Disclaimer: I don't own anything that doesn't belong to me.

…

And suddenly, they were in space.

Not really, of course. It quickly became clear that they were actually sharing the sensory output of the many Hive drones and satellites in orbit around the Earth, allowing them to see the planet they called home from all angles while simultaneously being able to see the moon, the sun, the stars, and even distant planets. Normally such a view would be impossible for the human mind to comprehend, but thanks to their "upgrades," they had no problem processing it all.

The Earth looked beautiful from space. All the many problems that faced humanity, from climate change to pollution to wars with each other or the myriad armies of monsters and evil organizations which periodically reared their ugly heads to threaten the populace… From here, it all seemed so tiny, so insignificant. The world had been there long before them, and would be there long after, and the stars would be around even longer. Would the Hive persist that long, for the memories of them and humanity to live on in the Buzzing, as had countless other species before them? Nushi hoped so. It would be nice to know that a piece of her lingered on millions if not billions of years into the future.

Unfortunately, the beautiful view was rather marred by how space around the planet seemed to be fracturing, in a twisted facsimile of how the palace-ship had come to Earth on Arrival Day all those years ago, except that when reality tore open to disgorge the inbound ships, they revealed a void filled with centipedes rather than honeycomb.

The ships themselves were far less pleasing to the eye than Apista's palace had been. There were hundreds of them, of varying sizes, with little to no uniformity between them, as if each vessel was made by a different builder, which was not far from the truth, for this was a fleet made of ships plundered from dozens of worlds. The only thing they had in common with each other was that all of them were decrepit wrecks, interstellar ghost ships covered in great carpets and masses of fungus like throbbing tumors that seemed to be all that was holding them together, along with the gargantuan centipedes tightly wrapped around and inside of the ships, more fungus coating their backs.

The largest and most grotesque of the ships had to be at least a third as big as the moon and appeared to be the skull of some long-dead space monster vaguely reminiscent of the legendary Demon Beast Daitanix, only covered in even more fungus, growths resembling wasp nests, and more centipedes sticking out of every orifice.

"Well, looks like we've got a contender for ugliest fleet of aliens to try and invade the planet," Ariel murmured in disgust, her voice/thoughts appearing in all their minds.

"I don't think centipedes could get that big," Shin muttered.

"The centipedes are carriers for the fungus," Nushi spoke, the Buzzing whispering information into her mind. "Part of an experiment the last Swarm Queen conducted to try and make it easier to spread. Like plague rats, or other animals that have a symbiotic relationship with some sort of parasitic or infectious life form."

"Whatever they are, they're the nastiest creepy crawlies I've ever seen," Goro expressed in distaste. He hesitated, suddenly remembering the millions of insectoid life forms listening in. "No offense intended, Your Majesty."

"None taken. If anything, I'd consider being compared to them an insult," Apista assured him.

They sensed… Nushi wasn't quite sure how to describe it. An invitation? Some kind of hailing frequency? Whatever it was, the Queen accepted, and they suddenly found themselves zooming towards and then into the giant skull, quickly finding their consciousnesses on the command center of the colossal vessel.

It wasn't much prettier than the outside.

Just about every surface of the cavernous chamber was covered in fungus, shifting about as more of the centipedes slithered through it. The fungal growth was luminescent, bathing the room in a sickly purple and black glow which somehow made it seem even darker than if there was no light at all. Mounds, pillars, and other indecipherable structures rose up from the ground, many of which had what looked like corpses mounted on them, but from the way many of them twitched and occasionally moaned as the fungus gradually consumed them, centipedes slithering up their limbs and chewing into their flesh, it was clear that they were very much alive, and probably wished they weren't.

Shambling figures lurched about the chamber, scurrying across the floor, crawling on the structures, or buzzing around the room on tattered wings which shouldn't possibly have been able to support their weight. The majority of them resembled emaciated humanoid wasps, their bodies blackened and twisted, holes bored through their limbs and abdomen. Luminescent fungus clung to their frames, and centipedes could be seen wriggling in the fungal mass and crawling in and out of the holes in their bodies. The way they moved was extremely unnerving; they were surprisingly fast, yet each limb seeming to move disjointed from the rest, they frequently made a ghastly rattling noise, and occasionally they would stop in place and have a full-body convulsive fit.

As they watched, one of them walked straight towards the wall, suddenly dissolving into centipedes and slithering into the carpet of fungus. A moment later, more centipedes swarmed out of the fungus on a higher level of the chamber, reassembling into the undead insect, who resumed going about their work, whatever it was.

An anguished moan echoed throughout the room as some of the undead horrors tortured one of the wretched figures bound to a pillar, stabbing it with talons and sharp instruments, centipedes crawling out of the fungus and eagerly lapping up the spilled blood. The tortured creature finally expired, and was immediately consumed utterly by the fungus, which spat it back out moments later, covered in fungus and centipedes like its tormentors. It trembled, then lurched over to the next prisoner in line and started torturing it, filling the room with whimpers of pain once again.

"It's like something out of the works of H. R. Giger," murmured an appalled Shin.

"I think the Infershians could take a lesson or two from this," a queasy Ariel whimpered. "Pretty sure Hades Beast Fungus never was capable of anything this bad."

"From a biological standpoint, it's actually rather fascinating," Nushi commented, scientific interest warring with revulsion. "On every other standpoint, though…"

"This is certainly going to replace the battlefields I've seen in my nightmares," Goro agreed.

Mibojin said nothing, but all of them could sense that she was horrified as well.

But as awful as all this was, the greatest atrocity of all, the centerpiece of this obscene grotesquerie, was on an elevated platform in the center of the chamber, sitting in a throne cobbled together from the hollowed-out husks of several insects. There was a gasp of horror and outrage from Apista and the Divine Insects, and the shocked heroes suddenly realized those weren't just any random insects, they were the corpses of their predecessors.

But even this nightmare paled compared to the abomination casually slouching in the throne, cradling a goblet full of what looked like blood from from the hollowed-out head of an unknown alien. She resembled Apista, but as seen through a twisted mirror; dark where the queen was bright, hard and angular where she was soft, cruel where she was kind. She was beautiful… If you found Gigeresque undead horrors from an entomophobe's worst nightmare beautiful, anyway.

Her body was largely covered in hardened, segmented black carapace armor with stripes of yellow fungus to emulate the stripes she had had back when she was a member of Hive royalty. Wicked curved spikes grew from the sides of her multi-jointed legs, with barbed talons in place of feet. Her stinger was very long, sharp, and covered in barbs and hooks, growing from a swollen spiracle which looked more like an engorged, semitransparent sac then Apista's much more shapely rear, a sickly glow pulsating from it like a heartbeat, occasionally obscured by centipedes crawling about the interior. More centipedes wrapped around her (literal) wasp waist like some sort of twisted corset, pushing up her bosom, which probably would've looked much more appealing if it weren't for the fact that the armor plating covering them had circular, toothy mouths that looked very much functional. Her shoulders looked like smaller spiracles, complete with stingers, and more stingers grew from the armored gauntlets covering her primary set of arms, while her second seemed content to just have cruel, serrated claws. Holes of varying sizes riddled her form, some of them so deep they went right through her body.

A cape made out of fungus hung down her back, with holes for her dainty, tattered wings. What initially looked like very long cables or hair grew from the back of her head and into the throne and various instruments around her, but a second look revealed they were centipedes, many of whom were either digging into or burrowing out of her skull.

But her face was possibly the worst part, because it looked almost exactly like Apista's, but paler, with black veins standing out, and a mouth full of needle-sharp fangs. A spiky, fungus-covered coronet crowned her head, with barbs on the inside that seemed to dig into her cranium. Her left eye was so dark it could be mistaken for a hole, the multifaceted cells so black they absorbed rather than reflected light. And her right eye… Something was off about it-

It wriggled and unfolded into yet another centipede growing out of her eye socket.

Ah. That explained it.

Ariel threw up, her feelings of sickness and revulsion flowing through the Buzzing to the rest of them, and if it weren't for Mibojin's iron will clamping down on them the rest of them might have followed suit.

But as horrifying and sickening as her appearance was, the worst part was how she looked/sounded /smelled felt/tasted to their new senses. Every member of the Hive had a unique melody which helped them stand out and contribute to the whole of the Buzzing. Creatures not part of the Hive were more or less blank spaces; alive, but their inner melodies, if they had any, were inaudible to them.

But this mother of horrors, and the monsters she surrounded herself with…

They were gaping wounds in reality. Not silent, but the absolute opposite of sound, an anti-melody which defied comprehension and was completely antithetical to life as they knew it. The shrieks of terror echoing through the Buzzing were practically WELCOMING in comparison.

Another, intense wave of revulsion washed through them, and Ariel seemed on the brink of throwing up again. Everything about this queen, from her appearance, to her movements, to her sheer presence screamed wrong wrong wrong wrong WRONG.

"This… Thing should not be," Mibojin said slowly, voice/thoughts tinged with more emotions than Nushi had ever heard/smelled/felt/tasted from the ninja. From the thousands of murmurs of assent ringing through the Buzzing, it was clear she was not the only one to share this sentiment.

"Sister," the monster crooned, her voice a mockery of Apista's, every syllable dripping with hatred and malice, sounding like millions of tortured screams mixed together and practically oozing a malevolence thick enough to snuff out the stars. "It's been a while." She smiled, and Nushi knew she was going to have nightmares of that smile for many nights to come. "Did you miss me?"

"Hello, Vespa," Apista responded, voice even, while fury, sorrow, and regret blazed through the Buzzing.

The abomination tutted. "Vespa? No, no, I've told you before, I've shed that title. You may address me as Parasitica II, ruler of the Infestation Empire Swarm."

"II?" Goro murmured.

"Parasitica was the name of the original Queen of the Swarm," Formic replied.

"Just as every ruler of the Hive takes the name 'Apista' upon ascending to the throne to honor the First Queen, it would appear that Vespa felt she should do something similar now that she rules the Swarm, rather than keep her old name," Lepidoptera added.

Manti sniffed. "At least she's still holding to tradition, in a sense."

"You've given me quite the merry chase, sister," Parasitica continued. "But at last, I have found you. And with the interdiction field I've put up, there will be no running away and abandoning your subjects to me this time."

"I didn't abandon them," Apista snarled, voice rising, as more regret flooded the Buzzing. Waves of righteous indignation and support surged towards her as the rest of the Hive assured her that Parasitica was wrong, but she didn't seem to take much comfort from it.

Parasitica shook her head in mock disappointment. "Sister, I'm ashamed of you! I thought members of the Hive never lied." Something ugly flashed in her eye, all civility dropping for a moment to expose the monster she really was. "Nor do they cheat."

"I didn't cheat-" Apista protested.

"The throne should have been MINE!" Parasitica shrieked without warning, shattering her skull goblet in one claw and slamming another fist on an armrest, squishing a centipede that had been crawled up on it. Her minions froze in place, trembling.

As if a switch had been flipped, the false Queen immediately became calm once again, throwing the remains of her goblet at an underling's head. "But I'm over it, I have a much better throne now anyway. Do you like it?"

She sprawled out in her seat, lounging across the broken bodies of Apista's former champions. "They cried out for you in their last moments, you know. Begged you to come back and save them. You didn't, of course, just like you abandoned the rest of the Hive to hide on this backwater mudball like a craven coward."

"I did NOT-"

"By the way, I'd like to introduce you to someone," Parasitica interjected abruptly. "Vespi, come here, would you?"

"Coming, mom!"

Some of the fungus next to the throne bulged upwards, a swarm of centipedes rushing out and coalescing to form a bee about Philia's size and age, but twisted and distorted, like every other member of the Swarm. Her limbs were full of holes, her stinger was a jagged hook, her body covered in blackened carapace…

But the truly disturbing thing about her was she appeared to have been stitched together from several different insects. Her wings were of all different shapes, her eyes and antenna didn't match, and her appendages varied drastically in size, with one arm almost as big as her entire body, and another so tiny it was almost invisible. In one arm, she cradled a stuffed doll also looking like it had been stitched together from multiple different insects, creating a misshapen, unidentifiable creature. If it weren't for the sheer wrongness surrounding her, nearly worse than Parasitica's, she might actually have been kind of cute.

Absolute horror rocked the Buzzing.

"You… you have…" Apista stammered, shocked beyond words or thoughts. "But… But that's not possible! You were sterile when you left! Only the Queen can reproduce!"

"You are correct, of course," Parasitica purred, affectionately rubbing the head of her asymmetrical offspring, who preened at the attention. "Just as the egg my predecessor attempted to lay was stillborn, so to did all my attempts to create children – true children, not the wretches I infest – end in failure."

An absolutely sickening grin crossed her face. "And then, after I occupied Hive Prime, I just happened to stumble upon the Royal egg vault. Initially, I was going to smash them all, just as I fully intend to destroy every last trace war memory of you… But then it occurred to me: why should I go to all the trouble of destroying a valuable supply of spare parts?"

"No," Apista whispered, and for a moment, the entire Buzzing seemed to go silent in disbelief.

"Mama, do you think my cousin is watching?" Vespi asked her mother, slurring slightly due to having mouthparts from more than one insect.

"I'm almost certain of it," Parasitica leered. "My dear niece, I assure you that you have nothing to fear from me. While I'm going to do horrible, unspeakable things to your mother… You, I'll just kill and reanimate." She grinned. "After all, my daughter could use a playmate."

Philia suffered an emotional breakdown at that, sobbing and screaming, her pain and terror flooding the Buzzing and briefly extinguishing the inferno of RAGE rising up within Apista as she quickly diverted some of her attention to try and comfort her frightened daughter.

"This bitch needs to die," Shin said/thought bluntly, HATRED unlike any he'd ever felt before pulsing out from him and nearly consuming everyone else.

"How…" Ariel whimpered, tearing up, and Nushi reflexively hugged her in the real world. "How can anyone be so cruel?"

"There's a lot of sick people in the universe," Goro snarled, his righteous fury tempering Shin's hatred, with more than a hint of terror. Goro was a parent too, after all. The thought of someone like this monster making a child out of parts from somebody else's-"But I don't think I've ever heard of one this twisted."

"I have encountered many monsters in my life," Mibojin agreed, sharing his feelings as she thought of her own daughter. "However… None, I think, were as vile as this."

"Your Majesty," Coccinella warned her mistress, struggling to tamp down her own fury. "She's trying to get under your skin."

"It's working," Apista snarled back, hugging her crying daughter to her chest.

"Anyway, as much fun as it's been riling you up, sister, I believe it's time we got down to business," Parasitica announced. "Surrender and I will destroy this planet."

"… Doesn't she mean "or?"" Nushi asked.

"No," Coccinella replied.

"You're going to destroy this world anyway," Apista pointed out. "Why should I make this easy for you?"

"Because you'll be making it easier for the inferior meat shields you're cowering behind," Parasitica pointed out, matter-of-fact. "Surrender and I'll just kill them. Refuse, and I'll assimilate them, which I'm sure you believe is a fate worse than death."

"You'll assimilate them anyway," Apista argued. "I doubt your instincts to spread and grow your influence would suffer to leave a corpse uninfected."

"Yeah, that's true," Parasitica admitted as Vespi giggled beside her. "I should have guessed you wouldn't be stupid enough to take the bait. I guess I'll have to work for it, then."

"You underestimate the people of this planet," Apista affirmed, pride and affection for humanity replacing some of her anger and warming the hearts of the heroes. "You are not the first threat they have managed to avert, and I doubt you will be the last. My new champions have been chosen from their ranks, and they will rid the universe of the Swarm forever."

Parasitica actually seemed interested by this. "You've taken new champions? From the pathetic mammals of this planet?" She burst into laughter, and, disturbingly, all of her minions did as well… Except they laughed in her voice. "Wow, you must be truly desperate. Then again, given the number I did on the last bunch, and the rest of your strongest fighters, I guess you don't really have much of a choice, do you? Especially after I impaled dear old Anthoph. How is she doing, by the way?"

"YOU DON'T GET TO SAY HER NAME!" Apista and the Divine Insects all shrieked in outrage.

"Wait, she doesn't see us? Or hear us? Or… Whatever is going on here?" Shin asked, mildly confused.

"Parasitica is blind to the Buzzing," Mibojin recalled. "So while we and the rest of the Hive can watch this exchange through the Buzzing, it must not work the other way around."

"Thank goodness for that," Ariel murmured, having managed to collect herself… Though she showed no interest in leaving Nushi's embrace. Which was fine, because Nushi didn't really feel like letting her go. "I… Don't really want to get a glimpse into her mind, or for her to see into ours. Is this what my family felt, gazing upon N Ma? A being of absolute, bottomless evil?"

"We can stop her," Nushi spoke up, almost surprised to realize that she believed it. "Just like your parents and the rest of your family defeated the darkness, and Shin defeated Foundation X, and so many other heroes throughout history have averted disaster… We can beat her too."

And just as she believed it, so too did her teammates.

"I will enjoy killing you and that birthright-denying maggot," Parasitica sneered. "The question, of course, is should I do it before or after I kill your champions? Would it be more satisfying to force you to watch as I torture them to death, or for them to watch as I kill you? Hmm… Or perhaps I should kill them, then reanimate them and make them kill you?" She chuckled. "So many options… anyway, open fire."

The view suddenly returned to the orbital panorama of the planet as, rather abruptly, every ship in the fleet opened fire, bombarding the Earth with enough firepower to glass the surface several times over.

Or at least, it would have, if a golden honeycomb barrier hadn't sprung up at the last minute, the fusillade of missiles and lasers smashing fruitlessly into it, the energy shield growing brighter the more ammunition was pumped into it.

Nushi forced her heartbeat to go down, sighing in relief, feeling similar waves of relief emanating from her companions. They'd known the Hive's planetary defense barrier was in place, of course, but… Seeing that much firepower leveled at it all at once had still been frightening, if even for a moment.

"And now, it is our turn to open fire," Apista spoke, with more than a hint of smugness.

The barrier flashed and a spherical shockwave blasted out from it, buffeting the fleet and pushing them back. While several of the smaller vessels were destroyed outright, the shields of the larger ships held, although some of them flickered a bit; while the flagship skull didn't seem to have been affected at all.

Holes opened in the shield, and thousands of drone fighters flew out to attack the ships. Millions of undead wasps, apparently unbothered by the vacuum of space, swarmed out of the ships to engage the Hive fighters, leading to a thrilling space dogfight.

"Nice! Looks like they're going to have to do better than that to break through!" Ariel whooped, her jubilation filling the Buzzing and mingling with the feelings of triumph from the rest of the Hive in a heady concoction which made Nushi's head spin and hug her tighter, something the Heavenly Saint didn't seem to mind.

And that's when the Swarm did something better than that.

Without warning, the giant centipedes wrapped around the ships lashed out, streaking across the black expanse towards the barrier, smashing through and destroying every fighter or wasp in their way. They slammed into the shield and, to everyone's astonishment, started chewing on it.

"What… Have they always been able to do that?!" A startled Shin cried.

The majority of the Buzzing replied that no, they had not.

"They've never done anything like this before," agreed a startled Caelifer.

"Makes sense," Goro assuaged. "They probably have been working on something like this for just such an occasion. You can't expect your enemy to always use the same playbook, after all."

Mibojin nodded in agreement. "Just as we must adapt to any circumstance, so to will our enemy. To expect otherwise is folly."

Several drone fighters broke away from the dogfight to attack the centipedes, but the giant arthropods took absolutely no notice of the largely ineffectual barrage from the much smaller mechanical insects. The barrier started growing brighter as it gathered energy for another shockwave burst, but the centipedes took no notice of this either, continuing to dig their way through the shield.

"We can't let them get through!" Ariel cried. "There's no telling what would happen!"

"Sure there is," Shin retorted. "One word: bad. Very bad."

"That's three words," Caelifer pointed out.

"Technically, it's two," Formic corrected him.

"Shut up," the grasshopper replied.

More drones quickly flew up from the planet, hovering on the other side of the barrier from the centipedes, who were merrily chewing their way through the shield. A few moments later, one of the centipedes managed to break through, its grotesque circular mouth opening wide in a horrendous shriek.

The drones opened fire, aiming all of their attacks at the exposed interior of the centipede's mouth. It shrieked again, this time in fury as well as pain, and luminescent fungus-tipped tentacles lashed out from the maws, flailing about and destroying dozens of the drones.

Through the Buzzing – and by watching the display – they could see that more and more centipedes were breaching the barrier. "Not good not good not good not good!" Ariel squealed in dismay. "Also, those things are even uglier than a Hades Beast Worm!"

"Don't worry, the barrier is almost fully charged," Lepidoptera assured her. "I highly doubt those things will like being inside them when they go off!"

Indeed, the shield had almost reached peak capacity, bolts of energy crackling along their surface and striking the centipedes, who shrieked and convulsed…

And expectorated, spewing out copious amounts of spores and slime which smashed through the drone clouds and fell towards the planet below.

Nushi gasped, horror filling the Buzzing. "No!"

"This must have been their objective from the start!" Goro realized.

"What will happen if that fungus reaches the surface?" Mibojin demanded, emotions as sharp as her blades.

"It will start defiling the planet and corrupting all life around it," Apista said grimly, dispatching more drones. "Hopefully we can get it all before it reaches the surface, but if not-"

She glanced at the heroes. "You need to be ready to deploy at a moment's notice. Your first battle may be a trial by fire."

Shin sighed, radiating resignation. "Aren't they all?"

Even more drones rose from the surface of the Earth, flying up to intercept the slime globules and the spores spilling out from them. As they did so, the barrier finally unleashed another energy blast, sending feedback up through the bodies of the centipedes which cooked them from within, causing many of them to convulse in agonized death throes which ripped apart the ships they were rooted in, sending debris and chunks of fungus flying everywhere.

A wave of relief washed through the Buzzing as over half the Swarm fleet disintegrated into clouds of shrapnel. The largest and strongest ships were still intact, but heavily damaged, and even the flagship looked a little worse for wear.

"Well, at least that's that taken care of," Goro commented.

"It will take them quite a while to recover from that," Formic agreed.

"Don't relax, we aren't finished just yet," Shin reminded them, senses focused on the projectiles the centipedes had fired at the planet.

They, along with what felt like the entire Hive, watched in trepidation as the drones caught up to the globules and opened fire. One projectile exploded in a spectacular conflagration, consuming it utterly as well as destroying most of the spores it had generated, the surviving drones breaking off to take out as many of them as they could. Another mass of slime and fungus went up moments later, followed by another, and another.

With each fungal meteor destroyed, tension eased throughout the Buzzing. For a moment, they dared to believe they might be safe…

Only for the drones to abruptly veer away from the final missile.

"What the – what are they doing?!" Ariel cried in dismay. "They're letting it through!"

"It's too close to the surface," Lepidoptera explained. "Blowing it up at that low an altitude could cause severe environmental damage."

"Letting that thing impact will cause even worse damage!" Shin protested.

"Actually, destroying the meteors higher up had a greater chance of the spores burning up in reentry, while blowing one up this close to the ground would actually disperse its contents across a much wider area," Caelifer told him.

"Oh."

The meteor struck, fungus immediately starting to spread from the point of impact.

"We need to get boots on the ground there, stat," Goro barked, snapping to attention. "Where is that?"

Their perception zoomed out to reveal-

"Wait, where is that?" Asked the dumbfounded Shin. "That doesn't look like anywhere in Japan."

"That's because it's not," Coccinella spoke up. "That's Caelifer."

Nushi blinked. "Wait… Munich? As in, the German Munich?"

"Technically Bavaria, but yes," Coccinella told her.

"… Why is it in Bavaria?" Asked a confused Ariel.

Apista blinked, perplexed, as was most of the Hive. "… Why wouldn't it be?"

"It's just… Shouldn't it have hit Japan?" The sorceress asked, still confused.

"Why would it have hit Japan?" Lepidoptera asked.

"Because we're in Japan!" The fox pointed out.

"… So?"

"Well… It's just… Look, back me up here, guys!" Ariel begged her friends. "Japan is pretty much always where EVERYTHING starts in these kinds of situations, isn't it?"

Goro frowned. "That's… true…"

"Yeah, why is that, anyway?" Nushi wondered.

"Wait, you mean this sort of thing doesn't happen all over the world?" Shin asked in surprise. "I always assumed everywhere on Earth was equally likely to get attacked by aliens or monsters or an evil organization at any moment. For it to just be Japan made no sense."

"Well, we never really got anything as exciting as all that back home," Nushi told him. "You know that, you saw my memories."

Shin scratched the back of his head, perturbed. "Well, yeah, it just… seems a bit weird, is all."

"Look, it doesn't matter where this is happening – though yes, I agree it is odd it's not happening closer to home – but we need to get over there immediately before things get worse," Goro asserted. He looked up at Apista. "Unless your drones and soldiers can handle it?"

"They cannot," the Queen confirmed. "Given how our enemy has clearly altered their tactics – and our nascent military is still too small and undertrained – I'm afraid we must leave this up to you."

"Which is fine, because you were chosen for this exact reason," Manti assured them.

Nushi nodded. "I figured. All right, team, it looks like it's time for our first mission. It's a shame we didn't get a chance to train, but we'll just have to make do with what we've got."

"Sometimes on-the-job training is the best kind," Ariel agreed.

"The memories of your predecessors in the Buzzing will allow you to use your new weapons and powers on a basic level right away," Coccinella spoke up. "However, it's no substitute for actual experience, so don't get cocky."

"We won't," Nushi promised. "Okay everyone, it looks like this is it. Earth needs us! So let's buzz off and show the Swarm who they're dealing with!"

"Yeah!" Everyone but Mibojin cheered.

"How are we getting there, though?" The ninja asked.

There was an awkward silence.

"We can provide you with transportation that should get you there very quickly," Apista offered. She frowned. "Except… At the rate the fungus is spreading, there's no telling how bad things will be by the time you get there… Even a delay of a few minutes could cost us everything."

"Then we need to get there immediately," Nushi resolved. "Ariel, can you teleport us?"

The Heavenly Saint shook her head. "My magic's gotten a lot stronger, but I can't get us all the way to Germany in a single leap. It would take me multiple jumps, and I'm pretty sure we're going to need as much of my magical juice as we can by the time we get there; I know a spell or two which might help protect us from the fungus and stop it from spreading."

"Wait… Time… That's it!" Shin exclaimed. "We'll take the ShinLiner!"

Everyone understood at once. (You know, because of the Buzzing.) "Of course!" Nushi exclaimed. "It's a time-traveling train! We can get there right when the meteor hits!"

"Or even before, so we can stop it from hitting at all," Mibojin suggested.

Shin shook his head. "No, that would cause a paradox and get us in trouble with the time police. Trust me when I say none of us want to go to time prison. We can definitely get there just after the infestation starts, though!"

Goro frowned. "Wait, but doesn't that mean we would already be there, and we'd probably have sensed something like that by now-"

"Come, ShinLiner!" Shin declared before Goro could get too far in that line of thought.

With a resounding crash, the ShinLiner smashed through a wall, dove into the honey lake, and resurfaced at the edge of the island, showering everyone in honey.

Dripping wet, everyone glared at Shin.

He sweatdropped. "… I did not think that through properly."

Apista sighed and rubbed her forehead. "This is why my people have always avoided time travel."

Philia giggled, having regained some of her natural cheer.

"Don't worry, we can get cleaned off inside," Shin assured everyone as a door slid open on the side of a car. "Since we're time traveling, we should have a little time to prepare ourselves for the battle ahead, but not too much time."

"But if we're time traveling, shouldn't we have all the time we need-" Goro protested.

"ALL ABOARD!" Shin shouted.

Queen Apista bowed her head. "My brave champions… Go forth, and know that all our hopes lie with you. I have every confidence that you will do us all proud."

"We won't let you down, Your Majesty," Nushi promised, directing every bit of courage, determination, and love she could muster at the Queen.

Apista smiled radiantly, sending faith, hope, and love right back at her. "The thought never crossed my mind."

And of course, they knew this to be true.

"Good luck!" Philia called as the five entered the train, the door closing behind them, similar shouts of encouragement and well-wishing coming from every other insect in the city.

The ShinLiner rumbled to life, its horn blaring, and it took off…

Smashing through another wall in the process.

"Sorry!" Shin apologized through the Buzzing, emanating waves of shame and embarrassment.

Philia burst into laughter.

Apista sighed as she summoned drones to repair the damage. "Strangely enough, his predecessor broke through the roof multiple times his first day on the job…"