"Your first mission," Sia declared, producing a sleek, chrome teleporter from beneath her midnight-blue cloak, "is to eliminate an exoskeletal creature… on Earth."
"Wait—aren't we already on Earth?" Liana asked, cracking her new whip experimentally. The weapon snapped through the air like a serpent made of lightning.
"Earth 2," Gara replied flatly, stepping forward with a solemn nod. Before anyone could question him or even process the words, he pressed a glowing glyph on the device.
A brilliant pulse of light consumed them.
The sensation was immediate and violent—muscles twisted, bones stretched, and nerves screamed as space itself bent around them. The laws of reality splintered for a moment, and then—weightlessness. They were falling.
"Zack! A little warning would've been nice!" Mia shrieked, arms and legs flailing wildly as she plummeted.
She wasn't wrong. Zack should've seen this coming. But his precognition wasn't some flawless miracle—it was like watching flickering images from a broken projector. He caught fragments of potential futures, nothing whole, nothing certain. Lately, the glimpses had turned dark. Ominous. Worse yet, Sia and Alex were conspicuously absent from every vision.
"It was unavoidable!" Zack yelled, wind ripping past his face. He twisted mid-air, attempting to stabilize himself.
"We're gonna crash!" Alex howled. Already his form was shifting—bones snapping audibly as thick fur rippled across bulging muscles. Claws erupted from his fingertips. His eyes flared yellow.
"Don't waste energy!" Zack screamed, panic slicing into his voice. "Your powers might not work here!"
"Wait—wasn't this supposed to take two seco—!" Liana started, but the rest of her words were swallowed by the thunderous impact.
They hit hard. Earth cracked beneath them, forming a small crater ringed with scorched earth and scattered debris.
Silence followed.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then: a groan. Alex's limbs twitched violently as his hybrid body restructured, healing with grisly efficiency. Zack wheezed, grateful for the reinforced armor that had taken most of the blow. Lily lay in a smoking ring of scorched stone, having conjured a protective blaze at the last second. Her fireproof suit—one of her few cautious decisions—was intact.
Liana rose slowly, her long coat shredded and dirt-streaked. Her body had absorbed the impact like bedrock. She shook off dust like it was an annoyance.
"Get off me!" Alex growled.
Mia, who had landed squarely on his back, smirked and rolled off. "Sorry, fuzzy. You're surprisingly plush for a murder machine."
Alex snarled but let it go, too tired to argue. "Where the hell are we?"
"This… this used to be the Indian Ocean," Liana muttered, eyes scanning a desolate horizon.
Zack's brow furrowed as he activated his foresight. "There's no water. Just scorched craters and dust. It looks like someone nuked the planet."
"No," Lily said sharply, her gaze narrow and tense. "This isn't post-war damage. These formations—they're not natural."
"So either we're back home after Armageddon," Alex said grimly, "or this is what Gara meant by Earth 2."
"Maybe it's another simulation," Mia offered weakly, half-hopeful.
"At least I can't actually die in a sim," Zack said with a nervous chuckle.
"Idiot," Liana snapped. "Can't you smell it? This place reeks of blood."
That silenced them. Even Mia's usual quip died in her throat.
"Mission first," Lily said, voice like cut glass. She flexed her hands and ignited her flame-gauntlets with a hiss. "We kill the creature. Then we get the hell out."
Then—thump.
The ground vibrated.
A low groan echoed from beneath them, like the earth itself was waking up. Dust curled upward in slow spirals.
Something enormous was moving underground.
"RUN!" Zack shouted, eyes flashing. He didn't need foresight to know what came next.
No one hesitated. Every instinct screamed in unison. They bolted.
Alex, now fully transformed into a towering beast of muscle and fur, crouched low. "Get on!"
Mia and Lily leapt onto his back, clutching tightly as he launched into a sprint. His claws tore into the broken ground, propelling him forward at near-sonic speed.
Zack raced ahead, vision flickering with glimpses of branching paths—some ended in blood, others in flame. He called out turns and dodges with seconds to spare.
Behind them, the land exploded.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of spindly figures erupted from beneath the crust. Chitinous limbs gleamed like razors. Empty eyes reflected no soul, only hunger.
"Keep them off us!" Alex roared.
"On it!" Lily shouted, hurling a barrage of fireballs into the swarm. Screeches tore through the air as some of the creatures ignited, writhing and collapsing.
Liana darted alongside them, whip trailing sparks. Her mind raced, counting, calculating. "There are too many. If they keep multiplying, we won't survive this chase."
One of the exoskeletal monsters lunged. Liana's whip cracked—severing its head in a clean arc of violet light.
The swarm didn't flinch.
"Faster!" Mia yelled, clinging tighter to Alex.
"They're driving us somewhere," Zack called back. "This isn't random—it's a herd tactic. They're steering us."
"To what?" Lily shouted.
"To something worse," Zack muttered.
The landscape twisted ahead—jagged cliffs, broken cities swallowed by sand, monuments shattered like toys. The sky was an eerie green-gray, choked with ash.
In the distance, something waited. A massive silhouette. Still. Watching.
And breathing.
The hunt had only just begun.