Sectonia DID want to view what a boss fight was in this place. If the horrid miniosn were anything, the leader of these minions must be truly grotesque. And that seemed to be the case as the room was covered in various archways, cobwebs, and a dark ceiling. And as if the room itself was an illusion, when everyone had gotten in the room, a deep, horrid sound could be heard as bits and pieces of a monster appeared from the archways deploying its minions in such horrid, grotesque ways by making its own flesh explode. And those minions, while different from what they had seen before, were still grotesque themselves. And this show of body horror made Sectonia very, very mad.

"This is the leader of these grotesque monsters? Show it no mercy my minions!" Sectonia said, casting her Haste on everyone as they were all grouped together. She was hesitant to cast it on Ganondorf, but she could revoke it at any time if the gerudo king tried anything and was too mad at the horrid creatures in front of her to care. Just then a mighty foot came down out of the darkness at the group, Sectonia blinking away to safety so she could begin to summon her own minions, her now supercharged antillions getting to work throwing their elemental magics at the minions summoned by Mom.

Looking over the battle, Sectonia had to figure out what to do herself. Considering the hit and run nature of this creature, she figured she should handle the grotesque minions herself while the more agile members dealt with the giant in the sky and the grotesque body parts moving through the walls. Handing off her Chaos Shield to one of the less durable minions of hers, Jesse for the time being, Sectonia got to work throwing large rings of light or stabbing the minions around the room with her swords. Sometimes occasionally her splash damage would hit Mom, but she was targeting the minions first and foremost.

The Melee fighters were, ironically given conventional wisdom about these things, overtaken by the mages in their charge after the knight. While the sword wielding warrior struck first, after that came a barrage of magics from the teleporting casters in the form of acid and a mighty spear, though all this was preceded by Kamek’s big punch, done at a much more comfortable range than his colleagues' up close and personal wizardry. Something he got a needling over from Rubick when he reappeared at the magikoopa’s side.

”My apologies for choosing a safe and reliable option” he replied, words full of vinegar, the mage not at all upset by this insult in the slightest ”I’ll be sure next time to simply annihilate the whole area indiscriminately with little concern for the lives of my friends and family” which was a thing he could do, although the charge time and setup of his most destructive spell was prohibitively long for most situations.

”Besides, his majesty has this in the bag I’m sure” the old Koopa insisted, as they both watched as the royals and shipgirl finally got into range on foot.

Jr and Rika had overtaken the stamina burning Bowser by the time they had closed the gap, with the prince flying up and going for the face while Rika went to try and cripple the legs with her chainsaw bayonet and explosive punches. Together, they brought the queen’s head low right in time for Bowser to arrive. The king skidded to a halt right ahead of her, well, head, then pull back a fist in a massive wind-up, and then, finally, kinetic strike module blazing, slammed a rocket propelled punch directly into Silitha’s battered and bleeding mug, rendering into pulp with this final blow.

”Splat!” went the spider queen, who then swiftly dissolved into ash, leaving behind her brightly glowing spirit and, interestingly and unexpectedly enough, a fragment of a mask.

”Way to go papa!” Jr cheered from on high, before shouting ”That’s right, run! Run you weenies! Run!” as the spider swarm panicked and broke in response to the death of their mistress-mother.

Rika, meanwhile, was more interested in what had been dropped, approaching the mask fragment and saying ”Ooo, is that one of the ones we are looking for?” before picking it up and recognizing its fragmented nature and adding, less confidently ”Or part of it?”

”I dunno, maybe?” Bowser replied as he held one claw on onto and rolled his shoulder, before giving a general order of ”Grab some spirits and then let’s get out of here! I am done with this place.”

The Knight likely had much the same feeling as that last, warning them that there were more spiders out there, which was not good news.

”Eh, we can take em” Jr replied to that, but to which Kamek countered with ”I’d really rather not. We need time to regain our mana and stamina before any more encounters like that young master”

While they had been saying that, the knight had hopped off, insisting they come with him to his camp, but the Troop would be having none of that.

”Yeah nah no thanks. We are heading back that away” Bowser replied, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder back the way they had come, a way neatly lit up by the torches the troop had popped down as the party had ventured into the woods ”and you can come if you like I guess”

”It has light, and has been scrubbed clean of webs, so comparatively to going that way it will be smooth sailing” Kamek agreed, to which Rika added ”Literally” as she moved to skim off in that direction, gliding on the trail of goop also leading the way back alongside the lights.

”Besides, we have friends back that way who we need to link up with again. We’re already wandered way off track after all” Bowser added at last, which most likely put the matter to bed.

”Sorry about that” Rika called back sheepishly, her lost plane having been the cause of all this, but the king waved off her apology ”Eh, turned out fine, and we got a pretty strong looking spirit out of it so don’t worry about it” and in so doing tacitly raised the question of the ownership of said powerful spirit.

Then, a few moments later, after they’d grabbed a couple of the fallen spiders for good measure and stuffed them away to try out with Sectonia’s funny hat (which they still did not know they were going to be being charged for yet, which was going to be a whole altercation that was for certain) they were off. Rika led the way, Kamek and Jr floated above, and Bowser’s spiky shell acted as their rearguard. Mimi stayed with her trainer, while her Mimies, however long they lasted, grappled themselves onto the backs of the accompanying hiveling to give them some tiny and adorable cavalry escorts, which gave Kamek an idea that he would be trying out later.

As they traveled, they were regaled with the knight (who went by Barnabee)’s tale of woe regarding the disposed Vespa and the wretched wasps who had stolen her land and her throne despite his best efforts to defend and/or reclaim it but, unfortunately, the kingdom conquering Troop wasn't exactly the best target for this sort of request.

Or wouldn’t have been anyway, but fusion had had a few positive effects on some of them.

”Saving a queen and kingdom” Kamek, not at all to be found among that number, replied before giving a sniff of a laugh and half explaining that ”That is not exactly our ballpark, so to speak. Quite the opposite, you might say”

Rika and Jr shrugged at this whole thing. The former happy to go with the flow attitude wise and not particularly concerned with the plight of those who she did not know. The latter was not as invested in the whole villainous deal as his dad and caretaker were, yet also while playing the hero did sound like it could be fun, it also sounded like effort and a whole side thing they didn’t have time for.

Which left their response mostly in the hands of the King himself and, perhaps unexpectedly, he did not reject the quest outright .

”Ehhhh, maybe if we’re in the area?” which got him a pair of slightly surprised looks from the other two koopas, and which prompted to gruffly defend his (almost) kindness with ”I mean, we gotta go all over looking for these masks anyway right? …. Plus, honey tastes good” which got a pair of nods of understanding, both of them much more used to the king following his stomach instead of his heart.

”Buuuut first we need to meet up with the rest of the troops, so we’ll get back to that egg temple thing, take a rest” the king was really needing one ”And if they don’t come back for us, we’ll go looking for them” which was a plan that had his family’s approval at the very least.

After the thunderous outcry shook the room, it took Nadia only a quick moment to recover from her terror, and as she scrambled back onto her feet her face was close to beet-red. She was flush with a potent cocktail and fury and embarrassment, directed almost as much toward herself as whatever nebulous, amorphous entity lurked just beyond this archaic chamber’s ghastly confines. What good was her plucky, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care attitude if she kept letting herself get spooked by cheap scares like this, after all?

On the other hand, she knew it wasn’t worth fretting over. Before her eyes, tumors of twisted flesh oozed from the cracks in the floors and walls, swelling into malignant growths large enough to give birth to yet more odious monstrosities. Some tightly clutched weapons like staves or claws close to their chests, a feeble attempt either to preserve the facade or hold fast to some semblance of long-lost humanity, while others veiled themselves as best they could beneath tenebrous robes. At the feet of the warriors groveled unclothed thralls, their infested skin sloughing from their bones as they plaintively clasped their hands, gibbering in ecstatic delirium. The Cultists' skin stretched into humanoid shapes, with scraps of clothing and armor shuffling into their proper places, but Nadia knew what they were. Eldritch horrors or not, they were just more enemies to kill, and now they stood before her, bloated and squishy like so many overripe tomatoes ripe for the harvesting. The feral hardened her claws and gave voice to her rage, her instinctive hatred of these things that should not be. “You’re mincemeat!” she snarled, less a pun and more a promise.

Then Mom’s leg crashed down from above, forcing Nadia and all the other Seekers to scramble for their lives. A blood-propelled dash got her out of harm’s way, and in a flash Nadia wheeled around to take revenge on the loathsome limb. With her hands on the ground she used Fiber Upper to extend her segments upward with lethal force. Negating contact damage through that invincible reversal technique, she plunged her feet deep into the leg’s grotesque outer layer of sagging adipose tissue, then kicked her legs into gear to drill even deeper. A guttural grunt echoed through the room as the leg rapidly began to rise, and Nadia hurried to snap her legs back down in a spray of torn flesh.

Nadia hopped to her feet. With the Seekers spread out, the Cultists were converging on their targets, with the thralls pushing themselves along behind their ascended masters. Yet they seemed to move just a little slower than they ought to–or else Nadia herself had been made faster. It felt -and sounded- like Sectonia wanted this freakshow dealt with quickly. “Comin’ right up.” Nadia smirked, pulling out one anchor to twirl on its chain as she withdrew her new Bait Launcher from where she’d stuffed it in her hoodie’s inside pocket. “Meat your maker!” She took aim and fired at an incoming Brawler, and though the steak that slapped against his golden mask barely registered, the tiger that poofed into existence behind him was another matter. With a roar it reared up and swiped with its massive mitts, gouging out chunks of squirming, beady-eyed flesh from the Brawler’s exposed back.

”Hnnnngh.” Rumbling like an upset stomach, the Brawler turned to block the remainder of the big cat’s vicious onslaught. Nadia’s anchor then swept in, cutting into the fresh open wounds on the cultist’s back. His quivering muscles squealed, signaling for Nadia to double down, but as she reeled in her anchor to hurl it like a javelin, the thrall on support duty made his move. He placed the Brawler under guard and threw himself into the projectile’s path, allowing the anchor to lodge in his chest cavity with only a rattled groan of protest. Behind him, the Brawler pushed the tiger off, and it quickly disappeared. Before Nadia could do something, a growing shadow beneath her heralded the arrival of Mom’s leg, and the feral hastened to backdash out of danger.

Not in a great position to attack with her anchor pinned down, Nadia clicked her tongue and decided to use the leg as cover. She reloaded the Bait Launcher at record speed thanks to Sectonia’s speed boost, but as the massive leg in front of her retracted, she saw her opponent reach down and grab her anchor’s chain for a mighty, two-handed yank. “Wagh!” Nadia cried in surprise and dismay, her eyes wide as she flew through the air straight toward the monster’s outstretched hand. Acting on instinct, she released a blast of blood to change her flight path, but the Brawler’s limb metamorphosed, growing explosively into a distended tentacle to chase her down and snatch her from the air. “Mmmph!” she yowled, her face buried in pulsating eldritch meat. She carved into the mutated limb with reckless abandon as the Brawler reeled her in, sensing that she’d be able to cut loose a crucial second before being pulled into clawing range, but her enemy didn’t wait. Instead his other arm erupted too, growing a serrated tusk, and the next second it rammed straight through her midsection. For a brief moment she struggled, her screams muffled, before the brute ripped downward. Nadia’s top and bottom halves parted ways, the latter hurled behind the Brawler in a stream of blue blood. Her arms went limp, but by their handiwork the end of the cultist’s tentacle gave out the next moment, allowing the catgirl’s body to plop down on the ground.

As the battle raged on elsewhere in the room, the Brawler stood there for a moment so the thrall could heal him through grisly rite. He picked out his next target: that little boy would make for a fine appetizer. Neither he nor his attendant noticed the feral’s blood boiling up, taking on a familiar form, until the copycat buried her forearms like drills into his back. The thrall looked up just in time for an axe kick from Nadia’s lower half to smash his head into the ground. A frenzy of stomping ensued, and the Brawler turned to finish what he started, only to find his movements even slower than usual. A wincing Nadia was propping herself up on one arm just enough for her Night Light to bathe her repulsive enemy in its restrictive glow; with the other she leveled the Bait Launcher at him once more. “You’re crazy strong…” she muttered, grinning. “But I’m not half bad myself!”

With a squeeze of the trigger, another projectile steak brought about the tiger’s return. While it laid waste to the cultist’s back, Nadia put her halves together again. Once the Brawler fell to his knees she moved in with a flip kick into Curtain Shredder, finishing it off. Keeping an eye out for Mom, Nadia took a quick breather. “Ugh.” While the new separation point in her gut alleviated her impalement and subsequent bifurcation a whole lot, it still hurt, and after its brush with the Brawler’s despicable flesh she didn’t want the blood she put into her copycat back. She suddenly facepalmed. “Damn it, I could’ve just used the tongue monster instead.” Around the room, Mom’s protuberances suddenly arose again, sending forth a fresh wave of cultists. Nadia sighed, her eyes settling on the spirit of the rapturous cultist thrall with Strikers on her mind. “You were healin’ that thing, weren’t ya? Nearly undid all the work I put in. Well, unless ya wanna get squashed, you’re gonna heal me now. Got it?”

The spiritbond completed, but before Nadia could so much as gather up her anchor, an ascended Witch looked her way. Flesh snaked across the caster’s arm and scepter as she wove Fate’s Pull, opening a rift next to the feral. A tentacle burst from the shadowy pit and grabbed Nadia, then tossed her straight toward the new quartet of enemies. Something about that attack crawled painfully through the wrinkles of Nadia’s mind as she tumbled along the ground, forcing her to clutch her head as she staggered to her feet. A Brawler leaped at her with an overhead slam, but she pulled off a Fiber Upper in time to turn the tables. Her copycat ran after the Brawler as he sailed away, leaving her with just two enemies on hand. Still, she was too close, especially to that fearsome Priest whose flesh visibly writhed beneath its soot-covered robe.

Nadia backdashed and assumed a defensive stance with her anchors, her Night Light turned outward to intercept anything that got close, then flung one anchor at the Witch. She deftly dodged out of the way, and the Priest began to move. Desperate, Nadia aimed a wide-ranging swipe at the two of them with her other anchor, and while it clipped the Witch it flat-out stopped when it reached the Priest. To the thief’s horror a pink tentacle emerged from its sleeve to wrap around the anchor, holding it in place. At the same time, the Witch grabbed hold of the other anchor. All of a sudden, Nadia found herself caught, stretched between her own weapons. A crumbling sound bade her look upward, and sure enough, Mom wasn’t about to let this sitting duck lie. The giant red heel plummeted toward her. “Grrrrrah!” Nadia could neither tug free nor dodge as long as the monsters had her bound, so she did the only thing she could: the limbo. That let the Night Light slow the leg down just enough for her to take drastic action. The next second, the leg smashed down.

As the dust cleared and the leg withdrew, the cultists searched for a blue stain on the floor, but instead they found Nadia. She crouched against the wall where she’d rolled, being healed by her new Striker. Confused, they peered at the anchors in their grasp. The chains were slack, and from the drum on Nadia’s waist dangled two severed metal links. “Screw it. Long-range just ain’t my style.” she spat, her breath ragged. She stood to her feet and fired the Bait Launcher, freshly reloaded. She put the gun away as a steak plopped down between the Witch and the Priest, then sharpened her claws. “Time to earn your stripes!” In a flash the tiger appeared to wreak havoc once again. With a smile Nadia dropped to all fours, wiggled her tail, and launched toward the action like a cat out of hell.

As Sakura got caught up with the others over the radio, Midna opened her shadow hand to unveiled the results of her mass crushing of the Other spirits:



”So… mysterious liquid” Minda picked up a little bottle of orange liquid, popped the cork, and gave it a sniff.

”hmm, orangy” she commented, before adding ”but still mysterious” to attempt to convince her dry mouth, violence having worked up a bit of a thirst. Fortunately she still had some of the survival rations, and so she stopped the bottle, stashed them, and retrieved some water bottles in their place.

”Drink?” she asked the other two, before she herself unscrewed the cap of hers and began to sip away at it while examining the other items.

Karin raised her eyebrows at Midna, interrupted from her studying the lose collection of miscellaneous items on the ground. ”Ah. I would be much obliged, thank you.” She responded, taking a refreshing drink of water. Hydration was very important.

”I only wish there was an easier way to identify these treasures and any properties they may have. Right now it just looks like a bunch of merchandise. What is that, some type of physical representation of data?” She said, pointing at the Suppression.

”The mysterious orangy liquid is most likely magical, and the shield may be, too. It’s all a bit silly. I’m glad I can rely on my fists.” She said.

”There was a lady back in one of the Al Mamoon who could identify stuff, and while we can’t go back there, I don’t have a portal and I’m not sure we’d be welcome, hopefully there might be something like that in this town as well. Only question is: where?” Midna replied, as she gave the crocodile shield a poke, unsure if it would be any better than her current one… and also finding it odd that the straps looked much too big for arms.

As for the comment about relying on firsts, Midna could see her point, but she did have a suggestion ”You might still want to keep an eye out for clothes and such though. This is magic” she patted her pauldron ”as is this bandana and these beads … though i should probably get them identified as well now that I think about it”

Karin nodded, conceding the point. ”Special clothing would undoubtedly be useful without slowing me down. Though again, I…” She squinted at Midna. ”I would not just be putting random garbage- err, attire, rather- I find on my person. Both for practical and aesthetic reasons.” She said, clearing her throat. Her adventurer’s outfit was much more practical than her noble outfit but despite the pockets, the muted colors, and the sleeveless look, it was undeniably very sleek. Something a rich person would wear while out on a hiking trip.

Midna had another look at the items, and then tapped most of them to store them in the twilight ream. The only ones she didn’t were the money, which she offered to the other two as a fair split of the spoils, and the doll. That she gave an examin and then, after finding it oddly easy to balance, carefully used her shadow hand to balance it on top of Sakrau’s head while the young woman was talking on the radio.

Sakura had been listening intently to Peach’s response, thus she did not notice her new hat. Now she knew where Princess Peach was! ”Got it, Peach-san! Be there soon, over!” She responded, pleased that her idea was being used by the LEADER of the Seekers of Light! The freakin’ Mario Princess!

”We have an in with the Sep- the Septentrion. Which are the people in charge, right? So our plan is working! Now we just need to meet up with Peach-san. We’re looking for Anistar Gym, with the big purple roof, close to Main Street. Should be an easy enough find if we get on the roofs.” Sakura said with a nod. The doll on her head didn’t seem to budge an inch. Karin smirked, not even trying to conceal her amusement. Sakura smiled back. Karin gave Sakura her divvy of the money and pocketed her own.

”Well then. Princess Midna, Miss Sakura. Shall we be on our way? There is no time to lose. I want to meet this Sep- this Sep-ten-trion as soon as possible, my word, what a word they’ve chosen. ”

”Wish I knew what it meant. That might give us a clue. What’s it in English- September? Maybe there’s seven of them?” Sakura theorized.

”It’s a deliberately obtuse word, chosen most likely to make themselves seem smarter rather than any kind of practical reason. It does indeed have to do with the number seven, and also, I believe, the ‘northern regions.’” Karin said, recalling her extensive private education.

”I bet it would annoy you.” Sakura said teasingly. ”You have the longest attack names ever. Everyone knows exactly what your attacks are! What’s that elbow hit called? ‘Koka Tenshinchu: Sumeragi?’” Sakura recited the complicated attack name with air quotes.

”Indeed. You’ve really got me there, Sakura.” Karin said, conceding the rib and avoiding looking at the little doll on Sakura’s head.

Midna’s one visible eye was looking anywhere but, in a way that was frankly suspicious in its own way, and her own amusement at the prank had made paying attention to all the details a little tricky, though she at least did not miss a chance to get in on the ribbing.

”To be fair, it's only descriptive if you know whichever language that is. I certainly have no idea what it means, other than the fact that I can get a stab in before you finish shouting that” she joked, before having a think and asking ”Wait, so is naming attacks a normal thing where you are from? Question. Why?” while drifting up towards the roof to get that gym spotting on.

”I don’t shout it every time, but the technique being named makes it easier to learn. It’s why we name things.” Karin said, talking to Midna. As she drifted up, Karin joined her by attaching a grapple hook to the roof and walking at leisurely pace up the wall. Sakura knelt down for about a second and just jumped a storey and a half into the air. Karin watched as she passed her and stifled a surprised comment. Sakura bent over the edge of the roof as Karin approached and smiled, briefly rubbing her finger under her own nose.

”Learned that one from Kazama Akira herself.” Sakura says, dusting off her hands.

”Regardless.” Karin said. ”I’d like to see someone counter a move based on the attack name once the fist has already struck true. It’s no different from shouting or letting out air to focus your energy as you attack. Similar to a Kiai.” Karin said.

”Kanzuki-Ryu only has long attack names because the martial art is so deep and varied that it simply necessitates it.” Karin said.

”Right…” Sakura said. ”It is fun to come up with attack names though!”

”I mainly just hit things … but I guess I can see your point. Easier to plan ahead if the attacks have names instead of going ’and then I'll hit them with that lighting beam thing i can do’ I suppose” Midna admitted, now thinking about attack names in the back of her head.

”Somethin’ like that! Easier to teach other people, too. Rather than just: ‘Elbow Thing’ or “Fireball thing.’ Though I guess if you use ‘em consistently enough, those are attack names, too.” She mused, and Midna had to give a little laugh to that even as she mentally conceded the point.

Sakura held her hand over her eyebrows and looked for the purple roof. ”Anyone see anything?

”I’ll be honest, my eyes are not the best in the light. Growing up in a world of perpetual twilight will do that to a girl” the princess admitted while squinting out over the sea of buildings

”Understandable. Fortunately, I’ve located it on my side.” Karin said, pointing out the steep purple roof. Sakura turned and followed her index finger. ”It isn’t that far away, we can be there shortly. Shall we?” Karin said.

With that she fired a line across the street. Sakura immediately hopped on and started balancing on the tiny little string.

”What on-”

”Shh shh shh, hold on, this is cool.” Sakura said, wobbling from side to side with her arms extended. She slowly started walking across. Karin stood there with her arm extended, supporting Sakura’s weight and tapping her shoe impatiently.

”Oookay, nevermind, this is a long time and I’m gonna fall.” Sakura admitted, still wobbling with her arms out.

”Obviously!” Karin said, detaching the hook and letting Sakura fall. She landed on her feet with a heavy thud and stumbled a few steps to get her feet underneath her.

”Now that you’re down there, I’ll race you both.” Karin said confidently, zipping across the street with her grapple hook for real this time.

”Yeah no you’re going to lose that” Midna said, stepping into a shadow and then stepping out of one on the opposite building (specifically a ventilation unit, not that she knew what that was) a blink of an eye later. That point made, however, she wasn’t going to actually ruin the fun, and so she called over ”But i’ll make it a fair race and not just shadow hop all the way there” as she summoned her her wolfos to ride an then taunting ” So let’s see if you can beat this mutt instead?” before kicking her heels to its sides and setting off at a scamper across the rooftops, periodically dismounting to warp ahead and guide its leaps like she had Link during their whole adventure.

”What was that?” Karin said, skidding across the roof, transitioning into a flip, and then firing away, pulling herself quickly.

Sakura watched them both go and with a brief cry of dismay, started sprinting at street level.

”Perhaps you can teleport into my shadow, Princess. Most people are used to living there!” Karin taunted, finding a good rhythm as she sailed through the air and across the next street like an acrobat.

”I spent like a month chilling in the hero of time’s one, so sorry, you'd be second best at the very least” Midna retorted as she guided her pet across the rooftops before calling back ”Not that I’d complain about being able to watch you while you do all the work for me mind, so you know what, maybe I’ll take you up on that some time”

It wasn't exactly the worst strategy either, having a second fighter to spring out when a foe least expected it, she mused … but only after having made the comment entirely to tease the noble lady.

Karin couldn’t respond because she was too busy showing off. She quick-fired a line to either side of an alleyway and caught it with a hand, spinning around it like a trapeze artist. With a graceful loop she landed on top of it, posed, and fell forward to transition into a swing.

”My coattails are long enough for everyone.” Karin said. She flew out of the swing and landed in a handstand. Then she walked in said handstand to the edge of the roof, fell, and zipped across to the other side.

She arrived at the purple rooftop, most likely losing to the mutt if Midna played seriously, because Karin got caught up in the show of it all. ”Hmm. My mistake.”

Midna was 100% not taking this seriously, because the banter was fun, and her ego was not on the line at all, so it was a close thing indeed and the poor hound just lost by a single daring leap.

The princess tisk tisked the wolfos, but wasn't so self centered as to not acknowledge her own participation in the loss so that was all it got criticism wise.

Sakura arrived at the scene third for certain, and she had used some of money to buy a souvenir from a street vendor. ”Good race- hey, look what I got!” It was a second Baki doll.

”Isn’t he cute? It’s Baki-chan! My friend Jimmy-san started up his own line of cute dolls, and it reminded me of that.” She said, still clueless to the one on her head. Though she did wonder why the vendor saw fit to give her a discount.

Midna, for her part, had to purse and bite both her lips and cover her mouth in attempt to hide her laughter, before getting a hold of herself and suggesting ”you should start a collection”

”Maybe I will! I bet there’s lots of cool stuff to find in this world.” Sakura said, looking intently at the doll. She unzipped her jacket and put it next to the radio in the inside pockets, before zipping it back up.

”I see our fellows!” Karin said, eager to rejoin with the others and move on. It was only a matter of time until Sakura discovered the doll, of course. Mainly because when she was confused she often scratched her rubbed her head, and she was often confused in Karin’s opinion. Or someone may immediately point it out to her. Either way.

”It seems some of them are heading into this very building.” Karin leaned over the edge. With a single step she delicately dropped from the roof and onto the ground. Sakura was already wanting to head inside, but she didn’t want to miss out on the Seekers’ conversation.

”Hey everyone! It’s us! We got here. That was crazy, huh? Those monsters are weird. What are we talking about?” She asked, crossing her arms and looking to try and pay some attention.

”Nothing we couldn’t handle of course, why, we saved a whole bunker” Minda said, just a tad gloatingly, before adding, a bit more humbly while gesturing to the two street fighters, ”or, well, these two did and I helped clear out the trash”

Karin nodded graciously, her posture straight. ”If anyone learned anything useful or strange, please do fill us in. Sakura learned that if the Others take enough damage, a light bulb-esque weak spot is revealed.”

”also, if you crush their spirits, you can sometimes get some ‘data’ out of some of them which, well, I have no idea how to use, but maybe someone else can? We know they know about fusion, but maybe this crushed stuff” she summoned some buddy rummy data ”could be useful to them when it comes to learning about where they come from?”

Minda was not so sure about this, so she also added ”also it is either that, mildly interesting stuff, or money, so i’d give it a go either way if I was you” as a way of instructing the newbies among them to the worth of crushing spirits, particularly when these, which where producing comparatively useful stuff compared to some of the trash they’d sometimes gotten before.

Only when the Brood Mother's spirit appeared, glowing in grayscale, did Primrose relax. It was minute, but she let her shoulders fall and she sighed. The monster was dead, and its spiderlings were scared away for the time being. The Seekers had a chance to regroup, heal up, and thank their insectoid ally. The dancer went over to the others, giving a nod to Rubick as she was glad he'd survived the ordeal when it looked like he'd been taken out, same as her. Despite the Koopa prince's confidence, Primrose had to agree with the elder wizard - some time to recover would be best before they stumbled into anymore webs. To that end, she once more summoned the flame of Warmth to continue healing herself where she left off, and the others Seekers as well to supplement Junior's own spells.

With Silitha's spirit and the mask fragment collected, plus some other spider spirits for good measure, the group decided to head back the way they'd come.

"I was going to suggest the same," Primrose mentioned, casting a glance at the paint and torches that would lead them back to the underground temple. Then she looked to Barnabee, the knight that had assisted them. "Thank you for jumping in to help us."

She hadn't truly expected that would be the last they saw of Barnabee, but that he followed along with them was a bit of a surprise. He wasted no time in explaining himself, his mission, the situation in his homeland... and then asking for help. That came as no surprise, as Primrose thought that he'd wanted something from them when he decided to tag along. He was not subtle at all.

"A coup, hm?" She considered Barnabee's tale, amused that Bowser and Kamek brushed him off so quickly. This kind of thing did seem outside the realm of the Seekers' goals... at first glance. Barnabee had mentioned the riches of his queendom, and perhaps the royal treasury had something they needed.

"Barnabee, would you happen to know anything about that mask Rika is holding?" she asked, pointing the girl out to the hive Knight. "Or might your Queen Vespa? What it's used for, where we might find the other pieces..."

She glanced at the Koopa King, then after a moment instead turned her attention to his advisor. "It may help us, to help them." After finding the others, of course. She didn't voice the last part, taking it as granted. They had to make sure everyone else was alright before they got too far separated.

As they got nearer to the ruins where the Temple of the Black Egg waited for them, Primrose made one more suggestion. "On the topic of masks... we should check if this fragment fits into the space on that door. It may only be part of the full thing, but its shape should still fit if its one of the masks we are looking for. If not, well..." She trailed off, not needing to continue the statement. If it didn't fit at all, they'd have to keep an eye out for "fakes." They wouldn't be able to take the first mask they saw, or they'd have to grab as many as possible and try them all. Either option sounded tedious, but it was better to check now then later.



Therion certainly hoped that this room would be the last, as Nadia suggested it might be. He could think of a few people that would have fun in a changing dungeon like this, fecal and decaying monsters notwithstanding. For the thief though, the uncertainty was grating on him. Sure there was always some unknown factor in adventures like this, but the way these basement levels were set up like a game with a new horror behind every door... it was wearing on his nerves. So when Jesse made it possible for the entire group to go into the boss room together, Therion figured they could make short work of it.

"Let's make this quick," he said, stepping into the chamber.

The area was wide, dim, and in a state of decay and disrepair. It looked more similar to the stone hallway he and Ms. Fortune had fought ghosts in, so he mentally prepared himself for specters to appear. He didn't strain his senses for long, as the enemies made themselves known in the most conspicuous way possible. A shout from somewhere above them rang out, setting off a chain reaction of bubbling flesh and other body parts that delivered monstrous beings directly into the room. Therion sneered his distaste for the gruesome entrance, and the opponents themselves. Their forms looked human, but pulsing crimson flesh covered great swaths of their bodies. As though to signal the start of the fight, a massive leg crashed down from the ceiling directly toward the Seekers.

Therion dodged out of the way, and then he immediately slunk towards the edge of the chamber where the arches cast deep shadows.

It wasn't an efficient use of Sectonia's Haste spell, but there were plenty of other fighters to take advantage of it. Plenty of targets for the monsters, and hopefully plenty of time to figure out a way to take down that giant. It was hard to tell if it was even a human leg, not just from the size of it but the sagging sacks of skin that seemed to make up the entire limb. Either way, it must belong to the 'boss' of this room, so it was the most important target.

Easier said than done, he thought to himself. The giant stomped down frequently, but she was quick. Ms. Fortune managed to take a chunk out of the leg, but it didn't seem to slow the boss down whatsoever. Would they have to drag the giant down to them, or sever that leg and hope she bled out?

The stone bricks in the wall beside Therion rumbled, bleeding skin out through the cracks that reformed into a massive bulging eyeball. It's pupil swiveled and then looked at the thief - thoroughly spooked, Therion drew the stinging dagger from beneath his poncho and in one quick movement drove the poisoned blade into the squishy eye before backing away from it. Not gonna let me play it too safe, huh? The eye partially collapsed without delivering any new enemy from it, though there other eyes and hands elsewhere in the room that managed to drop off more cursed combatants.

Now that he was forced into the fight, Therion intended to play hit and run. It was the type of tactic he was good at, so he darted into other Seekers' fights backstabbing and debuffing. Usually not enough damage for killing blows, but enough to distract the Brawlers and Witches and open them up for others to capitalize on. Then he'd move on, quick enough to avoid any retaliation. When the giant's foot came down Therion was always quick to get out of the way and pepper the limb with throwing knives while it pulled away into the darkness above.

An eerie darklight glow in his peripheral vision alerted Therion to a spell being sent his way. Already on the move again, he turned to find an Ascended Witch had had enough of the thief's hijinks and was targeting him directly. Her staff was raised high, the head of it silhouetted against a dark halo. The sight of it inspired something fearful in the thief, he felt his heart start beating faster as the Fate's Reveal found its mark, briefly enclosing him in a wisp of darkness. When it wrapped around him the physical damage it did was completely overshadowed by whatever he could feel it doing to his mind. By reflex he raised the hand not wrapped around his dagger to his head, his ears flat and his face pained.

Dark magic. And a dangerous kind at that. These witches were trouble, the kind that shouldn't be left alone for long. Though still reeling from the mental attack, Therion sprinted toward the Witch banking on the hope she wouldn't expect the tactic from him after he'd been playing keep away before. It worked, she was beginning to shift into a defensive stance when Therion reached her. He drove the dagger forward in both hands, right into the Rapturous Cultist that managed to intercept the attack in time. The Cultist had reached out as if to catch the blade and it stabbed right through both of his hands. With a frustrated growl and a flick of the dagger, Therion cut the tendons in the Cultists wrists and shoved him away. When the Cultist stood back up and was determined to get in his way, Therion cut his throat.

The Ascended Witch had slithered away on the tentacles that wrapped around her legs. If her twisted mouth could smirk, Therion got the impression that she was doing it now.

Now that they were separated it would have been easier to go after a new target, but there was only one enemy between himself and the witch: the hooded Cultist Priest, escaped from the tiger's clutches. He decided he could make it by, and so he went after his quarry.

The cloaked priest turned its hooded gaze on Therion as he went to move past, giving the priest a wide berth. Its robes rippled as the flesh underneath it moved, subtly telegraphing an attack. Therion expected a spell, or an eldritch appendage to lash out similar to the other enemies, and these he was prepared to avoid. He wasn't ready for the Priest's robe to part from the middle and its mass of flesh to short forward, forming a long bone spike that easily closed the distance between the two of them. Therion's eye widened and he hastily dodged to one side. He avoided a killing blow, the sharpened spinal cord of the Priest piercing his abdomen and glancing off his lowest rib where it forced the spike downward and it cut through his left side before retracting back underneath the dark cloak.

While suppressing a cry of pain Therion bolted, suddenly desperate to put as much space between himself and the priest as possible. His hand was pressed hard into his side to staunch the bleeding that he could feel was happening. That spike had been excruciating, much worse than any stabbing Therion had suffered before. His mind, too, felt scrambled and injured, like the stress of the situation was being transformed into pain.

Therion cursed, then wheezed, taking temporary shelter in one of the rooms alcoves once more. He may have avoided instant death, but a couple more like that and he'd end up dying anyway. New plan is to stick to the old plan, he told himself, trying to get his breathing and his heart rate under control. He also needed to heal, but before he could fumble with a potion he became aware of someone - or something - approaching him.

"Came back to finish the job?" he said as the Ascended Witch raised her staff. She bared her teeth, and Therion bared his in return. He didn't know if she was going to cast the same spell she before or she was going to try and fling him back into the thick of battle, but he wasn't going to give her the chance either way. He sucked in a sharp breath, knowing this was going to suck, then dashed forward toward her again. His body glowed slightly with a Boost, and with no devotee to get in the way this time his dagger struck true.

He plunged the weapon into her chest once, twice. Due to HP Thief he could feel the witch's lifeforce being siphoned into himself, and the wound on his side closing up via magic or however it worked. He'd never questioned it before and wasn't about to start now as long it worked. Now that he'd patched himself up some Therion finished the witch off and hung back from the rest of the fighting. When he found an opening he'd go back to hit and run in order to tag team the loathsome witches while they were engaged with someone else. His breather only lasted a few moments before the giant leg came down on his location, sending Therion running along the edge of the room while he looked for his chances.

Once they got Wicke going, she ended up having a lot to say. The Ace Cadet couldn't really fault her for gushing about something she was clearly so passionate about, even if a lot of the terms she was using flew right over his head. He got the gist of it though: the Aether Foundation went around helping Spheals and Spheal-adjacent animals called Pokémon. A noble cause, sure. She brushed off the thought of critics to the foundation, but the Cadet wasn't going to press it. He was only curious, and as she more tactfully mentioned it really wasn't any of their business anyway.

"Schounds pretty nysh," he told her around a mouthful of brownie, unable to oppose his appetite after she mentioned the handmade aspect. It might be an interesting place to visit if they found themselves nearby after they met up with Frisk's friend. He paused to swallow. "Not really our wheelhouse, but I wouldn't turn down any more last minute work with you guys, since we'll be in town."

He leaned back in his seat, continuing on with a grin. "Especially if the work involves big, spooky monsters or moving bones? That's kinda what we're here for in the first place."

That was fine to talk about, right? It wasn't like the Seekers' campaign was a secret, and neither Big Band or Lucia mentioned anything about keeping a lid on investigating the whole skeleton situation. He didn't mention Band's thoughts about the Skullgirl for a couple different reasons. Wicke might have denied the place having critics, but maybe they had some other problems that could give the group a few clues? He glanced at Red, Band, and Lucia, giving them a shrug. It was a long shot but hey, didn't hurt to ask.



The teleportation itself wasn't so bad (it was weird that it felt different from when Lady Palutena did it, shouldn't that kind of thing all feel the same?), it was just the suddenness of it that caught Pit off guard. Almost as soon as he leapt down from the rooftops and landed on the ground after the sirens stopped sounding, he felt someone grab him and then whoosh, he was somewhere else. Pit let out an exaggerated and belated "Whooooa?!" only to find he was still in the same area, just in an alley. He blinked and looked to the familiar faces that had been gathered together there. "Uh, what was that about?"

More Seekers were deposited in the alley, until finally Goldlewis was transported and the person responsible started with their explanation. Pit wiped at the drying flakes on his forehead as he listened to the back and forth between Luka, Goldlewis, and Peach. He gathered that even though they weren't allowed to help out, they still did good - and the angel did roll his eyes when Luka mentioned that fact about civilians being prohibited from fighting.

The brief meeting ended on a sour note with one of the casualties passing the alleyway. Luka disappeared quickly after that, leaving the Seekers to their own devices. One of the walkie talkies crackled to life, letting them know Sakura, Karin, and Midna were okay. As Peach went to find out where exactly they'd been teleported to, Pit spoke up.

"Are we really gonna get in trouble if we keep trying to help people?" Pit asked, crossing his arms over his chest. "I get those things were dangerous, but I bet if they let anyone capable volunteer to fight it would only help everyone. I don't get it."

The groups that had been split apart could share their information now. They trudged toward the alley's opening after Peach, awaiting a rendezvous with the rest of their team. From there, Bede broke off from them and went inside the gym since it was apparently a Pokémon Gym. Pit pressed his face right up against the windows, peering inside while they waited. He'd always been curious about the gyms that the Pokémon Trainers talked about, on the rare occasions that they did talk.

The Seekers that had been on the other end of the walkie talkie arrived, and Pit greeted them with a friendly wave. The girls were higher energy than the boys at the moment, their reappearance perking the angel up.

"Oh, I saw that too! It looks like a weird tail," he said of the light bulb fact. Midna's information made Pit pause, thinking about how far away he'd left the Other spirits on those rooftops. He'd hardly been thinking about spirits since "awakening," maybe he should start? I'll have to go back and grab 'em, especially if we're gonna stick around here for a while. Shouldn't be too hard to find my way back!

And when prompted to share what they'd learned in kind, Pit frowned and brought up his earlier frustration. "We just got told we weren't allowed to fight the Others, since we're civilians!"

He glanced at Goldlewis, since he'd asked about any other leads the group might have found while separated. "Not much else on my end, it's hard to find anything when everything's... uh, invisible?"

He turned to Raz then, tucking a hand under his own chin and propping his elbow in his other hand. Pit put his earlier thoughts into words, questioning the boy."But you can see everything right? Can you use your psychic powers to send pictures and stuff into our brains?"

Much like her, some of the others decided to focus on the minions. Nadia and Theron focusing on the minions as well as Sectonia. Nadia seeming to have issues trying out a new combat style she wasn't used to trying to keep distance from these horrific monsters and Theron going into them like a melee fighter does. Sectonia meanwhile decided instead to hold her swords out as she summoned her large rings of light and threw them about the arena, noticing that the arena wasn't all that large at the end of the day. At this point Sectonia was getting a bit annoyed at the random properties of her projectile attacks that weren't her lightning, but at least the size of this room made it so it didn't matter that much with her light rings as they were fired in triplicate thanks to her item, and their massive size made them incredibly difficult to dodge in such a confined area, even if Sectonia herself could only aim them generally.

This added to the chaos of the fight as her antillions did what they could to the brawlers and cultists that appeared, blasting electricity or ice at them. Thanks to the item the queen had gotten earlier, they weren't the walking minor damage distraction they were before, instead they were doing some sensible damage. That item didn't make them all that much more durable though, but before they were destroyed by the brawlers and their allies they could put down a fair bit of hurt or freeze a couple of them totally solid.

Causing chaos on the battlefield (Which her allies were immune to), also caught the attention of enemies that weren't actively engaged. Notably a group of cultists who had just been summoned by a couple bits of flesh coming out of doors that Sectonia's light rings had nearly hit, but before hitting them the rings had boomeranged back at the Queen, doing her no harm, but missing those cultists and getting their attention. And with this attention came the tentacles summoned by the cultists, lashing at and pulling the queen from her little spot at the edge of the room towards the center. This also grabbed her attention, as the tentacles ripping into her and causing a bit of bleeding was hard to miss.

Unfortunately for those cultists, having her undivided attention instead of having her cause random chaos meant she blinked over to them and rapidly slashed at them with her swords, dealing with their squishy selves in due order, but not before they got another hit off. With them being dispatched, Sectonia noted that they didn't hurt as much as some other things, but they left behind some residual thing... It made her angrier at the whole situation she was in here. Like she was getting overly frustrated at this whole fight. But she was already disgusted and filled with righteous rage at dealing with these abominations... It was nothing... probably... maybe...

"This fight wont end if we all focus on the minions." Sectonia said, giving the hint that some others should deal with the giant above. Yes, Sectonia's light rings often clipped Mom just due to their sheer size but that was a residual thing. If nothing else, that would eventually cut her down if she was taking damage, but the faster this giant was defeated, the faster this could all be over.

Getting the rest of the way out of the brewery had taken a few minutes of waiting, but once Geralt was sure he found a breach in the barrel creatures' patrols, he took full advantage of it, hooking onto a rail and riding it around and tangential to his final goal. Dropping off the rail into a quick roll (which hurt his knees a bit but he would never admit it), he ran to his next target and leapt, hooking onto the rail and being pulled right next to his goal: the orange tower. Clambering upwards, he hooked onto the rail leading out of the brewery, and in short order he and the rest of the Seekers were free.

It wasn't much longer to reach the rendezvous point, and once the sky-hooks they had gathered for the others were handed off, they mused on their options. Unfortunately, it looked like they would need to collect more gear, especially if they had any desire to go into Quarantine Valley and deal with the Hermits. Geralt was less than enthused about going into that place, but he'd been one of the ones to suggest they trade with the Hermits, so he accepted that they'd likely need to take an unfortunate path to get to them.

Absent any actual ideas on how to proceed, they followed Giovanna's lead of hoping trouble would run into them. Taking the sky-lines was rather convenient, if a bit odd. They passed a fight below, but at the sight of what was likely G-Men and that strange gas...no, not a good idea. Geralt's stomach protested the loops they took on the way there, but soon enough they were deposited onto the roof of a factory.

As the group got to looking around, engaging in the ages-old practice of "Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone" with the hoodlums drinking nearby, Poppi located some suspicious individuals attacking the construction site. Geralt followed Tora to the edge of the roof, looking down on the thugs with a sneer. "Well, then. Looks like we have some more work to do." He commented, following Giovanna and hooking to a sky-line to make his way down.

Blazermate saw Poppi trying to understand what she meant. Yeah, from the way Poppi was acting, in her world machines couldn't do as much as humans or something. Maybe it was harder for them to do magic? This must've been some culture shock for her then. Susie noticed this too, but didn't really have any grip on who Poppi was unlike Blazermate. This ruminating was cut short when someone who wore the same outfit as a G-man, but was completely robotic... Or Susie saw being completely cybernetic, stepped on the bus. Poppi and Tora looked at the stranger with unease, Poppi pulling out her blade stealthily in case things went south.

Much to Tora's relief, the man simply patted the fluff ball on the head and sat down. Blazermate got a good look at the Claw, noting that if they were to fight it, it would be one sturdy fellow almost on par with the big koopa king himself. The weak points, the canisters on its body, in clear view of everyone and not even being hidden at all. It was as if it was begging something to fight it in a way, quite strange. Susie meanwhile looked at the cyberntics and while not on par with what she could do, it was interesting. A bit too rough, but at least it looked durable.

The rest of the bus ride wasn't all that eventful, with the group having made it to the train station ahead of all the others. Tora and Poppi chatted to themselves as Susie did more exchanges remotely on the grand exchange, having made quite a tidy sum at this time playing that market and Blazermate pulled out a rag to clean herself. It took about 10 minutes before the rest of the team dropped in and the group was given the ability to follow Giovanna. They discussed what they'd do next with Blazermate asking "The red shift corruption isn't curable? How can that be? Everything has a cure." Well, she'd stay out of those corruption clouds either way, but yeah, something incurable that affected robots as well? Not fun.

Figuring they'd have to find some kind of detector, the group made their way to a construction site through some bizarre rooftop geometry where the workers below worked their jobs in relative peace. At least until some gang member looking fellows appeared and started causing chaos, the invaders slaughtering all they could get their hands on. "Savages such as those should be taught some manners." Susie said, calling her business suit. She then said. "If one of you could be so kind as to charge my suit with some elemental energy?" Blazermate meanwhile did what she could to identify the weak points of these things as she overhealed everyone and got ready to fight, building up what charge she could.

---

---

Once the rest of the group met up, Raiden, along with Geralt, Benedict, Susie, and the others, were given a brief rundown of their options. Tora chirped with his opinion based on what he and the others found in the scrapyard but was shot down when told the cons of his plan. "If we absolutely needed to, most of my organs are synthetic. I don't know how redshifting applies to machines, but I'm sure that'd open up some other possibilities. Plus, I really need to replace the pistol I sold. If we could find a merchant or some extra loot, I wouldn't mind snagging one. Call me selfish." Raiden added, giving some movement to their plans.

Following the group's lead up to the apartment complex, Raiden clipped his hook onto the skyline and followed alongside the group. Once they were zooming down the rails, Raiden took note of the horrific sights below, slums strewn with the poor, and a tall building pouring with the G-men they had encountered earlier today. Raiden followed Giovanna's lead up to the roof of a factory building where they were able to get a decent summary of the nearby locations in the industrial district. Raiden almost felt disheartened seeing the androids laboring so hard. He had no idea of their level of consciousness but felt poorly nonetheless.

Raiden heeded Poppi's alert of shady figures and made no waste of time to catch up. Raiden decided that with the explosives in play, stealth would be in order, but the rest of the gang had other ideas in mind. Before leaving on his own to deal with that individual problem, Raiden decided to help Susie with her request. He place a firm hand on the shoulder of her suit and looked her deadpan in the eyes. "I can shock you. Should give you a decent boost of electricity. Hopefully that helps." Raiden then deployed a light shock, surely not harmful to a robot, but might've still hurt maybe a little.

"I've got something down there I want to help with. If you guys can keep them busy from in front, I can help with the explosives." He took an alternative route down some ladders, sliding down the poles of each individual side, and made his way to the entrance opposite facing the hoodlums.

---

---

"Another victory for the Grand Magus!" Rubick cheered at the sight of Silitha disappearing and her spiderlings fleeing. He eyed the Brood Mother's spirit, wondering if he should lay claim to it. If he recalled correctly, incorporating spirits into oneself could grant access to newfound power. Being the knowledge-seeking magus he was, Rubick was keen to experience it for himself, and this seemed like this perfect spirit to try it with.

Before he could continue this train of thought further, though, the others were already making plans about their next course of action. "We're not following Sir Barnabee? That's a shame," Rubick remarked. "It would have been fascinating studying these bees' abilities." When it came time to gather the loot from the battle, Rubick's eyes were once again drawn to Silitha's spirit. He walked over to it, mesmerized at the sight of it. His mind raced with thoughts of its incredible potential. Rubick thought back to its teleportation ability, recognizing the great utility it could provide. If he recalled, Rubick could perform a Spirit Fusion with it. He looked back at Bowser, eyeing his various physical anomalies, then back at the spirit. Giggling, Rubick eagerly picked it up. He then summoned his Xweetok Wiggles to examine it as well. "What do you think, Wiggles?" Rubick asked him. Wiggles walked down Rubick's arm and gave the spirit a sniff, then shrugged, or at least performed the closest gesture of a shrug a Xweetok could.

Wiggles' ears then wiggled and pointed behind Rubick. Rubick turned to see the Koopa King changing his mind and deciding to help Barnabee and the bees after all. Putting Silitha's spirit away, Rubick walked back over to the gang. "Ah, so we are helping the bees after all, then," Rubick said. "Delightful!"

With a destination in mind and no small amount of competitive spirit to speed the short trip along, the splinter group moved fast. Only a couple minutes into the group conversation beside Anistar Gym, Midna, Sakura, and Karin all showed up in quick succession. Despite following up a fierce battle of their own with vicious Others by running an extended race, none of them even seemed out of breath. Were he a younger and more impulsive man Goldlewis might have felt jealous, but he knew that everyone had their own strengths, all worthy of respect. Besides, these were the people who’d managed to eliminate over a fourth of the Guardians that stood between the Seekers of Light and the Lord of Light. Goldlewis knew that he ought to count himself lucky if he could so much as keep up.

“Hello, girls!” Peach greeted them, smiling at Sakura. Considering the threat posed by the Others, the sight of them unharmed did them a lot of good. That meant out of everyone who engaged the unknown foe in battle, only Raz took serious injuries, but the orange-flavored jelly given to him had already helped patch his wounds up. “We’re just discussing where to go next. Hopefully no more of those things show up, they were a real handful, hm?

Not to Midna or her team, apparently. Peach and company had managed to save a few civilians, but an entire bunker’s worth? The thought of a shelter coming under attack hadn’t even occurred to the princess. Any pride she’d managed to take in her own small accomplishments during the scramble to defend Main Street quickly evaporated.

Luckily, Karin directed the conversation back toward more practical matters than aggrandizing or effacing. She brought up the Others’ distinctive Achilles’ heel, and though this didn’t constitute a revelation for the other fighters, Goldlewis gave a sagacious nod. Before he could chime in on the subject Midna went ahead and showed off something else she’d gleaned from the battle, that being a strange packet of coagulated intelligence. She called it ‘data’, a concept that would normally lack any sort of physical form, and yet here it was. It floated above her hand, shifting slightly like a cluster of pixels or perhaps television static brought into the real world. “...Huh,” the veteran murmured. How strange. If it was just information, what was it doing in physical space, instead of inside a computer somewhere? Maybe it existed as a result of Psynet, like a knot in the invisible ‘web’ that connected the minds of the city’s psionics? Well, Goldlewis wasn’t a techie, let alone a psych-techie, so he gave a shrug and moved on. “We oughta ask someone from Psych-OSF about it if we get a moment.”

He mentioned fighting alongside a couple Scarlet Guardians by the names of Kagero and Tsugumi who just happened to be in the area, as well as the fact that Kagero seemingly possessed the ‘psychic ability’ to turn invisible. How that worked Goldlewis didn’t care to speculate, since if Kagero was technically editing himself out of the minds of those perceiving him, the notion of all psychic abilities originating from mental manipulation was a scary one to consider. He couldn’t offer any guess as to Tsugumi’s power aside from supernatural aim, but he could mention the psychic television broadcast that happened, since without psionics on hand to interpret it, the new arrivals must have been even more in the dark than the veteran’s own detachment. As a Septentrion the name Karen Travers carried some weight for the Seekers, even if Goldlewis couldn’t assign a face to that name just yet. “By the way, that Luka feller said brother, and pronounced the name ‘Kah-ren’, so if we somehow meet the guy make sure ya don’t call the Major General ‘Karin’.” He couldn’t help but glance at the Seekers’ own Karin while speaking. “I only ever seen his name in writin’ myself, so…” After that, all that remained to be said concerned the brief encounter with Arashi Spring, who could move at lightning speed, and the teleporting Luka Travers. “He’s the possible ‘in’ we mentioned,” Goldlewis said. “Gave us his number to call if we need anythin’.”

Not much to go on, but as Pit pointed out, the Seekers found themselves at a severe disadvantage in a brainpunk city where everything worked with psionic ability in mind.

“Right…” Peach, who’d been mulling over all the details everyone presented, nodded slowly as she replied. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Whatever’s going on with the Others, and maybe Midgar in general, the Psych-OSF seems really important. A lot of major players. I have an idea, but I’ll need to run a quick errand first.” She glanced up at Goldlewis. “In the meantime, I think we should call this Luka and arrange a meeting if we can. We’re in the dark here and need every last morsel of info we can get.”

Goldlewis crossed his arms. “I hear ya, but I reckon there’s two problems with that. First off, we ain’t gonna get the right answers if we don’t ask the right questions. Second, I dunno how in tarnation I’m actually s’posed to call the li’l guy. My phone glyph don’t work with Black Tech.” Sensing some confusion, he furrowed his brow and explained. “There’s…well, in my world we ain’t got what you’d call normal technology anymore, or science for that matter. Just magic science and magitech. All it means though, is that we gotta find a Psynet terminal first.”

“Okay, we’ll keep our eyes out.” Peach put her hands on her hips, frowning. “That just leaves us back where we started, though. When I’m done with my errand, where can I find you all?”

At that, Goldlewis gestured to the nearby window of Anistar Gym. “Why not check in here for a spell? Bede moseyed on in by himself a couple minutes ago, and I noticed a couple of hours eyeballin’ it. Might as well, I figure.”

Without any real alternatives for the moment, the Seekers headed for the main doors, joining a couple people in workout clothes on their way inside. When the other alert began the gym-goers had dropped everything and evacuated to the nearest shelter like everyone else, but with the all-clear given they were right back on the grind. Upon stepping inside, it wasn’t hard to see why people would want to make the most of this place, for the Anistar Gym was a sight to behold.

Three huge floors of gym goodness stood in front of them, each two stories high for a total of six stories, although the building extended downward into the plate rather than upward into the sky, and the entrance brought the group into the top floor. The floors were color-coded, with the topmost being blue, the middle floor green, and the bottom floor purple, although for all of them a high vaulted ceiling made to look like a starlit night sky gave the whole place a space-age vibe. A great dome-shaped skylight overlooked an open circular atrium in the building’s center that spanned all three floors, and the five support pillars that circled it featured six-story rock walls for intrepid climbers.

In fact, everywhere the newcomers looked they could find all sorts of equipment. There were high-powered treadmills where psychics rolled along at a breakneck pace atop their levitation orbs. Next to the racks of weights were racks of spoons, ranging from table-size to dumbbell-size to spoons the size of a streetlamp. The giant sign that read ‘RERACK YOUR SPOONS’ in all caps didn’t seem very effective, though. Big foam blocks lay around for use with psychokinesis and transport powers, with a few people even sparring atop blocks someone else was levitating. There was an elaborate psi shooting gallery, and a reverse shooting gallery where machines launched balls to test defense powers and dodging. Along an entire wall stood a huge variety of punching bags, many of them fashioned after Others on a scale of hardness from easy, squishy Pool bags to tougher Rummy bags to hanging Pendu bags that moved on small tracks. Some of them even looked animatronic, like a Vase Paws bag currently giving a man an reactive workout routine where he had to recognize and dodge fast kicks or a big tail swipe. Goldlewis spotted a woman training with a game of life-size reverse whack-a-mole with Yawn bags that popped up from holes in the ground, dodging their attacks and countering with quick punches. And all that was just the first floor; according to the big sign by the door, the bottom floor featured a giant pool, and the middle offered a number of insulated rooms, whether for meditation or practice with the elements, such as pyrokinesis, electrokinesis, cryokinesis, aerokinesis, and hydrokinesis. Anistar Gym was fully loaded, a favorite training ground not just for civilians but Psych-OSF personnel too, despite whatever accommodations they must have at the Otherlobe. There was just one problem.

As the Seekers marveled at the place, Bede flounced up to them in a huff. “Some gym this is!” he fumed, his face the very picture of annoyance. “There’s not a single Pokemon in the whole place! I asked who the leader is, and they didn’t know what I was talking about. What a crock.” With his disappointed-looking Hatenna at his heels the boy stormed off toward the door.

On the way out, he nearly ran into a tall, well-built fellow with a jawline protector and a mop of dirty blonde hair. Before the two could collide, however, the man flattened himself against the doorway, allowing the much smaller Bede to push through. “Scuse me,” he murmured, but Bede ignored him and disappeared outside. Thinking nothing of it, the new arrival headed inside, walking past the Seekers with a mildly curious glance in their direction. Behind him followed a trio of rank-and-file OSF members, two identical and the third a little different. Now that the action was over with for now, they were removing their helmets and loosening their uniforms a little to get back to working out. The first two turned out to be brothers with shaved heads except for poofs of blonde hair on top, while the third was a girl with black hair, a widow’s peak, and an eyepatch. “Alright, let’s pick up where we left off,” the leader said, heading toward the right to an open area by the bags.

Meanwhile, Goldlewis found what he was looking for. “There!” he said, pointing out a machine by the front desk. “That’s gotta be a Psynet terminal. Lemme see if I can make a call.” As he went over, the three grunts took up positions around the sturdy man with training weapons in hand -a pair of beatsticks for the twins and an axe for the girl. Their opponent stood in the middle, and when the sparring began he defended himself, using some sort of power to harden his body into a metallic texture. His attackers fought without holding back, but the defender held them off all by himself with only his gloves as weapons. After only a few moments of furious contention the three took a break to catch their breath, while their opponent merely wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. Then the training continued.

After a few minutes, Peach showed up again. She and Goldlewis, fresh off the terminal with his new Psych-OSF contact, met up with the Seekers. The veteran went first. “Luka said he’s on assignment and can’t meet for a while, but he’d be happy to chat with us over a meal at Musubi’s at seven,” Goldlewis reported, glancing at his watch. “That’s about three and a half hours from now, so we got time to kill.”

“I found what I was looking for. You mentioned that your old friends invited you to join the Psych-OSF, Raz,” Peach said next. “What if you took them up on that offer?” From her pocket she produced and revealed two spirits, and from the images within the motes of prismatic light her compatriots could tell they belonged to Psych-OSF grunts. “Of course, I’m not asking that you go alone.”

Goldlewis stroked his whiskers, impressed. “Those ain’t the casualties Luka mentioned, are they?” When the princess nodded, he raised an eyebrow. “What d’ya need those for?”

Peach selected one of the spirits and lifted it up, looking closer at it. It belonged to a woman with short, light brown hair in a high bun, long sidelocks, amber eyes with two moles by the left, and a big smile. “In this place, being psychic is everything. These two must have been, and we can use that. We don’t need new powers, just sensitivity, so mental fusion would be enough. If three of us go together, we’ll be able to watch one another’s backs as we get intel from inside the OSF. We also won’t get in trouble for helping people”

After a quick look around to make sure no security cameras were listening, Goldlewis thought about it. “Hmm. Mighty bold’, but risky. Fusin’s illegal, if ya recall. You’ll need to do it outta sight, and you’ll need new IDs afterward.” He sighed. “That said, it might be our best shot at gettin’ inside the Psych-OSF. Raz mentioned a fast-track through Basic Brainin’, so if y’all breeze through together, ya might even reach Cadet by tonight.” For his part, however, Goldlewis didn’t feel comfortable with fusion just yet. That led into just one question, aside from what to do until dinner with Luka: who would be joining Peach and Raz on this daring mission to infiltrate Psych-OSF.



The dynamic duo’s descent from the top of the factory was breakneck even by sky-line standards. With only the tenuous magnetic grasp of the sky-hook’s furious rotation keeping them from freefall, they tore through the wind so fast it just about beat them senseless. Sure, Tora had fallen from a far greater height in the Sandswept Sky when hurled thousands of feet upward by an updraft from Hollow heights, but now he was being dragged along, forcibly whipped back and forth by the curvature of the sky-line. Tora found himself immensely grateful that he had Poppi clutching him tight in the ironclad assurance of mechanical strength. If he’d been obliged to hold onto a hook himself, the staggering and relentless g-force involved would have ripped the hook from his wing’s nerveless grip long ago and sent the Nopon spiraling into the cityscape. Still, it took everything he had not to scream his lungs out from a potent combination of heart-pounding exhilaration and sheer terror. After all, they were zooming into battle.

After what felt like ages but in reality encompassed just a handful of seconds, the sky-line swooped down to travel alongside a filthy canal adjacent to the construction zone, and following Giovanna’s example Poppi disengaged the sky-hook there. She tucked in, holding her bug-eyed Masterpon against her like a body pillow, and landed in a roll. “Oof, ow, ooh!” Tora cried as the two tumbled along, until finally his companion came to a stop on her back and unfolded. He slid off her and plopped onto his side, spirals in his eyes. “Meeeeeh,” he wheezed.

Up ahead, Giovanna quickly stood up straight from where she slid to a stop herself, a fair bit more unkempt than last time in the brewery. At some point during the frenetic descent, one of the two buttons keeping her shirt together had come undone, but luckily she’d managed to prevent disaster and put herself back together. “Best way to travel,” she deadpanned as she approached the group, tucking her shirt back in. After a quick self-diagnostic to confirm no real damage taken, Poppi stood as well. She helped Tora to his feet and started to dust him off, prompting him to return the favor, but her attention mostly lay on the construction zone across the canal.

“Might be for the best that line didn’t bring us any closer,” Giovanna reasoned aloud, crouching down behind a section of fence in case any of the gang members looked her way. While she originally imagined zipping in to start the brawl with an intense, daring takedown or two, closer inspection of these crooks convinced her that this scenario was fundamentally different from the run-in with the Hoodlum Dolls earlier. “Hold tight a second,” she told the rest of the team in a loud whisper. “These guys are much more heavily armed and armored. They’re on alert, too. We’re not catching them with their pants down this time. I see lots of guns, too.”

Tora narrowed his eyes. “Not want run in with balls to wall then, meh?”

“Exactly.” Giovanna took stock of the area. Whatever this building might be she couldn’t quite tell, since it looked too small for either a warehouse or a factory, but its construction had seen some solid progress. The structure existed as a framework of burgundy metal with thick, possibly concrete filler within the major supports. It boasted no real walls, but plenty of hanging tarps, plywood boards, yellow shoots, port-a-potties, and metal panels obstructed sight lines, providing dubious cover for a shootout but plenty of places to hide. The stacks of material lying around would be better suited for defense, if it came to that. Plenty of construction equipment lay around the place too, from handheld tools to heavy-duty machinery. Of course, the workers left plenty of beer bottles and crumpled-up fast food bags around too, sometimes stashing them inside whatever they were constructing before the finishing touch. By this point all the humans had fled and the androids were destroyed, which left only the Misconducts scurrying around.

What bothered Giovanna was why they were here. What was their plan, and how long had they been planning it? If they meant to knock this project down, it should have logically happened before those supports came in. It would take a lot more than sticks of TNT to blow through all those. And why did they gun down the androids without setting their sights on the fleeing humans? Just because they thought they could get away with it, since they weren’t human? It didn’t add up. Something smelled fishy, and it sure wasn’t that scummy canal in front of her, rank as it was. “We can use the walkie-talkies Sakura gave us to communicate if need be,” she said, holding up her own for emphasis. Raiden and Susie had their own. “But let’s try the quiet way for a minute. It doesn’t look like they have designated lookouts, so we can move in if we’re careful. Subdue anyone you can without being noticed, but don’t do anything that’ll compromise us. Probably won’t last, but it’ll give us a leg up when it’s time to go loud.”

The team did some quick preparation. Poppi switched to her Dark core, which would allow her to create localized gravitational anomalies to push, pull, and crush foes. If Susie preferred that infusion in her business suit to Raiden’s, the machinist would be able to do the same. Her fusion with that volatile gunslinger appeared to be granting her new capabilities, as well.



“Alright, let’s go already.” At Giovanna’s signal, the Seekers got underway. Most of the Misconducts were on ground level fiddling with explosives or ransacking terminated androids, which made getting close the hardest part. Poppi flung Tora across the canal before boosting over herself, and together the pair sprinted across open ground toward a crane. With the artificial blade and her keep optics leading the way they waited for an opening. When it came they climbed atop the treads, then the main cabin, then onto the crane arm itself, deftly maneuvering up the metallic incline until they could jump onto the second of the five floors.Tora rolled against a cylindrical red-and-white container and held still, listening for any sign of trouble, and Poppi crouched behind him. It occurred to her that she could have switched to a smaller and less conspicuous form, but QT Pi’s mobility would be an asset, and it looked like the two of them found a pretty good spot.

They found themselves at the bottom-most corner of the C-shaped building. Behind them softly flapped a hanging tarp, the gaps between it and the frame small enough that she could easily see to ground level, but it would be hard to make out anything in the dark from behind it. Straight ahead lay the central courtyard, full of Misconducts, including the heavily-armored man who looked like the leader. To the right, a drop to the first floor. She could see a white cloth and some discarded hard hats down there. A peek across the courtyard confirmed Giovanna on the opposite side of the fourth floor, hiding behind a pillar on the upper straight of the C, right beneath where the fifth floor began and shielded by plywood plus a blue container on one side. Within arm’s reach of her hiding spot a yellow cable was anchored, stretching across the courtyard to the center bend of the C on the first floor. Elsewhere, the other Seekers were getting into position, with the less stealthy ones taking fewer risks. Blazermate, for instance, would probably hide behind a vehicle outside of the construction site itself until go time, at which point she could fly in. Everyone needed to be mindful of relevant light sources that could cast telltale shadows over the Misconducts’ fields of view as they worked. Tora sidled around to the edge of the tarp to peek down. They could easily get the drop on some hapless hoodlum from here, but neither he nor his blade planned to kick things off by themselves. So they waited, not sure what they were waiting for, other than some kind of signal. Giovanna, the de-facto source of such a signal, waited too. If she didn’t want utter chaos, she needed a diversion, but the longer she waited the closer everyone got to the Misconducts finishing their setup and cleared out to start the fireworks.

After a tense minute, the growly chatter and barked orders from the first floor went quiet with urgent swiftness. Alerted to some sort of change, Poppi quickly scanned the area, and soon found out why. A lone G-man was approaching the construction site from the nearby street, and two more waited on the sidewalk, staring with their bright red eyes. Poppi pursed her lips. “Oh, boy.” The G-man continued to get closer until a pair of Misconducts went out with their weapons hidden to meet it before it could get close enough to see what their mates were and had been doing.

“You’re not construction workers,” the G-man stated, his voice hard. “You’re hockey players. You should be skating on ice and hitting pucks, not in a construction yard. What are you doing here?”

One of the Misconducts shrugged, holding his hands out to either side. “What, we can’t just hang around here? Tomorrow’s the, uh, big game, you know? We’re just getting together to, uh celebrate. And psych ourselves up! Just some harmless fun, man.”

The G-man did not so much as blink. “We saw construction workers leaving the premises. You’re obstructing their work. Disturbance of the peace and loitering are both punishable crimes.” Behind it, the other two G-men began to approach to support their outnumbered colleague.

“Huh? Ah, don’t you know it’s break time around here, man?” The second Misconduct, a lady, nudged him, and he held up placating hands. “Hey, hey, look. We’re sorry, alright? Won’t happen again. Just give us a few minutes to pack up, and we’ll be on our way. Promise!”

“Your story doesn’t check out,,” the G-man replied. “If you are hockey players trying to have fun, there are better places than someone else’s construction site. We will personally oversee your departure.” It went to step between two.

The man rolled his eyes. “Man…” Then the woman whipped out her shotgun and blasted the G-man in the chest. It staggered, falling to one knee, then lunged at the woman. They disappeared together in a flash of light and smoke. “Damn it!” the Misconduct growled, pulling out his pistol to open fire on the other G-men. His buddies back at the site joined in, peppering the agents with bullets as they ran for cover behind a stack of girders.

“Mayday, mayday!” One of the G-men said into its phone. “Hostile gunfire from suspects at my position. Requesting backup.” After a moment it continued, its voice still flat but a little more urgent. “What do you mean you’re busy cleaning up the Hoodlum Dolls? I am full of bullet holes…fine, I will put out a general distress beacon…”

At that point TNT Randy stepped up, a lit bundle of explosives in hand. “Fire in the hole!” he howled as he hurled the payload toward the G-men in cover. The TNT blew apart the stack of girders with a tremendous noise and sent both G-men flying, but as they dragged themselves to their feet they doffed their hats. The next moment they exploded in a blast of tar, assuming the form of two new monsters: a horrific bat-winged woman split in half, and a frenzied wolfman. Immediately Manananggal cast Zanma on the girders, releasing a blast of force that sent the whole lot of them flying through the air to crash into the Misconducts’ hiding spots, while Loup-garou raced forward.

“Now!” Giovanna yelled, using her walkie-talkie. She summoned Rei and jumped out from cover, using her sky-hook to grab onto the yellow cable. Even if it wasn’t metal, she could still hook onto it and slide down, then leap off the opposing wall and fly down with a divekick at TNT Randy himself. The big man, his left hand full of TNT and a lighter in his right, managed to block at the last second, then come around with a massive right hook. Giovanna airdashed backward out of the way, but Randy lit the TNT and tossed it toward her underhand. Gritting her teeth, she jumped up and blocked with Faultless Defense, negating the chip damage as she flew backward toward cover away from all the Misconducts ready to rip her limb from limb.

Before they could go after her, Poppi opened fire with her revolvers from the second floor. Empowered by High Noon, her dark-energy bullets erupted into brutal cross-shaped blasts of repulsive force on impact, demanding that the gang members run for cover while returning fire. Randy, however, just brought up his goalie shield. “Shit! Was this a setup!?” He hurled more TNT up at the two, but Tora managed to blow it up midair with a spread shot from the Variable Saber, and the dynamic duo retreated from a hail of gunfire from below, using their high ground as cover. The multifaceted battle was on.



Though the Seekers’ reception to Barnabee’s plea ended up being a lot more lukewarm than the buzzy brave would have liked, but between them Bowser, Rubick, and Primrose offered just enough of a hook for him to hang his hopes on. Though this turn of events took a little wind out of his sails, the Hive Knight wasn’t about to become crestfallen. “As much as it grieves me to put my most noble cause on hold, I shall hold out hope for your cooperation when the time is nigh.” He stood tall and saluted his new acquaintances. “In the meantime, should you present no objections, I should like to join you on your own quest. A rare offer, I confess, and perhaps out of line for the champion of Her Majesty the Queen, but I am honored to extend it in good faith to any who might be of aid in the future. Upon my blade’s gnashing teeth, I daresay you shall not find my skills wanting! For as long as it takes to see my mission though, my sword is yours. Dedicated to your ‘wellbeeing’, as it were! Huzzzzah!”

After flourishing his saw-toothed sword, Barnabee winked. “And as they say, one good turn deserves another, hohoho…”

The group retraced their steps back into the Ruins. As they neared the Temple of the Black Egg, Barnabee considered the mask fragment left over by Silitha, which Primrose pointed out to him. “Hmm…” he mused, scratching his fuzzy head. Then he snapped his spiky little fingers. “I am loath to speak with too much certainty on historical matters, for outside our fair Hive I am admittedly rather ill-informed, but this rather calls to mind a legendary artifact of yore. See its ivory-white luster? That perfect hollow? It can only be the mask of Lurien, the Watcher, said to have resided with the tallest spire above the Home of Tears and peered through the rain with an all-revealing lens.” He ran his hand along a jagged crack at one end of the curio. “Although, it is plainly sundered. It would take two more such fragments to restore it to its former glory.” He sniffed and handed the piece back to Primrose. “Although, even then it could not possibly compare to the splendor of my Queen, whose own glorious mask has no equal among either living or dead.”

A quick visit to the temple confirmed that the fragment fit perfectly into one of the three slots on the seal of the place’s titular black egg. Other than that, however, nothing happened upon its insertion. It didn’t take a genius to intuit that more fragments would be necessary in order to gain entrance to the Guardian trapped inside. How many more was anyone’s guess, but if the number of fragments adhered to the typical formula, ‘eight’ seemed like a solid guess.

With that confirmed, the next order of business was to reunite with the other group of Seekers. They recalled that Nadia mentioned a large vertical cavity deep inside the Ruins, as well as the possibility of a mapmaker at its bottom, and headed in that direction. There they found that huge vaulted chamber of gruzzers, cave crickets, and suspended platforms among wrought-iron supports. No sign of their friends could be seen, however, and given the size of the other contingent that meant they must have gone further in, which meant Bowser’s bunch needed to do the same. For those who could teleport, float, or fly, getting down would be easy, but not all of those among the few that braved the Webwood could count themselves so fortunate. Still, despite the treacherous descent and a couple up-close encounters with ornery insects, the team managed to reach the bottom.

On the central dias they found evidence of a struggle, including the spirits of fallen gruzzer flies on the cusp of fading away. More worrying than that was the discovery of several different routes that all seemed to lead in different directions from this spot, leaving the team at an impasse. Luckily, some telltale humming and a trail of discarded paper led them over to Cornifer in his cozy corner of the crossroads, hard at work on his cartography. “Oh yes, they were just here a while ago,” he replied when asked about Nadia and the others. “The young lady with long ears, the one with striking red hair, the sturdy fellow in armor, and of course that rather grand wasp.” Having not really taken notice of Omori, Therion, or the Adventurer, he pointed the newcomers in the direction of a certain tunnel. There, the purple stone bricks and bluish chitin masonry of the Ruins gave way to packed dirt and the wooden supports of a mining shaft. “They went in that direction. Oh, but wouldn’t you like to purchase a map before you go? It is all too easy to lose your way down here, I find. To wander without aim is a fine predicament for a mapmaker such as myself, to be sure, but not so for ones who travel with purpose, hm…?”

As the team moved on, Barnabee set off with them at an eager stride. “Forsooth, the mapmaker speaks true. The tunnels and trails of this ancient kingdom twist and turn without end. Any fool who blindly travels its paths is destined to meet an untimely end. Tis well that I, the Hive Knight, have never…well, almost never, or at least, very rarely, gotten lost.” He cleared his throat with a buzzing sound. “...Onward, my new friends! Your comrades cannot have gotten far!”



The dirty eastward tunnel confronted the troop with a number of branching paths of various sizes as they went along. Some featured strange totems or indecipherable signs, bug masks, or cracked crystal protruding from the stone. Scouting planes and wizard orbs sent down them turned up no sign of the other Seekers, and in a couple cases provoked new enemies, some of them vicious indeed. Regardless, most seemed to be dead ends, or loop back to the main path, so they stuck to what seemed to be the main route. Eventually, they came across a final split in the road. In one direction there seemed to be a lot of masks, either hung up on poles in an ominous manner or discarded amongst the clods of soil underfoot so thickly that walking that way would make them clatter and scrape incessantly. Within slumbered the Ancestral Mound, home to dead spirits and the eccentric Snail Shaman. The other path quickly opened up into a massive dripstone cavern of packed earth, stone, stalagmite, and stalactite, spiky and treacherous even without the bus-sized Goams that erupted suddenly and without warning from the earth, their spiky burr-coated shells nigh impenetrable. Nimble bugs deftly leaped through the cavern in search of foliage to nibble, staying well clear of the strange clown insects that hung around the area in groups by noxious pools and sludgy streams of poisonous muck. At the sight of the newcomers, a wrinkly purple Huuli Hoarder laden with gems took off screaming, scuttling along a nearby wall for a place to dig into and make its escape. On the far side of the huge cavern, part of the rock face gave way to a protruding wall of wood that stretched from floor to ceiling, with several hollow roots twisting out from it to rest like primordial serpents in beds of grimy stone. Could this be one of the trees that extended upward through the Webwood?

Barnabee paused at the cavern overlook, his eyes narrowed. “Hmm,” he began, raising his voice over the Hoarder’s irksome cries. “It seemed reasonably straight shot here, yet now a perilous land unfolds before us. We would do well to consult fresh eyewitnesses, should there be any likely folks around.”

The general consensus of the other two with regards to Barnabee’s request was about the same as Bowsers, as in: “if we have the time maybe we’ll look into it.”

No dashing heroes willing to put everything down for a noble cause here it seemed.

Still, it was enough to keep the bee knight with them, and none of the troop felt bad about the prospect of stringing him along for as long as his presence was of use. He certainly proved himself handy yet again quite quickly, as he identified the mask fragment they had found as belonging to one Lurien, the Watcher, a figure of some local historical import. That certainly bode well for the odds of it being important, and, as luck would have it, it was indeed part of one of the ones they needed

"Hey nice, it fits!” Rika said celebratory after she found it to fit nicely into the slot, happy that the missadventure she’d somewhat caused had had a positive ending.

”So, nine bits instead of just 3 huh” Bowser said, pointing out the obvious change to their quest this represented

”Well, it could just be this one that is broken” Kamek suggested, but the King looked unconvinced.

”Eh I mean they probably are though? Right? Otherwise it’s 5 pieces and …. Well I guess that’s an ok number too but it would still be a bit weird if only one was broken up. That’s just … sloppy evil workmanship” Bowser mused on the topic of macguffin hunts and keys and such.

”So… I guess we aren't just looking for monsters wearing these masks then, but like, big monsters in general? This is gonna be a real bug hunt then huh?” Jr summarized, before noting that ”It’s weird that it's like, this mask belonged to this Lurien person but they aren't the boss we need to take down, right? I’m not the only one thinking that right?”

”Perhaps this F decided to make things harder for us? Claimed the masks himself and then broke them up?” Kamek theorized

"So are we just going to go around punching big monsters till we find more?” Rika asked

”I dunno, maybe urgh … you know what let’s focus on finding the others first, yeah?” Bowser decided, not at all interested in facing that daunting sounding task at the moment.

---

After taking a short rest to catch their breath, drink some water, and eat some snacks, the Troop trooped out, heading back the way they had come and swiftly coming across the hanging platform filled pit they had crossed over to get here.

Jr simply descended down using his car, while Bowser who had never taken the time to un-meowser himself, set his claws into the side of the pit and just kinda slid down the side of it, using tentacles, lobster limbs, and guns to dissuade anything from trying to knock him off.

Kamek meanwhile hung back, glancing at the two ladies and other wizard of the group and proceed to make them an offer ”So, I may have come up with an idea, one that might make traversing this place a little easier for you, if you are interested?”

Rika certainly was, her legs still not the best at land based traversal, and so she took him up on the offer without additional questions.

With her approval, the mage landed, took out his wand, and then tapped it into an open palm, forming, in an instant, a little egg. This he sets down on the ground, stepped back from, and began chanting too:

”Hocus pocus filiokus
Keep quiet now while I focus
Grow and grow, O loyal steed
Of you we have need
To skitter through these caverns deep
To help us free the light blinded sheep
So awaken child of mother dead
Rise and shine you sleepy head
To carry her slayer, that is what you are for
So rise and rise and live once more!”

As Kamek spoke, energy and magic flowed into the egg, causing it to grow and grow, larger and larger, till it towered above them all and then, as he finished, it cracked. Split asunder, and out of it hatched a massive spider which had Rika subconsciously take a half step back before she recalled that it was under control, and had a better look at it

What she was presented with by the mage was a big spider, yes, but specifically one that, if she knew her taxonomy, she would have recognized as something close to a huntsman spider due to its wide flat thorax and abdomen. It also had a small cushion like saddle on top of its head, which she was motioned to take a seat on.

"You know I’m not so sure this is really that secure” she said, not exactly an expert in these things but still recognizing the lack of things to hold her down, as she set herself down cross legged, right before a magical aura gripped her and bound her to the creature’s back.

"Wow” she started, right before the as til now motionless spider itself stumbled to the side clumsily, with Rika failing her arms a top it with a "wowowow” as Kamek hurried after it in a panic.

Right before the spider hit the edge however, Rika suddenly went "Wait!” and halted her arm flailing, holding both horizontally and as stock still as the spider had gone. There was a tense little moment, and then the spider padded away from the edge as the ship girl declared that "I think I’ve got it. Yup. It’s like it’s my legs now? That is so weird”

”Ah so that’s how it works” Kamek said, admitting he had had no idea up until now, before starting to suggest ”In that case let’s take it slow and-” right before Rika took a running start and she, on spider back, lept down into the pit while wooping with delight at her new found mobility.

”Oh no” Kamek started as he hurried back to the edge, only to sigh in relief as he saw the girl land safely on a hanging platform, and then marble as she rapidly descended, the hunter spider beneath her stringing webs between platforms and across the walls to scramble on down quick as can be.

”Well, that seems to have worked nicely” he noted, before looking at the other two and offering ”Would you like one? Or, well, one to copy in your case Rubick? It does not have to be a spider either, I just thought it would be symbolic. I can do a burrowing beetle, or a variety of Wyverns if you’d prefer to try and fly, or even a griffon should you prefer that aesthetic”

Whether they took him up on it or not, the mage preceded to produce a obsidian wyvern for himself, stashing away his broomstick and descending into the depths on the cavern adapted flying beast, which caused him and it to fade from view as they flew through the dark caves.

---

He was next seen down below, landing by the map maker that the others had stopped by to hear the news about where the others had gone, namely, onwards after buying a map. Something both said map maker and the bee knight suggested they do as well.

”I mean if they already got one, then we don’t need another one right?”

”Big waste of money”

"Yeah … what they said”

” … ” Kamek just stared at the rest of the troop for a few moments, shook his head, and then went ahead and bought a map when they weren't looking anyway.

His (advised) foresight proved itself useful swiftly, as they walked right past where the entrance to the basement had been (just as they had walked right past where the spirits of Sectonia’s mind controlled minions had fallen after they were eaten alive by spiders) and deeper into the maze of tunnels the people they were looking for had barely set foot in before beginning their downwards decent.

Obviously then, they found neither hide nor hair of their fellows, and instead found only more of what the realm was infested with: more bugs.

Many of these turned out to be skittish and harmless, a light zap from a wisp or burst of gunfire from a scout plane enough to deter most of the curious or aggressive ones, while a stealthy Kamek simply flapped on by without a care in the world, the mage gradually filling out the twisty turns of the deadend filled maze.

Progress was gradual yet steady and safe … right up until Rika suddenly shouted "Oh no you don’t!” Down a tunnel one of her planes had gone, and then spurred her spider steed down it at a breakneck speed without warning, thrusters on her back firing and giving it extra acceleration, leaving the rest of the troop blindsided and in her dust.

Astride giant spider Rika stampeded through the tunnel, hopping across gaps and scaling a few vertical surfaces while scattering lesser bugs in her wake till she burst into a little mining complex and came across what had caused her to yell in the first place.

Within where three centipede like creatures perched around various crude yet sturdy miner’s shacks and, pinned to a wall, the sputtering form of her scout plane, once again pinned by silky strands, although this time the aircraft was to a wall and was also in a sorry state of repair.

"You jerks, you’ll pay for - eek” Rika was interrupted in her decrying of their attack on her plane by 3 volleys of the same attacks that had taken it down. Each of the pests raised up its arms and then launched dozens of fine strands of silk from their backs, which swiftly turned in the air and flew straight at the ship girl with near impeccable homing ability.

Her sunglasses flashed as if catching the nonpresent sun, slowing the frightfully fast shots, resulting in her and her spidery steed only getting clipped by a few shots as they scampered to the side rather than taking the full volley to the face. It still stung a hell of a lot though, at least where it didn’t get caught on her gauntlets and shielding.

On instinct, Rika pulled up her guns to return fire … only to hear the dreaded click of empty chambers from each and every weapon, reminding her of how she’d used everything up before on killing the spider queen.

"shoot” she cursed, because that was now a thing she couldn't do. Logically, she should have just turned, run, got reinforcements or just left the weird hand bugs with their prize. That, however, would have been admitting defeat, and the Pacific Princess had injected something similar to the Gleaming refusal to be beaten back into her.

"Alright spidey, time for some live fire combat training!” she told the unthinking construct she was riding/controlling, and then leapt into the fray. Literally. The huntsman spider launched itself atop one of the buildings hosting a kindred,taking the creature by surprise enough that Rika could deliver a massive gauntleted punch to its limb-covered chest, smashing it clear off of the building and onto the rocky ground below with a crunch.

That was swiftly followed by a second crunch as Rika’s steed leapt again after it, the ship girl bringing down both her two gauntlets in an overhead smash that finished the job

"Phew. Ok. Next!” Rika taunted as she pulled herself up, only to find that the second one who would face her gauntlets coming right at her. Fast.

Skittering along the ground came the centipede like monster, many limbs carrying it frightfully fast and its long glaive striking even faster. The wicket point connected solidly with her chest … only for it to be bounced back by the last of her energy field’s reserves.

With an alarm beeping in her ears Rika herself skittered back as the centipede stood tall, took two slow stalking steps to the right … and then struck again and again with several quick jabs. Rika caught these by copying Bowser, using both gauntlets in a boxer’s guard to defend herself, before surging forwards as the kindred drew back for another strike and using the hull blades attached to her rigging to punch forwards and strike it in the abdomen.

The creature shrieked and stumbled back, only for the low blow to bring its focus down, and to her steed, which it then directed a stab at, skewering one of the spider’s eyes. Rika cried out in pain and stumbled back, not because she had been hurt as she would have had the spider been a striker, but because her controlling link to the construct had fed her a simulacra of pain to helpfully inform her it had been damaged.

She really did not appreciate that, nor when another volley of those sticky strands came flying in from the other kindred who was off to her left, striking the spider’s body and limbs in dozens of places and causing it and her to lurch to the side with another bark of pain.

"That’s really annoying” she hissed as she acclimatized to the transmitted sensations of pain and found them not nearly as bad as it would have been had she herself been struck all over.

As she adapted her foes wordlessly come up with a plan, with the close range fighter scuttling around to put itself on the opposite side of her from the shooter, which would have would have forced her to face it with her back to the other … if her instincts hadn’t screamed at her about how bad this position was. Said instincts also reminded her that this was not how she was supposed to fight. She was a battle cruiser, she was supposed to move fast and hit hard not slug it out like a heavily armored battleship.

So she ran, or, rather, rode, turning and charging towards the shooter instead, the wounded spider racing forth at what was still an impressive speed. The one who had circled round her chased after her, but to ward it off she dropped it a gift, one that came in the form of the one modern armament she had left: a torpedo.

The scrambling creature darted to the side to avoid being bonked by the metal tube she’d dumped from the underside of a gauntlet, and then stumbled as said tube exploded behind it, the blast levaling one of the shacks.

That gave her enough room to block a sunglasses slowed volley of threads, and then to leap at the shooting kindred.

It had learned from the first one’s fate however, and so fell back to avoid being smashed into upon her landing, and then raised its spear to hack at her. Rika countered using both gauntlets, catching the blade in their maws … and then triumphantly touted "See how you like your own medicine” as the spider brought its abdomen down under its belly to positively blast the kindred with its own silk, a wave of the strands washing over it and sticking it to the floor.

"Ha! Now eat this” Rika cried as she smashed two fists down onto it in a one two punch, and then disdainfully spat on the creature for good measure, priming the Brachydios slime her blows had splattered to blow while the kindred struggled futility to free itself.

"And now finally for you!” she said, turning on the last kindred as it rose up to unleash a volley of strands upon her … only for it to be struck by a flaming clown shaped balloon and knocked off its feet.

”There you are! You had papa worried sick running off on your own like that!” called the source of that attack, junior, as he fluttered in on his clown car ”You could have gotten hurt or something”

"I’m fine, and I can handle myself” Rika retorted, right before the slime she had set exploded behind her, taking out the kindred … and her own spider as its abdomen was too close to the blast. The destruction of that unraveled the magic and caused the ship girl to unceremoniously be dumped to the ground, landing on her butt with an ”Oof!”

”See” Jr retorted, before vaguely waving over at the kindred and saying ”Primid Party, just shoot that thing or something” resulting in the burning bug getting introduced to the 5 rounds rapid method of dealing with horrors, and for once, siad method worked remarkably well as it was blown away by a hail of super scope shots.

”I had this” Rika insisted as she picked herself up off the ground, thinking for a moment, sighing, and then saying ”but thanks for coming”

”Yeah sure whatever it's nothing … so why’d you run off anyway?” he asked, to which Rika replied by tramping over to the cave wall and awkwardly scratching at her trapped plane till she freed it from the strands … and it promptly fell apart.

”Gah. Well. Urg. Stupid” the shipgirl said as she crouched down, unlocked her gauntlets to free her hands, and then started piling bits of the broken plane into the hanger bay it had come out of. ”Don’t have spare parts for these” she explained as the hanger began recycling the bits that had survived and demanding replacements for the parts that hadn’t.

”Oh yeah oof. I know what you mean, without that mallet Papa gave me keeping this” he smacked his clown car ”in one piece has been way more of a pain than it used to be” before he had a think and suggested ”You where really relying on that dispenser thing to keep going huh? Guess we shoulda stocked up on spare ammo and parts and stuff while we had it… Well, till then, maybe we should try and get you some replacement gear and strikers and stuff?”

That Rika had to agree with.

---

After the troop regrouped and had joined back up with the main party (and Rika had gotten her ear talked off for her recklessness by the two worried old koopas) they headed deeper into the caves till they came to the fork in the road.

The troop moved to look at the big cavern first of all, the one filled with big indestructible worms, cool clown bugs, weird jumpy bugs and ”Oh hey, that screaming one has gems on it … get it for me Kamek”

The mage glanced at his king, then at the screaming bug … and then delegated the task himself.

”End, put it to sleep, would you?” he said, getting the foliage covered sniper striker to appear and, after he made another comment about the lovely locations he kept being brought to, proceeded to try and put a tranquilizer dart in the bug. Should it hit, and the bug be forced to take a nap, Kamek would then get some toadies to go get it for him so he wouldn’t have to risk becoming wormfood himself.

While the elders waited to see if they were going to get rich quick, and Rika sat down next to the giant chicken she’d gotten as a replacement mount and sulked/thought about what she’d do with the spirits she’d packed up for a bit, Jr attempted some long distance clown to clown communication.

First he let Dazzle the clown nosed sealion pokemon out of his ball to ride in his car beside him for moral support, then he floated up in the air at the entrance and yelled ”Hey! Clown bugs, over here!” before smacking the front of his clown car to establish the fact that they had similar aesthetic tastes.

If he did not get bombarded by roach and/or clown based sorcery, he’d call over the question ”Have you seen a catgirl? Or a giant bee? Or a small human kid? Or a guy and/or girl human with red hair? We’re looking for them and wanna know if they went by here”

---

“Alright.” Jesse said as everyone gathered up. “I’ll wait out here. Once a bunch of us squeeze in, I can turn No-Collide the door.” The Director explained. “That’ll let the rest of us walk right on through like it wasn’t even there.”

“Before you ask why I didn’t do this before, it was because some unique flavor of random bullshit might occur. But now that we’ve all gotten a feel for this place, I think it’s a pretty good bet that nothing crazy will happen if we cheat a little bit. The place is happy to drop fuckin’ bombs outta midair anyway as a reward.” Jesse said.

Once the first wave went in and the doors slammed shut, Jesse pinged the door with No-Collide and dashed in, having heard the angry roar of an abusive mother. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Once they were inside, they encountered the many monsters within, including a giant leg from the ceiling. The Seekers engaged with the monsters. Jesse watched as the giant leg came down, part of a dress and all, and blinked. “Huh.” Still, she couldn’t help but be appreciative of her new mundanely bizarre reality. This was her life’s work!

The next time leg prepared to came down, Jesse Evaded, but she realized she had enough time to just run out of the way as long as nothing interrupted her, so Evading in the future wouldn’t be necessary. Her new sigil splattered a cultist coming her way without Jesse having to lift a finger.

For a few moments, Jesse left the vital work of dispatching the cultists to her allies and began charging up a powerful Pierce shot. It was her best chance of dealing the greatest amount of damage no matter where the leg appeared next.

When the leg went to stomp on her dodging allies, Jesse lined up a shot and aimed to fire a superheated hole through the giant leg’s calf. If it came her way, Jesse wouldn’t waste time sprinting out of the way and would instead instantly Evade to the side, before turning and firing. The Seekers had no formation or cohesion, but hopefully that wouldn’t be a problem. Spreading out the attention of all the enemies evenly across the room might just be the best strategy, and it’s not like grouping up would be feasible in such a scenario. Still, it made her miss her Rangers, even if just a little.

“How we doing, everyone?” Jesse asked, loudly above the din of battle. Sectonia was on support and casting her magic. Therion was doing hit and run, and Jesse found it difficult to gauge how grievous Nadia’s injuries actually were. At this point, she’d be most concerned if Nadia stopped bleeding everywhere. Ideally if anyone needed help they’d call out to her. Jesse would do the same if too many cultists tried to interfere with her sniping.

With a bloodcurdling, guttural roar the tiger went to work, slicing into the robes and eldritch flesh of the Priest and Witch that stood in Nadia’s path. After a direct swat from the great cat’s massive mitt nearly severed her right arm at the bicep, leaving it a barely-attached mess of loose, dangling teeth and tendons, the hissing Witch slunk away from the chaos. Since her counterpart seemed to be grappling for the tiger, unveiling twisted limbs of weaponized bone and muscle from beneath its cloak, Nadia went for the caster.

She pounced on and tackled the stress-slinging sorceress to the ground beneath her, then rolled to put herself on the bottom and her quarry on top. “Upsy-daisy!” she grunted, extending one of her legs upward as far as they would go in a deluge of pressurized blood. Her relatively lightweight foe blasted off, and a split second later slammed into the ceiling. Before the stunned Witch could plummet downward, Nadia snapped upward like a giant elastic band, using her leg to drag the rest of her body toward it instead of it toward her. Her other foot punched straight through the monster’s torso in a brutal upside-down stomp before both began to fall back toward the ground. On the way down the feral pivoted around to put herself back on top once more, her free heel planted on the Witch’s skull-faced mask. When the two landed the next moment, Nadia popped the cultist like a zit beneath her. Another enemy down, and in every bit as gruesome a fashion as these crimes against nature deserved.

Unfortunately, things had gone south while she’d been pulling her stunt. Nadia looked up just in time to see Therion take a vicious wound from the Priest that she’d tried to keep busy with her tiger. “Damn it!” she yowled, scooping one of her fallen anchors off the ground as she sprinted toward the aberration. “Eat this!” While Therion made his escape, Nadia kept the Priest off his back by jumping up and burying the blade into its own. Its insides squealed, and the faceless horror promptly twisted around a boneless tentacled arm to grab her by the leg. “Not again, damn it!” With a cruel tug it wrenched her free, then dangled her upside-down in front of itself for the finishing blow. Its other arm swelled outward from its sleeve into the shape of a giant, malformed crab claw, the inside of the pincer lined with so many jagged teeth that one crush could turn a cow into ground beef.

It lunged in to snap shut on her midsection to messily cleave her in twain, but for the second time this fight Nadia separated herself instead. Her ears stabbed into the ground, propping her upper half up to start spinning by the neck. “Lawn Meower!” she called with a grin, carving into the tentacles holding the priest up again and again. More stray projectiles from Sectonia hit it at about the same time, adding insult to injury. Unamused, the coagulate nightmare dropped all pretenses. Its body erupted in a tide of varicose crimson, turning its robe into little more than a cape on a horrific amalgam of skulls and rippling sinew. It speared Nadia’s back with its spiked tongue to drag her into its slavering maw, filling her with immense, instinctive terror. She screamed at the top of her lungs and promptly severed the tongue, prompting the gibbering freak to fling both her halves away.

After rolling to a stop Nadia stuck herself back together, yanked out the tongue, and cringed like it was going out of style. “Eeeeeeeehe-he-he-he-heeeewww,” she mewled , clutching her own shoulders as the pure panic from the thought of being eaten subsided. Then Mom’s leg showed up, forcing her to focus on the task of hand as she evaded. “Hey, can’t ya see I’m cringing here!?” she yelled at the offending limb, only for the Knight to show up and steal the show.

The little guy was, had been, and would continue to move with practiced precision. Whether as a result of Sectonia’s prompting or its own intuition, it had been hunting Mom down wherever her leg appeared. It dodged with practiced precision, then went on the offensive. Nadia got to her feet, watching as the Knight made mincemeat of Mom’s cankles with the aid of random light rings from a certain illustrious insect. A Brawler charged at it from behind, but it leaped up and over, falling upon the cultist with a well-aimed slice that bounced it up high enough to take a final swing at the leg before its quarry fully withdrew. Then it dashed away, leaving the trash mobs to the Seekers as its pitch-black eyes scanned the room for the leg’s next emergence. Nadia whistled. “This one’s a Knight to remember.”

At that people Jesse’s shout rang out over the general chaos. “I’m okay!” Nadia replied, despite her residual heebie-jeebies. Thanks to her new striker, most of the damage she’d currently racked up was mental. Hopefully her exposure to these freaks didn’t mean she’d be getting some eldritch meat infection. The possibility was almost too horrible to consider. Instead she sought to answer Jesse’s question for herself with a quick look around. Having been hanging back to blow chunks from the cultists’ corpuscles from a distance, the FBC director herself seemed fine. It looked like Sectonia was too mobile for these things, with her gang of Antlions and unrelenting magical output making it tough for them to challenge her, even if they did get a couple hits in. Nadia spotted Therion as he finished off a Witch that gave him grief earlier, healing himself up in the process; she felt like she could count on him not to get into the same pinch twice. She couldn’t tell if the Knight had even been touched yet, but her money was on ‘no’.

That just left Omori and Ganondorf, and with a start Nadia realized things might not be hunky-dory in that department. The unlucky lad had almost been pancaked by a stomp from Mom, and then found out the hard way a couple moments later that these enemies were cut from a different cloth than usual. After that he pivoted to follow the Knight’s example, fleeing from the cultists to target Mom exclusively, albeit in a more conservative fashion given his fresh wounds. Hopefully he’d stick near Sectonia for healing. Meanwhile, Ganondorf -either too slow or too prideful to dodge- had eaten not one but two stomps from Mom, leaving him with several broken bones. Worse still, he seemed to be Mom’s favorite target other than Sectonia, though that gave Omori, the Knight, and Jesse something to look out for.

Nadia sighed and shook her head. Having caught her breath, it was time to get back in the fight, starting with that damn Priest. With its naked villainy clad in black robes once more, it loomed toward her like the shadow of death. No doubt Therion wanted another stab at it, too. “We need to focus on this one!” she called, pointing at the Priest. “Jesse, can we get some support?”

The three were ready, so Nadia made the first move. She ran in, on two legs this time like a normal person. Patiently the Priest waited until she got in range, then let rip The Finger, just as it had done to Therion. In the glare of the feral’s Night Light, however, it was more than slow enough to dodge. Nadia went low with a quick Cat Slide as Jesse’s first charged sniper shot rang out, pulverizing the priest’s spinal cord spear. “Nice one! Now for the…can opener!” Nadia burst up from below and sent one forearm into overdrive, turning it into a rip-roaring corkscrew of bone to drill into its center mass. Her combo might have ended there, but Jesse’s second shot staggered the Priest yet again, and a bright idea flashed into Nadia’s mind. With a yellow flash she pulled off her tail and held it up like a golf club. “Fore-gettaboutit!” When she whacked the Priest with her Outtake, it did no damage, but utterly demolished the monster’s stance, both knocking it on its ass and blocking any healing. At that point Therion could swoop in, and with a third and final shot from Jesse to pave the way, finish the rotten nightmare off for good. “Hell yeah! You’re Theri-on the ball!”

A moment later Sectonia’s projectile profusion finally spelled the end of another Witch, leaving just one Brawler from the third wave, and though a stomp from Mom managed to finally clip the Knight, Omori’s retaliation seemed to provoke something in her. ”Grrah!” she snarled. Three more fleshy protuberances expanded from the floors and walls of the room, but this time one was much bigger than the others. In addition to another Rapturous Cultist and a second Cultist Priest, which by itself did not inspire joy, a Templar Impaler fought free from its grievous wound.

The bizarre, grisly confluence of man, scorpion, and eye-pocked viscera filled Nadia with dread, but she wasn’t about to quit now. While there wasn’t much to go on, the hunter in her smelled blood. Whatever this leg-creature was, it seemed to be losing, and this fresh horror smacked of a desperate measure. “C’mon, guys! This gam is almost over! Let’s show ‘em what leg-ends are made of!!”



After her new acquaintances expressed the faintest hint of interest in Wicke’s company and what they did, the floodgates were open, and the bespectacled lady launched into an excited monologue. Happy to let her babble on about conservation and habitats to her heart’s content, Big Band kept to himself in taciturn silence, crunching away at an extra-large candy bar full of nuts. He’d been amazed to learn that in a place like this people used physics defying sorcery for as mundane a purpose as making chocolate, but he’d be hard-pressed to deny his appreciation for the fruits of their magical labor after trying some for himself.

Nice as the smidgen of dessert was, however, his mind currently dwelled on matters other than sugary sweets. He listened to Wicke’s spiel as best he could, hoping for her to drop an even tastier morsel of information about what might be going on in this city, but she stubbornly refused to suggest anything of value to him. While she did touch upon the inhumane mistreatment of Pokemon by rabid breeders as something of an endemic problem in Edinburgh, and ‘research’ undertaken by the Aether Foundation, any conclusions drawn from such vague descriptions would be speculation at best. He might have assumed her monologue to be a carefully rehearsed advertisement for the Aether Foundation, especially that part about donations, if she didn’t speak with such clear and present passion for the subject matter. The only scoop he’d be getting out of this chance encounter would be one of ice cream.

Still, he didn’t begrudge this meeting with Wicke one bit. In fact, he was grateful for both her and Sierra taking the team a little ways across town, for reasons keenly aware to both himself and Lucia. Those three loose cannons were still on his trail, after all. He’d worried about Irons’ lackeys putting in a surprise guest appearance at the All Round Spheal Show, and kept a close eye out during the event. While he didn’t notice anyone who fit the profiles Lucia gave him, he couldn’t discount the possibility that they watched from inside nearby buildings, or other vantage points he simply missed. Simply put, Band did not want those ill-omened cops showing up any time soon, which was why a quick trip in Sierra’s van worked to his group’s advantage, especially if any would-be pursuers happened to miss their exit into this arcane patisserie. The fact that Band kept glancing discreetly over his shoulder at the shop’s entrance indicated how much he believed in his luck, though. His merry little band hadn’t been too careful, not by a long shot.

Ace took the chance to turn the conversation toward the team’s investigation on his own. It was a good question, asked in a casual enough manner to not seem probing, and Wicke didn’t hesitate to answer. “Monsters and skeletons, you say? Well, not many know this, but ‘Pokemon’ is short for ‘Pocket Monsters’. That’s probably not what you mean, but actually I have heard about skeletons appearing at night as of late. Some trainers have shown up who used their Pokemon to try to deal with them, which is terribly reckless, if you ask me. Pokemon battles aren’t life-or-death fights, after all. It’s like sending, oh, I don’t know, baseball players to join a SWAT team. And their poor Pokemon had the scars to prove it!”

Wicke shook her head with a heavy sigh. “The only other rumors I’ve heard are even spookier. They say that some of the skeletons that appear are those of Pokemon themselves! It makes sense if some sort of phenomenon is reanimating the dead, since of course Pokemon have passed away in this city, but how awful! I don’t know if I could stand seeing one reduced to such a sorry state.”

After a sip of hot chocolate, Wicke managed to relax. “Anyway! Enough about all that. Here, I’ve finished writing your checks. You can cash them at any bank in the city.” One by one she distributed slips of paper covered in her elegant, loopy script. The Seekers’ full compensation for their work was outlined therein.

“Thank you.” Though it felt a lot more like a promissory note than any actual money, Band supposed that he wouldn’t be getting any better. He carefully plucked the proffered check with the padded pincers of a tiny mechanical arm and stashed it in one of his enormous trench coat’s many inside pockets.

“Dearie me!” Wicke pushed out her chair and stood, gathering her pocketbook and purse. “This was a lovely little break, but I’m still on the clock, and every day’s a busy day at the Aether Foundation. We do have work available, so please visit the headquarters and apply if you’re interested. Have a splendid day, sweeties, and remember: with Aether, not even the sky’s the limit!”

Her heels tap-tap-tapped as she left at a brisk pace, back into the cold streets of Edinburgh. Band remained at the confection-laden table with the others, thinking. While it did strike him as funny that any woman in her thirties would call a grizzled forty-nine-year-old man a ‘sweetie’, he wondered more about taking her up on her offer. “Even if we didn’t need the money, I figure we probably oughta pay the Foundation a visit sooner or later,” he put forward. “Even if I ain’t a Pokemon fiend like Bede or Bowser Junior, it seems like an important place.”

“Shoah,” Lucia replied. “But ouah fahst oahdah of business is whatevah the deal with the skeletons is, right?”

Band nodded, already trying to figure out a path to take that might lead them in that direction. “Mm-hm. Right now though, I ain’t exactly swimmin’ in ideas, other’n just waitin’ for sundown and seein’ for ourselves.”

“Excuse me.” The two glanced over at Frisk, cognizant of the first time she’d spoken up since the show. Her expression took them by surprise; it was clouded, stormy, and even suspicious. “Before we move on from the company Ms. Wicke works for, there’s something she said that stuck out to me.” She took a deep breath. “Actually, it just about slapped me in the face. She said…she said that the mission statement of her company, the Aether Foundation, is to ‘love and protect’ all Pokemon. Love and protect…that’s exactly what she said.”

Band blinked, wondering if Frisk meant Wicke herself, or a different she, whose association with this or any matter was of utmost significance. With all eyes on her, Frisk wasted no time clearing things up. “The woman who attacked and stranded us in the middle of the icy ocean on our boat trip over here, and left us to die. Rather than fight us herself, she summoned two monsters with strange, supernatural abilities to do her bidding. We survived, but only thanks to Linkle, who could freeze the water for us. The rest of the trip was agony.” Her face tightened. “She said her name was L.”

“L?” Band repeated the name, his face and manner deadly serious. It didn’t ring a bell, but it needled him nonetheless. “Can you describe her?” After Frisk obliged, the detective narrowed his eyes. “Apparently, the other half of the team, the ones Ace here was with, ran into some boat trouble themselves this mornin’. They got attacked by someone in red armor, a tall man that people called a ‘Consul’. Another one showed up this afternoon in the Metro and sicced every cat in the joint on us.”

The news didn’t make Frisk any happier. “While laying low after our arrival, we did a little digging around and found out that L is also a Consul. It seems like she’s the person in charge of Edinburgh.”

“That makes three Consuls,” Band groaned. “Probably means she’s the boss of the Aether Foundation, too. So much for ‘love and protect.’ Worst case scenario, it also means she knows we’re here, ‘cause the cops answer to whoever’s in charge. To think I just walked right in and announced my presence. God, this is some funked-up sheet music.”

“The Consul’s aftah yah?” Lucia blinked, her brows as high as they could get. “I mean, I only know hah by reputation, but yeah. Iyahn’s ain’t exactly subtle when he stahts bellyachin’ about whatevah she wants him to do. No wondah he jumped on yah case, she probably had ‘em lookin’ out fah any unusual newcomahs.” She removed her hat and ran her hand through her hair, clearly nervous. “We bettah be real cayahful.”

Band suddenly jumped up as if he had ants in his pants, no longer confident in this place’s safety. “We can’t stay here and wait for ‘em to catch up with us. We gotta find somewhere to disappear.”

“My place ain’t any good,” Lucia said, getting to her feet. “They know wheah I live.”

Frisk stood also. “Albedo and I found a hideout. But before we go anywhere, we need to get in touch with him. He should be at the big library. The New Minion?”

“Noumenon?” The police officer nodded quickly. “Yeah, I can get us theah from heah, no sweat. Can take us by a bank to get these cashed, too.” She waved the check given to her by Wicke.

Band popped one last brownie into his mouth and made for the door. “Then letsh boogie.”

---

After a tense but uneventful stop at a nearby bank, where the group got to see small wads of zenny magically wired to them from the ether, Lucia led the others in the direction of the Noumenon. All five of them -Ace, Band, Lucia, Frisk, and Prisoner- hustled along as fast as they could without being conspicuous, casting many an awry glance down every alley and around any corner, but if they were being followed or spied on their enemies gave no sign. All told the trip took about an hour, errand included, so it was just past three by the time the team reached their destination. Funnily enough, they could see it from the very outside; it was rather hard to miss.

In keeping with the standards set by some of the absurdly colossal buildings in Edinburgh, the Noumenon towered over much of the cityscape, reaching hundreds of stories into the crisp arctic sky if not further. It stood as tall as the Great Pumpkin that formed the magical city’s centerpiece, if not that ginormous gourd’s ‘hat’, which doubled or perhaps tripled its height. The Noumenon, at least, was much narrower, yet its classical resplendence still dominated most of the city block that housed it, and at its zenith stood a metallic colossus that may have just as well been Atlas, shouldering the weight of the world’s knowledge on his shoulders. Next to it, Big Band felt very small. The only thing that stopped a minutes-long pause to marvel at the staggeringly vast structure was the fact that he’d already been forced to come to terms with the Great Pumpkin itself, a building so big it housed a whole nother city inside it. He took a deep breath and went in.



The rules of the Noumenon, as offered by the bookworm Lex behind the front desk to first-time visitors, were simple. Be quiet, be courteous, clean up after yourself, keep an eye out for less friendly bookworms (some nerdy, some psychic, and others downright nasty), and don’t go anywhere you shouldn’t. The lowest couple scores of the building’s many floors were open to the public, their shelves packed with the written words of a thousand thousand worlds, while higher levels were restricted to scholars possessed of the title Archon. The very highest, meanwhile, were sealed away from all except Edinburgh’s governing council, a very select group. So enormous was this place’s interior that everyone who entered was encouraged to take a magic bookmark from the front desk as they perused the facility. Those bookmarks functioned as a dowsing rod that could be used to find either people or books within the library. Even then, countless magical familiars scurried around the place helping people to find and carry their books, or who got lost. There seemed to be a great deal of (mostly utilitarian) magic here overall, from flying carpets to on-call candles to everlasting inkwells, fittingly enough for the number-one source of spellbooks in Edinburgh. Ominous guards roved around with heads covered in wax, silently keeping the peace, and there were even pools of wax for some reason.

It was pretty overwhelming, but Band didn’t come here to study. Once he took a bookmark in mechanical hand, he held it up as instructed and said, “Albedo.” Sure enough, the bookmark moved on its own, a number inscribing itself toward the tip: twenty-six. That, Lex said, would be the floor where they’d find their friend. The only problem was getting up there, since Ace was strongly averse to magic, and Band himself couldn’t just rocket-blast through a place like this lest he disturb the peace at best or cause rampant destruction at worst. That meant the stairs, and as Band stood at a seemingly infinite staircase, he realized that death might be preferable.

Raz had been uncharacteristically silent since the Other fight. In a bit of a mad dash to re-prove himself to Lili, hoping that a display of bravery against some monsters would clear the awkwardness of their scuffle, Raz instead got shot down hard and had been out of the count for most of the fight. It was... embarrassing, to say the least. He was shaping up to be a pretty key figure in things around Suoh, maybe even all of their stay at Midgar. He couldn't get reckless like that again! Even after Peach so helpfully healed him Raz kept to himself, mostly following everyone else's lead in the aftermath of the fight, until being addressed directly snapped him out of his funk.

"Uh, what?" He blinked up at Pit, as if his eyes were out of focus. "Oh, no, I can't. Sorry. Thought Transference is a pretty high-level technique, I never learned it back home. And Clairvoyance only works if you're the one using it..." Such a matter-of-fact denial might've stung, but at least it roused Raz into a bit of action.

He chose to stay out of the proceedings at the gym, deciding it was better to let himself heal up a bit more than getting right back into a brawl, and while everyone was checking out the gym the next step of their plan was revealed: infiltrating the Psych-OSF.

Raz nodded to Peach and Goldlewis. "Oh right, I've totally got an in. Me and Roxas even managed to free one of my friends, Lili Zanotto, so she's on our side too! A bit more than she already was at least. She's, y'know, cool. On the level. In on things." He cleared his throat. Coach Oleander is her squadron's leader, and he offered me a fast track to joining. I tried to get the rest of you in too, but it looks like the Psych-OSF is leaning more on the 'OSF' part of running things. They don't even let non-psychics join anywhere." He scratched his head and glanced out the window at all of the specially-tuned advertisements and road signs.

"It's kinda weird. Back home it was us psychics that were looked down on. Here, they run the place, and anyone else are seen as 'different'. Sorry, guys," he offered to his team members, very sincerely too.

---

Geralt followed along on the sky-rail as the rest of the Seekers descended, managing a landing somewhere halfway between Tora and Poppi's roll, and Giovanna's semi-elegant slide. Not quite tumbling head over foot, but definitely not coming to a smooth stop, the oversized Witcher grunted as he stood back up, looking around to make sure they'd all made it in one piece. Patting himself down to ensure he hadn't lost anything, he gathered with the others to take a peek at their target.

That these thugs were much more prepared for a fight was unfortunate but inevitable, given that they were actually attacking a building site. What they were after, he really wasn't quite sure, but it seemed the Seekers were all of one mind: they had to be stopped. Unbeknownst to him, Giovanna was having similar, if not more thoroughly fleshed-out, thoughts about the mystery of their motives. He wasn't thrilled by the prospect of once again having to remain stealthy, but he was forced to grin and bear it. Or, more accurately, mildly scowl and bear it, but he was a grumpy old man, that was allowed.

Giovanna quickly gave the order to move in, and Geralt charged to cover and hid behind a metal panel, before making a short hop and pulling himself up to the second, and in short order the third, floor. Keeping low, he shuffled to hide behind a hanging tarp, keeping his breathing slow and steady. He doubted anybody could hear him over the talking and yelled orders below, but given his size it was better to be careful. He waited for a minute or so, wondering when something would happen, when the talking quickly cut out, and not long after, a familiar and concerning voice spoke. A G Man. Sighing, Geralt stood and moved to a better vantage point, looking out for another Seeker to see what they were doing.

He did not have time to find one before the blast of a shotgun rang out. Cursing, he moved from his place of cover, making the drop to the ground from where he was, though not without being sure to lower himself a bit first to help mitigate the fall, landing as TNT Randy's dynamite exploded and caused the other G-Men to enter their combat forms.

Quickly casting Quen to protect himself, Geralt grunted as a gunslinger opened fire, and charged forward, letting the magical shield he'd summoned take the damage, tackling the Misconduct to the ground and delivered a pair of brutal punches to the man's face, rendering him unconscious. The feeling of a hockey stick hitting him in the head, breaking the shield, was all Geralt registered for a moment as he fumbled off the gunner, shaking his head as the improvised weapon swung towards his head again.

Without a thought, a massive arm thrust out, catching the hockey stick mid-swing and snapping the tool with a clench. Geralt rose, and to his assailant's credit, they were not cowed, lashing out with the ragged edge of their weapon. Geralt merely raised his arm in a block, catching the weapon on his armor, and grabbed the thug by their neck, lifting them and tossing them at an ally roller blading over to their rescue, knocking the two over. He strode over to the pair as they scrambled to get up, tearing the roller blader's hockey stick from their hand and quickly bashing them in the face with it, turning to the other and jabbing the end of it into their gut, before flipping the stick in his hands and smashing it over their back, shattering the wooden hockey stick and knocking the hoodlum to the floor. Kicking them once in the ribs, and probably cracking a few, he turned and lashed out with a kick than knocked them back to the ground.

Turning to observe the rest of the battle, Geralt drew his crossbow and quickly shot one of the Misconducts that was trying to return to position after Poppi's scattering attack. The bolt didn't manage to pierce the hockey pads, given their bulk, but it certainly scared the thug, who turned to Geralt and opened fire with their shotgun, whiffing badly. As they tried to correct their aim, a blast of unseen force launched them backwards into a beam, giving Geralt time to close the gap and tackle them into the beam, crashing their skull into the metal and knocking them out cold.

"What are we doing about the G-Men?" Geralt called out, watching as the monstrous enforcers fought the Misconducts, tossing a charging stick-wielder over his shoulder. Part of him was missing using his swords, but leaving a trail of corpses would be...perhaps more conspicuous than they were looking for. If Raiden wanted to, he could go ahead, but it was probably better not to piss off their hosts.

Raiden and Poppi offered Susie their own elements. Having never actually tried a 'dark' element before, Susie chose that soon finding it was essentially a gravity manipulation type element. Very useful for fighting, but not for the proposed 'stealth' that was suggested they partake in. While Susie could fly over on her own and find a place to watch the battlefield, she wasn't much one for stealth. Infiltration? For sure. But outright stealth? She knew her limits and she wasn't going to even bother trying something like that. Once things kicked off, she could just jump onto the battlefield inside her Business suit, causing quite the bit of chaos. With this in mind, Susie waited at the top of a tall crane in the construction site in her business suit, waiting to drop down onto the battlefield when the fighting began.

Blazermate meanwhile wanted to try her hand at stealth. She wasn't a stealth based medabot, but it sounded fun! She was nimble in the air, so finding a place to stealth from wasn't an issue. However due to how spread out everyone was, there really wasn't too much she could do unless she worked on the outskirts of the group or placed a distraction...

And a distraction she thought of! While staying high around the top of the buldings, she found a side observation platform area and summoned her Engineer spirit who began making his buildings. The "Clank, clank, clank" of his wrench could be heard echoing through the nearby complex, catching the attention of some of the TNT crew. As Blazermate waited above for some to come investigate, a couple of the TNT group decided to investigate the strange, rhythmic clanking sound. Giggling silently to herself, Blazermate got into position to do what that one western anime hero did, getting ready to grab one of them and take them to the sky.

And as she thought, two of the fringe TNT crew came to investigate, climbing up the scaffolding stairs to investigate the sound. With one motioning for the other to investigate, one of them gingerly turned the corner to see a red dispenser standing between him, a level 2 sentry gun, and the engineer crouching whacking the gun himself. Around this time a loud explosion could be heard, which Blazermate took as her signal. While this guy was confused at what he was seeing, Blazermate swooped down and grabbed his buddy who had been alerted by the loud explosion, chomping his head in her suffering arm shield as she swooped down and back up into the sky. The other member, hearing the muffled screams of his ally and the explosion behind him, came back out to investigate.

And acting out her little reenactment of what she saw on TV, Blazermate dropped the body of the crew member she had bitten at the feet of the other member from her position above as she swooped over. The panicking crew member now on guard with his shotgun all ready, stammering that there was something back here to those around as he looked into the sky for whatever had dropped his buddy. It was around this time that the body of his ally animated into the zombie it had become and leaped at him smelling tasty brains. Blazermate using this distraction to finish that guy off as he was forced to stop searching for her and deal with his now zombified partner.

With two zombies under her command, she told her engineer to move his sentry gun to fire more into the open as more gang members advanced on their location, going back to maneuvering through what she could as she told her zombies to make as much noise as possible to lure more over there into sentry gun fire as she made her way towards where the others were and to cover her approach to the frontlines with everyone else.

Susie meanwhile just at in her mech bored, spending a bit more time buying and selling much like she did when idle. This was thankfully put to an end as the battle below between two transformed G men and the gang members who made the place a bloodbath began. Seeing her chance, Susie got ready and jumped with her business suit, landing onto the battlefield below with her business suit drill whirring and crushing an unfortunate member who had just fired their gun at the transformed G Men. She then made an excuse to potentially get those transformed G men on her side, since her battle helmet was white and all. "How dare you mess with my construction site you hooligans! Take this!" and Susie fired her new gravity enhanced dark missiles, causing singularities that dragged in anything that got close grouping them for followup. And guarding her cockpit when fired upon, as she had learned.

Blazermate meanwhile had taken cover nearby, looking for opportunities to heal that wouldn't get her shot at, at least until she managed to get her projectile shield and could reposition better. At least her zombies and engineer placed sentry near the back of the battlefield would cause some chaos. Although the only ones in a good position for her to heal were Geralt and Giovanna.

When the fighting started, Ganondorf remained strangely inactive. Instead of immediately going on the attack, he just watched and waited. With this many Seekers taking part this time, he decided to observe the big boss's movements and attacks. He figured the extra allies fighting would buy him a moment or two to do this. It wasn't without its costs, though. The large creature was evidently able to stomp more quickly than it looked. Both the attacks were painful to be sure, and when the dust cleared the Gerudo could be seen laying flat on his back. But no matter how much pain he felt, he didn't so much as wince. He scowled and grit his teeth, but nothing beyond that.

"Time to get... serious." the man muttered. Still laying down, he held up his right hand and suddenly the Triforce began to shine brighter than ever. And then he pushed himself to his feet, breathing through gritted teeth and practically ignoring the pain of his broken ribs. But as he returned to his feet, Ganondorf began to slowly grow noticeably larger. In moments he was nearly twice as tall as Bowser, and just as much more muscular as well. His normally dark tan skin had become a dark shade of bluish green and covered by a mix of same-colored fur and scales. His human face had warped into that of a boar mixed with a reptile and bearing golden ram-like horns. His crimson hair had extended into a long feathery headdress. And Ganondorf's clothing could still be seen adorned by this new creature, albeit looking like it was too small of a fit. And the pair of weapons in Ganondorf's collection had also changed shape, and were now much larger and heavier looking than previously. He had been transformed into a frightening beast known only as Ganon.



Ganon said nothing, made no indication that he was even still the same being other than the Triforce still glowing on his right hand. It gave a low, rumbling war cry before stomping forward with an enraged charge. He swung his massive blades sluggishly but also wildly, and with no regard for either friend or foe that happened to be caught by them. Instead Ganon's hate-filled eyes were locked onto one target and one target only: the very creature that had previously crushed him while he had been in his weaker form.

Ganon's attacks, though wild in nature, were largely focused on Mom. If any lesser enemies happened to be cleaved by his swords because they got too close, then all the better. But the main target of Ganon's ire was Mom. And it was Mom at whom all of his sword swings were squarely aimed. He didn't completely ignore the smaller enemies. If a large enough number of them tried to swarm him, Ganon would simply spin around and unleash a powerful dark energy beam from his mouth in a circular sweep to keep them at bay, only to then return his focus to attacking Mom. And should Mom float above and stomp back down elsewhere in the room, Ganon simply turned and charged forward until once again he could unleash his hatred upon the boss monster.

This was the pattern that Ganon repeated until either the battle ended, or the transformation wore off - whichever came first. Regardless, by the time the transformation did inevitably wear off, Ganondorf himself would be rendered exhausted - still wounded from broken ribs and other previously inflicted injuries. It had been quite a while since the last time his true form had been unleashed, and he'd almost forgotten how taxing it could be to truly go all out like that. But it wouldn't stay that way. The King of Evil was determined to restore his full power to its original glory. This, as far as he was concerned, was merely a glimpse of his true might.

With the all-clear given, all hell quickly broke loose. After concluding her gravity-empowered fusillade from on high, Poppi momentarily retreated from the Misconducts’ return fire with her masterpon. The two cycled clockwise around the partially-constructed structure away from where they’d last been seen, looking for another angle, and as they repositioned both driver and blade snuck a shot at the action down below.

Rather than face the firing squad that would be the Misconducts’ reply after her attempt to take down their boss, Giovanna hightailed it while her foes dealt with the concussive force of Poppi’s dark garage, forcing a handful of the goons to give chase around the side of the building. At the same time, Geralt made his entrance on the opposite side, laying waste to three crooks who happened to be on that side. Though literally outgunned, the Witcher fought with brutally pragmatic use of his strength and magic. In just a few moments he’d downed all three, leaving them writhing on the ground to nurse their bruises and fractions as he joined in the projectile mayhem with his crossbow. A couple seconds later, however, the furious report of Blazermate’s sentry from behind him completely outclassed his output, plugging any Misconducts unfortunate enough to be in cover facing the opposite way with lead, starting with the hockey player Geralt tossed over his shoulder. Neither Tora nor Poppi could hear the man’s shouts over the turret’s gunfire.

Susie joined the fight in a rather bloodthirsty manner, landing on and grinding one of the hapless hoodlums to pulpy powder with that giant war machine. Doing so got the attention of almost every Misconduct scattered around the bottom level at once, and bullets riddled her Business Suit from all directions, but her infused missiles wreaked even further havoc on their foxholes by yanking them and their equipment around. The distraction offered by that mechanized menace proved to be the undoing of those closest to the G-men, since the minute they looked away, Loup-garou was among them like a wolf among sheep. As one man aimed a shotgun at the back of Susie’s head, seeking to cut the head off the snake while he still could, Loup-garou struck him from behind with Souffle D’eclair, frying him in a brilliant blue surge of severe electric breath. Nearby Misconducts turned on the wolfman, but he swept through the area with Axel Claw, striking random foes. Unfortunately for Susie, his cohort had already assumed everyone in the area who wasn’t a G-man to be an enemy, so her Business Suit took three medium-damage slashes as well. Further off, Manananggal finished draining a female gangster of blood with her proboscis-like tongue, healing some of the gunshots she’d already taken.

Those two, Poppi realized, were going to be a problem. While the rank-and-file Misconducts could kill someone in mere moments with their firearms, they weren’t particularly strong in and of themselves. They’d bitten off more than they could chew, and the Seekers would be paying the price. If only Raiden and Benedict had come along to help. With a full strike team, they might have been able to end this before the G-men got involved.

As Tora and Poppi neared the edge of the upper bend of the C-shaped structure’s second floor, ready to help pick off their foes, they spotted TNT Randy on the offensive. He hurled a handful of lit TNT sticks toward the area occupied by Geralt and Blazermate’s turret. The ensuing chain-explosion destroyed the sentry, and with a roar Randy wrenched his axelike hockey stick free from the cleft skull of Blazermate’s last zombie. “You’ve all made a BIG mistake coming here!” he bellowed, taking aim with his rocket launcher. “You’re history!”

Tora pointed down at what was about to be a big problem with his wing. “Poppi!”

“Roger!” Poppi scooped up and kicked her Masterpon like a soccer ball, probably not what he meant but effective nonetheless. He hurtled down and bodily smacked Randy right in his mask, staggering him enough that his first RPG went wide and exploded against one of the third-floor supports on the right.

“Argh!” Randy growled as Tora landed. When the Nopon started swinging his Variable Saber the huge man brought up his shield, blocking strike after strike. Tora quickly realized his blade wasn’t getting through, but thanks to his low profile spotted an alternative. He reversed his weapon’s grip and stabbed its laser blade right into Randy’s foot.

The Misconduct miniboss howled. He slammed into Tora with his shield, bowling him away, only for Poppi to strike the next instant. She swooped in like a peregrine falcon and struck with her full weight and thrust behind a dive kick straight to the hockey mask. The rocket launcher clattered down beside its owner as Randy slammed head-first into the ground. Poppi’s momentum carried them both a few more meters, and when they slid to a stop she leveled her revolvers at the big man’s face. “Hey, hey. Roughhousing with Masterpon is Poppi’s job.” A hissing noise beside her got her attention, however, and she turned to see another bundle of TNT tossed up into the air. She jetted sideways before it could explode, releasing Randy but making sure he took a bit of self-damage in the process.

At about that time, the ground began to rumble slightly. Something was coming, and as a grinding noise grew louder, those not immersed in the action got the urge to look toward the street. After another moment, a giant bipedal machine rumbled down the road, tearing across the asphalt like a hockey player sliding on ice. It stopped, turned to face the construction site, and began to walk, carelessly tossing aside or crushing any cars or other obstacles in its way. Predominantly sleek black but with nodes of heavy, bulbous green plate reinforcing several areas, it resembled a walking tank. Pile drivers like talons on its feet pierced the ground with every step for added stability, while its long, double-jointed arms featured pronounced claws, blood-red like the mech’s other highlights. In those claws the machine held a weapon even taller than itself, a giant pickaxe-like implement with a chainsaw axe on one side, a pointed hammer on the other, and rocket boosters in both directions. At the very center of the machine rested its cockpit, enclosed in armor and adorned with both glowing red eyes and enormous horns, like a steer’s. The end result was an engine of destruction blended with a bovine titan, every bit as imposing as it was enormous.

“Attention, all you maggots crawlin’ around down there!” a boisterous, soldierly voice broadcasted from the machine’s speakers, loud enough to make its slight unhinged bent noticeable. The cockpit opened just enough to let the cyborg pilot see the scene with his own eyes. “This is Khamsin, of the Winds of Destruction! You know what that name means? Freedom! Today, I’m freein’ this place from scum of the earth like you!” The chainsaw blade of his colossal weapon spooled up, roaring like an industrial wood chipper. “So buckle the FUCK up, ‘cause here. I. COOOME!” With Manananggal pointing him in the right direction, the fearsome newcomer charged straight for the construction site, eager to tear asunder anything that stood in the way of freedom.