“Teros' blight is neither seasonal nor generational. The wraith manifests itself throughout Gaea's history, though none can predict where or when. His appearance is as sporadic as his physical nature, and has often drawn into question the strange entity's purpose. Some believe him to be one of the planet-mother's tests, an arbiter to judge the aptitude of this current race of man. Others believe him to be a remnant from a past age, a vengeful spirit bent on exacting his revenge.

None know the truth of this demon but those charged with earth's restoration.”

Still cautious about being detected by possible Rogue Special Forces surveillance, Rueben opted not to power up, instead rushing in his recreant-form towards the small bar that Roun had disappeared into some moments ago. Up to this point, everything seemed fine and this was what worried him. He’d been unable to detect significant zeta signatures within half a kilometre of their location and he’d only seen three men enter the building since Roun and Zadavia had entered. Briefly it crossed his mind that maybe the younger female braver was the threat, but both Shin and Naomi had vetted her and she didn’t set off any flags when he looked her up. His mind then rushed towards the three young men that had entered the bar just moments prior. None of them were channelers, of that he was almost certain. He’d not been able to find a listing of them on any monitoring network, nor did they have the tell-tale signs of bravers. Had he not just received Shin’s call, he’d be convinced that everything was fine.

“How could it not be?” He questioned himself as he finally reached the door of the bar and activated the sliding door.

As the door slid open, Rueben’s eyes widened with shock at what appeared to be little more than a drunken brawl. What was more puzzling was the fact that Roun seemed to be holding his own just fine. As he entered cautiously, Roun was engaged in fisticuffs with the lithe blue-haired young man and the massive dark-skinned bruiser.

Rueben watched as Roun rocked backwards, shifting his weight onto his back-leg in his current stance to avoid a rather wild right hook from the blue-haired young man, before spinning on that same leg to avoid an axe-handle from his larger attacker. Maintaining his momentum, Roun dropped into a low stance, pressing both of his hands to the ground and spinning his body to sweep the smaller of his opponents off his feet before once again using his spinning momentum to dive-roll out of the way of another wild attack from the larger of the two.

Seeing that Roun seemed to have that part of the commotion under control, Rueben then scanned the room for the other participants in this increasingly puzzling scenario. The first person that he spotted was the young braver-tier channeler, Zadavio Moreno, who was still sat at her seat near the back of the bar. Despite possibly being the best equipped to deal with such a situation, being the only channeler present willing to utilise their full power – Rueben thought – he was surprised to see her cowering so far from the brawl.

“Civillians…” He scoffed lightly, before his eyes resumed darting around the room.

Meanwhile, Roun was forced to change his combat strategy for his fight. As he once again found himself pressed into a backpedal, quickly retreating to outrun the lunging slap of his hulking opponent, he realised that he would need to incapacitate the more difficult of the two drunkards if he ever wanted a one-on-one fight. Having accepted this, he slid to a stop just outside of the range of his large attacker, ducking under the smaller and faster blue-haired fighter as he flew over him with a jumping side-kick. Roun smirked at the opportunity, rising just as the man flew overhead to slam his shoulder into the unfortunate youngster’s tailbone. The result was painful enough, but had the secondary effect of throwing off the young man’s trajectory and balance, sending him spiralling into a nearby table rather than the empty space behind his target. Next, Roun rushed towards his lumbering opponent, who seemed barely able to maintain his balance under the effects of the alcohol that Roun was certain he had consumed. Among many of the alcohol’s side-effects, Roun was banking on the hulk’s slowed reflexes, which allowed him to close the distance between the two and deliver a spinning back kick unhindered. Unfortunately, even with his questionable balance, the force of Roun’s attack was not enough to take his man off his feet. Instead, he simply replied with a left-straight. Roun was barely able to dodge the attack, which sailed past his head and generated a palpable gust of wind that rustled the young man’s hair. As expected, next came a haymaker from the right, with the massive fighter putting all of his strength behind the attack. Roun’s eyes just gleamed with excitement as he saw the attack, rushing towards it as it was delivered.

By now, Rueben had managed to locate the last of the three miscreants, who was behind the bar accosting the bartender. With a loud sigh, he took off from his position near the wall and cut through the spaces between the unoccupied tables and chairs, which separated him and the bar. As he did, he locked his gaze on the black-haired, gothic youngster who now had the elderly bartender suspended against a wall by his collar. Rueben couldn’t make out what the young man was saying at first, but having long assumed them to be intoxicated, he did not find this to be at all surprising. With a single decisive action, Rueben jumped and slid over the bar top, delivering a swift kick to the young man’s shoulder as he did. This caused the youngster to drop the old man that he was terrorising as he went stumbling into a nearby refrigerator.

But unlike the two opponents that Roun fought, this youngster seemed surprisingly lucid. Rueben’s eyes narrowed at this fact, watching as the young man turned and in turn fixed his gaze on Rueben.

“You must be the guardian’s guardian…” His raspy voice trailed off at the end of the sentence. “We were waiting for you…”

Just behind them, Roun’s entire body was coiled around the massive out-stretched arm of his opponent and he was using all of his strength to hyper-extend the large man’s elbow. Naturally, this was a painful experience for his opponent, who’d been writhing in agony as he tried to combat the force of his comparatively small opponent’s entire body with just his other arm. An exercise in futility – or at least it was initially. The gothic youngster’s announcement seemed to motivate strength in the massive bruiser that he did not have just moments ago, pushing him to perform a bicep curl with Roun’s body still trying to pull his arm in the opposite direction.

“What the hell!?” Roun muttered, his body trembling as he used all of his strength to combat this movement; but much to no avail.

“Who the hell are you?” Rueben inquired from the other side of the bar, as the previously stunned blue-haired young man also rose to his feet some distance away.

“We are… I am… the undoing of your kind!” Rueben’s eyes shot open at these words but more importantly at the sound of the raspy voice that he’d heard just once before.

Roun’s eyes also widened with shock as he felt a powerful energy signature erupt just metres from his location, one which was far too familiar for him to mistake it. Sensing this, he released his lock on the massive bruiser, falling towards the ground and landing on both hands before completing a backwards walkover that would see him to his feet. A back handspring allowed him to avoid the follow-up attack from his massive opponent’s arm before a backwards somersault then allowed him to sail over the blue haired youngster as he in turn went sliding under Roun and back to his massive friend’s side.

But as Roun landed, his eyes didn’t focus in on his previous two opponents, who seemed not just stronger and completely re-energised but decidedly sober in mere seconds. No, what caught his attention far more was the zeta signature that was now emanating from the young man sent to watch over him. His eruption of energy seemed to have shorted out the cosmetic augmenting features of his upgraded expansion suit, reverting his clothing to their black and red motifs. But his hair and eyes did not return to the colours that they had exhibited when he’d first met Roun. Instead, the white highlights of Rueben’s hair now shone green, mirroring the glow of his eyes as green flames erupted from his body. Bottles and glasses shattered while the bar itself was rocked under the force of the braver’s expanding aura, clearing the area in his immediate vicinity as he coalesced a powerful concentration of flame into his palms. Before Roun could move in his unpowered up state, he witnessed as these green flames coalesced into balls of energy within Rueben’s hands before he thrust them forward towards his opponent. The result was an explosion of the two green orbs and an invisible shockwave that sent the gothic youngster into the nearest wall at breakneck speeds. Roun’s jaw just dropped at the sight.

“Be patient… there is more to this than it seems.”

Once again his inner voice spoke, the one that linked him to his preternatural abilities and the one that he had come to hear from the very first time that he’d manifested his abilities. He’d come to trust it, as one would come to trust any aspect of themselves – so he waited.

Seconds felt like hours however.

He could no longer hear the faint sound of the costumed parade outside, nor the voice of the local news caster on the holo-viewer. These sounds were replaced by the slow beating of his own heart, which filled his ears as his mind raced.

“Did I just watch this guy murder some punk?” He questioned himself, but that very thought process was broken by the twitching of the black-haired stranger’s hands.

Roun watched, completely awestruck as the young man pulled himself from the dent that he’d made as his body was embedded into the reinforced polymers that lined the interior of the small bar. As he ripped his body out of the wall that surrounded him, it seemed to float just briefly, allowing him to push himself away from the walls before he slowly fell to the ground with a maniacal grin.

“There’s the bitch’s energy.” His grin widened, stretching the young man’s mouth to proportions that seemed eerily inhuman. “Too long have I yearned to drink of her once more.”

With this statement, Roun felt the strangest of sensations wash over him and instantly his mind was brought back to that day some three months prior.

“No…” He muttered as the heralding wave quickly subsided, even faster than it had done before.

The result however was even more intense than that which he had previously experienced, bringing the young man to his knees almost instantly. In the corner, Zadavia also clutched her head as her own internal energy fluctuated wildly under the influence of the chaotic wave of energy.

“A cataclysm?” Roun’s confusion just grew as he pondered whether or not this could be a coincidence or if the even more unlikely scenario could be true. “Did this dude just initiate a cataclysm?”

Answers would have to wait however, because with this cataclsysm came yet another familiar sensation and one that he had also sensed that day. Back then, he was unable to identify the phenomenon before he was reverted by the Prowler’s neutrality cannon but this time he’d have a chance to experience it completely.

The youngster watched in agony as the environment within the small bar warped violently, as space itself seemed to writhe in the same agony that crippled the three channelers present for this odd and seemingly induced cataclysm. But what made it stranger was that their non-channeler opponents also seemed unable to take advantage of this incapacitated states. Much like the environment within the small bar, their bodies also seemed to warp violently, reflecting the space that visually stretched and compressed all around them.

Soon, it was as if the stress was too much and space itself seemed to tear under its influence. Soon the building was flooded with a new sensation, the feeling of a latent energy that was similar but at the same time completely unlike zeta. This new energy seemed wilder, almost chaotic as it flooded in and filled the space around them, mingling playfully with the ambient atmospheric zeta before streams of it began to course into the three strangers. Soon, their shifting bodies stabilised and coursed with this strange energy that oddly enough seemed to bring an end to the localised cataclysm.