Alisha (EARTH NINETY-SEVEN - LOCATION: SAN MARCOS, TEXAS):

I and Aadil comforted the pair as they slowly collected themselves, while Michael watched with genuine concern.

"Why us, why this planet?" Chris whimpered in a tiny voice.

"Michael knows the answer to that," Aadil said as he turned to face me along with the other three, the two boys' eyes pleading for the truth.

Michael simply replied "I'm sorry, I can't tell you," and turned away, unable to meet our eyes.

"Michael," I pleaded.

"Frenzil is working for the Darkstar Empire," Michael relented, giving in to their pleas, "She's here for--"

"For?"

"A shard,"

"A shard?"

"She's here for a shard of the gem containing the Winds Of Destiny,"

A brief moment of silence passed between the five of us, as I and Aadil slowly realized what he was saying.

"Wait wait wait, so she's working for the Darkstar Empire AND the Winds Of Destiny are real?" Aadil asked, standing up suddenly.

"What are the Darkstar Empire and the Winds Of Destiny?" Chris asked in a shaky voice.

"The Winds Of Destiny is a gemstone that's theorized to hold the very fabric of reality, whoever has it is basically unstoppable." Aadil began to answer, "The Darkstar Empire takes a bit longer to explain, but the basic gist is that it was an ancient dictatorship ruled by Eero, who went by the name 'The Emperor' when he committed mass genocide campaigns. The Realm Knights killed Eero and the empire was destroyed around three billion years ago,"

"So the Darkstorm Empire's like the opposite of the United Realm Empire?"

"Well no, 'cause you can still find some similarities between the two,"

"Oh please, what similarities could they possibly have?" Michael asked in a mocking tone.

"Slavery?" Aadil responded with a chuckle as if he thought Michael was joking.

"There's no slavery in the URE, infinite materials,"

"And how exactly are those materials harvested?"

"By machines?"

"Well, most machines are sentient, so it's still basically slavery,"

"It's all they know since they were programmed to work,"

"Still slavery,"

"What does this even have anything to do with what we were talking about?" I interjected, trying to stop them before they went off on another tangent.

"Oh right, so why is she working for them?" Aadil asked Michael, getting back on topic.

"That's what we were sent here to investigate," Michael said, "And I may have figured that out if I hadn't been kidnapped."

"Knowing you, you would've charged Frenzil and died,"

"You would've done the same,"

"You're probably right, but that doesn't change the fact we saved your life."

"Why did you 'save' me anyway?"

"Michael, I've known you since we were toddlers, did you think I'd let you kill yourself?" I responded as I walked over to the metal beam he was tied to and knelt."

"We haven't seen each other in two years," He replied with a confused expression, "You know I would've arrested you, right?"

"Michael, you have a distress beacon embedded in your palm, you could've had us arrested any time in the past fifteen minutes." I called his bluff, "You wouldn't have arrested us,"

"Maybe you're right, but that doesn't change the fact you guys are criminals. If I don't bring you in, a Shadow Agent, hell, maybe even a Phoenix Assassin will kill you." Michael said, pointing out something that the three of us knew to be true.

"So we do have a bounty on our heads," Aadil muttered.

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"For what it's worth, I don't think you two killed Francine. It did seem like you were just at the wrong place at the wrong time, but you both, along with Aarush, killed a lot of people," Michael said in a lousy attempt to console us.

"If you thought we were innocent, then why would you open fire on us?'

"We didn't, Lucan tried to get them to stop before they killed you. We don't know who gave the command, as mine, Samron, and Lucan's comms malfunctioned. Most of the agents there said they heard Xelo give the order."

"Xelo? But why would he do that?"

"He and Francine were close, he might've just seen red,"

"Red enough to kill two Realm Knights?"

"To be fair, the Revenants are also Realm Knights,"

"One: Those three are like, two billion years old, two: They're adults mentally, and three: They can change how they look whenever they want." I pointed out.

"You get my point," Michael said with no point in sight.

"You don't have a poi-" Aadil said before being cut off as the warehouse, no, the entire planet shook, "GODDAMN!"

The four of us grabbed onto the shelves to steady ourselves, while Michael was completely fine since he was still tied to the beam. Eventually, the rumbling stopped, but we all knew we couldn't stay.

"We can't stay here," Michael said what we were all thinking aloud.

"Where do you suggest we go then?"

"You said Provisonius and Samron are here right?" I asked, an idea forming in my head.

"Yeah, why?" Michael asked, but I could see in his eyes that he was slowly putting half and half together, "Woah woah woah, bad idea, you two have a kill on sight warrant,"

"That'll make things harder, but would those two really kill us? We're like they're kids," I said, recalling how close we all were.

"Maybe they wouldn't, but there's a lot of us at the camp. How do you plan on getting past them all?"

"I'm an ex-Phoenix Assassin, and you and Aadil are Shadow Agents,"

"And what about Chris and Max? You can't just leave them here, they have to be important if Frenzil herself went after them."

"We'll take them with us," I said as I turned around to the pair, "You two do everything I say and we'll be fine,"

The two brothers nodded their heads, still quivering after everything that had happened.

"Michael, we need your word you won't arrest us," Aadil said as he turned to Michael.

"I can't say I won't, but for now I'll work with y'all,"

"Good enough for me," Aadil said as he took out his cryo-hilt, igniting the sword and cutting through Michael's bonds.

"Cryo-swords? What happened to your metal ones?" Michael asked as he clasped Aadil's hand and was hoisted up.

"I actually have no idea,"

"Aadil shattered them when we went after Smorthian," I said as I helped Chris and Max up.

"We killed Smorthian? As in that one politician dude who kept air-striking the Southern Quadrant?"

"Yeah, and it turns out his skin was made out of hardened Chrozium,"

"Wait then how'd we kill him?"

"Aadil turned his limbs into chains and ripped him apart."

"Wait what?" Chris asked as he wobbled to the nearby shelf.

"Aadil's ability was that he could turn anything into chains," Michael explained.

"What does that even mean?" Aadil asked, making me remember that he forgot he had powers, "How much did I forget? And can we please have a different name for the original Aadil so we stop getting confused?" He asked, rubbing his nasal bridge in annoyance.

"He sometimes went by Zohan," Michael suggested.

"Alright, so Zohan's ability was that he could manipulate anything, organic or not organic, and turn them into chains. Uso thought it had something to do with past trauma, but it was never clear if you could only ever make chains," I began to clarify, "I and Francine thought that your abilities were altering your mental stability, so we had to strip you of them."

"So you're telling me, I had superpowers and they were making me insane?" Aadil asked me to clarify.

"We're not entirely sure, but yeah, that's pretty much it."

"And there's no solid evidence that's true?"

"No, but it had a huge impact on how Zohan thought, made him think he was invincible. He almost killed both me and Francine when we were wiping his memories."

The ground rumbled again, making it clear we were still on a timer.

"Look, none of this is helpful, if we wanna make it to Houston before nightfall, we have to go now," Michael said as he made his way to the door, "Are those two coming?"

We turned to Max and Chris, and they shuffled towards us nervously. Stepping outside, we saw the beat-up truck Aadil had been driving, but we could also see a huge plume of smoke in the air, most likely from the drill Aadil had mentioned before. We piled into the truck, I and Aadil sitting in the driver and passenger seat while Michael, Max, and Chris crammed into the back three seats.

The engine revved to life, and we descended the hill, the warehouse Aadil and I had been staying fading into the distance. The sky was a dark grey color, despite it only being the afternoon, three hours from sunset. The drive was long and boring, and almost every town we encountered was in ruins, with the lucky few that were still intact being empty, the citizens having likely evacuated. Around an hour in, we encountered a burning city, and at one point a Darkblade had jumped onto the truck. Michael hopped out the window and burnt it to a crisp, the corpse still in the flatbed as we finally approached Houston, or whatever was left of it.

The entire city was in ruins, with the only block still standing at the center of the city surrounded by large walls. Strangely enough, there were no Darkblades in sight.

"I don't remember those walls," Chris said, peering over my seat.

"Scanatron walls, put four boxes at certain spots, and press a button on the control cube. The boxes shoot out wires from two sides and connect with each other. After that they start growing a metal wall that can withstand a bomb," Aadil explained as we drew closer.

"We'd better get ready, I don't think they'll like seeing the 'suspected' murderers asking for help," I said as I activated my gauntlets, not wanting to set off an outburst and fry everyone alive.

We stopped in front of the large laser gates, and once Michael got out and flashed his badge, the lasers turned off and the metallic doors opened, beckoning us to enter. We drove through the streets as Michael directed us towards the central skyscraper, which had been transformed into something that looked like it would have belonged in Realm City itself.

Compared to the rest of the city, the skyscraper was a tall, metallic white and black building, with added flying buttresses to keep the building steady in the case of an earthquake. Large pipes containing purified water flowed throughout the tower and the surrounding block, both providing emergency power to the seemingly temporary base and acting like a cooling system for the block.

I looked around and noticed we seemed to have an entourage, as though we were being escorted. Finally, we arrived at the bottom of the skyscraper, and at the front were Samron and Provisonius, Eclipse Blasters aimed right at us, along with every single soldier and every single turret in the vicinity.