Jordan removes his hand from over his mouth, fully unveiling the confusion on his face as he looks down at the broken, cooked figure, face-down in the sparking mass of metal and wires that was once half an electrical box.

There is a long period of near-silence, where the only sounds were of the boys catching their breath– Scott’s pained whimpering being the exception.

Jordan rubs his head where Zain had slugged him, a bruise being visible.

Slowly, Jordan turns his gaze towards Zain. Responding in kind, Zain looks up from the native’s corpse to meet Jordan’s eyes. He raises his arms slightly, and lets them fall to his sides in a sort of restless gesture, as if to say “what now?”.

Jordan takes his phone out, flipping to his checklist. He crosses out the “Pay Zain back”, then returns it to his pocket.

The flame-endowed head of Jordan’s spirit appears from behind him, followed by the rest of its body.

Jordan’s eyes don’t leave Zain as the thing raises its arm-cannons, firing at the ground surrounding Zain in continuous streams, creating intersecting “paths” of  the hissing liquid. It coats sections of the sidewalk, the road, and even the trunk of a nearby tree and the lawn surrounding it.

The spirit ends the path of liquid at Jordan’s feet, and Jordan bounds forward onto it.

As Jordan’s shoes are about to hit the liquid, the spirit phases into him, overlapping the front of his body with its back half. Its own, sheet-like feet take the place of his.

With surprising speed and control, Jordan and the spirit glide on the liquid as if it were ice, with droplets of the stuff being tossed up into the air as they speed straight towards Zain.

At the moment Jordan and his spirit are a meter from Zain, as he stands unready for their approach, The spirit kicks the ground, and their trajectory changes by ninety degrees, with the two now sliding onto a path to Zain’s left out of his reach.

As they leave his reach, the spirit turns its torso and head, raising an arm-cannon at Zain and firing a concentrated stream of the orange-maroon substance right at his head.

The force of the blast staggers him, with a startled, muffled cry sounding from beneath his helmet.

Jordan and the spirit continue to circle Zain, watching as he fumbles around, half-blinded. The stuff is slow to slough off of his head, his crystal gauntlets making it awkward to wipe away. From Zain’s POV, one sees that only the very edges of his vision are clear.

Jordan makes his way to Zain’s back, and spots a weak spot in his armor: the plating around his neck hasn’t yet fully developed.

JORDAN: (muttering to himself) I’m gonna fill that damn armor with scorcho, you piece of shit. You’re gonna be swimming in pain; even worse than I was.

The spirit, still phased into Jordan, kicks the ground, sending the two towards Zain at an eerily measured pace. They create near to no sound, gliding across the path of substance like a pair of ghosts.

As the spirit positions a cannon to meet with Zain’s slowly-closing weak spot upon coming close, Jordan sees Zain having moved a hand to just near his face, rotating it strangely.

Switching to Zain’s POV, one sees that Zain is looking into the flat plate on the back of his gauntlet, ceasing to rotate it as soon as he sees Jordan and his spirit reflected in it.

By the time Jordan realizes, his eyes widening, he and the spirit are already but a half-meter away from Zain.

Zain pirouettes to face Jordan and his spirit, raising an arm wide, and as he does so the grand bulk of the crystal juggernaut manifests behind him, doing the same.

Bounding forward, Zain lariats Jordan in the throat, the crystal monolith doing the same to Jordan’s ghost, a resounding clap resulting from the impact.

Jordan is sent flying beyond the paths of liquid he’d placed, hitting the sidewalk as his spirit de-manifests.

ZAIN: Gotcha.

The crystal goliath fades into nothing, and Zain continues to scrape at the substance obscuring his vision.

A heavy-sounding creak can be heard from behind Zain, followed by the sound of rushing leaves.

The tree Jordan had hit with the corrosive substance falls at Zain, having cracked and melted away at its base.

There are loud sounds of scraping and cracking as the tree’s branches extend all the way to the road, breaking on it. The tree’s trunk collides with Zain, rushing him into the ground with an ear-shattering crunch.

Zain manages to struggle only for a few moments before going limp. His armor has caved in at the front, though that which remains is enough to keep the weight of the tree from his body.

Jordan sits up, having regained his senses. He is clutching at his throat, standing even as he is obviously having trouble breathing.

JORDAN: (aside) Police are gonna be here soon. Fuck, this looks–

Jordan surveys the wreck of a scene. A man is face down in a broken electrical box, his body still twitching, another is pinned under a tree, and a car– its front dented, holds a wincing teen, holding their face as if in pain. Upon seeing the latter, Jordan springs into action, rushing towards his car.

JORDAN: –really bad! Really, really bad!

As Jordan opens the car’s door, he can’t help but notice how much more able he feels.

He does not wince from the cool wind on his back, and looks away from the car for a moment to appreciate the purple-orange of the sunset sky behind him.

He feels the path to that far-away mansion to be more open now, and finds himself more worthy of what lies behind its windows.

The euphoria of Jordan’s self-realization is so strong that he barely feels it as two thumbtack-sized darts stick him in the neck.

Scott hears an alerting thump, and his face is put into focus as he finally removes his hands from his face and blinks his eyes open. They are bloodshot, and his cheeks are slick with tears.

What Scott sees with his half-blurry vision obviously troubles him.

At least ten people in metal plating, riot gear and gas masks are rounding the block’s far corner, holding irregularly-shaped, long-barrelled rifles. Some are still leaping from the open gate of a large, black lorry parked nearly out of view behind Zain’s house.

They all rush towards the battle-torn roadside, carrying their rifles by their hips.

Immediately as they near it, they branch off into four groups. One approaches the wrecked tree, with a single person setting up some sort of hook-and-pulley device and wrapping a wire around its trunk’s middle as two others keep their rifles pointed at the pinned and incapacitated Zain.

Another approaches Jordan, slumped half-into the car, with his legs hanging out. As one of the geared individuals holds a rifle at his motionless figure, two others heft him up by the arms, pulling him towards the lorry with his legs dragging on the ground.

A third group of two approaches the yet still twitching body of the jacketed man, his smoking body being tugged out of the electrical box. Once he is fully removed, one of the gas-masked figures sets him down, placing a hand at the base of his neck and another on his wrist, evidently checking for signs of life.

The last group approaches Scott, and as two other geared personnel hold their rifles at him, one makes his way forward to the car’s doorway.

His speech is obviously augmented by a voice-changer, coming out as impossibly low and laden with static. Regardless, his frustration is easily heard.

GEARED MAN: You’ve caused us a whole heap of trouble. You and your little friends are coming with us, and you’ll be answering some questions. Do not attempt resistance.

Scott has his hands above his head as he’s pulled roughly from the car by the man, another geared fellow stepping forward to relieve him of his gauntlet and matching arm-guard.

Scott’s face betrays badly-repressed fear as he looks backwards, into the mask of this man as he shoves him towards the far-off lorry. 

He is perturbed by a difference he sees between their goggles and Zain’s helmet;

No matter how he looks at their reflective surface, he can’t see eyes, nor anything else suggestive of a human behind the mask.

Scott thinks to himself while being half-walked, half-hauled towards the vehicle’s open gate:

SCOTT: (aside) These guys aren’t police. There are no markings, no names on their uniforms. Where’re they going to take us? Why’d they have to come now? Why’d they never come sooner?

Why didn’t I do anything? Why did I just sit there?

As he watches the tree lifted by the now fully-assembled device (taking the form of a mini-crane), and Zain being pulled out from underneath, soon after being bound leg and arm in chains, Scott feels a shiver down his spine.

As he watches Jordan’s limp form carried into the pitch-black of the lorry’s interior, Zain following shortly after, he feels his eyes begin to water.

As he nears the cavernous opening himself, seeing nothing but shadow as its mouth grows ever wider before him, he begins to beg, not knowing whether he is addressing Jordan, Zain or himself.

SCOTT: (aside) Wake up. Fuck, I need you to just wake up. I want out of this.