Loonatics: United

Episode 3: Awakening

In the midnight, Tech came out from his room to drink some water, on his way to the kitchen, he glanced at the display of the projector that he had left switched on, which was displaying a video of the general Hill and his soldiers following Slam to another site of the stadium turned base. "What the…" Tech said. "Ace!" He yelled.

"What…" Ace said sleepily after coming out of his room rubbing his eyes. "Hill?"

Tech nodded. "And our big friend."

"I don't get it." Ace replied.

"Slam, he entered the base again." Tech rested his hands over the couch.

"Alone?" Ace asked.

"I don't know, call the others." Tech said.

Ace pressed a button that was on a wall which activated a subtle but rather annoying alarm. After a few seconds Duck, Rev and Lexi got out of their bedrooms. "Couldn't you just knock the door?" Duck said.

Lexi yawned. "I know, like, you couldn't choose a better tone when you bought it?"

"I thought we had all come to an agreement at the shop." Ace argued.

"No, you and Tech did." Duck said as he approached them. "I think I was sick the day you bought it, man I won't eat on the street ever again."

Rev ran and got in front of Duck in a split of second. "What's wrong with street food? You can't generalize just because you got sick one time and how do you even know it wasn't by your poor hygiene or the mold that's in the sink…"

"Focus guys!" Tech growled. "Slam is in trouble."

Meanwhile on Hill's base, Slam was inside a big crystal tube next to the general and his assistant, a young, skinny wolf who wore bottle lenses and a lab coat. "The machine is up and running, sir."

Hill nodded. "Thanks Matt, now, activate it."

"Alright." Matt pulled a lever of the console he was in front of and glowing purple energy circles began to go down the tube where Slam was standing, still unconscious, after two minutes, the machine turned off automatically, and a screen that was next to it showed three bars which signalized that the process was complete.

"Formidable." Hill said and walked towards a glowing cage that was among all the machinery, he put a password to open it, then he took a small, cylindrical glass container from its inside, it was keeping a purple substance. Hill nodded at the object he was holding. "Everybody, come here!" He exclaimed. His men came right after his command. "Today, we'll become stronger, thanks to this little but smart guy." He pointed at Matt, who just stood silent. "Who helped me to create this fantastic substance, which is going to give us strength and unbelievable resistance, basically, we'll have the powers of this guy." He now pointed towards Slam.

One of Hill's men raised his hand. "Is that injected? Because I'm particularly afraid of pointy things and I don't want to…"

Hill interrupted with a chuckle. "Don't worry, fellow; you just have to…" He dropped the little container and the purple smoke that came from it began to expand through the room. "Breathe." He embraced the smoke by taking a deep breath and extending his arms. His men began to do the same and the smoke dissipated after a few minutes. Hill exhaled with joy. "How do you feel?"

Matt was looking at himself trying to notice any change. "Uhm, sir, I don't look any different."

"I didn't ask that." Hill took a metallic chair that was on a corner and threw it strongly towards Matt, who reacted with a scream and put his fist in front of his face instinctively to protect himself, which made the chair to shatter into pieces.

Hill laughed and started to clap. "I told you it was going to work!"

"Too bad we are here to ruin it." Ace said as he arrived along the others.

"Sorry about the timing but dressing up at midnight isn't the same as doing it on normal hours I mean you are like in a weird zombie mode that tells you to sleep and rethink your life I hate when that happens in the mornings…" Rev was interrupted.

"Surrender or face the consequences." Lexi said.

"Uhm, you know what to do." Hill said hesitantly to his men.

The wolves approached them with hostility, Ace threw a punch at one with almost no effect on him, the wolf returned the attack and Ace impacted towards a wall and cracked it, then he fell to the ground.

Duck was throwing energy spheres at them, just slowing them a little bit but it wasn't enough to prevent two of them from carrying him and throwing him towards the ceiling, his face smashed right into the ceiling's concrete and then again into the ground.

Lexi was fighting three wolves and was just evading their kicks and punches, she heard a fourth was on his way so she jumped right before he could attack her and he wrongly tackled the other three wolves making all of them to fall unconscious. She landed next to them and stood up. "Come on, really?"

Tech moved some tubes with his ability and threw them towards a pair of wolves who caught them in the air, and one of them threw the tube he had caught back to Tech who couldn't anticipate it and got hit hard with it, he fell down and groaned while laying on the ground.

Rev was running in circles around more wolves and after some time one of them managed to catch his leg and smashed him to the ground. "That's not cool man." Rev said while on the ground.

"Alright, alright I'm genuinely sorry for this I just wanted to show what we were doing here, Matt, take this big guy out of the chamber." Matt nodded and pressed a button which opened the door of the tube. "Come out, you are free to go." Hill's command made Slam to get out of the chamber and recover consciousness, a small device fell off from his forehead, Slam then blinked and looked at his surroundings, confused.

Tech stood up rubbing his head. "What is that?" He said while pointing at the device.

Hill crouched to take the device. "This is a modern mind control chip, my worms needed to use it, I'll be brief, I just borrowed your friend to copy his powers to a substance that made my soldiers a little more, capable." He dropped the chip and stepped on it. "See, now we can all be calm."

"What?! Are you insane?! You kidnapped our friend to empower your people, and you are pretending us to let this go? You are really a mad scientist." Duck said while cleaning the blood from his beak.

Hill sighed. "I apologize for that, and I mean it, but this was necessary."

Ace walked towards him. "Necessary! You literally attacked us!"

"You left me no choice." Hill growled. "Let me tell you all I know about what is coming, and you will be begging me to be your ally, in fact, your abilities shall come very handy, we've been, uhm, how do I put this? Observing you, just give me time to explain."

"I say we take down all of this nonsensical operation." Tech said to Ace.

Ace thought for a moment, then shook his head and grunted before looking at Hill with a straight face. "Explain, now."

Hill sighed in relief. "Okay, you may want to sit down fellows."

"Since the planet's formation, an ancient creature has been sleeping on its depths, it is all in this manuscript." Hill took out an old piece of paper from his jacket. "We managed to translate some phrases and came to the conclusion that whatever is resting down there, is going to wake up soon."

"And?" Duck said.

"And it was made to wipe out all life in this planet." Hill explained. "We have reasons to believe every planet has it's own, uhm wait a second." He read the paper quickly. "Oh, settler."

Duck stood up. "Do you have any proof of this? Because for me this sounds like insane cult stuff."

"I'm glad you asked, Matt, the readings." Hill commanded, to which Matt nodded and opened a graphic on the monitor above the console. "As you can see, huge amounts of energy have begun to increase in the past two years, and each day, they get bigger."

"It might be totally unrelated." Tech said.

"Oh really, let me cite this phrase from the manuscript." Hill unfolded the document completely. "So when the light gets stronger, the settler wakes from its long dream and prepares the land for new life to start."

"It…kinda makes sense." Tech crossed his arms.

"So…" Ace stood up. "Let me know if I understood, these settlers, whatever, kill planets to, uhm, reset life on them?"

Hill nodded. "That's pretty much it, yeah, what we aren't sure about is, for who? Because we still don't know who wrote these papers in the first place, but I guess that matter isn't relevant right now."

"So, what can we do to stop this thing from waking up and killing everything?" Lexi asked.

"We can't, I mean, it is on the center of the earth, instead, we have to stop it when it awakes and arrives to our land." Hill answered. "So, are you with us?"

Ace looked at his team, knowing they were going to let the decision on him. "For now."