"What's all being the matter, my most wicked of sisters?"

Jane looked up from her distraught crying fit. Through eyes blurry with tears she recognized the figure who had spoken. It was the strange clown who had once offered to be her guide, still dressed in that ridiculous purple outfit.

Gamzee smiled at Jane from a short distance away. He must have appeared sometime after she had collapsed to the ground, hugged her knees to her chest, and begun to weep. The creepy fellow opened his mouth to speak-

And quickly shut it with a startled honk as Jane's best forkkind weapon shot over his head. It passed between his horns and barely missed impaling his conical hood.

The pronged apparatus clattered against the ground while Jane's sylladex closed. "I don't want you!" the girl yelled. "I want my friends!" Her voice nearly broke.

Jane hiccupped as fresh tears came. "They're all dead; all of them," she sobbed and squeezed her blue eyes tightly shut. Roxy, Dirk, and oh Jake... They had all met their demise. With their support Jane had somehow managed to reach God Tier, but it had all gone downhill from there. Even the other four players, their 'ancestors', had died-some of them not for the first time. They had all been heroes, her co-players, and her best friends, but they had fallen one after another. And now she was the only one left.

"I'm alone," Jane whispered. She suppressed the urge to wail aloud in grief.

Why? Her heart cried out. Why hadn't she died along with them? She was just one girl, left friendless and without hope. Even though she was a Maid of Life, Jane couldn't do it all alone!

For a few moments, the clown was silent. Jane was glad for the respite; she was in no mood for his usual shenanigans right now. The girl hung her head, clenched her fists in her skirt, and sobbed without restraint.

"...No, you're not motherfucking alone," the clown spoke eventually. Jane looked up in surprise and saw that he had moved a few paces towards her. He must have inched closer during the hush.

There was an unexpected sadness showing on the strange fellow's painted face. His eyes looked down at Jane with pity and sympathy.

Jane felt her sorrow give way to anger, pulsing through her body and burning hot as the sun. It felt good to give in to her rage, to damn this game and all of its horrors.

"You're insane and wrong," she spat. His compassion made her sick. All of her friends were dead! What would he know about loneliness? About losing everyone she cared about? About being tricked and abandoned and still left to feel utterly fucking useless-

"You'll always have the miracle of friendship," the clown continued in his strange way of speaking. "That's all being one of the blessings of a hero of life." He smiled a cheshire smile. "In fact, you've still got a whole motherfucking heap of friends right now."

Jane sniffed and rubbed at her eyes. "What the blazes do you mean?" she demanded.

The damned idiot kept smiling. "You haven't gotten your drink on to a single one of those potions, have you sis?" he answered cryptically.

Jane stared at the strange clown in confusion. He simply winked and backed a long ways away before sitting down on the ground as if to watch.

When Jane realized that she had been given her one and only hint, she took a quivering breath. Next, she shook herself and forced her trembling hands to open her sylladex. She would solve the strange clown's riddle; she was a gusty gumshoe for Pete's sake! Jane repeated those thoughts to herself as she organized all of the many potions by color.

Eventually Jane sat facing seven piles of assorted shades of muck, from bronze to violet. Now she was trying to use her tear-soggy brain to puzzle through the clown's riddle.

"Oh yuck…" Jane said as a thought occurred to her. Did he mean that she was supposed to drink one of these things? Hesitantly, she reached for one of the fuchsia potions. They were her second-favorite color.

Jane held the bottle in her hand and dug out the cork. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. Immediately afterward, she made a very undignified noise and quickly shoved the cork back in. Jane held the potion at arm's length as she coughed into the crook of one elbow.

It smelled disgusting and sparkly! He couldn't expect her to chug this sludge! Jane shuddered just remembering the stench. There was no way she was going to drink one of these gross things.

Jane held the elixir in her lap as she felt the sadness return. Her momentary distraction had ended, and now she felt like even more of a failure than before. She sniffled and let a tear fall from one eye, watching as it splashed onto the clear glass bottle.

Jane felt a slight tingling spread from her fingertips to her hands and all the way up to her elbows. She gasped in surprise when she realized that the sensation had started from the pink potion and resonated up her arms. Now Jane could feel a similar source of power come from within her and slowly flow back towards the bottle.

Curious, she held the bottle up closer to her face to examine it. With a bit of concentration Jane felt her powers grow. It felt like a vibrant and captivating spark of energy and something else too. It felt like…it felt like…

Life...

Gamzee jumped to his feet as Jane did the Lifey Thing in an explosion of God Tier power. His expression was a mix of excitement, wonder, and a peculiar dash of amusement. After a few awe-struck moments however, he seemed to remember something. Colors flashed from his fetch modus as the clown withdrew a laptop from his sylladex.

"The plan is proceeding as motherfucking expected," Gamzee said aloud as he replied to a new message. His eyes wandered back to the miraculous spectacle taking place. "They're back," he said softly, almost reverently.

The clown watched for a few more moments. Perhaps he was deciding something. Or maybe he had already made a decision long ago. Perhaps he wanted to see his friends again. Or maybe he no longer cared. Either way, he did nothing more.

Gamzee silently activated the Music Box Time Machine and disappeared from sight.