June 23rd

1942 HAST

Flares of lava erupted from Mauna Loa's crater, sending sprays of fire all around. All the vents along the side of the mountain radiated wave after wave of unbearable heat, and each of them were put out by Tristan as the Union tore up the mountain. They were seemingly invincible, banding together like they never had before.

The brunette villainess stood carefully near the top of the volcano, her hands outstretched as she made the eruption bigger and bigger. As the heroes approached, she flexed her hands and another massive burst of lava shot into the air.

"You do not stand a chance against me, heroes!" She roared. "I am Aetna, my namesake was the immortal goddess of volcanoes. I am invincible!" As she finished her spiel, another flare of fire erupted from behind her, spilling down the sides of the mountain.

At that moment, a wave of water washed over the crater. Steam billowed into the air as the water made contact with the lava, and Bristol stood proudly, her hands outstretched. "Water puts out fire, so I would think again about that invincibility of yours!" She called, another wave growing in the ocean behind her.

Aetna's citrine eyes shimmered dangerously. "Elemental Empress, I recall that you have four elements at your disposal. Why use only one?" She taunted.

Avi glanced at Bristol, and found a visage of falter on the girl's face. Bristol ignored Aetna, trying to summon another wave but her grip went slack as the volcanic villainess sent a wave of lava straight towards her.

"Bristol, watch out!" Avi yelled urgently. Instantly, she clapped a hand over her mouth and her vision darted quickly to Aetna. If she had heard Bristol's name...but she hadn't. Sighing in relif, Avi turned back to Bristol, expecting her to have moved.

But Bristol was stuck in place. The lava was approaching her but she wasn't moving. She was petrified, and the hot rock kept looming closer to her. Her dark eyes seemed to illuminate with the impending glare of her imminent doom.

Then a streak of black and red bolted into sight and Bristol was gone, standing safely on the opposite side of the mountain, next to Avi. CJ set her down. "Be careful," he said, before speeding off.

Bristol took a deep breath and looked at Tristan, who was crouched behind a nearby rock, forming flurry after flurry of ice and snow. They accumulated around Aetna, but with each one that took form, she simply swiped them out of existence with another spray of fire.

"She's getting on my last nerve," Tristan huffed, standing up.

Avi bit her lip. She examined the crater and did a quick resonation of the mountain beneath them. "The volcano is almost reaching the next level of eruption. We need to distort Aetna's control on the magma chamber and the eruption will slow down."

Tristan ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "But how do we do that? I can try to freeze the magma through the vents." He suggested.

Avi took a deep breath. "I will distract her. You guys," she looked at Bristol and Tristan, "work together to slow the lava."

CJ skidded to a stop nearby them, putting a hand on Bristol's shoulder. "Can you try to control two elements at once? Earth and fire?"

Bristol instantly looked to Tristan, who was shaking his head ever so slightly. However, she looked back to CJ beside her. "Yeah," she said with a shaky breath. "Yeah, I can try."

Avi nodded. "Rapid, divert the smoke while you run. Now, let us go!" She ordered.

The Union split up. CJ dashed off, sprinting around the mountain until the smoke from the crater was billowing up in a single plume. Bristol lifted her hands, her eyes shutting in concentration as the lava flows began to slow. Tristan stood in the middle of his own blizzard, snow and ice shooting towards Aetna and all around her to freeze the flaming vents.

Now it was Avi's turn. She marched up the mountain, ignoring the fire at her feet, until Aetna acknowledged her presence. This would take a lot of concentration, and it needed to be at exactly the right moment or it wouldn't work.

Aetna rose a hand and lava began to bubble behind her, and that's when Avi struck. Her eyes shone a neon green as she proceeded with her resonation, and Aetna's grip on the lava behind her went slack.

Instantly, a flood of memories washed into Avi's mind. She saw glimpses of the island, of the Union, going deeper and deeper until she spotted Rune. A glimpse of Psyche, Phobos, and a head of platinum blonde hair being sent away from a group into a forest. However, Avi caught sight of who Aetna used to be and suddenly, her transformation made sense.

A mental wave rammed into Avi's mind and her control on Aetna was distorted. The villainess fell to the ground, coughing and clutching her head. An amulet fell out from underneath the collar of her jumpsuit, and realization hit Avi like a train.

Avi threw her hand forward, freezing Aetna in place with her mind. "Who made the amulet? How do they work or I have half a mind to plunge you into the crater behind you." She said.

Aetna glared at Avi intensely before grimacing. "You know who made them and how they work. You only want me to tell you so your worst fears are confirmed."

Avi felt a tremor underneath the earth and felt it slow carefully. She looked behind her quickly and found that the lava flows were slowly hardening. Bristol and Tristan's combined control was working.

"Impossible! I'm the only geothermal meta, you cannot control me, Elemental Empress!" Aetna cried out, and used all of her energy to push off Avi's mental hold on her.

Avi stumbled backwards, sending forth another resonation to keep her in place. Thankfully, Aetna was still shaky so whatever attack she tried to send to Bristol wasn't working. With what time she had left before her enemy recovered, Avi turned around.

"Keep it up!" She yelled to Bristol and was greeted with an apprehensive nod from the Elemental Empress.

Avi turned her attention back to Aetna, but was met with a kick to the stomach. She crumpled to the ground, clutching the point of impact as she hissed in pain.

Aetna stood above her, her citrine eyes glowing dangerously once again. The crater began to glow as Aetna pressed a hand around the amulet. Swirls of light unfolded from it until a glimmering portal shimmered behind her.

Avi staggered to her feet. "Stop her!" She shouted.

Instantly, another blast of snow hit Aetna, but the volcanic villainess seemed to be transforming into a pillar of flame. The snow melted away on impact, sending steam all around. "We will meet again, heroes. And next time, I will not let you go this easily."

And with that, the portal disappeared, taking Aetna the human flare with it.

Avi tried to control her breathing, keeping an arm clutched to her stomach. The pain was fading as it always did whenever she got hurt, but she still felt shell-shocked. She had seen things and heard things she didn't want to believe.

Around her, the smoke cleared and the tremors of the Earth stopped. There was no trace of ash or lava anywhere, it was as if Aetna had taken all traces of the volcano with her. Maybe she was the embodiment of volcanoes, and they only erupted with her control and presence.

Avi sighed and turned around, finding her teammates in a similar state of confusion. They met halfway down the mountain, but no one said anything for a while until Avi spoke up.

"I read her mind." She said, her voice scratchy. "Aetna used to be Terra, the geokinetic metahuman we faced last winter."

Instantly, everyone made sounds of realization. Once the identity was a match, the idea clicked into place. Aetna could have been Terra's twin, except she was Terra.

"So that's what she meant by her evolving," CJ groaned, pushing his hood off his head and running a hand through his disheveled hair. "Terra fell into that pit of magma last winter and we all thought she died."

"Only she didn't," Tristan sighed. "She just used her predicament to her advantage."

"And now she's even stronger," CJ grumbled.

The only person who didn't seem to be fazed by the whole Aetna/Terra Identity Crisis was Bristol. She seemed blank and distant, very un-Bristollike.

"Bristol? You okay?" Tristan asked, and a flash of concern appeared in his sapphire eyes.

Bristol slowly looked at him, snapping out of whatever daze she was in. "Yeah, I'm fine." She said, emphasis on fine.

Avi knit her eyebrows and glanced at CJ, who looked back at her and simply shrugged. Bristol and Tristan seemed to be in the middle of some telepathic conversation and frankly, Avi didn't know what for.

"Not only is Aetna actually Terra," Avi continued. "But she gave me a confirmation on the maker and purpose of the amulets."

Bristol, Tristan, and CJ glanced at her expectantly, but she could read in their eyes that they already knew what was coming.

"It's Priscilla, isn't it?" CJ voiced carefully. "The asterokinetic dust comes from her and enables the amulets to have teleportation access."

Avi nodded. "When I looked through Aetna's mind, I saw that she's working for Rune now. Phobos has one of these necklaces, as well as Psyche and another minion of his that I couldn't exactly recognize."

She glanced at Tristan, the memory of the blonde girl in Aetna's distant memories surfacing. She had placed a name to the face and was worried to say it out loud.

"There was also another person that I saw in her mind." Avi said cautiously. Each word was soft, like if she spoke them too loud, she would stir an eruption in her teammate. "Someone that I did not recognize at first but upon further contemplation, I have identified them."

"Who is it?" Bristol questioned. "Another meta?"

Avi pressed her lips together, shaking her head. She looked at the rock beneath her, running a hand through her short brown hair. When she looked back up at her teammates, a pang of guilt ran through her.

"It was Olive."

~~~

The four heroes were silent as Avi got to work on resetting up the portal. She added some of her power to the rock they had landed on, added with radiation from CJ's speed, and the portal slowly shimmered into existence.

Guilt blew through Avi like a forceful and unwelcome gale. She had to report the information, she was an artificial intelligence android, after all. That was her job. However, she felt more human than android in that moment.

Normally, Avi could detect people's simple emotions such as happiness, anger, and sadness. She herself didn't experience much emotion, but when she did it was very...crippling. It deterred her focus and she just felt numb from head to toe.

So as Tristan sat down on a rock nearby, head in his hands and fingers in his hair, Avi couldn't look at him without another wave of guilt and sorrow hitting her. She bit her lip and stepped back as the portal formed.

"It's ready," she said quietly.

Avi had expected Tristan's moves after her bomb of surprise to be quick and sharp with jagged edges all around. However, as he stood from his chosen rock, his movements were slow and cautious. He sent Avi a look, and in that contact, she scanned his emotions just to confirm that he wasn't aggravated with her.

But what she found instead surprised her even more.

Sadness made up Tristan's entire being. It flowed through his veins like blood, being pumped from his now broken heart. His soul matched his exterior, and it was blue just like his supersuit. A deep and dark blue.

Avi took a deep breath and started towards him. Bristol and CJ shot up and walked towards her to try and stop her and she knew why. Tristan had a temper, but Avi had already confirmed that she was not about to witness one of his temperaments.

"You two go on ahead," Avi said, holding up a hand to stop them. "I'll be right behind you."

The Elemental Empress and Rapid glanced at one another apprehensively, as if they weren't sure to leave her alone with Tristan in a situation like this. Thankfully, they started for the portal. Avi didn't turn back around until their figures had disappeared through the mist and light.

When she turned back around, however, Tristan was standing in front of her. He was much taller than Avi, but she stood her ground. "I apologize for the information I had dealt you," she said assertively.

To her sheer surprise, Tristan smiled sadly. "Don't worry about it," he countered. "I needed it."

Avi furrowed her eyebrows. "You needed to be informed that your sister was seen working with the enemy?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

Tristan ran a hand through his hair and motioned towards the portal with his free one. "Walk and talk, shall we?" He asked with a sigh.

Carefully, Avi nodded. She fell into step with Tristan, but stayed a reasonable distance away from him. "Why?" She repeated.

Tristan heaved a sigh. "I had some suspicions when she left to go find Aaron in the first place. I knew she was going to run into trouble on her way to him and I guess I was right."

Avi looked up at Tristan curiously. "Who, might I ask, is Aaron?"

Instantly, he tensed and Avi feared an eruption from the ice-cold hero. However, he relaxed. "Aaron is—was—our older brother. He went missing after the same kind of explosion that killed our parents." Tristan said softly.

"I'm sorry." Avi stated. She didn't feel much sorrow, but Tristan's confession seemed to stir something within her.

Tristan shook his head. "It's alright. What I'm worried about now is Liv. I have so many suspicions now but we can't interrogate her again."

Avi's mind instantly kicked into gear. "Maybe we do not have to..." she murmured.

Tristan glanced at her in confusion. "But you told me that when you went into her mind, everything was covered in shrouds. We can't do another mind scan."

Avi nodded to confirm, but took a breath. "That is true, but how would she lose her memory in the first place?" She asked Tristan, turning to face him.

They were directly in front of the portal now, its swirling mass directly beside them. Avi was giddy on a theory that she could apply. "The only known meta to have control over minds enough to distort memories and apply amnesia is Psyche. We know now that he and Rune are still linked together. I would assume that Olive ran into Rune and his gaggle of minions on her quest to find Aaron, and somehow found herself unlucky enough to be a victim to Psyche's abilities."

Tristan nodded, his eyebrows knit together in thought. "It's as good a lead as any," he sighed.

Avi smiled. "Then let's test it out." She said and dived through the portal.

When she landed on the other side, which had shown up just at the frontal edge of the meadow leading to headquarter's forest, Tristan followed shortly after. Nearby, CJ and Bristol were waiting, both wearing identical visages of concern. Upon sighting Avi and Tristan, they shot up and tore towards them.

"Are you guys okay?" Bristol asked, her brown hair billowing softly in the wind.

Tristan nodded. "We're great, don't worry. Just had to contemplate a few things." He shot an impish smile Avi's way, who matched his with her own.

When they looked back at CJ and Bristol, they both were looking at them in confusion.

"You guys are weird," CJ stated.

Avi laughed. "Come on, we'll fill you in on the way through the meadow."

And so they did. As they marched through the meadow under the cover of darkness, Avi and Tristan reported their theories regarding Olive.

"Great," Bristol sighed. "First Priscilla, now Olive. Who next? The Contingency?"

"We don't think Liv is working for Rune and his buddies. We just think she encountered them and suffered from Psyche's mind control." Tristan said to her.

"But now I have so many questions!" Bristol exclaimed. The golden emblem on her top and thigh-high socks were the only forms of detection that Avi could place on her. Besides from that, she was camouflaged in the darkness. "Where did they run into her? Why? How do we know that Rune isn't using Liv as some proxy? If they're still locked up, how did she run into him?"

Tristan and Bristol got into a small argument over all of the suspicions they both harbored. They shut some down and debated others, but eventually the meadow grass around them was wearing thin around them and they approached the forest now.

CJ spoke up after a while, shutting them both up. "Bristol, I've got one more question for you." He said hesitantly.

"What is it?" Bristol snapped.

"How do we get through this?" He gesticulated to the forest before them and a gasp ran out in unison.

Priscilla had told them about her new security system of venomous fog, but she never said it would start that night. Tendrils of the smoky stuff curled around the treetrunks, flicking at the ends of the forest and recoiling as if they had a mind of their own. A smell like ozone wafted through the air, and the Union took a careful step back to avoid a stray tendril.

This stuff was poison, they couldn't march through it...or could they?

"The system has to be acquainted with the members of headquarters, does it not?" Avi reasoned. "Maybe it will have already possess a pre-administered identification unit."

"English, please." CJ coughed.

Avi shot him a look and sighed. "It should be able to identify us because it is a security system designed to keep us safe."

"And if it isn't?" Tristan asked.

There was a small moment of silence as the Union looked to Avi for the thousandth time that night. She liked the attention, but didn't like being the leader without an official mission from Priscilla. They were all leaders on their covert ops.

"Then I guess we will find out momentarily." Avi stated and marched straight into the fog.

Her friends cried out in fear as the fog swirled around her. Avi took a breath and pressed her lips together...and nothing. She took a few more steps, but the fog remained. It cleared a small path as she moved. Smiling, she turned back to the three teens at the forest's entrance.

"See? It must know not to emit poison if the heart of a hero is present." Avi smiled proudly.

Upon seeing Avi enter safely, Bristol, Tristan, and CJ stepped through. They maintained a careful step of caution, but eventually made it to the river. They clambered over the rocks until finding the riverbank as Bristol allowed them passage underneath the waves.

Eventually, they made it to the manual entrance and headed safely back into headquarters. They stood in the small shack, a sigh of relief emerging from the four heroes.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm exhausted. Fighting evil villainesses can drain you. Who knew?" CJ feigned a yawn, making a big show of stretching out his exhaustion.

Bristol shot him a funny look. "Get to bed," she laughed, shoving the speedster. "Because no one is carrying you if you crash in the tool shed."

Everyone laughed and Avi felt the same sense of camaraderie that had emanated from them back at the arcade. She liked the feeling and felt her favorite limited emotion: happiness.

However, the moment cut off. CJ opened his mouth to rebuff Bristol, but a scream radiated throughout the hallways of headquarters. The feeling of happiness was shattered as faces fell and heartbeats rose.

And with a look of initiative, the Union tore out of the shed, bounding down the halls towards the screaming. They dodged corners and sped into the cortex, and gasped at what they saw.

Lying on the platform, was Liv. However, fanning out from around her were ash marks, the same kind that they had seen everywhere lately. And it could only mean one thing.

Tristan rushed to Liv's aid, who was knocked unconscious. Bristol ran to look for Priscilla, her footsteps echoing throughout the metallic hallways. CJ and Avi crouched down next to the ash. Avi performed a scan but when she got the result, she deemed it unnecessary.

"Don't tell me," CJ said in a gravely low voice.

Avi nodded. She looked up and found Tristan watching her with a look of horror. Liv was still slumped on the ground, breathing but knocked out.

Bristol tore back into the room, breathing heavily. "Priscilla isn't here," she announced. She prepared to continue, but saw everyone looking at Avi with the reports of the ash identification in her emerald eyes.

"It's her," Avi reported softly. "Aetna was here."