Papercut

From the depth, the blackness of space, a single ring of a bell echoing filled the emptiness. Soon after, a sudden abrupt freezing of space and everything in it had taken place. Olivia found herself unable to move, paralyzed almost, but only for a breath; everything began to flow once more.

At that moment Olivia found herself slightly less fatigued than earlier, as she had been right before she used Hades' flame. She thought her body was regaining its strength back, but looked up to see tens of Amelia's clones before her, swarming as they did once before the final blow. She was positive she had destroyed the remaining doppelgangers, along with Amelia herself, but ȧssumed it was just one of the foresight visions she had perceived. Following this belief, Olivia had just the right amount of Energia to summon the Withering Blaze and with this realization, she pierced her lip with a bite, submerging the clones in black flames as she thought she had earlier.

The ring of a single bell flooded Olivia's ears as it had earlier, everything became frozen as it had, shortly before resuming once more.

Again, she felt slightly less fatigued and her Energia restored to the specific charge it had a few moments ago. The clones as well had reappeared.

What was happening? She didn't know; Olivia believed she was undergoing a stroke of sorts from overworking herself, maybe even a dream sequence. She shed blood again after biting her lip, summoning Hades' Withering Blaze, incinerating all of the clones and reducing them to nothingness she thought. Once over, she sat in the silence of space for only a moment before the single strike of a bell filled her ears again, getting louder with each occurrence.

Space froze, the clones reappeared along with some of her Energia and she became slightly less fatigued again.

From the blackness, a voice called to Olivia, "Don't you hear it; the bells?" The voice sounded as if it was coming from everywhere and everything all at once, it was becoming maddening. This was it, she thought she was losing her sanity with each repeat of the bells, freezing, and burning.

Everything repeated itself; The bell rang, space froze, resumed, the clones reappeared, they died, space froze etcetera. It all happened again and again and again and again and again.

Upon the twenty-ninth ring, the voice called to Olivia again. "The bells Olivia, don't you hear them?" The voice repeated.

After hearing the voice for a second time, she had realized the voice was Amelia's; she was positive of that, if not the state of her current sanity. In Olivia's mind, she had killed Amelia, so why could she hear her voice? Why was she reliving the same events endlessly? WHERE WAS THE RINGING COMING FROM? All of these thoughts ricocheted around her head like a tennis ball. Amelia's voice emerged from the blackness again, "A higher level of Kinetic Freeze is what was born from the colliding of my own and Wildcard's power that you stole."

In her head, Olivia could see visions of what seemed to be her standing in front of Amelia, in the location they were fighting in, but Olivia's looked as if it were frozen, paralyzed like a statue.

She didn't understand the circumstances. Was she seeing a mirror into a different world, an alternative reality? In the visions, she could see Amelia visibly speaking, but the Amelias before Olivia acted mindlessly, attacking as they had done many times before.

"You've been placed outside of the normal chain of events, a pseudospace almost. Those sequence of events have been linked together so that they would never 'end'; the chain is forever ongoing. 'Kinetic Freeze: Apex' has separated the links within the normal chain, creating a new smaller chain that links back to itself that only we can perceive. You only exist within it's new chain, Olivia; I am simply outside of it."

Due to her own negligence, Olivia had become trapped in a constant cycle of her actions. Albeit absorbing Wildcard and making the power her own, she hadn't known that she had been empowering Amelia from the first time they collided.

"Help me stop the moon, " Amelia started, "I won't kill you, but I won't release you from the chain unless you promise to help me. However, if you double-cross me, I won't hesitate to trap you again forever."

Olivia began to think to herself; she wondered why Amelia wouldn't kill her when she had the full opportunity. And with that, she ultimately grew dumbfounded to no extent, it was completely a new experience since demons always kill their prey; remorse and sympathy do not exist in the underworld.

Olivia pleaded.

"You, would rather let me live, than to kill me where I am, if all I did was help you save your world....those people; those millions of creatures who's lives are so short they'll die before I even look ten-thousand? Why? Why do you care so much for something so insignificant? Why are their lives so precious to you, you're so much stronger than anyone on that entire planet, I just don't understand it."