---

With some time away from the others, Juri composed herself, rationalizing away her fear of the Thin Man. It was just a stupid game, and she was a good actor. If she and the Thin Man were in the same room, she’d tear him to pieces. So it was no problem.

Of course, they ended up in first place, and Juri set her weight onto one foot, casually checking her fingernails. Without looking, she caught her reward and attached it to her belt. Zenkichi thought to thank her. ”I get results. Just keep that in mind.” She said, smugly.

The next game was crazy taxi. Juri had played this type of game before, now she just had to do it in real life. ”Why the hell are half of these mini-games just jobs?” She said.

”And why the hell is this guy so freakin’ annoying? Why are they- what’s their problem?” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted up at those two guys with the weird names she didn’t care to remember.

”What’s your problem, freakshow?! You dress like that on purpose or did the dry cleaners at the circus explode with you still inside?”

—

Once in the city, Juri hopped over the side of the door and got into her taxi. She turned the key and switched through a few radio stations before landing on one that played some rock music. It was whatever. Juri missed her motorcycle. Now THAT was a sweet ride. This hunk of junk paled in comparison.

She put the pedal to the medal, on her way to her first client. Juri was a rather practiced driver, though she preferred her motorcycle to some lame-ass taxi. She got a feel for the handling by going up onto the sidewalk and terrifying a few stupid NPC civvies outta the way, honking on her horn. She pulled up in front of a red client. ”Get in, bozo!”

She sped through town, a frown on her face. The fact that this was a game made it less fun than real joyriding. At least she didn’t have to worry about consequences, not that those came to her much anyway. She wondered if there was anyway to cheat. Though, she did have a little bit of fun, cackling out the window as she saw that big turtle guy blunder his way under a bridge. At roughly the same time, the cop made a jump and seemed to be having fun. Doing her part to ruin it, she shouted out the window ”You look stupid!” and hoped he heard her.

She pulled into the stop for her client, which ended up just being a gas station. ”Wha- who takes a taxi to the gas station?” She asked, raising her fingers off the wheel. ”You gonna fill up my cab?”

“Thanks for the speedy ride!” Her client said in happy response, pleased with her performance. Proving exactly why she should never be in customer service, the idea of someone being pleased with her doing a good job for them annoyed Juri.

”Yeah, yeah, get lost already!” She shouted back, jerking her thumb.

Nearby was a green client. They were close, so Juri picked them up. Juri did a couple jumps, and it was kinda fun, but again she had been joyriding so much around town it didn’t really do much. Oh, great, she crashed through a corner store, but it wasn’t even real! Nobody cared. It wasn’t fun to break stuff that nobody built, otherwise she’d just stay inside and play video games all day. Anyone actually having fun doing this was a sucker. The fact that this was the most popular mini-game was just typical. Everyone wanted to live her life, they just didn’t have the balls to actually do it. And her client had the nerve to actually complain about her crashing through the glass.

“What are you, crazy?”

Juri’s lower eyelid twitched. ”What’d you just say to me?”

The green client gave her practically nothing! ”That’s it?!” She was lunged into the backseat and grabbed him by the collar.

”Cough up the cash, punk!” She threatened, raising her fist. The guy just flailed around in her grasp, trying to run, like fully run, legs working and everything, despite being trapped. She reached into his coat and found nothing. He was practically a mannequin.

”Stupid robot. Get the hell outta my face.” Juri tossed him out and clambered into the front seat. After she just said to that cop that she got results, she felt like she was doing badly. While Juri wanted more rewards, she can’t imagine those literal clowns running this place would have anything good. Juri stepped on the gas and prepared to keep doing the work of these nimrod clients, if only to just try and place high again.

”Hurry up, grandpa! Your funeral's happenin' soon one way or the other!” Juri honked her horn as she sped up and around Kamek the wizard, before turning a corner and peeling off.

Well, Blazermate knew their video probably wasn't going to win, so getting no standing wasn't too surprising. She just hoped the others had fun, since right now she had no idea what these tokens actually did. And of course they all still got something, which was cool. The next minigame though... Well, Blazermate was a bit concerned that it was a free for all.

Getting into the next minigame, Blazermate wasn't entirely sure how to drive. She didn't really know the basics! Plus her car was... well lets just say she felt a bit weird needing to sit on a book to see over the dashboard. Still, she would be learning how to drive on the fly while having almost no knowledge of how a car actually worked. She usually took a train or walked or flew, cars were a luxury where she came from and none of her medafighters ever drove one so... this would be interesting.

She had lost a fair amount of time learning about how the gearshift and clutch worked, and even when she figured out how to make the car go forward, turning was another thing entirely. She didn't know how sensitive the steering wheel would be, and crashed into various lamp posts, NPCs, and really was just swerving everywhere. It was here she learned that her car and the NPCs were invinicble, but the enviorment wasn't. This was... Kinda fun. considering how she had wasted more than half her time just figuring things out, she decided to forgo the minigame entirely and just drove around causing chaos around as she smashed into everything, playing a very different game now as there was no consequences.

---------------------------------------------------



2nd place wasn't too bad considering how poor those monsters were... well besides the last one. It was a bit weird to lose to Ganondorf, but Sectonia wasn't going to make a big deal of it. Right now she had no idea what these tokens did, and none of the others seemed to have any ill feelings or anything about winning or losing outside of Jr, but he was a kid so it made sense. Still, at least she placed so far in these minigames that so far really haven't been designed for her or the other large party members.

Speaking of that, being one of the largest members of the team, Sectonia also got one of the largest cars in the next minigame. It was here she noticed that everyone got their own car based on their tastes, with Sectonia's car being more opulent than the others she'd come to see. Although once she got in the car, it was now that a huge weakness of the Queen finally came into play, her lack of feet. It took her a little bit to remedy this with using an Antler to work the peddles, but this would have more problems down the road as she couldn't do all the fancy drifting and quick break turns that a few of the others could do.

This made her driving pretty basic, but unlike Blazermate who was having trouble driving and seemingly just gave up on the minigame and is having her own fun in a very unimaginative basic car, she could at least participate in the minigame. Although grabbing a red passenger off the bat was a poor decision for her, as she wasn't expecting the 'hard' passengers to be that difficult to get to their destination, most of their destinations in weird spots or across town.

-----------------------------------------------



Getting 2nd wasn't really what Roland expected. He was fine with it though, although if he was given leave to explore the underground tunnels of the City, especially around K corp, the things and horrors he'd see down there would put everything in that video to shame. Although considering there were cognetohazards that would probably shatter the minds of those who saw the video, perhaps it was a good thing then that none of those monsters were really scary. Although he felt like he saw a picture of that last one somewhere... Well, that was that and this was this, and the next minigame was a driving one.

While Driving wasn't one of Roland's passions at all, he knew how it worked. And the game gave him a sleek black gothic car with silver trimmings almost like it was trying to match his weapons. These minigames had some good taste at times. Unlike many of the others, Roland could get the car started and started to pick up passengers like normal, grabbing a yellow one. Although unlike some of the more competitive people, until he saw one of them like Falcon drive by like a bat out of hell, Roland followed traffic laws and stuck to the roads. That put him behind the more aggressive drivers until he figured out that the point of this game was to grab passengers and get them to their destination regardless of obstacles in your way as they didn't matter.

Knowing that, but having lost a fair amount of time, Roland followed suit with the others, although his passion for this minigame was lukewarm at best. Driving wasn't really his thing and was just something he used to get from point A to point B. Now if this was cooking or something...

”Guess we didn’t do so well this time, huh?” Roxas asked, not exactly sounding surprised by their lack of placement in the final standings. This elicited a shrug from Falcon, who was standing next to him.

"We knew it would be a long shot, given the state of how our video turned out." Cap responded as he rested a gloved hand on the Nobody’s shoulder, not sounding discouraged in the slightest.

”That’s true.” Roxas admitted, ”Oh well, there’s always the next game.”

That next game - it turned out - was a driving-centric one Ballyhoo called Kooky Cabbies. They’d have to drive people around to their destinations in a taxi, while making good time and doing tricks and stunts along the way for good measure. Well, that was convenient for Roxas, since it looked like he was gonna get to put his driver’s license to use again, although he did wonder how different the taxi would handle compared to the supe’d up machine he’d constructed back in Twilight Town.

Well, it turned out to be not quite the same. Driving a full-fledged car was indeed a different thing from driving what was basically a go-kart. But the taxi itself at least handled similarly to the car Roxas had taken his driving test in, so at least he wasn’t going into this completely blind. He also found some appreciation in the subtle-yet-personalized look of his particular taxi cab. It retained the default yellow color, but had a pair of small plastic keyblade baubles shaped like Oblivion and Oathkeeper dangling from the rearview mirror and a vanity plate that read: TWILIGHT. Obviously in reference to Twilight Town.

Roxas had started near a place called Mixed Martial Park, and it didn’t take him long to spot a first customer, a medium level one whose intended destination was an unfamiliar shop down in Grapital Vista. Well thankfully Roxas’ cab had a device that pointed him in the direction he needed to go, so at least he wouldn’t get totally lost. And so he hit the gas and started driving. He attempted to narrowly weave his way through some traffic for stunt points, but that turned out more challenging than he anticipated when his passenger was also chatting him up along the way. That bit of distraction resulted in a wrong turn which lost Roxas a bit of time when he actually did reach the destination.

”Racing around is one thing, but doing it while chatting? This is gonna be tougher than I thought.”

---

A driving game? Ha! Captain Falcon thought to himself. Why not just give skip the formality and give me the trophy now? He thought this with a confident smile on his face. He’d never say it aloud, of course. Wouldn’t be very sporting. And besides, for all he knew one of these folks was also a skilled racer. But either way, it looked like this next game was going to have him at a distinct advantage. Driving and racing was practically what he lived for!

His taxi cab made Falcon feel right at home with its blue paint job, and racing stripes that were colored to make it reminiscent of the Blue Falcon. In addition, it also had his falcon icon on the hood with his racing number “07” underneath it, both painted in white. The taxi also had its own vanity plate that read “GPX CHAMP” in reference to his previous victories in the F-Zero Grand Prix.

Cap’s starting position in Grapital City was in Southpaw Junction on the southern end of town. And he immediately made a beeline for a high-level customer who wanted to go to a residence in Trophy Heights, all the way up on the northern end of town. Compared to the F-Zero tracks? This may as well have been a walk in the park for Falcon. He effortlessly weaved through traffic and even managed to powerslide his way around a turn he narrowly missed. And all the while he had little difficulty in maintaining a conversation with his passenger. Falcon had plenty of experience socializing with strangers thanks to media interviews and interactions with numerous fans across his career.

In fact, unless one or more of the other competitors decided to start targeting Falcon for interference at some point? He may very well have had this particular game in the bag.

---

They… won? Ganondorf was clearly not expecting that game to end in any sort of victory for him, but he turned out to be entirely wrong. Had it really been because of what happened to Juri at the very end? Possibly. Ganondorf had little-to-no understanding of how the teams’ videos were ranked against one another, so all he could do was just shrug his shoulders and accept the win when he could take it.

Although the description of the next game left him utterly confused. What was a “cabbie” and what made them so… “kooky”? Driving passengers around? Driving as in… carts or carriages? Well, as it turned out, no, no it was not a cart nor a carriage. Or if it was, it apparently did not need any horses to pull it. But the warlord was so bewildered by this machine that he ended up spending several minutes just trying to make the cursed thing go forward. And when he finally did figure it out, it zoomed out of control and veered off the street into some nearby grass.

”Hmph.” Ganondorf grunted and harrumphed in frustration. Yet again he was thrown into a game where he was at a severe disadvantage. At this point he was practically convinced that Ballyhoo was doing this on purpose. Indeed, the warlord hardly even noticed the personalized look of the taxi he was sitting in. A dark, almost black paint job with gold and bronze stripes and a fuzzy bauble hanging from the rearview mirror that was shaped like the Triforce. His taxi also contained its own vanity plate that read “KG OF EVIL” in reference to his legendary title.

”Bah!” Ganondorf finally grunted, ”I know not why I should even bother.” He muttered to himself. At this point he was just sitting there, still parked where the taxi had stopped after it went off the street. He wasn’t sure where he even was, but he could see a beach of sorts in the distance. He couldn’t see it from where he was sitting, but there was also a sign that identified this location as Bold Coast. Ganondorf took a breath and then just leaned back against the seat of his taxi.

Maybe instead of trying to win this time, he should just take a nap or something? He’d won the previous game so he had a decent handful of rift tokens already, anyway. It’d certainly be less stressful and frustrating than trying to figure out how to make this blasted machine work at the very least.

With a shake of her head, Sandalphon cleared up the last of the dizziness that accompanied her warp into Balan’s wonderworld. When her pupils blinked back on, she immediately took stock of her surroundings, and the archangel couldn’t help but be impressed. The first minigame began in a cozy penguin village at the foot of a mountainside, featuring a climb that turned out to be much larger than it looked but still fairly self-contained. Then Film Those Freaks deposited her in a vibrant sky garden and demanded that she explore the horrific Old World below, the length and breadth of those murky depths unknown. Now, however, she appeared to be in an actual city. Sure, it seemed to be limited to an island in the middle of the ocean, but its hitherto-unseen scale offered a whole little world to explore–or drive around, as it were.

Right now, Sandalphon stood in a four-way intersection with her designated taxi cab, and around her lay the small, hilly suburban neighborhood of Trophy Heights in Grapital City’s well-to-do northeastern district. She couldn’t help but be interested in a residential area like this, given its sheer novelty to her. Wherever she’d lived, space had always been at a premium, with skylines and sightlines dominated by the architecture of mankind, choked by stone or concrete to the point of claustrophobia. That went for both Midgar and her long-lost City of Grams, differentiated only by their relative heights. Here, though, there seemed to be plenty of room around the houses, with well-kept green lawns, healthy trees, and flowering shrubs. It struck her as rather pleasant, refreshing even, but in the end she wasn’t here to sightsee. Most importantly, this neighborhood lay on a hill, and from here she got a good view of the city. It featured a very irregular layout, the sort that grew over time rather than got made all at once, but the only people she could see were those who stood in color-coded zones awaiting pickup. Already the sounds of engines echoed through the streets, drowning out the breeze and birdsong. It was past time Sandalphon added her own voice to the chorus.

Once Ballyhoo’s thunderous voice announced the game’s commencement, the archangel jumped into her cab’s driver’s seat, light as a feather. Cars had been an inescapable fact of life in Midgar, especially down in Detroit, which as she understood it boasted some history in the world of automobiles. By that same token, though, she’d never owned nor operated her own vehicle, instead relying on public transport. Still, few denizens of medieval worlds could claim to have adjusted to modern life better than Sandalphon, and if she could figure out supercomputers or social media, she could figure this out too. Beneath the hood, it might as well just be magic; what mattered was how well someone could use it. After spotting the manual, Sandalphon calmy flipped through it, speed-reading each page. “Right…right. This should be simple.” With graceful fingers she turned the key in the ignition, put the car in drive, and then pressed her heel against the gas pedal. The taxi cab lurched forward like a hungry beast, eager to tear up the pavement, and came just short of hitting a stop sign before Sandalphon slammed the break. “What power,” she murmured, smoothing her hair. No wonder Midgar suffered so many car accidents. After one more jumpy start, Sandalphon reigned the monster in, and set off at a brisk cruise through the burbs. A green trip would be a good place to start.

If Sandalphon respected the power of an automobile, Nadia craved it. On many of her ‘expeditions’ from Little Innsmouth to New Meridian’s affluent uptown she’d seen motorcars parked or driving around, and a few on the silver screen, but she’d never gotten the chance to so much as ride passenger in one. Such luxury items were elements of a world foreign to her, so far out of her wheelhouse that she’d only ever been able to dream of cruising the city streets herself. Now, however, she couldn’t avoid it. Her very own vehicle lay right in front of her, sitting pretty on a little parkway surrounded by the cherry blossom trees of Mixed Martial Park, just south of the Gainsville Swole Foods Market. And as far as she understood what Ballyhoo said about fares and stunts, she just needed to drive around faster and crazier than anyone else. Plus, it sounded like she couldn’t crash her car, nor injure herself in the process. This minigame really was a dream come true!

The feral practically dove into her cab head-first. While she did see the instructional pamphlet, she proceeded to ignore it. She’d seen people drive these things in movies, so how hard could it be? She twisted the key and pushed the lever as far as it would go, then slammed on the gas. Her cab shot forward, tires squealing, and obliterated a little flower stand in an explosion of multicolored petals like confetti. “NYAAAAAAAGH!” As she panicked, her heart pumping adrenaline-spiked blood through her veins, her vehicle rumbled right across the grass and onto the sidewalk, at which point she took a sharp turn and screeched sideways into the metal poles out in front of Swole Foods. The loud, violent impact jolted it to her core, even if it didn’t actually inflict whiplash, and Nadia’s head flew from her shoulders into the passenger’s seat. For a moment she just lay sprawled across the seat with her fur on end, hyperventilating. Only after a moment did she reach over, grab her head and set it down atop her shoulders, still bug-eyed.

Then a giant grin covered her face. “Wow, I almost ate shit already! That was in-car-edible!” With her head back on her shoulders, though, she could see the big digital display on the dashboard, the yellow numbers counting down. “Oh, right!” She’d almost forgotten the game’s strict time limit, which meant that if she wanted to maximize her fun, she’d need to hurry up and start driving people around. As luck would have it, a pickup zone lay only a few hundred feet behind her, its unmistakable yellow flashes nestled between a burger joint and an apartment with an unused billboard on its roof. “I tax-see you!” Nadia yelled. “Be right there!”

Not knowing how to reverse, she hit the gas and swung around to the left to perform a wide loop. Her path took her down the red-brick street, then back into the park, where she immediately ramped off a rock and flew straight into the trunk of a cherry tree. “GUH!” As the tree snapped in half, her car slammed down right back where it started, on top of the flower cart’s wreckage. Nadia shook off her discombobulation as best she could and accelerated once more, her tires sending splintered boards flying behind her as she zipped down the park path, through the arch, across the street, and into the pickup zone where the power line brought her to another abrupt stop. Nadia’s head spun, her eyes rolling around in their sockets. “Ooh-hoo-hoooo,” she slurred, trying to slap some sense into herself. “Hunka junk…stop when I let off the ‘go’ button, would ya…?”

“Get me to Haymaker Park!” a voice announced suddenly, the surprise helping jolt Nadia from her stun state. When she spun her head around she found someone sitting in the back of her taxi, probably the person who’s zone she’d crashed into.

“But there’s a park right there…” Nadia informed the man, pointing over at the cherry blossom grove she’d partially demolished. When her passenger didn’t respond, her gaze shifted to the numbers above his head, also counting down, then at the yellow arrow above the taxi itself that seemingly pointed her where she needed to go. It looked like her first trip had already begun. “Uhh, you got it champ. Just hold tight!” The feral pressurized and then released two blasts of blood from her arms, just enough to push her cab backward, and just like that she could veer to the left and get moving. Every couple seconds, she looked straight up to check the arrow so she knew where to go.

After a premature right turn at the end of the street that resulted in a destroyed fire hydrant and sky-high water spout, Nadia shook the water from her hair and pushed eastward through a straightaway that included the extra-large parking lot of the Squared Circle Outlets. While she needed to weave around some slow-moving vehicles, the feral quickly found that she could just bounce off obstacles like billiard balls, using each impact to get her back on track. Her passenger started complaining, but Nadia barely heard him. She left the parking lot looking like a junkyard and headed around the Backspin Courts apartment complex, if by ‘around’ one meant ‘straight through’, since she turned the place’s tennis court into her personal shortcut. “Screw it, we ball!” A less ingenious driver might have opted to go through the parking lot, but Nadia went through the complex itself. After squeezing out from between the bleachers, she motored between the apartments, narrowly missing a dive into the central swimming pool. Of course, she clipped the edge of a building on the way out the other side, tearing out a chunk of bricks. “Whoops, left a resi-dent in that one!” When she emerged from the second passage, she found a vibrant green park in front of her, surrounded by a low wall. “That’s gotta be it!” Cranking the wheel, she slid to another stop against it, her heart still racing as she smiled ear to ear. “Whoo, I wheelie did it! And in record time!” She turned around in her seat aglow with triumph. “Here you are, mister-!”

There was nobody there.

“Huh!?” Nadia stood up, peering down into the footroom to see if he’d hidden himself -or gotten lodged- down there. Unfortunately she could find no sign of the man, and she realized that he must have flown the coop. “Come on, what a wimp! Un-cab-elievable!” She plopped back down on the upholstery, dejected, as the car continued to creep forward. Had she been too rough…? “I was just following the arrow.” Well, she couldn’t afford to overthink things now. As she saw with dismay when she looked at the timer on her dashboard, her clumsy joyride had cost her precious seconds with nothing to show for it, so she needed to pick up another passenger, and fast. Luckily she could see another pickup zone in the parking lot for the apartment complex, just down the street and to the right. This one appeared to be red, but the feral knew that beggars couldn’t be choosers. She propelled the taxi down the road, grinding along the wall the whole time, then veered into the red zone where she used a parked car to stop. “Hurry hurry hurry!” Nadia yelled at the dude as she hopped out to shove her taxi away from the obstruction. Once the NPC sprinted over and vaulted into the back seat, she dove back into the front. “Where to?”

Her passenger said something, but the cat burglar didn’t really hear it. Instead her eyes lay on the timer, having noted that she got a few seconds of extra time just for picking someone up. After a moment, the part of her brain responsible for evil deeds connected the dots, and a suitably mischievous smirk spread across her face. “Yeah, whatever,” she told her NPC. “I got a better idea.

By the time Nadia initiated her new strategy, Goldlewis had already hit his stride. Unlike many of his comrades, the veteran boasted plenty of experience navigating a vehicle through tricky city streets, and if he could handle a huge hummer just fine even a large taxi cab would be no problem. While he did enjoy driving his Mammoth around Midgar’s Sector 07, especially the occasional solitary nighttime cruise along its highways, Goldlewis always felt like a bull in a china shop, unable to unleash the beast. Now, with a disposable cityscape and no repercussions, he finally found catharsis in a taxi cab styled like an old Cadillac. Goldlewis sped through the streets with just one hand on the wheel, the other casually hanging over the car door. He commanded his vehicle like a cowboy would a horse, knowing when to speed up and when to slow down, calmly muscling aside other cars when necessary, and almost never broke stride except to pick up or drop off. For the most part he stuck with yellow trips, sometimes spending a couple seconds to pass up reds or greens to do so, since they seemed to be the best blend of risk, reward, and time. Though neither as quick or daring as the likes of Captain Falcon, nor as inclined to do stunts to boost earnings, his rock-solid performance paid dividends in terms of time and money alike.

Goldlewis covered a lot of ground, burning rubber from the Offsides to Brawl Street, from Brawl Street to ABS Tower, and from the Gazebogon to Southpaw Junction. While on the move he focused only on the road, but while waiting for customers to climb aboard he could take a quick look around, and marvel at Grapital City’s many sights. From the incredible Grapital Building, where a giant statue of a wrestler held the highest part of the building on her shoulders, to the ancient-looking bell tower of Old Abseil, this place constantly amused him. Naturally, the antics of his fellow Seekers stood out most of all. Some of his allies turned out to be absolute menaces behind the wheel, like the Koopas and Juri, though they menaced their passengers almost as much. Goldlewis managed to dodge Blazermate not once but twice, and at one point he caught a fleeting glimpse of Sectonia as he zoomed past her. Of course, right after that Captain Falcon zoomed by him. Man’s probably got this in the bag, the veteran reckoned. He saw Zenkichi doing rather well for himself and, judged by his enthusiastic whooping, having the time of his life in the process. Even if he wasn’t as vocal, Goldlewis had to agree: this was fun.

Nothing tickled his funny bone more, though, than what he saw after drifting to a safe stop in Jobber Flats. After spotted the distinctive triple halo of Sandalphon, he noticed the archangel herself as she came to a halt at a stop sign, where she proceeded to wait for an NPC driver to make a left in front of her. The sight left Goldlewis gobsmacked. “Are you…obeyin’ traffic laws!?” he hollered.

Hearing his voice, Sandalphon turned to look his way. “Of course,” she told him, her voice deadpan. Goldlewis could just barely see the timer on her dashboard that indicated just under twenty seconds left. The passenger in her back seat, an old woman, seemed to be sound asleep. “Proper observation of vehicular protocols is vital for the safe and efficient conduct of modern society.”

With neither the means nor the time to respond to that, Goldlewis could only stifle his chortles and drive away. “Bless ‘er heart.” From there he went west, driving around Old Abseil and then into Grapital Central. According to the arrow overhead, his current destination lay somewhere around Payback Square, if he had to guess. With his focus on the road and its obstacles, he didn’t notice the steadily growing roar of an engine -or the increasingly loud yowls- until a taxi cab flew off a stopped ramp track and sailed over the roadway, Nadia Fortune behind the wheel. Shocked and unable to look away from the airborne vehicle until it smashed with a deafening noise into the office building on the other side, where it got completely stuck. “What in tarnation!?” As glass shards rained down Goldlewis instinctively lifted his arm for protection, trying not to swerve into anything. He managed to salvage the situation without any major collisions, but a couple glancing blows left his passenger on the verge of quitting, so he needed to be careful. “Girl’s off her damn rocker,” Goldlewis grumbled, shooting one last look up at the crash site before he sped away.

After a moment, Nadia sauntered out of the hole in the office building and across the body of the car protruding from it. She seated herself on its rear bumper like the edge of a diving board, hundreds of feet above the ground. She exhaled slowly, delighted but battered and exhausted from her reckless journey through Grapital City. Ever since she enacted her strategy of picking up and then squandering passengers as fast as possible to game the system for all the bonus time it was worth, she’d wreaked havoc all over the place. Her number one priority had been to seek out all her friends as they drove around and give each a love tap (or a ‘car-ress’, as she called it) with her vehicle. In short order she’d turned this round of Kooky Cabbies into an impromptu game of bumper cars whenever anyone ran into her, or her into them rather, which happened much more often. All good things must come to an end, though, and her strategy couldn’t ultimately beat the inexorable march of time. Better to go out on a high note, she reckoned.

As she sat surveying her territory, however, one of the competitors currently in Grapital Central piqued Nadia’s interest: a woman with short black hair styled in horns, wiry of build and foul of temper. Back in the minigame lobby the feral got a brief glimpse of this woman, but that hadn’t been the first time. Half-forgotten memories were resurfacing from her time spent in Carnival Town, all centered around a certain aggressive vagrant who always waltzed around town like she owned the place: Juri. “Well, well. Look who the cat dragged in~” Though technically a criminal herself, Nadia always stood up for the little guys, while this churlish martial artist preferred to beat them down, so naturally the two had come to blows. Neither definitively got one over on the other, however, and their rivalry came to an end when Nadia finally skipped town. Now that she’d returned, however, the feral had half a mind to pick her feud back up where the two left off. As Juri’s cab drew near, Nadia gathered herself up on her own cab’s bumper, and when the time was right the cat burglar pounced.

Nadia struck like a bolt from the blue, dropping directly onto Juri’s hood with her Mantreads. With her effective weight nearly tripled by her fusion with Massachusetts, the impact partially cratered the indestructible front of the car in the much more destructible roadway and launched Juri’s passenger straight from the rear seat to the pavement. “‘Scuse me for dropping in!” the catgirl announced, grinning mischievously. Despite her changes in form and fashion, she still looked enough like Nadia Fortune to jog Juri’s memory and reignite old flames. “Well if it isn’t my ol’ pal Juri! It’s been so long since we’ve scrapped, you’ve got me Han-kering for a rematch!”

Taking second place was a surprise for Primrose, especially because she didn’t particularly feel she contributed much. Therion had at least been “eaten” on camera. Still, she wasn’t going to argue the result. Figuring much of it had to do with Roland’s know-how, Primrose glanced at the Fixer and gave him a small nod. She accepted the prize, now at a total of five tokens. Beside her, Therion was sitting at nine - which officially made him the most token-rich player at the moment. He could have been smug about it, but instead he drew no attention to that fact.

And then there was Pit, who snapped up his consolation token with a petulant frown. It wouldn’t last long, because he really had been having fun so far, but while the results were being tallied he couldn’t help but feel that this was so unfair! Rushing through levels (though it had been some years since he could call himself a true platformer), bypassing obstacles, dealing with creepy monsters… it was all stuff he regularly dealt with! So how was he doing so poorly? It was easy enough to blame his teammates and partners, especially since he preferred to work alone, but a true captain could compensate for his squad. So Pit sighed, wallowed for a second, and then tried to psyche himself up for the next game.

He missed something that Ballyhoo said, which did not go unnoticed by the two Orsterrans. A new name among the victorious players: Juri. She had a very distinctive look, so it was easy to spot her with a quick scan of the area. There was no fuss over her - she’d just been added to their group for the games like Capt. Falcon technically had been, it was just an interesting development. Especially after poor Sectonia had been partnered with a rock in the first game.

And speaking of games, the next one was swiftly announced. The most popular event in the big top, although the explanation made little sense… at first. Once she parsed through the words, context clues led Primrose to believe they would be transporting people akin to a rented carriage… although she did raise a brow at one word. Non-lethally…?

Without further ado, they were transported once more.

---

While he may have lost the first two minigames there was no way that Pit, Angel Land’s strongest soldier, captain of Lady Palutena’s royal bodyguards, and all-around super cool heroic guy, was going to lose three in a row! Not if he had anything to say about it! And though he hadn’t really grasped Ballyhoo’s explanation, once they were in the minigame for real and he saw the taxi cab everything sort of fell into place. The goal of this game was to drive around town really fast while getting passengers from point A to point B. That sounded easy enough!

"Alright," the angel said to himself as he hopped over the side of the cab into the driver’s seat. "This can’t be any harder than using an Aether Ring! So this time, I'm definitely placing!"

Throughout his life (as short as it was compared to the gods’), Pit had seen a lot of different vehicles. From the primitive horse-drawn buggy, to the modern day car, to the futuristic spacecrafts of mortals, as well as all sorts of divine vehicles ranging from chariots to mechas. Theoretically, a taxi cab should not be beyond him. Once behind the wheel, he immediately realized that he was right: this would not be as hard as using an Aether Ring. Its controls seemed to be more like an Exo Tank’s, which he could definitely handle. It was fortunate too that the taxis were sized for their drivers, so he didn’t have any issues reaching the pedals. The rest of the intricacies of driving the car… he’d just figure those out as he went.

With newfound determination, Pit started the engine and grabbed the wheel. For good measure, he imagined what Lady Palutena might say to further encourage him. ”Start with the green fares to get used to the taxi’s handling, but remember this is a race against everyone else too. So once you’re comfortable go right for the red! Okay Pit, show them why we deserve to be invited to the next Mario Kart!”

"Yes ma’am!" Pit replied to the vision his brain conjured up, then stepped hard on the gas pedal towards his first client - and very nearly ran them over. "Hop in!"

"Thanks! Get me to the courts!"

"Okay! That's... where is that?" Pit squinted at the mini-map in the form of a GPS. It was all lines, colors, and squiggles. He had never needed to read a map before... but thankfully a big yellow arrow appeared in the air that let him know where to go. "Oh! Alright, hold on!"

His destination wasn't that far away. The next passenger wanted to go back to where the first had been. The start of the game saw Pit driving back and forth between easy green fares while he got used to the car. When he eventually felt good enough to start taking jumps and crashing into stuff on purpose for once to make shortcuts, he blasted onto the freeway with his sights set on the red fares.

---

When Therion had practiced driving back in Twilight Town, it had only been a way to pass time. Sure, he figured it might come in useful in a pinch, but he didn’t expect to be using the knowledge so soon. Once everyone was transported to the island (separated, he noted, so no teammates this time) and he inspected the taxi, he realized it wasn’t entirely different from the vehicle he’d practiced with. It looked much more put together, so it was probably sturdier, and there were a few more handles and levers, but otherwise for a medieval guy like him? Practically the same. The taxi also featured two displays on the dashboard, one being a map and the other showing zeroes.

The total fare I’m guessing, Therion thought. Though it took him slightly longer, he came to the same conclusion as Primrose. The concept of a “taxi” was not foreign to either of them, the word itself was just unfamiliar. Well, and the car they’d be expected to use. So in this case, Therion actually had a leg up on the dancer. I could give her some pointers through the pearl, but… nah.

This was only a game after all, so he left his friend to fend for herself. She would hardly be the only one struggling with this anyway. With half a shrug Therion entered the car, turned the key, and felt the engine rumble to life. He wondered for a moment how well he would realistically do; of the Seekers he knew best, he couldn’t imagine any of them doing that well save for the Koopa family who seemed versed in a wide variety of random things. Then of course there were those that they had split up from, who mostly seemed more familiar with this kind of thing. Lastly, the professional racer they’d immediately found and the dark horse that was dropped into their group last game. Therion’s odds weren’t terribly great, but at least he wouldn’t be the worst.

"Let’s see…" he fiddled with the map, coming up with his strategy in a few moments: rather than fight for fares in the larger, more populated city area with more experienced drivers, he would first go across the bridge connecting the two islands and collect some passengers where there was less competition.

He set off, stopping at a few people to see if they were going the same direction and turning them down until he found a yellow fare with a destination on the volcanic island. Unfortunately he ran into trouble almost right away. As expected the city was full of of Seekers making the most of the game, whether they were playing the right way or not. Therion had started off near some junction, and had to dodge not only the maniac drivers actually trying to ferry passengers but the rogue elements of Blazermate and Ms. Fortune who seemed to have decided that ramming others off the road was the goal. He passed plenty of scenes of destruction until finally making it across the highway's bridge.

To his chagrin, the passenger he'd picked up was long gone - driven away either by the long drive time or the hasty, jerky movements he'd needed to take in order to avoid obstacles and other players. Oh well, whatever, he thought. At least now he could drive in relative peace.

---

The game’s precious starting minutes, the time when everyone that was vying for first would set out to get as much of a headstart as possible. Though for Primrose, she spent that time in the cab’s driver’s seat. She had one leg crossed over the other, a manual she’d found in the glovebox spread open in her hands. She had been deposited near the heart of the city on the edge of Mixed Martial Park where she could see a few others getting their start or driving by, but she paid them little mind. She'd seen some crashing already and figured out that the players, their vehicles, and their passengers were immune to damage, so there wasn't much need to pay attention to what everyone else was doing just yet.

Like with the first game, Primrose discarded any notion of placing first, second or third. Even the previous one she wrote off as more or less a fluke. And since she wasn't playing to win, she could take her time and figure out how the car worked. She flipped through each page of the instructions, appreciating the "dumbed down" language used in them. It served its purpose: making it so almost anyone, from any walk of life, could understand how to play. Putting the knowledge into practice was a different thing entirely, but the dancer made progress incrementally. She figured out how to turn the car on, how much pressure to put on the pedal to convince the two tons of steel to move, and on the other pedal to get it to stop. Her time limit was really running down since she wasn't picking up any passengers, but it really didn't bother her much. It wasn't until Nadia drove back around her way and rear ended Primrose's taxi (causing a major lurch that pushed the dancer's car into the side of a fountain) that she decided to actually try and play. "Alright, I get it," she said, flipping her ponytail out of her face.

Unfortunately the cat burglar had already driven away by the time Primrose pulled her car around, so she couldn't return the favor. Instead, she slowly drove toward the first green fare she could see. It was a nondescript man who was only headed around the block, though when he hopped into the back of the cab he smiled brightly. "Yowza, I lucked out with my driver!"

Glancing into the man's eyes, she could see that he wasn't exactly all there. The people in this city were basically props, designed to play a human-like role. How deep did it go, Primrose wondered. How well could they emulate a person? An idea came to her mind, one she'd test as soon as she dropped her fare off. If she didn't plan on winning, anything she did could hardly be counted as cheating, right?

After a bit of a rocky start with his first passenger, Roxas managed to find a bit of a groove to the minigame. Sure, he wasn’t doing as well as the likes of Zenkichi or Captain Falcon, but he was reasonably sure he was at least somewhere in the middle of the pack. He’d mostly been doing green and yellow fares, and so more than likely that was why his score remained relatively middling by comparison. He’d also stuck around the western and southern sections of the island city, mostly in and around Mixed Martial Park where he had initially begun the game at.

And then Roxas made the mistake of trying a red fare. ”Where to?” Roxas asked the NPC guy after picking him up.

“Pressure Point.” The guy said, “And step on it! I’ve got a hot date waiting for me so you better not make me late!”

Roxas swallowed hard. Pressure Point? That didn’t sound familiar, so it was obviously somewhere outside of the area he’d been sticking too. Little did he know that from where he currently was in Payback Square, Pressure Point was a decently long distance away on the northern tip of town. But the Nobody was undeterred and hit the gas anyway. This destination being a place he didn’t know, Roxas found himself relying on the compass arrow - which he hadn’t needed to rely on as much in previous fares after becoming a bit more familiar with that part of town.

North - past the ABS Tower and then Mixed Martial Park, then through Gainsville before making a hard right through Squared Circle Outlets before making a hard left past Backspin Courts and continuing north through Catbird Grove. After that it looked like a matter of following the road up to Pressure Point, which as its name suggested was the highest point of the cliff that could be found on this end of the island. Roxas had been speeding his way here to try and make good time like the passenger had asked him to. As he rounded the road circling the cliff’s edge, disaster struck.

Another cab came barrelling from the opposite direction, obviously one of the other Seekers taking part in the game. It looked like one of the Koopas, either Bowser or Junior. Although Roxas didn’t exactly get a chance to register who it was at the time. Either way, the Koopa’s reckless and aggressive driving put the two cabs on a collision course. Both swerved to miss each other, with Roxas swerving to the left while the other swerved right. But that was where the problem got even worse for Roxas. Roxas’ swerve took him right toward the cliff’s edge!

”OH NO!” The Nobody suddenly yelled when it became clear his car was about to go over the edge into the sea below. The Passenger was already gone, probably having ditched the ride when the two cabs nearly collided. That left Roxas to try and bail from the taxi before he inevitably went over the cliffside with it. He vaulted out from his driver’s seat and used Flow Motion to launch himself back up onto the edge of the cliff just as the tax began its nosedive toward the jagged rocks and seawater below.

”Phew, that was way too close.” Roxas said aloud to himself between gasps for air. And then something else hit him, ”Wait, does this mean I’m out of the running now? Ah, man…” He went from looking shaken to looking dejected and disappointed. Well, there was nothing to do now but start walking. Roxas jammed his hand into his pockets and began to hike back down the cliff road, hoping maybe he’d find something else to occupy his time with until the game was over.

With so many competitors around Grapital City, especially the main island, it didn’t take long for Roxas to find someone else up the creek without a paddle. On the main exterior road that circled the eastern coast around Trophy Heights, he spotted a motionless taxi cab, thoughtfully pulled over to the margin so that it wouldn’t obstruct anyone else headed this way. A couple dozen feet away, the unmistakable golden glow of Sandalphon’s halo shone softly in the shade of a tree, signaling where the archangel herself now calmly sat. After her rendezvous with Goldlewis she’d delivered her dozy but accommodating passenger to her destination on the south side of Haymaker Park, earning herself another precious few seconds, but the writing had been on the wall for a while. Now, just like in Connected Climbing Chaos, she had accepted her loss and decided to relax instead, enjoying the view of Low Key Key’s tropical beaches and sparkling shallows the next island over. Of course, this time she didn’t have anyone to keep her company, but when her keen eyes spotted Roxas, Sandalphon gave him a courteous wave.

”Oh, hey! Sandalphon!” He called out, returning the wave with one of his own before he shrugged and started jogging toward where she sat. He spoke again once he was actually closer and didn’t have to shout, ”You're out of the game, too?” He asked her, though noting that her cab appeared to still be there and intact. ”But you still have your car, right? You didn’t give up, did you?”

“I exhausted my allotted time. My manner of driving is ill-suited to the nature of this game,” Sandalphon admitted, her gaze settling on Roxas. “Am I to assume from your choice of words that you lost your car? Are you well?” She prepared herself to bring out her Aether Lance if the boy needed healing.

”We were being timed?” Roxas asked with a blink, having apparently not noticed that detail about this game. He knew there was an overall time limit to the game, but they were also being individually timed? ”Must have missed that part of the rules. I’m not hurt though, I think this game disables damage sort of like the climbing one did. As for my car?” He made a gesture with his flattened hand, slowly inching it forward before suddenly making it take a nosedive downward, complete with a “falling” whistle and exaggerated explosion sound effect. ”Nearly collided with one of the others and had to swerve to miss ‘em. Trouble is I swerved toward the edge of a cliff and… yeah…”

Sandalphon’s pupils blinked off, then on again. “Goodness. That…must be disappointing, yes?” Despite the flatness of her tone, she seemed earnest to offer Roxas her sympathy. “If it’s any consolation, it shouldn’t be long until this is over. By my estimation, the difficulty of the ‘trips’ continues to ramp up over time to ensure that the game does not last indefinitely.” As she spoke, she unwrapped a couple honey candies stored in her hip bag, then delicately placed them in her mouth. Her pupils became carets as she savored their flavor, and after a moment of consideration, she held out one for Roxas as well. “Here. Honey is the perfect food, packed with vital ingredients. As I understand it, sweet confectioneries also improve humans’ moods.”

”Thanks!” He said as he took the candy and immediately popped it into his mouth. Once he did that he went ahead and sat down nearby, even reclining back against the tree they were both sitting under.

Practically the second he seated himself, Sandalphon laid out her request. “We can still make effective use of this time, however. This would be a good opportunity to explain everything you can about Organization XIII. I wish to ascertain all that I can about this faction, both in terms of individual members and collective goals.”

”Oh right, you did say you wanted to ask me more details about that, huh?” He closed his eyes briefly and thought back to everything he knew about the Organization, and then he opened them again and was ready to talk. ”From what I understand, the current Organization has some new people in it that I don’t know, but I can tell you plenty about the old Organization from my world. But that’s gonna require some context.”

Sandalphon’s pupils became inverted triangles. “Understood, but please be sure to summarize non-critical details.”

”In my world, Light and Darkness play pivotal roles in maintaining the balance of the realms. In fact there’s two main realms, technically more but the most relevant ones here are the Realm of Light and Realm of Darkness. The Realm of Light is where most people live, it’s made up of a collection of worlds that used to all be one world before an event called the Keyblade War broke it up into smaller worlds. That’s where you’ll find cities and towns and stuff. And then there’s the Realm of Darkness, it’s kind of a wasteland devoid of any real life, and Light too for that matter. The only thing that lives in it are monsters called Heartless. They sometimes venture into the Realm of Light where they prey on people with strong Hearts and corrupt those Hearts until they become Heartless like themselves, I guess it’s sort of how they spread and reproduce. And worst of all, normal weapons can’t destroy them, only temporarily send them packing before they inevitably reappear in some other location. Only the Keyblade is capable of permanently destroying a Heartless and freeing the corrupt Heart held prisoner within them.”

So far, no mention of Organization XIII, so Sandalphon assumed this must be important background information. She nodded to encourage Roxas to continue, even if she was already impulsively thinking of ways she could have worded this explanation more succinctly.

Roxas continued, ”Heartless weren’t the only threat. Sometimes, when a person with a strong Heart becomes a Heartless, the shell left behind can continue to live and exist with a will of its own. Without the Heart they once had, they possess no emotions, only memories of what it was like to feel them. Because they lacked the core of who they used to be, these beings were named Nobodies. Organization XIII was a group of 13 powerful Nobodies working toward the same goal: restoring their Hearts and becoming whole again.”

The concept of a Nobody intrigued Sandalphon, since she too lacked emotions, but unlike these people she’d never possessed them to begin with. “Driven by that terrible emptiness,” she reasoned.

”Don’t feel too much sympathy,” Roxas warned, ”The Organization was willing to do anything and everything it took to achieve its goal, even hurt others. And in the end, their stated goal wasn’t even their true goal. The Leader was actually after an entirely selfish goal of his own and had been lying to and manipulating the other members of Organization XIII to reach that end. A former Keyblade Master named Xehanort sought to recreate the Keyblade War in order to summon the ultimate power: Kingdom Hearts. To that end, he willingly split himself into a Heartless and a Nobody so that they could be in multiple places at once to further that goal. His Nobody, taking the name Xemnas, founded Organization XIII and sought out other Nobodies that he could recruit for his cause. And I was one of them.”

Sandalphon’s brow furrowed slightly. This explanation, fraught with jargon from the boy’s world, took a little more of her brain’s processing power than she initially thought. Still, if her perceptive powers allowed her to handle simultaneous conversations, this shouldn’t be an issue. Based on his admission to being a Nobody, though, did Roxas lack emotions? He didn’t seem that way to her so far.

Roxas had paused, taking a breath. This was honestly the first time he’d ever tried to explain all this to someone, and only now was he realizing just how complicated and outright confusing it all probably sounded. ”Most of the original members left the Organization by the end. I was the first who did so. But others did sometime after that. In fact they ended up turning against it and Xehanort in the end and helped with his ultimate defeat, so I doubt many of them would have rejoined him in this world. But there’s some I could point to who might be around and playing some part in the current Organization.”

The archangel nodded. “By all means.” She looked around, hoping that the end of the game wouldn’t interrupt the conversation. Whether she did badly or the best drivers really were that good, though, there were no signs of wonderworld collapse just yet.

”First there’s Xehanort himself.” Roxas said. ”He’s a powerful Keyblade Master who embraced the Darkness in its entirety and learned how to use it to possess and take control of others. Then there’s his Heartless, who took the name Ansem. He’s probably one of the most powerful Heartless in existence, able to summon and control other Heartless - and even awaken the Darkness in others’ Hearts in order to make them do his bidding. And then there’s Xehanort’s Nobody, who took the name Xemnas. He’s the one who created the original Organization. He’s powerful in his own right, able to wield countless energy weapons he calls “void” blades. He can even summon massive volleys of them in projectile form to overwhelm his opponents.”

Abilities like those of Xemnas were nothing to sneeze at, certainly, but Sandalphon took particular note of what Roxas said about Xehanort ‘awakening Darkness’. If he could control or change others, that made him a threat on par with some of the demons she’d faced in the past. She couldn’t help but wonder–could he awaken ‘Darkness’ in anyone’s heart? The archangel would have liked to think that hers harbored no ‘Darkness’ to awaken.

”If you can believe it, Xehanort even managed to utilize time travel to recruit his younger self from the past. The younger Xehanort is still just an apprentice with the Keyblade, but his embracement of the Darkness still makes him a threat just the same. He’s a specialist with time magic, from what I remember. The last one I should bring up is Xigbar. That guy was always a complete mystery. No one ever knew who he was before the Organization, but I do know he was there with Xemnas as a founding member. He specializes in Space magic, can make himself float and teleport around while he shoots at you with his arrow guns. He doesn’t seem like much, but be careful around him. He wasn’t just a founding member, but he also worked with the original Xehanort years before the Organization was even founded. You can always bet he knows more than he lets on, so don’t let his playful and goofy subordinate act fool you, he’s just as dangerous as the rest of them.”

That seemed to conclude Roxas’ report, given the obvious differences in the Organization XIII roster in his world and this one. Sandalphon nodded. “Thank you for the information. With all that said, do you believe that the Nobodies’ ultimate goal is the same, that being Kingdom Hearts’? Do you know anything else about this power?”

”Well,” Roxas began, tilting his head thoughtfully. ”the thing with Kingdom Hearts is that it’s an ancient power that supposedly goes all the way back to the birth of the world, like a creation story, I guess. And so as far as I know nobody knew exactly what that power entailed, just that it was supposedly the source of all Light and the Heart of all worlds. But Xehanort believed he could use it to essentially rewrite reality, and create a world that he was convinced would be better than the one that already existed. So if he’s still around in this world, then I’m willing to bet that he thinks that Kingdom Hearts can undo what Galeem has done.”

For a moment, Sandalphon considered that in silence. Then she inhaled deeply through her nose. “If Kingdom Hearts possesses comparable power in this world, then I share your concern. Such power does not belong in the hands of those without love or sorrow. And choices like what would be best for everyone are not for mere men to make.”

She stared out at the wonderworld’s sea, thinking about Balan’s ability to create simulations like this one. The penguins on that icy mountain and the creatures of the Old World had all just been toys, created and deleted at his whim to play bit parts in the background of others’ enjoyment. The idea that someone could make and unmake the World of Light was no less terrifying. “Our next step, then, is to discern how Organization XIII plans to obtain Kingdom Hearts, and how assisting us accomplishes their goal.”

”Well, I can at least tell you how Xehanort originally tried to do it, by pitting 13 vessels of Darkness against 7 vessels of Light in battle. That was how he nearly managed to do it previously. Of course, for all I know the rules for that are different in this world.” Roxas remarked. After a short pause he felt the need to clarify a previous detail, ”I can tell you're curious, about the fact that I’m a Nobody. Well that fact was true, but I did leave out one detail. Nobodies don’t remain empty forever, they only start out that way, but they eventually come to regain their ability to feel over time. It was the biggest lie Xemnas ever told us, designed to keep us in line and ensure that we don’t go against the Organization’s goal or question our orders.”

Sandalphon’s pupils turned back to power symbols. “Hm. A transient state, then. So in truth, the root of the problem is not the Nobody phenomenon, but Xehanort. Or…Xemnas?” For a moment, her pupils became stress marks. “Nevermind, I believe I understand. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. I suspect when we conclude our time in Carnival Town, however, there will be an all-hands meeting to pool our knowledge, and…it may be prudent for you to explain again. For the others’ sake, of course.”

”You’re probably right.” Roxas said with a sigh. ”Sure makes me wish one or two of the others I knew were around. They’d probably do a much better job of explaining it all than me.” He added with a small laugh.

---

Juri hit the breaks as her passenger flew out the back of her cab. Not that she needed to hit the breaks- the woman on her hood must have weighed a ton. She gripped the wheel and stared at Nadia, and there seemed to be no hint of recognition in her eyes. ”Am I supposed to know you, fatso?” She asked, innocently.

“Fatso!?” Nadia half-laughed, half-gasped in dismay.

Then Juri shot from her seat like a bat out of hell, sending a flying kick towards Nadia to knock her off the hood. Either way Juri would be jumping out of her seat.

”Oh, wait!” She said as she landed, slapping the side of her own head. ”You’re the little pussy cat that ran away!” Juri said, pointing at Nadia. She dropped her feigned ignorance, her expression going deadly serious, and eyed Nadia up and down.

Then she settled into her fighting position, lifting one knee. ”If you want some more, come and get it.” She grinned like the corners of her mouth were being peeled back to reveal venom-soaked fangs. The invitational was rhetorical- this was happening, now.

Nadia sprang to her feet. While she’d expected some sort of cheap shot, Juri’s speed had still taken her by surprise. Not many people out there could fight with the intensity people like Juri did, but that went for Nadia too. More to the point, she hadn't felt that kick at all. It knocked her back, but dealt ni damage. While Nadia’s numbness meant she felt a lot less pain than most, feeling nothing was new. Wow, I'm so strong! she thought, forgetting that Balan disabled damage in this wonderworld. Very confident, she put her hands on her hips and leaned toward the martial artist with a smirk. “Damn straight I ran away–couldn’t get far enough from your smell! Or as I like to call it, the Jureek.”

”That’s probably just you smelling your own asshole, you literal mangy stray.” Juri spat back, raising her hands along with her knee.

That remark elicited a curled lip. Even if it had been a month or so since she last saw it, the cat burglar recognized her rival’s fighting stance. That worked just fine for her; from the moment she chose to remake Juri’s acquaintance, this encounter could only ever go one way. “Mew-sic to my ears. Oughta warn you though, I’ve gotten a couple upgrades.” She held up her firearm, revved it up like a drill, extended it upward, and then snapped it back down in a fist pump with a couple of yellow sparks. “I’m new and im-purr-oved!” Then with a glint she sharpened her claws and stepped back with her right leg, most of her weight on it as she bounced back and forth on her scars. “Showtime!”

Nadia began by leaping into the air, then airdashed forward on jets of blood. Her momentum would have brought her into Juri’s airspace if she didn’t cancel it into Cat Spike, launching her own detached head downward. “Heads up!” With her hair hardened as it span, however, it looked more like a buzzsaw than a volleyball. After a couple hits, either struck or blocked, it lost momentum, so after Nadia landed, she followed up with old reliable: her Cat Scratch sequences. “Wreck-a yo face!” For its third hit she chose El Gato, her flipping axe kick as strong as it was unsafe on block. This was a frame trap, however, and at her command her head zoomed forward to strike Juri low if she tried to punish El Gato.

Juri wasn’t going to take any claims of ‘upgrades’ lightly. She had dipped and dodged to the sides, back pedaling as the cat unleashed her onslaught of strikes. Nadia sent her head towards Juri, and Juri promptly smacked her head onto the ground with her heel. ”Literally the dumbest move I’ve ever seen anyone come up with.” Juri said flatly to Miss Fortune, though she’d still taken a little damage from the trade.

She brought her leg up, and then around, sending a streak light along the floor in a wave towards Nadia’s head. Juri dashed forward and did a spinning roundhouse kick over the wave to catch Nadia if she moved forward to go pick up her own head.

Wise to Juri’s game, Nadia quickly made an executive decision. She squeezed her eyes shut and braced her head for impact Juri’s Saihasho wave. Her head soaked the low projectile, allowing the feral’s body to focus on the main event. “Lemme give you a hand!” Ducking way down, she low profiled the high kick and punished the whiffed kick with an upward extension. From there her discombobulation meant that she couldn’t convert into anything too fancy, but a One-Two Pun-isher connected into Limber Up that led to a pop-up and knockdown.

”Oof-” Juri hit the ground and started to roll back to her feet, annoyed.

As Nadia shook her head to clear her vision, her body snatched it, then served it underhand. It would fly in an arc over Juri as she recovered, then come down like a spinning sawblade on her other side to apply pressure on wakeup. Nadia herself charged forward, much too late for a meaty hit but still eager to mix Juri up.

The sawblade head was coming at her at a troubling but predictable timing. Fortune always tried to give Juri too much to think about, but that was just because Fortune had a peanut brain. She decided to punish her aggression by spending some energy for an OD-Senpusha kick, erupting from the ground like a sawblade of her own. ”Bwahaha!” It would catch Fortune and lift her up with Juri before she slammed her foot down to knock Fortune onto the ground. Juri dropped back down to the ground and looked around for Fortune’s head to give it a solid punt. ”C’mere, it’ll only hurt for a second!”

When she hit the ground, Nadia tumbled for a moment, more disappointed than anything. Seemed like Juri was as cunning as ever when it came to reversals, but that was where her advantages ended. “You, hurt me? Puh-lease!” Nadia taunted, alerting Juri to the location of her head. When the martial artist kicked at it, though, Nadia sneezed to launch her head at Juri and start biting her all over. “Omnomnomnomnom!”

”You stupid little-” Juri said, swatting at Fortune’s uncannily mobile head. She managed to grab some of her hair and wrench her free. She started to maliciously smash her head against a nearby light fixture.

Though she dreaded the first impact, Nadia’s face became completely deadpan after one smack. The streetlight might have just as well been a cardboard box for how much it hurt. She made sure to mouth off between smacks. “This! Isn’t! Even! Light! Exer! Cise!”

Juri blinked, and stopped smashing Fortune’s head against the pole. She held it aloft and just stared at her. This close, and now ‘activated’, the Gleaming red could be seen underneath her purple and green eyes. Juri was having a hard time understanding her complete lack of ability to harm Fortune with her programmed command to destroy her.

By then, Nadia’s body was back in action. Using Fluffy Soft she transformed her legs into those of a white tiger, easily closing the distance in order to deliver a flying dropkick with heavy paws. A strike with them would have normally inflicted a defense debuff as well, but with all actual damage off the table it made no difference. By the time the feral recovered from her dropkick, her legs were back to normal, but her offense had only just begun.

Fortune’s head went flying out of Juri’s hand as she tumbled along the ground. Normally she would be so entirely frustrated with the lack of pain from Fortune, or even on her own end, that she would just give up and go do something else. At the very least she would stop taking this ‘battle’ so seriously. As Fortune approached she stood up and shifted her stance, moving slightly to the right. Then she sniped her approach with a long ranged kick, planting her back foot and twisting to shoot her front foot forward as far as possible. She began to chop, elbow, and kick at Fortune, trying to lock her and her mobility down and keep her grounded.

“Hmph!” Crazy good pokes Nadia could deal with, but if there was one thing she hated, it was being forced to sit there on defense. Fortunately, she didn’t need to for long. “Shove off!” While still in blockstun, the feral extended her guard into a pushblock, harmlessly shunting Juri back a couple steps. Then she crouched down, building up energy. The two of them might have been decently well matched a month ago, but since then Ms Fortune had embarked on a globe-trotting adventure against ever-stronger foes alongside tried and true friends, while Juri simply stagnated, picking on the weak. It was time to show her what she’d been missing out on.

Going with one of her new favorite strategies, Nadia used Charge. She burst forward as a streak of yellow lightning, blitzing into and through her opponent. When she rematerialized behind Juri, she spun on a dime to use Battery, a pair of electric slashes that became crits thanks to Charge, prolonging either hitstun or blockstun. Her assault ended with a massive spurt of blood from her neck, its Hydro infusion reacting with Cat-5’s lightning moves to leave Juri Conductive.

Juri was caught off guard by the streak of yellow lightning. She was numbly battered around, before backpedaling and spitting as Fortune’s blood got on her. ”You were always disgusting, but what the hell was that? You finally stick a fork in a socket or something? ” Juri asked, trying to play it cool. Truthfully, the idea of being outclassed by Fortune of all people was an uncomfortable one.

“No, but I can still socket to ya!” As Nadia’s head ran over, using her ears like little legs, her body pressed her advantage. Spraying blood from neck, biceps, and wrists, she created two copycats that took form beside her. “Me, myself, and I!” Finally, the blood welling up from her neck created a copied head, which winked at Juri before Nadia doubled over. “Get reddy, ‘cause this isn’t a drill!” She shot the fake head forward like a drill, followed by her clones running in from either side. One went low with Cat Slide, and the next second the other came in with an overhead Flying Screen Door. Finally, after scooping up her head, the real Nadia finished things off with Ear Piercing for a mid, low, high, mid sequence.

”Huh?!” Juri took a step back. Then her face hardened. ”Tch.” She leaned down, widening her stance, and the Feng Shui engine flashed white. She crossed her arms to block the fake head, and on the first clone, activated her Kasatushi counter. Where Juri was, suddenly she wasn’t, in a burst of speed that met Nadia’s charge from earlier. Juri was a short distance Fortune, crouched low and skidding to a stop, leaving a trail of dust in front of her. She pumped her leg into the air, stocking a Fuhajin. Then she backflipped, keeping her range from Fortune. She was picking up a burst in power from Fortune: she clearly wasn’t the same cat girl from a month ago.

The sudden movement allowed Juri to evade Nadia’s onslaught, but her copycats didn’t disappear. Instead they stood by, awaiting new impulses, but for a brief moment the feral’s attention was elsewhere as she tried to remember what those special stocks of Juri’s could be used for. Bah, whatever. She pointed at Juri, commanding her copycats to attack. They ran toward her on all fours in order to perform Cat Scratch, both ending in El Gato axe kicks one after another. Then from a distance Nadia used Charge again, its finite range placing her point-blank in front of her target. This time, though, the Conductive status on Juri caused an aftershock following Nadia’s electric attack, and so did another use of Battery with arms turned into tiger limbs by Fluffy Soft. This was starting to get out of hand; if Juri wanted to take her momentum back, she’d need to do now.

Juri retreated even further, zigging and zagging back down the street and towards a nearby alleyway. Fortune’s clone assault was relentless. She stumbled backward after Nadia’s aftershock, and then growled. She suddenly dashed forward and to the side, finding the positioning she wanted. She used a stock to enhance her special move. She swept her leg far and out, doing a wide-ranged spinning kick once, and then twice again. She was trying to knock the aggressive clones away while they were attacking, and then use the move to close the gap on Fortune herself. She spent some OD meter, and her drive gauge was low at this point, to send a slash at Fortune’s ankles. After that she did a shot hop kick to bring her foot down on Fortune’s head.

By this point, Nadia was acting rather carelessly. With all the mayhem, she took a solid couple hits from Juri’s kicks, the latter of which left her head spinning, and she did not manage to tech off the ground once knocked down. “Me-owch!” she cried, more for effect than anything. Her copycats would be on their way in a moment, but Juri had knocked them back far enough to give herself an opening.

Juri dashed forward and as Fortune rose, aimed to set a foot on her shoulder. Then she would step up and knee Fortune in the gut, before spinning and slamming her other heel into the side of her head like she was trying to knock it off entirely. ”Get lost!” She didn’t know how Fortune was controlling these puppets, but hoped to disorient her visually, at least, by throwing her or her head away.

With a mixture of quick thinking and luck, Nadia managed to mitigate the throw by taking the knee strike with her arms, then popping her own head off to avoid the follow-up. The maneuver still got her pushed back and disoriented, though, so she couldn’t launch a counterattack, and the two ended up at a stand-off. “Get her!” she yowled as she grabbed her head from the air, and her copycats approached in order to keep Juri busy with some rapid slashes while Nadia hopped back.

Juri tried to back dash but had to block. Something snapped in her posture and it almost looked like she lost a shade of saturation. ”Seriously pissing me off!” She ducked under a swipe and snapped her leg between both clones heads like a ping pong ball.

It had been an intense few moments, and even without any sign of injury, Nadia still felt fatigue starting to build. Neither of the two were getting anywhere, which meant Juri -under Galeem’s influence- would never relent. As exciting as this fight was, not being able to definitely beat the bully took the fun out of it. Once the wonderworld collapsed, though, things would be different.

Hurry the hell up and lose already, Falcon!

She pulled her Bait Launcher from her belt and considered it for a moment. Was annoying Juri really worth spending the ammo…? The feral grinned. Of course it was! She took aim and fired, shooting a slab of raw meat that plopped down in the melee. The next moment a big, burly tiger poofed into existence, ready to try and make mincemeat of any martial artists in its way.

Needless to say, Juri did not expect that. ”Hey!” She yelled, between heavy breathes. ”What’s wrong with you? You know those things are endangered!” She protested.

That shout took Nadia aback. “Huh? It’s not even real! And why d’you care, anyway? There’s only one Ms Fortune, and look how you treat me!”

”What are you, whining, now?” Juri asked.

Her summoned tiger attacked, swinging its huge arms again and again, but it neither moved very much nor lasted very long, meaning Juri could get away before the tiger poofed back out of existence. Nadia took the chance to absorb her copycats, noting that they’d be more useful if called out for a quick assist than an extended brawl. In a burst of pressurized blood she superjumped up, then used Charge to slam back down onto Juri’s position and get one final aftershock on her before the Conductive status wore off. As the dust and sparks cleared, she stood up, grinning at her opponent. “You look tired. Worn out already? You oughta try picking on someone your own size more often~”

Juri stood back up, catching her breath. ”Shut up, loser. You couldn’t stop me then and you can’t stop me now. Even with all your annoying new tricks. Just stupid gimmicks. I’ve basically got them all figured out now.” Juri said, swallowing dryly.

“Buhbuhbuhbuhbuh,” Nadia stuttered, making a flapping-lips motion with her hand. “Blubber all ya want. I’ve just been messing around, and that’s all you ever do. If you think you’re hot shit, you’re in for some serious misfortune!” Sharpening her claws, the feral readied up for another round.

There was a flash of energy, and Juri stood up straighter. ”Am I supposed to be surprised you’re making stupid baby noises, like usual? You’re not funny.” Juri dashed forward, compelled to try and smack Fortune around as much as she could. But before the pointless battle could recommence the game would come to an end, and they would both end up back in the lobby.

It was very much looking like Pit was going to lose three minigames in a row.

If there was one bright side to that, it was that at least he wouldn't be dead last. During the course of the game he'd passed by others with stopped cars, crashed cars, or no cars at all (along with the results of seeker sabotage in the form of paint and other goopy hazards, craters in the road, and more)... so he was doing better than them, but it only made him feel a little better. He wanted to win, and not because someone else was doing poorly but because he was doing great.

That said, the red fares turned out to be much harder than they appeared. The sudden jump up from green fares saw Pit wildly careening through the city's streets to try and reach his client's destination in time. Balancing safety with speed was tough, and more than half of the passengers he picked up ended up bailing because of one thing or another. And while at first Pit would happily chat with the NPCs that got into his cab, as the time limit ran out on the more challenging fares the chatting turned into complaints to "stay on the road" or "go faster." There was no pleasing them!

At the very least, driving around was really fun - and when Pit did manage to complete a fare, the elation washed away the previous failures and spurred him back on the road. It prevented the game from truly being stressful, keeping it squarely in the 'enjoyable' category.

He was in the middle of ferrying his latest passenger across town when the sounds of battle caught his ear. With all the hijinks going on, plus the sounds of the city itself, it really wasn't that remarkable. In fact he ignored it; driving with both hands gripped tight on the wheel, leaned forward with his brows pinched and the tip of his tongue poked out of his mouth in concentration. Only when he turned fast around a corner and came upon on the scene of the fight did his attention drift from the road to Ms. Fortune and Juri's bout.

"Huh?" He blinked, craning his neck around to watch while the taxi continue forward, actually registering the newcomer now. Why are they fighting? Did they give up and decide to spar instead? Aw man, that sounds fun...! Although from what little he could overhear, the girls were being pretty catty with each other. Maybe not a spar, then...? Maybe Ms. Fortune was trying to set the crass lady free from Galeem but forgot the damage was turned off?

"Hey, watch where you're going!" Pit's passenger urged him, grasping his shoulders from the backseat and shaking them to get the angel's eyes back on the road. "Wh-oh!" The taxi struck several flower stalls and then scrapped the side of the shop itself, forcing the vehicle down a one way alley. It burst out from between the buildings with its wheels bouncing off of the pavement, across the road and onto the curb. Pit spun the wheel, resulting in a loud screech and tire marks burned onto the street as he got the taxi back on track.

"Sorry!" Pit said, looking back at the frazzled man still miraculously in the cab. The NPC held his dizzy head, then shook it. "Just pay attention and let's go."

Since quitting wasn't something Pit did and he was still in the middle of transporting his fare, he got a move on in the direction of the arrow above rather than hop out and join the new impromptu game of smash. It did get him thinking a little though. When the taxi skidded to a halt and his disgruntled passenger hopped out, Pit glanced at the displays on the dashboard. He couldn't read the words, but after the first few fares he determined one set of numbers to be his score, and the other his game timer - and the latter was running down quickly. Pit drummed his fingers on the wheel while he thought. He could keep playing, or he could see what the fight was really about, or if he assumed the feral was trying to help Juri, he could get a head start on doing the same for his fellow Smasher Capt. Falcon... Speaking of, the blue blur (not that one) whizzed by in the opposite direction. It wouldn't come as a surprise if the F-Zero pilot handily won this game.

Pit turned the car's wheel again, quickly sending it clunking across the meridian in order to chase after the front runner, but he never managed to catch up before his timer hit zero and the taxi's engine cut out, gradually bringing Pit and his vehicle to a stop in the middle of the highway. The angel let his forehead fall onto the steering wheel with a thunk. Game over. In the other lane, another taxi drove by with an unfamiliar driver and a women in red in the passenger seat.

---

Driving around in the taxi was a little bit fun. Mostly due to the low stakes of the game, as Primrose thought the prospect of controlling these high speed machines wouldn't be half as fun if it was in some serious situation. Either way, the dancer seemed to very much prefer riding shotgun rather than behind the wheel. For most of the game after her first fare, that was what she'd been doing - with that first passenger having taken over her role.

With her Allure, getting what she wanted out of the weak willed was trivial... and there was no will weaker than none at all. The NPCs functioned like real people in order to breathe life into the game, but Primrose was still surprised that batting her eyelashes and asking the man to drive in her stead had actually worked. It definitely would be considered foul play of some kind, if her help was any good at his new job.

As if following a strict map, her thrall never deviated from the road, meaning no short cuts, off-roading, or ramps. He also wasn't the best at avoiding obstacles left over from other players (or said players themselves). Even with those faults, he was still probably more effective than Primrose herself as a driver, so the dancer just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

The slow and steady progress was not enough to keep up with the ever declining timer. When Primrose noticed that it was getting close to running out she sat up straighter in her seat, looking around for any nice spots to wait out the rest of the game. She, her driver, and an NPC woman (a green fare, if the small increase in money was any indication) were headed over the long bridge separating the heart of the city from the island next to it. Palm trees lined the road, making bars against the sky with pleasant streaks of setting sunlight filtering between them to light up the street ahead.

When they crossed the bridge, the arrow indicator turned left. The taxi followed it to a little inlet dock, where the third passenger hopped out. "Thanks!" She called, waving as she dashed away. A couple seconds later and the timer ran out, so Primrose exited the vehicle too.

"My thanks as well," she told the driver she'd enlisted. He replied with a "no problem!" before coming to realize that the car would no longer start. He sat there in confusion for a moment before hopping out and hoofing it, presumably back to where he'd originally wanted to go back across the bridge. If he was a real person, Primrose might have felt bad about that.

She stretched her arms over her head, then stretched her legs by walking along the roadside. Compared to the havoc being wreaked in the main city, things seemed pretty quiet over here. She continued on, appreciating the scenery - the mountain on one side, the ocean and the beach on the other. Even if it wasn't real, this was a pretty place.

Behind her, Primrose heard the rumble of another taxi. Without needing to focus on driving, she'd realized that the players' cars sounded different than the ones that just populated the game. She slowed down, looking over her shoulder before stopping and waving her hand.

"Could you give a girl a lift?" she said as the driver slowed down.

Somehow, Therion wasn't surprised to see Primrose here. He'd hardly seen anyone on the second island, save for a few of the top players taking harder fare to and fro, but eventually other people must have come up with the same strategy as him or else gotten themselves stuck here after trying too hard a fare. Primrose seemed like the latter, since he'd already passed her abandoned taxi down the road.

He pulled over, and with a flat expression he held a hand out towards like her expected to be paid a fare. Primrose's mouth curled into a little amused smile. "My company isn't enough~?"

"You know that doesn't work on me," he scoffed. He didn't keep up the act, reaching over the cab's center console to open the passenger side door for her. "Come on. I'm almost out of time anyway."

Primrose obliged, rounding the vehicle and closing the door once she was seated. Therion pulled away from the curb and set them smoothly down the road, downhill where they got a great view of the coastline.

Despite saying he was almost out of time, there were still a couple of minutes left on Therion's timer. Since he'd been taking a bunch of easy fares, his overall time limit had increased by a fair amount while his score, the money he'd earned, was fairly low. He didn't have a chance at placing in the top three due to that play style, but he didn't really care. 'Kooky Cabbies' turned out to be pretty fun, and even pleasant after the pressure of trying to win was removed. Therion had been getting a much better handle on driving with the multiple easy fares, and though he couldn't be called an expert by any means he was at least competent by now. Putting his focus solely on the car and the road kept his mind off of everything else - the mission, the changes everyone was going through, the horrors they'd experienced earlier that day... and there was no chance of creepy monsters, being submerged, or falling off a mountain in this minigame. With the warm sun and the soft, salty breeze... it was actually relaxing.

Savoring that unexpected relaxed feeling, Therion had abandoned the game a little before Primrose herself had been disqualified. He just kept his focus on driving, and steadily getting a little better and more comfortable with it, until he got to this point: being able to enjoy a nice ride with the wind tickling his hair.

Primrose settled down in her seat, resting her head back against the headrest. She'd thought it before, but riding in a car felt so different from riding in a carriage, even an uncovered one. It was nice, especially since she could trust he friend at the wheel instead of what she'd been doing before. Not wanting to break Therion's focus, Primrose didn't bring up any conversation topics. The Orsterrans simply soaked up the wind, the sun, and the sight of the sparkling beaches until the taxi chugged and rolled to a stop.

Geralt crashed into another car, still not having fully internalized how traffic worked, and her fare threw his hands up and shoved the door open, storming out of the vehicle without paying. She groaned, looking around for a new fare and making her way to the green zone to pick up a new person. Hopefully, this one wouldn't need to go so far. 'Take me to Catbird Grove!' The woman demanded, and Geralt nodded, looking to see what direction that was. It wasn't too far from where they were at, but it wasn't particularly close, either. Further still, she didn't have a whole lot of time left, having taken so long to get a hang of controlling a vehicle. So, she put her foot to the accelerator, and they were off.

A patch of Junior's goop was in the road, and Geralt groaned when she realized there was no way around it without wasting even more time. "Oh, that kid..." she grumbled as the taxi drove over the goop, and for a few moments, completely lost traction, sliding forward without any response to Geralt's attempts to control the car. After those few moments, however, the tires caught the road, and despite a little fish-tailing, Geralt managed to get her fare to their destination with seconds to spare. Unfortunately, those seconds were not enough to reach the next fare, and the vehicle sputtered and halted, leaving Geralt eliminated from the game. "Well...that was miserable." She groaned, before shrugging and exiting the taxi. "Might as well have a look around while those lunatics have at it."

One of said lunatics, Zenkichi, was still having the time of his life, though once he started seeing the other Seekers, things got a little too hectic. He got caught by Nadia on her rampage of crashing into as many of the Seekers as she could find, and between Bowser's massive vehicle and Junior's goop, it was hard not to get knocked a little off track by the Koopa Troop. Zenkichi had one thing most of the other Seekers didn't have, even if they knew how to drive cars: City driving experience. Sure, he didn't drive any crazy places like New York City (he'd heard dreadful rumors of traffic in that accursed place, and not even he would be willing to brave it), but Tokyo was one of the most densely-populated cities in the world, and he made it through just fine. Avoiding the nearly suburban traffic of Grapital City, in comparison, was a piece of cake.

'Take me to Payback Square!' 'I need to go to the Grapital Building!' 'Jobber Flats!' 'Bold Coast!' Passengers called out their demands, and Zenkichi dutifully met them. He cut down on the stunts after the first few rough landings, instead focusing on just getting people to their places, though if he saw a perfectly-placed ramp truck, he couldn't say no to it. It was like being an action movie hero, launching into the air and crashing back to the earth.

He laughed, driving along to get this fare to their destination, when he passed Roxas and Sandalphon sitting down for a chat. He slowed to a crawl as he did, honking quickly and giving the pair a quick wave before jetting back off. At one point, he saw the catgirl, Nadia, fighting with Juri, and sped up to get well out of their way. Far be it from him to butt into a catfight. Nooooo, thank you!

Geralt, meanwhile, was wandering around Catbird Grove, just enjoying the small park, there, when she decided to take a seat in the grass and try to meditate. It had been a while since she'd had the time to do so, and even with the distant sounds of engines, horns, and chaos, she found her mind slowing, until only one thought occupied it: Ciri. The face of her daughter, the long scar on her cheek, and she sighed. There was so much going on, and Geralt felt no closer to finding her than she was when she was first awoken from Galeem's curse. As her eyes opened, and she rose, Geralt swore a silent oath. "I will find you, Ciri, and I will free you from Galeem. And when the time comes, we'll stop it together. It's not my story. It's yours."

Having this be her first time driving a car and her relative inexperience operating vehicles, Blazermate was acting more like a kid at a bumpercar ride, instead causing chaos by trying to smash her car into others with a gleeful "Whee!" as she drove by and her targets swerved out of the way, being much more skilled than her in most regards. Still, she'd try all the fun tricks and would often be either the first or second wave of sabotage that matched the koopa troop in their attempts to mess everyone up. Although she never saw Falcon for more than a few seconds as that guy was moving with great skill and she couldn't crash into him even if she tried.

Although her little joyride would be over pretty quickly once she tried to use the emergency break to turn and managed to do a bunch of doughnuts before spinning out, her car twirling through the roads and wedging in Roland's car, making it unable to move and basically taking the two of them out of the minigame. "Whee, that was fun! Never drove before, nor do I get to let loose like that!" Blazermate said, swirls in her eyes.

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Sectonia was one of the under performers of the group, although in her case it wasn't due to lack of knowledge of how to drive a car, but more so because she had a delay between changing her speed or breaking. She also wasn't really enjoying having to driver a car; so far these minigames haven't really been her thing and she was only trying for the potential power and beauty that was said to be at the end of this trial. But with there being so many people and only three winners, and her poor ability to drift or do anything that the forerunners could do, she lost more and more interest with this game as things went by. She did find it a bit amusing though as she saw the koopa troop Nadia, and Blazermate trying to mess people up instead of playing the game normally.

it was a bit interesting how when she had little interest in the game itself, she could sit back and enjoy the chaos that unfolded. So much so she parked at a higher up area a bit away and just watched what happened below. She already knew she wasn't going to beat Falcon and the other urban knowledge drivers as they had passed by her a few times. Blazermate managed to take out Roland, from the looks of things, and Falcon skillfully dodged everyone trying to take him out. Nadia was duking it out with the new person... what was her name again? Jura? Really it seemed like outside of a couple people, everyone else was just doing whatever they wanted.

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While Roland was one of the few who didn't need to learn how to drive, he wasn't an expert at it. You often didn't need to do any kind of combat driving as a Fixer, with firearms being pretty rare in the City, so it was more used to go from point A to B. Plus some people just had augments that were cheaper than cars that let them move way faster and not be exhausted or even teleport. And then the backstreets were often pretty narrow or under construction....

Well, no reason to mumble about all that to himself as Roland just did a fairly satisfactory job. He wasn't as fast as Falcon, but he wasn't in trouble like a few of the others... or causing trouble like those who felt they had no chance of winning and were just having fun. Honestly, if he knew he was going to be a bit under the top placings here, he'd probably join in on the chaos, it looked fun. But while he was doing pretty well, having a fair amount of time left, that would soon come to an end as a spinning out of control Blazermate crashed into his car and wedged herself and him in between two buildings in such a way that there wasn't a way for either of them to get out in any reasonable timeframe. One would think if this minigame was more realistic or from a different place their cars would've exploded form this.

"What the hell?" Roland said as he got slammed into the one way alleyway by Blazermate. The medabot giving up on her little joyride as she looked very dizzy, but also pleased with herself. Roland could only look out his window, chin in his hand as he waited for the minigame to be over after giving it a bit of a try to get out and finding it pointless. "Well, at least one of us had a load of fun." Roland said, wrapping his fingers against the edge of his car as the timer ticked down to nothing and Blazermate giggled like an excited schoolgirl. Well, she kinda looked like one, so that made sense.

”Good luck with your Doctor’s appointment, Mr. Perkins.” Captain Falcon cheerfully told elderly passenger as the man exited the cab. ”And have yourself a fine day!” He added, calling back to his waving passenger as he sped off back into another search for a fare.

“Thank you, Captain!” called the elderly man, but unfortunately it seemed Falcon was already away before he could hear that.

Unlike Roxas - who stuck to a specific area; or Ganondorf - who didn’t even bother to participate - the Captain had been zooming along the streets and roads of the entire island city. His sticking almost exclusively to red fares meant that his passengers were requesting locations all over the city, near and far. It also had the side effect of really racking up Cap’s earnings and overall standing on the minigame’s scoreboard, not to mention him almost never being in danger of running out of time. He really had become the driver to beat. But if his career in the Grand Prix taught him anything, it was that being ahead of the pack also came with having the largest target painted on your tail.

And Falcon certainly wasn’t wrong. Indeed, as the minigame marched on and more and more of the competitors were eliminated, those who remained seemed to become that much more focused and aggressive in their tactics. Some of them in fact began to outright single out the Captain in multiple attempts to sabotage him and eliminate him from the game. The most obvious of these perpetrators were Bowser and his son, Junior. Bowser’s modus operandi appeared to be the direct approach as he would often try ramming Falcon’s cab or running him off the road. And his experience from Kart racing made him a genuine threat in this regard. But these were tactics that Falcon had become all too familiar with thanks to his time here in Carnival Town racing against Morton and Lemmy Koopa, who often employed similar if not identical direct attack strategies against him. Some clever braking and creative steering was usually enough to avoid getting steamrolled by the king’s big car. ”All the muscle in the galaxy doesn’t mean much if you can’t actually hit anything with it, you know!” He called to Bowser briefly after managing to dodge one of his rams and then zooming away from him.

By contrast, Junior’s M.O. appeared to be a less direct approach. His smaller size meant he couldn’t be as liberal with ramming other drivers. So instead he appeared to use his oversized paint brush to literally paint sludgy hazards on the roads in his wake wherever he was driving. The obvious solution to this was to simply avoid driving the same roads and routes that Junior took. But that wasn’t always possible, as sometimes a requested destination was right in the thick of where Junior had laid some of his paint traps down. Avoiding those wasn’t always possible, and at times required Falcon to ease up on the gas to avoid losing control and spinning out. Aggressive driving was one thing but the Captain was certainly not fond of people utilizing actual weapons of any kind. It took something away from the skill element and made the game rely a bit more on chance as a result. Not exactly his cup of tea, as the Captain preferred to earn his trophies the old fashioned way. But nevertheless, he couldn’t control how others chose to play the game. But after a round of playing “dodge the goop” with Junior, Cap shot him with a concerned look. ”Best not overdo it with the traps. Wouldn’t want to accidentally fall into one yourself, now would you?” He warned the prince as he zoomed ahead to continue on toward his destination at the time.

And then there was the robotic girl, Blazermate. A classic example of yesterday’s teammates becoming today’s rivals. Although based on the interactions Cap had with her during Film Those Freaks, he hadn’t taken her for the sabotage type, and yet here they were. Then again, unlike the Koopas, she wasn’t exactly “targeting” Falcon in the strictest sense. Rather she was driving recklessly and that on occasion put her on a collision course with Cap and his blue taxi cab. He had to pull a handbrake maneuver to avoid getting sideswiped by her cab. ”Close, but no dice I’m afraid! Hahaha!” He told her, not even sure if she had been intentionally trying to take him out. Either way, the Captain kept on living to continue driving for the time being.

After this things seemed to quiet down a bit. It was probably because more competitors had run out the clock and thus there were fewer still on the road. In fact by Falcon’s count, there were only a small handful still driving. More and more he passed by cabs that weren’t moving or other competitors who were no longer in their cars, which signified to him that they’d been eliminated. There couldn’t have been much more than maybe three or four drivers left by now. Five, tops.

”Seems we’re at the final leg. Even my own timer is starting to get lower now.” He said to himself, noting that even he couldn’t keep his time going forever. He made course for another red fare, figuring he could maybe get one or two more done with his current time. Maybe three if he really pushed it. ”The checkered flag is growing nearer, folks. Time to see who claims it first!”

To say the royal koopas were both causing carnage and tearing up the road was something of an understatement. With oodles racing experience, blasting back and forth across town was a breeze, but, of course, between villain and mario kart involving interfering with other racers as a core component, they couldn’t simply be satisfied with just out racing the others. They had to mess with them too.

Which made trying to share a road with even one a nightmare, let alone two, let alone cross the bridge between islands with instant game overs on either side of you. Unfortunately for Midna, that is exactly the position she found herself in, with Bowser in front taking up the whole half of the highway, and jr coming right up behind her as they all approached that most dangerous of crossings.

”move!” honk ”out” honk ”the” honk ”way!” she demanded, having discovered and now making liberal use of the car horn after getting tooted at herself by the none-people-cars.

As for why she wanted to get past, well, a certain prince had gotten clever with his strikers, and recreated an old classic of mario kart which he put an end to Midna’s honking by sending another volley her way: green shells.

”Goddesses you have got to be kidding me” the princess cursed, swerving to the side to avoid the first of the triple burst, only to careen into the central divider as looking where she was and where she was going proved much to difficult. Sparks flew as she scraped her vehicle against it, only for her to pull off just in time to avoid the second shell, and then dodged the third purely because she was swerving wildly to try and avoid the shells that had rebound off of the back of Bowser’s mega vehicle.

She let out a little sigh of relief as she saw the prince had run out of ammo, for now, for now, only to put her eyes back forwards and meet those of Bowser leaning over the back of his vehicle.

”Get lost tailgater!” he demanded, before taking a swipe at her with a titanic claw. She hit the brakes with an ”ach” to avoid this, only for Jr to rear end her, ramming her forwards back into Bowser’s swiping range with a ”yeah, get her papa!”

”You little-” she began to bite bark at him, only for the sound of jet engine flaring to herald her boom as bowser swung his kinetic strike module down, smashed it into the side of her taxi, and sent it, and the princess, careening over the bridge’s barrier and down into the drink.

She surfaced a few moments later, just in time to see father and son duo fist bump rather than keep up their sabotaging ways vs each other. Had she simply been taken down, she might have just stewed in the drink, but she drew the line at nepotism. Ironic for a princess, yes, but technically she had been appointed as her parent’s successor rather than simply inheriting the position.

Either way, she swore then and there she would have her revenge as she slipped into the shadow of the bridge and began to scheme.

Compared to the deliberate carnage her adopted father and new brother were causing, Rika’s was entirely unintentional. Despite Kamek sitting in her lap and giving her pointers, her lack of land legs was biting her in the butt again. She mostly compensated for being a land vessel via using her gauntlets when on foot, but having been made to sail everywhere meant she didn’t actually have the most strength or dexterity in her lower limbs, which made fine motor control of the pedal operated, well, motor, a touch tricky.

Hence why she was up there in the property damage department with Nadia, an unintentional rampage that ended with an ”Easily does it- oh dear” from Kamek before they missed a corner, rammed straight into an exercise ball store, and where bounced right back out. Two more bounces atop the parasol of a food vendor and a shop awning later and they had crashed, upside down in the middle of the street.

With a groan, Rika popped her gauntlets back on, shoved open the door of the car, and then forcibly shoved it back on its wheels, only for it to not start up again.

”What? Why? What’s wrong now!?” the ship girl complained in exasperation, only for Kamek to gently inform her that ”Sadly I think you are out of time young mistress” prompting a deep and frustrated ”Uuurgh” from the ship girl before she complained that ”this has been no fun at all” as she weakly kicked the taxi cab

”Perhaps there is something more amusing to do around the town for those who are out of time? We’re hardly the first and only to run out of time” Kamek suggested, before actually properly taking in the place they had been racing around and noticing the odd thing about it, namely that ”huh, it seems like the whole place is more gym than city? How odd”

”What’s a gym?” Rika inevitably asked, to which the mage replied that ”it’s a palace where people train their bodies to be stronger” before pointing out a few of the things that had given it away ”those would be weights for lifting to build arm muscle, and those treadmills to make you better at running, and, I suppose that” he gestured at a Leg Press Machine that had been placed where a park bench might have been in an actual city, ”would be for lifting weights with your legs to make them stronger I suppose”

”Huh” Rika replied, before saying ”I’m going to try that then” which is how she ended up using the rest of the time they had doing leg exercises.

While she was at that, Bowser and Jr were still trying to win the game, but they were about to receive a thorn in their side as consequence for their actions. As the prince once again came to cross the bridge on a long and daring red passenger request, the shadow of vengeance sprung her trap. With a heave, Midna swung herself up onto the brigade, landing on all sixes and then lashed out with her shadow hand, grabbing the front of his rather diminutive taxi. As the prince yelled at her to let him go, she casually hurled him and his vehicle off of the bridge to cap off one perfectly executed ambush.

She didn’t stop to gloat however. With the lighter target down, now came the daunting task of running the road hogging Bowser off the, well, road.

Finding him was pretty easy, what with the roar of rage that echoed into the sky when he found out about how she’d ended his son’s game. Unfortunately, him finding out about that made things a fair bit trickier for her, as when she roared into view on the back of one of her stolen motorbikes, she was just in time to spot the prince clambering up onto the back of his papa’s cab.

”There she is papa! There’s the meanie who threw me off the bridge” the prince shouted, pointing her out with his paint brush, before calling out that ”show her what a loser she is and win the race, I’ll hold her off!” when his dad made to come after her rather than break away from the race

”Oh I’m the mean one? You two should have thought about the consequences before messing with me!” she called back, before revving her motorcycle and charging right at them.

”Ha! We’ll see about that!” Bowser taunted back, before yelling ”Now get in here!” at the closest available fair, who happened to be red.

That was Midna’s cue, as she brought up her second set of arms, and started to pepper the passenger with shots from her twin commando auto pistols.

”Hey what the heck!” jr shouted in complaint as the passenger too started complaining, (though not nearly as frantically as being shot might suggest) before forming an iron shield and sticking himself, and it, in the way of the shots.

”Na na na na na! Can’t hurt me!” he shouted at her as Bowser hit the gas and roared off towards their destination. Not deterred, Minda kept up after them, forming a shadow hand and slapping it into the side of the koopa-cab, causing it to swerve into oncoming traffic. The royal ride naturally plowed everything aside, but it was all to much for the picky red fare, who bailed on them after the fourth collision.

”Alright, that does it, get off the road!” the koopa king roared, as he powslid the cab around, and then gunned it right at her. Seeming undeterred, she countercharged, only to leap at the last moment before the collision, her bike going down into a portal, and her up onto the hood of the car.

”Huh!?” the king grunted in confusion, only to panic as the princess made a grab for the wheel with her shadow hand and tried to forcibly turn all three of them off of the road and into the sea.

As she did so however, the mirror shield he had left sitting against the side door of the car flashed once, and a man very familiar to them all stepped out of it, brandishing a pure white blade.

The sight of her killer in the form he had worn when he struck the (temporarily) fatal blow made the princess flinch, and then when he came at her with that pure white blade prompted her to leap off of the vehicle entirely. She hit the asphalt, tumbling over and over in a way that would have really hurt if she could have taken damage at all. Fortunately, as it was off, she merely pushed herself up off the ground after reorienting herself, only to find the reflection of Ganondorf coming at her, blade in hand.

With a flash she swung out her sword tipped tree spear to block the opening blow, and then emptied auto pistol rounds into the reflection as their blades clashed again and again, only for nothing to harm the reflection, because, of course, damage was off. It took her adrenaline spiked mind far too long to realize this was why she was making zero progress. To the point that when time ran out she’d still be trading parries blows with the phantom.

”That guy’s her biggest enemy? Thought he was Link’s nemesis” Bowser grunted, unsure if that was useful info or just funny, while Jr noted that ”Did you see her face? She was really spooked by him showing up. Like really spooked” not quite able to interpret the look Midna had had on her face when her death flashed before her eyes, as much because half of it was covered in mask as because of his youth.

”Well it got her off our case, so time to make up for lost time! We can still win this thing!” Bowser declared, even as his timer ticked perilously close to out of time thanks to Midna’s sabotage and the mixed blessing of his mega sized vehicle.

After putting Nadia and her spectacular wreck in his rear-view mirror, Goldlewis tried to pick up the pace. The timer in his cab’s dashboard marched ever closer to zero, after all, and if he meant to win he couldn’t afford to waste any time. So far his strategy had been a blend of speed and control, reasoning that any crashes or spin outs that resulted from an overabundance of haste would cost him a lot more time on the clock than caution. He didn’t overdo it like Sandalphon, but he still got outpaced by the likes of Captain Falcon and even Zenkichi. Now, though, he knew that he would need to pick up the pace to stay in the running. A little more familiar now with the city layout and the overall shape of its streets, he cranked up the music in his radio player and began to drive a little more recklessly. He flew off hills, skidded around sharp corners, and even took out small objects.

Goldlewis reached Payback Square, dropped off his current passenger, and drifted to a stop in a red zone just narrowly missing his next customer. “Southpaw Junction, and step on it!” the female NPC demanded. The veteran obliged, slamming his pedal to the metal to the sound of screeching tires. His arrow pointed him back toward Grapital Central, but while he knew he could weave through those twisting streets, the broader southbound avenue offered more room for acceleration. It featured one other bonus, too: ramp trucks. As long as he didn’t soar straight into the elevated railway, Goldlewis knew he could use those strategically-placed stunt vehicles to perform tricks, which he’d avoided in favor of solid fundamentals until now. “Better buckle up, ma’am!” he grinned, still not familiar with the concept of a non-player character. “I’m gonna take you for a ride!”

Now, with his engine roaring as the cab sped down the roadway, Goldlewis could really feel the wind in his hair. His heart pumped with exhilaration, and he couldn’t suppress a smile. Suppressing his common sense, he steered his taxi toward the first ramp truck he saw, and a second later he was in the air. “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaw!” he hollered, easily drowning out the screaming of the passenger in the back. All too soon the vehicle touched back down, with a quick rightward veer necessary to avoid a collision with a building. Just after getting the vehicle back under control, though, Goldlewis saw another ramp, and deftly drifted over to fly off it as well.

He reached Southpaw Junction ahead of schedule, his passenger shaken but still in the vehicle. “Thank ya kindly!” After snatching his cash from her shaking hands, he rounded up another customer that requested a quick trip to Jobber Flats, back where he last spotted Sandalphon. Goldlewis got there on the double, a little shaken by several near misses and a run-in with Junior’s paint hazard but satisfied with the extra dough. He didn’t see any sign of Sandalphon and reasoned that she must have barely left the area with the time she had left, though overall he had noticed fewer and fewer competitors around. Those with less driving skill, especially the few inclined to sabotage others instead of trying to win for themselves, were all getting eliminated. Already the relentless decline of the timers had thinned the herd by half or more. Those last two trips had bolstered his own time somewhat, so if Goldlewis could last just a little longer, a top spot could be his. Unfortunately, the saboteurs only got more dangerous once eliminated, using their own abilities to wreck havoc rather than their vehicles.

Unwilling to waste time hunting down a red, he settled for a yellow, only to find that the customer demanded a trip over Grapital City’s connecting bridge to Low Key Key. With Half-Nelson Highway a hotspot for saboteur activity, and too much of a detour anyway, he opted to go for the much narrower, much trickier southern bridge instead. He managed to avoid a drop into the drink, but he felt anxious to make up for the time spent on his cautious crossing, and after turning south Goldlewis entered the little town where he dropped his passenger off at a poolside. He spotted a red fare up the street, picked the NPC up, then had to pull off a three-point turn to head south again to get to the giant ice cream come. Unfortunately, this particular customer’s timer turned out to be incredibly strict, and just moments before Goldlewis reached the monument his passenger bailed. “You gotta be kiddin’ me. It’s right there!” He got no response, of course, and the veteran had to swallow his pride in order to find someone else.

Thanks to that incident, his timer suffered a blow that he never recovered from, even after two back-to-back yellow trips in Low Key Key (during which he saw, and waved to, Primrose and Therion in the latter’s parked car). His hesitation to attempt more reds ended up spelling his doom. Just as he drew near the tropical island’s lavish southeastern hotel, his taxi cab began to give up the ghost. “Gaghhhh, don’t you quit on me now, you stinkin’ clunker! Just a hundred more feet, c’mon, c’mon!” Unfortunately, his timer read zero-zero-zero, and no amount of coaxing would add more seconds to that fateful number. With a final sputtering cough, the car ground to a halt. “Awww, hell.” He smacked the steering wheel with the bottom of his fist in disappointment, only for the airbag to explosively deploy and flatten Goldlewis against the seat. “MMMPH!”

It took him a few moments to extricate himself, after which the veteran heaved a heavy sigh, shook his head, and moseyed down the road toward the hotel. While he waited for the game to wrap up, he could at least see if the drinks in this wonderworld were real enough to taste. Fortunately, he didn’t have long to wait; even if Falcon had the others beat by a country mile, only the person in second needed to run out of time for the game to reach its end. The moment Goldlewis reached for a mimosa, the tropical paradise around him began to collapse.

---

The moment Nadia got warped back into the giant roulette table that served as the Seekers’ minigame lobby, the feral looked around. All of her fellow competitors from Kooky Cabbies had reappeared alongside her, their positions seemingly random, but right now she cared about just one unfriendly face in particular. With almost everyone more or less relaxed after their taxi cabs stopped moving, it took only a second to identify her target by movement alone, given the warp-induced disorientation that led to directionless aggression. Now that Juri and Nadia were back in the real world -or a more real one than Grapital City, at least- they could give their feud a proper conclusion, and the feral planned to keep her word by showing the bully how dangerous a serious Ms. Fortune could be.

“Okay, let’s do this right,” Nadia muttered, drawing her dagger Athame from her belt with one hand as she sprayed blood on the floor from the other. When she hopped onto it, she could deploy her rigging, the mechanical arms unfolding from her backpack to swivel their cannon batteries in Juri’s direction. “I won’t miss you!” She fired missiles of condensed hydro energy like watery corkscrews, two salvos at once, and as all four shots homed in on Juri’s position Nadia transformed her legs with Fluffy Soft and sprinted after the missiles in an animalistic burst of speed.

Juri’s good reactions meant that she could turn and block the missiles the moment she spotted them, but burnout prolonged her blockstun long enough for Nadia to pounce. She lashed out with her tiger legs, first with a scratch and then with a knee. “Saved the beast for last!” A high guard reduced the empowered blows to chip damage, but the Marks they applied reduced Juri’s defense by a combined ten percent, which spiked to 40% when Nadia followed up with a wicked slice from Athame, even when blocked. “Knife knowing ya!” Finally, Nadia used her dramatic tension to unleash her classic blockbuster, Cat Scratch Fever. “Furserker Purrage!” She advanced with a relentless series of slashes, dishing out remarkable chip damage as she pushed Juri back. The final hit caused the martial artist’s back to slam into the roulette table’s central tower, stunning her. As Juri reeled and Nadia’s teammates looked on, either alarmed or just curious, the feral stepped forward with a Friend Heart in her hand.

“Haah,” she gasped, grinning. “You’ve had quite the slumber party. But it’s time to wake up!”

She drove the Friend Heart into Juri’s head, setting the vagabond free in a burst of light.

In just seconds the commotion was over, thanks to Nadia’s underhanded strategy. As Juri recovered, fully healed but also fully possessed of her memories, her attacker waved the others away with fingers crossed behind her back. “Nothin’ to worry about guys, just freeing my friend here.” Once she’d assuaged the others’ concerns, Nadia turned back to Juri. She didn’t bother insulting her with an offered hand to help her up. “Welcome to what I’ve been dealing with,” she told her old rival. Would the truth inspire her to rethink her ways and fight for the future, or sink her into a depression? Maybe it wouldn’t change much of anything. Regardless, the choice was Juri’s to make. “...Enjoy.”

By that time, Balan and Ballyhoo had appeared. “What an incredible, action-packed ADVENTURE!” Seemingly ignoring the violent confrontation, the gamemaster looked more animated than ever. “Good work transporting those travelers, everyone, but alas! There can be only one winner! And then several RUNNERS-UP!” His associate Balan provided a drumroll as Ballyhoo snapped his fingers, summoning a cloud of wallets with all the competitor’s pictures on them that contained their collective earnings. Cash poured out of them -though in a couple cases, a single butterfly fluttered out of them- and one by one they quickly ran out until only three remained. “In third place, Goldlewis Dickinson! In second place, Zenkichi Hasegawa! And in first place, Carnival Town’s very own CAPTAIN FALCON! CONGRATULATIONS!”

Though getting third took Goldlewis by surprise, it did lift his spirits. In the end, his focus on the objective had given him the edge over Bowser, who'd committed a bit too much to chaos.

Ballyhoo held out his empty palms, then turned up his hands, revealing rift tokens between gloved fingers. He hurled them like throwing knives, five at Falcon and four at Zenkichi, then did a backflip before launching the last three at Goldlewis. Finally, he took off his hat and threw it, which whirled through the air above the crowd dispensing consolation tokens to everyone else. Sandalphon received hers with a nod of approval. Now even those who had yet to place in any of the minigames could reach that slot machine's much-lauded ‘pity’ and get what should be a valuable spirit. The games weren’t over just yet, however, so everyone had one more chance to earn a real payout.

For the fourth time, Balan and Ballyhoo spun the roulette wheel. When the boo ball finally stopped, it lay in pocket number thirty-four. “GASP!” The gamemaster cried, using the word itself instead of the actual sound. “Could it be? The fourth and final minigame in your collective free trial session before we start charging you is none other than WITCH ONE!” He declared it with such bravado that it echoed through the lobby, though as it petered out the rising sense of anticlimax forced Ballyhoo to clear his throat. “...Ahem! It’s a fun new twist on an old classic, a favorite among gamers of all ages, time periods, and IQ levels! So listen up!” After landing and leaning on his cane in a saucy pose, Ballyhoo began his exposition. “The rules are simple. You will be divided into two teams. Four of you will be seekers…”

“Aren’t we all Seekers?” Nadia muttered.

“...And the rest will be hiders! The hiders will have ninety seconds to find somewhere to hole up in our quaint little town. When that time is up, the seekers’ hunt begins! They must find all the hiders within six minutes to win, and if they fail, the hiders will be victorious! How to find someone, you ask? Simple! Just poke ‘em with your very own unicorn horn! Just don’t poke something that isn’t a hider ten times, or you’ll eliminate yourself. And be aware: the hiders have a trick up their sleeves! The MIMIC VEIL!” Ballyhoo opened wide and coughed out a classic witch hat with a veil of cloth wound around it. “Snap your fingers while wearing it, and you’ll create an illusion of the nearest valid object around yourself to hide inside! You can adjust it a little, but too much movement will break the illusion! Use it to hide yourself in plain sight! Especially because we’re disabling all abilities that would RUIN THE GAME by making yourself unfindable! And the seekers will get faster the longer they chase someone, so you can’t run forever! AHAHAHAHA!”

Nadia couldn’t help but smile. “So it’s just hide and seek, huh? ‘Find’ by me!”

The terrible pun earned her a look from Sandalphon, her pupils briefly in the form of targeting reticles.

Goldlewis, meanwhile, rubbed his head. “There ain’t much I can fit inside, I reckon,” he muttered. “Maybe a wardrobe, or somethin’...?” Well, after unexpectedly placing in the last minigame, he couldn’t complain too much.

“Get ready to hide and/or seek then, gamers!” Ballyhoo exclaimed. “Let the minigame begin!”

---

Once immersed in Balan’s new wonderworld, those designated as ‘hiders’ found themselves wearing witch hats in a whimsical old town of cobblestone streets and wooden cottages at nighttime, decorated thoroughly in the pumpkins, hay bales, candles, and props of Halloween. The flickering flames inside oil lamps and jack-o-lanterns illuminated crimson leaves, orange grasses, and colorful candies nestled inside bowls on the cottages’ doorsteps. All these buildings, however, featured fully accessible interiors, furnished with a selection of small and large objects. Which ones counted as ‘valid’ turned out to be based on the size of those who used their Mimic Veils; a valid object was whichever one could completely encapsulate the user in his or her current configuration, which ruled out the small props for just about everyone.

Still, this own offered plenty of places to hide. The Potter’s House, full of ceramic pots and jars of all shapes and sizes as well as ovens and bushels of coal for firing them. The Weaver’s House, full of quilts, blankets, and tapestries hung all over the walls and furniture that filled the abode with ghosts of cloth. The Mason’s House, full of statues of various people and creatures plus slabs of uncut stone. The Botanist’s House, an overgrown dwelling with plant pots and pantries full of magical flora and fragrant incense. The Ironworks, with all sorts of cauldrons and safes on display. The Tavern, laid out for a feast, with its many barrels and cloth-draped tables bowing beneath the weight of giant fruits, vegetables, meat slabs, and pies. The Stables, where sacks of feed and storage crates surrounded pens where fake animals lay. The Barracks on the bottom floor of the tower, with various suits of armor and crates of ammunition. And in the center of town, the two-story Library, its bookshelves towering over sprawling study tables.

Meanwhile, the four seekers wound up in a waiting room to hang tight while their opponents hid themselves. This took the form of the otherwise inaccessible potion laboratory at the top of the town’s tower. It featured a large brewing table with a cauldron and wealth of magical ingredients that could be processed and combined to all sorts of amusing effects, as well as a talking skull that could offer explanation or advice when prompted–or scream when hurled out of the window. Each prospective seeker also got a rainbow-striped shank, evidently their ‘unicorn horns’. And if none of that tickled their fancy, the four soon-to-be-seekers could just talk with one another, though given who’d been selected -Pit, Ganondorf, Geralt, and Rika- any chat between the four of them was bound to be interesting.

Just a little bit before the end, the koopa king and prince ran out of time, which left them grumbling, and then dismayed at how they’d probably just barely lost a podium position as a result of their early termination. Who was to blame for this was rather obvious. In two ways actually. For them, they were quite sure that had she not attempted/succeeded at sabotage that they would have won (unable to see how their own actions had lead to their downfall). For everyone else, Minda was obvious, in that she stood out, because like Nadia and Juri she arrived back in the waiting room fighting.

As for what she was fighting, well, anyone not distracted by the cat fight would have seen Minda glance around only to lock eyes of a second version of Ganondorf who’d appeared from nowhere, this one armed only with the single distinctive white blade that Toriel had intended to slay him with.

The princess immediately charged the reflection of the king of evil (who simply sauntered towards her in turn) thrusting her treespear forwards in a swift stab. The man casually blocked the blow with the flat of his blade however before lunging past the reach of her long weapon with an elbow barge, knocking her back. He followed it up with a thrust of the white blade which Midna narrowly evaded, earning the king only a scratch for his efforts. Despite the smallness of the wound, the blade of light seared the princess badly, causing her to hiss through her teeth as she stumbled back.

As much as Midna wanted to just shoot her foe to try and gain some space, the princess now had enough understanding of guns to know that it was a bad idea with people behind her foe. So instead she dropped the twin pistols she’d been trying to use, leaving her hands empty as the mirror image dained to charge her now to follow up on his blow. He slammed down with a powerful two handed blow of his blade, which midna caught with the guard on her spear, using a fair amount more effort to do so than the king had done to block her own attack.

Rather than pull back however, the reflection pushed forwards, keeping their blades locked and aiming to simply power through her guard. It was working too, that glowing blade of light getting closer and closer to her forced as he forced the speartip back.

Resisting the urge to grab the spear with all four hands and to simply try and hold, the princess struck back, swinging empty hands at her hated foe, only for an obsidian ax to fade into her grip as she used a crescent moon slash to quickdraw her only other remaining bladed weapon. The reflection of her foe reacted by stepping back such that it was he, this time, who received only a scratch. Or at least he should have. To her confusion the blade seemed to simply slip right through the reflection, meaning it was not set aflame like she had intended.

Not put off by this failure, she followed through with her plan, letting go of the cumbersome fire ax rather than try and arrest its swing. Then she struck forward with her shadow hand, followed by several quick jabs with her spear, only for the king to block them all with more perfect parries, causing her to snarl in frustration.

Rather than continue to throw herself at a wall, she darted left while summoning her flygon from a portal and sending it right. Rather than be surrounded however, the king leapt up and over her, before trying to stab her in the back as she spun to follow him, scoring him another seering cut on the princess due to the spear limiting her turning speed.

Then he was back on the defensive, blocking a beam of purple fire from her flygon. That, at least, was the opening she needed, the princess darting her blade forwards, slipping it past his guard as he tried to move to block both attacks, and delivering a swift stab. This one too, however, failed to count for some reason.

Frustrated beyond end, when the king acted to knock her spear aside, she let him, releasing her grip on the weapon and causing him to overextend due to lack of resistance, before lunging forwards with fingertips wreathed in glowing purple dragon’s claws. He made to grab at her, but the princess opened a portal and promptly blasted the man in the face with a shotgun spray of sand to throw off his vision long enough for her to dig her claws into him in-order to find something that she could hurt.

Or that had been the plan anyway. Instead one of the larger and sharper of the millions of void black sand particles won the luck of the draw to be the first to bypass the reflection’s ethereal nature, and deliver a tiny cut to it, taking its one and only hitpoint in the process. As such, rather than getting to get stuck in with her claws, the princess blinked in surprise as the reflection shattered from that single tiny blow, and she instead went stumbling through the space where it had been.

”huh” she said to herself contemplatively after she’d stabilized herself, before rubbing at her wounds and finding that, at least to her touch, it seemed like the light seared gashes were not actually there, only a pair of razor thin cuts. ”an illusion then” she correctly assessed, only to cringe when a young voice complained that ”That’s how it ends? Lame. I wanted a nice dramatic stabbing or something” and turning to find Jr and Bowser had been snacking while watching her duke it out with the reflection of Ganondorf

Minda opened and closed her mouth a few times, before simply agreeing that ”no you’re right, that wasn’t cathartic at all” and then saying that ”do that again so I can take him down properly this time”

That got a laugh and a kneeslap from Bowser, before he agreed ”yeah, sure, I definitely want to see that backstabbing schmuck get his” only for the other, more important, fight to come to an end and for the regularly scheduled entertainment to get back on track. Still, by the time the fourth game had been explained, and they were all in a spooky town and wearing witch hats, any animosity from the previous game had been swept away by that age old adage: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The trio stuck together as they searched for hiding spots so they could talk and trade stories, and while ‘he shot me in the back while we were trying to take over the world” and “he stabbed me in the front while trying to take over the world” weren't exactly the most compatible tales, shared animosity still did wonders for diplomatic relations between the kingdoms (in exile) of koopas and twilight.

”He has to be lying about not remembering destroying that kingdom, surely?” the princess was saying when they got to the part of Bowser’s relaying of what Ganondorf had been up to where they were talking to Asgor. The king for his part shrugged and was saying that ”might have been a different him” but was prevented from getting to the revelation about respawning by jr piping up that ”Papaaaaaaa, I think we’re running out of time to hide somewhere” the prince having been the only one paying attention to that while the older royals gossiped.

”Oh, right, yeah” Bowser replied, now actually paying attention to where they were and what they were doing. The former was in a library. The latter was finding something, anything, that the king could conceivably disguise as because he really was the limiting factor here with his size.

He ”Uhhhh”ed for a moment, and then turned into a bookshelf, which got him stuck at an angle in between a pair of existing shelves in just the most blatant hiding spot ever.

”Might want to try that somewhere else” Midna suggested, as she hung from the raptors by her shadow hand, and then proceed to turn into a hanging chandelier big enough for someone to stand on (and thus big enough to contain her mass).

”Yeah try against a wall papa!” jr called over. In contrast to his towering papa, jr had both the smallest form while standing, and an even smaller one when curled up in his shell. He did so now atop one of the tables, having slammed the biggest and heaviest grimoire in the library there, and promptly turned into it. Then he used the opening and closing of his cover to flip off that table and to get as far as possible from the base prop he was copying as possible, winding up on another table across the hall.

Once he was there however, there came a crash, as a moving bookcase knocked over another, followed by another crash and another as an entire column of shelves went toppling over domino style. Papers and knick knacks went flying, but when the dust cleared, the first bookshelf was nowhere to be seen.

For about 5 seconds anyway, after which the elevated Midan worked out the koopa king had simply flopped his own on top of the first knocked down shelf to join the mess he’d made. With how much time they’d wasted nattering on, it was probably the best he was going to do, she guessed, as she used her hanging spot to peek out an upper floor window to see if she could spot the seekers (of props) approaching.

---

With the stupid racing game over, Juri reappeared back with the stupid others at the stupid hub area. She had fought Nadia for a bit, but she felt weird about it. They didn’t get to hurt each other at all, which was majorly disappointing in retrospect. But, only in retrospect. She was having a hard time puzzling it out, when suddenly, she was absolutely jumped by Fortune from behind. ”Yeah, well, that was a waste of time any wa- ah hey what the fucking oof augh-” The friendheart went into her and she flailed her arms around.

”So you wanna fight, is that it?!” She yelled, only realizing a few seconds later she seeing things clearly for the first time in a while.

She looked at Fortune as she turned away from her. ”Welcome to- how- how stupid do you think I am? Did you have to leave town to figure that all out? What a joke.” Juri said, brushing her fingers flippantly through her hair.

Then she strolled away, holding her hands behind her head, hiding her face from everyone so they couldn’t see how wide her eyes were. She was barely paying attending the rules- something about hide and seek?- when she was whisked away to the next game.

Normally, Juri would just out and eliminate herself. The last thing she wanted to do was pretend to be a freaking chair. But now having the opportunity to be invisible for a while appealed to her. She needed some time to collect her thoughts and plan her next move. Because apparently some giant space laser blasted her and her motorbike on the way to her apartment, and now she was living in a really, really stupid dimension. No wonder Fortune could get the jump on her- extenuating circumstances. Didn’t count.

Appearing in the town, Juri loitered. ”Piece of junk witch hat.” She let it fall to the cobblestones. She scampered off and started climbing the highest building she could find, which happened to be the tower in the center of town. There she lay down on the roof and stare up at the magically created sky.

Her first instinct was to get angry. That some giant laser beam freak could mindwipe her was insulting to her core. Control her mind? As if. She’d have to get even with god, though, that was always probably a little bit of her motivation anyway. If Miss freaking Fortune was on their team, they’d certainly need Juri’s help. It’s obvious they were a big group, and it was easy to tell the non brainwashed chumps from the brainwashed chumps, just by looking at them. Not that 99% of the population wasn’t brainwashed jumps back on her home world, anyway.

Her home world. What the hell? This was such bullshit. She didn't get asked to get whisked off to freaking Candy Land. Nobody told Juri what to do. Nobody at all.

If there was one upside to any of this, Juri had just solved her boredom problem. Once these stupid games came to an end, anyway. Her current strategy, due to apathy and a desire to be alone, was to lay down undisguised ontop of the seekers spawn room tower. Juri had bigger things to think about than the outcome of this literal children's game. Either she was going to get eliminated first and have some time to herself, or the seekers would hop down and start searching the floor and she would have some time to herself.

The minigame had concluded very peacefully for the Primrose and Therion. Toward the end, the only player they'd seen besides each other was Goldlewis (the dancer returning his wave and the thief just giving him an acknowledging nod). So when everyone was transported back to the giant roulette wheel, seeing the tail end of not one but two battles came as a bit of a surprise. At the first signs of combat the two Orsterrans prepared to defend themselves or their comrades, though ultimately it didn't come to that. Midna banished her illusory foe, and Ms. Fortune sank a Friend Heart into her old rival. Both confrontations ended quickly with little spectacle. Even the host of their games ignored it all completely, just moving on and explaining the next event. Primrose looked between the feral and the twili, wondering what all that was about, while Therion just exhaled and stowed his dagger.

The last minigame turned out to be the simplest one of all: hide-and-seek. After the last two more technologically advanced games, this was a welcome bookend. The world they were transported into even had a more medieval fare, with a cute autumn witch decorative theme. This would be as even a playing field as they could get with such a diverse group.

Therion popped the witch hat on his head, already formulating some ideas. As a thief, he was well versed in staying hidden. He was a short, lean, and flexible man, which just made it all the easier to conceal himself when he needed to. And if he was discovered, he could outrun a lot of people. With a quick scan of the assembled players he realized that two of the 'seekers' were Kamek and Rika, while the other two were from those that had split off and gone into the city. That angel and the shaggy haired woman... he didn't really know how well they'd be able to find people. Therion was confident in his skills, but he doubted he could outsmart the old mage with the mimic veil - so he might have to rely on his legs after all.

Assuming their ninety seconds had started as soon as they were teleported, Therion got moving. "Good luck," he bid everyone before he left, seeing them off with a flick of his tail as he jogged down a cobbled street.

Primrose was not as skilled at hiding, though there were plenty of times she'd kept herself out of sight or in the shadows while searching for information. And even she had played hide-and-seek as a child. She watched Therion go, Juri abandon her hat and go, and the two Koopas take Midna along with them as they left while she scrutinized the nearby areas. Just where would be a good spot, and what shape could fool those looking? Hmm...

She settled on something she thought was pretty inconspicuous: a hay bale. She could easily fit inside one of them if she huddled down, and they were scattered all around the town including the center where the hiders had started. Surely such a common sight wouldn't make anyone look twice. She placed the hat atop her head and made to sit down at the trunk of a tree nearby. On the trunk's opposite side was another hay bale with a lantern and a jack-o-lantern on top of it. Primrose paused, thinking, then took the lantern and nudged the carved pumpkin toward the center of the bale. She had an idea that she hoped wouldn't look too suspicious. She held the lantern up slightly and snapped her fingers with her other hand, instantly casting the illusion around her. Now, she looked like any other bundle of hay around town - and she even had a lantern "on top." Hopefully the seeking team would walk right by her without a second glance.

Farther out headed toward the town's edge, Therion had already enacted his own hiding plan. As he moved, he opened the door to shops and houses. Some he left wide open, some only ajar, and one or two of the smaller places he went in to push something before hurrying a few streets over. Hopefully that would send the seekers on the wrong trail and buy some time. He had considered getting to the very edge of the area and hiding someplace there, but if he was on the opposite team he would have started on the outside and worked his way in. So in town, not too close to the center but not too far from it was the best place he figured. A potter's studio caught his eye and he slipped inside, closing the door behind him.

This seems good, he thought. He walked over to one side of the interior, cracking open a curio cabinet just a little. He dislodged some of the coal in the pile by the furnace after that. Finally, he made his way to his spot: on the same wall the door was on, between it and the nearby window. With a snap of his fingers he became an unglazed vase among many. His strategy was ultimately pretty simple: after messing with various things around town to give the illusion of someone being there, he'd wait in this cluttered building in most plain looking spot. Being close to the door, when someone opened it he would be out of sight unless they closed it or moved to the opposite wall. And if he felt like he needed to leave to avoid being caught, there was said door to leave through but the window was just as close by for an easy exit. The finished vases were much more likely to draw any seeker's eye, and if they got suspicious that someone was in the room they'd check the cabinet or the coal first, giving Therion time to make his move.

Pleased with his hiding spot, all that was left for the thief to do was settle in and wait.

Ganondorf had indeed dozed off in his taxi toward the end of the Kooky Cabbies minigame. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, Captain Falcon stood atop the podium in first place. Of course he did. The Warlord didn’t recall much about Falcon in terms of the latter’s career as a racer, but he knew enough to know that he was the obvious favorite to win that minigame from the start. He sort of half-expected to see one of Bower’s Troop up there as well, given what he recalled about their occasional racing games they held in their world. But instead, he saw two of the men from the other half of the Seekers. Maybe Bowser’s own incompetence got the better of him in the end?

But it wasn’t the winners’ circle that proved to be interesting. No it was the two simultaneous fights happening between competitors as they were all brought back to the circus tent. One of which was between Nadia and the nasty girl Ganondorf had been lumped together with in a previous game. He had no interest in whatever their quarrel was but did note Nadia’s use of a Friend Heart against the latter. Were they really going to consider recruiting her? Well, if that was the case then she had better be able to back up her boasting with actual fighting skill. Only time would tell.

But the quarrel that actually caught the warlord’s attention was one being fought by the smart-mouthed Twilight Princess. He had no concern with Midna herself but he did give an almost insulted glare at the illusory opponent she fought against. Was that supposed to be… himself? That poor excuse of a pale imitation? Or perhaps it was simply another form of Phantom Ganon? Ganondorf chose to believe the latter because even a pale copy of him would NEVER be felled that easily.

Bah, it didn’t matter. Whatever the quarrel was, Ganondorf chose to ignore it. And besides, it was time for the next minigame to be selected. Something about witches needing to hide from a team of four designated to hunt them down. And when he realized he was not going to get to be one of the hunters, the warlord let out a growl under his breath. Him?! Running and hiding? Never!

”Damn that Ballyhoo!” He barked in his anger, ”If not for the promise of spoils I would raze thy blasted tent to ashes.” He threatened, not even bothering to try and hide his absolute contempt for these blasted minigames. Clearly whatever novelty or amusement these games might have offered to him had long since worn off. Now all he cared about was ending this farce once and for all.

”Why run and hide when I can easily crush those fools chosen to chase me?” Ganondorf moved not to hide but to instead make his stand against the seeker team, having no interest in playing this game the intended way. As he did, the witch hat slid off of his head and his boot callously crushed it into the ground without him even giving it a glance.

”Is he serious?” Captain Falcon asked, "That's not very sportsmanlike."

”Hey, it's just this last game then it'll be over, right?” Roxas suddenly asked, walking up and picking Ganondorf’s witch off the ground in an attempt to give it back and calm him down. Unfortunately, Roxas was in for a bit more than he bargained for when Ganondorf suddenly swung his arm around and knocked the Nobody back a distance until he landed flat on his rear end. He guessed there wasn't going to be any getting through to him at this point.

”I’m pretty sure that was a ‘no'.” said Falcon, even helping the grateful Roxas back to his feet. Then he sighed with disappointment, ”Well, we can’t force him to do something he doesn’t want to do. May as well not waste anymore of our time limit and get this game started.”

And just like that, Ganondorf stood alone at the spot the hiders had all spawned in at. Now that he was alone, Ganondorf used his time limit not to hide, but instead prepare defenses against what the rules described would be a fight slanted heavily in his enemies’ favor. He quickly summoned a squad of Moblin Archers and put them to work to gather nearby environmental objects that could be used for defensive purposes. Ganondorf was no fool, he had heard the description of the rules and one of those rules had stood out to him:

”If you poke something that isn’t a hider ten times, then you’re eliminated!

With time running short, Ganondorf sent the Moblin archers to spread out and hide in separate locations around the immediate area that they could take shots from. Their orders were to make sure they moved from location to location in between taking shots. This would either create the illusion of there being more than five of them, or it would also lead the four seekers on a wild goose chase that wouldn’t necessarily end with them finding Ganondorf.

Meanwhile, Ganondorf himself finally picked the witch hat back up. It served as a veil that could camouflage him, and he did at least want to give himself some element of surprise. So he used it to disguise himself as a horse-drawn cart that sat nearby and was hopefully unassuming. When he felt the time was right, he could spring an ambush of sorts. He wasn’t overly fond of relying on guerilla tactics like this but he was obviously not above using them in such a slanted scenario like this one.

Blazermate wasn't the best at hiding. She would be an amazing seeker, well, she was one already, but her Scan ability would make her really good at finding the others. But perhaps thats why she was a hider. She could at least leverage her light weight and agility to get into a more obscure spot to hide though. Also being one of the smaller seekers, she could hide where no one else could, so that could be really interesting. Plus she was also really fast, so she could make for a good dash if needed.

Using her agility and flight, Blazemate tried to find something that was high up. That... was difficult since she was just a tad bit bigger than most of the props high up. That did give her an idea though.... The idea wasn't to get seen right? Well... why did she have to hide as a prop? She just had to keep out of the vision of everyone and she'd be fine! And who ever looked up at the rooftops anyway? Or the rafters of the inn? She could just move about the rooftops til time was over. She did have a plan B if she got chased as well that should buy her a ton of time as well.

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Having spent her time observing the shenanigans of the others, Sectonia wasn't surprised when she didn't place. She didn't make too much of a big deal about it either as it just wasn't her game. The next game however, she would at least give a good try, although it seemed a bit strange to her.

A hide and seek game. This was a game Sectonia was inherently against as she wanted to be seen, but now she had to hide? It seemed that every game was against her here, she just lucked out in the video taping game. But perhaps luck was part of it, something she wasn't really happy about. Well, time to give this one a try. Watching the shenanigans the others got into did give her a bit of a chuckle, it was like watching a circus perform at times so there was that.

Sectonia was torn between the flower house and the mansion with the statues. So much so she took a bit of time deciding before eventually deciding on the flower house for the atmosphere; however she did send an Antler to the mansion to stand as its own statue to perhaps make people think she hid there. Finding a plant that was big enough to hide her royal personage was the other difficult thing. Most plants couldn't really fit her, except a tree which was difficult to place. She gave it a good old try though, and perhaps no one would find her although she could teleport away if things got bad.

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Roland was a bit annoyed with the schoolgirl robot for making such a huge mess out of the last game. Well, only mildly annoyed, he conceded that she was just having her own fun and no one got hurt so it wasn't all that bad. And overall Roland knew she had a good heart, something that'd get her in trouble one day. He took his consolation prize without much complaints and got ready for the next game.

So the new game was hide and seek huh? Well, hiding was something Roland was good at for once. While he was pretty average so far with the games so far, this was something that he was great at. He didn't specialize in stealth, any fixer that specialized in something only ever made it to grade 3 at most unless they were just leagues above the average fixer like Kali. But he was better at it than most, well, as good as you could be without getting the Head's beholders involved...

That did mean though he had a good idea of how to stealth and where to go. And with his silent movement, he could reposition if necessary without much fuss as long as he wasn't seen. He started his hiding in the pottery area as it would be pretty easy for him to position his new 'pot' disguise in a good spot that looked natural. If the seekers got suspicious, he could just slink off and go to where they had already been. After all, you don't look where you've already been until way later. Finding a decent sized vase, Roland positioned himself to make himself look like in in a spot that seemed very natural and his silence made not even his breathing audible. Even more so with him finding a spot behind other pots to be a 'tree lost in the forest' as it were.

Captain Falcon certainly could not condone Ganondorf’s actions. He might have been of a mind to teach the man a lesson. But that would have disrupted the game and possibly ruined everyone’s enjoyment. That and he would have wasted his entire ninety seconds that he was supposed to use to hide. And who knows? Maybe by some miracle, the man’s strategy would pay off in some way? So he decided to live and let live on this occasion and was now on the hunt for a hiding spot.

Even if he sprinted at top speed, his limited time wouldn’t afford the Captain much in the way of exploratory opportunities. Instead he could really only look for the first place he thought might be suitable. That search brought him to the village tavern. It was empty, of course, not a customer or even a bartender in sight. As such, Falcon didn’t feel too bad when he slid over the tavern bar onto the side with all the mugs and taps. He crouched down behind the counter, even having just enough time to snatch a mug and partly fill it from one of the nearby taps. Not a full drink obviously, just a single shot if nothing else. And also not something he normally partook in, but this being a virtual world he figured it didn’t actually matter anyway.

After that he used his mimic veil to disguise himself. While sitting and hunched over, he could make himself small enough to look like just another barrel of ale among a literal wall of them sitting behind the counter of the bar. Even if one of the seekers did suspect someone hiding here, they’d have to take a huge gamble and hope they poke the right barrel without wasting too many attempts on poking the wrong one.

In the end, Cap couldn’t think of a more solid strategy than this. Well, maybe he could under a longer time limit, but given the circumstances he was confident this was the best choice he could have made. Now all he could do was sit and wait to see if it panned out or not.

---

”Sheesh, what’s his problem?” Roxas asked himself under his own breath as he quickly tried to do what little exploration he could to find a hiding space. He figured some of the Seekers overall could be temperamental, but Ganondorf was apparently in a tier all his own. It was a wonder he was even agreeable enough to fight alongside them in the first place. Oh well, there was no time to think or worry about that stuff now.

Unlike Falcon, Roxas could search the town a little bit more thoroughly. With Flow Motion he could find quick routes across rooftops that would have taken a lot longer to get through on the ground level, even for someone as fast as the Captain. This meant that Roxas could find what he hoped would be a more remote hiding spot. That search eventually brought Roxas to, of all places, the stockades. A sort of jailhouse situated within what was likely supposed to be a barracks for guards. And the locked up jail cells gave him what he thought was a pretty clever idea.

Roxas grabbed the cell keys from the warden’s spot nearby and used it to make sure all the cells were locked shut. Then he tossed the keys between the bars of one cell and left them lying on the floor inside. This would make it harder for any seeker to open these jail cells since the keys themselves were locked inside one of said cells. After that Roxas used his Keyblade to make quick work of one of the other cells so that it would unlock and open for him, and once inside he shut the cell door and proceeded to use his Keyblade to lock it back. A very handy trick of the Keyblade that Roxas rarely ever found himself making strategic use of like this.

Once inside he used his mimic veil to disguise himself as bedding on the floor, which for this particular jail meant a rectangular pile of hay with a ragged blanket draped over it. Since the keys were in another cell, any seeker that came inside would assume that a hider had to have locked themselves in that cell and couldn’t possibly be in any other cell. So if Roxas was guessing right, that meant there was little chance anyone would suspect him in the cell that he DID choose to hide himself in. The only drawback here was the lack of a proper exit plan. But then again, if he'd set his hiding spot up correctly then he wouldn't necessarily need one. Or so he believed.

Of course, maybe he was overthinking this a tad bit? Nah, and besides, it was way too late to go back on this plan now.

It wasn't much longer before Zenkichi's taxi finally gave up the ghost, slowing to a stop about a quarter of the way from his next destination, and he sighed. "Dang. Well, can't imagine I did too bad." His supposition was answered immediately, as the moment his run officially ended, so too did the minigame.

Appearing back on the roulette wheel, Zenkichi hummed. "Wait, does that mean I came in-woah, oh boy!" He stepped rapidly away from Nadia and Juri continuing their fight, idly noticing Midna fighting a Ganondorf not too far away either. Another Ganondorf was on the roulette wheel, pointedly not fighting Midna, so...he had no idea what that was about but was willing to chalk it up to magical shenanigans, especially when the one Midna was fighting shattered once she got a good hit on it. Okay, that was weird...and oh, guess Nadia was going for the Friend Heart, but why'd she start before the game ended? Did she forget we can't hurt each other?

Musings aside, Zenkichi was pleasantly surprised to find out that the last game they'd be playing was a modified version of hide and seek. Though, this version seemed...somewhat violent, with the seekers having to stab the hiders with a 'unicorn horn.' Cutesy as that was, some part of Zenkichi wondered if the stabbing part would hurt or not. He didn't have much time to think on it before they found themselves in a spooky little town. It reminded him of stuff he'd seen from American media about Halloween, and even at a few parties in Japan in the last few years. "Huh, that's kinda cute." He chuckled, looking around and finding Sandalphon, Ganondorf, Juri slinking off to hide right off the bat, and the others. It looked like Geralt, Pit, and the two members of Bowser's crew that weren't Bowser himself, or Junior, would be hunting.

"Oh, we're in trouble." He mentioned to the others who were still around. "Geralt's job is basically hunting stuff down, and when we were in Midgar, he tracked a lady through a battlefield by scent alone. We're gonna need really good hiding spots if we wanna avoid her." The seriousness of his warning aside, Zenkichi had a small smile on his face as he ran off from the others, making a beeline for the Ironworks. Looking around at all the options available to him, Zenkichi quickly used his Mimic Tear to disguise as a large safe, nestling himself in what he figured was a fairly good spot. With only a minute and a half total time, he would rather pick and spot that might work than be caught unawares.