The group reunited at the entrance to the ultrapulse, and returned to Radecross together.

They decided to hole up in Zeo’s hotel room, and Kiria and Reina went out to get everyone food from Ulty’s, the most popular fast food chain in the world.

As the girls started passing out the food, Tyger’s brow furrowed. Normally, that would note a change in expression, but for him, it was more like they were returning to their default state of being. “You guys seriously got Ulty’s? Yer in the most interconnected city in the world and yer gettin’ food you can get anywhere.”

“Aw, shush!” Reina said, poking his cheek with a fry. “You know you love Ulty’s!”

When Kiria handed the bag over to Annabelle, the elven girl’s ears perked up. “Oh, wow! So this is Ulty’s?”

Zeo glanced over at her with a look of absolute disbelief. “You’ve never had Ulty’s?!”

She shook her head.

“The Quinah family is fully-staffed with some of the most elite chefs in the country,” Kiria explained. “There’s no need for them to eat fast food like this.”

Off to the side, Cain snorted. He was the only one sitting in a chair, while the others were either on the floor or, in Kiria’s case, seated on the edge of the bed. “This hardly qualifies as food.”

“Just shut up and eat yer veggie burger,” Tyger growled before taking a sip of his soda.

Giggling, Reina said, “Yeah, Cain! Eat your veggie burger!” The Beasterizer duo then shared a quick fist bump.

Annabelle retrieved her food from the bag: a chicken wrap and a side of waffle fries. As she did, a smile made its way to her face. “Oh, look at the packaging!”

The paper wrapped around the food was a pleasant shade of purple, with a fancy white trim pattern spread across the surface. At the center was, of course, the Ulty’s logo, which included Ulty, the cartoon robot rabbit, himself.

Reina reached across Tyger to where Annabelle was, tapping her finger on the logo. “Look at his big ears!”

“I know! They’re so cute!”

“Man, we should’ve taken you to Ulty’s,” Zeo said. “The restaurants are always huge, and they’ve got tons of arcade machines.”

“Oh, wow, really?”

He nodded. “Yup. They’ve got lots of other stuff going on too. Concerts, plays, movies, pet parades.”

The elven girl’s face lit up like the sun. “Oh my goodness! I definitely wanna go!”

“You’ll have to go to a different location,” Kiria said. “The one here’s locked out from all the trains, and they only do curbside delivery.”

Reina stuffed a whole cheeseburger into her mouth. At the same time, she began to unwrap her second one. “Mmhm!” She gulped the first burger down. “The line was really, really long, too!”

Annabelle’s ears dropped in disappointment. But when Zeo tapped her elbow with his own and promised to take her to another location, she perked right back up.

“So what happened with you guys in the pulse?” asked Kiria, her eyes once again taking in the visible injuries on Zeo and Tyger. “You ran into a kaiju?”

Zeo let out a chuckle. “Yeah….it was pretty rough, but we managed to pull through.” He looked over to Annabelle and gave her a wink. A burn exploded inside her heart, similar to what Reina was about to feel once she finished her four cheeseburgers.

“No way!” Reina exclaimed. “You guys fought a kaiju?!”

All three of them nodded in affirmation.

“No fair! I wanna fight one! That’s what I’m training for!”

Cain’s eyebrow curved upward. “You’re training to become a Kaiju Hunter?”

The chameleon girl’s head went full bobble-head mode. “You bet your sweet bippy I am! I’m gonna be the best Kaiju Hunter ever!”

Kiria smiled at the display. Reina’s energy was undeniably infectious. “Is that where your equipment comes from?”

“Yuh huh!”

Now it was Tyger’s turn to inquire, once he finished rubbing a sore spot on his neck. “You mean yer bow?”

“It’s not just a bow! It’s a bow-bracer! Oh, and I have grapple-greaves too!”

Bringing his hand to his chin, Cain muttered out, “Grapple-greaves….? Bow-bracer….?” His mind raced to add the information to its database, formulating strategies for and against the devices, even though he didn’t actually know how they worked.

“I’ll show you guys when we go in the pulse again later!” Reina said, absolutely reveling in the attention she was getting.

Kiria then focused her gaze on the other Beasterizer. “Are you okay, Tyger?”

“Yeah I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You were already hurt from fighting the mech….did fighting the kaiju re-open any of your wounds?”

He shrugged, glancing down at his body. “Nah, I’m good. Just a little sore.”

He then let out a little hiss as Reina poked at one of the cuts on his shoulder. With a giggle, Reina said, “Awwww! You need Kiria to kiss your boo-boos better?”

“Shut up!”

Annabelle gently dabbed at the edges of her mouth to wipe away any crumbs. While she could definitely tell the food wasn’t in the same echelon as what her family’s chefs could conjure up back home, it had still been a pretty enjoyable sandwich and fries. “Luckily for the both of us, Zeo was there to save the day!”

“Oh?” said Kiria.

Zeo’s shoulders shifted upward in embarrassment as Annabelle relayed how dashing, cool, and heroic he had been when fighting the kaiju. “Aw, c’mon Annabelle….”

“But you were so amazing, Zeo!” Now it was his face that was going red. “You’re a hero!”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Off to the side, Tyger grumpily tore into a nugget.

Having finished his food, Cain disposed of his trash before folding his arms across his chest. “You used a Lightning Install?”

“Yeah. It’s one of my favorites.”

Kiria turned to Cain. “What’s the significance?” While Cain had a reputation for his lectures on things that were ultimately pointless, Kiria still valued his knowledge and judgement quite highly, and to her, this sounded like something worthwhile.

“It’s a rare one,” he explained. “A very rare one.”

“Huh….Really?”

Annabelle clapped her hands together in utter delight. “Wow, Zeo! You have a rare ability?!”

Cain’s eyes narrowed, honing in on Zeo. “How did you get it?”

The blond boy had to consider that for a moment. “Uh….naturally? I got it about the same time as I got my Fire one.”

That answer didn’t seem to satisfy Cain. In fact, he seemed to be even more agitated by it. Perhaps it was the lack of conviction in Zeo’s words. Perhaps it was the withholding of potentially useful information. Perhaps it was the veggie burger. “The Fire Install is child’s play; everyone can learn it. The same cannot be said for the Lightning Install.”

On the other side of the group circle, Reina dug through her bag of food, but came to the sad realization that she had already finished her final cheeseburger. That is, until Tyger offered her one of his own, and she beamed at him.

“Are you an Energizer?” Cain asked.

Zeo nodded. “Yeah.”

“And what’s your energy signature?”

“Lightning. Or, technically electricity, but-”

Cain leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smile. “That explains it.”

Having gotten completely lost in the conversation, Annabelle’s eyes danced from face to face, looking for someone to help clue her in.

It was Kiria who assisted her. “There are different ‘types’ of ultranians, and they each have unique biological quirks to them. Zeo is an ‘Energizer’, which means his body naturally produces a specific type of energy, which is called an ‘energy signature’.”

The elf girl whipped her head around to Zeo, a look of genuine concern on her soft face. “Y-you have electricity inside of you….? D-does it hurt? Are you okay?”

That got a few laughs around the circle, namely from Zeo. “I’m alright, Annabelle, don’t worry! It doesn’t hurt at all!”

Not wanting to be upstaged in the explanation department, Cain cut in, “Oftentimes, Energizers develop an Install that originates from their energy signature. That is why Zeo has access to the highly-rare Lightning Install; he was biologically inclined towards developing it.”

Tyger seemed to be the only one who caught on to the specific wording Cain had used. “Whatever makes yer ego feel better, man.”

“Quiet. Why don’t you go back in the pulse and get beaten up for a third time?”

“Wh-?! Hey, I kicked ass in those fights!”

“It looks to me like it was the other way around.”

Sighing, Kiria said, “Settle down, boys.”

The room fell quiet for the next few moments as the group finished off the rest of their food.

Clearing her throat, Annabelle asked, “So….what happened to you guys in the pulse?”

“My cookies got crushed!”

Kiria flicked Reina on the head before answering more seriously. “Not much. We only came across two monsters on the way out, and we didn’t have any trouble with them.” Tyger was already flashing the middle finger in Cain’s direction, sensing the incoming smug smile.

“We did come across a mining operation,” she continued. “And from what we could tell, it didn’t appear to have been done by the city.”

“What was it then?” asked Zeo. “Other pulse explorers digging up buried treasure or something?”

Reina suddenly smacked her own forehead with her palm. “Oh, shoot, that’s what I forgot! I wanted to find treasure!”

Tyger raised an eyebrow. “Thought you wanted to hunt kaiju.”

“Yeah, but I also wanna get filthy rich!”

“They were mining forcestones,” Cain stated. “The explosive forcestones I showed you two when we first arrived.”

A lightbulb clicked in Annabelle’s head. “Oh! Those pretty orange crystals!”

Nodding, Kiria retook control of the conversation. “Yes. Someone other than the city is mining the explosive forcestones from the pulse.”

Annabelle frowned. “But who?”

“Probably those strange miners we found the other day,” said Kiria. “They were definitely some sort of organized group, and they had access to the proper equipment to do it.”

A growl erupted from Tyger’s throat. It was so sudden, it caught Annabelle off guard, and she jumped backward, leaning into Zeo in surprise. “Those scumbags?! Weren’t they talkin’ about doin’ some villain shit?!”

“Indeed they were.”

“Wait….a group of guys with explosives….” Zeo muttered to himself.

Reina burped. “Dang….I wish we’d ordered dessert, too.”

Zeo snapped his fingers. “Wait! Mistral!”

The other five turned to him in sync before Reina asked, “Huh? Mistral? Wuzzat?”

“On my way to the pulse, I ran into these guys on the train,” Zeo began to explain. “They were trying to plant explosives on it, and I’m pretty sure the logo they had on them said ‘Mistral’.”

Kiria and Cain made eye contact, both having come to the same realization.

“Wait, hold up,” Tyger said. “There were scumbags tryna blow up a civilian train?! Who the-?!”

“You stopped a terrorist group, Zeo?!” Annabelle squealed, cutting Tyger off mid-sentence. “You really are a hero!”

“Oi!”

Kiria got to her feet, and started making her way over to the door.

“Where you going, Kiria?” asked Reina.

But rather than leave, she instead stopped beside her bag on the front table, and dug through it, procuring her phone from within. “Nowhere. I’m calling the authorities.”

To everyone’s surprise, Zeo suddenly shot up to his feet. “Wait! Hang on a sec!”

“What is it?” she asked.

There was a few moments’ pause before he could explain himself. “W….why don’t we stop them ourselves?”

“What?”

“Th-the terrorists, I mean. Mistral. Let’s take them down ourselves.”

His explanation only further stunned the group into silence, until Kiria’s brow knitted. “Zeo, these are terrorists. They may have the ability to threaten innocent civilians.”

“I know, but….” Zeo began.

Annabelle….

He felt the sudden compulsion to look over at the elven girl. She was gazing up at him with concern and confusion on her face, but once his gray eyes made contact with her bright pink ones, he realized why his inner voice had told him to look at her. She always supported him, and always made him feel….like he was something. A hero.

“I took down a group of them on the train by myself,” he said, starting his argument over again, this time with more assurance in his voice. “And you guys took down a mech! These Mistral guys got nothing on us!”

With bright smiles on their faces, Reina and Annabelle simultaneously pumped their fists and screamed, “Yeah!”

“We even took down a kaiju! Right, Tyger?”

“Yer goddamn right we did!” Emphasis on ‘we’.

The positive feedback he had gotten from those three spurred him further onward. Now only Kiria and Cain were left to convince. “Class G can handle anything! We could do it back then, and we can definitely do it now!”

Kiria still didn’t appear to be swayed. Cain rustled in his chair, folding his arms across his chest and closing his eyes. “I could take them down by myself no problem,” he stated. “So of course the entire group could. Even with a handicap.”

Tyger jumped to his feet. “I could throw all their asses into outer space before you got done mouthin’ off one of yer nerd-ass introduction speeches!”

“It’s a legitimate psychological tactic!”

Joining him, Reina struck a dramatic pose. “I’d shoot all of ‘em! Bang bang bang! Easy peasy!”

It was time to bring the motivational speech home. “Kiria….Class G made a pact, remember? To go on adventures together. Real adventures.”

“….”

Zeo smiled. “And I dunno about you, but stopping a terrorist organization sounds like a much better adventure than exploring some caves. We did that back in elementary school. But we’ve never fought terrorists and saved civilians, have we?”

With a smile, Annabelle said, “Well, you have, Zeo.”

Kiria let out a defeated sigh. In truth, she actually had taken down a terrorist organization before on one of her many Royal Guard missions, but she understood his point.

As she dropped her phone back into her bag, the other members broke out into smiles and fist bumps.

“Okay….” she said, walking back over to join the group. “But here’s a question for you: What exactly do we do next?”

Zeo….did not have an answer for that. None of them did. At least, not for a few moments.

Smirking, Cain said, “Chateau Aurum.”

The confusion on all of their faces sparked joy within him. Another prime opportunity for an educational lesson had emerged!

“Chateau Aurum is an island resort for the nobility. It typically isn’t open to the public, except on rare occasions like major holidays.”

“This sounds familiar….” Tyger said under his breath.

“Oh! I think I’ve heard of that, actually!” Annabelle said. “I think my parents have gone there before!” She looked over to Kiria for confirmation, but the latter simply shrugged her shoulders.

Cain continued. “There was a notice on the city memo board that the resort would be open for the week. To the public.”

“Ah, right, that,” said Tyger.

“That lines up pretty well,” Kiria noted. “A rare opening of the resort to the public, the appearance of the ultrapulse, the mining of explosives, the terrorist attack intent we overheard….”

With a nod of agreement, Tyger said, “Yeah that makes sense. Good pull, man.”

Cain turned away. “Of course it was. My deductions are always right.”

“Asswad….”

“So I guess we’re going to Chateau Aurum?” Zeo asked, looking around the room. “Let’s head on over to the port, then, and get ourselves a ride!”