Sakura surpressed a giggle at Bella's modesty. "It's okay, Bella-san! You look great." Pretty much all of the street fighters she knew liked to show some skin sometimes. Even Ryu went shirtless sometimes. Which- well- try not to get distracted, Sakura. He's not even here.

Suddenly, she was scooped up in a big hug, when got a laugh out of her. She kicked her legs a few times, her harness digging into her awkwardly. "Hahaha! Congratulations, Bella-San!" Once she was set down she readjusted her clothes and harness. "Normally, I'm the one that catches people off guard with big hugs, teehee. I don't see what everyone is complaining about."

Soon, it was time to see Shippy off. "Bye bye, Shippy-san! Sayonara! Safe travels! Thank you for everything!" She waved the ship off.

"Well- that's good. Now all we have to do is-"

And then things got very interesting, very quickly. Blue Team's day was about to get worse.

Before Sakura knew it, she was being ushered onto the Maw. There was a giant robot, the Sealab was closed, and Blazermate almost got left behind because of some kind of EMP. If no one else got to her, Sakura was strong enough to pick the robot up, even if she was a little gross looking. Fortunately, the Koopa Troop was on it! That was good. Everything was very chaotic.

Sakura didn't land very gracefully on the inside, her face briefly smeared with rain water. Once she was onboard the Maw with everyone else, Sakura looked around. "Ugh. Oooh. Aw, man. This sucks." She whined.

A very creepy lady appeared, and Sakura was held back by Peach's command. The lady looked like she was from feudal Japan. The mask, the outfit, the hair- she looked like a Yokai.
"I really think we should just- I mean- this lady is horrible!" She whispered harshly. Two monsters made their appearance, weird kite looking snake things.

Sakura tensed up, raising her fists. She studied the monsters closely as they approached, getting ready to fight. Unlike, some of the others, Sakura lacked the experience or mental defences to even begin to realse what was happening to her. In a matter of moments, her eyes crossed, her lids drooped, and she fell forward onto her knees. "Wuh-ugh..unh..." With a soft sigh she fell forward onto her belly. Almost immediately she was rendered unconscious by the hyponotic pattern. She was already out like a light by the time the scarlet blast hit her.


When she awoke, her eyes fluttered open. She was in a dark room, laying on a bed. "Uhm...moshi moshi..?" Her voice was cartoonishly high pitched, like she had inhaled helium. She brought a hand up to her neck and realised it was tiny. Tiny, and chubby. Eyes wide, she looked down at herself. She was wearing a floral printed pink dressed, two purple shoes tied with bows. No fighting gloves or bandana, no cat ears or harness. Her hair was still short and brown, and a pink fibre flower was tied within in. She was actually a very adorable child, but, that wasn't exactly what Sakura wanted to be at the moment.

"N-nani?" She squeaked. "NANDA TEEEE?!" She yelled. Then she covered her mouth as she remembered where she was. "Shimatta!"

Uncovering her mouth, Sakura glanced around, eyes wide. Taking a deep breathe, she tested something. "I...can...speak...English. I can still speak English. Oh, phew." She slapped the sides of her head, but it felt like she could barely reach the top of her head anymore! "Oh no, oh no, oh no! This place is terrible!" She looked down at her arm and flexed. No muscle. No muscle at all!

"Nooo! I worked so hard! This isn't fair!" She kicked and slammed her fists into the soft bed. Covering her mouth again, she silently chastised herself. But she seriously felt like throwing a temper tantrum. Hopefully that was just because she was a toddler, but inwardly she knew that was probably just how she was without Arashio keeping her a little bit more in check.

The little girl hopped off the bed, almost losing her balance. Was she alone? This place was so scary. And she had no strength! Nothing! "Uwah--ah! Uaah!" Sakura yelped quietly. She started to panic, tapping her fingers together. She glanced around. Everyone was much the same- everyone was a little kid! Bowser and Junior and Bella and Nadia- even that Mirage guy.

"Oh, noo! We're all little kids! Now we're gonna get eaten by monsters!" Sakura clambered to her feet, clearly panicking.

"What do we do, what do we do?! We have to- we have to fix this! I can't be a little kid again! I forgot everything I learned in school already!" She whined.

"And also- I don't wanna die! We'll never be able to beat the guardian boss like this! Chikuso!" Defeated, she fell onto her face, landing with a thud on the bed.

"We're captured. We're sooo captured." She bemoaned, her voice muffled by the bed. With all of her strength taken from her, now in the middle of a spooky room, Sakura felt totally hopeless. Normally she was something of an optimist, but this was terrible. If she couldn't fight, she couldn't do anything. It was what she had centered her entire identity around and now- it was gone! Who was Kasugano Sakura if she couldn't fight?! Nobody, that's who! Just some dumb kid with a big mouth.

"Waahh." Sakura lay motionless on the bed, limp as a sack of potatoes.

---

Mirage was momentarily distracted from the mixture of bad decisions they had to make by Bella's celebration of being able to traverse land. He couldn't imagine what it'd be like to be stuck among the waves, but if they kept getting onto boats, he'd probably feel stuck at sea. He simply tilted his head with a small smirk, the moment of positivity being a relief in this situation. However, it didn't change that they had to make a choice.

Thankfully, everyone seemed in agreement in one regard: Shippy had been through enough. Mirage wasn't particularly sure of what they'd all been through prior, but this sea wasn't a place for a boat like that. It was better to head out, and apparently rejoin it's captain. He knew that emotion; A man and his ship! Ah, what he'd give to have the Mirage Voyage right now. They could traverse the waters and party the whole way! But, after that crash on Psamathe, and that issue with the insurance agency... He'd probably not see that boat again for awhile, huh?

"Be safe!" He called to Shippy, both for the sake of the living boat making it safely home... And the egg he left in there. He figured it was best to just not talk about that with anyone, so he'd keep the thoughts to himself. They had things to worry about, anyways. Like which path they'd take.

Mirage turned as Tyl Regor made himself known again, and began to yack on. However that quickly changed as Regor's demeanor did, the revelation that something was happening being ominous and worrying as Nadia nearly got caught up in the lift's door closing. "You're kidding?! The guy locked us out here? I ain't forgetting that anytime soon!" He complained vocally, but retreated with the others. They couldn't just stand around, or else they'd end up swimming with the beasts. Looking around at their surroundings yielded results, the glimpse of something huge in the sky dipping through the clouds nearly made Mirage's knees give out. He brought down his goggles and zoomed to try and get a better look at what he could only assume was an absolutely huge aircraft, but his zoom was met with a golden beaming light that caused his vision to revert, the trickster confused momentarily as he tapped on the goggles in an attempt to make them work, but no dice.

"Crap, it's like some kind of EMP!" He exclaimed in a panic, noticing the technology held by the others also seemed to be going out. Including full-blown vessels like the Atomos, which was saved due to Bowser and Kamek's quick thinking. The horrid noises from the aircraft kept Mirage from focusing on their deeds however, as Peach screamed for them to take shelter on the Maw.

"This sucks!" Mirage muttered to himself, scrambling with the others to get on board. He slipped on the wet ground and ended up scuttling a short distance on all-fours until he got to his feet, noticing an individual he hadn't really seen much of before: A little turtle guy attempting to carry Blazermate, that bot that had nicked one of his arc-stars. She was a robot, so of course the EMP disabled her, too. He was attempting to haul her up onto the Maw, and Mirage, being the ever-so apparent helper, attempted to help distribute some of the load and get her on board, the fact he hadn't even let out a single quip in regards to helping Jr was a sign of how terrifying that thing in the sky was.

Fortunately, everyone seemed to get on board safe and sound. Mirage was panting, glad that his tech was water-proof. But the whole visage inside the Maw wasn't what he expected. Warily, his hand kept to his revolver, eyeing the area cautiously and being taken aback by the strange, slender looking individual that apparently ran the ship. If this was who they had to take out to gain control, then there shouldn't be any hesitation right? Mirage considered pulling his weapon, but paused as Peach spoke. Allowing her a moment to converse, and seemingly ask for peaceful passage. If that was how they were going to play it, it was fine with him... But as some weird slithering monsters appeared, he shifted to track one of them, in case it chose to make a move.

Unfortunately, before Nadia could even point out what was happening to them, Mirage seemed to fall under the hypnosis at a very fast rate. He slumped onto his knees, and then the only other thing that met the floor was his face. Leaving him in a rather embarrassing position as his backside stuck in the air, but he was long gone...

---

"I want my porkchops extra glazed..." Mirage mumbled, asleep on what was essentially a pile of mismatched socks. It took naught by one mis-roll to send him tumbling down the small hill of foot-wear which woke him up quickly as he tumbled to the bottom with a yelp. Thankfully his handsome face fell into a rather soft pillow, keeping him from sustaining any damage. Mumbling nonsense to himself as he pushed himself up, he found something odd right off the bat: His lower arms were bare, which wasn't how his attire was a little bit ago. Quickly, he stood, finding the floor too close for comfort as he observed his small body. A familiar yellow t-shirt and black shorts, with some sneakers.

"Hey, I refused to get rid of this until I was twelve!" He said with a mixture of confusion and amusement, before realizing if he was wearing this, then where did his suit go? Or his changed suit from when he took the spirit in? His skin tone seemed normal, and as he reached up, he found his first ever pair of goggles atop his head. As nostalgic as it may be, it was also distressing. He picked up the pillow in frustration and tossed it, but found it didn't go terribly far. Not only was he pint-sized, but he was as strong as someone who was pint-sized! "Why do I keep getting smaller?!" He complained vocally to himself, before picking up on another voice; A sorta high-pitched one, but a voice nonetheless.

Waddling over as well as his small legs would allow, he heard a second voice: Before noticing the sight of a small girl trying to pull another small girl out from between some cushions. The cat features kind of made who it was obvious, or at least narrowed it down quite a bit? Regardless, he recognized Nadia enough to lend a hand "No worries! Mirage to the rescue!" His childish voice called as to not take the duo by much surprise. Joining beside Nadia, Mirage grabbed hold of Bella and joined in the pulling efforts to try and free her from suffering the fate of a TV remote. He felt a bit of annoyance and concern as he realized he wasn't as much 'Mirage' now that his bamboozle had been foozled by that creepy chick. Now he was just tater tot Elliot, but even without his abilities he was eager to try and help.

Sectonia was accosted by one of the warehouse managers after sending her antilions in to check for the mimic, said antilions tapping on crates seemingly causing him distress. Sectonia explained the situation to the man, in which he replied in kind mentioning that her antillions would get squashed by the security inside said warehouses. "Thats not a problem, I can always make more." Sectonia said, dismissively. She then continued. "However if that is the case, finding this 'mimic' would be far more tricky. Especially if these sentinels are so bad at their job that this thing could sneak in anyway."

"What?!" The contempt with which Sectonia responded, both for her workers and the city, ignited a spark of outrage. Contrary to the queen’s assumption this merchant was just an independent vendor, knowing nothing of the situation inside the warehouses, who happened to see what for all intents and purposes appeared to be a coordinated raid. A few warehouse workers, customers of the nearby bazaar, and other bystanders had gathered, just as taken aback by the sudden intrusion. Sectonia’s explanation smoothed things over a little for those aware of the infestation, but even they had to wonder why the giant bugs decided to barge in without so much as a by-your-leave from the owners and provoke the Ruin Sentinels. Hearing that the insect queen didn’t care if potentially destructive fights broke out with the fearsome guards only served to rub everyone the wrong way.

A heavyset warehouse foreman stepped forward with a brave face, pointing a beefy finger at the massive hornet. “Well, even if you are hunting for the mimic, you’ve gotta get those bugs out and find another way! We can’t have brawls right in the middle of all the goods, and they’re cousin’ panic! Attackin’ Sentinels is almost as bad as attackin’ the Grimleal themselves. And if the stinkin’ Resistance catches wind of this, they’ll join in the chaos and attack again!”

"Fine." Sectonia said, snapping her fingers. An audible 'poof' sound could be heard from where the antillions were at the time of their searching as they disappeared into smoke and stars. "So I assume some of you have a much better idea then as to where this thing is? I don't need to search if one of you has more pertinent information."

The foreman looked annoyed at Sectonia's presumptuousness. So the only grounds someone had to ask her to stop doing something was if they had an easier way to get it done for her? "Tellin' you not to break the law and disturb the peace doesn't mean we gotta do your job for you! We've all got our own work to get back to!"

"Weren't you complaining a moment ago about the Sentinels not being able to do things themselves?" the merchant added among grumbles from the others. Even if Sectonia came to do something good, the way she had decided to go about it -going over everyone's heads to do as she pleased- was running up against resistance. That plus an underlying fear, both of her monstrous appearance and the duplicitous Resistance, combined to unite the crowd against her.

One cap-wearing girl, however, spoke up from the crowd. "Hey, maybe I can help! Try the red brick warehouse on the other side!" she suggested. "The overseer there, Nazeem, got his fingers bitten off by something last week."

Sectonia could only roll her eyes at how uncooperative this town was being. First the vizear's troop, now the townspeople. Seems like this town was full of nothing but fools. But before she was just about ready to leave as to not deal with all of this complaining from horribly managed subjects, a little girl actually gave her a good source of information. Ignoring the riff raff who was being overall very unhelpful, Sectonia moved to the girl and tipped her hat, her alcremie under her hat also trying to tip its imaginary hat. "Thank you little one." Sectonia said. She gave the rest of the crowd a glare before asking for directions to where this warehouse was.

The ones she'd dismissed did not respond. Francesca, however, pointed Sectonia directly to where the warehouse lay with her ability to fly in mind, and trusted in her ability to discern the characteristic red brick to do the rest. Sectonia made her way to the spot in question, finding the building that stuck out with its red brickworrk. The building seemed to be empty of workers, the door open. considering the time, they probably went out for lunch if Sectonia could guess. Still, seeing as this was her major lead she should have this all wrapped up in short order. Summoning her green antilions again, she sent them to fan out around the warehouse to find said finger eating box.

Just a few moments after the bug queen sent her minions inside, history repeated itself, albeit with Sectonia able to see what happened this time. The clank of heavy metal armor in motion followed by the slam of a weighty polearm against an antlion carapace drew her attention, and when she looked inside she found one of the Ruin Sentinel guards on the offensive. An unnaturally tall and thin night in armor with the yellow sheen of brass was addressing the unauthorized intrusion one bug at a time using a polehammer as tall as it was. Though it didn't move at great speed, its long strides and reach allowed to to follow the Antlions wherever they might scuttle.

"And there it is. I suppose this would be a good of a test as any for this." Sectonia said, pulling out one of her staffs and pointing it at the metal behemoth now that she could see where it was as it smashed two of her 5 antillions without much effort. Wordlessly the sentinel started to slow down, with its massive loss in speed on top of his already slow movement making its attacks dodgable by the third and final indoor antillion who went about doing what his queen commanded of him.

With Sectonia interfering with but technically not fighting the Ruin Sentinel, her underlings could go about their assigned task of giving absolutely everything in the warehouse a once-over. They pored over boxed tools, furniture, construction supplies, and a whole host of other goods. When the two from the perimeter turned up nothing they joined in the search to speed things up, but the time dragged on. All too soon, the lunch break threatened to end and put the factory staff back on the clock. Sectonia's magical reserves hurt a little too, as sustaining the time distortion field around the Sentinel required notable upkeep. It was at about that time however, that she noticed that she hadn't seen or heard the antlion sent to the second floor in a bit.

Noticing this, Sectonia made her way past the sentinal with the last two antillions, making her way to the second floor of the warehouse. Controlling this sentinal was getting annoying, but seeing as it wasn't much of an issue now Sectonia held the spell on it as she reached the second floor. She spread out her two remaining antillions, figuring out where the other one perished so she knew what to attack.

Finding the missing minion proved tough, since in a world where even full-bodied people left no corpses, summons especially didn't. As Sectonia searched, however, she came upon an odd sight among all the stacked boxes and cases. Arranged in a rough circle in one area were not one, not two, but five unique treasure chests. She could see a gold-locked marked chest, a brightly colored toy chest, a smallish reinforced chest, a metal-plated electronic chest, and a time-worn old chest. Some sat on top of other crates and some on the floor, facing various directions without much rhyme or reason, but for someone on the hunt for anything unusual the sight of so many in a small area seemed amiss.

Down below, the Sentinel started to move. The distance between it and Sectonia had put it out of her hex's effective range, and it now headed for the stairs to the second floor in pursuit of the intruding targets.

Sectonia sent her antillons to try the odd looking chests, positioning herself so that she had view of the odd collection of chests and the stairs at the same time as she heard the sentinel making his way to her location from down below.

No sooner did one antlion open the reinforced chest and find nothing out of the ordinary about it, than the toy chest sprung to life. It popped open to reveal a nebulous head with arrow-shaped red eyes, and from its base extended a trio of spider-like legs terminating in blades. With a skittering sound the creature leaped at its fellow bug, blades flashing in the imperfect light.

"Hmph. Doesn't seem too out of the ordinary in my kingdom." Sectonia said to herself as the toy chest mimic did its thing with the antillion. Trying out her new power again, Sectonia made herself faster and charged the mimic chest with her blades out, doing a few swipes at it before attempting to stab it.

Sectonia's weapons fell upon the creature with extra force thanks to their increased speed, but even without she got the impression her strokes would have been sufficient. Each attack dealt visible damage to the Spiderchest. It pulled a leg-blade from the antlion's head and turned it against the insect queen, but with little effect. By the time she readied her thrust, it was already on its last legs, and her stab finally put the little menace to rest.

The next moment, the electronic chest lunged for her. It burst out of its original shape as it leaped, revealing a much larger and more horrifying mimic, and with vicious talons tried to grab hold of Sectonia's abdomen so that its grisly fangs could chomp in.

The newcomer to the mimic party caught Sectonia slightly off guard, as she wasn't expecting more than one mimic. The fact that it went for her lower half though wouldn't leave it unscathed. While it did manage to get a grab on her, Sectonia summoned a large ring of light and had it spin around her lower half, the buzzsaw ring of light causing massive damage to anything that was attacking that section.

As soon as the pain began the nightmare mimic got a final chomp in, let go, and scooted backward out of the ring's range. It took the opportunity to pull itself on top of a nearby crate and then launch itself bodily at Sectonia in a wild leap. It aimed to land on Sectonia with the full weight of its body behind its ghastly jaws and bring the big bug to the ground.

Evading the constant damage of the ring after getting its final bite in, the mimic decided instead to instead knock Sectonia out of the air using its body. Even so, Sectonia still had her light ring spinning around her, and seeing as the mimic couldn't dodge in the air, she launched it at the airborn mimic intending to cut it in half.

A shrieking sound rang out as the ring cut into the mimic, but while it dealt enough visceral damage to spray gunk over the storage space, it did not kill the monster outright. The mimic followed through with its leap and crashed into Sectonia, knocking her to the wooden floor with a loud noise. The planks below her rattled under the impact, soundly built but not made to bear the strain of combat.

This creature had no fear, no brain, just instinct it seemed as it took Sectonia's ring of light head on becoming gravely wounded in the process in its attempts to knock her to the ground. While it did succeed, it didn't succeed for long as she blasted it with another one of the powers gained by absorbing the count's spirit, a dark globe of void energy, at point blank. followed by a blink to right herself back in the air.

Her magic scored a heavy hit on the mimic, and though the vicious thing meant to lunge at her once again, her magic had begun to take its toll. Seldom did the monster ever spring its trap and not brutalize the hapless bystander outright, and now that it found itself confronted with a capable -and durable- victim, its low intelligence wasn't doing it any favors. The mimic's slobber flew this way and that as it gnashed its teeth, pulling itself at Sectonia once again, but the monster could not defend itself if she took action in time.

Sectonia, not wanting to be on the reviving end of this slobbering brute's jaws again, summoned her swords and unleashed a barrage of rapid stabs at it as it approached. Most enemies would try to dodge this attack, but the mimic didn't seem to have the intelligence to do so, nor the ability to stop itself from moving once it got started.

A flurry of steel fell upon the mimic as it scrabbled toward her, sinking into its mottled flesh. Despite it wounds the monster was a credit to its kind, and only barely slowed down under the onslaught until one of Sectonia's points pierced its glowing green eye. The rest was a done deal--the bug queen pierced straight through and into the monster's brain, killing it. After struggling around for a moment in its death throes the greater mimic lay flopped down and started to dissolve. In another moment only its spirit remained, joining that of the spiderchest in floating just off the floor.

At that time the clanking of armored footsteps grew louder; the Ruin Sentinel reached the second floor. Worse still, she heard voices echoing through the warehouse below. The first few workers had returned from their lunch break, and it was time for Sectonia to make herself scarce.

Before leaving, Sectonia grabbed the spirits of the two mimics. Seeing as the sentinel was at the top of the second floor stairway now and more commotion coming from below, she dismissed her antillions and made for a window, blinking outside the warehouse when she had clear vision and avoiding the whole situation of dealing with the rest of the people downstairs. Hopefully it was just these two chests, and not a third. But considering the bounty was for only one chest, they should be fine with the proof she had. At least she hoped, getting bitten by something with a mouth that big, even if it didn't hit at full force, wasn't the most pleasant of things. at least the pipe of insight she had gotten earlier was now showing how useful it could be, slowly healing the bite wound left behind by the large mimic. She made her way back to the palace to collect her reward. Bounty work, for a Queen! Galeem really needed to go.

Jesse Faden narrowed her eyes as the Tantroni approached. It was tough, she'd give it that. Perhaps she should have slowed it down with a shot from her Tool Gun. Normally, she considered herself fairly cool-headed in combat. But for some reason, this thing really pissed her off. Not that she was immune to outbursts of temper anway, but still.

"Die!" Jesse extended her hand out and blasted the Tantroni in the face with pure kinetic energy. It reeled and Jesse backpedaled. She reached into her jacket, produced the Tool Gun, and increased srhunk it's already tiny feet to half their size with three shots. One missed and shrunk a tile on the floor. Helplessly, it toppled over. That granted Jesse the opportunity to shred it to dust with her Service Weapon. "Idiot."

As she shot it, little blue crystals scattered from the wounds. They scattered in a variety of directions. After a moment, though, they flew towards Jesse. The damage her Health had taken, her own little Resonance keeping her intact from the blows of paranatural entities, was knitted back together. After a moment the pain was gone and it was like she had never been hit at all. Even if she couldn't shake her sour mood.

The Phantom Thieves found themselves having a very annoying argument, but Panther cast some sort of spell that soothed her temper. That Tantroni must have had some kind of curse, like Joker said, because little got under her skin that easily.

(That's...a lie.)

She sheathed Service Weapon and produced the Tool Gun. Joker asked her to help with the vent, and she nodded. "Sure." She adjusted the options and made the vent No Collide. She waved her hand through it to test it, and smirked. Then she lead the way, crouching into the now open passage way.

No Collide saved the day once again. Jesse theorized she could probably just rip whatever she wanted apart with her newly refound Launch, but this was a much more elegant solution. Much quieter, too.

Now the heisters were crowded in a dark vent, observing a room full of obstacles and guards. Their goal? An employee access door. Once there, she could just No Collide everyone through it. Unfortunately, as far as she knew, she couldn't No Collide light itself. Otherwise the gun would just keep hitting light and would never work.

Four guards. Nine lasered subsections. Stealth...wasn't exactly her forte. The Tool Gun was the first quiet weapon she'd used in- well, ever.

(Let's see if I can come up with something. Even though I feel like we're not gonna get through this room undetected.)

"Might just be best to use the element of surprise, this time, and waste these guards now." She whispered. Joker gave her an interesting tidbit about the paintings. "Are you sure that's not different, too?" She asked.

Jesse rolled her shoulder again, staying crouched. Silently, she attached a thruster to a distant bench, one far from the employee access door. She kept it unactivated. "Since they're attracted to noise, I can activate that thruster and create a distraction if we need it.

"Because, I'm thinking we get small. Everyone here has paranatural abilities that shouldn't be effected by our physical size." She held up the Tool Gun. "I can shrink an entire person at once. Using a few charges, I can adjust someone to the size they like. And, if you stand still, I can make them big again." She explained.

"Since the guards don't seem to have very good eyes, we can make ourselves small and slip underneath the lasers. We get to the employee access, I'll No-Collide it, and we get inside. Then, I make us all big again."

"Or. I could use Launch to throw those portal paintings wherever we want. I could put one up against Employee Access and one right up against the grate we're in. But that has a lot of variables." Jesse pointed the Tool Gun at herself and zapped herself a few times. After a few hits, she was about nine inches tall.

She smiled. "Hey, look. I'm a mini-me." She waved up at everyone who was suddenly much larger. Her voice wasn't higher (Unfortunately), just a lot quieter.

"One problem with this plan that I only realise now. It's gonna take forever for us to run across. Any smaller and we might have to bring extra food rations and camp out." Jesse joked. She looked out across to the Employee Access door. Just to be safe, she zapped it with a preemptive No-Collide.

"Although, I do have good cardio."

---

Link bent down and wrapped his hands around the handle jutting up from the floor, the object hemmed in on all sides by shoes, baggage, and general junk. He pulled with all his might, putting in all the power his small arms and knees had, and after a few seconds the thing dislodged from the floor with enough force to throw shoes into the air and send him tumbling over onto his back.

He looked over his prize, a an badminton racket. Of course, he didn't know what this thing was. What he did know is that Peach hit people with something that looked like this during the tournament.

He stood up, fitting the racket into his belt. He had a belt now. It was part of a very smart looking uniform. A blue and white tabard, some sturdy leather boots and gloves, no actual bits of metal armor but that was fine. It just made it easier to move around in. All in all, a pretty good set of clothing. Too bad it was just too small for him. Well, under normal circumstances it would be.

He looked back down at his tiny, tiny hands and sighed. This was not a trick he had ever expected The Maw to pull on them. They might have been able to avoid it if they had come in careful and quiet, maybe, but that hadn't been an option once that thing had risen up out of the depths. No one had to tell Link to start running, you always got out of dodge when a machines eyes started glowing red. He had half expected it to start laser barraging them as they went. He was so glad Shippy had taken off before that monster had appeared. He hoped she made it back safe.

As everyone had started to wake up and take stock of their predicament Link's first instinct had been to acquire some sort of weapon, even if it probably would do any good against the monsters that had done this to them. Those things had been bigger than them when they were still adults, after all. It was more that he had never felt more naked in his life, even when he had actually been mostly naked. His equipment was gone, his slate was gone, and as he flexed his arms he could feel a loss that, after experiencing it twice before, was excruciatingly familiar.

He pulled out the racket again, giving it a couple of practice swings and doing a few side hops across the uneven ground. "Hya, hyu, hyaaaa! Hup, hup, hup." At the very least he was still a swordsman. A weaker swordsman, but a swordsman all the same. He guessed he had his dad to thank for that, getting him started on it super early. It was a disappointment that this transformation hadn't put any old memories in his head. He would have been thrilled to know what the mans face looked like, at least. What else might he still have access too? "Cia?" He whispered, kind of dreading the idea that the woman would appear still fully grown. Adult or otherwise, though, the woman hadn't appeared.

This wasn't much to work with.

It seemed like he had more to work with than, say, Sakura who seemed convinced that they were all going to be eaten by monster. "Hey, we're not going to be eaten by monsters!" He called over. "Not if we're careful." He gave another confident swing of the racket. "Besides, I'll get 'em with this! I've seen Peach send Bowser flying with one of these."

Speaking of Peach, Link looked around for some kind of vantage point. Spotting an old cupboard sticking out of the debris and jumped up and scrambled up the shelves like a ladder until he reached the top and started looking around for both the others or an exit. "Are we all here?" He called out. "Speak up if you haven't! If you were one of those fat people we're not gonna hurt you."

It seemed the battle was far from over, that didn't bother Laharl even a little. In fact it excited him even more, now that the Custodian decided to reveal it's stony form to the group. As it slammed it's fists onto the ground Laharl jumped back, nearly crushed by the Custodians blow "FINALLY A REAL CHALLENGE!" His skin was splattered with the eyes yellow viscera, but he wasn't worried about being covered in his foes essence.

Tora was right about the giant stone creature being a 'tough customer', it's whole body was composed of solid rock but even the toughest stones crack and the Custodian was no exception. Laharl once again threw himself at the enemy, still suffused with the power of fallen foes and fists burning white hot. The fire would be hot enough to melt the stone creature, the flames also fuelled by his foes defeat greatly increasing its intensity.

Laharl flew at the Custodian, unafraid of it striking him with it's mighty fists as he would survive the blow. He struck the creature in the head with all his might, the blow hit it square between it's glowing eyes. "Surrender to defeat you useless rock," Laharl growled winding his arm back to throw another punch, oblivious to the Custodians state "Or I'll simply make you serve me after your defeat!" punctuating 'defeat' with another blow to the creatures head.

Red wasn’t entirely sure what to make of the custodian, it was certainly tough looking but she was certain she’s dealt with worse. She was more interested in that kid that evidently followed them down here. She had seen him around the group during and after Parnasse and mostly dismissed him until seeing now that he actually seemed to be much stronger than she had originally assumed. Well she couldn’t let him have all the fun.

With Laharl taking on its head Red was intent on finding another way to help hinder this creature. And with a quick look she noticed the joints connecting its arms to its body looked much smaller and weaker than the arms themselves. Hopefully while it was getting its face beaten in she could come around and bring her axe down on the joints from behind.

Tora waved his wings in alarm as the boy jumped into action before Poppi could finish her mode change. "Meh!? Why not wait for Tora!?"

A hundred percent extra power did a lot for Laharl, but if he imagined himself standing in triumph on the husk of a foe slain in a single heroic blow, his fantasy would have to wait. His fist smashed into the hard wedge between its eyes, shattering stone, but his impetuousness was almost his downfall. Overlord's Dignity increased the damage taken along with the damage given, and striking a surface much harder than himself would have dealt equal and opposite destruction to his arm if he didn't cut short the follow-through. That also meant decreasing the injury inflicted to the Custodian, however, and when it reeled back its head was intact. Laharl did, however, get a momentary glimpse of what was beneath the head--a thick, squirming mass of corruption in the golem's core.

Red's plan to not fight the colossus head-on and instead strafe around for a better angle would have worked if not for a couple miscalculations. First, now that the Custodian had immersed itself in the cistern canal, it had nothing but water on either side, and getting behind it meant one needed to get across the entire canal.

Second, as the golem brought its arm around to attack, it separated from its body connected by extendable tentacles of corruption. The entire weight of its arm swept across a ridiculously large area, dealing a heavy blow to all four exterminators and smacking them into the canal. Tora wailed in surprise as he splashed down, but once in he flailed his wings in fear rather than pain. A dive in sewer water, after all, had bottomed out his to-do- list. Luckily, as implied by the relative lack of vile smells in the cistern air, this canal didn't have sewage. But he could scarcely afford to breath a sigh of relief. In the water he was a sitting duck for the Custodian, just begging to get slam dunked. "Poppi!" he yelled, treading water as the Custodian pulled its arm back together to prepare for another strike. "Freeze the water!"

Red’s plan unfortunately didn’t work out too well in her favor. Getting behind the creature was harder than she thought and what she assumed to be a weak point was actually far less of a weak point than she hoped. Meaning the monster had far more range than it seemed and she got knocked aside. She growled in contempt as she came up for air. And then she heard Tora’s plan. It was probably time to get out of the water.

After a worrying second the artificial blade burst from below the water with the help of her thrusters, having sunk in her Alpha form's thick armor. She held out her sword for Tora to grab hold of and haul himself from the drink. "...Roger, roger!" She took hold of the Drill Shield, extended its bit, and started to channel the power built up during the fight. "Noponic Storm!" Freezing energy whirled across the water, but it would be a moment before the battlefield was usable again. In that time the other two would have to survive and find their own ways to turn the situation to their advantage.

As Red saw the artificial blade pop out of the water she started swimming even faster. ”Shit shit shit shi-“ She pulled herself out of the water fast enough to not get caught in the freezing snow storm. ”Alright I’m getting REAL tired of this damn thing! Let’s get this done.” A red aura flared up around her as she started getting real mad at the creature causing her problems. She started firing bullets at the creature while she waited for Poppi’s attack to subside, mostly aiming for the head but also testing how susceptible the rest of its body was to damage.

Her gunfire struck the golem at various points across its body. Most of its component stone turned out to be just as solid as it looked, with her bullets doing little more than chip damage. It only reacted when she shot its head and the magic-imbued sphere its upper body rested on, which developed glowing cracks every time it got plugged. When Red paused for a moment she saw that Poppi had finished frosting over the canal, and realized what the artificial blade had been trying to do. By freezing the water she effectively bridged the two canal walkways and created a single battlefield all around the Corrupted Custodian, giving all four exterminators enough space to move and fight without having to worry about falling into the drink. Poppi heard the ice groan as she landed, but seeing that it held beneath the weight of her armor, she passed Tora the Drill Shield and let him hop down. The Custodian turned its full attention on the driver and blade, who faced the golem with shield and sword at the ready. It roared, but the brave Nopon laughed in its face. "Hah! Tora fight far worse! Come on everyone, lay on damage! Let's get this over with!" The pair burst forward, and the Custodian swiped at them.

As the enemy's extended arm swung their way, Tora slid low along the ice with his shield raised for protection, while the Poppi went high with a jet-assisted leap. At the peak of her jump she brought her new claymore down to open a new crack in the Custodian's body. After sliding into range Tora popped out his shield's drill bit and allowed its rockets to push its tip into the golem's bulk. It skittered along the surface until it lodged in the crack that welled corruption, and there it ripped messily into the dark matter until the golem knocked him back. "Armor hard, but mucky-muck soft! It what bring stone to life!" Poppi observed. "Aim for black goo!"

Red laughed almost maniacally as she scanned the battlefield one last time and readied her weapon. As long as she could effectively utilize the ice for mobility she had the terrain advantage as well as having scouted out this things weakness with her and Tora’s attacks. She slid into action. Quite literally as she used the ice and her momentum to slide under an attack from the stone beast. Her attacks would struggle breaking through that armor. Given enough time and effort, she could probably get the job done. But it’s best to let Tora with his drill handle that. Instead she sliced at as much corruption as was visible to her. She also made sure to hack, slash and shoot the sphere the body was connected to. Hopefully with Tora as a distraction and the ice for mobility she could keep her damage to a minimum, but she wasn’t completely counting on it. She’d have to push through the pain like always regardless.

The mercenary's axe found little resistance in the lengths and tendrils of corruption that reached out from within the Custodian's body. Piece by piece she whittled those unclean extensions down to size, leaving them to sizzle and disintegrate once separated from the whole. When she put in work against the sphere, however, she found it paid dividends. Every strike against it produced a visible reaction that seemed to destabilize the golem. Only the ice that blocked access to most of the sphere and her enemy's swings halted her offense. With Tora well-equipped to occupy the Custodian's attention and defend himself, Red took only a couple errant pushes and glancing blows from wide-range strikes. Laharl getting decked forced her to put in overtime, but Red got it done.

Her efforts soon came to a head. In a fit of rage the golem smashed the ice again and again with its fists, breaking open dangerous holes, but Red wove between the slams and the pitfalls alike. Her next strike broke through some kind of damage threshold, and with a wet roar the Custodian fell forward onto its arms. Its head sagged a touch from its shoulders and corruption dripped from it.

Tora saw his chance. He took aim with the Drill Shield and fired a Boom Biter from its middle, sending the explosive cannonball right into the golem's face. "Poppi, pull head down to give Red clear shot!"

The artificial blade nodded and boosted forward. She discarded her claymore, dented and bent as it was from repeated impacts against solid stone, and jumped to grab hold of the Custodian's head with both hands. Her strength pried it farther from its shoulders, exposing a mass of corded corruption to the air. "Now Red, time for execute!" Tora called.

Seeing Poppi and Tora putting the custodian into a good position she prepared herself and her weapon. One Poppi pulled away its head, exposing what looked like a critical weak point, she lept into action. ”DIE ALREADY!!” She yelled out as she brought her axe down straight through the corruption connecting the head to the stone.

Red's axeblade fell like a guillotine on the Custodian's neck, parting head from body in one brutal stroke. With the damage already done by a few minutes' worth of cutting away at its extremities, the corruption had nothing else to fall back on. The infestation withered, a dying plant, and the Custodian fell apart. Its stone chunks hit the already fractured ice field and send cracks snaking across its surface as they slowly started to turn to ash. Though breathing heavily, Tora hightailed it for the edge of the canal, pausing only to scoop up the golem's spirit with his free wing. "Ice breaking! Move feeties if not want get wet, meh!"

He and Poppi made to to the edge just before the ice broke apart and began to drift downstream, with Red following right behind them. As beat up as this area looked, it was free of corruption, with only dark stains proving that the putrid mess had ever been there. Tora sat down against the wall, still panting. "Huh...huh...huh. Tough nut to crack, huh, Poppi?"

His companion nodded. She figured that now would be the perfect time to wipe her brow or something, having seen the others perform such gestures before, but she suppressed the needless urge. "That for sure. When we took job Poppi thought it just rats. Not gross moldy snakes."

”And here I thought this job would be boring!” Red stretched her arms out while they celebrated their victory. She saw the thing that Tora grabbed and it instantly caught her eye. ”Oh is that one of those spirit things Midna told me about?” So this thing could potentially be a major upgrade depending on how you used it. She was debating on if fusing with it would actually be a good idea or if they should use it in a different way. ”I actually haven’t really seen one of these before. What do ya think we should do with it?”

As Red spoke Poppi had been trying to focus, channeling ether to construct a new claymore in the same manner she did with her other weapons. Although substantially more difficult and draining, she finally managed to pull together the replacement weapon just after the mercenary's question. "Poppi guess we should take to palace as proof of clearing infestation," she ventured, her voice slightly garbled by her overall ether depletion. Her eyes landed on Laharl, laid out unconscious along the stone floor. "We should...carry him, as well. Can you do it, Masterpon?"

Tora almost protested, with excuses of comparative strength and fatigue on his lips, but in the nick of time he realized both the condition Poppi's reconstruction left her in and that she was asking a favor of him, however obvious that might be. He immediately felt bad that his first instinct was to get Poppi to do his work for him, and cleared his throat. "Sure, meh! Poppi earn break." He waddled over and hoisted the demon child above his head with his wings. He then turned to go, retreading the path that brought him here. "You know, this actually pretty nice for sewer. Neat carvings, good light. Even flowers with lilypads, meh."



As the group returned to the cistern's main chamber, Tora struggle a little with his burden. While he shifted Laharl around to a more manageable position for long-term carrying, he happened to see a big, green pipe that protruded from the floor of the basis and emerged from the water by one of the circular stone terraces. Its style and broken-down appearance stuck out from the surroundings, but even if it seemed useless Tora couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen this kind of pipe before. He waddled over. "Meh...Tora get feeling this important somehow," he said aloud, going off the feeling in his guts. "Maybe mention to Mooglypon and see if Alcamoth guys know about."

Shaking her head, Red turned away from the pipe that the other two were looking at. ”Not touching that unless I know what it does. If something looks out of place like that, it probably wants to kill ya.” She has had plenty of experience with things of that nature. She loved fighting weird creatures but when it came to objects that could do any number of things with no warning it was best to leave it alone.

His impetuousness was in fact his downfall, arrogantly charging into battle blinded by visions of a triumphant victory only to miss the bigger picture and ultimately get himself knocked out cold. It was a miracle he sustained moderate injuries and survived, due to his empowered state during the fight. Slowly the demon boy regained consciousness, stirring slightly. Laharl groaned as his muscles burnt with searing pain, and his arms were sore.

"Ugh I demand to be put down! Unhand me!" he growled squirming a little looking rather helpless, he was embarrassed that he failed to bring down the behemoth himself and more than a little disappointed in his foolhardiness. Tora was only too happy to comply, and let the kid go free without a word of protest.

Red scoffed at Laharl as he finally came too. Normally she’d tell him to shut his trap or something to that extent but this kid definitely seemed.. interesting. He had way more strength in that body than it appeared, even if he did act immature despite it. She smiled under her mask as they kept walking. Hopefully everything here was as interesting and exciting as these past couple days had been. If so then this place would be paradise to the battle hungry mercenary.

Blazermate really wasn't sure what way would've been the best to get to the center of this hurricane. Although going into the ocean didn't seem to be the best idea? Well via a platform anyway. Thankfully her choice was made for her, or maybe not thankfully as she got knocked out when a loud roar radiated out. Well, being knocked out wasn't entirely accurate, she still had her mind in her medal, but all senses and everything from her body was just blanked out, as if she wasn't in her tinpet anymore, although she knew she was.

After some time, she managed to 'wake up' as her tinpet rebooted. She got up on edge, after all, it was rare for a medabot to be knocked out by any kind of EMP due to how specialized their tinpets were, but she guessed it wasn't out of the question now that it had happened that a strong enough blast could cause issues. And the place she woke up in was very different from the platform she had been on. She looked around, getting a lay of the area, and quickly noticed that her shield arm was gone, with her normal arm replacing it. "uh..." She said, not sure what was going on. She seemed to be factory fresh, with that new medabot smell and everything, her parts nice and shiny. "Was that all a dream?" She thought but that was put aside when she saw Jr, another Jr but angrier, a little kitten kid, a little girl...

It took a bit before it hit Blazermate. "Ok, why are you all kids?" she said, standing up and now towering over everyone else. It was like she towered over the meda operators in some tournaments she faced, but even more so. She had to think about the situation a bit. She was the biggest one here now for some reason, and from what her systems could tell, she was just set to factory settings with factory parts. That was fine, she was just back to fighting in a medabot tournament without the extras from this world of light, although losing the invincibility was kind of a bummer. Still, she was the biggest one here, so she figured she'd have to lead now, no free ride on the back of the giant koopa anymore.

"So uh... anyone wanna catch me up on what happened to you guys?" Blazermate said, getting into a boxing stance and practicing some boxing routines. After being caught up, and practicing her boxing a bit, she said. "So... I guess I'll have to carry a few of you..." She wasn't too happy about it, but she was still a medabot and very strong for her frame and unlike the others, didn't have her physical powers diminish.

"Anyone got any plans or ideas here or should we just wander?" she asked after taking whoever took her up on her offer, only able to really carry a couple people at most at the loss of being able to fly, having them either hold onto her back or her jet hair as to keep her hands free if things got messy.

Among the many things that happened before Tyl Regor's return, the conversations that took place seemed to get them nowhere. Such was the downside to their decision to agree on matters of such import before acting. If nobody could come to an agreement, progress would stall. Still, as it was, things were alright. Nothing was forcing their hands quite yet, even if that freak had expected them to have made some sort of decision in the time since he'd-

Ah. Of course. As soon as Geralt thinks 'We'll be alright, nothing horrible has happened to force us to do something', that exact fucking thing happens. He barely even spared the giant, monstrous thing a glance, worried that he'd either stop and study it, or that its strange glowing eyes would focus on the Seekers and destroy them personally.

Even as it was, that wave of energy had shut down anything that worked on electricity, the main power source of many of the worlds that composed this place. That was bad. That was, in fact, extremely bad, as it resulted in Blazermate 'falling unconscious' (Geralt did not want to contemplate that she might be dead just yet), and the Atomos becoming little more than a decoration.

Oversized legs and arms pumped as the MegaWitcher sprinted towards the Maw, diving into its maw (pun intended) and rolled along the wooden floor. They were in some kind of parlor. Quickly getting up and looking around, Geralt found that the place was actually decently decorated. He could only assume it was to make the victims of this place feel more at ease before their inevitable demise.

Peach took the lead when a figure appeared before them, wearing a porcelain mask and rail-thin, before admitting to them that it was the master of this ship. Geralt's hand strayed to his sword, but unless things got worse, he'd let Peach handle this.

Things got worse.

A silver blade sang as it flew from its sheath and Geralt stepped forward, drawing the Sign of Axii to induce one of the monsters to distract its friend and turn this fight into a cleanup.

But as he pushed power into the Sign, nothing happened for a moment.

And then the backlash came, the spike of pain into his mind that came from trying to overwhelm a mind much too powerful, only this creature didn't even seem to blink.

Ah, so that's how it was. They were experts of this craft, and Axii was merely a brute-force application of an art they'd perfected. Or perhaps, one that their very nature granted them mastery over.

All these thoughts and more crossed Geralt's mind as darkness overcame him.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Waking with a start, Geralt looked around to find himself lying on an oversized bed, the others stirring and trying to figure out what happened. It took a moment before he registered that they were either extremely small now, or that this bed was excessively oversized.

He hoped it was the latter, but he wasn't dumb enough to hold onto that hope for long. No, whatever strange force controlled this place had clearly metamorphosed them. "Oh, fuck."

Oh. Fuck. That was not his voice. That was the voice of a squeaky, snot-nosed child! He sounded even younger and higher-pitched than Ciri had when they first met. This was bad. This was very bad. If he was that young....

"I'm not a Witcher."

He wouldn't be able to utilize his Signs, he wouldn't even be able to properly swing a sword.

Where were his swords?

Geralt patted himself down-

He was wearing....

This was much worse than he thought. Much, much worse. This outfit was something Vesemir had given him as a child. It was nothing special, just some decent clothes that wouldn't wear quickly for the little bits of training they'd allowed him to do as a youth, which in retrospect was more like structured play.

Geralt almost wanted to join Sakura in her panic, but he took that feeling, buried it behind his experience, his knowledge, and his stoic facade and carefully stood up.

Link was already taking a position to calm the others and get their attention, and Geralt nodded at the boy. "Oh, I'm Geralt by the way."

It took him a moment to remember just how different he probably looked. The others he could, somewhat unsurprisingly, pick out well enough, but his own appearance was drastically different due to the mutagens that were part of the Trials. He just wanted to be sure they didn't waste time trying to figure it out.

"So this whole thing is fucked." He figured he'd say what they were all thinking, at least. "So what's the plan?"

When he came to, the first sensation the Cadet realized was something pointy digging in his side. He opened his eyes to mostly blackness, but a few patchy light sources made it clear that he was underneath something, or a pile of somethings. He wiggled and felt something smooth, something else soft, and the hard angled edge of whatever was poking him shift away. He thought his rigging might be tangled up in the mysterious pile he found himself in, but that wasn't the case - in fact he couldn't feel or even sense the rigging at all. Likewise, he didn't feel anything snagging onto the ridges of his armor, and suddenly that armor felt really light as if he wasn't wearing any at all.

...okay, he wasn't stupid. As soon as the initial fogginess of waking up from hypnotism wore off, the Cadet could tell that he was without his equipment. No weapons, no armor, and even his field bag was gone. He could hear muffled voices from somewhere nearby, panicked and reassuring both, and they sounded vaguely familiar. Figuring it must have been the rest of the blue team, the Cadet started pushing things off of him. Someone called out to speak up for roll call and the hunter shoved his hand through one of the openings he could see, waving it around.

"I'm here!" his own voice accompanied his arm, sticking out of a pile of trashed toys. Soundless rattles, deflated balls, ripped teddy bears and more junk were falling from the small mountain until half of a rocking horse was shoved out of the way and a boy emerged. As he'd expected, he was no longer in the altered green scale armor but a tough cream and brown cloth ensemble... but there were other changes too. His skin was back to it's lighter shade from before he'd fused with Jamaica's spirit, there were small cuts and scrapes on his face, hands and elbows, and he was a lot shorter. Suspiciously child-sized even. The bright orange mop of hair on his head was a giveaway for his identity should the others not recognize him, but if there was any confusion then his next words cleared it right up. "Oh my Wrog. You're all... and I'm...?!"

He looked down at himself and found that yes, almost their entire crew had been turned into children, including himself. He blinked, dumbfounded, because this was probably one of the weirdest thing that'd happened to them so far - or to him at least. Beyond the strangeness of it all, there was an underlying worry too. Most of them were probably defenseless like this, stuck in a deadly soul consuming submarine.

"Ha... if anyone felt like, y'know, you had to Pukei right now I definitely wouldn't blame you," he said. A squeal and a small purple body made a beeline for the red haired boy as soon as he emerged - it seemed BB was unaffected (probably because it was already a literal baby) and still as loyal a follower as that crooked salesmen had advertised.

The mini-Cadet rubbed the top of his minion's head and took some deep breathes, trying to calm down and think. His mind was still intact, he still remembered everything that had happened over the last couple days. Freshest of course was seeing Shippy off, seeing some huge hulking metal thing coming right for the island, booking it into the Maw and then looking directly at the hypnotizing vortex that was those monsters' faces, proving once again that the Cadet found it difficult to not look at something when advised against looking.

So, only his body was altered. He was just a tyke now... or, again technically. If memory served he was pretty dang young, around the age when he spent most of his days running through Dundorma's reconstruction zones and yapping at the heels of passing Guild Knights. When he'd sneak into the canteen and listen to the stories and banter passed around by seasoned and novice hunters alike, then go home and emulate their tales with makeshift weapons in the form of tree branches, pillows, or silverware. It would be a couple years until he took up training for real, and a couple more until he would earn his "Ace Cadet" title - though he didn't plan on having the others call him by anything else even while he was all miniature, of course.

"Everyone's still got their brains, right?" he asked the group when talk of forming a plan came up. "I think we should see who's still normal, and what we can still do. You guys look pretty much the same." He pointed out Blazermate, Hat Kid, and after a moment's hesitation Bowser Jr., identified by the face on his handkerchief. Many of them already voiced concerns about their lack of power, so establishing a base line might help them get a sense of... Well, what they should do, and how.

"Obviously I don't have any of my gear or items so..." he let out a near-desperate chuckle, considering the stock he put into his equipment and how much of his usefulness was tied to it. "Um. Oh! I'm still strong. Well, uh, not as strong as regular me, but... pint-size me has at least quart-size strength!"

Though he didn't move to prove it, he sounded pretty confident. The humans of his world were a different stock than the ones that could usually be found across the multiverse after all.

It was a simple thing to dispatch the little yellow oni where it slumped against the gallery's wall. With a concentrated blast of magic it was reduced to ash, and it's spirit waited there until Primrose made sure that the battle was over and came to scoop it up. Thankfully the battle didn't last long, and what ill effects they suffered were quickly taken care of. Poor Joker, he'd looked mortified - Primrose was sure she would have been too. The rage that had taken Jesse didn't seem any more pleasant. The perks of being a back lines supporter, the dancer supposed.

Next they all found themselves squeezing into the vent now that they didn't have anyone to stop them. Primrose gestured for them all to go ahead, volunteering to collect and keep any spirits they ran into to bring back to the others outside. She was last in, and gently pulled the vent's slotted metal opening back into place should any more wandering guards make their way over.

The vent was cramped but they wouldn't be spending time in it for much longer, as they reached another room and prepared their next move.

"Paranatural?" Primrose repeated the word mostly to herself, vaguely understanding what it meant (Para, beyond, outside of; Natural, innate, from nature) but only hearing the term for the first time. "I suppose you mean our magic. No, I don't think being shrunken will stop us from using it." She glanced at the Thieves, confirming that her statement held true for them as well.

Primrose watched as the woman shrank herself down, glad that she was willing to take the plunge first and show there didn't seem to be any pain or side-effects of to go along with the size change. Jesse also made a good point that at that size, it might take quite a while to reach the other side. Especially if they stuck to the edges to avoid being seen. The dancer was confident in her sprint but would rather not do anymore extended running after the monster spurred marathon of yesterday.

"Hm... what about this?" She presented the spirit of the Makami, it's light papery form easy to see. "One of those guards turned into this. Do you think it's strong enough to fly with a few shrunken passengers - and do you think the guards in this room will ignore it as one of them?"

Surely with it's thin and flexible body it could make it's way easily through the light beams. The thought of riding on the creature as it twisted through the air was enchanting, almost like a fantasy even, and so Primrose lowered the spirit after a moment's consideration. "Wishful thinking perhaps," she said, "though it may be useful regardless."

She looked down at the Makami's colorful orb and spoke softly to it, the same way she had the Hippowdon in the pyramid. "You... you are a dog, aren't you? You seem noble. Good dog, come with us and let's get you a new home."

When Jesse suggested taking out the guards, Joker raised an eyebrow, although his mask obscured it. If the Shadows could move through the lasers and they couldn’t, any fight would be a tough proposition. At best they would need to confine the whole struggle to one of the nine subsections of the room, and the four were spread out between them. Avoiding an unnecessary fight completely would be the better option, although unfortunately he couldn’t be one hundred percent positive about the giant paintings working like they used to. To not risk further embarrassment he figured it best to use an alternative plan, and luckily, the FBC’s director offered a few more.

He considered Jesse’s ideas, noting as he did her excellent aim in being able to plant a thruster all the way across a room full of lasers. He doubted the Shadows. It probably went unnoticed with all the other brightly colored beams around. In the end, he found himself liking her first plan. “Going small’s a good idea,” he whispered. “We’ll be able to go right under the lasers, and if we need to hide, we’ll be small enough to use the plant pots.” As Jesse began to put the plan into motion, shrinking herself to less than a foot in height, Primrose came up with the idea of using one of the monsters from the last room for transportation. Joker considered it, but was not convinced. “Can’t strikers only appear for a short while? Go ahead if you like, but I think we might have a more surefire way to get over there quickly. Don’t we, Mona?”

The not-cat nodded. “Yeah, that’ll work. Alright Jesse, go ahead and shrink us!”

As a whole the team waited while Primrose made contact with the essence of the Makami. The hunting wolf spirit seemed eager for a companion, more so than the Hippowdon by a long shot, and the spirit linked to the dancer’s own, restoring a semblance of existence. After that, it was time to begin. One brief session of getting zapped later, the Thieves walked right through the no-collided vent grate and into the open. Being this low to the ground put things in a wildly different perspective, Joker found, but at least it wasn’t because he was Rattled this time. He shuddered at the thought and crouched beneath the bench while a guard plodded by. Once the coast was clear, he gave Mona the thumbs-up. “Okay, now!”

“On it!” The thief jumped into the air and disappeared in a puff of smoke. A second later the Morgana Car hit the floor, no bigger than a breadbox but large enough to accommodate both the three Thieves and their two new friends. “Not a moment to lose!” Mona’s voice came from the vehicle, his tail wiggling around excitedly in back. “Get in!”

Once everyone piled in, Mona raced forward. Across the golden tiles he zoomed, passing under laser after laser with a rather close for comfort amount of clearance. Twice he came to a gentle stop, both to avoid a guard’s patrol and screeching his tires while doing so, and once he threw himself into reverse to hastily correct after an overextension. Jesse’s remotely-triggered thruster saved the day there, distracting the guard long enough for Mona to skedaddle. In the end the car cruised straight through the employee access door without detection, either from the Shadows or the lasers. In contrast to the glitzy main rooms of the gallery the stairwell was a standard affair of concrete and and metal, although bearing a greenish tint, and once Mona let his passengers off he turned back to normal so that everyone could be returned to their normal size with the Tool Gun’s Undo button.

“Good work,” Joker told the team. “Even if we sometimes go in guns blazing, discretion is part of the Phantom Thief code. Let’s stick to it.”

The group climbed the stairs to the next floor. In a stroke of bad luck the employee access area they found turned out to be nothing more than a connection between two floors, rather than the extensive web that Joker hoped for. Still, he felt confident in their choice. If this place still had no basement, going up brought them closer to the distorted gallery’s sanctum, where any captives must surely be held. Jesse lent a hand by no-colliding the exit door so that Joker could poke his head through for a discreet look, and he was immediately struck by just how different this wing looked.



Here the subtly unnatural green tint that had tainted the staircase grew to a staggering potency. Everything seemed to swim or shimmer ever so slightly, as if the room was filled with crystal clear water. Sculptures of primeval beings, their gods and demons of stone and gold so lifelike as to seem frozen in time, stood in the open space; paintings of creatures and cryptids that seemed too lifelike to be the product of imagination hung from its walls. Joker saw no guards, and one door to the right. On the left end a couple steps preceded a raised section of honor, in the middle of which a stylized but no less ghastly portrait rested among lit candles. In fact, candles seemed to be the only light in the entire area, and there were a lot of them. Joker pulled his head in, showing the others his affronted expression. “Okay, it’s some sort of eldritch nightmare gallery in there,” he reported. “I’m sure everything’s cursed, so let’s just make a run for the exit on the right without looking at anything.

This didn’t seem to surprise the Thieves, and they got ready to book it. They waited for their leader’s signal before rushing through the door and to the right through a gauntlet of unnerving art pieces. Joker rounded the corner of one of the gallery’s four wedge-shaped dividing walls and in an instant became a dark blur as he dived back into cover. Standing in front of the door was a single guard, unmoving. “Looks like we can’t sneak by this guy. It’s probably a strong one,” he murmured. “But I can get the drop on it to kick things off. Get ready.”

He zipped forward as a blur once again, swooshing into hiding behind a statue’s plinth. Another dash brought him into the cover of a glass display case. Then he surged from the shadows, boosted off the wall, and landed on the Shadow’s back. “Show me your true form!” he demanded as he reached down and peeled the guard’s mask off. It contorted wildly, forcing him to jump clear, then melted into liquid darkness. Joker joined the others who pulled up in front of it, weapons out and ready to fight. A moment later the Shadow reformed in a wave of bone-chilling power, putting out every candle in the shadow gallery and plunging it into viridian darkness. From the void emerged an abominable thing that immediately unleashed an accursed scream. That hideous clamor filled all six with primal Fear. Instinct took over, and they turned tail to scatter and hide throughout the gallery. With a gibbering noise uncannily close to laughter, the Shambler began to stalk its prey.



Despite Nadia’s effort her opposition proved a worthy challenge--and since her adversaries were mere cushions, that made her feel pretty much worthless. Still, she grit her teeth and pulled, squeezing Bella out of her pillowy prison a bit at a time. Unfortunately a sudden cry shattered her focus, and reflexively Nadia crouched down with ears flattened and tiny razor-sized claws at the ready. Her bright eyes made vision in the darkness of the room not a problem, but even still she couldn’t see the source, as the heaps of household items obscured whoever it was from view. Other voices reached her from different directions, turning her ears this way and that. All sounded vaguely familiar in their intonations, but not quite recognizable in their pitches. Shaking off the eerie feeling that brushed at her, Nadia took a deep breath and got back to her task. If she wasn’t alone, all the more reason to get Bella out as soon as possible.

Luckily, the struggle didn’t last long. Reinforcements arrived in the form of a little boy in yellow, although since he stood taller than Nadia she begrudgingly guessed she needed to change her point of view. Either way she appreciated him identifying himself the moment he appeared, which cut through some of the confusion and confirmed in the feral’s mind that whatever happened, it happened to everyone. “Hey, Mirage! You know, you seem awfully childish all of a sudden. It’s me, Fortune. And this is Bella.” The minuscule Abyssal waved. “Here, take her other hand!”

A little grin escaped Mirage at Ms. Fortune's humor, enough to show a tooth missing among his pearly whites as he took the joke as a chance to help cope with their situation. "No kidding!" He responded, reaching out to grab hold of Bella's other hand. Her hand seemed small enough to disappear into his own, so he ended up grasping a bit of her forearm to help in pulling her out from her soft, cushiony doom.

With two sets of hands the task went quickly, and after only a few moments Bella was out. Even better, she managed to stand, despite the near-instant loss of the new power she’d gained. Her relief turned to confusion as she gave herself a proper once-over. “How could this happen?”

Nadia sighed as she gave a shrug. “Magic, I guess. We lost our stuff, powers, everything. But at least it seems like we’re thinking the same. And...I remember these clothes.” She took hold of her threadbare sleeve, feeling the cloth. “This was the stuff I was wearing before the Fishbone Gang adopted me. At first I thought we were just made younger, but...it’s more like I was sent back in time.”

Mirage slipped his goggles over his eyes, fingers slowly trailing the band around his head with disbelief. "Yeah, I remember my Ma giving me these. Said they made me look sporty and adventurous." He added with fond reminiscence. It seemed to make Nadia smile.

Still wearing a face of consternation, Bella shook her head. “I don’t remember ever being like this.”

“You mean, you don’t remember anything from your childhood? Like, at all?” Nadia asked in disbelief.

Bella tugged on her hair, shifting uncomfortably. “No…” She took a step back, nearly stumbling, but managed to catch herself with the help of her tail. “At least I can sort of walk. This must have been before my muscles atrophied. And they have less to hold up, anyway.”

“That’s good, ‘cause we’ve gotta get movin’,” Nadia declared. “My instincts’re sayin’ we’re not alone. We can’t fight like this, so if anything finds us, we’re toast. Let’s hurry up and find the others first. I heard voices from that direction.”

She scurried to the end of the sofa, hopped back onto the bed where she landed, and made for the other side. With a frown she noted that the furniture seemed much bigger than it should have been considering her size adjustment. If everything were to scale, that would have made her under a foot tall, which couldn’t possibly be right. The idea of being reduced to a kid in the first place was annoying enough without things being more unfair. She came to a stop at the other end of the bed and eyed the small drop. The bottom layer of this room appeared to be a sea of small objects like clothes, toys, and especially shoes like an enormous ball pit, albeit one that rose and fell in hills and mountains. Something occurred to her for the first time, making her gulp. “All these...th-these clothes and things. Were they all…?” She trailed off as horror twisted her insides, preventing her from finishing the thought.

With shoulders hunched and arms crossed she looked ahead. Some ways away she saw a mountain of pillows tumble down, with a telltale childlike figure sliding down it. This one she recognized as Bowser Junior, who must not have been as affected by the curse. Getting there wouldn’t be a problem. Nadia hopped off the end of the bed and onto the ground layer.

‘Into’ the ground would have been more correct, however, for she instantly sank to her belly button in the item pit. Alarm bells went off in her head, telling her to get out, but no matter how she tried to climb on top the small things kept shifting beneath her, sinking her back to firmer, more compacted footing underneath. With a snarl of frustration she found that moving through it was even worse than trying to push through an actual ball pit, since everything was irregularly shaped and tended to catch. “This sucks,” she hissed, but she didn’t know the half of it.

After a few more steps there came a clatter from in front of her, and she went wide-eyed in fear. Something was moving through the ground layer. It moved fast, it moved noisily, and most terrifying of all, Nadia couldn’t even catch a glimpse of it--only the items it threw into the air as it carved through the mess straight toward her. “Uh oh,” she muttered in deadpan fright, too desensitized to scream, before she turned herself around toward the bed and went as fast as she could.

She put all her hope on the unseen monster not being able to leave the ground layer and pushed through until she could sink her claws into the edge of the blanket that hung down and scrambled up. Mirage and Bella reached down and helped haul her up just in the nick of time, and as Nadia clawed her way back on top, the monster came to a sudden stop right below her. Which Mirage childishly mocked, pulling up his goggles just to tug the skin beneath his left eye downwards and stick his tongue out at it. “No snack for you today, buddy!” He boasted confidently.

Then the blanket corner went taut, its end clutched by the unseen foe, and it started to pull. Beneath Nadia, Bella, and Mirage, the blanket began to slide toward the edge, and them with it. The little feral released a guttural noise that sounded like she was being strangled and sprinted the other way as fast as her legs could take her. Mirage letting out a panicked “Crap, crap, crap!” As he regretted taunting the monster, but managed to keep pace. But Bella wasn’t so lucky. With a squeal she fell down onto the blanket and was carried atop it toward the edge of the bed. “Bella!” Nadia cried, reaching back with an open hand, but before the Abyssal could be yanked off the edge her snakelike tail lunged at the bedpost. Its teeth dug into the wood, turning it into a lifetime that saved Bella from certain death. Holding her breath, Nadia crept to the edge of the bedsheet-clad mattress and looked down to see the last of the blanket disappear into the ground layer. Only after a few moments of silent stillness did she realize how bad she was shaking. For the life of her she could not remember being more scared. Except once.

She got to her feet and brushed her hair back, her tail sweeping back and forth in agitation. With Mirage she helped Bella back from where she dangled, and all three stood at the edge of the bed. “...Jeez. The hell was that…?” Trying to compose herself and focus, she took a number of deep breaths in and out. “So. The floor might as well, uh, be lava.” She pointed a claw at the pile of pillows. “We need to get over there, but we’ve gotta stay off the ground.”

Mirage pounded his small fist against his chest with his signature grin back in place. "Well, at least it's not real lava-- I've been there, NOT fun." He said in a surprisingly nonchalant manner, all things considered, but the task before them made him try to tune into some optimism. "Alright kids, time for some hardcore parkour! Where you play for keeps and if you fall, you get eaten by a mysterious monster." He let out a small huff that was a mix of frustration and repressed fright as that optimism momentarily faded. "No pressure, no pressure at all."

The simple plan of action made her look at the terrain in a new light, seeking routes that didn’t involve touching the danger zone for more than a moment at a time. Up ahead the mess trended upward like a hill. Across the first stretch of junk she saw a large suitcase lying open, stuffed with drab clothing, and right after that a dresser on its side, halfway sunken. Then the hill seemed to come to a peak, and the pillow pile not too far beyond that. As she already knew, however, the suitcase was too far to wade to. “We need...some kind of bridge,” she thought aloud. Still a little nervous, she looked around her immediate surroundings. The four-poster bed with all its cushions lay at a slight angle with Bella’s sofa on the far side and a leaning bookcase against the headboard. By its foot an office chair poked up from the ground, the kind that swiveled. A small fan lay face-down in the junk near where the monster surely still lurked.

Mirage bit the inside of his cheek as he tried to think, scanning the area in front of them. If the game was keeping away from the ‘splash-zone’, then a small idea came to mind. “If it can’t come up to grab us, then we could hop across those big pillows.” He suggested, gesturing ahead at the assortment of throw pillows and cushions. “They might sink down if we stand on them for too long, so we’d have to keep moving.” He added, with a bit of concern as he looked down at Bella, noting she had issues escaping from the blanket issue they’d just experienced moments prior.

The tiny Abyssal looked embarrassed. “Um...I don’t suppose I could ask for some help? I can mostly walk on my own, but jumping might be a problem.”

Mirage's eyes widened for a moment, followed by a few blinks at her request. Back when he was a kid, he was the one getting the piggyback rides as he was the smallest. A complete change to now, where he was the tallest kid in their current small-numbered group. "I've got ya. You're looking at the best athlete to ever grace a galaxy-wide television network! Only... Slightly miniaturized." Maybe the 'best athlete' thing was a bit of a stretch since there were a few folks more agile and parkour-experienced than him, but he could keep up! Kinda! He could get Bella across this, at the very least.

“In that case, I’ll handle the pillows. We’ll use ‘em like steppin’ stones!” Nadia ran over and grabbed one. Thanks to its light weight she could haul it around easily, and after she dragged it to the edge of the bed she tossed it down onto the ground layer. It rested on top of the junk without sinking, and even when the feral dropped down after it for the sake of experimentation, it didn’t move. “Hey, it’s got enough surface area so that it doesn’t sink!” she called, glad for a lucky turn at last. Her principal concern, however, was that the monster might not care about the pillow. Such things didn’t come to mind when one pictured a safe platform or barrier, after all. But the moments passed without any stirring beneath the junk, and Nadia breathed a sigh of relief. “Looks like this’ll work. Toss me another!”

"No sinking, bonus!" Mirage cheered, glad one of his own fears was no longer a factor. Quickly, he made a small system with Bella where he gathered pillows and she began to toss them down to help Nadia in making her platforms. This process slowed a bit as Mirage began to burrow through some junk to try and reach bigger pillows to make travelling across easier, throwing an assortment of clothing and small household items to the side as he worked. As he dug through the junk, he came across a small but strange looking device that he only took note of because it seemed to have a trigger. A small, gray gun-like object kind of shaped like a top hat.

Picking up the device, he pointed it towards the leg of a somewhat large but useless to their traveling efforts nightstand and curiously pulled the trigger, resulting in a ‘POP’ sound as the gun shot out a similarly-colored projectile that stuck to the piece of furniture. Walking over, he attempted to recover the item to see if it was reusable, but even as he tugged, it seemed to be stuck in place in a very sturdy fashion. Brought back to reality as Bella called that they needed more pillows, causing him to tuck the weapon away in the side of his shorts as he went back to work.

One by one the pillows dropped into Nadia’s waiting hands for her to run out to the end of her makeshift bridge, pulling each behind her as she hopped nimbly between them. She worried about running out, but was relieved when she reached the suitcase with a few pillows still stocked up on top of the bed. She went back over to the bed just to make sure, then called up. “Okay, come on you guys! Be careful!” Before heading over herself, however, she reached out to snag the fan from the ground layer. It was just the right size and heft to be carried, and she couldn’t help but think it would come in handy.

Once past the pillows steps the trio hurried over the suitcase, across an almost too-big gap, and up the dresser. When they reached the top of the hill, however, they found it to be a cliff overlooking a big furrow in the ground level. Nadia crossed her arms. “Ohh, purr-fect...”

A shout from close by got her attention. She quickly spotted a little boy with dirty blond hair atop a cupboard. Running through Blue Team’s roster in her head, she figured that it had to be Link. “Over here!” she yelled in reply, jumping up and down as she waved. “Fortune, Mirage, and Bella! We’re headin’’ your way!”

Mirage offered a wave with one hand, having Bella on his back still as he hadn't particularly found a good place to set her down. He noticed Link seemed to have found a weapon of sorts, which was admittedly smart. He noted that after they got regrouped he should probably do the same, as something was better than nothing, even if he wasn't particularly good at swinging objects around. Not to mention having the strength of a small child on top of that. "How're we getting across, though? Can't just toss some pillows here." He questioned, noticing that Nadia seemed to be scanning for a solution.

Nadia re-evaluated her surroundings and realised there was a broom leaning against the edge of the dresser. Its head lay somewhere down in the middle of the ravine, but her head was full of dumb ideas. “Ooh, I’ve gotta try this.” With a grin that belied all the terror sustained only minutes ago, she grabbed hold of the broom handle and propelled herself off the edge of the dresser. “Here goes!”

Holding on for dear life she managed to pole-vault over the chasm and to the other side, steering herself toward a ripped-up green recliner. Although yellow stuffing protruded from its many slashes and holes, it cushioned her landing just fine. “Whoo!” she squeaked as she bounced down. “Nailed it!” Feeling more than a little better about herself she climbed up the recliner’s back to where the handle had come to rest. Another bright idea hit her, and she lifted up her new fan. When she turned it on it blew with a lot more power than she expected, and the broom shaft practically flew back to the other side. “Wow, that actually worked. Here, you guys try!”

Eyeing the broom, it was slightly concerning. Mirage was sure it could hold him, but the question was more if he could hold on. Eyes shifting around for a moment, he sat Bella down and held the broom, allowing her to get a grip first with her tail. He took a deep breath, fully investing in this attempt to go down as he dropped his weight on the broom. The entire way down, he was screaming, and as they made it to the bottom, that screaming was muffled as he landed face-first into some of the yellow-stuffing of the recliner, though it quickly stopped as he stood and regained his composure, noticing Bella with a slight head-tilt at his actions. Face red, he offered a light pat on the back to Bella as they hurried to catch up with Nadia.

After a few more hops Nadia slid down the side of a grandfather clock past Mount Pillow to land on the bed where everyone seemed to have gathered. This one was even broader than the one she woke up in, although it wasn’t the four-poster kind. More important, of course, was everyone on it. Blazermate jumped out to her immediately, as the Medabot looked fresh and full-sized. Makes sense for a robot, I guess. Everyone else, however, was in the same boat as her. She scampered up to greet them. “How d’ya do, fellow kids?” There seemed to be two junior Bowsers, one of which she took to be an ensmallened Bowser Senior. There was a boy she did not even remotely recognize as Geralt until he said so, and another boy she recognized just about instantly as the Cadet. “Hey there, monster pun-ter! Still got the one brain cell I think, so everything’s fine there. As for what I can do…” she put her hands up in resignation. “Zilch. I mean, I can see in the dark pretty well, and my claws are still sharp, but that’s about it. No Life Gem, man. I can die as hard as anyone now.”

She distanced herself from that gallows humor by checking a few of the remaining team members. The snow-white girl could only be Rika, of course. Having never seen Kamek without his robe it took a moment to realize the rather normal-looking Koopa must be him. And the brunette all done up with flowers and ribbons… “Sakura?” Nadia beamed. “You’re so cute! If I were still big I’d wanna scoop ya up, give ya a big hug, and buy ya ice cream or somethin’.” Only after spouting all that did Nadia realize that her friend seemed to be in bad spirits. “Oh...uh…”

She was saved as Peach arrived, floating down from some high-up perch thanks to her little parasol. Even as a four-year-old the princess was the very picture of dainty, but it was determination written on her features. “Hello, everyone,” she said, her voice the highest out of everyone’s. Doing her best to keep her composure despite the indignity of it all, she told the others, “Like Link I went up high to look around. I saw just one door, but no handle or anything. Must open from the outside. There are holes in the ceiling that stuff falls through, but I saw a vent in the wall, too.” She pointed to just about the exact opposite side of the massive room. “We might be able to get out through there, if we can get up somehow. As for a plan...” She glanced between the assembled heroes. “I figure there’s a good chance we can end this by tracking down the demons that caused it. Then there’s nothing stopping us from putting down that creep. But they’re way up at the top, and we’re down here, so we’ve got a long way to go.”

Nadia raised her hand like a schoolchild. “So you guys know, there’s something scary under the junk. I didn’t see it, but I saw it cookin’ through the stuff tryin’ to get us, and it ate a blanket tryin’ to pull us in. So we gotta stay on top of something.”

The grim expression on Peach’s tiny features left the feral feeling like she wasn’t the only one with a fun discovery to report. “I thought I saw something too,” she whispered, glancing upward with a hint of anxiety. “In the shadows, hanging from the roof. Upside-down.”

Once again Nadia shivered. “Great. This just keeps gettin’ better.” She moved to the edge of the king bed and looked off into the darkness, trying to spot either the new monster or the escape route Peach saw. “Guess we’ve gotta make our way over there.”

The princess moved up to stand beside her. “While I’m not saying to split up, we shouldn’t travel in one big pack if there are enemies around. We’ll attract more attention and get in each others’ way,'' Peach advised. Her eyes landed on Nadia’s fan. “And let’s keep an eye out for anything that might be of use in the junk, but be careful you all don’t put yourselves at risk of the monster below. And we may want to be careful about how much more noise and spectacle we make.” Though she managed to hide it, her heart beat like mad. This was not going to be easy, but they were going to make it through. “Let’s go.”

---

Having caught up along with Bella to regroup with everyone, Mirage wasn't entirely surprised the entire group has been de-aged, but it was strange to see regardless. He noted that there were now two little turtles, the only other one he could think of being Bowser, though he looked much less wriggly and slender now. Nadia was helpful in identifying folks, Sakura in particular, who seemed to not have cat ears and such as a natural part of herself like Nadia did since they were missing. Must've been the effect of a Spirit or something. Regardless, he was happy to know everyone was here and safe, if not a bit scared and/or agitated.

Geralt being one of the group who he exchanged names with, he was surprised with the guy's appearance. But he figured it wouldn't make sense if he was, say, ten feet tall as a kid. "Fudged is right, those creepy snake things turned us into tots and took all our stuff? They're gonna pay by the time I'm done here!" He spoke with a bit of annoyance, while trying to show a little confidence that he would, indeed, escape this situation and make them pay. But rather than boast further, he listened to Peach for a moment, and her exchange with Nadia. And how there was a lot of bad news flowing around...

"Well, I might be missing out on my abilities, but I found this!" He offered as a moment of positivity among the bad news being shared, presenting the Dart Gun. Pointing it at a nearby surface and firing, Mirage found the weird projectile sticking again. He walked up to it and tried to get it to fall under his weight, to the point of standing on top of it and jumping a few times, only to see it not budge whatsoever. "These things stick to walls real good! I bet I could climb wherever I want with them." He jumped off, turning to fire more out of curiosity, since it seemed to not exactly have ammunition. A second one stuck, then a third, then as a fourth shot out, Mirage was taken by surprise as the first projectile poofed away like it never existed, in a little white smoke cloud.

"Nuts, I can only make three of them. But that's better than nothing!" Positives! Had to stick to them positives. The idea of monsters being above and below was concerning. It's like they had to keep safe in a middle ground or they'd get snatched. But that raised the question on if there were things to hunt them in this middle ground as well. Mirage felt a little more confident with the Dart Gun in hand, and at Peach's suggestion to make their ways through the pile to reach a vent that she found, he felt ready.

Twirling the gun in his hand, he continued: "If we can all get below the vent, I bet this gun could help get us up there. But we should see if we can find anything that'd make traveling in a group easier. Maybe a rope that I can take up there and tie for everyone to climb, or something?" Shrugging as it was the best idea he had, Mirage chuckled a little. "I'll climb around and see what I can find, though. Scout from higher ground while I move. I'll try to stick close to you guys too, just a bit higher up. So if you need one of these platforms, lemme know and I'll blast one down for ya."

With that, Mirage took Peach's suggestion to get going more seriously and began putting the Dart Gun to use to climb up the steep hills of household junk. His platform projectiles leading him up to a small 'cliff' of sorts which seemed to just be a small table buried by the countless items spread around, but it was more than enough of a path through somewhat higher layers of junk for him to wade through. Holstering his dart gun once again through the power of pants-tucking, his eyes scanned the junk as he slowly stepped through, trying to be a bit cautious in case anything decided to start falling. His thoughts trailed to the fact that Link had picked up a weapon of sorts already, and while this new gun was nice, the projectiles weren't very fast. He wasn't sure if the velocity of them would even be enough to cause much more harm than an irritable bonk, so he decided to start piecing together a new piece of gear.

Scavenging up some supplies, Mirage found a few particular things that helped in his efforts: Some furniture, a display case or something he figured, must've shattered a long time ago. Mirage picked up a few glass shards as the rest lightly crunched beneath his feet, continuing his search for supplies and finding some simple cloth shirts and an elastic exercise band. Taking one of the shirts and the band, he stopped momentarily to take a seat by some shoes, putting his materials down in front of him which nearly got lost in the immense clutter as he tried to work. Removing some of the shoe laces, he thought he had pretty much everything he needed to start on a small project.

Using the glass, Mirage cut through the exercise band after a few minutes of effort, providing himself with two cords that both had handles, which seemed convenient enough for what he wanted to do with them. After that he cut the cloth shirt, making a medium-sized, somewhat rectangular piece of cloth which he then tied both sides to the ends of the cords using the shoe strings, a small satisfied laugh leaving the boy as he looked at his crude weapon. Standing, he put a few glass shards into the cloth 'pouch' of sorts, his fingers looping through the handles of his new weapon as he brought his arm back and then swung it forward, yelping as he arced the weapon incorrectly and sent the glass scattering into the area directly in front of him.

"Not exactly a gun, but it'll do once I get the hang of it..." He said to himself aloud, thinking about putting more practice in as he picked up a few little items here and there to put in his pockets as ammunition, occasionally sending an item out into the distance with his sling as he slowly got the hang of how to angle it without it hitting the ground. Every toss helped him learn how far he could through, and what amount of strength led to what distance and destination. He took mental notes of this, trying to prepare himself for combat in case the others didn't end up making gear of their own, or pick up something to use for self-preservation. He made sure to pick up a few easily breakable things; Tiny perfume bottles, things of that sort, that he could potentially sling a decent distance to make a noise for a distraction too. He wasn't too confident in starting fights as a four-year-old, so sneaking was fine with him where he could manage it.

Folks down below might've been able to see the occasional small object fling from the area Mirage climbed up. Or even catch a glimpse of him using his newly created tool. Just in case the sling fell apart, some of what he stuffed in his pockets were replacement strings and a glass shard for cutting. Though he was pretty proud of his knots, so he doubted it'd fall apart too quickly.

He continued to travel in a somewhat casual manner, but watched his step and kept an ear out for anything abnormal.

"Err, yeah, magic." Jesse Faden had said at the time, in response to Primrose's question. "Where I'm from we call it the paranatural. Technically the term is classified, but, that's a stupid rule."

(Plus, I'm the Director and I can do as I damn well please.)

Jesse nodded as everyone agreed to the plan. The Tool Gun truly was a utility. A very useful Object of Power, one of the best she's ever discovered. It took some charges, but soon the entire gang of heisters was down to her size. Once that was done, the only thing left to do was get walking. Make slow and steady progress- would hardly be the most grueling walk across a room in her life.

Or, so she thought. Instead, the cat turned into a truck. Jesse blinked, and then nodded. "Oh, okay, I get it. You guys are just gonna play this off as no big deal to impress me. Fair." She said jokingly as she hopped inside.

Things got a little dicey, but Mona was good for it. The distraction was useful and they managed to make it through. Jesse undid everything, spamming the mental button. Even the door would become Collidable again, just to make sure no one followed them in without at least having to open the door. A brief visit through some back areas and they kept moving forward. The Thieves moved with purpose, they knew where they going. Faden just hoped this place wasn't going to pull the rug out from under their feet again.

No-Colliding doors and then peeking through was a very good strategy for safely scouting ahead.

"Phantom Thief code. I like it." Jesse said. "Although I should warn you, I'm basically a cop. But I'm pretty sure this place is outside my jurisdiction. Still, try not to commit too many felonies while I'm around." The redhead said. Jesse was clearly having fun. Her mood had brightened the more she tagged along with the Phantom Thieves.

Joker reported in from the peek-a-boo tactic. "Eldritch nightmare gallery?" Jesse asked, her interest piqued. She shook her head. Joker was right. Maybe if circumstances were different. Right now, the natural had become the new paranatural.

Once inside, she sprinted, keeping her pistol held in both hands and pointed at the ground. Past all the art no doubt born of madness, they pushed through the sickly pale green light. Their final obstacle was a lone guard. Jesse wondered if perhaps they could formulate a plan to sneak past this one, too- but Joker went ahead and got the drop on it. Not the worst call. Getting discovered was a different ball game than pulling off an ambush.

What was revealed, however, turned the tables of the Phantom Thieves + Guests quite quickly. A hideous creature formed from darkness and marred by evil. It roared and the entire room was plunged into darkness. It roared, and Jesse knew it to be the kind of noise that could worm into an untrained mind and force panic upon courageous hearts. Jesse Faden was not an untrained mind.

She steeled herself and prepared to do her job, resisting the fear effect.

"We need light!" Jesse shouted, voice steady and strong. For her part the redhead began taking steps backward. She pushed a hand out and did a melee attack. There was a burst of wind, but she was well out of range of the shambler. The true purpose was to summon a short but crucial flash of white light, the kind that accompanied her abilities in some form or another. The grisly form of the Shambler appeared for a second and a half before fading back into darkness.

Hand still reaching, she grasped one of the nearby blue-green statues in her minds eye. Wrenching it from the ground, she flung it at the giggling Shambler at speed. A crushing blow to disorient or shove bakc. Then Jesse once again lit the room up, only this time it was with her semi-automatic Service Weapon. The explosive bursts eminated from the whirring yellow cylinder in the center of the otherwise obsidian pistol. Jesse was going to put some psychic bullets into this monster.

Ideally it would focus all on her while her allies regained their composure. Give them time to push it's corruptive influence out of their heads. She wanted to create more distance by sprinting away, but she settled for doing a balanced, calm, back-pedal instead. If she ran too far, it might pursue an easier target. It was never wise to underestimate the intelligence of a monster from another dimension.

(All eyes on me, you ugly bastard.)

Eventually, Sakura managed to overcome her ragdoll inducing despair. A kid who must have been young Link reassured her that they would not get eaten. And maybe she was being a bit dramatic, but this was seriously scary. Sakura pushed herself unsteadily to her feet. This felt so wrong. She barely even remember being this young. Taking a stance, she cupped her hands together.

"Hadoken!" Nothing. If anything- it actually hurt to try and draw upon the fire of her soul. Like squeezing an empty tube of toothpaste. Her body wasn't prepared to expulse Ki. She knew the technique but had none of the training. Her shoulders sagged and her head dropped. She hadn't been unable to do that since she was 15. That was only 3 years ago, but for someone her age that was a significant portion of her life time. And she had spent 2 years before that trying to learn how to do it!

She slapped herself on the head and tried to pull herself back up into higher spirits. She had just survived a battle, after all. It would be stupid if this was the thing that broke her morale. But it wasn't just that, was it? This place was capital E evil.

The little girl turned to the groups resident robot. "Blazermate...we're all kids! You're the only one who isn't! I don't know what we're gonna do. We all got KOed and now we're kidnapped. We're literally kidnapped. And now, I've got no powers, and I'm stuck in the body of a dumb kid who only wanted to eat chicken nuggets and ice cream!" She exclaimed miserably.

"Mister Geralt?" Sakura said as a foul-mouthed boy introduced himself. He looked a lot different. It kind of made her sad. He was a little kid once, too, before he lived his long and difficult life. No scars, no yellow eyes, no white hair. "Ma..." She murmered looking down at the bed beneath her. She didn't have a plan for him.

Sakura hadn't the wherewithal to re-introduce herself, but who she was was thankfully obvious enough.

Things only got worse. Soon they all re-grouped.

Nadia spotted her and Sakura pouted. "Oh, yeah. I'm adorable." That really wasn't the kind of thing she wanted to hear right now. After a moment she sighed, smiling faintly.

"...Thanks, Nadia, I guess. My mom loved to dress me up." She fondly brought a hand up to the flower and ribbon in her short brown hair. The hair style was identical to the one she had as an adult.

They had a long way to go. Nadia said there was monsters below, and Peach said there were monsters above. At this point, Sakura was starting to tremble. She tried to take a few deep, calming breathes, but it sounded closer to hyperventilating.

Backing up away from the edge of the bed, she retrieved a large pillow like the others had done. With a little toss she sent it below, landing on all the junk.

"I used to play the floor is lava. My little brother g-got mad at me because I would always cheat. Like this." Sakura whispered. She went back and grapped a second pillow, and tossed it down next to the first one. With a quiet squeak of a yelp she lowered herself off the bed and hopped down. Sakura took a moment and steadied herself. She grabbed onto the fabric of the king bed, waiting to scramble back up incase the monster came for her. It didn't, thankfully.

Then, she grapped the second, large pillow with both hands. She set it down infront of her and stepped onto it. Then she crouched down, grabbed the first pillow, and set it down infront of her. She repeated this process once more to demonstrate. Slow, steady steps. No jumping required. Which was good, because Sakura wasn't sure she could make many jumps.

"S-see? We had to ban this strategy." Little Sakura said up to the others with a weak smile.

Then she kept going, making a small one girl path forwards across the room to the exit. After a little bit she sat down, putting a hand over hear thumping heart to catch her breath. "You guys keep g-going. I'll c-catch up."

She waved the more adventurous and brave of the Seekers ahead of her. There were probably much quicker ways of going if someone wanted to take risks. Sakura did not want to take any risks. For the first time in a long time she didn't feel confident that her body could do the things she asked it too. Since she was a kid, she knew she could hold her own weight, and she had extra bones. That was it- and it wasn't a reassuring thought. If she was just a tiny version of Sakura, she would be doing all sorts of crazy cool jumps and parkour. But she was just a normal, middle class kid with all of her baby teeth still in.

---

Feet meeting dust, Mao kept a steady pace as he walked away from the plant site. The faster they were out of sight the better, he figured, as it meant less witnesses to them being in the area. As far as he knew, the plan went off without a hitch. Klee's 'treasures' were planted under some tiles he loosened up, a great hiding spot as he'd promised, and while someone might have seen them go into the alleyway, he didn't think they looked overly suspicious considering Maritsu always had a bunch of multi-colored folk running around. Though he could have done without Maeve being a loud nuisance, they were tasked on the same job and he had no say in the matter. Something that was equal parts annoying and frustrating.

All they had to do now was lay low. The bubblegum-haired woman could 'wet her whistle' as much as she wanted now, instead of stalling earlier. If something had gone wrong, she might have actually been helpful, so there was no point in complaining now that things were said and done. All he had to do now was ensure Klee didn't wander off or get herself into any trouble, but thankfully she was pretty compliant and polite. He hadn't been sure how he felt about essentially being tasked as a babysitter, but he had warmed up to her a little, even if he'd never vocally admit that to anyone. She didn't try and be bossy like some people, and wasn't a nuisance like a few folks he could form a list about.

However, being willing to look after Klee didn't always mean he was good at it. Mao's mind tracked to heading as far away as possible from the plant site, but as he attempted to pass the restaurant from earlier, he felt a tug on his coat that caused him to turn his head, glancing back and noticing Klee looking up at him. Given that he didn't turn further, it seemed he didn't want to stop for long, and was fully oblivious to why she'd stop him here of all places. "What is it, Klee? We should be heading back now that we buried your treasure." He kept patient, not trying to sound too urgent as to not worry her, but he was ready to be long gone from here.

“What about the pizza?” the little girl pouted, her eyes watering from the thought that her caretaker forgotten about her request. “You said we could get some. Um, but if we can’t, that’s...that’s okay.” She looked down at the ground, the very picture of resigned disappointment.

Mao blinked behind his glasses, body fully turning now to face Klee as he looked between her and the restaurant next to them. Her expression was like a knife in the gut level of guilt, Mao visibly flinching from the feeling she gave off. "The pizza, right..." He responded, figuring that sitting down in the restaurant kept them out of sight for the most part anyways, so it fit into their objective. Plus, he had said he'd come back, she was jogging his memory. "I got sidetracked and it slipped my mind. Let's go eat first, then we can head back." He surrendered to his previous promise, though didn't sound very apologetic on the matter.

“Yay! Thank youuu!” Klee cheered, the immensity of her sorrows evaporating in an instant, but at least she had some manners. She raced into the Hound Pits pub with her arms extended to either side, and with a roll of her eyes Maeve followed at a jog. Only as Mao went after him did he get the feeling that something was missing. A few moments of looking passed before he realized that the scene lacked both a sight and a sound: the enormous saxophone player from earlier, filling the quaint establishment with the sweet notes of jazz.

Inside, Klee headed for the same booth the trio inhabited earlier. A waitress whose eye she managed to catch headed over after dropping off a basket of fries to another table and collecting an unused menu. “More waters?” she asked in a flat tone as Maeve and Mao grew close.

Mao, barely trusting the water in this town let alone anything else, nodded. "Waters, then whatever she wants." He gestured to Klee with his thumb, not about to be taking requests for Ms. Bubblegum. She could pay for her own drink if she wanted something better. A pizza ought to be enough food for them to share, too. Mao wasn't about to admit to being a cheapskate or anything, but money didn't grow on trees around here. Or maybe he was just petty? It was always up to an individual to decide.

Klee’s eyes shone when she was given free reign to request whatever she wanted, but luckily she was a girl of modest ambitions. “A pizza, please!” She chirped.

“What kind?” the waitress asked, very patient.

“Mushroom?”

The worker didn’t need a notepad to get that down. “Okay then, one mushroom pizza. Small, I’m guessing. Anything else?”

Maeve flagged down her attention. “I’ll take a strawberry shake!”

With the two orders memorized the woman strode off, leaving the trio alone at their table once more.

"Charge that shake separate!" Mao called out, snapping from Maeve's insolence. His glare met the pink-haired woman for a moment, wanting to start verbalizing his irritation to her as his mind raced for the correct words to express his anger.

A moment later, loud footsteps from the direction of the door, quickly growing louder. Although Klee’s cohort couldn’t make out much from their angle in the booth, and Maeve needed to twist around to even attempt it, they got a sense of a big, burly frame atop short legs that bustled their way. Another few seconds and the unknown figure appeared, and although it wasn’t an enemy, the realization of who it was left neither Mao nor Maeve feeling any better.

“Hey, guys!” Baz practically bellows, his total lack of indoor voice as prominent as ever. The broad-shouldered man stood with his hands perched on his enormous wrestling belt, lightning-blue eyes gleaming our from a pillar of a face wreathed in choppy blond hair. “I happened to see you guys go in, and since everything’s better with Baz, I figured I’d drop by!” He proceeded to seat himself in the trio’s booth, ignorant of the look of wanting to die etched on Maeve’s face as she was forced to scoot over. “Whatcha havin’?”

“Uncle Baz!” Klee cheered. She hopped down from her seat and ran around the table so that the big hooligan could pick her up. “We’re having mushroom pizza!”

“Mushroom!?” The man hoisted her up onto his arm. As amazingly inept of a guardian Baz was, having managed to lose Klee every time he was told to take care of her, the two idiots got on like two peas in a pod. “Pizza’s great and all, but if you wanna be as strong as the Baz someday, you’ve gotta get more protein, kid!”

"Let's not start making doomsday scenarios." Mao added in, horrified at the idea of Klee ending up more like Baz in any regard. Mao leaned back as far as the booth's seat would allow, watching the scene with an unamused expression behind his glasses. Baz was irritating, in an entirely different way: He was the definition of a mook, but unlike Maeve who just gave off conflicting vibes, Klee really liked him. He was a 'jolly' guy, so it made sense, he figured. She made bombs and he was bombastic, but that didn't make the display anymore tolerable. All his protein talk just reminded Mao that Baz was a bit of a meathead, but also reminded him of a estatic vampire who was obsessed with sardines and their health benefits, protein included!

He would've asked what Baz was doing around here, but it wouldn't surprise him if 'patrol around aimlessly' was his current task, so why bother asking? Mao grabbed the hot sauce bottle that sat on the table with the assortment of condiments, fingers toying with it as an attempted distraction. "Guess we should've sprung for a bigger pizza if we're having more guests." He mused out loud, weaponizing Baz's presence against Maeve for a moment by considering if they had enough for him, too. If he had to give Baz any credit, he was at least honest. Maybe TOO honest, but he didn't have to worry about him the same way he worried about the pink gossip girl.

“Huh? Nah, I’m good.” He let Klee down, and the kid went back over to her own seat in anticipation of the coming meal. “Just got out of lunch at HQ. Damn near kicked me out, actually. Can you believe it? All cryin’ and whinin’ about me havin’ enough meat. Well, ‘scuse me if ‘enough’ is never enough! D’you know much much it takes to get this jacked?!” He raised both arms to flex, nearly clocking Maeve’s chin in the process. He laughed and slammed his arms down on the table, making the silverware jump and drawing a few eyes. “I’ve been gettin’ so much experience lately, by the time I find the Order of No Quarter they’re gonna be beggin’ for the Baz the join ‘em!”

Maeve shifted in her seat, her head leaning on a hand with her elbow on the table. “Maybe you should join the circus instead.”

“We’ve got a circus!?”

"There's enough clowns for one."

A few minutes later a simple mushroom pizza was delivered to the table alongside Mae’s shake. The young woman planted a straw in it and got busy, while an overjoyed Klee dug into her favorite dish. Although it wasn’t exactly the same as the pizza from her world by any stretch, the spirit of it carried through to her, and the child savored every bite. “It’s so good! You have to have some, Baz!” she insisted.

Despite his claims of a full lunch already, the big man didn’t take much convincing. Whether the four enjoyed the moments of peace or not, they did so unburdened by guilty or regret, and that made just about everything a bit sweeter.

Between Klee and Baz, it took no time at all for the small mushroom pizza to be completely devoured. Mao taking back his decision to have a bite himself and instead seemed content with sipping at the bottle of hot sauce like it was a normal beverage. With the food gone and Klee's hunger hopefully satisfied, he could only think of getting out of here. Maybe if it had that nice jazzy atmosphere from earlier he'd stay, but it seemed they kicked out the guy making the music and left themselves with nothing but loud pub chattering. "This place is a crapshoot without the music, I'm ready to get out of here." He commented as an interruption to the good time, standing from his seat in the booth, hot sauce bottle still in hand which he then proceeded to put back to his mouth as if he seemed to be finishing it off.

Disappointed maybe in not being the first to lead a movement, Baz extracted himself from the booth and stood up right after. “You said it, pal,” he agreed, despite not having been around during the music. Maeve scrambled out after him after dropping a couple coins for her snack, and Mao did the same. While being good, law-abidiing citizens wasn’t exactly the modus operandi, they at least needed a couple places they were welcome, so dining and dashing on such a small check was off the table. With Klee just about on top of the world the trio got underway, only to realize that their hanger-on seemed intent on making a quartet. “So, where’re we headed?” Baz asked as he sauntered from the Hound Pits and into the early afternoon sun.

'We?' Mao repeated in his mind, thinking of how hard keeping a low profile would be with a big loudmouth like Baz following them around. His mind raced momentarily, a decision being made to go back on his less than pleasant thoughts about Baz from earlier, and to embrace a bit of hypocrisy for his own benefit. "Don't you have something to do, Baz? You said you came from HQ, right?" Surely if they almost kicked him out then they gave him some sort of petty job to get lost in. Maybe giving the burly man's brain a jumpstart would help him get back on track.

The wrestler scratched his head. “Huh? Oh! Uh…” Recognition dawned in his eyes as all of a sudden he remembered his instructions. “Yeah, I was s’posed to round up anyone I found. Apparently there’s a buncha new folks in town who’ve already started gettin’ friendly with the Grimlosers. So of course the captain’s callin’ another snoozefest.” He grit his teeth, clearly opposed to the prospect of another Resistance meeting, but something ultimately prevented him from defying the orders he’d been given.

"Probably just some mercenaries trying to make a quick buck," Mao assumed, though the idea of having more opposition to deal with wasn't pleasant. It really said something about the Grim if they needed outside help to handle their group, however. What use were a couple of peons, though? Maybe this meeting meant they were more than that? Only one way to find out. "But if they're worried enough to call a meeting, we ought to go. We'll scoop up any idiots wandering about on the way, come on." Seemed like he'd be traveling with Baz after all, against his wishes. He was sure Klee wouldn't complain, however.

Sure enough, the kid looked happy to have the big lout along for the ride. As far as she knew the day just kept getting better and better; after a fun game of knock-it-down with some scaffolding in the morning, she and the others had run around for a while playing catch-me-if-you-can with the funny people in robes. Then she got to hide her new treasures, have pizza, and now her favoritest person was here to goof around with her. Only when Klee learned where the group would be going did her smile disappear. “Aww. I don’t want to see the others again.” Unfortunately, she knew she had no choice. “Is demon face going to be there?”

Baz shrugged. “Probably. But nothin’s gonna happen to ya while I’m around, kid! C’mon, I’ll give ya a ride on the Baz’s mighty shoulders.” Gratefully Klee accepted his offer, always happy for a ride, and the wrestler’s size made him a better candidate than most.

Leaving the Hound Pits the four turned south and made for the train station. Baz’s heavy footfalls clanged against the metal grates of the catwalk that went above the train platforms, close enough close enough to the cannon of the hulking Railway gun that Klee could reach out and touch it. After climbing down the stairs back to ground level at the other end, they went along the wall down the platform, past a set of restrooms to where a turntable could send a train off on a parallel track. A set of gates barred the way, and the employee access door beside it, with a big ‘NO TRESPASSING’ sign on it, was deadbolted. Anyone in the know, however, knew that lifting the loose-hinged door by the handle in just the right direction would allow the bolt to escape the tampered mechanism. Going through it brought the quartet to a seldom-seen section of Al Mamoon, as restricted as it was neglected: the Train Graveyard. Getting the trains up and running had not been an easy process, especially as the Vizier struggled at first to come to terms with modern technology in the course of his public projects, and the Graveyard stood as just one testament to Validar’s utter lack of compromise when it came to seeing his will be done. It contained the ‘error’ portion of the trial and error process by which Al Mamoon had been thrust into the new age. High sandstone walls, tough chain-link fence, and rumors of curses kept the average person from exploring here, which sat just fine with the Resistance. Baz, Maeve, and Mao navigated the maze of trains, avoiding both traps and the pesky monsters that called the place home, until they reached the hideout.



Hidden inside a broken-down train car indistinguishable from the rest and far removed from civilian eyes, it made for a good base, even if those found here made for bad company. No sooner did they step inside than the new arrivals were greeted by the double whammy of Cass, the bad-tempered cyborg whose indiscretion had already spilled some blood today, and Daemon, the masked swordsman whose Klee-scaring visage belied one of the better hearts among the Resistance. With a spatter of blood still on her face, Cass gave a venomous smile. “Ah, my little kitty. I didn’t think you’d make it out of there.” Maeve scowled but otherwise ignored her, shoving past and toward the meeting car.

Mao wasn't exactly fond of 'Chicken Legs' Cass anymore than Maeve. Though they shared a willingness to kill, he'd been pulled from the more tyrannical mindset and instead looked more into justifying his attacks. Justification being targets of the Resistance, of course, without any tendency to question the validity of said targets. These 'morals' if you could call them that were an unnatural part of him, yet felt second-nature at the same time. Her ruthlessness hit different than it would have in the past, but that was more her problem than his. The mechanical-bird wannabe could go pluck herself.

The loud stomping behind him from Baz drew a thought from his mind: How, of all things, did that start feeling like the most tolerable thing in HQ? Maybe it was just because he kept Klee happy, but at that point it turned into Mao babysitting two people. And he wasn't sure how fond he was of that idea.

Speaking of Klee, Mao used himself as a sort of stopgap between the others and her, essentially turning him and Baz into walls for her protection against the individuals the former didn't trust, at the very least. He kept a stern expression as he made his way into the meeting car, hand resting on the handle of his sheathed blade as he voiced his complaint on the meeting. "Seems like most of us got dragged back here, so what's the deal? The Grimlosers making a move?" With no remorse his remark was stolen from Baz, and no, he wasn't crediting him for it.

Inside the central train car, a couple more familiar faces were already gathered, waiting for the meeting to begin. Leaning on her giant ring blade with a distant look on her face was Tira, a bipolar lunatic who gave Cass a run for her money in the craziness department. But while Cass antagonized and endanger the others in a reckless, prideful bid at self-aggrandisement, Tira relished the freedom of not caring a whit what others said, did, or thought, and that made her both more tolerable and more dangerous. Meanwhile, the masked ninka Koga reclined against a wall, taciturn as ever. If anyone could be said to do his job with neither quirk nor complaint, it was him.

At Mao’s prompting, Daemon stood and moved to the bulletin board on one wall, where he crossed his arms and turned to address the group. Though a terribly motley crew, those assembled before him -Mao, Maeve, Cass, Baz, Klee, Tira, and Koga- represented about a third of the Resistance’s total power. It took a sharp mind and a firm hand to keep leverage them properly and prevent their discovery and annihilation by the authorities as they carried out their mission of rebellion, and having lead his own gang in the past, Daemon could do just that. Still, all the authority he had came from Number Two, and with the possible exception of Cass these people listened to him solely because the acting leader told them to. Daemon cleared his throat.

“Maybe. Word’s come down we need to be on the lookout for some new faces in town. They arrived by train a few hours ago according to Koga, and after she saw them leaving the palace Sombra’s been tailing them. As best we can tell it looks like Validar brought in a little extra muscle to deal with his problems, and I don’t just mean lost dogs or the Custodian we dumped in the waterworks.” As he spoke he ran his fingers along the city map behind him, nudging the pictures pinned there in turn. “They split up to get the lay of the land, but once they do, they’re coming for us for sure.”

"Might be better to make sure they never regroup at all," Mao commented on the information provided, continuing: "They're on our turf, we can take advantage of that while also being able to outnumber their smaller groups outside of the common areas of the city." While Mao didn't trust the group particularly well, their circus of freaks was strong. He may have been underestimating a similar caravan of freaks now rolling into town to help in their extermination, but if they were stronger than he thought, that was even more reason to hit them while they were split.

The idea did not seem to take Daemon by surprise. “It’s on the table. Number Two wants them caught and brought back to her we can, so she can convince them to join us. No use wasting any actual talent, after all. But right now we don’t have a bead on all of them. Sombra went back to report rather than randomly pick one group to tail, but we’re gonna get the pictures she took any minute now. Once we find ‘em, a couple can pull something suspicious to lure ‘em into an ambush. Rough ‘em up, drag ‘em back, figure out what Validar’s plotting. Got it?”

Flummoxed as usual but used to it by now, Klee just shook her head softly. Whatever these people wanted to do, Mao or Baz could tell her. At least her big friend seemed confident. “Roughin’ up chumps is what the Baz does best!” he proclaimed.

"Recruitment through violence! She thinks like a demon, that's for sure!" Mao added, figuring this to be as good as done. It was a Netherworld norm to recruit people directly after beating the hell out of them, so the plan seemed solid as far as he was concerned. And as much as Baz's intelligence was usually insulted, all those muscles were useful in a brawl. Not to mention that rope of his would be perfect to wrap up the unconscious peons. "And I do love making people talk." Mao added, the idea of having a noncompliant subject to examine to be exciting. Number Two was quite good at getting information from people herself however, so if he'd get the chance was up in the air.

“Then we’ll spread out along the main avenue,” Daemon confirmed, giving everyone their orders. “When they come back a group at a time to turn in their jobs at the commissions office and find it a crater, we’ll lead ‘em off.”

After a few moments the black plastic printer in a corner of the room came to life, shaking the stool it stood on as it spat out a couple of pictures in quick succession, color and everything. They depicted an interesting assortment of unfamiliar faces, from a big glitzy bug to a mustached strongman to a beautiful dancer to a hamster in overalls, although Maeve and Mao couldn’t help but feel as if they’d seen the big, trench-coated man somewhere before. Tira kneeled over the photos, grinning. “Ooh-hoo-hoo, I can hardly wait!”

The cyber-ninja picked up his sheathed katana with a flourish and attached it to his belt. “Then let’s go.”

”It looks like people are coming to us” Kamek noted from atop the pillow pile. Bowser’s attempt at wandering round at random had failed as soon as they established that no one else was on the bed yet. Well, no one apart from tyrant the baby behemoth, who they’d found with his horns stuck in the mattress and his little legs flailing uselessly above himself.

After freeing the pig they’d climbed atop the pile of pillows on the bed, and from there identified the smaller groups of heroes slowly making their way towards their larger group.

”They really got everyone huh. Well except Blazermate” The already rather small robot didn’t seem to have been affected one bit ”Guess she’s around your age then jr?”

”Well or a robot who’s always been like that” Jr pointed out

”Well yeah, but they shrunk Rika and she’s a robot”

”Cyborg,” Jr replied, before looking down and asking her ”You were young like this once, right?”

“I don't remember being anything other than what I was. Or being alive for very long before the big light flash happened and we came here” Rika replied from where she was lying next to jr while the prince tried to reboot her gauntlets with little success. The machinery all seemed to be intact and functional, the time rewind having inadvertently undone the EMP damage that had crippled them before, but in their partially developed state they seemed to lack the power to function correctly as they did when Rika was older, namely supporting their own hulking weight for her less than muscular frame.

”Perhaps you where grown quickly using magic or machinery?” Kamek suggested before speculating that ”It would be quite interesting to see how the Abyssal fleet produced its soldiers.”

“Maybe?” Rika wasn't sure on either count.

”If they could just grow more, why would they be resurrecting their people over and over?” jr pointed out.

”Efficiency perhaps?” The magic-less mage replied. Ultimately it was uncertain if they’d ever have the need or opportunity to find out, but the speculation passed the time till people started congregating on the bed. When that occurred the troop slid and/or clambered down their pillowy height and joined them.

Unlike some of the party, the troop had seen basically everyone in their base form already, so most of the members were easy enough to identify, barring the de-witchered Geralt who helpfully introduced himself.

”I’ve sometimes wanted to be young again, but this most certainly was not what I had in mind,” Kamek joked to the other man who’d lost something close to a century and, by the looks of things, the spark of magic that made they unique among the majority of their kind.

Last to join them was Peach, who despite being four again was apparently never to be found without a version of her signature parasol, who pointed them towards a vent high in the far wall that they might be able to use to start climbing out of whatever depth they’d fallen with the aid of Mirage’s dart gun. They were also warned about some kind of creature lurking in the random junk strewn across the floor, prompting the troop to take a look over the edge for it.

”Yeesh, What a mess” Jr commented, taking the first proper look at the state of the floor. Not that you could see said floor for all the stuff piled up, which was kind of the issue.

”and this is why you need to clean your room from time to time” Kamek was helpful to remind him.

”Yeah yeah”

”Bet it isn't so tough, whatever it is! We can just smoke it out and then not have to worry about a buncha platforming!” Bowser declared, blowing out a little wisp of fire to show where said fire would come from.

”That might not be wise. Firstly because we’re trying not to attract attention, and also lets try and avoid setting fire to the submarine while we are in it. Last thing we want is it burning down with us inside it,” Kamek suggested against the idea

”How can it burn down when it’s in the water?”

”If the fires so bad that the waters coming it to put it out, then that waters coming for us too” Kamek pointed out, which got an ”Ah” from Bowser

”Wait, you could breathe fire when you were this age?” Jr asked, a little surprised by this information.

”Huh? Yeah, I could breathe fire since I was a baby!” Bowser declared proudly, initially missing the blow that might do to Jr’s ego.

”Oh” jr replied, before muttering ”I’d only just gotten the hang of that” dejectedly.

”Oh. Uh. Well yeah but... You can do a bunch of stuff that I could never do with mine! That homing one you do? And the bouncy ones too? You're really talented with it son, so what if it took you a bit longer, you're great at it now and you're just gonna keep getting better! When you grow up you’ll be as good as me, better even!” Bowser told him, clapping his identically sized son on the shoulder.

”Thanks dad” jr replied, a little perked up, but still sad that he wouldn't be able to help using fire like his dad was going to be able to.

“Um i think people are heading out already” Rika interrupted from where she was sitting, and indeed several people were already off. Mirage and his pop gun were climbing up and all over while Sakura was either being very clever or very foolhardy with her plan of using two pillows to leapfrog her way across the room.

”Yeah that is cheating, you cheater!” jr yelled after Sakrau as she stepping stones her way across the floor before more quietly saying that he ”Didn’t know she had it in her” to Mimi, as if he was a little impressed by this underhanded tactic.

”If we’re splitting up then seeing as we’re the tough guys we’ll take the toughest route!” Bowser declared, pointing a finger along a route that would involve quite a bit of daring jumping to pull off.

”I’m not so sure all of us could manage that Sire. Perhaps we could instead tare up the sheets and use them to create the envelope of some kind of hot air balloon powered by your majesty’s fire breath and hey wait no put me down aaaaaaah!” Kamek speculated, before being picked up and unceremoniously thrown by the still inhumanly strong Bowser across a rather large gap and landing atop a large toy-box shaped like a treasure chest. The young koopa scrambled a bit to avoid sliding down the curved lid of the box, but managed to find it in himself to avoid slipping down into the sea of junk below.

”Sire. Please warn me next time.” Kamek shouted at the king who had lobbed him so recklessly.

”Yeah yeah” Bowser called back before Jr joined in and called out ”Here, catch!” before tossing Tyrant through the air. The koopa did his best to catch the bay behemoth while avoiding being impaled by the beast’s massive horns that made it and BB something close to the most deadly weapons the group had at their disposal at the moment.

The flying pig was swiftly followed by Mimi, who didn't need to be caught at all as she gently floated down to land with them. Finally she was followed by Rika, who’s landing was nowhere near as smooth. Larger than Kamek by a fair bit (adult koopas where practically child sized already, leaving the koopa as quite the tiny tot) and covered in some underdeveloped metal parts, the girl just barely cleared the gap and then, upon landing, that same amount of dead metal weight caused her to slide down the side of the toy box chest, while her bound up hands offered little in the way of ability to grab hold of things to stop her slipping down.

”oh dear oh bother oh dear” Kamek panicked, running after her and grabbing an arm, only for his small and weak form to do little but get dragged along. Mimie grappling on as well did little to help improve the situation. Then two thuds behind him herald the arrival of the royals, who rushed down and, with claws for grip and raw strength hauled the three of them back up to safety from which Tyrant had refused to budge.

“Thanks. And sorry. I’m just dead weight thanks to these.” Rika said, heaving the heavy gauntlets on her arms up with a great deal of effort.

”It’s not your fault” Kamek assured her.

”We’ll keep an eye out for anything that can help. Maybe something with a battery?” Jr suggested, thinking maybe he could rig something up to help the girl’s gauntlets get the juice they needed externally.

”Sure. But we’ve wasted enough time here already. Let's keep moving. Jr, you go across before we throw Rika for this next one so this doesn't happen again.” Bowser ordered, already eyeing up the next gap they’d need to traverse.

”Sure thing dad. Come on, up you get and let's get moving. The faster we get outta here, the faster we can kick some snake butt and you can get back to blasting everything to bits with like a bazillion guns” Jr said, helping the girl up and with that bit of motivation in mind, their little gang kept moving across the mess of a room towards the vent.

Even if they were far smaller than her at this point, Blazermate was a bit dejected no one took up her offer on carrying them. This was probably for the best, as even if they were smaller than her, she doubted she could even fly with one of them. She listened as, even though their voices were squeaky and some of them, such as Geralt, looked very different, they still had their wits and planning about them. Peach for example explaining the threats around them, with things near the ceiling and some horrible monster inside the junk that was littered along the floor.

Using the pillows on the bed and around the room, apparently they could float along the junk below and the creature swimming through said junk didn't bother anyone on them, which Blazermate found really odd. But if thats how it worked, thats how it worked, so she could only shrug as different members of her party, such as the koopa troop started tossing others or jumping around the pillows, tables, toybox, and other elevated positions trying to get to a vent that Peach had pointed out. While some of them could do this, there were others where Blazermate doubted they could jump like that in their diminished state, Rika being a good example that needed a lot of help.

This got Blazermate thinking. While she couldn't fly, she could at least glide while carrying someone, and make their jumps much easier, adding her own jumping power to theirs if she carried them. Looking to the others who hadn't jumped yet, she said. "Hey, if some of you want some help jumping, let me know. I can't fly any of you over, but I can make you jump high and float down like Peach did with my jets." Blazermate looking over the rest of the room as she waited for someone to take her up on that offer, noticed something that unsettled her. Everything here was big. She was about as tall as Link was before he became a kid, so she wasn't that small. And yet everything here looked like it was more Bowser's size, making even her, the tallest of the group right now, feel small.

A little boy dressed in a plain beige tunic stood in silence, his green eyes were staring intently at his open hand with an expression of confusion and wonderment. 'Impossible...' the boy thought, absent-mindedly running his fingers through the locks of green hair upon his head yet freezing as soon as his fingers met the strands 'Tis not possible...'' the boy should have felt overjoyed by this new revelation yet his joy soon came to an end for the blade of antiquity was gone with it his skills and strengths, the green haired boy was no longer a swordsman but a child like he had been before he was cursed. When the boy was still filled with dreams of adventure with his best friend, this was who he was a boy and now truly he could call himself Glenn.

"I-" Glenn choked back a sob, tears of happiness in his bright green eyes "I'm human, tis impossible yet..." his voice was not as distinguished as before yet still carried the same tone as he spoke aloud for everyone to hear "It appears I hath been freed from my burden." Glenn was giddy with excitement, he cared little about his age reversal. Nothing was more freeing yet his memories told him that everything he was before no longer applied, the fateful duel meant nothing and he was merely a child burdened by an entirely new issue: his memories.

Glenn had been haunted for years by the ghosts of his past, but now the battle where Magnus had cursed him no longer made him ashamed of himself as he wasn't an anthropomorphic frog. However he felt like he couldn't take this as a sign
of straying from his original purpose.

"Masamune, thy blade of antiquity tis gone!" with a gasp at the realization that the blade his deceased friend and mentor entrusted him with had disappeared, Glenn's expression turned grim "Twas my destiny alas tis gone..." he looked at those also turned to children, nodding solemnly and quieting himself as he was not the only person affected by this transformation.

'I hath no destiny....' Glenn bowed his head, joy replaced with a complacent look of a boy that has no hopes.

So, it boiled down to, keep quiet, get out, undo this curse somehow, take down the head honcho, and escape. Add a few intermediate steps for finding things that could help them, figure out how to do all of this while terrifyingly under-sized, and don't die to the floor and ceiling monsters while doing so.

Honestly speaking, this wouldn't be easy. Without the physical conditioning he had as a Witcher, Geralt wasn't sure how much he'd be able to do. He knew that at the very least, the Cadet would outstrip him in that category. Humans were just built different where he was from. He had his mind, and for that he was eternally grateful, but without the ability to put into action many of the plans he'd normally come up with, that mind was worth less than it might otherwise be.

Still, they weren't completely lost. Mirage and Nadia had picked up some kind of mechanical fan, and a gun that shot darts which were shockingly sturdy, if slow-moving. Sturdy enough to be used as platforms, which gave Geralt a few ideas. Still, he looked around the room and frowned. The place was too damned big. And the others were already off while he thought. Peach's idea had merit, though he wasn't sure just yet on how they'd undo whatever was done to them. Probably ambush them and stab whatever passed for their throats.

Speaking of which, it was time to find a knife or something that could be used as a similar weapon.

And with that, Geralt set about searching around the base of the bed he was on, casting his eyes over the room, he noticed miscellaneous bits of debris flying around where Mirage had gone off to. A sling, perhaps? Simple enough weapon. Not...quite my area of expertise, however. He left that train of thought when Blazermate spoke up. Looking to the massive robot- relative to him, at least- he nodded. "I was no slouch, even as a child." God, that voice was grating. "I'm at least fit enough to carry my own weight. With your boost, we should be okay."

Looking about the room, Geralt mostly-arbitrarily decided upon a direction they could head off to on the way to the vent: what appeared to be a bookshelf, with random items along with books covering its shelves. "That way." He pointed, getting next to Blazermate. "Not sure exactly how you plan to do this, but we should jump at the same time, no?"

Here went everything. They pushed off, the bed hardly an ideal surface to jump from, but their slow descent as they half-floated across the room was...disorienting. Geralt did not like the relative lack of gravity, the sluggishness with which the ground rose to try and intercept them.

All that vanished as they drew closer, however, and Geralt reached out, bent his legs, and crashed into one of the shelves just below his knees, falling onto the surface with a sigh. "That could have been worse. Thanks." Pulling his entire body over the ledge, he stood up and surveyed their new surroundings. "Not far now."

Geralt lifted an arm, waving to catch Mirage's attention. He didn't want to call out too loudly, wary of the creatures the others had mentioned. He didn't know what would set them off, but he didn't want to risk it. He pointed at the side of the bookshelf's interior, then lifted his arm, pointing at the 'wall' the whole time. Hopefully he'd get the message: 'Darts, along this wall.'

Primrose was surprised at the easy acceptance from the spirit. More than acceptance even, it seemed to push for a bond and in no time it's wish was granted, becoming the dancer's second Striker. She learned it's name and that it was not a dog per se, but a wolf. Noble creature indeed. She smiled softly, though the expression faded when her gaze flickered to Joker.

A more surefire way? She thought, her eyes then drifting over to Mona. It clicked after a moment that they must mean the vehicle he could turn into. Primrose nodded. Though it would be immediately suspicious if any of the guards caught sight of the Mona-mobile, hopefully it would be small and quick enough to avoid detection. Though she could feel the Makami's eagerness, it would have to wait. Primrose would much rather everyone stay together than go off alone at this point. Another time, she promised it.

With everyone else she boarded the car. Looking out of the windows was routine by now, but the view was completely strange. Being so small was certainly a unique experience. She wondered who would appreciate this story most between her Orsteran companions. She didn't ponder for long, before she knew it they were through the door, resized and moving on.

Once they reached the next floor, Joker had looked inside and reported some troubling news. A cursed gallery. Primrose's face tightened subtly, imagining the worst kind of things that could befall them with the a strong curse. Going right through without looking at anything probably wouldn't be difficult for her, so she nodded at the boy's plan and rushed right in along with the others. A single guard, which would make for a single monster stood in their way.

Primrose prepared to brandish her magic as soon as it's true form was revealed, but it's ghastly appearance on the scene chilled her blood. She was frozen to the spot until it roared, and then plunged into darkness the dancer knew if she didn't run she'd be dead. So she ran, overtaken by dreadful fright she didn't even know where she'd gone to within the room until after a few moments she seemed to regain her senses.

She found herself crouched and shaking behind a statue's pedestal, eyes wide and staring at the ground. Carefully she roused herself, slowly placing her knees and palms on the gallery's tile floor and crawling forward. She breathed in, breathed out, and repeated. That thing... what was it? It couldn't have been a normal monster, more like a demon ripped straight from the pages of some accursed tome. But Primrose had faced her fair share of evils, she could overcome whatever terrifying spell had come over her. She peeked around the marble base she'd taken cover behind, taking in what she could of Jesse's battle with the thing. Right now while the abomination was focused on her would be the best time for Primrose to put her supporting skills to use.

As quietly as possible she stood, forcing her wobbly legs to hold her weight. She backed away from her cover until she had enough room to move, and then she danced.

Primrose twisted and dipped, her outfit moving with her as she performed. She didn't know what that monster was capable of, but from the brief glances she'd had during the flashes of light from Jesse's gun it looked bulky. She could only judge that it would attack with it's body, and so Primrose ended her dance with a low spin and a quiet utterance of "The mole dance," granting Jesse a boost to her defense.

Next, she heeded the Director's earlier words and produced light in the form of the fire orb. She willed the flames into existence with a wave of her hand, lighting up more and more of the area as it grew larger.

If she threw it, it might set the whole cursed gallery aflame. Actually that didn't sound like such a horrible idea, if it could be contained to just this room. Still, she would need a clear shot at the Shambler or else Jesse would be caught in the orb's explosion. Primrose couldn't see the Phantom Thieves, just she knew they could see her just fine and would know to stay out of the way if the orb went sailing. Until then she let it glow and shed light on the area, planting her feet and preparing to let it fly with the right opening.

With a heavy heart, and an even heavier slam onto the ground, Big Band realized that he still seemed to be missing some core functionality. His first idea, and far and away the most effective, had been to engage his afterburner and soar off into the wild blue yonder, but his systems refused to listen. “So it’s like that,” the big man grumbled, picking himself off the ground with one pneumatic arm and holding his volatile plunder with the other. Even in dire straits, however, he took a moment to dust the sand from his coat as part of his efforts to keep cool and collected. With steady breath he shut out the worrisome hissing noise of the explosives inside the treasure box and weighed his options.

In a way, Band felt grateful that the bombs appeared to be magical, so that defusing them wasn’t even something he could try. Someone versed in any of the many arcane arts this world appeared to foster might know how, but the detective lacked both the slightest idea where one might be found and the time to actually get there. That left just one possibility: mitigation. As much as he prided himself on the strength of his big bell, he wasn’t willing to bet that he could soak a blast meant for a small building. Stashing it underground could be even more disastrous, with the sheer potential for collateral damage. Band reckoned his throwing arm could hurl the payload high enough into the sky that the detonation would do no damage, but that would take precise timing. His best shot? Getting it out of Al Mamoon entirely. But speed was not his forte.

“Salt...peanuts,” Band groaned. Suddenly he felt the absence of any nimble companions a lot more. To reassess the situation he opened up the oh-so-innocent treasure box once again to check on the bombs. As he feared their pulses had already gotten faster, and with the innocent little faces drawn on them they looked like round little rabbits squirming together in a nest. Band felt as if they were mocking him, saying whatcha gonna do about us? But watching them together turned on a lightbulb above his head. Using a padded pincer he plucked one bomb from the box and set it in the hole he pulled the box from. If a dozen of the fruit-sized explosives could take out the commissions office with a chain reaction, he reasoned, one couldn’t be that bad. From beneath his coat he extended his saxophone and clamped it down over the hole. He took a deep breath, tensed his joints, and blew out a single flat note.

BWOMP

A muffled explosion went off in the saxophone’s bell. Some smoke rose from his mouthpiece, which he avoided inhaling, but Band saw no visible damage. “Alright, looks like I’ve got you under my skin. Gonna need a hell of a tune-up later though.” One by one he repeated the process, moving with mechanical precision. Place, cover, blow. Place, cover, blow. As the remaining bombs pulsed faster he pushed himself into overdrive, keeping at it even as the internal damage to his precious sax began to mount. By the time the last cheerful bomb vanished beneath his instrument’s bell his eyes were watering, and not just from the stinging smoke. He smoothed over the little crater, replaced the tile atop it as best he could, coughed a couple times, and stood. Crisis averted.

Only after he turned to stomp off did he realize that a bespectacled woman had been watching him with crossed arms. He’d been so intent on his task he didn’t notice her arrival. His eyebrows shot up over widened eyes. “Oh! Uh. Hello, Dolly.” He glanced down at the pile of sand, soot, and chipped tiles, more than a little embarrassed. “I ‘s’pose this looks a little odd.”

“Yeah,” the lady replied, “What were you doing? You with the Resistance?”

Band straightened up and shook his head. “No, ma’am. I’m a detective from out of town.” Not quite the truth, not anymore, but good enough for his purposes. “I tailed a trio of suspects to this office. Saw them come down this way, then leave a while later. When I dropped by to take a look, I found this.” With a tilt of his head he indicated the homemade treasure box laid on the ground. “Stuffed with bombs, cheek to cheek. I couldn’t let ‘em blow up the surroundin’ buildings, so I detonated ‘em one at a time.”

For a moment the woman considered his story, but it took her only a few moments to give a stiff nod. “In that case, I guess I should thank you for saving my life. I work right in this building.” She slapped the side of the commissions office.

With a smile Band bowed his head. “No thanks necessary ma’am, just doin’ my duty. But you’re welcome all the same. I just appreciate you believin’ me.”

Hunnigan shrugged. “It just makes sense. If you wanted to do some damage, you could have let them go off together. Or just run into the office yourself, I guess. Wouldn’t have taken much. I did see a few other people head in and out of the alley in my peripherals, and there isn’t much of anything here anyway, so it was a little unusual. What’s your name?”

“Me? I’m the last of the most real. They call me Big Band.”

His new acquaintance gave a thin smile, although for someone who looked as if she hadn’t smiled in years, it still made an impression. “Do they now? Well, most people call me Hunnigan, but Ingrid works too. Would you be willing to give a report of everything you saw to the peacekeepers?”

Band glanced out of the alley. “More than willing, ma’am, but right now I’ve got a slim chance of trackin’ the suspects down before they’re miles beyond. The trail’s cold, but it’s not dead yet. But you better clear out, ‘cause when they come to see their handiwork and realize everything’s still in one piece, they might try an’ finish the job.”

Pursing her lips, Hunnigan took the warning seriously and gave back some advice of her own. “Believe me, it’s important to demonstrate to the Grimleal that you’re on their side. What we should do is call them here anyway, but not to guard the building. Instead they could lay low in the area and wait for the Resistance to show up and spring the trap. That way you can both give your report and stay on the case.”

“Hm,” Band murmured, pleasantly surprised. “You know your stuff, Ingrid. That makes sense to me. Go ‘head an’ make the call, and I’ll stand by.”

The two made their way to the front of the office, where the secretary slipped inside to use the phone. Band looked out over Al Mamoon’s thoroughfare, pausing on each face. None of the suspects seemed to be around, but who wasn’t to say their compatriots hadn’t already lined the street? Without even meaning to the one-man band had gotten involved in the desert city’s shadow war, and in just a few minutes he would be standing on its frontlines. The detective treated himself to a wry smile. “Never could just stand on the sidelines, could ya, Ben?” A tiny mechanical arm rose from his coat with a handkerchief to dab the sweat from his brow. If things were hot now, they were going to get a lot hotter, and real soon.



Overwhelming Fear momentarily relieved the Phantom Thieves of their senses and put them to flight, their legs running as if they had minds of their own. As they sprinted away or dived behind cover, however, Jesse held strong. Rather than waste time wondering why this puny creature could resist it, if it was even capable of such, the Shambler lurched forward with raking claws at the ready. In the stygian blackness the flash of Jesse’s power seared into her mind a grotesque vision of a wrinkled, eyeless face, singularly dominated by a gaping, fang-toothed maw.

Then she hurled one of the soapstone deities at it, bowling the creature over backwards as the carved statue shattered against it, and lit it up with her Service Weapon’s muzzle flash. The monster glet out an uncanny shriek as it regained its feet, the limbs on its back like featherless wings as they flared out behind it. It howled up a storm, giving vent to its otherworldly fury, but in the split seconds that Jesse could see it the thing she could make out no injury on its contemptible frame.

The Shambler moved forward. Relentless and implacable it staggered Jesse’s way through a hailstorm of gunfire and an avalanche of unsettling antiques. Though its body only absorbed part of the physical force delivered to it, it never once evidenced any injury. No matter how much she punished it, the unstoppable Shambler kept coming toward her, forcing her to back up. Twice it got too close just as she hammered it with a carving, but luckily the scrapes of its cruel claws received mitigation from a recovered Primrose’s defense-boosting enchantment. After only a few moments Jesse’s supply of throwables began to run dry, but to cease her onslaught in favor of an alternative would be to give the horror the moment it needed to pounce on her. Bit by bit it forced her back, stepping blindly through the darkness, each flash illuminating its ghoulish mockery of a face, nearer, nearer, nearer.

Then gunfire to either side of Jesse broke out, joining their cacophony to her own. The FBC director had bought the time she needed. In her peripherals Jesse found Panther keeping up a steady bombardment with her submachine gun, Skull unleashing more infrequent but brutal shotgun blasts, and Joker targeting probable weakpoints with his pistol. Even Mona stood at Jesse’s feet with his slingshot, terrified but determined, peppering the Shambler’s ankles and knees with projectiles. “Going in three!” the cat yelled. “Two! ...One!”

“GO!” The Thieves cried as one.

Mona leaped forward, transforming into a full-sized bus. With his pedal to the metal he bulled into the Shambler head-on. A second later his forward momentum smashed the Shambler into the doors behind it in a bone-pulverizing impact, but neither the doors nor the monster gave in. When Mona turned back it left the Shambler plastered against the door for a moment, providing just the opportunity Primrose needed. The dancer’s fireball blazed through the air and crashed against the horror in a scintillating follow-up, and now that she was out of ammo, Panther followed her example. The thief snapped her whip taut and the weapon burst into flame, lighting up a face of frantic courage. She lashed out over and over again, striking the scenery as much as the Shambler, proliferating the fire Primrose started. Thanks to all the flame everyone could focus on putting out damage rather than light, and as the horror pulled itself from the doors Joker called upon Leena to plant a One-hit Kill shot straight into its mouth. The magic bullet drilled into the flesh between its teeth, but even that evidenced no wound of any kind.

“It’s freakin’ immune to everything!” Skull growled.

“Then there’s a gimmick somewhere!” Panther yelled in reply. “Dormina!”

Carmen manifested to unleash a wave of sleeping magic, but predictably the Shambler shrugged it off. Shaking his head, Mona called, “I’ll stay here and help push it back with wind. You guys try to find a lead!” He pulled out his scimitar, and by his side his Persona appeared with rapier extended. “Show them your might, Zorro!”

No longer worried about miscellaneous curses, the rest of the Thieves scattered. Their search lasted only a moment, for the hideous portrait of a monster the thieves now knew to be the Shambler itself was prominently displayed at the shadow gallery’s opposite end. Going out on a limb Joker slashed at it with his knife, but its edge slid right off the paint. “This must be the answer...” Holding his hand over one side of his face, the leader of the Phantom Thieves activated his Third Eye, and in his mind’s eye a clue took shape. “I can see it...a dagger of bone, shaped like a helix. It’s somewhere in here. Find it!” The Thieves ran between the exhibits and display cases Jesse had yet to destroy, wildly searching for the weapon Joker mentioned as fast as they could while the director and the cat struggled to keep the monster at bay.



Even though a small part of Nadia (smaller than the rest, at least) still wanted nothing more than to dive beneath the pillows and hunker down until this nightmare was over, it was time to make the best of a bad situation. It helped that her new friend Mirage was practically chomping at the bit to get back into pint-sized action, emboldened by his newfound toy. Though a gun that could create platforms without needing ammunition certainly seemed more useful than her fan at first blush, she didn’t mind. If anyone was equipped to make the most of an unconventional power set, it was someone who fought by pulling her own body apart.

After hearing Mirage’s plan Nadia watched him set off, scaling a sideways table to get atop a nearby ‘hill’. His new tool made the conquest of vertical space easy, but the minute he tried to wade through the junk up there there came the commotion that Nadia had already learned to fear. The unseen monster tunneled through the ground layer like a shark through the water, with only the objects it kicked up marking its frightfully swift passage. “Get off the ground!” she called up in panic, but luckily Mirage was a step ahead of her. He clambered back on top of some furniture well before the horror reached him, a few foraged items in his hands. Rather than forge onward busied himself with his loot, and though Nadia’s lower angle blocked her sight, she guessed he must be crafting something. When he did press forward he was in for a fun journey. For whatever reason the chutes on the left side of the Belly seemed to be the most used, which led to a chain of junk mountains arcing along that side to form the ‘high road’ laid out before him. A number of floor lamps, flags, thin cabinets, and other tall, narrow items stuck out between the mountains. It looked like one hell of a tricky path to Nadia--good thing he had that dart gun.

While he went off on his own adventure, Sakura kept her ambitions in check and went for a far more pragmatic approach. Her methodical strategy gave her a slow but straight, and most importantly safe, shot all the way to the other side. If something got in her way, she would simply go around it. The simplicity of the plan made Nadia smile, and it was one that everyone could do too, what with Mount Pillow behind them and all. Still, the fact she went alone (much to Bella’s chagrin), and how isolated it left her set off warning bells in the feral’s head. Sakura would be fine if nothing weird happened out there, but given everything that happened so far, Nadia felt a little uneasy. Peach watched the future street fighter with similar worry, and worked to follow as close a path to Sakura as she could by climbing, jumping, and gliding with her parasol.

Next up was the koopa troop plus Rika, whose welfare Bowsers Junior and Senior seemed committed to look after. They also chose a straightforward tactic, even simpler than Sakura’s really, that relied on their throwing and jumping power. “Hey, if anyone’s cheatin’ it’s definitely you guys!” Nadia teased. “The rest of us can’t chuck like baseball players or jump like rabbits.” Even if she could have gone along for the ride, however, she would have passed. In a way, she needed to forge a path of her own. To prove that she wasn’t useless. Still, one thing Kamek said ignited her imagination. The feral examined the bedsheet, getting a feel for its thickness, then tested the weight of the fan. For being so strong, it managed to be incredibly light. As she looked between the two objects, an idea coagulated in her mind, dumber and cooler than any she’d had so far. “Okay. Okay! This is gonna be good. Gimme a meowment.” Her little claws flashed, making the first incision, and she got to work.

A brief but furious session of slashing, arranging, twisting, and knot-tying ensued, and in only a short while a final knot completed her project: a bedsheet parachute. Two other twisted lengths of cloth went into makeshift straps that allowed her to carry her fan like a backpack, and after a quick test to confirm that her parachute could catch the air, Nadia felt ready to fly. She pulled up behind Blazermate and Geralt as they coordinated their jump, and a moment after they leaped into the air Nadia turned her fan on and followed in their footsteps. Her parachute billowed open as the fan whirred to life, and with a squeak the kitten lifted off her feet. Heart pounding and beyond giddy, she sailed up, up, and away. For a moment she could see everyone, from Sakura with her pillows to the Koopas in front of a toy dump to the sad little boy back at the start.

Then she, along with the other fliers, realized their mistake.

From the pitch-black center of the Belly’s cavernous ceiling, there shone a dreadful crimson light. Nadia looked up, frozen, to see a dot of yellow at the center of a vivid red orb, surrounded by a ring of similar yellow beacons. From the shadows emerged a hand of massive proportions, disembodied, floating like the angel of death come to take her away. It came too late to snag Blazermate, who landed safely with her passenger, but now it bore right for Nadia. Reflexively she tugged on one of her parachute’s cords and banked to the left, brushing right by the loathsome thing. When the back of the hand made contact with the cloth of her parachute the hand snapped shut, just a few feet away from crushing the kitten mid-flight, but Nadia’s momentum carried her out of the way. She drifted left and smacked belly-first into a television set on top of the one the junk mountains in Mirage’s path, where she clung like her life depended on it as her parachute settled softly atop her, hiding her from view.

Then the red-and-yellow spotlight shone down on her position, but its glare found nothing out of the ordinary. A moment of absolute, agonizing stillness passed, Nadia’s breath held. Then the baleful gaze slid on, headed back toward where Blazermate and Geralt stood in the open, exposed.

Peach moved quickly to retrace her steps. She hopped back across the set of speakers she’d just navigated and sprinted along the fallen ladder that formed a bridge over the junk where Sakura was making her way. From the pool table at the other end she slid down the ramp of pool cues onto the caved-in nightstand. From its bowels she retrieved the alarm clock she saw just moments prior, which she then wound up and threw with all her might. The clock hit the junk a few feet away and shattered the tense quiet of the Belly with a terribly alarming clamor. Instantly the spotlight locked on, and as Peach got clear, a mammoth hand smashed the whole area flat.

It took a moment for the echoes of the impact to die and the smothering quiet to return. The clock was no more, but whether not satisfied or simply curious, the monster wasn’t done. Its fingers curled, gathering a clump of junk before the hand floated upward again, silent as the grave but for the couple loose pieces falling to the heap. As the hand went up the body descended. The hand turned upward with its payload, and in contemplation the scarlet eye regarded it. In that moment the children below got their first -and only- glimpse of its outline--a colossal hanging torso with mottled, veiny flesh, near-human musculature, severed wrists, and a head like an alien flower. Then Bongo Bongo brought his other hand around to smash the clump of junk in a mighty clap, and as the shreds and splinters cascaded to the floor its eye resumed its search.