MASS MISCALCULATION

by lolmyster42

Aaron never really had an easy life. Then again, the life of a Saint is never easy. Especially when you're put in a coma. Twice. He failed to save one universe... can he save another?

38. Chapter 36

A/N- And here we go. The last chapter this story will ever have…! For awhile. But don't worry. I made this one special…

Post-edit note- I'm putting this here after I wrote the whole thing, and I better see people jumping up and down in joy after seeing the chapter length… because dang, this was hard to make…

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MASS MISCALCULATION

Episode 36- Super Ethical Galactic Climax!

---

There was nothing better than having an entire empire of technologically advanced aliens who trumped any and all other species in terms of weapons in the palm of your hand. It was even better since Boss had that specific palm. Really, it's what every kid dreamed of- an entire empire to rule.

Sure, some gangsters just wanted a crew, maybe a small-time gang to run. Him? No… he always thought bigger, so big some would say insane.

Was it insane to make Steelport an independent city-state? He didn't think so. Presidency? That was just the next step.

In truth he wanted world domination long-term, but then Earth had been destroyed. Sure, now that he had the time machine he could always just reverse that. But in this universe, with so many planets and species… well.

They had all the time in the world. Home could wait. This universe couldn't, considering the time machine didn't work here.

Only wrinkle was the people standing against him. Problem with going as big as this was there was always someone opposing him, but these days he felt like everyone wanted a piece of him. It wasn't enough he all but obliterated the big three mercenary groups in the galaxy, oh no, now he had a conglomeration of the galaxy's biggest governments threatening war with him just on the fact the zin had mass relay technology and planet-buster weapons. And… ah, he couldn't remember, he felt like he antagonized them a lot, too. At least he had that asari councilor under his thumb with the data Binary had oh-so-graciously provided way back when, so she wouldn't be a problem. The other two aliens, they wanted war. The guy who sounded like Keith David, Boss didn't know, he acted like he wanted to avoid the Saints altogether.

It didn't help that during the two years Aaron spent here alone he terrorized the entire galaxy. Did Boss respect him for the name he made for himself, yes. The answer was a definite yes considering how proud Boss was of his main homie when he first heard of the things he did. Destroying that one Thessian city was a bit much, but no-one's perfect. But even so, the fact that Aaron was the second-command of the Saints didn't help them with the Council. To say it was icing on the cake was an understatement. It was more like one of those layered chocolate cakes that the bakers say is in the center, but really, they screwed up, so now it's more near the back so you have to work further for it. Well, Aaron was that filling.

Other than that, Cerberus, that terrorist organization that had some goals Boss didn't care about. Or know. He should know, but he didn't care enough to remember. He'd have to ask Aaron again.

Moving on, they'd been under the radar for awhile, which meant they were planning something big. And dangerous. Eh, he'd deal with it as it came.

Shepard, that pretentious fuck, he was still out there somewhere. Doing who knows what. Or maybe nothing, Boss hadn't really the time to look that up, but he still had a score to settle with him… but he was small compared to his other problems. A problem, but a small one, despite Aaron saying that Shepard was dangerous enough to be elevated to medium problem.

Most people would scoff at that, saying one man couldn't pose much of a danger. But Boss was one of those people who defied that reason on a daily basis, so he begrudgingly listened and put Shepard at medium. By that he meant he had Kinzie make a refrigerator magnet and stick in on a chart on the fridge. A chart and magnet Boss later burned because he realized he didn't want to see Shepard's face whenever Boss went for a sandwich.

And finally, the reapers. According to Aaron, robot space squids bent on a cycle of galactic genocide. Sounded s little weird to Boss, to be honest that topped his list of weird stuff. Super dangerous that, again, Aaron had reported, and had stressed to Boss that he should tell his zin to prepare defenses for when that mess started.

Which is why he was here, in the zin Mothership. Deep in dark space, along with the zin fleet of ships. Known to a select few of the Saints, Boss had been ordering his zin to prepare for that day, and had been approving and directing multiple projects. Unknown to the Saints, even Aaron, was what these projects actually were.

Admittedly all Boss was going off here was video surveillance of Sovereign during his attack, and they were running off the assumption all reapers were like that. Meaning all the Saints knew about these projects Boss had been approving were powerful enough to take them out.

Aaron asked Boss what the projects were, at one point. All Boss said is that they were, "dope ass shit the like of which this galaxy has never seen. It'll be epic when they finally get finished."

But nothing was dope about today. He made these trips once in awhile to make sure everything was going smoothly, and also to run his empire. Zinjai could only do so much, after all.

But he didn't know a thing about engineering or any of the sciences used in the production and manufacturing of these projects, so usually he had to have Zinny, who was leading all the projects, dumb it down for him. And that is what he was currently doing- waiting for Zinny. In Zinyak's- now Boss's- throne room, sitting on the large golden and winged throne in the center of the large, circular room. Drinking wine made from genetically altered grapes from his jewel-encrusted and oversized golden goblet.

"Dude," Aaron said, waving a hand in front of Boss's face.

Boss shook his head a bit, then looked at Aaron. "What?"

"You've been sitting like a statue for like, fifteen minutes, dude. It's creeping me out."

"Oh," Boss laughed, then took another drink from his goblet. "Yeah, doing some intense thinking. Contemplating the future and what-not."

"Boss doing the responsible thing and thinking about the future?" Aaron dawned a bewildered look on his face, looking around rapidly. "Huh, weird, shit ain't blowing up."

"Hah, hah," Boss responded with a sarcastic tone, taking another gulp from the goblet. Aaron had come with Boss this time due to not having anything better to do and took to sitting in a blue lawn chair. Admittedly it was funny to Boss that he got to sit in the gold throne as Aaron had to sit in the dinky little chair. Aaron had asked if he could sit in the throne, Boss replying with a no.

Then he heard the sound of zin feet walking to him. He craned his neck to see Zinny walking to him, tablet in hand.

"Zinny! My main Head of Engineering Staff! How's it going?" Boss asked as the tablet was passed to him.

"Fine," Zinny shrugged as Boss held the tablet with one hand, using his thumb to scroll. "Empire is doing better since you gave us actual reasonable work hours. So no more people flopping down on the ground dead of work exhaustion like when Zinyak was in control, so that's good."

Boss gave a vague nod of understanding as he muttered to himself, looking through the various project reports. "Hm… hmm… mh-hmm… hm! Ah-huh, yeah, good… great… excellent. A'ight, looks good Zi- wait hold up." He gestured with the goblet for Zinny to come over to Boss, which he did, Zinny leaning over Boss's body to see the screen.

"What the hell is this?" Boss demanded, pointing to somewhere on the screen.

"What? You asked for a retractable sword, I put in the design for a retractable sword."

"Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah," Boss mumbled, shaking his head furiously, Aaron's interest perking once the word 'sword' was mentioned. "I didn't want the sword to just slide out like that, I wanted it to come out all segmented so it could be used as a whip then come together to make a sword."

"Hey what are you guys talking about over there?" Aaron wondered, scooting his lawn chair closer to the throne. "It sounds cool, I wanna see."

"Nope," Boss denied, "baller secret stuff is only for the people making it and the people in big-boy seats. Not, uh… whatever that is."

"Fine, then." Aaron crossed his arms, huffing and turning away. "Don't show me the mega-cool thing. See if I care." It's not like wanted to see whatever weapon of mass destruction Boss was making… it's not like he loved stuff like that. It's not like he felt slightly betrayed Boss wouldn't share it with him.

Not at all.

"Hey, I don't want to ruin the surprise," Boss defended. "And you," Boss turned to Zinny, "explain this instant why the sword is like this."

"At no point," Zinny argued, "did you say you wanted a system of cables implemented in the sword to allow segmentation."

"That's because I don't want cables, I want magnets, I want it to be like the sword the one robot has in Pacific Rim. Wait, d-did you even watch the movie?" Boss sputtered, pointing an accusing finger at Zinny.

The zin head engineer sighed. Boss really was a child when it came to small details such as this. "No, Boss, I did not watch the movie Pacific Rim."

"And even after I used the time machine to go back to the Old Earth to steal a copy of the movie from a video store run by some sweaty guy five minutes before the planet blew up. Again."

"I have more important things to do than watch a movie."

"Zinny man…" Boss thrust the tablet back into Zinny's grasp, meanwhile using his now free hand to palm his forehead. "Those important things involve my Pacific Rim sword. Get me the sword, okay?… Get me my sword, okay!?"

Zinny nodded profusely, stepping away while Boss leaned back in his throne, sighing. "Now I know how all those gang leaders felt when I kept killing their henchmen like they were nothing, minions are useless." He raised his goblet. "But hey, alien empire."

He took another drink, then gagged. He felt something in his mouth that was not a liquid. In fact, this object… it was solid. Tasted metal-y, but in a more refined manner. Spitting something out onto his hand, he tilted his head oddly when he realized what the object in his hand was.

"Boss, you okay?" Aaron asked, standing from his chair and hurrying to Boss.

He waved a hand. "Yeah, I'm fine, but look," he said, sounding amazed as he held the object up for Aaron to see.

It was a key. Not even a alien digital lock key- it was a three-inch, old-timey looking key, the kind of key one would use in the Eighteenth Century to unlock large doors, but much more intricately designed, and made of gold. And for whatever reason was decorated with pink and green gems.

"Did… did someone put that there?" Aaron asked, unsure of what to make of the key as Boss eyed it.

"No," he answered, "no-one touches it, I have anti-theft sensors in my room. And I know they work because they picked up Kasumi trying to steal my underwear to sell online."

That was something Aaron would have to talk with the thief later about, but that could wait. "So, uh, where'd it come from?"

"I guess Zinyak just kept it in here and I never noticed it 'till now."

Aaron's eye twitched. He knew Boss had tendencies to not notice important things- bomb timers nonwithstanding- but that was a new level of ignorance. "How have you never noticed that there before…?" He asked, teeth grinding. There's no way he would miss a key that had been sitting in a giant cup he'd been drinking out of for months…

Boss shrugged. "I dunno, I mean, this is the first time I've ever drank the cup empty, usually I just top it off when it's nearly gone, ya know?"

Aaron blanched. "That's fucking gross, dude. You've been drinking that cup ever since you got it… and you've never washed it, either, now that think about it!"

"First of all, this is a goblet. Not a 'cup'," Boss corrected, saying the word 'cup' with disdain, "and the goblet will either be referred to as a goblet or by it's formal name, the Royal Cup."

"You're stretching this Emperor thing, you know that?"

"Am not."

Aaron blew a breath of exasperated air, flattening both palms and pointing them forward. "Dude, man, it's just… you're like one of those guys that eat chips out of those tube cans and then throws them away when there's still a few left in the bottom but they're too lazy to reach all the way in there."

"No," the Emperor defended, "that's just wasteful, this is more like recycling."

"You're recycling something, all right. With all that mouth bacteria you got swimming in there due to months of hygienic neglect."

"Okay, you know what, I'm not arguing this with you," Boss waved the gold key in front of Aaron's face, "I just want to know where the damn key goes to."

"Pfft, good luck with that." Aaron spread his arms and did a small spin, earning a grunt of amusement from Boss. "The Mothership is bigger than a large planet, it could go to anything."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Boss sighed, sitting back in the throne.

He heard a small whirring sound, followed by a click near his right hand, his eyes going to the side of the throne. A small panel had opened once his hand neared it, key in grasp. Experimentally, he took his hand away, the panel closing, said panel so precise there were practically not seams. He moved the key near it again and the panel opened, a keyhole revealed to be underneath.

Both immediately rounded on the hole, scrutinizing it in detail as their faces hovered inches away from the hole in amazement. "Hmm… key…" Boss muttered, brow furrowed to a degree of one attempting to solve a great puzzle. "Keyhole…"

"You put the key in the keyhole," Aaron instructed, with Boss shushing him in response.

"Shshshshh, I'm thinking!" Boss whispered, Aaron throwing his arms up in annoyance. After a few seconds, Boss did put the key in.

Nothing happened.

"Oh for god's sake," Aaron gasped, gripping the key and turning it.

A large whirring was heard, both gangsters looking up to see a panel on the ceiling open, a thin, robotic arm folding down to them. After about ten seconds it stopped, the end of the arm hovering in front of their face with the only thing on the end was a large, glowing, red, circular button.

Aaron immediately began to feel nervous; it was sensible, after all. Movies had taught him that big and shiny buttons were not to be pressed, they usually did something bad. Like blow something up, or set off a trap. Or initiate self-destruct to the structure it was attached to.

Like a large Mothership. It was a button, after all, a simplistic design. It did one thing and one thing only, so why not blow something up? Like a giant ship!?

"Boss, dude, whatever you do-" Aaron's voice hitched in his throat when he saw Boss staring intently at the button, it's glow allowing him to see Boss's eyes- which were centered at the button.

"B-Boss, what are you thinking about doing?" Aaron asked, anxiety present in his voice. He started to panic when Boss's hand slowly started to raise, fist clenched with the exception of his index finger, which was extended towards the button. "Man think about this, you don't know what that thing does!"

Boss didn't hear Aaron, though. He was too fixated on the button… on that tantalizing crimson allure. The light guiding him, beckoning to him. He could almost hear it whisper, to. "Push me," it whispered to him.

Then he saw himself in the button. A four-year-old version of him, sitting on the ground watching some cartoon, the animated soldier pressing a large red button to stop some fiendish villain's plan.

"Wow!" Child-Boss said in wonder. "I wish I could press a large button like that!"

"You do, do ya?" A shadowed figure asked, who was sitting on a decrepit couch behind Boss, face obscured by a newspaper. "Your going to press every shiny button you see, huh?"

"Yeah!"

"Even if it blows something up?" he asked, wiping the smile from Child-Boss's face. "You gonna press a button to set off a bomb on the street? Kill some middle-schoolers riding a bus?"

"N-no…"

"You gonna press a button at a nuclear power plant, blow the entire place up? Saturate a city with radiation and deprive it of power?"

"No… Dad please stop…"

"How about this, boy, huh!? Why don't you become president of the United States of America and press the shiny red button to plunge the world into thermonuclear war!? Huh!?" the shadowed figure rolled up the newspaper. "That what you want to do!?"

"No! I don't want to blow the world up!"

"Well too late! Too late because my shit-stain of a son just had to press the shiny red button!"

He swatted Child-Boss in the face with the newspaper, sending him to the ground. "Pick yourself up and go to your room, you purple-eyed freak."

Rage filled Boss as soon as the illusion ended. Rage because his father was right. Ben King actually had to stop Boss from pressing that thermonuclear button during his presidency.

He didn't want to admit he was right. And who did he think he was, crushing a child's dreams like that? He just wanted to push shiny buttons, dammit, same as any child!

"Fuck you, Daddy!" Boss screamed as he jammed his finger with all his might on the button.

Aaron gasped as the button was pressed, proceeding to cover his head with his arms. "No man, Boss why no…" he moaned, mind set and ready to hear the inevitable countdown and the ship to explode.

But after thirty seconds Aaron realized that the ship wasn't blowing up, causing him to calm down and look around.

"Seriously?" Boss grumbled, staring at the button, vein popping on his forehead. "Man, what a rip-off."

The button retracted back into the ceiling, the pair spending a minute looking around for anything unusual before shrugging upon finding nothing out of place.

"So…" Boss looked at a relieved Aaron, who looked back at Boss. "You up for some pool?"

---

Somewhere within the bowels of the Mothership

Zinyak was known for collecting exotic species, along with unique members of said species or ones he favored, before exterminating that species, and then took to keep the survivors as trophies. Most were put in pods full of nutrition gel with their mind being placed in a custom simulation, with an exempt few being placed in his personal trophy room.

However… legend has it there was one. One who was known for his vast amounts of diabolical ambitions, one who destroyed the wills of men.

Rumors were he was a member of the last species Zinyak conquered, the humans, though some said otherwise. Zinyak had taken much interest, to the point they had civilized conversations on methods of subjugation and torture that those had overheard had described, "Too dark to entertain the thought of." These talks lead to the suggestion of blowing the Earth up, making this being instrumental in it's destruction.

Because of this, Zinyak had allowed this man (or creature, as some called) complete freedom in simulations, even making horrific games that broke the minds of many subjects, yet Zinyak merely called them game shows. Some zin grumbled that he was even allowed to keep his cloths in the pod, he was favored that much…

But even Zinyak knew the dangers of this individual, so secretly he had their pod situated in the deepest part of the Mothership where no-one, not even the engineering staff, could ever find it, the only method of release being a key he had cleverly hidden in his goblet, a hiding spot no-one would dare to ever look.

However, as soon as Boss pressed that button, a pink glow pierced the dark veil that was the deepest part of the Mothership, a cylindrical pod full of a pinkish-red gelatinous substance being revealed. The bottom of the pod opened, the goo and a figure falling to the ground.

The glow vanished as the pod turned off, though the darkness did not last as two green lights illuminated the darkness, originating from the figure which dropped from the pod.

The instrument of humanity's downfall hath risen once more to wreak devastation upon a new world…

---

Santa Claus just didn't know anymore.

He thought his life was over when Earth was destroyed. How could one celebrate Christmas with no Earth, after all? He was the spirit of Saint Nick, for Pete's sake.

He thought his life was over until his faith was restored by the afro-sporting leader of the Saints on that Christmas night… though that was months ago. After he was released from the simulation he was stuck in a labyrinth of corridors he couldn't navigate, and had been trapped ever since.

Thank goodness he could survive for years on end with the amount of Christmas cheer he had felt from Boss on that night, but event then… months in endless corridors got boring after awhile.

Then he heard it. A footstep. His face it up with joy, finally! Outside contact!

Oh, this was extravagant, maybe he could ask for directions and finally leave this fudge pit! Maybe they could even help him fond Mrs. Claus, or Boss!

"Hello!" he called. Though only the darkness of the corridors greeted him, despite hearing footsteps approaching closer and closer.

Strangely, they sounded muffled. Maybe they were wearing slippers, Santa reasoned. That had to be a good sign, only pleasant people wore slippers in his book.

"Excuse me, I don't know who you are, but I'm dreadfully lost, I was hoping you could-" he froze, sweat starting to trickle down his rosy cheeks as he laughed nervously, backing up.

"My, what a… strange outfit you wear. I could hardly call it seasonal, but who am I to judge?" and audible gulp was heard, along with the sound of a metal pipe rhythmically tapping on the wall.

"N-now see here, lad! This is not proper behavior to show towards another individual!" His back pressed against a wall, beard damp with sweat as he was covered by an ever-growing shadow.

"I'll put you on the Naughty List!" he warned, though it was futile as the pipe was raised. "Please, I'm begging you, don't! Please! No!"

The scream of Santa Claus was drowned out by the sound of pipe meeting skull, the dark corridors once again falling silent.

---

Giant tubular hallways full of pods. That was something the ship was known for, full of humans and aliens alike. Though Boss now had control of them, in the past he had explicitly stated he would only release them once the Saints returned to their original universe and fixed everything Zinyak had ruined so humans and aliens alike could return to their homes.

So here the victims slept, all quiet in the hallway except for the rotation of the pods.

Except until someone messed with two pods via a nearby control panel, pink goo being expelled as two human figures fell to the platform connecting the massive hallways to the rest of the ship; one a white man of short and fat proportions, the other a black man of tall and muscled proportions.

Respectively, they were Zach and Bobby. Legendary announcers renowned for their work, kidnapped and tortured by Zinyak for the sole purpose of announcing the 'game shows' of he-who-shall-not-be-named.

Zach groaned, brown eyes snapping open as he sat straight up, wildly looking around and spotting Bobby lying on the ground, and immediately shook him in an effort to wake him up.

"Egh…" the larger man groaned, rolling over on his side. "Baby, don't worry, Zach's working late."

Zach's eyes narrowed, slapping the co-announcer awake, who immediately bolted upwards, looking around wildly.

"Oh my god…" he gasped, "we're out! We're finally out of the hellhole!"

"And… we're naked." Zack pointed out, Bobby looking down and groaning.

"Ah for the love of- look, not a problem. We need to get out and-"

Bobby stopped his sentence as his blood froze, color draining from his face as well as Zach's, both of their bodies refusing to move from their spot when they heard it.

That laughter. The high-pitched, inhuman giggling of a madman. Someone they had once thought a eccentric man turning out to be a monster in disguise.

Oh, they had tried to leave. God be their witness, they tried to quit… but the things he had promised to do to them if they left. The dreadful promises of a lunatic… they didn't want to go to the camps. They just didn't.

But that… monster would do anything to keep them. His two. Favorite. Announcers…

"No…" Zach whimpered, huddling up to Bobby. "Please god, no… not him…"

"I'm scared Zach." Bobby whispered, their fears growing when they saw that horrid silhouette approaching them. "Hold me."

It's the only thing they could do, really. To alleviate the fear, the growing tension as the beast drew near. Any second now he would be upon them, ready to whisk them away to-

"Hey!" Someone shouted, the two announcers eyes snapping to a zin engineer running up to them.

At this point they didn't know what was worse, the aliens who took them or… him.

"Ah, shit…" the zin worker muttered. "How the hell did you two get out, everyone's supposed to stay in their pods for now!"

The zin's rant was cut off as green light illuminated his backside, casting his shadow on the two, as well as a bigger one over his. He turned around, holding a hand to his face when he saw the two points of illumination.

"What the f- Zindai, I swear to god if you're playing around with the lights again, so help me." He tried peering past the light, but it was too bright to make anything out.

Then he heard it. That laugh. That laugh that spelt doom for anyone who heard it, a laugh all zin grew accustomed to.

"No… no!" the zin choked out, falling on the ground and trying in futile to crawl away as the source of the light grew closer. "Please, no! I beg you! Don't- no! NO!"

And the light pounced upon the trio.

---

"Man I'm telling you Aaron, four-dimensional pool is even better than regular pool. It's like, it's like weed but backwards while upside-down at the same time. Underwater."

"Sounds heavy," Aaron airily replied as the two walked down one of the many hallways leading to what Boss called the "game area", a relaxation chamber like no other.

Humph. Aaron grew up in arcades, he'd be the judge of that.

Then something caught his eyes. It looked like a random door, just sitting in the middle of the hall. Strangely though, it was unlocked according to the blue dial where the handle would be on a normal door and a piece of paper taped to it labeled "don't go in there, Emperor's 4 life's order". For whatever reason it was written in purple crayon.

"Yeah, only Boss is that lazy to not make a damn proper sign." he looked at Boss, who kept walking forward while paying no heed to Aaron, who looked back at the door. "Fuck it," he decided, "he could have killed us with that button stunt, plus I'm second in command. That's basically super vice-president."

He opened the door, noting it looked like someone was living in there when he saw the following items: a bed, a minifridge, toilet, computer monitor, shower, sink, desk, fluorescent lighting that he'd personally give a 8/10, looks like another monitor with a word processor sitting on the desk earlier mentioned.

Oh, there was a woman there as well, sitting in a leather-padded chair typing. She looked at Aaron, who was taken back as soon as he saw her. He recognized her when he first saw her, but now he knew for a fact who he was looking at.

"Uh… Jane Austin?" he asked, the author waving a hand at him.

He would have went on to ask his fist question when he heard rapid footsteps approaching him, following a shocked "gah!" from Boss, who promptly shut the door, panting heavily as he looked at Aaron.

Aaron was pretty positive someone not wanting to know they had someone holed up in a closet somewhere waved some red flags, and knowing it was Boss, that raised a few more flags. He looked back at the door, warily asking, "Boss, why do you have a famous author locked in a closet?"

"Yeah, I think her caterer I assigned to her forgot to lock the door again," he grumbled, pressing a button and making the blue light turn red. "I swear, that guy is useless."

"Dude, seriously, the hell."

"I know!" he resigned, banging on the door. "The work in her royal suite is taking forever and it's killing me that I had to stick her in this dinky room but I had nowhere else to-"

"Boss!"

"What?" he asked, personality going back to it's original state.

An eye twitch was all that Aaron was capable of producing. The flippancy of Boss was renowned across multiple worlds, but damn.

"Boss, why do you have Jane Austin locked in a closet?" he asked slowly, making sure to emphasize on Jane Austin and locked closet.

"Oh, well that's an easy one to answer, Zinyak apparently loved her work and had her put away in his weird personal person-stash, so when I took over I just kind of, you know, let her out. She was super grateful so I asked her to do something in return. Hence," he gestured to the door, "what she is writing."

Aaron nodded. "Cool. So what's she writing?"

"That's a secret, let's go." Boss made a move to continue on to the 4-D pool, but was stopped when Aaron grabbed his wrist.

"Hold on, I want a autograph," Aaron said, trying to unlock the door lock.

"Hell no!" Boss ripped Aaron's hand away from the door. He was the one who found her, damn it, he already messed up by making Aaron find out. There was no way he was letting evidence escape.

The two proceeded to argue over the matter, slaps being thrown in the fray as the two fought for control of the door, both not noticing a zin soldier approaching the two.

"Emperor Boss! Emperor Boss!" he cried, the two ignoring him as they continued to fight each-other. "Emperor! There's an urgent issue you must address!"

"Ain't nothing more important than stopping the oppression that is fandom from tarnishing an artist!" Boss yelled back, smacking Aaron's hands away.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Aaron yelled back, redoubling his efforts to get through the door.

"Emperor!" the zin screamed, both heads focusing on him.

"What!?" both screamed, causing the zin to take a few steps back before re-composing himself.

Clearing his throat, the zin reported, "an attack has occurred in the sub-levels, and a eyewitness was found. The medical examiners tried to calm him down, but, well…"

Both the Saints got off of each-other, Boss asking, "who was the eyewitness?"

"A worker, my lord. Your presence was demanded the victim himself."

"Ugh," Boss groaned, rolling his head. "Man, I'm busy with nothing, can't someone else do it?"

"Dude." Aaron cast a hard glance at Boss, who's shoulders shrunk.

"Okaaay, let's go." He motioned for the zin to lead the way, the two following. "Not like wanted to play super pool or anything. Nah. Who needs that shit? I swear if I knew this is what being the Emperor was like I would have dumped this position on Ben."

---

Ah… they were here. He had to admit, it took some looking to find them, being in a secret room and all. Three pods, each containing a single person: one blue, one pink, one orange. The colors of the ones who had been instrumental in spreading his terror.

It was time to wake them up.

The bottom of the pods opened, three female figures falling out onto the ground. Green light enveloped their figures, and when they saw who it originated from, they could do nothing but bow to their master.

Now… now all he had to do was acquire what he needed. They were in a new world, and from the limited data he had combed over new exactly who was perfect for him to announce his return.

Where was that ship Zinyak had made for him again?

---

By the time the trio arrived, the witness in question was calmed down due to the metal restraints forcing him to the bed, zin doctors in white gowns on standby.

"So, should I just talk to him?" Boss asked the doctor who seemed to be in charge, seeing as he was the only one with a circular mirror on his forehead.

"He's stable, so it should be safe. Just… he's been through something very traumatic. Be gentle." He leaned in closer to Boss, whispering, "and don't mention anything about cats to him."

Boss quirked a brow. "Uh, why?"

"I don't know, they mention of any type of feline just sets him off. J-just don't mention it, alright?"

"I won't," Boss assured, walking to the patient while Aaron hanged back to watch.

Boss approached the restrained zin with caution, and with good reason. Even with their eyes being completely black, he could see the terror in them, his skin pale and breathing rapid. Honestly, he looked terrified.

"Um… hey buddy!" Boss expressed joyously, trying to calm the zin. This had the opposite as he yelped and began to shake, eyes darting everywhere until they settled on him.

Boss groaned inwardly, he wasn't too good at this consolation stuff. "E…Emperor Boss?" the zin choked out.

"Yeah man, it's me. You ain't even gotta worry, man, this place is safe." Boss assured, the zin sighing in relief. "Now, apparently there was an attack of sorts? Wanna fill me in on that?"

"Oh, it was awful…" the zin whimpered, sweat running down his face. "I was just making my rounds when I heard a commotion. I investigated and found two humans released from their pods… one was really fat." he managed to gasp out.

"What?" Boss whispered. No-one was supposed to leave their pods yet, which meant someone let them out. Or someone screwed up and pressed a wrong button. Hopefully the latter. "What happened next?" he pressed.

"I tried to approach them when I heard it…" the zin rasped, eyes growing larger as the memory set in.

"Heard what?"

"That laugh… that horrible, horrible laugh of him… the cursed beast. I saw his eyes with my own… those horribly large, green, slit eyes…"

Boss's heart skipped a beat, the world around him growing gray. That description… no, it couldn't be. There was no way.

"Large, green… slit!?" he thought frantically. "And the doctors said he freaked out whenever someone mentioned cats… no. Oh no… no no no nononononONONONO…!"

"Look, man…" Boss asked slowly, hesitant to say the next words. There was no way, he… Boss made sure that he was… no, it couldn't be…

"I need to know, if you knew the attacker's name. Can you do that?" there was a copious amount of trepidation to his tone, and hesitation. The tone of a man who knew the answer to his own question, but didn't want it to be confirmed.

"Of course." the zin said, voice filled with dread. "Everyone in the Zin Empire knows his name, the cursed scourge that he is. Come closer…"

Boss leaned down to the zin's level, ear near his mouth. Aaron was too far away to hear what the zin whispered into Boss's ear, but his lip-reading skills were good enough to make out that he only said one word. A word that immediately caused all color to drain from Boss's face.

"No…" he gasped, stumbling back and pointing at the zin. "No, there's no way! No way! I don't believe you!"

He looked panicked, hyperventilating as he looked around wildly.

The doctors approached him slowly, raising their hands, but he was quick to pick a scalpel and waving it at them. "Back up!" he yelled. "I don't believe it, you're crazy! He's dead!" he threw the scalpel at the wall, and then ran screaming down the halls out of sight.

The room was quiet after that, Aaron leaning his head to the hallways while the doctors were frozen. "So, uh…" he said, uncertainty present in his voice, "I'm just going to go get him, so… yeah, I don't know, either," he sighed, stomping his way down the hall.

---

Never in his life had Aaron ever seen Boss afraid, and usually that was due to the insane odds he alays pitted himself against.

But then Boss had that look in his sunglasses, a look of pure, unadulterated fear. So he didn't know what to make of that, only that he mentioned a 'he' of sorts.

He thought for awhile, he really did, but the list of people Aaron knew that Boss killed and could have survived the come back and haunt of was basically nonexistent. He even tried asking other zin about it, but everyone he met just stood there, frozen. So he was reduced to manually look around for him.

"Yo Aaron mon!" Aaron turned his head to see Zinkle run up to him, dreadlocks flowing majestically in his wake.

"Oh, hey man." Aaron waved as the zin came to a stop to him. "Hey, have you seen Boss man, 'cause he, like, had a super big freak out and just ran away, I've been looking everywhere for him for the last twenty-five minutes."

"Yeah, jus' was gonna talk to ya 'bout that mon, Boss mon he, he just ran into the cockpit of the ship screamin' bloody murda while I was chillin' and threw me out, then flew the ship away." Zinkle explained. Aaron groaned upon hearing this.

"Godammit dude, a single person can't pilot a ship like that!" he yelled. "Why didn't you stop him, man?"

"Nah, don't worry." Zinkle waved a hand. "Boss has the captain hat, he'll be fine."

Sounds came out of Aaron's mouth. These sounds vaguely sounded like words, but instead of making syllables they just formed a jumbled mess upon hearing the man's logic. He held his index finger up to try to counter him, but the finger fell. "Man, I just…" Aaron laughed lowly and shook his head. "Man Zinkle, I wish I could live in the world you live in for, like, a few seconds."

Zinkle shook his head. "Nah, dat world sucks, mon. Hallucinations never be endin'." He would have continued if his eyes hadn't shot to a random part of the ceiling, Zinkle walking away as he grasped at the air.

Sometimes Aaron questioned the sanity of letting that man pilot the ship. He questioned a lot of Boss's decisions, but this one especially. One of these days Zinkle was going to crash them into a building, he just knew it.

He felt a tap on his shoulder, and in shock jumped back, hands raised to punch whoever had dared to poke him. But his hands lowered when he saw it was just Zinjai.

"Oh my god, man, Boss said to stop doing that." Aaron grumbled. Zinjai bowed his head in apology, but Aaron saw it. The little smirk tugging at the corners his lips, though they disappeared almost instantly.

He knew it, the bastard did that on purpose.

"My apologies, Aaron, but I seem to have misplaced the Emperor, and the zin will not speak to me. Do you know the whereabouts of the Emperor?" he asked, clasping his hands together.

"Yeah, he ran away screaming and stole the ship. He gone." Though technically it wasn't stealing since Boss owned the ship. Knowing Boss, though, he'd find a way around that one day.

"I see. Have you tried asking anyone where he has gone?"

Aaron gestured to all the zin around him. "Man, have you seen everyone here? They're all frozen 'n shit."

"Oh dear…" Zinjai's face grew concerned, Aaron picking up on his nervous tone.

"Something wrong?"

"Yes, incredibly so." Zinjai started pacing while he spoke, "while the zin are a very independent species, ever since Zinyak has been an emperor and his rule being so hard it had effected the people, their self esteem and ego took a traumatic fall. Boss defeated Zinyak in fair combat, which is why they so readily accepted him as he proved he was a superior being, but seeing him display so much fear for no apparent reason…"

"It's freaking everyone here out," Aaron finished, Zinjai nodding.

"Not only that, but with no leader, they don't know what to do, and along with seeing the Emperor in such a state."

"Godammit." It made sense to Aaron. Oppressive diminishing the ego of an entire species with his rule leading them to being subconsciously dependent on the leader of that species while consciously believing they were independent. Now that they had no-one to depend on they were frozen in fear due to that subconscious fear and the fact they couldn't understand the fear they were feeling. In reality it was fear mixed with confusion, the deadliest of sandwiches Aaron had ever faced.

"This is one deadly sandwich." Aaron voiced his thoughts, Zinjai growing confused.

"Pardon, sandwich?"

"Well I mean, if we make Boss and the ego the bread and all the emotions the filling- yeah, I don't know either, it was stupid." Aaron shook his head. "Not important, Boss is flying the ship alone and we need to go get him before he gets stranded somewhere."

He noticed that Zinjai opened his omni-tool, Aaron asking what he was doing.

"The engineer, Robert, is always on the ship, is he not?"

Aaron's eyes lit up. "You're a genius, Zinjai," he commended, going to his side. Why didn't he think of it, Robert barely ever left the place, hopefully he could tell them where Boss was.

A few moments passed before the call was answered, Aaron saying, "pick up Lornis, this is serious."

Robert's face finally appeared on the screen, looking confused and worse for wear. "Uh, Aaron?" he asked, confused.

"Yeah, it's me, where are you?"

"Um… I'm on the ship."

Air blew threw Aaron's nose. "And where is the ship?"

Robert groaned, looking behind him at a window and back at Aaron. "So, uh… yeah, what happened was I was doing some routine checkups and diagnostics on the instruments when Boss just kinda, sprinted in here screaming incoherently." he waited for Aaron to nod before continuing. "Yeah, he just kind of went crazy on the controls and made us take off, so… we kind of just ended up at Illium."

"Wha- how!?" Aaron screamed, the volume of his voice causing Zinjai's ear-holes to ring.

"Heya guys, what's wit da pink 'n green ship flyin' off?" Zinkle asked as he looked out a window, though Aaron waved him off. He had more important things to do right now then humor the mind of a drug-addled man.

"How is it you found yourselves on Illium?" Zinjai asked, concern laced in his voice.

Robert's eyebrows raised slightly. "Oh, hi Zinjai. Um, Boss, like I said, went crazy with the controls, he turned everything up to the max, just sent the ship into hyper-drive." His cheeks turned slightly green as he started to look nauseous. "Yeah guys, I'm not going to lie, my head and stomach and everything is still reeling from the fact Boss drove this thing way too fast, and I'm pretty sure he crash landed… urgh…"

He vomited off-screen, Aaron coaching him through his session with encouraging words such as "hang in there" and "could be worse. You could be vomiting from a chili dog you got at Freckle's" until he was done.

"Alright, Robert, just hang in there, we're going to Illium to go get Boss. The zin up here are freaking out with him gone."

"Okay, cool, I'm just gonna go find a chair to crash in. I think I see the HQ from one of the windows, so we're not far…"

"Alright, hang tight." Zinjai cut the connection off. Turning to Aaron, he said, "I can have a ship prepped to go right now."

"Sweet, let's go." Zinjai pointed the way, walking off with Aaron in tow, having to grab Zinkle and drag him with him.

---

The Citadel… the galaxy's supply of safe havens free of Saints was slowly and surely shrinking, and Sparatus had always hoped that the Citadel, seat of the Council, would always be a bastion, a shining beacon that would be free of those hooligans.

But hope soon diminished from the turian councilor as he saw the video playing before him. He had instructed any Saint-related incidents on the Citadel be reported to the Council, and they were currently reviewing an incident that had occurred not fifteen minutes ago.

There were three male humans, all teenagers, dressed in purple, baggy clothing in the Presidium next to a flattened cardboard box, rap music playing from a music player near them as they took turns break-dancing on the cardboard.

Obviously this was a clear public disturbance, and thankfully a turian c-sec officer shortly came to intervene.

He had entered the scene smoothly and professionally, and had started off with a stern but fair warning in the form of, "gentlemen, your 'performance' is causing a scene, I'm going to have to ask that you three desist and leave."

But like the uncouth individuals they were, they immediately rounded on the poor officer, crossing their arms and invading his personal space as they approached him. The one in the center started to point at the officer with reckless abandon while the other two nodded approvingly, the center one shouting obscenities. The officer refused to move so the three instantly pounced on him, beating him into submission until more c-sec officers came to arrest the boys.

Sparatus closed the video with a sigh. "How did it come to this?" he asked his fellow councilors, "to the point we have sympathizers running amok?"

"I'm just trying to discern where in this day and age they acquired cardboard," councilor Valern admitted.

Sparatus slammed his hand down on his podium. "The cardboard doesn't matter! What matters is the fact that we have let these idiots carry on for so long!"

"Can't be that much of a bunch of idiots when they have market lines," Anderson pitched in.

"Exactly, the fact that their corruption has spread so far confounds me so. Clothing lines and music corrupting the youth, motion picture films that they have the audacity to call 'art', and then there's the fast-food restaurant chain…" Sparatus seethed at the mere mention of it, "a name I can't in good conscious say due to the fact that the very name of the joint is slathered in profanity."

"Not to mention that they subjugated an entire species," Valern added.

Sparatus seethed even further, spittle dripping from his mandibles. Zin. The Council, let alone the entire galaxy, didn't even know how an entire species of intelligent life went on without them noticing. It wasn't even that which concerned them, it was their technology.

The Council had sent legions of spies and spectres to try and gain glimpses of what they were capable of, but of Sparatus would admit one thing about the Boss, he was paranoid. Security measures on technologies set up so they could never glean a scrap of it, and no-one knew where the zin even were, only that the Saints alone gained from their technology.

How he deplored that man… the days of Aaron's terror were bad enough, but super-powered as he was, he was only one man. He was limited to one location at a time. Boss, though, has the exact same if not more brashness and flippancy towards governmental rule, and he was worse because he had resources, recourses the Council couldn't hope to match with the zin. And he even had Aaron.

The worst part of it was no-one knew where they came from. No records of Boss or any of his lieutenants or the Saints existed. No one even knew Boss's real name, for spirit's sake. And it baffled the entire Council how a low-life and some gang could come into so much power so quickly.

So what did Sparatus want? War. They were too influential on the youth of today, every single day he got more and more reports of young men and women joining that gang, and the Council had an image of peace to maintain. Peace was fucking hard to maintain when there was a gang like that out there spray painting every structure they saw and shooting law enforcement regardless of the species or government. And he didn't want war, he tried peaceful threats to Boss, and his only replies were crude jokes he kept firing back. He even had the audacity to have his subordinates hack into his personal e-mail just to keep sending mocking jokes at him. One could only take so many 'lol nopes' and 'U mad bruhs?' and 'SaintLife 4 Lifes' before a breaking point was reached, not to mention it was basically confirmed that he had shot all three of them just for the hell of it… well. What other option was there?

Valern wanted war, too, but he was mostly in it for the technology. Technology that could destroy entire planets, energy weapons, reverse-engineering prothean technology… who wouldn't want that?

Much to the Council's confusion, Tevos wanted as little interaction with the Saints as possible. She layered these claims with plausible reasons and the like, but really it was just because of the blackmail Boss had on her. After all, hiding prothean technology was not an offense the Council would let off lightly. Fortunately, it seemed like councilor Anderson wanted to avoid the situation all together due to the fact the leader of the Saints was a human and therefore reflected badly on his species. One would think that would motivate him to eradicate them to save face, but it had the opposite effect of making him want to move the problem out of sight, and therefore, out of mind. At this rate though his inaction would only worsen human relations.

David Anderson just wanted the sandwich he ordered five minutes ago.

And if all of the lights in the Council Chamber hadn't instantly gone off at once, one could see the steam rising from all the councilors due to their individual frustrations. But nevertheless, the power did go out, enveloping the four in darkness.

"Huh. Power's out," Tevos noted, looking around blindly.

"If it's another snot-nosed Saint punk who thought it would be an excellent idea to cut the power in a poor attempt at cracking a joke I swear I'm gonna…" Sparatus grumbled.

"Language, Sparatus," Valern chided.

"Ah, there's no-one here, Valern, who cares about maintaining the image here?"

"What did you just say?" Anderson said, form growing rigid.

Sparatus eyed the human's dark form. "That there's no-one… oh." There was no-one. Meaning security wasn't here to make sure they were okay.

The Chamber was silent, c-sec security and hidden snipers not to be heard; not even their breathing.

Uneasiness set in, then they were startled when they heard a thud in the middle of the chamber.

"Who's there?" Anderson demanded, un-holstering a side arm and aiming it at the source of the noise. The demand, unfortunately, was met by two large, green glowing eyes illuminated the Council.

The silence of the Chamber was pierced by the screams of the Council as the beast pounced.

---

It was a short matter to get a small ship to travel to Illium, with Zinkle piloting. The second the trio arrived business on the planet seemed in order, that is until they saw the Fleur De Lis crashed into a building, a sight Aaron immediately swore at. They landed at the platform extending from the Penthouse of the Crib, Aaron pointing at the two zin as he got off the small ship.

"ZK, watch the ship." he pointed at Zinjai. "ZJ, watch ZK."

They nodded as Aaron stormed off, stomping his way to the Penthouse. Boss fucked up, oh, how he messed up. Crashing the goddamn ship into a building, this was going to tarnish their street cred, and every second he took to get Boss back the zin were slowly getting more and more mentally scarred.

He slammed the glass door shut as he entered, eyeing Matt looking nervously at the sofa.

"Yo, Miller," Aaron called as he approached him.

"Oh." Matt glanced at Aaron, then focused back on that sofa. "Hey, mate."

"That's some intense staring your doing," Aaron noted as he caught Matt staring. "Any, uh, reason? For that?"

"Boss is under there." Matt explained. "He ran in here screaming with a shotgun and did a tactical roll under the sofa. He shoots anyone who tries to move the couch."

There should have been some expression that appeared on Aaron's face, but at this point… yeah, it was blank. He was out of exasperated expressions, he was done with this shit. "Are you for real?" he forced himself to ask Matt, teeth clenched.

"Yeah, see?" Matt pointed to melted parts of the sofa, the plastic and filling fused together as steam wafted off.

"Okay, enough of this shit, Boss! Get out from under there!"

"No!" was what Boss tried to scream, but it sounded more like "nnaaaoo!" to Aaron's ears, who in frustration kicked the sofa. This earned him a scattered laser shot to the chest.

"For fuck sake's, Boss, I got a Mothership full of incompetent fucks who can't do shit until you get your ass back there, so stop being a child and get out from under there!"

Three more laser blasts to the chest was Aaron's answer.

"Matt, man, I'm this close to blowing the whole Crib up. I'm not even joking." Another blast to the chest. "Boss, this is serious, stop it!" Another one.

Grumbling under his breath, Aaron tried to figure out what to do when he heard the door open, Ben walking into the crib with a yellow bag.

"Hey, Playa, what's with all the shouting?" he asked as he opened the bag.

"Not now, King, I'm trying to figure out how to-" Aaron's eyes shot to the bag, a familiar logo on it's surface. "That a Freckle Bitches bag?"

"Yeah, dawg!" Ben held a cheeseburger up, which was wrapped in yellow paper with the Freckle logo on it. One could almost see the grease dripping off the meal in copious amounts, a reason Aaron had rarely eaten there when he was still human. "Just got it not ten minutes ago, was gonna watch some TV while snackin'."

"Good, gimme that shit." Before Ben could protest, Aaron grabbed the burger and threw it at the ground, near the sofa.

Ben looked at the burger, then back at Aaron, eye's growing soft. "Why?" Ben asked.

"Ben. C'mon man, no…" Ben adopted a look of total sadness, Aaron wincing from that look. A look of soggy wetness that implied sadness but was really just guilt tripping. That look Ben did on occasion. Aaron looked at Matt. "Dude, can you go take Ben to go get another burger while I deal with this?" he asked.

"Sure." Matt shrugged, walking to Ben who immediately brightened up.

The two left, Aaron looking at the lone burger.

"Just me… and you." It was well-known Boss had a weakness for greasy food, and Freckle Bitches was the greasiest out there. He knew, oh he knew that at any moment Boss would cave and go for the burger. It was somewhat like fishing; he knew Boss suspected the burger was bait, but eventually hunger would overwrite common sense. It was nature, just as a marooned man at sea will eventually give in and drink sea water when uncontrollable thirst set in. Aaron didn't need to eat, he'd wait all day if he had to.

All was quiet in the Penthouse. Aaron couldn't even hear Boss breathing. But eventually, he'd give in. It was only a matter of time. A wet spot was seen under the burger as the grease seeped into the carpet.

"C'mon, Boss. Are you really going to let that burger ruined that imported rug?" Aaron taunted. But the bait didn't give. That was fine. He could wait.

And it took a good few hours, but for a split second Boss's arm shot out from under the couch in a feeble attempt to grab the burger. But that was all Aaron needed to grab Boss's arm, dragging him out from under the sofa. He screamed, limbs flailing as he tried to shoot Aaron again, but he simply batted the gun away and sat him on the sofa, smacking him repeatedly.

"Pull it together!" Aaron yelled, trying to get past the screaming. Finally, after a dozen smacks, Boss had stopped.

Feebly, he pointed to the burger, to which Aaron picked it up and gave to. "You sure man, 'cause this thing's been on the ground for- okay." Aaron watched silently as Boss consumed the burger in a matter of seconds, finally giving a satisfied sigh as he threw the wrapper away.

Aaron swore it was like dealing with a child. Was he even worse than this as a kid? Ugh, Aaron knew the answer because he was there.

"Better?" Aaron asked, sitting next to Boss.

"Yeah…" he nodded, then looked at Aaron. "Sorry for that."

Aaron barked a laugh out. "Say that to the building you plowed into… and Robert's stomach." Boss winced.

Alright, good. Emotional responses. This was progress. "Dude, what was that back there?"

"Oh man, dude." Boss took his sunglasses off and laid them at his side, Aaron doing the same with his. Purple eyes met blue and Aaron saw the raw fear in Boss's eyes.

"Damn. This really is serious." he had never, ever seen Boss that afraid. Not ever.

"It's him, Aaron." Boss said gravely, leaning back into the sofa. "It's that fucking fuck."

"Who? Zinyak?" Boss shook his head. "Dex?" another shake. "Loren? Killbane? Julius? Y-"

"It's none of those!" Boss shouted, then relaxed his composure. "You wouldn't know him, I made everyone swear to never speak of him again, but… well, you need to know." he took a deep breath as he began his story.

"Alright, before we begin I need you to keep it straight throughout the entire story. No asking questions midway or shit like that, it's gonna get weird pretty quick, but man I need you to just follow me, alright?" Aaron nodded. "Good. Now, here's what happened.

"It was back when the Saints first got to Steelport. Loren fucked us good, and we were broke. We took his fancy pad and turned it into the original Crib, so we had somewhere to live, but we still needed money. So I was out, there, doin' shit like protecting Pierce with a helicopter and sniper rifle while he robbed lockboxes, committing insurance fraud by throwing myself into traffic, blowing shit up with a tank, you know, normal stuff I do on a daily basis. Then, Pierce showed me something… it was a gameshow. We were strapped for cash and he said it would net us some, so I thought, 'sure, why the hell not?' But let me tell you right now, Aaron, it was anything but a game.

"The name of the show was called 'Professor Genki's Super Ethical Reality Climax', or S.E.R.C. for short. Basically, it involved me dodging obstacles like fire and electricity while I unlocked various weapons to murder legions of people of mascots for cash."

"The- wait, what?" Aaron asked. Legalized killing? For money? No, that didn't sound right, no matter how messed up Steelport was that couldn't be true.

"Yeah, Aaron, remember what I said about not questioning things until I'm finished? This is why. Anyway, the person who created S.E.R.C., Professor Genki. He was a Korean man, or maybe he wasn't, I don't know, he sounded like one and there were Korean elements in the show. But basically, he was a man who lived in a pink cat suit, had a lab coat and everything. Big green eyes, pink fur, white secondary fur color, it was actually a pretty high-quality fur suit. Even had a tail. Actually to be honest with you, man, at this point I'm not even sure it is a suit.

"So, the thing you need to know about Genki- he's a goddamn monster. He's not like you or me, who kill for mercy thrill. He kills for pure, unadulterated fun." Boss's face grew darker as he went into detail, as did Aaron, though his eyes grew more and more incredulous. "He killed for fun, found joy in the suffering of others. His army of mascots were really just people he kidnapped off the street and mind controlled, anyone who would try to escape… he tortured himself. Anyone who even looked at him wrongly were rumored to be sent to a North Korean prison camp."

"You're making this Genki guy sound like a furry warlord."

"You don't even know the half of it," Boss murmured. "So, I did his show, a bunch of episodes. Got paid. Then, one day, I just see the fucker strolling down the street. Mindin' his own business. Then I ran him over with my car."

"Accidentally, or…?"

"Doesn't matter, ran him over, thought he was dead. Then he ripped the door off the car and threw me out. He didn't even have a gun, and he was giving me trouble. I swear, he punched harder than a brute, and… I kept shooting him, Aaron." Boss's eyes shrunk slightly. "He just… he just wouldn't die."

"So, he had a bullet proof vest. Big whoop."

"Vests don't block rockets, Aaron. Or shots to the head."

"Oh come on!" Aaron slammed his hand on the sofa arm. "I admit, I've seen you do shit like that, I've done shit like that before I got messed up, but we're talking about a weirdo furry here, man." Aaron couldn't accept this, he wouldn't. It didn't make any sense.

"Heh heh heh heh…" Boss chuckled darkly. "I guess he's like us in that sense, Aaron. He's hard to kill, but after ten minutes of unloading on him he did die. It was weird, though… he was laughing. Spouting joyous taunts at me, he was loving the fight. Was in pure ecstasy 'n shit. It was creepy… and real messed up. Anyway, spent another five minutes shooting his body to make sure. In the end, it was worth it, guy dropped a million bucks." Aaron whistled at that. "Yeah, that's where it started, I guess. Around there.

"See, this thing came out- Genkibowl VII. I was the star and they had me doing weird stuff like blowing streets up with a giant ball of yarn or get in a panda suit and skydive to building after building murdering mascots with a chainsaw, and afterwards a cannon would shoot me through these fire hoops that were floating in the sky."

"Hold up-"

"And then… there was a challenge where I had to drive Genki around in his car to his fans."

Aaron looked at Boss, who's eyes were vacant as he stared up into the sky. Aaron really hoped Boss skipped something, because he just found a plot hole to this 'amazing' story. "But… you said you killed Genki."

"I did! I swear to god, man, I did. But here he was, making me use his car to torch innocent bystanders until he was satisfied and I dropped him off at the red carpet. And as he danced in front of his fans, man, I saw it… he looked at me with those big, green cat eyes, with large, black, slit pupils. It was only a mask, man, a static image. But I saw it." He gulped. "It was… excitement, mixed with rage. Maybe he was mad someone finally offed him. Maybe he was excited someone could do it, like he just found someone he could… play with. Maybe he was just happy I was putting up with his bullshit, I don't know. I was the leader of the Saints, so it's not like he could just send the black van to get me off the streets and into some camp, I'm too badass. And I think he knew that."

"Or…" Aaron argued, "it was someone else in a fursuit who didn't like he had to do this." He waved his fingers in a magical fashion, though Boss didn't look amused. Aaron's face fell. "Come on, dude, you're trying to tell me some loony furfag is some immortal hyper-death god or some shit, how the hell do you think I'm going to react?"

Boss shook his head. "It wasn't someone else. It was him. I don't know how, but I knew. I knew, it was him."

"Boss, man, it was someone else."

"He had that laugh, though."

"Then it was someone else who sounded like…" he threw his hands up in frustration. "Fuck it, whatever, continue. I'll withhold judgment 'till the end."

"Okay. Thanks." Boss breathed in deeply, than continued. "So, fast forward. Earth is blown up, I'm super bummed. We bust some Saints out of virtual jail, you included. You get sent here, I go on a rage, then spend a few days tearing the simulation up. During this, I had to protect areas that one of the Saints were downloading a virus in to disrupt the system from defense programs. In a few…" he shivered, then regained his composure. "In a few the defensive programs took the form of hundreds of Genkis… hundreds of em." He shivered. Just the memory still haunted him, even with his arsenal of weapons and super powers, it was an army of Genkis he was dealing with.

He calmed sown, sighing. "But, they weren't Genki. They were just programs, but goddamn. Terrified me when it first happened."

"Yeah. Sounds rough." Aaron yawned, looking at his wrist. He swore, this story was going on forever, and he didn't even have a watch.

He should get a watch one of these days. He wondered if watches even existed anymore, but regardless, he would look anyways.

"Then," Boss continued, "I was walking down the virtual streets, mindin' my own business, when… I saw him."

"No." Aaron interrupted. "No. Don't you dare. Don't you friggin' dare say it was him!"

"It was him."

"Dammit, how!?"

"I… I don't know, man. At first I thought he was just another program Zinyak was using to screw with me. Then he gave me this look."

"He gave you a look with a expressionless mask?"

"It was the angle that did it. He gave me this look, and said… he said some things."

Boss still remembered. The look of disbelief on his face as he gazed upon Genki. The hope that he was just another faceless program. Then he said those words…

He knew, then. He knew exactly who it was that was standing in front of him.

"Genki remembers you. You the one who managed to hurt Murder Cat. You're fun to play with." Red energy flowed around him as cars hovered over his head, aimed at Boss who had the dubstep gun pointed at Genki, fear plastered on his face. "Play with Genki some more…"

Boss blinked, then resumed the story. "We fought again, though this time we had super powers. I swear, we destroyed an entire district in that fight, I had to throw everything I had at him, powers and guns alike. Got him, though. He dropped some more cash, too, so bonus."

"But how do you know he wasn't just a personality programmed into the simulation, like Cyrus or Julius?" Aaron asked.

"I just knew, okay? And awhile later I found my proof. Turns out that Zinyak was so much of a fan of Genki's work that they actually teamed up in the conquering of Earth." Aaron threw his hands up in defeat, shaking his head. Boss mirthlessly laughed at the sight. "Yeah, that was my reaction, too. Even made this messed up telekinesis gameshow I had to do.

"Then, I, uh… shit, so I was with Asha…" Aaron winced. "Yeah…" Boss muttered.

Her death still stung, even though it happened so long ago. Another reason why Boss was building all of his secret things to beat the reapers with .

"We were doing this secret agent training when Genki came via a present."

Aaron tilted his head slightly. "Like… like he came in a missile, or…?"

"No, I mean a literal present," Boss held both his hands out in front of him, "a box. Even bow wrapped it."

"Ah, okay. Continue."

"So, this time Genki didn't have powers. Would have been awesome if Matt hadn't shut my powers off so I could do the mission properly, so me and Asha were just whittling him down with gunfire. Then, halfway through the fight, he did get powers. Did this weird tiger-roar thing, and got a invincible shield that I couldn't get rid of without powers."

"Which you didn't have," Aaron pointed out.

"Yeah, I had to yell at Matt throughout the entire fight to get him to turn the powers on, but after that I got him. Again.

"So fast forward to when we were planning our final attack on Zinyak, me and some of the homies crashed a helicopter into a recreation of his old S.E.R.C. studio. Me and Gat were fighting off zin while everyone else tried to get the door opened. Then… he came."

"Oh, come on! Seriously!?"

"I know, right? You'd think his brain would have been fried from all the times I killed him," Boss said, then shrugged. "But I learned from killing that sadistic prick three times that you can never trust a man-cat. Even if he was killing the zin for us. So that kill-tally was raised to four.

"Then everything went accordingly, ripped Zinyak's head off, took empire over, went here, then we had a fun and mystical adventure and everyone lived happily ever after…" They shared a look once Boss said that. Then they laughed at the sheer absurdity of the implication that Boss had implied. Happy ending. Heh.

It was boisterous laughing, really. Laughter that could be heard throughout the entire Crib. The kind of laughter that one usually died of oxygen deprivation of, but thankfully Aaron didn't need silly things such as air. And Boss thought he was too awesome to breath.

He rescinded that statement when he recovered from passing out, but he still tried sometimes.

Finally, the two calmed down after their small fit of giggles, then sighed deeply. It was the small jokes that kept people going, even times of bad story telling. Aaron was still calling shit on the entire story Boss was trying to weave and had been giving him the benefit of the doubt the entire time, but he'd gone this far. He'd see it through to the end, damn it.

"Then there was the zin in the medbay," Boss said, mood instantly shifting to somber, "after what the doctor said with the cat thing and what the guy said about the eyes… well, I had to be sure. I was in major doubt, man, but I had to know. I leaned in on him and he whispered one, single, solitary word."

"Genki?" Aaron guessed.

"Yep, Genki. Then I freaked out, as you saw. I mean, look at it from my perspective, this dude's been after me for years practically, I keep killing him but he won't stay down, I don't know how. So you see my problem."

"No, I don't." Aaron stood up, pacing back and forth in front of Boss, who shrunk further into the sofa as Aaron spoke harsher and harsher.

"You're telling me a story about a immortal Korean man with mental problems and who owns a fursuit. You are telling me he somehow managed to legalize killing mascots. You are telling me he just magically came back to life multiple times through the power of bloodlust or some shit, who the hell knows? And then you're trying to tell me that he teamed up with Zinyak because he liked murder, too. Tell me Boss, j-just tell me." He leaned down at Boss, and asked with a voice laced with disbelief and discontent, "tell me how I'm supposed to believe that?"

"… It does kind of sound ridiculous when you say it like that…" a downcast Boss murmured.

"Of course it does!"

"But Aaron, I'm telling the truth! There really is a crazy man-cat out there!" Boss tried to rise to meet Aaron's eye level, but the virtual man quickly raised a finger to Boss's forehead.

"I need to ask this question, do you hear yourself?" Aaron flicked the forehead, sending Boss back into the sofa. "Honestly, do you hear yourself? Now, we've been into some crazy shit over time, aliens, robots, clones, all that shit. Even on the rare occasion a weird combination of the three. But I draw the damn line when you say homicidal cat-man."

"Man-cat," Boss corrected.

"Whatever!" 100% couldn't even describe the capacity that Aaron's patience had reached. He wanted to say it was around the 816%, but that in itself was a rough estimate.

But he was done, he was just utterly done with Boss and his cat fantasy. He didn't know what freaked the zin out, and frankly he didn't want to know at this point. He just wanted to watch some TV and waste the rest of the day away.

So that's what he did; plop down on the couch next to Boss, grabbing the remote, and turning the TV on so he could catch some damn cartoons and get this memory over with.

But, instead of a TV program playing, it was just gray static with the only volume coming from the TV being a constant "hissss" which caused Aaron to narrow his eyes.

"Okay, Boss, what'd you do now?" Aaron turned his head to look at Boss, who grew slightly nervous at the sight of the TV.

"Um… nothing," he answered. "Haven't touched the thing."

"I swear if Jack got drunk and messed the transceiver up again…" Aaron grumbled, flipping through the channels. Eventually he gave up, tossing the remote aside.

"I warned her I'd take her powers away if she did that again, she's drained once I get my hands on her." Aaron growled, raising from his seat to leave, only for Boss to quickly tug on his sleeve to stop him.

"Hang on homes, I'm getting a call." Aaron obliged by sitting down as Boss opened his omni-tool, seeing Zinny in the caller ID. "Oh, cool. Maybe he got my robo-sword ready."

Leave it to Boss to have all of his worries melt away at the possibility of getting something cool, and Aaron would take it.

"Yo, whassup?" Boss greeted, lounging back on the sofa.

Normally a response would have been given immediately. Zinny was one of those people who barely had any free time these times, though Boss didn't know why.

But what came over the line was nothing but heavy breathing, followed by shaky gasps. Concerned, Boss attempted to assert the situation by saying, "yo man, what's wrong?"

"… We've been conquered, Boss…" was the only reply that came from the omni-tool.

Both froze. Boss wanted to ask what he meant by that, but the bluntness of that message along with the weight it carried caused him to only utter a simple "huh?"

"He was too strong…" there seemed to be a sob on the other side, followed by quickened gasps. "Okay, okay, I'm working on it!" he cried out, though the volume made it sound like he said that away from the call area.

"You need to turn the TV on." Was Zinny's simple request, albeit a scared one.

"TV's broke, man," Aaron called over to the omni-tool.

And then the call cut out. "Okay, I'm going back to see what the hell's going on." Aaron groused, attempting to get up off of the sofa. Yet again he was stopped by Boss.

"Dude, look." Boss pointed at the screen, the channels flipping by themselves.

Aaron sat back down, looking at the remote and chuckling. "Yeah, I bet Pierce got the buttons sticky with his Flow. Lemme just fix this real quick." He crushed the remote instantly, sighing at a job well done.

The self-satisfaction soon faded as the channels continued to flip, stopping at a black screen.

Both gangsters were mystified by this black screen, as it was slightly illuminated to reveal it was still on, so the two were wondering what was about to happen, if a commercial or something would come on.

A few seconds later, Aaron was about to move and unplug the TV, but was blasted back into the sofa when the speakers blasted sound at him, and the screen instantly exploded with color.

The music was… strange to Aaron's ears. It was almost like a jolly tune one would hear when a gameshow started, but this was more eccentric. It was almost too happy, to be honest. And there was a Eastern feel to the music, almost Japanese…

No, wait, that was Korean. Yes, definitely Korean to Aaron's ears- wait a minute.

… No.

Hell no.

No he refused to accept this.

Boss started shaking as green and pink blobs swirled on the screen, shaking his head as he pointed. "I tried to warn you." His words came out as airy gasps, the blobs starting to diverge from the center of the screen. "I tried to warn you but you didn't listen. You didn't believe."

"I still don't believe it." Aaron said, watching the screen intently as the setup of a sport's announcer's table was revealed, green wallpaper with pink cat faces decorating it. Two microphones were on the table, with two men sitting next to each other, both donning smiles that were obviously fake to Aaron's eyes. The sweat rolling off their foreheads was another indication.

"My god, it's them!" Boss yelled as he scrambled further back into the sofa, a noticeable dent being seen on the other side. "Aaron, that's Zach and Bobby!"

"I don't even- wha…?"

"They were announcers for Genki's shows," Boss explained, "this settles it. Genki's back if he got them."

"No, I just… no!" Aaron refused to believe anything Boss said about Genki was true, there was no way someone like that existed. No way.

"H-hello, to everyone in the galaxy!" the portly man announced in a half-hearted voice, though was quickly straightened into a believable smile when the other man elbowed him.

"Everyone in the…" Boss muttered, looking out the window to see the various advertisement screens on the streets below. Sure enough, they were tuned to the broadcast.

Another call came on Boss's omni-tool, who reluctantly opened it. "Hiiii…?" he feebly greeted, though Aaron could just feel the vibes of nervousness coalescing off of him.

"Hey Boss." It was the voice of Gat who responded, a response that sounded rather… strained and angry was something Aaron would use.

"So, get this," Gat began, "I'm here on Omega, me and Grunt and Grejan are hangin' out, right? Guess what we're seeing on every single fucking screen?"

"… Strippers?" it was a desperate guess, made by a desperate man in desperate times. But it was Boss's guess nonetheless.

"No, Zach and Bobby. Who announced Genki. The hell is going on?"

"To be fair they announced more then Genki."

"For fuck's sakes, Boss, does the cat wallpaper behind them not paint a good enough picture?"

"Gat the galaxy may be ending sooner than we thought, I'ma have to get back with you on that, later!" Against Gat's protests, Boss closed the call, then shook his head grimly. "Is it too much to hope that the broadcast isn't being put out to the entire galaxy despite the fact Zach addressed the whole galaxy?" he asked his long-time friend.

"Wait, the fat one's Zach? Damn, I got them mixed up," Aaron muttered, shaking his head.

"Aaron, this is serious!"

"I feel like I said those words to you not ten minutes ago…"

Their attention was turned back to the TV as Zach continued his announcement. "I'm Zach, professional announcer here with my friend and long-time partner, Bobby."

"Thank you Zach," Bobby replied in a deep and grizzled voice that not only staggered Aaron, but impressed him as well. "Over the years we've announced many of the world's favorite televised pastimes, mainly in Murderbrawl and the increasingly popular Genki series-"

"Boss is it to late to just abandon this universe to it's fate and just go back to ours?" Aaron asked over the broadcast, though was merely shushed in response.

"Boss, I'm not kidding, if they mention anything about Zinyak blowing up Earth to the galaxy it's going to raise questions." Then they really would have to leave here forever, because they really didn't want to deal with that.

"- Which took the media by storm as soon as it was televised, with the Genki empire slowly growing over the years. Now today, we are here to announce the newest addition to the Genki menagerie of game shows, titled…!"

Both Zach and Bobby leaned in to the screen, shouting, "Super…! Ethical…! Galactic…! Climax…!" with large pink and green bubble words appearing with each word, the camera switching to a view of the zin Mothership.

Which now had pink lights instead of purple.

"You monster…" Boss whispered in horror as he saw it.

"So, the zin empire got taken over by whoever did this, and you're worried about the lights?" Aaron questioned.

"Aaron, I got a image to maintain. This is an insult to said image."

"How the fuck did they even- oh, right, they can't do anything when you're not around and are traumatized by Genki!" Aaron shouted, a sarcastic air about him. "This is unreal, for real. I'm willing to bet it's just some poser in a suit."

"We're here live with the zin empire at the Mothership, with the entirety of the zin being recruited into the ranks of the Genki Mascot Army Force," Zach announced, cutting to the interior of the Mothership, showing zin soldiers walking around in mascot suits, ranging from animals to hotdogs. And a Gat suit here in there, for reasons Aaron didn't want to know.

"Fuckin', just… just why…?" He was approaching his wits ends. Aaron didn't know when, but soon. He'd reach that point soon.

"And with help from newly-made Genki Super Construction Squad," Bobby continued, with Aaron's eyes slowly growing more and more downcast while Boss's face grew in horror when they saw the engineering staff in pink worker hats, all with fearful looks on their faces, "we've managed to convert the pride of the zin fleet, the Mothership, into the most intricate Genki Maze of Death the show has ever seen, with the prize at the end being…!"

The camera flew over to what Aaron assumed to be a mish-mash of metal walls overlaid with the most convoluted traps he had ever seen, from pillars of fire to a pool full of sharks, making a large maze that was at least a mile in length. He didn't know exactly what part of the ship it was madeAnd at the end of the maze, leading to the throne room.

Aaron crossed his finger as large green and pink doors slowly opened, silently praying that one of his guesses pertaining to what was on the other side to be correct. "A ancient alien, a ghost, evil version of me from the future, Shepard in a fursuit, someone from another dimension, anything but what we think it is!" The doors opened and his hopes were immediately crushed. "Damn it!"

There on the throne, was Genki himself; a man in a fursuit that depicted a pink cat in a lab coat, large disproportionate head with big cartoon glasses, glaring green eyes, and a bordering-manic smile adorning it's face, tail slowly swaying behind him.

Then the two looked up and their eyes almost bulged out of their heads, both shouting, "no way!"

It was the four councilors. Tevos, Sparatus, Valern, and Anderson. all four suspended in the air by rope, tied together, with a pit of rotating and spinning blades of various sizes and proportions below them as they struggled to be free.

And what more could the two Saints do than laugh? Laugh at what, who knew. Maybe it was the fact that a certain bunch that had been antagonizing them for so long were now being publicly humiliated on galactic television. Maybe it was the sheer absurdity of the situation. Maybe the two finally had gone insane from all of this.

It was probably one of those reasons, anyways.

---

Gat had been to places, seen things. False watch sellers at the end of their ropes. Graffiti artists dying in back allies. Fat hookers, he'd seen it all. Everything. Some seriously messed up stuff.

But he'd never seen so many people panic. Everyone, literally everyone in the bar on Omega were freaking out at the sight of the Council in the position they were currently in, dangling above those blades. Bottles were being thrown, people tossing tables, and a salarian was running in circles screaming.

On a Friday night, he'd expect something like this. But today was Tuesday, so he knew it was bad.

"And now!" Zach gestured to a Genki-themed phone that was pushed to them, and watched as the portly man picked the phone up, "we shall call today's contestants, the leader of the Saints, the Boss, and any plus-one member he chooses to bring!"

"And what an exiting call it will be!" Bobby nodded, crossing his arms and staring at the screen as a small window popped up near his head, displaying Boss participating in past Genki games. "As you remember, Zach, Boss has been an avid participant in the Genki franchise with winning multiple games, and was even the champion of Genkibowl! Not to mention the only person in history to hurt the Professor himself without being disemboweled in front of his loved ones!"

"The hell are they smoking?" Grejan questioned, swirling his drink as he leaned on the counter, eyes sliding over to Gat, who shrugged.

"Who, them or Genki?" Gat asked, with Grejan waving the question away and slamming another drink down.

Yeah, Gat would probably need to do that again after awhile.

The phone rang. Then it rang again. Then it rang some more, with the two announcers faces slowly growing closer to the phone as it rang.

And then it was picked up, and before any announcer could say a single thing, uproarious laughter was blasted through the speaker, and Gat identified it as Boss, with some Aaron mixed in.

"Ahahaha! Y-yo man, Aaron look at Sparatus he just- the fool keep struggling!" Boss sounded like he was trying to be professional, but honestly he was failing with the amount of laughter that was coming out from his end of the call.

"I can die now!" Aaron proclaimed happily. "I can die because I've seen what I've always wanted to see!"

"Wha, the Council humiliated like this?"

"Close, but nah, Sparatus' bondage fetish revealed to the public!"

They laughed even more when Aaron made the crude joke, Gat's eye twitching. Everyone else just screamed louder.

"Ah, ah wait, I'm stupid, yo Bobby!" Boss greeted loudly, faint remnants of laughter still present in his voice, "whazzup my brother?"

"Boss! I! Need! You!" Bobby said every word enthusiastically, face inching ever-closer to the phone with each utterance.

"What do you need, Bobby!?" Boss shouted into the phone.

"I need to know if YOU and a friend will participate in the S.E.G.C. event to save the Galactic Council!" Bobby shouted with a attitude that would make anyone blush.

"Don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up…" Gat thought desperately as he gazed at the screen. He knew Boss hated the Council, but if they were killed on TV like this the galaxy would be thrown into disarray. No, he was smart, he would do the right thing. Gat was positive, Boss always did the right thing.

The line was silent for the longest period, the patrons to the bar calming down from their panic to listen to their only hope of saving their leaders, the two announcer's faces pressed into the phone. Finally, three words came out. Three words that shattered Gat's hope.

"Nah, don't wanna." And then the line was cut.

And everyone resumed their panicking while Gat slammed his head on the counter.

"So, we fucked or what?" Grejan wondered as he started stacking empty glasses, Gat turning his head to meet the drell's eyes.

"Rephrase the question, willya?" He muttered, groping for the glass full of alcohol a few inches from his hand.

"Did Boss just screw the entire galaxy over or not?"

"Yes." The glass slipped off of the counter and shattered on the ground, Gat's hand going limp as he gave up the futile attempt.

"Yes to the yes part or yes to the no part?" Grejan pressed.

"Exactly."

Grejan decided right then and there that was probably the straightest answer he would get out of the man, and so gave up, deciding to quit with his glass tower and just watch the chaos ensure before him.

---

"Ahaha, B-Boss, bro, that a good idea?" Aaron tried to hold his snickers back, but he was utterly failing due to the mystified looks the two announcers had on their faces.

"Yeah, fuck 'em." Boss said, calming down before Aaron had. "What'd they ever do for us? Keep the galaxy stabilized?" he asked with a scoff. "Bitch it's my purpose in life to unstabilize stabilization."

"Uh-huh? Yeah, alright." Bobby cleared his throat, fixing his attention back onto the TV with a fixed smile. "This just in, word in from the Professor himself says that he has personally captured someone that will force the Boss to participate in S.E.G.C.!"

"Really?" Boss drawled. "And just who would that be?"

The camera focused back on the Council, the rope turning around to reveal a fifth figure tied into the bunch, Boss's eyes slowly widening as he recognized the familiar shape.

"No. That bastard…!" Boss growled, knuckles rendered white as he clenched his fists.

"It's… is it… is it who I think it is!?" Zach gasped as the figure was revealed in the light. Aaron's jaw dropped once he saw the white beard and red suit.

"Oh my god, it is!" Bobby gasped dramatically, slamming both his hands on the desk. "Ladies and gentlemen, it has been confirmed that the figure tied to the Council is, in fact, Santa Claus!"

"That's… wha…?" Aaron rubbed his eyes to make sure he was perceiving the image before him correctly.

No, it wasn't an illusion. There was, in fact, and individual who was the spitting image of Santa strung up with alien councilors.

"Just how far…" Aaron wondered, mind numb due to the sheer ridiculousness of the situation. "Just how far will the insanity go?"

"Nope. No, uh-uh. I done." Aaron shook his head frantically, trying to shake the thoughts from his head. "Boss, what the hell is going on, my grip on reality is slipping."

"Yeah, so this is going to require some context." Boss explained, clearing his throat.

Aaron threw his back into the sofa. "Great," he muttered, "more story time with Boss. What a thrill it always proves to be."

"Alright, so," Boss began, "it was during the breakdown of the simulation. Christmas came, and everyone was celebrating but me, dig? Even Zinjai was there."

Aaron nodded, then stopped. "Wait, why was he there? Zinyak was still in control."

"Pfft, dude, ZJ hated the guy, I think he just escaped for a bit to get some fun. Anyway, Shaundie from the future came, I saved Santa inside the simulation, killed a evil version of him named Santa Clawz, saved Christmas, and learned how to harness Christmas Spirit."

Aaron twitched. There were… so many questions he wanted to ask. A lot, to be honest. Future Shaundie was foremost, but honestly he had too many questions to even count off. So, he settled with one. One that seemed the most important first and foremost.

"Lemme get this straight…" cold eyes swiveled to Boss, who immediately froze in his seat. "You, who have always hated Christmas, learned the true meaning of Christmas and how to enjoy it?"

"Yeah, dawg."

"Then what the fuck was that Christmas special we had a long time ago!?" Aaron screamed, raising from the sofa and chopping his arms in the air. "I mean, what the absolute fuck!? You had a goddamn Christmas adventure where you learned the… I mean… what, did you just forget the magic!?"

Boss shrugged. "I guess?"

"Who the hell forgets whimsical yuletide magic!?" Aaron screeched, tearing at his hair, hair which started to spark electricity.

He couldn't do it anymore, his comprehension of everything he ever knew and loved was shot. It was gone. Just gone. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense, the… the cat man kidnapped Santa? Or did he kidnap the holiday? No, wait, he… he kidnapped the Council, so… Genki was… was… was… Genki?

Aaron crashed into the sofa, mind and eyes blank. Boss waved a hand in front of his face, asking if he was alright in a small effort to snap him out of his trance.

"I… I don't even know what 'alright' is anymore, man." Aaron whispered, looking at his hands. "I mean, what is alright? A standard made by the Man in order to reign in control of a otherwise utilitarian society in order to coral the masses into a ideal figure that inspires the next generation into following their footsteps, and let the cycle continue forever while Congress continues to brainwash the people with drug control laws?" He looked deep into his fingers, hoping that the answers to the universe could be found within the dirt under his fingernails. An answer in the form of a map, a map that lead from nail dirt to pocket lint. And where does the lint lead, though? "Are we just stuck in some pointless looping existence where what we do is pointless due to government regulations shaping us into useless drones carrying the world on our shoulders only for our children to do it in the future?" He looked to Boss for an answer. "Where does the lint lead, man? Where does it lead?"

"Fuck, I broke him…" Boss sighed as Aaron looked at the ground, eyes vacant of any life. He grunted while shaking his head, opening his omni-tool and calling the Genki-phone, said phone ringing on TV.

Zach picked the phone up, with Boss immediately expressing his displeasure with the entire affair by saying, "we'll be there soon," followed by the closing of the 'tool and the shooting of the TV.

"C'mon Aaron," Boss called, putting his sunglasses on and looking at his longtime friend. "Time to rid the universe of the maddest man-cat to ever live. And save the Council so the galaxy doesn't get in a massive tizzy. And save Christmas, I guess. Again."

"Hey man, the lint led me to the fridge." Boss glanced over his shoulder to see Aaron holding a sandwich, a ball of unidentified lint in the other hand. "The bread said that jet fuel can't melt steel beams and the lettuce is in a heated argument over the tomato over benefits of a monarchy-type government versus a democratic one. Don't know what the cheese's deal is, pretty sure it and the onion are going through some heavy relationship stuff."

Many strange events always followed Boss throughout his life, and one of the reasons he was friends with Aaron for so long was due to the fact that weird stuff just didn't faze Aaron, even after this whole dimensional travel and virtualization thing. Honestly, it was a quality that he expected all of his homies to have, but Aaron was supposed to have the highest tolerance of all.

He partly blamed himself, he shouldn't have just dumped all that information on him all at once. He had to snap him out of it now before it was too late.

So, with this in mind, he slapped Aaron who, in utter shock, dropped the sandwich. Holding his cheek, he looked at Boss with a shocked expression, though soon his clouded vision returned to normal.

"You cool?" Boss asked, hand poised and ready for another smack.

"Yeah. Ugh…" Aaron held a hand to his head, shaking it and focusing back on Boss. "Dude, you gotta warn me before stuff like this happens, because, like, ever since I met you weird shit has just been happening to us and the amount of weirdness has just been exponentially increasing over the years, you known what I mean?"

He put his sunglasses back on, shaking his head one more time to shake the confusion from his head. "It's just, dude, this stuff has been taking a mental toll, it's just been culminating in the back of my head for years, and then you just- you blew the floodgate for a second there."

"Yeah, but you're good now, right?" Boss stuck a thumb out behind him. "'Cause we seriously gotta go and save Santa."

Aaron nodded. "Mmf, yeah. Always a fuckin' adventure with you, Boss."

---

Boss made the educated decision to just immediately leave using the ship Aaron had arrived in, leaving Zinjai and Zinkle behind to tend the flames, so to speak. The announcers specifically said Boss could bring a friend, so Aaron guessed that was him.

And thought a time limit was never actually specified, Boss imagined they had to leave as soon as possible, so this left little room for them to actually tell anyone what was going on, but Boss trusted his Saints to calm everyone down while they went and rescued Santa.

… Well he trusted most of his Saints to do that. Probably just Oleg and Viola, to be honest. Maybe Kinzie… nah who was he kidding, she wasn't gonna do shit.

But after some flying, they did find the spot in dark space that the fleet was located in… only all the lights were pink now, Boss seething and gripping the control to the ship tightly, a creaking being heard. Aaron, meanwhile, just spun lazily in the seat next to him, not a care in the world.

"He went too far." Boss growled, relenting on the controls ever-so-slightly. "Goddamn pink. Didn't even try to mix it up by adding green lights. Fucker did it just to spite me."

"Dude, we got bigger things to worry about than the lights." Aaron reminded, who halted his spinning just to balance the hilt of his blade on his index finger.

"Yeah, yeah. I get it." Boss mumbled.

"So…" Aaron looked at Boss, the hilt wobbling on his finger. "I'm still skeptical about this being the Genki and not some impersonator or a clone Zinyak made or a machine or some shit, but let's just assume it is. Anything should be aware of?"

"Aaron, I'm pretty sure from the five seconds I saw him on TV I was able to figure out that he wasn't a robot."

"Actually, it'd be a android." Aaron corrected. "There's a difference because androids are designed specifically to mimic human shape and function which separates them from normal robots due to the fine line between-"

"If it's made of metal and runs on sparks it's a robot," Boss interrupted.

"So you're just gonna, ugh, this is the mech/robot argument all over again."

"It's a fucking robot, Aaron! It's big and machine-y!"

"It's not a- grr, fuck you for saying it's a robot, fuck Keith and Kinzie for saying it's power armor, it's a mech suit! It's too big to be power armor and it's not autonomous, godamnit!"

"Why are we even arguing about this, he's not even a robo- andro-, fuck it, whatever, what was the question?" Aaron was about to answer when Boss held a finger to shush him. "Wait, I remember. Uh… stuff to watch out for, right?"

Aaron nodded, prompting Boss to continue. "Ugh, other than the inhuman resilience and insanity, he, uh… oh, his best girls."

The hilt fell to the floor, Aaron using his hand to cover his mouth to hold in the snickers that ensued once Boss said "best girls". "Wh-what?" he managed to gasp out.

"Yeah, Genki had three girls that acted as his mascots, they were his poster girls… I think. I never really did know the deal there." he held up three fingers, looking deadly serious despite the circumstances. "Their names correlate with their furry personas-"

"You mean fursonas." Aaron corrected, pointing a finger at Boss.

A little part inside Boss died when Aaron said that, he wouldn't lie. And every time Aaron aid something like that his faith in humanity died a little. "Sure man, sure." He shook his head, rubbing his hand in his face to drown the weariness out. "Is that what the children of the internet call it these days?"

Aaron nodded in affirmation. "Yeah. Where have you been, man?"

"With everybody else staying the hell away from that shit." Aaron pouted a bit when Boss said that. It was an insult, really. But he'd let that one go for now.

"… Anyways…" Boss continued, "Genki's best girls comprise of… Sad Panda… Angry Tiger… Sexy Kitten…"

"Boss every word you say is turning me more and more into a stoner, forget about it, I'll figure it out." Aaron groaned out, leaning back into his chair and covering his face with his hand. He was still recovering from his last mental attack, dammit, but the weird stuff just kept piling on and on.

Then, in a flash, he came to a startling realization, fingers opening to reveal the lenses of his sunglasses which leered over to Boss. "Wait, back up. You said one of them was a tiger?" he asked with just a hint of trepidation.

"Yeah, wh-" Boss stopped himself, snapping to Aaron's gaze which became increasingly worrying to Boss. "Dude, it's just a chick in a suit."

Aaron immediately deflated, slumping in his chair. "Oh. Okay then… you sure?"

Boss was about eighty-percent sure the Genki Girls were just normal humans in suits. But hey, he'd been wrong before. He couldn't tell Aaron that, though, otherwise he'd forget about saving Santa and just try to kidnap the girl or something creepy. And Santa took priority here. "Yeah, hundred-percent." Boss confirmed.

"Aw…" defeated, Aaron slouched back in his chair, a heavy sigh following him while Boss breathed a sigh of relief.

"… So, I got a idea," Boss started, pointing to the approaching Mothership. "The TV showed us Genki was in the throne room, right?"

"Yeah," Aaron nodded, "why?"

"And we gotta go through that psycho-maze to get there, right?"

"Uh-huh, look." Aaron pointed to the open docking bay waiting for them, complete with neon signs in the shape of arrows pointing to it.

"And the throne room is just about where I'm pointing, right?"

Aaron drew a mental line leading from Boss's pointing finger to a random spot on the Mothership, and after consulting his mental map of the ship, nodded. "Yeah, totally. What are you planning?"

"I'm thinking we just skip all of that bullshit and just crash into the throne room." Boss explained, turning a few dials up. "I know it's not my style and it goes against, like, a bunch of my philosophies… but Santa's on the line here, bro."

"Also it won't look good if we kill a lot of zin in mascot suits," Aaron reminded, "plus the Council."

"Yeah sure whatever I'm going for it!"

And then Boss pulled the throttles to the maximum, the ship zooming to the Mothership, and quickly grew to Aaron's perspective. Then they crashed, the ship tearing through the hull and jarring the two Saints in their seats as the ship shook, light disappearing before reappearing as they crashed through the wall leading to the throne room, grinding to a halt on the floor.

All was silent for a few minutes until a black and blue blade pierced the side of the ship, cutting a rectangle and a foot kicking it out of the way, Aaron staggering out and falling to the ground.

"Boss… goddamn…" he gasped out, steadily getting to his feet while shaking the grogginess away. "Your driving's gonna do what the rest of the galaxy can't; kill me."

"You know ever since junior high you've been complaining about my driving. Gets kind of old," Boss groused, walking calmly out of the ship, power suit on as he adjusted the helmet on his head.

"Whatever, man, I got eighty people back at the Crib who will back me up on this. Let's just get this over with." Aaron pointed the Lazer Razor to the air, shouting, "Genki! We're here to- wait hold up."

The room was empty, entirely. Throne wasn't even there. Scratching his head, Aaron muttered, "the hell, where is the…" then his eyes narrowed when he saw something infuriated him to no end.

"No. You're kidding me…" he growled out when he saw the entrance to the throne room, a large neon sign saying "START!" over it, with what was obviously the maze they had seen on TV beginning there.

"Motherfucker called it." Boss sighed, pounding a fist into his hand. "Damn, he's good. We got trolled, homes."

He should have known. Aaron should have known that Genki would anticipate Boss like that. Eve moved the chair to make it look realistic, probably had a recreation of the throne room at the end. His grip on his sword tightened, O.M.G. gripped in the other.

"I don't accept that. I'm the only one that gets to troll people in this world. I earned that right." he looked at Boss. "You ready?"

"Yep." Boss held two zin pistols up. "For Santa!"

"And everyone else- screw it, let's go!"

And in a flash, the two dashed into the maze.

---

The thing about super speed; it was pretty fast. Both Boss and Aaron had that, and even though Aaron was faster, they were still blurs cutting through mascots at a rapid pace, dodging the rustic traps that awaited them as they tore through the maze. Aaron even noticed cameras on top of the maze attempting to follow the duo.

Did he feel bad about killing the zin? Slightly. To be fair they could easily just knock them out, but, well. That wasn't really their style. If anything, it was euphoric, him going at this pace. It had been so long, really, since he'd went at this pace, it was almost refreshing.

It would be even better if speakers weren't playing high-paced music and those two announcers weren't describing everything in detail, something that irked Aaron to no end.

"Amazing!" Bobby cried as the two flew through the maze. "Once again the Butcher of Stillwater does not disappoint with the amount of bloodshed he is spilling tonight in the maze!"

"Yes sir, always to be expected when this contestant is in the field, he has yet to disappoint." Zach let a weary sigh out. "Hey Bobbo, how long have we been doing this?"

"A lot of years, Zach. A lot of years. And please don't call me that."

"Bobs, I just don't know. Earth is gone, along with our whole lives. My wife's dead-"

"And what a shame it is."

"-Not to mention that the only reason we're doing this is because we would be shot otherwise, I just… I just don't know what I'm doing anymore, y'know?"

"Ooh, uh, Zach, we're not suppose to mention we were threatened to do this, we have to keep the whole 'happy announcer' thing going."

"I don't care anymore Bobby."

"Yeah, me too. And wow, what a fantastic power-punch from Boss!"

"Er, Bobby, is this type of equipment allowed?" Zach hesitantly asked when he eyes the power suit Boss was wearing. "The rules clearly state that the only equipment allowed into the maze is the equipment provided to you, and let me tell you, what the leader of the Saints has on right now is not approved gear."

"The Professor felt that Boss would be at a disadvantage due to the natural powers possessed by our other guest today, Aaron, and waved off that little rule," Bobby explained.

"Ah yes, Aaron Aaronson, new contender to the Genki Games with a past just obscure as the Boss' own, but from the looks of things he's… not really moving at all." Zacg squinted as Aaron froze on the spot. "Hmm, something appears to be wrong here…"

And just like that, time froze for Aaron. Just, instantly. The second he heard that damn announcer say that. That damn last name.

For years he had to keep it hidden just so people wouldn't laugh at him. It made elementary school hard enough until he learned how to forge documents and make his last name disappear. After that he wasn't known as that one kid who had the same name twice in a row; it was just Aaron.

And in high school he went through monstrous lengths to delete that last name from every US record that existed on him, and it took doing. It wasn't until senior year that he and Boss were the only ones that knew that last name. Which meant…

He turned his head slowly to Boss, who froze. All of the mascots were frozen, too. There was something flowing from Aaron, felt through unseen. Some would say it was the raw manifestation of his anger, others would say raw power. But Boss knew it was none of those, for as long as he'd known Aaron, Boss could confirm that Aaron was a pretty chill guy. People always say he would get angry over the littlest things, but Boss knew. Boss knew the galaxy had rarely seen Aaron truly angry.

And this wasn't anger. It was fury, scorn, hatred, and a bit of humiliation. He hadn't been this mad since Boss killed his cat.

"Boss…" Aaron said slowly, every syllable he uttered sending the mascots further and further back. "Care to explain why they knew my last name? Hmm?"

Sweat dropped off of Boss, a large gulped being heard coming from his throat. "Oh, uh… if I would hazard a guess, I'd say… it was from the questionnaire I had to fill out when I signed on for S.E.R.C. when one of the questions was the name of my best friend?" he squeaked out.

Aaron, not moving, asked, "Zach. I'm gonna ask you a question. And I better like your answer, because otherwise you'll die." He looked directly at the camera, arcs of electricity flowing off of him. "Is this live or not?"

"Erm, no?" Zach answered, a bead of sweat dropping from his forehead. "The footage needs to be edited before we release it to the public."

"Alright, nice. So here's what's going to happen. You're going to forget that you ever uttered my last name and make sure no-one in the galaxy ever finds out by deleting that bit or I'll vaporize you. Got it?"

"Um, I'm pretty sure you'd have to take that up with a different department, I'm just a announcer-"

"I can just keep blowing up bits of the ship up until I find you, ya know."

"Yeah, I'll take care of it, don't worry!"

"Cool." Aaron then focused his attention back to Boss, who was attempting to shrink into the wall behind him. "Now, you idiot. Why the hell would you put my last name there?"

"It seemed formal at the time?" Boss shrugged.

"I spent three years deleting that from the Unites States Archives, you fuck! I just- ugh, forget it." Aaron pointed a finger to a pair of closed, metallic doors a hundred feet away with multiple obstacles blocking the path. "Look, we've been at this forever and now I really gotta kill that cat guy, so why isn't the door opened?"

"Oh, that's an easy one," Boss said as he pushed himself off of the wall, "we get points for kills and the doors won't open until we get enough, same with the doors after them!"

"… Why the hell did no-one tell me this before?"

"You dashed into the maze before we were able to explain the rules to you two," Bobby's voice explained through the above speakers.

Aaron groaned, rather deeply, and extended his index finger towards the door. "Okay, fuck this bullshit, it's been going on way too long, I wanna go home, I'm skipping this shit." As he said this a black ball of energy the size of a marble grew, hovering in front of his finger as arcs of blue electricity arced off of it.

"Aaron, wait!" Boss yelled, trying to reach out to Aaron, proving futile as the ball grew bigger. "That's against the rules!"

"I don't even know the stupid rules!" Aaron shot back, then focused back on the door. "Besides, rules are meant to be broken. Sometimes they have to be broken in consecutive order. Much like the doors I'm about to blast down."

Despite all of Boss's efforts, he couldn't stop the wide beam of energy that blasted from Aaron's finger, said beam cutting through the door like it was nothing. As well as everything leading up to the door. And all the obstacles beyond that, as well as the next door. And so on and so forth, until the exit was sighted way at the end of the entire maze.

"See, look at that. Instant progression," Aaron proclaimed proudly, hands on hips as he gazed at his handiwork. The hands soon fell when alarms while red lights flashed. "Oh, and just what is it now!?"

"Ah, see, I-I think it has something to do with the fact you blew a hole through the maze," Boss explained, gesturing to the hole leading to the exit.

Aaron just shook his head, lowering Boss's self-esteem even further as he walked forwards, only to be promptly stopped when he heard something… suspicious.

He saw three shadowed figures drop from the ceiling, landing in front of the pair and slowly rising to meet their covered eyes. And yet, somehow, Aaron wasn't surprised to see all three of them had cloths and face makeup associating them with different animals. Specifically a blue panda, a orange tiger, and a pink… he honestly wanted to say that was a cat, but he wasn't too sure here. She was a little scantily clad for his taste.

"… Heeeh… alright, Z and B, why don't you tell us what's going on?" an exasperated Aaron requested, lazily rolling his hand at a nearby camera.

"Well ladies and gentlemen, it seems that due to the contestant Aaron Aar… yeah, Aaron, cheating in order to bypass the Genki Maze, the sudden death penalty round has been initiated!" Zach announced with all the jubilation a man who could die any second to an insane virtual man could muster.

"That's right, Zach!" Bobby cheered, pumping his fist at the sight of the three girls. "The exalted Genki Girls have come to stop the contestants due to Aaron's-"

SMASH!

Both announcers blinked, trying to comprehend the fact that in place of the woman dressed like a tiger was Aaron, hand slightly outstretched. And the Angry Tiger's body was planted firmly in the ceiling, the limp form falling down to the ground, unmoving.

"Hmph. Shame. She could have worked out for me, but you just look nothing like her. Ah, well," Aaron murmured, interlacing his fingers behind his head and walking towards the end of the maze. "Guess the closet and rope in my room will remain unoccupied. Hey Boss, take care of these two, wouldja? I gotta go wring that cat's neck." And then he started whistling a jaunty tune, form disappearing into the distance as the distance as the other two girls looked at Boss with questionable looks.

Shrugging, Boss answered, "yeah, he, um… he does that sometimes. Kind of scares me to be honest. So, anyways." Boss extending his covered hand, sparks from a destroyed trap leaping to his body, power suit glowing purple as he pointed his two guns at the pair. "Let's do this."

---

Aaron wasn't really surprised when he came to the recreation of the throne room, it was pretty much the same as it looked on TV; Genki sitting in the throne while the Council members and Santa dangled over the pit of death.

He didn't know how, but Genki looked… kinda bored. Had his head resting in his hand- paw?- while his tail swished between his legs lazily. Somehow.

"Aaron! I knew you were behind this in some form or way!" Sparatus screeched from his position, angrily fidgeting in his bonds. "I swear to the Spirits when I get out of here I'm going to-"

With a snap of his fingers, Sparatus's body crackled with electricity, the turian sputtering nonsense until Aaron stopped, the councilor panting from exertion.

"Christ, Sparatus, I swear you never learn to shut up. I might as well glue a mustache on you and make you start demanding pictures of Spider-man," Aaron chided, crossing his arms. "I mean, I came all this way to save you and your merry band of politicians and this is what you say? I'm not surprised."

Aaron then focused his attention to the Professor in the throne. "So you're Genki, huh?"

"You not Boss…" Genki stated in a voice that was higher then Aaron anticipated. Really, it made him question Genki's masculinity.

"He's a bit busy," Aaron explained, un-crossing his arms. "You've put me through a lot of baloney in the last few hours, Genki. Some real OG shit. Buffoonery of the highest regard. I just gotta know, are you a clone, or a android, or what? Because I utterly refuse to believe that your some kind of undead cat-man or whatever."

Genki leaned forward in the throne, the unmoving mask leering down at Aaron, yet un-fazing him. "Genki been alive for years as a super murder-cat. Went so long without anyone to play with… everyone died so easily, and Genki shows only entertained so much, the screams of the tortured soothing me so little…" the mask dipped slightly, Genki's form growing somber before instantly perking up. "Then Genki find Bossy man! Boss actually manage to hurt Genki! Boss was fun to play with! So Genki set game up to get Boss to play with Genki some more until he die!"

The child-like demeanor that he was carrying was irking Aaron to a mild degree, but only so. He hadn't really answered his question, and Aaron was growing more and more convinced this man, if that, was mentally insane. But he'd let him get a good five more sentences out before deciding anything.

"But you!" Genki cried with glee, clapping his hands and kicking his feet out while the tail wildly swished too and fro. "Genki seen what Aaron do to galaxy! Aaron like destruction and death, just like me! And I can tell you're bored, too!"

"Yeah, sorry to burst your bubblegum-flavored bubble, but I don't get kicks off of murder," Aaron said.

"That's not true." The playful attitude of Genki instantly ended, head tilting to the side as the Professor rose from his chair. "I read a lot about you. Seens vids. You don't kill just for mercy anymore, do you? You gave up just like Genki did. I can tell by the way you kill. You kill and smash and crush and burn and destroy and obliterate and annihilate just like Genki does."

Clenching his fists tightly to his side, Aaron scoffed, Lazer Razor whipping out, Aaron casually spinning it in his hand as he gazed up at Genki. "… Fine then. Don't answer the question. I'll figure it out after I beat you to death with your own mask."

Genki laughed, a dark, high-pitched laughed as he held up a syringe with purple fluid swishing inside, the label of "experimental nanomachines" stamped on the side. "Genki don't think so, Genki find this while exploring ship. Murder Cat wanna play with Aaron, now." The needle plunged into Genki's neck, the fluid instantly being drained into his body. "Play with Genki now…"

All was quiet for a few seconds, Aaron going so far as to look to both sides and looking at his wrist. Then, with an empowered meow, raised his hands to the sky as pink energy flowed from his body, muscles noticeably bulging and the room shaking as the meows of power slowly turned into tiger roars.

Room shaking, the Council and Santa looked on in the horrify power that Genki was gaining. The walls themselves seemed to shudder at the amount of raw force his body was shunting just from the nanomachines.

Nonplussed, Aaron sighed as he lazily inspected his sword. "So, it this the part that happens in every anime where you use some arbitrary method to power up to some insane level and toss me through the wall or som-"

His eyes widened when he realized a much more bulky Genki, with a ripped lab coat and sharper teeth on the mask, was in front of him. But that couldn't have been right, because Genki was just by the throne just now- a good hundred feet away from Aaron.

And then with one paw-swipe Aaron's world was a blur for about two seconds before he found his body impacted in the side of a zin ship… only now he was in the middle of space, Mothership clearly in sight.

"… Huh…" Aaron marveled, looking around. Genki did toss him through a wall- and then some. It didn't hurt or anything, but still… it was a weird mixture of intrigue and surprise he was feeling. He never had been hit that hard before. Nanomachines were the shit, apparently.

His eyes snapped to the pink blur fast approaching him, with a furry foot outstretched. Though Genki grew confused when his foot impacted the Aaron-shape dent, and no Aaron. Confusion grew when a blue sneaker impacted his face, sending him crashing onto the top of another ship.

Getting up instantly with metal debris flying past him, Genki looked wildly around before sighting Aaron rapidly gliding towards him. The chesire-grin fixated on his mask seemingly growing bigger, Genki extended his hand, all the metal debris stopping suddenly as a pink aura surrounded every piece. Then, extending his hand outwards as the debris flew towards Aaron.

Rolling his head, Aaron blinked out of existence just before the debris hit him, reappearing on the other side and reaching out to the debris, the pink aura gone as Aaron grabbed the bunch of metal in his own telekinetic vice, throwing the clump at Genki- noticeably at a faster speed then what Genki managed.

Comically-large eyes widening, Genki jumped just in time to avoid the debris, the metal slamming into the ship below him. Relief instantly turned into alarm when he felt something poke his head, turning just enough to see Aaron directly behind him, black and blue ball of energy growing in front of the finger that had poked the Professor's head.

"Boom," thought Aaron as the beam was discharged, Genki's body being propelled straight through the ship, beam dissipating into space while Genki's body tumbled directly downwards.

Eh… he was sure everyone in that ship were fine. Zin engineering had good countermeasures when suffering major breeches like the one he just caused. And even if it didn't, they were fighting in the middle of an entire fleet. They could stand to lose a ship or two in a situation like this.

The plan now was simple: teleport directly behind Genki and cut him in half with his sword. Seemed solid, he had just enough time to position himself before Genki reoriented himself. Unfortunately, the plan fell apart when Aaron enacted said plan, though when he slashed towards the cat's body, Genki dodged while wrapping his tail around Aaron's neck.

Struggling, Aaron tried to pry the appendage off of him, but was proven useless as any struggles only made it tighten further. Noticing Genki's leg rearing back, Aaron relaxed his body as much as possible as the inevitable came, with Genki simultaneously letting go of Aaron while stomping him directly in the back, a noticeable shockwave being seen while Aaron's body was propelled forward at a great speed.

Aaron's body slammed into the mothership, body sliding upwards while his sword was firmly planted in the hull along with his feet, a straight and bright orange line making it's way upwards to the ship.

Sliding upwards, Aaron didn't even notice the small smile that was slowly forming on his mouth- he was too invested in the fight to notice small details like that, after all. There was something building in him, excitement or something. He just couldn't pin down what it was, though.

A pink blur crashed into the side of the Mothership, Genki sprinting his way up to Aaron while leaving behind a pink line of energy that oddly complemented the orange one Aaron's word left. Fire appeared in the cat's hands, dozens upon hundreds of balls of fire shooting from Genki's hands as they flew towards Aaron, who was still sliding upwards on his feet.

Ice adorning Aaron's free hand, he swiped it in front of him, a icy mist being left behind that negated every fireball that touched it, except for the flaming Murder Cat that dashed right in front of Aaron. Electrically buffing his own body, Aaron dodged every single swipe and kick Genki sent at him, pulling his sword from the ship and wildly slashing at Genki, though this was met with avoidance as well. Aaron had to sprint just to keep up with Genki, to a speed that to anyone watching would just see two lines, one pink and one blue, spiraling around the entire mothership, the tips clashing over and over again.

Tired of the cat-and-mouse game, Genki gripped the blade with both hands- a feat that shocked and exited Aaron- electricity arcing out of his furry paws as Genki leapt straight upwards, dragging Aaron with him and spinning as fast as he could before tossing Aaron in a random direction.

Not taking his eyes off of Genki despite flying away from him, Aaron held out his O.M.G., which instantly transformed into it's iconic three-barreled CAIN, all with a purple finish. Electricity arcing into the gun, Aaron grinned gleefully as three hyper-charged balls shot from the barrel, instantly making their way to a shocked Genki, who was instantly caught up in a large mushroom cloud.

Body being tossed back, Genki tried to reorient himself, but was too late when Aaron teleported directly in his path of movement and stomped on his face, sending the Professor flying in a different direction, and action Aaron repeated again, and again, and again until he grew bored.

Launching a abnormally large fireball, Aaron slammed his foot into Genki's midsection and right into the fireball's bath, the explosion cancelling any momentum the Murder Cat had and causing him to float in one spot.

Then, Aaron did the unthinkable. He fired more CAIN shots, again and again, dozens of balls flying towards Genki. Then, reaching out with his hand, Aaron telekinetically grabbed every ball, making them spin in a cone around Genki's prone form.

Genki, who was in massive pain due to Aaron's onslaught, could only look in horror at the dozens of balls of energy spinning around him, his eyes meeting Aaron's covered ones in a look that couldn't be described, even including the fact they were fake. Aaron couldn't describe it- a mixture of pleading and anticipation. As if Genki wanted Aaron to stop, but at the same time fire the attack.

To some degree, it confused Aaron. But only some, because all Aaron did was smile and clench his fist at the same time, the CAIN balls converging on Genki with just enough time for him to let out a defeated meow.

And then space itself turned white.

---

Grunting in exertion, Boss tossed the last Genki girl on that ground, letting a tired sigh out. It was more of mental difficulty in killing them than actual physical effort, but he still managed it. Would have been cooler if he took on all three of them at once, but Aaron was somewhat of a show stealer.

"Where is he, anyways?" Boss wondered, looking towards the exit Aaron had made for himself. "He shoulda stomped Genki's ass by now, it's been, like… a few minutes or something."

Boss's question was answered with the sound of a large, muffled explosion which caused dust to fall down from the ceiling onto the ground and the lights to flicker, followed by a large smashing sound and a body being propelled through the ceiling and onto the ground next to Boss.

When Boss saw who it was that landed in front of him, his eyes almost shot straight through his lenses. It was surreal, in a way. Seeing Genki, a person that made even Boss wary, slowly getting up from the ground while his body wobbled, blood pouring from the mouth of the mask.

Then Aaron seemingly appeared right in front of Genki, blue power resonating in his fist as he cocked the hand back, then springing it forward so the fist hit dead-center of the mask, the material distending as the fist indented itself into the mask. And, with a final cry of pain, Genki was launched through one of the innumerable walls of the maze, collapsing in a heap of rubble on the other side.

No-one said anything- not Boss, not Zach or Bobby, and not even the mascots surrounding them. How could they, with someone that the zin had revered as a unbeatable destroyer being beaten to such a degree? Really the only person who was making a sound was Aaron, who slowly walked forward while clapping his hands.

"Dude, I gotta tell you, I haven't thrashed someone like that in, well, ever." He let out a small chuckle when Genki failed to fully stand on his feet, instead crashing back down onto the rubble, sitting against it.

Crouching down, Aaron leaned in close to Genki's oversized head, close enough that he could hear the labored breathing underneath. "Seriously, though. I gotta know what's under the mask," he said, grasping the mask and twisting it. "I want there to just be nothing underneath, know what I mean?" he muttered under his breath, and pulled the mask off.

He blinked. It, uh… it was very underwhelming, what he was looking at. He was expecting more than a completely average face that would be staring at him if it weren't for the dark hair obscuring his eyes. Though it was interesting how parts of his face were subtly shifting; broken bones being instantly fixed.

Aaron let out a "humph" sound, tossing the mask between his hands. "So, regeneration, huh? Or is that just the nanomachines?"

Genki let a sigh out. A long, and weary sigh. "The first one…" he mumbled.

"Geh, his voice is still weird even with the mask off," Aaron thought, shaking his head. "Been stuck with this awhile, huh? Guess that'd explain how you keep coming back."

"Been stuck with it… too long…" Genki agreed.

"Yeah, I bet there's some amazing back-story with some amazingly somber shit." Aaron plunged his sword straight through Genki's heart, the tip piercing the Professor's back while the owner of said back spat a glob of blood from his mouth, eyes as proportionately dark as his hair staring up at Aaron in shock. "Too bad I don't care."

Genki looked down at the blade, seemingly uncaring. Then he looked back up at Aaron, smile gracing his bloody lips.

Aaron frowned. "And just what exactly are you smiling about?"

A weezy laugh escaped Genki's lips, shoulders shaking in effort. "Waited… so long to find someone who could kill he…" he whispered, eyes glazing over as his breathing became more and more shallow. "For so many years… burying pain with pain… heh heh heh heh… you're lucky."

"Hm?" Aaron flinched when Genki caressed his cheek, a act that he would describe as, "pretty creepy", especially with the bloodstain left behind. "I can see it behind the sunglasses… you really are like me. At least you have friends to suffer with." The hand fell to the ground, and with a final "thank you"…

Professor Genki was no more.

---

So much whiteness… so much nothingness. Genki didn't know what to describe it as other then emptiness. Maybe this was what hell was, a personification of the metaphorical emptiness in his heart.

He wished he'd met Aaron sooner. All Boss did was give him false hope whenever he almost killed him, but at least Aaron finished it. Torturing thousands of others to bury his pain was getting old.

Heh. He always was too late at finding things, wasn't he. Some "professor" he turned out to be in the end…

"Daddy!"

His eyes widened when something grasped his hand, and looked down to see a young girl gripping his hand, a small pink cat plush doll clutched in her other hand. a Young girl with the same eyes as him, but not hair. She was bald, after all.

The shocked expression on Genki's face caused the small girl to giggle. "Took you long enough to get here, daddy."

The shocked expression was soon replaced by a sad smile as the father rubbed the girl's bare head. "I know. I'm sorry I'm late again."

"Mf, it's fine. Mommy's been waiting forever, so can we go?" she asked, before a look of realization flashed across her face and she let go briefly to dig in her pockets, holding up a pair of green-tinted glasses. "Oh, I almost forgot! I got your glasses!"

The father laughed, putting the glasses on and softly pushing the hand away, though was surprised to see it come back, this time a plastic band being held with a pair of fuzzy cat ears on top. "Can you put these on, too?"

Genki remembered how they always laughed at those ears. God, they looked so ridiculous, especially when working in a lab… but the looks his daughter and wife always gave him for it were worth it. So he put them on, gripping his daughter's hand once more. "Sure, sweetie. Let's go see your mom. I've been waiting ages to finally see her again."

And just as soon as he arrived, Genki left the white void of nothingness. Though, for the first time in more years than he could count, he wasn't alone this time.

---

"So, uh, we chill right?" Boss asked.

Tevos huffed, crossing her arms while Valern carried Sparatus on his shoulders, and David Anderson standing to the side, eating a sandwich. "The entire galaxy is sure to be in a panic due to what this Genki did. We'll need to say something to reassure them that this won't happen again."

Boss groaned, rubbing his face. Yeah, she was right, this was going to take forever to clean up, but he could see it being done. Zin were calmed down at least, so that was a plus. Hopefully the Council would be able to calm the galaxy down, then everything could go back to normal for about twelve hours before something else happened.

Man, life was great.

"We still cool though?" Boss pressed.

With a sigh, Tevos answered, "yes Boss, we're fine. We'll go back to keeping the galaxy in order while you keep attempting to throw it into disorder and continue to blackmail me." The bitterness in her tone was not unnoticed by Boss, who barked a laugh out as a result.

"A'ight, cool," he nodded, them punched her in the temple, knocking her out cold. The other two councilors' eyes widen as Boss walked towards them, Boss punching Valern and them raising a fist at Sparatus.

"Wait-wait-wait don't-" Sparatus was silenced when Boss's fist connected with his face, sending him to the ground.

Boss looked at Anderson, who shrugged. "Ey, uh, Keith David sound-alike, you cool?"

"Mf, sure," he answered, Boss nodding in relief as he knocked Anderson out too, sandwhich flying from the human's mouth as he fell to the ground.

"You know…" an old voice chided, Boss not even needing to turn around to see Santa walk up behind him, thankfully with a red suit Genki had oh-so-graciously provided. "Knocking people unconscious is a sure-fire way to earn yourself a spot on the naughty list."

"What, I don't get a free pass for saving Christmas?" Boss joked, then forced his shoulders to slump when Santa crossed his arms. "Well I can't let them know where the fleet is, so yeah, I knocked 'em out. It'll be fine, I'll cram them in a fridge and drop them off at the Citadel or something."

"Oh, fine. I'm sure I can wave it off for now." Santa held a mitten up, prompting Boss to shake it. "I never did thank you for saving Christmas, and me. Twice now, in fact."

"And yet I'm still on the naughty list," Boss droned.

"Oh-ho-ho! I'm sure that can be rectified in a jiffy! So, what is to come of today?"

"Well, I had the zin destroy any records of Genki existing, and have them burn the body and footage of the gameshow. As for Zach and Bobby, they don't really have anywhere to live, so I guess they can crash at the Crib." He tiredly rubbed his face, groaning into his palm. "I don't feel like explaining the whole we're-in-another-universe situation to them, I'll just show them the video I made. Other than that, things should back to normal soon." He smirked. "But enough about me, what's in store for Santa Claus?"

"Oh, I'm going to go find the missus and then… I don't know. Everything is happening so fast, do they even celebrate Christmas here?"

Boss winced. "Well… everyone on Illium does. Every else, uh… nah, not really. I don't even think Earth does anymore, but there's still one planet you could bring yearly joy to. If ya want."

"Oof, in my age, I think one planet is all I can handle. Hey, seeing as me and my wife no longer have a home to return to, I don't suppose it'd be too presumptuous to assume we could live at this Crib?"

Boss gaped, nodding vigorously at the thought of having the Santa live with him as he gestured Zinny to come to his side. "Santa, sir, it would be an absolute honor, yo Zinny! Take Santa here to get his wife outta stasis, would you?"

"Sure, come on." Zinny gestured at Santa to follow him, Santa doing so while Boss giggled, the thought of living with Santa fresh in his mind.

He stopped giggling when he saw Aaron, who was just… standing there, sunglasses off and Genki's mask in hand as he stared blankly into the large eyes. He'd been like that ever since Genki said his final words to Aaron, and it was worrying Boss.

He was just standing there, staring into the mast. For about an hour now. Boss didn't hear what Genki had said to Aaron, but obviously it had gotten to him. But Boss was still having a hard time believing that Genki was actually dead, once and for all. It was freeing, in a way.

But he was still worried about Aaron, a feeling that only increased when anger grew on Aaron's face as he burned the mask in his hand, tossing the ashes away.

"You don't want to keep the mask as a trophy? I thought that was a thing you did?" Boss questioned, walking up to Aaron as he put the sunglasses back on.

"I'd rather just forget the crazy fucker, so drop it," Aaron spat.

"Okay, fine. You okay?" a concerned Boss asked.

Aaron's only answer was to shove past Boss, muttering, "I'm fine, let's go back," hands in pockets as he stomped off, a defeated Boss lagging behind.

---

Saying he was just like Genki… that was ludicrous to Aaron's ears. He wasn't anything like that psychopath. He killed out of mercy, and that was that. He wasn't broken enough to enjoy killing alone. He wasn't broken like Genki.

He sighed, removing those thoughts from his head as he gazed out a window he passed, looking at the swirling galaxy beyond. His home for nearly three years now. A galaxy he'd lived in, enjoyed, had fun in, made friends in…

… Tormented in, destroyed in, killed in… oh, how he had killed so many…

He twitched, shaking his head and continuing on. The only thing he wanted to remember was that fight he had with Genki, a fight that made him feel… something, he was still fuzzy on what. But it made him smile, so it must have been good. Only good stuff made people smile after all.

Maybe that's why Genki wore the smiling mask, though why a cat Aaron would never know. Maybe he didn't even like the killing but wanted to like it, and that was why he was broken. Because he couldn't smile right. But Aaron smiled right all the time, whether it be laughing with his friends or the rare occasion he was committing mercy killing when a smirk would turn his lips. So you see, Aaron wasn't broken. Because at least he knew how to smile at the right things.

He wasn't broken at all.

---

A/N- … I swear I didn't make it this long on purpose. It just happened. It just… it kept dragging on and on and on… but I'm still happy with how it turned out, and BOY did it take awhile to come out, but hey, we went over 20K words here, I think that delay can be forgiven. Plus I think I'm finally getting this writing thing down because I just learned how to write dialogue right. Or maybe not, I dunno. Hopefully. You tell me. Only took me, like, thirty-eight chapters to figure out periods can go in dialogue. Progress in my writing skills, I suppose, it's getting there. I'm pretty sure if you go back and read the entire story the quality starts getting better around chapter thirty.

… I'm not that good at writing, but I try. I have to think I've improved in some regard over the years at least… but, whatever. We're not here for that.

So, this is the last chapter for… awhile. I'd say a few months, but the last time I said that it took me three years, so, uh… yeah, we'll just go with awhile. I'll be working on Anomaly from here on out, and I imagine most of you will be disheartened at this, but it needs to be done, so I'm gonna have to ask you all to put the weapons you're threatening me with down.

In all seriousness yes, I'm leaving. Not forever, mind you. Just a long time. But at least I'm leaving off with a long chapter, because this is thirty-one pages of work here… heh, thirty-one, what are the odds? I would and probably should have split this chapter in two, but I made a promise to make a certain amount of chapters before getting back to Anomaly. I gotta start making less of those, huh?

Well, with that… I guess I'll leave now. It's been fun, if not arduous, writing this, and I look forward to coming back. It's been fun, guys.

Cya.