The peace in the Shinto dojo slowly returned after Sergio bellowed his wild claims. King Solomon looked, with a gaze of deep tenderness, at Izanagi and Izanami. The two eastern entities bowed deeply one last time: a serene, dignified movement that merged seamlessly into the rustling of the leaves outside. Solomon raised his hand, nodding solemnly to his old companions to bid farewell to the dojo, speaking in a calm, solemn voice that their time here was up. With a fluid motion of his staff, he wove a warm, golden light around the group. The soothing scent of cedarwood and old incense slowly faded, giving way to the familiar, chilly outdoor air of their own domain. The shift this time did not occur with a brutal, disorienting impact, but with a slow, almost dreamlike transition, in which the reality around them melted away.
When the Nobodies opened their eyes again, they stood on the familiar, stone courtyard of the Bastion. The massive walls towered cold, yet protective, around them: robust, empty, and longing for the renewal that had been hanging in the air for hours. King Solomon leaned lightly on his staff, surveying the young warriors with an amused look; he straightened his shoulders, smoothed his beard, and asked what it was they had been so passionately discussing the entire way back.
He had not even finished his sentence before the proverbial bomb exploded in full force.
"I want a candy forest with cotton candy trees!" Ren shouted wildly, running around Miki in lightning fast circles while his teal wind energy shot across the stone floor in bright flashes.
Miki roared right over him, swinging her arms wildly as her fiery red glow made the shadows on the walls dance at a frantic pace, demanding real, flowing lava running through her ceiling. Within a second, the spark spread to the rest of the group. Lyn loudly began demanding that her walls be thick enough to blow up an entire ammunition depot inside, without bothering the rest; meanwhile, Beat and Apollo stumbled over each other’s feet to shout their own wishes over the noise. Sergio Waxelton hiccuped noisily, threw an arm around nobody in particular, and started a conga line all by himself, waving a soaked polishing cloth that smelled of strong beeswax. In no time at all, it became a complete, uncontrollable chaos of young warriors, all blaring at the exact same time.
Nicola tried to rise above it with an utterly dry expression, stepping forward with a deep sigh and raising a hand to call for quiet, hoping everyone could form a neat line. Nobody listened to him. The chaotic bickering continued at full speed: Ren snatched the polishing cloth out of Sergio’s hand at breakneck speed, Miki began heating up the stones beneath her feet out of sheer frustration, and Nicola was simply pushed aside with a shoulder bump through the noise.
Then, Silarias reached his limit.
The great warrior took a heavy step forward, sucked a terrifyingly massive breath of air into his lungs, and let a hellish lion roar escape from the depths of his throat. The brutal soundwave was so insanely powerful that the windows of the entire Bastion rattled in their frames, and the fierce gust of wind blew the smoke plumes straight off Sergio’s clothes. The impact was immediate and absolute. The screeching was instantly nipped in the bud, and the air turned ice cold. Within a single millisecond, everyone, including the jumpy children and the half drunk Sergio, snapped straight to attention. With fear and deep respect in their eyes, they formed a single, perfectly straight, dead silent line in a fluid, almost military movement. Silarias slowly exhaled, lowered his broad shoulders, and gave a brief nod to the tech specialist, telling him it was his turn.
Nicola instantly got a triumphant, almost maniacal grin on his face. He rubbed his hands together vigorously, swiping his fingers through the neon blue holograms that shot out from his wristband in bright sparks. The group tossed the concept of Sergio’s simple wash salon straight into the trash within a fraction of a second, because the plans now lighting up the air were vastly bigger, bolder, and cooler.
He lit up the blueprints for the children first. Miki would receive a room made of jet black, heat resistant obsidian, with glowing lava tubes running along the ceiling so she could train her thermal control to the absolute limit. To prevent her whole life from going up in ashes, a magically cooled chill corner would be installed, featuring a massive beanbag that was guaranteed to be immune to her heat. Beside it flashed the design for Ren: a massive indoor storm chamber devoid of furniture, built with giant wind turbines in the walls where he could zip through with his teal flashes without fear of destroying anything wooden. Half of that space was immediately reserved for the candy forest he had devised with Miki, complete with trees made of cotton candy and bushes growing edible energy gummies that would instantly replenish their powers.
Directly below the children’s plans flashed a wild, pulsating network of neon lines that seemed to run through the entire Bastion. Beat and Apollo stepped forward out of the line simultaneously, their eyes gleaming when they saw the blueprints. This was their shared dream: a giant, three dimensional racetrack that wound through and around the entire Bastion. The design showcased extreme loopings, sheer vertical walls, and floating speed tracks of pure energy that broke through the thick stone walls and raged over the grounds outside. Beat wanted the track to react to his purple Oni power, featuring special acceleration zones that would push his rajin volt earring to the boiling point; Apollo demanded that the track contain challenging, glowing obstacles that could only be shattered by the unwavering light of his shield. It was meant to be the ultimate test of pure speed and reflexes: a place where the two could push each other to the absolute limit daily in a blood pumping race for the crown of the Bastion.
Beneath that, Nicola projected the workspaces. His own astral forge studio would be directly linked to the blueprints just stolen from the Lost Library, allowing the walls to transform into three dimensional touchscreens of pure light to control a vacuum furnace in which he could mix liquid ether with alien metal. Lyn’s room bordered it directly: a maniacal demolition yard with meters thick, self healing walls of reinforced concrete where she could test weapons until shrapnel flew in all directions, surrounded by hydraulic presses, heavy hammers, and mountains of usable scrap.
For the front line, Nicola kept things functional. Silarias asked for nothing more than a tactical focus room, a minimalistic and completely soundproof space with a simple mattress and a massive, interactive tactical map of the front line on the wall to escape the pressure of the outside world while overlooking the training fields. Aurelius, on the other hand, received a seismic meditation dojo with a floor of heavy, raw bedrock and deep resonance springs, essential for keeping the constant, dark bloodlust of his new, cursed Dáinsleif in check by grounding the heavy energy straight into the deep foundation of the Bastion.
The strategists and scouts received rooms that aligned perfectly with their nature. Nyx demanded a botanical astronomy dome with a massive glass ceiling to study the cosmos, resting on a living indoor garden filled with rare, luminescent herbs she could use for her medicinal and tactical plans. Jane’s room became an ethereal healing oasis: a serene, soft space infused with her own regenerative energy. Lila’s room was perhaps the most mysterious of all; a unique space that at first glance appeared to be a dense, living forest, yet remained constantly shrouded in deep, ominous twilight. The walls behind the trees were full of hidden crawl spaces and an extensive network of secret passages running through the entire Bastion, allowing her to gather information unnoticed and keep watch day and night.
But the absolute crowning achievement of the entire renovation was the transformation of the wash salon into a completely new wing of the base: the grand wax and ether bathhouse. This would become a massive, lavish space of gleaming white marble where Sergio Waxelton would hold absolute sway, heavily supported by Nyx’s healing powers and Nicola’s technology. In the center of the marble hall, Nicola designed an enormous central basin filled with a constantly steaming, glowing mixture of Sergio’s liquefied beeswax and Nyx’s turquoise healing ether. The magical properties of this combination were unmatched: where Jane’s magic closed normal wounds, Sergio’s liquid wax ensured that the Nobodies’ muscles were softened to the core, their skin became resistant to extreme heat, and their exhausted ether circuits were completely flushed out and reset within minutes. After a brutal fight or an exhausting training session, you would step in broken, only to come out feeling as though you were reborn. The atmosphere promised to be legendary as well, because the walls and floors were polished so insanely smooth by Sergio that Ren and Miki were already laughingly sliding across them in the simulation. Along the edges stood shelves packed with exclusive polishes, giant towels, and, of course, an inexhaustible bar stocked with strong liquor where Sergio, sitting halfway in the warm bath, could bellow his tall tales to everyone lying back to recover.
Nicola closed the floating projection with a loud, mechanical click. He let the neon blue circuits dance around his fingers with sharp, crackling sparks and looked at the row of warriors, declaring with a wide, maniacal grin displaying the pure passion of a master inventor: "This will become the most legendary base this world has ever seen!"
He was just about to clap his hands together to activate the first machines when Lyn took a step forward. She did not look at the shiny holographic plans, but crossed her arms tightly over her chest and raised her eyebrows. The smile on Nicola’s face tightened.
"It all looks wonderful on paper," Lyn stated in a sharp voice that cut through the space, "but look around us. The Bastion is still an empty, cold shell. We possess no forge, no vacuum furnaces, and nowhere near the raw materials to realize even a fraction of those megalomaniacal plans. We literally have nothing in hand at the moment to build with!"
The silence that followed was heavy. The neon blue glow of Nicola’s holograms flickered briefly, as if they too felt the severity of her words. The warriors in the line looked at each other uncomfortably; the euphoria of their newly formed dreams crashed hard against the cold reality of an empty treasury. Nicola lowered his hands and the sparks slowly died out, while he focused his gaze on the grey, empty walls for the first time since his return to the Bastion.
Until a warm, golden laughter cut through the cold hall.
"May I finally say something, my dear allies?" Solomon asked with a soft chuckle. King Solomon was still standing near the entrance, his eyes twinkling like distant stars in the night as he looked broadly at the group, reminding them that they were forgetting someone important who could help them with this.
Silarias frowned, his gaze shifting questioningly from the grey stones to the king. He understood nothing of it at first, his fists still clenched from the previous tension. But Nicola and Nyx were ahead of him. As if by reflex, they turned their heads toward Solomon simultaneously, their eyes wide and full of sudden hope.
Silarias stared at the expression on their faces, and then the penny dropped. The deep frown cleared, giving way to a look of surprised insight as a low realization escaped his heavy voice.
Nyx immediately switched to a mode nobody had expected from her. Her posture softened, her facial expression became soft and innocent, and she looked up at the king with a look that could sway even the heart of a god. "Could you please help us out?" she asked softly.
King Solomon opened his mouth, a feigned seriousness on his face. "Do you truly think that I would just jump in?" he asked.
He did not get any further. Miki, who had rushed through the confusion, tripped awkwardly over the hem of her dress and came to a stop right at the king’s feet. She looked up, her cheeks red with embarrassment and tension, offering a sheepish apology. "Uncle Solomon, could you please help us out?" she asked.
Solomon’s assistant, who had been standing silently in the shadow until that moment, stiffened. He cast a fearful glance at his monarch, quietly pleading: "Your Majesty, please hold back and maintain your composure!"
It was as if the king completely melted down within a single second. The stern attitude vanished like snow in the sun, and with an infectious laugh, he effortlessly lifted Miki into the air. "Do you want your Uncle Solomon to do this for you?" he asked with a booming laugh. "Come along then!"
Without casting a single glance behind him, the king strolled with Miki in his arms straight into a shimmering portal that opened in the middle of the room.
Nyx and the rest of the Nobodies were left behind stunned, their gazes glued to the spot where the portal had just extinguished. They slowly turned around toward the assistant, who was still standing in the middle of the room. The man began to chuckle softly and shook his head.
Putting all ranks aside for a moment, he spoke while looking at the group: "Nyx, you know how your father is, and how much he cares for you. He loves you, but he is rooting for both of you. I truly believe you are going to save the world."
He reached into his robe and pulled out a sparkling crystal alongside a crumpled piece of paper full of hasty scribbles. He placed a small, round pair of glasses on his nose to read the text better, expressing his hope with a small chuckle: "I hope you are ready for an upgrade!"
He raised the crystal, and a bright light began to fill the room, so intense that everyone had to shield their eyes.