Thomas was sitting on a train that resembled the one who took him once towards this place. He looked around, feeling weirdly tense as if he was waiting for villains or superheroes to come and attack him again.
Opposite him, Lucy was sitting and lost in her own thoughts. For a rare moment, she kept her silence, didn't speak like usual or said anything since they boarded the train.
Thomas noticed how weird she acted, and thought about the possibility of her being anxious from boarding trains or travelling or something.
As she remained silent, he finally got a moment of peace for himself. His thoughts drifted between too much stuff, between his experience back at the train, the battle between superheroes, the wallet he found, and the artefact he wanted to get.
He finally got his chance to go to Retto town and find that artefact. He was very curious to see what this artefact was like, very interested in trying it out and seeing if he could use it better than its maker.
He was soothing with excitement that his body started to faintly tremble on its own. To control it, he tried to think about other stuff, and finally, his thoughts stopped at the urgent message he received from Trevor.
Trevor went there for almost one week. During this time, he kept sending reports regularly, all of them lacking anything interesting.
They were facing a dead end in their investigation as if there was no clue no matter where they looked. This was quite suspicious in Thomas' eyes, the same feeling Trevor felt. It was as if someone was trying to cover up his tracks, and masked any clue that could be found anywhere.
They tried to look at the area of the incident, areas around it with no result at all. They spoke with people who were on board that train that day, spoke with people from Retto town, and even met the dwellers in the wilderness and asked them if they saw or heard anything weird.
Yet no one gave them any valuable data. According to Trevor, he complained once in a message about Ellisa, how she tried to snatch the investigation from his department on the excuse of having no result whatsoever.
She felt determined to get her hands over this case and kick Trevor and his department off it. She even went to the old boss leading the SA, and spoke with him twice about this, ending up facing firm rejection.
There were rules running the world of superheroes and SAs, luckily. And the old man leading the branch was strict in things related to such rules and regulations.
Trevor didn't know why she persisted in doing this, even saying that this by far was her first daring act to try and snatch a case from his hands.
Thomas didn't think he was the reason behind this and thought there was a deep history between Trevor and Ellisa or something. He felt this was personal as if Ellisa wanted to leave a mark on Trevor's face and reputation.
Thinking about this helped in alleviating the insane excitement over him. He sat there, calmly waiting for the train to arrive at Retto town.
Unlike his first time boarding the train, he and Lucy were all alone in the truck. Normal people avoided this place, thanks to their unique clothes, the emblem of the SA department, and the tree pot he carried all the time with him.
From time to time, he'd sneak a look at Lucy to see her looking outside the window, seemingly lost in something. She kept her silence all the trip and didn't even turn to look at Thomas once.
This was a bit weird, and Thomas wanted to ask her on various occasions but refrained from doing so. He knew everyone had their own fears and doubts, their problems. As he didn't like anyone peeking into his affairs, he wouldn't do the same to others.
Not to mention his relationship with her was just limited to work. She wasn't his friend, to begin with. As he had no person to speak with, he took out Trevor's message and read it again.
There was no mention of a meeting place or anything, just a request for the two to pack up and come as fast as possible to Retto town. He didn't find it suspicious, as Trevor already mentioned the place they were at in the last report sent yesterday.
"That reminds me… There was no report today…" Thomas didn't know if Trevor considered this distress message in today's report or if there was no time for him to send such a thing in the first place.
The team was heading towards a remote place, one that was rumoured to have weird things happening there a few years ago. As they had no clue of what to do, and Ellisa was coming at Trevor like a hungry wolf, he decided to go there and inspect things.
Thomas didn't know if something bad happened to Trevor to ask for the two to come. Yet if there was something dangerous, then Trevor would have asked the help of Ellisa and her department, not the two of them.
"That means he found a good clue, or perhaps a trail that needs lots of working hands to follow and crack…" Thomas thought as the old investigator he was. He was sure of his hypothesis, that Trevor and his team found many clues at that place, and wanted the help of everyone on deck to rapidly reach a concrete clue or even locate the location of the real culprits.
Thomas was also excited about this as he didn't need to stick to the town. As long as he went outside, he could find any excuse and go towards the location of the buried artefact without arousing any suspicion.
"We are here," the moment the train stopped at Retto town station, Thomas instantly recognised it, "let's go, we have a couple of minutes before the train leaves."
"Ok…" Lucy felt like she was in a deep dream and just woke up. Thomas grabbed his precious tree pot and walked towards the door while feeling like he was getting closer to getting from his artefact with each step taken.
"Last time I came here, the place was filled with tons of people and a few superheroes investigating what happened. Do you think they belong to our team?"
Thomas recalled everything he passed through the moment he got off the train. He looked around and couldn't help but say these words, but for a reason, Lucy seemed like she didn't hear any of what he said.
"Never mind, let's go," Thomas felt like the two exchanged their rules and he was the one speaking nonsense instead of her. So he went directly towards the bridge and got out of the station without exchanging a single word.
"We should ask how to go to the Broken Ridges area from here… Excuse me, do you know where…"
Thomas was about to ask for directions from one of the passersby before he suddenly felt something. It was a peculiar feeling, like a sharp needle that got deeply into his head or something.
This was something he felt before in this world, the moment he spotted the two superheroes on board of that train. He stopped what he was saying, turned around fast, looking for the source of this troublesome ominous feeling.
"Watch out!" as he was looking, his eyes fell and froze over a spot. There he didn't find one or two superheroes, but five! Five people, wearing black cloaks, covering their heads with big hoodies, were walking fixedly towards his direction from far.
He couldn't see their features, but their eyes were shining brightly, a clear indication of being superheroes. The moment he spotted them, he couldn't help but grab Lucy's arm, and pull her to cross the street without warning, while shouting to everyone around, "Villains!"
The moment the word came out of his mouth, everything changed.
Thomas didn't know if they were true villains or not, but he knew if he shouted and they acted, then they meant bad to him.
He didn't know why every single time he tried to come to this town something bad would happen. And yet this time was different. Last time he got the mad demon by his side, and that was enough to make him feel more confident than now.
Even if he got a superpower, one that could turn anything it touched into dust, it wasn't enough. He had to get too close to the target to do it, and he was outnumbered!
As for his mate, Lucy, she was hopeless! She could only turn her hair bright, without doing anything else. Praying that she got a special superpower hidden just like him was like hoping to win the lottery by buying out a single ticket, or even worse.
He shouted and started running with Lucy while hearing loud screams from behind, mixed with violent noises. He looked above his shoulder and saw the five running towards him, releasing attacks blindly and hitting the normal and innocent people filling the place.
"They are indeed villains," just one look was enough to tell him much about them. They were villains, ones that wouldn't flinch to use brute force against normal people. Even the two villains he met before on the train didn't try to harm innocent people to get the mad demon. And that told him these five were much worse than the two he met before.
He just took one glance and spotted them using their superpowers. One of them was holding a blade, one that looked like a sword without a handle. He waved it right and left, releasing arcs of lightning that slammed fiercely for fifty metres away from him.
He reminded him of those magicians he watched on TV and in cinemas. He was a villain with a superpower to attack far away targets, a piece of bad news for someone like Thomas.
The second villain was releasing small, diamond-shaped, needles that were made out of fire. They could travel away for thirty metres before landing, exploding and releasing a ball of fire that could cover an area of five metres around, incinerating anything and anyone standing inside.
He was also a long ranged villain, another bad news for Thomas. The third was different. It gave Thomas the impression of being a lady thanks to her tight cloak and agile moves. She could move fast in an area of fifty metres around. An agile-based villain wasn't that deadly, but to Thomas, it was a troublesome foe.
Luckily she got to wait for many seconds before reusing her superpower again. And he felt like she could only move in one direction, unable to change it in the middle of her movement. She hit many people standing in her path, and Thomas thought she was either a lunatic or her superpower had such limitations.
The fourth was able to change his two fists, making them grow thicker and bigger, looking like he was wearing a thick glove or something. He was launching shockwaves one after another, pushing anything and anyone around in a ten metres area away, as if they got blasted by grenades or something.
The fifth was when someone released a bubble around him. It was faintly brown in colour, and Thomas didn't know what it could do. It covered up an area of thirty metres around, slowly expanding and receding every few seconds passing.
Luckily he spotted them fast and early enough, enough to pull out the distance between him and them by a few hundred metres. Yet he knew this wasn't reassuring at all.
Just that lady jumping around like a monkey was enough to make him feel desperate. They could outrun others, but this one was quite problematic.
The bad news was that they were in a town without a SA department there. On top of that, they appeared just in the middle of it, and they had to cross a huge area on foot if he wanted to go out of the town.
Then what? That was what he kept asking himself while running with Lucy. They were alone here, and Trevor and others were somewhere far from here. They were on their own, and no one was here to save them.
"I miss that mad demon," he didn't think a time would come for him to say such a thing, but he truly missed such a daring and strong superhero now, "keep running! One of them is moving quite fast and will catch up to us very soon."
"We need to fight!" as expected of someone who saw nothing in the world of superheroes, Lucy said.
"Stop asking for your death! Keep running and let's pray someone strong enough to stop them is nearby."
*Boom!*
Just as the chase started, many fierce explosions happened. Thomas kept looking back from time to time, seeing these five drawings close to them no matter how long they ran.
"Let's go there," seeing that the agile villain was drawing closer, only less than two hundred metres away, he was sure there was no hope in trying to run away using this method.
"That's… That's a bustling marketplace!"
"We need them to delay these for us," Thomas didn't like using normal and innocent people as shields for him, but he had no other choice. If he got the power, he'd turn and face these five villains and kill them. But he was weak, and his mate wasn't any better than any normal person.
"Fine!" as she took a look behind, she got what Thomas felt when she saw that agile villain. She knew there was no hope for them if she caught up and stopped them. Just stopping them for a minute or so was enough for the other four to arrive and surround them. And then it would be the end.