A Surprise?

After barely meeting any worthwhile opponents, the group reached the border to Zone D by midday.

"Guys, we're finally here!"

"Tch. It's 12:34; we're late by almost half an hour."

"Thanks for reminding us, Kimin."

Eo noticed his Essov groupmates had become much closer to Kyros' "Heroes". It was a strange feeling, seeing a bunch of large clunky former bullies try to socialize with numerous terrified smaller people.

Just then Likad bumped against Eo.

"Hey, Eo." She whispered.

"Hm?"

"I want to know your secret."

Eo blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I want to know your secret at how you managed to… tame them."

LIkad pointed a finger at the former Red Jackets.

"They picked on me a year ago but now they're acting all decent and stuff. How in the world did you do that…"

"Oh, I just showed them I was the most powerful, and then I told them to behave like normal people."

"You're so funny, Ean."

"Eo."

"Whatever."

Eo shrugged her off and continued. Things were about to get serious soon.

☆

"LOOK OUT!"

Eo watched Utaris jump in front of Prezna and block a triangular-shaped projectile. Utaris collapsed, wind knocked out of him. The projectile had luckily not pierced his armor, but it had dented it really badly.

"UTARIS!"

"PREZNA!"

Eo watched Prezna run over to Utaris.

"Are you okay? You're damaged badly!"

"It's okay, Prezna. I'd take anything for you."

Eo watched the girl sob on top of the boy.

(What the heck? This isn't supposed to be a romance. This is making me feel extremely weird. Should I be looking at this?)

Eo averted his eyes in horror/disgust and was about to walk away for an entire kilometer when he remembered that a projectile hit Utaris.

(Oh yeah, there's an enemy here somewhere.)

Eo scanned the area. He saw a glint of something bronze-colored within the dune-like terrain they were currently on.

(There it is.)

"OVER THERE!"

Eo motioned to his comrades and jabbed at the monster. It was a scorpion-type, flinging around a barbed tail stocked with triangular projectiles.

Immediately afterwards, long range attacks pummelled the scorpion. Eo saw Kyros propel himself into the air with steam. During the launch, Kyros generated ice spikes all around him that slammed into the scorpion, pinning it down. On the return trip to the ground, Kyros generated a dancing flame all over his sword. Then he hit the ground and Eo could see a giant fiery explosion.

Eo was about to compliment Kyros when he suddenly realized that he had practically copied Eo's tactics on the lizard-type Phase II from way before. Eo decided to not call him out on his unoriginality though, because while Eo needed his whole team to execute the pin and finish tactic, Kyros just went full out by himself. That was plenty impressive enough.

"Amazing, Kyros!"

"As expected of the savior!"

"Wait a minute Lodan, now you're praising the savior like you do to the boss now?!"

"Huh? I've always said this!"

Eo might've wanted to call Kyros out on unoriginality now.

He turned around and was about to walk away when he heard something rumble. It sounded way too ominous to just be another unit.

Eo froze, heart thumping. The wannabe protagonist was aboutta get his whole man's career ended.