Tokyo – Underground Vault, 12:16 P.M.
The silence after the scream was suffocating.
Sharim stood, chest heaving, in the fractured corridor beneath the city. Molten claw marks still glowed red-hot on the walls, the heat hissing into the stale air. His breaths came shallow and ragged, each exhale fogging the air as if even his core temperature was failing to stabilize.
The vault before him remained shut, sealed tight with old Plumber technology—long-dormant, but humming faintly now in his presence.
He touched the metallic glyphs. Energy responded.
The mutated speedster tilted his head. He didn't know how or why, but the old systems reacted to him—not as an intruder, but as something familiar. Something recognized.
The glyphs pulsed once.
Sharim snarled. "Don't... twist my mind..."
He wasn't sure who he was talking to. The machines. The voices. Himself. All blurred.
With a hiss, the vault door creaked open a sliver, enough for a body like his—half-glitched, half-heatwave—to slip through.
Inside was a dead tech-lab. The chamber flickered with the faint stench of ozone and age-old dust. Console lights blinked hesitantly to life, responding to his energy signature.
He stumbled toward a cylindrical structure in the middle of the room—an alien stabilizer once used to detoxify volatile samples.
His hand hovered above its dormant panel.
His claws shook.
"If I step in... I lose the edge. The speed. The strength. Her."
He clutched at his head, growling low.
He felt Scorch again. Not just memories. Not just voices. But the rhythm. The way she ran. The way they moved together.
"Not again... No more futures."
He slammed his fist into the control console, shattering it.
The lights went dark again.
But the stabilizer flickered one last time.
And began slowly charging.
—
Aboveground – Central Tokyo, 12:43 P.M.
"Why is it always tunnels? Or sewers? Or underground vaults?" Ben grumbled, walking behind Hikaru and Scorch, arms behind his head as his stomach growled loudly. "You'd think a galactic threat would at least attack somewhere with food."
"You just ate," Hikaru said, side-eyeing him. "That takoyaki plate was meant for two."
Ben scoffed. "And it was—for me and myself."
Scorch knelt over a patch of scorched pavement. Her claws hovered just inches from the ground, tracing thin steam trails visible only to her.
"He's stopped moving," she muttered. "For now. But something's changed."
"What do you mean?" Hikaru stepped beside her.
"His heat trail's fractured," she replied. "It's not the same constant surge of speed. It's like... he hesitated."
"Could be a trap," Ben offered.
"Could be exhaustion," Hikaru added. "Or he's trying to stabilize."
Scorch's voice turned quiet. "Or something worse. Kinetians don't stop running unless something inside them breaks."
Ben frowned. "Okay, first off, that's messed up. Second, can we like—get ahead of him? Corner him before another crater happens?"
"Unlikely," Hikaru said. "But I've been working on something."
Ben perked up. "Wait, is this where you finally give yourself a cool new alien and we all get jealous?"
Hikaru smiled faintly. "Something like that."
He lifted his arm, the Elementatrix glowing. A new symbol rotated into view—a glimmering blue droplet surrounded by faint ripples.
"Waterdrop."
A burst of mist enveloped him, and when it cleared, Hikaru stood changed—his body fluid, shifting, almost translucent. He resembled a humanoid water figure, streamlined with elongated fingers and smooth limbs. Light passed through him, distorted like glass.
"Dude!" Ben grinned. "You're like a water balloon with martial arts skills."
"More like hydrokinetic elasticity and environmental absorption." Hikaru's voice was calmer now, flowing like a stream. "Let's see if I can track him beneath the city."
Waterdrop melted into a puddle, seeping into a nearby drain.
Ben blinked. "Okay, that's gross and cool."
Scorch gave a tight smile. "If he can find the source of the energy surge, we'll know where Sharim is heading next."
"Question," Ben added. "What if he's heading toward more tech? Something that might... I dunno, make him even less Sharim and more Cruelight 2.0?"
Scorch's eyes narrowed. "Then we don't let him reach it."
—
Underground Tokyo – 1:12 P.M.
Sharim stood in the center of the dead vault, facing his reflection in a shattered glass panel. His skin rippled. Energy popped across his body.
The mutated energy core pulsed harder.
"Everything hurts," he muttered. "Even standing still hurts."
He clenched his fists and looked down at the glowing tempo-loop still clinging to his wrist. It flickered now—faint, unstable.
It was dying.
So was he.
But rage burned hotter than death.
"I'll outrun it," he growled. "Even this."
Suddenly, the stabilizer in the room whirred to life again. Not fully active—but responding to the residual charge from his mutation.
He turned to it slowly.
"No."
He struck it again—this time less violently. The glow dimmed.
"I don't need to be saved."
Footsteps echoed down a distant corridor.
Sharim spun toward the sound.
A puddle. A shimmer. And then Hikaru—still in Waterdrop form—rose from a crack in the vault's floor.
"I figured you'd be down here," he said quietly.
Sharim snarled. "You followed me?"
"Scorch is scared for you." Hikaru took a step forward. "She wants to help."
"I DON'T NEED HER PITY!"
The vault trembled as Sharim's energy surged.
"I was the fastest," he hissed. "On Kinet. On the circuits. In the skies. And now?" He spread his arms. "Now I'm a glitch in motion. A dead man running."
"You're not dead." Hikaru's voice was calm. "But you're burning out. I can feel it—your pulse is unstable. You need to stop."
Sharim's eyes shimmered blue again.
For a moment, just a heartbeat, Hikaru thought he saw the man Scorch loved.
Then it vanished.
"You're wrong."
He lunged.
Waterdrop barely dodged in time, the vault exploding into motion as Sharim's speed warped the walls.
Back above, alarms in Hikaru's communicator blared.
Ben looked at Scorch. "That's our cue."
She nodded grimly.
"We run."