August 7th, 2030

"You know," Robbie openly shared with Lynn, "I trusted you enough with my life, but this-"

Currently, Lynn Loud and Robbie Ackerman had run right into a trap, both of them surrounded by a small squad of armed units in tactical gear, including the body armor and thick-steel helmets. Lynn herself saw only another group of hostiles, different than the ones she had seen before with the crew. Robbie, on the other hand, had her body quivering with nothing but fear, had her hands hoisted up in the air. Had she finished her drink back in Site Prime, she would have undoubtedly pissed her orange uniform. "Oh God, please don't shoot!"

Lynn made note that none of these guns had been aimed right at them, but that was no reason to let her guard down. "Stay behind me, idiot!"

"Oh, God! We're so gonna die!" Robbie wailed, voice breaking away. "Agh, I made a dumbass mistake!"

Lynn waited for either one or for all the soldiers to make an advance on them- and that had taken quite some time in build-up to come forth. But a commanding, yet sincere voice had boomed through the air, through the shining white headlights of all personnel vehicles within proximity. "Is that the Fed wiring in you? Be realistic, you can get half of us before we succeed to subdue you-"

"No way, is that-?" Lynn dropped her arms back in place and eased her tense body. "Girl, we're fine, we've got help! ...But how did-?"

"It was all thanks to me," the warped voice akin to Linka's own communicated via the radio systems on the armored vehicles. "Lynn, I'm sure you've been acquainted with the Patriots."

Act VII: Revolution, Chapter VIII: Reinstated

"So, all this time...?" Lynn emptied the water bottle after taking the whole thing in two long sips and kicked it away. "You've all gone into hiding? But I thought-?"

Alexander Elmont was no longer a devilishly handsome man of long brown hair that sparkled lightly in the sunlight, nor had he any sign of facial hair. These days he and his colleagues hid and lurked and worked beneath the shadow of the public. All rules thrown out the window the second they'd been disowned by their own, but let it be known, by his very own belief, that he was needed in such a time of chaos and rising social unrest. What went on today, still ongoing, was but a testament that order had to be established.

"It was all a calculated risk but we've triumphed and made it here," Elmont lamented pensively. "I do hope they all see how it all seemed to crumble since we were no more, since the day we fell because of the leaks. We've been in the dark about our new enemy until real recently, thanks to this artificial intelligence here."

Lynn was met with a phone he pulled out, to which it received a call from a blocked number- and the call was automatically answered. "Were it not possible on Link-N's part, I would not be privy to his secret mission and the alliance with his so-called Primers in the ranks of the government-funded Prime Federation. Congress has been made ignorant that the Federation is connected to the Black Network by agenda, considering they have been doing the good man's work which was to find and capture all Patriots and affiliates."

"But today is the day where they can make their move fast now that Link-N has allowed himself to play bait to finally meet with his formed unit. Today while everyone is busy fighting alongside or against the phenos, while the men in charge are desperate to maintain order, they can get to work and make a false story."

Lynn gave a nod of discern, worried about her sisters. "Seems like the base is the way to go... That's where my sisters will be, isn't it?"

"Affirmative."

"Then..." Lynn cracked the knuckles of both hands. "We need to go to the base!"

"Uh...?" Robbie gawked confusingly.

Prime Federation Base

Leven and Carly helped Troy and his team in neutralizing the last of the organization's hired minions, including an enraged Phoebe Ward and a silently fuming Caroline Pingrey, humiliated by the fact that she had been bested even with a great advantage she unveiled not long ago. Meanwhile, Meli Ramos had kept weeping for the death of one of their own; Benny consoled her closely, gently trying to pull her away by the shoulders.

"What's the next step?" Carly shifted herself around the hangar in a clockwise degree, making sure she saw no ambushing soloists try to get the drop on them, as she had known to become scared by being taken out with a single shot to the right area. "We- we got them all, right?"

"No, not everyone," Troy Lindemann shut down. "There's a fortified room here, the contingency if the place ever fell to the enemy. The Supervisor has locked himself in there with a handful of bodyguards, but he won't be going amywhere."

"OH, TROY, YOU TRAITOROUS FUCKER!" Phoebe cursed while on her knees, hands tied with a zip behind her back. "ALL OF YOU, DO YOU NOT REALIZE THE MAGNITUDE OF YOUR ACTIONS?! I PROMISE YOU THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES, AND AN UNIMAGINABLE HELL TO PAY WHEN YOU-"

Chad McCann slapped the woman with a fancy backhand maneuver. "Bitch, please, you ain't shit anymore."

"HOW DARE YOU LAY A HAND ON ME! THIS IS SIMPLY UNACCEPTABLE INSUBORDINATION FROM ALL OF YOU! ESPECIALLY YOU, LINDE-MUTT!"

"Keep crying all you want, but it is as Chad says," Troy curtly stated, "your time with these guys is over. I would have figured you could see sense in the madness they presented, but to you-"

Phoebe emitted nothing but a series of primal growls, eyes and body language radiating an infinite level of hostility. "TRAITORS OF THE FEDERATION, WORKING ALONGSIDE OUR VERY ENEMIES WHO DARE OPPOSE US!"

Troy went silent; it was clear that Phoebe had no mind to listen, that mind where she still sought a sickening vengeance against Lynn Loud. "Benny, Chad, Meli, on me! The Supervisor is holed up behind a thick layer of titanium, we're to break in and end this."

"We're coming too!" Carly weaseled in. "We can help!"

"Carly, someone has to watch everyone here, including-" Leven addressed the unconscious Lissandra and Bethany, whom were tied up back-to-back separately from Phoebe, Caroline, Shepherd and the few soldiers captured. Lana was on the floor, legs stretched out flat, with the knocked-out Lola laying her head over the tomboy's lap. "Lana's watching over Lola in the meantime."

"You're putting a non-pheno to watch everyone!" Carly showed concern.

"Is that fear in your voice?" Chad questioned, ready to laugh at her.

"Don't be scared, the phenos here are neutralized with suppressing dampeners," Leven reminded her. "This will be quick, I'm sure! Plus, the back-up is just outside the base-"

"Stupid of them to all head outside," Chad criticized. "Then again, most of them are just girls, makes sense." At his remark, all the females in proximity gave him the death glare, shooting nothing but daggers at him- and then he immediately walked to the staircase, shaken up enough to feel an all-women beatdown coming just over the horizon. "C-come on, the faster we can finish this, the absolute better!"

Leven and his new friends took off, jogging in a hurry to apprehend the mysterious Supervisor. "Are you certain he has no escape route? I would think there must be a way out for him to know only."

"No, I'm sure of it," Troy believed. "He's gotta be there or he saw through me, and that'd be impossible at any rate. We've left him with so little room to breathe, he had no time to do anything else but evacuate into his safe room."

"We're so close..." Leven felt the say come to its theatrical end. "Can you feel it?"

Carly kept Lana company in the hangar, sitting beside her while keeping her sight on the captured enemy. The unidentified blonde girl woke up in a startle and tried drastically to break free from her lock. She was met with the line of the original roster of Prime Federation associates and did nothing but growl in her natural form, having nothing but pure hatred and humiliation to be in the same level as this lot of rank amateurs.

Bethany, too, opened her eyes and raised her head up, seeing Carly and the twins just seven feet away. "Eh-" She puckered her lips and twitched at the very sight of Carly. "C-Carly-"

Glancing right at the only other Asian girl in a black uniform, Carly believed she was just hearing things, but the eye contact they exchanged to establish had said otherwise. "D-did you just-?"

Bethany shakily exhaled, but gave Carly a nod. "You're Carly Evans-Nguyen, once an operative working for the Black Network."

"Y-yeah-" Carly had a funny feeling, questioning on how this stranger had known. "What's it to you? Wh-why do you care, whoever you are?"

"What game are you playing at, Bethany?" Lissandra pulled at her arms, in turn tugging at Bethany's own. "You zip the fuck up, this worked well with Lincoln Loud, but it ain't bound to happen again!"

"I know, I know you don't know me," Bethany continued, ignoring Lizy, "but I know you. I've known you, and-"

Carly turned her head away. "That's enough of a story, you can stop talking now."

"Where I've come from..." Bethany now felt the intensity of her body flare up. In her chest, right beneath the ribcages, the fiery inferno had ignited, plus the bad feeling that began to develop; the inverse sensation of the common butterflies in one's stomach. If there had been the possibility to alter a small thing of big significance to Bethany, it'd be taken right away. "You... You're long since dead."

Little Bethany Chang was numb in most places, buried beneath and around rubble, scraped and covered in the dust that had also gotten into her eyes. She wasn't mortally wounded yet but this was where her deathbed could very well be. Oxygen would deplete in this dark zone of no light, assuming there would be no other series of explosions to rock and roll and bring down the rest of the building's remains down to properly crush her. She knee true fear and she cried and prayed to the forces that be for some savior.

And who should answer that prayer but a woman no older than her mother? This woman, whose hands had come burrowing into the gravel and moved the large concrete pieces away from the injured and frightened little girl, had become the savior. The woman, of burn scars around her eyes, dressed in the black ninja-like uniform that would one day become Bethany's own, the one named Carly Evans-Nguyen.

"What are you saying?" Carly stood up, trying to call the stranger's bullshit fiction. "What do you mean, where you come from?"

"B-Bethany, stop it now!" Lissandra advised.

"I mean to say..." Bethany winced her eyes and broke away first, bobbing her head down. "Not once, not in person, Carly... Not once have I ever gotten a chance to express how thankful I am for saving my life-"

"S-saving your life?" Carly only grew confused. "You're saying I'm going to save your life at some point?"

"You do," Bethany hid her face further, crying gently, which had not been known to Carly if she hadn't noticed the falling of tears hit on the cement beneath her. "You saved me and I've owed you a debt I have never thought could be repaid until today."

"I don't know what to make of this-"

"Then don't!" Bethany shot her face up, decorated with fresh tears and red eyes of sadness. "Just run when the Decimation arrives! Run as far from everyone as fast as you can!"

"STOP SPOILING THE FUN!" Lissandra kicked herself up and fell backwards to crush Bethany. "YOU ARE DONE SPEAKING!"

"This Decimation event..." Carly scratched herself. "That's when I'll...?"

Lissandra kept herself pinned fiercely against Bethany, nearly using all her force right on the latter's back. "YOU CANNOT SAVE THEY WHO ARE FATED TO DIE!"

Neither parties of present could calculate the next move to occur, but for both time displaced teenagers, it was a nice surprise for the one they recognized as the Prime Commander to make their own appearance right in front of all the audiences present. Clad in a leather attire, laced with layers of Kevlar armor, and a helmet that could so be mistaken for protective motorcycle headgear, Laika Letenko gripped a heavyweight RPK with both hands, right at waist level. "It is as you said, comrades," the aging woman croaked in her dirty-thick Russian accent. "Beaten by dead bodies."

Carly stumbled back and fell over Lola, hitting Lana on the way down. "WHOA!"

Laika turned her attention to the present line-up of Prime Federation members. "Yes, yes... The Federation of yesterday." Wasting no second to lose of the valuable time she had, the cold but proud Russian woman promptly raised her machine gun to them and opened fire. In mere seconds, Phoebe Ward, James Shepherd and Caroline Pingrey turned into human Swiss cheese, as did the remaining unnamed foot soldiers, all of which Letenko had no clear care for. The casings clanked on the floor, the smell of gunsmoke filled the air, and the muzzle lit up rapidly beyond the naked eye's own capacity to blink. "Bet-any! Lizy! Up, up! Make retreat, re-arm and return to battle!"

"Cut us loose!" Lissandra dragged herself forward with Bethany still attached to her. Letenko directed the barrel in between them and shot the zips, disconnecting them from each other. Next, she had them leave the base with two of the portable time-traveling MP devices she brought into the party. "CAN YOU NOT SHOOT THAT CLOSELY!?"

"GO NOW!"

Just outside of the base, on solid earth, Lupa had made her choice to render Lynnette and Luna neutral, keeping them at bay from herself and Lincoln. She had grown to see how his way would benefit her on a personal level; for her exposure to the Medi-Sin, she had only a mind to desire fatal vengeance against Dylan Blood just as well as for him bringing her back into the heart of war again. She growled and she drooled from both corners of her mouth, hands extended out to contain the attackers.

Lincoln got his chance and faced the statue-still Luna and formed his fists. "I think you're just as much a monster as you say I am..."

"L-Lincoln, you bastard-!" He punched her with a quick left hook, cutting her out. And then again. "AGH!"

"Hey, clone!" Lincoln called out to Lupa, "Stop the others from leaving! Kill the rest!"

"Lizy, maneuver sixteen!" Bethany raced to the left of the group, blades held outward as she ran alongside them. "Break their formation!"

Immediately, the blonde Southern teen galloped on all fours and unleashed her inhuman tail, advancing and performing a barrel roll of a leap midair, aiming a heavy land in the middle of the group. This caused the running party to spread out; Lyle and Lemy in one part, Loanne and Darcy in another, Leia by herself, and Leven perfectly still, not so scared to move from the danger zone that was Lissandra Autumn Mercer. She attacked first, swinging her clawed arm only for him to block it high and fold his arm over hers. "FUCK!"

Leven jammed the palm of his other arm into Lissandra's face and gripped it to push her back. "Are you proficient in the art of combat?"

"Am I pro-what?!" Lissandra felt her arm and head split further away and forced her other hand in between herself and the Ultimate Clone. "You're about to be-!"

He let go of her and performed a karate chop onto her exposed neck in a swift rush, and then brought his momentum-built hand to block her next attack and deliver the end blow just below her chest. As she fell back from the force, he watched her turn her head over where she'd been hit, yelping a deafening cry. "Had enough?"

"Yer mince meat!"

Bethany dashed into the center, readying both blades for offense. "Gotcha!" She thought that she had him, especially when he didn't move, enabling her to slice into his skin like butter. Only, he didn't react in the way she hoped for. Leven merely smiled and pushed himself forward so that the blades could run deeper into his body, and on his pale face was a sickening smile to make Bethany's soul squirm in discomfort; it seemed sinister in nature, some unscripted scene out of a horror movie. "What is this-?"

Leven raised his right hand and turned it knuckles-side toward her so that the Silver Element device could cast a reflection from the sun in her face. "Do you know what this is?"

"Why- Why do you have that?!"

"Of course you do, Beth-Bad-And-Beyond!" It was no longer Leven's own voice, but that of Liberty Loud's own. "Oh, yes, I like this form! But a penis... I will not be a reverse-trap!"

Lissandra jumped on "Leven" and climbed over the back to sniff her. "Alexa clone..." she squeaked quietly into her ear, "what is the meaning of this?"

Liberty performed a front barrel roll, taking Lizy with her right into a chokehold. "This duo failure will not stand, so he reconsidered your place here and dispatched an extraction."

"An-?" Lissandra choked. "No, we are so close! We've cornered our enemies! Look-!"

"Another day, hick," Liberty urged, relinquishing her disguise, reverting back to herself once she slapped two fingers onto the device on her wrist. "We'll have all the time in the world."

"Pshhhh..." Lissandra entered a sulking mood. "Whatever, shit."

Bethany returned her blades into their scabbards respectively and pulled Lissandra away from the witnesses around them, all either startled by the event, left confused or shaken by their nerves; no one had expected such trouble from a pair of nobodies or the friends they seemed to have. And if that hadn't been the kicker, Laika Letenko fell five feet from the sky, right through an opening just above everyone's heads. She made a perfect landing in front of the team she led. "Do it, clone."

"Righty-O!" Liberty put the Silver Element to use again, activating a solar-level white light that blinded everyone quickly. "Buh-bye!"

Five Minutes Ago

"WELL DONE, CLONE! WELL DONE!" Lincoln praised his female clone present for her siding with him. Presently, Lynnette and Luna were stuck in place, and the others remained spectators, sensing a challenge in taking upon a telekinetic. Loanne herself had no idea the extend of her powers that came from the demonic entity just yet. "I think..."

Luna gulped hard, feeling weak and helpless just like those times before, where she had been but heavily sedated and subjected to rape. But this was worse, for the man who approached her in a straight, confident manner, shoulders broad up high. "You're just as much a monster as you say I am."

"L-Lincoln... You bastard-" Again, Lincoln delivered his blows of superhuman strength, aiming to break through Luna tough skin. "AGH!"

"Hey clone, stop the others from leaving!" Lincoln focused. "Kill the rest!"

"L-Loanne," Leia fearfully urged, "do something..."

Darcy dared step a foot forward. "Am I included in that, Lincoln? I thought you agreed you'd spare me-"

"SILENCE!" Lincoln bellowed her way. "NOT ANOTHER WORD!"

Lupa drifted past Lincoln and Luna, coming right overhead above the stunned group yet unable to act in offense against her. She saw them, studied their facial expressions and knew some were afraid to move. It was just as she had seen before, in the eyes of Lacy and Liby and the good townsfolk of the rising Grimmtown safe haven. They all looked the same from up here, a bunch of pheno-type humans who might not have done wrong. Whatever their reason was for being here, Lupa could not afford to make it matter, to give it a sort of value. But... She found herself yet again standing in the divide, so terribly confusing her to choose whether to truly follow through with Lincoln's wish, or to keep her ideals and stay on the path she hadn't yet strayed from.

"CLONE, THEY ARE THREATS!"

"That's bullshit, Lincoln!" Darcy exclaimed to reject. "We've come to fight them over there, not you!"

"THEY'LL KILL US ALL!"

Peekaboo, the demon greeted Loanne childishly, would you like to have fun-fun? Like before, Loanne was cloaked up from head to toe in a coal-black suit- the skin of the demon- and prepared herself mentally and physically for another fight. I smell two familiar scents here...

Lupa pushed herself higher, earning an eerie chill that she felt go up her spine. "Yergh..."

"Holy shit!" Lyle and Lemy had seen Loanne go full demon here for the first time, a bizarre spectacle to say the least. Loanne charged directly at Lincoln and Luna, targeting the albino to end this violent altercation. The fair blonde had little experience on the art of fighting, but she raised her hands and tossed out her fists in a pattern, chucking left and right at Lincoln. This was different than when she and Darcy fought against the Prime Federation forces, however, as Lincoln proved to hold his own and duck and dodge and counterattack the woman in black, landing good hooks on her face and upper body.

"Loanne!" Leia inserted her fingers into her mouth and bit on her fingernails. "D-Darcy, she's getting wrecked!"

"Shit!" Darcy sucked it up and went for it, risking being stopped dead in her tracks by the flying albino girl. "Lincoln, you and me!"

Loanne struggled in her fight for some reason when she knew well she was more stronger with the demon's unholy skin wrapped all over her body. Right as her own hands were seized and forced downwards, pushed towards on her crotch area, the demon stretched its hands separately from Loanne's, splitting at the joint. These dark hands stretched out flexibly to repel and attack the winning fighter. It threw him back long enough for Darcy to get herself in between them. "H-hey, I don't need-"

"The fuck you don't!" Darcy remarked with a sarcastic scoff. "Your luck just ran out, he's on an entirely different league!"

"We'll fight him together, then!" Loanne compromised. "He can't take us both down, right?"

"Does different league not mean anything to you?!" Darcy spun a finger upon the minors behind her. "Any of you have a power to match hers up there?!"

Lyle, Lemy and Leia shook their heads rapidly, mouths lightly open to display nothing else but pure horror. "Sorry, I- We don't, it seems!"

"No need, we've got you covered!" Elmont brazenly announced his presence, taking up a carbine rifle loaded with anti-pheno rounds. A round burst of three bullets erupted and flowed through the barrel, hitting Lupa in the stomach in a group. The intrusion of the special rounds had Lupa focusing all her attention on her trio of wounds, severing her hold on Luna and Lynnette. "Target down... Anyone wanna explain how she can do that? Flight abilities weren't on the Link-D file!"

Lupa descended downwards, falling while struggling to slow herself as she manually applied pressure on her fingers. It seemed her powers were fading about, as experienced due to the inability to yank out the bullets from the entry points on her skin. "Urrrrgh!"

"CLONE!" Lincoln believed the fall would be the girl's end, so instinctively, he moved to catch her only for Lynnette to rush him with a tackle. "NO, WAIT!"

"YOU'RE DEAD!"

"YOU GET THE FUCK-" Lincoln raised his hand up and elbowed Lynnette in the back repeatedly.

Lynn Loud entered the party at long last, being the one to save Lupa from potentially dying; Lyle had a case of painful recollection as to how it looked like, for it had been a darkly familiar sight. "Gotcha!"

"L-Lynn...?" Luna had no idea what to make of Lynn's appearance, but to see her and Lynnette in the same setting had raised definite questions, and perhaps evidence that Lincoln wasn't lying about this. "Then who-?"

"The fuck are you?" Darcy went and faced the mysterious man with the only firearm around.

"He's with us," Luna assured. "No need to worry."

"I see that family complications still have a place among the Louds..." Elmont centered rifle at Lincoln. "You in the green suit, I can handle it from here."

"Wait..." Luna pointed at both Lynnette and Lincoln. "I don't know who that is... I think we need to investigate her."

"Why's that?" Elmont got his answered when Lynnette faced them, showing them all, including Lynn herself, that she had a truly uncanny resemblance to Lynn. "Never mind."

"Hey, shoot-" Luna was too slow to suggest to Elmont to incapacitate Lynnette for a proper questionnaire, for Lynnette had sped off before the assassination mission could be completed. "Shit!"

"Lynn, would you care to do the honors?" Elmont asked. "You're the only one who can catch her."

"She's... Like me?"

"I thought she was you, dude!" Luna yelled. "Wait, then where the hell have you been all this time?!"

"Long story! Why are we fighting Lincoln for this time?!"

"Long story! Get after greenie before she escapes us! We can handle Lincoln!"

"My reinforcements will be coming soon," Elmont shared, "right after this place is cleared of hostiles! Luna?"

"He's the only one left to beat, if that clone is done!"

Lynn dropped Lupa off at Luna's feet, leaving her in the care of the good guys before scampering off to chase Lynnette. Lupa only seemed to give care about her bullet wounds yet.

"She is down!" Elmont confidently announced, his rifle still locked onto the albino man. "Surrender now or get what she's gotten, Loud! One warning only!"

Lincoln raised his arms, accepting surrender then and there. With the tables having turned on him with no chance to get out of this cornering. The nostalgia kicked in, the feel and intensity of being up against just about everyone else formerly allies, those of whom showed no reluctance to fight him all at once if need be, and that time was here before his eyes. "Don't shoot, I give!"

"A wise choice," the armed man agreed, nodding his head. "Turn around and get on your knees now."

Lincoln complied much to his anger, falling on his knees carelessly once spinning around. "You're all nothing but a board of idiotic fools..."

"I think you've done enough talking, so just zip it."

"You're wrong about us, Linc..." Luna voiced, "you truly think so little of us, that we'd fall over to the other line. I- I don't understand, we've been-" She choked in her own words. "We've been together when all this began! You! Me! Us and our sisters! We would never-"

"You'd never lose control, Luna?" he'd go on to ask without facing her. "You'd keep yourself in check in the presence of flesh? A cold-blooded reptile, you know, must devour, and definitely one of a life-size scale such as... Yourself."

"N-no, I'd never-" Luna shook her head. "No, it won't be like that! It never will! Not with a promised cure-"

Lincoln snickered at the idea. "And that'll fix you, right?"

"What- What do you mean?! There's nothing wrong with me-" Luna took a gentle sniff when her nose had picked up a very delightful odor, which had been Lupa's blood that seeped through the clone's cold-pale fingers. And it didn't take a rocket scientist to tell Lincoln she was attracted to it, hungering for live human flesh under the surface. "Uh-"

Lupa had rolled onto her back and poked her wounds about, trying to dig into the holes to yank the bullets out, but every single time she tried it, she hissed and jerked out the tips, yelping like a helpless puppy. "Mmm... H-help..."

"Luna, stay focused," Elmont advised, "I trust that you have such strong will, or you wouldn't be here with any of them, right?"

"The smell..." Luna licked her lips. "She- She is-"

"Luna, do not-" Elmont had turned his gun from Lincoln to Luna in a sudden trade. "-make me shoot you! I will if I have to, but at the risk of killing you via blood loss..."

"Don't be stupid, just kill her already!" Lincoln opted. "She'll be a threat later! She and that primal set of instincts!"

Darcy placed herself in front of Luna, preventing her from advancing to the fallen girl. "Intervention time!"

"G-get outta my way-" Luna grew blood-drunk, drooling and driven to have a mouthful or two of Lupa. "N-not like we need her, she was helping him-" Next second, they'd seen her tongue pop out through those lips and rotate around the lips to lick them freshly moist. "She's bad!"

"No, Luna!" Elmont heaved defensively. "Luna, don't even try it!"

"Don't worry, I think we can take her!"

"Jesus..." Lyle's stomach turned negatively. "I have a bad feeling about this... Leia, get behind me."

"I- I think we should run away," Leia commented. "This is getting crazier by the second!"

"G-get me out of here," Lemy pleaded desperately. "Fuck these guys, all of them."

"Luna, you know I'll shoot..." Elmont calmly assured. "Remember that you don't do this-"

Luna roared tremendously, mouth opening widely to show her deadly rows of teeth. She dropped down like a dog and repeatedly let out monstrous wails of beastly rage and yearning to show and scare all of those who could be potential snacks. It had come at once, a sort of switch that had been flipped by that smell of human blood. She would have never believed it to beat her the way it did now, the primal instinct that was never hers, the invader of her body was the champion of that battle, proving that she needed true mental training after all; what was the Superbeast of Dadetown but an icon with a mortifying weakness?

Luna attacked first, fixated on Darcy to force her out of the way. Lupa herself was immobile and unable to defend herself now, for her powers had been temporarily disabled, but the special chemical flowing inside her had begun to attack the Medi-Sin compound as well, beginning to destroy Dylan Blood's hold of her completely.

Luna knocked Darcy to the ground with all her force when the girl was expecting a fist or two from Luna. "Argh!"

Elmont has already given Luna the time to fight herself willfully, but the battle had proven a loss, and so it was that he took it upon himself to shoot Luna in the back before an unnecessary casualty, taking his eyes off Lincoln. The others had backed away from Luna; Leia urged Lyle to retreat with her, pulling on his clothes, Darcy dragged herself away from Luna, and Loanne had circled around to put Lupa in between herself and Luna, in case she needed to pull her away. "Oh shit..."

"She's freakishly strong!" Darcy passive aggressively complimented. "Thank fuck you decided to shoot her!"

Luna fell flat at the base of Lupa's feet, weakened and stripped of her much darker nature. She had her sense of being back, and the world was clear and of sense. She stayed down and collected her thoughts and wandered back to her own words just seconds ago- the words of a vicious, bloodthirsty Luna, dictated by the cold-blooded traits of a creature so pathetic and insignificant and small, yet a creature that only had too little in mind for anything else not vital for survival. Such a beast had she become for a second, and it had become weird to suddenly realize she had a weird nickname christened by the media. That very name was hers, a part of her as long as she stayed like this. As long as-

The cure was close, the cure was the end of the Superbeast of Dadetown. The cure, her only chance to be rid of the living nightmare now under lock and key again. "Th-thank you...! Thank you! P-please, the cure!"

"Stay down, I'll quickly call my team of medics-"

"HEY, BEHIND YOU!"

The abrupt warning came as fast, but Lincoln was faster than the speed of light, folding his arm over Elmont, holding him in a lock that squeezed his throat. The rifle had lost its master for a brief moment, switched over to Lincoln's right arm. "Hrrrrk!"

And Lincoln laid his finger down over the trigger and opened fire upon the frozen spectators.