Lara said “I’m sorry but I can’t let you in”. Camille was confused, she said “Why?!” Lara said “You could have ulterior motives. How do you know that Jade is not dead? He was taken to prison before the first monsters showed up. I watched it on the news. If he was alive I would have caught him first”.

Camille said “I cannot give you the details but I know that he is alive and I know that the last place he was seen was in Nigeria”. Lara said “You said the last place he was seen, doesn’t that mean he is not here?” Camille said “Yes, I can’t find where he is for now but I need to at least search the last place he was at to get on his trail”.

Lara said “Why don’t I do the searching for you and I’ll tell you if I see him”. Camille said “I have to search personally or else I won’t be satisfied. This is someone that killed and tortured my boyfriend and his brother before my eyes! The least that I can do is fail to find him myself”.

Lara snapped her fingers and 6 more portals appeared and different meta-humans walked out of them. Although they were not aura manipulators they all carried a dangerous aura. She said “It is only natural that the last place Jade was seen in was Nigeria. I assume that he is currently in hell paying for what he did. Camille, you haven’t given me any reliable information. You don’t trust me, which is natural since we literally just met a minute ago. But I don’t trust you either, go back to where you came from Camille, I will tell you if I find Jade. This is my territory, you will not cross”.

Camille’s expression was slowly filled with anger as Lara spoke and now she was filled to the brim. She said “WHY WON’T YOU JUST LET ME PASS?!” small portals opened around the eight Valkyries and they pulled out their weapons from them. Lara said “I don’t trust yo-“

“CHARGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Camille roared her command and the Valkyries gave their pegasi the mental command to move forward. The meta-humans readied their abilities for the incoming Valkyries. Camille pulled a long spear out of a portal and said “We just wanted to search” before driving her Slepnir toward Lara.

Lara said “I don’t trust you” and the size and definition of her muscles increased while her skin got a metallic luster and she dashed toward the charging Camille.

…

News of the battle reached the APT and Night City since they had a connection with Terrania. Terrania asked for the assistance of both settlements but they didn’t understand Lara’s decision. The people she was fighting just wanted to search the country and since Jade wasn’t there as Lara said they would find nothing and leave. Why was Lara so hell bent on preventing them from entering?

On the side of the APT, most of the administrative members and even the other members felt that she was being a bigot. She refused to help them when they wanted to defeat the Glass Empire, a good cause that would have helped a lot of people but she adamantly refused for no clear reason. Now she wanted their help to defeat a person who just wanted to search for someone that was probably dead.

Alas the news changed when a piece of information became known. Salam, Jola, Bella and Gbenga confirmed that Jade was in fact not dead and that they had actually seen him. Gbenga and Bella’s account showed that Jade did escape prison and that he evolved into an Ancient Grade race which was proved by Salam’s account of a Rank 2 High Human Jade that destroyed Banu city.

Salam now knew that Jade had a job at the time when he destroyed Banu city and was Rank 7 or higher. This feat, at such an early time, could only be achieved by an Ancient Grade. Hence if Jade was alive, he would be a major threat since he would either have evolved into a Mythical or Celestial Grade race. And his attack on Banu city proved that he hadn’t changed one bit, he was still as ruthless as he was before the apocalypse.

When this was known to the APT, they dedicated resources and people to search for traces of Jade and even asked for the help of Gold Lands and Night City to search for traces of him in Nigeria. The people that searched for him used mythical powers and magic to search for any traces. They used Divination, Future sensing, Past sensing, etc.

Alas they found nothing, the Divinations gave inconclusive results, those with Future sensing said he would appear in the Future but they didn’t know when and where and this was after they pooled their resources and did all the best that they could do to get one clear vision. Those who could sense the past had better results as they sensed that he escaped from prison, evolved and went to Abuja but the results they got were also very vague as he seemed to be in multiple places at certain times and was nowhere at sometimes, it was all very inconclusive but it was the best they had.

They found out that he disappeared and reappeared at Abuja for almost a year before completely disappearing for almost the whole duration of the WW3 Event only reappearing toward the end of the event in Abuja for a while and completely disappearing after that.

The locations where he reappeared were always battle locations and the details of the fights were unclear as if something was blocking the senses of the investigators. The only fight that some information could be gleaned from was his most recent fight with the Champion Arachnis and that information came by analyzing the place after his fight. There were large and smoothly cut fissures in the ground that appeared as if a giant sharp knife had cut through the place.

A mild fear filled the settlements that knew about this since even though they evolved and became beings that belonged to fiction in their previous lives, they were still unable to catch or understand Jade. It was exactly like when he terrorized the world, no one knew where he was and how he did what he did, he was still an enigma.

Many theories were proposed but the people that had interactions with him disapproved of a lot of them. The Jade the theories painted was a space, time or reality wielding god but the Jade they saw was a normal person that went through the normal things other people went through during the apocalypse.

The investigation had taken a day and the results were sent to Lara who told Camille the results, but she still refused to let her in and just asked for help from the other settlements. Many conspiracies like, she was working with Jade or that she was Jade, spread around but they had no backing in reality. The only thing Lara told them was that they could not trust Camille.

Due to their relationship with Terrania and the help they provided when they were still weak, the APT sent Gbenga who had met Jade to assist her in repelling Camille. The meta-humans were doing a good job of holding back Camille’s forces as they had held them back for a day. But they were the most powerful people in Terrania and had important roles that could not be filled by anyone else so Terrania needed some of them to return.

Night city sent Mira who, surprisingly, volunteered for the role, her reason was that she wanted more powerful genes to store. The second day of the war against Camille began.