Loonatics: United

Episode 5: The Rise Of The Settler

The tents started to move violently on the camp by a tremor that was making the ground to shake at the middle of the night, Hill and his men, along with the Loonatics came out rapidly from them ready for battle. "It's coming! When we reach the hole, we'll have to surround it!" Hill commanded. The entire team along with the army's hijacker worms arrived to the aperture and Hill's men surrounded the border of the hole kneeling down with their rifles pointing at it as the Loonatics got in position right behind them, each one covering a corner of the circle formed by the soldiers. A green light came out from the hole before the tremor stopped, then a huge creature jumped out from its inside and the soldiers began to shoot at it without any effect, then the green monster landed at the other side of the aperture, it was a big and strong, male lion who seemed to be a hybrid between reptile and feline, he wore only a pair of white pants and was looking at them furious with his red eyes. Ace began to shoot his eyes' lasers to his chest, the creature just laughed with a deep voice and walked towards the group of soldiers that were near of him, they began to shoot at him with their plasma rifles until he approached them and smashed them with his fist like if they were little insects, doing the same with Hill's repurposed hijackers. The rest of the soldiers backed away with fear and Ace stopped using his laser vision, Slam didn't hesitate to try to battle with the monster, he jumped against its leg and punched it strongly, he gasped and waved his hand by the hardness of the creature's skin, who kicked Slam and sent him about twenty meters away, Rev ran fast towards the monster and tried to use the force of his speed to give him a strong punch, so he ran from its leg to its face and punched him obtaining the same results as Slam, only that he managed to get away from it to avoid a possible attack.

"Tech, I'm out of ideas." Ace said.

"I would recommend to, run." Tech answered.

Ace nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

"Retreat!" Hill commanded and pointed towards the camp.

The soldiers ran away from the place along with the Loonatics towards the camp, the creature roared beastly and went after them, managing to kill several soldiers on its way, when they all arrived to the camp Tech ran rapidly to his tent and pressed a button which was over one of the desks, then the camp got surrounded by a semi-spherical, red, holographic shield which blocked the monster's first punch, he kept punching until he roared again with fury. "Ziox will destroy you! After ending with everything else." Ziox roared one last time and ran away from the camp.

"Of course he speaks in third person." Duck rolled his eyes.

"You didn't tell me you had installed a shield." Hill said to Tech while glancing at it.

"Precaution, Sir." Tech replied. "But I'm afraid it won't last."

"Why is that?" Hill asked.

"It requires a huge amount of energy to work, our battery will give it, hopefully, ten hours of life as much." Tech answered.

"I see." Hill nodded quite worriedly. "Well, find a solution, fast." He walked away.

Tech was in the camp's lab drawing diagrams on a glass board, then Matt and Anne entered to help him. "Any discovery?" Anne asked as she sat down on a chair.

"I'm afraid not, it's no easy task to make a plan that involves indestructible beings." Tech answered.

Matt shook his head. "Who would have thought we would end in the hands of a giant lizard-ish monster?"

Anne was skipping several pages from an old book she was holding until she stopped on a page. "The soul of his strength resides deep within his home."

"What is that?" Tech turned around to face her.

"A phrase from this encyclopedia about mythology, it's from an old culture that worshiped a creature they believed lived below them." Anne responded.

"Do you think they were talking about, well, him?" Matt asked.

"It makes complete sense." Tech answered for Anne. "Home, that could be the planet's core itself." He walked from the board to the laptop that was on a desktop. "Matt, come here."

Matt walked and stood next to Tech. "Oh my…the energy is still high."

"Home." Anne said. "The soul of his strength."

Tech looked at Matt. "We can't destroy him."

Matt smirked. "But we can decrease the source of his power."

"Anne, you are a genius." Tech and Matt said at the same time.

Anne chuckled. "Classic me." She stood up from the chair. "So, how will we screw up this guy's party?"

"Matt, do we have any solar cells?" Tech asked.

"Of course." Matt said.

"I need you to install two of them on my worm, Jack." Tech whistled, then Jack slid through the tent's entrance that was opened.

"Alright, what will you do?" Matt asked.

"I must find out a way to make the solar cells to not only absorb the core's energy but also to retain it." Tech answered. "Anne, are you good with numbers?"

"Uhm, sure, well I am not a fan but with a calculator I surely can handle that." Anne said.

Tech nodded at her. "That's all we need."

Meanwhile, Ace was talking with Lexi in front of the camp's light, both of them were sitting on an improvised bench. "You should get some sleep." Lexi said.

"We all should, but I don't think we could even be able to blink knowing that an ancient monster is about to destroy us." Ace turned his gaze upwards. "We won't make it through this."

Lexi placed a hand on his upper back. "You don't know that."

"But I feel it, I hadn't felt anything like this on none of our missions, for me there was always hope, but this feels different, like an inevitable ending." Ace lowered his head and locked his gaze on the led light that was in front of him. "The sun won't come out Lexi, not this time."

"Come on, this is not the first time we deal with a near impossible situation, as I said, you just need to rest." Lexi said.

Ace shook his head. "I am thinking about the city, when it was alive with, you know, people walking on the streets, traffic all the time, thousands of voices mixing together and getting lost at the same time, I thought I would never miss that kind of mess, but that mess meant home even if I didn't like it, and now I just want to return there."

Lexi nodded after picturing what Ace had said. "It is hard to remember those times, I know, but in the here and now, there is people that still counts on us, even if they have no idea of what is happening yet."

"I don't want to fail again, Lexi, I did it once and because of that hundreds of people are living with fear on a wasteland." Ace said.

Lexi got closer to him and laid her head over his shoulder. "Sometimes bad things happen, no matter what, sometimes the best we can do is to stand up and keep walking."

"I don't know if I will be able to do that anymore." Ace replied.

"Then, don't fall." Lexi said. "I will catch you."

Rev was running across several areas of the camp continuously, he kept doing so until Duck managed to walk by him. "Hey! Stop that scandal can't you? I'm trying to read and your noise is very annoying."

Rev stopped running right in front of him. "I'm sorry I need to do it otherwise I won't be able to sleep."

"Sleep?! After what has happened?" Duck said.

Rev nodded. "I've always thought that if you ignore the existence of a problem it stops bothering you therefore it doesn't exist, also, since when do you read?" He then noticed that Duck was holding a book.

Duck sighed. "Since never, maybe I am doing the same thing as you, or at least trying to, man those things have actually lots of words, it's crazy." He leaned on the wall of a tent. "I've never been a man of books, or intellect, but you already know that."

"What are you saying?" Rev asked.

Duck chuckled. "Ace is the leader; Lexi is his support, you and Tech are geniuses, Slam is the muscle, but what I am for the team?"

"Okay first of all I don't want to give you any cheap phrase about self-esteem or confidence because we all know those things don't actually work so instead I'm just going to tell you the truth, you are not a genius, you are not a leader, you aren't strong, but yet, Ace hasn't expelled you from the team, he has somehow found something in you that the team needs." Rev said.

Duck looked at him with confusion. "Okay…is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"It's supposed to let you know that you are needed, despite feeling like a nobody, believe me Duck, every screw, every nut plays a fundamental role on huge, powerful machines." Rev disappeared in an instant after using his super speed to get back to his tent.

Duck stood there, thinking about what Rev had told him, then he smirked. "A unique nobody? Well, that's something I can live with."

Tech was rapidly pressing the keyboard, with total attention at the laptop's screen. "You got my numbers, Anne?"

"Sure." Anne put a piece of paper where she had done the operations that Tech had asked her to do over the desktop.

Tech grabbed the piece of paper and nodded at it. "Excellent." He looked at her with a gaze of approval, then he went back to his work on the laptop. "The cells, Matt."

Matt was working on his own desktop reassembling Jack's cover with a screwdriver. "It was no easy task to put those on him, not because of my intellectual capacities, your pet is kinda, aggressive with strangers." Matt said. "But yeah, it's done."

"That's what I wanted to hear." Tech said as Hill entered the tent.

"How are you doing, fellows? Acmetropolis hasn't got too much time left." Hill said.

"Patience general, we already got a solution, we'll need your permission to go on an expedition to the very center of the planet." Tech replied.

Hill raised an eyebrow. "O…kay, granted, I guess, if whatever you want to do works."

"It will, sir." Matt said firmly.

"A real expedition! It´s like a dream come true!" Anne exclaimed.

Hill sighed. "I trust all of you, just come back in one piece." He left the tent.