Disclaimer: Bambietta Basterbine and all related characters belong to Shueisha.

Far away from the Soul Society were five quincy hidden from the shinigami. They were not just any quincy, however. No, they were former sternritter in what had once been His Majesty Yhwach's secret empire, the Wandenreich. Each of the five were sitting around a table of an outdoor cafe, plotting out their future.

"Why don't we go back to Hueco Mundo?" Meninas McAllon asked. "The shinigami will never look there and I'm sure we can deal with the hollows and arrancars."

"Pretty please?" Candice Catnipp sighed. "Look, I'm glad me and Meni are alive and well, but I'm sick and tired of people staring at these stitches that clown of a captain-"

"Captain Clown," Meninas interjected. "Get it right, Candi."

"-Captain Clown gave us to be part of his Zombie Corp or whatever," Candice finished, knowing that was no more right than what she had said. "I'm sick of everyone pointing at me and making comments. It's 1978 all over again, Lil!"

"I said it before and I will say it again," Liltotto Lamperd snapped. "We are not going back to Hueco Mundo. Gigi and I were only there to get enough arrancar or hollows under our control to bust you two out. And most important of all, the food there tastes like garbage."

"Aw, but the scenery is so cool!" Giselle Gewelle exclaimed. "Endless deserts as far as the eye can see. Hueco Mundo nights, like Hueco Mundo days, more often than not are hotter than hot in a lot of good ways... Like Bambi! Isn't that right, you little underachiever you?"

Giselle reached over to the seat next to her, pinching one of Bambietta Basterbine's cheeks. It was harder than most would do it, making Bambietta flinch and cry out a little. "Ow! Gigi, please don't!"

"Come on, I've done worse," Giselle said, a vacant expression suddenly spreading over her face, as if she was staring too deeply into Bambietta's soul itself. Then, just as suddenly as it had come over her, it faded away, Giselle snapping to attention. "Oh right! You probably don't remember! Bambi, you really need to work on your poor memory!"

Liltotto sighed. Bambietta was already dead, moreso than even Meninas and Candice. and it was far more noticable than their stitched up bodies. Bambietta's complexion was clay red, a product of the corrupted blood running through her veins. Now all that was left was just enough of Giselle's own to keep her functioning. There had been plenty more from a shinigami noble, his death a ridiculously bloody one the quincy had stumbled across. So much so that Bambietta had returned to her old self, though entirely ignorant of her state of undeath. How the sight of her own undead flesh, let alone the scent of it rotting, had not caught Bambietta's attention was beyond Liltotto. Perhaps she had simply been happy to have survived the war and get caught up on what she had missed out on. Perhaps she simply failed to read the room and her own body. Liltotto truly had not cared one way or another.

However, then there had been the talk of conquering a country or two, to set herself up as a queen. Liltotto was happy at least that Giselle had stepped in, doing some bodily harm to Bambietta by hitting her over the head with a now broken tennis racquet to drain the blood of that nobleman and make her the meek and weak timid little nothing she was now.

It was a favor to the world but, more importantly to Liltotto, a favor to herself. There was only so much Bambietta she could take at once. Sure, there had been a moment of hearing Giselle crying and yelling "Now look what you made me do! I didn't want to do! Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I wanted to! Now you're you again!" but that was a step up from Bambietta talking coherently. Still, this version of her was grating to the ever-hungry quincy in its own way.

"By His Majesty's inconsistent 'stache!" Candice suddenly exclaimed. "What's that?"

Liltotto snapped out of her doldrums, putting off thinking about what to do about the undead Bambietta for later, and looked up to see what Meninas was talking about. Sure enough, there was someone...rocketing towards them?

He was a man dressed head to toe in white, like the Wandenreich uniforms they had abandoned now that they were in the living world. However, most perplexing was the fire and brimstone bursting out from his hands and feet, propelling the older looking man through the sky.

As he drew dangerously close, he repositioned his hands forward, redirecting his missile-like movement with the explosions generating from his palms, and lowered to the ground. Only then did Liltotto take note of the goggles beneath his Wandenreich cap and over his eyes, as well as that of big gray mustache adorning his face.

Liltotto and the others stared on in shock as the man stood there, unmoving for a moment as he clearly looked at them, though his eyes were obscured by the lenses of his googles. He was clearly a quincy, one of the Wandenreich, but he was none the former sternritter recognized.

Finally did Giselle speak, pulling her head up from under the table and atop Bambietta's lap. She nearly jumped out of her skin seeing the googgled quincy. "What is that thing?"

"Rude much?" The new quincy's shoulders suddenly slumped, his mouth hanging open. It was shortlived however, the man suddenly pointing at Giselle and the others. "I think you mean who is that thing! Wait, no! I'm not a damn thing! I'm a quincy! I'm a sternritter! Sternritter E!"

"No you're not," Candice snapped back. "We know Sternritter E...unfortunately."

"Fortunately!" Giselle retorted, snuggling Bambietta and making her flinch again.

The man shook his head before putting his hands on his hips and laughing. "Ah hah hah hah, since when were you under the impression there could only be one power for every letter in the alphabet?"

"He does bring up a good point," Meninas chimed in. "There were at least two Sternritter Ys. And I was always asking why when it came to that. Not to mention Gremmy bending the rules with his imaginary friends. And then Uryu got his own A-list power. And let's not forget that His Majesty and Haschwalth could swap letters like some of us swap spit."

"Thank you for that mental image," Candice suddenly said.

"I'm sorry," Meninas whimpered, growing withdrawn.

"No, I meant it," Candice replied, hands clasped together as she closed her eyes and rocked her head from side to side. "I love me some yaoi!"

"Oh, okay." Meninas nodded.

"Anyway!" the mysterious newcomer of a quincy exclaimed. "Allow me to drop the bomb! I am Louie 'Kaboom' Basterbine!"

Bambietta perked up ever so slightly then, as if a portion of the dark cloud that hung over her head begin to lift a bit. "Uncle Louie?"

Giselle, Liltotto, Candice and Meninas all repeated exactly what Bambietta said, though in a widely different tone. "Uncle...Louie?"

"That's right, Sternritter E, the Explosion, Louie 'Kaboom' Basterbine!" the new quincy shouted. "Leave it to my favorite little niece to remember me! Not that she's so little anymore! Or... Wait, why is she red as clay? I distinctly recall her being a lively girl! Is this some kind of prank? Are you girls... What do you whippernsnappers call it now? Right. Are you girls trolling me?"

The four former sternritter around Bambietta flinched a little at that, realizing that they were very much on the verge of being the bearer of very bad news. Bad news that they were responsible for. "Uhhh..." all four of them said in perfect synchronization.

"Wait," Louie said, the pieces of the unpleasant puzzle beginning to lock in place. "It's bad enough that His Majesty sent me off on what he promised me was a super duper important mission that turned out to be a whole lot of nothing only for me to return to the Wandenreich to find the war lost and a lot of people dead! And now I come back to find my niece your zombie, Giselle Gewelle!?"

"Hey, hold on a minute!" Candice interjected, desperate to make the save by mixing truth with lies. "We didn't kill Bambi! It was some immortal werewolf samurai ghost and his equally immortal kaiju!"

Louie scoffed. "A likely story!"

"It's more likely than you think," Meninas said.

"Though it does sound unbelievable stupid," Liltotto added.

"Super stupid!" Giselle exclaimed, too hyper for her own good. "Dumb doggy!"

Louie furrowed hid brow. "I thought you said he was a werewolf."

Giselle shrugged. "Bambi kept calling him Captain Doggy. And what Bambi says goes."

"Oh yeah, if that was the case, we wouldn't be on the precipice of this moment, dumbass," Liltotto whimpered.

"And come to think of, that wasn't quite accurate to what happened," Meninas said, putting an index finger up to one of her cheeks as she glanced upwards a little. "Captain Doggy did hurt Bambi real bad, but it was Gigi who killed her with her bare hands and then zombified her while we all watched."

"Meni, please kindly shush," Giselle whimpered, eyes wide as she stared at Louie...and he glared at her. "He's looking at me."

"Explain this story fully," Louie said, his breath rather labored as he tried to compose himself. "Now."

"Yes sir," Meninas replied without a hint of thinking or being emotional, making all of her compatriots feel nothing but fear, her honesty a double edged sword that was very likely to cut them down here and now. "We all went to the Soul Society to begin the attack. Then we four abandoned Bambi as part of a funny prank. And because Lil didn't want to hang around her too much. And because Candi wanted to feel more in charge away from her. And because...well...Gigi didn't want to be away from her for even a sec, but the distress it would cause sounded like too much fun for her. And because I... Well, I don't know why I did it. So we scampered off, Bambi got upset and made a big explosion. Then she fought some shinigami captain with a lopsided haircut and his stab-prone lieutenant. He talked the talk, Bambi walked the walk all over his face with her vollstandig. And we watched because Gigi likes to do that sometimes. Candi's wings popped out in response because she's sort of bad at vollstandig? Anyway, then another shinigami captain with a bucket on his head who used to be a furry dog man showed up. The helmet came off and he wasn't a furry dog man but a rugged hunk of a man now instead. And immortal or some nonsense. So he used his bankai, which was able to overpower Bambi's explosions, pushing them back into her. She blew up and fell down. His immortal power up ended and he turned into a harmless dog. And then we approached Bambi and Gigi killed her and made her a zombie."

"Thanks, Meni," Liltotto whispered. "That was very helpful."

"Unbelievably stupid," Louie said, unblinking.

"I know, super stupid!" Giselle chimed in. "Dumb doggy!"

"You're all so bloody stupid!" Louie shouted. "My niece was injured and on the verge of death, so instead of healing her with your schrift, Sternritter Z, Giselle Gewelle, you killed her and made her your zombie?"

"Yhwach and Haschwalth would have had her executed over losing even if I did replace her damaged parts with other flesh!" Giselle countered. "I couldn't let Bambi die!"

Now Louie blinked. "So you killed her."

"Yeah!" Giselle said without even a pause of self-reflection.

"Good Lord, it's no surprise we lost the war," Louie sighed. "This immortal werewolf samurai ghost and his equally immortal kaiju you spoke of-"

"Captain Doggy," Giselle interrupted, correcting him as best she could.

"Captain Doggy," Louie repeated. "He reverted into a regular dog after his immortal form ended?"

"That is correct," Meninas replied.

"So he couldn't fight anymore?" Louie asked.

"Probably not, no," Meninas continued. "I mean, his lieutenant had to come in and grab him and go."

"So my niece was wounded but healable, while the enemy was rendered powerless and no longer able to fight." This time it was a statement, not a question on Louie's part.

"That's about the gist of it," Meninas replied. Her eyes widened before blinking a few times. "Gigi, you really didn't have to kill and zombify Bambi you know."

Giselle let out a weak little laugh, the former sternritter realizing that herself. "Errors have been made."

"I'm going to start attacking you all up now," Louie said, he mustache twitching and curling up, spiritual power flowing all around him. "I don't know when I'll stop. I might even end up accidentally violently killing some of you."

Time passed. Explosions detonated across the battlefield chosen by destiny. Arrows fired. Muscles bulked up. Lightning crashed down. Mouths got bigger. Blood was spilled.

Civilians rightfully ran like hell.

And the self-proclaimed Bambies? They were now huddled around each other, crouching down behind the overturned cafe table where it had all started, a docile Bambietta by them.

"Okay, girls," Giselle whispered, "when did we lose control?"

Candice had one suggestion. "I think it was when Old Man Louie said 'I'm going start attacking you all up now. I don't know when I'll stop. I might even end up accidentally violently killing some of you.' At least that's my guess."

"See, now I was thinking it was when Giselle said '"What is that thing?' after spotting this crazy uncle of Bambi's," Liltotto offered up.

Meninas was quiet, knees pulled up against her chest, arms wrapped around them. She tilted her head up, looking at the others. Finally did she speak. "You want to know when we lost control? When we left Bambi to die."

"It was just a prank, Meni!" Candice snapped. "How were we supposed to know Captain Komamura had nonsensical powers perfectly designed to counter Bambi's like he did?"

"Captain Dogg-" Giselle stopped, tracks of static electricity running up between her two extended strands of hair.

"You say that again one more time and I swear to whatever forsaken God this world has that I will bring a thunderbolt right down between those roach antennas you call hair, Gigi!" Candice snapped, lightning dancing around her right hand's fingers as they curled inwards.

"Shushing up now," Giselle said, running a hand over her mouth as she closed it from one side to the other.

"No please," a familiar voice said suddenly, "please keep yapping. It makes it so easy to find you ladies."

The four quincy looked up, spotting Louie looming over the edge of the overturned table, his eyes blazing.

"In case you four forgot," Louie began to yell, "I'm not finished with you! It's vollstandig time!"

More time passed. Explosions continued to detonate across the battlefield that now was wishing it had not been chosen by destiny. However, no longer did arrows fire off. No longer did muscles bulk up. No longer did lightning crash down. No longer did a mouth get bigger. Though blood continued to be spilled, it was not in the manner the one spilling it had wished.

Thank goodness the civilians had vacated the scene long ago.

Regardless, the self-styled Bambies were spent, Louie having vollstandigged all over them. They all lay on their backs, battered and broken, panting as they all tried to catch their breath.

Meanwhile, Bambietta simply stood there, eyes wide as she tried to understand what was going on. "Uncle...Louie...make the girls go kaboom?"

Louie looked at Bambietta then, his bushy and curled up mustache twitching as two tears formed at the corner of his eyes. "Look how the inability to think things through and jump to the first idea has massacred my niece."

He looked at the fantastically beaten quincy then, sighing.

"Well, I'm sure glad I got that out of my system. Now to fix things."

Louie commanded the spiritual particles to air around him to flow into an outstretched right hand, it forming into a red ball. Giselle and the other three had seem him do that time and time again, the Explosions being little different than the Explode. It made enough sense in their eyes, him and Bambietta being related, but it had absolutely sucked to be on the receiving end of again and again and again.

And that was before he had used vollstandig after finding the girls. Giselle could distinctly recall him yelling "Allow me to drop the bomb! Well, a lot of bombs! My vollstandig will let me carpet bomb the battlefield!"

On one hand, Giselle had begun to realize that the madman had a catchphrase. On the other hand, she had begun to also realize it was not fun to be on the receiving end of Bambietta's or Louie's vollstandig. So many explosive orbs had fired off from those wings.

Still, she was seeing him make another orb and she was so very afraid he was about to finish her and the other girls off for good now in his attempt to fix things. Giselle should have been scared, but she felt that she was too beat up to. That or perhaps despair had its own calms?

However, when she saw Louie turn towards Bambietta and raise his hand up as if to throw the Explosion at her, Giselle realized she had a lot more left in her tank when real fear set in. When fear for another truly set in.

"No! Don't you dare!" Giselle screamed as she sat up from the ground. "I screwed up, okay? That's not the way Bambi should be! The way Bambi should ever be!"

Louie held himself still for a moment. "You have no idea how glad I am to hear that."

Then he threw the orb at the docile and still Bambietta, the once great quincy not even comprehending what was coming her way. It struck her in the chest...and a mighty explosion consumed her.

"No!" Giselle cried out. "Bambi!"

The explosion rang in her ears, breaking up what could have been deafening silence. Then it was simply that and that alone, smoke wafting up from the ground, obscuring all sight.

"Allow me to drop the bomb!" Louie suddenly said, clapping his hands together cheerfully as he looked at Giselle and the others. "Especially since I got so hot under the collar that I broke a great Basterbine family tradition! I forgot to explain my powers!"

"Bambi's gone," Giselle whimpered, her head buried in her arms as she sobbed. "Just...take your bombs and go away...or kills us. I don't care."

"Do you girls know what my Explosion does?" Louie asked, not paying any mind to Giselle's despair for the moment. He looked at their beaten and broken bodies, then glanced around the battlefield he had fought them all on. "Mmm, don't answer that. I assume you've got the bumps, bruises and blood loss to get the wrong idea. Oh, and there's the property damage! No, my Explosion does not simply blow stuff up."

Candice glanced at him, her face oddly comically in its expression despite all that had gone on. "Huh?"

"My Explosion is a shrift so deadly, so mind bending, that His Majesty, Soul King rest his soul, felt only I could take on the great mission he had instructed me with!" Louie bragged. "I begged him to stay at his side in the great war, worried how it would play out, and now look how it all ended! Ah, the road not taken! But enough about the past! He sent me out to find beings of great power that could threaten his plans! Not the war potentials you know of, but those who's abilities were so cheap he worried they might throw an almighty wrench into the war! An almighty wrench the likes of which even His Majesty had not seen! One was a shinigami who's zanpakuto could use other zanpakutos' shikais, even the feared war potential Sosuke Aizen's! Another was a child who was truly transendent and could be a Soul King himself if need be, especially if he found a great sword forged from the most deadly hollow to have ever existed! And then finally a fullbringer so all powerful that she broke the limits and expectations of her kind!"

"Wait just a second..." Liltotto said, furrowing her brow. "You mean...?"

"Unfortunately, I lost the hit list stating their names and, not wanting to shame myself in front of His Majesty, carried on with deductive reasoning to remember who I was going after beyond those vague descriptions I had memorized!" Louie continued to exposit. "I went for the fullbringer first, knowing she was on Earth. However, by the time I found her, it was too late. She had died and gone to Hueco Mundo for reasons I dare not worry about! So I scratched her off the list! Then I found the transcendent tyke bomb was without power or motivation, being raised by a shinigami with a potentially offensive tattoo adorning his face! Star 69, such a dangerous ability of phones! I left them be because while I may be a baby boomer, I'm not that kind of a baby boomber! And finally...finally...I found the shinigami with the absurd zanpakuto! He was dead. Horribly, horribly dead. Though I have no idea where his blood all went."

"I do," Meninas whispered.

"After that, I returned to the Wandenreich's castle and learned the sad truth that I missed the war...and went out to find Bambietta." Louie snapped his fingers. "Damn, I almost broke the Basterbine tradition of explaining our powers again! Anyway, that unholy trinity of a hit list? Yes, those three had powers that could make even the bravest of souls fear their own world, but not I! To fight nonsensical power, one must use nonsensical power! So His Majesty sent one of his mighty Schun- Shusta- One of his Elite Four to fight them! For the Explosion breaks all logic!"

He snapped his fingers then, the smoke clearing from where Bambietta had been standing...only to reveal her standing there still.

Truly alive and well.

Gone was the decaying flesh, Bambietta's lively self and natural color restored. Light and luster began to return to her eyes then, the quincy blinking. She raised her hands up, looking at them.

"I'm...alive?" Bambietta whispered. She suddenly shot her arms upwards, hands balled into fists as she roared. "I'm alive!"

"You see, my Explosion does not simply cause things to turn into bombs that blow up," Louie said, looking at Giselle and the others as Bambietta hopped around in excitement in the background. "It can do that, as you learned in our battle, but my Explosion's true ability is to destroy things on a conceptual level. No, to destroy concepts themselves. I didn't like that my niece was dead and a zombie? I blew the concept up and now she's a lively girl again!"

Giselle stared at him, overjoyed by the notion of Bambietta being alive but confused by the nature of Louie's schrift all the same. "Huh?"

"See the grass?" Louie said, pointing at a park off in the distance. "Let's say I don't like that it's green."

He threw an orb of the Explosion into the park. It burst sure enough, and in its wake was blue grass.

"See the sky?" Louie said, pointing up. "Of course you do. Let's say I don't like that it's blue."

Louie threw an orb upwards, as if assaulting the heavens. His hand outstretched, he closed it tightly when the orb ascended high enough and to his liking, causing it to explode. The sky began to shift and change then, shifting from a beautiful blue to an unnatural shade of green as far as the eye could see.

"So pretty," Meninas said, kneeling down and touching some grass.

"Sure is Dragon Ball here," Candice said, taking in the sights of around her.

"Well, a fake planet Namek is still better than Hueco Mundo," Liltotto said, sighing as she rubbed her temples. "But if anyone told me this morning that I'd be in Dragon Ball, I'd have laughed. Long and hard. With youthful abandon."

"You two both forgot the Z!" Giselle whined, glaring at Liltotto and Candice. "But I guess I should expect that from the GT duo! Hmmph!"

Then there was Bambietta, the living and no longer dead girl coming back to reality bit by bit, paying no mind to the changing world around her and instead looking in the window of a candy shop.

"They've got fudge!" Bambietta exclaimed, turning to look at her relative and pointing excitedly. "Uncle Louie, they've got fudge!"

"That's great, Bambi!" Louie exclaimed, turning back to the quincy quartet. "You'll have to forgive her. I've never raised the dead before with my Explosion, but I'm assuming she needs a little time for her wires to stop being crossed and fully be herself. Now then, I don't actually like the sky being green and the grass blue, so..."

Louie fired off the Explosion in two different directions from his hands, restoring them all to normal just like that.

"Forget the immortal werewolf samurai ghost and his equally immortal kaiju," Candice whispered under her breath. "Who comes up with this nonsense?"

Bambietta, meanwhile, was still looking at the candy store's display, completely overwhelmed by the sensations of being alive once more. So overwhelmed was she that she could not even get her mind in truly working order, the overload making jump from one thought to another.

However, she then caught sight of her reflection in the glass...and she saw some tears on the edges of her eyes.

Her mind's eye began to spiral then, memories moving past it like a kaleidoscope. Of her battle with Captain Komamura. Of his unbeatable bankai turning her own power against her. Of her body bloody and ragged from being blown up from the inside.

"So much...pain..." Bambietta whispered, her forehead touching the glass, her eyes closing.

Still did it continue. Her friends circling around her. Fear seizing her heart. Giselle taking her life, even as she cried herself.

The same-style tears, on the edge of her eyes.

That had been the awakening.

"Giselle," Bambietta whispered, her whole body trembling. Her hands, pressed against the glass, began to curl into fists. "Giselle Gewelle!"

Giselle heard that, perking up. "Hey, it's Gigi."

"Oh?" Louie looked towards Bambietta then, seeing her moving towards them all, her eyes ablaze with an inner fire, her teeth grit together. Each step was labored, as if overflowing with power and rage. "I do believe she is fully herself now."

"Dead quincy are we," Meninas said, wishing she had a white flag to wave.

Liltotto was thinking the same thing. "We really shouldn't have ditched our sternritter uniforms. We could have whipped Candice's top off to use as a white flag."

Candice glared at her. "Hey, I'm all for flashing my tits if it would calm Bambi down, but-"

"All of you!" Bambietta screamed once again, her eyes narrowing as tears flew out from their corners, the quincy taking one step closer to the quartet. "Do you have any idea what you did to me?"

Candice nodded. "I've got a pretty good inkling."

Meninas bit her lower lip, looking aside and away from Bambietta, unable to make eye contact. "I do, Bambi."

Liltotto sighed. "Something stupid that has earned us a severe beating no doubt."

"We made you better, Bambi!" Giselle said, waving her arms excitedly while forgetting what she had said to Louie only minutes ago. "We showed off the real you! It was awesome!"

"Damn it, Gigi," Candice whispered, still watching as Bambietta came ever closer. "Ah, girls. I am wearing a white bra. You can whip that off if we need a flag..."

"Wrong answer!" Bambietta roared, having taken in what Giselle had said. Her arms flew out to her sides, her eyes burning with an inner fire that demanded nothing less than to be unleashed and to take its unholy revenge. "All of you have simply elected the ways of pain!"

"Hold up," Giselle interjected, fidgeting a little in ways only she could. "I didn't vote red, Bambi!"

Once that might have gotten a chuckle from Bambietta. However, under the circumstances, it only incensed her further. "You didn't? I guess I wasn't red when I was a zombie, is that it? Whatever! Now I'm gonna-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Louie suddenly appeared between Bambietta and the others, his back to the quartet. "I get it, Bambi, you are upset and with good reason!"

"Very good reason," Bambietta said, taking a deep breath as her spiritual pressure shrank a little bit. "Uncle, they-"

"I know, I know," Louie said, suddenly reaching out to embrace Bambietta with a hug. "Just cool down. It's going to be okay."

He suddenly glanced over his shoulder at Giselle and the others.

"And in case any of you are thinking of shooting me in the back with the thought that it would help you all," Louie began to say, "keep in mind my niece here will only be more upset with you."

Giselle was quick to lower her bow and let it dissipate into the ether. "Got it!"

Louie sighed, looking back to his niece. What he found awaiting him was neither an expression of an angered or crying quincy. No, Bambietta was looking up at him with her best pleading and pouting face.

"Can I please kick their butts, Uncle Louie?" Bambietta asked, the irises of her eyes seemingly on the verge of taking on the shape of stars. "Please?"

"Bambi," Louie said, admonishing her slightly, "this is not a place of war. This is not the home of the shinigami or hollows. Think of the collateral damage and the civilian casualities that might occur if you were to cut loose on that decidingly less than fantastic four."

Candice, meanwhile, whispered under her breath, looking at he chaos all around her. "Oh, now he cares about that."

"But you could use your Retcon Bombs to fix whatever I do!" Bambietta said, nodding quickly. "Broken battlements, dead people... I mean, you just brought me back from the dead!"

Louie chuckled. "Retcon Bombs?" Never change, Bambi. Never change."

Liltotto, meanwhile, furrowed her brow. "Retcon Bombs, Bambi? Really?"

Meninas perked up. "Oh, I think that's a term from a comic book. From Spi-"

"Nerd!" Candice snapped, cutting her off.

Meninas glanced at her, surprising Candice with a rather serious face. "Don't make me treat you like a world made out of cardboard."

Giselle popped up by Meninas' side, sticking her tongue out at Candice. "Yeah, nerd of steel, Candi of kleenex!"

Meninas flinched a little. "There's that word again."

"Sorry!" Giselle squeaked, vanishing behind Meninas and moving more towards Liltotto.

"Oh look, Giselle can say sorry," Bambietta said, peaking out from over Louie's shoulder, eyes casting nothing but judgement.

"Hey," Giselle repeated, "it's Gigi."

Bambietta turned back up to Louie, judgement falling away to the quincy's best patent pending puppy dog pout. "Please?"

Louie tried to keep a stern and brave face, but it fell away in light of Bambietta's attempt at being adorable and needy. Her lower lip trembed ever so slightly, breaking the older quincy. "Fine, go play rough with your friends."

"Hahah!" Bambietta grinned, once more peaking out at the others over Louie's shoulders. She pointed her index and middle fingers towards them all, then motioned them to her own eyes, then back to them.

The quartet could feel the pressure radiating from Bambietta's spirit, their knees shaking under the duress.

"Well, I guess we're all trembling with fear," Candice said, feeling a nervous sweat form on her stiched up brow as Bambietta began to approach.

"Yes, even I am," Meninas admitted honestly.

"Bambi's looking at me!" Giselle exclaimed, the quincy also glistening but smiling nonetheless. "So I'm trembling with anticipation!"

Liltotto looked at her fellow quincy, her expression all but deadpan in its appearance. "No surprise there."

Even more time passed. Eeven more explosions detonated across the battlefield that now was still wishing it had not been chosen by destiny. Meanwhile, there still were no arrows firing off. Still no muscles bulking up. Still no lightning crashing down. Still no mouth getting bigger. Yet still did plenty of blood get spilled, though it continued to be in a manner the ones spilling it wished it was not.

The civilians, meanwhile, were very happy that had long since abandoned the area, some watching on with binoculars.

Then, at last, did a voice scream out at full tempo.

"GIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLE!"

A massive explosion spread out from the epicenter from which Bambietta stood, leveling the entire town somewhere in the world of the living. Things were silent, having become more Dragon Ball Z at the hands of Bambietta than even her uncle could manage. There was a stillness then, everything quiet in the crater that had once been a city that had mercifully long since been evacuated.

Then, as if it had not endured enough, more explosions began to dot its landscape. This time, however, it was different. The explosions did not destroy, but create, quickly restoring all that Bambietta had laid waste to.

Bambietta stood amidst the dwindling chaos, taking deep breath as her rage subsided and her power replenished itself. "That," she began to say, smiling brightly, "was loads of fun!"

"Kids these days," Louie said, throwing around orbs of the Explosion to undue the damage that the Explode had done. "Ah well, that's Bambi for you."

As orbs of the Explosion restored the town, three very dead and charred bodies of Candice, Meninas and Liltotto were pushed to the side, a very much alive Giselle crawling out from behind them.

"Friends make such good shields," she grunted, pulling herself from the corpses and looking at Bambietta. All she could think about was the name Bambietta had roared when she had unleashed that final explosion. "Third time's the charm... Hey, it's Gigi."

Three orbs of the Explosion hit suddenly hit the corpses around Giselle, making them good as new. Candice, Meninas and Liltotto all sat up then, one set of eyes unblinking as they processed the horror they had just experienced.

"Did we just die?" Liltotto asked, unblinking.

"Oh right, that's a first for you," Candice said, glaring at Liltotto. "You get used to it. Right, Meni?"

"Our stitches are gone," Meninas said simply, looking herself and Candice over. "Huh. Neat."

"Wait, we're alive-alive again?" Candice said, her draw dropping. "Praise Louie, the greatest of all uncles!"

"Now that we've all been killed by each other..." Bambietta said, glaring at the lot.

"I haven't been killed yet, Bambi," Giselle offered up.

An orb of the Explode hit Giselle dead on then, detonating.

Another orb, this time belonging to the Explosion, hit Giselle's ashes as a follow up, bringing her right back.

Giselle simply sat there, an unnerving and yet oddly endearing expression on her unphased face. "That was a heck of a thing."

Bambietta raised an eyebrow at that before also raising her hand, the Explode at the ready. "You know what? Why stop when we're bothing having fun?"

Louie's hand then took hold of Bambietta's wrist with an odd mixture of gentleness and firmness. "Bambi, stop killing Gigi."

Giselle snapped out of her euphoria then, still a little confused from her death and return. "Hey, it's Giselle Gewelle. ...Wait a minute..."

Bambietta sighed, letting the Explode's orb fade away. "I'm sorry, it's just... I popped my ex-friends killing cherry, Uncle Louie! Once you pop, the fun don't stop!"

Louie shook his head. "If I could live five times over, I'd be born in five different places and stuff myself with different foods from around the world. I'd live five different lives with five different occupations. And then, for those five lifetimes, I'd wish to never hear my niece say any of that ever again."

Bambietta lowered her head. "My bad."

Bambietta regained her more explosive composure then, whirling around to look at the other four quincy.

"Anyway!" she started, pointing at them all, her face as lively as ever. "Now that we've all been killed by each other, I don't have to take this whole hanging out with you thing! I'm going home!"

Bambietta felt a sweatdrop appear on her forehead then, recalling the Wandenreich and its castle was a thing of the past. She looked over her shoulder at her uncle.

"We do have a home, right?"

"Well, to be fair, since I went out on this mission, I've been a murder hobo for all intents and purposes. Still..." Louie formed an orb of the Explosion in his hand and sudden crushed it, causing it to harmlessly burst in his palm. "There we go. Now we do."

"I wish I could reject reality and substitute my own," Bambietta said as she and her uncle began to walk away into the sunset.

"Well, now that the war is over and you're a lively girl once again, we can return to training your Explode to evolve like my Explosion has. Perhaps it will even exceed my own."

"No, no, no!" Candice whimpered, just barely catching wind of what the duo spoke of as they walked away. "Press B, press B!"

Bambietta began to skip a little then, a spring in her step and a smile in her face as she walked off into a new day and a new life, a song in her heart and in her voice. "Happy people! Are you ready? Come On Now! Listen! Happy people's in the house!"

Uncle Louie was not far behind her, content to see that he had prevented a war a thousand years in the making from robbing his favorite niece from him. The song though... "Well, there surely are worst scenes those lyrics could close out on. Now to fade to black and be hit with what will no doubt be an inspiring quote that ties brings everything to a close all nice and proper."

"Even if things go south for me in the second invasion, I'll just have to pray that a character inspired by a goofy Power Rangers Zeo villain will save me. There, that's inspiring, right?"

- The Diary of Sternritter E, Bambietta Basterbine