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Episode 18: On The Trail

  The three moons shine brightly in the night sky, surrounded by a beautiful tapestry of stars, cosmic dust, and planets, lighting the sky in a brilliant rainbow of silvers and colors. The sandy plains surrounding the Hakkan Valley are blissfully quiet, with only the small sounds of insects chirping and rodents chittering breaking up the peaceful silence. At least until a single blue quad comes roaring down through the Valley, causing the tiny night creatures to flee in panic.

  Her sandy-brown hood flapping in the wind, her gold-flaked eyes hidden under a set of goggles, Anza Reyes stares dead ahead, scanning the horizon for the entrance to the Irroco Caves in the various rocky outcroppings scattered throughout the Lowlands. She continues her long, lonely drive through the desert for what feels like hours, left with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. Her mind wanders to her various travels over the years, the many adventures she’s had, the many foes she’s faced, ultimately landing on the current threat facing her.

  For two years now, many towns near the northern hemisphere have been assaulted by bandit gangs armed with strange weapons and supported by strange monsters infused with horrifying mechanical augmentations. After dealing with one of these mechanized beasts herself, she set off to hunt down whoever was creating them and to put a stop to their madness. Over the past few months, Anza has gotten closer and closer to an answer, but she has never found the man responsible for this: Professor Franklin Vyle. Everywhere she goes she finds his labs, his warped and mutilated creations, his armies of bandits, even his best assassins, but never him.

  She sighs to herself, shaking a tiredness out of her eyes and forcing herself to focus once again. No use getting agitated now. She’s found a new lead, and she has a new tool to help her finally find this madman. She can feel the pressure of the radio spike in her pocket pressing up against her thigh, a reminder that this time, no matter where he may be hiding, no matter how many monsters he throws at her, the Prof will not escape.

  As she continues driving through the desert, a small metallic glint catches her eye, a brief warning before the sound of rapid gunfire erupts from a plateau nearby, sending a storm of bullets her way. She smiles and speeds up, having finally found her target. She weaves out of the way of a wave of gunfire then banks hard to the right, heading straight towards the Irroco Caves. Another burst of bullets comes screaming toward her, but she simply holds a hand out and splays her fingers, crafting a tangled web of psychic tendrils in front of her, blocking and destroying the useless lead pellets with a smirk.

  “You’ll have to do better than that, idiotas,” she says, putting on an extra burst of speed and rushing directly forward. She closes the gap to the plateau in no time, leaping off of her quad and letting it slide to a halt just off from the main gate, taking out two guards instantly before they can even react.

  The remaining five bandits all draw their weapons or summon their psychic abilities, ready to defend their stronghold no matter what. Anza simply smirks, excited by the prospect of a challenge. She wraps her arms in coppery tethers of light and dashes forward, batting away an incoming sphere of black energy with the back of her hand and booking it straight for the woman who took the first shot. To her credit, the bandit does manage to weave out of the way of Anza’s first strike, slipping through a handful of psychic tethers with a blast of energy in each hand, rushing to face her opponent head-on. Anza laughs and catches the woman’s first strike with her left hand, using the bandit’s momentum against her and tossing her to the ground, her dark blonde hair billowing in the breeze as she goes flying for just a moment before crashing suddenly back to the ground.

  While the woman recovers, Anza takes her next target down with a simple tether blow to the face, striking between another bandit’s eyes with a brilliant flash of orangish-red and instantly knocking him out cold. Two of the remaining bandits fall back to lay down cover fire from different stone outcroppings, leaving just one more directly guarding the gate, his entire body glowing with brilliant cyan light.

  “Lo siento, se?ora, but I can’t let you pass,” he says, his accent similar to Anza’s, if a bit thinner. He strikes his fists together to create a bright burst of cyan light, trying to intimidate the older woman with his power and instead simply making her chuckle.

  “Eres lindo, hombrecito, pero eres débil,” she replies with a cocky smirk, giving the bandit a split second to get offended before she suddenly whips her arms forward, ensnaring him in a web of tethers and pulling him directly into a leaping knee shot, striking him in the jaw and shattering bone on impact, causing him to go flying into the air for just a second until Anza latches onto him again and smashes him directly into the front gate, breaking it open at the hinges with a loud, resonating thud.

  At the sight of their comrade being so easily defeated, the other two bandits open fire, spraying wildly into the night, trying to pin Anza down in the crossfire, to no avail. She dives below the initial wave of bullets and stretches out two sets of tethers into both boulders the bandits are hiding behind. With a mighty cry of exertion, she rips the stones out from the ground, completely destroying the bandits’ cover and forcing them to run to avoid being crushed by the other’s boulder.

  While all of this is happening, the woman finally manages to recover from her fall and slowly staggers to her feet, preparing two blasts of dark power in either hand, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Anza sees the female bandit preparing her attack and rolls to the side, just barely dodging the attack before kicking herself back to her feet, her knees poised to bolt at any second, her fists once again wrapped in her psychic tethers. She gives the woman a brief taunt, allowing her to take the first shot, which she immediately does, condensing her gathered energy into one shot and firing it out with a rageful scream.

  Anza doesn’t break her pose even a little. Using the two fingers she had taunted the woman with, she charges up and flicks out a single, intensely powerful string of coppery energy, popping the dark blast like a bubble and soaring directly through it to strike the woman in the gut, blowing her back a few feet, giving Anza just enough time to react to the gunners’ second wave of bullet fire and fall back.

  “Okay, ni?os, this has been fun, but I’ve got work to do,” Anza says with a small smile, gathering her strength and supercharging the tethers built up around her, causing a small whirlwind of energy and reddish sparks as she winds up and slashes her arms out wide with a shout, sending out a series of massive tethers that handily blast away the remaining bandits, smashing them against the plateau walls with enough force to leave small cracks in the stone and leave the bandits all completely unconscious.

  With the front guard taken care of, Anza makes her way into the base, feeling her left pocket just to ensure the radio spike survived the brief scuffle and letting out a small sigh of relief when she finds it undamaged. She darts into the dimly lit base, slipping past the bandit she’d tossed inside with a small apology and continuing her way deeper into the winding caverns of the Irroco Caves. Just past the front gate is a sort of hub room full of half-emptied crates of weapons and supplies, with three branching pathways splitting off from the main area. She takes a second to consider her path forward before simply shrugging and choosing the center path, walking into the dark corridor with her arms tensed, ready for anything.

  She manages to get decently far in before she is pinned down by a sudden spray of bullets from the left side. She barely manages to avoid getting hit and dashes behind a support beam, readying her defenses and preparing to face whatever weapons the bandits may have in store. She dives out into the rocky corridors with a web of tethers held in front of her, blocking the retaliatory gunfire easily, though she still can’t see exactly who or what is shooting at her. She decides to simply charge the hidden gunner and rushes forward at full speed, dropping one arm to summon a trail of tethers behind her, latching onto stray chunks of stone and rubble as she goes. She waits until there is a brief halt in the gunfire to plant her feet and launch her gathered projectiles at whoever is trying to gun her down. The stones soar down the hallway at tremendous speeds, hurtling through the air until they suddenly collide with something, something that lets out a small cry of startled pain.

  A few more stones manage to find their targets, drawing even more screeching cries of pain until the hallway is completely cleared out. Anza drops her shield but keeps her arms wrapped in tethers, just in case, making her way further down the hallway to examine whatever she had struck down. She walks up to one of her rocks and kneels down next to it, finding a broken, clawed wing pinned beneath the heavy stone. Carefully, she lifts it up to get a proper look at the mutilated beast that had been trying to kill her: a small species of cave kinrik, with a series of miniature guns crudely fused to its chest, and what looks like tiny motors spliced into its shoulders and spine, probably to help it fly with the added weight of the guns.

  “Bruto,” Anza mutters to herself, dropping the broken corpse to the ground and trying to wipe the stains off of her fingers. She gets back to her feet and continues her trek further into the caves, keeping a mental map of the various twists and turns she’s taken along the way so she can find her way back out. She springs a few more monster traps along the way, but none of them give her much of a challenge, outside of the serious challenge of not getting their disgusting guts all over her as they all try and fail to rip her apart in a sickening variety of ways.

  “Where are you, cowards?” She finally calls out into the caves after fighting off yet another wave of monsters, glaring into the labyrinth of hallways and storage rooms. “Are you going to keep wasting your boss’ supplies, or will you step up and fight?” She waits for a brief moment for any sort of reaction, turning her head slightly as she hears a small scuffling noise come from her right. Her ears perk up at the soft sound of energy building up, giving her just enough time to dodge an incoming blade of red energy.

  “That’s more like it! ?Vamos!” She exclaims with excited glee, ripping a few more chunks of stone out from the walls with her tethers and slinging them into the room to her right, taking out a stray bandit as he dives out to try and snipe her. A half-dozen other bandits all ready themselves for battle, worry clearly showing on their faces.

  “When’s that backup getting here?” Another bandit shouts, forging some turquoise green psionic armor around himself and charging Anza head-on, his constructs colliding with her tethered arms in a small burst of coppery light.

  “ETA is ten minutes, boss,” one woman replies, turning around from a radio station and loading a high caliber round into a shotgun and taking aim for Anza’s skull. “Duck!”

  The armored bandit smirks and shoves Anza away, leaving a wide enough opening for the woman to fire off her shotgun. Anza’s eyes go wide as she slips under the massive scattering of lead pellets, getting clipped here and there by a few stray shots, leaving some small trails of blood on her arm. Unbothered by these small wounds, Anza leaps back to her feet with a smile on her face, her right fist fully enveloped in orangish coils of energy, her eyes locked onto the woman who had shot her, only to be blown down to her knees by a sudden burst of telekinetic force.

  “Pin her down!” The armored bandit orders, rushing forward to capitalize on her sudden vulnerability. One of the bandits summons multiple scarlet red blades and chucks them forward, forcing Anza to roll out of the way, right into the armored bandit’s attack as he comes crashing down, his energized boots landing hard against her back, almost forcing her completely flat, though she manages to stay on her knees through it all.

  She manages to push the bandit off of her and is about to stand back up when another burst of telekinetic energy forces her flat on her face, holding her down despite her best efforts. Realizing how much trouble she’s in, Anza raises a large barrier around her to protect herself from another volley of psychic attacks and bullets, much to the bandits’ annoyance. As the bandits continue to wail against her defenses, Anza grits her teeth and plants her palms firmly to the ground, focusing her energy into the cave floor and spreading a sort of root system of tethers across the room until she has every bandit surrounded on all sides.

  “Juego terminado, perdedores,” she says through a squashed smile, sending one last burst of energy through her tethers, causing them to erupt from below, giving each bandit a split second of horrified realization before completely ensnaring them and dragging them to the hard stone with ferocious force, knocking them out cold. The psychic grip keeping her pinned to the floor eases up, allowing her to get back to her feet with a soft grunt. “I’ll admit, you guys are good. Didn’t think I’d have to try that hard,” she says casually, stretching out some of the soreness from her body and making her way casually to the communications array in the back of the room.

  She pulls the radio spike out from her pocket and splits it in half, jacking one end of it directly into the radio transmitter and activating the other half with a quick press of her thumb. After a split second of calibration, the two halves of the device are completely synced up to the various frequencies used by the bandits the Prof has working for him. Anza smirks as she listens to the quiet sounds of radio chatter coming from her receiver, giving a quiet thanks to the Prof for this little piece of work. Satisfied with her progress, she leans over to scrub through this base’s communication log to see if she can find any hints as to where to go next.

  She only gets a few minutes into the recordings until something piques her interest: a call for backup from just a few moments ago. She scrubs through the audio real quick, skipping past the first few sentences describing her invasion of the base and her subsequent entrance into this very room. She can hear her own voice echoing back at her in the background static of the call, then one simple reply from the person at the other end of the call.

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  “Understood. Suna out.”

  That voice makes Anza’s blood freeze in her veins, her heart stop beating for a moment, her eyes go wide in sheer terror. Suna. Max Suna. “Quemarme,” she mutters under her breath before stuffing the receiver in her pocket and bolting out of the comms room as fast as she can. If she heard that bandit girl right, Suna had said he’d be here in ten minutes, probably closer to five counting all of the time she’d wasted fighting. Stupid, so stupid. She’d heard that there would be backup, but she hadn’t cared. She was so hyper-fixated on catching the Prof that she ignored such a blatant warning.

  She keeps kicking herself as she wanders through the vast catacombs, trying to remember which paths she had taken to get here in the first place. After the third wrong turn, she winds up right back where she had started. “Enfoque, Anza. éste no es momento de entrar en pánico,” she scolds herself, smacking her face a few times to recenter her mind. She takes a second to think about the path she had taken to get here, then runs it in reverse, forming the shortest way out of the Irroco Base she can imagine. With a quick nod of her head to reassure herself of her choice, she bolts back out of the comms room and follows her mental map perfectly, finally seeing the beautiful light of the night sky just ahead of her as she nears the exit.

  Then the whole world instantly goes black. She doesn’t have any time to react or even realize she’s not alone in the caves. One second she’s racing for freedom, the next she feels a vicious jab of blunt metal crashing into her stomach, then the feeling of bones snapping against stone as she goes flying back into a wall, leaving a crater upon impact. Wheezing and struggling for breath and sight, Anza barely has time to react to the follow-up blow as some cloaked form bathed in pale green light erupts forward, its fist cocked back and ready to crush Anza’s head. Anza ducks under the blow and rolls out of the way just in time to see her pursuer punch their entire arm into the stone, leaving only their elbow visible.

  Anza tries to take advantage of this by sweeping her opponent’s legs, only for her shins to smack right into cold hard steel with a painful reverberating crunch. She lets out a small cry of pain before the cloaked figure pulls their arm back out, revealing a macabre and mangled mess of steel parts, motors, tubes, and gears. The cloaked figure is once again bathed in jade light as they heft their mechanical arm high into the air, the sounds of a turbine screaming out as a small wick of green fire lights at the tip of their elbow. Anza only has a second to see into her attacker’s cold, dead, expressionless eyes before they launch their final blow, the small flame erupting into a massive jetstream of pale greens as their steel fist comes screaming down to smash Anza’s face.

  “That’s enough, Sinker. Hold,” a smooth, twangy voice says from the cave entrance. Sinker’s fist halts just an inch above Anza’s face, the green light fading as they drop their energy and slowly straighten up, still staring emotionlessly down at their prey for a brief second before taking a few steps back, allowing Anza to slowly get back to her feet, glaring at the cave entrance as an older man with elegantly graying hair and a thin beard walks into view, the light from the moons glinting softly off of his very formal coat and slacks. “Well, I guess they weren’t lying after all. Anza Reyes. How the heck are ya doing, mate?”

  “Suna,” Anza grinds out like it’s a curse. “Creí que te había dicho que murieras, abuelo.”

  “Save it, love. You know I don’t speak that,” Suna replies with a smirk, crossing his arms and matching Anza’s glare. “So, what do you think of my new friend? She’s quite a beauty, ain’t she? Franky really did her right with those upgrades, wouldn’t you say?”

  Anza takes a second to examine Sinker’s mechanical arm and legs, grimacing at the idea of having someone’s limbs chopped off and replaced so casually. “Yeah, she’s something, alright. Be sure to tell the Prof I said his craftsmanship needs some work when I send you two packing.”

  Suna chuckles heartily at that, letting his arms drop and hang loose, his fingers glowing with subtle silvery light. “I will, but only after I bury you alive in here, love. You ain’t getting away this time. I hope you’ve made peace with god…” In a burst of blinding speed and light, he erupts forward, propelling himself on a stream of sand. “Because I’m sending you to him!” He thrusts his hand forward, using telekinesis to summon a massive sand construct in the shape of a fist barreling directly into Anza’s gut, which she just barely blocks in time with a web of tethers, leaving her upper half exposed for his second strike: a swift right hook to her jaw.

  Anza staggers back several feet, her vision going hazy once again as Sinker suddenly joins the fray, her entire body glowing with jade green energy as she rushes forward, her mechanical arm bursting into green flames as she charges up another rocket-propelled strike, which Anza manages to redirect with a quick burst from her tethers, knocking Sinker just barely astray so her blow only grazes Anza’s shoulder and she goes soaring past her target. Anza tries to press her offensive by latching onto Sinker with several supercharged tethers and attempting to throw her into a nearby wall, but Sinker plants her feet firmly in the ground, small thrusters of green flames coming to life to propel her even faster down the hallway, forcing Anza to be yanked from her position and go flying straight towards Sinker’s prepared fist as she suddenly stops and whips around, still staring coldly forward as she prepares to kill Anza.

  Anza drops her tethers at the last second and forms a barrier around herself, shielding her body from the brunt of the attack and launching her far out of the caves, only to be reeled back in by a sudden flurry of sand and wind as Suna drags her back into striking range. Anza’s back gets pressed firmly into a hand-shaped sand construct as she is rocketed back into the caves. Reacting purely on instinct, Anza whips her arms upward and latches onto the edge of the cave’s peak, pulling herself high into the air and out of Suna’s trap. While she flies she charges up another set of tethers and throws her arms down with a shout, ripping through the cave entrance and grabbing onto Suna’s body, much to his surprise, ripping him through stone and into the air. Suna manages to stay unharmed by using a telekinetic field to protect himself, much to Anza’s annoyance. Using her momentum, Anza spins herself around as fast as she can, building up power until she finally lets go and chucks him into the cave’s topside. Before he can crash into the stone, however, Suna cushions the blow with a small field of shimmering silver energy, saving himself from any damage while also latching onto Anza with his mind and shoving her down into the sand below as if he was swatting a fly.

  Anza crashes to the ground on her knees, still ready to fight but definitely not in the best shape. A brief sense of energy spikes through her mind, giving her just enough of a warning to avoid Sinker’s soaring strike once again, only this time when Anza tries to grab onto the mechanized assassin, she dodges the attack, rolling out of its way and spinning on her heel thrusters, revealing her mechanical arm folding in on itself, forming what appears to be the barrel of a massive gun. Anza’s eyes go wide as she senses the sheer power of the attack emanating from Sinker’s upgrades, stunning her just long enough for the weapon to fully charge and release a giant beam of pale green light straight for Anza. She manages to get to her feet and start sprinting just in time to avoid the blast as it soars past her and completely annihilates the cave entrance, forcing Suna to leap away for his safety. Sinker corrects her aim and starts trailing after her prey, forcing her to keep running as she charges jade energy into her purely human left fist. The beam strike ends just as Sinker launches herself forward with inhuman speed, locking onto Anza’s location and landing true, striking the older woman squarely in the shoulder, sending her flying back toward the collapsing cave with an explosion of power.

  Anza crashes into the rubble of the Irroco Caves, just barely protecting herself in a bubble of fading tethers before Sinker comes roaring back, using her mechanical arm to grab her prey, spin around, and slam her into the dirt, charging up her left fist to deliver an explosive thrust as Anza bounces back into the air, rocketing her far away once again, only this time she crashes into a constructed wall of sand, the impact crater she leaves in the glowing construct quickly morphing around her and turning into two separate walls of silvery dust on either side of her as Suna grabs onto her and starts pulling the two constructs apart, taking Anza’s entangled limbs with them. Anza cries out in agony, feeling her joints crack and pop, her nerves scream in protest as her body is slowly pulled further and further apart.

  “Sorry, love. It’s nothing personal. Professor’s orders, you know?” Suna says callously, walking forward and gazing at Anza casually, waiting for Sinker to arrive behind Anza in a burst of flaming energy, her arm cannon charging up for the final blow. “I figured I’d let Sinker give you a quick death. I owe you that much after all we’ve been through, eh?” Anza doesn’t reply, she simply lets her head lang low, her eyes closed and her breathing slowing down, trying to find one last moment of peace. “Ah, well. Goodbye, Anza. It’s been a real treat, finally killing you.”

  Suna turns his back and walks away, giving his subordinate a clear line of fire to finally erase Anza from existence. Sinker takes the shot, bracing herself with her heel thrusters as a giant beam of psychic energy erupts from her arm with a massive crash. Just as soon as she fires, Anza’s eyes snap open, her irises glowing with coppery lightning as a sudden burst of power rushes through her whole body and mind. A veritable forest of psychic tendrils erupt up from the ground, completely blocking Sinker’s finishing shot as well as destroying a decent chunk of the Lowlands as both assassins are chased off by the unexpected spikes of vengeful orange light.

  Sinker lets her blast fade away as she rockets back out of the tendrils’ way, while Suna raises a telekinetic barrier to deflect the spires, dropping his sand constructs in the process. Anza slinks down gracefully to the ground, her entire body surrounded and bathed in shimmering bolts of copper lightning, her eyes still flashing the same color.

  “Did you really think that was all I had, abuelo?” Anza asks, her face showing a cocky smirk, but her voice strangely muted and numb, as if she wasn’t all there. “You should know by now…” She extends a hand and flips two fingers up, summoning another burst of psychic tendrils from the ground, completely surrounding her enemies in mutating, grasping spires. “You never had a chance.”

  Several of these massive spires manage to grab onto Sinker and Suna, raising them high into the air as Anza lifts her hands up, then sends them crashing back down with a swift chop, cratering both assassins in a single blow. Anza lets some of the coppery spires fade away so she can see the results of her handiwork, only to be met by an unnaturally quick counter strike from Sinker, her cloak torn to shreds, revealing a youthful, scarred, and darkly complected face from under the hood, as well as eyes that suddenly burn with the fiery intensity of pure fury.

  “Just die,” she says, her voice hoarse and muted, but her rage coming through quite clearly. She clashes her mechanical fist with Anza’s aura, tearing through the barrier of sheer willpower and landing another strike in Anza’s gut.

  Anza manages to stand her ground this time and grabs onto the young woman’s arm with a bunch of tethers, pulling her down into a psychically enhanced knee thrust that launches her up before she pulls her back down into the ground with the tethers, spinning around and dragging the assassin through the rocky sand at breakneck speeds before she plants her feet and hurls her towards the collapsed caves, hoping beyond hope that this will finally end it. She doesn’t get a chance to see if it works, however, as a sudden whirlwind erupts all around her, whipping the sand and rocks and debris into a supernatural sandstorm.

  “You stupid girl,” Suna says slowly as he rises out of his crater, floating into the air with his arms outstretched, his body enveloped in silver energy, not even a speck of dust showing on his well-tailored suit. “I’ve killed people with twice your skill and power. If you really thought that little display would end it, then you’re dumber than I thought.” He reaches out a hand and grabs Anza with his mind, hoisting her high into the air, right at the epicenter of the storm, where multiple arcs of yellowish lightning are starting to form. “I wonder, how many strikes can you handle before you’re just charcoal, love?” He shouts, forcing the sandstorm to speed up so that the bolts of static energy finally start to leap out, seeking the nearest point to strike.

  Once, twice, three times! Shock after shock bursts down from the storm, striking Anza’s coppery aura with hateful force, sapping just that much more energy with each bolt. Anza shouts in pain as she is bombarded by this lightning, trying to keep her focus up, trying to form a stronger defense against Suna’s telekinetic grip, anything to escape this storm, but to no avail. She simply has to hang there and take it, each burst of lightning coming closer and closer to breaking her aura and finally landing true. The strain of keeping up her heightened state of power starts to take its toll on her as well. She can feel her pools of psychic energy slowly running dry with each passing second, but at the same time she can also vaguely sense Suna’s reserves also depleting, and much quicker thanks to the storm. If she can just hold out a little while longer…

  The winds start to die down as Suna slowly drops to the ground, his field of silver energy dimming as he starts to run himself dry. After one last lightning strike just barely doesn’t break through Anza’s defenses, Suna decides to drop the storm and not exhaust himself completely, instead opting to simply toss his charred and limp rival aside while he catches his breath in the fading storm. Anza takes a brief moment to revel in the sudden relief of not being blasted by lightning until she feels the incoming surge of power emanating from Sinker as the young assassin soars into the air with a mighty leap, latches onto Anza with her mechanical arm, activates her thrusters, and rockets down at terminal velocity, her eyes wild and full of bloodlust as she drags a screaming Anza down into the debris of the Irroco Caves.

  A massive explosion of green and orange light bursts out from the rubble, leaving a massive cloud of atomized stone and shattered glass in the air. Standing in the middle of a crater at least fifty feet across, hovering shakily in the air, Sinker stares down at Anza’s limp and fading form, watching with stone-cold glee as the orangish energy disappears from her victim’s eyes and body, leaving her just a broken and bloodied old woman. Sinker drops to her knees, her mechanical upgrades smoking and sparking from overuse and battle damage, but still functional. She waits obediently for Suna to arrive, awaiting further instructions.

  After a brief pause, Suna struts his way over to the crater, suspending several boulders in the air and crushing them into hundreds of jagged chunks of rubble. “Sinker, disengage. Wait by the buggy.” Sinker nods once and walks away mechanically, leaving just Suna and Anza in the pit. Suna takes a brief moment to look down at his best opponent to date, a small hint of nostalgic sorrow twinging his mind at the thought of losing such a good rival. “I told you, mate,” he sighs, taking a few steps away until he’s out of the crater, dropping his hand and the psychic field keeping the rubble suspended. “I’m burying you. For good.”

  Anza looks up weakly to see hundreds of pounds worth of stone raining down on her. She raises her arm as if to stop the deluge of rubble, only to be completely buried under a small mountain as if the planet itself has chosen to become her tomb. The night goes silent once again, save for the small sound of a buggy engine igniting and departing, leaving the stone mound all alone, a marker of Max Suna’s greatest clash.

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