Just then, a thought lit up my mind. I had to warn humanity, but how? A public broadcast would be instantly dismissed by the remaining CENO infrastructure or labeled as a terrorist threat. I needed a channel that was chaotic enough to bypass the filters and popular enough to gain traction before being censored.
I chuckled. "This just might be crazy enough to work."
"Felicity," I commanded, turning from the now-pulsing Sex Pistol. "I have one more task. We need to warn the human world of the coming lunar event. They have 58 hours remaining to seek out shelter."
Felicity looked up, her expression skeptical. "And you want to use the public airwaves? They'll squash it in ten minutes, Ash."
"We won't use the airwaves," I countered, a grim smile forming. "We'll use chaos couture. We need to email the Z-tuber 'Mothman420' with the Lunar Cry footage."
Felicity's eyes widened. "Mothman420? The conspiracy rollerblader? He's a walking disinformation campaign!"
"Exactly," I affirmed. "He's a chaos magnet. He was already filming the CENO Tower implosion and my fight with Marla and Koba. He has the perfect, unstable platform. Send him the unedited lunar video—the one showing the gigantic black Lunar Ribbon and the Lunar Beasts rushing toward it. No message, no context. Just the proof."
Felicity sighed, accepting the beautiful absurdity of the plan. "Fine. Using the world's most hyperactive shock-jock to deliver an extinction-level warning. It's exactly the kind of move CENO would never anticipate."
She quickly accessed the captured CENO drives, stripped the security headers, and routed the raw video file through a half-dozen encrypted proxies.
"Email sent," she confirmed, watching the progress bar fill. "The file size is huge, but it's routing directly to his primary Z-tube email server. If he checks his inbox, the world finds out about the Lunar Cry in the next five minutes. Now what? We have a siege cannon to aim."
I gripped the Control Rod and nodded toward the massive, throbbing Sex Pistol. "Now, we contact the clans. Marla, Koba—you're up. We're going for a ride."
Mothman420 was huddled in a grimy, abandoned subway maintenance tunnel—Level 1 of the Vein—his rollerblades kicked off, furiously editing the footage of Tarq's impossible survival. He was working on a makeshift solar battery, trying to upload the raw video without CENO's residual censors immediately nuking his channel.
His burner Z-phone chimed with an incoming notification—an unusually large file transfer request from an unlisted, heavily encrypted address. "Whoa, hold up, brogan bros," he muttered to his offline viewers, checking his inbox. "Got a weird one here. Someone's dumping a massive file."
He quickly bypassed the security layers, his curiosity overriding his caution. The file was simply named "CRY.MP4." He downloaded it and clicked play.
The video started with the sterile, cold precision of a deep-space satellite feed. It was a perfect, crystalline view of the Moon. Mothman instinctively started recording the screen with his other camera. Then, the anomaly appeared. A colossal, black, swirling Lunar Ribbon—like a seam of ruptured space—dominating the lunar hemisphere.
Mothman's eyes widened to dinner plates. "Wait, what is that? Is that a graphical glitch? Holy moly, that's massive!"
The footage sped up, showing the lunar surface. Then, the terror truly began. Tens of thousands of tiny, scurrying silhouettes—the Lunar Beasts—were visible, rushing toward the Ribbon in a tidal wave of organic motion. It wasn't a hallucination; it was a mass migration. "No... no way," Mothman whispered, his manic energy completely draining out, replaced by cold dread. He was watching the end of the world, unedited and undeniable.
The video cut abruptly to a single, stark text screen:
TO THE REMAINING HUMANS OF PHOENIX:
THE LUNAR CRY ARRIVES IN LESS THAN 58 HOURS.
SEEK DEEP SHELTER. PREPARE.
Mothman stared at the screen, the reality of the message crushing the chaotic excitement of the past few hours. This wasn't a prank. This wasn't a conspiracy theory. This was a direct, chilling warning, delivered alongside the literal proof of an alien invasion force.
He quickly re-checked the sender's metadata. The address was gone, scrubbed clean, but he knew who it was. The tiger-striped girl, the one who had just brought CENO Tower down.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, splicing the lunar video with the warning message and adding the title: "THE LUNAR CRY: 58 HOURS TO DOOM (UNEDITED CENO FOOTAGE)."
He slapped his solar battery pack. "Alright, Z-tube. You cut my feed before. Let's see you try to cut this."
Mothman slammed the Upload button, injecting the most critical and terrifying truth into the global network. He knew he had just broadcast humanity's final countdown. Then, he grabbed his rollerblades and his salvaged Bio-Booster Gear and prepared to deeper into the alleged ''beast city'' not to film, but to survive.
Back in the Gutter Nest, the immense, throbbing Sex Pistol stood ready. I tied a piece of braided beast hide leather through the loop at the bottom of the rod and wore it has a neck lace, the rod swayed gently between my tiger striped breasts. "Now, we contact the clans."
"Marla, Koba—you're up. We're going for a ride."
They rose, their restored forms powerful but restrained. Marla was a coiled spring of controlled fury, her bat wings folding tight against her obsidian scales. Koba, the War Beetle, shifted his bulk, his exo armor groaning as he prepared to move. I swung myself up onto the center knuckle of the Hand, placing the massive Sex Pistol in my satchel ring. Marla and Koba seated themselves on each side of the behemoth bio-guardian.
"Level 1: The Vein," I commanded, "We need every viable clan, every splicer crew, and every Beast Syndicate ready for war. We're offering them one chance to choose a side before the Lunar Cry cleanses the surface. We're going to the Wrestling Arena."
The Hand moved out, carving a path up through the upper levels of the Gutter Nest. The mission was simple: gather an army of chaos. The Scarlet Maw, the Shadow Fangs, the Neurojackies—every faction that controlled the sprawling, neon-lit labyrinth of The Vein needed to hear the message directly from the being who just toppled CENO.
Marla's voice, cut in over the psychic link. "The strongest clan gatherings will be at the Bone Dunes Arena. It is the most neutral ground for a full muster."
"Perfect," I growled. "We're making an entrance."
The Hand burst through the final layer of bedrock and into the humid, neon-drenched chaos of The Vein. We were rolling a newly forged god-weapon, flanked by two of CENO's former elite, straight into the heart of the beast underworld. Our war had just begun.
Mothman420 skated deep into The Vein's outer levels, the chaos and confusion of the surface giving way to the sprawling, neon-fungus-lit anarchy of the Beast City. He ducked into a derelict subway car, pulling his cherished salvaged tech from the CENO Tower crash—the Advanced Genome 'Bio-Booster Gear.'
He desperately needed to figure out this artifact. He had watched the horrifying Lunar Cry video, and if the world was ending in two days, he wasn't going to face it in a hoodie and rollerblades.
The gear was a round disc, clad in three triangular plates containing glowing red cords, centered on a single, appealing silver orb. He flipped it over, examining the intricate bio-mechanical engineering. It felt heavy with dark, latent power.
"Okay, brogan bros," he muttered, adjusting his camera rig to film the process, even though he wasn't streaming yet. "This thing looks like it's supposed to be worn, but how does it... whoa!"
Mothman, in a moment of pure, unthinking curiosity, pressed the silver orb in the center of the unit.
The reaction was instantaneous and violent. The entire mechanism snapped open like a bear trap, the three triangular plates slamming outward with sickening speed. A mass of metallic, flesh-like tentacles flew out, wrapping around Mothman's torso, head, and limbs. He screamed, his cry swallowed by the depths of The Vein.
The tentacles constricted, pulling the device tight against his body. Then, the entire assembly began to immolate. The Bio-Booster Gear cooked itself, turning into a brittle, obsidian-black husk that encased Mothman completely, conforming to his shape like a terrifying, second skin. He thrashed for a few agonized moments before the chemical process rendered him still, silent, and entirely sealed inside the organic shell.
A few tense, silent hours passed in the abandoned subway car. The Gutter Nest's air currents slowly swirled around the dark, human-shaped shell.
Then, with a sudden, sharp CRACK, the husk shattered.
The obsidian shell exploded outward in a shower of brittle flakes. Mothman420 stood up.
He now wore a layer of the dark, semi-rigid Bio-Booster Gear. The mysterious alloy plating covered his chest and shoulders, and the red glowing cords now snaked across his arms and legs, pulsating with faint internal power. The silver orb had reformed into a central node on his sternum.
He flexed his hand, a strange sense of amplified strength and kinetic energy flowing through him. The world looked different—his vision was clearer, and the sounds of The Vein were sharper, almost digitized. The Bio-Booster Gear hadn't just protected him; it had bonded and upgraded him, turning him into a legitimate, if still very confused, Splicer.
"Holy..." Mothman whispered, testing out a small jump. He launched several feet in the air before landing with the heavy thud of reinforced armor.
He activated his Z-phone and checked his reflection in the dark screen. He looked like a hyper-mutated vigilante cosplayer. He grinned, feeling the surge of the artifact.
"Alright, brogan bros," he muttered to his camera. "The end of the world is coming, but I just got my Level Up."
Now powered up, Mothman was ready to re-enter The Vein, unknowingly heading straight for the epicenter of the brewing conflict.
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