As the walls Zoran had made of his flames fell apart completely, Xen Ikity knew there was no more time to waste. Mara Kilzarad had agreed to let the Two Pillar Guard deal with the safe capturing of her class in exchange for staying and helping the Sunbird School Force in the battle against Darkalight after, so all that was left to do was formulate a strategy.

To that end, Xen grabbed Vega and Mara by the neck to drag along with him as he met up with the leader of the other half of the Two Pillar Guard, Sunbird Languages teacher Jill Lahala, and the person that half was supposed to protect – her older brother Rafael who taught Arts.

(Xen) ‘Alright. We’ve got everything we need here, so let’s see how we’re going to use it.’ – seeing the Lahala siblings had focused their attention on him, Sunbird’s Physics teacher looked at Mara first – ‘Kilzarad, you know how your class fights best. Give us the basics.’

(Mara) ‘Well, they usually leave a group way back that focuses on long-range offense and defense and has a healer and sensor in it, too. Those will be the hardest to get to, but stopping them will also turn the tide of the battle.

Then there’s a group half of which distracts the enemy while the other attacks at close-range.  If one can take out the close-range fighters first, the distracting ones will be a lot easier to deal with.

And they have an all-out frontal assault group, where I’d say the strongest fighters in the class are. All of them have elemental devas and release wide-area attacks to either eliminate any enemy right off the bat or scare them enough to run away and get hit by the distraction and close-range group from the side. If you want to get to any of the other two groups, you’ll have to take care of the assault force first.’

(Xen) ‘Got it.’ – having already made a rough version of a plan in his mind, Xen turned to the energy compound users from his half of the Two Pillar Guard – ‘You brats are the strongest fighters we’ve got here, so you’ll take the frontal assault group.’

Mr. Ikity’s students became rather reluctant after hearing who they were going up against, but after taking a few moments, they gave confirmative nods to their teacher’s order, Xen then moving on to the Lahala siblings.

(Xen) ‘Next up, you two. Jill, you’ll help me with making an opening and after that I want you and Rafael to take your brats and go deal with the close-range and distracting ex-Martians. You’ve got all the terrestrial morphs with you, so they should be a perfect match for fighters like them.

And since you’ve got the biggest numbers out of all of us, I expect you to finish up first. When you’re done, double back to where the energy compound users are and help them beat whoever’s left there. Then bring all the captured brats to us.’

(Jill) ‘Are where exactly are you going to be for all of …’

(Rafael) ‘We got incoming, people!!!!’

The Arts teacher’s roar redirected everyone’s attention to the coming attack – a massive lava stream full of mini-typhoon drills, orbs of turquoise flames and teal energy projectiles, just ahead of which was moving a wave of coral-colored crystal blades and spikes emerging from the ground.

Xen was the first to face that by quickly making a gigantic multilayered wall of his Normoid to hold back the destruction, all his students using energy compounds coming to back him up as fast as they could. Under normal circumstances, they might have been able to hold out a bit longer, but then all of a sudden the flaming orbs in the stream transformed into fire clones. Those clones were of a girl who looked like she was in middle school and had her hair tied in pig tails, but in truth though identical, if one looked closely enough, they would get the feeling there was some difference between half of the copies and the rest.

There was a reason for that – they were made by maybe the biggest troublemakers in Mara Kilzarad’s class – the twin sisters Mia and Kia Nelaz who Xen himself had had to deal with all too often. The two’s clones were able to push through the multi-energy wall, mixing with the typhoons from the stream to create an epic blue firestorm, which combined with the heat from the lava made the environment even more unbearable to be in. And to top it all off, the crystal spikes and blades and teal energy projectiles were also coming with full force.

Before any of these attacks could hit, a silhouette leapt above the Physics teacher’s head, upon landing in front of him being revealed as the big golden-clawed and golden-eyed ocelot Jill Lahala could transform into, Rafael riding on her back. The Arts teacher turned to his colleague only for a moment, within that moment Xen seeing he had the craziest-looking grin on his face, his eyes widening and exploding in chartreuse-colored energy while the dreads his hair was tied in turned into an afro.

(Rafael) ‘I warned you about the attack and you still couldn’t do shit, old man?! Guess me and my crew are gonna have to turn this around for you, then!!!’

Many more silhouettes jumped above and around Mr. Ikity, when looking at them realizing all the members from Jill’s half of the Two Pillar Guard had turned into their morphed forms now. In their ranks were included armadillos, rhinos, bulls, bison, antelopes, deer, white bears, wolves, jaguars, baboons, snakes, lizards, crocodiles, frogs, massive scorpions, beetles, spiders and crabs, all being hit by Rafael’s frenzy-inducing energy pulse next. The eyes of every fighter within that pulse’s reach burst in chartreuse energy and light, the hairs on the bodies of those members who had fur standing up, right after which the Lahala siblings led them on to counter the ex-Martians’ attack.

First up, Jill herself made waves of massive golden claws rip their way through the ground to completely overtake the coming crystal blades and spikes, then receiving an elemental push by all the morphers capable of using some kind of deva when transformed. With that push she sped up greatly, fully cladding herself and her brother in golden claws to become a truly massive golden ocelot paw armored in chartreuse energy which pierced and tore apart the lava stream, firestorm and teal energy.

(Jill, Rafael) ‘FRENZY CAT’S EVER-PIERCING GOLDEN PAW!!!!’

While the main enemy attack was run through by Jill and Rafael, the morphed students attacked the fire clones which had now been separated from the mini-typhoons they had been mixed with initially and thus become easier targets. Fangs sunk into their blazing bodies, tails whipped them, horns were run through their insides, hooves crushed them, pincers clipped off their limbs and so on until eventually all the copies had been disposed of.

Amid the smoke risen from all the heated fighting Mia and Kia Nelaz themselves were revealed along with the typhoon maker Jart and the three students who were helping them. None of the ex-Martian frontal assault force’s six members seemed to be the least bit interested in anyone from the Two Pillar Guard, however. Instead they all headed straight for Neana and Zoran’s squads again.

(Xen) ‘I guess Darkalight have really done a number on those kids! They’ve programmed them to specifically target the New Martians!!’

Vega had got angry and tried going after them, just when he rushed past Xen’s side Mara managing to grab and pull him back with much annoyance on her face, the teacher and student’s eyes meeting then.

(Vega) ‘Didn’t you want your class to get back to normal, Kilzarad? Let me go so I can fix them, then!!! I’ll start with that group right there!!!’

(Mara) ‘No, you won’t! You need a lot of energy from the enemy weapons to free so many undead from Darkalight’s control and you don’t have a lot of that in you now, right? First you’ve got to power up!

That’s why Xen said to bring everyone else to us!! I figured out his plan early on: the three of us hit the brats from my class who’re the furthest from here and the closest to Darkalight’s cannons, so we can give you cover there while you absorb enough energy to free all ex-Martians brought to us in one go!!’ – while still sounding annoyed, Xen noticed the tone of Mara’s voice changed a little when she addressed him – ‘Speaking of which, Ikity, we got our opening, so shouldn’t we get going?!’

Before giving a verbal answer, the Physics teacher pointed at his back.

(Xen) ‘We’re going, yeah.’ – once Mara and Vega who had understood his instruction had climbed on his back, Mr. Ikity burst in as much Normoid as he could, to an extent where he shot a beam of it to the sky and shook the whole neighborhood – ‘But first, we’re going to make a little detour.’

The mind controller and energy absorber on his back didn’t have the time to be confused, because as soon as Xen was done releasing energy, he absorbed all of it back into himself to take a condensed shape, teleporting in the blink of an eye right in front of the ex-Martians’ frontal assault force. By the time that had happened, he had covered himself in numerous Normoid spikes and needles to a level where he looked like an orange gorilla, concentrating so much of his energy compound in those spikes and needles that they become harder than any metal.

(Xen) ‘NEEDLE APE’S TWIN HAMMER PALMS!!!!’

Withstanding the multi-elemental attack the undead students used against him with ease, the Physics teacher smashed a palm into Mia and Kia, creating a wave of Normoid strong enough to push both them and the other members of their force a long way back. All the way to where the troops from Xen’s half of the Two Pillar Guard were already waiting with confident grins, to which he answered with the same.

(Xen) ‘Can’t have the Lahalas take all the glory!! There you go, brats!! Take down those six!!! And leave the rest to us!!!’

The youngsters under Mr. Ikity’s command first partially neutralized the ex-Martian six’s devas with Goroid. Then they blocked the thin lava streams, turquoise fire rings, miniaturized typhoons and crystal double-terminated obelisks with Reloid-Normoid barricades or teleported them aside with Flexoid. And finally they released a close-range counterattack in the form of a Daroid-Sairoid-Taxoid mixture of different cold edged weapons, all the while having the widest, most confidence-fueled grins one could imagine.

So much so that they even surprised Mara who was looking back at the development of that fight when Xen turned to check on her.

(Mara) ‘I was thinking I might have to put your brats under mind control again to make sure they can fight off my class, but I guess I won’t have to for now. They look pretty pumped already.’

(Xen) ‘What’d you expect, bitch?! They’re going up against the former strongest class in Sunbird! A class that’s bullied them a lot and a class they’ve never had the chance to fight back against until now!! But me, Jill and Rafael showed them they can handle any of the ex-Martians!!! So your brats are as good as captured now!!!’ – realizing his students’ performance had inspired him as well, the Physics teacher addressed Vega next – ‘Vega, you power me up a bit for the battle, OK? Just like what Rafael did with Jill! And as soon as we get to the last batch of ex-Martians, leave them to me and Mara and go absorb some energy from wherever you can around us!’

Just after having pale green energy channeled through his orange needle gorilla cloak, a new obstacle was revealed in front of Xen. Judging by the fact he and the duo he was carrying on his back had suddenly entered a dense cloud mixing steam and darkness, it seemed they had found the ex-Martians responsible for distracting and attacking their enemies close-range before the Lahala siblings and their troops.

(Mara) ‘Damn, I was really hoping we could evade that. Vega, power up this old geezer more, so he can move faster!! We need to get out of here, now!!!’

(Xen) ‘Did you just call me slow, bitch?!’

(Vega) ‘You are a bit slow cuz of how massive you are, sensei, yeah. But my empowerment can’t help a lot with that!!’

(Mara) ‘Well, then we’re really fucked!!!’

(Xen, Vega) ‘Who exactly is hiding here?!!’

There was no need for Miss Kilzarad to answer, because a silhouette jumped at the trio from the steam and darkness to their side moments later. Luckily, Xen was looking at his colleague at the time this happened, Mara’s eyes widening to an inhuman extent from shock as she screamed.

(Mara) ‘Close your eyes, right now!!!’

The Physics teacher followed the order he had been given, starting to instinctively swing around in the darkness while roaring angrily.

(Xen) ‘What happened?! Where are they?! Tell me where the fuckers are and I’ll get them!!!’

(Vega) ‘How am I gonna do that when my eyes are closed, too, sensei?! And why did we even close our eyes, Kilzarad?!!’

(Mara) ‘It’s Lyzia from my class! She’s got a paralysis gaze and I saw her coming at us from the side!’    

(Xen) ‘Which side? The left? The right?’

(Mara) ‘Will you just give up on trying to hit her, you dumb lump of muscle?!! As long as we’re not looking at her eyes, she can’t do anything to hurt us! When she realizes that, she’ll go after another target and we’ll be OK!’

(Vega) ‘So I can open my eyes now?’

(Mara) ‘No, dumb shit!!! She might still be around!!!’

Time was against Xen and co. and he was well aware of that, so sitting around and doing nothing just wasn’t an acceptable option for him anymore. With a stomp and another roar he released a very powerful Normoid pulse, having made the decision to open his eyes afterwards and keep moving forward no matter what.

(Xen) ‘The hell with this bullshit!! I’m not going to waste any more time over one student when there are so many to capture!!’

It was a good thing Mr. Ikity opened his eyes when he did, because in that very instance multiple condensed steam bullets were fired at him while brown-skinned tentacles with orange scales on them here and there came from one side to snatch Mara away and a massive spiny-tailed iguana – to do the same with Vega from the other. Mizz Kilzarad’s student who was said to use a paralysis gaze was nowhere to be seen, however, so Xen could go wild all he wanted.

He formed a Normoid spike tornado around him that destroyed the bullets and cut up the tentacles and the iguana, just when he was ready to move on, realizing his legs had got stuck in something. That something was a puddle of pink jelly which seemed to have come out of nowhere, limiting the man’s movements and distracting him just long enough for more tentacles and steam bullets to be sent his way.

The wounded iguana had also got back up and leapt forward, the fact being clear to the Physics teacher that he would not be able to stop all three attacks this time around. And luckily for him, he didn’t have to because of a third party’s intervention in that moment.

Jill’s half of the Two Pillar guard led by her still ridden by Rafael tore right through the cloud of steam and darkness all around, everyone from that unit having been clad in even more frenzy-inducing energy by the Arts teacher. His sister herself stopped the spiny-tailed iguana from grabbing Vega, biting the animal by the jugular and then throwing it aside while Rafael on her back used enough of his energy to push back the scaly tentacles aimed at Mara, leaving only the steam bullets for Xen to deal with.

A swing of his Normoid-clad arm was enough to dispel that attack, right after that success hearing Jill’s brother roar at him while in the midst of all the commotion Vega and Mara decided to finally open their eyes themselves.

(Rafael) ‘You told us to take care of this lot, right, old man? So get going to the next batch already and let us do our job!!’

Although he was once again indebted to the Lahala siblings and their students for getting him out of a tough spot, Mr. Ikity smiled confidently back at his colleagues before further reinforcing his tough-guy act with a verbal comeback.

(Xen) ‘You’re the ones who took so damn long to get here and now you’re ordering me around, brat? Someone must have hit you really hard on the head for you to keep …’

A wave of darkness swept the heroes from the side before Xen could finish, Vega quickly cladding himself, his Physics and Psychology teachers in as much of his pale green energy as possible to illuminate their surroundings to an extent then. Soon enough many eyes were seen amid the darkness, when their owners came close enough turning out they were all clones of the same young man, but not made of a certain deva – they were perfect physical copies instead. Which meant this had to be the work of someone from the ex-Martians with a cloning deva like Mr. Ikity’s colleague Aguaro Vivaya.

(Mara) ‘If we’re already running into clones, we must be getting close to the long-range group! Get your game face on, Ikity, because these brats are not going to let us move freely from here on!!’

(Xen) ‘Oh, yeah? What are they going to do?’

The Physics teacher’s massive fists and kicks clad in Normoid needles and spikes threw around the tens of clones that came his way before any of them could do any damage or snatch one of the passengers on his back, moving ahead though the darkness with as much confidence as possible only to come to a halt again. As it turned out, the ex-Martian’s physical copies had been nothing more than a distraction to keep Xen and co. busy long enough for another attack to be sent to them by both land and air.

First, the earth under Mr. Ikity’s feet started shaking and cracking open in many places, then multiple meteors tore their way through the darkness above like blazing orbs of light. There was no longer any stable surface to be able to move on freely and the skies had been set ablaze, seeing as how this was too much for him to handle alone, Xen turning to Vega.

(Xen) ‘Vega, you take out the meteors, OK? I’ll handle the ground!!’

The drunkard didn’t even give any confirmation to his teacher, but went on to release barrage after barrage of pale green energy projectiles which destroyed all the meteors, meanwhile the shaking ground being stabilized and hardened by the Normoid of half the Two Pillar Guard’s leader. All the cracks scarring that ground still remained, however, out of them emerging another wave of physical clones that wasted no time in dragging Xen under in an attempt to tear him, Vega and Mara to pieces.

Firing some of the needles on his energy armor to turn into orange energy apes used to fend off his attackers distracted Mr. Ikity enough to allow the tremors to resume, only now that he and his companions were halfway underground, those tremors were felt as much stronger. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, more meteors and bigger this time, came raining down from beyond the darkness again.

(Xen) ‘OK, I guess this last group is going to be really troublesome!! Three-stage attacks like that are very hard to counter, especially since we can’t see very far ahead and have no idea where the enemy is at exactly!’

(Vega) ‘And we’ve got no one left to back us up!!’

(Mara) ‘We won’t need anyone else! My brats have just given us what we need to take them out!!’

Equally shocked, Xen and Vega both turned to the smiling Miss Kilzarad then.

(Xen, Vega) ‘What?!’

(Mara) ‘Vega, your base fighting style is the channel-type, right?’ – while the energy absorber nodded, his Physics teacher traced Mara’s gaze which was now focused on the cracks they were half-stuck in – ‘These cracks were made by the quake deva of Zalan from my class. He’s really good at using it and can cover a wide area in cracks like these.

Unfortunately for him, though, it’s also easy to find where he is by following the cracks. And since he’s made these big enough on purpose to allow some of Kike’s clones to move through them, you can channel all three of us straight to where the cracks end and where Zalan and the rest are going to be.

From there Xen can focus on capturing that group while you go and power up from the cannons and tanks we must be close to now.’

(Xen) ‘Yeah, but didn’t you say there’s a sensor in that squad, Kilzarad? That means they’ll be able to see us coming a long way off and counter us somehow!!’

(Mara) ‘Not if Vega can channel us fast enough.’

(Xen) ‘Think you can do it, kid?’

Vega had had a thoughtful expression during the teachers’ conversation, now joining in with a very serious look on his face.

(Vega) ‘I’ve got something I can use on them.’ – his eyes focused on Xen after that – ‘You just keep the ground around us stable so I can move us fast, sensei.’ – then he looked at Mara – ‘And you, bitch, make sure to remind your shitty class they owe us and the rest of the Two Pillar Guard for saving their asses when I free them. I was saving my hybrid-style techniques for Deathaxe, so using one on your brats really wasn’t part of the plan.’

The Psychology teacher didn’t answer in any way, meanwhile Xen nodding at his student as he focused solely on stabilizing the ground again in the wake of another wave of clones having been defeated. He could see more were already on the way and a lot more meteors were coming from above, but Vega didn’t give either of those attacks enough time to hit.

He fully clad himself and the two teachers in pale green energy, that cloak taking the shape of a beam to launch forward with an extremely high speed, Mr. Ikity noticing that another beam was sent just a bit before the one they were in. But the two were so close to each other that they would look as a single entity to the eyes of a sensor deviant.

When reaching the part of the ground where the cracks ended, the first beam blossomed into seven massive rhombus-shaped blades that reached above the surface, as expected that attack having been dodged the ex-Martians there.          

They didn’t have enough time to dodge the attack that came mere seconds after it, however, Vega shooting himself, Xen and Mara aboveground in a pale green energy explosion big enough to reach the undead students who had either jumped to the side or simply upward. Then he went off on his own to probably search for sources of energy to power up from, leaving it to Mr. Ikity and Miss Kilzarad to deal with the taming of the group around them.

Looking at the area the two of them were in, they had now come up some distance away from the ramp leading to the main gate, being just in front of Dreadblade’s walls, along the length of which were positioned multiple golden beetle tanks and big energy cannons, but those were for Xen’s drunken student to worry about.  The Physics teacher quickly redirected his attention to the members of the ex-Martian group around him and Mara, the healer among whom had already started healing one of her classmates from the damage done by Vega’s explosion.

No time could be given to the brats to retaliate, Mr. Ikity straight up resorting to the most wide-scale technique in his arsenal by breaking apart his Normoid armor into thousands of long needles fired off in an instance, each of those transforming into a massive orange energy gorilla along the way.

(Xen) ‘APE GENESIS NEEDLE BARRAGE!!!!’

The healer and the student she was healing were quickly beaten up by the gorillas, the same being valid for all the clones spread around, the multiplication of which had now ended due to the original having been captured as well. Then the duo responsible for the quake and vibration waves were taken out, Xen himself going after the meteor maker. A point-blank range Normoid roar was used to obliterate the walls of meteor rock meant to stop him, the young man who had created them being head-butted really hard by the Physics teacher’s though-as-iron forehead.

That attack crushed the ex-Martian in a mini-crater deep in the ground and made him cough up some blood, while Mara was going around the others to check on their condition and look for tools to use for restraining them, Mr. Ikity leaning closer to the meteor maker to make sure he wouldn’t cause any more trouble. And he saw then a look of absolutely petrifying madness in the undead student’s eyes.

(The Meteor Maker) ‘DIE. FOR DARKALIGHT.’

Right after he said that, Xen realized the ex-Martian had injected himself with two overdrive syringes beforehand, finding the strength to drive the needle of the last one in his cheek as veins and cracks pulsing with pale green energy appeared on his skin. His eyes, mouth and hair burst in energy of the same color, as he roared louder and louder, a shadow covering everything around the Physics teacher.

Though a part of him had already figured out what had cast that shadow, Mr. Ikity looked up anyway. And he found just what he had been dreading: a meteor several times bigger than Dreadblade Fortress itself had been manifested just above the fortress complex.

Having several Physics degrees, Xen knew better than anyone that when that thing fell down, it would cause the destruction of half of Deckstoru and every living thing in the area.