The air was a whirlwind of grit and glass.
Adrien raised an arm to shield his eyes, crouched low behind a support column, his blade humming at his side with built-up kinetic charge. The dust tore through the corridor like a living storm—spiraling around the figure in the center, who paced erratically, feet dragging through the growing layer of sediment as if the earth itself were rearranging to his will.
The man's breath came in hitches, half-gasps and gritted growls. He clutched his head with one hand, the other twitching at his side.
His sclera had turned a deep charcoal, almost black, and his irises glowed red, like flickering heat coils beneath skin. The veins across his face and neck bulged, blackened and webbed like branches of oil crawling under flesh.
He turned sharply toward Adrien, his face contorted in rage and confusion.
"You're one of them," the man snarled. "I can smell it on you."
Adrien didn't flinch. He stood slowly, keeping the blade half-sheathed and pulsing.
"I'm not here to fight you," Adrien said evenly, tone firm but without force. "I'm here to understand what happened."
The man barked a laugh that cracked midway into a wheeze.
"Understand? You think you're a reader now? Gonna scan my brain with your shiny sword, huh?"
He took a step forward, the sand pulling with him like a cloak.
Adrien held his ground, voice calm.
"What's your name?"
The man blinked once. The question caught him off guard.
"What?"
"Your name," Adrien repeated. "You remember it?"
The man's lip curled. His eyes narrowed.
"You think that matters? Down here?" He jabbed a finger at the floor. "They stopped calling me by anything when the drones stopped sleeping—when the walls started watching."
Adrien subtly shifted his stance.
"You worked down here?"
"I lived down here," the man snarled. "Supposed to be temp maintenance. Underground patrol. But the Mechons kept humming. Never stopped. Nights bled together. Every corridor had eyes. Every light blinked in code."
Adrien's grip on his blade tightened.
"When did it start?"
"When you Suppressors cut the grid," the man hissed. "Said it was containment protocol. Said it was for Capella's good. But the hum didn't go away. No. It grew teeth."
He clutched his skull with both hands now, staggering.
"Then the dust came. I tried—God, I tried to sweep it, burn it, choke it out. But it got in. It started to listen. And I—I started to hear it back."
Adrien kept his tone even, but his eyes scanned every movement.
"You're not well. This isn't your fault. We can bring you in. Get you stable—"
"Stable?" The man cut him off with a scream. "You think you're better than this?! Than me?! You wear your order like a cape and walk through my grave—and expect me to follow?"
The sand swirled violently, spiraling outward into tendrils that scraped the walls and ceiling. Chunks of metal began to rattle loose.
Adrien ducked into a tighter stance, the blade twitching with reactive pressure.
"You don't have to die here."
"Neither do you. But you will."
The dust lunged.
The sand struck like blades.
Shards of compressed grit whipped through the air with high-pitched screeches, splitting metal as they carved across the tunnel. Adrien weaved through the strikes, eyes sharp behind his visor, pivoting low under one arc, then springing sideways as another lance of sharpened dust speared through a support beam where his head had just been.
The infected man—eyes glowing red, veins pulsing like ink under his skin—howled with manic rage, arms outstretched as the storm around him surged.
"Come on!" he bellowed. "Don't hide behind that fancy stance! Bring out your Morpher, high-and-mighty Suppressor!"
Adrien didn't answer.
He dove behind a pile of collapsed debris—bent pipework, shattered floor paneling, and an old beam bent into a jagged arc. The cover was poor, but it bought him seconds.
"Damn it," he muttered, thumbing his comm. "Bloodhound—anyone? Iyato? Gail? Daihatsu? I've made contact—target's enhanced. I need backup, now."
Nothing.
Not even static.
He pressed harder against the wall, breath held.
Then, from beneath him—the sand moved. Not flowed. Not scattered.
Erected.
The entire base of the debris lifted, grains of sand rising as a solid column, tilting the debris as if it were being raised on a throne. Adrien's eyes snapped wide.
"—Sh*t—!"
The man was already in the air, riding a swirl of debris, his feet barely touching the ground as he launched himself forward with a wild, overhead strike, his fists laced with hardened glass-like dust.
Adrien twisted out, rolling as the man crashed through the debris. In one motion, Adrien's blade snapped upward, catching the strike—
CLANG—CRRSH!
The force rippled through Adrien's forearm. He absorbed it with a grunt, then flared his gauntlet, releasing a pulse of kinetic energy that exploded outward in a blinding flash. The shockwave sliced through the storm, scattering dust into a wide arc and driving a clean opening through the swirling chaos.
Without hesitation, Adrien stepped into the break—low stance, shoulders tight—and charged.
"You wanted the Morpher?" he growled, blade thrumming. "You've got me."
The kinetic coils along his blade snapped forward, power rippling through the alloy like a thunderclap as Adrien closed the distance, eyes locked on the man who'd become the epicenter of the dust storm.
Adrien's blade cleaved through the swirling sandstorm, kinetic charges detonating on impact with explosive grace. The narrow corridor lit up with bursts of white-blue energy, slicing a path toward the infected man—toward the Dust Devil.
But the man was fast. Faster than he should've been.
He dipped and twisted through the rupturing storm like a thing possessed, the sand catching Adrien's sword mid-swing—not stopping it, but redirecting it just enough. Another tendril erupted from the ground, smashing Adrien sideways into the wall with a brutal CRACK.
The air left his lungs. Dust exploded outward.
Before Adrien could recover, a wall of sand slammed into his chest, pinning him against the metal with crushing force. His sword clattered to the floor nearby, flickering as its kinetic charge sputtered.
The infected man—no, the Dust Devil—stepped forward, breathing heavily. The storm around him churned and hissed like a living thing.
"That's it?" he spat, voice layered with static. "That's what they send? The great Flashpoint—savior of Sector Ten, butcher of Harmony Spire—and I bring you to your knees with nothing but sand."
Adrien struggled against the grip—his armor groaning under pressure—but it held tight.
The Dust Devil leaned in closer.
"I expected more. I wanted more. But you're just another Suppressor lapdog choking on command lines."
He paused.
Suddenly, his head jerked up. His eye twitched.
"Wait."
His tone shifted—far more alert now. He snapped his fingers, and the sand around him shifted into a dense circular shield, just as a high-pitched whistle sliced through the corridor.
THWUNK!
Gail's arrow slammed into the sand shield, detonating on impact with a flash of resonance. The Dust Devil didn't flinch—he'd read the vibrations through the earth, felt the attack coming through the ground itself.
"Two more," he hissed. "Thought I'd only get to kill one of you today."
He thrust a hand forward—sand splitting from his palm like buckshot—and fired a barrage of hardened glass-edged projectiles down the tunnel.
Gail dove behind a pipe structure, gritting her teeth as the sand ripped into the metal around her.
Daihatsu raised both arms, channels of ice and lightning spiraling around his gauntlets. He countered the volley mid-air, shattering sand bullets with explosive discharges—each one hitting like glass striking a Tesla coil.
"Adrien!" Daihatsu yelled, eyes locked on the pinned silhouette in the duststorm. "Get up!"
Adrien growled under his breath, gritting his teeth as cracks began to split along his shoulder armor. He reached for his blade—still flickering, still within reach—
The sand tightened.
Daihatsu's boots slammed into the ground, the concrete beneath him instantly flash-freezing in a web of frost. Blue light pulsed from the bracers on his arms, followed by a sharp burst of gold as his Morpher activated. Arcs of ice and lightning surged together, spiraling up his forearms like opposing storms crashing toward balance.
The air around him crystallized, small flakes of frost caught in the electric charge humming through the hallway.
"You want a storm?" Daihatsu muttered. "Then take both."
With a forward stomp, he launched off the ground—a blur of frost and thunder, his gauntlets glowing with dual energy.
Dust Devil turned just in time, summoning a wall of sand between them, but Daihatsu didn't stop. He slammed through it, shattering the barrier in a burst of crackling light and cold vapor.
Their bodies collided—fist to forearm, sparks and shards of dust exploding between them.
Dust Devil snarled, trying to counter with a slicing wave of sand. Daihatsu ducked under it, letting it tear into the wall behind him as he spun with a backhanded lightning strike, forcing the man to stumble back a step.
"Not bad," the infected man hissed. "But storms still need ground."
He jabbed his foot into the floor—spires of sand shot upward, sharp and fast like jagged spears. Daihatsu twisted sideways, frost trailing his movement, and froze two of them mid-formation, vaulting off the third to launch into the air.
From above, Daihatsu slammed both gauntlets together, channeling lightning into a concentrated point.
"Conduct THIS."
He dropped.
BOOM—!!
The impact struck the Dust Devil dead center—lightning surging, ice coating, resonance flaring. The blast sent him flying backward, his body tumbling across the tunnel like a broken wave before crashing through a fractured support pillar.
The sandstorm around him scattered violently.
Adrien dropped to one knee, the pressure lifting from his chest as the dust holding him dissolved into harmless drift.
Gail emerged from cover, drawing another arrow, visor locked onto the now-exposed target.
Dust Devil groaned, trying to stand, shards of concrete falling from his back. The glow in his eyes dimmed—but didn't disappear.
"You're all... still breathing?" he rasped, voice fractured.
Daihatsu landed, steam and mist swirling off his armor, lightning arcing from his fingertips.
"Not for long if you keep trying."
Gail didn't hesitate.
The moment the Dust Devil staggered from Daihatsu's blow, she stepped forward, her visor flashing green as she activated her Morpher's advanced targeting module. Her next arrow wasn't kinetic—it was pulse-tipped, humming faintly as she drew the string back with practiced precision.
"Sightline—locked."
TWANG!
The arrow shot forward with blinding speed, slicing through the dust-heavy air. It struck the Dust Devil in the shoulder with a burst of resonance, sending up a plume of shattering particles.
But he reacted fast. Too fast.
A sand-formed shield erupted just in time to absorb the full impact. The barrier cracked, but held—barely.
He growled.
"Always the quiet ones with the loudest stings."
Without moving his feet, the Dust Devil thrust his hand sideways—and the sand beside him coalesced into a massive, whip-like arm, stretching out like a lashing serpent toward Gail's position.
CRASH—!
The arm slammed into the pillar she'd been behind, obliterating it in a geyser of debris—but Gail was already moving, sprinting up the collapsing structure's edge with balletic speed.
She ran along the length of the sand-arm, using it like a bridge. With every step, she loosed another arrow—one to the shoulder, another at his ribs, the third directly at his temple.
The Dust Devil roared, staggering as one arrow sliced past his cheek. The next scraped his ribs—just enough to twist him.
"SHUT UP!" he snarled, voice cracking. "SHUT UP—STOP HUMMING—ALL OF YOU!"
His hands went to his skull as his body seized with another sudden spasm, his torso arched backward. A tremor pulsed through the sand below him.
The corridor howled.
The dust exploded outward, whirling into a chaotic spiral that battered the air in every direction. Gail was forced to jump clear, flipping backward off the crumbling sand-arm as the entire structure collapsed beneath her.
Adrien, still recovering, dropped down behind a half-fallen beam, grunting as he landed hard. He slapped sand off his mask, dusting debris from his shoulder and picking his blade up from where it had fallen.
"That was fun," he muttered, half-sarcastic, half-sincere. "Thanks for the save."
Daihatsu cracked his knuckles, cold steam rising from his gauntlets. "Told you we'd find you eventually."
Gail joined them, reloading her next shot. "I don't think he appreciated the reunion."
Adrien looked toward the swirling duststorm, scanning for movement. "Where's Iyato?"
"Haven't seen him," Gail said.
"Not a word," added Daihatsu. "He split off before the flare."
Adrien frowned—but his train of thought was cut short as a voice bled through the storm, distorted and layered.
"You're too loud," Dust Devil rasped from within the chaos. His silhouette shimmered in the debris, posture hunched and jittering.
"All this buzzing... it's drowning out the good sounds... I liked the quiet before you came."
The air trembled.
Then the sand lifted.
It surged upward, curling in the air like a rising tide—then fell forward with a deafening CRASH, forming a tsunami of dust and debris, wide enough to flood the entire corridor.
"MOVE!" Adrien barked, already grabbing Gail and pulling her behind the nearest support frame.
Daihatsu threw up an ice barrier in the direction of the wave, but it shattered under the sheer force. The three braced together as the sand hit like a freight train—
–But when it settled...
Dust Devil was gone.