Now, when Gary led me to that wooden hatch, and opened it up, immediately I noticed a powerful stench emanating from the hole, wherever it led.

"What is that?" I asked Gary, trying not to breathe through my nose.

He seemed relatively unfazed by the smell, as he just shrugged and headed into the hole. There were a series of metal rungs leading down to the depths of wherever it led, which enabled his slow descent into the murky darkness.

I hesitated for a moment, mainly because I had no clue why a secret underground lab would smell so bad; but after gathering up some courage, I slowly followed my new recruit, my shoes making a faint *clink* *clink* that echoed throughout the underground tunnels.

When I finally reached the last rung, I was surprised to find that there was no solid ground beneath my feet. Reluctantly, I let go, figuring that if I could survive a drop from that building a while ago, I could probably survive this potential drop too.

And upon hitting the ground, with a loud *splash* I realized that I was in some kind of liquid. Firebird stood on front of me, and Cynder was on his shoulder. The bird's fiery glow cast a dim light around us, and I could just barely make out that the water I was standing in was incredibly murky.

That's when it hit me- Gary's grandfather's lab was in the sewers.

"Dude, why does your Grandfather work down here?" I asked him.

"He's er... incredibly cheap. He doesn't want to waste money renting a building he could use as a lab, so he just made himself at home in one of these tunnels. Homeless guys from the Junk Block make their way down here, to give him the stuff he has them make, and in return he pays them with anything he has on hand that they could use. Sometimes food, clothing... sometimes even money."

"I see... also, how can you have that bird on your clothes without it burning them up?"

He seemed confused by the question. "She can choose whether her flames burn certain things. Isn't it obvious?"

"..Yeah, sure," I replied. "We should get going."

He nodded in response, and we headed down the tunnel, sloshing through the murky water. Suddenly, I noticed a shadow off to my right. I extended my hand toward the shadow, and opened the little shutter on my palm- and the whirling primordial energy from within cast the wall ahead of us in a bright purple glow.

There were a couple little rats standing on the little ledge to our right. They seemed to have been chattering at eachother, and as soon as one of them saw that I'd shown the light on them, I could swear I saw a little look of surprise spread across its face.

In an instant, they disappeared into a small grate behind them, which was leaking water into the shallow pool we were wading through. "What was that?" I asked Firebird.

"You might wanna steer clear of the rats down here... there's always been something kind of off about them. I think my grandfather uses them as test subjects for his experiments, because they usually attack me on sight once they get a good whiff of me. I've never harmed a rat in my life."

I couldn't help shuddering a little at the thought. I was grateful to be wearing armor, no way the rats could get past that.

Eventually, we reached a fork in the tunnels. There was a weird light coming from the left tunnel, spilling out onto us. We could also hear the sound of someone humming the Looney Tunes theme, so we had a hunch that it was the right tunnel.

We made our way through that tunnel, and to our right we saw a large room that had seemingly been dug out of the earth, and crudely connected to the sewers we were currently in. By crudely, I mean the wall to our left was literally smashed; with broken bricks lying all around the hole, forming a little entrance to that room.

We both entered, and I was taken aback by what we saw.

Rows and rows of tables lined the room, all of which had a different contraption on them. The walls were completely white, and had all sorts of tools and weapons put up on display, with some of them even hanging from the ceiling. There was a large forge, and an iron press along the left wall.

There was also an Old Man wearing a lab coat, tinkering with something near the back of the room.

"Grandpa?" Gary shouted out.

The Old Man looked up at us, and when he saw Gary, a look of pure joy spread across his face. He looked like a grandfather who hadn't seen his grandson in ages.

"Gary, my boy! What brings you here? ..You haven't been leaking my plans to your grandmother, have you? I told you, those blueprints were for your eyes only." His voice was gruff, but there was a kindness to it that I didn't expect to come from him. He didn't seem like such a bad guy.

"Oh, no.. don't worry Grandpa. I'm.. er, actually here to stop you." Gary replied.

"Stop me? STOP me?" His grandfather replied, his expression suddenly turning serious. When he next spoke, his tone was cold as ice.

"Choose your next words carefully, boy. Your grandmother needs to see the error of her ways. If Global Warming exists, then how would it be possible for me to freeze this town? And what's even more important, is that I need to see for myself. If it does exist, then I've got my work cut out for me, fighting against it so that I can win the argument that it doesn't exist someday. The lives of a few citizens is certainly worth this endeavor. It's all in the name of science, I thought surely you'd understand this at your age?"

"There's nothing to understand Grandpa, your argument doesn't even-"

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"SILENCE BOY!" Like a cowboy in an old western movie, the Old Man whipped out a weird futuristic looking gun and blasted his own grandson with it. It sent Gary crashing into the wall, and bound him to it via some weird energy that formed glowing rings around him.

He then aimed the gun at me. "And who are you? One of Gary's friends, I presume?"

"Y-yeah, I guess. I'm Starlight, Champion of the-"

"SILENCE!" He blasted me with the ray gun, but the beam dissipated upon hitting my armor. Evidently, energy based attacks did not work on me while I was wearing this thing.

"Yeah, that's not going to work on me." I said, acting as if I knew this was going to happen. I ran over to the Old Man, but he ran away himself. I chased him around the lab, which was actually pretty difficult. He had tables of stuff all over the place, and there were also a lot of random metal stuff all over the floor. I couldn't run in a straight line long enough to activate Superspeed,( and even if I could, it'd be impossible to maneuver around this small room. I'd probably crash into something again, like I always did) so basically I was just chasing the surprisingly fast, and physically fit old man around the small room for a couple of minutes.

Finally, I thought maybe I should forge something. The fisherman kept hooking me with a fishing rod when he was training me, and that was pretty annoying.. so I thought, maybe I could do something similar to this guy.

I didn't know how a fishing rod was made, exactly, and I doubted I could wield it with as much proficiency as the fisherman anyway.

I envisioned something simple, instead: a long, thick, metal chain. I intended to hurl it like a lasso, and ideally have it wrap around this Old Man's torso. Then I could yank him back toward me with my super strength, and we'd be done with all this before lunchtime.

I closed my eyes, imagined the chain- and sure enough, I could feel energy welling up in my left hand, A chain was indeed slowly coming out, like the tickets from a game at Chuck E Cheese's.

Now, unfortunately, several things began to go wrong from this point onward. First of all... the chain was indeed being forged by me. But, it wasn't stopping. It just kept coming out endlessly.

Second, when I got fed up and just kind of made the makeshift lasso with the chain I'd made so far, and hurled it at the Old Man, he just happened to be in front of the iron press.

And the lasso wound itself around the press- and that's when the chain stopped mass-producing itself from my hand. Instead, it started to retract, pulling me toward the press.

Before long, I was tightly bound to the press by my own chain, wrapped tightly around me. It was connected to my left hand, and no matter what I tried, I couldn't make it "unforge". It was stuck. I also had no leeway to move my arms, so I didn't have enough leverage to use my super strength to get me out of this at all.

The old man just stood there, cackling at me.

"Ha..ha..." *hycuck* "Ha... you absolute buffoon. As if you are the champion of whatever. I don't think I caught that last part. Regardless, a real champion would never get caught in such a ridiculous situation. Perhaps, I am the true champion here."

And with that, he proceeded to laugh again, before going back to work on that thing he was making. I noticed a little whiteboard behind him, with detailed schematics for what looked to be another ray gun.

Like all classic supervillains, he started rambling about what he was doing, and I had no choice but to listen.

"Now, the biggest thorn in my side throughout all of this, is my grandson. He alone has enough power to stop me... but with this, I can get rid of his powers, so nothing can ever impede my research again."

Gary watched in horror, as the Old Man pulled out his ray gun, and began tinkering with it. Then he spoke again, this time directly to Gary.

"This, is a Freeze Ray. If I reduce your body temperature low enough, you will no longer be a suitable host for our family Phoenix, and she will likely die off. I was hoping I would never have to use this design.. but if you insist on standing in my way, and going so far as to bring extra muscle-"

He looked over at me.

"Well, I use that term loosely. But I have no choice, but to take those powers away from you, boy. It's nothing personal- all in the name of science."

For the next few minutes, he worked on this invention. I struggled against my chains, but it was no use- it seemed as if it was impossible to break my own creations, even if I could get enough leverage against the iron press to do that. I even tried making a little star- but it seemed generating all those chains had taken enough out of me to where I couldn't use that costly-but-ultra-powerful move.

But the Old Man was getting frustrated. He kept repeating something, seemingly going over the details of the Freeze Ray schematics over and over again, but he was missing something.

"I need the Cooling Solvent... that goes into the Frost Duct... the generator whirs, the electricity cools... and it freezes on impact. I'll need Nitrogen, and lots of it...That's all I'm missing."

I remembered what Behemoth told me about my powers, and about how I could technically forge anything, as long as it could realistically be made, and I knew well enough how it was made. For the past hour, this old man had repeated a lot of the same steps, and the schematics were right behind him... not to mention, he seemed to be lacking things he needed, things that I would not necessarily need to have on hand...

I closed my eyes, and concentrated the Primordial Energy in my palm, and focused on the steps. Hearing the guy say them out loud helped a lot.

Slowly, the idea began to take on a more physical form in my mind. It seemed to be taking up a lot of energy, but it was just barely enough, from what I could tell.

By this time, the Old Man had noticed the energy emanating from my palm.

"W-what are you doing? Stop that right now! Stop it, I say!" He shouted, and I opened my eyes.

In my palm, a massive amount of energy was gathering- and slowly, that man's Ray Gun was starting to appear in my grasp. This one was made from a sleek purple metal, that seemed to shimmer even as I held it in my hand.

I was able to just barely aim it at the Old Man, ad fire. He attempted to block it, seemingly as a reflex as he just held up his Ray Gun. The little machine froze, and broke into little pieces. It seemed that broke the gun's hold on Firebird, since he fell to the floor.

Firebird got to his feet, and his expression was one that was seething with rage. "Grandpa... you were going to kill Cynder? Just to take my powers away? How dare you. I'm not going to forgive you for this." He looked up at me. "Thanks, Starlight. I'm happy to have joined your group."

Firebird flicked in the direction of his grandfather, and a giant burst of fire hit the Old Man square in the chest, sending him barreling into the back wall. It seemed to have hit with the force of a ballistic missile.

"W-wait! Don't kill him. He doesn't deserve that." I said aloud, but Gary waved me off.

"Everyone in my family is naturally resistant to fire.. it's part of the Phoenix' blessing. I'll explain more about it later... that was probably the equivalent of getting punched in the face, he'll be fine."

But, unfortunately, Gary's grandfather was not fine.

A giant figure suddenly darted into the room, grabbing the Old Man with the Ray Gun(Yeah, that became his villain name.) in its' jaws and barreled back out into the sewers.

It kind of looked like a massive rat... with a golden crown on its head.

Gary wasted no time running over to me, and trying to get me free of my chains. He attempted to burn through them, but this was to no avail- it seemed the chains were as impenetrable as my armor.

"Okay, okay, look. Just, imagine that you don't need the chains anymore. Focus on them, and.. kind of, release them, you know?" He said. "That's what I do when I have to unfuse with Cynder.

I did what he asked. I focused on the chains, and envisioned them sort of.. fading away.

Then I smashed into the floor- apparently, it did indeed work. I slowly got to my feet, and picked up the Freeze Ray that I'd dropped when I fell. Firebird walked up behind me.

"That was pretty cool, by the way, with the Freeze Ray. You'll have to show me how you did that later.. for now, let's go save my grandpa."