CHAPTER 70: AN ANARCHIST’S MASTERPIECE

"Copy that, Jinxie!" Jax’s voice was a beacon of pure, unadulterated, and slightly hysterical joy in the chaotic storm. "It’s time to deliver the party favors!"

His leg was a universe of white-hot, grinding pain.

Every step was a fresh, new, and inventive kind of agony.

He loved it.

This was living. This was art.

He was a beautiful, broken instrument, and he was about to play his masterpiece.

The two Ironheart veterans flanking him were mountains of silent, stoic professionalism. They moved like a single, cohesive unit, their massive tower shields forming a mobile fortress around the lanky, limping anarchist.

"Alright, boys," Forge’s gruff command roared over their shared comms channel. "Let’s take the bomb for a walk!"

The push began.

It was a slow, grinding, and utterly glorious advance into the very heart of hell.

Gargoyles, their spectral guardians gone, were now a frantic, disorganized swarm. They threw themselves at the Ironheart shield wall, a tide of claws and teeth and mindless rage.

CLANG! SCRAPE! CRUNCH!

The sounds were a beautiful, percussive symphony.

The ground shook as the Umbraxis, now fully exposed and monumentally pissed off, stomped a massive, clawed foot, sending a shockwave through the earth that nearly sent Jax tumbling.

"Whoa there, big fella!" he yelled, grinning from ear to ear. "Don’t get your scales in a twist! We’re just here to make a delivery!"

The air grew hotter, the smell of ozone and burnt everything so thick it was almost a taste.

A wave of molten fire, a river of pure, liquid incandescence, washed over their shields.

The heat was immense, a physical, crushing weight. The energy shields flared, glowing a brilliant, cherry-red, whining under the strain.

Jax could feel the hair on his arms singeing.

"Now this is what I call a barbecue!" he whooped.

They were getting closer. He could see their target now. The jagged, unstable rock formation at the edge of the Great Lawn. His canvas.

His beautiful, beautiful canvas.

"Gargoyle on your six, kid!" one of the Ironhearts grunted, not even turning his head as he shoved his shield back, crushing a creature that had tried to flank them.

The pain in Jax’s leg was a constant, screaming companion now. He was leaning heavily on one of the veterans, his vision starting to swim at the edges.

Not yet, he told himself. Not until the show is over.

A gargoyle, bigger and nastier than the others, broke through the line. Its dead, reptilian eyes were fixed on the strange, blinking device on Jax’s back.

It lunged.

Jax was too slow. His leg wouldn’t move.

This is it, he thought, a flicker of genuine, non-theatrical panic in his mind. Eaten by a B-list monster before the grand finale. How embarrassing.

A whip of pure, black energy, thin and precise as a surgeon’s scalpel, shot from the crater where Michael was hiding.

It wrapped around the gargoyle’s neck and yanked.

SNAP.

The creature’s head was torn from its shoulders in a single, clean, and beautifully efficient motion.

Jax looked over and gave a weak, grateful thumbs-up. "Nice one, Spooky! I owe you a beer!"

They were there.

The base of the rock formation.

The Ironhearts formed a defensive semi-circle, their shields locked together, a final, desperate wall against the tide.

"Go, kid!" Forge roared. "Do your thing!"

Jax didn’t need to be told twice.

He limped forward, the pain forgotten, his mind a place of pure, beautiful focus.

His hands, usually trembling with a manic, restless energy, were now perfectly steady.

He was no longer Jax, the anarchist.

He was Jax, the artist.

He pulled his masterpiece from his pack.

It was a glorious, chaotic sphere of scavenged DGC tech, polished chrome, and a single, perfect, and furiously glowing Resonance Core at its heart.

It was the single most dangerous, unstable, and beautiful thing he had ever built.

He placed it gently at the base of the rock, his movements a loving, reverent ritual.

He began to arm it, his fingers dancing across the keypad, inputting the final sequence.

The Umbraxis, its attention finally, fully drawn by this new, strange energy signature, turned its massive, reptilian head.

Its eye, a vertical slit of molten gold the size of a city bus, fixed on the small, insignificant human scrambling at its feet.

Jax finished the sequence.

A small, digital timer on the bomb began to count down from ten.

He looked up at the god-monster, at the face of the apocalypse itself.

He gave it a cheeky, two-fingered salute.

"Party’s over, big guy," he said, his voice full of a pure, unadulterated joy.

One of the Ironhearts grabbed him by the back of his jumpsuit, hauling him back behind the shield wall with a grunt of exertion.

CRUNCH!

The Umbraxis’s massive claws, each one the size of a car, tore through the exact spot where he had been a fraction of a second before, sending a shower of shattered rock and dirt into the air.

The timer on the bomb hit zero.

The world went silent.

It was the quiet of a held breath. The moment between the lightning and the thunder.

Then, the world ended in a single, glorious, and utterly beautiful word.

BOOM.

The explosion wasn’t just a sound.

It was a physical thing. A wave of pure, concussive force that slammed into the shield wall, sending cracks spiderwebbing across their energy fields.

The rock formation, its structural integrity utterly and beautifully compromised, did not just crumble.

It shattered.

A thundering avalanche of a thousand tons of ancient, solid rock and earth cascaded downwards.

It slammed into the side of the Umbraxis with a sound like a mountain breaking in half.

The beast let out a roar, not of pain, but of pure, shocked outrage.

It was buried up to its chest, its massive form trapped, stunned, its head shaking as if trying to clear the ringing in its ears.

The dust began to settle.

The window was open.

A single, desperate, and utterly unified scream echoed across every comms channel.

It was Chloe’s voice.

It was Forge’s voice.

It was a chorus of a dozen different Hunters, all roaring the same, final command.

"MICHAEL!"

"YOUR WINDOW IS NOW!"