Shantae: Clash of Arms

by IllusoryNomad

Following her latest defeat, the notorious Risky Boots hatches yet another dastardly scheme to annihilate Sequin Land as we know it. Only this time, she's managed to pilfer an extensive collection of military-grade weapons from another world! With the threat of Risky's conquest more perilous than ever, Half-Genie Hero Shantae and an unlikely ally must join forces to stop her!

10. Shocking Trial Separation

Chapter 7: Shocking Trial Separation

LOCATION: MIMIC'S WORKSHOP, SCUTTLE TOWN, SEQUIN LAND

DATE: SEPTEMBER 21ST, 16 P.G.F.

TIME: 1026 HOURS

"…and that's just about all the important details about the last two or three days in a nutshell," a familiar young ponytailed woman concluded as she watched the elderly scientist to whom she was talking keeping himself busy in his quaint little laboratory.

"Hm… So the most intriguing mystery of our extraterrestrial acquaintance's existence here was solved just like that, hm?" a certain elderly scientist plainly surmised as his favorite visitor, none other than his lavender-haired adopted niece, just finished explaining to him the events of the last few adventures she'd been on since they'd last met.

"It seems that way, though I'm sure there's a ton more we could stand to learn about," Shantae confirmed with a nod as she watched her uncle Mimic tinker around with an undisclosed project using a series of test tubes full of various liquids and a dilapidated stone slab that seemed ready to crumble at the slightest touch. "I didn't think the answer to the reason he has magic in his system would just be thrown at us like it was when we went to the Prickle Stitch Valley, but even then, the answer brings up a ton of other questions. Like, I'm still a little concerned that he's not telling me the whole story, but whenever I try to ask him for more details about his time in the Grotto of Judgment, he barely budges and changes the subject. So, I don't know what else he could've found out…" she confessed to her uncle in worry.

"Certainly not the most… conventional method of uncovering such a crucial bit of information, that's for sure," he agreed as he remained hard at work, juggling the tasks of completing his experiment and drumming up theories with Shantae. "However anticlimactic it is for me, I am at least glad to know I was on the right track. Given a couple more days and another opportunity to run another couple of tests on the young fella, I'd have concluded that the magic in him stemmed from my Dynamo-turned-Portal myself," Mimic confidently asserted. "There is still some work to be done that could further solidify that conclusion, nevertheless. It's just a matter of scheduling an appropriate time to do so…"

"Right…" Shantae droned in mild discomfort at the idea of her teammate potentially being her uncle's guinea pig for his experiments again. "So anyway, I definitely didn't think it was possible to switch bodies with someone until yesterday…" she added, changing the subject right away.

"Oh, right, right, I nearly forgot you mentioned that…" Mimic agreed, though his attention was unevenly divided between Shantae and his workbench. "I can't believe that dastardly magician made you two exchange bodies at that rotten pirate's behest. It seems so unlike Risky Boots to ever solicit assistance from anyone unless she was seeking to manipulate them as she saw fit."

"You're telling me," Shantae agreed with a heavy sigh as she pondered at what point she'd next encounter her archenemy. Since this wacky series of adventures began, the half-genie had yet to lay eyes on her, which was a tad unusual. However, the residual impact of her nefarious plotting could be felt for miles upon miles; as demonstrated by multiple encounters with Risky's heavily-armed Tinkerbats, amongst other experiences she'd had in the last week or so. "I didn't even mention that Hypno Baron only went through with it because Risky completely obliterated his castle, and then forced him to do her bidding."

"Obliterated, you say?" Mimic remarked in surprise, though he was certain to contain it. "You certainly do know how to draw quite the hyperbole, Shantae…"

"Uncle, I'm serious! Using Tay's weapons, she literally wiped his castle off the map! It was the whole reason he relocated to Genie's Hem and took over the college up there!"

"Oh… Goodness, what a catastrophe," he nonchalantly stated, still toiling away with his test tubes as he poured the contents of one onto the slab to see it sizzle and cause the stone to crack more. "Drat… That wasn't the right formula for the Auto-Potion at all…"

"Are you even listening, Uncle?"

"Yes, dear, of course. You're still not allowed to date him just because he has magic in him," he rambled without even looking at Shantae, causing the half-genie to gawk at him in total embarrassment. "I will hear nothing about how you two switching bodies brought you closer together and established some unbreakable bond or some other hogwash, you understand?"

"What!? That wasn't even close to what we were talking about!" she yelled, appalled that her surrogate parent had missed the mark of the conversation by ten thousand light years. "Uncle, you really weren't listening! You're the worst! Also, Tay and I are not dating!"

"Good, good. As long as you get the idea, doll… Where is your alien buddy, anyway?" he casually asked, almost completely ignoring her embarrassed outburst. At that, Shantae sighed, giving up on trying to get his full attention as she calmed herself down.

"He's not… well, technically he IS an alien, but don't call him that," Shantae admonished with a light chuckle that eased some of the distress she felt from Mimic's bold, inattentive assumption. "He's at Sky's place, seeing if she's home because we have somewhere new that we need to explore. We could use a ride, but she may have already left by now."

"Oh? You're still bumming rides off your friends to get around?" Mimic reacted with surprise, though he still hadn't turned away from the wooden table he'd been conducting his experiments on. At the very least, she'd finally caught some more of his hard-earned attention. "I'm surprised Sky hasn't become exhausted with how much you treat her like a transport service. You should really consider finding your own method of navigation at some point."

"I'm not bumming rides, Uncle… I don't own a boat or a plane, and you never got around to inventing that 'bicycle' thing you said would help me get around easier," she complained with a slight pout as she crossed her arms. "And Sky's just fine helping me on my adventures. Plus, if I don't have a ride, I can always use my Warp Dance… at least, as soon as I figure out why it hasn't been working like it did in the past… a-anyway, I also don't have a problem getting where I need to be by my own two feet."

"I suppose, cupcake, but you know you can't always expect her to drop what she's doing to accommodate you," the retired Relic Hunter lectured. "Let us not forget that many of your recent trips have required you to travel either by air or by sea; two avenues that no amount of perambulating would help you with."

"…Parabola-what?"

"No, this has nothing to do with angles or equilateral curves, Shantae. I said, 'Perambulating.' As in, walking."

"Oh. Another 'Uncle' word to add to the dictionary, then…" she commented with a pensive nod.

"Also, as far as I am aware, your Warp Dance has only been able to take you to places you've previously visited, no?"

"Yeah, you're right…" Shantae begrudgingly agreed, beginning to see Mimic's point.

"So, regarding places you haven't been, that leaves you with limited options if someone isn't there to provide transportation. At one point or another, neither Sky nor any other transport resource will be available, and the day that happens, you'd be stuck. Again, I suggest looking up some alternative measures of traveling if walking or relying on your magic won't get you there."

"I guess, but what else am I supposed to do?" she countered. "Sky is the most reliable person I know of who can help me travel long distances. Risky's out for obvious reasons. And there's no way I'm asking for Squid Baron's help again after what happened the other day…"

"Well don't you know how to steer a ship all by your lonesome anyway?" Mimic brought up as he poured another liquid onto the stone.

"Yeah, but like I said, I don't have a boat just waiting for me to sail in it."

"Well that changes for today, believe it or not."

"What do you mean?" she asked with utmost intrigue as she wondered just what Mimic was getting at.

"If this next place requires a ton of sea travel and Sky isn't available, then you can borrow my-!" he was about to offer before his experiment went awry. The resulting room-shaking *BOOM* caused by a sudden explosion of the liquid he was pouring startled both him and his adoptive niece as he was flung backward across the messy laboratory. He landed on his feet, thankfully, but his stone slab swiftly went up in brilliant pink flames. "Oh, dear… Shantae, could you-?"

"Yeah, I got it," she agreed before he could finish. With a stretch of her arms and a few shakes of her hips… "Transform!" Shantae called out as she struck her patented pose to turn herself into her Mermaid form. The minute she did so, she conjured up a few water balls and fired them at the burning table. In no time flat, Mermaid-Shantae put out the chemical fire before it threatened to burn down Mimic's Workshop. Unfortunately, the method in which the fire was put out actually made the smoke even worse as it billowed heavily from the scorched work table to the point where it began fogging up the entire laboratory. As Shantae *POOFed* back into her human form, Mimic quickly committed himself to opening his windows as quickly as he could, coughing profusely as he did so. "It's best that you step outside, cupcake! You don't want… AGH! You don't want to breathe this in!" he instructed as he moved to try and contain the magenta-colored smoke with a wet blanket before it enveloped the entire workshop.

"Are you sure? I could at least-!"

"No, no, sweetheart, go on outside! I'll be there momentarily! This is no big deal, so don't you panic!"

"Alright, but I keep telling you not to mess with those chemicals, uncle," Shantae remarked as she turned to step outside. "They're bad for your health. If you need anything else, I'll be waiting outside."

"Yes, yes, I'll catch up, but don't be surprised if it takes me a while to get this under control!" he warned as Shantae exited the workshop, shaking her head. She patiently waited outside, leaning up against the wall of the workshop as the gloomy gray of the sky above was nearly overshadowed by the murky-looking bright purplish pink entity that was the smoke from Mimic's failed experiment.

"Oh, uncle… What am I gonna do with you?" the half-genie asked herself, crossing her arms and shaking her head in mild amusement as she turned to watch the townsfolk peacefully carrying on with their respective days, seeming completely unfazed by the fact that Mimic's laboratory had smoke pouring out of every open window on the oddly-shaped building. Just an average day in Scuttle Town, I suppose. However, as Shantae noticed, a horsefly had flown directly into the smoke and within seconds, a sudden *POOF* of pink smoke burst all around the bug. Instantly, the normally-harmless creature grew about five hundred times its original size and mutated to where it was spewing flames from its oral cavity as it let out a series of vicious, horrifying screech noises. The intimidating, disgustingly-loud *BUZZZZZZZZ* from its gargantuan wings further solidified the jade-green, shiny-bodied, orange-eyed mutant fly monster as a threat to the safety of Scuttle Town's citizens.

"Whoa! That could be trouble!" she observed, getting ready for an early-morning boss battle from nowhere. However, rather than challenge Shantae right away, the abominable fly monster took off, haphazardly zipping through the air over a few buildings as it spewed erratic blasts of flame every which way. It was at that point that Shantae heard a sudden series of *BANG* noises coming from somewhere nearby that startled her all over again. Right as she turned in the direction the noises were coming from, her trusty sidekick came rushing toward her, gun in his hands as he tried to assess the situation.

"What the heck is THAT thing!?" Tayshan, dressed in his newly-revitalized white tank top and navy-blue army fatigues and boots, asked in mild distress as he scanned the area to notice other citizens either staring at the mutant fly as it buzzed off or running away in terror. Tay himself was also evidently freaked out by the revolting creature he'd just tried to shoot down. "It zipped right by me, breathin' fire everywhere an' almost burned Sky's house down! An' why does it smell like week-old deviled eggs out here!? What's all the pink smoke about!? Is your uncle alright!?"

"I'll explain later, but it looks like that thing is headed in the direction of Oasis Town!" Shantae warned as she hurriedly prepared herself for yet another field trip. "We've got a job on our hands already, Tay, so let's get rolling!"

"Wait!" called Mimic as he finally emerged from the smoked-out building with his clothes and beard matted in soot. He was hacking up a lung as he held out a hand to halt the two young adventurers.

"What is it, Uncle!? We've got to move now if we want to save Oasis Town!"

"When you come back… Auto-canoe… You… borrow that…!" he sputtered between coughs as he continued to explain. "If… Sky… not availablrhuhuhohuagh!" he tried to spit out before he erupted into another uncontrollable coughing fit.

"Uh… Do you need help, sir?" Tay asked with utmost concern for the old man's health.

"No-hoh-ho!" Mimic tried to shout, though he was predictably interrupted by another series of coughs before he stood himself up and took in as deep a breath as he could. That… only made it worse as he hunched over and fell into yet another coughing fit, spewing chemical smoke from his mouth that further concerned his teenaged audience. Almost immediately, he dashed past the duo toward the nearby dock where he borrowed (read: snatched) a canteen of water from a random blue-robed bystander and chugged the whole thing down right in front of them.

"Hey, whaddaya doin'!? Just whaddaya think you're doin', ya thievin' old coot!?" the civilian screamed, though Mimic paid her little mind.

"My apologies," he offered before politely handing the stolen water container back and running back toward Shantae and Tayshan. He was ragged and out of breath at this point, but his composure held as strong as it could.

"Uncle, you… are just too much sometimes…" Shantae remarked with a mildly perturbed sigh as she rubbed her hand through her hair.

"Dude… You alright, there?" Tay asked after her, uncertain of if they should go and chase the fly monster at this point or attempt to aid Mimic in his recovery from his lab mishap.

"Yes, yes, I'm… I-I'm fine," he assured through a much-abated sporadic series of coughs before he cleared his throat and patted soot from his clothes. "I was saying that if Sky isn't available for your field trip, you two can borrow my newly-crafted prototype Auto-Canoe! I also wanted to check in on your progress with that HUD Monitor, but it appears you've got a task to complete!"

"Lucky us, because Sky ain't home," Tay answered, all but confirming their method of transportation to their next adventure. "But as for the HUD Monitor thing, we-!"

"Great! Now that that's all settled, we've gotta go! Come on, Tayshan!" Shantae urged as she cut in, grabbing her sidekick by the hand and practically dragging him off. "We'll be back, Uncle! Try not to get sick while we're gone!"

"Whoa! Hold up, let me get at least a little bit organized here!" Tay pleaded as he tried to keep his balance while Shantae dragged him through Scuttle Town on the path to Oasis Town.

"No time!" she firmly denied his request as she continued to dash forward and pull him along like a wagon full of stolen goods. And before they knew it, they were off on their next big quest… or rather, a mini-quest, because as you're probably aware, Oasis Town was not the destination they'd originally set. As such (and you're probably gonna hate me for this), we won't have much time to go over exactly what happened there, though you won't be completely left in the dark. Instead, we fast forward a bit to a closer point in time before they made their next (intended) grand voyage into parts unknown…

Hours later…

LOCATION: SCUTTLE TOWN LIGHTHOUSE, SCUTTLE TOWN, SEQUIN LAND

DATE: SEPTEMBER 21ST, 16 P.G.F.

TIME: 1430 HOURS

It was a cloudy, chilly afternoon, where our dynamic duo found themselves loafing around in the upper deck of Shantae's lighthouse, huddled together and reading comics to casually pass time by following a quick little excursion to Oasis Town to take care of a not-so-little problem. Their time since their trip to the mostly-immolated Genie's Hem was somewhat quiet, though they'd found some ways to keep themselves busy… as you PROBABLY already know. We rejoin them in the midst of a casual comics-related discussion just before they were set to venture off to their actual destination…

"I like how the Secret United Genie Alliance of the Republic Sultanate talk about how they don't appreciate covert government interference with the general public's daily lives, even though their whole league was created by the same regime they accuse of corruption," Tayshan, back in his usual black-and-tan-camouflage ensemble, analyzed of the story he and Shantae were sharing as they read the final panel.

"Well, to give you some background, the S.U.G.A.R.S. were initially instated as the government enforcement service in the name of a tyrannical dictator," Shantae, dressed in her usual red dancing garb (in case you were wondering) explained. "They at first were known as the Shurtat Aldawla, or the state police, established by the diabolical Sultan Sharun. He wasn't originally supposed to be the Sultan of Jumhuria. His brother Mahayid was supposed to inherit the title from their father. Sharun manipulated government officials behind the scenes, staged a coup that led to the assassination of his father, and covered it up by framing his own brother, who was banished and locked away until he went insane trying to clear his name. Sharun basically cheated his way to the top. Once he gained control of Jumhuria's government, he had everyone who helped him get there banished or otherwise silenced, so that no one would uncover the horrible truth before he turned the government upside down, one corrupt nationwide decree at a time."

"Yikes… Nothin' like a ruthless, egomaniacal madman with the right resources t' shake things up for the worse…" he commented, though he couldn't help but draw a comparison between the villain in the story and a certain conniving pirate mistress with eerily similar proclivities and ambitions… "It sounds just like a certain someone we've been tryin' t' hunt down for the last week…"

"You said it. Good point, by the way," she acknowledged with intrigue. "Sharun DOES seem to act an awful lot like Risky Boots, huh? That's uncanny… Still, that's why Jayid and the six other genies they unknowingly enlisted infiltrated the forces of the Shurtat Aldawla, turning some of its other members against Sharun as they became a beacon of light on a country ravaged by the government's darkness, greed, systematic oppression, and legalized crime. It didn't take long for Jayid and his group to be found out as genies though, which is why the general public's opinion of them is so mixed."

"I see… So the S.U.G.A.R.S. are like, a rogue sect of the state police who are workin' toward deliverin' the power t' govern back to the people by endin' the totalitarian iron-fisted grip Sharun has on it? And then, because o' the bad name genies were given, the public doesn't trust them an' refuses t' lend support?"

"Exactly!" she excitedly confirmed, happy that Tay was catching on.

"That… actually sounds a lot like our time on Naga Mountain, if you scramble a few details around," he humorously observed, making Shantae gasp with surprise.

"Oh my gosh, that's so true! I mean, Squid Baron was no Sharun, but you're totally right! There are a ton of parallels to draw there, too! How weird is that!?"

"Pretty weird…" the serviceman acknowledged with a mirthful chuckle. "One more big comparison, an' I'll start thinkin' this comic somehow predicted the events of our own adventure."

"Who knows? I only showed you this and two other issues, so anything is possible! Anyway, Jayid and a team of other genies were watching the fall of Jumhuria as they knew it from the Maginexus, the Genie Realm of this comic," the half-genie explained, unaware that she'd drawn yet another parallel as she went on. "Deciding that enough was enough, they transported themselves to Jumhuria disguised as regular humans and got to work unearthing the roots of the city state's darkest days; even with genies having a history of committing equally-atrocious acts upon the people of Jumhuria long before Jayid came along."

"Ohh… Yeah, I was a bit confused as to who was who," Tay pondered, mentally comparing what he'd heard in this peculiar comic to what little info he was given about the history of Sequin Land.

"The three issues I showed you were pretty much in the middle of everything, so I get it if things were hard to follow. The beginning of the series is slow and sometimes, it feels like things are just dragging until the writers develop a new major plotline. It's my favorite series of my entire collection, regardless. I wanted to show you the really juicy stuff first to see if it caught your eye. I hope you enjoyed it."

"Yeah! It's exactly the kind o' comic I like most! A deep an' intricate plot, a diverse range o' characters, that irrevocable grit an' drama… an' of course, the spicy, suspenseful will-they-won't-they buddin' romance between Jayid and his half-genie rival Shakyra…"

"Isn't that part the best!? Shakyra is my favorite character of them all!" Shantae enthusiastically gushed. "She's strong, beautiful, confident, independent, determined to make big changes for the good of Jumhuria, and even has powers just like mine! She can shapeshift into animals, monsters, and various inanimate objects, use her long, luxurious sapphire-colored enchanted ponytail to whip enemies into submission, and even summon bolts of lightning and towers of fire at will!"

"She sounds like a real tough competitor."

"Without a doubt! She always proves to Jayid and the others that having a human mother and a genie father is by no means a weakness of hers. She takes pride in it and keeps everyone on their toes, so they know not to underestimate her. Even better for her character background is that she is living, breathing proof that genies and humans are capable of coexisting and loving one another as equals."

"Heh, puttin' it that way, sounds more like Shakyra is less a 'favorite character' an' more-so an indirect homage t' you. Or, maybe a direct one, because I'm drawin' a LOT more parallels right now…" Tay observed, raising an eyebrow as he began to grow just a tad suspicious of the comic book's eerily-relatable content.

"Aw, no way…" Shantae deflected with a sheepish giggle. "I've never done any of the awesome things Shakyra's done over the course of this series. She's a total bombshell who's always oozing with confidence, quick wit, catchy one-liners, mastery over her powers, and she even has one of the most powerful full-blooded genies in the universe as a potential lover. No way I'm like that at all… I can't even figure out how to make an appropriate heroic statement before kicking things off, much less stay confident in myself or get anyone other than Aashiq to like me the way Jayid likes her…"

"Come on, don't put yourself down, Shantae…" Tay consoled as he laid a hand upon her shoulder and gently rocked her back and forth. "You've got plenty goin' for you. We've already been over that."

"I know… but it's like, Shakyra is the kind of hero I aspire to be, y'know? She's got it all, while I barely have a thing in comparison…"

"Hmm, I can tell by now that these comics play a pretty big part in how you handle your own adventures," Tay observed as he registered Shantae's self-deprecating comment and drew some comparisons of his own regarding what he'd seen of her.

"You can?" she asked, surprised that he would make the connection without her telling him. "Wow, you're good… and yeah, I know it sounds super geeky that I try to be the kind of hero I read about in comics…"

"Hey now, it's perfectly okay," he assured as he patted his tour guide's shoulder. "If it makes you feel any better, I sometimes thought about action heroes I've watched or read about whenever I did trainin' drills."

"Really?" she asked, perking up as she felt moderately less ashamed of her heroic habits.

"Yeah, though it ain't somethin' I tell everybody," he admitted with a bashful rub of his head. "Granted, you get t' do it for real, which is amazin' in itself. I only ever did it for motivation t' push through my trainin' sessions, as well as tryin' harder with martial arts classes an' exercise…"

"That… Wow… Thanks for understanding, Tay…" she expressed with a relieved smile. "Of course, you're also doing it for real now too, if you didn't think you were already. I hope it's what you expected."

"Trust me, no amount of expectation I had could've prepared me for what we've been through, homegirl…"

"A good point… A good point without a doubt from me," she very much agreed with a thoughtful nod.

"Glad we're on the same page. Still, I think if you were every bit like Shakyra, you wouldn't be near as much fun t' hang out with," Tay countered, catching his companion by surprise as her eyes widened at him.

"What do you mean?"

"Well… Shakyra's a great character. No doubt about it. But I think she definitely takes things way too seriously, if you ask me. All the time. No offense, but I got the feel that she's so busy provin' the point that she can hang around a crowd she feels is inherently superior to her that it's sorta contradictory to what she stands for, t' try so hard t' impress Jayid an' the gang in her efforts t' establish herself as a worthy hero in her own right."

"I… guess I see your point there, but it's not like that's her entire personality. She has her moments of making lighthearted jokes and sharing laughs with the rest of the crew, as well as having self-doubts that she overcomes by her own merit. The most appealing aspect of her character is that she can do so much despite the stigma placed on her for being a half-genie. Is it really her fault that other characters tend to look down on her, making her have to prove herself more often than the rest of the S.U.G.A.R.S.?"

"Yeah… yeah, you got a point there."

"Shakyra's whole background is complex and delicate in areas that the other characters could only understand from the outside looking in. She got where she is because she worked hard for it, even with the odds stacked against her, just like Jayid. Like I said, she's my absolute favorite character in the series because her story so closely resembles my own."

"I understand now… Thanks for clarifyin'. Still, part of what I've come t' like so much about you is that you're growin' an' learnin' at your own pace an' steppin' up to the plate when no one else can. You also acknowledge when you're uncomfortable with a situation, but you still go in an' do your best t' make things right. That takes a lot o' courage. You don't do it t' prove a point or to impress some guy or your friends, either; you do it because it's the right thing t' do, even if it costs you somethin' you might not get some kind o' return for. I also admire that you know how t' keep a positive outlook, even in a time like this, where most people would be stressin' out from what's been goin' on. I know I would've been much worse off had I been tryin' t' stop Risky by myself, for example. I think you're extraordinary just by bein' you."

"Aw, you're just the sweetest, Tay…" she complimented as she smirked at him, bashfully running her fingers through her ponytail. "You're right… Maybe I should give myself some credit. I AM curious, though… Did you find yourself relating to any of the characters in this comic?"

"Hm? Me? Uh… N-not really…" he shrugged. "I wasn't drawin' any comparisons t' myself while we read. Why?"

"Because I think you and Jayid are one in the same," she deduced, making her companion cock an eyebrow.

"How do you figure that?"

"Ignoring the fact that you're human and Jayid is a full-fledged genie, you both charged valiantly into a different world that, despite you having no idea how it works, desperately needs your help. You're both a part of your own organizations dedicated to protecting the rights and prosperity of the general population. You bravely take on the obstacles thrown at you with hardly a second thought, even with the odds stacked against you."

"That right?"

"Mm-hmm. What's more, you and Jayid both demonstrate an alarming level of intelligence; especially when it comes to planning out complicated strategies for accomplishing missions, thinking on the fly, or even in the middle of a fight when you want to catch your opponent off-guard. It makes you both incredibly dangerous; especially if the enemy underestimates you. I've seen that from our sparring matches and during some of our adventures. Plus, you and he have some similarities in your personalities; motivated, intuitive, and passionate, but with a lighthearted, sarcastic side and a penchant for being something of a sweet-talker when it comes to cute girls…" she teased, smirking as she winked and nudged her friend with her elbow.

"Wow… I appreciate the comparison. I mean, I don't think I'm anywhere near as cool or as intelligent as Jayid is, but still… thanks for that. I guess if you put it that way, though, there are some parallels t' draw between me an' this comic, bizarre as that might be. I mean, the S.U.G.A.R.S. kind o' remind me of my faction back home."

"How so?"

"Like them, the organization I enlisted with has an interestin' name, now that I'm reminded of it."

"Is that right? What's the name of your organization?"

"It's called the Governmental Establishment of Nationwide Independence Enforcement Services." At that, Shantae suddenly drew in a dramatic gasp, a bright, giddy smile creeping onto her face. She almost looked like she was ready to explode with joy. She could hardly contain herself.

"No way…!" she uttered in a hushed whisper, causing Tay to shoot her a confused look.

"…What?"

"Your organization is called the G.E.N.I.E.S.? Seriously?" Shantae remarked in a mix of utter astonishment and unshakeable humor, laughing loudly enough at the incredible coincidence that one would swear her walls shook just from the reverberation.

"Huh…?" he uncertainly answered as he thought about the first letter in each word. Once he got it, he gasped. "Oh, wow. Ohh, woooooowwwww…" Tay droned in total shock, feeling a mite silly that he'd forgotten the acronym for his own military organization until this point. "If… that ain't the craziest thing…"

"Do you know what that means, Tay?" the excited young lady asked, evidently figuring something out before her friend did.

"No. What?"

"Technically speaking, you ARE a genie!" At that, Tay couldn't help but scoff in amusement. "You may not have the magic powers of an actual genie… or, maybe that's debatable, but either way, you're part of a group dedicated to keeping your homeland safe! If G.E.N.I.E.S. is the name they go by, then that kinda-sorta makes you a genie!" The two shared a healthy laugh at Shantae's deductive reasoning.

"I… suppose so. Wow, I can't believe I didn't realize the coincidence in the name until now… All things considered, we always just called it the Enforcement Services. I blanked out on the rest o' the name after a while."

"Imagine if you'd told me that sooner," she posed, still smiling ear to ear with enthusiasm. "I'd have probably been convinced you really WERE an alternate version of me."

"The more we find out about each other, the more seriously I'm considerin' that t' be a possibility…" he quipped, scratching his head with his index finger as he wondered by this point how true such a prospect could actually be.

"Same here. Still… it makes me curious, Tayshan. What sorts of things DID you do once you enlisted? I don't think I ever asked you that."

"Well…" Tay began, taking a moment to recollect his memories about his time as a proud member of the coincidentally-named G.E.N.I.E.S. organization. "I'm still in the early days o' my time in service, havin' only served for a little over a year. I'd just gotten promoted t' Corporal maybe a week or so before I came here."

"What was it like? I mean, I've got some ideas as to what it's like being a soldier in a massive army, considering some of the people I've encountered during my past adventures, but… what was it like when you started?"

"I can tell ya one thing, homegirl: It was NOT the easiest transition, goin' from a civilian lookin' for a purpose to a dedicated serviceman with an objective shared by a massive group o' my peers an' superiors."

"How?"

"My first few months were as rough as can be. The first thing they did once I got all my paperwork signed off an' got all my doctors' exams cleared up was throw me in a one-month-long intensive boot camp," the soldier explained. "This boot camp consistently pushed me an' the other guys to our limits. Gettin' yelled at, sun up t' sun down. Goin' t' sleep at midnight, wakin' up t' blarin' trumpets at 6:00 AM sharp every mornin'. The minute you wake up, you're puttin' on layers upon layers of clothin' an' equipment, bein' fed a quick breakfast, an' put through drill after drill after drill with scarcely a break between 'em before you were back t' doin' more drills until it was time t' get ready for bed. Lather, rinse, repeat…"

"Wow… what kinds of drills did you go through?"

"Shoot, I don't even know where t' begin…" he replied with a deep breath, thinking about the grueling horrors of his first few weeks in the military. "T' nutshell it, imagine spendin' every single day bein' made t' carry about forty t' sixty pounds of equipment, consistin' of your clothes in addition to couple o' weapons an' other paraphernalia in a sack on your back."

"Got it."

"Right. So then, imagine runnin'—not walkin', but RUNNING—through the hottest desert in Sequin Land for about two hours with the sixty pounds o' stuff on you. After that, you have t' crawl through a muddy makeshift swamp under a net made o' barbwire, usin' only your elbows an' knees for another hour. With a sixty-pound sack on your back an' all your equipment."

"Wow… Sounds pretty hard. It's hard enough exploring deserts and swamps in just my regular clothes. Carrying a giant bag around and dressed in layers while exploring them? I can't imagine. If the heat exhaustion didn't get me from all the extra effort it'd take to lug all that stuff around, I know I'd probably pass out from fatigue alone. Things were that difficult for you out the gate?"

"Oh no, that was the easy part," Tay corrected, causing Shantae's eyes to widen in shock. "Next, imagine finally gettin' through the mud bog, only to have t' run another… maybe fifteen minutes, where you're avoidin' pitfalls, fake landmines that you can't see, an' occasionally havin' t' do a hurried-up hopscotch routine through another couple o' nets. THEN, you have t' climb a ten-foot wall by shimmyin' up a worn-out rope."

"With sixty pounds of equipment on you?"

"No, thankfully… At least, not till later. They let you put the sack down on the other side o' the wall for the first few tries at this part. Of course, you still gotta pick it back up an' run another thirty minutes while avoidin' more fake landmines an' mock fire from fake guns held by your superiors an' peers. You also gotta switch between runnin', crawlin' through more mud, hoppin' through more barbwire, an' one more mad dash t' the finish line, which would take… about another forty-five minutes if you were movin' too slow. Thirty if you were quick."

"Jeez, Tay! That sounds brutal!"

"Believe me, I know. Now imagine havin' t' go through that nightmarish torture in a mixed bag of unpredictable horrors every day for three weeks, in addition to a cycle o' daily weight trainin' routines that pushed your body an' mind t' their absolute limits, and even further beyond. Also, add in incredibly aggressive, in-your-face, unrelentin' drill instructors that practically BEG you t' talk back, act out, or do anything at all t' step outta line. If you didn't step out o' line, good on you. You're patient. You're well-disciplined. You probably know the mind game they're playin'. If you did let them provoke you, though… well, they'd make you skip meals an' go hungry for a night, go through an extra round of a certain part o' the obstacle course I mentioned, lock you in a box in the ground for an hour while they occasionally dumped buckets o' freezin' water on you, or… worse, they'd punish everybody EXCEPT you, then throw you t' the wolves when everybody finished up the punishment with a fresh, tangible, collective wave o' seethin' anger directed at you. That's just scratchin' the surface."

"You… managed to avoid getting punished, right?" Shantae had to ask, shocked and frightened by the unforgiving cruelty of Tayshan's training.

"Shantae… after all I told you about my past, you should know me by now. That said, no. No, I did not avoid it."

"Oh, no…"

"Oh, yeah. Every other day, I was lettin' my temper flare up when I struggled an' the instructors screamed in my face, or pickin' fights with drill instructors and my squadmates when they laughed at me, or refusin' to obey a direct order from a superior, thinkin' it made me look like this hotshot rebel without a cause. As you might expect, I… developed a bit of a reputation for bein' a glutton for punishment."

"Tay… Wow, just when I thought it might've gotten easier for you once you joined the military…"

"Not immediately, it didn't. Due t' my refusal to cooperate an' my hotheaded antics early on, I was marked as a liability and a 'no-hoper' who would only drag the rest o' the squad down… T' be honest, I was probably one or two more temper tantrums away from bein' discharged for frequent insubordination. I only shaped up after one o' my instructors pulled me aside one day an' had a talk with me when I was especially itchin' for a fight with my squadmate for trash-talkin' me. He told me that if I hoped t' get anywhere near accomplishin' my goals in life, I'd have t' learn to control myself an' not fly off the handle. He said I had a ton o' potential, since I actually managed t' finish that course multiple times within the first week an' showed a ton o' promise with adaptin' to the routine in record time, but that I was gettin' in my own way with bein' so quick to anger."

"I see… So… how'd that conversation change your perspective?"

"I told him about my past… my parents, my life on the streets, my ambitions t' make somethin' out o' myself, tryin' t' mask my anger as passion an' commitment. It's what he told me after I spilled my guts that changed me from that point on, though…"

"What'd he say?"

"He told me… that if I wanted t' prove I wasn't a victim o' circumstance or a product o' my environment, then I'd have t' start makin' changes for myself; not just my parents or my peers. He said I wasn't a bad guy… just misguided an' frustrated with a problem I wasn't even workin' t' solve… with the problem bein' my personal insecurities an' its effect on my idea of inner progress as compared to perceived progress in the eyes of others." At that, Shantae went silent, her gaze fixed on Tayshan as he gazed back at her, his face communicating total solemnity. "That statement floored me. Granted, it took me a couple days of bein' totally silent an' ruminatin' on that, but I got the idea. I thought back t' how I acted since I joined, an' a short time before. The fights, the outbursts, all the way down t' what anger I was holdin' onto… even what kind o' satisfaction I was gettin' out o' the positive things I did up t' that point. Soon enough, I took a mental step back an' spent a whole night cryin' my eyes out about what a failure I'd been t' myself an' questionin' whether I was ready t' make the commitment of joinin' the Enforcement Services… or, the G.E.N.I.E.S., as we pointed out."

"Tayshan…" Shantae spoke up, her eyes wavering with sympathy as she placed a hand on his back. "You're so hard on yourself. I-I mean… I'm sorry you had to go through that… and I'm glad you managed to turn a tough situation into a good one, but I can't even imagine how awful that experience must've been for you."

"I know… an' I'm still workin' on that, as you already know," Tay assured with a somber smirk. "Still, once I got the idea, I pulled yet another 180 an' shaped myself up t' give it my all an' remain calm throughout the rest o' my time in that boot camp. The drill sergeants noticed the change pretty fast an' gave me my props for toughin' it out the right way rather than lettin' my emotions overwhelm me like I was doin' before. Thankfully, I made that change just in time."

"Just in time?"

"Yeah. Those who didn't make the cut at the end o' boot camp were discharged back t' where they came from, or they quit before then because they couldn't handle the pressure. Those who did make it immediately received their first promotion from Recruit to Private, a brand-new, official uniform, shiny new government-issue rifles an' handguns, an' for the last week before transferrin' to a designated base of operations, we got to take a much-deserved break from all the gruelin' trainin' routines. Mind you, it ain't like it was perfect for me. I still had one heck of a reputation t' clean up. Shoot, I STILL DO have a reputation t' clean up. I still never made any new friends, an' I was still more interested in improvin' myself than I was in fraternizin' with my peers. All things considered, I still got messed with for bein' such a short-tempered recluse despite my chosen profession. And, like I told you before, I still needed another wake-up call from my dearly-departed friends back in that cave in the Prickle Stitch Valley t' help me really see what it meant t' take responsibility for myself."

"Well, progress is made in strides," the insightful young woman informed her comrade. "It's never easy, but we all get where we need to be at one point or another; even with a little help! As for friends… I mean hey, I'd like to think we're close friends already, and we've only known each other a week. Like I said yesterday, I consider you one of my best friends. So, there's progress for you right there!" she let him know with a cheerful grin, which he returned.

"Thanks for that, Shantae… I appreciate it greatly."

"Of course! Still, once you made it through, what else did you do?"

"A lot more trainin' routines with one voluntary three-month stationin' trip abroad as a peacekeeper. The routines encompassed much more than just bulkin' up muscle with weights an' buildin' endurance, though. I'm talkin' hand-to-hand combat trainin', run an' gun mock-missions through more obstacle courses, target practice at the shootin' range with all kinds o' guns an' grenades, an' even some technical work with breakin' down an' reconstructin' weapons, as well as some o' the war vehicles we had at the bases, so we know what t' do if a gun jams or a vehicle stops workin'. Oh, an' we also had weekly meetings t' discuss a little bit o' history on battle techniques an' crisis intervention, amongst other educational subjects."

"Whoa…! You did all that in the span of a year?"

"Yep, more or less. There's little t' no time for rest, but once our trainin' expanded past a month-long marathon o' miserable physical torture… I gotta say, it generally got a lot more fun," he stated with a confident smile.

"That just blows my mind! I know you said you had a lot of training under your belt, but to think you had THAT much? Magic influence aside, no wonder you're so strong and smart!" At that, Tay's face heated up as he bashfully chuckled.

"Aw stop, you're makin' me nervous over here," he joked, scratching his head.

"But it's true! Seriously, I finally get why it's so tough fighting you in our sparring matches, for one thing. I also get how you've been such a quick thinker in the middle of our adventures."

"Thanks, but let's not forget: You've still got me beat in sparrin' matches, six to a big, fat zero. Plus, your adaptive ability on these trips an' even durin' our matches far exceeds my thinkin' skills. You're such a natural at it, it's uncanny!" he countered, offering praise to his partner.

"To do as well as you have against me in our sessions, even with you having only a fraction of the amount of magic I have, and without me taking on any handicaps, is already a wonder, Tay. Don't underestimate yourself. It shows us both that you're getting better, just like I said you would. Plus, I've been adventuring for years! I'd better be able to adapt to my surroundings or to a tough situation, or else I'd be in huge trouble every single time I set foot in a new landscape! Your thinking ability helping you as much as it has, is definitely a good sign that you're getting the hang of things."

"That's true…" Tay nodded in agreement.

"In fact, going back to how you and Jayid relate, you both have a knack for gathering an understanding of any situation while you're in the middle of it. Just from our time on Naga Mountain alone, you actually found a method to get past the toughest parts of it without even needing to fight the monsters in your way! I would've never known the Nagas and archers there would stop attacking us and offer to give you your flamethrowers back if we agreed to take down Squid Baron for them. It's just like how Jayid convinced a giant nine-headed Hydra to protect a village from a full-frontal assault by the Shurtat Aldawla by agreeing to talk the villagers into drawing up a peace agreement with it. Like I was saying before we got sidetracked, you and he are a lot alike," she assured with a grin.

"I mean, I-I guess, if you put everything I said int' that kind o' perspective… Buuut, I think you might've missed the mark on 'sweet-talker,' if I'm gonna make any objections," he shot back, mirthfully shaking his head as he thought back to Shantae's previous comparison. "I'm definitely not the kind o' guy who can charm his way out of an unpleasant situation with a woman or win her heart with lines laced with honey. 'Smooth' ain't exactly a word that describes me, as far as you've already witnessed."

"Oh, yeah? So how do you explain the fact that, within your first day here, you managed to get the attention of not one, but two girls just by saying the right things to them?"

"What two girls did I do that to?"

"Don't play dumb, Tay. You know exactly who I'm talking about."

"…You an' Sky?" he guessed, causing Shantae to exhale in disbelief. "I mean, I didn't say two words t' Sky before she started hittin' on me. There was literally zero effort o' my own there. I uh… I wasn't aware you liked me like that, though," he smilingly teased, though his heartbeat increased in intensity. "I wasn't expectin' such a sudden confession from you."

"N-no!" she hastily denied with a furious blush, making Tay snicker. "Not me! I-I meant Twitch! I told you I don't feel that way about you!" she defensively shouted.

"I know, homegirl. Relax," he calmly admitted with a sigh and a chuckle. "I'm just messin' with ya."

"Oh. I-I knew that," she lied, nervously tittering as she brought herself to her feet to put the comic away in a nearby shelf packed to the brim with reading material… which was mostly, if not exclusively comic books and beauty magazines neatly sorted by series and issue. "You're a clever one, Tay. I'll remember that."

"I bet you will… Still, I think it's interesting you compared me t' the main character of that comic. I didn't think anything of it."

"Well, he's the one whose personality is closest to yours. At least, as far as I know about you. You even have the same dry, witty sense of humor, exemplified mainly by making flat, sarcastic remarks about things you find inconvenient or worth criticizing for how absurd you think they are."

"Oh gee, you've figured me out to a 'T,'" he flatly remarked. "Your deductive reasonin' is impeccable."

"Exactly what I mean. Thanks for proving my point," she told him, smiling triumphantly as she chuckled. Tay merely smirked back, conceding to her. "Maybe I'm not the only one who should give myself more credit, hm?"

"Whatever you say, Shakyra," he teased as he rolled his eyes, purposefully calling his friend by the name of her favorite character.

"Another good one, Jayid," she shot back, still smirking. "If only you would realize how right I am…"

"Right, because the next thing you'll tell me is that since we're so much like those two, then we should definitely be-!"

"Don't say it," she warned, not liking the implications of his statement.

"…partners in crime-fightin' for longer than this situation with Risky an' my guns will carry out for, an' eventually build our own team o' justice warriors named after a basic carbohydrate in the name of fightin' corruption, greed, an' government-instigated oppression," he finished, unsure of why she interrupted him. "What, that thought bothers you?"

"Oh. No, I thought you were going to say something else," she admitted, darting her eyes away momentarily. "Still, I wouldn't want you to be stuck here against your will, but I think it'd be cool to finally have a partner to complete at least some of my adventures with. I've never done multiplayer before and so far, teaming up with you has been awesome! A fresh, new experience I feel like I was missing out on."

"Glad ya think so. It's definitely been a real blast goin' explorin' with you. Still, nothin' good lasts forever…" he sighed, ruminating on his current purpose for being in Sequin Land and what it meant for his friendship with Shantae. "However long it takes, once we wrap this up, chances are, that's it for us if it all plays out a certain way…"

"I… I know…" she somberly agreed, looking away in contemplative sadness. "But we can still make the best of the time we have. I'm here with you through thick and thin."

"I appreciate that… No words can justify how thankful I am. That said, you got any idea on when we could head out again t' search for Risky Boots today? The trip to Oasis Town earlier was kind of a bust, what with us seein' Tinkerbats there, but not bein' able t' catch 'em through all the commotion about that giant, fire-breathin' armored mutant horsefly with the grudge against your uncle."

"Yeah, things like that happen often around here. Also, you can blame Uncle for the gross mutant fly. He was messing around with dangerous chemicals in his workshop again and blew something up in his lab. The egg-scented smoke was toxic and wound up causing a normal fly to turn into… that thing we beat up. I don't have a clue where it got the armor from, though. I just hope the same thing doesn't happen to him after what we saw before we left…"

"Wow… A whole side adventure caused by a simple mistake… There's the butterfly effect, an' then there's THAT… My fingers are crossed that he doesn't wind up turnin ' int' some gargantuan abomination we have t' take down."

"Yeah, me too. But, at least we managed to make short work of that fly monster before it burned down the city in its blind, vengeful rage. Seriously, we flew through that whole city AND the boss battle in under an hour, which is another reason it's so great to have a partner to work with. Your discovery of the weak spot in its underbelly saved our bacon. We'd have had a really rough time otherwise. It also helped that you planned our attack patterns to counter it in the middle of the fight to make it that much easier."

"Ah, that was nothin'," he bashfully dismissed. "That giant fly did the same two or three things until we weakened it enough, an' even then, it only switched to doin' a faster version o' the same thing; flyin' around in a figure-eight motion, swoopin' down two or three times t' try catchin' us by surprise, then tryin' t' breathe fire where it thought either of us would be standin', leavin' itself open. That one was almost as easy as that giant red octopus. They'll be cleanin' bug goop off those buildings for weeks, though. I didn't think the boss battle explosions would actually cause it to… well, explode. The mess it made completely trashed that other outfit I had…"

"Don't remind me…" she dismissed, shivering with dread. "And at least you still have your original outfit until we figure out how to get the bug guts off your other one. Just be grateful none of it got in your hair, since you've been growing it out," she joked, calling attention to her friend's hair that had steadily grown from a sharp, short buzz cut to a sizable bush of obsidian black on his head over the course of his time in Sequin Land.

"Ain't like I'm growin' it out on purpose, homegirl," he joked back as he rubbed his also-hairy chin. "It's just comin' in with the longer we go without me findin' a barber."

"Fair enough, but I kinda like the longer hair and the extra stubble on your face," she complimented to his surprise. "The way your sideburns and mustache are starting to connect to your beard… I think it makes you look more… mature, if that makes sense. Plus, I'll admit I am curious to know what your hair looks like when it's grown out. I've never met anyone with such a coarse, curly texture like yours," she further explained, fixating on his hairstyle.

"Oh. Well then… Th-thanks for that," he accepted her praise, though he was somewhat nervous about her observation as he took it into consideration. "I… guess you'll find out what it all looks like as we go along, though I'm gonna start needin' a comb pretty soon."

"Don't sweat it. I've got a couple spares you can use."

"Noted. Thanks. Still, if I'm lucky not t' have gotten any o' that fly gunk in my hair, then what does that make you since you didn't get any in your hair either?"

"More skilled at dodging gross fluids flying at me since Squid Baron, that's what," she humorously concluded. "Anyway, considering it's still early in the day, we could go do some recon work of our own."

"True, but I'm not sure how much recon work we'll be doin' if we plan on payin' a visit t' that Kitschy Quilt Desert place that freaky wizard mentioned…" At that, Shantae pondered on an exact reason to follow the moderately-untrustworthy lead.

"Hmm… Well, he DID say something about a friend of his that could help us with a reversal for the Super Slugger Spell, didn't he?"

"Yeah, though I don't know how deeply we can trust his word. For all we know, he could be sendin' us into a trap."

"True, though we can't rule it out as a point of interest. That's our only lead, so we have no choice but to follow it."

"If you say so. Still, after everything he put us through just for us t' get our own bodies back, I'm still uneasy about him, which makes me not want t' trust his suggestion."

"Hmm…" Shantae paused to think, acknowledging Tay's question. "You've got a good point, Tayshan. Without question, you do. Even so, it's better for us to investigate to rule out or confirm any possibilities with this place. Plus, if we're lucky, it'll be knocking out two birds with one stone if we get clues on both Risky's newest hideout and a Spell Reversal to help Barracuda Joe."

"Makes sense, I guess, but… Are you sure we shouldn't just ask someone else here or, like the trend seems to be, wait for someone to drop a vague, yet paradoxically-obvious hint that points us in the direction of a different place?"

"Honestly, Tay, that's how it's basically always been for my last couple of adventures. As a matter of fact, I'd like it much better it if I could just go wherever I needed to at my own discretion more often. Chances like that come few and far between, unfortunately, and I'm a lot less likely to stumble upon anything significant if there wasn't already a clue that led me to a certain area in the first place. All the same, I think it'd be a nice change of pace to be proactive for once."

"Okay, that's fair. Still, what'd be the point in goin' there if we don't have more than the word o' some shifty sorcerer that lets us know we ain't just wastin' time?"

"Well…" Shantae pondered, realizing that Tay had another point. "Generally speaking, every time I've been given a hint to go somewhere, I've always found something worth note. I mean EVERY time, too. Or at least, 95% of the time. You've already been with me for a while. Have you noticed it yet?"

"Yeah, I noticed. Things tend t' conveniently pop up right when we need them to. Still… what you found on all your other adventures… was it relevant to your main goal in some way every time?"

"Believe it or not… Yup!" Shantae answered with a cheerful smirk. "Well, most of the time, like I said. Although, when I went to Tassel Town last week, it was just to collect some gems to take care of my bills. Yet, out of nowhere, I found you. Think about what would've happened if I didn't wind up going there."

"I'd prefer not to, all things considered about what happened t' lead me there…" Tay replied, understanding the half-genie's point. However, he found himself apprehensive about haphazardly popping up to seemingly-random places with hardly a clue as to why they were going there, as they had been. Up to this point, they'd hardly found anything substantial relating to Risky Boots if one were to make an exception for the Prickle Stitch Valley and what they'd heard about the maniacal pirate woman decimating Hypno Baron's Castle. Nevertheless, as Shantae was the only person he could rely on, in conjunction with their inexplicable strokes of luck finding some significant item or clue that helped them along their way, he had little choice but to trust her. "Alright, I don't suppose I can argue," he conceded with a sigh. "In that case, when do we get rollin', boss?" Tay asked, nodding in agreement as he readied himself.

"We can move out right now, trusty sidekick," she joked, finding amusement and satisfaction in having a partner that followed her lead. "Uncle's technologically-enhanced autopiloting canoe is available to us in Sky's absence, so we might as well take advantage of it. It'll take us a bit longer than flying there, but it's pretty fast, regardless. At least, that's what he tells me."

"Acknowledged," Tay nodded once more. "Let's do it."

"Let's!" With that, the duo set off to Scuttle Town to make the arrangements for their trip to the Kitschy Quilt Desert.

One long, grueling boat ride later…

LOCATION: KITSCHY QUILT DESERT, SEQUIN LAND

DATE: SEPTEMBER 21ST, 16 P.G.F.

TIME: 1712 HOURS

"Sittin' on that boat for as long as we've been is SUPER uncomfortable… Ugh, I feel like a walkin' pincushion," Tay complained, rubbing his backside as he and Shantae exited their alternative vehicle and set foot on the sandy shore of the Kitschy Quilt Desert.

"Yeah, you said it," Shantae agreed, mirroring her partner's method of pain relief. "Though in his defense, Uncle's inventions are usually meant for utility, not comfort. Anyway, we're here now! Of course, I've never explored this place."

"Another new place for both of us, huh?"

"Yep. That makes three in a row, not counting our unscheduled trip to Oasis Town earlier today."

"Even for how unplanned pretty much every trip has been since I got here, I can definitely say I would never have expected t' go there on the fly…"

"Ah, I see what you did there, Tay…" Shantae pointed out with a smirk that Tay noticed, but playfully pretended not to acknowledge.

"No idea what you're talkin' about," he teased, though he couldn't hide the smirk on his face, though it wasn't there for long before he recognized that they were basically in uncharted territory with hardly a way to safety in the event that anything went wrong. "Still… Even with that invisible map thing, we won't get lost here, will we?"

"No, no. Don't worry. We should be fine. Most of the places I explore are pretty straightforward, with only one or two twists to them," the naïve young woman assured. "Plus, the deserts can be pretty predictable with what they have to offer."

"If you say so, but don't forget I'm still not used t' these spontaneous field trips…"

"Just follow my lead," she instructed with a smile as the two approached the starting point and stood juxtaposed to one another, surveying their surroundings.

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," he agreed, though he seemed to have something on his mind. "Although, do you think it'd be too much trouble t' suggest we stick together this time?"

"Hm? What do you mean?" Shantae curiously asked back.

"Well… Considerin' the last few times we traveled together, I've been noticin' a trend," Tay began to explain as they briefly paused. "Between the Scuttle Town Forest, Naga Mountain, an' even a little bit o' Genie's Hem an' Oasis Town, you tend t' get through areas so quickly that I wind up trailin' behind you by a noticeable margin almost every time. I… I-I don't wanna make it sound like I'm sayin' we should slow down, but…"

"Ah, I get it," Shantae concluded without hearing the full expression of Tay's concern regarding the discrepancy in the quickness of their travels. "You're saying that we're moving at different speeds during adventures and that you need a little more time to get used to the pace of my trips, right?"

"Uh…" Tay stammered, surprised that the half-genie had misconstrued his point. She wasn't wrong in pointing out that he needed more time to get used to the pace of any one of Shantae's expeditions, but he was more concerned with something else. "W-well, sorta, but I meant-!"

"It's okay that you haven't gotten used to things just yet," she interrupted, certain that she knew what he was going to say. "I haven't had as much time to train you lately because of the hiccups on Prickle Stitch and Genie's Hem, so you've got a point."

"Right, homegirl, but I meant in terms o' figh-!"

"Maybe today's adventure will be the one you'll need in order to really get the hang of things," she cut him off again. "Don't worry, though. I'll make sure we stay close enough to have each other's backs, since this landscape is new to both of us. That way, you can learn by watching what I do instead of having me explain it. It'll be both easier and faster that way. Okay?" Tay, not wanting to be rude, merely nodded at her suggestion, silently trusting her completely. Although, he couldn't shake a debilitating sinking feeling off that he couldn't rightly identify in that moment. Nevertheless, the duo continued their trek. However, they soon picked up on some of the more… ominous aspects of their adventuring place of choice.

"This desert sure looks barren… Not another soul, not a building, not even a cactus in sight for miles… The heavy, dark gray blanket o' clouds ain't doin' much t' make this place look invitin', either." As he made this observation, an immense jarring *CRASH* blasted through the air, accompanied by a momentary flash of white, scaring the living daylights out of both adventurers.

"…and a touch of dry desert thunderstorm to add to the mix. We're in for it now," Shantae observed, taking a deep breath to prepare herself. "But we can't back down."

"…I'm not shocked that you'd say that," he commented with a tinge of apprehension in his voice. "But we'd better move like lightning t' get this one over with."

"Wow, Tay," Shantae started with a small chuckle. "Thunderstorm jokes to lighten the mood. I like it! You're on a roll with the puns today!"

"Huh?" he asked, genuinely uncertain of what she meant this time.

"You've got a point, no less. Let's try to make this one quick, so we can potentially get our hands on that Super Slugger Spell Reversal as soon as possible. Here We Go!" she announced, ignoring her friend's wordy question (while also taking his pun-laden suggestion as a word of advice) as she took off in front of him.

"Hey, hold up!" he shouted after her as the duo commenced their latest adventure. They found themselves running through the uneven, malleable sand dunes of Kitschy Quilt Desert like they'd been running from a stampede, though they immediately found difficulty in the fact that with every step they took, their feet sunk into the sand, slowing their pace nearly to a figurative crawl. "I can already see why this place looks so abandoned!"

"Yeah, it's like this whole island is made of quicksand!" Shantae acknowledged as she began jumping to keep herself from sinking into the sand further. Tay, quick on the uptake, mimicked her movements as he joined her in hopping like a rabbit to keep from being ensnared in the mineral-rich trap that was the miles-wide pit of quicksand. Soon after, a fleet of armor-clad ravens swooped low and dropped off the first of many ambushes of enemies; little spiky green slime balls and reanimated skeletons of long-dead rodents that made themselves known by spitting miniature sapphire blue embers at our heroes. Shantae wasted no time whipping her hair at the spike creatures before they could pose a serious threat to her or Tay. Meanwhile, Tay quickly drew his firearm and fired a couple of shots at the undead rats, disposing of them with ease. Clearing the first wave of foes quickly, the duo hopped their way forward through the alpine dunes of quicksand, their determination undeterred.

The soldier and the half-genie were quickly faced with their next obstacle in the form of their next ambush. Popping out of the sand like tops off of pressure-squeezed water bottles, a group of shiny, dark cobalt scorpions of varying sizes from… well, the size of an actual scorpion to the size of a young elephant, in addition to two emerald green, tower-like cactus creatures emerged and made their intentions known. Shantae quickly rushed forward, whipping three of the smaller blue scorpions out of her way while narrowly dodging the stinger-tipped tail strike of an elephant-sized one, making sure to keep herself above the sand. Immediately after, she whipped away at one of the two cactus monsters, which took multiple hits before one of its pumpkin-shaped appendages flew away from under it, shrinking it in size. The intuitive heroine repeated the process once more, knocking the creature down one more peg before jumping to aim her hair whips at its head. She succeeded in vanquishing the creature, the remainder of whose body collapsed once its head was knocked off. Seeing that the coast was clear, she charged ahead.

Tay had made short work of the other scorpion creatures, taking them out from a distance as he did his best to keep short-hopping to keep from being buried in the hazardous quicksand. He turned to notice the cactus creature wiggling its way toward him and conjuring something up in its spooky orange eyes. Before he could assess further, the cactus monster fired a laser beam at the ground from its eyes, causing him to leap out of the way as the beam's path quickly swept upward toward him. Tay made note of this occurrence and quickly dispatched the creature by aiming a series of calculated gunshots at its head. He turned around to see that Shantae had already gone, hopping a considerable distance ahead and defeating an additional cactus monster and jumping over a second swarm of spike creatures and scorpions.

"We barely started, an' she's already doin' it again…!" Tay complained with a sigh, perturbed that his partner had left him behind once more. "What is up with this…?" he muttered to himself as he advanced to the scattered swarm of bugs and sentient spiky slime balls and cleared them out while trying to keep up. Unfortunately, Tay would find it harder to maintain a quick enough pace to catch Shantae, thanks to the added challenge of having to constantly jump to avoid sinking into the sand. With running not being the best of options, he was forced to improvise, galloping like a two-legged horse to balance moving as swiftly as he could and remaining above ground as he continued along the curvy, absorbent sand dunes. Using this unorthodox method, he pressed on while carefully clearing out enemies in his path.

Unfortunately, he would not get far before he was stopped juat before a piranha-filled water pit rife with slime monster-infested floating stone platforms. However, it wasn't the pit itself that stopped him; instead, he was halted by yet another brigade of giant scorpions, bomb-dropping ravens, and a horde of rat revenants that all dared him to come at them. "Darn it, she's still skippin' enemies, too…!" Tay grumbled, even more upset as he surveyed the dangers ahead before moving to deal with the foreboding foes using his firearm. "Looks like another trip where my hands are gonna be full…"

Meanwhile, Shantae had been making rapid strides across the dunes. She'd been dashing by as quickly as her environment would allow as she skipped past the next barrage of enemy-dropping armored ravens and cactus monsters and crossing over two gigantic piranha-and-starfish-infested lakes; effortlessly at that, as she'd been relying on just her acrobatic agility and graceful coordination. Afterward, she bowled through the next squad of monsters (this time, led by a ruby-red scorpion woman twice the size of the largest blue scorpion the duo had encountered thus far), whipping them all into submission before she was able to finally catch a break by stopping on a solid platform embedded in the sand up ahead.

Immediately, she noticed a series of floating platforms lined up in ascending succession, leading to higher ground barely visible from her current angle. Upon further observation, she noticed a dip in the dunes steep enough to where she wouldn't be able to simply jump across without some form of leverage. The first floating platform was also too high for her to simply transform into a bat and fly horizontally across the gap. She quickly danced her way into her Harpy form to take flight for the floating platform just ahead, only to be met with a lightning bolt that struck with a world-shattering *CRACK* directly in front of her, scaring her out of the transformation.

"Yikes! Looks like flying is a no-go here…" she pondered as her partner finally caught up to her.

"Yo!" Tay called, already drenched in sweat as he galloped toward her. "Where's the fire!? I know I said we should move quick, but you're blowin' right through everything!"

"Hey! I thought you were right behind me. Sorry about that," she apologized, though her attention was divided. "Can you help me out with something?"

"What's up?" he asked, catching his breath as he set foot on the block Shantae had been standing on.

"I need to get up to those floating platforms up there, but I can't seem to use my Harpy dance to get to them."

"You can't? How's that?"

"I'm not sure… I tried it just a second ago and the instant I started flying, a lightning bolt struck out of nowhere. Watch," she instructed as she changed back into her Harpy form and made another attempt to fly. As predicted, another lightning bolt struck right in front of her the second she tried leaving the platform, scaring herself and Tay senseless as she changed back.

"Point taken… Alright. So what's the alternative?"

"I want you to carry me on your shoulders and see if maybe you could give me a boost," she suggested. "It'll be tough because of all the quicksand, but you're pretty tall. I'm hoping the added height will be enough for me to climb onto the first floating platform."

"Okay. It's now or never, so let's do it," Tayshan agreed, crouching and letting Shantae climb onto him and sit on his shoulders. "Tell me when," he prompted as he stood tall with Shantae perched atop him.

"Wow, I knew you were tall, but this view is incredible!" she recognized as she rested her hands on Tay's head. "Not to mention your hair is so soft to the touch! It's so curly and bushy, too. I can't believe I never really noticed before now. I wonder if I should start sharing my shampoo with you to see how it works…"

"You can gush about my height an' my hair texture later, homegirl," he redirected, slightly intimidated by the flashes of lightning emanating from the clouds. "I'd prefer that we didn't become this place's new lightning rod."

"Right! Let's go now," she attentively commanded with a point forward. Tay jumped off the platform to get a running start, only to find out that he sunk faster with Shantae sitting on his shoulders.

"Oh, jeez! No, no no! Nononononono!" he panicked, frantically hopping up and down as though he were walking barefoot into a lake full of piranhas (one of which, ironically enough, was just ahead past this set of levitating platforms), attempting to run forward toward the targeted area.

"Focus, Tay!" Shantae encouraged, crossing her legs tightly around his neck and hunching over to wrap her arms around his forehead to keep from falling off as she bounced in tandem with his rapid, jittery hopping. "Relax!" she further commanded, though she didn't realize the compromising position she put him in.

"Can't breathe…! Guagh…!" he choked out, his voice raspy with pressure as Shantae had placed an inadvertent death grip on his vocal chords. He tried pulling her legs away as he jumped around like his clothes were on fire. He was also trying his hardest not to pay attention to the fact that his partner was hugging the back of his head too tightly for him to focus as he tried fruitlessly to bring himself back under control. Soooo yeah, there's not much more I need to say about that.

"Don't panic! We're just about in the right position where I think I can-! Whoa!" Shantae tried informing him as she noticed her partner slip his hands through her legs to untangle her unwitting chokehold. He took in a sharp gasp of air as he jogged in place, reaching upward and cupping his hands under the young woman's rear before lifting her high into the air. She nearly lost her balance, quickly grasping the soldier's wrists as he held her up. "Hey! What do you think you're doing down there!? This isn't exactly what I had in mind!" she angrily complained as an ominous boom of thunder rumbled in the background, intensifying the urgency of the situation.

"You were chokin' me out!" he shouted back, his nerves already activating the adrenaline he was using to hold her up the way he was. "It was this or pass out from the lack of oxygen an' earn both of us a shallow grave! Anyway, you got any other ideas in mind? I can't keep this up forever!"

"Oh, right! Hmm… Okay, if you can, just stay in this position while I use my Monkey dance! That way, I can easily make the jump."

"How are you gonna dance like this? You're in the air, sittin' on my hands while I'm tap-dancin' for dear life in the quicksand down here!"

"When there's a will, there's a way! Here goes!" she announced as she cautiously stretched her hands out to her sides and began rhythmically wiggling while sitting on the frantic serviceman's hands. Tay, though his attention was primarily focused on the quicksand he was valiantly trying not to drown in, glanced upward to see how Shantae was performing her latest daring feat. Of course, from his angle, all he could see was her butt wiggling into his fingers, immediately causing him to shoot his gaze back downward as his face became hotter than the dry, scorching atmosphere of this desert. After a few heart-pounding seconds, a familiar *POOF* sounded and suddenly, he felt the silky touch of mammal fur gracing his palms. "I did it!" proclaimed the now-simian girl in a tiny, cutesy voice dissimilar from her normal tone.

"Thank goodness…" Tay sighed as he continued his haphazard, desperate tap-dancing, bringing one of his tired arms down as he held the other high to continue giving Monkey-Shantae the leverage she needed to make the jump.

"Okay, here goes!" the little mauve monkey girl announced with vigor as she leapt off the palm of her partner's hand and easily cleared the height and distance necessary to reach the first floating stone platform. She changed back into her humanoid form and waved down to Tay, who'd hopped back to the platform in the sand to catch a much-needed breather. "We did it! Thanks for the help!" The exhausted soldier could only give her a thumbs-up as he lay sprawled on the platform, breathing heavily like an elephant was sitting on his chest. After a minute, he sat up and stretched his arms before climbing back to his feet.

"That was… not the best idea we had," he tiredly informed her, to which she acknowledged.

"I can't argue with that," she plainly remarked, nodding in agreement.

"Still, we did pull it off. If you're takin' the high road, I'll take the low one," he suggested as he readied himself for more action.

"Heard loud and clear! Okay, let's do it!" With that, Tay breathed in his second wind, drew his gun and dashed forward. Shantae hopped from platform to platform, quickly coming into contact with some swooping armored ravens that, rather than drop other enemies on her, attempted to lash out at her with razor-sharp talons. Anticipating this, she deftly jumped over one of the black-feathered birds, subsequently whipping a second one out of commission. One more came as she cleared the gap to continue her ascent up the floating stairwell. As she ascended, however, thunder boomed and rolled as the clouds began flashing like a strobe light. However, on the next platform stood a treasure chest. Just as the half-genie prepared to make her next jump, another lightning bolt struck in front of her, followed by a deafening *CRACK*.

"YEOWCH!" shouted a masculine voice from down below, its owner having been subjected to unfathomable electric torture.

"Tay!" Shantae called, kneeling down and peeking below to see her friend standing on a small, gray, square-shaped stone platform embedded in the quicksand as he frantically shook and blew on his hand, which had been smoking from the impact of the lightning bolt. "You okay down there?"

"Y-yeah, I just… That lightnin' bolt got me just as I was about t' open this treasure chest down here," he replied, surprising his partner.

"There's one down there, too?" she asked, not expecting more than one chest to be available at a time. "Try opening it!" she suggested, prompting the soldier to raise his hand to open the chest, only to be struck by another *CRASH* of lightning.

"WOOA-HOHH!" he yelled again, shaking the same hand that was struck moments earlier. Shantae, seeing the admittedly-comedic display, stifled a giggle at her friend's misfortune. After recovering, Tay glared with disapproval at his partner, having heard her poorly-hidden snickering.

"Sorry, sorry… Okay, maybe we'll come back to that one later," Shantae sheepishly commented with a nervous titter. "There's one over here that I can get! I'll open it now," she announced, hopping over to the platform bearing the shiny red lock box. She attempted to open it, only to be struck herself with an additional *SNAP!*

"WAAHAHOWWCH!" the unsuspecting young woman hollered in a mix of literal shock and unbearable agony as she recovered from the lightning strike. After a moment of being stunned, she shook herself off and peered over the edge of the platform. "I can't… open this one, either," she regretfully informed.

"Welcome to my-! WHOA!" Tay attempted to snidely remark as he inadvertently reached toward the treasure chest. Another lightning bolt nearly struck him again and would've, had he not noticed the clouds above flashing white as he made his statement. As such, he jerked his hand toward his body and flinched as the bolt made contact with the sand, blackening the spot of impact while somehow not even deafening its intended target. "An' they say lightnin' never strikes the same place twice… Clearly they've never been struck two-and-a-half times."

"Two-and-a-half?" the young woman asked, her curiosity about the young man's logic piqued.

"You saw it! I got shocked twice an' then almost lost my hand-!" Tay explained, reaching his hand out toward the treasure chest again, causing yet another bolt of lightning to strike. Realizing his mistake before ACTUALLY losing his hand, he jerked it away as the bolt made another ear-splitting *CRASH* that scared him and his half-genie companion straight. "…just now, as a matter of fact," he finished with a sigh of relief.

"…Sooo, does that technically make it three times you were struck by lightning, or do the two halves stay as halves?" Shantae dared to ask with utmost curiosity, calling into question the serviceman's math. "Because I don't think almost getting struck twice is quite the same as actually being struck once…"

"Hey, so h-here's an idea! L-let's get outta here before we get insta-barbecued like a couple o' shrimp, huh?" he suggested, ignoring his leader's understandable query in the wake of his newfound paralyzing (no pun intended, depending on the context) fear of electricity.

"Great idea!" the reasonably and equally-intimidated young half-genie agreed, jumping down from the platform to join her comrade down below. "We can always come back for these later. Let's get moving!"

"Ain't gotta tell me twice…" Tay murmured as they continued their electrifying trek. "Safe t' say these lightnin' bolts might have some kind o' bone t' pick with us," he added as he and Shantae continued.

"Or, we could just be that lucky, considering how unlikely it's supposed to be to get struck by lightning even once," she theoretically posed as she and Tay wiped out an additional barrage of sizable jewelry-colored scorpions, another crimson woman-scorpion hybrid, and one more cactus monster while doing their best to get around the second enemy-infested lake before they advanced into the next section, where they immediately noticed that the clouds had become especially unfriendly, flashing and crackling above them. As they looked ahead, they noticed an extensive, expansive lake that dipped very, VERY low into a desolate, sandy valley. One could still hear the chattering of piranha teeth below, no less. Shantae and Tayshan also took note of the fragmented, rickety wooden plank bridge that stretched all the way into a densely-foggy, foreboding limbo.

"Wow… this just keeps gettin' more interestin' whether we like it or not…" Tay wisely observed, shaking his head in a mix of dread and wonder.

"Yeah. This desert certainly stands out from the rest, I'll admit…" the half-genie observed with a nod. "Oh well, we won't get anywhere by not going for it. Let's move!" she further proclaimed before commencing her trek across the perilous path without waiting for her comrade. She sprinted onto the bridge, each footstep making the flimsy structure rattle and creak as though it would collapse beneath her. Tayshan was trailing steadily behind her, calculating his every move. Crossing the unstable bridge provided him with a totally-reasonable sense of dread that sent his anxiety into the stratosphere as the bridge continuously shook and jerked with the gravity of their footsteps. The duo was soon met with her first of many obstacles, however; a narrow gap too large to walk across. Just as Shantae was preparing to jump across, another lightning bolt struck directly through the hole in the wooden planks, freezing her stiff.

"More lightnin' bolts!?" Tay rhetorically yelled, clearly having had more than his fill of spontaneous electricity. As he posed his inquiry, another lightning bolt struck in the exact same spot as the last one, giving Shantae a much-needed clue right away.

"From the looks of it, the lightning here will strike in certain patterns. This one… hmm…" she trailed off, studying the perceived pattern. She and Tay quickly noticed that the lightning struck once every three seconds. They each waited for the next strike, anticipating their theory to be correct. Immediately after it happened, Shantae leapt over the gap and onto the next series of planks. Tay also timed his jump with the frequency of the lightning strikes and jumped across after her.

"Alright, that wasn't so horrible…" he began with a sigh of relief. "…but I know that's just the first o' many."

"Correctamundo, Tay," the half-genie confirmed. "Chances are, the patterns will probably be different for the rest of them too, if we come across any more. Let's keep going," she concluded as she and Tay continued their pendulous trek across the bridge. The two began running across, making occasional short hops across lightning-harboring gaps and avoiding small, armored squadrons of garnet-colored finches packed in groups of three swooping down at them to complicate their passage over the bridge. The finches came in patterns entirely independent of the lightning, emphasized by some of the trios being struck by lightning bolts and being knocked out of sight. Neither of the two heroes bothered fighting them or the occasional enemy drops from the previously-encountered armored ravens during their travel. Their attention was focused on keeping their balance and avoiding the lightning strikes, which, in tandem with bridge gaps, became more frequent and haphazard.

Shantae, eager to get this section of the level done as quickly as possible, belly danced to transform into a monkey and dash forward, leaving Tay far behind without warning. Her monkey form provided her with more speed and agility, though it prevented her from attacking; an inconsequential circumstantial sacrifice. She adeptly, yet hastily hopped over gaps that she would've struggled with otherwise, passing over some of them before she even saw lightning. The adorable little simian made clearing the gaps look like playing a game of hopscotch, disregarding the peril of the lightning and the electrified lake below, which crackled with voltage every time it was hit. Eventually, she came to a halt, encountering a much longer gap that presented with six lightning bolts that struck in a pattern not readily identifiable. However, she saw the end of the bridge just beyond the misty coat of fog. Shantae reverted to her humanoid form, knowing that her monkey form's enhanced jumping prowess was not enough to get her across.

"Hmm…" she pondered, intently observing the bolts as they rhythmically rained unforgiving electric desert rage… even without any rain. Before too long, however, Shantae noticed that each bolt struck in its own individual pattern, which complicated her options for approach. She'd had experience with this sort of puzzle, calling back to her time on the Ammo Baron's air fortress, though she was far from a fan of them. Nevertheless, she got the idea and danced to turn into a tiny, purple bat. "Now!" she announced, motivating herself to fly straight and horizontally through, dodging the first two bolts and stopping in the position where the third bolt was set to strike. The fourth lightning bolt struck once, allowing her to advance to its spot as the third bolt struck behind her. However, she was forced to hover backward one space as the fourth, fifth, and sixth bolt struck again. She flapped toward the position of the fourth bolt again when bolts one, two, three, and five struck simultaneously.

She backtracked once more to allow bolts four, five, and six to strike, followed by her advancing forward into the spot of bolt five as bolts one through four, as well as bolt six struck simultaneously. She backtracked even further when bolts six, five, four, three, and two struck rapidly and successively in that order. Immediately following, bolts one, two, three, four, five, and six struck in successive order as the half-genie, half-bat floated desperately through the perilous environment hazard. As she finally cleared the puzzle, all six bolts struck simultaneously before pausing momentarily and beginning the same pattern from scratch.

"Whooh… What a hassle…" the half-genie complained, floating over the final few bridge panels before transforming back, landing on a solid square boulder beyond the end of the bridge and collapsing to rest, her heartbeat racing like a flying carpet from Cape Crustacean (a different location in Sequin Land, in case you were wondering). "I'm just glad I did it…" she further spoke to herself before realizing something. "Oh, no! Tayshan!" she exclaimed with a sharp gasp, realizing she completely left the poor soldier in the dust. Fearing the worst, she climbed to her feet, though she never left the boulder, and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Tay! Hey, are you still out there!? Tayshan! Tayshan?" she boisterously called out, though she got no reply. Her heart sank with dread and guilt that built with the longer she waited for his reply, which she wasn't very sure would come. "Oh, no… I got carried away and totally ditched him on the bridge… I have to go back…!" she affirmed, ignoring the threat of the perils she'd just flown by. Just as she was preparing to transform to make her attempt, she caught sight of an opaque silhouette emerging through the fog and stopping just before the lightning bolt puzzle.

"Shantae! Where are you at!?" the soldier called, having made it past the other obstacles on the bridge, though his tone of voice was far from enthused. If anything, he sounded incredibly annoyed.

"Tayshan! I'm over here!" the half-genie called back, relieved that he was alive and had made it to the lightning bolt puzzle. Hearing her, the young serviceman peered past the rhythmic lightning bolts to see Shantae on the other side, waving at him. "Sorry I left you!"

"Why do you keep dustin' me!?" he shouted, his frustration evident. "I thought we talked about stickin' together!"

"I know, but I'm so used to traveling alone that I got carried away!" she defended, though she understood. "It's a force of habit to speed through every place I explore!"

"Right, but if our last two or three trips were any indication, I can't move as fast as you can! Even with Sky's Falcon Call! It's no substitute for you bein' able t' turn into animals at will! The monsters an' environment hazards we keep rubbin' elbows with don't help this problem, either!"

"I know! I'm sorry, Tay! I'll try to break the habit! I just have to remind myself that I have an active partner this time around! Although, we did talk about skipping past enemies we didn't need to fight, remember!? That's one way to help you keep up with me!" she suggested, based on his concern about the obstacles in their path.

"Hmm…" he sighed through his nose, no less frustrated than he was moments earlier. "We can talk about it more after we're done here, I guess! For now, I gotta figure out how I need t' get past this gap, so we can reconvene!" he concluded, turning his attention to the lightning bolts that appeared to strike too frequently for him to maneuver. "Hey, how'd you get past?"

"I transformed into a bat and figured out the pattern!"

"Of course… Do you maybe remember that pattern?!"

"Um…" Shantae hummed in wonder, scratching her head and thinking back to how the bolts struck. She remembered going through and maybe avoiding the first one, and then the second one, but then the fourth one struck after that… but then she went forward and avoided all but the last two… or did she go back a couple places and avoid the third one? Maybe she had to move forward before she got hit by the fifth one, but then moved back to where she was in the place of the second one, but then had to go forward two, then back one, then forward three, then forward one more, then back two, then forward one, then back another two, and…

Look, clearly you see where this is going. She couldn't remember the absurdly-complicated pattern, alright? She tried explaining this to Tay to the best of her memory, but it came out as incomprehensible, incoherent electro-babble.

"Ugh…" Tay groaned in a mix of trepidation and understandable disappointment. "Enough is too much with this nonsense… Guess I'm wingin' it. Literally," he cleverly and sullenly remarked, utilizing his Falcon Call to summon the familiar birds of transport. As he called them, all six lightning bolts struck simultaneously, which he took as a sign that the coast was clear. Unlike Shantae, of course, Tayshan had zero experience dealing with puzzles of this caliber. As one might predict would happen… he was struck with a voluminous *CRACK* by at least two of the lightning bolts during his ill-fated flight. "DAAAGH! OGH!" he screamed in insurmountable burning agony as he was lit up, the lightning strikes immediately dispersing his avian assistance as he was sent careening to the ground below.

"OH MY GOSH! TAY, NO!" Shantae shrieked with unspeakable horror as she witnessed her friend being electrocuted in midair. The soldier fell onto a dune below, unceremoniously tumbling like a… well, like a tumbleweed into a wide, empty trough that harbored no water. The half-genie, too stunned with grief to even move, merely watched on in absolute devastation as she watched her friend's body collapse into the pit far below the bridge. The distraught young woman's eyes, wider than the moon, welled up with an ocean of sorrowful tears as she fell to her knees, her hands clasped over her mouth as she tried to process the sudden, violent loss of her friend. She wouldn't even be able to recover his body due to the quicksand… or so she thought.

Surprisingly, as he lay sprawled out on the ground smoking like a wintertime chimney, the presumed-dead soldier remained still on top of the sand instead of sinking into it. Shantae, unable to take her eyes off her comrade, prepared to collect his body before she saw him stirring awake. He coughed up additional clouds of smoke and gingerly brought himself to his feet, unknowingly bringing his partner a much-needed sense of relief.

"I-I'm okay!" He called, though he could barely coordinate himself through the intense ringing in his ears, his sudden dizziness, mild numbness in his limbs, and his unfocused, blurry vision. He clasped his head and took a deep breath, kneeling down to recuperate. After a moment, his senses returned to normal, though he found himself confused as to how he wound up in the ditch as he looked up and saw himself under the bridge while Shantae had been kneeling atop a giant boulder, though he couldn't tell what she was doing.

"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, are you hurt?" Shantae asked, her tone pressured and frightful.

"No… Not as much as I thought, anyway…" Tay answered as he brought himself back to his feet once more and stretching. "What… what happened? How did I wind up down here?" he asked, evidently unable to recall.

"You got struck by lightning while you were trying to cross the last gap of the bridge," she explained. "You fell into that ditch afterward!"

"Hm… Oh, I kinda remember now…" he replied, his memories slowly returning. "It all happened so fast, I barely remember anything after I used the Falcon Call…"

"Are you sure you're okay, Tay? How many fingers am I holding up?" the worried maiden called to her friend, holding out her hand with three fingers extended.

"Uh… I can't really tell from all the way down here," he remarked. "I didn't bring a telescope!" he further joked, signifying that he'd fully and miraculously recovered.

"Oh, good…" Shantae breathed a heavy sigh, drying her tears and sniffling. "I was so worried… I'm so glad you're okay!"

"Me too," he agreed, though he still wondered how he'd taken so many lightning strikes in such a short span of time and been alive to tell the tale, much less able to walk and talk as though he'd never been struck at all. "Looks like there's solid ground down here, too!" he added, stomping the ground to test its sturdiness. He was greeted with hollow thumps of metal as he stomped, which confused him. "Huh… that's weird…" he contemplatively muttered.

"Yeah, we really lucked out this time… But now we need to figure out how to get you out of there!" Shantae informed Tayshan, though she had little idea as to how they would accomplish this feat. The dunes surrounding the soldier were much too malleable and slippery for him to climb on his own. Worse, none of her transformations were suitable for transporting him out. It certainly didn't help that most of the ground in this desert was quicksand that pervasively threatened to swallow anyone who dared trudge upon its voracious grits.

"Uh… I think I got an idea," he assured her as he walked toward the wall of the ditch closest to the end of the bridge. He jumped, used the Falcon Call to get a small boost, and then attempted to climb the rest of the way out of the ditch, only to have his fingertip graze a nearby ledge at the top as he slowly slid back down. However, as his finger grazed this 'ledge,' a *CLICK* noise was made, alerting both heroes.

"What was that clicking noise?" Shantae asked.

"I'm not sure, but ohmygoodnessnonoNONONONOCOMEONTHISCANNOTTBEHAPPENINGTOMENONONOOO!" Tay babbled as he turned to see the floor he'd previously been standing on opening wide to devour him whole, an ocean of sand pouring into a burgeoning abyss of total blackness.

"Tay!" Shantae called in panic, her fear for her friend's life surging back to the extreme. Thinking quickly, Shantae utilized her Harpy Dance to try and save him, only to be met with a lightning strike that prevented her from leaving the boulder she stood on in her Harpy form. "Darn it! Why can't I fly here unless I'm a bat!?" she cursed as she turned back human, furious that her idea didn't work. "Tay, try to hang on! I'm coming down!" she tried assuring him, leaping off to assist him as he tried his hardest to run, crawl, and claw his way out, only to continue slipping.

"I won't be able t' make it!" he yelled out in panic. "I can't keep this up…!" he further shared, his fatigue rapidly catching up to him as he ran out of room to crawl, succumbing to the embrace of the wide-open void below. "WAAAHH!"

"TAY!" Shantae screamed again, fearing that she'd really lost him. However, after a brief few seconds, she heard a distant *thud*, signifying that the soldier's fall wasn't too steep. "T-Tay?"

"I'm good!" he called from within the hole, though his voice sounded strained as though he'd been trying to shake off the impact of his fall. "Looks like there's some kind o' shelter in here!" Hearing this filled the half-genie with a mix of relief and hope as she jogged in place atop the crest of the nearby dune to keep herself above the sand.

"That's great! I mean, not great that you fell down there, but it's great that you're okay and that this hole isn't a bottomless pit. Do you think maybe we found Risky Boots's hideout?"

"Hm, I'm not sure. Her base was in a cave, but maybe this could link to it. Lemme look around before you come down here," he answered as he snooped around, feeling for something that might give him a clue. The inside of the hole was dimly lit, preventing him from seeing much of anything, even with the barely-helpful sunlight shining in from above. However, he'd heard a sudden *CRUNCH* as he inadvertently stepped on something that crackled and fizzled upon impact. Quickly, the trapdoor began to close, sending another wave of panic through the guts of both the soldier and the half-genie. "Aw, no! Shantae, hurry up! The door's closin'!"

"Shoot! Here I come!" she announced as she jumped into the pit as the door automatically shut. However, she was too late. By the time Shantae got close to the opening in the pit, the doors had closed again with a definitive, reverberating *CLANG*, completely separating the two of them for the first time since their cooperative adventures began. "No! Why is all of this going so wrong all of a sudden!?" she yelled, clearly unhappy with the result of their most recent endeavor. Shantae, in a worried panic, transformed into her Elephant form to try forcing her way down by stomping the door in. She had no luck after multiple attempts of jumping and ground-pounding the metallic structure as hard as she could with her elephant hooves, however. Despite her best efforts (which could possibly be heard miles away, considering how hard she was stomping on the door), she eventually tired out and changed back to her normal self without an ounce of success. "Tay! Can you hear me!?" she called as she knelt down and shouted, though she received no audible reply. Ostensibly, the door was soundproofed, as she could hear absolutely nothing from the other side. She furiously pounded away at the metal barrier with a fist and growled, upset that her friend was trapped in some inconveniently-placed hidden passageway. "Darn it! There's gotta be some way to get this thing open…"

The half-genie peered around, looking for anything that might've been of some assistance to her, but she saw nothing but the sand surrounding her. With no other choice, she transformed into her Monkey form and carefully scaled her way back up from the pit, additionally perching back on top of the boulder on which she'd previously been standing before changing back once more. She worriedly surveyed the vast, mostly-empty, stormy desert for some form of clue that would help her reunite with her lost companion before spotting what looked like a stone structure far in the distance over the sandy, cloudy horizon hidden behind a slew of massive, monumental sand dunes. "There's something over there. No choice now but to investigate," she acknowledged. With no further hesitation, she bravely, yet carefully advanced toward the next obstacle.

"I've got to get through the rest of this desert as fast as I can now. There's no telling what might happen to Tay if I can't get him out of… whatever hole in the ground he fell into," she worriedly murmured as she sized up the next quicksand-bathed section. "I sure hope whatever's out there can give me something that would help me save him…" And with that expression of her rapidly-growing concern for her teammate, she was off to the races.

Shantae began her solo dash toward the mysterious structure shrouded by the sand dunes, hopping and skipping along the endless bed of quicksand as she put forth her best effort to keep from getting stuck. However, she was almost immediately met with a hill the size of three Squid Barons after eating three other Squid Barons… after eating just one more Squid Baron after THAT Squid Baron ate an entire battleship… Alright, what I'm trying to say is that this dune was ridiculously huge. At its base was a lone silver platform in the sand to stand on (and presumably to prepare to climb at one's own risk). Shantae paused as she landed on the platform, pondering how to cross an enormous hill made of quicksand that appeared to endlessly cascade like a melting chocolate bar under a magnifying glass in the sun. She scoured the surrounding area and saw no openings or alternative routes, as though the dune doubled as a nearly-impassible wall that could only be climbed over with considerable effort and the lightest of treads. Seriously, this thing was like, miles wide and, while wavy and somewhat triangular in its appearance, its gigantic, endlessly-shifting form prevented Shantae from going in any other direction but over.

Without a second thought, knowing that she'd be unable to go Harpy to simply fly over the hill in the wake of the still-present lightning storm, Shantae improvised. With her arms raised outward and with a few mesmerizing shakes of her curvy hips, the half-genie switched into her Monkey form again. Hastily, the lavender-furred simian scaled the hazardous sand mountain by clinging to it for brief stints before jumping as high as she could to latch onto a higher portion. However, as she made her first jump, a bed of gleaming silver spikes suddenly shot out the side of the mountain where she was set to land with a *SHING* that nearly startled the young traveler into losing her focus.

Thinking quickly, Monkey-Shantae altered the trajectory of her leap in midair by activating her special ability. She enveloped herself in a light blue aura and instantly changed her direction with a flashing *TSHHHH* by bulleting herself above the spike trap, barely managing to land safely on the hill once more. It was to a point where her tail grazed the tip of the last spike on the trap, causing her to flinch as she hopped forward to make absolutely sure she was out of harm's way. However, as she recoiled and regrouped, another bed of spikes was about to pop out from her current position. Noticing and knowing at this point that stopping was not an option, Monkey-Shantae picked up the pace with scaling the mountain, each of her subsequent jumps and Monkey Bullet air dashes causing more spikes to rise from the side of the hill. As she ascended, however, the spikes became increasingly more unforgiving, shooting out more rapidly to the point where they were just coming out all over the place without warning, each intimidating *SHING* a deadly reminder of what could happen if she screwed up here.

Utilizing her Monkey form's abilities to their fullest, Shantae hopped, leapt, and air-dashed her way up the enormous sand dune, zigzagging her way past the relentless spike beds as swiftly as she could under unyielding spiky pressure. Luckily for her, however, the spikes were the only obstacle in her path at this point, which granted her all the opportunity she needed to make larger bounds and more calculated instant air dashes. She eventually reached the top, where another stone platform awaited her. After landing in the minuscule safe zone at the summit of the mountain, Shantae transformed back to normal and took a moment to breathe.

"Gosh, those was no joke!" she proclaimed, reasonably startled and out of breath as she recovered from her most recent series of brushes with death. "One wrong move, and I'd have been skewered like a half-human shish kebab! What a nightmare… I hope that's the only…" the heroic adventurer trailed off as she looked ahead to see two more sand mountains even bigger than the one she'd just finished scaling; the second one being slightly (by which I mean at least two times) bigger than the first, and the third one being twice the size of the second. Additionally, Shantae noticed that in order to proceed, she would have to climb down the other side of the hill she was standing on, climb up and over the second hill, and then climb up and over the third one.

As if things couldn't get daunting enough, she also noticed that lightning was sporadically striking the sand mountain just ahead while spikes were randomly stabbing through the side of the first formation before almost instantly retracting. One more thing she caught sight of was the lone, unarmed red scorpion-woman hybrid awaiting her at the trough between the first and second sand hills. "…Oh, this is just great…" she complained, clearly very excited to take on such a challenging task. She sighed away her nervousness, nevertheless. "Better make this a quick one…" and with that, she set off once more. Without transforming, Shantae made a series of graceful, yet slightly-panicked leaps and bounds down the side of the first sand hill, where she was faced with the constant threat of being impaled by giant silver spikes that seemed to poke out of nowhere. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, waaaAAAaaaAAaaa!" Shantae oh-so beautifully sang out as she played the world's most life-threatening game of downhill hopscotch. Just as she was finding her rhythm, however, a wayward spike jutted out at just the right angle to clip her foot and… well…

"Waaaah!" she bellowed, face-planting in the sand as she began tumbling the rest of the way down much the same ultra-coordinated way her partner did after he was struck by lightning in midair moments earlier. Along with the very long, very heart-stopping series of unfathomable near-misses with the smorgasbord of protruding spikes, and the barrage of wet *WHAPs* of Shantae's body against the quicksand, one could hear the melodious tune of the unfortunate half-genie grunting in pain as she tumbled down the mountain, and… as you might've guessed, she had a LOOOONG way to fall. How she managed to avoid getting horrifically and tragically impaled (or even grazed) by a single spike as she lost control and careened down the monumental sand dune like a hairy, sandy bowling ball is beyond even me. Eventually, Shantae plopped face-down on a stone platform at the bottom of the hill with a *FLOP* of pure elegance and heroic valor. "Owwww…" she groaned as she slowly picked herself up and dusted (or, sanded?) herself off. It didn't take her long, however, for her ears to be filled with the raucous laughter of the monster that stood before her. Mildly annoyed by someone taking pleasure out of her misfortune, Shantae looked ahead and was greeted by a somewhat-uncommon sight.

Appearing before the Half-Genie Hero was a particularly-small scorpion woman… er, more like scorpion girl, considering she appeared much smaller in stature than others of her kind. She was crimson red from head to… uh, scorpion leg, with an underdeveloped stinger, sleek jet-black hair neatly tied into a bun, golden eyes with dark blue irises, and a triangle bikini top that matched her hair in color and held her… uh, her 'little girls' in place. This creature, appearing to be very young, continuously guffawed as though she were about to suffocate from her laughter, pointing at poor Shantae as she did so. Evidently, she found the half-genie's tumble quite humorous.

"Hey!" Shantae barked, brushing sand out of her hair as she stood on the platform she so luckily landed on. "It isn't nice to laugh at someone's mistakes, you know! I could've been seriously hurt!" The scorpion-girl, hearing Shantae, tried to stop laughing. However, this task proved most daunting, as every time she glanced at her possible enemy's sandy state, she was reminded of just how ridiculous she looked as she rolled unceremoniously down the hill and face-planted on the platform at the bottom.

"Gaaahahahahahahahaaaaaa!" the scorpion girl burst out laughing some more, her shrill, high-pitched voice indicative of her youth. She clutched her abdomen with her human hands, still snickering at Shantae for her loss of coordination. "After all I'd heard about you, you actually turn out to be a total klutz! Hah! Some hero you are when you can't even keep your balance going down a tiny hill!" the insensitive scorpion girl jeered as she continued cracking up. Even more evidently, she watched Shantae's honest mistake from start to very painful, mineral-bathed finish. At that, Shantae huffed in annoyance and slight embarrassment as her cheeks turned just the lightest shade of pink. She set off to skip through the quicksand and move onto the next mountain, sliding past the cackling scorpion girl without so much as a passing glance. The scorpion girl, noticing Shantae's hasty effort to make an exit, stopped herself from laughing long enough to turn around. "N-no, wait! I was expecting you, and I have a request! Hold on!"

"Huh? A request?" Shantae asked, turning while hopping to continue avoiding getting stuck in the quicksand as she dropped some of her previous disdain toward this insensitive creature. "What request? And how'd you know I was coming here?"

"I… can explain later, but I think we could help each other out," the secretive creature proposed as she casually approached the half-genie with no quicksand-related difficulty.

"How so?" Shantae asked, her embarrassment replaced with a sense of wary curiosity.

"First and foremost, it's obvious you're gonna need my assistance scaling these sand dunes," the chimeric maiden suggested as she gestured toward the next giant sand hill as it was being struck by rapid bolts of lightning all over. "A clumsy goofball like you would never survive in the unforgiving, quicksand-covered desert," she observed with a scathing, judgmental insult that immediately rubbed Shantae the wrong way. Rather than argue with the girl right away, Shantae held her tongue and opted to silently scowl at her instead as she listened to her proposition. "In case you didn't notice, I don't sink in quicksand. I have a special ability that allows me to tread over it with no issue, simply put," the scorpion girl added, pressing a hand to her chest to emphasize her boastfulness.

"Oh, well that's something neat," Shantae praised. "So you're going to teach me a Scorpion dance I could use to travel along the terrain? I mean, I already have a Spider dance, but I don't know how well that would work here…"

"What? No, I wouldn't even know how to…" the girl denied in confusion at her prospective partner's estimation. "Never mind. Don't ask weird questions. I was thinking I'd let you ride me over these gigantic dunes so you won't wind up getting swallowed in the quicksand. As for how you could repay me: There's a half-scorpion, half-man hybrid much bigger than me who desperately needs your help. He lives just up ahead, actually."

"Oh! Okay, sure," the young heroine agreed without question. "I was actually headed that way. I've gotta make it quick, though. My friend got stuck in some underground passageway a little while back, and I'm trying to find a way to get him out of there."

"You didn't come here alone? That's unusual… I've heard you always travel by yourself."

"It's a long story, but yeah, I had a partner with me until just recently."

"What, did he get sucked into the quicksand mountain you just stumbled over?"

"No, he fell into some trapdoor hidden in a pit under a rickety old bridge, and the door closed before I had the chance to go in and save him," Shantae explained, which only earned more disrespectful snickering from this irreverent creature. "What's so funny?"

"Wow, you really are hopeless," she teased, further irritating the half-genie as she glowered with building frustration. "Your friend's a goner if he couldn't even get this far without messing up. What kind of loser gets stuck in a random trapdoor in the middle of a desert? Wow, your only help was a bigger klutz than you?"

"Okay, you're not coming across as very ni-!"

"Ha! Maybe I should've met you a bit earlier, in that case. I'm sure I'd have been a ton more useful than he was. I'm surprised you even got this far on your own," she egged on as she kept on laughing.

"I get it, we had a tough time. Tougher than we thought. I admit that," Shantae conceded, trying to avoid getting angry. However, the arachnid girl's continued taunting made such a task increasingly difficult. "Give us a break, though! This is the first time we've been here. It really isn't funny, either. My friend is in serious danger, and I need to find a way to save him."

"I'll bet he is, if he didn't even make it here with you. If you needed a tour guide, that all but confirms I should've been with you from the start. Whoever that guy was, good riddance to him, because it sounds like he was only slowing you down anyway. Don't waste your time on rescue quests. Instead, you should think to pick better company to keep if you're looking for adventuring buddies. Like m-!" the girl was about to suggest, though Shantae had already lost her patience.

"That's enough! You don't know either of us or what we've been through, so lay off, alright!?" Shantae was all but forced to yell in hers and her lost teammate's defense as she briefly lost her temper, startling the scorpion girl silent. This silence carried on for a good five seconds before Shantae realized she was glaring hotly at the chimeric young woman. Realizing she may have let her frustration boil over, she took a deep breath before recomposing herself. "Sorry, I just… I'm worried about him, and I'm trying to get through this place to accomplish a goal we had. I didn't mean to scream at you."

"Uh… it's alright," the mildly-frightened scorpion hybrid excused. "I'm sorry for making you mad."

"No problem," Shantae also forgave before shifting gears. "Anyway, I'll take you up on your offer if it means we can get past these giant quicksand mountains faster," Shantae expressed, accepting the offer of assistance. "Besides, my legs are getting tired," she added as she never stopped hopping for dear life.

"You still want me to help you?" the girl asked, seeming quite surprised (and even somewhat hopeful) that Shantae accepted her offer.

"Yeah, if you're still offering," the lavender-haired adventurer confirmed, bringing an invigorating smile to the scorpion girl's face.

"Then by all means, girl, climb on and let's dig in! We don't have a grain of time to waste! All puns intended," she eagerly urged, making me want to do my best impression of an ostrich and stick my head in the sand with all those horrible puns.

"Haaaa, nice!" Shantae cheered, laughing away some of the remaining awkward tension. as she took the scorpion girl's offer and hopped on over to climb onto her back. "Whew, this is a relief… Thanks for the lift!"

"No problem! The name's Aleaqarab, by the way, but you can call me Ali for short," she finally introduced herself.

"Ali? Wait, isn't that a boys' name?" Shantae asked, caught off-guard by Aleaqarab's name suggestion. Unexpectedly, the scorpion girl flinched in annoyance. "Unless you ARE a-!"

"No! I'm a girl, and 'Ali' is a unisex name!"

"I'm… not so sure about that," the half-genie contested. "In Sequin Land, Ali is definitely a boys' name through and through. Maybe you'd want to go by Allie instead? Or even Alea? Those sound better, if you want my suggestion."

"Yeah, well maybe I'm not FROM Sequin Land, alright?" the disgruntled scorpion girl complained. "Also, who still follows those ancient, bogus gender rules on names in this country, anyway? Why can't people be named whatever they want?"

"Umm… I'd like to guess because of how certain names sound? Like, how you'll never find a girl named 'Hank' or a boy named 'Angelica,' no matter where you live or go," Shantae casually explained. "You wouldn't even find a boy with a name anywhere close to the likes of 'Shantae,' unless he was stuck in a girl's body… or from a different timeline, I guess…?" she hesitantly pondered, remembering a certain series of coincidences regarding a certain person with a certain name… with a certain spelling and pronunciation. "My name's Shantae, by the way."

"Huh…? Who…? What… What are you even talking about, switching bodies or traveling through time to keep a name? Are we having the same conversation? Also, I know who you are, based on your reputation, but… pleasure to meet you…?" Ali uncomfortably greeted. "…Though I'm starting to wonder if it really is a 'pleasure' at all…" she further whispered under her breath. "I wonder if this is what they mean when they say you should never meet your heroes…?" subtly implying that she was (with an emphasis on WAS) a fan of Shantae's before their… rather awkward and mildly-hostile meeting.

"Long story. Still, not to step on your toes, but I think you'd be better off wi-!" Shantae was about to suggest again.

"I'm sticking to Ali, and that's that. Pure and simple," she concluded, turning her head up and away while crossing her arms. "I don't care how many hundreds of people tell me otherwise! I like the name, and I'm keeping it!"

"Oh, okay. Suit yourself…" Shantae acquiesced with a shrug, though Ali's complaint subtly suggested that this was not the first time she'd heard this issue brought up to her. "Anyway, are you ready?"

"I thought you'd never ask!" Ali exclaimed in relief, raring to trek along the perilous mini-mountains of quicksand alongside Shantae. "Let's move nonstop like the sands of time!"

"Alright!" Shantae cheered with a fist pump aimed skyward as she crossed her legs around her new ally's abdomen and rested her other hand on the scorpion girl's shoulder. "Let's go!" And with that, Shantae and Ali were off in a hurry. However, just before they really began their pendulous trip, the newly-formed duo mde it maybe a few yards before running into a particularly smoky red treasure chest sitting all by its lonesome on a convenient stone platform at the base of the second mountain. "Hold on!" Shantae commanded, causing Ali to already have to come to a screeching halt, stopping just before the treasure box.

"What is it?" Ali asked, none the wiser to Shantae's reason for already calling for a break.

"I need to see if this treasure chest has anything in it that might help me…" she explained, climbing off the arachnid maiden to approach the box.

"I don't know if you'll be able to. All the other boxes scattered throughout this desert have been booby-trapped to trigger a lightning strike aimed at anyone who approaches them," Ali warned, causing Shantae to stop just shy of laying a hand on the box.

"That's true, isn't it…?" the half-genie pondered, remembering what happened previously, though that train of thought was cut short by her curiosity about the burn marks surrounding the chest. "But then, why does this one have all these burn marks around it instead of on it or near it where anyone might've tried to grab it?" she asked as she investigated, though she also took note of the fact that she had yet to trigger a lightning strike.

"I'm not sure. It was like that when I got here, and I hadn't been bothered to try it out since I saw it get struck by lightning… and even then, I only saw it out of the corner of my eye from a safe distance. All the other ones will only get you struck if you reach out toward them like you're going to open them, as far as I also saw."

"Interesting… Well, only one way to find out what this is about…" she affirmed with a nod before she reached for the box. As expected, a lightning bolt triggered, beaming downward without Shantae even noticing, though her hand was already on the box.

"Get out of the way, you dummy!" Ali insultingly called out, trying to warn Shantae of the imminent danger she was in, though she was entirely too late. However, just as the bolt was about to strike the unaware half-genie, a transparent, spherical barrier momentarily surrounded her and the box, the *CRACK* of it sending scattered sparks all over that singed the ground around her before the shield disappeared in an instant. "What!?"

"Huh?" Shantae muttered, barely noticing what happened, though she picked up just enough info to get an idea. "A shield out of nowhere that absorbed a lightning bolt? Hmm… There's only one thing I know that could possibly do that…" With that and, in a rather unplanned move, undid the lock on the box with a single touch. Surprisingly, she did not trigger an additional lightning bolt to punish her for her intrigue about it. Instead, a transparent, shiny, teal spherical object emerged from the opened treasure chest. Jumping with excitement, Shantae quickly reached for it, triggering her usual 'picked up an item' jingle as she struck her signature accompanying pose. As it turned out, Shantae got Bubble!

"What… is that?" Ali asked, unfamiliar with such a momentous occasion.

"I just picked up a new spell! Well, new-ish," Shantae clarified as she moved to climb back onto Ali's back. "I learned it at one or more points before, but I always forget about it until it pops up again."

"Uh… Rrrrright…" the understandably-discombobulated young chimera uncertainly acknowledged. "So… what kind of spell is it?"

"It's my Bubble spell! It works as a shield of sorts, so when I activate it, it makes it so that some attacks aimed at me are absorbed without me taking any damage. It also protects me from environmental hazards sometimes. It must've been doing the same thing whenever this treasure chest got struck by lightning!" she happily concluded. "I couldn't explain to you why it was protecting the chest without needing to be activated, though…"

"Oh! Okay! Interesting…" Ali kinda-sorta praised, though she wasn't near as ecstatic as her partner about the discovery. "How… incredibly convenient for that to show up here and now instead of literally any other point in time…" she added, taking the words right out of my mouth.

"I know, right?" Shantae nonchalantly and rhetorically asked. "It does use up magic as a drawback, so I won't be able to keep using it if I don't have a way to refill my magic gauge."

"…I'm… just… going to pretend you're not completely insane and roll with it," Ali commented, for some reason unsettled by Shantae's totally-sensible way of explaining the functions of her power-up.

"You'll see when we get rolling. Now let's step on it!" she valiantly ordered, pointing forward.

"As you wish," Ali agreed, dismissing her curiosity in the wake of carrying on. With that, the two took off (for real this time), with Ali immediately displaying her unprecedented speed and agility with climbing up the second, much taller quicksand mountain. The scorpion girl's eight legs moved as though they were twin conveyor belts, each footstep kicking up small blasts of sand as she focused on navigating the uneven landscape. Shantae, caught by surprise at Ali's agility, clung tightly to her new comrade, wrapping her legs tighter around her waist while clutching her shoulders tightly with her hands. "Don't tell me you're scared, Shantae! You're practically squeezing the life out of me back there!"

"No, not at all!" Shantae reasoned, her voice shaking as she continued holding on while trying to shield her face from the rapid, relentless waves of sand grains pelting her as their trek progressed. "I just didn't expect you to be this fast!"

"Why, thank you!" Ali accepted what she figured was a compliment. "Being part scorpion, it's only natural that I travel this-! WHOA!" she was about to brag before a sudden *CRASH* of lightning struck right in front of her, startling her into jumping backward and beginning an inadvertent backward slide down the slippery hill. Knowing that she needed to retain her grip before she slid all the way back down, Ali made use of her sizable scorpion pincers and, with two sandy *POOMPHs*, she punctured the mountain with them and dug deep to bring her slide to a sudden halt. Poor Shantae, being anything but prepared for such a rocky (or in this case, sandy) ride, was jumbled, jiggled, and jostled all over the place as she tightened her already-intensive grasp on her living, breathing ride by wrapping her arms around Ali's torso. The half-genie's hair, face, and body bathed with hot sand… some of which, she was forced to spit out.

"Ugh, gross! This quicksand tastes like… like burnt toast!" the half-genie complained, still spitting out sand that got in her mouth.

"Sorry, girlie! I wasn't planning on giving you a free sample," Ali laughingly apologized as she steadied herself before beginning yet another reckless mad dash that Shantae had no time to prepare for. "Also, do you mind not squeezing my chest so hard? Your bracelets are digging into me," she added with mild discomfort as she adjusted her bikini top.

"Oh! Sorry, I didn't even notice," Shantae apologized, sliding her arms down to where they were wrapped around Ali's abdomen rather than her upper chest. "It was hard to tell where my hands were."

"And what's that supposed to mean!?" Ali shouted as she came to a screeching halt, highly offended by Shantae's apparently-rude remark.

"What? I didn't say anything to hurt your feelings. At least, I don't think I did…"

"So mine are small. Big deal! I'm a late bloomer, alright!? Not every girl can be as blessed as you are, Shantae. Goodness, what a way to rub it in my face…" Ali continued to complain, though Shantae had to take a second to register exactly what she was so upset about. After a moment, she realized it and gasped.

"Ohh, sorry, sorry…" the 'blessed' young woman apologized again, briefly glimpsing at herself as she became slightly embarrassed. "And it's okay, Ali. I didn't start uh… 'developing' until I was thirteen years old. It'll get to you soon. I pro-!"

"I'm twenty-seven, sweetheart," Ali interrupted with a deadpan expression, catching the half-genie by total surprise. "We scorpion hybrids age slower than humans, but even with that, I'm almost at the end of puberty and there isn't much hope I have for any growth spurts other than my stinger… Also, I don't have a stinger on my tail right now, in case you didn't notice."

"Gosh, Ali… I'm sorry about that," Shantae tried her best to console. "Still, you never know. I don't know much about the anatomy of scorpion people, but as far as puberty goes, no two people are exactly the same. For all I could guess, you could wake up sometime next week and be fully-developed out of nowhere! And hey, even if you stay the same, it's important that you accept yourself for who you are."

"…That's true…" Ali agreed, ruminating on Shantae's insightful words. "Thanks for that. I mean, I know my stinger's almost in and I get taller by the inch every day, so I'm not worried about that. But… um…" she paused, unsure of how to ask her next question as she became just a tad nervous. After a moment of silence, however, Ali decided to just go for it to overcome her hesitation. "Woman to woman, do you think my breasts will get any bigger by the time puberty's done for me?"

"Uh… I… I can't really speak for certain," the rightfully-nervous half-genie hesitantly answered, being placed on the hot seat of a very sensitive issue for her temporary tag partner, whom she barely knew. "Like I said, I… I don't know how much longer you've got because we're not the same species, but anything's possible. I mean, I didn't think mine would grow as much as they have, but they did pretty much out of nowhere. Just keep your fingers crossed. I… would also recommend drinking lots of milk and doing exercise if you're really worried about it."

"Exercise and milk, hm? Good ideas… Why didn't I think about that?" Ali pondered, already seeming to have come up with an idea to promote her physical development. "Thanks, Shantae. You're a much bigger help than I thought you'd be about this. I knew it was a good idea to ask a girl with some experience under her belt… And I'm sorry about throwing that on you. It's a weird thing to talk about with someone you just met, I know…" she further repentantly acknowledged, revealing just a smidgen of her personal insecurity through it all.

"Uh… Glad I could help!" she nervously, yet cheerfully acknowledged. "Also, no worries. No matter what, you'll look fantastic by the time you're fully-grown. Just keep that in mind. Now, are you ready to keep climbing?"

"You don't even have to ask!" Ali excitedly stated as she dashed forward without warning, nearly causing Shantae to fall off of her. Evidently, she'd received something of a motivational boost from their short conversation. "I'll try to get us up and over this dune as quick as can be, just to be safe!"

"G-great, but c-c-could you try to m-move a bit more carefully!?" Shantae requested, doing her best to avoid more sand getting on her while also trying to cling onto Ali like her life depended on it.

"Yeah, sure I—YIKES!" Ali shouted, narrowly sidestepping another three consecutive lightning bolts as she kept her pace going. It wasn't long, however, before the lightning bolts began to increase in the frequency of their strikes. Getting just a tad flustered as she continued her ascent, Ali briefly observed the clouds above to see them sparking and crackling nonstop, the earth-shaking *BOOMs* of thunder doing nothing to ease her nerves. She didn't have to worry about the thunder, of course, because she had a steadily-increasing barrage of lightning bolts to distract her. How auspicious a turn of events this was… NOT.

As Ali and Shantae continued their dangerous high-speed hike, more and more lightning bolts struck on either side of the chimeric young girl, forcing her to frequently sidestep to avoid getting hit. They also rapidly exploded in front of her, which caused her to stop dead or jump back in panic and be forced to dig her aching pincers into the quicksand to maintain her position and avoid backtracking; which, by the way, is not very good for holding passengers steady… in case you didn't know. To make things even more complicated, she'd also hit points where she'd be climbing just fast enough for a bolt to strike with a jarring *CRACK* behind her, forcing her to speed up to avoid being hit as she shrieked in utter terror.

Meanwhile, Shantae had been caught in a continuous, swirling mix of trying to hang onto Ali to avoid falling (and potentially sinking) into the quicksand, getting her attention to stop her from haphazardly and messily leaping and hopping around with little to no sense of coordination, and keeping from eating any more of the sand Ali had been constantly kicking up in her face by complete accident. After a solid five consecutive minutes of Ali frequently stopping, starting, and jumping around to avoid getting fried by wayward electricity…

"Alright, stop! Just stop what you're doing right now!" Shantae yelled, having lost her patience for everything she'd been put through in the last few minutes. Ali, startled once more by Shantae's yell, froze in place, panting heavily as she craned her head back to look at the frustrated half-genie.

"What gives, girl? We were just… we were just getting into the swing of it," Ali breathlessly inquired. "We're almost there, so why are we stopping?"

"Um… Not to be the bearer of bad news, Ali, but… we're not even a quarter of the way there," Shantae pointed out as she took a moment to point forward in the midst of her brushing all the sand off her hair and clothes. Ali looked up to see that Shantae had indeed been right; they barely made any progress at all, maybe only climbing a stone's throw away from the base of the mountain where they started.

"Whaaaaa? But how? I was going full-speed ahead this entire time! How is that possible?" she naively asked, seeming unaware of how much of her light-speed traveling went anywhere but forward for the most part.

"Here, I think now's a great time to use this," Shantae suggested, clasping her hands together and focusing before stretching her arms out, her hands coated in a luminescent light blue aura. "Bubble!" the young adventurer called out as she demonstrated her ability. Within a second, the same teal bubble that she'd collected from the treasure chest earlier had spontaneously formed from seemingly nowhere, surrounding both girls in a protective barrier. Amazed, Ali stared in wonder at the encompassing energy sphere.

"Whoa…!"

"Pretty cool, right?" Shantae gloated while trying not to sound too proud of herself. "We should be safe from the lightning now, but it'd be wise to move quickly. I won't be able to hold this up for all that long before it turns off and I have to channel more magic to use it again."

"Oh! Got it, got it. Here goes!" Ali announced in agreement with Shantae's assertion as she dashed ahead… and only ahead this time. With a vigorous burst of energy, Ali scurried up the mountainside at top speed, keeping in mind the time limit she had to do so before Shantae's bubble shield expired. During the slippery climb, the girls were targeted by a barrage of lightning bolts, the time between each strike shrinking with the higher they were on the perilous, grainy hill. Each frightening *CRACK* and *CRASH* of lightning, accompanied by the white flashes of it in the smog-colored clouds and the deafening *BOOMs* of thunder, made Ali increasingly more nervous as she carried on. It was to the point where she'd nearly lost focus of her current goal in the wake of just getting herself out of harm's way as soon as she could.

"Good job, Ali!" Shantae praised as she continued to maintain her grip, temporarily relieved of any issues regarding lightning or sand splashes thanks to her shield. "You're really blazing a trail up here!" she further complimented, reading the scorpion girl's mostly-silent urgency and desperation as determination. "Now we're more than halfway there!" Just as Shantae spoke, a particularly deafening *CRACKLE* of lightning struck the bubble shield directly. The sheer volume of the lightning's sound as it hit the shield was nerve-wracking, but it had been far beyond proven that the protective spell had worked as advertised. That did very little to ease a certain someone's nerves, however.

"Waaahh!" Ali shouted in panic, jumping out of her skin as she nearly lost her balance. "Whoahwhoawhoa!" she further shouted, being forced to dig her pincers into the sand again to keep from back-sliding. Once she regained control of herself, she breathed the heaviest of relief sighs as she panted nearly to a point of hyperventilation. "Gosh, I didn't know it would be this danger-!" she was about to complain before another *SNAP* of lightning struck the shield again, causing the poor young girl to flinch and quietly whimper.

"Minor setback, but we're almost there, Ali! Let's push it through!" Shantae valiantly cheered, more invigorated by the constant danger of electrocution than she was concerned about… well, you know, possibly getting electrocuted. "Just a bit more, and we can clear the other side in no time! We've gotta punch it, though, because my shield's about to run out!"

"Uh, r-r-right!" the frightened scorpion girl shakily assured as she shook her head to refocus. "Here goes! Haaaaaaaaaaah!" she roared with fear-laced valor as she blasted off once more, her eyes squeezed shut as she did so. By doing the scorpion equivalent of sprinting with all her might, Ali managed to avoid getting struck by any additional lightning bolts (though many of them came close) and had made it up the rest of the way in what would probably be considered record time if anyone was keeping count. However, had she kept her eyes open, she'd have realized she was nearing the top before launching herself off the summit like she was a living motor bike going up a steep ramp; and like said motor bike, she gained some serious air time just as Shantae's shield dissipated, leaving the two girls unprotected (as if it would even matter) as they ascended to the stormy heavens.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, Ali, do something, please!" Shantae begged, her previous excitement suddenly replaced with blood-chilling dread as she looked down to see just how much of a tumble she and her chimeric comrade were in for. The mere sight of the fall they were headed for made her stomach flip and turn like a hundred simultaneous coin tosses. As expressed earlier in case you didn't remember, Shantae did not really do too well with extensive, high-speed flights she wasn't in control of. It probably didn't help that they were quickly losing altitude on account of neither girl having wings. As such, she went into full-panic death-grip mode, squeezing Ali as tightly as she could. Ali, though panicked beyond belief that she'd launched herself halfway into space, did her best to brace herself for impact as she began to descend at the same speed at which she lifted off as the adrenaline rushed through every part of her body. Spreading her eight scorpion legs and steadying them, she positioned herself to where she would land as safely as she could. However, this did nothing to account for how that landing would play out.

"Hang on! M-maybe not as tight as you're doing right now but hang on!" Ali managed to announce despite Shantae inadvertently putting her in a chokehold by wrapping her arms around the arachnid girl's neck. Nonetheless, Ali braced for impact, nearly freezing with fear as she did so. Before too long (though it felt like an eternity for her), Ali's legs simultaneously hit the surface of the other side of the mountain with a *PWOFF* as she began to inadvertently slide downward like the mountainside was soaked in oil, waves of sand kicking up like water behind her. "Wuwuwuwawaaaah!" Ali shrieked again as she lost partial control of her pace, beginning a nonstop slide to the base of the third and final mountain. This trip downward would not be smooth, however, as there were many, MANY more spike traps almost rhythmically jutting out of the sand mound and retracting into it in the blink of an eye. Even worse, the lightning bolts had still been strkiking all over the place. Even MORE worse (oh yeah, we've gotta break a grammatical rule here just to describe it), there were also seemingly-random, yet thankfully-uncommon bottomless pits to account for. Just the sight of it all petrified the poor scorpion girl as she nearly went catatonic to the point that a sudden jerk of her shoulders to the left by her passenger was the only thing that allowed her to avoid three rows of spike beds and two insanely-accurate lightning strikes.

"Don't worry, Ali! I'll guide us to the bottom!" Shantae assured, locking her hands on Ali's shoulders while relaxing her position to where it was like she were riding a motorcycle. Ali didn't get to say anything before Shantae leaned over and pulled Ali to the right by her shoulders as they skidded down the sand hill. In doing so, Shantae caused them to avoid another lightning strike and three more spontaneous spike beds. However, the real challenge was the first of a few big pit jumps.

"U-um, what do we do here!?" Ali asked in reasonable suspense. "How do we-!?"

"I got it! Hyah!" Shantae assured once more, thrusting Ali's shoulders forward before yanking her backward with all her might and body thrown in, causing Ali to jump with just enough height to clear the extensive gap and narrowly avoid yet another *SNAP* of lightning before hitting the sand on the other side of the pit with another fortunate *PWOFF* as they continued skating downhill.

"How… How did you do that!?" Ali asked in utter shock at her passenger-turned-driver's incredible reflexes.

"Not really sure, but we can make it through with no problem!" Shantae valiantly stated. "At this rate, we can even conserve my bubble for when we hit the last sand hill! Are you Ret-2-Go!?"

"Er, I-I don't know what that means, but sure!?"

"Then here we go!" Shantae declared again, starting to get into the swing of the newfound sport of scorpion-back riding. Almost instantly adapting to the situation, Shantae bobbed, weaved, swerved, and veered all around the sand mountain with Ali. She guided her ally in such a way that she skied past and leapt over numerous spike beds, dipped and dodged rapid, relentless sprays of lighting bolts that struck in bunches, and practically flew over the sporadic pitfalls littered across the impossibly-uneven quicksand mountainside. After one particularly long, adrenaline-pumping jump over a wide, ostensibly-expanding chasm of skull-smoking death, Shantae and Ali made it to the trough between the second and third sand hills, where Ali came to a sandy screeching halt. Understandably worn out by such a perilous venture, she took a moment to catch her breath before sharing her thoughts on such an extravagantly dangerous experience.

"Mercy me, what even WAS all of that just now!?" she emphatically asked, spooked out of her wits.

"Beats me, but we survived," the extra-relieved half-genie answered, remaining seated safely on her ally's back. "We've only got one more to go, and then we're there… right?"

"Yeah, I think so," Ali nodded, surprised by Shantae's dismissal of the crash course behind them. "How are you not freaked out by any of what we just went through, though?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you kidding!? All the lightning bolts, the spikes, the scorching wind and sand in our faces, the ridiculous pitfalls back there… NONE of that scared you!?"

"Uh… A little, I guess, but that's nothing I haven't dealt with before," she nonchalantly answered, taking the momentary break to shake and brush the excess sand out of her clothes and hair.

"What!? You mean you deal with that kind of nonsense on the regular?"

"Yeah. As a hero, things like that don't usually get to me," she confidently answered. "I fight monsters, pirates, and war machines all the time. That, and I'm always patrolling through way more dangerous landscapes than this, be it a volcano, a haunted castle, other deserts, or even the occasional spooky dungeon labyrinth filled to the brim with the restless, ferocious monsters… amongst many others. So far, this has pretty much been a cakewalk."

"…You're kidding me…!"

"I WILL admit, though, that I do get a bit nervous when I'm way up in the air for any reason other than me getting up there myself. Not gonna lie, you scared me a little when you ran so fast up this last hill that you sent us both flying almost into the storm clouds. I almost thought we'd have gotten smoked in midair…" Shantae explained, hiding nothing from her situational partner. "Oh well. We made it, and that's all that counts."

"Whoa…" Ali murmured as she looked back at Shantae, her breath certifiably taken away by the half-genie's admission. "You're totally hardcore…"

"Oh? Uh, heh, I… I-I don't know if I'd go THAT far…" Shantae sheepishly remarked, nervously pressing her index fingers together.

"No, seriously! I'd only heard stories about you, but I thought people were just spreading exaggerated rumors… on top of what I already believed about you. To have a first-hand experience with you is totally nuts! I mean, I know it wasn't all that long, but it blows those rumors right out of the water! Just a taste of the adventures you go on is enough to prove them!" she gushed, evidently having regained her respect for Sequin Land's greatest defender.

"Oh! I-I don't know what to say… Thanks?" she uneasily accepted Ali's compliments, though she was quickly getting nervous with the attention she was being given.

"No need! I'm just glad I get to actually be in the presence of a living legend!" the scorpion girl gushed some more. "I'm really sorry for how I treated you earlier," she apologized posthaste. "It was uncalled for. I was trying to make myself look cool in front of you, so I understand if I left a bad impression… especially after I badmouthed your sidekick and then chickened out to the point where you had to save me at least a dozen different times in just this last half-hour or so. I genuinely hope he'll be okay when you get to him, and I can't apologize enough for how I acted earlier…"

"Water under the bridge, Ali! I'm not upset!" Shantae reassured, patting the guilty young scorpion hybrid on the back. "I'm just glad we're working together now. Also, if I know my friend by now, he's definitely not the type of guy you want to underestimate. Trust me on that. I'm positive he's holding his own, and I swear I'll bring him back in one piece. You definitely did your part up here, too! I wouldn't have made it this far without you or your unique abilities!"

"Aw, thanks!" Ali graciously accepted Shantae's praise as she tried not to seem too excited to be complimented by her hero. "That means a lot! R-really, it does. Like, so much more than a lot of things would coming from other people, so you can be sure I… uh… S-sorry, I'm… I'm rambling…" she awkwardly cut herself off, suddenly quite nervous. "I-it's not every day something like this happens, y'know, and I was just waiting here on a whim based on something I heard the other day, and to have you helping me even though we just met… um…" she continued to go on before stopping to gulp, her throat suddenly dry as she tried to process that she was talking to Shantae, the living legend herself.

"No problem, it's all good," the hero in question nonchalantly forgave with a friendly smile that brought a much-needed sense of relief to Ali. "Although, I should ask by now… Who is this guy you want me to help? And what does he need help with?" she prodded as the two casually trotted toward their final challenge before they reached their destination.

"He's my dad, though he doesn't know I'm here right now…" Ali admitted, much to Shantae's shock. "Or rather, he doesn't seem to remember who I am…"

"What? Is everything okay?"

"I don't think so…" she started, her concern unmistakable. "I popped in for a visit a couple days ago because I hadn't seen him since before he moved out here, but he wasn't himself… He didn't recognize me, and then he kicked me out after I made one comment about the way he designed his house… I'm not even sure why he got that mad at me, either, but knowing him, he's not usually like that. Granted, he's always been a bit sensitive about his fashion sense, but… something's wrong this time around. I can't figure out what it is, though… Anyway, before I got the chance to leave or think about what happened, this thunderstorm popped up out of nowhere, and I've been stuck on this island ever since."

"Oh… I'm sorry, Ali… What can I do to help?"

"I was hoping you could figure out what's wrong with my dad," she explained. "It sort of has to do with the reason I knew you'd be coming here at some point."

"Oh?"

"While he was yelling at me to get out, he mentioned something about a visitor he had the day before I showed up… I didn't get much, but I remember it being said that he was warned about someone of genie descent with purple hair. I've only ever heard of one person in this whole country matching that super-specific description…"

"That's about as specific as you can get, I guess. I'd probably never draw the conclusion that he and this other person were talking about me," Shantae remarked, shrugging her shoulders as though to come off like she didn't know what Ali was talking about.

"Hah, nice," Ali complimented with a chortle, taking some humor in Shantae's comment. "Still, I'm not sure who that visitor was or what business they had with you to know you were coming here, so I apologize for not having any answers…"

"Don't worry about it," Shantae consoled. "I'm sure your dad will spill the beans when we meet up with him. And whoever else is looking for me, I'll bet he'll point me in their direction once we clear the air."

"Um…" Ali droned, somewhat hesitant as she brought a hand to her chest. "A-about that… I… was wondering if maybe you'd be okay going to see him alone…" she requested, catching Shantae by surprise.

"Alone? Why?"

"I… I don't know how he'll react if he sees me again. He was incredibly nasty to me and made it very clear he didn't want me to set foot near his house again," she explained, disheartened as she came clean.

"Oh… Well in that case, I'll do my best to talk some sense into him," Shantae assured, feeling bad for the young scorpion maiden who'd been ostracized by her own father. "I'll try not to mention that you and I met until he becomes open to the idea of seeing you again. It isn't right for a daughter and father not to be able to have an open, loving relationship," she added, mentally drawing a comparison between this situation and her own background. It stood to reason that a chord had been struck within the half-genie, as she highly valued the idea of a strong, durable family bond. Though she herself struggled with the idea that she may not ever get to meet her own biological father (much less bond with him), she acknowledged that she would make sure someone else got to be with theirs if she had anything to say or do about it. "By the time I'm done, Ali, I can assure you, you and your dad will be able to build an unbreakable connection like no other!"

"You'd really accept the task?" Ali asked, honestly surprised that Shantae would, with little more than a couple of questions, voluntarily step into the middle of a tumultuous family affair with the intent to fix it.

"Of course! I'll help in whatever way I can!" she naively assured, filling to the brim with vigor. "Let's go right now!"

"Wow… Thanks, Shantae… I don't know what to say, but… but I'm glad I even got to meet you. Getting your help with my dad is icing on the cake!"

"No problem! It's what heroes do," she once again naively assured as she got set to take off with Ali once more before noticing yet another red treasure chest sitting on a stone platform just before the final sand hill. "Hold on… Another treasure chest? I wonder what that one could be…" she further added, climbing off Ali and skipping ahead across the quicksand to inspect her next unexpected bounty.

"I know the last one had some kind of protection against the trap set on it, but are you sure you should approach that one?" Ali asked as her travel passenger casually opened the box with no electrical interference whatsoever. "…Huh. What's up with these boxes? I figured that if the other ones I came across were rigged, then they'd all be. Weird…" she murmured to herself. Nevertheless, inside the treasure chest was not one, not two (or three), but FOUR Heart Holders, in addition to a glass vial with an eccentric purple liquid in it, plugged with a cork. Shantae got Four Heart Holders and a Potion, vastly increasing her stamina by a long shot while also restoring her health to full and supplying her with a free recharge in case she grew weary.

"Goodness almighty, I'd NEVER expected THAT generous a power-up!" she cheered, all but fired up by her most beneficial find yet. "My health is double what it was before! This is incredible!"

"…Eh?"

"This one even came with a Potion! Maybe it makes up for me not being able to find any Heart Holders or Potions since Naga Mountain, but who knows? Hmm…"

"I'm a bit lost. What just happened?" Ali asked, stopping Shantae's train of thought.

"Oh! Sorry, it was just me getting another huge power boost," the young heroine explained, though it did little to clarify what Ali had just witnessed. "Anyway, we should get going," she advised, climbing up onto her living, breathing dirt bike's back. "We're in the home stretch, but it looks like this next one's gonna be the most difficult of the bunch."

"No kidding…" Ali agreed with a gulp of pure terror as the two young women eyed up the gargantuan hill they were set to cross. Within the first millisecond, they took note of a plethora of hazards that would serve to make this climb the most death-defying yet. There were spike beds all over the place. Some periodically retracted and extended in and out of the quicksand, though Ali and Shantae knew it'd be just about impossible to account for which spike traps were where; not because they were anticipating the other hazards, however… It was because there were THAT many of them all across the sandy mountainside. Additionally, lightning was rampantly striking down with no quarter, bolts hitting random areas of the hill within as little as two seconds of each other. To add even more, there were flocks of armored birds and living cactus monsters scurrying about as they tried to avoid being hit by the merciless lightning bolts. A couple of these creatures had spotted Shantae and Ali and seemed to angrily stare down at them, daring them to approach at their own peril. As it seemed, our dynamic duet would be in for it this time; no holds barred.

"I sure hope you're ready for the long haul, Ali, because this is what separates the heroes from the humiliation… o-or, something along those lines," Shantae stammered, attempting to make a witty one-liner about the situation to improve her rep.

"…You sure we need to go through all that?" Ali reasonably asked, wanting nothing to do with what unfathomable horrors awaited them ahead. "We could just… y'know, go around this dune. Matter of fact, there's a trail right over there with a literal detour sign marking it," she further suggested, pointing to the far left of the mountainside. Indeed, there appeared to be a much safer, much less insane, much less death trap-infested alternative route to their destination. The large, rectangular wooden sign even read in a sophisticated font, 'This Way Directly to the Kitschy Quilt Library.' Of course, the sign had been vandalized, with someone crudely adding 'for cowards, babies, and idiot losers like a certain meddling half-genie brat,' in what looked like red paint. There was also a very inaccurate drawing of Shantae's face with a goofy expression, a handlebar mustache, and a quote in a speech bubble that incorrectly read 'Im a totl klown, unlyk Pirate Queen Risky Boots, who rulzz lol. PS im dum 2. Soooo dummm.' Need I even mention the stink lines added for most tasteful measure, or the additional message reading 'Risky Boots was Here! Shantae is a Loser!' my dear reader? Suffice it to say, Shantae was not amused.

"…Oh boy, I only wonder who could've done that," she dryly remarked as she rolled her eyes, incredibly annoyed by a certain someone's (presumably Risky Boots's) astonishing immaturity. However, the crude drawing sent a wave of anticipation through her body, as this was the first sign (no pun intended) of her being anywhere close to Risky's trail since the chaotic woman-hunt began. However, she could only wonder what the self-proclaimed Pirate Queen could've been doing here of all places. Whatever it was, Shantae knew at this point to expect nothing but the worst from her diabolical archenemy as she silently became much warier of her surroundings.

"Well at least you know someone really cares about you to go out of their way to insult you so thoroughly," Ali consoled. "I swear none of that was there the last time I passed by that sign. Then again, neither were all these ridiculously-dangerous, oversized sand dunes. Well, at least not as many of them. I don't think they were supposed to be this tall, either. I can say one thing for sure, though: There was nowhere near as much… chaos going on with this last hill last time I saw it…"

"That's not good…" Shantae murmured, a pit forming in her stomach regarding the implications of Ali's observation. That was already another clue that this mess had 'Risky Boots' written all over it…

"Either way, Risky Boots sure did put a lot of detail on that sign there," the young chimera noted. "I don't know too much about your relationship with her other than you two always fighting to the bitter end for the sake of good versus evil, but… Does she really hate you, or does she just have some sort of obsessive fixation on you and she's just terrible at expressing it…?"

"…You could say something like that, sure," the flustered half-genie hesitantly confirmed without actually answering Ali's question, mildly creeped out by the suggestions posed behind it. "I'm honestly starting to wonder if she wrote all that to try and convince me to go through this obstacle course to prove to her I'm brave, because this is as lazy as it is childish. Anyway, I suppose we'll go the 'idiot, baby, loser' route to save time."

"Oh, thank goodness…" the incredibly-relieved scorpion girl exhaled, immensely grateful that Shantae was no glutton for punishment. She didn't even care that she inadvertently confirmed herself as all the things written on the sign marking the path.

"What was that?" Shantae asked, having not heard her partner.

"I said yeah, let's play it safe this time," she corrected. "It makes more sense at this point. Ready?"

"Yep," the young humanoid woman concurred. Without much more hesitation, our couple of 'cowardly idiot baby losers' took the safe route. Thankfully for them, not only did the path circumvent the deadly obstacle course in its entirety (though the entire path was still made of quicksand), it also yielded no enemies, no spike traps, and no haphazard lightning strikes despite the constant rumbling in the dense, thick clouds above. Nevertheless, after a few minutes (as opposed to what very well could've been at least another hour) Shantae and Ali made it to their destination.

"Here we are," Ali declared as she and Shantae stopped in front of a giant igloo… which was made entirely of hardened sand bricks, save for the door.

"This thing is huge!" she observed, astonished by the size of the igloo, which nearly rivaled that of the Sequin Land Palace… Okay, maybe more like one third the size of the Sequin Land Palace. Still, pretty big for an igloo… in the desert of all places… made of stone. Jeez, I don't get paid enough for this job… "I do have to wonder why there's an igloo made of sandy bricks in the middle of an uninhabitable, unseasonably-arid desert that's prone to lightning storms and whose ground is just about all quicksand…" she pondered; rightfully so, as everything about this eccentric building raised enough red flags that one could outline the perimeter of the massive sand igloo with them.

"Yeah, I have no idea why he would, of all things, shape his house like an igloo when he's WAY out in the middle of this desert instead of somewhere more appropriate, like the sub-zero tundras of Frostbite Island," Ali knowingly remarked with a shrug, however ironic her statement. "At least there, it'd make SOME sense."

"True, but I always thought a scorpion would hate sub-zero…" she almost posed before realizing how ridiculous her yet-to-be-asked question would sound. "…never mind," she dismissed with a shrug. "That's not a point I think it's necessary to combat."

"I get what you were about to say, no less. As long as we're mortal, and I'm making a lot of assumptions here, there will probably never be a point in our lives where we get to understand his thinking. Dad always was kooky like that. Anyway, I'm gonna try to collect my things on the other side of this desert and figure out how I'll get out of this endless thunderstorm. I'll be back, but I hope there's something you can do to fix my daddy… please?"

"You can count on me, Aleaqarab," Shantae assured with a fist clutched to her chest as she dismounted the worried scorpion girl for the final time, landing on a stone platform just before the front door of the misplaced structure. "By the time you come back, your dad'll be welcoming you with open arms. I promise."

"Thank you," Ali expressed, pulling Shantae in for a quick surprise hug, which the half-genie returned as best as she could in her astonishment. It wasn't long before the two girls separated and Ali was on her way deeper into the Kitschy Quilt Desert, where her form disappeared into the sandy winds quickly following her departure. It was at this point that Shantae momentarily questioned herself on exactly what she agreed to and if she could really complete such a delicate task as reuniting a distressed young girl with her disgruntled estranged father. She may have been a hero, but she understood that she was no family counselor in any sense of the word. Nonetheless, the half-genie shrugged, silently assuring herself she could do it, and took one final long, pensive look at the igloo, wondering just what the inside of it had in store for her. Afterward, she entered through the metal door of its entrance.

Inside, she found that the floor was solid stone through and through as she noted the rhythmic clacks of her shoes against the compact, sturdy surface. "Hello? Anyone home?" she called as she continued her trek into the enigmatic structure. The half-genie soon found herself in a huge dome-like room fitted with an array of shelves lined from top to bottom with books, save for what looked like a work desk littered with note paper at the other end. The walls were painted with a rather garish plaid pattern consisting of teal, gray, and tickle-me pink. The walls also bore a pattern of wood torches that lit up the room. Shantae further observed to see that she'd been standing on a carpet that spanned the circumference of the dome, though its colors clashed horribly with the already-tacky walls. The carpet bore an aggressive lime green, scarlet red, and sunflower petal yellow diamond pattern that hurt the eyes to simply glance at.

"I guess Ali was right… Jeez, someone could really use some home fashion tips for picking less busy patterns and not overusing clashing colors… The feng shui is totally off in here…" she muttered to herself, definitely unimpressed by the design of the igloo.

"Welcome to the Kitschy Quilt Library!" announced a low, booming voice from seemingly nowhere, causing Shantae to jump and squeak in sudden fear as she turned around to be greeted with the apparent librarian; a half-man, half-scorpion whose torso was human, but whose entire lower body was that of a giant gold scorpion complete with menacing pincers. The man-scorpion hybrid's human half donned a plum purple and sunset orange, horizontally-striped sweater, a long, thick beard of a withered, ashen gray, gold-rimmed sunglasses, and a green turban with a cherry red jewel embedded in the front. "I must say, though, I wasn't expecting any visitors except for… wait…" he pondered, studying his guest's appearance.

"Oh, I-I'm sorry," Shantae apologized, letting her guard down slightly, though she did not approach the scorpion man. "I was just… passing by. I wasn't aware anyone actually lived or worked here."

"Yes, that notion is far from uncommon," the scorpion man affirmed with a solemn nod as he crawled toward the half-genie, who instinctively became tense. "The Kitschy Quilt Desert is far from being known as a tourist attraction… as I'm certain you've come to find out, traveler. I've lived here for ages, and I haven't had but a handful of separate visits since I moved here, though I had to show one of my guests the door recently," he rather nonchalantly admitted, causing Shantae to gulp with pressure. "Although, I WILL say I was expecting someone with a description similar to yours to appear at one point or another."

"Oh?" she perked up, feigning ignorance.

"Yes… A somewhat short, petite young woman with long, shaggy royal violet hair tied into a ponytail… wearing almost exclusively red… and…" he pondered some more, something clicking in his head. "Might you also be at least part genie? Excuse me for being far from polite with such an outrageous inquiry, but I must verify…"

"Yep. I'm half-genie, half-human," she confirmed.

"Ah, so you are the prestigious Shantae I've heard so much about!" he exclaimed with excitement that the young woman couldn't tell was real or fake. Her guard was still up, considering what she'd found out before she arrived.

"Y-yep, that's… That's me," she assured, not even bothering to ask how he knew so much about her or how she would be stopping in. She still had Aleaqarab's warning locked into her mind, but she wanted to play it cool.

"Indeed! Tell me, how did you find yourself here?" he curiously inquired as he stopped in front of Shantae, observing her through the sunglasses he never took off.

"Well, it wasn't easy, I'll say that much," Shantae replied with a deep, shaky breath. "It took lots of hopping to keep from sinking in the quicksand, dodging lightning bolts, and crossing a rickety, old, foggy bridge in the middle of a dry lightning storm to get here. That, and some crazy trap-infested sand dunes…"

"My word, you must be exhausted! Here, might I fetch you a cup of tea?" the scorpion man offered, immediately taking to his work desk without waiting for his apparently-expected guest's reply. "It's far from common that anyone makes it across the Lightning Gap Bridge or the Sand Dunes of Doom. Although I was awaiting your arrival, I believe you'd be the first to cross those hazards and survive in close to a hundred years," he informed as he prepared the beverage.

"Wow…" she remarked in a mix of surprise and understanding, noting the danger associated with the bridge and the dunes. "Has it really been that long?"

"Well… maybe I'm a little far from the truth in terms of how long it's actually been since my last visitor," he admitted with a chuckle that Shantae nervously shared. "Especially given what I'd just told you about the last person I escorted out of my home for her boorish behavior and lack of refinement," he insulted his own daughter (or at least, that's who Shantae presumed he was referring to), which immediately angered her. Although, she held her composure. "Oh, but you're probably wondering how I knew so much about you and your trip here, aren't you?"

"Believe it or not, sir… Not as much as you might think," she cleverly denied, though his surprise was evident. "I'm more curious about who you are. Again, I… I wasn't sure if someone was actually living out here. I was referred here by H-!" she was about to finish her statement.

"Well, here I am to exceed your expectations, dear Shantae," the scorpion man interrupted without warning, seeming to take pride in her interest in him. "My name is Alsumu. Alsumu Alladagha. You may call me 'Al' for short, though. It's far from uncommon for people to mispronounce my full name."

"Pleasure to meet you, Al!" Shantae graciously stated, 'happy' to make the acquaintance of a new face while also wrapping her head around the fact that he had a nearly-identical nickname to Ali. Like father, like daughter, I guess.

"Likewise, Shantae. Did you come all the way here alone?"

"No, actually…" she began, her worry for the absent soldier evident. However, she was uncertain of how to bring up the topic of his disappearance. Likewise, she played it safe. "I uh… I got some help getting here, though the person who helped me decided not to join me in coming in."

"Oh? How peculiar…" he murmured, seeming to be cautious of something as he looked Shantae up and down through his sunglasses.

"Yeah, but they had their reasons…" she dismissed, avoiding any mention of Ali while drumming up an idea of how to mention her original partner. "Anyway, I came here together with someone other than that person, but he fell into a giant ditch just before the end of the Lightning Gap Bridge. The ditch turned out to be a hiding spot for some kind of shelter, I think…? But the door he fell through closed back up before I could help him out, and I was wondering if you knew anything about how I could open the door and rescue him."

"Hmm… I see," Al pondered as he stopped in his tracks before he finished making Shantae that tea he didn't even confirm her desire for. An awkward silence passed over the gaudily-decorated library as neither the scorpion man nor the young woman spoke. Eventually, the human-scorpion hybrid spoke once more. "Your friend… I'm sorry to say, is good as gone," he gravely stated as he turned to face his guest, making her heart sink.

"…Wh-what do you mean by that?"

"Shantae, my dear… That pit he fell into was no shelter," he explained, finally taking of the unnecessary sunglasses, but keeping his eyes shut. "He fell into the Carnivorous Catacombs."

"C-C-CARNIVOROUS Catacombs?" Shantae repeated with a sudden, gripping sense of fright as her blood ran cold.

"Indeed. It's a secret compartment of this desert where those foolish enough to travel to this land without taking precautions are taken if they are found before they leave… dead or alive."

"Oh, no…!"

"I'm afraid so, darling. The vessels of the lost and doomed are collected, stored for preservation, and then eventually consumed to nurture the creatures of this land."

"Oh, gosh…! Tayshan…!" Shantae whispered to herself as her gaze fell to the floor, her eyes welling up with tears as she feared the worst yet again. However, from her experience with traveling alongside the soldier, she at least knew that he was a fighter; there was certainly no way he'd go down so easily as to be ambushed by some man-eating desert monsters. He had to at least be alive. He HAD to be. She shook her head and dried her tears, holding out hope that her friend would survive until she found a way to save him. "Is there maybe a way to open that door so we can get him out of there?"

"No," the scorpion man bluntly remarked. "There is no escape from the Carnivorous Catacombs. It is far from common for anyone to survive in there for longer than a few minutes. By now, I imagine your friend has become a nutritious snack for the scorpions," he callously added, his polite tone gone and replaced with one of malice and sinister intent. Shantae immediately raised her defenses, expecting things to go south very quickly.

"How would you know that, Al? You sound a little too sure that my friend isn't still alive down there," she contested, taking offense to the nonchalance of her host's tone.

"Because…" Al trailed off, opening his eyes to reveal his ink-black sclera and crimson-red irises as he flashed an evil grin. His pupils were shaped like a vertical slit to boot, definitely notifying Shantae that this scorpion man was bad news. "I'm the one who built it! And you, dear, are going to be my appetizer before I consume your friend!"

"What? Why!?" she asked, certifiably blind-sided by this most harrowing turn of events.

"You want to know why? I'll tell you. I've been ridiculed and ostracized by humanity for far too long! For eons, I have tried bestowing upon you ungrateful beasts my unparalleled fashion genius and insight into exuberant home design! Yet, what do I get in return? Insufferable, unjust castigations against my exquisite tastes! 'There are too many busy colors here,' this. 'The patterns don't match' that. 'You have no idea what fashion even is' the third! Well no more! If humans can't learn to appreciate my artistic integrity and genius, even after my self-imposed exile, then they will suffer indiscriminately! Even if it's one miserable peon at a time," he ranted, though it was just a tiny bit (by which I mean entirely) unwarranted and arbitrary. It didn't even make sense for him to reveal his disproportionately-insidious intentions so soon; something I wasn't alone in taking issue with…

"…You're doing this just because people don't like your tacky fashion sense?" Shantae bluntly questioned, bemused and perturbed by Al's ridiculous reason for kidnapping and eating people. Al gasped in a mix of shock and seething ire.

"TACKY!? You of all people should be one to talk about 'tacky!' That dreadful little two-piece dancer travesty you have on is as far from chic as you can get! And who are you kidding with all that fake costume jewelry? Are you TRYING to make me pity you? Your hypocrisy makes me want to vomit! And scarlet red is SO last season, doll. Do not address me about what is 'tacky.'"

"Hey!" Shantae yelled, taking great offense to the fashion police officer. "My outfit is 100% authentic, thank you very much! I'm a dancer as part of my profession as a hero, so this outfit is totally practical!" the half-genie defended, causing Al to raise an eyebrow in wonder at her assertion.

"… So you're an adventurer-slash-hero parading around as a professional dancer…?" Al incredulously questioned, uncertain of the half-genie's angle. "How droll… Your image is just a tad misleading, don't you think? You call yourself a hero, prancing around in that provocative getup? It hardly covers anything, much less suits anyone whose job entails gallivanting through dangerous environments and saving people from monsters like me! What kind of example are you setting, exactly?"

"Look, it may not be the best thing in the world to wear out in public on a regular basis, but I'd like to think it does me a whole lot more justice than… for example, wearing an oversized, stuffy sweater; especially in the middle of a ferociously dry, hot desert, of which there are a ton here in Sequin Land," she calmly and casually commented, unaware of just how that comment would be received by the guy wearing the oversized, stuffy sweater; especially in the middle of a ferociously dry, hot desert.

"Excuse me!?" Al practically screamed, taking all forms of offense to Shantae's example, which hit close to home for him for some mysterious reason.

"It also at least matches in both color scheme and my overall theme of being a magic-wielding half-genie whose powers revolve mainly around dancing," she commented further, unintentionally roasting her new friend-turned-enemy. Appalled, his jaw dropped wide open. "Oh, and I had all my jewelry appraised a long time ago. My earrings, headband, bracelets, and hair tie are all made of reinforced 24-karat gold. They're also enhanced with magic to keep them from breaking or tarnishing. Don't ask how I got them or how I keep them in such good shape other than with magic, but they're definitely not fake."

"Why… You…!"

"I don't mean to be rude, Al. I'm sorry for calling your fashion sense tacky," she apologized. "Maybe we can trade fashion advice after you let my friend out of your creepy sand dungeon. I'm a bit of a fashion buff myself, believe it or not."

"And why, pray tell, would I need fashion advice from you?" he asked, still hostile toward his uninvited, yet-expected house guest.

"Well…" she began, looking at Al and around the room and spotting numerous obvious examples. "I was just thinking I could help you by giving you tips on how to bring a level of consistency to your ensemble."

"And by that, you imply…?"

"Just by looking around this library and at your outfit, I think there are too many loud, busy colors that clash like scimitars going on here. It's kind of—no, very distracting."

"…"

"Plus, the patterns of your walls and flooring don't match. Plaid and Diamond patterns are as far from collaborative as you can get, which makes the color issue more glaring. It's hard to tell exactly the kind of message you want to communicate to visitors when they come here. Is it supposed to be homey, or lively, or… actually, since you're a bad guy, maybe you're going for an intimidating vibe?"

"…!"

"As for your outfit, the stripes and coloring of your sweater don't match your turban or even your lower half at all."

"…!"

"One more thing, sweaters are definitely out this season. Actually, sweaters haven't been hip in Sequin Land for the past six years, actually. The weather around here alone is a huge reason no one wears them anymore. Even on Frostbite Island, they'll wear jackets, trench coats, or even snowsuits before they entertain the thought of a sweater. Have you studied any of the fashion trends that have come and gone in the last few years? I mean, I don't know how long it's been since you moved out here, but still…" she rambled on, pretty much nailing Al on every point he previously brought up about why no one liked his fashion sense.

"…!"

"Maybe-!"

"That is IT!" Al roared in rage as he raised his enormous scorpion stinger and single-handedly tore off his ugly sweater, revealing his incredibly muscular, swollen bare chest and arms, already demonstrating that he was beyond the talking phase. "You come into my home uninvited, disrespect my fashion etiquette, think you can tell ME how to dress and decorate when you can't even pull of a remotely believable hero theme, and worst of all, make me ruin my favorite sweater? YOU MUST DIE!"

"…Well, this escalated quickly…" Shantae muttered as she prepared herself for battle. "I wonder if it was something I said…?" With that, the fight was set to begin. Without hesitation, Al charged at Shantae with vigorous rage, intent on making her pay for her brazen disrespect. Shantae, already prepared for a confrontation at this point, dashed toward him, her trusty Hair Whip (amongst other abilities) at the ready.

ALSUMU ALLADAGHA ('Al' for short): FURIUOS FASHION FAUX PAS!

Now, this is usually the part where we really kick off with the hero-versus-boss showdown of epic, chaotic proportions. However, in case you've forgotten, a certain unfortunate soldier had lost his way long before this point and we've yet to even figure out what happened to him (other than what was previously implied, of course). I'm fairly certain you're asking by now where he is, what he's doing, and if he's even still alive at this point. So, in lieu of carrying on with this most awesome, titanic, catastrophic two-person war for the ages between Shantae and Al (we'll come back to it, trust me), we'll instead take a much-needed 'See You in the Next Episode' sort of break and, when we come back, we will divert our attention elsewhere… Hey, at least I'm giving you a more legit reason for this cliffhanger, so don't bite my head off, alright? Just sit tight till next time!