Not minding the others who were conducting their respective duties, Zeel used his antigravity boots and glided along the walls into the depths of what was remaining of the Mogadorian base.

Bernie Kozar, who was supposed to be a lookout, had come swooping down towards John, pulling him off in another direction entirely.

John could only sigh and voice an apology to Zeel deep in his heart. John did not want to upset Zeel if not absolutely necessary, since the guy was extremely unpredictable. He could smile with you today, and hook your girlfriend up with your best friend tomorrow.

Zeel disliked when others did their own things during a collective mission. It put the others at risk, hence any deviation from the plans was strictly forbidden. But Zeel had the luxury of being flexible at the current moment since they were tackling much less resistance than was predicted.

Running down the corridor, Zeel's body slowed down before eventually pausing entirely. Turning his gaze towards a specific direction, Zeel knew there was perhaps a rare metal somewhere in the distance.

The way his eagerness was currently radiating out from him, suggested that it was not as simple as just another 'rare metal'. He felt innately disgusted and curious at the same time, Zeel was not one to judge by way of appearance but by usefulness – whether that be good or bad uses, morally speaking.

Zeel slowed down near a wall with his senses in complete disarray. He could feel something radiating very strong energy signatures from behind the wall. He cranked back his left hand and sent a fist into the wall shattering it, and what laid behind were clumps of what appeared to be red molten rocks.

The closer he got, the more Zeel could feel the negative thoughts suppressed since his childhood overwhelming his rational thought processes. Zeel slowed his perception of time to a crawl and bolted out the room using everything he could muster at that moment.

He did not consider how much strength he used, only that his intuition was telling him to move away from those rocks as fast as possible – the resulting momentum sent him through five walls before stopping, and Zeel felt his efforts were well-spent.

Regaining his senses after a brief couple of seconds, Zeel found himself in a room that had been blocked off from all sunlight and smelled like – well shit, literally. This cell made the pig pens of this time feel like a luxury hotel.

Far off in the corner, Zeel noticed a well-defined, slightly large, Caucasian, guy with chiseled facial features. The guy looked at Zeel as if he was denying him something important and without any questions, the guy tackled Zeel.

Given that Zeel was a bit disoriented, he responded a bit too late and was sent cascading through another two walls.

Getting annoyed with the constant collisions, Zeel snapped as suppressed memories he had not thought of since childhood, began raging once more.

With a knee to the stomach and a fierce round of fisting, a crater was formed with the mystery guy inside. Zeel had not even noticed when the noise in the surroundings ceased and the group had gathered watching him pound a random guy into oblivion.

"You know he is a number right?" John asked, after hesitating to talk for an entire 5 seconds. He had to speak since nobody else looked like they would.

Suppressing his anger, Zeel huffed and with a wave of his hand, a stasis pod was constructed from nearby components. The stasis pod encased the unconscious member of the Garde.

Zeel would be lying if he said he had not thought about killing the guy had everyone not been gathered together.

But recently, he has come to appreciate Alice's mentality of sparing lives – at least the ones that could be useful to himself.

"He hit me first," Zeel clarified as he gave one last kick to the stasis pod containing the mystery number.

Zeel could tell that the new Garde would be an obstacle for his goals, just based on the sight of his living conditions a few moments earlier.

The human mind is a fragile construct, when severely traumatized you have a chance of recovery, but when broken to the level of the guy earlier – death would be a release.

Zeel compared the Lorien to a human mind since all of the Garde had been raised as humans instead of Loriens.

This meant that they were vulnerable to the same psychological stimulus as trained human soldiers.

"Head to the center and see what's there," Zeel commanded causing everyone to disperse.

Alice waited a few seconds with a raised eyebrow before she too went ahead.

Alice was perhaps the only one who could question Zeel's judgment at any time. Zeel slowed his perception activating his super-speed and TechnoMancy simultaneously as he created a bottle made entirely of microglass.

The outside of the bottle was laced with a lattice structure that was synthesized on the spot using Zeel's calculation capacity. Zeel bolted through the smashed walls to the room he had run from earlier.

Using his TechnoMancy, Zeel barely managed to compress the red metal enough to fit in the vial.

Luckily, the metal was compressed quickly enough to avoid Zeel losing his sanity.

Zeel could feel cold sweat on his brows as even with maximum speed, just below breaking the sound barrier, he was still somewhat affected by the negative effects of the metal.

He could only laugh to himself derisively. If the Mogadorians found a way to weaponize that metal, even he would go on a rampage killing comrades and enemies alike.

Now, this was an opportunity to succeed where the Mogadorians had failed. Walking out of the hidden walls, Zeel continued slashing away at support beams and load-bearing walls, effectively embedding his nanobots deep inside.

After making his way to the rendezvous point, Zeel was greeted with animals galore. Every member of the group was holding small pets in their arms. Alice eyed Zeel expectantly since the animals she was holding were new-born Chimeras.

It was an open secret that Alice longed for Zeel to settle down and have children with herself. But everyone knew this was impossible, Zeel was a drifter by nature, and would rarely remain in one place too long.

Sadly, Alice did not know of the many enemies Zeel possessed. Remaining anywhere too long would be no less of a death sentence for Zeel, who was ironically already dying.

"So are we gonna get cats next?" Zeel asked since the majority of the animals were either dogs or birds.

"They're not dogs, they are chimeras," replied Alice as Zeel wondered what experiments can be done using them.

He had recently been trying to create interdimensional storage and was pretty close, just missing some key components that would be impossible to find on such a primitive planet as this one.

Maybe, he could also create an animal storage unit for Alice's entertainment?

"Alice get them; we have to leave," Zeel told Alice as she waved her hands causing all chimeras to float.

The infiltrators were already waiting for everyone at the entrance. What good would infiltrators be if they didn't come with the escape option as well? 

Just as congratulations were in order, Alice raised both hands in the air before slamming them onto the ground. The resulting shockwave blew everyone a couple of dozen feet backward. Zeel and John were amongst the first to regain their bearings mid-blast.

Zeel forced everyone's antigravity boots to break their fall, while Alice flipped backward and landed on her feet.

Then a storm raged as the earth quaked beneath its presence, but the storm was just a precursor to something much more terrible.