“Evil Theo, get down!” Caelin shouted.

Thinking he was in danger, Theo immediately crouched down, and Caelin flipped off his back as a springboard in an act of non-consensual teamwork.

With enough force generated from the jump, she sliced through the chandelier’s chain, crushing the large puppet underneath. Landing, Caelin observed the shattered glass on the marble floor in satisfaction as she admired her work. She fished an umber colored ball out from the wreckage and pocketed it in her jacket. 

“No, no, no!” Jacob stomped his foot on the ground in anger, throwing a tantrum. “How dare—”

“You should’ve given me a warning before you did that,” Theo grumbled. He rubbed his back while glaring at Caelin. “Do you know how heavy you are? My back almost broke from your weight.”

“You should be grateful that a beautiful lady like me even deigned to step on you,” Caelin scoffed.

“How dare—” Jacob tried again.

“There’s a beautiful lady?” Theo looked around in confusion, raising a hand over his eyes. “Is she in the room with us?”

“Will you two listen to me!” Jacob screeched, stamping his feet angrily on the ground.

Caelin and Theo stopped bickering and glanced at Jacob in disdain. 

“What? You’re still here, James?” Caelin asked apathetically.

Jacob sputtered incoherently in disbelief. “H-how dare you! I’m Jacob, the Reaper!” 

He attempted to call forth his puppets, but the wooden shells remained lifeless as the colored balls only trembled uselessly in Caelin and Theo’s pockets. “You destroyed my beloved puppets! I worked hard to lure and transform each human into pu—”

Theo landed a punch in Jacob’s stomach. Jacob immediately keeled over from the brunt of the blow and threw up a brown, projectile bile onto the marble floor. His ramblings interrupted by retching sounds instead. Caelin wrinkled her nose at the smell and took a step back towards Theo. 

“Lend me your sword, Evil Theo.” Caelin stretched out her left hand expectantly.

“Don’t you have your own?” Theo glanced at the crimson sword still in her right hand.

“I don’t want his disgusting blood on my precious baby when I incapacitate him,” Caelin said as if appalled by Theo’s suggestion. She withdrew her sword, the Imperium disappearing into glittering shards of red before fading away. 

“She’s picky as well,” Theo grumbled irritably under his breath. He begrudgingly tossed the sword to Caelin. 

“I heard that, Evil Theo,” Caelin chided, catching the sword. She looked down at the blade and frowned, waving it before Theo. “Why is this so dull? I can’t work with a sword like this. What did you do?”

“What are you talking about?” Theo said, digging his heel into Jacob’s hand as the boy attempted to crawl away. “I didn’t do anything to it.”

Jacob howled angrily in pain and shot a venomous glare at Theo.

Caelin pointed to the steel blade’s edge. “Just look at how dull it is! Not to mention how it’s nicked in several spots. You wouldn’t even be able to smoothly slice a loaf of bread with this.”

“It was already like that when I found it,” Theo said irritably. 

Caelin looked between the sword and the mutilated wooden bodies littering the floor. She found it hard to believe that Theo could achieve such precise cuts with such a damaged blade, but she couldn’t deny the evidence there before her. There was definitely more to Theo than he appeared to be, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint yet. 

Ultimately, the two decided to tie up Jacob and temporarily seal his power with Caelin’s Imperium as an extra precaution. The rope they used was specially provided by AIKA’s Engineering Division and could not be cut or broken by physical force. After Theo secured the knots, they waited for the others to arrive. 

Approximately half an hour later, Lilac, Hale and Killian arrived at the scene. They briefly glanced at Jacob, who was still tied up in the corner of the room in a puddle of his own vomit, and walked over to where Theo and Caelin waited by the broken dining table.

“Good job. I’ll have the Engineering Division provide you two with communication devices next time so you won’t have to wait idly for us,” Lilac remarked after Caelin finished telling them about what she and Theo had experienced, a sign that they had passed Lilac’s test. 

“When we went to the old house, we found that Mayor Hadden was also a puppet,” Killian said, explaining what they had encountered at the Mayor’s previous house on the hill. “We were also thinking of bringing back the colored spheres to AIKA. Perhaps the Engineering Division or Dr. Grey can do something to help them. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to locate any of the original bodies. I believe the boy may have used them in the process of turning the townspeople into puppets. Have you two figured out anything about his Imperium?”

“Only that he creates these puppets from people and can control them after,” Caelin said. “We tried taking his Imperium off of him, but it shocked us whenever we touched it.”

“That can happen when someone bonds too strongly with their Imperium.” Lilac nodded in understanding and turned from the group, stepping closer towards Jacob. “How did you obtain that Imperium?”

Jacob spat on her boots. “I’m not telling you anything.”

While Lilac questioned Jacob, Hale leaned in towards Caelin and attempted to whisper, “Hey, what’s with Theo? He seems…cooler?”

“You know, I like this guy,” Theo smiled, approaching the two as he overheard Hale’s compliment. “What was your name again?”

“That’s right, you haven’t technically met each other yet,” Caelin said. “Hale and Killian, meet Evil Theo. As I’ve mentioned before, the one with purple electricity around her currently is Lilac, the commander of Combat Division 3.”

The four of them turned around to see Lilac “talking” to Jacob. They quickly turned back.

“‘Evil Theo’?” Killian said puzzledly.

“Yeah, he has dissociative identity disorder,” Caelin explained instinctually. She stopped, surprising herself by the words that had automatically come out of her mouth. It was as if she had uttered those same words multiple times before to defend someone. 

Killian looked at Theo. “Is this true?”

“So we’ve been told before,” Theo said with a nonchalant shrug. He stared fixedly at Caelin. “But I don’t really like labels, especially from a pseudo-psychologist.”

“You’ve studied psychology before, Caelin?” Killian asked, seemingly impressed.

“No.” Caelin shook her head, frowning thoughtfully. “But I know the term from…No, there was someone who…” 

She hated the feeling of not remembering. Unfortunately, it was the first thing that she could remember. The condemned fate of a blank slate past. She felt her chest twist and tighten as she sought after this glimmer of a memory that had unknowingly slipped out. There was once someone she knew, someone dear to her. Someone she didn’t want to forget. 

“Who are you?” Caelin whispered under her breath.

“Caelin!” Lilac shouted urgently, snapping her out of her thoughts.

The four of them turned around to see Jacob attempting to call his puppets. The colored balls began to shake violently from within the canvas bag Killian was holding. Caelin quickly ran over to reseal Jacob’s Imperium, but before she could touch him, he suddenly collapsed with a violent seizure. The veins on his neck and face bulged as blood began to slowly pour out of his orifices. 

“Lilac, what did you do?” Caelin gasped, staring in shock at Jacob's deteriorating state.

“He must’ve overused his Imperium,” Lilac said. “We have to stop him before he kills himself.” 

She attempted to rip the golden crown pin off of his shirt, but it instantly shocked her. Lilac pulled back her gloved hand with a hiss as white smoke emitted from her fingertips.

Jacob’s maniacal laughter began, before breaking into a coughing fit as he choked on his own blood. “You’re too late. He will avenge me and kill all of you. He has come back to save us.”

“Who will?” Lilac demanded fiercely. “Who is ‘us’?”

“He will grant hope to those without, and he will destroy those who don’t deserve it,” Jacob babbled on. “Just as he has done before.”

“Who?” Lilac shook Jacob roughly, forgoing her original intentions to stop aggravating his injuries. 

“Xero,” Jacob said with a bloody, content smile. “Xero has returned.” He gave one last bloody cough, and his eyes rolled to the back of his head. He died where he sat. The golden pin on his shirt collar fell off, plopping to the floor with a clink and shattering into a pile of black sand.

“Did he…just say ‘Xero’?” Killian whispered softly. His face had turned pale.

Lilac took out a small black pouch and scooped the black sand into it. “Everyone, gather up the puppets and Jacob’s body. We need to return to AIKA and tell Alice what we discovered here immediately.”

“Do you think Xero has really returned?” Hale asked. There was anger in his green eyes, and his hands clenched into fists.

Lilac sighed softly. “I can only pray for all of our sakes that it isn’t so.”

While they collected the wooden puppets off the ground, Caelin absentmindedly picked up the wooden debris, slowly tossing them into a brown burlap sack Lilac had distributed to each of them. Considering the damage Xero had done during the Dagann Wars, it was normal to react when hearing the inauspicious name mentioned. Perhaps she was reading too much into it, but Caelin couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something she was missing. 

Theo had flinched when he heard the name and his eyes darkened, but as ever, he gave nothing away.