A myriad of thoughts flickered through Finn's mind as he flew down, supporting the weight of his childhood friend with both arms. The agreed drop-off point was close, and he could already see another heroine standing there.

Damsel wordlessly took the limp Sarai from him, giving him a nod and running in the other direction with her teammate.

While he was no medical professional, he had cauterized the wounds as best he could. And there was still a pulse. Radi was apparently in the district now, along with some other healers. There wasn't a reason to assume he hadn't gotten here in time. She would make it, surely.

If not, he didn't know what he would do. But it wouldn't be good.

He remained silent throughout his entire flight, now touching down on the pavement again for leverage in order to generate greater velocity. Because he had to run.

Lyra was close.

There was no hesitation as he ramped up the enhanced muscle contraction and fading. He couldn't lose her or let her go into hiding again. There wouldn't be a second chance anytime soon, he told himself. He didn't know how true that was, but he had to assume so because there was no way he was going to let her put this off for any longer. She was flying off the handle and needed to be stopped. By him.

She'd left immediately after trouncing Sarai, in anticipation of his arrival if he had to guess. He wondered why, though that was as far as he let that thought develop. There would be an opportunity to ask her why, he would make sure of it himself.

He sprinted through the city and scanned every bit of his sensory range, hoping to find a sign or trail of her. Much like he had done a few nights ago when he first started looking for her, except there was more urgency to it now. There would be a small window before they got away.

Assuming they didn't have a teleporter, that was. It was an eventuality he would be able to do little against, but an exceedingly unlikely one when he took into account the fact that they had been spotted running out of the bank.

From the moment Matilda had contacted him, he'd been in motion. Sprinting over from another part of the district had taken a tense few minutes, yet he'd managed. The news of Lyra's presence here demanded that he show up.

His eyes tracked uselessly back and forth, providing him no visual feedback that his power wasn't already supplying him in greater detail. It was simply a habit he wasn't suppressing, to convince himself that he was doing all he could in case he failed.

And he held no delusions about his chances of success. There was a real possibility that his powers just weren't up to snuff for the task. That he was a bit too weak, a bit too slow. For all his improvements, he was no longer a big fish in a small pond. He'd entered the deep waters and Lyra had survived this place for a year. No matter what, he could not afford to underestimate her or her gang.

Which was obvious, looking at it now. He had dismissed the idea of her working with other villains and seen her as a single, untethered entity in a vacuum of sorts. But she was involved with her subordinates at least. And those subordinates had capabilities of their own.

Most notable was the illusionist, whose power he wasn't entirely clear on but could tell didn't work with one medium, instead affecting multiple. Presumably, that was also the reason he hadn't been able to find their base of operations despite having likely passed the area where they set up shop. However, it wouldn't cover the moving escape perfectly. Or if it did, the range of it wouldn't obscure all the gang's members. His senses should be able to pierce through it…

There. A girl with short brown hair running through the open street at superhuman speeds. Leather costume, red stains on her knife, carrying vials. He knew who that was. Bloodbrand.

He twisted around eight more blocks and reached the unsuspecting opponent in less than half a minute, grabbing her by the throat and pinning her against a nearby wall before she could even raise an arm to defend herself.

She tried to pull her knives on him, but found the weapons unmoving in the face of his magnetic hold over them. Her limbs kicked and scrambled at him, but it was nothing in the face of his combined reinforcement and armor.

"Where is Calliope?" he demanded. When she didn't answer, he repeated the words. More struggling silence.

Finn squeezed tighter. Her eyes rolled back, aura pulsing purple. "H-harder…" she croaked.

He released her as if he'd been burned and opted to just punch her in the face. The hit knocked her down with ease; he wasn't going to entertain that nonsense. "Tell me where she is."

"I don't," she coughed on all fours, "I don't know. I don't know."

Obvious lie. He readied an electric shock and kicked her in the stomach before she could reach for one of her vials, already having predicted the action in her outline.

"Last chance." The warning came with a raised crackling palm over the villain's head. He pushed it closer, then stopped midway.

A familiar outline sped towards them, riding the ambient sounds at blistering speeds. While he didn't let his guard down, he turned around to face the person he had been looking for.

Lyra stood with her arms loosely at her sides, in the middle of the road. Costume wise, she was largely the same as two years ago, the one major addition he observed being the new sword strapped to her hip. What was concerning was the things he sensed underneath. The physiological changes his perception told him about in great detail. He recognized them, of course. They seemed similar to a warrior-type body, but also not. It was almost exactly like Gunther in human form.

Likewise, the aura, albeit not as bad as he had feared, was showing the symptoms he had been expecting. That extra presence in her head, influencing her in unimaginable ways. It was still there, stronger than ever. And yet, Lyra was still in there too, emanating similar signals. They were more in sync, just not perfectly so. Her emotions were a vortex of colors so intense it was almost blinding, while the passenger was more insidious, shadowing her with the occasional divergence.

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Finn steeled himself.

"There you are," he said in a quiet tone, fully aware he didn't need to raise his voice for her to hear it.

"Here I am," she replied in a sweet tone. "I've missed you."

With the skill brought on from his rigorous physical control training, he suppressed his scowl. "You have an interesting way of showing that."

Her tone became melancholy. "It's not that I didn't want to see you. I just couldn't, for many reasons."

Rather than ask for elaboration, Finn only gave her a hard stare, and maintained it.

Lyra offered a quick jerk of the head to Bloodbrand, giving the bruised villain leave to run away. Finn didn't stop her this time.

In a single burst, Lyra disappeared onto the rooftop of a building above, but Finn had already seen the future action in advance and sprinted there. This went on a few more times, both of them traveling a long distance. She didn't seem to be trying to escape from him though. She knew better than that. No, this was just her selecting for a better location to have this conversation they were going to be having.

Eventually they ended up in an empty warehouse, standing across from one another. The cameras were on, though Finn blocked them easily enough. Lyra enveloped them in her tried and true silence barrier, rendering their words truly private.

The first thing she did when she had him alone was take off her mask. And the person he saw was an older, darker version of his partner. Her eyes told the story of someone who'd chosen to live a life of pain. Inflicting and suffering it. The longing she beheld him with was scarred, marked by the ever-increasing list of brutalities she was visiting upon people.

Furthermore, she looked exhausted. As if she hadn't slept in days or perhaps longer. He couldn't discern the exact cause without asking her, but a glance was enough to tell him she was having a rough go of it. The precise nature of the problem eluded him, though, and that was a problem he intended to solve.

"Come with me," he said, not bothering with the preamble. They had a chance to talk, so they would clear the air. And he would get her back.

Unfortunately, she was shaking her head. "I'm sorry."

He returned the colors of his suit to their normal plain gray and dispersed the light projections altering his face, baring his expectant look.

"I'm so sorry," Lyra went on. "For everything. For those words I said to you. For how it went. I'm happy that I get to say this to you, but it's… too late, Finn. I'm too far gone. Worldsong and I are on the same wavelength, nobody can stop this. Us."

"I'm never giving up on you," he said confidently. That much, he could say.

"And I love you for that." She stepped closer, even as his mind went wild at the phrase she had just said to him. The timing was completely inappropriate to be fixating on that sort of thing, but maybe it was what he had been wanting to hear from her for a long time now.

But no. The nuances of these emotions were a distraction, currently. He needed to stand his ground if he wanted to have a chance at convincing her to return out of her own volition.

"Even if I'll never be the same. Even when I end up as nothing but a monster, I'll still love you." Her lips parted slowly, pulling themselves taut over her teeth in a manic smile. "This is only the truth. You know I'm not lying to you. I just want you to let me help you in the ways I still can."

The offer perplexed him. "Help me with what?"

"Omega," she said, making his stomach drop. "And any other enemies you have. I can be your support."

In the past, he would've taken issue with the idea of letting anyone else in on his fight with Omega, and he felt odd about that even now, but in this moment, the main thing on his mind wasn't that. Much more important was Lyra's well-being, which he absolutely could not guarantee if she went anywhere near that walking calamity. But beyond that, there was something else. A suspicion he'd carried ever since his initial realization about the similarity between the two cases. If they interacted, what would happen? There had to be a reason for their similarity. What possibilities would their meeting open up? It couldn't be anything positive.

"I need you to stay away from him," he declined. "It's for the best."

"No you don't get it, I have to do this. It's the only way I can be useful. I've been investigating, collecting information. Every day I become more ready. I always prepare, I'm getting stronger. How could I not direct that force to something good?" Her pleas were cast into doubt by the odd fluctuations he saw from her power right then.

Inhaling a deep pull of air, he sighed. "Just come with me. I'll find you a cure, all you have to do is give this up before someone catches you or you do something that's even harder to come back from."

"...Sorry," was her response. "I'm not the old me anymore."

He pressed his lips into a flat line. "We have resources. I can get you whatever you need to prevent your power from taking over your mind. I'll do whatever it takes to get you out of this mess. You just have to trust me. That's all I ask."

But even so, his words fell on deaf ears. "No," Lyra said, crossing her arms and looking down. "They can't hold me."

"Can't they?" Finn snapped.

She raised her head to stare at him with wide eyes. "What?"

"Can't they, or do you just not want them to?"

Her smile faltered, and gazed at him with a lost expression. "What do you…"

He scoffed, all efforts to suppress himself gone with the wind. "Were you even being serious about wanting to support me with Omega? Or is that something your power whispered in your ear for its own sake? Worldsong, was it? How many of your actions are from its control, and how many are yours? Probably not a lot."

She was like a deer caught in headlights.

"But I could be wrong. Maybe," he forged on, "you prefer this. Maybe you actually enjoy your new status. Killing people whenever you see fit, destroying lives on the regular, abandoning everyone who cares about you. Because why not? You don't mind holding hands with some untrustworthy creature because it's giving you what you want! You like it, and always have."

He knew he'd crossed the line with that one, which was the point. If words weren't going to get her to come the easy way, he would rile her up by questioning the very foundation of her problem. Saying her words were just false platitudes and pretenses to cover up that she wasn't sincere in the slightest? That definitely got a reaction. Enough of one to incite the next stage of this interaction.

The shock on Lyra's face morphed into rage, a feral snarl contorting her features into those of a predator. Maroon exploded in her aura, one hand drawing the blade at her side.

Timing his own ready stance with hers, Finn extended his needle to full length to hold it out in front of his chest, reinforcement setting in.

"I'll show you what I've been going through," she whispered sharply.

Sound and light were banished.

In total silence and darkness, Calliope and Shade commenced their battle.

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