Ren was the only one left with an ability to match bazookas. Despite his panicked state, he could produce at least a couple of simple, curved shields from the surrounding aggression. Not cohesive enough to turn into a full Conmote, but still able to block a hit. While the wobbling substance failed to coalesce it at least moved where Ren directed it. With Junior’s foreknowledge it was trivial to put them in the right spots.

Explosive ammunition detonated at the nebulous, red-ish barriers.

Minhyun yelled from under the truck. “Aron is on his way back up. He fell two levels down. But his leg’s hurt.”

“Alright, if you can link with him and me at the same time, keep me updated.” Junior shouted back, over the bombardment. He turned to Ren. “Twenty percent chance they hit a vital column and the whole building comes down on us. We have to do something.”

The agents of the void switched tactic.

“They must have noticed,” Ren whispered, “that I can’t build a complete shield around us.”

Carrying multiple guns so big that it took two man each to move them, the agents slowly surrounded the pillar the duo used as cover.

Ren dropped all his barriers, hoping the agents would be too stumped to react quickly, and did his best to focus on calming down. A nebulous figure of dark smoke began to form in front of Ren. He gave it long, long claws.

Bullets did nothing to Aggression – a vicious fighter Conmote.

It took three seconds for the agents to notice that. Five more to really realize what that meant. And another ten until they had all shed their gear and were on the run.

With the aggression turned to terror, Ren had no choice but to dissolve the Conmote. Instead he constructed a new one – Fear.

The pitch black figure with a horribly distorted humanoid shape took form at the entrance, cutting the agent’s path off. Just as they scrambled into their cars, Fear stepped into view and began slashing away at the engine cover. They scrambled to get back out of the car again.

Ren was satisfied with the results and was about to ask Junior for the next steps when…

Aron blasted a door off its hinges, raining white hot metal on the concrete. He was angry. He hopped on one leg which distracted a bit from the image, but he was angry.

The nearest agent lost the ground under his feet as it evaporated and he dropped a level down with a surprised scream suddenly ending in a fleshy smack, followed by muffled groaning from below. The nearest truck went up in a fountain of plasma.

“That’s one way to save the day,” said Junior. “Ren, can you help Minhyun out from under there, he’s telling me he’s stuck on something.”

Ren let go of Fear and complied.

The agents were retreating, firing the automatic guns from their trucks. It didn’t stop Aron in the slightest but the bullet hail as enough to obscure his vision. He redirected the shots into the dust-spraying concrete all around him.

Baekho popped at the far end of the parking garage and walked closer, surprised by the gun shot noises. While Minhyun crawled out from under his hiding spot he reestablished the link and told Baekho what had transpired.

Ren patted the dust off Minhyun’s clothes.

***

What was he supposed to do?

Aron pondered his options. This was an intelligence gathering mission after all, so…

He decided to catch a few of these idiots of the void.

As the fleeing cars left the garage, he bent down, touched the ground and turned the road from under his hand all the way to the last vehicle into chocolate pudding. Cold one, because it had to be a solid, but the car sank anyway.

The agents got stuck and were left behind by the ones further ahead. The organization’s own operatives that had been stationed at strategic locations around the block could easily take them into custody.

Aron calmed down a little as the rest of the agents had fully retreated. He could have set them all on fire, but as long as he didn’t know how exactly the organization did their missions, he tried to keep the body count low.

Looking behind him it seemed that the most muscular Nuest member was back with a backpack full of goodies.

Doing his best to put no weight onto the leg that hurt from the fall, he stumbled back to the group and greeted them, smiling through the pain.

“Did we get what we came for?” he asked.

Baekho showed off his results. “All collected.”

“Your shirt is inside out by the way.”

“I know, I was in a hurry to get away.”

“Why did you take it off?”

“Why didn’t you turn off the lights like we planned?”

“I dunno, Junior didn’t know they had an emergency generator somewhere inside and there was a force field that- Where is he, anyway?”

The four boys looked around until Ren screamed and made them all converge at the pillar Junior had been hiding behind.

There was a lot of blood. Junior’s hand was holding his stomach where he was bleeding from, but that did nothing to stop him from dying.

He smiled wearily. “Bullet reflected…ceiling…one in a million chance…couldn’t…see it coming.”

“No!” Ren shouted. “You’ll pull through. You’re going to make it out alive.”

“Sorry…zero percent chance…”

The boy stopped talking as blood dripped from his mouth the same time a tear left his eye.