Okay, obviously I wasn't just going to take the word of a couple of complete strangers I didn't know anything about when they showed up and told me Izzy, along with Amber, Pack, Eits, Broadway, Wobble, Syndicate, and Grandstand were all about to be killed by Scion candidates. Or that Whamline was one of them. Hell, for all I knew, these two were a couple of the candidates and I was their target. Still, the question remained of how they would know about this place and be able to come here. Not that it was out of the question for them to have found it some way without one of the others willingly giving it to us. Which was a thought that made me shudder, anger and panic rising in me.

The first thing I did was hit both of them, with a bit of red paint, along with the wall behind them. The two were yanked back against that wall and held there. I would’ve apologized, but I still didn’t know if I could trust them. And I was too busy anyway, yanking the phone from my pocket as I called Izzy. Fuck, fuck! I felt a rush of completely overwhelming panic and terror as she failed to answer. After that I tried Amber, then Pack. No, no, no, no! Spinning on my heel, I faced the other two even as the paint wore off and they dropped back to the ground. “Who are you?!” I found myself blurting. “What the hell is going on? Where are they?!” I told myself to breathe, to let them answer, but the thought of all those people I cared about being taken by people who were trying to become Scions was enough to shatter every semblance of self-control I had. It was all I could do to hold myself together as much as I was.

The obvious female figure spoke up. “L-look, we know you're freaking out right now. We are too. But we're telling you the truth, and there’s not a lot of time. They need your help. We need your help. It's exactly like we said. Whamline is one of the candidates. We were watching him and the rest of the Minority, trying to catch him in a way that could prove what he was for the courts or whatever, but the rest of the candidates ambushed us from all sides. It was a trap. I don't know how they knew that we knew about Whamline, but they did.”

The boy nodded his head rapidly. “We got away, and this was the only place we could think to come. Before all this went down, Pack told us we should come here and find you if the shit hit the fan. I swear, she gave us the name of this place. B-but, but Eits, he told us you helped him with a baseball. Does that help? Please, please, we have to help them, we need you to trust us. Whamline’s a psycho piece of shit and all his fellow ‘candidates’ are just as bad.”

“And now they’re gonna make a big production about killing all of them. They all want to join the Scions at the same time.” the girl hurriedly added. “So that’s their big move, not the whole ‘killing a certain number of normal civilians.’ That’s too--too--you know, mundane for Pencil right now!” Her voice rose to a frantic shout, the girl clearly as panicked as I was feeling.

“So he’ll have them kill a bunch of Touched instead,” I murmured, the words tasting like ash in my mouth. My stomach was rolling, tears trying to flood my eyes before I managed to blink them back forcefully. “Star-Touched and Fells. That makes a perfect statement for him, it shows his people are outside the normal system. It’s all part of his fucking games. It’s all--”

Fuck, it didn’t matter! None of his motivations mattered. The only thing that mattered was saving the others. “Where are they? You said you escaped, so where are they right now?”

“We can take you there,” the boy agreed hurriedly, head bobbing. “But you need help, we all need help. There’s a bunch of them, and only three of us. We have powers but not--not like this. We can’t… can’t do this without your team.” He sounded like he was barely keeping himself from completely losing it, his voice cracking from stress and terror about what could happen. I definitely knew the feeling. And hearing the emotion in his voice as he obviously realized how in over their heads they were did more than anything else to convince me that they were telling the truth. I really didn't think they were that good of liars even if I had just met them.

Sending an SOS 911 message to all the others with just a few words about what was happening, I focused on those two once more. “Show me where we're going. The others will meet us there, but if they're in trouble, we can't wait.” I was doing my level best to keep my voice as calm as possible. These two were already losing it, I couldn't make the situation even worse by joining in. No matter how much terror I felt right then. If anything happened to Izzy, or to any of the others, I would-- No. No one was going to die. I couldn't think about that. I had to focus.

Speaking quickly and still frantically, the two introduced themselves as Facs and Yeet, for the boy and the girl respectively. Apparently they had been working with Carousel and Syndicate to try to identify something about some people who had been trying to abduct them, and they ended up tripping over Grandstand and her group looking into who had arranged to have that reporter lady killed. Which, if they were right about what they came up with, was actually Whamline. That revelation was enough to send me reeling on its own. And it made me angry. A cold fury and rage kept boiling up in my stomach when I thought about the fact that both Izzy and Amber had been around that piece of shit for so long. Any person who would start trying to join the Scions like that, knowing what they were, deserve to rot on Breakwater.

And now he and his fellow candidates had those two and all the others. They had Eits, they had-- fuck!

At least it turned out that Yeet had her own way to get around. She produced some glowing egg things and then when she hit someone with them, it transformed them into energy and sent them flying off in her chosen direction. She couldn't produce them constantly, at least not fast enough to keep all three of us moving like that, but between my power and hers, we crossed a lot of distance very quickly. Plus, Facs’ own power allowed him to create glowing energy ‘facsimiles’ of things he could touch, including air. He used that to make bridges and such to extend our travel capabilities even more.

If I hadn't been so panicked and angry, I might've actually enjoyed it. But I didn't care about that. I hardly noticed the actual trip, as it was all just a blurry haze once we got the idea of how to move together. I barely knew who these two were, but they were my only chance of finding my sister and the others.

On the way, I did a couple other things, I called that same number for the Ministry from before and told them what was going on. I didn't even care about holding back information, at least when it came to this. As soon as the man on the other end answered, I told him every person who had been kidnapped and that Whamline was one of the people behind it. I told him that the Minority bastard was one of the candidates for the Scions, and that they should spread the word to listen when I sent the call to official sources for help. I didn't know how hard it would be to convince the rest of the Star-Touched that I wasn't full of shit, but I figured having the Ministry leaning on them could only help. That group might as well be good for something right now.

As soon as I was sure the guy I was talking to understood what I was saying and that this wasn't a prank, I disconnected and called Ten Towers instead. These people at least I was sure would listen. Especially since I was calling Caishen. She would believe me. Hell, maybe I should’ve just called her first to begin with. But the idea of calling the Ministry was right at the top of my head since we had just gone through that whole thing with taking Rubi to the--

It didn’t fucking matter, focus!

I was running across another rooftop, screaming inside my head to hurry up while the other two trailed right behind me. I was following their lead about where to go, while listening to the phone ring. Finally, the woman in question answered, starting to tell me to hang on a moment. But I shouted right over her, telling her what was going on, to get every single person she could together if she wanted to save those people and stop the Scion candidate, including Whamline the traitor, from killing basically the rest of the Minority and several others.

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Even as I said that, I could hear fighting going on in the background. They were busy. Shit, shit! They were busy, of course they were. With everything that was going on already in this city, combined with the ticking clock that Pencil had established, why wouldn't they be? Even as I silently screamed curses, Caishen said they would be there the moment they could get away from what they were doing, and to send her the location as soon as I had it. There was the slightest pause before she told me to be careful. I think she probably would've said a few more things if she understood that I wasn't with the rest of my team. But now wasn't the time to get into it. Let her think I had everyone with me. They’d be there soon anyway… I hoped.

She also promised to call every other group to find someone that could meet us there, and said she would spread the word about the location once I sent it to her. Right, so now I had her and the Ministry pushing people to get their asses in gear. And, at that moment, I had a call from Paige, just as my two new companions and I used a splatter of blue paint to launch ourselves halfway across the long gap between two buildings. Before I could answer, Yeet hit all three of us with a few of her eggs, sending us clear to the far side of that roof. As we came out of it and reformed into our physical forms, I hit the edge of that roof with another shot of blue, propelling us to the third building we’d been on in about the same number of seconds.

Only then, once we landed, did I answer the call from Paige. “Tell me you’re on the way!” I really didn't want to hear about any other problems right then. I couldn't handle it. If the others had gotten hung up with something else--

“I’m tracking your phone,” came her quick response. “We’ll catch up with you as soon as we can. Paintball, don't do anything crazy, don't--”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” I interrupted before disconnecting. It was bad, it was wrong, I knew that. But I was panicking. If anything happened to those guys, I didn’t… I didn’t know how I would get through it. Izzy. I had to save Izzy. No matter what happened, and no matter what I had to do, I was going to get her, and everyone else, out of there.

Finally, I sent a message to Cavalcade, telling her we needed help, why, and that I would pay her whatever fee she needed as long as she showed up to help.

I knew how dangerous this was. Jennica by herself was a major threat, and Whamline had plenty of experience as a member of the Minority. One who had managed to go unnoticed for this long. Plus there were five others with their own powers, apparently. I asked these two for any details, but they said they didn't see that much. There was just a lot of light and sound, and several of the others were caught with some sort of special stay-down cuffs that had been launched at them somehow. Grandstand was knocked unconscious by something before they even knew there was a problem.

These two would’ve gotten everyone out of there if they could, but Yeet only had one egg for each hand at that point, and it took time for her to ‘cook’ more. Time they didn’t have. So she had catapulted herself and the boy, whom I was pretty sure was her brother given the way they talked, moments before they would've been taken. It all happened so quickly and suddenly that they didn't have a chance to really see everyone who was attacking.

They did, however, know where the Scion wannabes had taken the others. After escaping, they hid and watched as the rest were loaded into a moving truck. Then they’d followed the truck as it drove to another building. That was when they heard Whamline talking to someone about how Pencil wanted them to make a big show out of killing every single one of them to show how serious he was about getting the cure to save his sister. But he didn’t want it to just happen immediately. They had to do something special with it. They were talking about only killing half of them and using the other half for leverage, waiting until the end of the first deadline, or even just to the end of the day. Apparently there was a lot of debate between the seven candidates about how they should go about it.

Hearing that, Yeet and Facs had been about to talk themselves into trying to rescue the others when they remembered what Pack and Eits had said about my group being able to help. Unfortunately, we weren’t at the pawn shop when they showed up. So they had been in the middle of collecting themselves to go back and try to rescue the others by themselves when I had arrived.

It was very obvious the two of them felt horrible about running away, and about not having more details they could share. But I reminded them that if they hadn't escaped, we wouldn't even know this much. Hell, the only reason we knew where these fuckers had taken their hostages at all was that they were brave enough to follow the truck even after they saw how easily the seven Scion candidates captured the others. They saw all that, they knew how dangerous it was, and they still followed them. Plus they were smart enough to go and get help.

I had a lot more questions about the two of them, including where they had come from considering I certainly had never heard of anyone with their powers. But now wasn't the time. There wasn't time for anything else except dealing with this and getting the others away from those psychopaths.

Fortunately, it was around that time when we finally arrived at the edge of the building across the street from where my two companions said the others were being held. All three of us dropped down to our stomachs just to be on the safe side and very carefully peaked over the edge. The building we were on was a covered parking garage, while the place the wannabe Scions were holed up in turned out to be a storage facility. It was the main building with its own units, as well as a whole lot full of several more structures behind it. According to these two, there were no workers at the facility. At least no one who was still alive. The entrance was covered by an electronic gate, and we could see a camera watching over it. In fact, there were cameras all around the facility, including on the roof. The people who owned that place clearly took security very seriously. And there was no doubt that Whamline and the others were using those cameras to see if anyone approached.

Fuck, seriously, Whamline was a traitor? Worse, he wanted to be one of Pencil’s fucking people? Sure, I hadn't interacted with him a lot, but he had seemed okay when I had. Hell, he had basically checked me out to warn me about not doing anything to hurt his teammates. Now I bet he had gotten a pretty good laugh about that.

I was going to punch that fucker so hard…

First, however, I sent the pin of our location to Caishen, then to the number I had for the Ministry, and finally to Cavalcade. Then I checked on the rest of my team. But they were still too far out. Paige swore they were coming as fast as they could. Everyone was going to do everything possible to get here in time. We just had to watch the place, take the time to figure out everything we could about everyone who was in there and what they could do, where the hostages were, all of that. We had to make sure we were ready once the cavalry arrived.

Which, of course, was the exact moment when we all saw a car arrive at the gate. Someone in a purple ski mask and lime green raincoat came jogging out of the nearby office, just as a familiar figure stepped out. He was a shorter guy, standing only five-foot seven, with a rather wiry build. The only reason he stood out was because of his ‘costume,’ such as it was. It consisted of a dark green sweatshirt with the hood up over his head, a black cloth mask over the bottom half of his face, and gray jeans that were covered in blood stains.

It was Box, the actual Scion whose power allowed him to create orbs that he could throw, which broke apart into blasts of earth, water, air, or fire whenever they hit something. He walked around to the trunk of the car, took out a shotgun, before nodding to the figure in the green raincoat. His voice was faint, but I could barely make it out. “Let’s show these pigs how serious we are. Boss wants two of those fuckers dead. He picked the little one and the one with the lizards. One from each side. We’ll stream it for shits and giggles.”

No. Oh no. We didn’t have time to wait for the others to arrive, to scout the place out, to find out… anything. Box was already going in there, the shotgun in his hands.

If we didn’t do something right now, Izzy and Pack were about to die.