Nath shook his head ruefully. "It's so easy to forget just how many fronts there were to this war."

Marc nodded. "And we hardly know anything about some of them – Africa, Australia, Japan… I wish we had more of their stories."

Nath hummed. "At the same time, I suppose it's fitting. Every story we do have from the War stands in for at least a dozen more that have been lost."

Miraculous Hero Key:
Jo-e – Kangaroo Miraculous
Nooma – Numbat Miraculous
Whale Tale – Whale Miraculous
Tank – Anklyosaur Miraculous
Slip – Wonambi Miraculous

Japan, April 1944

"We are all ready, Jo-e. Whenever you are."

Jo-e raised an eyebrow, her mouth setting in a thin line, and glanced down the narrow alleyway at the small group they had brought together for this mission. "Any trouble on the way?"

Nooma pursed her lips. "Just…"

Letting out a heavy breath, Jo-e placed a hand on her shoulder, her mouth set in a firm line. "I know. And I'm sorry. If there had been anything–"

"Save it, Emma," Nooma interrupted her curtly, holding up her hand for quiet. "What's done is done." She worked her jaw in frustration, and she shook her head. "Best not to dwell on the past, right? We'll have time for that when this is over."

"True, of course." Her ears attuned for any sounds from the street, Jo-e quickly scanned the team they had assembled for this mission. The twin sorceresses, Opal and Sapphire, speaking quietly a bit to the side. Whale Tale, Tank, and Slip crouched a little further back in the alleyway. Tank clenched his jaw, his hands opening and closing around the handle of his flail, a dark look in his eyes. Poking her head around the corner, Jo-e scanned the simple wooden building where the Ninja's men had to be holed up, in a well-to-do neighborhood just outside of Tokyo. Eyeing the pagoda, she frowned.

This mission was what they had been building toward for the last two years, gathering intel and planning their strategy. But now that the time was here, the weight of the mission rested on her shoulders – and she had still been a new miraculous user when the Guardian Council started planning the mission. Was she ready for this level of responsibility? Her team had been in the country for two weeks already – only thanks to Opal had she, Slip, and Tank managed to avoid detection by the Japanese soldiers patrolling the countryside long enough to link up with Nooma's team. They had been here far longer – almost two years they had been in the country… and they had nearly been captured within the first week. "Do you have a plan?"

Nooma scoffed. "Of course I do: go in, kill the bastards who murdered Ari-Bear, get back her miraculous, take down that Ninja character, and get the hell back to Straya." Her eyes narrowed. "Why complicate matters?"

"What do you know of this 'Ninja'?" asked Slip, furrowing his brows.

"Not a bloody thing." Nooma shrugged. "We can ask him all the questions we want when we put him in the ground."

Jo-e nodded, swallowing nervously, and tested the weight of the boomerang in her hand. All her life, she had trained for this, to become a miraculous holder, to have the opportunity to go on their adventures and fight the enemies who would seek to hurt the innocent and throw the world out of balance. But when the previous Joey had been killed, just a couple months into this conflict, she had suddenly been thrust into a war for which she had no preparation, expected to take a place on the New Atlantis Council and even lead their Intervention Teams in the War. Two years and countless battles and secret operations later, and still she felt woefully out of her depth. "Well," she told the others, gritting her teeth, "there's nothing for it but to do it. Tank, Opal? You're up."

Giving a feral grin, Tank gave his flail a testing swing before racing out of the alleyway and making a hard turn to charge straight toward the temple building. Three windows opened along the wall facing them, and a half-dozen faces looked out for a moment before they were suddenly replaced by rifles, all pointing at Tank. With a shout, the riflemen opened fire, and Tank held his flail out in front of him, spinning it in a tight shield. At that same moment, Opal pulled a piece of zircon out of a pouch on her vest, muttered a few words, and hurled it over Tank's head. Watching the gem arc downward, Tank thrust his flail forward and shouted, "Tail-Light!" A beam of white light erupted from the end of his flail and struck the zircon, which burst apart into a thousand shards. Opal twisted her wrist, her eyes illuminating brilliant white, and the gem shards hung in the air, all emitting brilliant white light straight at the pagoda windows. The gunfire stopped.

"Now's our chance!" bellowed Jo-e, sprinting after Tank, even as the hovering zircon shards continued to catch and refract Tank's light, illuminating the interior of the temple. Behind Jo-e, the rest of the group sprinted after her, crossing the street in a matter of seconds. Sapphire raised her hand, flicked her wrist, and snapped her fingers. A spark flicked away from her hand toward the temple's wooden door, which instantly caught fire, moments before Tank swung his flail around and smashed the door apart, scattering embers across the room and igniting patches of the bamboo rugs inside. A dozen rifles cocked to either side of them as they charged inside, the gunmen turning their faces aside and blinking constantly. Jo-e jumped behind Tank's spinning flail just before they opened fire.

Opal huddled behind Slip's spinning hunting spear as bullets flew in all directions. Muttering a few words, she held up a diamond and crushed it in her hand before blowing on it, scattering diamond dust through the air, which spread between the Australians and the Japanese soldiers. Opal waved her hand, and all the diamond dust suddenly congealed together and expanded, forming impenetrable walls on all sides of them, pushing the gunmen into the corners of the atrium. As the walls formed, Sapphire spun around and exhaled, spreading her hands wide. Ice crystals began to form along the walls and floor around the gunmen. At the same moment, Opal withdrew a tourmaline and threw it at the doorway at the end of the atrium, where it burst apart, cutting a large hole through the door.

Slamming through the doorway ahead of the others, Jo-e found herself in a massive open courtyard, facing scores of men, all holding katanas. The leader stood rigidly still, eyeing the group warily as Jo-e stepped forward and folded her arms. "You are trespassing," the leader informed them in halting English, his narrowed eyes the only warning of his anger. "If you surrender those gems, then perhaps we will allow you to live."

Jo-e arched an eyebrow at him, holding her boomerang in one hand. "Funny. I was going to say the same thing to you. Surrender the gem, and we might let you live." Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "But if you refuse to return the Koala Miraculous, we will take it back ourselves. And we will not leave a single one of you alive."

"After what you did to Ari-Bear, you deserve nothing but death!" snarled Nooma, stalking forward, past Jo-e. "I'll murder you myself."

Lunging forward, Jo-e grabbed Nooma's shoulder and dragged her back, just as the leader's gleaming black katana sprang from its sheath, missing Nooma's neck by a matter of centimeters. "Well, I suppose we have your answer," Jo-e mused wryly. Not taking her eyes off of him, she called, "Opal? You heard the man: he wants our gems."

Opal smirked. "I would be happy to oblige," she replied, her voice dropping low as she murmured arcane words that Jo-e couldn't understand. The murmur grew, and she held out a pair of tiger's eyes. The leader cocked his head in confusion, moments before the two gems sprang out of Opal's hand and began to spin, revolving around one another in a tight helix. Suddenly, the paired tiger's eyes darted away from Opal, straight toward the leader. His eyes wide, the leader dove for the floor, swiping wildly at the tiger's eyes as he did so, and the gems surged past him, ripping through cloth and flesh and carving a swath of destruction through the group of samurai behind him.

"Embiggen!" bellowed Whale Tale, stomping forward and flexing his arms as he grew to double his size. Cracking his knuckles, he drove his fist into the wall beside him, knocking a shower of roofing tiles down on top of the samurai in the center of the room. At the same moment, Slip gave his hunting spear a twirl, parrying two sword blades and smacking one of his attackers with the butt of the spear.

"Where is it!?" demanded Nooma, sprinting around the periphery of the courtyard and barreling through the first door she found.

"Nooma!" shouted Jo-e, ducking a katana slash and parrying a second one with her boomerang. The leader of the samurai kipped to his feet and swung his katana through the air once before taking a wide swing at Jo-e. Jumping backward away from him, she flicked her boomerang out and send it looping around him in a wide arc. The leader sneered at her and raised his katana, just as Sapphire opened her mouth and unleashed a cone of flame, singeing his cloak. A samurai charged forward with a shriek, swinging wildly at Sapphire's head, only for Slip to jump between them and jab his spear up into the samurai's stomach. His eyes widening in shock, the samurai fell to the floor in a pool of blood. Clenching her fist, Jo-e called her boomerang back, straight into the back of the leader's head. The leader stumbled to one knee, and Jo-e raced past him, following Nooma. The first room off the courtyard that she found was empty, as was the second. She was just about to open the next door when from somewhere to the side she heard a deep voice.

"Inky Depths…"

Suddenly, all light in the courtyard vanished. Someone stumbled into Jo-e, and she nearly lost her balance. Feeling a sharp blade against her sleeve, she reached for the arm holding the sword, grabbed it, and punched the samurai in the face, throwing him away from her toward the center of the courtyardd. Still she could see nothing. Finally, she closed her eyes and breathed in and out slowly. She could hear movement all around her – the others of her team, the samurai, and something else, softer than the others. Soft footfalls on the rug. Putting on a burst of speed, Jo-e barreled in that direction, knocking over two people before throwing her arms out wide and tackling the third one around the waist, knocking him off balance. Falling through a doorway, Jo-e rolled to her feet, boomerang held up defensively, and opened her eyes to find blackness still surrounding her. Outside of the room, she could hear the clashes and shouts of her teammates, suddenly cut by a scream of pain.

"So, you have come to take the miraculous…" a soft, deep voice murmured, somewhere to Jo-e's left.

"It doesn't belong to you," she retorted, turning in that direction, twirling her boomerang around one finger and dropping her foot back in a defensive stance. "Give it back and this doesn't have to get any messier."

"That is where you are wrong," the voice responded.

Jo-e cocked her head to one side as the voice cut out, spinning to her right just as something stabbed across her arm, sending a burst of pain down to her hand. She let out a pained hiss, and something hot dripped down her arm. He had cut her? Through her miraculous suit? That wasn't supposed to be possible! "What are you?" she whispered, a tremble in her voice.

"I am… the Ninja." The Ninja lunged for her, but Jo-e dove to the side, flicking out her boomerang at him as she did so. The boomerang struck something solid, and she jumped toward it, driving her knee up into his gut. The Ninja let out a grunt of pain, just as the darkness vanished, revealing a man dressed all in black, a trident held in one hand.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Jo-e demanded, her eyes narrowed. She flicked her arm dismissively, sending a spatter of blood across the wall. The Ninja glared back at her, his eyes never seeming to stop on any one thing, and she summoned back her boomerang. Feinting to the left, she charged him from the right, but he was ready, bringing his trident's tines around to stab at her core. Jo-e waved her boomerang down, knocking the trident away, and he threw out one foot at her. Spinning around, she drove a kick at his head, lifting her other leg and kicking him in the gut when he ducked beneath her initial kick. The Ninja grunted, and she spotted something shiny at his neck. Lunging forward, she let out a yell, grabbing him around the neck and throwing him to the ground, ripping the object from his neck as she did so. With a flash of dark purple smoke, the Ninja detransformed and collapsed against the wall, leaving Jo-e to stare down at the strange new miraculous in her hand.

"Now where did you come from?"