It was Sigmund, not Ruthers, who made the first move. The large viking-like man acted with what would have been shocking quickness to those who didn't know any better. There was no hint of movement at all for anyone with normal senses. He was simply in one spot one second, then in another in the span of less than a blink. He appeared directly behind Jacob, towering over the smaller man as he brought his powerful fist slamming right down to punch through the Necromancer. He would end this charade now, before it went any further. So their students, their people, would see what happened to those who thought they could attack them here, in their home. He would show their people just how quickly this supposed threat could be ended.

At least, that was his intention. That was what should have happened, by all rights, after they had been forced to listen to this nonsense prattering about innocent victims and child soldiers. His reward for sitting through such disgusting lies should have been the sight of Jacob's head popping like a melon under that single blow. Instead, what Sigmund felt was his own fist slamming into a waiting, glove-covered palm… and then stopping short. Jacob had turned, pivoting on one foot before catching that incoming fist. And all the power of the Committee, all the strength of thousands upon thousands of dead, harvested Strangers, failed to measure up against one arrogant Necromancer. Jacob simply caught Sigmund's falling fist like it was nothing, and held it tightly enough to send a jolt of pain through the man's arm.

To the left, Geta appeared, his body engulfed in blue-white fire as he sent an inferno that way. Slightly behind that man, Jue had multiplied herself into ten equally powerful incarnations, all of whom were rearing back to sling bolts of lightning that could each, individually, tear a ten story building to its foundation. At the same time, to the right, Litonya had summoned a swarm of thousands of empowered, magical locusts and was sending them that way. Antaeus appeared at what would have been Jacob's front, but was now his back since the Necromancer had turned to face Sigmund. Antaeus, like his fellow Committee member, was going for sheer brute strength. And from his spot right back where they had started, Davis invoked a power that would slow their opponent's reactions to a crawl, forcing him to move in what amounted to extreme slow motion.

Finally, Ruthers, the man who had first encountered Jacob all those years ago, and held such a grudge against him for all that time, hovered in the air directly above. His hands were glowing with blindingly bright, deadly white energy. Energy that soon erupted downward as he pointed that way, sending an eight-foot wide beam of absolute pure destructive force at the hated figure. A beam that his own allies were specifically exempt from the damage of. It would simply do nothing to them.

Jacob had one hand busy holding Sigmund's fist. Behind him, an equally-strong man was bringing another fist crashing down at his back. To one side, a wave of incinerating magical flames and ten bolts of building-shattering lightning. To the other side, a swarm of magical beetles that could eat through steel. Above him, an incoming beam of such destructive energy that only a star itself could compare to. All of it coming at a man who was being forced to think, react, and move at a snail's pace. This fight, such as it was, would be over before it truly began.

Except it wasn't. Because in their rush to end this battle instantly, in their tunnel vision against the opponent who angered them so much, the Committee had forgotten that Jacob wasn't here alone. The ghosts of all those Crossroads Heretics who had died throughout the years since its inception were there too. And they would not stand by to let their shepherd be taken so easily.

The ghost of Ulysses Katarin was the first to make that clear, as he appeared in front of Davis while that man was busy focusing on slowing Jacob's reactions. The former Crossroads combat instructor had been quite impressive in his time, but would, of course, have been no match for a Committee member at any point. His most powerful blow would have glanced off someone like Davis like a fly attempting to assault a boulder. It didn't matter that Davis was distracted, because there should have been absolutely nothing someone like that could even do when he was alive, let alone now that he was dead and relying on Necromantic energy to sustain his form.

But that was when Davis became acquainted with another very important fact: Jacob Donn's well of magical energy ran deep. Deep enough that this single ghost, what remained of Ulysses Katarin, was able to pull so much power into himself in that moment that his entire form grew painfully bright. Davis realized almost too late that this was a real threat, and turned his focus that way just in time to erect a forcefield between them. That shield didn't quite shatter under Katarin's blow, but it did crack slightly. And just like that, Davis wasn't focusing on that slowing power anymore. Nor would he be returning to it any time soon, considering Katarin had been joined by half a dozen more Crossroads ghosts, all intent on keeping that man very busy.

The time it took for those ghosts to interrupt Davis might have been enough, given how slow Jacob should have been moving, for the rest of the Committee to still put an end to all this. But being slowed hardly mattered when one had prepared for this confrontation so thoroughly. The one known as Jacob had watched these people, these Committee members, literally through their entire existence. He had studied them, planned for them, learned everything about them. He knew how they thought, how they fought, how they would attack him. He knew what they would do before they even conceived it. As he'd told them so clearly, he spent centuries watching them spread their hate. Centuries spent allowing such atrocities to happen, while planning for this moment.

So, when Jue and all her duplicates sent those bolts of lightning at him, it automatically triggered some of the many camouflaged spell coins that Jacob had secretly scattered across the ground during those moments of absolute darkness before showing himself. Those transformed into six-foot tall metal rods that drew in and captured those bolts, harmlessly storing the energy to be used later.

And when the flame-covered Geta sent the rolling wall of fire that way, it was met with a much larger wall of dirt and stone as more coins forced the ground itself to rise up. The inferno simply rebounded off the Earth wall before just being doused entirely as the dirt collapsed on top of it.

As for the empowered locusts Litonya sent, they found themselves countered by three times their number in other bugs. Bugs that were dead and raised as zombie versions of themselves, each given power from Jacob's seemingly endless supply. Thousands of dead bees, spiders, grasshoppers, wasps, butterflies, dragonflies, and more poured forth out of thirty or so very small portals that simply appeared in midair in front of the invading locusts. Soon, a terrible war had broken out, as every locust found itself bombarded on all sides by empowered zombie bugs.

Then there was Antaeus, whose greatest strength was… well, his strength. And that strength was at its best when the man was holding still. The more he moved, the weaker he became. A bit of irony in his power meant that the instant he began trying to actively use his strength by moving his fist to hit something, that strength gradually fell. He could never actually hit someone with his full potential. Still, even the lower level of his strength was beyond what almost any other person was capable of. And that was even before the man had been brought onto the Committee. Now, with those added benefits, there was no chance that someone like Jacob could even hope to survive a single, savage blow. In another second, Antaeus' hand would be through the Necromancer's back and holding onto that still-beating heart so he could rip it out.

But, like the rest of his companions so far, Antaeus would find his efforts come up short. Once again, Jacob knew everything there was to know about his opponents' strengths and weaknesses. Even as the large man's fist came at his back, another automatic spell was triggered. This one had been set up very specifically for this moment. It was triggered by a man matching Antaeus's exact dimensions swinging a fist within a short distance of the spell itself. A spell that was one of more than a hundred set on Jacob's clothing. This was actually two spells in one. The first thing it did was reverse gravity directly underneath the man's feet. Secondly, it drastically sped up time in that tiny area.

The combination of those two spells meant Antaeus was only halfway through that punch when he was abruptly lifted off the ground by altered gravity. For a Committee member, that should've meant nothing. He could counter the changed gravity with a thought. But he wasn't thinking about that right then. He had tunnel vision, focusing only on hitting this Necromancer as hard as possible. Between that and the speed boost, he was a foot in the air before he even knew what was happening. Which had the effect of making his punch miss, beyond simply draining more of his strength with that motion.

And that was when the next automated spell, which had been triggered on a delay so the first two would go off properly, hit Antaeus with a powerful telekinetic shove. That shove, again, would have accomplished little, if anything, had the man been at his full strength. Or anywhere close to it. It would've failed if he'd known it was coming, allowing him to brace himself. But he was floating a foot off the ground, the speed of that motion draining his strength dramatically, just for that second. So when the telekinetic shove came, he was knocked backward through the air several feet.

All of that happened in the same two second span. The fire, lightning, locusts, speed draining, and attempted punch from a man who could tear down mountains were automatically countered not because Jacob could think that quickly, but because he had prepared for this. He was ready for this kind of fight. He was ready to face these specific people. Their careers, everything they had done for so long, had been about punching down on people weaker than they were.

Jacob had spent over four millennia doing everything possible to level the playing field. His life, their life since they had started all of this, had been about fighting threats that could eclipse them.

And the simple truth was, these people were nowhere near eclipsing Jacob Donn.

Of course, that still left Ruthers and the horrific beam of energy he was sending straight down from that place above Jacob. The man was angrier than he had been in quite some time, and he was using that anger to put his all into that beam. There were seventeen different powers at play in that attack. Most of those were about drawing and using more energy, and magnifying the actual beam to make it as strong as it could be. This was the sort of attack that could turn entire cities to ash in seconds. The power of a star itself was being tightly focused into a relatively narrow beam that should have left absolutely nothing of that hated Necromancer. It should have punched a several mile deep hole in the ground instantly.

But this wasn't actually a beam of star energy. Jacob had experience with the real thing. And this? This was barely a pale imitation. It almost offended him that this man would try to use such a cheap version of what a girl he had known and been so close to in what amounted to his infancy could do without such trickery. That annoyed him more than the fact Ruthers was trying so hard to kill him in the first place. He had grown desensitized to people trying to kill him ages ago. But someone trying to imitate that little Seosten girl? That pissed him off.

Of course, being angry in that moment wouldn't have meant much beyond that brief second before the beam hit him. All of his feelings on the subject would have been utterly erased, along with his actual body and every other thought he had. But Jacob's experience with the true Seosten archangels wasn't limited to that infinitesimally tiny part of his life when he had known Tabbris. He had traveled the galaxy for many years, and in those travels, he had met a couple of the original adult versions. Those adults were dangerous enough that it had only taken a single meeting with one for Jacob to prepare defensive spells that would kick in if one of them tried to vaporize him again.

Ruthers' own version might not have been nearly as strong as the real thing, but it was close enough to trigger those automated defenses. No fewer than nine of the spells Jacob had prepared over his clothes activated in that instant, before the beam had even progressed more than a foot from Ruthers' outstretched hands. The first spell worked to identify the exact location and size of the incoming beam. The second and third spells slowed time in that small area, delaying the beam while four of the remaining spells worked together to bend space around Jacob. This was a trick he had learned after an encounter with one of Ehn's own lieutenants. It was only a momentary imitation of what they were capable of, but it worked well enough for this. For those brief couple of seconds, space was elongated and twisted around Jacob in that one narrow area just above him. What had been less than fifty feet suddenly became the equivalent of over a several hundred thousand miles.

The beam from Ruthers didn't actually move at the speed of light, of course. If it had, the thing would have been delayed for only a single second. If even that. As it was, the maze of twisted, elongated space delayed the beam a full three seconds. Which was enough time for the remaining two spells to do their own job. Namely, draining energy out of the immediate area and feeding that energy into the entire collection of spells to make them more effective. The spatial distortion, time delay, and even the energy drain itself were all fed and improved by the absorbed power. And the largest source of nearby power that could be drained was, of course, that incoming beam.

The truth was, Jacob wasn't satisfied with this defense, as far as actual archangels went. It needed more. There was no way, even with the energy drain spells, to actually take enough power and distribute it quickly enough to stop one of those attacks. But in this case, put up against the lesser imitation? It was enough to handle that. The devastating blast of energy became swirling, tiny dots of light spinning wildly through the space above Jacob before finally dissipating.

Once again, all of that happened in only those first couple seconds, as the assembled Committee members launched themselves into a coordinated attack that should have reduced their enemy to little more than scattered atoms.

As for Jacob himself, he continued to grip Sigmund's hand even as all that was happening. He gave the man a small smile, showing a hint of teeth. Then, as the theme song of the reborn rebellion continued to blare across not only the school grounds, but the entire island itself, he pivoted on one foot, yanking Sigmund off the ground with the other. Twisting around, he hurled the other man as hard as he could through the air to crash into the still-floating Antaeus. The two men crashed to the ground and went skidding across and through it, leaving a crevice several feet deep and a hundred feet long before they stopped.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

For anyone who didn't understand what the Committee was, surviving the first couple seconds of an attack from seven of them at once might not have seemed all that impressive. But for anyone who did have an idea, anyone who knew anything about Crossroads and their leadership, it would have been seen as an absolute miracle.

Davis would have recovered quickly enough from his surprise when the ghost of Katarin, along with several others, assaulted him. The fact that they were strong enough to pose any sort of threat at all was surprising on its own. But he could have dealt with that. The real problem came in the next second, as Katarin's ghost abruptly changed color. It went from being a white grayish blue, to much brighter, crisper blue with flecks of glowing silver through him. The color of Jacob's aura.

"Hey there, buddy," a voice that was not Ulysses Katarin announced with his mouth. "The name's Locke. Figured it was time to help out my partner here. And you? You've got a rodent problem."

In the time before this older version of Jacob, once known as Felicity Chambers, had been sent back through that final rift, Locke already held a power that allowed her to control animals. That power had been added onto and enhanced through the intervening millennia. With those few words of warning, she used that upgraded power. Instantly, thousands of mice, rats, squirrels, and other rodents appeared seemingly out of nowhere and assaulted the man from all sides. But these weren't any ordinary animals. They had been greatly enhanced by Locke to be so much stronger and tougher than anyone could possibly have expected. What looked like a swarm of ordinary tiny mammals was a much greater threat. Even then, one, two, even several hundred wouldn't have been any problem for a member of the Committee. But multiple thousands assaulting him from all sides, at the very least, took up his attention for a moment.

Nor was Locke the only member of the so-called Flique to actually manifest herself outside their original body by partnering with a ghost. They had worked out that particular trick within a few hundred years of arriving in the past. By this point, ten of them could attach themselves to various ghosts, and work independently from the primary physical body.

Jue found herself confronted by Extra and Story, possessing the ghosts of another couple of former Crossroads graduates. Hot Type, possessing Rudolph Parsons' ghost, appeared to show Geta what it was like to throw around some real fire.

All around Jacob, the Committee found themselves facing those Flique-enhanced ghosts. Between those, the 'regular' Boscher ghosts who retained all of their powers, the assorted spells Jacob had prepared for this moment, and the Necromancer himself, this fight wasn't going nearly the way they had expected it to.

But they were hardly the sort of people who would accept such a fact so easily. With a thought, Ruthers created an inferno around Jacob, while sending himself careening toward the man like a meteor, fist swinging with enough force to level a mountain.

There was a time, so many centuries earlier, that countering that sort of heat would have required Hot Type's assistance. She was the one with the fire-based power set, after all. But the fact was, Jacob had been reaping powers for thousands of years. He had taken on literally thousands of levels of passive enhancements. Such that the raging inferno engulfing him barely registered as a bit warm.

And as for Ruthers' incoming fist, well, that wouldn't measure up either. In one smooth motion, Jacob pivoted while the man was descending. His body turned, foot rising before it slammed into the descending man's stomach just as Ruthers was swinging at empty air. The impact was enough to send him rocketing through the air to crash into and through the distant main school building.

With a screech of fury, Litonya was right there. Her body was encased in a black exoskeleton armor even as she did her level best to drive clawed fingers into the man's stomach so she could rip his organs out bit by bit. The exoskeleton armor itself gave off a powerful gravitational tug on the area around it that would yank Jacob down.

Or it should have. But he hardly felt a thing, either from the gravity effect or the woman's clawed fingers rebounding harmlessly off him. What he did feel, however, was Litonya's hand as he caught it before she could pull back. His eyes narrowed to meet hers through the insectoid-like helmet. "You always have been small-minded. Maybe it's time your body fit that."

She didn't know what was coming, but it wasn't good. So Litonya erected every forcefield she could in that second. At least twenty separate shields formed between them as she yanked herself free of his grasp. Unfortunately for the woman, twenty wouldn't be enough, as Jacob's hand lashed out toward her.

Every type of forcefield had its own sort of weakness. Some could be penetrated by enough force, others through simple intangibility, or a certain vibration, intense heat or cold, a sonic frequency, or other more obscure method. And in that moment, as Jacob's fist went through those twenty layers of forcefields, he employed every single one of those methods one by one. Millennia ago, he'd had a power that allowed him to sense objects in his vicinity. By this point, that sensory gift had advanced enough to tell him details about all sorts of things, including these shields. Such were his reaction times that he could shift the specific effects coming off of his arm perfectly to counter each layer of shield without any delay. One millisecond it would be vibrating at the specific frequency needed to shatter one forcefield, and the next it would stop vibrating and give off the intense heat needed to break another.

All of which meant that, before Litonya could react, he had simply punched through her layers of shields to grab her throat. With a grunt, Jacob hoisted the woman up, rising a bit into the air himself before slamming her bodily into the ground with enough force to create a ten-foot deep crater. As she lay there, thoroughly stunned, a beam of white light shot from his eyes, engulfing the woman. When it faded, she seemed to be gone. Until the truth became clear. Litonya hadn't been disintegrated, she was simply shrunk down to the size of a beetle. Which should have meant nothing for someone who possessed at least thirty different powers that could simply adjust her size. But no matter which of them she employed, none worked. Litonya hadn't just been shrunk and left like that. The power Jacob employed created an ongoing effect that forced her to remain at that size regardless of outside efforts. It was something she might have been able to counter, had the Committee and their people ever ventured beyond Earth and their paltry colonies to explore the full universe as Jacob had.

Hot Type had been joined by two more of the Flique-possessed ghosts to hold off Geta, while one more helped Story and Extra with Jue. While each specific Flique member could technically only hold ten powers at once (up from the limit of six they had begun with), similar powers could stack quite effectively. Which meant that despite the Committee members possessing a much broader range of abilities, what the Flique ghosts had was stronger.

Between the six Flique ghosts stopping Jue and Geta, and the pair facing Davis (Locke had been joined by Fathom), that left two of them who could still manifest. And those two (Knockout and Spook) were busy ensuring that the rest of the Crossroads students and staff stayed out of the way. The two of them were more than capable of holding those people off for the time being, especially with help from the several hundred ghosts who had manifested to back them up.

By that point, Sigmund and Antaeus had recovered from being sent flying and crashing into each other. And they were both ready to put a stop to this nonsense now. No more playing around. The two of them looked at one another before instantly teleporting back to where Jacob was. They worked in perfect unison, attacking the man from both sides as if they were part of the same body. In the span of only three seconds, the pair of Committee Boschers had each attacked their target at least fifty times, every blow perfectly coordinated to take advantage of one their partner had just thrown.

And none of it was enough. Jacob evaded or deflected most with a simple motion, twisting his body, raising his cane to smack an incoming fist out of the way, conjuring a forcefield that was shaped not to simply shield against a blow with blunt force but to redirect it away from him, and so on. For those three seconds, his form was an even faster blur of motion than theirs.

Finally, his cane, which had once been Felicity's staff, absorbed enough kinetic force from redirecting so many of their blows. He tapped the skull top against Sigmund's chest and unleashed that force in a blast wave that caught the man and sent him careening backwards, tearing up a deep trench through the ground in the process before he finally slammed into the athletics building with enough force to collapse the entire structure on top of him.

Antaeus, meanwhile, swung his enormous fist wildly, a scream of rage bellowing from deep in his soul. And Jacob… simply caught his wrist with one hand. At the same time, the Necromancer's other hand came down to grab the back of his neck tightly. While Antaeus struggled, Jacob met his gaze, eyes glowing with a violet-purple light that soon became all the other man could see.

When that light faded, Antaeus tried to swing at his opponent again, only to double over as an intense wave of nausea washed over him. Then he struggled to launch himself that way in a bullrush, but simply stumbled and gagged violently again.

"You like violence so much, taking it away from you is probably worse than death," Jacob observed. "And the thing is, you attacked my grandparents, so that sounds good to me. From now on, every time you so much as attempt to cause harm to another person, unless you're acting in defense of your life or the life of another, you'll feel that nausea until you stop."

Ruthers had recovered by that point and emerged from the building he'd been sent through, and immediately sent a handful of what should have been closing statements, five attacks altogether. Each of them, on their own, capable of wiping out entire swaths of enemies.

And none accomplished a single thing here.

Ruthers created an orb of intense gravitational force that would have literally compressed any lesser person into a blob of flesh a tenth their normal size.

Jacob's danger sense warned him about it and he created a gravity negation effect around himself until it was gone.

Ruthers sent a wave of teleportation energy that would send the Necromancer out of Crossroads and into the center of the Earth.

This utterly fizzled.

Ruthers summoned a tiny metal ball, barely an inch across, and used a combination of powers to accelerate the thing to obscene speeds while simultaneously shielding it from outside damage and multiplying the effect it would have by a thousand. It wouldn't be like a single one-inch metal ball striking its target at well over ten thousand miles per hour. It would be like a thousand of those things happening all at once.

Jacob caught the metal ball. His hand snapped out, a dozen powers coming into play to warn him, direct him to it, speed him up, and slow the ball itself so he could literally pluck it out of the air with two fingers.

Ruthers created an inferno of ghost-fire, centering it on himself and sending the flames in every direction. They rose to a height of thirty feet while rushing out to completely wipe out those hated ghosts.

And when the flames dissipated, the ghosts were all still right there, each covered by glowing blueish forcefields.

"Yeah," Jacob intoned dryly, "like I wouldn't have thought of that."

A snarl of rage escaped Ruthers, as he was joined by Sigmund, who extracted himself from the other structure. Litonya, still shrunk, dragged her tiny form out of the crater. Jue, Davis, and Geta had withdrawn from their own opponents to join the rest of the group. All seven Committee members took a moment to collect themselves after those intense (and fruitless) few seconds.

"Those are some impressive tricks you have," Jue noted while her eyes narrowed at the empowered ghosts. "But it doesn't matter. We all know this is not something you can keep up forever. All this effort of yours will be for nothing."

"Effort?" Jacob echoed, offering her a long stare. "If I was really expending that much effort, I'd just kill you. It's harder not to, honestly. But the truth is, this world still needs you. Things are gonna get worse before they're better. And besides…" His gaze shifted toward the onlookers. "I'm not one for traumatizing a bunch of children. You might be beyond redemption, but some of them aren't."

Ignoring those words, Ruthers growled out, "You have assaulted us in our home and that was a mistake. You will be ground to dust as the intruder you are."

Those words were enough for Jacob to lift an eyebrow as he flicked two fingers, and the music was cut off abruptly, leaving silence in its wake. When he spoke, his voice sounded quiet, yet it reached the ears of every person on the island. "Intruder? Is that what you called me? You call me an intruder here, in this place? Well, isn't that something. As I recall, I was invited here, all those years ago. Though not so many for you all, I suppose."

Ruthers' gaze was laser focused on that Necromancer. "You are not one of our students. You were part of this world long before we ever came together like this, and were certainly never invited into this place." Even then, a frown was tugging at his face. Time travel. They had known Jacob was a time traveler of some sort, but… no, that was impossible. Being a time traveler was one thing, but one of their own students? There was no way. They didn't even teach Necromancy. At least, they hadn't until…

Jacob offered a small shrug, but couldn't help the small smile that came. This was clearly a situation, a conversation, a revelation, that he had waited for quite some time to experience. "Eh, wrong on a few points there, actually. First, the bit about me never being invited here? That was wrong. I mean, you all voted against it, but it ended up being a tie. A tie that Gaia broke."

In the wake of those words, the entire island was silent. It was Ruthers, in the end, who broke that silence. "No…" he managed with audible emotion. "You're not… you can't…"

"Isn't time travel a bitch?" Jacob, his form already shifted to that familiar blonde, feminine form, asked. He only held that form for a moment to let the truth sink in, before shifting back to the one he had become much more comfortable with.

"Sorry, that one doesn't really feel like me anymore. I've been this version for too long. This is me, right here. I'll let the other me keep the girl form. Not that I'll be around enough to be too confusing, but still."

"Oh, it doesn't matter," Litonya snapped, still struggling in vain to return to her full size. The anger in her own voice was the only one that actually rivaled Ruthers. "Whatever or whoever he-- she-- it is, they've made a terrible mistake in coming here. Whatever invitation this traitor might have had has long-since passed. It's time to remove them from our home."

"See, that's your other mistake," Jacob cut in, his voice silencing what had been a rising rumble of agreement from the rest of the Crossroads loyalists. "You've spent all this time, all the years since you started this organization, thinking this was your home."

"Hold onto your socks, kiddo," Pericles advised as his ghost form hovered to one side. "Cuz they're about to get knocked off."

"What you haven't spent enough time doing," Jacob continued casually, "was asking yourselves one very important question.

"Where did this pocket universe of yours come from?"

With those words, the sun that had set minutes earlier was suddenly and unexpectedly at the top of the sky. It looked like the middle of the day. The ground under their feet that had just been torn up and left with jagged holes through it was pristine again. The ruined buildings were perfectly restored. The water of the nearby ocean turned a bright pink, while the sand across the beach was blue with green polka dots.

"Funny how this place was always so well-synched up with the timezone of Felicity's home, isn't it? And did you take a moment to ask yourselves why I was able to stop Ruthers' communication from reaching the rest of you, and stop you from coming in here when you got the alert about the Edge being in danger? Did you stop for even a moment to wonder how that was possible?" Jacob let them absorb that, before his hand rose. "You called me an intruder. You said I wasn't welcome here. But the truth is, I'm the one who invited all of you here. You set up your school in my Archive. And all of you?"

With a snap of his fingers, every single Crossroads loyalist, student, staff, and Committee member alike, were abruptly removed from what they had so erroneously believed was their own private pocket reality. They were sent back to Earth, while Jacob's last words echoed through all of their minds.

"Consider yourselves expelled."

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