Justice Society of Japan

by Edrobot

A chance encounter leads to the formation of Japan's newest super-team. But between between government conspiracies, an evil sorceress, aliens and a time-traveling assassin, do they even stand a chance? A crossover between the DCU and more Anime and Video Games than I can count. But especially Gurren Lagann, Final Fantasy XIII, Xenoblade Chronicles, Madoka Magica, Code Geass.

7. Chapter 7

[FRONT COVER: Several female characters dressed as Vocaloids, performing onstage with Hatsune Miku. Shirley is dressed as SF-A2 miki, Hope is dressed as Nekomura Iroha, Sayaka is dressed as Aoki Lapis, and Ino is crossdressing as Utatane Piko. Electra Pendragon is also present, dressed as Akita Neru, and glaring at the others from behind an on-stage prop. An electronic billboard in the background reads "NOT A DREAM! NOT AN IMAGINARY STORY!"]

---

Kyosuke Kamijou was used to crowds. As a world-famous violin prodigy, the boy had been living around them all his life. People came from all over to watch him play in both orchestras and on his own, and even when his fingers weren't working their magic Kyosuke was constantly swarmed by poseurs and sycophants. To Kamijou, crowds were just another fact of life.

But while it was one thing to face a crowd interested in seeing you, it was quite another to be part of a crowd out to see someone else; sandwiched between masses of squealing kids and fanboyish adults, weaving down concrete corridors lined with stands selling overpriced snacks and souvenirs, scrambling around in search for the right section with a pair of girls he barely knew.

"And Gate 22 should be riiiight… here." Sayaka frowned as she looked at her map. "Or maybe I'm holding it wrong," she said as she tried turning it upside-down. "Unless I'm looking at it funny…"

"No no, you got it," chimed Sayaka's pink-haired friend (Madoka, Kamijou believed it was). "It's right over there, see?" The girl pointed at a white sign with black text outlined in orange.

"Ah. Right." Sayaka hastily folded up her map, leaving some uneven edges. "Told ya' my innate sense of direction would get us there!"

Kamijou sighed. What could he say about Sayaka? She was just as guilty as anyone else of giving Kamijou special treatment, what with talking about him like he was in already league with the greats, bringing him albums of classical symphonies he had heard a dozen times before, and visiting Kamijou in the hospital every single day like they had some kind of manic pixie dream girl ritual going on.

"Twenty-three… four… and five! Looks like we're here!" Sayaka pulled back the seat on the right and made herself comfortable, while Madoka took the seat on the far left. Sayaka then pulled down the middle seat, and gestured for Kamijou to take it. Kamijou's eyes rolled at how obvious this gesture of affection was.

Still, for all her troubles, Sayaka did have her good points. If nothing else she was certainly a lot more loyal than most of Kamijou's fans, as she kept up her visits even after the doctors told her that Kamijou was never going to play the violin again. And there certainly must be something her friend Madoka likes about her, or else the two wouldn't hang out so much. He just wasn't quite sure what it was yet.

Now that he was seated, Kamijou got his first good look at the concert floor, which he had only caught brief glimpses of as they made their way to their section. The baseball diamond had been transformed into a futuristic setpiece featuring black, geometric shapes whose edges were outlined in glowing blue lights, the largest of which was an enormous cube hovering above a torus, slowly rotating in place. And on every face of the cube was a clock that was slowly counting down, presumablyto the concert start time. He wasn't exactly a fan of the style, but admitted it was a pretty well-designed set all things considered.

Suddenly, Kamijou felt someone nudging at his ribs. Not surprisingly, when he turned to the side he found that "someone" to be Sayaka.

"So, waddya think?" she said. "Sure beats sitting around at home waiting for your arm to heal, am I right?"

That it certainly did. Miracle recovery or not, it would still be a few days before Kamijou would be strong enough to start practicing again. "I guess that's one way to put it," he said. "There are certainly worse ways to kill a Friday night."

Sayaka looked worried for just a moment. Apparently, that wasn't what she wanted to hear. "Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm ungrateful," Kamijou said. "Honestly, I think I'd actually be feeling worse if you took me to a classical concert. I'd spend the whole time envying the guys who actually get to play."

Sayaka gave a nervous laugh in response.

---

"Sooo… what exactly are we looking for, again?" said Shirley.

"Anything out of the ordinary," Lightning replied. "Hidden explosives, scouting dones, chemical weapons… anything that an advance party would leave behind before an invasion."

"Are we likely to find something like that?"

"Doubtful. From what little Shulk could tell us, subterfuge doesn't seem to be the Mechons' style." Lightning pulled up the brim of her cap at as it once again fell over her eyes. "Then again, it never hurts the be cautious."

"Ah." Shirley continued to fidget with a stress ball he picked up earlier that day. Between the music emanating from the inner stadium, and the cellular signals bouncing all over the place, she was finding it hard to stay calm and collected.

That being said, as bad as Shirley was, Ino looked worse. While trying to keep pace with Lightning and Shirley, every once in a while she would look at the index cards taped to her arm, and without fail she would leap away once she looked up at Lightning. She would then launch into a quiet panic attack before calming down into a slight case of jitters, only for the cycle to repeat again a few moments later.

Shirley wasn't sure if watching this spectacle was more sad or disturbing, but either way it raised a very interesting question…

"Why isn't Ino wearing any shoes?" asked Shirley.

"She didn't bring them," Lightning said. "Said she had a hard time walking in heels. Which begs the question of why she was wearing a pair of heeled boots in the first place, but that's not really a huge concern right now."

"So… what are we doing here, then?" said Shirley. "I mean it's pretty obvious what we're doing here in the Tokyo Dome but I mean why are we on this team or I guess a subset of the greater team and I'm sorry I'll shut up now."

"No, that's a good question." Lighting stopped, and began looking around. They were in the food court of the Tokyo Dome, which was closed off for the concert. No people were around, and all of the benches had been moved to storage. "Given my weakness, normally I'd be staying as far away from Ino as possible. But I need the both of you for something." She stepped forward a few more paces, and then turned around to adress the girls. "I need to test the limits of your powers, because it's clear that the two of you don't understand them."

"Um… okay." Shirley looked at Ino. She was now completely transfixed on Lightning. "So… how do we do that?" Shirley asked.

"We'll do Ino first, since her abilities are still unclear." Ino flinched as Lightning looked at her. "Ino, Kyubey told me you have a talent for mimicry. Is that true?"

"Uh… I don't know," said Ino. "What's 'mimicry'?"

Lightning sighed. "It means you're very good at copying what other people do."

"Oh." Ino was flush with embarrassment. "I... guess I am pretty good at that." She reached into one of her jacket's side-pockets to pull out a marker, some tape, and an index card to take notes with.

"Not right now," Lighting said. "This is too important."

Ino put the office supplies back into her pockets.

"Right…" Lighting pulled out her strange gun-blade weapon, and held it out for the girls to see. "There are only a handful of people in the world who know how to use a weapon like this." She took a couple steps back. "Now I want you to watch closely..."

A split-second later, Lighting launched into a dizzying series of kicks, backflips and swordstrikes, as if she were trying to strike an invisible enemy from all sides. This went on for a good five seconds, before she landed in front of Ino, flipped her weapon back into gun form and handed it to Ino. "Your turn," she said.

Shirley stared at Lighting, slack-jawed. "...Just for the record, I'm not expected to be able to do that, right?"

Ino ignored Shirley. "Okay. Um, that looks pretty difficult. But I guess I could give it a try..." her hands shook as she reached out to take Lightning's weapon, being careful not to make skin contact. There was a brief spark of dark energy as she put her hand around the grip, but other than that nothing out of the usual happened.

Ino moved to where Lighting was standing just a few moments ago, and took a deep breath. Then, with a diving leap, she began to flawlessly replicate Lightning's every move down to the last pirouette and kickflip.

"How did I do?" the girl asked.

"You did just fine, Ino," Lighting said, taking back her weapon. "Now let's try something a little harder." She reached into a pouch, and pulled out a small, striped piece of metal shaped like piece of pie, which unfolded into a red-and-white target. "I use these for practice," she said. Lightning then placed one up against a concrete wall before getting back into position. Once she done so, Lighting then stuck her hand out palm-first, shooting out a small fireball, striking the metal target with deadly accuracy. "Now the real question is; are you able to do that?" said Lightning.

Ino gulped, and then stuck out her hand in an identical manner. She closed her eyes and grunted, but nothing happened. "Sorry… I tried my best…"

"Well, I guess that would make sense," Shirley said. "I mean Ino is anti-magic, after all."

"If that were universally true, she wouldn't be able to use a Keyblade," Lightning rebuffed. "I might only dabble in magic, but even I know that magic resistance doesn't usually apply to one's own magic. Either that or Keyblade's aren't magic, but I doubt that's the case." She then looked at Ino. "Try pulling it out and then casting the spell. Maybe try using it as a focus; I've heard that can help."

"Right…" without quite understanding what Lighting said, she out and summoned her Keyblade, which appeared in a flash of light. It was an odd-looking thing with a large, two-handed grip, all of which was connected to a long, metal shaft. At the end of the shaft was a metal extrusion that looked like the 'bit' of an old-fashioned key, which provided the weapon's namesake. It was very plain-looking, manufactured, even, with all the jagged edges forming perfect right angles. And finally, it had a uniform grey coloration that looked neither shiny nor dull.

Neither Shirley nor Lightning had ever seen a real Keyblade before. In fact if Kyubey hadn't been helpful enough to put a name to the weapon, they wouldn't even know what to call it. Apparently Lighting had done some back-checking, but didn't really find out much about the weapon; all of the pertinent research materials were locked up in libraries that were very hard to get into, even for an investigatior of her caliber. The only thing she could find was a news report mentioning that an American kid named Sora somehow found a Keyblade and used it to defeat a group called "Organization XIII".

Shirley was familiar with that name. Rivalz had mentioned it several times back when she first got her powers. Organization XIII was a nebulous group of metahumans, aliens or cyborgs (accounts varied on that front) that were supposedly responsible for every unexplained disappearance, murder, or other disaster in the last decade, even the ones that seemed impossible. While it was clear the group did exist in some capacity, finding any reliable information on the group was an exercise in frustration. This is because they made good targets for conspiracy theorists, especially since they all wore conspicuous black cloaks like the one Ino had. But the idea that one kid (admittedly with the help of a space cop and some sort of magic user) were able to take down the group single-handedly was… absurd, to say the last.

Regardless of whether Sora had told the truth about his exploits, Lightning had intended to get in contact with the kid with the keyblade to see if he knew Ino. But of course, the current mission took priority.

"Okay I know this might not make any sense…" Lighting said to Ino, "Try to do what you saw me doing, but try to do it with your keyblade instead of just your hand."

"Okaaay..." Lighting watched as Ino pointed her weapon at the target, and began to concentrate.

Moments later, Ino flew back as a shadowy fireball traveled down the shaft of the Keyblade, and launched itself in the direction Ino was pointing. There was an explosion of black light as the "fireball" missed its mark and collided with a nearby trash can, causing a small explosion that sent bits of flaming refuse flying everywhere.

"Shirley; sprinklers, now!" Lightning pointed up at the ceiling.

"Right!" Shirley looked up at one of the sprinkler heads situated above the inferno, and tried to turn a couple of them on. But instead she ended up soaking the entire room, herself and her partners included.

"Heh… sorry about that." Shirley tried to laugh off the accident, only to hang her head in shame, water dripping off her long, orange-red hair.

Lighting, however, continued to stare at the sprinkler right above them. "You know these sprinklers are mechanical, right? Not a single computer operating them." She looked back at Shirley. "Same goes for the water faucets that turn themselves on at night. A purely computer-based technopath wouldn't be able to do something like that."

"Okay… so what does that mean?"

"It means you've got more options than you think. Pretty much everything we use is some form of technology. Even a simple wooden club counts if you stretch the definition far enough." Lighting looked around as water began to pile up by her feet. "Now I'm not saying you'll be able to tie people's laces togeather but…" she suddenly paused as she looked at the destroyed trash can. "Wait," she went over, and picked up a worn, plastic rectangle, with some wires jutting out of it that were connected to an old-fashioned alarm clock.

As she got closer, Shirley realized that it was a tape recorder, the sort you might find in a thrift store or a used electronics shop. And on the tape recorder, were printed four simple words in bright red, permanent marker. "Are We Cool Yet?"

"Damn it…" Lightning muttered. "This better not be what I think it is…" she popped open the recorder, and handed the tape to Shirley. "Tell me what's on this tape," she barked, "but whatever you do don't listen to it."

"Excuse me?" Shirley gave Lightning a befuddled look.

"It's a cassette tape. It's a magnetized strip with a pattern encoded to it. Tell me what the pattern looks like."

Shirley held the tape in front of her forehead, and closed her eyes. She thought back to the time her father showed her how a Vocaloid voice synthesizer worked because she had asked how they could sing if they didn't need to breath.

The question came up when Shirley was six. Miku had been built and programmed, but her A.I. still needed a few years of life to develop, so she was placed into safe, childlike body and became Shirley's playmate. Milly was visiting that day (since her father was a major investor in Joseph's company), and had just met Miku for the first time when she decided to see who could hold their breath the longest. They all went through a few rounds of the game before realizing that Miku didn't actually breath at all, she was just programmed to look like she did.

Joseph spent an entire hour trying to explain the basics of sounds though simple conversation, so he brought the trio into his office showed them an olioscope. He then let them play around with it, making all sorts of silly sounds into the microphone. He explained that the lines on the oscilloscope represented the noises they made, and that a taller wave meant a louder sound. They then plugged the microphone into a computer, to demonstrate that computers can read these waves as well, and convert them into data. He then went on to explain that when Miku wanted to say something her processor constructed the appropriate sounds based on known data, but Shirley wasn't thinking about that. She was thinking about the interface of the sound-recording program, how it let you "read" a sound without actually listening to it. She wondered if that was what Lightning wanted her to do…

Picturing the interface in her mind, she tried to coax the electromagnetic signals on the tape into the imaginary screen. At first Shirley thought she had failed, for all she saw was a straight line with some. But as she looked closer, she noticed there were faint faint imperfections, including a soft sound that played three different times, as well as a faint rythmic sound, and some slightly more sharp sounds that appeared at what Shirley assumed were beginning and ends of the tape. She was curious as to what these sounds could be, but remember Lightning's advice she resisted the temptation to play them, even in the confines of her own head.

Opening her eyes, Shirley snapped out of her trance.

"So. What was on it?"

"I'm not really sure…" said Shirley. "There were sounds on it, but it was so quiet most of time..."

"Of course…" Lightning looked over the tape. "You didn't listen to it, did you?"

"Of course not! Why?"

Summoning a stationary fireball, Lightning melted the tape in her bare hands. "This thing is a powerful cognitohazard that messes with people's brains to the point where they can't hear, or even comprehend music anymore." She tossed the melted plastic on the ground, where it sizzled in the water that continued to pool up around their feet.

"That's horrible!" said Shirley. "Who would do such a thing?

"'Are We Cool Yet', a group of so-called 'art terrorists' who like to do pretentious bullshit like this because they think they're really clever." Lightning turned around. "The problem is, they've already tried this before. Normally they're picky about not doing the same thing twice. Stranger still, everyone involved is supposed to be dead..." Lightning glanced at the clock that the tape recorder was connected to. "No time to dwell on that, though. If there's any more of these things, it looks like we only have an hour before they all go off."

Shirley looked at Ino, who appeared to be rather confused about all of this. Shirley was too; Lightning's explanation had gone far too fast for her to get more than a couple bits and pieces. But unlike Ino, Shirley at least could act like she knew what she was doing.

"...Right," she said. "So how are we going to do that?"

"We search the rest of the arena," Lightning said. "We can't expect to evacuate the place in time, but there's only so many places where you can hide something like that, and… wait. What's that sound?"

Shirley picked up her ears, and tried to listen through the sound of the water rushing out of the sprinkler system. There was indeed a sound approaching them. A voice, in fact. Most likely male, but you could never tell sometimes. As it got closer, Shirley was able to make out a song...

"[I'm siiiiiiinging in the raaiiin

Just siiiiiiiiinging in the raaiiiin

What a glorious feelin'

I'm happy again…]"

It was then that the trio saw what was perhaps the strangest thing they had seen all day; a man made of living shadow, with a head that was almost shaped like a question mark, skipping down the abandoned food court, carrying a brightly-colored umbrella with the face of a popular cartoon character printed on it, singing one of Gene Kelly's most famous songs. The group continued to stare at the man as he continued his impromptu musical number, before Ino decided to speak up.

"[Um. Can we help you, mister…?"]

"[Mister Nobody's the name, and nothing is my game.]" He made a motion as if he was tipping his hat, and then handed Ino a white business card that had word "FISH" written on it in big, blocky letters. "[I produce nothing, sell nothing, clean nothing, and can introduce you to any number of nothings, nobodies and neverweres.]"

"[Uh-huh.]" Ino politely nodded, not really understanding.

He then pointed at Shirley. "[Tell me young lady; have you heard of the Brotherhood of Dada?]"

"[No, not really…]" Shirley began to lean away from the strange man who was now invading her privacy.

"[Of course not!]" he shouted. "[They were the biggest nothing I ever made! A testament to nothingness! Oh but that's a story for a different time.]" Mr. Nobody then moonwalked back a few paces, his feet sloshing around in the puddles on the floor as he did so. "[Anyway I'm working on nothing important right now, so would you girls be dears and leave the rest of the tape recorders alone?]"

"[So you're the one behind this.]" Lightning pointed her weapon at the shadowy figure. "[What exactly does 'Are We Cool Yet' have to do with the Mechon?]"

Mr. Nobody shrugged. "['Coolness' is such an overused term, don't you think? It's just a social construct the haves use to make the have-nots feel worse about themselves.]"

"[Answer the question!]" Lighting switched her weapon back into gun form.

"[WOAH there darlin', no need to turn this into a gunfight, ya'hear?]" Mr. Nobody said, suddenly speaking with a fake Texan accent. "[I ain't heard of no such thing 'round these here parts. I'm just an ol' wanderin' cowpolk, wanderin' wherever the wind takes me,]" he made a motion with his arms as if he were throwing a lasso.

"[You're lying,]" said Lightning.

"[That is completely possible!]" Mr. Nobody reverted back to his original northeasterly American accent. "[I'm such a good liar that even I don't even know if I'm telling the truth half the time!]"

"[Well then you're stalling,]" said Lighting. "[You're either waiting for backup or waiting for the tape recorders to go off. Either way I'll give you one last chance; surrender now, or we'll have to do this the hard way.]"

"[Hey now, man!]" Mr. Nobody said. "[Can't we all give peace a chance? You know, learn to love one another in mutual respect and- SUCKER PUNCH!]" he hollered as he threw himself towards Lightning with inhuman speed, winding his fist back for a punch.

Just as the blow was about to connect with Lighting's face, Lightning grabbed Mr. Nobody's fist with her free hand, stopping him in his tracks. She then twisted the hand back until it made a sharp, snapping noise.

"AIEEEEEEEEE!" Mr. Nobody screamed. "OH GOD THE PAIN! I'M NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO USE A PENCIL AGAIN! WHY COULDN'T I HAVE BEEN LEFT HANDED!? WHYYYYY!"

He then collapsed onto the floor, and began to sob.

"Well that was deceptively simple," Lightning said. "Now we need to get this guy locked up, and then find his co-conspirators…"

Ino began to approach the sobbing wreck on the floor. "Excuse me… are you okay, mister?"

Just as she was getting into arms reach, however, Mr. Nobody sprang up from the floor and shouted "SUCKER PUNCH 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO!" and sprang into a leaping somersault that ended in a dive straight into Ino's chest, where he seemed to disappear entirely.

"INO!" Shirley yelled as the raven-haired girl collapsed onto the floor.

Lighting, on the other hand, trained her weapon on Ino. "Shirley, get back! Now!"

Shirley tuned around and began to ask "Why?" before she was suddenly smacked in the back of the head with what felt like a sharp, metal object. Falling face-first onto the concrete floor, she began to right herself when suddenly Ino pointer her Keyblade right at Shirley's throat with her right hand.

"Oooh… I've never possessed a girl before," Ino said. "You know I've always wanted to do this ever since high school. Just wish she was a little older so I could feel her up without looking like a pedophile."

Listening to the words coming out of Ino's mouth, a chill ran up Shirley's spine. "...Ino?"

"Wrong," said Lightning. "That's Mister Nobody in there," she grabbed Shirley and helped her up. "And it looks to me like things just got a bit more complicated…"

"You got that right!" Mr. Nobody laughed using Ino's voice. "It's pretty roomy in here, actually; no memories to hold me back, nor pesky free will to get in the way. Where'd you find her, anyway? Some kind of… fleshy... robot… Illuminati factory?"

Lightning's voice suddenly rang out in Shirley's head. "Don't worry. I have a plan." Shirley was startled for a moment, before she remembered Kyubey's psychic link. "Kyubey. Let the others know about the tape recorders. Tell them to search the trash cans, but don't turn them on. Destroy them, if you have to."

"Right!" Kyubey responded. "Don't worry, just leave everything to me..."

---

"So let me get this straight," Lelouch said over the psychic link. "What you're saying is that we have a little less than an hour to find and destroy an unknown number of tape recorders before art terrorists mess up everyone's heads while the girls fight a man who can possess people."

"Yep! That's pretty much the gist of it!" Kyubey replied.

"...well, it's not exactly what we planned for, but I think we can handle that. Tell the others to stay on guard. Lelouch out." Lelouch turned to address the rest of the support team, which at the moment consisted of Rivalz, Shirou, and Nina. They were hanging out by the surveillance van that they had rented for the occasion. It was parked right next to Rivalz's motorcycle, which the young man had brought despite Lelouch's insistence not to. "So. Did you get all that?" Lelouch asked.

"Most of it," Rivalz said. "So what's the plan? Drive around in a motorcycle smacking trash cans with baseball bats?"

"Don't be absurd!" Lelouch snapped. "There's already one villain in there, and I doubt he's working alone. We just need to call Sonoda, and wait for his department to show up."

"But who knows how long that could take!" said Shirou. "Every minute we waste is another minute an innocent could get caught in the crossfire!"

"Which could be us if we're not careful." Lelouch put his hand to his face. "Look. I know the two of your are eager to help, but we can do more good by-"

Just then, Lelouch heard a revving sound coming from the direction of the van. By the time he knew what was going on, Rivalz and Shirou were both long-gone, taking Rivalz's motorcycle with them.

"Of course…" Lelouch clenched his fist. Those two were going to get themselves killed, no doubt about it. He then looked at Nina, who cringed a little as Lelouch's icy stare enveloped her. "Guard the van," he said. "And call the police, making sure to ask for Police Chief Sonoda. I'll be back shortly."

Lelouch then broke into what he considered to be a run, but to most people was more of a slight jog. Once he was sure that he was too far for Nina to hear, but not close enough for Shirley to listen in, he pulled out his phone and dialed C.C.'s number.

"C.C., where are you exactly?" Lelouch said.

"...at the base. Where you told me to be." C.C. responded in her monotone way. "Sayoko has been doing an admirable job impersonating you, by the way, and found a very creative way to dispose of the wizard that's been haunting your office the past few days. Oh, and I managed to get in contact with someone who might be able to explain Kallen's condition. You see he thinks it's-"

"Not now!" Lelouch yelled as he began to chase after the runaways. "Listen, is there ANYONE who can get to the Tokyo Dome within the hour?"

"Not that I'm aware of," C.C. said. "The Knights usually despatched to that region are on a mission to Okinawa, fighting an army of skeletons led by a giant-"

"Nevermind then, forget I asked." Lelouch hung the phone without another word. He had only been running for a few seconds, and he was already starting to feel winded. "If I make it out of this alive…" he wheezed, "...I need to get a gym membership..."

---

Just as Lightning and the girls were patrolling one half of the Tokyo Dome, so too were Shinji and Simon busy with the other half. Their vigil was a silent one, with Shinji keeping to himself while Simon guided the Laggan through the corridors of the arena, broken only by the occasional person running from their seat in order to use the bathroom.

In a way, Shinji was glad that nobody else was around to see him; the "costume" he currently wore consisted entirely of his street clothes, plus a plastic sentai mask picked up from the 100-yen shop that covered his face but little else.

Eventually, Shinji decided to break the awkward silence with a simple question: "Why did you become a superhero?" he asked.

"Well… I guess it was for the money," Simon joked. "I'm kidding, of course. I'm not Booster Gold, after all. No, really I was just kinda caught up in a moment."

Shinji nodded. The Spiral Kingdom's invasion of Tokyo was one of his earliest memories. And while it wasn't quite as catastrophic as even the whole "Fal'cie" thing, it was the first time that he realized how dangerous the world was outside of the ivory tower he lived in. He remembered his dad dragging him by the arm through the streets of Shibuya, as the Gunmen descended from the skies, their steely faces wide with malicious grins as they began their rampage. He remembered the bunker that the government officials and their families were sent to. And he remembered his mother, who on that day swore that she would find a way to protect her son...

"Oh. I see," said Shinji. "The day you found that old mech in the junkyard..."

"And the keys, too," Simon said. "I dunno if it was a coincidence, but it was bound to happen eventually." He laughed. "Then Kamina got the idea to steal his own Gunman, and, well, it kinda spiraled out of control from there."

Shinji once again agreed. He and his family had watched the final battle from a grainy pocket television.

"You know I don't think it really clicked untill I met Superman," Simon said. "It was, like, a few days after the battle and everything, and Superman had just gotten back from his mission to the sun, and he stopped by and was like 'Hey you're the guy who saved Tokyo while I was off fighting sun demons from the future. Good job! But maybe a little less killing next time'. And I was like 'HOLY SHIT SUPERMAN TOLD ME I DID A GOOD JOB! Guess I'm a superhero now!'"

Shinji looked stunned. "Wait… you've killed someone?"

Simon's eyes twitched as he realized what he just said. "Ah, well… we didn't really have a choice," he said. "It's hard to empathize with the enemy when you're fighting for survival."

"Ah..." Shinji wasn't sure whether to feel disappointed that Simon quite as perfect as he had hoped, angry at himself for not realizing something so obvious, or relieved that his mentor was being so honest with him.

But before the conversation could continue any further, a red laser beam shot past Shinji's head, causing a nearby soda machine to explode. Slowly they turned their heads towards the source of the laser, and found a most peculiar sight; a man with a pencil-thin moustache wearing a garishly-colored patchwork suit as well as three colored lights.

It was then that Simon had a flash of recognition. "Hey… I recognize you!" he said. "Paul Dekker, AKA Crazy Quilt. Am I right?"

"So what if I am?!" the villain said.

"Well… you're kinda supposed to be dead," said Simon. "How'd you come back to life? And what are you doing in Japan, anyway?"

"None of your business!" Crazy Quilt screamed before firing off another laser from his helmet, which bounced harmlessly off the Lagann as Simon ducked into the cockpit.

Not wanting to become a target himself, Shinji threw up a shield of his own. "You seem pretty calm about this!" he yelped.

"Hey, I've heard of this guy. He's kind of a one-trick pony," Simon said flatly. "Nothing really to worry about-"

And then Crazy Quilt tackled Simon out of his mech and pinned him to the floor. "OH IS THAT A FACT!?" he screamed. "Do you know how many people I've killed because they didn't take me SERIOUSLY?!" He grabbed Simon's head and pushed it up against his own, letting Simon see the villain's blank, soulless eyes in more detail than he ever wanted.

"Oh that's just Crazy Quilt, just another run-of-the-mill loony." He slammed Simon's head up against the concrete floor. "Oh, that's just Crazy Quilt, the guy who goes after Robin because he's not good enough for Batman." He reached into one of his pockets, and pulled out a large paintbrush whose wooden end had been sharpened to a point, and began to hold one of Simon's eyes open using his free hand. "'Oh, that's just Crazy Quilt, the guy who ended up with as suckey name because all the GOOD ONES! WERE! ALREADY! TAKEN!"

His eyes mad with sadistic glee, Crazy Quilt was just about to jab the crude implement right onto Simon's eyeball, with every intention of skewering it like an olive. But before he could do any damage, the mad artist was knocked off his feet by a hexagonal force field slamming into him.

Now free of the villain's clutches, Simon lept to his feet and leapt back into the Lagann. He then looked at Shinji.

"Did you do that?" he said, pointing at the free-floating transparent hexagon that was even now trapping Crazy Quilt between a nearby wall.

Shinji nodded.

"Can do you do any more of those?"

Shinji shook his head. "I've only been able to make one of them at a time…" he then clenched his forehead. "And… I don't think I can hold it forever…"

Simon looked at the trapped villain. Sure enough, Crazy Quilt was slowly but surely prying Shinji's forcefield away from himself.

"We just have to be a bit more creative then…" Simon said. "Try giving it a bit of slack."

Following Simon's directions, Shinji relaxed and let Crazy Quilt push the forcefield away, the sudden change throwing him off balance and sending him toppling over.

"Okay, now press him against the floor."

Complying once again, Shinji reoriented the hexagon to face downward, and pressed down on the furious evildoer.

Now too enraged to speak, Crazy Quilt pointed his face at Shiji and fired a green laser directly at his head in retaliation, only to be blocked by the Laggan stepping into the laser's path just as Simon winced in anticipation.

Unfortunately, Shinji's momentary distraction proved to be all that Crazy Quilt needed in order to escape. He slithered out beneath the forcefield, and broke into a mad dash before vaulting over the Lagann towards Shinji.

Simon tried to grab the flying artist with the Laggan, but the clumsy robot hands lacked the dexterity to grab the moving target. So he abandoned the controls and leapt after the villain, latching onto a section of his colorful costume and falling out of the mech once more.

From here, the fight descended into an all-out brawl between Simon and Crazy Quilt, while Shinji stood on the sidelines trying to figure out who was winning. For a moment, Simon thought he had the advantage; he had more experience with fistfights, and had peripheral vision. But then one of the lights on Crazy Quilt's helmet emitted a blinding flash; leaving Simon barely able to see anything but a blurry afterimage. This gave Crazy Quilt a home field advantage, which he demonstrated with a left-hook to Simon's jaw, throwing Simon against a nearby vending machine.

Shinji tried to intercede by placing his barrier between Crazy Quilt and Simon, but he merely vaulted over it just like he did with the Lagann. Even Shinji's attempt to ram the villain nearly ended in tragedy when he ducked out of the way, almost sending it crashing into Simon.

"DO YOU PEOPLE SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I GET ANGRY!?" Crazy Quilt exclaimed. "DO YOU?"

Slowly, Simon pushed himself off the soda machine, and got back up. "You call that angry?" he asked with a soft chuckle. "You're just throwing a tantrum over how dumb your name sounds. You wouldn't know real anger if it slapped you in the face."

"MY NAME IS NOT DUMB!" Paul Dekker, alias Crazy Quilt pointed his helmet straight at Simon's chest, and launched a trio of deadly lasers, all of which were focused to a single point. But by the time he did Simon was already out the way, so rather than the shower of blood that he had been expecting, Crazy Quilt was instead met with a shower of fizz and bubbles as the other vending machine exploded.

Thinking on his feet, Shinji directed his forcefield so that Simon would land on it, allowing Shinji to carry Simon to safety.

"...It looks like you made him angry," said Shinji, watching as Crazy Quilt fired at the soda cans that were now rolling across the floor.

"That was the idea," Simon replied. "He can't shoot straight when he's frothing at the mouth. Plus we have his attention."

"So now what?"

"Well, now I come up with a better plan. But first I need to make sure everyone's safe…" He concentrated for a moment and thought, "Kyubey; let me talk to Lightning."

There a moment of silence. Then, Simon heard Lightning's voice say "What is it? We're kind of busy," her words aching with tension.

"Oh boy, let me guess; you've got your hands tied fighting a supervillain?" Simon replied.

"Yeah, some lunatic who possesses people. What's on your end?"

"An artist with a trippy helmet who needs to take an anger management class. You know, one of those Gotham crazies. But he's way tougher than he sounds."

"I'll bet." Simon swore he heard a tinge of envy in Lightning's voice. "Look, I can't exactly drop what I'm doing..."

"Don't worry, I understand. Just make sure that Hope and Ino get out of there safely."

There was a brief pause. "Wait... I thought Hope was with you?" said Lightning.

"What? No!" Simon's heart began to race as he tried to hold back the panic. "I told her to go with you!" said Simon.

"Well I certainly can't find her anywhere," said Kyubey. "And the support team seems to be busy with other matters at the moment, so I doubt they'll be any help."

"Oh no... Something must have happened!" Simon said.

"But what are we going to do!?" Shinji whimpered. "We can't just stop fighting and look for her!"

"Calm down, she can't have gone far," said Lightning. "For all we know she's probably with Shulk…"

---

Shulk never really liked concerts very much. As someone who liked to do a lot of thinking, large masses of people were usually an unwanted distraction. Which isn't to say he was a misanthrope, far from it; human ingenuity was one of the few things he had absolute faith in. It's just that he would much rather spend a relaxing afternoon with a close group of friends than getting lost in an endless sea of strangers, even if they all shared a common interest. This, combined with his relative lack of combat experience, was ultimately the rationalization he came up with for deciding to tackle the amusement park solo.

"After all I can get more research done on my own," he told himself. "I just need to be careful, is all."

From a little hide-away inside a shaved-ice stand, Shulk had set up his own base of operations. His laptop had been patched through to the security feed (the Tokyo Dome's security team had been very cooperative in that regard) and had an eye on the entire park. Only a few feet away, a series of weapons, mechon scraps and alchemical components were scattered around the floor, all of which were experiments in various stages of completion.

While Mechon armor wasn't quite invincible, it proved to be extremely durable against anything except for The Monado, even shrugging off explosive weaponry and all but the most powerful of spells. Only the Monado proved to be able to consistently pierce through their defenses, and if Shulk's vision was correct they had found a way around even that. Because of this, finding a way to defeat the Mechon without the Monado was now a top priority. He'd been trying everything from acids to silver nitrate to goat's blood, but nothing seemed to be able to leave any kind of impact on the armor samples he had been supplied with. In fact, the only reason he had an armor sample in the first place was because they once managed to capture a Mechon scout that had gotten stuck in a tree and disassembled it.

As for The Monado, Shulk had the weapon slung across his back, thanks to an ingenious strap that Shirou had made for him.

Shulk looked at his watch; it was nearly 10:30, and by now the concert was well under way. He peeked out from his hiding place behind the counter of a shaved ice stand, and combed the sky at the sky. If the Mechon were going to attack, now would have been a perfect time. All he had to do now is watch the sky until...

Shulk looked towards the ferris wheel, saw a formless mass off in the distance. It was suspended in mid-air, close enough to the ground that Shulk figured he could walk right up to it, but far enough so that it was noticeable even without a pair of binoculars (which Shulk was still kicking himself for forgetting to bring).

He looked at the security feed. Whatever it was, it wasn't visible on any of the cameras; either it was sitting in a blind spot or the intruder was somehow tampering with the cameras.

"Now this is curious..." Shulk thought. "The question is, is this the first wave, or is somebody trying to tell me something?" He looked at the hilt of the Monado. "But even if it is a mechon, it isn't anywhere near as large as THAT one. Theoretically, it could be perfectly safe." He then looked at the exit door. "Then again, it could just as easily be an elaborate trap set by a Dead Apostle, or a shape-shifting lizard person. But no matter what it is, I have to stay on guard..."

Clutching The Monado in his hands, Shulk left the shaved ice stand, and began to creep towards the hovering object.

But as he continued, a realization began to dawn on him. Wasn't this more or less how his vision began? Right in front of the ferris wheel, in plain view of the roller coaster, surrounded by midway booths? Could it be that in an attempt to thwart the destiny foretold by his vision, he might have accidentally caused the chain of events that led up to this moment in the first place? He shuddered at the thought; If this was true, how was he supposed to know which visions he could change, and which ones he couldn't? What did this say about free will, and self determination? And furthermore-

"How are things going, Shulk?"

Shulk's heart skipped a beat as he turned around to see who was addressing him, but found nothing more than his own shadow, lying against the ground. It took him a couple seconds to realize that the voice in his head was Kyubey, addressing him telepathically.

"Don't scare me like that," Shulk replied. "You really caught me off guard there."

"Ah. Right, fear. Another human emotion I keep forgetting," said Kyubey. "In that case I will try to take your emotional state into account before updating you. Should I come back later?"

"No, now's fine." Having collecting himself, Shulk resumed his methodical approach. "I'm very good at multitasking. What's going on?"

"Simon and Lightning are currently engaging an enemy; apparently from a group called 'Are We Cool Yet', who are planning to use an acoustic weapon to make everyone in the stadium unable to hear music."

"That does sound like something they would do," Shulk replied.

"So you've heard of them, then?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Shulk grimaced. "We have a couple of their more dangerous creations locked up back at Atlas and we still don't know how they work... but we're getting off track here. Any signs of Mechon involvement?"

"Nope!" Shulk imagined Kyubey raising his ears as he said this. "Perhaps this is all a big coincidence, and the Mechon haven't arrived yet."

"There are no such things as coincidences," thought Shulk. "Everything up until now has implied that while the Mechon themselves are non-sentient, an intelligent entity is either controlling, producing, or directing them. Something like that could easily manipulate a group as undirected and unfocused as Are We Cool Yet." the metaphorical gears in Shulk's mind began to spin. "Perhaps they're trying to get the local superheroes all in place so they can… kill them? Harvest them? It's a bit early to say at this point."

"What should I tell the others?"

Shulk held his breath as he approached even closer to his target. "Tell them that I'm busy, but I'll join them when I'm done." He began to make out a humanoid figure, slouched over on a floating chair of some sort. "Whatever the Mechon are up to, it won't matter if the artists get to them first. I'll tell you if I find anything."

"Very well then. Good luck!" Kyubey with that, Shulk was once again alone in his own mind.

And just in time, too. For Shulk had managed to get close enough to the floating figure that he was able to see it quite clearly. It was a man, or at least something that looked like one, wearing a blue jumpsuit with an intricate design printed across his chest that was not unlike a symmetrical circuit board. He rested an an enormous green chair that was, sure enough, floating in space. It looked like something out of a 60's science-fiction pulp, with a sleek, elegant design that harkened back to how people imagined the future that ultimately never was.

But it was the face that really got to Shulk. It was cold, distant, and uncaring, but also focused and dignified, as if the man wearing it was contemplating a dozen more important matters, and that Shulk's presence was an unfortunate but necessary distraction.

Slowly, the man's eyes directed themselves towards Shulk. And without even bothering to move his head, the man on the green chair began to speak.

"Greetings, human," the man said. "I am Metron, of the New Gods." His eyes swivelled as they examined Shulk from top to bottom. "Being a member of Atlas, you have no doubt heard of me. Have you not?"

"I believe so..." Shulk said. "You're the time-traveler, right?"

"Correct," Metron said.

"That's what I figured," Shulk had nearly frozen in fright, but he found that his mouth was still quite eager to move. "Even if I hadn't know about your involvement with JLA operations, I still would have guessed who you were based on the occasional trace you've left in Earth's history. The Mages Associations has actually recovered inscriptions depicting you and you and your time-traveling 'mobius chair', mostly from powerful clairvoyants who were sensitive to spiritual-"

"I did not arrive in this time period to hear a lecture about myself." Metron continued to watch Shulk without moving. "Even if I did care for such things, for now there is little time. Please hand me the Monado."

Not eager to find out what happens when you say 'no' to a time-traveling deity, Shulk gracefully handed over his weapon.

"At the moment I am locked in a struggle with a cosmic entity colloquially known as 'The Time Trapper'." Metron began to examine the blade that Shulk had given him, this time moving his head just enough so he could examine the Monado while it was in his lap. "Not any Time Trapper you may know of, but rather the original Time Trapper, of which all others are mere echoes."

"I… see." Shulk stared at Metron, futilely trying to grasp what could possibly be going on in that nearly-alien mind of his. "And I'm guessing it's like a vast, cosmic chess game far beyond any human's ability to comprehend…"

"It would be more apt to describe it as an eight dimensional strategy game where the full rules are unknown, half of pieces are invisible, and both sides are cheating." Metron flipped the blade over, and began fiddling with the interface.

"And is that what you're doing right now? Cheating?" Shulk watched as Metron sorted through menus and screens that he had never seen before, attempting to memorize them so that he might be able to experiment them later.

"For the sake of my clumsy, three-dimensional metaphor, yes." He raised the Monado up into the air, and extended the laser portion of the blade, which began to glow bright green. "The Monado is a true anomaly, having power over not only Mana, but also the very concepts of Fate and Destiny. Keeping it from falling into the wrong hands is nothing if not essential to stopping His plans."

Shulk stared at the spectacle with disbelief. "...and how exactly are you planning to do that?"

"I have just started transmitting a charged signal backwards in time using 5-dimensional anti neutrinos. When the signal collapses back into 4-D space, it will resonate with your past self and produce a vision of near-future events. This will inspire you to start an investigation of the Tokyo Dome, which will in turn lead you down a very specific series of events including this very conversation we are having now."

Shulk blinked. "This… raises so many questions."

"Which I will attempt to answer. As long as they do not involve the specifics of the future, operation of the Monado, The New Gods, The Time Trapper, or any technology or magecraft that your species has not yet discovered on it's own."

Shulk thought carefully about what he would say next. "What's so important about the Tokyo Dome?"

"The Dome itself is irrelevant. It is someone inside the Dome who will ensure that best path is achieved."

Not satisfied with this answer but aware that Mentron wasn't likely to budge, Shulk changed subjects. "Why did you not appear in my vision?"

"When I created the signal that alerted your past self, I carefully edited myself out of the proceedings in an attempt to hide my tracks from my adversary."

"I guess that would make sense…" Shulk said. "And I'm guessing you added the Mechon in order to convince me further, correct?"

"No, I'm afraid not." Metron handed the Monado back to Shulk. "The appearance of that particular Face Unit will be a natural consequence of both you and I using the Monado. In fact, I have taken the liberty of temporarily reducing the Monado's signal shielding in order to accelerate that time table, ensuring that your next encounter will take place very shortly."

Shulk was taken aback. "What?! But why?!"

"I'm afraid I cannot tell you that. But rest assured that if you survive, this path will eventually lead you to a powerful ally who will be essential in the trials to come."

"Are you MAD?!" Shulk exclaimed.

"Perhaps." Metron continued to wear his steely, unflinching expression. "Many have accused me of insanity before, and occasionally it was warranted."

"And I don't suppose I have a choice but to help you?"

"You've never had a choice in the matter. No one has. Not until now, anyway."

"How… ominous," was about all that Shulk could bring himself to say.

Metron pushed a few buttons on his chair, which began to crackle. Then, both it the deity seated upon began to fade out of view. "And now I must go," he said. "There is much to do, and only a finite period in which I can accomplish it. We will not meet again until either after the final battle has been won, or the chance of victory has dropped to exactly zero percent."

Having said all that he wish, Metron disappeared back into the mists of time, leaving Shulk bewildered beyond all compare.

"...what on earth have I gotten myself into?" he said.

Realizing there wasn't a moment to lose, Shulk looked to the sky to begin a fearful search for the Mechon that the enigmatic had warned him about. This fear turning to panic when he suddenly heard the deafening roar of a jet engine flying overhead; the same roar that he had heard in his vision.

"Okay… don't panic." he thought. "Metron said he didn't make any changes to this part, which means it's going to land right… behind me!"

A brief "thunk" echoed from behind Shulk, prompting him to bolt in the opposite direction, sprinting towards the ferris wheel.

"Okay, what are my options?" he thought. "Fighting it directly is no good, the rest of the team is occupied, and leading it towards the Dome would just result in casualties." Shulk looked behind his shoulder to see how far away he had gotten. "The brute looks too slow to win in a short-term chase, but he might have the stamina for something more long-term. My best bet is to find somewhere to hide and..."

Another rocketing sound was heard from behind Shulk, and suddenly the obsidian monstrosity from Shulk's vision flew right past him, making a generous swipe at Shulk as it passed, missing only because Shulk had the good fortune to have correctly guessed its move. Its feet screeched as they scraped across the ground as it decelerated to a sudden stop. The robot then began turning itself around to face its prey, revealing itself in all of its horrible majesty.

It was just as Shulk had remembered it from both his vision and his last encounter with the beast. Same emaciated body, same sharpened fingers, same skeletal mask stitched shut by unidentifiable wires that groaned as the machine opened it's mouth.

But this time, instead of releasing a bloodcurdling laugh, the Mechon began to speak.

"[Thought you could get away, didn't ya', boy?]" it began to say. "[Thought ya' could just up and run off with the Monado, and leave me behind?]"

Shulk tried to move, but found that his knees had frozen in place. Every word that machine said sounded like the gnashing of gears over heavily distorted speech. The fact that it spoke with the accent of a British thug did nothing to alleviate Shulk's fear; if anything the implication that the machine held a humanlike intelligence was deeply worrying.

"[Well, boy? Are you just going to stand there gawking, or are you gonna try and fight back?]" The Mechon began to swivel it's fingers eagerly. "[Not that it matters; you was dead the second my sensors found that blade of 'yers!]"

"Which means he didn't spot Metron..." Desperate to keep him speaking while he rummaged through his stuff, Shulk said, "[So you can talk, then?]"

"[Surprised?]" the mechon asked. "[I bet you thought I was just some nameless grunt, just another unruly animal to be put to down!]" the ground shook as the robot began to march towards Shulk. "[Oh but I'm no animal; I can think, after all. In fact I've spent sleepless night and endless days doing nothing but thinking. And do you want to know what I think about, boy?]" The Mechon began dragging his claw across the ground, throwing up concrete and leaving enormous claw marks in the ground. ["I spend all that that time thinking about what it would be like to TEAR THE MONADO FROM YOUR COLD, LIFELESS BODY!]"

The Mechon then charged forward, claws bared and ready to cut Shulk to ribbons.

Thinking quickly, Shulk threw a vial of powder onto the ground, where it cracked open. He then flicked on a handheld lighter, and tossed it to where the vial had landed, and covered his eyes before it erupted in a bright flash.

Reflexively the Mechon covered its own eyes, it's momentum carrying it past Shulk, where it crashed into a nearby restroom while Shulk himself used the distraction to dash down alleyway between the two nearest booths.

"Magnesium and ammonium perchlorate… a potent mixture to be sure, but I only had enough to do that once." Having put some distance between himself and the Mechon, Shulk ducked into a booth with a taffy machine in order to catch his breath. "I doubt it will set him off the trail for long, though. I need to come up with a new plan..." He pulled out the Monado, and began fidding with it, trying to recall the sequence Metron had used on it in the first place.

"Wacha' doin?" Hon'kale said.

"I'm trying to figure out how to create a distraction," said Shulk. "Metron was able to use it to attract the Mechon's attention, but I think if I can focus its energy into a plasma I might just be able to..."

He then looked up with puzzlement, and turned to his side to see that Hon'kale was now leaning over him, lying across the counter that sat right above Shulk's head.

Shulk immediately pulled her down, and whispered. "What are you doing…? Where did you…? How did you get here?"

"Oh, I just hid in your shadow." the girl said, pointing behind her back. "It's probably my coolest power. Wanna see?"

"...not right now!" Shulk whispered frustratedly. "Go back with Simon and… actually no, it's too dangerous. Just stay here and be quiet while I try to figure a way out of this."

The girl peaked her head out from behind the counter to try and get a look at the robot. "[Okay, cool, I got a few ideas myself. Like, maybe you could call a giant laser from the sky? Can it do something like that? Ooh! I know! Maybe you could use it to cut a hole in reality and send him straight to the bottom of-]"

Shulk pulled the girl down, and covered his hand over her mouth. "[Listen, I appreciate the help, but I need to focus on creating a distraction.]" He looked back down at the Monado. "[Once that's out of the way, I can start putting together a method by which we can trap the Mechon, and possibly even dismantle… it…]" When shulk looked back up, he found that Hon'kale was no longer with him.

It took him about three seconds to figure out what was going to happen next. "Oh bloody hell…" he muttered.

Just a moment later, a childish voice echoed through the park. "[HEY, UGLY!]" it shouted. "[YO MOMMA'S SO FAT, THAT WHEN SHE GOT ON A SCALE, BUZZ LIGHTYEAR POPPED OUT AND SAID 'TO INFINITY, AND BEYOND!']"

Now it was Shulk's turn to peak out from behind the counter, and it was from here he saw Hon'kale scampering about, dodging the Mechon's clumsy swipes with careful leaps, ducks and sidesteps.

"[GAAH! You little brat! I'll squash you like an insect!]"

"[Yeah, well, first you'll have to catch me!" the girl then displayed some very impressive parkour as she scrambled up a nearby flagpole, leaping off of it and onto the roof of a nearby gift shop just as the mechon cut it down.

From there she leapt onto the roller coaster track, and turned around to give the killer robot a childish raspberry.

The Mechon then activated its boosters, and took to the air in attempted to follow the girl, but every time he got close he would accidentally brush up against one of the rails, inadvertently bending the structure into a new shape that made Hope's escape that much easier.

And for a solid minute, Shulk just stood there, watching the spectacle unfold. "Well… that is technically what I was asking for." He then pulled up a map of the amusement park on his phone. "And at least she has the good sense to try and keep him away from me." He glanced over the main attractions for a moment, and then opened another window so that he could look up how one would go about hotwiring amusement park attractions. "All I need now is something I can use to keep the Mechon held down..."

Shulk looked at the taffy machine. His plan then started to click into place...

---

Madoka Kamine was having a hard time enjoying the concert. It wasn't that she didn't like the music, it was more the fact that her friends didn't seem to be enjoying it either. Every so often Sayaka would try and engage Kamijou in a bit of small talk, but Kamijou would only give vague, noncommittal responses, as if he was more interested in the music than whatever Sayaka had to say. He even moved his hand when Sayaka tried the whole "innocently grasp the hand of the boy sitting next to you" thing that Sayaka said always worked in movies, though Madoka hoped it was just a coincidence.

And then there was all the psychic chatter that Kyubey was directing. Since Sayaka wanted to pay full attention to "Operation Kyosuke" (or "Operation True Love", Sayaka kept flip-flopping on that), she left it to Madoka to pay attention to how the team was doing.

And truth be told, things weren't going well. Two fights with supervillains had already broken out, and while this did mean that a fleet of invincible robots wasn't going to arrive anytime soon, everyone in the Dome was still in danger, and they didn't even know it. It was amazing how Kyubey, who even now was seated comfortably in Madoka's lap, could be so calm about all this.

Still, Madoka had faith in the Justice Society to pull through. After all, there was still time to…

"Sayaka? Are you there? Hello?" Shulk's voice suddenly rang in Madoka's head.

"Sayaka said she didn't want to be disturbed right now," Madoka replied. "She's kind of busy..."

"Well tell her to drop whatever she's doing because this is important!" Despite not being able to see him, Madoka could tell that he sounded worried. "I'm with Hon'kale, and we're pinned down at the amusement park by a rogue Mechon. I've got a plan to escape, but until then we need someone to go to the sound room."

"The what?"

"The sound room; the place where all of the speakers are controlled, and- look, just put your friend on the line will you?"

"Actually, I connected Sayaka back up to the psychic link approximately fifteen seconds ago," said Kyubey. "You see I interpreted your emotional state as being 'panicked', so I bypassed Madoka in order to-"

"Yes yes, you did a good job," interrupted Shulk, "Now Sayaka, can you hear me?"

"Uh… yeah, I guess so," thought Sayaka, though Madoka thought she heard a tinge of worry in her "voice". "What's going on? And no technobabble this time."

"Actually it would be 'magibabble', but um, yes. A group of art terrorists are going to play magic cassette tapes for evil ironic hipster reasons. It would be a very bad thing if they did this."

"But wait," Madoka interjected, "I thought Rivalz and Shirou were on that?"

---

Meanwhile, Rivalz Cardemonde wheezed as he and Shriou slowly pushed Rivalz's motorcycle up a flight of stairs.

"I don't know if this is really worth it…" said Shirou.

"No way, this is going to be awesome!" Rivalz replied, shoulder braced against the vehicle while his hands were clutched tightly to the baseball bat he was carrying. "Now keep pushing! We're almost there!"

---

Madoka thought she could hear someone sigh.

"Rivalz and Shirou are… not my first choice," said Shulk. "And in any case they wouldn't be able to fight back if they came across a rogue metahuman."

"But the tape recorders in the trash cans…"

"Are a distraction," Shulk with an air of finality. "While they might be able to get some sick kicks off of ruining the lives of a few people, Are We Cool Yet would settle for nothing less than a full public display. That means they'd need to have hijack the sound system." There was a brief pause for a moment. "And unless stopped, my guess is that they'll throw the switch and expose everyone to that tape."

Sayaka blinked. "What tape?" she asked.

"I heard Lightning telling Kyubey, about it," Madoka said. "It's some kind of… mind thing that makes it impossible to hear music…"

Having heard this, Sayaka suddenly leapt up from her seat. A frantic look in her eyes, she turned to Kyosuke and said. "Hey I'm going to the bathroom but it might be a while okay so you should leave- no wait I mean you shouldn't leave- no wait I mean you may or may not have to leave, depending on if anything bad- I mean if Madoka says you should okay?"

Kyosuke Kamijou looked back at Sayaka, meeting Sayaka's rambling with a thoroughly blank expression. "Um… okay?" he said.

"Great see you later!" Sayaka called back as she ran off to find a safe place to transform.

Kyosuke then looked at Madoka. "Is she always doing this?" he said.

"Heh-heh…" Madoka did a nervous laugh, and tried to figure out what to say in order to smooth things over. "She's really nice once you get to know her…"

"I'll bet…" Kyosuke looked back at the concert with an uninterested gaze.

Madoka hung her head in shame. She didn't think she was making things any better. "But at least they can't get any worse…" she thought.

"Madoka?" said a somewhat familiar voice, "is that you? I didn't know you were coming to this concert!"

Maoka looked up, and saw the familiar face of Hitomi Shizuki, one of Madoka's friends from school. She had messy green hair as well as a pair of matching green eyes, which always seemed to wear a soft, almost forgiving expression.

"Where have you and Sayaka been?" she asked. "It's like, you guys just disappear off the face of the face of the earth whenever school gets out. You got cram school or something?"

Madoka felt a twinge of regret. Unlike Sayaka and Madoka, Kyubey had never approached Hitomi with an offer to become a magical girl. Apparently she "wasn't the right type", as Kyubey had put it. "Yeah, that's us!" she said. "I mean you've got piano recitals, and we have cram school!"

Kyosuke looked at Hitomi with raised eyebrow. "You play the piano?"

"Occasionally," she said. "I started out playing for fun, but I've got family who likes to come over and listen."

"And let me guess;" Kyosuke said, as if he had heard it a thousand times before. "Your favorite piece is Pachelbel's 'Canon in D'. Or maybe something by Beethoven?"

"Nothing so cliched!" Hitomi giggled. "Actually I'm more partial to contemporary pieces, especially some of the stuff produced by Japanese musicians, especially-"

"Um…" Madoka interrupted. "Don't… you… have a seat to get to?"

"Oh don't worry, it's actually right over there." Hitomi pointed to an empty seat a few spaces behind them. "I just wanted to catch up with some of my old friends. Is Sayaka with you?"

"Yes, but…"

"I understand; sometimes you just have to go. I'll just wait until she comes back." She inched her way past Madoka, and sat down in Sayaka's seat. "I'm Hitomi, by the way." She extended her hand. "Hitomi Shizuki."

"Kyosuke Kamijou…" the young man replied, accepting her handshake.

"Oh yeah, you're the violin prodigy, aren't you?" Hitomi said, holding onto Kyosuke's hand a bit longer than one would expect for a handshake. "I heard your hand is doing better, how long until you'll be coming back to school?"

"...a few days, I guess," said Kyosuke. "I'd like to say I'm not looking forward to it, but all the time in the hospital hasn't exactly been a vacation… Kinda looking forward to getting to solve a math problem without having to dictate it to someone else."

"I can imagine. I'm guessing it's like, 'now just carry the two… no that two!'"

"Don't even get me started on what I have to go through for long division," Kyosuke joked. He looked at his only recently-healed hand. "I'm not quite ready to hold a pencil yet, but I'm getting close."

"I bet you're excited to play again."

"For sure," he said. "I was practically green with envy from all the music Sayaka kept bringing me…"

"Hey, I'm actually working on this new composition. It's kind of amateurish, but I think it's off to a good start. Think you could come over and give me a few tips?"

"...Well piano music isn't exactly my specialty, but I'll see what I can do," he said. "What kind of piece is it?"

"Well, it's… kind of this short… happy song, like something you'd want to hear on a nice, spring day. I don't have the lyrics just yet, but it's probably more important to get the melody down first."

"Understandable," Kyosuke said. "Too many godawful pop song have been produced because the they wrote the lyrics first and couldn't find a good melody for them."

"Ha. You can say that again…" said Hitomi.

Madoka watched as Kyosuke and Hitomi continued to talk, without even so much as looking at the concert was going. Madoka wanted to intervene, but wasn't sure if she should. Or even if she could in the first place. After all, what would she say? "Kyosuke, you can't fall in love with Hitomi because Sayaka made a magic wish to fix your arm"? Even if he believed it, it would just convince Kyosuke that Sayaka was some kind of crazy stalker. And furthermore it would break Sayaka's heart to have her best friend betray her secret identity like that.

So Madoka sat in her chair, and watched helplessly as Kyosuke and Hitomi got to know each other.

"What do I do, Kyubey?" Madoka thought. "I don't want to see Sayaka's wish go to waste…"

"You could wish for them to fall in love," Kyubey said. "Or better yet, wish for the power to make other people fall in love, so you could reuse it!"

"But that's mind control." Madoka gave Kyubey a concerned look as she stroke his ears. "I don't think anyone would like that, especially not Sayaka. I'm talking about what I can do without magic."

"Well, you did ask." Kyubey closed his eyes and raised his chin to let Madoka scratch it. "Human emotions are not something that my species has, so I don't think I'll be the best help with this."

"I see…" Madoka sighed. "I guess we just have to hope that Sayaka gets back soon…"

---

Back at the food court, Shirley and Lightning continued to face off against Mr. Nobody. The only sound breaking the tension was that of the rushing water thanks to the sprinkler system. That, and the sound of Mister Nobody making do karate poses while hollering like an Idiot.

"Someone's seen too many Bruce Lee movies…" Lightning looked at her gunblade, which even now was refusing to change back to gun form. "Looks like Ino disenchanted it," she thought. "There goes the plan to use stun rounds… and even if I had a taser it's too wet to use right now." She then looked at Ino's Keyblade, which was even now lying on the floor. "The only bright side is that he doesn't recognize his advantage..."

She looked at Shirley, who was currently biting her lip, and repeatedly looking back and forth between Lightning and the possessed Ino. "The girl needs to work on her poker face, but at least she seems to get what's going on."

The Inspector then looked down at the water pooling around their feet. "I really don't have time for this. Let's hope this doesn't freeze any pipes or anything... "

Lightning pointed her hand to the floor, and focused the mana in her body until a small blue orb appeared in her hand. She then shouted "Girlborg, think fast!" before hurling the orb into the ground. It disappeared with a soft crackle, and suddenly the water on the floor became frozen solid, leaving a frozen ripple at the point of impact.

Both Shirley and Mister Nobody tried to leap just in time to avoid the cascading freeze, but Nobody's timing was slightly off; Ino's feet ended up stuck in the ice while the rest of her body had toppled over.

"GAAH!" Mister Nobody shouted. "What the hell? This kid isn't even wearing shoes!" He grunted as he tried to pull Ino's feet out of the ice. "What kind of irresponsible parents does she have, anway? I mean come on..."

Shirley looked at Lightning. "So… now what?"

"Now we find a way to secure Ino until either Mr. Nobody decides to stop possessing Ino, or we find a way to make him stop," Lightning replied. "Just put him in an arm lock for now; that way if he figures out how to summon the Keyblade, he won't be able to use it."

"...Right…" Shirley approached Mr. Nobody, who even now was forcing Ino to claw at the ground, desperately trying to dig the Keyblade out from beneath the ice. "How exactly do I do that?"

"It's not too difficult." Lightning took a deep breath as she tried to figure out a way walk Shirley through the process. "First, wrap your right arm around her neck… yes, like that. Now put your your left arm under her right… no that's her left. Her right is on your left. Okay. Now grab her by the shoulder… with your left hand, not your right. Now gently pull her forward, and then let go of her left… no, no, that's her right! Arg…" Lightning shook her head. "I think we need to find a martial arts tutor for you."

"No, no! Please, continue!" said Mr. Nobody, who had just finished replicating Lightning's steps to the letter. "And then if my legs were free, I'd kick her in the face, right?"

"...you know what? Forget the armlock." Lightning cupped her palms in her face. "Girlborg, I know you're stronger than Ino. Just… hold her arms together or something."

"Okay…" Shirley said. By slowly pushing Ino's arms away, Shirley was able to break free from Mr. Nobody with minimal effort. She then circled around and seized Ino's body in a tight bear hug, her metal arms closing around Ino's more ones like a bolt caught in a vice grip.

But in spite of the complete reversal, Mr. Nobody did not appear to be distraught. "Oooh!" he said. "I need to get a photo of this."

He then leapt directly out of Ino's chest, and rolled back into a standing position, where he pulled out his cell phone and began snapping pictures of Shirley staring dumbfounded at him while still holding onto Ino.

"Man," he laughed. "If they aren't writing slash fic about you guys yet then they certainly will now!"

Lightning responded to this with a swift karate chop to the neck, causing Mr. Nobody to fall to the floor.

"If I end up taking these lessons, will I get to learn how to do that?" asked Shirley, point to Lightning.

"I hope so," said Lighting. "Wouldn't be a very good teacher otherwise." She looked down at Mr. Nobody. "Now we have to get him secure, before he either wakes up or decides to stop playing possum-"

But once again, Mr. Nobody sprang up from what should have been an incapacitating blow, and shouted "SUCKER PUNCH III: RISE OF THE SUBTITLE!" before diving feet-first towards Lightning.

Instinctively, she pulled her weapon out to block, but only succeeded in shattering the disenchanted gunblade as Mr. Nobody's foot collided with it en route to Lightning's chest, which he phazed right into.

At that moment, Lighting felt her muscles go both limp and tense at the same time. She could feel Mister Nobody's presence taking over her nervous system one synapse at a time, with each victory stabbing Lightning like a thousand red-hot pokers drilling into her skin.

And then, just when Lightning felt like she couldn't take it any longer, she heard her own voice say. "Now this is more like it!" She then watched helplessly as the being locked within her skin poured over every inch of her body. "Looks like this body is stronger, faster, not jailbait…" Lighting then felt the sensation of fish hooks pulling at her skin as felt her own arms move to clutch her own chest. "And if I'm not mistaken, it looks like this body has much larger blargagargagagrgagerg…"

Mr. Nobody stumbled over as Lightning focused every ounce of her willpower on freeing her body from his clutches. As bad as the pain was it was nowhere near as painful as becoming a Cie'th. With pain like that hanging over their heads, it was no wonder that L'cie always try to complete their Focus. But during the Tokyo Incident, Lightning and her allies had the will not just to fight back, but to win. Something that, as far as she knew, nobody had ever done before.

No. Compared to that, whatever pain Mr. Nobody could dish out was nothing.

"Still… this isn't much more than a distraction. It'll only be worthwhile if Shirley figures out how to take advantage of an opening…"

Through Lightning's eyes, Mr. Nobody watched Shirley carefully. The girl hesitated for a moment, but then charged forward with her fist held wide, clearly ready to swing for the head.

Mr. Nobody fought Lightning over dodging the attack, with Lightning concentrating on planting her feet on the ground, and holding her arms to her side, while Mr. Nobody struggled to find a way to avoid the attack anyway. Lightning finally eased off a little when Mr. Nobody had the idea to try to block Shirley's attack with Lightning's breasts, thinking that they would both cushion the blow and provide a bit of "accidental perversion" that he could taunt the girl with.

What he didn't know was that the chest is actually one of the more sensitive parts of a woman's body. He also didn't know that while a L'cie was far more durable than a regular human, they were also no more intolerant to pain, and that being punched by a super-strong robot girl is seriously going hurt no matter where the blow lands. As a result, Mr. Nobody violently ejected himself from Lightning's body just a few moments after Shirley's fist connected, sending him crashing through the ceiling, screaming like a banshee as he soared into the night sky, screaming "LIKE A BANSHEEEEEEEE..." all the while.

After looking up at the hole in the ceiling to make sure that Mr. Nobody was gone, she got down and helped Lightning back up to her feet. "Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Lightning said before casting a healing spell on herself. "How's Ino doing?"

Shirley Looked at Ino, who had finished hacking her way out of the ice with her Keyblade and was now sitting on a chair in order to avoid stepping on the ice. "She looks fine to me. No sign of frostbite or anything..."

"Good," Lightning said. "Things would have been tricky if we had to amputate."

Shirley winced at Lighting's remark. "...you're joking, right?"

"Mostly." Lightning gathered up the broken weapon pieces on the ground. "Now let's hurry; we have to track down whoever's masterminding this before something else goes..." remembering what happened the last few times she tempted fate, Lightning stopped herself mid sentence.

But by then it was already too late. She heard a voice cry "...EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" First looking at the hole, then at Shirley standing under it, Lightning began to say "Get away from there!" but only managed to blurt out the first two syllables before a falling Mr. Nobody rocketed straight into Shirley.

Shirley then went limp, her eyes hanging open as she fell straight to the floor…

---

"SUCKER PUNCH, UN-NUMBERED THIS TIME BECAUSE WE'RE REBOOTING THE- oh wait nobody's around to hear me, damn." Mr. Nobody looked around for a bit. He always ended up in some kind of weird mental world whenever he tried to take over someone's mind, and had to fight his target's own metaphorical demons before he could seize control. The pink-haired woman had a pretty tough setup; a maze of twisting, neon tunnels covered in crystaline artwork that would inevitably unfold into a cascading array of lasers, turrets, tripwires, buzzsaws, and laser turret wiresaws. The little girl's on the other hand was much easier; it was just a blank white room that held a lobotomy patient, who was drooling a small puddle on the floor.

But this one was a bit different. It looked like a cathedral of some sort, but with hospital beds in place of the pews and altars one would normally expect. The entire room appeared to be made of shiny brasswork, but a few parts had fallen off, revealing a hidden layer of bones and rotting flesh.

But as strange as this was, it would not compare to the activity at the far end of the room.

The air smelled of grease and motor oil as Clockwork angels, made of gears so fine and intricate that they appeared almost skeletal in form that were dressed in metallic togas carried staves decorated with gears and springs that radiated a brightly flickering fluorescent light. Their synthesized voices trumped in unison, chanting Latin phrases that sounded more like assembly instruction than religious verse. The automated choir was gathered around a iron cross, upon which a body was crucified. Black smoke was pouring out of the crucified body, collecting on the ground like pools of blood instead of rising into the air. It looked like the girl he had just possessed, but most of her flesh had rotten off to reveal a shape that was not unlike the clockwork angels themselves.

Every so often, the angels would gather their power and try to drive back the smoke. But each time, the smoke coiled back only for a moment, before impaling the clockwork angels with trendels of darkness, leaving their clockwork innards strewn across the cathedral floor. Moments later, more angels would fly in from a hole in the ceiling, and the cycle would begin once again.

Mr. Nobody was about to say something snarky; perhaps a comment on how heavy-handed the meaningless symbolism was, but something about the place seemed to drain all the life out of him. His most primal survival instincts, once buried under eons of evolutionary conditioning, had now unearthed themselves. They screamed for him to get out, begged to put the scene in front of him out of his mind, pleaded to go anywhere, ANYWHERE else from the place he currently was.

Yet all this screaming was in vain. Curiosity got the better of Mister Nobody and he found himself drawn ever closer to the spectacle, figuring that whatever it was that was making him so fearful was probably worth a look...

But just when he was close enough to reach out and touch one of the "angels", the ground shook with unprecedented force. Chunks of metal and rot fell from the ceiling as the cathedral began tearing itself apart, while the angels fled to higher ground. Soon, the roof and walls had disappeared completely, revealing a vast, artificial cosmos, with lightbulbs for stars, vast, whirring gizmos for planets, upon which little tin men lived simple, orderly lives, along predetermined paths like so many slot-cars.

And in the center of this cosmos stood a vast shape, ever-changing in nature. At one moment, it was a metal worm with gears for teeth, that devoured entire continents. The next moment it was a great mass of cogs, spinning endlessly as it awaited tribute. In another moment it wasn't even a physical being at all, but a sentient language that could only be understood by those who could not speak.

It was then that the great being turned it's attention to Mister Nobody, an insignificant speck on the great tapestry of creation. The being then assumed all of its forms simultaneously, operating in a state of incomprehensible flux. It then opened its infinite mouths to speak, and said but a single word. A word that was not a request, or even an order, but rather an absolute statement of authority made manifest.

"Leave."

---

"...Hey? You awake?"

Shirley opened her eyes to see Lightning standing over her.

"Yeah… at least I hope so." Shirley felt like her head was pounding. "I mean there's always the chance this could all be some kind of nightmare…" she tried to get up, but found that her arms had been bound with a pair of handcuffs.

"Wouldn't that be a weird twist…" Lightning fished through her pockets for the key. "You were out for nearly a whole minute, and then he just lept out like he was running away from something." Lightning then began to undo Shirley's handcuffs, giving Shirley a perfect view of the window that Mr. Nobody had jumped out. "What exactly happened in there?"

"...aaah..." Shirley wasn't really really sure what to say; she had blacked out as soon as Mr. Nobody took control. "Y-your guess is as good as mine," Shirley said. "I don't really know."

Lightning gave Shirley a doubtful look, but decided against pursuing the matter any further. "Now get up," she said. "He might have run off, but he's still at large. We'd better catch him before he does something drastic."

"Right…" Shirley got up, and brushed the ice crystals off off her skirt. "Sorry about punching you, by the way…"

"Don't worry, it had to be done," Lightning said. "I can take a hit or two, and he was the one feeling all the pain. It's not like we had too many other options."

"I guess…" Lightning looked over to see what Ino was doing, and found her sitting next to a pile of broken ice with her legs crossed in such a way that her bare feet were folded into her jacket, and weren't touching the ice-covered floor. She seemed lost in thought, almost as if she was trying to remember something…

"Is something wrong, Ino?" Shirley asked.

"What does 'Nobody' mean?" Ino cocked her head to the side. "That guy called himself 'Mister Nobody', right? And I think I've heard that word before…"

"I wouldn't be surprised. It's a pretty common word," Shirley said. "It means… um…" Shirley paused as she tried to find a way to explain such an abstract concept.

"No person, or a lack of a person," said Lightning. "As in, 'nobody is here'; that is, there are no people here. It could also mean 'an unimportant person'." she then looked at Ino suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"

Ino closed her eyes, and shook her head. "I dunno… I thought I remembered something for a moment there, but it's gone now." She reached into her pocket and pulled out an index card to jot out an additional note to herself.

"I see…" Lightning watched Ino scrubbing for few moments more, and then started off towards the hole Mr. Nobody left in his wake. "Now come on, it looks like he's heading towards the stage. Grab Ino and follow my lead." Almost immediately, Lightning broke into a run and lept through the same broken window.

"But I-" Shirley began to protest, but Lightning was right. As long as that maniac was still around people's lives were at stake. Even if meant accidently brainwashing Miku or revealing her secret identity, Shirley wouldn't be able to forgive herself if someone got hurt due to her own inaction.

"Right!" In one swift motion, Shirley scooped Ino into her arms and dashed through the window as well, aiming for one of the landings on the staircase that separated the different sections of seating. Unfortunately, Ino then took that moment to wrap her arms around Shirley's head, distracting Shirley enough that she missed the spot she was aiming at and ended up tumbling down a few more sections, where she landed face first into a bucket of popcorn.

"Uh… excuse me, miss?" said the red-haired young man who evidently was not used to attractive teenage girls literally falling into his lap. "Are you ok-?"

"EVERYTHING'S FINE!" Shirley shouted as she pulled her face out of the bucket. "NOTHING GOING WRONG HERE. By the way did you see the other girl I was-" the young man pointed at Ino, who had miraculously landed on her feet only a few meters away, slightly dazed but otherwise uninjured. "Oh thank god…" Shirley breathed a sigh of relief. She then turned to the young man and said "Sorry about the popcorn, here, I'll pay you back…" and reached into her back pocket for her wallet, only to realize that her outfit didn't actually have pockets. "Um… okay. I don't know how this usually goes, but… just… send a letter to the Zenigata building and I promise I'll pay you back, okay?"

Shirley then began to run towards the stage, leaving the young man to explain things to what was either his girlfriend or his sister (Shirley couldn't really tell). "I am so sorry…" Shirley heard him say, "...I have no idea what just happened…"

...but as much as Shirley wanted to go back and explain things, what was going on now was far too important; Mr. Nobody was about to get on-stage and who knows what would happen after that. Grabbing Ino by the hand as she passed, Shirley continued to race down the stairs...

---

"Sound room sound room gotta find the sound room…" The magical girl sped down the hall, desperately searching for anything that looked like it could be the entrance to a "sound room" of some sort. So of course she wasn't looking at where she was going when she ran through a section of the building whose floor was inexplicably covered in ice. Naturally, Sayaka lost her balance as her feet slid across the slippery floor and landed flat on her own back, knocking the wind out of the magical girl. She then started to hyperventilate as she glanced around to see if anyone was watching her, a sensation that only got worse when she realized that all her worrying was making the soul gem on her belt fade into sort of a dark grey. "Oh god I gotta save Kyosuke," she thought. "I gotta save everyone and I can't save everyone if i'm flat on my back how am I supposed to fight this guy if I can't even run over a sheet of ice and what is this doing here anyway is Mr. Freeze here because there's no way in hell that I'm going to be able to fight him-"

"Sayaka!" Lelouch's mental voice shouted over the psychic link. "Calm down! You're not going to save anyone if you panic like this! Just take a take a deep breath..."

Focusing on the sound of Lelouch's voice, Sayaka took a deep breath, and then exhaled slowly.

"Good," Lelouch said. "Shulk told me about the plan, and I found the room you should be looking for. It's called the A/V Room, and it's in the administrative section of the building. Where are you right now?"

Sayaka sat up, and examined her surroundings. "Um… well... there's some fast food places nearby so I think I'm in the food court, but the floor's all slippery."

"Interesting..." Lelouch said. "This could mean there's an unknown metahuman around, so stay sharp."

Sayka nodded, only realizing afterwards that Lelouch couldn't see her.

"Now, you see the door marked 'employees only'? Enter it, and follow the stairs up to the third floor."

It took a moment for Sayaka to find the right door, but when she did it was obvious that she was on the right track; The normally drab, concrete walls were covered in black paint, upon which was written blood-red graffiti depicting all manner of mathematical equations. The pattern coiled around the staircase all the way up to the third floor, where the metal doorway had the words "x2 die" etched on its surface.

"Okay, I'm there. Now what?" Sayaka looked behind her shoulder to make sure she hadn't stumbled through a Witch's barrier by accident.

"Now head left down the hallway, until you come to an intersection."

"Right…" Sayaka held her breath as she began to pull the door open the door…

...only for her to back away in fright as a pudgy man in a security outfit slumped through the doorway. His face was lax but eyes were wide open, caught in a state of perpetual fright. But most disturbing of all was the slide rule stuck through the side his throat. Syaka clutched her neck as she imagined someone actually being killed like that. Was their throat slit open, and then the slide rule was shoved in? Or was the person responsible strong enough that they didn't need to?

Whatever the case, Sayaka dropped to her knees, pulled out the slide rule, and tried to use her healing magic to fix him. But by then it was already far too late; as powerful as her magic was, it couldn't bring back the dead.

"Sayaka? What's wrong?" Lelouch asked. "You should be there by now, did something happen?"

"Um… no." Sayaka lied. She did so in order to avoid a weighty conversation. If she didn't stop this madman now, no doubt more people would die. Just like this nameless security guard…

She got up, and went down the leftmost hallway, following the trail of mathematical graffiti that the guard's killer had left behind.

"Now when you get to the intersection, head right until you find room 101. It should be clearly marked as the AV room..."

But Sayaka wasn't listening. For one thing, the Graffiti showed her the way, but what really caught her attention were the dead bodies littered around along the path. Sayaka didn't know if they were hunted down one by one, or if they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The victims were all sprawled out in different positions. One was a salaryman carrying a cup of coffee. Another was a custodian, who was no doubt anxious for the night shift to end. Yet another was a guard who had just raised their gun to fire. Sayka thought about taking the guns, just in case her magic didn't hold out...

...But memories of Lightning's voice echoed in her mind. "We don't kill people," she had said. "That's not how we do things."

And that wasn't how Sayaka wanted to do things, either. By becoming a Puella Magi she had dedicated herself to justice. And no matter how sick this freak was, a true heroine would never take the life of a sentient being unless there was no other option. Even if no one would ever know…

---

"...are you sure this is going to work?" Shinji whispered.

"Positive," replied Simon. "I've done this plenty of times; usually with a bit more prep work, but it's the same principal."

From inside the gift shop there were hiding in, Simon took a quick peek out to look at the Lagann, which they had left sitting out in the hallway as bait. "So… how do we tell when he's getting near?"

Suddenly, a green laser beam bounced off the Lagann's face, burning a small hole in the ceiling. "I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE SOMEWHERE!" they heard Crazy Quilt shout. "COME OUT AND FACE ME LIKE A MAN!"

"Never mind…" Shinji squeaked.

"Don't think you can fool me by leaving that stoney-face robot behind!" he said, now coming into view. He then circled it a few times to check if the two heroes had hidden behind it, and then lept up to the rim to see if they were inside.

"Aaand now!"

On Simon's command Shinji tipped the Lagann over using his psychic shield, which he had carefully hidden underneath the mecha's feat, sending Paul Dekker falling face-first into the cockpit. The shield then carried them both into the air for a brief moment, before suddenly swiveling around to plant the Mecha upside-down, trapping the mad artist like a spider underneath a plastic cup.

"Alright, good job Shinji!" Simon gave Shinji a hearty slap on the back. "You bagged that crook without breaking a sweat!"

Shinji made a nervous glance at the Lagann. "Are you sure he's really trapped under there?"

"Not unless he can lift a metric ton of solid steel!" Simon grinned. "Of course if he had the Core Drill he could just turn it on, but we all know that's safe and sound riiiight here..." he pointed to a bare spot on his neck. The Core Drill was nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, Simon's eyes widened as the he heard the sound of the Lagann powering up.

"Uh… Simon?" said Shinji as he watched the mecha sputter to life. "How hard is it to drive that robot of yours?"

"It's pretty simple, actually." Simon felt a pit in the bottom of his stomach. "In fact I'd say even a novice could do well with it…"

"That's what I was afraid of…"

The Lagann's retractable hood sealed itself shut as the mecha tumbled onto it's back, and then rolled into an upright position.

"A-HA!" The mouth of the Lagann moved in an unsettling way as Crazy Quilt spoke through it. "So this is what that necklace of yours is for!" he shouted. "And here I thought it was just some sentimental jewelry!"

"Of course!" Simon grabbed his neck. "You must have taken it when you were trying to gouge out my eyeballs!"

"CORRECT!" Crazy quilt made the Laggan point at Simon. "I mean I was a master thief after all… but NOOOOOOO, everyone gets caught up on the whole 'crazy artist' bit. Now, let's see how we turn on the weapons..." the hand pointed at Simon suddenly folded into a drill, which began to spin rapidly. "Ah, much better. Any last words before I paint the arena with your blood?"

"Yeah, I've got something. Just a bit of advice." Simon grinned as he removed a wrench from his coat. "Practice that speech a bit more, and you MIGHT be able to scare off Ambush Bug. Maybe even Blue Beetle if he was having an off day. But who do you think I am?" he then pointed the wrench right at the Drill. "Simon the Digger, invincible leader of both the Dai-Gurren Brigade and the Justice Society of Japan, that's who!" His smirk widened into a toothy grin. "So BRING IT ON!"

Shinji, not really in the mood to stick around, tugged on Simon's arm. "What do you think you're doing?" his voice trembled as he whispered to Simon. "There's no way you're going to win with just a wrench!"

"Relax, I know what I'm doing," said Simon. "Just remember. Don't believe in me, believe in the me that believes in-"

"ARE YOU IDIOTS DONE BABBLING?!" Crazy Quilt shouted. "MY GOD, WHAT IS IT WITH THE HEROES HERE WITH THEIR ENDLESS SPEECHES?! CAN'T YOU PEOPLE JUST HAVE ONE LINERS AND BE DONE WITH IT?" He then thrust the drill-arm forward, only for Simon to catch it in the mouth of the wrench.

"Yeah... like you're one to talk," Simon said as he struggled to keep the drill from getting any closer to him. "From what I heard American villains are just as bad. Especially ones from Gotham. I mean don't you just looooove talking about how much you want to kill Robin?"

Crazy Quilt turned the Lagann's other arm into a drill, and then thrust it at Simon. "I've got hobbies you know! I don't just lie in my room all day and imagine what it would be like to kill The Boy Wonder!"

"Especially since someone already beat you to the punch." Simon smirked. "Twice, I might add."

"FUCK YOU!" one of the arms came dangerously close to Simon's neck, but he was able to direct it into a nearby wall.

"No fuck YOU!"

"STOP COPYING ME!"

"No stop copying ME!"

As Shinji watched this battle of wits from the sidelines, it became increasingly clear what Simon was trying to do: Simon was trying to get the villain angry, and for the large part he seemed to be succeeding. Shinji couldn't see inside the mech, of course, but he imagined that Crazy Quilt's face was beet red.

"But it's powered by fighting spirit, isn't it?" thought Shinji. "If he's getting the pilot angry, Isn't he just making the robot more powerful?"

He thought back to the last time he saw Simon get angry, back when they were fighting Mordred. Looking back, that kind of rage seemed uncharacteristic for a guy usually so laid-back.

But then he thought about what he did with that anger. Simon didn't let it consume him, he just focused all the rage on exactly what was bothering him. He might act on impulse, but it was never without purpose. Not like a hammer, but a drill...

Shinji clenched his fist. "He said he believed in me… he's expecting me to do something, but what?" He looked around the room. There didn't seem to be anything that could easily stop him.

But when he looked back at the mecha, Shinji realized something. As much as Simon was moving was moving his arms around to try and angle the drills away from him, his feet remained planted on the ground. And since he didn't move, that means Crazy Quilt didn't either...

"Guess anything's worth a shot," Shinji thought. "Hope I don't explode his brain or something by accident…"

A couple seconds later, there was a faint clanging noise coming from within the Mecha, followed by a sharp "Ow!" from Crazy Quilt.

The innards of the Lagann clanged a couple more times.

"Ow! Stop it!"

Finally, Crazy Quilt retreated a few steps back and threw open the cockpit, revealing Shinji's shield, reduced to a fraction of its former size, repeatedly knocking on the villain's helmet.

"Stupid little pest…" he swatted at the floating hexagon without much of a result.

Simon then used this opportunity to counterattack, rushing past the drills and leapt back into the Lagann with both wrenches drawn, drumming on Crazy Quilt's helmet until the villain gave up trying to take the mech, and made a break for the arena.

"Looks like we got him on the ropes!" Simon cheered. He then turned to Shinji. "Quick, get in! It's the only way we're gonna catch up!"

Shinji thought about this for a second. "Actually, you go on ahead. I've got another idea I want to try…"

---

The world was garbage, and Sho Minamimoto was the only person who could see it.

He knew it all along, of course, and it wasn't just because he was picked on in elementary school for being the smartest kid the class. It was the rat race that everyone aspired to join, the status quo kept up by the greedy politicians, and the media that brainwashed all the sheeple into allowing it to happen.

He tried to escape that life, once. He worked his fingers to the bone in his uncle's ramen shop, just so he could go to Tokyo U and become the youngest PhD of mathematics in the institution's history. Math made SENSE. It was the same for everyone, no matter what family you were born to or how much money you had. Even a blind man could do math if he had the patience.

But when he finally made it he found it was the same old thing; rivalries between professors, bickering between departments for funding, students who were more interested in a diploma than actually learning anything…

But then he met these guys at a cafe who were like "hey you sick of running in that wheel all day? We're doin' something real, and we could use a smart cookie like you to do all the hard stuff."

So they brought Sho out backstage, and showed him all the stuff they were working on. The crying bomb, the absence of a shark, the living graffiti, wonders Sho had never even imagined. They were going to wake the sheeple up, they said, make them realize what a wonderful world they had been squandering.

And that was when Sho Minamimoto finally found his purpose.

His new career started off slow; while he was really proud of that 11th digit he added to the base 10 system, the MIBs never found the note, so they thought it had been created by accident and Sho never got the credit. But as his skills grew, so did his audience, as the case was with the iPhone app that made people do pointless things for no reason, or that photograph that makes people literally unable to "think outside the box".

But his crowning moment had to have been The Blank Tape. Just the slightest exposure, and anyone who listens can never even comprehend the idea of music, let alone listen to it. And why should they? Music wasn't art, it was garbage; just some pop-culture trash cobbled together by innumerate yoctograms.

The plan was to leave these tapes all around Shibuya, all within tape recorders set to go off when traffic was greatest.

But evidently some son-of-a-digit snitched, and called the cops on him. But Sho wasn't going to let himself go to prison, oh no. He was going to fight until his dying breath...

...And that's exactly what happened. For all his wit and gusto Sho was just one man. The moment he drew a gun his skull was riddled with bullets.

But then the Reaper's Game gave him a second chance. A chance to come back and get revenge on the world that crushed his aspirations like an empty tin can. And the moment they offered to make him a Reaper he instantly jumped aboard. After all, why go back up the rabbit hole when they were just going to kill you again?

Ever since that day, Sho Minamimoto has been biding his time, searching for the right variables to complete his victory equation; the one that finally let all those hectopascals, human and Reaper alike, see the the world the way he did.

And maybe then they could all be cool.

...but for now, as he sat in a swivelling office chair, surrounded by television monitors displaying all the camera feeds in the Dome, Sho had to content himself with something a bit more... cathartic. Perhaps it was bad form to try the same plan twice, but Sho wasn't one to leave a problem unsolved. Especially when he had accounted for every variable… all except...

He glanced at the monitor depicting the big skeleton robot chasing after the little drow girl in the amusement park. "What the zeta is up with that robot, anyway?" he thought. "Ah well, a couple outliers won't hurt anything; it'll all add up to the same result…" It probably just thought the park looked like a good place to fight.

Speaking of which, it seemed like the blue-haired girl had just found his installation. But seeing how shaken she was by something as pathetic as a few dead bodies, Sho figured that this fight would be as easy as 3.14…

But enough gawking, it was time to get down to tactics. Judging by what she carried in the video feed, the girl probably used a sword of some sort.

"Fine by me." He patted the revolver that he had holstered in his right pocket. "An integer that brings a sword to a gunfight deserves to be subtracted anyway."

A rattling at the door interrupted sho's train of thought. Figuring the kid was about to open it, he swiveled around in his chair, pulled out gun, pointed it at the door, and fired all six rounds into it.

The rattling immediately stopped. A few seconds later the door swung open to reveal the girl Sho had seen on the monitor, albeit with several gaping wounds in her torso. But even with all the dripping down the side of her body, she was still standing, and apparently still strong enough to unsheathe her blade.

"Stop… right there…" she sputtered, "In the name… of justice… I will-"

Sho wasted no time whatsoever. Leaping up from his seat, he used his superior reach to administer a swift kick to the girl's head, knocking her over so he could stomp on her face again and again and again.

And he thought that would be the end of it, but the girl rolled aside so that she had the space to get back up, making a swipe at Sho's legs with her sword as she did so, cutting a small seam around the ankle-section of his pants and digging in ever-so-slightly into his skin, leaving about as much damage as a paper cut.

"Yeah, as if a hectopascal like you is really gonna kill me," Sho laughed, "You heroes are so zetta lame!"

"Says the guy… who thinks math equations... are 'gangsta'." The girl coughed. "And your mom was a hectopascal."

Sho's mad smile widened even further. "Well well, looks like this radian has a bit of spunk!" he said. He took a couple more steps towards the girl, until he was close enough to notice that all of her wounds have closed. "And I bet you have an attitude cuz that healing factor makes you think you're invincible, am I right?"

The girl made a clumsy lunge forward, but Sho stepped to the side and grabbed her by the arm, snapping her bones in two with a knee jab, sending the sword clattering to the ground. "But really it just means that I don't have to hold back." He smirked. "Not that I normally do."

The girl gasped in shock, but she didn't scream. The pain was far too great to even do something like that. She just got down the floor and watched in agony as her twisted arm repaired itself, her bones slowing moving back into alignment before before trying to reassemble themselves. Sho had once heard that the sensation that a regenerative metahuman felt when healing their own bones was almost worse than having them broken in the first place, since when you break your bones you get the worst of it over quickly, but when you put them back together it tends to drag on a bit.

"I bet you don't even know how to use a sword." Sho kicked the girl's blade underneath a nearby desk. He then picked the girl up by the neck, holding her in just the right position so that she would have no choice but to look into Sho's amber eyes. "So what makes a kid like you tick, the formula from which you derive your answers? Are you just some kinda attention whore, or do you just get some sorta kick outta being a goodie-two-shoes?"

"L… love…?" gasped the girl.

"Love?" Sho snorted. "It's just a social construct; a rationalization for the way our genes make us reproduce! Love is garbage!"

"That's what… she said…"

Sho was now grinning wider than ever before. "Oh I see what you're trying to do." he said, "You think you've got me all figured out. You think I'm the kind of guy who's gonna get angry from schoolyard taunts and make a mistake." He dropped the girl to the floor, reached behind the desk with his feet, and kicked the sword back to her. "Well tell you what; I'm in such a good mood that I'm gonna give you an extra credit problem." He snapped his fingers, and the mechanism he set all day setting up for just this sort of occasion activated, changing all of the monitors so that they displayed a single countdown. He then held up a tape recorder that had been plugged into one of the monitors. "You probably know about the tapes already, so listen up; one of them is going to play over the concert loudspeaker in fifteen minutes, more than enough time for a clever little radian to get her operations ordered. You can either be cool and leave with that lover boy you're so worried about, or you can risk it all and stay to try and divide by zero." Sho shoveled a handful of bullets out of his pocket, and then started loading his gun. "So, watzit gonna be?"

Slowly, the girl once more got to her feet, and assumed a fighting stance, sword drawn and ready for battle. "Do you really have to ask?" she said.

Sho Minamimoto chuckled to himself. "Sohcahtoa…"

---

Having scrambled up to the stage, Mr. Nobody snatched the microphone from Miku and shouted "Hellloooooo, Tokyo! Are you ready for a hostage situation!?"

The crowd mumbled indecisively as they tried to decide whether or not this was all supposed to be part of the act.

"NOW THAT'S WHAT I LIKE TO HEAR!" Mr. Nobody pumped his fist in the air a couple times before grabbing Miku with the arm-lock that Lightning had accidently taught him. "Alright, so this first one goes out to my good friend The Quiz, wherever the hell she is right now. It's a bit of a number I like to call 'Mr. Nobody makes a daring escape from the concert while carrying a robot celebrity. Incidentally it's also our last number for the night, so for those of you from out of town I hope you enjoyed Tokyo." With Miku in hand, he began to inch towards the door leading backstage. "Feel free to pick up some useless crap at the gift shop, and be sure to watch out for my new album 'Reading Random Words From the Dictionary in Pig Latin', a delightful little piece on how life has no inherent meaning or value, in stores NOW." He then started moving Miku's free hand around in order to pretend that she was waving goodbye. "Goodbye! Do svidaniya! Annyeong! Hyvästi-"

But just as he was about to reach for the doorknob, the backstage door swung open, revealing Crazy Quilt, flustered and out of breath. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN HERE?!" he shouted.

"Oh some freaky shit really scared the crap out of me so I was just trying to kidnap this diva here and use her as a hostage so I can escape," said Mr. Nobody. "How about you?"

"NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!" sputtered Crazy Quilt.

"Let me guess." Mr. Nobody continued to hold Miku in an uncomfortable position as he made a thoughtful pose. "You had the same escape plan for when things went all wahoonie-shaped?"

"OF COURSE NOT!" Crazy Quilt's face turned a deep shade of red.

"Your lips say 'no', but your eyes say 'yes'!" Mr. Nobody pointed his finger and winked. "Well, you know what they say; great minds think alike!"

"WE HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON!" Crazy Quilt was absolutely livid with rage. "And now that you've bungled things royally, we don't even have an escape route!"

"Au' contraire!" Mr. Nobody held up a finger. "We do, in fact, have one option left to us."

"And what, pray-tell, would that be?"

Mr. Nobody then licked his thumb, and stuck it high up into the air. "Intergalactic hitch-hiking!"

There was an awkward silence as both Crazy Quilt and Miku stared at Mr. Nobody's thumb.

Finally, something snapped deep within Paul Dekker's twisted little mind. Sure, maybe he was going to get Erased when this was all over, but he sure as hell wasn't going to let himself die before his partner. He shoved Miku aside as he pounced on the amature hitchiker, and began strangling him. "THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" he screamed. "WHAT DID I EVER DO TO DESERVE SUCH AN INCOMPETENT PARTNER!?"

"Well let's see… there's all the murder, the thievery, your overall arrogance…" even while being strangled, Mr Nobody continued to wheeze out his answers. "...oh and the strangling! Strangling is kind of big on the list of cosmic no-nos…"

"Hey, get a room, Lovebirds!" Crazy Quilt raised his head for a moment, just in time to see the Lagann drop right in front of him. "Some people are trying to watch the concert!"

Instead of trying to come up with a comeback, Crazy Quilt went straight for violent retaliation, and fired a laser beam out of his helmet, but Simon just held up the Lagann's palm to reflect the shot back at the villain's feet.

"Come on, is that really the best you can do?" Simon said.

"Careful!" Lightning shouted as she and Shirley leapt up onto the stage. "If a stray laser bounced into the crowd you could blind someone! Or worse..."

"Oh yeah, good point." Simon pointed at Crazy Quilt with the Lagann. "Hey, Girlborg. You think you could maybe turn that guy's helmet off before someone gets hurt?"

"Sure, no problem." Shirley reached out into the mad artist's helmet, searching for a way to turn it off…

...but then she saw that Miku was staring at her. "Oh god…" she thought. "...Miku's looking right at me. She probably recognized my voice already and now she's seeing if my face matches and oh god she's going to reveal my secret identity and..."

And Shirley grew worried, she began to lose her focus, causing the helmet to crackle as it started overloaded.

"MY EYES!" Crazy Quilt screamed as he began to tear at his non-functional eyeballs. "ITS ALL SO BRIGHT…IT BUUUUURNS!"

The screaming was loud enough that Miku turned her attention away from Shirley, and turned to face Crazy Quilt, just in time to take a laser to the face as madman's helmet began to fire uncontrollably.

"Miku!" Shirley dived to catch the robotic idol as she fell to the floor, stopping her fall right before the back of her head smashed into an angled stand that held one of the on-stage props.

But it was already too late. When Shirley looked into Miku's eyes, instead of the warm, almost-human glow that her father's company had spent millions trying to perfect, all she saw were soulless, empty shells, burnt out of their sockets by the laser.

Shirley felt her muscles tense up as her mind tried to comprehend the magnitude of what had just happened. She heard some shouting in the background, and was vaguely aware that Simon had exited the mech in order to give Crazy Quilt a good punch in the face. But Shirley was frozen in that one, single moment, as if her whole life had been building up to this one self-inflicted tragedy.

Shirley should have never tried to become a superhero. What was she thinking? She wasn't brave, strong or cunning. She was just a girl who was lucky enough to develop superpowers after being bitten by a robot. She should have just lived out her days in silence, trying to salvage what remained of her "normal" life before the inevitable reveal would take it all away.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I'm so sorry…" she clutched Miku's body as tears streamed down Shirley's cheeks. "I didn't mean for anyone to get hurt…"

And then she heard a faint whisper. "Thank… you…"

Shirley opened her eyes. She could hear Miku's simulated breathing; slow at first, but getting stronger with each passing breath. And before she knew it, Shirley felt Miku hugging back.

"You… saved me…" she said. "Your name is… Girlborg… correct?"

Shirley held her breath. She couldn't tell if Miku was playing dumb, or if she seriously didn't recognize Shirley.

"Yes… that's right," Shirley said. She figured that either way it would be best to follow along. "I'm a robot. Like you."

"Really? ...I didn't know."Miku pinched one of Shirley's cheeks, and tugged at the synthetic flesh that hid her metal bones underneath.

It also gave Shirley a second look at the damage that had been done to Miku. Yes, Miku eyes had been burnt out, but it was clear that the lasers didn't penetrate any further. Shirley felt like an idiot for not realizing this sooner.

"Whoever built you must be very proud!" Miku said, smiling with closed eyes in an attempt to hide the damage. "Or disappointed, if you were made by a bad guy. But you don't seem like the type a villain would build."

"Um… thank you." Even the thought of having to lie like this made Shirley's stomach turn. But as long as Miku was just simply coming up with her own explanation, Shirley supposed that would be fine…

"...Oh how touching, Mr. Nobody said." Mr. Nobody said. "But little did the Justice Society expect for Mr Nobody to use this distraction as an opportunity to make his daring escape..." he then rubbed his hands together in an extremely sinister way.

"You do realize we can hear you, right?" pointed out Lightning.

"Uhhh… SMOKE BOMB!" Reaching behind his back, Mr. Nobody pulled out a small, round object, and threw it to the floor where it exploded into a dense cloud of thick, white smoke.

The smoke cleared only a few seconds later, but by then the supervillain was halfway up the staircase, leaving behind a large pile of people that he had been yanking from their seats in order to block their way up.

"I'M A FREE MAN! A FREE MAN ON THE LAND!" he shouted to the dumbfounded heros behind him, "MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD-"

But before the villain could finish his irrelevant commentary, a teenage boy clinging onto a large, transparent hexagon with both arms flew in and swooped down on Mr. Nobody, striking him in the forehead with the edge of his geometric construct. This sent the villain tumbling down the very stairs he had been ascending, leaving him face-up on top of the pile of people he had been throwing down.

"Thank you governor I would love to have more lobsters stuffed down my underpants…" Mr. Nobody mumbled.

"Shinj- I mean anonymous person on our team whose real name I don't know!" Simon said, catching himself before he revealed Shinji's secret identity. "Good save back there!"

"Uh, thanks." Shinji scratched his neck in embarrassment. "I'm just worried I hit him a bit too hard..."

"Well it's not like a concussion would make him any more crazy…" Simon rubbed his chin as he watched Shinji hover on his shield. "You know I think it would look better if you were standing on it."

"Well, I guess it would but it's kind of wobbly…" Shinji tried to stand up on the floating hexagon, but his legs turned to jelly as soon as his hands let go. "WooaaAAHH~!" Shinji clutched his arms around the shield once more. "I don't think I'm ready for that just yet..." Shinji's head swivelled as he took a nervous glance at the crowd that was currently watching him.

"Hey, don't worry; we have plenty of time for practice." Simon waved his hand to dismiss Shinji's worries.

---

The Mechon's claws tore through through wood and concrete like tissue paper as it it ripped apart the hot dog stand animalistically. He had given up trying to catch the kid through wit or dexterity; while certainly fast, his frame lacked the dexterity to keep up with such a frustratingly small target.

What was that girl, anyway? A DNA scan identified her as human without any kind of metagene powers, but she appeared to be anything but normal. Or human for that matter. Was she a Magus? It was certainly possible; the Mechon's built-in "ether detector" spiked every time the girl used one of her powers.

Well whatever the girl was, she was also the Mechon's only lead to the whereabouts of the idiot with the Monado. Maybe she was the one who tipped him off about FACE units being immune to the Monado's power. It was doubtful, but certainly possible. Stranger things certainly have happened.

He looked at the wreckage of the souvenir shop that the girl had originally used in her first escape attempt. "Damn gel's been leadin' me 'round in circles, she 'as…" He flexed his pointy metal fingers. "Well once I 'ave the Monado, she's gonna get what's coming to her, whatever the hell she is." his fingers then clenched themselves into a fist. "Same with the Monado brat." The fist then began to shake. "What is he, 18? 19? Too young and inexperienced, that's what I say. Why, If I was still around, I-"

The Mechon lost his train of thought when suddenly the lights turned on in a nearby section of the park. Trendy J-pop filled the air over the park's loudspeakers as a nearby attraction sprung to life; one of those "flying chair" rides where a bunch of swings suspended by metal chains are spun around a rotating tower. This variant in particular was apparently tornado-themed, with the tower itself resembling a rubbery cyclone with several spokes sticking out of the top so that the swings actually had room to, well, swing. There was also a very tacky statue of some wierdo in colonial-era clothing and a tricorne hat holding a wooden staff decorated with feathers and turtle shells. It was called "Mister Twister's Twister Whisker", a name which made the Mechon want to groan every time he thought of it.

Yet in spite of the tacky name the Mecon felt drawn to the structure nonetheless, as he felt the presence of the Monado in that direct. His optic sensor swivelled in their sockets as they tried to get a lock on it's position, eventually finding it just underneath the rapidly-spinning ride. Apparently the brat was just hanging underneath, holding the blade up into the air, almost as an invitation.

It was a trap, to be sure. But what could a mere human possibly do to against the Mechon's armor-plated body? Against a FACE unit, the Monado would be as useless as a toothpick, and anything less would be laughable.

As the Mechon lumbered ever closer to his target, it watched as the young man with the Monado rushed off to the ride's control panel, reaching underneath before pulling out a pair of wires whose ends had been stripped bare. The young man touched the wires together, and the swing began to come to life. Slowly, at first, but as time went on it began to pick up speed. Soon, it was moving far faster than the ride was ever designed to go.

"So that's 'is plan?" the Mechon chuckled. "He's just gonna 'it me with a buncha chairs? Can't wait to see the look on 'is face when all 'is hopes come crashing down…"

But just as he was about to active his rocket-boosters, the Mechon spotted the kid he was chasing just seconds ago, hanging on one of the spokes that held up the swings. Apparently spotting him back, the kid waved, and then swiped her claws through the nearby chairs, releasing the chair it was attached to from the tornado-shaped ride and sending it hurtling towards the Mechon.

Furious, the Mechon swung his arm in order to slice through the incoming projectile, only noticing the cardboard box that lay within the chair when he broke it open, splattering the Mechon with a pink, gooey blob.

"What the-?" He scraped some of the blob off with one of his fingers as the sensors informed him that the warm paste consisted primarily of sucrose, vegetable oil and butter, and that it was a treat more commonly referred to as…

"Taffy?!" The Mechon exclaimed as he began to wipe the confection off his arms. "Yer' tryin'a fight me with Taffy?! Of all the boneheaded, idiotic, downright insulting ways this could have played out, by far this has got to be the-"

But in the time it took the Mechon to start ranting, the girl had already swung over to the next spoke, in order to release another chair loaded with a box full of taffy at just the right angle to cover his jaw. And then she did it again. And again. And again. Over and over until there were neither chairs nor taffy left, at which point the sugary confection had seeped into his gears and electronics, leaving him completely unable to do anything but stare straight forward.

Even his vocal processors were covered in the sticky mess, denying him even the pleasure to helplessly rant in the general direction of his mortal enemies as they circled around him, likely just to add insult to injury.

"Ooooohh, I see now!" The girl said as she approached the frozen Mechon. "The taffy made him all sticky and broken, like when you spill orange juice on a computer keyboard."

"I suppose that's one way to put it," said Shulk. "Mechon armor may be functionally indestructible, but the underlying components should still only have finite strength." He then started taking pictures with his smartphone, and the girl soon did the same with her own (albeit in a more haphazard manner). "Just as I thought, the exposed joints proved to be a fatal weakness. This unit in particular is likely first-generation model of some sort, assuming that there's a rational intelligence behind all this."

"Oh rub it in why don't ya?" the Mechon thought.

---

While being able to recover from certain death was undoubtedly useful, during her fight with the math-spouting artist Sayaka discovered that her regeneration powers had a few limits. One of which was the fact that even with the aid of magic, recovering from a mortal wound was very tiring, so that while fighting the villain she hit her peak early, gradually slowing down as her opponent inflicted injury after injury.

Her opponent, on the other hand, had no problems running at full blast. Over the last ten minutes the villain had been subjecting the poor girl to every torment he could think of. When he ran out of bullets, he started throwing furniture. When he ran out of furniture, he started throwing computer monitors, leaving only the ones that displayed the ever-looming countdown to abject failure. And when he finally ran out of those, he alternated between using what was left as an improvised bludgeon, and simply going at her with some sort of unidentifiable martial arts technique.

But Sayaka stood her ground nonetheless, because while the psycho mathematician could chip away at her all night, it would only take one solid blow with her sword to defeat him. And then she'd finally be able to save Kyosuke…

"Man, this is boring. Keeping you occupied is barely worth the effort." The man cracked his knuckles as he stood in front of the doorway. "Might as well stop playing around and just beat you into unconsciousness." He rolled up his sleeve and flexed his arm. "Too bad you'll end up missing the performance. But I guess I can leave a remainder as long as it all factors out."

Wishing she had paid more attention in health class, Sayaka's hands quivered as she pointer her blade towards the man's stomach, praying that the man would survive what she was about to do.

"What? You scared?" The villain threw his arms out to the side. "You digits are all the same; prancing around frilly outfits fighting monsters, but the moment you get a taste of real combat you just crumple up-" he pounded his fist into his hand, "-and add yourself to the heap." His eyes glinted as he gazed into the monitors displaying the countdown. "Just five more minutes and this'll allllllll be over," he said. "Or rather, it'll just be beginning! Every time you look at a radio you can't play, every time you see someone singing along to a song you can't hear, you'll know that you failed everyone, including your pathetic little friends-"

Enraged, Sayaka lunged forward, sword drawn pointed at the mad mathematician. She ran the villain straight through, burying her sword halfway through his gut, freezing the madman's maniacal mug mid-laugh. Sayaka held her breath as she saw the blood running down his black leather jacket and dripping onto his shoes, staining them with deep red splotches. The air stood still a the girl held onto her blade for dear life.

And then, just as Sayaka was about to declare the man dead, she heard a chuckle….

"Ha…"

...then came a guffaw…

"Ha… ha…"

Then the guffaw evolved into a giggle, and then a chortle, and then finally a howl of sick, twisted laughter.

"Ha ha... ah ha ha ha… AH HA HA HA!"

Sayaka looked up to see that the villain's face had warped into a fiendish grin, his smile stretching ear to ear as he shrugged off the blade in his stomach.

"You're so zetta slow!" he grabbed onto the blade of the sword, and slid his bloodied hand across the razor edge. "Our entire world is built on numbers. A work of art can move entire generations." He then removed his hand, and pressed his bloody palm onto Sayaka's terror-stricken face. "Now what makes you think something so mundane would be enough to kill a master of both?"

As the timer's final minutes continued to tick down, the villain pulled himself closer to Sayaka, impaling himself on her blade even further... "But you know what?" he said "Even if I die here, even if you go against your half-assed moral code and kill me outright, even if you somehow manage to get away with it, one thing will never change. A radian like you is not cool." he bent over the scared little girl's shoulder, and whispered into her ear. "And you never will be."

Suddenly the door flew open, and a gust of wind blew into the room, carrying with it an indistinct blur that violently tore Sho away from Sayaka in the blink of an eye.

When things finally calmed down, Sayaka was surprised to find that the villain was no longer skewered through the blade of her sword, but rather lying on the floor, tied up with a fire hose, with Hon'kale sitting on top him, glaring at him with claws drawn, ready to strike if he made so much the slightest movement.

Sayaka then glanced behind her, and watched as Shulk smashed a cassette tape with the hilt of the Monado, the monitors behind him now reading "NAN" instead of the timer that was there just a few seconds before.

The magical girl's eye twitched as she tried to make sense of what just happened. "Wha-"

"After defeating the Mechon in the amusement park, Kyubey told me that you were in danger and that time was running out." Shulk turned on a nearby computer as he said this, and began typing on the keyboard. "I then used the Monado to tap into the Speed Force, and rushed over to finish the job."

"But-" Sayaka began to say.

"Sayaka, please," Shulk said, "Wait until I finish searching this computer for digital copies of the tape if you have any more questions. The minds of hundreds, if not thousands are on the line here, and I want to make certain that there weren't any more backup plans." He then spoke through Kyubey's mind link. "How are the other tape recorders coming?"

"Well the good news is that the police just arrived, and they're making quick work with finding them," Shirou said. "The bad news is that they arrested us for bringing a motorcycle indoors."

Shulk shook his head. "Talk to Lightning about it," he said. "And how go the other fights?"

"We just wrapped them up," replied Simon. "The concert is ruined, but at least everyone's safe. Shirley and Shinji got the final blows, and-"

"We can go over the details later," Shulk responded flatly. "For now, just try to make sure the audience stays calm..."

"Actually, Miku wants the whole team to come out," Simon said. "You sure you don't want to-?"

"I'm fine." said Shulk. "I'm sure there will be plenty more chances to do public appearances, but right now I want to make absolutely sure that there aren't any nasty surprises waiting for us."

"...ooookay then." Simon paused for a moment. "Well, in case you change your mind we're going to be on the stage. So just come down when you're ready." And once more, Simon disconnected himself from the mental link.

A few minutes passed as Sayaka watched Shulk mash on the keyboard in front of him. "You should get down there, too." he said, turning away from the screen. "I'm sure your friends in the audience are worried about you." Shulk delivered a faint smile, but Sayaka only had to look at the slight twitch in his eyes to see that he was just a mask to hide his worry.

And yet Sayaka didn't really have anything to say that would calm him down. So she responded with a weak "yeah, I guess…" and began to leave the room. But before she closed the door, she looked back and saw Shulk, already back on the computer, hammering away at whatever it was he was trying to do.

She then glanced at the maniac that was tied up on the floor, unconscious, with Hon'kale tugging at his face as if she was expecting a latex mask that would reveal him to be a robot duplicate or something. His face was almost serene in slumber, even as the girl forced it into sorts of silly expressions.

"[Hello!]" she said in a deep voice, squeezing the villain's lips as if imitate speech. "[My name is Bendy McCrazyhead. I love the color pink and I want to be pretty, pretty princess when I grow up!]"

"[Hon'kale, don't play with the supervillain. It's not nice.]" Shulk said. "[Now where is that diagnostic tool…?]"

Sayaka sighed as she shut the door behind her, ready to put as much distance between herself and the maniac tied up on the floor as possible.

---

Heading down to the concert floor was harder than than getting to the A/V room in the first place. After all, it was one thing to find a dead body in the hallway, but knowing the body was there ahead of time was almost worse, because Sayaka kept anticipating how bad it was going to be.

Nevertheless, she forced her legs to lurch down the hallway through sheer willpower. After all, Sayaka was a hero. And what kind of hero would let a couple dead bodies scare her?

As she left the office complex, Sayaka saw a few police officers chatting about a mess that some of the other heroes left in the food court; something about a sprinkler system and lots of ice. The cops paused as she walked past, their eyes drawn to the blood that the villain had wiped on her face. Sayaka ducked into the women's room to escape the stares, and began to wipe the blood off with some soap, water, and a paper towel.

She then stared into her reflection, and saw what a wreck she had become. Her hair was an unruly mess, sticking up in all sorts of ways it shouldn't. Her eyes were bloodshot, veins popping out, almost ready to burst. And while there were no signs of scarring, her face twitched every so often. But the worst part was her Soul Gem, which was now nearly pitch-black, with only the faintest specks of blue.

"Okay… get it together, girl." she thought. She cupped some water into her hand and dumped it on her head so that she could smooth out her hair. "Remember, you're a superhero. You have to look strong for everyone. You have to give people hope." She clenched her firsts, and bumped them togeather, knuckle-to-knuckle. "Witches might kill indiscriminately, but psychopaths can do a lot worse. You're doing good work here. It's all worth it..."

Sayaka left the bathroom, and headed down the stairs to the concert floor, where everyone seemed to be giving introductions. By time she had gotten down to the stage it was Shinji's turn to stammer at the mic, while Hon'kale (who evidently made it there first despite Sayaka's head start) awaited her turn with eager anticipation.

"Well, I'm Shin… juh… I mean..." Shinji tugged at his neck, which was already dripping a bit of sweat.

"[Say your name is Hexagon!]" Hon'kale whispered.

"...Hexagon? Uh, I mean, yeah. Hexagon. That's my name," Shinji said. "It's because I have this… shield… thing… that's kind of shaped like one…" he made his shield appear in mid-air, and had it spin around a bit as a demonstration. "I guess it's not the most impressive power, but-"

Hon'kale then snatched the microphone right out of Shinji's hand, and began to shout. "[HI EVERYONE! MY NAME IS HON'KALE AND I'M AWESOME!]" she pulled Ino over from the side "[THIS IS MY SISTER, INO! SHE'S AWESOME TOO, JUST NOT AS MUCH!]" Hon'kale then shoved the mic into Ino's face. "[SAY HI FOR THE AUDIENCE, INO!]"

Ino stared at the crowd with a bug-eyed expression for a few seconds, before picking up the microphone. A few more seconds passed before she gave a stiff wave and said, "...hello," in a meek tone of voice. She then looked and Sayaka, and handed the microphone to her, saying "Here. You take it."

Sayaka took a deep breath as she accepted the microphone. She had been thinking about this moment for a while now, about the time when she'd be confronted about her identity, and would finally be forced to choose what to call herself. She had gone through several possibilities; Magic Knight, Azure Guardian, and Aqua Blade were all some of her favorites. But no matter what name she she came up with, she couldn't help but feel that she had no reason to hide.

Sayaka looked out into the crowd. To them, she was just another magical girl, an unknown soldier in the fight against evil. Wouldn't they feel safer if they knew that there was an ordinary girl underneath her costume? Someone approachable? Someone they could relate to? Why not reveal herself, to let everyone know that they were being protected by someone like themselves?

And of course there was the fact that Sayaka had just saved Kyosuke's career yet again. If this didn't score any brownie points with Kamijou what would? In fact, he had probably fallen in love with Sayaka's magical girl form already-

Sayaka froze as her gaze drifted to the front row, where Kyosuke and Madoka were sitting. Except that instead of seeing an empty seat between them, Sayaka saw Hitomi Shizuki sitting in her spot, holding hands with Kyosuke.

And worse, Kyosuke didn't seem all that impressed with the superheroes, never mind Sayaka herself. He stared at her with a glazed-over, apathetic expression… no, not apathetic. Dissapointed. At what, Sayaka couldn't stay, but she felt his unmoving stare piercing her like a pair of ice-cold daggers.

And why shouldn't he be disappointed? For there was Sayaka, the self-proclaimed role model, just standing there, wordlessly opening and closing her mouth over and over again like the idiot she was.

How could she have not seen this earlier? Of course someone like Kyosuke wouldn't be interested in a hopeless spaz like herself. Who cares about plain 'ol Sayaka? Hitomi was the more popular one, anyway...

"Sayaka?" Shirley whispered through though Kyubey's link. "Are you okay?"

Without saying a word, Sayaka dropped the microphone and darted off the stage, faint tears streaming down her eyes. And as she ran past the puzzled faces of the crowd, a single thought consumed her mind:

Whoever that villain was, he was right.

Sayaka Miki was not cool. And she never will be.

---

On their way out from the concert, Kyosuke mulls on how obvious it is that the Magical Girl in the JSJ is actually Sayaka. He also noticed when Sayaka froze up when she looked at him, but doesn't realize that she was staring because Hitomi was holding his hand (which he actually found annoying, but was too impolite to say so). The chapter closes with Kyosuke vowing to stop stringing Sayaka along, making plans to formally break up with her in order to avoid all the problems that come with being in a relationship with a superhero.]

Sayaka didn't show up after the concert ended. Madoka claimed she got a text that saying she had to go home because she had some chores to do, but Kyosuke saw it a transparent gesture because it was obvious what was really going on.

"Who was that magical girl?" Hitomi said. "I think I've seen her before…"

"It… must have been on television!" Madoka said with slight hesitation. "I mean, the Sailor Scouts and stuff are always on the news. Maybe you saw her there."

Hitomi looked thoughtful for a moment. "Yeah, that must have been it," she said.

Kyosuke rolled his eyes. Despite being a good conversationalist, it was clear after only a few minutes of talking that Hitomi was dumber than a sack of hammers. After all, Sayaka just happened to disappear right before a superhero fight started, and the team that saved her just happened to have a blue-haired magical girl who just happened to have the exact same height and face.

Admittedly, there was the outside chance that this was actually Sayaka's identical twin sister. But given how Sayaka took the chance she got to tell Kyosuke about her family life while he was in the hospital, he found the idea of Sayaka omitting such a detail (either on purpose or by accident) to be incredibly unlikely.

"She probably thinks we're living in an American comic book," he thought. "That I'm going to just ignore the blatantly obvious and let myself get kidnapped by every nutjob that can afford a spandex costume and a little bit of detective work. And who do I have to protect me? An adolescent girl with stage fright."

He cupped his hands to his face. "I can't keep stringing her along like this, leeching off fannish devotion. I have to break things off before she does something stupid that gets us both in trouble..."

"Is something wrong, Kamijou?"

Kyosuke looked up to see Madoka staring at him with her big, pink eyes. It then occurred to him that Madoka likely knew about her friend's secret identity all along. This meant that Madoka was a sycophant, plain and simple. She depended just as much on Sayaka's fragile charisma as Sayaka depended on Madoka's absolute loyalty. Keeping this in mind, Kyosuke figured she would be the best person to deliver the bad news...

"Yeah, is something wrong?"

Kyosuke looked at Hitomi, who also seemed to be concerned. Emphasis on "seemed", as she was likely just parroting Madoka's reaction.

"Oh nothing… I'm just kind of tired." Which was true; Kyosuke was tired of everyone centering their lives around him. Tired of being treated like some kind of delicate treasure. But most of all, he was tired of everyone lying to him about how they really felt.

But of course he didn't say that. That would be unbecoming for world-famous violin prodigy. So instead, he said "Give me a sec; I'll call up the taxi. If we're lucky, we'll be able to catch the next train home..."

---

BETHANY SNOW: Today's top story tonight; the Teen Titans were puzzled to discover the time-traveling arch-villain "Harvest", head of the N.O.W.H.E.R.E. organization, lying dead in front of the Pentagon this morning, impaled by a pair of "haunted sugar tongs". It is believed that the murder has something to do with the U.S. government's own N.O.W.H.E.R.E., a government organization that was disbanded ten years ago due to creating a cosmic horror that almost destroyed the world for very confusing reasons. Vriska Serket, of the Teen Titans, had this to say:

VRISKA SERKET: Speaking as a former villain, It's o8vious what happened; someone who was part of the old N.O.W.H.E.R.E. group got pissy a8out this moron stealing their name and decided to settle things violently. Though why anyone would fight over a name like "N.O.W.H.E.R.E." is 8eyond me.

BETHANY SNOW: Karkat Vantas, current leader of the Doom Patrol, declined to comment.

CALENDER MAN: In other news, Lobo has been defeated in Mortal Kombat. Literally. During the international Mortal Kombat tournament, a man identified only as "Largo" defeated the infamous bounty hunter. While Lobo had promised not to kill any of the participants, this did not stop him from ripping off his opponent's arm. Largo is in very high spirits in spite of his injury, and says he looks forward to using his tournament winnings to get a "cool robot arm". And now here's Dr. W, our international correspondent, on the Clean Air Summit in Beijing, China.

11TH DOCTOR: *wearing a filtration mask due to all of the very obvious smog* Mrrmmrmmmrm mrrrrm mrrrm mrrrrm-mrrm mrrrm, mrrrm mrrrrrm mrrrm mrrm mrrrrm mrrrrm mrm. *gestures to Merasmus the Wizard, who in his underwear, hung up on a statue of Mao Zedong* Mrrrm mrrm mrrrm mrrr, mrrrm mrrrrm mrrrrrrm mrrm mrrrrrm mrrrrrrrm mrrm mrrm mrm. *points microphone to The Pyro, who is holding a protest sign that says "CLEAN AIR NOW!" in Chinese.* Mrrm mrrm, mrrrm mrrrm mrrm mrrrm mrm?

THE PYRO: *speaking through gas mask* Mrrrm mrrm? Mrrm mrrm mrrrm mrrrm mrrm. Mrrrrrm mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrrrm mrr-mrrm mrrm. mrrrm mrmr mrrm mrrrm mrm mrrrrm mrrrm mrrm mrrm mrrm.

11TH DOCTOR: Mrrrm mrrm! Mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrrm, mrrm mrrm mrrm mrm: *points microphone to Grant Morrison*

GRANT MORRISON: *clearly not wearing a filtration mask or anything that should impede speech* Mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrrrm mrrrm mrm mrrm, mrrrrm mrm mrrmr mrrm mrrrm mrm mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrm.

11TH DOCTOR: Mrrm mrm mrrrm. Mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrm mrrrm mrrrm mrrrm!

CALENDER MAN: Thank you, Doctor, I'm sure that whatever you just said was very important.

AMBUSH BUG: Coming up; a crazy guy wearing a tinfoil hat tries to convince us that the members of the royal family are actually shape-shifting lizards. Only on Channel 52!

---

OMAKE: JUSTICE SUBSTITUTES OF JAPAN PART 2

Hercule MR. SATAN: So, uh… what are we doing here again?

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: We're here to lure the so-called "heroes" into a dastardly trap.

MR. SATAN: What kind of trap?

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: A trap whose elegance lies in it's simplicity. First we lure them into this spot.

MR. SATAN: Yeah? And then what?

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: And then we do nothing!

MR. SATAN: ...your plan stinks.

FUBUKI: Look! It's the bad guys!

DAN HIBIKI: Well well, if it's Hercul- I mean Mr. Satan, my Arch-Nemesis who I met online this one time.

MR. SATAN: Ha! You ready for a beatdown, runt?

DAN HIBIKI: Who's the runtier one? The runt, or the one who's calling the other person a runt?

MR. SATAN: Uhhhhhhhh...

DAN: HOOOAH!

MR. SATAN: Kiiii-YAAAH!

DAN: YoooooOOOOO!

MR. SATAN: WOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOOWOO!

DAN: EEEEE-yooooooWAAAAAA!

MR. SATAN: HAyoooooooWAaaaaa-YA!

DAN: You are indeed the master of making Bruce Lee noises. But tell me, can you perform the One-Palm Mantis-Style Candlemaker?

MR. SATAN: The One-Palm Mantis-Style Candlemaker? You mean the secret technique that can win any fight, but kills the user if performed wrong? Yeah, sure, I can do that. Can you?

DAN: Yes, of course. I do that move all the time.

MR. SATAN: Oh yeah? Prove it!

DAN: Um… I'm kind of rusty. How about you show me how it's done?

MR. SATAN: What me? I'm practically an amature. You're the one who should be doing it.

DAN: Oh no no no, you're the real master here. You should go first.

MR. SATAN: No, I insist! You're clearly the one I should be looking to for inspiration-

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: Fool! I don't care which of you can perform that move! For I am the Purple Purposeless, master of not giving a shit!

DAN: Nooo! Apathy! My only weakness!

FUBUKI: Ditto!

DAN: Nobody… paying… attention… losing… will… to live!

FUBUKI: Must… talk… in… ellipses!

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: Kneel before my overwhelming not caringness!

MR. SATAN: But you care about my stuff, right?

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: Not really.

MR. SATAN: Nooo! Apathy! My only weakness! *faints*

DAN: Only… chance… must use… phone… must… take… photo-op...

FUBUKI: Must… say… something… hilarious… on… twitter…

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: It'll do you no good, fools! You'll never find more followers in time! You might as well wish for a Deus Ex Machina to fall out of the sky.

GREY LANTERN RING: Purple Purposeless; you have the ability to instill great indifference. Welcome to the Grey Lantern Corps.

PURPLE PURPOSELESS: Wait, what? *GETS HOISTED INTO THE SKY* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAISTILLDONTCAREABOUTANYOFTHIIIIIIIIIIIS!

FUBUKI: Huh.

DAN: That was weird.

FUBUKI: For sure.

TO BE CONTINUED

---

So let's talk about combat. Action scenes are fun to write,

I think of the characters as being on a "cognitive spectrum", that is, how much they think when they fight. Among the main characters, the order is:

[THINKS MORE-THINKS LESS]

Shulk, Shirley, Lightning, Kallen, Ino, Simon, Shinji, Electra, Sayaka, Hope,

Note that one approach is not necessarily better than the others; it's simply a measure of how their personality is reflected in their combat style.

Simon's fighting style is somewhat close to that of Indiana Jones; he uses whatever means are available, isn't afraid to fight dirty, and can quickly come up with a plan when required. The only reason he doesn't carry a firearm on foot is that this version of Simon is somewhat more concerned with preserving life than his canon counterpart, and he's more willing to go all-out on an immortal or non-sentient being.

Lightning, by contrast, is much more methodical. She strikes only when there's an opening, and tries to either block or parry other incoming attacks despite being the most physically durable member of the team. The reason for this is twofold; not only does it keep Lightning from fully relying on her L'cie powers, but it also makes her opponents underestimate her.

Shirley leans a bit more on the cognitive side, since she doesn't have the combat experience that anyone else does. And while being a rookie is a trait she shares with Shinji, Shinji is less likely to be able to think things through in an emergency.

Hope's combat style is fast-paced and childish. Like Simon she thinks on her feet, but never comes up with a concrete plan for more than a few seconds ahead. Sayaka is similar, but her healing factor isn't nearly as powerful as Hope's so she has more to worry about.

Electra does think while she fights, but never about strategy. Rather, her mind is occupied with how much she hates the person she's fighting, and fantasizing about what she's going to do when she wins, which only succeeds in riling her up further. While powerful emotions can be useful (especially in anime), they need to be tempered with skill, something that Electra is far too impatient to learn.

With Kallen, it's not so much that she lands in the middle so much as that she hits both ends of the spectrum simultaneously. She's no master strategist, but she's experienced enough to keep her head cool in a fight, smart enough to spot traps, and trained enough to channel her rage effectively. At least that's how I interpret her both in-canon and out; feel free to debate me on this.

Ino we can talk about later, since she doesn't have enough character development yet to come up with a style that is completely her own.