Alana rushed out from behind the trash bins, pressing her earpiece. Using all three Infurnuses was going to be quite a flashy spectacle, but she was hoping there would be some actual function to it as well. If Burpy had been missing when the Goon left with Eli yesterday, then Alana might have the element of surprise. Even more so if he wasn't expecting the Eastern Infurnus to have joined the fight.

"I'm gonna go all out over here to keep his eyes on me, then I need someone to fire an Xmitter," she said quietly, loading Ash first. "Maybe if we stop him from firing the Goon we can get the drop on him, even if we can't fire our slugs either."

"Copy!" Kord replied.

Eli was in the middle of the street dueling with Trixie, who skillfully dodged and weaved around, keeping Eli's focus on her and not on any remaining civilians. Kord slipped into an alley, as stealthily as a cave troll could be. Alana caught a quick glimpse of his blaster and the Xmitter inside it.

"Trade off!" Alana called, firing Ash as Trixie dove away from an Attacknet. Trixie nodded and dove for cover in a storefront whose window panes were now frozen solid from her Frostcrawler.

She fired Ash, who spat out balls of flame around Eli, scorching the street. Eli scowled and fired a ghouled Beeker, who doused out Ash's flames, but by the time Ash was returning to protoform, Alana had already fired Burpy, who flew in circles to create a wall of fire around the corrupted slinger.

"What?!" Eli called frantically as he disappeared behind the six-foot tall flame barrier.

So he wasn't expecting more than one Infurnus.

Alana glanced down at the final Infurnus in her blaster. He had his eyes locked forward and chirped apprehensively. She couldn't imagine what this was like for him, going up against his slinger's tormentor- no, his own tormentor, the ghoul that had corrupted him.

Well, maybe she could. Alana still felt like she had stared down death when she first saw the Dark Slinger again. But she could at least be grateful that she'd gone the last decade without facing the Goon instead of being under his control all that time.

Alana fired the Eastern Infurnus and watched as he megamorphed, spiraling around Burpy's circle of flames and stretching them upward, completely sealing Eli off from the rest of the street. The Infurnus kept circling the flames, waiting for Alana.

"Now, Kord!" Alana called.

Kord stepped out from the closest building and fired the Xmitter. The slug transformed and let out a screech that Alana hadn't heard since the gang's ordeal in the scrap heap. An electromagnetic pulse radiated out from the slug, and Alana watched as the core of her blaster flickered off, rendering her weapon useless.

It'll disarm him, too, Alana reminded herself, stepping forward and giving the Eastern Infurnus a thumbs-up. He dove down and swallowed up one portion of the flames, giving Alana a brief opening.

"Wish me luck!" she called, giving a mock salute to Trixie, who was wringing her hands worriedly.

She took a deep breath and leapt through the opening, holding her arms out in front of her face. The Eastern Infurnus belched out a final burst of fire, sealing the wall behind her and closing her in with Eli and the Goon before he returned to protoform.

After the incident with Twist, the gang probably should have done some more training for hand-to-hand combat. Even without knowing they had an enemy who was impossible to take down without a blaster, disarmed fighting was a notoriously difficult concept for slingers. It took a completely different mindset to make your own body your weapon, and it was hard to transfer shooting to punching, even if it didn't involve sentient high-speed ammo.

It crossed Alana's mind that the gang really hadn't worked on hand-to-hand as she was jumping unarmed into the fire. Of course that meant Eli hadn't either, and even with the Goon's experience, there was only so much he could do. Hopefully she wasn't getting herself into too big a mess.

Eli was looking around angrily, frustration clear on his face. Up close, Alana could see that he'd put a hasty bandage on the cut on his cheek, but she doubted the Goon was eager about caring for his hosts. He was panting and coughing, looking like a trapped animal. When he saw Alana, his eyes widened and he scoffed.

"Of course," he growled. "I was hoping to catch you by surprise, or at least take down some of these filthy townspeople, but they won't stop fighting back! And leave it to you to gather all three Infurnuses."

"It's gonna be different this time around," Alana promised, raising her fists. A small blue hue began to encircle them. "We may not have been expecting some possessing ghoul, but part of your success in the East and West was that you were something completely new. But these caverns have seen ghouls before. They've seen us beat them, and most of the people here just a few months ago banded together against someone like you."

Eli lunged forward, swinging a fist. But Alana dove to the side, gasping when Eli almost stumbled into the fire.

"Watch it! Some of us care about him," she shouted, diving forward and trying to tackle Eli to the ground. But he moved like liquid, sliding behind her and grabbing her left arm and wrenching her right behind her back. It was almost a perfect rendition of Twist's actions in the Shane hideout, when he'd been showing off just how he got his name.

Eli shoved her close to the wall of flames. Alana's eyes widened in panic as her vision became filled with orange and yellow, and heat prickled on her face.

"How?" she snapped, digging her heels into the road to try to slow her approach to the fire. "Don't think E could do that before."

"I remember what he remembers, and I have the ability to push his mind and body past their limits," Eli laughed, leaning forward until Alana could see him in the corner of her eye. "I saw that from an old friend of yours, the blond boy - ah, yes, his name was Twist. Didn't he break this arm?"

His grip tightened on Alana's right arm and wrenched it back farther. Alana hissed in pain, praying she wouldn't hear the unfortunately familiar snap of broken bones. She fought to keep her breathing steady, her mind racing to find her next move.

Sorry, E, this is what we have Boon Docs for.

"Yeah, and I don't wanna do that again!" she yelled.

Summoning a burst of energy that shot through her veins like lightning, she bent forward as hard as she could and pushed her arms up, flipping Eli over her back and sending him crashing to the ground, partway into the wall of fire.

Eli cried out when he slammed into the ground, coughing as the breath was knocked out of him. He quickly rolled out of the way of the flames, frantically batting at his clothes where small sparks had caught him. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, no fire had spread enough to even go through his clothes.

The rush of the wind from his fall had temporarily spread the flames, nearly catching Alana, but her Aquabeek popped up from his canister on her bandoleer and spat water at any points of contact.

Alana approached and summoned more energy, her vision focused on that cursed Goon Doc, but Eli grabbed his blaster and swiped it at Alana like a (thankfully blunt) sword, slamming the metal into her face and splitting her cheek open. She swayed but managed to keep her footing, raising both her hands and ignoring the smell of iron as blood dripped down her face.

"You can keep at it all you want," she laughed, giving him a crooked smile. "But there's nowhere in these caverns where you can go. We've fought ghouls. We've fought Dark Bane. And we'll fight you!"

She held out her hands and released a burst of blue energy. It spread from her fingertips like a fountain, jetting toward Eli and hitting him straight in the chest.

The blue began encompassing him like an embrace, and even though he choked out like he was being drowned, he gritted his teeth and stepped backwards, straight into the flames.

Eli yelled out in pain at the heat, and Alana's eyes widened in horror. For one brief moment, she prayed the Goon would back off and step out of the fire, but he didn't. Even though Eli's face was twisted in pain, the Goon Doc grinned wickedly at Alana. Just as fast as blue light was engulfing Eli's body, so were hot flames. Smoke was beginning to rise from his shoulders.

Crying out in frustration, Alana dove forward, tackling Eli out of the circle of flames and crashing back out into the street. Smoke and ash stung her eyes, blurring everything around her. She was sure Eli would have the same issue, but he also had the Goon to see for him. It didn't matter if his human eyes were irritated as long as the Goon could still puppeteer him. He quickly got to his feet, letting his Aquafreak spout out jets of water to put out the cinders still clinging to him.

Trixie and Kord, who had been waiting outside the fire while Pronto had ascended another building for high ground, both fired at Eli, but he dove expertly out of the way, like he knew the shots were coming before the slugs even transformed. Alana had to roll out of the way to avoid Arachnet webs from Pronto's shot and shakily got to her feet, trying to control her strained breathing.

"Nice try," Eli laughed hoarsely, momentarily swaying on his feet before balancing himself. He raised his fingers to his lips and let out a high-pitched whistle. And suddenly the ground rumbled.

Alana winced at the sound and turned toward the rest of town. The color drained from her face as one explosion after another detonated on varying spots of buildings throughout town, releasing a bright green flash and sending pillars of smoke rising up in every direction.

"What the heck?!" Kord yelled. One explosion erupted in the storefront Trixie had just been taking cover in. Dust and rubble trembled and collapsed forward into the street, nearly showering the gang. Trixie and Pronto sprang out of the way, frantically trying to avoid the destruction.

Kord grabbed Alana and pulled her behind him. She crouched down and covered her head with her arms, peering up and watching as Kord reared his arms back and punched a piece of wall hurtling toward him, cracking it into two pieces that fell to the ground with loud thuds.

"Thanks," Alana sighed, wiping soot and dust from her face. "Are you okay?"

"Nothin' major," Kord replied nonchalantly, looking down at his bloodied knuckles. Another explosion shook the ground. "I know those. That's Rookie. Eli- the Goon- must've set 'em up."

Alana looked out at the city, where yells and cries for help began sounding out. A few more explosions rang out before they finally stopped. Her heart pounded in her ears, and her ears were still faintly ringing from the nearby explosion. Ash, Burpy, and the Eastern Infurnus hopped up to her, looking confused and frustrated, but luckily uninjured.

"Guys! Eli's gone!" Trixie cried out, waving away dust from where she and Pronto stood on the other side of the street.

Alana whipped around, her heart leaping in her throat.

No, come on, she thought desperately, scanning the desert landscape outside of town. Relief flooded through her when she caught sight of Eli weaving up a canyon wall on Lucky, fleeing town. He hadn't completely gotten away.

Alana whistled and Midnight came bounding through the rubble on the street. She leapt up onto the wolf, taking a deep breath before turning to the rest of the gang.

"Kord, you're strong enough to move rubble, and Pronto, you can dig through to people who might be trapped. Keep Doc with you. The town needs you two here," she began. She glanced at Trixie, who nodded and called her own mecha. "Me and Trixie's mechas are more built for speed than yours anyway. We're going after Eli."

"Are you sure you can defeat him without the magnificence of Pronto?" Pronto asked. "We just failed at catching him with all of us!"

"We'll figure something out. We have to," Trixie replied, climbing up on her mecha. "We've got this. Go help the people. We'll bring Eli back."

Kord nodded, scooping Pronto up under one arm like he was in slugball and heading further into town. Alana and Trixie rode their mechas away from Gateway's town, and the second they were clear of the roads and rubble, they transformed their mechas to their wheeled modes.

"It doesn't look like he's in bike mode," Trixie noted, peering forward at Eli, who had a couple hundred yard head start. "If they don't have that in the East, the Goon might not be confident enough to use it. Eli's not much use if he gets in a bike crash."

"That'll at least help us catch up to him," Alana agreed. "But the issue is what we do when we get to him. He's too strong to fight in a straightforward duel. And he knows us so well it feels like he knows what we'll do before we even think about it."

"That's not pessimism from Alana I'm hearing, is it?" Trixie called over the rush of the wind as they chased after Eli. Alana snorted and rolled her eyes, brushing blood from her cheek from where Eli had broken skin with his blaster.

"Nah, that's just lack of sleep talking," she said. "But I really don't know the play here."

"Well, the problem is that he's predicting what we'll do, so why don't we just be unpredictable?" Trixie asked. "Try to use the most unusual moves we can, try to throw him off."

"We might throw each other off," Alana warned. Sure, going haywire might mess with the Goon's interpretations of Eli's knowledge about Trixie and Alana, but it would also mess with the girls' ability to work as a team.

"That's a risk we'll have to take," Trixie admitted. "It won't be the prettiest fight we've ever had, but as long as we get him back and we're all in one piece, what else matters?"

Burpy, who sat on Midnight's control panel with the Eastern Infurnus, chirped and nodded eagerly, his head aflame. Alana squared her shoulders and nodded.

"Right. You still have Mage?"

"Yep. She's so cute," Trixie cooed, reaching up to quickly pet the white healer perched on her shoulder.

"I know," Alana laughed. "Well, then we're both equipped to cure that stupid ghoul. Be as spontaneous as you can, I guess, and don't communicate?"

This might not go well, Alana thought, but she didn't have any other solution.

"Let's do this," Trixie cheered, racing forward in her mecha kart.

Eli was only a hundred feet ahead of them now. The dirt path the slingers rode on was gently sloping uphill. Alana knew if she looked behind her, she could probably get a good view of the plums of smoke marking where all the town had been bombed by a ghouled Rookie, but she forced herself to focus on her job. She trusted that Kord and Pronto would be able to manage the town.

"You don't know when to quit, do you?" Eli yelled from in front of Alana and Trixie, turning and firing Joules.

Alana rode ahead of Trixie, holding out an open hand as the Amperling came speeding toward her. Just before the ghoul could make contact or release a wave of electricity, a blue light blossomed from Alana's hand, and Joules returned to his non-ghouled protoform. He fell onto Trixie's mecha as she passed him.

It may not be very unexpected of Alana to cure the ghouls Eli fired, but it did mean less ammo for him, and Alana could tell the Goon knew it. The ghoul on Eli's shoulder growled, baring his pale green teeth. Before he could fire again, Trixie shot a Fandango forward.

Alana raised an eyebrow- a Fandango wasn't particularly useful if it wasn't used with another slug- but watched as the Goon hesitated. He looked confused, unsure whether or not there was some hidden reason why Trixie had fired a Fandango (and, admittedly, not a very strong one) at him.

After the brief moment of hesitation, Eli steered out of the slug's way, but the red and teal velocimorph still clipped one of Lucky's legs. The wolf mecha stumbled slightly, and while it wasn't enough to knock Eli down, it let Alana and Trixie gain on him even more. It was a decent reminder that regardless of strength, slugs still moved with enough speed to generate a good amount of force.

Alana tried to hit Lucky with her Jellyish, hoping that attacking the mecha would seem less likely than attacking Eli directly, but Eli growled and fired his Hop Jack. The ghoul tackled Alana's Jellyish out of the air before detonating, not with the force a Grenuke would have, but still spraying some Jellyish goo on Alana and Trixie.

"Sorry!" Alana called out, flicking some green ooze from her arm before leveling it, taking a moment to aim at Eli.

"No worries, but you're helping me get this out of my hair," Trixie replied, wincing and gently shaking her head to loosen some of the goo in her pigtails.

"Fair enough," Alana said, letting a burst of energy loose. Blue light erupted from her hand, but the second it did, Eli swerved Lucky to the right, easily missing the blast and grinning as the blue light dissipated. Alana smirked and began to fall back, letting the Goon and Trixie gain on her. Trixie looked confused, but didn't ask what Alana was doing.

"Too predictable," Eli chided, glancing back at Alana. The Goon on his shoulder shook its head.

"Maybe not. I just wanted to make sure you took the right exit," Alana replied, before suddenly veering to the left, momentarily tipping so much on Midnight, she was pretty sure she could have reached out and touched the ground.

"What-?" Eli exclaimed, focusing on the path that he and Trixie had inadvertently gotten on. The steady incline had stopped and the ground on either side of the path rapidly fell away into a small quarry not quite one hundred and fifty feet deep. The path they were on was essentially a bridge over the gap, held up by several stone columns, and stretched on for the next five hundred feet.

Alana had gone left, staying on the side of the quarry. She was hoping Trixie might be able to slow Eli down enough that Alana would get to the other side of the bridge before them, and she could trap Eli between her and Trixie.

Midnight had reached her maximum speed, but the bridge had some curves that would hopefully force the Goon to slow down enough for Alana to get ahead. If he got past her, then the chase would just have to continue until another opportunity came along, and Alana wasn't eager to let him get out of Gateway Cavern and toward populated areas.

The Goon, seeing he was either going to get caught by Trixie on the bridge or Alana at the end of it, finally decided to take his chances with Lucky's bike mode. Eli slammed his fist on the mecha's control panel, and Lucky's legs folded upwards and wheels to their places. Almost immediately, Eli began to put more distance between him and Trixie.

"Floppers!" Alana cursed, reaching down and loading her Grenuke. At this speed, she didn't even need her blaster's accelerator, but it still whirred to life as she took aim. She slowed her breath, ignoring the urgency of the situation and the speed at which she was hurtling across Gateway Cavern, and focused on the narrow bridge.

It wasn't the safest move. Creating a gap in the bridge would hopefully force Eli to slow down, or waste some ammo making a new bridge, but it could also throw Trixie off. Alana didn't like taking risks that would put anyone but herself in danger in a fight, and she was really hoping the Goon knew that and would be thrown off.

"You got this, Gav," Alana encouraged the slug before firing. The Grenuke megamorphed and rocketed toward a spot fifty feet in front of Eli and Trixie. Sparks flew down its tail before it detonated with an explosion so strong Alana could feel its rumble even so far away from the bridge.

At first, Alana felt victorious, but her cheer turned to dread as, instead of creating a simple gap in the bridge, the entire thing began to crack and crumble. Had she underestimated the megamorph's force? In the heat of the moment, had she accidentally used energy to boost Gav to make a stronger explosion?

She didn't have time to think about it, though, because both the Goon and Trixie didn't have time to react. Both of them, in their respective bike and kart modes, weren't mechanically equipped to try to maneuver a collapsing path. Their wheels skidded and slipped off the rocks instead of grabbing on to climb the falling bridge, and they were falling.

Without needing to pause to think, Alana loaded her Bubbaleone and aimed it at - who? Both of her friends were falling. She wanted to be unpredictable to the Goon, but was leaving Trixie worth it?

Alana's arm just barely turned to the left, aiming at Eli. Trixie was her friend, yes, but she was also a perfectly capable slinger who had gotten herself out of plenty of tough places before. She had to trust that Trixie could help herself, and focus on her mission: getting Eli back from the Goon.

The whole thought process took maybe a tenth of a second. Alana summoned energy to charge her Bubbaleone, hoping the combination of the buff and megamorphing would make a strong enough bubble to trap Eli. She fired and watched with bated breath as the pink slug sped toward her possessed friend.

And it looked like she was right, that the Goon had expected her to help Trixie, because he wasn't even looking in Alana's direction. Instead, he had fired a Bubbalash beneath him, hoping to land on it and continue his fleeing. But Alana's Bubbaleone knocked him off Lucky and swallowed him up, leaving his mecha behind to bounce off the Bubbalash and unceremoniously crash to the ground. Alana made a mental note to apologize to both Eli and Kord for the repairs it would need.

As Alana's Bubbaleone scooped Eli up, she fired her Arachnet. The slug spat a web to a remaining pillar of the bridge and Alana leapt off Midnight into the quarry, swinging down through the air. She heard a crash behind her as Trixie's mecha made contact with the ground. She forced herself to focus on Eli, who was furiously hitting and kicking at her Bubbaleone.

Alana stumbled to the ground, letting go of the Arachnet web as Eli used his blaster to hit the Bubbaleone enough for it to pop. The slug returned to protoform and tumbled to the ground with a whimper. But Alana was already firing Ash, so the instant Eli was freed, he was surrounded by a circle of flames.

Keep going, keep going.

Alana shot her Aquabeek, who megamorphed and sprayed a jet of water into the circle of flames. The Goon wasn't able to see the attack coming, and Eli was knocked out of the fire, kept safe from the flames by the Aquabeek's water. Burpy hopped out of Alana's bandoleer and raced around the fire, his own head aflame.

Adrenaline flooded Alana's veins. She dashed around the small ring of flames, her hopes rising at the sight of Eli sprawled out on the ground and the Goon a few feet away from him. The Aquabeek attack must have knocked him from Eli's shoulder. Burpy was chasing the ghoul, spewing flames out of his mouth.

Alana dove forward, shouting out and releasing a beam of blue energy. It sped forward, but just before it would have hit the Goon, he dove downwards. He disappeared into a fissure in the ground.

"No!" Alana bellowed. She dove for the ground, peering into the fissure and releasing another blast of energy, but the Goon was gone. Furious tears sprang into her eyes. "Floppers!"

I messed up.

She curled her fists into hands hard enough that she could feel her nails through her gloves. Burpy growled, but then chirped loudly. He extinguished his flame and nudged Alana.

After taking a deep, shaky breath, Alana looked upward and scrambled to her feet.

"Eli?" she called, rushing over to the fallen Shane and kneeling down next to him. His skin was pale, and she could still see the veins on his arm and face. His eyes were closed, and he was so still Alana couldn't even tell if he was breathing.

"Ash, go check in on Trixie," Alana ordered. Her Infurnus chirped and nodded before hopping through the bridge rubble to where Trixie had crashed.

She ripped off a glove and felt his neck. His skin felt cool, but she could still feel a heartbeat. Residual dark energy seemed to coat him like a blanket.

"You're gonna be okay," Alana assured, resting her hand on Eli's shoulder and closing his eyes.

Soft blue light engulfed her body, then slowly moved down the point of contact and spread across Eli's body. Alana could feel the warmth returning to him, and his breathing deepend to the point where she could see his chest rising and falling. His skin regained its color, and he began to look human again as the traces of dark energy in his system were purified.

Burpy hopped up to his slinger, eyes soft with relief. He nuzzled Eli's cheek and kept his head pressed against his skin, chirping quietly.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was likely only a minute, Eli's eyes fluttered open. For one frightening second, Alana feared they would be scarlet, but they had returned to their usual teal hue. They widened in fear, and Eli quickly grabbed Alana's hand and wrenched it away from his shoulder. She tried not to wince at how his nails dug into her skin.

"It's okay, it's me, it's Alana," she said, forcing herself to sound calm even though she was so relieved she felt like she could burst into tears, and so ashamed that she'd let the Goon get away that her eyes were already watering up.

Eli looked around hesitantly, like he was expecting the Goon to pop back up again any moment. He just barely relaxed when he set his eyes on Alana again.

"This is real," he said quietly. His shoulders sagged with relief.

"Um- yeah, this is real," Alana stammered. What did he mean by that? "Can you maybe let go now?"

Eli glanced up at where he still had a death grip on Alana's wrist. He immediately let go and lowered his arm to pet Burpy instead.

"Sorry," he replied. "It's, uh... it's been a day."

"I bet," Alana said, trying to keep her voice light. But Eli's guarded expression was worrying her.

He looked up, surveying the remaining empty pillars of the stone bridge. Eli carefully sat up, wincing from what had to be a number of aches and bruises. Then he tensed again.

"Where's the Goon?"

Heat crept up Alana's neck. She stared at the ground, unable to look Eli in the eyes. He was her best friend. She knew he wouldn't be mad, or even annoyed. But that didn't change the fact that she was mad at herself for not catching the Goon.

"I'm sorry. He got away," she admitted. "I swear I did my best, but he took off and I couldn't cure him. I'm sor-"

Eli cut her off, poking her arm.

"It's okay," he assured. "You tried. You got me back. Thank you."

What did I do to deserve him? Alana wondered. Her eyes watered up, but she quickly wiped at them. Eli politely didn't comment. Instead, he gestured to the rubble around them and his best up mecha.

"I remember a bit, but not this. What happened?" he asked.

Alana scratched at her head, following his gaze around the quarry.

"Well, we were chasing you, and I- completely on purpose- took down the bridge you were on. I'm hoping the people of Gateway don't, like, need that," she noted. "At least, not anytime soon."

Ash suddenly returned, hopping into sight as he rounded a boulder. Alana's shoulders sagged in relief when she realized her Infurnus was smiling. However Trixie's landing went, she must be okay.

"'We'? Where's everyone else?" Eli asked. Alana held out her hand for Ash to hop onto.

"Well, Kord and Pronto are back in town. Trixie and I were the ones chasing you. She was... kinda on the bridge too. When I blew it up. We should probably go check on her."