Aurin shoved the shovel underneath the pile of Spikruption dung with tremendous force. He lifted it up and tipped it into the wheelbarrow, shaking his head at that large red dinosaur of his.

“I know you need to eat lots to stay in shape, but…this is something else,” he said.

Spikruption roared proudly, very pleased to have out-dunged the rest of the Minakai.

“Are you almost finished?” asked Luna, walking over to the fence and leaning on it with a big smile on her face.

“Almost,” he said, flicking the pebbles that were Shamtile’s droppings into the wheelbarrow. “I just need to get rid of this.

Luna put her index finger to her bottom lip. “I’ve always wondered why you don’t get Shamtile to open up a pit, bury it, then close it back up again?”

“Sometimes if Kyle isn’t looking, that’s exactly what I do,” chuckled Aurin, looking around to see where Kyle was.

“Over there,” said Luna, nodding towards the river where Kyle had just finished feeding a school of Dopefish, including Luna’s. “If you’re worried that he’ll look around, I know the perfect way to distract him.”

Luna pulled out a brown summoning stone and summoned her Stopod. The sleepy-looking grey octopus scuttled around on his stubby tentacles, unsure as to why he had been called.

“What’s the plan?” Aurin asked, poking Shamtile to alert him.

“On my signal,” said Luna, trying to hold back her giggling. “Stopod, drop a boulder into the water.”

Stopod sucked in air and then spat a large boulder over the fence and across the enclosures. It fell into the river, creating a wave that soaked Kyle. He turned back to the river, not having seen the flying boulder. He leaned over, thinking there must have been a Minakai getting rowdy somewhere underwater. By the time he had given up and headed inside to dry off, the dung had mysteriously vanished.

“Let’s go!” said Luna excitedly.

“Where?” asked Aurin.

“I don’t know. Somewhere that isn’t here, the tower or the town. Something tells me that in any one of those three places you’ll have Zodiac brain again.”

“Zodiac brain?”

“Yes,” nodded Luna enthusiastically. “It’s a severe mental condition that results in one dwelling on a nefarious criminal organisation for an unhealthy amount of time when one is unable to do anything about them.”

Aurin laughed. “Then I must indeed have a case of Zodiac brain,” he said before pointing towards the mountain that loomed over the ranch. “Fancy a hike?”

Luna looked at her attire—a pale red coat over a white dress with thick boots and socks almost up to her knees, the ensemble completed by a scarf wrapped around her neck—then nodded. “I’m not remotely dressed for the occasion, and it’s a particularly chilly November this year, but let’s live a little.”

“Shall we bring the Minakai?” Aurin asked.

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“All of them?”

“Yep,” said Aurin, looking around at his team who were relaxing in the pen with him.

Luna shrugged and summoned the rest of her team of ten to join Aurin’s team of thirteen; Innogon immediately hopped onto her shoulders, almost knocking her off balance. With the wild blend of monsters in tow, the twenty-five of them set off.

“Have I missed something?” asked Kyle, opening his window while drying his hair with a towel.

“We’re going for a walk,” said Aurin.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“With enough Minakai to overtake a small country?”

“Yes.”

“Did you finish cleaning the filth?”

“Yes.”

“Alright, have fun.”

With that, the abnormally large group headed towards the forest across the fields and to the west. At the lowest part of the forest, it was filled with ash trees and alders, but as the party climbed, they were slowly replaced by intoxicating pines.

“Inno,” said Luna, loosening her scarf as she started to overheat from the tough climb, “time for you to walk.”

Innogon grumpily jumped onto the forest path and walked alongside Bakugon. Shamtile poked him in the back of the head and screeched in such a way that it sounded like laughter, but was swiftly met with a jet of water that knocked him into Gorunze, who nearly treaded on him.

“It’s like having a giant, mismatched family, isn’t it?” joked Aurin.

“Would you change a thing?” asked Luna.

“No,” said Aurin, taking her hand and smiling. “Well, except for Zodiac.”

“Naturally.”

“I think what irritates me most about them is that many of them are excellent tamers and can battle with the best. To squander that potential for their false higher ideals is…well, it’s just sad to me. Leo, scumbag as he is, is someone I enjoy fighting against and he has the talent to obtain both a cosmic Minakai and unlock the method of reviving an extinct evolution.”

“He’s brilliant in that sense, yes,” said Luna. “He’s certainly no Sagittarius or Libra who were happy enough to burn down Kyle’s ranch.”

“And happy enough to try to kill us.”

“That too, yes.”

“Think how far we’ve come since that time last year,” said Aurin, looking at the team surrounding him. “Five new Minakai and a bunch of evolutions.”

“I’ve only hatched three since then,” said Luna, looking towards Feathrus, Stopod and Bakugon, “but it’s quality over quantity as far as I’m concerned.”

“I’ve got both,” said Aurin with a sly grin.

“I mean, your team is pretty good…but we’ll see in a few months who is going all the way to the top in the next tournament.”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” asked Aurin with a hint of excitement in his voice.

“Yes,” said Luna, with a small skip, “I’ve decided to enter the Hazelton tournament again this year, and afterwards, we’ll both be going to the national championships as competitors.”

“I love that enthusiasm.”

“It’s not just me, right team?”

Luna’s Minakai roared, screeched and barked, all eager to get thrown into the depths of battle. Angree yelled and beat his chest so violently, Luna was worried he was going to crack the wood.

The group pushed on, tried from the long climb, but Aurin found it to be much easier this time than the last time he had made the climb. He put it down to training with Tobias and snowy mountains being a part of everyday life during his time in Briarwood—Luna was finding it more of a struggle.

“Here we are,” said Aurin, climbing over the last major ridge before the mountain became untraversable.

“Al…right,” panted Luna, dragging her burning legs up the slope. “We…did it!”

“Look at that view,” said Aurin, walking over to a large, flat rock and sitting down.

“Mag…nificent,” said Luna, sitting down beside him.

“Look at the tower,” said Aurin, pointing to the wondrous structure erupting out from the forest.

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“About what?”

“About everything. It’s a place of endless possibilities. To think that all you need is a single key and you go into a world of dreams, wandering somewhere between dimensions. If it wasn’t for Harmony Tower, we would never have even met.”

Aurin smiled as he stared into the distance. “I would like to think that we would have still met somewhere, somehow. It feels like we were meant to, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe we would have,” said Luna, turning to look at him. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, does it? Things played out the way they did and we did meet.”

“It’s still something to think about. My life has changed beyond measure since I arrived here in Hazelton.”

“For the better?”

“Absolutely for the better.”

“My life is better for you being here.”

Aurin and Luna sat in silence as the sun started to set. The Minakai had taken to playing or sparring with each other. Glacibot and Frocean were seeing who could gather the most snow. Desparee and Angree were trying to see if the latter could punch through a nature beam. Shamtile and Bakugon were hurling rocks at Innogon as he blasted them away with water jets. It was truly a pleasant day and nice to get away from the looming threat of Zodiac, but Aurin knew he had to address it.

“We can’t keep running from them or simply delaying them constantly,” he said.

Luna knew who he meant. “You’re right.”

“We need to go on the offensive, and sooner rather than later.”

“Right again.”

“I know my team are strong, so are yours, but that strength may not be enough. Fighting cosmic Minakai is no easy feat.”

“But you have strategies in mind now, don’t you?”

“Strategies only go so far, but yes. I have something else in mind that we can try.”

“What is it?” asked Luna, her curiosity piqued.

“We do exactly what we did a year and a half ago during the first Hazelton tournament,” said Aurin. “We find a member of the Zodiac Squad and tail them until we find their base. If we can find the headquarters, we can find their cosmic summoning stones. They won’t be our Minakai, so we won’t be able to control them effectively, but removing them from the Zodiac means that they can’t execute their plan.”

“It’s a good idea in theory, but I would bet anything that they’ve got ways of avoiding being followed after what we did to them last time.”

“I have no doubt you’re right about that,” said Aurin, nodding slowly, “but I also believe that they have a weak link. Someone in their ranks who is too arrogant for his own good, someone that we can dupe much more easily than the rest of them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we find them through Damian.”