Back in Genaisa, Roun and Zadavia had made their way over to the parking lot at the Itami Estate. The two youngsters thought it better to borrow one of the Itami’s vehicles for their trip to Masamune, rather than attempting the journey on foot. Normally, Roun would have little problem with such a trek given the superhuman stamina that channellers like him possessed, but his continued anxiety made such endeavours less than ideal.

For this reason, he was borrowing his mother's Betchnar, a massive sports utility hovercraft. Unlike the Archel that he was much more accustomed to, or even Rueben's vehicle of choice the Detrel, the Betchnar was a large and lurching beast. Its top speed was barely half that of the smaller, faster sports vehicles that the youngsters preferred but for what it sacrificed in speed and glamour, it gained significant safety features in return. Features that had been reserved for military vehicles some one hundred years prior, now came standard in zeta-variants on this vehicle, giving it the reputation for being one of the safest civilian transport vehicles on the market.

"The Betchnar? Really?" Zadavia sighed heavily as Roun made his way towards the front of the garage and towards the least sexy vehicle of the lot.

"Yes." Roun nodded. "I'm officially a soccer mom, but short of actual military hardware this is the safest thing my family owns… and call me paranoid but I get the impression we're gonna need the protection."

Zadavia just smiled in reply as Roun unlocked the vehicle and got into the driver seat, prompting the young woman to follow him.

"I would call you paranoid but Naomi's been hinting at something like this for at least a week now." She explained as Roun started to familiarise himself with the vehicle's controls.

"Of course she has." Roun smirked and shook his head slightly. "That would explain why you were ready to go from the time I left my room."

"I was ready before that – but yeah." Zadavia nodded. "I honestly hadn't been taking Naomi very seriously at first, but when you and Seth started going on about how powerful a precognitive she is, I figured there might be something to all of her cryptic advice." She explained.

"Smart call." Roun chuckled lightly. "My mom knows way more than she tends to let on, so it's generally a good idea to listen to what she has to say. Though it would be great if she could let me in on her schemes every now and again, especially since I always seem to be the one at the centre of it all."

Zadavia giggled lightly.

"Yeah... I'm pretty sure that's the reason you're not privy to any of this information." She explained, causing to Roun to nod slightly.

"Sadly." He affirmed. "It's just annoying being the key player and the last one to find out what game we’re actually playing."

"That's understandable I guess." Zadavia continued to giggle. "But you should probably get used to it, 'cause I don't think that's going to change any time soon."

"Tell me about it. I’ve got that exact same feeling." He scoffed lightly.

Seconds later, he was powering up the extraordinarily beefy engine of the Betchnar, which now echoed throughout the massive garage. Instead of the high-pitched whir that had become the trademark of the Archel, the Betchnar let out a throaty growl as it powered up and lifted itself off the ground in a slow and deliberate but laboured motion.

"Great, I'm driving a bus..." Roun scoffed lightly, much to Zadavia's amusement, as the vehicle levelled out just over two feet from the ground.

Slowly the bass-filled growl subsided and was replaced by a low hum, allowing Roun to activate the security gate of the garage. As the massive automated gate retracted into the roof, the youngster maneuverer the large vehicle between his parents’ other cars. Soon he was making his way out of the garage and down the long driveway, with Zadavia watching him as he began to disable most of the vehicle's automatically controlled systems.

She looked on with puzzlement as he deactivated its automatic stabilizers, which usually regulated the output of the vertical thrusters to ensure that the vehicle did not rock unnecessarily or flip itself due to driver error. Next, he disabled similar systems for lateral motion as well as turning, before Zadavia finally decided to ask the question that was now playing on her mind.

"What are you doing?" She inquired, much to Roun's surprise.

Stolen novel; please report.

"Turning off the driving aids." He replied nonchalantly. "Why?" His gaze narrowed slightly.

"Well firstly, because you need those..." She replied in the most matter-of-fact tone.

Roun just chuckled.

"No I don't." He replied in an equally deadpan tone. "Most people prefer them but few actually need them; and if you can actually drive they're mostly unnecessary." He explained, drawing a sigh and an eye roll from his passenger.

All Roun could do was laugh lightly at her response.

"Look, in a quarter mile, I can outrun these cars on foot." He explained. "And I’m not tooting my own horn here, but I naturally react faster than the computers that regulate these things. So in the unlikely event that we actually needed these things to do their jobs, we're both better off if I'm the one making the decisions and not some glorified calculator."

"If you say so." Was all Zadavia replied as they reached the end of the estate's driveway and made their way out of the large swinging gate.

All Roun could do was shake his head at her lack of confidence in his abilities, but right now he had more important things to worry about than his companion’s absence of faith. As they proceeded down the road, Roun ran the conversation that he was preparing to have with his father through his head. Scenario after scenario played out, but none seemed likely to end with his father approving of him leaving Genaisa and traveling to Merricent at Synchros’ behest. Even going as far as having Synchros herself speak with Shin seemed unlikely to work, and the youngster couldn’t help but admit that this was likely his best option. A heavy sigh escaped his lips, a fact that did not escape Zadavia’s attention.

“You should really at least try to lighten up, you know.” She stated somewhat unexpectedly, drawing Roun’s attention away from the empty side-road and towards her.

“That’s a first.” Roun smirked lightly in reply, leaving Zadavia puzzled. “People usually tell me to get serious. This may be the first time in history that someone’s told me to lighten up.”

Zadavia just chuckled lightly at his response.

“I don’t doubt that.” She replied casually. “Calm and confident suits you – I’m not a big fan of this new soccer-mom-Roun.”

Her statement just caused Roun to burst out laughing at the analogy. Unfortunately, before the young man could respond to the clever quip, a brilliant flash of light enveloped the windshield of the massive vehicle. Reflexively, Roun applied the Betchnar's powerful brakes, manually activating the forward facing thrusters to slow the heavy machine’s forward momentum. Unfortunately, this helped little as the SUV drove straight into what seemed like a powerful explosion. The force of the blast knocked the front of the heavily armoured people-carrier upwards, threatening to flip the vehicle under the force of its own weight.

Roun growled lightly as time seemed to slow for him, forcing the young man to put his preternatural reactions to good use. Immediately he began to manually toggle the thrusters mounted beneath the vehicle, killing the power to the systems at the front of the car and diverting all power to those at the back, in an attempt to stabilise the vehicle. The result was his mother’s Betchnar hopping into the air and sliding backwards under the force of the impact before another two explosions triggered behind him.

This time, Roun was able to make out the source of the blasts slightly more clearly. The second two explosions were preceded by streaks of energy falling from the sky and impacting the already damaged country road. His gaze narrowed as he also went about mitigating the effects of these blasts on the Betchnar, once again ensuring that the vehicle didn’t flip over – or worse. The second impact happened just a few metres away from his rear quarter panel on the left, forcing him to modulate the thrust coming from the vehicle’s altitude regulating thruster even more acutely. But it also forced him to attempt to correct the angular momentum imparted onto him by the blast, forcing the youngster to try to pull himself out of tail-spin. Unfortunately, the final blast made this task no easier. Before he could stabilise the ride height of the vehicle, this explosion impacted the right side of it.

Roun growled heavily as he shut off the altitude regulating thrusters completely and allowed the vehicle to be tossed into the air. He waited patiently as the vehicle was tossed over itself, before he re-engaged all of the systems and tried to safely complete this forced somersault. The result unfortunately was less than graceful, with front quarter panel on the driver side scraping the dirt road before he managed to complete the flip and level the car off. With this done, he forced to vehicle to resume its nominal hovering height before doing his best to correct the vehicle’s spiralling motion and prevent it from careening into the wooded area that lined the wide dirt road. Intermittent bursts of angular thrust slowly dampened his spinning while the lateral thrusters finally brought the vehicle to a halt, mere inches away from a massive conifer.

“What the hell was that?” Zadavia exclaimed as the vehicle finally slid to a stop and touched safely back down onto the ground.

“Stay in the car.” Was all Roun said, ignoring her inquiry as he opened the Betchnar’s driver-side door and disembarked the vehicle.

“Roun!” Zadavia yelled to her travel companion, but that's all she'd managed to get out before he slammed the door shut and locked the vehicle behind him.

Zadavia growled at his rudeness and reached for the handle of her door, but this drew a piercing glare from Roun that stopped her in her tracks.  So far she had seen him go from carefree and confident to quite the worrier but this new look was something entirely different – and admittedly, it scared her just a little.  The young woman decided it best to simply sit back and allow the young guardian host to approach the three smouldering impact craters.  Now she watched as Roun walked towards these three craters, each now burning with an eerie red flame that danced somewhat chaotically in place.  She continued to watch as his gaze narrowed and he approached these small pires, watching them carefully before – strangely enough – calling out to them.