Tropic Thunder

by A-LionGleek

A simple search and report in Africa becomes far more dramatic than expected when the Titans receive word of Professor Chang having managed to create an even more deadly genetically modified version of an already lethal virus. But things get worse still when Beast Boy finds himself both struggling to control his more beastly side and facing his past...in more ways than one.

17. The Worst Family Reunion Ever

Hey everybody. Man I've taken WAY too long this time. I'll admit, this chapter was actually initially going to be even LONGER then it currently is. But at this point, after a long while of writing and going back and forth on whether I wanted to split it up, I've decided that it will be much better for me to have a bunch of the parts initially planned for this chapter to be moved over into the next chapter alongside what was already planned for said next chapter. Not to mention the fact that it also felt only fitting to release this chapter in its current state as a means of (in a roundabout way) providing tribute for the now tragically departed Chadwick Boseman (rest in power man. Wakanda Forever.). And regardless, I very much hope that you all enjoy what has managed to stay in this chapter and that you leave plenty of feedback (seriously, with how exhausting this chapter eventually became to write, I really could use some good feedback to ensure that I don't lose my steam for this story, let alone for the planned stories to follow). And that being the case, this chapter is where the vicious endgame begins to unfold for this story. How shall it all go down? Prepare to find out dudes!

A/N: But first, let me remind you all that I do not own Teen Titans or anything else DC-based or similarly owned by a separate higher legal authority than myself. The only things I dare to claim ownership of are my OCs and a few unique twists and turns involving Azarath and the Wildebeest Society, plus several deities that I made up myself for the Upper Lamumban tribe. And furthermore, some quick answers to some questions from Eris:

A: Paint Camouflage Charm Timing - As N'jobu himself explained in the chapter before the previous chapter, the maximum amount of time he could allow this charm to work is an entire 24 hours, as that is the maximum amount of time in which he can apply a safe amount of paint and the other necessary material for. If he were to try to apply an amount of paint that would allow the charm to last longer than 24 hours, then it would come at the risk of suffocating or drowning the one the paint would be getting applied to. And that in mind, an hour is confirmed by allowing enough paint and additional charm material to be applied to a person's face. But for the sake of having the charm be in effect for an entire 24 hours, Beast Boy would have had to strip down to at least his underwear. And the only reason he applied enough for just an entire hour is that he only had enough of the additional material that needed to be mixed in with the paint to allow for such an amount of time.

B: The Depths of Beast Boy's Mind in Which he had his Dream Talk with the Beast - Technically, N'jobu helped guarantee that Beast Boy would be able to talk to the Beast while sleeping that night and thus wouldn't have to wait until he'd successfully talked with the Beast while awake before going to sleep. That being said though, I'm sure that, once cured, Beast Boy will be a bit more willing to try to go to that same level of depth within his mind than he was before his experiences with Primetia. It's certainly a possibility at the very least. And as for that truce? Yes, it will definitely be expanded upon in the future (or at least that's the plan).

C: Inner Mind Access for the Beast and other Animals - They'll have just enough access to be able to view his thoughts and help provide influence as advisors in combat. But they'll still be denied the level of access they'd need to completely take full control of his body (unless a 'special occasion' occurs in which he decides that such will be necessary).

D: Creation of Copies in Adonis (and potentially others) - That's something I still need to think about (which is why I had Beast Boy and the Beast feel uncomfortable with fully discussing the matter in the previous chapter).

E: Studying of 'Mythical' and Alien Animals - Considering how mythical animal forms are at least planned to start playing a somewhat key role in future stories, I'm sure that Beast Boy could very well prove a bit more willing to take a look at Raven's books and other material on such animals once this adventure is over. Alien animals, I'll need to think about.

F: Dr. Rookwood's Final Bit of Info - She wanted to let Nyota (and through her, Beast Boy and the others) that Chang's 'benefactor' was Beast Boy's uncle.

G: Arronax's/Juris's Amulet - You'll find out what it does this very chapter ^_^

H: The Extent of Beast Boy's Transformation Abilities - Well from what I've researched, the Red does have a degree of connection with microscopic life as well as all the animals. Therefore, considering he can already turn into an amoeba, he could entirely likely be capable of turning into stuff like bacteria or archaea (though I think I'll accept your headcanon of him feeling weirded out by the idea as 'canon' for this series of stories). Fungi and plants he can't turn into as they're connected to the Green, which he himself doesn't have a sufficient enough connection to that he would need in order to be capable of even controlling plants (ala Poison Ivy), let alone turn into them. As for humanoids, while he could at least transform into a Gordanian in the comics, I'm planning on not having him be capable of turning into explicitly humanoid species outside of more animalistic primates like monkeys and apes by virtue of all the 'higher evolved humanoids' having a not sufficiently active enough connection to the Red to allow him to take their forms (and also because it allows my writing for Beast Boy's powers to avoid becoming TOO complicated for me to properly handle).

I: Other Unnatural Powers Alongside the Porcupine Quill Shooting - As explained by the Beast in the previous chapter, other unnatural powers provided to the animal forms by the Red include ultrasonic vocalizations in animals that don't already have as much, enhanced speed for already fast animals, elasticity in necks and trunks of long necked animals and pachyderms, enhanced durability of armored animals, cloning in insects and similar forms, etc. And as far as the cloning power is concerned, my headcanon is that any clones he creates while in the form of an animal that could be granted such a power by the Red automatically revert back into the body of the originator whenever said originator reverts back to his original human form.

J: Potential Other Powers You've Suggested - I can certainly allow those suggestions to be on the table at least.

K: Showing His Titan Friends Around - It can certainly be done at some point in the future. Whether or not it will be done immediately after the events of this raid is another matter though. And on the subject of the Mokele Mbembe and Grootslang, you do remember how Beast Boy already encountered an entire herd of brontopods (the Mokele Mbembe species) alongside Wildebeest, Ambush, and Jungle Cat in a previous chapter right? And as for the grootslangs, I'm still not entirely certain if he's ever even met any of them in this version of continuity judging by how he had to be given a bit of exposition on the way they are in this version of continuity from Jungle Cat and Ambush in the same chapter where they encountered the brontopod herd. But regardless, I'm sure that Beast Boy will allow his Titan friends to meet his tribal companions and visit his 'home village' at some point or other in the future ^_^

All that out of the way, ONWARD WITH THE FIC EVERYONE!

Chapter 16:

The Worst Family Reunion Ever

Beast Boy tensed up, his eyes widened and face turning a lighter shade of green at the sound of the voice he'd just heard from behind him. It was a voice he knew all too well; one that belonged to a man that he'd legitimately hoped to never see alive again after the last time he'd ever seen him in the flesh as opposed to in a dream, memory, or (in the case of at least one notable instance) brief fear induced hallucination. "It can't be," he thought nervously to himself. "Somebody tell me I'm just hearing things."

"You're not," said the Beast. "We heard it to."

"I know you heard me," said the unwelcomely familiar voice behind the changeling. "Those ears of yours have heard much quieter stuff from considerably further behind you. I would know, I witnessed as much. Now why don't you act like a proper gentleman and turn around to face me. We've got a lot of catching up to do after all."

Steeling himself for the inevitable, Beast Boy turned around to look behind him, a narrow-eyed glare already on his face. And sure enough, standing behind him with a smug wolf-like grin on his face was a fair-skinned, blue-eyed, and messy black haired adult man that he would have recognized anywhere regardless of how much he'd wanted to forget him in the years since their last being together in the same room. "Galtry," he growled, his voice low and filled with tranquil fury.

Nicholas Galtry chuckled. "Come now Craig," he purred. "Is that any way to speak to your uncle."

Beast Boy snarled, pointing his right finger accusingly at his uncle. "You lost the right to be referred to as my uncle years ago! The things you did to me? They should have gotten you behind bars for life! And my name isn't Craig! It's Garfield! How many times do I have to tell you that?!"

As he said this, there was one part of him alongside the part that currently felt the bravery and anger he was expressing that felt the same terrible fear he'd felt for so many years whenever thinking about his cruel and despicable uncle. And at the same time, he couldn't help but wonder why Dr. Rookwood hadn't mentioned Galtry over the course of the earlier conversations with her. After all, the shapeshifter now had good reason to believe that Galtry was the man who'd been serving as Chang's benefactor, and it was entirely likely that Rookwood and the rest of the Wildebeest Society members, plus Chang and his goons, had been aware of the familial connection the two had shared.

But then he also remembered how, not too long after the mutants and tribal warriors had met him at the rendezvous point after he'd gotten the kasai-rex in position, Nyota had mentioned something about Rookwood seemingly remembering something important at the last minute that she'd wanted to mention, only for Nyota herself to just hurry up and reapply the gag and leave to join back up with the raiding party due to a mixture of pridefully believing she and the rest of the raiding party already had enough information available to be able to handle whatever it was Rookwood had just remembered as well as an impulsive desire to not want to keep the raiding party waiting too long for her to join back up with them. In that instant, Beast Boy mentally cursed this mixture of traits Nyota had. While she could be plenty nice and friendly in times of peace, there were also times he remembered from his childhood where she had also proven far too proud and impulsive for her own good. And clearly, this was another example of such a case. Especially if this was the 'important detail' that Nyota had impeded Rookwood's efforts at revealing. "Damn it Nyota," he thought to himself.

Galtry chuckled once more. "Defiant as ever I see." He nodded his head. "And I will say this, you've certainly made quite a name for yourself since you left my custody. Kind of like your father now that I think about it. Clearly the apple didn't fall far from the tree."

Beast Boy snarled again. "I guess there must have been a tornado when yours fell."

Galtry's eyes narrowed. "Very funny," he growled. He then shook his head. "Well regardless, I'm sure you know very well what I want from you."

"You got that right," Beast Boy growled, his own eyes also narrowed, and his teeth gritted menacingly. "And you're not gonna get either of them."

"That's an awfully bold claim to make here boy," Galtry noted, his eyebrow raised.

"Good," Beast Boy growled, trying desperately to keep himself from showing any signs of the fear he was feeling alongside his anger, while also managing to notice what looked like a conveniently present large slab of metal lying on the floor nearby the safe containing the Primetia antidote. "Because I'm not a little kid anymore Galtry. I'm a teen, and a trained hero. And because of that, I can now do something that I couldn't do against you back then."

"And what might that be?"

"Fight."

Without warning, Beast Boy turned into an octopus, grabbed the lying around sheet of metal with one of his tentacles, and threw it right at Galtry. The adult man had just enough time to widen his eyes and just barely drop to the floor in time to avoid getting creamed by the sheet of metal. But even though his uncle didn't get hit by the metal, the fact that it got thrown at him, plus his hurried dodging technique, nonetheless distracted the man long enough for Beast Boy to shift back to human form, return his attention to the safe, and start entering in the code. "N. Y. U. M. B…"

The sudden sound of a whoosh, and the equally sudden agonizing feeling of something sharp jabbing into his left shoulder from behind caused Beast Boy to halt his entering in of the code and rear back, howling reflexively from the pain in his shoulder. He was still howling when he managed to slip and fall, with only his managing to successfully grab onto the safe with both hands in a reflexive action preventing him from falling to his face on the floor. Gritting his teeth, hissing in agony, he managed to force his eyes open and look towards his left shoulder, at which point his eyes widened at the sight of what appeared to be some sort of needle attached to a bungee cord-like string stabbing him there. And what was even more unusual was that the syringe seemed to be acting entirely on its own as it extracted what appeared to be a sample of his blood that completely filled it up.

"You said I wouldn't be getting anything from you."

Beast Boy directed his gaze towards Galtry, who now appeared rather darkly amused while holding a mechanical gun-like device that the syringe and string were attached to. "Yet here I am on the verge of successfully gaining one of the two things I want from you. You sure you're as capable of handling yourself against me as you think?"

The shapeshifter snarled. "You got lucky this time." He looked at the syringe. "What are you doing?"

"Isn't it obvious? I'm extracting a sample of your blood."

Once the syringe was completely filled, Galtry pressed a button that caused the syringe to extract itself from the changeling and retract back to its former position at the barrel. "As of this moment," the older man said as he detached the syringe from the string and lifted it up to his face. "I have successfully extracted a sample of your blood containing a complete sequence of the animorph mutagen within you that grants you your powers of shapeshifting into animals." He let his earlier grin come back on his face. "Remember all that hard work I put into figuring out that formula back when you were still a little kid? I made sure to keep the data I'd managed to get ahold of before your escape safe and within my possession. And as a result, all I needed to do was figure out the correct way to fill in the blanks that remained, and I'd have all that I'd need to know to recreate its power for myself. And thanks to the drones I had implanted within you alongside the Primetia sample you're currently infected with, I had everything I needed to ensure that this here machine I just used would know the correct genetic sequence to target and extract a sample of."

Beast Boy's eyes very briefly widened upon hearing his uncle mention that drones had been implanted in his body, but he hurriedly worked to hide the fact. At the same time, he also remembered what the Beast had mentioned during their 'dream meeting' the previous evening about some sort of metallic presence that had apparently entered his body alongside the virus and had been poking around in the various strands of animal DNA within his system. "That must have been the drones Galtry just mentioned," he thought to himself.

"And with one half of your earlier bold claim now so easily broken through your own carelessness…"

Beast Boy immediately directed his full attention back to Galtry in time to see his uncle very swiftly lowered the collar of his suit so that the right side of his neck would be exposed while also getting his hand that was holding the syringe positioned so that it was pointing directly towards the newly exposed area. "Let's see if you can do any better at stopping me from breaking the other half now that we both no longer have any reason to hold back!" He jabbed the syringe into his neck, pressing on the plunger and letting his nephew's blood sample enter his veins within seconds after doing so.

Beast Boy, now realizing with all too real horror just what was now on the verge of possibly happening, tried desperately to get himself to move so that he could perhaps still somehow prevent his uncle from injecting the entirety of the sample into him. But the pain from the injection he'd received that had resulted in that sample's extraction was very strong, and by the time he'd successfully gotten back on his feet and turned around to face his uncle, he could only gape with a sinking heart as he saw Galtry remove the now empty syringe from his neck.

"Ah," the older man exhaled, a clear look of excitement on his face. "I have only just finished injecting the mutagen into my bloodstream, and already I'm feeling such power in me!" He closed his eyes and nodded his head. "Oh yes," he said to himself, damn near purring as he felt the power of the mutagen now rapidly taking affect within his veins, changing him, mutating him, filling him with power that even now continued to excite him. "I can feel it," he purred. "I can feel it." He suddenly opened his eyes, revealing them to now be an ominous ruby red. "I CAN FEEL IT!"

Immediately after he yelled this, Galtry started laughing, the volume and intensity of the sound rapidly increasing to the point that he managed within seconds to reach 'maniacal cackling', all while the rest of his body continued to change in response to the mutagen just as his eyes had done. And as he continued laughing, his ruby colored eyes agleam and his still in pain nephew helplessly watching, his skin turned a bright scarlet red, his already messy black hair grew even longer and messier to the point that it went down past his shoulders and seemed almost like a lion's mane while also turning a shade of red considerably darker than the shade his eyes and skin had taken, his ears elongated and turned pointed like an elf's, his fingernails elongated into sharp claws, and his teeth likewise grew longer and more like fangs. And unlike Beast Boy's teeth, all of Galtry's teeth became sharp pointed fangs.

Once the mutation had finished, Galtry briefly bent over, his hands resting upon his knees as he panted and gasped. Painless as the mutation had appeared, it had clearly still taken a lot of energy out of him. As this happened, Beast Boy took deep breaths and exhaled multiple times, working to steel himself up and gain back as much energy as he could. For he already had a feeling of what he would need to do. He had initially hoped that the mutation would be painful to Galtry as it had been for him, and that he'd be able to take advantage of that to knock him out of the vault and slam it shut with himself still inside so that he'd have time to give himself the cure while his uncle was still writhing around from the mutation induced pain. But since the mutation had apparently caused no pain for Galtry and also not taken nearly as long as the green shapeshifter had hoped, he now had no choice but to take a different course of action that he could only hope right now would pay off in the end. Fortunately, he now noticed that the earlier pain he'd been feeling from the syringe used to extract the blood sample that had now mutated his uncle was now almost completely gone, and he could certainly stand and move once more without aid or running the risk of instantly falling over.

Much to his luck, he had just enough time to fully prepare before Galtry then straightened up, his head still lowered. The red skinned man chuckled. "It is mine. At long last, it is finally mine! The power! Such power! It is now mine to wield! And I alone shall now wield it! For now it is time to claim the other thing of yours that I desire! Right now!" He snapped his head up to face his nephew, maniacal wolf-like grin on his face. "PREPARE TO…!"

He didn't even have time to allow his face to convey his sudden shock before he got rammed right in the stomach by a lunging green bighorn sheep. The uncle and nephew both went flying out of the vault, crashing to a landing against the wall directly in front of it, the older of the two grunting in pain from the combined impact of both his nephew's horned head from the front and the wall from behind.

With his uncle temporarily out of commission, Beast Boy backed away from Galtry, shifted back to human form, and hurriedly closed and locked the vault once more. He had literally just finished locking the vault when he heard a voice say, "What are you doing?!" He turned around, barely managing to hide his shock at how swiftly his uncle had recovered.

Narrowing his eyes, the green skinned changeling pointed his finger at the vault. "We both need what's in that vault Galtry. I was originally going to cure myself first before doing this, but you didn't take as long to finish mutating, nor feel as much pain in the process, as I'd expected. And knowing you, if you got the chance to successfully cure yourself first, odds are you'll probably destroy the other sample just to spite me before you kill me." He took a combat ready position, a determined look on his face. "You want that cure? You're gonna have to go through me."

Galtry stared blankly at his nephew. But then his earlier grin returned, and he chuckled maliciously. "So that's what you wanna play huh? Very well, this shouldn't take long at all. Let us begin!" Without warning, Galtry turned into a wild boar, his fancy black suit and shoes getting horribly ripped up and destroyed in the process and bolted straight at Beast Boy. But Beast Boy had already been prepared for such a tactic, and he turned back into a bighorn sheep in time to lunge towards his uncle at the same time. The olive-green bighorn sheep and scarlet-red wild boar collided in midair, their heads pounding together. And just like that, the battle was on.

. . . . .

At the same time that Beast Boy and Galtry were beginning their clash, Starfire was busy flying around trying with all her might to prevent herself from ending up on the wrong end of Dr. Constance Morales's electro whip or foudre knives. "Stay still you freak," Morales snarled as she rapidly threw another flurry of her knives at the still airborne Tamaranean.

Starfire continued to hurriedly soar through the air above the Latina, constantly changing direction whenever possible for the sake of avoiding the various knives tossed her way as well as the occasional lash of her opponent's lightning whip. "I am the sorry, but I'd much prefer not to."

This seemed to annoy her flightless opponent, who shrieked in rage drew out five knives, and threw all of them at once straight towards the Tamaranean, who just as swiftly responded by hurling a star bolt at them. The orb of vivid green flames crashed into the five knives, reduced them to ash in midair, and hurtled straight towards Constance, who was forced to jump backwards just in time to avoid getting roasted.

This lull in the Latina's rapid-fire string of attacks was enough to allow Starfire the chance to start going on the offensive herself, grunting from exertion as she hurled star bolt after star bolt at her opponent, who kept jumping, stumbling, and similarly working desperately to avoid getting blasted. But eventually, the opportunity to turn the tide presented itself, and Morales managed to swiftly draw her voltage whip out of her belt once more in time to send a star bolt flying back towards the Tamaranean with a single lash.

Starfire dove towards the floor in time to avoid getting blasted, only to then shriek when the very star bolt she'd just dodged hit the ceiling above her and caused a small cave-in, with some of the resulting rubble landing on her back and sending her plummeting to the floor with a thud. Starfire was not pinned down for long though, and she was able to shove the rubble off of her and get on her hands and knees, only for her eyes to widen at the sight of the voltage whip being lashed at her once again; at which point she hurriedly lunged aside just in time, the violently crackling lash slamming into the floor and seemingly cutting a miniature crevasse into the area where the Tamaranean had been positioned mere seconds prior. Knowing immediately that she needed to act before her opponent had the chance to attack again, Starfire turned her head and shot a jet of star bolt energy at the Latina. The burst of green flames plowed into Morales and sent her flying backward, losing her hold on her whip in the process. Morales still hadn't yet landed after getting hit by the star bolt jet when Starfire removed herself from the meeting room wall and left the room to see if she could find a somewhat more ideal place for her to continue the fight.

. . . . .

Robin and Dr. Lagrange continued rapidly clashing their respective weapons together in their duel on the catwalk, teeth gritted, and eyes narrowed from all the focus they were putting into their attacks. Lagrange snarled, his dark eyes icy with determination as he continued to swing and thrust his rapier at lightning speed in a furious effort at getting the better of the Boy Wonder, who even now seemed completely calm in his defense despite fighting with similar speed and having a similar look on his own face. Eventually, they reached the point of slamming both their weapons together and pushing against each other as the rapier and bo staff seemed to battle for dominance.

"Looks like the Dark Knight taught you well," Lagrange growled as he pressed the blade of his rapier as hard as he could against the surprisingly durable metal staff in his younger opponent's gloved hands.

"Funny," Robin grunted. "I could say the same about whoever trained you."

They both withdrew their weapons, reared back with guttural yells, and then started swinging at each other once again. But eventually, Lagrange decided to pull a fast one on the Boy Wonder, feinting as if about to slice at the young caped crusader from the left at a high angle, only to suddenly swing from the right at a low angle instead. Robin just barely dodged in time to avoid getting a nasty gash across his stomach, and he still had to hurry to get his bo staff positioned in time to smack the rapier aside when Lagrange subsequently attempted to stab him through the chest with a single forward thrust of the blade.

Fortunately, the force of the staff slamming against the rapier and knocking it off target was enough to cause Lagrange himself to end up briefly stumbling backwards off balance, giving the Boy Wonder enough time to swipe his opponent's legs out from under him with a swing of the bo staff. The older man fell on his back several feet ahead, and the Boy Wonder immediately started rushing towards him, his bo staff drawn back as if ready to be swung down upon the downed Lagrange.

But Lagrange was not as helpless after landing as Robin had thought. For while still on his back, he lifted his legs to the point that his backside seemed to lift up from the catwalk, and then snapped them back so fast that he seemed to send his entire body flying forward in a devastating kick attack. Left with no time to stop or dodge, Robin was pounded in the chest with both of Lagrange's feet, at which point he was sent stumbling backwards, managing in the process to lose his grip on his bo staff, which went flying over the rail to his right and plummeted down to the floor far below. And as the young caped crusader kept stumbling away, Lagrange landed smoothly back on the catwalk, reclaimed his rapier, and rushed towards his opponent, howling in preemptive triumph as he positioned his blade for a devastating finishing thrust through the younger warrior's chest.

But Robin was not as helpless in the circumstances as Lagrange had expected. For upon noticing Lagrange charging in to kill him, the Boy Wonder hurriedly drew out two birdarangs from his belt and placed them together in the ever so familiar way that allowed them to merge together into his trusty sword, which he swung into position just in time to knock aside what would have otherwise been a devastating stabbing. In fact, the impact between the two blades was enough to cause actual sparks to fly from the contact. Lagrange stumbled backwards, just barely keeping hold of his rapier, clearly caught off guard by the Boy Wonder having successfully deflected what he'd been evidently quite certain would be a successful killing blow.

When Lagrange finally regained his footing, Robin chose to speak once more. "You're gonna have to try a lot harder than that to take me down!"

"Evidently so."

Lagrange pressed on the tip of the hilt, revealing that there was a button in that area that Robin hadn't noticed before this moment. In a flash, the single blade on the scientist's rapier transformed into a mighty serrated saber. He raised the transformed blade up in a threatening position. "I was willing to go easy on you," the scientist said as he prepared himself for further fighting. "But now, since you are clearly proving yourself a much more worthy opponent than I initially expected, the gloves are off!"

"Wouldn't have it any other way."

With another guttural yell of rage in unison, the two warriors charged each other once again to resume their duel. And within seconds, the two massive blades were clashing violently together once more.

. . . . .

Meanwhile, in the gym, Cyborg and Dr. Azimi were still brutally duking it out.

"Say cheese!" Azimi screamed as he fired another burst of his camera cannon. Cyborg ducked just in time for the massive red laser to blast a sizable hole in a nearby wall.

"Good grief," the half metal hero thought to himself. "At this rate…"

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard running feet coming towards him, and he looked up in time to see the middle eastern scientist rushing towards him with his titanium knuckles already at the ready for a punch. He had just enough time to subsequently lift both of his fists into position for a block before Azimi's right fist pounded against the block and sent him skidding towards the hole that had been blasted into the wall. He landed on his back at least two feet away from said hole.

He managed to groan from the impact before he heard Azimi running towards him again. But this time he was ready to act, and he prepared his sonic cannon immediately before trying to get up. As a result, Azimi was sent flying backwards by the low power burst of sonic energy Cyborg subsequently sent his way. Eager to press his newfound advantage, Cyborg hurriedly leaped to his feet and started running towards his downed opponent, already drawing his right fist back for a punch. Unfortunately, Saul recovered quickly, and he jumped to his own feet in time to draw out his camera cannon and fire another blast at his charging opponent. And this time, Cyborg was unable to dodge in time. Thus he went flying backward through the hole that had been blasted into one of the walls not too long ago, and subsequently put holes in at least three more walls before he finally came to a stop in what appeared to be a miniature tech factory. Cyborg managed to get back to his feet, wincing from the pain of the blast as well as his landing. He'd just managed to get a good look at just where he now was when he heard Saul say, "I see you've reached the technician station." The half metal hero turned his head towards where the voice had come from in time to see his middle eastern scientist opponent enter through the nearby doorway. "And all the better for me you did so. After all, I was just in need of a refill on film." As he said this, he pressed a button on his cannon, causing the back end of it to open up like a drawer. And no sooner had he done so when he reached into a nearby crate and drew out what appeared to be ten slides of what Cyborg now guessed must have been ammunition for the cannon. Saul slipped the ammo refill into the open ammo compartment, closed the compartment, and aimed the cannon at Cyborg once more. "Now where were we?" He purred as he charged the cannon up for yet another blast.

. . . . .

In a flash of shadowy energy, Raven found herself in what appeared to be some sort of meadow surrounded by a ring of columns similar to the kind one would find on a Greek or Roman temple, landing in an undignified heap. Arronax appeared on the opposite side of the meadow, landing perfectly on both feet. "I presume you recognize this place?"

Raven glared at the ginger haired man, but then managed to get a good look at the area they now appeared to have arrived in, and her purple eyes widened. "This…this looks just like a similar meadow in the Azarath city gardens…"

"The resemblance was a deliberate decision on my part." Arronax nodded his head. "This very meadow was one of my favorite places to visit when I lived in Azarath. And after my very much unexpected departure, I made sure to have the pocket dimension I'd magically set aside as a means to have a private place to train in my combat and magic skills bear as close of a resemblance to that very place as possible, feeling that it would be a good way to remind myself of my old home. And in all fairness, there's every chance I'd have continued taking occasional visits to this meadow in Azarath for the rest of my life. If it hadn't been for you."

At this, Raven narrowed her eyes, and turned to face the ginger haired Wildebeest Society leader once more. "Whatever you might think, I was not involved in your departure from Azarath. Tell you the truth, I didn't even know you were still alive Arronax; or should I say, Juris?"

The Wildebeest Society leader glared, his blue eyes narrowed icily. "You weren't completely wrong to think as much. After all, my physical body was destroyed by your father's blast. But through sheer willpower, I allowed myself to stay in the realm of the living as a spirit, binding myself to the medallion that I even now still wear around my neck." He gestured at the medallion around his neck. "And as a result of my having tethered myself to it, I naturally ended up sealing myself up inside it so that I would have a place of refuge while waiting for a sufficient host body. And of course, naturally, when Azar and the rest of the monks and nuns on her side chose to cast the amulet into the void between dimensions so as to not be reminded constantly of me and what, in their eyes, was a betrayal I'd committed against them, I naturally ended up stuck there for a while. In the end, I only managed through an immensely powerful channeling of my power to access and enter a rift within the void that led to Earth, the very planet that you were destined to allow Trigon the ability to destroy immediately after his planned similar destruction of Azarath."

He rolled his eyes. "Unfortunately, what I didn't realize until long after I'd arrived on the other side of the rift was that it just so happened to be a temporal rift; and by sheer chance, I ended up arriving on Earth at a time that occurred long before you were even born. And I didn't even find that out until I happened to notice a newspaper that was being read by a local Earth dweller who happened to find my amulet lying around and take it with him when he left the area. And considering just how weak I was at the time from all the energy I'd expended in order to both keep myself shielded from destruction while in the void and successfully enter the rift that brought me here, it was a miracle that I was even able to notice what the man who'd since found and started wearing my medallion was reading. But in the time it took for me to gain my strength, I managed to notice just what sort of people the man wearing my medallion was working for; and by the time my strength had been fully replenished, I had the perfect plan in mind for my second attempt at preventing Trigon's plans of conquest, as well as more than enough time to get it prepared."

Raven raised her eyebrow. "And just what might this new plan of yours have to do with the Wildebeest Society?"

"It has everything to do with the Wildebeest Society. For you see, the man who had found my medallion and placed it around his neck was the then leader of a simple crime cartel with a side degree in genetic engineering known as the Wildebeest Gang. And I had arrived on Earth just one month before that very cartel was later rebranded as what you now know as the Wildebeest Society."

"And how is a bunch of criminals who dabble in genetic engineering supposed to be capable of killing me?"

"Surely you remember the tales of Azulon the Raven?"

Raven raised her eyebrow yet again, now feeling even more confused. "I do," she responded. "Azar told me them many times when I was a child. He is a popular trickster character in Azarathian folklore. He is a white raven capable of human speech that also possesses immense wit and intelligence that he commonly uses to outwit and defeat his various enemies, all of which are much bigger and stronger than him."

"And surely you remember which of those enemies was the one he faced most often in those stories?"

"Ozaru the Bull. But what does that…?"

"Are you aware of what a male wildebeest is called?"

Raven narrowed her eyes at the interruption…only for her eyes to then widen as the dots finally connected. "A bull."

"Exactly."

Juris nodded his head, a wide grin now on his face. "And once I'd fully realized what I now had within my reach thanks to the man who'd found my medallion and placed it around his neck, I knew that I had found a means to defeat you that couldn't have been more thematically appropriate. After all, since you yourself were named after Azulon's species, what better way for me to destroy you than with an army themed after Ozaru? And not only did I plan to use that army to kill you, but I also have plans to lead that army to Azarath to rid it of your father's influence. And from there, with Azar no doubt dead and the land likely having been leaderless for a long while since your father brought about his version of the apocalypse upon it, I plan to take her place as the temple's religious leader and allow yet another rebirth to Azarath and its customs with myself at Azar's helm and my four most trusted Wildebeest Society scientists as my new chief monks and nuns. And from there, I plan to also send out my army into the rest of the worlds beyond, where they will be tasked to find and destroy all further signs that remain of your father's influence. For immortals have no greater enemy than being forgotten. And once I am fully successful in my plans, there will be no memory or knowledge left of him, which will in turn cause him to languish in the void before eventually fading from existence altogether."

"That still doesn't explain just how such an army would be capable of taking me down," Raven stated, partially out of hope that keeping him talking would stall him long enough for her to gain the energy she needed to perhaps escape from the pocket dimension Juris had transported them to and half out of genuine curiosity as to his plans. And she had to admit, while she wasn't entirely certain as to the accuracy of what Juris believed would be the potential end result of his plans, she certainly didn't see any harm in getting the full idea behind his current actions either.

"I was hoping I'd get the opportunity to explain." Juris nodded his head. "To start, once I'd fully regained my energy and thought out my plan, I proceeded to absorb the cartel leader's entire mind into my own, effectively killing him, so that I could take full control of his body and act from there."

Raven's eyes widened. "You took a human life?! That's a violation of Azarath's most sacred law!"

Juris only smirked. "Well I wasn't exactly in Azarath anymore. Not to mention, I'd already tried to kill you; so at that point, why not go all the way? And he was only the first such host whose mind I absorbed into my own. For you see, every time one of the men I possessed to serve as leader of the Wildebeest Society was on death's door while I was possessing them, I would always have my medallion passed on to the most immediate chosen successor; at which point I would pull the same trick on said successor as I had done with the predecessors, passing on my mind and magic to them as I had done with every leader I possessed before. This body I currently possess is only the latest of the men I've possessed for the sake of my goals, and one that you've no doubt noticed just so happens to bear immensely high resemblance to how my own original body looked before I got blasted to ash and cast into the void. And say what you will about the number of men I've essentially killed by absorbing their minds into my own. Considering how, once I've killed you and then rid the universe of all elements of your father's influence afterward, I will have ended up saving countless other lives, I daresay that sacrificing a few lives for the cause will be a fairly small price to pay."

He nodded his head. "And that in mind, now for the real meat of the matter. While acting as leader of the newly christened Wildebeest Society, I naturally allowed them to continue their work as criminal geneticists. In fact, I myself even took part in several of their other crimes before we eventually had the more active criminal activity not related to genetics phased out in favor of the geneticist work. And regardless of how many other projects I allowed my organization to take part in for the sake of money and keeping up appearances, the one that always took highest priority was the creation of soldiers for my planned army. In fact, I was so aware of how important that particular element was that, in the early days of the organization prior to my getting enough hybrids created to make even a reasonably sizable army, I always made sure to only ever have one hybrid actively wreak havoc on the Society's enemies at a time so as to disguise their numbers. And even all this took a comparative backseat to the eventual creation of Project Baby Wildebeest."

"What was so important about that project?" Raven asked.

"The answer's quite simple. He was intended to serve as the perfect leader for my army of wildebeest hybrid soldiers; perfectly balanced in that he would hold absolute authority over his lesser brethren amongst the hybrids, have an independent will and mind of his own, and still have enough loyalty to myself and my inner circle so as to not lead the hybrids against us in an uprising. But most importantly, once he was deemed absolutely ready and prepared for his destined purpose…"

At this point, he clenched his hands together, fingers intertwining and a wolf-like grin coming on his face. "He was intended to be my ultimate and final host."

Raven raised her eyebrow. "And why was he intended to be your host? If he was blatantly designed to fight me, wouldn't he be powerful enough on his own without you controlling him?"

"Physically speaking, yes. But with my mind and spirit inside him, he would have the additional edge he'd need to be a worthy match against you. After all, he could hardly be a true leader for the rest of the hybrids if he had to constantly be given instructions from someone higher ranking like myself. But as my host body, this would no longer be an issue. For my brains and magic combined with his brawn would allow us both to serve together as just the right warrior to combat against you and anyone else who acts under your father's allegiance. And while he has admittedly ended up doing so in ways that I wouldn't have really preferred, it is entirely possible that, through the time he's spent actively working alongside you since his escape, he's now finally prepared to take charge of his herd and become my host."

At this point, he directed his gaze back at Raven, blue eyes agleam with triumph. "Though I will freely admit, I wasn't expecting to get the opportunity to finally get rid of you without even needing to pass my spirit into his body beforehand. But I suppose he'll still be useful to me when I move on to rid the rest of the universe of your father's influence immediately after I've killed you."

At this point, Raven narrowed her eyes, and placed her hands on her hips, half intrigued by all the information she'd just learned; especially over how Wildebeest himself had apparently been designed with the intention of serving as a weapon to be used as the instrument of her murder; but also less than enthused about how Juris even now still planned to try to kill her despite there now seemingly being no reason for him to do so. "Well I hate to break it to you, but at this point you're just wasting your time. In case you haven't noticed, the day of my father's attempt at spreading his apocalypse to Earth and the rest of the universe has already come and gone, and I myself managed to send him back to the void where he'd been imprisoned beforehand within hours after he'd claimed Earth. And that was two years ago, not to mention I'm now 17 going on 18. Simply put, considering the prophecy you were hoping to prevent from ever happening has already been both fulfilled and overturned over the course of a single night and day two years ago, there's not really much of a point now in trying to kill me."

"So you claim, Gem."

The ginger haired man's eyes narrowed. "But demons lie, and you are half demon. You could yet be lying. And even in the event that what you say is true, how am I to know for certain that your father won't come back? That you yourself won't be responsible for as much if he does? And even without all that to consider, why is that even now I still feel Azarath suffering as if his apocalypse is still in effect there despite him supposedly having been defeated as you claim? If you are indeed telling the truth, then why would you not have banished him from Azarath when you supposedly banished him from here?"

"What are you talking about? Azarath was freed from his curse when I banished him back to the void, just like Earth was…"

"You are wrong! Even now I can feel Azarath's pain, and it is suffering in such a way that only Trigon himself could make a world suffer! Regardless of what you claim, his influence is still active in Azarath, causing it great pain and agony! And as long as you continue to draw breath, not only will Azarath continue to suffer, but Earth itself, plus the rest of the universe, will likewise be at risk of suffering in the same way once the time finally comes for you to unleash him upon this planet as you did to Azarath!"

At this point, Raven clenched her fists, her purple eyes smoldering with rage and her teeth gritted in a silent snarl. "What I did…?! You blame me for what happened to Azarath after I left?!"

"How else could he have bypassed the defenses in his natural form?! You know perfectly well how strong the spells designed to deny him access to any dimension while in his natural form are! And simply put, out of all the potential beings that could have had the power to even weaken them sufficiently enough to allow him to break through, let alone outright open a gate that would allow him to bypass them while they're at full strength, you're the only option that could have possibly been responsible!"

"How?! I wasn't even there when it happened! I didn't even know he'd managed to escape and lay waste to Azarath until at least a week or so after I'd turned 16!"

"So. You. Claim."

Raven's eyes narrowed once more. At this point, it now seemed quite clear to her that the former Azarathian monk was beyond help. With the countless years he'd now spent reduced to a restless spirit, forced to rely on possession of various bodies that were not his own in order to stay 'alive', and with only his single minded desire to protect Azarath and the worlds beyond to keep him going, his desperation to fulfill the same well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, goal that had gotten him reduced to his current state had driven him insane. And despite having managed to maintain a veneer of calm and sound mindedness in the years leading up to this current moment, it had all too easily been stripped away now that he seemed to finally have the opportunity to attain that goal right there in front of him.

He shook his head side to side, glare still on his face. "Enough is enough. I grow tired now of this chatter. And as long as you draw breath, both Azarath and all the worlds beyond will be doomed to suffer from your father's evil. And at this point, I've waited long enough." He lifted his hands, fingers now crackling with electricity. "I will wait no longer, Gem! Prepare to die!"

In that instant, Raven had just enough time to hurriedly melt into the shadows and teleport to safety behind Juris before the lightning he shot from his fingers struck the ground right where she'd been standing seconds prior. And just like that, the battle was on.

. . . . .

Ambush ducked her head, an orb of darkness that would have otherwise hit her right in the face zooming inches above her as a result. Then she hurriedly jumped aside to avoid getting her legs pinioned together by a series of roots that suddenly sprang out of the floor where she'd been standing. "I could use a little help here," she shrieked as she continued trying to avoid the attacks that Night Howler and Grizzly Girl were sending her way.

Jungle Cat, at that point trying desperately to avoid getting thrown off of the completely crystallized Rhinestone, who was now furiously swinging his head and body side to side in a violent effort to get rid of the unwanted passenger he now had sitting upon his neck and shoulders and holding onto one of his horns. "Kinda busy here," he hissed.

At the sound of snarling seemingly coming from the ceiling, the lion mutant looked up; at which point he paled at the sight of Swamp Gator positioned on the ceiling similarly to a gecko, and with his head turned to face him while having both his jaws fully open and what appeared to be a burst of his acid breath attack rapidly charging up for release.

"Oh great."

Desperate to avoid getting sprayed by his brainwashed friend's acid breath, Jungle Cat let go of Rhinestone's horn and hurriedly lunged off the rhino mutant's back just in time to avoid getting engulfed by the spout of acid that was sent spewing from the crocodile mutant's mouth. Rhinestone similarly avoided getting engulfed by virtue of having been knocked face-first against the floor by the force in which Jungle Cat's foot had pounded against his back when propelling himself off, and he directed an annoyed glare at Swamp Gator. "Watch where you spit you fool! You could have sprayed me!"

"Sorry," Swamp Gator hissed, not sounding remotely sorry in his current brainwashed state. "But newsflash, you're invulnerable while in your current crystallized state. You'd have been fine."

"And if I hadn't been crystallized?!"

Swamp Gator didn't even have the chance to respond to this before a burst of Jungle Cat's roar slammed into him hard enough to send him rocketing straight through the ceiling, leaving a comically shaped hole in the ceiling as a result of the crocodile mutant getting sent flying into the air over the lab building's roof.

Unfortunately, when the lion mutant looked to Rhinestone, the rhino mutant was already charging his way once more. "YOU'LL PAY FOR THAT!" Mentally swearing, Jungle Cat hurriedly started running, desperate to avoid getting smashed or gored by the once again charging Rhinestone.

Meanwhile, Ambush had found herself in a very unpleasant situation. In a brief few seconds in which she'd distractedly placing all her focus on Grizzly Girl, she'd managed to completely forget that Night Howler had still been in the area. And now, the wolf mutant had managed to get the drop on her, and was now using her shadowy powers to hold her in place in midair above the corridor floor from behind while the now very triumphant looking Grizzly Girl prepared to extend one of her finger nails into a branch at a positioning that would allow her to impale the tigress mutant straight through the heart.

"Ursula, Claire, please!" Ambush whimpered, desperately trying to squirm her way out of the shadowy energy restraints around her wrists and ankles that were keeping her trapped in midair above the floor between her two brainwashed mutant gal pals. "Don't do this!"

"Master says you are enemy," the ursine mutant growled, white eyes glowing bright from the mind control, and one of her fingers already resting upon Ambush's chest. "Master says you must die or surrender. And since you refuse to surrender, you must die. Because what master wants, master gets."

"Indeed," Night Howler smiled, brow furrowed in concentration as she maintained her mental hold on Ambush's shadowy restraints. "You're finished beast. Nothing short of a miracle will get you out of this. And I know perfectly well you're not capable of just randomly pulling such things from out of the sky…"

It was at that very instant that Swamp Gator finally came down from his brief trip skyward, crashing back through the roof and landing right on top of Night Howler. The lupine mutant hissed in surprise and discomfort as her dazed boyfriend abruptly landed on top of her from the sky, losing her concentration in the process. Grizzly Girl was also startled by this turn of events into stumbling a couple steps backwards. Thus Ambush was freed when her shadowy restraints burst into harmless shadowy mist, and she fell to the floor on her feet.

Immediately after fully realizing she was free to get away, the tigress mutant hurriedly took several gymnastics style flips backwards and away from her two brainwashed gal pals before skidding to a stop near where Jungle Cat had been positioned. She then turned invisible right as it looked like the three dazed and out of commission mutants seemed on the verge of full recovery.

"HELP!"

Ambush's eyes widened, her invisible body tensing up. Jungle Cat was clearly in trouble. Remaining invisible, she hurried through the corridors, desperately searching for her boyfriend so that she could help him. When she finally did find him, she very nearly slipped and fell on her backside in sheer shock and horror at the state he was in. At that moment, he was laid out on the floor of one of the corridors, clearly bruised, bloodied, and beaten up as he sat on the floor and had his back and head up against a large wall of black crystal that had somehow erupted from the floor behind him. And the clear culprit responsible for this, Rhinestone, was standing not too far in front of him, his crystalline arms converted into the shape of spiked maces that he'd now lifted up as if in preparation for being slammed down upon the leonine mutant's head.

"Prepare to die," Rhinestone grumbled, his white eyes glowing blindingly bright.

In a flash, Ambush rushed into position directly between Rhinestone and Jungle Cat. "NO!" She screamed, clear horror and despair in her voice as she desperately lunged into position, her invisible eyes widened and on the verge of tears, and her invisible arms and hands outstretched in a seemingly futile effort at stopping the planned killing blow. But then, much to her shock, a massive shroud of brilliant white light suddenly materialized around her before then abruptly expanding into a gigantic flash of even more blindingly bright light.

Rhinestone reared up in shock, hissing in pain as he converted his hands out of their mace forms and slammed them over his eyes to try to block out the painfully bright burst of light. Jungle Cat also briefly hissed and covered his eyes from a mixture of both the pain he was already feeling and the bright light his girlfriend was unexpectedly giving off. But when the light finally stopped, with Ambush being revealed to have unexpectedly reverted out of her invisibility mode in the process, she hurriedly took advantage of Rhinestone still being blinded and out of commission by grabbing Jungle Cat, lifting him up in her arms, and running as far away from the rhino mutant as she could to get herself and her leonine mutant boyfriend to safety.

When Jungle Cat recovered, her looked up at Ambush. "That light," he managed to weakly say. "How did you do that?"

"No idea," Ambush panted, continuing to run and carry her boyfriend around.

At the sudden appearance of long sharp 'branches' extending through the air towards her and Jungle Cat, Ambush shrieked, managing to slip and land on her back over the course of her attempts at skidding to a stop, at which point the branches extended harmlessly over the two feline mutants, wriggling and snapping like whips. Clearly, Grizzly Girl had been planning to grab Jungle Cat and Ambush with her branch fingers and had been extending her fingers into position too quickly to change their course in time to still grab them when they both ended up ducking under her attack.

Her targets' unexpected evasion proved further detrimental to Grizzly Girl when a burst of Swamp Gator's acid breath, likely intended for Jungle Cat and Ambush, ended up instead engulfing segments of the ursine mutant's branch fingers instead. Grizzly Girl roared in pain as she hurriedly retracted the parts of her branch fingers that hadn't been melted down or detached from her as a result of the acid. Taking advantage of the two attackers' moment of distraction, Jungle Cat and Ambush hurriedly rolled to the side towards where the acid had come from, slid back onto their feet, and started running down that corridor, managing to avoid getting splashed by another burst of Swamp Gator's acid breath.

The crocodile mutant grumbled at the sight of his targets escaping and running down the corridor, and he hurriedly crawled across the ceiling he was positioned on to follow them, snarling and spewing acid their way whenever he could. At one point, he let a wide grin come on his scaly face at the sight of Jungle Cat seemingly skidding to a stop and halting. But then he paused, his white eyes narrowing in confusion when he noticed that, somehow without his noticing, Ambush had vanished. But then he tensed up in alarm at the feeling of something invisible grabbing his tail…before he was then just as abruptly yanked down from the ceiling and slammed down on the floor left and right, spun around through the air like a tetherball, and then sent flying right past Jungle Cat…at which point he then collided with what appeared to be a trio of humanoid wolves that looked exactly like Night Howler, sending the three lupine mutants collapsing to the floor like a set of bowling pins and bursting into shadowy mist like the phantoms they truly were. And no sooner had Swamp Gator finally skidded to a stop on the floor when the shadowy mist that the three false 'Night Howlers' had turned into soared through the air down another corridor as if to return to the original.

Ambush reverted from her invisibility mode after making it back to Jungle Cat's side. "You ok?"

"I am."

Jungle Cat nodded, and then pointed towards where the three Night Howler shadow clones had been. "But we'd better keep our eyes and ears open. The real Night Howler could be anywhere right now. Not to mention so could more clones…"

"Speak of the devil, and she will appear."

The two feline mutants tensed up, eyes widened and tails standing on end. Then they turned to look behind them just in time to see none other than the real Night Howler drop down onto the floor from a shadowy vortex that had just opened up in the ceiling, her white eyes blindingly bright, her teeth gritted in a vicious snarl, and her clawed finger nails already crackling with shadowy lightning.

"Any last words?"

. . . . .

In the basement arena, Tawaba, Mumbyo, and Nyota were already locked in furious combat against three of the unnerving white furred and red armored wildebeest hybrids, clashing their swords, and shield in Tawaba's case, against the vicious natural weapons of the hybrids. As of that moment, all three of the hybrids actively fighting against them had multiple wounds upon them, several of which were actually bleeding, yet were still standing and fighting as if they didn't feel a thing.

"What are these things?" Nyota asked herself, half disgusted and half unnerved by how little her opponent seemed to be effected by the vicious gashes she'd left on it with her sword.

"We are the ultrabeests," said the apparent leader of this group of hybrids, unnerving grin still on its furry face as it remained standing alongside its nine comrades that weren't actively fighting Tawaba and his children. "Brought into existence by the creator to serve as the elite honor guard for the one he created to serve as our overall herd leader, kept secret from even the creator's inner circle, and designed to be more than capable of serving this role when the time finally came for us to take it."

"I can imagine," Mumbyo grumbled dryly as he directed a withering glare at his grinning opponent, which was currently still standing and winding up for a swing of its right fist despite bleeding from severe gashes in its stomach, shoulders, under arms, and left leg. "These things can't even feel pain?!" Mumbyo thought to himself. "How are we supposed to defeat them?!" He had just enough time to think this latter question before he was forced to duck his head when his opponent finally swung its right fist towards his face.

Tawaba, meanwhile, was able to simultaneously listen to the lead ultrabeest's speech as well as remain locked in combat with his own opponent.

"The reason why we've kept ourselves hidden so long as a secret was because the creator explicitly wished for us to only come out of hiding when the planned leader was ready to be as much. And we were to only allow our existence to be made known to anyone other than the creator in the event of an absolute emergency. And at this point, it is clear that such a time has in fact come. After all, it is clear that you three will almost certainly kill the entire remainder of the herd up above us if we do not stop you here."

In that instant, the ultrabeest fighting Tawaba pounded its left foot against the chieftain king's shield in a powerful stomp kick, sending Tawaba stumbling backwards. The chieftain king was able to swiftly regain his balance without completely losing his footing and falling over but was still forced to hurriedly defend himself when his opponent abruptly barreled towards him as if about to try to ram its horned head against his stomach. Mumbyo and Nyota similarly found themselves forced to hurriedly defend themselves from an x-shaped slash and a snap of fanged teeth, respectively. All while the ultrabeest leader and its nine comrades that weren't already actively fighting smiled and laughed. It seemed quite clear that the tribal royal family would need some serious luck in this battle.

. . . . .

Dr. Amanda Rookwood, now very much free of her bonds and gag, briefly stood within the edges of the jungle, gaping in shock at the sight that lay before her. At that moment, she could see the main lab building in all its glory, but with smoke and fire rising up from within, the front door busted off its hinges and leaving the entrance gaping open, a massive hole blown into one of the concrete walls surrounding the building, and the dead body of the erumpent, which the two kasai-rex appeared to have been hungry enough to strip completely to its bones while also leaving its now detached horn lying around several feet to the left of it. Simply put, it was quite clear now that the raiders had already arrived and started their battle against the Wildebeest Society. Was there truly anything she could do now to help?

She reached into her lab coat's pockets and drew out her pistol and the jar of shamanistic combat powder that had been hidden inside her former 'cell' alongside the spear tip that had been provided for her to free herself with. In that instant, both weapons seemed hilariously ineffective in light of just what she had a feeling could very well currently be unfolding inside the lab.

But then she thought hard to herself about just how much effort she'd put in to get free and arrive back at the lab, how much she'd been hoping to be able to help in some way, and the tasks that she could yet still be capable of doing to provide assistance despite the fact that at least someone amongst the raiding party had almost certainly learned the hard way at this point about the information she'd forgotten about during her earlier interrogation. And in that instant, she clenched her fist around her pistol, a determined look on her face.

"No turning back now," she thought to herself as she started walking over towards the still intact gate built into the front concrete wall. After all, she had a feeling that anyone watching the cameras at this point would most likely be focusing on the gaping hole instead. "For my own sake," she thought to herself as she stopped at the door and prepared to access the retinal scanner so as to get the gate to open for her, "that of my family, and that of anyone else I could help that just happens to currently be in this building right now, I'm going in."

. . . . .

Beast Boy, now in lion form, crouched low towards the floor before then pouncing at his uncle, roaring in rage. Galtry, in tiger form, similarly lunged and roared at his nephew. The two big cats collided in midair, and started furiously wrestling, batting at each other with their paws, slicing each other with their claws, and biting each other's shoulders, and necks with their teeth. Eventually, Beast Boy managed to brush Galtry off of him and send him sprawling away, at which point he then turned into a gorilla, stood straight up on both feet, and slapped his palms across his chest before screeching in rage at his downed uncle. Galtry, snarling angrily at this development, turned into a grizzly bear, reared up on his own hind legs, and roared in fury at his nephew before he and Beast Boy both charged at each other once more.

When the olive-green ape and scarlet-red bear subsequently collided against each other over the course of this charge, they both started rapidly batting away at each other, with Beast Boy's fists pounding furiously into his uncle's face, neck, chest, and belly while Galtry's own front paws slammed painfully against his nephew's own face, shoulders, chest, and stomach. As it soon turned out, the sharp claws on the already strong front paws of Galtry's grizzly bear form ended up providing him with a slight edge, and so Beast Boy eventually turned into a rhino and abruptly charged at his uncle, who barely even had time to register the fact before he was first run over, and then slammed in the backside and sent flying like a pinata by a swing of his nephew's horn.

Galtry got back on his feet, still in grizzly bear form, and turned around to roar, only to pause and widen his eyes in surprise, mid-roar, at the sight of his nephew, still in rhino form, barreling straight towards him. Desperate to avoid getting pounded or gored, the red shapeshifter turned into an elephant and started charging towards his already charging nephew, lifting his trunk and trumpeting furiously in the process.

Beast Boy turned into a mouse right as he and his uncle were seconds away from crashing together, and the speed at which he'd been running before this transformation caused him to go flying through the air in time to land on his uncle's trunk, which he started using as a ramp to run across towards Galtry's head. But Galtry was smart enough to know what his nephew likely had in mind, and he turned into a reticulated python, sending both himself and his nephew falling to the floor. Galtry landed first, and promptly sent his head flying towards the still falling green mouse, jaws open and ready to swallow it. But Beast Boy was quick to realize what was going on, and he turned into a crocodile. As a result, the red python's fanged mouth chomped harmlessly against the side of the green crocodile's scaly body, and the crocodile itself landed with an immensely strong thud upon the center of the python's body.

Galtry reared his head and neck up, hissing in pain with his eyes closed, jaws agape, and forked tongue sticking in the air. But then he felt his nephew get off his body and heard him snarl, and he looked in his nephew's direction in time to see the olive-green crocodilian open its jaws and position itself as if about to try to snap them across the middle of his body! In a flash, he turned into a wolf and lunged out of the way in time to avoid getting bitten in half. No sooner had he thus escaped this fate when he turned to face Beast Boy, snarling and slavering with rage. His nephew raised his own head, eyes narrowed as an equally angry hollow snarling emanated from his own scaly jaws.

Realizing that Beast Boy would now likely still have the advantage in an extended fight between them in their current forms, Galtry turned into a hippo and bellowed at his nephew. Beast Boy snarled, turned into a polar bear, and roared at his uncle. The two charged each other once more, only for Beast Boy to suddenly realize that he'd potentially miscalculated as a result of finding himself using his polar bear form's front paws to hold his uncle's hippo form's jaws open as Galtry tried to snap them shut upon him. Deciding that discretion would be the better part of valor in this situation, he hurriedly shifted into a bald eagle and flew away just in time to avoid getting crushed between his uncle's jaws, shrieking as he flew down a nearby corridor. Galtry bellowed, half in rage and half in smug triumph, and turned into a vulture before taking to the air himself and flying after his nephew.

The resulting chase soon led to them entering a room that appeared for some reason to be containing a large number of massive, reinforced glass tanks filled with water. Beast Boy gave these a passing glance as he flew over them, but the superior sense of smell Galtry now had in his vulture form soon proved a major advantage, as it allowed him to immediately take notice of the fact that the water in the tanks just so happened to be salt water. And as a result, he soon found himself with an especially dastardly sounding idea.

In a flash, Galtry turned his back on his nephew mid-flight, turning into a great white shark in the process. The mighty tail Galtry gained in the process of this new transformation slammed hard against his nephew's side, sending the green eagle rocketing aside with a surprised shriek before it then landed into one of the tanks with a splash. Eager to avoid losing his new chance at successfully getting the drop on his nephew and killing him, Galtry jumped from the tank he'd landed in and making his way through each of the tanks to reach the one Beast Boy had landed in.

After what felt like an eternity of flailing in the water of the tank he'd landed in while still in his bald eagle form, Beast Boy managed to notice an ominously large shape moving towards him, and he looked in the object's direction in time for his eyes to widen at the sight of the blood red great white shark his uncle had turned into barreling straight towards him with its jaws open. With seconds to spare, he turned into a bottlenose dolphin and did a backflip, his tail flippers smacking right against his uncle's 'chin' and sending the shark staggering backwards and in circles just in time for the green dolphin to then send itself rocketing headfirst against his uncle's side, the tip of his nose ramming extra painfully against the gills on that area.

Galtry winced in discomfort as he was rapidly pushed ahead by his nephew's ramming, and then promptly winced in pain when he ended up getting slammed against the side of the tank he and Beast Boy were in. Desperate to regain his advantage, he turned into a giant pacific octopus, hurriedly starting to wrap his tentacles around the green dolphin; only for said dolphin to abruptly transform into an electric eel. The resulting electrical shock was enough to stun him long enough to let go of his nephew and briefly sink from the daze he ended up under.

His uncle once again out of commission for the moment, Beast Boy swam up to the water's surface away from the sinking red octopus his uncle was still in the shape of and jumped out, shifting into a pteranodon in mid-jump. With a half triumphant and half determined shriek, he started flying towards the still gaping open doorway to the room he and the tanks were in, eager to get away from his uncle and return to the vault containing the all-important cure. Especially since he could now feel the burning presence in his mind indicating the virus becoming considerably stronger than before.

Unfortunately, as he soon found out the hard way, his uncle was still far from finished. For right as he was seconds away from reaching the doorway and entering the corridor outside the tank room, he heard a hollow snarling and felt the wind displacement of a heavy creature from behind him, and he turned his head in time to shriek in surprise and fear at the sight of a massive blood red liopleurodon lunging through the air towards him, its jaws open, ready to devour him!

. . . . .

"Damn and blast," Constance Morales hissed as she rapidly threw knife after knife at her once again air born Tamaranean opponent, becoming angrier and angrier as said Tamaranean continuously blasted each and every knife either out of the air or straight to ash and dust with her star bolts. "Don't you ever run out of fuel?!"

"It appears you are making a mistake on my identity," Starfire said blankly as she blasted yet another round of knives from Morales into ash. "But I am not what you would call a car."

Morales snarled in rage and clenched her left fist while reaching for another round of knives, only for her eyes to widen and a loud gulp to leave her throat when she realized that she now had only five knives in total left on her. She mentally cursed. She'd gotten careless and was now at risk of running out of knives. She let go of the five knives she had left, leaving them in her pocket as she proceeded to instead draw her voltage whip back out. "Best save my knives," she thought to herself, both angry and grudgingly respectful towards the Tamaranean for turning out to be such an apparently good opponent. "Something tells me that this whip will be my only logically good choice of weapon against this girl from here on out."

Starfire immediately went on guard, preparing herself to unleash a blast at the sight of the voltage whip coming back out into play. Sure enough, immediately after reactivating it, the Latina started twirling it through the air in circles like a lasso. "Well if you're not going to make it easier for me by naturally running out of power, then clearly its high time I really stop holding back. Get ready E.T! Because as of now, the gloves are off!"

Immediately after yelling this, Morales lashed the whip towards Starfire, who hurriedly blasted it back with a star bolt. Undeterred, Morales continued lashing the voltage whip at Starfire again and again in rapid fashion, the Tamaranean likewise blasting it back again and again in equally swift fashion with her star bolts. As this rapid-fire duel continued to unfold, the two combatants found themselves slowly moving down the corridor towards a large chamber with a gaping open doorway. Eventually, Starfire ended up managing to float right through the doorway and into the chamber, at which point Constance suddenly lowered her whip and pressed a button on a wall device nearby the open doorway. Seconds later, a thick metal door lowered into place, sealing the chamber shut with Starfire inside!

Desperate to ensure that her current plan worked, Morales hurriedly pressed a button and turned a dial on the trigger device to its maximum capacity. The sound of hissing gas rapidly entering the chamber she'd now trapped Starfire in caused her to allow a wolfish grin to come onto her face. "Perfect," she thought to herself. "With enough gas now being pumped into that chamber to kill a dinosaur, that Area 51 reject is as good as…"

A sudden explosion interrupted the scientist as the door to the apparent gas chamber was abruptly blown off its hinges and sent rocketing at her, a burst of fire and smoke erupting out of the chamber from behind the dislodged door at the same time. The door plowed into Morales and sent her flying backwards. She landed on her back on the floor, the door sandwiching her against the floor and shielding her from the wave of fire that passed over her as a result of the explosion. Even after the gigantic wave of fire finally dissipated, she could still hear the seemingly distant sound of further explosions occurring within the building. She lifted the dislodged door and got back on her feet in time to see a now very angry looking Starfire floating towards her, eyes glowing solid green and a gigantic star bolt each encasing her fists.

"A very dirty trick," she said as she floated ominously closer and closer towards her Latina scientist opponent. "If it weren't for my natural Tamaranean capabilities, plus my ability to breath in a very different fashion compared to the people of Earth, I'd almost certainly be dead now." She pointed her star bolt encased fists towards the now very unnerved looking scientist, an unnerving glare on her face. "Shall we continue this duel?"

. . . . .

The sound of explosions seemingly coming from inside the walls of the building caused Robin and Dr. Lagrange to pause in their sword fight. "It would appear someone tried to use the gas chamber, only for someone to end up igniting the gas while it was still being released into the chamber," said Lagrange.

Robin had no time to respond before one explosion coming from within a seeming exhaust pipe directly above them caused the pipe to split in half, with the separated ends of both halves coming falling straight down towards the catwalk the two warriors were standing on. Eyes widened, the two combatants jumped backwards in time to avoid getting crushed by the pipe ends, only for the catwalk they were on to end up dislodged from its position and sent falling towards the floor.

Quick as a whip, Robin drew out his grappling gun, fired it at another catwalk a couple feet away and swung himself to safety, miraculously managing to avoid dropping his sword in the process. He had just straightened back up to his feet and turned around to face the area he'd been when he saw Lagrange, who had landed back on top of the falling catwalk was now running up it while it was in the midst of taking a diagonal position in mid-fall. And when the scientist reached the topmost end of the now diagonally positioned falling catwalk, he jumped off, lunging straight towards the same catwalk Robin was on, managing, miraculously without losing his grip on his sword, to grab onto the rail and climb aboard to join the boy wonder.

Having gotten himself to safety, Lagrange turned to face Robin, his serrated saber at the ready once more and a determined silent snarl on his face. The boy wonder nodded his head, a grudging look of respect on his masked face. "Not bad," he said. He extended his sword in the scientist's direction. "Shall we resume?"

Lagrange growled. "Gladly," he responded as he spun his sword in circles through the air before then abruptly charging at the teen caped crusader. But Robin had been expecting exactly that, and he was able to easily block the attempted blow to his head that followed.

. . . . .

Cyborg and Dr. Azimi continued their own duel in the technicians' station, seemingly oblivious to the muffled sound of the chain reaction Starfire had caused as they rammed their respective fists together in a vicious punching match.

"Fall," Azimi snarled as one of his titanium knuckle encased fists once again rammed into one of Cyborg's own metallic fists. "Damn you, fall!"

Cyborg, wincing slightly as his left fist once again crumpled somewhat from the impact of the titanium knuckle, only continued to duke it out. "Yo! Hate to break it to you man," Cyborg snarled. "But it's gonna take a lot more than you whining at me and throwing a bunch of punches at me to take me down."

The muffled explosions reached the interior of the roof above them, and several patches of ceiling fell down around them. The two strong fighters directed cursory glances at the destruction going on around and above them. "It appears we'll perhaps need to bring down the house to end this fight," Azimi whispered under his breath.

Cyborg managed to overhear this. "Read my mind." He activated his sonic cannon, Azimi already drawing his camera cannon back out and charging it up at the same time. "Let's get this over with."

"Agreed."

The two fired their respective blasts, the blue laser from Cyborg's sonic cannon and the red one from Dr. Azimi's camera cannon pushing against each other as they dueled for dominance.

. . . . .

Ambush and Jungle Cat rushed hurriedly through multiple corridors, desperately working to stay ahead of their four brainwashed fellow mutants as they worked to hopefully avoid attacking them long enough to come up with a proper plan of attack against them that would hopefully not result in any deaths or overly severe injuries.

Naturally, their four brainwashed friends were not making this easy. Swamp Gator was even now crawling rapidly across the ceiling while spewing out bursts of his acid breath attack their way whenever he could. Night Howler had taken the form of what appeared to be a wolf themed version of My Hero Academia's dark shadow and was soaring through the air close behind the two feline mutants, shadowy jaws gaping open and at the ready to snap upon them as it reached its clawed shadowy hands towards them. Rhinestone was stubbornly bulling his way down the corridors with his arms converted into 'mace mode' and his horns seemingly spinning like drills, the ground seeming to shake with each of his footsteps. And of course, Grizzly Girl was running closely alongside her boyfriend, roaring in rage as she sent both her fingernail branches and various summoned tree roots after the two feline mutants in a desperate attempt at tripping, restraining, or impaling them.

Eventually, Swamp Gator got smart enough to switch tactics. More specifically, he stopped aiming at the floor where the two feline mutants were running and instead spray his acid breath at the ceiling area a couple yards ahead of them, moving his head so that the acid cut a complete circle, causing a massive portion of the ceiling to collapse right towards where Jungle Cat and Ambush were about to go running through. The two feline mutants skidded to a halt inches away from where the ceiling portion ended up landing, hissing in surprise as they just barely stopped themselves in time.

Rhinestone eagerly pressed the moment of advantage, rushing forward with his drilling claws at the ready to gore the two feline mutants. But Ambush was quick to react, grabbing Jungle Cat by the hand and jumping into the air seconds before Rhinestone could successfully gore her, dragging her leonine boyfriend into the air with her. And as the rhino mutant zoomed through the now empty space where the two feline mutants had been standing, Ambush landed upon his back, using this positioning as a means to both propel herself and Jungle Cat away from him while also sending him sliding further forward off balance. Rhinestone had just enough time to bellow in surprise as he skidded along before eventually coming to a painful stop via a crash-landing flat on his face against the floor.

Grizzly girl roared in rage at the sight of this, causing her fingers on both hands to extend into long sharp branches. Jungle Cat and Ambush hurriedly ducked in time to avoid getting speared, the branches harmlessly extending above them. Then they were forced to grab the still extending branches and swing themselves upward in time to avoid ending up on the receiving end of a vicious lunging attack initiated by the still literally shadowy Night Howler. The living shadow reared up from its failed lunge, baring its shadowy claws and teeth and its purple eyes agleam with savagery. Jungle Cat, hurriedly taking advantage of this momentary lull between Night Howler's attacks, let out a burst of his roar at the ceiling above the shadowy wolf hybrid. While the resulting cave in of ceiling material was easily brushed aside by the shadow, the sudden burst of sunlight directly upon it was enough to cause it to howl in pain before dissipating back into Night Howler's solid natural form.

The sound of an angry reptilian snarling from Swamp Gator was enough to warn the two feline mutants that the crocodile mutant had not taken kindly to what had just happened to Night Howler, at which point Ambush hurriedly grabbed the downed Night Howler and held her in place directly in front of her and Jungle Cat. This caused Swamp Gator to growl in further rage due to this move now leaving him unable to spray his acid breath at them without risking melting down his girlfriend at the same time.

But this moment of advantage didn't last long, as Grizzly Girl grabbed Jungle Cat and Ambush by the necks with her branch fingers and yanked them backwards, causing them to let go of Night Howler in the process. The lupine mutant melted into shadowy energy to teleport to safety as the two feline mutants were crashed together upon their heads and dropped painfully to the corridor floor.

Jungle Cat had enough time to open his eyes afterward to see Grizzly Girl abruptly step to the side of the corridor before he then heard Rhinestone snorting smugly. Red eyes widening, Jungle Cat looked behind him in time to see the indeed smugly smirking Rhinestone jump into the air, his right fist raised and seemingly glowing. In that instant, Jungle Cat hurriedly grabbed the still dazed Ambush and rolled the both of them aside just in time to avoid getting gored by the line of immensely sharp crystalline stalagmites that abruptly erupted down the center of the corridor as a result of the almost earth-shaking three-point landing that Rhinestone subsequently engaged in.

The sight of the line of crystal spikes erupting from the floor area in front of her and Jungle Cat was enough to shock Ambush back to full awareness. "I'm awake," she shrieked, caught quite off guard by just how narrowly she'd avoided getting impaled thanks to Jungle Cat. The sound of a reptilian roaring coming from above her to the left caused her to look that way in time to see Swamp Gator hurtling towards her from where he'd initially been positioned upon the ceiling, jaws open and ready to snap at her.

Acting on reflex, Ambush grabbed the edges of Swamp Gator's jaws before he could snap them closed, swung him around, and sent him rocketing backward. By sheer luck on Ambush's part, Night Howler had just happened to materialize out of the shadows and into view right in the area Swamp Gator had been sent flying towards. As a result, the lupine mutant was sent flying as well and knocked on her back when her crocodilian mutant boyfriend slammed into her.

Meanwhile, Grizzly Girl roared and sent the branch fingers on her right hand rapidly extending towards Jungle Cat. The leonine mutant ducked just in time for the sharp ended 'branches' to slam into the crystalline chest of the once again charging Rhinestone, sending him flying backward as well. Eyes widened in surprise at accidentally banging her branch fingers against her own boyfriend, Grizzly Girl retracted the guilty branches, a concerned look on her face as she did so. "Winston?" She asked, clearly sounding concerned despite the fact that her boyfriend's currently being in crystal mode had successfully prevented him from getting accidentally stabbed to death the way she'd been intending for Jungle Cat. But then Jungle Cat straightened back up and let out a burst of his ultrasonic roar, sending her flying backwards in the opposite direction.

With all their attackers now momentarily out of commission, Jungle Cat and Ambush hurried over to a nearby side corridor that they'd noticed. And once they'd entered this corridor, it soon became obvious just how lucky they'd been in their timing when they heard what sounded like shadowy energy materializing into shape en masse behind them, followed by the sound of a large number of running feet behind them alongside mass wolf-like snarling. It was now clear that Night Howler had summoned another round of shadow energy clones of herself to go chasing after the two feline mutants.

"Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving," Jungle Cat growled, desperate to keep himself and Ambush ahead of the pack of shadow clones Night Howler had summoned and sent after them.

"I'm going as fast as I can," Ambush panted, trying as desperately as she could to continue mustering up the energy to keep running after the latest round of attacks.

Ambush and Jungle Cat had just enough time to reach another 'junction point' before they found all paths they could take blocked by squadrons of Night Howler shadow clones. The two feline mutants barely skidded to a stop in time to avoid colliding with any of the clones, which all tensed up into combat position and snarled, with a few of them even seeming to lick their chops.

Jungle Cat gritted his teeth and Ambush clenched her fists. "This isn't looking good," the latter snarled.

"You're telling me," Jungle Cat hissed.

At the sound of a chuckling coming from in front of them, as well as the distinctive noise made by the summoning of a shadowy portal, the two feline mutants looked ahead in time to see a large shadowy vortex materialize in front of them, the original Night Howler stepping out alongside Swamp Gator, Rhinestone, and Grizzly Girl. Night Howler smiled, her fang-like teeth making it look especially ominous alongside her solid glowing white eyes. "You've put up a good fight," she said. "I'll admit to that. But face it, you've lost."

"That's awfully presumptuous of you," Ambush growled, fists still clenched as her fangs gritted into a snarl. "Considering my boyfriend and I are currently still standing and able to fight."

"True enough," Night Howler admitted. "For now."

"Indeed," Swamp Gator hissed, a smug smirk on his own scaly face. "For sooner or later, you both will run out of energy and lose your ability to fight. And from there, the four of us will take you down as easily as brushing off a mosquito."

"Correct you are bud," Rhinestone stated, ramming his fists together with a confident grin on his horned crystalline face. "Master made it clear that these two were to be either killed or converted. But since they were to only be converted in the event that they surrender, then it is clear they must be killed. For what the master wants, the master gets."

"Got that right," said Grizzly Girl, a low chuckle escaping her jaws as she allowed Jungle Cat and Ambush to get a good look at the clawed fingernails on her left hand, which she was already raring and ready to extend into long sharp branches.

Jungle Cat growled. "Easy to say when you've got a bunch of duplicates around to fight us while you kickback and be lazy."

Night Howler only laughed. "It's not my fault you don't have the endurance to take them all out." She smirked. "After all, it certainly goes to show just how much you should fear my power."

"Is that so?" Jungle Cat snarled.

"Oh but of course. For you see, I have control over darkness. And fear of darkness is one of the most primal and ancient of fears that mankind have had since their earliest days of existence. And that is quite understandable, for even with the stars and moon present, night is always when darkness rules after the sun sets. And before light first came into existence, let alone before mankind or any other living thing came into existence, there was only darkness."

"Well if darkness is so powerful, then how come you don't allow yourself to use it to its full potential?"

At the sound of this, Ambush looked at her boyfriend as if he'd grown a second head, Night Howler glared at Jungle Cat, and the three other brainwashed mutants raised their eyebrows in confusion. "And what, may I ask, would make you say such a claim?" Night Howler snarled, clearly angry.

"Well think about it," said Jungle Cat. "What have you done with your power so far? Clone yourself? Fire a bunch of explosive orbs? Turn into a living shadow monster? Summon restraints?"

"I'd hardly call that something to sneeze at," Swamp Gator snarled.

Despite the situation, Ambush couldn't help but smile at this comment. "Even when brainwashed he's quick to defend her," she thought to herself.

"True," Jungle Cat admitted. "But think about it Claire, really think about it! If darkness is truly as powerful as it is, then why is it that you're the one amongst the four of you that has kept getting taken out of commission the most easily? I mean seriously! That shadowy monster you can turn into? Useless in combat as long as your opponent has a conveniently available means of introducing a brand-new sudden mass source of light!"

Night Howler narrowed her eyes. "Why you…"

"Those clones surrounding us right now?" Jungle Cat continued, a cat-like smirk of pride on his face. "Easily dispatched and turned to smoke by the slightest strong impact against them! Heck, I'm sure I could dispatch all of these with a single roar!"

"I'll just summon more!"

"Go right ahead! I'll just blast any reinforcements into smoke as well! And in the subsequent match of endurance that ensues, you'll run yourself into the ground plum tuckered out long before I even come close to losing my voice! And that's a fact!"

"You take that back you beast," Swamp Gator snarled, stomping his left foot forward and baring his teeth into a feral snarling while swinging his tail side to side in threatening fashion and coating his hands in acid.

"And you of all people should know how correct I am Owen," Jungle Cat continued, pointing his clawed finger at the crocodile mutant. "After all, you've been twice used unwittingly as a makeshift projectile that's all too easily rendered her temporarily out of commission over the course of this battle! Heck, you've even been used as a projectile to successfully dispatch three of her clones!"

Rhinestone and Grizzly Girl both winced upon hearing this, directing a mutual meaningful look towards the now very embarrassed looking crocodile mutant. "You're gonna need some ice for that burn," said Grizzly Girl.

"I hate to admit it," said Rhinestone. "But the beast does have a point there."

Swamp Gator hung his head, and Night Howler turned her now furious gaze on the rhino and bear mutants. "HOW DARE YOU!?" She howled. "WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?!"

"Face it Claire," said Jungle Cat. "Even before we got mutated and had those additional powers inside us activated, you were always the physically weakest of us. And even with your new powers, you still haven't yet proven yourself to be any stronger than you were before! And even crazier, you yourself still believe as much!"

"THAT'S NOT TRUE," Night Howler screamed, now even angrier than before as she turned her head to face Jungle Cat once more.

"Oh really?" Jungle Cat purred, now on a role while privately pleased that his current on the fly plan so far appeared to be working. "Then why have you been the easiest to temporarily put out of commission over the course of this battle? And better yet, why have you not even tried to adequately use your power to its full potential despite how powerful you claim to be?"

Night Howler clenched her fists, solid white eyes crackling with rage and her teeth gritted into a feral drooling snarl. Her three fellow brainwashed mutants could only stand awkwardly, uncertain as to what to think or do at that particular moment.

"Just think about it Claire! Really think about it," said Jungle Cat, making sure to really let his point come across to the lupine mutant. "If you're so powerful, then why have you limited yourself to only tossing orbs of darkness when you could just as easily send entire streams worth of shadowy flames at us? Why do you keep summoning clones to do work that you could easily take care of yourself? Why do you limit your shadow monster form to such a comparatively weak form instead of really cutting loose with it?"

"Kit Cat," Ambush hissed, sounding half irritated and half frightened. "What are you doing?"

"Why do you only use your portals and teleportation for the sake of retreats when they could make perfectly capable active weapons in combat? Why do you only use your shadowy lightning as an intimidation technique? And why do you not go the extra mile with your shadow restraints by using them like whips or tetherball strings?"

Night Howler snarled again, shadowy lightning tendrils forming around her fists.

"You can get as angry about it as you want," Jungle Cat said, keeping his finger pointed at Night Howler in the process. "But the simple truth is, as powerful as you may now claim to be, you're still the least threatening out of all six of us! There's so much you could do with your powers, yet you're still exactly as weak as you were before you even had them precisely because you limit yourself to the easy stuff and refuse to even consider all the techniques that could allow you to actually be strong! Seriously Claire, there are so many amazing things you could do with your powers, and you don't even bother to try! Talk about pathetic! Hell, if you're truly as powerful as you claim to be, I'm sure you could cast this entire corridor we're currently positioned at into a darkness so thick that it would take an especially powerful bright light to dispel it!"

As he said this last sentence, he directed a meaningful glance towards Ambush out of the corner of his eye. The tigress mutant briefly narrowed her eyes in confusion, but then they widened as she then figured out just what her boyfriend wanted her to do. She surreptitiously nodded her head, thankfully managing to avoid getting seen doing so by the now quite literally shaking with rage Night Howler and half dumbfounded and half angry Swamp Gator, Rhinestone, and Grizzly Girl.

Swamp Gator turned his head to face Night Howler. "Do not listen to that arrogant little fur brain," he hissed to his girlfriend in encouragement. "Unlike him, I actually have seen what you can do, and I know you are stronger than he dares to insinuate."

"Yeah," Rhinestone stated, a smug look now coming on his face. "Why don't you go ahead and humor this little menace? Make him eat his words?"

"Agreed," Grizzly Girl cooed, intertwining her branch-like fingers together menacingly with a wide grin on her face. "Put the little beast in his place."

Night Howler thought to herself, all while the other mutants in the area watched her intently. Then she nodded. "You know what? I think I will." She snapped her fingers, causing all the clones she'd had present in the area burst into shadowy mist and start forming a transparent swirling tornado-shaped vortex of energy around her. "You want me to show you how powerful I am thanks to my control of the dark?" Night Howler snarled, an arrogant wolf-like grin on her face as she clearly prepared to unleash what appeared to very likely be a quite powerful technique. "I'll go ahead and do exactly that!"

Immediately after she said this, she snapped her hands and arms forward, causing what looked like shadowy flames to engulf her hands before the transparent shadowy mist that had been surrounding her started to rapidly expand across the area and become gradually less and less transparent. As this happened, she and her three fellow brainwashed mutants had very smug and toothy grins on their faces, Ambush looked fairly nervous, and even Jungle Cat himself looked as if this current development was giving him a decent amount of pause.

"Ok," the lion mutant managed to say as he looked around at the now very dark area around him. "I'll admit, this is starting to look pretty scary."

"I was hoping you'd say that." Night Howler nodded, her prideful grin now looking even more so. "Because now I'll make it even scarier!" With a swish of her hands, she caused the aura of darkness around herself and the rest of the mutants to start becoming even thicker. "And scarier!" She caused the darkness to become even thicker. "And scarier!" The darkness continued to become thicker and more all-consuming, all while Night Howler giggled at how she was at last proving herself a credible threat in the eyes of the two mutants who weren't under a thrall. But she was completely blind to how her three compatriots were now starting to look very worried at just how dark the area around them was starting to become thanks to the lupine mutant's efforts at disproving Jungle Cat's earlier remarks. And the fact that they'd managed to already lose sight of Ambush and later managed to catch just the slightest glimpse of Jungle Cat suddenly letting a wide Cheshire Cat style grin come on his face before he too seemed to vanish into the increasingly thick darkness only made them feel even more wary. And before long, they started to find themselves on the verge of being unable to even see themselves, at which point their eyes widened in horror as they finally realized that they'd been played.

"Claire," Grizzly Girl whimpered, a nervous look on her face as she tentatively extended her right hand towards the still giggling wolf mutant's left shoulder. "That's enough! Please stop!"

"Claire stop!" Swamp Gator yelled, now looking and sounding immensely panicked at realizing just what was now likely at risk of happening. "That's too much! Too much!"

"It's a trap!" Rhinestone bellowed, for once sounding frightened. "Claire, turn it down! Turn it down! Before we…"

"Huh?" Night Howler asked, briefly turning her head in confusion to look behind her before her own eyes widened in horror at just how much she was now at risk of putting herself and her friends at just as much of a disadvantage as their opponents. "Oh fu…"

The darkness expanded to the point of engulfing all four of the brainwashed mutants, Night Howler's belated shutting off of the relentless expansion doing little to help as she and her compatriots all screamed in horror upon being engulfed and finding themselves completely blind in the all-consuming blackness of the shadowy energy around them.

"Dagnabbit!" Swamp Gator hissed, half angry and half frightened. "I should have seen this coming!" He hissed again, his voice sounding like a mixture between a sob and a snarl. "Now I can't see anything!"

"Neither can I!" Rhinestone bellowed, sounding more panicked than angry.

"Claire!" Grizzly Girl whimpered, openly weeping from sheer terror as she blindly felt her way through complete thin air with her hands. "Owen! Winston! Where are you?!"

"I need light!" Night Howler howled. "AGH! I CAN'T BELIEVE I JUST SAID THAT!"

"Wish granted."

The four brainwashed mutants had just enough time to widen their eyes in horror at the sound of Ambush's voice in the area coming from very close in front of them before a bright shroud of brilliant white light suddenly materialized in front of them, managing to briefly let them have a clear view of the otherwise completely invisible tigress mutant's silhouette before said shroud equally abruptly expanded into an even more gobsmackingly vast burst of light, managing to become seemingly even brighter in the process. Within seconds, all the darkness that Night Howler had summoned into the area was dispelled, and the four brainwashed mutants were sent staggering backwards, teeth gritted, eyes closed or similarly covered, and all of them hissing and wheezing in what appeared to be intense pain and discomfort from the impossibly bright light.

"Gah!" Night Howler screamed, her hands clenched tightly upon her head as black mist seemed to emit from her fur and body; almost as if the light were physically causing her pain. "It burns! It burns!"

"Argh! Now it's too bright!" Grizzly Girl growled as she continued blindly waving her hands through the air, but now with her eyes closed.

"Still can't see!" Rhinestone snorted, keeping his crystalline hands clapped over his already closed eyes in a desperate attempt to keep himself shielded from the painfully bright light.

"Make it stop! Make it stop!" Swamp Gator snarled, swinging his head left and right as he kept his eyes closed and hands positioned on his head very similarly to how Night Howler's own hands were positioned.

"NO!" Night Howler howled, now feeling even more pain and agony from the continued exposure to the mercilessly bright light, the mist steaming off of her body now starting to spew into being more rapidly and look more like smoke. She shook her head side to side violently and desperately tried to walk backwards to escape. "PLEASE SOMEBODY HELP! IT HURTS! PLEASE SOMEBODY HHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLPPPPPPP!"

"ROAR!"

At the same moment this roaring sound was heard, a gigantic tidal wave of noise waves utterly slammed into the four dazed and blinded mutants, all four of them having just enough time to reflexively open their eyes before they all went rocketing backwards, clear out of the massive expanse of light, and coming to a painfully crashing halt against a wall at the very end of the corridor.

For what felt like an eternity, the four mutants remained pinned by sheer impact inertia against the wall, grumbling and groaning from the pain. Then Swamp Gator, Rhinestone, and Grizzly Girl all gurgled, their eyes rolling to the backs of their heads, and then they fell from the wall and flat on their faces on the floor, completely out cold. Night Howler, however, remained up against the wall for a good while afterward, sniffling and whimpering with her eyes closed as small tears started to streak down her furry cheeks, still feeling the pain of both her impact as well as the agonizing burning sensation she'd been feeling while so mercilessly exposed to the full force of Ambush's impossibly bright burst of supernaturally powered light.

She was still positioned there and weeping through her closed eyes when said burst of light, at least 10 yards ahead of her, finally faded away and Ambush and Jungle Cat came walking up to her and the three unconscious other brainwashed mutants, wide eyed looks of surprise on their faces at the sight of her in her current state. Stunned and confused, Jungle Cat and Ambush came to a stop an arm's length away from the wolf mutant. Said mutant continued to quiver and whimper, her eyes remaining shut and keeping her blind from her earlier duo of opponents' presence in front of her.

Jungle Cat raised his eyebrow in confusion. "What on Earth?"

Ambush, however, noticed a couple details that her boyfriend didn't, and these details were enough to make her feel incredibly worried. The details in question were that Night Howler's already jet-black fur now looked considerably less soft and bristlier as if it had been severely burned and her cloths showed signs of slight ash formed upon them.

Heart in her mouth, Ambush tentatively started to extend her right finger towards Night Howler's right arm. "My power," she thought to herself. "Did I…?"

The tip of Ambush's finger very lightly touched Night Howler's right arm…

…and the wolf mutant HOWLED in agony.

"GAH! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! IT HURTS! IT HURTS!"

Ambush snapped her finger away, stumbling backward a few steps in wide eyed shock before falling down on her butt. Jungle Cat also briefly reared back in surprise at this development. But then Night Howler lowered her head, eyes still closed and leaking tears as the wolf mutant whimpered and sobbed, at which point the two feline mutants continued gaping at her, a concerned look on Jungle Cat's face and a half horrified and half despairing look on Ambush's.

"So…bright…," Night Howler whimpered, trembling and spasming with pain and fear. "Too bright…hurting…burning…please…make it stop…make it stop…I… …I don't…don't wanna…don't wanna die…" She groaned, slid off the wall to the point of being on her knees, and then face planted onto the floor.

Jungle Cat crouched onto his hands and knees, checking all four of the unconscious mutants for pulses. He sighed in relief when it turned out all four of them were indeed still alive. Even Night Howler still had a pulse, although hers was just the slightest bit slower than those of her three compatriots. "They're alive," he managed to say, directing a half relieved and half exhausted look on his face. "They're…alive…"

At this point, Ambush completely lost it, crumpling onto her knees before she then lifted up Night Howler's upper body, wrapped her arms around the unconscious and barely alive wolf mutant's abdomen, and laid her head on the lupine mutant's shoulder before she then started sobbing and weeping from a mixture of guilt over having very nearly killed her friend and frustration and despair at the circumstances that had forced her and Jungle Cat to so brutally fight against and very nearly kill their friends that they'd so desperately wanted to save.

Jungle Cat, meanwhile, remained on his own knees not too far away, hanging his head, sighing, and letting a single manly tear escape his right eye as he realized just what he'd done. He had not at all expected Ambush's newly discovered light burst attack to have such a devastating effect on their brainwashed friends, let alone be at risk of killing Night Howler. And now, as a direct result of this lack of knowledge and the borderline bullying form of tactics he'd used to trick Night Howler into leaving herself and her three fellow brainwashed mutants in ideal circumstances for maximum effect from Ambush's light burst had now left their four friends barely alive and his girlfriend sobbing her eyes out and apologizing to the unconscious Night Howler repeatedly. And as if to make matters worse, assuming that Dr. Morales had been telling the truth when she'd left them to deal with the four brainwashed mutants, they had no way of removing the collars forcing their friends to fight them.

"There's got to be a way to help them," Ambush whimpered, her voice just barely able to be understandable in her current sadness as she kept her head on Night Howler's shoulder and continued to cry. "There's…there's got to…" She burst into tears again.

Jungle Cat placed his hand comfortingly on his weeping girlfriend's shoulder, a look of guilt still on his own furry face as he rubbed his other hand through his mane. "We'll find a way," he said weakly in an effort to reassure Ambush and cheer her up. "We'll find a way…"

"Look no further."

Ambush and Jungle Cat tensed up, eyes widened at the sound of this unexpected, yet familiar, voice behind them. They turned their heads to look behind them. Sure enough, standing nearby with a determined look on her face was none other than Dr. Rookwood. The blonde scientist amongst Arronax's inner circle nodded her head. "There was something about Professor Chang's benefactor that I remembered that your shapeshifter friend would potentially have wanted to know right as the tribe princess finished restraining and gagging me after you guys left to go on the raid. I managed to find that spear tip you guys left for me and escape in time to drop by. But while I'm certain that the shapeshifter's probably already learned that information the hard way, I figured I might as well still see if I can do something to help. And clearly, it's an extra good thing I chose to come over judging by what that project I mentioned this morning that was transferred to here from the sister location has now turned out to be."

Jungle Cat looked to Ambush, who sniffled, gently lowered Night Howler back down to the floor, and crawled over towards the blonde Wildebeest Society scientist, a half hopeful and half still in tears look on her face. She reached the scientist, at which point she rose up onto her knees and clasped her hands together as if begging. "Can you really help them?" Ambush whimpered, her voice barely remaining even as she asked this question.

Jungle Cat looked intently at Dr. Rookwood, the beginnings of hope starting to flare up inside him at the thought of the kindly scientist perhaps indeed being able to help them get their friends free of Dr. Morales's mind control collars, and maybe even subsequently healed and back on their feet in time to help if they were lucky.

Sure enough, the scientist nodded. "The last thing I remember being mentioned within my earshot about this 'additional security measure' while I was still out of the loop on its exact nature was that it could only be shut down by either the boss's magic or the fingerprints of his four inner circle members. And last time I checked, I'm still technically one of those four."

"Then please," Ambush hissed, eyes on the verge of bursting into tears once again. "Please help them. I don't want to hurt them anymore! I don't want to hurt them anymore! I. Don't. Want. To. Hurt. Them. Any…" She completely broke down, wrapping her arms around Dr. Rookwood's legs, laying her head against the scientist's waist, and sobbing her eyes once more, half in melancholy over what she'd done not too long ago and half in relief that there was now finally a way to truly save their lost friends.

The scientist placed her hands comfortingly on both of the weeping blonde tigress mutant's shoulders, nodding her head with a look of motherly warmth on her face. "Have no fear child," she said. "I'll help you take care of them. I give you my word." She looked to Jungle Cat, gesturing with her finger towards the four still unconscious brainwashed 'Project Menagerie' subjects. "Bring them over," she said, a firm, but kind, tone to her voice. "I've allowed enough kids to suffer because of me. And right now, it's really high time I help allow the suffering to end for as many of those kids as possible that I can still save."

. . . . .

Back in the arena in the building's basement, the tribe's royal family were still viciously fighting with all their might against the ultrabeests. Or more specifically, they were still fighting with all their might against the three that were currently actively attacking them while the remaining ten continued to stand idly by the arena entrance that they'd used and watch their increasingly bloodied and bruised compatriots do battle with the increasingly exhausted and battle weary royals.

"You should give up now and let death come swiftly to you while you still can," the leader of the ultrabeests stated in its irksomely smug deep voice, an arrogant grin on its pale white face and its yellow eyes agleam. "After all, your deaths are inevitable in this battle, so you might as well make it easier for yourselves."

"You clearly do not know anything about the conviction of a true chieftain then," Tawaba grunted, still locked in combat with his opponent. "For a true chieftain of my tribe never gives up in active combat."

"If you'd rather die the long way, then so be it," the ultrabeest leader snorted, a seemingly even more gleeful look now on its face. "After all, a longer battle means more entertainment."

"Yeah!" The nine other ultrabeests standing with the leader yelled heartily in unison. The three ultrabeests actively fighting, meanwhile, hissed and chuckled maniacally while still actively attacking. Mumbyo's opponent, in particular, couldn't seem to contain its glee as it began to become increasingly swift and vicious in its attempts at swinging its clawed hands at the young man.

Mumbyo growled, gritting his teeth and keeping his hands tight around the handle of his sword as he furiously worked to defend himself from the creature's furious blows. At the same time, he directed a brief annoyed glance at the various wounds he'd already inflicted upon the monster, bitterly noting once more than just a single one of them would have already long brought down the creature if it hadn't had such an insane pain tolerance.

Then he thought to himself. "It has high tolerance for pain," he thought to himself. He took another close look at the ultrabeest he was fighting and managed to take note of how he hadn't cut it anywhere near its heart. "But does that necessarily mean it's unkillable?" He was starting to get an idea on a way to defeat his opponent.

The chance to put this idea to the test came very soon afterward when the creature stepped back, lifting both fists in the air as if preparing to slam them down on Mumbyo's head. In that instant, Mumbyo reacted swiftly, jabbing his sword straight into the area where he was certain the ultrabeest's heart would be located. The tip of the blade went clean through to the point of bursting out of the creature's back. Feeling no pain from this, the creature began to lean forward for the sake of its planned blow, allowing its body to ride down the blade in the process. But Mumbyo was smart, and he proceeded to use the beast's own forward leaning momentum against it so as to lift it and his sword skyward. From there, he worked with all his might to continue holding the sword skyward as the now very angry ultrabeest thrashed and flailed in a futile attempt to still strike him from its current position.

For what felt like an eternity, all the others present in the arena gaped at the scene, Tawaba, Nyota, and their respective opponents briefly halting their own battles as they observed. Mumbyo's ultrabeest opponent bellowed in rage, snapping its teeth, swinging its horned head, and flailing its clawed hands and hoofed feet uselessly as it tried desperately to strike at Mumbyo, who stood his ground and continued working with all his might to hold the monstrous creature skyward on his sword as high as possible. Eventually, the ultrabeest started to slow in its movements, its breathing becoming increasingly haggard and infrequent before it finally went still.

No sooner had the ultrabeest finally gone limp and died when Mumbyo finally lost his footing. With a slip, he landed on his back, the entire dead ultrabeest landing upon him and leaving him pinned to the arena floor with only his head and feet poking out from under the corpse. As Tawaba, Nyota, and the ultrabeests continued to watch, Mumbyo seemed to have trouble getting himself out from under the dead ultrabeest. He grunted and groaned as he worked laboriously to try to get the large dead creature off of him, emphasis on 'try'. "Good grief, this thing is heavy," he hissed.

In that instant, the ultrabeest that had been battling Nyota bellowed, a maniacal look in its eyes as it gazed towards the out of commission Mumbyo. It hissed with bloodthirsty joy, its fanged and tusked jaws gaping open and drooling, its claws at the ready, and its yellow eyes agleam with evil joy. But Nyota had been quick to react immediately after her opponent broke off away from her to go after her brother, and she vaulted over the charging ultrabeest in time to land right in between it and her brother. From there, positioned inches away from where her brother was positioned, she turned around and jabbed her sword towards the monster. By sheer luck, her blade went right into the charging ultrabeest's gaping mouth, the sharp tip going out through the back of its head and causing the helmet it was wearing to dangle upon the very end of said tip.

The ultrabeest jerked to a stop, howling with its eyes closed in what sounded, much to the shock of the three tribal warriors and apparent horror of the other ultrabeests, like a cry of pain. Nyota stood her ground, keeping her sword in its current position even as her opponent howled and screamed in clear agony while futilely trying to pull itself free. Only when the creature had started to utter its last breaths did it finally wrench itself free of the blade, managing in the process to dislodge one of its tusks, which in turn ended up landing point first into Nyota's ankle.

Nyota shrieked from the pain of this unexpected stabbing, dropping her sword onto the arena floor as she fell on her backside near the dead ultrabeest already lying upon her brother. The ultrabeest that she herself had killed landed on its back, dead before impact. Hissing in pain, Nyota reflexively placed her hands upon her stabbed ankle and the fang still positioned there, eyes clenched shut and teeth gritted.

All the ultrabeests gaped at the scene, seemingly legitimately stunned that at this turn of events. Tawaba, however, found himself taking careful note of several details even as he himself continued to gape at the now very much dead ultrabeest that his daughter had stabbed in the mouth. Specifically, he took note of both how the ultrabeest that his daughter had now successfully killed had seemingly felt pain for once at the moment of its fatal injury, and how all the ultrabeests were very heavily armored around their heads and necks compared to the rest of their bodies. "Their heads," he thought to himself. "Those must be the only places in which they can feel pain."

The sound of a bloodthirsty bellowing drew his attention out of his thoughts, and he looked in the direction of the noise to see that the ultrabeest he himself had been fighting was now starting to charge straight towards both of his incapacitated children. In that instant, Tawaba reacted almost instantaneously. "You will not harm them," he thought furiously to himself as he rushed towards the charging ultrabeest from behind, eventually jumping in the air and leaping towards it right as it was inches away from reaching the now horrified Nyota and Mumbyo. Already he knew exactly what he was going to do.

"HEY!" He roared as he lunged through the air, his sword drawn back and at the ready to slice. The ultrabeest jerked to a halt and started turning its head to look behind it. But in the process, it allowed the base of its neck to become exposed and no longer protected by its armor. And just like that, its fate was sealed as Tawaba's mighty sword sliced clean through, beheading the monster.

Tawaba landed masterfully on both feet between his incapacitated son and daughter and the now halted and wide-eyed monster. Then he turned around, still in battle ready position, just in time for the still wide-eyed monster's head to slide off its body and land on the arena floor, the now headless body crumpling to the floor as well seconds later. Tawaba gazed intently at this, breathing heavily from both exhaustion and triumph. Then he looked up, his children following his gaze, and they stared intently at the ten remaining ultrabeests, all of which were gaping silently their way.

Then the eyes of all ten of the remaining monsters narrowed, with all but the apparent leader snarling angrily. "I will admit," said the leader. "You've done a lot better against us than I expected." He rammed his fists together. "Clearly, it is now high time we stepped up our game." His nine remaining underlings snorted in agreement, clenching their own fists and baring their fangs similarly to their leader. And then, in a sight that made Tawaba, Nyota, and Mumbyo's hearts sink, all ten of the remaining ultrabeests started slowly stomping their way towards them at once.

. . . . .

"I summon the power of Msitara!" N'jobu roared, his staff glowing with rainbow energy. At that moment, he and the six warriors that served as Tawaba's inner tribal council were furiously battling against the various Chang goons, Wildebeest Society underlings, and wildebeest hybrid soldiers that dared try to challenge them in the corridor where they were currently positioned, and the shaman had just now channeled his shamanistic powers to summon vicarious aid from the tribe's forest goddess. And immediately after he'd made his call upon Msitara's power, he slammed his staff on the ground, bottom end first.

With a burst of rainbow light, a rainbow aura shaped like a leopard, Msitara's sacred animal, appeared in the air between the shaman and his current opponents. The aura turned its head towards the large squadron of wildebeest hybrids that were currently daring to challenge the shaman, all of which were now backing away in fright, narrowed its eyes, and roared; at which point all of the hybrids directly in front of it found themselves getting tangled up in thick tree roots that eventually converged together to the point of transforming the luckless mooks into small trees. The leopard aura faded away immediately afterward.

The sound of bellowing and thunderous footsteps coming from behind him caused the shaman to turn his head in time to see another large squadron of wildebeest hybrids charging their way towards him. He spun his staff clockwise in the air, now having it encased with rings of orange light. "Hear me Hofukara," he yelled, now invoking the power of the tribe's fear goddess. "For I need your aid!" And with another slam of his staff, a large orange crocodile-shaped aura formed in the air between him and the incoming hybrids, hissing and snarling as it directed its cruel gaze their way. And no sooner was the entire charging squadron of hybrids caught in the light of the aura beast's gaze when they all literally jolted to a halt, wide eyed and literally paralyzed with terror.

With the hybrids now incapacitated in this manner, the crocodile aura vanished into thin air; at which point N'jobu lifted his staff once more, which was now glowing with an unnerving blood red aura. "Now Mashindano," he growled, now wishing to channel the power of the tribe's war god. "I bid you to strike my enemies down!" With the slam of his staff that followed, a blood red rhino-shaped aura took form in the area that had been previously occupied by the fearsome crocodile aura, snorted, pawed its left front foot, and then violently swung its horned head in various directions while bellowing and snorting with rage. And with each slash of the aura's horn, brutal gashes appeared upon the bodies of the paralyzed hybrids as if they were being sliced at by an invisible blade. The hybrids could only bellow in agony as they were mercilessly slaughtered where they stood.

At the same time that N'jobu was laying waste to the wildebeest hybrids, the six warriors that served as Tawaba's governing councilmen were viciously doing battle against their own opponents. Two of them fought with swords, one with a heavy club, one with a large ax, one with a bow and arrows, and the final with a long thick war spear. And naturally, they were all indiscriminately slicing up, shooting, jabbing, chopping up, and smashing the hybrids, while also making extra certain to always use their shields to knock out any and all human opponents that came their way.

At one point, one of the hybrids that ended up doing battle with the spear man got lucky, managing to break the spear in two. The hybrids quickly pressed their advantage, picking the now weaponless man up and throwing him clean through the door to a nearby room. Unfortunately for them, this action soon quite effectively cancelled out their earlier disarming him by virtue of the room in question turning out to be a weapons chamber. And they found this out the painful way when all seven of them were stabbed through their hearts in a row at once by a metallic techno spear that the man grabbed that turned out to alternately function as a grappling hook. And before he left, he managed to also notice what appeared to be both an electronic quadruple bladed ax and a quiver of specially designed electronic arrows that he realized could probably be useful for the archer and axman amongst his five fellow councilmen.

N'jobu meanwhile, continued laying waste to the hybrids even now still coming after him with his shamanistic powers. "It is said that the mind can be one's greatest weapon," he said as he began to channel the power of the tribe's wisdom goddess, his staff now glowing with an ethereal pink energy, all while he had a squadron of hybrids charging towards him from all four corridors surrounding him. "Allow these beasts Busari, to know firsthand the tremendous power of your own mind." He slammed the bottom end of the staff on the floor, at which point a gigantic ostrich shaped aura of the same ethereal mind energy that the staff had been glowing with to take shape directly above him. With a shriek and single mighty flap of its wings, the aura sent a web of pink energy tendrils bursting in all directions. The hybrids all which jolted in surprise as the tendrils of mind energy pierced their heads straight to their brains. From there, the hybrids could only grunt and wheeze in discomfort as their own comparatively paltry minds were completely overwhelmed by the flood of impossibly strong willpower that suddenly began to erupt within their brains. And within moments, the power proved too much for them to handle, and they all lost consciousness, at which point they all crumpled to the floor like sacks of potatoes once N'jobu had withdrawn the mind energy tendrils and the ostrich aura had dissipated.

A comparatively smaller squadron of hybrids soon attempted to charge at him from the directly in front of him, seemingly paying no heed to their unconscious brethren as they proceeded to seemingly trample them underfoot in their rush. N'jobu pointed his staff at them, the long wooden pole now starting to become enshrouded with a noxious looking green mist as the shaman began to channel the power of the tribe's deity of poison and healing. "I beseech you Ugonjwara," he hissed, his eyes narrowed in concentration, "to unleash your wrath now upon these vermin."

No sooner had the shaman said all this when a giraffe-sized aura of poisonous gas shaped like a gaboon viper took shape directly in front of the shaman, hissed at the charging hybrids, and then sent a gigantic stream of poisonous gas spewing from its mouth. The hybrids had no time to stop or dodge, and thus were engulfed by the gas. By the time the gas dissipated, and the aura vanished, the latest round of luckless hybrids attempting to attack N'jobu had all suffocated to death from the noxious vapors.

No sooner had this shamanistic spell ended when the six councilmen finally arrived in the same area as N'jobu, all of them looking slightly roughed up, but not so much as to be unable to fight. The man with the ax took a good long look at all the dead, unconscious, or transmogrified into trees hybrids positioned around the shaman, and then back at said shaman. "I'm guessing everything is alright here?"

"Aye," said N'jobu, nodding his head up and down in the affirmative. "There was a lot of enemies I had to take on, and I highly doubt I can channel too much more spiritual energy without needing some serious rest in the near future, but I'm still standing."

"We should probably see if any of the others need any help now that we're done," said the archer amongst the group.

"Agreed," said one of the swordsmen.

"A good idea," said N'jobu. He grabbed onto a talisman around his neck, lifting it up so he could get a good look at it. The gemstone the talisman consisted of was carved into what appeared to be the shape of an eye. "Eye of Bahati," he said, now wishing to invoke the power of the tribe's trickster god. "Allow me to witness my allies so that I may know that they are safe." The talisman glowed with golden energy, followed by N'jobu's own eyes glowing with a similar color. After a few minutes, he nodded his head, golden glow still in his eyes. "So far, all our allies are handling themselves well…"

His eyes then widened in horror, all while still glowing. "Except for Tawaba. He and his children need help. And quick!" Immediately after he said this, the charm wore off, and his eyes resumed their normal color.

In a flash, the six councilmen tensed up and readied their weapons.

"Our chieftain needs help you say?" Said the man with a club.

"Then we're his men," growled one of the two swordsmen.

"Aye," N'jobu agreed. He summoned a glowing image of the eye of Bahati upon his staff. "My friend is in grave danger," he stated. "Grant us swift passage to him Bahati, so that I may aid him." The eye image burst into golden dust, which then coalesced into a gorilla sized aura of golden light shaped like a baboon, which then clasped its hands together before just as swiftly pulling them apart, causing a glowing golden portal to take shape between it and the seven warriors. No sooner had the portal fully opened when N'jobu and the six councilmen leaped through, eager to save their king and his children, the shaman already preparing yet another spell to unleash upon arrival at wherever the summoned portal was about to take them.

. . . . .

Meanwhile, in the pocket dimension that Juris had transported himself and Raven to, the two former Azarath dwellers were engaged in what could only be described as a rather vicious 'wizard's duel'. At that particular moment, Juris was sending mighty jets of flame from his hands towards Raven while the half demoness viciously worked to defend herself with bursts of shadowy energy.

"Why won't you die?!" Juris howled, his blue eyes blazing with hate as he fired yet another wave of flames at the half demoness, only for said half demoness to once again dodge.

"Do you want the short answer?" Raven growled, her teeth sharpened into fangs and her now four eyes glowing solid red. "Or the long one?" Juris responded by letting out an incoherent howl of rage before then shooting out an even bigger wave of fire towards Raven. This attack, naturally, proved no more effective than the previous one; for this time, Raven simply summoned an entire forcefield around herself instead of attempting to levitate or teleport herself out of the way.

The sorceress was very quick to react once this wave of fire had finally gone out, dismissing her shield and swiftly yelling out her mantra. "Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos!" With a crackling noise, a bolt of black shadowy lightning burst from the air and knocked the disgraced monk backwards. Juris hadn't even landed yet before the sorceress started summoning a large volley's worth of bowling ball sized orbs of shadowy energy. And by the time Juris finally got to his feet, this volley had already started getting sent hurtling towards him.

The disgraced monk cursed and summoned a forcefield of white light just in time to successfully shield himself from the rapid onslaught of shadowy orbs. When the volley came to what appeared to be a lull, Juris dismissed his forcefield, only to then curse at the sight of one of the 12 columns rocketing rapidly towards him while encased in shadowy energy. With the makeshift projectile already moving too fast for him to summon another shield in time, he resorted to blasting it off course with a burst of lightning.

Before long, the ginger haired former monk turned Wildebeest Society leader found himself continuously firing off bursts of lightning and flames in order to adequately defend himself when Raven proceeded to use all 12 of the columns as makeshift projectiles and bludgeons against him. It was only by sheer luck that he was able to successfully avoid getting hit by any of the columns over the course of this vicious onslaught. By the time he'd finally managed to reduce all the columns to dust, there was just enough of a lull in the fight for him to successfully fire off a bolt of lightning towards Raven, which struck her in the chest and sent her flying backward.

With considerable effort, Raven managed to get back on her feet, groaning and hissing from the pain of the electrical shock against her. She had to admit, this battle was certainly proving quite difficult.

"I have to hand it to you Gem," said Juris as he watched her get back on her feet, using a minor healing spell on himself in the process. "You've proven yourself a considerably tougher opponent against me than I expected. And I was already expecting you to be difficult to kill." The sorceress snarled, her eyes back in their violet human-like form instead of their crimson red demonic form.

"How is he even still standing?" She thought to herself. "Or able to continue casting so much magic? He's not a born mage, so that amulet should have had its energy depleted by now and unable to allow him to use any more spells at this point for at least an hour. Hell, he should have run out in the middle of that onslaught I just tried to subject him to."

"I will admit that I'm lucky to still be standing."

Juris nodded his head, a look of grudging respect on his face. "In fact, if this were going on with me still in my original body, I would no doubt have run out of energy and been reduced to a bloody mess by now. But fortunately, in my current circumstances, I have an advantage I wouldn't have had in my original body."

He let a grin come on his face, clearly feeling very proud to get the chance to say what he now wished to say. "For you see, even though the man whose body I'm now possessing has had his mind completely absorbed into my own and effectively been killed, his soul remains trapped inside this body so long as I myself stay inside it. And with his soul still trapped in his body while I use it, his vitality is mixed with my own, allowing me to have it symbiotically bound to the energy of my amulet in a continuous circle of energy exchange. Thus, as long as I continue to maintain control over the amulet, I'll be able to continue using magic long after most magic users who wield the same kind of magic as I would have either succumbed to excessive channeling of their life force or exhausted the natural magical energy present in their magical items."

Raven narrowed her eyes upon hearing this. "This could be problematic," she thought to herself. If what he claimed was indeed true, then he'd inevitably outlast her if the battle continued to go on long enough for her to get exhausted. Then she thought carefully over one particular comment he'd made in his recent words, and then directed a surreptitious glance at the amulet around the disgraced monk's neck. "I wonder…"

"But even so," Juris then stated. "Considering how I could very well get careless and make a costly mistake of I let this battle continue to get drawn out, especially since you are now arguably proving even tougher than I was already expecting you to be, it is probably best that I go ahead and make this quick."

In a flash, Raven tensed up, already preparing herself for another attack. "Azarath, Metrion, Zin…"

With a snap of Juris's fingers, a large glowing orange rune materialized in the air in front of Raven's face. The rune in question looked somewhat like a stylized tongue with a pharaoh style crook and flail drawn in an x-shape across it. And at the same time the rune materialized in front of Raven, a flash of orange light suddenly appeared over her mouth. And by the time this light and the rune had vanished, an invisible force had suddenly taken hold of her mouth and was now holding it shut! "HHHMMMPPPHHH!" Raven shrieked, reflexively reaching up towards her mouth in surprise, caught completely off guard by the unexpected invisible force that was now holding her mouth shut and effectively gagging her.

"An Azarathian silencing rune," Juris explained, smug wolf-like grin still on his face as he gazed at the surprised half demoness. "But one specially designed and focused on explicitly silencing a person instead of preventing people from hearing any noise coming from a specific area. And it's entirely likely that, if I'd known in advance that you would turn out to be as tough as you've now proven yourself to be, shutting you up with that rune would have probably been the very first thing I did at the very start of this duel."

Completely without warning, he summoned a whip of white light and lashed it towards Raven. The brilliant white lash very swiftly coiled tightly around her abdomen, pinning her arms to her sides. "MMMPPPHHH?!" Raven shrieked as she found herself so suddenly restrained. Then she was equally abruptly yanked towards Juris when he rapidly pulled it back. "GGGNNNGGG!" She screamed as this happened, only coming to a stop when she suddenly found Juris literally right in front of her while having his left hand clasped around her throat and holding her up above the ground while simultaneously dismissing his 'light whip' and drawing out his broadsword so fast as to seemingly be causing it to appear from out of thin air.

"Hhhrrrgggmmm, wwwrrrggghhh," Raven gurgled, eyes closed and mouth straining against the magic keeping it shut as she coughed and choked from Juris's tight grip around her throat, her feet uselessly kicking and flailing above the ground.

Juris chuckled. "You sound so pathetic now. But nonetheless, I suppose that, paradoxically enough, I'll now be ending your misery just as much as I'll be ending a large amount of such for Azarath and the rest of the universe." He drew his sword back, ready to thrust it straight through Raven's heart. "Any last words?"

Raven's violet eyes snapped open, seemingly dazzling with fright and horror as she realized just how close she was to legitimately dying, and almost a full 9 months after she'd been resurrected from a considerably more gruesome death. She hurriedly wracked her brain. There had to be something she could do! But then she noticed just how close she was in proximity to her would-be killer, particularly in regard to the amulet around his neck. In that instant, her eyes narrowed into a vicious glare. She knew exactly what to do, and also just what she would say in response to Juris's recent question.

"Uh'v gggttt yyyrrr hhmmhhllhhtt," she grunted, her words muffled by the invisible force sealing her mouth.

Juris raised his eyebrow, clearly confused. "What did you say?"

"Uh'v gggttt yyyrrr hhmmhhllhhtt," Raven grunted, her eyes now blazing with irritation over her invisible gag.

Juris sighed. "I suppose I should have expected this when I asked if you had any last words." He shook his head side to side. "Alright, I suppose it won't hurt to let you have your voice back for one last minute or so." He sheathed his sword and snapped his fingers, causing the very same rune that had just been used to gag Raven briefly materializing in front of her face again before then once again disappearing, the invisible force keeping her mouth shut vanishing alongside it. She coughed and gasped reflexively the instant her mouth finally burst open. Once she was finished, she very abruptly looked Juris right in the eyes. "I've got your amulet."

The disgraced monk had just enough time to widen his eyes in confusion before the half demoness very abruptly reached up and snatched the amulet off of his neck, snapping the cord that had kept it in place. He barely even had time to notice this before he was suddenly blasted back and away from the sorceress by a burst of shadowy lightning fired from her right hand, the sorceress herself levitating even further away from him the instant his hand was no longer around her throat.

Desperate to get his amulet back, Juris hurriedly got back to his feet, only for his eyes to widen again in horror at the sight of Raven very ominously lifting the amulet skyward. "Stop!" The sorceress threw the amulet down to the ground, shattering it. "NO!"

The sound of what appeared to be thunder boomed in the sky around the two combatants, and cracks appeared in the 'walls' of the pocket dimension with solid white light shining out of them. Immediately realizing what this meant, Raven hurriedly tried to summon a shadowy portal, realizing how unpleasant things could get if the pocket dimension, now apparently on the verge of complete destruction, were to evaporate from existence while she herself was still in it. "Azarath, Metrion…"

Her eyes widened when she happened to catch sight of Juris unexpectedly drawing out a revolver from his belt and fire a shot towards her. She had only just barely enough time to summon a force field in time for the bullet to be harmlessly deflected. But it was at that exact same moment that an explosion of white light suddenly erupted from the center of the rapidly deteriorating pocket dimension, engulfing the entire area and sending both the disgraced monk and the half demoness rocketing backward through the veil in opposite directions.

. . . . .

Tawaba stood tall and firm in front of both of his incapacitated children, his sword and shield raised and ready, as he watched the ten remaining ultrabeests steadily approach him. The creatures seemed very much not in the mood to mess around, their fists clenched, yellow eyes narrowed, and their claws, fangs, and horns seemingly agleam in the light of the ceiling lamps as they approached.

"You've done well," said the lead ultrabeest as he and his remaining ten cohorts slowly made their way over to the tribal chieftain king and his incapacitated son and daughter. "Better than we expected. Especially since you have managed to figure out the secret of just where we are still capable of feeling pain. But I dare you now to try to kill all of us with that knowledge before at least one of us manages to take you down."

"Go ahead and try," Tawaba growled, doing everything he could to avoid letting himself sound as tired as he felt. "I just might surprise you…again."

Despite himself, the lead ultrabeest let out a low chuckle, seemingly still maintaining a grudging respect for Tawaba despite his anger. "We'll see how proud you are once we're done with you." He pointed his clawed finger at the seemingly doomed tribal royal family. "Enough talk! We attack now!"

As if in direct response to the lead ultrabeest's shout, a vortex of glowing golden light abruptly materialized in between the monsters and the tribal royals, with none other than N'jobu and the six councilmen lunging out of it and landing right in front of the surprised ultrabeests. The shaman pointed his staff at the creatures, the long wooden pole seemingly cocooned in tendrils of wind. "Back away foul beasts!" N'jobu roared. "The great god Hewaraka commands it!"

Almost immediately after the shaman said this, what appeared to be an elephant-sized zebra made entirely out of wind burst into existence directly in front of the staff's tip and charged towards the ultrabeests, a gigantic gust of hurricane force winds trailing along behind it. This attack burst right across the ultrabeests, sending them rocketing backward before all coming to a crashing halt in unison against the walls directly on either side of the entrance in which they'd first come into the arena.

The monsters didn't even have time to get up after crumpling to the floor before N'jobu started channeling another spell, his staff now enshrouded in what looked like thick brown dust. "Behold the wrath of the great goddess Duniana!" He slammed the staff's bottom end down against the arena floor. The ground started to shake, and a tall giraffe made out of dust and stone rose from the cracking floor. Upon fully rising out of the ground, the giraffe aura reared its neck backwards, mouth opening up and revealing a vivid green glow, which it then spat out as a large green spark that exploded directly above the ultrabeests, sending a veritable avalanche worth of boulders raining down upon them. The creatures could only shriek in surprise as they were all buried under the stones, the giraffe aura bursting out of existence the instant all ten of the monsters were completely covered.

With the ultrabeests now out of commission, N'jobu and the councilmen got straight to work on helping their leader and his children, with the councilmen working together to get Mumbyo out from under the dead ultrabeest he'd killed and extract the displaced fang from Nyota's ankle before N'jobu then used a shamanistic healing spell to restore energy to all three of the royals while also preventing Nyota's wound from experiencing further bleeding. "You'll have to keep weight off your ankle for a while," the shaman explained once the aura of Ugonjwara had faded away. "But you'll at least now have the chance to be able to use that foot at all in the future."

"I suppose that's fair," Nyota stated. She nodded her head. "I suppose, in a way, that we can consider this karma against me."

"Indeed," N'jobu agreed, a firm look on his face. "After all, how can we not be certain that those beasts we've just saved you from aren't what our scientist friend had wanted to mention before you left to join us?"

Nyota nodded bitterly, silently accepting the criticism. The shaman had similarly criticized her impulsively choosing to deny Dr. Rookwood the chance at telling that one last minute bit of knowledge in favor of not keeping the raiding party waiting for the sake of knowledge on something that she'd overconfidently believed they'd already be capable of handling anyway thanks to the knowledge they'd already been given, and she'd been much more quick to brush it off. But now, after what she, her brother, and father had just undergone, she was now humbled enough to accept this criticism now that it had been given to her twice, and after seeming proof of something that had indeed very nearly proven her and her family's downfall.

But then the sound of rumbling and snorting came from the pile of boulders, and all the assembled tribal folk turned their heads in time to see said pile quivering as if something were trying to burst out from underneath. And sure enough, much to the surprise of all ten of the tribes folk, all ten of the ultrabeests burst out from the boulders, battered and bruised, but still very much alive…and now looking downright murderous with fury. In that instant, N'jobu and the six tribal councilmen got themselves into battle ready positions. It was clear that it would be necessary to engage in further combat against these monsters if they were to get themselves, their leader, and his children to safety.

The lead ultrabeest snarled, yellow eyes blazing with rage before he then pointed his clawed finger at the newly arrived warriors that had just subjected him and his comrades to the indignity they'd just gotten out of. "KILL THEM!" With bellows of rage, the 9 other ultrabeests charged angrily towards the tribes folk in obedience. In a flash, the six councilmen split off into separate directions, with six of the charging ultrabeests promptly splitting off to follow them. The remaining three ultrabeests barreled straight towards N'jobu, who stood firm in front of Tawaba, Mumbyo, and Nyota.

This trio of ultrabeests were about halfway to reaching the shaman's position before he then pointed his staff, now enshrouded in shadowy mist, straight at them. "Now Kivuru!" He yelled, now wishing to channel the power of the tribe's god of the night. "Unleash your might upon these foul monsters!" In a burst of smoke, a rhino-sized hyena made out of shadowy energy took shape directly in front of the shaman, snarled at the incoming ultrabeests, and then spat out an orb of darkness from its mouth that crashed explosively into the creatures, sending them flying backward.

As this was happening, the two swordsmen amongst Tawaba's council were the first to end up at the point of dueling against the ultrabeests pursuing them. And it wasn't long before they both discovered the hard way the same unpleasant surprise about the creatures that Tawaba and his children had learned in similar fashion. "That blow should have made it left it in too much agony to continue fighting," one of the warriors yelled when he ended up having to unexpectedly duck a haymaker from his opponent's right fist as well as block a swing of its left hand claws with his sword almost immediately after slashing it across the area where its heart was located.

"They are like demons," hissed his fellow swordsmen immediately after just barely dodging a charging horn attack from his own opponent almost immediately after dealing what should have been a pain induced crippling slash wound across an important vein in said opponent's right leg. "What kind of mad man would willingly create such abominations as things incapable of feeling pain?!"

The other four councilmen, themselves currently either actively dueling with their respective opponents or still trying to get into what they felt would be ideal positions for such duels, felt their hearts sink nervously upon hearing their comrades' words. But fortunately, Tawaba was quick to yell some words they were all too happy to hear.

"Hit them in the heads!" The tribe chieftain king yelled. "Their heads and necks are the only areas where they can feel pain! Strike them there!"

"NO!" The lead ultrabeest roared upon hearing his kind's only proper weak spot get broadcast to his comrades' newest opponents.

"As you wish my king," said the archer, who had at this point already shot an impressively large number of electronic looking arrows from a quiver he'd been given from the weapons chamber upstairs into his own still advancing opponent, drew out his 50th arrow from this new quiver and shot it directly into his charging opponent's right eye. The beast howled in agony, reflexively rearing back and starting to hop backwards on a single foot as a result of the sudden pain of this new injury. The archer was swift to take advantage of the creature's incapacitated state, firing two more arrows into its neck, followed by a final three into its chest to join the 49 other arrows already fired into there as well as in the creature's stomach, shoulders, and back. After what felt like an eternity, the luckless ultrabeest collapsed onto its knees, gurgling and groaning in pain and exhaustion as the black mamba venom contained within all 55 of the arrows slowly entered its system entirely, before then keeling over and falling flat on its belly, its limbs sprawled, its single undamaged eye turning blank and opaque, and its mouth snapping open in a final reflex action and releasing what looked like some sort of drool related to the venom now in its system as it finally died.

The spear wielder amongst the councilmen was the next to capitalize on the information his king had given him, leaping upon the upper edge of the sealed up arena entrance directly opposite the single unblocked one and pointing his electronic grappling spear towards his own still charging opponent before pressing the button that caused the spear tip to go rocketing straight towards the beast. The rapidly flying tip jabbed clean through the creature's open mouth and the back of its head before then coming to a stop in the wall to the left of the unblocked entrance, the lead ultrabeest having only just barely managed to jump aside in time to avoid getting skewered himself. But the spear man wasn't finished, as he proceeded to then jump from his position and let the retracting capability of the cord yank him towards his skewered and agonized opponent, allowing him to deal the beast a flying double kick to the chest with both his feet before then letting go and landing perfectly while the still rocketing away ultrabeest came to a crashing halt against the wall that the spear's tip had lodged into. From there, the monster went limp.

The two swordsmen were the next to properly capitalize on their opponents' weakness, with the first one proceeding to first completely slice off his opponent's right arm right as it was attempting to swing the claws on that arm towards him, causing the beast to start stumbling off balance just long enough to be easily dispatched with the swordsman's subsequent upwards swing that sliced clear through its neck, decapitating it just like its compatriot that Tawaba himself had killed. The seconds swordsmen, meanwhile, first managed to time himself so that he was able to jump right over his opponent when it attempted to charge at him with its horns, knock it into falling on its face when his feet landed on its back and he used this landing as a means to propel himself forward, and then jabbed his sword straight through the base of its neck right as it was about to try to get up, leaving it effectively pinned to the floor. The beast had just enough time to close its eyes and roar in pain before the councilmen grabbed its horns and rapidly pulled on them in a way that allowed him to turn its head a complete 180, breaking its neck. The beast jolted into silence, eyes widened in a final shocked gaze, before it then gurgled, its eyes rolled to the back of its head, and it went limp.

The axman was the next to dispatch his opponent. Waiting until literally just the right moment, he swung his procured electronic ax at the creature, dealing a perfect blow straight into its chest, taking full advantage immediately afterward of the long metallic pole connecting the four blades, two on each end, to hold the monster at bay. The creature bellowed apoplectically and uselessly swung its clawed hands at the air between it and the triumphantly grinning tribal warrior. But its anger very swiftly turned to shock when, while still keeping one hand on one half of the connecting pole, the warrior pressed a button in the very center of said pole that allowed the second half of the pole to detach. And from there, the ultrabeest had just enough time to grunt in surprised horror upon then managing to catch sight of the warrior draw back the newly detached second half, complete with the remaining two blades, before it was then decapitated by the subsequent swing of said other half.

The last of the ultrabeests to go up against one of the councilmen fared no better than its brethren, as it first managed to find itself off balance when its club wielding opponent managed to duck under its attempted x-shaped slash and slide between its legs while it was still charging. Then it ended up being sent collapsing onto its stomach by a devastatingly strong airborne slam against its back from the warrior's club. And from there, as a result of the blow ending up strong enough to completely fracture its spine, the beast was reduced to helplessly bellowing and howling in fear and confusion over its suddenly being unable to move before another bone crushing blow to its head finally put it out of its misery.

At the same time the six councilmen were busy dispatching their own opponents, the three ultrabeests that had dared try to go after N'jobu were similarly dispatched in no less unpleasant fashion as the shaman proceeded to first channel the power of the tribe's river goddess Majiji, summoning an elephant-sized hippo made of water that then exploded into an airborne river that engulfed the three hybrids and lifted them into the air before then slamming them down face-first against the arena floor. The three ultrabeests had only just started getting back up on their feet when N'jobu channeled the power of the tribe's thunder god Umemu, summoning an elephant made out of lightning that caused a maelstrom of even more lightning to come raining down on the luckless monsters by rearing up and trumpeting skyward. The monsters were still panting and gasping from the pain brought upon them by that attack when N'jobu finished them off by channeling the power of the tribe's fire god Motowaba, summoning a gigantic lion made out of fire that then proceeded, with a roar, to cause the three hybrids to spontaneously burst into flames. From there, the ultrabeests could only helplessly bellow and uselessly flail their arms around in random directions before the viciously strong fire proceeded to rapidly reduce them to ash, very unnervingly causing their agonized bellows to cease very abruptly as opposed to letting said bellows end naturally.

With only the lead ultrabeest now remaining, all the tribal folk present turned their heads to face it. From the look on its face, it was clear that the deaths of all its brethren had now left it even angrier than it had already been. "THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!" The monster roared, its yellow eyes almost literally glowing with unadulterated fury. "AN OUTRAGE! THIS WAS NOT HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT A GLORIOUS BATTLE AGAINST A VILE DEMON ALONGSIDE A GLORIOUS WILDEBEEST HYBRID CHILD LEADER! NOT DIE WORTHLESS DEATHS AGAINST A BUNCH OF FILTHY MUD-MEN SUCH AS YOU!"

N'jobu raised his eyebrow, uncertain as to what the lead ultrabeest could possibly be talking about, but already having a feeling that it somehow hardly mattered at this point. "Whatever you believed to be your destiny was little more than lies and empty promises." He gestured towards the bloodied corpses and heaps of ash that remained of the other 12 ultrabeests. "Look no further than the remains of your brethren to find the truth. Whatever your vile creator may have claimed, he was wrong! You and your kin are destined to die today, and your creator and the entire society of wildebeests he has built shall die today with you!"

"Will see about that," the lead ultrabeest hissed, his yellow eyes narrowing murderously as he leaned forward, his fists clenched, claws bared, teeth gritted, and left foot pawing the ground as if in preparation to charge. "DIE," he then roared as he very abruptly started barreling straight towards N'jobu.

The shaman was unphased, lifting his staff skyward and spinning it clockwise multiple times, a shroud of gray mist forming around it as he channeled one final spell. "You shall now face judgment!" N'jobu howled. "From the fearsome death goddess Mzukukara herself!"

With a burst of gray light, an elephant-sized vulture made out of gray light materialized directly between the shaman and the charging ultrabeest, a savage look on its face as it lifted its wings, pointed its taloned feet at the monster, and shrieked at it with glowing eyes. Caught in the light of the aura's gaze, the lead ultrabeest very abruptly jerked to a stop, rearing back in surprise and confusion as he was very abruptly turned to stone, becoming fully encased in time for his final surprised bellow to cease in mid-shout very abruptly. And no sooner was the lead ultrabeest completely petrified when the shaman gave the staff one last spin and slammed the bottom end down upon the arena floor, causing both the vulture aura and the newly petrified lead ultrabeest to explode, the former bursting into a shower of misty vapors while the latter shattered into countless stony fragments that crumbled to dust immediately after touching the arena floor.

N'jobu collapsed to his knees, panting and gasping. That last spell, strongly recommended to only be called upon as an absolute last resort, had taken an impossibly large amount of energy out of him. Quite frankly, he was now lucky to even still be alive himself after having cast it.

Tawaba placed his hand on the shaman's shoulder, clearly concerned. "Are you alright my friend?"

"I'll be fine," N'jobu panted. "I just need rest, and I should be able to recover as long as I avoid expending too much more energy in the near future.

The ground seemed to start rumbling, almost as if an earthquake were on the verge of happening. The assembled high-ranking tribes folk all looked nervously at each other. "What was that?" Mumbyo asked.

"No idea," said N'jobu. "But I get the feeling that we will very much not want to find out just yet; especially not down here."

"He is right," Tawaba agreed. He gestured towards the lift that he himself had used to enter the area alongside Mumbyo and Nyota. "Come on," he ordered. "We must get back up to the surface now. And depending on just how things are up there, we may very well need to evacuate this entire building in the very near future."

. . . . .

Raven managed, with considerable effort, to get back on her feet after coming to a crashing landing in what turned out to be a corridor within the Wildebeest Society main lab building, hissing and groaning in discomfort from the hardly comfortable impact she'd just had after being sent flying through the veil between dimensions by the implosion of Juris's pocket dimension. Juris himself was nowhere in sight; and quite frankly, she wasn't entirely certain if the disgraced monk was even alive. She shuddered at the thought of the various unpleasant possibilities that she herself had just now been very lucky to avoid. "Probably should have gotten myself and Juris out of there first before I shattered that amulet," she thought to herself.

The sound of animalistic snarling and growling drew the sorceress's attention, and she looked behind her towards where the noises were coming from. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of a seemingly rather unassuming door. Then she noticed the words on a nearby labeling sign, and her eyes widened in recognition. She and the other formerly captive Titans had been escorted right by this very door while on the way to the laboratory chamber where they'd earlier been imprisoned. And as both indicated by the noises coming from behind that door as well as confirmed by Galtry himself the previous day, this door led to a chamber where all the animals that had been used as test subjects for Galtry and Chang's scheme and were still alive were being kept. And as she continued to hear the creatures within the chamber putting up a rumpus, she managed to also hear various other sounds coming from all directions that indicated a considerable amount of chaos unfolding; which led to her very quickly managing to remember that her recent battle against Juris wasn't the only battle that had been unfolding in the area. And in that instant, she realized that she needed to get moving and see if she could make herself useful now that she was no longer busy battling Juris.

She hurriedly deployed her psychic reach, hurriedly working to make sense of all the chaos, locate her friends, and see where her help would currently be needed most. After noticing a particularly large number of battles and clashes going on, she happened to get a read on Wildebeest, realizing in the process that he appeared to still be stuck in the lab where she had earlier been imprisoned alongside Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire. "Might be a good idea to bust him out of there first," she thought to herself as she prepared to head over to that area. "Regardless of what he was originally designed for, he's my friend now. And he'll certainly make good backup for me if I try to intervene in any of the battles going on…"

Two earthshaking roars split the air, and the sorceress tensed up in alarm as she found herself recognizing both of them. One of the roars she'd heard so many times coming from one of Beast Boy's apparent favorite heavy hitting animal forms that there was no doubt in her mind that it had come from him now. The other one, however, she'd only heard once; and from an animal that she would never have guessed could have possibly been in this lab without it making its presence known considerably earlier…

But then she happened to very briefly brush her mental reach up against what she recognized as Galtry's mind, and her eyes widened at how, for some reason, it now seemed to have several very disturbing similarities to Beast Boy's own mind that she'd known, for a fact, should not have possibly been present the way he was the last time she'd seen him. And at the same time, she also managed to get a good look at the current state of Beast Boy's mind, and her eyes widened in horror as she realized how she very nearly didn't even recognize it.

"He's running out of time," she thought to herself in horror. "If he doesn't get that antidote soon, he'll be lost to the virus for good! But how is he to get it with his uncle delaying him…?"

The sound of a lion's roar coming from within the animal test subject holding room, followed by a crocodile's grumbling bellow and an unnaturally bloodthirsty sounding gorilla-like shriek, briefly got her attention off of Beast Boy and what she could only assume was somehow Galtry. She turned her head towards the door, suddenly finding herself thinking of an idea that, at this point, she was far too desperate not to consider.

And just like that, another chapter finally done! Hope you all find it worth the long wait, will be looking forward to the next one to come, and that you leave plenty of feedback (remember, I need an exact minimum of ONE review for this new chapter before I allow the next completed chapter to be posted; though a larger number of reviews will be much appreciated considering how exhausting it eventually became to write this chapter, not to mention how close I came to outright losing steam for my work). See you later dudes!

Coming up Next: All that remains to be accomplished over the course of what remains to unfold for the climax shall now reach their epic conclusions!