STORMWEAVER II: Chapter 42 Sneak Peek (Patreon)

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“Maybe you’re gonna step back in time, dude!” Catcher exclaimed giddy, joking but obviously still excited. He’d regained a lot of his usual brightness once Rei had shown that he could move, and had practically fallen off the wall the excitement when Shido had shown off its new Phalanx-Mode.

“Catchwick, tone it down,” Dent said over her shoulder without looking back at the Saber. She was still watching Rei. “I agree with the Captain, Ward. I think building off a Break Step is a good basis. Still, let’s be careful about it.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rei answered, trying not to sound too grim as he looked back around at Aria. For all any of them knew, after all, Temporal Step was just Break Step dialed up to 11, and he was about to to bazooka himself into the discretionary wall.

“You want to come at me?” Aria asked him. “You’re sure?”

He gave her a pained grin. “Yeah… If it is like Break Step and I overdo it, I’d rather bounce of a shield then solid light.” He frowned, though, realizing how selfish that sounded, and started to add quickly, “Sorry! If you’d rather I aim elsewhere, I totally underst—”

“Nope,” Aria told him at once, taking two quick leaps back that graceful landed her some 20 feet or so away from him, where she settled into a ready position with her shield at an angle in front of her. “Just don’t blame me if you end up rearranging your face on Hippolyta.”

Rei’s grin was a more genuine this time. It still hurt—everything still hurt, dammit—but between Viv, Catcher, and Aria, he could feel juuuust a little something that could almost have been normalcy returning.

As normal as things could ever be around Shido, at least.

“Okay…” He took a breath, considering things. He decided to stay in Phalanx-Mode. It was the least agile of his three modes, now, which ordinarily would have also made it the least-ideal to test out what they all seemed to agree was some kind of mobility Ability. On the other hand, given the situation that was exactly why he picked it. With his shield and thick armor Rei wasn’t only the heaviest—and therefore slowest—he could be with Shido called, but also the most well-defended.

Maybe he was more worried about slamming into that wall than he wanted to admit to himself…

A little more complicated was how he wanted to go about this. He’d seen Break Step used before, and seen it triggered right out the starting gate. Common as it was, it was one of the few Abilities that started with a charge, with only subsequent ones requiring a modest amount of energy buildup before being able to be fired off again. Temporal Step wasn’t like that, apparently, but Rei was starting from a stand still, so it was functionally the same. That was good, because he was coming apart at the seams as it was, and already wasn’t looking forward to the burden the coming boost in Speed they were all expecting would have on his body. If he didn’t have to move more than that, he wasn’t going to.

So Phalanx-Mode, from a standstill, aiming right at a ready Aria…

No time like the present, Rei thought.

It still took him another few seconds to steel his nerves.

Then he brought his own shield up to protect himself from whatever might happen next, and took a single, aching step forward.

“Temporal Step!”