ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _|_|_|

Wendy

I believe in love, but my relationship with it has been a strange one. Romantic love, anyway. I love my friends. I love the work I do. I love the League, and being Marpesia. It's just that… every time I think I have a romantic relationship figured out, I doubt myself. I wonder what could go wrong. I wonder if I'm a fraud, if I'm just going along with some perceived notion of what I think it is I should be doing, instead of trusting my gut instincts.

I had told Stan that I'd cheated on Token, even though that wasn't exactly true. When we went off to separate colleges, we had agreed to be in an open relationship, to try things out with other people if they came along. Which… I did. And while there was nothing wrong with that, my folly was that I hadn't told Token about it. It was like I had convinced myself that I'd just straight-up cheated on him, that I was a bad girlfriend and a bad person, and that he didn't deserve to hear any of that. Instead of communicating, I shut down. I had done to him exactly what used to bother me about Stan. Shutting up and mumbling that everything was fine, even though there were things I wanted to say. Because I was so protective of Token's feelings, even when we weren't together. But I didn't say anything. I never said anything.

So I'd broken up with him. He had a new girlfriend for a while and so did I, and then I had a boyfriend and then that was over, too. And then Token and I had come home for this summer, this final summer before our last year in college, and we were both single again and starting up a mission again, and being with him just felt right again. Everything always felt right with him.

I could look at it from every angle, but I still felt awful for handling things so poorly, which meant only one thing. I loved him.

I had tried to be so cautious after Stan. I really did. Marj even said to me our senior year of high school that there was no shame in admitting that I wasn't completely over him. That I wasn't completely in love with Token, not then, not yet. The thing about being in love with Stan for as long as I was really just boiled down to me feeling a little responsible for his happiness. Especially after that Halloween. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for not saying something to try to make him feel better after our final breakup, something encouraging… or to try to talk to Kyle back then. But I didn't, and for so long, I felt like their argument and Stan's sacrifice that night was on me.

I blamed myself for Stan getting killed that night, and feeling like that really fucked with me, because I never talked about it. I mentioned it once, to Marj, and that was it. Not a word to Stan, definitely not to Kyle; not to Kenny, not to Token.

If I could do that to someone I loved, I thought, I didn't want to love anyone else. Not for a long time. And now Token was in the hospital and I felt like a wreck.

Here's the thing about me: I don't know who I am when I'm not helping someone. When I'm not fighting for someone. I was getting a minor in sociology at school. I loved, more than anything, helping other people and trying to do good. So when I felt like I fucked up… when I felt like I fucked up, I felt like I was nothing. And I didn't ever really take as much time as I should have to focus on helping myself by truly going for what I wanted. Especially when it came to romantic love.

Instead of, I want this, maybe I should go for it, with me, it always turned into more, I don't deserve this as much as someone else needs something else. The only person I forgot to help was myself, when it came to this stuff.

Maybe if I had, I would've broken up with Stan for good freshman year of high school. Maybe even earlier. Maybe I would have opened up and talked to Token, instead of thinking I was helping him by pretending I was fine.

I didn't say it, but I knew without a doubt that I was in love with Token the summer after senior year. We were so gelled as a duo in the League by then, and he had been so welcoming and so wonderful in getting me, as Marpesia, not only acclimated but immersed into that world. His world, specifically. I was the only other person he trusted with the equipment in his metal shop, for one thing. And outside the League, I loved our every interaction. He planned the best dates, we were always there for each other on the other end of the phone if we needed anything late at night, we ran in the same circles at school and being close to him made me feel so wonderful.

I still loved him.

And love meant honesty and openness, but I hadn't been ready for that. I'd just gone on being the support, and only the support, and didn't let things grow naturally. Even though I wanted it; I really, really wanted it.

He was such a rare, lovely, genuine human being, and we complimented one another so well, and I loved him and I loved us and I didn't want to stop loving us and what we could be. So I felt responsible for his happiness now, too.

I just didn't want to fail him the way I still felt that I had failed Stan.

– – –

The red mist that had separated me from Professor Chaos dissipated when I found myself standing in front of a large, three-storey building.

I hoped that Chaos was all right. Butters had gone through a lot for a long time, and I worried for and about him on a regular basis. Marjorine had been one of my closest friends for years, and now Butters was more like a sibling to me than ever. I knew why he'd chosen to become Harmony. I knew that the past few years for him had been hard, trying to re-forge his friendships with the rest of the League. I knew that Clyde was still on edge about him, and that Butters knew that, too.

And I knew that Butters had gone to the Goths for a new Tarot reading before we'd set out for the Carnival.

As much as I wanted to help, I had to trust that Chaos would be okay. I had to trust that Disarray would not get the better of him this time.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to check. "Chaos?" I asked into my wire. Nothing. "Chaos, where are you?"

Static.

Worry clinched my heart. Knowing I was talking into a void, I still said, "Be careful, honey, okay? Please, be careful. You're my sibling, I'm not gonna lose you. Let's make sure we find each other, okay?"

And still, I was met with static.

I sighed, and looked back up at the building, then at my immediate surroundings. No one seemed to be anywhere, now that I took the time to glance around. "Hey, Mosquito?" I tried.

Still nothing.

"Mysterion? Mosquito? Henrietta? Anyone? I could use some guidance, here."

Absolutely nothing.

I swallowed a lump in my throat, and turned yet again to face the one place Damien and Scott Tenorman were directing me to go.

This sucked. I was the defense of the team. I was always there to back up the others, and now that I was facing a challenge front and center, I had no one to call for help. I'd never done a solo mission before. I had always at least one partner on the field. This was so much less than ideal.

Hard as it was to try to narrow my priorities and not get bogged down thinking about where everyone else could be and if they were all right, I had to try to focus on myself, and make my own way out of Hell. It really was a challenge for me. I always preferred teamwork to solitude.

The building was garish, to put it lightly. Neons and fluorescents and giant speakers protruding from all three floors, blasting a hurdy-gurdy rendition of Radiohead's "Lucky." It would have been a boring, decrepit old rectangle of a place if not for all the embellishments. Scrolls and swirls adorned each outlined storey, and alternated in color from neon to pastel to God knows what in a pattern that looked like where rainbows go when they die. There were six windows facing outward on each floor, but they were boarded up or barred.

As far as I could tell, the giant black double door was the only way in and the only way out. Painted onto the door in white was the numeral VIII, and beneath it, in either red paint or blood: FRAUD. My heart skipped. God, what a word.

"Ah, Marpesia!" a voice crackled through the speakers. Scott Tenorman. The Radiohead bastardization continued to play behind him. "I've been wondering when you were going to show up. Bring your coins?"

"I have one," I said, holding up my entrance coin in case there was a camera present. I'm sure that, somehow, he could see me.

"Oh, dear. Bad luck for you," said Tenorman. "Already wagering you're going to win, hmm?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You've got to run the gauntlet, my dear."

"Don't call me that."

"It won't matter much longer, anyway," said Tenorman, and the doors swung open. "You have one token, Marpesia. Use it wisely. Then again, you could always wager your life."

"What," I said, "this isn't my ticket in?"

"Oh, no, no, Marpesia." Tenorman laughed. "But if you play wisely, it will be your ticket out."

His voice cut out and the music began grinding in a little louder as the great black door heaved open, going inward. I gathered myself and walked in, half expecting to enter some kind of void.

I got the opposite. More neons, more garish lighting. The door swung closed and the music faded to a dull murmur pulsing from the walls of what I immediately recognized as an arcade. From what I'd overheard from Henrietta and Gary, the others were, for the most part, faced with rides. I, however, had been given some kind of game.

Or, rather, several games. The room was stocked full of them. All of those awful rigged games you see at carnivals—target shooters, skee-ball, ring-toss, that dumb one with the water pressure pistols. Well, all right, I'm biased. I think all carnival games are pretty dumb. So this was just madness.

"Are you shitting me?" I called up at the ceiling, firmly placing my hands on my hips. "Just get out here and let me punch you in the fucking jugular!"

Tenorman's voice came through from tinny speakers overhead: "Not so fast, Marpesia. Listen, it's all about wagers and odds. Simple, really. You're good at figuring out patterns, aren't you? The clever reporter of the group? Surely this will take you no time at all."

"I don't want to waste any of it playing some nonsensical game," I spat.

"Oh, but the first level is so simple," said Tenorman. "One of these machines will open up the second. Choose wisely and advance all the faster."

But that was just dumb luck. That's what I hated about carnival games. Sure, there was some skill and strategy involved, but for the most part, they were all rigged, and winning was only a matter of luck. Nothing to do with ability at all.

Already fed up, I began walking the perimeter of the room in search of some sort of switch or trap door. Not only did I not find anything of the sort, there weren't even any outlets, and yet the game machines were all lit up with that sickening incandescence. Granted, this was Hell, of a sort, but something other than magic had to be powering everything. Or maybe Damien really was that powerful… or at least amped up enough from either the volcano, or the Between. Or both. I was convinced that the Carnival had not been built so much as conjured, given that Damien was the son of the Devil and all. But really… something had to be the source of all the power feeding into all of the attractions; all of the Circles.

Aim for the Bullseye.

Huh.

I took one last look for a different way out and then, finding none, I went for the target practice game. It had those phony toy guns, and I set down my coin on the ledge of the shooter side, picked up one of the fake pistols, and opened fire on the targets. It was one of the least riggable games, too… but, wouldn't you know it, I'd chosen correctly.

An LED screen behind the targets that popped up at varying intervals ticked up with a score until I'd overshot the allotted spaces for numbers, and the screen showed instead the word, WIN.

A creak could be heard overhead, and I looked up just in time to see a piece of the ceiling give out, dropping a sad stream of red confetti through the opening before a rope ladder was unceremoniously thrown down. I rolled my eyes, picked up my coin again, and made for the ladder.

This was bullshit. I really couldn't be wasting my time in an arcade.

Not to mention that my being in an arcade was utterly stupid as I rarely played video games or carnival games with my friends. Token was good at them, and sometimes I'd watch him play and catch on. My heart skipped as I grabbed the rope ladder. He should have been the one besting the arcade, not me.

God, I felt like such a fraud.

Sometimes I really did feel like I was still the probationary member of the team. That other members deserved the recognition, the hero status. But not me. Not someone who couldn't even sort out what she wanted or who she was. Not someone who even wore a mask on a day to day basis when I lied and said everything's fine when it came to matters of the heart.

Token was the hero. Not me. I didn't deserve that title and I didn't deserve him.

That was Hell to me. The fear of faking it and losing out on things that really mattered, over and over again. Fucking up the only good things that came my way. Trying to be my genuine self and ending up feeling like a fraud.

No wonder Wilcox's painting of the Eighth Circle looked just like me.

I bit back tears and climbed. Up, up… several feet up until I crawled through the ceiling and onto the dark second floor.

As soon as I was standing, the room became flooded in purple outlines, gleaming off of each corner and off of the plates of my own armor and staff. I looked down and took a step, to find that my sole impression also gleamed purple on the floor. At least the blacklight was a welcome change from the awful neons of the first floor.

But while I was trying to get my bearings, a streak of red shot past me, and I reflexively raised my staff just in time to block a strike from what I realized was a pickaxe.

I gasped and looked up into the half-veiled face of one of Tenorman's Ginger clones. My attacker raised up her pickaxe and struck down again.

I feinted and whacked the backs of her knees with my staff, which got her down. On a far black wall, a hazy purple LED number 1 appeared, and a disembodied female voice said, "Point."

"What?" I said to the room.

From seemingly nowhere, I heard footsteps, and just barely saw a path of red lighted sole marks appear along the ground before another figure clad entirely in black jumped me. I yelped and countered with my staff, looking up to see that he had indeed attacked with another pickaxe. Now that he was close enough, I could see the man's red goggles, and the tell-tale pattern of freckles on his cheeks.

"What the hell?!" I shouted, and shoved him off. I spun out my staff and hit him in the gut.

"Point," said the room, as a 2 appeared on the wall, and as someone kicked me in the back from behind.

I hit the ground hard and saw my entire silhouette appear in that same hazy blacklit purple as I picked myself up. My third assailant was still another one of Tenorman's clones.

"Point," said the room, as on the opposite wall a number 1 appeared, this time in a hazy red light.

"Is this laser tag?!" I shouted up at the ceiling, trying to elicit some sort of response from Tenorman.

This was absolutely ridiculous, and I didn't have time to be playing arcade games. Even if they involved potentially lethal weapons on my enemy's part. This was an absolute waste of energy. It was insulting, really. Telling me that my place was just in this nonsense building of unimportant distractions.

I let out a yell and leapt to my feet in order to punch the third clone across the face. She went down hard, and the room said, "Point," and awarded me with a purple number 3.

Another two rushed in, and the dark room with its glowing outlines was really starting to get to me—my eyes weren't adjusting to the dark, because there was just enough moving light to make me see spots instead. Luckily, my current opponents were slow. One trained a gun on me, and I ducked out of the way before he could fire. I rushed him and whacked the inside of his wrist hard with my gauntlet, making him drop his gun. As soon as he had, he made a grab for me, but I managed to feint around behind him and kick him hard into his companion. The two collided and fell to the ground, leaving their hazy red imprints around them.

"Point," said the room. "Point." And the purple numbers went up to 5.

"Yeah, okay, what is the point!?" I demanded of the room.

I was answered with still two more attackers coming from seemingly right out of the walls.

One of the Infras managed to graze my lower right arm, just above my gauntlet on the inside, with the tip of his pickaxe and I let out a yelp of pain that was drowned out by the room saying, "Point," and giving the red side a 2.

I clipped my staff to my back and pulled off the prehensile fan blades I kept hidden within the pleats of my skirt to cut up the clone that had attacked me, and just as the room said, "Point," and gave me a 6, the second Infra struck from behind and nicked my side. It didn't draw blood, but the crunch of his pickaxe against my armor echoed in the room.

"Point," said the room, and the red number went to 3.

I wanted to stop and tie up the stupid open wound on my arm. Every drop of blood that fell from it hissed into a lit-up purple splotch on the floor and made me an easy target. I took a few steps back, but the Infra rushed me, raising up his pickaxe and bringing it down. I had no staff in my hands to counter with, so I clipped the wooden handle of his weapon between my fans, heaved out a breath, and bent my knees to flip the man over my back and disarm him.

"Point," the room said, and the purple numbers raised to 7.

"How high does this go?" I demanded.

And was tripped yet again.

When I fell, I hit my head, and my ears started ringing, seeming to echo inside my helmet. I was still holding onto my last attacker's pickaxe, though, so I put away my blades and clutched the Infra weapon to my chest as I gathered back my breath.

"Point," said the room, and that voice sounded so familiar, I realized.

Who was that…?

I looked over to the wall with the red number, which was now a 4.

I had no idea what this was best out of, but I did need to hear that voice again to make sure I wasn't projecting anything. I thought I had a pretty good idea of who it was, so I needed to listen this time. Meaning I needed to win, or I'd be even more distracted.

Gathering my breath, I stood up, and turned to face my latest opponent.

And gasped.

This one was wearing goggles, sure, but street clothes rather than the black uniform. Street clothes for this all-to-identifiable man meant a suit, tie, and gun harness, in which was still strapped one .45, while he had the other trained on me. I couldn't tell whether or not he had the markings on his face, though. Not yet.

"Sargeant Yates?" I asked, clutching the pickaxe.

"Hello, Marpesia," said the Sargeant. "Why don't you drop your weapon, and we'll make this nice and easy."

"Is that actually you?" I asked, taking a step back. "What kind of contract did you sign with these guys? What the hell could they have offered you? You didn't sign over any part of South Park, did you?"

"I said, drop your weapon."

I shook my head. "You're our ally, Sargeant, I don't want to do this," I said.

He cocked the gun. "Drop your weapon."

"Why did you join the son of the Devil, Sargeant?!" I demanded again.

The Sargeant grinned, and said, "I liked my odds." And shot at me.

I cried out and ducked, but looked behind me in enough time to see the bullet hit the far wall in a splash of hazy red light. He fired again and it nicked my shoulder armor enough to get me to stumble back. "What the fuck?!" I shouted at him.

He wasn't answering me anymore, so I moved out of the way of his next shot and tried to get in close enough to see if he was a clone or not. Sargeant Yates wasn't the brightest person in our town (which in itself is quite an understatement), but he'd at the very least been trustworthy. According to Mysterion, he'd been an ally from the beginning. He never arrested a single one of us for our vigilantism, and kept certain areas of town un-patrolled in order for the League to do our thing. If nothing else, like so many other people in South Park, Yates at least tried. Our police force was always kind of shoddy and fault-ridden, but Yates and Murphy had been good allies for a long time.

Whatever Damien was peddling, it had to be good. Or it had to be something else. Bait. Leverage. Blackmail. All of the above.

I jabbed the pickaxe's blunt end into Yates's sternum, and he coughed and stumbled back, firing absentmindedly off to the side. It was enough to make the room say, "Point."

I'd almost forgotten to listen, but I caught it. I knew I wasn't imagining things.

As soon as the purple number raised to 8, I asked aloud, "Ms. Cartman, is that you?"

The lights flashed on, bathing the room in a sickly fluorescent yellow, and another rope ladder dropped from the room's ceiling. That was it? That couldn't have been it. This was… alarmingly, insultingly easy.

Besides, I was still worried about Sargeant Yates.

He was distracted by the light change, so I quickly dropped the pickaxe and rushed forward to disarm him and take the cartridge out of his gun, then took the other from his holster and took it apart as well. I grabbed him by either side of his head and turned him to face me.

No markings.

Whether he'd been cloned or not was still up in the air, but Tenorman had sent the real thing after me with an order to shoot to kill.

"Please," said the disembodied, monotonous voice of Liane Cartman, "advance to the next level."

I looked over at the rope ladder, then back at Yates. "Don't move," I told him, and punched him unconscious. I'd figure out what the Sargeant's motives were later.

If the building was only three storeys high, it stood to reason that the next 'level' would be the last. But even as I climbed, I couldn't shake the feeling that everything about Attraction VIII was purposefully pointless.

When I'd climbed onto the next floor, the trap door swung shut underneath me. I gasped and turned back to it, but could not for the life of me find a handle or even a hinge. Clearly, the opening only went one way. I stood to survey the room for windows or doors.

As I should have expected, there were none.

The room appeared to be the entire top floor of the building, and was dimly lit and illuminated in neon red. A few feet in front of me was a card table draped in red velvet, atop which were two small bowls, each holding three black dice with red marks for the numbers.

Behind the table, on the wall, was a huge casino wheel, divided into black, white, and red segments and with spikes around the outer rim and a triangular rubber stopper at the top.

Seated at the table was Scott Tenorman.

The wheel behind him seemed to surround him like a halo, which was a gruesome thought, and the red light of the room cast jarring shadows over his face, truly hollowing out his sunken, sleep-deprived eyes. He held his pyrite-topped walking stick out to one side, and was drumming the fingers of his free hand on the card table.

"Well, well," he said. "You're really going to do this with only one coin?"

"I've made it this far, haven't I?" I pointed out. "So what is this? And where's the rest of your little Ringleader team?"

"Oh, Charon's apprentice has some recruiting to do," Tenorman said, his eyes locking with mine on that one. "Can't build new Betweens without a little chaos, now, can we?"

Shit.

Inside I was trembling, but I held firm. Butters would be okay. I had to believe that my friend would be okay. And, well… I'd have to break out of my own game in order to see his success for myself. He'd be fine. He wouldn't turn on us again. Right? He'd be fine.

"And as for Damien, well, he has much more important things to attend to." Implying that I wasn't worth it. Wonderful. "I'm just here to pick off Mysterion's defense." Tenorman accentuated that by harshly tapping his walking stick on the ground. "That is what you are, isn't it, Marpesia?" Tap. "The defense? The armor? You're the one who takes bullets for the team, because you believe you can't be hurt. Isn't that right?"

"It doesn't matter what I believe," I said. "Whatever you have planned, I'm going to win."

Tenorman snorted. "Not with only one player. But sure. Let's get this over with. I'm sure it'll be quick, but crushing anyone's armor right now will be intensely satisfying."

God, was he related to Eric Cartman, or what?

Eric… shit, where was Eric? I hadn't heard anything over the wire. No indication that he might have so much as been spotted. He may be an asshole, but I still considered him a friend, in the long run. I consider just about everyone I talk to a friend.

Did I care too much, and too easily? Was that it?

And why should that be a weakness? Why should that be a sin?

Tenorman snapped me back to attention with another loud tap from the base of his walking stick.

"You only brought one coin, right?" he said.

I held it up and said nothing.

Tenorman pushed one of the bowls of die in my direction. "Three per coin," he said. "Place your bet as many times as you can."

"What do I do?" I asked.

"It's simple, really. Roll the dice. Spin the wheel. Match a number enough times and win your way out of here, that's all there is to it."

"Um, no?" I said. "Carnival games are always rigged. This is asinine."

"I don't know the meaning of the word." No, probably not. "I assure you, your only opponent is yourself, here. Just… spin the wheel."

"And what happens if I don't?" I challenged him.

Tap.

Tap.

Tenorman grinned.

"Then," he answered, "you'll find out precisely what will happen to all of my original recruits." Tap. "Sally Turner, for one," he said… the girl Harmony and the Coon had first identified in all of this. "Friend of yours, I know. Distant, maybe, but, Marpesia, you are always one to keep in touch, what with your journalistic integrity and all."

"What, you think friendship is just keeping tabs on people?" I snapped. "What the hell?"

Tap. "Yates," Tenorman said sharply. "Sargeant Yates, for another. Big fan of Mysterion's, if a bit of a pushover. Always looking to your little League for assistance. I'll send him right back out to patrol the streets and keep things nice and tidy for Damien once I've disposed of you."

"Yeah, and why was he—" I started.

Tap. "Another friend of yours," Tenorman pressed on, leaning forward in his chair and narrowing his sunken eyes. "Red, was it? What a lovely name. What a perfect name. She's been incredibly useful thus far."

My heart sank to my feet. I rushed to the table and grabbed the side of it, ready to just flip it back on Tenorman and attack. "Where is she?" I demanded. And, for the others to hear over the wire, "Where's Red?!"

Tenorman didn't answer that question, but kept going, standing as if to stare me down. "And one last recruit that may be of interest to you, Marpesia," he snarled. And then he grinned, and it was putrid. I felt the world collapse before he said it:

"A Mister Testaburger, I believe."

Dad. My dad has red hair. Strawberry blonde, really, but that was enough for these Ringleaders.

I let out a gutteral yell and leapt over the table at Tenorman and grabbed him around the neck, and nearly had him in a chokehold.

He tapped the walking stick on the ground again, and he was gone in a blast of red smoke. When the smoke cleared, a window had appeared to the left of the large wheel, looking into a small room where Tenorman sat sprawled back in a large red chair.

I lunged for the window and pounded at it. I took a knife out of my boot and slashed at the glass, but it barely made a mark. Tenorman laughed, and I could hear his awful voice echoing through the room.

"You fucking coward!" I shouted. "You asshole! Get out of there or let me in! Don't you dare do a fucking thing to my dad!"

"Play to win, doll," Tenorman mocked me.

"Shut the fuck up!" I screamed, and punched at the glass.

Nothing. I screamed and punched again, but still nothing. The glass was too strong. This was bullshit.

My eyes welled up with tears and I took a few steps back, glowering at Tenorman through his safety glass. He just kept on grinning.

"Let him go," I demanded. "Don't use him. Don't clone him. Let him go."

"Is that your wager?" Tenorman asked.

"What do you mean, wager?"

Tenorman pointed behind me with his walking stick, and I turned to look back at the table, still with its little bowls of dice on top.

"Three dice per coin," Tenorman repeated. "Just roll them and see how well the odds are in your favor. Roll the dice to place a bet between one and six. One of those numbers shows up when you spin the wheel, you're one step closer to getting out of here. No matches, well…"

"Well, then, what?" I asked through clenched teeth.

Tenorman sneered, tapped his stick on the ground, and leaned forward over it, eyes fixed right on me. "Then…" he said, and followed it with a nasal laugh. "Then I crush you."

My heart skipped. "This is rigged," I said again.

"Not at all," said Tenorman, sitting back in his chair again. "We gave you two coins, didn't we? You could have brought both, or another player, and doubled your odds. But you truly do like to go right up against death itself, don't you, Marpesia? You're a fighter who picks too many battles, all of them futile ones. I mean, look at you. You even tried to extend kindness to my worthless little brother. You know he'll never pay you back, right?"

"Jesus, is that what this stupid arcade is about?!" I snapped. "I let Eric stay with me after Damien dropped the news about his mom on him and you're trapping me in this… this…"

"Hell?" Tenorman offered.

"God, just shut up!" I shouted.

"Play the game, little girl, that's all you have to do."

"And shut it with your tired mysoginistic epithets, too," I added, storming over to the table with the dice. He didn't respond to that one, undoubtedly not understanding.

I slammed my coin down on the table, and the three dice in one of the little bowls lit up, the dots glowing red. I took a deep breath and picked them up. Out of curiosity, I reached for the other three in the second bowl, but they appeared to be glued to the base of it.

This was really the only chance I had at getting out.

I rolled the dice onto the table, and came up with a one, a three, and a five.

Tenorman, who clearly had some sort of view of my actions from where he sat safe behind the glass, commented, "All right, then. Spin the wheel."

"This is a waste of time," I said, and stormed up to the giant wheel on the wall.

"Do you want to bust your father out of here or not?" Tenorman said.

My heart sank, and I spun the wheel.

Too many people were trapped here, and it would only get worse if I lost. It would only get worse if the team remained split up. It would only get worse if the Ringleaders won.

The wheel was divided into segments bearing three numbers on each little sliver—all the possible combinations of a roll of three dice. I needed another way out of that arcade. Tenorman had given me no indication of what constituted my winning. Meaning he was clearly betting on me to lose. And, honestly… given the mundanity and odds of the game he had me playing, I wasn't feeling super confident that I could win, either.

At the end of my spin, the rubber stopper at the top of it pointed to a combination of two, five, and four.

"One out of three," Tenorman remarked.

"So, what's that mean, then?" I asked, moving back over to the window.

Tenorman's mouth stretched into a twisted grin, and he said, "It means I get two points, and you get one. Meaning I get to do this."

He tapped his walking stick down once, and the room shook. I heard a groaning sound coming from both sides, and whipped my head to my right but saw nothing. Tenorman tapped the stick on the ground again, and there again was the shake and groan.

But this time, I saw it.

The walls on either side moved inward by an inch.

I was so paralyzed with fear I couldn't even scream. When he said he was going to 'crush' me, he meant it. Very, very literally.

I turned back to look at him, at the smug grin on his face. "What are you waiting for?" he said. "Try again."

"You're going to kill me," I said numbly.

"Don't blame me, sweetheart. You were the one who walked in here with only one token."

He just had to use that word instead of 'coin.'

I choked, held a hand over my mouth to cover up any cry I'd let out, then took a deep breath, balled that hand into a fist, and punched the glass again. Not a scratch. I tried again, and again, and felt my knuckles scuff and start to bleed.

Trying to keep my cool, I stepped back and looked for any sort of lip between the glass and the wall; anything I might be able to wedge open with a flat blade. Nothing. It was sealed from the opposite side, or welded in some other way. I wasn't breaking through.

I wasn't getting out of there.

Practically hyperventilating, I moved against all reason and went back to the table, grabbed up the dice, and slammed them back down. Three ones. Still feeling absolutely numb, I walked back to the wheel and spun, hard. While it whirred, I looked up at the ceiling and down at the floor to see if I could figure out the mechanism powering the walls. Nothing seemed evident. This really was Hell.

The wheel stopped. Instead of three ones, I got three sixes.

Tenorman let out that nails-on-the-chalkboard laugh of his and tapped his stick down three times. The walls groaned and advanced inward three inches on either side.

This time, I did scream.

The first two levels of the arcade had been designed to mock me, to make it look like Damien and Tenorman were going easy on me. But if I wasn't a threat, they wouldn't have set up the third level to kill me, dangling my own father's capture in front of me and making it look like my fault if I couldn't win his freedom and win my way out of there.

If it had just been a fight with someone, I had no doubt I could have won. But for this… God, I really couldn't do it alone.

When I was a cheerleader, I was always the base of the pyramid. I was the structure, the support. I was always there to catch my teammates and hold them up, I was always the one on the receiving end of the trust fall. And it was the same in my daily life with my friends, and it was the same in the League. I was the defensive line. I was the support.

I was the support because I refused to believe that sometimes I was the one that needed to trust that someone else would be there to catch me when I fell.

Everything I did, every action that I took, was for other people. When we'd entered the Carnival together, Chaos had asked me if I was okay. And I had lied. I had fucking lied. Because I was just so concerned for him. I was so concerned for my friend, I didn't want him to worry or feel like he had to be mentally burdened by me.

Why was I so bad at putting myself first? Why was it so hard for me to open up?

I'd cried to Stan about my concern for Token, but I still hadn't told Stan everything. Which was exactly what it was like when we were dating, and he was like that, too. Maybe that's why we lasted as long as we did. We were both so utterly insecure, having each other was just some mutual form of support, someone to hold onto at the end of a long day of putting ourselves last.

My best self was who I was and how I felt when I saw what I could do for other people. Even if it was just a tiny gesture. I think that's why Marjorine ended up being one of my best friends… she had come to me first, before anyone. She trusted me with her genuine self, and it made me so happy to know that I could help her and be her friend.

The thing is… I wanted to be the support. I liked being the one to catch other people. It was just a balancing act that I couldn't figure out.

I grabbed up the dice again and said aloud to the narrowing room: "I don't belong in an arcade. You should have put me on the highwire."

Because my life was a tightrope act, really.

I needed a net, and I had been so concerned about everyone else, so concerned about how I could help them along, that I hadn't realized that the net was there, it had always been there. I had my friends, I had the League. I had Token.

I rolled the dice, but Tenorman was right. I couldn't win this game alone.

I rolled a one, a two, and a four. The wheel showed none of them.

Tenorman tapped his stick three times and the walls closed in three more inches. I screamed and grabbed onto the Wheel in frustration. Is this really how I was going to lose? Is this really how I was going to die?

Crushed and alone?

"Help me!" I shouted into the wire. "Henrietta, I need backup! The coin came apart for a reason. This game needs two players, or I'm not going to make it out alive!"

"Marpesia? Hold on," came a voice from the other end.

But it wasn't Henrietta. It wasn't even Delphi, or Gary Harrison.

It was Token.

I cried out and clapped my hands over my mouth, choking on a startled breath. I managed to breathe in slowly, and let it out with relief. "Oh, my God…" I heard myself say. My heart pounded in my ears. He was all right. He was back. He was okay, he was going to be okay. Forgetting where I was and what I was doing for a second, I called him by name. "Token? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. And I'm gonna help you," he answered. I wanted to cry. It was so good to hear his voice, to hear the determination and strength behind it. Whatever it took, I was going to make things up to him. "What can I do? What do you need?"

"I'm trapped in some kind of casino game," I told him. "It's impossible to win with just one person. I need to double my odds, here. If Gary and Henrietta still have that extra coin, I really need you, TupperWear."

"Hang on. I'll be right there," he said. "Oh, and uh, one little detail."

"Yeah?"

"I'm trying out a new name, given my… new circumstances."

My heart skipped. New circumstances meant his leg. I still had no idea how on Earth he could be up and walking around already, let alone charging into battle, but Token never was someone who gave up easily. "Sure thing," I said. "What should I call you?"

And I could tell he was grinning when he announced:

"Biomech."

– – –

Token

When I was a kid, I was really into mechs. I collected every Cyborg and Iron Man comic I could find. I built drones in my back yard. I won science competitions three years in a row in middle school. Clyde and I would have conversations going in a few different windows at night about our Coon and Friends superhero identities when we were nine, ten years old, sharing research about mosquitoes and cyborgs, and I'd stay up way too late going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole about advancements in artificial limbs and organs and all sorts of shit like that.

I had no idea how much that research would stick with me. Or how much it actually applied to me in the end.

The enemy had tried to break me, Hell had tried to break me, but I wasn't going down. I was going back out onto the field, and there was nothing they could do about it. Maybe they'd brought down TupperWear, but there was no way they'd be expecting Biomech.

No one was ever going to break me again.

– – –

The previous August, right before we'd all gone back to our respective campuses, Craig and Clyde and I stayed out on my parents' patio after a League meeting, drinking and waxing poetic about whatever we could think of. Clyde's the worst lightweight and the best part is, he thinks he isn't, so only a couple beers in he was getting all weepy about how much he loves Bebe and at one point thought my dad's grill was just a really big grey dog. But after I switched out his third beer for a bottle of water, Clyde sobered up enough to get really serious, and that was where the conversation really started about the future of the League.

I hadn't even realized how big of an issue it was until then, too, but ever since the three of us talked, I couldn't shake it. I thought about that night a lot during my hospital stay. I closed my eyes and shut out all the noise around me and thought about just how much that talk, those guys, and the League meant to me.

"It's just," Clyde had said that night after becoming coherent again, "I like… I hear Stan drop hints about like… wanting to move and stuff. What the fuck do we do, you know? If we lose Stan, we lose Kyle, and… shit. Like… what the fuck do we do? I can't… I can't think about the League without those two. Token, you're not bailing, are you?"

"What," I asked, "on the League?"

"Yeah, dude."

"Well, if you say bailing, that sounds kinda shitty."

"Okay. Uh… retiring," Clyde said.

"Fuck," Craig said. "That's worse."

"But are you? Craig, you, too," Clyde said. "I mean… I'm staying here. Me and Kenny, dude, we're still in, we're always gonna be in. Are you staying in California, Token? I just… I gotta… I gotta know, man. I gotta know."

"Oh. Uh. Shit." At the time, my mind had turned to my classes, to my life out in L.A., to all the opportunities available out there, all the surgical technology that sure wasn't going to make it to South Park anytime soon. And, yeah, I did kind of think at the time about being in a place that was a different kind of weird, and was definitely less snowy. "I don't have to decide now, do I?" I asked.

Clyde's face drained when I said that. He leaned back against the patio wall and said, "Oh. No. I guess. No, but… keep me posted? The League would… really not be the same without you. And I don't just mean because of all this." He gestured back toward the training field. "Dude, we're all invested, but you have literally invested in the League. But… I just… I can't imagine us without you."

"That's gay," Craig said, trying to lighten the tone in his signature way.

"You're gay, Craig," Clyde shot back. He noticed that his drink had been switched at that point, and set down his water to grab out another beer from the ice bucket instead.

"Yeah, maybe," said Craig.

I rolled my eyes. "Are you or aren't you, dude?" I had to know. Craig had dated our friend Tweek in elementary and middle school, but there had been a messy breakup after their guinea pig died in eighth grade. Girls had asked Craig out in high school, and Craig had said, basically, 'sure.' So, there was that. According to Wendy, he'd sometimes go to Pride meetings after school, but apparently he never said anything. Just kind of took it all in. But Craig was Craig. None of us could fully figure him out. That's not a knock against him, he just liked being more unknowable than most.

"I dunno," said Craig. He took a sip of his beer. "I'm still kinda figuring that out. I like Henrietta and all. Maybe I'm bi. Maybe I just gotta experiment. I dunno."

"Well," Clyde said, "have you figured out if you're still on with the League? You still don't have a name, so…"

Craig shrugged.

"Ugh! Fine," Clyde said. "Just… get back to me, guys, okay? This shit is bothering me."

The thing was, at the time, we hadn't had a huge case in a while. We kept up with our usual vigilance, but things had really smoothed over after the Cthulhu crisis. And I admit it, I did think back and forth about the pros and cons of staying and leaving.

Right up until that fight with the Leopard at Home Depot. After that, I'd started leaning more toward the side of coming back home after undergrad and continuing with the League, and the deeper we got into Damien and Scott Tenorman's little Hell on Earth plan, the more my mind seemed to be made up.

I'd almost given up my life for the League during that fight with the Leopard, and I was ready to go all in like that again. When I was in the helicopter with my parents heading to Denver for surgery, I was already requesting the fastest procedure possible.

"Honey, you're delirious," my mother had said. "You need time to heal. You need to rest. You don't have to go right out and fight again."

"Yeah, I do," I protested. I was already forcing myself to sit up instead of lie back. I was already looking at my busted leg again, going through every possible solution to that problem in my head. It was just a temporary setback. It wasn't going to stop me. "I know what I'm talking about. I'm not going down this easy."

"Token, think about what you're doing," my mom pleaded. "I know this thing is important to you, baby, I know…"

"Then you know I'm right," I said. "Mom, please. I do know what I'm doing."

My dad cut in with, "I've already spoken to a few specialists. If you're serious, son, then they're going to have to do repairs on more than just your knee."

"Fine," I said, looking down at my bandaged kneecap. I'd had localized anaesthesia done on the area, but I still knew what it looked like and how painful it had been when the Leopard bit me. I knew the bone had torn through my skin. I knew that my right leg was pretty much fucked forever.

"Token," Dad said firmly.

"They can take off my whole fucking leg if they can give me a better one," I insisted. "I am not leaving my team like this. I'm not. I can't."

My mom couldn't really talk to me for a while after that, but she really just had to cry it out. This was the same woman who cried every time I'd so much as fractured a bone as a kid; of course she didn't want to think about me full on losing a limb. But I knew she knew that I was right, she just had to come around to it. If I was going to replace my own bones, I was going to get the best Goddamn new ones money could buy. I knew what alloys and alternatives were available, and I knew I could go even beyond that. I didn't just want a new leg to stand on, I wanted a new one that I could use to kick Damien's ass right back down into the deepest pit of Hell.

And that's exactly what I got.

Once in Denver, I was able to go into surgery right off. They replaced my knee first. My mother couldn't watch, but my dad pretty much insisted on being in the room with me during surgery, and I couldn't deny that I was glad he did. I went for localized anaesthesia again because, honestly, I was curious and wanted to watch the procedure. I wanted to be able to apply this to my own practice someday, after all.

When all was said and done, I had a new kneecap, new femur, a few replaced bones in my ankle, and a few metal grafts to replace the skin they couldn't save. The bones were a computerized symbiote, connected to AI tissue that mimicked the rest of the tendons in my leg; I could control my new knee and ankle as well as I could every other joint, if not even better by the time I got out of PT. The best part, too, was that the new bones and tissue were lighter, but stronger.

My dad paid for my surgeon's silence on the Shadow League matter, so I was able to get an additional upgrade, too. The metal grafts could sync with the rest of the symbiote, and I could create a full armored exoskeleton around my entire lower leg pretty much at will, thanks to a large mechanized plate around my kneecap. The surgeon even kept it to my color scheme of blue and chrome.

When I tested out the exoskeleton in PT, I fucking punted a martial arts dummy across the room so hard it made a dent in the wall, with no added exertion on my part. All I had to do was tap into the symbiote and add a little more willpower to a kick, and the armor delivered.

I nodded hastily while my dad took actual detailed notes during my outpatient talk with the surgeon, and I was anxious to get back into action on the entire long car ride back to South Park in the rental my dad had somehow procured along the way.

"I still don't want you going right back out there," my mom said on the drive.

"I know," I said. "But you know I have to."

"What about your future, sweetheart? What about your career?"

"Mom, the League is my future," I said. "And as far as my career goes, this is exactly what I want to do," I added, patting the outside of my new knee. "Do you know how many people would appreciate having a surgeon who had the same procedure done that they were about to get? I'm fine. I promise. I'm fine."

"Okay…"

"Don't be reckless, though," Dad cautioned.

"I know. I'm good," I said.

"It's your right leg. Be careful driving," Dad added. "I don't want you speeding or crashing into something because of that armor."

"That's actually a really good point. Thanks." Working a gas pedal was the last thing on my mind at the moment, though.

Things were silent for a while, but when we passed into Park County again at last, my dad told me, "I'm proud of you."

Not that he hadn't said it before, but this was the first time he'd said it with regard to my League duties since the direct end of the Cthulhu crisis. I smiled, and looked down at my right knee.

When we were kids, we'd written up fake backstories for our alter egos, back when we were just playing a game. Reality had proven to be so much stranger and more wonderful than most of what we'd come up with, but for a couple of us… I guess we'd always kind of known that our fiction could possibly inform what would eventually turn out to be true. I mean, Kyle could technically fly. Kenny was never 'playing' in the first place. And now here I was with a biomechanical limb.

And that was the moment I realized I needed a new name.

I said, "Thanks," to my dad for his words, and started running a few things through my head.

Clyde had asked me and Craig on no uncertain terms if we were sticking with the League. I sure as hell wasn't backing down now. I'd carved out my exact future that day, and was heading back into battle stronger than ever.

Once home, I went instantly for the base. I tied on my mask and pulled on a set of my spare armor. I left off my right boot, though, and activated the exoskeleton instead. I'd have to build new armor to better accommodate that soon enough, but for now, what I had would do. I got on the wire as soon as possible and sent out a call to anyone who might hear.

"Back on frequency," I said. "What'd I miss?"

– – –

Iron Maiden had sent me coordinates, and, taking my father's advice on the driving matter, just plain sprinted to where the others had set themselves up. On the way, I kept running ideas through my head while Henrietta, Gary, Delphi, and Mysterion caught me up on what had been going on. No matter what else happened that night, I was walking into the Carnival with a new name. TupperWear wouldn't cut it for me anymore. It hadn't felt right in a while; I just hadn't really had much of a reason to change it yet, but I sure did now.

By the time I came upon the two vehicles parked in the woods, I'd settled on it.

Biomech.

That was absolutely me, no questions asked.

Walking through the underbrush leading to the vehicles, I figured the others could hear me, so I called out, "It's just me."

And instantly, someone leapt out of the Tenth Circle vehicle and rushed at me. And exclaimed in his affected voice, "Dude, holy fuck!"

"Hey, Mysterion," I said, and felt myself grin.

He grabbed me by the shoulders and said, "How the hell are you even here?"

"Man, I was not going to let a little cat bite stop me," I said.

"Cat bite? Asshole."

I laughed. "So, how can I help?" I asked.

"Uh, depends. How's your leg?" Mysterion asked.

"Good as new," I said. I stepped back and undid the exoskeleton for a few seconds, and saw Mysterion's eyes go wide behind his mask. "Which, technically, most of it is."

"Holy shit," he commented, staring up at me. "Dude, seriously, are you okay? You good to fight?"

"I'm all in," I said, calling up the exoskeleton again.

"Okay, well… good. It's… it's so good to have you back, man."

"Glad to be here. So, everyone's in but you?" I checked. "Any way I can bust in there, or what?"

"I don't know, honestly," Mysterion said, folding his arms. His eyes fell on the red mist pouring out of the lamp, which was currently sitting on the ground between the two vehicles. "Everyone keeps fading in and out of frequency, and we have to adhere to certain rules. No one's seen Red. No one's seen Cartman, or his mom. Red Serge is on recon, he said he found where they're keeping the Gingers, but he's been awfully quiet for way too long. I know Mosquito's gathering whoever's busted out of their rides and shit, but I have no clue where they all are. Last ones we sent in were Chaos and Marpesia."

My heart skipped a beat.

It had been amazing bonding with Wendy again that summer. She'd been pretty quiet over the past couple of years, and I'd kind of figured we were done, and hadn't pressed the issue. But we'd started talking again almost out of the blue, about pretty much whatever; school, mostly, since that had been the most immediate thing at the time. When we'd met back up in South Park at the start of the summer and started really hanging out again… yeah, maybe I hadn't exactly gathered up the courage to officially ask her on a date again, but being together was nice.

I'd never really had the chance to tell her I loved her, either.

I've had a few girlfriends, but Wendy… I honestly, really loved Wendy. I loved her selflessness, I loved the way she was so quick to help others. I loved the articles she wrote, because I knew the passion and drive that went into them. I loved hearing her talk about the causes she fought for. So I'd wanted to tread lightly with getting back together, wanting to make sure it was right for both of us, if it was meant to be. I respected her too much to want to force anything.

"Marpesia?" I asked Mysterion. "How's she doing? She okay?"

"I think so."

So of course that had to be the exact moment we received a call that she was, in fact, quite the opposite.

Mysterion and I joined the others in the League van, and Henrietta had looked right at me, handed me the extra coin to Attraction VIII, and said, "You wanna take this one?"

Oh, without a doubt.

And now, there I was, standing at the Carnival gate, surrounded by red mist.

"Be careful in there," Mysterion said, now through the wire. "I'll be in soon. Try to find Mosquito and the others, and check back in once you and Marpesia are clear. And keep an eye on Chaos if you can."

"Gotcha," I said, starting for the gate.

"Good luck, Biomech," Mysterion said.

I grinned, and carried that new name with me as I entered the Carnival.

It seemed pretty desolate. No Infras, nobody else from the team. No Ringleaders. No Chaos.

I kept what I'd learned from the others in the back of my mind as I followed the conspicuous trail of red mist around a chalk circle in the ground, passing by ruins of what once had been the others' attractions.

Until I stood in front of a garish, neon-lit, three-storey arcade.

"Dude," I said aloud to whoever, "what the fuck."

This was where they trapped Wendy? No shit this must've been Hell.

"Well, look who's here!" a voice came from a pair of speakers over the door. Scott Tenorman, no mistaking that. "Sorry to disappoint, oh, knight in shining armor, but—"

"If you say 'your princess is in another castle,' I'm ripping your teeth out," I said, unimpressed.

"Oh, I wasn't. She's very much here," said Tenorman. "But rules are rules. I doubt even you could knock down that door."

"Don't have to," I said, and held up the coin from Henrietta, figuring Tenorman could see me.

He didn't respond, which meant he wasn't impressed.

The door of the arcade building groaned open, and I pushed my way inside before it could open all the way. The door slammed shut behind me, and fluorescent lights flashed on, revealing… an arcade. I'd expected Hell to be plenty of things. Anticlimactic wasn't one of them.

All of the games were shut down, though, except for one. A shooting range, toward the back, but it already looked like someone had played and won. I walked over to it and cautiously set the coin down on the ledge. Something creaked overhead, and I glanced up to see one of the roof tiles flap down and a rope ladder spill out from the next floor up.

Meaning Marpesia had already beaten that floor on her own. That must have been it.

I climbed to the second level, and found myself in an empty, blacklit room. "Tron?" I said aloud. "Seriously? Or is this laser tag?"

All around the room, all over the floor, there were footprints outlined in luminescent purple and red. There were even outlines of human bodies… all of them red. On the far left wall was a red number 4, and on the right, the purple number 8.

"Team has already advanced," said a disembodied female voice. An incredibly familiar one. "Please continue to Level Three."

Yet again, the ceiling opened up and dropped down a rope ladder.

And from above, I heard the groaning of gears, and a desperate cry of, "Just give me a little more time!"

I rushed for the rope ladder and started climbing. Marpesia had said she needed to double her odds in order to get out of the building. Whatever that meant, I'd help her see it through.

When I got to the third level, I was standing in a too-narrow room, given the size of the building. There was a segmented wheel on the far wall, next to a darkened window into another room, and a table at the center. And at the table, shoulders slumped, head down, stood Marpesia, who slowly, shakily picked up three dice from the table.

The floor closed behind me, and I called out, "Marpesia!"

She dropped the dice and turned, then cried out when she saw me and rushed at me. I caught her, armor clashing against armor, and she clung on tight, her breath shaking until she stood back and stared right up at me. I smiled for her, and said, "Sorry I'm late."

She cupped her hands over her mouth and let herself cry a little, and I hugged her back in.

"I can't believe you're here," she said.

"Yeah, took me a minute," I replied.

"How are you?" she asked. "Oh, my God. How are you? How's your leg? Oh, my God, your leg!"

She stepped back again and really looked me over. "How are you here?" she asked. "What's going on?"

"Well," I said, "long story short, the surgery was beyond successful."

"I… I can see that."

"I'm fine," I told her. "I promise. I'm fine. And I'm here to help. What do we need to do?"

Suddenly, her face completely paled. She glanced over at the now closed trap door I'd climbed through, then looked up at me again held her arms to her chest. "Token, I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"What? What's going on?"

"I didn't even think… I… I know this'll double our odds, but now you're stuck here, too! God, I can't—"

She cut herself off, covering her face with her hands and starting to cry.

"Hey… hey, Wendy, no, what's going on?" I asked, setting my hands on her shoulders. I bent down to be at her eye level and asked, "What's wrong? What do we do? Whatever this is, we'll fix it."

"I don't know if we can," she said, dropping and then wringing her hands. She looked me in the eyes and said, "You don't deserve to die in here with me, I'm so sorry I dragged you into this."

"What are you talking about?"

"I can't win," she said. "I can't win. It's a dice game. I'm getting killed by some stupid fucking dice game, and now you're here and Tenorman is still going to find some way to rig this so we'll lose. I can't—I can't—"

"Ssh. It's okay. We'll figure it out," I said again. "What game?"

"You… you have to roll these three dice and have to match the numbers to that wheel, and every number that doesn't match is one inch the walls close in."

A sting hit my chest. Oh. Yeah, shit, this was not good.

I looked up and analyzed the room. If it was an inch per wrong number, and if we each had three dice to roll and if all of them were incorrect, that would be half a foot the walls would close in each time. If we lost each turn, we had probably… ten rolls to go before there'd be no breathing room.

"What about that room by the wheel?" I asked.

Marpesia stood back and narrowed her eyes. "That's where Tenorman's hiding," she said. "And believe me, I've tried to break the glass."

"Of course you have," I said with an almost involuntary grin.

"But it doesn't matter! He's totally rigged this whole room!"

"Not necessarily," I said. "Listen, how'd you try to break the glass? Or did you try to wedge it open?"

"Nowhere to fit anything to wedge it open," Marpesia said. "And I punched it, what else?"

"Hmm. Did your armor scratch it?"

"Not really."

"Okay." I drew a deep breath. "All right, here's what we're gonna do," I reasoned. "We'll play a couple rounds of the game, and then I've got two ideas to break the glass. One, I could try busting it open with my shield."

"That might work," Marpesia said, "or it could also just super piss him off."

"Yeah, true. Option number two is I kick it down."

"No way!" Marpesia argued. "You just got out of surgery!"

"Yeah, and you have no idea how much stronger my right leg is because of it," I said proudly. "I don't brag about much, but I'm pretty sure Tenorman's not expecting the horsepower of this thing."

And then, for a few seconds, Wendy was just Wendy. She studied me again, and took a deep breath. "Token, are you okay?" she asked under her breath.

"I really am," I said. "Believe me."

"Did they… God, I'm sorry, but I have been so worried about you," Wendy said strongly. "I have been… I have been stressed out of my mind not being able to see how you're doing, that I couldn't be there to help when you fought the Leopard, I just… everything about it just sucks, and I want you to be okay! Did they replace the whole thing, or… what happened?!"

"I'll break it down for you later, but the short version is I just got a few bones replaced," I said.

"Just…?"

"Wendy, I promise, I'm okay."

Wendy looked me in the eyes, and smiled, and nodded, and said, "Okay."

We took a moment to steel ourselves, then turned and approached the center table.

From behind the glass in the other room, Scott Tenorman said, "You two lovebirds done wasting my time? I do have other people to torture, you know."

"Save it," Marpesia barked, picking up her three dice.

I set my own coin down on the table, and the three dice in a bowl near where I was standing lit up, gleaming red. I picked them up, and together Marpesia and I dropped them back onto the table. She then walked to the wheel on the wall and gave it a spin.

The segment of the wheel fell on 5, 6, and 3. Out of our six dice, we had two matches; one of them twice.

"Shit," Tenorman said.

Marpesia smiled a little, then looked sullen as Tenorman took up his walking stick and tapped it into the ground once. The walls groaned and closed in an inch.

We kept it up for two more spins, and then, with the walls in another three inches, a thought hit me.

"It's kinda Greek, don't you think?" I said.

Marpesia gasped. "What?"

"Yeah, it's like Sisyphus," I recalled. "They're making you do this mundane thing over and over again and calling it a rule. That's not you. You don't have to put up with this."

Realization lit in her eyes, and she grinned. "Holy shit," she breathed out. "Holy shit, you're right."

Wendy had very purposefully styled her alter ego after an Amazon queen from Greek mythology. Like me, Wendy was into the meticulous research side of things, and she'd even inspired Bebe to choose a Greek myth-related name for herself when she joined on. She'd read me the retelling of a couple of myths about Marpesia a few years back, and her voice was absolutely on fire when she did. She cared so much about it, and about doing her namesake justice as a warrior.

"Oh, they are not using that against me!" Marpesia shouted to the room, and slapped down her three dice.

I laughed and set mine down as well. "You wanna do the honors?" I asked.

She smiled up at me with determination and said, "No matter the outcome, this is my last spin."

"You got it." I took a second to size up the window. It wasn't too high off the ground. A couple kicks would bust it in, for sure.

All three of the numbers this time matched numbers we had rolled.

"Go for it!" Marpesia called over to me.

"What?!" Tenorman barked, standing up out of the chair.

I stretched a little as I approached the window of the room he'd hidden himself in, and just said, "Our turn."

And with that, I tapped into the symbiote and gave two kicks to the window with my right foot.

The glass shattered on the second strike and burst inward. Tenorman let out a scream, and while he was distracted trying to dodge the flying glass, I climbed into the room, picked him up, and threw him out the window and back into the game room. When I followed him out, Marpesia had already grabbed him up by the collar in order to hold him against the wall.

"How did you do that?!" Tenorman cried out. "That wasn't supposed to happen!"

"You give us a rigged game, we're gonna come up with our own rules, too," Marpesia barked at him. "Now, I'd say we've won."

"Not so fast, princess," Tenorman snarled.

Rightfully pissed, Marpesia struck him across the face, and hurled him over in my direction. In flight, he dropped his walking stick, then fell in a heap in front of me. I kicked him over and set my right foot down on his chest. "You really want to go up against us?" I asked him.

"You can't cheat Hell," Tenorman tried to warn me.

"Yeah, well, we've got a couple friends who already have," I said. "I'd say we can give it a shot."

Tenorman narrowed his eyes and made a reach for his walking stick. I looked over at Marpesia, and it was clear we had the same thought. Get that thing away from him.

He managed to grab it, though, and ran his thumb across the pyrite topper.

The walls shot back to their original place at the far ends of the room, and the floor opened up in the same place I'd entered through. And up through the opening crawled half a dozen Infras, all primed and ready to fight.

"Well," Marpesia said, cracking her knuckles, "beats a dice game."

She lunged at one of them, and two others rushed in my direction. I took out one of my hurling discs, clicked out the blades on it, and tossed it at one, which exploded on impact. For the other, I regrettably had to shift and let Tenorman up in order to correct my stance enough to punch the Infra with an upper cut to the jaw and put him out of commission.

Tenorman muttered something unsavory under his breath and tapped the cane down hard onto the floor. A dozen more of his Ginger clones crawled up through the floor, putting Marpesia and I now at two to fifteen, not counting Tenorman himself.

Marpesia spun out her quarter-staff, and I grabbed up two more hurling discs. She charged forward, propelling herself up to roundhouse one Infra into another and take them both out, then landed and clocked one in the neck with her staff. All three combusted; the clones were becoming more volatile. Either Tenorman was getting lazy with production, or there was a reason behind it.

I threw the discs forward into the faces of two other clones, and ran through the dust they left behind in order to take down another. I glanced back and saw that Tenorman was making a move for the window, but found myself surrounded. "Marpesia!" I called over.

She looked back and made a break for it, shouting, "No you don't!"

I dealt with the five Infras I had surrounding me, kicking one clean through one of the far walls… and, given that he exploded upon impact, giving us a new possible escape route. I really liked this new fuckin' leg.

Marpesia grabbed Tenorman and tossed him further back toward me and the last of the Infras. He made a reach for the pyrite tip of his walking stick, but Marpesia rushed him and he had to instead hold the cane up to block the attack from her quarter-staff. "We have to get this thing away from him!" she called over to me.

"On it," I said. I picked up one of the Infra clones and tossed her against the wall where the other had already blasted an opening; this one exploded as well, and the wall gave and crumbled even more. We'd have to get out pretty quick if we were going to use that opening. Even though this was the third floor, I figured if the clones were shoddily built, the building couldn't have that much structural integrity, either.

"Would you stop!" Tenorman barked.

"Still like your odds?" Marpesia said, scowling.

Tenorman shoved her off, but I rushed him from behind and jabbed my elbow between his shoulder blades before he could reach for the tip of his walking stick. He choked on a yelp and dropped the thing, and Marpesia was quick to pick it up and step back.

"You idiots!" Tenorman snapped at his four remaining Infra clones. "Deal with them!"

"Yeah, I don't think so," I said. "I think we're done."

I clipped off my shield and tossed it at the last four soldiers, slicing up three of them instantly. Marpesia pulled out one of her concealed knives and tossed it through the freckled forehead of the last one, and we were left in a room full of iron sulfide dust, and a seemingly helpless Scott Tenorman.

While I picked up my shield and fixed it onto the backplate of my armor, Marpesia cautiously approached Tenorman and asked, "So how powerful is this thing?" She held up the walking stick. "You can, what, summon clones, teleport… what else?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

"Yes! That's why I'm asking! God, you are related to Eric."

"Yeah, were is he, by the way?" I had to know, stepping to Marpesia's side.

"And where's my dad?" Marpesia demanded.

"Oh, safe and sound, the both of them. For now," Tenorman said. He folded his arms and drummed the fingers of one hand against the fabric of his red Ringleader coat. "I suppose you both think you're pretty clever to have figured out this little game, but Damien will be clearing more Spaces tonight, I assure you. The Tenth Circle is nearly complete, and you'll never survive the Bullseye."

"The Bullseye?" I asked. "What's at the Bullseye?"

Tenorman sneered, and said, "Final judgment."

With that, he made a surprisingly quick move forward, grabbed the walking stick out of Marpesia's hand, twisted the tip of it, and jabbed the base into the ground. He was gone in a tower of red mist.

"Fucking cheater!" Marpesia shouted after him.

"Hey. We'll catch him," I said. "And at least we know that when we do, we break that damn thing."

"Yeah, no kidding," Marpesia said. She looked around the room, and hugged her arms to her chest. "I can't believe he took my dad."

Shit. Yeah, Mr. Testaburger did have reddish hair.

"If Tenorman clones him, I swear to God…"

"It's okay," I said. I set a hand on Marpesia's shoulder, and said, "We'll get to the bottom of all of this. I caught up with Mysterion before I came in here. I think Mosquito's gathering the troops. Let's find everyone and make a plan. Okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Marpesia said, and sighed. Eyeing the opening in the wall, she said, "Let's get out of here first. Also, holy shit, you can kick."

"Yeah, no kidding, right?" I said with a laugh.

"You really are all healed up, huh?"

"Better than ever."

Marpesia smiled, then set a hand on my arm as we both walked through the opening and assessed the climb down. "Huh," Marpesia said. "Neither of us has any grappling hooks or anything…"

"We could cut that rope ladder," I suggested.

"Oh, true." She started back toward it, then said, "Or we could literally just climb down the ladders again. We're not exactly being attacked." Her eyes widened. "Besides, Sargeant Yates was on the second floor. I wanna see if we can get anything out of him."

"Yates?" I said. "I didn't see anyone when I came up."

"Ugh, what the fuck," Marpesia fumed, rolling her eyes. "I don't… I seriously don't get what Tenorman and Damien are doing with all their Gingers. I really don't. And the thing about Yates… Token, it was actually him."

"What?"

"Yeah, like, he converted."

"Shit, Mysterion's gonna be pissed."

"Yeah, for real," Marpesia said.

"Well… let's get back down there and see," I suggested. "And if he's gone, I mean… nothing we can do till we see him again, I guess."

"Mmhmm."

We started back toward the rope ladder, and then she asked, dropping her persona, "Hey, you don't think my dad joined willingly, do you?"

"I highly doubt it, Wendy," I said sincerely. "Your dad's way too smart for this shit."

She managed a weak smile. "Yeah," she said. "Okay."

I went down first, and spotted her as she followed. We took a look around the second level, now no longer in blacklight but the same awful fluorescents as the first floor, but there was no one to be seen.

"Like, what're they even being offered," Marpesia asked on the way down to the first floor, "that anyone would join?"

"I mean, we saw Kyle and Red's letters," I said, helping her down from the ladder to the ground.

"Yeah, and then they had to go and send Kenny one that was just a trap to laden him down with another Shadow problem," said Marpesia. "Are they just trying to push buttons or what? Wear us down?"

"Well, this was pretty much a testament to that," I said. "I think it's us in the League they're trying to wear down, because they know this town kinda has a history for going along with… pretty much whatever." There'd be initial pushback, and then eventually everyone would accept the weirdness as a new reality. That's just how it was in this town.

"No kidding."

Marpesia tried the front door, but it seemed jammed shut. She glanced up at me and asked, "So, about that great new kick of yours…"

"Gotcha."

I stood back, tapped into the symbiote, and kicked down the door.

It shattered.

"We're gonna want to run," I said, and grabbed Marpesia's hand.

We bolted out of there, and the building groaned and collapsed behind us. We caught our breath in the aftermath for a few seconds, then turned to look at the damage.

Marpesia cast a worried look around the Carnival, and I knew that, while she was probably looking for her father, and the rest of the team, pretty high on her list was also Butters. If she'd gone in with Chaos, I figured she'd've been pretty protective of him. Which was for the best. Chaos had been unstable the last time he'd really been Chaos. I trusted Butters, and I trusted Wendy's judgment, but I made it no secret to her that we'd have to be on guard if Chaos ever came back.

Her eyes then fell on the fallen building, and she laughed a little. "So," she said, looking up at me. "Biomech, huh?"

"Yeah, uh… yeah," I said. "Does it work?"

"It totally works," Marpesia said. "I like it. I promise I'll get used to calling you that."

"Thanks," I said.

"Thank you," she said, and hugged me. I returned it, and we both sighed. "Thanks for coming back. I'm sorry if you had to rush your surgery or anything, but I'm… I'm so happy you're back."

"Are you kidding?" I said. "One, I watched the surgery…"

"Gross," she laughed. "Of course you did."

"And two, I wasn't gonna leave you guys. I wasn't gonna leave you."

We stayed like that for a while, and then she stood back and said, "Hey… can we talk?"

"Yeah, what about?" I wondered.

"Biomech… Token, I…" Wendy sighed and took off her helmet. She wiped away some of the sweat from her forehead, and looked down and away. "I'm sorry things have been tense between us the past couple years," she told me. "I just… I did something awful, and I couldn't talk to you about it. I talked to Red about it. I talked to Stan. But I just feel awful."

"What happened?"

"I cheated," Wendy said. She couldn't look me in the eyes. "Token, I'm sorry. I slept with someone else, at school, when we were still together, and…"

"Okay," I said.

"What, just okay?"

"Wendy," I said, removing my helmet as well, "we agreed it was going to be an open relationship when we went out to California."

"I know, but—"

"And that's what an open relationship is," I said. "I mean, yeah, you could've told me, but we agreed that we could see other people and still come back to each other. That's literally what we said, Wendy, it's okay."

"But I still…" Wendy trailed off, then took in a deep breath and looked up at me again. "I miss you. Being at different schools, I… I miss you. And I tried not to miss you, and that just… it might work for some people, but it doesn't work for me. It took me a couple times to figure that out, but missing you means missing all of you. It's not just the intimacy, it's you. I want… I want you. All of you."

I couldn't resist saying, "Well, you can't exactly have all of me back." I raised my right knee and banged on the exoskeleton. "But we can give it a shot."

Wendy's eyes widened, full of tears, and then she pounded a fist against my shoulder. "You are such a nerd! Oh, my God, seriously? You're making jokes about that now? Already?" But she was laughing a little, and that meant the world to me.

"Wendy," I said, bending down to be at her eye level, "if you want to try again, we can try again. We can find exactly what works best for us. We took a gamble once and it didn't work. So we try something else."

"You sure?" she asked, setting her hands on my arms.

"Of course I am." I took a deep breath, and added, "I love you."

Wendy gasped, blinked out a few tears, then threw her arms around me and said, "I love you, too, Token. I love you, too. I'm so happy you're okay, sweetie, I don't know what I would've done if…"

"Well, we don't have to worry about that," I said, pulling her in. "We just have to move forward. Okay?"

She nodded, and echoed, "Okay. I'm so sorry I messed things up. I just… I didn't handle that well."

"It's okay. We'll figure it all out as we go," I said. "We learn, and we keep going."

Wendy smiled, and from the way her eyes lit up, I could just see her confidence build. "Thank you," she said, softly.

"Hey," I said.

"Hmm?"

"Real quick, before we get back out there…"

I set one hand on the small of her back, and the other at the base of her head, and bent to kiss her. She grabbed my arms and returned it, fully, and just like that, we were back.

We kissed again, and when we moved out of it, I set my helmet back into place and asked, "You ready?"

She stepped back, re-affixed her own helmet, and said, "Let's do this."

And not a moment too soon.

"We're out," Marpesia said into the wire. "Mosquito? Chaos? Who's on frequency?"

"Shit, thank God!" Mosquito called into the wire. "We could really use you over here! Head toward the front gate. I don't think you can miss us."

"We're on our way."

"Hold up, we?"

"What's up," I said into the wire. "I'm back."

"Oh, fuck yeah!" Mosquito said. "Let's celebrate by helping each other not die!"

I laughed, and said, "We'll be right there."

– – –

Kyle

We were surrounded.

I had seen walls of shadows encroaching on the Carnival grounds, and only minutes after I'd reported that to my teammates, a squadron of Tenorman's Ginger clones had finally sniffed us out and attacked us right there at Mosquito's lean-to. We'd taken down a couple dozen of them, but there was no end, and now the four of us were back to back, Mosquito and Endgame saving their bullets and Toolshed saving his drill bits, since this was nowhere near the worst of what surely lay ahead.

"How many left?" Mosquito, who was facing the gate, asked me, as I had the best view of the rest of the grounds.

"I dunno, dude," I admitted. "At least fifty."

"Fucking what," Endgame scoffed. He pulled off his sunglasses and blasted straight through a line of five Infras, but others simply filled in the gap.

Mosquito snarled and struck out at one of the clones with the mallet he'd taken from his own Carnival attraction, whacking the Infra square in the face and breaking his goggles, causing the volatile thing to explode. "As if Damien wasn't trying to run us ragged already," he said sourly. "Guys, we've got to push through them."

"The best thing we can do is advance," Toolshed said, shanking one of the Infras up through the chin with his flathead screwdriver. He pushed the man off with one foot, causing the dying clone to collide with two others.

"No," Mosquito snapped. "We're not changing position until we've got everyone!"

"Look," Toolshed said, "I know that was the plan, dude, but—fuck!"

He was cut off by an Infra taking up a pickaxe and advancing toward him.

"Nope!" I shouted at the clone. I thrust a hand out and forced the man back with a mental shove. It really was helpful that those things weren't actually alive. They were easy to read now, sure, but so many of them caused the activity in the air to almost be too much. Almost.

Toolshed let out a grateful sigh and said, "Thanks, babe."

"You got it," I said.

"Wait, hold on," said Mosquito, punching out an opponent. "Babe?"

"Yeah, are you really that surprised, dude?" Toolshed pointed out.

"I… guys, that's such a breach of—"

"Get down," Toolshed warned him. Mosquito ducked, and Toolshed tossed a nail from his belt into the air and whacked it like a tennis ball toward one of the advancing Infras with his claw hammer. The nail hit the Ginger clone between the eyes, and she crumpled down, oozing ore instead of blood.

"Thanks," Mosquito said. "But we've gotta address the—"

Endgame groaned. "Did you miss," he said to Mosquito, in between sword strikes at his own immediate opponents, "the whole fucking Tunnel of Love thing?"

"Okay, but that still brings up protoco—"

"Incoming!" came a familiar female voice from a few yards away. We all turned to look in that direction and, sure enough, up over the crowd of Infras leapt Marpesia. She kicked off of one man's head, flipped off the shoulders of another, then came down with a kick to a woman's gut that forced her back through a line of six other Infras. They exploded on contact, and Marpesia pulled out her quarter-staff, spun it out, and stabbed it through two others. She grinned over at us, then hollered behind her, "You're up, Biomech!"

"Biomech?" asked Mosquito.

Another long line of Infras went down at that point, with one skidding to the ground, destroyed, in front of us, and as the dust cleared from the contact explosions, I could clearly see—I guess, the hero formerly known as TupperWear. He still had his right leg raised from a kick, and a bit of iron ore smoldered off of his heel. The remaining Infras advanced on him, but he took out two bladed hurling discs and shot them out in either direction, decapitating a couple of the Ginger clones and sinking into the others.

"Holy shit!" Toolshed exclaimed, pumping his fists up in the air. "YES!"

"That's how it's done!" Biomech called back.

Only a few remained, now, coming from our left. "This is getting dumb," Endgame said. He stepped forward, cracked his head to either side, slammed down his left foot for a perfect stance, and grabbed off his sunglasses, shooting a long laser beam straight through the final wall.

When the last body collapsed and the last sentient shadow skirted away, back to the Bullseye, Endgame sighed and put his sunglasses back on. And I saw him not grin but genuinely smile when the other two approached us. I couldn't blame him. Token really was back, and seemed to be walking just fine. Something was different about the armor plating his lower right leg, but it wouldn't take us long to figure out what.

"I think that was the last of them," Marpesia said, scanning the area just to be sure.

"Awesome," Mosquito said with a grin. "And holy shit, am I glad to see you guys." He turned to face Biomech directly and said, "Fuck, dude. Holy fuck."

"You knew I'd be back," Biomech said. He walked up to Mosquito and held out a hand.

Mosquito stared down at his hand for a few seconds, then picked his head back up. "Dude," he said. "What is this? I made the shitty call that almost got you killed."

"You know how they say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you see how far I kicked that guy?"

"…Yeah…"

"So no harm done." Biomech smiled, and said, "I'm still waiting on that handshake."

"Idiot," Mosquito said, obliging and shaking his hand. "Welcome back, dude. Thanks for being a stubborn asshole and coming right back."

Biomech laughed and folded his arms. "You got it," he said.

Mosquito grinned. "So," he said. "Biomech, huh? Catchy."

"I thought so."

"So that means you really, uh…" Mosquito started.

Biomech took a few steps back and pointed down at his right leg. Once we were all focused on that, Biomech tapped the outside of his knee, and the armor that covered his lower leg receded, showing not a boot but his bare skin, which now bore a few outer metal plates.

"Holy shit," I said.

"Oh, fuck, man," Toolshed added. "You okay?"

"I'm good," Biomech assured all of us. The armor replated itself around his lower leg, and he stomped the ground a couple of times to make sure it held. He lifted his head to address us again and said, "I can go over logistics later. For right now, just know that I came out of surgery fine, and, uh, my leg really is biomechanical."

"Fuck," Mosquito said under his breath.

"Dude, I promise you, I'm fine," Biomech repeated. "Better than fine. Right, Marpesia?"

Marpesia shrugged at the rest of us and said, "He did kinda knock down an entire building."

"Dude!" I exclaimed.

Endgame walked up and nudged me, then stepped up to Biomech and raised up his right hand for a high-five, which Biomech obliged him with in a second. "What's up," said Endgame. "Welcome to the enhanced humans squad. Am I right, Human Kite?"

I laughed. "Actually, yeah, dude," I said. I stepped up and lightly punched Biomech's arm. "Welcome to the club."

Biomech smiled and said a sincere, "Thanks."

I felt ridiculously short next to those two—Craig is 6'2" and Token is 6'4", and their boots added at least another two inches to each of their heights, so I with my flat boots and 5'10" self just stepped backwards toward the three others and hoped Endgame and Biomech wouldn't notice.

"Okay," Mosquito said, taking charge. "Well, that was a big fucking distraction, but thanks for giving us the heads-up, Kite."

"No prob," I said. "I dunno whether that's the first of a whole wave of similar attacks or what, but at least we didn't lose any ground while we're waiting for the others."

"Yeah." Mosquito paused, then stood back, folded his arms, and scrutinized me and Toolshed for a moment.

"What?" we asked together.

"You're doing this?" Mosquito said in a stern tone. "You're seriously doing this?"

"What?" asked Biomech.

"Dropping the camaraderie," said Mosquito.

"Oh, that's such a bullshit way of putting it," Toolshed fought him. "Yeah, okay, it's been code for a long time that we're team members first, but there is absolutely no loss in camaraderie here if we're open."

"It can be a distraction," Mosquito warned.

"Yeah, you know what's more distracting, Mosquito?" Toolshed said. "Keeping it under wraps."

"Believe me, I know, but—"

"Yeah, okay, no, you don't," Toolshed snapped.

"Hey—" I tried, ready to play peacemaker.

"Excuse me?" Mosquito snapped at Toolshed.

"Your partner is intel," Toolshed argued. "She's one of the safest ones in the League."

"Just because she's not on the field doesn't mean—"

"HEY!" I shouted.

Toolshed and Mosquito paused their argument, and they both looked guilty in their own way—Toolshed a little more embarrassed, and Mosquito a little more humbled. I let out a huff of breath, set my hands on my hips, and said, "Mosquito, suck it up."

"Nice one," Endgame said.

"Shut up," I snapped at him. Looking back at our de facto leader, I continued, "Nothing much is gonna change. If anything, our partnership on the field is gonna get stronger. End of discussion. Okay? The end. And you," I added, looking at my partner, "we don't have to fight for it, babe. We just have to prove it. All right?"

Toolshed sighed, smiled, and said, "Yeah. Yeah, you're right. You're right." He nodded to Mosquito and said, "We good?"

Mosquito put up his hands in defeat and said, "I trust you guys. Just… just don't bring first names into it. All right?"

"Don't plan to," I confirmed. "We're still playing things safe."

"All right," Mosquito said. "Fine. Anyone else? Announcements? You two?" he prompted, looking at Biomech and Marpesia.

The two in question glanced at each other and shrugged. "We'll stick to allies first for now," Biomech answered.

"But," Marpesia added, "there's no saying that won't change."

"Okay," said Mosquito. "Endgame?"

"Dude, I'm single, don't look at me," said Endgame.

"You are?" Mosquito asked.

"Yup."

"Oh. You cool with that?"

"Yup." Endgame grinned, looked at me, and said, "But for real, dude, way to one-up Toolshed on the pun game."

"There is no pun game, asshole," I snapped. "You're just… bizarre."

Endgame laughed.

"All right, team," Mosquito said, "back to the matter at hand. We got through one fight, but there's plenty more where that came from. What do we make of what just happened, and how do we prepare for what's next?"

"Well," I said, propping one arm up on Toolshed's shoulder and leaning against him a little, "the shadows powering those things went right back to the Bullseye. Whatever it was we just witnessed, it was either a test or a distraction. Or both."

"I mean," said Mosquito, "clearly, at least one of the Ringleaders knows we've all made it out of our respective attractions. I still don't want to move until we hear from Angel, Chaos, Mysterion, and Red Serge, but…"

"But," Toolshed finished, folding his arms, "if the Ringleaders know what we're up to, then it's highly probable that they'll try to stop them from finding us."

Despite the dire situation, I let myself laugh a little. If we were going to be out and open within the League, that meant I could tease my partner at will.

"What?" Toolshed asked.

"Nothing," I said. "Just look at you talking about probability and being all logical." I prodded his arm with my free hand.

Toolshed laughed. "I learn from the best," he said.

"But he's right," I said to the others. "What's to say we find Mysterion and the others at all? And is Red Serge still on recon?"

"Funny you should ask, buddy."

I lifted my head and whipped around, and I knew the others were all following my gaze. Looking a little scorched but otherwise not too much worse for the wear than any of us, my younger brother was walking toward us, moving alongside the gate.

"Wh—Red Serge?" I exclaimed.

"Yeah, and have I got—"

"Woah," Mosquito said. "Nope! Hold up."

He planted himself firmly between me and our returning teammate, and looked Red Serge up and down. "What gives?" Red Serge asked.

"Yeah, we haven't heard a word from you in the hours since you beat your ride," Mosquito pointed out, "and we just happened to have been fighting off a shit-ton of iron sulfite clones."

"I'm not a—"

"We don't know that." Mosquito looked over at me. "You know Red Serge best out of all of us, Kite," he said. "Can we prove he's not another Carnival distraction?"

"Jesus, thanks," Red Serge complained.

"He's got a point," I had to admit. I stepped forward, folded my arms, and asked, "Exactly how tall are you? When's your anniversary with your girlfriend? What was the theme of your bar mitzvah party? What's your laptop password? Where do you keep your super embarrassing middle school laptop that I know you still have?"

Red Serge rolled his eyes. "I'm five-eight-and-a-half. My anniversary with my girlfriend is September seventh. I wouldn't say there was a theme of my bar mitzvah as much as maybe I did talk to everyone a little too much about astrophysics. Fuck you, you're not getting my password, and fuck you further, how did you know about that stupid laptop on the top shelf of my closet?"

I laughed. "I didn't, but I do now," I said.

Red Serge's eyes widened, and then he groaned. "I'm getting rid of that," he said.

"No, you're not," I taunted him. I walked up to him and, as a final test, tried to get a read. I knew what those Ginger clones were made of, now, and what to read for. Ike was Ike, and I couldn't get a read, which meant that this really was him. So I hugged him. "Glad you're safe, Red Serge," I said.

He hugged me in return and patted my back. "You, too, guy."

When we rejoined the others, Mosquito did give me a testing glare and said, "Speaking of breach of protocol."

"Dude, there is no one from the public around," I said. "We can be a little lax here, especially with questions literally regarding identity."

"Fine," said Mosquito. To Red Serge, he said, "Glad to have you back." Red Serge gave a slight salute in place of an answer. "Okay, guys," Mosquito said, transitioning us into a new moment. "Let's circle up. Kite, keep an eye on the grounds. You see anyone else approaching, give the word."

"Got it," I said, choosing a spot in our not-too-close huddle accordingly.

I cast a look around the circle at that point, and… shit, it was nice to have so many of us all in one place again. We'd been in the Carnival for hours, some obviously longer than others, but we'd been separated for way too long. Especially Token; it felt like things were falling back into place now that he was back, and the team was taking shape again.

"All right," Mosquito said, "what've we got?"

"I lost my hat to Leviathan spit," Endgame said. "Technically also yours."

"That is the absolute least of my concerns, thank you," Mosquito said.

"Yup."

"Anyone else? Something helpful? I mean it, guys, we are so close, here."

"Well," Toolshed offered, "we know they're probably trying to distract us, and the Infra clones are becoming way more explosive for some reason."

"Yeah," Biomech said, "we noticed that, too."

"Oh," said Red Serge, "holy shit, buddy, welcome back!"

"Thanks, man," said Biomech. "But back to the matter at hand…"

"They were in Attraction Eight," Marpesia added. "And—oh! Guys, we fought Scott Tenorman."

"No shit?" said Mosquito. "What happened?"

"I mean, he got away, but he has some kind of power in that walking stick of his," Marpesia noted.

"Oh," I said, "that pyrite piece on it?"

"Yeah," Marpesia said. "Exactly."

"It's like he's tapping into something with it," Biomech said.

"I figured it might," I admitted. "It's made of the same stuff the clones are. Some kind of mind control?"

"Over Damien's shadow things?" said Endgame.

"Tenorman's working for Damien," Marpesia pointed out. "It's a safe bet."

"Okay," said Mosquito, "so Damien gave Scott Tenorman some sort of controlling power in exchange for… something. Some kind of deal with the Devil situation, right? That is what we're dealing with, with him, right?"

"No doubt about that," said Toolshed. "And as far as Disarray goes… guys, anyone seen Chaos?"

"I lost sight of him when I entered with him," said Marpesia. "I'm a little worried, but I think he can handle it."

"Let's hope so," said Mosquito.

"He can," Marpesia insisted.

"All right," Mosquito said. "Anyone else?"

"Dude," said Red Serge, "I was literally just on recon. I've got plenty."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. First of all, I'm pretty sure I heard Cartman's mom's voice on my ride."

"Oh, my God, you, too?" Marpesia asked.

"You heard it?" Red Serge checked back.

"I thought I recognized that voice," Biomech added. "That was her."

"But it kinda sounded recorded?" said Red Serge.

"Yeah," said Marpesia.

"Dude," said Endgame. "What the fuck."

"Honestly," I said.

"Anyone actually see her?" Toolshed wondered.

A few no's went around. "Saw some others, though," Red Serge offered.

"Yeah?" asked Mosquito.

"Sure did." Red Serge drew his thin sword, and started drawing a diagram of the Carnival grounds into the dirt with the tip of it. "Okay, so, I managed to sneak into the GSM encampment. There's a line of trailers, here, and three tents. The tents move. I have no clue how, but they do. They weren't in the same places when I started my recon and when I finished. I think that wherever they end up, that's the real Bullseye."

"Nice work," Mosquito complimented him.

"Thanks," Red Serge said with a grin. "So, anyway, there's the trailers, here," and he pointed at his diagram, "and a big metal structure on the side of the volcano, which might be some kind of rig. Something has to be sending signals to the Infras' goggles, so my current guess is that the volcano structure is some kind of control room. I bet they did the radio broadcasts from there, too."

"It would make sense," said Toolshed. "The volcano's a huge source of raw power, and they're basically digging these clones outta the dirt here."

"Not only that," I added, "but something has to be powering all of these rides and attractions. Come to think of it, I haven't seen any generators or anything, and yet there's all these buildings, and a huge influx of new and super-volatile clones."

"Yeah, so production must be up," said Red Serge. He drew a large circle in front of his diagram of the trailers. "There's also this ferris wheel. I don't know what it could mean, but it's not anyone's attraction as far as I can tell. No numbers or anything."

"Is it a gear?" Biomech offered. "Something tied to Tenorman's clone production? Did you see it move at all?"

"It turned a couple times," said Red Serge. "I don't know if it was any kind of pattern, but I did see it move. The real shit, guys," he continued, drawing a skull in front of the trailers, "is that I saw Scott Tenorman guarding the camp. He looks pretty ragged, but he looks like he's waiting for something. Or, he did, until he left. Probably to fight you guys," he added, nodding to Marpesia and Biomech. "Once he got out of there, I took a better look around the trailers."

"Are the real missing people in there?" Mosquito asked.

Red Serge elegantly slid his sword back into his belt and nodded. "Yeah," he confirmed. "Yeah, they are. I saw Sally Turner and Sargeant Yates, anyway."

"Holy shit," Mosquito breathed out.

"Yates?" said Marpesia. "That's so weird. He attacked me in the arcade I was in."

"Really?" I asked. "Why d'you think? Where is he now?"

"I have no idea why," Marpesia said, "but it was him. Not a clone. Unless they've perfected some kind of cloning system specifically for the people they know we'd recognize."

"That's giving them too much credit," I said. "I honestly don't think Tenorman's that smart, or that Damien cares enough." I shivered. "I mean, Damien cared enough to try to get me to join, so I don't… I don't think he's cloning people the League would know well. I think he's dangling them in front of us or keeping them for some other reason."

"They did clone Sally, though," Marpesia pointed out. "And she's Marj's roommate."

"So what's Yates's deal, then?" asked Toolshed.

"Guys," said Marpesia, "I really think he just took the offer. And Tenorman called him in to fight, and he did. He was gone when Biomech and I left, though, so he'll probably try to fight us back again. Or, worse, turn the town on us. He's definitely not on our side for this one."

"Well, then, good riddance to him and good luck to Murphy," Mosquito said. "But let's keep an eye out for him. What about Red?"

Red Serge shook his head somberly. "I doubt they're keeping her with the others," he said. "Whatever it is Damien's setting up for Mysterion… I dunno, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to use her."

"He already is," I said. "Mysterion kept hearing her through the lamp. Even before we had the lamp. She's here, she's just Between. And she's… fuck, I hate to say this, but she's bait."

"Hey, Mysterion," Mosquito said into the wire. "You catching this?"

Static.

"Mysterion, do you copy?"

Static.

"Delphi," Mosquito said in a stronger tone. "Henrietta. Is Mysterion with you?"

"Mysterion entered the Carnival about twenty minutes ago," Henrietta answered. "I called you guys. Didn't you hear anything?"

"Twenty minutes ago?" Marpesia asked, concerned.

"Twenty minutes ago we were… fuck," I spat. "Twenty minutes ago we were fighting off a bunch of—fuck, fuck!" I picked my head up and said what was on everyone's minds: "That was a distraction. And we couldn't hear anything from the wire over the fight and the explosions. No wonder that batch was more volatile!"

"So what's the plan now?" Endgame asked. "Do we stay here and get attacked again, or do we move?"

We all turned to look at Mosquito. He glanced behind him at the Carnival, and then at each and every one of us. He drew in a deep breath, steeled himself, and asked, "Gary. Henrietta. You have our best information about both the Between and Hell. I defer to you."

After a moment of silence on the other end of the wire, Gary answered, "My best advice at the moment, Mosquito, is to have faith. What do your instincts tell you?"

"Have faith, huh?"

Mosquito looked down at Red Serge's diagram and tapped his foot. "We've got a few objectives right now," he said. "We have to free the captives, Red and Ms. Cartman chiefly among them. We have to bring down Red Devil Red Hair, and General Disarray. I'm going to give Chaos the benefit of the doubt on that one, and he'd better fucking pull through. We need to find our missing teammates. We're not going to win until we're a single unit, but Gary's right. There's something to be said for having faith in the others."

He scuffed his foot over Red Serge's sketch and said, "Endgame, burn up the base."

"What?"

"Laser the fuck out of this rendezvous point!" Mosquito said. "We're still gonna stick to the plan of getting everyone back together, but we're just gonna move our base of operations." Endgame shrugged, turned, and lifted his sunglasses in order to send a blast at the lean-to that he and Mosquito had constructed.

"Where to?" I asked.

"Red Serge," Mosquito said. "Lead us toward the trailers. The seven of us can at least start formulating a plan to free the captives. Delphi, Henrietta, get at least one of the vehicles as close to the gate as possible. Move your own base closer. Once the other four are out, I'm bringing the rest of you in." He picked up his game mallet, swung it over one shoulder, and said, "We're getting close to ending this, guys. Let's move."

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Authors' Notes:

South Park is -c- Matt Stone & Trey Parker.

We're back! It's been a busy year, but we're building up our buffer of the next few chapters. Thank you so much for your patience!

Aaahhh I have been looking forward to trying out that new hero name for Token. Tupperware (and we keep stylizing it TupperWear because… literally just because that's how I remember seeing it written on the SP character guide page at one point back in 2011) is already heavily based on Cyborg from DC Comics, given what Token says is his origin story in the Coon and Friends trilogy of episodes… I'm actually kind of surprised but glad Biomech wasn't already taken.

Up next: Circle IX, in which Mysterion enters the Carnival. We'll hear from one of the non-usual narrators again as well, but starting with chapter 24, it's back to the regular 4.

Thank you so much again for your support of this story!

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn.~

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