A thick sickly residue clung to Artorias' armor, already pitted with dents and battle scars from the Seeker's previous fights that upon their momentary breather the Wolf Knight made a mental note to see to the repair of his armaments as he wiped the slough from his blade, welcoming the feral with a nod as she slid out of her hiding place.

"Hm," the knight’s pointed ears twitched at the mention of such a word as justice, it's meaning became more hollow when he came to think of it as he pieced back his memories "At one time twas I who thought justice a simple thing, alas that which is just tis different from what is right." Artorias mused aloud as he unceremoniously kicked the icky remains of wasp guts from his greaves, speaking more from his own experience.

There was no changing the deep seeded hatred of all that corrupts, but of the dark he was becoming hesitant to be as mindless in his hate with the disturbing nightmares he had been having. But he was only held by fear than of a change of heart.

A fear that all he had been made to believe was wrong, but with a sigh the knight perished the thought. Now wasn't the time nor place to ponder, it was time to act. His heavily armored feet causing a bit of a racket as he stormed off with the others to the throne room of the Queen, a great wasp hanging by a chain.

Though as a knight he upheld his chivalry but he was also not blind as the hornets to see their so called Queen was nothing but a puppet on a string so to speak. Dealing with the swarms was one thing but swarms that took the form of deadly weapons was another, though he easily evaded such attacks it took a bit of his stamina to do so with the added weight of his greaves.

Leaving the swarms to be dealt with by those capable of doing so his attention focused on the Queen. While the feral began her attack upon the bit of bandages keeping pieces of the metal monarch up he looked elsewhere, his glowing eyes following the chain upwards. Though he grunted, deciding to focus on taking on the Queen with Nadia.

With the introduction to the fight of the Ichor and Iron wasp queens, things got a bit more annoying than just the ranged attacks of the bare basic wasps and the heavy drone. Although with the push from the two 'kings' with a bit of haste, the stalemate that was about was broken at last as they pushed through and started to destroy the opposing backline, causing some damage to the heavy drone in the process. Sectonia, having a bit of fun in the backline for once watching the boys just wreck havoc in front of her was throwing out her spells, even throwing a partial Spacial Rend upon the Heavy Drone when it lost its balance and fell out of the sky temporarily, but soon she'd have to go and join the frey herself as the Iron Queen, having gotten into position, was buffing her own minions with her magic that let them much more easily deflect Sectonia's spells. Sure they could evade the slower spells, but having her spacial rends not having the effect she wanted, and not wanting to leave herself open to charge a bigger one, forced her hand into melee combat as well.

Moving past a recovering Heavy Drone, Sectonia approached the Iron Queen with her blink strike. The enemy wasp had a will equal to her title though, and instead of getting struck by a swipe from Sectonia's swords, instead shot web at Sectonia and stopped her momentum temporarily as she went to strike. This surprised Sectonia a bit, but the webs didn't hold her long. The iron queen got a hit in before Sectonia could blink away, but as her name suggests, she was more for defense than offense. Something Sectonia would learn as she started her counterattack doing a rapid sword thrust.

Still, that iron defense was no joke. With her amount of buff spells on her and her minions occasionally forcing Sectonia to retreat or throw her lightning around to clear them away, it took Sectonia some time to chip through her defense and regeneration. Counterattacks were a aplenty as well, but the incoming damage on the bee queen wasn't all that high, especially when her Chaos Shield came off of cooldown and her commrades keeping the much more offense oriented ichor queen busy. After a bit of a longer fight than Sectonia would like to admit, eventually the iron queen fell after Sectonia focused on her exclusively for a time thanks to Rubick offering a large enough distraction.

With the iron queen dead, her buffs went with her, making the nearby wasps much easier to clear out. Taking her spirit as Sectonia liked the idea of more buffs for her loyal minions, she would make use of Kamek's snackivator much like the mage made use of Sectonia's symbol of avarice and decided to fuse the spirit to her wings to get back her more majestic golden insect look instead of these half cape half wing things they were at the moment.

But that would have to wait until after they were out of this hive and into a safe area. There was still the heavy drone to take care of, which wasn't in a great state. Through the residual damage of everyone's attacks, attacks directed at it, and everything, it was on the verge of falling apart. And Sectonia, retreating back to give herself some passive healing, gave it a courtesy blow with her swords, finishing it off as well as the cumulative effort of everyone worked to take it down. And with that, the spirit as spoils.

With everything calming down now that the large majority of forces had been taken care of, the group made its way deeper into the hive and soon found the 'ursurpor', a giant mechanical wasp! And giant was an understatement, it was far bigger than Sectonia and Bowser themselves, but also immobile. "Hmph, no wonder they were such a weak hive, considering whats before us." Sectonia said. Still, just because it was immobile, didn't mean it didn't have its own tricks as it summoned in many of its wasp minions in large hordes to attack the seekers.

Sectonia, being one of the group that brought the widespread damage, used her Slow on one of the groups of wasps before throwing her various spells. Due to them being in a large group, hitting them wasn't as difficult, although seeing as it was a large group of individuals making an object, her spells had a mixed effect. She also summoned her striker, which shot its own lasers at the swarms, as well as her antillions to help support however they can, granted they seemed to be able to only attack the giant metal wasp queen itself instead of the wasp hordes due to their limited range, but any damage going out was good damage so far.

After reporting in to Gamma, and finding out where Sakura had gone, the princess went to find out what was in the final room, confident that the street fighter could handle herself, and that she had backup if anything went sour.

Said final room was open to the air rather than sealed by double doors, which allowed the princess to simply slip inside without any risks of falling for any traps (deliberately set or not).

What she found was disturbing. The first thing she sensed was the beep beep beep of some sort of machine, the monitor of which showed a line that pulsed in tune with the sounds. The machine had a pair of wires coming off of it, which joined up with tubes coming from other, less noisy, machines, and which all slipped under a set of thin curtains shrouding a hospital bed.

The curtains did their job of hiding what was inside rather poorly, for a strong back light revealed the silhouette of a limbless figure, its chest slowly rising and falling. As the princess got closer, slipping between the shadows of strewn around visitor chairs and a bedside table, she started to hear that breathing too, once it was no longer drowned out by the machines. It was a hollow and sickly sounding breathing, while also being strangely staticky as well (though not being familiar with the concept of white nose, the princess would have described it as a combination of sizzling meat and a snake’s hiss).

With a mix of dread and curiosity, the princess pulled herself out of the shadows of the machines by the bed, and reached out with her shadow hand to pull the curtains aside with care. Upon seeing what was within, Midna gasped with horror, and dropped the curtain, before forcing herself to look again.

What she beheld was a person, arms and legs severed at the joins leaving not even stumps, and their face sheathed in bloody bandages. Their torso meanwhile had numerous wires and tubes stuck too or into it. The ones from the beeping machine were right over the heart, the princess unsure if it was mirroring, stealing from or maintaining the organ beneath, while tubes carried various fluids to and from the brutally injured person.

While most of her was appalled at what she saw, a little part of her mind mocked the hypocrisy of her horror when she had just done this to a certain obnoxious ex-head of R&D.

”He could have fixed that” she bit back at her own mind with a harsh whisper, before continuing the thought ”He did fix that... He could, or someone could, fix this!” which briefly ripped away the horror and replaced it with hope. Mere moments later however her spirits came crashing down again, as she stared at the mass of tubes and cables and then followed them back to the machines, and then from the machines to cables linking them to a slot on the wall, one that sat beside a large switch.

”That … turns them off?” she guessed, which she had no idea if it was bad or good. Even if it was good, she wasn’t a doctor, she was quite sure that if she tried to remove all the things plugged into the patient/victim, she might very well kill them by accident.

”Skywave?” she said, summoning the newly acquired exosuit striker to her side, but the dead pilot within knew nothing that the princess did not know, and so could simply put motion to the princess’s doubts as to her effectiveness with a shake of the head. This person needed the kinds of surgeons who made DespoRHado’s cyborgs, or miracles, and the princess had neither.

She could only pray and hope that an angel was listening ”Sandalphon? Are you still listening? Can you see what I see? Can you help them?” she asked the air, unsure if the Archangel’s power worked this far away.

If it didn’t, she would regretfully leave, and go to inform the others. Something needed to be done, but with such a delicate situation, she would not risk doing something without the others, and could only hope they knew more about the machines in the patient/victim than she did.

Within the span of about five minutes, the Seekers managed to coalesce on roughly the same area of the Sector 08 undercity, where the brink of the troubled but tenacious dystopian sprawl called Detroit overlooked a sequestered cityscape long since given over to isolation and redshift corruption. This unofficial ninth sector went ignored and unacknowledged, a blight on the city’s history and a remnant of its darkest hour, and with its very existence too painful to embrace it lay here, hiding in plain sight like a homeless veteran. This was Quarantine Valley, a realm even lower on the rungs of Midgar’s sociopolitical ladder than the undercities, yet safeguarded against intrusion with the fierceness of the City of Glass. As Goldlewis took it all in from the sidewalk behind the metal railing, he couldn’t help but feel a profound melancholy borne of his sense of responsibility. Even if it wasn’t his call that left this place -these people- desolate, it saddened him to them abandoned to this terrible fate

Guided by an expert at high speed, Goldlewis and Karin seemed to arrive first, and once they turned up the fliers could zero in on the position and join them. Susie, Blazermate, and H’s drone had navigated over the tumultuous streets with little to no issue; even if people down below spotted them, they probably had more pressing matters to worry about. Roland turned up soon after, drifting to a stop on a slick black motorcycle inexplicably come into his possession. He knew he had little to fear from his wanton theft; the law of the Administration seldom lifted a finger to save anyone down here, least of all from itself. Geralt had taken advantage of Detroit’s sky-lines, using them as intended with his sky-hook to make good time weaving around and in some cases through the various buildings. Though Sandalphon used the same means of transportation, her method of sliding atop the sky-lines (while an impressive feat in its own right) took her long enough that Zenkichi joined Geralt, courtesy of a former colleague’s good-natured assistance, before she did. With 2B and 9S still in Sector 07, probably for the best considering the fugitive status of DespoRHado’s android corps in Sector 08, that left only two conspicuous absences: Benedict and Partitio. Goldlewis didn’t know where they’d gotten lost along the way, or even if they’d set out along with the rest at the start, come to think of it. Maybe Partitio had decided to stay behind to help the poor people of the slums, leaving the Seekers right where he first joined them. Benedict, as a former Turk, posed more of a problem. Goldlewis had a hard time imagining that the old tactician would run off and turn his coat now of all times, but who could say what seemed wise to a traitorous mind.

With everyone more or less here, Goldlewis set down his coffin with a thunk and crossed his arms. “Alrighty then. How do we get in?”

As he hoped, Mr. H had an answer for them. “Well, there’s a couple options, but none of them good. There are cameras positioned all around the valley to catch anyone trying to fly in, whether they’re using vehicles or even parachutes. All official routes in and out have been closed down or blocked off except one, and while it’s closely guarded, it’s probably our best bet. This way.”

H led the team about half a block to the north of the interplate subway station, where the remains of a sky-tram station stood on the edge of the valley. It had been shuttered long ago, and the coiled steel tram lines that once connected it to a matching rooftop station down in the valley, severed. In the vicinity, however, stood an unassuming reinforced door in the yellow glare of a single light, plastered with holographic restriction warnings. A Dandelion Security CCTV Camera hung over it, turning the fan of metal petals that surrounded its lens left and right as it scanned for unwelcome visitors. The Seekers stopped up the street a short ways, standing outside a run-down laundromat. “That’s our ticket in,” H told the others. With the recent reduction of personnel, eight wasn’t a huge group, but it was enough to be conspicuous. “I can hack the camera to freeze its intake just long enough to get us inside. The bigger issue…well, I’m sure you’ve already noticed.”

Sandalphon narrowed her eyes. While a casual observer might not notice anything, she spotted something curious after a moment. Next to the doorway stood a trash can, and every few moments its lid cracked open to admit a pair of binocular lenses with a slight red glow from within, betraying the presence of Gleaming eyes. Furthermore, at the closed pawn shop across the street, the blinds parted slightly to let red eyes take a peek of the area. “G-men,” she answered. “At least two on stakeout.” When she looked again, however, she noticed a strange abundance of small trash cans on a road where the alleys already featured dumpsters, all concentrated within a hundred feet or so of the entrance. As well as two simultaneous blind-pulls. “Make that six.”

“All of them probably equipped with walkie-talkies,” H added, his voice grim. “We need to take them all out at once if we’re going to get inside. I can’t help since I’ll already be performing the hack.”

Sandalphon thought for a brief moment. “A coordinated strike may do the trick. Even if we’re unable to exploit their disguised forms’ low health in order to kill them instantly, they’ll be forced to transform and fight us once damaged. If we time it right we can end it before it even begins.” Immediately she turned her gaze upward, searching for a vantage point in the vicinity. “I can snipe one of them.”

Goldlewis stroked his whiskers, considering his options. “Hmm…what if the UMA floated a Thunderbird way above one o’ them trash cans, then dropped it? Doggone G-man wouldn’t know what hit it. And if I got close enough somehow, I could smush another one with my coffin, and that’s all she wrote.” That left three hidden G-men to take care of: two more in trash cans, and one in the pawn shop. Luckily, that establishment featured a second story with a balcony, no doubt due to being a living space at some point in the past. While the fire escape was locked up tight, one of the second-story windows had been smashed, and someone could get in.

Everyone quickly made their choices and got into position. Goldlewis strode down the street alone, aware of all the eyes sticking to him like glue, past the pawn shop, and stopped at the small, weed-infested parking lot opposite the sky-tram station with one of the trash cans right behind him. “I’m an undertaker, and this here’s my coffin I put dead folks in,” he declared loudly so that the G-men could hear, trying to get their attention. “Boy, there sure are a whole lotta dandelions ‘round this parkin’ lot. As a coroner, I need flowers for my funerals. Guess I’ll grab some!” He crouched down to pretend to pick dandelions, keeping one hand on the chain of his coffin.

Down the street, Sandalphon used her new power Vault to leap up onto the roof of the laundromat, where she could crouch down behind a noisy AC unit and take aim at the pawn shop’s storefront window. H piloted his drone close enough to connect to the security camera. Once everyone gave the signal that they were ready, Sandalphon spun up her rifle and waited until both G-men in the pawn shop were peeking at the exact same time. “Now.”

As H froze the camera, Sandalphon’s rifle shot blazed down into the street, through the window, and into the head of one of the faceless goons. Goldlewis whirled around and smashed his coffin into the trash can behind him with a mighty Behemoth Typhoon, crushing it and its occupant against the brick wall behind it. A split second later, his Thunderbird grenade dropped down on another can, blowing it up. The three other members of the group did their thing, and the G-men were taken care of. H opened up the door, and everyone hurried inside. Less than thirty seconds after the operation began, the reinforced door slid shut again, and the valley-side street was quiet.

After a moment, a woman standing on a higher rooftop breathed a long, slow sigh, and snapped her notebook shut. Her pale yellow eyes, as sharp as a predator’s fangs, and her long lupine ears had taken in just about everything. First Benedict, then Zenkichi, and now Roland, who’d been by her side as recently as last night. Three disappearances in three days, only to turn up alongside the same strange group across different sectors, from the debate to the Vandelay raid to Detroit. And now a member of DespoRHado, formerly affiliated with the Lateran church. Had all three really betrayed General Affairs? Why? What brought them all together, and what were their goals? It just didn’t make sense. A dozen questions ran through her head. Nevertheless, she had a duty to figure this out. Having been on the trail of these renegades for a little while now, she felt close to a discovery of vital importance. On the cusp of some revelation.

“Looks like you had the right idea.” Behind her, rather than any fellow official peacekeepers, a young Lupo man in a dark pinstripe suit and a purple overcoat stood with his arms crossed. “They’re the ones all right,” Vigil remarked. “What d’you suppose they’re up to now?”

As the former judge rose, the pale golden chains of her hammerhead flail jingled softly, their thorns shining softly in the strange day’s halflight. “I intend to find out.”

“What, not gonna call it in?” Vigil put on a mischievous smile. “Going off on your own with a schmuck like me instead of your police squad? You’re a bad cop, Lavinia.”

The woman gave her old friend a withering glance, then frowned at the street below. “If that’s the case, Leontuzzo, it’s because I care about one thing only.” She stepped to the edge, pausing to utter one more word before she jumped down to pick up the trail. “Justice.” Hoping to close this bizarre case for once and all, Penance was on the hunt once more.

---

After climbing down a ladder, H and the Seekers reached a large enclosed area. Ahead of them lay a maze of corrugated metal walkways and platforms suspended over a deep, dark intersected by large pipes and other such Detroit utilities, spanning multiple levels connected by stairs. They appeared to be anchored around the huge concrete supports littered the open space, and the ladders that rose up into the higher reaches of the restricted area alongside them granted access to a dangerous alternate path along unsecured, elevated struts. On the other side of the labyrinth, lower down, lay another door like the one the Seekers just came through: the point at which Sector 08 stopped and Zone 09 began.

“That door back there is the only way to the exclusion zone,” H explained. Between the team and their goal patrolled a handful of guards, not G-men this time, but armed troopers. “As you can see, we’ll have to sneak past a few guards to get to it. And the door itself won’t open without a security keycard. The guard captain should have one on him we can use.” In front of the door stood a mustached soldier in camo fatigues and a gray longcoat, his manner impatient and bored but his eyes alert. “Of course, we can’t just ask him to lend it to us. We’ll have to take it from him somehow.”

Sandalphon queried her internal database, searching through her memory for the familiar face. “I know of him. He predated my time in DespoRHado, one of the few to ever actually leave the organization. His name is Charles, but most know him as the Closer. An expert fighter.” Her eyes drifted upward. “That high ground doesn’t grant much access, but I can vault up there and provide overwatch, directing everyone from above.”

“Sounds good. We gotta be fast, and we gotta be careful. This could get real hairy real fast if you guys don’t take the stealthy approach, so if you end up going loud, make sure you’re good and ready.” H’s drone transmitted a deep, somewhat shake breath. “Alright! Nothing to it but to do it!”



Unfortunately for Midna, it turned out that Sandalphon had terminated their magical connection when the previous mission came to a close. Anyone who knew the value of information also knew the value of privacy, and since the archangel had no further need nor desire to perceive or listen to everything the Twilight Princess encountered, she hung up to better focus on the handful of perspectives she’d be directly working with in Midgar’s undercities. Furthermore, while Sandalphon -as the source of the power- could reach out to anyone she’d previously connected to, that didn’t work in reverse. Midna was on her own, and the fate of the still-breathing patient was in her hands.

Back by the operating room, Gemma was beginning to get antsy. He knew he wasn’t well-suited to subtlety and didn’t want to jeopardize anyone or anything due to impatience, but as a senior Psych-OSF member he couldn’t help but worry for his companions. After a few more tense moments, listening to the Doctor at work, Gemma reached out to Sakura via Brain Talk. ”Hey. Everything alright?”

At that moment though, Sakura was in the midst of another conversation. Brain Drain stared at the girl, unblinking, as she tried to steady herself and work her way through a response. She ended up babbling somewhat, repeating herself a couple times, all the while quailing under the psionic’s mental pressure. Brain Drain let her go on, his nerves of steel as calm and collected as ever. It was only natural that an inferior mind -let alone one trapped in a prison of fleshy impotence- would shrivel in his presence, caught as she was in the headlights of his sheer intellect and metal majesty. Though Sakura wore the colors of Psych-OSF, meaning she had to possess at least a modicum of combat ability, Brain Drain wasn’t flustered in the slightest even by the sudden, unannounced appearance of such a suspect individual. After all, what had he to fear?

“Peach, yes, I get the picture,” he responded at length, when the girl was quite finished. ”I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. I don’t know of anyone by that name, and I haven’t dealt with any transfigured unfortunates. We do keep some monsters on the premises to help deter intruders… As he floated over the floor toward a clipboard to double-check, he gave Sakura the side-eye. ...But evidently they’re all old hat. I trust you’re at least passingly familiar with my colleague, the Doctor? I’d wager you’re too composed to have run into Anima, though.” He glanced over at a dark-haired man in a faded green vest and red tie, lying unconscious in a tub previously obscured to Sakura’s point of view, muttering hopelessly as he slept. ”A little fickle, that one, but quite unstoppable so long as the host remains.”

Realizing he was rambling, Brain Drain snapped his attention back to Sakura. ”Regardless, while what we do here is of utmost importance and demands privacy, I assure you this is no ‘evil hospital’. This is where people come to be fixed.” He crossed his arms. ”Oh, don’t bother asking. I don't have to read your mind to know what you're thinking: what does he mean, ‘fixed’? Well, I don’t see the harm in telling you. We’re not open to the public, but our clientele is guided here through certain channels. When they have nowhere else to turn. When they are broken beyond repair, or hate what they see in the mirror, and yearn to be made whole. When they need a medical solution to an ailment without a cure, be that boredom, depression, who they are, or even death itself. I tend to their minds, and the Doctor, their bodies. It is far too complicated for a layman like you to possibly grasp, but if you’re still curious, I invite you to ponder the paradox of the Grandfather’s Axe.”

Brain Drain turned to gaze up at the giant, glowing tank. “Yes, we have quite the collection here. ‘Donated’, yes…you could say that. Surrendered. To the Brainframe, for scientific study and experimentation, to learn more about the mysteries of the mind. They are networked, not just with one another, but to psynet. Extra servers to bolster the psychic pool of the populace. A rising tide raises all ships, as they say.”

He ran his hand along the side of the apparatus, almost lovingly.”Of course, I…could not do this without Psych-OSF. We have something of an arrangement, you see. They help keep the lights on, and in return I provide some services to them. The rehabilitation of certain criminal elements, who would otherwise be subject to execution. They’re brought here, and I help make them better. But that is the extent of our affiliation. My true allegiance is, as ever, to the Greater Good. And that requires that I bend all my efforts to the eradication of the single greatest threat to mankind: not the Ever Crisis, but the Skullgirls.” He huffed, his mental tone irate. ”And I would be all the closer if not for the rash of recent thefts. Someone has been stealing brains. MY brains. The sheer nerve it takes to steal from ME…it’s enough to make a man sick.”

Brain Drain turned to glare at Sakura. ”You, my uninvited guest, wouldn’t happen to know anything…would you?”

In the battle for the hive’s streets, the rubble of a destroyed building suddenly began to be pushed up, forming a brief dome of paper and wax. Rubble tumbled down, revealing the odd bone, before the top of the dome opened up, pushing all the debris to the side to tumble away, revealing the floating form of the (former) skull girl Marie Korbel, and the legions of skeletons she had summoned to form the walls that had cleared away the debris.

Then the striker turned to a mote, which returned to its owner, causing the skeletal walls to dissipate, and reveal him to the world once again.

Bowser was in the midst of wrestling with a battered heavy drone who’s charge had brought the building down on top of both of them, but now that he was free, he grabbed a tight hold of it, and spun around quickly before hurling it into the air.

”So long ya posser!” he yelled as the machine was launched skywards where it smashed into another building, stunning it long enough for Bowser to take in the state of the battlefield (and also long enough for Sectonia to later finish it off).

Said queen had abandoned her floating artillery role, and moved in to take the Iron Queen in melee, tying up the wasp’s mage core leader, while the chaos Rubick was spreading with his imitation magics was tying up the mage core itself.

In the distance, gunfire sounded as Jesse used her object of power to tear through the wasps, making short work of even the metal armored ones with her array of powers and weapon modes. Ganondorf was busy dueling another, more humanoid, robot of the wasp forces, while the bees had rallied an array of bee-type pokemon which turned their desperate struggle into something far more even and, with the aid of the seekers, something they were actively winning.

The only people really struggling on the seekers side turned out to be the rest of Troop, who were facing down the self empowered Ichor queen, who was very much pulling a Sectonia by charging into the seeker’s own mage line.

Kamek and his clones swooped past the king as he looked for them, only for the queen to come slamming down with her titanic blade to cleave one of the doppelgangers in half, while her own refracted around her in a mesmerizing haze. Rika, who had returned to the fold, fired her rigging guns at the queen in retaliation, only for her shots to be blow off course by a swirling barrier of wind surrounding the queen.

The queen turned on the princess, buzzing towards her, hauling her sword over her shoulder again as she flew, before bringing it down in another overhead swipe. Rika used her maneuvering thrusters to boost out of the way, and then just barely brought her cloyster striker out in time to block the queen’s stinger as she swung its poison dripping tip forwards in a combo attack. She tried to jab her spear in in retaliation, but hit only air as it passed through one of the illusions, and then grappling hooked away as the queen reached out with one of her hands to try and touch her, which she correctly assumed would not end well.

A ball of electricity flashed through one of the illusions, prompting the queen to turn again and focus now on the final member of the Troop she had not yet tried to take down.

”Uh oh”

Presently lacking his clown car, the prince was not the most agile, and given that he was carrying two pokemon, that agility was even more limited. So, as the queen charged once more, he saw only one choice

”fire everything!” he yelled, summoning superscope wielding Primids
and pan hurling chef bros to his side to add to his firepower. Kitchen utensils flew, energy bolts flared, electroballs zapped and fireballs from the princes’ own maw sizzled, but all their efforts flew off course or hit falsehoods, all except for Dazzles.

Held under his trainer’s arm, the popplio opened his mouth and unleashed a beam of pink soundwaves which could not be blown away, and as he swept them over the whole illusionary ensemble, he struck true. In an instant, all the illusions vanished, and the queen became visible.

Somewhat.

It was as if her body was writhed in a veil of mist, one that made it appear hazy and unclear. Where the sound beam hit her, that haziness lessened somewhat, but it by no means became clear. What was clear was that the pokemon was doing no harm. Neither did Rika as she hit the queen with a burst of rifle fire, the bullets that were not blow off course unable to bring the queen’s body into clarity to properly harm it.

Which meant she kept coming.

The prince turned to run, but burdened as he was, there was no chance of escape. The queen’s blade rose up, and then swung down- and cleaved into the king’s shell, as Bowser hurled himself forwards to shield his son.

It would have cost him greatly, had his son not immediately called out ”Benediction!” and used his long cooldown full heal to restore his father to peak condition in an instant.

It still cost him, for as he spun around the queen’s massive stinger, came to meet him, striking him in the chest and injecting venom. The king roared in pain but soldiered on, claws ripping forwards, yet the queen buzzed back, using her great blade to repel his attempted attack.

Behind him, his son backed up to get clear of the royal rumble, and lent his father his aid, using ”Esuna!” to clear the venom, and cures to try and keep him topped up, yet the queen was relentless in her attacks, swift in her evasions of the kings heavy blows, and immune to any of his lighter ones. She also called some of her remaining cultists to go after Kamek specifically, while not minding Rika’s attempts to aid her father.

Yet from her actions, Jr sussed out how the spell protecting her must work, and in turn what it must be weak too.

He stepped closer despite warnings and noises of concern from his minions in order to cast ”Holy!” causing a pulse of power to blast out from him, striking the queen and searing her body, bypassing the misty defense due to its magical nature.

That was why she had distracted Kamek, now as to avoid the heavy hits: ”Hit her with everything you’ve got papa!” he called out, as the holy magic had briefly stunned her, giving him an opening.

The king, trusting his son’s plan, followed up immediately, he jets flaring on his kinetic strike module and sending his rocket empowered fist slamming forwards into the queen. Where it hit, the haze fully dissipated, and then the entire effect shattered, along with a fair portion of the queen’s carapace, though the blow was by no means lethal, the magic having reduced the blow’s damage in its final moments.

In the moments that followed it would have been wise for the queen to use her mobility to back off and re-apply to her buffs, or to switch to hurling lightning from afar. Instead the damage enraged her, driving her into a berserker rage like the ones the other cultists had experienced, turning the spellcasting leader into a furious single minded brute.

She was by no means harmless like this, and indeed the massive bleeding crack she immediately left in Bowser’s shell with a rage fueled cleave was evidence to that, but any cunning she had was gone. Bowser went on the defensive, and Jr kept him alive with spellcraft, while Rika and Mimi both flanked the queen. The pokemon used her shadow to attack from one side, briefly drawing the queen’s attention and allowing Rika time to flip her spear around, jabbed barrels on its base past the air shield that had been deflecting ranged attacks, and to then pulled the trigger.

Two point blank shells blasted into the queen, punching through her chitin and then exploding within, spraying blood and guts everywhere, before Bowser slammed another punch in, this one doing its full harm, and shattering the rest of the ichor queen’s inside, ending her life.

They took a moment to breathe, and then started to move to aid Kamek, only to find the mage had just finished dealing with the cultists the dead queen had sent after him. This same thing was true most of everywhere, with the seekers having dealt with the biggest threats, and the free bees having the rest in hand.

And thus, the way forwards lay open.

They had some taodies gathered up some spirits of the different types of wasps they had killed, including a few mages and of course the Ichor queen, before they kept moving and caught up with Nadia.

---

”Which is to say, we dealt with the wasps response force, meaning we won’t have to deal with them now” Kamek added to the hive knight’s one word response to Nadia’s joky accusations of them being late.

As it turned out they probably could have taken all the time in the world that they wanted, because the ‘true’ wasp queen seemed to be something of a fake. She was a machine, and one far less impressive than some of the ones that they had fought outside, a contraption of scrappy looking iron, unworked wood and patchwork canvas. She was also hanging from the ceiling, and couldn't exactly go anywhere, or come to attack them.

She herself might be rather defenseless, but her loyal swarm still fought for her, ensuring that there was still a fight to be had. Said wasps lacked any special abilities, but they were also far more coordinated under this grand queen than they had been on their own, or under the lesser ones.

The troop were forced to scatter to avoid the first living weapon that came their way, and then started to play their own parts in the battle. Bowser and Jr both took on wasp handling duty. The king’s mega fireballs were his most flashy contribution, creating slow large moving balls of danger that the seekers and wasps could move around individually, but that seriously disrupted the formation of any swarm trying to swing past them.

Less flashy was the use of his cannons to blast swarms with supersonic waves to sow confusion among their ranks, or blasts of water, regular cannonfire and fire breath to thin their numbers.

Jr meanwhile mostly made use of Dazzle, the mon forming great bubbles of cold air, which when popped blasted forwards in a gust of icy wind that crystallized on the wasps wings and bodies, slowing down their flight speed. With Mimi copy catting this attack, the prince could give himself and others more time to avoid the slowed down swarm strikes.

While they did this Rika launched herself up into the air with her feather fall rune, and then used her grappling hook to latch onto the queen and pull herself to one of the bandages, whereupon she set herself to work chainsaw bayonetting though it. Kamek covered her back, granting her a sphere of protection to make her mostly immune to physical damage, and using his and his clones magic to blast nearby wasps with magic bolts, or summon spinning rings of playing card suit symbols using the wand of pocus.

Once a pice of the armor fell, he summoned his so far unused tonberry striker and dropped it directly atop the machine piece below. The little creature slid and bumped down it for a few moments before it caught itself on a bit of the metal skeleton. Once secure it ominously raised its plain chef’s knife, and then stabbed it down, doing a disproportionately immense amount of damage to the component with that single blow.

Leaving Ch'en behind to do with his warning as she felt appropriate, Zenkichi joined Geralt and the others in following H's drone towards their destination. As their goal was pointed out, Sandalphon wasted no time in pointing out the biggest obstacle to their goal: the G-Men staking the place out. They were, predictably, very poorly hidden, but that meant little in the face of their limited time window to get through that doorway while the cameras were down. Alerting them and starting a brawl was inadvisable. Goldlewis and Sandalphon were quick to come up with plans, and Zenkichi wasn't far behind.

Casually ambling down the street, he approached the dumpsters first, looking pensive and nodding. "I'm a garbage inspector. Ensuring the integrity of waste receptacles is vital to maintaining a functioning city." Slowly moving between each dumpster, he frowned at one, before shaking his head and moving on. Ignoring the first G-Man he passed and instead nodding at the trash can as if nothing was amiss, he "inspected" a second, circling around it and looking to the others for the signal. As Sandalphon signaled the team, Zenkichi's Phantom Thief attire appeared, and he hefted his greatsword, swinging it overhead and cleaving the trash can, as well as the G-Man inside, in two.

Geralt, meanwhile, was waiting a short distance away from any of the others and the G-Men, ready to serve as backup with a veritable swarm of Strikers that he could direct to help attack any G-Men that survived their alpha strike, as well as his hand crossbow. He didn't want to get any closer and arouse suspicion, but he could at least stay close enough to lend a hand if it was needed.

With the G-Men down and the team on the other side of the door, Zenkichi breathed a sigh of relief. "Man those guys were always awkward to deal with. I felt bad for them, kind of, before I remembered what Shadows really were. Khamsin...much as I couldn't stand the guy, he wasn't entirely wrong that they're basically just disposable cannon fodder. Even now, saying that feels wrong, but...it's whatever." Clearly not entirely over having to reconcile two worldviews, Zenkichi let the moment pass. He'd have plenty of time later to think about it. They had work to do.

The restricted zone before the door to Sector 9 wasn't terribly grand, but there were more than a few armed troopers, real soldiers this time, watching the place. Both Zenkichi and Geralt grimaced at the prospect of sneaking around, neither particularly adept at such maneuvers, and both realized they'd have to fight. "No way I'm sneaking past anything." Geralt readily admitted. "Get in position and get ready to strike, I can either join when you're ready or start this thing myself."

"Might be best to join in. If they all concentrate fire on you, well, I know you have that shield spell, but I'm not sure how long it'll last under directed fire." Zenkichi advised, thinking. "I can probably sneak around a little, but I've really only snuck past Shadows on low alert before. These guys aren't gonna be as simple to get around."

Nonetheless, Geralt took up a hiding spot behind one of the early pillars, ready to rush in when things went loud, while Zenkichi, being much less noticeable, slowly snuck through the restricted area, ready to draw his guns and start firing as soon as their cover was blown. It was less a matter of if, and more a matter of when. Geralt, meanwhile, would have a bit of a run to take to get closer, but his Strikers were ready to be called upon, and Quen would hopefully cover his approach as long as he wasn't being focused down too hard.

Susie and Blazermate, having no real problems navigating the streets thanks to their flight, were among some of the first to arrive. Roland arriving fairly late all things considered even with a high performance motorbike. "Tch. Not as fast as those in the City I guess. Taking it was a waste of time." Roland did park it however where he said he would, using some nearby pole to keep it locked down so it wouldn't be easily stolen. He didn't know if that pair would listen to what he said, but hey, he held up what he said he was going to do.

As everyone gathered, they planned on how they were going to get through to the next area, an area that seemed to hold some answers on what was going on in this city. Plans were being laid out to deal with the G men that were stationed there, 6 in total. Thinking about it, Susie offered to take one out, saying. "A drill dive should take one of them out. With the rest of you dealing with yours, that leaves..." Roland, having worked with these things, but not all that interested personally in helping the shady leaders of the city, knowing what he knows now with his memories restored, said. "I'll take that one. Working with these monsters for so long, only realizing how wrong it was, really doesn't feel great."

As Goldlewis went to start the distraction that'd signal everyone to start their attack, Susie hovered high above the G man she was going to dive bomb, with Roland silently moving to his position, his mask making him less noticeable to the G men compared to Zenkichi and Goldlewis, especially as they were taking up their attention. Blazermate stayed behind, as she didn't have anything that'd let her deal with any of this in a timely matter. Once everyone was in position, the trap was sprung. Roland moved to hit his G man with his massive sword in order to cleave it in two, while Susie summoned her business suit and crushed the G man she landed on into dust. Due to the low hp of these forms, both party members took out their respective targets, and with everything down, they could move on to the checkpoint proper.

Once they got there, it was clear that the checkpoint itself was manned by actual soldiers instead of those monstrous G men. "Well, I think you guys were onto something. Its rare that they lave actual soldiers guarding anything unless it was important. There must be something that they don't want people to see there." Roland said, thinking about what he was observing. Blazermate piped up. "So... I don't see how we're all going to stealth through this. I'm bright blue, Susie is bright pink, and I'm sure the metal detector would go off if we tried to get through one, and I'm sure they got one...." Blazermte said. "But well, if we get into a fight, my projectile shield can protect us from their bullets as well." She then got a look on her face as if she thought of something. "Oh! Oh! Leave some for me to turn into zombies, we could use them to sus out dangerous areas!" The medabot had said she could do this, but Roland had never seen it. At least from what he could gather, she wasn't going to make those puppet abominations from a certain someone he hated...

"I could use a test drive of this shield I got. I'm not a fan of a live fire test, but thats what my business suit is for." Susie said. Roland was silent, he knew it'd probably come to a fight, but he wasn't happy about it. Hopefully this would be worth it, and this wasn't some long long grift.

Sakura’s shoulder dropped, her arms hanging limp when Brain Drain said he didn’t know where Peach was. Moping, her eyes glassed over for a small portion of his explanation, but the mental pressure brought her back into reality.

As he began to explain what exactly they do here, Sakura listened intently, nodding along. At the mention of privacy, she looked down at the ground. As for the Grandfather’s Axe…well, she didn’t know what that was. ”Uh…right. I don’t know many logical paradoxes off the top of my head, I gotta admit…” Sakura scratched her head. ”That’s not the one where you go back in time and kill your grandpa with an axe, right? Not that I know anyone who’d ever kill their own Grandpa.”

Sakura decided to answer Gemma’s question. I got found out, now I am talking to this scientist doctor guy. He’s kinda scary but that’s it, I think. He says he doesn’t know where Peach is.

Then she refocused on Brain Drain.

She couldn’t help but look at the brains as they were brought up. ”Rrright. As long as you aren’t stealing them, y’know.” If Sakura knew what a Skullgirl was, at that moment it slipped her mind. ”I don’t know what that means, either.” Sakura said, thinking that she wasn’t coming off as very smart in this conversation.

She stood up straight again as he asked her another question. ”Stealing Brains? Um, no? Sorry. I don’t know anything about that. Stealing brains is no good.” Sakura said, then shuddered. ”Eugh…”

Sakura tapped her forefingers together, embarrassed. ”I know I’m really pushing my welcome here, and I’m sorry. But do you know where people who have been turned into Others are kept? I mean we really gotta do something about that. If there’s some quest we need to go on to find the cure, y’know, we’ll do it! I’m all about that Greater Good. And the Medium and Little Good, too.” Sakura said. She had a lot of energy to spend in the ‘saving Peach’ direction and was in desperate need for an outlet for said energy.

The big bad Queen, as it turned out, was little more than a gigantic robotic wasp. She commanded an impressive enough looking army, but then again, so did the King of Hyrule. And Ganondorf had reduced that army to cinders. These wasps would be no different. The Gerudo brandished his blades as the Wasp Queen offered the usual spiel about how she could never be defeated. Honestly if Ganondorf had a rupee for every monarch he had ever fought and dethroned, well, he'd have quite a few of them to say the least.

As the wasp swarms attacked and took their various shapes, most of the Seekers were quick to spring into action. Ganondorf, on the other hand, was content to take this more slowly. Instead he just calmly walked forward and let his lips curl into a wicked smile as a seeming storm cloud of wasps hovered above and began to close in on him. What happened next was a massive explosion of dark energy that Ganondorf had been building up in his swords ever since the Seekers first began their invasion of this hive. The wasps buzzed around him as they became engulfed in black fire and burned to ash. And at the center of it all stood the mighty King of Evil who began to laugh an ominous laugh, "HAHAHAHA!"

His sinister laugh thundered at the center of the remains of countless wasps now burnt to ash. He brandished his swords and only now did Ganondorf finally break into a run. He ran for a ledge straight ahead of him, slicing and cutting at any wasps that got in his way. At the edge he bent his knees and pushed himself into a powerful leap. Luckily for him the Potion of Jumping he had consumed during his fight with Blast Hornet had not yet worn off. The potion's effect allowed Ganondorf to make a great leap for the Wasp Queen herself. He even sliced his way through a sword-wielding heavy drone along the way.

Then with all his strength the Gerudo buried his blades into the Queen's armored thorax. Whether this did significant damage to the Queen, Ganondorf did not know. But he began to use his swords as makeshift climbing tools, stabbing them repeated into the insect's body in order for the man to traverse upwards in a climb that he aimed to eventually let him reach her head. Of course, the Queen's wasps wouldn't just be standing by and allowing this. But most were hesitant to attack, as if they were afraid of accidentally damaging their queen. But those whom did attack were simply met with Ganondorf's Violet Flare breath attack.

"Did you honestly think that you could rule forever?" Ganondorf taunted the Queen, regardless if she could actually hear him or not, "Monarchs rise and monarchs fall! I've seen it for myself, and YOU will be no different!"

Rubick never thought he'd see a day where he'd be fighting magic wasps, yet here he was, sowing chaos among them. Pointed bolts of energy and sticky blobs of honey and silk flew through the air, among other projectiles and waves of status effects, but Rubick continued to fling their own spells back at them and subtly convince the wasps to attack each other. At one point, he even glued two wasps together and rode on their bodies through the air as they struggled, then leaped off to zap a few other nearby wasps before Weaver's Warping back to solid ground. He was enjoying the wasp-themed magicks, but it wasn't too long before the wasps were defeated. Rubick only regretted that the fun ended so soon. He still had some ideas he wanted to try on them.

Look around at the others, he could see that Sectonia and the Koopa Troops finished dealing with their own enemies. "Nothing like a bit of carnage to test one's mettle!" Rubick exclaimed in glee. Following the rest of the Seekers further in, they soon came face-to-face to a giant mecha wasp, which was presumably the queen. Rubick relegated himself to helping deal with the swarms of wasps, letting the heavy hitters of the Seekers deal with the mecha queen. He even crushed the rock he had in his inventory, granting him an additional 25% mana regen rate. He would go all out now, stealing spells from every source he could and slinging them. Sectonia had a plethora to take from, but Kamek and Ganondorf had their own spells worth stealing as well. Summoned minions littered the area, fiery and dark projectiles filled the air, but Rubick just continued firing. He even fired some at the mecha queen when an attack was about to strike one of the Seekers, deflecting the blow and sending it flying elsewhere.

---

Jesse squinted up at the giant wasp ‘queen’ once she was in the same room as it.

This is the thing that commands so much loyalty?

“That’s not even a real wasp.” Jesse commented out loud with a bemused shrug of her hands. Unfortunately the fight got started real quickly. The wasps formed giant weapons and began slamming and slashing around the place. She supposed such a formation made them harder to kill. If they rushed in all at once, they’d probably just die.

Jesse stayed on the ground and jumped over ‘AoE’ wasps when she had too. The other folks on the ground, like Ganondorf, seemed to have themselves covered for now. The intensity of the wasp attacks wasn't enough to put any Seeker immediately on the backfoot. Jesse had Uncle Sven, her alchemist striker, toss out a potion of bouncy goo. Jumping onto it, Jesse ascended high into the air and Levitated over the action, getting a good proper view of the battle. She withdrew her Tool Gun and tried No-Colliding one of the Eyes. Ping! A little blue streak tapped against the eye. Whether it worked or not, there was only one way to find out. Jesse put the Tool Gun away and withdrew her Service Weapon.

There’s gotta be someone in there. Unless it's a Wizard of Oz situation and there's a curtain somewhere I'm not seeing.

The problem was, flying to the thing would take a while, and leave her vulnerable to getting swarmed. If she just sprayed inside, that might not do anything and would only alert a hypothetical pilot to the new weakness.

Jesse briefly landed on one of the metal rings on the outskirts of the large room to re-up her Levitate. She jumped back up into the air and began to rain supporting fire onto the offensive wasp swarms below. If they came for her, she could Shield or Evade to defend herself and then blast them even harder up close. Any particularly wounded Wasps, she could wrench out of formation with Launch and scatter them into their allies.

”Hello? No?” Midna trailed off as her attempt to contact Sandalphon failed ”I’m really going to have to find out how that worked”

It had and would certainly be useful to have a line to the others, she thought, so it was something to look into. The lack of it meant she was still on her own when it came to the limbless patient. Or, well, not alone. She at least had people who might know what the machines were, and so she sought them out.

”I’ll be back” she said, not knowing if the person could even hear her but saying it just in case, before pulling the curtains back in place, and slipping into the shadows once more.

A few hops later, and she was back in the room with the doctor, and a few more and she’d found Gemma, pulling herself out of the shadows in his line of sight and then carefully edging closer to engage in whispered conversation with him.

”I found a person. Arms and legs cut off. Face wrapped in bandages. Machines with tubes and… wires I think they're called, stuck in and on them. Sounded barely alive” she told him quietly, ”We need to help them. I can teleport them back to our bases, but I’m not sure if I can even move them out of the bed. It’d help if you or Sakura had a look, as I’m not familiar with your technology”

”Where is she anyway? Is she not back yet?” she asked, growing concerned, before offering ”I can go check?”

Karin kept up her disguise for now, especially when it turned out the area was being watched by G-Men. The plan was an alpha strike- wipe out the entire enemy squad before they could notify each other of the danger.

“Oh, excuuuse me, can you help with me something, sir?” Karin said, approaching a G-man ‘hiding’ inside a building. “There’s something I-” Karin cut herself off and bumrushed him as soon as the signal was given.

There was some crashing and scattered object, and window broke. Karin emerged without her hat and sunglasses. Her outfit had changed dramatically thanks to her disguise. Well, she could always buy a new outfit later.

Karin stealthed into the place with the rest of them. Karin was quite light on her feet, capable of moving much more silently than the average person, having been trained in Ninjutsu. But there was still no way she could sneak through and, say, pickpocket a captain of his key and then navigate everyone else through.

It was usually better to begin an attack than to just wait until you are discovered. Karin went up above with Sandalphon using her grapple hook. It was hard to see her up there, and she made sure to stick to where they couldn’t see her. She tried to get closer to their target so she could drop down on him from above should the battle begin in earnest.

Crouching down near the restricted area’s entrance, Goldlewis tugged at his beard uncomfortably as he considered the others’ feedback about H’s proposed plan of action. In truth he more or less knew the score before his teammates so much as said a word, as much as it pained him as a former soldier to admit it; this group just wasn’t made out for stealthy subterfuge. Though Goldlewis was many things, ‘subtle’ wasn’t one of them, between his immense frame and eye-catching outfit. In fact, the braggadocious style he cultivated practically demanded to be noticed, and in a situation where a single glinting belt buckle might catch a guard’s attention, there wasn’t any way on earth he’d be sneaking through this place even with Sandalphon on high to guide him through.

The archangel wasn’t any more optimistic. Even if everyone else could get through unnoticed, she’d been planning to wait the operation out from the rafters so that her bright white attire couldn’t give her away, then slowly descend behind enemy lines. While having more adaptable comrades would’ve been a plus, the confidence with which they selected their preferred gameplan -together with what she’d already witnessed today- suggested that the Seekers would be fine finishing the mission in their own way. “If that’s the case, better to plan for an ambush from the start than scramble once we’re discovered,” she reasoned. “I can still provide support from above. Please keep in mind that, unlike before, these are flesh-and-blood humans. Simply doing their job of quarantine security. Killing them would not be justified.”

While not one to take life without cause, Goldlewis furrowed his brow. “Sure, I don’t wanna take ‘em out if I don’t have to, but we got a lot restin’ on us. When you pick up a gun, you’re signin’ a contract that means you’re willin’ to kill, and willin’ to die. If it’s our lives or theirs…” He let that sentence hang.

“Ohhhh…” Mr. H sounded very unhappy. “W-well, just…don’t do anything you’ll regret, okay?”

Hastily the team split up, keeping a low profile to the extent that they could. Goldlewis didn’t get too far, forced (like Geralt) to remain behind shelter as Zenkichi advanced. Blazermate and Susie could fly beneath the catwalk network and lurk down below where nobody would think to look. Sandalphon used her new ability to vault all the way up to the rafter beams behind the shelter of a pillar, hustled carefully to a near-central position, then crouched down with her gunstaff shouldered at the ready. Her radio glyph glowed faintly by her head, ready to relay her callouts, as she rested her cheek against the cold metal. Her impassive gaze needed no scope in order to scrutinize everything in the area.

“Keep in mind, these aren’t Peace Protection officers,” she whispered to the others through her direct line with them. The telltale red and black uniforms of the troopers here suggested their true origins. “They’re…Psych-OSF. I’m afraid I can’t ID them and get any additional information, but they’re bound to have psychic abilities in addition to standard-issue firepower.”

There were eight rank-and-file guards in all, two squads’ worth. Pvt. Gima Koch, Pvt. Hano Barlow, Pvt. Kou Kaufman, and Pvt. Matsumura Atkinson wielded Chlorokinesis, Sunakinesis, weak Hallucikinesis, and Levitation respectively. Pfc. Fujimori Mosley and Pfc. Kenji McLaughlin wielded Flyrokinesis and Blastokinesis. Finally, LCpl. Natsuko and Cpl. Miwa Marcias -sisters- wielded Zoolingualism and Confusion respectively, the former’s power made more noteworthy by the presence of both black bats up above and, down below, an infestation of crysales that would always attack in groups of three and could use Sleep Scales to pacify opponents. While the privates patrolled the walkways alone, their paths sometimes crossing, the privates first class Mosley and McLaughlin patrolled the same large platform, and the Marcias sisters never strayed far from one another. All had been doing this for a while and seemed more bored than alert except for the sisters, who never suffered a dull moment so long as they were together. All troopers wielded standard-issue burst-fire plasma rifles, a sidearm of choice, and a tool of choice that complimented their psychic abilities in some way.

Then there was the Closer. He stood at the very back in front of the security door without moving, surveying the whole area ahead of him with both hands resting on the pommel of his high-tech greatsword, its tip planted against the metal below him. Sandalphon shared what she knew. “Since I memorized the DespoRHado databanks, I do have some documentation on Charles. His damage output is nothing to scoff at, but he is deceptively fast as well, favoring offense over defense. If an ally of his attacks, he will gain Perception for a short time, which will make his attacks even more punishing according to the target’s lost vitality–hence, ‘the Closer’. Be advised, if allowed to use his ultimate technique, Descent, all of them will gain a temporary bonus: evasion for him, and attack for the rest.” From above, the Angel of Information stood by to lend assistance whenever her allies called for her, or her judgment bid her intervene, once she gave the signal.

Down below, Goldlewis maneuvered himself toward what looked like an opening in the guards’ security, away from where Zenkichi advanced. If the Seekers weren’t going to fight united in a wide-open space that gave gunners the advantage, they needed to split the guards up so that nobody ended up facing a firing squad. When Sandalphon finally kicked things off by shooting a stack of pipes, causing an ungodly clamor that got the attention of everyone in the area, Goldlewis emerged from behind a pillar and charged down a walkway toward the guard he’d selected.

The young Hano Barlow yelped and unloaded his rifle, only for the deluge of red plasma blasts to spatter against his Wall of Light. A moment later his gun clicked empty, and the next second Goldlewis barged in with a shoulder charge into a backfist. Caught mid-reload, Barlow stumbled away, reaching toward the hourglass-like container at his waist. “Pocket sand!” He hurled a handful of stinging grains into Goldlewis’s eyes, then used his ability to command the rest of his sand into the shape of floating spheres. Since the veteran had glasses, however, the pocket sand wasn’t as effective as it could have been, and before Barlow knew it Goldlewis bore down on him once more. His choice of full-auto Recital-17 sidearm handled well, but it lacked stopping power, so with massive swings Goldlewis quickly pushed the sand-manipulating psychic into a corner. Once he overwhelmed the man and knocked him out, he could move towards the area’s center and help someone else against more dangerous opponents.



If Brain Drain’s robotic face could have been construed into any semblance of human expression, the remark Sakura gave him about the Grandfather’s Axe paradox would have resulted in a ‘kill me’ expression of elephantine proportions. ”...I see,” he murmured for a moment, more to himself than to his new acquaintance. ”It seems I find myself in the company of a profound brainlet. I’ll have to remind myself to use smaller words…”

With a concerted effort Sakura might have been able to tap into Brain Drain’s less-than-glowing review, if not for her brief exchange with Gemma. Her news didn’t exactly set the Psych-OSF soldier’s mind at ease, but it wasn’t often that a run-in with someone in a nightmarish place like this ended with an actual conversation rather than a fight. As fortunate as this might have seemed, if this doctor couldn’t offer any information about the soldier who’d been metamorphosed, their operation here would be in serious trouble.

Gemma had other things to worry about, too. Midna reappeared from the shadows to report that she’d actually found someone alive. What she described sounded downright horrific, though, and close enough in appearance to the patients that littered this deranged hospital that notions about some sort of conversation sprang to Gemma’s mind, sending a shiver down his spine. Midna wanted to save the poor person, but before the two could do much of anything, they needed to deal with the elephant in the room. “Got to get rid of that thing before we do anything, I feel like,” he whispered back, tilting his head toward the Doctor. “As for Sakura, she found someone who works here and is talking to him. Said he didn’t know anything about your friend, though. Go ahead and follow her, call out if you need me.”

Back in the STEM chamber, Sakura tried not to wilt beneath the powerful psychic’s accusatory gaze. Though his emotions were inscrutable, the girl got the definite feeling that Brain Drain wasn’t buying her claims of innocence. ”So you say. But while lips may lie, lobes will always surrender the truth. It’s just a matter of prodding.”

Brain Drain did not take any action yet, however, and he did not move while Sakura asked a question of her own. Once she finished, he ruminated on what she said for a moment in silence. ”People into Others. How intriguing. You witnessed this phenomenon when it befell this Peach, then came here in search of answers. I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree. This facility has everything to do with people, but nothing to do with Others. Yet, I get the distinct impression that both share the same tangential connection to Psych-OSF. Those who solicit my services here aren’t exactly chatty, but…” He went quiet suddenly, turning his head to look at one of the other sets of doors leading out from the room. ”Hm. It feels like I have more unannounced guests…and speak of the devil…”

The next moment, the doors opened, revealing a brightly-lit elevator with two dark figures silhouetted against the glow of its harsh incandescent bulb. When they stepped forward and the doors closed behind them, Sakura could see -and recognize- the newcomers, a brawny young man and a full-figured young woman. Their sleek black-and-red outfits, faces, hairstyles, everything was unmistakable, save the strange looks on their faces, and the empty dullness of their eyes. It was Dexio and Sina, and for whatever reason, they did not look pleased to see her.

”You two,” Brain Drain intoned telepathically. Sakura wasn’t the only one who recognized the inseparable pair. ”P-types EPL133902 and HB2797521. Didn’t I already fix you?”

They ignored him, instead zeroing in on Sakura. “Rebel filth,” Dexio spat at her.

“We’re here to cleanse you,” Sina told her flatly. “To wipe this stain from the face of the great New Himuka!”

She powered up her Refrigerant Coil, her Cryokinesis coursing through her arm. At the same time, Dexio plunged his hands into his cestus and smashed the ground, sending a ripple through the building with his Seismokinesis.

”What do you think you’re doing?” Brain Drain demanded, his mental tone urgent. ”No fighting in here. I forbid it. I will suffer no damage to my STEM system. Or my brains. Whatever this is, take it outside this instant.”

A psychic wave rippled out from him, his mental authority practically tangible, but Dexio and Sina seemed to resist. “Don’t stand in our way,” Sina growled at him. “This traitor and all her friends must die!”

“For the glory of New Himuka!” Dexio added.

Brain Drain lowered his head, glowering. His brain began to glow. ”I should have known better than to rehabilitate you the way they wanted. So much for blind loyalty. It’ll get you killed.” He snapped his metal fingers. ”Painwheel”

Another control wave rolled out from him, and the masked girl laying in one of the tubs suddenly spasmed, pink electricity arcing across her body. “Rrrraaaaaagh!” she howled, clutching her temples. “Get outta my head!” Yet she obeyed all the same, climbing out of her resting place with her four enormous blades held aloft above her. Painwheel’s eyes blazed red, and with an inhuman roar she charged toward Dexio and Sina.



The friend heart offered by Roxas to Yuito was not in vain. Upon making contact with the shambling hollow, it instantly restored the young psychic to perfect condition, his life force full to burst and his mind completely intact. “Whuh!?” he gasped, jerking suddenly before going limp as if awakening from a frightful dream. He managed to catch himself before hitting the ground and stabilized himself on one knee, his head still spinning from both the haunting experience and the resurgent memories. Despite the chill in the room, Yuito broke out in a cold sweat. “I…we…”

Before he could cause a ruckus, though, the lilting singsong of Anima that echoed through the mess hall recentered him. Instinctually Yuito crouched down behind one of the tables to hide himself alongside Roxas, narrowly avoiding the deadly gaze of the specter as it roamed their way. While hunkering down he became aware of the intermittent cries and sniffles of Hanabi as she wept, all the fight drained out of her even as Anima drew closer to where she lay. ”Hanabi?” he asked, reaching out for his childhood friend through Brain Talk. ”Are you okay?”

”Y-Yuito!?” Hanabi sounded terrified, as if unwilling to believe that she’d heard the voice of a living being. ’I-is that really you?”

”Yeah, I’m okay. Listen, we’ve got to make a run for it. Can you move?”

Her reply came after another moment, and another couple sniffles, albeit ones from joy rather than misery. ”Y-yeah. Let’s get out of here!”

With Yuito restored, everyone moved with renewed determination and vigor. They snuck around behind the turned-over cafeteria tables to avoid Anima, waiting patiently when pieces of furniture floated up to reposition themselves, and gradually closed in on the exit. Only Luka ran into a spot of trouble. He happened to get cornered right as a few tables lifted up near him, forcing him to dash and slide to cover. Anima spotted him and turned to walk through the air in his direction. When she got close enough, she lifted the table she was sure he’d hidden himself behind, only to find nothing. Bemused, she looked around, floating everything in her vicinity. At that point Roxas, Yuito, and Hanabi realized that Luka had grabbed onto the table to rise with it when it lifted up, using his impressive arm strength to hold himself up without so much as a grunt of discomfort. When he was sure Anima wouldn’t notice, he used his high vantage point to pinpoint a spot by the door he could teleport to, then warped straight there. Anima whirled around to claw at the source of the noise near her, but she found nothing to grab a hold of. A second later the doors clicked shut, and the specter was alone in the cafeteria.

The youngsters ran through the halls of the mental hospital until they couldn’t run anymore. They came to a stop and took refuge in a janitorial closet, out of breath and panting. Hanabi wasn’t completely exhausted, though, as she immediately balled up her fists and started punching Yutio. As the rain of ineffectual blows fell against his chest, the young man put his hands up in surrender. “H-hey, what gives!?”

“You idiot!” Hanabi cried, tears streaming down her cheeks again. “Don’t you dare ever do anything like that to me ever again. I thought…I thought I lost you!”

With a look of pity on his face, Yuito wrapped his hands around his friend’s shoulders and pulled him close. “Hanabi…don’t worry, I promise.”

Though terrifying for a brief moment, the turn of events had not only brought two teams together (sans Raz) but led them a safe distance from the residential wing to a clerical part of the hospital, where records and such were kept. It was safe to say that Anima had lost them. Where to go from here, though, was anyone’s guess. At least, until they happened to hear voices coming from a hall nearby, but as they arrived the last sliver of incandescent light shining from within the elevator got cut off, and whoever just boarded it began to descend to the depths of the Beacon Mental Hospital basement.



Once the battle got underway, things got hectic fast. Although way less cramped and chaotic than the fight against Pizza Head atop his eponymous tower, the confines of the Hive’s throne room made for quite the brawl given the sheer abundance of wasps that showed up to lend their mechanical queen a hand. Once formed into all sorts of weapons and sent forth with some appropriate wordplay by their overlord, the swarm attacked the seekers relentlessly.

“Mind if we cut in?” A gigantic wasp scimitar hurtled forth.

“Try blocking this!” Several swarms grouped up into huge cubes that began to roll around the arena, one loud whomp at a time.

They even took the shape of a giant musical instrument for a monumental guitar smash. “Play them a b-flat!”

Nadia had to hand it to this impostor queen: she could sure belt out puns, almost as fast as she sent forth minions. The minute she touched back down on the throne room’s main platform following her rail ride, three separate swarms assailed her in quick succession. As a super-sized boomerang made out of wasps whirled toward her she dropped to the ground and performed a Cat Slide underneath. Just as her momentum from the slide gave out, a wasp cube tried to upend itself on top of her. Thinking quickly, she unleashed her Fiber Upper, planning to abuse the reversal’s nigh-invulnerability to carve straight through. For a brief moment she disappeared, seemingly crushed, only for her paws to shoot out of the cube’s other side on hyper-extended muscle fibers. Then the rest of Nadia snapped up to join them, tearing through the swarm as she did to burst free in an explosion of bug parts. When she landed she found that the rest of the cube had moved on, but above her loomed a gigantic bow and arrow made entirely of wasps.

“Ready for your shot?” the wasp queen asked.

Nadia crouched down with a cheeky grin, one arm bent with the elbow upward and the hand on the back of her head in a faux-glamorous pose. “Just make sure to get my good side!”

The arrow careened toward her, but the feral had a plan. She used Charge, transformed into a bolt of lightning that shot through the incoming conga line of wasps, blowing through the entire procession in scarcely more than a second. When she rematerialized, yellow sparks dancing across her body as her jacket and hair whipped in the wind, she dove downward with Athame extended in a spectacular Feral Edge. Her dagger’s point punctured the bandaged metal plating on the wasp queen’s midsection, and when Nadia wrenched it upward it left quite the gash. “Just kiddin’,” she quipped as she performed an El Gato axe kick to dent the weakened weak point. “They’re all good sides!” Laughing, she kicked off and rocketed back toward solid ground.

As she landed Nadia got a brief chance to look around, and things looked pretty good. The impostor’s swarms packed a punch, but the Seekers were dishing out way more damage than they were taking. Entire platoons went down to the team’s barrage of elemental and magical attacks, and nothing scattered the swarms quite like Bowser and Ganondorf’s fiery and shadowy explosions, though the Koopa King’s supersonic waves helped ruin the wasps’ cohesion, too. Sectonia could make them easier targets with Slow, then sit back and wait for her endless torrent of random projectiles to work their magic. Rubick and Jesse shot their shots. Everyone seemed to be dealing with the wasps well enough, but no matter how many they killed, more crawled out of the woodwork to join the fight. Nadia realized that targeting the wasps just meant buying oneself safety; only by attacking the queen could the Seekers make real progress.

Luckily, her teammates had been working on that too. When the feral made her initial attack, Artorias quickly followed in her footsteps. Not the most agile knight around, he risked falling into the pit in order to strike the back of the queen’s abdomen, but thanks to their combined efforts the impostor’s rear-bottom section fell away. Not long after the Koopa Troop plus some antlions demolished the front-bottom section, and a Tonberry inserted into the construct’s undercarriage dealt that part of the machine a whopping blow. When Ganondorf used his blades to climb up the part of the thorax Nadia weakened a moment ago, he paved the way for Rubick to finish the front-middle section off with a well-placed counter-shot. That just left the rear-middle section, but Barnabee was on the case. He could warp-strike from the rail to the queen’s back and saw into the sensitive machinery with his blazing Yato blade, which cut through the yellow-painted scrap metal like butter. Before too long, only a head atop a huge, threadbare metal support skeleton remained dangling on that chain.

Still, it took Jesse and Ganondorf to force the issue. With everyone else more or less blocked now that the swarms were exclusively forming floating shields to protect their queen, the FBC director and the warlock were the only ones already in a good position to attack the head. When they did, the impostor gave up her first cries of pain. Jesse’s hypothesis that this giant machine had a pilot was right on the money.

But it wasn’t just any pilot.

“Waaaaaaaagh!” After spinning around in comedic fashion from the damage, the metal wasp’s head swelled up and abruptly exploded, revealing the occupant as she burst from the wreckage midair to stretch her legs–and her wings. Hovering in the air was the true form of the impostor, not a wasp at all, but a giant bee with a coppery crown and heavy scepter: Rumor Honeybottoms. “Urk!” she groaned, glaring down at the Seekers. “You’ve done it now, sugars. This honey is off…” As she raised her scepter, magical pink power surrounded it. “....LIMITS!”

She hurled the scepter down like a giant throwing axe. When it hit the throne room platform, its arcane might sent a heavy shockwave through it, knocking everyone still standing on it off their feet as the interlocked hexes broke apart. Nadia yowled in panic as she fell along with the crumbling platform, plummeting down into the pit. Her eyes widened as the fog parted to reveal a lake of pure honey, glittering gold and as sticky as a tar pit. Before she or anyone else could fall in, however, the shower of Seekers and debris approached a multi-layer stack of yellow hex sheets, half a dozen in total. Nadia jumped and landed on top of one, only for the hexagonal plate to begin to dissolve beneath her feet. “Oh, come on!” she griped, her heart pumping like crazy. It looked like she’d need to keep moving in order to not fall, but as if that wasn’t bad enough, the lake of honey appeared to be rising. The chunks of the platform floated on its surface, so she could stand there if all else failed, but the feral quickly realized that she and the others would need every foothold they could get, because Rumor wasn’t done with them just yet.

“Mwahaha, have fun down there!” the usurper called gleefully, descending toward the hex stack for a better view. For once, though, she came along; after realizing that their ‘queen’ had been a bee pretending to be a wasp all along, the rest of the wasps had quickly made themselves scarce. “Oh, but I can’t let you have all the fun, now can I? After all, why settle for just one pain in the bee-hind when I can…bee…fifty-two.”

Pulling out her spellbook, Rumor performed a quick hex, then began to transform. In grotesque fashion her body morphed into the shape of a striped bomber plane, and she began to fly in circles above the stack of platforms dropping bombs every few seconds to make things as hard as possible for the interlopers who’d dared to intrude on her domain.

Roxas was very relieved to see that his plan had worked. Yuito was restored, and freed from Galeem's influence as a bonus! Yuito was rightfully confused, and while Roxas could answer the questions he probably had, now was not the time. "Shh, get down!" Roxas whispered to Yuito, "I'll explain everything later. Right now we need to get outta here."

"I used a Friend Heart on him." he said to Pit in a whisper in regards to Yuito while they were in the hallway, "Not sure if it would work twice, but at least we know it can save people from that fate at least once."

He stuck with the rest of the team as they crept their way out of the cafeteria and eventually regrouped with Luka, Hanabi, and Pit in a janitorial closet. Roxas half expected to be questioned heavily about how exactly he had been able to save Yuito. But for the time being it seemed like Luka - and especially Hanabi - weren't too concerned over the details just yet.

"Oh, Yuito?" Roxas said, holding out the Scarlet Guardian's sword for him to take, "I'm guessing you're gonna need it."

After that was said and done, Roxas only now started to look around. "Where are we now?" He asked, unsure what part of the hospital they had fled to, primarily because he had been more focused on escaping from Anima. But now that that tension was eased, he had to admit to himself that he was afraid they might have gotten themselves lost. Of course this was about when the murmuring voices could be heard.

Roxas put his ear against the closet door to try to hear them more clearly. But it was obvious they were going to follow the voices if they wanted to know anything concrete. The Keybearer slipped out of the closet and crept down the hallway toward where the voices were coming from. But unfortunately, by the time he might have caught up to them they disappeared into an elevator that was going down. All the way down to the basement.

Roxas looked around at the others, "Should we follow them down?" he asked. On one hand it seemed obvious that they should. But on the other they had no idea what was actually down there and could have been walking into some kind of trap for all they knew.

---

As it turned out, the "wasp" Queen turned out to be a fake, in more ways than one. Not only was the wasp itself just a mechanical contraption, it was also being operated by a Bee of all things. Well at least it seemed like her army of wasps were no longer swearing their fealty to her at least. But then she broke the floor and managed to drop the lot of the Seekers down into a hidden chamber with a lake of honey waiting at the bottom of it. The Gerudo managed to sheathe his blades away in midair, and good thing too because he would need his hands free for what he did next.

Ganondorf channeled his dark magic and used it to summon his Phantom. Or rather, his Phantom's horse. The phantom stallion appeared directly under the falling King and Ganondorf effortlessly positioned himself on the ghostly saddle. Then with a rear the horse in question began to gallop in midair. Meanwhile, the Bee had transformed herself into some kind of flying vehicle that flew around dropping bombs. Ganondorf drew the White Sword from its scabbard and spurred his mount into a charge through the air.

This benefit would only last a minute, and so the Gerudo would have to make sure he made it count. He attempted to keep pace with Bee, effectively challenging her to a midair dogfight where he on his flying phantom steed would trying to take swings at her with his sword with each time they passed one another. Either that or in a few other instances he would instead try to fry the bee with his Violet Flare flame breath.

Either way, Ganondorf could only keep this up for a minute at most. After that the phantom horse summon would pass its time limit and dispel. Then Ganondorf would have even fewer options to fight this enemy with. The rest of Seekers had better have tricks of their own to deploy, because Ganondorf was not going to be able to keep up this tactic for long.

Sakura raised her hands defensively. ”My lips are not lying! Honest!” She protested. She really did not want this guy trying to pry her brain open. Especially over something she didn’t even do!

Setting a hand on her hip, Sakura scratched her head. ”Psych-OSF…I only joined up with them like, two days ago. They clearly aren’t just a monster-fighting battalion. What are you- they- we- what’s up with that?” Sakura wasn’t asking Brain Drain, she was just thinking aloud.

Sakura turned around with wide eyes, and a confused smile on her face. ”Dexio-san, Sina-san, hey! What are you two-!” The smile quickly faded as she saw the looks on their faces. Something was wrong with them. The words that came out of their mouth made Sakura look over her shoulder to see if those harsh words were being spat at someone else.

Thus the seismic blast made her lose her balance, her arms pinwheeling. ”What the-?!” Shocked, she fell onto her butt. Brain Drain said several things that caused confusion, dismay, and a little anger to flash across her features.

”What happened?!” Sakura cried out, asking Brain Drain and her two comrades. She began to crawl backwards on her palms, wincing as the controlled Painwheel came to life. Doctors typically didn’t make their patients fight for them!

”H-hey, wait! Wait a minute!” Sakura back rolled and fired a heavy hadoken between Painwheel and the two operatives to try and separate them with the pushback of the blast.

Mr. Gemma, I need a little help here! She thought as she rushed in between them both, putting her hands out. She found herself very concerned about this ‘Painwheel’ figure as well, who was just taking a nap and was now seemingly forced into a battle. Though Sakura perhaps wasn’t thinking about what a bad situation she was putting herself in by placing herself between both forces.

”Stop, stop, stop!” She looked over at Sina and Dexio. ”What happened? Did he do something to you?” She then glared at Brain Drain.

”Did you do something to them?!” She asked, trying to put things together. Why else would they be at this hospital? Sakura was a bit distracted by her revelations, and her extreme reluctance to fight these two.

While Sectonia wasn't much for long range anymore, shooting out lots of projectiles but making them a bit easier to dodge, that fact didn't matter too much with the additional support of the other seekers. While she didn't do much damage to the wasp swarms herself, her debuffs helped a lot at keeping them in a good position for the others to handle, their attacks covering the angles hers didn't. With the more ranged heavy members of the team dealing with the wasp reenforcements, those that were more single target oriented dealt with the wasp robot queen uninterrupted, which after some time eventually exploded, revealing a pilot that... wasn't a wasp. Instead, they were a bee, which made all the wasps that were left flee in disgust.

While Sectonia didn't care about this dintinction, she did find it annoying that all the puns that had been said int eh fight continued, but instead now based on bees and honey. Its like this queen bee was cut from the same cloth as Nadia, and the two had a bit of a repour, at least until this 'queen', who was a magic user like Sectonia, did something that just outright dumbfounded her. Instead of engaging the seekers in a bit of a magic fight, Honeybottoms turned herself into a... plane? Sectonia could only look at her with a look of disbelief, saying simply. "... Why..."

But now wasn't the time to be confused at such a weird turn of events. With her emergence, Honeybottoms had destroyed the platforms that the other grounded seekers needed to have any bit of mobility, dropping them into a pit of honey and sparse platforms, a honey pit that kept rising. And who knows what kind of honey that could be, it could be lava for all she knew for how weird this situation had become. Waving her arms, she summoned a large crystal for the seekers who had fell to perch themselves upon, giving them far more space to evade Honeybottom's attacks once they made their way to it. While conjuring the crystal, Sectonia muttered. "First that pizza faced lunatic, now this..."

Now the fact Sectonia was one of the few group flyers, her size, and the fact that summoning such a platform took her a bit of time, wasn't lost upon Honeybottoms, who upon seeing the interloper bee queen casting a spell, focused to drop a few bombs on her in an attempt to interrupt what she was doing. Thanks to her items though, Sectonia took far, far reduced damage compared to the seekers from these bombs than what Honeybottoms expected, even more so as Sectonia seemed to 'ignore' being hit by them. They still damaged Sectonia of course, but it didn't visibly look like they made her flinch.

With her platform summoned for those below, Sectonia went to engage Honeybottoms in the air herself. Some of the others, such as ganondorf, seemed to have some limited flying capabilities, but most of the aerial fighting would have to be for Sectonia. Being able to fly even or above Honeybottoms would make her have to choose between her bombs or other attacks, while Sectonia had only one target, the bee plane herself. And since Sectonia could now be in close proximity, her multiple projectiles would be much, much harder to dodge. Although unlike her melee swings, these did leave her open when she went for them. Well, all but her lightning, which was one of her faster projectile attacks.

And lightning was all she really had the opportunity to use projectile wise, as if Sectonia went to try anything else but her melee swings or her lightning, Honeybottoms would move her wing and turn the tip of it into a buzzsaw before swiping at Sectonia, forcing her to drop what she was doing and blink on top of Honeybottoms to drop a sword swing or a blast of lightning. Rising like this wouldn't last too long though, as there wasn't all that much space left before reaching the ceiling, with the ceiling slowly rising with the pit of honey below. Sectonia wasn't going to question this luminal space, she had enough of this craziness as it was. And in times where she couldn't teleport above Honeybottoms to use her lighting, she'd teleport behind her to do a sword swipe or two. Honeybottoms wasn't always using such a slow buzzsaw attack however, and could instead of dropping bombs, fire off 'fist' missiles that followed Sectonia. They didn't do as much as the bombs, but they were far more accurate due to their homing nature and Sectonia's size.

Hopefully more of the seekers below could help with this fight, Sectonia could tank and deal damage with her chaos shield, her swords, and her lightning, but it'd be nice for more than just her and a couple other attacks to deal with this unruly, weird, pun happy bee queen.

Midna spoke a bit with Gamma in the 3 way junction room, filling him in on the limbless person’s existence, and getting info about what Sakura was up to in turn.

She agreed with his assessment that they’d have to deal with the doll-making doctor first if they wanted to have a chance of extracting his victim, but decided to first back up Sakura. After all ”She’s talking to someone who works in this madhouse? That’s a situation just waiting to go south” she predicted, perhaps projecting herself into the situation a bit more than she should, because she certainly wanted to deliver some pointed words to whoever was in charge.

It was also strange that he didn’t know anything about Peach, or, presumably about people being turned into Others, she thought.

”Was this a trap?” she wondered. The people they were tracking down had certainly befallen something. ”Did they deliberately make a lot of noise about this to lure dissidents here?” she theorized as a result.

If so, it was all the more reason to go and back Sakura up before things went south. After suggesting Gamma also start heading that way (”I don’t think the doctor’s going anywhere, so might as well be ready to charge in like a gallant knight and back us ladies up, right?”), she moved as swiftly as she could towards the third and final room.

Inevitably, she was too late, and things were already in the middle of going south, the princess arriving just in time to see Sakura shoot a hadouken between two psych-off operatives and some unfortunate looking woman with bolts stabbing into her joints, visible dark veins that did not look healthy and a leather mask that seemed stitched onto her face. Despite this unpleasant looking state of being, she was clearly dangerous from her movements, and the giant wheel of blades attached to her back.

The masked princess pulled herself out of the shadows next to Sakura, ready to fight, only to be confused about her subsequent actions of practically begging the operatives to stop and demanding to know if the 4th individual in the room, the one with the exposed brain, had something to do with how they were acting.

”Roadblock, shield us” she commanded, summoning the bulky exosuit before them, who raised a massive translucent barrier shield between them and the hostels that Sakura didn’t seem to want to fight. It’d give them a few moments to get on the same page, she hoped.

”Are these some of the people who came back acting entirely differently?” she guessed, before also guessing that ”We can probably free them with friend hearts? If what that lunatic Consul C talked about is true with it restoring people to their original state is right anyway”

Then she jabbed a finger at the brain person and demanded to know ”The person with their limbs cut off two rooms over, that your dong?” while the other three were held at her sides, ready to draw a flurry of blades if she didn’t like his answer.

Together the seekers took down the scrapwork wasp queen, tearing off its metal armor, and destroying its internals, sending both falling down into the massive pit below the platform the ground pounders were fighting from.

That proved to be a bit of an issue for Rika, who had been clambering around on the machine like a chainsaw armed tick, because as the last bit fell, it took rika with it, machinery and princess plunging down into the abyss

”It’s been cutting you up, but I gotta blast” Rika told the wreckage as she angled her rigging guns down at the wreckage and then fired them in tune with giving her featherfall rune a squeeze, launching herself up into the air with explosive speed.

She fired her grappling hook upwards towards the platform the seekers had been fighting on, only for the fall to have taken her too far down to reach it.

”Uh oh” she intoned, before calling out for ”Help!” as she started to (slowly thanks to the rune) fall into the pit.

Fortunately, Kamek had been keeping an eye on her, and was already swooping down to help her.

”Not to worry! Just grab on and-” the mage called down as he descended upon his broom, only to go ”Ek!” in surprise as Rika’s grapple grabbed his broom, and dragged him down to her.

”Oh! Sorry” the shipgirl apologize as she swung from the line where it connected her to his broom, and then managed to get a hand up to awkwardly grab on, her gauntlet kind of getting in the way of that as she almost knocked him off with it ”Sorry again!”

”Ah, Oh dear. Well. I suppose that works” the mage said once he’d steadied them both.

”Now hold on, this might take a while” he warned, as he slowly started to ascend back up towards the paltorm- only for it to shatter as a result of Rumor’s scepter throw mere moments later.

Light suddenly graced their eyes, revealing a second, rather more precarious set of platforms down below, which was convenient as it meant there was something for the plummeting King and Prince of the koopas to land on after they careened past the princess and their royal advisor.

”Oh, guess I could have landed on that just fine” Rika calmly noted (not at all perturbed by the giant bee turning into a plane above them) only to correct herself when she saw one of the platforms disintegrated beneath Bowser as the king was trying to pick himself up and dumped him down another layer ”Oh. Or not”

”Do you think he’s ok?” she asked, only for the King to come leaping back up onto the upper set of platforms with a furious roar, rejoining his son who had been faster and avoided being dropped down despite his 2 passengers ”Oh, yup, looks like it”

They two turned out to be even more Ok when Sectonia summoned up a massive crystal for them to stand on, giving the pair some permanent ground from which to start launching AA fire up at the bomber bee. Bowser alternated between charging and firing flash cannon beams which didn’t care about the issue of firing against gravity, while Jr had Dazzle sing his disarming voice up to the heavens and Mimi copycat his song yo make it a duet, one that bypass the same gravity issue, sending twin beams of pink soundwaves pulsating up into the air.

Rika meanwhile knew she would have the problem of gravity to deal with if she joined them, and would rather not have to worry about any missed bullets or shells raining back down ontop of them, so she requested ”Fly me closer please, so I shoot her with my guns”

”One moment, almost done” the mage who had been waving his wand around replied, before he finished the spell and summoned four of his toadies. The propeller hatted mini-hims grabbed Rika and hoisted her up so she didn’t have to hold on to the underside of his broom any more.

”Oh, that works, well” she commented as the minions started to buzz forwards with her in their grasp. Along with Kamek, she swooped after the bomber plane, the mage unleashing spell blasts and fira spells, while the ship girl opened fire with her machine gun and rigging guns.

Unfortunately these then proceeded to rapidly run dry, she’d fired rather a lot of shells and bullets between the city of tears and here after all, and this was hardly the time or palace to fiddle with ammo boxes to refill them.

She tried to urge the toadies to catch up, but their flight speed wasn’t exactly comparable with a plane. ”You’re going to have to toss me” she told Kamek far to casually for what she was requesting

”What?” Kamek asked, not sure if he’d heard that correctly.

”Toss me. I can just float down to the crystal if you miss” she clarified

”I suppose … very well, here goes nothing!” Kamek decided, before having the toadies hurl the shipgirl towards the plane, and even joined in by conjuring a magic fist and using its unfurled hand to push her onward at the last moment.

The shipgirl whooped as she sailed through the air, maneuvering thrusters flaring for extra speed and rune squeezed for extra height as she sailed through the air. Her grapple lashed out and caught the tail of the plane pulling her in as she blasted it with a few electrical goop shots from her grizzco blaster. Then her grapple snapped back into its launch tube, and she had mere moments to try and cling on, hull blades hacking, spear summoned and hooking over the wing, hand awkwardly trying to grab on.

She got a brief purchase and began to try and chainsaw bayonet off one off the tail fins, only for the plane to yell “get! Off!” after which she proceeded to do a barrel roll which flung the ship girl off of it once more.

Rika yelped in surprise as she went flying again, losing grip of her spear, which plummeted down below uncontrollably.

Still, the feather light ship girl did not plummet down with it, and instead managed to right her fall with her thrusters. Just in time to see two massive white gloved fists homing in on her location.

She launched herself into the air once more with her rune to avoid the fists, only for them to slowly turn to chase her, leaving her a slowly sinking duck, one out of range of the rapidly escaping plane.

”Uh oh. Um. Um. oh!”

The ship girl spotted her way out. She briefly canceled the rune as she summoned a striker, before kicking off the spirit’s body, launching herself forwards. Maneuvering thrusters fared at the same time, launching her forwards as she shouted ”Ah, wait up please” at her new target.

Said target, Sectonia, paused her own pursuit of the plane briefly to check on the sound, at which point the princess fired her hook forwards, latching onto them before calling out ”Coming in” as she started to rush forwards.

Angling herself, the ship girl swung under the queen’s abdomen as she was reeled in, boosting again at just the right moment to launch herself forwards (while giving a partying ”Sorry! Thank you!”) even more so she could catch up to grappling range with the plane. Grapple flew out, latched on, but instead reeling in inorder to try to board she swung under it, firing her grizco blaster and splattering the plane with electrically charged ink from all sides.

Then as she was on the upswing she triggered her feather fall rune, the rope still attached turning the upwards momentum into momentum back the way she had come, the princess launching herself over Sectonia’s head and into the awaiting arms of Kamek’s flock of toadies.

”See, It all worked out” she told the mage, (who had been worried sick from the moment the ship girl had been tossed off the plane) before admitting ”Though I am a little dizzy now”

”Then let us perhaps hold off on doing it again?” Kamek suggested, before adding ”or next time you might lose more than just your spear”

”No that’s fine, I can get it back, see” the princess replied, concentrating for a moment before her helbard like weapon teleported back into place hung over her back by its strap. Doing so seemed to take a lot out of her, energy wise, due to the distance involved from bringing it up from however deep the hole went, and so she was far easier to talk out of any more misadventures as a result.

The mage suspected the others would be glad to have freer sight lines, and in the koopa royal’s case, he was entirely right, as the beams of light and sound they had paused in the firing of resumed now that there was no more high flying trapeze artistry going on.

As Sandalphon alerted, and distracted, the guard, Zenkichi made his move on the unsuspecting Private Atkinson, grabbing one arm from behind as he turned to the source of the racket. He violently yanked it from the man's rifle as his foot crashed into the back of the soldier's knee, and wrenching it upwards with a sickening crack, before ripping the helmet from the soldier's head and grabbing it with both hands to slam it into his cranium, rendering him unconscious. "Huh. Ya know, I...feel bad about how easy that was..." he murmured, leaving the KO'd guard to join the others in the thick of the fight.

Geralt had used the opportunity to shield himself with Quen, running out at a dead sprint to Gima Koch, who spun when he heard the heavy footfalls and unleashed a stream of plasma into his chest. Geralt didn't stop, even as Quen shattered, and rammed his shoulder into Koch's chest, sending him tumbling and fumbling for his sidearm as he recovered. The Samurai Edge flashed as Geralt reached down, the slow bullet it fired crumpling against the steel plate that the Harbor Demon's Spirit had given him, and Geralt yanked it from Koch's hands, tossing the weapon aside carelessly, retreating clanking sounds betraying that it fell far away from all but a flier's reach.

Geralt's victory was short-lived, as his prey refused to surrender, Galeem's curse still controlling him, and a face-full of dirt and seeds greeted the Witcher, vines rapidly growing from them and trying to bind his arms to his body courtesy of the soldier's Chlorokinesis. It wasn't more than enough to delay him, though, as Geralt's inhuman strength easily overpowered the plant growth, and a massive clawed hand grabbed Koch's face while Geralt straddled him, the other crushing his throat until the man's spasming attempts to free himself slowed, then finally faded. He held on a few seconds longer, to ensure the man was truly unconscious, then slowly released the chokehold as a burst of plasma flew overhead. Geralt stood, nodding at the non-lethal takedown, and cast the Sign of Quen to protect himself once more as he ran forward, towards the sister soldiers, who were trading potshots with Zenkichi, who was ducking between pillars and taunting them.

"Come one! Can't even hit an old man, can you?! Oh, hey Geralt! Now there's two old men for them to miss!" Laughing, Zenkichi popped out, only to get a face full of angry bats scratching, clawing, and biting at his face as a burst of plasma hit him in the chest.

"Idiot..." The Witcher mumbled as he charged forward again, the Phantom Thief shaking off the bats and trying to provide cover fire. As he approached the sisters, a mental hammer crashed into his skull, causing Geralt to reel and grip his head, pain overwhelming him momentarily.

As soon as it came, however, the Confusion ended, with the butt of a rifle cracking into Geralt's nose, followed by a point-blank stream of plasma fire that heated his armor and made it more than a little uncomfortable for a moment before the air rushed back in and cooled it off. Geralt lashed out with a punch, connecting and sending Miwa Marcias back as Zenkichi filled the air with bullets, also running up and calling on Valjean to protect Geralt with a Rakukaja. "I'd ask you to surrender, but I know that won't work." Zenkichi stated simply. "So I'm just gonna go with 'make this easy on us.'"

"Halo, give us a hand!" Geralt gruffly called, swinging the lighting-wreathed katana he took off of Monsoon at Miwa, while Zenkichi rushed at Natsuko. Both sisters were tricky to get a hold of, each having more than their fair share of tricks up their sleeves.

Natsuko ducked and weaved, tossing animal food on Zenkichi, marking him as a priority target for both the swarms of bats and Crysales, and more than once he caught his eyes drooping as he fought. Each moment of lapse cost him, as a burst of plasma knocked his sense back into him. Sandalphon took one such opportunity to snipe Natsuko as she paused to aim, sending the girl stumbling forward, Zenkichi pushing through the exhaustion to follow up with an upward swing of his greatsword, comboing into a sweeping horizontal slash.

Geralt, meanwhile, was having a much similar problem, with Confusion giving Mia ample opportunity to fire a blast of plasma into his knee, sending him down to one and causing him to hiss at the pain. He rose nonetheless, lashing out with his new lightning katana as Sandalphon shot Natsuko, distracting Mia for a split second, more than enough for a Witcher to capitalize on. The lightning gave him enough time to punch her in follow-up, and she rolled with the hit, retreating closer to her sister and attempting to use her Confusion on Zenkichi, only for Geralt to use Axii to stun her in turn.

"Thanks for the assist." Zenkichi nodded as Sandalphon appeared between the two men, staff in hand, to give out an area heal. Oh yeah, that's much better. Let's finish this!" He cheered as both swordsmen went back into the fray.