Meanwhile, deep within the Free Abyss...
Flex City was alive.
Neon streaks stretched between impossible towers, glowing across the sapphire sky. People floated between buildings, some riding hoverboards, others simply phasing through walls as though architecture was merely a suggestion.
Music spilled from open plazas.
Devian Nova flashed across the streets.
People laughed.
People argued.
People traded.
People wandered.
People simply existed.
For the Nicronians, it was almost overwhelming.
After generations of living beneath the expectations of Airious, Flex City felt less like a city and more like stepping into somebody else's dream.
Androsha walked through it all with her recruits.
She wasn't giving them a speech.
She didn't need to.
She just wanted them to see.
"That's the food district," she said casually, pointing toward a glowing avenue. "Don't ask me why that building is upside down."
One of the younger Nicronians stared.
"Is it supposed to be?"
"No idea."
She kept walking.
A few of them laughed.
For the first time since leaving Nicron, some of them seemed genuinely relaxed.
Then a message reached them.
Androsha stopped.
A distant transmission flickered across the surface of a nearby screen.
The Airien Champions had arrived on Nicron.
The mood changed instantly.
The laughter disappeared.
The smiles faded.
Several Nicronians looked at each other.
One elder immediately looked away.
Another lowered his head.
Someone else pressed their hands together nervously.
Guilt.
It moved through the group almost like a wave.
They had chosen this.
That was the problem.
Nobody had dragged them into Flex City.
Nobody had forced them to leave.
They had looked at Androsha.
They had listened.
They had considered everything she had said.
And then...
They chose.
They chose to abandon generations of tradition.
They chose to walk away from Airious.
They chose an uncertain future in a place they barely understood.
And now the Champions were standing on the planet they had left behind.
One of the elders swallowed.
"I..."
He couldn't finish.
Another elder turned his face away, clearly embarrassed.
A younger Nicronian looked at him.
"You regret it?"
"I don't know."
"That's not an answer."
"I know."
Androsha watched them for a moment.
Then she scoffed.
"Ugh."
Everyone turned toward her.
"Seriously?"
She gestured toward the group.
"You're still attached to them?"
Nobody answered.
Androsha folded her arms.
"You gave it up."
Her voice wasn't cruel.
It was blunt.
"You chose this."
She pointed toward the city around them.
"This place. This life. This uncertainty."
She looked at the elders.
"You made your decision."
One of them finally spoke.
"But they were our elders."
"And?"
"They guided us for generations."
"And you spent generations listening to them."
Androsha stepped closer.
"That doesn't mean you have to spend the rest of your life apologizing for finally making your own choice."
The elders fell silent.
Androsha shook her head.
"I spent years trying to tell you the truth."
She looked around at all of them.
"Back then, nobody listened."
Her expression hardened.
"Now you finally listen, and the moment Airious comes knocking, you start acting like somebody stole you."
She pointed at the ground.
"Nobody stole you."
Then at herself.
"I didn't steal you."
Then toward the city.
"Devia didn't steal you."
She pointed toward the horizon.
"You chose."
The word echoed.
An older Nicronian lowered his eyes.
"But what if we were wrong?"
Androsha stared at him.
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she smiled.
"Then be wrong."
Everyone looked at her.
"What?"
"Seriously."
She shrugged.
"You think choosing your own path means you magically become incapable of making mistakes?"
She laughed.
"That's not freedom."
She stepped backward, walking as she spoke.
"Freedom means the choice belongs to you."
She pointed at them.
"And so does the mistake."
The guilt in the group didn't disappear.
But something else appeared alongside it.
Understanding.
Androsha turned around and continued walking.
"Come on."
Nobody moved.
She looked back.
"What?"
One of the younger Nicronians hesitated.
"Aren't you worried?"
Androsha grinned.
"The Champions are on your planet."
She gestured around Flex City.
"And you're here."
She shrugged.
"Guess we'll see what happens."
Then she started walking again.
"Just don't embarrass me by pretending you didn't choose this."
Slowly...
The Nicronians followed.
They continued strolling through Flex City.
The Nicronians slowly began to relax again.
The neon streets stretched endlessly ahead of them, alive with color and movement. People drifted through the air, lights twisted around buildings, and somewhere in the distance, someone was laughing loudly enough to be heard across the entire avenue.
Androsha walked among her people, watching them experience this strange new world.
Then, almost out of nowhere, a thought crossed her mind.
"Yeah..."
She tilted her head.
"Now that I think about it..."
She looked upward.
"I haven't seen Oudre in, like..."
She counted on her fingers.
"...a while."
A tiny smile appeared.
"Oudre."
The name lingered in her mind.
She remembered him.
Back when she was still trying to teach people the way of the Deviant.
Back when almost nobody believed her.
There had been the books.
So many books.
The weird ones.
The obscure ones.
The ones nobody else wanted to read.
Oudre would find them and hand them to her like treasures.
"Read this one."
"Why?"
"Because you keep asking the same question from five different angles."
"That's not an answer."
"It's a better one than the answers you're getting."
She remembered the talks.
The arguments.
The ridiculous tangents that somehow became hours-long conversations.
The laughs.
And the quiet moments.
Those were the ones she remembered most.
The moments when nobody else was around.
No elders.
No students.
No arguments about Airious.
No pressure to prove anything.
Just two strange kids sitting somewhere, talking about things neither of them fully understood.
The memory pulled at her.
And then—
The world around her seemed to blur.
Her awareness sank inward.
Her Inner Realm.
The dazzling streets of Flex City disappeared.
The neon became darkness.
The noise became silence.
A grim forest stretched endlessly beneath a colorless sky.
Fog crawled between the trees.
And within that fog...
Memories flickered.
Like old videotapes.
Grainy.
Unstable.
Fragments of moments long gone.
There he was.
Oudre.
A younger version of him sitting beneath a tree, surrounded by books far too large for him.
He looked up.
That same strange little smile.
"Whatever it is you're learning..."
Another memory.
Oudre walking beside her.
"I'll learn it with you."
Another.
Him adjusting his glasses, completely fascinated by something she had just said.
"Let's just see what happens."
Another.
The two of them laughing.
Another.
Silence.
Just sitting together.
No words.
No need for them.
Androsha watched the memories pass through the fog.
He had been curious enough to ignore his conditioning.
That was what made him different.
He hadn't simply rejected Airious.
He hadn't blindly accepted her.
He had done something much stranger.
He looked.
He questioned.
He read.
He investigated.
And when everyone else told him to stop asking questions, Oudre had simply asked another one.
A voice echoed through the forest.
"Whatever it is you're learning, I'll learn with you... see what happens."
Androsha smiled.
"He really was an enigma..."
The fog moved.
She could almost see him again.
A charmer wrapped in an absurd mountain of books.
A strange little bookworm who somehow made silence feel comfortable.
Someone who could turn the most ridiculous conversation into something profound without even realizing he had done it.
Her expression softened.
"Even when nobody was watching..."
The memories continued to flicker.
She remembered the nights.
The discussions.
The moments where they simply existed beside each other.
No ideology.
No expectations.
No need to convince anyone.
Just curiosity.
And somehow...
Those moments had stayed with her.
She closed her eyes.
"Oudre."
A small laugh escaped her.
"You really were weird."
The forest remained silent.
Androsha opened her eyes again.
"But you were there."
She looked at the fading memories.
"You were there when nobody believed me."
The fog swallowed another image of him.
The boy who had handed her books when everyone else had handed her doubt.
The boy who chose to remain with Avia...
while she chose the Deviant path.
Different paths.
Different questions.
Yet somehow, that never erased what existed between them.
Androsha smiled faintly.
"This bookworm..."
She looked away.
"...still has a place in my heart."
The memory faded.
The inner realm dissolved.
Androsha's eyes opened again.
Flex City returned.
Neon.
Movement.
Noise.
Her recruits.
The dazzling Free Abyss.
She stared ahead for a moment longer.
Then she chuckled.
"Wonder what he's doing now."