Union

thirty

October 31st
2346 EST

    Tristan's clenched fists iced over as he stood, frozen, before Rune and his monstrous band. He dared a quick glance around the cortex and saw that CJ and Avi had beaten him and Bristol there, and were now in their own stand-off against members of Rune's dark league. CJ was running circles around Psyche, while Avi was encased in a green glow, fighting Mania. Despite Eric's cryptic warning, his alter ego had taken him over once more, and there he stood, fighting the girl he once loved.

    "Yes, Tristan, watch as your beloved home crumbles before you." Rune drawled, snapping Tristan's attention back to him.

    "How the hell did you get in here?" Bristol demanded, a look of ferocity flooding her eyes. Her hands clenched into fists at her side, ready to charge toward their opponent.

    Rune's shrouded eyes slid over to Bristol, and through his shadowy mask, darkness formed a thin smile. "Hello, Bristol. It's been a while, hasn't it?"
   
    Bristol yelled as flames filled her hands, and she volleyed a fireball at the sorcerer before her. However, like he was a hologram and nothing more, Rune dissolved into shadows.

    "Where'd he go?" Tristan whirled around, looking for any sign of Rune, but true to his abilities, he'd disappeared.

    "We can worry about that later," Bristol called, grabbing Tristan's arm. "We have more pressing issues to worry about."

    She was right. Decaying corpses with only the purpose of destruction were tearing through the cortex, leaving a trail of carnage in their wake. Each previous villain they've faced stood against them again and their friends needed their help.

    A small tidal wave materialized behind Bristol, and she rode it into battle, sliding into the pulpit behind Aetna and the undead that aided her. Tristan spotted Priscilla atop the central platform, swirls of light surrounding her as she vaporized a vanguard of Rune's zombies.
   
    "Tristan Dahl..." A gravelly voice snagged Tristan's attention. Phobos' wiry figure stalked towards him, dragging a hand along the wall as he approached. "I've longed for this moment since our encounter at Shadowedge."
   
    The Union's mission to Shadowedge had felt like an eternity ago, but Tristan knew that it marked the beginning of this battle for a long time now. His suspicions had been correct, and here they were.

    "Hope you didn't get too comfortable," Tristan noted, ice filling his palms. "Because you're going back there," he mumbled to himself.
   
    Before Phobos could attack, Tristan shot a dual ray of ice at him. The villain darted out of the way, but Tristan was faster. He became a machine, firing icicle after icicle, to keep Phobos on his toes. Like any metahuman, if he couldn't concentrate on his abilities, he couldn't use them. So as long as Tristan was one step ahead, he'd be able to keep him distracted.

    That was, until the zombies came. They surrounded Tristan, and while he tried to fend them off, he couldn't fight off that many opponents at once. Phobos fired an image of Tristan's fears into his head, and Tristan fell to his knees. He scrambled backwards as Phobos stalked towards him; he fired a blast of ice in his direction, but the villain only ducked out of the way.

    "The Union and Contingency will fall," Phobos taunted over the roar of elements in the air. The cortex had become a battleground in all sense of the word. "What will you do, Tristan, when everything that you love is destroyed?"

    Phobos pushed more images into his mind, and suddenly, Tristan wasn't in the cortex anymore. He was in his childhood home, creeping down the halls in the middle of the night. His parents rushed into the hall, urging him to go find Liv and Aaron and run to safety. They were in their supersuits, and they rushed back into the rest of the house. In slow motion,  Tristan watched as the room exploded into flame and light, as he flew back, back, back--