Apocalyptic Rebirth: With a repairman system space, she rises again.

Cassius ignored the bite in her voice and looked at her with a look that made Sunshine’s skin crawl. "Suni... oh, how I have missed you. You look more beautiful than I remember. Even though my mind was not very right back then, I clearly remember my grandmother Rori asking your father if you would consider marrying me. It was the happiest..."

That was the breaking point. Hades’ anger meter went from a 30% simmer to a 100% boil in a heartbeat. He didn’t say a word, nor did he wait for Cassius to profess his love. He simply closed the gap in two long strides and launched a kick so hard it caught his once adopted son right in the center of his chest.

THUD!

Cassius flew backward, rolling across the floor like a ragdoll. Hades didn’t wait for him to get up, he stomped on his legs with the robot leg, snapping it in half. As Cassius screamed, Hades pulled his gun and pointed it straight at his head.

"Give me one reason," Hades growled, his voice vibrating with rage. "Give me one reason why I shouldn’t blow your brains out right here on the pavement. We know everything, Cassius Strauss. We know about your father, the embezzlement, the attempt on my life in that accident back then. We know about the fake foolishness. The last information we received was that Peter was with you. If you are here on your own then something must have happened in Crosstown or he sent you ahead to spy on us."

Cassius, who was clutching his chest and gasping for air, froze. His eyes went wide. "You... you know about my father.... I mean Peter?" His face paled, "Father, wait! Please! For old times’ sake! We were family! please forgive me! I didn’t know he was alive until he reached out to me and said that you were responsible for his accident. I was just an angry kid that thought you took his family away from him."

Hades scoffed, the sound full of disgust. "I took you in when he died. I raised you, giving you everything in life that you could ever need. When you played a fool, I hired the best doctors from around the world to treat you. If you had any brains, you should have compared how I treated you to how your father manipulated you. Don’t use age as an excuse. You aren’t my family. You’re a parasite like your birth father."

Sunshine looked at the man on the ground and felt nothing but cold boredom. "Just shoot him, Hades. I don’t want to waste a prison cell on him. We have enough enemies locked up."

As Sunshine turned to walk away, Cassius let out a panicked scream. "Wait! Moon is coming! She’s coming for the fortress!"

Sunshine stopped. She turned back slowly, her eyebrows raised. "Moon?"

Cassius sat up as much as he could with a robot leg pinning him down. He was shaking as if he had a fever suddenly. "She killed my father. She killed Peter! She’s gone completely mad, and she isn’t coming alone. She has a fire army with her."

Dominic had already picked interest in the matter stepped forward with his hand on his sword. "Explain. Now." As long as it concerned Moon, he needed to know.

Denise, who had been quiet until now, spoke up with a trembling voice. "It’s true. Moon made a deal with that army of pyrokinetics and she brought them into Crosstown."

Sunshine’s eyes narrowed until they were just slits. "Does this army happen to be led by a man called Garrison Holt?"

Cassius nodded frantically, thinking this information would save him. "They call him the Fire King now. Moon convinced him to be on her side. They are going to take this fortress together."

Sunshine closed her eyes for a second. Garrison Holt had been a force to reckon with in her past life__ until he lost his mind. As far as she remembered, he was not the kind of man to be led around by the nose. How had Moon managed to fool a man like that?

"Anything else you have to say?" Dominic asked Cassius and Denise.

Cassius wanted to shut up, and act like he had more information to use as leverage. But Denise ruined it all. "That’s everything we know."

It made Cassius wince, as he glared at her. "You stupid bitch."

"Throw them out as a gift for the watchers," Hades ordered, lowering his gun but keeping his hand on it.

"Wait!" Cassius shouted as the guards grabbed his arms. "Suni! I have the lucky bracelet! I have the thing you wanted so badly. I stole it from Moon for you."

He lifted his arm, showing the bracelet that had once belonged to her family. Sunshine didn’t even flinch. She didn’t look interested at all.

"That thing is a piece of junk, Cassius," she said coldly. "I already used up all the luck months ago. How do you think I built this base? I took what I needed and left the shell for Moon to play with."

Cassius looked around at the massive towers, the vehicles, and the glowing shields. His face fell. He finally understood. He had been carrying a hollow toy while Sunshine had used the real power to build a whole new world.

Sunshine turned to walk away, heading toward the command center. But Cassius wasn’t finished. In a final, desperate move, he broke free from the guards and hopped toward her.

"Suni, wait!" he yelled, reaching out to grab her shoulder.

The moment his fingers touched her skin, Sunshine didn’t even turn around. She simply let the lightning she had been practicing with at the rift explode out of her body. A massive surge of blue electricity arched from her shoulder into Cassius.

It was a sound like a lightning strike. Cassius was thrown ten feet into the air. When he hit the ground, he didn’t roll. He didn’t move. He went completely still, his skin and clothes turned black as coal.

Carson walked over and pressed two fingers to Cassius’s neck. He stayed there for a second, then stood up and shook his head. "He’s dead. Fried from the inside out."

Sunshine didn’t stop walking. She didn’t even look back at the smoking body of the man she had once called a friend.

"Carson, see to it that he is incinerate into ash," Hades ordered, his voice as cold as the toxic wind. "Then, throw the ashes beyond the wall and I don’t want his filth in my fortress."

The soldiers and residents watched this in total silence from a distance. They learned a very important lesson that day. Betraying the Quinns was a bad move because they didn’t spare anyone, not even those that were once considered family.

But others had long learned this lesson with Damian and Fifi Quinn.

By the time the rest of the Quinn’s received information on Cassius’s arrival, his ashes had long been spread into the mix of volcanic ash.