@Lugubrious@ProPro@MULTI_MEDIA_MAN

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Linkle had never seen one of the pre-war whatevers the Courier spoke of as he marched off to get patched up by Blazermate, and for that she felt a pang of jealousy. The closest thing she had to compare these strange stretchy squashing people to was the color. Not in how they made her feel, even seeing something like Cuphead effortless lift off and tip his own head to her hadn’t been anything other than delightful and amazing, but in how unreal they were. The way Pirouletta had moved during their fight, the way King Dice’s face had contorted despite seeming solid, the way this boy in front of her was able to change the shape of his eyes, sometimes they were less like people and more like water bound up into shapes.

She kind of loved it.

“Thanks for the help.” she said to Cuphead, walking over to one of the tables the robot had flipped over in its rampage against The Power , its cards and chips scattered all over the floor around, and righted it with one hand. “I’m Linkle. I’ve never really questioned somebody before, but...he was just so weird. And then he just up and left.” She grabbed one of the high backed chairs and slid it to the table, patting the red cushion while looking at Cuphead expectantly before plopping Pirouletta onto the plush green center of the table. On the ground cucoos circled like sharks. Linkle herself leaned down, elbows on the tables. “All right Miss Pirouletta. Tell me everything you know about your boss.”

To say Geralt was surprised by the recent developments would be an understatement. He simply couldn’t have expected any of what happened. He was still fumbling around in the dark, and by the time he’d gotten himself up and dusted himself off, new developments were still happening. The reinforcements, the other dark-robed person of seemingly great power, and the fact that apparently this group of misfit heroes was even bigger. Oh joy, more people to be a royal pain in his ass. At least they couldn’t be worse than Dandelion.

Geralt followed Linkle, figuring he could at least be of help for an interrogation. It certainly wouldn’t be the first one he’d done, as well. He stood before their prey and crossed his arms. “Don’t forget the little details, either.” He said with a sneer.

Peach drew up alongside him, quietly menacing in her own way.

The little gizmo looked thoroughly unhappy. With all of these people around, there didn’t seem to be any chance of non-cooperation. Any of them could probably wallop her soundly, most likely without even using their abilities, and she knew that Cuphead could from firsthand experience. So her choice of action seemed pretty obvious.

“After big light explosion, casino and islands still here, same as before. But pretty soon new people come, all sorts we never see before. Boss was thrilled, and Devil too, but then come storm. I never see what happen outside, but I hear lightning, chaos, horrible shrieks. Devil go out to deal with it, but all that comes back is spirit, carried by boss. Things get back to normal, but boss sad and angry. After time he disappear, gone for while, then he come back in black coat. After that he only come sometimes, and he always acted different, trying to be like before. Seemed like he had new job. Instead casino run by manager, who only come by once to leave lackey in charge. Manager never say name, but lackey is called Moneybags. Probably at hotel.”

Cuphead listened while bopping his head up and down in his seat. Once she finished, he thought over the words. ”Golly, if someone walloped the devil hard enough to make him a spirit, I can imagine why Dice would have a case of the moody blues! I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout no storm though. Muggy and I live waaaaay on the other end of Inkwell Isle. Never heard of this Moneybags goon neither.”

As if on cue the doors to the devil’s casino burst open again, pushing back a couple of the patrons on their way out, whose number by now had dwindled almost to zero. “Oh, the humanity! Everything’s in terrible disarray! The absolute state of it…!” he cried. Portly but well-dressed, he appeared to be some sort of animal-person, maybe a bear. With an outraged and indignant look on his face the suited fellow bustled over to the largest gathering of newcomers, which included the interrogation committee, Peach, and the Houndmaster nearby. “I say! Who in blazes are you all? What is the meaning of this disaster?” He stared, wide-eyed, at the hole in the ceiling and the general movement through it. “And what happened to my poor casino?!”

Linkle looked up as the talking bear burst through the door, not really impressed. Talking bears got less impressive after the first one. “King Dice did it.” she said, pointing down at Pirouletta. “Ask her.”

Moneybags looked confused. All his indignity had nowhere to go. “King Dice? The old manager? That scoundrel! I’ll give him a piece of my mind!” As prompted, he asked Pirouletta, bending down to shake his fist at her. “Is he here?”

Pirouletta shook her head. “No. He went away.”

“Blast!” Thoroughly irritated, Moneybags looked around. “This place will take a fortune to fix up. And how am I supposed to run it with a...a hole in the ceiling?”

The Houndmaster walked over. “You are not supposed to run it. Gneidxick...or Dice, or the Guildmaster, or whoever he is, is a wanted criminal. He appears to have absconded, but until such time as we have searched the premises this establishment’s operation is halted.”

Moneybags leered at the smaller man. “Who are you supposed to be, who can tell me how to run my casino?”

“The sherriff of Lumbridge,” the Houndmaster said, crossing his arms. His wolfhound padded over, baring her teeth at Moneybags. “Are you at odds with the law, Mr. Moneybags?”

“Police?” The bear leaned back, looking alarmed. “Er, no! Not at all! Everything perfectly legal here, yes sir.” With obvious fear he glanced at the wolfhound. “Nice...doggy?”

“In that case, once we confirm that this institution represents no illegality, nor threat to Lumbridge or its denizens, its operation may resume. You may even discover your business fomented by this unnatural connection.”

“‘Fomented’, eh?” Moneybags weighed his options, clearly swayed by the possibility of more profits. “Well then, by all means, search away. You shall have my full support. Perhaps I could negotiate some help to deal with this mess.” He took another look around and for the first time noticed the robot pillaging his casino floor. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Hey, you! Stop that!” He ran a few steps before having to stop, huffing wildly. Instead he shook his fist at the robot. “That’s...my...property!”

“Is it?” Linkle asked, looking around to the others as the bear ran off. “I mean, it’d be the manager's stuff right?”

Gaige-Tron stopped in its single-wheeled tracks as the well dressed bear started yelling at it. “Uuuuh….” a few poker chips fell to the floor, then it quickly stuffed some in its chest cavity. “These are being taken for the investigation!” The robot then wheeled off in a hurry. Cuphead couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight.

“That’s…! Uuuuugh.” Moneybags groaned, realizing that he couldn’t object without contradicting what he said earlier. He sighed and turned towards Linkle. “Well, my employer’s not here right now, is he? We never signed any contracts. I just went along with him to get my foot in the door. If I sow the seeds, I eat the bread.” He patted his chest, looking proud. “Besides, he was beyond arrogant. Always strutting around in that checkered suit, surrounded by suck-ups, going on about this and that. Any man with a lick of sense would strike out on his own.”

”Golly gee, that sure sounds like King Dice alright!” Cuphead added, punching his open palm. ”A real class act! The bee’s knees of sleaze! Are you folks sure he was behaving strange?” He looked more at Pirouletta for confirmation.

Pirouletta looked at him like he was stupid. “Da. Fat man says checker suit. Boss wears purple, always.”

“Why, you…! Have some respect!”

Cuphead gasped, his arms flailing around like limp noodles, completely devoid of bones, and his straw turning into an exclamation point. ”Why I outta!” he pulled off the glove on his left hand (revealing his hand to be a slightly smaller glove) and slapped the casino goon across the face with it before putting it back on. ”She’s right though… King Dice ALWAYS wears purple!”

Linkle thought for a moment, frowning. “I was sure the new manager would have been a lady.”“ At least, that’s what she’d guessed considering who the others said had come and taken him away. “If King Dice was always such a bad guy then what I found weird about him isn’t too weird I guess, but still.” She looked Pirouletta right in the eye. “This might seem like a strange question, but did you notice King Dice’s eyes ever change colors? Or, did he ever give anything like a heart to you and your friends?”

Confused, Pirouletta shook her head. “Boss eyes...uh, green. Never give us heart.”

“Did he ever do anything else to you guys? Something that seemed weird to you?” Linkle continued. “Anything at all.”

“Er…” The strange line of questioning clearly confounded the dancer, but after a moment something did seem to occur to her. “One time, after he come back there was blackout in casino. Most of us sleeping when it happened, but we all get weird dreams. But nothing happen after.”

Of all the things that had been said, that caught Geralt’s attention. Sudden infliction of strange dreams? He could work with that. Cutting in, he questioned the dancer. “Did you all have the same dream? What happened in it?”

“Yeah.” Linkle said, nodding eagerly. She knew about this from the Legends. “Dreams can be super important.”

”I once dreamed that I was a water bottle,” Cuphead cut in, offering essentially nothing of value.

Pirouletta ignored him. “Dream was...dark. Just darkness. But there was something in the dark. Big. Everywhere. Moving. Could not tell what it was.” She shuddered.

“Hmm.” Geralt mused. That was both helpful and unhelpful at the same time. “Nothing else? Just...darkness, moving around, everywhere? Not even a pinprick of light?”

Pirouletta shook her head. “Some colors in the dark, here and there, but no light. Mostly...pink?”

Linkle, for the first time, thought back to the wave of darkness that had swept out of Peach’s castle and seemingly freed everyone it touched. It didn’t seem right, everything she’d ever heard was fighting against the idea, but could this darkness be some kind of positive thing? The thought of pink being mixed into it, the same color as a certain friend shaped little savior, only made that impression stronger. “That might have been it. The one that brought everyone here is the lord of light, so maybe dark is good? Dark has helped us out before.” She growled, shaking her head. “No, I still don’t get why he attacked us then.”

Moneybags laughed as though Linkle said something silly. “Pff, hohoho! Not a chance. Money is good, not dark.”

The Houndmaster looked a lot more serious. He spoke from experience. “I cannot say. A creeping gloom can be every bit as maleficent as a baleful luminosity. The dream she speaks of...a vision of an eldritch abyss. It is most worrisome.”

“I’d agree, but it free-,” Linkle stopped, looking around the table. Cuphead, Moneybags, the Sheriff, they were just like Din. Even if she explained they wouldn't get it. The only ones that would understand were Geralt and Pirouletta. “Maybe I’m thinking too hard. Ummm, do you have any idea why your boss would go and get a job as guildmaster? Actually,” she looked up at the Sheriff. “How long was he the guildmaster for? How did he get the job?”

The Houndmaster scratched his dog. “I arrived after he did, in actuality. It was my belief that he was with Lumbridge since its early days. Several months, at least. As for how, I suppose he just wanted the job. Demand always outpaces supply in Lumbridge, and the Guildmarm required aid.”

Linkle stared at the man. What the man had said hadn’t been very helpful, save for pretty much confirming what King Dice’s new job had been. A single word he’d used, though, threw her for a loop. “Months?” She asked, more to herself than anyone else. That was way longer than it felt like she’d been in this world. She’d never really given it much thought, she’d just assumed that this whole thing was fairly recent on account that she could remember at most three and a half days. What in Hylia’s name had she been up to for months?

“Uhhhh...I can’t think of anything else to ask.” She said slowly, trying to take her mind off that. “Anybody else have anything?”

The Houndmaster exhaled. “No. Regrettably this did not yield any revelations. Regardless I am pleased that force went unneeded.”

”Most of this is going over my head.” Cuphead’s, well, cup head popped off and did a flip before landing back in place. ”But golly gee, I’m super keen to be getting that mean ol’ King Dice back. He may be an untrustworthy weasel, but he’s our weasel by gum! I’ll stick with ya as long as I can help!”

Peach nodded to him. “We’ll be happy to have you.” She then panned over the group in general. “Things just got a little more complicated. It looks like there’s another major faction at work, one with some sort of affinity for darkness. One member, Gneidxick, established himself in an important position in the Land of Adventure’s only permanent fixture. There’s someone named King Dice, who he seemed to be trying to impersonate. He attacked us, but it seems like he did it as part of an act, pretending to be King Dice. Someone else from his faction appeared and stopped him, berating him for doing so. It seems like the darkness is somehow linked to freeing people from Galeem’s influence, which makes sense…” she squinted. “Sort of...given what the Master of Masters said about Galeem’s light binding hearts.”

Moneybags looked flabbergasted. “Goodness. I haven’t the slightest what you’re going on about, but it seems highly convoluted.”

Linkle just nodded. “One more thing to keep a lookout for.” She needed one of those wrist things like the Courier had to keep track of all the things she had to look out for. She never thought she’d have enough to need a list.

“Yeah,” Peach said, rubbing her temples. “I bet it’s only going to get weirder.”

”Hey toots, recognize me? I wouldn’t be offended if you said no on account of how I’M A FREAKING TREE NOW! So if you would be so kind, please GET THIS TREE OUT OF ME!”

The princess noticed, and closed her eyes for a moment. She took a deep breath, as if trying to keep herself from losing it. “Yeah, alright.” Shrugging apologetically at the others, she reached down and jammed her hand into Daxter’s chest. When she pulled it out, he shrunk in a burst of multicolored light and became his old self. The Ent spirit she placed in Jak’s waiting, eager hand.



It wasn’t a moment after the spirit had been wrenched from the little weasel and he was no longer more tumbleweed than mammal that Linkle had scooped him up and hugged him to her chest. Her hands had been full when she’d seen Donnie. Blazermate had been too far away. Daxter was close enough to grab and small enough to lift. “I’m so happy you guys are all alright. You must have run into some really weird stuff out there if you’re turning into ghosts and plants.” If she was being honest, she’d assumed the worst when the pair had suddenly flown down. At least until Jak turned back to normal.

Geralt mostly followed along with Peach’s summary of events, but he got stuck on something towards the end. “Wait a second,” He called out, “who’s this Galeem? What’s he doing to people?”

“You remember that bright light you saw just before you appeared in this world? That was Galeem.” Linkle answered, pointing one finger up. “It’s the sun here.”

“What.”

Well, that was easy enough. It seemed the dealer might be willing to give her what she wanted, and all she had to do was ask nicely for it. Maybe she should try doing that more often, she considered. A shame the Lumbridge Brigade and an added party of extras had to go and wreck it for her by coming to their rescue. Sure, it was pretty obvious that they were probably going to have to fight him at some point, but she was at least hoping to get her reward out of him early before then; now she had to fight for it, as usual. Kid lept from the edge of the table into formation with the others, brandishing her parasol as she mentally prepared herself to do battle with the gambler and his puppet minions. She took on a more serious, determined expression, her grip tightened on her weapon, and on Gneidxick’s call, their showdown… was cancelled?

It was hard to tell what happened, but it wasn’t an attack… probably. Whatever it was, it was trippy; dizzying even. The result was like that of a miniature tornado spawning in the middle of the room, scattering the casino’s occupants and contents about, and restoring everyone to their normal sizes (if tornadoes did such a thing). Hat Kid came to her senses in time to tilt her hat’s visor out of her eyes and witness Gneidxick depart behind another hooded, cloaked figure through a darkened rift. She could barely catch the latter half of their conversation, but even hearing it all wouldn’t have made any more sense of their situation. If anything, it only raised further questions. It was all rather… confusing to say the least. A little context would go a long way with something like this…

One thing was clear to the child, and it was that she never got her prize. Lame! It’s one thing for the fight to be interrupted and brought to an abrupt anticlimax, but to use that as an excuse to not hand over her rightful reward just seemed too convenient. (Or, more likely, it just didn’t cross his mind at all.) Couldn’t he have at least waited until after fulfilling his end as the dealer to betray them?! Keep up the deception just long enough for her to get what she wanted? It’s not like she hasn’t dealt with exactly that before at-Oooh! That’s what he meant; by ‘letting her “have it.” That made more sense.

It took her long enough to figure out internally that he was never going to reward her (and that ‘betrayal’ would suggest that they were ever on good terms to begin with), and in all likelihood, he wasn’t even aware of what she was after. Given his character, it was probably for the best that she didn’t specify as much. Good news was that she knew where to look and had no one around to stop her. While the Houndmaster--the appointed sheriff of Lumbridge--was busy overextending his jurisdiction by way of an annexation loophole they could literally fit a giant through (as they were trying to do), Hat Kid switched back to her tophat and made her way over to the claw machine, to which both hat and Compass Badge pointed. She wasn’t leaving without getting what she was owed first.

She approached the cabinet, umbrella in hand, and knocked the hilt against the glass until it broke. It was then that she remembered once having a more suitable weapon for such a task, half lamenting its absence (as well as that of most of her things), but able to make do without an issue. Any of it beat playing the (likely rigged) machine fairly

Speaking of her cheating to win, she couldn’t help noticing Mr. Chimes, whom she had subverted and defeated not but a few minutes ago, still lying lifelessly within the toy stash, and briefly considered the absurdity of having been in there with him from her now more dominant perspective. She hoisted the wooden primate up by one of his legs, gave his ragdoll prodding shake to make sure he was still out, and stuck her tongue out at him in an expression of mockery before tossing him limply back into the cabinet. She then dug out what she was really after, the Time Piece, looking upon it triumphantly while she tossed it in her hand before safely tucking it away out of sight.

Meanwhile, Fox promptly began conducting a brief headcount to make sure everyone was well and accounted for, nodding to and politely waving off the Cadet assuringly.

“Is everyone alright?” He asked aloud to no one in particular. Based on the responses (and in a way, the lack thereof), he could make a fairly safe assumption that no one had been seriously hurt, or worse. As unlikely as it was in such a short-lived and uneventful scenario, it was hard to predict anymore just what could go wrong or how quickly, so it did no harm to maintain a habit of routinely or periodically checking on the people at your back. Even if he wasn’t necessarily responsible for them, it wouldn’t do to lose anyone under his watch.

Banjo and Kazooie had been splayed out on the grass lounging in the sun outside of the town’s entrance to relax and decompress after escaping the Dead Zone before being called into the Guild Hall on an emergency. Fresh out of one predicament, and right into another. It didn’t seem as though they would catch a break until the culprit, their prospect foe, had been escorted by an apparent cohort off to who knows where. The events and exchanges that followed left Banjo rubbing his head--both in aching dizziness and confusion.

“Uhh… what just happened?”

“Looks like we just got out of what was supposed to be an epic and memorable boss fight. I was kinda looking forward to it, actually.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll get an honest chance at it later. I don’t think they’d set something like that up without having it in mind,” Banjo conjectured, citing familiar video game narrative structure as precedent. “I still don’t get why that happened though… or what, really…”

“I don’t know, but it probably involves some kind of intricate, layered, convoluted subplot with a bunch of inscrutable, esoteric jargon.”

“Is that a backhanded reference to something I should know?”

“Just making my best guess.”

“That’s a weirdly specific guess…” Banjo looked about and noticed a few people gathered around a craps table to interrogate a miniature cartoon character--one of the attendants being such a character himself. The red one of the two drink-topped characters that elected to stay gave off the unmistakable impression of being from the same setting as the establishment’s runaway manager, complete with bouncy, expressive animation, stylism of a bygone medium, and a voice like it should be (or was?) filtered through a CRT speaker. If the matter held his attention, it was worth paying a little for anyone curious. “Let’s see if they know anything about it,” Banjo suggested as he made his way over to the table.

Though the duo hadn’t their own line of questioning to add to the interrogation, there wasn’t much need for them to. Most of the bases had been covered by the others already, so a simple eavesdrop sufficed for the bear and bird to have any inquiries they would have otherwise had answered. Sadly, the answers they received left much to be desired as far as comprehending any of it.

“Called it,” Kazooie commented upon hearing ‘convoluted’ from someone else; her “guess” confirmed.

“That’s… not a lot to work with… or is it too much?” Banjo was scratching his head at everything he had just heard, somehow expected to make complete sense of it. “Honestly, I’m even more confused now.” One couldn’t blame him. It was a lot to take in all at once, and it could only be assumed that there was a great deal more to come. The mere sampling of exposition here was already making Banjo’s head hurt.

“Maybe we should sleep on it,” the breegull suggested, taking into account their considerably extensive uptime, and that they’d effectively been active through four different provinces (counting the new one they were in) since sunrise. “We’ve been up for a full day at this point.”

“Huh… we have, haven’t we?” the ursine nodded contemplatively. Their adventures were typically over within a day, and they spent the entirety of one running almost non-stop to barely make a dent in this one. Their work was surely cut out for them. “I guess some shut-eye couldn’t hurt. Let’s head back and see about finding us a room.”

And so, the duo headed over to the hole in the roof higher than the roof itself with escape ropes dangling from it. Hat Kid had already sauntered over to the rift next to the Cadet and the two criminals and hookshot herself to the top back into the Guild Hall. She didn’t know or intend it, but given the nature of the exchange between them that she ignored, she was basically showing off and unintentionally rubbing their faces in it. When the Koopa obstruction was cleared, Kazooie sprang the duo upward onto one of the ropes and left it to Banjo to climb the rest of the way. Fox lingered behind most of the rest to make sure everyone else had cleared out of the casino before leaving the Houndmaster and whoever he was in charge of to their duties as he followed suit.

Considering that it was still morning, the child was already feeling pretty good about her accomplishments for the day. She took a seat at the bar (where she was probably considered too young to be allowed), popped the cork on her jar of Lon Lon Milk, drank down the first half, and cutely let out a contented sigh of relief as she delighted in the period of respite she had been granted.

The bear and bird, meanwhile, looked around for whoever they had to talk to about finding lodging for the day. After which came the issue of payment, but didn’t see much issue with that. If they needed funds badly enough, they could simply pawn anywhere between one or all of the four gold rings they got off of an angel earlier.

Fox wasn’t as quick to concern himself with finding a place to sleep, even if he probably should have been. He wasn’t presently in his means to pay for it if anyhow, as the check for the rescue operation in the Dead Zone wasn’t likely to clear in a hurry from… whoever was supposed to be sending it. Besides, he wanted to stick around in case anyone called on him for anything else, or if there was something else that needed to be done in general. He seated himself in an unoccupied booth for a short rest and started thinking back on his day.

The exhausting affairs of the previous and current day started to show on him as he boredly, tiredly laid his head back in the moments of reflective idling. He had some experience with other worlds, even going on missions in some of them, but none before were so collectively awful as those conglomerated in the Dead Zone. Someone must have thought he was fit for the job to have sent him alone into a ruinous hellscape of hostile angels, demons and the undead--all things he had minimal exposure to or knowhow in dealing with. Luckily, he ended up encountering others like him from different walks at the RCPD, and with their combined efforts, they managed to escape with the survivors holed up there.

That was the least surprising part to him, as he’d been down that road once before. Since then, nothing and no one could be considered ‘out of place’ to him anymore; not when seemingly nothing was restricted to any one place. On that note, he suddenly realized he couldn’t remember who sent out the call for that; whether it was a distress call or a blatant suicide mission mass distributed by a third party. They had won the day either way, so he wouldn’t dwell on it too much in either case. Though, that didn’t stop him from trying to better recall the events leading up to it, reaching farther back into his memory for some kind of answer...

How did he end up there anyway?

Bowser and his group, having been healed by Blazermate and assisted by Kamek, well, a white version of himself anyway, had to stand and bear Bowser almost yelling at the guild master for their reward from the last mission they had been on. "Must he be so noisy?" Sectonia said, examining her new magic item in one hand, while using her other to block the ear that was taking the brunt of Bowsers demands. "I got used to it. He is a big boy after all~." Blazemate said as the Courier came out of the hole looking for Blazermate's aid. The guy didn't look too hot, but he survived. Sectonia could only look at the man in... well disgust wasn't the right word. The guy was ugly for sure, but he also looked to be really beaten up. So as she was unsure of what to make of him, she waited as Blazermate healed the man up.

"C'mon Courier, you gotta stop getting so beat up. What would you do if I wasn't here?" Blazermate said as 6's wounds closed up thanks to the powerful healing beam. "By the way, like the new parts? Demon arm and some kind of weird head part that also gave me a new backpack. At least this time I kept my cuteness~." Blazermate said, showing what she had aquired from the Dead Zone. Speaking of Dead Zone, Blazermate then introduced Sectonia to the Courier, the Queen Bee still thinking Courier wasn't much of a looker, but he was at least passable now. "I can see what the loud king was saying. Your kind is very common outside of Popstar apparently." Sectonia said, only looking at the Courier with one of her big eyes before going back to examining the item Kamek had given her.

"We met Sectonia in the Dead Zone before we got here, like, RIGHT before we got here. I think shes pretty, but I don't think she has the 'team spirit' yet." Blazermate said, explaining Sectonia's presence here. She then moved close to 6, whispering. "Also she says shes a Queen. And well, Bowser's a king... Think that might mean anything?" Blazermate said, giving a playful giggle.

Blazermate backed up again to give 6 some space, continuing with. "Oh, I didn't tell you what my new parts did! They're cool. This demon arm..." Sectonia said, waving the arm, the shield blinking absently with its maw shut. "Lets me control the undead, make them stronger, and uh, make new undead! Plus its really loud and a decent enough shield." She then gestured to the parts she gained from the Robo medic. "This lets me use my Medaforce to make people INVINCIBLE! Its super super cool! Although, we ran into this guy who could freeze time in the Dead Zone who kind of put a sour spot on that after I made someone invincible to kill a bunch of big zombies." Blazermate said, a bit bitter about what had happened with the camera killer guy.

While Blazermate was giving her demonstration, Tora came into the guild hall, Din following him and looking really beat up. Blazermate, doing what she did, healed up the dancer when she came into range. "Hi Tora, Poppi, Din. Like my new parts? Also we got a new friend!" Blazermate said, explaining and telling the trio the same thing she did the Courier, Sectonia glad she had some servant to say all the introduction she needed here already. Although from the robot girl's demeanor she just seemed to help whatever wayward soul came her way. An odd creature, but useful no doubt. Sectonia, having thoroughly examined the item Kamek had given her, took out the other magical item she had claimed from the Dead Zone and sighed at how the thing looked strong, but would clash horribly with her royal outfit. "I don't suppose any of you have something to make this look more... appealing would you?" She said, holding the N'kuhana's Opinion in one of her hands, speaking to the people standing around Blazermate for her healing.

More and more of the people Blazermate knew, and some she didn't, came up and out of the hole. Most didn't beeline their way to Blazermate, although the new arrivals probably didn't know she was a medic. No one so far looked all that injured, and seeing as she didn't know most of the people here, she'd rather stay with her friends, only moving to heal someone who was really hurt. "Uh... I think someone does? Although Tora is more a mechanic. Maybe that'll help?" Blazermate said. She then asked. "So, did you guys make any new friends here like we did?"

The Courier chafed at Blazermate’s chastising of his injuries. Only he got to tell himself off for his own dumb things, nobody else. But yeah, he had been pretty dumb, hadn’t he? Well, no bother, the Dead Zone folks had come back and here she was bathing him in radiant, healing energy. The internal bruises sealed up, the swelling went down, and the skin closed up, no longer showing off his shiny metal bits underneath.

”The same thing I always did before I met ya, I reckon. Survive.” He mocked shooting himself in the head with his fingers, poking fun at his own past. The medabot then went into a personal diatribe about her new parts, which the Courier glanced over and nodded along with, only really pretending to be listening for the politeness of it all. She apparently thought that her cuteness went unmarred by the horrifying monster arm, but beauty was in the eye of the beholder… And the Courier really couldn’t care less one way or the other.

He had hoped to skip on out to take care of business, but then she just kept talking. Ok, there was a giant magic bee alien with them now. So what? Did she expect him to have a fruit basket prepared or something? Ugh. The irritation was stronger than it normally would have been thanks to the (now receding) effects of the inferno chem he had cooked up. Just breathe easy, don’t let it bother you. She’s excited. Pretend she’s one of the little kids back home, happy to find a new dress that isn’t covered in burn marks.

Wait, is she still going? And she’s back on about her new parts?! When does it end?! Is Blazermate stuck in a circular loop, unending because her programming is faulty and can’t find an end to the chain of command prompts?! Oh hey, Tora came inside and that got Blazermate’s attention. Thank Atom. The Courier used that opportunity to sneak around her and jet out the door. There was too much to do if they were going to prepare for that “G” ranked mission and… Wait a minute… He idly looked over his magazines and cache of bullets, coming to a painful realization. He was low on ammo. Frighteningly low. So it was either go buy the materials to make some, go buy the bullets themselves (unlikely in this town), or… Go back to Blazermate oh god why?

With a sigh he turned heel and headed into the guild hall once more. Sectonia seemed to be having a mini tragedy as she desperately hoped that someone could make an item of hers look more appealing (cosmetics were never his thing, but then again he was lucky to find the right part in working order when prospecting bombed ruins so eh). He ignored her to approach Blazermate one more time just as the bot asked if they had made any new friends.

”Friends are in short supply, mujer, but we did recruit a couple of new companions for this posse we got goin’ here.” he answered, feeling the need to address her before just making demands. ”Linkle ran into a magic using warrior, calls himself a witcher. Geralt if’n I remember right. An’ I got us a cadet. Goes by… Cadet. Seems native to this hunting hall. Both’re good at hunting monsters.”

With that out of the way, he segued into his own topic without any transition whatsoever, graceful as a truck taking to the water. ”Running out of ammo. Reckon I could make use of that dispenser a’yers.”

It was at that moment that Jak emerged from the hole leading down to the Devil’s Casino, aloft on his wings of light. Per usual he wasn’t alone as Daxter sat on his shoulder, but there was another too: that cup-headed cartoon. What was his name again? Ah yes, Cuphead! So simple, how could it have slipped his mind?

---

---

”Hey!” Daxter yelped as Linkle scooped him up. ”No touchy da merchandise!”

”Gosh!” Cuphead exclaimed. ”I don’t know if anything you just said is making a lick-a-sense! Galeem? The sun? And influence? Why, nobody can bind my heart!” To prove his point Cuphead opened up his chest like it was a cabinet door and pulled his heart out. It wasn’t shaped like an actual human organ, but like those cute depictions of a heart as two curves pressed together to a point, like an arrowhead. It was pink, large, and kept beating. He then put it back in his chest and closed it up, leaving no trace there was ever a door there to be opened.

”I’d wager it’s just the Devil up to his old Devil-y tricks again. He’s a crafty one, you know! I wouldn’t put it past him to somehow trick King Dice into thinking he’d been beaten down into a spirit.”

Jak and Daxter stood nearby watching this whole exchange. Both were staring at Cuphead, open mouthed and slack jawed. Daxter’s jaw was even touching the floor! He looked back up to Jak, then to Cuphead, and back to Jak, so on so forth until he finally settled on, of all people, Peach. ”Well this has been one heck of a day! Now if you wouldn’t mind putting me down Twinkletoes, I think I need to go scrub my brain of everything I just saw!”

”Come on, Dax. Let’s get a drink before we go kill some more demons.” Jak urged his little buddy to follow him, and the ottsel was more than happy to do so, though he did grab a nearby bottle of booze for the road. Jak once again became Light Jak, wings sprouting from his back. He was just about to take flight back up the hole when-

”Hold up!” Cuphead called out, flipping from his seat and landing back in front of the duo. ”Fancy taking a guest? I think it’d be jolly swell exploring a new land, especially if it’s where King Dice has been setting up shop!”

Jak, unable to speak in his light form, glanced over to Daxter. Daxter made a disgusted face, still remembering the heart fiasco from just a few moments ago. Jak shrugged and held out his hand, which Cuphead snagged with enthusiasm. ”Yippee!” he cried, and they were off, flying upward through the portal between lands!

---

---

Courier 6 gestured to Cuphead, who bounced off of Jak (who in turn kept walking until he went out the door) and began hopping around the guild hall with boundless excitement. ”Fuck me, I forgot about him. That’s Cuphead.” His voice made it clear that he was simply over it. ”Anyway, ammo dispenser please.”

”So this is a guild hall, eh? Someone give me the skinny! What’s it for? What do you do here?” He landed nearby Bowser and the guild marm, looking over a locked box. Recognizing the Koopa King from down below, he took to the big guy. ”Howdy! You’re that Bowser fella, right? Tryin’ ta get into that box? Noooo problemo! Let your friendly neighborhood Cuphead take care of that for ya!”

Cuphead held up his right index finger which morphed into a key-shape before their very eyes. He then stuck it in the lock and wiggled it around a bit while whistling an old tune. After a few moments something clicked and…

”Yeowch!” Cuphead pulled his finger out of the lock which appeared to be broken in a comical zigzag pattern. He glared at the lock. ”Why I outta-” With that he snapped with his left hand, firing out a single shot of his peashooter right into the lock.

---

"Huh." Linkle said, leaning back against the table as she watched Cuphead ascend up the hole with Jak and the newly freed Daxter. "You know, I always thought red eyed people hearing about this might react more...violently." She said with interest.

Once Linkle had started on her little explanation she hadn't really stopped. Galeem, spirits, friend hearts, how The lord of light and his hand minions could invade your mind if you still had red eyes and make you do stuff, how they planned to beat its butt and send everyone back home, even the uncomfortable revelation that being freed wasn't a permanent thing. "I was kinda hoping he'd go all weird and attack me or something! It'd be so much easier if the people I wanted free were trying to kill me. You can't just go around kicking people in the head, though. People start thinking you're crazy if you do that sort of thing." Linkle was speaking from experience. There was hardly a childhood bully or troublemaker in her village that hadn't ended up with one of young Linkle's boot-prints squarely on their keister. It was one heroic escapade her grandmother had not been thrilled by, mostly because it kept bringing disgruntled parents to their door.

She turned to Geralt. "Sorry this took a while. You must have been real confused for a little bit. I'm actually really surprised you came out of the control so clear headed. When I got free it was like waking up from a dream, I could hardly remember anything that had happened recently. Oh, speaking of!" She pulled her cloak around, running her finger around charred rim of the fresh burn holes the cigarette bats had put in it. "You wouldn't happen to know if Lumbridge has a expert tailor, would you?"

---

Seeing as there didn't seem to be anything left to do in the Casino, Linkle bid farewell to Pirouletta. "So long as this place is closed you could probably make some money up in Lumbridge. I know for a fact they appreciate dancers up there." There was no hint left of the girl that had threatened to feed the living roulette wheel to her pets, though the cucoos riding on her head and shoulders still promised retribution with their eyes. She didn't seem to notice the dissonance at all. "Well, take care of yourself. We'll probably be back eventually."

With that out of the way Linkle was free to jump up and grab on to one of the ropes handing down from the land of adventure. She went hand over hand, quickly propelling herself up into the busy guild hall.

Jak strolled out of the guild hall, Daxter on his usual spot right on his best friend’s shoulder. They hadn’t gotten to take a real good look at alum ridge before going to the hall to find Peach, so Jak took his time wandering around. The sights, the sounds, the smells, they really did remind him of Sandover Village, back when everything was… Happier. Sure, he wasn’t a time traveling hero of the last bastion of human civilization back then, and he wasn’t the champion of the Precursors, but… things were peaceful. And as much as he’d hate to admit it, he missed that.

”So where do you think the nearest tavern is, Jaky boy?” Daxter asked, downing the bottle of booze he swiped from the Devil’s Casino.

”I’m not sure you need more of that stuff.”

”Oh learn to have a little fun once in a while!” Daxter would’ve kept talking, but the neck of an alcohol bottle was more appealing to his lips at the moment.

“Hehey, watch it, longears!”

A raucous voice sounded out from behind the two. Toward Jak and Daxter rushed a large bird of prey with lustrous azure feathers and a triple-hinged beak, flying low. The demonic hawk carried a parcel swaddled in brown paper, and seemed to have no intent of giving bystanders a wide berth. Instead they were obliged to dodge out of his way as he flapped down the street. He made a turn that sent him in the direction of the town’s namesake bridge, narrowly missing Jak’s head in the process.

”WOAH!” Daxter dropped his booze, juggling it back up in the air several times as he tried to get a grip on it only for it to slip out his fingers again and again. Ultimately it dropped to the ground and shattered. Daxter looked down at the water drink as though he had just witnessed a murder, then back up to Griffon.

”Get back here you menace! I’ll fry you in a pan!” he shouted, shaking his fist.

Jak thought for a moment, then adjusted his path to follow the bird. ”Wasn’t that one of V’s demons?”

Daxter shrugged. ”Yeah, so? Doesn’t mean I won’t cook’em up with some salt and Cajun spice! Damn birds, always thinking they own the air around your head. Why are birds such assholes?” It was clear that Daxter was projecting some of his relationship with Pecker onto the situation.

”Where we find that demon, we find V,” Jak said simply.

”And where you find we’ll endowed women in skimpy bikinis, you find Daxter. I’m not following you, Jak.”

Jak rolled his eyes and kept the course for the bridge. ”I wanna have a talk with our poetry reading friend.”

”Aaaaaaah I get ya. Wait, is this an actual talk talk, or the pew pewpew pew talk?” Daxter enhanced his question with finger gun gestures.

”Depends on how cooperative he wants to be.”

Following Griffon led Jak to and then just after the bridge, where a few wrought-iron tables and accompanying chairs sat on a small terrace. By the time he arrived, the demon had already dropped off the parcel at the table where V sat and alighted on the chairback opposite him. In his typical solemn manner the Mysterious One had unwrapped his prize, a hamburger from the Clik Clak Diner, and was just about to take a bite.

Jak stepped in and took a seat opposite V. Griffon squawked in protest, unhappy that his spot was being usurped, but he cleared the way for Jak nonetheless. He sling his shoulder over the backrest and put one foot up on the table, making eye contact. Daxter jumped from Jak’s shoulder onto the table.

”Ooh, nice burger. You gonna finish that?” he asked in earnest, despite V having not even taken his first bite.

Jak ignored the antics of his friend in favor of a more serious approach. ”I’m not a big talker, so I’m gonna get right to the point. I want to know what your personal stake is in the Dead Zone. I’ve loved enough revenge and delving into darkness to recognize it when I see it. Something about that Qliphoth tree is personal to you.”

After giving a dubious ’are you serious?’ sort of look at Daxter, V gripped the burger to get a mouthful while Jak started to talk. He chewed at a measured, deliberate pace, clearly in no hurry to answer. Once he finally swallowed, V opened his mouth to begin speaking but ended up fsighing instead. Only after he dabbed at his mouth with a napkin did he say anything. “‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees’,” he quoted. A moment passed before he gave a slight smile. “Inside that tree is a powerful demon who has resurrected. He defeated Dante, the legendary devil hunter who I hired, as well as Trish and Lady, two of the strongest women in the world. And with every slaughter he grows stronger. You can see why he must be stopped.”

”Don’t dance around the point!” Jak suddenly shouted, his eyes turning pitch black and his skin becoming black purple, rippling with dark eco. The transformation ended as soon as it began. ”I understand we’ve got to kill a demon. Like I said, I’ve seen people like you. I’ve lived it. I want to know what your stake is in this. Does it have to do with your failing health?”

”Or MAYBE he’s just upset the guy is better at controlling demons than him!“ Daxter was still a liiiittle sore with Griffon.

"Ohoho, you just gonna take that, V?" Griffon cackled.

The tattooed man gazed out across the river, breathing deeply. "Your concern for me is...touching. But you needn't worry about me." He closed his eyes, shrugging. "You needn't continue on this path at all, in fact. It's not your fight, or even your business. Other regions need saving too. Leave the Qliphoth to Nero, my familiars, and me." Once again he raised his burger for another bite. Griffon landed on his shoulder, watching Jak and Daxter with triplicate eyes.

”Nobody asked you, bird brain!” Daxter said, flipping the bird the, well, the bird.

”Dax, knock it off!” Jak shouted, grabbing his friend and holding him in place. He then turned back to V. ”Nero made it sound personal too. That he knows this Dante guy… And his arm.” Jak trailed off for a moment, letting it sink in. ”But you don’t come across as the selfless type to me. And you’re right, there’s a lot of saving that needs done in this messed up world. But Dax and I? We’re heroes. Saving is what we do.”

”Lives, days, damsels in distress,” Daxter counted each off on his fingers.

”Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, I get it. I’ve already talked more than I usually do in a day. I’m just… Trying to reach out. Let you know that I’ve been there. I understand.”

V set the diminished burger down. For a moment he seemed to be on edge, but that tension had faded away. "I appreciate your earnestness. This world is fortunate to be so replete with heroes. You will not lack for work, wherever you might go." He picked up his black book, its only identifying feature the single letter on its cover. "'Dip him in the river who loves water'...I wish you luck on your travels."

”And what the heck is THAT supposed to mean, huh? Speak-a da normal language, o-k?” Daxter exclaimed, talking as though V were a dumb foreign tourist.

”You too,” Jak said, getting up from the seat. ”... As long as your personal stake doesn’t conflict with the safety of the people. Let’s go, Dax.” What little Jak had learned from this conversation, one thing was clear. While he considered V a powerful ally, he was less sure than ever of the magician’s goals and true allegiance.

V and Griffon watched the pair go. When Jak and Daxter disappeared around a corner, V let out his breath. The packed earth around his table swam, bubbling black, rising up to become Shadow. Rumbling, the demon panther looked up at V inquisitively. "Curious," the Mysterious One murmured. "Why would you be interested in my personal stake, 'heroes'?"

Shadow growled, which prompted Griffon to nod. "Yeah, we'll keep an eye on 'em. Ain't nice to try mindin' other people's business."

V looked down at the place where the other half of his burger had been, and frowned. "...Indeed."

"Hey hey hey hey," Cadet started, thumping Bowser on the shell to get the big guy's attention. Cadet was sympathetic to the poor guildmarm's eardrums and nerve. Needless to say he cared about the woman very much, his feelings deeper than just the camaraderie of being from the same "world" among this multiversal super mix-up. "I know it's probably your default volume, but there's no need to yell pal, she's got it for us!" The hunter gave the guildmarm an apologetic smile, which was quickly replaced with an expectant sparkle in his eye when she located the G-ranked quest... or, the box that held it anyway. She'd listed off the rewards for the previous quest too, but Cadet was already looking forward to the next one. Still, poor dude was zenniless, and rupees could go a long way in Lumbridge. Then again -

"How do you guys split rewards?" he asked of Kamek, figuring he might have more answers than the Koopa King. "There's like, what, twelve of you guys? Of us I mean, I'm definitely in for the whole saving the world long haul thing."

A little bit away and over the chatter, Cadet heard the sound of his name and looked over to see a familiar face in the Courier, with some not-so-familiar faces. Was that a giant bug? And... what the heck was that on the lil robot lady's arm? Oh well, they had to be friends right? Cadet raised and arm and waved them all over when another new friend made his way over. He was small, animated, and pretty curious about everything. Cadet was more than happy to talk about something he actually had experience with.

"It's a hall for the guild! Duh! This guild is for adventurers, you can hang out and get advice or take jobs here," the hunter informed with a smile, "and the next job's in that box!"

It wasn't but a moment later that the cute cartoon tackled the lock on the little chest, and Cadet stood nearby with bright eyes eagerly awaiting the top to pop open.

A few at a time, heroes gathered in the Guild Hall. Hat Kid popped up out of the hole thanks to her grappling hook and made a beeline for the in-house bar, where she thankfully procured her own spirits to enjoy in her newfound free time. Banjo and Kazooie, who emerged from the Casino not long after, got up using limbs made heavy by hours of exertion without rest, and straight away left to crash in the Great Ton Pu Inn, which always accommodated heroes.

Blazermate and Sectonia remained nearby to exchange words, with the medabot in particular chatting up anyone who’d listen -however reluctantly- about her new upgrades and her time in the Dead Zone. They were joined in short order by Tora, Poppi, and Din, whose condition needed no explanation. Still, the Nopon greeted her anyway. “Hi-hi, Blaze-Blaze! Friend Din here hit head, need pick-me-up, meh.” Blazermate doled out healing dutifully, restoring the dancer to peak condition. As her punch-induced daze and bleariness faded away, she stretched her arms with a yawn, as though waking up from a dream.

“Oh...hey there! Blazermate, Courier, Bowser.” She treated the others to a warm smile. More seemed to be on the way still, with Linkle appearing over the rim of the hole a moment later and Peach right behind. Seeing them, Din perked up to wave, but she found herself interrupted by someone who’d ascended just before them.

“Diiiiiin!” A purple blur shot between Sectonia and Blazermate to wrap itself around the redhead. It turned out to be Menat, the fortune teller some of the heroes met just yesterday, and she hugged her fellow dancer tight. “It’s so nice to see you again! And you’re back with your friends! I heard you were giving up your quest.”

Din looked sheepish. “...Yeah.” She turned to address the heroes, eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry for leaving. It just all...came to a head, you know? But you all have been kind to me, helped me when I needed it, and appreciated what I could do in return. My place is with you all.” Linkle punctuated that by running up and wrapping her arms around the both her and Menat, peeved a little that the fortune teller had gotten there first.

”New friend?” Blazermate asked, pointing at Menat who had barged past her and Sectonia. Since she was in the Dead Zone, Blazermate was unaware of Din giving into Galeem’s light earlier.

“We made a bunch of new friends here.” Linkle said, squeezing the both of them while looking around at the unfamiliar faces in the room. “You guys made some friends too, huh?”

Nearby, Cuphead fumbled with the lock, his attempt to pick it a failure. Instead he resorted to blasting it, which did the trick. Hardly the sturdiest of its kind, the lock fell away to permit access to the contents of its box, and the Guildmarm picked it up while clearing her throat. “The G-rank hunt. ‘Fight to the Bitter End’. At the most southeastern part of the Land of Adventure there looms a giant purple bubble, a zone of distortion awash in uncanny light. Nothing sent in has ever recovered. Even the land outside this cursed space is twisted and evil, and dangerous foes roam there. As an adventurer of the highest caliber, it falls to you to enter, find the entity whose power sustains the distortion, and strike it down--for the sake of us all.”

A stunned silence reigned momentarily. The Guildmarm blinked twice. “Whoa. That sounds pretty serious.”

“- and exciting,” Cadet chimed in. He scratched the back of his head trying to think where exactly this area could be, he hadn’t seen it during his time in the Land of Adventure. Southeast huh?

“Sounds like it’ll get us all killed if we go in thinking like that,” Geralt mumbled, rolling his eyes. “Enthusiasm’s good, kid, but something like this? Never a good idea to go in expecting anything but the worst when you’re going in blind.” He smirked at the Cadet, trying to show it was all in good faith. “Still, I WOULD like to see what the hell is going on. They only just told me about...everything.” He sounded weary. He was too old for this shit. Even Vesemir only had to deal with a few worlds maybe getting destroyed, not...all of them.

“I agree,” Donnie said, “Knowing is half the battle, as they say.”

”Wowzers!” exclaimed Cuphead. ”You’re a real bring-down sort of guy, ain’t ya?” He slapped Geralt on the back with a chuckle. The Cadet laughed along with him, making sure to turn his grin toward the Witcher to let the other man know no offense was taken. ”I love this lil’ guy.”

Tora flapped his wings. “Everyone in high spirits after weird boss fight, meh! Ready for more!”

”Y’all should take this more seriously,” the Courier chimed in. ”We already lost some good, tough hombres. Some real badasses.”

”And if its anything like Peach’s Castle… You’ll for sure need me there.” Blazermate said, remembering the previous zone fight with MegaDragonBowser.

“If we want to know more about this place, why not ask Menat?” Linkle said. The idea came easy, the girl was right there after all. Linkle leaned her head toward the fortune-teller, not breaking the hold. “She told us our fortunes yesterday.”

“Oh!” The girl stood up straight and separated from Din, trying to adopt a serious composure. She cleared her throat and raised her hands in ceremonious fashion, then remembered something, coughed, and spoke without a whole lot of mystique. “Uh...every time I try to scry that place, I get the same weird visions that don’t make much sense. I see islands made of cheese, freaky black stretchy things, and a lot of TV static.” She winced. “I haven’t been doing scouting missions regularly, either. Sorry!”

A familiar head of blonde hair pushed through the hustle and bustle of people to intrude upon the gathering of heroes. “I might be able to help with that,” Euden said. “It’s very far to the southeast, across the plains. About twice as far as to the Hamlet, I’d guess. The land starts sloping upward, turning jaggy and mountainous. Eventually it’s mostly canyons and cliffs. There’s weird stuff like places where the ground is corrupted, giant skulls, and lots of monsters. Even some fiends from my world.” He nodded sagaciously, his arms crossed.

”And there’s some kind of bubble too? Have you seen it, Euden? Is it on the top of one of the mountains?” Cadet asked, trying to wrap his brain around the image the shapeshifter was attempting to paint for them. Maybe it was similar to the weird way the hilltop from the night before shifted?

“Sort of, it’s right in the middle of the mountain range,” the young prince assured him. “The web of canyons and such lead right into it. Can’t miss it.”

“Could it be from your world?” Linkle asked. “Fiends are monsters from your world, right? If they’re helping to guard it then maybe it’s part of home.” That was a long shot. After all, fish monsters didn’t live in the waters of Hyrule. Well they did, but not fish monsters she had seen.

Euden shook his head. “I doubt it. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

Ever a wealth of questions, Ace Cadet butted back in. ”What are fiends anyway? And what are the other monsters like? Probably nothing we can’t handle, but we’re gonna need the right kind of gear.”

The question left Euden looking thoughtful. “Fiends are monsters that can come in all sorts of forms. Anything from evil-looking wolves, rats, and slimes to giant or humanoid forms. As for other enemies...there are things that look like giant floating helmets, bird people, lion wheels, giants, you name it.”

”Oh. So a bunch of stuff huh? Just groovios.” The red head folded his arms behind his head, his tone teetering on sarcasm, but he didn’t actually seem concerned.

The Courier shrugged, though he remained contemplative. ”Long as I can put holes in’em, I can kill’em.”

Donnie, ever the odd one out in his weird armor, took all of this in with unusual calm before interjecting. “There’s another possibility…” he said. “An Old God. A manifestation of pure Void, prone to driving mortals to insanity with an idle glance, only able to force pieces of itself into our reality at a time. We’ve only ever killed weak ones, their heralds, or driven off parts of their bodies. Basically, imagine a giant flesh monster that’s all tentacles, eyes, and teeth, and likes to rape minds, and you’re on the right track. We’d need a team at least twice the size to go up against one of those, so I’m hoping it’s not that.”

“Then our timing couldn’t have been better,” came from a voice on approach. “We just came here with a full team, with one already here,” Fox reminded the monk, as well as stating the fact to the others, “Looks like we already have twice the team.” Of course, he wasn’t so much rationalizing as he was simply projecting calm confidence.

Tora and Poppi exchanged a worried look. “Monsters Tora and Poppi can handle,” the Nopon declared. “But if crazy old voidy things out there like Thing from last night...mehmehmeh…” Nobody, he felt sure, wanted to run into any more insanity-inducing horrors anytime soon. Or ever.

That made the monk do a double take. “Wait, what the fuck happened while I was in the Dead Zone?!” Donnie asked incredulously, his previous Zen-like calm shattered instantly.

Peach, after giving Donnie a pointed glare for his swearing, pulled him aside so that his outburst wouldn’t disrupt the meeting. “We spent most of the day doing various quests, and by nighttime we could take the hardest one on offer. It was a hunt for a dinosaur called a Brachydios, but the place we found it was a cursed farmstead. It had been infected by this...color. Like nothing I’d ever seen. It burned just to look at it. And there was this..Thing. From beyond the stars. Twisted flesh and vile crystal. Fighting it just about drove us insane.” She shivered despite the warmth of the populous hall on a warm day.

”Sounds like you guys had the worst of it. We just had to run from zombies and demons and stuff.” Blazermate said, shrugging. Sectonia, much like Peach, wasn’t too pleased with the ornately dressed human either, but since the other princess beat her to it, she just hovered there, listening.

”Having battled in both zones I can confirm that the Thing was... Well it was definitely something else.” Kamek agreed ”Completely unexpected too, everything else up till that point was rather bright and breezy by comparison to both it and the dead zone.”

“...By Xuen, I’m glad you all got out alive and kept your sanity.” Donnie replied. “I don’t remember any Old Gods with a color motif, but just the fact that there are things like them in this world...well, we need to be very, very careful if one shows up again. Anyway…” he turned back to the meeting. “Yeah Fox, I guess we do have twice the team, but like I said to Peach, we need to take these things seriously. It’s good to be confident, but confidence alone will get us nowhere.”

The pilot smirked with a lidded half nod. “I plan to take more than that with me,” he retorted in a casually assuring manner. “Even a good few we can manage with, but we’ll take all we can get.” As always, even knowing as little as they all did about what they would be up against, he felt good about their chances. A little better than usual, actually… It gave him somewhere better to direct his attention, lest he think too hard for too long about the events leading up to here…

”Just be careful. I can only heal one person at a time. Blazermate said. Unlike Medafights, which were 3 v 3 for the most part, this would be a large form fight with many people, and as far as Blazermate knew, only her and Din could actually heal people. ”...Unless you guys don’t mind sitting next to a Dispenser. Speaking of which...” Blazermate interjected, summoning Dell and asking him to make a dispenser only, dismissing the engineer when he made the building and upgraded it all the way. Courier had asked for one of these earlier, but Blazermate was a bit too preoccupied with the current chatter previously to make it.

”These clones of mine can also provide healing, though they aren't as potent as your’s Blazermate” Kamk added, jabing a thumb at his two idling white mage doppelgangers hanging around the Guild.

Geralt nodded, and patted his side. “I’ve got some healing potions, but...well, if you’re not me, the big boss, or some kind of inhuman monster, and I mean that literally, it will kill you.”

Then Donnie had an idea. “You know, the first step in any serious operation is scouting, right? Do you think we can try and get some more info on what we’re going up against? I have a flying machine and a flying disc, and I’d happily use one of them and donate the other. Any other fliers here willing to run recon?”

A certain artificial blade raised a hand, jumping up and down a little. “Poppi can fly and sees good.” Tora frowned, pretty sure that he knew how he felt about letting Poppi wander into unknown territory without him.

”I can also fly and I am capable of teleporting myself long distances. However my eyesight has seen better days” kamek said as he adjusted his spectacles

“I can fly… pilot, I mean,” he emphasized for clarity.

”If you need a Pilot then I’m your cup!” Cuphead added. ”I’m a real whizz in a plane, y’know!”

“Wait, right,” Donnie remembered, putting a hand to his chin. “Its territory is a giant bubble. There’s no guarantee it’ll let us out once we enter, so running recon might just divide our forces and make it easier for it to kill us. Not a good idea, now that I think about it. But running in, swords raised, doesn’t sit well with me either. Still though, if it’s a choice between letting it divide and conquer us and making it deal with all of us at once, I’ll pick the latter.”

”We’ve pretty much got a whole fleet to fight this bubble making thing, but…” Ace Cadet glanced at the Courier, the man having mentioned that the group had lost people before now. ”...as long as we all stick together and keep an eye out for each other, we should be fine! Right?”

“A fair point. Still, before we all go in, everyone that was in the Dead Zone needs sleep.” He took off his helmet, revealing the gray bags under his eyes from sleep deprivation. “We stayed up all night. Everyone else should probably use that time to prepare and stock up. There’s a good smithy run by three sisters here in Lumbridge. I got my armor repaired there, they do good work and will fix it up in minutes. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a good magic or potions shop around here too, though I’m sure Geralt and Cadet know more than I on that front. They’ve been here longer.” He turned to the Ace Cadet. “You mind playing tour guide, by the way?”

”Of course not!”

“Excellent.”

“He’s right,” concurred the vulpine, “We still have the day. Use it!" His tone had shifted subtly to one more assertive. “Gather whatever you need, and whoever you can. I'm sure some of you already know each other; what you're capable of; what you need. Prepare accordingly. If you have any last minute affairs, settle them before dusk. If you need rest, get it. We'll meet back here before sundown before we move out.” With that, Fox quietly made his leave to go take his own advice, seeking out Howard, Leon, and the rest to inform them of the mission before looking for a place to lay his head down for the afternoon. It was unlikely that the relatively primitive setting would be able to accommodate him the way he was used to, but for no more than he needed, it would more than suffice.

”Agreed,” the Courier said, moseying on over to the ammo dispenser. ”I’ll be cooking up a bunch of chems and experimenting with the new ingredients Kamek got me from the Dead Zone. Takin’ requests.”

Almost as if right on cue, his new robot companion Gaige-Tron emerged from the hole leading down into the Devil’s Casino by way of the Cadet’s slinger. It approached its master and opened a chest compartment, revealing a bunch of plastic chips, tobacco, alcohol, fabrics, and all manner of other stuff pilfered from the casino.

”Oh Courier, know how to make anything that might make someone stronger from your chems? I can’t use it, but giving someone something like that then making them invincible sounds really interesting!” Blazermate said, thinking as to how useful that would be when dealing with hordes or large creatures.

The Courier's offer to mix up some “Chems” also piqued Linkle’s interest. She remembered the feeling of the stuff he’d spread around earlier fixing her up. For the first time she let go of Din. “Could you make some of that stuff from before for everybody? You know, the stuff you spit out with your funny hat.” She thought about it for a moment, shifting from foot to foot, the weight of Din’s wallet shifting uncomfortable with her. It reminded her of what she’d intended to buy with it. “Can you make anything that’s, like, green? There was this green potion back home that let me go really crazy when I drank enough of it.”

Seeing as the others were requesting things of this ‘courier’, Sectonia had a request of her own. ”If you have the know how, I will request something to make everyone beautiful. Paints, cosmetics, and their ilk will do fine.” She said, figuring she could pretty a few of these faces up. At least the ones that showed some promise.

Next in line, the Cadet made his voice heard again. ”If I’ll be showing people around Lumbridge, I might have a request too! Uh, she - ” he gestured towards Blazermate, realizing he didn’t quite learn her name yet, but introductions could wait for a little longer, ”- mentioned demons or something which reminded me, where I come from we’ve got this thing called a demondrug, it makes you super strong for a little bit after you drink it. Or it can be made into a powder! You usually make it with berries but maybe something like that could get whipped up with whatever you got from the Dead Zone…?”

He didn’t sound completely sure, but maybe it was worth a shot… and speaking of Blazermate, the red headed hunter turned back to her with a smile. “I can back you up with healing items too, I’m not stingy with my lifepowders. If I have the stuff I can make potions, or more lifepowders, or recover ammo…” he counted the items off with his fingers.

”I’ve got ammo covered. This dispenser is amazing for that!” Blazermate said to Cadet. ”But yeah, healing is nice.”

The Courier chuckled. All these requests! The last time he offered his services nobody took him up, now all of a sudden after seeing how useful his chems were they were lining up in droves. He accepted the challenge for them all, though he noted that Sectonia’s cosmetics would be of a… lessened priority. Probably wouldn’t get to it, really. Ok, he straight up ignored the request on the grounds that it was fucking stupid. But the others he happily agreed to.

Tora looked more than a little put out that the Courier was getting all the attention. He started bouncing up and down, waving his wings. "Meh meh! Tora can help too! Fix stuff, make it better, make new stuff! Tora top-of-line inventor! Just look at Poppi!"

He slid over to her and spread his wings like a showman. Poppi jumped into an energetic pose, smiling but with a slight wince. "Masterpon exhibit startling lack of humility, but not wrong. If friends need more advanced tech than smithy give, we are happy to help."

Peach, of all people, looked interested. She spoke up with crossed arms. "Could you make me a new scatterblaster? Mine got melted in the fight with Wheezy. I could use some grenaducks as well...actually, now that I think about it, regular grenades would be fine. No need to dumb it down."

Nopon and blade nodded emphatically, and in unison. "Easy-peasy!"

Geralt also chimed in to that request, “I should make some Grapeshot bombs, myself. Maybe get a hold of more ingredients too. Little things are downright nasty.”

Tapping Sectonia on her abdomen to get her attention, Blazermate said ”You might want to ask Tora there to help with your crown problem there. I’m sure he can figure something out with it!” Sectonia thought for a moment about this, as her plans were to just paint it herself and wear it, but someone who would willingly do all the leg work did appeal to her. ”Tora? Is it in your skill set to combine magical and non magical items and decorate them?” Sectonia asked the, rather odd looking onion bird thing. While his speech was odd, she had known stranger looking things under her command, and his roundness was oddly comforting.

Tora stared at her blankly. "What magical?"

Sectonia looked at Tora with a sigh, pointing at Poppi. ””Isn’t she made out of something magical?”

The Nopon shook his head. "No magical in Poppi." He didn't even know who this bug-person he was talking to was, but he kept that to himself for now.

“I can enchant equipment,” Donnie added. “If anyone minds staying here for a few extra hours after I rest up, I could work on your stuff. Make necklaces spawn rains of arrows that fall from the sky, enchant a pair of gloves to make you a bit smarter, that kind of thing.”

Sectonia sighed again at Tora, clearly there was more she needed to know about how this world worked. Surprisingly the ornate looking human that looked like he just wanted to punch stuff piped up offering his aid. ”That will work. I will come to see you soon then.” Sectonia said, curious as to what this man was talking about.

"So this is where everyone went." Joker spoke up, the trio of thieves walking into the hall and to the others. Though since there were no threats in the area, the thieves' outfits had shifted back into their Shujin uniforms. In their place was Ryuji, Ann, and Ren, the leader thief clearly worn out now that he was without his mask at the moment. "So, what's going on?" Ren asked.

“We’re gonna kill the worst monster in the land.” Linkle said, looking the newcomers up and down. She didn’t know who these people were, but they didn’t really fit the aesthetic of the Land of Adventure. She assumed they must have come from the other side of the party. In fact, there were a few people interested in going that Linkle had never seen before, like the fox and the giant bee. “I think this is an open adventure, if you don’t mind some danger. When they...” she gestured vaguely around the room at whoever she could spot, to Bowser, the Courier, Gaige-Tron, back to Din, “...Beat the big monster back in the Mushroom Kingdom something really cool happened.”

“I was born 4 hours ago,” Gaige-Tron inserted.

“Wait.” Linkle said, staring at her in confusion. Yeah, no, she would have remembered a big robot. “I swear I’ve seen you before.”

”Didn’t Courier take the spirit of that robot tank thing? Guess he upgraded them. Did you help Tora?” Blazermate said, scratching her head. She then turned to Joker. ”Oh yeah, you were in the dead zone too! These are our friends. You’ll like them!” Blazermate said to Joker, gesturing to the Land of Adventure group.

”YOU HEROES CAN'T HELP PICKING UP NEW STRAYS WHEREVER YOU GO, CAN YOU HUH?” Bowser said as he rejoined the party, followed by Jr. ”NOT THAT I’M COMPLAINING. A BIGGER ARMY’S A BETTER ARMY!”

The pair had been over by the bar while the others had been talking. While there Jr. had drunk the Guild dry of child friendly beverages and was now thoroughly rehydrated.

”Welcome back Sire, do you need a recap?”

”Nahh. You found the Boss’s spooky monster-infested castle and then there was a bunch of blabbering about doing stuff before going.” Bowser summarised.

”Indeed. Personally I was intending to pop back to her majesty's castle. I have some questions for the Master of Masters, seeing as I believe he knows a bit about the portal used by Gneidxick and his bullying companion used to flee. Also he mentioned something called a “Nobody” last time. Could be that these imposters are related to whatever a nobody is based on the diatribe the woman went off on. Any info on the powers and abilities of these hooded menaces might be most helpful, don’t you agree?”

Bowser shrugged while Jr pipped up excitedly: ”Oh Oh. Can you check if that Steven guy has more pokemon stuff yet?”

“Any chance of setting up a teleporter over there? I’ve been planning to set my Hearthstone--a one-way teleportation device--to Peach’s Castle, but I forgot to do it before we left,” Donnie added.

”I don’t see why not. It would let you see the man’s stock yourself Jr.” Kamek said before asking Blazermate and the Dead Zone team in general, ”Unless the teleporter needs to stay pointed back at the deadzone? Is the other end safe? If so I can pop through, pick it up and then move the other end back and forth.”

”Well, we were being chased by a giant horde before this guy in green armor came out of the tower we hid in to fight said horde. I left a sentry gun there to guard it but its up in the air if its safe or not.” Blazermate said. ”I could always just make a new exit if needed. It just takes me a minute or so.”

”Really it’s just a matter of how desperately you want to get back there. If you can't guarantee the safety of that end then maybe not going is for the best?” Kamek replied, clearly not feeling up to taking that risk.

”I’m sure we could hike back and not lose much time. We had to destroy these tree root things and well, yeah, not sure how close we were to one before we hid and got all those police station survivors out.” Blazermate said, shrugging. ”Put it to a vote maybe?

"Actually, the tower should be safe now. Well, safe-ish." Ren said, adjusting his glasses. "When I stayed behind to find these two, the horde was cleared away." He motioned to his friends. "But there's no way in hell we're heading back to that place any time soon." Ryuji added.

Sectonia let out a light laugh at hearing of this ‘master of masters’ ”Master of Masters? That sounds absolutely pretentious.” She said, mostly at Kamek.

”True, but he’s a rather interesting mage to talk to, so it balances out.” Kamek replied

“Oh, and Tora,” the monk said, turning to the Nopon. Any chance you could soup up the Dwarven Flying Machine? I have some upgrades I’ve been meaning to get done, but since Galeem took away my engineering skill I haven’t really been able to work on it. Oh, also, can I sit in on your tinkering sessions for a few minutes before I go to bed? I think that’ll be everything I need to get my memory back, just like with cooking back at the castle.”

Everyone talking seemed to have the Nopon a little overwhelmed. "Muh, sure," he said.

”I would like to get back some of my magic. You know the method to regain the memories this ‘Galeem’ took?” Sectonia asked Donnie, Donnie having her attention having just complained about what she had been annoyed with the past hour or so.

“No, in my case I lost most of my trade skills. The only way to get them back has been to sit in on someone else doing that trade for a few minutes. When it comes to magic though, it usually comes back on its own, but it’s slow as a tortoise and you don’t know what you’ll get back and when. It seems to only get slower over time too.”

Sectonia momentarily balled one of her hands in anger before releasing it and saying. ”A shame then.”

”I think I’ve been lucky on the remembering front. I ‘think’ I remembered all my medabot stuff in like a few days? But we’re not that complicated. And even if I forgot something, you can get cool parts like making people invincible! No medabot has anything close to that!” Blazermate said, not really helping matters, but hopefully reassuring the two of them since she had been in this Galeem hunting party longer than the two of them. ”Although there WAS that medachange thing the Blazer Multis had, but they were so bulky and ugly…” Blazermate muttered to herself.

"We can't really afford to forget our personas though." Ann shrugged at what Blazermate said. "For some reason they've been weakened, but that seems to be- She stopped herself mid-sentence to look at Ren. 'Wait, Ren, you lost most of your personas, didn't you?" With a nod from the leader thief, she sighed. "Guess you got it worse than us."

"It's fine, Ann. I managed to work my way around it, haven't I? Ren reassured Ann. "Kinda sucks Arsene wasn't able to help much, but at least I'm okay now."

The thieves' added conversation, just one of many talking around and over one another, ended up tipping the balance of the situation. It was getting chaotic. "Hold it!" Peach shouted over the hubbub. "We're going on too many tangents. Let's sum up before we all get lost and stand around for hours." Taking command of the meeting, she held up her hand and started listing things off one by one, using a finger for each. "We're going on the G-rank hunt, likely for this region's champion. Those who went to the Dead Zone need to recover, so we'll go in eight hours or so, around 4 o'clock. 6 and Tora are offering their services to help prepare. Kamek and Blazermate are going to try and set up a way to return to my castle. The rest of us should make preparations, resupply, do some training maybe. Ask around to see who's going. Does that sound alright?" She looked over the gathered heroes expectantly.

”Yessir Ms. Peach! I’ll see what I can do, and if anyone needs to know where anything is around here, I’m your man!” the Cadet said with a salute. Linkle mimicked him, also throwing out an enthusiastic salute.

Sectonia appreciated this Peach putting everyone in place, although she wasn’t sure how she felt about being ‘commanded’ like that, even if Peach was being nice about it. ”I could use some rest. Being stuck in a tube isn’t becoming of a Queen.” she said. She doubted this place had any rooms that would match her concept of beauty though, which did irritate her.

”I think that works. Donnie, are you ok with hiking it back to the Dead Zone after we’re done with the G rank hunt?” Blazermate asked, fine with flying back to Peach’s Castle with Kamek.

“I mean, yes I can fly over there, but it’s probably going to take hours, hours that we don’t have.”

”All I need to do is go through the teleporter to the dead zone, grab it, and then transport that end back to the castle in a flash,” Kamek pointed out ”So there will be no need for long journeys.”

”Then I can have Dell just make another side here and you can teleport that instead. It’d be safer.” Blazermate interjected. ”Just give me a little bit. I already summoned Dell earlier to make that dispenser, he needs time to rest.”

At that point someone else stepped in. The devil hunter known as Nero approached Donnie and Blazermate with a request. “Hey, if you’re gonna be moving that thing, could you wait a bit? V and I have unfinished business there. Nadia, too. Once we catch our breath, we’ll be on our way.”

”I mean sure? We’ll be going back there after this G rated mission and maybe rest after that, so at worst if you stick with us you’ll be back tomorrow. But you guys know how to survive there, so you should be fine waiting a day for us. You’ll know when we’re there, with the whole zombie horde following my commands and all~.”

Nero nodded, satisfied. His inquiry marked the end of the overall discussion, and people began to disperse. Whether to work, to rest, or simply to explore, they possessed a few hours to do with what they willed before the plan swung into motion at four.

”Right then. One teleport back to Peach's castle coming right up. You!” Kamek pointed at his red doppelganger ”You’re going to check if it's safe for me to do this.”

The clone, who had been standing around looking for threats saluted and then began to march in the direction Kamek ordered it.

”Kamek! Take this too!” Jr called before tossing the old wizard the coffin smasher, the wooden hammer that worked exactly the same way as the engineer's wrench. After a few comical missed/juggling grabs Kamek finally caught it and popped it into a robe pocket. ”To get it up and running I take it?” he enquirered, receiving a ”Yup” in response from Jr.

The Koopa trio marched over to the teleporter and oversaw the red mage Kamek clone successful teleporting back and forth unharmed a few times. Satisfied that he wasn't about to disappear to his doom Kamek bid the royals farewell, stepped on board and vanished.

”What do you even want to see this Steven guy so bad anyway?”

”Well. See. Mimikyu’s been super helpful” Jr explained, petting the bobble-head of his only Pokemon as he praised it, ”But I have no idea how to use them properly. Like they’re some kind of... Plush doll ghost copy of pikachu with shadow powers or something? You remember that Pokemon trainer right. THE Pokemon trainer. He knew all about what his minions could do when he was ordering them about and he had this wicked elemental combo attack with them right? But I have barely any idea what Mimi can do or what they’re gonna end up being able to do. And if, no when, I catch more Pokemon I need to know stuff about them, know as much about them as I do about my Koopas and Goombas and other minions. So this guy seems like a good start with that. Plus maybe i can get more balls and any other gear he’s got on him”

”Uh huh. Sounds good son.” Bowser replied, not following the details but proud of his son’s decision to seek self improvement. ”Here, take some of this. And this,” he then added as he got some gold and rupees out of his pocket and handed them to Junior ”, in-case he has got stuff”

”Wow,” jr said as he found himself holding a pile of money, ”Ok. Yeah. I definitely need a bag or something”

At that moment Kamek reappeared and announced ”It is done,” loudly so anyone intending to pop back would know ”We now have a way back. Make sure you all get back by four as i will be moving the teleporter back to its original position at that point”

”Yeah yeah yeah. Also toss my hammer back in my car now that you're done with it” Jr replied before waddling onto the teleporter with his pile of gold and jewels. ”See you in a bit papa,” he said before vanishing.

”With your leave sire?” Kamek asked his king as he deposited the necro smashed in jr’s clown car that was parked next to the Bowser mobile upon which the teleporter was still mounted.

”Yeah yeah, you two go off and learn stuff,” Bowser replied, waving the mage off off.

”Thank you sire. I’ll endeavor to learn all I can so I can continue to advise you as best I can,” Kamek said before he bid the king farewell, stepped up onto the teleporter and disappeared.

”Right. Wait. So now what am I doing?” Bowser asked nobody in particular, suddenly realizing that they were all going to be hanging around town till early evening and he had zero plans for what he was going to do with that time.

---

On the other side of the teleporter Kamek and Jr found themselves in the foyer of Peach’s castle where the mage had temporarily set up the exit.

”Remember to be back for 4 jr.” Kamek called after Jr., who was in the process of wandering off looking for the Pokemon expert. After receiving a dismissive agreement from the prince from the boy Kamek shook his head and then remembered something. He rummaged around in his cloak and retrieved the Madman's Knowledge from his cloak. He had not had time to deal with it back during the Gneidxick incident, but even then he had sensed its yearning to be unleashed, absorbed, learned. He’d had some reservations, it was a skull after all, but the hypothesis some had raised that the place they would be going might be a realm of otherworldly terrors like the Thing from Beyond the Stars made Kamek brushed his few concerns aside. After all what, Kamek thought, was trepidation in the face of the potential to gain power through knowledge?

With some effort he crushed the skull between his hands, extracted the glowing light within and pressed it against his head as he might do a spirit.

---

As everyone started to split up Linkle was eager to get good and prepared, face the challenge of Galeem’s champion, and free another chunk of the world. Before that, though, there was something important she had to do. There was something that she’d have to be an absolute idiot to not notice.

“C’mon.” she said cheerfully, grabbing Din’s hand and practically pulling the other girl to the door. “Let’s go see what they’ve got for sale around here.”

However, as they cleared the door and went further up the street the pep in Linkles step seemed to lose a bit of its energy. She slowed down when they were away from the others, a slightly more serious look on her face. She looked at Din hesitantly, like she was trying to come up with something to say, before finally deciding to keep it simple. “Are you okay?”

The dancer looked more than a little embarrassed, given the recent history between the two, but her smile was genuine. “Yeah. I’m alright. It’s been...tumultuous. But I’m okay.”

“What happened?” Linkle asked. “Did somebody get you, or…?”

Din slowly shook her head. “No...it’s hard to really say what happened. It’s all fuzzy. But I was feeling really down, pretty near despair, and I just...let go. Like I was fighting to stay awake, but stopped resisting and fell asleep. And this world…” Her face hardening, Din looked up to the sky. She gazed across hill and dale, moor and mountain, to where the Lord of Light floated above it all. “It’s one big, fluffy bed. It’s his world. His earth, his sky, his sun...and we’re all fighting to stay awake.” After taking a deep breath, eyes closed, she turned to look at Linkle again. The faintest hint of tears welled up in the ducts of her eyes. “We must not lose hope,” she affirmed. “I’m sorry for letting you down...but it won’t happen again.”

When she looked at Linkle she saw, just for a moment, an emotion Linkle didn’t like showing anyone. It wasn’t panic, or the sort of jittery energy that Linkle showed when she was worried about someone. What crossed her face was cold fear at the process Din had just described. The whole world was one big fluffy bed. That thought, for the first time, made her afraid of Galeem. What it had done wasn’t something you could fight like a monster. “I think she tried to do the same thing to me.” she said slowly. She turned her head upward to look at the shining sun. “She showed me things, in my sleep and I…” she stopped, shaking her head. “I think I was this close to getting pulled into it.” She put her hands on Din's shoulder. “So you don’t have anything to apologize for. If you were feeling down and I didn’t notice I should be the one apologizing to you.”

She suddenly yelped, remembering last night. She pulled the wallet off her hip and presented it to Din. “I also mugged you!” she said, the typical jittery worry replacing the fear on her face. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I am so sorry.”

Din laughed. “No worries. You can use it better than me.” She pulled Linkle close in a hug, rubbing her head and ears like she might a little sister.. “And you have nothing to apologize for, either. We’re both just trying to make sense of this...this nonsense hand we’ve been dealt. And we’ve learned something important going forward.”

Linkle couldn't help but giggle a bit, a combination of relief and a tickle in her ears. Then she pulled away and patted both her cheeks a couple times to put her hero face back on. “Yosh!” she said, looking up and confident as ever. “What do you say we spend it together and get some stuff to really hurt Galeem! I was gonna go see that blacksmith first. We can probably get them to look at your staff while we’re at it.”

With that Linkle led her over to the blacksmith's building. “Heloooooo?” she called out as she stepped in.

A blonde-haired head leaned out from behind a corner. “Oh, hey!” At the sight of the heroines, Ramona stepped away from her forge to wave hello with a giant, thickly-padded mitt. “Wow, a sylvan? In our shop? Word must really be getting out!”

After another moment another of the Sisters of the Anvil made herself known, her manner not nearly as exuberant as Ramona’s. “What can we do for you?” asked Rena, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Oh, are you guys friends with Euden?” Linkle asked before anything else. “That’s what he called me. Sorry to disappoint you, I’m just a plain old Hylian.”

“Huh?” Exclaimed Ramona with raised eyebrows. “But then…?”

Rena quickly spoke up. “We beg your pardon. And, ah, yes, we know Prince Euden. Before this all got started, we served at his halidom.”

“Awesome! That’s really reassuring.” Linkle said, pulling out her crossbows and giving them a twirl. She had no idea what a Halidom was but as far as she was concerned it meant these girls came recommended by Euden himself. She flipped the bows around and handed them over by the hilts. “I was hoping you guys could look at these before we went to fight the G rank. Since we all got transported here they haven't had the ‘umph” they used too. I’m not sure what’s wrong.”

The smiths accepted the crossbows, taking one each. It did not take long to identify the problem. “Well, it looks like they’ve been takin’ tremendous wear,” Ramona remarked. “Stretchin’, warpin’, loosenin’. I’m havin’ trouble deciding if the wood’s been singed or frozen.”

“Both.” Linkle said quickly.

“We can replace the strings, repair the wood, and reinforce it. Should hold up better and for longer,” Rena said.

Linkle thought about it. “You’re incredible. No one back home could even take a guess about how they worked. Just be careful, I don’t know what part makes them shoot forever.”

“Probably an enchantment in the wood,” Rena remarked, more as an aside to Ramona than anything.

“And I’ll be able to hurt turtle shells and metal and stuff?” Linkle asked.

The question was a little confusing and not professionally-worded, but Rena took a stab at it. “What you can damage with them is mostly a function of the bolts you use. What do you shoot with them?”

Linkle took one of the crossbows back briefly, put her shield on the floor, and fired a bolt into it. It was honestly more of an arrow than a crossbow bolt, with a long wooden shaft and a broad metal tip with some blue feathers fletched into the back for balance. She yanked the arrow out of the shield and handed both it and the crossbow to Rena. “Those. I can make them come out with a bomb on the end too but those come out slower.”

Rena accepted the crossbow and, while she dealt with her incredulity at Linkle damaging her own equipment for a test, let Ramona respond. “Those aren’t really bolts. They’re shorter and don’t have broad tips. We could whip up some aluminum ones, with Light Metal heads that could pack more punch, but they wouldn’t be infinite and I got no clue how to change what the crossbows shoot.”

“I get it. Thanks anyway.” Linkle said, throwing the spider shield back onto her back. I looked like she’d need to find someone who could figure out how the crossbows worked if she wanted to improve their power. She added it to The List. “They’ll feel better when they’re good as new, at least. They probably haven't had a tune up in literally ages.”

Din stepped forward. “Could you look at this, too? Any way to make it better?” Instead of her staff, she offered her keyblade, the strange-looking club-wand supposedly crafted from her heart by the Master of Masters.

Rena narrowed her eyes, handling the weapon carefully. She turned it over and over, examining its structure. “Well...I must admit, I don’t know how it could hold up so well if you actually hit things with this, but with some of the ore brought back by Tora and Bowser we could make it a bit stronger.”

Pleased, Din gave a bright smile. “Sure, that sounds great!”

“You’re gonna use the thing the Master gave you?” Linkle asked, curious.

Din nodded. “It’s really useful. Plus, it came from my heart. I don’t know what that means, but it makes it seem important, right?”

Linkle nodded vigorously. “That makes sense. Maybe it gets stronger as you get stronger?” She turned back to the blacksmith girls. “So, what do we owe you?”

Ramona gave a shrug, addressing Linkle. “Well, according to your quest rewards, you get a free service in most shops in town. For you, though…” she looked at Din. “It’ll be eighty rupees. Or gold, or zenny. It’s tough keeping track of all the currencies, huh?”

After a semi-nervous chuckle Din glanced at Linkle. “Er...might need a little from that bag after all.”

“No problem!” Linkle said, whipping out the wallet. Eighty Zennies was no object, especially now. Linkle hadn’t realized that the free service thing counted for more than one shop, or even more than just one job. She laid down eighty of the weird golden coins on the shop counter. Giving up a little actually reminded her of something. “Actually, do you guys buy stuff too?” She said, taking out the Bwaa Blaster. “I don’t really use this anymore, but it was pretty useful for a bit. There’s something in it where if the shot hits somebody it makes them go bouncing around, but I can’t get it to work all the time.”

Ramona thought about that. “We could buy it, sure. Sounds like it’s an item that has a random chance to it. There’s a whole bunch of items and weapons that have a chance to do something or other, so using it’s like rolling the dice.” She took the Bwaa Blaster and looked it over, trying to figure out how it worked. “To better use...stuff like that...either improve your luck, get something that increases ‘status’, or just increase the fire rate. More shots means more chances, after all. But this is too...well, advanced for us to work with, really.” Aiming at a solid section of stone wall, she fired the blaster and noted the damage it did. Then she tried again, hammering the trigger until she got out a second shot. “Neat. The shot doesn’t drop off like an arrow, flying straight like some spells. But the fire rate’s really low and it’s not that strong.” She shrugged. “Basically, a better-than-nothing weapon, best for a novice. I’ll take twenty rupees off the price of your repairs for it.”

Linkle took back twenty of those gold Z coins. “Thank’s a lot.” She moved her hips around a little. That had freed up a little space. She turned back to Din. “You want anything else from here? If not I was gonna go look for a bag next.”

After a moment of trying Din couldn’t think of anything. “No, I think that’s all. I was thinking I’d do some more dancing before we set off again, though. See you in a bit?”

“Sure, see you in a bit.” Linkle said. She waved at the girl as she walked away. “There’s still stuff I’ve gotta do, can I come back for those in a couple of hours?” She asked the blacksmiths.

Ramona nodded, smiling. “Sure thing!”

“All right!” Linkle said, stepping out the door. “See you before we leave.”

---

Linkle wandered the streets for a while, looking around for something like the village's old general store, before finding herself in front of the Malo Mart. Figuring this looked like the place she stepped inside and gawked at how bright and colorful the inside of the place was. It seemed like a rich place, especially compared to the rustic decoration she used too.

She approached the counter, still looking in semi-shock around the room. “Hello?” she asked.

“Hey.”

A little voice came from behind the counter. When Linkle looked she found a young child, almost an infant, standing on a stool. He stared at her, emotionless, unwavering, almost unblinking.

“...Buy something.”

“Uhhhhh…,” Linkle went. This baby was very intimidating. “Yeah, I’d like a bag or maybe a couple of pouches I could strap to my belt and green potion if you have some annnnnd…” Linkle looked around the room, searching for anything else that seemed useful or would pique her interest.

Malo pointed at the various items where they lay on the shelves. There was a sturdy-looking greenish-brown sack, maybe made of hide, and two soft cases pouches. A small selection of potions, mostly health and mana pots of a variety of styles, sat on the left side of the main counter. “You can take them after you pay me.” He noted her continued searching, looking for anything unique. He pointed a little sausage finger at a shelf in the corner. On it rested a number of distinct items, like an iron branch, a feather crown, a beetle, and above them all, the Desolator. “For adventurers with extra money,” he explained succinctly.

“What do they do?” Linkle asked.

Malo blinked at her. “Read the labels.”



Linkle looked up from the last label. This evil looking scythe was exactly what she needed, but it was also an incredible evil looking scythe. The Carthus ring tempted her slightly, what with all the diving she typically did, but she decided against it while keeping in mind that short history it came with in case they ever met these sand kingdom warriors. No, there were really only two things that caught her eye.

“If I got the pouches, the bag, two bottles of that green potion over there, the Feather and this Beetle how much would that cost?” She asked.

The baby did some quick maths. “Four hundred and thirty,” he said.

Linkle pulled out over half the Zennies she had left, counted them out, and gave them to the baby before setting out to collect her purchases. She took the pouches first, slotting them into her belt and doing some quick re-organizing. The pokeballs she had came out of her boots and went into one of them, her remaining arrows for the bow went into the other. The heavy boots she had went into the sack she’d picked up, along with the Feather Crown. The beetle, a relic of a legendary hero she’d never even heard of, latched snug as a bug onto her left wrist with its legs. She looked it over, being overtaken by a delighted little shutter.

Then she went over to the potions. She filled the bottle she’d gotten from the marauding kart with the green liquid and immediately downed it before filling the bottle again and adding it to the pokeball pouch. She could already feel it boiling in her chest, the pressure of an incredible power waiting to be unleashed. It felt filling. That monster wasn’t going to know what hit it!

“Thanks a lot.” She said, trying not to meet the boy's unblinking gaze. She took her leave of the bright shop and its scary baby, sack bouncing over her shoulder. She didn’t think she could carry this bag around everywhere, but luckily she had a friend that could probably do that for her.

She felt a rumble in her belly at that point. That reminded her, she hadn’t had breakfast. Well, so long as the facilities were free it wouldn't hurt to get a full stomach before going monster slaying. She headed for Mina’s, mostly because it was the only place in town she knew but also because she had a hunch the woman could tell her what Chochobo’s liked to eat. She’d have to stock up on that stuff too.

Courier 6 had left the Guild Hall with his robot trailing slightly behind, carrying all manner of things pilfered from the casino down the hole. Some of the things he knew he’d be taking advantage of immediately, such as a large bottle of whiskey he now took large gulps from. It was an impressive amount of supplies that Gaige-Tron had stored in its internal cavity to be certain, but still not enough. He needed more… Natural ingredients. Luckily such things could be found in the Land of Adventure, and all around Lumbridge, in spades. Plenty of plants and other vegetation to combine into what he was working on.

“What sorts of things are you gonna cook up, master?” Gaige-Tron asked. The Courier winced.

”I reckon ya shouldn’t be callin’ me that. No gods. No masters.” He took another gulp of whiskey. Gaige-Tron wasn’t sure how to process that information. It was designed to have free will certainly, and had some brain patterns from the human named Gaige to guide its thinking, but the Courier was its creator. More than that, it was hardwired to obey the Courier’s orders. How was it supposed to address him, then?

“Boof!” someone suggested.

The Courier stopped in his tracks, followed momentarily after by Gaige-Tron, who almost dropped some plastic casino chips. He looked around for the source of the bark while the robot scrambled to get a better grip of its ill-gotten winnings.

Just a few meters away stood the origin of the sudden noise. White of fur, full of fluff, and austerely regal of posture, the magnificent dog -either a Great Pyrenees or a rather big Laborador- stared down his snout at the odd pair. After a moment he lowered his head a touch and started padding toward them, his armor clinking with every step.

Behind them, another few familiar adventurers left the Hall. Well, mostly familiar to the Courier and getting more familiar with each other. At least that was the plan. The Ace Cadet was genuinely glad to give anyone a tour of the town, making sure they got what they needed before everyone reconvened to take on the final quest. To that end, the hunter led two of the crew, introduced as Blazermate and Sectonia, out through the Guild Hall's doors and into the sunlight.

"Seems like the squad's getting bigger every day," he remarked to the two ... ladies...? "Not that I mind! I always heard it was bad luck to go on missions with more than four people but never really believed it."

Cadet was friendly and his words came easily like they always had. He stopped after a few steps to regard the others. "You'll probably wanna stop by the Sister's smithy to get your armor looked at, Blazermate. I mean it looks awesome don't get me wrong! Between you and that other guy I'd love to get some myself, but doesn't hurt to get it checked out, right?" He smiled at them, his expression full of humor. Something was really funny about the pair. Sectonia, a Neopteron or... Neopteron-looking thing, and Blazermate who's armor sure looked like it had been taken pieces straight from a Neopteron's chitin - and yet they were friends. Or seemed to be, anyway.

”Oh, I don’t think they could help me. My parts are a bit more complicated than you think.” Blazermate said, looking at the store and noting how little tech there actually was there.

Speaking of Sectonia, she'd been asking about her crown earlier, and Cadet was about to suggest something when an unfamiliar sound reached his ears. It was one of those things that were sort of like bigger, weirder cats. He'd seen a few around Lumbridge but never one all dressed up in armor! His interest piqued, the hunter all but dragged the poor inhuman ladies over with him toward the Courier and the animal. Blazermate followed without much complaint, especially considering what the Cadet was going towards while Sectonia flew more with a harumph, not really having anything better to do at this moment as it were anyway.

"Aw! Another new friend?"

The dog seemed to understand he was being talked to, and pivoted to head over to the Cadet. He boldly walked right up and pushed his head under the monster hunter’s hand, demanding to be pet.

”Aw, doggie!” Blazermate said, joining Cadet in petting the armored dog. Why someone dressed up a normal dog in armor, as if they were mistaken about what a dog type medabot was, Blazermate didn’t know. Sectonia meanwhile, was just confused but just watched what this creature would do. It wasn’t as ugly as the thing that bit her earlier, but armor on a four legged thing like that looked very awkward.

Cadet scratched the animal’s chin and head. ”Doggie? That’s what it’s called? It’s cool, fluffy, cute… like a Palico sort of! Palidoggie.”

The Courier stepped closer wearing a big, friendly smile. It was very much unlike the kinds of smiles that the others had gotten used to seeing from him. This was more quaint, wholesome. He gave the dog some ear scratches. ”Dogs, rather. In much better condition than the wild mongrels of the Mojave Wasteland. Pretty darn good with animals if’n I say so myself. Oh, speaking of which…”

He pulled out the two pokeballs hanging from his belt and released their contents. Two bright balls of energy emerged and took form, solidifying into a heracross and a donphan. ”Mornin’ Ivories. Mornin’ Bugfoot.” The heracross clapped enthusiastically while the donphan gave what could only be described as the best salute possible using its trunk.

Caesar jumped backward in a dextrous evasive maneuver, not afraid but alarmed and alerted by the monsters’ sudden appearance. He did not run off, however, instead trusting in the Courier that he’d keep these beasts under control.

Sectonia wasn’t too interested in the dog, at least right now. It looked like a more complex looking version of the creatures that walked around Foralia and Popstar for sure, but with roughly the same intelligence. What did get her attention however was Courier unleashing his pokemon. ”So, you can summon your own minions?.Something you found in this world?” Sectonia said, pointing out the Courier’s pokemon, noticing they came out of red and white spheres he had thrown. She knew of the spirit way of summoning, but this looked far different.

”Its ok doggie, they’re just Pokemon.” Blazermate said to ease the dogs' worries. Considering her demon arm and all the stuff they had gone through in the Dead Zone, it made sense why he’d jump at creatures suddenly appearing, but pokemon were cuddly looking from what Blazermate knew, so hopefully he’d notice that too.

”A couple of us can stow away and summon stuff,” Cadet noted to Sectonia, who nodded. ”Kind of jealous, wish we had somethin’ like that where I come from!” He stood up straight and patted the dog’s side. He vaguely wondered if it could fit in one of those spheres, but it didn’t really… look like the “Pokemon,” exactly.

”Need something, dog?” the hunter asked, but after a beat he looked up and between the Courier and Blazermate. ”Can dogs talk?”

”Heh. Depends on the dog.” the Courier chuckled, thinking back to the various cyberdogs in the Big Empty with their bionic enhancements that gave them computerized voice boxes and human intelligence. ”Not normally, no. But I reckon with all the crazy shit in this multiverse we’ll run into at least one at some point.”

”What 6 said. I know in my universe we have both normal and talking dogs, depending if the dog is a medabot or not.” Blazermate said, reaffirming what the Courier had said. ”Things like this don’t exist where I come from.” Sectonia said, eyeing the creatures that the courier had released and the flowers just beyond them.

Cadet nodded, seeming a bit disappointed. He looked into the furry animal’s eyes and asked him directly, ”Are you the talking kind?”

Caesar stared at him, uncomprehending. After a moment he pushed his head under the hunter’s hand again. This time, however, he gave two dry coughs, one after another, almost like gasping for something. The red head looked at him curiously. Not the talking kind then, but clearly he wanted something. ”Water? Food? Uh I’ve got…”

He rifled through his bag and produced several small berries, meant for Pokemon though he didn’t know it, and bone he’d taken from the pile of stuff yesterday.

Off to the side Ivories and Bugfoot had started a staredown, with the donphan in particular huffing and puffing in a competitive way while the heracross smiled back in a way that said, “I dare you.”

When presented with the food, Caesar sniffed the berries before taking them, gently and in a dignified manner, to eat. Some juice spattered on the grass, and after a pained moment he bent down to lick at it. His floppy ears drooped magnificently. While the dog seemed to like the berries, he didn’t go crazy enough about them to suggest food was what he was looking for.

”Let me give it a shot,” the Courier said, taking a step forward and holding his hand out. ”Animals got a certain connection t’me fer some reason, more often’n not. What d’you need, boy? Talk t’me.” While it wasn’t an ability he had to activate, the Courier willed that his Animal Friendship work as hard as it could in hopes that he could interpret or analyze this big armored dog’s needs and wants.

It didn’t take a whole lot of intuition to tell that Caesar needed water. Panting plus dry gasping meant a thirsty dog. Berries, though mostly liquid, didn’t quite scratch the itch.

”Ah, easy. This hombre just needs some liquid refreshment.” He checked his pack, but found the only liquids were chems or alcohol. He frowned. Rushing Water would have worked, it was more water than chem, but the dog didn’t need to get hopped up on something that gave him energy and speed… Assuming the dog’s physiology would even work with the drug properly. He gestured for Gaige-Tron to come over, and the robot did so.

”Ya got any water from that casino stored up?” he asked it.

“Oh yeah, boss!” the robot answered enthusiastically, having decided on a different moniker than “master.” It opened its chest cavity and fished out a bottle of water. 6 smiled, uncapped it, and offered the liquid to the dog.

Caesar nosed the bottle, clearly eager for its contents, and as 6 started to pour he snapped at the stream enthusiastically, snagging mouthful after mouthful of clear, sweet water. That set his tail wagging, and once the bottle ran dry he pushed up against the Courier, leaning against him affectionately.

”Aww, its like a movie!” Blazermate said, giving as cutsy as a face as she could, with the lack of most facial features. Sectonia, the ever stand-ofish one couldn’t help but give a bit of a smirk herself, as while these two creatures weren’t the best looking, the moment was wholesome enough to be beautiful.

”Although, if this dog has way more intelligence than I’m used to, wouldn’t this be almost patronizing? Dunno if that’d be bad or not.” Blazermate said after getting over the cute moment, thinking to herself for a bit.

Cadet had no clue what a movie was, but for once he didn’t ask. The Courier’s way with animals remained as impressive as it back in the Coral Highlands. The hunter grinned down at the dog, and never one to stay silent for long he said, ”Feeling better? That’s good! Wish we could learn your name.

...think it would be a good idea to bring it along on the G-rank quest with us? It’s got a pretty spiffy set of armor on and all, bet it’s trained to fight a least a little, right?”

The dog sat down and lifted up a leg to scratch his ear, mostly ending up batting at his helmet instead. His collar jingled as he did. The noise brought the Cadet’s attention to the name tag and he knelt down to read it, a sheepish grin on his face.

”Oh. Caesar?” The rest of his collar’s inscription read, Commander of Cherrystone Kingdom. Royal pet of Queen Mercia. The dog panted, recognizing his name.

Meanwhile, the Courier’s Pokémon had given up on their staring contest and had engaged in an actual contest of strength. The donphan has charged the heracross, who was holding it in place using its powerful arms to grip the tusks. Both pushed against the other, locked in place. Neither was giving up any ground.

”Cool it, you two.” On his order the Pokémon stopped their squabble, Bugfoot being only too happy to do so while Ivories was more reluctant. He then gave them some snacks Gaige-Tron took from the casino, which they were only too happy to gobble up.

The Courier crouched down by the dog. ”Wanna come with us, Caesar? Fair warnin’, it’ll be heckin’ dangerous.”

While the dog didn’t understand the gunslinger’s words aside from his own name, something in 6’s tone reached him. The sense of warning got across, and when he felt it, Caesar's mouth closed and his tail went down. He gave a faint protesting whine, unhappy about the prospect of being brought along if something was going to be seriously dangerous.

”Why not leave him at Peach’s Castle? I don’t see a problem with that, do you?” Blazermate suggested, noting that Kamek was setting up the teleporter to the castle as they spoke.

The idea sat well with the Courier, and after everyone agreed, they made arrangements -at the Cadet’s suggestion- to leave Caesar with Rick, the cucco tender. While the boy dealt mainly with poultry, he could take care of a dog no problem, especially one as splendid as Caesar. Plus, with Linkle reclaiming cuccos, he found himself with a little time to spare. Once the dog received his last scratched from 6 before leaving, the gunslinger proceeded to crafting.

Before work could begin, Tora needed to find a suitable place. With the comfort of his home an impossibility, he made a quick circuit of Lumbridge with Poppi. After a good few minutes spent power-waddling around, checking out various potential sites where he could set up shop, Tora ended up at the stockyard near the smithy. An outdoor distribution center and marketplace, with loads of awnings stretched over various collections of goods, it served as the dumping ground for whatever materials the adventurers gathered while out on their quests. Everyone was entitled to what they collected, of course, but not everyone could use what they picked up; by piling their resources here the adventurers could ensure that everything got put to use. Anything left beneath the main loot tent got accounted for, sorted, and sent off to whoever could refine it or make something of it. Not everything could be gleaned this way, naturally, which accounted for the quantity of fetch quests that ran through the Adventurers’ Guild. Still, the stockyard was the beating heart of Lumbridge, and with a number of tradesmen already established there, Tora decided it would be the perfect place to get to work.

He claimed a vacant corner and started setting up. If his friends wanted something done, they could find him here, but he wanted to attend to his own project first and foremost. A better understanding of some technology in this world plus his own inspiration left him itching to resume work on Poppi’s third form, and really make some progress. Once he put together a workstation the Nopon instructed Poppi to lie down on it, and after she went into sleep mode, he opened her up with his toolkit. “Meh, mehmeh…” His wings and little arms got to work as if they had minds of their own, disassembling and reassembling in a flash. First came the check-up, ensuring that Poppi’s chassis and systems functioned as intended with no deficiencies. Once satisfied that the existing framework seemed intact, Tora cleaned it up and then began to take it apart. His mind raced with ideas, postulating functions and weaving together solutions to accomplish them. Croagunk stood by the whole time, and after getting over the sight of its trainer being engineered, it helped Tora out by getting new materials and components as he required them--a clever Pokemon indeed.

Meanwhile, Donnie, as he had promised, came striding over from the Guild Hall, straight here. Grabbing a folding chair from his Luggage (part of his camping supplies), he parked himself near Tora, sitting in on the session. He idly palmed the orb for the Dwarven Flying Machine, not sure if he should interrupt the Nopon who was clearly deep in the clutches of some kind of engineering fugue. Right now, what Tora was doing was all Greek to him (not that he knew what Greece was), but soon, very soon, those memories would come flooding back, at least enough to get him started.

Still though, looking at Poppi’s innards, she reminded him of the Blingtron series of Gnomish robots, only far, far more sophisticated. Poppi had the language capabilities of her master, for one, rather than coming off as blatantly non-organic. If it weren’t for the mechanical bits on her, she could actually pass as human. It was fascinating, and he hoped he’d get a better idea of how she worked once the arbitrary amount of time had passed for him to remember what he was hoping to.

Donnie’s arrival went largely unacknowledged as Tora hunkered down to tackle the biggest project of his career. The jump from Poppi α to Poppi QT represented a minor upgrade in power versus a massive change in hardware capability, and now he aimed to achieve a more drastic overhaul plus an impressive leap forward in power. Poppi’s ability to change forms stemmed from her capacity to deconstruct to ether and reconstruct into pre-designated designs, much like the weapons of real Blades, so the first step was to build the new chassis. To get the output he wanted, Tora needed harder and lighter alloys, higher-yield servos, higher-capacity circuitry, more robust systems, and -to be honest- more expertise than he possessed right now.

Tora sighed, tossing aside a splintered piece of inadequate exterior metal, and rubbed his head. “Meh, meh, meh...backwater town too low-tech for Tora. Not have good enough materials. Wish Grampypon Soosoo here right now.” He refused to accept inferior materials or an inferior final product; only the best would suit his vision for Poppi. Oh, well. Even if he couldn’t assemble a whole new chassis, he could put together a few components that could be used later, and labor a little on her code. He began manufacturing a couple odd ends, from joiners to shock absorbers to chip housings and a few decorative pieces, and when those lay finished he attached his little computer pad via a cable and started tapping await. His little hands moved in a blur, writing line after line of new code capable of handling the functions and systems that would eventually be, as well as a sizeable update to Poppi’s personality that’d install along with the new chassis.

And finally, it clicked. Weeks of work came back to Donnie in an instant: Making functional dynamite, machining an arclight spanner, creating a basic blunderbuss, even crafting a mechanical squirrel that could follow him around on its own. Some more came back as well, including crafting mechanical sheep that exploded on their own, and the delicate work that went into creating such a lifelike automaton, coupled with the cost-cutting measures it took to get a dozen of them out the door in less than an hour.

Along with…painful memories of his Gnomish inventions backfiring spectacularly. A particularly bad memory involved him blowing off his hand due to improperly handling a copper bomb. Thankfully he knew Vivify at that point so that he didn’t go into shock before the priest got there….

He shuddered thinking about that horrible day.

In any event, he replayed Tora’s engineering session in his mind and realized that he was doing what he was doing because he didn’t have the metal he needed. The monk could fix that problem handily.

Summoning, unzipping, and fishing around in his Luggage, he pulled out several chunks of empyrium ore, a kind of metal mined from Argus and one of the few substances on its surface not hideously corrupted with Fel magic.

“Hey, Tora!” he said, interrupting the Nopon. He placed the heavy chunks of ore onto the table without even breaking a sweat. “Use these for her chassis. Empyrium. Strong, durable, and never rusts. There’s a blacksmith over thataway”--he pointed in the general direction of the Sisters of the Anvil--”who can probably work it into a fine plate in under a few minutes. Tell them what you want done and it’ll be fine.”

After jumping in surprise, Tora went to examine the ore. He had a suspicion about it from its presentation alone, however.

In a puff of smoke someone new arrived on the scene. The little cartoon cup flitted about to and fro with crazy speed, almost literally bouncing off the walls. ”Wowzers!” he’d say, looking at one piece of machinery before moving into the next. ”Swell!” he’d say to the next, so on and so forth until he came to a screeching halt (literally, his feet kicked up smoke and screeched like a car slamming the breaks) in front of Poppi.

”Gosh! Isn’t that the cat’s pajamas!” he exclaimed, peering real closely at her.

Donnie just stared, completely unsure how to process the living teacup. But of course, he’d seen a lot of things. Why was this one kid such a problem for him? Cuphead wasn’t even new: He’d seen the kid at the Devil’s Casino.

He supposed it was just a lot to get used to. The boy’s...physiology...was one of the strangest things he’d ever seen.

He shook it off. It wouldn’t do to get bogged down in appearances. He was a fighter first and a scholar second, and he had a god to kill. But he didn’t really get to introduce himself before the Nopon intervened.

“Meh!” Tora protested, trying to wave Cuphead away. “Don’t look at Poppi while under construction! Not decent!” He’d already forgotten the new arrival’s name, having not been paying attention while in the Devil’s Casino. Once that got sorted out, he turned inquisitively to Donnie. “While grateful for gift and definitely going to take without repay, meh, ore seem too heavy. Poppi need to move and fly ultra fast. Unless cutey-cutey smith sisters can make much lighter alloy with good resistances, it not useful for Poppi chassis, meh.” The Nopon ran over a mental checklist. “Plus, there whole bunch of parts Tora can’t make. When making Poppi first time, used lots of salvage parts. Now, need top-of-line goods for top-of-line Poppi. Golden cogs, cubic diamonds, ambler stigmas, genbu-weave cloth, dynamo turbine, gold condenser, digital filament, screw coil, fifty-volt battery....or equivalent. But none be found in low-tech place like this.” Tora looked morose. His circumstances stifled him.

Cuphead’s eyes lit up like sparkling stars, actually shining light! ”She flies? Hot DOG! Does she come with a plane mode? I can pilot her no problem!” The little cup stood proud, hands on his hips in a dramatic pose.

Tora shot him a look. “Poppi pilot self, meh! And not have plane mode. Modes are Alpha, Quixotic Tutelar, and now soon-to-be Quantum Technochampion π.” He perked up, smiling in a self-satisfied way. With his eyes closed and his little nub-hands on his ‘hips’, which evidently existed at the widest part of his egg-body, he explained, “Friends like name? Tora came up with when deciding which foot to set in gambling portal first.”

“Shame the ore won’t help,” Donnie said. “Though it might not go to waste after all.” He threw the Dwarven Flying Machine’s orb to his side with a flourish of his hand. The rickety Gnomish autogyro poofed into existence in a cloud of magical smoke. “If you can’t complete the upgrades to Poppi today, do you think you can fit in time to upgrade the machine?”

Now that his principle project needed to be put on ice, Tora found himself looking at the comically primitive flying machine with mild interest. “Maybe. If Tora motivated. What beardypon want done to it?”

Donnie chuckled at ‘beardypon,’ then got more serious, “Well, it’s Gnomish engineering. And Gnomish engineering is unsafe. The propeller is only a few feet from my head, and there’s not even a seatbelt or a roll cage. So some kind of safety overhaul is top-priority. Second is a weapon of some kind. I think Kamek still has the weird gun from the giant clown robot we fought a while ago, that could work..Use your best judgment though. If it’s going to be a combat machine, it’ll probably need some armor too. And it’ll need to be able to carry all of this, so maybe an engine upgrade? I think that’s everything for right now.”

During the explanation the industrious Nopon had already started getting familiar with the contraption, waddling all around to look at its components. It did not leave much to the imagination; the thing was practically a one-chopper war on the concept of sophistication. As Donnie finished, however, Tora shook his head disapprovingly. “Why waste bullets and storage space on fire mode that hard to aim, sure to miss, and crazy inefficient? Meh, meh, meh! Instead, should be underslung biter cannon! Tora homemade invention fire boom biters that only blow up after chomping target. Zero percent failure rate, very safe.” He waved a wing at the flying machine dismissively. “Safety features easy, and can redo engines using drill shield engines no problem. Nice and strong and reliable, meh, but maybe less good for long flights.”

”Unsafe? Well that’s my middle name! Cup-Unsafe-Head! Who needs to supe this baby up when I can take the wheel?” He hopped up on top of the propeller and began to dance a jig on it. When the propeller started rotating he switched to the Russian dance, sticking his legs out to kick off the blades as they spun by. Of course this got faster and faster and faster, and Cuphead matched the speed until his legs became a motion blur! After a few seconds it was almost moving fast enough to take off and finally, finally it moved too fast and sent him flying off, crashing into a large pile of junk. Parts and pieces scattered and flew up in the air from the impact. A few seconds later and a little gloved hand stuck up from the pile giving a thumbs up. ”I’m ok!”

Tora blinked twice, dumbfounded, then shook his head. What he just saw defied physics, but now wasn’t the time to start getting bothered by strange stuff. Only going weirder as time go on, he reminded himself.

A white-haired man, his face impassive and obviously unimpressed, reached down into the pile and gave the hand a tug. “I have no idea how you do that, kid, but you might want to be careful. A workshop’s no place to be messing around.” Nodding at the others, Geralt frowned. “I was just sharpening my sword when I overheard some of your conversation. Had a question, Tora. Guess you as well, Donnel.”

“Meh, sure.” Tora looked the Witcher up and down. “What want?”

“My crossbow. It’s served me well, but I see all you folks and these...explosive...crossbow...things. It’s got me interested. They shoot more quickly and they seem deadlier.”

The observation provoked a laugh from Tora, as if Geralt was taking something common and well-known very seriously. Despite his chuckle, however, Tora knew that a great number of people in the World of Light came from worlds without the technology that he and many others enjoyed, so he didn’t mind explaining. Plus, it gave him a chance to show how smart he was. “Exactly right, meh. Projectile weapon that use string weaker than gun and cannon, which made of metal and use boom-boom to send small bullet flying very fast, pierce straight through. Tora use Boom Biter in shield to shoot explodey balls with teeth, call Jet Biters. Also use Mech Arms, which fire missiles. Missiles explosives that fly on own using...um, streams of fire.” He tried to explain using terms Geralt might be familiar with. “Like bombs friend Geralt throw last night! Except fly on own, and sometimes guide self to target.” Looking happy with himself, feeling full of knowledge and very helpful, Tora finished his exposition with a question. “Peach-Peach already ask Tora for new gun. Geralt want one?”

Well. That was easy. “If you’re offering. They seem extremely useful. Especially if there’s anything as small as my crossbow.”

Tora nodded. “Okay, meh. Tora can make handgun, probably incorporate ether technology. Like mini ether cannon. Will be up to friend to keep supplied with bullets, though. And maybe in return friend buy Tora lunch sometime? More than fair trade, mehmeh!”

Geralt’s eyebrow rose. If that was what he considered a fair trade, he wasn’t going to argue. “Sounds good to me.”

Tora jumped up and down, pleased to make a deal. He did not, of course, plan on asking Geralt for lunch just once. After all, now that the two both fought alongside one another, exchanged a few words, and did business, they were friends for real. And friends could always lend friends a meal. “Okay! Tora have much work to do, so will get to it. Sleep nice, Donniepon. See friends later!”



After a little fiddling around the steering wheel, pedals, and controls to get a feel for the giant machine, Peach came to realize that she didn't need to force it. Once she relaxed and allowed her hands to move where they wanted, the multi-ton metal monster moved like an extension of her own body. It just came naturally, as it had the night before. The princess sighed. She smoothly guided Brother Grimm from where Poppi lay it to rest the night before to bring it around Lumbridge's southeastern side, where those intrepid few planning to take on the G-ranked hunt could embark. Ever since word got out that her crew would be making an assault on the little-traveled part of the Land of Adventure known only as The End, townsfolk spoke in hushed tones. Some looked at her or the others with awe and admiration, others with pity. Peach, meanwhile, continued to try and steel herself. She knew nothing of the threat her team was to face, other than that it at the very least equaled Megadragonbowser -who she herself had not fought- in power. And he, from all accounts, had been an idiot playing with massive power. This would almost certainly be harder.

Well, she knew that, and that the deed must be done. As one of Galeem's thirteen champions, it stood in the way of making things right. For the sake of this world and all worlds, this enemy would be taken down.

...Still, despite her new powers, and all her allies, Peach felt very small. Anything could be waiting out there. Anything at all.

She put Brother Grimm in park, took a look at the dashboard, and began the more-than-usually arduous process of getting out of the oversized vehicle. When she reached the ground, she spotted a couple familiar faces approaching. Tora and Poppi made their way over, together as always, albeit with the Nopon fairly dingy-looking and the artificial blade in pristine shape. Only after Tora held up an item for Peach did she remember the request she made for him. “Oh, thank you,” she said, accepting the weapon. It resembled her old boomshot, but even a cursory glance turned up a number of differences both inside and out. She looked it over thoroughly, then held it in her hands to get a feel for the thing.

“Tora call it 'Kanagawa Powa!'” the rotund inventor declared. “Based it off of Peach-Peach's old boomshot. But this one alloy fiber like ether cannon. Not break easy! Also have ice core, so shots freeze baddiepons solid! Not work all time, but still.”

Poppi scanned the princess's face. “Does Peach like it?”

Peach allowed herself a slight smile. “Yes, this should do nicely. Marvelous work, Tora.”

“Ohoho, meh meh!” Puffing out his chest proudly, Tora closed his eyes and put on a big smile. “Not even tip of Tora iceberg! Have even greater greatness in store!”

By now the others had started coming in, and the arrivals split off cleanly between those planning to go on the mission and those just wanting to see the first group off. Captain Howard was taking a well-deserved break, but came by to watch the go-getters get going. Nero, V, and Miss Fortune had already returned to the Dead Zone, with the first two going north and the feral headed south from the Argent Tower, all by herself. Euden and Ryu arrived together, who'd been sparring from the looks -and sounds- of it, but while Ryu hung back Euden joined Peach, Tora, and Poppi. Something seemed different about him after his battle against the wandering martial artist; his big eyes seemed especially blue and innocent, somehow. “That makes four,” Peach noted. “The others should be here any moment.”

---

Michael looked over the device the Cadet had handed him with apprehension. "Ah...uh-huh..." He gulped, placing the device on his arm and doing as the Cadet said, aiming it and closing his eyes as he pulled the trigger. "Alri-WOAH!" He let out a yelp of surprise as he was suddenly pulled up and out of the hole, lying on the ground for a moment to catch his breath. "Jeez...that's something, alright." Getting up, he would toss the device down the hole, in case anyone still down there wanted to use it to get up.

Franklin, on the other hand, just shrugged and climbed up the ropes. Once he reached the top, he walked out of the guild hall to find Michael looking around. "So...what's next?" He asked as he walked beside him.

"Next...I am getting something to eat. Hey, excuse me." He called out to a passerby. "You know somewhere we can get breakfast here?"

---

"This...this is good. This is what I needed."

The two had sat down at the nearby Clik Clak Diner. The building wasn't too hard to miss, given that its relatively modern look stood out like a sore thumb from the medieval buildings that surrounded it. Michael was in the process of digging into a large plate of pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and sausage, while Franklin had settled for just a stack of pancakes. "Mmh. Oh yeah. God, I'm starving."

"Yeah, it's not bad. Not as good as that feast, though."

"I dunno, man. These are some good pancakes." Michael said, stuffing another bite of pancake into his mouth. "Or I'm just really hungry."

Franklin simply nodded, taking another bite and swallowing before he spoke up. "So, what's next?"

"Well, uh...guess we'll go after the next one on the list. I'll see what the rest of the guys are doing."

"Mhm. We still got some money, you wanna buy something?"

"I'll ask the others what we're doing, and if we need something, we'll get it." Swallowing a forkful of scrambled eggs, he tapped his fork against the plate a few times, trying to think of what else they needed to do. "Oh, and uh, I guess get something for Baba to eat. If he even needs to eat. I...honestly have no idea."

"Right, right...so, that it?"

"Pretty much...oh, actually, more importantly-" He flagged down the waitress. "Could I get a milkshake?"

After helping Ceaser make his way to Peach’s Castle, Sectonia took her time to explore the groups ‘home base’, eventually finding a place to take a short nap before the G ranked mission in a few hours. Blazermate meanwhile spent her time trying to clean herself up and tinker with her own parts. While she knew how to fix herself, she wasn’t a mechanic so while she could do an OK job, she’d soon realize that it’d be much easier to ask others for help.

Blazermate spent a bit of time in a stand-by state waiting for the hours to pass by. Once the designated time to gather up for the mission came around, Blazermate made her way to the gathering point through the teleporter, meeting up with everyone. ”Hiya guys. Ready for today?” She said. As she said that, she noticed how shiny Poppi was, compared to herself which, while Blazermate looked ok, she wasn’t nearly as radiant as the mecha lady. She also noticed the worried look on Peach’s face, figuring it was about what was to come.

This got Blazermate thinking, This was supposed to be the boss of this part of the world right? Like that dragon bowser? That fight, overall, wasn’t that bad, although considering that was a much more arrogant and dumb Bowser, it did take awhile and a few people were turned into spirits. What if something that powerful though had actual brains behind it? That could be disastrous! And while Blazermate could heal her own parts, if she went unconscious things would go south fast. And it was at this point Blazermate looked at Poppi again, and it reminded her Tora was very skilled at fixing robotics, even if Poppi looked more like a human with armor. While she didn’t need any hard repairs like that, the upcoming battle might actually facilitate them if things go poorly, and Medabots were probably vastly different than anything Tora had worked on. Realizing this, Blazermate moved to talk to Tora.

”So uh, Tora. You know, with this whole G rank mission coming, I noticed I don’t think I’ve actually talked to you about how to repair me if things went, bad.” Blazermate said, a bit sheepishly. ”Care to step out a bit so I can show you?” Blazermate asked, gesturing to both Tora and Poppi, knowing those two were almost like Medabot and Metafighter.

Since the others had yet to fully assemble, and because of Tora’s rather predictable fascination with robot girls, he Nopon agreed straightaway. “Great idea, meh!” He and Poppi, who seemed to grasp the situation firmly and without humor, followed Blazermate over to where a more private conversation could be held by the nearby river Lum.

With the trio in a more secluded area, Blazermate began. ”So, uh yeah. Repairs...” Blazermate started. She took her Suffering arm and slashed her own leg with its fingers, leaving a scratch. She then began to heal her own minor wound using her right arm, although it healed very slowly. ”As you can see, If my healing arm is operative, I can repair myself slowly.” Blazermate said, when the minor damage was repaired, a bit of ‘scarring’ could be seen, although this was more just Blazermate’s paint missing in that area than anything serious. ”But it only heals the part to working condition, if I want to look pristine, I’ll need a bit of extra work.” She then pulled out her own repair tools, a very simple screwdriver set, and said. ”But if my healing arm gets damaged to the point of shutting down, I can’t repair myself at all, at least as best as I know.” She said, presenting her other arm, the one she used to heal with.

Taking her tools, she sat down and took apart her healing arm, revealing the inner workings and her tinpet. It looked almost comical knowing that the part that gave her healing capabilities came apart so easily. Tora watched the whole time, his enraptured black eyes absorbing every detail; in fact he got so physically close to see that he got in the way several times. Blazermate then raised her now partless arm, showing a very thin frame. ”This is my tinpet, or my skeleton. Its incredibly rare for this to actually get damaged, as its made of some really sturdy stuff, but if it does, I’d need you to help me repair or make a new one.” She said. She then did the same with one of her legs, showing just how simple her frame that her parts sat on was.

Tora looked surprised. “How Blaze-Blaze have such normal components? Frame parts seem unremarkable. Guess material must be special. New spirit parts not explainable, just seem like crazy spirit magic. But Tora could definitely replace original parts if get hurt. Except brainbox, probably. Tora still not able to work with grampypon’s Ether Furnace.”

A longing sigh escaped the Nopon. “Meeeeeeh….Soosoo such incredibly smartypon. Poppi Ether Furnace engineering masterpiece. It absorb ether from atmosphere and other energy sources, refine, then construct new matter from etherium just like normal Blade, using existing matter as blueprint. It how Poppi change forms and repair self quickly.” He looked again at Blazermate’s healing arm. “In Tora world, healing devices use ether to reconstruct damaged tissue. How Blaze-Blaze healing work?”

Blazermate shrugged. ”I’m not entirely sure how my healing works, not to the degree you probably know about your ‘ether’. But basically I take power from my Medal and channel it through this part, and bam, healing beam.” She said, pointing at the parts of her healing arm before showing a bit of difficulty lifting anything with her tinpet arm as she began putting her leg part back on.

“Medal?” Tora looked at Blazermate inquisitively. “What that?”

”I guess now is a better time than any.” Blazermate said. ”You know how you said you couldn’t repair my ‘brainbox’? You can actually very easily repair my head part, my ‘brain’ isn’t actually in there.” Blazermate continued, snapping the last of her leg part back into place before standing up and turning around, showing her back to Tora. Pointing with her tinpet arm at her back, a small hatch opened up, revealing an even smaller, almost quarter sized, gold metal in the center. ”Thats my medal. If I’m defeated, it gets ejected. Thats often how Medafights are won. Its what powers me and where my ‘brain’ is, so to speak.” Blazermate kept a very trained eye on Tora, making it so he didn’t actually touch her Medal.

Tora looked at the thing with reverence, as if Blazermate was showing him a very private and secret treasure. He clearly wanted to touch it, but when she explained its purpose, he knew better than to do so. “Wow....like Blade’s core crystal, except it pop out,” he observed. “And that core supply all Blazermate energy? Tora not understand how possible, but it very cool! Still...” he looked at the Medabot in a new light. “That explain why Blazermate not fight by self and prefer support. Energy supply infinite but not super strong, and materials not good as Poppi’s or as quick to fix.”

”Well, I’m more a support Medabot model. With the right parts I could be an offensive type. Just because I have a Medal doesn’t mean I CAN’T actually be offensive, but I prefer the support parts. Medafights are either 1 on 1 or 3 on 3 though.” Blazermate corrected Tora before saying. ”But yeah… I’d have to say Poppi’s parts look far sturdier than mine.” She then gestures for Tora to help her put her healing arm back on, both so it’d go by faster, and to give him some training on taking off and putting back on Blazermate’s parts.

Tora lent a hand, taking to the task like a fish to water. “Tora wish understood Ether Furnace,” he complained as he worked. “If did, could use tech for other things. Loads of people want weapons that can refill ammo or weaponize elements. Ether construction extremely useful. But it so complicated that can’t be done without intelligence to manage it, so nobody in Tora world able to do it except with Blade. With Tora genius for AI, could make all sorts artificial blades, but...Tora not want them used just like tools. Daddypon Tatazo forced make soulless artificial blades against will to be soldiers.” The memory did not lift Tora’s spirits. As he spoke, Poppi looked on and listened in silence to him talking about the technology and motivation that created her. “Tora also happy with Poppi. If there more artificial blades, Poppi less special.” He reached over and patted her head.

After a moment he returned his attention to Blazermate to help recomplete her. “If Tora could figure out how Blaze-Blaze medal work, though, have small neverending energy supplies that could be very handy. Maybe Tora could study medal sometime?” He put on the finishing touch and waited eagerly for a reply.

Blazermate was a bit taken aback by Tora wanting to use a medal for a non medabot thing, but she quickly recomposed herself as he wasn’t aware of exactly what a medal was. ”Well you see, my Medal also holds my ‘soul’ as it were. The two are inseparable. There was an attempt once in my world where they tried to make a medal as a power source like you suggested, but it ended very, very poorly.” Blazermate started, before looking at Tora very seriously. ”Without the soul or mind in the medal, it eventually burnt out, but that was after the bot in question was… how do we say… dumb. Like, very dumb. They couldn’t do anything but attack. Something as simple as “pick that up” was beyond them. And even then overall they were weaker than a medabot like me.” Blazermate said, not going into much detail beyond that as if something else had happened that wasn’t all that pleasant. ”Although I do have a ‘rare’ Medal, so that helps things.” After this offhanded comment, Blazermate realized she never explained the different medals. ”Oh yeah. I forgot. I have a Rare medal, its a special kind of medal that lets me use the Medaforce, a really powerful, mystical force. Most medabots don’t have these kinds of medals. The only difference between a rare medal and a normal medal though is energy output, Medaforce usage, and independence. Rare ones are better in these fields.” She paused to let Tora absorb that information before continuing. ”But yeah… if you ever see my medal get ejected, make sure you pick it up and keep it safe. Although I don’t know if my world’s rules work with this world’s rules...” She finished, ending on a bit of a dark doubtful note.

The abundance of jargon and new concepts did not seem to phase Tora. “Uh huh...uh huh...I see. Meh, meh...it all sound very interesting. Well, would not want to use Blaze-Blaze medal, but maybe Tora can make more. But sound like not have power without soul, like Blade. Also like Blade, Blaze-Blaze can live on after destroyed if core crystal intact and be reawakened, but Tora suppose friend keep memories while needing new body built.” He scratched his head with a wing. “Meh...Tora wonder if Blaze body could be integrated with Ether Furnace. Surely AI good enough to manage it. If Tora able to make new Ether Furnace, Blaze have double power and could replace base parts with ether ones. Stronger, and can be self-repair very fast.” Clearly his mind already raced with the possibilities, trying to conceptualize a machine that combined Poppi’s unique hardware with Blazermate’s own system, like plugging a brand-new CPU in an old computer.

With Tora’s help, Blazermate’s healing arm was put back in its place. ”That sounds cool! It's like this thing that lets me get Medaforce by healing.” Blazermate said, pointing at the Uberheart in her chest. ”I’m always up for new parts!” She then paused to calm down a bit at how cool that all sounded and got back to explaining repairing bits. ”So, I don’t know if you saw Tora, but if one of my parts stops working, I can’t really move it well. My Tinpet by itself isn’t very strong. Which means...” Blazermate said, tapping her legs. ”If say, something made my legs inoperable, I couldn’t move. We already went over the healing arm, I don’t know about this demon arm, it's a bit a unique case I’ve found… and a broken head part means I can’t see, hear, fly, ext...” She said. ”But as you see, I’m pretty easy to fix up since i’m so modular. Maybe when we have more time and aren’t getting ready for a mission, I’ll let you look at a few more things ~.”

That brooked an enthusiastic response. “Any time, meh!”

Poppi interjected for the first time. “People starting to gather, Masterpon. We should go back.” Tora agreed, and the trio headed for where Brother Grimm towered above the town.

-----------------------------------------------------



Sectonia didn’t follow Blazermate as she had left a bit earlier. Upon waking from her nap, The queen bee made her way back to the land of adventure as that was where everyone else was and she really didn’t have anything better to do at this point. Her few interactions with the mushroom people of the castle weren’t the most stimulating, even if they were excellent servants. She’d have to keep them in mind if she was going to make her own kingdom here at some point, although they’d need a more floral design to become more beautiful.

When she reached the Land of Adventure, she decided to try out the local food in the area. She did try to get something back at Peach’s castle, but the kitchen staff weren’t at their posts, and Sectonia had no idea where they were, with the mushroom people apologizing but saying that they couldn’t do anything for her without their princess.

Sectiona would’ve preferred to eat in an actual castle, but since that wouldn’t be a thing without their princess there, she found a quaint little place. While not a castle, it was… fair. She wasn’t a huge fan of all the stone work and lack of plant life, especially flowers, in Lumbridge and the surrounding buildings. That being said, the area at least kept itself clean and there was something quaint about the simple decor.

The Clik Clak Diner did stand out to her though, it clashed horribly with the aesthetics of the other buildings, but it had a more sleek look because of it. Out of sheer curiosity she decided to take a look, as metal wasn’t used much in her world unless it was used for decoration. Flying into the establishment, it looked… clean yet bland.

“May I help you?” The lady at the counter asked, not phased by Sectonia’s presence at all. ”Yes, I hear you serve food here. Do you have Fruits and Honey?” Sectonia said, dignified as always. Seeing as Sectonia was a giant bee lady, the waitress wasn’t surprised at the more odd order. “Take a seat, we’ll have something out for you in a bit.” Sectonia nodded and hovered to a non booth table as she couldn’t actually fit in any of the booths.

There weren’t that many people here at the diner, the most notable being two ‘humans’ as they were called eating their own food at a table adjacent to hers. They looked cleaner than the previous ‘human’ she had met that came back injured, with one of them having a fairly good looking suit on, but at the same time they also looked… shadier? Sectonia didn’t dwell on it too much as her food came right out, the waitress not needing to cook anything seeing as all Sectonia wanted was essentially pancake toppings.

When Sectonia had her food dropped off, the person at the other table, the one in the suit, asked for a milkshake. While not a bad idea, Sectonia kept to her fruits and honey, eating them as dignified as a giant bee with her bee mouth could.

After making sure that the armored dog would be looked after and everyone else got to where they needed to go around town, Ace Cadet was left with a little time to himself before the planned meeting time. He didn't do well sitting still, so eventually he found himself on the outskirts of Lumbridge again, digging up plants to use for his potions. Sure, he already had some life powders and the rest of the crew was doing their own preparations as far as healing went, but it didn't hurt to be over-prepared, right? If there was even such a thing.

He found some suitable herbs, crushed them and stuffed them into bottles. The whole affair didn't take very long, so next on the to-do list was... recollect his Slinger! Now that everyone had made their way out of the casino, it was time to return to it's rightful owner! He knew that a few of their party had used it, but seeing as it'd been passed around, tracking the device down would probably take a little time. On his way back into town, the Cadet noticed that the monster truck was gone. He blinked in surprise and looked up, shielding his eyes against the "sun." Wait, is that really the sun? I've been hearing some weird stuff lately, so maybe it's not? Can I tell time with it? The young man's thoughts rolled quickly through his head, eventually coming to the conclusion that it must have been getting close to the meeting time if someone had fetched the Grimm.

The trail to find his Slinger led Cadet around the entirety of Lumbridge before he was finally pointed back toward the Guild Hall. Apparently whoever had used it last was kind enough to leave it with the Guildmarm. The hunter made his way into the building, looking just a little flustered before he spotted everyone gathered and coughed into his fist before putting on his brightest smile.

"Almost time, huh?" he said conversationally, going quickly to the Guildmarm's counter and claiming his equipment. He strapped the Slinger back onto his wrist, looking over it briefly not for damage but out of some fondness for it. His final task complete, the Cadet joined the group. He was quite chipper, happy to see all of them despite it only having been a few hours, but he noticed the princess' solemn mood and thought it right to give her some optimistic words. "Hey, as long as we Wacha each other's backs, we'll be fine!"

---

As Michael dug into his pancakes, he took a moment to look up as he heard the door opening. He blinked, pausing for a moment to look at the person who walked in. It was a...bee? At least, they resembled one. Franklin also turned his head around to look at the bee person for a moment, then turning back around and going back to eating. Given everything they had seen so far, a giant bee-lady wasn't the weirdest, although it was probably up there. Michael stared for a little while longer, furrowing his brow as he got the sense that he had seen her before. Wait...when we got out of that hole, she was there. Next to Blazermate, I think... As he glanced over her again, he noticed that her eyes lacked the red glow that the town's inhabitants had. He gave Franklin a nudge, whispering to him. "Hey, look at her eyes."

He turned around again, taking a look at her eyes, noticing what Michael had spotted. "Oh...yeah, I see it."

Michael gave him a nod, looking back down to his food, getting close to finishing his meal. The waitress soon came up and placed a vanilla milkshake on the table, which he took. "Thanks." He took a sip, swallowing and placing the glass down. "Ahh, that's good."

Franklin simply continued to finish off his pancakes. "Mm-hmm. So, anything else we missed?"

"Well, uh...oh, we should go and find Blazermate, see if we can refill on ammo using that dispenser thing. And uh..." He lowered his voice a little. "We should probably go talk to her. I think she's another new member of the group."

"Yeah, yeah." The two went back to eating their food in silence, Michael finishing his plate before Franklin despite having ordered more food. Once they had both finished, and paid for their meal with some of the rupees they had earned earlier, they got up and walked over to the table where the bee-lady was sitting. "Uh...hey, I think I saw you earlier. You know Blazermate, right? We're part of the same group as her."

Sectonia kept mostly to herself in this place. It looked very different from what she knew, and while it lacked a more elegant flare and especially lacked vibrant colors, it had a bit of a mechanical precision to its design that was, at least tolerable. The food really wasn't that much to write home about thought. While she could easily dip the fruits in honey to make them more elegant, the fruits were kind of small and there wasn't nearly enough honey, but they did their job all the same.

She heard muttering coming from the table next to hers, as the two people were talking about something, but she paid it no mind. She had her tongue deep in the bottle of honey she was given however when the pair got up and moved up to chat with her. Seeing as she kept mostly to herself, she was quick to compose herself, the two probably only getting a hint of seeing her eating.

Hearing their question did peak her curiosity, and giving herself a moment, as if she was processing what they said (when in reality she was making sure honey wasn't in her mouth), Sectonia said. "Are you? It seems like most of you were over here. I've met quite a few of you."

Turning to give them her attention, Sectonia continued. "I am Queen Sectonia, ruler of Floralia, who's beauty rivals that of the gods. You are?" Having needed to do this song and dance a few times made this feel droll in the grand scheme of things. However Sectonia knew most of these people would have no idea who she was, and they couldn't worship or follow a nameless figure no matter how beautiful could they?

Michael raised an eyebrow as he listened to her response. Given her rather...flashy appearance, it wasn't too surprising that she was royalty of some sort. She had apparently met a few of the others which was good- it hopefully meant that they wouldn't have to explain the whole situation to another newcomer. He had to wonder how she would react to Bowser, given that he proclaimed himself a king. Hopefully they would get along...although, given her response, it seemed like she had a bit of a vanity problem, not unlike plenty of people in Los Santos. Clearing his throat, he introduced himself. "I'm Michael, and this is Franklin." Franklin gave a nod, mostly hanging off to the side. "Anyways, uh...I assume you've been told about the plan?"

It was clear the man in the suit was the leader of the pair, speaking for the pair of them as it were. She looked the pair over again, and it made sense seeing as this one was a bit more fancy than the other one. She mulled something over in her head a bit before saying. "I see. You are more sharply dressed than your cohort Michael. In fact so far you seem to be the most decorated of all the humans I've seen so far." Compliments were rare from her, but considering as this human was showing some effort of class unlike the others she had seen, a bit of positive reinforcement was due.

"That loud 'Bowser' baffoon also wore a suit, but it looked a bit tattered." Sectonia continued, turning her compliment back into an insult towards Bowser. This did give her an idea, seeing as that 'king' did have items Sectonia was interested in. When she regained more of her Magic, maybe she could extort him and make him look more beautiful in the future. Although there was nothing she could do about his loud voice. Still, she gave an approving look to Michael.

"As for this 'plan', I'm to understand we are going to destroy some powerful creature and make its power our own. What do you bring to this 'plan'?" Sectonia said, conjuring one of her magic staffs but only holding it casually to give the pair an idea of what she did.

"Ah...thanks. I try my best." Michael looked over his suit, straightening it out a bit. He listened with interest as she mentioned Bowser. Huh, so they did meet...and it sounds like they didn't exactly get along too well. He wasn't exactly surprised, given their personalities he'd be more surprised if they didn't clash. "Yeah...mine got sort of torn up, but the guys at Peach's castle were able to fix it and clean it up."

He nodded as she spoke about the plan, holding out what Michael guessed was some sort of magical staff, with her...floating hands. ...why does she have- ah, whatever. I've seen weirder. Nodding, he spoke up once she finished. "We use guns. They're a type of advanced ranged weapon, very powerful. We might not have any powers, but we're skilled fighters." He looked over to the door. "We were about to head out and join up with the rest of the group in a moment. Care to join us?"

Sectonia chuckled a bit at the mention of Michael also noting his suit got damaged at some point, but also noting he got it fixed at the castle where Sectonia had just come from. She figured it was probably one of those mushroom minions that fixed it up, skilled minions if directed perhaps? However what she found funny was that this 'Bowser' was probably offered the same service and didn't take up on it from the looks of things.

When they explained their 'guns', Sectonia could only stare blankly. She snapped out of her thoughts about the odd contraptions fairly quickly though. She had a few mechanical servants and machines under her control back in Floralia, but much like Blazermate and that woman in the suit of armor, this was clearly technology not found in her world. While she greatly doubted such small objects could put out the sheer devastation of magic, she nodded all the same.

"Yes, lets." Sectonia said, grabbing the remainder of her honey and poofing it away with her hands. She then throw down a bit of the currency she was given earlier as she left with the two men. Having to pay for your own food felt wrong to her, but it wasn't her money anyway so she didn't really complain.

After a short walk, the trio met up with the rest of the group, ready for what was sure to be a daunting and dangerous fight.

Geralt spent much of the time the group had preparing. In this case, he was carefully piecing together a few new Grapeshot bombs. As one might expect, making a grenade was delicate work. One had to properly gauge the amount of explosives, the amount of shrapnel, properly wick the fuse, make sure it stayed securely within the bomb. Additionally, preparing the shell to crack at the right level of force to prematurely detonate the bomb on impact always required especially careful consideration.

As he concentrated on his craft, Geralt thought back to his conversation with Tora. He wondered what kind of weapon the...ball thing...would produce for him? He imagined it would be similar to his crossbow, but also wouldn't be surprised if the little thing got overly excited (he seemed like the kind of person to do so) and made him something like what the Courier fellow carried. More like a full-sized crossbow. While he could absolutely use such a thing, he preferred to have a hand free in case he needed to use one of his Signs.

Still, if it was anything like the other weapons that were being used, whatever he got would likely represent a massive increase in his ability to fight effectively. Those things were like what crossbows were to the sling. An army equipped with them could take a city in a day.

He was almost excited about this. It was an odd feeling, to be excited about a weapon like this. To be excited about a fight was one thing, but just a weapon itself? It was strange. It also was rather unimportant in the grander scheme of things. They had to get together, fight this other, likely even more terrible monster, and slowly fight their way to killing the sun-god thing. Galeem.

Of course he'd gone and gotten himself into another mess like this. Of fucking course he had. He could just imagine Yennefer sarcastically commenting on it all while he just shrugged. That was Geralt's problem. Sure, he was a Witcher. Sure, he was the Butcher of Blaviken.

But he was still, in fact, a person. A person who, despite everything, seemed to still care about helping people in need. And if some horrible monster was enslaving millions, well, what greater need could there be?

Sighing, Geralt finished his bombs, now up to a grand total of 5, and made his way back to the area they'd agreed to meet at. Noticing those already gathered, Geralt gave a nod of greeting, then looked to Tora. "How's everything coming along?"

A golem. That's what Tora reminded him of. A tiny, furry, mechanically-inclined golem.

---

Several hours later Kamek descended from the masters study, having spent an enjoyable afternoon reading up on various subjects and headed for the teleporter. There he found Jr, now wearing a bandolier for Pokeballs (current population one tuckered out Mimikyu) strapped over one shoulder, a large cylindrical duffle bag with pokeball logos on each end hanging over the other way and holding a piece of paper with an extensive grid and various notes about Pokemon typing on it.

When Kamek asked him how his day had been Jr replied ”I tricked myself into going to school!” before waving the type grid in Kamek’s face.

”I see.” Kamek replied, unable to avoid being amused by jrs over exaggerated distress ”and what did you learn.”

”Oh. Well. Mimikyu is a ghost and fairy type Pokemon, which makes them immune to normal, fighting, because you can't punch ghosts, and, for some reason, dragons. They have a bunch of other strengths and weaknesses like, uh” Jr explained before having to check the cheat sheet ”x4 resistance to bugs? Weak to other ghosts. Also steel. Resistant to and weak to dark and poison so those cancel eachother out. Oh also she’s a girl.”

Kamek nodded approvingly, prompting Jr to go on ”Then I learned about training and moves and leveling and evolving which mimikyu wont do and everyone else already has fully evolved. Then me and Mimikyu practiced against a bunch of wild Pokemon. And I got all this stuff. More balls and some potions and some treats and stuff.” jr said, showing Kamek the contents of his duffle bag.

”So you have no money left” Kamek noted

”Nope. Papa’s got more tho right?” Jr said

”Well hopefully he hasn't spent as much as you” Kamek said before the two used the teleporter to cross back over to the land of adventure.

There they found Bowser stuffing a bunch of plastic shopping bags into the boot of the Bowser mobile.

”Oh hay!” Bowser said, waving at the pair. Then when asked where and what he’d got he replied ”Yeah so there's just a completely out of place grocery store called Ham Panther in town. Also a fancy looking Pokecenter. Don't know how we missed 'em but hey, I managed to get enough grub for the expedition.”

”A lot of this looks like meat and candy” Kamek said disappointedly as he examined the contents of the bags. Jr meanwhile let out a ”Sweet” as he grabbed, ripped open and gobbled up a pack of own-brand fizzy strawberry laces.

”Nooo. I got other stuff. Like. uh. This cabbage for you” Bowser said, getting a flat look from the mage in response ”And a load of tins of stuff that’ll last forever.” mostly baked beans as it turned out Oh and jr, take a load of these water bottles for your explody goo powers”

The varoise bottles were handed over. Jr complained about it being plain old water and not fizzy drinks. Kamek lectured him on the importance of hydration and how caffeinated beverages actually increased dehydration. Then when that didn't work Bowser told jr it meant he could explode stuff more often which resolved the issue and the bottles were added to the contents of the boy’s duffle bag.

After that was sorted out Kamek vanished to reset the teleporter connection back to the Deadzone while Bowser and Jr rolled their vehicles round to join the Brother Grimm at the starting line of their trip to the End.

”OH GOOD YOU’RE ALL ALREADY HERE” Bowser noted, which was the closest thing to an acknowledgment that they were late the King was going to give.

”Good to see you all. I hope you all had a productive day? I’ve set the teleporter back to the deadzone for anyone wanting it, and I’ve learned a fair bit about Gneidxick’s group and condition from the Master of Masters that I’ll brief you on in a bit.”

”and I got a typing chart for pokemon” Jr boated, happy to show it off to any of the other trainers.

”I GOT GROCERIES.” Bowser said, leaving out the bit of the day he had spent just lazing around town just as he had when talking to Kamek, before trying to hype up the team for their next mission ”ANYWAY. YOU ALL READY TO GO KICK THE BUTT OF SOME G-RANK GALEEM GOON!”

---

Linkle didn’t know it, but she had been going in circles. She had been doing that, to a lesser extent, ever since she separated from Din but now as the sun started moving into the four o’clock position it was starting to be a real problem. The winding loop-de-loop path she took to reach Mina’s and grab a bite to eat was bad enough, but if you marked down Linkle’s journey through the village after that on a map with a green marker you’d find she’d looped and crossed over herself so many times that the map would appear to be of a great grassy field rather than a town. Wandering her way back to the Guild Hall and finding her chochobo hadn’t done anything to help her navigation, but now she was at least looping herself faster. The only upside is that one of those loops of the town had brought her back to the Blacksmith Sisters in time to pick up her freshly restored crossbows.

Linkle, for her part, simply marveled in frustration at how Lumbridge was so much bigger than she’d thought. She had somewhere she had to be! They were going to kill the G class! She slumped forward against her chochobo’s soft neck, groaning to herself. She didn’t want to get left behind again, not like last time. She never be able to face the others again if she missed another big fight like this. She’d even asked for directions from some of the passers by, but the town gates she’d arrived at were always empty.

As they trotted down a street that felt familiar she straightened up and called out “Helllooooo? Can anybody help me?”

As if by coincidence, Ren approached Linkle, having overheard her. “What do you need help with?”

Linkle quickly looked down and smiled as she recognized the boy from the guildhall earlier. “Oh hey!” She said, and leaned down more towards him. “You’re one of the guys from the dead zone, right? Were you out looking for the rest of the group too? I don’t blame you, this town’s soooooo big.”

It wasn’t.

“There are about forty gates.”

There weren't.

“I just can’t seem to find the one we’re leaving from. Do you know?” She flicked her eyes dishearteningly back up to the sun for a second, biting her lip, before turning back to Ren. “You wanted to do that too, right?”

The thief showed slight confusion as Linkle explained. Was the town really that big? Either way, he might as well help her find the others. “I haven’t really decided. But if you can’t find your way to the gate, I can help you look for it if you want.” Ren offered.

“Thank you!” Linkle said, jumping off the Chochobo and offering her hand. “I’m Linkle.”

“Ren Amamiya. Nice to meet you.” the thief introduced himself properly, shaking Linkle’s hand.

The handshake was short, but vigorous. As they started walking, the bird trotting along beside them, Linkle decided to ask about something that had been on her mind ever since she’d heard these three talking at the guild hall. “You’ve got a Persona, right?”

The thief curiously looked back to her. “Yeah, why? Do you wanna know about Personas?”

“Heck yes, but that’s not why I asked.” Linkle replied. “A friend of mine has a Persona. Well, actually she has two. She stayed behind at the castle with who I’m pretty sure was her boyfriend. I thought they might be friends of yours. Did you guys know a Mina or a Junpei back home?”

Well this is a first. Not only was someone actually interested in a part of the whole Metaverse schtick, but there’s actually more Persona users outside of the Phantom Thieves and another wildcard! “Not really. Most of the Persona users I know are a part of my team, but I’m willing to meet them. If they don’t try to backstab me, of course. Long story.” Though the names seemed oddly familiar, he wasn’t exactly willing to have what happened with Akechi happen again.

Linkle’s face fell a bit at first when he mentioned he didn’t know who they were, but lit up immediately when Ren said he was willing to meet them anyway. “No, no, they’re fine. Mina’s really scared of a lot of things and Junpei was a little violent when we first ran into him, but that was because of weird mind control stuff. Also a long story. Other than that they’re regular kids.” She thought about that for a minute, how anyone with a Persona could be considered regular. She flashed back to that fight and couldn't help but laugh a little at the understatement. “Those Persona things are pretty crazy. Junpei’s was shrugging off arrows and explosions. It was lucky for me he had to wait a bit in between summonings or he would’ve chopped me in half for sure.” Linkle’s eyes suddenly shot wide for a second. “You said one stabbed you in the back? There are villains running around with one of those scary monsters?”

Ren chuckled a bit as Linkle told him about when she had first met the other Persona users. When asked if there were corrupted users, he hesitantly nodded. “As far as I know, they’re a rare case. But this one, Goro Akechi, he was manipulated by the same bastard that falsely accused me of assaulting him to cause mental shutdowns in people.” he explained. “Masayoshi Shido, his father and leader of a conspiracy group being puppeted by a god of control, Yalda-something. Yaldabaoth? Pretty bullshit, right?” the thief tried to joke. “But really, me and Akechi were both just the main pawns of that god’s game. I wish I could’ve helped him.”

Some of that went right over Linkle’s head, mostly the part about mental shutdowns, but the real meat of the boy’s story got through. A bad guy manipulating his kid, and pawns of a controlling god. She glanced upward at the sun and frowned. Galeem and this Yalda-some-such would get on like peas in an evil pod. Three more things to watch out for. “Who knows, you might run into him if you travel far enough.” She said, trying to shake off the poor mood she got it whenever she thought of Galeem. “Goro, I mean. Maybe you can still help him out.”

“You think so?”

“I really do.” She said cheerily. “I’m sure he must be here somewhere.”

Ren smiled. “Thanks, Linkle.”

“KWEHHHH!” Came a squawk from the Chochobo. Linkle looked down the street to see The unmistakable shape of the Brother Grimm monster Kart, Peach and Michael and everyone else that had made it gathered around readying themselves to head out. It was amazing what can be easily achieved if you have someone beside you able to keep you walking in a straight line for more than four seconds.

“Woohoo!” Linkle shouted, jumping into the air. “You really know how to navigate.” She said to Ren, punching him lightly in the shoulder. Then she crossed her arms, her expression getting slightly more serious. “I know you said you hadn’t decided, but I know from experience how scary strong you Persona guys are. We’re about to hunt down something really bad and kick it in the head. It's going to be really dangerous, and I think we could use all the help we could get if you’re willing to give it.” She thought back to the first time they’d fought one of Galeem’s guardians, how she’d missed that fight because she wasn’t strong enough to beat Junpei. How people had died. How maybe, if they’d had people as strong as Mina and Junpei in there with them, it could have been prevented.

On one hand, he didn’t think he’d be of much help. On the other hand, Ren had his team back. He didn’t want to disappoint Linkle too. “I’ll let the others know we’ll be heading out with you guys.” the thief finally decided.

“All right.” Linkle said, hopping back up on Epona II’s back and looking the boy in the eye. “It’ll help you out too, I swear.” She nodded and pointed forward. The Chochobo took off down the street to join everybody else.

Geralt's question caught Tora a little by surprise, since he'd been paying much more attention to practicing punches with the Mech Arms while waiting for others to come. Loosening his stance, the Nopon dropped one Mech Arm and reached into one of his pouches. “Tora have new shooty right here!” He produced a gun from his pouch and handed it to the Witcher. “Couldn't implement Ether tech, meh, so instead made battery-operated. It fire plasma blasts, put holes in things real nice, meh. Will burn through charge fast, but can charge with electricity, and has mini solar panel. Just leave out in sun or ask techy person to charge for you.”

Poppi raised her hand. “If change to electric element, Poppi can charge for friend Geralt! Pleased to help, so ask anytime. Within reason,” she added.

After a handful of minutes, just about everyone had gathered around Brother Grimm for the trip. Some no doubt would want to take their own possible organic transportation, but Peach stepped up to make sure that everyone knew how long a trip this one would be, and over rough terrain besides. Any beast riders would surely fall behind. “I also wanted to thank each and every one of you,” she told them. “Grave danger lies ahead, unknown enemies with unknown powers, but here you are ready to jump in for the sake of the worlds. For that I commend you.” She waited a moment as the collected townsfolk clapped, then beckoned the heroes to join her. “Alright, let's get underway. We have a champion to put to rest.”

The engines of the tremendous monster truck roared to life. Tora and Poppi hurried to climb aboard. Peach hadn't been idle during the many hours of the day; she'd enlisted help to enlarge Brother Grimm's already-spacious bed even more, adding benches and handrails to accommodate heroes. The vehicle might not be quite as fit for battle anymore, but it could take everyone where they needed to go, and after a minute to get everyone stowed, it started to. At the princess's bidding the motorized behemoth lurched into motion and got the trip underway. It'd be a long and bumpy ride.

---

Brother Grimm rumbled across the landscape, pancaking the grass of sprawling plains and skirting around crops of forest. When it eventually drew close everyone got a good look at the glittering waters of the southeastern lake, made peaceful once again by the efforts of heroes yesterday. Peach drove a wide berth around Territorial Rotbart, the remarkably overlarge and extremely powerful ape just wandering in the open for no good reason. Swampy lowland posed no problem for the monster truck's mammoth tires; it rolled straight through. All the while a crisp breeze blew across the rolling land, beneath an azure sky. Tora took it upon himself to bask in the warm sun once he got done tinkering with his toolkit, and to enjoy the open wild.

The heroes spotted a couple palces of interest, including tree forts, towers, a temple up in the mountains, and even an elaborate mansion just sitting out in the open. Nobody could escape noticing the massive tree that loomed in the southernmost reached of the Land. But everyone had a job to do, so they heeded Euden as he guided them toward their goal. It didn't take long to be able to spot it—the giant black sphere sitting at the far end of the region, wreathed in purple energy. Peach drove steadily its way.

Euden warned that the group would encounter a turning point, and he did not steer them wrong. Gradually the lush, abundant land turned barren, rocky, and eventually twisted. Briars and brambles sprouted from its paltry soul, and pools of lava welled to the surface in places. The terrain worsened, turning the already-bumped ride into a constant series of herky-jerky jockying. Cracks started appearing in the ground, crevices and ravines and canyons. Monster sightings became more frequent and their subjects more formidable, with a few errant attacks now and again. Keese flocks flew close, mactera drew near to lob globs of acid, a couple vicious scorpions leaped from passing cliffs, and a few bullet gangs appeared to take potshots. Nothing really to worry about. The rhino beetles, however, were large and hard enough to cause a real jolt if they got beneath the truck's wheels, and they seemed nigh-impervious from the front. After a time Brother Grimm came to a large furrow with no bridge across and came to a stop.

The orb lay another couple miles out, across mountainous terrain. Euden eyed the canyon gravely. “The point of no return,” he affirmed. With one hand he pointed at the opposite side. “We can jump it, especially in this thing, but since it's lower on that side we can't get back up so easily.”

Peach thought about that. Then she put the Brother Grimm in reverse. “If Kamek supersized Bowser,” she said, rolling over an errant scorpion as she backed up. “And we got our fliers to help, I'm sure we could get it back across.” After reaching a suitable distance she put the monster truck in drive and floored it. The beast belched out flame as it thundered forward, moving closer and closer. “Hold on!” She yelled. A moment later Brother Grimm ramped off the canyon's lip, soared through the air, and landed on the opposite side.

It landed on its tires, but the impact was immense. The airbags deployed, keeping the princess's head in once piece, but anyone in the back who didn't hunker down could very well be thrown clear. Dust flew as Brother Grimm slid to a stop, a few bits and pieces bouncing off the dusty earth. Tora had bounced into the sky, but as always Poppi was ready to retrieve him. She caught her masterpon and landed by the truck just about as Peach, Euden, and any other in-cab passengers extracted themselves from the airbags. The far side of the canyon appeared to be a semicircular cliff, most of its edges walled off by stone, with only one zigzagging route forward for now. “W-well,” stammered the prince, more than a little shook. “That turned out pretty well, all things considered.

A few seconds passed before the walls and their tops started to bubble. Purple particles seeped from the ground, and from the wall-stains and dripping pools came a number of creatures. Smooth and purple, with bulbous clothing and red eyes, the Primids emerged in large numbers, many of them armed with various items, particularly medieval equipment. Alongside them came Borboras, Tickens, and Bytan. Feyesh and Armights took to the sky.

Tora's eyes just about bugged out. “Mehmehmehmeh! This needlessly large welcome party!” Poppi handed him the Mech Arms, and not a moment too soon. The first Primid let loose with its cannon, firing an explosive ball at Brother Grimm that Tora jumped to block, and the party summarily got started.