This is the second chapter of the Forum Guardians story, please read the previous chapter (link at the bottom of this topic) if you haven’t already.
Enjoy! 
Part 10: Last Breath
Erick slowed to catch his breath and think things over. Months of searching, and this. The guardian couldn’t have been around when they found the coin. They would’ve been roadkill if she was.
He paused and looked over his shoulder. The girl following him tripped over a can, and a wail pounced on her while she was vulnerable. He quietly vaulted over the old fence separating alley from the beach. His grip on the staff tightened.
Blobbert poked his head out of the backpack, squelching with enthusiasm. It was a familiar sight, however unwelcoming.
Erick’s hand drifted to the coin, and flipped the switch. It whirred to life, silently beckoning for the sunken realm beneath the waves. The intricate carvings pulsed with energy, bringing unseen structures to life. A harsh mechanical grinding pierced the air, like twisting a steel beam into a corkscrew.
A smooth, aquamarine tower emerged from the water. There it was… Triton.
He sighed when a THUD sounded behind him. The girl chasing him had made it over the gate, and was stomping over to him with a glare. He hoped he could take care of her before Auruas arrived.
…
Kate growled. When the others shot her a bewildered look, she pointed ahead. A dozen torn and withered limbs were scattered on the floor. Laying on his side in the middle of the carnage was Hershey. His fur was speckled with blood, like sprinkles on a brutal cupcake. Kevin yelped, and immediately ran over to him.
“Hershey! What happened to you, buddy?”
In response, the panda lifted it’s head and nudged him with it’s nose. Turning around, there was a greater chaos in the alleyway leading to the beach. The chain-link fence closing it off was torn in half, each side melted into the wall beside it. Kevin stayed to comfort the panda while everyone else crept over.
Even Tim was shaken. Facing opposite the stone tower was Erick, David’s staff raised in-hand. Electrical wiring and gadgets were woven around it. The thick gloves he held it with were singed where the rubber met wire.
Lying behind him was Kayla. She didn’t move; her clothes were torn and she was covered in cuts and scrapes. Erick’s face was as blank as it always was.
While the group stared on, filled with dreadful curiosity, the storm clouds began to groan from their seat on the rooftops. A tail, grey and smooth, churned them. It was an ordinary-looking rear end of a Great White, or it would be if Great Whites flew in the sky with their nose pointed towards heaven.
The tail began to descend, revealing itself to be conjoined with the pale, blued torso of a woman. Her eyes scanned the area, before she let out a sharp cry. All at once, the clouds reached their peak. Millions of volts fell from the sky- and were redirected into Erick’s staff, without a single stray spark.
Part 11: Reunited
The sand hissed, melting into glass and revealing a string of wires running from the staff toward the gleaming tower. Auruas descended holding a stone trident, and pointing it at Erick.
“GET OFF MY BEACH, or would you like another warning shot?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Erick examined the staff, “And it looks like I can take another zap.”
The trident sparkled with electricity, cackling like an old hag. “If you saw what’s down there, you’d thank me for this.” Another bolt of electricity shot out of the trident, and again Erick channeled it into the wires. By now, the heat had melted his rubber gloves almost entirely, forcing him to hold it with the back of his hands.
Erick shook his head. “That’s enough to do it. Kayla?”
She rolled over, revealing a makeshift cannon buried underneath the sand.
“You hid that under the girl?!”
Kayla threw a lever, sending a steel ball hurtling into Auruas and knocking her out of the sky. She crashed onto the glass with a pained scream.
“Ugh, I hate sushi. This had better be worth it, Erick.”
David strode forward, Kate and Tim close behind. “Actually! It’s just raw fish so it would be sashimi. And you, I want my stick back. Do you have no shame?”
Erick silently tossed him the staff. The wires had melted, and the wood was bent out of shape and terribly burnt.
“You ruined it, thanks. And what did you do to Kayla?”
“Relax, I’m fine. We just made it look like I was dead so that… thing would leave me alone. He needed a hand getting rid of her and opening up the tower over there. What’s up with it, anyways?”
“I can answer that,” Tim spoke up. “It’s the entrance to an elite city that’s partially underwater, and partially underground. There’s all sorts of rich and famous people in it. Top scientists, CEOs, artists, politicians, et cetera. I used to work in a factory there. I was a-”
“We don’t have time for an info dump. That wasn’t enough to kill her. Get in the elevator or talk somewhere else.” Erick went over to where the wires were attached to the tower, and punched in a code. The doors opened and revealed a surprisingly spacious elevator carriage.
“I’m waiting for someone here, you go on ahead. I should be fine on my own, and anything down there would have died months ago.” Tim said.
Kate, Kayla, and David said their goodbyes before going into the elevator with Erick. As the doors shut behind them, Kate did a double-take. “I feel like I’m forgetting something… shoot!”
“What?”
“I forgot my gun! I must have dropped it when Kevin bumped into me by the panda, and… hold on. We forgot Kevin and left him behind?!”
Part 12: Ride Down
Kevin would have to be left behind. There was no going back for him now.
Kate drooped against the wall, while David and Kayla stood in silence. Erick kept his back straight against the wall, staring almost mesmerized by the coin in his hand. He turned it over, ran his fingers along the engravings, then turned it over, and ran his fingers over the engravings again. And again, and again. Finally, Kayla broke the silence.
“You seem to like that coin.”
“It’s the cost of admission, and extremely expensive. Someone paid an arm and a leg for it. And they left it lying on the sand like litter.”
“Admission isn’t worth much, now that the city’s a dump.”
“Dump or not, it’s hiding impressive tech. I’ve been searching through every record and account from the few people who made it out, and they mastered STEM cells easy within a few months of getting everything together.”
“What did they use them for?”
“They stuck an amputee onto a beheaded shark.” Erick kept a straight face, like always, but disappointment showed through his eyes.
David sat up. “That’s rad. This place sounds brutal! Sunken ruins filled with half-human monsters that have otherworldly powers!” He grinned.
“From what it sounds, that was a one-time experiment, so you won’t be seeing more of those.” Erick felt over the coin again. “And I don’t think ‘otherworldly’ is the right word; the only demons there were the lawyers.”
“Aww. So there’s mostly just corpses?”
“You’re so edgy, David,” Kayla teased. “By the way, Kate, didn’t you say you’ve been here before? Back when we met, I think?”
Kate didn’t answer, her back turned toward the group as she stared at the wall.
“Kate? Kate? Hello? Why are you ignoring me?”
“There’s some weird goop on the wall here… it looks like blood, but it’s not quite the same color. And wouldn’t there need to be anticoagulant for it to be wet like this?” She stuck her finger into a crack in the wall, and before anyone could remind her that sticking fingers places they don’t belong in a moving elevator is an attack on common sense, a stream of sienna red sludge began to spurt out. Everyone quickly backed away, and looked to Erick.
“What’s that?”
“How should I know? It doesn’t matter, it’s only a few more minutes until we get out. The elevator clearly has gunk slowing it down.”
After a few minutes of debate over the sludge, and a few more of uncomfortable silence, they heard a “ding”. The doors opened, letting in an ankle-deep pool of sludge. An aged voice com played from behind a poster that had faded out months ago.
“Welcome. Triton is a city unlike anything else on Earth, that boggles the mind and challenges the senses. We hope you’ll stay a while.”
Part 13: Newspaper Stand
Erick tore the poster off the wall, and pulled the voicebox from its wiring. After examining it thoroughly, he put it into his backpack.
“I’m going to go check something, stay here.” Erick pulled out a map, and walked away.
“I guess we’ll look around, if whatever it is is too urgent to share.” Kayla wandered toward a newspaper stand. “It’s probably the first time in a while that anyone’s seen what it looks like inside this place. I wonder what the city’s final days looked like?”
Splashed across the headlines was “Chemical Attack Decimates Upper Floor”. The water system had been sabotaged with a chemical agent that deformed and mutated those affected, and reduced them to howling animals. A grim reminder of why they were called “wails”. There was no mention of any superhuman abilities, or how they got to the surface, but the article was in a frenzy over the economic collapse it was causing. The author’s priorities were questionable, and the red sludge that had risen past their ankles was even more so.
David shivered, and walked over to a hole in the ground that was covered by some planks. The sludge was draining through the cracks, and it was a good place to sit and check his feet. He pulled off his shoes and poked at them. They seemed fine. He hated how his socks were soaked, though. Probably stained an ugly shade of red, too. He leaned forward to put his shoes back on, and felt a terrifying shift underneath his weight. Before he could react, the planks broke into pieces and he was falling.
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