Cave Story: A Novelization

by JackmanB

A novelization of the popular freeware-PC game created by Daisuke Amaya a.k.a "Pixel".

10. Chapter 10

Sue was closest; she attacked first, lunging right at him with both her hands extended. He raised his sword defensively, the broad side of the blade intercepting her swings. Without looking, he pointed behind him with the machine gun and started firing, hoping to at least clip Misery with a few shots. Sue kept swinging, the dull claws on her hands extended, trying to rip him open with every attack, but she wasn't trained for combat either so he read all her attacks easily and met each with a counter or a dodge. He didn't try returning the attacks, since she looked like she wouldn't be able to take a hit like the Doctor could.

Sue dove forward, trying to skewer Quote on her hands, but missed entirely as he stepped behind her, hitting her in the back with the butt end of the hilt on his sword. Misery was running straight for them both, taking every lucky hit from the machine gun as if they were nothing, and took a heavy swing of her own at Quote. He arched his back, thrusting himself away from her swing and responding with a swift kick into her belly with his left foot, followed by some more properly aimed, if unsteady, hits from his gun. She was quite a bit stronger than he was in this form, but his powerful legs still had formidable in them, causing her to reel from the attack. Sue collected herself from her failed offensive, spinning to her left with a hand outstretched, trying to clobber him in her blind swing. It was an easy duck, and he responded by thrusting the barrel of his gun into her shin and swiftly delivering a punch in the face from his right hand.

Between Misery and Sue, he felt his personal space being a little crowded, so he gave a strong leap and kicked the Booster awake just before he began descending. He sprayed the ground with his weapon, not aiming at either in particular and hoping he'd just tag them with a few hits here and there rather than beat on their skin with the shots. The airspace was littered with the smaller beasts that were constantly milling about the room, although unlike last time, they seemed to have a fairly one-track mind; last time they protected the Core with their own lives, separating rarely only to attack, but here they just moved in a constant back-and-forth way, not aiming for Quote or Misery or Sue and not actively circling around their 'mother'. The openings in their shells remained closed and their movements were very monotonous, as if they were lobotomized.

He kept up his fire, trying to avoid the smaller beasts as they floated about the room while he kept himself up. He spent too much time watching the beasts, though, and when he turned his attention back to Sue and Misery, Sue was up in the air with him: her transformation didn't give her much in the way of mass, but her bunny-like legs gave her the jumping ability of one. With an incredible bounce, she was zipping through the air in a straight line, aiming right for him with incredible speed. He pointed the Booster to his right, trying to evade the hybrid missile and twisting his body out of the way, but she still managed to get him in his shoulder. Luckily for him it was just a scrape compared to what it could have been; his grip on the machine gun remained tight.

With amazing agility, Sue reached up with both hands and absorbed her own impact against the ceiling, harmlessly bounding off that with just her arms and towards the far wall, where she performed the same trick with her legs and sprang herself back towards Quote, who couldn't keep up with her incredible speed. Neither could Sue, fortunately enough, and she found herself aiming too wide and zipping past him entirely, colliding with the larger beast's tough, mossy hide. She managed to keep herself steady, absorbing the weight of the impact with her arms again and gently falling back to the floor.

Misery wasn't doing nothing the whole time; while Sue took to the air against him, Misery was busy conjuring up more creatures and critters for Quote to square off against. Last time she could only conjure up four, at the most, before forcing herself to turn her attention to another spell. This time, she apparently didn't have the same handicap, and was able to make dozens of small, assorted creatures – from bats and bugs to rats and lizards – all at once with just a few waves of her hands and different clicks and sounds from her tongue. Once he landed, the Booster overheated for the moment, he was immediately swarmed by the critters, nipping at his ankles and biting at his skin. He managed to shoot some and chop others with his blade, causing them to disappear in a puff of dust, but he was busy with other problems too worry about the little distractions.

The beast was floating in the room the entire time, bobbing slightly under its own weight from whatever force was keeping it up. It would let out a loud bellow occasionally as the red skull on its inside would take some different position, sometimes rotating around to show only its forehead, and other times rotating around to show only its clenched teeth. Each time it roared, a small ball of orange magic energy would drip from the opening in its shell, and the energy would explode in a volatile show of force. Thankfully for Quote, the beast didn't seem to be aiming specifically for him; it seemed to just move back and forth across the room, its body being too big to turn or rotate, and would eject some more of the stuff with each bellow. Each roar was certainly loud, but he found himself too focused on the others to pay any attention to the noise, worrying himself over the little drops of explosions it was drooling instead.

Sue leapt back up to Quote, arms swinging and legs kicking as she tried to put up a fight. In his condition, a single hit would probably be the end for him, but with how widely she was swinging and winding up, he had no problem predicting her every movement and easily dodged many hits and countered others. But with Misery behind him, the creatures she was summoning all over the place, and the beasts floating about above him, his focus was divided. She made a powerful swing right at his head, which he dodged and responded by firing a few rounds into her foot. She leapt in pained surprise, quickly flicking out her other foot in offence, which he ducked, catching her foot between both his hands, forcing her onto her back as she fell down.

He spun around, activating the Booster as he flew for Misery, his machine gun firing at her as he went. She took several hits in the chest before whisking away in her blue glow, reappearing on top of one of the smaller beasts hovering around the room. She brought both her large, misshapen hands down to its skin, and they both became enveloped in the same aura; the beast flexed the opening in its face wide, and it suddenly broke its both-and-forth cycle, instead diving straight for Quote on the ground. It was as if Misery had somehow commandeered the creature.

Just as it began to skim the ground, Sue had launched herself back at Quote, her body flying through the air like a bullet as she had before. Quote kept his eyes on both; just before he could be hit by either, he leapt back, pushing himself farther with the Booster, clear out of the way from both of them and right underneath the Core. Sue couldn't adjust her flight, and Misery didn't see Sue in time to get out of the way as they collided with each other, Sue's devastating momentum easily slinging Misery off her ride as they fell over each other. Once they hit the far wall, Misery started barking some commands at Sue in a language he couldn't understand; Sue was yelling back as she pulled herself up, responding to each verbose accusation with her own. They began to argue with each other, their mutual enemy temporarily forgotten.

Quote happily took the opening to sheath his sword, so he could switch his machine gun to his right hand and flip his missile launcher over his shoulder and into his left. Running ahead of the Core and giving a strong leap into the air, he twisted around, steadying himself with the jetpack, and unloading a chunk of missiles right into the red skull in the beast's opening. Each missile landed on their mark easily, the blasts erupting inside its tough shell. It let out another roar; this time the pitch was higher and the volume was much louder, drowning out the sound of the explosions in its face. The smaller beasts didn't even seem to notice, but Misery and Sue stopped their own fighting long enough to remember who their opponent actually was.

Misery teleported next to him once he landed, his missile launcher already back across his shoulder and his sword drawn. She raised her glowing hand in the air, and soon the few bricks Quote was standing on began to rumble and move. He jumped forward in surprise just as the bricks levitated straight up, flattening themselves across the ceiling. He was met by Sue once more, her fist outstretched as she came in, aiming to belt him in the face. He tucked his head down and dodged to his left, his movements hasty and sloppy as he was caught off guard from the quick strike. He managed to miss the hit, although he found himself tripping over his own feet while he tried to keep his balance. He stayed upright, but with his back turned to the other two he was wide open for another hit.

Once he regained his control, he leapt forward, gunning the Booster in the direction he was facing as he flipped his body around (rotating the Booster's thrust appropriately), retreating from an oncoming Sue while he returned the fire with his machine gun. She was taking each blow to the body and she was recoiling with each hit, the shots beginning to mark her face and burn her fur wherever he concentrated his fire. He absolutely could not kill Sue, and preferably not Misery, and he'd been aiming for non-lethal strikes the whole time, but they were certainly making it difficult for him.

He landed on his feet, his back against the wall of the room, and began jogging to his right, his left arm up and working the machine gun as best towards the two while he ran. In a flash, Misery disappeared and reappeared directly into his running path, which he hadn't expected. Using just her magic, she lifted him up into the air and flung him hard over her shoulder. He was spinning and twisting through the air as he went, unable to keep himself steady, his machine gun firing all the while as he went, hoping to hit something. Before he could hit the wall at this speed, he kicked on the Booster, his foot pointing towards his head – not that that meant anything, but any direction was better than none as he went. His trajectory began to widen and gyrate with the Booster's added influence, until his spins began to widen enough for him to clearly see where he was going. He wound up hitting the wall anyway, but thanks to his jetpack and his quick readjustments as he kept up with his wild spinning, he hit it fairly lightly compared to how hard he could have.

The skull in the beast had shifted positions, rotating itself so that the mouth of the face was in the opening. Its mouth was wide open, revealing two rows of startlingly human teeth and a realistic human mouth, but no tongue. The bottom of its throat began to light up as it charged an attack of its own, much like it had in the core of the island. He remembered the strength and ferocity of the attacks back then, and how devastating they were: one of them barely managed to snip him in the legs, and it felt as though they were crushed under some kind of incredible weight. If the beast was under any alternating spell like the other two were, he didn't want to even think about the strength the same attacks would have now.

Sue leapt laterally up from the beast, bouncing off the wall to the side and leaping on top of the beast itself from there. She gave a running start towards Quote, leaping off the edge of the beast and rotating herself around so that her stomach was towards the ceiling. Once her belly began to graze the stone of the ceiling, she reached up with her hands, launching herself off it with her arms and taking her the rest of the way straight towards Quote. He didn't know if she was a gymnast before coming to the island or if the skill was somehow natural and the red crystal just amplified it, but it was as impressive as it was frightening, seeing her spearhead towards him through the air like that. She must not have known that the beast was readying its own attack, and she was going to find herself right in its trajectory if she wasn't stopped.

Even with her speed, she was far enough away for him to be able to see it coming. Thinking quickly, he dropped the sword, letting the blade bounce across the ground so he could free his right hand, and dodged by firing the Booster's thrusters to his left, out of Sue's way. Like last time, she managed to absorb the impact against the wall by flexing her powerful arms and dispersing the energy through her body. Immediately on the recoil, he reached up and grabbed her by the ankle, giving her a hard overhand toss straight back to the ground. His jetpack overheated just as he let go, and not a moment too soon: the beast let loose a volley of huge blasts, as large as he remembered them, and they hit the rear wall with enormous force, shaking the room with their bursts and digging craters into the wall. If either of them were still in the air, they would've easily been vaporized.

Quote didn't know how he was going to manage to not only stop Sue and Misery from trying to tear him to shreds without killing them, but also destroy the Core at the same time. He probably wouldn't have the firepower to do it alone, now that he only had a handful of missiles remaining, and he doubted someone would come in and rescue him with miraculous timing again. He picked up the blade he had dropped, spraying shots towards Misery and Sue blindly, trying to think of something.

Sue took a moment picking herself back up, apparently a little bruised from the brutal life-saving whip against the ground, but Misery wasn't as slow, running right at Quote and leaping over Sue easily. She extended both hands as she practically galloped toward him, her wrists glowing blue, and he quickly found himself immobilized. With a flick of both her wrists, he was pushed back against the wall forcefully, causing him to gasp in pain, then flung back into the air. Misery teleported herself away, appearing on top of one of the smaller beasts again just as it passed underneath Quote, ready to catch him again with unfriendly arms.

He was fairly steady this time, his body remaining perpendicular in the air while he came back down. Misery had angled herself to be directly underneath him as he fell, readying either herself or some spell, but either way he didn't want to find himself wrapped in those grotesque arms of hers. He pointed his machine gun down and opened fire back onto her – the recoil of the weapon practically pushing him farther upward as he pulled – managing to distract her while he came back down, landing on the beast himself. Misery and the creature they stood on were both glowing blue, telling him that it was under her command again; hopefully, it'd mean she couldn't spare the focus for any more magic, but she could still fight physically.

She swung with her left hand, aiming for his body, which he managed to avoid by leaning back far enough to feel only the breeze of her swing against his clothes. She made another jab with her right, which he dexterously swung around, and retaliated by jamming the barrel of his gun into her chin, but not firing, afraid a strong hit to the neck would be fatal even with the red crystal's enchantment. He followed up with a jab of his own into her stomach, the blade held sideways, only briefly contacting her skin. She swung down, trying to squash the smaller opponent with her hand, but missing yet again as Quote ducked to his left. The beast they were standing on wasn't very huge; it didn't allow for a lot of open-ended manoeuvring as he'd prefer. Once Sue leapt up from the ground, bouncing powerfully off the flat ceiling and right onto the living platform with the other two (the force of the impact causing the beast to sharply dip in altitude), his movements became even more restricted.

Misery kicked forward with her left leg, which he managed to sidestep. Sue tried a left uppercut, narrowly missing as he arched his back. She tried kicking forward, her foot barely sliding off his skin as he spun clockwise to avoid it. Misery tried sweeping under his feet with her own right foot, which he managed to simply step over but was nearly caught by surprise by her long, unnatural tail. Whatever they tried to do to get in a hit, he'd manage to see ahead and find a way to dodge, if by the skin of his teeth, but they were going too quickly for him to get any counterattacks in. He couldn't risk trying to evade by jumping off the beast, because he was sure Sue would be able to match him whichever way he went, and it'd cost him more than he would gain.

The face inside the Core still had its mouth wide open; it was just cooling down from the previous blast, but it was apparently ready to fire once again. The same crackling noise and the same light emitting from its throat began to reverberate through the room once again, although he seemed to be the only one of the three to notice, and they were passing right through its range again. He suddenly got an idea on how he could defeat the Core, but he needed Misery and Sue to stop attacking him and get off the beast they were riding, and fast. With both his hands full he didn't have a lot of options; Misery thrust her fist forward, which he effortlessly ducked and was forced to counter by butting his head into her chest, pushing her off the beast. He couldn't lift himself fast enough to dodge the attack Sue definitely would have capitalized on, so rather than get physical, he was forced to open fire with his machine gun, blindly firing point-blank into her body as he fought off the recoil. When he turned to see her, she was indeed standing closer than she was, ready to attack, but the hits from the machine gun caught her by surprise. The hits from the gun burnt through her fur and into her skin, but thankfully she was pushed off the beast before he could do any permanent damage.

It was just him standing on top of the smaller beast as it floated obliviously in front of the Core's open maw, its attack very nearly ready to fire. He practically threw his machine gun back over his shoulder and his sword back into its scabbard with practised precision, rushing himself to prepare for, hopefully, his last hit against the beast. Misery's glow was no longer surrounding the smaller beast, so it wasn't locked onto whatever flight path she chose; running down the creature's opposite side while hurryingly prepping his missile launcher, he leapt off the creature with as much kick as he could, pushing it into the Core's opening in its shell.

Considering the size difference between himself and the creature, he could only hope the amount of force he put into pushing it into the Core's open mouth was enough to actually get it in there. It wasn't, but that was what the missile launcher was for: he pressed its 'panic' button, and each of the remaining missiles on the weapon fired to life. They sprang out from the weapon, each of the half-dozen or so flying through the air, their individual vapour trails clear as could be, and they each collided with the smaller beast in its side. It gave out its own yowl of pain, sounding much like the larger Core but 'younger' as each missile hit it in its side hard, pushing it that last few feet into the Core's mouth just as it fired.

The enormous blasts it fired from its mouth exploded with the smaller beast on impact, lighting up the Core from the inside as each hit ignited in its own mouth. Bursts of light escaped from the corners of its mouth around the creature caught in its opening, the explosions from its own attack detonating in its mouth, ripping apart its sensitive skin and teeth from the inside as each hit blew unexpectedly early against the shell of the smaller creature. Loud booms vibrated through its body and into the air with each hit, and its strong, sturdy outer shell began to flex and stretch with each blast. After the third explosion – smoke and steam visibly creeping out from around the gag in its opening – the Core began to sink, its enormous body crashing against the floor with all its weight. The top of its shell began to collapse into itself, unable to sustain its own weight, but before its body could totally cave in, a brilliant white light filled the room from its imploding body. Quote could only shield his eyes from the light, before a shockwave from the body's implosion knocked him off his feet. He had no idea where Misery or Sue were; he could only hope that they weren't too close to the blast.

---

He was only out for a few moments; the shaking of the room was strong enough to wake him from his familiar unconsciousness. The sounds of heavy stone falling from the ceiling and smashing against the floor all around him was nearly deafening, and he could hear Sue yelp in fright every time one of them nearly squashed them both. She was sitting on top of him, shaking him by his scarf and yelling all manner of words, trying to rouse him awake. When he finally opened his eyes, Sue's expression visibly lightened in relief, but the urgency was still there. She had changed back from her frenzied half-human form back to her totally-Mimiga form, although her familiar sweater was gone since it didn't survive the change. She didn't seem the least bit concerned over her nudity, her mind focused on much more important things.

"The island's falling!" she yelled over the rumbling, leaping off Quote and making her way towards the stairs. "It's collapsing everywhere! We gotta leave, now!" She started to run full-tilt to the staircase leading down to the bottom of the mountain; she felt no pain from their fight, from how she ran, and she didn't look any different than before. He wondered if she even remembered any of it.

Climbing himself onto his feet, feeling the weight of all three of his weapons and his jetpack still in place, he ran for the stairs too. He glanced around the room as he went; each of the smaller beasts that floated idly around the room were lying on the ground, their bodies pressed flat as if they had deflated, each of them dead. The Core itself was nowhere to be seen; same with Misery. He hesitated in his run, spinning slowly around the room as he kept towards the way out, looking hard for Misery anywhere among all the rubble and other dead bodies. He couldn't see her; chances were she was crushed under one of the falling blocks from the roof, or under one of the dead bodies. He held onto the hope that she had woken up before either of them and escaped, or teleported away from the room, but he couldn't stay and start digging for a body that might not be there. He sprinted towards the stairs, his legs and arms heavy from fatigue from all the fighting, but his stride was long and powerful; death was a powerful motivator.

His run down the steps was fairly straightforward: aside from all the rumbling, it wasn't any harder going down through the darkness than it was going up it, his hands feeling along the walls as he went down. He soon found the foot of the steps in the second room – some of the cages had fallen from their positions high on top of each other, the stacks strewn across the ground and some of their locks swinging wide open. The other stacks that remained were jumbling about with the movements; he could feel the incredible rush of wind from outside, through the grated fence, and he could see the clouds below the island slowly beginning to creep up from below the horizon. The wind whistled as it pushed through the grates in the fence, each song combining to a sort of unnerving howl as it went through the room.

The tumbled cages were short and flat, at least, making them easy stepping stones towards the other end of the room and towards the second set of stairs. Thankfully, all the Mimiga that had been caged had evacuated long ago, although where to was anyone's guess. They knew the island better than he did; hopefully, they knew of a safer way into the island than the way he took to get here. The hole the Doctor had punched straight through the floor next to the staircase was still uncovered; he slipped through the opening towards the room below, shaving off the few seconds it would take for the stairs.

The throne room was still as messy as ever, thanks to Misery's destructive spell. The ground was still uprooted all over the place, debris from the floor making the room a hazard to pass itself, and with the rushing wind pushing and pulling everywhere as the island fell, it was all the harder to navigate. He flew himself through the room with the Booster, taking a short landing next to the undisturbed throne to cool the jetpack a bit as he made the next leap. The bricks from overhead were beginning to dislodge; mostly only pebbles and dirt were falling between the cracks at the moment, but it was a sure sign telling him to go faster.

Sue had beaten him out of the mountain and was nearly already to the cabin once Quote got himself through the door at the base. She glanced behind her shoulder, seeing him sprinting as fast as he could away from the mountain to catch up, and motioned for him to go faster before turning and running some more. Weirdly, the helicopter from before wasn't there: someone had found it and taken off from the island with it. Even if it were, it wouldn't have done either of them any good, since they didn't know how to pilot it, but it left a very serious question for them: where next?

Quote was going to worry about that later, running full-tilt from the mountain's entrance. Outside he was safe from falling bricks, but loose boulders lining the mountain's outside were still crashing down on him from all sides. He kept his focus divided between running ahead and looking over his shoulder to avoid any rocks that might be falling straight for him. The two frenzied Mimiga he had seen before weren't anywhere in sight. Perhaps they were on some other side of the island by now, or perhaps they were underneath some of the rocks strewn about the lawn of the mountain. Maybe they were even de-frenzied with the Core's destruction and had taken shelter someplace else. Wherever they were, they weren't nearby, and he didn't know if he should feel okay with that, considering they were still Mimiga.

Sue had run up to the top of the little curve just past the cabin she and her crewmates had bunked in, where the helicopter was last. She had paused to catch her breath, her eyes trained on the mountain above them, watching for any more falling boulders. Quote ran to catch up, thinking of their options on getting off the island before they were crushed dead under the debris. They couldn't try to hide in that last cave and they certainly couldn't hide in the cabin; their only real option was to leap off the island for safety. And that was just as deadly as standing and doing nothing, essentially. Maybe Kazuma had taken to the air on his baby dragon, and they could somehow catch them both as they fell. The Egg Corridor was clear on the other side of the island, though, so the chances of that happening were pretty slim.

His thoughts turned to Professor Booster and Itoh and Momorin and Jack and Mahin and all the other Mimiga and Gaudi and what they could possibly do. They were all locked inside the island somewhere, without any opportunity to escape, waiting for the walls to come crushing down on them once the island impacted the earth. Just as his errant thoughts turned to Curly, the ground underneath the cabin gave way, opening the hollow ground up from underneath him. He was taken completely by surprise as he limply fell into the hole, grasping and kicking at air as he went, trying to keep his balance on some invisible platform as he fell. Sue ran up to the hole's edge, looking straight down into the black pit that he fell, cupping her hands around her mouth to try and amplify her voice, but it was no use; her words were totally drowned out by the sound of the wind rushing past his ears, the walls falling down around him, and the island's rumbling as he fell. Before long, the darkness of the island overtook his sight, forcing him to fall blindly into the pit in an out-of-control freefall.

---

He never fell unconscious from the fall. He was wide awake for each slam against the collapsing stone, his body beating against the rock like a baton against a drum while he fell straight down. He could see nothing as he went, the darkness filling his vision entirely while he fell, leaving him hopeless to the elements as his hung limp in the air. He could try straightening himself with the Booster, but he didn't know so much as which way was up. The hole in the ground that he fell through had vanished high above him.

The fall began to smooth and slide the farther down he went, easing his painful descent into the belly of the doomed island. A mysterious orange light began to fill the pit he was falling into with all the dirt and stone, allowing him to see where he was going. The ground began to ease into a very gradual slide, allowing him onto the floor of some hidden sanctuary deep under the island's surface, but he still hit the slide hard and was still sent spiralling over himself as he fell, unable to regain his balance and stability in the fall. His machine gun slipped from over his shoulder in the fall, becoming lost in the avalanche of dirt and stone trailing close behind him.

The flat of the floor finally came into view just a few terrifying moments down the slide. Most of the falling stone had gone before him, slowly rolling to a steady stop at the bottom, but there was still a dangerous amount catching up from behind. As damaged as he felt from going so long without a break ever since leaving the Plantation, he managed to keep himself upright with a superhuman amount of effort, fluttering steadily with the Booster just over the base of the slide, allowing the remaining stone to pass from underneath him. The island's shaking was getting worse all the while; he knew the threat of more falling boulders was still there, so he kept going, staying ahead of the onslaught.

The bright orange tunnel he was in stretched for a large distance, just going straight ahead. The walls had been chiselled with the oft-seen expertise around the island, although something seemed different here than anyplace else. The stone almost looked…polished, compared to the dirty, dusty uniform of everyplace else. Not a single chip was missing from any brick in the tunnel, although now with the island on its crash-course towards the earth below, several of the stone bricks from overhead were jarring loose, coming to a crash on the floor below, just like with the chamber holding the Core.

He glanced behind him, looking for his machine gun under the debris anywhere. It was still in plain sight, but it was snapped in two from the hit against the ground and the numerous weights of the falling rocks. It was far beyond repair; for that matter, his missile launcher was useless at this point anyway, being totally empty. Neither weapon was particularly cumbersome, but at this point, with his tired limbs and his beaten focus, any lost weight was a reprieve. Without a second thought, he slipped the shoulder strap from the missile launcher off his left shoulder, discarding it.

There was no way he was going to go back up the pit and back to the surface, and he wasn't too keen on giving up and waiting for his death; he turned around, down the well-lit orange tunnel, breaking into another run as he desperately began to look for a way out.

Less than a minute from beginning his run, he found his first surprise within the island's belly: just around the corner from the first bend, he saw Curly, lying still on the ground and surrounded by more of the falling bricks. Was there another way into this place that he didn't know about? Did she fall down, or rise up, some pit in order to get here? Was she even still alive? He hadn't expected her to be here, in the middle of the island as it fell, apparently all alone and surrounded by falling debris.

Just as his pace quickened to get himself to her side, his vision began to darken again. It wasn't getting dark in the tunnel, but rather, the colour seemed to leave his vision entirely, and he could only begin to see in monochrome black-and-white, just like from taking that hit when he fought the Doctor. He began to worry about coming down with another bout of rage, when, unlike last time, the sound in his ears began to dull and soften as well, until he was absolutely deaf to everything happening around him. His movements slowed, unintentionally; it was like he was beginning to run through thick molasses, his limbs becoming harder to move until he was frozen still entirely – along with everything else in the room. He was still aware of everything he could see: the falling rocks; Curly lying still in the middle of the floor; the vibrating of the wall; but all of it, from himself to the bricks stopping mid-flight between the ceiling and the floor, were stopped in time.

He was really beginning to get concerned over what was happening to him, when he suddenly heard a voice in his head. The sound was crystal clear, its words perfectly legible with each syllable, and it was particularly androgynous. Did you know, it asked, that the witch-woman Jenka had a younger brother? He didn't know if he should feel alarmed, or what he should be alarmed at, but it didn't look like he was going to have a choice when it came to listening to this voice's story. His name was Ballos. And just like his older sister, he possessed magical powers unseen by any other man. He was a great man; he led and protected his people using his magical power, providing warmth during the harshest colds and rain during the fiercest droughts. His people loved and trusted him more than they loved their own king…

In a blink, each of his senses came flooding back to him at once. He stumbled over his feet, his stride totally broken from the interruption, and momentarily stunned from the sudden rush of sound and colour as it all came rushing back to him. He looked around the room dumbly, wondering who or what could have put him in such a trance to force him to listen to what they had to say; of course, there was nobody nearby, aside from Curly.

Putting the strange event to the back of his mind, he ran to her side immediately, dropping to his knees and picking up her head gently. Her eyes were still moving under her eyelids; she gave a short, pained moan to confirm that she was still alive and still active.

He looked over her body, trying to see if anything was broken, and quickly discovered each of her legs bending in two separate places. The bones in her legs had been shattered, although since she wasn't under any bricks, the cause wasn't immediately apparent. He looked up, trying to see if there was another hole going straight down that she could have jumped down, but there was nothing, just solid rock straight above them.

Still dutifully attached to her hip was the holster carrying the Polar Star he had traded her when they first met. Aside from the sword, he was considerably unarmed, and Curly didn't look like she was going to need the gun anytime immediately; hurriedly, he took the Polar Star from her holster and jammed it barrel-down into the belt of his pants. He remembered the tow rope from the island's core, still wrapped around his waist just above his belt, clasped onto itself to keep from sliding off, and how useful it was to get Curly out of the core and to that little hideaway where she was revived. Unclipping it from itself and letting it slip to the floor, he proceeded tying her up to him the same way as last time; although the Booster made it a little difficult, he still managed to tie her back to his, both of them facing the opposite direction. The extra space made the rope a little tighter than last time, but she was still secured safely to him. With that done, he began down the tunnel once more.

The biggest threat of the long orange tunnel was the collapsing roof above them. There was no telling when a crafted stone would dislodge from the ceiling above them and come crashing down; its size, its shape, its location, they were all random variables that he couldn't predict for the life of him. The rumbling of the walls around him was intense, shaking him in his legs and disorienting his steps. After spending only a moment sprinting down the hall, he saw something begin to creep into vision from the far distance; it flew with feathery wings, but its shape was definitely human, with a head, torso, legs and arms. There were lots of them, each of them flapping almost casually towards the two, ignoring the collapsing island around them as though it were just another day.

Each of them carried a simple bow and a quiver of arrows; rather tame by the rest of the island's technological standards, but dangerous all the same. He consciously drew his Polar Star, feeling the warm, rigid, familiar grip in his palm as he held it, wrapping his finger around the trigger protectively, though he did not fire at any of them. He kept up his pace, dodging falling stones by bobbing and weaving between their fall paths, shrugging his shoulders every time to keep Curly's balance on his shoulders.

The farther he got to the end of the tunnel, the more of it came to view; he noticed that it seemed to simply stop dead at the end, with no visible door or window anywhere along its high wall for him to go through. The floor just before it dipped deeper into the island, however, which was exactly what he didn't want; to go farther into the island as it plummeted. Once he got close enough to the wall for their liking, the humans with wings each prepped their individual bows, firing at Quote in an attempt to get him to stop.

Just what he didn't need was more pressure on keeping them both alive and finding a way out of this place. His movements became more and more varied, seeing the arrows fly from their bows and tracing their flight so he could avoid where they landed, all the while returning fire with his Polar Star while still dodging falling rocks. The flying humans couldn't seem to take a hit very well; the Polar Star wasn't particularly powerful and it didn't look like Curly had it modified in any way, but a single hit from it would cause them to retreat in pain. Each time he struck one, it'd make a gross, awkward yell in pain; a clearly inhuman sound. Sometimes their skin would flake off where he managed to hit them, revealing a much more monstrous green underneath.

Halfway through the tunnel, the same sensation wrapped around him; the dull colours, the blank sound, time freezing around him totally, keeping his form frozen in place, his legs sprinting towards the far end of the tunnel with his left arm raised in the air against the flying menaces. The resentful king was jealous of Ballos, he heard the voice speak to him, narrating the story further. This was hardly the time for stories. So he had him caught and imprisoned. His unjustified punishment was cruel and severe. It was a lesson on the terribleness humans can achieve.

Just as quickly as last time, he was brought out of his trance, with everything resuming around him at full speed. He didn't miss a beat himself; he expected the awkward transition and easily kept himself steady, firing at his opponents seamlessly. Once he pulled himself to the end of the tunnel, firing some more at the aggressive flyers, he turned and leapt down the hole in the floor, taking him farther in. The only way to go was forward, after all. Just as his feet cleared the opening and he could feel a stirring on his back, the voice decided it had more to tell right then and there. Ballos was driven mad by the undeserved punishment, his rage uncontrollable and his fury unbound. Weakened by the torture, he was helpless to contain himself; the king and his kingdom were swallowed by Ballos' wild magical force. His loved life and his proud name had been destroyed and tarnished in a single night, consumed and replaced only by fiery hot ashes.

The floor under the first was unmarked and uncultivated; mostly just dirt and unprocessed stone. The lighting still painted everything a peculiar orange. He landed on top of a column, the path onward continuing behind him and underneath the tunnel he had just went through. He had no idea how much longer it would take before the island would hit the ground, but he managed to trick himself into believing that he'd always have a few minutes longer before the impact to find a way out.

"Quote?" he heard Curly ask behind him. She sounded tired and disoriented, but she was moving and speaking, which was a relief. "Huh…? Where are…?" She shook her head and blinked her eyes, trying to get her bearings but she had no idea where either of them were at the moment. She heard the rumbling, and she could feel the tightness around her waist, the rope connecting her to him back-to-back. She couldn't feel her legs, though. "Where are we?" she asked, glancing around the corridor they were in. The floor was uneven caked dirt, with dust and pebbles constantly raining down on them from the vibrations. He was too busy running hard, his eyes peeled for an exit anywhere, to answer.

The winged humans were on this floor as well, although they were taking strategic positions all over the corridor and waiting for him to go to them, unlike last time. Some of them were still equipped with the bow and quiver, taking shots at him whenever he got near enough, but some others were equipped with a spear or javelin instead and tried to rush him head-on. They still couldn't take much punishment and fell easily to one or two shots from the Polar Star, but with their higher positions and dotted cover, they were being awfully clever with trying to take them down. He had no idea what they were and why they wanted him dead, but between arrows and spears he couldn't stop to ask questions.

A pillar of the winged humans flew down from the hole in the ceiling they had just jumped down, their own weapons at the ready to snipe them where they ran. Quote was too busy barrelling forward to notice the group of hunters coming up behind them; Curly gave a surprised shout when the first one fired its bow, quickly digging her fingers around her belt to retrieve her other weapon and return fire, the arrow only barely missing its mark. Her new gun fired much farther and faster than the Polar Star and carried a considerable wallop behind her shots, capable of bringing down the user's nemesis with just a few well-aimed shots. The winged humans didn't take to the new weapon too well, pulling away without hesitation after the slightest graze from the strong pistol.

"Hey!" Curly shouted into Quote's ear, trying to get his attention. She got it, but it didn't show; he was too busy trying to muscle his way forward, skilfully predicting attacks from each of the archers and militia, avoiding and countering all the while. Up ahead was a new type of brute, lacking wings like its brethren but easily four times as large as the average archer. They were lifting entire boulders with one powerful hand, ready to toss it forward with an underhand swing towards them. "Don't worry about–"

Quote was listening, his hand carrying the Polar Star raised ahead of him, pulling the trigger to intercept the new, large opponent before it could try to bowl them over with its rocks. But the entity that spoke directly to him decided to continue its story again from where it left off; his mind went through the familiar motions, all sound drowning out and all time stopping dead, pausing arrows mid-flight and gunshots halfway out the barrels. Driven insane by his punishment and beyond recovery, Ballos' sister Jenka confined him to the floating island high in the sky, where she believed he could do no further harm. Placing him in his prison was all she could do; no matter how far gone he was, Ballos was still her brother, and she could not bring herself to kill him.

"–your six o'clock, I have you covered!" Curly spoke like she wasn't aware of the break in reality, and that Quote was the only one between them that was hearing this voice and experiencing these remarkable sensations. The huge enemy lopped its stone towards them, the rock hurling towards them slowly but they were still fairly close. Quote leapt to the side, the rock passing around them easily as it bounced across the ground, and he returned the fire. It took a bit more punishment than the others but it still fell easily enough, its pasty skin flaking away and revealing the concealed dark green scales.

Just ahead was another hill of mixed soil and pebble, nearly reaching to the roof of the cave with still with more than enough room for them to pass through standing straight. Curly was busy keeping up her own fire, picking off the few enemies Quote had missed with ease, apparently remembering how to use a weapon with the rest of her memories. Just over the hill was a short run to a walled-off area with a wide opening on its bottom, protected by numerous different types of the humans and with archers lining the unsteady walls the whole way.

The shaking from the island was probably throwing their aim off, causing arrows to fly all over the place but hardly towards either of them. He focused on the left, seeing and shooting every archer on his side, while Curly took the right, her own aim working perfectly with her other weapon with relearned expertise. Some arrows soared right over the heads while others cut through the clothes on their skin, but Quote and Curly were firing like professionals, their hands steady in the shaky atmosphere. None of the enemies with pikes or the larger ones throwing rocks managed to get more than just a few steps with Quote's impeccable aim.

The walled-off area was just a fairly narrow column with more archers sitting on perches on either side, with another exit clearly visible at the top of the far wall. The moment they entered the room, each archer drew their bows and wound back their strings, taking careful aim at them both, and firing one after the other. Quote was hyped on some kind of imaginary adrenaline; he didn't even pause to think about strategy or their options, simply running to the centre of the bottom floor and leaping straight up, kicking the Booster alive at the height of his jump.

Quote fired ahead as they ascended, managing to shoot them either before they could shoot him, or managing to get their slow, arcing arrows in his own fire as well. Curly was managing the same way, getting her targets directly and silencing them easily as they shot up the pillar; their action was quick and precise, bringing themselves to the top of the tower and leaving injured human-things in their wake, lucky that they were fast enough and that their aim was poor enough to not take a single hit as they climbed. Jenka had a daughter, Misery, whom was also a witch, Quote heard just as they neared the top of the column and right to the exit. She is the one who is responsible for the Demon Crown…as she forced Ballos to create it. Her charge for her greed was an eternal curse to the Crown, forcing her to obey whoever possessed it. The curse can be lifted if the Demon Crown can be destroyed, but…

His fixation was cut short, the voice apparently telling its fill for the moment. Whoever this person was, they apparently knew quite a bit more about Misery and the Demon Crown than he did; they confirmed Balrog's and Misery's earlier claims that they could not disobey the Doctor because of the Crown being in his possession. He wished he knew where either of them were, and if they had gotten off the island safely.

The exit to the tower led to another pit in the ground, only this one was massive; it was easily the width of a building, heading straight down for hundreds of feet. The orange luminescence continued all the way down, lighting their way, but unlike the gentle ease into the bottom like last time, it looked as though it simply stopped, forcing him to land flat on his feet. And even if it did slope, he still had Curly to worry about; he couldn't keep himself upright as he fell for the life of him last time.

The island seemed to sense his apprehension over jumping into the pit – with a powerful tremor, the platform he was standing on crumbled under itself, collapsing to pieces and falling down the hole helplessly, taking Quote and Curly with them. He thought to start up the Booster to bring them back up, but their combined weight caused him to drop faster than he was used to and he wasn't sure if the Booster could support both their weight like that. They both gave a worried gasp as they fell down the oddly-lit tunnel, unsupported by anything as they plummeted straight down.

The ground came up far faster than Quote was comfortable with, and he shot the Booster awake by tilting his right foot straight up. The jetpack came alive between them, its thrusters working hard against the downward force and the surplus weight as they closed in on the solid ground beneath them. Their fall began to slow, easing their descent greatly, but the jetpack cut out, overheated, just metres from the ground. They free-fell the rest of the way, Quote landing hard on the soles of his shoes; his practice with jumping and falling had certainly came in handy, but the shock up his legs from the impact was startling all the same.

The Demon Crown will continue to exist, no matter how many times it is destroyed, so long as Ballos lives. This is the supreme magical power of his eternally enraged soul, with which the Demon Crown, his own evil creation, is imbued. Ballos himself wishes to die, but his magic has made him immortal to all but the most mortal of wounds; even now he uses his magic to force the island to the ground, intent on burying himself under the rubble for eternity. The Core was created to counter Ballos and anchor the island to the sky. Quote faltered, dropping to his hands from the harsh impact against the ground once his trance ended. "Are you okay?" Curly asked, looking over her shoulder. "Quick thinking with the jetpack, but that fall was still pretty harsh. Do you need to take a break?" Quote shook his head; the island was falling and they still hadn't found a way out, but he figured the voice was telling him Ballos' sad story for a reason the deeper into the island they went. Leaving the island at this point would probably come second to meeting Ballos personally.

He picked himself up, despite how badly his feet hurt from the fall, looking straight ahead from where he stood. He was standing at the bottom of the tall shaft, which opened to a naturally open walkway in one of the island's wings; a simple wide stone bridge with no walls or rails protecting any crosser from falling was all that was connecting the spot he stood on to another, simple wooden door placed into the far stone wall. The bridge was thick with grass – not moss, but live, healthy grass – swaying frantically in the rushing wind as the island soared downward. They could see below the island; land was clearly visible by now, the clouds nowhere in sight, although the island was falling awfully slowly than he imagined it to be.

"Whoa, the island is falling?!" asked Curly, incredulous. "I thought we were just in the middle of some crazy earthquake! I didn't know that – wait a sec, you must have destroyed the Core." Quote nodded, taking the first few steps onto the bridge and towards what was probably the very last door in the island. "Way to go, Quote. Wish I was there to help, but I guess the world's safe with you around, huh, super soldier?" Truth be told he could have used all the help he could get, against Misery and the Doctor and his crazy transformation and against whatever was living inside the Core, his bones bruised and his muscles cramping and his energy dropping…but he wasn't about to tell her that.

Halfway across the stone bridge, a figure began to appear just in front of the door, melting into sight the same way Misery tended to. He gripped his Polar Star with both hands tightly, raising it offensively against whoever was warping in his way, ready to fire at a moment's notice. The form began to take a solid shape, but it wasn't Misery; it wasn't even human. Four furry paws were placed flatly on the ground before them, a long body with a healthy tail at the end sitting down in front of the door taking a solid shape, followed by a flat skull with floppy ears on either side. It had deep blue eyes and a long snout with a wet, black nose on the end, its muzzle shut as its eyes met Quote's.

Sitting in front of them was a young puppy that looked nearly exactly like Hajime. The body shape and breed were the same, although their fur pattern differed very slightly between the two, as he recalled. He kept his weapon trained on the dog, though; standing on the unsafe bridge underneath a falling mass of land, he was understandably nervous and wasn't about to let anything get the drop on him, even if the target was just a puppy.

The dog's expression visibly dropped once they got a good look at each other. Something was off about the dog; the sheen on its fur was unnaturally radiant: the dog literally seemed to be glowing an ethereal white light, and its body was surrounded by that same blue glow emanated whenever Misery cast a spell. Its light aura seemed to flicker back and forth in the wind, but its fur and its thin ears remained stationary. Please kill my master, it begged, its voice projecting into both Quote's and Curly's minds at once. It was definitely the same androgynous voice that was telling him the stories as he approached, there was no question about it.

"Who's there?" Curly asked, squirming around behind Quote, trying to look ahead. "Who wants us to kill who?" Quote turned sideways, spinning Curly around so that she could get a better look at the dog guarding the door to Ballos' prison.

If you kill my master, it will liberate Misery from her eternal curse. It made no movement as the voice rang clearly in their heads, only this time without dulling the colours and stopping time around them. If you don't, there will be others who seek the Crown, and these past events will occur limitlessly forever. Quote dropped his Polar Star when it was obvious that this dog wasn't going to try and attack them, holstering it in his belt once again. My master's name is Ballos. He is a man who does not know death…his magic is beyond containment. The aura surrounding its body began to flicker and fade, and its body began to disappear along with it.

"You look just like Hajime," Curly said softly, though loud enough for the dog to hear over the howling winds around them. Its aura strengthened somewhat at the name, but it was clear that the dog wasn't going to be staying for much longer.

Is that his name? it asked, its voice lighter and softer. We are…distant relatives, he and I. Thank you both for looking after him when he lost his way from Jenka. Its body vanished as the wind picked up once more, seemingly blown away with the air, leaving just the final door for them to open. They were both wordless; just beyond the door was the last thing they needed to stop to prevent any more Date Fuyuhiko's and to give Misery, and probably Balrog, their freedom – even if she brought it on herself, according to the dog's story. Quote took a deep breath, to relax his shaken nerves, before twisting the knob and pulling the door open.

There was no solid floor for them to stand on just beyond the door; it simply dropped straight down, just like way back when he first found himself in the Mimiga village, to the floor a story below. It was an easy drop for Quote, even if he was still a little shaken from the previous one, shuffling and readjusting Curly on his back. The floor below was a finely dusted, clean, well-worn stone, although the clean stone walkway hid the bones and skulls from various humans and animals hidden in plain sight around the walls and corners and even the ceiling of the room. The walls were uncut, unprocessed stone, which was a stark contrast to the red pillars dotting the room sparsely across the ground, each with a peculiar eye-like pattern around their circumference and each of varying heights and widths.

In the very centre of the room was a throne, not unlike the one for whoever wore the Demon Crown, but it was considerably more ornate with all sorts of designs carved into the red stone it was made of: horns and eyes and hoops lined the armrests and the headrest, compared to the simple, unremarkable stone chair in the mountain. Lying face-down at the foot of the throne, arms and legs outstretched, was a man: a tall, bald man with tan skin, wearing a clean, white robe with fancy green, yellow and red decorations running down the back of his robe and around his neck. He wore simple green sandals and numerous rings all around his stubby fingers. His skull was nearly oval and flat across his head, and his body was a little thick around the chest and waist. He lay totally motionless on the floor as Quote and Curly landed on the far side of the room, as if he hadn't heard them approach.

Quote walked sideways so that Curly could have a clear view of what was happening as well. They both had their weapons drawn as Quote tip-toed towards him, not sure of what to expect of a man with limitless magic power that could level kingdoms in a single night. He seemed awfully docile considering the island was going to crush him and everything else in it in a matter of minutes, the walls still rumbling with the island as it fell.

"Ah!" the man said loudly, causing them both to flinch and raise their weapons toward him. "Welcome! It's been so long since I've had company!" Slowly, the man pushed his hands and feet underneath himself, pushing himself back onto his feet like a normal man would, instead of using his incredible powers to levitate back up or something as Quote had expected. His face was just as wide as the rest of his head; his large eyes were closed as he spoke, though his large, wide nose flared and his long, wide lips flapped with each syllable. He brought his hands to his front, clasping them together and he smiled a very warm, friendly smile towards the two when he finally brought straightened himself.

"My name is Ballos," he said warmly. His voice was very rich and deep; a very practised tenor-like voice that seemed designed to catch everybody's attention the moment he used it. "My I ask for yours?"

Quote stood awkwardly towards the man, both their weapons raised right at his head, a stunned silence filling the room from Ballos' near-frightening hospitality. "Curly Brace and Quote," Curly said quickly and flatly after a moment, not returning any of the formalities Ballos was showing them.

Ballos chuckled a deep, happy chuckle once she gave him their names. "Well then, Curly Brace and Quote, would you happen to have the time to listen to this old man ramble for a spiel?" Jenka certainly looked her age, but Ballos looked as though he was just a normal man in his fifties or so, compared to the many centuries he should have looked. "I may not look the part, but I'm a warlock, you see. Some time ago – I've forgotten how long, precisely – I allowed my thirst for magic to grow and expand and consume myself, without any fear of judgment for my actions. My raw desire for more built upon itself, expanding beyond my control, until it became so powerful that even I, it's master, was helpless to keep it suppressed. This force, this…incredible, unstoppable, ferocious force was so magnificent, so very…enthralling, that its fire gorged itself on the child who adored me, and the wife who loved me." His wide, closed-mouth grin did not waver or falter with any single word – Quote felt like he was going to be sick.

"They were swallowed by its flames and they suffered for it…all because of me and my selfish quest for more. I did nothing to prevent it; I simply stood and stared into the blaze, transfixed, unable to look away from the fiery horror that I had created with my own magic. Their screams reached my ears and the scent of their burning flesh filled my nostrils; and I laughed…" Curly audibly grunted in disgust. She didn't know how much more of this guy's unwavering smile and his cheery storytelling attitude she could take.

"Jenka – my dear sister Jenka – sealed me away, my magic growing and raging more and more explosively with every moment that passed. I do not blame her; I would have done the same in her position. But, you'll understand, after staying sealed here, in this very room, for…well, like I said, I've lost track of time, but it's been a while. After staying sealed here, in this very room for so long, my magic feeding on itself the whole time, I've waited patiently for this very moment, for the person who will finally bring my incredible magical fury to its end." He opened his eyes: his right eye was a very deep ruby-red, though his left eye was a pitch-white. His red eye seemed familiar to Quote, and he knew exactly from where: the same red jewel was the centrepiece to the Demon Crown. Misery had ripped his left eye right out, and placed it into the crown, which gave it its incredible power. "Now kill me!" Ballos bellowed, his happy grin immediately flipping into a terrifying scowl, "or I will kill you!"

He stamped on the ground hard with his right foot, and the ground around him seemed to ripple outwardly like a stone thrown into a pond, the soil heaving up in all directions at a constant, fast speed. Quote made a low leap over it, allowing it to pass harmlessly under them both, and they returned the fire. Ballos seemed to take every hit, making no effort to dodge or to conjure up some kind of shield like Misery had, but at the same time none of the shots seemed to be hurting him too much.

Ballos leapt into the air right next to them, propelling himself forward with an invisible force to meet Quote and Curly in the air, intent on ramming himself into them both. Quote directed the Booster to his left, just barely missing Ballos as he whipped past them both. They kept up the fire, each shot hitting its mark easily, but he did not move or flinch like they had even hit him, and his clothes did not smear like they would on anyone else.

The two fell back to the ground, standing sideways beside one of the smaller pillars in the room. Ballos turned and arced himself back around with amazing flexibility, his speed keeping up perfectly while he turned around and aimed himself towards them once more. Neither of them were expecting the incredible turn-around; Quote made a hasty leap backwards, away from the human missile as Ballos collided with all his force into the pillar, shattering it to pieces easily. But even then he was still going, not even feeling the bump on his head as he kept up.

He zoomed down to the floor, righting himself straight as he slid across the ground with impressive practice, his sandals burning across the dirty stone and across the few skeletons as he went. He held both his hands up to his shoulders, palms open, and without any verbal incantation or obvious movement, fire seemed to simply ignite in his palms. Quote knew better than to simply stand there and fire; he kept running, both their guns kept on him at all times. His concentration was as solid as concrete: no matter how many hits he took, he simply stood there and took each shot without breaking his focus or even registering the pain. He slung both his hands forward, one after the other, grunting loudly as if he were throwing a ball as hard as he could. The fireballs he had conjured each burst in the air once Ballos clenched both his hands into fists, raining down embers all across the room from where they stopped.

Quote stopped behind one of the other pillars, taking shelter from the rain of fire, watching several embers cascade down to either of his sides past the column. Once he was confident that the rain was over, he jumped into the air, bringing himself on top of the flat pillar he was hiding behind without using the Booster. Ballos was making his way towards the centre of the room, wide open for more shots – although given how he reacted so plainly to each hit so far, it made them wonder just how effective they actually were, but it was all they had.

Ballos looked up, spying the two on top of his ornament, and disappeared in a flash of the same off-blue Quote was so familiar with. He scanned the room quickly, trying to guess where he might reappear. "Behind!" Curly yelled, her steady hands firing non-stop at the incoming Ballos as he spearheaded towards them once more. Quote didn't try to spin around and counter; he simply stepped off the pillar, falling to the floor while Ballos passed overhead. Ballos swung himself around once again, bringing himself high into the air before slamming back down to the floor with all his weight. Another ripple through the ground, only it was much higher and faster, throwing the skulls and bones in the air was the wave passed under them. Quote retreated, using the Booster to send them up at a backwards angle, trying to keep up with the attack before it overtook them; the jetpack petered out just as the highest point of the wave passed by.

Ballos kept up his attacks; he opened his palms again, crooking eight of his ten fingers inward, and a small blue ember lit up on their tips. He spun each hand down, the fire following and inverting itself, and he extended each finger to various points on the ground, one after the other. The embers flew forward like bullets, embedding themselves in the floor once they struck. Quote was paying attention, running in a broad circle around each shot Ballos made, both he and Curly pelting him with as many shots as they could. It didn't look like Ballos was even aiming for them with his own shots, but Quote wasn't about to let that deceive him.

After all eight embers were absorbed into the ground at different spots, Ballos took to the air once again, hovering upright and in slow circles high above the ground. From each ember, a small blue light began to trace along the ground, running quickly like a startled insect through the dirt and towards Quote and Curly, surrounding them for all sides. Quote took a short hop into the air and pointed the Booster forward, overtop each of the running lights. One of them passed directly underneath his flight path; once they passed overhead, a violent explosion rocked up from the ground. A blast like that would have easily torn them apart.

Curly kept up her attacks on Ballos, following him wherever he went; Quote was too focused on avoiding hits and explosions to follow Ballos' movements. The underground lights were trailing behind him quickly, branching out occasionally to try and cut off his movements. Ballos moved his hands to his sides, his fingers extended towards a pair of pillars in front of him: with a burst from his hands, the top layer of each pillar separated from the rest with a loud crack as the stone cut itself apart from the force. Quote remembered Misery physically straining to move a large brick with any force, even coupled with her own magic; Ballos had no such limitation, and the discs were flung at them both with effortless trajectory.

The first disc soared towards them at the ground, biting into the dirt metres away from Quote, kicking up a huge splash of dirt and rock towards them while the disc itself dug into the ground, drilling towards them ferociously. He gave a powerful leap, soaring high over the air to avoid the disc and two more explosions from the lights chasing him, managing to get in a few more pot-shots on Ballos before focusing on the second, which was coming right for them in the air. He wasn't dropping fast enough – he pointed the Booster straight down, causing them both to plummet hard into the dirt but the disc passed over them both, the turbulence shifting the cap on Quote's head.

Ballos lifted his hands and crooked his fingers once more; this time, his fingers glowed a menacing white before he spun clockwise quickly, his hands and fingers pointed straight up. Streaks of lightning erupted from his fingers and coated the ceiling, the bolts painting the walls as he spun and fell back to the floor. Quote was having enough trouble keeping up with the five remaining lights pursuing him; now he had to watch out for whatever was above them as well? Curly was at least keeping up the fire, and Ballos' incredible defence finally seemed to be waning; his robe was beginning to rip very slightly, and he had a bruise on his forehead, but he moved like he felt nothing.

Ballos landed hard on the ground, causing another wave to bounce up around him and heave up everything it reached. The ripples dissipated forcefully against the pillar's strong bases and they seemed to ignore his throne entirely, but all the loose pebbles and rotten bones upchucked and rained down all over the room. Another of the blue lights burst in the wave, leaving only four still trailing behind them; the lightning Ballos had struck into the ceiling began to rain down with the rest of the dirt and pebbles, coming down at random times and random places as well. There was no way Quote could predict a strike from a lightning bolt, other than hoping that they actually never did strike the same place twice. Although, lightning in the ceiling? That gave him an idea.

He made a hard turn to his right, his ankles bending under the sudden strain as he ran, keeping ahead of the trailing lights. Ballos was standing still, preparing another spell to fire at the duo while Curly kept pelting him with her shots. Another of the lights exploded far too close for their comfort, causing her to yelp in surprise and cover her face from the incoming debris. Quote was running back towards Ballos from a wide angle; another bolt of lightning struck down from the ceiling, hitting the top of the pillar they were just passing, the static causing them both to shiver and a few hairs to stand on end. His feet and his knees pumped, running as quickly as he could. Ballos was in plain sight, open for some more shots of his own, but he couldn't risk breaking his stride.

Quote got to a comfortable angle facing Ballos, staring the man head-on in the centre of the room while he ran. Curly couldn't see over his shoulder, and with nothing in front of her or to her side there was nothing for her to shoot at, but she knew that Quote knew what he was doing. The three remaining lights were close behind – one of them bursting once it got close enough, unsteadying Quote's balance – while he sprinted, his eyes not on Ballos but on the ceiling above them, studying its rock face and trying to predict when another bolt was going to come down.

Ballos' raised both his hands above his head, his palms glowing a light-yellow as he prepared his next spell against the robots. He was aware of Quote running straight for him, but he was confident that nothing either of them could throw at him could cause his focus to falter. He levitated himself regardless: while no hit could break his concentration, his body wasn't nearly as steely as his mind. Quote was in the air immediately after him, pointing his Polar Star in the air – but not firing. He didn't intend to tackle Ballos either; he passed underneath the man, his gun held as high as he could without once pulling its trigger.

Just as he passed underneath the man, a lightning bolt streaked across the sky as he had hoped. Quote and Curly were both made of hard metal, and his Polar Star had a steel casing; his plan was to make themselves into lightning rods, getting their metal as high as they could to attract the lightning while under or at least near Ballos, and hopefully manage to get him in the bolt. It couldn't have gone better: the lightning arced through the air, attracted to their steel, trying to find its way straight to his Polar Star and passing directly through Ballos in the effort. He took the full brunt of the hit, his body stopping the shot entirely while Quote and Curly passed underneath him unharmed.

The strike was quick and deadly, the electricity gone in a flash, the thunderclap all that remained of the strike. Ballos' body totally vanished once the strike hit; every piece of him gone, disintegrated to the wind, leaving behind only the robes on his back and the rings on his fingers, each accessory falling unhindered to the floor below. With his concentration thoroughly broken, the remaining blue lights that chased them across the ground each blew and the lightning still charged in the ceiling faded away. The island very slowly began to stop its plummet straight down, the vibrations weakening and the rumbling growing softer as a tense few seconds passed, Quote and Curly still on their guard for anything. "Is that it?" she asked, her gun gripped tightly in both hands. "Did we just win?"

Before the island could stop falling entirely, the shaking and the rumbling began to worsen; the whistling wind through the door they left open when they entered began to intensify. The island began to pick up speed once more; Ballos' body may have been destroyed, but his focus on his magic was still there somehow, forcing the island down. He hadn't been totally killed just yet.

Several rocks and pebbles began to shift and change in the far wall away from them. At first it wasn't anything important given the intensity of the vibrations, but soon entire boulders were beginning to dislodge from the wall, but rather than collapse to the ground they simply hovered silently in the air. Each rock, from the largest to the smallest, began to pile onto themselves on the wall itself, piecing themselves together like an enormous picture-less puzzle, the largest stones lifting and rotating around and the smallest ones diving into the centre of the picture and finding a spot to fill from the inside.

From the beginning it didn't look like the rocks were assembling anything in particular, but eventually they began to click and slam together to form an enormous sphere. Aside from the cracks between each rock it was totally featureless, but those came soon after the form was completed: some of the larger rocks seemed to whittle themselves in the air, revealing white slate underneath the tan dust in nearly perfect squares. Other, naturally curved rocks were smoothened and bent farther, forming elegant L-curves and placed side-by-side as they were pasted onto the front of the ball. Other boulders were cut by nothing, their shavings spilling onto the ground as they began to take two more perfect spheres; one was stark white, floating just to the upper-right of the face of the ball, but the other was a perfect pitch-red, taking the opposite side. Ballos' face was perfectly emulated, from his red right eye to his wide nose to his shining teeth, on the stone sphere suspended high in the air, connected solidly to the wall halfway up from the floor.

There was more rumbling in the room, from the stone pillars still standing and the thick throne sitting in the room as they were lifted into the sky. Every spare rock in the room, from the largest hanging suspending in the ceiling to the bones scattered everywhere around them to the smallest dusts in the far corners, were lifted high into the air above them, leaving the floor absolutely spotless without a single spec of dust still on the floor at any place. Everything began to form an indecipherable whirlwind of stone above them, spiralling into a mesmerizing vortex of dull browns and reds, rocks smashing into each other in their spin. Ballos' throne, his clothes, and his rings were in there as well, swirling menacingly above the two of them, the whole thing kept up by absolutely nothing and threatening to come crashing down on them both at any moment.

The enormous ball that made Ballos' face was totally unmoving the whole time; as if the rock was just a symbol – a type of avatar – that represented Ballos' consciousness rather than his being. Curly didn't buy it, though: she raised her weapon right towards the thing's left eye and fired a few shots, her weapon scoring each hit directly. There was no sound or obvious movement after the barrage, but one of the rocks from the spiralling mass above them quickly swooped down towards them both, hitting the floor with a powerful boom; it missed only because Quote was more interested in the whirl of rocks above them than Ballos' large face.

Now that the first stone had been cast, each of the others began to plummet and strike in quick succession. A rock would strike the ground with incredible force, splintering itself on the impact and knocking Quote off his balance with the vibration before rising back up to the whirlwind, while smaller skipping stones would drop down along any of the four walls and dart across the floor with blinding speed, trying to dig through his body with their trajectory. Having four eyes definitely helped them both out; Quote kept his eyes on the larger rocks above and leap and duck out of the way, while Curly could help him avoid the smaller, faster ones by leaning to one side and forcing him to sidestep away from any incoming projectiles. But they were hopelessly pinned down against Ballos' incredible offensive, using every part of the very room they were in as his weapon.

They both tried to return the fire whenever one of them had a decent shot, but Ballos would always fling something down and disturb the two before they could even pull their triggers. The larger ones weren't so difficult to avoid as the smaller ones, being harder to see and considerably faster than the others. A massive boulder would crash down from above and narrowly miss them both while a smaller one would shoot forward and try to skewer one or both of them as it flew by. Fatigue had caught up to Quote long ago, but it took him this long to realize it; minutes passed like hours while he was busy jumping and weaving and ducking, feeling the rush of wind pass over them as a large one came thundering down and feeling his clothes ruffle as a small one whizzed by him, missing by only hairs as they went.

Their window of opportunity to return any fire was always mockingly narrow and it wouldn't be long before Quote would get too tired to keep up his acrobatics or Ballos made a lucky shot. His pants had taken a few holes from the smaller arrowheads coming way too close to landing a hit, and he wasn't positive how well Curly was holding up. He didn't even know how they were going to kill him; they weren't even clear on whether or not shooting Ballos' face or his eyes would even really do him any harm.

One of the little pebbles finally managed to get him in his left shoulder, shooting right through his tough metal skin and ripping through his inside circuits and gears easily. Its flight path was adjusted significantly as it coursed through his insides for that split second, arching upward and exiting just next to his neck. He gave a loud pained grunt and faltered, slipping to his knees after the hit, dropping his Polar Star in his right hand to cover the wound in reflex. "Are you hit?!" Curly asked in a rush once he collapsed – she knew the gravity the situation, and if Quote was injured…

Another pebble came rocketing past, though Quote was still focused, the injury not severe enough for him to risk stopping for too long. He leaned back as the rock-turned-bullet roared past him: he avoided a fatal hit, but the rock slammed into the clasp of the tow rope around his chest, destroying it. Curly fell off his back with a thump, dropping her own weapon in surprise, the rope still wrapped around them both but without the clasp, it was totally useless. She still couldn't move her legs; she reached out for her gun as she dragged herself across the ground, one arm in front of the other, slowly and painfully. She didn't really know why she was, at this point, but she'd rather go down fighting than resigning to simply getting flattened.

Quote kept his eyes to the sky, watching for some other rock to come down and try to put them to their ends one last time. A huge one did: it dropped down from one of the far ends of the vortex, the air screeching as it came in for one last press. Like Curly, he refused to simply sit there, no matter what the odds were – the pain from the open wound in his shoulder was nearly blinding, but he picked himself onto his feet anyway, turning around and wrapping his good arm around Curly's waist just as she reached her gun. With a powerful grunt, he lifted her with all his strength and tossed her out of harm's way, pushing them both away from the boulder.

The rock came to a powerful crash against the ground, the familiar vibration pushing up his legs and the rushing air wrapping around his body as the rock hit with enough force to crack the ground they stood on. The situation was hopelessly dire; there was already no chance of actually escaping the room, much less the whole island before it hit the ground, or to kill Ballos by any conventional mean. He had one last idea to try; even if he and Curly were going to die here, he'd leave his mark on Ballos.

He spun around, leaping onto the rock before it had a chance to rise back up into the cloud above. He heard Curly call his name as he rose with the boulder, heading into the storm above them, but there was no way he was stopping now. It rose with a startling velocity, approaching the whirlwind above faster than he anticipated, but any height was high enough for him. He climbed past Ballos' teeth, his wide nose, and up to his eyes, rising up and over his forehead before running forward and leaping off the edge of the rock.

He could hardly move his left arm without tremendous pain, but that was alright, he only needed his right. As he fell, he moved his hand to the sword's handle, the scabbard still clinging to his belt. Just as he became level with Ballos' eyes, he kicked the Booster active, sending him flying directly forward, straight into his enormous, rocky face. Pebbles were flinging in front of him and behind him, ripping through his black tank-top and the scarf around his neck, never quite close enough to cut his skin – for all his omnipotence, Ballos wasn't a very good marksman. Quote approached Ballos in the air, drawing his sword while he still had the room to swing it, holding it as steady as he could in only his right hand while he flew. Whether or not the strike was going to kill him wasn't in Quote's all-too-clear mind at this point, and when he finally got close enough to see between the cracks of Ballos' jigsaw-puzzle face, he thrust the silver blade forward with all his strength, sending its tip piercing through the stone in his good eye.

Immediately all the stones circulating in the air began to drop. They weren't being dropped aggressively; the magic that was holding them all up simply dissipated the moment Quote's sword struck Ballos' eye. The rain of rock and bone from above didn't phase him at all, hearing each one crash hard against the floor and not raise again. He gave his sword a firm twist, cutting the blade through the stone some more as it drilled in deeper; Ballos' face began to dismantle, the magic keeping it together vanishing totally with the blow. The rocks that made his chin and his teeth hit the ground first, followed by his nose, creeping up to his eyes – the white one was still totally intact as it spilt to the ground, but the red one was shattered to pieces, dropping down in fragments with the rest of it. The Booster finally gave out, sending Quote down with the rest of it, his tired and beaten ankles absorbing the blows as he landed on the bridge of what was left of Ballos' nose and slid to the ground.

His first thought once he landed was to see if Curly was okay; he hadn't expected the rubble to start falling once he made the blow. He hadn't really expected much of anything, in hindsight, he just wanted to hit Ballos since he figured they were as good as dead by that point anyway. He was pessimistic about all the falling stones and Ballos' face falling apart like that; knowing just how resilient his magic power was, he wouldn't be too terribly surprised if Ballos was still alive somehow and was only getting ready for round three. But, as he climbed to his feet and put his sword away, the constant rumbling and shaking of the island began to lessen steadily, until it stopped all together. The magic Ballos was using to force it down had disappeared…which could only have meant that Ballos must have gone with it.

Curly managed to avoid most of the raining debris by sheer luck; many of the larger boulders and bits of pillar had collapsed all over the room, piling on top of themselves in various deposits all over the room, but thankfully none of them collected on top of her. She was dusty and dirty, but aside from her broken legs, she was absolutely fine. Quote jogged his way to her, climbing over chiselled rocks and uncut boulders, vaulting over the throne that happened to be in his way as well. She was trying to wipe the dust that had accumulated all over her face and her arms off, but she was generally failing; he jumped his way down to her, leaning down to look her over and help clean the dirt away from her face.

"You hear that?" she asked after a moment of them both trying to brush the dirt off her skin. The white was becoming visible under the grey dust, but she was a far cry from actually clean. "No shaking, no rumbling…the island stopped falling." She looked up at Quote, her eyes lighting up and her face just beaming. "Quote, that was amazing! How you rode that rock into the sky and stabbed Ballos in the eye with your sword! We were beaten, we were hurt, but you didn't give up; you said 'no way! I'm not scared of any magic or any crazy…magic!' And you just up and stabbed the guy in the face!"

Quote fell onto his rump when she was clean enough, his own smile impossible to hold back: the island wasn't falling; the Doctor was dead, probably for the last time; the Core was destroyed; Ballos was defeated, finally given the death he'd craved for centuries; Misery and Balrog were free of their curse; the Demon Crown was probably just a plain blue helmet now that Ballos wasn't powering it anymore, if it still existed at all…he had accomplished a lot. The last two tasks for him to accomplish were to find a way out of this pit with Curly, and to burn every last red flower that might remain in the island.

"So what do you think made the island stop falling once we got him?" she asked. "Do you think, like, all the negative energy was weakened once we beat him, or something? For that matter, what's keeping the island up now?" That was an interesting question. Quote brought his good hand to his chin in thought, when Curly brought her own hands to his. "Nah, don't worry about it, Quote, I'm just excited about all this, is all. That was such a crazy rush! You and I fighting, back-to-back against Jenka Two-Point-Oh in the middle of nowhere on this island; I'm just thinking a million thoughts right now–"

It hurts, they heard a rich, deep tenor-voice say, echoing directly into their minds.

"Did you say something?" she asked, her smile still wide, looking at him expectantly. Quote shook his head – he heard the voice too.

It's so hot, the voice said again, very softly, barely legible at all. They were both looking around the room for where the voice could be coming from. It sure sounded like Ballos, but he couldn't still be around, could he? After all that? The pain, he winced, his voice cracking under the invisible strain he was taking. He sounded horribly weak, like he was putting every ounce of his strength into supporting an impossible weight.

There was a soft thud in the room, coming from all four corners at once. Some of the piles of rubble were disturbed suddenly, their light tops toppling over themselves and sliding down the piles. Another thud, suddenly quite a bit louder around them both, and the wall immediately behind Curly suddenly gave her a good shove, scaring them both. "The walls!" she cried, trying to shuffle herself away but her broken legs made it too difficult to crawl more than a few inches, sitting up.

Help me, Ballos audibly cried. He was sobbing under the horrible feelings he was experiencing, unable to help himself with his pain, wherever he was. It hurts so much…it's so hot. Help me… The walls continued to compact all the while, the piles of rock being pushed along like feathers as they slid across the flat floor. Quote quickly knelt in front of Curly, facing away from her, offering his neck for her to wrap her arms around. Grabbing her legs by the knees with both hands (clenching his teeth tightly from the pain in his left arm, his grip weak), she piggybacked on him as he ran to the centre of the room, as far away from any wall as they could get. Their exit was too far away for them to reach before the walls closed in on them, however, and there was no other obvious way out.

"There's no way out!" Curly yelped as they both looked up and down the room, looking for a window or a sewer pipe they could take or something, anything. "We're gonna get crushed! There's no way out of here!"

There was a loud noise directly above them as something large burrowed through the tough rock above them with incredible speed. They could only just hear it over the grating of the approaching walls, but it was loud enough for them both to look upward. A small, brown stub poked through a spot in the centre of the ceiling as it dug and scraped through the soil, before finally pushing through and bringing the rest of its body down with it. A familiar briefcase with legs came gliding down to the floor, shouting 'Huzzah!' as it fell, its feet slamming hard against the floor. Quote could hardly believe it; of all the people to come to their rescue at all of the times, Balrog was the one to come crashing through the roof and make a hero out of himself. "Did someone ask for a way out?"

"Balrog?!" Curly asked in surprise, sharing Quote's amazement over the development.

"That's my name, last time I checked," he replied with a huge goofy grin, looking them both over. He winced at their looks; Quote was missing a chunk of his 'flesh' in his left shoulder and Curly's legs were broken in different places. "Misery said you guys would be here. Looks like I showed up at exactly the right moment." The walls made another lurch forward, brushing more rocks on top of each other as the room began to collapse into itself. "Whoa, no time for talk, though! Hang on tight to my feet, we gotta roll!"

Quote didn't need a second invitation, even if it was from Balrog, and even if it was a little weird. He brought himself to Balrog's right, kneeling down to let Curly grip onto his stubby foot before diving forward and gripping as hard as he could onto the other. The walls were dangerously close, the rocks approaching and threatening to bury them both if they didn't leave quickly. Balrog gave a huge jump, flapping his stubs hard up and lifting them both out of the same hole he had dug. The rumblings from the room below had caused his tunnel to cave into itself again, but Balrog didn't let that stop him; he simply burst through the blockage, the walls finally pressing themselves as together as they could with the rocks piling into a pillar between them.