"Look, Dan. It's not that bad.", Brandy said, giving the Knight a pat on the shoulder. The aftermath of the nerf had been devastating, Knights had not been a very played Troop to begin with, and now he was nigh-useless. After a short discussion brought upon by a lost 2v2, everyone had taken turns attempting to cheer him up. Agatha hadn't done it, Webert had somehow managed to make it worse, so now it was Brandy's turn. They were together, up in his bedroom.

"Give it a rest, Brandy.", Dan grunted. "I mean, what's the point? I'm obsolete. Nobody uses me anymore. You know my usage rate was hovering around 6% anyway, and now it's about to hit zero. I'm being replaced with Mini Pekkas, Guards, Royal Ghost, Ice Golem, - people would actually use Ice Golem as a minitank, over me!" He put his face in his hands and sighed.

Brandy frowned. She wasn't sure how to handle this. Maybe I could return his mustache trimmer, she thought. Maybe I could…, she thought, and then she had it.

"Well, you know what always cheers you up when you're down?", she asked.

Dan didn't even look up. "What?", He grumbled.

Brandy walked over to the closet. "Your sword collection! You've always liked going over that, right?"

If such things happened, a red exclamation mark would have appeared over Dan's head. But things like that didn't happen- yet. So as such, he just stood up and threw out his hands. "Wait! Don't open-"

Brandy threw open the doors to the closet with a loud crash.

"-that.", Dan groaned, and winced.

Brandy's face turned to shock and concern. Because instead of finding Dan's extensive sword collection, all neatly polished and organized as usual, she found herself staring at bottle after bottle of-

"Dark Elixir? You're drinking Dark Elixir? You know you can't drink that stuff. Where'd you even get it, anyway? Webert?"

Dan sighed again and sat down on the side of his bed. "I know, I know. I know I shouldn't be drinking it. It's just the only thing that takes away the pain anymore."

"Dan, it can't be that bad.", Brandy said. "So you got nerfed. So what? Oticat still uses you, you have all of us-"

Dan stood up, his face contorted. "You don't understand, Brandy. You're- you're a legendary. And I'm just a common. You were born at level 9, I had to work my way up from the bottom. All you have to do is show up, and everyone loves you. You have your Dash, all I have is stats. You're a hero. All I am- was- is a distraction. My only purpose was kiting, and I can't even do that anymore."

He closed his eyes, and sat back down. "Watch. I'll probably be replaced any day now."

Brandy paused, then leaned close to him. "No. No you won't."

Dan didn't respond.

"Dan, listen to me. I promise you, Oticat needs you in the deck. You've been there since day one, and he isn't about to get rid of you now."

Her friend looked up. "Really? You really think so?"

Brandy smiled. "Dan, you're still a glass breaker. Dan, you can still match me in a fight. Dan, you can still distract a Pekka. So Dan, I don't think so. I know so."

"Really, Brandy?", asked Dan. "Am I really still viable?"

"Dan, as long as you're my friend, you're always viable.", said Brandy.

"Well, when you put it that way...", Dan smiled, and stood up.

The door slammed open, and Oticat burst into the room. Dan and Brandy both looked up in surprise.

"Dan, I have some big news.", said the king, slightly out of breath.

Dan grabbed his sword from off his desk and twirled his mustache. "Yes? What word doth you bring this noble knight?"

The king's eye twitched. "I'm sorry, but there's no easy way to say this. I'm switching you out for Guards."

Dan stared. He was silent for a few seconds, then his face twisted as he finally spoke.

"I knew it.", he said. "I knew this was going to happen. So it doesn't matter then, does it? None of what I did matters? All the battles that I won, all the towers that I destroyed, all my experience- nothing? What is this, Oticat? Is this just a game to you?"

Then nobody moved in the room, as they all just silently stared. Brandy opened her mouth to speak, but Dan raised a hand to silence her.

"Go away, Brandy.", he said quietly. "You'd never understand."

Brandy stared back at him, the hurt evident in her eyes, but did not say anything. Finally, Oticat broke the silence.

"Um... well, it's time to go.", he said. "We got a battle soon. Brandy, suit up. Dan... hang in there buddy. I'll find a place for you. Somewhere."

The mood as the team touched down near Arena 9 was tense. None of them had ever done this without Dan, and they weren't sure if they could adjust to the Guards or not. But this was a battle, and they had to put such worries aside.

"Heya, wanna place a bet?", said the voice of a Goblin. Brandy turned, and saw two of them in a small booth. It was set ramshackle against the wall, and had "Betz" written on it. The Z was backwards.

"Um…", Brandy said.

"Yeah, you're a Bandit.", he continued. "Bandits love stealing, so why don't you make a steal with this golden opportunity?"

His partner, who had been totally and utterly distracted with the cleaning of his ears, picked one part of a single word out of this sentence- golden.

"Golden?", he asked frantically in Gobbish. "Gold?"

"No, you idiot.", said his friend, also in Gobbish. "It's just an expression. Go back to bed."

With that out of the way, the bet-dealer turned again to Brandy, but she was gone. Her attention had been moved entirely to a nearby screen.

A broadcast was playing, one straight from the infamous "opinion" section of the TV Royale crew. And it was a real mean one.

"Good night, Knight!", shouted a Giant. "This aggressive mini-tank has always been a little obsolete, but now?"

An image of a Knight twirling his mustache was slapped with two Xs over his eyes and a crying emote.

"Its over! He's gone! Down the drain, down the dumps! He's gone forever, and there is no! Bringing! Him! Back!"

An explosion filled the screen, and the Giant narrating gave a vicious thumbs down.

"That's just a great big middle finger to every king who ever leveled up their Knight, and just a taste of what's bound to be coming next! What classic card will be totally stomped on and obliterated? Find out, only on Infowars!"

The screen blinked out, and Brandy sighed. "I hope Dan wasn't watching anything just then."

"Hey, wanna get drawn?", she heard something whisper in her ear. Brandy flipped back her hood, almost dislodging a Bat. It giggled and flew a short distance to a small booth Brandy had not noticed before. A man stood in it, casually sharpening a pencil. He did not resemble any troop, and he certainly wasn't a king. Snapshots with Adam Clowery read a sign that hung right above his head.

"Ah, hello.", he said when he saw Brandy walk over. "I'm Adam. I draw, as you can see."

He gestured to the myriad of drawings that were taped and nailed to his booth.

"If you want to be drawn, it's only 100 Gold."

"I… shouldn't.", Brandy said. "I mean I have the Gold, but I should really go catch up with my team."

"Ah, yes.", said Adam. "I see. Time."

He paused for a second, then carefully took out a pencil from behind his ear. With lightning speed and precision, he flashed it across a canvas, all while not taking his expert eye off of Brandy. After exactly 4 seconds, he put down the smoking pencil, and handed Brandy the drawing.

Brandy blinked. It looked exactly like her. "This… this is amazing.", she said. "How did you do it so fast?"

Adam shrugged, and gave a slight wink. "Just skill, I guess. But you better go- your teams probably missing you right now."

"Right.", said Brandy as she pocketed the drawing and ran off.

As the team filed into the bench, Brandy could not shake off the weirdness of her friend not being there. Neither could anyone else.

"I can't believe he's really gone.", Agatha said. "I remember when we were still in Arena 1 together."

"I never even really got a chance to know him.", said Webert. "I only got on to the team an arena ago."

"He really did tank for us.", said the Ratzo brothers. "I can't even count how many towers we took with him helping us."

Bowza merely nodded.

Randy said nothing, because he was an Ice Spirit.

Oticat4 walked into the room.

"Alright, we got a big match ahead of us.", he said. "If we win this match... we go onto Arena 9!"

No one said anything.

"Eh? Eh? No? Okay, look. I know that Dan isn't in the deck anymore. But its not like he's dead- he's still back at home. And I know that he wants us to win here."

Agatha stood up, and hit the floor with her staff. "You're right. We're still a team, and we need to move."

Oticat stepped into the elevator that would take him up to his platform, and the announcer raised his microphone. With a bored air, he read off the match details.

"Alright, we got Oticat on blue, and Odurawaz on red. Ready, go."

He threw down his hand, and the match began. As was Oticat's habit, he started the match with a screaming Hog Rider emote. His opponent responded with a raspberry Goblin. Oticat responded to his opponent's response by selecting the Ratzo Brothers, playing them right on the left bridge. They fist-bumped, grabbed their ram, and stepped onto the teleporter. Within a second, they were out on the field.

"All right, guys, we're going for a bit of a bridge-spam strategy today.", whispered Oticat so his opponent wouldn't hear. "Just keep moving, and we got this. Brandy, you're up next."

"Bridge spam, huh? Didn't think he really did that.", said Webert in confusion.

"He only does it when he's angry.", replied Agatha. "It's not really hard to see why he's doing it now. Go get 'em, Brandy!"

Brandy smiled weakly, and stepped onto the teleporter.

Her vision turned blue, then faded into the vines and gold piles of Jungle Arena. It seemed familiar to Brandy for some reason. Was this the place where she was normally unlocked? She didn't really know- she had been gotten from a Legendary Chest. Or had she been unlocked through trade? She couldn't quite-

"Brandy! Focus! You're just standing there.", Bowza shouted from right next to her.

"Oh. Right. Sorry." She scanned the arena in front of her, and saw a couple of Archers firing at Webert. They were distracted. She grinned. Good. She raised her club, whistled, and dashed forward at them. Brandy's dash was interrupted by something- she didn't know what. It vanished too fast to see. And judging by the angry King emote that Odurawaz used a second later, it shouldn't have been there. So Brandy gathered herself again, and aimed at the Archers. They turned to see her seconds too late, and their mouths dropped open in shock. Seconds later, there were significantly less arrows being fired. The huge Bowler gave her a thumbs up, and started going at the tower. Brandy looked around for any more targets, but did not see any. She was about to head for the tower, when she heard one of the most terrifying sounds in the world from her left. A clank of metal hitting the ground, and a monstrous "BUT-TER-FLY." That could only mean one thing- a Pekka.

Brandy turned to the Pekka. She knew she couldn't defeat it, but she could at least slow it down. So she readied herself to dash, and- and she was stuck. She couldn't dash. Why couldn't she dash? It reminded her of the time she tried to take off her mask, only worse in every way. ANd then, the cold hit her. A cold so frigid, it hurt. Brandy looked down. Oh, that was why she couldn't move. The red king had hit her with everyone's favorite status effecter, Freeze.

"Freaking no-skill, cancerous, idiot, using Freeze…", she growled under her breath. "And count down from 5, 4, 3…"

Brandy looked up again, and saw the Pekka raising its massive purple sword high above its head to crush her. "BUT-TER-FLY.", it said again.

Oh, well. At least she had protected Webert. The Pekka swung downwards and hit Skeletons.

Wait, Skeletons? Agatha must have come up from behind Brandy without her noticing!

"Head for the tower! I'll handle the PEKKA!", Agatha shouted as she summoned another trio of skellys. She turned around to address Bowza.

"Hey, Bowza!", Agatha shouted. "Take out that Minion Horde!" Figured that with Dan gone, the second oldest veteran was directing them.

"Right!", said Bowza back to her, and aimed his bow. With cool precision, he fired his bow. The arrow of light shot through the air with a soft whistle and sliced through the Minions like a hot knife through cold butter. It would have been a hot knife through regular butter, but Bowza's damage wasn't all that great, really.

Finally, Brandy's legs unfroze, and she took off. Only 8 tiles from the right tower. 7. 6. With the Princess firing at Agatha's Skeletons, she had a perfectly clear shot. Brandy crouched and started charging up, when something smacked her face. Curious, she grabbed it and held it up so she could see. Was that... gum? Had a spectator spat their gum into the arena? Brandy looked to the audience, when another of the mystery projectiles smacked her. And another. Strangely enough, it was actually damaging her.

"What the...", she said, and looked to her left. There were two girls in eyepatches pelting gum at her. Oh well. She could take them out without a second thought. She readied her dash, and saw them wave to someone behind her. But Brandy didn't have time to worry about that. She leapt forward, and struck one of them right in the jaw, popping her into Elixir. Brandy raised her club- and another hit her in the back of the head, taking out the last of her HP.

When she reappeared back on the bench, she was pleased to see that the enemy king was on the ropes. Even though he still wasn't thinking quite straight, Oticat had guided his troops admirably, and victory was almost assured.

"Howdah.", whispered Bowza to himself as he fired. He wasn't sure why he said it, or even really what it meant, but he just said it anyway. It was practically instinct. He nocked yet another shining arrow, and fired over the heads of the Ratzo brothers. They had already slammed their ram into the left tower, which was now at only 500 HP.

Odurawaz looked at Oticat, looked at his tower getting decimated, then back at Oticat. With a sigh of acceptance, he pressed a button on his interface, and broadcast the White Flag Goblin emote. A king in the audience- Oticat's clanmate, SpacekrakenX, responded with a simple laughing Electro Wizard emote. An Electro Wizard seated above him used a laughing King emote, but the simple irony was noticed by nobody.

With one last yell, one of the Ratzo brothers swung his sword downward, and the stone of the tower cracked. The Princess within flipped her escape switch, and she vanished to the bench as her tower broke down, and spilled all over the grass.

The heads of the audience turned as the Golden Goblin statue's eyes flashed, and hit 0. The rest of the various decorations spread across the Arena glowed blue to signify the outcome of the battle, 1-0. The battle was over, and Oticat had officially moved on to Arena 9!

But the mood among the team was anything but celebratory. Sure, they had advanced, but Dan wasn't here to share the moment with them.

"Did we do something wrong?", asked a Guard.

"No.", said Webert. "Why do you ask?"

"You're all just staring at us.", said another timidly. "And it seems like something is our fault."

The Guards hadn't been played the whole time, and everyone was just a little mad at them.

They hadn't really done anything wrong- they just weren't Dan.

"No, no, you're fine.", said Oticat reassuringly. "I didn't get a chance to play you, but that's fine. I'm sure you'll get your shot next time."

Both teams left their dugouts. Oticat walked confidently over to the prize Goblin, ready to collect his new Arena 9 chest. "Ooh, sweet new cards.", he said. "Goblin tribal time."

On the other side, the red King shrugged on his cloak. "Well, we tried.", he said to his team.

"I'm sorry, dad.", said the Princess who's tower had been taken. "I could have defended, if only I had fired faster."

"No, you're fine, Emma.", said Odurawaz. "Besides, we completed our task."

Emma looked up. "We did?

"Yes.", he said. "We've gotten the information we needed, and now the rest of the plan can proceed."

"Right.", said the Princess. "That's good."

The King pushed his glasses up his face and smiled. "Yes. Resistance against it will be useless. Useless, useless, useless."

"So, did anyone else notice when he threw the Skeleton Army right in front of me?", grunted Webert, as they walked. "And that Dart Goblin in front of Brandy? This guy was hilarious!"

"Oh, is that what that was?", Brandy asked. "It vanished so fast, I couldn't even tell."

Everyone laughed, then Brandy sighed. "If only Dan were here to see it all."

"Brandy, only the sea misses the sky.", said Bowza. "You must remember that."

Whatever that meant, it didn't help Brandy much. The thrill of winning slowly turned to something else. Brandy didn't quite know how to describe the feeling. She looked to her right- and saw a Red King, standing stock still in the middle of the crowd.

As soon as she laid eyes on him, an involuntary chill ran through her body. He looked just like any other king- except for one distinctive mark, a black line running down from both his eyes. The look was haunting, and unnatural. But the air of uneasiness was nothing compared to how she felt when he turned slightly, and looked straight at Brandy.

Hello.

Brandy stumbled back, right into Larry, whose head fell off. He angrily put it back and silently shook his tiny bony fist at her, attracting the attention of Agatha.

"What is it now, Larry?", she asked, then paused as she saw Brandy staring straight ahead.

"Brandy, what is it?"

"That king.", said Brandy, and pointed. "When he looked at me, I heard a voice inside my head."

Agatha put her hand to her chin, and thought. A quiet, almost silent warning bell went off inside of her head. This was starting to seem dangerously suspicious, but she couldn't actually prove anything.

"Bowza, what do you make of it?", she asked him.

"Trees do not require the light for reading, only for life.", he said.

"Oh, you're not helpful.", sighed Agatha. "Don't worry about it, Brandy. I'm sure it's nothing."

"If you say so, Agatha.", said Brandy, and they continued walking.

Then, nearby, she saw a Villager peddling her wares- a collection of just smithed-swords.

I should get one of those for Dan. Maybe it'll help cheer him up., Brandy thought to herself, and walked over to the Villager.

"Hey, these are nice swords.", she said. "What are they made from?"

The Villager looked up from her knitting and smiled warmly. "These are pure Spooky Iron, imported straight from Spooky Town. Do you like them?"

"Yep.", said Brandy. "In fact, I think I'll take one right now. Bye."

She grabbed a blue sword and dashed away through the crowd, knocking a Prince right off his horse. The Villager almost called out, but thought better of it. She knew the rules. Bandits, along with Goblins, were allowed petty theft in the same manner as Rascals were allowed to commit small crimes, and large troops such as Giants or Pekkas were forgiven for accidentally destroying small buildings. It was only their nature, after all.

Brandy stopped running and smiled. Stealing something always made her feel better, and this time was no exception. But her smile disappeared as she looked around, and saw that her team was nowhere to be found. Brandy jumped over the heads of the people in the crowd, but she still couldn't see them. So she ran to the Balloons as quickly as she could- and they weren't there, either. But far off in the distance, way up in the sky, she could see what appeared to be the blue glint off of Bowza's magic bowstring.

"Dang it!", she said, swinging her fist. "I missed them."

She didn't know exactly what was standard procedure in these types of situations- she had never missed the Balloon before. She looked around, and saw the Bomber that attended the station, tossing rocks off the side into the gully below. Perhaps he could help.
"Excuse me, sir!", she said to him as she ran up with a wave. "Can I get a Balloon?"

The Bomber didn't even turn around. He just picked his head off of his neck and turned that around to face her.

"Where's your king, kid?", he asked, his tone of voice the definition of sarcastic boredom.

"Oh, uh, I just missed him. I got a little distracted, and I-"

"Oh, give me a break. If I had a bone for every time I've heard that one before, I'd have an entire Skeleton Army.", he scoffed.

"But- but- you gotta give me a Balloon.", Brandy whined. "What else am I supposed to do, walk home?"

This time, the Bomber turned his entire body around. She didn't know that you could make sarcastic looks without skin or organs, but he somehow pulled it off. Brandy quickly flipped back her hood in an attempt to look friendlier.

"Look, kid. You either show me your king..."

He gestured towards a random King in line.

"5000 Gems…"

He raised one eyebrow, through some sorcery, then jerked one thumb towards a wall of rock, some distance away.

"...or I show you the footpath."

Brandy fumed and stomped her foot on the ground.

"Fine. Whatever. Your Balloons suck, anyway. Probably only level 1."

She turned around and began to make her way towards the canyons.

"I hope you get fired, or blown up, or... or something!", she called over her shoulder, but the Bomber didn't seem to hear her. As soon as she was out of sight, a shadowed figure crept out of the shadows and up to the Bomber's desk.

"Did you do it?", the figure asked him. His voice was smooth and elegant, but perfectly evil.

"Yeah, it's done.", replied the Bomber. "Now, my fee?"

The figure pressed a small pouch of Gems into the Bomber's waiting hand. "Yes, yes, here you go. Thank you for your cooperation."

The figure walked out from the shadows, and turned on a communicator. Within seconds, the face of a King had appeared inside of it.

"Did it go well, my lord?", asked the King on the screen. "Did everything go right?"

The figure smiled, the black lines underneath his eyes stretching with it. "Oh yes,", he said. "Everything went well. It's not often that I dirty my hands with this kind of grunt work, but there's always a certain satisfaction I get out of doing so."

And then, he threw back his head and laughed. The sound and the force of it were tremendous, a magnificent ohohohoho that attracted the attention of everyone there. But the red King waved his hand, and they all went back to their business.

"Yes…", he whispered to himself. "Everything is going just according to plan."

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