To say the multitude of alarms blaring overhead wasn't distracting at all was a definite understatement.
"What the hell happened?!" exclaimed Neeran, flinching and covering her ears for a second.
"Someone's tripped the alarms," groaned Zach, looking over the security footage on one of the terminals in front of him. "And you're not gonna like who!"
Neeran just looked at Zach, not game enough to look at the screen, and said,
"They didn't?"
"They did."
"We're screwed," muttered Shakkuri shaking his head slightly.
"Come on, move, move!" shouted Jexxel, ushering her four younger siblings through the door as the first guards of the base appeared.
Jexxel gunned down the first three to round the corner as she moved backwards through the door that Chopper shut behind her.
"We gotta move," said Jexxel, shaking her head to clear it.
"Where?" asked Chopper.
"Back to the Spectre," said Jexxel, swiftly checking her gun. "We'll be safest there."
"Let's move then," said Janan starting off.
The five siblings hurried through the twisting and turning corridors until Jexxel realised that they'd screwed up.
"Wait," said Jexxel. "Janan, find where we are."
Janan nodded and swiftly tapped into a map of the Black Sun Outpost that they were stuck in.
"Shit," cursed Jexxel quietly.
"Language," hissed Janan.
Jexxel had to restrain herself from hitting Janan for the comment and swiftly memorised the map in her mind.
"We need to go this way," said Jexxel as she turned to go down a corridor and the door opened.
"Take cover!"
Jexxel and Chopper took several potshots at the incoming guards before taking cover with the younger three members of their family.
"Ezra, Kyipen, go!" ordered Jexxel.
Ezra needed no telling twice and ran. Kyipen hesitated and stayed with her elder siblings until Jexxel shoved her after the disappearing figure of Ezra.
"Go! You'll be safer!"
Kyipen went to stay but seemed to understand that she needed to hurry and follow after her brother, and that was what she did.
Ezra had rounded the corner several corridors up and came face to face with someone he recognised all too well.
"Raptor!" exclaimed Ezra, excitedly.
"Ezra?" asked Raptor coming to a halt a few meters back from where Ezra was and thinking,
'Not good.'
Behind him, several low level members of the Black Sun came around the corner after him and, once they'd spotted Ezra, aimed their blaster rifles at him.
"Wait," said Raptor, holding his right arm out to the side. "You kill him and you'll all have hell to pay."
"But sir, he's one of the intruders," replied one of the soldiers behind him.
"But I don't think you realise who brought him here," said Raptor turning to face the soldier slowly. "The one person in the galaxy that I advise you do not piss off."
"But, what could this one person do?"
"Neeran?" replied Raptor, as if who he was talking about had been obvious. "This."
Raptor had drawn his pistol and shot the soldier right between his eyes. Ezra had slowly begun backing away a little when four other figures came around the corner he'd come around minutes earlier. Jexxel was the first there and drew her pistol on him, followed by Chopper, Janan and Kyipen.
"Ezra, duck!" shouted Jexxel, aiming at Raptor and firing several shots at him. Raptor simply moved to the left and then the right before dropping down to the ground as the shots that were supposed to connect with him connected with some of the soldiers behind him.
"Come on Nadia Star-Jinn," said Raptor, standing up straight again. "Surely you remember me?"
Jexxel just looked back at him with a scared and angry stare for a moment until a forgotten memory was stirred within her sub-conscious and she remembered who he was.
"Raptor?" whispered Jexxel, questioning who was standing before her.
Raptor nodded as the others behind Jexxel suddenly realised the connection with the man before them. All except for Kyipen, who, like two of the people about to enter that corridor, did not recognise him for who he was.
As it so happened, the three who came around the corner into the corridor where they were all located, were none other than Shakkuri 'Hiccup' June Hanonai, Zach Raymond Wilson and Neeran Claire Zaneshi.
"Juan!" shouted a voice everyone recognised all to well.
"Neeran Zaneshi," said Juan in return with a sly smile plastered on his face.
Neeran looked at him as he stood there, separated from him by five of her adopted children.
"What have you done?"
"I believe the better question is what haven't I done," said Juan as he turned to walk down the corridor beside him, and unknowingly had Ezra take several small steps towards him, stopping beside one of the fallen soldiers bodies.
"You have bigger problems at the moment, my brothers apprentice."
Juan removed what Neeran instantly recognised as a detonator as he finished.
"Much bigger problems."
"Get down!" shouted Neeran as the explosive detonated and Juan disappeared.
Everyone instantly dropped to the ground except for Zach, who would not have been affected by the explosion, and Ezra, who Neeran realised too late was standing almost in front of the explosive device that had been rigged on the bodies of the dead troopers.
"Ezra!"
Ezra screamed and threw his arms in front of his face in a futile attempt to save himself from death.
Neeran got up to try and get to him but the blast shockwave knocked her down.
Neeran got up again and ran down the corridor, expecting to find the destroyed body of her youngest son, but instead found a boy she almost didn't recognise.
The body was a child about age seven with pointed ears, three whisker-like scars on both of his cheeks, three scar shaped marks on his upper arms, a tail that ended in mattered fur, darkened rings around his eyes and automatically healing explosive burn marks on his forearms and body.
As she reached him, he was suddenly alive as his cat-slit, eagle visioned eyes flashed open and he rolled out of her reach and sprung up instantly into a crouched position.
"No," whispered Neeran as she looked into the child's dull eyes and slowly stood back up, the child copying her. "It can't be."
But it was, all too clearly.
Standing before her was a figure she recognised all to clearly.
After all, seeing past all of the changes on his body, his raven black hair, tan complexion and suddenly clear electric, sapphire blue eyes told her everything.
The altered child standing before her was none other than her youngest adopted son.
Ezra Zaneshi.
"Mum," whispered Kyipi, seemingly horrified. "He isn't human."
Neeran didn't reply.
She knew exactly what had happened to Ezra, and what he really was.
"They're going to pay," growled Neeran, clenching her fists so tightly they became white.
"For everything."