Inside the cabin, Kirren stood alone near the reinforced door, his hand resting on a safety rail to maintain his balance. His trademark, easygoing grin was entirely absent. He stared at the metal floor, his brow furrowed in a rare display of deep conflict.
Maxwell noticed the shift in his younger brother’s demeanor and approached him, his heavy footsteps muffled by the ship's carpeting. "We're about to arrive in Leilani. Is something the matter, Kirren?"
Kirren didn't respond immediately. He glanced at his brother, then back to his boots. "I don't know," he said simply, the words heavy.
Maxwell moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him, slipping effortlessly into the mantle of the protective older brother. "Come now, Kirren. I know you better than anyone else. What is bothering you?"
Kirren rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the short bristles of his trimmed haircut. He let out a reluctant sigh, realizing there was no point in dancing around the issue. "You're going to hate me for it."
"Whatever could you mean?" Maxwell looked genuinely confused.
Kirren looked out the window, his dark eyes tracking the passing sea of white clouds. "It's that Angelo kid. Some part of me just... doesn't want to go through with this."
"Kirren..." Maxwell started, his voice softening.
"I know, I know," Kirren dismissed, waving a hand. "It's just... When you think about it, you two are incredibly similar. As different as you are on the surface, you're two sides of the exact same coin. You both fight for justice. Only you fight inside the boundaries of the law—"
"—And he fights outside of it," Maxwell completed, his tone hardening slightly.
Kirren nodded. "Yeah. But even spending such a short amount of time with him, seeing that raw conviction in his eyes... It moved me. You know?"
"Kirren, you know full well—"
"Yeah, I do," Kirren cut him off, his voice rising with uncharacteristic edge. "And so do you. You know full well that the law can't touch some people. Don't pretend that isn't the reality of the world we live in."
Maxwell said nothing. The counter-argument died in his throat. After a tense, stretching pause, he asked with barely maintained composure, "Do you truly believe the Angel of Death is a necessary evil?"
Kirren looked away slowly. "I don't know. Maybe."
"I don't know about 'necessary evil'," Sienna interjected, stepping out from the seating area to join the brothers. "But I've seen what happens when no one does the right thing."
Both men looked at her, slightly taken aback by her sudden involvement. Maxwell recovered his formal posture first. "Meaning?" he prompted.
"Geovale's Rest," Sienna said simply. "Or 'Outlaw's Oasis', as it goes by nowadays. My mother told me all about it." She glanced between the two men, her expression grim. "Corrupted leadership made the people rise up against it. But once the government fell, no one decent rose up to fill that vacuum. You know what happened next?"
"The criminal element moved in?" Kirren guessed softly.
Sienna nodded. "Now the place is a lawless wasteland where the worst criminals from all over the world find absolute refuge. A total and complete shithole. Imagine it—a massive territory right in the middle of our continent, surrounded by massive walls so that people can't get in accidently... or more importantly, so the monsters can't get out."
"And you believe this justifies vigilantism?" Maxwell's retort was cutting, his prosecutor instincts flaring.
"I don't think anything about it," Sienna replied smoothly, unfazed by his tone. "I just know the horrific results of when good men do nothing. His methods might be extreme, Maxwell, but he gave me the distinct impression that he truly wants the bad people gone."
Maxwell glanced between the pair, a deep, weary sigh escaping his chest. "Look. I understand your sentiment, truly. And I acknowledge the boy's good intentions." He looked up, his eyes full of absolute, uncompromising resolve. "But there are right ways of doing good, and there are wrong ways. It is not up to him to decide who gets to live and who doesn't. That is the path to anarchy."
Kirren and Sienna exchanged conflicted looks but didn't push further.
"I will say this, however," Maxwell added, his voice softening just a fraction. "After he has paid his debt to society, I would be the first to accept him with open arms to the right side of the law."
Kirren processed the compromise. He nodded slowly. "Yeah. Alright. Fair enough." He stretched his arms high above his head, forcing the heaviness out of his muscles. "Alright, so we find them again, and try to convince Blue-bot to come clean somehow?"
"That is the plan at the moment," Maxwell confirmed as the autopilot announced their descent into Leilani. Below them, locals were already stopping in the streets to point at the sleek government vessel.
"Alright, let's go, babe!" Kirren said, allowing his natural, vibrant energy to return.
"Right beside you, love," Sienna smiled affectionately.
Maxwell turned to check on Vera. To his absolute astonishment, the hollow-eyed detective was actually sleeping in her chair—a rare, almost mythical sight.
He stood beside her and shook her shoulder gently. "We have arrived, Detective."
Vera slowly opened her eyes, blinking away the remnants of the first decent sleep she had experienced in over a decade. "We—where... Are we here?"
"Yes. I apologize for waking you, but this is where your specific areas of expertise are needed," Maxwell offered politely.
She unbuckled her harness groggily, rubbing her face. "Wow. I actually slept... I... Wow."
Minutes later, after Vera had splashed cold water on her face and the group had gathered their gear, they stepped out of the ship and walked directly to the motel parking lot where Kirren and Sienna had last seen the Trio.
"Huh," Kirren frowned, looking at the empty asphalt. "It's not here. Guess they left."
"But you explicitly stated—" Maxwell started.
"I said I felt my sand this way! I thought the ship was still here. They did say they wanted to spend the night..." Kirren explained, placing his hands on his hips. "But now that we're actually on the ground, I can tell the ship is further away. That way." He pointed north, toward the looming, skeletal mountain range.
Vera pulled a physical map from her coat pocket, her eyes darting between the paper and the northern horizon. "There's a settlement called SolThanor that way. Maybe that's where they went?"
"Probably, right?" Sienna agreed.
"Right. Guess we head out there then?" Kirren asked, cracking his knuckles.
Vera thought about it for two seconds before shaking her head. "No. We should probably split up."
"Meaning what, Detective?" Maxwell prompted.
"Two scenarios," Vera said, holding up two fingers with clinical precision. "One: They somehow realized we were tracking their vehicle, and they moved it out to the mountains as a decoy to drive us away from them. In which case, they are still hiding here in Leilani. Or two: They spent a night here, and we can gather intelligence from motel staff or locals who might have interacted with them."
"Or three," Kirren chimed in. "They just pulled a massive feint, and they've been spending their time out there this entire time."
"Correct. But we'd still be sending someone out there to check," Vera concluded, folding the map. "Splitting up is the most logical course of action to cover all variables."
Sienna glanced at Kirren. "Can't argue with that logic."
"Guess not," Kirren admitted. He looked at his brother. "Bro?"
Maxwell nodded his approval. "Very well. You two go to where their vehicle is located, utilizing your Auron mobility. Leave the ship here with us in case we need to reach you quickly."
Kirren's pink aura, followed a split second later by Sienna's vibrant yellow, ignited right on cue. "Gotcha," Kirren winked. "Let's go, babe!"
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The two launched into the sky, rocketing toward the mountains. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the outskirts of the necropolis, the wind howling a mournful warning around them as they touched down near the parked CampShip.
"Well, here it is. But where's the gang?" Kirren asked, peering through the ship's windows. It was completely empty.
"Kirren, look," Sienna said, stepping to the edge of the cliff and looking down into the sprawling basin. "This place... It's a complete ghost town."
"Whoa, wait, really?" Kirren rushed to her side, his pink eyes widening as he took in the decaying, skeletal remains of SolThanor. "Never seen one before. Damn." He scuffed his boots against the dry earth. "So... eery. That's a word, right?"
"Yes, love," Sienna chuckled softly, though the amusement died almost instantly as she surveyed the rotting structures. "It is definitely eerie. But what do you think they are doing in a dead place like this?"
"Hm," Kirren pondered, scratching his chin. "Maybe Vera was right and this is a feint." He sighed in frustration. "Talk about a wild goose chase over absolutely nothing. What a waste of our time." He turned back toward the ship. "Let's head back."
Sienna didn't budge. She was rubbing her temple, her brow furrowed as she tried to recall a fleeting detail from their last encounter.
"Babe?"
"Wait," she murmured. The memory of their last interaction with the group surfaced. A single, specific word echoed in her mind.
Angelo looking at Sol...
"Do you even have a budget for this, Detective?"
"Wait," Sienna suddenly perked up, her eyes widening. "Angelo called Sol 'Detective'." She looked back over SolThanor with a sudden, chilling understanding. "Maybe this is exactly why they are all the way out here. They aren't hiding. They're investigating."
Kirren crossed his arms, looking down at the massive ruins. "You think they're looking into this ghost town?"
"I don't see any other logical explanation. Do you?" Sienna countered.
Kirren looked at the sheer size of the abandoned city and groaned. "Nope. Guess we have no other choice but to go 'bump' into them manually." He scanned the grid of broken streets. "You'd think glowing Aurons would stick out in such an empty place. They're probably inside one of those larger ruins."
The two made a move to descend into the valley, but something stopped them dead in their tracks.
A sound.
It was the terrifying, rhythmic tearing of the atmosphere—the sound of distant, massive lightning building directly behind them. They spun around and saw a localized storm of blinding electrical energy dancing wildly inside the dense clouds, moving toward them at impossible speeds.
"What the...?"
"What the heck is that?"
The lightning mass passed high above their heads, the air pressure dropping so violently it made their ears pop. The storm stopped abruptly at the far edge of the town, hovering near the feet of Mount SolThanor.
A tiny figure descended slowly from the heavens. Pure, destructive lightning danced dangerously around his frame, radiating a lethal intensity that was clearly visible even from a mile away.
"Who is this Auron?" Kirren asked, a rising sense of dread coiling in his stomach.
"Kirren, I don't like this one bit," Sienna whispered, vocalizing his exact fears.
"Me neither, I—"
Before Kirren could finish the sentence, the hovering figure raised both hands and launched a colossal, meteor-sized thunderbolt straight into the center of the ruins.
BOOOMMMMM!
"OH MY GOD!" Sienna shrieked, throwing her hands over her ears.
"HOLY SHIT!" Kirren yelled, his pink aura flaring defensively as the shockwave rattled their bones.
The ground beneath the epicenter groaned in agony and collapsed entirely, a massive sinkhole devouring a huge chunk of the town under the sheer, unadulterated power of the strike.
As the dust billowed upward, two gigantic, crackling arms made of pure electricity materialized near the distant figure. The arms began sweeping through the town like a child knocking over toys, casually turning surrounding structures into pulverized rubble.
"Kirren! They're destroying the town! The kids are down there!" Sienna shouted, panic gripping her throat.
"Fuck!" Kirren cursed, his jaw clenched tight. "That level of power... That's an Arch Auron at least!"
Sienna froze. She stared at the apocalyptic destruction tearing through the valley. A distant memory—as vivid and painful as the day it was forged—rose to the surface. She reached out and grabbed Kirren's hand tightly.
"My nana told me when I was young," Sienna said, her voice trembling but finding its steel, "that our country was butchered because the people needed a hero, and there simply wasn't one. So I became a Pro to feel like a hero..."
"Sienna..." Kirren breathed, recognizing the look in her eyes.
"Now," she continued, her yellow aura flaring bright and hot against the wind, "now I get to be an actual hero, Kirren. I want to save them. I want to save those kids!"
Kirren looked at her. Something Angelo had told him back in the forest resurfaced in his mind:
"Then our visions aren't so different. I'm just clearing the field so others can play safely."
A wicked, unsure, yet undeniably brave smile split Kirren's face. "I'm right behind you, babe. Let's go save those kids!"
Before they could launch, the air around them filled with static. Stray sparks danced across their skin, making the hairs on their arms stand straight up. A second later, an unknown, sickeningly smooth voice made them turn.
"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"
The man floated midair, suspended by twin wings constructed entirely of roaring lightning. He had shoulder-length curly hair and a neatly trimmed beard, draped in a dramatic, one-shouldered cape. His eyes glowed a dangerous, electric yellow as he looked down at them.
"Stand behind me, Kirren!" Sienna commanded. Her yellow aura exploded outward, swirling and twisting around her frame as it forcefully evolved. The sheer atmospheric pressure of her power caused the bedrock beneath her boots to spider-web and crack. A feral, battle-ready grin split her face as she flexed her toned muscles and pointed directly at the stranger. "Hey, bastard! Who the hell are you?! And why are you attacking this town?!"
The man brushed a curl of hair from his forehead with a theatrical flourish. "Ho, ho. What kind of mercenary gives away their true name to the dead? But, you can call me The Electrocutioner." Violent sparks danced between his fingertips. "Which is like an electric executioner. Get it? Or Electro, for short."
"You seem perfectly fine with giving away your nickname, though," Kirren noted dryly from behind Sienna's glowing form.
Electro looked at Kirren, his lip curling with utter disgust. "Why are you hiding behind a woman like a coward? Have you no honor?" His gaze shifted back to Sienna, leaking pure, murderous intent as the lightning danced violently around his frame, his giant electric palms hovering in the distance, waiting for the command to strike.
Meanwhile, deep underground, the situation was infinitely more dire than the battle brewing above.
The impossibly dense, black-evolved metal, a massive headache just minutes prior, had now ironically become their only salvation.
The vault's ceiling had buckled violently under the weight of millions of tons of earth and collapsing rubble. The only reason it hadn't instantly squashed its occupants into paste was their desperate, combined effort.
Angelo stood in the center, his teeth bared in a feral snarl as both his physical hands and the massive, spectral Angel's Silver Hands pressed upward against the groaning black metal. To his right, Neiva’s giant gauntlets were locked against the ceiling, her muscles trembling violently. To his left, Sol had his hands pushing desperately against the crushing weight.
Veins bulged on their necks and forearms. The air was thick with the suffocating scent of dust and metal. The ceiling was still descending, inches at a time, screeching like a dying animal as the metal fatigued. Their time was measured in seconds, and they all knew it.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Red's voice echoed frantically from within Angelo's mind, the internal screaming only serving to make Angelo's skull throb harder. "What the hell happened?! Who the fuck is this guy?!"
"Red!" Blue shouted back in their headspace, trying to maintain his clinical composure despite the absolute terror. "This is hardly the time for—"
"SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!" Angelo roared aloud, his physical voice tearing through his throat. "IF YOU LOSE FOCUS AND TRINERGY MODE DROPS, WE'RE ALL DEAD!"
A moment of agonizing, tense silence passed, save for the horrifying groan of the buckling metal above them.
"What do we do?!" Neiva cried out, her knees buckling slightly under the immense, impossible pressure.
Angelo already knew the answer. "There's no way we can lift this mass!" He turned his head slightly, straining to look at the detective. "Sol! We need your decay powers! It's the only way out!"
Sol squeezed his eyes shut, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth as he gritted his teeth. "But—! But then we'll lose the only evidence we have left! The prisms!"
"Sol!" Neiva screamed, tears of strain mixing with the blood leaking from her eye. "If we don't do this, we're dead! How are we going to solve anything if we're crushed in here?!"
Sol's jaw clenched so hard he thought his teeth might shatter. The frustration of losing the prize after coming so far burned almost as much as his tearing muscles. "There's just no way! Even if I decay the ceiling, the millions of tons of rubble resting on top of it will just fall through and crush us with the momentum!"
"I'll help! We'll attack the rubble together!" Angelo shouted. The metal shrieked, forcing all three of them into a half-crouch. "QUICK! WE'RE OUT OF TIME!"
Sol paused. He opened his eyes, staring at the descending black void of the ceiling. "FUCK." He banged his forehead against the metal, the raw frustration echoing through the rapidly shrinking space.
"OooohhhhhhhHHHHHHH!" Sol roared. The viscous, silver darkness of his atomic bond manipulation began to pool violently between his palms and the black metal.
Angelo dug his boots into the floor. Trinergy—a blinding cocktail of silver, orange, crimson, and azure—began building to critical mass between his actual palms and the spider-webbing ceiling.
Neiva closed her eyes in a silent, desperate prayer, pouring the absolute last dregs of her stamina into her gauntlets to buy them the final seconds they needed. Please, please, please, she whispered to whatever gods were listening.
"NOW!" Sol screamed.
Blinding silver darkness shot outward from his hands, violently infecting the indestructible black metal and the millions of tons of compacted earth resting directly above it.
"TRINERGY FOOOOOOORCE!" Angelo roared.
The black metal ceiling turned to void, instantly decaying into nothingness. The crushing weight of the earth plummeted downward, but before it could reach them, the two opposing silver powers erupted upward like a hyper-pressurized volcano.
Millions of tons of earth, stone, and decayed metal exploded skyward, propelled by the raw, unfettered chain reaction of Sol's darkness and Angelo's Trinergy. The resulting eruption blasted a massive, perfect crater straight through the bedrock and out into the open air, the sheer force of the upward momentum miraculously sparing the trio at the bottom of the shaft from the concussive shockwave.
Back near the CampShip at the outskirts of the town, Electro, Kirren, and Sienna were violently caught off guard by the massive, silver-and-brown geyser that suddenly erupted from the far edge of the ruins.
Electro spun midair, his yellow eyes locking onto the towering pillar of destruction. A wicked, arrogant grin stretched across his face.
"Ah," he purred, electricity crackling wildly around him. "The rats have finally come out to play."