The City of Tears was a vast locale, a veritable world all on its own, the various sections of the city like separate continents stretched out over an inky sea. Even still, it felt like a city. Despite its size it was clear how busy things were, people (bug-like or otherwise) milling about, getting from A to B, riding the boats across the water. Everywhere had somebody in it.

Except for one specific spot.

Somewhere in the heart of the City of Tears was a section of old brickwork and tall pillars that was cordoned off. A few guards stood by the entrances into this square, not only to ward off any passersby from walking in, but also to protect the city from anything that threaten the rest of the city. Because sitting in the center of this city block was a large, round manhole cover, a multi-winged bug with pointed mandibles blazoned on its surface. This, most residents understood, was the entrance to the Royal Waterways; the various sewage pipes and support pillars underneath the main city, now defunct and filled with all sorts of monsters and vile creatures.

A creak of rusted metal echoed through the empty square as the manhole opened, pushed upwards by a long arm clad in red. This was followed by the owner of the hand, naturally. A middle-aged Japanese man in a red suit with wild hair, heaving the entrance to the Royal Waterways open. "Geeeeez," he sighed, "that thing is heavy..." Rolling his shoulder, Ichiban lifted a burlap sack up and placed it on the stone floor, climbing out after. "I'm gonna need a serious bath after this one." He wiggled a foot, flinging a neon orange glob from his shoe. He grabbed the sack again, filled with viscous elixirs in wide jars and thin vials of glowing blue liquid. Hoisting it over his shoulder, Ichiban headed out of the cordoned square. "Time to get you guys back to Dr. Hypatia."

He walked the winding, multi-layered roads of the City of Tears with ease, each step a wet squelch from his drenched shoes. There were multiple routes back to the Sanitarium, but the one Ichiban liked to use took him through the main plaza. Seeing all the lights, all the people going about their business or just taking in the atmosphere, it filled him with a sense of community that he felt he lost somewhere along the way. He couldn't quite place why though...

As he wandered into the plaza, he shifted the sack of medicine on his back, causing its contents to shift. A jagged corner of one of the elixirs dug a hole in the burlap, a hole that quickly widened and dropped the elixir to the ground. "Wuh-oh!" Ichiban was quick to bundle the sack in his arms to keep any more from spilling out, but had to rush after the lost elixir as it bounced and tumbled across the stones. He caught up to it, just-so coincidentally as it rolled to a stop beside a certain group of new faces.

"Yo, Cornifer!" Ichiban gave the map-maker a wave as he stooped to pick up the elixir. "Any good maps lately? I've been dying to get a better scope of this place." He only just realized he was interrupting something. He addressed the Seekers, "oh, sorry, didn't see you guys there. I'll let you get back to--" Ichiban's eyes went wide as he finally got a good look at the group. "Whoa, you guys look awful!"

It took him another comical beat for Ichiban to realize the faux pas. "Ah-ha, I didn't mean it like that..." He straightened his back, medicinal vials clinking in his arms. "You guys just look like you got hit with some nasty stuff. You all got some of that plague that's out there, right?" Ichiban raised the one elixir in his hand, as best her could with the sack in his arms. "I was actually takin' this stuff back to the Sanitarium just now. If you want, I'd be happy to show you the way. This place can get a little confusin' to get around."

---

Benedict's @Dark Cloud and Giovanna's @Lugubrious

Zenkichi put his hands up after Benedict mentioned arresting him, "Woah, woah, there, Benny, nobody said anything about any arrests!" but otherwise let the man continue speaking, narrowing his eyes. So Benedict needed help? Must be quite the pickle he'd found himself in if he needed...this kind of help. Not just backup from another Lieutenant, but a rogue Special Operations agent, a few robots, and this big scary-looking dude with two swords. Why two, though? Zenkichi found his eyes lingering on Geralt a moment longer than the others, confusion not quite showing through, but moved on when the Witcher raised an eyebrow.

What Benedict said about the city being corrupted from within almost, almost made Zenkichi roll his eyes. Was...was Benedict not aware of-no, no he wouldn't be. Zenkichi been one of the unlucky few to come face-to-face with that ugly side of Midgar's government and not only keep his life, but his job. It could be confusing to parse who was in on the darkness that lurked behind that door, who knew but kept their head down, and who was blissfully unaware. Was Benedict finally coming to realize that a group of otherwise-loyal Special Operatives wouldn't up and quit just because leadership changed hands? Or had he found yet another conspiracy?

Giovanna's blatant reaction to Benedict's forthright honesty made Zenkichi smirk a bit. It was nice to know that his co-worker trusted him so much, though he had to agree with Giovanna's frustration. What if he was in on it? What if Zenkichi summoned Valjean right on top of them, dropped a Megido, and started carving through them while his G-Men transformed? Opsec was vital when you were dealing with corruption, and while Zenkichi knew Benedict enough to know he wasn't in on the dark dealings that happened behind closed doors, they couldn't risk him blabbing to somebody who did.

They both ignored Giovanna's attempts to get Zenkichi to leave, but she gave up quite a bit of information in doing so. It only took a moment to put the pieces together. So they'd been the ones who cozied up to Khamsin and dealt with the thugs trying to attack the construction site? By all means, it sounded like Khamsin was the one who did most of the damage, especially killing the G-Man, but he couldn't ignore that. It seemed Giovanna wasn't much better than Benedict in that regard, though she clearly thought she was.

"So you're the ones who killed Manananggal?" Zenkichi coldly interrupted, hands coming down on the table. "Surely an agent of your caliber realizes that assaulting Public Security agents is a serious offense?" He was lying through his teeth that he'd believed that, but to be frank, transferring his frustration at Khamsin onto the idiots who'd tried to befriend the lunatic wasn't difficult. The emotion was very real. Geralt's hackles raised, and his hand subtly drifted to his crossbow, ready for a fight.

After a moment however, the cold facade fell, and Zenkichi pushed off the table, standing up mostly straight. "I'm sorry to hear you're retiring, Lieutenant Pascal. Public Security will be lesser without you there. As a professional courtesy, let me give you and your new friends some advice: Don't talk so much. Now, I have an investigation to run, so if you wouldn't mind, I need to get going. If you need help, you know how to get in touch." Stepping away from the table of Seekers, he shook his head, looking up to the sky with a long-suffering sigh. "Always so complicated." He half-muttered, walking out with his hands in his pockets.

"What just happened?" Geralt wondered as the door closed behind Zenkichi, blinking a few times. "Should we trust him?" The Witcher asked, turning to Benedict.

Outside the restaurant, Zenkichi and his G-Men spread out after a quick chat, each heading in seemingly different directions, but none actually letting the restaurant out of their sight. The civilians in the plaza, realizing what was about to happen, slowly but assuredly made their way out of the area to avoid the coming trouble.

Zenkichi himself was in the laziest possible hiding spot, just on the other side of the large statue, staring at his phone. "What do you know, Pascal...?" He muttered, shaking his head. He knew he could trust the man, but those friends of his were trouble. Whether they'd be trouble for him, for Public Security, for Midgar...or, he hoped, for Midgar's enemies...he didn't know.

Akane would never be safe here. Not unless he kept his head down and waited for the right moment. Benedict and his new allies might be that moment, or they might get them killed, and he had to know which it was.

The layout of the Under did not follow any kind of logic. It was nonsensical in the worst way, nearly impossible to traverse with any kind of bearing in mind. Maybe Therion was already delirious with fever, or maybe he had quickly grown desensitized to the patchwork World of Light, but when the doorway inside of some huge fleshy area like the inside of a giant monster's stomach itself at the bottom of a dungeon inside of a chest in a mine, led to a stone hallway which led to a city of rain, he did not even question it beyond the initial thought of The layout of the Under did not follow any kind of logic. He silently blinked at the city ahead of them, then tilted his head up and blinked at the darkness far above them. At least they could easily wash off like this, letting the water pour down on them.

His silence continued as the Seekers boarded a boat, then filed together down dark cobblestone roads and rain. It hadn't been that long since 'infection,' but he definitely felt sick. Maybe it had even started in the earlier levels of that basement, enemies were coughing up globs of blood there too. His limbs were heavy and he had a pounding headache, not to mention his tongue felt thick and there was a subtle aching in his body that the magic healing of the Seekers' strikers hadn't alleviated.

In Orsterra, Therion had never taken traveling with an apothecary for granted. There had been plenty of times that Alfyn's skills had come in handy. Now, Therion really wished the goofball was around. He'd gladly trade any of the Seekers for him to whip up some curative... well, to be fair, Alfyn had become his friend so the thief would gladly trade a Seeker for him regardless, if it didn't mean he'd be dragging the apothecary into the same predicament.

He wondered how Primrose was doing elsewhere in the ruins.

"..."

Gods, he felt terrible. He'd thought it before but if it was possible to quit now he would seriously consider it, but as it was he didn't want to be stranded down here, unable to find a way back to the surface world. For now he dragged himself along with the group over to a familiar face.

'Trade secret' my foot, Therion thought bitterly. They'd been through hell to get here and yet there was seemingly some cozy, faster route out there somewhere. At least the mapmaker was helpful, giving them a freebie (Therion would be damned if they paid for this map, he was on Sectonia's side on this one) and giving them a breakdown of the city, plus directions to a treatment center. There was a warning too, to avoid the Consul in this area. Therion's jaw tightened. Was it the same one that cut their lift earlier? It would feel great to repay them for that, but the thief would heed Cornifer's advice about steering clear of them. None of them were in any shape for further fighting at the moment.

About the time Sectonia flew off to do whatever it was she was wont to do, a stranger dressed in red rolled up to them. Despite meeting them just that second, he offered to show the Seekers the way to the sanitarium. Nice guy. Therion's fingers twitched. He could tell an easy mark like this instantly, but as fatigued with illness as he was there was nothing he could do about it. Instead he shoved one hand into his pocket, while the other manacle-free hand gestured to the road ahead.

"Lead on," he said to the man in red after a shaky breath. The sooner he could get well again, the better.

Midna was hot on Goldlewis’ heels when it came to springing into the fray. Though her mouth was filled with the lingering unpleasant mix of bile from what she had had to do, and a combo of oddly tasting Data Soup and Bone Potage she had acquired and then drunk to heal and reinvigorate herself, she had the steel needed to do what needed to be done.

Her wolfos leapt down from the semi with the princess holding firm to its coat with one hand, and her one handed interdimensional ax in the other, its demon blood caked blade crackling with electricity.

Just behind them, Pit cleared the top of the truck. Though his eyes light up briefly at the sight of the orbital laser, his face otherwise kept the same expression of serious concentration that it'd had since the end of the last battle. Technically they'd been successful, the gate had been closed and they'd dealt with the... monsters. The way it concluded though had been miserable, leaving a grim feeling hanging over the Seekers. The way Pit usually coped was by focusing on saving as many people as he could.

He used the bow as a makeshift pole to vault himself from the roof of the truck, giving himself more momentum when he went for a flying kick at one of the clawed aberrations the laser had dragged toward them. It connected with the hunter's head, though with not as much force as Pit hoped. It reeled but kept on its feet, swiping its claws up as Pit pushed off of it. Directly above it he shifted the bow into its two blade halves, and with one held in forward grip and the other in reverse he drove them both down in a vigorous double slash. The aberration let out a howl as its shoulder and the side of its neck were sliced through. It brought its one of its huge claws up to prevent further damage as Pit landed in front of it and kept up the attack. Its other hand lashed out, catching only the edges of the angel's tunic before its shoddy guard was broken with an upward slash. Flipping the reversed blade back around Pit stuck with a forward cross chop, tearing into its abdomen and finishing it off.

"Moving in!" he stated, snapping the two blades back together and leaving the remaining hunter and the axe wielder in order to even the odds against the small horde of aberrations the officers were fighting against.

Instead of fighting, Roxas focused on using his flowmotion to slip past the hostile aberrations. His goal was to make a bee-line for the shelter, since he figured there were probably people inside in need of help getting out.

”I’ll try to get the people out!” he told the Policeman when he made it to the vicinity, ”Is there another shelter they can go to?”

Midna charged the big aberration giving a battle cry of ”I’m putting you down!” as she pulled back her shadow hand and then drove it forwards in a massive punch. Her fist met the aberration’s tree-felling chop in tremendous trade of blows, resulting in damage to both unusual limbs. As Midna reeled her shadow hand back from the blow, she had her wolfos leap to the side of the mutant so she could dart in and out to deliver a harassing ax blow to its flank, the hack of a strike bringing down a bolt of lightning atop its target should it hit. Her bolt from the blue struck true, but this monster wouldn’t go down easily. With its size and range it could just about keep up with the wolfos and its rider, its hard-to-stop blade swung again and again.

Karin leapt into the fray, dropping her heel against one of the clawed monsters. It blocked and slid backwards, giving her enough time to spin around and drive an elbow into its back, before tripping it with an elegant sweep. She brought her foot down upon its head, and it screeched, slashing up at her in futile retaliation. Karin back stepped easily. An accosted Filfthwing then stuck an arrow into her shoulder with a painful yellow spark. The clawed creature in front of her swiped up her torso, and she stumbled backward. ”Aah!” The monster advanced and she jumped over its head to avoid the next swing and back walked to temporarily retreat into her allied lines, not wanting to get caught any more out of position. When the clawed creature approached again she kept it at bay with well placed, well timed kicks, and blocked another arrow fired her way.

For a few moments now Goldlewis had been facing off with one of the gladius-wielding swordfighters. It sliced at him with such aggression that he’d been locked down in defense mode, but the veteran wasn’t just blocking there helplessly. He watched closely, getting a feel for the timing of his enemy’s attacks, until he could finally execute a carefully-timed instant block that gave him the advantage in the closest of quarters. His ensuing shoulder barge beat the aberration to the punch, comboing neatly into a backhand blow to the jaw. It recovered faster than he expected and clipped him with a swipe, but as it went for a second Goldlewis ducked back to launch the aberration with an impressive double high kick. As it flailed its limbs in the air, an upward Behemoth Typhoon from Goldlewis smashed it behind him toward the semi. Whether it lived or died was of no concern right this second; the veteran could see Karin under assault from several angles, and whether or not she needed his help he moved in to assist.

He opened with a Thunderbird grenade to hit the hunter in its unprotected back and send it stumbling towards Karin, then made for the backlines where the Filthwings flew to help get the archers off his allies’ backs. One of the defenders, Juliette, had the same idea but got accosted by the slugger on the way. It dished out haymaker after gut-busting haymaker, but Juliette moved nimbly. She swerved between its blows and planted a kidney shot in its side with her gauntlet, sending a shockwave of pain through its body. It went for broke with a wild hook but overextended enough to turn sideways, and Juliette stepped in to seize its dangling leg with her off hand. As she pulled it toward her she punched it square in the back, slamming it face-first into the ground. She prepared to finish it off with a punch to the head, not noticing the archer charging a shot.

“Incoming!” Goldlewis hollered, forcing Juliette to take notice. She grabbed her target’s head instead and picked it up to use as a ‘human’ shield, and once it took the blow for her she sent it flying toward the archer with a soccer kick. Though he took a few of the other archer’s shots on the way, Goldlewis hurried over to slam both other Filthwings into the ground with another mighty Behemoth Typhoon.

That left just one archer with a clear shot at the veteran’s head, but before Goldlewis knew what was happening Julietta had run over and sprung off his back. “Heads up!” She braved the danger to unleash a flying wallop with her gauntlet that sent the Filthwing into the highway wall, the heavy impact cracking both concrete and chitin.

Previously, when Goldlewis’s slam had sent the Hunter towards Karin, she was the one doing the pouncing. ”Orochi!” She zipped forward, turned, and thrust her back towards her opponent, crushing it bodily. It crumpled onto its knees just in time for Karin to finish it off with a series of advancing palm strikes and elbow thrusts. Outwardly, Karin didn’t seem any worse for wear from the damage she had taken, but it was still damage, and once it broke the threshold of her health she would be extremely vulnerable. Karin still felt the wounds of the blunt damage from earlier, the slashing up her chest and the arrow in her back.

Once Roxas was in the shelter, he could immediately see it wasn’t ideal. Namely there was a group of wounded kept protected in a back corner where they would hopefully stay out of the danger. But Roxas had an idea, and went back to the corner where they were all sitting and laying before summoning one of his Keyblades, ”It’s okay, everyone. I’m here to get you all back on your feet.” then he held the weapon straight up and thrust its tip upward in the direction of the ceiling, ”Heal!” at this command, a trio of yellow and green bell-shaped flowers appeared over his head and seemed to shake as if ringing once or twice. Immediately Roxas and the wounded around him felt a refreshing green aura wash over them - open wounds closing and bruises seemingly washing away as if they had never been there.

Outside the battle raged on, although in Midna’s case she was in the midst of leaving it rapidly behind, the once again bleeding princess riding hard and fast away while the ax brute pounded after her, barely being slowled by crates she was portaling in behind her to trip it up.

”Come on come on come on, there!” the princess took a sudden right, darting between vehicles and then into a dead end in the shade of an abandoned truck.

A heartbeat leather the brute charged in after her, ax raised and coming down with a devastating chop, only for it to find itself alone as the twilight Princess vanished into shadows and her steed into a portal. Momentarily confused, it spun upon hearing a call of ”Pin it down!” from behind.

Standing now at the entrance to the dead end she had lead it into, the princess’s command was obeyed by her initiate strikers, which caused roots of psychic energy to burst from the ground and walls of wreckage and to wrap around the hulking mutant.

It struggled, snapping swaths of its bindings with every movement, but it was a delay and that was all she had wanted. A quartet of icy javelins speared the juggernaut from her other strikers, her maxed out Vibrava blasted it with its fiery dragon’s breath. The princess herself shot a stream of lightning from her ax blade and slapped down a twilight volley bomb using her shadow hand, all while riding her cyber bear. Its cannon blast was the last of her veritable barrage of firepower against the mutant, its goopy projectile exploding and showering it with burning goop.

While the Seekers dealt with their opponents and Roxas took care of the civilians, both soothing and safeguarding them from further harm as he guided them toward extraction, Atlas and Hayato handled the remainder that were under fire by Pit’s light arrows. The Neuron officer put aside defense to rush the last few aberrations down. He struck them with a flurry of baton and gladius strikes in a prolonged beatdown, then dodged whenever the going got rough to keep up the pressure. Though not as speedy or combo-oriented as his fellow, Atlas took command of the battlefield so long as he kept possession of his ball. His charges, shoves, and blocks forced enemies to reposition while his intercepts took the heat off his allies’ backs, dictating the flow of the fight. When Hayato knocked a monster down, launched it up, or knocked it back, Atlas would roll in to polish it off with a beefy coordinated finisher.

He and Hayato made short work of the last hunter and swordfighter, and once Juliette cratered a Filthwing archer against the sidewall, a goal shot kick from Atlas smashed the monster through to plummet to the ground far below as it died. Off in the background, the drones carried all three civilians on their stretchers off to a waiting helicopter. Goldlewis let his shoulders sag for a moment as he caught his breath. Considering the scale of the chaos around the Seekers, it was a small victory, but a complete one, and any victory was worth celebrating.

“Here, are you hurt?” Atlas offered the Seekers a couple pills of Medicine.

All too soon, however, an explosion in the sky grabbed their attention. A different helicopter spiraled through the air, swathed in flame and surrounded by Filthwings. The nearby officers’ radios lit up with panicked yells. “Mayday, mayday!” a voice shouted. “I can’t shake them, I’m going down!”

Grimly aghast, Goldlewis couldn’t avert his gaze. He watched as the helicopter hit the highway a couple thousand feet up ahead, but it didn’t explode on impact. The officers exchanged a glance, brief but very communicative. “You go on ahead,” Juliette told the others, nodding. “We’ve got things under control here.” Hayato dipped his head in respect, then turned to sprint toward the new crisis. With a sigh Goldlewis hefted his coffin and followed.

The helicopter had landed, slid messily across the pavement, and finally come to rest against an almost horizontal semitruck blocking the entire road, the flames burning especially bright in the shadow of another elevated overpass just ahead. By the time Goldlewis arrived on the scene, Hayato had already reached the helicopter pilot, who’d been extracted from the wreck by a female officer with a striking resemblance to him.

“Hey, are you okay?” the woman asked him. “Stay with me!”

The pilot shuddered, clearly in great pain. “My leg… my damn leg… I can’t move like this.”

Hayato stepped in to assist without a word. Together the twins hoisted him between their shoulders, then turned to begin the long trip back to the evacuation checkpoint. They tried not to put too much stress on the pilot, but they moved as urgently as they could, perhaps instinctively sensing that their time was short. Barely did the pair get three steps from the crashed chopper before the air around the highway began to flicker. Arcs of red lightning crackled violently as fresh gates tore open in reality, not just cracks like the one Hayato closed earlier, but full-on crimson portals. Inside, Goldlewis could see the faintest suggestion of an alien world, black stone and red crystal suspended between two immense plates, with a diagonal column of light on the horizon.

“A gate?” Akira gasped, her eyes narrowed. Then the gates rippled, and something came through.

Another voice came through Hayato’s radio. “Come in, PD025! Corruption levels just shot up over there, what’s going on?”

Goldlewis drew in a sharp breath. He couldn’t see it but something was there. The air shimmered ever-so-faintly, the only real sign of their presence being the subtle distortion of the background as seen through the space they occupied. But that distortion moved with weight, the stop-start of a living thing. He couldn’t make out details of any kind; it was like trying to track a fly on the wing, there one second and gone the next, only for another twinge to turn his gaze in another direction. But the veteran grit his teeth and gripped the chain of his coffin tight. Obviously this wasn’t good, but from everything he’d heard he did know something else. “Chimeras!” he barked, having quickly come to an important realization as his attempts to trace the strange movement were confounded. “At least two of ‘em! Maybe more!” Unable to sense the invisible beings, he searched the ground for any sign of their movement in the traces of dust and ash. When he finally noticed something that wasn’t a false positive, it was too late. “Agh!” he grunted, clamping his hand down on the fresh claw slash that had suddenly opened up on his shoulder. “They’re fast!” He swung his coffin and hit nothing but air. This was going to be rough.

Karin got into her finding stance, turning around and searching for any sign of the creatures.

The warnings given at the SOU meeting filtered back as Goldlewis declared the name of their latest foe. The most dangerous, invisible to the naked eye, their very presence infects their surroundings with Red Matter. It stood to reason that they would want to take care of the Chimeras as quickly as possible, but...

"Invisible enemies are such a pain!" Pit griped. He had, of course, followed the action, and now held the two halves of his bow defensively in each hand. His eyes darted around the stretch of road, searching for any sign of the extra-dimensional beings. With the crackle of fiery wrecks behind them and the general commotion of the city around them, it would be difficult to hear where the Chimeras would strike from if it was even possible at all - not to mention with the unnatural lighting on all sides, Pit's go to strategy of looking for a shadow would be futile as well. If they were to fill the same role as before and keep the monsters away from the Neuron officer, the only one capable of closing the gates, they had their work cut out for them.

Midna, running low on healing items, was here too and, after her failure to stop an invisible unfriendly friend back in Al Mamoon, she was determined to make a difference this time. For this she had two tricks. The first was to raise up her shadow hand and to project a dark energy field around her as a kind of ward to be tripped should an invisible foe come after her or anyone close to her. If it did trip it, her twilight Vibrava was on hand to blast it with dragon breath and earth power.

The other half was an alteration to her failed strategy against Ciella, the princess dumping out sand from the twilight realm, concentrating it into a large cloud, and then sweeping the cloud it across areas of empty space like a net. It would not do not do much if any harm on its own, but the singing sand’s tune should change upon impact, giving the location of the invisible foe away if the way it distorted the flowing sand did not.

”Come out come out wherever you aaaaare”

"Good idea Midna!"

At least it was in theory. The sand screen did not move as if the full mass of a living thing pushed through it.

Pit's gaze flickered over to the twins; at least one of them would have to be unburdened by the pilot in order to start the process of closing the gates. The angel started towards them with intent to take over getting the man to safety, calling out to "Trade spots!".

He swapped the bow for orbitars, but in that brief moment between desummoning and summoning equipment when there was nothing to protect Pit something struck him. A bodily slam that he didn't see coming, quick enough that the shift of sand left no time to get out of the way. His side crumpled from the impact and he went flying with a pained shout.

In the last few moments, Karin had her eyes on Pit, figuring his movement might make him a target. When he got hit, she was quick to react. ”Tenko!” She called out, flashing toward the invisible target with an upward palm strike. She hit something but she had no combo follow ups, no idea of if the attack connected or not. She felt something, but nothing like she’d ever felt before, as if the matter of her arm didn’t interact with the matter of the creature in a normal -or intuitive- manner.

”Tch!” Frustrated, she backed up and went to protect Pit with her guard. As for Pit’s goals, that remained up to him to accomplish - and so far the prospects of that happening weren't looking good. As Goldlewis stated before, the Chimeras were fast. They were, from what Pit could tell, darting between everyone present and attacking at every opening. Pit had scrambled to stand after getting flung, saved from a follow up attack by the orbitars automatically snapping to his defense at the last moment. Whether it was a claw or some bladed limb, it crashed against the shield and was gone before a retaliatory shot could even be made.

"How are we even supposed to fight them?!" There was no answer, unfortunately. Appreciating the street fighter's backup, Pit stuck close to Karin as the Guardian Orbitars spun around them both. Any shift in space or weird shimmer in the air saw a bolt of energy shoot at it from the floating weapons, but they hit the sand beyond their invisible targets more often than not.

“These things are like ghosts! They can hit us just fine, but we can barely touch ‘em!” Goldlewis swung at one of the shimmers, but the weight and force of his coffin barely seemed to register. The next second the chimera completed his attack, and with a brutal kick slammed the giant man onto his back. With the wind driven from his lungs by the impact he could only feebly attempt to roll over and prop himself up.

Over to one side, the twins were having just as tough a time as the Seekers, if not worse. Hayato and Akira attempted to defend the helicopter pilot as best they could, but they couldn’t effectively fight or even see what they were up against, and their dispatcher was of no help. “Hey!” Akira yelled. “Don’t hang up on me, damn it!”

“Ugh!” Hayato skidded backward, lost his footing and tumbled for a second before coming to rest on his side. “This is bad. At this rate…”

At that moment, a third gate appeared. Another shimmer emerged, larger and more oblong than the others. It descended, clamped down on Goldlewis’ back, and attempted to lift all five hundred sixty-six pounds of him into the air. “Aaagh!” he roared. “It’s…got me…!” Then a second shimmer arrived just like the first, joined its strength to the former, and together pulled the Secretary of Absolute Defense through the crimson portal. In a flash he was gone, his coffin left behind.

Midna, without a thought, tried to reach a shadow hand in after him, only to find herself dragged in by an unseen force accelerating the grasping fist’s lunge into something far faster that she could not resist.

For his part, Roxas had been rather preoccupied with tending the wounded. Because he was unable to cast Curaga without waiting about a minute in between uses, that pretty much kept him out of the action going on outside. He could hear the sounds of fighting, but dealing with civilians and healing the wounded ended up becoming his priority. At least until he heard the distant shouting of Goldlewis, that is.

Roxas burst out of the shelter just in time to spot Goldlewis in the distance being dragged into another gate that had appeared, ”No no no no!” he shouted repeatedly after he broke into a sprint. After a few seconds he felt his MP return since the last time he used Curaga and used his Keyblade to shoot forth a Blizzaga spell to create another “rail” for himself to grind on in order to cover the distance. But only a few moments after, an attack from the chimera broke the “rail” and forced Roxas to improvise.

”I’m not losing anyone else, you hear me?” Roxas shouted at no one in particular. He jumped from the tip of the “rail” and twisted himself around to launch a Firaga to fend off an incoming attack. After that he impacted a wrecked car and launched himself off the side of it. He continued doing this a couple of more times, looking like a ricocheting pinball before finally going sailing into the gate.

Karin watched several of her allies disappear into the gate. Gritting her teeth, she cast a look over at Pit, then at the struggling police officers. ”We’ve no choice! Onwards!” She sprinted forward and jumped into the portal. The angel was already on the move alongside her, heart beating fast after watching the others disappear. He passed through the gate just behind Karin, shouting to the people they were leaving behind, "stay safe until we get back!"

---

Upon entering the portal, the Seekers began to accelerate. Above and below them were dark planes cast in red light that extended infinitely into the distance, but ahead in that distance lay a bright horizon that cleft the planes in two. It felt like falling headfirst down an immense pit, but sideways. In an instant the ordinary world was far behind, vanished so completely it might as well be a memory. A handful of seconds passed in this transient, liminal space, and then, with the anticlimactic suddenness of jolting awake from a bad dream, they arrived.


They’d landed on a platform suspended in the air, in a strange and alien place. Everything was angular, oftentimes cubic, black or off-black stone like obsidian, but streaked with thin veins of gold, like splashes of a paint brush. In some places they were perfectly smooth, and in others the sheer faces of the glossy cliff-pillars bore irregularities. Outcroppings of crystal, dark at the base but blood-red toward the tips, protruded from the terrain around them in clusters, and like everything else they bore only straight edges and flat surfaces, never curved. The spot where everyone stood seemed to be at the end of an odd sort of sky-archipelago, an array of interconnected platforms and walls that went on a fair way. Blip-lines in the air like static, or undulated barcodes, could be found all over. Two unfathomably immense planes existed an incalculable distance away to either side, slanted diagonally, and at the end of the infinite corridor lay pure white light, although to one side, an inverted black pyramid could be glimpsed far away.

For right now, though, their focus lay on Goldlewis. They could see their new friend receding into the distance, still in the clutches of some nebulous entity–although, strangely, what looked before like a shimmer seemed now just a touch denser. Its silhouette almost suggested a giant, floating torso, carrying Goldlewis with beefy, disembodied forearms. If the team meant to follow and rescue him, they would need to brave this bizarre crystalline dimension. A series of bridges and islands stood before them, confronting them with an elaborate traversal challenge of platforms that moved on their own, disappeared underfoot, as well as blockers that only disappeared when enough floating targets were struck, or pressure plates weighed down. Yet the Seekers were not alone here. Strange beings, humanoid but never human distorted like the copy of a copy of a copy, wandered the place, stiffly lumbering around to hit and occasionally -with the aid of strange copied firearms- take potshots at any intruders.

Midna, having floated down into the world that was simultaneously strange and familiar in just the worst mix of ways, would have simply flown after Goldlewis, but the first barrage of gunfire from the replicas dissuaded that notion. She would have pulled out a gun and shot back, had the realities of being in a different dimension interfered with the regular workings of her portals, an interference she did not have time to hash out. The same issue went for her summoned steeds.

”Just you then. Don’t let me down” she told her interdimensional ax, which was ready to add the blood of another realm’s denizen to its blade.

That said, it would be acting mostly as a backup. Instead the main way Midna helped them progress was via twilight volley bombs, the princess putting herself behind cover, and then charging and hurling the massive explosives at the gun wielding foes own, flushing those not simply destroyed out into the open for the others to deal with.

As for the platforming? Well, if they could deal with the shooters, then the princess could simply cheat and float on past most of the obstacles, whl her massive shadow hand could help hoist others along her own. Any of the more elaborate obstacles were handily dealt with by Pit, whose target shooting and flexible movement made short work of buttons and triggers that needed to be pulled to clear the path, especially to keep up with the keyblade wielder.

Once he’d burst through from the gate, Roxas wasn’t given much time to take in the surroundings before even more enemies made themselves known. But he did briefly spot Goldlewis in the distance and knew these things were in the way. Roxas just summoned both his weapons and broke into a run, ”Get. Out. Of. The. WAY!” with each word he delivered another strike or Dual Slash against the humanoids trying to stop them.

As for the platforming. For Roxas, that was the easy part. Flowmotion made crossing these obstacles pretty easy for him. He could use it to launch himself between platforms, slingshot himself around pillars, or even kick off airborne crystals. And all that built up momentum could also be put into his attacks to enhance their striking power and resulting damage.

This was Karin’s first time in another dimension, if one didn’t count the World of Light. But she didn’t let it be overwhelming, instead she focused on the task at hand. Reuniting with Goldlewis and then finding a way back to Midgar. Clearly this realm had no shortage of threats. Karin followed after her allies, using a combination of her agility and grappling hook to navigate the alien terrain.

A particularly troublesome humanoid shooter was brought to her with her grapple hook and punched through, sending it flying away where it couldn’t bother her anymore. After that it was a matter of pulling herself to a location, leaping as far as she could, then pulling herself to her next.

”Mister Goldlewis! Shout for us!” She shouted, trying to make her voice carry in this strange space. She didn’t want to lose track of their quarry.

---

Listening to Polaris was easy.

We’ve always stuck together.

Withdrawing her Tool Gun, she turned what probably would have been a considerable mining effort into a stroll. The little weapon had proven useful time and time again ever since that Museum.

The Director was happy to get out of the muck and into the rain. The atmosphere out here was downright pleasant, and moody in a good way.

“That probably took a couple years off my lifespan. But we made it.” Jesse said, taking in the scenery.

There, they ran into a familiar face. Cornifer the Cartographer. “That’s some trade secret.” Jesse muttered good-naturedly. He also told them a valuable bit of information: there was a Consul in town. And exactly where he lived. Seemed like a target worth considering, or at least worth learning about. But a problem for later. They all needed to recharge their batteries.

That was when they were interrupted by a stranger. Jesse figured she was a good judge of character. Cornifer seemed nice, and this guy knew Cornifer, and this guy also seemed nice. Personally, Jesse was up to getting to know the place.

“Gee, thanks.” She said sarcastically when he said they all looked awful. Therion responded, and it was a bit of a cold reception, so Jesse stepped up to the front of the group.

“But yeah, we just kinda went through a bunch of bullshit to get here. My name’s Jesse Faden. If you could help us out, we’d appreciate it.” She said, looking to follow this fellow to promised medicine.

Door trouble aside, the ill seekers soon discarded the tainted red and sickening pink for a serene and calming blue. The rainfall would've been refreshing if Omori wasn't so sick. And he doubted the blood would wash off his clothes that easily. He had idly followed everyone else to the boat, trying not to let himself succumb this ailment. And yet, he still quietly held Mewo in his arms like a young child with their teddy bear. The boy simply retreated to his thoughts the whole ride through. A selfish part of him wished his dear sister was there with him, for him, for comfort. But at the same time...

No, he wouldn't allow Mari to go through THAT hellish labyrinth. Never.

The Knight meanwhile seemed to become eager when they were close to the city center. This place. It knew this place! But it was livelier than it had ever been when it first arrived! A glimpse of what the City of Tears used to be before her. When their boat was docked, the little bug hurried up the steps and to the plaza. If this was the same city, then the fountain should be-

...What?

That...wasn't its sibling...

Omori had followed everyone off the boat and to Cornifer, more than willing to let them do the talking instead of him. His skin felt itchy, his jaw hurt, and he felt like if he tried to talk he'd subject himself into another coughing fit. Luckily, the mapmaker directed them to somewhere they can recover at, along with other places of interest. Though as the boy noticed the Knight was dead still, staring at the fountain's statue, something caught his ear.

The ill-tempered Consul P.

That statue wouldn't happened to be of him, would it? He didn't know, and it'd hurt his brain if he mulled over it right now. One of the locals; a human, surprisingly, offered to lead the sick seekers to the Sanitarium. At that, Omori tried to speak. "Plea-" He quickly held a fist to his mouth to stiffle the second coughing fit since It Lives. Freaking called it. The black cat in his arms looked at Ichiban, meowing in response as if she was answering for the poor kid.

Yeah, might wanna get this settled first.

From the moment they arrived, the Seekers got to experience just how perilous the Astral Plane could be firsthand. The land here, if it could even be called that, hung over a seemingly infinite drop, and no matter where the visitors went a brink was seldom far away. They had no choice but to trust in the integrity of these inexplicably suspended spans of sheer obsidian, overgrown with crimson crags and riddled by golden seams, which left them at the Astral Plane’s mercy. Though practically indistinguishable from one another, the different types of stone behaved in different ways. Some would fizzle out a second or so after someone set foot atop them, completely disappearing for a time and dropping any hapless individuals who hadn’t moved on. Most platforms were ‘locked’ in their current positions, but some slid back and forth through the air in set patterns, and others could be moved by force. With the astral entities added to the mix, lurching weirdly around or raining down gunfire from afar, the going was tough.

Of course, the Seekers were resourceful, and put their multifaceted talents to the task. A few could fly, either in short bursts or continuously, to cross over the many gaps without plummeting into the void. Karen could grapple to points of interest, and Roxas could run across and up ninety-degree surfaces, or ping-pong between them. While the distorted enemies made themselves a frequent nuisance, they also proved themselves lacking in terms of endurance, speed, and intelligence. That made traversal the principal challenge, and luckily for the Seekers, this astral archipelago extended mostly in one direction. Even if no deep southern voice answered Karin’s call, she could be reasonably assured where its owner had been taken, and hasten in the same direction alongside all the others. However, one other strange impediment presented itself, noticeable only in brief moments of rest as the Seekers made their way along. If given a moment to reflect, they might notice that they felt…dirty. Like something weird was on them. In them. Building up. Weighing them down. Subtly, but there nonetheless. Nobody in his or her right mind could call it a good feeling.

After about twenty minutes of navigation through the alien dimension, the team closed in on the terminus. A straight path led between two high, uneven walls to a final large platform on the other side, accessible by a series of room-sized stepping stones to those who couldn’t just sail overhead. Even before they reached the end, though, the Seekers could see -and hear- what awaited them. Goldlewis was on his feet, but only just, making his stand against the entity that had abducted him. When it first extruded its limbs into the World of Light it had been as invisible as the other chimeras, and the glimpse the heroes caught as it flew off through the Astral Plane had been scarcely more defined, but now for whatever reason they could see it. It looked like a burly torso of hard red armor, with a glowing core in the center of its chest, and above that an inverted face half-hidden beneath a sort of cowl, its eyes and mouth glowing like magma. Rather than full arms it sported only shoulders and gauntlet-like forearms, but those massive mitts floated freely, ready to bash and bludgeon, and its shoulders featured huge trunk-like cannons. Instead of legs it bore strange hemisphere limbs sort of like sleds. It towered above Goldlewis, easily twice his already-remarkable size. And compared to earlier, it now looked almost completely opaque, more than real enough to wound and kill its prey. It looked almost like a demon, but the heroes knew that this was a chimera–the first they had ever seen.



Enceladus was a massive, mighty bully. It liked to throw its weight around, charging like a battering ram from hell, but those arms packed an incredible punch too, and when it pounded the ground the matter of the Astral Plane reacted by cracking to unleash a fiery splash. If it stretched out its hand toward a target, a fusillade of fire bolts shot from its fingers would surely follow, though the projectiles blazed through the air a lot slower than bullets. Then again, it also didn’t mind using finger lasers that created explosions when swept across the ground. Enceladus could send off and remotely control its hands as well, but a lot of its destructive power lay in those two cannons, capable of firing explosive cubic payloads or powerful energy beams, themselves also more than capable of causing explosions in their wake.

As the Seekers joined the battle they could see just how bad it had been for Goldlewis. Such a strong monster would be an incredibly formidable opponent on its own, but without his coffin the veteran could rely on nothing but the strength of his own two hands, and as great as that might be every man had his limits. Goldlewis was on his last legs; this fight was do or die.





Giovanna’s attempt to smooth things over came to a crashing halt when Zenkichi cut in, and not just with any run-of-the-mill intercession, either. While the secret agent didn’t know what Manananggal was she could put two and two together thanks to the explicit knowledge that this man believed she and her crew killed it. Giovanna plopped back down in her chair, watched in worried silence by Poppi and especially Tora, who by now had actually been distracted to the point of interrupting his meal. Giovanna’s retelling of past events had been meant to show that her little band had nothing to hide, but after this crucial tidbit of misinformation had come to light it meant she’d stumbled right into disaster. No matter how she tried to play nice now, Zenkichi wouldn’t be having any of it. Plus, if this Turk actually took the time to memorize the names of his goons’ true forms, he was even more fastidious than she originally thought. Things had just gotten a lot more complicated.

“It sounds like you ought to get your facts checked. You of all people should know that those shadows’ testimony isn’t reliable. Khamsin’s the one who butchered Manananggal, and if you want proof, you’ll find it smeared all over his axe. He was pretty shameless about it.” She crossed her arms. “If I were you, I’d be a lot more worried about DespoRHado than a couple street cleaners. It sounds like they’ve got a bone to pick with Shinra’s administration, and they’ve sure got the manpower for a coup d’etat.”

The tense exchange didn’t last much longer. After expressing his disappointment with Benedict’s intended departure from General Affairs, and urging the Seekers to keep to themselves, the detective went on his way. It was an abrupt change; for a minute it sounded like he’d be calling in the G-men, but now he suddenly had better places to be. Giovanna took a long drink of water from her glass, thinking. Tora, Poppi, and everyone echoed Geralt’s confusion, but whatever Benedict’s answer might be, Giovanna figured she could better address the Witcher’s question.

“Definitely not,” Giovanna sighed. “I mean, it’s good for your health not to trust anyone in General Affairs in, well, general, but even if this guy’s somehow a diamond in the rough, we’re probably in trouble. Wrong or not, he’s holding us responsible for Khamsin mulching that split-in-half vampire woman. And with Benny’s resignation, he just gave up his professional courtesy. I’d be willing to bet his arrival here wasn’t just a chance encounter, either. They might have caught on to us while we were spread out and followed us here.”

Tora fidgeted in his chair. “Meh…that may be true. Tora and Poppi not really pay attention. We spend time playing hitty-ball game for shinybig prizes.”

“...That explains the new gear. Ugh.” Giovanna massaged her eyes with the palms of her hands, then gave Benedict a weary glance. “We’re gonna need to get our story straight in the future. That guy was right, the less details the better. Speechcraft just isn’t my strong suit; I’m better with problems I can hit.” With the bill paid up front, she stood up from the table.

Poppi followed her example. “It’s alright, you did the best you could. But we should probably get going, right?”

“That’s the problem.” Crossing her arms, Giovanna looked out the door. Her tone was hushed. “He might not just let us leave.”

“Tora see. Should prepare for worst then, meh.” Tora popped the last bit of savory pizza into his mouth, wiped his wing off, then jumped down to the ground. He adjusted his pack, making sure his new hammer could be reached readily and easily. Once Geralt, Blazermate, Susie, and Benedict were all ready as well, the crew made for the pizzeria’s front door.

Outside, the street seemed oddly empty, even for the furtive citizens who hustled around this area in the shadow of DespoRHado’s Bunker. Tora and Poppi looked around. As ordered, Zenkichi’s G-men were making themselves as inconspicuous as possible, in the best way they knew how. Two were crouching around a manhole with plungers in hand, while one appeared to be using a wrench to play pinfinger on the hood of a random car. One stood in front of a store’s windows with a washrag in hand, but rather than scrub the glass he towel-snapped it with the wet, wound-up cloth. Poppi rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother…”

A couple seconds later the moment Zenkichi had been waiting for arrived, and he appeared from behind a statue. He fixed his eyes on Benedict. “Pascal. You're going to get more than yourself hurt if you keep talking like that. I don't want to hurt you, but I do need to know exactly what you know. This goes deeper than any one of us, and I can't have you messing this up for me.”

Giovanna put her hands on her hips and gave a thin smile “Sorry, mister. But Special Ops needs him right where he is.”

Zenkichi shook his head with a sort of resigned frustration. The four G-men dropped their pretenses and began to approach. “I’m afraid I’m not asking.”

The inhuman peacekeepers doffed their hats and transformed in bursts of shadowy tar. Tora recognized Loup-Garou from before, but the other three took the forms of Apsaras, Jack Frost, and last but certainly not least a fearsome three-headed engine of chrome, Chemtrail. The first two looked weak, but strength practically billowed off that last one. Tora armed himself with his new Star Crusher while Poppi kept hold of her Variable Saber, not forgetting the new set of beads she’d earned that outfitted her with fresh dance moves. Just another legally dubious fight.



After receiving the map from Cornifer and expressing her gratitude, Nadia unrolled it and turned to leave the shelter of the gazebo, looking over its contents. Her map of the Under itself seemed to have grown, but for now she focused on the map of the city itself. The Home of Tears featured a pretty uniform layout, at least from such a lofty perspective. Four districts, just like the mapmaker said, and the one her team wanted -or more accurately, desperately needed given the amount of coughing going on- lay to the east. For a moment Nadia wondered if Cornifer drew this while hanging from the ceiling or something. While he looked a little rotund for such extensive fieldwork, he’d already proven that the heroes would do well not to underestimate him. Just how far were they underground now, anyway? Well, whatever. She planned to keep up the established tradition by taking the lead, and almost set foot outside before a frantic Cornifer gave her pause. “Wait wait, stop!”

Though terribly ill and fatigued, Nadia still jumped at the sudden shout, wondering if something was wrong. “Huh!? What!?”

“Don’t just walk out into the rain with the map out!” the cartographer admonished her. “It’s…well, I know it’s yours now, and you may do with it as you please, but I thought I should say. If you hold it out under the rain, all the work I poured into it will be washed away! You’ll also have no way to know where you’re going lest you commission a replacement, so please, be careful.”

Nadia chuckled, jokingly palming the side of her head. “Aha…right. Duh.” She rolled up the map and put it in her pocket. Then, after staring out into the pounding rain for a moment, she pulled it out again for another inspection. “Uh…which way is it from here, again…?” In her state, it would be a wonder if she could memorize a birthday card, let alone a complicated and yet at the same time abstract representation of an entire city’s layout.

Luckily, fate had another surprise in store for the team this evening, and this time it turned out for the better. After a few moments a stranger came to call on the mapmaker in his cozy gazebo, stumbling over through the rain with a bulging sack slung over his shoulder just to say hello. Nadia glanced over as he drew near. He turned out to be a man, well out of his prime but still animated by a youthful spirit, with a bright maroon suit, a scruffy goatee, and an impressively voluminous head of hair. His tone and even his body language conveyed a sort of wholehearted cheerfulness, which was saying something considering the man appeared to be soaked through by the constant rain, and after catching just one glimpse of the Seekers huddled around the Gazebo (which included the comatose, antlion-borne Ganondorf) he could tell just how debilitated they were. Nadia couldn’t help but laugh at his forthright outburst. He wasn’t exactly wrong. “Not one of my better days, I’ll admit.” Even making puns felt a little much for her right now.

He offered to guide them to the Sanitarium, which through sheer coincidence happened to be his destination. The others might be dubious, but the news left Nadia with a smile of extravagant relief on her face. If this man’s clinking sack contained more capsules like the one the sharp-eyed thief saw roll across the ground earlier, which looked for the world like vials of healing tonic, she felt inclined to believe him. This guy looked like a goof, but someone who’d go the extra mile to get things done if it meant helping someone out. The best kind of person. Who but a kind-hearted fool would lug around a bag full of this stuff in the pouring rain after all, especially dressed as eye-catchingly as that? It was a stroke of good fortune at last. Nadia jammed the map in her pocket and stepped back out of the gazebo and into the rain. Now that she’d been shivering beneath shelter for a moment the rain felt positively warm, like jumping back into a pool after getting out on a less-than-balmy day. “Say no more,” she declared.

Ichiban led the team through the streets, across the bridges, and along the canals of the Home of Tears as fast as his new retinue could go, anxious to get them treatment. Although these surroundings interested Nadia greatly, being a city built and lived in principally by non-human hands, everything passed by in a blur. She felt dazed and half-conscious, wracked by coughs every other moment. Sightseeing could come later. The Seekers needed a cure for what ailed them, and quickly.



At length, Ichiban brought Nadia and the others across a final bridge to their destination, not within the confines of the Downtown district itself, but sitting on an island directly adjacent to it. Formally known as the Addermire Institute of Infectious Disease, but better known to the city residents as the Sanitarium, this imposing hospital of glass and stone had clearly seen better days. Rusted metal, dead plants, and cracked concrete were all common sights, but a ghostly blue light poured from its many windows, courtesy of the whale-oil lamps therein. Once everyone reached the front desk Ichiban needed to hurry off to finish his delivery, but he wasn’t the only one who could tell what was wrong with the team with a single glance. The bright blue eyes of the pink-haired lady behind the counter filled with worry when she approached. “Goodness me, did you all enter the Womb? Stained with blood, coughing like mad. It’s good we have plenty of room, we’ll see to you straight away.” She pressed a button behind the desk, which made a buzzer go off in a room not too far away.

A little nervous, Nadia ran a hand over her face and hair, wiping the water off. “Is it bad?”

“It’s…certainly not good,” Nurse Joy admitted, scribbling on a set of forms at lightspeed. “But it’s a reasonably common case. Virtually everyone who goes there contracts the same diseases. It’ll take some doing to get them out, and it may not be pleasant, but we can do it.” She glanced up at the Seekers, visually confirming something, then started to scribble again. After a moment, a small team of hospital workers arrived with gurneys, led by a stern-looking nurse with glasses. They bid the diseased adventurers lay down, and relieved Sectonia’s antlions of their heavy burden, though the gurney creaked under Ganondorf’s weight. Everyone got whisked away to separate rooms, then helped out of their clothes and given hospital gowns in exchange.

After only a few moments, Nadia found herself alone, lying in a dark room where the only lamp made the surgical equipment cast eerie shadows on the walls. Just what were these instruments? Nadia peered around with wide eyes and lips pursed when not seized by coughing. Some of this equipment looked positively medieval. Come to think of it, why did those egg-shaped creatures strap her in? She tugged at the belt-like bindings, but it was no good. They wouldn’t budge an inch. Fear began to creep through her, but she felt too terrible to focus on it, and just lay there in a state of worried delirium until the door slammed open. Her eyes shot to the entrance, where she saw a frog in a surgical mask, followed by a man in blue carrying a clipboard. “Suspected Red Plague. Creeping Cough. Ooh, tetanus, how fun. Hemophilia? Eh, may as well.” The man spoke with a pronounced German accent. After drawing close he tossed the clipboard on the bedside table in a casual manner, then glanced at Nadia, rubbing his chin as he noted her ears and tail. “Possible rabies. Yes, yes. Just in case. Couldn’t hurt.” He turned away to a nearby cupboard and opened it to root around inside. “...Much.”

Nadia gulped. “Uh, what was that just now?”

“Oh nothing, nothing. Just relax.” The Medic turned back, snapping his glove as he did. Nadia eyed the syringe in his hand, which he flicked in order to remove air bubbles. Only when he turned a leering grin on the feral did she really start to struggle. “It’s time to practice medicine.”

Nadia screamed until the sedative overtook her.

---

Somewhere between two and three hours later, Nadia could be found sitting in the sanitarium lobby, rigid as a mannequin with eyes as wide as saucers. A free lollipop protruded from her mouth, her hands lay on her knees in a white-knuckled deathgrip, and a sticker that read I gave blood =) lay on the breast of her jacket. She’d been like that for a while. The Chanseys had put her clothes through the washer and dryer during her stay at Addermire, but she couldn’t thank the people here for much more than that. Well, that and curing her diseases in almost no time flat, all things considered, but that crazy doctor and his 'treatment' had to have taken years off her life. Surely most of that stuff couldn't be proper medicine? There had been actual leeches in one of those jars, for goodness' sake! Nadia shuddered. She felt more or less fine now, thanks to both her regeneration and the medic's medibeam, but she could hardly describe the ordeal as pleasant, and she didn't even want to consider what all had happened while unconscious. “I need…a damn drink.”

Unfortunately, drinks cost money, and she’d spent everything she earned in that nightmarish basement on the Night Light in her sternum, which she was strongly beginning to suspect might not be a gemstone at all. Her pockets were empty, which meant no much-needed alcohol, no food, no spa treatment (however well deserved) and not even a place to spend the night. What time was it anyway, eight, nine? The thought did occur to her that she could probably solicit a room in Addermire overnight, but she knew more surely than she’d ever known anything before that she wouldn’t be caught dead inside a room in this place ever again. I’d rather sleep outside in the deluge, she thought, grumbling to herself. Wouldn’t be the first time. Then again, most of the inhabitants of this rain-drenched city seemed to be bugs. If she crashed in some alley she could get swarmed by giant earwigs or flies or something. No, she needed money, and that left her with only one option: doing what she did best.

With a heavy sigh Nadia stood up, still a little shaky and very twitchy. She spat the lollipop stick onto the floor and rolled her shoulders, trying to loosen up. “Here I go stealin’ again,” she muttered to herself, pulling out her map. “Royal Quarter’s gotta be it. If I hit some rich sucker, I’ll be set for tonight at least. Somethin’ warm to eat…somewhere dry to sleep…and enough beer to kill a horse. Yeah.” She plodded toward the front door, then turned to glower and glare back at the insides of the Addermire Institute. Nadia hissed, then pushed through the doors and ran out into the rain.

Bowser took the lead against the basilisks, the troop doing the bulk of the lifting in killing them. Unfortunately the terrain and the dexterity of the foe meant he could do little in the way of his usual stealth and trickery, and instead simply fired his blowpipe at their easy targets while moving away from them defensively if they got too close.

However, while Teemo was ready to display quite the bloodlust to the basilisks, he felt much less confident about fighting the giant enemy crab. For one, he found it was quite unlikely any of his darts would penetrate its shell. But rather importantly even if they did its not like they would do much without any poison on their tips.

"Not sure we should fight that." He stated, twirling his blowpipe a few times to keep his hands still warmed up. Deciding to heal off some of the damage he had, he would take a nibble of one of the many mushrooms he had hoarded, even the tiny morsel consumed ballooning his chipmunk-like cheeks with the effort of mastication.

Surveying the rest of the scene, he frowned disapprovingly. The increasingly aquatic environment troubled him, for his frame wasn't exactly well built for the world of the nautical. His head, bulbous in comparison to the rest of the body didn't have much buoyancy and he didnt have any good limbs to paddle with underwater. While being fast on the ground, he knew he couldn't mount a great speed if he was submersed. Further, his apparel and other items would probably make him sink, assuming he could properly even hold onto all of them underwater. "Umm, not in the mood for swimming either." he said, knowing that this only left one clear avenue to go down. However, he certainly also wasn't about to go alone, knowing that these people were his guides in the new world. Thus, while he did advise the group on his own abilities he wasn't about to countermand them if they desire to go elsewhere. "Maybe we can make a quick bridge to that...." he suggested, pointing to the great structure both borne up by and made of the roots nearby. "Gotta be something around. Maybe more pieces of roots and stuff. Those fish don't look like something you'd keep in a family-friendly aquarium." The yordle finished.

It would only be a matter of time before the demon was put down for good. After Red's surprising punch Artemis was obviously hurting, and while throwing haphazard lasers around it seemed to be in its death throes. Perched where he was, the Ace Cadet was more than content to keep an eye on things and support where needed while the others finished it off. That was until the action stopped, held up by Albedo. After side stepping a laser the Cadet leaned over the railing to get a better look at what was going on. If the alchemist was looking to carve a piece off, the hunter couldn't fault him, but it was kind of a bad time for that considering the circumstances. when he did slice into the demon it was not to take a piece of it, but to reveal something inside.

Sierra, he heard Band and Wonder Red exclaim, to which the Cadet could only answer, "What?!"

It was true - what brief glimpse they were afforded of the inside of Artemis' torso showed that Sierra was inside of it. So she had been the strange thing he'd seen earlier in the fight. Had it absorbed Sierra? Or was she in the process of being transformed into that thing? The Cadet felt a dreadful feeling crawl up his spine and he took several steps back from the ledge, away from Artemis. At the same time, concern and anger on the girl's behalf bubbled up. Surely they weren't going to be condemning Sierra to her death if they destroyed this monster, right?

The reveal had been cut short by Artemis' pod, and the demon itself escaping its pin and flying up again amid a flurry of lasers. A smattering of them hit the Cadet before he could take cover, shoving a writing desk over and ducking behind it. He stood to shoot what pods he could before dropping down again.

Detective Band was right - Sierra wasn't dead yet, and if they had anything to say about it that fact wouldn't change, but it require a change in tactics to keep her safe while fighting Artemis. With his back pressed to the desk the Ace Cadet stowed the great bow, running through his equipment check list. After a moment, the sword and shield Master Bang filled his hands. The more controlled attacks he could perform with it would hopefully prevent any more damage to the girl inside the monster.

About that time, Wonder Red returned from getting the civilians out and delegated the duty of actually getting Sierra out to Albedo and the Cadet. The redhead in question opened his mouth in surprise, the second time that day he was volunteered for something. He wasn't sure he was the best person for the job but it wasn't like he was going to refuse - he wanted to rescue Sierra.

"You got it boss," he replied. Then he left his cover, shield up to block any beams that shot his way. He used the Isotoma to get closer to the rising angel, springing into a Shoryugeki once he was near enough.

Without hurting her inside was the goal, but the only way the Cadet could see to take down Artemis while sparing Sierra was to hope that freaky head it had functioned just like any other living thing's head, and they could either knock it out with some blunt force trauma or separate it from the body entirely without risking the person trapped in its torso. His sword cut into Artemis' abdomen, another shallow vertical slice. He used the demon itself as a launch pad to force himself up higher, shield first to deliver a powerful uppercut to Artemis' chin.

Now how was he supposed to get Sierra out? Just rip her from the thing's body? The Cadet drove his sword into Artemis' side to stop his descent, an unwelcome hanger-on. Time to test his strength against Artemis' self closing wound. With the cut he just made already almost closed the Cadet jabbed a hand into the wound to pull it open again. Anyone that wasn't working to subdue Artemis could try and wrench Sierra out, or he'd go in to try it himself. It was a clumsy plan, but if it worked then he'd take it.

Everyone made it down to the bottom of the tree more or less in one piece, and once they had grouped up Jr used his magic to fill in any pieces they had lost on the way down. Then they trooped out onto the impossible beach, as even Bowser agreed there was no benefit in tangling with the giant crab for no good reason.

Once out of the tree the group tensed for a moment, as emerging out into an underground seaside was a familiar experience, one that had led to a great deal of pain the last time they had done it. Fortunately there was no orphan here to greet them this time: Kamek sent his wisps up ahead to double check.

”Nothing anywhere as dangerous looking as the last time. Well, on the land anyway. I do not like the looks of whatever’s in the deeper waters” Kamek noted, before considering Teemo’s suggestion and noting that ”We could probably fly across the water to one of the distant pillars if we wanted too, though it’d take up a lot of my mana to make that many steeds and minions to carry everyone. It would also be a slightly risky endeavor, what with most of you not being used to aerial combat, or so I assume”

”That one, however, looks like we could walk over to it across these dunes” he suggested, pointing over to the one that looked like it might have a clearing at its base, before glancing at Rika to see if she would confirm that to be so via a report from her scout plane.

Instead he found her holding an odd device that looked a bit like the world’s dinkiest knife in her hand. When he inquired where she had gotten it she told him that ”The hanger with the broken plane just spat it out for some reason. I think it’s meant to attach to something?”

She showed him the underside that seemed to have futuristic magnets and adhesives on it, and then gave it a go, haphazardly sticking it to her gauntlet.

”Oh uh yeah I think I’m feeling something let me just” she flexed her arm muscles which caused the point of the addon to fire out … at the right angle she had attacked it too, at which point it smacked into Bowser

”Woops sorry -argh!” Rika’s apology was interrupted when the cord joining spike and device together suddenly reeled her in and caused her to be pulled to the side and to smack into him.

A bit more apologizing later, though given that Bowser had barely felt a thing while Rika had to have some bruises cured it was hardly necessary, and she started experimenting to put it somewhere actually useful.

”Hmmm, no. no. noooo. Ah ha!” she intoned triumphantly as she popped it inside her Brachydios’s gauntlet’s ‘mouth’, setting it above the rifle barrel, and thus also just above her chainsaw bayonet.

”Oh that is going to be nasty” Jr commented, drifting closer to inspect her new engagement tool

”Mmm hmmm. Now I can get close without running about, which’ll be handy” she said, while firing off the hook in the air a few times as a test for its reach and flight path. She also gave it a fire at the sand too, but it being loose she didn’t get any real grip, which was a bit disappointing. At least it meant she wasn’t slammed face first into it either.

Then she inevitably got into trouble with her new toy. After grappling up a weird mushroom plant and a shellder out of the water (and giving it a chainsaw to the face) she picked a bigger target for her third test.

Her grapple whipped out into the sea and prepared to reel in another aquatic creature, only for the grapple to go taught and then pull her towards the water instead, and then dragged down into it with a splash.

With bubbles trailing from her lips, the ship girl came face to face with what she had hooked: a cloyster. Unlike its lesser shellder kin, Rika’s fist and chainsaw smashing into its diamond hard shell had almost no effect, other than prompting it to retaliate with a barrage of spikes.

Rika scrambled backwards, dated sunglasses flashing and slowed the barrage of 5 spikes enough that she blocked or dodged all but one, which splintered against her shields.

The waterlogged ship girl pulled herself back on top of the surface of the water, only for the now angered clyster to come after her, propelling itself with jets of water, breaching the surface and, with its shell shut, spinning rapidly. She met it with a massive punch from her left hand gauntlet, deflecting the shells spin attack yet also jarring her arm in the process.

The two flew apart, and then immediately after recovering opened fire on each other, Rika launching one of her few remaining torpedoes while the cloyster blasted her with a freezing aurora hued beam attack. Rika covered herself in a one gauntleted guard that left her arm numb, while the cloyster clamped shut just in time to shrug off the ship sinking explosive.

”Hey, Rika, get back to land so I can help!” came a yell from Bowser, heralding his arrival along with the two flying troop members who swooped over the waves to assist.

”Then catch me!” the ship girl called back, confusing the king until she fired off her grappleshot again and hit the only solid enough thing on the beach to grapple to: him.

The ship girl ”Weeee”ed through the air and into his arms, before immediately re-aiming and telling him to ”Keep holding on!” before firing off the hook again.

It lashed out into the waves where the cloyster was ducking under the water to avoid the attacks of the flying koopas, this time catching the edge of its shell. The line went taught, and the two part ship folk began some father daughter bonding via the medium of fishing, only with Rika’s sore arm as the rod and with the its own name yelling cloister as a fish that could fight back via aurora beam blasts.

Claws and boots dug into the sand as the ~130kg bivalve was hauled first onto the beach, and then towards them. Closer, closer, and then right before they collide Bowser shouted ”Eat this!” as he fired up his kinetic strike module and blasted it square in the shell, launching it up into the air.

The selfish spun wildly in the air and then crashed down in the sand … somehow still mostly unhurt. It rested there for a moment, and then started to try to bounce and wobble back to the water.

It didn’t make it

A single super effective electro ball spiked down into it, Mimi’s attack scything though the other pokemon’s poor special defense with ease and reducing it, a bit anticlimactically, to ash.

”Oh. Huh. Well I guess that’s over” Rika said as she slipped out of Bowser’s supporting grip and called up her thanks to the two fliers. Then she had a thought, pointed her gauntlet at the fallen spirt of the Cloyster and shot it out, the spike flying fourth and then returning a moment later with the spirit in tow.

”Useful” she commented, before thinking for a moment and calling over to their newest companion: ”Hey, Teemo, wanna see something neat we can do with spirits?” before giving him a little demo on how making strikers worked.



After that little adventure, the troop got back on track, sticking together properly now that Rika had worked out most of her excitement over the grappling hook. Instead she got to be excited about her new minion, which she liberally tested out on the walking clam things, finding it to be a very handing instant shield as well as fairly dangerous in close combat, as well as reusing her new team up fishing attack with Bowser to grapple and topple over the spindly legged things to make them an easier target for the others.

Perhaps the battle was too overwhelming.

That or the sight of Red using the very civilians they had to protect against Artemis was really jarring. There was nothing else Frisk could do, and when the creature's next attack broke her shield and nearly sent her over the edge, she didn't feel as confident as she initally was. When Big Band hurried over to hoist her out of what would've been quite the fall, she nodded in thanks, but didn't follow him back into the fight. It'd take awhile for her Kindness magic to mend itself, and the boys already had it covered if Artemis getting knocked all the way to the ground floor was anything to go by.

...

Did they really need her help? Frisk hurried down the stairs to regroup with them, but the question still lingered on her hesitant mind. They seemed to be doing fine without her and her useless soul magic. There had to be some spellbooks, or anything she could use around here. Somewhere...

And then things escalated again.

As it turns out, for whatever dreadful reason there may be, Sierra was trapped inside of Artemis. ALIVE. From a floor above the rest of her teammates, Frisk's attention darted between the desperate Artemis' retaliation and Red managing to evacuate the civilians, then shouting orders to the other boys. So where would that leave her?

Well, she had one idea, at least. Soon as Ace used the summoned Solar Isotoma to move closer to the creature, Frisk could be seen jumping down from the second floor onto the flower, buckler shield resting on one arm just in case. Ace was trying to pry the regenerating wound back open. If Frisk could just reach far in enough and get a grip on Sierra, she could pull her out as hard as she can!

If she doesn't get blasted again by pink lasers, that is.

After everyone agreed to leave the huge crab to its slumber, they slipped out of the great tree's hollow and into an ethereal underground beach. Primrose took some time to gaze out over the water, not quite admiring the view so much as just taking it in. There's no end to the surprises, is there? she thought to herself. She wouldn't have guessed that they'd find something like this at the bottom of the tree, yet here it was. And here they were, on the quiet shoreline contemplating how to cross over to the other side where another great tree stood. The beach they were currently on only extended so far, and the sandbanks dotting the area were few and far between.

She glanced down at their furry new companion when he said he wasn't in the mood for a swim. A breath of air that might pass for a laugh left the dancer's lips. "Nor am I," she said.

Now if the group took things slow and steady, they could probably make it to the other side with little issue. For Primrose, she could rely on her scarf to sail in the air between the sand banks. Between Kamek, Junior, and Rubick, they could indeed fly everyone else to the pockets of sand and take breaks in between moving. It was certainly doable. Teemo's bridge suggestion was another option, and either sounded fine to her. She ended up strolling the beach as far as it stretched into the water, helping Teemo look for anything suitable for taking them across the water either by bridge or raft. Meanwhile, the Koopa Troop played around with the local wildlife.

Eventually Rika came over to show off how to bind a striker, useful knowledge for their newbie. It occurred to Primrose that since she was absent for much of the circumstances around Teemo's rescue and subsequent recruitment, she wasn't sure what the others had already told him. He was still Gleaming, she could at least tell that much (which made two including Barnabee). He had said something about telling him their story, hadn't he? Starting with the more practical information like spirit use was a fine idea.

While the abyssal girl went off clam-tipping with her family, Primrose smiled after her. Then she turned Teemo as the group slowly got a move on.

"Did they show you how else to use spirits?" she asked. "We'll have to swap stories at some point, but before that, using these will be important if you tag along with us."

Whether the yordle planned to stick around for long, who could say. He seemed chipper and willing. Before her own demonstration Primrose conjured her magic to swiftly overwhelm a walking clam that had been flipped over by Bowser, slamming it's softer underside with fire and shadow. When it crumbled and left behind the mote of light, Primrose picked it up.

"Here," she said, drawing attention to the spirit in her grasp as she crushed it between both of her hands.


There was a brief flash. As the light quickly faded and the huge mollusk fell into her hands, Primrose stumbled. She was surprised by the sudden size and weight of the item it conjured. The clam was over three feet long and just as heavy as it looked, but she hefted it up in both arms.

"... destroying them gives you everything from items to animals, apparently." Well, at least if they got stranded in the tunnels they could eat this thing... although Primrose wasn't planning on carrying it around. She turned to the Koopa Troop, imploring the lot of them with a single raised eyebrow. She and Therion had already dumped a lot of the extra equipment with them earlier, so what was one more... huge, living clam added on? It was with a sigh that Kamek cast his shrinking spell on it, and the bivalve was left in the safe keeping of Junior's clown car before moving on.

Rubick made his way down with everyone else, zapping some Basilisks here and spraying burning venom on one there. It was a vile place, but at this point Rubick was already expecting the environment to be inhospitable. Along the way, Rubick spied the various items and pieces of equipment scattered around, but chose not to go for them. Rubick weighed his options and deemed the worn state of the items to not be worth the risk. The party eventually managed to reach the bottom, and they were greeted with a sight of sandbanks surrounded by water.

While the others began to do their own thing, Rubick summoned his Xweetok striker, Wiggles, who began to swivel his head around to take in the sights as he stood on Rubick's head. It was a rare occasion to have a little bit of peace Then Wiggles climbed down and into Rubick's robe, and then pulled out Silitha's Spirit. Rubick's eyes widened, having forgotten he had the Brood Mother's Spirit on him. Rubick laughed and gave Wiggles a chin scratch as he took the Spirit. "What do you think, Wiggles? Is it time to test this?" Rubick asked his little furry friend. To Rubick's surprise, Wiggles shook his head, then pointed at Kamek. Rubick turned toward the koopa mage, initially confused. However, this also awoke his curiosity, so Ruick went over to Kamek and asked what he should do the spirit.

One thing led to another, and Rubick now had the Snaktivator in one hand and Silitha's Spirit in another. According to Kamek, he could use the Snaktivator to focus a fusion into one body part to help mitigate unwanted changes. While Rubick was tempted to just let the Fusion happen and see what would occur, Rubick decide the folly of getting an unwanted weakness would not be worth the temporary euphoria of satisfying his curiosity here. It was already hard enough surviving in the Under, after all. Rubick set up the Snaktivator, and then let Silitha's Spirit fuse with him. It was a strange feeling, having this strange energy merging with his very being, and it left even Rubick lost for words.

But it soon passed, and Rubick found himself with an altered appearance. Turning his body around, Rubick could see that his fancy collar now resembles a bottom jaw with upward-facing fangs, and the lengths that trail upward are now more like Silitha's scythelike pedipalps. His robe is now primarily spider silk and now features chitinous armored plates, while the curled extremities of his cape look like upturned spider legs. The green gems in his armor and on his body now look more like yellow spider eyes. He also felt the sensation of new information flowing into his brain, similar to his Power Steal, but so different at the same time. He concentrated on the feeling, and webs of light surrounded him before he teleported over to the group, who seemed to be in the middle of explaining the topic of Spirits to Teemo. "Voila! Before you stands a new and improved Rubick!" Rubick announced as he lifted up jazz hands. "Still a magus, yet now much grander!"

Awe-inspiring as the sight of Ash Lake might be, it held little weight for the new arrivals on the whole. They had things to do and places to be, so they worked quickly to make what they could of the new environment. Looking across the still dark waters of this remarkable vista pragmatically, in fact, Teemo found little more than profound danger. Even putting aside the very real possibility of giant underwater predators, he simply wasn’t built for swimming. Though vast in principle, this fantastical subterranean landscape was functionally quite small for purely terrestrial beings like him.

Where the Yordle saw peril, however, the others saw opportunity. The Koopa Troop went right ahead and helped themselves to the local wildlife, both at the outset and as the team went along, following as Teemo led the way along the winding sandbank. Barnabee did not partake in the slaughter, but distanced himself from the water, watching the others assert their dominance on these sandy shores. When it came to the aggressive five-legged clams, even Primrose helped out, and from the eldritch shellfish claimed a spirit to crash. Thanks to her, Rubick, and Rika Teemo got a firsthand demonstration of itemization, fusion, and spiritbinding, and as significant as those revelations might be in and of themselves, they would be only the tip of the iceberg of what the little guy would come to realize if he remained with the Seekers long-term. No matter where they went, it seemed like the heroes would never stop running into both new enemies and new friends.

The sandbank went on for about half a mile, longer if its serpentine curves were somehow stretched into a straight line. Sometimes it measured several hundred feet in width, with the peak of its central dune higher even than Bowser if he stood at the water’s edge, but sometimes the sandbank dwindled down to just a dozen feet. In the interiors of its tighter bends lay shallows that could be splashed through without a second thought, where crabs combing the silt for invertebrate morsels could be chased into their hidey-holes. Glistening shell fragments seemed common, but among them a keen-eyed explorer could find the occasional sand dollar, star conch, or piece of coral.

Still, it wasn’t long before the travelers began to focus on their destination, this change brought about in part by a shift in the terrain. As they closed the distance to the hollow they could see more clearly how it differed from the one that brought them here. For starters, it looked bigger, but in much worse shape. It looked badly damaged, its bark warped as if by a terrible fire, and it didn’t actually reach this monumental cavern’s ceiling. Instead it stopped a way up, caving in and withering away to a jagged crown. Far above, the rest of the tree dangled from the roof like a stalactite. Barnabee scratched his chin as he eyed the group’s destination. “I daresay we shall not find a method of ascension in yonder husk. Could it be the same great petrified trees that I witnessed in Hollow Bough, I wonder…?”

When the Seekers began drawing close, the ground began to change as well. The sandbank thickened into what might be considered a proper island, but its constituent material went gradually from pale beige to a somber dark gray, becoming even more soft and fine. It also piled up higher and higher against the side of the other hollow, forming a massive dune that the earthbound were forced to climb. They could see a large crack in the wood at the top that would permit them entry, so they trudged uphill, difficult as it was. A curious smell filled their nostrils as they climbed: that of soot and cinders, like the powdery leavings of a burnt-out campfire, but they made their most curious discovery within a few dozen feet of the opening. Growing from the ash were handfuls of small, evergreen gorse bushes, laden with bright yellow flowers, as well as toxic pea-pods. They stood in neat rows to either side of the breach, their formation pleasant but clearly not natural. Inside it was dark for the adventurers’ light-adjusted eyes, so only once they stepped inside the hollow could they really see what it contained.

And for the most part, the hollow was home to a gargantuan, towering heap of ash. While for the most part the ground in here assumed the shape of a shallow basin, the farthest third of it shot upward into an impossibly steep ashen incline, hundred of feet tall. At the very stop stood an empty throne all by itself, turned away from the entrance. Behind it, recessed into the wall, lay a giant gauge like the face of a clock tower, sixty percent filled by blazing purple flame that lit up the entire space with its flickering glow. Down below the mountain of ash, yellow gorse flowers practically blanketed the floor, but that wasn’t all. Seven altars lay in a circle around the chamber’s center, and on each rested an impressive weapon: a star-metal greatsword, a holy lance, an evil-looking longbow, a magical staff, a draconic greataxe, a splendid shield, and a hellish trident.

Off to one side, a large figure stood, shrouded in a dark cape. Crowned, bearded, and broad-shouldered, he sported two great curled horns, and a watering can in his hand. He’d been tending to the flowers until the Seekers arrived, at which point he stared at them with dark, sunken eyes, wholly devoid of Galeem’s light, or any light at all. The exile made a weak, miserable attempt at a smile.

“...Howdy.”



The race was on to bring Artemis down before she could let loose her ultimate attack, and all without harming the poor girl trapped within the confines of the demon’s torso. How Sierra ended up like that in the first place was a question Band had neither the time nor the ability to investigate. He only hoped that answers would come to light once the team extracted her, for better or for worse. Pessimistic as he might be sometimes, Band didn’t want to think that the cheerful, wholehearted Spheal trainer had a dark side, or hidden agenda. Of course, that meant this was someone else’s doing, and while Chief Irons sure did seem like a ripe bastard, did he really dabble in the demonic arts? Then again, anything was possible.

Of course, all that could wait. Red was right; the two of them needed to put their fists to use against Artemis so that Ace could cut Sierra free. Wasting no time, the squat superhero recruited a squad of strikers for a new Unite Morph (as opposed to a gaggle of frightened innocent bystanders) which he used to smash wooden debris toward the airborne demon. It wasn’t the most accurate or effective attack, and Band figured he could do one better. Any musician worth his salt, after all, could hit the perfect pitch. “Think fast!” he told Red, snatching him up for a fastball special. With his high-power brass knuckle he hurled Red straight toward Artemis to deliver that big fist of his personally.

A moment after Red drove that haymaker home to soften the demon up, the Cadet went to work. After a footstool jump off Albedo’s Solar Isotoma he slashed into Artemis, then cracked her jaw with an upward wallop from his shield. He then embedded his blade in order to attach himself, but by that time the projectile-happy pretender had already begun to fall. Reaching her was the hard part; it turned out that it didn’t take much to cut her ultimate attack short. Shrieking, she plummeted back down into the ground with both Ace and the newly-arrived frisk on top of her. Together they dug into the demon’s body, prying it open to shed the light of day on the captive trainer once more. Big Band hustled over to help, but the team quickly found that their enemy’s healing factor wasn’t nearly as potent as it looked earlier, and with Artemis stunned from the Seekers’ desperate measures to interrupt her she couldn’t even resist.

For a few seconds Band stood over her as the others worked to pull Sierra out. This almost reminded him of one of Peacock’s favorite moves, which involved bringing her entire crew out to kick and beat on whatever hapless fool she’d managed to stuff into a burlap sack. After a moment though he elected to make a pragmatic choice. He brought his brass knuckles down on the demon’s head with enough force to crack the tilt beneath it, and after only a couple blows Artemis was toast. She dissolved into ash and left Sierra behind, unconscious and slick with cyan demon blood but otherwise none the worse for wear as far as Band could tell. Mission complete.

The detective stood up straight, breathing a sigh of relief. “Nice hustle, y’all.” Ace and Red had both pulled their weight, and even if Frisk hung back for most of the fight, Band was glad she came to help at the end. Not half bad for someone as ordinary as her. His gaze turned to Sierra and the spirit of Artemis beside her, questions bubbling up in his mind about the chain of events that led to this moment. It hadn’t been long at all since she parted ways. Had someone in the group mentioned that they were planning to head to the library in her presence? “Guess we’ll have to wait ‘til she wakes up to get to the bottom of this. Sure didn’t seem like a secret monster to me, but at this point, nothin’s gonna surprise me.”

The Noumenon’s front doors slammed open, surprising him. Band turned in a hurry to see Lucia running over, a panicked look on her face. “Guys, I got some real bad news!” She stopped short with wide eyes, taking in the chaos that had befallen the library with the bedraggled Seekers and their senseless new acquaintance in the middle of it. “Uh. Well, wahse news, anyhow. We got company, and it shoah ain’t the good kind!”

Outside the Noumenon, a perimeter had formed of arcane police cars that floated above the ground on magic glyphs instead of tires, the vivid flashes of their red and blue lights produced by racks of glowing crystal. A number of guardsmen stood at the ready with crossbows, staves, and swords in hand. Most prominent were the three officers that Band wanted to see least of all, especially so soon: Nightingale, Stryker, and Byte plus Barq. They started shouting, all loud and accusatory. Band didn’t pay much attention, since he just ducked back out of sight. “Don’t bother yellin’ with ‘em,” he told the others. “They ain’t here to be reasoned with. We got thirty second max before they come bustin’ in here. If I’m bein’ honest, I don’t mind takin’ care of things now. It was always gonna come to this. Just a matter of time. But we don’t wanna face ‘em all, so let’s see if we can get ‘em to chase us out some back route to somewhere more private.”

“...Cooperation is NOT optional! If you do not surrender, we’ll have no choice but to use lethal force!” Stryker finished bellowing a moment later. Less than ten seconds later, he cracked his neck. “Sounds like resisting arrest to me. Stand back, fellas. We’ll handle this.” With the officers securing the perimeter, Irons’ watchdogs moved in.

Even though his impromptu tour group wasn't in the state or mood for small talk, Ichiban couldn't help but point out interesting sights or helpful tidbits about parts of the city as he lead them through it. It was just shooting the shit with some folks, really, but maybe they might learn a thing or two for when they were all healed up. Not that Ichiban figured himself that good of a guide.

He also decided to not mention the Sanitarium's sketchiness. He hadn't been helping them out for too long, but it wasn't a secret how freaky some of their methods got. Ichiban felt a little guilty about it. These people needed to get healed though, and he didn't want to scare them off with horror stories.

"Aight, you all try to rest easy!" Ichiban said to the group once they arrived at the Sanitarium's front desk. "I gotta take these to the medicine storage, uh, place. These docs'll have you better in no time, promise."

Again, there was a bit of a nagging guilt in just leaving them to face the odd procedures, though it wasn't like Ichiban know what they did in the operating rooms. He hadn't been a patient yet. Maybe people just... had a big fear of doctors around here?

Ichiban's own time would be a bit of a lengthy form of torture too: red tape. He couldn't just dump the recovered medicines off and be on his way, no no. He had to get them officially registered as being recovered, then bring them all the way to the other side of the Sanitarium to get them each checked out for any contamination, one at a time, and after that he had to carry them back again to where he started in order to get it all sorted away. By the time he finally wrapped up everyone else was getting let out, cured of their illnesses.

As the small group of Seekers too a moment to recover from whatever medieval methods were provided to them, Ichiban wandered back over to them in the waiting lobby, a few packs of unbranded chips and cookies in his hands.

"Hey, again," he greeted with a nod. "You all feelin' better? I uh, prolly should've warned you about this place before. Sorry about that." He offered his vending machine loot to the group, either as an apology gift or as comfort food. "But the way I figured it, you guys must be pretty tough. Not many folks manage to make it through the Basement in one piece! Well, I guess you did get sick, but still..."

---

Before he could put a word in edge wise, Giovanna cut him short. Once more assuming she knew better than he, of course you couldn't trust most in General Affairs but she didn't know the detective personally

Her rather strong headed demeanor was beginning to wear thin on Benedict, had they listened to him before and avoided tracking down Khamsin they wouldn't have put themselves in this situation in the first place. Benedict had told the secret agent she did have a target on her back, she was as much a liability to the Seekers as she was a benefactor.

Benedict quietly sighed, removing his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. Something bothered him about the way the detective had simply left with only a word of advice, that wasn't the kind of thing he would expect of his former colleague. The old tactician pushed his plate away, unable to finish what was left of his meal as he mulled things over.

Gripping the tip of his cane as he stood, Benedict readjusted his glasses with a push of an index finger. Not bothering to have his leftovers packaged, the Turk quietly waited as Giovanna paid for the meal. Benedict stood by the entrance, something at the back of his mind nagging him to peer momentarily out the glass.

Though he saw nothing out of the ordinary, still the former inspector couldn't help but feel like something was amiss. Opting to follow the rest of the group out the restaurants front doors, he decided to put those suspicions to rest for the moment at least.

However that moment came sooner than expected as they stepped into an empty street save the not-so-subtle street workers going about their business, Benedict sighed inwardly. He should have known better than to not expect an ambush, Zenkichi wasn't a fool.

His colleague stepped out from cover, staring at him intently as he demanded answers from the old tactician. Benedict, wasn't sure if the detective would be as inclined to believe an outside force was at work in Midgar but before he could say anything the brash agent cut in and opted to take a combative stance.

"Indeed, it runs deeper than either of us could understand. However Mr. Hasegawa you are being influenced by the very thing that stands in the way of both our duties." Benedict's knuckles turned white as they gripped the butt of his cane, ready to draw it from its hidden sheath. "To root out the wrongs and make them right and to protect the public, which the city has failed to do."

The Turk stepped toward his colleague, hands tightly on his cane "I don't stand in your way, the city is standing in our way. A city we do not belong in, but I will fight you if you choose to not see reason."

Almost punctuating his sentence, Benedict's sword hummed as it was pulled from its place. The tip pointed towards his friend and former colleague, Benedict had no emotion on his face just a stern look in his eyes.

"If not, I will make you see reason." he was not trying to intimidate the detective nor was he faking bravado, Zenkichi of all people would know that when Benedict said he would do something. He would not hesitate to follow through. He was watching his colleague carefully, making sure to note his body language, he knew where to hit and when to retreat if his friend made a move.

Geralt took Benedict's lack of contradiction to Giovanna's response as an agreement, and nodded. Not terribly surprising, that. Really, had Zenkichi just walked over and offered his help to solve all their problems, he'd probably be more suspicious of the man. Geralt picked up on Benedict's unease, though he wondered if it was just due to the current situation in general, one of his old allies oh-so-conveniently walking in on them, or something else he couldn't quite figure out.

He didn't need long to realize what that was, though, as he noticed the nigh-deserted plaza as soon as he stepped out, rolling his eyes a little at the G-men's ineffectual attempts to blend in. Zenkichi was still standing in that half-slouch pose, thumbs hooked in his pockets, even as Benedict drew his sword and the G-Men began to transform. It was as if he was totally confident in his ability to handle the situation. Geralt was actually a little impressed, though he seriously doubted he would be able to back up that confidence for long.

Geralt drew his steel blade, looking at Benedict. He knew the tactician wasn't a slouch when it came to a fight, but he wasn't sure what Zenkichi had up his sleeve and if the other man could take it. Still, the numbers were well in their favor, about two to one in fact.

When Benedict replied, alluding to Galeem and implying that Zenkichi was under the influence of a greater power, the other man looked a bit taken aback, his face hardening a little. "So you do know...I take it that that's why you went to her, then. You saw what was happening, and you went to somebody who'd been as close as you could get without needing to get your own hands dirty. Lucky you." Zenkichi half-mocked, though Benedict could tell the mockery wasn't directed at him, but Zenkichi himself.

"I need to know whose side you're on, Benedict. I have too much to lose to risk anything if I'm not 100% sure."

Geralt lifted his hand, drawing the Sign of Quen.

Zenkichi called out, "Valjean!" as his posture straightened and his Persona materialized, his hands launching up from their lazy position at his hips, now carrying dual revolvers.

Geralt cursed, moving forward.

Zenkichi let loose a barrage of bullets, sweeping his aim over the Seekers, the firepower crashing into Geralt as he charged, Quen barely holding after the couple of shots that hit him.

Zenkichi gave his revolvers a spinning flourish before depositing them in their holsters and catching Geralt off guard by swinging a massive sword off his back, forcing the Witcher to pivot on his feet to avoid his lighter blade (even upsized a bit from the Spirit fusions) being knocked aside.

"Why two swords?" Zenkichi wondered aloud, making Geralt roll his eyes.

"Really? Wait till now to ask that?" He snarked back, stepping in with a thrust which Zenkichi barely dodged, replying in turn with an easily-avoided swing.

"You clearly know what you're doing. Was just wondering." The harsh sound of steel on steel as Geralt stepped in, Zenkichi blocking with the wider flat of his blade.

"How about this: Win, and maybe I'll let you know." Geralt lashed out with a boot as Zenkichi tried to thrust the crossguard of his weapon into Geralt's shoulder, the Witcher coming out of the exchange ahead and landing a follow-up swing across the Lieutenant's arm.

"Damn. You drive a hard bargain, there. Can't say no to an easy win like that." Zenkichi taunted, launching a pair of slow but powerful swings, forcing Geralt back a bit. A longsword was one thing, but a blade like that had enough mass behind it to seriously hurt even through armor or a cracked Quen shield.

"We'll see." Geralt bit back.

Roxas had to dive out of the way of a finger laser. This thing was a chimera? The floating arms and body of it reminded him of a familiar enemy from his own world: the Heartless known as a Guard Armor. It, too, had body parts that floated about and could attack individually. And from what Roxas could recall, each of those parts could also be individually destroyed, "I've faced a Heartless similar to this in my world!" he told the others, figuring it was best to share what he was thinking. "If this is anything like that was, then we can destroy the parts one by one if we focus our attacks!" while Roxas wasn't sure if this would work against this specific enemy, some kind of plan was better than having none at all.

He used his Keyblades to bat away an incoming couple of fire bolts. Then he fired back with a couple of Blizzagas before having to dive out of the way of another incoming finger laser. This time Roxas decided to move forward and close the distance between himself and the chimera. It tried to launch a punch at him but the Keybearer was able to guard against it and strike back with a Dual Counter. After that he unleashed a flourish of melee strikes on the same arm he had just countered against. He was trying to put his strategy into motion by focusing his attacks on a single part in the hopes of destroying it sooner.

But Roxas also knew he had to tread lightly. This thing had already demonstrated that it could hit, and hit extremely hard. The Keybearer understood that he was likely the only Seeker in this current group capable of healing. And so Roxas had no choice but to divert his attention way from his attacks every now and again in order to check on the well being of his teammates. If it looked like everyone was taking a beating, he could fire off a quick Curaga to give the Seekers a second wind if needed. But this also meant that he had to remain on guard a bit more, and as a result he started to not get in quite as many attacks as he would otherwise have liked to. He also knew that if he went down, that would mean the group would lose its only current healer.

After spending nearly a year doing missions for Organization XIII alone, Roxas had to admit that this current situation of taking an entire team into account was actually kind of new to him. He just had to hope he could get the hang of it quick because otherwise he and the Seekers would be in serious trouble.

While not the cheapest thing, it was about time Sectonia saw some bits of high class society for once. A lot of fancier looking bugs were here, One with a fancy white tophat, a fashionable bee lady, a pair of bugs arguing over cards. and a bug watching and enjoying their arguments. among other noble or well off looking bugs. There were a few non bugs here, but they were in the vast minority. While being a bit more extravagant than the rest of them, Sectonia didn't stand out as much as she would've in a lower class theatre, well, besides her size making her much bigger than many of those here.

Having gotten to the theatre at the time she did, Sectonia had only caught the tail end of a play based on some desert adventurers trying to save a princess. She wasn't all that interested in such a play, having been in a desert not a few days ago and fought such a disgusting monster there. The arguing pair quieted down when the next show started though, a strange looking humanoid boy bandsinging various songs that had a good rhythm, but felt disingenuous. Sectonia found them tolerable, but she wasn't smitten with them like a few of the younger bugs in the theatre, she'd prefer more of an aria than whatever this was truth be told.

After finishing one of their songs, as if speaking her thoughts, one of the male bugs in the audience spoke up and started calling out this band, named 1010, out for feeling fake. A sentiment that was more or less proven true as one of the band members tripped over their instrument chord and crashed onto the ground in a mechanical heap. Some of the smitten lady bugs berated the guy who had spoken up about the band, distracting most of the theatre from the band's producer coming down and using some kind of device to summon a new band member to replace the broken one, with said broken one being nonchalantly, and briskly, brushed aside by one of the janitors. Now this Sectonia saw as enjoyable. She figured she'd need to go to the circus to see such tomfoolery, but no, it was a routine of this theatre! What made it even funnier to her was that from what she could tell, this wasn't planned from how the staff was acting, but none of the patrons seemed to notice.

After their show with the robotic boy band members having some issues getting off stage, the crowd mumbled to itself before the final showing of the evening was to be seen. Sectonia couldn't hear much at all, but did catch a little bit of someone mentioning how someone named Undyne would make sure things were kept orderly, with another bug sushing them as the stage had been cleared and the next performer was on stage. They were a single ethereal looking butterfly who began to sing a song with a tune Sectonia greatly appreciated. Now this was what she figured a high class theatre would have, not the metal boy band. Other than a beautiful song, not much else of note happened. With her act done, the songstress gave a bow before fading from sight as a few of the patrons got up and left, with a few others staying to chat with each other.

Sectonia, feeling far more relaxed than when she came, go up with the patrons leaving and decided to go take a look and see if her minions had gotten cured from their afflictions. She had plans to take them all to the amusement district, as she figured they would appreciate a bit of fun and time to unwind. Although with that in mind, she looked to see how much her little escoursion cost, and sighed. It wouldn't be a cheap venture, so she summoned what antillions she could, figuring that since it had been a few hours her antillions had gotten that 'king of evil' to a medical center. With a small group of antillions summoned, Sectonia commanded them to go look about for Geo or other currency that might just be lying about. From what she had seen, currency was found in the weirdest places in these cities so far.

With a lack of a map though, finding her minions would be quite the tall order in such a large city.

The platforming across the floating world they had wound up took a while, which combined with the feeling of uncleanliness resulted in a sort of gradually building dread in the princess till about ten minutes in (according to her watch), when it became clear that being inside the plane wasn’t a rapid fire way to be turned into a monster. Which meant it was actually less corrupting than her home realm, as it would have turned them all into ghosts or beasts right after they arrived.

”Still probably not a good idea to stick around in here any longer than we have to” she muttered while hiding behind a stone block, before yelling ”So it’d be nice if you could stop slowing us down you worthless pieces of trash!” and then hurling a twilight volleybomb at the copy of a copy of a copy denizens of the realm, which she had found produced absolutely nothing of value when crushed.

Yet slow them down they did, as did the feeling just which grew worse and worse. It was something of a relief then, when they found their man, despite how dire the situation he was in was.

The chimera assailing the unarmed man was massive, and a block of armor to boot, but at least it was visible and tangible. That hadn’t stopped it from thrashing Goldlewis however, and the secretary of defense was in bad shape.

”The cavalry's here, so pull back and let us take the heat!” she called out as she approached, float-hopping up the stepping stones, yet despite her words she was still a ways off when she yelled it, and the Harbinger’s influence was notably slowing her stride.

As a result, she was almost certainly going to arrive to the fight, despite not being the last to reach the stairs

”Come on, think think think” she demanded of herself as her slow pace forced her to watch, before snapping her fingers upon realizing she should ”Think laterally!” to solve her problem.

In tune with that line of thought, she diverged from the tunnel-like path leading towards the combat and went to the side, ascending up the walls flanking the stairs, before landing atop it.

Up there she found exactly what she had been looking for: a way to help before she got in close. Hovering around the top of the wall were several of the near ubiquitous hut sized floating cube that littered astral terrain, ones just like those the gang have passed dozens of on their way here. Until now, she’d just barely thought about them, but now, as she reached out with a shadow hand and plucked one from the sky she had found a use for them: namely as projectiles

She pulled the first floating rock close, and then whipped her head around and around, whirling her shadow hand like a sling, reproducing that must humble yet deadly of weapons at a marco scale, before hurling the gravity defying rock at the hulking form of the chimera.

The princess mainly relied on the size of her target and her projectile to make up for the unpracticed and improvised nature of her attack .The fact that most of the party were still approaching when she made it reduced the risk of friendly fire, but first Goldlewis and then also Roxas were still there and in the line of fire. To avoid hitting them, the princess aimed her toss as wide of the men as she was able … and also yelled the made up on the spot attack name of ”Cubic toss!” as a warning when she let a chunk of the astral plane fly.

She wasn’t done with just one shot, however, and the princess would grab and throw as many shots as she could until she was interrupted, or the battle on the platform got too chaotic from the introduction of more fighters for her to be able to risk firing into said fight. She added to this barrage by summoning her 3 amazon initiate strikers, who dashed to whatever cover they could find atop the wall, and from those spots proceeded to launch as many volleys of armor piercing and mind breaking psychic spears at the chimera as their timers would allow.

If she had space after, she’d use it to approach and throw in some dragon dances as she did, powering up for her own entrance into the fray. If something came after/was fired at her? She’d have the remaining cubes to use as a shield of sorts for her small body, or failing that, dive for any kind of cover she could find.