Vader walked past the pieces of the Cybermen, flanked by five of the skull-faced creatures, which Teridax had informed him were known as Rahkshi. The sounds of battle echoed all around him.

"You know what to do?" He asked a tan Rahkshi with blue hands and feet. It nodded and split off from the main group.

That was all the reply Vader needed. He went back to the innocent civilians.


"What are those things?" asked the boy in white and blue as the Cybermen came into view.

"Metal men who want to delete us or something." Deadpool shrugged. "I wasn't really listening when Lupin gave me the whole explanation. Just watch out for their zappy hands".

"Got it", said the grey-skinned girl, as three long, metal blades came out of her hands.

It took a few seconds before Deadpool realized something was up.

"WAITAMINUTE!" Yelled the mercenary. "Where the heck did you get those claws? They're exactly like Logan's claws!"

The girl looked at him incredulously. "You know someone who..." began the girl, but the Cybermen interrupted her.

They started firing on the group, who were saved by a pink force field, glowing the same color as the unicorn's horn.

"Guys, focus! We can talk about that later! Right now we've got bigger problems!"


Dante blocked the Cyberman's hand with his sword, then fired a shot into the cyborg's empty eyehole with the gun faster than it could blink. The Cyberman stumbled backwards, before going on the assault again. But Dante didn't give it a chance, slashing its head off cleanly, then stabbing his sword down through its body at the neck. This was not a fight. This was a slaughter.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the last of them. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the defective Cybermen had surrounded them and were closing in on all sides. He readied his sword and his gun calmly.

"We're trapped!" Tigress called as the group backed into a tighter circle. She was less then confident in the abilities of their fighters when faced against machines.

"Leave that to me." Jigen said. He shot one end of an overhead power-line and the cable swung down, hitting several of the Cybermen and short-circuiting them.

With the herd thinned in that area, the five of them ran through, Dante, Po and Tigress taking out any Cybermen in their path.

The group turned a corner, almost running headlong into another group of Cybermen, these ones marching normally.

They immediately ducked down an alleyway to avoid a mass deletion, but were surprised to find that these Cybermen weren't pursuing them.

"CORRUPTED UNITS DETECTED." Said the Cyberleader. It stood at the front of the normal Cybermen, as the ones that had been attacking Tigress' team earlier arrived. "COMMENCE SYSTEM PURGE. ALL CORRUPTED UNITS MUST BE DELETED."

The non-defective Cybermen raised their left arms. These appeared to be a newer model with wrist-mounted energy blasters. Most of the 'corrupted' Cybermen were gunned down by the normal ones, but a handful of them managed to reach their target before being destroyed, grabbing hold of some of the normal Cybermen. The ones that had been grabbed struggled to break free before the others shot them down along with the corrupted Cybermen.

"RETURNING TO PRIMARY OBJECTIVE." Said the Cyberleader. "CONVERGE ON THE RIFT SITE".

The Cybermen marched off in the direction they had been going, leaving the remains of the destroyed Cybermen where they lay, and leaving the small band of heroes unpursued.

"Come on." whispered Lupin. "They know the rift's exact location, we may as well let them lead us to it. But make sure they don't see or hear us".

The others nodded, before creeping out after the Cybermen.


"So, any idea whereabouts in this city the rift to the Instrument is supposed to appear?" Asked Mickey, the remains of the Cybermen destroyed by his spell scattered around the area.

"Negative." Said Buzz. Stitch muttered something similar, though he added some colorful expletives about 'witchfraft' and 'think's he's all that'.

"Well, finding it should be easy." Said Peter. "Lots of other people are looking for the orb too, so just follow the explosions."

Then they heard heavy footsteps approaching, along with many metal footsteps following after them.

"More Cybermen?" Asked Peter.

"No, too disorganized." Woody said. He looked to the head of the alley where the heavy footsteps were coming from, and the back where they'd come from, and where the metal footsteps were emanating.

Stitch' Curiosity got the better of him, and he scurried ahead of the main group, to peer around the front of the alley. A heavy, purple felt foot stepped in front of his vision before he could get very far.

"Evenin' boys." Said what appeared to be a large purple bear holding a huge Gatling gun in one paw. He was followed by a large number of Cybermen coming around the other corner, though Stitch could tell there was something not quite right about this particular group.

"Lotso?" asked Buzz in surprise.

"The one and only!" he said, before he opened fire on them. Most of the group were forced to dive for cover; only Stitch seemed unaffected by the hail of bullets, standing up and yawning as he took the brunt of the attack. The Cybermen opened fire from behind, but Buzz's spherical energy shield covered them all from the energy attack

"Well I'll be damned", said Lotso momentarily ceasing firing, the tip of the gatling gun red hot and smoking. "You're completely bulletproof ain't you?"

"Quite." Stitch looked quite proud of himself. "It's my fluffiness, you see."

Woody was just getting up, dusting off his Stetson, when he saw something in the shadows above him. "Oh no." He muttered. "Stitch! Lotso never works alone! He always has a partner, stronger then he is!"

The bear looked to someone (or something) above him and grinned.

"Looks like we got ourselves a tough one, eh Carnage?"

Suddenly, a red creature sprang from the shadows and onto Stitch. He managed to pull the creature off him and throw it high into the air, but before it crashed down on a nearby roof, it fired a long, web-like structure from its hand and pulled Stitch after it.

Lotso laughed and opened fire again, but a gentlemanly skeleton stepp up in front of his friends. When the gatling gun roared back to life, Skellington just laughed, as the bullets went straight into his evening coat without a scratch, not coming out the other side.

"Flush the rest of them out!" Lotso ordered the Cybermen, who obeyed, shambling out after the ones who had bullet-holes in them from Lotso's attack. Buzz's shields only protected the group from energy attacks, so Woody was quick to draw, and put six bullets into six Cybermen's weak points.

"Can't you… you know… delete them again!" Woody yelled to Mickey.

"That was a one time spell." Mickey said, trying to focus his arcanic power on the other Cybermen. "I can't do it twice the same day."

Woody was forced to reload. There were more than six Cybermen. And it wasn't long before they managed to catch Peter and throw him out into the open beyond Jack Skellington.

"No!" They all yelled.

Lotso's aim shifted fire again but Peter took to the skies. A few of the Cybermen opened fire at him in the air with wrist-mounted weapons, but he narrowly avoided the shots for the time being.

Even so, with Lotso and the Cybermen shooting at him, he wouldn't last long.

Suddenly, something appeared behind Lotso. As he turned to see what it was, a falcon flew into him from behind, tearing the Gatling gun from his paws.

A strange sense of calmness overwhelmed him, and for a moment, there he wondered why he was concerned about anything. Then he came back to his senses, as the falcon transformed in mid-air into a carbon-copy of Lotso himself.

Lotso reached for the gun on the ground, but some blue-furred creature behind him kicked the gun away and the bear's doppelganger moved between Lotso and his gun.

"Kill him!" Lotso shouted to the Cybermen.

"No, kill him!" The copy pointed.

The Cybermen looked from one to the other, unable to decide.

"Your minions don't know who to obey." Kurt gloated. "Obviously the virus they've been corrupted with tells them to obey either your voice or your appearance. They don't know what to do when there are two of you."

Lotso cursed under his breath. "Well, ain't you a clever one?" He pulled out a grenade. "I hate the clever ones!" He chucked it into the alley, and ran.

"Everybody down!" Buzz yelled, but Jack Skellington simply caught the grenade with a bony heel, played hacky sack with it for a bit, then punted it backwards to the Cybermen.

It was an impressive boom.

"We'll go after him." Kurt said.

"No!" Woody interrupted him. "Peter, follow him and see who he's working with. That virus is way beyond Lotso."

Peter nodded and flew after him. Jack and Mickey helped take care of the remaining Cybermen, and then when Woody turned to the strangers who had stopped Lotso, but they were already gone.

"Alright people, we've got an Instrument to find." Said Buzz after a few seconds, when it was clear Woody had more important things on his mind then immediate command.

"No, we have to find Stitch first." Said Woody. "You heard him, he hates clever ones. Whatever virus he used for the Cybermen, and whatever else he's planning, you can bet we'll need Stitch to stop him."

Buzz nodded. "Alright. Let's find our alien friend." He grabbed Woody, and Jack grabbed Mickey, and together they raced towards the rooftops in search of their sixth member.

And all the while Woody was pondering the questions: 'Who were those guys? What did they want? And What do they know that we don't?'