As the darkness grew, the Troop took part in helping light up the way. First and foremost, Kamek created a few wisps, the glowing blobs of mana fanning out and trying to act as little floating lamps. This, unfortunately, only worked somewhat, only really offering the ability to see what was right around them. Bowser’s first contribution had the same problem, as the king first set fire to a load of worm grass and then bathed in their light, drinking it in and cursing the tentacruel domes on his shell to glow with inner light.

They had a second problem, which was that while they lit up the cavern a little, they lit themselves up a lot, making for ever so easy targets for the things which lurked in the dark. Both Bowser and the wisps thus ended up being priority targets for the spitters, something that came to a head when the troop entered into a cavern via a narrow passageway while a touch ahead of the rest of the party.

Immediately upon entering, they were ambushed by a spread out collection of spitters, which nailed most of the wisps in quick succession, and then focused in on the glowing king himself.

”Gahhh!” he roared in pain as the acid ate through his vine armor, before he tried to fight back with his turret guns, firing wildly into the dark at where he thought he was being shot at.

This had little impact on the bugs hiding above, nor did Rika’s own firing when she joined in. Jr meanwhile was less concerned about the ceiling bugs and more about the swarm coming towards them.

The prince opened up by splashing a crescent of ink in front of himself, before hucking a fireball at the first grunt, creating a flaming patch on its location, which added a bit of light. Then he hefted the javelin he’d formed while spitting and hurled at the next, nailing it in the jaw with his olympian strength and skill. Another fireball, another javelin formed while fireballing, but this one did not find its target, as Kamek ended up crushing it with a magic fist while Jr was tossing.

”Hey! I had that one” Jr complained

”My apologies, it is difficult to see what you are aiming for in this gloom” the mage replied as he launched a fireball at another grunt.

The prince grumbled, and then happened to see how a Glyphid guard was forced to pick its way around the javelin that had embedded itself in the ground, giving him an idea for later.

Behind them, Bowser and Rika needed ideas for right now, as the spitters continued to target the king, which had caused the pair to burn through both of their healing strikers already in order to keep his vine armor up.

”Oh! My shock swarm, maybe they can go find them!” Rika realized as she came up with a plan, before popping open her gauntlet hangers and unleashing a swarm of electric insects from them.

The swarm spread out, and in doing so unintentionally outlined the terrain with their light glows as they sought out the targets. Then, when one came across one, it attracted the rest, and soon enough a spitter was zapped into oblivion.

That was good, but there were still several more spitters, but fortunately, Rika had a second idea based on the first. She launched a cheap distracting swarm, and then another, and another, flooding the cavern with the electric motes whose whole purpose was to create flashing lights. With just a little tweaking, she’d made them instead produce a steady glow, filling the air with dozens of firefly like motes and softly lighting the walls as they did so.

It was more than enough to make the bright red spitters visible and target-able. Cannons boomed and gunfire cracked as they took down the rest of the spitters, with the final one finding itself faced with a giant slow moving fireball floating towards it.

A giant slow moving fireball that acted as a giant flare, lighting up the whole room.

”Oh… Uh… Yeah I was just, uh, letting you all flex your creativity, I always knew that would work” Bowser said after a long pause after the discovery of the fact that he could just use mega fireballs to light up large rooms.

Admittedly, Rika’s own innovation still came in handy, with the princess sending her swarms forwards through the smaller tunnels, because in the particularly twisty turny ones the fireballs would only provide a brief amount of light till they hit/went through the walls.

They ended up providing both light sources when the brother longlegs snatched up the remaining wisps, a great fireball bringing a brief dawn to the cavern while Rika’s electroflies made for handy distractions that the strange monsters tried and failed to grab.

Once they had the lighting situation all set up, the smallish groups of two dozen or so bugs they came across were a manageable matter. Which naturally meant that it wasn’t long till the universe decided to toss a fresh complication at them, one heralded by a big inverted triangle and a handful of dwarven miners.

”Bet if you just make me massive I could smash that shield” Bowser insisted, but his advisor, well, he advised against that

”For all we know it would be another flame clock situation, not to mention you might cause a cave in in the process” Kamek warned, before starting to say that ”So I’d rather save my mana for any new bug threats,” only for the scrambling of claws to creep in mid sentence, causing him to sigh and conclude that he had been talking about ones ”Like that”

Having been inspired by his missed spear toss earlier, as the swarm started to dig into the cavern Jr jogged out in front of the group, tossing up a pokeball and bringing Mimi into the fray as he did so.

”Copy me!” he commanded his pokemon, before he crouched down and pressed his iron tattooed hand to the ground. Up from it sprouted a few long spikes, and as the prince quickly moved to one side, more and more formed, creating a freestanding spearwall that would deter the smaller glyphids from trying to get past. His pokemon copied him, and created her own wall of spears, forming a nice little defensive perimeter on their part of the battlefield.

To add to it, the prince flicked his paintbrush, coating both the spears and the ground in-front of them with burning goop, further deterring the ground crawlers, and funneling them to either side of it.

As for what to put behind it? Well, Rika covered part of that by screaming out in pain and summoning her the white whale that had belonged to the pacific princess, who’s to mounted turrets swiveled to the side and started blasting, while it used its mighty jaws to bring the pain to foes that came past the barrier.

Bowser ended up holding the other side of said barrier, burning and blasting glyphids that came round, and raining his shell spikes up and over the spear wall, and down to any clumps of glyphids trying to get past.

Unfortunately, that was just the smallfry handled, and as Jr worked to patch his sister back up, the two potential major complications to his plan arrived.

A trio of hulking praetorians stomped forwards amidst their lesser kin, and it was quite clear that the spiky barrier would be no barrier to their acid sprays. Similarly, the buzzing Mactera Spawn hovering through the air were able to simply huck their horrid projectiles down at the defenders, bypassing their barrier entirely.

With Jr’s clowncar still needing repairs, and the tunnels having not been considered suitable for flying steeds, that left Kamek as the troop’s only available air force. Still, he wasn’t alone, as the mage naturally had more hims, and a little extra help in the form of Mimi who had elected to ride on the tip of the mage’s broomstick. All of his broomsticks actually, as the copycatting specter had mimicked the mage’s clone spell, equipping all the doppelgangers with a familiar of their own.

He’d opted to make red clones only, and those clones made great use of their passengers, recklessly charging forwards and getting up in the mandabled faces of the enemy fliers, at which point the Mimis could scratch away at the bugs with their claws.

As his doppelgangers tied up many of the fliers Kamek prime swooped forwards between them, both he and Mimi delivering drive-by blasts as they did, before they cleared the flying swarm and soared over to the praetorians.

”Time to say, bombs away, and bid these bugs good day” Kamek chanted in a sing-song tone as both he and Mimi began dropping dark energy mines ontop of them. The magical mines spiked down into the earth, pulsed once, and then as long as there was something beneath them, immediately exploded upwards again in pillars of dark energy, hammering the unarmored undersides of the glypids, as well as the exposed green rear of the praetorians.

Things were going wonderfully until a quartet of Centiwings crawled their way into the room via tunnels in the ceiling, and then dropped down into the air and commenced their unnerving spiraling flight. They’d encountered them alone on their way here, but the number of them combined with the surrounding hostels spiked them way up in the mage’s threat assessment. He did not want to find out what they could do if they got ahold of him with their many legs, that was for sure

As he could not simply teleport away due to his passenger, he started falling back via flight, but low to the ground as he had ended up while bombing, he could not swoop for extra speed without getting attacked by ground bugs. Even if he made it past them, he might very well ram into Jr’s spikewall, so it was a dangerously slow hover he committed while backing away from the flying bugs.

As the mage and Mimi blasted at the rapidly approaching Centiwings there came a call of ”I’m coming to help!” from Rika. The freshly healed shipgirl had been tossed over the spikewall by her brother on her request, and then grappled to one of the remaining Mactera spawn, before kicking off of it for more distance. Now close enough to aim without risking friendly fire, she blasted one of Kamek’s pursuers with her rigging guns, finishing it off, and then called out ”Crimson Queen!” as she summoned that striker.

The Vespikan queen appeared beside her, and then immediately charged forwards, her humongous cleaver held overhead, before it slammed it down upon one of the Centiwings, slicing it clean in half in a single stroke. Then she thrust her stinger forwards, impaling another, before her spirit returned to Rika.

With that touch of breathing room, Kamek and Mimi managed to blast the fourth and final centiwing with spells and electroballs. As its spirit fell, the mage turned to thank Rika for her assistance, only to see the girl slowly floating down to the ground, lacking as she was in any grapple points due to his clones having taken down all the Mactera while they had all been dealing with the centiwings.

”Oh no! Rika!” he cried out in alarm when he looked down below her and saw a swarm of glyphids preparing to claw at her when she landed, before quickly coming up with a plan and casting ”sphere of protection” upon her.

”Thanks Kamek!” the princess called up, before she, now surrounded in a shimmering amber barrier, cut her antigravity and feather fall effects and dropped down into the mass of bugs.

Claws slashed and jaws bit, but the barrier reduced the damage to a mere ⅕ of what it could have been. It still hurt, and she was still at risk of being cut down, but it meant that rather than being torn apart in moments she was able to fight back. Her spear jumped into her gauntlet’s jaws, and then was driven into a sclicer’s head. Her hull claws slashed at a grunt, and her disruption cannons blindly unloaded their globby payloads into foes behind her, all of which allowed her to strike several foes at once.

She wasn’t unsupported either, as Kamek floated low, bouncing fireballs down into the bugs trying to still reach her, while Mimi’s shadow appeared at Rika’s feet and slashed at more of them with its spectral claws.

Finally, Jr threw some support her way, sending his own Vespikan strikers into the fray, the four large wasp woman rapidly closing the distance between their shelter and the out of position princess, and delivered swift death with their four-handed cleavers.

With all this support, the bloody princess broke out of the mass that had greeted her on landing, and sprinted towards cover. After clearing some ground, and building up momentum, she leapt up with her featherfall rune, sailing forwards landing upon Bowser’s Trowlon striker that he’d sent floating her way. It moved her a bit closer, and then before it timed out she leapt again, clearing more ground and then launching her grapple and latching onto Bowser. The winch reeled her in quickly, into the awaiting hand of her papa, who caught her just before she ran body first into Jr’s spike wall.

”I gotcha” he told her reassuringly as he lifted her back into the relative safety of their defensive position, and handed her to Jr’s care, the prince only lightly complaining about how much he was having to heal her as Kamek returned as well.

Reunited behind their spiky defenses, the Troop were well placed to hold off the remaining smaller crawlers, and ready to face whatever fresh horrors of chitin came their way.

With the defeat of the Tyrant, Roland did what he came to do and crushed the spirit to see what he'd get. Last time he got a crossbow, this time however, he wanted to see what would happen. Susie, with Blazermate's help looted the crate meanwhile.



Roland was expecting a weapon, but got armor instead? Were these always just random? Seeing as the two bots knew what was going on, he asked, and Blazermate gave him a resounding. "Yep! Be glad its not bolts or something. We've seen weird things come from crushing spirits sometimes." Roland shrugged, and decided he'd at least try this armor the next time he got the opportunity to change.

Having discovered another rift with a VIP inside, Roland, Susie and Blazermate were told where to meet up. They met up with everyone else at the portal as Goldweis and Geralt jumped in to handle what was in there. While waiting, Roland decided to pass some time asking Zenkichi. "So... what did you do while you explored the area?"

As Zenkichi met up with the others while Goldlewis and Geralt headed into the portal, Roland struck up a conversation. "Checked out the lower areas. Found a kid. Sounds like he made it back alright, or I think Halo would've said something." Zenkichi's tone was a bit more matter-of-fact than the others were probably used to, and he sighed. "I hate this place already."

"yeah. I hear ya pal." Roland said giving a knowing sigh. " Me and the robot sisters over there fought some giant dinosaur robot for supplies. Pretty sure the pink one has them." Roland continued, being a bit more expressive than Zebkichi but sharing his disdain for the area. Susie only looked at the two chatting puzzled, but mostly just sat around doing a bit of bookkeeping on her PDA. Blazermate stood at attention, but more or less was waiting as well.

"Nice. Hope you got something useful out of it. I've got a couple Spirits but...not sure what I'm gonna do with em. Actually...lemme crush this one." Pulling out the Lady Nya'gai Spirit, Zenkichi glared angrily at the monster before crushing its Spirit. The umbrella that it left behind was..not actually unexpected. He'd have to give it a closer look later, though.

It was then that Sandalphon called for the others to enter the portal, and they went in. They had to wait around a bit while the fliers activated some moving platforms that wouldn't have looked too out of place in a Mario game. Carefully traversing the platforms, Zenkichi found himself wildly uncomfortable here. Being inside of one of these portals, in another dimension, was disturbing. It felt fundamentally wrong.

Perhaps even more wrong than that was the strange portal of dark energy that appeared, letting out a group of armed combatants that looked very, very strange. Definitely not human, especially given the centaur-looking one they had with them. "They...definitely don't look friendly." Zenkichi muttered.

"Do ANY of these monsters look friendly?" Roland said with a bit of sarcasm as he pulled out a sword and got ready for combat.

"I mean, they're not here right now but some of the Machines look kind of friendly" He retorted sarcastically, Closing Statement appearing in his hands as he buffed Roland's attack with Tarukaja. "What do ya say we take the sword guys?" Zenkichi posited to Roland.

He didn't have to tell Roland twice. Getting a buff from Zenkichi, Roland went in to clash swords with one of the sword guys. His first slash caught the creature off guard, but the creature pushed him away by overpowering his second slash. As he did the smell of coffee whisked by him as he remembered a certain coffee nut librarian. He gained some Courage from this clash, with a gruff voice saying"There’s nothing that can stop us!" buffing his strength by an additional 10% as he had 3 allies backing him up.

Blazermate and Susie meanwhile went to work on the centaur and the two cannon soldiers. With Blazermate's ability to conjure a projectile shield and Susie able to give Blazermate a good solid wall to hide behind, it was surprisingly effective. At first Susie went for the centaur that charged her, pulling out her business suit and getting ready to box it as Blazermate healed her and summoned her engineer spirit to start making a sentry gun. The cannon guys backed up the charging centaur, aiming at Susie's business suit as they weren't aware of her weakness quite yet. Susie still reflexively blocked her pillot seat with a single fist, while using the other to punch the centaur down and away, which sort of gave that away later, but their target would quickly change as the engineer constructed his level 1 sentry which started to shoot at the centaur and put continuous damage on it.

Zenkichi followed closely after Roland, his sword coming down in a heavy overhand swing on the other Voidranger. The space-themed villain deftly deflected the sword sideways, thrusting in with its other blade. Zenkichi tanked the hit, one hand coming off the Closing Statement and letting it crash into the ground as he drew his pistol, point-blank dumping its cylinder into the Voidranger's gut and recovering a bit of health.

The dual-wielding swordsman quickly stepped sideways when the revolver clicked empty, attacking with both blades while Zenkichi stowed his empty pistol. Once again tanking the hits thanks to Closing Statements bulk making it difficult to block with, Zenkichi retaliated with a series of heavy slashes, trading blows with the first hit, while the Voidranger dodged the second and third.

"Valjean! Deathbound!" Zenkichi called as a follow-up, a wide swarm of hands appearing from the ground beneath them all, swiping twice at both Voidrangers. The first attack caught his enemy off-guard, leaving it open for both the second swipe of the summoned hands to strike it, as well as a running slash from Zenkichi. The attack had enough power behind it to bowl the Voidranger over in a tumbling roll backwards, which it dextrously recovered from by pushing off the ground with its hands and springing into place.

With Roland dealing with one of the Voidrangers and Zenkichi dealing with the other, one of the cannon guys broke off from its fight with Blazermate and Susie to shoot a shot at Roland. Using his hammer at that time to clash against and parry the sword of his current target, he had to reflexively counter the shot only to get knocked back by it. Susie capitalized on that by striking it with a giant fist while Roland rolled back to his feet and went to break through another sword combo using his lance. This gave him Gleaning as a higher timber voice said. "Good… Very good… I’ll be smarter the more I eat, right…?" To assist Zenkichi, Roland gave him a bit of cover fire from his gun, shooting the creature he was fighting.

Being near the ranged fighters now, the centaur and the other cannon soldier attempted to get Susie off of their third partner. Knowing to aim for the girl inside the giant robot, they focused their attacks there, but Blazermate activated her projectile shield to neutralize the cannon shot and slow down the centaur long enough for Susie to grab it, spin it around, and throw it away. Susie then went back to working on the unfortunate cannon guy before her.

"Thanks!" Zenkichi called as a burst of gunfire hit the Voidranger, giving Zenkichi an opening to crash the Closing Statement into its torso, following up with a rising diagonal slash that was caught and deflected before Zenkichi took a slash to the chest. Grunting, he bashed the Voidranger in the face with the crossguard of his sword, stunning the enemy long enough for Valjean to land a One-Shot Kill, which performed just as advertised, reducing the enemy to ash.

"I see why you got this job." Roland said as he went to clash his giant sword against the other Voidranger, easily overpowering it's first slash and slightly parrying the second, but getting hit with it's final part of its sword combo. It then took a defensive posture as Roland struck at it with his daggers in 3 quick dashes. The Voidranger took to damage but that was all Roland needed to get to Emotion level 3. This time, he got the power of Home, in which a young girl's voice said. "Friends. Oh, friends. Will we get to go home?" Which caused the numbers 1 through 4 to appear over the enemies heads. As well as an EGO page, The Homing Instinct. Roland said. "Hit them in order to do lots of damage." As Roland did just that, firing his crossbow on the distracted centaur which caused the 1 to disappear over its head and causing it extra pain. Susie followed up by shooting a missile at the one with 2 over its head, the extra damage finally destroying the cannon soldier.

Zenkichi charged the weakened Voidranger, his speed and dexterity boosted by Closing Statement against the wounded enemy, and crashed into it with a savage swing down its chest. The Voidranger skid back from the blow before leaping in to counter-attack.

Roland, having gotten an EGO page, decided why not use it now? And with a flutter of will-o-wisps the area changed into a grass hill with a road leading to an emerald castle with Roland now wearing a suit and top hat. With a one armed bow and a snap of his fingers, a small prairie house was conjured, then fell on the Voidranger. The Centaur, rearing up to attack Susie with a rush from its hooves, was immune to the attack, but the Voidranger wasn't so lucky as it got hit by a literal house that disappeared a second after it landed filling every one of Roland's allies and himself with hope and 10% more power. Although hit by a house, the attack didn't seem to do as much damage as you'd think.

Rushing in once the house was gone, Zenkichi stood over the stunned Voidranger, looking down on him and shaking his head. "Tough luck..." He muttered, stabbing his sword down into the enemy, who dissolved into ash immediately with the killing blow.

"And make that two."

And with 2 left, one weakened, the fight goes on...

Despite her lengthy boast, Sakura managed to kick things off with such speed that Gisu didn’t get the chance to hop on her board in time. The young psionic yelped when struck in the knees and got knocked over by Sakura’s Hadoken, clearing the way for her to try and punk Morris as well. By now though she’d lost her initiative, and though seemingly relaxed in his recumbent position, Morris was both literally and metaphorically on the ball. He lifted his hands into a ‘snapshot’ position, his thumbs and forefingers each making an L on opposing corners of a rectangle, and his Elastikinesis altered the elasticity of the air directly in front of him to create a vertical trampoline. Sakura’s momentum carried her right into it, and her attack amounted to nothing as she bounced back. Morris dispelled his trampoline and pulled a spiked metal sphere the size of a billiard ball, which he tossed like a coin. As it fell, he caught it in a smaller trampoline, stretching it downward. Then he grabbed the bulge and pulled it backward, and once he released it the ball hurtled Sakura’s way like the payload of a slingshot to make sure she had something to worry about as she landed.

Sakura dove out of the way, worrying about it sufficiently enough. She watched where it went and then asked her question about their ages.

Gisu got to her feet with a frustrated grunt, annoyed that she’d been downed so easily. “Ugh. Appearances don’t mean anything in Psych-OSF ‘cause of the anti-aging drugs, you know. We could be in our thirties for all you know, so don’t underestimate us.”

“Fourteen and fifteen,” Morris remarked offhandedly, a mischievous smile on his face.

Sakura looked relieved. ”Oh, great. That’s about how old I was when I started getting my butt kicked. Okay, the fight’s on!” Sakura said, excited.

Glaring at him, Gisu dropped her Hoverboard, though it stopped before it hit the ground. When she jumped onto it, a current of psychic energy levitated her into the air. Its lateral blades gleamed in the sinister afternoon light. “You look tough. But we’re soldiers for a reason. You’re about to find out the hard way.”

“And they don’t pay soldiers to talk,” Morris chimed in. “They pay us to follow orders, and our orders are to bring you in.” With just a slight lean, he sent his chair rolling to the side on its big hoverball, putting some distance between himself and Sakura as he circled around. Then he used the tech built into his chair to create a bubble shield around Gisu, and as she surfed forward the battle began.

The anger from earlier had mostly melted away as Sakura faced the challenge before her. Stakes and context melted away in her mind and a smile found her face. ”Yeah, yeah, let’s go!” As Gisu came forward, protected by a bubble shield, Sakura thought she would test it.
”Hadoken!” She fired out another quick moving fireball, and then another one when Gisu responded, looking to lead her shot this time.

Rather than try to avoid them, however, Gisu took the fireballs head on, and even with their power combined they only cracked the shield. When each struck her shield, a ripple of energy spread across its surface, then coalesced into a feedback pulse that returned to Morris’s techno-chair. Meanwhile Gisu charged directly into her opponent, performing a kickflip that sent her board into a wild horizontal spin beneath her, its bladed edges turning into a buzzsaw of rapid hits. The barrage ended with a double stomp into the board itself to bounce off the psychic current like a springboard and send Gisu flying away.

Sakura guarded against the strikes, gritting her teeth, before catching the board Gisu was on and holding it in place. The stomp broke the stalemate and Sakura stumbled backwards, barely managing to stay on her feet.

As Gisu landed and began to circle around to come at Sakura again, the barrier given to her by Morris vanished despite having plenty of durability left, and Morris began to move as well. Strafing in a circle, he slung spikeballs at Sakura while Gisu performed a series of quick dash attacks to try and slice Sakura as she sped past. On the third one, however, she would perform a flip over Sakura right before impact and then dash into her from behind.

Sakura ducked under one spikeball and avoided another, wide eyes tracking the projectiles. Her leg was sliced out from under her, and she had to absorb the next spikeball with her arm. Deflecting Gisu’s follow up slice with her hands, she rolled to the side and glanced towards Gisu only to just barely see her flip behind her. ”Oof!” Her head jerked back and she was sent flying forward. She converted her roll into a spinning front flip to face her enemies once more, her boots skidding on the pavement. Gathering blue ki in her hands, she charged up another fireball and launched it in the general direction of the pair, and followed behind it with a run.

Gisu’s board slice and the way she bounced off Morris’s trampoline reminded her of her battle against Gemma. She’d seen the moves before- could she exploit them?

Sakura swept around her advancing fireball and tried to put it between her and Gisu. Once again she gunned for Morris, the backliner and support that was making her life so difficult. With a mighty leap she jumped above him again, but at the apex of her jump she tucked in and did a flip, stopping her momentum mid air and changing her trajectory into a downward kick that would just miss him. Then she shot up into Morris from below. ”Shouoken!” With a fist-first rising uppercut.

While Gisu swerved around the fireball, Sakura made her move on Morris. Despite his casual attitude earlier, the boy had a serious, almost curious look on his face. Why would his opponent try this again after his no-sell last time? His fingers hovered over the second blue button on his chair's armrest, and as Sakura fell he made the snap decision to press it. Another bubble shield went up, this time around himself, and Morris soaked his opponent's tricky uppercut with a web of cracks on his shield. He'd protected himself, but this wasn't a win; she'd gotten him to spend his emergency shield with very little expenditure on her part. With that barrier on cooldown Morris needed to play this safe. He backpedaled quickly, and Gisu flew in to buy him a moment by drifting into Sakura with a bladed sideswipe. Even if it didn't connect, it ought to get her attention, and if she messed her hands up by trying to grab the board's bladed sides again, all the better.

Sakura watched Morris bounce away, satisfied with that. She remembered that Gisu existed just in term to turn around and catch the blade on her forearm. It was like she was made of steel, but the dings and scrapes that a sword would leave in plate armor were left on her flesh instead. But it was entirely a matter of focus.

”Sore!” Sakura brought her blocking arm down and raised her other one up, leaning back to give her leg plenty of room to chop up into Gisu from below, her leg going completely vertical with her signature Chin Buster Kick.

"What the!?" Just what was this woman made of? A horizontal blow capable of chopping lumber barely seemed to register, and with the commitment Gisu put into that strike, she'd halted her momentum and couldn't just slide by. Sakura's leg shot upward with such speed and flexibility that Gisu couldn't fully lean away in time. Her cheek got clipped and she bent over backward atop her board, twisting to put her hands beneath her and convert her fall into a handspring. Her backflip completed a couple yards away, coming to rest on a cushion of psychic energy. It welled up as Gisu crouched down, and after a brief delay she shot back toward Sakura with a lower profile. It was time to really start doing tricks. After pressing down the nose to perform a hard nollie, she launched into a sideways backflip that sent her flying at her opponent like a drill–the Tamedog.

”Uh oh!” Whatever confidence Sakura had in her ability to stop powerful strikes, it clearly had a limit. Wide-eyed at the scary looking attack, Sakura bent her knees and looked to jump clean over Gisu’s drill move. She brought her legs up, Gisu cutting loudly through the air beneath her.

Meanwhile, Morris had an idea. Sakura's fortitude came in part from her stance, so her technique began where her feet met the ground. The same couldn't be said for himself or Gisu, who floated on Levitation hoverballs. With his sling shots ineffective so far, Morris emptied out the bag of spiked balls into a single trampoline and launched them all at Sakura at once. In addition to pelting her painfully, they'd hopefully act as caltrops once they littered the ground, limiting her footwork with the threat of piercing penetration.

When she landed, one of them smacked her in the back of the head. ”Ouch!” She stumbled forward, rubbing her head. She turned around and crouched low, using her arms to protect herself from the spiked balls, hissing through her teeth. She’d really love to be dodging all these slices and stabs these two were doing.
Sakura looked around, frowning at the caltrops. ”Oh, man.” She complained, already knowing one of them would stab into her feet at some point. Ibuki did this crap to her all the time.

Sakura shot a fireball at Gisu and then tried to move to the side to get out of the middle of the caltrops.

Highly mobile, Gisu wove around the fireball easily. Though she’d managed to stick the landing for her Tamedog trick attack it had still taken an extra moment to correct. Now that she’d recovered, though, she was back in action. Both psionics could see that their agility and unpredictable fighting styles had Sakura on defense. It was time to up the ante. Morris tapped further into his Elastikinesis, creating an extra-strength vertical trampoline in front of him that he dragged backward. This would run through his mental energy faster, but he felt confident that this investment would pay dividends. When he released the trampoline, it sprang back with enough tensile strength to function as an air cannon, hurling a powerful wind front toward Sakura to knock her off balance -maybe even off her feet- before she escaped the caltrops. His assault became a one-two punch as Gisu cruised in and leaped toward Sakura with a Tail Grab to wallop her with the underside of her board.

Sakura gasped in surprise as she felt herself get knocked off her feet by a gust of wind, her arms flailing for something to grab onto. She gasped in something a little worse than surprise when Gisu thoroughly smacked into her body with her board. Sakura spat and flew backwards, landing on some caltrops that stuck into her. She converted her tumble into a back roll and then backed up, getting out of the field of spikeballs at the cost of a pretty nasty hit. Not to mention the fact that the caltrops were still there, except the one that was stuck in her arm, which she pulled out in frustration, causing some blood to run down it. She discarded that one down the street. How was she going to get the party started? They had psychic powers that- Sakura slapped her forehead. She had psychic powers. And not just Levitation. Sakura tapped into the SAS, and noted the bevy of psychic abilities at her disposal. Sclerokinesis, Psychokinesis, Teleportation, and Pyrokinesis. Luka’s Teleport might come in handy in navigating between these two opponents.

All she had to do was make sure she didn’t teleport into anything or anyone. She aimed a fireball at Morris, and then launched into an EX-Sakura Drop, her body flashing orange as she leapt forward with her fists locked together over her head. ”Here I come!” She was zooming in like a heat-seeking missile towards the leading Gisu, but her eyes were on Morris. In a move she thought was cheap as hell, she teleported from Gisu mid-move and was suddenly bringing the hammer down on Morris instead. She felt like she was picking on Morris, but he was really giving her a lot of trouble.

If it hit, they would both bounce up. ”Ichi, ni…” Sakura smacked him again, sending him even higher. ”...san!” She brought the hammer down to send him crashing into a wall. Sakura landed quickly and charged up a point-blank fireball.

Thoroughly jumpscared by Sakura’s sudden teleport on top of him, Morris couldn’t take any action before his foe’s fists slammed down on top of him. Squashed against the hoverball beneath his chair, he bounced right out of his chair and could do little but get pummeled through the air. “Oof-ow-gah!” Before he knew it, Morris found himself plastered against the stylized facade of a Tex-mex eatery, dazedly staring down the metaphorical barrel of a blazing hadoken.

Unlike Sakura, Gisu did not announce her attack, even as misdirection. Instead, after locking on, she performed a backflip to sling her hoverboard out from under her at high speed. It slammed straight into the street fighter from behind to cut her combo short with a painful double-stab to the back. The force of the blow crush countered her, sending her spinning into Morris, and both slumped off the wall. “Crap, sorry!” Gisu winced. Running in, she snatched up her hoverboard from where it had fallen and began to whirl it around like a sign spinner to try and strike Sakura repeatedly. With any luck her eye-catching whirlwind of offense and defense would keep her foe occupied long enough for Morris to slink away.

”Kuahhh!” Sakura’s fireball fizzled out anticlimactically, the wind driven from her and slamming her into her foe, coincidentally giving her one more hit in her combo. Sakura fell onto her back, eyes squeezed shut. Sucking in air, she regained her composure and got to her feet just in time to get wacked across the chest by Gisu. Stumbling backwards she jerked from side to side before managing to block one. She spent some V-Meter and did a V-Reversal. One of her eyes flashed white and fast, she spun, dodging the next strike and sweeping Gisu off her feet, sending her away. ”Right there!” Gisu would have had to stop attacking and block it, and even then she would still get shoved back. The strike wouldn’t hurt at all, but it did get Gisu off Sakura.

The two of them were really working her body. Sakura wiped some spit from her lips. Well, it was the easiest part of her to hit. Normally Sakura would get nothing but a breather off a V-Reversal, but now she teleported up to Gisu and was suddenly in kicking range. Assuming she was back on the board, Sakura did some side kicks and a spinning heel kick aimed at Gisu’s legs while she was on the board to knock her off or force her to defend. Once she had established the pattern and forced Gisu to raise her board to block, she used Levitated to hop right on, set one foot on the edge of the board and used her other leg to drive her knee right into Gisu’s torso.

As impressive as spinning her board was, Gisu couldn't call melee combat her forte. Thanks to her unfamiliarity with the V-reversal, it meant the end of her offensive pressure. With some distance put between herself and Sakura she quickly scrambled back onto her hoverboard, only to find her adversary right on top of her. "Come on!" Gritting her teeth, she backpedaled from the kicks while performing a tail press for defense. If she lost her footing, she was done for. She wanted nothing more than to disengage, but Sakura was one step ahead. To Gisu's surprise she actually commandeered the board, which made the psionic feel about as indignant as it made her feel stupid. Gisu tried to block the blow, but a good amount of force still went through, and with a grunt she fell off the board and onto the ground.

Of course, the next second the hoverboard slipped out from beneath Sakura like a banana peel, flinging her comedically onto the ground as the board slid away. ”Haha bwah!”

Gisu ran after it, knowing she wouldn't last in close quarters combat. Meanwhile, Morris made it back to his chair. Despite his propensity for riding in it everywhere, he evidently wasn't crippled or anything and could move on his own just fine. His bubble shields were off cooldown, so he was ready to defend, but this time he planned to attack as well. "Lucas, I need this." Using SAS, he borrowed his squadmate's PSI. Immediately he used PK Thunder, sending a crackling thunderhead to home in on Sakura's position. When Gisu reached her board, she'd tap into Yamaguchi's Electrokinesis to electrify her blades. It was up to Sakura to decide who she wanted to stop.

Sakura got back to her feet. Homing projectiles and lightning blades- these two were making her work for it. Pyrokinesis looked like it might come in handy here. Her hands lit up red, and then blue as she gathered the energy for a charged Hadoken. ”Hadoken!” Throwing her palms out, wrists pressed together, psychic fire and fire ki combined into a heavy hitting fireball to meet PK Thunder head on.

Sakura covered her face with her elbow, watching the resulting explosion with one half-open eye. ”Wow, awesome!” She cheered.

She began to run towards Gisu, looking to meet the dangerous skater head on. Sakura leaned into her run, going full ninja and leaning down low, her closed fists extending behind her. This was to bait Gisu into lowering her board. Then she would transition into a hopping spin kick. ”Shunpukyaku!” Her leg would aim to slam into Gisu like a clothesline, crushing any low attacks. If it was blocked, Sakura would be able to get back on the ground fast enough to defend herself.

Her foot slammed into the bubble shield constructed around Gisu by Morris. The repeated impact of her spin kick cracked the barrier and returned kinetic energy back to Morris, who was already preparing his next move. He'd put himself behind Sakura to hit her with another trampoline airblast, pushing her back toward Gisu, who performed a front flip to try and bring her hoverboard's lightning-infused tail down on Sakura's head.

Sakura kept a mental bead on where Morris was this time, and when she heard the trampoline pull back she was ready for his airblast. She let herself get pushed forward and then planted her front foot, placing both her hands on the dirt. Bracing for impact, she performed a Focus Attack, charging it up. Looking to absorb the impact of the board, she returned fire with a slow but armor-breaking knee aimed to pierce through the cracked barrier and to drive the wind out of Gisu. ”Hoaah!” She yelled. The electricity wasn’t good for her stun bar, and she shook her face to maintain concentration.

After that she grabbed Gisu’s shoulders and jumped up, for a moment she maintained a handstand on top of Gisu. Then she brought her legs down, rolled along the ground with Gisu, and flung her at high speed towards Morris.

"Drat," Morris grumbled. Sakura had already proven herself strong, but smashing through a barrier like that put her above a majority of Others, and now Gisu's assault had been foiled again. He used his Elastikinesis to create a trampoline that bounced his teammate high into the air, where she could right herself and catch a much-needed breather as she drifted down using her Levitation. For a moment though, that left him alone. Morris took a deep breath and focused the PSI power gleaned from Locus to shoot a flurry of PK Fires as he bounced around, each projectile a little fork of lightning that exploded into a burst of flame on impact. He aimed at both Sakura and the ground around her, since they would dissipate if they didn't hit something within a second's flight.

Sakura watched Gisu float, and then made some pretty intense eye contact with Morris, her eyes alight with a passion for fighting. Sakura got a feel for the PK fire when she raised her arm and the thing zapped into her block, causing her to slide back. After that she dashed forward and sprinted onto a nearby wall, running along it for a moment before diverolling, the PK Fires exploding all around her. Her diveroll converted into a bounding leap, and in mid air she pushed a blue and red psychic hadoken mid-air, about half the size of her normal ones because she wasn’t grounded. Either way it was still burning hot and something to deal with while she landed behind it and looked to close the rest of the gap.

With his SAS PSI running low, Morris made the best use of it that he could. When he held our his hands, a PSI Magnet formed, and the swirling vortex sphere devoured the hadoken to convert it into a little health. However, the visual pollution meant he wasn't quite aware of just how fast Sakura made her approach.

When she got close enough, she converted her run into a galloping stride, still plenty fast but with her fists up. Juking another burst of flame, she aimed to slug her back fist towards his magic chair.

Her relentless pursuit paid off, catching Morris mid-bounce after she swerved around his PSI. His chair rocked back dangerously on its hoverball, dented a bit from the impact, and he fought to steady it. A personal bubble shield popped up to give him the moment he needed, meaning both his barriers were on cooldown again.

Sakura was by no means unscathed, but a giggle escaped her lips as she put the pressure on Morris. After smacking into it with a few kicks to make sure he wouldn’t retaliate, she hopped forward and grabbed onto Morris' chair. ”Oops!” If he predicted it, he could swat her hands away, but the moment would pass before he could react if not. Sakura twisted and turned aimed to slam Morris and his chair into the ground. ”Toriyah!” She shouted.

He would've landed hard if not for his powerful instincts of self-preservation. A trampoline formed beneath him just before he hit the ground, but it's stretch still led to an impact with the asphalt below, and when it bounced back it flung both Morris and his chair apart. He landed and rolled across the ground, looking up just in time to see his chair smash against the street. No way it's generators would be working after that. Before Sakura could follow up, Gisu dive-bombed her from above like a hawk to nail her with its lightning-infused nose right before her borrowed Electrokinesis ran out. She rebounded from the strike and coasted down near Morris, a little jarred by the impact. Though able to fight on, both had seen better days.

Sakura was pinned to the floor by the impact, taken again by surprise. It was hard to keep track of both opponents at once. ”Urgh.” The electricity didn’t play well with her, and she put a hand on her head as she pushed herself up into a sitting position. She was looking a little rough.

”Not bad, you two.” She said. ”What do you think of me, huh? I’m pretty tough, right? Pretty cool?” Sakura asked as got back onto her feet.

"Pretty annoying," Morris managed to huff without looking too pitiful. He got to his feet and reached up as if to adjust his collar. "You've been pushing us around for long enough. It's time we showed you what happens when brains meet brawn."

He tugged a red strip on his outfit, and his hood popped up to conceal his face with a shadowy veil. Orange lines criss-crossed it in a tessellated triangle pattern, and the next second a number of the triangle flares up to create concentric circles. By now Sakura knew this act: Brain Drive, a state of heightened physical and mental acuity that boosted psionic abilities. Gisu activated hers as well, her signature pattern a ring of speed lines radiating out from the empty center.

Sakura looked between both of her empowered foes, taking a step back. As they did, though, she remembered that she could do the same thing! Closing her eyes for a moment, she inhaled through her nose and exhaled out of her mouth. An orange spiral wrapped upwards before flaring into a pattern of sparkling blossom shapes. ”This is incredible!”” She exclaimed, opening her eyes and then widening her stance, ready to receive her enemy’s attacks. Sakura had activated her own Brain Drive.

Gisu boosted forward atop her hoverboard, faster than ever on a psychic current like a miniature tsunami, and as Morris backed toward his chair he manifested trampolines throughout the area. Gisu bounced off them, changing directions at high speed to attack Sakura with a blistering series of drive-by slices.

Sakura tracked Gisu with her eyes and the first slice scraped past her block. But the second struck her from behind before she could turn around. ”Ugh!” She had to resist falling into a spinning vortex and collapsing on the floor as she jerked back and forth from each subsequent slice. She relied on prediction, hopping over one slice, pausing in the air, and then doing an aerial EX-Shunpukyaku, her leg lashing out in a full circle around her lightning fast. ”Hoooah!” Sakura yelled. If Gisu got hit by one kick, she would be sucked in by the wind, battered around and then expelled back where she came from.

It wasn’t just Gisu’s Levitation that were on point, though. Thanks to Brain Drive, her mind and body were actually functioning faster, so when Sakura whipped up a whirlwind kick in the middle of the battlefield, the psionic’s reflexes saved her. She banked right in time to narrowly avoid running into the EX-Shunpukyaku. Nevertheless, the cyclone might have pulled her in if not for Morris. He conjured a psychic trampoline beside his teammate so she could grab hold, staying just out of reach while she accessed PSI through SAS. Powered by her passion for what she loved the most, Gisu built up and let loose a conic blast of psychic hexagons, brilliantly flashing magenta, cyan, and yellow. “PK LOVE!” As the strongest smash attack Lucas -and therefore his squad- had at his disposal, it was a show of power that could deal major damage, but Sakura’s whiffed kick didn’t have so much recovery that landing PK Love was guaranteed.

Sakura landed, having to pull her arms back in from the left-over momentum of her spin kick. Aware that it didn’t connect, she looked up at where Gisu was and was left agape at the incoming psychic blast. She only had a moment to raise her hands. She channeled Gemma’s Sclerokinesis and crossed her arms in front of herself, her body turning into steel in the fraction of a section she had before impact. All she could do was hope her two methods of defense would be enough to prevent her from getting knocked out. Cracking one eye open, she saw the PK Love wash over her in spectacular fashion, a kaleidoscope of colors and concentrated will. It was over faster than she expected, but the moment stretched on in her mind.

When it was over she felt Gemma’s steel power leave her, having used its entire charge of nullifying the attack. Sakura’s arms were still crossed in front of her, and she glanced down at her body, confirming the lack of damage. ”...heh. Cool!” She punched her arms downward at her sides and her palms and feet ignited with blue flame and a shower of cherry blossom petals that faded away in an instant. Defending that attack had given her enough V-Meter to activate Sakura Senpu. Her damage potential was higher than ever combined with Brain Drive.

Gisu’s jaw dropped in shock as the recoil from PK Love sent her wobbling on her board, not just at the manner in which Sakura no-selled her prospective knockout blow, but also what it implied about her squadmate Gemma. Pyrokinesis was a common enough power that Gisu couldn’t immediately just to definitive conclusions about Hanabi, but Sclerokinesis? Only one man possessed that power, and if Sakura could access it through SAS, that meant only one thing: that Gemma’s absence this afternoon wasn’t a coincidence. Deeply unsettled, Gisu couldn’t stop her mind racing. Gemma was one of the most principled men she knew. If he’d turned his back on Psych-OSF to partner up with its enemies, could that mean…

“Gisu!” Morris yelled in alarm.

Crap, right! Gisu focused on Sakura, who’d just powered up even further before her very eyes. In a panic, she put her hands together to cast a PSI ability point blank. “PK-!”

Smacked solidly in the face, Gisu’s head jerked backwards, Sakura’s clenched fist pulling away. Point blank might have been too close. Sakura rolled forward and leapt into a flying knee to knock Gisu away. She dropped back onto the ground in an acrobatic crouch, but instead of continuing to strike Gisu she paused a moment and watched Morris out of the corner of her eye, waiting for his interference.

He did not disappoint. While strafing, he used his Elastikinesis to rapid fire a bunch of small trampolines directly in front of them, grabbing each and stretching them back as far as he could before releasing. Their smaller size but greater stretch made for a more concentrated and hard-hitting blast of air, almost like a long-range barrage of punches. He formed and fired them as fast as he could move his arms, which was pretty fast. Gisu used the chance provided by his onslaught to recover atop her board, albeit not as fast as before.

”Straight through.” Sakura pivoted and brought her arms back and forth like a loaded weapon, firing a blazing EX-Fireball towards Morris as he strafed. It looked to blow through his smaller projectiles and crash right into him if he stayed the course. Sakura teleported into the air above him, and then spun downwards in his direction with a controlled spinning kick that altered her momentum as she pleased. Sakura Senpu left a clean, blade-like trail of energy off her spin kick.

The moment he observed the EX-hadoken cutting through his air bullets, Morris sped up. Though unstoppable and surprisingly fast, that fireball couldn’t change direction to follow him, at least. When Sakura teleported, he momentarily panicked. He’d seen that she could do this and he tried to keep it in the back of his mind so that he could trampoline her when she did, but right now his mental stack was piled high. Brain Drive meant he could act fast enough, but his first instinct was to hammer his chair’s emergency personal shield button. Thanks to all the damage, it didn’t respond. He couldn’t hover out of the way either since Sakura Senpu actually could change directions, so the barrage of kicks hit home. For the final strike, however, a Guardian Vision of Commander Camilla Vodello appeared to intercept it for him, leaving him bruised but not beaten as he span off f toward the sidelines on his chair. “Craaap,” he seethed, angry with himself.

Sakura on the other hand, was a picture of serendipity. Senpu was also a state of spiritual enhancement, not just physical. ”Wow. That lady had a long neck.” She noted, with great wisdom and serenity.

Morris spotted Gisu on the move, made a huge trampoline in front of him, and snapped it with all his strength to send a wall of air Sakura’s way. It caught her and buffeted her back–directly into a trampoline Morris made behind her, which made her stumble forward, off-balance. At that moment Gisu drifted into her, sideswiping her legs out from under her with the tail of her board. That afforded the two a crucial moment, and through SAS their minds cried out as one. “Let’s go!”

With Brain Drive about to expire, Morris went for broke. With Elastikinesis he manifested dozens trampolines around the area, surrounding and pointing inward toward Sakura. Gisu pushed her Levitation to the limit, picking up speed before slamming into one of the trampolines. She began to bounce around, faster and faster, becoming little more than a giant blur of metal and borrowed Electrokinesis, almost impossible to track. Morris revved up his chair’s hoverball, using a trampoline as a barrier to stop him moving forward as the psychic orb built up speed. Finally, he dispelled it and shot straight toward Sakura atop his chair, a living battering ram. At the same time, Gisu made her final approach, shooting at the street fighter like a bullet. At the last second though, she performed the same flip maneuver she’d used to nail Sakura earlier, vault over her and then inverting her momentum to drive her board’s nose into Sakura’s heart.

Sakura was impressed by the raging electric inferno that she was in the center of. She watched as she got up off the ground, the light catching in her eyes. With Senpu and Brain Drive active, both nearing their conclusion, the rest of the world melted away. And for a moment it was like she saw the pattern of the rain. The speed and power of the attack was immense, and she was right in the crosshair. But for a split second as the wave crashed down, Sakura spotted a weakness. She took one step to the side, to line up properly with Morris. And in half-a-blink, Gisu was there, next to him. They were synced up.

The moment would be over blindingly fast from the outside, but within it Sakura found the time to make eye-contact with Gisu and smile sympathetically, encouragingly. Doubt. Sakura saw it. It was visible on a fighter from a mile away.

”MIDARE ZAKURA.”

With a tremendous upward spiral, Sakura punched the air between them, her punch bursting with ki energy. It was clean and smooth, a battering ram. It would stop them both dead in their tracks. She lifted them up, dropped, spun, and then erupted upward again. Spinning, she lifted all of them together with an upward thrusting punch, leaving a line of energy beneath her. There was an explosion that sounded almost like a ringing bell. Sakura landed, untwisted her upper body and dashed forward.

The two were knocked close together. When they rose to do battle again, she would catch them both across the face with her leading elbow, Sakura sweeping her upper body in a horizontal arc. Linking her hands together she clocked them again on the back swing. Then with the last of her empowered spin kicks she lifted them both into the air with three slicing, streaking kicks. With a straight kick that hit neither of them directly but was accompanied by a pushing force of pure ki, the pair would be sent tumbling into a wall.

Sakura held her leg high in the air after the kick, the limb vibrating with leftover power. The pleasant ringing came to a stop, blue embers drifted to the ground and vanished, and the dust the kick had lifted settled. Sakura lowered her leg smoothly and with great care, before standing firmly on the ground. Brain Drive ended, her hood falling to reveal her face to the sky again.

For her opponents, Brain Drive wasn’t the only thing that was over. Morris had slumped down off the wall, completely senseless, and only by some miracle was Gisu able to remain on her knees. On that final impact, though, Sakura had heard a shattering sound, just like the one that accompanied an Other that had been broken to the point its bulb appeared. That begged the question: could Gisu be finished off with a Brain Crush as well? Sakura didn’t know how, though, and before she could answer Gisu ran out of time and wiped out for the last time.

Sakura cleared her throat and then spat onto the ground. ”Good fight!” She raised her fist, grinning.

”But if you wanna beat me as a team, you both gotta be on the same page. Let’s do it again sometime.” She rubbed under her nose, satisfied with a battle well fought. But the thrill, that wonderful elation she was always chasing, faded with her victory. Back in the real world, Sakura remembered why exactly they were fighting.

She considered Friend Hearting them, but it was best to see what the others did first. After all they weren’t driven mad by Galeem, they were attacking them because of real genuine loyalty to a cause they believed in. There was a pretty big chance they would just arrest her again, and there’s no way she can beat them twice in a row.

”Phew! Teeheehee!” With an exhale and a giggle, Sakura skipped to join the others if they needed help in their battle, or just to reunite with them. How invigorating! Sakura was plenty beat-up but her grin was wider than it usually was.

Geralt watched the Spirit that the Chimera left warily. It was his first time seeing one up close, and he was not particularly interested in messing with it, so he left the thing for anybody else to claim. There was a difference between making a calculated decision, like absorbing the Orphan, and messing with obviously tainted material, and Geralt had seen enough cursed beings to know he wasn't willing to take the chance here.

As Hal arrived and performed a closer scan, Geralt frowned as a portal into whatever dimension the Chimeras hailed from appeared. Both the drone and his sense of smell confirmed the worst-case scenario: Iron had gone into it, and they'd have to follow. "Gotta be kidding me. Too many portals with you people," he grumbled, shaking his head. Nonetheless, he entered with Goldlewis. Rather than an instant transition, it felt as though there was a delay between entering the gate and arriving on the other side, and Geralt took a slow, deep breath to settle his stomach. "Dammit..." He muttered, taking a moment to recollect himself.

When he really got a look at where they ended up, he sighed. This place was entirely foreign, almost hostile, in its existence. Strange, unnatural-looking geometric shapes which would normally betray something created by people. Here...he had no idea if it was natural or not.

Hal managed to pick something up in the same direction Iron's scent headed off to, but there was simply no way for Geralt or Goldlewis to traverse the empty chasm between them and the next platforms. This resulted in Goldlewis calling for backup, though Geralt was concerned about those who would enter, given that they had no way of fighting the Chimeras, while he and Goldlewis had barely split half a dose of Blue Evolve between them. Still, it was necessary, and Blazermate, Susie and Karin quickly activated a way ahead for them. Odd that such a solution existed in the first place, though it might have been a defense mechanism for landlocked Chimeras to activate as they headed to the gate, then closed behind them by others to prevent counter-invasion. He wasn't certain of their mental faculties, but it would be unwise to underestimate them.

With some relatively simple platforming out of the way, especially for a Witcher, the Seekers found themselves in an open area, with plenty of room to maneuver around, when they were met with a group of strange individuals that looked similarly alien, though in a different way, appearing before them. While Zenkichi and Roland bantered a bit and went to attack the interlopers, Geralt and Goldlewis had their attention drawn by a trio of flying Chimeras appearing to attack. There wasn't terribly much they could do against aerial opponents thanks to the limitations of the drug, though Geralt had an idea to try and ground them. Waiting for one to swoop in and claw at him, he stood firm and drew the Sign of Aard, a burst of telekinetic force slamming into the Aello and staggering it. With the little he'd taken, it wasn't quite enough to knock it out of the sky, but it was thrown off-balance enough for Geralt to grab on of its legs.

Even with its mobility suddenly arrested, the Aello recovered quickly, clawing at Geralt's face, while the Witcher grunted and slammed it into the ground, stunning it for a moment. He dropped onto the Chimera, simultaneously ducking under a charging swipe of another's talons, and he dug his own claws into the monster's chest, raking them outwards and dealing a bit of damage, though the attack was noticeably less effective than it ought to have been. "Damn things!" Geralt complained, punching the Aello in the face and receiving a claw to his own in retaliation. Following up, the Chimera's leg snuck between the two of their bodies, though rather than going for what might have been the obvious move to some, it instead pushed against Geralt's chest with its foot, pushing the Witcher off of it and lifting itself back into the air.

As it rose, Geralt heard a screech from behind and turned, drawing his silver sword in time to catch another of the aerial monster's claws on the flat of the blade, holding the attack back as the one he'd been fighting crashed into his back, its talon scraping along his armor and breaking the deadlock between him and the other Aello, allowing its taloned foot to rake along his face, sending a spray of blood to the floor.

"Enough!" Geralt screeched, and plunged his hand into his body, tearing free the Hateful Flesh and spinning it in a wide, destructive circle around him, with no concern for where Goldlewis had wound up. The Eldritch weapon's effectiveness against enemies incomprehensible applied, and the fact that it was a part of Geralt allowed it to actually harm the Chimeras rather well. The Aello that had just scratched his face flew up, springing off his shoulders, but the one on his back was not quite as lucky, and the literal meat cleaver crashed into it, knocking it from the air once more, stunned and delirious.

Geralt whirled on the downed monster, leaping in the air with a guttural yell, landing in front of the Chimera and bringing the fleshy weapon overhead with the power of his weight and centripetal force on its side, crushing the Aello and slaughtering it brutally. As he rose, the other Chimera dove in, kicking diagonally at Geralt with each of its claws. The Witcher drew from the orphan's weapon a bloody clump of explosive tissue, throwing it directly at the aerial monster and stunning it before dragging the Hateful Flesh along the floor, sparks flying from where the siderite edge met the inorganic floor, and the eldritch weapon crashed into the Aello in a savage uppercut, launching it into the air before it crashed into the ground.

Geralt manically charged the Chimera as it struggled to rise from the floor, but between his bloodlust and enhanced strength and speed, the Witcher was faster. He hefted the cleaver like a guillotine, and slammed it down to execute the monster. Lifting his head and looking for the last Chimera, Geralt started to calm when he saw Goldlewis finish it off, before the adrenaline started to fade and he realized what had happened. "Fuck." He cursed, forcing himself to take a deep breath. "Lost control again..." He admitted, storing the Hateful Flesh back in his torso. It was...odd...how natural that seemed to him. Obviously the influence of the Orphan of Kos's Spirit, but nonetheless bizarre.

Stepping away from the others, Geralt sniffed the air to try and find Iron's scent trail again, though if Goldlewis tried to confront him about his recklessness, he wouldn't ignore the man. He hadn't totally lost control like in the subway tunnels, but he'd definitely not taken the care he should have.

Roxas was already exasperated by the time he managed to regroup with the others. The Others that he had fought his way through managed to drain him of much of his MP, and now he only had enough for one or two spells before it would have to recharge. But it wasn’t long before the group’s troubles took another bad turn. Suddenly they were confronted by more members of Psych-OSF, and unfortunately the Seekers were outnumbered. They were calling Luka’s entire platoon traitors, and Hanabi and Yuito too since they were there as well. This was not a battle Roxas wanted to fight, but it became increasingly clear that he wasn’t going to get a choice.

”I may not be a Scarlet Guardian, or even a psionic at all.” Roxas said, summoning both of his Keyblades, ”But these are my friends, and that’s all I need to know!” The two psionics who happened to be nearest to him looked like kids - no older than Raz, Lili, or even Roxas himself. Still, with that SAS link of theirs, Roxas knew he couldn’t take them lightly. He took a deep breath, and then Roxas went on the attack. He tested the waters first by throwing his Keyblades, one at each of the boys.



From the beginning Lucas looked nervous, standing behind his friend Ninten despite being taller. He clearly didn’t want to follow through on the challenge posed by the other OSF soldiers, and when Roxas stepped up to take them on, he reflexively took a step back. Unfortunately, he’d have to run a lot farther to escape from the Seeker’s double keyblade toss. As one hurtled toward him he hunkered down behind a psychic bubble shield, his eyes squeezed shut, but as ever his companion took the initiative. “Hyah!” With practiced timing Ninten whacked the first keyblade with his baseball bat, returning it to sender with interest. The other bounced off Lucas’s shield, depleting it by about a third though it’d recharge fast once he lowered his guard.

“You’ve gotta be brave, Lucas!” Ninten called out with determination, his bat at the ready for more projectiles. With an enemy in their midst, it went without saying why Ninten needed a partner in this fight. “We can’t let these baddies win. Just think what Commander Camilla would say!”

Lucas took a deep breath and lowered his guard. Both his friend and his platoon leader were right, and he couldn’t afford to let either of them down. Instead he clenched his teeth and balled his fists, the sight of which made Ninten smile. “Alright, let’s do this!”

His PSI energy surged around Lucas as he used OffenseUp, granting him an attack boost just before Lucas let loose some power of his own. “PK Thunder!” An orb of intense lightning appeared and flew through the air, guided by Lucas to home in on the location of his opponent. While it traced a serpentine path toward Roxas, a trail of electricity in its wake, Ninten prepared to use QuickUp to grant his ally a speed boost as well.

When his own Keyblade was suddenly flying back at him, Roxas wasn’t too worried. He reached out and recalled the flying blade to his hand with a flash of light. The other weapon also vanished shortly after colliding with Lucas’ bubble shield. From there Roxas made a split decision on who to focus on first. The blonde boy used his powers to summon a bolt of lightning that he could apparently control in its trajectory, while the boy with a red hat used his powers to apparently buff himself and his partner. Roxas chose to focus on Lucas first, seeing the PK Thunder as a more immediate threat to deal with.

Roxas tried dodging away from the lighting at first, but this was how he figured out that Lucas was actively controlling its trajectory. So instead of trying to run he whipped around and threw his Keyblade a second time, hoping this was sudden enough for the weapon to collide with the lightning before Lucas had a chance to maneuver it around. Immediately after this, Roxas summoned his other Keyblade and pointed it in Lucas’s direction, ”Fire!” he cried and shot a Firaga from the tip of the Keyblade that hurled toward the blonde psionic. These two weren’t the only ones capable of wielding elemental attacks.

His efforts were rewarded with a solid bonk to his target’s oversized head, eliciting an “Owie!” as Lucas recoiled. When a roiling blast of fire followed it up, Lucas panicked, his fight-or-flight reflex activated. He managed to put up his PSI Magnet just in time, meaning that the Firaga got absorbed by the rippling nexus of energy and partially converted into health. Rather than drop the Magnet, however, Lucas continued to hide behind it.

”Why are you doing this?”” Roxas suddenly demanded, ”We haven’t done anything!”

But Roxas wasn’t about to leave himself open from trying to talk. While he asked his questions, Roxas snapped his fingers on his free hand and summoned Burn Rooster. The robotic Reploid leaped into action and proceeded to launch into a fiery flying kick at Ninten. Roxas meanwhile ran forward intending to keep focusing on Lucas while his Striker hopefully kept Ninten distracted.

Ninten’s buffs only actually affected his target, so when Burn Rooster threw himself at the boy, Ninten wasn’t quite ready. The Reploid’s kick sent him into a tumble with a yelp, his clothes asmoulder with flaming embers. Though Lucas had squeezed his eyes shut while defending himself with PSI Magnet at first, he’d opened them in time to see his friend hit the ground. “Ninten!” he cried, his means of defending himself momentarily forgotten.

“Kid!” Rope Snake yelled urgently as Roxas approached. “Get your head in the game!”

Roxas raised his weapon, but found himself unable to actually bring it down for a strike. This just didn’t feel right. None of it did. Roxas shook with anger and confusion, ”I’m not your enemy. I don’t want to fight.” he said after he stayed his Keyblade, ”And I have a feeling you don’t either.” That last part was for Lucas in particular. Roxas could see that the kid didn’t seem to want to actually be here right now. There had to be some way to end this without fighting. And while Roxas knew he could be making a big mistake right now… he dispelled his Keyblade.

If he or the others were really the traitors that these Psych-OSF agents were told they were, then why would at least one of them be so reluctant to fight right now? He hoped maybe this would make Lucas and Ninten think and maybe even question their orders. Of course, they might not. It was a giant risk Roxas was taking, but he preferred it over the alternative of wielding his Keyblade against two kids who didn’t know any better.

Somewhat paradoxically, the Nobody’s heart was in the right place, but the die had already been cast. Diplomacy would never win in the World of Light while Galeem reigned. After Rope Snake’s urging, and his attacker’s hesitation, Lucas quickly mustered up the willpower to do just as he was told. He lashed out with Rope Snake himself, snatching Roxas and reeling him on. Taken by surprise, he received a couple PSI sparks from the psionic’s oversized cranium before Lucas used his power to fling his disoriented opponent over his head and behind him. As he took a tumble, Lucas clasped his hands together and lifted his head up. “PK Freeze!” From the ether he formed a miniaturized ice storm and flung it in an arc after Roxas, the wintry singularity growing bigger and stronger the farther it went.

By that time Ninten had risen, and he used this opportunity to cast DefenseUp on himself.

Roxas was acrobatic enough to right himself in midair after the psychic throw. Deep down he knew it was pointless to try and talk them down, but he couldn’t help himself. He saw something icy arcing its way toward him and had to act fast. Before he even started falling back down, Roxas summoned Oathkeeper and pointed it straight forward, ”Freeze!” he called out. Once again he was using an elemental spell of his own. This time it would be ice vs ice as Roxas’ Blizzaga clashed with Lucas’ PK Freeze.

Unfortunately that was the last of Roxas’ MP. His feet touched the ground and he simply readied his Keyblades, knowing that now he’d have to outlast these two long enough for his MP to recharge itself. The enormous mass of ice crashed to the ground between the two sides and shattered noisily, filling the air with cool diamond dust. Once Ninten finished up his pre-fight buffs with OffenseUp on himself, he hefted his bat and ran forward through the mist to challenge the keyblade wielder head-on, prompting Lucas to run after him. While he gauged his opponent’s strength in melee combat, Lucas circled around shooting PK Fires to try and keep his friend covered.

This was not a particularly great situation for the Nobody to find himself in. He was obviously no slouch in melee combat so fending off even the buffed Ninten’s strikes was something he would ordinarily not have much difficulty with. It was Lucas who was making this harder than it otherwise would be. He fired off a series of little yellow lightning bolts that suddenly burst with fire as soon as they touched anything. And without any MP, there wasn’t much Roxas could do about them. Not while Ninten was staying in his face and keeping him from disengaging.

Roxas did manage to avoid most of the PK Fires, but at least one of them nailed him in the back while he had his Keyblades locked with Ninten’s baseball bat. The only idea he could think of after recovering from that was to jump a step back from Ninten and then throw both his Keyblades in a circular arc around himself. That would at least give him a moment’s reprieve to reposition himself so that at least his two opponents weren’t flanking him. Then he recalled his keyblades to his hands and immediately threw one in Lucas’ direction. Then he readied his other Keyblade to try and block what he anticipated would be another direct melee strike from Ninten.

Unlike Roxas, unfortunately, Ninten wasn’t a trained fighter. He generally fought with the finesse (and strength) of the little boy he was, refined by his experience in the OSF but still no great shakes. His stat boosts helped even the odds somewhat, but he’d generally given worse than he’d gotten. When Roxas launched a keyblade revolution the unexpected trajectory of his weapons resulted in a clock to Ninten’s head that left him a little dizzy, but when Roxas hurled one at Lucas he knew he couldn’t relent. He dashed in and performed a big bat swing that Roxas blocked, leaving himself overextended and vulnerable. Lucas managed to roll out of the way of the other keyblade, and when he saw his friend in trouble, he knew it was his turn to save Ninten. “PK Thunder!” The thunderhead snaked its way toward Roxas, cast because Lucas was now too far for PK Fire, but his projectile’s travel time left a little to be desired.

Roxas was about to follow up against Ninten only to spot the PK Thunder arcing his way. This was starting to become repetitive, but until his MP recharged all Roxas could do was keep holding out. He shoved the overextended Ninten aside and took off in a sprint, with the PK Thunder seeming to give chase. Roxas wasn’t sure he could outrun it for long, or even how long Lucas could sustain the attack. And so the only solution Roxas could think of was to charge straight in Lucas’ direction. He’d have to snake around to try and dodge the PK Thunder but if Roxas could get in striking range he could probably hit Lucas and hopefully break the psionic’s concentration to dispel the thunder attack.

When Roxas broke into a run to evade the seeking thunderhead, Lucas knew that his PK Thunder didn’t have the longevity -or speed- to give chase. Instead he sent it into the ground to cut it off early, and as Roxas sped his way he cast off a second one. Rather than try to tag his agile opponent with it, however, he sent it in an loop above and behind him. If Roxas thought that this was a misfire, though, he’d be sorely mistaken. The moment Lucas guided the PK Thunder into his own back, an explosive reaction launched him forward in a headfirst corkscrew, armored against interruption. His aim wasn’t perfect, but if Roxas wasn’t ready, he’d find himself on the receiving end of a surprise headbutt. With the pressure off him for a moment, meanwhile, Ninten went to heal himself with the PSI skill LifeUp.

Roxas was utterly confused when Lucas fired a PK Thunder that he turned around onto himself. The Keybearer had no idea what the kid was actually trying to do, and so when Lucas suddenly came flying forward at him head-first, Roxas could only put his Keyblades up in a defensive stance. But the sudden attack left him no time to properly brace himself. And so when the charged up headbutt collided with him, it resulted in Roxas getting knocked down the ground. His Keyblades being up prevented him from taking serious damage, but that didn’t stop him from having the wind knocked out of him. Roxas lay there a moment, realizing that Lucas had to recover from launching himself and that Ninten was nearby appearing to heal himself. Roxas pulled out his last Potion, put it up to his mouth, and drank it.

That at least dealt with the damage Roxas had taken so far, or at least a portion of it anyway. But he was still catching his breath from being winded even as he pushed himself to his feet. But just then, his MP was finished charging. So far Roxas had been fighting with the equivalent of an arm tied around his back thanks to having no MP. But not anymore. He dashed forward toward Lucas and aimed the tip of one of his Keyblades at him, ”Fire!” The firaga spell shot forth and rolled through the air at Lucas. Afterward Roxas suddenly lunged to his side and attempted to rush Lucas with his Keyblades from an angle that was different from the firaga’s trajectory.

A fireball Lucas could handle, and he put up his PSI Magnet to do just that, absorbing it just like the spell he’d soaked before. Thanks to his speed, however, Roxas turned his simple cast into a two-pronged attack, and when it came to physical strikes, PSI Magnet did nothing at all. And Lucas soon found himself being knocked a few feet upward by Roxas bringing his Keyblades around into an upper slash. And that was all the opening Roxas needed to leap up and strike at Lucas a few successive times, four to be exact. On the fifth attack, Roxas hooked his Keyblades onto Lucas and brought him back down in a sort of suplex slam.

At this point Roxas chose to cast yet another spell, ”Thunder!” he cried with both weapons pointed straight up. This called down a short-lived rain of thunderbolts around himself. Lucas would naturally be within the area of effect, but if Ninten had tried to approach with any baseball bat attacks, then he’d be inadvertently putting himself within the area of effect as well.

Ninten had watched the combo Roxas performed on Lucas with dismay, unable to intercede with his bat while the keyblade wielder kept his friend in the air. In a panic he used the SAS to activate Umbrakinesis, Audiokinesis, Telekinesis, and Precognition all at the same time, desperately trying to find something he could use as an attack. With everything at his disposal though, Ninten got overwhelmed, and he ended up doing nothing. Only when Roxas brought Lucas back down to earth could he do what he did best, and run in to whack his foe with his baseball bat. Instead he took a thunderbolt to the head, but as much as it hurt, he could see -and hear- Lucas getting worse. “Stop!” he yelled, his voice boosted by Audiokinesis to a shockingly loud level. Finally getting an idea, he used Telekinesis to hurl his baseball bat like a boomerang, then tapped into his own PSI. When he cast Hypnosis, Roxas fell asleep where he stood, slumping over limply.

Lucas hit the ground at his opponent’s feet as the lightning storm abated, and Ninten ran toward the both of them, his bat returning to his hand on the way. “Coming your way!” he yelled, empowering himself with OffenseUp. As Lucas rolled away onto his feet, Ninten struck Roxas with a home run swing, sending him flying toward the kid he’d electrocuted. Lucas snatched him with Rope Snake, whirled him around, and buried him in the ground headfirst. Somehow that didn’t hurt very much, but what came next very much did. Lucas performed a dash, slid to a stop right next to Roxas in a cloud of dust, and delivered PK Love “HYA!”

First was the shout, big and loud enough that Roxas was momentarily disoriented. And that, apparently, was all Ninten needed. The baseball bat came crashing into him, and then Roxas felt drowsy all of a sudden. He fought to keep his eyes open but the Hypnosis was too strong and the Nobody fell asleep. He was awoken by a bit swing from Ninten that sent Roxas flying. Then he got snared by Lucas’ rope snake and then hurled upward by his powerful crackling PSI attack.

Roxas was in trouble. He was taking serious damage at this point and would go down unless he healed himself. But if he did that, he’d lose all his MP and would once again have to survive long enough for it to recharge. He wasn’t sure he could do that a second time against these two. Especially not with Ninten being able to heal himself and presumably Lucas too with his LifeUp. So the choice was either risk having the two outlast him, or try to go all out now and hope it’s enough to end this now. Either way he was taking a gamble.

Roxas managed to right himself while he was in midair. And then he came shooting straight back down at the unsuspecting Lucas in the form of a streak of light that exploded into a Cross Slash as soon as he hit the boy. Ninten came charging in for a swing of his bat, but it just met Roxas’ Keyblades. And Ninten wasn’t expecting an instant response that came in the form of Roxas sweeping his blades around himself in a circular slash that was Dual Counter. And then, with only a sliver of MP left, Roxas thrust both his Keyblades skyward.

”You can’t stop me!” And upon that command, columns of bluish light shot straight up from his Keyblades and into the sky only to come crashing down onto the ground around Roxas. The columns of light were fast, difficult to avoid and could hit hard when they struck. Ninten avoided the first couple of columns but his own mental and physical fatigue started getting the better of him and he started taking hits. Lucas instinctively tried to put up his PSI Magnet, after all it was able to absorb the Nobody’s spells earlier so why would this be any different. But PSI Magnet could only absorb so much before even it was overpowered by the strength of Roxas’ light columns. And then Roxas floated up a few feet, ”Give me strength!” he cried bringing both his back down and bent at the elbows as if to fully exert himself. At this, the columns of light increased in size, strength, and speed. If this Magic Hour attack was hard for the boys to avoid before, well now it was bordering on impossible.

In moments, Roxas’ Magic Hour petered out and ended. It left him drained and exhausted. But luckily for him, it looked like the gambit paid off. Ninten and Lucas were both sprawled on the ground, neither were able to overcome the barrage of light columns. But they were only unconscious, which was a relief to Roxas. He never had any desire to fight these two boys in the first place, so if they had become spirits he would have felt terrible.

”I’m sorry it came to this.” Roxas said softly to the unconscious Ninten and Lucas. He staggered toward them, with Oathkeeper still in his hand. ”May my Heart be my Guiding Key.” He performed a Keyblade Purge, first on Ninten and then on Lucas. With them being unconscious, the technique went off without a hitch and so they were both freed. But it was after this that Roxas finally dispelled his Keyblades and plopped down with a thud. He was so tired he couldn’t even stay standing. This was now the third and fourth people he had used the Keyblade Purge on within a relatively short period of time. And that fact was definitely beginning to take its toll on the Nobody.

”I hope we can be friends after all this is over.”

As the last of the Other fell, they came face to face with the other team that had cleared the other half of the street, and there was a brief lull in the battle that Midna knew would only last so long. She wanted to use it to catch her breath, but unfortunately here Vibrava had other plans, namely its ash coated form started glowing brightly, and then that glowing form began to grow and warp.

”Gah why are you, what are you, what?!” she demanded to know as she shielded her light sensitive eyes from whatever was going on, which thankfully meant that the final burst of light when the transformation ended didn’t straight up blind her for a few moments.

Instead she lowered her hands down, and was greeted by the sight of her pokemon’s towering evolved form, the now truly dragon looking dragon type greeting her with a chirp of its name “Flygon!”



”Ok. Don’t really know what just happened there but … guess that can wait” she decided, as she and it both turned to face the Other squad. Inevitably, her failure came to bite them in the butt as the Psych-OSF team proved to not be the one they had been hoping for, and instead consisted of a group of unfamiliar faces. Unfamiliar faces that threw down accusations of treachery, and then prepared to throw down for real.

”Alright, trial by fire it is then,” she declared as she squared up and prepared to fight, phrasing which her still very flammable new flygon did not exactly appreciate, even if she was entirely right. This was not going to exactly be the easiest of test runs of an entirely new body, particularly with Midna declaring that ”No one dies in this, no one,” even as she quickly drew her spear with a crescent moon slash.



She didn’t have time to charge it, so instead would be relying only on the faith powered shocks as she flipped it round so she’d be sticking em with the blunt end as she faced down the two psychics who happened to be standing opposite her as the two sides had squared off.

The princess, with a polearm in her hands at a big green monster at her side, cut quite the imposing figure. They’d been through a great deal together after all, from the treacherous bowels of Al Mamoon to the peak of Split Mountain, through the perils of Nyakuza Metro to brave the concealed atrocities of Midgar. These poor fools were just another hurdle on her journey to saving the world; they just didn’t know it yet. Nevertheless, neither Sabrina nor Will showed any sign of fear, nor an overabundance of aggression for that matter. Out of every enemy present, they seemed the calmest, most in control, and most mature. Not to mention the most experienced in the art of beating Pokemon.

“That looks like a Flygon. Shades of cactus, though…a regional variant from the eastern sands, perhaps,” Will remarked off-handedly. “A shame Fubuki isn’t here to OHKO it with Cryokinesis. Still, I think you’ll find you’ve met your match.” Turning his masked face (not to mention his prominent beak of a nose) to the side, his left eye gleamed with a radiant cross of psychic energy as he foresaw an attack, and he spread his patterned wings wide. “The future is my hands.”

“And reality bends to our will.” When Sabrina raised her hands, Midna could see that each bore only four fingers, their nails more like white claws. Her long black hair, which turned to blonde as it parted in twain, began to flutter in a psychic wind. Two giant spoons slid out of her belt and into her grasp. Immediately she unleashed Psychic, a blistering wave of telekinetic force. Will produced two mines and flung them like frisbees into the wave to send them hurtling straight toward his foes. Then, without any delay, he moved a short distance to drop another mine in what seemed like a random spot.

In response, Minda deployed the ever useful Roadblock in the way of the psychically propelled bomb attack, and though the barrier wielding exosuit was pushed back, it did give her time to respond to their twin mottos

”Catchy, but I already beat a goddess of time itself, and I’m up against a breaker of reality. So let’s make this quick” she taunted, which was perhaps not the best use of the time/protection her striker had bought. Still, she had it up for a while longer, and so she commanded her new Flygon to ”Buzz em”

The pokemon moved to comply at once, leaping out through the shield, and then flapping its wings lighting fast and at just the right frequency to produce a wave of damaging sounds that lashed out in every direction. Midna had her striker’s shield to protect her, her foes, and their bombs, were not.

Rather than try to stand firm and let the wave wash over her, Sabrina covered her ears and floated off the ground, allowing the Bug Buzz to push her farther away. It by no means fully mitigated the damage, but it helped. Will clapped his hands over his ears as well, and when the soundwave struck the mine he laid down, it went off prematurely–sending the metal trash can it had been laid behind sailing toward Midna, up and over her shield. It might end up being little more than a distraction, but it was something. As it flew, Sabrina recovered enough to use Reflect, bolstering herself and Will somewhat against nonphysical moves with a barrier of telekinetic force.

While this had been occurring, the princess had been dancing, spear held to her chest, flying with power, as her own body became energized as well, surrounded by a faint purple aura of draconic might. Yet she had to end the steps before her second twirling rendition of the dragon dance thanks to the trash can, the princess deciding to simply push forwards rather than try and block it.

”What a trashy attack” she called it

With hastened steps she exited the barrier, dragon claws digging into the tarmac as she twirled her spear and facing its deadly tip away from her foes.

Her flygon was much more likely to do so, and so as the princess charged Will, aiming to jab him in the gut with the butt of her spear, the dragon pokemon flapped its wings again, this time launching itself up into the air before bearing its claws and swooping towards Sabrina and attempting to disarm her rather than strike her directly.

Just as Midna made her move to strike Will, twenty seconds had passed since the psionic foresaw an attack. Apropos of nothing, a hefty semisolid mass of psychic energy dropped on the princess like a lightning bolt, or an artillery shell, falling upon her and promptly exploding. Will sought to capitalize on the opportunity provided by his Future Sight, and produced another mine while Midna reeled. One he slid across the tarmac, hockey puck style, to come to a stop beneath her. Then he used Future Sight again, another portentous gleam from his eye foretelling the arrival of another psychic ambush.

”What in the actual-”

The princess, her spear presently embedded in the side of a car, was in the middle of picking herself up from where she had been exploded too when the puck came in. Unable to finish getting up or responding quickly enough to avoid it, she instead kept a hand on the ground and opened a portal, launching her wolfos out of it and towards Will. As the massive beast stormed towards him, looking set to simply trample him, the puck slid between its legs, and into the portal it had just come out of as Midna focused everything on holding it open for longer than normal.

Will gritted his teeth as his attack failed and Midna sent a new one his way in the same stroke. Rather than try to dodge the rampaging wolf, however, he stood his ground. He’d seen what would come next–he just needed to trust in what he’d seen. When the minion struck him, a Guardian Vision of his squadmate Sabrina overwrote him in a defensive posture, and though he slid backward a touch from the blow the damage of the impact was negated. To Midna, being mentally inept, it looked as though he’d executed a perfect parry. As the wolfos continued on, a little confused, the Guardian Vision faded and left Will standing there, his breathing more intense. Still, he’d made it. His expression turned to a grin as he used SAS to tap into the power of his squadmate, Ninten. “Let the games begin.” He used DefenseUp to increase his physical resistance, and the floor was Midna’s for the next ten seconds until Future Sight came to pass.

Unfortunately for her, she hadn’t worked out how that future sight attacking worked, and so rather than go on the defensive, she had leapt behind the car her spear was stabbed into, and was asking herself ”Where in the goddess’s name did that attack come from?” while trying to find some hidden aerial attacker.

There was, naturally, none to be found.

While this had been occurring, Flygon advanced on Sabrina, prompting the psychic to put up her guard, creating a ring of spoons in front of her that together sustained a wall of force. Her opponents struck them, almost breaking her guard, and swatted a couple spoons aside that clattered across the street. This Pokemon wielded considerable physical strength; better to dodge instead. Sabrina dashed backward, trying to circle around the Flygon, and kept it busy with Kinesis, a flashy telekinetic display with the fallen spoons that would diminish its accuracy somewhat. So she’s having it fight on its own, she thought. A big mistake. Without a trainer, a pokemon is just an animal. Since a Flygon’s defense and special defense for even, it didn’t matter what kind of move she used. She tested out a Psycho Cut, sending a blade of mental energy the creature’s way.

While entirely correct about the nature of its mind, she had an entirely incorrect assessment of what kind of animal the mind belonged to, as the flygon that had once been a wolfos followed up its charge not with a draconic charge but with a wolfish flank. Still, that only set to throw off her aim a little, and so her blade still clipped the beast’s hip, scoring a deep groove- and causing the spikes on that hip to burst from the flesh, turn in the air, and then spear directly towards her.

Even as they did, the flygon swooped further to the side and sprayed her with its dragon breath.

The monster’s Hit Reflect ability was a strong one, taking Sabrina by surprise as a portion of the damage dealt by her Psycho Cut got returned to her in the form of piercing spines. Unfortunately for the Flygon, the ability derived from Sabrina’s Alakazam fusion proved even more potent. When those spikes made contact, they were destroyed, negated by Sabrina’s Magic Guard. No indirect damage, from status effects to recoil, could touch her. And when the Flygon’s dragon breath washed over her a moment later, it burned painfully, but Reflect mitigated the damage enough for Sabrina to mount a resistance. She unleashed Confusion, hoping that the one-in-ten chance to confuse her target would accompany the jolt of psychic damage.

Fortunately for the flygon, it did not roll that one in ten like its mistress had the previous day. Unfortunately for it, it was still confused in the normal way as to why its ranged attacks were not working as well as it had hoped, nor why its recoil effect was being negated, causing it to swoop up and out of both their effective ranges rather than rushing in.

It hovered there for a moment, and then decided to return to its mistress, who could probably figure this out. As such it came swooping towards her just as Will’s predicted psychic attack came striking down on the princess who had wasted her 10 seconds, but was at least looking up and primed for evasion when it arrived.

When the psychic payload finally descended like a bolt from the blue, Midna’s readiness allowed her to dodge it, but her troubles were far from over. Will hadn’t spent those ten seconds idle; he’d prepared another mine and slid to where his Precognition told him that Midna would evade to. The princess’s elation at thwarting Future Sight turned the next second to dismay when she witnessed the beeping device laid just in front of her, and the moment after that it went off in a fiery blast. “Hah!” Will gloated, taking the moment to pose rather than set up another gambit. “Just as I foretold!”

Midna’s Flygon wouldn’t get a taste of super-effective fire damage fortunately, but Sabrina wasn’t about to let the fused Pokemon turn tail on her if she could help it. Reaching out with Psychic, she attempted to flip the car over and on top of the Flygon, giving it just a brief window in which to act.

The car came crashing down ontop of the pokemon, or rather, where it had been, because a moment later it rose up out of a portal beneath its mistress. The princess herself was burned, though not quite as badly as she could have been, as a fragment of a golden mask on her rosary had devoured 25% of the flames.

This still left her bare skin singed and scorched, but her masked senses and magical arms were unharmed, leaving her with the will and way to grab onto her steed’s head crest for support, and then urging it to take to the skies, out of reach of any more mines.

”But not out of the way of those, what were they, delayed attacks?” she asked herself as she reached out with her shadow hand and pulled her spear out of the flipped car. Said vehicle was not going to be taking anyone anywhere anytime soon, as the flip had perfectly intercepted the flygon’s retaliation barrage, leaving it perforated with cactus spikes.

”Ok, enough games. Lets see if you can see this” she asked, before sending her vibrava diving towards Will. As she did so, she did two things. One, she pushed electricity directly into the metal crest on its head, preparing it to deliver an electrified headbutt. The second thing she did was summon Skywave at just the right moment for the striker to unleash its combination healing and blinding wave in such a way that it hit both her and her target.

When his foe flew up Will took the chance to use Future Sight again, foretelling an imminent attack, but after that things took a turn for the worse. His Precognition showed himself unable to escape Midna's coordinated attack, instead taking both the lightning-infused headbutt and some sort of energy wave from an unknown assailant l. "Wha-?" He gaped, frozen like a deer in headlights. Could this future be prevented? There wasn't any time! "What do I-!?" Paralyzed by the concept of predetermination, Will received the full brunt of the minion's combined assault. Except that his own ability, Synchronize, activated to make Flygon blind as well. He fell back, stunned and sightless for a couple seconds.

Sabrina watched the whole thing go down, sighing. Just like Will to massively overthink things and get trounced by an attack he could have avoided. The psyshocks she'd been firing at Midna in flight clearly weren't cutting it, so it was time to step it up. "Hey, eyes on me!" Unleashing her Psychic, she picked up a half-dozen objects and pieces of debris all around her and slung them toward her opponents in a punishing barrage.

The princess barely noticed her steed’s blinding, hands tugging on its crest like handlebars to guide its flight, making it swoop round so she could see what the helpful called out attack was. Upon seeing the incoming volley, she turned her earlier time wasting into a boon, calling up the off cooldown ”Roadblock!” again to block the barrage. That gave her the cover to take her eyes off of Sabrina, and glance down at Will to check on his condition, catching her spear in her healed arms as she did so, and preparing to give him some more volts if he looked to be getting up.

While the exosuit's barrier mitigated the first wave. Sabrina wasn't done quite yet. Narrowing her eyes, she bent her spoons to either side, parting the objects she'd hurled into two groups that split to either side around Roadblock. Ever since that striker put in its first appearance, she'd been workshopping a way around it. The trash cans, bench, pieces of car, and fire hydrant would clash together in an attempt to crush either Midna or Roadblock between them. Though in a bad spot, Will grinned up at the princess defiantly. The attack he foresaw was a glorious one–it just needed a little more time. The mine rack on the underside of his arm dispensed a fresh explosive into his hand, a guarantee of mutual destruction if Midna tried to beat him while he was down.

Instead of that, the princess spurred her flying steed forwards while Roadblock pivoted one way, and behind it she briefly summoned up the rather beaten form of her darknut. As the two guardians blocked the barrage from either side, she burst between them with a cry of ”Coming through” and charged straight at Sabrina, preparing to use her (still reversed) spear as a lance.

Sabrina stood her ground, tapping into SAS. "Please assist me, commander." Once she activated Sasha's Marksmanship, she spared a brief moment to aim and then took a surprise psychic headshot at the incoming princess. It lacked the stopping power of a bullet, but it would be a severe blow to her mental health. Meanwhile Will ran off, using the SAS to co-opt Ninten's PSI so he could start buffing himself with DefenseUp, OffenseUp, and Quick up as fast as possible.

The princess responded by doing a barrel roll atop her steed, avoiding the shot but fouling her own aim as she swung round and upside down in the entirely unpracticed maneuver, leaving it effortless to dodge. The pair blasted past the psychic, before half turning in the air and hitting the tarmac, 4 sets of dragon claws digging into it as Midna urged her minion to copy her own ground gripping technique.

As they slowed Midna opened portals to blast sand towards Sabrina, and then had her minion leap forwards and slam into the ground again nearby, causing a shockwave to pulse through it as her flygon created a localized earthquake that she, being atop it, was immune too.

After avoiding the careening train wreck of a trainer-pokemon duo, Sabrina fixed her mind’s eye upon them, firing one Marksmanship blast after another. They might not do that much damage by themselves if they didn’t hit a weak point, but they were easy to land and added up quickly. Midna tried to cut the psychic fusillade short with flurries of sand that threw off Sabrina’s accuracy. Thanks to the sandstorm, she couldn’t see what the Flygon was up to until it was too late. The street’s surface cracked and ruptured with tectonic energy, dealing a jarring blow to the psionic’s legs and knocking her down. Her ability might be incredible, after all, but it wasn’t Levitate. If Midna or her pet meant to capitalize on that hit, though, they were disappointed. Now that twenty seconds had passed, the universe rained on their parade as the attack foreseen by Future Sight came to pass, battering them with what felt like a giant, psychic water balloon from above.

“Up you get!” Will called out as he ran up beside Sabrina. He held out his hand, and when she took it, he lifted her to his feet.

“You’ve stalled us long enough,” Sabrina said flatly. She reached up and tugged the cord at her collar, causing her hood to flip over her head. In the pitch blackness that obscured her face, bright orange triangles formed a pokeball symbol. Will responded in kind, his pattern mimicking his theatrical face mask. This was Brain Drive, a state of heightened mental acuity that pushed their users’ bodies and psychic abilities to their limits. “No more playing around.” The two posed together for a split second longer, Will activating Future Sight as he did so for a little extra menace. Then the two advanced forward together. Sabrina released a flurry of Psycho Cuts to carve toward her enemies from a distance, while Will used Stored Power. On its own the move was piddly, but with the power it derived from all his stat buffs, it fell upon Midna and her Flygon like a miniature warhead of pink psychic energy.

In response, a wounded Midna checked her watch before the sand swirled around both her and her steed, and then as it cleared they were gone.

The conspicuous absence of their opponent as the fallout of their attacks dissipated put both psionics on edge immediately. Stored Power was strong, but not that strong, and Psycho Cut should’ve left ample evidence behind even if all of them hit. “She…absconded?” Will exclaimed, incredulous and a little indignant.

Sabrina kept her eyes peeled as the scoured the immediate area, but there was no sign of their opponent. “Or she’s lying in wait. It’s possible she knows about Brain Drive. What do you see?”

“Nothing. I can’t see far enough ahead to to know where this leads,” Will replied irritably. “What a scummy tactic. What about you?”

Shaking, her head, Sabrina raced to find a solution as the seconds ticked down. “It’s too dark. They could be hiding anywhere. I’m trying to think of a counter…”

“Of course, that’s it!” Will snapped his fingers. “Didn’t that newbie Kotone have a shadow power?”

Sabrina’s eyes widened, and without delay she activated SAS to co-opt the Umbrakinesis of Kotone Aguilar. Will followed suit. Neither had really tested their new recruit’s power before setting out today, but they understood that it could be used to control light levels, and it was worth a shot. Before their will, the shadows around them began to evaporate like morning dew, replaced with mere dimness. As the area of effect expanded, Will received a vision. In his mind’s eye, he saw the shape of his foe spring from the darkness, like a wild animal flushed from its hiding spot. That shape lunged his way, only to be enveloped by multiple explosions and be blown to smithereens. “I see it!” he crowed. “Victory is ours!” He began deploying mine after mine, juggling them. “Sabrina, Psychic, right there!”

“On it!” Trusting her teammate completely, Sabrina used her power to launch Will’s mines in the indicated direction. Sure enough, Midna had seemingly arisen from the shadows to attack, and the next instant the volley of mines struck her and went off in a resounding symphony of destruction, scattering her ashes to the winds. Relief flooded through Sabrina as Brain Drive ran out and her hood fell back, but she couldn’t take her eyes off her opponent’s remains. Was that truly ash? If anything, it looked more like…

”Sand-” came a call from above as Skywave dissipated, and dozens of portals to the twilight realm opened. Portals just like the ones she’d blasted Sabrina like, and used to eat several of the mines that had come her way. But if Sabrina had thought what had been fired had been a sandstorm, she had been sorely mistaken, for what came raging out of those portals was a true ”Storm!”

Sand rained down, singing a siren’s song as it engulfed the pair on the ground, a song that was joined in duet caused by the flapping of a flygon’s wings when it burst from a portal, caught its trainer, and then dove into the storm. From the outside it seemed that sandstorm transformed into a thunderstorm, as lightning flashed through the grains as the masked princess unleashed the charge of her spear upon her foes.

Try as he might to shield himself from the onslaught with both his arms and his wings, Will could only take so much punishment. Buffeted by sand and jolted by electricity, he couldn’t focus enough to use his Precognition, and any attempt to set up some mines around him would result in them blowing up in his face. When Midna capped the sandstorm off with a golden blast from her spear, it blew through the chaos to hit Will dead on. A high-pitched shattering sound rang out, the same as when a bulb popped out of an Other, and Will fell to his knees. With his mental health depleted, his body vulnerable to a knockout blow. “Im…possible…”

When the electric sandstorm subsided, it revealed Sabrina much less worse for wear. After all, Magic Guard could negate the indirect damage caused by ambient weather, including sandstorms. But she was in a bad spot. She realized the state her partner was in immediately, and knew she couldn’t afford to let the opposition perform a Brain Crush. Using Ninten’s PSI through SAS would allow her to heal him, but how could she do that with Midna and her beast still on the field? There was only one option. She fired off a handful of suppressive lasers at her foes with her borrowed Marksmanship, then targeted Midna with Hypnosis.

”Let’s finish thi…s…” the prince’s triumphant cry slipped away from her as she slumped on her steed’s back, dropping her spent spear and causing it to glance back at her in confusion. It chirped, and tried to rouse her via nuzzling to little avail, and so instead wrapped its tail around her to prevent her dozing form from slipping off entirely.

Then it briefly took stock of the situation, and decided that if Sabrina could actually be hurt, as she clearly had (even if it was not nearly as bad as Will), then it presumably had been doing something wrong last time. So it did the only thing it knew how to do, and charged her, claws at the ready.

Sabrina had anticipated this. The only question was whether or not she could deal with it. As the Flygon approached, she used her telekinesis to rip up loose pieces of the street and sidewalk next to her, then clumped them together in a large mass. “RrrrrrrrrAH!” She hurled it at the monster, then used Psychic to let loose a terrific blast of force. It spread across a wide area, and when it struck the boulder, it exploded in a shotgun-like blast of asphalt and concrete. She put everything she had into this–her best chance to succeed.

In response the pokemon pivoted slightly and then flapped its vibrating wings once with enough force to kill all its momentum, and in doing so sent a shockwave of insectile sound blasting forwards into the incoming debris. Bug and psychic type force collide, and by type advantage, the bug won out. The asphalt shotgun was stopped dead in its tracks, while the waveform of the bug buzz blasted clean through the psychic power and slammed into the Psychic herself.

Having spent all her energy on that last ditch effort, the ear splitting sound and physical wave were enough to drain her willpower as well, causing her to collapse to the ground.

The last one standing, the Vibrava let out a cry of victory, one that finally woke a gumbling Minda from her unnatural sleep, the princess going ”Huh, what, is it over?” before shaking her head, checking that neither of the pair she had been fighting where dead/dying, and then once that was confirmed pivoting to see if anyone else needed help.

---

The scouting party was over. The Seekers had found what they were looking for. Shockingly (not), it was on the other side of a portal into the Astral Plane. The last time Karin entered such a place, it didn’t go well. The Kanzuki was determined to redeem herself and put on a better showing.

Navigating the Astral Plane was just as easy as it was last time, being: mostly easy. While the fall into the infinite abyss was not a welcoming sight, as long as Karin had access to her arms, a missed jump could always be recovered by just firing her grappling hook above her and latching onto the solid bottoms of the floating islands. The safety blanket made Karin navigate with confidence, and her previous experience aided her in this endeavor. Their goal? Find Iron, this VIP, and figure out what she knows. She’ll probably ‘owe them one’ after all this is over, anyway.

Soon they stumbled into, as it was aptly put, a ‘turf war.’ ”Not chimeras indeed. Mindless killing machines of flesh and steel alike, it seems. Dispensing of them shall always be a public service.”

As the battle commenced, one of the cannon wielders was left unattended too. As it fired its strange projectile, Karin grappled hooked onto a nearby floating isle to get a better angle on it. At this point, she attracted its attention, and it began to fire upon her. The stone exploded behind her as she cartwheeled away. It fired upon her in the air, but she used her grapple hook to yank herself to the ground. Dodging each subsequent blast, she got closer and closer. Finally, when she was too close to dodge, she grit her teeth. ”Say-yah!” Pushing forward, her palm met the blast head on and blasted straight through it. The voidranger had backed up to the edge at this point, and Karin kicked the gun out of its hand, spun, and snap kicked it into the abyss.

Karin turned her attention to the rest of the battle. Showered with projectiles, the centaur, the mighty mechanical-like Trampler, was going to wreak some havoc on the field. Karin narrowed her eyes, thinking of her battle against the monstrous enemy she battled in the Astral Plane. And the mechanical monster and its insipid bully of a pilot she felled not long ago. Karin would challenge the centaur warrior, with the aid of her allies.

She fired a hook past its head, causing it to turn and look. Karin latched onto a island and zipped forward, crashing across its face with a slam. She landed on the side of the floating island and looked back at the Trampler.

Deciding it was her current biggest threat, a massive bow shimmered into its hands. The arrow was tipped with a rotating diamond construct that swirled with similar shapes.”Tch!”

Karin leapt out of the way as the Trampler's arrow pierced the island and went out the other side. Certainly she didn’t want to get hit by that. Sailing through the air she landed with a role and sped towards the Trampler, her profile low. It moved with impressive speed and met her much faster than she expected. With her dash she could change direction on a dime, however, and shifted out of the way as it slammed its spike-like hooves into the ground.

Karin zipped back and slammed her palm up into its joint. The Trampler was a little over twice her size, but big or small the knee was always a prime target. Thankfully, she felt her hand push into its strange metal skin, instead of bouncing straight off like it did against the scorpion.

Already being struck by her teammates, she also spotted some literal cracks in the armor that she made sure to exploit.

But it was quick to retaliate. Karin had to make sure not to get pinned under its hooves. But since it couldn’t stab her, it settled on much easier, wider swings.

Caught mid-dodge, Karin braced for impact and was knocked away. ”Ah!” She landed quickly and rolled back to her feet, getting back into the fight. Or, at least, she planned too. A whole rift in reality appeared in the air in front of her, blocking her path as the Trampler prepared its ability. Karin was flattened against the ground by a glowing block of energy. It dissipated quickly, leaving Karin in a starfish position on the floor. Her eyebrow twitched as she deadpanned at the sky above. Another rift opened, and she rolled out of the way this time. Another, and another, it kept trying to predict where she was going to go. And when it thought it had her eager to get closer, it surged forward with a stomping of its hooves. But Karin jumped clean over the rift, the polyhedron smashing into the ground well below her, and as it reared back she slammed into it, almost causing it to lose balance. She dropped and rolled, kicking out at its hind legs. It stepped forward and then kicked back at her, its legs like a piston.

Karin absorbed the blow with a spark of defensive ki, but she slid backwards with a trail of dust, and the pain in her arm was a dull, booming ache.

”Hmph.” The Trampler had its arms crossed, its emotions unreadable other than a vague aura of superiority and evil as it rotated to face her. Karin hoped to wipe that smug aura away by nailing it between the eyes with her grapple hook. It went to snatch the hook off immediately. Karin disconnected her hook in the next instant, dashing forward and focusing more palm strikes on its already damaged knee. It bucked and kicked wildly when it had the chance, and Karin rolled away to prevent being squashed. She had to stay close, but not too close. Too far, it’ll use the bow. Too close, it’ll step on her. As always, Karin dances in and around her enemies' most ineffective range.

Before it can get a bead on her, she is back in. Strike, strike, strike, Karin yells, her palms turning red from the impact on steel. ”Pardon~” She smiles, getting out of range just as quickly.

Trampler charged after her, and the smile faded as she barely avoided getting rammed into. It stopped, turned, and aimed to, well, trample her once again. This time it kept running, skidded to a stop, and summoned its bow at her. Karin needed to close the gap quickly.

She dashed, latched her grappling hook to the floor in front of her, and then pulled herself along. The arrow tip grew in intensity. She wasn’t going to make it. Karin had to retreat- she looked around for cover.

A familiar feeling passed over her- a heart pounding surge of adrenaline. Blazermate had swept in from her duties attending to the entire field and had seen fit to grant Karin a dosage of invulnerability.

”Thank you, Miss Blazermate!” Karin shouted and ran forward. ”Leave the rest to me!” The arrow was fired, and its tremendous force came to nothing when Karin met it with two palms. It slowed her for a moment, but she fired a hook at its forehead again, and then pulled herself forward, leaving the uber.

It swept at her but Karin pivoted turned, and then retracted the hook when she was behind the Tramplers upper body. Now she was on its back, her hook pulling its head backward.

”R-R-RESSEN HA!” Leaving behind a trail of after images, Karin spent a super meter to turn into a vertically spinning blade. She erupted forward and cleaved into its head from behind. Its damaged legs buckled. On the final strike she stopped her spin momentum dead and turned it around into a devastating palm strike downward, slamming the Trampler face first into the ground. Karin let gravity carry her downward, where she impaled the back of its head with her feet.

Karin’s boots sunk lower as the thing dissolved into ash, her eyes closed and her smile delicate and refined, like she had just drunk some fine tea. ”Mmhm~. Splendid.”

Opening her eyes, she regarded the spirit of the Trampler thoughtfully. Its arrow ability, in particular, would be quite useful for Karins problem of limited range. She picked the spirit up and held it in her hands. Karin would hold onto it until a better time for speaking to it arrived. They had a mission to uphold, after all. Time was of the essence.

It went without saying just who Goldlewis, and by extension Geralt, planned to ‘take out’. They were the only ones who could attack Chimeras after all, and they wasted no time doing so. As flimsy and flighty as the winged trio looked, airborne opponents posed a problem that the two needed to take seriously Goldlewis stayed put while his comrade burst off the remark, chasing down one Aello to grab hold before it could gain altitude. He managed to bring it down, getting the attention of one other in the process. Goldlewis wasn’t so fortunate. The hail of bullets belted out by the veteran’s Skyfish minigun passed right through the third Chimera. “Dagnabbit,” he breathed, realizing what had happened. He might’ve spiked himself with a trace amount of Blue Evolve, but why would that apply to his weapons? That meant the big man needed to get up close and personal. But still, thanks to Geralt’s efforts, he needed only to deal with one Aello. Surely that would be easy.

Not so. For starters, this red matter arena wasn’t that big, and the fight against the Antimatter Legion took up a lot of real estate. Those Voidrangers were fond of big, sweeping dual blade attacks, and as the Seekers found out, they were a little tougher than they looked. Only physical and electric damage ate into their Toughness and could cause a Weakness Break. The Eliminators, meanwhile, fired their plasma cannons in bursts, and Goldlewis had to make sure as he chased his Aello around not to get hit by those volleys. Still, Zenkichi, Roland, Blazermate, and Susie managed to destroy them one by one. Although, when Roland eventually got an EGO page, the area change around him distracted and threw off everyone. The real problem was the Trampler. When it brought its hooves down, it created shockwaves, and more than once Goldlewis almost got his hands on the Aello only to get thrown off by a shockwave. He also almost got hit by its End of Bow attack, barely Roman Canceling in time to avoid the enormous quantum arrow as it hurtled off into the distance.

By that time the enemy’s numbers had thinned out though, and as the Aello went off to help dogpile Geralt with its sisters, Goldlewis chased it down. He jumped, airdashed, and tackled the extradimensional harpy to the ground. Pinning it beneath him, he sat up and started to pummel, only to take a huge hit from Geralt’s Hateful Flesh as the Witcher whirled the meaty cleaver around him in a wide area. “GYAHT, DAMN!” He bellowed, his hands flying to his chest. A huge gash had been cut across his pectorals, through his clothes (cutting his tie in half in the process), and into the skin. Blood was quickly soaking his shirt, and as he sagged backward the Aello wriggled flee. He sucked in his breath with his teeth gritted, wincing. He looked over and called Blazermate. “Need a medic!”

Luckily, the medabot wasn’t too busy. He flew over long enough to heal the veteran up, but while the wound was gone, his front was a mess. “Much obliged,” he groaned, narrowing his eyes at Geralt as he eviscerated two of the Chimeras in a blind rage. “Go-lly. That boy ain’t right.”

Seeing him vulnerable, the Aello that got away swooped toward him to make the most of the opportunity. It lunged toward him with its talons wreathed in red light, kicking repeatedly with both legs. Rather than tear Goldlewis up any more, however, its talon slashes clanged off his Faultless Defense, not even dealing chip damage. “Tough luck.” When the onslaught ended, the veteran reached up and grabbed the Aello by the ankle. “Try this on!” It squawked in dismay as he yanked it down toward him, then slammed it against the ground with a mighty hammerfist. Before it could get up, he brought his leg down on it hard enough to fracture the red matter beneath. As the Chimera lay there, Goldlewis took a deep breath, then jumped. He twisted in the air and fell on his foe with a titanic elbow drop, killing the Aello instantly in the miniature crater the impact left behind.

While Karin picked up where the others left off to terminate the last Voidranger standing, Goldlewis collected the Aello spirit and headed over to Geralt. The Witcher had been an intimidating man even before his Harbor Demon and Orphan of Kos fusions, and now he stood panting in a pit of chimeric carnage. Goldlewis did not balk, however. Instead he marched right up and gave Geralt a good view of his blood-soaked shirt. “You got me pretty bad. If we didn’t have Blazermate and Sandalphon to patch us up in an emergency, I coulda bled out.” He raised his hand slowly and pointed a finger at Geralt. “Whatever the hell that was, you need to get it under control. Where I’m from, friendly fire’s called a blue-on-blue, and it’s the single worst thing a soldier can do. Grounds for immediate dishonorable discharge. Those flyin’ chimeras were pains in the ass, yeah, but we got way bigger fish to fry, partner.”

Geralt nodded, letting a small breath out of his nose.

"I mentioned earlier that ever since I absorbed the Spirit of the Guardian of the Blue that my mind...isn't as clear as it was. There's something constantly pressing against it from the inside like a painless hangover. A sort of persistent rage. Even if Peach were here to get it out of me, somebody else would need to absorb the Spirit, or it'll just come back. They'd have to take on its power, and the mindless rage of an infant god torn out of the womb and left to fend for itself."

He sighed. "You have my apologies, and if you'd prefer I stay far away from you, I will." Geralt, for what it might have been worth, did look truly contrite, but with that came the knowledge that a mere apology couldn't undo the trust that had been lost. "But I can't promise that I can just grit my teeth and control it. When we get a moment to take a breath, I'll meditate and try to think of ways to channel it, keep myself present while the Orphan's rage is threatening to overwhelm me. And as you can imagine, I'm reluctant to mess with more Spirits, unless they've proven to be the most unflappable man you or I have ever met."

Goldlewis grunted. “I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe there’s more ways to offset it. Or to nullify your rage once it flares up. If fusin’ caused this problem, maybe fusin’ will solve it.”

With their red matter contamination slowly crying, the Seekers got moving again the second Karin finished off the Trampler. Any further conversation or looting could happen once they got out. Using Hal’s biosignal tracking and Geralt’s nose, they quickly navigated the remainder of the archipelago and found (much to their communal relief) a Gate they could use to return to their original dimension. At the very end, they found the woman they’d come searching for lying in a daze near the edge of the final island. Much to their relief, they also found a Gate just beyond her; she’d collapsed just before making her escape. Goldlewis and the others raced over, only for Hal to cry out in alarm. “Heads up, there’s a new one!”

And by ‘new one’, he meant a Chimera of unprecedented size. Shaped like a gigantic, demon gorilla to the point of walking on its knuckles and crowned by blood-red horns, the coal-black monstrosity dropped onto the island behind the Seekers hard enough to shake the whole formation, then unhinged its massive, toothy jaw to terrify them with a roar they could feel in their bones.



“We can’t fight this!” Goldlewis bellowed, turning to make a break for it. “Grab ‘er and get the hell outta here!”

---

After a few moments spent in crimson limbo, they’d made it. The Seekers reappeared on a rooftop back in Quarantine Valley, a ways off from Sector V but still able to see it. Though they’d only been in the Astral Plane for about fifteen minutes, it seemed much more dark than they remembered. The already-cloudy day looked cloudier, its gray clouds thicker and angrier. Rain could start falling any minute now. Maybe, for Midgar’s plates high above, it already was.

“There you are, I see you,” Sandalphon called everyone. They couldn’t find her amidst all the scenery right now, but it was a comfort knowing that their guardian angel was watching over them once again. “Welcome home.”

Goldlewis let out a heavy breath, bending over with his hands on his knees. Blazermate had made sure that nobody was wounded after the battle, but everything the Seekers had been through in the Astral Plane and prior left the Seekers pretty gassed, and nobody more so than the portly veteran. Getting back to reality did him a world of good, though. Like a weight had been lifted from every part of his body. It looked like the same held true for Iron, too. Carefully piloting his drone, Hal set the woman down on the rooftop, and after a moment she picked herself up onto her knees, doubled over with her dark hair hanging in front of her bespectacled face.

“I don’t understand…” she mumbled, sounding a little delirious. “What the hell went wrong? I mean, I know it was still experimental, but…but…it was supposed to help people…that’s what she said…” Suddenly she looked up, panic on her face. “...Wait, m-my case! W-where’s my case?”

“Alert,” Sandalphon warned everyone urgently. “I’m seeing multiple bogeys closing in on your position.”

The case was lying a couple dozen feet away. When Goldlewis spotted it, he also noticed the figures on the other side, approaching at a measured pace. Their leader stopped behind the case, reached down, and picked it up. As he did, the Seekers became aware of more movement all around. Hermits showed up a couple at a time, including the four they’d sparred with back at the hideout, all of them armed. As Goldlewis watched, wondering just what the hell was going on, the Hermits grouped up around their leader. Kyle grinned at his new friends and held out the case for a subordinate to take.



When the Hermit opened the case, Kyle took one of the vials inside. Its contents glowed bright purple, and he held it up into the air with the grandeur that befitted an elixir of immortality. “Heh…the Administration’s abandoned us here for twenty years. And this drug gave us the claws to fight back.” He lowered the vial, looking down at it. “But now, we’ll really show those bastards up top…a thing or two. And Reunion’s out of the deal…” His gaze turned suddenly to the Seekers. “Y’know, I thought we’d hit the end of the line, BUT…now we know there’s somethin’ even stronger.” He held out his hand, grasping. “Your, uh…spirits, was it? Hand ‘em over.”

Behind him, all his Hermits passed around the remaining vials, quaffing a full dose each. Crimson wisps of power began to swirl and streak around around them, and their weapons and bodies alike hummed with energy. They hefted their weapons, ready to fight. Goldlewis glowered at them, nervous. They’d beaten the main five and a couple lackeys, but there were four times as many now, and while the Seekers had been working, the Hermits had probably been resting. Kyle’s holographic face turned into a scowl. “Get ‘em!”

As the Hermits moved forward, something happened. Without warning one suddenly gave off a red pulse, doubling over with a groan. As the others looked over, alarmed and confused, another one pulsed. Then another one. A chain reaction rippled through the entire gang minus Kyle, including Kabal, Lester, Mudrock, and Bernavas. Worried, Kyle stepped forward, putting a hand on Lester’s shoulder and turning around to face her. “Hey! What’s wrong?” Angular, dark red crystals began to push through the skin and clothes of the first Hermit to drink. The outcrops grew larger, and they began to burst out of other Hermits, too. Some collapsed, and turned to run, but they didn’t get far. Kyle whipped around, his projected face horrified, then looked down at the vial in the palm of his hand. “Oh, shit. This ain’t happenin’!”

Behind everyone, Iron stumbled to her feet, eyes full of terror. “This…this wasn’t supposed to happen!” She took off running for her life, fleeing into an abandoned apartment complex nearby.

“Redshift,” Sandalphon observed from afar. “They’re aberrating!”

After the crystals emerged, chimeric flesh quickly followed. It spread across the Hermits’ arms, turning them into twisted axes, claws, and bows. Their masks fell apart, revealing faces mutated beyond recognition. The elites had stronger constitutions, but it was only delaying the inevitable. Goldlewis stood, his teeth bared. Not if I have anythin’ to say about it! Some of the others had used Friend Hearts during the sparring, but not him. If he was fast enough, there was a way to save the opponent he’d come to respect. He jumped, and right as he started his air dash with a burst of speed, he performed a Roman Cancel. It preserved his momentum at that instant, turbo-charging his momentum and sending him flying across the rooftop. Aiming for Mudrock, he brought his coffin down on her from above, dealing just enough damage to reach the threshold. The next instant he delivered a Friend Heart, restoring her just before the redshift corrupted her spirit data irreversibly into an aberration’s. Mudrock slumped down, mentally overwhelmed but still human.

Goldlewis breathed a sigh of relief. If only the others were so lucky. By that point almost every other Hermit had already aberrated. Kyle just stood in the middle of them, dumbfounded. “H-hey, what’s goin’ on?” The aberrations began to attack, striking him again and again with no resistance. “Snap out of it!” he cried. “Don’t you recognize me!?”

Just as one lifted its axe to bring it down on Kyle, a blue bolt streaked across the sky and popped its head. The aberration slumped down, and Sandalphon took aim at the next one. “All units, begin operation. Eliminate the enemy.”

Goldlewis lifted his coffin, ready to fight. “And someone go after Iron!”



Given their greater numbers, the two opposing platoons pressed their advantage right away. For his part, Luka led his band by example, teleporting past the frontrunners immediately to shatter the opposition’s backline before they could set up. In the scramble that followed, what might’ve turned into a chaotic all-out brawl split up into a handful of one-on-one or two-on-one skirmishes, separate enough to keep things clean. When humans clashed, unspoken rules of engagement like these benefited everybody; nobody needed to worry about getting blindsided by a stray shot or third-partied, at least until one of the duels concluded. Sakura managed to grab the attention of Hanabi’s former squadmates to keep them from fighting one another, which nobody involved objected to whatsoever. Roxas went for the youngest and least aggressive psychics, Ninten and Lucas, hoping to mop the boys up fast. Midna and her newly-evolved Flygon took on the P-types Sabrina and Will, matching their varied and potent powers with her own. That left just the four substitutes, and their fight with Luka had already begun.

He’d warped directly in front of Yamaguchi Wolfe as the only male soldier among the four reinforcements nocked a lightning-infused arrow to his sizable compound bow. Surprised, Yamaguchi gritted his teeth and took the first blow from Luka’s Weight Hammer as best he could, his bow arm in pain and his aim knocked askew. When Luka swung back around, Yamaguchi dodged backward, the hammerhead missing his dyed blond pompadour by mere inches. In a remarkable gymnastic display he performed a retreating cartwheel without even using his hands, nocking an arrow as he did to fire the moment he was perfectly upside-down. Luka blocked it with his hammer, but the added jolt from the archer’s Electrokinesis pushed him back in extra blockstun, and it was at that moment that Kotone attacked.

The stick-thin beanpole of a woman flung one knife as she ran in, then the other, both bouncing off Luka’s guard but keeping him locked down. As one stabbed into the ground she rolled to pick it up, then leaped to catch the second mid-rebound, and descended on the much smaller psionic with a double overhead stab. Luka teleported behind her and brought his hammer down, only for the latina’s Umbrakinesis to activate and render the immediate area pitch-black. In the darkness she rolled behind him, but even if he couldn’t see her, he could hear her. He whirled around as the shadows receded and thrust his hammer’s shaft into Kotone Aguilar’s stomach. She gasped, and the next moment she found herself thrown over Luka’s shoulder and onto her back.

That meant Tanabe Row, crouching with her sights on his head, had a clear shot, and she took it. Her Pantera rifle fired vertical sawblades, each with an extra oomph thanks to the Rotational Ergokinesis that intensified their spin. Luka teleported a couple feet to the right to avoid her first shot, breaking into a run. As he teleported to avoid her sawblades she whipped her aim left and right to track his movement, the golden beads in her pile of coffee-black dreadlocks jingling as she did. When he appeared right in front of her, Tanabe unleashed her contingency plan, launching a flash kick that just kept on going as her Ergokinesis sustained her backflip’s momentum, carrying her higher and higher. Luckily for Luka, he’d opted to sweep in under her firing line with a slide attack, so he low-profiled her flash kick, too.

He couldn’t wait for Tanabe’s kick to end so that he could punish her, though. At that moment, Kasumi Tucker made herself known by firing off her grenade launcher. Luka dodged away from the explosion, but thanks to Kasumi’s Audiokinesis, the blast itself was just the beginning. She amplified its sound into a deafening, almost physical blast that stunned Luka and left him reeling. Immediately Yamaguchi jumped off the ground to fire an electric triple shot at Luka. Kotone threw her knives, Tanabe squeezed off three more sawblades, and Kasumi’s second grenade landed a direct hit.

Luka slid back out of the smoke, the Sclerokinesis he’d borrowed from Gemma to survive the onslaught timing out a moment later. The whole exchange against the four psionics lasted only a handful of seconds, but already his heart was pounding. Private or not, these four were well-armed and well-trained. Yuito and Hanabi ran up behind him and slid to a stop on either side, their faces serious. “Need a hand?”

“Do I ever,” Luka gasped with a wry smile.

Sneering, Yamaguchi drew his bow. “Come and get some!” He turned his aim straight upward, electrified his arrow, and fired into the sky. A moment later a deluge of lightning bolts began to fall on the trio’s position, and they quickly scattered.

Yuito immediately found himself faced with Kotone and her throwing knives. He spun his sword in front of him to block her projectiles as they rushed together, and the knives bounced off. Thinking his foe disarmed, he went to attack, only for Kotone to then throw herself feet-first in a drop kick. The unexpected move staggered Yuito, knocking the wind from his lungs. Kotone teched backward when she hit the ground and caught her knives as she rolled to her feet, which she promptly hurled into Yuito’s chest. “Agh!” he grunted. Thanks in part to his clothes and mental health, the wounds weren’t deep, but boy did they sting, and he could feel blood running down his skin. As Kotone rushed in he tried to put that aside and focus on her, but when she used her Umbrakinesis everything went black. With no other option Yuito swung blindly to try and catch her, but he found himself grappled before Kotone painfully wrenched the knives out.

“GAH!” Angered, he whirled his sword around himself in a tornado of steel, catching his foe as she went to kick him down. “Don’t like fighting fair, huh? Fine!” Yuito turned on her with a burst of psychic force, causing her to stumble backward, but he quickly grabbed a piece of rubble behind her with Psychokinesis and pulled it into her to send her right back toward him. He lashed out with a two-hit sword combo into launcher, then jumped after her to keep the pain train rolling with disjointed sword hits. For the finale he seized a stop sign and brought it down on top of her, spiking her into the ground before landing himself. After a deep breath, Kotone performed a ukemi, and once on her feet she hurled her knives once more. Frowning, Yuito plucked them out of the air with his power, then sent them sailing off down the street. Kotone growled in frustration, realizing her error, and charged. Darkness enveloped Yuito, and a moment later Kotone loomed behind him, her hidden blade flashing as she drew it from her belt. When she tried to stab it just below his collarbone, however, her knife snapped against his Sclerokinesis-hardened body. Her vehement swear got cut short as Yuito elbowed her in the face, stomped on her foot, and finally delivered an uppercut that knocked her clean out.

Meanwhile, Hanabi went after Tanabe. All the sawblades that Tanabe fired earlier meant that she needed to reload, and with her Prometheus Torch in hand Hanabi raced toward her to try and take her out before the gunner could cut loose once more. She reached Tanabe just as the new magazine clicked into place, but rather than fire her Panthera, the Black woman launched a roundhouse kick. Her Ergokinesis boosted her centripetal force, causing her to whirl around like a ballerina with her leg extended and her dreadlocks splayed out like helicopter rotors. Hanabi dodged away twice to avoid the kicks, putting herself at a perfect range for Tanabe to slide to a stop, crouch down, and start shooting. While Hanabi took off into a strafing run, a couple saws clipped her, one leaving a painful gash in her arm. She winced, thinking about just how hard it would be to approach this lady until she got an idea. “I’ve got your back, Hanabi,” Yuito’s recorded voice said as SAS Psychokinesis activated, quickening Hanabi’s heart in a way the fight did not. As Tanabe fired, Hanabi began to grab and collect her sawblades. After a moment the redhead launched four of them right back at her, and Tanabe flinched, hunkering down as she turned her face away. Hanabi got in, Pyrokinesis engaged, and attacked with a fiery three-hit combo, once with both sides of her staff and then a revolving bash.

After staggering, Tanabe hopped backward, firing a sawblade down into the ground as she did. It bounced up and flew straight toward Hanabi’s head, prompting her to reel back in fear. With her eyes upward, Tanabe went low, curling up into a ball and rolling forward at high speed thanks to her Ergokinesis. “Whaa!” Hanabi yelped, swept off her feet and splatted flat on her stomach. Tanabe got to her feet and turned to fire more sawblades into Hanabi’s back, but the girl protected herself with Gemma’s Sclerokinesis. Try as she might Tanabe couldn’t keep her opponent down, and when her last-ditch rifle bash traded with Hanabi’s wakeup attack, the younger woman blew straight through it and knocked the Panthera from Tanabe’s hands. As Sclerokinesis deactivated Hanabi then went on offense, striking with three flurries of flaming jabs, the first straight forward, the second behind her back, and the third through the crook of her leg. Tanabe fell to one knee, and as Hanabi tossed an ember onto her, the older woman activated Brain Drive. Her hood flipped on and she kicked off phase two with another quintuple flash kick, nearly knocking her adversary out as she took a foot to the jaw. Hanabi braced herself, however, planting a foot behind her, and snapped her fingers. Her ember went off in a fiery explosion, flinging Tanabe to the ground smoking and unconscious.

At the same time, Luka faced off against both Yamaguchi and Kasumi. The punkish sharpshooter and the bookish grenadier didn’t have a lot in common, but together they kept Luka from making any progress at all. Since even the general area of Kasumi’s grenades could be brutal thanks to her Audiokinesis, he avoided them at all costs, but the farther away he got the more effective Yamaguchi and his lightning bow became. Things changed, however, when he made a crucial gamble. Ignoring Kasumi, he teleported right on top of Yamaguchi and started bashing. The dude tried to get away with his acrobatics, but Luka clung to him like a bulldog, hammering him again and again. “Hey!” Yamaguchi yelled. “A little help here!” Kasumi hesitated, though. She hadn’t trained alongside him long enough to know what to do in this situation, and all she had was a hammer. Well…in the end, it was just math. An ally and an enemy versus just an ally. Yamaguchi was toast anyway. The young-looking girl pushed up her glasses, took a deep breath, and fired. Hearing the grenade launcher, Luka promptly teleported away, and the grenade did the rest of the job for him.

“Fuuuuuuuuu-” Kasumi groaned, hanging her head. When she brought it up again, Luka had been joined by Yuito and Hanabi. “Uh oh.” She tugged the cord at her collar, engaging Brain Drive, and when she stuck her fingers in her mouth she let out an ear-piercing whistle. To the three soldiers, it felt like two drills piercing their brains, threatening to knock them unconscious even with their hands clasped over their ears. Furthermore, the aftershock lasted longer than it took Kasumi to fill her lungs again for another whistle, meaning the soldiers would black out before she’d drop from lightheadedness. In intense pain, Yuito opened one eye that he fixed on the bent streetlight not far from Kasumi. Normally he used his hands for this, but in theory that wasn’t strictly necessary. He reached out with his Psychokinesis and tore the streetlight from its base. Fighting against the deafening noise, he guided the pole directly over Kasumi, then unceremoniously dropped it on her head.

A shattering noise rang out as she fell to her knees, her mental health destroyed. “Brain crush!” Hanabi called, her own ears still ringing. Though the others might not hear her, they recognized what she was doing when she extended her hand toward her opponent, holographic Vision rings appearing around it. A giant holographic port appeared behind Kasumi’s head, and when Yuito and Luka joined in, another appeared on either side of it. Then, gigantic SAS cables as thick as paint cans manifested behind her, their plugs like rapiers. In quick succession they stabbed into the ports, connecting straight to Kasumi’s mind. Hanabi furrowed her brow. “How about…every episode of every season of every romcom I’ve watched this year!” In an instant, an immense amount of foreign data was forcibly injected into her target’s brain, overwhelming her senses and knocking her out instantly. She dropped like a log, and the battle was over.

Yuito shook his head, his ears still ringing, then raised an eyebrow at Hanabi. “...You watch a lot of romcoms, huh?”

“I…heheh..” His friend averted her gaze.

Everyone met back up in short order. Their opponents had all been soundly defeated, although in some cases it had taken a lot out of them. It was another victory. Unfortunately, their journey was far from over. After catching their breath, everyone hurried down the rest of the avenue to its intersection with Main Street. Finally they’d arrived at Suoh’s center. The battle damage and plentiful ashes told the newcomers that a lot of action had gone down here, but for now the fighting seemed to have moved elsewhere. At the opposite end of Main Street loomed the Otherlobe, like a giant red apple waiting to be picked, but before the team could head there they had one other order of business to attend to. They hurried across the roads and the parking lot toward Musubi’s, where several of them had eaten two nights before. When they reached the front door, however, they didn’t find Raz where he said he’d be. Instead they found two Psych-OSF soldiers, the lovely duplicating crossbow-wielder Kyoka Eden and the quiet plant-loving gunslinger Tsugumi Nazar.

“Luka?” Kyoka’s eyebrows rose, her surprise clearly evident. She and Tsugumi both had their weapons out, and a group of civilians they’d evidently been protecting could be glimpsed throughout the restaurant behind them. Luka’s grip tightened on his hammer as he wondered whether he’d be in for a fight; there was no way Kyoka didn’t know about the APB. As if sensing his worry, however, the motherly soldier shook her head. “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not gunning for you. We’ve got bigger things to worry about, after all.” Tsugumi just nodded.

Luka breathed a sigh of relief, relaxing a little. “We’re looking for a boy named Raz,” he explained. “Big head, goggles…?”

“Oh yes, he was here just a moment ago with Morceau Platoon, though naturally Morceau’s nowhere to be found. Nagi and Poo were injured defending this place, the poor dears, so they’re still here. But he, Lili, and Norma ran off for the Otherlobe all of a sudden. Something about a call for help from the Grand Head.”

“Zanotto?” Yuito furrowed his brow. “Perfect, thank you!” With that he, Hanabi, and the rest turned to go.

Luka lingered for just a moment, looking back over his shoulder at Tsugumi. “Where’s Kagero? I don’t see him.”

“That’s the point of invisibility,” Tsugumi replied flatly. Not really having a reply to that, Luka hurried on his way.

---

Pacing themselves so as to not exhaust the remainder of their strength, the Seekers and soldiers made their way down the wartorn Main Street to the Otherlobe. A couple times a stray Other reared its ugly head, but against six fighters none stood a snowball’s chance in hell. Things only got complicated a little after the halfway point, when the team spotted something up ahead. It seemed to be a large, fearsome construct with a body the size of a truck, all angular silvery armor accentuated by glowing lines of a vivid, unfriendly red. It stood upon two enormous, thickly plated legs, like a colossal roboticized ostrich. Luka, Yuito, and Hanabi would recognize this immense war machine as one of the Psych-OSF’s most prized pieces of military hardware: the mighty Sectopod. None of them even wanted to see it here, much less be on its business end.

As daunting as the armored walker was, however, the two people standing at its feet scared the soldiers even more. In a way, the two seemed like peas in a pod. They were decked out in the Psych-OSF’s characteristic red, gray, and black, and both featured long, dark hair that turned silver the farther it went, though the woman’s extended far longer. She gave off the impression of flashy, romantic secret agent, her dark gray ruffled dress with a diamond cutout just below her black tie lined with bright red, just like her dark gray overcoat, while gold-clasped belts and black boots with red clasps completed her look. Two long red horns rose from her somewhat floppy fedora, and in addition to the wicked-looking dagger sheathed in her belt, she wielded a forked staff of demonic aspect. A dark energy seemed to surround her, a portentous blend between Catastrophe Messenger and Renegade Spitfire. The man, meanwhile, seemed to epitomize the cold, consummate marksman. He wore a heavy dark gray coat, stylized and armored, over a striped black and gray turtleneck with a triangle cutout, pants, and thighboots with armor belted on. He had two scarves, a red one around his neck and a blue one that trailed from his left forearm, as well as two weapons, a heavy crossbow slung across his back and an automatic rifle in his hands. Even through his glasses, his gaze felt like an eagle’s, owing to his mix of mercenary sniper and Sinful Marksman. Almost immediately, the Sectopod released a warning shot, a spray of plasma bolts from its main cannon that burst against the ground in front of the team.

“That’s far enough,” Sasha told the group.

“We heard you ran into our platoons. Gave them a good thrashing, too!” Milla shook her head in disappointment. “Tsk, tsk. I expected better of Gisu and Morris. And those reinforcements were no substitute for the real thing, hmm? Of course, we shouldn’t be missing people to begin with. Good soldiers running off, disappearing, turning traitor. What is this world coming to?”

Sasha sighed joylessly. “There’s too much going on to waste any more time. By order of Grand Head Zanotto, you’re all under arrest. Lay down your weapons and come quietly.” He clicked the safety off on his rifle. The wind seemed to pick up. “Or be destroyed by Septentrions Third and Fourth class, Commanders Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello.”

Milla winked. “That’s Camillia to you all, though.” Darkness welled around her as her staff blazed red, taking the form of a terrifying, spectral goat skeleton. ‘Well? Don’t keep us waiting, now~”



Well, great. Just when Nadia thought she’d finally reached a spot where she could take a break, a huge horde of slavering alien insects showed their ugly mugs to kick off the biggest bug fight yet. Getting here in the first place certainly hadn’t been easy, after all. Even with everyone pitching in to light up the way with flame or magic and clear out threats, the going had been treacherous. The frustratingly uneven, unpredictable terrain throughout these peculiar caves and caverns involved more climbing, clambering, and jumping than running, though at least petrified wood proved to be a bit easier for Nadia to sink her claws into than solid rock. Add to that deathtraps like the Worm Grass, and it had been far from a walk in the park with her new dog. After that trail of thrills and spills led her here, she’d been hoping for a chance to catch her breath, but it looked like the Hollow Bough wasn’t done with her just yet.

As the first wave of glyphids dug out from the cave walls, Nadia drew her box cutters and snapped new blades into place. She assumed her typical side-facing fighting stance, one blade down in front and the other on her shoulder. “Come and get me then, creeps! I’ll slice you up in-sections!” Bugs swarmed her way in packs, but after learning how to fight them on the way here, the feral felt confident. She’d already found out that their attacks did very little to break her stance, meaning she could just beef through them to cut the offending glyphids down, but their bites and leg slashes did slow her down. That made it easier for other glyphids to join in, and they could quickly surround her. A death by a thousand cuts sounded unlikely, but with no means of escape, it was a real possibility. So Nadia fought them at arms’ length, severing legs and splitting heads with her boxcutters before the glyphids could land attacks of her own. This meant a lot of kiting them around, and in the tunnels the feral had to be methodical, relying not on the others’ inconsistent light but the certainty of her own senses. Her keen eyes meant she could see them okay, but she could hear them very well–the skittering of their legs, their aggressive shrieks and squeals, and the snapping of their jaws. Right now though, Stetson’s flare gun bathed the entire area in light, meaning that Nadia Fortune could go to town.

“Hah, hah! Mrow, myao!” The feral dealt each glyphid death with two strokes, the first to cut through as many legs as possible, and the second to carve through its body as she stepped in. From there she could strike again the other way, or dash to reposition. A couple came at her at once, so she extended her leg for a disjointed spin kick made all the more impactful by her heavy Mantread boot. It knocked all three sideways, stunned briefly, and Nadia cut them to ribbons with a double spinning edge. When a pack came her way with a glyphid guard at the head, the frontrunner put its hard-shelled front legs together to protect its head, and Nadia’s blades barely made a dent. It snapped at her, slowing her just enough that bugs could start spreading around to either side, but the feral wasn’t about to get surrounded. “Good luck blockin’ this!” As the defender put its guard up again, she jumped forward over the shield, leaping right into the middle of the pack. With a little boost provided by jets of blood, she became a vertical propeller that carved across the guard’s back and through several glyphids behind it. “Saw that comin’!” She stuck the landing with a grin, and as the rest of the pack closed in, she decided to bust out her new Blockbuster. Bloody hydro energy welled up around her arm as she spun it up, and when she stabbed it into the ground a Preda-Torrent whirlpool roared to life on the spot. All the glyphids around her got soaked, sucked in, and minced up by Kitt N’ Spin.

That was just one wave though, and by now the whole cavern had become one enormous battlefield. Sectonia’s antlions evened the odds, and her elements plus Cyclops’ roaring flames obliterated a bunch of bugs through temperature shock alone. When her Tesla Coil wreaked havoc among groups of glyphids with chain lightning, Stetson added his electric boomerang to the mix to leave entire crowds at a time shocked, stunned, and sitting ducks for the wasp queen’s AoE. When orange acid spitters and purple web spitters reared their ugly heads, though, Sectonia took to the heights of the cavern to skewer the ranged bugs that the Koopa Troop didn’t shoot down first, which was a big help. Speaking of, it looked like Bowser’s group had somehow set up a palisade of iron spikes during the first wave, creating a defensible position perfect for managing the horde. As more kinds of bugs began to arrive, and incoming Macteras proved that Sectonia wasn’t the only airborne bug around, Nadia hastened toward the makeshift spear walls to join her team. The dwarves, who’d already grouped up, did the same. Together, they and the Seekers held the line. Rika’s guns blazed alongside Stetson’s DRAK-25 Plasma Carbine, Overhard’s turrets, and Paintbrush’s impressive ‘Hurricane’ Guided Rocket System, making things easier for Kamek. Together they cleared the air and cut down as many bugs as they could before the horde could reach the melee fighters.

As mactera dropped like flies, Nadia focused on the earthbound glyphids crawling her way. With the arrival of Praetorians and Centiwings, things were heating up. “Earn your stripes!” ”She pulled out her Bait Launcher and fired it at an incoming Praetorian, and as the yoked tiger appeared to start shredding its armor, Nadia circled around. A trio of glyphid slicers came at her, but she intercepted the first one with a double overhead slash that severed both its bladed forelegs, allowing her to cut through its front half with an x-slash and then scatter its quarters with a disjointed spinning hook kick. Another one cut in a split second later, but Nadia somersaulted into the air away from the lunging slice and dropped her heel on its head in an El Gato axe kick. Before it could rise she sank one blade through its body and into the wood below, pinning it to the ground. “Goin’ nowhere!” As the third slicer attacked, she tried to pull the blade out, only to find it had stunk. In the nick of time, her new pup Chucho tackled the bug, stopping it short. “Good dog!” Nadia crowed. She squeezed the trigger on her handle to leave her blade there, then turned around to strike back with limber up. “Careful! The devil’s in…” The glyphid popped into the air, and Nadia bent forward to shoot off one of her tails like a javelin, impaling her target mid-air. “De tail!” Turning once more to face it, she jumped and grabbed the slicer by the embedded tailspear to slam it down into the ground. That third his activated New Moon, and with a silvery gleam the bug burst into a shower of green guts. “Bug-ger off!”

By then the tiger had timed out, and the Praetorian unhinged its jaws to belt out a spray of corrosive poison. Nadia put away her tail and hilt, then took off running with Chucho floating after her, parting several glyphids from their legs on the way. She dipped and dodged, but the Praetorian just wouldn’t leave her alone. “Normally I hate to cut and run, but sheesh! It’s a thirsty one, huh boy?” She timed and spaced things so that just as the stream ended, she closed the distance as a bolt of lightning with Charge, appearing right in front of the big bug’s shredded face with a level one Purrge of Vengeance rippling in her hand. “Well, here’s a drink…on me!” She slammed the maelstrom sphere into the Praetorian’s mouth, then performed Charge again to blitz straight through the monster to the other side. “After all, it’s zappy hour somewhere!” She grinned ear to ear, and behind her the monster promptly exploded into stinky, bright green chunks. As cool as that must’ve looked, she had to scramble back to safety a moment later, coughing from the noxious gas that got in her lungs.

By that time the battle seemed to be winding down. The Koopa Troop had dealt with the Centiwings, managing to avoid getting skewered by their awful lancelike probosci. Most of the hordes had been cut down either by the Seekers or their new dwarf friends, who really seemed to know their way around a battle. After calling in a supply drop, Stetson brought out his scanner and yelled out his report. “Swarm’s peterin’ out, we’re almost through!” As if on cue, the last few packs of glyphids showed up. Nadia moved forward to help wipe them out, approaching what looked like an alien clump of wood and vegetation to jump on it for the high ground advantage. Instead that mound burst from the ground, taking her by surprise with the sudden reveal of a Stalker, camouflaged by its color-changing skin to look like just another part of the environment as it lay in wait for the ambush. “Me-YOW!” Its huge foreleg raked across her, and as it went to grab her and pull her into its mouthparts, she backdashed in terror. “Nyagh! That’s not very…KNIFE!” Still wielding one box cutter, she used her other hand to hurl Athame into the Stalker’s head. Then she dashed forward and sheared through both its forelegs and long, lobster-like antennae with a horizontal cross cut. Falling on the ground, the feral bent the monster backward with Limber Up, then snapped up to her lower legs. After an aerial backflip she landed directly on the Stalker’s back. 2700 Pounds of Justice, her Mantreads, and the debuffs to the bug’s already-low defense combined to instantly splatter it beneath Nadia’s effective weight. Its limbs went flying off in different directions on jets of green gunk, leaving Nadia not just victorious, but immensely satisfied. “Whoo!” she yelled, her heart pumping. “I’m just that goo-d!”

As crazy as the swarm had been, it was just another day at the ‘office’ for the dwarves. In the aftermath of the fight, Stetson, Cyclops, Paintbrush, and Overhard all resupplied at the newly-arrived drop pod, meaning each only got 50% of their total health and armor back. “We’ll ‘ave to be stingy with what we got left and mine all the nitra we see,” Stetson reasoned, taking stock of the team’s inventory. “But with our new friends along for the ride, we oughta be able to take out both generators at once, long as we’re bloody careful. Keep an eye out for red sugar too. Heal ya right up in a pinch. ” There was no time to rest, so once everyone caught their breath and handled the leftover spirits, it was time for the four dwarves and the ten Seekers to split up and follow the generator cables to their sources. They pointed the teams toward two tunnels leading out from this central hub. One seemed greener, with more soil and leafy plants around it, not to mention a load of dirt blocking the way. Overhard and Cyclops went that way, the latter using his drills to clear the obstruction. On the other side, pink flowers grew around the mouth of the tunnel, and a strange noise issued from within. Stetson and Paintbrush opted for that route, and once Nadia went with them, Tingyun did as well.

---

The eastward tunnel system from the cavern where the Caretaker lay in wait sloped generally downward, and pretty soon its explorers got a good sense that they’d entered another biome. If Hollow Bough proper was a forest in decline, petrified and parasitized by maggots and invasive vines, this area was a quiet, tranquil garden of healthy vegetation. Instead of briars and lichens, it grew tall stalks of bamboo and sugarcane, golden fronds of wheat and even rice in the low-lying pools of mineral-rich water that had collected in pockets around the tunnels. How did all this grow without sunlight? The dwarves didn’t know, and they didn’t care. Instead they homed in on certain kinds of crops like mice to cheese: red barley bulb stalks, droopy blue yeast cones, teal malt start sprouts, and pink starch nut bushes. “Them’s good beer-makin’ ingredients!” Cyclops explained with gusto, enthusiastically collecting all of them that he could get his hands on. He and Overhard deposited them, as well as all the gold and nitra they mined, into the four-legged walking storage box that accompanied them, frequently yelled for it to hurry up or get out of the way.

On the way down, following the generator cable as it wound around the spacious tunnels, the team found only a few scattered packs of glyphids, and maybe one or two Praetorians. Here and there they found odd scarecrows in the plots, and while these Twirligigs turned out to be animate plant creatures, they were neither terribly fast nor aggressive. Their remastered forms, the samurai-esque Kirikuri, stalked among the fields, keeping them glyphid-free with a defensive fighting style based on splinter contact damage. As long as the newcomers didn’t disturb them or steal crops from under the cassette beats’ noses, it was pretty peaceful for the most part. Still, given the sheer amount of enemies they just fought, the presence of Twirligigs and Kirikuris didn’t fully explain this area’s tranquility.

When the explorers reached a larger area, they began to understand why. A loud grunting noise alerted them beforehand, and when they emerged from the tunnel, they spotted it: a gigantic kemono, part pig and part plant, the Kingtusk. It seemed to be feeding, rooting around in the vegetation and chowing down on everything in its path. While the beer ingredients seemed to be its favorite, it gobbled down whatever it felt like, including any glyphids or cassette beasts that took issue with its wanton gluttony. “It’s eatin’ our damn starch nuts and barley bulbs!” Cyclops whispered angrily. “Who’s up for makin’ pork chops?”

“Ignore it, you dolt,” Overhard told him, elbowing the driller in the ribs. “We’re spread thin enough as is. Gotta focus on the generate first. Look!” He pointed out the tunnel that the cable led to. “We can get around it, nice and easy.”

Cyclops huffed. “Fine, but if we got time afterward, that pig’s history,” he grumbled.

For the time being, everyone snuck past the optional boss. On the other side of the tunnel Overhard pointed out, they found the final cavern in the area. It looked like one big wheat field, surrounded by a forest of bamboo, and in the middle stood the Power Station, a sophisticated computer tower-esque machine of thick gray armor and orange lights.

---

Nadia, Tingyun, Stetson, Paintbrush, and the three others took the western route, moving at a quick pace. Whenever the dwarves found a deposit of nitra or gold, the pickaxes came out. Everything they mind went straight into their pockets and pouches. Nadia kept watch as the two did their thing, sticking to just one box cutter that she rested on her shoulder for now. At first, everything seemed to be going smoothly, despite the rather winding nature of a tunnel that twisted, turned, and doubled back on itself without rhyme or reason. They cut down vegetation, collected minerals, and exterminated any stray glyphids that they happened to run into. Without much need to communicate, they kept quiet for minutes at a time, with only the skirmishes, the crack of ore struck by pickaxes, and the intermittent ring of Tingyun’s attack-boosting bell offering disturbance. Still, there was that odd, underlying noise. It started as a whisper, but it began to sound more like a drill constantly spinning up and down. The deeper the team went, the louder it got, and the weirder things became.

It started slow. Thickly tangled, corded green vines replaced the walls. They had red flowers that span like wheels, and from the ceiling strawberries grew individuals on long, upside-down stalks. Patches of bulrushes littered the floor here and there, but instead of the brown sausage-shaped clumps, they had three round, gummy bulbs stacked on top of one another, pink, white, and green. They looked like dango. They began to encounter strange glyphids and other bugs. Nadia had already torn through half a pack when she realized that they weren’t fighting back. Instead they just stood there passively, with pink flowers sticking out of their heads. “Freaky.” Still, Nadia and the dwarves were unanimous when it came to wiping them all out, just to be sure. Next came the odd-looking elevator plants, which adjusted between a high and a low position when stimulated. Riding on one mildly amused Nadia for a few moments, but none of them were remotely useful for actually getting around the area given how long they took to move and how random their high and low positions were. So when the tunnel suddenly went almost vertical, Nadia needed to climb manually. While she clawed her way up the wall, Stetson used his grappling hook to scout ahead, and Paintbrush silently set up a zip line so he, Tingyun, and anyone else could ride slowly upward.

At the top of the chute, the tunnel opened up into the first cavern, and the sight left Nadia baffled. The walls were dark stone, overgrown with vines in a lattice pattern like a gigantic net. Large plant towers grew straight upward, the two triangles at the top jumping every few seconds, or bent around to grow right back down again toward the ground. Strewn throughout the place among the green vines were large void sunflowers, towering flower rings, and strange, round blue bulbs big enough to fit a person inside. Some just sat there, but others gushed out fountains or blasts of water from their green ‘lips’, the latter of which flew into weird tube plants (either bent or straight) with a flower on either side, which redirected the water. Strangest of all though was the phenomenon several of the blue bulbs seemed to be sustaining. In the open air, near docile, tentacled brain-creatures that hovered obliviously around the cavern, bodies of water just floated in the air. They took on random but constant shapes. One even looked like a face.

Nadia blinked, taken aback. “Wow…this is so weird!” A smile crept across her features. “This crazy, messed-up world never ceases to amaze!”

Artorias stood in the midst of several felled husks, breathing heavily from the battle's exertion "Hmph." the knight grunted, he was unamused by the lack of challenge the fight against the odd looking bugs posed. With the greater challenges already dealt with by the others he settled with taking on the grunt work by ensuring the many alien bugs that came at them in droves were kept far from coming close to him.

Whenever he had a moment to himself Artorias cast his gaze up, at times sighing as he longed to see the surface for the last time he remembered seeing the light of the world above was in a place long ago and in a different place entirely. Yet that dream, the light above in it destroyed everything it shone upon.

Artorias still felt conflicted by it though he had already been told this world differed from his own, so accustomed to the Darkness being associated with all that is evil and wrong while the light stood for all that was good and right.

But his thoughts were interrupted when Nadia seemed to exclaim about the wonders of this broken world, it made the knight think "Whatever the world may be now I am left wanting to see more of it." Artorias sighed looking up as if staring there could make the sky be visible.

With Karin finishing up the rest of these things, there wasn't much to do but collect their leftover spirits or in Blazermate's case, heal. And she'd soon find with Geralt going into a blind rage due to the guardian spirit he had absorbed earlier, that she'd have a lot more healing to do especially for Goldlewis. Roland, after picking up the spirit of the thing he beat, noticed this blind rage followed by guilt and had a bit of empathy for Geralt. "Hey man, I've been there before. You'll get the hang of controlling it at some point." Roland said, although in his case, it was a bit different. He would've said more, but there wasn't time for it as another big enemy appeared, chasing after the VIP they had just rescued.

With their flight, Blazermate and Susie were able to get away from the big creature without too much difficulty with Blazermate able to help the slowest member of their group if they weren't too heavy. Roland, still charged by his emotions, was also pretty fast even though he was on the ground. Without her hands being free though, Blazermate was unable to heal anyone as she flew, which also meant she wasn't able to give anyone an uber if they needed it. At least they could get a headstart with the creature posturing and acting all threatening.

When they escaped the portal, something wasn't right. Out of a case the VIP had, was some purple liquid that the hermits called the 'elixir of immortality'. And boy these hermits were being awfully suspicious Roland thought, expecting a backstab but not surprised about it. And even though they had been running and fighting all day, having even fought some of these hermits earlier, it seemed their elixir had caused them to redshift. "Well, thats one way to become 'immortal'." with Blazermate saying. "I am so sick and tired of everyone we meet backstabbing us in this city!", Roland almost giving a schadenfreude chuckle at her naivety as he got ready to fight.

Having no time to rest, Roland was still at emotion level 3 so he was starting combat a lot stronger than others had seen him at this time and started to intercept and clash attacks like he usually did. Having more than 4 allies with him in this fight, he had his full strength gain from Courage and numbers appeared above the heads of the hermits. But due to the sheer amount of them, keeping to the number path would be difficult, meaning they'd be resetting every 10 seconds when someone inevitably hit the wrong one. Susie decided to stay at range and fire her missiles at whatever Other she could, and Blazermate did what she did and healed, having a projectile shield to deal some damage and protect others from ranged stuff for awhile.

After a few amount of clashes, Roland had gotten his emotion to level 4, gaining "Power of the Past", reducing his speed but greatly increasing his strength. This came with the usual quote being emitted, from what sounded like a witch. "I want you to feel it all the same… The misery of forgetting it all… losing it all…". Roland also got an EGO page, "Faded Memories", which he used right away to give his allies and himself a possible strength buff. Roland, donning a decayed looking dress, blasted the area with a strange dust that smelled of cinnamon that attacked the mind of the Abberations as the yellow wisps changed the immediate area into a ddecrepit ruin filled with emerald mist., with some pillars able to be used for cover if needed for the 10 seconds it would be up. This would spawn platforms for those who were on an already elevated part of the environment, not caring for if they were friend or foe so they wouldn't fall.

Once the area dissipated, with Roland clashing during the whole thing and Susie shooting her missiles to give some cover alongside Sandalphon, Roland had finally gotten to Emotion level 5 as the fight was wrapping up. This was the final push everyone needed as Roland gained "False Present", giving himself and every one of his allies a strength and defense boost, but making them take more mental damage if there was any. And with this quote, a much more sinister witch voice could be heard, saying. "Drink this potion, it’ll give you courage. You’ll be braver than anyone." He'd also gain the EGO page "Harvest", but the battle was closing soon so there wasn't really much reason to use it.

Geralt was somewhat pleasantly surprised, in that Goldlewis didn't dismiss his apology and explanation as an excuse. He offered his own perspective as to a way to deal with the issue, that being a more serious version of his sarcastic response: fusing with someone or something. They'd met plenty of people with strange abilities in the World of Light, so perhaps someone would possess a way to calm or shield his mind from the Orphan's influence. In a city filled with actual psychics, they may yet find a way. Roland also offered a few words of encouragement, to which Geralt gave an appreciative nod, but for now, the issue remained unsolved.

They didn't have far to go before finding another Gate out of this strange dimension, as well as their target, collapsed on the ground. As they approached, though, the Seekers found themselves greeted by a titanic Chimera that dropped from the sky behind them. Geralt and Zenkichi wasted no time in running, as Hal's scooped up their quarry and charged with them through the Gate.

Once on the other side, Hal let Iron down gently, and the woman began mumbling about things going wrong. Zenkichi couldn't hold back a distasteful look, but when she mentioned that she'd lost her briefcase, his eyes widened. That could be bad if somebody found it.

Of course, somebody else did find it. The Hermits. Sighing, Zenkichi watched them warily, though he was glad to at least see a rational human being and not an Other, a ghost lady, or murder robot. At least they could be reasoned with.

Scratch that, they couldn't be reasoned with. "Gotta be kidding me..." Geralt muttered, and Zenkichi couldn't help but agree. He wasn't naive enough to assume that both groups having beef with the Administration would make them friends, but they'd literally just made contact with these guys and they were already turning on them? What was this, some video game speedrun to betray your allies?

They knew the Hermits knew that you didn't just "hand over" Spirits. Sure, Zenkichi had a few on hand, but he got the feeling it wouldn't be enough. It never was. The Hermits all took a dose of Blue Evolve, which was sure to make even the weakest among them somewhat of a threat. Unfortunately for the Hermits, however, things didn't pan out quite the way they'd expected. Rather than making them stronger, the Blue Evolve caused them to double over in pain. Upon seeing that, a pit opened in Zenkichi's gut, and he imagined the other Midgarians felt the same.

The only way to fight a Chimera was to be exposed to red matter, a dose close enough to near abberration, or have a Legion. Maybe part of him had foolishly believed that this drug had something to do with the secretive chained monsters that Neuron employed, but no...no, that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

As the Hermits began transforming into Abberrations, Iron panicked and started to run for it. Geralt wasted no time in breaking from the group and beckoning Hal's drone after him, needing to rely on the machine to keep him away from pockets of red matter. Zenkichi, on the other hand, stayed with the group and sighed.

"Hey, Kyle. You know everything about this city, right? That means you know what us Turks are capable of. I wanna be mad, but...man, you really must've been desperate. And look what it earned you. Power's not some shortcut to getting your goals, you idiot. It takes cultivation, effort. Even Shinra knows that. Did you not expect this stuff to have side effects?!" His piece said, Zenkichi drew his sword, the simple greatsword he'd started out with.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Valjean...Megidola." As he spoke the command, Valjean summoned a series of balls of energy, even more than Megido created, among the Abberrated Hermits. The spheres seemed to glow and vibrate with magical energy, and from them erupted a series of beams of light, striking the Hermits around them before vanishing with the balls of energy.

With the Abberrations off guard from the powerful magical attack, Zenkichi leapt in and howled as he activated his Fury, swinging his sword at the closest weakened mutant and cleaving through them, the wave of energy that burst forth from his blade striking the one behind the deceased Abberration. It didn't stumble or stop, charging to swing its weapon at Zenkichi, who stood there and took the blow, bringing his sword down in a brutal overhead swing that crushed the Hermit beneath it. He followed up with a wide horizontal swing to catch a couple more Hermits with the energy beam before he cancelled the Fury and drew his revolvers, his sword disappearing.

Backpedaling, Zenkichi squeezed off a dozen shots in rapid succession, gunning down another pair of mutated Hermits that had been weakened by his opening attack and recovering most of his lost vitality in the process. It was bittersweet, to see the red, glitchy Spirits they left behind as they died. It meant there was nothing that could be done for those poor folks. They were already dead, for all intents and purposes. He was just...making sure their bodies realized it.

What a dreadful day this had been, Zenkichi thought idly as he shoved his revolvers into their holsters and drew his sword again, blocking the blow from an Abberrated Hermit, before he pushed them off with his sword and started slashing away at them, dodging out of the way of a clumsily thrown attack. So much death, so much pain.

Damn this city, Zenkichi thought as he cut down yet another Hermit, his breaths starting to come heavier from the effort.

---

Damn this city. Geralt thought as he burst through the doorway into the apartment complex Iron had run into. Somebody turned to look at him, but seemed to think better of saying anything as he ran through the hallway and out the back door, catching a glimpse of the woman they'd been looking for running along the rooftop. "Dammit, woman, we're trying to help you!" He called out after her, not really expecting it to convince her, but more to say that he'd tried. Not particularly hard, mind you, but he'd tried.

She kept running, and Geralt gave chase, even as a people gave him wary looks as he ran by, one person even drawing a weapon and backing away a bit, but the Witcher paid them no mind. Iron had the advantage of knowing the area, and she used that advantage well, keeping ahead of the much faster Geralt by squeezing into a small thruway between two buildings that cost Geralt precious time to work his way around, his massive frame far too large, especially in armor, to squeeze through. Hal didn't have too much trouble keeping up, simply having his drone float around or over obstacles, though he did have to warn Geralt away from a building Iron tried to trick him into entering. From his vantage point, the drone saw her duck inside the entrance and climb out a window, while Geralt didn't have the luxury to wait and sniff out her path.

Drawn out by the commotion, Geralt turned a corner and found himself face-to-face with a trio of Abberrations, each with their arms terminating into a sword-like appendage, which they tried to swarm him with. Geralt simply snarled as he pulled the Hateful Flesh from his body, not in the mood for nonsense. He caught a sword swing with the cleaver, the two weapons sliding along one another, and kicked out the monster's knee before decapitating it violently. He whirled the eldritch weapon over his head and launched it at one of the remaining Abberrations, which dodged out of the way as its fellow charged in.

Pulling the weapon back, Geralt sidestepped a stab from the mutated monster and returned the favor with a punch to the face. It managed to daze the creature, giving him enough time to heft the Hateful Flesh and bring it from the side and into the thing's torso, butchering it quickly. As the final one landed a slash along his armor, Geralt turned and cast the Sign of Igni, bathing it in flames and stunning the Abberration. As a finishing blow, he took the Hateful Flesh and slammed it into the Abberration, knocking it back with enough force that the landing, rather than the attack itself, finished it off.

Stowing the Orphan's weapon back inside him, Geralt looked around quickly before taking off in the direction of Hal's drone, conveniently hovering right outside yet another building. They wouldn't let Iron get away that easily.

It was a relief to regroup with the others. It looked like they all won their respective fights. But Roxas’ shoulders sagged and he still had difficulty staying on his feet, at least until his MP recharged. A Curaga spell handled the injuries he took from the final part of his bout with Ninten and Lucas, but the healing spell wouldn’t do anything for his increasing fatigue. This had been a very long and arduous day so far, and it didn’t look like there was an ending in sight just yet. Roxas probably needed to cut back on the amount of times he used the Keyblade Purge consecutively. Of course, doing that meant deliberately not freeing someone from Galeem’s influence when an opportunity presented itself. Could he really bring himself to not help someone when he knew he had the power to do so?

When she rejoined the others, Sakura found that they were all successful in defeating their foes. She did a little dance, hopping from one foot to the other. ”Hee hee! Good job, everyone! We sure showed them.” She offered high fives to everyone.

”Now, let’s funs over, so let's get back to business! We gotta find Raz. And crack this mystery!” Sakura punched her fists together.

Jogging with the others to get to the Otherlobe, Sakura kept an eye out for any other Psych-OSF. Clearly disappointed when Raz wasn’t where they thought they’d be, and a little unnerved by all the ash, Sakura crossed her arms and looked at the two soldiers. Thankfully, they had more sense than their predecessors and weren’t up for a scrap. But if Sakura wanted to find Psych-OSF she wouldn’t need to look particularly hard when a line of plasma lit up the ground in front of her. Her eyes widened and she flailed her arms before regaining her balance.

Compensating, Sakura stood strong and put on her game face, already in her stance. Not only were the two psychics in front of her much stronger than the pair she had just challenged, they were also backed up by a giant killer robot.

”Gisu and Morris were pretty tough.” She said. ”You should give ‘em more credit. You should also stop trying to capture us. Because your orders were given to you by bad guys! Brain stealing, Other-making, evil goons! You’re doing their bidding!” She pointed between the two commanders.

”Don’t forget mind controlling on top of that” The princess added, as she stepped back a few paces, not out of fear, but because she needed space to open one hell of a portal to the twilight ream if she wanted to even the playing field.

Milla sighed, her expression resigned. “So that’s what this is about. Armstrong sure managed to whip some impressionable people into a tizzy with those words of his.” She shook her head. “Haven’t you stopped to consider that’s just what he wants? To cause pandemonium and infighting so that he and DespoRHado can take over this city by force? Just look at Suoh, all these poor people!” She gestured to Main Street. “Others don’t come from buses. This attack is no coincidence!” As her gaze hardened, her shadow beast laid its bony claws on her shoulder, its head lowered as if preparing to lunge. “But maybe you know that already. Your friends’ handiwork, perhaps?”

“Don’t bother, Milla. This isn’t a courthouse,” Sasha said flatly, his cold stare on the Seekers. “Whatever you have to say, your goals or your affiliations, save it for the judge. Your accusations, testimony, evidence–you’ll be able to make your case once you’re in custody. Even if you’re responsible for this mess. But that’s a road we can only walk once the streets are safe.”

Luka grimaced, his eyes pleading. “But the streets aren’t safe. People are still fighting. Civilians are still dying! Sasha, Camilla. We’re not here to cause trouble. We’re just trying to find our friends, and we saved everyone we could, killing many Others on the way.”

It was then that Pit was finally able to make his way back to the group, running to join them as they stood opposite the latest obstacle in their path. Fresh from a fight with monsters, the cuts and scrapes on his person served as further proof of Luka's words, though the sounds of chaos behind them should have been enough.

During the Others' initial descent, Pit's fighting had taken him away from his allies on the main streets and up onto higher ground once more. His arrows had joined the anti-Other guns in trying to take out as many as possible before they touched down. Those that made it through the artillery fire and landed on rooftops he intercepted with his bow, reducing the monsters to dust to stop them from jumping down and wreaking more havoc. Naturally his higher vantage point gave him a greater view of the neighborhoods turned battlefield, and of all the civilians in immediate danger. He didn't think twice about straying farther from the Seekers, alighting from his perches and swooping down to defend anyone in need of help - actions that inevitably led him to the battle's fringes were the Others had spread while the response was still focused on the epicenter.

Now that he was reunited with everyone, Pit watched the argument while catching his breath. He hadn't dismissed his bow during the rush over, and with all the tension in the air he felt no need to do so now. If anything, the hand wrapped around its grip squeezed tighter.

“By beating down soldiers within an inch of their lives who were doing the same?” Milla questioned Luka, barely sparing the newcomer a glance.

Hanabi bristled, her eyes fiery. “That was obviously self-defense, they wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer!”

“I’m sure we can talk this through,” Yuito added. “After the current crisis has passed!”

For a moment Sasha didn’t respond. He looked reluctant, as if he were gnawed by doubts. After a moment though, he pursed his lips, his brow furrowed. “It’s as you say. But the crisis is right in front of us. Even putting aside our orders, you’ve resisted arrest and attacked Psych-OSF soldiers. If you really want what’s best for the people, come peacefully, and let us do our jobs.”

“And that’s our final offer,” Milla added.

”Make our case?” asked Roxas in a disgusted tone, ”Will that be before or after you steal our brains or fuse us with P-Types so you can add us to your little army?” he added, clenching his gloved hands into fists. Ever since he arrived in Suoh for the first time he hadn’t liked Psych-OSF. Something about them just kept rubbing him the wrong way. And that was starting to show itself here.

”We’ve already seen the underground lab in Beacon Hospital. We know your organization is rotten to its core.” Roxas said, pointing an accusatory finger at Sasha and Milla, ”I didn’t need Armstrong to tell me that. And as for DesporHado? Maybe you haven’t noticed but they already suffered a severe blow at Vandelay Campus today. Wanna take a guess how many of us were there and helped make that happen?”

Roxas shook his head and just summoned his weapons, ”Let me make something very clear to you people. I don’t care about the election. I don’t care about Shinra or Armstrong, or any of the political nonsense. I’m here on my own mission. And not you or anyone else in this stupid city is going to stop me.”

”Yeah! He’s right! If we get arrested we might as well be toast, and all the bad guys would just go free. No, no, no!” Sakura shook her head vehemently.

”Justice is on our side!” She proclaimed defiantly. Before she became a Seeker, she wasn’t usually able to say that. It felt different to fight for justice than it did to fight for fun.

Milla tilted her head, clicking her tongue in a condescendingly full-of-pity way. “Tsk, silly girl. Do you think there’s ever been someone who doesn’t believe that?” She gave a defeated sigh. “Regardless, I suppose we have our answer. Once they shook out the grogginess, our squads were kind enough to tell us all about you on your way over. So this should be quick.”

When she raised her staff, the crystal in its tip shone a vivid red. Her shadow goat’s eyes flared up with the same wicked luster, and with a hollow bleating it brought its clawed forearms down on the ground. With a final, mighty push, it dispersed into the street itself, and the ground began to pulse. When Luka moved back from the impact zone, expecting some sort of damaging shockwave, he quickly realized the Originum Art’s actual effect: an 80% movement speed reduction. Milla’s Quicksand Conversion continued to pulse every 1.4 seconds, each slow lasting for .8 seconds and almost completely halting the movement speed of all enemies within a wide radius, regardless of whether or not they actually touched the ground.

As Luka looked on in horror, realizing just how crippling an effect this was, Milla giggled. “What do you think? I got it from Miss Earthspirit. These horns, too. Aren’t they darling?” Lowering her staff with one hand, she tapped her horns with the other. “In the end she may not be good for much, but she’d very good for one thing.” Activating her own Levitation power, she floated up on top of a pink hoverball, boosting her own movement speed dramatically. “And once I slow you down…”

“We will stop you.” Sasha raised two fingers and then pointed them at the renegades twice. Without delay, the Sectopod opened the bay on its head, revealing and promptly firing its armor-shredding laser blaster. It let off two bursts of fire right into the group of Seekers. While Milla had been talking, however, Luka had been sending messages via Brain Talk. If the same idea hadn’t already occurred to them, they got the message loud and clear. Before the Sectopod could light them up, Luka, Yuito, and Hanabi used the platoon leader’s Teleportation to bug out, leaving both the firing line and the range of Milla’s Quicksand Conversion, large though it was. With its final action for the turn, the Sectopod began to prepare its Wrath Cannon, its main gun charging for a blast of legendary proportions.

For those unconnected to Brain Talk, the strategies differed. Pit opted for the same plan of getting out of the slowed area, but without teleportation he jumped instead, intending to simply leap up and away. He quickly discovered that was a mistake. Despite the pavement visibly pulsing with the effect, Milla's ability still affected him even when he wasn't in contact with the ground. He hardly had time to think, dang it, before the laser fire began.

His wings had been beginning to unfurl and assist his escape, but now he slowly pulled them back in toward his body. His mind stuttered as he tried deciding what to do. Rather than chance the Orbitars' summoning taking too long with the slowness and ending up with no protection, Pit started to spin the bow already in his hand. In normal circumstances he could deflect lasers with his angel ring technique like this, even while hanging in the air - but he was about to find out if that was still the case when the projectile was strong, and his reduced speed meant the bow blades couldn't turn even half as fast.

The result was painfully disappointing, in a literal sense. It was like moving in slow motion. The spin wasn't anywhere near quick enough to form the titular ring of the technique's name, and as such it was no match for the speed of the beams. A lucky strike turned away maybe one or two of the laser blasts in the volleys, while the rest chewed up the area and nearly did the same of the angel. Fortunately he was tougher than the average person; he did his best to defend himself while the impacts pushed him slowly and steadily toward the area of effect's edge.

Sakura had gasped in surprise when she realized what was happening to her. So slow! They barely had more than a second to act even if they avoided the pulse. Her time at Psych-OSF had definitely put enough trust in her to follow an experienced psychic’s lead. With a blip, she teleported straight backwards.

In a crouch, she spotted her angel-winged ally’s predicament. ”Pit-kun!” She called out, extending her hand. Using her base telekinetic power, she took hold of Pit and wrenched him backwards in time with the end of the slow effect. That would pull him out of harm's way and out of the effect of the pulse radius.

”You’re okay!” She said.

Pit recovered quickly, all too happy to be back at full speed. "Thanks to you!"

”There’s no way that powerful technique can last forever, right?” With that hopeful question she and Pit dove behind cover, hiding behind an abandoned car out of range of the pulse. Sakura grabbed the edge and poked her head out, watching the Sectopod. In another few seconds, it would be finished charging its Wrath Cannon, and it seemed to be pointed her way. Sakura gulped.

"I don't know much about psychic powers, but let's hope not because it's really annoying!" Pit used this time to safely unequip the Palutena Bow and swap to the Guardian Orbitars. They'd be more useful for protecting himself and others while under the hail of projectiles that the battle looked to be turning into.

While about half of his enemies moved out of range of the slow-inflicting pulses, Sasha moved in. He borrowed Levitation to dash forward, his feet not touching the ground. Inside he enjoyed immunity to the effects of Quicksand Conversion and the protection it bestowed. From there he turned on the escapees immediately, taking aim with his manacaster. Unlike the Sectopod, he didn’t need Milla to reliably hit his targets. A spread shot of bright green wind bullets ripped through the air, catching Yuito unawares as he turned to get a bead on his enemies. The blast knocked him down, which got Hanabi’s attention, and she managed to jump away from Sasha’s next shot just in time. Rather than keep shooting at her with his manacaster, the Psychonaut put two fingers to his head to unleash his Marksmanship. A flurry of blue psi-blasts hit the girl as she moved, juggling her higher with each hit, until Sasha switched back to his manacaster to intercept her as she fell. A Guardian Vision of Yuito manifested just in time to block the spread, and by that time Yuito himself was back on his feet. His sword flew in, propelled by Psychokinesis, but Sasha dashed to reposition between shots. Even when the sword came back around like a boomerang, the Psychonaut saw it coming and dodged again in order to deliver Yuito another blast. Luka avoided Sasha’s shots much better since he could use his Teleportation much more, and when he saw Yuito falter again he made his move. He teleported right in front of Sasha to sucker punch him with his Weight Hammer, but while he took the Psychonaut by surprise, his efforts were all for naught. A Guardian Vision of Milla overlaid her companion to negate the damage. From the Vision issued a powerful Dirge Shot that sent Luka flying, inflicting Stormlash on him while granting Sasha Enemy Insight.

Meanwhile, Midna had repositioned via portaling in one of her few remaining crates, which promptly got destroyed, and then used its shadows to hop away. Her destination of choice had been a fair bit up the street, and behind the Sectopod. There she unleashed the stored up magic she had been channeling, opening up a massive portal to her home realm beneath herself, and up from it rose a machine to rival the towering biped in size, as the 10 meter tall mechanical bear-wolf-thing rose up, carrying her up with it atop its head between its ears.

She had intended to use the inanimate cyborg as a stationary cannon to blast the enemy mech. Instead she found out how it actually worked at either the best or worst time, as in response to her standing atop it, the new hatch in the mech’s head opened up, and promptly dropped her into the cockpit found within.

The princess landed in the pilot’s seat with an ”oof” and then briefly panicked as a seatbelt automatically secured her to the chair, and then freaked out more when she saw that infront of her was a rather small brain floating in a jar.

”What kind of deathtrap is-” she began to demand, only for a glow to surround the brain, on that spread to the rest of the cockpit, liting up consols, monitors, and most importantly, a screen showing the outside world. Controles were thrust into her hands, and at the slightest nudge, the machine moved.

”Ohhhh” Minda marvaled as she understood, before thrusting the controles forwards with a cry of ”Oh it is on!” as she set the bear charging towards the fray.

Even as Sakura gaped at the giant kaiju robot right out of a saturday morning cartoon that had joined her side, she had to stay focused on the matter at hand. Uncertainty about engaging in close quarters combat made her reluctant to leave cover, even as the Sectopod aimed at her. Briefly standing up, she gathered a Hadoken within her hands and charged it with Pyrokinesis. Then she fired a blue and red ball of energy towards the Sectopod, and followed up with two slings of her arms to send some flameballs towards the robot. Then she dove back behind the cover of the car.

Her target didn’t seem to register the attacks; she’d have to do a lot more than that. Instead it kept its target squarely on her, its emitters reaching their fully-charged state. Before the Sectopod could annihilate both the car and the girl behind it with its Wrath Cannon, Sasha used Brain Talk to send a message to its system’s Psynet port. “S31, change targets. Eliminate enemy armor directly behind you.” The huge machine obeyed, sparing Sakura as it turned around to face the new threat. The amount of time Midna took to spool it up, in combination with its slow speed, meant that it had barely gotten started before the Sectopod turned around to face it.

”Phew,” Sakura watched the Sectopod turn its attention away right when she was about to bolt out from behind the car. She wanted to chip in to help Midna a bit, but it looked like her fireballs weren’t enough.

That left Sakura and Pit in the same boat as Luka, Yuito, and Hanabi: pitted against Sasha. Typically five versus one meant bad odds, but Sasha Nein wasn’t the third-strongest Septentrion for nothing. He activated Prism Break, imbuing himself -and his weapon- with a refractory magical power. For the next twenty-five seconds his attack speed increased dramatically, and for every shot he fired at someone, identical shots would fire towards the two nearest other targets. That meant that when he fired a spread shot of wind bullets at Luka, he simultaneously fired at Yuito and Hanabi too. Worse still, if only one of them got hit by any triple-blast, that blast would hurt over twice as much. The area became a sea of wind shots limited only by Sasha’s (boosted) fire rate, the wind bullets’ travel time, and their max range. With the added crossfire, everyone started taking hits left and right.

Having already overused his teleportation, Luka’s power ran out at the worst possible moment and he got downed within seconds. Hanabi dodged over to him and created a wall of fire in front of them with a sweep of her staff, which seemed to block this elemental wind effectively, but at the same time Yuito had different plans. “We’ve got to attack!” he yelled, borrowing Sclerokinesis to weather the storm as he charged forward. He used Psychokinesis to throw debris as he ran in, forcing Sasha to dodge. He floated to a stop and turned to shoot again, only for Yuito to shrug off his blast and slash him repeatedly.

With a grunt, the Septentrion closed his fist. “Karmic Quietus.” In an instant the buff conferred by Yuito’s Sclerokinesis was dispelled, granting Sasha a second stack of Enemy Insight in the process. He then lifted his manacaster and fired a point-blank Dirge Shot. The punchy blast stormlashed Yuito and sent him flying the same as it did Luka, leaving him on the ground at the edge of unconsciousness. That also granted Sasha his third and final Enemy Insight, and as he turned toward Hanabi’s wall of fire he began to float off the ground with Levitation. This battle was just getting started.

---

Karin finished off the last Voidranger, and her allies succeeded in their respective battles, though not without some minor drama between Geralt and Goldlewis. Sakura had mentioned it in their travels- the trouble of absorbing a powerful boss spirit. ”My understanding is that someone had to do it, lest the monster revive at a later date. Fusing with it grants power, but it’s also a sacrifice.” Karin said. She was far too attached to her charming good looks to ever lose them to a fusion.

Regardless, it was time to fetch Iron. They found her, and an exit, and a very large monster with no reason, or means, to fight it. ”Toodles!” They hopped through the door.

Karin looked at Iron, like she was going to start talking, but when Iron spoke the heiress seemed unamused. ”I suppose her time in the astral sea was quite traumatic. To be perfectly honest I expected someone a little more coherent.”
Karin was even less impressed by Kyle’s logic. ”You cannot be serious. You intend to kill us? If you’re so eager for a second beating, then by all means I shall oblige-” Karin was cut off and surprised like the others when many of the hermits began to redshift.

”Oh, my.” Karin watched, suppressing her horror to get into a fighting position as Geralt chased after Iron.

Bernavas came at her once more, but it was not the swordsman she just defeated. He moved with greater speed and strength than before, catching Karin off guard and slashing her across the torso. With a cry she flew backwards and back rolled to her feet. Bernavas came at her again, and she jumped over the swing, kicking him in the back of the head as she did. While she expected him to try something different, he just lunged at her, swinging as hard and as fast as he could. Over and over and over again. There was no grace, no strategy, no thought. A mindless beast, ravaged by the redshift.

Karin’s face darkened as she became accustomed to Bernavas’ new pattern, countering and punishing his strikes every time. Her palms smashed him away and he came screaming in only to be countered and smashed away. The fight would have been boring if it wasn’t for the pit of dread in her stomach.

Karin parried a follow-up strike, sent his sword flying, and delivered a swift barrage of EX-palm strikes. Bernavas crumpled against the wall and she delivered the finishing blow, a cracking kick to the neck. Steely-eyed, she watched as he turned to dust and ash.

It was a mercy. And he was too dangerous to be left alive- innocent civilians were only a block away. Her only regret was, ironically, giving him a Friend Heart too early. In that way, she had accidentally condemned him to his death. Countenance grim, she turned to battle the remaining aberrations and protect her allies.

Leave no man behind. That was a mission statement that had shaped the whole military career of Goldlewis Dickinson, from gung-ho cadet full of youthful vigor to grizzled battlefield captain, holding fast in the face of devastating loss. Did that principle apply here? Maybe not. These Hermits were never ‘his’ men, as their masked leader just made abundantly clear. Now, they weren’t even men anymore. Just crystalized husks, animated and compelled to slaughter by some otherworldly malice. Yet his body had moved as if of his own accord, compelled by a force even stronger: the will of preservation. And so Goldlewis flung himself away from his allies into the newly-birthed throng of murderous aberrations, using a stunt that was hard enough to pull off let alone make count, to save a stranger who moments ago would’ve been his enemy. Almost without thinking, he sacrificed a small part of himself to form the friend heart needed to free Mudrock in her final moments as herself. And against all odds, it worked.

Of course, that was just the beginning. Mudrock might be saved from aberration, but the rest of her crew hadn’t been so lucky, and the monsters were more than willing to make sure no living thing walked away from this rooftop alive. It was up to the Seekers to make sure that didn’t happen, and they hardly needed Sandalphon’s call to action in order to grasp the situation’s urgency. Heeding the veteran’s call, Geralt booked it in the direction Iron went, and despite the dangerous close quarters that lay ahead of them Hal sent his drone in after him. These aberrations were a clear and present danger, but detaining Iron -the only link the Seekers had right now to Reunion- was still the mission objective, after all. Everyone else could handle the monsters.

Everyone got to work, Roland attacking first. Still emotionally charged from the skirmish in the Astral Realm, he could start dealing damage right out of the gate, and his assault kept the enemies at bay while Blazermate and Susie scrambled to respond. Feeling resentful over the betrayal maybe, Zenkichi allowed the axe-bladed aberration to whale on the despondent Hermit leader while he lectured Kyle about shortcuts. He wasn’t heartless, though, and after a moment his Persona rained down Almighty devastation across the rooftop, throwing the gang of aberrations into chaos before jumping into the fray alongside Roland. On the far side of the mob, Goldlewis got just the moment he needed to extend a hand to Mudrock and lift her up to her feet. “No time to explain,” the veteran told her. “We gotta fight for our lives!” He could not see the grim expression on the woman’s face beneath her helmet, but she seemed to understand the life-or-death situation, and was willing to do whatever it took to survive.

With that settled, Goldlewis led by example. The aberrations on his side of the mob had regrouped, and now half a dozen charged him at once, the air filled with their grotesque screams. The veteran roared back, his coffin seized and upheld like a massive shield that he drove forward to scatter the mutants like bowling pins in an unstoppable Wild Assault.



His attackers hit the ground en masse, dazed and left floundering by the weighty impact. A few more turned at the commotion, a filthwing archer among them taking aim, only for the lid of the coffin to fly off and smack the filthwing out of the air. From the cosmic void within the coffin burst a handful of arms that seized most of the downed aberrations. Then, with help from Goldlewis, the UMA bodily flung them over the edge of the rooftop to plummet down to the streets of Quarantine Valley far below. Whether they lived or died, they weren’t his problem any longer. The other aberrations surged forward as the UMA’s arms receded into the coffin, but Mudrock charged in to meet them. Using Crag Splitter, she brought her hammer down hard enough to fracture both the aberrations and the ground beneath them, stunning one or two in the process.

“Duck!” Goldlewis barked. When she did, his Behemoth Typhoon whirled over her head. Its crushing weight smashed two of the monsters’ upper bodies apart like ceramic, while knocking the other two down. “Crumble!” The veteran went to finish them off, while a larger aberration with an axeblade came at Mudrock from the side. It swung at her with timber-felling force, but the juggernaut stood fast and intercepted it with her hammer. After blocking the strike, she forced her attacker off-balance, then took out its knee with a horizontal swing and an unsettling crunch. An upward swing to its head launched it off its feet, and when Mudrock followed up with an overhead slam, the aberration was destroyed. Meanwhile, Goldlewis had run into a new problem: the aberration that had been Kabal, still possessed of the masked man’s superspeed. It raced around him, keeping him under pressure with quick attacks from every angle, until a brief pause telegraphed its next rush a little too much. “Hold your…” When the monster burst toward him, he stepped forward and delivered a massive cowboy punch that clotheslined the aberration, knocking it head over heels as it flew off the edge behind him.

By then, the two sides had just about pincered all the aberrations between them. Supported by Susie’s missiles and Blazermate’s healing, the others had also made quick work of the aberrations. Karin had dispatched the most dangerous one personally, the aberration that had been Bernavas. Though wounded thanks to his former friends, Kyle was still alive, albeit slumped down on his knees. “It’s all over…” he muttered. “We’re through…”

Brows furrowed, Goldlewis looked around. The aberrations might be gone, but the team’s troubles were far from over. He hadn’t noticed it while fighting, but the Hermits’ aberration had thrown something out of whack. All across the rooftop, patches of the ground were in flux, shifting unnaturally or bleeding crimson energy from glitchy wounds. The air itself seemed to crackle in places, and as Goldlewis watched, small outcrops of red geometric crystal began pushing through into this plane of existence. His eyes went wide, and bared his teeth in a frightened grimace. “Aw, hell!” His gaze landed on Mudrock, and he pointed at Kyle. “Can you get him back to Sector V?” She nodded, and as she jogged over to him, the gate that everyone fled from the Astral Plane through suddenly tore open once more. Everyone beheld a vision of Tartarus with terrifying clarity, followed shortly by its massive coal-black arm reaching through the Gate to claw at the ordinary world. As if in response the crystal growths began to accelerate, and the Gate itself to widen.

“It’s a Redshift Cascade!” he roared, memories of the catastrophe in the Sector 07 highways flooding back to him. “We gotta haul ass outta here! Move, move, move!”

By that time, Geralt and Hal had made it through the gauntlet left for them by Iron. Though waylaid and obstructed, they were still in hot pursuit, but as Geralt burst from the apartment complex to catch up to Hal’s drone they both got a good look at the disaster unfolding down where the chase began. The latent data corruption in this part of Quarantine Valley had been kickstarted by the massive red matter spike introduced by the Hermits’ aberration, and to disastrous effect. For a few moments, the backdrop itself changed like a TV channel. Suddenly it wasn’t city buildings in the distance, but an off-white haze surrounding the formations of the Astral Plane, complete with red matter cubes afloat in the sky. They could see large spikes of red matter crystals cropping up all over the place, in some cases blocking off or breaking up bridges, though floating platforms started to appear as well. More Gates ripped open, disgorging Aellos and other chimeras.



“Oh man…” Hal piped up weakly. “Don’t tell me Blue Evolve caused all this…?”

Sandalphon’s voice cut through the haze. “I see you,” she said. “Everyone, use this shot to follow them.” From her distant vantage point, the archangel fired near Geralt and Hal’s position, showing everyone else where they needed to go. “There’s nothing we can do about this cascade. Hurry, before you succumb to redshift, and Iron gets away.”

As bad a taste as it left in the heroes’ mouths, she was right. Geralt and Hal resumed the chase, charging through the condemned upper floor of a building where a couple panicked squatters were trying to gather their belongings to flee. “Oh, good, there’re still survivors,” Hal breathed, not realizing that by the time Goldlewis and the others made it up here, there would be new aberrations waiting for them instead. After exiting back out onto another highrise rooftop, a loud reverberation swept over Quarantine Valley, originating from a spot at the edge where it met Detroit. There, the two could see an explosion of pink energy like lightning, which continued to swirl around some sort of mass wedged between the perimeter buildings. “What the hell is that!?” Hal wondered, close to panicking. “None of this makes sense! But I’d bet my life it has something to do with Iron. “We’ve gotta find her!”

In between them and that point of interest lay the only place Iron could have gone: the building on the other side of this rooftop. Before Geralt and Hal could get there, however, a Gate burst open above the empty helipad, and a humanoid chimera with curved horns, red armor, and a huge flaming poleaxe dropped through. Diomedes spotted Geralt and leaped down to challenge him with an angry roar.

As it approached, however, there came a shimmer of divine light, and Sandalphon warped in to stand alongside the Witcher. “I lost sight of you when you went inside,” she mentioned matter-of-factly, crouching down with the barrel of her gunstaff trained on the chimera. “It seems I was right to come in person.” She fired, her shot shaving off one of Diomedes’ horns and cutting a furrow through one side of the chimera’s helmet. With a slight sigh she stood, then jumped backward, taking up a support position with her weapon held like a staff. “Please continue.”

That encounter delayed Geralt, though if the other Seekers caught up fast enough, they could help. Still, the team hadn’t lost the trail while the scent of Iron’s sweat -not to mention her fear- hung in the air. At the head of the pack, Geralt led the way into and through the next building. While rushing through the dingy, trash-littered halls they ran into civilians bolting the other way, who stumbled and in some cases collided with the Seekers as they fled. Sandalphon, who already had to stoop to fit in these corridors, wasn’t strong enough to shoulder past the runners and got tripped up several times. The scent trail led to a stairwell, which had a surprise aberration in it that jumped out when the door opened, and climbing those stairs led to a dark, quiet hall on the building’s top floor. “End of the line…” Hal muttered. After another moment, though, he suddenly raised his voice. “Look! Someone’s there!” he called out, forgetting that the others didn’t have his drone’s sensors. “Trying to ID ‘em…I think it’s Iron. Go, go, hurry!”

When Geralt reached the room he indicated, however, he found a sorrowful sight. Iron was dead, her body gradually dissolving into ashes atop a stained mattress on the floor. Beside her lay a sleek black pistol. “We’re too late,” Hal observed, his tone morose. “I guess that’d be her gun, then. I don’t see any signs of a struggle. Check her pockets, would you?” Within them Geralt found a strange keycard that Hal seemed to recognize. “That’s a passkey for the Zone 09 gate. Wait…Iron worked for the ARI?” When he got a blank stare, the technician explained. “The Aegis Research Institute. Supplier for Neuron. Take a look around the room, there may be something else we should see.”

Geralt quickly found the other clue: an open case surrounded by discarded vials. “Looks like all these vials are empty. That means someone must’ve…” Hal turned his drone to look back out at the hallway. “There was a security camera in this hall, right? Maybe it can answer a few questions for us.” When he hacked in, he quickly set up a 3D holographic reconstruction of its data. It showed Iron running into the hallway and slowing to a stop as another woman stepped out of the room she died in, holding a case. With a start, Hal realized who it was. “That’s Jena!” he exclaimed, referring to the woman on the wanted poster he’d shown everyone earlier. “Ugh, the audio is really rough. Must be all the corruption.” The two women seemed to talk briefly, until Iron sagged down like a puppet with its strings cut, and as Jena turned to leave, Iron lurched into the room.

By this time, everyone had caught up, so everyone knew just who had been on the scene until mere moments ago. As they gathered, the sound of gunfire echoed through the building. “Could that be her?” Hal asked. “Let’s check it out!”

Everyone hurried through the building, exiting into what looked like an alley. “We’re still technically in Zone 09,” Hal told everyone. “Must’ve hit the outer wall by now though. We’re below Detroit.” After several back-and-forth turns, the alley finally opened up into a large square courtyard, surrounded on all sides by buildings that lit the area with the glow of huge neon signs. Through a rift between two buildings on the left side, the Seekers could look out across Quarantine Valley, but the scene right in front of them demanded their attention. People were already fighting here, and not anyone the Seekers expected to see. The enemies, nine strong, resembled chimeras, but sleeker and more artificial in appearance, with silvery exoskeletons and purple energy instead of red. Fighting them were just two humans, both Lupo judging by their wolf ears and tails. One wore a dark blue pinstripe suit that matched his hair, his purple overcoat fluttering as he discharged his twin revolvers. By now, just about everyone should recognize the stoic, almost drab attire and pale golden thorns of the other as she fought with a hammer-headed flail.

“The Judge,” Sandalphon observed, pausing at the entryway to the hidden underground plaza. “I do not know the other. Judging by his attire, a potential scion of an undercity crime family.”

As luck would have it, a bone-shattering slam to the jaw of a clawed Protolegion as she took it to the ground turned Penance the newcomers’ way, allowing her to spot them. “Oh, there you are,” she said wearily, wrenching her weapon free of the monster’s head with a schlorp. “And at the worst possible time.”

“Or maybe the best possible time,” Vigil joked offhandedly. “The first dozen of these things were fun enough to toss around, but this bit is starting to wear thin.”

Penance dodged away from the lance of another Protolegion, wincing as she put too much weight on her wounded left leg. “I suppose it can’t be helped,” she muttered before raising her voice. “Would your cohort consider a truce?”

Bringing her gunstaff down, Sandalphon’s Angelic Praise sent out a divine ripple of healing light for the sake of all allies present, both old and new. “I would consent,” she suggested to the others. “Whatever’s going on is bigger than petty politics.”

“It’s us against the chimeras,” Goldlewis agreed, glowering at the enemies of mankind. Anderson had to be close. He readied his coffin. “Team, let’s help ‘em out.”

After kicking away her attacker, Penance gave a stiff nod of thanks, her health and her morale restored. She and Vigil made a break for the Seekers, joining their ranks to turn on the Protolegion threat together.

Eventually, the wave petered out, leaving the cavern filled with ash, smoke, and innumerable spirits of fallen insects, which Jr only got a look at once he stepped out from behind his spiky barricade.

”Woooow, would you look at all that stuff” he marveled, as if he was looking at bountiful fields and not a field of death.

”Stuff?” Kamek asked, before understanding ”Ah you mean potential items. I suppose, though it might be difficult to pick out anything of value”

His words very much rang true, for it turned out to be rather difficult to pick the spirits of the bigger, stronger bugs out of the swaths of grunts, and they didn’t exactly have time to find the needles in the haystacks. Efficiency, as the dwarves would tell them, was the name of the game, because apparently it was only a matter of time till another swarm came a-crawling.

Still, that didn’t mean that there was no time, and so while the dwarves called down and then grouped around some kind of pod like squirrels round a bird feeder, the troop took a moment to do some much more adhock resupplying via spirit crushing.

Or rather Rika did, borrowin the mimic hat with Sectonia’s approval on her head, Jr at the ready to top up her HP.



The pile of gear rapidly amassed, until one part of it (the grapple worm) started eating another part (the Batnip) which prompted them to stop and be confused as to what in the world the first object was.

They found out when Rika poked it too hard with the butt of her spear, causing it to shoot out its tentacle, latch onto a nearby rock, and reel itself over there.

”Ohhh. It's like a grappling hook. A really meaty grappling hook. Neat” She commented, before noting that ”I mean I’ve already got one of those, but I can say for sure they’re good”

”I know I’m an insect, but I have class. That is just… ick.” Sectonia said upon Rika describing the grappling worm in such a way and seeing it move.

It took a bit of convincing, but Jr ended up taking said hook, a decision that Rika immediately got vindicated for suggesting as he started grappling around the caves alongside her. He also took the plasma pistol, while Rika emptied the rifle of its rounds to use them in her own rifle. Said empty rifle and the other items not seeing immediate use were shrunken and stashed, except for the barrel of very unpleasant smelling fluid.

That one of the dwarves inquired about, mainly because of the distinct container, and though he was not particularly pleased when he found out what specifically was inside, he was still interested enough to take it off their hands and stash it in their walking cargo hauler. There was vague talk of paying them back, but neither side really valued the drink highly enough to bother in depth negotiation over it, especially with the looming threat of another swarm breathing down their necks.

After they’d used up plenty of precious time on looting, it was time to split into pairs and take down a pair of generators.

The way the royals (and Kamek) ended up going ended up being rather a dirt blocked way, necessitating they take small pauses to wait for it to be excavated by Cyclops’s pair of arm mounted drills. Unfortunately for him, two of the people accompanying them were rather large compared to the dwarves, which meant a lot more digging needed to be done. Fortunately, his drills could tear through dirt like tissue paper, meaning that Cyclops could clear the way in a matter of seconds–were he so inclined.

On the first time they did this, they had the additional issue of Rika’s massive whale, who was not going to be able to fit inside the small tunnel. They intitaly ended up abandoning it, only for Jr to have an idea a few moments later, and running back to toss the spinner he’d gotten a few hours earlier. The gold 3 pronged frisbee spun through the air, landed beneath the monster and then proceeded to capture the willing beast inside of it in exactly the same way a pokeball would, allowing Rika to carry it around in a pocket.

On the second camping out and waiting for this, Kamek suddenly snapped his fingers as he remembered ”Ah, you know, I think I can help with this” before requesting ”One moment. Or ten” as he conjured up a Big Beetle steed for someone to ride.

”This big beastie will be able to tunnel through that soil with ease, or so I understand it” Kamek explained, before suggesting the Cyclops give it a go and combine magic and technology to make holes suitably large for the king and queen.

At that, the dwarf raised an eyebrow, not that the others could see it beneath his distinctive helmet. “Oi, you think I need ‘elp makin’ ‘oles? What kind o’ dwarf you take me for?” His double drills roared to life, and before the Troop could object, the way was open.

That left the Kamek rather disappointed it had to be said, the mage demising the construct with a wave of his hand and figuratively sulking atop his broom for much of the rest of the trip towards the power station. Sectonia gave a bit of a laugh at seeing that, saying. ”A person from the underground knows it best I suppose.”

After incinerating the crops the dwarves were trying to steal when dealing with its Kirikuri guardian the Bowser (and by extension his family) decided to leave the rabbit food nabbing to them, and focused on pushing forwards and dealing with the odd stray bug or seven. He then had to be dissuaded from picking a fight with the giant pig, Kamek once again refusing his King’s request to enlarge him so he could take on a large foe in an unnecessary manner. Instead he summoned some toadies to transport the stomping king in a more sneaky manner.

”Ok but this, this we’re smashing, right?” Bowser asked when they arrived at their destination, namely a big computer machine thing that was apparently one half of the inverted pyramid’s shield power supply.

Overhard glanced his way, considering the idea. “Usually, we call down Hack-C to take it offline for us nice an’ easy-like. These things’re tough as nails, our weapons don’t even scratch the thing. Who knows, they might even be rigged to call for backup if someone tried shuttin’ ‘em off manually. With a hazard level like this we don’t wanna bite off any more than we can chew, but who knows. Maybe you’d ‘ave better luck bustin’ it.”

”I could shatter reality around it… but that takes time to charge and if you have a faster way of dealing with it by ‘hacking it’, perhaps that would be the best way to handle it. If.” Sectonia said, nonchalantly telling the dwarves her most powerful spell at the moment but letting them ultimately decide on what should be done, deferring to their expertise in the matter.

Before the conversation about how to handle the Power Station could proceed any further, however, a strange noise issued from the bushy bamboo thicket. It was a mechanical tone, but distorted, almost angry. Then the foliage began to rustle, vibrating with the gaspy roar of an unhealthy engine, and through the underground forest crashed a hefty four-wheeled tank. Boxy and heavily armored, with wheels that could rival a monster truck’s, the all-purpose, all-terrain Metal Attacker featured a laser chaingun with three barrels stylized like bamboo stalks. Those barrels had already spun up, and after a brief moment it released a spray of green laser bolts with a lurching motion, prompting the surprised dwarves to start moving. While the others might wonder just who was attacking them in this mean green machine, Cyclops and Overhard could see that the problem wasn’t inside the cockpit as much as outside. “Xynach Charge-suckers!” the engineer yelled, his voice shrill. Lifting his Warthog auto shotgun, he began to fire at one of the two heinous-looking organic growths adhering to the Metal Attacker’s sides. One had glommed onto the left-side hub just over the wheels, and the other stuck to the right side of the cannon battery. “Shoot ‘em off, quick! Then we can use that thing for ourselves!”

A stream of fire gushed from Cyclops’ flamethrower. “Two licked suckers, comin’ up!”

”I’ve got the one on the left.” Sectonia said, taking this time to go after what she assumed was the ‘safer’ of the two disgusting growths. From the ‘meat hook’ to this, things were somewhat unpleasant weren’t they. Well, she’d take the ‘expertise’ of these dwarves into consideration once more as she blinked to that side to zap the thing with her dark lightning from her staff.

The troop meanwhile initially focused on not getting blasted by that laser sprayer, with Bowser summoning Marie Korbel to form bone walls, Jr planting a hand to the ground to form a him sized metal shield, and Kamek tossing out a few dopplegangers to draw fire.

Rika meanwhile just grappling hooked away, relying on her ability to slow the incoming shots by looking at them to avoid most, and her knight and cloyster strikers to block what she couldn’t dodge.

Survival secured, or at least given consideration, the troop returned fire, focusing the opposite side from the queen. A glowing fist appeared next to the machine to punch the growth courtesy of Kamek, while Bowser showered it with a spray of toxin from his cannons so he didn’t need to worry about damaging the machine with his poor aim. Meanwhile Rika nailed the infestation with her disruptor cannons, and finally jr arced a spiked iron discus around his cover to nail the growth without even worrying about exposing himself to fire.

Sticking to a single side quickly proved to be a needlessly difficult task, and the dwarves (not to mention Overhard’s turrets as he built them) just shot whatever side they could hit. Their shields and bone walls proved ineffective though, because this Metal Attacker could move. It rolled around on those huge tires at high speed, plowing and drifting across the cavern’s fields in huge sprays of mangled crops and rich loam to get around the Troops’ barricades and gun them down. It was agile enough that when Cyclops threw a sachel charge, he only managed to catch it in the edge of the blast, though the dwarf quickly chalked that up to poor light in this cave. Out-maneuvering this thing seemed to be the only truly viable option. Still, the damage that the dwarves and the Seekers racked up together quickly reduced the charge-suckers’ overall vitality by about a third.

At that point though, the parasitized tank did something new. It activated its suspension and jumped over a dozen feet into the air, at which point its tired pivoted to face downward, their hubs becoming green rockets whose blazing power kept the Metal Attacker aloft in the air. With both charge-suckers partially obscured, the tank began flying directly above its ground-bound opponents, scattering them with repeated bolts of lightning from its undercarriage. Its main gun, meanwhile, could still be angled to fire on Sectonia and any other fliers.

”Ow ow ow” Jr smarted as his shield got bypassed and he got sprayed with bolts, which got him to rapidly come up with a solution ”OK, new plan, a mobile shield!”

The prince ran over to his similarly flanked father, and quickly put his new scheme to work, the prince using both metal and healing magic, in conjunction with his dad’s vine growing from overheal power, to form an interlocking towershield of iron and ivy for his father to carry.

With this in hand the pair could shield themselves from the incoming fire, be it from the side or raining down from above, and then repair it when it got damaged. This, admittedly, left both royal Koopas mostly on the defensive, but their tanking and drawing of fire did leave the others more free to operate, and if the weren't being targeted, then they would be free to lower their shield and shoot back at their foe.

Said shooting back got a fair bit more difficult when the machine flew up in the air, hiding its weakspots. When it did so Bowser and Jr both switched to sonic attacks, Bowser trying to confuse the plants using supersonic sound waves, while Jr deployed Dazzle and had the Brionne let loose his disarming voice, sending pink soundwaves pulsing up into the air.

Kamek didn’t have much trouble getting into a shooting position, but he did have the issue that he was rather frail. So instead of taking the machine head on he stood back, tossing doppelgangers at it. He also used the power station they’d come to destroy as a platform atop which to summon his sniper strikers, if a good angle presented itself.

Rika actually had the least issues, because after giving up on trying to jump/grapple up to it, she realized she could just launch her electro swarms at it, the firefly-like bugs able to simply fly up too and electrocute the growths on the machine directly. Even if individual motes could be blasted, by having them fan out before striking Rika made it near impossible to take them all down (although this did also result in a lot of them being friendly fired).

Sectonia, not wanting to be the target of the chain gun, activated her pipe of insight to absorb the occasional lighting bolt that headed her way as she blinked away from the gun aimed at her. She’d first try to get around it, but the machine would spin quickly to lock onto her and fire, so seeing as she really didn’t have that many options due to her size until this attack was over and realizing she’d just be blinking around, she decided to instead blink behind the generator they were going to shut off itself. The Dwarves did say it was extremely sturdy, and it sure was as it took the tank’s gunfire and didn’t even care.

Although this left Sectonia herself in a bit of a pickle until the attack died down, as her long ranged attacks really didn’t do too much to the machine’s very small weak points either with how bad her accuracy was at these longer ranges, so she was stuck just charging her Spacial Shatter move to use if she got the opportunity.

Though the hard-hitting, defense-piercing deluge of lightning bolts put the ground fighters on the back foot, it was by no means a perfect strategy. Overhard was forced to abandon his position, not to mention his turrets, but when he and the others fanned out the tank naturally couldn’t hover over all of them. Only those who barely moved or stayed still, like the snipers, took the storm’s full fury. Even, the machine’s ungainly flight pattern meant that it wheeled around through the air above the explorers, never bombarding the same place for long. Meanwhile, the ground fighters shot up at the charge-suckers through various means, either damaging the parasites or debuffing them, even if their own debuffs didn’t transfer to the Metal Attacker. The fliers got their chance to shine as well, provided they didn’t run afoul of the tank’s bamboo chaingun as it cut through the air with a stream of deadly gunfire.

Pretty soon, the Metal Attacker exhausted its supply of lightning charges, and its hover fuel was by no means infinite, either. It fell back to the ground with a mighty slam, allowing Cyclops and the others to get some free shots in for a second or two. As pilots went, these charge-suckers weren’t the most skilled or intelligent by any means; it beggared belief that they could control the Metal Attacker to this extent in the first place. Still, with just about one third life left collectively, the parasites had one more trick up their proverbial sleeves. The Metal Attacker began jumping around, over and over again, aiming to crush its foes beneath its weight. At the same time, its missile rack came online, and in addition to spurts of chaingun fire it started shooting out tracking rockets to chase the Seekers down, three at a time. “Gah!” Cyclops roared as he stumbled backward, a salvo of missiles blowing up the soil around him and putting his heavy armor to its limit. “Where’s Paintbrush when you need ‘im?!”

Gritting his teeth as the Metal Attacker jumped at him, Overhard used his Platform Gun to create a sloped wall of plascrete in front of him as a shield, which absorbed the tank’s fall damage on impact. “We got shields of our own, dipstick! Use ‘em!” He started firing around the area, creating emergency shelters of thick, spongy, yellow material.

Dropping a partially charged Spacial shatter, only cracking the air but not shattering it, Sectonia had to swap to a bit of a defensive maneuver to protect the others. While Overhard used his platform gun to make some defenses for the stomping machine, Sectonia, having her own cover by the generator, summoned a large crystal to use as some additional cover for the others.

Bowser and Jr had to again switch strategy, the King tearing apart their improvised shield and hurling it to the side inorder to lose weight and Jr recalling Dazzle, before they legged it for one of the shelters Overhard and Sectonia had created. As they did this, Rika grappled over to cover them, latching onto the king and pulling herself close, before using her grizco blaster as a flak cannon to try and blow up the incoming missile barrage. It worked out well, detonating the rockets prematurely, but there were plenty more where those came from.

In doing so she reminded Jr he had his own hook, and a moment later the prince was reeled over to one of the cover pads by his grapple worm. One beneath it he tossed out Mimi, who did her best to nail the bouncing machine with electroballs, while jr splashed goop about to try and further bog down the Metal Attacker next time it crashed down on them.

Rika finished escorting Bowser to cover a few moments later, and then grappled away again inorder to find her own safety from which she could try and nail the machine with her disruption cannons. The king meanwhile took the moment of comparative respite to catch up and huck a mega fireball into the air, properly lighting up the cavern.

It was also something the fliers had to operate around unfortunately, and Kamek, having been hit by quite a bit of feedback due to misjudging his sniper striker’s timers, did not want to go anywhere near. Indeed it wasn’t the only friendly bit of fire flying through the air, as the erratic movement of the Attacker resulted in far more stray shots than the first two phases.

As a result he abandoned the skies entirely, instead teleporting down under one of the shelters, and from there, sending out dozens of individual drybones into the open to act as bait.

All this culminated in the Attacker splashing down onto Jr’s goop, getting its wheels covered in it and slowing down its leaps. Then it got bogged down crushing drybones, allowing Rika to stack up a pile of disruption globs on it, which sapped its attack power, which in turn let Bowser brave the weakened fire.

Utterly fed up with the mobile machine, the king launched himself out from cover and into the path of the debuffed machine and demanded ”Embiggen me Kamek!” even as he used his own magic to grow in size.

In his haste to do this, the mage pulled out the dusty and oft unused sub-power of his enlarging magic, and causing an effect identical to a supermushroom on the king, increasing his size and strength by 50% in a few scant moments. Right after said moments passed, the Metal Attacker slammed into the king, but the enlargement magic absorbed the hit, both persisting and stopping the Attackerin its tracks for just long enough for Bowser to grab it in his claws, and suplex the entire machine over his shoulder, slamming it turret first into the ground.

Doing that left the Metal Attacker almost completely defenseless. It couldn’t swivel or adjust its turret or fire any missiles, and with no lightning left it couldn’t let loose a thunderstorm from its exposed undercarriage either. “Hell yeah!” Cyclops roared. With that one move from Bowser, the battle was one. Now it was just a matter of sealing the deal. “Clear the way!” he yelled at the others, chucking his last satchel charge. As soon as it landed, the explosive device started beeping dangerously, projecting an indicator of its (large) blast radius. “Eat THIS, you disgustin’-!”

BA-BOOM!

The blast launched the Metal Attacker into the air. It came down on its side next to the crater, the charge-suckers melting away into ash, then tilted over to land on its tires with a slam.

“Nice goin’ lads! The Power Station’s ours” Overhard congratulated everyone, though his face fell when he checked his ammunition stores. “That took everythin’ we ‘ad, though. Let’s order a resupply along with the hackin’ drone.” Before going to scrounge up some more nitra exposed by the damage to the cavern’s foliage, he glanced over at the Metal Attacker. “Reckon we could fix that up and get it workin’ for us. Any o’ you lot know ‘ow to swing a hammer?”

”I can give it a look yeah” Jr called over, as he rummaged around in his duffle bag, pulled out a very small engineering suitcase from it, and then had Kamek re-enlarge it for him. Then he strolled over to give it a look. Other than the final massive detonation and Sectonia’s only slightly charged shatter, they’d mostly tried to avoid wrecking the machine itself, and so it did not seem like it would be the worst job.

Everyone got to work getting ready for the next stage. First, the hacking drone arrived a ways from the Power Station, requiring the team to set up a chain of data node stakes to connect it to the target. That was minion work for sure, and Kamek’s toadies were set to the task of ferrying the nodes to and fro under the mage’s direction. Sectonia would summon her antlions as well, but they would act more like security for the toadies, only rarely helping out with placing the nodes. Once the nodes were laid out, with a green data stream flowing between them, the pod opened to reveal the little robot Hack-C with its little keyboard. It wore a tiny mining helmet on the warning light atop its head, and the twin fans in its rear included RGB lighting.

While he did that, Rika borrowed Jr’s gadbrush and painted a nice sea of electric goop around the hacking pod, which would hold off any ground based foes and let her sail around to boot. Overhard lent her a hand by laying down a plascrete slab on top of the pod to give it and Hack-C some protection from above as well.

Once the dwarves got enough nitra and stowed it in Molly, they called down a supply drop that drilled in through the cave ceiling. Both planned to take half of the total each, filling their stores up to full. Finally, repairs on the Metal Attacker completed, and the tank was operational once more. It wasn’t that roomy inside, allowing at most two individuals of average or below-average human size to sit in single file, but its controls were intuitive. Its official designation seemed to be NORA MA-05 ‘Kuebiko’. Once everyone caught their breath and readied up, the hack could begin.

Jr, naturally, climbed inside the machine he’d just fixed up and took the piloting seat, fiddling around with the controles for a few moments till he felt confident with them. With their main healer piloting the machine, Kamek left a number of white mage clones of himself hovering around the station, ready to keep everyone topped up.

Bowser, finally, had done nothing to prepare, other than take a break and a snack, which in a certain way left him the most prepared of everyone who had been busying themselves in between fights.

Then all that was let was to begin.

Milla hummed thoughtfully. Out of every enemy entrapped by her Quicksand Conversion, only Roxas still remained within its reach. Not a great use of her talents. Of course, she didn’t plan to stay here; she was just wondering which direction to go. As much as she wanted to help Sasha, he probably didn’t need it, and that mechanical monstrosity looked pretty horrible. “I’ll lend you a hand, darling,” she announced to the Sectopod, and she was off. Rolling atop her hoverball, she sped up the street with incredible speed, her dark power pulsing around her until she got close enough to capture Midna’s bearmech in its area of effect. “Open season!” she sang back, mindful of her Originum Art’s remaining duration.

”...Firing main cannon.” With an ear-splitting VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM the Sectopod’s Wrath Cannon lit up the dark day, bathing all of Main Street in the radiance of a fifteen-foot-wide beam of unadulterated crimson power.

Everything had basically gone straight to hell right from the word go. After he was seemingly trapped in place by the Quicksand Conversion, Roxas immediately suffered a severe case of lasers-to-the-face which downed him pretty much immediately. He should probably have counted himself lucky that Milla didn’t decide to finish him off right then and there. And yet, the fact that she chose not to somehow felt like even more of an insult.

But after that catastrophically bad start, he finally managed to push himself back to his tired feet and patch himself up with a Curaga. Great, a grueling battle against absurdly powerful psychics and here he was stuck without any MP to work with. At that point he realized where Milla had gone off to. While he had no desire to deal with her Quicksand thing, maybe his speed wouldn’t matter if he was attacking from behind? And that’s when he had an idea.

The Nobody began to run in Milla’s direction. But before he could get slowed down by getting too close, he summoned his striker, attempting to have it appear as close to within striking range as possible. But even as Burn Rooster attempted a heavily slowed down fire breath attack, the kid who summoned him was already going for a surprise attack at Milla’s back. Yes, both he and the Striker spirit would be slowed down by the Quicksand Conversion, but Roxas was counting on his attack being enough of a surprise to get through in spite of the slow effect.

Midna, meanwhile discovered her mech was capable of evasive maneuvers just too late to actually avoid the incoming blast, as her frantic wrestling with the controls upon being slowed down resulted in a hop and a sideways dash that did absolutely nothing to avoid the giant beam of death that blazed over everything it its path. Warning lights and claxon blazed and blared inside the machine trying to tell her about the front of it had been wrecked. Unfortunately for it, and her, being blasted by a weapon with the luminosity of the midday sun had done quite the number on the princess’s eyes, and she was seeing none of it.

The bear engaged in a full, and blind, retreat while the princess threw every minion she had at the issue to try and buy her time, risk of feedback be damned. 7 spear wielders of ice and psychic energy appeared across the back of the bear, all of them grabbing hold of exposed fur to avoid falling off, before lobbing their respective javelins at the nearby hoverball rider. Skywave was also summoned, the exosuit firing a gravity cluster to try and pin down the flier, while roadblock taunted and shielded to draw fire away from the other strikers.

Portals also opened, launching Midna’s wolfos and flygon into the fray, both of which rather got in the way of the ranged strikers when they tried to melee attack Milla. The flygon naturally attempted this via swooping towards her, claws bared, while the best the wolfos could manage was a single leap up into the air to try and snap her between its jaws.

In the aftermath of the Wrath Cannon, Milla couldn’t help but be impressed. How could that tawdry-looking bearmech possibly withstand that immense laser? Well, it had sustained suitably immense and probably irreparable damage at least, but it hadn’t been destroyed. And the occupant (or occupants) hadn’t been either, judging by the varied creatures pouring from the charred hulk’s body. Milla chanced a look over her shoulder back toward Sasha to see how he was getting on, and instead found Roxas back on his feet and charging toward her with no sign of the injuries inflicted by the Sectopod’s blaster. Some sort of powerful healing, no doubt. And to think she’d thought him soundly defeated. Now she was being attacked on all sides, her enemies spurred on by the dispersal of her Quicksand Conversion. It had been over twenty-five seconds, after all.

“Dear oh dear,” she pouted. “You naughty children are eating through my SP like candy.” With her off hand she slid the gilded black dagger from her belt. Then she reactivated Quicksand Conversion. Fast as her attackers were, nobody could mount an effective close quarters assault when slowed by 80% just under 60% of the time. Roxas, Burn Rooster, and Midna’s melee minions all slowed to a crawl, their brief bursts of movement unable to keep up with Milla as she rolled around on her hoverball. In that kind of situation, evading Burn Roosters flamethrower was child’s play. That heavy robot was annoying, but did it really think she was going to prioritize it just because it was noisy? “Quite slow,” she taunted the others. “You should-” Then Skywave’s gravity cluster touched down next to her, yanking Milla off her hoverball. A deluge of projectiles landed on her, drawing blood in several places. Projectiles seemed to be exempt from Quicksand Conversion’s effect.

When the gravity well ended, Milla lay on her side, propped up on her arms. Her head was hanging, but a slight dark mist seemed to be rising from her body, and when she raised her head she looked disappointed. “Tsk-tsk-tsk,” she clicked her tongue. “Harder. You’ll have to hit me harder than that. Much harder.” Her shadow goat rose up from the ground behind her and gave a horrific shriek as she activated ATK Up β, boosting her basic attack by 80%. Then the ghoulish beast raised its claws. “Like this!”

It jammed its claws into her back, sinking them in deep to activate Renegade Gambit. Milla groaned in intense pain, her HP dropped from about 90% to 30% in an instant. In exchange, her attack went up a further 20%, her attack speed went up 10%, and her Dragondrive Gauge went up by over half. Dark power, pitch black and blood red, welled up around her as she floated back to her feet. With her dagger in one hand and her inverted staff held like a sword in the other, she smiled through the pain. “Give me your best shot!”

As soon as he was able to move, Roxas let out a groan of frustration. This whole Quicksand Conversion thing just didn’t seem fair at all. He knew what he needed right now, but unfortunately he still lacked any MP to make that happen. So for now he was stuck continuing to rely purely on his Keyblades. But at the very least he finally realized that projectiles went right through Milla’s Quicksand power. But here again, Roxas lacked any MP to actually capitalize on that.

It didn’t look like Midna’s mech was going to be in any state to do this, as it slumped to the ground. Yet a moment later the giant cannon on the back of the crippled mech, now low enough to the ground to shoot at it, turned towards the self wounding woman, as a mostly recovered Minda found that control. Then, with a flick of a button the cannon roared, and fired out of itself a not inconsiderable amount of sand she’d portaled into it in a shotgun like blast.

That was a pretty good shot. Only the mechanical groaning of the bearmech as it reoriented its cannon clued Milla in to what was about to happen, and even that gave her barely any notice at all. The realization might have frozen a lesser soldier in her place, paralyzed by fear, but Milla was a seasoned veteran. Even before joining Psych-OSF, and gaining powers that strengthened her the closer to defeat she got, she’d stared death in the face many a time. She had no means to block or withstand this, and no time for second guesses. As the bearmech’s cannon fired, she leaped into the air, her dress streaming behind her. The conical sand blast caught her, but it didn’t cut her short. She burst from it a split second later, her upward momentum boosted by her signature Levitation. Her flips came to a stop as she reached the apex of her jump, dark power welling around her.

“...Shadowfall!”

She cannoned downward, creating a dark shockwave in the air. Her Renegade Descent hit the ground with a tremendous geyser of purple-wreathed black energy, dealing 1260% of her attack in an area only a bit smaller than the range of her Quicksand Conversion. It might not be boosted by ATK Up β, which only applied to her normal attacks, but that staggering multiplier plus the bonuses from Renegade Gambit meant just one thing for everyone caught in its radius: annihilation.

Roxas could easily tell what was coming when Milla just jumped up into the sky. Things like that had a habit of being followed up by big stomping attacks. And so the Keybearer made sure he backed off for several paces, trying to make sure he wasn’t caught up in the incoming drop attack. He let out a sigh of relief when he managed to avoid harm. This was getting hairy, and his MP still wasn’t recharged just yet.

It was a good thing, then, that Midna had taken one look at that charging of power and proceeded to smack every untouched button with all four hands till she found the ejection button. She was launched up into the air, while below her the bear mech was unceremoniously dumped into a portal. It was very fortunate that it had been crouching down before being dropped, because it meant only the cannon got blown to smithereens rather than its skull.

As the dark eruption subsided, Milla huffed at the disappearing bearmech, tracing Midna’s upward path with her gaze. All that expenditure, and not even an elimination to show for it. This four-armed trickster’s ability to manifest and unmanifest both herself and her allies at will was one hell of an ability. By taking to the sky, however, Midna had consigned herself to the sparse afternoon daylight that filtered through the angry clouds. No escaping now, Milla reasoned. Time for some target practice. Through the SAS she activated Sasha’s Marksmanship, and pink psychic lasers began to hurtle upward, rapid-fire.

The princess’s response was to expend the rest of her cargo crate collection, portals opening up and dumping the boxes in the way of the shots, but that ablative armor collection was only going to last so long.

Roxas could see what Milla was trying, but he was too far away to try and intercept the shots. And so he had to settle for the next best thing. Continuing to keep his distance, he winded up his arms and hurled both his Keyblades in opposite arcing paths that took them right toward where Milla was. He couldn’t stop the initial shots but he could at least try to draw her attention away from Midna.

”Hey! Forgetting something?” It really was irksome to be consistently ignored like this. But on the bright side it at least gave him ample opportunity to try and take the Psychonaut by surprise.

The element of surprise did not necessarily mesh with a yell for attention, but nevertheless Roxas succeeded in taking Milla’s focus off Midna. When she turned her foe’s way and saw his double keyblade throw, the Septentrion pursed her lips, thinking. Contrary to what the boy might believe, she hadn’t been ignoring him. No fighter worth his or her salt, no matter how confident, should ever just ignore an opponent. She knew, though, that her Quicksand Conversion was keeping him out. So far, he’d given her the impression that he couldn’t attack from range and wasn’t a good enough swordsman to fight her toe-to-toe without his mobility. She could hardly blame him, but that meant Roxas was her secondary priority. Until now.

Rather than sit still and get sandwiched, the dashed toward the keyblade on her right and sent it flying with a heavy stroke. Then she pivoted and parried the other as it hit her, carrying her momentum forward into a revolving knife strike to the keyblade’s guard that sent it skittering along the ground. Then Milla activated her Levitation and surged straight toward Roxas, bringing her Quicksand Conversion to him. “Careful what you wish for…” The tip of her cane extended like a rapier, she thrust it toward his chest. “Darling!”

Like Milla, Roxas wasn’t just going to stand there. He recalled his Keyblades back to his hands from the moment she batted them away. And then when she lunged, he moved to parry the thrust of her cane with his Keyblades. He was a little surprised to find that these movements were apparently unaffected by her quicksand. So it basically only affected his ability to run and jump?

Suddenly this seemingly unfair advantage of hers looked a little less unfair now. And it seemed Roxas’ luck finally turned because now his MP was back. And this allowed him to instantly offer a reprisal to her attack in the form of a Dual Counter. Sure, he wasn’t moving forward much at all but the actual circular slash itself still went as normal.

With a lot of momentum behind it and its power boosted by 100%, the end of Milla’s staff struck the boy’s guard with a whole lot of force. No amount of jarred nerves or strained muscles would stop his counterattack, though. He swung around in a circle, his keyblades carving radiant streaks of light through the air, but he wasn’t the only fast one. What Milla lacked in strength (without all her buffs from Earthspirit and Bellina, at least) she made up for in speed, and her trademark Levitation brought the contrast with Roxas into sharp relief. She dodged backward from his counter slash, hobbled as it was by Quicksand Conversion, and turned a certain hit into a glancing blow. Undeterred, she threw herself forward, vaulting up and over to try and bonk her opponent’s noggin as she passed overhead before landing behind him.

She wasn’t the only one who arrived behind him however, as Midna emerged from Roxas’ shadow at almost the same moment, having surrounded herself in an enshadowing sandstorm while he took their foes attention.

”Payback time!” the splinter peppered princess declared, a cry meant for both friend and foe as she came to pay them back for the aid and the harm respectively. Then she crescent-moon slashed her tree spear into existence to ward the speedster away from performing a backstab on Roxas, before launching her Boltok Pistol out of a portal and into a freehand and then using it to take potshots at Milla, again more to keep her away from her head ally than to do direct damage.

Upon hearing the yell, Milla transitioned smoothly from her wind-up into a guard. Polearms built like the Treespear were made for thrusting, not slashing, and its weight made her attack even more awkward, but the clumsy strike also kept her in blockstun longer than a clean hit. Milla used her Levitation to let the hit move her rather than crush her guard, but at this range it didn’t make much of a difference against the princess’s pistol. The shots she took prompted a sharp intake of breath, and Milla began to pick up speed. Now both her foes were stuck in Quicksand Conversion, and before its second usage timed out, the Septentrion planned to use it. Rolling atop a new hoverball, Milla sped around her opponents in a full circle, trying to outpace their attacks and cause one to bodyblock the other. There was just one question on her mind: how could she defeat an opponent who could just choose to not be attackable? She needed to figure out that disappearing act. Still, she couldn’t waste this chance while both were right here. Once more Milla hurled herself into the air, then rocketed downward in a desolate dive to try and wipe the Seekers out with Renegade Descent.

And it was at that moment that it became Roxas’ turn to pull a vanishing act. Well, not quite a “vanish” so much as his body turning into a streak of light that arced and zagged upward at the descending Milla. Miraculously this streaking light seemed to bypass the Quicksand Conversion, either due to the sheer speed of light or the light itself counting as a projectile. But either way Roxas was able to put himself in a position to try and intercept her descent with a powerful Cross Slash.

”Not so fast!” was the first thing Roxas shouted at her the moment he emerged from the streak of light to unleash his attack. Even if he couldn’t interrupt her attack entirely he was confident he could at least slow it down or blunt it somehow.

Midna could only hope that he gave her enough time to pull another disappearing act, the princess tossing her spear into the air and then using its shadow to hop away, unfortunately having to abandon the armament in the process.

She was right to get out of the way. Roxas burst upward, a ray of light against the crushing tide of darkness, pitting his keyblades against the dagger that was the driving edge of Milla’s withering Renegade Descent. Even with her damage buffs amping it up, her technique was telegraphed enough to be dodgeable, but -as demonstrated earlier against the bearmech’s sand blast- too armored to be stoppable. Though the Cross Slash cut into her already-low health, Milla won out, her meteoric shadowfall devouring Roxas’ light. Together the two careened into the ground and Roxas disappeared into the darkness, dealt a whopping 1260% of the Septentrion’s attack damage.

In spite of the pain, and in spite of all the damage, Roxas’ light refused to be snuffed out. In fact if anything, it was starting to burn brighter. His blades became encased in searing light even as he was pinned into the ground by the Renegade Descent, ”Not yet!” he screamed out with sheer determination and began to hack and slash his light-encased blades at Milla with wild speed and strength.

Milla’s brows went up, surprised that Roxas was still breathing, let alone fighting. As the ripples of molten shadow around the two began to subside, she backed off to avoid his keyblades, allowing Roxas to regain his feet.

He spent all remaining MP to exert as much strength and power as he possibly could into this rush of attacks, ”You’re finished!” And at the end of it he brought both blades crashing downward and unleashing a quartet of light pillars that raced across the ground in four opposite directions from him, which would deal heavy light damage to any enemy they collided with along the way.

What a bad time for Quicksand Conversion to run out; Milla was forced to deal with the Limit Break for real. The area became a furious dance of light and dark as Roxas attacked with unrelenting ferocity, his airtime as floaty as his target’s. At first Milla held her own, dodging in unpredictable directions and blocking with both her staff and her knife, which she held like a parrying dagger. But Roxas was putting everything he had into this, and on defense the Septentrion was no star player. She got clipped, then a second later struck twice, then soon after caught with a blow to the head that scrambled any chance of holding on any longer. The last part of Event Horizon chewed her up and then spat her out. Though she resisted light damage, that punishment on top of her already-low health left her on the ground, her hat torn off and her silvery hair splayed out in every direction. A long wound covered her left cheek from chin to ear, half bruise and half gash.

The next moment Roxas sank to the ground too, the last of his energy exhausted along with his magic.

Midna, having stayed clear of the blistering battle, stepped back in at this point, flicking a pack of orange gel and a granola bar at Roxas with one hand, while her other ones held a charged up Prometheus Torch.

”I liked that spear” she informed the other wounded woman calmly as she close in, before lunging forwards and attempting to drive the lightning-infused bo staff into her chest

Her dash stopped short, slowed by eighty percent.

Milla let out a deep breath, hovering off the ground. One hand went instinctively to the wound on her cheek, prompting a pained wince. When she turned to look at Midna, her shadow goat manifested around her, its stygian skull overlaid across her face like a mask and her eye blazing in its empty socket. Immediately a flurry of psi-blasts borrowed from Sasha’s Marksmanship shot at Midna to keep her from closing the distance, and as the barrage ended Milla tugged the cord in her collar. Because of her horns, a hat appeared instead of a hood, a dark synthetic veil hanging in front of her face with a pattern that resembled a single left eye, glowing orange. Brain Drive was engaged, giving Milla the legs to stand on that she needed to face the Twilight Princess.

”This again? You all really need to find a new trick” Midna declared confidently despite the pain of the psiblast inflicted wounds, and even she was stuck actually having to face the Brain Drive to protect the injured Roxas

Roxas slowly reached for the items that Midna threw his way. He ate them both and thankfully his injuries and damage was mitigated a bit. But he lacked the energy to actually get back on his feet. He could push himself to a kneeling position but that was it. With a trembling hand he summoned Oblivion, then shifted it into a backhanded grip. He used the last of his stamina to throw himself forward and to try and throw the Keyblade itself in Milla’s direction. But that was all he could muster. Even the act of throwing the weapon put him off of his kneeling position and back to laying on the ground.

Unfortunately it was up to Midna to find a way to finish this fight.

The princess meanwhile raised up her hand, curling the fingers and started to spread out her own field, one that washed over both her and Roxas harmlessly as it cloaked an area within an orange ring of power with supernatural darkness.

”Come on then, try me” she dared, as two portals opened up, one summoning her flygon, which began blasting Milla with dragon breath, and the other tossing up the princess’ Charr Pirate Musket into her free hands, which she promptly fired at Milla as well.

After dashing back from the dark field, Milla took a deep breath. Anger, indignation, and so forth might be warranted, but instead she focused. Enhanced by Brain Drive, her battle sense and her dexterity were finely tuned. Despite knowing that she now faced her foe at peak performance, Midna hadn’t fled from Milla’s Quicksand Conversion. Instead she extended a smaller field that overlapped with Milla’s own, but didn’t quite reach her. The Septentrion stood her ground, almost effortlessly blocking the thrown keyblade from Roxas, as the flygon appeared and Midna started shooting. Well, that creature would never get close enough to bathe her in those nasty blue flames. Levitating atop a new hoverball, Milla circled around her opponent, staying out of the dark zone while keeping her foes within her own pulse. Midna was a bad shot, and her weapon looked like an antique. Paired with her taunt, this seemed like bait. Neither terribly hurried nor anxious despite Brain Drive’s limited duration, Milla accessed PSI from Lucas through SAS, and an image of that nervous, pitiable boy flashed through her mind. His vulnerability made him her favorite, almost like her very own child throughout his training, and their bond was strong. “PK Thunder.” An electric orb flew in to hunt Midna down. “PK Freeze.” A self-generating snowflake arced through the air, growing larger as it went.

In response Midna dug back into her bag of strikers and started throwing them out there again. Roadblock to shield them from the ice, icy and psychic spear throwers trickled in one by one to toss their javelins, and finally Skywave to shoot its healing projectiles at both her and Roxas.

As for the electric orb, well, her flygon, aware of how much said style of power unnerved its trainer, and also seeing how it could not hit the out of range opponents, instead (slowly) turned and wrapped its wings around Midna, preparing to simply take the attack that would do the ground type pokemon no harm.

Those phantoms again. Milla kept moving too as Midna used her summons to counter both her projectiles, and Roadblock shuffled around to try and keep its shield between her and its master. PSI casts and javelins flew back and forth, but neither amounted to much. Milla took another deep breath. Last time she used Renegade Descent, she didn’t have any Dragondrive stocked up from Renegade Gambit that could be spent to ready the skill again, so she couldn’t just crash down on these happy campers like she did before. Dragondrive was the answer, though. Her last hope, once Brain Drive drained away. Calling upon her shadow goat, Milla used Renegade Gambit again. She didn’t have any extra health to sacrifice, but it still boosted her gauge up to 60%. Just one more time, she thought. Problem was, she’d need to attack to use that skill again, too. It all came down to that dark field; with Brain Drive and Quicksand Conversion still on her side, she’d need to risk it if she wanted to keep moving forward. When Roadblock finally timed out, she had less than ten seconds left on both her abilities. It was now or never.

“HYA!” Milla boosted forward with Levitation, charging with her staff gripped in both hands for as many mighty strikes as it would take.

”Gottcha” the princess declared, as she snapped her shadow hand’s fingers, causing power to pulse through the field once, causing orange electricity to lash out, briefly encasing Milla in a stunning web. It also marked her for a swift strike from her Flygon, who lunged forward to try and deliver what would have been a devastating finishing blow, had the slow field not dragged it to a crawl.

What was not slowed was the lighting the princess blasted fourth from her bo staff, a continuous beam of it blazing forwards at the restricted target till the weapon ran dry of charge.

No way–crowd control!? Milla gritted her teeth, her assault stopped in its tracks. The flygon might be slowed on the whole, but it would burst her way at full speed .6 seconds at a time. Until then, she suffered Midna’s electrocution. “Gaaaah…aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!” Milla cried, unable to fight back. Her only blessing was that lightning fell under ‘light’ in Bellina’s world, making it disadvantaged to and resisted by her own inherent ‘dark’, but she really didn’t have enough health to make that fact matter. The Septentrion withstood it only long enough for the Flygon to finish her off.

Its deathblow snapped her staff in two and knocked her down hard, her dagger sliding along the pavement. This time, Milla didn’t rise. No Brain Drive. No dragondrive. No life. It took everything she had to crack open one eye and stare up the street, her vision weakening. “...Sasha…”

With the defeat of the transformed hermits, there wasn't much time to breath at all before the group was running again, this time from a red wave that would be really, really bad. Blazermate had no complaints as she flew off chasing Iron as instructed, as that was in the opposite direction of the oncoming red cascade. Susie complained a little with a sigh, but rellented and started to fly herself. Roland was the most vocal about his complains, saying. "You guys have some bad luck. Do you run this much?". Blazermate gave him a reply, looking back at the red cascade to make sure no one was getting left behind. "Uh yes and no? Sometimes we just kill everything. Or you get stuck in a giant ship filled with monsters and darkness..."

Roland sighed himself and ran, his emotions running high which made him faster. He hadn't any time to rest yet, and all the fighting was getting a bit tiring. Still, he had dealt with multiple long combats while working as a librarian, so this wasn't new to him. It still sucked though, and unlike before, he didn't have that safety net Angela gave him. Blazermate having a mobile version of K corps singularity though was extremely useful though. Blazermate was already getting tired of all the red shift stuff, but more because it scared her since she couldn't cleanse it. Susie was likewise not as interested either, but that was because she hadn't been able to make any usable deals.

Eventually they had all caught up with Geralt and the now deceased Irons. Looking at the scene, Roland could only say. "I guess they couldn't handle the city life. I don't blame them, but this was a cowards way to go out though." There wasn't much time to ruminate on this though, as a gunshot outside caught everyone's attention. Heading outside, Roland saw his old boss Penance. While his life in Midgar seemed like a distant dream after being awakened to the truth, it was still his job right now and he said, as everyone was agreeing to team up against these... humanoid chimeras? "Hey, sorry for not reporting in sooner. Its been a whirlwind since I tailed these guys. I can explain things after we take care of these things." Roland said as he got ready.

Blazermate, seeing this as a bigger fight, summoned her engineer so he could start building his sentry. Susie didn't really have any prep work herself as no one had elements for her to use, so she could only get ready for the fight. And Roland, having still gotten no rest, was at his max emotion level and giving his allies his "False Promise" buff. (30% extra strength and defense, 25% weakness to psionic and mental attacks.) And from that, he got started as he moved in to flank one of the Chimeras as Penance went in with her hammer, double teaming it with his old boss for old time's sake. Striking it with his daggers, then his hammers, then finally his one handed swords dealing a respectable amount of damage.

Susie sat in the midlines firing her missiles as she learned what each of the enemies did to see if there was one she could jump on and start to beat up. Blazermate trying to keep herself safe as she healed everyone and getting an opportunity to send a single purgatory ghost that zoomed in and exploded on one of the Chimeras that Goldweis was dealing with. Seeing his ally get attacked, one of the Chimeras decided to attack Roland, getting his first attack parried by Roland's counter, but getting a clean hit on the next one. Roland wasn't going to have that though, and decided to show this newcomer not to mess with him. Using his last acquired EGO page, those light wisps illuminated the area again as the battlefield turned into a twilight bathed wheat field as Roland donned a bloody scarecrow outfit and launched a fleshy barb at the other Chimera, using it as a chain to fly towards it and swing at it with his giant scythe. The Chimera might've been able to parry this attack or even negate it entirely with its counterattack, if Roland wasn't surrounded by his friends and running high on emotion. Still he just barely won the clash on this one.

10 seconds later, the battlefield turned back to normal, Roland contending with his own Chimera as the others dealt with theirs. Susie having found that she could join in on the melee when one of the others grabbed the attention of a Chimera with a drill stomp. Some dodged, some didn't, and while at first they attacked Susie's mech as it was bigger than them, eventually they learned to attack the thing inside of it, which would've been really bad if Susie was trying to 1v1 them, but as she went after ones others were tangling with, she could defend herself with her mech arms while she was attacked, leaving a Chimera's flank wide open for her partner.

This lead to a bit of a save on Susie's part as Roland had gotten hit by another Chimera attack, causing him to get Staggered and his defenses left completely open. Susie managing to smack the Chimera to focus her after it landed an attack on the staggered Roland, dealing some chunky damage and forcing Blazermate to come over to heal up the fixer and putting herself near the center of the battlefield. Roland soon recovered, and was back on the attack, but he was getting tired of all this fighting either way.

Zenkichi almost had some more choice words for Kyle as he slumped, defeated at what was admittedly a major setback to the Hermits' plans. But then he noticed the condition the rooftop was in. And the air around them. And the magically appearing crystals, as if from another dimension tearing itself into this one.

Part of Zenkichi begged that his eyes were deceiving him. The other part of him wondered if he'd already gone mad. Either way, a Redshift Cascade was the last thing they needed now, and the giant Chimera that was its herald was a great sign to book it. Sandalphon marked where Geralt and Hal were at the moment with a quick shot from on high, and Zenkichi started running. He gave a quick look back to make sure the others weren't going to try to make some stupid heroic stand, but other than that, his attention was on where they needed to be, not what they needed to get away from.

Geralt, meanwhile, didn't need to be told twice that there was nothing he could do. Something of this scale was well beyond any of their capabilities, and he focused on chasing down Iron. He paid very little attention to the admittedly odd light show near the border with Detroit, focusing on the task at hand. The short distraction of Diomedes thankfully being brutalized by Sandalphon kept that distraction to a minimum, as well, though Geralt drew the Hateful Flesh once more to quickly put an end to it. He wasn't sure how much more often he could pull that out, with each time drawing more blood from him, so for now he carried the monstrous weapon with him as he ran. With his Orphan-enhanced strength, it was a simple enough task.

When he finally managed to reach the room Iron had holed up in, Geralt sighed. Just a little too late. Learning that a runner for Reunion worked for Neuron was...admittedly not all that surprising, once Geralt ran the information through his head. Neuron fought Chimeras. Reunion made the drug that let normal people do that, though with predictable but, apparently, poorly-anticipated results. Was this a well-intentioned person trying to give the common people a chance to fight back against the invisible threat that plagued them? Or an unscrupulous alchemist seeking riches for offering a weapon the government could use? He wasn't sure, and now, it seemed it didn't much matter. They'd have to get their answers from somebody else.

"Man, just what the hell were these guys up to...? And Neuron too?" The newly-arrived Zenkichi asked.

"That's what we're gonna find out." Geralt decided. "Not sure I care much what their goals or intentions were. That crap killed people."

"Yeah, we gotta make sure they don't keep spreading that Blue Evolve stuff, or we're gonna have a lot more Abberations on our hands..." Zenkichi muttered in reply, before the group heard a series of gunshots. "Crap!"

As they headed to the sounds of the gunshots, Zenkichi skid to a stop as his hair raised on seeing the Judge. Penance, huh? Great. Totally not a horrible sign about how not quiet the Seekers had been. Still, at least Roland might be able to make some peace with his boss.

"Wait, those...don't look quite like Chimeras." Zenkichi said as he got a better look at the Protolegions. "Ya know what, not gonna question it." He decided, drawing Closing Statement and running in to join the fight.

Geralt, meanwhile, head already leapt into the fray, taking on a Protolegion with the Hateful Flesh, using the explosive blobs of flesh to stun it for a moment as he came in swinging.

The Seekers did a fairly good job of assisting one another, with Susie coming in to slam and stomp at Geralt's enemy, while Zenkichi assisted Roland in fighting a group of them. When the other Turk found himself off-balance, not only did Susie come in for the assist, but he drew his revolver and dumped a few rounds into it, forcing the Protolegion back onto him as he called Valjean to drop a Triple Down into a pair of the monsters.

Geralt used the Orphan's flesh cleaver to great effect, and once he wore the Protolegion down, he finished it with a heavy slicing blow, slicing the monster's arm from its body and dissolving it into ash. As the fighting died down, he turned to the others. "Alright, Where to now?"

The Hollow Bough. So far, it had been an unpleasant trip, the present company excluded. Between the uneven paths lined by treacherous plants and grass and the armored bugs that scuttled throughout the area, the going had been rough. Not to mention, none of the Seekers really knew what they should be looking for destination wise, only the item they'd been tasked with retrieving. So it was that when arriving at a larger hollowed out area occupied by some dwarves, Primrose and Therion were grateful to their guide Tingyun for arranging better passage through the area.

Then a swarm came through, something expected from the way the dwarves reacted. A flurry of action began not long after, along with shots fired, spells slung, and insect chunks flying. For the Travelers, whatever chitin their weapons couldn't break through their fire spells made up for. Therion ended up taking an approach aiming for the bugs' weak spots with little trouble reaching them between his good accuracy and his feline form. Primrose continued to test out her new lance, and though she delighted at the freezing flames that flared from each impact point she ended up relying more on her magic in the end. She was still a novice with this type of weapon.

And finally when things died down, it was time to help fulfill the condition for their passage up. For that everyone split into two groups, each towards a separate "generator" they'd be looking to handle. With the Koopa family all sticking together in one direction, the majority of the remaining Seekers took the other - which meant that Primrose, Therion, and Artorias all tagged along with Nadia, Tingyun, Paintbrush, and Stetson.

Though Therion wondered how much the stuff the dwarves were mining might be worth, he kept his hands to himself unless it was to deal with roaming glyphids. He waited with Tingyun and Paintbrush for the lift while Primrose floated up to follow Nadia and Stetson, among the first to get a peek at what was to come.

A mostly mute Artorias huffed and puffed following the subsequent scuffle as he walked apace behind the others, though this seemed naught but a mundane trek through the caves he kept himself satisfied with the challenge the strange insect creatures called 'glyphids' seemed to present. They weren't exactly much but they came in numbers. A wonder it was they seemed the only other threat within the Hollow Bough.

Though the previous area was much more fitting to what they expected when venturing subterranean (cramped tunnels, cragged rock, perilous pathways, dangerous bugs, and darkness especially), the new one was more like what they'd actually been finding in the Under. Bright, sometimes beautiful areas ensconced in the earth like their own separate little bubbles.

Primrose gingerly touched the suspended water art. It stayed put while she waved her hand up and down inside, feeling the water resistance.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this could support a person. You could swim in the air," she said, and then thought privately to herself, though sights like these hardly come as a surprise to me anymore in the first place. Though not surprising per se, the phenomena was no less amazing, as Ms. Fortune had exclaimed.

The look on Therion's face clearly said he wasn't going to test out swimming. He tread a little farther into the cavern, eyeing the pitch dark faces of the sunflowers. Then he glanced at the cable they'd been following. Though they'd already come this far he found himself asking, "if this thing is feeding energy to that 'Caretaker,' wouldn't it be easier to cut off the flow than whatever it is we're going to do...?"

Stetson gave the thief a dubious look. “We got one dwarf who tried to be clever like that a while back. Spent all his ammo tryin’ to shoot it to bits, didn’t even get ‘alfway through. Figured ‘e’d use ‘is pickaxe to finish the job. Turns out the power that flows through these cables flows through dwarves just fine, too.” Leaving what became of the enterprising dwarf to Therion’s imagination, he crossed his arms and resumed his scan of the room while the thief grimaced. This especially alien ecology was hard to make heads or tails of. “Since we can’t bust in through the outside, we usually call down a hackin’ drone to mess it up from the inside. Won’t take long if we keep it safe.”

"Hmph, thou make it sound as if dwarves aren't the smartest bunch." Artorias said with an amused snort as he imagined what played out with the dwarf Stetson spoke of "How is it that these strange cables you speak of give magic to such strange contraptions?" asked the knight whom was unfamiliar with most machinery.

His remark made both Paintbrush and Stetson angry at him. “Figure it out for yourself if you’re so damn smart,” the latter grumbled.

Artorias tilted his head "Hm, my apologies it twas not my intention to offend thee. Thou are strange people and things to my eyes, for I come from a land where naught exist." the knight gave the cable a cautious nudge before retreating after either being electrocuted or not.

At the moment, Nadia was more interested in testing out Primrose’s hypothesis. She scrambled up one of the nearby pillars, her claws sinking into the vines with refreshing ease. With the nasty Bough Wasps and their horrible nests left far behind, she felt confident enough to unzip her jacket all the way once she’d climbed to the top. Then she crouched down, pressurized her blood, wiggled her tails, and pounced upward into the pool a dozen feet above with a splash. Going against gravity, she only got about halfway in before she started to sink back out fast, but with some furious paddling the feral managed to immerse herself completely. It was cold, cold enough to give her goosebumps, but the water was surprisingly clear and overall, rather nice. Delighted, she kicked her legs and swam through the pool, her ponytail streaming behind her. When she reached the top, Massachusetts’ power engaged to bring her onto the surface.

For a moment Nadia struggled, since this new manifestation of the shipgirl’s rigging was a lot bigger than the old one, but to her surprise the arms deployed on their own and extended to act as weaponized stabilizers. “...Oh!” In addition to not knowing that her new rigging could do this until just this moment, she hadn’t featured functional cannons since her fusion with Northampton at Blackwater Bay. When she took aim at a floating brain monster and willed the guns to fire, a double-shot of Hydro missiles burst forth to track down the creature and detonate against its vermillion lobes. After a couple more experimental volleys, the mutant popped, the flower on its head preventing it from ever fighting back. “Hah! Well, how about that!” Grinning, Nadia skated over to the edge of the floating pool and waved down at the others. “Well? Water you waitin’ for?”

His feelings on swimming clear, Therion began moving on little by little while Primrose only looked up at the feral and shook her head. Tingyun waved back, but also did not seem eager to soak her fine outfit or well-groomed tail. “I’ll leave the cave diving to you if you don’t mind, Ms. Fortune!” meanwhile knight Artorias simply shrugged, at this point he knew words alone were less likely to sway Ms. Fortune so he let her do as she must while he stayed behind with the others as he wasn't much for swimming.

From high up, Nadia could get a better view of this cavern’s layout. In addition to the large pink tube flowers that took in and then shot out water from the blue bulbs, there appeared to be green metal pipes that also ran in and out of the terrain, which she hadn’t noticed before among the green vines. Primrose recognized it, since the one she, Rubick, and the Troop took between Ash Lake and the Home of Tears was similar. She could also see more weird critters than before. In addition to the giant caterpillars and glyphids with flowers in their heads, there were a couple very round purple hippos, piranha plants with legs, and two small families of elephant slugs that floated and played in the air. Those are weirdly cute, the feral thought, though since she already had a new pet she made sure to give Chucho an affectionate scratch when he nuzzled her. Sometimes the critters went in and out of the green pipes the same way the blue bulbs’ water blasts navigated the flower tubes. Nadia also saw one problem, though. The cable leading to the Power Station disappeared into one of the walls, and she couldn’t see any way in.

Well…that wasn’t strictly true. Seeing one of the pink flowers sticking out of the wall nearby, Nadia got an idea. She skated a ways across the pool, then jumped off the side. After falling for a moment, she spent a little blood to airdash back into the pool from the side, then swam down to and dropped out the bottom. She landed on a yellow pole flower that swayed beneath her, then leaped to another. One last big flower on the ground looked like the perfect landing spot to get her close to her destination. When she landed on it, though, the flower promptly stood up with her on top of it, standing over twelve feet tall on giant, very human-looking green legs. It started to move, not walking but sliding with gyrations of its feet, and Nadia quickly jumped off. She somersaulted a couple times and landed on her feet, then turned to watch the flower slide off onto a pond of poisonous purple slime, her expression one of subtly horrified confusion. When she recovered a moment later, she approached the pink funnel flower, only to find its innards sealed tight.

“Ah, man,” Nadia grumbled. “I thought I could climb in ‘cause the water shoots straight through these things, but I guess this one’s closed.” Clawing at it, or the vine-covered wall for that matter, didn’t seem to work. As the feral found out, the plant matter regenerated with alarming speed. She turned to face the others with a shrug. “Guess I’ll ‘petal’ my bright ideas elsewhere.”

Primrose floated over to where Nadia was, pressing a hand to the dirt packed wall once she touched down.

"I suppose digging through isn't an option," she said, mostly to herself. If it was possible it would risk damaging the cable, and as Stetson had warned that didn't seem like a good idea. She took a few steps away from the wall and pointed out the closest piping.

"We can probably use those to get around this area. There was one connecting the lake and the city together, that's how we got in. Of course, there's no telling where they lead without going through them..." The pipes were interwoven through plant life and the walls and ceilings of the cavern, making tracing their routes impossible from there.

To demonstrate, Primrose floated up to one of the pipe openings. If she recalled correctly, getting transported through was almost automatic. She looked back to smile at the others before she went zip into it to see where it led.

As she did that, Therion glanced at Ms. Fortune. "Maybe your water copies could get through those flowers," he suggested. Just to see what was on the other side of the wall at least, considering the rest of them couldn't use the same route. As for himself, Therion had been testing a few things already. They already knew anything with those pink flowers growing out of them didn't fight back and hardly moved at all, and wondering if that was true for the rest of the flowers blooming in here he'd pitched a few knives at them. Silly maybe, as most reacted in the usual way a plant would (as in not at all), but the knife he'd thrown into the center of the sunflowers had gone through and disappeared, making them either yet another way to get around or a creepy trap into a dark void. Unbeknownst to him, it emerged from another random void sunflower elsewhere in the room and stuck into a vine beneath it.

While Nadia didn’t particularly want to find out where her fellow thief’s knife went, his other suggestion made her snap her fingers, an elated smile on her face. “Oh, yeah! Great idea!” Taking hold of her right wrist with her left hand, she pulled it off and then channeled blood from the stump to create a new copycat. Compelled by her wishes, her clone jogged back a short way, then took a running jump at the flower it promptly opened up, swallowed the copycat whole, and then spat it out on the other side. After a couple seconds of waiting, Nadia blinked a couple times, then straightened up and gave a shrug “Well, uh, I guess it worked, heheh. For all the good it does us. Guess my copycat’s all aclone over there ‘til we find a way through.” Scratching her head, she turned and looked around the cavern. Thanks to those big blue bulbs, there were water spouts and large water bubbles flying around all over the place. If only any happened to be heading in this direction.

At that time Primrose emerged from the other end of the pipe she’d climbed into. Shooting headfirst at high speed through the chute’s pitch-black interior probably hadn’t been pleasant, but when Nadia spotted her across the cavern the dancer looked none the worse for wear. The feral waved at her friend when she saw her. Unfortunately, Primrose looked no closer to her objective. Further experimentation with those strange tunnels would confirm that most of the pipes led circuitous paths around this biome. “Guess it was a pipe dream, eh?”

Not one to just offer criticism, Nadia then tried some experimentation of her own. While the dwarves tried different weapons to see if any worked on the plants, and Tingun boosted their attack before joining in alongside them, an idea drove her to approach one of the bubble-spitting bulbs. She positioned herself in the path of its next water blast, and when it fired, the bubble promptly knocked her flat. Left drenched (again) and sputtering on the ground, she couldn’t help but laugh at herself when the others glanced over. “Pff,” she giggled, knowing she probably looked like an idiot. “Don’t worry, I got this. Check it out.”

She picked herself up and went for the bulb itself. Much to her displeasure, her phagophobia filled her with panic at the prospect of clinging past the bulb’s green lips and into what looked like a mouth, but Nadia squeezed her eyes shut and steeled herself. When she finally took the plunge, the bulb promptly spat her back out, immersed in a bubble of water that flew through the air. It soared right into a curved pink tube flower, took a hard right, and shot out again in a new direction. The next second the bubble burst against the fulcrum of another tube flower, right in the middle of its meaty green stem, and after smacking against it Nadia fell once more. “Aww, c’mon!” she groaned, dizzy from the flight and dazed by the impact. She didn’t notice that her impact against the straight tube flower caused the whole plant to swivel ninety degrees so that one flower was pointed toward the exit of the previous tube. When the next water bubble sailed overhead, it went right in and carried on, flying until it encountered another tube flower or a hard surface.

Though Nadia hadn't noticed it, her companions certainly had. Disappointed by the piping and creeped out by the flowers, Primrose and Therion respectively had turned their attention to Ms. Fortune's new attempt when the dwarves' own didn't yield any success just yet. As the Dancer picked her way back closer to the others (hopping from plant to plant instead of taking the unpleasant pipe back), Therion got the feral's attention and indicated the flower-vine-tube amalgamation that she'd crashed into.

"You might have actually figured it out," he said. "Look, it turned."

His eyes traced some invisible path over the nearest flower tubes towards farther ones, trying to see how they might fit together. Once he had some idea in mind he ran towards one of them, jumping and pushing off the sturdy green stalk to strike its center mass and see it move. When subjected to a hard enough blow, the tube flower rotated dutifully. The same held true for all other pink flowers, able to shift between one of four cardinal positions, although for the straight tubes it was functionally two. However, yellow tube flowers couldn’t be rotated, requiring Therion to work around them. Bit by bit the path of the water bubble got longer and more convoluted.

When Nadia saw the vision, she joined in to help, although after messing with one that her fellow thief already had what she wanted she opted to follow his lead instead. Not that she couldn’t figure it out, of course; it’d just be faster to let Therion do it at this point.

While they went at it, Miss Tingyun came over to join Primrose. As it turned out, Stetson and Paintbrush had found a few cubes of Bismor, so they promptly left their fruitless endeavor for the thieves to solve and went to mine up the glossy yellow, orange-spiked mineral whilst the Seeker's resident knight went about to deal with any threat that appeared with swift brutality.

That left the Foxian to seek company from the next most elegant lady around. It seemed she was the chatty type. “Quite the cast of characters you’ve assembled,” she began. “What could possibly bring you all together, let alone to the depths of the earth?”

"You haven't even seen the half of it," Primrose replied, tone pleasant and words bordering on playful. She thought of shadow princesses, robot girls and nopons; the types that also made up their eclectic group in other parts of the world. Letting the thieves work on their flower path, with Nadia taking the plunge to see if each new orientation worked, the dancer gave Tingyun her attention.

"It's a complex and, frankly, unbelievable tale," she said. And one you won't be able to truly grasp, not yet anyway. "But I can give you the abridged version, if you like."

Her cordial manner and connotative words stoked the flames of the Foxian’s curiosity further. “Please.”

The sigh Primrose let out was almost wistful. Oh, where to start...? She took a moment to craft her tale, make it palatable for someone still glowing with sunset light to understand. She would like to free Tingyun, in the long run, but for now she only spoke.

"Most of us were displaced from our homes. Suddenly, violently. And after being dumped in a totally new, wrong place we were fooled into believing everything was normal... for a time. When our eyes were opened, we naturally came together to find a way to return home. Come to find out that everything was done by one... person, thing. An entity like a force of nature, or so it seems. I'm not sure what kind of place you're from, Tingyun, so it may come as a surprise to you to know this villain is of the cosmic variety." She paused there for a moment to let the words, however vague, sink in. "So we are allies of circumstance, trying to destroy this villain and set things right. Saving the world, you could say. As for how we ended up here, underground, well..."

Primrose continued by regaling Tingyun with a condensed version of their trek, starting from Gerudo Town and through the mess at the train station, ending with the fact that something they needed to complete their goal was down here, and they needed a relic from the Hollow Bough to get there. Tingyun listened, as politely interested as one could possibly be in the face of so many unfamiliar names and places.

As the dancer’s story-in-brief came to a close, the burglars struck gold. The latest flower layout that Therion set up turned out to be just the ticket as Nadia, who by now was soaked through and shivering thanks to the cool cavern air, climbed in the water bulb one final time. Once spat out in another water bubble, she flew through the carefully-laid sequence of pink and yellow tubes, going through turn after turn until she was so dizzy that Nadia didn’t even realize when her bubble shot into the final flower. She disappeared from the others’ view, successfully delivered to parts unknown. That meant that all the others needed to do was follow in her footsteps.

Naturally, this prospect didn’t please everyone. “Well, looks like it’s time to get our feet wet,” Stetson grumbled, tugging at his whiskers. “Damn water’s gonna mess up my beard.”

Having been distracted by Primrose, Tingyun went wide-eyed as she realized what she needed to do. “Wait. Can’t we talk about this?” She hugged her tail defensively.

"Nope. I did all the work, so everyone else gets to take a swim," Therion called from where he stood beneath the complex path. Though he'd gotten splashed plenty whenever tube-tester Nadia had splattered against a dead end, his tone implied he wasn't planning to go through himself. For all the uncertainty surrounding getting spat through an intricate connection of living hoses, mostly he just didn't want to get any wetter than he already was. His cat ears were low against his head, flicking some droplets off.

Tingyun huffed. “Well, if you’re not going through, it’s clearly not that important. I should stay behind with you–what if another one of those grabbers shows up?”

“Much I’d like to say to quit whinin’, she’s got a point,” Stetson mentioned. “Damn cave leeches’ll rip your ‘ead off if you ain’t got someone to get you free.” He didn’t plan to back down, though. After Paintbrush held on to his turban and jumped into the bulb, Stetson grabbed hold of his cowboy hat and did the same. In quick succession both dwarves got flushed through the system and into the cave on the other side of the vine wall.

Therion ran a hand down his face. He didn't want to deal with leeches or water but realistically, sticking together would be the safest option. After the dwarves disappeared through, he gestured for Tingyn and Primrose to take their turns.

"Fine. We'll all go. Ladies first."

"How very thoughtful," Primrose said, light and sarcastic, but she approached the water bulb all the same. She expertly kept the grimace from her face as she prepared to lower herself into it.

"Unfortunately, that whole ‘saving the world’ thing often brings us to the most unpleasant places and situations, compared to that a little water is nothing," she told Tingyun just before she jumped in and was spat out through the flowers.

Tingyun shot a look at Therion. “Such a gentleman.” With a defeated sigh she climbed into the bulb, then shot through the chain of organic pipes to emerge one very sodden and disgruntled Foxian. Very reluctantly, the final member of their group went after her.

After reaching the other side of the final flower, Nadia burst into a new grotto dimly lit by various glowing mushrooms and bulbs. As the water around her soaked into the plant-blanketed soil, the feral got to her feet gingerly, holding Chucho to her chest. If only the ghostly pup actually gave off any warmth. She didn’t mind getting wet anymore, and this was hardly new to her at this point, but a dip in warm waters beneath a tropical sun felt a lot better than getting drenched in a chilly cave. This was almost as bad as the caves beneath Carcass Isle…almost. At least it felt lively in here, however strange these plants and animals might be. All around her she could see more weird flowers, whether they gave off light, span like pinwheels, or danced to this biome’s natural rhythm. There was also one of those void sunflowers; hopefully it led back to the previous room. She didn’t spot any enemies, but she did see her copycat, standing in the middle of the grotto with her arms crossed and her feet tapping impatiently.

“Oh, there ya are,” the feral said breathily, putting on a smile. “For a minute there I thought ya’d go off and left me a lass half empty. Guess my blood runs deep, though. I should learn to b-positive.” She gave her copycat a high-five, and when the clone burst on impact Nadia soaked her blood back up.

“Haha, good one!” a cheerful voice said.

Pivoting her head around with her eyebrows raised, Nadia spotted a yellow flower with eyes. “Oh cool, a talkin’ flower,” she remarked, not even surprised at this point. “Thanks, little guy! I purr-ide myself on my sense of humor, ‘specially seein’ as I’m pun-derground and all.” Hoping to air dry at least a little while she waited for the others, she took off her jacket and tried flapping it, albeit with limited success thanks to the added weight of the rigging on the back.

One by one the rest of the party came through the same way Nadia did. As soon as Primrose was back on her feet she conjured a flame in both hands, shedding some warmth.

Her spell elicited a gasp of wonderment from the talking flower. “Whoa, that’s so bright!” She looked down at the unfamiliar voice, though any greeting she might have offered the flower was interrupted.

“Ohh, you’re a lifesaver,” Nadia sang, drawn to Primrose’s warmth like a moth to flame. Although a little less shamelessly, the others joined in, with Tingyun in particular wringing out and then wagging her tail to try and dry it out as fast as possible. “Ya know, I’ll admit,” the feral began. “We do a lot of fightin’, and I feel purr-etty well ‘kitted out for that, but this kinda goes to show that we could really be prepared in other ways. In fact, we’ve been crazy lucky. I mean, we barely scrounged up enough light to get this far. One wrong step in the dark, and we woulda been worm chow back there. What if we ran into boilin’ lava or freezin’ cold down here? If we didn’t fight our way through a place literally called ‘Pizza Tower’ we might not even have food.”

Primrose didn't reply, but she thought that Nadia was right. Something to think about for the future, though it was hard to prepare when you have no idea what to expect. Case in point this entirely strange area of the Under they found themselves in now, not to mention even stranger ones like the bloody river some had found at the bottom of The Basement. There was also the fact that some of the basic gear they'd brought hadn't seen any use... and, one contingent of Seekers had very nearly succumbed to freezing cold on the peak of Split Mountain. "Lucky" was an understatement... In fact, when she thought more about it, maybe luck was only a part of it. They were being guided by a heavy hand towards the Dreamcatcher, so it was more than possible they were being helped in little ways too.

All this worried Tingyun quite a lot actually, but she put on a brave face and gave a tittering laugh that she tried her best to keep her nervousness out of. “Well, they do say that the fate of a journey is often decided before taking the first step.”

Stetson was a little less charitable. “Sounds like a bloody miracle you all ain’t died ‘orrible deaths yet,” he told her as Paintbrush ruefully shook his head. Unable to argue with him, Nadia just shrugged.

"Basically, yeah," Therion agreed.

Artorias’s little experience with the Seekers thus far dictated it was less fate than getting by with the skin of their necks that kept them alive more importantly alive as a group.

The knight nodded "We survive because we work together, it would be suicide to go alone especially in dangerous places such as this."

Once sufficiently warm and dry, Nadia bid farewell to the talking flower and the team got moving. Their resident Scout led the way, following the cable whenever the tunnel forked or expanded into another grotto. His blue flares kept the way brightly lit, even if the shadows they cast seemed even more unnervingly dark than normal. Around the explorers, the flora and fauna continued to bemuse and unnerve them. There were strange fruits that Nadia had never seen before, at least for the most part; when she discovered a bush laden with cube-shaped strawberries, she tried one, which she found pleasantly sweet and tart. Less pleasant were the eye plants, which came in different varieties but all swiveled to watch the heroes go by. At one point the team ran into a small flock of Dorky Faces, strange creatures that seemed to be a mix of jellyfish and withered onion. As funny as they looked, their Funny Breath was paradoxically much less amusing, inflicting confusion on anyone who got too close. After getting thrown for a loop himself, Stetson drunkenly sicced Paintbrush on them, who minced the Dorky Faces with his rocket launcher.

Not long after that, the tunnel culminated in a wall of dirt, which the dwarves took as a sign of progress and immediately started dismantling with their customized pickaxes. On the other side lay what the team was looking for, situated in what might be this extraordinary cave system’s most fantastical cavern yet. It was huge, shaped roughly like an immense egg laying on its side, with the floor sloping down as it stretched out before the explorers. Aside from green vines that formed tall pillars or hung between them, every inch of the floor, walls, and top-heavy rock formations lay beneath a blanket of velvety pink or purple moss, some of which bloomed with small white flowers. Nadia could see two main points of interest: the Power Station they’d come to find, which the cable naturally led straight to, and the oversized flower pot standing (literally, given its little green legs) in the center of the room. It had (proportionally) little arms to go along with its legs, one akimbo and the other flexing to hold up a swing, a pink-and-white hula hoop, and a spiral ramp that led up to what looked like a domed house at the top, perched above the rim of leaves. Daisies sprouted from its sides, and at the very top sat a huge pink flower, its center large enough for Bowser to fit through. Warm light blazed through the windows, some of which took the form of a face on the flower pot’s front.

Nadia crossed her arms and shook her head, as bemused as she was amazed. “And here I thought it couldn’t get any weirder.”

“Wonder if anyone lives there,” Stetson mentioned, tugging his whiskers. “Someone better check it out while we call down the hackin’ pod. Don’t you lot all run over though, we need more hands to set up the data nodes good an’ proper.” Once again since nobody would explain to him what exactly this machinery did, Artorias was left a bit clueless as to what or how data nodes worked.

Paintbrush was already on his way over, and once he used his radio to confirm the Power Station’s position, a dwarven machine drilled down through the ceiling a few moments later. It landed a few hundred feet away from the Power Station, so the dwarves got busy linking them together. If the house had looked unoccupied, Therion would have gone to take a peek at what might be inside - but since a lodger was possible (even probable) he stayed behind to help the dwarves. The faster it was done, the faster they could leave. After taking a node out of the hacking pod, a stake protruded from the bottom they could use to plant it in the moss, and by tossing the nodes down the chain they quickly set up a stream of bright green digits flowing all the way from pod to station. Meanwhile, Nadia, Primrose, and Tingyun paid the strange house a visit. That meant jogging up a ramp wide enough to admit a car, and once they reached the top, Nadia went ahead and knocked on the door.

“Like, just a minuuuuuute~”

Nadia’s brows shot up, extremely surprised by the extreme valley girl accent that just accosted her ears. “Oh, I’m lookin’ forward to this.”

After some rummaging, a couple crashes, and noises that sounded suspiciously like cartoon sound effects, the door popped open. Out sauntered what the feral could only begin to describe as an alien plant woman, since while she looked like nothing Nadia could have conjured in her wildest dreams, she was definitely plant and she was also definitely woman. For all intents and purposes she appeared to have a potted plant for a head, with a drawn-on face (not to mention blush marks), goggles, and a mop of green fronds growing from the top in the rough shape of a spiky ponytail. She wore a black-and-tan leather suit with a tail like a root protruding from the back. It wasn’t zipped all the way, and quite possibly never could be. This alien raised one finger by her cheek, her drawn-on face somehow shifting in order to give her visitors a cheeky smile and a wink. “Like, wow! You guys tooootally took me by surprise! Nobody's paid me a visit in, like, yee-urs. How’s it hangin’?”

“Holy- uhhhuhuh," It took a lot of effort for Nadia to not go slack-jawed, or burst into laughter for that matter. “Well, whatever I was gonna say, it’s gone now.” She turned to the others, clicking her tongue. “What were we doin’ here again?”

Initially drawing his weapon the knight lowered the tip of his blade once Artorias was certain the strange plant creature was a non-threat, but to Nadia’s question the knight shook his head and shrugged.

"Dealing with the power station," Primrose supplied. She did not hide her amusement at Nadia's reaction to the stranger. Primrose herself looked more curious than anything. It had only been a couple of seconds, but this woman proved quite the character already. Certainly there were parts of her that drew in wandering eyes, but her leafy hair, petal bow and sprouting flowers were all rather cute, especially when combined with the drawings on the pot she wore... or that Primrose assumed she wore. That couldn't be her actual head. The dancer tilted her own head slightly toward the plant woman.

"We saw the house nearby and were curious if anyone was actually home. You won't mind, right...?"

Kanna put her hands on her hips. “Uuugh, that noisy thingamajig? Yeah, totally, go for it! It gives me hella bad vibes anyway. Like, I’ll even help!” With a snap of her fingers, she equipped two sets of floating leaf-shields, three on each side. Then she turned around, peering throughout her home’s pastel pink interior. “C’mon, Yacopu!” A squeaking noise issued from within in reply, and after a brief moment a small white rabbit(?) scurried out to jump into Kanna’s arms, at which point she lifted him up. “Alright, let’s do this! Floweeeeeeeer!”

She then looked at Nadia expectantly. Though taken by surprise, Nadia raised and shook her fist above her head. “Floweeeeer…?”

“Flooooooweeeeeeer!” With a cheer, Kanna started bouncing down the ramp, leaving her visitors to follow in the footsteps of Stranga’s most unusual plant.

Nadia watched her go, her expression still one of major disbelief. “Well, uh, I’ll refrain from the obvious pun and just say it’s nice meetin’ someone helpful for a change. Even if she’s a real pothead.” With a grin she headed over to the edge and jumped off, taking the short way down.

They reached the waiting dwarves and broke the news to them about Kanna, who jumped up to sit on top of the Power Station the moment she arrived. Stetson looked dubious at the prospect of her helping the team, but he proceeded with the explanation of everyone’s mission. “Okay then, listen up. We got Hack-C all set up an’ ready to go. All we gotta do is keep the bugs off it ‘til it’s finished, and bish bash bosh, we’re done ‘ere.”

Nadia slid her boxcutter hilts out of her belt and attached two fresh blades. “So wait, this thing’s gonna attract bugs? Why?”

Stetson shrugged. “Eh, some technical mumbo-jumbo, I dunno. You want the details, ask Overhard. Me, I just think they hate us.” At that, Paintbrush gave a weary nod.

Good enough of an answer as any, I guess. Nadia shrugged back. “Feline’s mutual.”

Once everyone was ready, Stetson pressed the start button, and the hack began. “Okay, look lively lads an’ lasses. It’s go time.” Sure enough, the walls and ceiling started to rumble, and glyphids began to extract themselves from the mossy earth en masse.

“Like, looks like we’re up then, Yacopu!” Smiling, Kanna squeezed her eyes shut and began to concentrate. “Flow…..errrrrrrrrrrrrr…!” After a brief moment, a strange flower popped out of her head, which glittered and shone with a strong white and blue aura. With a relieved sigh she plucked it, then promptly fed it to her rabbit, who devoured it in seconds. Then, as the bugs closed in, he began to concentrate. He turned around, then fired out a pellet that exploded in the air like fireworks. Immediately a psychedelic Wonder Effect pulsed through the cavern, changing everything it touched. Everything turned a random color, including Nadia herself from purple hair and blue skin to green clothes. Birthday hats appeared on all the glyphids. And finally, the cavern itself shifted forty-five degrees, turning the floor into a steep slope Nadia had to dig her blades into to not start falling down.

“What the hell!?” she yelled, her voice a ridiculous high-pitched squeak that surprised even her. She glared at Kanna with heterochromatic orange and yellow eyes. “How’s this supposed to help us fight?”

Kanna looked completely unbothered. “Fight?” she squeaked back. “Like, I’m here to help you guys have fun!” At that, Nadia just shook her head despairingly. Tilted floor or not, the glyphids were coming, and even in these ridiculous conditions Hack-C wasn’t going to defend itself.


Initially bemused at what was happening, it was the room turning that actually spurred the Travelers into action. Primrose, her red, black, white, and gold color scheme now turned a garish yellow, brown, and pink, relied on her scarf once more, taking to the air to avoid a fall. With no such equipment her friend's eyes darted around the room, and he hastily threw himself in such a way that when gravity changed, his fall was cut short by Kanna's home. Therion landed on the side of the ceramic house, a mostly green colored silhouette, and couldn't help turning a brief glare Kanna's way.

"This is fun to you?" he asked. His natural baritone had gone up an octave or two. He couldn't afford to feel any embarrassment from it, especially when the same thing was happening to everyone else. It was hard to find the humor in silly hats and clashing colors, especially since the ground had shifted under his feet while big armored bugs were swarming in. He wasn't the type to find battle fun in most circumstances either, and this wasn't one of those times.

Before all of the changes, Primrose hadn't been either. Personally she'd still say that she wasn't. But she sort of understood where Kanna was coming from; if not fun, the fight was sure to prove interesting at least. So Primrose didn't question it.

While airborne she held one hand high above her head, conjuring flames that gradually compressed themselves together and darkened into the Black Fire Orb. She hurled it into the tight pack of glyphids. She watched it explode on impact and ignite the insects as she landed on a piece of land that had once been a vertical plant-like pillar. Even the fire burned a random color, flickering a haunting mauve tone. Some glyphids that survived the blast fell from the wall (once ground) they clung to and landed on the new ground (once wall) farther below. Once he'd gotten his bearings it was these glyphids that Therion focused on first, lest they crawled up the opposite side and caught the group unaware. He made use of the magic knives from his own glyph, sending the weapons to knock the bugs off the walls again or catch them in their softer, unarmored spots. He hadn't been aiming for their heads, but with the horned headband duplicating his knives a quarter of the time it was inevitable that a stray throw would catch one of the glyphids in the face. It popped, the noise (and the accompanying disembodied childlike cheer) loud enough to be heard over the shouting and skittering, and showered a small area with paper the colors of the hat it'd wore while its body collapsed and faded.

Clearly Kanna's idea of 'Fun' was not exactly the helpful kind, at least to the knight whom found his vestments became a ridiculous shade of pink to the now blinding white shine of his armor, Artorias’s voice while still a bit of a rumble rose a few octaves "This is not fun it is rid-" the knight cut himself off with an annoyed sigh, swinging his blade to find the glyphids he felled exploded in a burst of garish multicolored confetti.

Artorias’s swings and movement seemed to pick up, moving at a pace he didn't quite think was possible but at this point whatever the effects of Kanna's meddling had done was further from his concern at the moment.

The gravity shift definitely threw Nadia off at first. Once rotated forty-five degrees, the cavern’s bowl-shaped floor turned out to be a steep slope, but not an unworkable one. After stowing one of her blades to leave one hand for climbing when needed, the feral adopted a low stance and began to move. When the first gang of bugs reached her, her blade flashed in the light of Stetson’s flare, and rainbow-colored viscera flowed in its wake. She chopped through the glyphid’s limbs and sliced apart their tender heads, which promptly burst like party poppers when struck. That took Nadia by surprise at first, but she quickly learned to interpret the cheerfully macabre noise as a confirmed kill. Fighting like this might be a little tougher, but party hats or no party hats, these were still just glyphids.

Her brain cells got put to the test, however, when a couple new variants showed up. Glyphid Stingtails featured a head of nasty-looking tusks and a curled tail with a grabber on the end, while Septic Spreaders faced her with smooth armor plates shielding swollen bile sacs that they used like living ballistae. Nadia didn’t know what color they were supposed to be, but the vivid pink globules of corrosive sepsis looked (and smelled) scary enough as they were. She picked up the pace, moving on three legs, to chase down a Spreader before it could inundate her with sludge, only for the Stingtail to make a wheezing noise. It shot out its grabber on a bright green tendril to snatch her by the head. “Hey! No touchie!” she yelped, flying through the air straight toward the glyphid’s horns.

Thinking quickly, she detached her head and allowed it to be reeled in, while her body lost momentum and sunk its claws into the mossy slope. “Hey, no touchie!” Her body wall-ran the rest of the way while the Stingtail charged to gore it, only for her body to turn to lightning and blitz straight through with Charge. It whirled around to use Battery in the form of a double spinning slash, severing the tail on the second stroke. As the bug turned to face her, she leaped up to catch her head, then spiked it down with her hair hardened. It carved across the Stingtail’s head like a buzz saw, weakening the armor. As she landed it struck her with its horns, eliciting a “Yee-ouch!” but when it went to knock her down the slope her head started biting. “Omnomnomnomnomnom!” Gross as it was, the taste of imminent victory was mighty sweet. Her body leaped up and dropped on the Stingtail from above, plunging her boxcutter into the broken armor with both hands. She left the blade there, snatched up her head, and jumped off just before the Spreader’s next volley could finish the job.

After that, it was just a matter of closing in on the Spreader. Nadia zig-zagged back and forth as she wound around its caustic blasts. Their splashes burned, making her wince, but she made her way to the high ground on the slope above the monster. As she ran she took out her bait launcher, and once she was in position she fired. “Eat this!” The Spreader opened wide, snapping up the steak in its jaws. “Oh. That works, I guess.” Its sac started swelling for another barrage, and Nadia threw herself down the slope with Cat Slide. Once she got close enough, she released her pent-up energy in a hyperextended Fiber Upper to launch the Spread off the slope and into the air. “Enjoy your in-flight meal!” As the Spreader flew, the buff tiger appeared next to it on a poof of smoke to tear the hapless bug apart. Nadia shaded her eyes as she watched it burst into goo, a grin on her face. “Now that’s just ‘plane’ wrong!”


There was no warning before the world titled again, throwing the inhabitants back into normal gravity. Primrose had been in the middle of casting, so the turn threw her off balance from her perch onto the ground. As she began to push herself up, she felt her body become heavy - or was it her arms becoming weaker? She struggled until she got her legs under her and stood. Lately Primrose had been unflappable, but once her colors began to change back to normal something else happened that froze the woman in place, her eyes wide and disturbed.

"What...?!"

Both of her arms were missing. Everything from fingertips to just before the shoulder was completely gone - she couldn't even feel a phantom limb there. There was no strain of muscle or flow of magic, just stumps where her biceps would start. It was completely unnerving. Any mild enjoyment she got from watching the glyphid heads pop with confetti was dried up now, especially by the time bats swarmed into the cavern and joined the remaining insects.

The Devout Beads appeared at her back to serve as her firepower in lieu of her spells while she adjusted, telling herself the missing limbs must only be temporary.

Initially the knight was horrified that he found his arms gone, his weapon clattering uselessly to the ground but that horror changed as he had to duck an oncoming bat from a clothesline to his face and all that initial panic became rage, launching himself into the air like a torpedo at the bats bellowing as he floated kicking and unceremoniously headbutting the air or any unlucky bat that flew near him in a futile effort that put him in a bit of a pickle as he slowly floated downwards.

At the very least, those bats didn’t seem quite right. They floated at a constant height above the ground, their wings flapping only about once per second. If anything, they looked -and moved- more like cardboard cutouts than living creatures. They were also surprisingly slow; an average person could easily walk faster than these bats ‘flew’. They did possess one advantage: shocking numbers, which combined with their ambling pace, created a sea of ink-black wings, fur, and glowing red eyes, slowly but steadily closing in on Hack-C and its defenders from all sides.

Despite the impending doom implied by the swarm’s advance, those bats looked like easy pickings to Nadia. When the previous Wonder Effect finally ended and gravity in the cavern returned to normal, she jumped back down to the ground ready to rumble. Only then did she realize that she was missing a couple critical components. “...Huh!?” She looked down at the empty sleeves of her jacket in utter bafflement. Having her arms off wasn’t exactly groundbreaking for her, but not even being able to feel them? That was new. She could even see her boxcutters laying on the ground where they, but her arms were nowhere to be seen. “Where the hell did I…oh, whatever.” With bats on the way, she couldn’t afford to root around for her missing limbs. Using the Oceanid’s power, Nadia expelled enough blood to turn into copycat replacements. “No matter what I lose,” she grinned, grabbing her weapons. “I’m always armed and dangerous!”

With an electric Charge she took the fight to the bats, hoping to thin their numbers before the wall of vermin could close in. “Mind if I cut in?” Her first boxcutter swipe sheared through one in a single stroke, and from its bifurcated body popped a gold coin that glittered once, then warped into her wallet. Not realizing at first, she carved through a handful of the critters before she noticed the slowly increasing number of coins. “Wait…” she whispered, her eyes getting wide. “They’re full…of MONEEEEEEY!” Laughing like a madwoman, she went to work. Nadia became a whirlwind of blades, kicks, and tail lashes, reducing bats to shreds (and coins) as fast as she could get her claws on them. Not even needing to jump, she barely even noticed the reduced gravity.

Watching her go to town, Therion clicked his tongue. Lucky cat. Like anyone who didn't have the option to reattach their limbs or grow new ones, he'd been freaked out by his own missing arms and it'd taken him a bit to adjust. He didn't attempt to shift into his beast form, not wanting to fall flat onto his face if it didn't bring his arms back in the form of front legs. Because of that he was left with very, very little options with which to fight: his divine skill, though he didn't have enough BP to use it at the moment, and his striker, whose melee attacks and horn ballista weren't great match ups. Unabashedly, he and most of the others left this round to those that had the means to deal with it, that being Ms. Fortune and Primrose.

"Makami!" The latter said, summoning the striker to her side, "Mafrei!" The skill fell upon the mob of bats while Primrose hopped up and away not even needing her scarf to float this time. Mafrei evaporated a large chunk all at once while Nadia carved a path through the rest.


All too soon, the coin fever came to an end, the pockets of the Seekers lined with extra gold. On the other hand, their arms also suddenly reappeared. While she’d managed to make do with her blood mimicry, Nadia had missed the certainty of her real flesh; copycat parts really were no substitute. Of course, those who hadn’t been able to hack together a cheaty solution had missed their missing limbs much more.

In this game of give and take, unfortunately, the moment one abnormality ended, another began. All around the cavern, everything with a middle suddenly shot upward, including the stalks of various plants, the Power Station, the Hacking Drone, and Kanna’s house, all increasing in height by several times as their middles inexplicably stretched. Of course, the same went for all the defenders. “Nyaaaaaaaaaaagh!” Nadia yowled as she flew upward, coming to a stop a moment later only to realize that her feet were still touching the ground–and that her midriff now seemed to be several dozen feet in length. “The hell is this shit!?” Her upper body wobbled precariously as her middle flexed back and forth, her elongated spine and stomach muscles working to keep her upright. As utterly bizarre as this felt, though, Nadia realized that this was only the beginning. She could no longer reach her earthbound foes with her claws or weapons, and her sense of balance was completely shot, so kicking would be very tricky. For the moment she could only retreat toward the dwarves, who could still shoot downward at the enemies from their new heights, while trying to think of a way to spin this.

Before she reached safety, the three-clawed grabber of a Cave Leech snatched her by the head and began to pull the struggling feral up into the air. “AGH! Somethin’s got me!” she yelled, swinging her boxcutters above her head in a panicked attempt to cut herself free.

“Leech!” Stetson called out. “We’ve got leeches!” When he turned his rifle upward, its flashlight illuminated a cluster of at least half a dozen, one of which promptly snatched him too. “Gaaaaah! There’s tons of the damn things!” And more were reaching down. With everyone stretched out, grabbing them was easier for the leeches than ever, and they promptly took Tingyun too. Thanks to his Heightened Senses perk, Paintbrush would have escapes if not for the sheer amount of leeches, but at the very least it meant he could instantly break himself free the moment he got snatched. Then he turned his rocket launcher upward, trying to kill the leeches’ bodies in order to stop the harvest before everyone got snatched up.

"Turn this stuff off already!" Therion hollered at Kanna, but she either didn't hear him or chose not to respond, if she even had the ability to stop the crazy effects in the first place. With his body wobbling like crazy he tried his best to avoid being grabbed. Obviously while stretched out so much he was a lot less dexterous, so it wasn't long until he was caught. A three pronged mouth closed around his upper arm and shoulder, eliciting a pained hiss from him. With his other arm, now blessedly back and with sword in hand, he stabbed the pink protrusion. It didn't let go, so he started trying to roughly saw the thing's head (or hand, or whatever it was that had a hold on him) off.

Her limbs and magic restored, Primrose itched to use them. Even as ridiculous as she looked now, she dodged the leeches with some modicum of grace. She began to glow, an aura covering her elongated body that flickered yellow, then green, then white-blue as she prepared her battle boost. She made an x shape in front of her chest with her arms and then pulled them apart, spreading them wide with a flourish as a great burst of fire spread to the ceiling. Following Paintbrush's lead she targeted the leech bodies, her pyromancy empowered well beyond normal with three boosts. While the flames ascended, Primrose began conjuring new ones. There's more where that came from!

The leech holding Therion writhed in pain, its grabber loosened enough for him to free himself. He glared at the burning leech cluster. "Fuck this." He chose now to turn into his beast form, long body much more manageable on all fours and far from the ceiling. Looking more like a noodle with paws than anything else, he weaved around the ground to tear apart the glyphids still swarming below.

Together, Paintbrush and Primrose wrecked havoc among the surprise colony of much-reviled cave leeches. Their grip might be hard to escape, but they could not withstand much punishment once discovered. After taking enough damage, their main grabbers went limp, stretching out to deposit their captives before the main bodies perished. Nadia’s own ‘plan’, which involved detaching her head to free her body just like with the Stingtail earlier, would’ve ended disastrously if not for her allies’ help. Instead, her head got feed just before the leech that caught her began to chew, and with a heavy sigh of relief Nadia’s head dropped from the ceiling. “Least some of you got a good head on your shoulders,” she remarked, a sheepish smile on her face.

That smile vanished when her body failed to catch her head, her arms grabbing just too late. Instead her head bounced among the moss. “Oof! Ow! Meowch!” It rolled to a stop in a clump of moss, and as the glyphids approached, her body stooped to grab it. While she managed to pick it up it, her body overbalanced and fell forward the next second. “Oh no.” In a panic she grabbed her own ankles, and straight away she began to roll across the ground in a giant loop; against all odds, Therion had some serious competition for ‘most stupid looking solution’ for the rest of the wave. Luckily, this wave wouldn’t last much longer.


The fighters could tell the situation was starting to change again when their elongated bodies began snapping back to their original proportions like rubber bands. There was a slight sting, likely a bit of whiplash, but otherwise they were no worse for wear. More concerning was their equipment and even magic disappearing. It wasn't a slow fade out, more like a switch being flipped. One moment there was a sword or spell in hand, and the next there was nothing. They were robbed of their means to fight, at least of those of them that didn't have natural weaponry, but at least they still had their arms this time.

The latest crop of monsters that surged in, including glyphids, bats, and other bugs, featured some specimens that looked bigger and badder than the previous. Already returned to human form, Therion cursed under his breath. It would be hard to just leave it to everyone else this time, but how in the hell were they supposed to- Poof!

A weapon appeared in his hands. It was heavier than his short sword - one of those "guns", with two long metal barrels side by side. Medieval as his home world was, he'd been in this new one long enough to understand vaguely what it was and how it worked: point and pull the trigger mechanism.

Never having actually used a gun, the recoil of this particularly powerful one came as a surprise to Therion. He just managed to stay upright while his arms and the weapon itself jumped upward after the shot. It ripped through the glyphid in front of him and damaged the one behind it. "Damn," he said, in regards to both the effect and the recoil. He backed up to ready another shot, shoving some balloons away as he did.

Artorias kind of looked confusedly at the new weapon in his hands, sword just gone in the blink of an eye replaced with an odd contraption with a trigger. It was a bit small for him to even press, thus the next best thing he figured was to use it as a bludgeon.

Though elated to be back to her normal height after that harrowing run-in with the leeches, Nadia couldn’t be happy just yet. Even with just a glance, she could tell that the standouts among the latest horde were not to be trifled with. It wasn’t just their greater size or menacing aura, but the magical empowerments that made them stand out from the rest. These Eximus enemies came in many varieties, from Arctic Eximus with bubble shields of freezing ice, to Venomous Eximus that exuded highly toxic clouds, to explosive Blitz, electric Shock, and fiery Arson Eximus. And just when Nadia needed them most, her entire suite of weapons vanished into thin air. “Oh, c’mon!” she snarled, thoroughly annoyed with all these random modifiers at this point. When she tried to cheat like she did earlier with her arms, however, she found that her nails wouldn’t sharpen into claws. At that, Nadia’s spirit sank, her ears flattening against her head. “Wait, what!?”

As the feral held her palms up in helpless bewilderment, something long and shiny dropped right into her grasp. It was long, heavy, and weirdly shaped, with two long metal halves joined in a stock, a grip, and a firing mechanism, all plated over by slate blue casing with orange stripes. Catching the Exergis nearly knocked Nadia off her feet, and it took a surprising amount of strength for her to lift up, but when she recognized the trigger she knew it must be a gun. Straining, she pointed it in the direction of a Venomous Slicer and squeezed the trigger. The coil-shaped pile bunker of the Exergis immediately punched into the crystal clutched in its end, shattering it into three radioactive shards that slashed through the Eximus like butter. One multishot wasn’t enough to kill it, but it did proc Confusion, and the grunts around the Eximus immediately started suffering form its toxic aura while the Slicer itself turned on its allies.

“Hah!” Nadia grinned, as excited as she was relieved to see the incoming mob tear itself to shreds. That was just one Eximus though, and her new weapon quickly clicked empty. “Uh…” As luck would have it, her new gun came with ammunition in the form of a bandolier of scarlet crystals. “Oh!” After planting the butt of the Exergis in the ground she plucked one humming gem and stuffed it in different parts of the gun until the mechanism finally clamped down. Once she heaved it back into firing position, she fired again, ripping apart a handful of glyphids but missing the Shock Bat behind it. When it started shooting electric orbs at her she knew she had to move. For a few moments, Nadia ran a cat-and-mouse game of run-and-gun, fleeing far enough to reload so that she could gun down some foes, then do it again.

Meanwhile, Tingyun was grappling with a new weapon of her own, her fans replaced by a blue Virtual Shotgun. While normally happily to play support and let everyone else do all the heavy lifting, she couldn’t help but be tempted by this armament. Guns might not be in style in the Xianzhou Luofu, but everyone knew what they were, as well as their basic principles. She decided to try her luck, and as it turned out, the Foxian was the luckiest of all. Her Virtual Shotgun wielded infinite ammunition, allowing her to blast as fast as she could pump the weapon. While she sacrificed some damage by staying out of the range of the Eximus auras, she managed to keep up with Stetson and Paintbrush, to whom shotguns were no strangers. And of course, the sight of the elegant businesswoman vaporizing bugs with a shotgun made Nadia grin like an idiot.

In the midst of mercilessly pummeling an Eximus in the midst of its noxious gas with nothing but the shotgun in his hands, Artorias seemed unfazed by the effects of the poisonous vapors but still damaged by it as he switched to beating the Venomous Eximus with his bare hands after the shotgun became too damaged by his onslaught. Pulling back to rush at the enemy with his fists he was stopped in his tracks as power-ups started falling from the sky.

Super Mushrooms. Mini Mushrooms. Fire Flowers. Elephant Fruits. Weird Mushrooms. Penguin Suits. Super Crowns. Double cherries. Metal Caps. Power-ups rained down, and whatever living thing they touched, they transformed. Enemies started changing sizes at random, some getting smaller, some getting bigger, and some getting much bigger. Some turned to gold, or metal, or balloons. Others gained royal dresses, goomba masks, rabbit ears, or propeller hats that sent them spiraling up into the air. “What now!?” Confused and overwhelmed, Nadia got hit by a Drill Mushroom before she knew what was happening. Her clothes instantly turned coal gray and red, and a drill-shaped hat appeared on her head. “...Huh?” A Bulb Berry rolled into her from behind, turning her body brilliantly incandescent. “Huh!?” Finally, a Super Acorn bounced off the Power Station and landed on her, and she found herself wearing a fluffy flying squirrel onesie. “HUH!?”

“Heeeeeeeeelp!” Stetson yelled, drawing her gaze. The team’s scout appeared to be trapped inside a big gray boulder, courtesy of a Rock Mushroom, and only his hat-wearing head was visible from inside. He rolled around inside it willy-nilly, crushing everything in his path while fighting not to lose his lunch. “Someone get me outta heeeeeere!”

Unfortunately, Paintbrush couldn’t help. Just as he went to use the Ice Flower he picked up, a Dash Pepper landed on him. The Ice Flower melted away as he turned a vivid red, then charged off uncontrollably, surrounded by spicy flames that left a fiery trail in his wake. He hit a Super Mushroom, doubling in size, and then a Double Cherry, doubling in number. The cavern filled with chaos as two fire-spitting giant gunners charged around like mad, burning everything in their path, and not even the knockdowns of Arson Eximus or blasts of Blitz Eximus could stop them for long.

Neither could Therion help, as he was busy extracting himself from a giant green shoe. It was inevitable that Stetson would just roll himself into another change anyway, so the thief focused on himself. He shimmed out of the shoe just before a big, cold bug snapped him up in its spiked legs. It started to radiate an arctic frost, but Therion started his retreat off by blasting one of its legs off. Just as he was really starting to get the hang of the shotgun, it was replaced by a white and blue boomerang when he ran into another power-up.

Tinyun was also somewhat preoccupied at the moment. While she’d been on a tear with her Virtual Shotgun, her killstreak came to an end when she touched a Spring Mushroom. Immediately a metal coil ensnared her whole body, pinning her arms -and her weapon- against her torso. “Ugh! Not my lucky day.” She could do little more than awkwardly hop around in order to try and avoid the bugs until she trod on a Vanish Cap. It instantly turned her transparent and intangible, effectively taking her out of the fight. With a rattled sigh, she sank to the ground to take a well-earned break, ignoring the enemies and power-ups that now just passed right through her.

Forced to fight on her own, Nadia fled from incoming enemies. As she jumped away, the wings of her onesie unfurled, and she found herself gliding through the air. Not world-shattering considering that she’d just experienced low gravity, but it was something, she guessed. Flying like this meant she could reload her shotgun in the air, and she also quickly discovered that 2700 Pounds of Justice meant that when she dropped, she could fall hard enough to crush weaker enemies in one fell swoop. Of course, her strategy didn’t survive long in a deluge of power-ups. In less than ten seconds she hit a Boo Mushroom, becoming a spherical ghost that couldn’t do much (her new form essentially frying her brain) until a Hammer Suit restored her to normal, albeit clad in a metal helmet. Hammers appeared in her hands, and when Nadia hurled one into a fire-spitting, rabbit-eared glyphid’s ugly mug, a new one manifested in its place. “Guess I hit it right on the head!” From then on she avoided power-ups like the plague, with the exception of a Super Mushroom, skirting around the rest as she bombarded her enemies with an endless barrage of hammers.

Amid the complete chaos, Primrose had abandoned the shotgun that had fallen into her hands as soon as she'd expended the ammo it had come loaded with. She had no idea how to reload the weapon, so once it was out she tossed it. She focused instead on the items and power ups spilling over the entire area. There were balloons floating throughout the cavern that she'd noticed popped easily when a stray attack touched them, and inside were items that might prove more useful to her. She kept out of reach of the monstrous bug nearest her as she looked through the balloons' offerings. Food here, a capsule-like thing there... The insect chased her down as she did, and being a Blitz Eximus let it strike the ground with its leg, sending shockwaves rippling across the ground towards her. She was easily able to avoid that, but not the Goomba mask that came falling from the sky directly on top of her. Suddenly she was a tiny little mushroom creature, staring down a chitinous predator.

At least until one of the two giant Paintbrushes stepped on top of it and smashed it into a paste which then proceeded to turn to ash as he rushed off.

Goomba-Primrose waddled off as quickly as she could. With danger all around she didn't want to wait to turn back to normal, instead she jumped head first towards any of the multitude of power-ups that were collecting on the ground. A bell with cat ears didn't revert her to human as she'd hoped, instead changing her current body. She hurried on, forcing her way through a small purple zone that one of the empowered bats overhead set down on top of her, leeching her energy and stamina. She made it out just before the zone collapsed in on itself, snagging a white, pink, and purple flower on the way to shelter beneath the pot Kanna's home was on.

“Wooooo, yeah! Isn’t this so great? You can do it!” Kanna cheered them on from nearby. At some point she’d turned into an elephant, then shrunk to half her size, and still the alien hadn’t lifted a finger to help. She just sat there on the Power Station as it chugged away, swinging her trunk and kicking her legs without a care in the world.

Primrose ignored her. "Nearly back to normal," she said to herself once the Bubble Flower took effect. The crimson of her clothes remained, while the rest of her ensemble turned a warm pink. She still didn't have her own magic back, which meant no flames, darkness, or dances from her, but she had something else she could work with now.

She left her hiding place and brought a hand up close to her face, splaying her fingers out as she let out a breath of bubbles. The bubbles were expelled quickly and grew in size, trapping any enemy they came into contact with and rendering them into a coin. The initial bubble volley she'd sent toward a cluster of bats, which had turned into coins before, but it also seemed to have the same effect on the glyphids and everything else as well.

The Seekers worrying about not changing again from some other random item falling on them was mitigated slightly as the battle went on by groups of clouds forming overhead, someone evidently having encountered a Cloud Flower. Items fell upon the top of them, piling up there until the spilled down off of the sides as the clouds acted as umbrellas, making pockets of space in the cavern a little less chaotic and letting the combatants focus more on clearing out the swarm however they could.

Still, it was a real blessing that the pandemonium didn’t last that much longer. After another minute passed, the hacking pod made a loud chirp to signify that its task was finally complete. At the sound, Nadia looked up glyphid she’d been beating with the butt of her Exergis, having taken a page from Artorias’ book when a Frog Suit swapped her Hammer Suit out a green frog onesie that deleted the rest of her shotgun ammo. Ice-Primrose turned to look, Vanish-Tingyun perked up her ears, Bee-Therion flipped himself rightside up in the air, Penguin-Stetson slid to a stop, and Metal-Wario-Paintbrush gave the bug that’d been fruitlessly gnawing on his metal boot an extra bop with his pickaxe for good measure.

A moment later Power Station went offline, its internal systems compromised and overheated to the point that a thermal cascade took it down from within. The few remaining bugs who hadn’t been killed by now began to flee, burrowing back into the mossy floor and walls of the cavern. As the station blew up beneath her, Elephant-Kanna overbalanced and fell from the top. “Wheeeeee…oof!” When she hit the ground, the impact smacked the elephant effect out of her, leaving the alien about as normal as she could get. As she picked herself up Yacopu bounced off her head and landed beside her. Rubbing her head with one eye closed, Kanna produced a Wonder Seed that she passed to Yacopu. When it processed the seed and fired off another pellet, the resulting explosion sent out a normalizing effect that returned the area -and everyone in it- to their original states.

“Woohoo, you guys totally did it!” Kanna beamed, rising to stand proudly with her hands on her hips. “Like, that was a blast!”

“That was awful!” Nadia hissed back at her. Finding that all her weapons had reappeared, Nadia closed her hand around the grip of her Bait Launcher. “Gimme one good reason I shouldn’t prune you right now, you overgrown shrub!”

Tingyun tapped her finger to her cheek in a thoughtful manner. “I’m having trouble coming up with any, I’m afraid…”

The Travelers were similarly upset. They caught their breath and calmed down, one more easily than the other. Therion's tail swished back and forth, some of his fur still puffed up.

"So you could have put everything back to normal this whole time?" he questioned, aggravated, his eyes flicking from Kanna to her rabbit.

She blinked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Uh….like, I guess? That woulda been hella boring, though…”

And though at first Primrose thought she could have understood the plant woman's motives, actually experiencing - and trying to fight through - the myriad of changes had been horrible, to say the least. Plus there was the fact that Kanna had sat on the sidelines, treating the battle as pure entertainment for herself. She hadn't wanted the thrill of battle, just to watch. Maybe the dancer’s feelings would be different if she had joined in. No matter Kanna's original intentions, it was this that irked Primrose the most. There was a dark, unpleasant feeling curling in her stomach, a lingering resentment from her life in Orsterra. Her struggles, her life, was not a show for someone else's enjoyment.

She said not a word in the alien's defense, instead turning to the dwarves. "Are we finished here?"

“Uh, yeah.” Right now, both Stetson and Paintbrush were watching to see if Nadia would actually go through with her threat.

The feral definitely had half a mind to, and she felt one hundred percent sure that she could get away with it scot-free. Ultimately, she let go of her Bait Launcher with a frustrated sigh, then stuffed her hands in her pockets. “Ugh.” Even if she really did feel that angry, she couldn’t bring herself to take it out on Kanna. It was wrong, and it probably wouldn’t make her feel any better, either. If only that ditzy pothead actually tried to fight them, instead of just being a bother. “You’ve gotta work on your definition of ‘fun’, lady. Just ‘cause it’s fun to watch doesn’t mean we were havin’ a good time. We coulda died thanks to you.” As the dwarves packed up, ready to move out, Nadia turned to go with them. “No wonder you’re all alone out here. Bet nobody can stand you.”

As she spoke, her words slowly seemed to sink in. “...Oh.” Kanna’s leaves drooped. Despite her drawn-on face, she managed to look pretty upset. “That’s, like, a total bummer.” She reached up and tugged at her fronds, uncomfortably swaying from side to side. “Well…if you want, you can take the stuff I’m growing around here. The moss is, like, super duper good for curing poison. ‘Specially the blooming stuff. And the herbs can heal you up. Like, a lot, if you mix ‘em juuust right.” Running around, Kanna quickly gathered a handful of unassuming, colorful herbs. Plucking a leaf from her head, she knelt down ground the herbs up into powder that she carefully mixed together, then wrapped the mixture up in the leaf and offered it to Nadia.

Nadia narrowed her eyes. Maybe this bumbling disaster really did mean well? Now she felt a little bad about what she said. Gingerly she took the package, which she slipped into a pocket. “Thanks for somethin’, I guess.”

Kanna seemed to take that as full and immediate acceptance of her ‘apology’. “Yay!” she sang, bouncing around with glee. “If you guys, like, ever need medicine or something cured, you can totally come back anytime! Can I get a ‘flower’? On three! Three, two…!”

By that time, though, Nadia had already spun on her heels and started to walk away. Everyone else followed her in short order.

Primrose sighed. Though she spared Kanna one last look over her shoulder, she probably wouldn't be getting over her new disdain for the strange woman any time soon. At least they'd completed their objective and had a little something to show for it too, if Kanna's claims about the herbs were true. Since they'd solved the area's puzzle it cleared out any threats along the way, it wouldn't take long to come back here if they needed to - as long as they didn't have to suffer mind bending, reality altering changes while fighting off a swarm of insects again. All things considered though, she would prefer not to come back.

"Is it too late to back track, meet up with Jesse and them above ground?" Therion wondered aloud to himself, frowning at the collection of flowers ahead of them as the group went back the way they came. He’d love to swap places - the director might have actually enjoyed that experience.

Once at the wall separating the two halves of the cavern, the Seekers figured out their transport back and continued to make their way toward the Caretaker, less enthusiastic than they’d been when they left it.

---

”A redshift cascade..? Oh, no.” Karin shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. ”Disaster all around us, set in motion long before we ever got here. We’ll have to keep moving.” Karin said to herself, before following the others in their pursuit of Iron.

Karin’s grapple hook meant she could traverse the city easily and fluidly enough, swinging and zipping herself from point A to point B. This gave more room for the others to move through. Unfortunately it was all for not, as they discovered Iron’s corpse instead of her living self. Karin lowered her eyes and looked away.

”All that effort, and for what? Only more questions.” She said, as a camera led allowed them the briefest glimpse of what was going on behind the scene.

”Corruption indeed.” Karin said. Quietly pleased with herself at that one.
With that, the disaster unfolded further, and the Seekers were drawn into conflict once again. This time, against odd looking monstrosities from the Astral Plane, and coming to the aid of two members of the authority. ”A Kanzuki never falters.” She reminded herself as she hopped into yet another battle in rapid succession.

”I possess the fortitude for ninety-seven more battles succeeding this one before my fighting abilities begin to degrade. Barely have we even scratched the surface!” Karin boasted before jumping into battle.

Karin found herself taking up a role of distracting and engaging the enemy directly while her allies supported and finished them off. She fought alongside Geralt (but not too closely) and snap kicked the knees of her enemy to slow them down. The enemies were powerful and in sufficient number and stature to begin to pose a threat.

”No match for us! Mindless beasts.” Karin taunted, and knew that a reaffirmation from a powerful warrior such as herself would boost the spirits of her allies as well. She dodged another lunge and knocked the protolegion onto its back for her allies to finish off while she parried another clawed strike with her forearm. This one was already damaged, so Karin dispatched of it herself with a series of flashy EX-Palm Strikes to send it scattering across the battlefield.

”Now,” She sought to answer Geralt’s question. ”We must continue to pursue this elusive white rabbit.” But before she spoke further, she eyed Penance and Vigil. It was unsafe to talk strategy with them nearby.

”Well, the battle has passed, for now. Does this mean it is time to resume petty politics?” She asked sarcastically.