While Chimera and Sarah were having a rather strange moment with a woman from a tube.,.

Aden braced himself as Dr. Pox tried to crush him with earth and steel, a force slamming into him from the floor and the ceiling.

Despite the move however, Aden overpowered the technopathic, tectonic assault, smashing the ground after it enveloped him.

“To think you were this strong… no matter!”

Pox spouted words and drivel as he sent water, earth, and technological parts at the group, trying his best to crush them or suffocate them.

Aden, however, wasn’t feeling anything at all from the words the pompous doctor said.

Instead, Aden was reliving the moment his life had changed,

The pain of the injection, the look on this man’s face as he stabbed a horrible disease into his veins.

And the rage and powerlessness he felt as he was confined to a bed for a majority of his life.

Aden never flexed his powers after he got them from Chimera.

After all, he never had a reason to. He had never wanted to be a Hero.

Deep down though, Aden knew the reason he didn’t want to have anything to do with this power.

Because one day, he would snap, and take it out on the man responsible for his condition.

One day, he would want to pay the man back for the horrible, terrible, and awful life he had to go through because of this man.

Despite himself, Aden didn’t want to kill the bastard.

But oh boy, did he want the man to suffer.

And now?

With how confident he seemed, Pox was surely at the happiest moment of his life.

And Aden, who had lost a good portion of his own happiness because of this man…

Finally snapped.

“RAGHHHHHHAAAAAAAH!”

Aden’s muscles flexed, breaking free of their skin prison. The muscle fibers branched out as if they were made of more flexible material, snapping and breaking over and over again only to grow larger and larger.

He grew to be twice as big as he was, and his body compensated with larger bones, jagged knuckles and vertebrae, and a few more bones in his legs to support the extra weight on his muscles.

Aden’s olive skin had pulsing crimson red lines underneath it, when the skin wasn’t ripped completely away to make room for the newest muscle groups.

After his transformation, Aden appeared to be like a red troll of a human being, with sharpened teeth and a pronounced brow to match the look.

“How… fascinating!”

Pox seemed to be in awe at Aden’s transformation, so much so that when Aden moved to strike him.

Pox couldn't react fast enough.

Aden tackled the doctor, smashing through the sanctum walls as he carried the bastared away.

The walls around them caved as Aden bulldozed his way through them, Pox’s body being ripped apart as he took the brunt of the assault.

The duo smashed through wall after wall, eventually leading them right back to the main laboratory floor.

Landing on the ground with a hop, Aden pummeled the doctor into the floor, who tried desperately to block him with his skills and stolen powers.

Nothing worked.

The jagged stone bounced off of Aden’s new muscles.

The water cannon he was using with his hydrokinetic powers actually seemed to be absorbed by Aden’s body, who greedily sucked up the liquid.

No tech could break through the skin and muscles.

No fire could scorch the living tissues.

Blow after blow, Aden crushed Dr. Pox and his feeble attempts to counter attack, shrugging off the attacks and simply beating the hell out of the prone scientist.

…

Chimera and Sarah were just about to ask the woman some questions, mainly why and how she was able to speak to them telepathically.

When a jolly red giant smashed into the room, carrying another man who looked a lot like Dr. Poxus if he was made from different elements.

Chimera, too stunned by the new events to think, almost missed it when the rest of the group arrived.

Save for the Death Children, who Chimera realized were no longer around.

Mimicera, and Dr. Hector were carrying a few canisters of a frigid nature as they too stood in awe of the fight that was breaking out.

Ms. Magica and a few Heroes, who were carrying a wounded Captain Asta.

And a bunch of scientists who were being corralled by a team of security officers.

The massive battlefield seemed to hold a breath of silence as everyone stared at the brawl taking place.

“Fool! I am *smash* the perfec- OW! Being! Your feebl- *punch* Damn you! Stop *smash* Hitting *double fisted smash* Me!”

To Chimera’s amusement, Aden continued to hit the bastard, even stuffing a piece of concrete into the scientist’s mouth to keep him from speaking as he landed another haymaker across his face. He even grabbed one of the liquid nitrogen canisters and smashed it over and over on the villain’s face.

Some of the cold liquid shot out and bathed the prone scientist, causing his body to destabilize.

“MMMMHHGPGPHHHH!”

Chimera couldn’t help it, she started to laugh at the absurdity of the entire scene.

Sarah on the other hand…

“Move over Aden, I want to hit his stupid face too!”

She joined in, smashing the bastard across the face with a few tendrils while Aden continued to wail on the doctor’s chest and legs with the canister.

She eventually got a few hits on the scientist’s teeth, knocking them out and spitting out the concrete

Chimera, feeling left out, recombined with Mimicera and joined in, landing on Aden’s back as they all took turns beating the snot out of the villain.

“S-Stop! You can’t do this to me! I am the per-”

Sarah, Chimera and Aden all clocked him in the face at once.

And Thus, Dr. Tiberius Poxus.

Who, despite achieving his goal of a perfect body.

Couldn’t stop the combined force of three pissed off young adults with super powers.

…

It wouldn’t be accurate to say that the beating lasted very long.

Being that a Hero from the League was present, it would be more accurate to say that it was a long and drawn out battle between the forces of good and evil.

In reality, Dr. Tiberius Poxus was beaten within an inch of his life until the group decided to finally end him with Chimera dissolving his body from within.

It was so abrupt, so brutal, and so final, that no one said anything after a while.

Even the newcomer, Margret, seemed to take a moment of silence for the maniacal scientist who sacrificed even his children for his perfect body.

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“Tiberius… your dream was only ever going to remain as such. Still, it was good to see you one last time.”

She walked away from the group, motioning for them to follow her after a bit.

“I need to check something, would you come with me, Aden, Sarah?”

The two nodded, still confused about who this newcomer was.

Chimera, though, had put the knowledge together after thinking about it.

The scientist responsible for the serum formula that allowed the creation of Heroes.

The alien that was an original resident of the planet Asta.

The mother of both Aden and Sarah.

Margaret Bockman.

Chimera followed after the two, leaving the clean up to Hector and the Heroes.

The long hallway that they originally came from loomed over them as the group followed Margaret to their destination.

Margaret spoke as they walked, a tinge of melancholy in her voice, “This facility is rather similar to before, when Tiberius and I worked together.”

Her hand brushed against the walls, “so much pain, death, in these walls.”

She continued, “our original goal was to help humanity survive on Asta by augmenting the human genome to better suit the environment. The joint venture between our species made to help you live here, and us…”

Chimera felt a pulse of psionic energy come from Margaret as she opened one of the doors.

“The Teras’emon were originally born from Asta, but years of selective breeding had destroyed our genetic potential. So, we died out, but not before we completed one last project.”

The next door that was opened had no visible locks, no keyholes, and no panels signalling a door was ever there.

It was a secret room in a secret lab.

Chimera felt a twinge of worry as they passed over the threshold into the new room.

“However, humans have a wide branch of potential. They’re ability to absorb selective DNA and even house foreign DNA in their bodies like viruses, was something my people lacked.”

“And so, we, Tiberius and I, created a child between the two of us, using the last gift my people had to create a better future for our race.”

The room that lit up showed a different scene, one that was making Chimera’s non-existant hair stand on end.

It was filled with test tubes in the same style Chimera found herself in when she awoke, lined with silver fixtures and red tinted glass.

And there were thousands of them.

The entire room stretched out and expanded, opening into a central chamber with a singular tube in the middle, surrounded by the various tubes that spread outward like people in an auditorium.

All of them had something within, and after a few moments of scanning, Chimera gasped at what she found.

Babies, some malformed, others perfectly normal.

There was babies in everyone of the tubes.

“Good… Tiberius, you kept your promise.”

“W-What the hell is all of this?”

Chimera asked as they finally stopped at the center of the room, where one of the tubes was housed.

Inside was a young girl, with red hair that flowed around her in the viscous tube.

“This is the culmination of our work.”

Sarah tilted her head, “our work?”

Aden shook his head, “this is all starting to sound nuts.”

Margaret turned to face all three, her smile calm and reassuring.

“My people were dying, destroying themselves for a sense of ‘genetic purity’. I believe your human histories had something similar with the nobility you once possessed.”

“The Problem, was that my whole race was intent on keeping things ‘pure’ and subsequently destroyed our chance at normal existence. Without intervention, without a drastic change, they would all die and our potential with it.”

Sarah tilted her head, “so, what happened next?”

Margaret smiled widely, “they needed to be harvested, so that the genetica material they had could be recombined and used to free our race from ‘purity’. So… we collected them.”

Margaret smiled as she gazed over the test tube babies, “so much potential existed within humanity, and when you all arrived, it was like a blessing from the heavens themselves.”

“Tiberius was instrumental in that, as he was the lead geneticist that you human’s brought over when you landed. Winning him over was simple. Purity had a way of clouding out all other thoughts, and when you wanted nothing more than to be ‘perfect’ well…”

She placed a hand on the tubes as she walked over to them.

“You can get someone to do many, many things, if you promise them their dreams.”

Chimera was starting to get a warning vibe from Margaret, a clear defining thought that told her ‘something was very wrong with this person’.

“So, you’re the reason he made the Death Children, why he was so intent on using Sarah for experiments to become a perfect being?”

Aden spoke in an accusatory way, and it made Chimera feel better to know that someone else was noticing something about this woman.

Margaret shook her head, “no, that thought is wrong.”

She spread out her hands, and a few more came out as well, showing three sets of arms on each side.

“We created those children, so that we could better understand the way our DNA sequences matched. Humanity was the answer to my problem with my own race, and we needed to stress test it, to make sure that it would function well. I was not about to put my faith in an uncertain future.”

She pulled out a remote from seemingly nowhere, pressing a button on it.

A red serum, which Chimera now noticed was on the ceiling, spread into the tubes filled with the babies.

“This serum is the concentrated DNA that I harvested from the last of my race, the last of the Teras’emon. Now that we have confirmed that the bonding process works, It is time for the revival of my people. Oh… sorry, our people.”

Chimera watched as the last of the serum dispersed into the red tinted tubes.

“Wait… what do you mean harvested? Did you take their dead bodies, or something?”

Sarah spoke with worry, like she was trying to believe one thing but confirm another.

“Oh no dear, my people are still very much alive in those tubes. I merely stripped them off their foolish thoughts. Those were, after all, what caused the Purity to exist in the first place.”

“You brainwashed them?!”

Aden spoke with fury as Sarah’s eyes opened in horror.

Chimera was preparing for battle, despite knowing what they were facing.

This… creature might be wearing a human’s face right now.

But it was clear.

Margaret Bockman, the one person who was supposed to be a victim according to the Hero’s League records, was anything but.

She was an accomplice to the horrors that each of them experienced,

“Why did Monica keep you in that tube we saw?”

Chimera asked the question that had been bugging her this entire time, ever since she and Sarah met the alien.

Monica Ferrous wouldn’t do something as simple as keep someone in a test tube unless it was to torture them, or experiment on them.

What came out of Margaret’s mouth next chilled Chimera to the bone.

“Why, because I asked her to. She’s such a dutiful daughter, or so I suppose. Her plan was rather useful, but some outlier got in the way. I swear, while humans are filled with such potential, why do they squander it on something as silly as robots? It baffles me.”

That clenched it.

Chimera had thought at first that they were saving someone from Monica.

As it turned out though, Monica was following Margaret’s plan.

“Why?! Why would you want to destroy New Terra?”

Margaret scowled, “that is no way to talk to your mother, little Chimera.”

Chimera felt a wall of psychic energy smash into her mind, and it was only through the combined forces of Mimicera, Clonemera and Chimera that kept her from being overwhelmed by the force.

“Tsk* keeping a few clones as back ups. Clever.”

Margaret pressed another button, which accompanied the hissing sounds of many different tubes releasing their contents onto the floor.

“To answer your question sweety, it is because humanity served its purpose. The genetic bonding works, and human’s are now better able to accept my peoples DNA into themselves. My new Mona will perpetuate, procreate and overtake the humans, allowing my people to rule our world once again. Still, they have those pesky powers of theres, and that would make it a bit difficult to proceed with things.”

“So, it’s time to clean house, so to speak.”

Chimera, Aden, and Sarah watched in horror as the babies from the test tubes crawled out to greet them, their bodies morphing and changing into child-like versions of Margaret.

That looked just like Monica.

“Well my little experiments, my happy little accidents, it’s time to choose a side. You can work with those humans outside to try and stop the inevitable, or you can join me, and become a God in my new world.”

Chimera tensed as the Monica clones screeched, some even laughing maniacally as they surrounded Margaret.

Aden, Sarah and Chimera looked at each other, each trying to confirm something.

Sarah nodded, which prompted Aden to as well.

“We’re doing this then, yeah?”

“Yup, no way I’m letting our mom destroy humanity.”

They both turned to Chimera as she nodded, “count me in, let’s end this once and for all.”

As the three turned to face the threat of an alien hybrid invasion, another voice added to their own.

“Hey! Don’t leave us out of this!”

Chimera felt a big grin on her face as her friend arrived, sporting a new look that caused the others to gape at her for a bit.

Even Margaret stopped to stare for a moment.

“Who…”

“Hey Meghan, nice robot look.”

Sarah smiled at her as Meghan grinned.

“Upgraded with Jade and Printy, it’s pretty cool, yeah?”

Chimera let out a laugh.

“Alright, we got our mom to stop, you ready?”

A fist bumped between the four as they turned to face off against the mastermind.

“Let’s do this!”

“Yeah!”

“Roger!”

Chimera flexed her powers as she readied herself, the group launching themselves at the alien invader.

…