Kingdom Crossovers

by HVK

A reformed Invader Zim has been chosen by the Keyblade and travels the multiverse alongside Calvin the magical alchemist and Hobbes the tiger knight, while in the shadows, a hidden conspiracy seeks to conquer the multiverse with monsters born from a dark titan with a hollow heart.

13. Red Lotus: The Hunt Commences

...I got a story recommendation on TV Tropes. THAT. IS. AWESOME.

Hello again, after a brief absence! (And forays into Cody/Sierra pairing fluffiness.) I promised this sooner, but life got in the way. I caught the worst toothache I've ever had, I got locked inside a bathroom because I'm a a Genius Ditz (with Informed Ability for Genius there!), and just recently, I seriously hurt my foot when I stepped on a rock. I only realized it when I noticed the blood in my footprints, seriously.

(Yes, I'm a bit of an idiot, as previously confirmed.)

I've also done my share of thinking, and I have my share of shipping ideas to implement later on (for all my pretensions at being a misanthropic cynic, my soul-core is made of soft fluffy sweetness). I've already got next chapter nearly finished, so that's good for you, and I also have another semi-epic story going on at the same time. (It's got a Warhammer 40k/Total Drama Island crossover with Gurren Lagann characters and themes. If that doesn't prove I'm a certifiable loon, nothing will.) Since the chapters on that one are shorter, I figure I'll post one chapter here and another chapter there to prevent the dread curse of schedule slippage or...worse...deadfic.

(Or I'll just post whatever I write first without worrying too much about it. That tends to work better, in my experience.)

Originally, this chapter was going to be part of the next oner, but it was too big for my current specifications (over 250 kilobytes), so I split it up. On the bright side, you'll have another update soon!

And for those of you with a case of Arc Fatique...two chapters of this arc left after this one. And then the REAL adventure begins. And I will make it AWESOME!

Disclaimer: I don't own anything I don't own. (I'd list things I've referenced, borrowed, camoed or whatnot, but that would take FOREVER.)

...

It's a funny thing, desensitization.

Enough exposure to the extravengently weird, and it ceases to be truly weird. People tend to get loopy when they aren't bounced across each other; when people stick around a small group for long enough, their behavior, no matter how absurd, gradually assumes some approximation of 'normal'.

This is why small insular groups are such a mess; whether it's religious zealots, political fanatics or small children (all of which tend to cause global anhillation for petty reasons), they all tend to congregate in small collectives that quickly assume a given standard of behavior to be the sole establishing standard for all good-hearted people. Because they refuse to associate with outsiders, this conceptual awareness shrinks lower and lower until they reach a horizon of behavior whereupon attempting to contact them when you're an outsider is the equivilant of facing a porcupine in a butt-kicking contest; you might win, but it's a bit of a longshot and anyway you're going to be feeling some serious pain for quite a while.

Traverse Town does not have much of this problem, owing to the sneaky ways the Free League has managed to keep all the factions and adventuring teams and private businesses and other people bouncing off each other in the Brownian motion of civilization. However, this long-winded rambling does have a point, and this point is that when people get used to even the most unusual behavior, an outsider's view of such things tends to be uncomfortably over the top.

""WHY IS THERE A ROBOT HEAD JUMPING ACROSS THE BUILDINGS!" Yelled former Irken Invader, Skoodge: a short, fat and rather messy Irken who, owing to being conned into various dirty jobs last night, was now wearing a janitor's jumpsuit.

"Being really cool?" Suggested Cosmo, a green-haired fairy, that sort that currently resembled a dimunitive human-like creature with insectile wings and a crown floating just above his head.

"What are you talking about?" Said Wanda, a pink-haired fairy with the dubious distinction of having Cosmo as her husband. She had been occupied with a large hunk of transparent stonelike material presentally containing a small child with a goofy pink hat. (He was, of course, Timmy Turner.) "I don't see any robot."

At that moment, the mobile compartmentalized robot head now carrying Roy Mustang, Lin Yao/Greed, Mr. Herrimen, Deadpool and Shego slammed out of the sky and narrowly missed hitting her. "Sorry," Roy said, not even looking at her and giving the impression that this was such a frequent occurance that apologizing was a matter of habit that was really quite pointless.

Deadpool leaned over, pushing a rather twitchy Mr. Herrimen out of the way. "And if you're going to open up with exposition, don't do it so hamfisted! Like pigs. Really big pigs with brass-knuckles. And they work as bouncers, even though their moms wanted them to be lawyers but they couldn't get into college for it because of anti-porcine specisim and they spend all their time writing angsty poetry that reads a lot like suicide letters. They sound fine, you know, they talk tough and throw the deadbeats good, but they cry in shame whenever they see pictures of their mother or see nice flowers or watch lousy police procudural shows that law people actually HATE, and no one ever sees them cry but, really, they're dead inside."

Wanda stared at him. "...What?"

"Hi," Deadpool said.

Lin leaned over. "Why do you have a child frozen in carbonite?"

Wanda looked from Timmy to Skoodge; Timmy was frozen in a posture of abject bewilderment, just as he had been right before the Heartless had torn his house (and parents) apart in a gorey horror; in a last ditch attempt to save his life, Cosmo had somehow seen it fit to freeze him like this. (At least the Heartless had lost interest, and for some reason the fairies, and had wandered off to go tear Vicky apart after their hunger won over their initial feelings that she was somehow kin to them had creeped them out big-time.) On the plus side, he had missed seeing his world explode and everyone he knew die, but on the negative side, he was going to have to emerge sooner or later, with all the horrors that would ensue. "Uh..." Skoodge said. "We discovered this ancient human from another time line and we're taking him to be de-frozen and annoy him until he tells us how many licks it takes to get to the center of a lollipop?"

Roy frowned, and then shrugged. "Works for me."

Deadpool pulled on the controls. "Hi-ho Argyle, away!"

A rocket pack emerged from the back and waves of force started pushing everything around. "It's name is not Argyle!" Lin complained.

"Bah, if it's good enough for Herbert 'Daring' Dashwood from that totally awesome world with the giant bugs and radiation, it's good enough for me!" Deadpool said defiantly, and the robot head blasted off and flew away. "Wait. Why didn't we just fly instead of jumping around to begin with?"

"Because we have to conserve power, you loony," Shego said.

"Hey, I'm not a loony! Loonies get big long lists of things they're not allowed to do."

"You do have one of those," Mr. Herrimen said. "'Deadpool's List of Things I'm No Longer Allowed To Do In City Limits'. It's quite popular with the more...unruly sort."

"Oh, okay." The robot head disappeared over the buildings and left.

Wanda watched them go. "...Cosmo, do you really think it was a good idea to ride the darkness and wash up here when we could have just poofed to somewhere with a modicum of sanity?"

Cosmo glanced at her, his finger in his ear. "Wazzat, Wanda? Hey, cool, I think I feel my brain! No, wait, those are just some gummi bears."

"...Skoodge?"

Skoodge shrugged. "I think we should get out of here as soon as possible before something crazy happens. Crazier, I mean."

Wanda snorted. "Well, if there wasn't something diminishing our powers, we wouldn't be talking about it!"

"Is that why you couldn't directly fight the Heartless? Your reality-warping psychic powers don't do anything?"

Wanda's eyes darted about suspiciously. "Yeah...psychic powers. That's exactly right. But those monsters better not come back again! I'll give them INDIRECT!"

Cosmo got bored and starting rapping on the carbonite-frozen Timmy, producing a loud noise that went klonk! "Is it supposed to sound like that?" Klonk! Klonk! Klonk!

"Cosmo, stop trying to prematurely wake up Timmy! Do you want to give Timmy the bad news?"

"Sure!" Cosmo said. "How bad could it be? Ahem: 'Timmy, good news and bad news time! The bad news is.... But on the plus side, WE'RE GOING TO GET ICE CREAM!'"

"...I really don't think that'll work, Cosmo."

"Sure it will! Ice cream makes everything better! Espicially horrible traumas. And not getting any presents for the sixtieth time in a row for your birthday. Or being told you're going to be a virgin sacrifice and they're going to make darn sure of that by taking your circumcision REALLY far. Or getting into a butt-kicking contest with a guy made of acid. Or-"

"Did you get hit on the head on the way here?" Wanda asked, almost bored. "At least, I think there were things you could have your head on."

"I saw such horrible things there," Cosmo said dreamily. "They will haunt me forever."

On the other side of the relevant-to-the-situation-meter, Mr. Herrimen glanced back at the people they had seen. Of course he knew them for new refugees. "I shall send some people to tend to them after I find some," Mr. Herrimen said. "It won't do to have those misfortunates running about without being properly informed of the best ways to help thier unfortunate situations!"

"Isn't it little bit of a bad moment to be thinking for bereaucratic things?" Lin said.

"Bah, it is never a bad moment for proper organizing! And you know well that it is my duty as president of Foster's and current holder of the Office of Inflow Regulation to assist newcomers to our town to the appropaite housing possibilities! Foster's is a bastion for the needy."

"A bastion that no longer exists?" Shego said dryly.

"It exists!" Mr. Herrimen snapped.

"Sure. In bits and pieces, but at the plus side you have a ton of materials to make a new house. Dunno if they're any good after being exploded-"

"I meant in spirit," Mr. Herrimen said testily. "Anything, whether a building or the ideals of an organization, begins as an idea. A figment of the mind, if you will. And ideas are indestructable. No mortal force can ever destroy the spirit of Foster's."

"And yet it's such a lousy substitute for body armor," Deadpool mused. "I should know, I shot a missle launcher at the house last week."

"THAT WAS YOU!"

"Relax, it was just at a little addition no one was using anyway. And by that, I mean 'I was aiming for your room but missed'. And by that I mean, 'porcupines are GOD'. Figure that one out."

Mr. Herrimen resisted the urge to throw Deadpool out of the robot. It would be cruel, potentially fatal, and most importantly, it was highly impractical with their present situation. "...Where are we going? We must make due haste to Foster's and find this madman!"

"In due time," Roy said mysteriously. "First, we're going to need to get you somewhere safe, Mr. Herrimen. You're not exactly fit to engage in a fight." This was self-evident, but it was still a bit rude. Mr. Herrimen sniffed. "And secondly...we're going to need a bit more firepower if we're going to face down Kimblee, and I have just the man in mind."

"Hello?" Shego said, waving her hands around, green fire swelling out from her flesh and passing harmlessly through her clothes to burn the air with a distinctive crackling noise like the noise of lightning in miniature. "You have me! What more firepower do you need?"

Roy raised an eyebrow at her. He waved his hand, drawing attention to the fact that he had the power to summon energies that outranked artillery strikes in raw destrustive power. "...If it was simply about raw power, I could have gone alone and that would be the end of it."

"Hey."

"We ought to think strategically," Mr. Herrimen said approvingly.

The information Lin and Roy had given him had not been heartening. It had been terrible enough to know that Foster's had been destroyed, but to discover that the people under his care were worse than dead, that their very souls had been torn away and forged into a weapon of mass destruction...

It was unspeakable. It was monstrous. And it was an unforgiveable insult against him, Mr. Herrimen, against his duty given to him by his dear maker. It was an insult to Madame Foster herself. And he could not let that stand without retribution.

And when they had revealed, reluctantly and in worried tones, that it was possible for those souls to be restored and his precious people live again...Mr. Herrimen had already decided on the course of action. Roy Mustang was a great believer in rules, because he didn't trust himself to be unfettered: he would follow Mr. Herrimen's decision. (And if he didn't like his orders, there was every possibility that he would simply undermine it in subtle and creative ways, but at least he wouldn't be direct about it. Roy Mustang's directness was worse than being hit in the face with a train, because at least the train didn't incinerate you.)

Mr. Herrimen continued. "We have already had this discussion, did we not?"

"We did?" Deadpool said cluelessly.

"We must gather together capable men and strike down this Kimblee now!" Mr. Herrimen said, ignoring Deadpool.

"Hold on, we talked about this?" Deadpool persisted.

"But first we require enormous force, and we cannot risk this in small numbers, but if we gather too many, we shall be seen," Mr. Herrimen said, still ignoring him.

"Seriously," Deadpool said. "When did this happen?"

"So it is fortunate that you already have a man in mind that will be all we need to start the battle," Mr. Herrimen finished.

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT!" Deadpool yelled. "That never happened!"

"Yes it did," Shego said. "You were there!"

"I was?"

"Yeah, you didn't shut up the entire time! While eating those snacks you brought. It was disgusting."

"...I was wondering where those went."

"You, sir, have a serious memory problem," Mr. Herrimen said to Deadpool.

Deadpool stared blankly at Mr. Herrimen and then yelled, "GIANT RABBIT!"

Everyone but Lin fell forward and hit the floor of the robot from overexposure to stupidness. "You'd think they'd be inured to the stupidity by now," Lin said aloud; it was fortunate that he was the one driving or something very bad might have happened.

I blame the reality TV, Greed said. That stuff is evil. EVIL!...And I'm the living embodiment of avarice. I KNOW what evil is!

Technically, Lin replied. You know what occasionally antagonistic neutrality is.

They kept moving for a while (recovering from Deadpool-induced stupidity by now) and finally came to an up-scale house in the nicer part of the First District. (In other words, it was where all the rich people that liked adventure lived.)

To call it a 'house', though, was not entirely accurate. There was some evidence that Traverse Town had been adopted by a succession of people between the refugee's arrival and the disappearance of the original inhabitants, and one of the bigger foundations of them was the fact that a number of buildings were nearly identical to various architecuture from many other worlds; some believed that these people came to Traverse Town and attempted to use it as a base to estabilishing some kind of dominion that went awry when the anti-social robots that disliked the intruder's presence showed up and killed them all, vaporizing the bodies but leaving the buildings intact. But that was stupid, so there was the possibility that something else had happened...

This particular building was a bit out of place, because it looked very much like a town hall from North America circa the 1950s. (The giant llama-head for a door made it pretty egregious, though.) It wasn't too different from the rest of the buildings around it, which tended towards a similarily out of place but still quite nice look; high-class and important buildings with a certain Traverse Town touch.

Roy jumped out of the robot and walked to the llama-mouth door, passing a complicated mailbox with three names on them: Gibbs, Possible and Stoppable.

He watched his step as he walked across the small lawn; the woman that ran the household was more than a little dangerously eccentric, and it wasn't uncommon for people to run afoul of cleverly hidden traps. (Given that the house was occupied by a high-ranking officer of the Peace Marines, two famous adventurers and a mad scientist-in-the-making, this wasn't unjustified.) He made it to the door without incident, and knocked on the door while Lin Yao and Mr. Herrimen followed him, the latter more nervously: the trap thing was a well-known danger of the house.

An intercom buzzed, static crackling. "Watch it, careful with that...that...the hell is that thing, anyway?"

"I told you, it's a lot of things," A young boy said back. "It's a wrench, it's a set of pliers, a self-contained toolkit, a soldering iron, a blowtorch..."

"A blowtorch!" A man said. "Now wait a minute, what are you doing with a BLOWTORCH at my knee!"

"Calm down," the boy said. "I'm not going to burn you! Unless something horribly bad happens. I should have probably tested this thing before I started..."

"Izumi?" The man asked. "Help?"

"Hold on a minute," The woman, presumably Izumi, said. "We got someone at the door."

"Please hurry. I enjoy having legs."

The woman scoffed. "Suck it up, tough guy." She cleared her throat, and her tone became much more level and welcoming. "Hello, whoever you are. It's Izumi Gibbs. Who are you?"

"Isn't your survillence scanner working?" Roy asked.

"Nah, thing's broken. Hang on, you sound familiar...Roy Mustang, is that you!"

Roy laughed a bit, ignoring the distrustful undertone that come into Izumi's voice. "Yeah. Been a while, Miss Curtis."

"It's Izumi Gibbs now, you idiot." This wasn't said with a great deal of rancor, at least no more than usual. "Keep it straight."

"Whatever you say."

"So, what's got you calling down here?"

"We're going to need to borrow your husband for a bit," Roy said.

There was silence. Then, in a rather frostier tone; "He's on leave. You KNOW that."

"Sorry, but it's a bit of an emergency."

"Like what? Mustang, my husband is NOT some rook for you to pull out whenever you need someone shot. What the hell kind of emergency would be important enough for you to go back on your word and pull him back into duty prematurely?"

"How about a rampaging State Alchemist that blew up Foster's?" Lin said. "Emergency enough for you!"

There was silence at the other line. It wasn't shocked exactly; grim, and slightly pensieve.

"Izumi?" Roy said.

"...We're in the basement. Get you and whoever else you roped into this down here; we need to talk." The intercom switched off, and the door, a rolling vault affair, slid open.

"Hey, boss!" Shego called. "We're supposed to wait out here or what?"

"I don't think it'd be a good idea to drag you guys down there," Lin said. "Just occupy some space and keep bringing down the real estate."

"Okay!" Deadpool said. He pointed at a random pedestrian. "Your tie is ugly! It's totally a brain-eating monster that you bought. Like a sucker. Hope you enjoy having your brain cavity excavated!"

"NOOO!" The pedestrian yelled, tearing off his tie and running off in horror. "MOTHER WAS RIGHT!"

Lin and Roy glanced at each other: Is it really a good idea to leave them to their own devices? They looked back to see Shego, in the depths of her boredom, shoot a laser from her fingertip to write Shego Rulez in a nearby warehouse; Deadpool, disagreeing with this assesement, had pulled out a pair of sub-automatic machineguns and rapid-fired into the wall: No, Shego Is Total Lamer! Dedpool Rokz! This had inspired the both of them to start retaliating with arguing messeges while otherwise ignoring each other, producing a rare non-online flame war.

"Let's just hurry, shall we?" Mr. Herrimen said. Lin and Roy nodded and they went through the door.

They came into what had probably been a large lobby and had been converted into a rather pleasant living room via a creative application of nice wallpaint, lovely floor-tiles, and some nice furniture arranged arround a complicated entertainment rig: a TV, a array of video game consoles, a recorded media player...

It was all quite nice. A perfect little family room. The one off detail was a small table set against the wall, quiet and unintrusive. It had quite a few ever-burning candles on it, set on little mounts, and behind each one was a portrait. There were names on the cold-iron mounts, looking like they had been sculpted by alchemic forces. (They probably had, they were too perfect and smoothly shaped.) Roy knew some of the people there.

Sig Curtis; Izumi's first husband and long since deceased, an extremely large and dour-looking man who had nonetheless been extremely kind and annoyed with the fact that he looked so scary; a mild-looking older man with graying brown hair and a beautiful woman with short-cut red hair: James Possible and Anne Possible. Kim's parents, long dead in the Heartless attacks. A small and wild looking six year old, looking much like his father and grinning like a total maniac. Timothy Possible. The younger of Kim's twin brothers, and he'd died with his parents back then. A stocky balding man and a stately woman with blonde hair; Eugene Stoppable and Jo Anne Stoppable. Ron's parents, among those murdered by Abel Nightroad's twin brother Cain some time ago for reasons that even now no one understood. (Abel had even said that 'Cain was always a bit cracked even before he went insane'. Given Abel's eccentric behavior, this was very worrying if Cain was crazy by his standards.) And finally, a elegantly gilded portrait of a woman and a young girl; Shannon and Kelly Gibbs.

A memorial to the dead. Most everyone in town had one of these. To be touched by the darkness, to survive it, was a horrifying thing. People latched on to thing's to cast the memory of it away, and so often they held to the memories of their lost loved ones with such tenacity that some went completely insane when their poor battered minds lost hold with reality. This memorial was more restrained than others; whether that meant that this household was letting go of people that were just memories or that they kept it under tight restraint was uncertain.

Beside that memorial was a door, fashioned after an old elevator; a brass two-piece sliding door in front of a simple lift as flat as a disc and shaped to fit in the tube-shaped elevator, the stainless steel walls engraved with a large spiral groove sliding down. Roy, Lin and Mr. Herrimen stepped inside it, the seemingly delicate-looking lift not so much as creaking under their combined weight. It was a product of alchemy and mad science, this lift, and it was unsurprising.

Roy had been to this house before and knew how it worked. He directed his attention to a control panel that the designer had seen fit to design in a retro fashion, all large knobs and directional switches and a big lever next to four little buttons. (It was probably Jim or even Ron's idea to do it like that; one fashion these days for sheer epic coolness was rooted in brass rivets, bulky machinery and retro mechanisms, better known as the steampunk school of design. Ron had liked it before it became the Cool Thing.) After a moment's consideration, Roy hit the 'Basement' button and twisted the lever down. Machinery quitely hummed to live, the door in front of them sliding shut before a concealed door slid out of the wall and went over the elevator door; by some mysterious process, this also caused the mechanism that kept the elevator lift locked in place to release, clamps unclicking and others clicking into place. There was a brief jolt and then a pleasantly smooth sliding noise that didn't quite stop but simply quieted until it was nearly unnoticable.

The lift took them downwards, not that it was easy to notice. Roy had become aware that, in spite of certain public perceptions, the clearest evidence that a truly efficient machine was at work was the lack of any overt noise or machines doing things or spinning lights; a truly useful device did it's work in peace. Roy had helped fund the considerable redesigns to this house as a personal favor to Gibbs some time ago, so he knew what to expect, but the other's didn't. (Though Mr. Herrimen clearly approved of the elevator's design ethic.)

The elevator went on for a fair bit; how far down, even Roy didn't know. This wasn't because he'd been lazy or unconcerned with the redesigning; it was almost literally impossible to be sure of how far down they were, or even if they were still technically in their own universe. Traverse Town engineers had access to a great deal of advanced technology, and at least one specialized branch of it made things like dimensional space a bit more...elastic than it ought to be.

(The Hitchhiker's Guide has a few entires relating to this sort of thing. It is notable that almost all of the pre-refugee buildings tend to be somewhat bigger on the inside then seems sensible. There are plenty of theories about this: they figured out how to compress time to expand space, they generated energy that warps the laws of physics, the town itself was a few decimal paces askew on the dimensional axis...the point is, space has never been a problem for most Traverse Town residents, though acquiring the technology to keep it that way is rather expensive. It also makes odd things happen; it's not uncommon for people to find that their home has suddenly acquired a closet that inexplicably leads to a closet with reversed gravity and a thriving proto-society of very smart fruitbats. This is, as yet, simply another small problem that most people take in stride.)

They eventually came to a stop (but not after a few turns that Roy was reasonably certain weren't physically possible in a downwards slide), clamps and bolts sliding into place to secure the elevator. The doors slid away, and they were immediately greeted by a small chaos of noises.

The ring of dozens of machines working together in concert, sounds of the life electric echoing in supremely balanced unity until they sang. The mingled mob-echo of over a dozen media displayers activated all at once. The hiss of molten metal cooling, the creaking of metal joints moving, and above all us, a lot of noise that was too indistinct to make out.

It was, in effect, a mixture of a laboratory, a tinkerer's workshop and a forge.

Roy, Lin and Mr. Herrimen walked into a large room, low-ceilinged and smooth-surfaced. There were racks and shelves everywhere, lined with a stunning array of bizarre devices and strange machines, many (but hardly all) looking like mockeries of sane science made from the assorted parts of half a dozen normal applicances and electronics. Small, uncomplicated but sturdy robots patrolled the room, navigating across the room's walls and ceiling on compressed tendrils, their arms thin and delicate instruments that picked up fallen devices while the robots carried them to their appropiate places.

The family sub-basement, Roy recalled. This complex was the territory of this family's very own mad scientist-in-training, Jim Possible, and later on, after he started to crawl out of his own crippling fears of incompetence, Ron, if to a lesser degree. The place where Jim expressed his own brand of genius, warped in his own half-mad grief.

It was not a place for unwelcome intruders to enter. Fortunately, Roy had the decency to have announced himself, so when one unoccupied robot scittered up to them and extended a hand from about knee-level, it was not bristling with gauss-claws to flay them to the bone but a delicately long-fingered technician's hand, offered in greeting and supplication.

Roy gently shook it, feeling a bit stupid. This seemed to please the robot; it gesticulated wildly before calming down and gestured hopefully at a nearby open door, from which a degree of noise was coming from. The robot ran to it, moving with all the disquieting ease of a spider, and glanced impatiently at them.

Mr. Herrimen shuddered. "That thing...knows us for who we are. That can't be right. Man was not meant to fabricate life like that..."

Lin open a eye lazily; it was red, inhuman. "That's fine thing to say, coming from an imaginary friend," Greed said.

"Hmph. There is a difference between the fruits of a child's pure imagination, and the artifice of arrogance."

"Not really." Then again, it was a bit of a personal insult at Greed...he was an artificial being, after all.

Roy held up a hand, signaling silence and forestalling the argument before it could break out. "Why is it no one can hold a straight conversation anymore? Everyone always take left turns in mid-speech. Just follow the damn robot and get this over with."

Mr. Herrimen bowed his head. "I apologize."

Greed shrugged; he twitched violently, Lin's more amiable personality turning it into a consenting gesture. "Fair enough."

Roy grunted. "Good." He paused, and before he stepped after the impatient little robot, added, "And the creation of intelligent life, mechanical or otherwise, should be considered on a case by case basis."

"Now wait just a minute!" Mr. Herrimen said. Roy had already left. "Bah, that man is too good by half..."

Lin scratched his head. "What does that mean?"

"It's a flavour of British that's a tad difficult for foriegners to grasp, I'm afraid."

"...But you're not British. Your creator is American and she imagined you. In America!"

"Yes. But. That's. Er. That's how I like it."

"But-"

"How I like it!"

"Will you two hurry up!" Roy yelled at them from somewhere further on. They yelped and did just that.

They passed through a short hallway (happening to see through the open doors elegantly-crafted and curious things: a bathroom with a idiotically complex mechanism of many moving parts for a toilet; a trophy room neatly arranged with memorbillia in glass cases of varying sizes, including a plastic cactus; a rather larger room filled with vats full of noxious and strange materials, and out of one a horrible slime-monster had crawled out to read a book and wave amiably at them; a small dojo with a hulking training robot covered in padded mats; and many other oddities) before finally coming out into a large circular room.

If the sub-basement entrance and the smaller project rooms had been thought cluttered, they were now proven to be merely pretenders to the idea-rule of that very thing. 'Cluttered' was, in fact, too narrow a word for this room: some lunatic had seen fit to line the rounded walls with a large extended series of self-contained automated foundries; enclosed behind walls lined with great big panes of transparent glass and built with astonishing complexity, working with glasswork and metal and stranger materials, all completely automated, the finished works making their way towards conveyer belts that transported them to deposit bins that could be pulled out.

That was the outermost row. The in-between row was a series of tables of unequal size, slightly rounded and presumably shaped for the individual task at hand. They appeared to have been, not wheeled in or something, but were actually part of the floor; the floor was patterned with odd grooves, and the shallow spaces under the tables matched the aforementioned tables perfectly, and the mechanisms forming the 'table legs' indicated that they could extend and retract quite readily. These tables were, frankly, a mess; a truly deranged plethora of half-finished machines, concussive firearms, energy-based weaponry, a few suits of powered armor and even, tucked away into one corner, was a hulking piloted fighting robot, badly damaged and inoperable.

There was more: flying trays moving around the room with exaggerated care so the tools they held didn't fall out, large operating tables chained to the ceiling for the repair of the powered armor suits; a towering mish-mash of sensory equipment, scavenged from what Roy was pretty sure was amazingly powerful communications technology (probably to get an actual signal down here; he also saw the set-up for a intercom there) and more all wired into the wall, and over a dozen video-monitors, televisions and even a few rare holographic glyph projectors were part of it and tuned in, each single one displaying a different channel, mostly presenting music but others tending towards news programs and cartoons. But Roy's attenion was solely focused on an operating table at the very middle of the room, bright spotlights hanging from the ceiling illuminating it, a few tables pulled up directly around it and rimmed with a fascinating array of tools; there was a man on the table while a young boy was doing mad science-y things to him, a stern woman watching the operation like a mother lion watches the universe and dares it to tick her off.

It was, according to a handcarved wooden sign hanging from from animated chains forged of glass and plasm, The Workshop.

"...Oh my," Mr. Herrimen said. "I've heard stories about places like this, but I never knew...is this all for that little boy!"

"Well, not just him, but then wonderworkers like this like to do lots of stuff," Lin said; he would know, a lot of mad scientists worked for him. "I hear the Ron kid got into mad engineering a little bit ago, and their friend Wade does most of his best work here with Jim. He's not quite mad, but he is scary good at what he does, you know?"

They approached the center, the obvious place of business. "Yo," Roy said, announcing himself.

The voice of the woman watching the whole thing arose from the mess of noise like sea foam from a storm. "Is that how esteemed military officers announce their presence these days?"

Mr. Herrimen sniffed. "The lady does have a point. Although...who exactly are you? I don't quite recall."

The woman gave him a look that could curdle milk, kill a yak at thirty paces and give a tarrasque a serious case of indigestion. "I'm a housewife," She said, and while an innocent enough statement on it's own, spoken by her, it neared levels of ominousness that was normally used by wealthy men with right hand cats and a good mad laugh.

The woman in question was Izumi Gibbs, and before she'd remarried after the death of her husband she'd been Izumi Curtis. She was a strong and stern-looking woman with a faint Asiatic touch to her features, though the curled dreadlocks were a bit egregious. She looked matronly, in both attitude and build, but Roy'd heard horror stories from the Elric brothers about her teaching methods and general despotion, so he took all the care in dealing with her that other men reserved for eldritch abominations. (Even more so. Even eldritch abominations could sometimes be defeated.)

She glared at Roy for a few more moments; she looked like she was seriously considering ripping one of the tables from the ground and hitting Roy with it. True, it was bolted to the floor, but that would only mean a delay of a few crucial moments. She eventually grunted and said, "Jim! Don't be rude. Say hello to the military interlopers."

"We are not military!" Mr. Herrimen said, indicating himself and Lin, who looked rather panicked at being put on the spot like that.

"But you admit you are still interlopers by omission."

Mr. Herrimen started to retort, but Lin clapped a hand over his mouth. "Quiet, you fool! You'll doom us all! Have you any idea what that woman can do to your insides with her bare hands, let alone alchemy!"

"Huh?" This was from Jim; a preteen who was a bit small for his age and looked a fair bit different from his picture upstairs. He, apparently, had used to have a upraised bit of hair on his forehead, but now his hairstyle was distinctive by it's absence, replaced by a fairly standard messy brown mop. He was wearing a labcoat armored with padding. and held a bizarre tool made from a dozen other tools into an unwieldy thing that was nearly bigger than he was. His round face was a bit haggard looking, with slight bags around his eyes. His eyes, though...

They weren't, by any stretch of the imagination, normal. They were brown, which was fine, but at the same time, they were some other color. A color that came from light, but not the visible sort; a terrible and awesome light from within that shone out in his every erratic movement, that was burning his brain from the inside with the raw force of Idea...

A lot of people in Traverse Town had gone a little mad. Jim went a few steps beyond that. He'd been a smart kid before his brother had died, according to Kim, but he was now something above mere intelligence now; the horror he'd endured had broken something in him, made a hole in him. And, as if to chase away the darkness, a light had filled that hole.

The light, so they said, of Inspiration. The light that had driven him into a comfortable madness that came with the knowing to create wonders that followed only the laws of science that Jim pretended to use or just made up. His madness had catalyzed in sorrow and loss, and something of that colored everything around here; these wonders that were a bulwark against the darkness that he would never ever forget.

Roy didn't like looking into those eyes very much. Just like every genuine mad scientist he knew, they reminded him, if only fleetingly, of Shou Tucker. Here was someone who might just look at his family and, even if only for a moment, wonder if an new wonder might work better if they were powered by human hearts instead of inefficient engines and then briefly forget that he was looking at people and not, say, annoyingly loud raw materials.

Jim stared at them for a moment longer. "Hey," he eventually said, presumably acknowledging that they existed and were not warped figments of his imagination like a lot of other stuff was.

The man on the bench tilted his head up. "Good morning, Commander-Admiral," He said. "I'd salute properly, but my hands are inaccessible."

Roy glanced at the tidy little restraints around his arms, legs and lower body, presumably to keep him from moving around too much. "You may consider yourself excused from protocol; I'm here on unofficial business." He could feel Izumi staring a hole in his neck. It was extremely uncomfortable. "So...needless to say, I'm sorry to bring your vacation short."

The man shrugged vaugely, as if to say that duty called and he wasn't one to refuse to answer. Mr. Herrimen bowed his head. "I must apologize, sir, for intruding into your household. But this is, of course, a dire emergency."

"Yeah...I heard," The man said. He went quiet for a moment. "...I'm sorry, Mr. Herrimen."

"It is no fault of yours, mister...I apologize, but I seem to have misplaced your name."

The man on the table, a strongly-built man with short-cut gray hair, peered at him. Mr. Herrimen was well-known for his faculty for remembering names and faces; clearly, this was a very serious thing indeed. "I'm sorry to hear that. Field-Admiral Jethro Gibbs, at your disposal."

Izumi grunted, in very plain distaste. "Only dogs let leashes be put around their neck." Roy rolled his eyes. Izumi didn't miss it, and glared at him.

Roy had seen hell on Earth. He had seen the sight of men and women murdered like animals in their own streets, falling like flies that had flown into a cloud of poison. He'd seen entire city blocks erupt into firestorms ignited by his own hand, heard the screaming of the families his soldiers had forced to the walls cut off (burned with such intensity that their eyes melted and their skin was charcoal and the evaporated fat made his lips sticky and oh God, how many times he should have just pulled the regulation gun from his holster and fed his brain a bullet). He'd look into the mirror, dully thinking about how many thousands of his own country dead on his hands and the Fuhrer-President's orders and how that warped country he'd once loved was either going to change so that the survivor's either came home to Ishbal and no atrocity like that would ever happen again or that Amestris itself would burn in revolution and something less monstrous would be born of it.

Izumi Gibbs' glare, a hot point on the back of his neck like a sniper's light, nearly made him take a step away from her. Years of training, conditioning, soul-searing horror almost broken out of the terror that Izumi inspired in every single sane person that was aware of just what she could do.

He collected his thoughts, took a deep breath. Exhaled. "...So you guys know about the destruction of Foster's."

"Yes," Gibbs said.

"Certainly," Izumi said.

"Wait, what happened now?" Jim said.

There was a long pause. "Nothing," Izumi said, after a moment. "Absolutely nothing that you need to dwell upon or possibly destroy your faith in your life being safe."

"Oh, okay," Jim said. He went back to doing...whatever weird experiment he was doing to his step-dad.

"Uh...what exactly are you doing here?" Roy asked Gibbs, uncertainly.

Gibbs grimaced. "After that...unfortunate business with the platypus-goblin, my leg keeps reverting to a bazooka. We're trying to stop that."

"It's probably a residual irrational flux interacting with his morphological field in decidedly unfortunate ways," Jim said. "My guess is that Dad's morphological field is already weird enough with his Devil Fruit curse, which would explain why his leg is transforming into a massive firearm specifically."

"Did you solve it?" Roy said, understanding every word he said because he bothered to do his research.

Jim shrugged. "Well, the best thing is to wait for his morphological field to reset itself. That sort of thing happens naturally. It does, actually; it's easier to change the nature of linear time advancement as experienced by temporal beings than to keep a morphological field from reverting itself. In the meantime...I'd be really careful where I put that leg."

"So...you're fit for combat duty?" Roy asked Gibbs.

Jim frowned. "Hey, wait a minute. First, you were talking to me, not my dad. It's rude to just wander off on someone in the middle of a sentance. Second, what are you doing taking my dad into a fight? He's on vacation!"

"...It's really really important?" Lin said honestly.

Jim scowled at them. For a moment, something flickered behind his eyes, a vaugely sociopathic impulse to stop what was intruding on his domain and keep his world-view safe and intact and his; it was gone just as quickly as it had appeared, and he shrugged in disgust. "Whatever," He said, turning away. He paused. "...Kim's out there. And Ron, and Rufus. They're right there in the middle of the action, aren't they?"

Roy raised an eyebrow. Mr. Herrimen, to his surprise, nodded. "Indeed, I met them earlier. Escorting a band of refugees about town, I believe. They may well be in harm's way, but I wouldn't worry about it, lad; they are far too skilled to suffer a terrible fate."

Izumi's eyes widened. A subtle clenching of muscles in her lower jaw seemed to indicate that mental processes were gearing towards a very specific conclusion. Jim bit his lip and said, "...But that didn't save Kim from being kidnapped and taken to that...place."

This was, admittedly, a good point.

"Go," Izumi said suddenly to Gibbs. "Hurry up and do something awesome."

Jim hurredly undid the restraints, allowing Gibbs to get up in time for Izumi to throw a shirt in his face. "Don't let them die," Jim said. The small tone of his voice turned a normally cliche line into something miserable and afraid.

"No," Gibbs said flatly, stepping off the table. It wasn't a promise or even a statement; it was simply a declaration of the nature of historical inevitability: empires crumbled, peace was harder than it sounded, and his adopted kids (and Ron; Gibbs wasn't sure how Ron figured into their little family except as a definite in-law someday) were never going to get hurt while he was in the immediate vicinity.

Roy waited for Gibbs to get his boots on before he cleared his throat. "Let's go," He said.

"Hold on a second," Izumi said grimly. "Mister Herrimen stays here."

"What?"

Mr. Herrimen nodded. "Ah. I see. It would be untoward to leave your household undefended. Very well, I accept."

Izumi blinked. "What? No, you have it backwards. It's you that's being protected. Jim? Get the weapons."

Jim gasped in joy. "Does this mean we get to pull out the rapid-fire sub-automatic flaming drill machine-chucks!"

"We'll see," Izumi said indulgently.

"WHOO!" Jim yelled, running off somewhere.

"What," Mr. Herrimen said flatly.

"Oh, come on, you don't think we're about to take you into an active battlezone, do you?" Roy said. "You're basically useless. Besides, it'd be a blow to the town if you died. Or something. Madame Foster would yell at me anyway and no one wants that. Espicially me."

"What."

"Look on the bright side, you'll be perfectly safe," Izumi said. "Also, we're getting paid for this."

"You are?" Mr. Herrimen said.

"Yes."

"Ah..." Mr. Herrimen found he couldn't quite argue with Izumi. It was like tapdancing on quicksand while wearing cement shoes; you could try, but it was a stupid idea and anyway you'd only end up dying or at least end up in severe discomfort. "...But why?"

"For interrupting my husband's vacation and dragging him out is why!" Izumi snapped.

Mr. Herrimen recoiled. "Ah, well, if you insist...but I must wonder. Why do we require the help of Field-Admiral Gibbs in this matter?"

"Firearms expert," Gibbs said.

"Ah. But I don't see any weapons being carried out...?"

Gibbs chuckled. "I don't need to bring any guns with me."

"I...don't understand."

"Me neither. This Devil Fruit thing doesn't make any sense to me either...but that's part of the point of them, I've learned." He nodded to Roy. "Let's go then, sir."

Roy nodded. "Lin? Lead the way."

Lin nodded, and grinned. As they left, leaving poor Mr. Herrimen down there, Gibbs said, "So why is Lin Yao leading the way again?"

"He's Xingian royalty," Roy stated. "No matter where he goes, no matter how far he flees, our enemy will never escape us with him there."

"Why is that?"

"Xingian royalty and their bodyguards are taught to recognize the flow of living force in the world," Lin remarked. "We can...sense living things, you see. It's related to Rendanjutsu, but I've never learned it. Pity now..." Lin trailed off. "...But regardless, because of all the lives he's carrying around with him, I will be able to sense Kimblee as long as he's carrying the Philosopher's Stone."

"What are you talking about?" Gibbs said.

"...What, we didn't mention what really happened?"

"No. And what's a...'Philosopher's Stone'? I remember hearing Ed and Al talking about it their last night before they shipped out abroad, and I've heard legends about it off-world, but...wait. This is going to be one of those things I'm really not going to like. Is it?"

"Sorry."

Roy sighed. "Gibbs...I think you're missing a few pertinent details about our enemy..."

...

"Let us in!" Zim told a large burly armadillo-man blocking his way into what he'd been told was a TV stationo. "It is a matter of vengeance and stuff."

"No."

"I said, let us in!"

"No."

"Let us in NOW!"

"No.

"Please?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"No."

"I'll have Zuko come over here and tell his childhood traumas at you if you don't."

Zuko poked his scar. "I don't have a left eyebrow for a reason!"

Zim and his group were standing in a small, slightly rundown neighborhood a short distance from Foster's, most of the buildings surprisingly tall with a lot of canopys and tarps everywhere. (It was to cover up a few holes or to illustrate that this was a street well-known for selling miscellaneous goods, but otherwise there was no reason for them. It just looked neat.) They'd left Foster's behind, hoping in their vauge way that the people tending to it knew what they were doing.

Sokka and Calvin had come up with a plan. It was not the sanest of plans. It was a plan lacking in subtlety or sensibleness. It was probably why Aang, Zim, Toph, Cyborg, Abel and Ron approved of it. (And why Kim, Katara, Hobbes, Zuko and Scar disapproved. Appa, Rufus, Momo and Morte were largely indifferent, as they were just along for the ride.) This plan required the use of a broadcast studio, and it just so happened that the three-story building recently refurbished for the purposes of the young but ambitious WUBA station was perfect for their purpose.

It was a nice looking studio, if a bit battered; there was numerous cracks and marks all over the concrete facade and the whole building's general look managed to appear like it was hunching over like a paranoid animal. It had an abnormal amount of windows with sniper's-balconies, a holdover from it's previous incarnation as a bunker for a short-lived band of crazy survivalists who disbanded when they realized that since something insane tried to kill Traverse Town every other week, there wasn't much point in trying to abandon civilization waiting for it. At the very top of it building was a modest little communications tower with four sattilite dishes to do whatever it is that they're supposed to do, and at the top of that was a little...something. Calvin had said it looked like a 'Class-3 Apokalypski Node' but no one else had cared, except when Hobbes had quietly explained that 'Apokalypski' was that branch of super-science that dealed with communications and scanning and wasn't anywhere as threatening as it sounded.

The WUBA studio building was sandwiched between two other slightly smaller buildings, currently unoccupied (Zim made a note of this and thought he might be able to appropiate them later), which gave it a good defensible position; you could only really go in from the front or top. The roof had it's problems of being pretty well guarded by a few guys at the top (it was vulnerable with the communications tower up there), and the front door was a nice security-minded one; big and round, like a vault door, designed to slide into the wall of the building and made of about a solid foot of metal.

On the other hand, Zim mused briefly, looking back at Appa, who was guarding their backs and peacefully watching the proceedings with a genially detached air, it probably wouldn't stand up to an enraged Sky Bison. Or, for that matter, a Metalbender. (And then he could probably just use his Keyblade to unlock it. He still wasn't sure how that worked, though.)

The armadillo-man blinked. He hesitated. "No."

Zim sighed and waved his hand. "You heard the man. Armadillo-man. Whatever. Bring on the horrific backstory exposition!"

"I resent the nightmarish reality of my formative years being used this way, but okay," Zuko said, walking over.

Hobbes held out an arm and Zuko walked right into it, stopping him in mid-step. "Wait. Guys, I'm still not sure this is the best idea..."

"What, you mean getting into a TV studio, convincing them to halt all network broadcasting and televise you making fun of Kimblee and daring him to come get you so we can set a trap for him?" Sokka said. "Is that it? Is that the idea you don't think is good?"

"Yes. I have a problem with it, that being that it is very, very stupid. But also, this plan hinges entirely on us managing a series of difficult hurdles, and we can't even get past the bouncer."

"Security guard, actually," The armadillo-man said. "...And that's what you want to do?"

"Yes," Calvin said. "That is what we want to do."

"...Who and what is a Kimblee?"

"The sadistic sociopath that blew up Foster's, sucked up the souls of the inhabitants and shoved them into a crystal thing."

"...Oh. Well, that's too bad, you're not getting in."

"Come on!" Cyborg said. "People are already dead over this guy, don't you want to prevent the loss of life? People like preventing the loss of lives."

"Meh," The armadillo-man said. "People; I can take 'em or leave 'em."

"You suck."

The group pulled back, starting to get discouraged, and Sokka gave Abel a dirty look. "You said this sort of thing happened all the time in town!" He said.

Abel shrugged helplessly. "I said that there isn't anything to prevent people from getting the newsies around us to send out emergency reports like this if the need is dire enough! Never did I say that they had to cooperate just because we ask them to! Right, Aang? Aang?"

The young Avatar in question was staring at the sky, fascinated; not by clouds, but by a big holographic projector screen that had appeared about fifteen minutes ago and seemed to be made of a vaporous mass in the sky; it was showing cartoons, and thus he was interesting. "How did I not notice this before?" He said excitedly. "And how are they doing that?"

"Oh, yeah," Ron said. "We put our public feeds way up in the sky. They'd get smashed in all the weird stuff that happens if they weren't! There's a ton of weird science involved; the clouds up there are really tiny friendly robots, our Internet is based with them as routers and data storage units 'cause they've been scanning data from every world system in range for the last six hundred years..."

"And they turn on around this time of day, 'cause that's when most people are out and about and ready to watch!" Abel said. "We have special projector nodes all throughout the town to display them and-"

"Focus!" Scar and Kim said.

"Sorry," The two goofballs said.

"So, basically, our situation is thus," Katara said. "We need a TV studio to pull off Sokka's plan-"

"It's my plan too!" Calvin said.

She ignored him. "-But we can't get into this one. And finding another one would waste precious time!"

"Probably," The security guard said.

Zim glared at him. "Hmph. I think you are all missing the obvious solution."

"Whazzat?" Aang said.

"Destroy everything. We smash every building in sight flat, pick through the rubble and continue our search until we find Kimblee, as he would then launch a devastating counterattack. Since he would just have a building on his head, it will be simple to incapicitate him and then do something about that stone of doom. And stuff."

They stared at him.

"What?"

"Sometimes," Aang said. "The things you say frighten all of us. Really, they do."

"Don't you have any clout here?" Calvin asked Scar and Abel. "You're with the Crossguard. You should have some political power, right?"

"Yes, but we're priests," Abel said patiently. "Our founders were notoriously paranoid about what excessive idealism, zealotry and short-sightedness would result in the hands of people with political power. As it is, the Crossguard's clout basically amounts to 'play nice or we'll murder you in the faces with flamethrowers.'"

"That seems a bit excessive," Toph commented. "...I like it."

"Yeah, we get that a lot," Abel said. "People always expect the religion-oriented faction to be ineffectual or useless if not evil."

"Maybe we could just break in here," Zuko said, only half-joking.

"Okay," Zim said.

"Wait, what?" Morte said.

Scar sighed. He rolled up the sleeve on his right arm. "Much as I resent the idea...we don't have many other options and Kimblee needs to be dealt with now."

The armadillo-man squeaked. "Eek! I mean...if you need to broadcast something emergency-type so bad, why not try those guys across the street?"

Zim turned. Across the street was a large crater in the ground that no one had bothered fixing yet. He blinked and turned back. "What are you-"

The armadillo-man had gone, and slammed the door and locked it. From the sounds of it, he also armed a security system, rammed restraining bolts and shoved some furniture there too.

"We've been suckered!" Zim declared.

"Obviously," Morte said.

"Silence! Ah well, perhaps we should find another station-"

Various windows open on the television station, from a strategically convienient approach. A motley and heavily armed team of assorted sentients in body armor looked out, holding weaponry of great potential violence. "The sanctity of this station will not be violated! Your mission is of no concern to us; whether by our deaths we make a blockade or you are defeated, you will not pass into this place!"

"...Okay, I can understand the people here having to be tough just to survive, but this is getting ridiculous," Hobbes said.

"That guy up there has a laser gatling gun," Calvin said. "How'd they prime the electron charge packs? I want one!"

"That guy gots missle launcher!" Rufus squeaked.

"Eh, it's only a Maverick Skydropper Mk. 2," Kim said dismissively. "It's nothing special."

"And that guy has...I don't know what that is," Sokka said. "What do you call a combination of a flamethrower, a drill and two paired plasma rifles?"

"Really cool?" Zuko suggested. They stared at him. "What? I'm not allowed to be interested in heavy armaments?"

"Perhaps we should reconsider this news station," Abel said. "We have one back at the Monastary; it's a ways, but I could swing things so that we could make a quick transmission and-"

"They have heavy weapons to keep me out!" Zim said. "And they don't even know who I am! I am interested now!" He laughed madly. "PREPARE YOURSELVES, GUARD-SLAVES!"

He charged, blasting the door partially out of alignment with a massive blast of fire. (Zuko nodded approvingly; Zim had already learned something of proper power allocation now.) The metal had bent double from the heat and force, bucking against all that stood in it's way. Toph and Appa slammed into it and pushed it the rest of the way with Metalbending and sheer brute force, to resultant screaming.

"Can we stop to think about this for a minute?" Sokka said.

"No," Scar said. "No arguments. No heisitation. No turning back." Xiao-Mei popped up from his shirt and growled. "For better or worse, we're going through."

Sokka shrugged. "I was afraid of that." He unsheathed his sword. "...We're not going to get lynched for this or anything, right?"

"Nope," Abel said. "We've an anarchic society. We practically live by the laws of dramatic neccisity! So stop fussing and make with incapacitating. And please no maiming or worse, it will make things not good."

"An interesting mode of speech," Zim said, as the defenders of the TV station retreated, no doubt to face them directly. "Let us commence with the awesomeness!"

"Uh," Hobbes said carefully. "I have a small problem with that. It's one thing to defend ourselves against a mob riot - that you caused, incidentally - but seriously, invading a TV studio? Can't we, I dunno, jury rig some sort of super-big hologram thing and get Kimblee's attention that way? We could do a song and dance number! I like song and dance numbers. Also not getting into fights with people that are carrying big guns like this."

"You'd think so," Zim said. "But no, that's boring. FIGHT! FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!"

And so they did.

...

Back at Foster's, the clean-up was proceeding...well, not smoothly, there simply hadn't been enough time yet, but it was proceeding nonetheless.

None of the workers was feeling espicially good about this job. Massive problems resulting in collateral damage was a problem in Traverse Town that they had all gotten used to, but Foster's had always seemed...safe. But now all the people that had lived here were either dead or seriously injured, and either way homeless. It was a disturbing thought; if even the people that lived here weren't safe...

Paranoia was starting to rise, and no small degree of stress.

One small group of workers was trying to pull a bathtub out of where it'd lodged into the ground, rocketed from the house with such velocity that it had struck with the force of small artillery. "Why are we even bothering with this stuff?" One guy complained; he was a rather scrawny parrotman, his wing-arms equipped with a set of slim opposable digits on the 'thumb' of his wings, and he was rather dextrous with them; a few of his co-workers were miffed at how good he was at delicate tasks. This was ameliorated by his incompetence in everything else he did.

"Eh?" The largest of them, a spindly sandworm with a communcation vox in the general vicinity of her throat to enable speech. She was small, as sandworms went, only about the size of a truck.

"I mean, it's not like anyone's gonna used this wood, or anything we can salvage; whatever isn't totally burned is in dozens of pieces. What's the point of it?"

"Isn't this sort of thing the alchemist's problems? We just pile it up and let them put it back together later."

The parrotman shivered. "Damn circle-magicians. Can't stand those circus freaks. And they're always going around breaking stuff and turning it into weird stuff. A alchemist turned my toilet into a seige engine once, you know. Never trust a man that makes glowy circles to turn your toilet into a engine of death, that's my motto."

"Is it?" Said the sandworm. "That's a funny motto."

"It's a, whatjercallit, rhetorical thing to say."

"No, seriously, alchemists don't always do the circle thing, that one short kid that goes around the world and does stuff just claps his hands it makes stuff happen-"

"Yer missing the point!"

"And besides, that alchemist that trashed your house was legit-"

"ALRIGHT!" The parrotman squawked. "Geez, I get the point."

Another of their crew, a large dark-skinned human who had been appointed the leader because of his awesome baldness, glanced around. "Ey now, anyone see Lofurt?"

"Thought he was on his break," Someone said.

"That was fifteen minutes ago," The sandworm said.

Their leader shook his head. "Bit long for a break, innit? Hey, you, parrot-guy, go fetch him, hey?"

"I have a name, you know!" The parrotman complained; no one ever seemed to remember him. "Oh, whatever. Where'd he go?"

"Said something about getting a smoke break," Somebody else said, pointing towards a nearby bit of rubble that hadn't been taken care of yet. "Wanted to go somewhere out of sight, blamed it on his mom constantly spying on him with sattilate technology and dark spirits man was not meant to wossname of."

"Of course he goes and does it out of the way," The parrotman grumbled, and left.

He didn't bother flying, it was too much trouble getting proper lift-off for a short distance that walking could handle as well. A little bit inside a copse of trees that had been mostly flattened by the blast that had taken out Foster's and the rest flattened by a good section of a room that had been blasted right off the house and smashed into the ground without crumbling completely.

The parrotman choked a bit; the falling plaster had mixed with loose dust to produce a atmosphere that was unconducive to casual breathing. He ducked under an uprooted bit of plumbing and noticed a pair of feet from around the corner of a wall. "Hey, lying down on the job, are you? Come along, break's over! Faster we get this done, sooner it's, well, done!" There was no answer. "What's this about? I say something to offend you earlier?" There was still no answer. "Oh, real mature, Lofurt. I never make fun 'a ya like the others do. Don't sulk, you know the boss hates that, we got poker night later." Again, no answer. "Come on, you know it's me-"

The parrotman turned the corner and stopped. Lofurt, a small dragonoid similar to a Discworld swamp dragon but without the short-lived tendency to explode at the smallest provocation, was lying against the wall, a smouldering cigarette in his claws. Spread-eagled, in fact.

His face had turned a horrible pale color, thick black lines spreading in erratic and sickly patterns from a thick cluster along the sides of his snout, now twisted and half-crunched into an grotesque wreck. His eyes were wide open, and his jaw hung as if in shock. The parrotman put his claws over his mouth and tried not to throw up; his eyes...his eyes...

It wasn't right, seeing that. Purplish and glowing a bit, squarish pupils and rolled up at the wrong directions, like something had wormed behind his eyes and tried to push them out...black stuff was running at the corners of his eyes, twitching and moving and horribly alive...

"Lofurt," The parrotman whispered. "What...?"

A shadow tilted, moved.

Behind him, something jumped.

The parrotman was slammed against the rubble-wall, a smaller but infinitely more malevolent weight pressed against him, sharp points pressing under his arm. Another arm - loathsome, skin moving like it's alive and HUNGRY, so horribly cold and DID SOMETHING JUST BITE ME - looped around his neck, sharp cold points sliding through the thick ruff at his neck and against bare skin.

"My apologies, but I'm in a hurry," Kimblee's cold, calm voice said pleasantly, and lightly touched the side of the parrotman's neck.

If he'd had time, the parrotman would have screamed.

-Coldness, utter damning coldness, spreading in from his neck and into his body like poison, tingling and itching and SEARCHING, brain itching like mad, why is it so cold, it hurts so bad, EVERYTHING HURTS-

Something appears in his mind, like every single night and chickhood bogeyman and awful memory brought to life, cold and monstrous and EVIL. "Hello," it whispers, this alien monster of grey-white flesh with streaks of black and long clawlike fingers and a head like a elongated skull with a single purple eye and extends the mental equivilant of a claw directly into the parrotman's brain.

It searches through him, shuffling through his thoughts and memories like it's reading a book, all careful attention and noting details, and it's so FOUL and WRONG, he would scream if he could, GET OUT OF MY HEAD GET OUT GET OUT, he can feel IT clawing him down to the core, taking and find and KNOWING EVERYTHING, it hurts so much, it won't stop and it's getting WORSE, IT wants something and he can't take it anymore-

The parrotman collapsed with a weak cry, falling onto the ground unceremoniously, his face twisted and mutated even more badly than the last one had been. Kimblee watched this happen with a bemused look. "Is that supposed to be happening?" He asked.

It is a curious question, Ghostfreak said, stretching a mental equvilant of arms. When I posesses others, they tend to take on some of my outward characteristics, but I've never seen THAT happen before. Pity, it looks quite amusing to observe in a controlled environment. My guess would be that you channeling my abilities through Kevin's Osmosium powers, even with me directing their use, is dulling their usual potency. Or perhaps...control would be a better word. My telepathic powers function effectively enough, but it's having a more adverse effect than it'd ought to.

Sure, Kevin groused. Blame me.

An acceptable proposal.

"Enough," Kimblee said. "Not that I don't find your banter amusing, but I don't intend to linger here. Have you found any pernitent information?"

No, Ghostfreak said. This subject has had no contact whatsoever with our target. If he is on site as you suspect, he is well hidden.

"Well, I did not expect this to be a trivial matter...but I've had to do this to almost six people now. And still nothing."

Kimblee frowned, at least as close as possible for his current shape. He was begining to find a hitch in his plans. This wasn't upsetting, so to speak, but it was an unexpected develoupment. Clearly, turning himself into a monster so he could sneak up on people and steal their memories on the off-chance they'd seen a man that apparently every sane person in town believed to be a urban legend had not been a particularily efficient idea.

In retrospect, it seemed kind of stupid, really.

Now, that is most impolite! Ghostfreak complained. My idea is fine! I never said it would work FAST, now did I?

He does technically have a point, Kevin said. It's a stupid point, though.

Kimblee sighed. He had learned a few things through his mind-searching - more people had survived than he'd thought, they'd been rounded up and put in the mobile hospital parked outside the Foster's property, most of the bodies had been rounded up for whatever reason, wading around in someone's psyche was both fun and educational...

But nothing of practical use. None of the workers seemed to realize that someone here didn't quite belong; Jarod might have been in some recollections, but as a phantom, a wanderer moving just out of sight before he could be identified, on the outskirts before Kimblee could identify him...it was quite frustrating.

He needed, he decided, to draw him out. Making a deeper mark on this town seemed an appropiate action. Kimblee looked around, staring at this place he had so recently visited, and his eyes settled shortly, on that massive mobile hospital that had come to take away the people who had survived his attack.

Big, lumbering and so very inefficient. The very sight of it offended him.

"Well," Kimblee said softly. "If you wish to lure out a bear, shoot the cubs, and the bear will run straight onto the lances you set in it's way."

Cupping the stone between his fingers, he raised his hands up, ignoring the rush of negativity from Kevin regarding this turn of events - the boy was so fussy now - and brought his hands together-

(wipe that hospital from the face of the planet, finish what was started, END those insignificant meatbags, give their senseless lives MEANING, fulfill their DESTINIES, shatter the deathly gloom with such glorious MUSIC)

-And his hands stopped just short of clapping, palms almost but not quite brushing.

Kimblee stared at his hands, trembling and twitching as he tried to put them together, muscles pulling his hands away. His hands were not his own, his body would not obey him, he could not do it-

"What?" Kimblee whispered, an unfamiliar emotion rising in him. He remembered it as the same feeling that Mr. Lyle and Azula's advances had wrought in him, and he realized that it was horror. "My hands...they won't move."

Gotcha, Kevin said, and seemed to grin like a monster. Some guarded shield in Kevin's mind had broken, and Kimblee felt such awful emotion rolling from Kevin, the breaking storm of frustration and hate grown too vast to contain. The destruction of Foster's and the creation of the Stone had been the last straw. Kevin had had enough.

"...You can't," Kimblee said, eyes wide. "You cannot control me. This body is mine."

Says you, Kevin said. It's MY body! ALWAYS MINE! Nothing take it from me; not you, not energy warping my brain, not that Ectonurite freak squatting in my skull, not every freak in the MULTIVERSE if they try! NO ONE'S STEALING MY BODY AGAIN!

"Damn you," Kimblee whispered. His hands would not come together. Like magnets pulling at metal; his arms refused to move, compelled by some greater force than his own will.

He wondered. Was Kevin's will greater than his?

No one else is going to die today because of ME, Kevin declared. No one, you psychopathic jerkass. NO ONE. Only way someone dies because of this body, IS BECAUSE I WANT THEM DEAD. You hear me? YOU HEAR ME! THIS BODY...IS MINE!

His thumb shivered, flashing green; for a moment, it spasmed, cracking and transparent, bones and flesh warping and turning into silicate matter, green and glassy, and then it was not human flesh touched by Ectonurite DNA, but a sharp flexible crystal, completely straight and sharp like a dagger.

Never going to be a monster again, Kevin said more quietly, with an air of terrible finality, and then Kimblee's hand moved on it's own and shoved a thumb's-length of Petrosapien crystal directly into the side of his throat.

Kimblee made a strangled noise, blood spurting out on dead-white flesh, a spark of green crystal amid the red.

NO! Ghostfreak shrieked. YOU MADMAN! YOU'LL KILL ALL OF US! Kevin didn't seem to care.

Kimblee managed a choking laugh as Ghostfreak frantically tamed the Omnitrix energies, his mutated flesh returning to normal. The wound in his neck was still bleeding, and the now-human thumb jammed in there wasn't helping. "You..." Kimblee said. "You are more resolute than I thought. How admirable."

"I'd ask who you're talking to," Said a voice behind him. "But that's really not an issue right now."

Kimblee blinked as, inexpicably, his limbs obeyed him as the humanity flushed fully back into his body and the alien aspects receded. Kevin howled in disbelieving frustration, his brief rebellion and attempt at taking Kimblee down with him all for naught.

He turned and saw, to his mounting surprise, a man identical to the photo Mr. Lyle had provided him. A man of average height and built; dark red hair that was nearly black. A grim expression, like a nemesis of Greek myth. A man known the people of this town as the Pretender.

Jarod.

"Well," Kimblee said. "On the one hand, my thumb is jammed in my neck, the voices in my head seem to be capable of hijacking my body and I may just be losing a unpleasant amount of blood, but on the other hand here you come right to me. So...a pretty average day."

"Solf J. Kimblee I presume?" Jarod said. "The Red Lotus Alchemist?"

"None other," Kimblee said, pleased. Introductions were unneccesary then. "I'm afraid you'll be coming with me." He did admit, to himself, that it was hard to make that seem credible with his thumb in his neck.

"You have it backwards," Jarod said, reaching into his pocket and shoving a small capsule right in Kimblee's face.

Warm chemicals splashed everywhere, smelling faintly pungent; almost immediately, his head swam, and the world went briefly out of focus. "...Oh damn the luck," Kimblee said. "...Of course you have some form of...knock-out toxin...

"I know," Jarod said. Even through the haze, Kimblee heard the rage in his voice.

Kimblee stumbled; any moment, it would be over, he would collapse-

He twisted his thumb in, scrapping torn muscles and other important neck-bits. The pain screamed out through the drug-induced haze, snapping him back to a moment of precious alertness even as green energy crackled around him, his nervous system shifting into a collection of alien forms that wouldn't be affected by the chloroform as badly or at all (he felt Kevin stirring, waiting to seize his chance), and before he lost any element of surprise, he pulled his thumb from his neck in a spray of blood and screaming nerves to clap his hands, held the Philosopher's Stone tight, and split the air.

The entire copse of trees disappeared in a roar of fire and noise.

Smoke and ash fell, surronding Kimblee in a suitably dramatic curtain. "This will not go over well," Kimblee said, mildly suprised to notice that the wound in his neck seemed to have healed (that was odd). He wasn't supposed to have killed this Jarod; Mr. Lyle wanted him alive.

Acceptable losses. After all, we did learn something from this exercise, Ghostfreak stated. He turned his attention towards Kevin. Your influence over this body will be curbed. NOW.

DAMN IT! Kevin screamed.

"Don't be so harsh on yourself," Kimblee said. "After all, you only blew your change to ensure my death moments before we were ambushed by the very man we were looking for. If you had not wasted your moment, I wouldn't have been in a position to use the pain to fight past the toxins and would surely be captive by now. I must thank you."

Kevin didn't say anything so much as he emanated a surge of utter frustration and hate.

"I believe the word is..." Kimblee thought. "Aw yes. 'Epic fail'." He glanced around; the smoke was falling. He needed to leave. "...Perhaps I did not destroy the body. I may be able to remove Jarod's brain; Wuya can have it preserved and reanimated, and Mr. Lyle will have all he needs from there-"

Something moved from behind him. Kimblee spun around, but he was not a man focused in direct combat, and he only moved in time for a strong fist to smash directly into his face.

Kimblee hit the ground and rolled away just before a foot could hit the ground where his throat had been. He got up, the ground flashing red and pushing him up on a dozen tiny pegs as long as spears and dense as bridge cables, and he saw Jarod. His clothes blackened, his body nearly burned, all the hair on one side of his face gone and the rest on fire and blood streaming from the eye on that side of his face, but he was still alive.

Still moving. (he runs and grabs a rock from the ground and raises it up high; Kimblee can only move bare moments before it smashes to where his chest just was)

Still attacking. (The stone is smashed into Kimblee's chest; he chokes, his ribs cracked, and a vicious kick to his crotch knocks him to his knees. Another kick is delivered to his teeth and they crack)

Still hating. Such inhuman, monstrous hatred. What, Kimblee wondered in childlike horror, had he done to this man to earn such hatred? (The foot rises and smashes into his sides, again and again and again; no concern for his own condition, not thought for his own survival, only this insane desire to FIGHT-)

Kimblee closed his eyes and snarled as Ghostfreak funneled a brief surge of Omnitrix energy into his arm as Jarod raised his foot once more; his arm twisted, becoming the arm of a Ectonurite (not enough for Kevin to twist to his own means) and Kimblee let the kick smash into his stomach and choke out his air just so he could grab Jarod's leg, Ectonurite claws biting deep, and pierced skin.

And so he pierced Jarod's mind.

(white walls, so stark and cold, pressing on him like things alive and EVIL, the cameras everywhere, always WATCHING HIM, they watch him always, there is no safety or hope even IN THE SHADOWS)

"What the-?" Jarod said, his voice strained, a whisper of a thing.

Kimblee probed deeper. Curiosity as well as neccisity guided him.

(he's so scared and alone - 'where's my mom and dad?' he asked the strange men again and again and they won't tell him and they never do, these men who have taken him to this secret place of white walls and hot lights and cameras everywhere, it's so cold and quiet here, in this room they have brought him; they have given him puzzles to solve, books to read and...'simulations' to make, little scenarios to create and make things happen. He does not know why, but he obeys them. They have told him that if he does them well, he might go home or see his parents. But they're lying; he never sees them again.

He's so scared and alone, so he has no choice. They tell him that he is SPECIAL, he is what they call a 'Pretender', he can use his head and become anyone or anything he pleases in his imagination and KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN but he doesn't understand it at all. He just wants to come home, but he never does.

Perhaps, though, he is not wholly alone; a man meets him when he is there, a kind-looking man named Sidney. He tells him gentle things and is there to listen when Jarod (is that really my name, the boy comes to wonder) can bear to speak, and in time Jarod forgets the face of his father and it is only Sidney's face that comes to mind-)

A hand gripped Kimblee's throat. The hold was weak and unsteady, but fingernails pressed against his flesh with surprising tenacity, absurd determination. "Out...of my head..!" Jarod hissed from a lopsided snarl.

Kimblee grinned, his mind awash in the on-rush of memories; it was not as he had expected, not pictures and coherent ideas but the idea of them, impressions and passing thoughts and emotions all bundled up and somehow sorted by his own brain into stable things.

It was glorious, intoxicating. "Let us see what else lies in your tricky brainpan," Kimblee whispered. He pressed the attack.

Layers of mental armor peeled away, like skin under sandpaper: shaven away, but no, Kimblee realized, it wasn't right, there were things there making him feel such mad things. More fell away in strips and fragments and no small amount of screaming pain, from both of them. Jarod was the one being violated, but Kimblee was feeling such bizarre things from this man, emotions and thoughts that made no sense at all.

(-he's made so many simulations over the years, perfectly plotted and directed situations; not merely planning, that was small time, not manipulating people or places, that was foolish, but to create a simulation was ART, to shape the future by molding the past, to establish things with such perfect timing that reactions were not likely but CERTAIN. Jarod knows of the power he holds; the mind is the greatest tool of all, and his ability to plan a scenario that ends with thousands dead with only a single shot fired that sets off a chain reaction of events troubles him. They have assured him that his simulations HELP people, he helps to combat terrorists and revolutionaries and all unsavory sorts, just like all his inventions made in his spare time help EVERYONE too-

He learns that they have LIED to him. The simulations go to whoever pay the highest, and those who have profited from MURDER and glorify in EVIL have so much money to offer. He is not saving people; he is helping them to DIE. So many are dead because of him. So many horrific things consigned to history as accidents or politically unfortunate assasinations, but Jarod knows better.

So many are dead because of him. Their blood is on his hands. If not for him, they'd still be alive. It was not his hands that pulled the triggers, but it was his hands that put the pieces of puzzles together. His fingers that brought their destinies to a close keystroke by keystroke. His brain that engineered their DEATHS. He is more to blame than those that used his precious work; his mind, his hands, his work, HE IS TO BLAME.

There is blood on his hands. He is GUILTY beyond all reproach, and in the white walls, knowing that his parents are GONE, that Ms. Parker is more like her father than the world deserves, that Sidney does not understand how EVIL the Centre is. Jarod can smell the ROT at the core of this place, the evil infesting it like slime from a decaying man's lungs. So many have already died; how many more will these butcher's demand for their purposes?

He knows that they will NEVER be satisfied.

Jarod tries to be cautious. He sabotages his simulations. He hinders the Centre in secret. He tries so hard to prevent more death without being noticed. But it is not enough. He CANNOT avenge these deaths or salve his conscience with such pitiful means. He is safe, but that is no longer relevant. He soon decides something.

Jarod, he decides, does not matter. He has murdered by proxy, doomed so many to death or worse. Blood is on his hands and he has dared to be SUBTLE. No more time for subtlety, he decides. No more allowing the Centre to exist unopposed.

He leaves then. He destroys what he can, steals so much of their foul wealth to turn it to the good.

He finds a world corrupt and filled to the brim with misery. He finds a world where the ceiling is a vast vault of blue and light without end or limit, where the sun on his skin is a GOOD burning, where life lives and good EXISTS without being counterbalanced by some evil intent like the Centre.

There is so much that is new. So much to find, so much to help.

He finds them, one after another. Criminals, villains, monsters. He makes them pay, never with bloodshed. He shows them how it FEELS to suffer, how it feels to be tormented by a monster. And he forces them to confess and ensures their imprisonment.

When he finds the needy, he gives them the closure they deserve, and the happy ending they need. There are good people in the world, and he REFUSES to let them suffer alone and unhelped and in pain. Not while he has a moment to spare.

He searches for who he is. But that, in time, becomes irrelevent. He stops caring about who Jarod was or why he was taken. He doesn't matter anymore.

People do. They deserve justice. And he gives it to them, becomes a nemesis to chase the darkness away and bring even the slightest hope of light.

The world falls in blackness and horror, but he endures. There are so many worlds to go to, to save, to help, and he WILL NOT turn away-)

Kimblee could not understand it. It...hurt, feeling these strange things. To look at a person and feel such...odd things.

It was incomprehensible.

It was inhuman.

It was monstrous. Kimblee felt revulsion, and horror at this monster that called itself Jarod. Why, Kimblee wondered, was he himself the only sane person in the universe?

Y'know, Kevin said. What you're feeling right now? It's called EMPATHY...man, it feels weird saying that.

Kimblee thought it was awful. His eyes narrowed even as Jarod wavered, still fighting but unable to keep his body from collapsing for much longer...

Kimblee threw his mental power into the fray, one last time. "There must be a shred of sanity in you!" He shouted. "A bit of intelligence, some degree of rational self-interest! Slide past, this insanity, and show me the REAL YOU!"

Kimblee tore through; memories scattered around him and he shuddered at them. They were so wrong. So absurd. Wasting time with people for no true reason? Delighting in the strangeness of a world as new to him as to a newborn baby? Finding a little boy's stray cat while also hunting down a mob boss to punish him and accomplishing BOTH? Shutting down a slaving ring, having all the perpetrators sent to prison? It was pointless, Kimblee knew. So insane and foolish.

So why did this man BELIEVE in it so? How could he be so insane? What...was...the...point?

Something appeared to meet him, in the depths of Jarod's mind. The echo of something vast, and ancient. Human, yet not quite. It was old, so very old, and it saw him.

For a moment, it considered. And in that moment, Kimblee saw that it was of Jarod, but somehow...different. Older. So much older and...powerful. It was to a man what humans were to insects, so far beyond his comprehension that Kimblee couldn't comprehend. It was without name, an entity that held no descriptor at all.

It spoke, in a voice that was like Jarod's but ragged, inquisitive, and so ancient there were stars that were mere children to it. Celestial Sapiens...Time Lords...the Great Old Ones...all those mighty and powerful alien races were less then babies to this thing that had no name. You can't win, it said. You will be undone. You don't even understand that you don't need a reason to do good.

Kimblee panicked, and dove even deeper. Past the consciousness. Into the sub-consciousness and even deeper than that. To a level beyond his understanding, the same place where man's dreams of ape-life came from. Where lives gone and ancestors past still remembered.

A memory came. An old one. So old, Kimblee shuddered at it. It did not feel like one of Jarod's memories, nothing he had experienced in this life, but it was something of his soul, nonetheless.

(-the wasteland around is grey dust, muted and devoid of anything to color it. No hue, no energy, no spirit, no life. A featureless horror of dust and emptiness: there are other hells in the multiverse, places of fire and torment and rigorous punishment and insane savagery, but this is the one so many consider to be closest to perfect evil; it is evil without consideration for Law or Chaos, and at it's core are the evils of APATHY and DESPAIR.

He cannot give up. He has a chance, just one, to atone. HE MUST DO THIS. No matter the cost.

He marches through the wastes, drained of life and color. Shades of things long dead linger in his wake, little more than mobile shadows and sad wretches, soon to become part of the Lower Planes themselves. He pities them, but does nothing.

He finds her soon enough. A short and horrible mockery of a woman, blue-skinned and ragged-haired, eyes glowing like campfires and teeth like jagged knives. A Night Hag. And no ordinary one at that.

"It is said that you are the greatest of the Gray Sisters, Ravel," He says, all sweet tones. "I have traveled far to reach you."

She nods, slowly. "But why have you traveled so far? Your need must be great...yet you seem to have brought nothing that would interest me. You must pay for your services..."

"My need is great. My currency is this: a challenge. Perhaps an impossible challenge...one I fear is beyond even your abilities..." The words are spoken with calculation, and the manipulation is that of a master's, a subtle twist to pull at the strings of the Night Hag named Ravel Puzzlewell, a being of pure evil and immense power...and also curiousity, vanity, and pride. Her eyes blazed with a heat foriegn to this hell, and some of the greyness eating the landscape ebbed from her.

Yes, Ravel cannot resist a puzzle of any sort, whether question or riddle or mystical problem. One day, she will try to unlock the very cage that is Sigil, the City of Doors, and set the Lady of Pain free-

"There is nothing that is beyond me, foolish man!" She says. "Nothing! Pose your challenge, I will hear you!"

The great question. His ONE hope to escape the doom waiting for him. "Death waits at the end of life for all men. I need it to wait for me no longer...can you do this, beautiful Ravel?"

Echoing in the memory is a single question, distant and strange, a whisper on the wind. It has not been spoken yet, but it is IMPORTANT nonetheless. It is said in Ravel's voice, though she does not speak it.

"What can change the nature...of a man?"

There was a sharp thud. Kimblee blinked.

Jarod was lying on the ground, in much the same horrible state as the others.

Kimblee shook his head. "What are you?" He asked again, the Ectonurite receding from his flesh and humanity restoring it self. "What manner of creature are you, really?"

Kimblee decided to interrogate Mr. Lyle later. He picked Jarod up, the unconscious man still quite heavy, hauled him over his shoulder, and left.

It all happened so quickly - the explosion, the brawl, the mind-searching and kidnapping - that the first of the nearby workers to investigate came five minutes after Kimblee left. No one questioned the sight of him on his way out, seeming to only be a solitary man carrying away a terribly injured person. Obviously, he was just trying to help.

...

The primary broadcast studio of the building Zim and his group had commandeered was probably a decent-looking room before they'd trashed it, but it really couldn't be helped.

It was small, as such rooms went, and sparsely filled except for all the equipment an enterprise like this demanded: small banks of computer equipment for editing footage and other such tasks, monitors that folded out from the walls, sophisticated cameras mounted on rolling supports, a long desk for the announcers and newscasters to sit for the news...

The technology, they hadn't taken care not to damage any of it, and the actual employees were, at worst, knocked out or immobolized. But collateral damage followed Zim where he went (some said that his mere presence made concrete flammable) and in the spirit of things...well, the table had been smashed through a wall in an effort to slow down the security, a huge hole had been opened in the floor when they charged in, the walls and ceiling and floor were scarred with soot marks and air cuts and cracks and generalized trauma, and then there were all the people lying around everywhere; not terribly hurt, of course, but generally in a dour mood.

The intruders in question were running around the room, flush with victory but in a hurry to do a job that few, if any, of them were really qualified for: getting the cameras up and running so they could send a broadcast message to Kimblee in the hopes of riling him up.

Some of them were...unethusiastic. "We just smashed into a building and took over," Katara said miserably. "...We're going to be lynched, aren't we?"

"Probably not," Ron said with a shrug. Sokka gave him a dirty look. "Uh, what I mean is!...Uh, well, at worst, these guys will hate you forever and try and get their friends to beat you up, but it's not like they'll get the law after you."

Katara stared at him. "...Why?"

"Well, stuff like this? It's not technically illegal."

She stared some more. "You're kidding."

"No, actually," Kim said. "We take a relaxed approach to things here. See, there's a horrible psychopath running around, and we have a nearly-surefire way to get him found out and taken down! It was an emergency, no one will blame us."

"We will!" Said a computer technician.

Kim frowned. "Look, we tried to do this nicely, but you didn't give us a lot of choice!"

"We would have helped if you'd asked! Probably."

Kim inclined her head apologetically. "...My dad's gonna kill me for this, if that's any consolation."

"Not really, no it's not."

Other in the group were more enthusiastic. "Okay, heroing time, let's go, let's go!" Aang said, sitting at a computer and randomly pushing buttons.

Danny stood over him and said, "Do you even know how to use a computer?"

"Nope!" Aang said cheerfully.

"Over here, guys!" Tucker said, a few computers over, carefully circumventing the rather weak computer security. (Obviously, these newsguys were new at the whole thing. A rival could have stolen their reports by now.) "I think I'm getting close to breaking through...YES! I did it!"

Aang went over. "What, no beeps or loud sounds?" He complained as Tucker went feverishly to work getting an emergency broadcast set up. "That's how it always happens in the movies! There wasn't even all that much typing."

"Computer science is a lot less demonstrative then movies would have you think," Tucker said. "...How the heck do you get a emergency broadcast going! I can hack, but I don't have the slightest idea how these guys set things up here!"

Kim came over. "Let me try," She offered. "I took a few computer classes last year, and I've done my share of hacking on missions. Two months ago? I had to highjack a mechanical parasite that had taken over a giant transforming robot's brain and controlled him. Nice guy, this robot; calls himself Wreck-Gar, he works at the Sizzler down the street from my house. Got Employee of the Month by putting out a greasefire with his face."

Tucker scooted over and pulled another chair over. "Be my guest!" Kim sat down. "Okay, unexpected lab partner, let's see if we can get some heroing done!" The two got to work.

Aang watched them, bemused. "...I have no idea what you guys are doing," He confessed, and decided to find out if computer data could be Bended. Then again...it was all electrical impulses in silicon...perhaps some form of extraordinarily subtle Lightningbending could do it...?

"Think we should do something?" Morte asked Calvin, from a short distance away.

"Nope!" Calvin said cheerfully, looting cool stuff from the security guards they had curbstomped. "Ooh, guns. I want me some DAKKA!"

Scar loomed from behind like a grim spectre of vengeance. (To be fair, this was pretty much his defined purpose in life.) "There is a difference between commandeering a news studio for a good purpose, and looting."

Calvin jumped back and dropped the sub-machine gun. (It was loaded with rubber-bullets; they were heavily-armed, not insane.) "Waah! Where'd you come from!"

"Ishbal."

"What? No, I mean...oh, never mind." Somewhat disappointed, Calvin dropped the stuff he had looted. A pity; in the partlance of his old Ork band Da Stormbringerz, it was some real flash dakka.

Through it all, Zim sat, cross-legged, atop a pile of unconscious guards who had the displeasure of having met his shoes face-first. Also his fists. And whatever he could wrench out of the walls. Also some fire. "Are we ready to broadcast yet?" He asked impatiently to the person who happened to be closest.

It was Abel, who was sitting at a computer and doing much better than Kim and Tucker combined; he'd already hacked through, but setting up an emergency broadcast required tandemn authorization. "I'd say so," Abel said, after a moment of thoughtful consideration. "We've already tricked the mainframe into accepting us as trustworthy users-"

"Traitor!" Cried a techie.

"-So we have a few more hurdles to clear; getting a broadcast, having it up and finished in a few minutes once we do, getting it spliced into regular viewing and more importantly interrupting scheduled broadcasts...but there are already protocols and processes for that sort of thing, so it's bascially a question of making our broadcast a round peg and putting it in the hole. I don't think I'll have much problem once the others pick up. These guys have pitiful security."

"Whatta ya want, we're poor!" Said the weather-girl, tied to a column and looking like the world's noisiest ornament. "We just do cartoons, dramas, the minor stuff the big networks don't deal with and a little bit of news relating to giant robot charity auctions!" Zim gave her an incredulous look. "More common then you'd think."

"Well, at least we didn't pick a big one," Toph said airly, having been looting with Calvin until she got bored of it and didn't care for the stuff she was finding anyway. (And Scar had guilted her out of it.) "Otherwise we'd probably knock the place over dealing with the security. What's with all the security if you're small time?"

"Criminals want to know where they can steal giant robots."

"That makes sense."

"Ahem, excuse me!" Said a teenage girl news-anchor that seemed to be in charge, a Latina freckled girl with short brown hair and a rather arrogant attitude. "Mr...Zim, I believe you were called? You're the leader of these...malcontents?"

"I prefer 'maverick gang of heroic sociopaths'," Zim said. "And yes."

"No you're not!" Calvin said. "And what's heroic about you?"

"Am too!" Zim said. "...Now wait a minute!"

"Well..." The newscaster gave him a studied look. "You just said you wanted our studio so you could send a message to someone evil so you could fight him, right?"

"Sure. Why?"

"Tell me something! What did he do? Something...big?" This was deliviered with a mixture of genuine curiosity and journalistic greed.

"He blew up Foster's Home," Abel said. "And did something unspeakably horribly with them that would make true death a kindness."

Her eyes got big. "...Oh. I see." Her leg twitched nervously, some sort of hurried decision being made. "...In that case, well...I might have a deal for you."

Zim raised an eyeridge. "Oh?"

"Courtney!" Cried her fellow newscaster. "What are you doing!"

"What's best for the studio," She said primly.

Zim hopped up and went over to her, with a groaning chorus from his 'seat'. "Miss...ah, Courtney, is it?"

Courtney nodded. "Yes."

"What matter of deal do you have in mind?"

Courtney looked back and forth, glancing at her companions. "...Could you scootch us together so we can have a quick huddle?"

"Okay," Hobbes said, walking over and untying her before bringing her over to a nearby collection of important looking people and tying her there.

She wasn't happy about this, and said so. Hobbes replied, "Well, me neither, but the alternative is paralyzing you with my super-special-awesome skills of doom, and frankly I don't like fighting women."

She frowned. "What? You think it's wrong to hit a woman because they're supposed to be weak? Is this some sort of chauvinistic thing!"

"No, I just don't like fighting women," Hobbes said. He felt deeply in his bones that it was wrong to hit a girl that didn't start it. It wasn't the result of a cultural perception of women as 'the weaker sex' or anything like that, it was just one of those whims taken as beliefs. (On the other hand, he was training to be a proper knight, or high-class warrior of the Kingdom, so he might have been adopting some older beliefs without being aware of it.)

Courtney frowned; she glanced momentarily at the sound-studio, where their DJ and phone attendent, a tentacle-alien girl-thing, had been locked inside through alchemy. She was actually grateful for it, as it meant she didn't have to fight. (True, she'd been alive longer than most cities had been around, but she didn't like hitting things.) Courtney mumbled something under her breath, said, ""Whatever," and huddled as best she could with her co-workers and made her intentions clear.

A few minutes later, she pulled back. "Me and my co-workers have come to a decision. In exchange for exclusive media rights to the full extent of this story, we'll put out a broadcast to enable you to lure out this fiend."

Abel gave her a look. "...I'm not sure if you're thinking about the logistics, but people already know about Foster's going boom through the news. Kind of hard not to hear about."

Courtney smirked. "Ah, but do they know who did it? Why he did it? And what he looks like?" She paused, worried. "You...do know those things, right?"

"We do," Zim assured her.

She sighed in relief. "Well, do-"

"Wait!" Morte said. "How do we know that you won't just turn us in to your security monkeys or pin us as the guys that did it? Nice revenge, isn't it?"

"Uh..." Courtney looked confused..

"Mutual trust based in the fact that you could all kill us horribly and we can't do anything about it?" A technician said helpfully.

"Oh," Morte said. "...Sounds right to me!"

Courtney seemed a bit worried, but she still asked, "Do we have a deal?"

"Okay!" Zim said.

"Shouldn't you discuss that with us first?" Calvin said.

Zim grinned cheerfully. "Nope!"

Courtney frowned. Zim reminded her of a few of her old 'friends', even though he couldn't look more different than, among other things, a certain tall girl with purple hair and way too much energy. It was the insanity, she presumed, that they had in common. "If you'll untie us...?" She prompted.

Zim glanced at the others. They rolled their eyes and got to work untying everyone. Zim got up and summoned the Keyblade to cut some ropes (some untied by themselves when the Keyblade got near), freaking some people out, a few being his friends that hadn't seen it yet. (Ominously, the shadows moved, like something was checking out the situation. No one saw it, and no Heartless emerged or anything, so there was nothing to worry about. Presumably...)

Eventually, newsies and heroes alike got together. "Alright," Courtney said grimly. "While the techies are getting your broadcast set up, tell me everything. We can kill two birds with one stone: a emergency report to warn everyone about this madman, and a message to him!"

"Okay," Zim said. "Our friend Mr. Scar of the Crossguard knows more than I do."

Scar stepped forward, grim and haunted. "Miss Courtney," He began. "Allow me to tell you about the man called the Red Lotus Alchemist and what he has done today.."

...

Once more, the Flame Alchemist stood on a rooftop, surronded by his entourage of convenience. They weren't far from Foster's, now, and he could see the moblie hospital in the skyline of buildings, overshadows the great wall-like construct that divided the districts.

It worried him, that hospital. It was a big target for someone with a mind to make as much chaos and destruction as possible. Expecting a...man like Kimblee not to want to blow it up and mop up his leavings was like expecting a curious monkey not to push the big shiny doom button.

Fortunately, that was why he'd already scattered small but skilled men and women and whatever under his command to likely targets that might be attacked in the immediate area. Civiliian centers...civic buildings...large home complexes...and espicially hospitals like this one. The ones sent to the mobile hospital ought to have already arrived. And if not...

He made sure his pyrotex glove was on. He would end it. He would not permit anyone else to die today. Not even, if it was possible, Kimblee; the man would stand a proper trial before they sent him to the Vault. It was a feasible option; you'd be surprised how much burning a body can withstand before frayed nerves shut down and burnt muscles stop working but still not die. Roy Mustang knew. He knew quite well.

Flame alchemy, his teacher had said, was the most powerful sort of alchemy known to man. It was presumptious to say. But it was true: cannons constructed from buildings, explosions generated from air, blades made from the conversion of air molecues and even the raw power of destruction alchemy were as nothing next to his flames.

Everything could burn. Fire killed everything. If enough fire to disintegrate a city block didn't do the job, you needed more fire. The only enemy to ever give him trouble were regenerators, and even that only slowed him down.

Roy sniffed the air. Crisp, a bit cold at his altitude. He wanted to keep that smell in mind, before he had to taste the burning flesh and ozone that he hated so.

"Ya done being dramatic and badass and all Still In Saigon-ness or what?" Deadpool asked flippantly.

"Shut up," Roy said curtly.

Lin, sitting in the robot with Shego, stood up abruptly. "He's coming," He said.

"You're sure?" Gibbs said, sitting next to Roy and preparing himself for his role in the fight. There was an odd clink of metal when he moved now, a strange sheen to his skin. A gunmetal sheen.

"It feels like there are dozens of people approaching this way," Lin said. "No...more than that. Fifty. Even more; a hundred?" He shook his head. "Even more than that."

Gibbs looked down with a sniper's practiced stare. "...The streets certainly aren't crowded." This was a plain way of pointing out that the streets had become deserted except for the odd straggler or stubborn fool; so many had fled in panic after the explosions. People had come gradually back, but not in enough numbers to confuse Lin at all.

Lin bit his lip. "...I have not felt this much presence since I saw...him."

Roy nodded. They did not need to say the foul name, give respect or honor to the monster by repeating the name he'd graced himself with: Father.

Father, who had destroyed the entire nation of Xerxes an eon ago and taken their souls. Enough power to choke a nation, and turn it to his will; such was the curse of Amestris, and the limits of it's alchemy.

If Lin was reminded of that homunculi's reserves of human lives... "Gibbs, keep an eye out for anyone that doesn't look right. Lin, find him. We need to know what he looks like now!"

Gibbs stirred. "Sir. Look."

Lin turned the same moment Roy did. "Aha," Lin said softly, shaking and staring at a small white figure on the street below, sticking to the shadows. Shadows that moved.

Roy knew Kimblee. He knew how the man loved to dress in white; he'd said that it made him feel like a proper composer. And felt clean. "This is going to be easier than I thought," He said, raising his gloved hand. "First, we need that street evacuated without even a chance of civillian casualties. Then lure Kimblee out into the open with superior firepower so me and Gibbs can get a good shot at him; I need to have everyone out of the way before I can take a shot."

Lin nodded, wincing with inner pain. They'd already worked out a plan, but they hadn't counted on what the proximity of so many souls packed together was doing to him. "Deadpool? Shego?" He said, and gestured with a hand. "See to it."

Deadpool stood up and saluted ironically. "Gotcha, boss."

Shego followed suit. "Bet you twenty we get it done without even needing you there."

"You're on," Lin said with a grin.

Deadpool pressed a button on his belt while Shego grabbed him around the neck, and they both disappeared in a flash of light.

Roy stood back, and looked at them. "Well, that's the begining of the operation set into motion," he said. "...Lin, are you alright?"

Lin shook his head. "...So many of them. So many people. So many voices..."

"Your part's done," Gibbs said gently. "Maybe you should let...your other side take things over."

Lin grinned weakly. "Hate the idea of letting him have all the glory...but why not?" He closed his eyes, and went still.

For a moment, nothing appeared to happen. His lips twitched, and pulled back; they had become razor-sharp, like shark's-teeth. He opened his eyes, and they were the brilliant red of a Philosopher's Stone, slitted and strange but still somehow human.

"Well," said Greed the Avaricious, grinning like a jerk. "Looks like I get to play too."

"Take your time," Gibbs said absently. "We can't rush this."

"Right, right." Greed stretched, frowning at Kimblee below. "...The hell? He's got someone with him!"

"What!" Roy said.

Gibbs put his thumb and forefinger over his eye. Noiselessly, a small scope appeared from his flesh over his eye. "...That bastard brought a hostage," He said, unsurprised. After his briefing on the situation, Roy had told him everything about Kimblee, a man who would happily smash the universe just to see what it would sound like.

"Unlikely," Roy said. "Kimblee's too impulsive to think of that sort of thing. A kidnapping?"

Greed snarled. "Like hell he's going to steal from MY town! Come marching in here, killing MY people, trashing MY buildings, and take one of MY future minons away? Like hell you're getting away with that!"

A dull blackness crept down his flesh. It thickened, bulged oddly. It crept up his neck, down his arms, and his legs, hardening into a perfect defensive shell. Roy could see it gleam dully under his pant's-leg, just about everything but his head covered in the carbon-dark material. It spread over his hands, elongating fingernails and bones into knife-sharp claws.

Greed punched an open hand furiously, making sparks as his shell scraped against itself. He laughed. "You know, this feels so much like old times, doesn't it? The three of us, tackling a criminal with so much power that we dare not let him unleash it? A proper surprise attack."

Gibbs smirked. "Sometimes I forget about the old days."

"Our day is far from over," Roy said pointedly. "...Gibbs? Get ready."

Gibbs nodded. "You know it." He got into position and pulled his sleeves back before he extended his arms, fingers lightly touching.

Skin rippled, like there was something under his skin moving. Then, without blood or tear or any discomfort at all, metal emerged, skin sliding smoothly away from it. A great mass of machinery appeared around Gibbs for a moment, an undifferentiated mass of shining metal and revolving bearings and electromagnets...

Roy remembered, as the machine assembled itself into a compact form. He remembered that Gibbs had not always been a Peace Marine. Once he had traveled the worlds as a member of an organization more illustrious and well-renowned; the Brotherhood of Steel, an outfit from a world damaged and ruined from nuclear fallout ages past, but a chance discovery of alien spacecraft had spurred true travel through outer space, and in doing so, they had found the other worlds. Devoted to honor, compassion and justice (mostly that was just the Capital Wasteland ones, though), they melded with other like-minded organizations but retained their incredibly cool name, soon becoming a star-spanning organization devoted to maintaining a measure of peace and harmony in the worlds. By force, if need be.

They worked in secret, and one of their agents was Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who was the sole survivor of his world's devastation, only to join the Brotherhood. He, at one point, had found himself infiltrating a chaotic world of a Golden Age of piracy, many of them no better than the brutal World Government that rules that world, endorsing slavery for the elite and taking their concept of justice to a warped extreme. Gibbs had hoped to find a way to redeem the organization, or failing that, devise a means to remove it from power with a minimum of casualties. He was sadly unsuccessful at either, but he did get something out of it; at one point, he foiled the exploits of a brutal band of pirates and saved a island of engineer-savants that hoarded mighty treasures. In thanks for his help, they gave him one of their most valuable treasures: one of many rare fruits from their world, unique 'Devil Fruits' said to hold a curse that conferred immense power upon whoever ate it at the cost of sinking like stone when immersed in water. Gibbs didn't consider power worth the pay-off, and intended to sell it off-world.

Unfortunately, he was soon captured by the very pirates he had fought, or more specifically, the giant monster they had used as a living ship. Without many other options, he ate the fruit, in the hopes that it would have some sort of useful power to save his skin.

The locals had called it the 'Bura-Burae no Mi', apparently, because they thought langauges like that were really really cool. The appropiate translation to English, according to Gibbs, was the 'Dakka-Dakka Fruit'.

And that, Roy thought with a grin as Gibbs finished forming a massive sniper rifle a little bigger than a truck; he'd had to move back to fit it on the rooftop; a barrel large enough for a grown man to sit inside, a swiveling post as big as Gibbs to stabilize and manuver it from underneath, and there was a sniping scope as big as a intersteller-range telescope right in front of his face.

There was the sound of a bullet the size of a person's torso sliding into a firing chamber. Greed stared, momentarily caught off-balance. "...Impressive," He finally managed. "You've been practicing."

"Thank you," Gibbs said. "Used the inverse of the 'more Dakka theory' for a precise destructive strike."

Greed grinned. "I want one."

Roy smirked at his companions, and cracked his knuckles expectantly with a shower of sparks around his hands. "All right. Let's get to work."

...

A/N: I'm still learning about pacing. I'm not really happy with the speed of this arc, but I feel that the best way to learn right now is to do it and see what works. And if I get a nice arc out of it? All glory to the Hypno-Toad! And by that I mean, "I'll be happy with it'.

I don't intend to have Skoodge or much of the other survivors of Nickolodean-Earth be a large part of this story, but some have asked about whether or not they're alive. So there they are, with a customary cameo that serves no real purpose aside from cheap laughs!

I like Lin Yao/Greed. He needs to have ninja bodyguards. So I came up with Shego and Deadpool. If nothing else, this has resulted in great hilarity.

By the way, if you need to know, Gibbs is a great big important guy in the live-action drama show NCIS (which I like better than most dramas because it's damn funny a lot. And I like Perky Goths.); while Gibbs has no Devil Fruit powers, he IS a Memetic Badass in-show. Izumi is similarly a Memetic Badass in Fullmetal Alchemist, being just about the only person Olivier Armstrong gets along with. For her alchemy test, she survived for a month on Briggs Mountain (which is basically a really cold version of Death Mountain from Legend of Zelda) and ate cave bears for food when she wasn't raiding the toughest military installation in the world for giggles. Naturally, I set them up! And had them adopt Kim and Jim. Since Edward and Alphonse Elric are Izumi's surrogate sons in some weird way, that makes for an...interesting household.

For those interested, Jim's a Genius (as in Genius: The Transgression) and he's clearly a Klagen, or a Genius that Catalyzes in sorrow and grief. (If Calvin's a Genius, he's probably a Staunen; one that Catalyzes in curiosity.)

I've realized, I'm turning Zim into a bit of a Blood Knight. Weird.

Took some liberties on Kimblee mind-warping people with Ectonurite powers. Also, Jarod? Traumatic childhood doesn't really cover it for him, as he never got a chance to have a childhood. Also, an oppertunity to see what a psychopath like Kimblee makes of the mind of a Messiah like Jarod. The answer? A total Mind-Screw? And that one weird memory of Jarod's?...Yeah, put your Wild Mass Guessing here.

Yeah, that's Courtney from Total Drama Island/Action/World Tour. You can certainly expect one or two others from the Total Drama crew to show up later in a big way. (I even suggested who.)

I totally made up the Dakka-Dakka Fruit. Easy to tell, huh? (It'd be an AWESOME Devil Fruit, don'tcha know?) Part of Gibbs' Super Sniper Cannon of Doom was modified by the trope entry for More Dakka's inversion; a huge sniper rifle with a scope the size of the Hubble Telescope and tons of stabilizing gear.

Now, the next chapter is actually mostly written, so no worries on late updates. This arc is drawing to a close, with next chapter being the penultimate chapter before it ends, then ON TO THE REAL ADVENTURE! (Finally. I mean, this arc is bigger then the REST OF THE STORY. My laziness and slowness to write this thing is showing. At least I've learned a lot from it.) Things will get better, other things will get worse, MUCH WORSE. Have fun with that.