Before the Plateau, Ace moved like a comet through the chaos of Deadlink—brilliant, erratic, uncatchable.

And always alone.

He dazzled. Every floor he touched bloomed in his wake—vines curled through shattered pavement, daisies burst through bullet holes, and thorns twisted up from scorched ground like applause. Players remembered him. They stared. They whispered.

But no one stayed.

Too loud.
Too flashy.
Too unpredictable.

Ace could never quite tell if it was the power they feared… or the person who wielded it like a prop on a stage no one asked to be part of.

“What’s your deal, anyway?” a player had asked once—back on Floor 3, just before the start of a match.

Ace had smiled, radiant. “Style, darling. I’m here to die beautifully.”

They’d rolled their eyes and left before the round even began.

He hadn’t bothered asking their name.

On Floor 5, he’d joined a squad—just for a stretch. Eleven minutes of chaos, shoulder to shoulder. His pollen mines had cleared a path through a wave of stone beasts. His vines had snagged a berserker mid-charge before they could flatten the healer.

Ace had turned the battlefield into a garden—and a victory.

At the end, the squad leader, tall and cold-eyed, gave a single nod. “You’re good. But you draw too much attention.”

They left without another word.

Not even a wave.

So by Floor 6, Ace didn’t expect anything new.

He entered the Plateau of Silence alone, as always. The sky above was blank and endless. The stone ruins were broken down to stumps, offering no shadows to hide in. Just wind, silence, and grass that rippled like an audience waiting for the first act.

“Perfect,” Ace muttered, brushing a stray vine from his boot. “A battlefield with nowhere to hide. My kind of theater.”

He didn’t look for allies.

He made an entrance.

An explosion of color. A garden born from chaos.

Thorns coiled like serpents. Blossoms burst into confetti. Petals rained from above. Ace stood at the center, arms spread, pink coat flaring behind him like curtains parting before a show.

And then—

He saw them.

Rann.
Gerbert.

Two players he remembered. Two who had endured.

He remembered Rann slipping effortlessly through a trap he’d set back on Floor 2. She had stepped through a wall of thorns like mist and left his bloom mine shredded behind her.

He remembered Gerbert adjusting vectors mid-battle, muttering calculations as his conjured tech wove defensive grids faster than Ace’s roses could punch through them.

They hadn’t feared him.

They’d measured him.

And seen someone worth countering.

Now, they stood before him again—older, sharper, still standing.

This time, when Ace threw out his arms and shouted—

“Hello, darlings! Lovely day to try and kill me, isn’t it?”

—they didn’t flinch.
They didn’t mock.
They moved.

Not away from him—but toward him.

And for the first time in a long time, Ace smiled…

Not as a flourish.
Not as a warning.
But as a player. As someone seen.

Something bloomed beneath his ribs.

Not a trap.

Not a weapon.

Hope.

That maybe, just maybe, being too much was exactly what this world needed.