The SWAT captain's scalp prickled.
The pressure of Lynn standing so close nearly stopped his heart.
He wasted no more words. Gripping his Time Pruning Baton with both hands, he put all his strength into a savage swing at Lynn's head.
He had to make physical contact before this monster could act.
If the orange erasure halo so much as grazed a layer of skin, the time dimension's formatting mechanism would activate by force.
Lynn stood still. He did not even raise an eyelid.
Deep in the marrow of his right arm, the Multiversal Management Hub surged to full power. A system alert rang through his mind like an ancient bell.
[EX-Class Law Weaving Engine connected.] [Detected: enemy possesses a resistance barrier outside the time flow of a Single Universe...] [Acquiring permission to modify underlying logic... Rewrite complete.]
An intricate, vast array of laws lit up in Lynn's eyes.
He watched the baton descend toward his head. His lips parted, and he spoke two words.
"Strip away."
His words became law.
There was no dazzling display of light, no earth-shaking clash of energy.
Just a simple command, backed by the unquestionable authority of a Low-Level Multiversal God to rewrite the rules.
It drove straight into the underlying code of this three-dimensional space.
The dozen or so TVA troopers, who had been outside the time flow and immune to all kinetic and magical attacks, shuddered at once.
The captain's baton struck Lynn squarely on the left shoulder.
But—
Lynn did not dissolve into orange fragments and vanish toward the end of time as the captain had expected.
The baton snapped against Lynn's white coat with a dull, crisp crack of plastic.
One half remained in the captain's hand. The other clattered onto the tiles and rolled far away.
"This...