John was barely through the check-out when there was an attempt to pull him into a barrier. Doubtlessly people camping the position and now trying to delay him. It wasn’t too hard to figure out which plane from NYC landed next in this airport, after all. Sucked to be them though. Just like the paparazzi barrier he had been asked to enter last time he was here, he was simply too strong to be forced into barriers by even low-tier Fateweavers.

Well, there went his hope to just forego this annoyance. The airport around them phased into total emptiness, not a single soul around but them. John took this chance to reach into his inventory and pull out Aclysia and Beatrice, in that order. The weaponized maid’s relief upon being freed from the stasis within his inventory was almost tangible.

“I do really hate that space, I am sorry, Master,” she stated as she began to grow from a figurine size to her normal one, then she realized the situation they were in. “What a basic hindrance, are they hiding from us?”

“Seems that way.” John tried to find whoever was behind this attack, but so far, no such luck. Now that he had entered the trap barrier, he couldn’t simply leave again until he assumed control. Granted, the fact that he initially resisted meant that he was the strongest guy around in the Illusion Barrier department, but since they had used an item, that didn’t really matter.

This was the first time the Gamer encountered an enchantment related to barriers in person. Well, strictly speaking, he had encountered some utility once before, such as the magical fuse box back in the old arcade, which Jimmy had set up. This, however, was a proper combat enchantment. Exceedingly rare due to how few enchanters were also Fateweavers by trait and the difficulty involved with creating such an item even then. Since they, on average, also had pretty low shelf-lives, just a couple of uses before they were worn out, they were resources seldomly employed.

They didn’t do anything Fateweavers couldn’t do themselves though. All their attributes had their value entirely in allowing even a minimally schooled person to either invade a higher-level barrier, trap someone much stronger than themselves or keep it from being easily entered.

Delaying John by some substantial amount would definitely be a justified usage of these items. Since they had set-up this little delay and weren’t coming at them guns blazing, the Gamer guessed that the only people inside here were some weak to middle level power goons good at hiding their presence. Abraham and his elites were continuing the purge of their ranks.

Well, John wasn’t planning to tag along their game. “Sylph,” he uttered the name and the thunderstorm elemental suddenly popped into existence in a green light and the sound of small bells. “Find the edge of the barrier and try to smash it.”

“Roger, roger, salute!” the green-haired storm the size of a hand bolted off as a greenish-blue bolt of energy and electricity. Her jagged charge carried her through the airport in no time.

‘One… two… three…’ John counted, then Sylph hit the border at full speed, putting the size of the barrier at around a kilometre. Abraham hadn’t been stingy in setting this up, more than enough space to play hide and seek. As he had been synced up to her mind at that moment, the Gamer suddenly found out what it was like for a fly to get caught by a windshield. Except the windshield was static and the fly was flying at several hundred kilometres per hour. ‘You fine?’ John asked, genuinely worried. Barrier walls were more like pushing two magnets against each other at the same poles, but at high enough velocity that didn’t really matter. Much like hitting water when jumping off a considerable height.

‘No… I hurt my nose, my cute little nose… such a courtesanic nose…’ There was no time to comment that that wasn’t even a word. It was just good that Sylph moved in her thunderbolt-esque manner, stopping to orient herself in between jumps. If she had flown in a straight line at maximum speed, she probably would have knocked herself out of corporeal life. The way she felt through their connection, she had come close enough at half. That she hadn’t even put a dent into the barrier while moving at such speed was a testament to it being rather sturdy.

There were multiple ways to go about this now that a simple smashing was probably out. The obvious was to use Gnome to locate whoever was hiding and keeping this barrier active. It was so obvious, in fact, that the enemy must have taken precautions against it, since the soil elemental couldn’t perceive anybody.

They could get there and have Metra have a swing at the barrier and try to break out the violent way after all. Chances of that working weren’t zero. If they could have just combined their physical powers, they could have pried it open guaranteed, but Illusion Barriers could only be damaged by one person at a time; different damage instances counted aside, not on-top of each other. Odd laws of reality but laws nonetheless.

Still, they were going to do that, since John’s actual plan needed some setup anyway. “Alright, Salamander, Undine, I need you to join up with Stirwin and Gnome.” This was a job for one of his more seldomly used Combinations. He was fine with taking the cooldown, it was much better than being bogged down here for an extended period.

The four elementals agreed, manifesting and then immediately putting their essences together. A swirl took the space between them for just a moment, then changed into a singular white colour. Nothing manifested, at least not in a proper, physical way, instead a cloud of white hung around the air and then swirled around John.

The fog surrounded the Gamer, a pair of clear blue eyes looked at him from within the mist, a shape slowly pulling together as it remained still. An immensely curvy woman, large breasts, a waist that would have made Jessica Rabbit jealous and wide hips, appeared. For a moment, she stayed manifested enough for the network of Lorylim scars, black and red, jagged and winding, from both of the affected elementals, to be put on display. Then moved again and became naught but mist.

‘Any comments today, Saladina?’ John asked the Gamer’s Consciousness. She was an elemental of very limited combat ability, more useful at giving advice. Her physical stats were downright awful. Any halfway strong person could catch and one-shot her.

Still, her unleashed ability was why John needed her here.

‘It appears to me that you need to keep the possibility of universal failure in mind,’ the voice of the steam elemental carried through his mind like the morning mist. ‘There might be no liars in this affair.’

‘I am considering it,’ John nodded; it had crossed his mind as well. However unlikely he found it, with how utterly perfect it played into the traitorous president’s plans, there was more than one way to solve this riddle. ‘At this point, it doesn’t matter. Abraham has played his hand and I am forced to respond.’

‘Just remember to stay your hand, should the truth be different from expectation.’ That were the last words Saladina had to offer, as she began to heat up. Although her unleash was immensely useful in this situation, it also needed two minutes to charge up. That would give her a mere three minutes to use it before departing again, but John expected all of his opponents to either be done or located by then.

“Well, I am going to do the smashing thing,” Metra announced and moved out. That plan went nowhere. No matter how much the ancient weapon showered the wall in strikes, all she managed to create were some cracks, no breakthrough. If she continued her ever more angry assault, she would probably, eventually, get through, but John’s plan came to fruition first.

With the hurt Sylph, having travelled back in incorporeal form, sitting on his hands, John looked at Saladina as she pulled into a singular spot and then rapidly expanded. She kept expanding and expanding until steam covered the entire barrier in its milky wavering. Through the empty isles and shops of the airport, it drafted like a blazing wind. Well, to John’s enemies, it must have been.

Nia waved at the fog like a confused kitten, “What does this do?”

“Saladina’s unleash covers a massive area in her fog,” John explained, watching Sylph in his hands going from grumbling in a hurt fashion with a lot of ‘Ouch’s and ‘Awawa’s to her usual chirpiness. “To us, it’s a giant healing field. Not the strongest, but its persistence is what counts. That and that it heals everybody equally without any additional mana cost. For enemies, it’s a just as persistent damage effect.”

The entire thing was immensely potent for group on group fights, but it was just a shame it was so highly conditional. Saladina was a sitting duck for two whole minutes before she got to use this trick and, as already established, sniping her immensely low HP off wasn’t too hard. The drawback of losing (at least) two elementals for pulling this fog wasn’t quite worth it. In their current situation, however, it worked out perfectly.

“And since everything is now inside her element,” John allowed himself a superior smirk, “tracking those that won’t fall over before this spell is over is rather easy. Siena, Sylph, I think that’s your job.” It was much easier to relay the positions of their adversaries to those hooked up to the same mental network as their mistborn radar.

“Finally, something to do,” Siena mused, poking her head out of John’s shadow for just a moment before moving away.

“I’ll go electrify them! Electrocute? That sounds so mean, but maybe that as well, dunno, maybe if they give up, I’ll just fry them a little bit?” the thunderstorm elemental darted off for the second time, staying far away from the walls.

John’s smirk went a bit sour as the air spirit’s little monologue did remind him that he was likely killing people with his move. More likely than not, since this was a damage over time effect from a level 170, 4-type combination. He didn’t even know if his enemies were strictly bad this time around. They could have been people convinced that he was an actual invader of their homeland.

His smile vanished completely but he didn’t order anyone to stop. The pledge to his own goals had already been made and he knew the cost when he had made it. Still, every time he had to kill to impose his goals, it left him majorly annoyed with the wider state of the world.

A desperate cry could be heard from somewhere, someone who had attempted to stay quiet, hoping for the damage effect to pass, only to be found by Siena. ‘Don’t make them suffer,’ John instructed.

__________________________________________________________________

A few minutes later, they were once more in the normal airport and hurrying along. It was the typical strategy for running along. Creating a barrier at one point, running the whole distance it covered at superhuman speeds, exiting, creating a new one, rinse and repeat. Nothing unusual about that.

Except that John basically appeared in front of his mother at one point.

That was the last encounter John expected and not one he needed right now. However, there was absolutely no hiding next to a streetlight. “Oh my,” Brenda blinked repeatedly, then chuckled, “I must be getting old, to only see you now.”

That was just the barrier phasing doing its thing, but the mundane mother couldn’t have known that. The bodyguard behind her very much could have though, Hex looking pretty unsurprised to see him there. If she had caught the news about the war, then she knew he had been on the way.

“What brings you here?” Brenda also didn’t have that information.

And John absolutely had no time for smalltalk. “Business,” he therefore stated, somewhat out of breath from the running. “Look, Mom, I am sorry, but I have to be somewhere, so…”

“Ah, no, that’s fine,” she waved off. “Just on the way to a pharmacy myself. I got a flyer about some new supplements and they sounded pretty good, so I want to try them. Something new on mushroom basis or something…. Ah, but look at me, already blabbering on again,” she laughed and hit him on the shoulder. “You go wherever you need to be… I am sure it will be fun if you need all of them with you,” she gestured at his girls, who had stopped with him for the moment.

“Yes… fun….” Agreeing was much quicker than further talk, “We’ll talk later!” He then hit the road again. His mother turned to the streetlight and he was already vanishing inside a barrier again. ‘What kind of bad luck must a man have?’ John asked himself as they closed in on Roosevelt Island.

He checked his clock one last time. They had made it in less than two hours, it was 18:30. All that lay between them and their target now was a bit of water. “Well, y’all better get ready,” Rave rolled her neck, in a much better mood than her boyfriend. A lifelong denizen of the Abyss, she hadn’t minded the earlier deaths nearly as much.