John approached the power room. He used the PIPS he got from the soldier he killed before to open the door. "All clear..." John beckoned for Peri to follow him when he saw that there was no one inside.

The whole room was illuminated by the light coming from holograms and monitors of the computers that were all around the place.

"The main terminal..." John glanced at one side and then the other, looking for the main console. "Here it is!" He approached the bigger the computer that was at the end of the room.

There was a ton of different keys and flashing lights that John became lost while looking at everything.

[Alright... What the f.u.c.k...] He frowned as he stared at the keys. [How the am going to know what to do?]

"Something wrong?" Peri spoke from behind John. She curiously glanced at the flashing lights and the number of keys that were everywhere on the computer.

"Well... I kinda don't know what to do here..." John embarra.s.sedly looked away from Peri's questioning eyes.

"Let me see..." Peri pushed John to the side and extended her hand toward the computer.

As soon as her hand touched the piece of machinery, her hand started to glow with a faint blue light.

John stared amazed at the scene. It was... Pretty. Peri had her eyes closed and she looked like it was concentrating very hard on something. Small blue particle were peacefully floating around her glowing hand.

"I get it..." She opened her eyes and the light disappeared as well. Peri glanced at her side and saw that John was blankly staring at her. "What's wrong?" She waved her hand in front of his face.

"What... What was that...?" John recovered from his surprise. "That thing with the blue light and the... Particle, I guess."

"You..." Her eyes glinted with a mysterious light as she looked at him. "You saw... The blue light...?"

John repeatedly nodded affirmatively.

"Strange..." She threw a side glance at John. "I think... It's for the best if you ask your friend, Lenny, about it..." She switched her sight to the computer in front of her again. "Let's first concentrate in what we were doing..."

"Oh... Right..."

"What we have to do?"

"Turn off the power system and also the emergency power system."

"Alright..." She started to swiftly press some keys. Her fingers danced across the holographic keyboard and in no time, the lights of the power room were turned off.

"How...?" John stared at Peri. It was true that he was unable to do anything, initially, when he saw the huge amount of keys in front of him, but he was trained to deal with this type of situation, it would only take a few dozens of minutes, maybe hours to figure how the systems of the Outpost work.

But Peri was able to it in less than minutes. The only way she would be able to it would be...

"Reverse engineering..." Peri answered John's question. "The special ability of a Greenfinger. I touched the terminal and was able to completely decode the whole machine in my head and understand how it works. After that, it's simple, I just need to do what I want."

"But... You are obviously a Floran warrior..." John was very confused, his little amount of common sense about Florans had been crushed in that very moment.

She coyly smiled. "I'm different... A lot different..." She inclined forward and whispered at John's ear, "You really should ask Lenny some questions. He is hiding a lot of things from you."

John just enjoyed a moment of the ticklish feeling of Peri's breath by his ear when he stopped caring about it because of what she said. [He's hiding things from me...?] John glanced at Peri, she flashed a coyly smile, showing off her line of pointy teeth. [I don't really care... It's not like he is obligated to tell everything he knows to me anyway... But it really got me curious, I should ask when I get time for that.]

"Huh?" John stopped for a while and started to listen closely. "Footsteps..." His expression changed when he realized there was a dozen people coming toward the power room. "We need to get out of here."

"Why? Let's just kill them..." She disliked the idea of running away from her enemies.

"We need to be certain that the kids are okay first, right?"

"..."

"Let's go, they are still a few meters away from us."

Peri gave up the idea of facing off the soldiers and decided to follow John.

They swiftly left the room and used the darkness to stealthily move around and evade being seen by the soldiers.

...

"Puh..." Oscar fell on the ground while spitting a mouthful of blue plasma.

His clothes were completely ragged, filled with holes and rips.

Oscar struggled to stand up, but he was unable to do so. Every time he tried to move, a huge amount of blue plasma start to leak from his wounds.

"You really used it..." Oscar lifted his head and stared at the approaching Lenny.

Lenny walked closer, step by step. His clothes were still fine, only his left sleeve was still missing, but surprisingly his left arm, that had been obliterated, had returned to normal.

"This kind of power... No living being should allow to have." Oscar spoke.

"..." Lenny stopped walking when he was face to face with Oscar. He silently stared at the state that Oscar was.

"Heh..." Oscar snorted, "If you waiting for me to say something like sorry or beg you to spare my life, you are wasting your time."

"..."

"Just get it over with it. I might really die from the leaks all over my body before you finish me off."

"Goodbye... Old friend..." Lenny coldly stared at Oscar and reached his hand toward Oscar's Cross 'Brand'.

As his hands touched the cold metal 'Brand', blue particles started to appear around his right hand. The burnt mark on his hand shone with intensity.

"Argh!" Oscar groaned in pain as the particles entered in his body. He started to tremble and shake, plasma started to leak even faster from his opened wounds.

Slowly, but visible to naked eye, his body started to shrink. As his body shrunk, more and more blue particles started to appear around Lenny's hand.

"If..." Oscar was able to suppress the pain and stared at Lenny. "If h.e.l.l really exists, I will be waiting for you there."

*Boom*

With those last words, Oscar's body exploded and formed a blue cloud.

The particles started to enter in Lenny's body through the burnt mark of hand.

Lenny silently watched this event unfold, he had already seen it many times. The number of people he had killed and absorbed... He already lost the count.

After it absorbed everything, the mark stopped to shine and Lenny fell on the ground.

Lenny sighed and waited for the ridiculous amount of pain that was about to come. He always hated the backlash of using that power.