Chapter 27
Then Melody and Zmaug nod, and they all take flight toward the city.
When they are near the city, Ark turns his head toward Ariach and asks:
"What is your name? And call back your poison from inside the city. Can you turn the people who mutated back to normal?"
Then Ariach looks toward the city and starts to call back her poison while answering Ark.
"My name is Ariach Roo'van, my lord, and I can turn the people back to normal."
Ark nods toward her.
But Melody asks:
"What happened to your fake body? Where is it?"
Ariach looks at Melody with an aggravated look and says:
"The moment Ark started to show me 'Love,' I lost the ability to keep the fake body in the real world. It immediately dispelled."
Melody looks at her and nods, not really caring about her plight.
Then they reach the place where the rest of the big players are and land near them.
When they see Ariach's tall frame behind them, they look shocked, prepared to fight. But then they see how she stands behind like a hurt puppy. They know Ark is to blame.
A smile starts to form on their faces; they know that they... 'won.' They lived. And now they know that Ark is going to take care of things.
Ark nods toward them and says to Ariach:
"Turn the people back."
So Ariach goes in front of the barrier where the mutants are and takes a silver bottle from her space ring.
Then she says:
"You can take the barrier down now."
Niobe goes to the barrier and puts her hand on it. A door appears. She says:
"If that really is the antidote, you can go inside and use it. We don't need to take the entire barrier down."
Ariach looks at her with a face that says, 'Really? Do you think I would dare do something while Ark is here?'
But she goes inside anyway, breaks the silver bottle in her hand, and a silver cloud starts to form, spreading inside.
Then all the mutants start to pass out. After they are all down, she comes out.
"Now they will become normal people again, but it's going to take a few minutes until the antidote completely turns them back."
Then she goes behind Ark and waits to see what he is going to decide to do with her.
Ark looks at her, and for now, he says:
"I will decide later what to do with you. If you are still useful for something, I will let you live."
Then Ark goes toward the rest of the gang and says:
"First, I need to introduce someone to you all."
And again, Terra appears next to him, and all are shocked to see the little green-eyed girl. Then Ark tells them why she has such a small body and how they have to take care of her until she grows a little bit more.
After he tells them what happened inside the cores and why it took so long:
"After I went inside the planet's core, I found the corrupting aura and started to dispel it. The dispelling went well; it didn't take longer than I thought it would."
"After dispelling more than half, I found where the cores were merging, and there was also the most concentrated aura of corruption. But after I went closer, the aura transformed into the blurry shadow, which I now know is the 'Master Mind' behind all of this. After it looked at me for a moment, it dispelled."
"So I thought it would be easier from then on because I only had to 'feed' the cores my aura so they could have enough energy to merge forcefully. Then, after merging, there would be enough energy left to create the 'body.' But that's where the problems started."
"The blurry shadow left something inside the Earth's core. It was so small that it was not visible, even to the core itself. It was a 'seed' that, when not activated, you can't tell apart from the other cells. But then the merging started, and this 'seed' activated. After activating, it transformed the cell next to it into a corrupted cell, and then that cell transformed the next one, and so forth."
"That's where I spent most of the time. I had to 'kill' these cells without damaging the good cells that were merging."
"And it seems the blurry shadow knew that I would succeed in helping the cores merge perfectly. He only wanted to stall me for a day, but I finished sooner."
Then Ark turns toward Ariach and asks:
"I suppose you don't know anything about the 'Shadow's plan.'"
All turn to her and look at her with piercing stares.
"I don't know anything about the 'High One's' plan. Only His Highness, 'Abyss Del'kzera,' knows."
"No one questions His Highness's orders. We only follow them. He didn't tell us anything about our goal or the plans. He only said we would go to the third dimension to kill someone."
"Then the 'High One' said that the more people know, the more likely it is for Ark to find out. That's why we were told almost nothing. Then he showed us Ark. And he also said that if we see Ark, we are not supposed to fight him; we are to run. That is all we were told."
The big players lean more toward believing that all she said is the truth.
Ark's eyes glow a little while looking at Ariach:
"She is telling the truth. She doesn't know anything."
Then all the big players just nod, no one bothering to ask how he knows or how he is so sure. Everything Ark says, they take for granted.
But Melody knows that Ark just read her mind and looked into her soul as well. That's why he is so sure.
The big players are looking at Terra and can't believe that this little girl could kill everyone on the planet. When the other empires, planets, and galaxies find out that Earth has a body that can speak and think, and because she merged with a dimension core, she has the power to destroy even the entire universe, they will have to rethink their entire plans about Earth. They will have to be on their best behavior when they are here.
The big players almost forget that all around, the war is still ongoing. But with Ark there, they know it will end soon.
Then they hear some movement inside the barrier. Some of the people are starting to wake up.
They go toward the barrier and see that all the people inside are normal humans now. Niobe takes down the barrier and tells them:
"Don't worry, everything will be fine now. The poison is gone. No one will turn into mutants anymore. Keep calm and search for your families."
Then Kyle steps in and says:
"Police officers, help the people find their families and assist them if they need extra help. Cleaning robots, construction robots, repairing robots, start doing your jobs."
Then the robot officers start helping the people find their families, and those who need medical attention are taken to the nearest hospital.
All around them, the buzzing of work starts to be heard.
Terra is watching with curious eyes everything around her. She then pulls Ark's sleeve and says something:
"Big brother Ark, what are those?"
Her little finger is pointing toward the working robots. Some are flying, carrying big beams for building, some are putting large chunks of rubble inside a special machine that breaks them into fine powder with steel and all. Some are gathering small pieces of garbage from the streets. Some are big like a tank, others are small like a mouse.
Ark looks at her and answers:
"Those are robots made to help us, to make things easier for us. If you want one, Uncle Kyle here can give you one anytime."
Kyle 'blocks' and turns his head slowly at Ark with a shocked face, 'I'm an uncle?'
The others laugh at him.
But Kyle then looks at Terra, and when he sees her sparkling big green eyes while looking at him, he feels like he could give her even 'The Vanisher' if she would ask for it.
"Of course, I can give you, little Terra, even 1,000 robots for you to play with however you want."
Then Terra laughs when she hears Kyle and says:
"I want one."
When the other big players see that, they also chime in, not wanting to be left out. Especially Zmaug.
"Terra, I can give you even more powerful and nicer robots that can even turn into dragons if you want."
Then Leah goes to her, squats in front of her, and says:
"Terra, do you want to play with big sister? I have some cool games for us. Don't listen to these old turtles and their ancient ways of doing things."
Everyone starts laughing, creating a happy atmosphere around them.
But unbeknownst to them, an even bigger catastrophe is coming.