In an eruption of lights and sounds, the Titian appeared within sight of the western coast of Sguvi. Each atom of the tiltjet and all aboard it had been converted into energy and near-instantaneously shot hundreds of kilometers east of the Peninsula. Now that everyone had been returned to their normal physical forms, the shock of the occurrence began to set in.

  "Wha...what the hell!? What just happened!?" Srell was the first to shout as he frantically undid his seat harness.

  Lorias pointed at Prism, who stood woozily in the center of the bay in front of him and Srell. The tall, muscular alien's eyes fluttered as he reoriented himself to a less magical state.

  Ursun and Leanna turned in their seats to look at Prism before Leanna began using the console before her. She tapped away at it to access the Titian's navigational bio-computer to get their bearings, bypassing the pilots entirely. Before the click of the intercom could be heard, she shouted, "We're 200 kilometers from the Sguvan coastline; only 300 kilometers from our target!"

  "We can confirm that the Titian has indeed traveled over 3000 kilometers in a matter of seconds." The co-pilot replied in a plain manner. As a consummate professional, she told herself that she wouldn't overreact to the remarkable things that Prism did anymore. "All readings are within normal operating ranges."

  "Prism...you should know better." Ursun said softly after he used the console to perform a sensor sweep of the area.

  "I know I should have consulted you first. I just sensed the incoming fighters and reacted..." Despite his tough appearance, Prism still spoke like a child when coming up with an excuse. "I barely knew what I was doing. I didn’t know that I’d..."

  "That you'd turn us all into a beam of light and shoot us like a laser across the ocean?" Lorias decried before getting up from his seat and walking over to his equipment locker.

  "It's fine. We'll blame it on the trance this time." Ursun said with a shrug while he unbuckled himself from his seat.

  "There's no way the queenies didn't detect us reappearing like that." Srell said, checking on his own weapons in the locker beside Lorias'.

  "Sensors aren't showing any enemies in our vicinity." Leanna shook her head as she watched the data on the screens in front of her.

  "Pilots, proceed to the safe zone. Let us know if you detect Wadaw's bird signal. In the meantime, the rest of us will get suited up." Ursun ordered as he too went over to his locker.

  "I cloaked the ship the moment we rematerialized." Prism said as bluish light danced on the fingertips of his hand, which he raised in front of his broad chest. He felt his strength surging back to him. "This region...its teeming with mana."

  "Here we go again." Lorias chuckled. He started to take off his boots. "The hunt for the mana convergences resumes."

  "No way! He'd be shot out of the sky if he tried that over here; trance or no trance." Srell practically snarled. He began to take off his jacket.

  "Let me help you with that." Prism said with shimmering blue irises.

  The light that Prism held in his right hand became five small blue circles of light. The circles flew over to the lockers and caused the red combat armor within them to vanish. Prism then moved his hand over to himself and each of his teammates, moving the blue spell circles in turn. When the circles touched each of them, their clothing was swapped for their combat armor in blue flashes of light. Prism then had their leatherine clothing appear in their lockers, where their armor had been.

  "I won't even complain." Srell said, satisfied with the magical method of changing clothes.

  Ursun gave Prism a stern look. "That's the last time I don't scold you for not asking permission first." The commander’s eyes left Prism and narrowed as he scrutinized his own armor. Ursun flexed a few times, noting how differently it felt. "It's never fit me this well before."

  "Same here." Leanna said after she placed her hand on her chest plate and took a few deep breaths. "It's finally loose enough for me to breath easily."

  "I may have made a few alterations. Hopefully they're for the best." Prism smiled.

  "Why haven't we let you do this sooner?" Srell also smiled as he started to shadowbox in front of his locker, practically gliding around the area with smooth, fluid movements. "You're putting Liam's body scan tailoring to shame, Magical Boy."

  "How's yours fitting, Lorias?" Prism leaned forward towards his most tepid teammate.

  Lorias picked up his variable sword from his locker and unsheathed it with a single arc of his arm. The motion made little to no sound, a testament to the sword’s stealth-minded engineering. He slashed it in the air several different ways, moving across the bay as he did so. Lorias then assumed a few different stances with the blade, taking in the feeling of his body and how his armor moved with it. When a minute passed, he put his sword in its sheath and nodded to himself in front of his locker.

  "My suit feels like silk. And at no time did I have to adjust my helmet." Lorias looked over at Prism, who beamed at him. "Well done."

  The intercom clicked, returning everyone's attention to the mission. "The birds have been released, sir. We have the coordinates for our safe landing zone in the Viga." The co-pilot said.

  Prism looked out of the window across from him and saw the planet's largest rainforest, the Viga, stretching out into the distance. What looked like a hundred purple birds with iridescent wings flew out of a specific area of the dense jungle. The sight made him wonder how the True Twins must have wrangled so many beautifully flamboyant birds to bring to one place.

  The birds flew east towards the mighty Adagadis, so large that they could be seen from thousands of kilometers away. ?ba's largest ice-capped mountains loomed in the horizon.

  "Alright, take us in. We'll make a visual check once we're above the area and land if it's free of enemies." Ursun said loudly.

  The Titian flew in a downward line towards the sandy Sguvan coast, pristine and picturesque. Prism thought that the jungle beyond the beach looked strangely textbook, with leaning palm trees surrounded by sprawling shrubs and wild palm fronds. He kept looking for signs of battle, or even just stray equipment, but the area truly seemed untouched.

  "It looks uninhabited down there." Srell’s suspicious nature wouldn’t let him accept what his eyes were seeing out the window. "I guess the True Twins really have secured this area..."

  "You'd expect to see a military base on such a large beach, or at least a dock. I don't even see a town near here." Leanna adjusted the visor she now wore while she looked out of the round window closest to the weapons console. She scanned across the EM spectrum for traces of settlements. "From our records, there really hasn't been anything here for over a century. No towns, no bases; nothing but untouched beach."

  "Something you'll all learn about the Sguvans is that they pride themselves on how little they "develop" their land." Ursun lifted the latest version of his coilgun from his locker and looked over it for a moment before speaking again. "What they do end up building usually complements their natural surroundings.”

  “They’re like the Red Wolves, in that way.” Prism thought.

  It only took the Titian ten minutes to fly over the safe zone, and only a few minutes more to verify its safety. The tiltjet slowly lowered itself into the jungle canopy, finding ample room to fly a short distance into a sizable clearing. The open space was surrounded by tall trees with far stretching branches that kept the canopy continuous and high above where the Titian came to land. Only trickles of sunlight were seen when RED-1 exited the transport bay, PAWs handy.

  "Are we good to camouflage this thing?" Prism pointed behind them at the stationary Titian.

  "Sure. Just as long as the pilots can come and go as necessary. They'll be staying aboard to guard it, but they may need to set up camp nearby or leave the Titian to join up with us later." Ursun explained.

  Prism placed his right forefinger on his right temple and closed his eyes for a few seconds. He relayed some relevant information to the pilot and co-pilot via their telepathic link, then shared the same information with his team.

  "Understood. You may proceed." Ursun waved his hand politely at the Titian.

  Prism smiled up at the mightily framed man and nodded in agreement. The dark-skinned alien then waved his own hands at the Titian, conjuring an illusion that made the building-sized aircraft appear as a giant, mossy rock protruding from the jungle floor. A tangle of vines over the bottom portion of the rock hid the lowered ramp that led into the cabin of the ship. Prism ran up to it and walked right through what appeared to be solid stone, disappearing from view only to reappear immediately after.

  "Exceptional camo work, my good sir." Leanna simulated tipping her hat at Prism.

  "Why thank you, milady." Prism said with a gentlemanly bow, surprised that such an old-timey gesture existed on ?ba. "I'd offer to camouflage our armor, but we're probably better off just becoming invisible."

  "No, we need to remain visible so that our True Twins allies can find us. If we suddenly appear before them without warning, we're likely to be attacked." Ursun shared psychically, no longer speaking aloud.

  "Our armor already provides some camouflage, due to the new meta-material that it's made of. If you recall, it only appears red to us because we're close together. At greater distances, it blends in with our surroundings." Leanna too shared telepathically.

  "It's good to have redundancy, as Gnapp loves to say." Lorias rubbed the section of his ear directly above his comm-clasp.

  "We've got quite the hike ahead of us. Let's get going." Ursun brought them back to their mission. "Lorias, lead the way."

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  The rainforest that they trekked through was reminiscent of their mission to retrieve Prism a year earlier. The two locations existed in the same climate band, in the heat of ?ba's wide equatorial region, so it didn't surprise them. The environment brought back memories of being ambushed by queenie mercenaries, and of one of their teammates being critically wounded as a result.

  "Any hostiles nearby?" Ursun asked Prism and Leanna through the telepathic link the team shared during missions.

  "I'm not seeing anything human-shaped. Plenty of animals lurking about, though." Leanna tapped her smart visor, cycling through different sections of the electromagnetic spectrum as they walked near a tangle of vines.

  "I'm sensing something...strange. It feels like...nervous anticipation." Prism's psychic voice reeked of uncertainty.

  "Not this magical empathy thing again. Are there Sguvan soldiers around or not?" Srell furrowed his brow and looked around the dark wood with his PAW raised.

  "I can definitely sense the stray emotions of others, but this jungle is so saturated with mana that it’s difficult for me to pinpoint where they’re coming from, or even where specific mana signatures are." Prism shared. Srell frowned at him, and Prism shrugged.

  "Wadaw's people should have been here to meet us. You’re probably sensing their emotions." Ursun held his PAW close to his chest and watched Lorias slice through a natural net of vines that barred their path with the red-hot blade of his variable sword. "They shouldn't have disappeared so quickly after releasing the birds. They may be watching us from the shadows; monitoring us before they send the signal."

  Lorias sheathed his sword and squatted before a visible area of the shaded forest floor. "The bird display may have been pre-arranged." Lorias communicated while he examined an exposed section of wet reddish ground closely. Mossy tree roots crisscrossed throughout the ground like a living lattice. "I'm seeing tracks, but they're several hours old."

  "Remember, we're way ahead of schedule. They were expecting us to get here two hours from now." Leanna shared while she continued scanning their surroundings. "Still, it would be pretty interesting if they were able to release the birds without being here. Perhaps they have some sort of remote signaling device to spur the birds on..."

  "We know the general location of the True Twins base. We'll continue making our way there." Ursun relaxed his posture for a moment, placing his hands on the butt of the clipped PAW that hung straight down from his chest plate. He took in the sounds of the jungle birds singing in the canopy. "They've probably already sent out some True Twins to meet us, if they aren’t already here."

  "Or if we're really lucky, we'll be found by a Viga ranger." Srell shared excitedly as he looked up at Lorias, who'd become a registered Etrysian forest ranger while he was still a teenager.

  "I'd be interested in that, if it happened. There's much I could learn from this land's rangers." Lorias shared earnestly. His lack of sarcasm surprised Prism and Leanna. "I've heard enough about them to know that they are unique amongst the world's rangers. They have many ancient traditions that I find interesting."

  Prism watched the way that Lorias walked through the jungle, ahead of the rest of them. Despite his inexperience within the Viga, Lorias carried himself with the grace of a jaguar. The hot and humid rainforest was so different from Etrysia's more temperate clime, but Lorias still looked to be in his element. After he sliced away another mess of vines with a rapid slash, he turned around to see Prism staring at him.

  "At our current pace, it should take us an hour to get to the waterfall described in Wadaw's message." Lorias shared along with his uncanny sense of direction, giving the rest of his team the same bearings as himself.

  Their shared telepathic link allowed them to communicate all manners of information and sensations with each other. Using it had become second nature to RED-1, even though Prism only kept it active during their missions.

  They walked for another thirty minutes, keeping their mouths quiet but their minds full of chatter. Though their glossy body armor looked unsuited for the stuffy conditions around them, the slightly-powered suits provided evaporative cooling and a high degree of adaptive breathability. The mercenaries comfortably followed after Lorias as he tread across the soft undergrowth.

  Prism wondered what sort of strange ?ban beasts existed out of sight. He imagined what creatures he would recognize. When he asked Lorias about the local wildlife, Lorias gave Prism a pained smirk.

  "Not much of that left, I'm afraid. A few small mammals and colorful birds are about all the animal life that still resides in the Viga. And frogs, of course. They're resilient little creatures, too." Lorias shared along with a few images of furry black rodents, cute little bats, and frogs of every color of the rainbow. "The crazy Monarchists in charge of this country eradicated what was left of the bigger animals centuries ago."

  "I should've known..." Prism said with a clenched fist.

  "We'll need to watch out for plasma beasts, though. They're what the Sguvan government replaced their flesh-and-blood animals with." Srell shared. Large black and gold facsimiles of animals Prism found to be familiar, like gorillas and leopards, flashed in Prism's mind. The detail of the machines revealed that Srell had done a great deal of research on the powerful Kingdom-built machines. "In case you weren't paying attention during the mission briefing." Srell smiled down cheekily at his alien teammate from a tall mound of tree roots.

  "I remember. The plasma beasts protect unmanned territories of the Viga and the Amagadis from being settled without the Sguvan government's approval. They used to only patrol wilderness areas designated as holy, but Gusa Sela started deploying them throughout Sguvi two decades ago. They're the reason why the singular was so confident that the True Twins wouldn't ever become a major threat under his leadership." Prism shared.

  His mind easily soaked up information, and he could retain that information for incredibly long periods of time.

  "Very good." Leanna shared while she leapt over a small stream with the grace of a cat. "The only reason Srell knows about plasma beasts is because of a silly lasernet show he watches."

  "It's not silly! It's cool." Srell made a rude gesture at her from the other side of the stream.

  "What's it about?" Prism leaned against the trunk of a vine-covered tree on the other side of the stream. He'd been curious about the multitude of media one could find on the Peninsula's lasernet, but not enough to watch any of it on his own. "It's not the same one we watched a few months back when you invited me to you and Lorias' place, is it?"

  "Definitely not. That was Cosmic Journey, a space adventure show." Lorias shook his head and smirked. He watched his teammates jump over the narrow path of water that flowed down a slope of moss-covered rocks.

  "It's that kids show, Queen Quasher. It’s about a lone mercenary who fights a fictionalized version of the Queen. In the show, she has a Plasma Army led by talking plasma beast generals." Ursun shared with his team, getting an immediate rise out of Srell.

  "Just because its animated doesn't mean it's for kids! It's a really deep show with really mature themes!" Srell's voice shrilled in the minds of everyone else.

  "Sure it is." Lorias took a seat on a flat-topped rock near a narrow bluster of trees that led to an inky black section of the jungle.

  "Come on, you barely know anything about it! You refuse to watch even a single episode of it with me!" Srell jumped over the stream and started wagging his finger at Lorias. Intense pulses of Srell's rising exasperation made their way into the telepathic link.

  “It’s thinly veiled Red Wolves propaganda, at best.” Leanna smirked at Srell, poking his buttons even further.

  Srell grimaced hard. His eyes looked like they might pop out of his skull at any moment. “You all are speaking crap about something you know practically nothing about!”

  “Quit shouting in the link. You’re gonna give us all a headache…” Leanna shared, earning her a nod and a smile from Lorias.

  Prism tended to the link, filtering out Srell's powerful emotional responses as he'd needed to do on occasion. The task, though simple, was enough for Prism to take his attention away from scanning their surroundings for humanoid mana signatures. He started to feel a strange hotness on his shoulder that quickly grew more and more intense. He looked to his right to see Leanna's face contort into a silent scream.

  "Millimeter wave weapon!" Her voice screamed in her team's mind, being particularly more pronounced in Prism's. "Defend yourself!"

  Prism expanded a golden field of energy around himself as his team began switching on their invisibility enchants. They could still see each other, but their hidden enemies could not. The directed energy weapon that had threatened to cook Prism alive became completely ineffective in the face of his physics-defying magic. He charged into the jungle towards the group of anxious humans that had quickly come into his focus.

  “Be mindful of androids!” Leanna shared just before Prism felt a powerful bullet strike him hard enough to make him feel woozy.

  He felt the mana instantly drain from his body as his barrier restored itself automatically. The gunshot would have left a large hole in his body without the force field, even with his suit of armor.

  Prism couldn’t be sure who exactly was attacking him, but he knew that they meant to kill him. He stopped running, took a deep breath, then pushed out his hands in front of him as if he was shoving something heavy. His irises shimmered a very light blue as a massive shockwave erupted from his body, radiating in front of him and to his sides. Prism heard several grunts several meters ahead. The attackers were thrown onto their backs, still unseen in the shadowy foliage that slowly swayed from the blast.

  “Oof!”

  Prism was sent flying to his side after he felt a hard punch strike his face. Before he could conjure his barrier again, he felt rough hands pushing him down into the ground, then feet, then an entire body atop his own. His eyes frantically looked up towards his temple as he tried to catch a glimpse of what held him down.

  He saw glossy black digits slither down to cover his mouth, its joints colored gold. The being’s skin was like obsidian. The face Prism saw looking down at him was smooth and featureless. He was being restrained by special-issue plasmagnetron-powered androids, gifted to the Sguvan military by the Queen herself.

  “Stay still.” Prism heard Ursun’s voice sternly in his frazzled mind.

  Two of the three androids that had pinned Prism down were thrown back a meter or so, leaving only the one that laid its slender body over Prism’s own. Alloy spikes ran through the machines with enough force to send them flying. Prism readied himself to roll hard and get the last android off of him. He instead flinched when he heard Srell’s shotgun blast through his tormentor’s back.

  “Fuck! You could’ve killed me!” Prism shouted directly into Srell’s mind.

  “I seriously doubt that.” Srell replied. “Now get up. You look silly.”

  Prism looked around hesitantly before rising to his feet. He saw Leanna executing the Sguvan soldiers who’d been struck by his shockwave. She’d seen the faint radiation signatures of the androids with her smart visor, but not soon enough to stop their assault.

  “These are new.” She shared after she walked around the ones that Ursun had skewered with his coilgun. The humanoid machines remained motionless; their power supplies were poisoned by the alloy that the coilgun’s bolts were made of.

  Srell walked over and promptly destroyed the heads and torsos of the supine androids with a few close-range firings of his shotgun. What was left of their golden joints flickered a few times before becoming a dull dark yellow. Prism looked over at Lorias, watching him as he patrolled the area around them.

  “We’ve got company. Looks friendly enough.” Lorias shared, still invisible like the rest of his team, save for Prism.

  “Oh look, the exact circumstance you guys were worried about.” Prism sighed. He sensed the humans approaching from all directions, close enough to have witnessed the battle. They were just as anxious as the soldiers he’d sensed earlier.

  “They’re transmitting the code signal. Ultra low frequency, super proximal, just like they said.” Leanna shared.

  “Shout out to them, Prism. Tell them who you are and that the four of us are invisible.” Ursun ordered. He swung his coilgun back over his shoulder and grabbed the PAW he’d clipped to his chest armor.

  Prism extended an unseeable field a few dozen meters all around him, causing his irises to become red. He then spoke loudly, certain that all within the field, and only in the field, could hear him.

  “I’m Red Wolf Prism. The rest of my team, which is RED-1, is currently invisible. They’re standing in my general vicinity.”

  Prism watched Ursun give him a grateful nod. “Now tell them that we’re reappearing.” The commander ordered through the psychic link.

  “My teammates are going to become visible now. Don’t be alarmed.” Prism yelled as calmly as he could.

  One by one, the mercenaries deactivated their invisibility enchants, silently appearing around Prism as though they’d teleported there. Ursun was the last to reveal himself, holding his PAW in one hand. It was pointed straight up at the canopy.

  “Of course you’d show yourself like that, you cocky old bastard.” An especially colorful voice shouted from the edge of Prism’s sight.

  Prism turned to see a lithe man with skin as black as charcoal. For a split second, Prism worried that the man might be another android. The man’s strange attire and lack of golden joints immediately dispelled those thoughts.

  He wore a jungle camo crop top and baggy green pants that were tucked into high, black boots. The man wore a thick, reflective silver mask that covered his eyes, forehead, and upper nose. Short, curly white hair peeked out from the back and sides of his head.

  “You must be Wadaw.” Ursun said with a straight face.