Julius stepped through the portal, leaving the Space Bar behind. Strutting confidently, he moved Sindibad out of the way, and grinned widely.
"Still on the lookout for mooks? I got a plan."

Julius changed the frequency on the radio. It was to a frequency they had previously visited, one belonging to Hecuba, the irritable necromancer mistress.

Within a few seconds, a sultry female voice answered, venom tipping her tone.
"You! What nerve you have, to act so rudely to me! I shall have your--"

Julius was quick to interrupt her, speaking infuriatingly nonchalantly.
"Whatever, honey. Hey, guess what? I found the Eye of the Serpent! It's ours now! How about we have a competition? If your army can conquer mine, I'll grant you the unlimited power of the Eye. If not, I will seize control of all your land, and butcher you like the hog you are!"

There was a sort of animal noise on the other end of the radio. Evidently, Julius had struck a nerve.

"I WILL BURN YOUR FARMS AND ENSLAVE YOUR CHILDREN! YOU WILL KNOW TO FEAR THE NAME H--"

"Ayy, that's the spirit! My dimensional coordinates are..." Julius explained in full detail how to reach Nox through magical means. Though it was unlikely that Hecuba's teleporter system worked like the Kurokages', it was close enough to not need much translation. "See you there, piggy! My army will be waiting!"

Julius flipped the receiver off, and laughed heartily. After a moment's consideration, he switched to Shocker+'s encrypted frequency, and spoke into it.

"Attention all units on Nox. We've got a change of plans. We're bringing in only one army. Cancel your preparations and get to work on the other jobs! Payment will be offered at the end of the conflict!"


Shazay's hand-held radio crackled into life, and played Julius's message. Listening intently, Shazay very nearly slammed the radio to the ground. Grimacing loudly, he called out to George Melons and Frederick Selous.

"Ay, you two! We don't need more'n one salt circle. Job's been postponed! You boys are gonna need to come with me if you want any payment. We got a new mission.""

Shazay bent over and planted his teleporter on the ground. Once again, he punched in a set of coordinates and pressed a jolly, candylike button. Once again, a portal to another world opened up.

Through the portal, one could clearly see green grass and well-moistened sand. Further off in the horizon was nothing but blasted wasteland and dust devils. This was Athas.

"Hope you boys like shootin' things, 'cuz that's the only way you're gonna get to go to the afterparty!"


"We're well aware of the impending theft of your master's priceless jewels. That's why we're here! As we speak, we're setting up a complimentary Rudimentary Mook Defense system in the areas outside of your home. What we're doing will be completely pro bono, though we do offer special package deals for nominal fees in capital and currency."

Xiangshi pulled out a small holographic projector. On it, the word "PRESENTATION" was printed.
"If you like, we can give you a brief rundown of our extensive home defence catalogue! Hiring the support of the local government is alright, but a permanent solution is necessary for anyone living on their own like this!"

"Er... yeah, okay. Sure. I'll take your word for it." Gintoki said, rolling his eyes. There was no way in hell that he'd be freaked out by any thiii...

Gintoki's thoughts immediately slowed down as he walked past more and more monster girls. Though the initial two maids, he reasoned, were simply cosplaying and/or holograms, the more he passed the more it dawned on him that he was actually facing all of these monsters...

Except as girls, of course. That meant that it was actually a ghost....?

This mission went from 'okay' to 'creepy' to 'what the hell am I doing here' more quickly than he would've liked. Maybe he should've taken the situation a bit more seriously...

And as soon as he walked into the room with the actual jewel, his jaw may as well have dropped to the floor. That jewel was... Incredibly huge; how in the world that this vampire loli could've gotten that, much less someone taking it away, was nearly unfathomable.

"Uh. Okay. Well, if that's all we needed to know I'm going to be riiiight back. As in, outside of this mansion. Good bye. Bye. Peace." he said, quickly making a complete 180. No way in hell was he staying around ghosts and former dungeons and the like. Nope nope nope.


"Aaand I saw that coming from a mile away. God dammit." Kakine sighed as the witch blazed off on her broom towards the city. Though he would have much preferred to go through this without incident, the way things tended to work out made that more or less an impossibility. Though by this point he would've turned his Dark Matter into something to propel them forward, the regulations the city had and his aversion to making this become an even bigger mess was... Yeah...

"Shoot. Sorry, 10032. We're gonna have to sprint." he said, turning the pair of earbuds he had given Marisa earlier into a small pair of beetles. At least this way, he could track her movements about the city without going on a wild goose chase.

"She's headed towards District 15, as expected, but i'm almost sure she'll begin to deviate from that course soon enough. We have to get moving." he said, beginning to dash after the girl on a broomstick.


As Hazama continued to walk along musing to himself, a novel idea popped into his head. Given how old the kingdom was- which was, of course, to be expected- there were bound to be some sort of passageways into the inner workings of the city. Of course, the newer buildings were worthless to him in that regard, but maybe if he looked around for some older buildings...

And thus began Hazama's search for older buildings in search of underground passageways. Of course, barging into any occupied homes was a recipe for disaster, so in order to minimize the chance of him being discovered he began by searching through the most decrepit; around the twelfth house or so, he happened upon a strange girl- probably of Asian descent- popping out of the wall through a hole before the hole closed itself back up. That was... Convenient. Though the feeding of whole half-grown bird fetus thing to that girl- some sorta jiang-shi, given whatever he had managed to dig up from SE's databases and whatever it was he knew about the things- was a bit strange, he had to admit that such an ability would make his job tens of thousands of times easier. Well, if the girl had the ability to pop in and out of walls like that, she'd help him out and do it again.

"Pardon me." Hazama said, walking over to the two girls. "Noticed you just popped out of that wall over there. Mind helping me out a bit?"

He flashed a disarming smile, but given his experiences here in the past few days (and how everyone in the nobility seemed to want to brawl or turn him into a slave or some sorta shit like that) he wasn't entirely sure how well it'd work. Oh well, if worst came to worst he could use Ouroboros to fly the hell outta there and do some recon elsewhere. And... Well, to be fair, it was kind of unnatural seeing someone pop out of a wall like that. Maybe this was a bad idea.

"And I thought I had a big mouth!" Dante called to Shivani. Holding out one arm to shrug, he took a few snow-covered steps towards the cat and dark haired man. Giving him a brief glance, Dante couldn't help but feel as if he'd seen the man somewhere before.
Dismissing this notion as indigestion, he opened his mouth again, "Anyways, if you two are done exterminating the local wildlife, you can at least help me carry these for saving your asses."

Dante held out the bag.

"Huh. Good job." Guts noted, shouldering his gory blade. Raising his meat hand, he scratched an itch on his nose, leaving some red residue over it.

"That should take care of the brunt. The best place to go is..." Guts eye the horizon, seeing a port. He immediately turned his head away, and pointed.
"North. I think we should head north."

Seiga - Abandoned Basement, Capital City, AgK

"My, my, barging in on somebody's home like that. Didn't your parents teach you any manners?"
"This is no place for the likes of you to enter!"
"Hush, Yoshika dear. Let's give our guest some hospitality."
Seiga stepped in close, studying Hazama's face.
"...No, I don't suppose anyone taught you, did they? You've got eyes like me."
She spun to his side, draping an arm across Hazama's shoulders.
"That said, your manners are a bit off, aren't they? Why, you haven't even introduced yourself, and you're already asking that I help you? What are you, a virgin?"
She brushed his cheek with her free hand, and spoke a little quieter.
"After all, girls don't like boys who take it too fast~."

As it heard the death howls of it's two companions, the final Wendigo stopped chasing after the JoJo. It was a desperate, scared animal, surrounded by death on all sides. A frightened lone survivor, this poor last wendigo... It stopped there, in the snow, and let out a low and mournful wail. Not a howling laugh, not a cackle, but a cry like pure sorrow. If anyone were to appraoch it, they would see the reason that the party went hunting in the first place: This last wendigo was pregnant with a litter of infant wendigoes. Creatures driven by animal instinct, only attempting to protect their most precious resource: their children.



Sir Frederick grinned from ear to ear. Athas... This was a place he had heard of before. A land of monstrous beasts and gigantic animals, ripe for the hunting. "Good man, I'm always game for a hunt!" he smiled, loading another bullet into the chamber of his elephant gun. "Tally ho!"

George Melons was much less excited. This place was hot and arid, not ideal for a person of his habits. If it weren't for Shazay's promise of 'hooking him up', he would be out of here in a split second. But then again, this land reminded him a great deal of his failed 'Mars Station' venture, perhaps one of his favourite side projects. It was quite depressing that it had failed really. Maybe, just maybe... He could start a new one here. "A'ight. I'm in."

He blinked, staring at the man extending the bag out. "Tch... You're serious?" The two would more than likely exchange an awkward staredown for a moment before he took the bag from his hand. "Whatever. Where're we going?" He said, stepping to the man's side. He eyed the coat, the pistols the man had, how they were similar to his own. "So I'm guessing word's spread around this world about me too, huh? What're you? Some sort of weird cosplayer? You got the hair wrong, though. It's black; not white. I like the guns, though. Not exactly the models that mine are, but what can you do, yeah?" Dante spoke pretentiously and smirked. "Ten outta ten though for originality."

Hazama let out a small laugh as the Asian woman moved closer to him. She seemed to be right, at least; given how she immediately reacted upon his arrival, he may as well have found a business partner he could cooperate with. She wasn't quite like Relius, but... Well, given the circumstances, she was close enough.

"Pardon me, ma'am." he said, smoothly moving out of her grasp and bowing to her. "My name... Well, nobody really cares; they just call me Hazama. I guess you may as well."

Honey traps, like what she was trying to pull, weren't going to work on him. There was no time to give in to carnal desires during a journey of revenge, after all.

"But... I'm pretty sure this isn't your house. After all, how could someone with those fancy clothes live in a house that isn't much more than a few bricks and a rotting wooden basement? These are the slums, after all." he said, smiling calmly. "On that note, I'm pretty sure that walking through a wall isn't exactly... Normal, you know?"

Walking over to the wall that the woman had just slipped through, Hazama casually knocked on it, a solid 'thud' resonating back into the room.

"Don't know what you're here for, but given how much of a dump it is, I'm willing to bet it's something important. So how about we help each other out here- you get me to the throne room so we can snatch the king, and I help you do whatever thing it is you're here for. Maybe more. Whaddya say?"

Raditz took the mask and looked at it. Excellent! This would make a fine disguise! With a bit of difficulty due to his thick and volumous hair, he tied the black and white mask on to his face.

"Excellent! Now no one will know that this masked warrior is in fact Raditz, elite Saiyan warrior! I shall reign terror through the night!"

Nevermind the battle armor, the arm and leg bands, and the ridiculous hair. Still, he listened and went inside, trying to determine what to do next. The power of the mask, imaginary as it were, was soothing. He felt that nothing could kill him in here. Very quickly, he came across a bunch of robots on stage singing about friendship which almost made him want to gouge his ears out. But he could set it aside for the time being, as he had spotted two pathetic weaklings to address.

"You two!" he said, pointing to the pair sitting with the astonishing piles of food. "Where can I go to enforce the glory of Lord Cooler?! And where can I go to find such delectable looking food?!"

Shivani - The Ice Moon

She glared at the last Wendigo, arrow knocked and ready to fire. She shot, letting the arrow pierce the ground a good six inches from the beast. She motioned for it to leave before turning towards the man. "Are you injured?" she asked, looking him over, hearing the conversation between the two Dante's.

Seiga - Abandoned Basement, Capital City, AgK

"They 'just call you' Hazama? My, my, mysterious, are we? Oh, but I'm afraid you'll have to work harder to impress us, isn't that right, Yoshika?"
"Huh? Whatever you say, Nyan Nyan!"
"Isn't she precious? She's my perfect pet, tough as anything.", Seiga strolled over and patted Yoshika on the head before looking back at Hazama, "An excellent compliment to my abilities, too. Which begs the question... what can you offer? And further, why should you need us? We're just a poor, lonesome hermit and her cute little underling, after all."

The pink-haired girl smiled and waved at Raditz, scooching over.

"Oh, you must be new here! Hi, I'm Kelly, and this is a Mage."

Taking a piece of the pizza, Kelly offered it to Raditz. Mage waved, unable to eat due to his or her closed helmet.

"Go ahead and try it! It's Mr. Vamp's own recipe. Um... let's see, there's a Mekillot hunt but uh..."

She pulled up a picture of the Mekillot on her phone, Wigglytuff charm clacking against the side. The screen showed a picture of carving of a tremendous armored reptile, towering over an oasis city and crushing palm trees beneath its feet. The Mekillot appeared to be carrying what looked to be a giant worm with a fanged maw surrounded by tentacles in its mouth. Dozens of tiny dots appeared to be throwing spears and magic spells at the Mekillot, to no avail.

"...I think they called in some specialists for that one. I mean, they're big, but this is a carving by halflings, so Oh! There's a job involving clearing out some of the monsters in the Demon Castle of Count Dracula. I should probably get on that one, Castlevania's got some powerful monsters I can sell to the boys back home."

"Well, of course it wouldn't be that easy. As I said earlier: you do me one, and I do you one back. Regardless of scale, of course; I have the resources at my disposal to do that." Hazama said, smiling slyly as he pulled out a small cellphone- standard issue by SE, but useful nonetheless. "Of course, I'm on a tight schedule here; after all, it's only a matter of time before they pick up on my recent actions. That's where you come in."

Letting the phone slide back into his pocket, Hazama slipped over to the exit one more, a dangerous glint in his eye.

"You are on hand at the moment and have what I currently am unable to access. This is a business agreement where we both profit from the outcome. And... To be honest, I'd rather not look to flashy while doing this, either."

With that said, Hazama opened an small interdimensional portal and let Ouroboros shoot out, causing it to lodge itself into the wall in front of him and crush whatever happened to be in between its jaws.

"See? Too flashy. I'd get caught in an instant."

Every Saiyan warrior possessed a voracious appetite. It was how they fueled their bodies, after all. Raditz took the piece of pizza and, in a feat of great power, consumed it in two whole bites. Delicious!

"Tell me where I can find more of this pizza! I need more of it!" Raditz declared. This would be the perfect battery to fuel him for future battles!

Then he started paying attention to the screen that the girl was using. He saw the picture of the giant worm snake thing and immediately interrupted. "What is this giant beast? I will slay it! How do I get there?"

Seiga - Abandoned Basement, Capital City, AgK

"Eeeeh? A chain?"
"What are you, some sort of nu-metal singer?"
"How lame!"
"Kyahahahahahahaha!"
When the pair had finished cackling at Hazama and his complete failure to impress, Seiga walked over, pulling the chain back and releasing it with a satisfying twang.
"Goodness me, you're adorable.", she chuckled quietly, "You know what? You've amused us, so I'll take you up on that offer. Now, child, what's your plan?"

"Sorry, kid, but I'm one of a kind." Dante grinned. "Being in a garage band doesn't make you famous."

With that, he pulled out and dialed some coordinates into his UMMA standard hand teleporter, opening a swirling rift in space-time. The blue portal rippled ominously, and Dante presented it with a flourish.
"Well, I guess we better get going. I'm late for a party." he said, and disappeared inside, towards parts unknown. The portal wavered, as if it would close soon.

"Right, right. Let's get going. Wait... garage band?" Dante said irritably as the portal opened. "You're late for a party... I'm late for preventing my brother from ruling the world." He spoke with an exasperated tone. "You know, I just love chasing people through portals too." Dante disappeared into the portal, leaving the other Dante to place his hand onto his palm and shake his head. "Alright." He followed suit, leaving the world behind him for a whole other place.

Through the portal was what appeared to be an outdoor arboretum. Scattered between the squat houses of Thunderbolt City, small groves of beautiful fruit trees and berry bushes grew. Children played among the grasses and flowers decorating the sides of each houses. Thunderbolt City was an oasis in the wasteland that is Athas.

Weaving between buildings, Shazay arrived at a small urban cul-de-sac. At the end was an unassuming sheet metal garage door. Shazay, grunting heavily, lifted the door up, and peered into the dark garage beyond. Even though the sun overhead could scour the flesh from one's bones, it still failed to penetrate the dark, magically air-conditioned rooms between the walls of Thunderbolt City's houses.

Shazay turned to look at George and Frederick, and grinned widely.
"Glad you guys are so willing to adapt. Aight, we got two jobs today. Both ain't for pussies, but you two ain't pussies I'm guessin'. Lemme run it down while I start Dusty up. Oh, by the way..."

Shazay flipped a switch on the wall. Instantly, a hefty battery of fluorescent lights blinded the three men. When the corona of blindness faded, the hidden bounty of the garage could be seen.

"This... is Dusty."

It was a very muscular car. The main body appeared to be cobbled together out of a mundane pickup truck and three dozen pounds of scrap metal. In the truck's bed was an astonishingly-advanced catapult mechanism, loaded with an ominous neon green barrel. Hooked up to the front of the vehicle by aircraft cable was what appeared to be a pair of jet turbines.

Shazay whistled in total admiration, and hopped into the driver's seat. He looked at Frederick and George, and winked at them.

"Now, see, Dusty's the big boy 'round here. Hop on in, an' I'll give you some specs while we get outta city limits. Oh, hey. Since neither'a you are armed f'this, yer gonna want to look in the back. Mission details says we got a crate'a weapons in the back. Should be a gunmetal-gray crate in the back, looks like a treasure chest. Why don't ya root round in there, find yerself a fancy boomstick or somethin'."

Shazay turned the key that had been in the ignition all this while, and rhythmically thumped Dusty's driver's-side door. With a noise somewhere between a bestial roar and a high-magnitude explosion, Dusty roared into action.

"That's a Mekillot, it's native to Athas, and you won't be going there because we can't afford to piss off a Dragon King. You, Mr. Muscle Man, are going to be helping me claim a castle for the bossman."

Taking a slice for herself, Kelly passed the rest to Raditz.

"Besides, there's a bunch of monsters in there that drop entire buckets of pudding if you beat them."

If Hazama was annoyed, he certainly didn't show it; his sly smile remained on his face, regardless of what the other two were saying. Well, Ouroboros was deceptively weak-looking to people who didn't know about the Nox Nyctores, at least compared to the flashier weapons he had seen around... Which that just meant that he had to keep from using the full power of the Azure or tapping into any of Terumi's leftover power. As long as he played the persona he did back at the NOL, it seemed, it'd be a cinch to keep her on board. Well, it was better than using brute force, at least. That'd be much more effort than he'd have liked.

"Well, can't be helped if those were the cards I was dealt. You see why I'm asking for an easier way out?" he continued, reeling Ouroboros back into its portal before shutting it closed. "Anyhow, plan's right here."

With that, Hazama tossed a small circular machine onto the floor, which proceeded to bring up a diagram of the castle at the center of the town.

"Walls are super thick, guards either bloodthirsty sadistic madmen or corrupt guys getting paid to look the other way. Guards of any type are gonna be a pain to deal with, so let's just avoid that and head straight through here." he said, tracing a path underground from their current location to the castle's basement. "From there, there's a series of tediously long hallways, which we're probably going to avoid because I'm not in the mood for fighting in narrow enclosures, if at all. Instead, we can take a detour right around the second room to the right and head up. Assuming your ability is as I believe it to be, we can just move through here and jump straight through to the throne room, where I snatch the kid with my stuff and spirit him away like nothing ever happened. Hopefully, the guards will be too shocked to react and we'll get out scot free, but... That's probably unlikely."

Taking a deep breath, Hazama watched as the hologram retraced his pathway, causing it to blink periodically as the other two looked at it.

"Gotta admit, that was pretty on the fly, but if you work long enough staring at blueprints this kinda stuff tends to come naturally."

With that outline finished, Hazama tipped his fedora downwards and leaned against the most stable wall he could find. Only being able to access Ouroboros for this mission was... Well, a really big pain in the ass, but if it got him stuff without having to work for it then who was he to argue with those self-imposed terms?

"After I deliver the kid to the revolutionaries outside of this place, I'll uphold my end of the bargain. Sounds fair?"

Well, at the very least he wasn't going to lie to her completely. SE could probably provide this girl with whatever the hell she needed, so it was less a lie and more... A simple half-truth. If she asked for something like a Nox Nyctores or, by extension, a Murakumo Unit, though... That... That'd take some effort.