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The sun crept up over the horizon of the city of Choajoi as morning dawned upon the area. The bright rays began to pierce through the windows, but the shades blocked them from entering completely. Ryan leaped off from the top bunk and flipped to his feet as he landed on the floor. He flicked his hair back and gave a thumbs up in style with a wide grin on his face. He cackled with glee for a moment, then noticed Joel rolling over to the side in the bottom bunk trying to avoid all light and sound from waking him up. Ryan walked over to a window across from the bunk bed and lifted up the shade, letting in the bright beams of sunlight into the room.

"Aaah! I’m blind! Help!" Joel cried as the beams hit his face. He rubbed his eyes and turned over, sitting up in the bed, and said, "Dang it, Ryan."

He stood up and patted himself down. His red shirt and gray pants were getting dirty from not being washed after many trips through the city. Ryan waved him off and entered the main room of the apartment. Joel shook his head briefly and left the room as well, following Ryan. Inside the room he found Ryan standing with Doma and Judy, who each held onto fairly sized boxes that looked like they were for clothes.

"Ah, good morning Joel!" Doma greeted Joel.

"Good morning, young Guardian!" Judy greeted Joel.

Joel eyed the boxes curiously for a moment, then looked at Ryan.

"What’s with these two today?" Joel asked Ryan.

Ryan put his hands up in the air and tilted his head down. He closed his eyes and gave a sly grin and said, "Well, thanks to the help of Doma and Judy you now have a brand new set of clothes that you might find familiar."

He snapped his fingers, cueing Doma and Judy in, and Doma handed Joel his box. Joel opened it to find a full box of red shirts with similar white stripes across them just like the shirt Sarralyn bought him on his first day. Joel’s heart skipped a beat as he took a deep breath in surprise. He looked at Judy and her box and had an idea of what might be inside the other. She nodded at him and opened it for him, revealing many sets of red pants with a similar white strip going down both sides of the pants along the legs.

"Alright!" Joel cheered, throwing his arms up in the air, "This is great! Thanks guys!"

He grabbed both boxes from Doma and Judy, and he rushed back into the other room to change. In an instant of changing he began to feel like his old self again. He jumped back out and bounced about the room with glee in his new set of clothes.

"Hey, wow!" Joel said, "I feel one hundred percent in these! Thanks guys!"

Joel was jumping from the floor to the wall, wall to couch, couch to ceiling, flipping up and down, and jumping from place to place. He suddenly stopped on the ground and began thinking.

"Wait a minute." Joel said, "How did you know I had clothes like these that I really liked?"

Ryan stepped up and patted Joel on the back and told him, "I took your destroyed clothes out while you weren’t looking and gave them an order to get you some new ones tailored. Of course, I paid them well for their help." He looked to the side for a moment and thought, "Amazing how just a set of clothes can raise someone’s spirit."

"Oh. So that’s where they went." Joel said, looking up for a moment. He looked at Doma and Judy and asked, "May I have them back at least? My dearest friend got them for me, and..."

"Yes, we know, we know." Judy said, smiling at him, "Ryan told us all about it."

"Heh, yeah, well..." Ryan started with a snicker, "If that girl was your dearest friend then I must be your best friend, right? The main man!"

Joel laughed in a boastful sense and said, "Yeah!"

The two friends gripped hands together up high, laughing together, and then let go.

"Ah, the power of friendship." Doma said, "It never ceases to lighten up anyone."

Ryan turned for the door and said, "Alright, we’ve got a city to save and some criminals to get rid of."

"Let’s get them!" Joel cheered.

Joel picked up a copy of the plans they had created over the past two nights from the table at the back of the room and started on his way out. Before Joel could reach the door, Ryan stopped Joel.

"Wait." Ryan suddenly said. He turned and looked at the sliding window that led to the deck outside and called out, "Bye Lynn!"

The other three looked at Ryan a moment, then towards the window in confusion. A loud crash sounded off from something hitting different metal bars on the railing outside. They could hear a loud screeching sound of a woman coming down, and Lynn was seen falling down from above. She hit her head on the deck and bounced up and off, falling further down and to the ground. Ryan shrugged, turned around to the door, and walked away. He waved at Joel and they left the apartment.

As the two stepped out of the apartment and turned onto the main street they saw Lynn still lying there on the ground under the windows and decks of the apartments above. She was still spaced out and bruised from the surprising fall. Joel and Ryan stood around Lynn, and Ryan picked her up by her head from her hair and looked her over, then let her go.

"This cat didn’t quite make it on her feet on the landing, did she?" Ryan asked Joel.

Joel kneeled down and patted Lynn’s yellow shirt and blue overalls, brushing off the dirt and rubble that has come over her, and said, "I guess not." He brushed through her hair for a moment and said, "But I don’t see the cat ears. What do you mean?"

Ryan stood up and pulled Joel away by the color and said, "Ah, nothing. Let’s go, man."

They continued down the street and stopped at an intersection. They both opened up and looked at their maps.

"I actually heard that some locations have a greater shake than others on certain days." Ryan told Joel. He pointed at three locations on the map on various parts of the town and said, "These being the three most likely active today."

"I hope that’s right." Joel said, "That would reduce our need of help by a lot!"

Ryan nodded and said, "Yeah, but who will be our third person? That’s the question here." He looked back and saw Lynn poking her head around a corner from the far back, who quickly backed off when she was seen, and Ryan whispered to Joel, "Never mind." He pointed at one of the three locations that was farther away and whispered, "You go here, I have a plan. Start running, alright?"

Joel looked at Ryan curiously, but he nodded and started running ahead and turned left to run to the western side of the city. Ryan waited a few moments to make sure Joel had left the visible area, and he eyed back without turning his head to see if he could still sense Lynn around. He began walking foreword and whistled a tune to himself. Sure enough, Lynn was right behind him sneaking around following him. Ryan looked at his map and started picking out the farther location of the other two target locations. He passed an area where the closer of the two were on his way to his destination and looked behind him to make sure Lynn was still following. The first of the two locations was actually the restaurant that Lynn worked in, and Ryan could feel the slight embarrassment that Lynn was going through when she was seen poking around the area trying to spy on him.

Ryan only shrugged the embarrassment off that he felt coming from Lynn’s mind and walked onward. When Lynn saw Ryan shrugging as he walked on she did not know whether to ignore it or to be offended like it was meant for her. She continued to follow him closer with that motion until Ryan stopped in front of a closed empty warehouse at the end of a street. Lynn was becoming impatient waiting on Ryan’s next move as she waited in the shadows for him, but suddenly Ryan turned around and waved at her.

"You can come out now, Lynn. You should know by now that I’m not an idiot." Ryan called out to her with a wide grin.

Lynn gave a slightly startled jump, then walked out stomping her feet across the ground with an angry look across her face.

"Why you big oaf!" Lynn snarled at him, "What do you think you monsters are doing around here anyway?"

"I’m stalling you, that’s what." Ryan told her. He looked westward for a moment, then back and said, "He’s almost in place. Great." Ryan pointed down at the ground where a poorly hidden trap door was set at, "Now’s your chance to help us. I promise we won’t hurt you at all either way."

"What? You think I’d help you demons?" Lynn asked.

"All you have to do is step up to that door down there for me." Ryan told her. He lowered his pointed arm and put his other hand up to his head and tapped it a moment and said, "Funny how you say think this, think that. I am the Guardian of the Mind after all. Of course I think!"

Lynn turned blue in the face and began to quiver and shake in front of Ryan, letting out brief whimpers. Ryan nodded at her and walked behind her while she was still stiff in the legs, and he patted her on the back a few times, pushing her a few steps towards the door on the ground.

"It’s time. Good luck!" Ryan exclaimed.

He vanished instantly as he teleported himself out of the area and into an empty and unseen area of Lynn’s restaurant. Ryan walked into the restaurant and waved off the clerks at the front desk, asking to just use the restrooms. As he approached the room the whole city began to shake briefly.

"That’s one." Ryan thought, "That must have been Joel."

Lynn felt the ground shaking, and her weak legs wobbled her back and forth and towards the trap door she was directed to. Around her the earth shook again, only a great deal more. She opened the door on the ground and only found a flat block in her way. She threw the door back and sat down with a sigh.

"Two. Nice one, human." Ryan thought, "Now let’s see what happens when..."

Ryan stepped foreword to the trap door inside the restaurant and looked at it. He lifted the door up and open and revealed an open passage as opposed to what he found a few days before. He looked around for a moment, then jumped down into the passage. Inside there was a latter for climbing up and out of the passage, and stairs leading down further. There were also red stains along some parts of the walls.

"From people who tried getting in at the wrong time, no doubt. Poor souls." Ryan thought, "I wonder how many of them were Guardians."

He walked foreword and moved down the flight of stairs, making his way into a short corridor. The room suddenly began flashing red lights down the hall with sirens echoing off.

"Uhoh. That was human of me." Ryan said, running his hand down his face.

Three sentries of the Suits came running out from a local room, each wearing their own tuxedo and tie. They drew pistols from their belts and aimed at Ryan sharply. Ryan stood there thinking for a moment, then put his hands in the air, and two of the men ran out and locked Ryan down tightly. They forced his arms behind him in a very uncomfortable fashion.

On the surface Joel sat in front of the trap door on the ground leading to the entrance he was sent to. He waited for something to happen with Ryan and Lynn off on their own. Near by behind Joel were a group of children playing with a ball. They bounced it back and forth between each other, and sometimes the ball would bounce across near Joel. He would bounce the ball back when it came near him, because he enjoyed listening to the sound of the children playing so peacefully together

"Hey mister!" one child called out to him.

Joel turned around to answer the child’s voice and looked at him curiously.

"Yeah? What’s up?" Joel asked.

"You’re one of those cool demons, aren’t you?" the boy asked.

"Wha, demon?" Joel asked. He fell back in the surprise of the situation, "Aah, how’d you guess?"

"Wow!" the kid exclaimed in excitement, "I’ve read all about you guys in school! Can you do cool moves like it says, too?"

Joel stood up and showed the boy his hands a moment, then said, "Well, sure. But I can’t really do it here. It would make too much of a scene, and I wouldn’t want to disturb the peace."

"Aww, bummer..." the child sighed. He brightened up again and asked, "Can you fight? How do you do it? Is it the same as all other demons?"

Joel shook his head at the young one and told him, "No, and we’re not really called demons. We’re really called Guardians. People just call us demons because they’re afraid of us. I just found that out the other day, myself, actually."

He scratched his head for a moment and pushed his hair back as he looked at the boy.

"Well that’s what my mamma calls you." The child blurted out nervously.

Joel gave an annoyed look and sighed at him, and he turned back around and sat back down in front of the trap door he was watching over. The boy poked him on the shoulder from behind repeatedly until he turned his attention to the child again.

"Hey!" the boy exclaimed, "Aren’t you gonna show me some of your cool karate moves? How about Kung Fu?"

Joel looked blankly into space for a moment and thought, "Karate... Kung Fu... what are those?" He shook his head at the thought and told the boy, "I don’t know karate. I use a style called the Khurinza’s Fury Dance. It uses attacks like your normal martial arts, but it also involves continuous movements to try keeping the opponent off guard. Like a rapid fire, you know? I couldn’t show you it or teach you it, though. There’s some things that you just can’t teach anyone else besides yourself."

"Aww come on! Please?" the boy begged innocently, "I promise I won’t beat anyone up with it!"

"Sorry, I can’t." Joel told him, looking back at the door in the ground, "Besides, I have a job to do here that I can’t stray from. You had better get along and play with your friends."

The boy slumped his shoulders and walked away sniffling and sobbing. Joel sighed and continued to wait for any sign from Ryan so he could do something.

Lynn was also sitting around the trap door that Ryan had directed her to. She had been inspecting it thoroughly trying to figure out what the odd surface under the trap door was for. She walked away for a moment and came back with a stick and began poking at it a few times. She then started to tap on it with her feet, and then Lynn stood over it and sat on it, waiting for something to happen. She groaned out loud and continued to wonder what was going on in the city.

Ryan was struggling with the three men underground in the corridor. The third man, who was not holding Ryan down, walked up to Ryan and punched him in the face. Ryan gave the man a look of disgust and spit at his feet.

"Boy, how did you manage to get down here? Only the Suits are allowed down here, don’t you know that?" he asked Ryan.

"Oh geez, did I know that? Nope, I’m afraid not." Ryan said, looking up slightly, "You can’t blame tourists like this all the time for making accidental bumps, can you?"

"You are trouble. We’ve been watching you since your situation in the cafe you and your red friend went to." The man said, "You may be a demon, but that doesn’t mean you’ll stop us from controlling this sweet city."

Ryan looked at the man and grinned, snickering a bit, and said, "Well then, you won’t be afraid if I do something like this, do you? Because it’s time to stop playing."

Ryan relaxed his body for a moment, stopping his struggling with the men. He then jumped up and flipped over the two men holding him down, breaking free from the lock down. As Ryan came down from the flip he disappeared into the darkness before he landed on the ground. The three men each yelled out in awe and fright at Ryan’s sudden actions. They looked around in a panic as they tried to find him again, and as one of the three tried running down the corridor, Ryan appeared in his full blue leather armor suit and cape over them with a look of disappointment on his face.

"It’s been so long, boys. I hope you didn’t miss me." Ryan said dimly.

The sentries aimed their pistols up at Ryan in the air as he floated up above them and began firing almost instantly.

"Seven Fast Stance." Ryan quickly said as he blurred out into seven figures in the air.

Ryan began moving at a blinding speed up and down in the air, making it appear that there were seven of him. The bullets being fired from the sentries both missed Ryan completely and flew threw one of the after images that Ryan left behind in his quick moves. When the men ran out of bullets the seven figures began moving one by one towards them, and Ryan fully appeared behind them as the images filled his body. As the sentries turned to find Ryan again they were met with a knock out hit to the ground each. Ryan had made quick work of the three men as he made quick moves avoiding the bullet assaults with his technique. He rubbed his gloves together and walked down the corridor and into the room where the sentries had come from.

There were many different computer systems inside the room. Ryan deemed it to be a control room for the entrance he came in through as well as other locations in the city. He sat down in a seat in front of one of the consoles and began to toy around with it. He found an area of options of on and off switches and determined which switch was for the location that Joel and Lynn were waiting at, and he selected to switch them open. The ground began to rumble slightly as the entrances opened up for the two other locations. Joel noticed the ground under the trap door shifting, so he opened the door and jumped into the passage. Lynn began to feel the ground rumble, then the ground under her moving to the side. She was sliding in place as the surface under her slid out, and she dropped down into the passage and crashed on the ground.

"Oww! Hey!" Lynn groaned. She stood up and patted the dirt off of herself and looked around, thinking, "This must be the place the demons were looking for." She looked up to the ladder and entrance, "But why would there be something like this down here? Maybe it’s the Suits’ headquarters where they keep all of my city’s resources captive at." She looked along the walls and noticed the red stains, "Eww, what kind of sick people are these guys? And I let them live around me?"

The walls suddenly began to close in on her and the exit to the passage and the stairs that led further down into the dungeon were sealed. She began to shriek loudly and was running from wall to wall hitting on them trying to get them to stop. Before it was too late they began to reverse again. In the control room, Ryan was rapidly pressing the open buttons for Joel and Lynn’s areas. Someone in one of the other rooms was trying to close all the gates and crush anything in them with it.

"Come on, kid! Move!" Ryan yelled at the image in the monitor.

Joel looked around at the walls in the entrance room he stood in as they closed on him and opened back up. He moved up to one of the walls and pressed his body against it and began to push. The gears began to screech and squeal as they were bent out of place and stuck there. Joel turned around and did the same thing to the other side. When he felt assured that the walls would no longer try to crush him he began walking down the stairs through the passage and made his way into the corridor.

"Blood makes me sick. Especially when it’s been splattered on walls like that." Joel thought.

Lynn noticed the walls were open wide enough so she could climb back up the ladder and outside to safety, but as she grabbed hold on the ladder she thought for a moment. She let go and began running down the stairs as the walls opened up wide enough again. Ryan let his button pressing hand go to rest and allowed the entrances to close again. In several windows in the control room he was in he could see signs of intruder alerts. The main security was attempting to lock the whole base down so no one else could get in.

Lynn looked around the corridor as she passed through after walking down the flight of stairs. She held herself tight as she crept through the underground passage, looking around cautiously. She heard footsteps coming from ahead and saw a sentry walking down the long hall in a search for any intruders. Lynn sneaked next to a wall under a shadow and waited for the man to come closer, and she reached inside her overalls, taking out a ring with a string and bar attached to it. She put the ring on her finger and gripped the bar that the string connected to and clicked a button on it. The bar began to extend up and around into a metal hoop attached to the ring with the string to act as a devise to pull it back when she needed to.

"Oh man, I hope these toys help at all!" she thought, shaking in suspense as she drew her arm with the hoop back.

Lynn threw the hoop at the sentry when he came close enough, and the string extended from within the hoop’s base as it shot out. The hoop hit the man hard on his face, leaving a giant imprinted mark behind, and the sentry fell down with his gun going off while he dropped unconscious. Lynn quickly snapped the hoop back, bringing it into her grasp again, and she froze against the wall as the shots fired off. She looked to her side to see a line of fire going up over her not too far off. She let out a sigh and continued to move along through the corridor in the shadows, trying to avoid being caught.

"I’m going to get gray hairs at a really young age by snooping around these things." Lynn pouted.

She found herself entering a much larger room at the top of a long set of stairs. There were eleven other staircases and exits on other ends of the room much like the one she stood at the top of, and along the middle of the floor there was a small stream of blue that poured down from a giant rock wall in the far back. She looked closer and realized it was a flow of underground water that slowly came out from a dam built underground. Lynn looked up and around the room again and noticed that Joel and Ryan were also at the top of two other staircases looking down and around as well. They were making different hand signals at each other after they spotted one another. Lynn could see Ryan pointing up at the rock wall dam, then down at the lower level, and Joel was looking at him and just shrugged in confusion. Ryan dropped his shoulders and sighed.

"What are they doing now?" Lynn thought, "They aren’t going to trick me and get away this time!" She began marching down the steps to the lower level so she could get to Ryan, "Just wait until I catch them and turn them in!"

She turned and started moving towards Ryan, completely forgetting where she was, and she suddenly felt a gun pointed against her head. She stopped and eyed to her side at the sentry standing next to her, ready to shoot.

"Umm, oops?" Lynn said out loud. She began to sweat and thought, "Okay Lynn, what would a super action invincible hero do at a time like this? Think of something cool."

Lynn reached into her overalls with her other hand and removed another ring and bar, putting the ring on her finger and gripping onto the bar as she did with her other hand. She shuddered a moment and breathed deeply, then she dropped down quickly, activated her second hoop, and tossed them both up and over. The hoops strung out and twirled up and around the sentry before he could make his own move and smashed him in the face. Lynn snapped the hoops back into her hands as the man moaned and cried as he fell to the ground. The other six guards in the area became alert of Lynn’s presence and began charging for her with clubs, and Joel and Ryan also noticed Lynn on the ground and began watching her from above. Lynn’s eyes grew big with shock as she saw the men charging at her all together.

She threw both hoops out and jolted her hands in, causing both hoops to fling inward at two of the sentries. The hoops swiftly hit them both, and Lynn moved her hands out again, causing the hoops to quickly change directions again towards the men again. Lynn hit the two guards several times across the bodies, then jolted them upward, and she flung the hoops down over the heads of the guards and knocking them down.

"Aie, um, Twin Dynamic! Yeah!" Lynn called out.

Lynn pulled the hoops back and turned around to hit a guard that was coming in close behind her. She pushed the man away and shot her right hoop out up and down along his body, then Lynn ducked down and twirled the hoop around along the sentry’s legs. The hoop’s impact along his knees caused him to loose his footing and fall down to his side. Lynn brought the hoop back to her, and she walked up to the man and stepped on his face, rubbing him into the ground harshly.

"That was, umm," She stopped to think for a moment, then gloated, "The Dyne Whip, hah!"

Ryan summoned a dictionary and was looking through it for Lynn’s wording of her newly developed attacks and nodded them off.

"Well, so far so good, I suppose." Ryan said.

Lynn glared at the other three men and threw her hoops towards two of them. She hit them in their gut, then snapped the hoops back and forth between both sentries, hitting them several times. Lynn then raised her hoops up into the air as they flew rapidly around and brought them around behind the two men, who were caught in a daze from the attacks sent at them. The metal hoops slammed into the backs of the sentries at a high speed, causing them loose their footing and crash into each other.

"Heart’s Arcadia, ah hah!" Lynn laughed as she brought the hoops back to her hands.

"Now that was just oxymoronic." Ryan said as he looked up the word ‘arcadia’ in his dictionary.

"Hey, what’s so different from that attack and her first one anyway?" Joel called out to Ryan, "You know, the Twin Dynamic one?"

Ryan looked up away from his book and answered, "All in the wrist movement, I guess?"

Joel and Ryan looked back down and continued to watch Lynn in action. The last of the six sentries suddenly looked a bit unsure of himself, and he began to slowly back away from the lucky amateur. Lynn once again threw her hoops out, skidding them across the ground in front of them both. She jolted her hands up, causing the hoops to rise up into the air, then she pulled them down. The hoops wrapped around the sentry tightly before he could get away.

"Hey big boy!" Lynn said as she tightened the string bonds between the rings and the hoops, "Say good night!"

She began pulling on the man as hard as she could, and Lynn sent him flying head-first into the closest wall. The sentry found his head stuck inside the wall, unable to break free. He started to yell through the wall and beating his hands against it trying to get out and call for help, but he had no luck. Lynn removed the hoops from around the guard and reverted them back into sticks. She put the rings and sticks back inside her overall pockets and sighed in relief. Ryan tossed away the dictionary, leaped down from above, and began to slowly applaud her victory, and Joel soon followed as he made his way down the steps to the lower level. Lynn forgot all about what she was after before she got into the fight and smiled happily and bowed for everyone as if she were in a daily performance act at the restaurant.

"That was great, Miss Lynn! Where did you learn that stuff so suddenly?" Joel asked her.

"Oh, that was nothing you can’t learn in elementary school in recess playing hoops with your friends!" Lynn exclaimed.

"It goes to show you can’t call women down as weak, no matter what you read in story books about cheapo damsels in distress." Ryan said with a wide grin, "The strongest Guardian of us all is a woman, after all." He looked up at the stone dam, "Now then, to finish up what we came here for. That should do it for us nicely."

Lynn came to her old senses and stepped up to Ryan and looked up at him and yelled, "Now I remember! What were you two planning on doing here anyway? Are you some sort of hench-boys for the Suits gang?"

Joel and Ryan looked at Lynn blankly. The size difference between the two and Lynn were noticeable, as Lynn was only 4’10" while Joel and Ryan both stood over 6’. Ryan shrugged and put his hand over her head and rubbed her hair and laughed.

"So not only are you small and small chested," Ryan began, pointing at her chest, then pointed at her head, "but you’re also small up here, too?"

Lynn’s face turned red in anger and jabbed Ryan in the chest through his thick leather armor and said, "Shut up!!"

Joel looked over Ryan and said, "Wow, who trains this girl? I’d like to learn how she does that!" He turned to Lynn and stepped up and said, "Well when we were passing through this city we ran into this couple who welcomed in travelling Guardians, and we promised to help this city get rid of this gang here for them."

Lynn backed away from Ryan and looked innocently at Joel and said, "Wait, you mean people actually like you?"

Ryan and Joel both looked suddenly stupefied and fell down onto the ground with a crash. Joel stood up and rubbed his head for a moment, then sighed.

"That’s the second time I’ve heard someone say that today. What gives?" Joel sighed.

"That’s... life... man..." Ryan groaned, face still in the ground. He slowly brought his left arm up and pointed up towards the upper level, "I think... we have company?"

Joel grabbed Ryan from the back of his mantle and lifted him up to his feet. Ryan wobbled around for a moment, then shook his head. The three looked around and noticed they were suddenly surrounded by a swarm of sentries with automatic rifles. They all aimed sharply at Joel, Lynn, and Ryan, but they all watched and waited for an attack signal from one of the suited men on top of the third flight of stairs to their right.

"Try six fasting this, kids!" the leader shouted at the three.

He raised his hands up high, and Lynn began to cringe in fright of being shot down. Ryan stood tall, crossing his arms with a wide grin on his face, and Joel looked around curiously wondering what was going on this time around. The leader gave the call and dropped his arms at the three on the lower level, and the swarm of Suits began setting off their automatic rifles at Joel, Ryan, and Lynn.

"Aah! This is the end! God help me!" Lynn shrieked and cried as she ducked down.

Ryan stopped for a moment and began thinking, "Wait a minute... Six fast... mine is Seven Fast..."

As the gunfire sounded off rapidly, Joel still looked around with a confused look on his face. He put out his hands and looked at them as he turned them up and down. As the bullets rained down over and around him they melted into thin liquid and merely splattered on their clothes and skin.

"Wait a minute... metal bullets... don’t work around me." Joel said as he noticed the bullets melting around a hot barrier around him

Ryan flicked off a few small liquefied bullet puddles that splattered along his suit and said, "It’s amazing what all can happen when you don’t think about it at first." He kneeled down and poked Lynn, who was still bent over on the ground crying, and said, "Hey, get up! You’re alright."

"But the loud sounds are scary!" Lynn pouted.

Ryan shook his head and stood up. The Suits were still trying to shoot them, continually reloading their magazines and firing on again and again. Ryan looked across the room at the stone dam, then at Joel.

"Well, I think it’s about time we get this show over with, man." Ryan told Joel, "Blast that thing down!"

"Alright. Here it comes!" Joel said. He charged his powers up, a pulse of air quickly jolted up around him, and he brought his hands back and called out, "Fire Bolt!"

Joel brought both his arms foreword and aimed at the center of the leaking wall. Several sparks flew out from between his hands, then a large beam of fire shot out and collided with the dam. The wall began to crumble and break in, and the water began to rush towards them at an alarming rate. The Suits began to all scream in fear and ran around mindlessly, tossing their weapons away. The ground water flooded in and filled the whole room and tunnels, and within seconds Joel, Lynn, and Ryan found themselves under the massive amount of water.

The three floated about at the bottom of the submerged room almost lifelessly for a moment, but Ryan quickly shaped up and grabbed Joel and Lynn. He pulled them through the room as he sped through the water, going through the passage Joel took up. The three shot out of the underground base like bullets, and Ryan held Joel and Lynn up in the air as they watched the streets fill with water. The flood began to move downhill and joined another stream of water to the southwest.

"Waaah! My clothes are all wet!" Lynn cried, "And my apartment’s probably all flooded, too! I can’t believe this!"

"You can say that again." Joel said, wringing his clothes dry from the soaked water.

"You two should consider yourselves lucky. I don’t take people on free air trips that often." Ryan told them, "But at least we got rid of the Suits."

Joel nodded and said, "Yeah, you’re right. Let’s get our things and get out of here while we can."

Ryan agreed with Joel, but Lynn began to toss and turn in a mad fashion.

"Hey, what about me?" Lynn yelled, "Put me down now!"

Ryan began carrying them down to Doma and Judy’s apartment.

"I’m afraid not, Lynn-o-buddy." Ryan told her, "If there’s any Suits left out there you can count on being their first target if they try coming back."

"But my show!" Lynn said.

"He’s right, you know, Miss Lynn?" Joel said, "We won’t be around to help if you get attacked in the future. Besides, you’re bound to have lots of fun while travelling with us."

"No! No, wait!" Lynn cried, rattling about in Ryan’s hand, "My life is being torn apart right before my eyes! Help me!"

Ryan and Joel retrieved their items from Doma and Judy and thanked them for all the free food they were given and the place to stay for the last several days. With the city of Choajoi saved from the ruthless criminal gang The Suits, the city could return to it’s old order of peace. Over time, the fruits and vegetation were returned to their farmlands, and the once rotten and dry land became very green for all that lived there. As Joel and Ryan left, tugging Lynn along close behind them, the city cheered the two Guardians on for all they had done for them. Their next destination would take them to the Shroud Forest, where they would travel through to reach Traquo again for the long pilgrimage to seek out Joel’s younger brother, the water Guardian.

"I don’t want to go! Help me, guys! The demons are going to eat me! Don’t let them take me away!" Lynn’s voice echoed from far away from Choajoi.

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