Vent stood in the midst of the rubble that was formally Paradise Enterprises. His company. His home. The labs and training grounds in the basement floors were still intact, but the height of the building had always stood for something, for the paradise Lucas had been trying to create. Now it was gone, it and its former owner, destroyed by a bunch of kids. The man he had sworn to protect, killed by the child he had failed to kill himself. Vent kicked debris into the lake nearby.

“Eww, don’t kick that stuff into my lake.”

Vent turned. Aqua and Pyro were making their way through the debris to where he was.

“What did you find?” Vent asked.

“A few hard drives survived the building collapse,” Aqua replied, handing Vent a stack of papers. “We didn’t find anything of much importance but…”

Vent flipped through the pages. Mission debriefings, informational profiles, and more documents that Vent already had. “But what?”

“But this,” Aqua handed him a plastic card. “Lucas left you everything. Even access to the top level security areas.”

He flipped the card in his hand. “Area C” was written on it. He knew where that was, he had seen the door; Area C was the bottom floor of the underground facility. He never had clearance to get in, until now. All of Lucas’s secrets, all of his projects, were now in Vent’s hands.

“Uhhh… Vent?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you going to do?”

Aqua’s question was vague, but Vent knew what she meant. Paradise was their home, and they now only had each other to depend upon. They knew nothing but to kill, so it only made sense to continue base operations.

“We’ll keep this whole thing going,” Vent replied, slipping the key card into his pocket. “First thing, we’ll get this tower rebuilt. With the money that Lucas left us, that should be easy. We’ll find out what to do after that.”

All at once, Vent, Pyro, and Aqua wheeled around as a large silhouette darted through the trees and around the debris, racing towards them at blinding speed. Noct appeared out of nowhere, throwing a flurry of knives at the newcomer. It swatted them out of the way, losing no speed at all. Pyro ran forward and grabbed its fists, stopping it in its tracks, and the four of them soon saw that whatever they were facing certainly wasn’t human.

***

Alan let his head roll around on the headrest of his seat. “Where is this place again?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Sean snapped.

Alan let his head roll back the other way. Sean seemed a lot more irritated than normal. Alan wondered if he was as bored as he himself was. As much as he hated to say it, fighting Paradise Enterprises gave them something to do. A way to vent. Now they had to deal with their problems the normal way. What is the normal way, anyway?

Alan rolled his head back towards Sean, but over his own shoulder at the two girls in the back seat. Nikki was staring out the window while Daniela slurped down a slushie she got when Sean stopped for gas at a 7-11.

“Want some?” she offered, holding it out.

“Uhh, no thanks,” Alan replied. “Not too thirsty.” Daniela shrugged and continued slurping her drink. Alan turned back to Sean. “How far now?”

Sean turned up the volume on the car stereo.

Fortunately for Alan, they were almost to their destination. They pulled up to Max’s house and Alan quickly got out, stretching his arms.

“I hate long drives,” he said as Sean, Daniela and Nikki got out and slammed their doors shut.

“Not my problem,” Sean answered. His voice sounded soft, but Alan knew better. To Sean, even the quietest of sounds could be a deadly weapon. Out of all the kids he knew with abilities, Sean definitely had the most mastery over his own power. Except for maybe Rose.

Alan approached the house and rapped on the door hard with his knuckles. He heard footsteps and the door swung open. Rose stood in the doorway, beaming at them all.

“Well, if it isn’t Goldy, Beat, and the gravity twins!” she said cheerfully. “C’mon in, everyone else is downstairs!”

She led them into the colossal voids of the house. It was truly massive, with random busts of important-looking people scattered about. A spiral staircase led upstairs, and as Alan could imagine, several more stories upward.

“Is this your house, Rose?” Daniela asked, viewing a rather large painting of nothing at all interesting.

“No way! This is Mirror’s house,” she replied, also looking at the large painting. “Its freaking huge isn’t it?”

Everyone nodded in unison. They all agreed; the house was freaking huge.

Rose led them down into the basement, into a large dark room that Alan compared to the Batcave. A large computer monitor on the far side of the room reinforced this idea. Max was typing away at his computer while 3 figures sat on a large couch near a larger coffee table. As Alan and the others approached, they stood up to say their hellos.

“Hey,” Zach said.

“Hi,” Lexi said. Kenta said nothing, only nodding at them.

Alan grinned. The three quietest members all sitting at a table together. He wondered if they had talked at all before Sean, Daniela, Nikki and himself had arrived. Rose walked straight up to Max, spinning his chair around so that he was facing everyone else.

“Everybody’s here, Mirror! Tell them what you found,” Rose pushed.

Max took off his glasses and set them on the table. “I know why Paradise Enterprises was targeting us,” he said.

There were a few moments of silence.

“Is that all?” Alan asked. He had hoped for something bigger. For driving all this way and assembling the entire team, he figured Rose had big news. Why did they care why Paradise wanted to capture them after they already defeated them?

“I thought they were just interested in our abilities?” Daniela tried.

“That’s what I thought too,” Max said. “But hacking into their network reveals a different story.”

He turned his chair back around and pulled up some windows on his computer. Alan got glimpses of what appeared to be mostly documents and a few pictures as Max quickly flipped through to the information he wanted. “If we read the mission reports and briefings files, we see that Paradise was simply a puppet in these fights,” he explained, pulling up a few emails and enlarging them for everyone to see.

“It turns out that an organization called Sector 3 was behind each and every attack,” Max explained. “They provided Paradise with all the information they needed, including detailed profiles on who we are, where we live, where we go to school, etc.”

Alan felt unnerved at the fact that some secret organization knew so much about him. “Who are these guys? What do they want?”

“Well, we can assume that they are interested in our abilities,” Max said. “As for who they are and where their base of operations is, I’m at a loss. Chances are the information was kept on Lucas’ personal computer, but that was definitely destroyed when the building collapsed.

“But what bothers me most,” Max continued. “Is that if they were desperate enough to collect all this information to try and capture us, they probably haven’t given up yet.”

“So,” Lexi spoke up. “It isn’t over after all.”

For another few moments, they all stood blinking at each other. Daniela put her slushie down on the table.

“Guys, did you hear that?” Sean asked suddenly.

Alan shook his head. It wasn’t uncommon to not hear something that Sean did. “What was it?” Alan asked.

“I think someone’s upstairs,” Sean replied, staring up at the ceiling. Rose and Max looked at each other.

“Tell me it’s your parents,” Rose suggested.

“No, definitely not,” Max said, also staring at the ceiling. “They’re at my grandma’s. They won’t be back until tomorrow.”

Without another word, everyone ran to the staircase at once. Once up, they followed Sean outside.

“Out here?” Alan asked.

“Yeah, he knows we’re coming,” Sean replied. Alan decided that the details were unimportant. Sean always turned out to be right somehow. Sure enough, he pointed at the roof of the house, where a small boy was prowling. He jumped back when he saw that he had been spotted.

“Y-you found me!” he said. His voice was extremely high pitched and squeaky. Yet it had an odd quality to it, as if he wasn’t really talking…

“Who are you?” Rose demanded.

“…seven, eight, nine!” the boy finished counting, ignoring Rose’s question. “Yay for me! The entire group is all here. That means I can kill you all at once!”

Suddenly, the boy was right in front of them all, fists coated in a thick layer of ice. Alan leaped forward, charging a light bolt in his hands. The boy was far speedier, however, and punched Alan in the gut before he had a chance to throw it.

“Alan!” Daniela shouted, stepping forward.

“Hang on!” Alan said, holding out his arm. “I got this!”

Alan clenched his fists. Why couldn’t he get to full power like before? When he fought Lucas, he reached a level of power he never had been able to before. What’s different about this time?

Alan shot a bullet of energy at the boy, who suddenly disappeared again. Before Alan could move, a frosty fist collided with his jaw with amazing force. He braced himself for a follow up, but it didn’t come. Alan opened his eyes and saw Sean tightly gripping the boy by his hair. Sean pulled his ear close to his own mouth.

“Now now,” Sean said calmly. “Violence isn’t the answer. Shouting, on the other hand, SOLVES EVERYTHING.”

Alan knew what was coming and covered his ears, but he could still hear Sean’s last sentence. Sean was using his power to magnify his voice as if he was speaking through a megaphone, right into the assaulter’s ear. The boy shrieked in pain, but his cries were drowned out by Sean’s booming voice.

“Can you guess what I’m listening to?” Sean asked the boy, pulling off his own headphones. “Yeah, it’s a BASS TEST!”

The noise was so incredibly loud that Alan had to crawl away with his fingers digging into his ears. He looked back just in time to see the boy double over and puke. Sean then took the opportunity to kick the boy square in the forehead.

“Oops,” Sean shrugged. “Just call me a hypocrite.”

________________

Whew, this chapter was way longer than my last one...... R&R please. Cmon, i need all the constructive criticism i can get.