(back to the present)

Gabriel: "By the way, i adopted a child."

Thallus:"...."

Thallus:"........you what? YOU ADOPTED A KID??!! AND HOW ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT SO CALMLY?! What's his name? Where is he now? "

Gabriel: "His name is tommy. He is under the care of my friends, since Cassius urged me to leave him with them and come with him since it was time to complete the final part of my training. I wonder how the kid is doing now.....

(back at the ship.)

Tommy: "Should we call papa now, uncle john?" (Tommy asked Johnathan as they ate breakfast.)

John: "He might be busy now kiddo, I'm sure he'll call us whenever he has some free time."

Tommy: "Aww man. I was hoping to talk to him today."

John: "It's ok little man, he is an important person after all"

(Luca walks into the room and greets good morning to the kid.)

Luca: "Enjoying your breakfast, little man?"

Tommy: "Sir, yes, Sir! These pancakes are so delicious, especially with this chocolate syrup!"

John: "That's right."

Luca: "I wonder how Gabriel is doing, you worried about him, John?"

John: "I do not know what his urgent work might be but.."(john stood up and whispered into Luca's ear and said) "I believe it might be related to his force and everything, it's not like we actually do know what is what."

Luca: "That's true."

Tommy: "Why are you both whispering all of a sudden? Is something bad gonna happen to him?" (he said, when they both could see him starting to tear up.)

Luca: "No, no, little tommy, it's going to be alright, your father will meet at us at the port before we even reach there." ( I wonder how he even is going to accomplish that.)

Tommy: "OH! That's great then! I can't wait to see him!"

Suddenly the P.A systems in the ship call for C.O. Luca, asking him to come to the ship navigation section immediately.)

(Back at Gabriel)

Thallus: "Oh it's fine, I'm sure your friends are taking great care of him. So, you don't wanna hang out a lot of time then? "

Gabriel: :" Not really, thallus, It's not that i don't want to, but it's that i must visit my other trainers and return to Arnav and Cassius too."

Thallus: "Oh. That sucks, But i guess i still can go back to baking then. I'll be sure to visit your training and watch you, my disciple."

Although they are friends, Gabriel and his teachers have always had a sense of parent-child relation's inkling in their bond. And thallus was very proud of Gabriel to control his immense strength at this young age and continuously try to improve himself.

Thallus: "I suppose, as your second mentor i failed to teach you one of the basic things, which is not so basic."

At the ship, Luca was informed by the crew that they are potentially a target of yet another assassination attempt, aimed to destroy the ship, They deduced this as they saw 13 targets pinging their RADARS and 2 pinging their underwater SONARS, Luca had a chill run up his spine and he was visibly distraught. His face sank and he was scared for the lives of his crew and more importantly about the guarantee he gave his friend that he would protect his child at all costs. He commanded the ship initiate submerging protocol and fire missiles at above water targets and torpedoes at the underground ones, and try to neutralize the threats by any and all means necessary. Luca's face was harsh and cold like he usually was but deep down he knew they aren't gonna survive this attack, if the targets are force users from the "organization" which sent another batch of troops to take out the ship, after a failed attempt.

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Luca's feelings of being useless came back and his heart began to sank, he asked John to distract Tommy and take him to a secure room and try to protect him.

The targets drew ever closer, faster than the last time and the folks from the navigation department had informed Luca that there are more troops inbound and they are sent in waves, 1500 kilometers apart, for now they're only able to recognize 2 waves, with the first wave's only 3 being neutralized after concentrated fire. Now after reloading and firing, the targets were too close and fired back at the ship too, this time they could only take out 1 user. The underground force users were all dead and the 9 surface force users managed to blow a bit of the ship off.

The force users were able to overwhelm the ship's defenses and managed to blow off a huge chunk of the ship's main hull and managed to kill a few crew and injure a lot, all the while Luca tried to protect the ship and activate the defense protocol which fired off all the weapons at the same time, which did no damage to the force users and now they're face to face with the 9 force users who're are plucking out each crew member and torturing them in the sky, while the rest watched in uncertain horror.

The entire crew was drowned in sorrow. Misery and fear surrounded the entire environment, screams of agony and people crying out for help, only to be not answered, filled the skies. Luca fell down on his knees and he was staring into the force users squad torturing his crew members, his mind racing at very high speeds and his feeling of not being adequate and not becoming the symbol of hope and strength he had always wished to be, rushed in and numbed his senses, he wasn't able to feel much of anything anymore, for a normal human like him, this was far too horrifying to watch.

The force users eventually spotted Johnathan and one shouted out to the rest that there is a revenant on board, and all of them flew towards him, with no obvious good intentions, Luca, Still paralyzed by this situation sank deeper into the pit of misery and was scared for tommy, the crew started to mess with Johnathan and while he tried his best to fend them off, it was all for naught, they enjoyed the screams of the crew members, their despair and their agony.

Thallus: "Apart from the obvious light and dark manifestation of the energy, there exists some forms of the manifestations where they aren't neither dark nor light. There exists a set of people who awaken their strengths in other forms, I only know a handful of them and one of them is an ancient, Zanis, a human capable of bending gravity at his will and something more than that which i don't remember."

The force users managed to rip off john's leg and hurt tommy a bit on his arm. Making him lose one of his fingers, listening to the child cry out, excited them and made them torture the others more. Luca, who thought he was responsible for not protecting the child and didn't stand on his word, fell down on his knees and started crying.

Thallus: "These people are normally the most confused and wrathful when they awaken, and have no restrictions or no moral obligation holding them back as they awaken."

The force users stopped their maniacal laugh and realized they didn't hear cries or anything of that sort from the environment. Tommy was staring at the navigation center of the ship and one of the crew members pointed the whole squad towards it.

What they saw that day was....Horrifying, utterly horrifying. It was not that the screams of the crew stopped, it was that a sound, a hum greater than that, reverberated through the entire ocean and they could hear it too. And it was terrifying and bone chilling.

What they saw there, was a man floating in air, emanating a faint emerald hue from his eyes, unlike any of the awakening they've ever seen. This figure, who was almost dead, just floated in the air like a corpse.

When one of them tried to do something to the corpse, the moment they moved, the floating corpse of the man moved like it responded to the intent of the force users. The man stood upright with his eyes glowing a full emerald glow and emanating sparks too. The mere sight of the tall individual with this unusual awakening, frightened them.

They didn't know why such strong individuals like them were scared, neither did they understand what the abilities of this person might be. They heard the little kid they tortured scream out to the man, on the top of lungs, saying, "Uncle Luca, help me please, it hurts! These are bad people, take me away from them please!!" he said, as he was sobbing uncontrollably.

Luca stared into the very souls of the force users and they had a feeling that they messed up really bad. Luca started to cry and leak an emerald liquid from his eyes and said "I failed, yet again." As he let out a painful shriek... But the force users were more concerned by the fact that the entire horizons were covered by black clouds, and a thunderstorm started... and the very ocean too, behaved weird. Like it was...moving?

Johnathan, in his half awoken state extended his arm towards Luca in the sky and said "He's....done it. We're saved, tommy" as he coughed blood and said very faintly.

To be continued in chapter 4.