Prism and The Red Wolves

Before the rector android could activate any of its weapons, the area around it began to grow darker. The frilly, feminine white android contrasted greatly with the darkness that framed its well-crafted form. Despite the blackening sphere that formed around it, the rector only became slightly shaded and remained visible to the others in the room.

Prism, his eyes still dark as night, reached out his hands toward the rector while his PAW hung from the clip on his chest armor. He formed an imaginary ball with his fingers, and the darkened area around the rector became pure blackness with light only shining at the seemingly-flat edges of the area. Prism began to close his hands together, tightening the imaginary ball that he appeared to be holding in front of himself. The android, which looked motionless within the darkness, began to vibrate as though it was straining against a force that surrounded it on all sides. The more that Prism closed his hands, the more force that was exerted onto the rector android.

In a manner of minutes, the android crumpled against the pressure and was crushed into a ball of polymer and white goo. Electricity arced across the surface of the ball of very valuable technological materials, due to the cracking of its internal energy supply.

"A black hole?" Leanna said after her eyes grew wide from witnessing the quick defeat of the normally-formidable opponent.

"How are we supposed to get the card key now!? You crushed it into the size of a beach ball!" Srell yelled after running to Prism's side.

"You mean this?" Prism said in an unusually deep voice.

Prism lowered his right hand to his side and then brought his left hand up as if presenting something to Srell. A small, rectangular black mass of energy appeared in Prism's hand. Soon, the black energy began to disappear from the shape, slowly revealing the red card key. The pitch-black color faded from Prism's eyes, as well as the darkness that crushed and held the crumpled rector android afloat. Its compacted remains fell to the ground with an oddly wet sound.

"Impressive, even for you." Srell said before taking the card key from Prism.

Srell walked the key back over to the elevator where the rest of the team was still amassed. They were learning not to be so shocked by Prism's magic, but they could still hardly believe how easily he'd beaten the replica of one of the Queen's strongest android combatants.

Ursun had memories of seeing a deployed rector kill dozens of his men on the battlefield years ago. He knew that the replica hadn't been truly as powerful as the Queen's fabricators made them, but Ursun was impressed with Prism nonetheless. The commander did his best to hide his amazement from the others however, not wanting to inflate Prism’s ego. Ursun had seen too many skilled mercenaries take too many risks simply because they’d been complimented a bit too often during a mission. And over a decade ago, Ursun had even been one of those big-headed mercenaries.

"Looks like this tower is ironically going to get easier and easier for us, thanks to that mana convergence." Lorias surmised.

“Don’t get cocky. Stay alert and work together. I don’t want you charging off ahead of us again either, Prism!” Ursun said loud enough for everyone in the room to hear.

Lorias' guess turned out to be correct, though no one had doubted him. Prism grew more and more powerful with each few floors they completed, but he was sure to listen to Ursun and involve the team whenever they ran into danger.

Unlike on the glacier, Prism wasn't afraid to constantly tap into the mana that radiated from the large nearby mana convergence. Prism sensed that it was ancient and therefore extremely stable, unlike the one he'd found weeks earlier atop the mountain.

Prism’s teammates marveled at how he not only dispatched the next two bosses, but used his magic to make his human allies faster, stronger, and safer as they came across more complex enemy formations. By the time they arrived on the 70th floor, they were all “ebullient bundles of birr,” as Leanna had called them after they’d dispatched an especially deadly group of androids. It was a well-known phrase that had been used to describe the Red Wolves by an Etrysian journalist during the early years of the mercenary company’s existence.

"There it finally is; the bomb." Prism said facetiously while walking triumphantly off of the elevator at the 70th floor before anyone else.

The large mock fusion bomb hung from a thick bundle of cabling that occasionally swayed in the wind. The top floor of The Center was exposed on all four sides to the outdoors since all of the room's massive windows had been left open. The room reminded Prism of the large lobby that they'd slept in the previous night, but with a higher ceiling that was still low enough to contain another large room above them. The room’s marble walls featured several imposing half-columns that ran up to the ceiling, making the room seem ancient and grand.

Prism could also make out the familiar remnants of battle that were noticeable throughout all of the floors they'd made it through; the bullet-cracked marble, the charred areas where explosives had gone off, as well as the cuts and gashes from large bladed weapons. It was clear to Prism that the penthouse room had been a host to many battles over the years.

"Could you do the honors, Magic Man?" Srell said to Prism while motioning to the hanging bomb. "Data Girl is normally the demolitions expert these days, but I'm sure you can do it faster." He added with a dismissive gesture towards Leanna.

"It's the panel with the special screws, right there." Leanna said while pointing to gray housing cover plate that was out of their reach.

Prism's eyes glowed blue as he began to wave his hands in the air before him, guiding his telekinetic magic to remove the cover plate and interact with the control unit inside. The unit was analog and rather antiquated-looking, which surprised Prism. With a few more fine gestures of his hands and fingers, he disabled the control unit and put everything back the way that he'd found it. He never physically touched anything. The others had barely been able to see the control unit or what he'd done to it, because he never needed to lower the bomb from its hanging position above them.

It became clear to RED-1 that they'd accomplished their mission when Gnapp appeared from a hidden circular staircase that was contained within one of the large indented columns that existed within the walls of the room. He walked out of the revealed entrance to the stairwell and smiled gingerly at the group before him.

"Congratulations, gentlemen and lady. You have completed this week's objective and have been the fastest climbers of The Center yet! It only took your team five hours to run the increased-difficulty gambit I created. I would have never thought that you all would breeze through the last half of this tower, even with Prism's help. My goodness, what a marvelous development!" Gnapp began to say in an especially chipper tone.

"There is a great mass of mana up here. Actually, it’s slightly above the building itself. It's enabled me to do some pretty incredible things while we've been in here." Prism explained to Gnapp, who scratched his beard in a display of interest and thought.

"Now can you tell us how you're going to "tap into its full power" now?" Leanna asked.

Prism looked back and saw that she and the others were raring to hear his answer. Each of them wanted to see what Prism was going to do. He'd restored RED-1’s stamina an hour ago, and they were still energetic. Prism smiled at them and nodded. He had no intention of hiding his intentions from them any longer.

"I think that I can complete my healing process by absorbing a large amount of raw mana from the mana convergence. That way, I'll regain my full magical might." Prism said while looking up at the ceiling above them.

"That's awesome!" Jaik said exuberantly.

"Yes, but what are the risks? You seemed too concerned for there not to be any." Ursun asked, reigning in his team's excitement.

"I..." Prism began to say, but stopped to take a deep breath. "It's possible that I'm just too damaged from the torture and from going so long without access to this planet's mana. The process could overwhelm my body and mind...it could tear me apart. And..." Prism struggled to be so honest with them, afraid that they'd deny his only chance at making himself whole again.

"And? There's even more risks than that?" Lorias asked warily.

"It's possible that I could destabilize the flow of mana across your entire world. That's the worst case scenario." Prism said softly.

"What would that even do?" Srell asked anxiously.

"Without mana, a world's natural processes cease to function. Waters begin to cease their flow, wind begins to cease its circulation, and even life ceases to thrive..." Prism explained with a saddened face and voice.

"It's crazy that something that we can't even perceive of or detect with our technology can be so pivotal to our continued existence." Gnapp said astutely. Leanna and Jaik silently nodded their agreement.

"How likely are these outcomes?" Ursun asked after spending a few seconds deep in thought, stroking his thick red beard pensively.

"Not likely. I have enough control over myself and the magic around us right now to minimize the risk significantly. Fighting through this building really was the best thing that could've happened before doing this." Prism said. His confidence was quickly returning to him.

"Then I'll allow it. Go ahead, kid." Ursun said simply and calmly.

With a happy nod of his head, Prism began taking off his helmet and armor until he was only wearing his underclothes. His eyes glowed blue while he summoned the winds to lift him up and take him out of the room through one of its large open windows and above the building itself. The ease of his flight reminded him of how it used to be for centuries before he'd arrived on Æba. He flew directly into the heart of the massive mana convergence, which he saw as a large swirling sphere made up of all of the colors of the rainbow.

Gnapp quickly accessed The Center's external camera feeds from his own arm display and zoomed in on Prism so that the others could see what he was doing. The members of RED-1 that still stood within the room linked their own arm displays to Gnapp's, with his guidance. They all stared into their displays, unsure of what would actually happen above them. Jaik was the only one who could see the colorful mass of energy that Prism had flown into. He smiled after he looked around at the others, soon realizing that his temporary magical nature enabled his eyes to see what they could not.

Prism reached out his arms to his sides and began to absorb the mana that rushed around his body. It was truly dangerous for an Elementeitan to commune with a world and open itself up to its raw mana more than once, but what Prism was doing was different. He didn't need to reach out to Æba and ask her to release her bounty to him. He merely needed to drink deep of the mana that was already there in the sky. He simply hoped that he would not drown in the process.

Prism's eyes flashed with every color imaginable as the torrent of mana began to enter his body. His form began to transform, just as it had before Ursun by the waterfall weeks earlier, so that he could handle the absorption more effectively. The phantasmal tendrils that appeared from his head reached out in all directions, facilitating the osmosis of even greater amounts of mana. His translucent body became ever more luminous, until his form was absolutely incandescent with kaleidoscopic colors.

Gnapp and the other members of RED-1 looked curiously at their arm displays at Prism's transformation, and they soon had to look away when the Elementeitan became too bright to be looked upon directly. Each of them could see the brilliant prismatic light streaming down from atop The Center through the windows that were all around them. Prism shined so brightly that he could be seen by all on the Peninsula who looked at the sky in his direction, even though it was midday. Gnapp and Ursun began to grow worried at the implications of such a strange display, and hoped that their enemies didn't act on news of the occurrence. If the enemies of the Conjunction believed that the Red Wolves had a new weapon, they had all the evidence they'd need after Prism's polychromatic spectacle.

After several minutes of overwhelming the daytime sky with color, the light from Prism's body dimmed and he began to feel a sense of fullness and satisfaction. His ethereal form hovered peacefully in the air for a few more moments before it coalesced back into Prism's more familiar human form. Prism smiled serenely as he hovered in the center of what remained of the mana convergence. Though stable, there was just enough of the convergence left to surround his body. He looked like a sleeping, dreaming man suspended in midair.

"How do we get him down from there?" Srell asked the others.

"Good question." Lorias said half-sarcastically.

Jaik ran over to one of the open windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. He gripped one of the metal railings near the windows, and peeked his head outside.

"Come back if you can! Everybody's worried about you!" Jaik yelled out into the sky.

"What on Æba are you doing? He's too far up to hear you." Leanna said reproachfully, figuring that Jaik was being childish again.

Prism slowly opened his eyes when he sensed Jaik's magically-tinged words. Prism smiled to himself when he realized how ingenious Jaik's efforts had been. Prism stretched his arms high above his head as if he'd gotten a full night's rest. He sensed that the raw mana within him was being put to work by his body, slowly restoring the magical elements of his being. Prism soon flew himself back down and into the penthouse room. Jaik was the first to rush over to him and make sure that he was okay.

"Mission accomplished?" Jaik asked with his thumps up and an expectant smile.

"Mission truly accomplished!" Prism said before the two grabbed each other and jumped around cheerfully.

"Kids, indeed." Ursun said with a chuckle.