Damned, Imperfect, Giver, Purified
Sky, Dani, Charlie, Tavian, Alexia, Troy, and now Mizu spent more time investigating Ultima Tower with the help of Mizu's limited knowledge to find out more about what happened. Charlie was able to explain the destruction of Ultima Tower from the inside, while Mizu explained what happened from the outside.
All of the citizens were evacuated from Ultima Tower to Zealous, which was now Alicas, thanks to Charlotte and Charlie's efforts to stop Genesis from intervening. However, what Charlie didn't know about the mass exodus was that Ultima intentionally cast her citizens away.
"That doesn't make any sense, what kind of leader would push her own people away?" Sky asked with Mizu still on his shoulders. The group was walking through one of the only standing streets without damage to it from the collapse of the tower, looking around at the abandoned homes.
"She didn't cast them away, she told them to fight or get out of her city, and if they didn't listen then she'd kill them," Mizu explained to Sky. She wasn't hiding a lot of information from Sky, despite being the daughter of his new enemy.
"Are you saying she mobilized the citizens into soldiers?" Sky asked Mizu next. Right after his fight with Cole, he had engaged in combat with what he now knew to be innocent people. He wasn't sure how to think, deciding it was best to save the thought for later.
"Yes," Mizu shortly said, peering toward a specific destroyed house on Sky's right-hand side. She showed keen interest in it, so much so that Sky started to walk up to the collapsed roof, peering in through the broken building to see what became of the interesting house.
"This is where my friend lived. I hope she made it out okay," Mizu explained, giving context before hopping off of Sky's shoulders. As soon as she left, Dani tip-toed up behind Sky and began to whisper into his ear.
"So, what are we going to do with her?" Dani asked. Sky pondered the thought, thinking that keeping her within his own home would be his safest bet, but allowing her to live peacefully with somebody else could bring her more happiness.
"Hey! Mizu! How old are you?" Sky yelled out as she searched through the house.
"Eleven, I was born December eleven years ago now," She explained. Sky nodded, thinking how Faith would've been a perfect person to be around Mizu.
"We'll see what Lia thinks. Worst case scenario, we can give her to Lisa," Sky suggested. He began to look around, hopping into the middle of the house with Mizu while moving debris with his strands.
"There it is! Here," Mizu picked something up from a dresser drawer covered by a large boulder. She wasn't at all amazed with Sky's strand usage, showing no interest in how they functioned. Sky assumed Ultima could use them because of her lack of surprise, and continued to uncover more things while Mizu handed him a strange object.
"What is this?" Sky said, turning the weird rock in his hand over while analyzing it. From a first glance, it appeared to look like a White Stone without the light, but as he looked at it further, he understood that it was nothing but a replica.
"This is a fake copy, right?" Sky asked, holding it up to the sky to see if he could see through it.
"No, that's the real thing," Mizu stated, pointing to Sky's right hand.
"Remember when I told you about Boo having two White Stones? It's not entirely impossible to have more than one, but I wonder if you could install that one in yourself the same way that happened to Boo," Charlie said, holding the White Stone in his own hand.
"You don't know about it?" Mizu asked, poking her head up from a dusty hole. She wiped off the dust that turned her red hair white and walked over to Charlie, offering to take the stone from his hand.
"If you double the amount of White Stones in your body, then you double the powers it gives you, that makes sense, right?" Mizu asked Sky next, pointing toward the White Stone on his left hand.
"Wow... you're telling me Sky's power can continue to increase, even at this level? All he has to do is to add more White Stones to him?" Charlie asked. It didn't take long for Sky to realize that Eirikr had a ton of White Stones in his arm, all turned black instead of white. If that represented the power difference between the two, Sky had no chance of killing him if he ever returned to Earth. Reluctantly, Sky picked the White Stone back up and slammed it straight into his forearm.
The White Stone, colliding with his skin, instantly inserted itself into the black tattoos that encapsulated his arm, and cleared up the black strands, restoring a portion of normal skin to him. In his eyes appeared a few messages.
[White Stone of The Damned]
[White Stone of Wrath]
[System Awakening: 3 Years]
"Three years until something interesting happens. The White Stone of the Damned?" Sky asked Mizu, and she nodded as if she actually knew what was going on.
"Yep! That sounds like the one she found. So, there's the White Stone of The Damned, The Imperfect, The Giver, and The Purified... this belonged to a friend of mine, who liked to dig these things up. I'm not sure where she found this one, but they've apparently scattered pretty far!" Mizu explained passionately. Sky was dumbfounded with how much her personality changed, but grateful to hear that he had another goal in mind now.
"Is that all that's here? Are there more stones in this city?" Sky asked next, pushing more debris around.
"Good luck finding them if that's the case. I always learned that multiple places keep the Stones in their possession to make sure they can at least build fail-safes so somebody really powerful doesn't get them. Probably like you," Mizu told Sky.