The bikers roared down the highway.
The lead brute , Mohawk, didn't slow. He raised his spiked club, eyes fixed on Ethan.
"Lena! Options!" Ethan yelled, the Void Star Gauntlet humming coldly on his hand, its black-hole palm socket.
ENTROPY: 75%.
Lena's scanner whirred frantically, tracking the converging bikes. Her cannon-arm sparked uselessly.
"Armor's scrap! Kinetic shields minimal! But that leader... strange energy signature around him! Faint particulate field!"
Mohawk bellowed.
As he roared, the dusty air around him seemed to thicken, swirling into a visible, haze of sand particles. It clung to him following him.
[BOSS: "DUSTSEEKER" MOHAM - LVL 25]
[ABILITY: DUST SIGHT - PERFECT AWARENESS THROUGH CONTROLLED PARTICULATES]
He swung his club at Ethan. Ethan dodged instinctively, but Mohawk was already pivoting, club whistling through the air exactly where Kai was trying to phase behind a rusted bus.
Kai yelped, aborting his move as the club smashed the bus door into shrapnel.
"He sees us!" Kai gasped, rolling away. "Through the dust! Everything!"
Another biker, riding with chainsaw wheels, veered towards Lena. She ducked behind a flipped sedan, but Mohawk shouted a guttural command.
The Dustseeker pointed, and a concentrated stream of swirling grit shot from his palm, blinding Lena's scanner and forcing her back into the open. The chainsaw bike revved, aiming for her exposed legs.
"LENA!" Ethan lunged, desperation overriding caution. He slammed the Void Star Gauntlet down onto the cracked asphalt.
[ENTROPY RELEASE: MINIMAL - GROUND SHOCKWAVE]
A pulse of dark energy, barely visible, rippled outwards. The asphalt beneath the chainsaw bike buckled violently. The machine lurched, its front wheel digging in. The rider flew over the handlebars, crashing into a pile of moldy beach chairs.
It bought Lena seconds. She scrambled back, wiping grit from her eyes. "He controls the dust! Directs it! Sees through it! It's everywhere he makes it!"
Ethan understood. Mohawk wasn't just tough. He had 360-degree, microscopic vision through the dust particles he commanded.
Predicting dodges, spotting ambushes, blinding targets. A perfect defense and offense.
Kai, dodging a wild swing from a biker wielding a flaming pipe, shouted over the engine roar. "So blow it away! Big gust!"
"His control is too focused!" Lena yelled back, ducking behind a palm tree as bullets sparked off the trunk. "He just pulls it back! We need to blind him! Overload his sight!"
Another biker charged Ethan, swinging a spiked chain. Mohawk pointed, and a dense cloud of dust shot towards Ethan's face.
Ethan flinched, raising the gauntlet instinctively. The dust streamed towards the black-hole socket, vanishing into it with a faint
hiss.
ENTROPY ABSORBED+1%.
Mohawk froze, his dust-sight flickering for a split second where the stream connected to the gauntlet. Confusion twisted his scarred face.
Lena saw it. The connection. The gauntlet interrupted the dust stream, momentarily breaking Mohawk's control and perception on that specific path.
"He needs the connection!" Lena screamed, her engineer's mind clicking into overdrive despite the chaos. "The dust has to touch him or be near him! Break the link!"
Mohawk recovered, snarling. He clenched his fist, pulling the dust cloud back towards himself, thickening his defensive shroud. He pointed at Kai, who was trying to flank again.
A concentrated stream of grit shot out, forcing Kai to retreat behind a crumbling stucco wall.
Kai looked at the wall, at the roaring bikes, at Lena frantically scanning, and at Ethan holding back the encroaching dust with his gauntlet's pull.
He saw Mohawk's smug, dust-shrouded face. And he saw his phase-dagger, gleaming in the polluted sunset.
This was a moment.
He didn't hesitate. No quip, no grin. Pure, desperate action.
"Ethan! Suck it ALL in! NOW!" Kai roared. Then he phased.
Directly INTO the thickest part of the dust cloud swirling around Mohawk.
He materialized inside the particulate shroud, inches from the Dustseeker. Mohawk's eyes widened in shock behind the swirling grit – no one got this close.
"Hey, Dusty!" Kai yelled, and slammed his phase-dagger, point-first, not into Mohawk, but into the ground right at the biker's feet.
[PHASE-DAGGER ABILITY: MICRO-SINGULARITY - ONE-TIME USE]
The dagger imploded.
A terrifying blast , of a black hole, no larger than a fist, sucked in everything within three feet with irresistible force for a single, horrifying second.
The dust cloud surrounding Mohawk was violently ripped away from him, sucked into the micro-singularity, along with chunks of asphalt and debris.
Mohawk stumbled, suddenly blind. His perfect dust-sight vanished. He roared in confusion and terror, swiping at empty air where his vision had been.
Lena didn't waste a millisecond. "ETHAN! THE GAUNTLET! HIS FACE!"
Ethan was already moving. He saw the opening. Saw Mohawk, vulnerable, sightless.
He focused everything on the Void Star Gauntlet. Not a shockwave. Not absorption.
[ENTROPY RELEASE: FOCUSED NULL-BEAM]
He thrust the gauntlet forward. From the black-hole socket, a thin, perfectly silent beam of absolute darkness lanced out. It didn't explode. It erased. It struck Mohawk directly in his wide-open, dust-free eyes.
There was no scream. Mohawk simply... stopped. His body froze mid-swing. Then, where the beam struck, his head began to dissolve into swirling grey ash, spreading rapidly down his neck, across his shoulders.
Within seconds, the Dustseeker was nothing but a pile of fine, dark grit settling onto the ruined highway, his spiked club clattering beside it.
The roar of engines died instantly. The remaining bikers stared, frozen in horror at the spot where their leader had just... ceased to exist.
The primal fury in their eyes flickered, replaced by raw, animal fear.
The sudden silence was deafening. Ethan panted, the gauntlet cooling rapidly on his hand, a faint wisp of dark smoke curling from the socket.
ENTROPY: 65%.
Lena lowered her sparking arm, eyes wide with shock at the gauntlet's power. Kai stared at the empty spot where his beloved dagger had been, a hollow look on his face.
The bikers looked at the pile of ash, at the gauntlet, at Kai .Their aggression shattered.
One revved his engine in panic, peeling away. Another followed. Then the whole pack was scrambling, engines screaming as they fled back down the highway, leaving only dust, the stench of exhaustion , and silence.
Ethan sagged. "Kai... your dagger..."
Kai took a shaky breath, looking at his empty hand, then at the pile of ash that was Mohawk.
A slow, but genuine smile touched his lips. "Worth it. For the look on Dusty's face. Totally worth it."
He limped over to Mohawk's fallen club, hefting the brutal weapon. "This'll do. For now."
Lena rushed to him, grabbing his shoulders. "You idiot! You walked into his sight!"
"Worked, didn't it?" Kai grinned. "Besides, someone had to be the distraction. You two were busy looking fancy."
The brief moment of relief was shattered.
A rhythmic thumping vibrated through the ground.
They turned towards the ocean, beyond the crumbling condos.
Rising from the greasy brown water, the figure covered the blood-red sunset. It was colossal, easily the size of one of the ruined skyscrapers.
It looked like a crustacean fused with a oil rig – a carapace of barnacle-encrusted metal, dripping with water and slime.
Massive, piston-like legs slammed down onto the beach with ground-shaking force. Where a head should be, a cluster of blinding, searchlight-like eyes swiveled, scanning the shoreline.
A low, groaning bellow echoed across the city
[??? - CLASSIFICATION: LEVIATHAN CLASS HOSTILE]
[ENERGY SIGNATURE: CATASTROPHIC]
[ESTIMATED LEVEL: 60+ - APPROACHING]
Its searchlight eyes swept across the highway... and locked onto the three small figures standing amidst the wreckage and Mohawk's ashes.
Lena's scanner emitted a single, shrill, continuous shriek of terror before overloading and going dark.
Kai's grin vanished, replaced by utter dread. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."
Ethan clenched the Void Star Gauntlet, its cold metal suddenly feeling insignificant against the approaching titan.
The gauntlet hummed, with a low, warning thrum, as if resonating with the sheer, overwhelming mass of the incoming thing.
They had survived the bikers. Kai had sacrificed his blade and won their hearts with his insane bravery. They had a terrifying new weapon.
None of it mattered against that.
The Leviathan took another earth-shattering step towards shore. Its intent was clear.