Pierce remained fairly casual and nonchalant as he introduced himself, always believing he had the upper hand with the countless guns behind him…  

Unlike Pierce’s strange nonchalance, his men were primed for battle…

They were prepared for anything that may come their way…

In some ways, Logan and Laura could smell the fear radiating off Pierce’s men, but when they turned to Pierce, he seemed unafraid of death…

And that made the one-armed man incredibly dangerous…

The soldiers behind Pierce were decked with guns, daggers, bulletproof vests, and a host of other tactical gears that Sprite could not immediately identify…

But it seemed Logan could identify the weapons and seemed relatively unbothered by it…

Then again, Logan didn’t survive this long by running from everyone with superior weaponry, but his main concern was not to fight…

It was to get Charles to safety…

Laura was tense, but Sprite could also sense a bit of bloodlust buried deep within the small girl’s heart…

And that was okay because right now, Sprite could feel the bloodlust she honed over a thousand years eating away at the corner of her mind…

Just waiting for an opportunity to break out and devour everything…

If Sprite had to compare it to a feeling, it would be the same as Thena’s Mahd Wy’yr…

Sprite’s mind moved a thousand miles every second, calculating every likely outcome of this confrontation, and she quickly realized the chances for victory were small…

Almost as small as she was…

The soldiers were too well equipped; though, it was important to note they were equipped to handle Laura and Logan, but not an Eternal such as Sprite…

Still, Sprite was half an Eternal at this point in time – the limitless Cosmic Energy inside her body was no longer there…

And she was incompatible with the Cosmic Energy of this Universe…

To make matters even worse, Sprite could still feel a subtle, almost unnoticeable, drain on her Cosmic Reserves, and it took her a split second to realize it was Tyrone…

Sprite couldn’t be sure if Tyrone was dead or alive, but he was definitely draining a bit of her Cosmic Energy every couple of seconds…

As Golden-Crimson Energy started to saturate every fiber of Sprite’s being, she analyzed the situation from start to finish…

Pierce was definitely not as simple as he seemed…

Sprite, Laura, and Logan noted how some of the men remained inside the cars, safe from any harm the impending battle would bring…

This meant killing everyone was a pipedream from the beginning…

Finally, Sprite felt the semi-familiar Crimson Energy complete its rounds throughout her body, fuelling the processes her depleting Cosmic Energy could not…

The Crimson-Golden Energy was something of a mix between Sprite’s Cosmic Energy and Tyrone’s pure connection to the Dark Dimension…

It was something entirely new…

The ground started to shudder and everyone tensed…

Even the ever-nonchalant Pierce could no longer pretend to have the world in his hands…

“You met someone in the desert a few days ago, right?” Sprite questioned, an uneasy, vicious, tone to her voice…

Everyone flinched even further, especially Pierce and the soldiers…

“What happened?” Sprite inquired further, but when she saw the confusion on the soldier’s faces, Sprite added “He was a black kid, and judging by your numbers. He killed a chunk of you…”

It all happened at once, or at least, that was how it felt…

Everything was progressing too fast to know for sure…

But it started when a look of realization dawned on the faces of the soldiers…

They recalled the battle with Tyrone a couple of days ago, and they also recalled how many of their friends died in that battle, but most of all, they remembered how monstrous Tyrone was…

And it seemed Sprite as equally, if not more, monstrous…

The soldiers, ex-marines, and special forces felt a chill run along their spines as they desperately tried not to give anything away, but their ghastly faces told Sprite all she needed to know…

After all, Sprite had spent thousands of years reading humans…

However, for formality’s sake and the last bit of hope that burned in the depths of her heart, Sprite asked “What happened during the fight?”

For some reason, Sprite’s inquiry felt like a death sentence…

The soldiers flinched…

Some of the weaker ones even fell to their knees…

Pierce flinched and took a couple of steps backward…

Laura, Logan, Caliban, and Charles also flinched…

“HOOOLLLLLDDDDDDD!” Pierce ordered, noticing some of his men were beginning to take aim at Sprite…

Their flight or fight instincts were beginning to take over, and Pierce couldn’t blame them, but somewhere deep inside, Pierce knew that the first to fire would be the first to die…

It was best to solve matters peacefully…

“This black kid… Tyrone, right?” Pierce spoke clearly even though his throat was dry and legs were paralyzed in fear “We had an altercation with him a few days ago, but in the end, he was taken to our facility alive…”

Pierce chose his words very carefully, since the best lies had a hint of the truth deep within, and it was for this very reason, that Sprite knew she had to pick someone mentally weaker to inquire for answers…

Sprite already knew the answer in her heart, but if thousands of years had taught her one thing, it was to be sure, and then even more sure after that…

The Crimson-Gold Energy around Sprite quelled, or more like, concentrated to the point it was a part of her body…

TRRRR

The sound of something piercing through the air was heard after the fact…

Luckily, Pierce was preparing since the beginning, and his instincts told him to exact moment to raise his metal prosthetic…

The feeling of death was cold…

A shiver before something bad was going to happen, and both Pierce and Logan felt that shiver at the exact same moment, but it was only aimed at one of them…

CHING

Pierce swerved to the right and raised his prosthetic simultaneously, and the next second, his metal prosthetic was cleanly cut in half, falling to the ground…

Like a ghost, Sprite appeared next to Pierce, almost close enough to whisper a secret into the man’s ear, but she didn’t…

Sprite was not interested in killing anyone… yet…

Using all the legs strength at his disposal, even overexerting several muscles, Pierce leaped backward like a spring chicken, but such an action was not necessary…

Since, as quick as Sprite appeared, she also disappeared at reappeared at her original location, only this time, she had a bit of company…

A soldier knelt in front of Sprite, her small hands around his throat, applying just enough pressure to keep the soldier breathing but not squealing…

All the soldiers tensed even further, something that shouldn’t have been possible…

Pierce, who was once again standing, though painfully, glanced left and right, looking for the soldier that went missing, and he eventually realized it was one of them who should have remained inside the car…

That meant none of them were untouchable to Sprite…

With Sprite back at her initial position with a hostage in tow, Laura pounced to Sprite’s side, feeling safe since the earlier aura of madness was no longer visible around Sprite…

“¿Por qué?” Laura inquired…

“Confirmation…” Sprite murmured a response, and slowly passed her hand in front of the soldier’s face, tricking his mind into a state of rest and absolute trust…

With that, the soldier would spill his guts as if he was talking to a lover, and Sprite would have the confirmation she required…

“What happened to the black boy you fought in the desert?” Sprite questioned, all the while staring down all the soldiers nonchalantly…

“Soldier!” Pierce yelled from behind a couple of soldiers “Say nothing to that small devil child!”

“We killed him. He was shot from behind, the bullet shattered his spine and bounced around inside his body, shredding his heart in the process. Then we sent him back to the lab for experimentation…”

A silent tear rolled down Sprite’s cheek…

There was no sorrow in her heart, only pain – a very potent type of pain…

Sprite had lived long enough to know that sorrow, anger, and anguish were not pain…

Pain just is, and Tyrone was her pain, and he came in small doses usually, but right now, she was feeling all that pain all at once…

Laura also frowned, but the feelings in her heart were far from sorrow…

There was only anger because her years as an experimental subject only bore anger and no other emotions…

“ARGH!” Caliban yelled in pain and scurried inside the house, since the shroud Sprite placed on him earlier was dissolving, allowing the sunlight above to burn his skin…

Sprite didn’t even realize that her concentration had been broken because all she was concerned with was the battle to come…

A battle she would initiate…

Pierce’s plan was good…

His soldier’s equipment was top-notch…

And the formation was impeccable, but he never prepared for Sprite, only Laura and Logan…

There was an insane stillness following the reveal of Tyrone’s fate…

Sprite slowly started to brush the hair of the soldier that knelt before her…

“Hey… hey… hey!” Pierce yelled, gesturing for all his men to raise their guns “Let’s just think about this and discuss it a bit longer. You are outnumbered, outgunned, and outsmarted! Everyone calms the fuck down!”

Sprite’s hands were now wrapped around the soldier’s neck, and the next moment, Sprite simply pulled upward, causing a geyser of blood to cloud the air…

Sprite had easily ripped the soldier’s head from his body…

The strength of an Eternal was nothing to scoff at…

“Fuck! Fuck! SHOOT!” Pierce scream hysterically, seeing his men were too surprised to even raise their weapons properly…

And what Laura did next scared the soldiers even more…

Laura was a bit more animal than human due to her years in the lab, so when it came to killing, she was even more brutal than Logan…

Like a rock from a sling, Laura launched herself forward, stabbing her claws into the stomach of the closest soldier…

However, instead of simply allowing the soldier to bleed to death, Laura twitched her wrists, and dragged her claws through the soldier until his guts spilled outside his body…

Laura grabbed the guts and threw it at the next nearest soldier…

There was no way to describe the carnage other than unnecessarily brutal…

The Soldiers had battled cartels before, but it was their first time witnessing a girl barely ten years old ripping the guts out of an ex-special force operative…

“SHOOT, SHOOT, SHOOT!” Pierce ordered, and the soldiers complied…

All they needed was an order to snap out of their trance…

Laura was loitered with bullets, but she kept moving forward regardless…

And that’s when Sprite appeared to help relieve some of Laura’s burden…

Sprite appeared like a ghost, golden cosmic lines dancing around her body…

---CHING---

---CHING---

An illusory blade appeared in Sprite’s hand, and she swung twice, her blade passing harmlessly through the head of two soldiers…

But as was stated earlier, the blade was illusory, so it could harm no one…

Luckily, Sprite was a master of the mind, so even without a real blade, she got the soldier’s minds to believe they were going to die…

Hence, the two soldiers simply died because of the threat of the weapon, and not the weapon itself…

Sprite noticed the third soldier nearby, and judged his mental fortitude to be a bit higher, so her usual tricks would not work here…

But, Sprite wasn’t all about tricks…

RIP

Sprite disappeared and reappeared a couple of feet behind the soldier…

The soldier’s head was in her hands, another blood geyser shooting into the air…

Sprite had the strength of an Eternal, and though she rarely used it, Sprite was willing to get her hands dirty this time…

Tyrone was just that important to her…

Laura lunged forward, tore a soldier’s head off, and landed in front of Sprite, taking the dozens of bullets that were meant for the Eternal…

Laura and Sprite met eyes for a moment, subtly nodding their heads in acknowledgment of just how deep their bonds would be after this battle…

“RAWR!” Laura roared and dashed into battle once more…

Sprite just hummed and waved her hands, casting the illusion of a sandstorm all around…

This was going to be a bloody, dusty battle…