Eerie silence — perforated only by the occasional deep rumble — permeated the air in the underground room under the Aldredian outpost. Dim lights illuminated the lone machine standing in the middle of the cavernous space, as the mechanical arms above continued moving about and shooting tiny lasers into Liask’s unconscious body. After running for several hours, the machine had indeed appeared to reduce Liask’s infection to a small streak on her left arm… but the only one present to note this fact was Pierce.

“C’mon, come on…” Pierce muttered, impatiently tapping his foot as he watched the machine work. The room’s depth in the earth seemed to isolate it from everything going on above, but Pierce could still tell that fighting was ongoing — barely ten minutes had passed since everyone else had left to join the fight, besides. Without any way of knowing which way the fight was leaning, Pierce was left to speculate and hope for the best.

Just how much time does this damn machine need, he mused bitterly. It’s been running for hours and hours. I get that the infection is hard to deal with, but if Liask isn’t cured soon, then—! He stopped himself, his lips pursed as he vigorously shook his head. No. Don’t think like that, Pierce. As long as I’m here, as long as this machine is intact, Liask has a chance—

The sudden rumbling thunder of a nearby explosion ripped Pierce out of his thoughts. He snapped his attention upwards — just in time to note the flickering lights in the room, and the stuttering of the machine, as if something had interrupted the flow of power. “No, no…!” Pierce muttered, desperately looking over the machine. “Fuck, how do I fix this—!”

Suddenly, a massive red dome burst through the ceiling of the room, briefly bathing the entire space in deep red light before dissipating just as quickly as it had appeared. Immediately, the dome was replaced by mounds of collapsing dirt and debris, coupled with sparking wires and the sounds of wrenching metal as seemingly the entire building had been launched downwards into itself. Within a second, the lights had cut out, and the entire room filled with dust and debris, burying even Pierce against the ground.

What the—? Fuck!! Pierce’s brow furrowed as he felt the metal and dirt settling around him. Quickly, he began rapidly moving his arms and legs back and forth, leveraging his Velocitechnic speed to make enough room to summon his blade and use it to cut himself free. Darkness still surrounded him, as did dust all around — dust that made it difficult to breath, and irritated Pierce’s throat to the point of involuntarily coughing.

“Aaaaahahahahaha!!!”

“What—?” Pierce whipped around in search of the laughter he had just heard, only to find nothing amidst the darkness. A moment later, he could hear a couple of smaller impacts, not unlike the sounds of people landing on the ground — and a second after that, what remained of the facility’s lights flickered back on, revealing Nil’kin powering them with her Electrotechnism. Standing a short distance from Nil’kin was Rebehka, as well as Phoenix and Kestrel, who both rushed to Pierce’s side… and standing in the center of the room, atop a pile of mangled debris and twisted mechanical arms, was the laughing visage of Feral.

“Hahahaha!!!” She laughed loud and long, her fingers curled in front of her with long claws of Chaos Energy extending from each — a side effect from her Overdrive activating all of her Chaos abilities at once. As she laughed, a handful of other Bleeders landed amidst the debris, standing opposite of Feral from Rebehka and Nil’kin and taking up battle-ready postures. “Oh, wow~!” Feral remarked, her laughter eventually ceasing. “That was so EASY!!”

“What? What the…?” Pierce muttered, his mind reeling in the face of everything that had just happened. “You… what are you doing here?!”

“That’s what I’d like to know…” Nil’kin added as she cautiously eyed the Bleeders. “How the hell did you follow us here?”

“Presumably the same way that you tailed me,” Rebehka responded icily. “Great job leading the Bleeders here, by the way.”

Nil’kin passed Rebehka a glance, but didn’t otherwise respond. It was Phoenix who spoke up next, shouting at Feral, “seriously, what the hell are you doing here? I thought the Bleeders only cared about Treséd!”

“That we do!” Feral responded, the back of her hands on her hips for her long claws to extend sideways as she stared down at the others with psychopathic glee. “But our recent attack went a little south. We didn’t get to kill that bastard Sentry, and now he’s fortified Tresnon too much for us to try another attack. And now he’s refusin’ to leave, the fuckin’ coward!”

“I wonder why…” Rebehka drawled, her eyes sweeping across the other Bleeders present. That the Bleeders were Chaotics was quite clear, but without knowing what types, it was dangerous to carelessly start a fight. Instead, Rebehka continued speaking, hoping to find an opening to seize. “…Let me guess. You’re here for revenge?”

“Exactly!” Feral remarked. “If we wanna kill the Sentry, then we needa draw ‘im out! We needa make him seethe with rage! And the best way to do that is to kill his students and friends! And… what do we have here~?” Her attention drifted to the wreckage at her feet; she stooped down, slashing at the debris with her claws before grinning maniacally. “Well! Would ya look at this~!”

“…No!” Pierce shouted, watching as Feral hoisted Liask’s still unconscious body into the air by her neck. “You—!”

“Pierce!” Phoenix cut in, glancing at him out the corner of her eye. “Don’t let her provoke you!”

“’Provoke me’ my ass, she’s going to fucking kill Liask!” Pierce countered irately.

“Aw, is she your li’l girlfriend~?” Feral cooed, only to glance toward Rebehka and Nil’kin. “You two are really quiet, though! Are you that intimidated by the Bleeders~?”

“I’ll grant that you’re an annoying unexpected factor,” Nil’kin replied, “…but I have to say, it looks like you’ve actually done my job for me.”

Anger flashed across Rebehka’s face as she turned to glare at Nil’kin. “You can’t be serious!”

“Ahahaha!!” Feral laughed again, still holding Liask the entire time. “Wow! I’d heard that you two would be easy to turn against each other, but I didn’t think it’d be this easy!”

“Where would a Bleeder be hearing about the Chaos Knights and one of the Deans?” Phoenix questioned incredulously.

“Fuck that, only one thing matters right now!” Pierce cut in, “you Bleeder bitch — hand over Liask, now, or I’ll fucking—!” He winced back, his aggression curtailed by the lingering effects of Kaoné’s Overdrive, but still he persisted. “If you don’t fucking hand her over… then… then…!”

“Ooooh, you want her? Alright… here!!” Feral shouted — and then, in one swift motion, she plunged her right hand claws into Liask’s chest, using the momentum from her own swing to whip around in a circle and then hurl Liask at Pierce. “Catch!!”

“What—?!” Pierce’s eyes went wide; he reflexively moved to catch Liask out of the air and lay her down on the ground, but blood was already flowing profusely from the new wounds in her chest. “No—! Liask! No…!”

“You bitch…!” Phoenix growled, watching Pierce crouch over Liask before looking back at Feral, with Kestrel slowly lifting into the air, clearly preparing for a fight. “You won’t get away with this! Right, Pierce, Rebehka?!”

“Uh, Pierce…?!” Rebehka responded, “I need you to take a deep breath…!”

“What?” Phoenix glanced over at Rebehka, and then back at Pierce, finding that the latter was still clutching at Liask’s body. His chest rapidly heaved, and notably, a faint, dark aura had appeared around his arms and legs.

“You…!” Pierce snarled, his pitch lowering to an almost guttural level as his entire body tensed up, and the aura swept across him and darkened. “You…!!”

“Shit — Phoenix, Kestrel, get back!” Rebehka quickly demanded, already creating a wall of ice between them and Pierce.

“Aaaahahaha!!” Feral broke into psychotic laughter again. “Awww~, did I piss off her little boyfri—?”

In the middle of Feral’s words, Pierce’s head snapped up to look at her — revealing that the dark aura had entirely overtaken him, hiding even his face from view. In an instant, he disappeared from Liask’s side and slammed straight into Feral, launching her against the far wall a supersonic speeds. “Gah—!” she involuntarily yelped; bright golden lights flared across her body as energy shields protected her from direct harm, only for a bright visual static fuzz to sweep across her body — the telltale sign of her shields failing. And then, a second later — before she had any opportunity to respond — Pierce was on her, the aura around his hands sharpened into claws as he raked at Feral, opening terrible gashes across her face and rending apart the metal cybernetics in her chest.

Before Pierce could get much further, one of the Bleeder Chaotics bounded toward him and grabbed him off of Feral before whirling around and throwing him upwards, where he disappeared into the darkness above. Feral collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain, only to completely disappear a second later.

“What the hell?!” Phoenix remarked in confusion, watching as the Bleeders closed rank around Feral’s former location and the one that had thrown Pierce leaped high into the air, presumably to give chase. “Did Pierce just go berserk…? Shit, Kestrel, we need to—!”

“Wait, no, get over here!” Rebehka quickly shouted, gesturing for Phoenix and Kestrel to hurry. Phoenix passed her an annoyed glance, only to note that both Rebehka and Nil’kin were staring past her; at this, she turned around. Rebehka’s ice wall still obscured Liask’s body… but it was still quite clear that Liask was now standing, her head cocked in a decidedly unnatural position.

Quickly, Nil’kin channeled electricity through her body and then shattered Rebehka’s ice wall to pieces, following with another lightning strike targeted at Liask — but before the lighting could strike, Liask was gone, having leaped high into the air to disappear into the darkness above, not unlike Pierce and the Bleeder Chaotic. But almost as soon as Liask had disappeared, a loud explosion followed… as did silvery lances shooting out from on-high, targeted at everyone still standing amidst the debris. The lances deflected off of the shields of Nil’kin, Rebehka, Phoenix, and Kestrel, but pierced straight through each of the Bleeders — outside of Feral, none of them had been wearing energy shields. And now, they paid for it, as the silver lances impaling them melted down and silver streaks began rushing across their bodies.

“Shit… we need to get out of here!” Rebehka remarked, crafting platforms of ice underneath her, Phoenix, Kestrel, and Nil’kin. Without waiting for a response from the other three, the Dean rapidly raised them all through the air, through the darkness above and back to the wide-open roof of the building — all while passing by falling metal and debris from the newly wrecked ship that the Bleeders had arrived on.

“What the… what?!” Phoenix exclaimed in confusion as Rebehka set them down on the remaining intact portions of the outpost roof. “What— what’s going on?!”

“Pierce, berserk… Liask, infected,” Kestrel muttered.

“You catch on fast, Earthian,” Nil’kin declared.

“I hate to say it, but that’s right,” Rebehka said. “Liask… she’s lost. Interrupting the cure process so violently, and then being stabbed in the chest like that — the infection will no doubt have rapidly taken over her body. But even so, she shouldn’t have been able to infect the Bleeders on her own, or even recover that quickly. Where the hell did the extra nanites come from?”

“There’s only one answer — those Bleeder idiots brought some with them,” Nil’kin stated. “Part of their ‘revenge’, no doubt. And a massive problem, for us.”

“And Shade no doubt rescued Feral, given how quickly Feral just disappeared…” Rebehka muttered. “With any luck, they’ll flee the area, but we have to watch out for potential attempts to sabotage us…”

“That’s— what…?” Phoenix looked at Rebehka, still stunned and confused. “But… what do we do? We can — can we still save Liask?”

Rebehka’s expression clouded over. “…We need to focus on controlling the situation,” she said. “We don’t have a Critical Infection just yet — there aren’t enough nanites around. The infection still needs living matter to spread at this stage, and all of the plant life in the immediate surroundings is long dead… but beyond the space barrier outside the outpost, there’s bound to be living trees and animal life. If the infection gets out there in this state, then it could rapidly spread out of control and swallow the islands! We need to stop Liask!”

“My Knights and I can handle that well enough,” Nil’kin asserted. “But can you, Dean? Earthians? Will you be able to do what needs to be done?”

“Pierce?” Kestrel questioned.

“Shit, we do need to deal with him, too…” Rebehka muttered, her hand on her head in frustration. “Having a berserk Velocitechnic around is not going to help one bit… but!” She looked over at Phoenix and Kestrel. “Your Ayas Weapons — they should be able to instantly end the Berserk State. If you can hit Pierce just once with one of your weapons, then you’ll snap him out of it!”

“Won’t that just stab him?!” Phoenix responded incredulously.

“No — look, it’s Ayas Weapon bullshit, I don’t have time to explain!” Rebehka replied, already crafting an ice platform under her feet as Nil’kin turned to face the infected Bleeders that crawled out of the outpost. “I need the two of you to go after Pierce! The rest of us can deal with Liask and the infection! But we need to hurry!”

“Uh… right!” Phoenix replied uneasily as Kestrel lifted her into the air to fly off, leaving Rebehka and Nil’kin to face off with the infected Bleeders.