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‘A nice moment,’ echoed Dozer flatly. ‘Now what might that look like for you? Perhaps like the moment when you sabotaged my project that was decades in the making?’

‘Hey, man, that was just, like, a prank. Y’know?’

‘I lost twenty of the brightest minds working under me.’

‘I offered to replace them! You said no!’

‘Tens of thousands of hours of labor. Lost in a single explosion.’

‘Technically, it was more than one. Chain reaction ‘n all.’

Dozer might’ve paused for a deep breath to steady himself, if his physical body wasn’t in this veritable stasis. Instead, he had to satisfy himself with merely ignoring Morgunov and taking a moment to instead reassess the field of battle.

Everything was moving so slowly that it might as well have been motionless. Even himself. That was how this strange Void State worked. It allowed him time to stop and think, even in the middle of utter chaos.

But it was flexible, too. He was still present at the normal speed of the world, as well. It was more like his mind had been divided by two, and this one here, within the Void State, was nearly detached from the thread of time.

It was a supremely odd feeling, one he’d never even attempted to explain to anyone before. Here, time didn’t feel “slow,” exactly. Rather, it felt almost non-existent. As if it held hardly any sway over him at all. So even though this half of his mind may have been “dragging” behind the other half at a snail’s pace, it wasn’t bothersome in the slightest. There was no sensation of having to “wait” or “catch up” to the present.

And not only that, if he concentrated on it, he could actually perceive events across a range of time, both forward and backward. If he missed something amid the chaos, he could go back and inspect it more closely. If he wanted to predict what was about to happen--such as what Iceheart and the Gargoyle were about to do--then he could do that, as well, though it wasn’t always as clear or reliable.

Especially against certain opponents. And these two absolutely qualified, even though they were still apparently not on a high enough level to speak to him and Morgunov here. Perhaps they’d already developed some awareness of this space, too, even if they couldn’t yet breach it.