"Landon!" Nemona and Grusha cried out in unison.
They didn't hesitate. They abandoned the tense argunt entirely and rushed across the concrete to et him.
Anabel’s face flushed a brilliant shade of red. She looked away, her jaw clenching as she watched the won throw their arms around him. The girls were laughing freely, their hands resting comfortably on his chest and arms. The sheer, unabashed intimacy of the display made Anabel's blood boil. It completely violated every professional protocol she had ever been taught.
"What happened here?" Landon asked, his voice tight with concern as he looked over the pulverized remains of the arena floor.
"We won!" Nemona declared proudly, though her shoulders imdiately slumped in exhaustion. "But I ran completely out of cosmic power at the very end and had to let my transformation go before I could finish the beast off."
"Oh?" Landon asked, raising an eyebrow. He looked past her, taking in the flattened crater, the shattered remnants of the permafrost ring, and the massive, lting chunks of Grusha's glacier scattered across the concrete. "Well, it certainly looks like you all had the situation perfectly under control. I guess I was worried about you for nothing."
"Worried?" Lusamine asked, stepping up beside him. "What is wrong? You look tense."
"Sothing strange just happened out in the jungle," Landon admitted, closing his eyes to focus his senses. "I don't really know how to describe the frequency, but I just felt a completely new presence enter the tiline."
"A new presence?" Anabel asked, her professional instincts overriding her annoyance as she walked toward the group. "Where exactly?"
"I am not entirely sure of the exact coordinates," Landon replied, shaking his head slowly. "But it wasn't close to our current position. Whatever it is, it is incredibly strong."
"Do you think it is another Endbringer?" Lusamine asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
Landon looked genuinely confused. He shook his head again. "No. I rember the oppressive, suffocating feeling Garon gave off when he arrived in Paldea. This signature wasn't anything like him. Whatever just arrived is not quite as powerful as a corrupted system user, but I honestly can't decide if the energy belongs to a human or a Pokémon."
"So, you didn't sense the sa apocalyptic frequency as Garon, and you believe whatever is going on is entirely unrelated to the Endbringer syndicate?" Anabel clarified, stepping into the center of the group.
"Right," Landon confird. "And the raw power doesn't feel like anything I have ever sensed before. There is sothing fundantally strange about the energy output. It is not natural."
"I will contact Looker on the secure channel to let him know about the anomaly," Anabel decided, pulling out her phone. "But for now, I have to assu the signature belongs to one of the escaped prisoners. You might not be used to the way high-tier human psychics feel on your radar, so that could easily explain the distortion. Did you discover anything else while you and Iono were scouting the periter? And speaking of which, where exactly did she go?"
Landon rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. "She was feeling a bit tired from the temporal jump, so she headed back to Prisma to rest."
Anabel nodded, accepting the explanation. However, just out of her direct line of sight, the other three won were actively exchanging highly aningful looks. Most of them had already figured out exactly what Landon and Iono had been doing out in the sweltering jungle, but they kept their mouths firmly shut to avoid giving the Interpol agent any more ammunition to fire at them.
"So, did you discover anything regarding the convicts?" Anabel pressed, looking up from her screen.
"Not exactly," Landon lied smoothly, having absolutely no desire to explain what he had been doing pinned against an ancient tree trunk. "I felt the shockwave from the stadium dropping and ca back to see what you were all fighting before I could get very far down the trail."
"Well, we are not going to recapture anyone if we just keep standing around in this crater," Anabel stated, putting a hand on her hip. "Do you actually have a plan, or are you just going to wander blindly around the prehistoric jungle until we stumble into an ambush?"
The girls all rolled their eyes simultaneously. They had absolutely zero patience left for her condescending attitude.
"I would usually suggest we wander around until we find a good spot for lunch," Landon said mildly, turning his gaze toward the towering walls of the stadium. "But that won't be necessary today. There are three human signatures rapidly approaching our periter as we speak."
Anabel's eyes widened in alarm. She reached for her sidearm. "Will you be able to take on three of them at once? While your girls clearly possess interesting destructive powers, these specific criminals have spent their entire lives perfecting their psychic skills and learning how to weaponize their abilities in lethal combat."
"Do not worry about it, Anabel," Landon said, his voice entirely calm. "I won't need their help."
The girls standing behind him all grinned knowingly.
"What exactly are you talking about?" Anabel demanded, severely disliking his casual arrogance in the face of a threat.
"Just watch him for once, Agent Anabel," Grusha instructed, her voice muffled slightly by her thick scarf. She smiled up at Landon. "It is about ti you actually get a chance to see exactly why so many of us willingly follow him. It isn't just about our romantic feelings. It is about the absolute thrill of the fight. We want to enjoy the adventure."
"Adventures?" Anabel scoffed in disbelief. "This is absolutely not a vacation adventure! These people are hardened, maximum-security criminals! They are a lethal danger to all of us!"
"Yes, yes, we know all of that," Lusamine said smoothly, clasping her hands together in front of her. "But this is still incredibly exciting."
"Are you honestly not worried at all?" Anabel asked, looking at the blonde woman like she was insane.
"Not at all," Lusamine replied, her eyes tracking Landon as he stepped away from the group. "You just saw the fraction of power that we can unleash, right? We are just his companions playing with the residual gifts that his system gave us. I might not have been happy about my circumstances at first, Anabel, but I now get to see and experience more of the multiverse than I ever dread possible. I will trust Landon with my life without a second thought."
Anabel saw the absolute, unshakeable conviction burning in Lusamine’s eyes.
She felt sothing twist deep inside her chest. Her cheeks ward unexpectedly, and she was forced to look away. It was incredibly hard for her analytical mind to understand why so many powerful, independent won could be so fiercely devoted to a single man. The fact that he seed to hold so much raw power and effortless influence over them only added to her deep-seated frustration. She couldn't figure the dynamic out, it made zero logical sense, and the undeniable fact that the won were entirely right about his strength deeply annoyed her.
"Hey, Landon," Grusha called out suddenly.
Landon paused, turning back toward the group.
Grusha rushed forward. She threw her arms securely around his neck and pulled him down into a deep, lingering kiss right in front of the Interpol agent.
"Be careful out there, and co back quickly," Grusha whispered as she finally pulled away, her cheeks flushed.
Landon smiled warmly, returning a quick kiss to her forehead before gently stepping back. The rest of the won looked like they wanted to follow him out into the jungle, but he held up a hand to stop them, offering a confident grin.
"Sorry girls, you have to stay here," Landon promised. "We can take a long lunch break after I wrap this up and relax a bit back at the sanctuary."
The won murmured their agreent, perfectly content with the plan.
Anabel was genuinely surprised that the rest of the won hadn't actively mobbed him or demanded to join the fight. She wondered if they really were that blindly confident in his combat abilities. They were watching him closely, their expressions mirroring the quiet concern of spouses watching their partner head off to a dangerous job. She knew that wasn't exactly the reality of their situation, but there was an undeniably dostic, loyal atmosphere to the entire exchange that threw her off balance.
Without another word, Landon vanished.
There was no flash of light, no sound. He simply ceased to exist in the space he was occupying. A split second later, he reappeared hovering high in the air above the concrete stadium walls.
"How exactly did he do that?" Anabel asked, her hand hovering over her holster. She had not expected him to possess localized teleportation.
"He just moves significantly faster than any normal human eye can track," Nemona explained casually, pointing up at his hovering form. "He has already activated his Primordial skin underneath his clothes. There is very little chance that we would even see the impact if he threw a punch right now. We were not kidding when we told you that he does not need our physical help to secure this tiline. As much as I desperately want to fight by his side right now, even I know that I would just get in his way. But that is exactly why we all train so hard in the sanctuary."
"All of us want to eventually be strong enough to stand directly at his side as absolute equals," Lusamine added quietly. "We want to help him fight the true wars."
Anabel couldn't believe what she was hearing. Then her mind flashed back to the security footage from the Paldea incident. She rembered how he had moved with impossible, physics-defying speed against the Endbringer. It truly looked like teleportation on the monitors. But if he possessed that kind of overwhelming speed, why didn't he simply use those powers earlier to catch the escaped convicts before they scattered? It didn't make any sense. She had so many unanswered questions about his system.
High above the canopy, Landon vanished again.
He dropped entirely out of their line of sight, descending rapidly into the dense prehistoric jungle. He needed to get a better visual on the three human signatures approaching their position.
As his boots touched the damp earth, he realized the environnt had changed. A thick, unnatural black fog was rapidly rolling through the ancient trees, completely obscuring the area where the thermal signatures should be.
"So, you are the anomaly that everyone in the underworld is talking about?" a sneering voice echoed from within the fog.
A dark silhouette stepped forward, barely visible through the mist.
"You have to make a pretty massive stink on the surface to get word of your existence all the way down to our ears in the containnt block," the voice continued smoothly. "You know, being locked up underground for so many years makes it incredibly hard to get a hold of any reliable network information."
Landon frowned, his glowing eyes scanning the fog. "I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The entire world knows about my existence now thanks to a broadcast, so I can easily see how rumors can spread to a prison."
Three n stepped completely out of the black fog. As they cleared the tree line, the thick mist violently sucked backward, absorbing directly into the skin of the man leading the group.
The first man was missing his left eye. A brutal, jagged claw mark ran vertically down that side of his face. He had short, ticulously styled black hair. He wasn't exactly what Landon expected from a hardened criminal who had spent decades locked away in a subterranean cell. He wore a sharp, tailored suit with a dark red tie, and looked to be only a few years older than Landon himself.
The second man was completely unhinged. He had a massive, surgical scar curving around the side of his bald head, and a wild, crazed look burning in his wide eyes.
The last man was a walking mountain. He was easily over seven feet tall, his prison uniform tearing at the seams from the sheer, unnatural mass of his muscles.
"Is that so?" the man in the suit asked, brushing a piece of ash from his lapel. "The Professor specifically warned us that you were strong. He told us not to take you lightly."
"The Professor?" Landon asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "Who exactly are you talking about?"
"He never specifically commanded us to keep his identity a secret," the suited man chuckled. "But it isn't like you will ever find him, even if you miraculously beat us today. The rest of our liberated associates are already long gone into the tiline, so you don't even need to bother looking for them. But it's not like we are going to let you walk out of this jungle in anything less than a body bag anyway!"
The leader grinned viciously, his single eye locking onto Landon.
"My alias is Shadow," he announced with a theatrical bow. "And these two charming gentlen are Violator and Brawn. But I am absolutely sure you can figure out who is who!"
Landon looked the three criminals over, taking in their arrogant stances. He let out a loud, dismissive snort.
"If you honestly think this little parlor trick is all it takes to bring down, then you are sorely mistaken," Landon warned, his voice dropping into a deadly register. "If you surrender to Interpol right now, I will not have to permanently break you."
Shadow threw his head back and started laughing hysterically. His two companions imdiately chuckled along with him.
"Do you really think that we would just walk away?" Shadow mocked, wiping a tear from his good eye. "We know exactly what you are hiding back there in that strange concrete stadium that just fell from the sky."
"Yeee! Haaa! Haaa!" Violator shrieked suddenly, his hands twitching at his sides. He took a deep, exaggerated sniff of the humid air. "I can sll the ripe, sweet scent of a whole bunch of pretty girls! Yip! Yip! Yip!"
"Oh? You want so of this?" Brawn grunted, stepping forward to crack his massive knuckles. He flexed his unnatural, tree-trunk arms. "I can give it to you right now, pretty boy. But be prepared for the pain. I am going to deliver the pain of a thousand beatdowns!"
"Ugh," Landon groaned, rubbing his temples. The sheer arrogance was exhausting.
He finally dropped his arms, a cold, predatory smile spreading across his face.
"Fine," Landon said, his core system fully engaging. "It hasn't been very long since my brutal fight with Garon, but I am feeling generous today. I will give you three exactly one chance to show what your absolute limits are."
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