Ethan suddenly found himself in flight or fight mode and, on this particularly warm winter day in Maybell, with nobody around to watch him, he chose flight.

He opened a portal to dodge out of the way, then opened another to the absolute peak of the mountain range behind him, putting himself a full twenty miles away from the town of Maybell and, hopefully, from whoever just attacked him.

He laid himself down on the rocky soil, his skin and clothing warmed by the sun’s rays, trying to force himself to stop hyperventilating. His heart was pounding in his chest as he thought back to the night he and Rainey went down the mines, the night he set them both on this collision course. Confirming she was alive brought a strange mix of relief and guilt, neither emotion able to quite overpower the other, feelings swirling inside of him like opaque, brackish river water.

Not only is she truly alive, she’s powerful, he thought. Way more powerful than me.

“Ethan?” Raz’s concerned voice brought him back to the present. “What the hell just happened? Your heart rate spiked and then you jumped a million miles away.”

“That about sums it up,” Ethan told him, “except you’re missing the part where I also almost got squished by a boulder.”

“Are you sure it was a boulder?”

“It came so close to me I could smell the cow manure on it, Raz, so I’d say I’m pretty certain.”

“Okay, okay,” Ethan could practically see Raz putting his hands out to calm him down. He let out a quiet chuckle despite himself at the image. “Talk to me, what’s happening out there?”

“I saw the breach point, then got attacked so I teleported to safety.”

“Didn’t you just fight Sola? You didn’t run away then, right?”

“That was different,” Ethan told him pointedly. “I didn’t have a choice then.”

“Because Quinn was there?”

“That, and because I had no space to run away. But…yeah, mainly the Quinn thing.”

“Well, you can flee now if you’d like. Alex is coming, so you can bail once she gets there. She can clean up whatever’s going on out there and you can come back here and tell me what’s really happening.”

“Oh, no,” Ethan groaned, adrenaline suddenly surging throughout his body, his eyes widening. He pushed himself to his feet, then opened a portal to go right back where he came from, hugging Maybell’s northern border. The light from his portal must’ve been like a beacon against the shadowed mountain range because he saw three more large, angular rocks rise out of the earth like they were being pulled by an invisible string. “I can’t let that happen.”

“What, am I that bad?”

Despite the fear overwhelming him, he focused not on the rocks, but on searching for Rainey.

If Alex comes out here and Rainey somehow sees her cut, she’s going to know she’s not invincible. I need to get this situation under control and convince Alex to stay away, but I can’t do that if I’m running away. He took a deep breath to steady himself, then readied a portal back to Maybell. He had to act fast if he wanted to wrap this up before Alex got here.

“Do you have access to Alex’s comms?” He asked Raz, taking a running start and launching himself off the side of the cliff. He resisted the urge to scream while falling through the air, then through his portal and onto a relatively flat peak near Maybell.

“I can open a channel…why? Do you need her to hurry up?”

“Tell Alex to cancel!” Ethan screamed into his comms. He didn’t have time to hide the fear in his voice. The first of the boulders launched itself at incredible speed towards him. “Cancel, cancel, cancel!”

“What?” Raz asked, incredulous. “This isn’t a food order, Ethan, she’s almost there to back you up against this maniac.”

“No need,” Ethan yelled, grunting with pain as the boulder exploded into the mountainside beside him, throwing dust and debris in his face. He spit out as much dirt as he could, wiping the rest off his tongue. “I’m fine!”

“You don’t sound fine,” Raz told him. “You sound like someone just smacked the side of your head.”

“I’ve got this-” he was cut off by a small, razor sharp stone embedding itself just above his head. He opened a void in front of him to shield himself, then another way up in the sky, far away from Rainey.

“-completely under control!”

Despite the words coming out of his mouth, Ethan wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep running. Opening so many portals in such quick succession was starting to wear on him. Rainey’s last two projectiles nearly took his head off, and he wasn’t getting any closer to handling this situation. Despite everything in his brain screaming about how dangerous this move was, he needed to confront her, head on.

First, he had to find her.

As he fell from the sky, he used his limited aerial advantage to scan the valley below, but came up empty, nothing resembling a murderous woman hiding in the grass.

Not there, but she still has to be able to see me, so she has to be here somewhere.

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Ignoring the valley, he turned his head towards the town and was able to spot a figure standing on a roof of a modern, two story home that, from the looks of it, probably cost more money than he’d ever see in his life, even if he did survive this attack and become a Protector, both outcomes that were seemingly becoming more unlikely by the second.

Gotta be her. He opened a portal just above the house, facing the sky, then underneath him. He sailed through it, his momentum suddenly slowing as he arced back into the air, only to open another portal below him at his Apex and deposit himself gracefully onto the other side of the roof just ten feet away from Rainey.

“You didn’t have to come all the way out here just for me,” she said, her faux-impressed tone instantly putting Ethan on edge.

“Rainey,” he said, an edge to his voice. “Any chance you can stop trying to kill me long enough for me to ask you why you’re all the way out here?”

“It’s Slate now,” she told him, folding her arms.

Damn, I never came up with a new name for myself. I’ve been too busy. “Slate, then. What are you doing out here?” He demanded to know. “Did you create that breach point?”

Rainey smiled. “An interesting use of my powers, no? You could probably do the same, you know. Just reach down into the earth and let the energy Surge through.”

“They’re too dangerous,” Ethan shook his head. “You and I both know that. We leveled a mine.”

“You leveled the mine,” she corrected him, earth shaking under his feet. His eyes shot down as he struggled to keep his balance. “I was perfectly fine gaining powers and leaving until you thought it’d be a better move to drop the entirety of the tunnel on my head.”

Ethan’s heart dropped. He may have had what he thought was a good reason to do it, but she was right. “That was wrong of me, and I’m sorry,” he told her. “I shouldn’t have taken either of us down there in the first place.”

“Oh, don’t apologize. Not now. Not when I’m so close.”

I don’t think I even want to know what she has planned, but I know it won’t be good for Alex or Ascension.

“Slate, listen to me. All you’ve done so far is ask someone to steal a few diamonds for you. If you were willing to give Apex some information about Sola, I bet they’d be willing to look the other way.”

“Do you really think so? Would they just…let me go?”

“Yes! Probably. Well, maybe.”

“But don’t you want to know what I needed them for in the first place?”

Ethan tensed. He suddenly had the sinking feeling that he had sensed her trap too late.

She reached into her pants pocket and pulled out what Ethan thought was a diamond, but one that looked wrong. It was the size of her fist and looked like it had been melted and put back together.

She smiled, her eyes glued to his. Slate held the diamond in her palm, then waved her left hand over it. Ethan watched, amazed, as the diamond stretched like taffy until it was about three feet long and no wider than a pencil sharpened at the edge to a point that glimmered in the sunlight. Whatever awkwardness was in the diamond mass was completely transformed into a spear that, to Ethan, would be completely unbreakable and incredibly deadly.

“One last question,” she told him, twirling the spear in front of him.

“How badly would I have to hurt you to get Titan to come all the way out here?”

Ethan threw his hand out in front of him to open a portal back towards the city, but all at once the ground beneath his feet suddenly sunk, pulling his boots underground. The soil cemented over him before he even had time to register what happened.

“Slate, stop!” He yelled. Stone shot up from the earth and wrapped itself around his arms, pulling him to his knees, pain shooting through his legs. He struggled against his rough bindings only to find that he was completely stuck, the world silent except for the sound of Slate’s laughter.

“I didn’t think I’d get to use this so soon,” she said, putting the spear to his neck and lifting up his chin, bringing his eyes to hers. The tip sunk into his neck with no resistance, leaving a thin trail of blood as she moved it up under his chin.

“It’s…not too late,” Ethan growled through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the trickle of blood running down his chest. “You got what you wanted. Powers. You can do something good with them!”

Slate laughed maliciously in his face. “That’s what you don’t see, Ethan. I already am.”

She grabbed her spear with both hands, raising it high above her head where it nearly disappeared in the sunlight. Ethan, arms pinned, tried his hardest to break free, but the stone wouldn’t budge. He shut his eyes, turning his head away as the spear came rocketing down towards his chest.

He heard a noise that sounded like a cannonball explosion, feeling a shockwave slam into his chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs. While he gasped for air, he finally forced his eyes open to see that Alex had leapt in front of the spear. Arriving late, it was all she could do to block Slate’s attack with her leg.

The first thing Ethan noticed was that he wasn’t dead, which led to an elation like he’d never experienced that was, unfortunately, cut short by the second thing he noticed. Slate’s spear had evidently shattered, given Rainey was now holding a much smaller, jagged piece than before, but it had been more than sharp enough to cut into Titan’s pant leg, ripping the fabric wide open.

Alex, though she had yet to notice, was unnerved. She was used to people rushing at her, testing to see if she was truly invincible. When she followed Slate’s eyes down, she saw her exposed thigh bore the gash she had sustained early. She had managed to remove the piece of rock, but couldn’t fully hide the gash it left in her thigh.

Slate didn’t need to rush at Alex to find out if she was invincible. She already knew she wasn’t.

“The mighty Titan,” Slate drawled out, smiling tightly, “how many people know you’re not quite as invincible as you claim?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she spat back at Slate. “Do you really think this changes anything? A scratch? You can come at me with everything you’ve got and you’re still going to lose.”

“I look forward to testing that theory,” Slate smiled. Without warning, the ground around Alex rumbled loudly as Slate threw up a thick wall of stone that encased itself around Titan, trapping her in total darkness. “But not today.”

“Coward!” Alex yelled, her voice echoing around her. For most people, this would represent a nearly impossible prison to escape from; for Alex, it took just three punches to break through the foot thick stone wall, her fist bursting through. She whipped her arm up, allowing her to see out, then kicked a hole through the bottom, collapsing her makeshift cage entirely.

She shook off the stone and ran over to Ethan, kneeling next to him.

“Hey, sorry I was late. Are you okay?”

For once In his life, Ethan genuinely had no idea what to say. He led Alex right into the biggest threat against her life and against stability in Ascension. Slate knew she could hurt Alex, and it was just a matter of time until she found out how.

“No,” his voice squeaked. “Not at all.”