Taking Back the Crown

by JCMorrigan

Mozenrath. Archibald Snatcher. Roman Torchwick. Mad Madam Mim. Yzma. The Huntsman. Wuya. Ayam Aghoul. Their mission: take over the multiverse, or look fabulous trying. Rated M for swearing, steamy implications and VERY bloody battles. Contains slash and het shipping.

169. Emotional Dysregulation

A/N: Please know the song "Once Upon a December" from Anastasia for this one.

...

"I suggest you don't move," Shuriki said coyly. "This wasn't my first choice of weapon…but you really didn't leave me with much else to work with, did you?"

"Don't move?" Naomi snapped back. "Try and stop me! C'mon, Ven!"

Ven wasn't sure why he'd been singled out in particular but he didn't mind in the slightest, bracing his Keyblade.

"No, no, no, BAD IDEA!" Stork hissed as Cacahuate tried to curl into a ball while still holding onto Mateo's shoulders.

Shuriki gave the Scepter of Light a decisive flick. A bright light flashed.

Ven hurried forward to try and take the brunt, and Papyrus flanked him with a fence of enormous bones to shield the rest of the group. But Shuriki hadn't been aiming for them. The light connected with the Crown of Aziluna, and a small, shimmering item flittered through the air toward Shuriki.

"NO!" Mateo screamed. "WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THAT?"

Shuriki gripped the Scepter of Light in one hand while reclaiming her crystal wand with the other. "Finally," she said proudly. "Back where it belongs."

"Oh, that's bad," Stork pointed out, wide-eyed and trembling.

"No," Rapunzel breathed, her lungs seeming to deflate all at once.

"And now that that business is sorted," Shuriki declared, "I no longer need this garbage."

She raised the Scepter of Light high. Most cringed, but Elena knew what was really about to happen. "No," she cried, "YOU CAN'T – "

With a decisive WHACK, Shuriki slammed the scepter into the stone floor. The crystal split in half, two fragments rolling haphazardly. Shuriki kicked the gem's halves over the cliff edge and threw the staff after them, plunging the Scepter's pieces into Aziluna's waters.

"You can't," Elena said plaintively. "You CAN'T. You just couldn't stop until you'd taken every last piece of my family from me, could you? That was my last connection to them! And you…"

"Hmph." Shuriki raised a brow. "Princess Elena. This confrontation is a few decades overdue. Hopefully I find a way around that enchantment of Alacazar's so I can really finish off the Flores line once and for all."

Elena was about to retort, but then the implications sank in. "Is…is there someone else – "

"NOW!" Indus yelled. He and Undertow rushed Shuriki from both sides behind; she vanished and reappeared elsewhere on the cliff.

"Of course," Shuriki groaned. "I have to deal with the rabble before anything else can get done around here."

"HOLD STILL SO I CAN MAKE YOU LUNCH, LADY!" Undertow roared. He shot toward her again; she teleported away once more.

"AAAAGH!" Carla tackled Shuriki from behind, clinging to her back like a monkey and beating both fists on Shuriki's head. "THIS IS FOR EXILING ME AND PAPA, YOU WITCH!"

There was a flash of light. Carla was thrown back toward the cavern entrance. "CARLA!" Victor screamed, barreling after her – and Indus and the Lobster Mobster were soon at his side.

"I'm fine, Papà!" Carla insisted, standing up – and immediately buckling one ankle. "Or maybe I am not fine."

"We cannot continue this battle," Victor urged. "Not with Carla's life in danger!"

"Papà!" Carla barked. "Don't treat me like I'm made of glass!"

"Except you're BROKEN!" Victor yelled at her. "We can revisit things when you're healed and safe."

"I agree," said Indus. "We should carry Carla to safetly. Lady Mera, Lady Prisma, and Undertow will take care of the problem." He didn't hesitate to scoop Carla into his brawny arms. She was light as a feather to him.

"Good going, big guy," the Lobster Mobster congratulated. "Now, what say youse we vamoose before – "

Except while they'd been attending to Carla, the battle had raged on. Shuriki was keeping Undertow at bay with nasty blasts of magic that left his skin singed. Prisma and Mera were giving their all against her, surrounding Shuriki with spikes of glass and walls of crystal.

"What's this?" Shuriki laughed, blowing up every single crystal that Prisma conjured. "These are practically glass! You're might look like a Crystal Master, but obviously you're just playing dress-up!"

"SHUT UP!" Mera yelled at her. "Stop trying to wig us out with psychological warfare!"

"Oh, but a REAL Crystal Master could've stopped me by now!" Shuriki blasted through another onslaught of crystal and glass, then threw Undertow back with another blast. "Tell me, girl, did you earn that Terra Crystal or did it fall out of the sky and into your lap?"

Prisma was fit to be tied. "I'm a hundred times the Crystal Master that Azurine ever would've been!" she spat. "You know, Azurine, the FORMER Crystal Master of – "

"I'm aware," Shuriki said dryly. She drew back her wand.

Down on the islet of Aziluna, the Cinnamon gang watched anxiously. "There's no opening for us to get through," Cacahuate moaned, "and by the time it takes us to get up that cliff, Shuriki will barbecue us! We're all sunk. And it's all my fault."

"No," Rapunzel said. "It's ours. We were the ones who wanted this." She furrowed her brow. "And I am NOT coming all this way to be stopped here. Not when we finally freed Elena."

"You'll get us out of this, right?" Naomi urged. "You're Princess Rapunzel! You can save anyone from anything!"

"I'm trying to think!" Rapunzel worried. "There has to be something – "

"Well, figure it out!" Naomi told her.

"WILL YOU SHUT IT?" Stork barked at Naomi. "You putting all that pressure on her is NOT HELPING ANYONE!"

Naomi recoiled, but ultimately realized Stork was right, and didn't say a word further.

"Okay, I might have an idea," Rapunzel said tentatively. "We need to – "

As she said that, the Lobster Mobster suggested vamoosing. It only took Shuriki one flick of her wand to silence both parties immediately.

In that instant, several things occurred. First of all, it was the most potent spell Shuriki had fired yet. Obviously, intended to be a kill shot. It broke through another fence of crystals, rocketing right toward Prisma.

Mera reacted on pure instinct, seeing that blast careen toward Prisma. She skidded out in front of Prisma, and only when she was fully in place as a meat shield did she realize that her condition was going to punish her on the way out if she did in fact die.

Indus, seeing Mera in harm's way, moved most of Carla's weight to one arm so he could extend the other, palm out. In sheer panic, he created a barrier in front of Mera in front of Prisma. A thick barrier, two feet of pure Epithet energy.

It wasn't strong enough to withstand Shuriki's power. The spell blasted right through the barrier, fragmenting it into solid shards that went flying across the battlefield. The magic was, however, considerably weakened. If it had hit Prisma, it might not have caused much damage after all.

It didn't hit Prisma. There was still one more barrier in the way.

All fell silent when the screams rang out. Wracked with pure torment, Mera collapsed to the ground, shrieking like a siren. Prisma could see that one of Mera's legs had a definite fracture in it – the bone was bent unnaturally. And it probably wasn't the only one.

"Crybaby," Shuriki sniffed as Mera continued to bawl in pain.

Prisma's rage was ignited. "How DARE YOU – "

She took two steps forward, raising the Terra Crystal. Undertow beat her to the punch, however, finally managing to lock his jaws around Shuriki. The sorceress would've been bitten clean in half if not for a protective green aura that sparked around her like an electric fence against the shark teeth, sputtering and preventing those teeth from sinking down in.

By that time, Indus (still carrying Carla), Victor, and the Lobster Mobster had caught up with Prisma, and they arranged in a blockade to prevent her from moving closer. "It is too dangerous!" Victor hissed. "Two of us are already hurt!"

"SHE NEEDS TO PAY," Prisma insisted.

"And she will!" the Lobster Mobster urged. "With interest! LATER! When we got a better plan than this! 'Less you wanna go down with your girlfriend."

"I cannot carry both Lady Carla and Lady Mera," Indus insisted. "We will need your help to get her out of here!"

Mera's howling was beginning to take shape as words. Those words were mostly "FUCK" and "SHIT!".

Prisma, looking to her, knew that as badly as she desired revenge, it couldn't be the first priority. They had to get Mera to safety and find a way to heal her. Now.

"CRYSTALLO!" Prisma conjured a medical stretcher composed entirely of interlocking crystals, pink and blue and soft purple. A soft cushion with beaded edges served as the mattress on top.

She and Victor then approached Mera. "I'm so sorry about this," Prisma said sincerely. "It'll hurt."

"I don't care," Mera croaked between labored breaths. "Just get me out."

Prisma and Victor bent, picking Mera up by shoulders and legs, and made the transfer as quick as they could so that Mera lay on the stretcher. Prisma then seized the stretcher and readied up to run. "Let's make like enchanted immortal trees and LEAF!"

"C'MON, MUSCLES!" Lobster Mobster yelled as Victor, Indus (with Carla), and Prisma (with Mera) beat a retreat. "We'll come back once we got the shell-cracker and butter for her!"

As a parting shot, Undertow twisted his head hard as he let go of Shuriki. He still couldn't break through her electric aura, but he did manage to throw her off-balance, and down she plummeted, over the edge of the cliff. It might have been cause to celebrate if it weren't well-established that she was just going to land harmlessly in the water.

"Hop on!" Undertow lowered himself to the ground so the Lobster Mobster could climb aboard his head. Then the shark careened after his human cohorts.

Elena was the one to say what everyone was thinking: "What just happened up there?"

No one had time to consider it. With the WHAM ARMY gone, Shuriki could focus fully on the heroes. She erupted from the waters in a spraying geyser, rising high above the Cinnamons. Bracing her wand for the next attack.

"Goodbye, Elena," she taunted. "This is for…well, you standing in the way of my conquest."

"You say that like I WRONGED you," Elena spat.

"This is it!" Cacahuate cowered. "We're all about to be toast!"

Then came the golden glow that reflected off the cavern walls. To Rapunzel's surprise, it was coming from her. Her hair was reacting to the situation – like it had when Ruby had deployed the Silver Eyes on Shinshu Field – and she had no idea how to control it or if control was possible. All Rapunzel knew was that her hair was blooming, rising, curling into a distinct shape –

"EVERYONE GET AROUND ME!" she yelled.

They obeyed without question. Once Ven, Papyrus, Sofia, Stormy, Stork, Naomi, Gabe, and Mateo with Cacahuate had closed in on Rapunzel, her hair formed itself into a golden sphere that encased them all.

Shuriki let off her next attack. It bounced off the hair. With an angry shriek of "WHAT?", Shuriki continued to pelt the sphere of hair, again and again, hoping to wear it down.

"What do we do now?" Sofia asked worriedly.

"This is admittedly longer than I thought we'd still be alive," Cacahuate admitted.

"Yeah, but the close quarters aren't ideal," Naomi grumbled as Papyrus' elbow accidentally hit her face.

"I'm scared," Stormy said softly.

"I think we're all scared," Rapunzel told him. "But it'll be okay. We got this far."

"If we can get around Shuriki and on top of the cliff," Gabe reminded the group, "we have a chance to fight her! I could take her down!"

"Gabe, will you STOP trying to play hero?" Naomi snapped. "That plan is a one-way ticket to you dying!"

"Not to mention there's literally no way we're getting on top of that cliff," Stork pointed out. "Not on that sheer face."

"But we can't give up!" Sofia insisted. "Isn't there another way we could go besides up the cliff? What about…hmm." It dawned on her. "If there's water in here, it must've come from somewhere. There has to be a way that leads to a spring or a river outside. If we can't go up, our only other option is down."

"That is NOT breathable conditions for humans," Stork told her.

"Maybe not," Sofia realized, "but we have magic! Ven, you know that mermaid trick you did earlier? Could you do something like that for the rest of us?"

"Not the way you're thinking," Ven told her, "but I can put up a Barrier spell that would filter the water through to make it breathable. It's something I've been working on with Aqua and Yen Sid. I'm not sure how long it'll hold, but we don't have another choice."

"If you cast something like that," Mateo realized, "I might be able to stabilize it and feed it more energy. I may not know the spell, but I know how to amplify magic."

"Okay," Rapunzel said. "I'll count to three, and – "

"Just to get it out of the way before it comes up," Mateo asked, "are you talking about us doing your plan literally on 'three,' or after 'three'?"

"Both," Rapunzel said. "I say 'three' and you and Ven put up the barrier. Then, the second that's done, we all jump to the left of Shuriki and into the water. Got it?"

"Oh boy," Cacahuate sighed, obviously in full panic now.

"WE'VE GOT IT!" Papyrus vowed. "AND I DECLARE IT'S THE BEST POSSIBLE PLAN!"

"It's the only possible plan," Mateo reminded him.

Stork simply muttered a mantra to himself: "We can do this we can do this wecandothis wecandothis – "

"ONE!" Rapunzel yelled. "TWO! THREE!"

Shuriki's onslaught was mildly interrupted when a translucent barrier went up around the golden sphere, shimmering like a bubble. Then, all of a sudden, the whole orb filled with her prospective victims lurched off to the side, forward, and –

"NO!" Shuriki seethed.

The orb plunged into the water, sinking deeper and deeper.

"Clever little things," Shuriki muttered. Between their ability to shut out her magic and the inconvenient escape route they'd chosen, it was better for Shuriki to cut her losses now. But she vowed "Just because you've won the battle doesn't mean you'll win the war."

But before she could make her escape, she spotted a sparkle on the island. A black gem on a chain. The corrupted Amulet of Avalor. With a smile, Shuriki simply levitated Morgana's prison into her own hand.

She blazed out of the cavern, heading back to the Avaloran palace, borne on a cloud of dark smoke that propelled her through the skies.

As the orb sank into the waters, Elena brought up the thing that had been on her mind since Shuriki had made the implication: "What did she mean about Alacazar's spell stopping her from finishing her revenge? I thought I was the only one who was enchanted by Alacazar. Do you think…there's another member of my familia who survived her?"

"Can we worry about that after we're out of the deep water?" Naomi asked.

"But we can't just leave that alone," Ven insisted. "Not if there's a chance we could save another one of Elena's family."

"Grandpa was pretty crafty," Mateo said. "If he'd figured out that he might need to send Elena a backup method of protection, then he might've done the same for the other royals. Now, if I were Grandpa, and if I only had so many protection spells to hand out…then it's obvious why I'd pick Elena, since she's the young heir with so much life to live. The only other person I'd think takes priority over her would be – "

"Isa," Elena gasped. "My little sister. …I don't want to get my hopes up. It would be like losing her all over again if I found out it wasn't even true. But if there's a chance, even just a chance that Isa is out there waiting to be set free the way I was…we have to take that chance!"

"We do," Rapunzel agreed. "When we get out of here, then we can focus on heading right to the palace and…figuring out how in the world we're supposed to beat Shuriki."

"It's really too bad she broke the Scepter of Light," Cacahuate sighed as the sphere finally touched the lakebed. "That was one of our only chances against her."

"But she threw the pieces in this lake," Sofia realized. "What if we could put it back together?"

"Put it back together?" Mateo repeated. "You want to PUT BACK TOGETHER an ancient magical artifact of Maruvian origin?"

"I mean, what's stopping us?" Gabe pointed out.

"And what other options do we have?" Naomi agreed. "Besides. I don't wanna leave here without picking it up. It belongs to Elena and her family. She should have it back."

"It's just a trinket," Elena admitted. "Compared to Isabel, it's nothing."

"Yeah, well, obviously it was something earlier when you were yelling at Shuriki about it," Naomi reminded her. "And if there's a way you can have both your parents' scepter and Isa, well, why not shoot for it? It should be easy enough to find the scepter now that we're on the ground."

Rapunzel found she could will a little of her hair to go slack, creating a window through the bubble that Ven and Mateo had created. "Anyone see it?" she asked.

For a few minutes, the group awkwardly hopped around the lakebed to move the orb and search for the lost treasure. It seemed to be too dark to even hope to spot it.

"We won't find it down here," Stork sighed. "We need to move on before something even worse happens."

"Wait." Sofia pointed. "Can we just check out over there? Really, really quickly. I thought I saw something sparkle."

So all together they awkwardly moved the bubble in the direction Sofia indicated. Papyrus elbowed Naomi about five more times in the process. Finally, they came upon the ruins of the scepter – two halves of the mystical crystal, and the golden shaft. What's more, just beyond that scepter was a cavern that likely provided the way out to greater waters.

"Good find!" Rapunzel told Sofia. Together, they moved the bubble over the scepter, sucking the pieces through the barrier shell as though enacting osmosis.

"You're a smart kid," Gabe added. "You're gonna grow up to be a genius."

"NO, SOFIA ALREADY IS A GENIUS," Papyrus corrected.

"I don't know about 'genius,'" Sofia said. "I'm just thinking about things and trusting my instincts."

"You know, you'd get along with Isabel," Elena pointed out. "She really is – she was a genius. Before Shuriki's attack, she was trying to invent a wardrobe that would dress you in whatever outfit you wanted, and all you had to do was pick the look and step in. If she's…if she's still out there, then you HAVE to meet her. You two would be best friends!"

"Well," Naomi said as she presented the pieces of the scepter to Elena, "if nothing else, we got this back."

Elena reverently accepted the broken scepter. "It will be the way I remember them," she vowed. "Every time I hold one of these pieces, I'll think about them. I'll never forget, and I'll bring it to every Dia de los Muertos. I promise."

"Can we go into the cave?" Stormy asked. "It's scary down here in the dark."

"I would argue the tunnel of doom looks scarier than where we are right now," Stork pointed out, "but I guess we don't really have a choice about it."

Together, everyone rolled into the cavern. It was only a short stretch of cramped darkness before ascending, and soon light came through from above, and soon after that the bubble broke the surface of a larger lake that fed the waters of Aziluna. The Cinnamons wasted no time heading for shore and dismantling the barriers; Rapunzel's hair went limp again.

"Can I help braid your hair back up?" Naomi asked a little too eagerly.

"Or I can do it!" Elena volunteered.

"Well, it can sometimes be a four-person job if we want it to be quick," Rapunzel laughed nervously, "sooooo…"

She sat on the shore as Naomi, Elena, Stork, and Ven set to work weaving her hair into its thick braid.

"I hate to say it," Cacahuate broke in, "but it looks like we might just be out of ideas. Oh, if I hadn't sneezed, or if I'd brought you to the Crown of Aziluna at a different time…"

"Don't beat yourself up," Mateo told him. "This is farther than we would've gotten without you. And, I mean, we have the pieces of the scepter, right?"

"Isn't there any way we can fix them?" Sofia asked. "If we have all the pieces…"

"There's only one way you could do something like that," said Cacahuate, "and that's if – mmmm. No. I'm really not supposed to tell you about that. Forget I said anything."

"Is it really worth letting Shuriki run around blasting everyone?" Stork hissed at him.

"Well…maybe not," Cacahuate said. "But I took an oath as a chanul not to guide anyone directly to it. I could lose my stripes for this!"

"That's bad," Mateo explained. "The stripes are what let him go from the Spirit World to our world and back."

"And we want to avoid that," Rapunzel said. "There has to be a safer way – "

"But it has something to do with that 'Taka' thing you mentioned earlier, right?" Naomi blurted. "It has to be."

"Ohhh, you really should stop asking!" Cacahuate groaned.

"Well, one thing's clear," Elena sighed. "I really can't beat her on my own. I never, ever wanted to risk your lives for my problem. But…"

"It's our problem now anyway," Rapunzel assured her. "Shuriki just crossed all of us and put us in danger."

"We were gonna fight her anyway to save Avalor," Ven reminded her. "Either we'd come at her from two separate directions or we work as friends."

"But it's dangerous!" Elena protested. "At least if something happened to me, then…well…"

"Shuriki would've finished what she started anyway," Stork broke in. "You were supposed to die anyway. Is that what you were gonna say, or am I wrong?"

Elena was silent.

"That's the literal worst way you could be thinking about it," Stork said sharply. "You'd really leave behind everyone on your team on a suicide mission where you MIGHT win?"

"I don't have a 'team,'" Elena insisted. "Everyone I knew and loved is…gone."

"If you don't have a team, then what are we?" Naomi barked. "Look, I know we've known each other for like ten minutes, but you're really cool and fun, and I want you to live so we can hang out later!"

"Me too," Gabe agreed. "You're the kind of royal I wish I was protecting up at the palace. We'd have way more fun than I get working for Shuriki."

"I think you're pretty cool too," Mateo said. "Maybe if we all get through this – no, WHEN we all get through this – we should all hang out. Get to know the reclaimed Avalor."

"I'd visit of course," Sofia said. "Elena, you've always been a part of my team. You were with me for years while I had the Amulet! We're a dynamic duo! And if anything happened to you…I'd be sad."

"I think I can speak for the off-worlders when I say we all like you already," Ven said. "We'd come back to see you when we could, too."

"Please don't get hurt," Stormy pleaded softly.

Elena sighed. "All right. We'll do it together. And here I thought I was brave, risking my life…but that wasn't the thing I was most afraid to risk."

"You have to dare to risk it all," Rapunzel told her. "When something's that important. We're all with you. Trust us."

"It's a place called 'Takaina,'" Cacahuate said suddenly. "It's a magic crystal forge that was the source of every little bit of magic in the Maruvian Empire. You can find it in the ruins of Tepet Muul."

There was a weighty silence as everyone realized what he'd said. "Did you just…tell us the forbidden secret?" Elena gasped.

"Rapunzel's right," said Cacahuate. "We gotta dare to risk it all if something's important. And saving Avalor from Shuriki is one of the most important things I can think of. That's the kind of thing we chanuls are given stripes to help fix in the first place. Besides, I really gotta make up for getting you guys into this whole mess."

"You didn't get us into the mess!" Rapunzel urged. "And we can find another way – "

"Well, the secret part was telling you about it," said Cacahuate. "I already broke my oath just now, and staying away from Takaina won't make it any better. In fact, if I lose my stripes and we don't go try to use Takaina, then that would be for nothing."

"Cacahuate!" Mateo gasped. "I am…so proud to have you as my chanul."

"You might only have me as a chanul for a few more days, depending on how things go," Cacahuate moaned.

"The next one couldn't be better than you," Mateo insisted.

"Anyway, Tepet Muul?" Naomi ventured. "Isn't that the ruined city outside Avalor? The one that was like the capital of Maru or something?"

"That's the one," Cacahuate sighed.

"Then we have to go there," Elena resolved. "We'll take the scepter and have it fixed in the forge. That way, we can stand against Shuriki." She turned to head out, since Rapunzel's braid was back in place. "Come on, everyone! No time to lose!"

"Actually, hang on a minute," said Gabe. "I've been thinking."

"Which usually never ends well," Naomi joked.

"It's just…okay," Gabe sighed. "If we're all stronger together, then what about getting even more people on our side? In the past, revolutions have failed against Shuriki, but maybe now that we have someone more powerful to head it up, we can actually get through this time. What if some of us went back to Avalor to round up a resistance that could back us up?"

"That's a great idea!" Naomi said excitedly. "Shuriki sure won't know what hit her if we show up with the Scepter of Light AND the entire kingdom at our back!"

"Elena?" Mateo asked. "Would you wanna come with us so people know you're back to lead the crowd?"

"But I have to go to Takaina," Elena said, cradling the scepter. "I know I could just let someone else take the scepter, but…"

"But it's your memory of your family," said Rapunzel. "That's not even something I had when I lost mine. I wouldn't want to ask you to give it up."

"Actually, I have another idea," Gabe said. "It's something I was thinking about for a while. Just…waiting for the right time. But a lot of the people in the palace aren't really that fond of Shuriki after all. Even the ones who she gave powerful positions. I think…maybe I could convince Esteban and Armando to finally say enough is enough when it comes to her."

"Esteban like the guy who's always right next to Shuriki when she goes out to public events?" Naomi asked. "The one who does her paperwork?"

"And Armando like the one who handles all the palace staff, cooking, cleaning, you name it," Gabe confirmed. "We might not have Elena as our figurehead. And telling people we do? Well, they wouldn't believe it. But having Shuriki's right-hand man and chief of staff on our side could inspire a pretty strong revolution until Elena shows up as our surprise plot twist."

"I dig it," Naomi replied. "So I'm thinking this should probably be an Avaloran thing, since we know the lay of the land. Me, Mateo, and Gabe."

"And Cacahuate," Mateo added. "You'll be able to help advise us when we're making tough choices, right?"

"I'll do what I can," Cacahuate vowed. "Anyway, before that happens, you're gonna want directions to Takaina. I'll help you write down what to do, and then I'll go and try to get the revolution stirred up."

"Then the rest of us will take Elena to Takaina and make sure nothing bad happens on the way," Rapunzel said.

"They say it's a dangerous journey and hardly anyone ever comes back," Cacahuate informed them.

"Has anyone ever had a Keyblade when they tried to go there?" Ven asked.

"You know what?" Cacahuate realized. "No. And no one's been a Sundrop either."

"AND I WILL LEND SHEER FORCE OF WILL AND MORAL SUPPORT!" Papyrus vowed. "THE MONSTER EQUIVALENT OF DETERMINATION!"

"And I'll be there to call out traps before we can walk into them," Stork said. "Though, fair warning, I see traps everywhere, even where there aren't actually traps, sooooo…"

"Can I go to Avalor?" Stormy asked. "That sounds a lot safer than Takaina."

"Sure thing, kid!" Naomi replied. "Actually, how'd you like to meet some of the Avaloran jaquins while we're on the way there? I bet if we got the jaquins on our side – "

"They'd ABSOLUTELY stir the revolution!" Mateo blurted. "They're the sacred animals of Avalor! And they've probably been waiting for a day like this to happen! Naomi, you're a genius!"

"I know," said Naomi, but still and all she was blushing light pink. "Anyway, we've got a long road ahead of us. Both teams."

Ven produced a pad of paper and a pen from his inventory. "Okay, Cacahuate," he said. "Which way do we go to get to Takaina?"

"Before I tell you," said Cacahuate, "one more thing." He extended a three-toed hand. In it appeared a construct of glowing blue energy: a multi-pointed three-dimensional star. "This is a spare key. You'll need it to open the door."

Ven took hold of the star. "Thanks. We won't lose it."

While the Cinnamons figured out the last logistics, the WHAM ARMY contingent had finally found a forest clearing in which to camp out and measure their odds against Shuriki. First, however, there was damage to deal with.

Mera had finally stopped screaming, sucking her breath in harshly through her teeth. "Believe it or not, I've felt worse," she said hoarsely. "Still hurts like hitch."

"…Like hitch?" Victor repeated in confusion.

"Yeah, I was halfway between saying 'like Hell' and 'like a bitch' and my mouth just kinda tangled them," Mera admitted. "Anyway, I'm probably off the board for the next month…"

"Maybe not." Prisma conjured a pair of crystal spectacles, placing them on her face. They were imbued with a power that allowed her to see Mera's skeletal structure. "I have an idea for how to heal you just a little bit quicker. It's something I did for myself once when I was a child." She took note of every single fracture – arms, legs, ribs, even a tiny crack on the skull that Prisma hoped hadn't rattled Mera's brain. Then again, Mera was from the Lexicosm, so likely it had taken out her stamina without affecting her functions. "Yes, I know what I can do here, but it will hurt like hitch."

"Yeah, I'm already there," Mera said. "Do your worst."

Prisma hesitated, holding her Terra Crystal out over Mera as she considered the fractures, considered the direction she wanted her magic to go. Then, shutting her eyes and focusing, she said "Crystallo" in a low, confident tone.

Pain surged through Mera all over again, and she gave a shriek. She felt her insides cracking, but in an altogether opposite way from when Shuriki had broken her. Everything felt a little more aligned and in place now. Then the wave of pain subsided ever so slightly, and Mera raised an arm to look at it. Instead of flopping from its previous break, it held steady the way an arm should. "Did you just fix my bones?"

Prisma observed her work. It was sheer perfection. A slim chunk of crystal was patching together every last fracture, and there was even a thin crystal crust on the crack on Mera's skull. "I gave you crystal splints that are holding your skeleton in place," Prisma said. "There will still be a little pain, but you should be able to walk and do other things without feeling the constant agony of having broken bones."

"Prisma," Mera said with wide eyes, sitting up from the stretcher. "That's…you're…you're awesome. You know that, right?"

"I know," Prisma said sweetly. She held up two fingers.

So did Mera. They both shut their eyes, pressing their fingers to their lips, sharing a kiss that didn't require them to touch. Then, when eyes were open once more, Mera asked, "So could you, I dunno, replace all my bones with crystals? That feels like it would be way more convenient in the long run."

"Unfortunately, no," said Prisma. "That would involve me taking out the bones first, and nobody wants that. Also, if there's bone left, well, bone likes to grow back. I'll need to check on your splints daily to see how your bones are growing and take them immediately away when they heal, or you'll have a whole other problem with crystal growths inside of your body that don't fit along your skeleton."

"Makes sense," Mera replied. "Also means we can't let you get captured or killed or anything, but I wasn't planning on that anyway."

"I will help to keep Lady Prisma safe!" Indus vowed, saluting.

"And what about me?" Carla barked. She'd been set down on the soft grass a while ago.

"Let's see…" Prisma used her spectacles to look at Carla's ankle. That one was fairly standard. "That will be easy to splint. Ready?"

Carla's eyes widened; "NO! I need a minute. It's going to hurt…"

Victor knelt at her right side. "Take my hand," he said, extending his hand to Carla. "Squeeze it if the pain is too much."

Then, to Carla's surprise, she was extended a purple claw from the left side. "Just don't crack it open, see?" the Lobster Mobster told her.

"Why you?" Carla asked as she slid her hands into Victor's hand and the Lobster Mobster's claw.

"Because you got spunk, kid," the Lobster Mobster replied. "Not that I'm a big softie around kids or anythin'. Just would be a shame to see you get cut off in your prime, so think of it as an investment to watch over ya."

"Ready NOW?" Prisma sighed.

Carla nodded nervously.

With another "Crystallo," Prisma created another splint, fusing Carla's ankle back in place. Carla gave a sharp gasp, clutching hard at the hand and claw she was offered. Then, when the pain abated, she let go.

"Thank you," Carla panted, getting up to test her ankle. It held her weight without any more surges of pain.

"Yes…thank you indeed." Victor also rose. "This is…wholly unexpected, to be honest. I did not expect such black hearts to care so much for Carla's well-being."

"Well, we look out for each other here in the WHAM ARMY," Prisma explained. "We're bad people, but we're not BAD people."

"To be honest, sometimes I had wondered if the path we had chosen was too dangerous," Victor admitted.

Carla put her hands on her hips. "Papà! I don't need to be fussed over like a small child! I don't want to give up our search for power!"

"Nor did I," Victor said, "but we must do what is best for you. Carla, you are my daughter, and ever since we lost Ash – " He shook his head. "But it is not important now. Perhaps within this 'WHAM ARMY,' there is a balance between power and protection."

"Are you saying you wanna join up?" Mera was testing her own legs, walking in a slow circle. "Because we'll take you."

"Yeah, gettin' power's what we're all about!" Undertow asserted.

"And looking out for one another like a big happy family!" Indus added. "And also making Alfred Hitchcock movies before they are supposed to exist!"

"That one made sense in context," Mera said quickly. "You had to be there."

"It is something to consider at the very least," Victor admitted. "Our goals do divert. You must return to the Mystic Isles, and Carla and I still have a score to settle with Shuriki."

"I guess we really don't have much use for the Eye of Midnight on our end," Prisma admitted. "Well, why don't we stick together for now and see how it goes? I mean, we're going to need your help to get to Takaina."

Victor cringed. "That was not part of the plan. We were to tell you about Takaina after – "

"The plan has changed," Prisma said sternly. "Did you hear what Shuriki said to me? She said I wasn't a true Crystal Master! That I wasn't powerful enough! How dare she! After all I've done to outclass Azurine and get rid of her! And…" She tightened her grip on the Terra Crystal. "If I was more powerful…then…" She looked from Mera to Carla and back. "Then so much of the hurt wouldn't have happened."

"Do not blame yourself, Lady Prisma," Indus said softly.

Prisma bristled. "Oh, I don't." Though the others weren't so sure she was honest with that one. "But I AM going to become more powerful before I face Shuriki again. This time, I'll win all on my own! But Crystal Master study is so slow and boring and takes years we don't have. I want something fast and easy, and it sounds like that Takaina place has all the crystal power I would ever need!"
"We do not even know much about Takaina outside of old writings," Victor admitted. "We could not take you there. If you knew where it was, we could perhaps put some of the old books to use, but…"

"Well, that's the thing I've been thinking about," Prisma said sharply. "Crystal Masters don't just MAKE crystals. They're supposed to be able to locate powerful crystals that already exist, too. And if that's what Crystal Masters can do, then I can do it for sure! I'll point you the way there right now!"

"Wait a minute!" the Lobster Mobster broke in. "Victor's moll bit the sand tryin' to find that place."

"You sayin' we ain't more powerful than Victor's wife?" Undertow urged. "You got ME on the team!"

"Ash did reject all traveling companions on her pilgrimage," Victor admitted. "Perhaps if she'd had more friends who she could have trusted…but she was always hesitant to give away her trust. Ever since an attack on her village as a child, she built walls around her heart. I was the only one she ever truly trusted; she told me as much. But I could not go to Takaina as I was. I had – I have no power. That was why Ash was to make me and Carla into malvagos once she obtained her power. That way, we would have access to Dark magic, and be able to accompany her wherever she might have gone."

"There you go!" Prisma said brightly. "We'll all be together, so nobody will die! And if someone does die, well, we'll just ask Yzma and Wuya for more Death Bombs. Now that that's settled, I'm gonna need some quiet."

Everyone was silent as Prisma shut her eyes again, raising the Terra Crystal to the sky. She put out a thought, asking the world itself to show her the way. Then, after a minute of still silence, the Terra Crystal illuminated, and a beam shot from it, arcing in a particular direction.

"That way!" Prisma opened her eyes and pointed. "That's where Takaina – AH!"

With a shriek, she ripped the spectacles from her face and stomped them. "I forgot I was wearing those," she laughed nervously, "so I opened my eyes and you were all skeletons!" She looked to Undertow. "Except you. You don't have any bones. Just teeth on the outside."

"And proud of it!" Undertow boasted. "When they say I'm the roughest and toughest, they mean that literally!"

"You're saying your skin is made of teeth?" Carla tilted her head. "I thought from looking at you that you were smooth."

"SMOOTH?" Undertow roared. "Don't you say that again! I'm not some smooth little thing like a dolphin! I've got grit!"

"I don't believe it." Carla walked over to run a hand over Undertow's skin. Then she winced. "Never mind. Sharks are not smooth."

"Glad we cleared that up," Mera said with an eye-roll. "Again."

"For context," Indus said, "I used to think the same thing as Carla, and it wasn't until I wrestled a whole school of sharks to keep them from eating Lady Mera and me that I realized sharks are not smooth."

"So can we get goin' to the crystal place already?" Undertow urged. "I got a hunger for bratty sorceresses, and we're gonna need to pump you up if we wanna crack her shell!"

"Okay, everyone!" Prisma declared. "Follow the Terra Crystal's light!"

...

Two armored men and a goth girl walked into a nightclub. Strangely, they were some of the few people who weren't actually jokes.

The Grandmaster had rotated the civilians again, deciding that whom he'd partied with last time now should be scavengers and a different crop of scavengers should be the elites. The lucky ones drank and danced and goofed off in the club, well aware they should enjoy this moment while it lasted.

Whiplash, Blizzard, and Rhona sauntered through to where the Grandmaster, Swackhammer, and Topaz were doing shots. "We have come to enter your tournament," Whiplash stated.

The Grandmaster held up a finger, dowining a shot of something that was half cherry red and half bright blue before setting it back down. "I would love to," he said, "but the bracket is full right now. If you don't mind hanging around, there's gonna be a follow-up tourney to this one, and that one will have a prize that I haven't thought of yet but it'll be just as good as being the Moron Mountain mascot. The triple M, if you will. So just sit tight, enjoy not dying horribly for a few – "

"I think you will want our talents in your arena," Whiplash said.

"Also, we weren't asking," Blizzard added.

"I know you weren't asking," said the Grandmaster, "but I'm still saying no. You can't just walk in here and decide you're part of the sporting event that's rocked the planet. You think people just walk into the NBA and ask to be part of the team that baskets balls? No. Doesn't happen." He gave Swackhammer a sidelong glance. "That's how it works, right?"

"Don't ask me!" Swackhammer protested. "Anything I know about basketball, I know from the Nerdlucks, and they get everything wrong!" He paused. "I'm sure you gotta pass an obstacle course or somethin' to prove yourself, though…"

"You heard the man," said the Grandmaster. "Unless you prove yourself on an obstacle course, you're not in. And I don't have time to build an obstacle course right now."

"Question," said Blizzard. "Is there anyone in this room RIGHT NOW that has a spot on the bracket?"

"Yeah," said Swackhammer, pointing to a llama with a human face that was kicking around awkwardly to the beat. "That guy." He then pointed to a trio of headless corpses lying on the ground by the llama. "And those – hey, wait a minute! The llama ate the fruit-heads!"

"Looking back on it, maybe we shouldn't have let the fruit-heads party with an herbivore," the Grandmaster mused.

"Looking back on it," Topaz added, "maybe if they didn't want to get eaten, their heads shouldn't have been made out of fruit."

The Grandmaster and Swackhammer both agreed, nodding and muttering assent.

"But you won't let us have their spot without an obstacle course," said Blizzard.

"That is what I said, yes," the Grandmaster replied.

"We wouldn't want their spot anyway," said Whiplash. "We would want…his."

With a crack of both wrists, Whiplash deployed a pair of supple whips, wrapping them around the goofy-looking llama and sending as many volts through them as he could manage. The llama, not at all being ordinary llama stock, charged Whiplash, prying its mouth open to reveal several sharp teeth. It bit into Whiplash's armor and was immediately given more volts from the metal's defense system. Then Blizzard froze the llama over so Whiplash could finish killing it. After the llama was well and truly dead but perfectly cryogenically preserved, Whiplash disconnected the whips that were trapped in the ice.

While everyone else watched that display of violence in awe, Rhona took the opportunity to slip out of the room. She'd entered with the other two, and that meant people were going to assume she was still with them. Now the real work began for her. While the warriors duked it out center stage, Rhona was going to pull the strings from behind the scenes.

She didn't go unnoticed, though. There was one other guest that managed to spot her departure. Granted, that guest was in a business where if he didn't pay attention to detail, he'd be sunk. Quietly, he put down his drink and then followed Rhona out of the room. Whatever was going on here, he wanted in on it.

"Obstacle number one, I believe," said Whiplash.

"Okay, I'll count that as ONE obstacle," the Grandmaster replied. "Not a whole course."

"We just killed one of your guys!" Blizzard complained. "Doesn't that get at least a jaw-drop of horror or anything?"
"First of all, I don't jaw-drop when I'm horrified," said the Grandmaster. "Second, I don't think I actually liked that llama, now that I think on it, and I'm glad he's dead now. Topaz, remind me to take him off the bracket, whatever his name was."

"Hungry Lamu," Topaz stated.

"Well, if you're so hungry, no one's stopping you from using the buffet," the Grandmaster replied.

Topaz didn't correct his assumption because she did in fact want to visit the buffet, and took her leave to do so immediately.

"Okay," said Blizzard. "How about this?"

He threw his hands high, and suddenly the whole room was awash with snow and wintry winds. Guests' coiffures were undone in the near-cyclone of cold that Blizzard had summoned. Several of the smaller species actually froze to death.

"Does THIS count for an obstacle course?" Blizzard asked.

"You know, I'm tempted to say yes," the Grandmaster realized. "And it would be a crowd-pleasing act."

"Wait a minute," said Swackhammer. "I think I remembered it wrong. The NBA doesn't use an obstacle course for entry requirements. I dunno what it does use, but it ain't that."

The Grandmaster shook his head. "Then no dice."

"I'M LITERALLY IMPRESSING YOU," Blizzard yelled, "AND YOU'RE GONNA SHUT ME OUT BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW THE NBA WORKS?"

"Rules are rules," the Grandmaster said.

"THAT EXPLAINS NOTHING!" Blizzard yelled.

"You LISTEN HERE!" Whiplash flicked a wrist; a metal whip surrounded the Grandmaster, pulling him close to face Whiplash's helmet. Whiplash fed it just enough electricity to cause discomfort. "You WILL place us in the tournament, and you WILL give us the very specific opponent we demand. Or you will die here in front of all your stooges! Do you hear – why are you smiling?"
"You know," said the Grandmaster, "I like a man who takes control." He winked. "Should I call you 'Daddy'?"

Whiplash groaned. "Are you serious?"

"Maybe I will give you a spot after all," the Grandmaster said. "Just as a thanks for livening up my day a little."

"You weren't supposed to ENJOY this," Whiplash seethed.

Blizzard let up on the storm. "Why not? You always do."

"Shut up," Whiplash hissed at him. He then gave a groan. "I suppose we have earned our place by…accidentally discovering one of the Grandmaster's kinks."

"And if that isn't how the NBA works," said the Grandmaster, "then I don't want to be part of it."

Topaz came back with a drink. It had frozen solid in the storm, and therefore, when she tried to drink it, it remained still in the bottom of the glass. She then set about trying to bite the ice free.

"Topaz," the Grandmaster ordered, "get these guys on the bracket. And let's think about what we're gonna do about that other empty slot until then."

"I will change the roster as soon as I finish my drink," Topaz vowed, using her fingernails to shave the ice and then lick it.

Whiplash tossed the Grandmaster aside with one arm motion, sending the Grandmaster spinning out into the center of the room. The Grandmaster didn't even stop spinning once he was there. "Oh, yeah, feel the groove, everyone!" he encouraged, starting up a mass dance. "We're gonna party like it's my birthday! You by the wall, don't be shy! Oh, wow, your dance partner definitely died of hypothermia, so I guess you'll have to lead. That's right, death is no excuse, get everyone out on the floor so we can party down!"

"I still can't believe any of this is happening," Whiplash sighed.

Topaz was now holding her glass upside-down above her head, mouth wide open. Swackhammer muttered to himself, "ARE whips how you get in the NBA? Maybe it's an obstacle course WITH whips…"

...

Hexen Isle was no longer the flourishing green plain of the past. Now it was desolate and sterile, its only notable wildlife a coating of dry, bristly grass that didn't cover certain dusty patches. If Cedric had been there to see it, he would have cried for what had once been his very small empire.

"Wow," Emerald remarked as she, Melanie, Miltia, Neo, the Mukhtar, and Cat trod the desolate shores. "This isn't creepy at all."

"What are you talking about?" Miltia snapped. "It's, like, super creepy."

"Yeah, that was sarcasm," Emerald snapped right back.

Neo just put an extra skip in her step as she led the group along through paths between high rock faces and dull black obelisks.

"Well, at least someone's having fun," Emerald groaned.

"This place reminds me of Daddy's experiments," Cat said softly, sharply. "I don't know why. It just does. That means get ready to fight." She flexed her upper legs, the serrated edges catching the light of the low sun.

The Mukhtar stopped to put a hand on a nearby obelisk. "Once these were gateways," he observed. "Now they are dormant. This would have been our route to the Calix. Heldalf is determined to keep us out."

Neo stopped skipping to give him a quizzical look.

He knew what she meant. "I am certain there is another entrance. One by which Heldalf himself must come and go. We must search for it."

"Ugh," Melanie sighed. "Tromping around on Creepy Island."

Tromping around on the creepy island is exactly what they did until at last they came across something that didn't quite fit. A temple, square and stone and dark, climbing into the sky.

"It has a door," Cat said.

"Thanks, Captain Obvious," Melanie sighed. "Anyway, it probably leads where we need to go."

The Mukhtar brushed away dust from an engraving in the stone. "This is a language I know," he said, mildly surprised. "The temple is called a 'Crucible of Malevolence.' It was built to keep Darkness inside and fester it into the creatures they call Hellions."

"So a monster factory," Emerald remarked. "Hey, that's kinda close to a dragon breeding ground, right?"

"We have everything to gain from exploring it," the Mukhtar said. "However, I would approach with caution. The subscript states that if the Darkness is purged, memory will fill in the gap. The Crucible must never be empty."

"Like, what does that even mean?" Miltia asked.

The Mukhtar looked to her. "That a shadow of the past may step in to take the place of the Darkness. Cat was correct to say we should brace for battle."

He pushed open the door, which gave a very loud, unsettling creak. Dark stairs went straight down into shadow. The Mukhtar produced a crystal lantern, holding it out front. "From here, the trail becomes more dangerous."

Neo just skipped right on past him, leading the charge once again, regardless of not having the lantern's benefit.

"Neopolitan," the Mukhtar hissed, scurrying after her. "You cannot see without this."

Emerald, Melanie, and Miltia all exchanged wary glances.

"Babies," Cat scoffed. She hustled down after the Mukhtar.

"She's right," said Emerald. "Last one there's the ultra-baby." Then she took off running, overtaking Cat and eventually the Mukhtar.

Melanie and Miltia wrestled to see who would go down first. Melanie managed to slip ahead of Miltia and keep the pace the whole way down. When Miltia finally arrived in the chamber beneath, Melanie scoffed, "Well, look what ultra-baby finally showed up."

"I'm so not an ultra-baby," Miltia argued.

"Miltiades is hardly what I would call juvenile," the Mukhtar said.

"THANK you." Miltia paused. "Also, like, I don't normally like it when people use my whole first name, but when you do it, it's pretty sexy, actually."

The Mukhtar nodded. "If it pleases you, I will continue to use it."

"Yeah, but if you slip and go back to 'Miltia,' that's totally cool, too," said Miltia. "Anyway, where the hell are we?"

The chamber looked to be circular; its dark walls weren't helping the lack of light. It was definitely a good distance underground. The Mukhtar twisted a knob on the lantern, intensifying its light.

No sooner was the whole room illuminated than everyone saw the figure in teal hastily dart out of sight, seemingly into thin air.

"Uh, hello?" Emerald called out. "Guys, we're not alone in here – "

"I saw," Cat said.

"We all saw," Melanie added. "That was, like, impossible to miss."

Neo immediately withdrew her sword, pointing it at the center of the room.

"Not wise when we are unsure if this is friend or foe," said the Mukhtar.

The room was suddenly brighter than ever when a host of lightning bolts struck. The Mukhtar, Emerald, Neo, Melanie, Miltia, and Cat thankfully all had wonderful reflexes, and were able to hit the dirt before they could be electrocuted.

"I believe it is foe," the Mukhtar grunted. "Neo, carry on."

The mysterious figure was now in full view in the center of the room: a man with long dishwater-blond hair, dressed in a teal military jacket that cascaded down to his knees. His milk-pale face bore a slim pair of glittering sunglasses. In one hand, he carried a wickedly sharp spear. His scowl suggested he didn't want anyone on his territory. Strangest of all, though, he appeared translucent to the eye, with the back wall of the chamber visible right through his body.

The vanguard got to their feet, bracing themselves for a fight. "What IS he?" Emerald asked the Mukhtar.

"A living memory of one who once walked this isle," the Mukhtar answered. "A shadow of the true self. It is merely a puppet for the will of the Darkness itself."

The Colonel (well, they all assumed he was a military rank of some sort, and they were correct) charged the vanguard, spear out front. Melanie was the first to counter him, kicking up an ankle to parry the spear and hook the bottom of its head on her resilient boot. Brought to a standstill, the Colonel used his free hand to cast a magic sigil beneath himself – a sigil that hummed with music. The sigil channeled itself into a new spell; meteors of fire were raining down inside the Crucible.

Emerald, the Malachites, and Neo were forced to scatter. Cat wove in between the meteors to leap onto the Colonel's back, scratching at him with her pincers. The Colonel elbowed her off, only to have to bring his spear up to duel the Mukhtar's blade.

"Neo," Melanie coughed. "Can't you, like, hijack the illusion or something?"

"Didn't you do illusions too?" Miltia asked Emerald.

Emerald and Neo looked to one another. "Worth a shot," Emerald said.

Neo nodded.

Both women turned to focus their full Semblance on the Colonel. The rogue memory called up ethereal beams of violet to ricochet around the arena; Neo concentrated on digging into their essence as imaginary constructs. Actually, taking them apart was fairly easy; the projectiles dissipated with a snap of Neo's fingers. Neo grinned; she'd found a whole new use for her Semblance, and she was going to play hard with it.

Emerald, in the meantime, honed in on the Colonel himself. He was just a hallucination caused by the temple. All she had to do was make him her hallucination. Which, of course, meant she'd have to make her control visible to the entire room, perhaps the entire world, if it were to be reality. She pushed hard at her own Semblance, willing it to go bigger, broader.

By that time, the Malachites had joined in the brawl. The Colonel, fueled by the Crucible's pure Darkness, used magic and physical attacks alike to fend off both twins, the Mukhtar, and Cat all at once. He raised his spear to summon more magic.

Emerald put all her will into his wrist. His arm froze in midair, and he was unable to cast anything more. The Colonel struggled, but Emerald kept his spear pinned in place, pointing straight upward. He was good as unarmed.

Miltia somersaulted around front, dealing the Colonel a hard kick to the crotch. "All yours," she told the Mukhtar.

The Mukhtar ran in with blade swinging. The Colonel was decapitated, his head rolling across the Crucible floor. Then the Mukhtar went in on dicing up the rest of the memory, just to be safe. There was no blood, nor gore; whatever was cut simply faded away.

"Okay," Emerald panted as the last of the Colonel vaporized. "That was more than we bargained for."

"Indeed so." The Mukhtar wiped off his blade with a cloth made from the hide of a Shadhavar. "That kill could not have been made without the Semblances we have present." He sheathed the sword, then bowed once to Emerald, then to Neo. "You have my gratitude."

"It's our job, man," Emerald said casually as Neo made a show of fanning herself with her hand.

"Look." Cat jabbed a foreleg toward the back of the chamber. "It's a portal. Like Oystercloud."

A dark door was visible in the wall.

"Was that there before?" Miltia asked.

"That was so not there before," Emerald replied.

Neo hurried over to pull the door open.

"Neopolitan!" the Mukhtar scolded. "We do not know if – "

Light spilled into the room. It appeared to be sunlight, despite the fact that it was coming from underground. A circular stone platform rested on the door's other side. Neo pointed to the door with emphasis.

"The Calix," the Mukhtar said with a nod. "We have found Heldalf's entrance after all."

"Okay!" Emerald said with a swing of her fist. "Hopefully the hard part's down."

"What we have faced was the easy part." The Mukhtar stormed toward the door.

"Well, you're just a barrel of sunshine!" Emerald spat, following close behind.

Neo slid into the lead again. Cat caught up. Melanie charged and slid beyond the door, then pointed back through at Miltia; "Ultra-baby."

"Stoppppppp." Miltia sauntered through the door.

When it closed behind them, it disappeared entirely from the interior of the Crucible.

...

The WHAM-Heathens wagon fleet finally pulled to a halt in front of a waterfall that cascaded down a tall cliff. Rose was the first to disembark; "Finally!"

They'd amassed quite the troop by this point. Yang, Harley, Velvet, Giovanni, Molly, Laphicet, and Elsa followed Rose; Lailah, Edna, and Zaveid stayed tucked away in Molly's heart for the time being. Then, following Snatcher and Roman, you had Foulfellow, Gideon, Pinstripe, Tawna, Don Karnage, Mad Dog, and Dump Truck.

Though the latter two were instructed to "be staying here and guarding the wagons from wagoning away" by Karnage.

Everyone else hiked beneath the waterfall, getting themselves completely soaked in order to access the shrine doors beyond. The shrine itself stretched high into the air, an absence of proper floors revealing a criss-cross of pathways several stories up. The walls were bright blue: fitting for a water shrine. A door at the opposite end of the atrium, and there was a shallow pool right at the beginning.

Rose hopped up onto that pool's edge. "Hokay!" she began. "So things are gonna be a little different for this one. Here's the dealio on – "

"Hey, boys!" Pinstripe nudged Foulfellow and Karnage. "Race ya to the top!"

Without hesitation, he bolted for the door at the other end of the room. Foulfellow was close behind, and Karnage, screaming out "I WILL NOT BE THE EGG THAT IS ROTTED!", concluded the race.

"GUYS?" Rose called after them. "THAT'S NOT – "

The trio barged through the door and let it slam behind them. Tawna shrugged; "Hey, when my man wants a race, nothing short of a time apocalypse will stop him from going for gold."

"Should we go after those guys?" Giovanni asked.

"Nah." Rose waved a hand. "They'll be back. Trust me."

With a SPLASH, all three of them suddenly reappeared in the atrium pool, falling over one another. "I say, what just happened?" Foulfellow sputtered.

"So someone's a wise guy, eh?" Pinstripe spat.

"If you'd stayed and listened to what I was trying to tell you, then you wouldn't be piled up in the pool, now, would you?" Rose chided. "I was SAYING this shrine is different. The water power is invisibility, so the whole point is to get through the temple without being seen. There are seraphic artes that look like eyes carved in the wall. Just think of them like magic. If one sees you in its direct line of sight, then poof! You're back here. Normally, the idea would be for the Shepherd to have the water seraph provide the invisibility part."

"Um…the water seraph is at the heart of the building," Molly pointed out.

"Cor-rect!" Rose swung her fist. "So we're just gonna have to get creative. But it's gonna need to be a small team to reduce the chance of us getting caught by the eyes five million times. So our first order of business is to pick who gets to go take a nap by the wagons."

"I should go," Elsa said nervously, backing away. "A closed space, all this water, and my powers? That's asking for a lot of trouble. Sorry. Good luck!" And then she ran.

"Ooh, Elsa ran away," Tawna mocked. "Big shocker."

"I know, right?" Giovanni snarked. "And all this over a good old-fashioned game of find the security camera blind spots! Heheh…I've been playing that game since I was a little kid. You could say I'm a world champion."

"Please," Roman huffed. "No way you're better at it than me. Just no."

"So you're saying we've got to LEAVE here?" Foulfellow spat. "After we came in through all that sluicing water?"

"You coulda warned us before we got wet!" Pinstripe scolded.

"Yeah, probably bad timing on my part," Rose admitted. "But thanks to that show-off act earlier, I'm sending all three of you and your minions on time-out just to narrow it down. Sound good?" She pointed at the door. "Out."

Fox, wolf, and potoroo grumbled as they exited. Gideon trotted after them. Tawna fired off "Not a minion" before catching up with the group.

"Okay, one question," Yang said. "Is Roman on this one or no?"

"Well, seeing as every WHAM ARMY representative except me and Archie just got chased out the door, I'd say I'm in on this one," Roman replied.

"Cool!" Yang turned to head out. "That means you get one more volunteer for staying back. Because I'm not gonna trust him in a death-trap temple like this."

"You got this, right, Rose?" Harley looked from Rose to Velvet. "Vel? You got this. I'm gonna go sit with Yang!" She bounded off, calling out, "Hey, sunshine! Wait up!"

"I guess that means I'm staying," Velvet sighed.

"I guess I have to stay," Molly realized. "Since I'm, you know, the Shepherd." She looked up nervously at the criss-cross pathways that extended overhead.

"You got this, Bear Trap!" Giovanni encouraged. "And I'm gonna be right here with ya the whole way."

"And of course I'm staying, since I know the place," said Rose. "Then Laphi has to stay too."

"Why?" Laphicet asked, a little taken aback.

"Because you're the Empyrean of Suppression," Rose reminded him. "I think if we combine your Suppression powers with Molly's Dumb, we can synthesize invisibility!"

"Actually, that's pretty smart," Molly realized. "And it means Laphi and I get to work together."

Laphicet nodded toward her. "It's my honor."

"Okay," Rose said. "So this is gonna be trial by fire. Except, you know, water. Remember: the eyes can't see you, or it's back to the beginning with all of us. We'll have to do a little experimenting to figure out just how long the fake invisibility will last. Mikleo could usually get us forward two tiles before we'd have to take a break."

"You know, I'm actually looking forward to this!" Roman realized. "If only to flex my security-cam-dodging skills."

"Wonderful," Snatcher grumbled. "One of us is happy about this at least."

"…You know, if you want out – " Roman began.

"And leave you alone with the pitiful excuses for villains?" Snatcher scoffed. "Endearing as they are, it would do you little good to be in isolation with them for so long."

"Your call." Roman shrugged.

Rose directed everyone into a formation before leading them into the next chamber. Glowing blue eyes radiated on the walls, each staring directly forward into a field of teleportation. "Ready?" Rose declared. "Let's go!"

It was an utter disaster. Laphicet and Molly could in fact synthesize invisibility, but only when the two of them were in complete synchronous focus, and there was no clear rate as to how long it would last. The first time, they'd gotten into the next room, the bubble popped, and everyone landed in the pool. The second time, they took it in shorter bursts, and still ended up losing their grip on the spell in front of an eye.

Giovanni then declared he could find the blind spots without using invisibility, and he tried, and he failed with a splash. So Roman immediately declared he could outdo Giovanni, tried, failed, and splashed. They went back to invisibility, and then Giovanni accidentally stepped outside the suppression field and was seen, bringing everyone down with him. Then, on the next round, Snatcher stumbled out of the field and brought everyone back to square one. Then Velvet got so frustrated with it all that she tried to just lunge one of the eyes, which of course resulted in an automatic reset.

"THERE WERE NO SUCH ARTES AS THESE IN MY ERA!" Velvet raged, stomping around the atrium. "THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED!"

"Wow," Roman said dryly. "You sound like Archie having to come to terms with technology."

"I'm having enough difficulty coming to terms with this in and of itself," Snatcher grumbled.

"Okay!" Rose declared. "Round eight, here we go!"

"You know we're never going to get to the top at this rate," Roman sighed.

"I'm sorry!" Molly wailed. "I'm doing my best!"

"The artes are working overtime to counteract my suppression field," Laphicet added. "If we had Emerald here with us, I could just amplify her Semblance instead."

"If we had Emerald here with us," Velvet grumbled, "maybe there would feel like there's a point to this mission."

"Hey, we can't go on without the water power!" Rose argued. "It's the last one we need! So yeah, there's a point to this, and no, we can't get Emerald back, because she's in the freaking vanguard!"

"Which I'm still having mixed feelings about, honestly," Giovanni admitted. "I mean, it's almost like you wanna get rid of us and break up our team."

Roman stared him dead in the eye. "I wanna get rid of you and break up our team."

"Yeah, getting mixed signals here," Giovanni said.

"Yeah, the whole vanguard thing is gonna fall flat on its face without a Shepherd at the wheel," Rose said. "Trust me. So let's give this tower one more try! This is gonna be the charm! I know it!"

It wasn't.

As everyone landed back in the pool, Snatcher was the first to get to his feet. "All right," he growled, "enough has certainly become enough! It's become time to take the path of lesser resistance!"

"You have a path of lesser resistance?" Giovanni asked. "And you've been holding out on us?"

"Well, actually," Roman realized, "the last two guys on our list – "

"Forget them!" Snatcher snapped. "Forget all of this! I've had just about enough of being ridiculed, tormented, and altogether insulted upon injury over the course of this entire outing! We'll be taking a direct route to the top of that tower, and we'll be doing it my way."

"Um…even I don't know what you're talking about," Roman admitted.

"I'm talking – " Snatcher rolled up his sleeve. "About THIS!"

There was a silence. "Your wrist?" Velvet said dryly.

"Wrong arm," Snatcher muttered. He repeated the gesture with the opposite side; "THIS!"

"Oh, right!" Giovanni realized. "You guys have those teleport thingies!"

"Wait…no," Roman broke in. "Those only work going from world to world or if we've been to a place before."

"So say the rules and by-laws and all the fine print," Snatcher huffed. "All the sorts of things meant to be broken, by my estimate."

"There was a reason you were given those safety guidelines," Velvet reminded him. "I don't even know how your machine works, and I can already tell you that if you do what you're thinking of doing, it'll be too dangerous to risk."

"Those so-called guidelines are little more than crossing Ts and dotting Is to prevent legal retribution in the extremely rare event something does happen," Snatcher stated confidently. "Do trust me; I've spent much time around inventors. Stood in line with one for three hours at the patent office, in fact, and what've I got to show for it? His son out to kill me with an army of Boxtrolls is what. Mr. Zorg's warnings are all stuff and nonsense. I've become quite accustomed to this device – dare I say skilled at using it – and I do believe I am of the skill level to no longer heed such warnings."

"Okay," Roman said tentatively, "Archie, I see where you're going with this, but even I have to say it's a bad idea. We have no idea where the endpoint is besides vaguely 'up.' Are you really gonna go off that?"

"Roman!" Snatcher was taken aback. "You doubt me?"
"No," Roman said. "I doubt the 'infernal device' on your wrist."

"I'm well aware I haven't been at the wheel of this particular mission," Snatcher ranted on. "Hardly done anything to contribute."

"Oh, fuck." Roman realized this for the desperate ego-boost it was. "Archie, this isn't the time. We can talk about whatever – "

"The time for talking's past!" Snatcher was setting his teleporter.

"Don't do that," Giovanni said flatly. "Just don't."

"Somebody stop him!" Molly ran forward.

Laphicet held her back. "If you touch him, you go wherever he's going."

"You do NOT know what you're doing," Roman insisted, pointing directly at Snatcher. "Most times, yes. In this case? No. You have NO IDEA what you're fucking around with."

"As if you do!" Snatcher spat back. "What I know is I'm finally about to regain my position in this pecking order. No longer the weakling, no longer the one we've got to hold up the show for! As a matter of fact, I am getting us to the top of this building! I'll go, come back, and you'll all see that I'm MORE than competent!"

"NO ONE IS DOUBTING YOUR COMPETENCE!" Roman yelled. "Seriously, do NOT touch the teleporter or so help me, I swear I'll – "

Snatcher pressed a final button, setting the device in motion. With a sly smirk, he addressed Roman; "Or you'll what? Keep trying to navigate this labyrinth of agony?" He gestured toward the door. "If you wish to keep throwing yourself at such a useless endeavor, then HAVE AT IT!"

All at once he felt a splitting pain rush through that hand, as though it had been run through with several needles at the same time. Snatcher wasn't looking at the atrium anymore; he was on an upper floor of the temple, viewing the interior. More blue, more water. Thankfully no eyes this time to send him back the way he'd come.

He'd made it. And whatever had impaled his hand aside, he was so looking forward to telling Roman that he'd been right.

Snatcher took a step toward the center of the room – only to be immediately reeled back. His hand, the one with all the needles, was being clutched, preventing him from leaving the spot.

Finally he turned to look at it and gasped sharply, a fresh wave of nausea rolling over him.

He'd expected some sort of blood or gore, that he'd run into something sharp by accident. It wasn't so. Instead, as he followed the length of his arm, his wrist ended at the carved stone wall. His hand was inside the wall. No, it was wall now. No matter how he tugged at it, it remained embedded, literally fused in with the stone.

So that's why they'd been warned not to teleport to unfamiliar locations on the same world.

Well, all he had to do was teleport back, then. Which would have been incredibly easy if the teleporter weren't also embedded in the wall with his hand. He could see the band of it protruding out of the wall slightly, just a few centimeters from being actually reachable.

No eyes in the room, either. So he couldn't try and get himself seen by the temple's artes and return that way.

His scroll jingled. All too excitedly, he used his free hand to fish it out of his pocket, answering it emphatically; "Yes? What is it?"

"Funny thing," Roman said. "I thought you'd be back by now."

Snatcher weighed his options. Tell him, and risk humiliation. Or not tell him, and have conceivably no way of escape. Unfortunately, his priorities weren't as balanced as most, and so he needed a moment to think about it. In the meantime, he could stall; "Everything's gone fine. I'm merely conducting reconnaissance of the area. As Mr. Vexen would want. In fact – "

It was just the slightest act of clumsiness. The scroll slipped from Snatcher's hand and hit the floor. Snatcher stumbled to stretch toward it and somehow kicked it instead, sending it just out of reach.

He really should've been honest when he'd answered the call.

Now he could only watch and listen in lament as the scroll transmitted dialogue from Roman that came off as little more than increasingly more worried mutters. Then the call disconnected, the screen going dark.

Well, no doubt the others would want to try it their way whether or not they bought Snatcher's lie. They'd be along soon enough, and then he could wrangle one of them into freeing him.

A loud, guttural roar rumbled through the halls of the temple. Snatcher cringed. That was right; they'd come to vanquish a half-turned dragon in order to get one of their seraphs back.

That half-dragon was slithering about the temple. It was in no frame of mind to distinguish friend versus foe. And judging by that roar, it was on Snatcher's floor.

...

Tepet Muul was an ancient metropolis that hadn't seen civilization for centuries: empty buildings buried in the heart of the jungle. Its architecture relied on steppe pyramids, making it tower to the heavens.

It also apparently had a skyrail system with purple trolleys that made their way around on wires.

"Is that…supposed to be here?" Rapunzel asked, looking up at the elaborate trolley system.

"No, it's not," said Elena. "I have…no idea why that's there."

Rapunzel, Stork, Papyrus, Ven, Elena, and Sofia made their way through the city according to Cacahuate's map. Rapunzel was in the lead, reading off the directions as they walked, occasionally tilting the map sideways to get a better idea of where they all were. Then, at last, they came to the innocuous-looking vine-covered wall that marked the gate to Takaina.

"Okay," Rapunzel announced. "We should be here. And that means…"

She brushed aside several vines, revealing an impression in the stone. Shaped like a three-dimensional, multi-pointed star.

"IT'S KEY TIME!" Papyrus declared, pointing dramatically at the wall.

"Heh…" Ven chuckled as he stepped forward. "Usually, I have to use a different kind of key for something like this." He reverently fitted the spirit key into the impression.

The key dissolved. The wall parted, transforming into a gate. A long, dark hall lay beyond.

"Okay!" Rapunzel declared. "Halfway there!"

"That definitely looks ominous." Stork slid past Rapunzel. "I'll take it from here. A place like this is bound to be infested with booby traps."

Except it wasn't. Stork's slow, cautious gait was for nothing; the way was unbarred. As they inched through the hall, Sofia asked, "Are you excited to get your scepter fixed, Elena?"

"I just hope we can," Elena replied. "Part of me still can't even believe I'm holding the Scepter of Light. Part of me still can't believe I'm even here at all. It's like…things have been so bizarre and they've happened all at once, and I have no idea what I can even expect from here."

"LOOSE STONE!" Stork called out, and everyone froze. Then Stork tested the suspect stone in the floor by slowly putting the weight of his foot on it. Turned out it wasn't loose, and definitely wasn't a trigger for a wall full of arrows like he'd thought. "False alarm. Carry on."

"HONESTLY, I'M STILL WORRIED ABOUT THOSE SKY TRAMS," Papyrus brought up. "THOSE LOOKED MORE OUT OF PLACE THAN ANYTHING IN THIS HALL."

"Yes," Stork told him, "but they're out there, and we're in here, so that's something I'm choosing NOT to worry about for now."

"Maybe some of us should go back," Sofia wondered. "I wouldn't mind checking them out to see if there's anything dangerous about them. I wonder who put them here if the city's abandoned…"

Ven noted the order in which they were walking. "Papyrus, Sofia. We're the last three in line. It'd be easy for us to just go check. Rapunzel, Stork, Elena, you three okay going in on your own?"

"If we haven't died by now, we probably won't," Stork related.

"I got this," Elena said confidently. "No, WE got this. You guys just make sure there's nothing weird going on here. Weirder than it already is, I mean."

Ven, Papyrus, and Sofia backtracked. Elena let out a sigh; "Isabel was working on a sky tram system for Avalor before Shuriki…"

"Maybe she is okay," Rapunzel ventured. "I mean, you and I both know what it's like to be a lost princess. Everyone thought I was…well, and everyone thought you were…but here we both are."

"I wouldn't get my hopes up," said Stork. "I know, I know. I'm cruel and callous and evil. But if you convince yourself she's out there now, and it turns out she's not…it'll hurt more than anything."

"It couldn't hurt more than losing her," Elena muttered.

"Yeah, have you ever been in that place before?" Stork asked. "I don't wanna make this a pity contest, but I thought there was hope for someone I lost once, and turns out I didn't really lose them until I saw the bodies."

There was a heavy silence. Then Elena said, "What if the answer's in between? To have hope that Isa is alive. But to be ready in case she's…not. Actually, both of you together helped me realize that, and it makes me a lot more…at peace, if that makes sense."

"Hey, we make a great team," Rapunzel told Elena. "Me and Stork, I mean. …And the rest of our friends too! The thing is, he's been through things I'll never know. And I've been through things he'll never know."

"And your situation is weirder than both of ours," Stork told Elena. "But at the end of the day, you don't wanna be like me. You know why I dread things? Because being surprised by them is half the horror. If I see it all coming, I can't be caught off guard. If I see things coming that don't actually come, well, that's a good day. But I wouldn't say I'm happy. Rapunzel's the one to copy if you want happiness. I'm just saying…don't set yourself up for heartbreak, either."

"Happiness," Rapunzel repeated softly. "I try to be happy. A lot of times, I'm just faking it until I make it. But usually that strategy pans out at least a little."

"It looks like you're both looking to be happier," Elena realized, "but you're going about it in two different ways."

After ruminating on it for a moment, Rapunzel and Stork both said "Yeah, that's right" in almost perfect synchrony, but with just a little different cadence, a little different speed.

"And sometimes…" Stork fired a smirk over his shoulder. "There's light at the end of the tunnel." That was his way of announcing that they'd made it down the hall.

The forge beyond was an architectural marvel, a cloistered but spacious chamber whose focal point was a well. Stork, Rapunzel, and Elena hurried to the edge of the well, peering down not into liquid but into soft blue light reflected off too many facets to count.

"That has to be a thousand crystals," Elena gasped.

"That could power every ship on Atmos," Stork said reverently. "Actually, no. I'm thinking of regular crystals. These are the magic kind, so…two Atmoses." His eyes widened. "The things I could do with the Condor with just one of those…"

"Well, we're here now, so we might as well take just one for that," Rapunzel said. "But first, let's get the scepter fixed up. I wonder how we do that…"

"Hmm." Elena stared down the well. "The air here feels magical. I wonder if we could just…put the scepter in the well and lower it. I bet the magic is concentrated enough here that it would pull itself together."

"I mean, it is supposed to be a crystal forge," Stork pointed out. "I would be surprised if these weren't specialized forgery crystals."

"Let's give it a shot!" Rapunzel suggested.

They loaded up the scepter onto the tray of the well, lowering it down at a reasonable pace.

Outside, a second party had arrived. Prisma, Mera, and their friends.

"Whaaaaat's with the sky trams?" Mera asked as soon as they were in the city borders.

"I…do not know," Victor admitted. "Those are not supposed to be here."

"Maybe it means people live here again," Carla mused.

"That is not possible," Victor countered. "This city is not fit for people to live. Not anymore."

"Getting warmer…" Prisma waved the Terra Crystal this way and that, divining the location of the forge. "Warmer…warmerrrrrr…" She gasped. "THERE!"

She pointed down into the exposed hallway. "You know," she mused, "I thought there would be more of a defense line, like a gate that needed a magic key or something."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Victor muttered. "I cannot help but feel like there is something we have failed to notice about this entire situation."

("WOW!" Papyrus said as he, Ven, and Sofia rode the tram that passed high in the sky in the direction Victor wasn't facing. "LOOK AT THE VIEW FROM HERE! THE PART THAT ISN'T THE CITY LOOKS EVEN MORE SPECTACULAR THAN THE PART THAT IS THE CITY! LET'S ALL LOOK OUT AT THE HORIZON!"

"You're right!" Ven gasped as he and Sofia joined Papyrus in not looking anywhere near the WHAM contingent. "It's gorgeous!)

"Well, I'm going in," said Prisma. "Who's with me?"

Victor winced. "You must understand. I am…hesitant."

"Because of your dead wife?" Prisma said sweetly.

Victor flinched. "Please. Have some courtesy."

"Oh, fine." Prisma rolled her eyes. "You don't have to come in if you don't want to. Actually, you and Carla should stay here and guard the door!"

"I will guard the door with you!" Indus volunteered. "I am the official door guardian in every duo heist between me and Lady Mera!"

"Papà!" Carla stamped her foot. Then winced – it was the one held together with the crystal splint. "I do not need you to decide for me! I will risk what I want to risk!"

"Suit yourself, little lady," the Lobster Mobster said as he shook his hat out over the grass nearby. "It's just that I was hopin' to have someone to play Liars' Dice with. Someone who wasn't a stuffed shirt or two corals short of a reef." A set of dice tumbled out of the seashell hat. "But you go on in and miss all the fun."

The gambit worked. "What's Liars' Dice?" Carla asked as she moved over to the Lobster Mobster's grass patch.

"Real easy game, see," the Lobster Mobster replied, settling the hat back on his head. "The first thing you gotta come up with is somethin' to wager. Somethin' good, like…hm…y'know, I got a real nice soft pillow back in my crib at Yzmatopia. You humans might not appreciate a good pillow, since you can only put your giant head on it, but that pillow gave me the best night's sleep I've ever had outta water. You win, you get that pillow. But what do you gimme if I win?"

Carla flicked at her green pendant. "This."

"Now, that's one shiny rock," the Lobster Mobster said. "You got yourself a deal, presumin' that ain't a fake."

Carla nodded fervently. It was actually a more common stone that was polished up to look valuable, but she knew better than to let that slip.

Victor was glad she was choosing to stay out of danger. Still, he couldn't help but mutter "I am no stuffed shirt."

"Well, I'm going in," Mera said. "Girlfriends gotta stick together. What about you, shark boy?"
"No way!" Undertow backed off. "That's way too cramped! But if anyone tries to get in, I'll leave a mark on 'em! A mark they won't survive!"

"Just you and me?" Mera winked at Prisma. "Guess it's a date."

"Wonderful!" Prisma chirped. "All right! We'll be right back! Don't accidentally destroy the city without us!"

As she and Mera sauntered into the hall of Takaina, Mera commented, "I love how you actually knew Indus would need that warning."

Elena cranked the well. The tray rose. The Scepter of Light lay whole upon it, as though it had never been broken. It had also changed its features – its gold shaft was now made of pure crystal, transformed by the forge itself.

"That's some powerful stuff," Elena said. "If it can turn a scepter to crystal just by it being near the other crystals, I wouldn't want to get too close."

Stork backed off a few paces.

"Well?" Rapunzel urged. "Try it out!"

Elena turned the scepter over in her hands. "I'm not really sure how it works, but…"

"Try saying a spell!" Rapunzel said. "Oh, try 'fira'!"

Elena pointed the scepter at a far wall. "Fiiiiiii…ra. Firaaaaaaa. Fira?"

Nothing.

"Blazes," Elena cursed. "It didn't – "

The scepter loosed a blast that practically carved a new cavern into the far wall.

"WHAT THE?" Elena stumbled back, looking every which way with wide eyes. "How did that happen?"

"Yeah, careful where you point that thing." Stork's own eyes were open wide and fixated on the damage she'd just caused.

"That must be the word for a Fire spell with your scepter!" Rapunzel guessed. "You have to say 'blaze'! Kind of like how when my hair used to heal, it needed a whole rhyming incantation. Most people can just say 'Cura,' it turns out."

"Well, how am I supposed to figure out all the words?" Elena wondered.

"Trial and error?" Rapunzel proposed.

"Why do you even think you NEED another spell?" Stork asked. "That 'blaze' can take care of Shuriki. Just make sure you don't bring down the whole castle with her." He winced suddenly. "Someone's coming!"

Mera and Prisma stalked into the forge room. "And that's how I earned and lost my forklift certification within the span of two hours," Mera concluded.

"Wha – " Prisma was distracted from the story when she realized the company they had. "YOU."

"Seriously?" Mera threw up her hands. "SERIOUSLY? Are you just gonna be everywhere we go? Do I have to worry about you AND ducks watching my every move?"

"YOU." Elena glowered at Prisma and Mera. Then she looked over to Rapunzel; "Those are our enemies, right? Or are they our friends because Shuriki beat them up?"

"They're with Yzma." Rapunzel's tone turned colder. "Not friends in the slightest."

"You know what?" Prisma laughed. "This is a win-win situation! Because I'm here in the place where I'm going to finally access my full power as a Crystal Master, and then I can get rid of you all!"

"Your full power?" Elena repeated. She followed Prisma's gaze, looking back at the well. Then her head snapped back to face forward. "NO."

"Yes!" Prisma cheered. "And you can't stop me!"

"Oh yeah?" Elena aimed the Scepter of Light. "BLAZE!"

Prisma and Mera dove opposite ways to avoid the massive blast that hurtled toward them. "I already had literally all my bones broken ONCE today," Mera grumbled as she got up from the ground. "You really wanna go for number two? Then I'm not gonna play nice."

In a flash, she'd conjured not only a glassy spear, but a pair of blades on the bottom of her shoes, transforming them into skates. She took off skating, and it was as smooth as if she were on ice.

"DON'T LET THEM GET TO THE WELL!" Elena repositioned herself so she stood guard directly before the central forge.

Stork immediately surged forward to combat Mera, aiming an uppercut that she avoided by blocking his wrist with her spear. She skated circles around him, stabbing and jabbing; he twisted this way and that, into ever more ridiculous poses, to avoid it.

"CRYSTALLO!" Prisma conjured crystal spikes to erupt from the ground, pointing toward Rapunzel and Elena. "Hmm…CRYSTALLO!" She waved her Terra Crystal through the air, and swords of all colors sparkled in the air, pointed at the two princesses. As the swords took off in the direction of their points, Prisma chuckled, "Ooooops!"

Rapunzel flung her hair upward to intercept the swords. Elena took out the spikes with a well-placed "BLAZE!". Then she staggered to one knee.

"Elena!" Rapunzel gasped.

"I'm fine," Elena panted. "Just…using the scepter makes me tired. Just stop her."

Prisma was already attempting to get around back while the princesses were distracted. Rapunzel charged around the well to head her off at the other side.

"You really think you can stop me?" Prisma laughed. "Please. What can couple little princesses and their frog do against a true Crystal Master?"

"You did NOT just say that!" Rapunzel twirled her hair as menacingly as she could.

Elena staggered into place beside Rapunzel, raising the scepter. "I have come…too far…to get stopped here."

"Oh, what a coincidence!" Prisma laughed. Then her brow furrowed. "SO HAVE I."

She charged for the well. Rapunzel flicked her hair, lassoing Prisma, only for Prisma to drop to the ground and roll. Rapunzel's head was jerked to the side by the motion. Elena tried another "BLAZE!" only for the shot to go wild. Then Prisma rolled right into her legs.

Standing on the well's edge, Elena was already off balance from the Scepter draining her. She stumbled backward.

"NO!" Rapunzel reached out to seize Elena's hand. But her own balance was compromised by Prisma flailing about in her hair; instead of having the anchor point to pull Elena up, Rapunzel was pulled down. Into the well.

"HA!" Prisma wriggled her arms free, seizing the edge of the well as the princesses went down – but the sudden jerk of Rapunzel's hair losing slack was stronger than Prisma's grip. "No, no…NO NO NO!" And then Prisma plunged down to the bottom with the other two.

For a moment, Stork and Mera froze, forgetting about fighting each other. Mouths and eyes agape, they looked to the place where their respective allies had fallen, hoping that it would somehow spit them back out.

When so much time had passed, the two looked to each other, fire in their gazes. "YOU did this," Stork seethed.

"Me?" Mera snapped. "YOU'RE the one who DID THIS!"

Stork moved at lightning speed. He seized Mera's arm – not a place that had a splint. It would crush if he wasn't careful. So Mera reacted, like a hedgehog showing its spines. And spines she produced: glass peaks that erupted from the floor en masse, shooting toward their target.

Stork let out a hiss of agony. Three spikes pierced into him, drawing blood. What seemed to be fifty more threatened to eviscerate him if he moved. He let go of Mera.

A bright light, a prism of all colors, burst from the well. Three figures rode the light's beam to hover in the air in the midst of the room. Prisma, who seemed to be sparklier than ever. Elena, whose gown had gained a multitude of new accents. And Rapunzel, whose hair fluttered freely.

Gently, all three women were lowered to the ground. Only then did they seem to remember where they really were.

Rapunzel's gaze went right to Stork and Mera. Her hair, glowing golden, deepened into a definite orange tint. She gave a growl of "How DARE you" before her hair, unbidden, shot out like a whip, crashing into the glass spikes, shattering every single one. Stork took the window to escape, putting a whole lot of distance between himself and Mera.

"Now I'm REALLY mad!" Prisma stormed toward Elena, waving her Terra Crystal – which seemed to reflect more colors of the rainbow now. "CRYSTALLO!"

Elena had enough time to scream "WHAT?" before she was entirely turned to crystal.

Prisma flinched. "Did I just do that?" Her gown flashed a bright yellow. "I just DID that!"

In a burst of red, Elena became human once more, a crystal crust breaking off her skin. "I wouldn't speak too soon," she said smugly.

"No, no, NO!" Prisma stamped her foot. "I'M supposed to be the Crystal Master! Not you!"

"What was that spell you were using again?" Elena thought it over. "Oh yeah!" She pointed the Scepter of Light directly at Prisma. "Crystallo!"

A garden of crystals sprouted, forming a wall that threatened to close Prisma inside. Prisma sidestepped deftly, hopping away from the crystals as they followed her. "How are you DOING that?" she yelled. "Oh, it doesn't matter! Just – just BURN!"

Prisma flicked the Terra Crystal. Red crystals surrounded Elena, giving off extreme heat. Elena stumbled, unsure where to move to avoid getting burned. The crystals glowed, their aura licking out as flames, threatening to set Elena ablaze. Then, as her gown flashed deep purple, Elena threw her hands out front, and ice emanated from where she stood, spreading to cover all of the crystals and then beyond.

"THESE ARE THE MOST POWERFUL CRYSTALS I'VE EVER MADE!" Prisma shrieked. "You CAN'T have my powers! This isn't FAIR!"

Rapunzel, hair still blazing bright orange, stormed toward Mera. "It's bad enough that you took over the Mystic Isles," she seethed. "It's bad enough that you were fighting me! But you do not ever, EVER get to HURT MY FRIENDS!"

Suddenly the foundations of Takaina were shaking. Shards of stone peeled from the wall and hailed from the ceiling as dust clouds were kicked up. Mera cowered in utter terror; "Are you the one doing that?"
Somehow, Rapunzel knew the answer. "My advice for you," she growled. "RUN."

Mera took the suggestion to heart, reinstating the skate blades on her shoes.

Elena pointed the Scepter at Prisma; "BLAZE!"

Prisma retaliated with the Terra Crystal; "CRYSTALLO!"

As crystal projectiles went up in flames, fire and stone battling each other, Mera slid in on her skates and grabbed Prisma's arm. "Gotta go!" she urged.

"Wait – WHAT?" Prisma was dragged away forcibly, finding there were now glass blades on her own shoes. "But I haven't beaten her yet! And she copied MY CRYSTAL MASTER POWER!"

"And the house is coming down on us," Mera urged, pulling Prisma down the passageway back to Tepet Muul. "So if you wanna NOT be crushed by an ancient ruin, we leave NOW. Also, just FYI, if you die on me again, I'm gonna be PISSED."

"Oh," Prisma realized. "When you thought I – "

"You're back," Mera told her. "That's what I care about."

"You know we have necromancy."

"I know. I don't care. Less talky, more escapey."

Meanwhile, Rapunzel, Elena, and Stork seemed to realize the trouble they were in. "Rapunzel!" Elena called over, her gown deeper purple than ever. "Turn the shaking off!"

"I – I don't know how!" Rapunzel shrieked, her own hair turning the same shade of purple. "It's like the more worked up I get, the more it shakes, and I don't know how to calm down!"

A cold hand seized her wrist. "If I may," Stork told her, "there's always the time-honored tradition of running away from our problems."

Rapunzel didn't even offer a response, just running alongside Stork as he took her down the hall, Elena keeping pace.

When Prisma and Mera stumbled outside, they witnessed perhaps the most asinine scene either one of them could name in recent history. Obviously, the allies of both parties had found each other and gotten into a battle. "Battle," of course, was the operative word. Really, what was happening was a standoff. Indus had created a barrier to shield himself, Undertow, the Lobster Mobster, Victor, and Carla from any potential attacks by Sofia, Ven, and Papyrus. Sofia, Ven, and Papyrus, however, were doing the exact same thing, putting up a Barrier spell fortified by bones. Really, both parties were just staring fearfully at each other from behind barriers.

"WHAT THE HELL?" Mera yelled. "HOW DID THIS EVEN HAPPEN?"

"Don't ask me!" Undertow yelled. "I wanted to chow down on these losers, and then things got weird!"

"You should've at least taken initiative yourself!" Prisma snapped. "Bad shark!"

"I TRIED!" Undertow yelled. "You weren't here to see what happened when I did!"

"…We're never gonna get a solid explanation for this, are we?" Mera realized.

"Let's just go," Prisma suggested. "We run now, we win LATER."

"Running is a very good idea!" Victor agreed. And without further argument, the entire contingent bolted into the jungle.

Ven and Papyrus finally let down the shield. "Where's – " Ven began.

"COMING IN HOT!" Elena yelled as she, Stork, and Rapunzel burst from the forge's hidden doors. Immediately after they escaped, the entry hall collapsed, sealing off Takaina for the forseeable future.

"WHAT'S GOING ON?" Papyrus asked. "WHY DID YOU JUST VANDALIZE THAT BUILDING? AND WHY ARE YOU PURPLE?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" Rapunzel shrieked. "I don't know, I don't know, I fell in this crystal well and then everything started to get freaky – "

Elena's purple lightened, her gown starting to take a teal hue. "It's like…our emotions are giving us magic," she realized. "Our emotions are giving us magic. That's…oooh, that could get bad fast – um, are you okay?"

"NO!" Rapunzel yelled, wide-eyed. Now the actual ground outside was shaking too. "I can't turn it off!"

"Hey, hey!" Elena was starting to feel a spike of fear on her own end. "Just – just don't let the fear get to you, okay? If you're afraid, it gets worse!"

"I KNOW!" Rapunzel screamed. "I don't know how to stop!"

"Think of something calming!" Elena told her. "Like baby jaquins!"

"What was something you used to think would keep you safe?" Stork asked. "Something that made you actually feel like the world wasn't gonna end on you? Something from the past!"

Upon Stork's prompt, Rapunzel could think of only one thing. The tower. Yes, it had been a prison. She had also believed for so long that it was protecting her from all outside evils. When Gothel wasn't actually there, maybe it was a place free of evil. When Rapunzel was a young child, she had loved that tower so much, even if she longed to know what was in the outside world.

It was better that she'd escaped. It was so much better that she had found the outside world, and the worlds outside that. But sometimes she wanted to be small again, nestled in her bed in the tower, looking up at the designs she'd painted, her own private fantasy world. One tune always playing in her heart.

"Flower…gleam and glow," she sang shakily, shutting her eyes tightly. "Let your power shine." Her tone smoothed out as she felt the old feeling of safety. "Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine…"

The purple dissipated from her hair. Replacing itself with teal.

"Heal what has been hurt. Change the Fates' design. Save what has been lost…"

It hadn't been the place she'd belonged. But it had felt so safe. Swirling paints and soft blankets, far away from all dangers she could know.

"Bring back what once was mine…"

The ground stopped shaking.

"What once was…mine."

Silence. Then Stork's voice broke through: "That was great, but, um…why did this happen?"

Rapunzel cracked one eye open. Then the other. Her hair was now bright teal, and it had decided to wrap itself around Stork like a cocoon.

"Um…I don't know," Rapunzel admitted. "I was just trying to think back to a time when I felt safe, like you said, and…and I guess it's teal now."

"Yeah, it's like our emotions are color-coded," Elena pointed out. "So everyone can know what we're feeling."

"Everyone will know what I'm feeling." Rapunzel blinked. A flash of purple that faded quickly back to teal. "That's…that's great. I can live with that."

Stork finished shrugging off the hair, and Rapunzel gasped; "OH MY GOSH, THAT'S RIGHT, YOU'RE – you're…fine?"
"What?" Stork clasped at one of the areas where Mera had pierced him, on his chest. There was no wound. There wasn't even a tear in his clothes. "What – what – " He spun around while checking the other ex-wounds. "What just happened?"

"Rapunzel's hair, maybe?" Ven suggested.

Rapunzel's eyes went wide. "I…I just healed you using the sundrop incantation." She lost her footing, sitting down on the grass with a soft plunk. "I haven't been able to do that in more than a year. I SHOULDN'T be able to do that anymore. That power is GONE."

"Okay, okay," Elena said, putting out her hands. "Let me make sure I have this in the right order. We fell into the Takaina forge. All the crystals affected us. We absorbed their magic. And now, we have more magic than we ever did before." She grasped the Scepter of Light tightly. "I didn't even feel tired when I was battling that Crystal Master."

"That's so awesome!" Ven cried with a beaming smile. "You guys have so much cool magic now!"

"It is NOT awesome – " Rapunzel saw purple again, and slowly inhaled, banishing the purple. "That power is what collapsed the building on us. I did that. I almost CRUSHED us."

"Yeah, and one other thing about that," said Elena. "One of the bad guys got the exact same powers as us. So that's gonna be a pain to deal with."

Stork cleared his throat. "To be fair, it usually isn't a Storm Hawk mission without pretty much everything going wrong that can go wrong. You know, Magpie's Law."

"MURPHY'S?" Papyrus ventured.

"Magpie's in my world," Stork pointed out. "You know, because magpies are harbingers of grave tidings."

"Only if you see one of them," Rapunzel corrected. "If there's a pair, that's good luck." Her hair was turning back to its usual gold. "And it's not like the magpies ever asked to be bad luck anyway."

"Solid points," Stork told her. "Anyway, what happens now?"

"WHAT HAPPENS NOW?" Papyrus repeated. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN, 'WHAT HAPPENS NOW'? WE HAVE ENOUGH MAGIC TO GO UP AGAINST SHURIKI AND WIN THIS TIME!"

"If we don't destroy Avalor in the process," Rapunzel said softly, practically gasping it.

"I mean…sometimes you have to break a few things to fix something else," Stork muttered. Then, louder, "But if you need to stay back – "

"Are you seriously asking her to stay back?" Ven snapped. "We NEED both Rapunzel and Elena's new powers."

"WE JUST HAVE TO WORK ON SOME NEW COPING SKILLS," Papyrus ventured.

"And I'm all for it," Rapunzel said. "I'm just…" A streak of purple appeared. She hummed the familiar incantation.

Stork then looked to the others. "You guys go on ahead," he told them. "We'll catch up. I think this should be between the two of us."

"WELL, ALL RIGHT," said Papyrus. "BUT WE WON'T GO TOO FAR."

As he, Ven, Sofia, and Elena left, Elena asked, "So are they, like, a thing?"

"They're close friends," Ven answered. "But Rapunzel…had someone else. Maybe she still does, but…"

"Oh," Elena said. "Messy and complicated. I get it."

Then the three of them were out of the vicinity. Rapunzel pulled her legs into a pretzel position, and Stork sat down across from her. "You picked that song," he pointed out.

"I felt safe back then," Rapunzel said softly. "Look, I know it would be better if I just left it behind, but – "

"No, I get it," Stork told her. "I just…you know I'm afraid of the worst things happening."

"I know."

"And I don't want you to think that was a…good thing."

"What if it was better, though?" Rapunzel asked. "I kept telling myself over and over that it was a good thing I broke out on my own. But I picked that song for a reason. When I lived in the tower, things weren't complicated. I didn't have to figure out who I was or fight these battles or deal with all these emotions." Slowly, a deep shade of blue faded into her hair. "I love all the new friends I've made. You guys are like my new family. But sometimes…sometimes I…"

"Wonder if it would've been better if you'd stayed where you were happy."

"I mean, if Eugene had never shown up, I could have just…been my mother's slave," Rapunzel said. "She would've made sure I stayed healthy, and the two of us would've acted like friends, and…it actually might not have been so bad. I think she did…love me in a way. If I could've just – "

"It wasn't better."

"Do you know?" Rapunzel asked. "Look." She took a fistful of blue hair. "I can't hide my sadness anymore, and I don't even know what spells I could cast if I'm not careful. And I…I wouldn't have to feel like the person I thought I loved…wasn't right for me."

"Yeah, but you wouldn't have had anyone to love like that." Stork let out a sigh. "You're telling me all the reasons I stayed on the Condor for ten years, and it's almost enough to make me not regret it."

"You regret it?" Rapunzel was surprised. "You love the Condor. It's your safe place."

"I am codependent on an airship," Stork reminded her. "You know how bad that got. If you're anything like me, then you would've put down roots in that tower so strong you could never leave. And sure, that would mean being safe." He pulled out a few blades of grass, twisting them in his fingers. "And lonely. You would've figured out in the end that she was using you. Yeah, maybe she loved you, but it always came with that one catch. And then you'd just…wish someone, anyone, would cut through all your defenses and find you."

"I might just be so grateful to that person that I'd fall for him," Rapunzel realized. "Maybe I was already there. Do you think I just…thought I loved Eugene?"

"No. You love him. That's obvious. Maybe it helped that he was the first person you interacted with in eighteen years. But it wasn't fake."

"I wish it was fake," Rapunzel said. "Then it wouldn't have to hurt that we might be over. I could just move on. I could be happy, the way everyone expects."

"Here's the thing," Stork said. "Your hair won't let you lie to yourself anymore. Note how I did not say to anyone else."

Rapunzel folded her arms, pressing them close. Seeming to shrink a little.

"If things do go down the drain with Eugene, though," Stork said, "I know it's not up to me, but…I'd prefer it if you two stayed friends. Because I wouldn't ever say I felt anything like THAT for any of my friends from back home. But I do love them, like a family does. They're my stupid little siblings that I have to keep in line, and I wouldn't want to lose that. I thought I DID lose that, and you know it. I don't want you to have to lose him, even if it can't be like it was."

Rapunzel nodded. "I'd rather have him in my life as a friend than just cut him away. It depends on him, though." Her eyes were filling with water rapidly. "Maybe he could even find a better girlfriend, like Stalyan – "

"The jerk who tried to make him marry her before we showed up?" Stork said in disbelief. "You're kidding me, right? There were SEVERAL problems with that relationship."

"I shouldn't even say 'girlfriend,' actually," Rapunzel realized. "I mean – it's not my place to say, but – "

"If you're trying to tell me he likes multiple genders, it means Papyrus wins fifty munny off Kazuichi. Which I would be proud to announce the next time the three of us are in the same room, except you know I don't trust Kazuichi to keep his mouth shut."

Rapunzel stifled a short giggle. "Maybe he'll find a great guy who loves to adventure with him. And is a little sassier than me. And likes to, well, you know."

"That's IF he calls it off."

"I don't have a lot of hope."

Stork shrugged. "It doesn't matter if you do. Whatever he decides will happen anyway, so you might as well do what you want about it."

"I just wish it wasn't so complicated," Rapunzel muttered. "I know it would've driven me crazy in that tower. But it might drive me crazy out here too."

"Okay, that's it," Stork groaned. "I was trying to not be selfish. But you just forced my hand, okay? If you ever had the chance to turn back time and start over, then I guess that's fine, it's your life, but I have NO idea what my life looks like if you didn't show up. So, no, it wouldn't have been worth it, because we wouldn't have met, and yeah, I know, this is Evil Stork Mode, but I would NOT be happy with you going back."

Rapunzel looked to him in awe. "That's the one thing I didn't think about," she said. "I'm sorry."

"No, no. I understand. I'm just not letting you get away with it."

She smiled. At last. "I might just be able to get through this if I have you with me. And all our friends, of course."

"If I get worried that you'll actually bring down Avalor," Stork told her, "I'll take you and run, like out of that forge. Got it?"

"That better be a promise."

"What's the pink mean?"

"Huh?" Rapunzel stole a glance at her hair. The blue had traded out for a baby pink. "I have…no idea. Happy, I guess? I don't know if I feel all that happy right now, but I do feel…better. For now, let's call the pink better-than-sad." She moved to stand up. "We better catch up."

"Hey. Before you do."

"Yeah?"
"Say what this is," Stork told her. "If you're gonna wear your emotions on your sleeve, then you're gonna need to own them."

"I own my emotions!" Rapunzel argued.

"Do you?" Stork urged. "Then what is this whole situation?"

"Complicated. Stressful. But it is a learning opportunity, and I just – "

"How you REALLY feel," Stork insisted.

"…It's the pits," Rapunzel sighed. Then she smiled, unexpectedly. "This is the pits. I hate it. I HATE it!" She laughed. "Okay, maybe I don't hate it so much right now, but I LOVE being able to say I hate it! This whole thing is awful, and I didn't want it, and I have to deal with it anyway, and I don't HAVE to pretend like there's an upside to it!" She threw both fists skyward. "YES!"

"Now THAT'S what I'm talking about!" Stork said excitedly. "Now, do you wanna save Avalor or not?"

"I don't!" Rapunzel said. "I mean, I do, but NOT right now, because this is NOT the right time!"

"And are you gonna go do it anyway?"

"OF COURSE I AM!"

Stork leapt to his feet. "Then let's go deal with it!"

Into the forest they ran, after their friends. Rapunzel's hair blazed pink. Definitely better than sad.

In a clearing some distance away, the WHAM ARMY contingent slowed down. "I better get to bite someone before this side trip is over," Undertow growled, "or I'm gonna get REAL nasty."

"Calm down, will you?" Prisma sighed. "We'll find some unfortunate victim for your lunch soon enough. Anyway, SOMEHOW two of our enemies just became CRYSTAL MASTERS."

"Yeah, wasn't something up with the blonde before that even happened?" Mera asked. "She seems double magic now, which is the opposite of what anyone here wanted ever."

"Ooh, it makes me so mad, I could just – " Prisma slapped a tree, and it turned to crystal, glittering in the sun. "THAT DIDN'T EVEN MAKE ME FEEL BETTER! It is pretty, though. Ooh, that might be the best one I've made."

"I think we should figure out a way to get even more superpowers so we can fight them!" Indus urged.

"Good thinking, Captain Obvious," Mera sighed.

"No, no." Prisma raised a hand. "He's got a point. But maybe it's not more powers we need. After all, I already have the most power I possibly can have, and it's not like I'm letting anyone except maybe Mera outdo me."

"I wouldn't even want to," Mera said. "You know I just care about painkilling. Not about outdoing anyone."

Prisma turned to Victor and Carla. "Who were the other ancient beings you were raising for your army?"

"The Shadows of the Night – " Carla began.

"We're not doing the Shadows of the Night," Prisma sighed. "Who else?"

"Orizaba," Victor said, "but the artifact to summon her rests in Shuriki's domain, and it will not even work until the next eclipse."

"Ooh, I know how this goes down," Mera said with a grin. "This isn't a beatdown. This is a HEIST. We sneak in, we get the thing, we sneak back out, we wait for eclipse time, and BAM! Won't even know what hit her. Then we bring down the rest of the brat squad."

"It just may work," Victor realized.

"Only if I get to bring down Security by force!" Undertow urged.

"YES, you can eat the guards," Prisma groaned. "Eat them, bite them, kill them, whatever you want, just get them OUT of our way and make it quick enough that they don't cause a scene."

"This is going to be a blast!" Carla squealed. "Though I still have one question. What was going on with the trams?"

"I have NO idea," Mera groaned, "and I'm sure that won't be explained in a satisfactory way for a WHILE."

...

There had been very little argument about letting Whiplash and Blizzard keep their armor as their designated weapons. However, the Grandmaster did make one thing very clear: "The moment you stand out there in the arena, there's no wi-fi connection, so if those things are paired to your Toothblue or whatever they're called, your headphones, your flashlights, your electric blenders, those won't help you if they're outside the arena. Got it?"
"Understood," Whiplash said. "Isn't that right, Blizzard?"

"Yeah," said Blizzard. But he wasn't the one Whiplash had been talking to.

"Dang it!" Rhona hissed. She wore an earpiece and microphone that hooked her right up to both Whiplash and Blizzard. "Okay, so you'll lose me for…maybe five minutes once you go onstage. But that's a maximum. After all, I need to be able to access your armor in order to let you have the Big Gun. Just kill time while I find a way in."

She'd already discovered the back rooms of the arena: a maze of tech and metal that seemed to have no sense in its layout. Somewhere around here would be a computer that would allow her access to the Grandmaster's files and programs. For example, an override to the wi-fi blocking. Or the official bracket layout, telling them exactly who they had to plan for.

Whiplash and Blizzard were turned to the arena, advancing into the light. The Grandmaster sat down in the spectator box, quiet for about ten seconds before saying "Shoot, I said 'electric blender' and now I want a margarita. Or a smoothie. Or a margarita smoothie."

"What about a smoothie margarita?" Topaz asked.

"That works," the Grandmaster said.

"I'm on it," Topaz promised with a nod. "Swackhammer, go make us smoothie margaritas."

"…That's not you being on it," the Grandmaster sighed.

"I gave the order," said Topaz, "so I did something productive in the grand scheme."

"I have got NO idea what a smoothie margarita is," Swackhammer said in disbelief.

"It's exactly what it sounds like," the Grandmaster replied.

"That doesn't – " Swackhammer knew he wouldn't win this one. "Fine. Fine!"

Whiplash heard the static in his ear. The arena had just cut his contact with Rhona. He and Blizzard were on their own until she could hook back up to them.

Four armored figures awaited them at the center of the field, all hovering in midair. Iron Man, the suit of red, flanked by the gray and pink cohorts known as War Machine and Rescue. Then the far less sleek armor that looked ripped from a history book as their fourth.

"You must be truly desperate to have teamed up with the Mandarin," Whiplash snickered.

Iron Man reached out a hand, but Rescue put a hand on the red suit's arm, shaking the pink helmet.

"Bet you're surprised to see us, aren't you?" Blizzard chuckled.

War Machine just shrugged casually. Rescue put both thumbs near where the ears of the helmet would be, waggling all ten fingers.

"Why you – " Whiplash deployed both whips, charging them up. "How DARE you! This is for all the humiliation you have dealt me through the years!"

Overhead, the match was announced:

IRON MAN, WAR MACHINE, RESCUE, AND THE MANDARIN

VS.

WHIPPET AND BLITZKRIEG

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" Whiplash hissed.

"Mandarin," the Grandmaster said from the spectator booth. "Man-da-rin. Yeah, I'm gonna need those smoothie margaritas to be orange-flavored."

Without further warning, the armors arranged in an attack pattern. Six beams crisscrossed, aiming to blast Whiplash and Blizzard to the heavens. Blizzard immediately conjured a half-shell of ice to act as a shield, deflecting the beams, then froze himself a path on the ground, skating clear across the arena to get a shot.

Whiplash hopped up atop the icy shield, flicking a whip. It caught War Machine and delivered a massive jolt. The other three immediately flocked to cover him, aiming a new web of energy. Whiplash vaulted over War Machine, flipping upside-down in the air, and disengaged his whip, leaving it curled around War Machine while the others fired on empty air.

All of this played out in a small window that Rhona kept to the upper right of the computer terminal she'd found. Regrettably, the Grandmaster seemed to have dedicated different systems to do different things. This was thankfully the one that would control arena functions, but if Rhona wanted actual information, she'd have to search for the computer dedicated to file storage. With a sigh, she set to work on password-cracking.

The guards who'd been covering this room lay unconscious to either side of her. She'd given them a taste of her high heel to the head.

Soon enough, Rhona had the necessary password. She opened an access panel to the arena controls – written in Sakaarian, but Rhona knew enough about ciphers and context to be able to figure out what stood for the sound made by the letter "E" and go from there to a rudimentary understanding. She'd assumed that the words would translate to fairly common Earth languages based on how the Grandmaster communicated, and for the most part, she was right.

"This is child's play," she said as she toggled the first setting. "Scarlotti! This is Rhona. I presume you are holding up well enough."

By that time, Blizzard was on a merry chase, riding ever-expanding ice structures up the arena while he shot blasts of chill at the armored opponents. Whiplash had left a minefield of whips blazing on the ground. Still the suits kept forming complex attack patterns, as though they'd rehearsed this very fight long beforehand, shooting deadly spiderwebs of light. "NOW would be a good time," Whiplash hissed.

"All right," Rhona said. "I'm taking down the firewall that blocks all remote connections…I'm routing into the power system for this terminal…now, once I give you the Big Gun, you're going to lose me, so MAKE THIS COUNT."

Whiplash fended off Iron Man's punches with his flickering whips. "JUST DO IT!"

"Big Gun in three – " Rhona began.

"NOW!" Whiplash demanded.

"Rude," Rhona sighed. She hit the Enter key, and the screen went dark.

All power diverted from that computer through a transmitter device she'd developed and attuned to Whiplash's armor. From there, Whiplash could feel the humming and vibrating of the new power Rhona had given him. All he had to do – all he did do – was loop one whip around Iron Man's waist. Then Whiplash sent a massive electromagnetic pulse through that lone whip, surging into Iron Man's armor and shutting down every system. Iron Man dropped like a stone onto his back, stuck in lockdown.

"GET ME TO THE OTHER TWO!" Whiplash screamed.

"On it!" Blizzard landed by Whiplash's side, using his ice to build up a crude stairway. "I feel like I should be singing some kind of Idina Menzel song or something while I do this."

"If you do, I WILL turn the EMP on you," Whiplash threatened.

The ice rose high. Whiplash jumped from peak to peak, heading ever closer to War Machine. War Machine attempted to change course, but Whiplash and Blizzard were faster. A single whip locked around War Machine's neck.

Then the gray armor hit the ground, also trapped in lockdown.

"ONE MORE!" Blizzard yelled, creating an icy ramp that pointed right toward Rescue.

Whiplash took three running steps, then slid, launched into the air. Rescue couldn't escape quickly enough. He tackled the pink armor, giving it two whips and the last of the EMP.

Rescue hit the ground, stone-still, with Whiplash still embracing the armor. Whiplash immediately jumped to his feet: "And now for the magic man."

The Mandarin careened around the arena, obviously trying to take advantage of the fact that EMPs wouldn't work on the more supernatural armor. Hence why Whiplash hadn't meted any out.

"Time for the storm of the century." Blizzard put up both hands. "FREEZE!"

Winter winds whipped in cyclone around the arena. Snow and ice built up in the corners. Icicles dripped off the Mandarin. The audience soon had trouble seeing through the whiteout.

"YOU WANT ME, MAGIC MAN?" Blizzard yelled. "COME AND GET ME!"

But the Mandarin didn't.

"Oh, I get it," Blizzard taunted. "You're lookin' for Whiplash. You figure he's the one I'm hiding in the whiteout! Smart kid."

Then he caught a glimpse of the Mandarin armor. Pressed up to the highest corner of the arena wall. Doing nothing.

"What the – why?" Blizzard gave himself another stairway of ice to advance on the Mandarin.

The Mandarin dove straight down, evading and picking a new hiding place.

"WHY ARE YOU RUNNING?" Blizzard yelled. "CAST ONE OF YOUR DUMB SPELLS ON ME ALREADY!"

That was when Whiplash started to figure it out. "Or can you not?" he asked, creeping up behind the Mandarin.

Seeing how close Whiplash had gotten, the Mandarin quickly fled, taking shelter in the storm.

"You have no power," Whiplash realized. "You have left your magic elsewhere. You have said nothing. None of these mouthy brats have seen fit to actually run those mouths. BLIZZARD! STOP THE STORM!"

"Uh…okay?" Blizzard calmed it down; visibility returned as a soft blanket of snow carpeted the arena. "But he's getting away – "

"And he will keep running," Whiplash said as he slowly advanced toward a lump in the snow. He brushed the white away, revealing Iron Man's armor. Then he seized the armor by the helmet, swinging it, giving a scream as he bashed it against the wall.

Helmet and armor disengaged. The helmet stayed in Whiplash's hands. The armor bounced and clattered, with no human head sticking out of it. Whiplash pounced, using the helmet to beat the armor to bits, and eventually, a panel fell away, confirming the awful truth: the armor was empty.

"Oh," Blizzard realized. "They did NOT."

He helped excavate War Machine and Rescue, slipping snow into their joints and expanding it into hard ice. Pieces popped. Those suits were empty as well.

"And that one's empty too," Blizzard realized with a look up toward the Mandarin – or, more accurately, the hollow Mandarin armor.

"WE'VE BEEN TRICKED!" Whiplash seethed.

The Grandmaster sipped at his unholy abomination of a drink. "…Huh. Wonder where they all went. And why do I feel like this is gonna become a problem later?"

...

From their back-alley hideout in the city, Pepper dropped the remote control she'd been using to control the Iron Man, War Machine, and Rescue armor from a hundred feet away. Gene lowered his hand, dimming the light of the Makluan rings and letting his own armor fall to the ground.

"Ohhhhh, this is bad," Pepper worried. "And you know what? They wouldn't have figured us out if you had let your armor just keep ONE RING. ONE!"

"I wasn't letting a single Makluan ring fall into the hands of the enemy!" Gene argued. "You know what I've been through to get these. I couldn't throw even one away!"

"Well, now they're onto us!" Pepper groaned.

"I told you all they would be," Gene sighed. "This ruse was paper-thin. It was only ever to buy time. Let's hope it was enough."

The two of them exited the small room to enter a chamber where Tony and Rhodey stood on a makeshift stage, giving an audience to several Sakaarians. "The reason the revolution always failed in the past is because we didn't have every single person on board," Tony urged. "We have one shot to make this count, and it's over when the tournament is. We need every single audience member and everyone who isn't in that audience to band together! Then you can finally say goodbye to that Grandmaster bossing you around!"

"Like he's so 'grand' anyway," Rhodey scoffed.

There were murmurs of assent and excitement among the crowd. Could this be it? Could this young man be the bringer of their salvation, the one who would unite them to a cause?

"…We'll tell him later," Gene muttered.

"Oh yeah," Pepper agreed.

...

"Okay, so that was an unexpected plot twist," the Grandmaster announced via giant hologram in the midst of the arena. "Not the first we've seen in this tournament, and not the last, but it is the first we've seen that was completely unscripted, and it's going to be the last one that's completely unscripted or people will start melting. Speaking of people who probably don't want to get melted, I am offering a generous reward of your guaranteed survival for approximately one and a half months if you find where those kids went. I'm gonna need the search party to start sometime between now and a moment from now. So now. I need it now. Everyone get up, get out, and find those kids."

"They wanna know who won," Swackhammer hissed. "The audience never leaves the game until they know who won!"

"Oh, right," the Grandmaster realized. "Well, only two of the opponents even showed up, and they didn't kill anybody, but they sure did expose to me the names of four people who are going to get killed immediately if I have any say about it, and I do, so we'll just give them the win. Whippet and Blitzkrieg, everybody."

"YEAH!" Blizzard pumped both his fists, doing a little dance in the snow.

Whiplash, however, was kicking snow around in a blind rage, whipping it as well. "THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS! THE GRANDMASTER WON'T KILL THEM – BECAUSE I'LL BE THE ONE TO FIND THEM FIRST!"

"Come on, buddy." Blizzard grabbed Whiplash's arm to pull him along. "Let's go regroup. THEN we can figure out how to show up those jerks. But for now, just take the win."

Back at the computer terminal, Rhona sighed, leaning back in her chair. "I hope those idiots made good use of that EMP," she grumbled. "If you want something done the smart way around here, you have to do it yourself, and neither of them is me. Then again, they did have my assistance, so that should've made it foolproof…"

It was all fancy language to disguise that she really just wanted to know whether or not they'd won. And maybe she was even a little worried.

As Rhona reflected on this silently, she was addressed from the door to the terminal room. "You know, that was pretty s…lick. I mean, I m…yself would've routed the power from an adjacent system to keep this guy running, just seems like the smarter ch…oice, but this one was junk anyway, so I guess I'll give you the b…enefit of the doubt here."

It took a moment. Then Rhona realized what it meant: she'd been found. She fell out of her chair with a yelp of terror.

Getting a good look at the man who'd just arrived to likely seal her fate.

...

Thanos surged toward the blue cube in Loki's hand, throwing a meaty fist around it. It dissolved into sparks and glitter: a mere illusion.

"I truly am at a loss for having witnessed that," Loki replied with a wink – true, his Odin guise meant it looked like an ordinary blink, but Thanos knew. "You wish to be the arbiter of life and death in this multiverse, and you fell for the most common illusion in the book?"

He thrust Odin's spear up toward Thanos' throat.

It was halted in an aura of purple that pushed back hard, Thanos feeding raw Power into the strike to stop the spear. It was only the tiniest fraction of what the Power stone was truly capable of; Thanos was playing like a cat. He bent the spear, twisted it like a pretzel, disintegrated it so the dust fell through Loki's hands.

"…Well," Loki said, looking rather offput. "It seems the element of surprise is useless against raw brawn. I suppose if you're going to cheat your way to the top, you may as well – "

Thanos' gauntleted hand seized Loki around his neck, lifting him so his feet dangled. Loki choked as he struggled, unable to break free.

"We – we can work out a contract," Loki wheezed. "I would offer you my undying loyalty – "

"Undying," Thanos repeated. "What an interesting choice of words."

Knowing what was coming next, Loki just managed to hiss "You will never be a god – "

SNAP. Thanos tossed the limp body, still shaped like Odin, over his shoulder.

"KING ODIN!" Several Asgardians, having witnessed the slaughter, rushed to the side of what they believed to be their fallen leader. Thanos could hardly have asked for better fortune; with his little game, Loki had given Thanos the honor of killing Asgard's king.

Thanos turned away, and all of a sudden felt the most bliss he could remember in his entire life as a pair of lips pressed to his –

He fought back. Sensing tendrils of magic burrowing into his very subconscious, he activated the Mind stone, clipping them at the root. Amora's lips remained connected to his – and she was really trying to get into the kiss, as though that would make it stronger – but her hypnotism could not take hold.

Finally she relinquished him. "How can this be?" she asked breathlessly. "You're just a man – "

"No," Thanos told her. "I am far more."

He pressed a fingertip to her forehead. This time, he dispensed with the theatrics, simply using the Soul stone to drain out Amora's life. Her shriveled body collapsed, a barren husk.

Thanos kicked the corpse aside. "Is there anyone else who wishes to challenge me?" he asked. "Perhaps I should ask that question only after demonstrating my true power."

He raised the Infinity Gauntlet high. The Soul stone's gold light bathed the vicinity. The corpses of the fallen – Amora's included – rose from the ashes, but driven by souls and hearts not their own. Thanos had resurrected his fallen Outriders from this very battle, giving them new bodies, new faces. Now Asgard would have to cower as its own citizens tore it apart.

At least, that was the plan. The plan was not, by any means, for the newly-created Outrider army in Asgardian clothes to gather together in a flash mob and start dancing to an unheard beat.

To this, Thanos could only say "…What?"
"STRIKE UP THAT BAND!" Caleb Covington glittered to the forefront of the chorus. "I don't know about you, but war drums put me in the mood for dancing!"

Thanos was dumbstruck. Then he finally managed "I have killed your superior and your witch. You have no reason to face me unafraid."

"What are you really gonna do?" Caleb taunted. "Kill me?"
Thanos' eyes widened. "You are – "

"The leading man for a reason." Caleb twirled away, and was soon lost among the bodies of the grooving Outriders.

Thanos was still reeling from the absolute non sequitur that had somehow managed to combat him. He didn't notice the assailant approaching from behind until he felt the fangs sink into his neck. Blackheart bit deep, taking a chunk from Thanos' shoulder and swallowing the meat.

With Blackheart providing a visceral distraction, Doom swept down from the skies above, pouring all his magic into seizing the Infinity Gauntlet itself. Doom pulled at it, very nearly ripping it clear away from Thanos.

Thanos held his grip firm. "So this is the might of Doom," he scoffed, surging as much of the Mind stone as he could into Doom's head.

"You think the Infinity Stone can outclass the intellect of Doom?" Doom growled.

Thanos switched gears. If not Mind, then Soul. He would kill Doom from the contact alone. And so he did.

Except nothing happened. Doom was still wrenching at the gauntlet, glowing with energy.

Thanos gave a desperate punch forward with his last trick, Power. Doom finally was cast aside, breaking in the process. Becoming a mess of wires and metal. A bot that had been engineered with magic. No wonder the Mind stone hadn't worked on him. It was never Victor.

Thanos roared, turning the Soul stone on Blackheart, who was licking his blood in a way far too sensual for Thanos' liking.

"…What did you expect to happen?" Blackheart smirked. "I have no soul."

It looked like Power was the menu item of the day. Thanos punched, and Blackheart went tumbling head-over-heels for a mile and more. When the demon finally rolled to a stop, he sat up, muttering, "Well, that woke me up."

Thanos was getting quite tired of all these diversions. However, he thought that at the very least, he had a grasp on everything the Overtakers could throw at him. As it turned out, they could still one-up him when they wanted to.

"PEOPLE OF ASGARD!"

He knew that voice. It was of a man he had killed very, very recently. Thanos whirled to look in disbelief as the blood from Blackheart's bites dripped down his back.

Loki descended from on high like an avenging angel. "I HAVE COME TO PROTECT OUR FAIR KINGDOM FROM THIS TYRANT'S WRATH! Had I only arrived a moment earlier to be able to protect my DEAR father."

Thanos clenched his teeth as hard as humanly possible. He should've used the Soul stone instead of snapping Loki's neck. But that was what Loki had wanted. He'd baited Thanos into becoming annoyed. And Thanos hadn't even realized that there was no false Odin corpse in the zombie dance line that was never supposed to be a zombie dance line.

"Instead," Loki announced as he finally stepped down in front of Thanos and touched ground, "I shall have to AVENGE the great king you so callously slayed."

"So you show your real face," Thanos growled.

"I haven't the slightest what you're referring to," Loki told him. "Is this your way of attempting to cover your embarrassment with some ridiculous, ridiculous lie? I, of all people, know how to see through such things."

Thanos pointed. "THAT is the true face of your Odin! He deceived you all!"

There were still many people watching the scene. Of course there were; Loki wouldn't have done this without an audience. It was all planned to the letter. Someone yelled out, "FALSEHOOD! FALLACY!"

"What a desperate lie!" someone else said.

Because of course, Thanos simply saying that Loki had been Odin the whole time seemed like the most ridiculous possible scenario, in retrospect. Inasmuch as it even beat out Caleb turning the zombie Outriders into a Broadway show.

"Now then." Loki braced a new spear, one that looked suspiciously like that he'd borne on the Chitauri invasion, albeit without its blue glow. "Shall we finish what we began?"

"I warned you that you could not escape my wrath," Thanos growled.

"I warned you that I had no intention of ever falling to you," Loki seethed right back. "A shame the Other isn't here. I would love to see him eat his words. But of course, you had to trade him out for that blathering telekinetic nitwit."

Thanos blasted the Power of the Infinity Gauntlet at Loki. Loki countered it with magic of his own, and the two blasts remained static, each pushing each other perfectly.

"See, you may think me weak enough to kill in one blow," Loki taunted, "but I would wager that I am the most powerful enemy you have ever faced. Certainly the most powerful Overtaker, at that."

"I don't even know what that means," Thanos growled.

"It isn't very pleasant to be left out of the loop, is it?" Loki teased.

The people gossiped as they watched the two magics collide. Loki had returned. He'd come to save Asgard in its desperate hour. He'd declared revenge for the death of Odin, when so many Asgardians had once thought the death of Odin was what Loki wanted most of all.

Perhaps they'd been wrong about him. So they began to cheer him at full volume.

"Pitiful," Thanos snarled. "No matter what you might say, I am a god, and I will not – "

He was immediately kicked by a giant silver boot. The force sent him tumbling; the Power beam fizzled out.

"Funny…it almost seems like I've seen that somewhere before," Loki said with a smirk. "And you know it really is good comedy from this end."

The owner of the giant boot planted down a second giant boot. "I'VE HAD ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS!" Imperious boomed, loudly enough so all Asgard could hear. "IN THE NAME OF KING ODIN AND, MORE IMPORTANTLY, OF LOKI ODINSON, I'M PUTTING AN END TO THESE IDIOT GAMES AND SAVING ASGARD ONCE AND FOR ALL!"

He unfurled his great silver fan, using it to slice a massive rift in the very reality of Asgard. Crimson light leaked through the crack, which was opening wider by the second. A great mechanical rumbling sounded from the other side.

"BY THE WAY," Imperious said, "WHAT YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE IS LOKI ODINSON'S CRAFTSMANSHIP! A FINE WEAPON OF WAR HE CREATED TO DEFEND ASGARD AND ALL ITS PEOPLE!"

A massive metal monster rolled through the rift, as big as Imperious himself. Though not for long, as Imperious shrank down to more of a reasonable size so he could enjoy the show. Thanos pried himself up to see the machine: shaped like a centaur, if the lower half were of a steamroller instead of a horse.

Imperious gave a dramatic twirl, pointing his fan to Thanos; "The original Ursus design failed me in its crucial hour. What you see before you is a massively upgraded design: Ursus MAJOR!"

A billowing flash of green circled the machine, then perched on its shoulder. "DO NOT FORGET WHO ALLOWED YOU TO CREATE THIS MASTERWORK BY PROVIDING YOU WITH FAR MORE KNOWLEDGE THAN YOU DESERVED!" called down a Doom that was probably not a robot.

Thanos was on his feet by then, ready to strike. "Oh, but the funny thing is this," Imperious said. "The old Ursus was powered by one very strong soul that didn't know when to give in. Ursus Major is a thousand times as powerful, so it needs at least a thousand souls! Why don't we ask all those you killed whether they want a hand in this battle?"

Thanos forgot all his intent, no longer sure exactly how he'd planned on attacking. For once, he was cold with fear. He stepped toward Imperious; "DO NOT – "

Imperious and Loki stood side-by-side, striking a pose that was dangerously close to being a dance. Behind them, Caleb encouraged the flash mob to make the same pose. This summoned a wealth of shades from beyond, spent souls pouring into Ursus Major by the hundred.

"Oh, you certainly have killed a LOT of people!" Imperious laughed. "What a naughty, naughty boy!"

When it was all done, Ursus Major glowed a bright green. Then a deep, sultry voice emanated from the machine: "Just so you know, I never forget a man I've kissed. Even if it was only once."

"The witch's death – " Thanos gaped, recognizing Amora's voice. "THAT WAS PLANNED – "

"Yes, yes, EVERYTHING was planned," Loki told Thanos, rolling his eyes. "What do you take us for?"

Ursus Major charged a blindingly bright beam of green, firing it off pistol-quick. Thanos barely had enough time to retaliate, pushing all the violet of Power up against it. The two beams collided, and it was as before with Loki rejecting Power – except this time it looked like Ursus Major just might be gaining the edge.

Thanos shot bullets of gold into his Power: the Soul stone, eroding at the souls that piloted Ursus Major. Taking a few of them away, sending them back whence they came. Amora obviously had a tight hold, since Ursus Major was still very green.

In all the commotion, it was easy to miss the horn of the train in the distance.

Loki, Doom (probably not a robot), Imperious, Caleb, and Blackheart reconvened, watching the show. "It almost makes me think we don't have to strike the finishing blow," Loki remarked.

"We should not," Doom said haughtily. "Doom planned for every facet of this circumstance. Our victory is at hand."

"Well, no one told me he could PUT THE SOULS BACK!" Imperious yelled. "Look! He's powering down Ursus Major bit by bit!"

The great machine was, in fact, faltering.

"What do you know," Blackheart sighed. "We pulled out the biggest gun imaginable and it still can't stop him. Like a cockroach from the Ninth Circle."

"It must have been a design flaw when YOU engineered the construction of the metal behemoth," Doom growled at Imperious.

"ME?" Imperious took a step back. "YOU'RE the one who drew up the schematics!"

"Do you mean to tell me you did not modify them, even in the tiniest regard, to use as evidence after the fact that Doom was not all-knowing?" Doom countered. "That there is no adjustment you added when my back was turned to prove your own superiority?"

"…Actually, it's AMORA'S fault the thing is failing," Imperious said quickly and nervously. "She's the one driving it!"

"Really just looks like all Ursus Major would need is one last push," Caleb observed. "Imperious, let's get a few more souls dancing its way. That should be enough to win it."

He put out his hand, and Imperious took it. With an "OH-HO-HO!", Imperious pulled Caleb into a spin, and Caleb set the tempo. The two danced over the flagstones of the street, calling more shades to their rhythm.

"It may yet not be enough," Doom growled. "If Imperious truly HAS modified my perfect design, then we are finished!"

Thanos sweated as Ursus Major kept bearing down on him. But all he would have to do was win the game of patience. Keep chipping at it, keep countering, until the robot was finally out of steam. They couldn't keep pulling souls for it forever.

(Well, they probably could, but Thanos had been playing with souls for a while now, and was certain he could match whatever they threw at him.)

"Something has to happen," Loki seethed. "Something has to change! Victor, I demand you – "

That demand went unspoken. Because something did happen. Something that wasn't actually ever in the plan.

The Asgardian palace exploded.

...

The Calix was made up of several discs of stone and grass floating in endless sky, connected by a web of walkways. Symonne had been confined to one particular network of platforms, warned that any move to escape would alert Heldalf, no matter how much of her seraphic power she put into hiding it with illusion.

From there, Heldalf left her unsupervised, doing things unknown in other sectors of the Calix network. He'd told her to entertain herself however she saw fit, and then simply left her to her own devices. A little odd, but that was Heldalf for you.

Her primary source of entertainment was, of course, illusions. She'd drawn at first from the memory of the Calix itself, creating doubles of the Shepherd Sorey so she could beat him to an inch of his life in a hundred different ways. It had also offered good references for Sorey's silly friends, and Symonne got a rush out of slapping Edna hard enough to leave a mark. Then there were the memories that had created those two outworlders, the girl with the purple pigtails and the bespectacled man in the military uniform. Those were fun to kick around until they stopped being a challenge.

Symonne eventually got bored with that, and even though she had taken a firm stance against doing so, she delved into her own memories to get new material. All there was there, all there ever was at any given moment, was pain. Nothing here was going to be pleasant to revisit.

But she didn't want anything pleasant. She just wanted to pass the time and feel left alone here in this void.

To start, Symonne conjured images of her deceased clan. The seraphs who'd taken her in as mother and father, those who had acted her siblings, the ones who'd decided on her outfit and suggested how she should wear her hair. (Looking back, that one young man had indeed had rather sinister motives in designing Symonne's blouse. She got in a good slap to him before carrying on.)

She didn't speak to any of them. She couldn't bring herself to engage – not when she knew that in the end, it was all just a daydream that looked real. Something she'd have to banish from view. Something anyone truly real could just walk right through. Instead, she made them converse with each other about what they used to – laughing at the idiocy of humans, scheming new ways to demand sacrifices from them, playing with elemental artes and laughing about the ways they could alter the landscape.

Symonne had always particularly loved it when they'd thrown one of their parties – a cross between raucous riot and classy cotillion. Half of them were setting things on fire and drinking themselves silly, and the other half waltzed, and Symonne felt at home.

Just like she did every time she used to conjure this scene. She loved it so much that it broke her heart when it had to end, every single time. That was why she had joined Heldalf: to put an end to the pain she felt every time she had to wake up from this daydream.

Symonne tiptoed among those waltzing, observing her parental figures and grandparental figures and other older mentors – the younger ones were mostly in the wild crowd. Once again, Symonne couldn't bring herself to engage with any, to ask any imaginary partner to dance. All she wanted to do was look, observe their grandeur. Seraphs with hair of all colors, representing all four elements.

Now she remembered. They used to hold one of these parties every December – and here in Glenwood, December was actually the tenth month, and Symonne couldn't even comprehend that it might be different elsewhere in the worlds. They'd always celebrate a whole year of human sacrifices and the power derived from them. A year of seraphic domination.

Sometimes they would even hire an act of performing Katz to dance in step and stack atop each other in pyramids. The pastel cat-shaped seraphs were always great entertainment, and usually too afraid to say no to most things, so the clan matriarch would always come up with circa fifty deadly stunts to ask them to pull off. The minute she remembered this, Symonne walked past a rainbow of Katz dancing in circles, trying not to sweat over the circus trick they'd been asked to pull off without a net.

"Dancing Katz," she said without thinking. And then, still without thinking, it became a melody, escaping her lips as "Painted wings…"

She could hear the time of the waltz, that one-two-three, in her heart as she watched her deceased family dance without her. "Things I hate to remember," Symonne sang softly, sadly. "And a song Mama sings, once upon a December."

She began to move her own feet, dancing all by herself in the midst of the hollow crowd. "Someone holds me safe and warm," she sang. "Seraphs conjure a silver storm. Figures dancing gracefully across my memory…"

But at least those wounds were old. She knew them. She knew better than to ever expect them back. They were dead and gone, and she was better off without them regardless. They were old news. Not like…

A tall man approached Symonne, sweeping her into a dance before she knew what was happening. Except of course she knew, because she'd made it happen. As she danced with this shadow of Roman Torchwick, she cursed herself out for falling for a fantasy that was so obviously too good to be true. No one would want to take her in. Even if he did come back for her, it would be to use her as some means to an end – an end far less dignified than Heldalf's plan, anyway. But it didn't matter, because he wasn't coming back for her.

The vision of Roman twirled Symonne away, and she wanted to be grateful that she could put away his memory, but another partner took her hand, and now she and Snatcher waltzed in perfect time. He was a natural at the dance, graceful and fluid, because that was how she perceived him.

She tore herself away, running over the walkway to the next disc, but there they were already waiting for her, slow dancing with one another. She even spotted Foulfellow and Gideon doing a rather silly dance in the background, a stark contrast to the waltzing seraphs. It seemed Symonne's imagination wasn't going to let her off the hook.

"Someone holds me, safe and warm…" Symonne felt her eyes moisten as she watched Snatcher and Roman twirl. "They said 'weather the silver storm.' Figures dancing gracefully across my memory – "

She gave in, twirling to the unheard beat, shutting her eyes to the Calix. "Far away, long ago! Glowing dim as an ember! Things my heart used to know; wish I didn't remember!"

She pried her eyes open. Finally, the whole illusion was gone. Symonne dropped to her knees, relieved and grieving all at once.

"And a song…" She smiled to herself, almost laughing. "Frou Frou sings. Once upon a December…"

Her voice cracked, and petered off into silence. She knelt on the ground, boiling in her own emotions. Then it occurred to her that someone was applauding.

Symonne rose to her feet, as dignified as possible. "It's about time someone here recognized my innate talents. Empyreans know Heldalf remains ignorant." She turned to see who'd approached, tossing her hair as she did so.

There stood Neo, holding out a large cardboard sign with "SYMONNE" written on it as though she were waiting to pick her up at the airport. The Mukhtar, Melanie, Miltia, Cat, and Emerald flocked behind her.

Neo waved hello as Miltia explained, "We're, like, here to bring you back to Roman Torchwick."

"He sent you?" Symonne couldn't hide her excitement. "He wanted me back?" She shook her head. "Not that I care."

"Uh, duhhhh, he's been worried about you this whole time," Melanie sighed. "Red hat man, too."

Symonne's heart beat a mile a minute. "Well, they both should've thought it over before sending a vanguard to pierce Heldalf's defenses. He may have overlooked your entry, but he would never let me leave."

"Already thought of that," said Emerald. "You do illusions, right? Like, large-scale ones? Because I do hallucinations. And Neo here does illusions just like you."

Neo gave a thumbs-up as she dissolved the cardboard sign.

"Prove it," Symonne said.

Neo clapped her hands twice. A perfect copy of Mad Madam Mim appeared, leaping around the disc and screeching "EVIL, EVIL, EVIL! I'M PURE EVIL! I'M THE BEST FOUNDER WHO ISN'T NAMED 'ROMAN' OR 'ARCHIE'!". Then Neo clapped twice more and Mim was gone.

"Tell us how you really feel about the establishment," Melanie sighed.

So Neo did. The Mozenrath illusion shook a finger at the vanguard; "NO FUN FOR YOU. NO FUN FOR ANY OF YOU! NO FUN ALLOWED EVER!"

There was a stifled laugh. Everyone was surprised to realize it had come from the Mukhtar. "…It isn't inaccurate," the Mukhtar offered by way of explanation.

Somewhat nervously, Cat moved forward. "I'm his apprentice too," she said. "I think that makes us like sisters."

"You aren't a Hellion," Symonne realized. "There's not nearly enough malevolence emanating from you. Oh, it's there, but you're something else. If I didn't know better, I'd say you were just human."

"I used to be," Cat explained. "I touched something I should have known not to touch, and now I'm a monster. But they say you're a monster, too, and that's not a bad thing. You just don't look like one."

Symonne caught herself smiling broadly. "In that, they're correct. I'm something you don't want to find under your bed or in your closet at night. I don't kill. I just specialize in doing things that are worse than death."

"My old family was assassins," Cat said with wide eyes. "What's WORSE than death?"
"So many wonderful, wonderful things," Symonne replied cheekily. "We'll have to have a chat, I see."

"We do!" Cat agreed.

"And we can do that after we escape," Emerald said. "Right now, we're gonna have to go overtime. Neo and Symonne use their illusion powers at the same time, and I try to feel out where the bad guy's mind is so I can have him hallucinate the same thing. It should end up being a triple cover. He won't notice we're gone until we're literally gone, and hopefully not even until we're halfway across the continent."

Neo gestured to an empty space in the midst of the Calix. A Symonne duplicate appeared there at her behest, standing stock-still and ramrod-straight with arms out to either side.

"Why is it T-posing?" Melanie asked.

"Because it's funny," Emerald answered. "Geez, get a sense of humor."

Neo gestured toward the T-posing Symonne duplicate, a sense of urgency in her eyes. Symonne realized she understood. She extended a hand, adding her own power to the illusion to fortify it all the more.

In doing so, she felt the type of power Neo had used. Something incredibly different from Symonne's seraphic artes. Seraphic artes fell in the boundary of magic, but what Neo had used didn't feel like magic – at least not a type that had been identified and defined there in Glenwood.

"That's going to help even more," Symonne said. "The fact that you and I are using two completely different types of power, I mean. A defense meant to sense one won't catch the other."

Neo nodded. She then inclined her head to the T-posing illusion.

"Ah, yes," Symonne realized. "It will be more in character if I write the script. Allow me."

The T-posing illusion snapped to life, finally lowering her arms. "Finally," she said. "One leading lady for the Calix performance and one to bring true theatricality to the vanguard."

"You're the only one I could trust for the job, after all," the real Symonne teased.

"Let us not waste another moment," the Mukhtar hissed.

The next step was for Neo and Symonne to turn the whole group invisible. Anyone who looked at them would see nothing. Anyone in the group only saw faint outlines to mark where everyone else was. Miltia immediately ran into the Mukhtar, stepping on his foot, when she tried to walk forward. "Ugh! Sorry, I guess."

"All is forgiven," said the Mukhtar. "Now let us make haste."

Among a group of invisible warriors, Symonne finally made her way out of captivity. Maybe hope was worth having after all.