Protect our Precious World:
The moonlight revealed the quieting, receding smolders, gas, and raining debris at the plateaued top of a high hill in Evershade Valley's mountain range. As all came to a rest upon the newly flattened hill, an orb of light descended onto the hilltop's center. The orb contained Bowser, Athelstan, Warra, Marut, Neva, Ramona, and Nova Daisy, and it soon faded after safely returning the seven Kruna Yura to solid ground. Daisy's Alkemei Vranzer continued showing a brilliant glow, a glow that momentarily spread to her friends before vanishing as the Vranzer returned to a dim, inactive state.
"What a way for this to finally kick in and do something, huh..." Daisy said under her breath, staring at the pendant hanging on her neck.
Bowser worked his Kracielle's full-field vision in every direction. "We're still in Evershade Valley...but I don't think that the Command Center survived that explosion."
"At least we did though," said Marut.
"That went way better than I was expecting," said Ramona. "For some reason, I feel kind of rejuvenated after that."
"Yeah, me too," said Marut.
"Same," said Athelstan.
"I feel...better," said Neva. "Not great, not even okay...but...good enough..."
Marut went airborne to get a scope of the area. The flat, high hill they now stood on had a massive chunk of its side blasted out of it, where structural debris and mountain rock now lay instead. Gatehouse Road was near the base of the hill.
"Yeah, that building's history," said Marut. "That explosion spared nothing."
"SPLIT!" Bowser suddenly shouted.
A thick, blazing blue cannon of energy rushed through the air at the Kruna, almost taking out the whole group had Bowser not warned them. The cannon rushed past all the Kruna, who dove out of harm's way. Said cannon crashed into a nearby mountain and bombed a sizable portion of its body off, catalyzing a rockslide. From the angle the blast had flown, their attacker was to their right and above.
"Whoaaaa – nope!" Marut screamed, whipping around in midair. "Nope! All the nopes there!"
Daisy's expression turned deathly intense. "That explosion spared something alright. Look who's back."
The Kruna returned to their feet and saw a crowned, Dark Matter-shaped entity of shadows housing a humongous orange-scarlet eyeball with a yellow iris and the Mother Computer Core inside. The new Gabriel Soul showed no trace of Dr. Ezhno, proof of his complete assimilation into the undead creature. The angelic wings Gabriel Soul had stripped from the Mother Computer had split back into two different, segmented pairs, glossed over with navy blue and purple; and the Alkemei Ankh hung over its body, the Ankh's chain attached to nothing whatsoever yet still seemingly bound to Gabriel Soul in the open space between its top pair of wings. Eight pink and light blue arrows stuck out from and rotated around the Dark Matter-esque entity without rest or any sense of order.
"So what?" said Neva. "It's some pointy eyeball with wings. Big deal. This might be its worst form yet."
Gabriel Soul twitched as it floated in midair, its eyeball gaining a white-hot glow. Its body revolved in place in an unorthodox manner, like an off-balance spinning top. Then it abruptly stopped, its gaze pointed skyward. A half-second later, a space-warping, neon blue energy beam screeched out of Gabriel Soul's eye. The gargantuan burst brought enough illumination to the sky to brighten a substantial portion of Evershade Valley, with its faint outer scope of light reaching the valley's border with Twilight City. The burst did not last long, but it did not need to. Gabriel Soul spun itself a multitude of times and screamed a flurry of similar cannons in complete and total random abandon, one after another in just about any direction it happened to fire in. The undead creature had no aim. It just blasted. Over and over. Without ceasing. At anything. The sky, distant mountains, the Kruna, the hilltop plateau underneath it that the Kruna stood on; it did not care where. It just unleashed mayhem.
Gabriel Soul at least had a short delay between the times it stopped moving and the times it let loose blasts, which helped the Kruna avoid getting caught in any of the senseless attacks. None of the blasts lasted longer than a second, but they came out within every other second, and each time with a different otherworldly, mechanical, extra-dimensional wail. Several blasts gored holes into the current battlefield, with several others heading off to who knows where out in the sky and across the horizon. A couple of the chaotic cannons even soared out over Twilight City. Daisy made the mistake of trying to deflect one beam that flew straight at her; for though the punch she threw diverted the blast out into the mountains, it also knocked her a considerable distance away and almost made her tumble off the top of the hill to the valley below.
After what seemed like an endless chain of energy cannons, Gabriel Soul stopped its assault and idly floated about in the air. Its eyeball glared at the Kruna as a sickly dark smog of black, red, and lime green hues bubbled and gurgled around its body. Every sound that Gabriel Soul emitted sounded either horror-inducing or demonic.
"I don't agree," said Warra, trying to catch his breath. "This may be its worst form yet."
"Isn't that what I just said?" responded Neva.
Surreal echoes of a fiendish grunt signaled the coming of another inhuman outburst. This time, Gabriel Soul zipped across the flattened hilltop arena and threw out destructive pink and light blue energy blasts in any and every which way every time it stopped to change its own direction. Gabriel Soul had no pattern to its attacking. Its unpredictable flight forced the Kruna on the defense, for its sheer speed and aerial agility combined with its erratic movement could not be tracked by any unassisted mortal being. A flotilla of energy blasts sputtered out in every possible direction there on the hill, the sight from a distance akin to a rapid-fire display of fireworks. Gabriel Soul's offensive bombarded every single Kruna there with torturous intensity and mowed over them. By the time the light show ceased, Gabriel Soul had succeeded in scattering each elemental wielder there like roadkill.
Fortunately, none of the Kruna had died. Not yet. But at the rate this clash had been going so far, their odds for survival plummeted with each passing second. They had almost no time to recover before Gabriel Soul prepared another frantic, frenzied fit. Now, the winged, studded spheroid spun itself in place. Its rotations made it appear as though it had glued itself to one singular point in three-dimensional space from which it curved and steered its eye. A speedy release of slow but steady cutting pink energy waves shot out of its eye in whichever direction its eye happened to point in at the time of each blast. Like the attacks before, Gabriel Soul did not act as though it had any target. The attacks just came, one blast after another.
"Not cool!" Neva screamed, beyond angry. "WHY DON'T YOU CHILL ALREADY?!"
Gabriel Soul ignored both Neva's furious shout and the dense, electromagnetically-charged ice column she shot out of her rifle at it. Her elemental blast tore through whatever burst Gabriel Soul ripped free and pounded it dead on. Not long after her blast connected, Bowser and Marut joined her efforts with similar beams of their own Volt Fusion-enhanced elements. Once Warra and Ramona added their support as well, Neva cut off her wave and imbued her rifle with the power her Null Hien had recorded off of Gabriel Soul. The second continuous burst Neva then pumped out of her rifle held twice the destructive power her first one had. Yet despite the barrage Gabriel Soul endured from five of the seven Kruna Yura, its attacking had not ceased. It still revolved in its place and blasted cutting energy slashes as electric and magnetic waves of flames, wind, water, light, and frost smothered its body.
As they individually prepared moves as well, Daisy and Athelstan both saw the oddity that had developed. It was as though Gabriel Soul had put itself in an uninterruptable sequence, even though the Kruna still heard damage being done to the undead creature's body. Only after the conclusion of its own attacking did Gabriel Soul react to the fact that it had five separate elemental beams crashing into it. Gabriel Soul shot itself skyward to clear itself out of the way of the blasts, its body now trembling and convulsing more than ever before. Once it reached an apparent apex to its flight, Gabriel Soul curved back down and swept across the plateau past each of the Kruna. Once well behind them, Gabriel Soul then rose again and darted back and forth in random dashes and zigzags when the Kruna stopped their blasts and turned to face it.
"Dude, what are we fighting?!" groaned Marut.
"The most horrific eye infection I've ever witnessed," said Athelstan.
Now zooming throughout the air, Gabriel Soul closed in on the Kruna again and added an attacking component to its movement. In between its rapid decelerations and exponential accelerations, energy shockwaves crunched out of its body. The ripples snapped with ghoulish crispness and neared the Kruna faster than they expected, for Gabriel Soul focused its aerial dashes at them with little deviation. Given the devoted, directed effort, it was the only time so far that this phase of Gabriel Soul had acted with a target in mind.
With Daisy as the closest to it, Gabriel Soul locked in on her as it got within striking distance and soared at her like a crazed fastball screaming down home plate. One horrifically fast concussive burst pounded Daisy into the hilltop ground, chunks of debris exploding into the air. As quickly as Gabriel Soul attacked Daisy, it then rocketed at Bowser and succeeded in the exact same attack. It got a hit streak going as it struck down the other five Kruna in a similar manner, despite their best efforts to avoid danger.
All seven Kruna Yura now scattered about the plateau, Gabriel Soul darted to the center of their battlefield and began to spin in place, accelerating into revolutions at exceptional speeds. Strobe flashing from Gabriel Soul's body lit up the whole area a bright blue hue, which became a more constant light source once a spherical barrier of energy erupted around Gabriel Soul. Ear-wrenching mechanical screeching accompanied the expanding blue energy that now stabilized at a constant circumference and zapped electrical charges and lightning strikes everywhere in every direction. Painful streaks zigzagged, arced, and curved at random, Gabriel Soul's lightning storm sparing none of the Kruna from its rage. The Kruna barely had enough sense in them to hear frantic, ghoulish screaming behind all the flashes of lightning buzzing past them and at them.
Gabriel Soul's lightning storm wreaked havoc on the plateau to enough of a point to cause a collapse of the entire remainder of the hill. Each random lightning strike blasted away and burrowed into portions of the hill until the whole landmass collapsed inward and crumbled. However, the Kruna did not fall with all of the rubble. Neva thought for sure they were in for a long drop into a pile of earth and mountain rock, but she did not fall. Once she realized she was floating in midair, she rolled herself around and saw the others floating too as Gabriel Soul's lightning assault quieted to an end.
"Huh?" Neva mumbled.
As the Kruna each acknowledged the bizarre lack of gravity, they also noticed that several portions of the destroyed hill had also not dropped. Gabriel Soul soared high above, its body blocking the bright moon when it stopped its ascent. The Kruna then felt themselves get pulled up with Gabriel Soul, along with plentiful amounts of debris, scrap metal, and even small trees. Nothing flew into Gabriel Soul, but the Kruna and what Gabriel Soul had dragged up with it stayed close.
"Hey, what are we doin' this high up?!" cried Neva, her legs flailing as she stared at Evershade Valley below.
"Why aren't we falling, is a better question," said Bowser. He stared at the warped space around Gabriel Soul that the moonlight highlighted. As Gabriel Soul's constant convulsions worsened, the spatial distortion spread outward around the undead creature and the Kruna. Soon, the Kruna and Gabriel Soul floated about in what could only be identified as a warped void. The world and the sky the Kruna once knew faded away, replaced with an animated backdrop in every direction around the Kruna and Gabriel Soul of darkened, animated, melded blue, purple, gold, black, and red blobs. The nature of the new environment made depth perception nearly irrelevant; for aside from themselves, Gabriel Soul, and the random matter that tagged along, none of the Kruna could make out how much space they now had available to them to move around in.
With the moonlight now completely blotted out, the Kruna turned their attention to a different source of illumination. Daisy's Alkemei Vranzer gave off a shining silvery-black glow through the darkness of their current surroundings. The Vranzer cast both light and shadows across Daisy's body and face as she stared down at it in wonder.
"Daisy, do you know what your pendant's doing?" asked Ramona.
"No, but I know that it didn't take us to...wherever we are now," said Daisy.
"So then what's it glowing like that for?" asked Bowser.
"I wish I knew," said Daisy. Her expression shifted from one of uncertainty to a resolute gaze at their enemy. "But I know that as long as we've got the Vranzer, we will win!"
Gabriel Soul's body entered a terrible seizure, each contorting jerk it made pinching energy out of its form. The seizure continued while it darted in wild zigzags in the space in front of the Kruna. On a few instances, Gabriel Soul soared great distances away. The amount of space Gabriel Soul covered made no sense to the Kruna, for the initial field of distortion that it had created around them did not have the expansive reach for it to move about through in the way it did now.
"How are we supposed to beat this thing?!" screamed Neva. "It's freakin' nuts!"
"It's quite the hellspawn, to say the absolute least," muttered Warra.
"This might be simpler than it seems," said Athelstan, pointing at the creature. "Look. Does that appear at all to anyone like something that's very durable?"
"Hey, he's got a point!" said Daisy. "It can barely hold together as it is! Just keep blitzing it!"
Gabriel Soul executed a cut out of one of its aerial dashes and made a beeline straight for Athelstan. Unsure of how to move, Athelstan took the brutal tackle Gabriel Soul gave him and went fluttering about well behind the other Kruna. By the time Athelstan's momentum had stopped and he could readjust his body, his teammates looked like dots with how far away they were. Gabriel Soul then launched Daisy away from the group in another direction with a similar result for her before backtracking from the rest of the Kruna.
"Where are we?!" Athelstan wondered aloud.
"Hey, dudes!" Marut shouted. "You gotta put your whole body into it to fly around! It's just like how you would move any other time! Your muscles and stuff! There's just no gravity, is all!"
"For whatever reason," Bowser added. He kicked his legs about and gained some altitude, then haphazardly flipped around backwards. Ramona danced about from side to side, almost like a slowed-down imitation of what Gabriel Soul had been doing. Neva felt a great deal better, now that she had no pressure on her injured ankle.
While the others tried to get used to having no ground under their feet, Marut stomped his legs down and shot out from the group. The Kruna Yura of Air angled his body into a hard dive at their still convulsing enemy, ready to Drill Dash. Unfortunately, Gabriel Soul took that opportunity to twirl in place and set off an explosion of its energy. Marut aborted his attack as soon as he could and swept underneath into a loop away from Gabriel Soul's discharge, just grazing the outer edge of the hot pink energy he almost rushed straight into.
Gabriel Soul's explosive energy dissipated shortly after Marut's evasion, which gave Daisy a clear shot at it when her body came accelerating back into the scene. Leading with her left knee, Daisy zipped by the other Kruna and crashed into Gabriel Soul. Warra and Neva both followed up with combined electrified elemental shots out of their tools, though they only connected roughly half of their shots on their target as its momentum carried it off into the distance. The two Kruna then had to cancel their offensive once Gabriel Soul made a hard curve around to zoom back towards them, for the creature unleashed a barrage of energy beams as it flew on a diagonal line to their left.
Gabriel Soul continued releasing thick, space-shredding energy bursts after altering its flight into swaying curves. In the midst of their evasive maneuvers, none of the Kruna noticed any of Gabriel Soul's blasts hit or connect with anything other than the debris that had followed them into their current unknown environment. The direction the blasts flew did not matter; when they missed the Kruna and soared off into the distance, whether upward, horizontally, down, or at any angle in between, the dozens of blasts that Gabriel Soul pumped out connected with nothing.
The Kruna had little time to ponder the nature of their surreal surroundings once Gabriel Soul's cannon assault stopped, for their opponent's instability and manic temperament reached an apex. The wings of Gabriel Soul opened up and generated an assortment of eight orbs, all darkened red and oozing with organic plasma. Another eight orbs splattered into being around Gabriel Soul's perimeter, making for a total of sixteen blood-filled spheroids. At the time of release, each Hemo Orb flew at the Kruna at a varied speed and arc from the other, similar in nature to Bowser's Tavado blast. With the Kruna now more or less regrouped, Ramona swept her sword up and cast a light barrier around her entire team for defense. Each Hemo Orb splashed in a sticky, mucky mess on the glass-like golden shield Ramona had projected, as did the second and third rounds Gabriel Soul pumped out across the short span of four seconds.
Ramona kept her defense up, just in case Gabriel Soul attempted another batch of Hemo Orbs. Instead, Gabriel Soul's wings expanded and clapped together in a thunderous smash. The bombarding shock waves Gabriel Soul's Angel's Judgment released broke through and shattered Ramona's light barrier, and the eight energy snakes of Gabriel Soul's Sinful Chain that ejected out of its body snatched all of the Kruna except Daisy and Neva. Bowser, Athelstan, Warra, Marut, and Ramona all suffered under the agonizing zapping of energy that ran through their bodies before Gabriel Soul flung the five elemental wielders away without any care for where they hurtled off to.
A chaotic, screech-filled tantrum overtook Gabriel Soul's body and prevented it from attacking for a while, granting the discarded and weary Kruna enough time to regain their bearings and fly back towards Daisy and Neva. It seemed as though even without the Kruna attacking it, Gabriel Soul lost more stability as time went on. However, Gabriel Soul also seemed to become more dangerous as it grew more unstable. The glowing Alkemei Ankh that had been hovering over Gabriel Soul beamed the brightest it had all night, much like Daisy's Vranzer now did.
Alright, no way it can survive much longer at this rate, thought Daisy, clutching her Vranzer. I bet one more strong, solid hit oughta do it, and you're gonna help me.
Without any indication of an attack on the way, several spiked projections shot out of Gabriel Soul's body and tracked towards Daisy. A swift twirl of her body got her away from the lengthy spikes that converged and stabbed the spot in space she was just in. Gabriel Soul retracted its extensions and then repeated the move on Neva, also failing that attempt as well. Again, Gabriel Soul paused as it lost control of its body. Seizing the opportunity, several of the Kruna went on the offensive. Bowser unleashed a Tavado blast, Marut and Neva unfurled a quick Chain Diffusion, Athelstan launched many of the floating rocks and boulders as projectiles, and Warra thrust a beam of electrified water.
All of the Kruna's attacks connected, but they did not produce anything close to their intended result. Soon after enduring the elemental onslaught, Gabriel Soul's form warped and stretched out in an overly elongated sphagettification high over the Kruna. The chaotic undead creature then faded into the realm's melded backdrop.
Gabriel Soul reappeared in several places at once as its whole – but transparent – self, afterimages and illusions masking its true whereabouts as the Kruna saw the creature everywhere. Each time the image of Gabriel Soul's body appeared, the laughter of a little girl reverberated throughout the void. With hundreds of Gabriel Soul bodies flooding the expanse one after another, the Kruna grew wary of a surprise attack and all put up individual defenses in case one of the images of Gabriel Soul turned out to be the real one. As Gabriel Soul's body continued flashing about the warped void, the eye taking up the center of its form enlarged and gained a deep, crimson hue outside of its yellow iris.
"Look down!" Bowser screamed.
Everyone's gaze shot downward and saw a more opaque image of Gabriel Soul with its body pointing up at them and its huge eye burning with power. All focus went away from the countless Gabriel Soul images flashing around them to focus on the actual Gabriel Soul below them preparing what was almost certainly a vicious, lethal attack. Once Gabriel Soul's eye gained a fearsome charge of dark energy along with power from the Ankh, the false Gabriel Souls stopped appearing. Gabriel Soul's eye revolved in its socket and pumped out eight small black-purple-pink energized spheroids that spread out in a circular wave and exploded into disorganized, skyward-sailing energy cannons. Without any actual aim to its offensive, only two of the cannons engaged any of the Kruna. Neva's wall of ice and Athelstan's stone barrier provided minimal protection and got decimated, leaving the two of them defenseless for the second round of Gabriel Soul's Chaos Breaker. The completely random nature of the attack and its cannons' trajectories spared Neva and Athelstan but stripped Warra, Bowser, and Marut of their elemental defenses.
Daisy's eyes flared wide-open, her Vranzer mirroring them with its glow. "Now!"
As Gabriel Soul prepared a third Chaos Breaker, Daisy reorganized the earth she had gathered in front of her into an unbound crystal hexagon. She somersaulted and whipped her body down into a descent at wicked speeds to Gabriel Soul, her fist up by her face with her crystal trailing her. The Nova Form Kruna of Earth reached Gabriel Soul the instant before its Chaos Breaker again birthed destructive energy pellets. With as much strength as she could combo with her momentum, Daisy lashed out at Gabriel Soul with a hearty punch and a fierce Crystal Smash that the punch itself also cast. Twelve Chaos Breaker Orbs escaped from Gabriel Soul's body as Daisy's punch landed on its eye, but the cannons they generated all fired in directions that did not endanger any of the Kruna.
Immediately following her fist's connection, the spikes of Daisy's Crystal Smash thrust into Gabriel Soul. But before the thick, heavy crystal masses got to pierce and impale Gabriel Soul, the creature erected an energy barrier from its eye that threatened to push Daisy and her Crystal Smash off of it. The extreme repulsion forces Gabriel Soul emitted turned from a defensive move into a counter attack when it expelled more power into its barrier. Almost mimicking the form for Andrew's Shadow Ripper, Daisy clutched the wrist of her fist responsible for the Crystal Smash attack and willed herself and her elementals into Gabriel Soul through the excruciating amount of pressure.
Desperate for survival, the wildly trembling undead creature beneath Daisy unraveled a third surge of power to augment the energy trying to wrestle her away. The other Kruna watched from above the bright blue-pink glow that came from the struggle below. Before the others could react, Ramona flipped her Solar Greatsword into a reverse grip, enlightened her sword with the remainder of her elemental power, and darted down to Gabriel Soul. Just as Daisy could feel a fourth surge from Gabriel Soul start to unhinge her, Ramona came screaming down behind her and jammed her sword into the energy barrier. Gabriel Soul's power clashed with Daisy's crystal and Ramona's light in a stalemate, neither of Daisy's nor Ramona's attacks piercing through despite the void-warping light show now brightening the scene.
The Vranzer's glow reached a peak as Daisy urged her Crystal Smash on. Daisy's grunting and groaning escalated into a ferocious roar that accompanied a violent, vehement fortification and splitting of her Crystal Smash into longer, more numerous, spikier sections. Following Daisy's lead, Ramona put every last ounce of effort she could into her shining stab. Still, the chaotic undead creature refused to succumb to the two Kruna's might; but its efforts could not sustain the fleeting remainder of its own structural integrity, for the clash created a level of instability it could not handle. Gabriel Soul's power faltered as its form failed and began to crack. Together, the two Kruna overwhelmed Gabriel Soul's energy barrier and punched through it. Daisy's crystal and Ramona's charged sword penetrated the barrier and Gabriel Soul's body, shredding the creature into seizuring chunks and convulsing pieces that glowed with a white hot light and exploded.
A multitude of events happened all at once with the explosions of Gabriel Soul. The explosions themselves flung Daisy and Ramona upward and well past the other Kruna. Such a rapid-fire chain of blasts also detached the Alkemei Ankh and sent it fluttering in the opposite direction. Marut saw the Ankh flying off and set up to pursue it, but he never got the chance to. Each bright bang coming from Gabriel Soul's failing body also fractured portions of the void around the Kruna. Before long, parts of the warped world around them either faded or cracked and snapped away like broken glass. As moonlight above and Evershade Valley below became visible, gravity gradually gained back its effects on the seven Kruna Yura.
The Ankh soared off into the horizon while Gabriel Soul's body continued its catastrophic, chaotic meltdown high in the night sky above Earth, but none of the Kruna could worry about anything other than the free fall they were now stuck in. The Kruna had much too far of a drop to manage a safe landing on their own; but luckily, they had Marut. The Kruna of Air whirled his body and saber around in a tremendous sweeping slash that brought forth a gusting jet stream burst underneath all seven of them. Marut's manipulation of the air slowed their descent to a floaty glide and blew them to a safe landing by Gatehouse Road and the remains of the hill that once supported MAE Command Center. Once each Kruna landed on solid ground, all eyes went up to the explosive lights brightening the night and the tormented screams echoing out into the darkness. One final explosion and one last deformed cry rocked the sky and signaled the end of Gabriel Soul. Now, instead of an otherworldly void, the sky above shined with a rainfall of glittery sparkles and a heavenly cascade of moonlight that reintroduced peace to the night and the world below.
After several seconds of quiet passed, Daisy looked down and rubbed at her sweaty forehead with a heavy sigh. Much like all the other Kruna then did, she collapsed and slid to the ground. Rainbows of sparkles blanketed the entirety of Evershade Valley and Twilight City, with no sign of any automated robot, demented machine, or chaotic doom engine in sight.
"I think it's safe to say, it's over," Daisy panted, sprawled out on her back. As if agreeing with her, the black gem of Daisy's Vranzer lost all of its glow.
"Finally," Neva murmured, smiling up at the sky. "I hope we never fight anything that persistent ever again... That was a nightmare..."
"Thankfully, that was a nightmare that had an end," said Warra, on his hands and knees. "I had nothing left to work with."
"Me neither," said Athelstan, keeled over on his stomach.
"Or I," said Bowser, leaning back on his shell and hands.
Marut rocked off of his side and onto his feet. "I basically spent what I had left bringing us down here."
"What about you, Daisy?" asked Ramona, trying to press herself up. "I can barely even feel my body with how hurt and tired I am..."
Daisy giggled, transitioning out of her Nova Form to return to her normal state. "I had just enough to get the job done."
"Me too," Ramona said. Once she managed to get back up without her wobbly body making her lose her balance, she walked over and reached her hands out to Daisy. "So now what?"
Daisy grabbed Ramona's hands and stood up, her smile fading. They stared at the destroyed hill and the MAE Command Center ruins as the other Kruna rose to their feet. The Kruna all knew of Dr. Gabriel Ezhno's fate, but no one knew what had happened to Chrissy.