[Scene 1: The Crash of Reverse Flow]
The chaotic, blind jump from the collapsing Obsidian Skatepark was devastatingly successful. Team Sloth survived, but the landing was anything but smooth. They slammed into a narrow, neon-lit city lane—Rewind Alley.
The environment here was terrifyingly surreal: rain fell upward, discarded chewing gum flew back into the mouths of their owners' reflections, and faint echoes of past arguments played backward from the walls. Time literally ran in reverse, creating a sensory paradox that challenged Leo's very sense of linear existence.
"Data log: Environment Rewind Alley. Threat: Temporal Recoil. The reckless jump caused a temporal backwash," Astrid analyzed, her voice tight with suppressed nausea. She clutched the Lumina Clue. "We are reliving moments of local failure. Facts first, feelings later! We need to stabilize the forward flow!"
Leo felt the psychic signature immediately: a deep, existential dread that was the philosophical opposite of his Cosmic Inertia. If I achieve Zeroness here, time might cease to exist entirely.
Tank roared, confused, as his earlier successful punch from the alley (Chapter 3) played backward, forcing him to retract his fist and causing him to stumble. "Let's smash AND grab! I hate reverse movement!"
[Scene 2: Annabelle's Malfunction]
The situation escalated due to an accidental betrayal. The temporal stress of the jump caused a critical malfunction in the gear of the team's competitive variable, Annabelle "AB" Cruz, who had landed nearby, still driven by her desire to exploit the rivalry.
Annabelle's Obsidian Skateboard, designed to ignore linear physics, instead began to loop violently. The Skateboard was caught in a localized time debt.
"My board is looping! I can't control the flow!" Annabelle shrieked. "This is statistically unacceptable! My reflexes are maxed out, but the code is broken!"
The localized temporal loop created by the Skateboard had a catastrophic effect: it caused the environment around the team to rewind violently, repeating a crucial past failure—a moment when a hidden Compliance Faction operative had nearly ambushed the team in a previous version of this alley.
They saw the scene: a shadowy figure—an expert in stealth and spatial distortion—rematerializing in the alley entrance, just as they had been before the team successfully defeated him in the original timeline.
"The time loop gave the enemy a perfect do-over!" Astrid screamed. "He's back, and he knows our moves! Petra, you and Leo—you fix the flaw! Now!"
[Scene 3: Race Against the Rewind]
The responsibility fell squarely on the two least likely collaborators: the exhausted, reluctant Cosmi-Napper and the frazzled Tech Wizard.
"The flaw is in the local time pattern! We have to find the point where the alley's movement changes direction and stabilize it!" Petra yelled, activating her laptop and Static Netcaster.
The two of them, aided by the panicked Annabelle who was desperate to stop her Skateboard from causing more damage, began a frantic race backward through the alley. They were pursued by the shadowy Compliance operative, who was moving forward in his reversed timeline—making him functionally faster than them.
"I need you to use your Inertia to stabilize the path, Boss!" Petra commanded, navigating the glitching pavement. "I need stationary data points!"
Leo, fighting the urge to collapse into the seductive quiet of the backward flow, pushed a series of small, agonizing Inertia Pulses into the ground beneath their feet. The pulse didn't stop time; it created pockets of absolute stillness (Zeroness) that the temporal rewind couldn't affect, giving Petra the stable data points she needed.
"I specialize in low-energy, high-impact emotional resolution, not temporal physics, Petra!" Leo gasped, his mind swimming. "This is too much Action!"
"Your Sloth is the cure for this place, Boss! Your Inertia is the only thing that refuses to change!" Petra retorted, using her competitive determination to keep both herself and Leo going.
[Scene 4: The Core Logic Error]
The chase culminated near a glitching holographic billboard that displayed the alley's timeline. Petra realized the fundamental error wasn't in the Skateboard, but in the Alley's code itself.
"The Alley's logic is inverted! The system rewards chaos with stability, and order with collapse!" Petra shrieked, her tech skills overwhelmed by the paradox.
Annabelle, watching the code glitch in reverse, had a sudden moment of competitive insight. "Wait! The alley rewards unpredictability! I lost that race because I was too good! Too predictable! We have to introduce a non-statistical variable!"
Annabelle, making a snap, selfless decision (a break in her competitive code), aimed her Skateboard at the billboard. She performed the most inefficient, chaotic aerial trick she knew—a triple-reverse corkscrew—crashing into the billboard and flooding the area with a massive, localized Glitch Code.
The Glitch Code was the unpredictable variable. The system, unable to process the input, immediately reset the timeline to its current, forward-moving reality.
The shadowy Compliance operative vanished, his do-over attempt erased.
[Scene 5: The Time Echo and The New Destiny]
The time loop was fixed, but the chaos of the reset was immense. Annabelle lay on the ground, her Skateboard cracked but her ego intact.
"Don't think this means we're friends, Techie," Annabelle muttered to Petra, accepting the consequences of her heroic inefficiency.
"It means you are statistically useful, AB. That's better than friendship," Petra replied, scanning the wreckage.
But the intense temporal energy caused by the combined effort of Leo's Inertia and Annabelle's Glitch Code generated a massive, unforeseen spiritual side effect: a Time Echo.
A column of blue, ethereal light erupted from the alley, slamming directly into the team. It was a psychic signature loaded with future data, bypassing all of Leo's newly regained psychic defenses.
The Time Echo slammed into Tank Hayes, causing him to reel back. He hadn't been involved in the repair, yet the echo was specifically targeting his mind.
CLIFFHANGER:
The echo subsided, leaving behind a chilling piece of data in the form of a projected vision. It revealed not a location, but a psychological change in the next target.
The vision showed the Carousel of Regrets—the next trial destination—and looming over it, a massive, skeletal figure: Bishop Graves. But the environment was warped.
The Time Echo revealed that the upcoming trial was no longer about generic regrets. It was now a dedicated test, specifically targeting Tank's deepest failure—his sense of worthlessness when his strength is useless.
The most terrifying part: the Echo showed Zhao Ming, the disciplined Compliance rival (Chapter 30), patiently observing the Carousel, waiting for the team to break.
Astrid stared at the vision, her face pale. "The Time Echo... it amplified the psychological attack! The next trial is no longer for Leo! It's a precise, targeted attack on Tank's spirit!"
Leo looked at the portal, which was already shimmering toward the next location. The enemy wasn't just ambushing them; they were custom-designing the very fabric of the dream world to exploit their greatest emotional weaknesses. They had no choice but to enter the next psychological trap immediately.