Alright, we're back. Sorry about the break. But, you know, life happens, we're back now. This one will be a bit longer to make up for the break.

Harold's blood was on fire. It was always on fire nowadays. When he was in the field, fighting, the burning went away, but, in the Avenger, his blood just burned. His normal immunity to pain was useless against this burning. He's always had a high pain threshold, but this burning, a constant burning, he would go 3 days without sleep, just because it was impossible to sleep with this pain, but then we would crash out of exhaustion, and sleep where he fell, until the pain drove him awake.

He gritted his teeth against the pain, he was going this a lot, he'd gotten a gum shield 2 days ago when he saw a crack in one of his molars. He was destroying some dummies in the training room again, he only left this room for food, to relieve himself, or the rare occasions he slept, combat helped, not much, but it helped. Before all of this, he'd known 2 forms of martial art, Karate, and Krav Maga, he'd liked Krav Maga, lots of dirty fighting, and it did a lot of hurt. Those abilities, had gone out of the metaphorical window. Now, he relied on pure brute strength. He could overpower a Berserker, had, a few times, done just that, they had size and weight, but Harold had no limits on himself. Normally the body restricts itself to prevent damage, a normal person could try to bite as hard as they wanted, but their body would stop them from shattering their teeth, not Harold, he had to make sure he held back, or he could shatter his teeth by biting too hard. Berserkers may have a form of stim like himself, but theirs was controlled, restricted, to ensure they could function over their entire lives, Harold had no such limits. Tygan had told him a week ago that the stims were the only thing keeping him alive now, if he lost the stims, his heart would give out.

Harold had no future after this.

He punched the wall, dented the metal walls, and looked at his hand, the shattered bone protruding from the broken flesh, he watched it slowly begin knitting itself back together, he healed quickly now, the stims fully empowering his system, that's what was causing the burning blood. The hand would be useless for a normal person for weeks after a blow like that, Harold's hand would be good to go in a few hours. He was feeling anger now. Not the constant anger brought on by the stims, he was feeling genuine anger, as he hadn't felt since his brother had died, he shook, his entire body shook with rage. He needed to kill something, but all that was around him was dummy's.

Before, all of this, before XCOM, he'd planned to spend his time in the military unit with his brother, retire, then live out a life, a regular life, free from the conflict. He'd enjoyed fighting, he never denied that, he wasn't the selfless person doing something they hate to spare others, he'd enjoyed fighting, killing was never a big deal to him as it was to others, he'd never had any kind of PTSD during his off time, but, he'd always planned to leave the fight behind at some point. Now, that would never come. He would die fighting these aliens, or, even worse, he would survive through this, and then have to face attempting to live with this burning, he was aging slower as well, by time, he should be in his 50's by this point, but he was physically still in his late 30's. So, potentially a hundred years like this, maybe more. No, he couldn't bear that. He would see this through, then have the stims flushed from him. And he'd die, and finally leave this fighting behind. He breathed. In, and out. He stopped shaking. Rage was his weapon, his name, his very being, but he could control his own anger, even if he couldn't control the stims in him.

Harold's blood, was on fire.

Aya sat in the Vertibird. She looked at the group in the ship, the one's who the Commander had chosen for this mission of hers.

Alice, of course, the leader of the little group. Alice or Stacy on every mission, guaranteed. Aya preferred Alice, Stacy was just too, military for her taste. Aya never focused on strategy, her body knew what to do, apparently she had a group of geneticists to thank for that little ability.

Maxim, naturally. They worked well together, his Psionics booster her speed, and their knowledge of each other letting them work together in a fight very well, they were a good team.

William, their resident hacker, for when they encountered security, if they had someone who was part of Miss Lost's group (they really should give them a name at some point, Miss Lost's group was a mouth full), they'd need great security, so Will would be needed for that, and being able to hack control of a turret was always fun.

Ash, a current member of Miss Lost's group, the sniper of their group, she wondered if Maxim resented him that, he'd always been the sniper, and Ash had taken his job. He was a good shot, a great guy to have watching your back, even if he was a half mile away.

And Roman, the explosives expert, they were going to blow the place once Aya had met with the person they were going here to meet. Throwing around grenades was always great, disorientate them so she can get in close.

She noticed looks that Ash gave Roman, really subtle ones, few people without Aya's innate perception of environments would notice it, but someone without Aya's lack of emotional understanding would know what the looks meant. As it was, she noted it, and ignored it, not her concern as long as Ash kept his eyes where they should be in the field.

She was ready for this, she wanted to know what had created her, it would be interesting to know exactly what her abilities entailed. Probably some kind of adaptiveness to it, since the arm incident, she felt almost no pain, she was aware of being hurt, but, it was unpleasant anymore. She wiggled the fingers of her cybernetic arm, the servo's whirring as they moved, not as dexterous as her real arm had been, but stronger and tougher. Thankfully, she was right-handed, so it didn't affect her much, and she learned quickly, so she'd gotten used to it easily, and never had those moments of losing control of it that, odd, she couldn't remember his name, Harold's brother, Smokes. Joe, she thought, but it wasn't important She was getting side-tracked, she had picked up some habits from Maxim, not all of them good.

"ETA 5 minutes" said Firebrand over the intercom.

Aya loaded the shells into her shotgun, she was, as they said on the shows Maxim had shown her, 'Frosty'.

Maxim looked around the ship, it was really cool now, he'd gotten back his thing, or he'd been able to do it, and just forgotten, whatever, he had his Psionic Vision back. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed looking at his own skeleton... Wow, that was a weird sentence. But he was the first, and probably only, human psionic, so he was allowed to say weird shit.

After the whole, re-awakening thing, Maxim had kind of thought he'd get all, philosophical or something, wondering about the infetesimal nature of the universe, or whatever it was they said. Nope, he'd somehow managed to remain pretty much the same guy, just now he had white hair and purple eyes. He liked the purple eyes, they were fun, though he did sometimes scare himself looking into a mirror, because he'd forgotten about it. The White hair, he was, a bit self-conscious about, thankfully, he had short hair, so he didn't see it unless he looked into a mirror, and nobody mentioned it, so he forgot about it most of the time. He knew Aya would never care about something like that, but he did still feel awkward about his hair, it just felt wrong, he'd probably end up dyeing it, white hair on someone, how old was he now, 20 years, damn he was 48, Tygan told him his Psionics slowed his ageing though, so Physically, he was somewhere in his early to mid thirties. Anyway, X-Ray vision. He really needed to work on that tangent thing. Seeing straight to people's bones was weird, he kept wanting to start singing that 'Spooky Scary Skeleton's' thing, but that would get awkward, so he was just singing it in his head as he looked around at the Skeletons checking their guns. He missed his sniper rifle.

Alice checked her rifle, this Plasma weaponry was certainly powerful, but she'd had to re-learn how they worked so she could properly check them, and, what was that noise. She looked up, and perked up her ears, was, someone humming? Probably Maxim or William, they're weird like that. She ignored the humming and made sure that the Plasma chamber was fully charged and there were no leaks, she was basically walking around with a rifle-sized nuclear reactor in her hands, the gun was better armoured than she was. But, hey, they can't get taken alive, she could fire her pistol into the chamber, and set off a blast like a small nuke. Not exactly something she planned on, but she had a backup plan for her backup plan, and ADVENT, weren't too kind to people they didn't like. Hell, Sean had only wrote about stuff, he wasn't even that popular, and he'd gotten his legs smashed to pieces, she didn't want to imagine what they'd do to an XCOM soldier.

She took her helmet from the overhead locker, and put it on her head, with a thought command, she activated her map of the area with a whispered verbal command, the inside of her helmet received an overlay of the area's layout, Tygan and Shen were really putting some thought into these designs, and they were working on a suit of Powered Armour for the crew. She looked at the map of the area, of course she'd reviewed this map a dozen times before, but, always double, and triple check your plans. There was a reason the Commander thought of her as his Second-In-Command (don't tell Bradford). They're plan, drop down just behind an abandoned Gas Station, abandoned since they used Electric vehicles now (although Maxim insisted it must be Nuclear because of the explosions when they were damaged too badly, but that was actually a Self-Destruct feature they put in them, she had no idea why a civilian car needed a self-destruct feature, but ADVENT were known for unnecessary security features), so the Petrol industry went right down the tubes, why they hadn't bothered to take it down, she didn't know, there was even still some Petrol in the pumps. They were going right across the street from the facility, there was a blind spot in the sensors that William had found, and they were going to fly right through that, and drop them in, then move into the Facility, find the room Aya's guy is in (even William couldn't get the Blueprints for this place), then hold position for a minute or 2 until Aya had dealt with him, place the charges, and Evac, simple. But Alice knew not to underestimate ADVENT. If HaA was there, (What they'd started calling the Hammer and Anvil group, especially not after one of them had almost killed Aya, only sheer luck and her reflexes had saved the first shot from getting her in the head, it hit her cheek for fucks sake, 2 inches higher and that 1 shot could have killed her, genetic engineering or no) then there could be serious trouble waiting for them, and even if they weren't there, you never knew when a new enemy was going to roll out.

Don't underestimate your enemy.

But, that goes both ways.

Ash climbed up on top of the Gas Station, on the cover over the pumps, the others were moving up along the ground. He was admittedly, a bit distracted, first Roman kissing him, then reading that journal he'd given him, but, he'd been trained practically since birth, to master his emotions, block them out to let him maintain focus in any situation... He'd never been very good at it. He was not a good spy, but, he was a good sniper.

"Officer, MEC, Shield" Alices voice came over the coms.

"It got 'em" Maxim replied as Ash turned towards them, bringing his Sniper Rifle up, as he saw a purplish mist appear and swirl in a vortex around the ADVENT group, and they scattered "Aw"

A burst of plasma bolts fired out, but just missed the officer as he ducked behind the small walls on either side of the road in front of the gas station, Ash quickly adjusted aim, and took out the Shieldbearer by a single shot between the eyes, their extra armour not helping against his armour piercing ammo. As his arm went back with the recoil, he didn't resist it, letting it carry his momentum, and, with his left hand, brought out his pistol, and fired a shot, which the Officer again managed to avoid. He heard a blast, and looked over in time to see Aya just slipping back over the wall, as the MEC dropped to the floor. Damn she was fast, he'd looked away for less than 2 seconds, and she'd managed to cross the road into better range, shoot the MEC, then get back behind it before he even noticed she's moved. The Officer sprinted off before Ash had gotten his sniper rifle back up, a burst of plasma bolts chased him, but he disappeared into the facility before another burst could fire.

"He'll be getting friends, move up a bit" Alice ordered as the rest moved up to the edge of the road, taking cover behind the small wall. Ash saw one of the ADVENT Toll Booth's, and clambered onto the roof, keeping the high ground was important, it allowed him to shoot people over their cover, which ADVENT tended to do when he was there.

Aya hurdled the wall, but got about 3 steps before the did a backflip back over the wall, as the Turret on the roof fired a burst at the place she'd been a millisecond before, apparently it's range was just beyond the road. A small object flew out from the group on the road, over to the turret, it's shielding preventing the Turret's auto-senses from being able to detect it.

"It's mine" William called out. That was good it'd give them control of that turret, but the reactive firewalls of the ADVENT network reacted and kicked him back out. The others began moving up to the facility front door (might as well be direct, they knew they were there anyway, and it was covered by the turret).

"Guys inside. Ooh, I have a new thing" there was a Watch Tower in the way, so Ash didn't have vision on what they saw, but he heard an explosion, a plasma rifle burst, the turret firing, then an earth-shattering boom, and he was what looked like a massive metal foot break through one of the walls. The foot seemed to stumble a bit, and Ash fired a shot, but the Watchtower meant he could only see the foot, and it recoiling messed up his shot, so the shot missed it by inches. The leg extended, and Ash could see the top of some box appear over the Watch Tower, not enough to see what it was, but enough to know this thing was huge. Some ADVENT weapons fired, with Ash still not able to see, so he fired another shot at the leg, aiming for the joint, his shot struck true, and slammed into the metal joint, at the same time a slight blue flash burst around the leg, William had launched one of the new EMP grenades, apparently they'd come through engineering just in time. The next 20 seconds or so was a blur for Ash, he couldn't get line of sight because of the Watch Tower, but couldn't move forwards yet as he was covering the flank, if anything tried to outflank them from either side, he could see it, and kill it, but he had no sight on the front, damn that Watch Tower, why hadn't he noticed it. What he did pick up was rather confusing a lot of shouting, both from the XCOM and ADVENT soldiers, and the massive metal leg fell backwards after a double shotgun blast, and there was a massive detonation. A lot more shots, some explosions, and shout of pain from one of the XCOM soldiers, and, he saw another one of the giant metal legs, though this time he saw the entire thing. It was like a tank on legs, just a big metal block with big metal legs. Easily as tall as the facility, and apparently, there'd been 2 hiding inside the facility. This was either an attempt at a trap, or just a horrible convenience, thankfully, he'd brought the AP ammo today. He fired a shot straight into the middle of the box, the shot ripped through, but apparently he missed anything vital to it, and it didn't seem to affected, but several bursts of Plasma weaponry, a burst from an ADVENT gun (Maxim must have done that mind control thing again), and a pistol from Alice finished it off, and it began falling backwards before it detonated, taking out an entire wall. Another one of those and they wouldn't even need the X4 charges to take the facility down.

"Ash, get over here, we're going to huddle up while Aya finds the guy we're here for" Alice's voice commanded. Ash quickly put his Sniper Rifle on his back, and came running over. The entire front of the facility was just, gone, ADVENT corpses and rubble everywhere, no XCOM corpses, though he noticed Maxim was holding his stomach, he didn't seem to be dying, and no one else was hurt. He joined up with the others, taking cover behind what they could find in the facility, forming up in front of the destroyed wall.

"Damn, what the hell happened over here" Ash asked as he saw the extent of the destruction, it would be a minor miracle if the guy Aya was coming for hadn't been blown up in the carnage.

"Sectopods" Maxim replied as Ash came over to join up with them, and Aya ran off further into the small facility to find the guy.

"What?" William asked "Sectopod?"

"The big robot thing, they were in the initial thing, they're taller now, and the guns are a bit different, but they seem to be the same" Maxim replied, reloading his rifle, he'd hated those things, but back in the old X-COM days, at least he'd been a good distance back and never had to get anywhere near them, now he had to fight them up close, and he couldn't even effect them with most of his psionics, since there was no mind to hit with his mind bullets.

"Why'd you call them Sectopods?" Alice asked

"Well, initially- Shit, reinforcements flare" Maxim interrupted himself as he noticed said flare land just outside the facility, there should have been a wall between them, but, the Sectopods liked to blow stuff up, and bringing an Explosives expert didn't exactly help the structural damage. But hey, they had clear lines of fire now. Maxim didn't even have enough time to register exactly what the reinforcements were, he guessed a couple Troopers and a MEC, but with all of them just firing into them, they didn't get 2 steps away from their landing zone.

"Anyway" Maxim continued as he again reloaded his gun (video game conditioning told him to replace his ammo whenever he had a chance), thankfully with these new plasma weapons it was actually just venting the main chamber, so he didn't have to worry about making sure he didn't jut drop a mostly-full clip on the ground (Which the Commander had yelled at him a lost for the first few missions in the old days until he'd gotten it into his head to not drop the mostly full clips). "Sectopods, I think initially they thought they were piloted by Sectoids"

"And were they?" Alice asked. Maxim was pretty sure she'd be taking notes if she had any paper on her right now.

"I don't think so. I never really focussed on it too much, I just learned which bits of it are best to shoot at. But these new ones are definably not piloted, Psionic stuff did exactly jack shit to them" Maxim replied, only now realizing he still had his Psi-Vision on. Had he been using it the entire battle? He turned off his vision, just as he turned to see Aya exiting out of the building. "So, how'd it go?"

"I discovered what I wanted to know, and terminated him" Aya replied, matter-of-factly... Well, everything she said was matter-of-factly.

"Terminated him?" William asked, and then, before people could give him the condescending answer "I know what it means. I meant why did you terminate him, there's room on the Ship"

"Because he was severely injured, and would not have survived being move out of that room, let along a trip in the Vertibird, where we will undoubtedly have to avoid ADVENT interceptors due to the time we spent here. And his defences had almost been breached. So it was either terminate him, or allow ADVENT to learn about XCOM and Lost's group" Aya said while making her way towards the EVAC area.

As Aya walked past a body of a Stun Lancer, the Stunny immediately jumped to his feet, and attempted to attack Aya with a large rock (apparently it wasn't quite as dead as they'd thought) but, without even looking back at the suicidal Lancer, she kicked behind her, catching the Lancer in the stomach, making him double over, then spun and delivered an elbow to the back of his head with her cybernetic arm, her elbow sunk a good inch into the helmet, and there was an audible crack as the Lancer dropped, actually dead this time. She continued with the momentum of the elbow, and spun back around. The whole event took about as long as it took Maxim to summon a Void Lance, which just evaporated anything that was left of the body just as Aya stepped away. A jet of what appeared to be black mist, with purple swirling in it (Psionic energy appeared purple as Maxim had figured out a while ago), flew out of the Psi Amp on Maxim's back, and shot like a jet straight through the rock the Lancer had been behind, and there was a smell of burning, for about half a second, as the Lancer was vaporised, and the rock fell to the ground in 2 pieces, neatly burned in half by the lance.

Aya didn't even break her pace, she delivered the elbow, heard the blast of the Null Lance, and kept her pace, she hadn't even broken her stride to take down the wounded lancer, and ignore the Psionic blast behind her, and just went over to the ropes Firebrand was dropping down.

The others, weren't quite as composed.

"Woah, the fuck was that Vamp?" William exclaimed as he practically leaped backwards from Maxim like he was Radioactive (which technically he was, but nothing that would be harmful to anyone).

"Hey, I did it right this time" Maxim said, seemingly to himself. He'd been trying out this new ability (outside and facing away from the Avenger of course) but hadn't managed to get it quite right until now) "Oh, yeah, shit, sorry. I call that a Null Lance"

"Why didn't you tell us about this?" Roman asked as they all recovered from the shock of it and were headed towards Firebrand, conscious of the fact that if they weren't quick Bradford would start complaining at them.

"I hadn't gotten It right yet.. Apparently I needed the right conditions or whatever. I'll give you a list of all my abilities and abilities in training next time all right. It'll take me a while though, I got a lot of shit going on" Maxim said as he grabbed onto the rope, and was pulled into the ship.

"I don't doubt it" Alice said, as she too was pulled in "Your teach gave me a bit of a run down a while ago. I could write an Omnibus just on the Theory of Psionics, let alone the Specific uses and the unique interactions with it in each individual".

"An Omnibus?" Ash asked. Maxim was really pleased he'd asked it first.

"A series of 3 books, more or less" Alice replied.

"More or less?" William asked

"Yes, more or less, as in, i'm dumbing it down for you so I don't get 50 follow up questions"

"That's generally a good idea with those 3" Aya said, gesturing towards Maxim, Ash, and William... Maxim had to agree with her.

"What about Roman?" William complained.

"When was the last time you heard Roman say more than 3 sentences over a mission" Aya replied

"I don't talk much or ask a ton of questions" Roman said.

"That's 2 sentences this mission by my count" Maxim said "Wanna see if we can break the record. I think it's 5"

"Hey.. Where's NOCLIP?" William asked, looking around

"No Clip?" Ash asked

"A hack for games" Maxim replied "... And what he calls his GREMLIN"

"It's right here" Aya replied, pointing to where the little robot hovered above their heads, almost invisible because of it's dark colouring and silent engine.

"Shit... I forgot how quite he'd gotten. Mark 3 GREMLIN" William said, the GREMLIN hovering back down near his head where he usually preferred it to hang out when it wasn't doing something. "Sorry about that, didn't mean to freak you guys out or anything"

"I wasn't freaked out" Roman said "Anyone else?"

A chorus of negatives.. And 1 spout of Maxim saying "4".

"Well, great to see you all care so deeply about my NOCLIP" William huffed.

"Stop referring to it in capitals, it doesn't stand for anything" Maxim said

The others looked at him.

"What?"

"How can you tell how he's spelling it?" Alice asked.

Maxim held up his hand, and a small amount of the purple energy from the Amp of his back floated over and formed into a small ball of purple of energy, which then quickly flashed out to fill the entire cabin "I'm Psionic remember" and he looked over at Roman "That's just some flashy stuff I can do. No actual effect aside from looking pretty"

"Do a dragon" William said

"I'd also like to see a Psionic dragon" Ash said

Maxim rolled his eyes, but never-the-less, a small amount of the purple energy formed in his hand, into the shape of a dragon, the general, scaly fire breathing variety, and flew around the cabin, this was actually something he did to practice concentration, make something like that, and have an obstacle course set up, and make it go through the course while playing a difficult game.

"Magic" Ash said

"Science" said Alice

"Science-Magic" said Maxim

"A form of energy manipulation based on science but that appears to be, and could easily be mistaken for magic by those that did not know the science part" said Aya

"You ruin everything" Ash said

"You guys might wanna buckle up, we got some interceptors coming in" Firebrand said over the intercom, just as the ship began evasive manoeuvres.

"Crap, I hate this part" William said "Motion sickness"

"We know" Alice said, as she threw a bag at him. "Just try to be quiet until we get back".

I'll be trying to get at least 1 part a week, but, as I've said, don't hold me to this, it'll depend on how busy I am, and how into the writing I get, if I end up getting really into it, there could be multiple parts a week. But there could be less if I end up not getting into it as much. As I've said, I'm bad at keep a schedule.