Disclaimer: I don't own the media I get my proper nouns from. Enjoy!
Nexus HWR 21 Warning:
Awul
Close to the middle of the second largest continent on Nexus, but a few hundred miles east of its geographical center, a hovercar sped over a desert of blue sand. The desert was flat for miles, only a few scattered and small sand dunes in sight. The hovercar was originally black, but due to the cloaking shield it had on, the ship camouflaged with the blue desert around it. The four passengers inside had Power Blockers on their left wrists as well, making them invisible in almost every way. They flew just high enough above the ground that sand was not getting lifted up by the wind of their passing, and their ship's engines had also been specifically designed to be next-to silent.
"He was brainwashed?" Max Alors questioned. He glanced next to him at Yuri, but the eighteen year old girl and youngest of their group of four looked surprised as well.
"Of course," Najenda said. The passenger seat turned around and the white-haired woman on it looked at the Fairy Tail mage behind her.
"What do you mean, 'of course?'" Chelsea muttered in annoyance from the driver's seat. "Even you didn't-"
"But I did," Najenda said. Chelsea looked out the corners of her eyes and Najenda just nodded to show she was not lying.
This made Max even more confused. "But, you were the one who told everyone that he had betrayed us," he countered. Najenda nodded, and she looked at him seriously as if expecting him to know the reason. Max tried to figure it out on his own but could not. "Why?" He asked.
"If I had told the good people of Pao that Lubbock was brainwashed, what would happen?" Najenda asked.
Chelsea turned to the woman next to her in confusion, because she felt like she knew the answer. "Why wouldn't you..." she began.
"Wait, I still don't get it," Yuri said. The blonde's expression shifted in an annoyed and angry way, "First of all, Takao said that Lubba was lying, not that he was brainwashed. Second off! By telling everyone he had betrayed us, you were saying it was alright to kill him. You wouldn't have said that if he-"
"To counter your first reason," Najenda interrupted the younger woman. "From what I've heard, Takao was barely able to speak when he teleported back to Pao. In order to get what he knew across, he had to paraphrase getting only the most important information at the time out. With all the people of Port Maple on the line, how he made Lubbock sound to be was probably far from his mind, and that's assuming he even knew that Lubbock was brainwashed."
"Alright," Max said slowly. "But if you knew from the start, why not tell us? If we had run into Lubba, we would have-"
"Fought him for real?" Najenda asked. Max's eyes opened wide, while Chelsea just grimaced and refocused out the windshield, finally understanding it herself. Yuri glanced around confused, still not getting what Najenda was talking about. Najenda looked at the youngest member of their squad and explained to her, "If I had told the good people of Pao that Lubbock, their friend, was only being used by the enemy? If the time came that they had to face him in battle, they would have tried to save him. They would have tried talking to him and getting the brainwashing to wear off. Lubbock lied to me though. He lied and let an entire city full of people be destroyed. His brainwashing was not weak enough that a simple speech by a friend would get him to snap out of it." Najenda's expression darkened, and she continued in a lower voice, "However, Lubbock is a trained assassin. His skills involve close combat and long range fighting styles, but he would still prefer to avoid combat altogether if possible. So if an enemy were to call out to him, trying to break his hypnosis, his reaction would be to pretend that their speech was working."
Max and Yuri stared at Najenda in shock. Najenda nodded at them while the two thought about what that would mean. "Once Lubbock had convinced his enemies, our friends, that he was back on our side, he would have killed them the second they lowered their guards. It wouldn't matter if it was Erza, Laxus, even Gohan. Those powerhouses are impressive fighters, but I truly believed that Lubbock would have found a way to kill any one of them. It's why I had to make sure no one would take it easy on him, as much as it hurt me to do."
Just with a single assumption that he was brainwashed, Max thought, in awe of the woman in front of him. She not only accounted for Lubba's actions, but the actions of anyone who might come against him. And on top of that, she pushed her own emotions to the side and told powerful people that he was their enemy. Wait, "was?" Max suddenly realized through that whole conversation that Najenda was using the past tense. "Najenda, you were speaking in the past tense just now. Is, Lubba..."
Najenda shook her head no. "He's alive," she assured them. "Which brings me to the purpose of this mission."
Yuri and Max's eyes shot open wide again. Najenda had specifically came to them for a mission, though before they left Pao she just said that she "needed their help with something." Najenda was a member of Pao's council and neither of them argued when she asked them to get in the car, though they had started getting nervous when she asked them to put on what she called: "Power Blockers." The idea that the purpose of this mission, which had been kept vague to them for a while now, had something to do with Lubba being alive, it put pits in both of their stomachs.
"Geez boss," Chelsea started. "You make it sound like we're killing the idiot."
Najenda shook her head again, and Max let out a sigh of relief as Lubba had actually been a good friend of his for a while now. "Lubbock's brainwashing has been broken," Najenda said to explain her use of the past tense, once again surprising those in front of her.
"Wait, so it didn't even matter telling us all that stuff-" Yuri began.
Najenda cut her off, "I am going to continue to let everyone believe that Lubbock is truly an enemy. It works better for us if he is considered a traitor. The Underlords already knew of his past in Pao. Now if they ever decide to check up to see if he's really betrayed us, everyone in Pao will back that up." Najenda got a more stern look on her face that showed she did not want any more interruptions, and the two behind her nodded at the woman to continue, beads of sweat dripping down the sides of their faces.
"The one who brainwashed Lubbock has turned traitor in the Underlords. He and Lubbock are full-on Underlords, two of only eight who remain, after Mandy executed Tai Lung and held his head above Metropolis." Najenda held her green metal arm out in front of her and a small panel on it opened up. Out from the panel came a blue light that formed a hologram in the center of the vehicle.
Chelsea had already gone through this as a member of Night Raid last night, right before they picked out the other personnel for their mission. As Najenda started going over their intel on Stewie Griffin, his dog Brian, and his friend Bart, Chelsea focused on the landscape and the navigation computer on the center console in front of her. Still two hours away. Her eyes shifted up to the rear-view mirror, and her lips curled into a frown. I was hoping for Raphael instead of Yuri. Leonardo said he hasn't checked in in weeks though. He was worried about his brother, but I think Raph's probably fine. He didn't pick up when we called though, damn turtle teenager. Chelsea's gaze shifted back to the pair behind her. He would have been up for it for sure, she added to herself, a skeptical look pointed in Max's direction.
"An Underlord base, where we know for a fact that an Underlord will be tonight?" Max whispered. He said this while looking into Najenda's eye, and she nodded back at him to show he had gotten it right. "Well, if that's true," he began, a confused look on his face. "Then why are we the only ones going? This should be an all-out assault like we did with the Underworld."
Najenda disagreed. "The Underlords are not the Underworld. The second we attack this base, all the other active Underlord bases are going to shut down. They'll start up new ones where the people we could have captured tonight wouldn't know about." The way Najenda worded that sentence made Max look at her funny, wondering why it sounded strange in his head. She kept going, "If we attack in a flashy way with people who are easily recognizable: Laxus, Gohan, Vegeta, Aang, then the enemy might not only get out word that they're under attack, but word of who is attacking them as well. If an attack is traced back to Pao, it puts Lubbock at risk. It puts all future operations in jeopardy."
"Why us though?" Yuri questioned. She looked at Max oddly and he nodded in agreement as he had been trying to figure that out as well.
"Because, tonight we will not be taking prisoners," Najenda stated. The car went silent, eerily so since even the engines were not making any noise. "Max, I was with you in two Underworld assaults, both of which I saw you act brutally towards the criminals we were facing. More so than the other members of Fairy Tail, I believe you can do what is needed."
"The Underworld killed Master Makarov," Max started. "He was like a father to me. Yeah I was angry, and I did kill a few of the Underworld, but only the ones who would not surrender easily."
"What if they give up later?" Yuri asked. "If they surrender, do we still-"
"Yes," Najenda replied. Her eyes narrowed and she looked back and forth between the two in the back seats. "This is not a game. This is not war the way you know it. The Underlords are winning because they have no rules. They have no moral code. We won't beat them through brute force and the power of friendship this time around." It sounded like a joke but Najenda said it in a completely serious tone. "If we want to crush them, then we need to stoop to their level."
"That's-" Max started, but he clenched his teeth and shut up. Then he shook his head and muttered, "No. No! We aren't them. We are better than them!"
"If we stoop to their level, what does that make us?" Yuri asked.
"You won't feel good about it," Najenda said, and the two in front of her opened their eyes wide again. "You might even hate yourself for it. It's a terrible thing I'm asking you to do, but we have to do it. Even if it is stooping to their level, even if it is throwing morality away, someone needs to do it. You need to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in order to stop these people. And that's what they are. People. Some might call them monsters, but when you kill them tonight, when the life drains from their eyes, they'll feel like people to you."
Max was shaking. He did not know what to say to that. Yuri got a darker look in her eyes though. "Mandy let me know that Lubbock was back on our side," Najenda said. "She's taken command of the insurgency in the Underlords. I won't argue with her, since she's the one who has that Stewie kid by the balls. Our operation is small. The circle of people who know information I have given the two of you, numbers fewer than ten. In that small group of people, there are ones who I do not know if I can trust. Yet this small group, is the only thing that can handle the Underlords as of now. Nothing else. No one else. If we fail at disrupting Underlord plans, taking out their leaders, crumbling their organization externally and from within, more tragedies will come. Port Maple, the Spire, this is only the beginning. Batman told us all about the Joker, and it's the reason we cut him out of the loop."
"Batman was a part of this?" Max asked in surprise.
"He was," Najenda responded. "But he has a rule. He won't kill, and he doesn't like it when others do either. Our ideas of how to handle the Underlords were too different, so we broke off from him. He recently left the continent in his search for new allies, to create a team of his own to help the world in heroic ways. We're not waiting for him to come back. We're not waiting for other tragedies to befall Awul before we act. And even when he comes back, we're not involving him anymore, because he has a rule. He has a rule that we are going to break, because these are not just some criminals we can put away. This is a high-functioning group of evil men and women and creatures who have very dangerous weapons at their disposal. The armory of Metropolis stolen during the Battle of Metropolis, the genius of Dr. Vegapunk whom they executed, giving us no clue as to what deadly inventions he may have created for them, and much more. It doesn't feel as much like a war as the War against the Underworld did, but that's because we don't have the same resources we did back then. We don't have Timmy Turner to read the minds of every criminal we find, so we're back to doing things the old-fashioned way. We have spies in the organization this time, meaning we have to be twice as cautious with everything we do in order to protect them. I lost Sheele trying to infiltrate the Underworld; I do not want to lose another friend."
Max stayed quiet for a little after Najenda finished talking. He wondered if she had anything more to add, but it seemed like she had gotten it all out. He thought about everything she said, mulling it over in his head. Laxus and Erza wouldn't like it. Guess that's why Najenda came straight to me instead of requesting the job at Fairy Tail. She caught me on my way in this morning, before I had seen the job board so she knew that I was free. If she had asked me to help with all this back then, I probably would have denied her on the spot, but I'm here now. I'm already on my way, and I'm one of the few people who can help. Max rubbed his forehead and leaned back in his chair. I could do it. I could kill the Underlords if I have to. Do I have to though? If they surrender, can I look a pleading man in the eyes and finish him? The thought alone made Max grind his teeth in anger, because it disgusted him to think of someone else doing that. And it would disgust my friends to know that I did it, but, no one will ever know... "We can't ever tell anyone about this, can we?" Max asked as he realized it himself.
Najenda shook her head. "It's better that way," she said. "I will report to Mandy afterwards. Mandy will inform the spies in turn. She will not reveal anyone involved to the spies in case one is turned again. And I do not even plan on telling Mandy who comes on this mission. The four in this car will be the only ones who know. I caught you, Max, before you went in to the Guild Hall this morning. Chelsea knocked on your door, Yuri, and made sure she only asked you to come along when no one was around."
Yuri thought about that morning, how Chelsea had come to her door and mentioned how Najenda wanted her help with a job. She said it in such a friendly way yet serious to show Yuri that it was not just a job offering but a request for her to come. She thought about how none of the kids she lived with were home, how the only one who was home at the time was Dawn. At the time though, Dawn was brooding in her room as per usual instead of going to the recently-built hospital to visit Takao like Yuri kept suggesting she do. Chelsea came when she knew no one was watching her.
"So are you two in?" Chelsea asked. The driver did not look back as the other two turned to face her. They saw the side of her face or looked into her eyes in the mirror and saw that Chelsea was already in battle mode. Her expression showed she was ready to kill any moment, and her eyes were scanning the landscape around her. Chelsea started slowing down their car, and she brought it to a full stop. Her chair turned around like Najenda's so the four of them were facing each other in a small square.
It was still only around midday, there was a cooler on the right side of their car with some food in it, and Chelsea kept the vehicle running to keep the air on inside their glass roof. The driver finished, "If you say you're in, we'll go over the plan in full." Yuri nodded first, then the other three turned to Max and waited. After a few more seconds, the man with dirty-blond hair nodded his head as well.
Chelsea nodded back, glad she was wrong about them. "We know exactly where everyone will be: guards, officers, and the Underlord," she started. "We know the layout of the city, the downtown section where a bunch of unused warehouses are, and which warehouse to head to. From the minute we enter the city, it will be twenty seconds exactly to reach the warehouse. If there is a spotter at the city's edge, he might get off a call that a car moving fast has entered the city, but there's no way they know who we are, or where we're going."
A new hologram came out of Najenda's green arm. Next to a blue 3D layout of the city was a list of names. Inside the city were red lines showing paths for their car. One red line was bold and she explained it as their main route, but they had backup plans in case one route was blocked, in case they started getting chased. "These three might be a problem..." Najenda's hologram altered as the leader of Night Raid tapped a few buttons above the hole on her metal arm. Three strong villainous figures showed up on the hologram with great detail to their bodies, and Najenda explained who they were.
"…These are called scouters, and we have some very advanced ones courtesy of Covenant tech Mandy provided for us," Chelsea began, while taking four scouters out of a black box. "They have a built-in camo power-up, it lasts for 30 seconds. There's also an overshield that will deflect bullets automatically. Don't rely on it though because it will fail if hit too many times..."
"...Max, Yuri, and I will go in through the front. Chelsea's Imperial Arms is called Gaea Foundation. The two of you have never seen it, but Chelsea can take any appearance she wishes," as Najenda explained, Chelsea slid what looked like a make-up kit out from under her chair. "She will be waiting at the back door as someone who the Underlord will think is trying to help him escape. If he does make it out the back, assuming we do not kill him in our initial break-in, Chelsea will put a needle through his neck and pierce his aorta as he bends down to get into the car that she will bring around right after the three of us jump out."
"Um, could you say that last part again? I think I misheard-"
"Time is of the essence," Najenda continued, and Max stopped speaking as what Najenda just said was confirmed. "Every second counts, so we will not be stopping the car to give the guards a beat on us. We jump out and start running for the doors immediately. Hopefully, and most likely, we will have them completely off-guard and be able to reach the middle of their base before any of them realize what is happening."
"Their base is where it gets tricky," Chelsea continued, before either of the other two could ask pointless questions like how were they going to jump out of a moving vehicle, or how fast were they going to be moving at that time. As Chelsea started explaining the base's layout and how he warehouse actually had three hidden basements in it, Max and Yuri figured out their plans for jumping while listening to her at the same time. Multi-tasking was not hard when their lives depended on their ability to do so.
I'll use some sand magic on the floor in front of me. Then I'll roll over it and start sprinting for the door. Yuri's fast, but I'm pretty quick too, so I'll probably be the second one there. I think I'm faster than Najenda, but I never knew Chelsea could shapeshift either. I bet Najenda has something hidden as well, her own Imperial Arms like Lubba's Cross Tail, even better! Max started nodding his head, feeling more confident about their chances later on.
The more Najenda and Chelsea went over their plan, their well-thought-out, ingenious plan, the better Yuri and Max were feeling about the night's raid. Chelsea knew better though. As Najenda started explaining what they knew about the powers of the three officers who could be a problem later on, Chelsea thought, As much as you plan for something like this, there are always variables we don't consider, ones we couldn't have considered. We'll look back on it and curse ourselves for not being ready, but hindsight is always better than foresight. All we can do is plan the best that we can. Sometimes though, it's not good enough.
After Najenda went over the plan, she went over it again. She stopped going over it and asked specifics to the two new members, then went over it again with even more detail. They ate lunch while talking about the layout of the city the Underlord base was in. She asked how many intersections they would have to drive past on a certain route before cutting into the second alley on the left in order to get back to the original and best route. Max didn't know that one, and they started all over. They had a whole day before they were going to attack, and Najenda wanted every last thing accounted for. Everyone was learning the route because if Chelsea was killed, if their car was stolen, or blown up, they still needed to get out of the city. If one of them died, if the mission went south, they were preparing for everything imaginable. All this, and it still won't be enough, Najenda thought. Between our last correspondence and now, the Underlords could have changed plans. Maybe three Underlords are coming tonight instead of just one. Maybe Zancrow shows up and we're all screwed. Maybe Zancrow shows up and Chelsea manages to trick him, kill him. That'd be optimal, but the chances Zancrow trusts anyone enough to let his guard down around, or that Chelsea's needles can even pierce his skin… There's too much. Even after all this time, all the battles and wars, I never know how things will turn out.
"So," Max began, after over four hours of going over the plan. "Why isn't Mandy here to help us out with this? I'm not saying we need her, since your plan sounds perfect as is, but-"
"Mandy should have come?" Chelsea asked to finish his sentence. Max nodded and Chelsea let out a long sigh. "I agree. Mandy would agree. She told the people of Metropolis she would kill the Underlords, and I want her to show them the body of the next one. That way, she gets what she wants: the people of the RNG thinking she's saving them all. And I get what I want," Chelsea added. "A scapegoat happy to take the blame for this assault, so that the Underlords don't come looking for us."
"But Mandy's not here," Najenda said, silencing Chelsea's complaints in a tone that made the others think they had had this argument already. "And we cannot wait for her to return, without any information about when that may be."
"She just went to Hell to visit Billy. It shouldn't be taking this long," Chelsea muttered, annoyed they were going through with this without their demonic ally.
Yuri stayed quiet for a few seconds, then she said in a deadpan voice, "Mandy went, to Hell?" It sounded more like she was asking, 'Are you fucking with me?'
"There are many portals and gateways to Hell on Nexus," Najenda replied.
Max's face paled, and Yuri's eyes popped open wide as she realized they were not just messing with her. Even Chelsea who knew about this beforehand, shivered as she thought about the place of her nightmares. It had been described to her before, and she never wanted to go there. Though if I had to guess, people like me are exactly the type who would be sent there. So I really don't want to die, yet I'm still going to go through with this. Maybe that means I'm good enough that I won't go there. Maybe that just means that I'm insane. Who knows?
After today, I don't think I can call myself a mage of Fairy Tail anymore. This isn't what Master Makarov taught me. This isn't why I learned Sand Magic, or why anyone who's ever helped me get stronger did so. They'd be ashamed of me if they saw me killing people without hesitation. I know I'm going to have nightmares about tonight for a long time, maybe forever. But what Najenda says is true. Someone needs to do this. Someone needs to cross the line. I have to be willing to push aside a part of myself, and become the villain who saves Awul. Max looked out through the front windshield towards the setting suns dying the sky red in the west.
Takao, these bastards scrambled your mind. That kid Stewie might be on our side now, but I don't trust him. If we find him, I'll make him fix you up. If he doesn't, I'll kill him. I don't care if he's a kid, you're, my best friend. Even more-so than Dawn, you've been with me here from the First Day. We grew up together, and you protected me and all the kids and Dawn from Luthor, all on your own. But after all that, you felt like you were still the villain because of what he made you do. You joined the Underlords to help us, to save us, again! It hurt Yuri's chest to think about, but it also made a fire burn inside her. I'll finish what you started. Najenda mentioned why she thought Max was a good pick for tonight, but she must know how I'm feeling right now. She knows I'm willing to do anything to take down the bastards who hurt you. When you wake up, I don't want to tell you that Port Maple burned, that everyone died, that what you did was for nothing! If I destroy the Underlords, then you can take some of the credit Taka-bou, because I never would have done it if not for you.
Five Hours Later
"He's dead," Chelsea said, walking in through the shadows from the back of the warehouse. Three human men on their knees and an alien creature with purple skin and ears that looked like fins of a fish turned their heads to the figure walking out of the shadows. The purple alien dropped his jaw in shock, because he was the one walking towards himself right now. Chelsea's body started to alter, changing back into her beautiful, slim twenty-one year old self. "The body's in the trunk. We can still hand him off to Mandy when she gets back, have her take the credit."
"Good, if she comes back soon it will be believable," Najenda said from in front of the four living prisoners she still had in front of her. They looked back towards the white-haired woman with a black scouter over her left eye and a black outfit pressed tight to her arms and legs. What to do with the Underlord's body somehow never came up during planning, as things going well enough that they would still be in the enemy base after the raid finished was unexpected to the two veteran assassins. Then again, things never went "perfectly."
"Alright, finish up here," Najenda said. She was planning on doing a quick interrogation to find out where the Underlord ran off to, but Chelsea was able to handle it on her own after all. The boss turned and started walking away with a dark look in her eye.
"Got it," Chelsea said. The men looking at Najenda in shock and surprise started turning back around. Only one of them had the smarts to start getting off his knees, but he was the first one whose head Chelsea put a bullet in. She had a silenced pistol in her hand and fired it four times exactly, and then four consecutive thuds sounded as the men hit the ground.
Najenda kept walking while the clicking and thudding sounds happened behind her. She stared forward at a man with dirty-blond hair longer than her own white hair. His fell almost down to his shoulders, while she had hers short, longest at her bangs that fell just over the tops of her eye sockets. Najenda stopped when she was on Max's right, and she reached down with her right arm and grabbed Max by the shoulder with it. Her green steel arm put a lot of pressure on him, and she said, "Max, we're leaving."
The mage on his knees flinched when Najenda grabbed him, and he lifted his head after she spoke. He had water in his eyes, and he looked at her sadly, then back down to the bloody mess of a girl in front of him. "I, couldn't stop, the bleeding," he wiped his eyes with a bloody sleeve, smearing some of it on his own face just to get the tears out of his eyes. He looked left and right at the ten bodies around Yuri's, many of them with sand in their fatal wounds. "What did we, this was-"
"A successful mission," Najenda said. Max snapped his gaze up furiously, but he stopped looking so angry at the look of regret Najenda had on her face while gazing down at Yuri. "But the cost was too high. I failed." She lifted her left hand and ran it through her hair while squeezing harder on Max's shoulder with her steel one. "I can't keep this quiet. I won't." She shook her head and said, "When we get back to Pao, I'm taking full responsibility for Yuri's death. I would have liked to keep this mission hidden from everyone, but Yuri has- had people who depended on her. Yumma, the other kids, even Dawn, she acted as their guardian all this time. I got her killed."
"Boss," Chelsea began from behind her. She had gotten close enough to hear what Najenda was saying, and she did not like the sound of it. "There's no way you could have seen that coming. The amount of manpower was beyond what we could have prepared-"
"It's not about fault," Najenda said darkly. "Yuri agreed to this of her own free will. I do not blame myself for her death, but I will take the blame from others. She rushed in here, her speed made her faster than the rest of us. She was able to take out twice as many as the rest of us were. Only we will know that though. All anyone else will know, is that Yuri died on a mission I took her on- a confidential mission."
"What about the council?" Chelsea asked. "They're going to demand more information."
"If it comes to that, I'll resign," Najenda responded. "This is more important. We killed an Underlord today. The biggest threat to peace on Awul, we put a dent in it. Yuri will never be known as a hero though, not to anyone other than us three."
"That's, so cruel," Max whispered, while looking back down into the dead girl's half-open eyes.
Najenda nodded. "I know," she said. "Maybe one day, I'll tell the ones who loved her what she died for. As for now though, it's time to leave." Najenda turned and started walking towards Chelsea. The car was still parked behind the warehouse, so it was back the direction she just came from. "Max, grab Yuri's body and let's go. We've sent our message." Najenda spun to the wall on her left and pointed her right arm at it. She extended her index finger and the end of the metal appendage popped open.
As Max stood up and carefully picked Yuri up with him, Najenda fired a few dozen bullets into the wall. She then continued walking off, and Chelsea turned when her boss reached her to walk at her side. Max followed after the two women, and he glanced to his left as he walked by the wall splashed with blood and now dotted with bullet holes. Written with those holes were the words, 'UNDERLORDS BE WARNED.'
Chelsea did not grin as she walked out of the warehouse, because of Yuri, but she was feeling somewhat satisfied. Twice the effect. Makes the already cautious Underlords even more hesitant. It's going to make them less eager to go back on the attack when they're already being hunted themselves. And when people see this on the news tomorrow, what idiot's going to want to join the Underlords then? When even their lower members are put down execution style? Now they know the heroes aren't going to play by the rules. Every villain's worst nightmare.
A/N Yuri... ;( If you don't remember her, she's from the show Towa no Quon. The same show that the leader of the Resistance is from. It's a 6 episode anime with some great action and cool characters with superpowers, a bunch of which I've added into Nexus. (The main villain of the show is the one who killed Lucy, and got resurrected by Orochimaru during the battle of Metropolis). Anyway, even though we just had an Awul part 3 chapters ago with Mysterion, Batman, Huey and Riley, and Mandy, I jumped over to some other Awul characters this time as we see more of the group who are taking on the Underlords while the rest of our MCs are off on Aebrith. Next part is the third Sora and Cass Adventure to start off chapter 22 (the first was when they were on Lagann Island and we saw the flashback to the Third Moon, the second was meeting Android 17 and Krillin and finding out about the Terminus blackmail). I'd love to hear your predictions on what their next big adventure is going to be, as well as whose arc is the whole of 22 going to follow. Leave me a review on a prediction, questions, or just comments about the story! Hope to hear some feedback from y'all! 'Til next time!