Loonatics: United
Episode 22: Course Of Action
The team was reunited in the lounge discussing Tech and Susan's plan. "Is too risky for Rev to go alone." Lexi stated.
"He'll need air support." Ace looked at Tech. "Are the hover-bikes ready, Doc?"
Tech nodded. "Clean and upgraded."
"Neat, don't worry, Rev, we'll watch your back." Ace said.
"Someone has to get inside the dome and get the guy out of there." Susan suggested.
"I'll take care of that." Ace glanced at Lexi. "You will help me enter and take him down."
"Sure, boss." Lexi replied.
"You know you don't have to call me that way." Ace argued.
Lexi grinned. "Okay, then sure, sweetheart."
Ace blushed then gazed Susan to quickly get out of the conversation. "Uhm, so these things will get his power crazy?"
Susan nodded. "Like a system malfunction, he will stand no chance." She handed Rev the disc shaped devices she had been holding. "Just put them all around the branches."
"And then I will activate them remotely from my hover-bike." Tech added.
Rev looked at the devices. "How fast do I have to run because I actually can run at a certain speed depending on the situation I can run fast, extremely fast, unbelievably fast…"
"Just don't screw this up, Rev!" Duck exclaimed.
"Unbelievably fast, then." Rev responded.
Ace began to walk towards the hangar. "Enough talk, let's end this mess."
The team had put on their special helmets and got on their respective vehicles, the gate opened in front of them. "Show him what we are made of." Ace accelerated followed by the others then they flew out of the place with their hover-bikes en route to Magnus' massive structure.
"I'm close." Magnus was inside of the dome throwing the rays from his gloves towards a deep hole that went all the way down the structure and beyond, which he had been digging with the help of the branches. "What is this? They want to play again?" He growled and began to throw rays more aggressively towards the dome's inside.
"How are those devices, Rev?" Tech was hovering on his bike in front of the structure keeping an eye on Rev's management of his task along with Duck and Slam.
Rev was collocating the devices on the branches with certain separation between them all around the trunk's bottom while dodging several attacks from Magnus. He ran quickly to a safe area over the roof of a nearby building. "It's done but that guy almost crushed me with his weird wooden tentacles."
"Just in time, then." Tech pressed a key on his bike's keyboard, then the blue lights of the black discs that Rev had attached on the surface of the branches started to glow intermittently and a glow of the same color surrounded the branches' outside.
Magnus' attacks now moved at random directions and they hit places far away from Ace and Lexi's true positions, they had parked their hover-bikes on a rooftop. "It's working." Ace said as they flew towards the dome with their jetpacks. "We are close already." They managed to get in front of the dome, Lexi began to shoot her brain blast towards the outside of the dome, Ace did the same with his laser vision and made sure to be hitting Lexi's power too.
Magnus groaned and shook his head with anger. "You can't stop the imminence of my new future!" He screamed. "The blue of your world was left to die by those who had also murdered its original, forgotten nature, I am here to restore that legacy!" The huge structure started to shake and the branches Magnus' was generating from the bottom started to crush the disc-shaped devices.
The kids played around the grassed ground under the coverage of the shadow the tall trees made by stopping the moonlight. A ball made of mud and leaves had been kicked towards a bush far from their improvised playground between the cabins. "I got it!" A young, infant Magnus took the duty to recover the ball, the other little bears didn't oppose to that. He hurried towards the bush and began to seek for the ball with his sight as he walked with his lowered gaze. After about a minute, he hadn't found the ball yet, with a feeling of failure, he sat down over a rock to think in a possible excuse, then all of a sudden, he heard sounds of huge engines like the ones of big machinery mixed with a burst of bullets, screams could be heard later from his position, fear invaded him then he ran back to the village and hid behind a tree, only to take his head out of coverage to see what had happened, he could only see two things, dead bodies product of a previous, merciless attack and huge industrial vehicles parked in front of the tragedy, he noticed no movement and headed to his cabin in a hurry, almost ignoring the corpses of his friends. He entered the cabin and found his mother dead over the wooden floor with her pink dress covered with blood. "Mommy!". He exclaimed with horror then kneeled down next to his mother's corpse and started to cry enraged, he hugged her and spent the night mourning at her side.
Magnus had managed to destroy the devices, but his gaze was lost in a space between a group of branches, his mind went back to the present when a brief cracking noise came before a sudden explosion of broken branches and sticks occurred behind him, he got hit by a thick piece of branch and growled by the pain, he stood up quickly and turned around, Ace and Lexi had made an entrance in the dome with the combination of their powers, they landed in the surface under the dome and deactivated their jetpacks to stand before him. "The party is over!" Lexi exclaimed.
"There are things you don't understand." Magnus made a large spiked branch to grow from below and threw it with strength towards them.
"Now!" Ace said and began to shoot his laser vision towards the tip of the upcoming branch, Lexi used her brain blast to hit the end of Ace's power, they had made a powerful beam that was stopping the branch on its way, the mix of red and pink light blocked the branch's violent approach.
"We can do this all day, Magnus!" Lexi exclaimed.
"The power of the hyper-seed is limitless compared to your weak abilities!" Magnus argued.
"So that's the source of his power." Ace thought.
"Is it that weird thing on your chest?" Lexi asked.
Magnus laughed mockingly. "This is just a half of the true, beautiful horror I'll unleash on your gray city!"
Ace and Lexi focused their power even more, after a harsh effort they managed to hit the branch so hard they pushed Magnus onto a wall of the dome strongly.
Magnus groaned and took a blue, glowing seed from a container on his suit. "Guess a few meters won't make a huge difference."
"There is no escape, Magnus!" Ace began to walk towards him.
Magnus still laid on the ground. "For you, Loonatics." He threw the seed into the great hole he had been digging.
Ace raised an eyebrow. "Uhm, are we supposed to be scared, or this is some kind of surrender?" Suddenly, the planet started to shake violently.
"Oh! What now!" Lexi complained.
Magnus grinned and stood up. "Rebirth." He threw rays at the ground and his legs started to get surrounded and covered by thick branches, same as his torso and arms, his head got covered by a helmet made of branches, which only revealed his eyes of fury. He had constructed a giant armor around himself. "Fear change, or embrace it." Magnus leaned forward and moved his arms and legs to the front to free himself and the armor from the branched wall. He crouched then jumped with his fists facing upwards and got out of the dome by breaking its ceiling, leaving a hole and getting out of Ace and Lexi's sight.
The planet was still trembling heavily. "We must get out of here!" Ace said and flew through the hole they had opened before followed by Lexi, they got out of the dome and stood hovering in front of the structure.
"Look, Ace!" Lexi pointed at the trunk's bottom from which dense branches started to get out and become bigger slowly and starting to surround the nearby buildings.
"The entire city will be eaten if we don't do anything, fast." Ace said. "Lexi, contact the others, we are going back to the HQ."
The quake had stopped before the Loonatics went back to the tower by Ace's command. They were reunited inside the lab, standing behind Tech and Susan who were sitting in front of the lab's main computer. "Hyper-what?" Duck asked.
"He called it hyper-seed, I guessed he was referring to that strange thing on his chest." Ace responded.
Tech nodded as he pressed some keys. "And you guessed right, see this picture." He displayed an image of Magnus' on the big screen in front of them, zoomed in the zone of the chest.
"Wow, now that's high definition." Duck praised.
Tech grinned cockily. "I enhanced the image." Susan hit him on the arm rather hard with her elbow. "Ouch! Alright, alright, I'm sorry, we both did so." He rubbed his arm.
Lexi raised an eyebrow while glancing at the image. "Is it, broken?" The picture revealed what looked like one piece of a cracked seed inside Magnus' container.
"He did mention something about the half of its power." Ace added.
"If my assumptions are correct, that glowing thing you said he threw to the depths was a complete exemplar of the so-called hyper-seed, which increases the fertile properties of the environment it reaches." Tech stated. "Think about it for a second, if he managed to make this mess with just a piece of one, what he could possibly do with the whole thing?"
"Devastation." Ace answered. "How much time do we have left?"
Tech displayed a thermal chart on the screen. "Judging by these lectures, I would say enough, but not too much before things start to get ugly."
"Ugly, ugly? Or casual ugly? Because I don't want to live in a planet covered with branches, branches and more branches we've used that word a lot I can't even stand the word itself how am I going to live with that!" Rev argued.
Tech sighed. "If nothing comes up, they'll get ugly, ugly, Rev."
Susan was thoughtful, then she gasped and snapped her fingers. "Zeolites!"
"Hey, we all do what we can here, I might have a few things to tell you as well so show more respect!" Duck complained as he looked at her angrily.
Susan sighed. "No! That may be the answer to our trouble, tell them Tech."
"Zeolites, uhm, they are minerals that have powerful dehydration properties." Tech explained.
"And we could use them to fabricate a weapon that could beat Magnus." Susan added.
"Promising, where can we find those rocks?" Ace asked.
"That's the thing." Susan lowered her head. "Acmetropolis lacks of this mineral."
Tech scratched his chin. "Maybe not." He revolved his chair backwards to face his boss. "Ace, I think I remember a place full of that stuff."
"I am all ears, Tech." Ace said.
Duck let out a chuckle. "Quite literally." Ace looked at him warningly. "What? Come on."
Ace rolled his eyes and looked back at Tech. "You were saying?"
"I saw some formations back on Ziox's cave." Tech replied. "Enough to stop Magnus."
"The giant, green, scaled lion's lair!" Duck exclaimed as his eyes widened.
Ace nodded. "Sounds like a plan, Slam and I will get that mineral for you, the rest will stay here and watch over Magnus."