The control screens showed a city unraveling.
Downtown sectors floated unnaturally, torn upward like petals in reverse bloom. The gravitational distortion bent entire highways like ribbons. Buildings twisted sideways. People vanished under collapsing skybridges.
Ronnie stood still in the center of the room.
He had once commanded fleets. He had once held absolute control.
But now…
Ronnie (quietly): "Neoterra Prime… is dying."
He gripped the railing. Behind him, officers scrambled to reroute power and initiate sector evacuations. None dared speak to him.
Not until footsteps echoed down the steel stairwell.
Elara emerged—quiet, shadowed, her green eyes heavy with fear.
Elara (firm but pleading): "We have to go help them."
Ronnie didn't answer.
Elara (more desperate): "They'll die down there. Henry… the others… they don't know what is happening."
Ronnie exhaled, slow and broken.
Ronnie: "I told myself I'd never watch a city fall again."
Elara stepped closer.
Elara: "Then don't. Not from a tower."
Ronnie turned toward her.
Their eyes met.
And the pain behind his eyes was real.
Viresa walked forward, untouched.
Lenny fired two shots from a gun—but the bullets bent midair and disintegrated before reaching her.
Ichiro (faint wind aura active): "We can't beat her—she's controlling density itself."
Henry coughed, standing slowly, his aura reigniting—shaky, but not broken.
Henry: "Shit, nothing has changed at all…"
Emilia: "We have to get past her."
Emilia shrouded them in thick mist while Ichiro summoned a wind vortex to mask Jack's charge, with Henry going Shooting Star through the fog for a distraction.
It worked—for three seconds.
Then Viresa snapped her fingers.
CRACK.
The mist imploded in a pulse of sheer density. Wind collapsed. Light bent inward.
Henry, mid-blur, was slammed into the wall as if gravity itself had become a vice. His heavenly aura flickered, crushed against an unseen force.
Emilia (gasping): "She's predicting everything—!"
Jack roared forward, his claws tearing through falling debris. Lightning burst across his shoulders.
Jack: "Then we don't play fair!"
He leapt.
She moved like silk.
Her obsidian cloak wrapped around his arms mid-air—folded his momentum into nothing—then she struck his chest with an open palm.
BOOM.
Jack was launched backward so hard, he slammed into Emilia, sending both tumbling down the slope.
Lenny raised a sonic mine—
Viresa: "Unworthy."
She pointed.
The mine exploded early in Lenny's hand, the compressed matter inside rupturing backward in his direction. Ichiro saved him with a sudden windshield—but both were thrown back, unconscious.
Viresa (calm, slow): "This is your power? This… resistance?"
"No. This is nothing."
She raised both hands now.
The entire tunnel compressed around her—metal, stone, and wires—all bending toward a gravitational core forming in her chest.
Henry stood, barely able to move.
His heavenly energy flared—but the pressure crushed even light.
Henry (to himself): "We're not just outmatched. We're insects to her."
Viresa stepped forward, the singularity crackling behind her, preparing to end them—
Henry moved with Shooting Star. He appears from the side, his fist glowing brightly with blue heavenly energy. But Viresa raised her hand, catapulting Henry to the ceiling, then the ground, and then a wall.
The group lay scattered, battered, bleeding. Henry tried to rise—his body screaming under the pressure. Jack clawed at the ground, scales cracked. Emilia's mist could barely reform.
And Lenny—he was the last one still standing.
His wounds dissolved in smoke.
His hand trembled. Plasma flickered faintly across his veins.
He heard the voice again.
Kaelvyn (from within): "I told you… when the storm comes, you will beg for me."
Lenny (gritting his teeth): "Shut up…"
Kaelvyn pulsed again. An echo like fire and thunder in his soul.
Kaelvyn: "They will die. All of them. But not you. Not if you use my power."
Lenny: "I'm not ready… I can't… it will be like the Mitsunaga residences all over again."
Kaelvyn (mocking): "Then watch them die."
Lenny looked at Henry, still struggling to rise—the boy with divine light in his fists.
At Emilia, coughing blood, eyes burning with defiance.
At Jack, twitching beneath shattered stone.
His fists tightened.
Plasma crackled violently at his fingertips.
Lenny (screaming): "SHUT UP!"
He took one step forward, teeth clenched—his mouth slightly scaled.
But before he could do anything—
BOOOOM!!!
A shockwave of neon blue and green light erupted from the far end of the tunnel. Stone and metal shattered outward. The gravitational pressure around Viresa dispersed violently, her singularity faltering.
Everyone froze.
Out of the light strode Ronnie, black coat flaring. Behind him, Elara, glowing softly with pulsing green-dark energy, her irises faintly burning.
The air shifted.
Reality steadied.
Gravity itself receded.
Ronnie (firmly): "This fight's over."
Elara stepped past him, silent, her aura wrapping around Henry's body—stabilizing him with radiant pulses of healing light. She looked down at him—
Then, gently:
Elara (quietly): "I told you not to fall."
Henry looked up at her, barely able to respond.
Ronnie's hand snapped up.
Twin blades formed instantly in neon-blue digital light.
Ronnie: "I'm the last High Authority of Neoterra's Prime Order. And I revoke your right to breathe in my city."
The air ignited.
Ronnie moved first.
In one fluid motion, he swings his right blade, throwing a spiraling javelin of pure blue lightning, forged from his right arm.
KRAKOOOOOM!!!
A thunderclap tore the tunnel apart. The bolt moved faster than sound, striking Viresa with godlike force. The impact ripped the air into light, throwing her backward through her own singularity. The imploding mass collapsed, distorting space itself for a brief second.
Viresa twisted mid-air, obsidian cloak reforming, slamming her foot into a wall to stabilize.
He dashed forward, lightning wings bursting from his back. Every step shattered the ground. He closed the distance in under a second, delivering a combo of thunder-charged strikes.
Each punch was a blast of pure lightning; each movement was wrapped in flickering arcs of neon electricity.
Viresa blocked, redirected, and tanked the damage—but even she grunted.
She waved her hand—gravity surged—but Ronnie turned into lightning, slipping through her pull, then reappearing behind her and firing point-blank into her shoulder.
BOOOOM!!!
She staggered.
Viresa breathed heavily.