✧ Chapter 40 ✧

Styra’s desire for a love interest was causing her hands to touch her beating heart as she started to question what kind of person she would really be interested in. She didn’t know how to release these feelings, but it made her want to go on that adventure now. And not just any kind of adventure. She wanted to have the most fun she could have while exploring and finding what they were looking for.

Who cared if Sapphirion wasn’t coming along? He was holding them back and didn’t even care about what happened to her or anyone else. Nearly even jeopardized everything. At least Creperus and Diamondion was on their side. She decided on Eternika, Chelbie, and Compass tagging along. No Sapphirions needed.

Using The Kra Force, she immediately donned back on her suit in an instant and decided upon one last thing. To destroy the anomaly as well. As much as she understood Hisa and appreciated their talk, her hatred for whoever zapped her powers for that amount of time was unwaveringly high. She needed to train for real and this adventure was going to be the best way to do that.

On the ship, Chelbie was becoming concerned. Eternika however already knew what Styra was thinking. It left the weapon feeling strange inside. Never did it know that Styra would want a boyfriend. The details were unclear regarding what kind of relationship she was going to pursue. She hadn’t really made up her mind yet, which made sense. Seeing Flight and Hisa act like that onboard was interesting by itself as well.

Too interesting…

As it created a map of The Omniverse to begin formulating a way to find the guardians, it decided to look for any clues that could determine if Amethion was actually missing. After all, if Amethion was still hiding as a shadow in StarSpace, the other guardians would have possibly followed in response to what occurred with the anomaly. When Creperus mentioned that the guardians went missing, that clearly included Strage and Spessarion. Upon digging deeper into Styra’s memories, it found a rather concerning one.

On the SPQB-190 (StarSpace Planetary Quarantine Base) Hisa was bidding Flight and Styra farewell before telling them about an invader. One that entered StarSpace and stole The Ring Of Infernum.

Wait a second…

The man who stole it looked familiar. Eternika had seen that face before back in the Liquatics Laboratory when they were hiding next to Testing Room 5750. It was from a pale bald man who wore a dark cloak. This same person was talking to Spessarion. Further investigating the other lab doors, one of them far away in the distance had a color corrupted portal that was glitching and tearing on the building. It had been floating silently around a space filled with random colors darting around said door without them even noticing at the time. There, the room’s number was located on it.

TR-45.

When Eternika came outside of the ship, it began to talk to Creperus about there being an individual of the description it mentioned.

“A man talking to a guardian? I must assume that Spessarion had to have been doing something shady that led to this. I find that particularly disturbing since no guardian is supposed to be making deals with The Ring Of Infernum. What was Spessarion doing running around with it?”

“Unsure. I believe the anomaly may be this man. You sound as if you do not know him though.”

“Eternika, The Eternal Timeline is responsible for keeping records of said events throughout The Omniverse. He is not an identifiable figure. If this man stole The Ring Of Infernum, it means that the deaths which occurred across trillions of civilizations was not only Strage’s doing. It is only The Guardian Of Death’s responsibility to make sure the ring is well guarded at The Heptarion Sanctum. Unless… Spessarion lied.”

“Lied about what?”

Creperus’s stern faces looked over at Sapphirion who was arguing with Diamondion.

“He lied about not being tied to the corruption of The Surreality Shards and pinned it all on a man who apparently wasn’t the only one taking part in this. With your friend Flight mentioning a symbol was carved into his locket, I believe we have found out who is responsible for causing havoc throughout The Omniverse.”

“Who?”

As Creperus paused for a moment, his booming voice alerted everybody there in Wisteliah including Styra who had finally come back.

“Everyone involved, I have an announcement to make.”

Flight, who was rushing outside with Hisa and Chelbie at his side, began to wonder what kind of announcement Creperus was going to make.

“Flight Takeshi, what are your parents’ names?”

“Now that you mention it I only remember my mother Lila. My father talked to me once when I was little but that was it. Why though?” questioned Flight.

The Guardian Of Darkness began to use The Eternal Light Of Darkness to create an image of the mysterious man Eternika talked about.

“I have reason to believe that your father is the one tinkering around with the destruction of The Omniverse. If your mother is tied to it as well, then they may also be behind having made deals with Spessarion.”

Confusion began to devastate Flight’s mind. He could not believe what he was hearing.

“Are you saying my parents left me for dead?! Why would they do that? Who even is Spessarion?!” he asked, becoming a bit more infuriated knowing what he had to struggle through in order to survive on his own.

“It could be worse than that Flight. Right now, the power you hold may be tied to what your parents did to you. In fact, I will go as far as to say that Hisa and Styra are both tied to their past lives which may be why they too have the ability to wield an Eternal Light. Unfortunately, the time disconnect broke our system so figuring out what happened before then will require finding someone else who can get us to piece the puzzle together. Eternika, was there anyone else inside the laboratory?”

Searching through the room again, Eternika replayed the events that occurred out of Styra’s subconscious. Interestingly enough, three hours before even Spessarion or Flight’s father appeared, a strange girl had teleported inside the lab room. She was looking around for something but gave up after hearing crashing noises outside of the lab. She quickly ate a red cherry from out of a special case and disappeared instantaneously.

“Who is that?” asked Hisa.

While mostly everyone seemed even more uncertain about who it could possibly be, Chelbie’s brain clicked with what she saw.

“Wait, what the hell?! That’s the girl that was in my 4th grade class!”

“You know her name?” asked Creperus.

“No, but I do remember her talking about wanting to play piano for a large audience when she got older...”

Hearing Chelbie talk about a musical performance reminded Eternika about that fight with Diamondion. They got warped into an auditorium filled with students playing before a live audience with instruments. This place was called The Centreplex Symphony Center. Looking around in that memory for everyone to see, it found the same mystery girl in one of the bathrooms holding another cherry in her hand.

“I recognize this world. When I was searching for The New Guardian, this was one of the planets I travelled to. It is known as Animearth.”

Styra, who was watching all of this unfold, began to develop an interest. Perhaps Animearth was going to be the place where her true love would be. More importantly, this was how they could find out where the real culprit was hiding.

“Animearth. Alright then. C’mon guys. Let’s get this adventure started!” she exclaimed happily.

“Aw yeah! Woohoo! Now that’s what I like to hear!” yelled Chelbie with ecstatic joy.

Sapphirion, who was enraged at the fact that they were going to get in the way of his esteemed position, immediately flew to The Void to talk to Prism. Creperus began to get annoyed by this.

“Not again. Diamondion, I want you to go with Flight and Hisa to StarSpace. There in Katar Village is a dark portal. If you can find a way to enter it since Sapphirion couldn’t, it would be much appreciated. I must go and stop Sapphirion from causing more trouble for our Master.”

“As you wish Dark One,” replied Diamondion as she immediately teleported the three of them and the Stormstrike Zero to StarSpace using The Eternal Light Of Reality.

“Wait! I wanted to say goodbye. Oh well… I have one last thing to ask at least,” requested Styra.

“And what may that be?” inquired Creperus.

Taking a deep breath, she stared up at it with intense curiosity.

“Why do you trust me? I mean you are The Guardian Of Darkness. I thought you were like an evil overlord or something for a second.”

Creperus gently lowered its heads to Styra’s level.

“Not everything that is horrid comes in the ways you might expect Styra. Darkness is not always evil and Light is not always good. There is a balance in those aspects of life that will show you that these things are true. It is you who must find where it begins and where it ends. The Omniverse is built to facilitate that balance. Just like how there are those that may see you as evil. Good intentions do not make a good person alone. It takes an open perspective to understand that everything works the way it does for a reason. I know that the awareness of constants in time is what defines the realness of it. One day you will see that in you.”

“I hope so too. Thanks for the advice,” she said while nodding in acceptance of what Creperus said.

In coming together, Styra, Eternika, Chelbie, and their robot companion Compass would form their first official team that represented their bond.

“Judgment Warriors, our adventure starts now,” stated Styra before they all took off inside of a Kra Forcefield she made that flew them outside of the atmosphere of Wisteliah.

Passing by stars and through planets, the colors of these places were out of this world as they dipped in and out waving hello to different types of alien species as quite a few waved back that were surprised to see something different blitz through their homes. Chelbie was mostly in awe at getting to experience the beauty of space itself. Styra started to get that feeling that reminded her of when Flight showed her that same experience by flying the Stormstrike Zero.

It was a feeling that made her heart pound with excitement.

∗ ∗ ∗

In the expansive Ethereal Eye, Voltaze reawakened from the painful experience. It reminded him of being tortured for every day that he ever lived. Having to sit on the ground of that hard cell for years was not the only thing which pissed him off.

Before being confined to imprisonment, he was but an infant who had lost a lot more than anyone would want to imagine. His kind, the Zethyrs, were subservient messengers to the vampires in the world of Deveurx that worshiped Prism and would do heinous sacrifices of their last born children when they reached the age of four to this deity. Such a deadly requirement threatened these offsprings’ lives from every family.

They would also be told to travel to different planets in which they attempted mass conversion of Deveurxan culture to other societies. If they rejected it, the planet would end up being destroyed by mass armies and taken over. If they accepted it, a mark of Prism’s image was left on that world in peace as a monument to assume that they did convert the other species.

The Zethyrs nearly sacrificed Voltaze to an altar but were later killed off by UVOCA agents on Deveurx because of encountering the armies that came to their Earth. The only reason Voltaze was left to be captured by the agency was due to the fact that he was a last born child with a special birthmark on his chest which was shaped like the letter V. This gave them ideas to use for their related surgery-driven projects.

Later on, he became their test subject. Experimented on for the purposes of creating a mind-controlled weapon out of a living creature by doing side deals with Spessarion himself. He wasn’t the only one that this was being done to, but he was their youngest experiment.

And that made him mad.

His hatred became stiffened. Fists balled up in anger at how he had been treated all of his life. It pushed him beyond his limits.

“I will destroy The Omniverse and then Prism will see what it means to be feared,” he told himself as The Lucid Light returned to visit him.

“You are awake and without as much pain as before. Now you must go to collect the rest of the Eternal Lights that remain along with Omnikra. I will be seeing you.”

Although Voltaze did want to destroy Prism, he had slight doubts about The Lucid Light’s commands. It was true that without its voice, he would still be trapped in that chamber. Therefore, he was susceptible to believing that it was on his side. When he requested The Eternal Lights to reveal the location of one of their own, they started to whisper the words “Katar Village” inside his mind.

Using The Eternal Light Of Time and his own powers to create another fractal hole, a haunting grin crept up Voltaze’s face.