Jade walked slowly over to his sister, nudging her standing body with his hand. She did not move in the slightest. He walked to a couple others, nudging Luke, nudging Guy, kicking Dist, nudging Peony… but none moved.

“What,” he muttered to himself once he’d approached the end of the bodies, “is going on here?”

The second he spoke, they began to move. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose; nor spake, nor moved their eyes! It had been strange, even in a dream, to have seen those dead men rise… But they were unfortunately not dead, nor did they need to rise (being already on their feet, as they were), nor was Jade dreaming!

“By Samuel,” Jade muttered aloud, confusing even himself with his voice. He repeated, “What is going on here?”

Dozens of eyes opened at once, focusing on Jade. Half that number of bodies turned in his direction, and Jade started edging away from them. “Now, really…”

“Colonel!” Anise cried happily, throwing herself at him. Ordinarily, Jade would not have moved away, but Dist and Guy were making a similar motion! Jade backstepped away, but the whole crowd was now starting to move after him!

Jade turned and started sprinting, but the majority of the group was able to keep up with him. Largo picked up little Anise and threw her through the air, straight as an arrow (with, of course, a cry of “Piercing Tatlin!”), which, due to her weight, was a very simple task. Anise caught the Colonel around the waist. Jade would have pushed her off, but despite the situation, he was reluctant to hurt her.

The added weight made it hard to run, though, and the ever-speedy Guy was the next to catch up, tackling him from behind and clinging to his arm, his lips puckered for a delusional kiss.

“Guy,” Jade couldn’t stop himself from complaining, “I’m neither one of Peony’s rappigs nor Natalia!”

Luke was jumping from the other side, getting his arms around Jade’s neck. Between the three of them, Jade was now suitably hampered, unable to get ahead of the crowd. And at this moment, when he had three people clinging to him, when there was a whole crowd of people on his tail…

This is when a look of concern showed up on his face.

Wise men have often wondered what it would take to make Colonel Jade Curtiss display an emotion other than his permanent grin on his face. The answer, it would seem, is the unconditional love of thirty people. And a Piercing Tatlin.

Speaking of which, at about this point, Jade heard Largo’s booming voice cry about again, this time with the words, “Piercing Osborne!” and he could break Luke’s grip just enough to see his sister flying in the air toward him. She landed on his back, forcing him to the ground, and wrapped him in a large hug while she snuggled his back with entirely more sibling love than Jade was looking for.

Now pinned on the ground with the whole crowd approaching, Jade tried to reason through why he was being run down.

Option 1: Anise was playing a huge practical joke on him.

Option 2: Peony was playing a huge practical joke on him.

Option 3: Anise and Peony were playing a huge practical joke on him.

Option 4: Luke’s hyperresonance backfired throughout the world, the vibration amplified to that distance by the Passage Rings he had connected with. The hyperresonance vibrated with particular power with everyone Luke had come into close contact with, (including Luke, himself), copied their fonon resonance frequencies, and drew that data into the sphere, simply because it was the largest mass of fonons available and, of course, fonons attract. When the sphere eventually shattered, the fonons broke free, using the frequency data to assembled into their usual patterns, leaving replicas of everyone he knew; they were physically fine, but woozy and mentally shaken. He could only surmise that they were left as a blank slate, and would latch onto the first thing they saw, much like a newborn hatchling attaches to whatever it sees first as its mother. When he spoke, he got their attention at once, forcing them to look at him, thereby imprinting himself on them.

Or something like that. It was only a working theory.

This meant Jade had only moments to come up with a plan of action.

Option 1: Use fonic artes to free himself.

Option 2: Use strike artes to free himself.

Option 3: Hold a long interior ethical debate over why the first two plans that came to mind involved hurting images of almost everyone he cared about (it wouldn’t get him out of this mess, but it bore thinking about…).

Option 4: Force this Luke to use his hyperresonance and hope that it would destabilize the replicas without harming him.

And if it failed, he’d take death over being hugged by Dist.

Jade grabbed the Luke’s wrist and began to channel his own fonons into the replica. He was attempting to overload the replica’s control over his power, and after a moment (wherein Dist got entirely too close for comfort), it worked. The Luke lost control over his hyperresonance, letting it go, but the Colonel was careful to allow him to only let some of it out. The power of seventh fonons flooded the street, Jade making sure Luke only fired his power directly upwards so as not to harm the town. The mass of fonons, however, was more than enough to destabilize the replicas, and slowly but surely, the replicas all faded into nothingness.

Jade sighed slowly, standing up on the empty street. He brushed the dust off his uniform and walked quickly back to his house. He reached the basement, where he found Luke standing up slowly beside the fon machine, which was, itself, depleted of energy.

“Jade?” Luke groaned. “Ow… what happened?”

“Your hyperresonance backfired,” Jade said with a sigh. He had just realized he’d have to explain something, and that was always guaranteed to annoy him. “Acting through the passage rings, it called up the fonic frequencies of people you’ve been in contact with, creating a sort of… phantom replica of each of them just outside.”

“A phantom replica? What did you do with them?” Luke asked.

“I didn’t do anything,” Jade shrugged. “They weren’t stable replicas, so they dissipated of their own accord. I just hate to wait long enough.”

“Oh,” Luke said. “That sounds logical enough. Are you sure that was it?”

Jade smiled. “Why would it not be?”

“I don’t know,” the replica answered. “I have this sneaking suspicion that something more happened.”

“That,” Jade said cryptically, walking for the door, “is a secret I will carry to my grave. Now, be a good boy and destroy that infernal fon machine for me, will you? I need to have some words with Guy…”

The words, for the record, were, “Ground Dasher.”