Tanaka and Sten have started a much bigger avalanche than anticipated! A huge stream of rocks courses down the cliff, onto Morren’s head, and spills over into the crater basin below. The two of them have to engage their jets to avoid falling into the stream of stones themselves!
Elsewhere on the rim, the lone remaining Jairian sniper takes one looks and NOPES the heck out of there! It’s good to know when to retreat and fight another day!
On the central peak of the crater, as the ground continues to tremble, Defender Zik turns to the terrified Lia to see if she’s ok. Suddenly, large cracks appear in the peak!
A battered Zik tries to get up, groaning from his painful experience in the singularity machine. Tanaka leaps to help him up, making sure his friend is okay. Always aware of danger, Zik asks about the gorillaurs, but Misha has bolted from the lab out of a side door. They’ll have to be careful when they leave!
But as they venture outside, Tanaka hears the gorillaurs beating a hasty retreat up the mountain. Their terror at the infernal singularity machine has overcome any avenge to protect their maker! Zik expresses his relief at not having to face such formidable creatures again in his current state.
As the pair of them trek back through the jungle towards the landing zone, Tanaka asks about what it was like within the singularity. Zik says that it was confusing; a mass of images swam before him, but he thinks it was mostly images from the future. He even saw an older version of his mother! But Tanaka is confused at that, since Zik’s mother perished in an avalanche. Maybe there are other universes that Zik was able to glimpse into!
Then Tanaka feels he must confess that he was tempted to join Wagner in the singularity. He thanks Zik for setting him straight, and promises to lift himself out of his depression and keep acting to better the future. Zik thanks Tanaka right back for having shut down the machine in time. Tanaka was quite the hero today!
Zik wraps up his story about chasing off the Jairian thugs who tried to steal Baker Mine! After rescuing the miner stuck under the elevator, Zik runs back out to help fight off the remaining Jairians.
After the Jairians leave, one of the mercenaries, a man named Clint Donovan, steps out and reveals that he had been helping defeat the them! Clint had recognized Zik from the news after the asteroid incident and decided he wasn’t going to kill the man who had saved an entire planet.
Zik goes over some of the major changes that Zoz went through after the Jairian uprising. People everywhere started carrying weapons to protect themselves. Zik became known as Defender Zik in the media, and he became the new head of Delta Mines! He built a stronger security station and renamed Baker Mine to the Frank Cooper Memorial Mine, in honor of poor Frank who was murdered by the Jairians in cold blood. Zik Enterprises went on to become a pivotal company in the progress of the Zozian civilization!
