In the span of just a few moments, Mafia Town was in chaos. Almost a hundred brutish adrenaline junkies of all shapes and sizes, fueled by energy drinks and Mooscles shakes, had rained down across the island city. Eager to be the last man standing, the menagerie of maniacs quickly filled beaches, wharves, rooftops, and streets alike with their violent, theatrical antics. Mafia stooges and hapless citizens alike found themselves irish whipped, sumo slapped, and spear tackled. As she squared off against her newest opponent, though, Nadia tried to tune the rest of the mayhem out. Even if her journey had made her a better team player, after all, this cat burglar always did her best fighting one-on-one. And if that high-visibility hero she dumped into the drink was any indicator, these wanton wrestlers would be easy pickings.

Or so she thought.

Nadia charged forward on all fours, pumping blood in her legs, then released the pent-up pressure to boost into the air. “Careful!” she called down to Bass, popping her head off to use Cat Spike. “I’m always one step a-head!” When she smacked it down with her palm, her head buzzed toward him like a calico circle saw. Bass lifted a strong arm to smack it down, but with her foe’s focus on the projectile, Nadia then flung herself after it in a blood-propelled airdash. The collision between head and hand forced the wrestler to recoil, so even as her head plopped to the ground, Nadia’s body descended on him to start a combo.

“Somer better than others!” From a quick cross slash she somersaulted Into a El Gato axe kick that left Bass doubled over long enough that she could jet her head over and hit him low to keep the combo going. “How’s this for uppsies-ing?” From there she turned her back to stretch her leg upward for a Limber Up launcher, smacked her head with a light kick to get it into position, then wheeled around to nail her foe with a Flying Screen Door reverse overhead kick. Thanks to her setup, her head could then restand him with a quick chomp, and that command grab gave her body more than enough time for a finisher. “Omnomnomnom! Think you got a chance?” she taunted with her mouthful as she used Fluffy Soft to transform her right arm. It swelled in size as stripy fur covered it, turning it into the fearsome limb of a white tiger. “Fur-get it!”

Bass tumbled backward into the wall of Seaside Spaghetti, groaning. Nadia shot him a grin as her arm shifted back, then charged forward, eager to keep up the pressure. Her adrenaline got the better of her, though, and she attacked early, mistiming her meaty. With an angry grunt Bass stepped off-axis, then planted his fist in Nadia’s belly with a terrific lunge punch, his full weight behind it. “GUH!” Spittle flew from the feral’s mouth as she shot backward, eyes and mouth wide open. She hit the ground and skidded atop her rigging pack, her legs only limply flopping down once she came to a stop at the dock’s edge. “Oof. Guess I’m not the only one with a punchline,” she groaned. Her respite came to an end when she spotted Bass barreling toward her, so like an idiot she hopped up and tried to challenge him with a claw swipe. Instead she ate a shoulder barge that made her see stars. Bass stomped the ground for effect, flexing, then walloped her with a massive lariat straight to the chin that sent her hurtling into the water without anywhere near enough time for her rigging to activate.

A moment after splashing down, she burst from the water with a gasp to see Bass slapping his biceps. "I'm just too...damn...STROOOONG!"

Nadia grinned evilly, then dissolved into a bolt of lightning that burst from the steaming surf and blitzed straight through her opponent. When she rematerialized behind him after her Charge, she spun on a dime and unleashed Battery in the form of a double electric claw strike, amped up into a pair of critical hits. Then she gave him a turn in the water with a dropkick, though unlike the cartoon wrestler it seemed it could swim “So you’ve got some skills,” she admitted.”I’ve got a whole lotta nasty sur-purr-rises though, so by the time you figure me out…”

The feral concentrated, reaching deep for her latent power. She willed her the spirit Rhodeia of Loch into momentary existence as a Striker, then stood back as the Oceanid created two Hydro Mimics of Nadia herself–a pair of watery clones with claws almost as sharp as the original. By the time Bass clambered out of the water, he found himself outnumbered three to one. “...The battle’s already over.” Nadia smirked, then pointed the mimics at Bass. “Well? Water you waiting for?”

In a flash the mimics took over the battle, giving Nadia a chance to set back, regenerate, and reassess. When she first joined the fight, her friends -and Juri- hadn’t been far behind her. Juri did a good deed for a day when she came to a woman’s rescue, even if she did immediately spoil the moment. Geralt’s sword skills and secret identities made relatively short work of a troublesome trio. Unfortunately, Junior and Rika did their fighting inside Bancho Sushi, and that brawl completely trashed the place. “Nooo, nooo, nooo…I’m so screwed,” Nadia moaned, her head in her hands. Even the locals were getting in on the action; not too far away, a gruff-looking man with a metal horn and a form-fitting suit had nonlethally disposed of not one but two rogue wrestlers. Of course, there were plenty more where they came from. With abundant enemies and less room to maneuver, the fighting got fiercer in the upper levels where Juri was headed. Just what was that psycho planning…?

Nadia’s attention returned to Bass just as he powerbombed her one of her copycats into oblivion. “Wow, this musclehead isn’t just built…he’s just built different!” Noticing that the Hydro Mimics’ attacks left the man Wet, she blasted through him with another Charge to trigger a painful Conducted reaction, then whipped around with a tail slap to knock him down. From there, all the feral needed to do was leap into the air, then fall on him with her full weight behind her modified Mantread boots to leave the man sprawled out and senseless. “Don’t come back for a sequel,” she advised him as the other Hydro Mimic dissolved. “Unless you want to get re-booted!”

She exhaled, then looked around. Down at the docks, Geralt was embarking with Junior and Rika for the cargo ship that brought this crazed crew to Mafia Town’s shores. To her surprise she spotted Dave joining them, outfitted with his wetsuit, a harpoon gun, and a Net Gun. She considered going with them, especially since she didn’t want to see Dave come to harm, but the people of this Mafia Town needed her help, and she couldn’t help but be curious about what Juri might be up to, besides.

Nadia turned and sprinted away from the dock, heading upward through the narrow, sloped Mafia Town streets with Chucho right behind her. There were hooligans everywhere. Some lay defeated on the cobbles, while others went after townsfolk or even one another. As soon as possible she scaled a building and took to the rooftops, leaping and climbing with catlike agility. Even then, though, she couldn’t escape the chaos forever. She ran into two portly female wrestlers, one dressed like a cow in a purple gi and the other an undead pirate, who’d just finished taking out an enormous invader in a dog costume. “Ladies! What’s good?” Nadia struck the pirate before she realized, starting an Unchain combo with a Step that brought her in close enough for a Hammer Blow overhead punch as the Unchain Circle. For the Unchain Finisher she launched a powerful upward lariat of her own, and Chucho followed up with Thus Spoke Pickles to blast the woman out of the air with psychic starlight. “‘Mind’ your head!” Nadia crowed.

The karate cow lashed out with Diamond Crusher, a powerful blow below the belt that would’ve left Nadia in a world of hurt if it connected. Instead, the feral cashed in a stock of Dramatic Tension to unveil her Blue Monday Counter, catching her attacker with her knee. Stunned, the brute couldn’t do much but yell as Nadia grabbed her by the black belt and flipped overhead, her arms made into tentacles by the extension of her muscle fibers. After slamming the wrestler into the roof, a wildly smiling Nadia whirled her arm around, then fell with a splendid elbow drop into her foe’s belly. It drove the fight right out of her, not to mention the wind from her lungs, and she couldn’t only struggle feebly as Nadia rolled her off the roof.

As she dusted her hands, the feral heard another cannon, and followed the sound toward the upper levels where she spotted a familiar pink-and-black blur flying up toward Mafia HQ. “Hmm…”

When Juri reached the upper plate, she found a grim sight at the doorstep of Mafia HQ. The ashes and spirits of a dozen Mafia grunts, three wrestlers, and a couple of Chinese Gangsters lay scattered around a smashed-in front door. As she entered, passed through the empty casino, and headed toward the theater, the sounds of clanging metal became louder and louder, and when she finally burst into the room Juri could catch a glimpse of the fight herself. A heavy-set man with a white suit, nasty scowl, and an expensive-looking guandao was fighting the Mafia Boss with a gang of ten weapon-toting goons at his back, but the squat, mustached mafioso was holding his own with a pair of cleavers that he wielded against Mabuchi’s polearm.

After a fierce exchange of thrusts, slices, and parries, Mabuchi sent the boss flying back toward his throne with a huge upward slash against the boss’s block, but the short man righted himself midair. He began to spin, electricity coursing through his blades. “Super charge!” When he hit the ground, he unleashed a huge spark that surged along the ground and into Mabuchi’s own block.

The ambitious man grunted as the blast pushed him back. “Get him!” he growled at his underlings, and two of them diligently pushed forward with swords. When the mafia boss stopped his swing, however, he hurled his cleavers like sawblades. They ground into the two men, spraying blood, then flew right back into the boss’s hands. As Mabuchi’s men slumped to the ground, he brandished his weapons, disguising his heavy breathing with a raucous laugh.

“Hahaha! You’re no match for me!” At that moment the boss spotted Juri, and he beckoned her over. “Spider! Just in time! Serve up these small fries for me, and you’ll be richly rewarded!”

As Mabuchi whirled around, realizing that his foes now had him surrounded, footsteps resounded from the hall behind Juri. The next moment Nadia appeared, her eyes sparkling with curiosity as she surveyed the inside of the Mafia headquarters for the first time. “Wow, this is where you’ve been hangin’ out? A crummy casino with smelly kitchens?” The feral raised her eyebrow at Juri. “Well. Can’t say it doesn’t suit you!”

“Don’t get cocky!” Mabuchi suddenly thundered. He whirled his Qinglong Yanyuedao overhead, then slammed the hilt against the ground. A nebulous crimson aura seemed to emanate from him. “Send all the fodder you want. It makes no difference to the reaper!”



Even without any context, Nadia could tell that things were about to get serious. Under any other circumstances she would’ve happily stepped up to the plate for a tag-team match, but at Juri she just scrunched up her nose. “Help you? I dunno…” After another moment of considering all the players in the room, a devious grin spread across Nadia’s face.

She didn’t care about either the mafia boss or his would-be usurper, but stopping a payday for Juri would be pretty funny.

Meanwhile, down on the ocean's surface above the fabled Blue Hole, the Koopas and their guests had closed in on the rogue cargo ship. Its lights rendered it easily visible against the dark ocean in the dead of night, but they didn’t illuminate any guards or defenses as far as the incoming heroes could see. Over all its floodlights blazed the ominous purple glow of the Flame Clock, plainly advertised with the bravado of a pirate flag rather than hidden away for safety. Due to the ship’s sheer size, however, boarding it from the water’s surface was a tricky proposition. Its smooth, reinforced hull featured no rungs stacked up along its sides for easy climbing. The entry hatches were both high up and sealed tight. Getting aboard presented quite the conundrum.



With the miraculous advent of a new dawn galvanizing them into action, the bulk of Palutena’s forces left the conquered Ivory Citadel behind and soared over to reinforce their brothers and sisters. Their well-timed arrival reunited the Army of Light against the airborne armada of Laguna over the pitch-stained ports of Citronpool Harbor, and together the angels rallied against the enemy force. Though a number of false angels had taken wing, they could generally be outfought and unceremoniously dispatched, so the army’s main concern took the form of the Kinship funerary boats. In rhythmic motion their oars plied the currents of the air rather than the water, missiles flew from beneath the gleaming masks on their prows, and their decks teemed with corrupted defenders. Being Laguna creatures themselves rather than mere vessels, they could fly and attack on their own, but the angels had already discovered a more fortuitous quirk of these ships’ anatomy: as living creatures, they could be afflicted. Featherswords could hinder their defense or evasion with Shield Smite or Spiral Sword, and every arrow skill possessed by a Featherbow could slow a Kinship down. And when Uriel joined the fray alongside Edelgard and Ortho, the quick-witted commander called out a simple strategy for her soldiers to put into practice.

“Men, attack from below!” Normally, battlefield angels used their wings to give themselves a height advantage over terrestrial foes, staying out of reach while making it easier to shoot down at their targets. Rising higher than these Kinships just gave the corrupted archers and Affinity musicians a shot at them, however, and the homing missiles launched from their cabins posed a serious threat. “Sever the oars, pierce their shells, and scuttle them!”

With that, the scales really did tip in the angels’ favor. By attacking from beneath the Kinships, the angels could pluck their oars like centipede legs, then peel away the rowboats’ gilded, colorful exoskeletons to reveal the corrupted muscle, bones, and arteries beneath. Even if these loathsome monsters’ hearts or brains lay somewhere within the golden boxes on their sterns, there was more than one way to skin a cat, and a bird without wings couldn’t fly. Palutena’s forces pounded the Kinships’ marble faces and ruptured the organs responsible for birthing new cherubic missiles. Feathershields could focus on warding off missiles, while Featherstaves kept everyone going. Empowered by Edward’s magic, their weapons could cut through rotten flesh like hot knives through butter. Fighting the Kinships like this took longer than going for a weak spot, but was safer for Palutena’s forces, and one by one the vessels began to fall. A couple times the distant ballistae got lucky and scored a hit with a massive bolt into a Kinship’s ribs or cabin, and that helped expedite the process. Once the slow but nigh-unstoppable Angelic Champions really got into the mix, they proved capable of even greater damage than the ballistae, their enormous blades of light taking chunks out of Kinships at a time.

This strategy didn’t demand the entirety of Palutena’s force, so a number of the angels set their sights on a different goal: Citronpool Harbor itself. Unlike the Ivory Citadel with its layers of thick stone walls, this second sky island laid its corruption right out in the open, so the army of light could bombard it from a safe distance. Storm Wardens pushed their cannons to the limit, raining down purifying plasma from above, while lieutenants like Celia unveiled a secret weapon: the holy hand grenades. Once hurled down, the praises of a disembodied choir heralded divine explosions that could level multiple infested buildings at once. Though this skyport had once been beautiful, there was no saving it now–only ablution could redeem this tainted soil.

Reasonably assured that their allies could handle the rest of the enemies, the Seekers could focus on the biggest problem. Worship, part heavy ordinance platform and part enormous battering ram, was a force to be reckoned with. Its energy bullets, cherubic missiles, and golden bulk made it very dangerous to attract its attention, while its rocket-fueled aerial mobility made hitting it almost impossible in flight. At one point it used its laser to snipe a ballistae that dared take a shot at it, and a moment later it decided to simply smash through a doomed Kinship just to obliterate the squad of angels poised to finish it off. Nevertheless, Midna managed to catch it and sink her claws in. She managed to deal respectable damage, but even the Twilight Princess and her cohorts couldn’t stick to the Worship for long, and when they fell back others took up the slack.

One squad of angels kept perilously close to the Worship throughout the skirmish. Fodoquia led them fearlessly in a mission to harry the inglorious thing until he saw an opportunity. “Team! Heavensmite!” Nodding, the others fell back alongside him just far enough that they could surround the lynchpin of their strategy, the stern Feathersword Ochlys, and start casting buffs. “Row Resistance,” Fodoquia pronounced, shrouding his team in a magic-resistant barrier.

The Featherbow Raenys loosed a Saint’s Shot toward Worship, then surrounded Ochlys with an aura of whirling air. “Tailwind!”

Despite his disgrace, the reverend knight Sanatio intended to atone through his duties. “Honed healing,” the curly-haired Featherstaff muttered. “Holy Cradle.”

By now, Ochlys was humming with energy. She raised her slender blade, studying the searing enchantment that burned across its blade thanks to Edward’s magic. “I suppose that’s five,” she remarked in a nonchalant English accent. “And finally…Accelerate!”

The warrior took flight, her blades flapping in the breeze as she pierced the sky, fast enough to leave afterimages. As she dove toward Worship, she lifted her blade for a Honed Slash, triggering Discharge consuming every buff to multiply her own attack power. “Wield me, o Father!” With her truestrike readied, she could neither miss nor be outrun, and in a flash her sword delivered her to her enemy. “HAH!”

Her incredible slash dealt out six times the damage it should have, cutting a massive furrow through Worship’s body. The next instant Ochlys was gone, having overshot her foe thanks to her speed, but the damage had been done. The flagship of Laguna’s fleet was grievously injured, and it wasn’t long before Pit led a heroic charge straight into Worship’s laser, then eliminated the blasphemous aircraft once and for all. The last Kinship fell soon after.

By now, the Army of Light wasn’t far at all from the last of the infected sky islands, a place where no angel had ever set foot and lived, the source and stronghold of the corruption. It resembled a massive rocky crag covered in buried churches, its stony surfaces slick with corruption, with an enormous train track that spiraled around and through the island itself, and along that track ran the train. It was a colossal, hideous, and intricate affair, more like a procession of gothic cathedrals on wheels than an actual locomotive. Corruption dripped down its sides and acrid fumes billowed from its smokestacks as the train made its grim rounds. Here, the corrupted monsters were at their most impure, being little more than oily masses with random arrays of limbs and multiple white laguna masks, though some also appeared to have subsumed machine parts from the blighted locomotive. They crawled all over it, silhouetted against its sickly yellow light as it eked them out from its twisted innards. There could be no doubt that the throbbing heart of the corruption could be found on board.

With their commanders in attendance, the angels regrouped on the light-scoured far side of Citronpool Harbor, recuperating as much as possible for their final assault. Angels healed one another, chomped on Roasted Nuts, and wolfed down Hot Cross Buns to refuel their stamina. As they ate, their brightest star’s voice filled them with resolve. “Steel yourselves, men!” Uriel exclaimed. “We’ve made it this far, and we’re not backing down now. Let us cleanse the sky of this filth once and for all! Let us fly forth and bring forth the Father’s wrath to pierce the rotten heart!”



Just as Goldlewis anticipated, the men and women of Meridi-at-han weren’t about to let such a golden opportunity pass them by. With their target waylaid by the veteran’s unyielding harpoon and his back turned toward them, the guards and adventurers threw caution to the wind and let loose everything they had in a bid to bring the burning wolf down. Through the ensuing bombardment arced a triple-shot of heavy black fire, its abyssal weight crashing into Ralph’s back. That benthic blast was what got it through to Ralph that, try as he might, he couldn’t break free from the big man’s grasp in this wounded state. Howling, the enormous wolf took a moment to gather his strength, then let go of the building with one hand and half-turned to leap toward his captor. In that critical moment, though, a Sun Guard captain unleashed his Firespitter. Its arrow-covered payload punched a primitive rocket into Ralph’s hide, then exploded, stalling the monster long enough for Primrose to deliver her amped-up Moonlight Waltz and eliminate the beast for good.

With a final whine, Ralph fell from several stories up, forcing Goldlewis to hop backward to avoid a blow from a flailing limb. “Dag nabbit!” As the citizens cheered, a number of hunters jostled through the crowd, carving knives at the ready, to try and get a piece or two of the dissolving carcass before only ashes remained. Goldlewis left them to it, using the crank on his Yowie harpoon gun to reel the huge hook back in. After checking that everyone was accounted for, he gave a sigh of relief. He’d been banged up a bit, and he hadn’t expected to have to use his full strength tonight, but considering the circumstances -and the unfortunate end met by some of the cityfolk- he really couldn’t complain. If anything, he figured he could use the exercise, though he knew that thinking like that was making light of the situation. The real surprise, he estimated, was Primrose. He hadn’t fought alongside her yet, so despite her toned muscles the veteran assumed that the dancer would take a support role. In the brawl with Ralph, though, she’d strutted her stuff in the offense department as well. His first instinct, borne of his time in the army, was to give her a congratulatory clap on the shoulder, but Goldlewis stopped himself and limited his commendation to an appreciative nod. “Nice goin’ there, missie. You’re one hell of a credit to the team.”

Arms crossed, Goldlewis looked around to take stock of the situation. A ways off, George had already been defeated, and Lizzie was on her last legs. As quickly and violently as it began, the rampage seemed to be coming to a close. But why were those monsters here to begin with? “Surely this ain’t a natural occurrence,” he mused aloud. “And how in sam hill did those beasts get all the way up here without anyone seein’ em? Been a spell since I went down to the jungle, but I reckon them giants stood head and shoulders above the trees down there.” This should’ve been a preventable disaster. With an appropriate amount of guards for such a large population in a dangerous region like this, he would’ve expected Meridi-at-han to be much better prepared–and yet the monsters had appeared right out of the blue, taking the whole city by surprise.

After only a minute or so the carvers had cleaned the corpse out, and as they dispersed Goldlewis moseyed over. He didn’t really expect to find any clues among the giant’s remains, so he was surprised when he spotted something dimly reflective amidst the ashes of the wolf’s leg. With a grunt he crouched down, picked it up, and turned it over in his hands. It was a crumpled-up soda can, badly damaged, but when he stretched it out he could make out -with some difficulty- the words ‘SCUM SODA’ on a green background. Brows furrowed, he glanced around. Had the can been stuck between the beast’s toes? “Mighty strange,” he muttered. Of course, he’d seen a lot stranger things than a soda can in a fantastical setting like Meridi-at-han, and the whole World of Light was pretty anachronistic anyway, but something about this particular oddity rubbed him the wrong way. “Scum Soda,” he repeated, shaking the can. Empty. He pocketed it, then stood up.

His investigation concluded just in time, since Primrose had noticed something amiss. She directed his attention toward some sort of commotion in the torchlit shadows back in the direction of the Grimm Troupe’s former big top. While the smoldering dark looked like nothing more than the burned-out wreckage of the tent at first glance, something about the way those scarlet lights flitted forced Goldlewis to agree that something was off. Still not sure what he was looking at, he hefted his coffin and followed her at a brisk pace. By now the streets were relatively clear, with the citizens sheltered and the guards on high alert, so an eerie aura suffused the hastily-abandoned marketplace. Only when Goldlewis got within a hundred feet was Goldlewis surprised to see a ring-shaped huddle of shadowy, ghostly bugs, so excitedly intent on something in their midst that they didn’t even notice the big man jogging toward them. They didn’t part to make way for him either, so Goldlewis had to muscle his way through the manic Grimmkin acolytes. Finally, he laid eyes on the cause of the commotion: a frantic fight between the Troupe Master and some suspicious-looking sorceress.

Goldlewis paused, rubbing his head as he watched the magical mayhem. He still couldn’t be sure whether or not Grimm was guilty of some wrongdoing. He couldn’t fathom why they’d be fighting or who was in the right, but these two were Gleaming, which meant that this could only end one way. Better to break it up if he could. Looking around, he spotted not just Primrose, but Roland and Zenkichi among the bugs. They definitely had the numbers to pull the pyromaniacs apart. For now the unsubtle soldier held his ground, waiting for one of the others to make a move he could capitalize on. When someone needed a hand, he’d be there.

---

Juri landed at the top plate, and glanced around. There were spirits everywhere.

”Oh, my god…Tony, no! Alfonso? I can’t believe it.” She gasped as she strolled through the wreckage. With a nudge she kicked one of the identical goon spirits with her boot. ”Ricardo, you too? Benny? Paulie? I can’t believe- okay, forget it.” She let out a little chuckle at her self-satisfied humor.

”They really don’t make bloody aftermaths like they used too, huh?” Juri sped inside. ”Guess it’s gang warfare after all.” How could she make money off of this? It all depended on what she’d find inside. If the old boss was already dead, she’d probably just buzz off, since the Seekers were leaving soon anyway.

Spider dashed inside and, to her surprise, saw the boss man holding his own. And to her delight, he immediately offered her money for violence. For a moment she thought she was going to have to extort it out of him with some sarcastic crap, but luckily the chef mafia knew exactly how things worked. ”Let’s go, then!” Juri widened her stance dramatically, a grin spreading across her face. One of her eyebrows raised, though, as she heard a familiar voice behind her.

”Did you follow me all the way up here? Have a little schoolgirl crush, do ya?” Juri asked with that usual faux-earnest sarcasm.

At Nadia’s hesitance to join the fray, Spider just rolled her eyes. ”So you’re allergic to fun and money. Gotcha. Just stay outta my way, then.” It’s like every time Nadia was offered a chance to prove her worth, she chose the worst option.

No more wastin’ time. It was time to shed some blood and ash up the place. Juri was told to serve up some small fry, so she decided to clean up the chaff. There were eight goons left. Juri figured she could take ‘em out. She strafed to the side alarmingly fast and rattled into them with her tommy gun. She zigged, zagged, and then tossed the gun aside to get into the crowd. She popped one up with a light tap of her foot that let her charge up a sweeping projectile. She sent it forward to knock several of them off their feet with a sweeping ki strike.

”Guess no one can get any help around here, huh?!” Juri crowed. All she wanted to do was take them out, whether that meant crippling or killing them was of no concern to her. Inevitably she would have to turn her sights on Mabuchi, and she tried to keep the henchmen inbetween her and Mabuchi so he wouldn’t easily get the drop on her.

If he decided to keep going after mafia boss, she’d interrupt her own massacre for a cheeky divekick to the spine.

As The Mercenary continued his sprint up the steps toward the first vista of seaside restaurants, he momentarily caught a glimpse of a pink-and-black blur that soared in an upward trajectory toward the Mafia Headquarters. He hadn't been there, but supposedly someone had taken advantage of the chaos to let themselves in and make off with whatever was inside. Perhaps he-

"YEERRRRAAAAAAGH!" A guttural roar erupted to his front just as the Mercenary had crested the flat landing to the second flight of stairs. A wrestler brandishing a lead pipe had squatted down into a launching stance, then propelled himself into the air for a summersaulting rotation, no doubt using the pent-up momentum to amplify his ground strike. Within a blur of reflexes, the Mercenary snapped his Wu-S up to level at the airborne attacker; firing off two darts and stepping aside as the man relaxed out of his stance and dropped his pipe, clattering down the stairway while snoring all the while. Holstering his Wu-S and ascending the flight of stairs, the Mercenary had reached the plaza and took in the chaos. Bodies, those of neutralized maniacs and civilians alike littered the streets, inside of shops and even hanging off rooftops. The Civilians of the town gave them one hell of a fight, but he noted that the Maniacs also had a tendency to fight one another in the resulting skirmish- seeing as some fighters lay strewn over each other in some areas. That would be to his advantage- the less attention to him, the better.

Another thunderous bang, and the Mercenary looked up to see another, smaller blur that had launched toward the Headquarters. Glancing over his shoulder, the Mercenary spotted a group of people heading toward the mysteriously-cannoned ship that had materialized in the docks. He was sure he would encounter them at some point- reaching the Headquarters became his priority. The Mercenary trudged through the cobblestone-laden streets, sometimes having to step over the littered bodies of fallen Maniacs that contested the narrow walkways and alleys. The Mercenary's bodysuit blended him into the shadows; keeping him concealed as he paused every so often at the sounds of distant fights, assessed their range, then bound over to the next cover point. There was a notable reduction of noise compared to when the fighters first descended on the town, and he suspected that the Maniacs had taken care of the majority of each other just as much as the Civilians and other individuals had risen up to fight back. Ascending up the inclined pathway and moving up and around a switchback, it was there that the Mercenary found a bigger storefront at the peak of the end; the sign violently torn from its housing and splintered into pieces. No telling what it was before, yet it was the black metal ladder on the side of the building that caught his attention. The construction had lead to the rooftop of the building, and it was here the Mercenary supposed, he'd get a better viewpoint to oversee any points of interest he may have missed.

Mounting the rungs, the Mercenary wasted no time in quickly moving up and over the ledge to the rooftop. As expected, it was barren paved concrete- saved for what appeared to be a black cauldron-like thing that had been blown out on one side; the metallic flaps secured to the frame with bundles of rope wrapped around it. Moving over to it, the Mercenary traced the barrel's angle up and over, pointing the firing trajectory directly up to the Mafia HQ. He could smell the acrid, pepper-y tang of gunpowder residue from where he was at, knowing this cannon must have been fired by the two people who had shot themselves up to the Headquarters. The barrel was big enough for a man to stand in, and so he went. Feet first, arms crossed over his chest, and then he felt the cannon lurch backward. The explosive rattle of yet another firing cannon deafened him once more; rattling him physically to his bones as he was shot off his feet and into an arc; the howling night wind lashing his face with ceaseless intensity. Despite being a short arc to the massive platform, the Mercenary briefly wondered if those hooligans below enjoyed this. He certainly did not. Spreading his arms out to slow his decent and bending his knees, the Mercenary hunched into a recovery roll at the moment his feet hit the ground. Bounding to his feet, he quickly unlatched his .45 from its holster, checked its magazine and chamber, then unlatched his service knife in his left hand as he ran past the smashed-in entrance.

As he moved past the doorway, the man raised his .45 to eye-level; crossing his knife-wielding left hand to brace underneath his right wrist; blade pointing toward the rows of desolate roulette tables. The bodies of the Mafia, piles of ash, more hooligans, and perhaps some of the white-suited man's henchmen were sporadically clustered at the smashed-in central door that was ahead. Just how many people were here, the Mercenary had no idea. Judging from the distance sounds of fighting in the rooms ahead, however, he deduced that those two figures from earlier had made it- possibly even the man with the polearm as well. Hell, it was impossible to ascertain with the level of bodies that currently lay around the area. The Mercenary continued a slow creep through the area, the sounds of clashing blades growing louder and louder as his heart began to pound in his chest. The sound was at its crescendo through the kicked-open set of ornate wooden doors to his left, and as the Mercenary braced against the wall, he heard the unmistakable growl of the suited man from earlier. Bingo. Curling his lip into a scowl, his anger at the man's probable cause of these events devastating the town motivated him to round the corner and step past the doorframe.

The dimmed lighting of the theater interior made it easy for him to acquire targets. His eyes were drawn to the suited man, now enveloped in a burgundy radiance as he surveyed the area from his peripheral vision. Two feminine figures were at the midpoint of the rows- not within range of the polearm-wielding man, yet not up on the stage where the Mafia Boss was either. He wasn't sure why this dockside man wanted to take the town for himself, yet he knew as much that it wasn't done out of generosity. The suited man was surrounded by the group, and the Mercenary wasn't about to let any more people be butchered by this madman. To those who saw him enter, the gruff, grizzled man had his gun raised and ready to fire at the mobster at the center stage- with a strange golden glint that caught the light within his ocean-blue eye. He didn't say a word, finger wrapped around the trigger and ready to fire at the slightest movement from his target.

Nadia hadn’t expected her unannounced arrival to lead to any tearful reunions, but true to form her nemesis never missed a beat when it came to putting the cat burglar down. When Juri mentioned a schoolgirl crush in that disingenuous drawl of hers, she earned herself a hearty snort of derision. “You flatter yourself,” Nadia told her, hands on her hips. Anyone else squaring up to face off against ten armed men might have courted some backup a little more tactfully, but naturally the same hooligan who assumed herself a Consul’s equal wouldn’t think she needed any help against a force like this. Thanks to that repellent attitude of hers, Juri was about to bite off a lot more than she could chew.

A slight, almost imperceptible sound made the feral’s ear twitch, and just to be safe Nadia cast a quick glance back the way she came. For a moment she didn’t see anything, but her keen eyes quickly picked up on furtive movement in the shadows of the theater’s main entrance. She realized that someone else was here, a man judging by the partial silhouette against the backlight of the casino down the hall. For a brief moment she peered his way, the electric blue irises of her feline peepers subtly aglow, like a plasma TV screen. Had he tailed her here, turning the follower into the followed? Admittedly the lion’s share of her focus had been on her own quarry, but this man must be good to have evaded her notice until now.

Unfortunately, Juri didn’t give her much time to think about the stealthy stranger’s presence. The mouthy martial artist’s latest taunt made Nadia’s decision for her. As Juri restarted the brawl by throwing herself into battle, the feral bared her teeth in an evil smile. She wasn’t allergic to fun or money by any means. “Just you,” she hissed.

In the chaos that followed Juri’s assault, Mabuchi’s whole entourage got mixed up in the melee. With so much jostling, getting a clean shot on the guandao-wielding gangster would be a challenge even for the likes of Snake, and things were only getting more wild from here. Nadia dashed in behind Juri, a grin on her face. “Here, lemme give you a hand!” Using pressurized blood she launched her hand like a grappling hook on a rope of corded muscle fiber, grabbing hold of Juri’s calf. Then the shameless saboteur tugged in an attempt to yank Juri off her feet and send her sprawling. “Enjoy the trip, nyahaha!” As the fight with Mabuchi’s minions continued, Nadia would interfere again and again, messing with Juri as much as possible. Grappling with her extendable limbs was just the beginning; she’d also try to create slicks using her own blood, use Charge to blitz through her, and so forth, even if she took a retaliatory hit or two in so doing. If really turned on, she would flee to give the henchmen the chance to attack, then return with infuriating purr-sistence a few moments later. And of course, if her rival abandoned the mobsters’ feud to give Nadia her full attention, the feral would happily oblige. That cocky thug was overdue for a well-deserved beatdown, after all, but even if she gave up on the gangsters, Galeem’s influence meant that the men she attacked wouldn’t be so quick to return the favor.

Especially compared to the pushovers that constituted the bulk of the Mafia of Cooks, Mabuchi’s men weren’t exactly easy pickings. Of the eight still on their feet, one wielded a knife, one a hammer, three had claw weapons, and two had guns, a pistol and a shotgun respectively. The last one, the most well-built and well-equipped of the bunch, actually brandished a surfboard. While the others attacked on Mabuchi’s behalf, the aquanaut used Beachside Bro-BQ to manifest a portable grill laden with skewered a’awa. When he hoisted the Hawaiian hogfish into the air, his whole team received a burst of health that allowed his two lacerated comrades to get to their feet and continue the fight. If everyone seemed capable enough, the aquanaut would happily switch from support to offense and unleash wide-ranging water-aspected attacks with flippers, frozen tuna, or his surfboard.

For a little while the Mafia Boss just stared at the mayhem unfolding beneath him, mouth slightly ajar. When it became clear that Juri wouldn’t be able to turn the tide in his favor with Nadia on her case, however, he ground his teeth in frustration. “Fine, I’ll do it myself!” He began to spin with blades extended, whirling like a top toward the mob. In response, Mabuchi disentangled himself from the melee and took a defensive stance. When the boss struck him, he struck back with a Resolute Counter, but the slash seemed to enrage the boss more than anything. “Bow down!” He leaped back toward his throne, then threw himself into another wild revolution. “Super charge!” Lightning flashed and sparks flew across the floor, but his opponent evaded them one by one. By the time that the boss got too dizzy to spin anymore, Mabuchi was close enough to extend a Petal Blossom Kick and knock the boss back, his defense reduced.

Flames seemed to dance around the boss as he yelled in anger, swinging his arms and stamping his feet. “Enough games!” He roared. “Mafiaaaaaaaaaaaaa…!” At his summons, all the Mafia goons scattered across the island suddenly and inexplicably flew his way, phasing through solid matter in order to pile up beneath his feet. This included Chrom, Rosanna, and -much to her chagrin- Juri. After just a second, so many underlings had clumped together that their bodies formed a giant sphere beneath him. “BALL!”

To Nadia, the spectacle was as incredible as it was hilarious. “No. Freaking. Way.”

Rosanna’s exasperated voice issued from somewhere within the sphere. “I hate it when he does this…” Chrom just groaned, hoping that nobody saw her in such a reputation-ruining stunt.

Gleefully unbothered, the boss began to roll the huge ball around to crush his enemies beneath his organization’s weight. Mabuchi managed to duck around it and then grab hold of the backside, making his way toward the top of the ball to challenge the boss swashbuckler-style. Nadia made a run for it, cackling all the while, as the usurper’s henchman tried in vain to fight the dreaded Mafia Ball.

The Mercenary's pause had been enough for him to assess the figures in the room- just before the bubblegum-punk styled girl had launched herself into the fray as all hell broke loose. Seconds after, the catlike woman had joined the engagement. It was obvious the two had a rivalry against one another, and the chaos in the theater seemed to be the perfect opportunity for them to settle scores. The catlike woman was relentless in her assaults against her rival- purely seeming to target her even above the man with the polearm who threatened to usurp the entire town. As for the Mercenary, he was, as by his nature, a mercenary. Under contract, not obligation. The Mafia boss and his henchmen seemed to be holding themselves well enough, and as the Mercenary stepped back through the doorway to the theater undetected by the two mobsters, he weighed his options again after pressing himself against the wall for cover. The central stage was beyond his reach, and it was an all-out brawl that honestly wouldn't serve to accomplish much on his end. The boss roared in rage, no doubt frustrated that there was nary a coordinated nor unified response by the other two in ensuring the polearmed intruder would be dealt with. That's when he heard the boss take a deep, raspy breath. "Maaaaffiiiaaaa~ BALL!"

The Mercenary peeked around the corner just in time to dodge a flying tuna steak, and to his surprise, beheld the insane spectacle that was hundreds of Mafia henchmen; phasing through the floor, the walls, the ceiling- all to coalesce under the Boss in a giant sphere of muscles and moustaches- with a few very hapless inclusions who were quite upset about their state of being. It was there he decided that the fight was handled, and chose to move away from the theater and back out to the casino foyer. Glancing behind him, he looked around the room to spot the cashier kiosk, unoccupied. Perhaps there was a silver lining to this after all. He was looking to get an assault rifle in the future..

With the massive form of Worship finally sunk, the angelic forces rallied shortly before continuing on. Citronpool Harbor itself was already a wasteland by the time Edelgard and Roxas flew by atop Ortho, the angels having attacked the place prior to their arrival. Ortho set down, resting and stretching his wings, angling his body to gently coax the pair of Seekers off so he could take his own break before they all moved on. Once they were on solid ground, Edelgard turned to Roxas.

”While I appreciate your willingness to follow standard military protocol, young man, it is far from necessary for you to subordinate yourself to me. I’ve seen what you and your friends are capable of, and I do understand that you are not likely to stay overlong with Lady Palutena’s forces. My commands to my platoon are not strictly yours to follow, nor are you required to address me by rank or title. You may refer to me simply as Edelgard, or Lady Edelgard should you feel the need to use some sort of title.” The smile on her face was real, but there was a sort of put-on patience to it that hinted at a deeper dissatisfaction that the presence of the Seekers was required, rather than at it in general.

”That aside, we had best get our preparations finished. They won’t wait for us to begin the final assault. If there’s anything you need to do, now is the time.” Her piece said, Edelgard went to a large, open space to await Ortho’s return, once the griffin had spread its wings sufficiently.

After she and Roxas were aboard Ortho and airborne once more, Edelgard steeled herself for the coming battle. This was the stronghold of the Corruption, Skyworld’s greatest enemy. It would be no simple feat to find and purge the source, to end the battle against this most dreadful foe. All of their preparations came to this.

The sight of the final island filled Edelgard with more confusion than dread. The geography, if it could be called such, resembled no sane place. Were her mind weaker, she might find that more disturbing, but she had seen her fair share of horror in this war. No, she was ready to do battle, to put an end to this war. As Ortho grew closer, the details of the creatures, if they could be called such, on the train grew clear. Little more than physical manifestations of Corruption with limbs and weapons, the things slithered about the train of evil like maggots on a rotting corpse.

After a bit more flying, Ortho passed over the track, keeping his flight path aligned with it for a few moments, to give Edelgard, and Roxas if he so chose, time to dismount and land aboard the vile locomotive.

Edelgard’s own landing let out a thunderous sound, and a bevy of Corrupted turned to her, pausing for a moment before they broke out into a frenzied attack. Following behind her a moment later were the black Eagles, and they set upon the Corrupted things like they never had before, emboldened by the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Swords flashed out, Shields and Staves bolstered their allies, and Bows hovered just out of reach, peppering their foes with arrows.

The Corrupted were not without means to fight back, however. Disgusting things stretched their bodies, granting them much more range with which to attack the flying Featherbows with their many flailing hands, seeking to pull them into a maw of horrors. One type of Corrupted had a sort of steam-powered cannon, launching balls of Corruption into the ranks of angelic forces, threatening to overwhelm and turn them on their allies. Another belched fire from the furnace that comprised its furnace, while others could only swipe at Edelgard and the angels with their sharpened, blighted talons.

”Do not falter here, Black Eagles! We have come to the heart of this Corruption, the very bastion of our enemies! We will emerge victorious today, just a little more!” A cheer rose up through the ranks of the Eagles, though having fought two battles already, and now a third against a fresh enemy, Edelgard knew that many of them would not return. She did not dwell long on this inevitability, but she accepted it all the same. The lives given today would grant every denizen of Skyworld a new future. One full of hope and light. Their sacrifices would not be in vain.

Edelgard’s axe flickered out in a rapid, familiar pattern against a particularly large creature with more arms and legs than she could count, the Empress unleashing Flickering Flower against the Corrupted monster. As the arte carved into the thing, it found itself overwhelmed by the force, and slumped, stunned for a few seconds. Edelgard wasted no time in climbing onto the creature, much as she had done to Beloved, to get her licks in. Her shield slammed into one of its masked faces, and Aymr crashed into its inky form, even as fire licked over her armor from a forge-gut Corrupted that a Feathersword crashed into from above, cleaving the thing in twain with a single blow. ”Th-thank you.” Edelgard grunted out, even as she carved and tore her quarry in twain, disgusting globules of Corruption hanging off her armor like worms writhing in dirt after the rain. Shaking herself off not unlike a dog, Edelgard launched herself into another assault, trusting her comrades to watch her back.

The ship assaulting seekers approached the cannon mounted vessel with as much haste as they could muster, eyes sharply on the lookout for any retaliation to their brazen assault on this sower of chaos. Yet they found nothing. No look outs, no cannons at the ready. Nothing.

”What a bunch of dummies, just letting anyone and everyone sail up to their ship” Jr declared over confidently.

Geralt, on the other hand, was extremely suspicious as Rika’s whale garnered no reaction from the ship. Tilting his head towards Dave, he nodded at the vessel. “Either ship’s empty, or we’re walking into a trap.” He advised flatly.

Dave just sighed. “Yeah, I figured as much as soon as we got out here and nobody tried to shoot at us. I don’t have that kind of luck.”

Rika, meanwhile, decided to test the self procured name of the vessel, the ”SS Literally Can't Sink”, lancing one of her new floating rocket propelled swords at its hull, and only to have it simply glance off the side of the ship.

”No making stairs out of those then. Guess I’ll just jump up?” Rika supposed, staring up at the hatch they were floating several meters beneath. With all her movement abilities, that wouldn’t be a problem at all.

”oh, oh, give me a piggyback, and we can try out that new move we figured out to bust on in in style!” Jr suggested excitedly, practically bouncing with excitement at the notion.

”mmm, that might bust it” Rika agreed, though that was only going to get them up there.

As Geralt and Dave’s own ride approached, the Witcher looked at his diver companion and frowned. “Gonna be tough to get up there. I might be able to make the jump and climb over the railing, but I don’t think getting you up with me will be easy.” He didn’t beat around the bush of Dave’s weight, but the diver simply nodded, hefting his harpoon gun.

“Can’t hurt to try with this. I can reel in some pretty huge fish with it. You get up there, I’ll shoot the harpoon, and you pull me up on the rope!” Geralt hummed, thinking it over for a few moments before shrugging. He was right, it probably couldn’t hurt to try. If this was an efficient ambush, they’d wait until they were all on board to spring it anyway, to lull them further into a false sense of security.

In-front of them, Rika crouched down on the water, and Jr hopped on her shoulders, which seemed like a bit of an odd move until the ship girl tapped a rune attached to her gauntlet’s palm, and promptly shot up into the air. She rose up and up, then the wall jumped off of the side of the ship just below one of the side hatches. As she did, Jr held his staff sized paint brush above her head, producing a white glow that wove its way down into Rika’s gauntlets, the illumination reaching a peak just as she came in level with the hatch.

There, she seemed to hang in the air, before unleashing a rapid fire barrage of punches, each one accompanied with a burst of holy light, bending and buckling the hatch before drawing bac fore one last punch, only to summon a massive mechanized lance in the grip of her first and to ram forwards with it.

The Black Lance punctured and then shattered the battered hatch, Rika’s energy shield flaring as she and her brother entered the vessel in a shower of shrapnel that would have been devastating to any ambushers.

There were, however, none to be found.

Yet.

As such a moment later both of the kid’s heads popped out the wrecked hole, Rika waving with a big gauntletted while Jr called out that there where ”No dummies here”

On Geralt and Dave’s end, they’d pulled up onto the top deck of the ship, only to realize that their…wasn’t really a top deck of the ship. Geralt had been forced to straddle the railing of the side of the ship and pull Dave over, helping toss him to a cargo container that was suitably high up to not create a large drop. The Witcher himself wound up just dropping to the deck belowship, rolling to break his fall and looking around.

“Nothing down here, either.” He called up to the pair, who were looking outside the ship, possibly having assumed they’d wait for the Koopas to scout ahead. Instead of a great ambush, they found a bunch of cargo containers, and some things Geralt vaguely recognized from Midgar.

”Oh..” Jr replied, a little upset at their flashy way onboard having been unnecessary, while Rika just leaned back in and gave a big thumbs up.

“Huh, a bunch of vending machines?” Dave questioned, puzzled, walking up to one of them. “It’s all wrestling-themed stuff, huh? Guess that makes sense, what with all those Wrestlemania-looking guys messing up the town. We gotta stop them. Bancho Sushi got messed up badly enough as it is!” Dave’s tone was somewhat dramatically despondent, but he’d really grown to love that place. He wasn’t going to put up with somebody messing with it!

Small-scale motivations aside, Geralt agreed, and nodded to show as much, summoning Tartaglia’s Hydro weapons. He might as well get used to fighting with them, though rather than the dual blades, he formed the Hydro energy into a single joined twinblade. “Alright, Junior, Rika, let’s take a look around. Most likely place to find I would be the bridge.”

”I’d settle for that shouty commentator guy” Jr replied while Rika poked her head back out the ship and tossed her golden spinner down to retrieve her whale from the water.

Indeed, said commentator was still banging on about the brawl back in the city, including, apparently, some kind of brawl going down in the mafia headquarters that had nothing to do with the wrestlers themselves: “And would you look at that! The reigning champ of maffia town has combined all of his lackeys into a massive ball that he’s rolling around ontop of! Now that’s something you don’t see every day!”

He was loud enough to be heard on the island itself, which meant that on the ship? Almost painful to hear.

”Aww, and now I wanna see that” Jr moaned at the latest announcement, while Rika shrugged, saying ”Punching I will be better. Probably” while also putting on a pair of headphones under her helmet.

”Oh, yeah, that’ll help” Jr said as he saw this, imitating her, before realizing why she was actually doing it and saying ”oh, no, right, that strategy, got it”

With everyone armed and ready, the quartet advanced up the ship towards the bridge, passing more and more containers containing much of the same, although there were also books with titles like ‘dive kicks for dummies’ on them as well. There was, once again, no resistance. Even when they got to the flame clock sat below the bridge, no one came out to defend it. Not that they knew how to destroy them anyway.

What was interesting, however, was that before this clock there sat 4 panels, a few feet wide, all emblazoned with the serrated sun symbol of what they now knew where respawn pads

”Huh. So I guess these are what Kamek was talking about? Just. Sitting out in the open” Jr commented at the sight of the apparently normally hidden mechanisms of repopulating the world of light, here so brazenly put out on display.

“Huh. Have to admit, I wouldn’t have expected them to be so brazenly displayed, though I suppose there wouldn’t be a problem, since anybody here would either be an enemy, or Gleaming.” Dave’s attention started wandering elsewhere as soon as information more directly related to the grand conflict of the World of Light came out, but when they started getting close to the bridge, his attitude started getting even more serious.

“Alright, everyone, let’s do this.” Geralt warned as he forced open the door to the bridge, seamlessly stepping in and moving to the side to give the others room to enter, Hydro twinblade flourishing as he cast Quen to protect himself.

Rather than an onslaught of fighters, the response to them all bursting in was a shout of “Wow hey, what are you folks doing here the rings over there!” from the announcer as he dove behind the spinning captain’s chair of a surly looking walrus captain who seemed entirely disinterested in their attack. That, and a slow clap from the consul who stood before the window, silhouetted against the setting sun as it hung low over the city she had just brought destruction too.

“Congratulations on making it abroad seekers of-” I began with the tone of a preacher about to deliver a self assured sermon, only for Rika to raise a palm and unleash a hail of gunfire at the Consul.

She made no move to avoid this attack, and instead without nary a thought raised a barrier around her that absorbed the attack, while she shook her head in disappointment.

“So you are here for me then? Sadly I am afraid I have no interest in giving you the satisfaction of battling you” she told them, reaching down and grasping an incredibly heaving looking metallic idol that was sat next to her before saying “but not to worry. For your efforts, I will provide you with a suitable challenge”

She hauled up the idol as if it was nothing, and in that very same moment something massive burst from the water next to the ship, as if by hoisting the idol, she had pulled it something out of the depths. The wave from the rapid emergence of the massive object rocked the ship, sending everyone but her stumbling.

Then a moment later the gigantic hermit crab she had summoned crashed down among the shipping containers down below. Its eyestalks glanced to and fro, before their glowing ire locked upon the bridge, and upon those that had summoned it here, prompting it to shove its claws into one of the shipping containers, and to haul out several of the vending machines in its titanic claws.

Completely disinterested in the fact that she was between the angry monster and its targets, I added that “Oh, and I’m sure the other Consuls will be most interested to know you are here. Perhaps that will bring you the satisfaction you desire” before simply teleporting away.

Right as the vending machines the titanic hermit crab had grabbed came smashing through the glass windows of the bridge.

”S-sorry.” was all Roxas could really say. He didn’t expect such a… stern reply. Still, wasn’t it more respectful to defer to her command while he was with her and her unit? She was being nice enough to let him ride with her, so he figured that was the least he could do in return. Clearly that wasn’t going to be the case. Not the battle was going to give either of them much time to dwell on this. When they reached the Harbor had already all-but fallen. But that didn’t stop what was to be their next target from making itself known.

It was a train, and not a very pleasant-looking one at that. All dark and gloomy, not to mention crawling with hideous looking Corrupted, it made its rounds in and around the last infected island. This was it. The island Roxas had so far only observed from a distance. And it was where he was certain the source of the Corruption could be found. The only thing he wasn’t certain of was whether or not that source was another Guardian. But either way, it had to be stopped, whatever it was.

Unlike before, Roxas took the opportunity to dismount alongside Edelgard. Whatever this train was, it only made sense that it would eventually make its way to the source or at least close to it. So should Roxas simply ride the train in hopes it would bring him to the source? Or should he try to disable the train and destroy it somehow? He wondered what the Black Eagles would do. But for the time being the only thing to do was get rid of the Corrupted that were crawling all over it.

Edelgard and her squad went right to work, opting to cut their way through the oncoming Corrupted like a mower traveling across an overgrown front lawn. For the first few moments Roxas opted to stay near Edelgard herself. But it didn’t take him long to realize that this would be slow-going if they remained at this pace. And that’s when a particular fact dawned on him. Without much communication to Edelgard, Roxas hurriedly buffed her using both Steel and Tailwind to grant her a speed and strength boon to her movements and attacks. Hopefully that would be enough for the frankly crazy stunt he was about to attempt.

”I’ve got an idea!” Roxas said to the Flame Empress before taking off further ahead on the train and calling back, ”Listen for my signal!” The Nobody had to really watch his movement. His StepSword as well as Flow Motion could get him through the incoming wave of Corrupted, but one wrong step could get him snagged by a stray limb or knocked off the train entirely. This was definitely a test of his own acrobatic skill and maneuverability.

Once Roxas got further up the train, he stopped and used a quick series of Thundagas to clear himself a space and get some of the Corrupted away from him. After that, he used his Phantom Ruby necklace to summon a cluster of randomly placed virtual cubes that would cover the width of the train in front of him. They were, of course, stationary. Normally harmless if not for the fact that he was currently on top of a moving train. The train’s movement would have the effect of dragging everyone else Roxas left behind through what was effectively a deadly obstacle course that could damage them or even bump them off of the train entirely.

”Edelgard, now!” Roxas shouted at the top of his lungs before adding, ”Heads up!”

That was the signal he had told her to listen for. Her Black Eagles were angels and could pretty easily use their flight to stay out of harm’s way when their section of the train was pulled through the virtual cube obstacles. And as for Edelgard herself, this was the reason Roxas was careful to use Tailwind and Steel on her before he did all this. Hopefully the boons to speed and strength granted by both buffs would be enough for her to dodge incoming virtual cubes, or smash them with her ax if needed.

Blazermate was flying around, looking for someone to help or something to do. And something presented itself as she heard, then saw there being commotion at the restaurant at the top of the city. "Oh duh! If they were attacking the Mafia, they'd go after their boss! Best go help them out." Blazermate said as she flew up. And yeah, this whole place was in chaos as she entered the establishment and heard the Mafia boss say "Mafia... BALL". She made her way to where she heard that, and as she got to the casino floor and towards the area where all the fighting was happening, she saw some spec ops guy running from where she heard the fight.

"Huh... Hey, do you wanna help me figure out whos attacking this place? She then skidded to a halt and walked back a few steps to get a good look at Snake. "You look kinda familiar but i can't place my finger on it." Blazermate said as she looked at Venom Snake closer "Like... there was some action hero or something and you look juuust like him." She then stopped thinking as she got an idea. "Oh! After I help the head guy here, I'll grab your autograph! That'll help! Just make sure not to leave the place, ok? Or you can help, I'm sure he'll be happy that we helped defend his city!". Blazermate giggled before she went back to finding the fight at hand with the Mafia boss.

As she entered the main room she saw what made her love the Mafia goons... Pure cartoonish insanity as three was just a giant ball of mafia men being rolled around by the mafia boss. Also Nadia and Juri were there helping defend him it looked like? Well, she hoped anyway as she put her healing beam on the Mafia boss and gave him a Kritz, causing his cleavers, and the whole Mafia ball to glow with electric blue energy and being way, way more powerful. She'd also heal any damage he took and possibly overheal him if she could, but Nadia and Juri would also need heals.

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The last corrupted island. Well, it had been an interesting week. Perhaps it could've ended sooner if she had put more effort in helping the angelic forces before, but once she learned that none of these islands were part of Floralia, her interest had diminished in the war effort until this final push. When it came to all this fighting in this world, she wasn't really a fan of it at the end of the day, but she wasn't a queen who would run from conquest. At least once this island fell, she could go and look into a few leads of strong artifacts or powers she had been looking into before this whole final push.

Speaking of the island itself, being able to fly herself made her a bit unique from the other seekers. Sure there was Ortho that some of the other seekers were riding, but she was more a shining light upon herself and more or less staying near but not on the ship itself. To help the angelic forces make landfall, Sectonia summoned all her Antlers over the course of a few rounds of portals starting with the golds and working her way down their size categories in order to give the smaller greens and blues some cover from their shield weilding larger cohorts. All while she herself provided air support with lasers and rings, at least until everyone had managed to make some landfall. and it'd be needed, considering all the corruption about.

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



While this whole combat before him was interesting, it'd need to end soon. Roland was wondering why they were going at it so harshly before remembering what he was told; Galeemed people would fight to the death unless some extreme circumstances stopped them. Considering Grimm saved him from a bad fate, letting the bug man just outright die felt like it'd be a bad way to repay the favor. Now to repay a favor forward, he just hoped Grimm wasn't a psycho once freed. He'd dealt with a lot of those, many far closer to home than he'd like.

Roland, finding an opening, moved in to deflect the Witch's next spell aimed at Grimm. Around this time, Primrose also made her move to handle the Witch, so Roland focused on Grimm. Having hurt his leg and taken lots of damage from this battle, there was a good opportunity to hit him with a heart... if he wasn't so evasive. Roland had something for that though, and pulling out a large paintbrush, made black, blood ink swirl around him. He then went to clash with Grimm's next attack to get close, pulling any hit that'd hit the bug man as his plan was to get close enough for his swelling ink to explode outwards in inky black tentacles, stunning Grimm and making him unable to dodge as Roland threw a friend heart at the troop leader.

He then turned to see if Primrose would need help with the other... zombie... necromancer... lady. Roland wasn't sure how to feel about that. Well, at least these zombies looked like zombies and not some... hobbled mess of a fresh corpse puppeteered by strings or by its own blood. Free range zombies, now thats a morbid thought.

”This is the place.” Captain Falcon said to Zhao after they made it to the harbor. They were standing in front of the entrance to the storehouse that Falcon had earlier seen Mabuchi disappear into just before the Captain had made his exit from the pier. ”Odd though. You’d think it would be guarded.” Falcon added.

“Well, I imagine everyone’s got their hands full with the circus wrestlers.” Zhao offered. Even he and Cap had fought a couple more of those cartoonish fighters on their way here. “And with whatever coup Mabuchi is trying to pull off.” He also added. Without wanting any more delays, the two entered the unguarded doors into the storehouse itself.

Inside, the scene was something that looked all-too familiar to Zhao. “I don’t believe this.” he muttered, looking around at the crates of shark fins and other items as well as the supply crates marked as “resin” and “dyes”.

”How do you mean?”

“This looks almost exactly like the same counterfeiting operation Mabuchi used to run back in Yokohama. Right down to the same front business even. Did the idiot not learn a single thing from the asskicking he got back then?” Zhao asked while rolling his eyes. As the two searched they eventually came upon a pile of pons on a nearby worktable. Next to them was what clearly looked like molds.

“Hey, Falcon-kun, can I borrow one of your pons for a sec?” Zhao suddenly asked. Falcon nodded and handed him a pon from the purse he’d been given back in You Tian. Zhao took that pon in one hand and another pon from the table in another hand. He held them both in his hands as if comparing the weight, and then even bit onto the pon he grabbed from the table like a jeweler testing the authenticity of a gold coin. “Yep, thought so.” Zhao handed both pons to Falcon. “See for yourself.”

Of course, Cap was by no means an expert on this. But the more he held both pons in his hands the more he began to feel the difference in their weight. ”So then, these really really are fakes?”

“I’ll say.” said Zhao who then gestured to molds. “See those? They mix green dye into the resin and then pour that resin into the molds so that they harden into the shape of pons. A classic counterfeiting scheme if I ever saw one. And almost beat for beat identical to the scheme he ran in Yokohama, too. The dumb bastard.” Zhao muttered before he suddenly kicked over the entire work table without warning, “It’s like he’s deliberately doing this just to taunt me! The fucking asshole!”

”Hey, don’t lose your head here.” Falcon said, trying to calm him down. ”There’s probably an office somewhere in here. We should check it in case he left behind some clue as to where went from here.”

“Yeah…” Zhao said, calming back down. “...yeah, good idea. Let’s go.”

The office they were looking for was located at the top of some stairs that led into a series of catwalks that one could use to traverse the storehouse without needing to weave through sections of workstations or storage areas. Inside, they found a desk, although the papers on it weren’t especially helpful. Mostly just ledgers and records of transactions through the counterfeiting operation. It was Cap who first noticed something a bit off about the office. ”That’s weird.” He said. “Don’t these places normally have radios for communicating with the ships outside?”

“Yeah, or with delivery trucks for that matter.” Zhao added. “I guess Mabuchi figured they were a waste of space since almost everyone has a cell phone these days. Still kind of weird though.”

”Any idea what this is?” Cap asked, pointing to what looked like some kind of bowl atop a pedestal that was filled with water.

“A birdbath?” Zhao offered with a shrug.

”Who keeps a birdbath indoors where there aren’t any birds?” Falcon retorted.

“You got me.” Zhao admitted. “Hold on, what have we got here?” he’d been trying to pick the lock on a drawer in the desk and finally got it open. Inside was another ledger of sorts, except this one did not mention anything about the counterfeit operation. Instead it made repeated mentions of a certain individual. “Consul 𝙸? What does that mean?”

And now it was Falcon’s turn to be surprised and become deadly serious. ”Consul? Let me see that!” he took the ledger from Zhao and skimmed over it himself. ”This is not good.”

Zhao could tell Falcon recognized the name. “You wanna fill me in, here, Falcon-kun? What the hell is a “Consul”? Is it someone you know?”

Falcon shook his head. ”Not personally. But I know their organization. My friends and I came here so we could hide from them for a while. But according to this, Mabuchi figured out who we were and alerted Consul 𝙸.”

“So this Consul is the one sending those cargo ships to attack Mafia Town? To target you?”

”Not just me, a few of my friends as well.”

“And Mabuchi is using the chaos to try and take over town.” Zhao said through gritted teeth. “That means there’s only one place I can think of where he would be right now.” Zhao paused and pointed upward. “The disk, where the Mafia HQ is.”

”I don’t suppose you know how to get up there?”

“Well-”

Before Zhao could get anything else out, they both suddenly felt the storehouse begin to rumble and tremble. Moments later, the water-sde wall of the storehouse began to crack and break before something from the outside seemed to tear it open. They were able to catch a small glimpse of what was attacking the storehouse below. Some kind of shark… octopus… mutant thing. It had the head and body of a great white shark, but looked like its tail end had been replaced by the tentacles of a massive red octopus.



“What the fuck?!” Zhao yelled, “The hell is that thing?”

”I’m not waiting around to find out!” Cap said, ”Come on, if we can make it far enough off the pier it probably won’t be able to follow us!”

And so the two began their run. Zhao and Cap stuck to catwalks first, hoping it would keep them out of reach of the monster’s tentacles. But unfortunately for them, those tentacles were able to shoot what looked like blasts of different colored ink as a projectile attack. For the superhuman Captain Falcon, this wasn’t as difficult to deal with. But Zhao, on the other hand, had a far harder time of this. One particular ink shot managed to hit close enough that Zhao slipped on it and tumbled over the railing. He was lucky that Falcon was fast enough to catch him by the hand. But there was no time for him to pull Zhao up and eventually the ex-mafia boss slipped from his hand and fell down to the ground level of the storehouse and scrambled to his feet to keep running. But the monster was giving chase with its tentacles.

Falcon kept running along the catwalk but after a few more meters he hurled himself over the railing and dropped down onto where the sea monster was chasing Zhao, charging up his fist all the while. ”Falcon!” Cap shouted out as he fell down to the lower level, then lunged himself forward to throw the attack. ”PUUUUUUNCH!” the explosive punch connected, which wasn’t hard to do given the monster’s size and threw it back several meters and even appeared to stun it momentarily. But the monster was far from vaniquished and was quick to recover and resume the chase.

By the time it did, Falcon and Zhao had burst back into the outside, still on the run from the attacking sea monster. Some more wrestlers had appeared by now but they were far too distracted by the sea monster to commit to their assault on the harbor. Zhao and Falcon punched and kicked their way past them as the stragglers were snatched by the tentacles and swept toward the jaws of the shark head.

”C’mon, Zhao!” Falcon shouted between gasps for breath. ”We just have to make it off the pier! We can do this!”

“We damn… well.. Better!” Zhao answered, “Or we’re fish food!”

The last drenaught exited onto the Ivory Citadel‘s landing pad as the one who had cleared it (according to one of the wounded he had spoken to) returned, along with her battered squad. Going by her dissonant appearance and arrival among the goddess’s forces since he was seized from them, he assumed she was another one of the Seekers. He’d been told about the eyes, of course, but this woman had her’s covered by both a blindfold and her snarling mask, so his confirmation was the way he was quite sure those unseen eyes locked with his, somehow seeing past all that shielded her eyes without trouble.

Hopefully now he could get some proper answers, rather than the verbal equivalent of a student's scribbled notes.

First however, he stepped aside to let the wounded through and informed them that ”The wounded and healers are held up through the first door on your left. There’s been a few corrupt stragglers, so watch your backs till you are there, just in case” getting a nod of thanks from the troops, and one of approval from the dragon knight.

Once they were past he stepped towards the knight and introduced himself as ”Edward Portsmith. Dreadnought, and leader, or I suppose former ladder, of the Commonwealth Remanent” along with a proffered hand to shake. For her part, the knight slipped off her steed and took the hand, while at the same time using the other three to remove her helmet, revealing dark orange eyes that were indeed free of Galeem’s light, ones that looked at him with curiosity. They were found on a face that was not quite as elven as the pointy ears that had been sticking out her helmet had made him assume it would be, but certainly featured a striking grace all of its own.

”Midna, still princess of twilight even away from my people” she replied once the helm was off. She certainly had the air of an exiled royal about her, Edward found, though without the somewhat pitiable arrogant insistence he associated with such types. Here, it seemed, was someone who simply knew that it was only a matter of time till they were back on the throne. Which was its own kind of arrogance of course, but it was at least more charismatic than the former.

The swing then, from that, to a more casual tone for the rest of their conversations was an interesting one, of that there was no doubt, starting with the princess telling him ”Welcome to this herd of cats we call a team. Now where’d you get dug up from? Anything to do with why my heels are on fire instead of the corruption’s forces, hmm?” before clicking the claws of one of her metallic boots on the ground, which were indeed aglow with his magic.

”The corruption dained to take me alive and use me to command its forces, so I am afraid I’ve been something of a bother. One of your number, a Queen Sectonia inducted me into your number as part of releasing its hold on me” he informed her, and at the same time wondered if it was coincidence or not all the members of the seekers he was aware of, himself included, were rulers.

”She was, however, a bit light on the details in the name of expediency. I was hoping you might fill in some of the gaps? And provide transport. I am sadly lacking the tome that will let me sprout wings” He requested, having overheard talk of what the overall goal here was, and wanting to play at least some part in it.

Complete elimination of the corruption in a single day, quite the tall order, and one he assumed the Seekers were involved in inducting the initiation of, given the prior stagnancy of the situation.

”Well you could always gamble for them,” the princess replied in a joking tone, before saying ”but if you’d rather not leave it to fate I can get you to the Harbor at least. Actual combat flying might be out of the question though” and before he could point out that surely assaulting the next would involve aerial combat the island in question lit up behind the princess, silhouetting her in holy light.

It also made them both flinch and shield their eyes (despite the princess looking his way rather than towards the island) rather ruining the dramatic effect of the timely delivery of information.

”I see”

”Good for you, I can’t right now” the princess replied, half joking, half complaining, as far as he could tell.

”Ah, princess of ‘twilight’ I see-I gather” he corrected himself rather than play into the pun/pain and instead winding back the gears of their conversation to ask ”So what was that about gambling?” to which his latest source merely responded ”Spirits” unhelpfully leaving him to deduct what she meant

”Queen Sectonia merely said for me to gather them” he said as he thought, before guessing that ”there is a way to gain power from them? Is that why you Seekers seem to overflow with strength?” not entirely sure how he felt about such a necromantic practice around the would be saviors of all worlds.

Seeming to pick up on his discomfort, the princess swore to him that ”Trust me, you’ll need it. It's not like they are actual souls, Galeem has a tight grip on all of those after all” only adding to the pile of mysteries, before explaining swiftly ”Press one to your head for passive skills, heart for powers, crush for equipment, or form a pact to bring them back for just a moment to aid you in battle as something called a striker. The first two come with some kind of downsides as well, but we have a tool that can undo the resulting ‘fusions’ back at base, so you won’t be stuck with them. Items are permanent, and for strikers, the max is two if you care about your lifespan, but we have another device to swap those out as well”

”That… is a lot to take in” he replied, but, then, well, he had always been a practical man, and if it was reversible, and did not cause additional harm, then the only recourse was to see if this was as useful and necessary as she insisted.

For that, fortunately, he had the resources with which to experiment, reaching a hand into a pocket and retrieving a quartet of fallen feathers, seeking, in a way, to take his failures and in some small way help himself makeup for them.

Shield for mind, bow for heart, sword for fist, and staff for word. Four fruitlessly lost lives for four pearls of wisdom.

”Still, I suppose I am willing to experiment”



”Well I can feel that that worked” Edward said calmly even as he found the sensation of having two extra limbs quite disconcerting, though not, he noted, in any way dysphoric. That was certainly an issue reported by the subjects of less skillful or more callous rulers of his reality (modifying entire peoples with magic in the name of enhancing their military capabilities was a common practice there) and one he was glad not to be experiencing right now.

He checked himself over, flexing his fittingly ashen wings and examining change in his clothing, and while he did so he also looked inward to a new well of power within him. Touching it, he found it rather familiar, identifying it as the feather-sheild’s status effect reflector skill. The very same one that had prevented the throne from stealing their minds during the chaos that had been his biggest failure. In this new world at any rate.

A very poignant thing to have gained. ‘Fate’ as the princess had described it, was either mocking him or saying this was a first step on the road to redemption. Then again perhaps that was applying too much agency to random chance.

He added finding out if there was a discernible pattern to what spirit usage granted to the list of things worth researching, which was a rapidly growing list, of that there was no doubt.

Still, even with this internal and external self reflection, he did still desire an actual reflection of himself, namely from a mirror. This was because while he could see part of his changed appearance, he could hardly see his entire new ensemble, let alone what it seemed to have done to his hair. For that appraisal had to rely on Minda’s assessment, which was: ”Not half bad. I’ve seen, and been, some right messes as a result of fusion so you’ve gotten off lightly. Maybe even well, the black and blond look is pretty striking” with just a little bit of a purr in her words on that last.

”Yes, well, while the complement is appreciated, a warning of the physical changes would have been appreciated even more” he replied, unsure of the intent of her tone, only to gain the rather flippant reply of ”It also changes your personality as well”

”Of course it does” he replied, suppressing a sigh and starting to see a pattern here with the Seekers not giving out information in a timely manner

The princess merely shrugged and pointed out that ”We have a war to win” before re-donning her helmet.

”That I suppose we do” he confirmed, strapping his new shield to his arm, and then raising an eyebrow at the way doing so seemed to affect his body and mind just a touch. Magical, clearly.

Before they could set out, however, there was a pounding of boots and flapping of wings behind them, as from the tower emerged a mixed assortment of angels. They were an eclectic group, drawn from recovered wounded of a dozen or more squads, which included those who Edward had been tricked into leading into a trap. These in particular halted in surprise at the sight of the changes he had undergone, but there was a general degree of curiosity as to who this unknown unique angel was.

”Palutana’s blessing for outstanding service” the princess smoothly lied before he could make his own excuse, and unfortunately this got some dark looks from the troops who had served under Edward himself. He was not, in their eyes, deserving. Still, he had words for that, swiftly adding that the false blessing’s were also made ”to ensure purity by her own hands instead of merely mortal ones” throwing Sectonia into the line of fire in the process.

Not that that lie was going to hold up for long, but it would do for now. It certainly stopped any sort of mutiny, and soon enough they were on their way, during which Edward learned something important about flying.

It was bloody hard work.

By the time they touched down on the wiped clean harbor, he was beat, and more or less forced to walk the span of it to reach the far side where the others were regrouping, while the angels themselves went on ahead. He really was doing a terrible job at inspiring confidence in the troops.

This, at the very least, gave him and Minda space to talk that they had not had been surrounded by the flight of angels, though with how out of breath he was, this mostly consisted of her needling him about his fatigue and sunken mood rather than being helpful/informative. At least she let him know that Palutana was one of the seekers and their lie about the source of his new wings would hold up. She also found some sympathy in her for his state and situation, though only once they were in sight of the angels once more, and it was not in a way that made him feel any better: ”If you were under the corruption control for, what weeks? What in the goddess’ name was it making you eat?”

His footsteps faltered, and then, after a moment of horror where memories of meals he now knew to be tainted by the corruption’s deception flashed through his mind, he replied ”I believe I never want to know” with forced calm.

”No wonder you're exhausted from just that flight then, and here I was thinking you were just a out of shape lead from the back kind of general” the princess replied, before opening a portal, catching the launched content, and then offering him a cereal bar, water bottle, and one of the hot cross buns the troops were eating (each one held in one of her four hands) ”here, eat something. The ‘troops’ already are after all”

His stomach protested due to his flashback, but he could entirely see the wisdom in this, and so soon enough had joined the troops in chowing down. Which did wonders for his mood. And his memory.

As the troops prepared to take off and assault the titanic magical construct (the closest reference he had for it was the Commonwealth's Ironclad landships) he instead pulled out another one of his tomes, the tome of enchantment and began to recite another ritual.

This tome one was one he had himself had a hand in forging, and though his mind then had been addled by Urrath at the time, it had not yet bloomed into the destructive fury in which he had written the tome of the reavers or that of the dreadnaught. As such, there was little fight to be had between reader and author when it came to intent or ideology, and so the words needed flowed freely and swiftly.

”What was once made can be unmade. What was forged, unforged. What was crafted, broken. With these enchanted armaments, let no armor stand in your way, let no wall impede your progress. Sunder it all and bring a swift end to this war, so that we may one day unmake all blades and forge them anew into plowshares”

As he finished the words, a golden glow pulsed out. Its magic joined the burning enchantment of the angels and seeker’s, adding an aura of sparks, like those that might burst from a weapon being forged or sliced through, that promised to bite into enemy armor, and leave it ripe for the piercing.



”So that’s how you did it. Very rousing” Midna commented from behind him, having approached to see what he was giving a speech to himself about, before asking ”got any more tricks like that in those books?”

”One, if I can re-research it. However other than the marking spell you might have seen, the only other I have re-acquainted myself with would be the construction of golems. That one requires time and space to set up however, which as you might imagine is difficult to find when landing on corrupted sky islands” he informed her, that sort of spell being much more suitable for preparing in advance and then marching into battle.

”About the same amount of time as that one?” she asked, and when he confirmed this, she offered ”Then I’ll find you space to do it. Better golems fall than angels, right?”

With that he was entirely in agreement.

---

Even with the energy boost from the food, the flight to the train was still an endurance test, though with guidance from Midna and her reduced squad he did at least learn the benefits of gliding, leading to him swooping towards the train in a downward dive alongside them, rather than stubbornly simply flapping his way towards it.

Still, he did slow them down, but that only meant that when they were closing in they spotted the perfect way to provide him an opening: Roxas’ setting up of his deadly obstacle course.

Midna swooped ahead of him and the troops, crashing down ahead of where Roxas was setting up his sweeper, adding her own lighting strikes to the mix with an electrified spear and a brief summoning of a bizarre hybrid golem dragon wolf creature that showered the train with a lightning storm of its own.

”Clever trick! Keep it up!” she called out as her troops swooped in to join her to keep covering Roxas’s back so he could continue his ploy for as long as he was able.

And to cover his own less impressive one.

The last Dreadnought touched down close behind Roxas with a polite ”Smartly done” before pulling out the tome of enchanting again, and beginning his chanting.

”Magic is a tool, and the golem, the greatest of those tools. See here, as copper and tin make bronze, so too do metal and magic melded together make marvels greater than either could hope to achieve alone. By meticulous design be forged, oh towering twin sentinel of the people! Stand tall so that they might never fall!”

This one had a touch of inspiration from a theocrat’s work infused with it, one who had taken the copper golem as a baseline when creating these constructs, so it had been little effort to work back to his own writings and ideals again.

Before him two great constructs were forged, metals spinning out of the astral sea, before being actively forged, the impressions of hammers and tongs upon them as they were made into the form of a towering sentinel. It was as if what was occurring was a far more careful, slow, and meticulous act of creating a golem by hand, which had been recorded, replicated and accelerated by the power of the tome.

By the time he was done speaking, the twin sentinels of which he spoke had been forged and where ready for battle. These Bronze Golems stood at twice the height of the man who had forged them, and their towering helbards even taller still, their points and blades aglow with his enchantments.

Without a word, they marched forwards to join the ranks of Midna’s forces. As they did, Edward experimentally activated his new Featherstaff striker, the fallen angel appearing beside him and overhealing the bronze golems and the ranks of angels they were carefully stepping their way through.

Just in time for them to meet the enemy.

Those great hulking contraptions of corruption, flesh and steel were near impossible for the angles to actually hold at bay. Instead they had simply relied on cutting them down fast enough before they were overrun, which was a very dicey proposition. The introduction of the golems changed that situation. The titans hefted their monster slaying helbards, thrusting them forwards to skewer the masses of blackness as they tried to charge through their ranks. Then they held them back with fearless metal hearts and durable frames while arrows, musical bolts from Midna's lyre, and feather swords darted past them to cut down the pinned foes.

Behind them, Edward nodded to himself as he stowed the tome, before pulling out his magelock pistol, and entered the fray as well. With shield in one hand helping him block and evade stray projectiles, his magical firearm barked like thunder as its red hot armor sundering slugs hammered into the most mechanical of their foes, spreading golden cracks across the infernal engines and setting the corruption ablaze.

---

The king of bugs assailed her once again, but he’d already tipped his hand. Now the Witch was ready for him, and moved not with desperation but keen-eyed focus. Two firebats burst into embers as she shot then out of the air; the third could not touch her now that she knew to anticipate its change of course. Grimm was still quicker than her, prone to puffing into clouds of smoke and reappearing in completely different places, but after the first couple of times that trick would no longer take her by surprise. She kept alert, relied on her ears and her surroundings to better tell where he’d moved to, and even began to predict and anticipate where he’d strike from next.

As her confidence grew, so too did the Witch’s aggression. She pelted her enemy with wand-strikes at every turn, chanced fireballs when she knew he’d be hard-pressed to dodge them. Her eyes blazed brighter than ever, as though she could practically see her victory lying ahead, the glorious end to this hard-fought duel—at least, until some clueless goon in a suit saw fit to throw himself into the fray. The Witch jumped back when she saw him, but it was not her he’d come for: his strange inky power went straight for the elusive circus master and sought to snare him before he could blink away.

Was it just dumb luck? Did she have some unknown admirer? Whatever the case, the Witch would never shy away from such a golden opportunity. Tongues of flame rose up around her, casting her narrow frame in silhouette, and a final fireball soared forth from her wand to strike her foe down for good. If the newcomer happened to get caught in the blast, well, that was his own fault now, wasn’t it?

Once regrouped and refueled, the Army of Light made the final fateful push in their battle to cleanse the sky-high holy land from the scourge of corruption once and for all. The final island in the corrupted chain awaited them, darkly ominous even in the light of day, an unflinching and unyielding bastion of unwellness. The land here was sick, a plague-ridden agglomeration of irreparably tainted soil, scabrous outcrops, and night-dark buboes swollen with bilious yellow ichor, eerily silent until the Infernal Train chugged into view. That crawled through pitch-black tunnels and clung to crumbling precipices, a titanic centipede of stone and steel, its legs screaming wheels, its carapace of pointed arches and flying buttresses. It belched out vile smog from its spiraled smokestacks as it ran its sordid route ad nauseam, a perpetual motion war machine. Its mere existence seemed to be a blight on the face of creation itself, permitted to endure for far too long. Today, as attested by the beat of snow-white wings and the chorus of courageous voices, this profane pestilence would come to an end.

As one might expect, though, the first step was a doozy. Even attacking the Infernal Train posed a daunting challenge. The execrable machine moved constantly, faster than most of Skyworld’s angels could fly, so Palutena’s forces would run out of stamina long before their enemy ran out of minions. If the angels threw themselves into the train, though, they would be at the mercy of the virtually limitless monstrosities on board, not to mention intolerably impure surroundings that all but guaranteed corruption. Finally, a fight on the train’s exterior came with a strict time limit, as none of the island’s tunnels offered the necessary amount of clearance. Fortunately, the angels’ commanders had come up with an alternative. As Pit led his powerful new allies onto the train, his elite strike force sure to stir the hornets’ nest, Uriel spread her troops out along the tracks, where they’d hover beyond the wretches’ reach. When the train passed by, they’d swoop in with blade and arrow, not just to strike the foul things down but to goad them away from the train en masse. With Nathaniel and Fodoquia spearheading this operation to ensure its success, the multitudinous horrors would be diverted from Uriel and the Seekers, allowing them to fight through a much more manageable horde and get straight to the heart of the matter.

After all, everything learned so far by Celia’s scouts indicated that in all its manifestations, each instance of corruption stemmed from a singular source. Once the strike team cut off the head, the body would die.

When the Seekers approached with Ortho in the lead, the train itself seemed to register the threat. A repugnant slurry of congealed corruption erupted from its windows as the angelic beast approached, each volley of volatile ejecta akin to a miniature army’s worth of crossbow bolts. Ortho was nothing if not agile though, and when he dropped off Edelgard and Roxas, the Seekers’ assault began. With the help of Uriel’s near-lightspeed swordplay, amplified by her Dawnbreaker blade and explosive holy light spikes, the boarding party chewed through the Infernal Train’s welcoming committee. After a liberal application of might and magic, the team breached the contraption’s gothic exterior, and forged into the belly of the beast.

Indeed, stepping into the corruption’s stronghold felt like being eaten by some aberrant monstrosity. While the outside at least resembled conventional architecture, the inside was crusted in tarry black corruption, old, hard, and littered with yellow crystalline deposits. It was hot, humid, and loud; many of the noises that reached the intruders sounded disturbingly biological. A foil smell filled their noses and lungs, and they instinctively knew that they’d need to work fast. It wasn’t dark, though, thanks to the countless slitted yellow eyes embedded in the walls. Whether feeding what they saw to some sort of central intelligence or not, they stared and stared and stared, the unwholesome glare of their sclera lighting the way.

Even with the Army of Light’s efforts to draw the bulk of the corrupted out of the train, the Seekers encountered staunch resistance. Again and again they found themselves assailed by malignant masses of limbs, mouths, and machinery, many with cannons as well as claws. With no two monsters alike, unpredictability proved to be their greatest weapon, but for the most part these wretches favored quantity over quality. Uriel wasted no words on them, keeping her lips pursed in perennial disgust as her brilliant blade danced in the dark. Together the Seekers cleared room after room, and with only so much real estate between their entry point and the train’s locomotive, it wasn’t long before they reached their final destination.

The cathedral that formed the front of the train was the grandest by far, its interior more spacious than the rest. Much like in the Ivory Citadel, this sanctum contained a figurehead of corruption in the form of an individual rather than some bloated, pulsating organ, but the being that stood before the Seekers was no Legion, long since overtaken and reduced to a hollow vessel. Instead they found themselves confronted by a towering warrior, about twelve feet tall. The corruption that formed his skin was masterfully woven, stretched over bulging muscles and odd blue crystal spikes, especially around his deformed left arm. Corrupted tendrils extended from his back, but he wore runic graves of obvious quality, along with a barbaric helmet. In his right hand he clutched an axe of terrifying size and appearance, its blade a skull-faced slab and its shaft lined with eyes. And though he seemed less far gone than the monsters that dwelled in this place, the corruption practically wept from him. He breathed its odious vapors from his toothy maw, and it was the heart that beat in his chest, surfaced in the form of blindly gazing eyes. This was the corruption’s source.

“The Avatar of Chaos,” Uriel hissed, tightening her grip on her sword. “Absalom.”

“No…” the warrior growled, hefting his axe Absolution onto his shoulder. “I am Corruption. And soon…you will be, too.” Absalom roared and swung his axe, hurling corrupt land mines far and wide.



Among the shadows cast by the sinister glow of scarlet torches, the fervid foxtrot between Grimm and the Witch continued. They leaped and twirled, every move more intense than the last as the dancers strove to take one another’s breath away. It didn’t matter how many concerned onlookers their increasingly unsubtle dance enthralled, these two only had eyes -and flames- for one another. Maddened by the light of Galeem that smoldered in the coals of their eyes, this wildfire would burn until only ash remained.

Yet even as the flow of battle grew fiercer, just like a river winding toward a waterfall, it also steered toward an inescapable conclusion. While Grimm put his best foot forward, his injured leg held him back, and with an inexplicably limited repertoire of moves at his disposal he could not give his performance the variety it needed to keep his counterpart on her toes. Each splash of blood torn from his body by the Witch’s magic was one he wouldn’t get back, while her veil of enchantments gave her own vitality a buffer that proved vitally important. Second by second, it became increasingly clear to the spectators that the Troupe Master was falling behind, unable to span the widening gulf between his condition and the Witch’s. Even then, though, the Grimmkin did not interfere. If anything, their unintelligible chatter grew more frenzied, each masked specter bobbing up and down in excitement. Other members of the Grimm Troupe like Brumm, Divine, and the Shadows lacked their macabre glee, but they still watched with intense interest. Many of these bugs had seen this song and dance before, after all. They knew what the Witch didn’t–that the defeat of the Troupe Master wasn’t an end, but a beginning.

Dozens of eager eyes watched, dying to know what would happen next, as Grimm’s health neared the one-third mark. This time, once he burst into a swarm, the Witch knew to descend on those bugs like a starving bat. It was the point of no return, and having smelled her opponent’s blood, she knew it. While the others stood back and watched, however, one observer took action. In an act of charity, and to repay the Troupe Master for his earlier assistance, Roland took the dance floor and inserted himself into the melee.

Of course, when an uninvited guest appeared in the midst of his two-person tango to impede him, Grimm couldn’t fathom that the man meant to help him. Instead he lashed out, angered by this impudent interruption in his time-honored ritual. Whether this man meant to interfere on the Witch’s behalf or merely acted out of wanton irreverence, Grimm would not spare him; once could not throw oneself into the flames and expect to escape unburnt. Instead of Roland’s throat, however, Grimm’s claws met his staff-sized paintbrush. The Fixer deftly parried him, then in that moment of vulnerability, locked him down in the grip of shadowy tendrils. Grimm struggled drunkenly, his slender frame possessed of surprising strength, but before he could break loose Roland endowed him with more freedom that he could ever have possibly imagined.

In an instant the Troupe Master’s violent energy left him, and as Roland’s tentacles receded Grimm slumped to his knees, his cape spread out around him like the webbing of a vampire squid. His head hung forward, his scarlet eyes unfocused, but devoid of Galeem’s delirious luster. Thanks to the Friend Heart his head was clear, and his injuries were gone. In an instant, all the incremental progress made by the Witch had been erased. She still wanted him dead, of course, but Roland stood by to prevent further damage while Primrose stepped up to attend to the Witch herself. In the span of just a few short moments, the fiery dance of death had been cut short. All around the Grimmkin gibbered and chittered in a mixture of confusion and disappointment, some floating over to check on Grimm while most simply faded away into the dark of night. Regardless of how it happened, it seemed that the show was over.

As the apparitions drifted away and the scarlet flames subsided, the abandoned market lost its fearsome, fiendish aspect. The dark shadows that cavorted so evilly shrank back to how they should be, while the hissing, swollen flames of the candles and torches surrendered their uncanny synchronicity. High overhead the wind picked up, and the stars twinkled once more. Cowed crickets and cicadas in the vicinity mustered their courage to fill the dead air with nightsong, and Brumm soon joined them with his organic xylophone to try and restore the festival atmosphere. Meridi-at-han citizens began to drift back toward the scene, and after another moment Grimm rose to his feet, his head raised. If Roland still felt apprehensive about Grimm going ape once freed of Galeem’s grasp, the silent bow directed his way would assuage his worries. That said, Grimm wasn’t quite finished with the Witch yet. Even if their dance hadn’t reached its thrilling conclusion, their ritualistic duel -performed in ignorance or otherwise- had borne fruit. With deliberate slowness, Grimm extended a hand from beneath his cloak and snapped his fingers. About a foot away, scarlet flames began to gather, as if filtering through into the material plane from some infernal netherworld. When they coalesced, the Troupe Master was no longer alone.



An insect floated next to him on six black ribbon wings, with a shell as black and a mask as white as Grimm’s own. For a moment the Troupe Master just stared at it, but he soon turned toward the Witch and offered her another bow. ”Bravo, my friend. Did you hear how the crowd adored you? They’ve not seen such a show in a long time.” His razor-sharp whisper featured a faint air of smugness, as if the opponent he fought so fiercely had done him an important service. ”Look here. How our child has grown, nourished and strengthened by the heat of our passionate dance.” His gaze lingered on the Witch, but after another second or two he held out his cape, and the Grimmchild darted beneath it. ”Our dance remains incomplete. It may be some time before the Ritual is finished. Later, perhaps, the stars will be right for another dance. Our scarlet eyes will watch you keenly…friend.”

With that, the conflict seemed to be defused. Still tense even after the fighting stopped, Goldlewis finally let out a sigh of relief. Given the potential volatility of this situation, he’d been happy to leave breaking up this battle in Roland and Primrose’s capable hands. If he’d been forced to step in, he doubted that things would’ve been wrapped up so neatly. His coffin was many things, but a precision instrument it was not, and for all the veteran’s strength, Grimm seemed liable to slip through his grasp like smoke between his fingers. “Whoo-whee.” He shook his head. “I dunno what in sam hill had y’all scrappin’ so bad, but I ain’t sorry to see it over with. As if burnin’ that doggone tent down wasn’t bad enough, y’all were fixin’ to burn the whole dadgum market to the ground in the crossfire. Downright irresponsible, ‘specially when the city’s dealin’ with a damn monster attack, good Lord. I reckon you’ve done enough playin’ with fire for one evenin’.”

When Grimm just stared at him wordlessly, Goldlewis looked away and rubbed the back of his head. “Uh, anyhow, we probably oughta give y’all the rundown on the way things are, seein’ as you ain’t gleamin’ any more. Why don’t we-”

Without warning a blue sigil flared to life next to the veteran’s head, and a deadpan, proper-sounding female voice rang out through the area. “Attention Mustang, this is Halo, please copy, over.”

“Gah!” The sudden voice startled Goldlewis, who flinched away from the noise like someone might a gunshot. It took Grimm by surprise too, all the more cause for concern because the Troupe Master didn’t know what he was looking at. He blinked, confused, then looked around as if hoping for an explanation. Once Goldlewis rolled his eyes, shaking his head, Grimm seemed to understand that this outburst wasn’t anything to be worried about, and after heaving a deep sigh the veteran put two fingers to the glyph to reply. “Yeah, I copy, Halo. You called at one hell of a time, lemme tell ya. We just wrapped up a surprise attack from three giant monsters. Ended up freein’ a couple…” Looking at Grimm, ‘civvy’ didn’t feel like the right word. “A couple locals as well. Over.”

The woman on the other end of this supernatural phone line seemed unfazed by the news. “Everyone’s in good condition, I trust. Over.”

“Uh huh.” Goldlewis crossed his arms, staring off into the starry heavens. “So how’re things lookin’ up there? Been meanin’ to get in touch. We’ve done just about all we can down here, so I’m thinkin’ it’s about time we scheduled some kinda pickup. Uh, over.”

“Agreed. The Avenger is en route to Meridi-at-han as we speak. Please proceed outside city limits and notify me once you’re clear. I’ll join you there.” The operator paused. “Should I bring any additional Fulton devices? Over”

Goldlewis had already started to motion for Primrose, Roland, and Zenkichi to follow him in the direction of the city’s main gate, as if they hadn’t heard his contact’s instructions for themselves. When questioned, though, the veteran paused to narrow his eyes in the direction of Grimm and the Witch. “I’ll let you know when we reach exfil. Might have some explainin’ to do on the way.”

For a moment there was radio silence. Then the lady on the other end spoke tentatively. “Over?”

“Huh?” Goldlewis furrowed his brow.

“You didn’t say ‘over’,” the operator informed him, her tone matter-of-fact.

Goldlewis grunted in a guess we’re doing this again kind of way, then set off at a brisk trot. “Hey, you didn’t either.”

“I did,” the voice insisted. “All my communications ended with ‘over’. Including that one.” She paused. “Over.”

“This conversation is over.” With a wave of his hand Goldlewis dismissed the magic sigil, then rolled his eyes again. “That woman, I swear,” he joked affectionately.

As the team got underway, carefully navigating through the night-shrouded plateau city as it licked its wounds from the giants’ rampage, Goldlewis became aware of a spindly figure tailing him. The scarlet light of Grimm’s eyes as he drifted from shadow to shadow indicated that the Troupe Master had accepted his invitation. Goldlewis slowed his pace, allowing the other Seekers to take the lead in order to fall in alongside the potential initiate. He still didn’t know quite what to make of Grimm, who seemed dangerous and eccentric even by Seeker standards, but if the big bug wanted to know more about the campaign against Galeem, Goldlewis wasn’t going to disappoint him. And if he signed up, he wouldn’t even be the first oversized insect on the roster, anyway. “Howdy there, partner. We ain’t been formally introduced, have we? My name’s Goldlewis Dickinson, and this here team’s just a small part of the Seekers of Light–the light bein’ Galeem, and when we get done seekin’ ‘im, there ain’t gonna be anythin’ left.”

Grimm digested the man’s summary impassively, then whispered his reply. ”Go on.”

---

Juri didn’t expect it. She would give Fortune that much credit. As her calf was snatched and she fell onto her chest, rolling to the left narrowly avoiding a knife that scraped against the floor. ”Hey!” She yelled. Juri snapped to look at Fortune with something akin to moral outrage. It was a weird look on her.

She turned her attention to the henchmen, weaving in and out, using them as human shields against each other. She kicked a shotgun out of ones hands, snapping it half with the force of the blow, and smashed him into the pistol wielder with a spin kick. Three rushed her with claws and she bent and twisted her body away and backwards from the strikes. That was when she slipped on some of Fortune’s blood and took a claw across the face. ”Ugh!” She span away with a flash of yellow sparks, getting slashed a few more times before she rolled away.

”You’re seriously pissin’ me off, Fortune!” Juri growled. All Juri asked was that she stay out of her way. She’d underestimated Fortune, assumed her to be the goodie two-shoes type. But now she was trying to get Juri killed, cackling all the while. Or maybe she just didn’t understand the gravity of the situation, living in some carefree bubble where life and death didn’t exist. Juri would have to remind her that it did, one way or the other.

That would have to come later though. Juri struggled through the fight, having to play it far safer than she normally would have let Fortune swing back again. She baited the cat girl into lunging too early by pretending to be distracted and launched her away with a pinwheel kick. A small amount of damage, but an anti-air with big push back. ”Back off!” She warned. Then Juri jumped into the air and flew away.

Wait, what?

Juri flailed her arms around as she floated helplessly through the air into the mafia ball. ”What?!” She yelled, infuriated. Juri wasn’t some two-bit henchperson to be used in a special move! Fortune cackled, but she left, having done enough damage to satisfy herself, apparently. Juri wrenched an arm and a shoulder free and waited until she was rotated towards the top, behind Mabuchi. She burst forth and aimed to stab her fingers like a knife into his back like she was trying to pry apart his vertebrate. She slammed her elbow into the same spot and then roundhouse kicked him off the ball. Then she turned an accusatory finger towards the boss of the chef mafia.

”Don’t ever use me in a special attack ever again!” She said. All she wanted was her money. A part of her wanted to kill the boss, too, for this humiliation, but that would be more trouble than it was worth. When she did kill him, what would she do? Run mafia town? No thanks. She’d learned her lesson after taking over SIN after Seth. Boss knew where the money was, he couldn’t give it to her if he was dead.

Juri leapt off the ball towards Mabuchi. With Fortune gone she could finish this. Trying to bait out an anti-air attack due to the seemingly predictable nature of her jump arc, Juri front flipped midair, halting her descent for a moment before streaking down with a divekick strong enough to lift Mabuchi from the floor on impact. Juri would turn and do several elegant, sweeping spin kicks to knock him up and away.

Juri would be fighting hit and run style on Mabuchi. She was pretty sure she was faster than him, so all she had to do was clear out when the mafia ball came rolling through. Even better, she would try to dodge his attacks and knock him into its path. Caught up in all this, she hadn’t noticed Venom at all.

Before he had time to head over to the golden-gilded kiosk, what sounded like a fighter jet had made its way toward the smashed entrance, nearly making the Mercenary dive for cover when the incoming visage revealed itself to be a strange blue robot. He saw fleeting glimpses of it skittering among the skies throughout the Town, but he didn't think it would come up here. It was feminine; lithe in construction as emerald-lit eyes scrutinized his figure. Even with the lack of a mouth, its vocalizations sounded curious; dutiful in innocence, even. Yet not before it remarked that he looked just like someone she once saw. That piqued his interest, though the term 'action hero' may have been overselling whatever reputation preceded him. He couldn't even manage to speak as the bot asked for his autograph post battle, then darted into the ongoing firefight. Might as well then. He knew he wouldn't get another shot at this.

The Mercenary resumed his previous combat stance; running back into the theater as he grimaced in concentration. The suited man was his target, and it looked like he was already being walloped the hell out of by the punk girl- with no trace of the catwoman to be seen. He briefly caught the robot flying overhead; inadvertently (or deliberately?) healing the Mafia Ball and its scattered pieces back to full strength. The Mafia Boss was sha-quatey, but had enough honor to not attack his associates. The Mercenary holstered his pistol, moving up and onto the central stage. Brandishing his knife, he waited for an opening from the girl's attack. Ensuring to stay as clear as he could of the Mafia Ball, the next time the suited man was sent flying, he was going to send a heavy punch aimed right at the man's head before he hit the ground again.

No matter how Juri sliced it, one versus eleven made for pretty bad odds. Under normal circumstances the martial artist would be more than capable of turning the tide against mooks of this caliber, then challenging Mabuchi herself, but Nadia’s sabotage really threw a wrench in the works. Thanks to the opportunistic interference of the feral Juri found herself taking extra hits while missing out on other opportunities, and it took no time at all for her frustration to reach its boiling point. Nadia couldn’t lie; seeing that she’d actually gotten under her rival’s skin gave her a sense of karmic satisfaction.

But not for long.

There was no denying that Juri deserved a little comeuppance. For the entire time they butted heads in Carnival Town, Nadia had been aware of the hooligan’s exploits. She beat people up, shook them down, and went out of her way to ruin everyone’s day, explicitly preferring to go after the weak and helpless. That probably went double after Nadia flew the coop, leaving her rival free to run amok though Carnival Town. And who could say what she’d been up to over the last week on the Mafia’s payroll? She wouldn’t put murder past Juri. But despite all that, once Nadia’s initial elation wore off, she wound up feeling rather…bad.

Maybe it was the look on Juri’s face, or the uncommonly genuine rancor behind her words, or the fact that these gangsters were really hurting her, but her rival’s misery quickly stopped bringing her joy. Nadia’s smiles and laughter weren’t always genuine to begin with, but now her mirth felt especially forced, and not even for a good reason. When the feral got sloppy and received a wheeling kick to the sternum, she took Juri’s advice and made herself scarce.

The Mafia Ball that followed was pretty funny, to be fair, but even once the super-sized circus act got underway Nadia kept her distance. Once the heat of the moment died out, she felt even worse about her disingenuous attempts to give Juri a taste of her own medicine. Sure, this syndicate showdown would probably have lasting repercussions for Mafia Town, but Nadia had no horse in this race. No matter which mobster sat in that chair, the townsfolk needed people like her to keep them safe–right now more than ever. She knew that she should’ve stayed down on the streets, safeguarding the citizens from those wrestlers. Or gone with Junior and Geralt to cut off the source. Anything but screw around up here.

I’m really no better than she is, Nadia thought.

Juri’s shouting drew her attention, and Nadia glanced at the Mafia Ball in time to see Mabuchi go flying from atop it. She proceeded to shout at the Mafia Boss, who gave her an indignant look of severe reproach, seemingly for daring to question him. “There are only two types of Mafia in the Mafia: goons, and the Boss!” He shouted down after her once she jumped down. “If you take the Boss’s money, you’re a goon, no better than any other! So don’t act like it!”

At that point Blazermate flew in from nowhere. Her arrival here wasn’t that much of a surprise given her reputation as a drama-seeking missile, but it did signal to Nadia that things were probably about to get out of hand. When the medabot discharged her built-in Kritzkrieg into the big boss’s Mafia Ball, turning the circus act into a wrecking ball of wanton destruction, Nadia took that as a sign to leave. As she slunk out, she passed by that darkly-clothed rogue on the way in. Had he been waiting in the wings the whole time? She didn’t know what he wanted here, but that didn’t concern her, either. After skirting around him, the cat burglar sprinted through the casino and out into the night.

By the time the newcomer got close enough to scope out the scene, the situation had really devolved into pandemonium. Half of Mabuchi’s men had already been flattened by the amped-up Mafia Ball, and for those still on their feet, avoiding it had become a full-time activity. That went for Mabuchi himself, as well. Though his guandao could deal grievous injuries, and his counter stance slowed down the fight, Juri was getting the better of him as he struggled to stay ahead of the Mafia Ball. Without his healer, the damage just kept piling up, and eventually Juri managed to hurl him straight into a knockout blow from the newcomer. Mabuchi’s weapon clattered to the floor as the man was down for the count.

“Good!” the boss yelled. The Mafia Ball promptly fell apart, its constituents tumbling everywhere. Chrom and Rosanna extracted themselves from the heap, then furiously began to fix their hair and clothes. A number of their comrades remained piled beneath the boss, forming an impromptu throne. “That’s what happens when you mess with the Mafia!” he barked at the groaning gangster. He pushed his cleavers together into their rolling pin storage mode. “Men. Take him away.”

After dismissing Mabuchi with a wave of his hand, he frowned at the newcomer, Juri. “As for you…” Disregarding the usual method of transfer, he reached into his pocket to pull out a big fistful of pons, then tossed them the Spider’s way. They tumbled across the floor, spread out fairly wide. It would take a minute or two of scrounging to recover them all while the whole Mafia watched. “Take it. You’ve earned it.”

Once the Seekers departed for the cargo ship, Bancho Sushi lay in quiet disarray, with only Bancho himself around to witness the disaster. It would take thousands of pons, if not tens of thousands, to undo the damage done to all his wooden furniture, his pantry, the decor, and so forth. Even the fish tank lay in glassy ruins, the last of today’s catch flopping around in the wreckage until Bancho tossed the critters overboard. For someone who prided himself on order, tidiness, and professionalism, this was a true debacle. But the stolid man never complained. After a few minutes, he found his broom amidst the chaos, and began to sweep. Unfortunately, the sushi chef and his establishment weren’t out of the woods just yet.

A loud, sudden slam outside drew Bancho’s attention. When he sidled over to the front of his restaurant for a discreet check, he saw the aftermath of a wrestler-on-wrestler bout. A strong, one-eyed lady wrestler with orange-yellow hair like a microfiber duster, wearing black snakeskin, had just powerbombed a now-dissolving competitor off a building. No sooner had the victor taunted than she set off looking for her next opponent, but by now the pickings seemed slim. As far as Bancho could tell, the Battle Royal Rumble had more or less run its course. At the same time, that meant that only the strongest few remained, and the sushi chef just so happened to have the misfortune of catching the wrestler’s eye.

“There you are! Get yourself ready, ‘cause you’re up against the one. The only. Sunrise Nishisenba!” The lady jogged over with a cocky grin. Bancho retreated, climbing over the wreckage of his tables and bar, but his pursuer elected to go straight through. “Lariat!” Fists outstretched, Nishisenba began to spin, gathering golden energy. “Tequilaaaaaa!” With his eyes on his attacker, Bancho wasn’t paying attention to where he was going, and stumbled over a barstool. Just as the wrestler went to unleash her power, however, an electric blur appeared in front of her.

“SUNS- WAGH!” Her special move struck Nadia’s Blue Monday Counter, resulting in a knee to Nishisenba’s gut that launched her into the air. “HOOGH!” Nadia blasted out blood to propel herself forward in a diving grab that tackled the wrestler through the window and into the dock outside.

With the breath driven from her lungs, Nishisenba could only lay there as Nadia rolled to her feet, then swung her arm in an accelerating circle. “Lemme pass you a JOINT!” She fell on her foe with an elbow drop that left Nishisenba stunned, then hopped to her feet once again. “Whew! Sorry lady, but the restaurant’s closed! If you’re hungry, though, you can eat this!” Nadia jumped and landed on the wrestler with her mantreads, smashing her through the dock and into the briny shallows.

After barely managing to grab onto the side of the new hole and clamber up, the catgirl rolled over and let out a sigh of relief. When she opened her eyes, Bancho was standing over her. “You didn’t have to do all that. You okay?”

“Yeah!” Nadia grinned. “I should be askin’ you. When you brought me on tonight, you Ban-chose wisely!”

The sushi chef smiled, then held out his hand. “Mm-hm.” He tried to help pull Nadia to her feet, only to realize that she was almost three times as heavy as she looked. After letting him struggle for a moment Nadia picked herself up with a laugh, then followed her friend inside to help him clean up.

How and why those giants had shown up to attack the city was indeed a strange mystery, but Primrose did not concern herself with it for the time being. Her attention was on the last instance of violence, the battle between traveling troupe master and local sorceress that continued on even while the monsters dissolved into ashes. As she'd told Goldlewis, she thought that the Seekers should stop the two of them before their battle accidentally spread further, and she wasn't the only one who thought so. While the small group waited among the gathering crowd looking for an opening, Roland was the first to jump in. He went right for Grimm, so Primrose's gaze flickered to the troupe master's opponent. It wasn't long before she found her opening, too.

When she struck, she did so with her friend H'aanit's hunting advice in the back of her mind. Certainly the witch seemed more dangerous than any savvy beast, but the same teachings applied - one's guard was lowered then they thought they had an advantage. Following Roland's intervention, Primrose paid close attention to the necromancer, using her own knowledge of magic to judge when the best time to jump in herself was. She chose the moment the witch was in the midst of casting her latest fireball, darting forward as she pulled a glowing pink heart shape from her chest. The dancer pressed it into the witch's back, letting it do its thing while she stepped away. With no way of telling how the witch would react to suddenly having the veil pulled from her mind, Primrose wanted some space between them in case she lashed out.

The woman's opponent did not seem inclined to finish the battle, at least. Perhaps the conflict really had been some kind of friendly fire spiraling out of control thanks the Galeem. In the end it didn't really matter how it started, only that it ended, and the nightlife of Meridi-at-Han could quiet down.

The unrelated citizens dispersed, equal parts entertained by the duel and disappointed that it had been interrupted. Some hung around still, like Kayna who was dismounting her Velocidrome and glancing curiously at the group. Primrose just folded her arms over her chest, brow raised at the little mini-Grimm that had appeared. Now that she got a closer look, Grimm and his entourage looked very similar to the native bugs in the Under. Were they from there? She didn't ask, especially as Goldlewis began admonishing both Grimm and the witch.

By the time Sandalphon called in (Primrose still wasn't exactly sure why she preferred to use codenames when speaking through her sigil), Primrose had walked over to make sure the spirit of Ralph was collected. Its body parts had been ravaged as quickly as possible after she and Goldlewis had made sure it died there and didn't escape (speaking of, she had found the old man just as capable now as in the brief stint in the desert), but the gleaming folks ignored the spirit. They must have thought nothing tangible could be made from it, but if only they knew they could simply crush it.

She returned to the group with shimmering spirit in hand, stowing it away as she caught Goldlewis motioning for them to follow him. She smiled lightly at the tail end of his conversation with the angel of information and moved to head toward the city gate with the others, casting a last glance at the people they were leaving behind. Grimm, the witch... they had to be pretty confused at the moment, but the dancer didn't offer any information to them freely. Primrose also saw Kayna jogging to catch up to them a little, waving her new friend down.

"Whew, what a crazy night!" the monster rider said. "Are you all leaving?"

"That's right. We'll be back eventually -" She suspected that they would, when they eventually had to return to tackle the City that Never Was. "- but until then, this is goodbye."

Kayna didn't seem put out by the sudden departure. She smiled, coming to a stop and putting her hands on her hips. Avmar had followed her, and he squawked at the Seekers at the same time that his rider bid them farewell. "If you guys find yourselves in the Tyrannian Plateau needing a hand, you know who to look out for! See you then!"

Primrose gave her a wave. Unlike the two they'd just set free, Kayna was still gleaming. It might have been nice to set her free too, but the more people they broke out of Galeem's influence the more evidence of their presence here there would be. Not to mention that in the wake of everything she'd learned from Asgore, Sandalphon, and everyone else about how things worked in this world, well... unless it was to save people or recruit them, sometimes it might be better to leave them be.

'CRACK!'

The suited mobster's skull collided mid-fall into the Mercenary's bionic fist; the resistance of bone against metal being felt up to his forearm and into his shoulder as the man sprawled out across the theater stage; weapon clattering harmlessly to the floor. The Mercenary wasted no time in stepping forward to secure the Kwan dao and heft the bladed weapon in his bionic hand; knowing from the weight of such a weapon alone, any use would be devastating at the cost of slowing him down. Perhaps he'd find use for it at a weapons exchange vendor. As for the mobster, the man was out cold and being dragged by a couple underlings presumably to a cell. Turning to the Mafia Boss, he was just in time to see the head honcho scatter a heaping handful of pons haphazardly around the punk girl's radius; clearly miffed enough about something to lack the dignity to respectfully pay her. If it was anything telling of how the catwoman acted by purposefully going after her at the start of the fight, that probably had something to do with it. The Mafia Boss was a stickler for results, and the Mercenary stifled his irritation at the disrespect.

A few pons had rolled their way over to the Mercenary; clattering against his boots as some rolled into their momentum and circled the floor before laying flat. He bent down to pick up the ones that came near him, being a sizable fistful, before walking over to the punk woman and holding his hand out for her to accept the currency, blading his body slightly with his other hand still holding the polearm as to not accidentally stick anyone around him. "Pretty good fighting style; rare to find that out here." The Mercenary complemented, his voice gravelly and rough with a notably slight lisp. Whatever she decided to do next, he was at least glad to have helped in case that man were to have recovered and prolonged the fight. After that, though, it was time for some answers. He looked back and over to Mabuchi still being carried out of the Casino. If nothing more pressing had come to his attention, he was going to tail the goons hauling his query to a cell.

---

With her eyes still fixed on her prey, the Witch failed to notice the shadow slipping up behind her until just a moment too late. A glimpse of movement, the abrupt and shocking sensation of fingers tapping against her back—instinctively the sorceress spun on her heel, ready to cast her fiery wrath upon this new assailant, to burn anyone who dared to try and cross her.

This shouldn’t have been possible. Her energy shield should have stopped any attack before it could reach her. Except this hadn’t been an attack, and already she could feel its strange nature working through the whole of her physical form. Every itch was wiped away, every pulled muscle eased, and when the healing tide finally reached the labyrinthine channels of her twisted mind she found herself instantaneously and wholly overwhelmed by it. The fierce light in her eyes winked out, and she dropped to her knees, clutching with both hands at her fragile, throbbing skull.

Could Primrose have known what she’d done? Unlikely: most beings hardly needed more than a few tweaks to fit in with Galeem’s new world, a veil laid over their awareness to filter out any hint of incongruity. Wild though she was, the Witch should have been no different, but for one wrinkle—her memories held knowledge that could threaten even a god, secrets dire enough to bring entire timelines to ruin. Merely altering her perceptions wouldn't have been enough: almost the entirely of her recollections had been shattered in the remaking of the world.

It took only a single breath for it to be undone, for all the countless horrors she'd witnessed to come flooding back into her awareness.The Decay. The Tangle. The Cleansing Fire. Severed fragments of memory abruptly snapped back together into a bloodcurdling, paradoxical whole, and in a heartbeat she knew with crystalline clarity what she was, what she always had been.

Murderer. Champion. Devourer of gods.

Her trembling hands dropped to her sides, and a low chuckle wormed its way out through the draping curtains of her hair. This lightbringer, this all-powerful fool, it thought itself untouchable? It should never have left her alive. She was the girl who’d slaughtered her way across a cursed continent and laid low the ghosts of empires past. She was the witch who’d killed an entire pantheon’s worth of so-called deities just to settle a grudge. She was the traveler who’d ventured deep into the Atlas of Worlds, and found its countless realms yet unequal to the scope of her ambition.

Now, unleashed once more, she'd be the one to murder this latest jumped-up demiurge and bring its whole wretched creation to an end.

…Of course, grand declarations aside, the Witch was far from the unstoppable force she’d been feared as once upon a time. When she shakily rose to her feet again, she did so not as a conqueror of dimensions, but as a sickly-pale and waiflike young woman with only a few scant slivers of power and a handful of enchanted gemstones to her name. She looked back towards Grimm and blinked in surprise, first at the fresh baby bug that had somehow popped into existence at his side and second at the impossibility that he should call her a friend. Hardly anybody claimed such closeness to her, let alone a freshly burned foe. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended by it.

“It’s not the ugliest child I’ve ever seen. Really though, all that trouble just for one little grub?” She squinted at the hovering child, mildly curious as to its nature but too exhausted to bother investigating further. Her smile had vanished, leaving her face a mask of imperious detachment—but a faint wickedness still gleamed in the depths of her stare. “…And to think that it had to end just before the best part. Next time you’d better not leave me feeling so unsatisfied.”

Speaking of ‘stopped,’ her head twitched upward to sneer at the oversized spoilsport who thought he could chide her. “I’ll take a good bonfire over a lousy old market any day,” she snapped back at him, before his next words stopped her dead in her tracks.

Gleaming. Of course. It hadn’t been mere coincidence that her memories had returned at that moment—this group, all the members of the crowd who’d seemed a bit out of place, they’d known the truth from the beginning. Her eyes roved over the rest of them, taking each in a new light: the plain-looking fellow who’d ruined her fun by going after Grimm, an older man who’d yet to do anything of importance whatsoever, and lastly some tall strumpet in a fancy dress, who must have been the one to free the Witch just now. I suppose I ought to feel grateful… But I don’t, really. In fact, she didn’t like any of them very much at all.

Still too interesting not to stalk, though. Even in the good old days, the Witch hadn’t risen to power without some help from a few naïve saps who’d believed her the lesser of many evils. Not too long after Grimm came into sight, the Witch caught up with the ragtag crew as well, now accompanied by a pair of freshly raised zombie servants. That big monster rampage had left plenty of dead bodies lying around, and it seemed a shame to let good material go to waste.

With a fresh spring in her step, she slipped in right by Goldlewis’ side, perhaps a little too close for comfort. “Nothing left, you say? Oh yes, do tell me more.” Beside that giant of a man she looked smaller than ever, almost a child in comparison, but the look of eerie fascination in her eyes could have made even a titan shudder. Just whom—or what—had the Seekers now invited into their midst?

Thankfully, the other Seekers stepped in to stop Grimm and the Witch from killing each other before it was too late, with Goldlewis and Zenkichi standing back and watching. He might’ve felt bad if his fellow Former Turk and his carnival game climbing partner hadn’t gotten everything well taken care of. As it was, Zenkichi didn’t really feel any guilt over his inaction, this time.

The Witch, at first glance, didn’t seem terribly threatening, but that fight alone showed that first impressions could be far from reality with how much firepower she was casually slinging. Grimm, on the other hand, had an otherworldly menace about him that belied his power, and the small Grimmchild he summoned once the battle had ended gave Zenkichi a shiver down his spine. Something seemed wrong about the little thing, but far be it from Zenkichi to try and dig deeper into that.

With immaculate timing, pun fully intended, Sandalphon gave Goldlewis a call via the glyph system, and Zenkichi’s heart skipped a beat when he realized what the former Secretary was doing, a tiny smile worming its way onto Zenkichi’s face before he shook it off his head. Now was serious time, dammit! It sounded like the veteran was getting a bit of a hard time from their angelic eye in the sky. Chuckling to himself a little, Zenkichi followed along after Goldlewis, passing him to give the big guy the opportunity to handle the introductions to both Grimm and the Witch. If they wanted to come along, then by all means they could.

As the Seekers and their potential new recruits gathered up outside Meridi-At-Han, Zenkichi’s eyes wandered upward. They wouldn’t see the Avenger unless it wanted to be seen, but instinct had his eyes scanning the sky for the ship nonetheless. ”It’ll be good to see everybody again. Though, I guess it hasn’t been as long for me as it has for the rest of you guys, considering I only showed up partway through the week.” Zenkichi mused aloud. He would’ve liked for the Thieves to join up with the Seekers proper, but Joker was used to leading, not following. And maybe once they found Haru, they could have a proper reunion, too.