Psylocke Vol 2 Ch 26: The Next Training, Enter Into The Illusionary City

Naomi closed her eyes, and in an instant, the air in the room seemed to shift. Tristan, still sitting awkwardly on the table, furrowed his brow and watched as the towering woman's body was wrapped in a soft, white glow. The light pulsed from her skin like she was a living sun—growing brighter and brighter with each second.

"Huh...?" Tristan muttered, instinctively taking a few steps back.

The light kept building until it swallowed the entire room whole. Tristan squinted, raising his arms over his eyes, but it was no use—the light was blinding, a suffocating wave that drowned out everything. He felt the table disappear from under his feet, the sounds of the room vanish, and the scent of tea and books be replaced by something else entirely—dust, smoke, and... concrete?

When Tristan finally opened his eyes, he found himself standing alone in the middle of a crumbling city street.

"What the hell?" he whispered, turning around in a full circle. Skyscrapers loomed above him, their glass windows reflecting the dull gray light of an overcast sky. Cars were abandoned in the streets, some flipped onto their sides, others half-crushed as if some massive hand had swatted them away.

"Where am I?" Tristan called out, his voice echoing weirdly in the empty streets.

Then, a sudden gust of wind almost knocked him off his feet. He turned his head just in time to see a shadow fall over the city—a shadow that grew darker and darker by the second.

"Huh?" he said again, but this time there was an edge of panic in his voice.

He looked up—and what he saw turned his stomach inside out.

The sky itself was falling.

A dark, massive ceiling was descending from above, stretching from horizon to horizon. It wasn't clouds. It wasn't a storm. It was something solid, moving with the slow inevitability of a collapsing mountain range. From the underside of the descending mass, huge chunks broke off—boulders the size of city blocks—plummeting down like meteor strikes.

One smashed into the side of a skyscraper, sending glass and steel erupting in every direction. Another slammed into the street just a few blocks ahead of Tristan, the shockwave knocking him off his feet.

BOOOOM.

The ground shuddered like it was going to rip apart at any second.

Tristan scrambled to his feet, his heart thundering in his chest. He didn't know where to run—everywhere he looked, devastation rained down from above. But instinct took over. He sprinted down the shattered street, weaving between abandoned cars and fallen debris.

The dark ceiling kept lowering, slow but relentless. It finally touched the tallest skyscrapers, and just from the contact—just from a brush—the buildings crumpled like they were made of sand. Whole floors flattened instantly. Towers that had once pierced the sky like needles now folded and twisted into themselves, reduced to smoking wreckage.

"Come on, come on!" Tristan shouted to himself, running harder, his lungs burning. He leapt over a crack in the pavement, ducked under a bent streetlight, shoved his way around a toppled bus.

But then—a roar behind him.

Tristan barely had time to glance over his shoulder before a chunk of debris the size of a small house smashed into the road behind him, sending shards of asphalt flying. A flying hunk of metal clipped him mid-sprint, slamming him face-first into the ground.

"Augh!" he gasped, feeling the air punch out of his lungs.

Before he could even push himself up, another crash—this time right beside him—and a crumbled slab of building collapsed onto his legs, pinning him to the asphalt.

"Dammit!" he shouted, struggling against the weight. It was no use—the debris was too heavy. He was trapped.

All he could do was watch in horror as the dark ceiling kept coming down, lower and lower. It filled his entire world now, blotting out everything else. The rumble grew to a deafening roar, vibrating through the ground, rattling his bones.

"No, no, no—" Tristan gritted his teeth, trying one last desperate time to pull himself free.

Then—impact.

The descending mass slammed into the ground.

For a split second, Tristan felt everything—his body tearing apart, his bones snapping, his mind blanking out from the overwhelming force—and then... darkness.

Cold, empty, absolute darkness.

Tristan's eyes snapped open.

He gasped, looking around wildly, expecting to see wreckage, dust clouds, debris—anything from the catastrophe he'd just witnessed. But instead... everything was calm. Serene, even. The city streets were intact, buildings stood proudly toward the sky, and there wasn't a single falling boulder in sight. No cracks in the streets, no overturned cars. Not even a pebble out of place.

He patted his body down with trembling hands. No crushed limbs, no blood, no broken bones.

"What... what happened?" Tristan muttered, his voice hoarse.

"Welcome back," a voice echoed from somewhere around him, soft and smooth, yet impossibly vast.

The ground beneath Tristan's feet began to rumble again—but not with the chaotic, destructive force of before. This time it was steadier, almost rhythmic, like a heartbeat.

"Naomi?" Tristan called out, spinning in circles, trying to spot her. "Where are you? What is this?"

Naomi's voice answered, coming from all directions at once, like the very air carried her words. "I'm taking you somewhere where you'll see more clearly."

See? Tristan thought, confused. See what?

Before he could even ask again, he felt it—his body lifting off the ground.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" he yelped, flailing his arms, but there was nothing to grab onto. His stomach dropped out from under him as he rose, soaring upward like a leaf caught in a gust of wind. The buildings shrank beneath him, the streets blurred into thin gray lines, and the city itself became nothing more than a toy set under him.

He finally stopped moving, feeling his body touch down on something solid. A rooftop, by the feel of it—a skyscraper-sized building that stretched far and wide beneath him like a giant's coffee table.

Tristan, panting and sweating, steadied himself and turned his gaze to the horizon.

And that's when he saw them.

Two immense monoliths off in the far distance, bigger than mountains, bigger than anything Tristan had ever imagined. They smashed into the ground with terrifying force, sending cracks spiderwebbing through the earth. Entire mountain ranges had been split apart just from their presence. Pieces of the very sky seemed to cling to their tops.

Tristan squinted—and felt his blood turn to ice.

Because those weren't just any monoliths.

Those were breasts.

And looming high, so high above the city that her face poked through the clouds, was Naomi. Her beautiful, expressionless face peered down at him like a deity observing a grain of sand. She was lying on her belly, casually, her body sprawling out across entire continents, her massive form dwarfing mountains, oceans, everything.

The city Tristan was standing in? It would have fit neatly, easily, into the palm of her hand.

"My god..." Tristan whispered, barely able to believe it.

His legs almost gave out as he stared up at her, his tiny mind struggling to wrap itself around the impossible scale. And to think—he had known Brobs were huge, but this... this was something else entirely.

Naomi's lips curved into the faintest hint of a smirk, her breath causing gentle clouds to swirl far above him.

And training hadn't even started yet.

Naomi's voice rumbled through the sky like a living storm, shaking the skyscraper Tristan was standing on and rattling the very air around him.

"This," she said, her tone calm and heavy with authority, "is your training ground."

Tristan's mouth fell open slightly as he tried to comprehend the sheer scope of what she was saying. The city? The whole freaking city?!

"Somewhere in this city," Naomi continued, her colossal eyes focused lazily on him like he was a bug she was humoring, "there is a ball of my energy. Your task is simple: find it... before I destroy the city."

Tristan's heart skipped a beat. "WHAT?!" he screamed, throwing his arms up.

He turned in a slow circle, looking at the endless streets, the hundreds—no, thousands—of buildings, alleyways, parks, and open plazas.

"You could destroy the city by just putting your hand down!" Tristan shouted up at her, motioning frantically to her mountainous frame that already looked like it was sinking into the world itself.

Naomi's smirk grew, a slight but terrifying shift of her lips. "There's no time to argue," she said, brushing off his panic with the casualness of someone flicking lint off their shirt. "I won't give you much time either. I already stepped on part of the city... what do you think I'll do next?"

The ground shook violently as if to emphasize her point, and a huge CRACK split one of the distant streets in half.

Tristan groaned, holding his head. "This is insane!" he muttered to himself.

Naomi, as if sensing his spiraling thoughts, added with a small shrug, "Oh, and don't worry. This whole city—" she gestured with one massive finger, causing a gust of wind that rattled the glass on nearby buildings, "—is just an illusion. I can recreate and destroy it whenever I want. So, you won't actually get hurt."

Tristan stared at her for a long moment, deadpan. "Oh great," he said dryly, dragging a hand down his face. "That makes it so much better."

He sighed and looked out over the impossible maze of the city. Somewhere out there was a ball of Naomi's energy, and judging by the gleam in her titanic eyes... she wasn't bluffing about wiping the place clean if he didn't find it.

"Alright, alright," Tristan muttered to himself as he started running across the rooftop, "find the energy ball, don't die, don't get squashed by a casual hand movement. Easy. Totally doable. Great plan."

Behind him, Naomi simply watched, her chin resting lazily on her massive hands, as her "tiny little student" sprinted off into the overwhelming sprawl of the cityscape below her.