Advent of Cataclysm.

"I know I said I would help the kid, but..." Shin was staring at the face of the tsunami, everything behind it was destruction, and everything ahead of it was chaos, hundreds of thousands of people and demons trying to escape as the waters caught and swallowed them up.

"There's no way we're gonna find him in this mess!" Rai finished Shin's sentence with a hopeless groan. "You took too long to get him if your plan was to keep him alive," He scolded his friend.

The two of them were flying side by side, Shin was on a hover bike flying just ahead of the tsunami, while Rai flew on his own using his suit and constently scanning the doomed population of South City for Kai or one of his friends. 

"At this rate we could just save one random person and call it a day-"

"There's no point in any of that," Tami countered, flying on her eagle much closer to the ground below them where she could see the people better. "The point to all of this was Kai, if it's not Kai then there is no purpose to it, we should just turn back and go home, I hate seeing scenes like these the most." She argued, and Shin nodded in agreement. 

"The Shadow is still here, the boy still lives, if you wish to save them you must hurry." Shin heard a deep chilling voice in his head, causing him to almost lose consciousness as it intruded his mind a lot stronger than it usually would. 

"Madarin says they're still alive, they must be further ahead." Shin announced, and Rai first took off like a missile using AORAI and expanding his search area to a city-wide scale to make sure he was missing nothing. 

"That's good news, Shin, are you okay?" Yui asked, unlike the others she had no means of outrunning a tsunami of that scale, so she had stayed behind in the Cloud with another friend of theirs to monitor them and cover in case someone came looking; with the entire eastern continent on the brink of sinking even the Cloud had become active.

"I'm okay, Yui," He answered. 

"Anomaly detected." AORAI announced over everyone's comm, and before even Rai could explain what the sensors were reading, they all witnessed a large shroom of orange fire shoot into the air. 

"What the hell was that?" Tami asked. "I thought the military was decimated on the second day of the Collapse!" 

"That was infernus," Madarin mused. "It is the doing of the shadow of the apocalypse; Tenzo, it is a call for help, the boy has been found." 

"That is weirdly specific!" Shin responded and then relayed the message to his friends, speeding ahead of the raging waves and slowly descending towards the mountain. 

"Another anomaly!" Rai announced once more, and the group watched the trees on the mountaintop shake when another cloud of fire shot into the air. 

"I found them!" He called landing a few hundred feet away from the four on the peak of the small mountain and making one leap to reach them. 

"No fucking way, it actually worked!" Andrew stared at Rai in disbelief and then at Kai again. "How did you-" 

"I didn't know who would come, I just listened to what he said..." Kai was bent over holding out his hands and staring at his burnt skin. "I can't close my fingers anymore..." 

"Don't worry about that," Rai looked towards the rapidly approaching wall of water and then gestured to the sky where they saw a great eagle and a medium sized vehicle descending towards them. 

"The calvary has arrived!" Tami announced guiding her eagle to land stylishly next to Kai and Ava while Shin stopped just above ground next to Andrew and Fritz and made a gesture with his chin. 

"Come on then," Shin tapped the bike. "There's room for two on here, Tami can carry one more, and Rai can carry..." He paused. "Who's this?" He stared at Fritz, is he some kind of new friend or a random that managed to make the climb in time?" 

"He's abnormally strong- this is not the time nor the place!" Kai snapped. 

"Yeah," Shin agreed and tapped his bike again. "You and the girl ride with me, Rai came here for Andrew specifically, so..." 

"No worries." Tami ran her hand through her eagle's feathers. "Come on new guy, make it quick there's about forty seconds left before this mountain is underwater." She warned him, watching her beast snap at him in agitation when he carefully approached them. 

Shin pulled Kai up by his shoulder first and then Ava behind him, instructing her to properly hold on for the two of them with her hands around Kai since their first climb was going to be nearly vertical. 

Rai took out a small bug-looking robot from his suit's sleeve and slapped it onto Andrew's back creating a jetpack with the tap of a button along with arm guards and a helmet, while Tami allowed Fritz to sit in her saddle while she stood on her eagle's neck.

"Fifi, Go." Tami calmly spoke, and Fritz found himself speechless when the eagle took off into the air climbing rapidly while she stood with her arms folded staring at him. 

"How did you manage to become friends with the world's most skeptical boy?" Tami asked, but Fritz was too lost in the climb and screaming to even understand what she was saying, so she let the topic slide and continued to watch him closely, standing horizontally at one point when the eagle had to ascend to avoid the waves as they crashed against and swallowed the mountain whole.

"This is amazing!" Andrew screamed out in both fear and excitement after he and Rai flew in tandem easily escaping the mountain with the technology from Cloud at their disposal, even though Rai was the one controlling the jetpack it still felt like he was the one because of the minute movements he made being accepted and adjusted to by AORAI's algorithm.

"Kai and Ava on the other hand were silent, Kai because he was focused on Ava baring his weight as they climbed, and Ava because these were the same people that hurt and fought with Kai on the same day his stepmother was killed.

To her, there was nothing exciting about this, she considered these people Kai's enemies, and she knew he thought the same, no matter how they acted now, they were antagonists to him.

"How did you do that earlier?" Shin asked, looking at the last of South City disappear underwater. "Did you make a deal with Tenzo, the Shadow of the Apocalypse?" He asked after hearing no response after a minute. 

"I don't trust you enough to tell you anything." Kai retorted. 

"You do realise, I am by profession supposed to drop you to your death, right?" 

"I'm ready," Ava stared at Kai seriously when he glanced at her over his shoulder after the bike was steadied in the air. "I don't mind dying here with you." 

"Stop it," Kai shook his head at her. "I don't want you to die." He took a deep breath of the cold air and then looked at Shin who was riding blind and staring at them with a half smirk, amused at both his and Ava's dynamic. "How do you know his name?"

"You're not the only one with an extradimentional entity stuffed into your body, they're having a chat as we speak," Shin scoffed. "So how about we have a chat of our own?" He getured to Kai's hands. "How lomh will it take to heal?" 

"...From what I've experienced, a few days, maybe a week." Kai answered. "And I didn't call his name, I don't trust him." 

"Good call, the Shadow of the Apocalypse is dangerous, calling him by name as his host could potentially lead to your immediate death." Shin warned him. 

"I would never kill him, though," Tenzo scoffed. "The boy is special." 

"You mangled the child's hand, is that also considered special treatment?" Madarin retorted. 

"You old dog!" Tenzo snapped. "What makes you think you have the right to judge my methods when your host could melt from the ears if he summons your power?" 

"I have been an ally of mankind since their conception, you on the other hand are newly converted after much persuasion by Jin!" Madarin argued.

"Being an ally to the likes of you has never been an intent of mine, I chose a side based on my divinations!" Tenzo growled irritated.

"That is compulsory you dirty mud-fart! All of us get divinations!" The wolf, wishing he had hands to slap Tenzo, snarled and barked.

"What the hell..." Shin began laughing, hearing the two bicker back and forth like longlost brothers. 

Kai didn't find it amusing though, he was lost in thought at the flames from earlier; Tenzo called it infernus, as did Shin, but that fire, that heat, it was the same hellish sensation that had been torturing him for two years before the first gate was opened. 

He closed his eyes, trying to recreate the sensation, and then very calmly he held his hand to the side and whispered... 

"Infernus-"