A group of eight Marrazzo Dee children ran from a burning house as its beams fell and the black flames consumed it.

"Children! Run and don't look back!" screamed the elderly Marrazzo Dee, who had stayed behind to blast the monsters that crashed through the ceiling.

The children ran into the blazing battlefield, weaving between flames and falling monsters. Of the group, only two were barely older than ten years, and the rest were younger. All shared the same look of utter horror.

Two large pincers tore out of the smoke right to the left of the kids. They screamed, with their bone armor forming haphazardly, but just at that moment, another jumped out from behind the crab monster and grabbed onto its protruding eyes before releasing a cloud of black mana into the eyes.

"There are children over here!" Elma roared as the crab monster flailed.

It directed its pincers toward Elma, and she leaped off, leaving three fingers clawing the eyes. She detonated her fingers, and the crab let out a  gurgle before being consumed by the black flames ravaging its body.

"Keep running!" Elma screamed as she poured a cloud of her withering mana into two more monsters breaking out through the smoke.

The children heeded her desperate command and ran through the smoke as the monsters' roars echoed behind them.

They ran, and more monsters chased after them, their abyssal roars shaking them to their core.

They kept running until they came to two burning huts. They made to run through the space between the huts until the huts collapsed into each other, the black flames raging.

They turned on their heels and screamed at the terrifying sight of monsters, with their eyes glowing bright and clad in black flames, rushing toward them. The oldest of the group pulled the terrified children along. They just had to run around the flames, but their delay cost them dearly. The monsters would catch them. The monsters knew that. Their instincts told them as much. They fired their own blasts of magic at the children and made them fall to their knees as magic crashed around them. Those children cried out as the monsters wailed.

It was then that a torrent of water crashed into the fastest of the monsters, and a bone armor-clad woman cut in between the children and the blazing monsters. She aimed her arm cannon at the monsters and blasted them.

"Children!" Dehlia screamed. "Zorra's Cave! Go there! That's where we're taking refuge!"

More monsters broke through the flames and smoke, and Dehlia met them with water lasers.

"Children, know that I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't think you were capable--guh--"

Dehlia intercepted a blazing humanoid shark and kicked it away, blasting it with water for good measure.

She then spun on her heels and struck the burning kelpman that came from above, blasting it away with streams of water.

"Children!" she shouted as she fended off more blazing enemies. "Don't worry about missing, don't worry about controlling your power, don't worry about how brittle your armor is or how pathetic it looks! Just run and blast any enemy you see! Help us protect you! Even if you're children, you're still Marrazzo Dee! Show them that we will all make those who would hunt us hurt for trying!"

Dehlia kept fending off the swarming enemies, mixing in magic attacks with her melee strikes. The form of that woman fighting mere feet away from them was forever engraved in their minds. The older of the kids picked up the younger and ran away, tears in their eyes. The tiny children they carried cried as shark-shaped cannons formed around their hands, and water lasers of varying quality flew out. Some of those lasers struck Dehlia, but never once did she curse the children. Some of the other lasers struck the enemies, and she seized her opportunities when they came, finishing off the enemies the children made stagger.

"Every Marrazzo Dee is a shark worthy of their teeth!" she screamed as she fought the monsters off one by one, blast by blast, bone by bone.

The fires kept roaring, and monsters kept falling. Her allies would sometimes cross her and pull monsters away. They couldn't afford to get stuck in one place when their fellow villagers were still unaccounted for.

Dehlia appreciated their efforts. Every little bit helped, after all.

She kept her fight up with the same ferocity as when she started.

The fires were starting to wane as they ran out of things to burn, and many of the monsters were falling more reliably now. The flames that had empowered them were double-edged, having wreaked havoc on their cursed bodies.

It was when Dehlia slashed the last shark man in front of her that a shadow descended from above and hovered a few feet above the ground. Dehlia locked eyes with the newcomer. That thing wasn't wreathed in black flames, but the air it projected was so much more disturbing it made Dehlia ill.

"So, are you one of the two blobs in the sky?" she asked.

The enemy, the silver-haired child, cackled. "Well, I wouldn't call us blob--"

The silver-haired child shut his trap and jerked his head to the side, narrowly dodging Dehlia's sudden water laser. He sneered at her, observing her and her shark-head-shaped arm cannon.

"You going for a headshot? That's rude."

"Oh, can you live without a head?"

"Obviously not," the child laughed.

Dehlia propelled herself into the child's face and swung her bone blade. He intercepted with a black sword.

"Then there's nothing rude about it. It's just a step in the dance," Dehlia said before releasing eight water lasers from small shark teeth floating around her body.

The child, cackling, wrapped his wings in front of his body and covered them in black flames as he backed away. "Is this dance a dance to the death?"

He unfolded his wings when he could no longer feel water magic hitting him, and cocked his head at the empty scene in front of him. He took a breath and, in the next beat, swung his sword upward. The clang of bone meeting metal echoed. He intercepted Dehlia's attack from above.

"Who would have thought that sharks could fly?"

"You haven't even seen the start of what a shark like me can do!"

An explosion of black flame went off between the two, with the silver-haired child escaping the subsequent plume while flying backward.

He sneered. "I can't wait 'til you see all of what we will do."

***

While eight children ran away, one child still sat in a burning house, clutching his knees with tears rolling down his eyes. It wasn't that anyone forgot him, but rather that he didn't move when others did. He was just a child that got lost in the confusion and lost his way. The elderly and other children would soon realize he was unaccounted for, but until then, the child cried for his mommy and daddy to come for him.

Fires burned, and the hut creaked. Thumps came from behind the wall the child was closest to. His heart raced as pieces of armor formed like spots on his body. He scampered forward and jumped through the window right as a flame-covered sharkman tore through the wall.

The child ran to the hut across from the previous as the monster pursuing him tore a path through the hut. The child slid into the space beneath the elevated hut and crawled for his life as the monster followed and slid into the space. Its jaw snapped thrice as it tried to take the child's leg, but no such luck. The child stayed away by mere inches.

The child cleared the hut and ran. The monster tore through the floor of the hut with so much force that the hut blew away as flames billowed. It sprinted toward the child with renewed vigor and lunged for the child, its mouth open so wide its skin tore.

Gray hands flew in and grabbed the child by his arm and clothing and dragged him away with some "oomph" behind the maneuver. The pursuing monster ate dirt, and the child escaped with his life.

"Protect him!" a Marrazzo Dee warrior yelled as he and another sprinted toward the monster. "Our young will not fall! The graves we will dig today are reserved for us and only us!

The warrior, a tan, muscular example of Marrazzo Dee might, stuck his bone trident through the monster and pinned it to the ground as the second Marrazzo Dee sprinted past and scooped up the child.

That warrior that picked the child up, a man with a kind face, showed the child a reassuring smile. "Be brave, okay. Your momma and papa need you to be." The warrior roared as he threw the child into the and over the flames. The terrified child watched as more monsters broke through the smoke immediately behind the warrior and tackled him to the ground.

He couldn't scream. The attack on his savior had him paralyzed. His terror was broken when another warrior caught him.

"I've got the child!" she screamed. Hope turned to sudden terror as her grip around the child tightened. "Put your armor on your back now!"

The child, terrified, just stared at her with tears and snot pouring from his face. She growled and clawed the child's back with armor-clad fingers. The child cried louder than ever before, and his armor formed.

The warrior winced and threw the child into the air, following up with a blast of water to the back that further propelled him.

"Catch him!" she screamed to the warrior and elder she had aimed for.

"We will!" the receiving elder yelled back.

A blazing monster crashed into her and sank its teeth into her armored neck, taking her down right before another warrior arrived.

The warrior and elder cleared the spot they were in of any monsters that could ruin their attempt at a catch, but both shivered when they heard a hawk monster's screech. They looked up and saw a blazing hawk diving for a child like the bird of prey it was.

Just then, a hand with a jeweled dagger in its grip flew in and struck the hawk in the eye. The monster flew to the side, and screeched in pain. The two Marrazzo Dee then caught the child, with the elder holding onto them.

"Amazing! You did amazing!" the elderly Marrazzo Dee yelled as he ran with the child.

The group was flanked by smoke and was terrorized by the sound of the monsters that were still standing. Before the two could reassure the sobbing child, black lightning tore out from the smoke and struck the two, the elderly man producing his armor quickly enough to shield the child.

They hit the ground but not before the elder threw the child forward.

"Run! Run to the caves!" he yelled as three monsters leaped out from the smoke and onto the fallen pair.

The child didn't waste time watching the two fire water lasers at the monsters. He just limped forward, desperately trying to get away from the carnage. His lungs burned, his body hurt, he couldn't see clearly, and he had no idea what was going on. He didn't register the legs that were standing in his way until it was too late. He hit the legs and fell backward onto his bum. He looked up. The only thought he had was--

He isn't Marrazzo Dee.

"You'll do."

Dominguez had appeared before that Marrazzo Dee child. There was no greater contrast than the fear on the child's face versus the cold disinterest on Dominguez's.