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.

16. Lotus Resolution Part 2

The three mysterious beings that had witnessed Wuya's plot and somehow set into motions ways of potentially averting it watched the fight between Kimblee, now assisted with a giant evil robot.

Silently, they communicated in extremely cool and subtle ways the matter: on the side of evil (as defined by the fact that he was a selfish and amoral sociopath and also that he had deliberately allied himself with people who were explicitly aligned with alien entities that wanted to tear the entire multiverse down to make themselves feel better) was Solf J. Kimblee, a powerful alchemist with the power to make air explode with his bare hands, his already formiddable alchemical prowess enhanced by a Philosopher's Stone forged from the souls of over a hundred mortal souls that had been strong enough to escape the Heartless in the first place, and now wielding a giant robot fueled by the Heartless that was covered in nigh-impervious armor and equipped with literally dozens of deadly weapons scaled up to fit on it's body. On the other hand, the people the mysterious three were supporting consisted of the chosen wielder of the Keyblade, that artifact upon which so much of their hopes for the future had been pinned and which they knew to be on par with the divine thunder-hammer Mjolnir in terms of raw power and the Green Lantern rings or Spiral Energy in terms of application, and the strange collection of individuals that were allied with Zim himself: a talented science hero using powerful alchemical wonders to manipulate the elements of fire and ice; a proficient martial artist tiger-man who was a bit in denial at how similar he was to the ancient Space Marines both in ideals and the fact that he was tough enough to take a giant laser point-blank; and most recently, the heroic Firebending scion of the line of Sozin and the first Fire Lord in generations to have channeled the hereditary madness into beneficient channels. As far as crews went their collective benevolent insanity was a pleasant distinction from Kimblee's amoral convictions, and they certainly had the power to take Kimblee on by themselves. It certainly didn't hurt that they had allied with some of the best and brightest of Traverse Town, people who held tremendous power that made this eccentric group the equal of a sizable army.

In the usual course of things, the battle should have already been well in hand. Unfortunately, Kimblee's raw power and the giant robot he was currently protected in made it more difficult. Or, as the lion-man pointed out, "Well, our guys are getting all kinds of crap kicked out of them, aren't they?"

The machine-man seemed reluctant to comment, perhaps because the only thing he could think to say wasn't very positive. "...Yes, yes they are." He turned to the hooded one. "What do you think?"

The hooded one jumped in place, pumping his arms and generally acting like a deranged football fanatic. "C'MON, ROY! KICK HIS ASS! DO SOMETHING AWESOME! SET HIM ON FIRE SOME MORE! MAKE WITH THE SMITING ALREADY!" They stared at him. "...Why are you guys looking at me like that?"

"...You do realize that most transcended entities like us are supposed to let go of emotional ties and let them evolve into higher spiritual ideals, right?" The machine-man said.

The hooded one scoffed. "Screw that noise! I'm loyal to my friends and family and I stay that way until the day I die!"

"You were," The lion-man said. "You did die."

"And I'm still loyal. LOVE NEVER DIES, DAMMIT!"

"So, to reiterate, they're not doing so well," The machine-man said dryly, more tolerant of the hooded one's clear fondness of Roy Mustang and doing the polite thing by not drawing attention to it.

The hooded one paused. "Well, yeah. Sort of. I guess. Look, at least none of them are dead yet. What's the chances of some of them dying in the immediate future, anyway?" The machine projected the appropiate percentages into their minds. "...Okay, it could be better, but that's just numbers. It's not like mathematics is the secret cheat-code that underlies the existence of reality itself."

"Well, actually-" The lion-man started to say.

"Zip it, you, I'm trying to be optimistic."

"And failing miserably."

"Please stop bickering," The machine-man said calmly. "We can do more to contribute by actively focusing on the battle instead of standing around bickering. Even though bickering is so much fun." They stared at him. "...What? I'm not allowed to have fun arguing either?"

The other two chose to ignore that and focused on the first half of what he had said. "You think altering probability with our divine awesomeness counts as being 'active'?" The lion-man said skeptically. "Weird how that doesn't contravene the Balance; you'd think the fiends would have done something about us being able to influence stuff like that. Sure, it's not as direct as it should be, but still..."

"Oh, they considered that permissible interference," The hooded one said. The lion-man looked skeptical. "It's because of the devils. They drew up the ceasefire agreements; you think they wouldn't put in legal loopholes for them to keep messing with people even if it lets us do the same thing, only without the evil? Devils are total control freaks."

"Well, we are talking about the same type of philosophical elementals who can't stand the fact that the multiverse is full of people who are listening to music that hasn't been approved by their censor boards," The lion-man said. He looked at their scrying device and winced. "Ow. That looks like it hurt! How can those kids in the armor still be standing after that?"

"They're not, they're now unconscious," THe machine-man reported. "Unsurprising, Kimblee just used them as bowling balls. Curious, I didn't know he had that streak of whimsy."

"Take it from me; when Kimblee decides to have fun, everyone involved is miserable forever," The hooded one said solemnly. "Or until they get some decent therapy. Or eat chocolate. A great stress reliever, chocolate. I miss chocolate."

"...You do realize we have rivers of chocolate in this plane? Right next to the Valley of Randomly Exploded Toddlers?" The lion-man pointed out.

"...Since when!"

"We put it in all the adverts! Just find a brochure or something; nothing brings in valuable tourists like rivers of chocolate."

"Amen to that," The hooded one said.

"Gentlemen?" The machine-man said, his patience waning. "Focus now? Please?"

"Right." "Sorry." The two and apparently more scatterbrained entities of mysterious but hopefully benign purpose focused on the machine, properly tying their consciousnesses to the superstructure of reality itself and directing it to that one planet and that one battle.

"Look at it this way," The lion-man said as a parting comment, just to get one last bit in. "At least they evacuated before all this stuff went down."

...

"You know," Zim said conversationally to Zuko as the two of them were hurled halfway across the street, though a building and immediately ducked for covered as the building was blasted in half by an errant plasma bolt. "If we hadn't gotten sent that message out and gotten people to evacuate, there'd be a lot more civillian casualties instead of just property damage."

Zuko looked at the neighborhood, which the past five minutes of combat with the Umbra Eternis had reduced to four smashed husks, two totally demolished houses and a hotdog stand that was inexplicably fine despite the rest of the area being on fire until Kimblee blasted it to make things nice and symmetrical. "And yet if we hadn't sent that message, we wouldn't be fighting a giant robot and getting the crap kicked out of us."

Zim looked at him, bemused. "And that's...bad, right? Because I'm not certain if you're joking or not." Zuko facepalmed. "Oh, you're doing that thing again when you're mad. What are you mad about? This fight is getting awesome!"

Zuko stared at him before he shook it off and the two of them rejoined the fight. He probably had a more accurate estimation of current events, and honestly the fight was...not going very well, thanks to Kimblee's immense firepower (though he seemed largely content to have the beserking robot do the fighting for him), the Umbra Eternis' nigh-invincible armoring, the giant Gestalt Heartless constantly trying to kill them at every turn, and the fact that the Umbra Eternis was a borderline-invulnerable giant robot. (Calvin kept calling shennaigans at this. Kimblee kept pointing out that this wasn't very sensible. Calvin kept doing it anyway and privately wanted his own giant robot made of indestructibility.)

Worse, their numbers had been whittled down, but not by any deaths, thankfully; the Mall Crawlers, after waking up in time to do battle, had been the first to get knocked out of the fight again, since even though they had surprisingly powerful armor and fought pretty well, they were just too desperately outmatched and had been smacked away in a suicidal charge directly at Kimblee that had resulted in them going through a building or two and getting knocked out. Sam and Tucker had fared better, but not for long; the Gestalt had fired a blast that destroyed the building they had been in at the time, and they had only just barely managed to escape before Danny had caught them in mid-air and used a variation on his Ghost Ray to create a shield that had successfully blocked a follow-up combined blast from both Kimblee and the Gestalt, draining himself so much that he had blacked out.

If Appa hadn't caught him and his friends in mid-air, he might have died on impact with the ground, and it was still too close when the Gestalt had tried to tear Appa's face open and forcing their heaviest hitters (mainly pretty much everyone on Zim's crew except Hobbes, plus Roy Mustang, Aang, Greed, Toph, Gaara and Angilaka and a few others) to distract their enemies while Hobbes had moved Sam, Tucker and the Mall Crawlers onto Appa and sent the Sky Bison to seek shelter until this was over; for obvious reasons he had been directed to go back to the ruins of Foster's and seek shelter at the mobile hospital, since that had the most security presence at the moment, and had the benefit of providing medical attention.

So, as Zim saw things, it was becoming a battle of attrition. They just had to outlast Kimblee until he grew tired and made at least one fatal mistake that would let them completely turn the course of the battle.

The Umbra Eternis seemed to have enormous energy to spare (espicially after what seemed like all the Heartless that had been active in the town at that point had swarmed in and been assimilated by the machine-titan, invigorating it and giving it even more power), and Kimblee wasn't even winded with the effort of controlling it yet. At that very moment, it was smashing through a head-shaped building and shoving the rubble at it's enemies below, or at least those enemies that weren't occupied fighting the Gestalt elsewhere. Kimblee didn't even flinch as Calvin and Aang combined their abilities to turn the elements in the air into purest explosive flame right in front of the mighty machine-titan with a ear-wounding blast, flinging the red-hot ash into the robot's chest moments before the fire struck it. It was hit hard, and staggered for a moment, the burning elemental nature of the flame damaging something innateto it's nature as a thing of darkness, the Heartless comprising much of it's body writhing and collapsing...and then with a mental push from Kimblee, it smashed through the fire, dispelling it through sheer momentum.

It's roar faltered as it's wild and unsteady steps caught several steel cables that were being held at the ends by Hobbes and Cyborg in the hopes of tripping it up. The giant robot's inexorable force carried onward and the cables snapped, flinging the two warriors away. Hobbes bounced off a wall and fled for cover, while Cyborg was caught by the Umbra Eternis and flung over the rooftops in a single move, but Kimblee didn't notice the cannon Calvin transmuted out of the rubble left in it's wake and fire a salvo that hit it directly in the shoulder; while not quite as skillfully done as Scar had done earlier in his fight with Kimblee, it did knock Umbra Eternis off-balance and work it's own momentum against it, forcing it to waste precious moments from falling over, spinning around on one leg awkwardly.

It was nearly steady again when Calvin fired the cannon again and again until the ammo he had supplied it with. Each blasting rock shattered off the Umbra Eternis' armor, which was too tough to hurt by them, but it did attract the attention of both giant robot and it's pilot. Slowly and staring directly at Calvin and growling with every step, it advanced on Calvin, the ground cracking and blackening under it's footsteps. It pulled a fist back for a punch, stopping in mid-swing when Calvin pointed the cannon upwards and stuffed himself into it and a timed shot fired himself directly over it's shoulder and to relative safety, and then Toph slid out of the ground nearby, riding on top of a thick sheath of compacted stone coming to a point over her that struck the massive arm overhead; it only scraped the robot's metal armor, but it hit with all the strength of a landslide (enough to shatter the stone) and shoved the punch off-course, causing Umbra Eternis to overextend the punch right into the street and bury it's fist into the ground up to the mid-length of it's arm.

Toph wasted no time; Toph pressed a foot down and a section of street shoved her off, rocks flying around her and fusing into an armored suit over her as she rocketed at the huge metal shape she knew to be it's leg - and all that metal practically sang every time it took a step, and the monstrous energies infesting that metal made her feel sick - her every being focused on making this thing budge and break, a Metalbending rocket of a girl-

Kimblee saw her coming, though, and the Umbra Eternis gave her a glancing kick, knocking her away. He looked down to examine where she had hit him, and was interested to see a nearly miniscule small dent where she had his machine-titan; impressive, he thought, considering that it wasn't much of an impact and that until now nothing had even scratched it. To her further credit, he thought, she wasn't hurt when she crashed into the ground and simply plowed into the ground and not particularily hard; the ground itself seemed to soften around her, cushioning the blow, and carried her off as her momentum bled away and the rest was funneled into a spiky rock she hurled at Kimblee with good aim considering she wasn't entirely sure where Kimblee was. A cannon appeared from it's chest and vaporized it in a single shot, and the Umbra Eternis charged forward to stomp on her, unaware that Aang, Katara, Sokka and Beth were right behind him and opened fire, delighting him to no end.

While that was happening, Calvin had ducked into an alley, running and cursing as loudly as possible, which was bad since they were trying to hide; as he rounded the corner, Hobbes tripped him to make him stop and not run into anyone. "Ow!" Calvin said.

"You're welcome," Hobbes said. "Guess who I found!" He gestured at Zim and Zuko, standing behind him. Calvin grunted indifferently and stood up, so Hobbes dumped the modified radio that he'd been forced to carry back into Calvin's arms. (The energy-attuned device that had sucked up Kimblee's transformative energy had already been folded back up and stuffed into Calvin's belt, as it was no longer strictly neccesary.)

"So how are we doing?" Zuko asked; the fight had been moving too fast for him and Zim to keep track of, and they'd been waiting for things to cool down a bit before they made another move.

"Oh, just fine," Calvin said sarcastically. "The heavy-hitters from this town got carried by that monster Heartless down a while ago, and for all I know they got eaten, and in the meantime your friends and that girl in the armor suit are being tossed around by Kimblee and the giant death-robot that I totally want, except not evil. The throwing thing may be literal, I think I saw that Cyborg guy being thrown over the rooftops."

"You know, that girl's name is Beth," Courtney asked from behind Calvin, hurrying into the alley right behind Calvin without him noticing. "Please try and show a little gentlemanliness?"

"Is that even a word?" Zim asked while Hobbes and Zuko looked incredulously at her. Zim blinked and did a double-take. "Wait, what are you doing here?"

"You turned my neighborhood into a warzone, what do you think!" Courtney said indignantly. "A giant robot is wrecking havoc and things blowing up, everyone else is somewhere else or knocked away or trying not to die, I couldn't find anyone and I panicked!"

"Oh, you want protection," Zuko said knowingly. He frowned. "I don't know if I should feel happy that you're confident in our skills to keep you alive, or insulted that you only feel that way because you couldn't find anyone else."

"Well, I can't make an educated guess without more information," Courtney said loftily. She glanced at Zuko, looking slightly uncomfortable (even by Traverse Town standards he was horribly scarred) and said, "...You're a lot better than some other people I can think of, though. Like those crazy teenagers in armor that 'guard the mall' and act like those ancient space knights from some old empire and also got to leave on that bison...lucky jerks."

"Wait, why didn't you leave with them?" Hobbes asked.

"...I don't know! And I wish I did, Kimblee could show up here any moment!"

"Psh, yeah right," Zim said dismissively. "I thought he was fighting Aang and the others. He'll be busy for a while yet."

"He so could show up right now!" Courtney insisted.

"Well, we'll deal with it. And maybe steal his robot! That'd be fun. Provided we get rid of those Heartless in it," Zuko said.

"Ooh, we coul replace them with exoskeletal muscle-replicants!" Calvin said excitedly. "In fact, I have plans for a kind of nano-scale clockwork where each gear is so tiny and multifaceted that they all fit together so completely that it looks like a solid piece at the macro level! I think they could handle the job nicely-"

"Focus, guys!" Courtney snapped. "Psychopath with a giant robot, a giant Heartless and a semi-magical semi-science-y stone made from people, remember? That you're supposed to stop? And I'm supposed to...watch you stop, I guess." She frowned, perhaps not very pleased by how passive that made her sound.

Zim frowned. "You're in a tetchy mood today."

"To be fair," Hobbes said politely. "We did turn her neighborhood into a warzone. Granted, she consented to our plan, but we didn't give her full disclosure first, but...um...uh..." Hobbes had, at this point, looked up and trailed off weakly. Zim looked up to see what he was looking at. and noticed that a shadow had fallen over them.

Above them was the great mechanical bulk of the Umbra Eternis, webbed with wriggling darkness, so close that it eclipsed the alleyway and probably the buildings around them, and Kimblee had seen fit to suspend himself down from them to listen in on their conversation. "Ah," Zim said faintly. "...Hi."

"Hello," Kimblee said. "Having a conversation, I see."

"Yes. I don't suppose you'd give us some time to conclude our conversation, would you? Perhaps a year or two to refine our skills as a conversation point?"

"Of course not," Kimblee said, pulling back into his giant robot and assuming command of it, evidently bored already. Umbra Eternis raised a gauntlet, or so Zim deduced from the way it's shoulder shifted and something big loomed over them with a big glowing disc on it. "That would seem a bit of a poor judgement call on my part. Not as much as you standing around just waiting to get hit-"

Hobbes moved and the others ran for cover while blasting fire (and gunfire) at Kimblee and trying not to hit Jarod. In a flash, Hobbes was bounding off the sides of the walls and ascending in less then two mighty jumps each, jumping with such force that he left deep dents where he kicked off, and then he was arcing directly over Kimblee, seemingly floating in mid-air. "I think that's pretty close to what irony actually is!" Hobbes said in mid-flip, a foot over his head in preparation for a devastating roundhouse kick.

Umbra Eternis pulled back with incredible speed, winding Kimblee back before hopping back, it's sheer mass and uneven weight distrubution making it a bit of a chancy move. Hobbes hit a wall and skidded down with his claws, and when he rejoined the others another massive fireball blasted into the back of Umbra Eternis, followed by a wind so powerful that the rooftops of the buildings forming the alley they were in tore apart so violently that it looked like they just disintegrated.

The ground shook as the giant robot staggered back from the force of that brief blast of wind. "RUN RUN RUN!" Zuko said, pushing Calvin, Courtney and Hobbes out of the alley while he and Zim ran out into a upraised concrete hill cut into a spiral for some reason.

"Why?" Courtney said, trying to keep up with them and panting. "Oh, I am so out of shape..."

"Because Aang's here, he's going to cut loose and 'moderation' is not something the Avatar Spirit understands!" Zuko said, and caught notice of the questioning look Hobbes gave him as they bounded over the steep inclines and loops of the spiral hill (which, given the intricate detail of the circuit-like patterns carved into it, suggested that it was some sort of controlling mechanism for...something). "Look, just keep running!"

The air went still for a single terrible moment. Just like that pause right before the storm, or tides receding for a tsunami. Zim looked back as they ducked behind a handy overturned bowl-shaped thing that might have been a bus stop, and thought he saw Aang hovering over the Umbra Eternis, doing some kind of pose that he too late remembered was an Airbending move-

Boom. The skies fell.

More accurately, a staggeringly powerful blast of focused air, perhaps strong enough to cut a mountain or pulverize a man into pieces, whirled around the Umbra Eternis and hammered down like a falling truck, driving it right through the ground and obliterating the area around it; the streets fountained up as a geyser of dust, the secondary shockwave tearing buildings apart and sending the rubble crashing down and tumbling over itself before being propelled into the ground with a hellish racket. Someone, probably Kimblee, said "Ow."

The various fighters stared in astonishment, horror, and various other appropiate reactions. "...Dear God," Roy finally said from behind a shelter that Aang had thoughtfully ensconced him a few moments before after sealing the Gestalt into a giant rock cube to hold it back for a bit. "...We should adopt him into the Peace Marines."

"That's not a bad idea," Gibbs thoughtfully said from next to him.

"Nuh uh, I saw him first!" Angilaka said. "Besides, I heard he's a monk; my guys totally got dibs!"

Her two associates were with her as well. "Hey, that was pretty cool," Abel said. "What do you think, Scar?" There was no response. "Scar? Hey, buddy!"

Scar still said nothing. He just stared, enraptured at the raw power. "I might well die before the glory," He whispered. "For mine eyes have beheld such might as would flow from Ishbala."

The two ninjas Naruto and Gaara had a less cultish reaction in their spot atop a nearby building where they had retreated to set a trap. "HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME," Naruto said, Aang's power pulling at his own; they were both born to the wind, in the ways of their worlds, and like called to like.

"Is this what it was like to behold the Sage of Six Paths?" Gaara said, sounding a bit like the child he had been, awe stirring from his stunted sense of wonderment.

Naruto blinked in shock; loyal to the virtues of the ninja code of his world, it was a little upsetting to have anything flippantly compared to the legendary savior and founder of ninjutsu. "...If he was real, I...I guess the Sage of Six Paths would have done stuff like that." He perked up. "Like making the moon from our world and sealing up a super-monster inside it!"

Gaara scoffed. "That's the most absurd thing I have ever heard from you."

(Both demon-beasts sealed within Naruto and Gaara, being entirely privy to this conversation, wisely chose not to say anything for fear of saying too much and also looking silly.)

A few buildings away (because rooftops are awesome for getting a good view of a fight like this) Sokka and Katara had wound up with Beth and watching the fight, waiting for an appropiate moment. Well, Sokka and Katara were, Beth seemed mildly stunned at best. "He...the street!" Beth stammered. "It's gone! Boom! Poof! How did he...that's not...it can't...it doesn't make..." Sokka waved a hand impatiently, gesturing 'get on with it'. "He's just a kid!" Beth finally said. "How can he do that?"

"He's not that young," Katara said sharply. "And anyway, I thought people in this town did stuff like that all the time."

"Not like that, exactly," Beth said. "I haven't seen people throw power like that around since-" She stopped. "Um. Never mind..." It was silly to remember those guys, she thought; Aang's power wasn't green and didn't make giant robots or drills or stuff like that. Without thinking about it, she absently rubbed an old tattoo on her shoulder; a flaming stylized skull, wearing sunglasses.

Greed, peering through a hole Umbra Eternis had knocked him and his sidekicks through with embarrasingly little effort, stared at the result of Aang's immense power...well, greedily. "I want one!" He declared, pointing at Aang.

"Great," Shego said dryly. "Like we didn't have enough crazy-ass kids with nigh-unfathomable power bugging us all day."

"You're just mad that he has more power than you," Deadpool said. Shego punched him in the face. "Oh God! My glorious pretty looks! MY PRECIOUS MODELING CAREER!" They stared at him. "...I could get a modeling career. I so totally could."

Cyborg, finally stumbling on the scene after being thrown away, stared. "...Damn, I just know I missed something totally awesome!" He shrugged and activated his on-board communicator, hailing Winry again. To his relief, his call was switched from her own communicator to the frequency of the ship he had spent all night building, outfitting, programming, debugging and preparing it for a test flight. "Winry! Please please, girl, tell me this is you!"

"I hear you just fine!" Winry said. "I got our shop's neighborhood pacified for the time being, loaded up the new ship for that new guy you seem and I'm coming your way! I've run into a few problems; no big deal, just some jerks taking advantage of the chaos for their own benefit, and roaming packs of Heartless keep popping up wherever I go. I thought we'd seen the last of them when they all went off somewhere, but more keep showing up! It's nothing this ship can't take care of, but it's majorly slowing me down. Where are you guys right now? I'll get there as soon as I can."

Cyborg sent her the coordinates. "We probably won't stay here too long though, this fight keeps going all over the place. And I'm warning you, be prepared, 'cause Kimblee found himself a giant robot he's powering with Heartless!"

"...I'm sorry, the speakers must be buggy. I thought I just heard you say that Kimblee has a giant robot powered by Heartless."

"I did, yeah. And it was made from Greed's defensive mecha and that Juggernaut robot the Council had on their diner."

Winry processed this. "And he still has a Philosopher's Stone?"

"Yep."

"...Well. Crap."

"Pretty much sums up the whole thing, doesn't it?" Cyborg said.

Winry said, "No big deal, I'll be there before you know it! I just AUGH!"

"What was that?"

"Nothing, some jerk just attacked me! Told you I was getting caught up in fight...I don't know how long it'll be before I make it, just hold on!" The communicator switched off amid a chorus of powering hums and distant weapons discharging. Cyborg shook his head, hoping for the best and fearing the worst.

Back to the crew; Hobbes took a single look at the destruction Aang had caused and hopefully said to Zuko, "Do you think that stopped Kimblee?"

"Nobody could have possibly survived that," Zuko said, not adding that Aang always pulled his punches. "So...yes, of course it didn't. It's never that easy."

"Oh, good," Calvin said. They stared at him. "What? I don't want that Jarod guy to get killed!"

"...Oh yeah, I forgot about him," Zim admitted.

"I suppose that's why Aang held back," Zuko said. Zim nodded.

They looked at the two of them in alarm. "Held back?" Courtney said disbelievingly.

Further conservation was forestalled: the ground trembled ominously, and Umbra Eternis tore it's way out of the ground, chunks of stone flying away from it as it clawed it's way out, it's roars oscillating disquietingly and black foam drippling from it's mouth. Dirt and concrete and other stuff fell off it's back as it hauled itself onto the streets from the hole it emerged from and stood up, the rubble it dislodged neatly filling the hole up and also totally obstructing the tunnel below. As it stood to it's full height, the dust it's rapid excavation had thrown up fell away, revealing that the damage down to it by Aang's devastating use of the terrifying power of Air unleashed...

Still amounted to little more than some minor denting on the metal above the fuselage where Kimblee controlled it: it's metal body was pitted and dented in places, covered in dust and dirt, and it could have used a bit of a new paint job on the front where Aang's air-blast had hit it, but the machine-titan itself was totally unharmed. It had a look of improbable smugness, and Kimblee's smirk was even more infuriating. Jarod twitched and writhed for some reason, the tendrils the Heartless had extended into him pulsing just as the darkness imbued into the Umbra Eternis flared up for a moment. The Umbra Eternis took a single massive step after another in it's rolling heavy gait, more of the street collapsing behind it. "At last," Kimblee said, the liquified forms of the Heartless collective powering the Umbra Eternis that he had appropiately chosen to call the Umbral Heartless contracting around him as though it was protecting him from further harm, hardening into a slightly crystalline form. "Someone's finally hitting properly. I think I almost felt that one."

"...Oh, COME ON!" Aang said incredulously, and he had a lot of credulity to strain.

And lo, there was much exasperated statements of disapproval and frustration. Among the most restrained of them was Calvin (a contrast to his apparent tendency to fly off the handle over nothing) turning to Zim and remarking, "You know, I've known you for less than twelve damn hours and we've already fought two creepy guys with superpowers that came out of nowhere. And, counting this abomination of engineering, two giant robot things made of evil. The first one being the Guard Armor, obviously. Is giant robots and inexplicable villains that know too much going to be a theme with you? It's totally going to be a theme with you, isn't it?"

"Hey, I fight using giant robots, I've hardly ever had to fight against them!" Zim snapped. "This is a new thing for me! Almost as new as the contrived pyrokinesis. On that note..." He clapped his hands together, forming a fireball between them. "Do that fire-making-bigger thing you did." Calvin rolled his eyes but obligingly did so, inputting a few commands into a rotary-style keypad near his elbow, and several brass-tipped prongs popped up, projecting a field of energy for about two and a half yards; Zim's fireball abruptly expanded in size, growing nearly as large as Zim was. Grunting with the effort of containing it, Zim tossed it up and kicked it hard, the aggressive intent more than the actual kick rocketing it over the streets and over the devastated rooftops and aimed straight at the Umbra Eternis...

Which turned in response to Aang pulling nearly a third of the street into a compacted bison-shaped projectile and throwing it at him. Zim's fireball exploded harmlessly against a shoulder, leaving a sooty mark. Kimblee didn't appear to have even noticed it and Umbra Eternis summoned four giant plasma cannons onto it's arms, two on each forearm, and opened fire with the spread of plasma smashing the projectile into pieces that nonetheless kept going and three of them hit the giant robot; one in the shoulder, another nicking the mechanisms of it's right leg and the last almost hitting Kimblee; he was narrowly saved by the tendrils holding him tight moving him out of the way and spitting the shrapnel back out.

It did provide a useful distraction, and Kimblee failed to see Roy appearing on the scene, along with Greed's crew, Naruto and Gaara, Abel and Scar and also Angilaka, the lot of them throwing some of the most powerful attacks they could muster: Roy firing off massive blasts of flame, Gibbs with his incredible firepower, Angilaka with spiritually-powered laser beams (which while very effective against it's Heartless portions still failed to hurt the armor any) and Shego with her most powerful blasts. Abel, Scar, Greed and Deadpool had opted to employ some large-scale weapons Gibbs had helpfully provided, Deadpool using a rocket launcher (that would undoubtedly be taken from him immediately after the fight) while Greed had allowed Lin to take over and use a laser gatling gun, since Lin had much better aim. Naruto and Gaara, still uncomfortable with firearms, preferred to use throwing kunai with explosive tags wrapped on them, throwing them at the gaps between the armor to hopefully damage vulnerable areas. Abel and Scar were on supress-fire duty, with Scar transmuting blockades in case of return fire and making large gatling cannons that Abel quite handily piloted. As a result of all that, the Umbra Eternis was pushed back, too overwhelmed to strike back, and the prospect of hurting it pushed everyone to rejoin the fight in their own ways; Katara and Toph were working on stopping Umbra Eternis in it's tracks by icing it's feet and covering them with rocks while Sokka and Beth provided cover fire, and Aang just hammered it with blasts of superheated air again and again.

Zim's crew (and Courtney) were doing their part as well; Zim and Zuko were culmatively generating massive quantities of fire equaling the smaller blasts the Flame Alchemist employed, while Calvin alternated between trying to transmute the ground into manacles over the Umbra Eternis' feet and making cannons to try and shoot Kimblee (or, failing that, fire one of them near enough to grab Jarod so they could resume fighting without concern for getting anyone killed). Hobbes, due to his near-perfect aiming skills, was actually the one firing the cannons and alerting Calvin to when they were out of ammo so he could transmute more ammo for them. Courtney...just fired a lot, and wasn't too bad at it.

As they slowly gained ground and kept Kimblee pinned, Jarod stirred, ink-black tendrils forming out of the thick murk around him to lace around his half-submerged face and partially fuse with him by tiny continuations sliding into his ears, his mouth, into even his eyes, tear ducts and facial pores. He twitched and moved, faint echoes of actions commited in whatever half-dream he was having as the elemental darkness embodied in the Heartless tore his mind down to the very core, past the personality-shell that was 'Jarod' and deeper, deeper, to memories too old to belong to any living thing. And there was plenty of darkness there to fuel the Umbra Eternis, enough loss and despair and madness and such rich torment to drive a man to madness a thousand times over. And indeed, it had, as Jarod's unconscious mind was begining to realize.

He wasn't physically hurt like Kimblee, though. The sheer amount of firepower, while not visibly damaging the Umbra Eternis, did certainly hurt Kimblee, with the feedback from the powerful hits slamming into him doing him physical harm, with bruises and lacerations spontaneously appeared on him with crunching sensations. He forced more power from Jarod via his link to the Umbrals, ripping ever-deeper through his mind and drawing strength into both himself and his giant robot. Bizarre images and impossibly ancient memories flickered through his mind like half-remembered dreams, too vauge and brief to understand, and they were too strange for Kimblee to grasp anyway. They presented contexts and situations that made him feel more uneasy that he ever had before.

Even so, it was enough to fuel the mechanisms of his giant robot and make the feedback pain dim a little; he raised an arm, the disc on the palm powering up and firing a tremendously powerful beam that could certainly scour the flesh from a man's bones...and went over everyone's heads, down the street, and hit a harmless looking giant rock-cube in the middle of the street. "Hah!" Hobbes said as the cube exploded in a big flashy blast. "You missed!"

Kimblee glanced at them and smiled faintly. "No, I hit precisely what I was aiming for."

Aang froze, the wind whirling around him to keep him hovering. "No way. Isn't that where I locked up that..." On cue, a large energy ball struck his back and knocked him out of the sky. The constant firing stopped and everyone turned in horror to see the Gestalt tearing itself loose from where Aang had Earthbent a prison around it, bits of rubble falling from a body that was still slightly cube-shaped from being contained by a too-small space. It shook itself off before it generated a massive set of many wings and took to the air, jaws opening to spew entropic blasts at them and forced them to scatter, and the ground where they had been standing was shortly torn apart.

Watching this approvingly, Kimblee smirked. "Excellent. Back-up plans always seem profitable, are they not?" With a grunt of effort, he managed to break his robot's foot loose from the ice and rock sealed over it, ignoring the frenzied cannonfire, fireballs, gun fire and other attacks Zim and his crew threw at his heavily armored backside, and the same went for Katara, Sokka and Beth.

Kimblee started advancing. Ignoring this, Zim ran straight for Aang and stood vigil over the dazed Air Nomad right as the towering mass of the Gestalt fluttered down, wings beating up a massive surge of wind. Zim stood his ground still, glaring up at it. Dozens of gaping jaws dominated by gnashing fangs appeared, all aimed directly at Aang and Zim, and the Gestalt threw it's mass of jaws upon the two of them even as Katara raced down on a bridge of ice (made from a ice spear Calvin helpfully threw to her); it's black body curled around them like a massive pool of living pollutants, the edges of the ground near it smouldering and hissing, and there were crunching noises...

A series of blasts from both Hobbes and Abel's respective cannons, neither of them deciding to run for it, struck the seething mass of the Gestalt and made it flinch in pain, and then it rippled violently as a bright glow emananted from within, tearing holes in it's body. It curled up defensively, shimmering with dark power and about to deal a single massive blast that would tear the street in half. And before it could finish charging up, a massive tornado of fire tore it's way right through the Gestalt, incinerating nearly half of it's body and almost blasting it apart. The tornado was still burning as the Heartless peeled itself away, folded itself back together (significantly smaller than before) and dematerialized before retreating into the shadows to recuperate. (And possibly brood that it wasn't really contributing to the fight.) The fires died away, revealing Zim and Aang at it's epicenter, the former of the two holding the taller human up; given their height difference, it was awkward for Zim to keep Aang propped up but he still maanged, and the flames both of them had generated in a single intense burst still flashed around them. "Not bad..." Aang wheezed. "For our first real combo move...right?"

"It's like when I made those fire gauntlets..." Zim agreed. "Only with less of me blowing up."

"Marginally," Aang joked. Katara slid over and grabbed Aang by the arm, the younger boy gratefully sliding an arm over the taller girl's shoulder and letting her dangle him slightly above the ground to give him balance.

"Nice work!" Katara said, smiling at Zim. "You're learning pretty quick."

"Eh," Zim said. He looked away and saw Kimblee busily fighting just about everyone else (except Cyborg, who was still trying to get back) with the help of the Gestalt, the smaller fighters avoiding with the attacks through sheer desperation and toughness...but it was only a matter of time before a blast of alchemic power or a Heartless-blast hit someone. "Excuse me, must distract Kimblee now." Ignoring Aang and Katara's infuriated demands to stop and think for a second, he ran a safe distance from them (Hobbes, Calvin and Courtney tagging along). Beth, with Sokka in tow, flew to the ground a short distance behind him. Zim cleared his throat and called out, "Hey, you! The maniac with the Stone made of evil and the bad dress sense! Also, the giant robot."

Kimblee paused in his merciless pummeling of Toph's surprisingly durable suit of armor she'd made from a flying car she had crashed through and glanced over, trying to ignore how surprisingly hard Abel's pummeling against the robot's foot hurt. "Yes?"

Zim pointed at Kimblee's robot. "You've absconded with an acquantice of mind who's due to give a friend of mine some much needed psychiatric assitance. Return him now."

"No," Kimblee said.

"Oh. Please?"

"No."

"Eh, it was worth a shot." Zim thought his next response over and said, "Then what do you want him for?"

"Hrm? Oh..well, as I have already informed some of you, I've been asked to retrieve him for reasons that I assume are quite unpleasant." He frowned, dropping Toph and turning more fully towards Zim. "And what do you mean, 'bad dress sense'?"

"I meant precisely what I meant," Zim said proudly. On the ground behind Kimblee, the fighters took advantage of this brief distraction to catch their breath and, possibly, mount another counterattack. "An entirely white suit, with your occupation? Surely the blood will get everywhere. Also, your hat clashes with your attire."

"It most certainly does not," Kimblee said loftily. "My hat is a matter of style, not simple color coordination. It offers a welcome focal point from the unerring pristine-ness of my suit, making a excellent contrast to the purity of my look."

"...So you're a assassin and a fashion expert?" Zim said.

"I believe a man should expand his horizons whenever possible," Kimblee said primly. "And I am not an assassin. Assassins generally have boundaries that I find pointless, if admirable."

"...I'm sorry, were you implying that you have standards of your own?" Zim said, even more nonplussed. "I stopped paying attention after you made mouth-noises. Your voice grates on my brain!"

"I don't...what?" Kimblee sputtered for a moment, trying to recollect himself. He glared at Zim. "Your literal-mindedness is going to get you into trouble. It's extremely irritating."

"So I've been told. Anyway...erm...what are you doing here?"

"Killing you all. Or I would be, if you would be silent for a moment."

"No, no, I meant what are you doing here, specifically. What is your purpose. By all accounts you don't actually live here in town, and it doesn't seem the sort of place you would like to visit for recreational reasons...barring recuperative bouts of mass murder, I suppose...so I presume you have an ulterior motive in your presence here." Zim paused, trying to collect his thoughts. "Because otherwise you'd just be killing and maiming and stuff, which sounds like...exactly something you would do for fun. Hrm. I thought I was onto a revealing thread there."

"No, no," Kimblee said. "You had it right. I am on orders to do my special manner of work here in town. Raising chaos, bringing a little healthy fear of the unknown...that sort of thing."

"Ah." A sudden suspicion seized Zim. "On whose orders?"

Kimblee frowned. "I can't tell you that."

"Your loyalty is commendable, I suppose," Zim said. Kimblee looked like he was going to correct him on some point or another, but Zim continued before he had a chance to. "Such loyalty indeed. You only do this because you are commanded to. You destroy everything you touch and ruin everything you come into contact to because it's your job."

He took a few steps forward, seemingly unconcerned with the giant unstoppable robot's proximity. "Obey and obey," Zim said musingly, words twisting as a rising fury darkened his tone like his breath was contorted in his throat. "That's all there is for you, is it not? Just breaking and destroying everything that you find, and then you don't even need specific orders, just a suggestion and a pointed direction, and perhaps a implication that you should enjoy yourself. Hilarity ensues, as they say." He looked scornfully at Kimblee. "Are you anything more than a tool in your employer's hands? Or have you passed the point where you stopped caring about anything except pleasing your superiors?"

Kimblee tilted his head. "I think that you have some manner of point here, but I fail to see it. Consider this while you wind up to it: you misunderstand my intentions here. I obey orders because it is convienient for me, because it is a occupation that gives me much latitude to ply my skills. But I do so only because I want to; it remains entirely my own decision."

Zim was silent for a moment. "Ah," He said after a moment. "So. You're that sort of villain. Please explode now!" Zim struck the Keyblade into the ground, throwing up sparks, and from where it hit the ground, the air rippled as a large fireball appeared, a bit bigger than Zim, the nascent Firebender (or whatever he was) snarling with the effort of creating it, and gave it a shove that launched it at Kimblee in an low sweep.

It made a nice explosion when it hit the Umbra Eternis (Zim's aim being a bit off) but didn't do more than push his left side slightly off-balance. "That was a pathetic surprise attack," Kimblee said patronizingly. "What was the point of that?"

Several blasts of fire, many magnitudes bigger than Zim's, hit him from behind. "The point was to distract you," Roy Mustang said with Zuko standing near him with his hands on fire, and the two of them combined their powers: Zuko creating the biggest fires he could while Roy amplified and threw them at the machine-titan's back until it glowed red-hot. It was so well-shielded Kimblee didn't even notice the heat, but Roy seemed satisfied. "Now!" He said, gesturing at Calvin, Aang and Katara, who had gathered a considerable amount of water while Kimblee had been distracted, and now they directed it onto the Umbra Eternis' still blazing backside, the Waterbenders freezing it into a solid mass with a sharp gesture and Calvin simply shooting a freeze-beam at it. Kimblee grunted in surprise, his robot's shoulders immobilized, and focused a fraction of the Philosopher's Stone power into the ice, which flashed red and harmlessly shattered into small chunks of ice and water vapor, some of it's back discolored. He flexed the defrozen robot's body, frowning at the unexpected resistence in some of the back plates; they had been designed to flex around the frame's movements to accomodate it, and it felt like a few of them had slid very slightly out of place.

Hobbes, Calvin, Courtney, Sokka and Beth had gathered near Zim. Sokka knew a fair bit about engineering (much of it acquired knowledge since his accidental departure from his home world) and said, "Hey, doesn't bad stuff happen to really hot metal when you freeze it?"

"Yeah," Calvin said. "Even though that wasn't anywhere near it's melting point, it still did something to the armor in the back. And Kimblee's no engineer, I don't think he even realizes the implications!"

Calvin wasn't the only one to acknowledge this. "Excellent," Abel cheered while the others readied their respective means of exploiting this potential weak spot. Kimblee, for his part, was stumbling around, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with his robot's back. "We finally did something!"

"What happened now?" Cyborg said, finally stumbling back into the scene from down the street. "I don't...hey, some of the bits on his back are out of alignment!"

"What did you say?" Kimblee said. "I didn't catch that." He grunted and the Umbra Eternis raised an arm. "Oh, never mind, it's probably not important." The Gestalt rose from his shadow, recovered from the damage Aang and Zim had done to it, and loomed behind the Umbra Eternis as his back-up, both of them charging up attacks.

"Tiger-boy!" Zim said to Hobbes as the people around Roy made their defenses; Aang and Toph raising a large barricade wall from the street and the rubble's stone and metal around them, Katara coating it with steel-hard ice, Angilaka infusing it with divine power, Calvin and Roy transmuting it to have greater density, and so on.

Hobbes growled. "My name is Hobbes!"

"Sure, okay. I want you to throw me at the bit where he was weakened." Zim pointed at the back plates that were slipping out of alignment on the Umbra Eternis.

At that moment, the people at Kimblee's front attacked: Shego fired her energy blasts while Deadpool, fired a missle or two, both of them aiming for the Gestalt and punching some holes in it. Cyborg fired both his sonic cannons and a few missiles from hidden launchers in his shoulders, aimed at the giant robot's head and several other spots with structural weaknesses his onboard computers detected. Katara and Toph hurled a huge chunk of stone with big ice spears frozen in all directions and hit the giant robot's left leg, halting it's in place. Abel (still manning the cannon) fired volley after volley until he ran out of ammo and just tore the cannon out of the ground and threw it at the Umbra Eternis, while Scar transmuted a weapon from the ground that resembled a two-seater mounted gatling gun that fired exploding spears that both he and Abel piloted. Angilaka, instead of performing some feat of strength, concentrated for a moment before a bright aura appeared around her, reshaping around her hands into several dozen bolts of hard light that burned like fire and fired at Kimblee, lancing into the depths of the machine-titan they opposed and exploding. Gibbs' arms expanded into a impressive set of beam-blasters similar to gatling guns, spinning on and shooting a spiral-shaped beam. Finally, Roy snapped his fingers with a fierce flourish and summoned several train-sized streaming flames that streaked right at Kimblee, consciously avoiding Jarod's submerged form. Aang bounced into the street, layering his feet deeply with stone for the few moments he was there, and leaped high into the air, suffusing the rock-boots with heat drawn from the sun until they glowed red-hot, and then he spun like a top in the air and fired the flaming chunks of rock from his feet, making a spraying effect akin to machine gun fire. If machine guns fired bullets that were on fire.

Hobbes watched all this happen (while Sokka, Calvin, Courtney and Beth joined in on the 'shooting at Kimblee' business), and looked back at Zim, his expression carefully neutral. "You want me to throw you at a giant robot-type enemy. Again."

"Yes," Zim said.

"Right through the field of fire so that you can perhaps exploit a weakness in it's armor. And I repeat, again."

"Yes!"

"Through the still-ongoing field of big missiles, explosions and general blasting right at this very same robot, with a fairly high probability that you'll get hit because our allies won't be able to stop themselves from hitting you."

"I'm not going into their line of fire, you're throwing me at it's back," Zim said in a reasonable tone.

Hobbes ignored this, and got to the central point. "And, assuming that you fail to get hit by an improbably high series of margins, you intend to do something to a robot that is, for all practical intents and purposes, invincible. While it's under heavy fire. And will probably be on fire by that point."

"One should hope so."

"One should..." Hobbes facepalmed. "Agh...sure, fine! Can you guys stop shooting, I'm going to do something crazy now." Calvin, Courtney, Beth and Sokka obliged him, and resigning himself for what was probably going to be a theme in their fights now, Hobbes grabbed Zim by the back of his jacket (increasingly frayed thanks to the rigors of this bullet-ridden fight) and hoisted him into the air and spinning a few times to build up momentum, and as soon as he had generated enough force to make minor shockwaves in the air he let go, producing another shockwave when he let Zim go, rocketing towards the Umbra Eternis with a delighted battle cry.

The others (meaning those immediately near Hobbes, Roy's group had no idea of this) watched this happen. "Did you just throw your friend at a giant invincible robot?" Courtney said.

"Apparently so," Calvin said.

"Why?" Beth demanded.

Hobbes protested, "It was his idea!"

"And you listened to him?" Sokka said incredulously. "Buddy, Zim's crazier then a sackful of crazy badgers locked up in an insanity-inducing cell and they graduated with honors on top of their madness squad in the top Boot Camp Of Insanity during national Go Bonkers Week at the peak of the full moon which has a lot to do with 'lunacy' except when my first girlfriend is personally involved and those crazy badgers I was talking about were also infected with crazy-badger rabies which is worse than usual rabies because it makes them go super-crazy instead of just being rabid, because if they bite you, you go crazy too and then it's just a few days before you're babbling about Bloodwraiths and screaming at mice with your shirt off and nibbling at coasters and dancing for old people. Because you're crazy." Everyone stared at him. "Okay, I swear, that made a lot more sense in my head..."

Zim crashed into the back of the Umbra Eternis, a few feet from the weak spot he had intended to get to and Kimblee hadn't noticed, aside from wondering what that dinging noise was before dismissing it as a ricocheted bullet. A few solid tendrils extended from the armor, the Umbrals sensing their natural enemy the Key right before them and trying to kill it's wielder before it could get them. "Hey, hey, get off!" Zim snapped, slashing them off at their root and kicking the pieces away before dropping off, extending the spider-legs from his Pak in mid-air so that they struck inches from the loosened back plates, allowing Zim to stand right in front of the weak spot. He raised the Keyblade up high, aimed, and wedged it right into the gap as far as he could. To his delight, the Keyblade flowed right into it like it was made of liquid, it's metal proving surprisingly protean, and he managed to get it nearly halfway through it and scratching the flow of liquified Heartless under the surface. Smog bloomed up from under it, perhaps a by-product of the Umbra Eternis' mysterious internal workings, but it shied away from Zim, as if afraid of the Keybalde. Deciding not to waste any more time, Zim had his spider-leg attachments reorient himself into a better position for maximum leverage and shoved as hard as he could.

There was a faint creaking sound; as could be surmised, while the armor of the Umbra Eternis was nigh-invincible, the same could not be said for the mechanisms powering it (what little there that wasn't done by the Umbral Heartless, that is) or even the parts directly under the armor. Consequently, while the loosened backplates were as strong and unmarked as ever, the actual fittings had been damaged by the rapid heating-and-freezing (a tactic beloved by elemental warriors all over the worlds), and thus the backplate Zim had been levering popped right out of place, scattering melting frost all over, and came to a clattering stop right in front of Hobbes.

This didn't go unnoticed. "Hey," Roy said, peering. "Isn't that..."

"The new refugee that was on the report about Kimblee!" Gibbs said.

"What's he doing over there!" Zuko said.

"Looks like...yeah, looks like he just snapped a piece of armor right off Kimblee's robot," Abel said.

"That's my little buddy!" Aang crowed.

"...Please tell me that was his plan all along," Hobbes begged Sokka. "Please tell me he wasn't just planning to get on the invincible death robot and make it up from there!" Sokka shrugged helplessly, and Hobbes sagged in misery, his mind coming up with terrible prophecies for the adventure to come. "He really is insane...oh, Aslan show me mercy, what have I gotten myself into!"

Courtney took pictures; it would be useful for her later report on this whole thing. Calvin just put on his goggles to analyze the metal's elemental structure so he might be able to transmute it; Beth's sensory array did something similar, since she liked being helpful, though both efforts were fruitless, since the Heartless screwed up their telemetry. Hobbes, after a few moments more lamenting his fate, picked up the fallen bit of armor, which he figured would make a decent fighting shield for himself dispite it being a bit bigger than he was (since he didn't know where his usual one had gotten to; he thought it had been broken or left in their dimensional dufflebag or something), and a fairly intact servo-motor still fused to it made a decent handgrip.

Zim, pleased at a job well done, moved up Kimblee's back to go for Kimblee himself. For his part, this hadn't gone unnoticed by Kimblee; though he didn't know that it was Zim who had done it, or that Zim was on his back, he was aware that something had changed, mostly due to the Umbra Eternis' squawk of discomfort and the information transmitted by it. He couldn't see for himself, since he was locked into the Umbra Eternis' lower torso and the hunchbacked robot couldn't turn around well enough, he simply extended a gauntleted hand around over to his back, the immense appendage missing Zim by a few feet and hovering there, arm straining as Kimblee realized it wouldn't go any farther. He grunted, turned as best he could, and the arm extended slightly...moving just over Zim and lightly touching the empty slot where the armor plate was supposed to be. "My armor!" Kimblee snarled. Attracted by the noise, the Gestalt looked over...and saw Zim clinging onto the back of Umbra Eternis. It expressed an appropiate degree of surprise before forming a number of sharp slashing limbs, diving at him like an ocean intent on stamping out a single ember and not really caring that it's summoner happened to be the terrain that ember was on.

Zim cackled maniacally and jumped off the machine-titan's back and bounced off it's legs to the ground just as the Gestalt smashed into the back of Umbra Eternis, nearly knocking it over. He hurried back to his group and the Umbra Eternis staggered around, almost falling over and flailing it's arms awkwardly. It just barely managed to keep it's balance, and whirled a fist directly into the Gestalt with enough force to smash it through a building. "What are you DOING!" Kimblee bellowed, and even though his words were downright civilized compared to the Umbra Eternis' background roar of indignation, he sounded even more angry then the robot. Umbra Eternis raised a hand, anti-tank weapons snapping into position over the Umbra Eternis' arm as various beam weapons powered up; and the Gestalt rose up, tendrils telescoping out from it and contorting into metallic shapes like combinations of drills and saws in varying mixtures...and Zim's allies, deciding that they didn't really want Kimblee to beocme a Heartless, went right back to their strategy of 'shoot the hell out of the bad guys until they explode or something', pounding into the both of them with their various missiles.

"We'll finish this later!" Kimbee snarled, and the Gestalt backed down and obligingly extended a shield of dark energy around the both of them, diminishing the damage a little. Kimblee then considered for a moment how best to resolve the assault on him, and then decided 'screw sublety' and to put some of his machine-titan's weapons to proper use for once, and then the immense metal bulk of the Umbra Eternis leaned in their direction, it's jaws suddenly open and revealing a large cannon extending from it's throat and powering up. The dark portions of it's body shimmered, and a terrifying array of weapons appeared from those shimmers to lock onto ports all over the machine-titan's body: rocket launchers, flamethrowers, gatling guns, flechet sprayers, grenade throwers, beam weapons and more, encrusting it's torso and upper arms to the point that it probably wouldn't be able to move at all if it wanted to. And just to make things really unfair, he drew upon the Stone's power and infused it into the street right in front of them and the outer walls of all the nearby buildings, breaking apart ordinary minerals and reshaping them into more guns and cannons and crude gatling guns and spear-throwers and a giant oversized crossbow or two, leaving them faced with a giant robot so literally armed to the teeth that it couldn't move and a horribly large array of transmuted weapons pointing right at them.

"I wish had that much firepower so my enemies could accuse me of being cheap," Zim commented. He shook a fist at Kimblee. "Because that is so very cheap!" Gaara stepped forwards as Kimblee's weapons powered up to maximum power and the Gestalt charged up as well, his sand billowing out and sweeping over all of them and pulling them close tough, hardening as it did (causing a few panic attacks among those who knew what Gaara did to people with that sand) and Angilaka pushed her hands against the sand with blue-white light shining forth, and finally Calvin clapped his hands and struck them against the sand-

Kimblee barely noticed the large ball of glowing sand busily being transmuted and finally fired his most devastating attack since he had acquired the Umbra Eternis and joined it to his will. All his weapons fired at once at the same time that the Gestalt fired a equally overpowered blast of it's own and the result was an explosion that tore the alley apart, collapsed the buildings on either side of it, smashed down the buildings near them and broke all windows (and similar fragile objects) for the next mile and a half. And because Kimblee really loved overkill, he clapped his hands, drew more power from the Stone, and made an even bigger directionalexplosion than the one that had wrecked Foster's Home, utterly obliterating everything in front of him for the next four and a half miles.

When the smoke and noise faded, an enormous long jagged gap had been blasted into the ground, encompassing all that was left of the area they had been in. Streets leaned into that gap, numerous houses and businesses falling in as Kimblee watched with his eyes slightly rolling around. Ash blinded him for a moment, and he briefly entertained the idea that this ash was the mortal remnants of the foes that had finally fallen to his superior power. Then he realized that meant he had their vaporized bits all over him and he started coughing and that meant he would have been breathing them too and triggered a truly spectacular coughing fit and he almost voimited.

After a moment, mastering the dry heaves and realizing that the ash didn't taste like vaporized bodies (something he had a good deal of experience in), Kimblee came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no way anything could have survived his attack...so he considered that they either had found a way to survive it, or contrived a means of simply not being there. (Somehow.)

He smashed the back of the Umbra Eternis into a wall, assimilating it's materials over the hole in his mecha's back and covering it in the strongest alloys he could think of before he glanced up at the amalgated Heartless, which looked rather miffed that it hadn't gotten the chance to kill anything, and the Umbra Eternis made a sweeping gesture. "Find them!" Kimblee said. The Gestalt stared blankly at him. "...So you can eat their hearts, I suppose?" The Gestalt circled away and sped off in the presumable direction of his enemies. "You have to know how to motivate people. Or horrible eldritch horrors from beyond the multiverse." Kimblee said to Ghostfreak and Kevin; the latter said nothing, and the former scoffed at the idea that he didn't already know that.

...

On the other side of the morality scale that Kimblee had the dubious honor of occupying the seedy end of, Winry Rockbell flew a ship intended for other people (or more specifically, a newly formed crew that she wasn't aware even existed; she just knew it had been built for a guy Cyborg had taken a liking to), not so much piloting the ship as powering it, aiming it at the appropiate direction and trying not to hit anything on the way.

The ship moved like a train; because of the ship's particular means of flight, it moved fast, anything that got in it's way was smashed over - requiring that she fly higher over the buildings then usual -but it also steered like a train, except that steering was, theoretically, possible, it was just ridiculously hard.

As it was, the ship was faster than she'd hoped, but not as fast as she would have liked, but then it would have been drastically unfeasable for it to be as fast as she wanted it to be and would have just been a teleporter. Protected in the ship's bridge by layers of thick armor, perfectly sealed inside it and safe from harm, she tried to focus on the matter at hand: find Kimblee, provide back-up, and end this nightmare as soon as possible.

Frowning grimly as she checked the radar and scanned through a number of worrying statistics and analyses provided by a computer, Winry absently aimed at and vaporized another pack of Heartless terrorizing a bunch of grocers who were trying to barricade and blow them up as her ship flew overhead. Unaware of their shouts of gratitude at her, she flew on, streaking by the street so fast that it had been a matter of reflex by this point. She had done the same thing dozens of time by now; fly overhead, see Heartless or criminals or a monster of the sort that showed up out of nowhere anyway and stop them on her way to wherever it was that the big fight with Kimblee had gotten to; as she had told Cyborg, it was getting repetitive, and she might have gotten there by now if there hadn't been so many fresh incidents to avert.

What, she wondered, was it about big-scale situations like this that caused a number of smaller problems to come crawling out of everywhere and slow people down? It was like there was something in the town that deliberately encouraged things like that to string out fights as long as possible and cause more chaos; if it wasn't for opportunists like that, even the big-scale stuff would probably be stopped much quicker because then the big-hitters could come around and help out instead of getting caught up in all the stuff that was a bit closer to home or at least in the way. That was probably why the rest of the Council hadn't shown up; there were more Heartless popping up all over the place, and destroying them before they killed anyone else was currently the priority. Also, she doubted the other Council members knew where Kimblee was right now.

She suspected that Kimblee had already left the area, or that the fight had gone elsewhere; the area Cyborg had indicated was coming up close, already passing past the edges of the evacuated and distressingly empty part of the district, and the ship she piloted came to a halting and unsteady stop, hovering.

From up here, she could see the area from the coordinates Cyborg had given her, and she bit her lip at the rubble where buildings had stood not even an hour ago, the gaping holes rent into the street, the way some of the neighborhoods were leaning up slightly and slowly begining to collapse into the tunnels below. It felt familiar and raw, like what had remained of the Factory District in the Lowardian invasion, and closer to home came faint but piercingly hard images she associated with the damage done to Resembool by vengeful Ishbalan guerillas in the Ishbalan Extermination campaign, or the remnants of Amestris when the Heartless had been let in and all the blood and screaming around her, memories that she kept so fresh in her mind that they bit and tore and ground deep into her until her mind bled with it and-

She shelved the pain aside, grit her teeth and reminded herself of what was at stake, just as she had forced herself to only contribute passing shots at the enemies she had seen on her search for Kimblee. She couldn't afford to stop or get all weepy or anything like that. "You're a big girl now," She told herself, voice cracking a bit. "None of that whiny damsel bullshit." Her mind, seeminglyy eager to bring up things to upset her, reminded her that Scar was in the group there, and she grimaced a little, choking down the grudge and focusing on the important things.

(People could change. She knew that. She knew that Scar had changed, that he was an entirely different man than the emotionally-crippled instrument of hatred that had murdered her parents in a fit of madness. Hatred was a foriegn thing to her, and she had foudn that she just didn't like him very much. For her parent's memory, at least, that was enough.)

She focused on the issue at hand and put enough power for the ship to warily scoot forward, moving at a gentle pace that wouldn't arouse attention and give her the benefit of surprise. The desolation got worse as she advanced, and she tried to ignore it while looking at the little details to get a better picture of what had happened here (not an easy task to reconcile, and it was bad enough seeing just how much firepower was being thrown around), and her gorge kept rising and she tasted sour sicknesse everything she saw an entire row of uprooted houses that looked like something enormous had just smashed right through them, or potholes in a street where missiles had bounced off something and hit the ground before they exploded...on the other hand, she wasn't seeing any bodies or blood splatters anywhere, which helped her growing queasiness a little bit.

At last she came to where Cyborg had told her to find them, not terribly surprised to find nothing more than a totally destroyed area that looked all too much like a warzone; the whole place scattered with rubble that was on fire in places, half-melted and miserably drooping bits of metal that had been pummeled beyond endurance by pressure and heat, an entire small plaza that looked like a massive bomb had hit it, and then a bigger bomb had it afterwards, and then a kaiju-class monster had come charging through...

Still no bodies. And this was definitely where Cyborg had called her to come meet up with them. Winry frowned, tapping a finger on the ship's dashboard (for lack of a better word) and narrowed her eyes at the massive gap in the buildings (well, more massive than general in the fights today) where something huge had smashed through, or perhaps two huge somethings, if the unusual impact marks on the building gave any indications and the odd-looking footprints smashed into the surrounding streets seemed to fit that idea.

The ship's audio receptors picked up a series of crashing noises, like something very big smashing through even more buildings. Deploring the thought of futher structure damage to an already battered day, Winry still turned the ship in the direction of those sounds, tilting it upwards so it ascended up out of eyesight of Kimblee; logically, if he was in a giant robot and was looking down to keep track of his enemies, he wouldn't bother to look up.

If there was a rule for tracking Kimblee and he had already abandoned subtlety, it was this: follow the explosions. Collapsing buildings seemed close enough, and he did have a giant robot. Winry powered the ship up as much as she dared, funneling willpower and resolve into the emotional energies that fueled this ship's bizarre engine - an ancient technology they had found by studying the remnants of technology here - and set off again.

She didn't know when she'd find them, or if it would be too late, but she would make it count all the same.

...

For better or worse (almost certainly worse), not everyone in the area had evacuated when Zim had called out Kimblee on live television. True, many of them had left in a hurry when the Heartless had started attacking (leaving to rejoin the big population centers for safety in numbers) and more had gone when they saw the message Zim sent out to warn people about Kimblee and call up the rogue alchemist himself for a fight, but plenty remained in scattered pockets in the area where the fight was taking place, too stubborn to leave their homes or firmly believing that they could tough out whatever came this way or just not caring about the current crisis.

Some of them, less thick-headed, had heard the explosions coming from the evacuated part of the district and were growing concerned, trying to get people moving, and the recent explosions and the massive fight that was getting gradually closer to them was helping them convince people that they needed to leave. In a less develouped part of the town than most, the streets wider and the buildings more cluttered together in an arrangement that resembled a squatter's village, several people were arguing the matter. (Because if there was one thing people in Traverse Town liked more than indulging the usual state of chaos, it was arguging for no reason.) "Come on, you guys, we need to go!" One of them yelled, gesturing at the dustclouds only a short distance away where the fight had been raging. "Something big is going on down here and I don't want to be caught in the middle of it!"

"Big, yes," conceded one of the 'stay right here' guys, a short cat-person in workman's overalls named Havoc (and unrelated to Alex 'Havoc' Summers, a mutant who worked in the local prizefighting circuits). "Like the dozen or so other things that have happened this month, or every other month!"

"But nobody actually got killed during those circumstances. You saw that message; this Kimblee guy is a person of mass destruction wanted for war crimes by a country that commited them on a monthly basis and he obliterated Foster's! Turned everyone there into an artifact that makes him even more powerful!"

A small wingless dragon nodded. "Staying here is suicide."

"Running won't do any good," buzzed a hive-mind swarm of clockwork grasshoppers flying slightly over their heads. "We should stay here and use the surrondings against him!"

A person without apparent gender who was probably human before replacing it's body parts with mechanical upgrades gestured towards the low-slung homes aorund then, where the rooftops were buckling against the stress of holding up the homemade cannons placed there. More people, the ones who wanted to stay and fight, were standing there with hoverbikes and more weapons, as lookouts and the first line of defense. "We know the area better than any intruder, and this is our home! I am tired of running and joining up with people every time something nasty happens!"

"Hey, would you prefer safety of numbers or dying!" said a humanoid crustacean wearing a translator (since it's mouthparts weren't equipped for articulating the same words as everyone around), and gestured towards a large bus covered with plate armor and rocket boosters, and nearly half of it was full; the friends and family of the people who wanted to evacuate immediately. "We must flee! I've seen the reports of what's left of Foster's and the destruction hitting us since; we don't have the firepower to fight something like this!"

"And so we just run and hide!"

"No, we retreat and regroup with others!" The crustacean pounded a fist into it's pincered hands. "If we stay here, we'll just end up becoming the idiots who get overconfident and wind up killed by the bad guy to show how dangerous he is."

"Aw man, I hate being that kind of guy," Havoc complained. "But if we run, we'll probably end up getting blown up by a random bit of collateral damage anyway because big dramatic fights have collateral damage all over the place."

Everyone nodded; this was a rare thing they could all agree on. "I hate fights like that," the dragon complained. "They think it's cool and all to wreck stuff, and yeah it looks cool, but what are we supposed to do with the wreckage until we find some alchemists to put it back! Yeah, it gets fixed up right away as good as new, but my stuff generally gets wrecked. I like my stuff!"

"So what are we supposed to do?" A human dressed as a mime for some unfathomable reason said. "If we stay we'll get cut down, if we run we'll be blown up!"

"Unless we leave right now," the crustacean said hopefully. "Then we won't get killed?"

There was some discussion from the 'stay and fight' people. "But if we get killed anyway, we'll look like a bunch of cowardly jerks," the androgyne remarked. "If we stay and fight and die anyway, at least we'll look cool doing it. Or look like a bunch of punks, but who cares, I know I'm not being a punk and that's the only opinion I care about."

"That would explain the modifications you've done to yourself," The crustacean muttered.

"What was that?"

"You're wearing Model twenty-two eco-fired prosthetics and organ-replacing implants from the Gaslamp corporation in the summer time!" The crustacean declared with the fervor of a born fashion obsessive. "Have you any idea how tacky that looks! Martian-style steampunk in a contrasting blend with the Digital Chrome style is the big thing now! Have you know awareness of proper fashionable protocol!"

"Hey, Gaslamp will be back before you know it! My fashions are the fashions that will rise again from the smoldering ashes of retroactive popularity! And then I'll be able to tell people that I was into it before it got cool!"

The argument quickly devolved into strictly aesthetic trends, the two bickering and comparing notes on their opinions of the current direction that the standards for mechanical implants, prosthetics, internal devices and other such things were going (there was a general consensus that implanted devices was the in thing now, but shoving communicators into your skull was becoming less popular since communication technology changed so fast these days and since big and clunky was the biggest thing now it would probably be uncomfortable to have a phone the size of your fist jammed into the flesh under your ear), and while a few people followed it with interest, others were furious that they weren't taking the problem seriously. "What is wrong with you people!" the dragon snarled. "There's explosions happening all over the place! When things like that suddenly stop and no one hears about the fight being over, something bad is usually about to happen! Or it wasn't important enough for everyone to hear about, but that probably isn't the case here. We need to go, before we all end up dead!"

"Uh, you just pointed out that these things sometimes stop without anyone notifying anyone," Havoc said.

"I think that stopping a rogue alchemist who blew up Foster's counts as important!" The dragon bellowed.

"...Oh."

"Come on, people!" The dragon puffed up, flames streaming from it's nostrils and magical symbols glowing on his body. "What do you want before you see some sense! For, I don't know, proof to suddenly come down from the sky!"

This was discussed. "Yes," Havoc said. "That would probably be fine." As if on cue, a large and smoking stone ball crashed into the ground at the far end of the street, bouncing a few times and glowing with the remnants of a powerful protective spell, scaring the hell out of people and a few nervous gunners shooting into the direction it had come from. "...Huh, that's convienient."

The dragon gaped. "...I was just being sarcastic!"

"And yet it worked," The androgyne said, going over to the stone ball and giving it a few healthy whacks with an oversized power fist for a hand, making a small dent and getting his hand dinged for his trouble. "Ow!"

The dent cracked, something inside the stone ball moving around, and then the whole thing burst apart into a thick cloud of sand that blasted all over the street, blinding people and knocking things over and generally freaking people out. Several people were pushed into one of the various groups in gut reflexe; a few of the people who wanted to run shifted into a more aggressive mode and ran howling at the sand to fight for their lives, while a few of the wannabe-fighters freaked out, their nerves stretched to the limit, and threw down their weapons and ran to the bus, intending on getting out of there.

The sand moved, suddenly enough to startle people into wary stillness, and they saw that the stone ball had been carrying a large group of people inside it, and with their protective shell destroyed, were now lying on the sandy street in a distangled heap. Sitting on top of the pile, Keyblade in hand, was Zim, and he blinked at the bewildered crowd in relieved wonderment. "I can't believe that actually worked," he said.

"I can't believe none of us saw that coming," Calvin said.

"And I can't believe that all of you fell on me!" Hobbes said. "MY SPINE HURTS."

"And I can't believe that none of us were killed by rocketing around inside a stone ball at insane speeds, never mind with how tightly we were put together," Zuko grumbled.

"And I can't believe that none of these guys has noticed us yet," the dragon said. Havoc nodded.

"Well, I did use divine magic to help protect us," Angilaka said brightly, ignoring the crowd. "Putting divine magic made sure that our shield wouldn't get us killed!"

"Actually, I did maintain a layer of sand to cushion our blow and I'm reasonably certain the tattooed monk generated a cushion of air to shield us-" Gaara started to say.

"DIVINE. MAGIC." Angilaka said loudly. Wisely, no one bothered to push the point any more. (Well, Calvin would have liked to argue, and Hobbes would probably like to ask more about the divine magic as it was a bit of an interest of his, but they had more sense than that.) She noticed the crowd staring at them, and also the bus ready to go, and the people on top of the buildings. "Who the heck are these guys? I thought this area was evacuated!"

"We want to stay and fight!" Some of them said.

"No, we want to run and get everyone out before we start fighting!"

"You wusses!"

"Incautious dumbasses!"

"Overcautious miscreants!"

"Insufficiently sentient mold-spores!"

"All of you shut up!" Zim snapped, shooting a blast of fire overhead. The crowd fell silent as he got off the pile-up, everyone else in Zim's group distangling themselves and standing up. "Are you people insane or something! Did you not hear my warning about the insane lunatic with a weapon of mass destruction!"

"There were...complications," the dragon said unhappily.

Hobbes came over. "Really." He didn't sound convinced. "It sounds simple to me. Run as fast as you can or you'll get killed horribly. How is that complicated?"

"...We got distracted with arguing with each other whether it wasn't quite as bad as that so we should stay and fight, or that we should leave as the message said?" The crustacean said sheepishly.

Hobbes facepalmed. "...I hate crowd control. I hate it so much."

"No you don't," Havoc said, just to be contrary and annoying. Hobbes glared at him and he wisely shut up and shuffled behind someone, whistling innocently.

"Listen!" Roy Mustang said, pointing behind them. "We have engaged Solf J. Kimblee directly in a battle and you need to leave now before he catches up! He-"

"OH MY GOD, IT'S ROY MUSTANG!" Someone from the roof yelled. "THIS IS AWESOME! IT'S LIKE BEING AT A CONCERT OR SOMETHING!"

"Wait, what?" Roy said. Gibbs blinked. "I don't-"

"AND IT'S DEADPOOL AND MR. GREED AND THAT ONE GREEN LADY THAT ISN'T AS AWESOME AS THEM!" A rhino-girl shouted excitedly, hopping up and down on her roof and making it shake. Then she pointed at Naruto and Gaara. "And also those guys." The two ninjas frowned, not sure if they liked being 'those guys'.

Shego blinked and scowled at her co-worker and employer, both of which were whistling innocently. (Well, Greed was. Deadpool was quietly sneaking through the crowd and trying to steal everything that wasn't nailed down just because he could. Hobbes saw what he was doing, forced him to give everything back, dragged him back to Greed, and also stole Deadpool's wallet when he wasn't looking.) "...Second-billing. Again. You guys suck."

"Holy crap, it is them!" The hive-mind grasshoppers said. "So many celebrities! Today is awesome, apart from the fear and destruction and death! But celebrities! And some other guys I probably know but can't be focused on because the celebrities are so awesome, and so more other guys I don't know and have never seen before in a day of my life and so are probably totally irrelevant."

Just about every semi-sane person there facepalmed in protest at the stupidity infecting the scene. "What part of 'run or you will die horribly' don't you understand?" Abel said acidly. "I don't think you understand the situation?"

"Well, what is the situation?"

Sick of the delays, Calvin yelled, "Kimblee is coming this way, and he has a giant indestructable robot made from two indestructable robots so it's like super-indestructable and armed with so many weapons it qualifies as a weapon of mass destruction on it's own and it's also powered by Heartless so it's literally made of evil, and speaking of Heartless Kimblee somehow made a giant super-Heartless and it's coming our way right now and you don't run you're all going to die!"

A brief pause followed this pronouncement.

"Um." The androgyne raised a hand. "How indestructable are we talking about here?"

"...Nothing all of us put together even fazes it," Gibbs said, gesturing at himself, Roy, Greed, Gaara and the other heavy-hitters that couldn't be bothered to be mentioned right then, and plus Zim and his crew, who were of course among the most powerful in the group even if it wasn't very obvious.

Boom. Something immense - and heavy - smashed through a house that was in it's way, punctuated by a massive mechanical roar and flashes of darkness. A cloud of dust rose over the rooftops, and a vast winged shape passed under it.

Plenty of people made small noises of utter horror. "...I vote we run for our lives!" The androgyne said.

"Me too!" Havoc said; they ran for the bus, though the people that still remained on the rooftops stood their ground, looking scared out of their minds and like they wanted nothing more than to get on that bus with their friends, but they stayed there just the same.

Boom. More buildings suffered. Boom. Boom. The line of buildings a few streets over were smashed apart.

"Get ready for it!" Zim said, sounding almost excited. He looked and noticed the people on the rooftops. "Hey, what are you doing! Get down there and run!"

"We need to hold off whatever's coming so they can!" The rhino-girl said, pointing at her friends on the bus, which was revving up with the last of it's passengers onboard.

"...You idiots, that's what we're doing!" Zuko roared, blasting flame from his mouth. "Get down from there and run before you get killed!"

"...Oh. Right, sorry, forgot about you guys." The rooftop people looked sheepish and started to move...

And then a large building at the front of the street that no one was using after it had fallen out of a freak wormhole in the sky and no one had wanted to see if it was evil or not exploded in a storm of fire and sound and a vast winged shaped flew out of the smoking wreckage and landed on the ground with a ominous crunching noise as the tortured street strugged to take the immense weight. The Keyblade shined fiercely, and the assembled bystanders gasped at the realization of what a terribly deep mess they were in as the giant Heartless perched there, glaring down at them with it's many eyes while it's wings retracted into the substances of it's body.

"...What is that?" The crustacean said from on a seat on the bus. "What is that? What the hell kind of Heartless is that! That's not a Heartless, that's a...a...shoggoth or something!"

"Don't forget the robot," Havoc said. "And to think you wanted to stay and fight it."

"That was you guys!"

"Oh. Right. Forgot about that."

Umbra Eternis was there of course, but it did not stand beside the Heartless or behind it (which would have been a good way for it to take all the blows first), but it stood atop the Heartless, not precisely riding it - though it could be considered to do so - as it had partially merged with the Heartless from the waist down, it's upper body standing firm with the arms crossed and Kimblee in an identical pose, a relatively tiny figure in it's stomach, and Jarod lay half-sunk to the neck...the extended tendrils hooked into him were nearly larger than he was, and disturbingly cancerous. And even more ominously, the Umbral Heartless were glowing with faint red light in places, the energy of the Philosopher's Stone absorbed by them in Kimblee's reckless uses of it. If this bothered him, he didn't show it.

"Okay," Sokka said in an aside to Zim. "I'll admit it. Guy comes in piloting a giant super-robot that is riding an even bigger monster. Why does everyone else have the really cool stuff?"

"It's like a law or something," Naruto said. "Bad guys always have the awesome stuff. Then again, it's not like they have to go through legal channels to buy that sort of thing."

"It appears your evacuation attempt failed," Kimblee said, looking aside at the bystanders before looking down at his foes with a smug little smirk that indicated he knew exactly they knew what he was going to do. The Gestalt stepped back and the Umbra Eternis bent low so that Kimblee was suddenly lowered to the ground, and he put a hand on the ground; red light flashed, and the ground curled up over the bus' tires as it tried to speed away, freezing it in place; the tires spun and smoked, the engine blared but the bus could not move. "Too bad for them." Kimblee was retracted back into the fuselage, neatly avoiding the flurry of projectiles Zim's group and the people on the rooftops fired at him and watching in detached amusement when those projectiles either bounced off his machine-titan's or just exploded without any harm.

"My turn," He said, and raised one of the Umbra Eternis' arms. The laser-disc in the palm powered up, and fired a powerful laser beam directly into the nearest rooftop, hitting the cannon on it dead-on and making a lesser explosion while the roof was torn apart. The rhino-girl leaped for safety before that happened, and found herself with the lesser problem of now falling to her doom. Zim felt something move at his side, and saw Hobbes jumping again, bounding off a wall and catching the rhino-girl (with some difficulty, since she was a lot bigger than him), landing on the Umbra Eternis' shoulder and bounding off again, bouncing from wall to wall until he was at the escape bus and dropped her beside it, and proceeded to start breaking the sheaths holding it down.

Toph rolled her eyes and gave the ground a light kick. The sheaths holding the tires disintegrated and the bus immediately drove away to safety...before coming to a stop, as the people inside realized that there were still people left behind and they didn't want to go until they were all gone.

"If they had just left when they were supposed to this would be a lot easier!" Greed complained. Fully armored up, he gestured at Beth. "You look strong. Throw me at Kimblee."

"What?" She said.

"Just do it!"

"Okay, okay!" Her powered armor grabbed Greed by the arm and spun around and around, building up momentum until she judged it enough and let go, her computers targeting the appropiate impact with utmost precision and Greed flew through the air like a sin-dark missile, smashing into the Umbra Eternis' shoulder and knocking it off-balance, and good job too; Kimblee had been about to fire another blast at another rooftop and the laser went awry, hitting the house through the middle instead. This was still enough to cause fatal structural damage and the whole house folded in half, crumbling inward, and the four occuptants on the rooftop scrabbling for balance and yelling furiously at Kimblee. One of them went for the cannon on their roof and squeezed off a single explosive missile at the side of the Umbra Eternis and hit it, causing Heartless and giant robot alike to stumble away, trying to regain balance.

Zim saw the people fall and ran towards the building dispite not having any idea of what in the world he was supposed to accomplish, and Gaara and Aang followed him as he extended his spider-leg attachments from his Pak and climbed up the crumbling facade and jumped, catching a cat-person who seemed very surprised to be saved by someone so much smaller than himself (and caught so easily) and swinging the Keyblade at an incoming piece of the rooftop that had snapped off and was approaching him far too fast. To Zim's surprise, instead of accomplishing nothing or slicing through it, the Keyblade generated a swirling flare of light in all colors that Zim could process that hit the offending debris, pulverizing with no more harm to them then some dust getting in their faces. The light kept going, somehow solidified and flattening out into a broad shape that caught another two cat-people that were clinging tightly to each other and landed on the light-construct looking totally bewildered.

Zim landed on the ground and put the cat-person down, with no idea of what he had just down or how he was supposed to get those two down now. Unfortunately that broke whatever hold he had and they fell down, screaming again. He stuck out the Keyblade, trying to ignore the cat-person he had saved frantically screaming at him to save those two, and Zim had no idea how he had done that or how to make it happen again, so he just concentrated as hard as he could on the general idea of don't let those two hit the ground, channeling that desire through the Keyblade in the way that his growing understanding of his Firebending had slowly and painfully suggested to him, and light flickered around those two. It wasn't another construct, and they didn't stop falling, but they did slow down, slowly drifting to safety. Aang and Gaara caught them, flying down and catching them with hand-shaped sand tendrils, depositing them near the bus before they used those same sand-hands to catch the falling building, stopping it from caving in any further long enough for Aang to get to the guy still at the cannon and shooting as many shots as he could at Kimblee before Aang forcefully grabbed him and flew him over to the awaiting bus.

"...What the hell did I just do!" Zim said.

"I dunno," the cat-person said unhelpfully, running over to the bus to make his escape and probably feeling very stupid right now. Zim shook his head and decided it wasn't important.

The Umbra Eternis staggered up. "Good show!" Kimblee said, pleased with the good fight they were showing, and the Gestalt playfully smashed a massive tendril through across one side of the street, collapsing three entire houses in a single swipe and forcing the scattered six or so people on them to run for their lives on the falling roofs. Toph extended several pillars on the ground for them to land, and when they did, she broke the tops off and levitated the rooftop cannoneers over to the bus, dropping them off. The very instant she had done that, she Earthbent the pillars out of the ground and threw the pieces she had already removed at the Umbra Eternis; the Gestalt caught most of them, and the last was dismissively swatted aside by the giant robot itself with a growling chuckle. Toph then threw the pillars themselves, leeting them shatter on the giant robot's armor and reforming the pieces into solid forms on it's armor, digging deep into the gaps between it's plates and pulling as hard as she could to rip the armor right off.

The Umbra Eternis merely smashed the rocks off itself, patting itself to make sure it's armor was still attached. It was, if looser than before. "No bad, but try harder, this is still fun!" Kimblee chided her. Toph growled and fired rock-spikes out of the ground directly at Kimblee himself. Startled, Kimblee turned his robot aside, so the spikes bounced off it's side. He smirked, red energy swelling up, and a beam of white light struck down and vaporized the ground where she had been standing. Fortunately, she had moved at the last moment, grinding along on a rolling wave of the street itself.

Kimblee was distracted thereafter; Greed had worked his way to the stomach cavity that was the robot's fuselage, having been trying to tear his way into the robot and having no success. He threw himself at Kimblee, screaming, "MY ROBOT! YOU BASTARD!" and punched Kimblee in the chest so hard that a few ribs broke. Kimblee stuck a hand against the homunculus' chest before Greed could reach Jarod and pull him out, transmuting Greed's internal organs but stopping halfway through, and Greed froze in mid-action when his insides basically tore themselves apart. Blood streamed from his jaws and he fell off the Umbra Eternis, armor vanishing so that he could regenerate, and right into the waiting jaws of the Gestalt.

"BOSS!" Shego and Deadpool shouted as the Gestalt generated a lamprey-type extension from itself that eagerly slurped up Greed. Deadpool fired at it with the missile launcher he still had, hitting the extension at it's base and causing the Greed-lump sliding down it to respond, pounding furiously at it from the inside. With it sufficiently distracted, Shego powered up a massive eye-hurting flare of greenness and released a laser that sliced it right off, toppling off the Gestalt and bouncing on the ground and rolling near them. It wriggling, bubbling up and forming individual Heartless that had been released from the Umbrals, and Shego furiously blasted them with the biggest burst she could create, disintegrating the Heartless in a heartbeat. (It also toasted Greed, but it was okay, he could heal.)

Greed groaned, trying to hold his insides in while his skin regenerated. "...Ow." Aang, flying over head, pulled the ground Greed was on out into a small disc-shape and moved it safely away from the giant robot and Heartless where he could regenerate in peace. "See, the kid who I don't even pay does better work than you jerks."

"We saved your life!" Shego retorted.

"He didn't burn me alive!"

"Oh, come on, you can heal. Don't be a wimp."

"Sometimes I hate you guys so much."

Kimblee held his sides and winced. "That...actually hurt..." He said, trying not to wheeze with his breath. His body was healing slowly - somehow - but it was an agonizing process, however it was happening. It got worse for him; it was clear that Kimblee was seriously targeting the people on the rooftop to antagonize his enemies, so Zim and his group began throwing all they had at him again to buy them a little more time (and incidentally channeled the frustration they were feeling at these idiots who didn't have the sense to run when they heard a public announcement telling them about the psychopath with exploding coming their way, but that was also sort of Zim's fault to begin with); missiles and plasma shots and fire blasts and green fire blasts and chunks of earth and and ice spears and chunks of earth that were on fire with ice spears on them and random light blasts that confused Zim and the makeshift armor-shield that dinged the Umbra Eternis in the head before it bounced back to Hobbes and holy light lasers unrelated to Zim's holy light lasers (that he still didn't really get) and cannonfire from the few dudes still on the rooftops who were too caught up in the action to make their way to the bus like their friends were screaming at them to.

The combined assault, even bigger than it had the last time they'd tried thanks to the random people on the rooftop. Kimblee kept the Umbra Eternis' arms raised over himself to protected, and the arms kept being bumped over him; because the shape of the giant robot he was in no danger of being crushed, but the noise was deafening and extremely painful to be bombarded by, and he couldn't retaliate because he couldn't even see what was going on; even the Umbra Eternis' senses, which he shared, couldn't help out before Gibbs was making it his personal mission to destroy it's eyes and it was too busy protecting it's optical sensors to pay any attention to the battle. And he felt every blow the Umbra Eternis took, his mental link to it working both ways, and while he didn't phyiscally suffer it's pains, psychically was another story. He clutched the Philosopher's Stone tightly, the pain growing too much for him to tolerate and thought of simpy rendering the apart and wiping this part of this town off the planet-

And Kevin began to sing. Loudly, as off-key as possible, and knowing full-well that it was going to totally destroy Kimblee's concentration. The bit of power he had been acclumating fizzled, and only encouraged Kevin to sing louder, and Kimblee banged his head against the wall in frustration, and immediately regretted it: now he had far too many people shooting at him, a voice singing annoying songs in his brain, and a headache.

A second round hit, and it nearly tore the Umbra Eternis from the Gestalt, which was less encumbered by Kimblee's pain and sloughed it off, tearing itself away from the Umbra Eternis and pouncing; this was, under the circumstances, a pretty bad move, since they were still firing, and the Gestalt wound up taking the full brunt of the attacks. Holes were blasted into it's front and it spun in the air, crashing into the ground, but this still happened to be the part of the ground where most of Zim's group was standing. They scattered, but Zim, Sokka, Cyborg, Calvin and Scar weren't quick enough to flee before it fell on them. It got up, realized that it had fresh beating hearts ripe for the taking underneath it and bent it's entire body on half, snapping itself into two almost-halves rimmed with sudden teeth and extending entrails with snapping jaws lined up all over. It flung itself back down, dripping ichor from it's wounds, and made the double mistake of trying to pin some of the more effective long-range combatants when they had their weapons and exposing it's innards to them. Cyborg fired his sonic cannon at high strength while also firing repulsor blasts from his other wrist, small machine-guns sliding out from hatches on his shoulders and opening fire, and the toothy entrails were pummeled mercilessly while the sonic energy and repulsors made a buffer layer that punched the Gestalt back, and in the moment before it started to fall back down, it seemed to float there.

That was long enough. Sokka and Zim let loose with everything they had while Calvin and Scar rolled away, firing wildly with bursts of flame and plasma, punching deeper and deeper in it's innards, and Zim made it even worse for the Gestalt when he wound his arm back and threw the Keyblade as hard as he could, light flaring from it in elaborate contrails as it rocketed up under it's own power into it's core, energy building up and released in a blast that should have been blinding but was instead invigorating and didn't hurt the eyes. The Gestalt stumbled back on a pair of legs it grew for this purpose, partly shredded from the primordial light, and Calvin revealed what he had been up to; gathering the cannons that had fallen from the rooftops when Kimblee destroyed them and transmuting them into a complication like a gatling gun, only with cannons. Sitting in the gunner seat of his creation and grinning like a maniac, he opened fire and soon exhausted his ammunition but it didn't matter, as a little over twelve explosive shells were emptied into the weakened Gestalt's amorphous flesh and expoded in side it, tearing off a full third of it's body. Scar was up next, and placed his hands on the ground, and the entire part of the street from just in front of where he was standing to the Gestalt cracked and rose up, the entire section churning with frantic energy as it took on a new shape, details emerging and suggesting a large barrel...

And when it stopped, Scar standing atop it, it proved to be a gigantic cannon nearly as big as the Gestalt itself, so large it cast everyone else into it's shadow, starkly free of excessive detail apart from the required mechanisms to ensure that it would only need to fire once. Scar looked passively at the people on the rooftop, who were staring at him in a mixture of awe and terror. "Flee now," he said simply, and then stamped on the button he had made for the cannon.

It fired, with a massive roar that would have deafened Hobbes if he hadn't made preparations earlier (having found earplugs or something like that), the shockwaves from that single shot pounding against nearby building hard enough to crack them and throwing everyone on the ground around, and it belched out not a single huge missile but dozens of small cluttered explosive cannonballs, and every single one of them found it's target in the Gestalt's body, shredding the outer layer of it's form before exploding with sufficient force to catapault it across the street and right into the Umbra Eternis, which had finally gotten back up and was about to open fire, and knocked it back down in a hopelessly tangled mess. Kimblee screamed impotently, and Scar smirked coldly.

Zim whistled, impressed. "Why can't you do something like that?" He asked Calvin bitterly.

"But I can!" Calvin said indignantly, moodily watching the rooftop people come to their senses and realize that Scar had delayed Kimblee long enough for them to get out of this fight (which had only been kept from escalating to an extent that should have killed them through considerable effort by Zim's group), getting down from the rooftops by climbing down the walls and moving down catwalks and jury-rigged elevators and other normal features of this neighborhood and running down the street to the bus with all speed, a few of them offering quick congratulations for Calvin on the whole 'gatling cannon' thing, which improved his spirits.

The Gestalt started to slide away from the downed Umbra Eternis, which was still quite active, but any of Kimblee's attempts to get back up and add a few kills were in vain; the gunners made it to the bus, running like they would be bodily dragged into Hell if they didn't and a few of them jumped through the windows in their haste to get inside, and the very instant the last of them got in there and were confirmed by a quick rollcall (they really didn't want to leave anyone behind), the bus' rocket engines fired up and rocketing it down the street. It was fortunate that it was a main street and would take them a very long way before they had to turn, relatively speaking. Pretty soon it was just an armored blur, and then it was no longer a factor.

Kimblee saw it go, and the Umbra Eternis stormed to it's feet, throwing the Gestalt off itself. Not paying attention to the shapeshifting Heartless reforming itself into a combat body again, Kimblee seethed with fury, now realizing that the fight was not as overwhelmingly one-sided in his favor as he had tried to make it. He didn't say any blithe comments like 'where do they think they're going?' or 'I'll add them to my kill tally, don't you worry' since it wasn't really his style and he felt actions spoke louder than words. The Umbra Eternis simply roared like no beast that had ever existed or should have, it's optics fixed firmly on the armored blur speeding off in the distance as it reached out and grabbed the Gestalt, red energy flashing down it's arm as it pumped a minscule amount of it's own considerable power into the Heartless' essence (just to see what happened) and some of the Philosopher's Stone power went with it. "Kill them," Kimblee said lazily, and the Gestalt obediently opened it's maw, and inside it swelled a red-flecked purple energy ball, swiftly growing large enough to crack it's jaws apart and ripple threateningly.

Energy crackled around it. Small beams came untangled from the delicate matrice making it up, burning holes in everything they hit (including people's jackets and clothes even though they dove for cover) and it surged forwards and doubled in size, now nearly the size of the Gestalt itself, about to fire any moment.

"Oh come on!" Zim yelled, shaking his fist at Kimblee and summoning the Keyblade; he had forgotten that he had left it inside the Heartless, so it was torn free from inside it as it flew to his hand. Annoyingly, this didn't do more than cause some brief discomfort for the Gestalt. "They're just part of the background scenery! Killing random people in the background to show how evil you are is so cliche!"

"It is not!" Kimblee said. "I'm just doing my job!"

"And what's that?"

"I already told you!"

The energy ball, impossibly, doubled in size once more, now bigger than the Umbra Eternis, and was flashing an ominous red color. "Shoot it!" Zim yelled. "Shooting energy constructs always works!"

"But that doesn't make sense!" Hobbes and Zuko both yelled, as two lone voices of sanity.

"Yes, but it still works! SHOOT IT!" Roy yelled, making an explosion and transmuting the oxygen quantities such that it turned into an beam of fire that Zuko and Aang pumped up, just as the Heartless fired it's beam attack with such force that the initial shockwaves tore apart what was left of the street, shattering all the remaining houses and burning the air around it. The two attacks met in mid-air and stopped, the dark beam pushed back slightly by the flames before gradually pushing forward, surging wildly in an attempt to find the slightest gap to exploit.

Greed, fully regenerated and stumbled back onto the scene with his body freshly armored, said "What. I do shit like this every day and I still don't believe what I'm seeing."

"I am certain we are breaking so very many laws of physics, but I'm sure we will be forgiven this tresspass," Gaara said. Naruto stared at him. "What? We've been forgiven far worse tresspasses."

"...Hmm, reality is clearly out to lunch today," Kimblee said, everything he knew about physics weeping at how absurd all this was. "If it even clocked in today."

Emboldened and desperate (and thinking about what would happen if they turned it on Kimblee but not having much choice in spite of their concern for Jarod), everyone there fired everything they had at it, reacting so fast they didn't even perceive the exceedingly short-lived beam war. Their attacks hit it as it was being held back by the flames and forced it back into the diminishing energy ball, overwhelming it. Little by little, bit by bit, it was pressed back, inexorably returning into the sphere of energy that had fired it and finally hit with another round of projectiles that hit too hard for it to deal with, and the blast slammed back into the sphere with all the force expended by it's release.

Unfortunately, the Gestalt couldn't reabsorb the beam and had to literally choke it down with the beam being forced down it's throat and forcibly reintegrated into it's essence, which didn't interact too well with it's somewhat delicate internal balances. The only external evidence of this was that after it swallowed the energy beam, trying with all it's might to absorb it, it trembled furiously and remained perfectly still, extending tendrils of itself into the ground to anchor itself while it's body went through a eye-wateringly fast series of variations in forms, trying to find one that would enable it to properly contain the swirling energies inside. It settled on expanding it's body onto an absurdly cute ball-like form, moving it's mysterious insides around and seperating them from the misplaced beam while creating a shield of the strongest materials it could manifest around those energies, walling it's organs away from the deadly forces inside it.

For a moment, it seemed to work. The Gestalt swelled momentarily, unsightly discolored bubbles extending and bursting with the concretic ripples disturbing the surface of it's shadow-black flesh, and then it stopped. Zim gaped in horror, Calvin took several wary steps back, Zuko swore loudly, and Hobbes held up his new shield over himself in the hope it could protect them. The others in their group had similar reactions of horror and fury. For their enemy's part, Kimblee dared to breath a sigh of relief, the Umbra Eternis wiped some imaginary sweat from it's helmet and even the Gestalt managed to express a modicum of self-satisfied smugness that was very odd in a giant monster with no real face like that.

And then...

More concretic ripples moved throughout it's body. Slowly and with seeming effort, at first, and they quickly picked up the pace, moving faster and faster, occuring with greater speed and violence. The Gestalt trembled again, part of it bubbling and bursting into half-formed Heartless that were apparently so terrrified they wanted to escape before it could happen, and from the places where they seperated from it cracked ripped open, spewing a pestilential red light only slightly dampened by the corrupting influence of the Heartless, looking uncannily like artistic depictions of nuclear radiation. Unpleasant crackling sounds came from the Gestalt, beams of light tearing right through it's body and blasting through everything in their path, and the entire Heartless rippled like gelatin in an earthquake, the cracks not just spreading but ripping all over in a jagged and uncomplicated pattern across it's entire body, and it finally released it's spherical form as the strain was too much for it to take anymore, twisting up into a serpentine shape in a futile attempt to flee it's own treacherous body, and for a moment it looked almost dragonish, nearly reaching an apothesis of form that it didn't even know was there to be had.

"Oh no," Zim said, watching the Gestalt get torn apart from the inside and knowing what that meant after it had forcibly swallowed that massive laser and knowing from first-hand experience what an explosion in slow-motion looked liked right before it went full-blast. Behind him, Courtney and Beth clung to Zuko in the mistaken impression that he would make an adequate human shield (well, Courtney did, Beth probably just got scared and needed someone to hug in her presumed last moments) while Hobbes grabbed Calvin and Zim himself before clinging to Zuko as well for whatever reason. "It's gonna explode-!"

She was right. Red light tinged with black surged out from the middle of the Gestalt's body, bending it's constraints so far that it looked absurdly spherical again for a second or two, pulling it's considerable but still limited quantities of flesh into a ludicrously stretched layer over a contained explosion inside it that had gone from red to a whitish color that looked absurdly pink, and then it finally snapped and the whole thing erupted forth in a single massive shockwave that obliterated the Gestalt completely and incinerating all traces of it, banishing it's remaining constituent Heartless to the dark world-realm they originated from. The explosion did much more than that; the Umbra Eternis, which was nearly right in front of it, was hit at point-blank range and hurled right through the street and into the tunnels below, Kimblee surviving thanks to the giant robot's armoring but knocked silly. Zim and his allies were further away from it, far away to not be incinerated by the immediate blast but close enough to blasted right off the ground and all over the area (which was still way better than getting killed outright); some of them were hurled through open windows, into walls and various stationary obstacles, some suffering more than others and most of them crash-landing at least six streets away, away from Kimblee's immediate retaliation and with landings they could at least walk away from thanks to several of them being capable of some form of mid-air movement.

Kimblee got back up, groaning and feeling very unsteady, and saw that the bus had already disappeared, meaning he couldn't blow up those people to make himself feel better. He mentally called out to the Gestalt, not very surprised to get no response. Feeling enormously frustrated, he watched through the Umbra Eternis' optics as a smaller group seperated from the people blasted out of the street by the explosion. He ignored his weariness, readied himself for battle, and chraged off towards the group he was now targeting, and unfortunately for them (and him) it was Zim's crew he was unknowingly after.

(And by sheer bad luck, Winry wound up flying right by them; she had seen the explosion and had been following Kimblee's path, but unfortunately no one was in the area. She presumed that it had been a missed attack of some sort, and flew right over.)

The crew (and two tagalongs) in question had an advantage, that because Hobbes had thought quickly and made sure to be holding pretty much the entire crew and two tagalongs, they went flying through the air together and were able to angle themselves away from anything dangerous; admittedly, this meant that they were still aimed directly at a building or the street (which while probably not fatal, exactly, for most of them, was still a really bad idea) and Zim tried to do the levitation trick he had done with those cat-people earlier and nearly succeeded; a glow appeared around them and they slowed drastically down before he lost concentration due to not having any idea what he was doing and continued falling. Hobbes placed his shield out and firmly kept his feet on it, angling them so they were all standing on the shield when they crashed into the ground and went sliding on it; the shield was, after all, a piece of Kimblee's armor, and if the continued combined efforts of their allies couldn't visibly damage it, this street couldn't.

They skidded down the street, still moving so fast that they were moving at ridiculously speeds, and Courtney needlessly pointed out that they were about to run right into a broken-down garbage truck. "Lean left, LEFT!" Hobbes yelled as the vehicle loomed, and they all did so while trying to stay on the shield, a tricky feat, and the shield veered enough to the left to narrowly skid just to the side of the truck, the edge of the shield still grinding against the truck and slicing a long cut into it, sparks going everywhere from under them until they wound up going through one of the tires and for some reason the tire's air exploded out and knocked them off-course, smashing them right through a mailbox that was there for some reason and also another eight mailboxes before they came to a...not quite gentle stop, but at least coasted at a comfortable speed until they gradually stopped skidding when Zim stabbed the Keyblade into the ground as hard as he could and jerked them all into a violent but welcome stop.

"...Let's do that again!" Zim said. Zuko, Calvin and Hobbes (and also Beth and Courtney) gave him looks. "Ah, later. After the crazy alchemist is defeated."

Hobbes let go and they all got off the shield, brushing themselves off and belatedly noting that they were still on the main street they had been fighting on; if Kimblee came charging down, he would run right into them, or possibly on them. "I've had more exciting landings," Calvin remarked. "Not usually in the middle of a life and death fight, so that's a new one."

"At least we yet live!" Zim said, grinning up at the very slightly taller boy. He then realized that Calvin was, after all, now a very slightly taller boy. "Hey, when did you get taller than me? Did you have a minute growth spurt in the night? Stupid humans-not-from-Earth and their puberty cheats!"

Zuko looked around. He grimaced at the nasty track the Keyblade had left in the ground while Zim extricated the Keyblade itself, the scarred truck and the mailboxes Hobbes had smashed. "I am not looking forward to what people are going to say about us after all this..."

"Those mailboxes had it coming!" Hobbes declared passionately. "Lousy arrogant and smug outmoded despositories of commerce and communication! I hate them so much!" Zuko stared at him. "What? I once had a traumatic experience with a mailbox as a child and it scared me for life." Zuko continued staring at him. "...Okay, I was nine and I walked right into the same mailbox four times a day for eight months by unbelievable coincidence. It has induced hatred for all mailboxes since!" Zuko looked like he wanted to express his contempt for Hobbes' weirdness some more, but he just snorted in disgust and turned away.

"At least we're alive!" Beth said optimistically.

"Well...yeah!" Courtney said, brightening up. "On the other hand, I am in way over my head. I so should have gone with those guys on the bus when I had a chance...and there's probably some morality issues with putting myself into the story like this, I can tell you that."

"I wonder where Kimblee is," Zim said, bringing up the thing no one else wanted to think about. "We ought to be more persistent foes than to be blasted away and dismissed. We should find him and defeat him right now!" They stared at him. "Or find the others and then defeat him. Whatever makes you more confident. Seriously, we need to find him. Or let him find us, whatever."

"You scare me. Badly," Hobbes said, disgruntled. His ears twitched and he glanced around, and Zim heard an echoing pounding noise (like something very big approaching), a worrying observation coupled with Hobbes' look of dawning horror.

"Kimblee's showing up already, isn't he?" Zuko asked flatly. Hobbes nodded. "Figures."

The stomping intensified. Boom-boom-boom off in the distance, and they readied themselves. Calvin took the oppertunity to transmute a large section of the ground in the direction he estimated Kimblee to be coming from. There appeared to be no apparent alterations, at least to Zim. By then the rumbling was almost unbearably loud, and the stomping was so close that the ground shook with each ponderous thudda-THOOM. "People, can we plan around this first?" Hobbes said. "Just attacking him isn't doing any good and that shouldn't have been our primary plan to begin with!"

"Perhaps you are right," Zim said reluctantly. Beth nodded earnestly. "Well, let us think! He attacks, we blast him with all our might and that ridiculously strong armor of his just ignores everything we throw at it!" He frowned. "And even with that hole I managed to make, he's sure to cover it, seal it up with available materials or outright repair it! Or prevent a similar weak spot from being made. Granted, we just blew up his giant Heartless, but that was more of an accident than anything. Still, it's a small victory."

"Ideas, anyone?" Zuko said. "Anyone at all? Before we get back into the fray?"

Beth raised her hand. "What if we put him into a position where all that armor and firepower can't do him any good?"

Calvin thought about it, and then he raised his hand. "Ooh! Ooh! I got a plan for that, Unrelated to my last resort back-up plan!"

"Well, out with it, man!" Zim said. "What do you have in mind?" Calvin explained his plan. "Ah! Count me in!"

"You want us to do what now?" Courtney said disbelievingly. "That's crazy."

"You're right, it's utterly mad!" Zim said. "Which is why it must be done. Let's do it!"

"Well...just don't get us killed!" Courtney said, relenting and deciding that doing things logically was less important than staying alive.

"It sounded good to me," Beth said, having heard many far less crazy plans from her friends in the Crossguard. (For example, Abel's plan to create an orbital healing ray by shooting it into space with a giant slingshot and fueling it with the power of fangirl-ism by sponsoring a fanfic shipping contest was taken under serious consideration for a time, and only dismissed because it was deemed too expensive to make a one-use giant slingshot.)

"Okay," Calvin said, powering up his bracelet devices and slamming him hand down on the street; a large portion of it flashed with the light of a alchemical transmutation, and when it was done part of the ground had peeled down from the sidewalk, shrinking slightly and bulging a little bit outwards, as though internal forces were pushing it up. The ground seemed stable enough to stand on, at least for the moment, and Calvin assured them that this was all part of his plan, running them through it once more until they were satisfied with it.

They heard a massive booming noise (not loud enough to hurt Hobbes, thankfully) and they hurried into position at the adjacent street at a nearby intersection. Almost as soon as they were in place, the Umbra Eternis came smashing through a nearby Internet cafe (apparently going through random buildings in an attempt to find someone to kill without any success), winded and dusty and it's operator hurt but still very much active. It's immense weight, combined with Kimblee's exhaustion, was enough to make him stumble when he hit the street, and scrambled to stand up straight so he didn't look undignified. The ground trembled under him right away, and Kimblee gave it a suspicious look before he dismissed it as seismic activity caused by his handiwork.

The Umbra Eternis had already looked away, staring at a more troubling sight. Through it's eyes, Kimblee saw what it was looking at and frowned more deeply when he saw Zim, Calvin, Hobbes and Zuko (and also Beth and Courtney), standing right there a short distance down the street from him and giving him impatient looks. Kimblee glanced from side to side, half-expecting an ambush waiting for him. "So there were some survivors after all. Pity I had to run into you first. But then, I don't suppose you know where Scar went?" They stared at him, and he seemed to take this as a request to elaborate. "Only I have a score to settle with him; I looked all over and couldn't find any trace of him, dead or alive, and all I've found is you." They said nothing, continuing to watch him. Like they were waiting for something to happen to him. Intruged dispite his misgivings, Kimblee had his giant robot kneel down so he could see them better and said, ""Why are you just standing there? I could easily destroy you all and you're just...standing there. Ah, I apologize for repeating myself, but it's a fairly unusual sight." The Umbra Eternis growled in apparent agreement, but it might have just been parroting Kimblee's opinion.

"Yes," Zim said. "You are a keen master of observing the obvious."

"So he is," Hobbes acknowledged.

Kimblee raised an eyebrow. Courtney snapped a few pictures of him with a small camera she apparently had in her pocket; the Umbra Eternis preened and flexed, apparently a bit of a prima donna. Kimblee waved politely and said, "Yes. Well. Why are you standing there?"

"Because," Zim said.

"Because why?" Kimblee nearly snapped, his limited capacity for restraint was being rapidly worn away by just how obnoxiously irritatinghis day had been.

"Because screw you is why!" Calvin said happily. "Seriously, screw you. You're unpleasant to be around."

Kimblee's eye twitched. His machine-titan was less retrained and howled like an infernal monster set loose upon a world it had been made to tear to bloody pulp, the darkness inside it swelling out into a massive cold blaze like a black sun. "It was interesting speaking to you, if not enlightening," Kimblee said, and the Umbra Eternis held up a hand, weapons similar to those that it had used to blast them off the first time appearing and locking into place, charging up another onslaught that would surely disintegrate them all. Zim and his allies (and Courtney and Beth) remained still, nevertheless. Kimblee half-smiled, pleased to see what was either acceptance of death without fear or a reckless certainty that they would absolutely win (both being traits he found admirable) and the Umbra Eternis took a single step forward to begin their final battle, briefly putting all it's combined weight (probably northward of a few tons, at least) on a very specific area of the street that, he had failed to notice, seemed substantially thinner than the rest of it.

The ground shook. Cracks appeared at once under it's feet, and the Umbra Eternis leaned sharply to the right, the rest of the ground begining to crumble. Kimblee's expression of detached amusement drained away into surprise as the street under him shifted, too quickly for him to do anything about it...

And then the street bent and broke, and the very heavy evil robot tumbled forward as the street gave way right under them in a small but precisely shaped path that left the rest of the street untouched, and the machine-titan had a very short fall into the tunnels below, landing front-end first into the hole, and while the tunnels were big enough to permit it's entry, they were still small enough that the walls pinned it's arms to it's side, preventing it from moving enough to exert it's great strength and free itself. It's back and upper legs were still above ground, dangling uselessly and unable to get purchase on the ground so they just flailed uselessly, the whole thing neatly immobilized. Kimblee groaned, having banged his face right on the floor of the tunnels and was too dazed to comment on how unexpected this was. Jarod, for his part, was still totally unconscious (thankfully for him) but had been shielded by the Umbral Heartless powering the Umbra Eternis, and unfortunately they were very much intact.

Zim and his group waited tensely, expecting the Umbra Eternis to tear itself loose any moment, but it did no such thing, just wiggling it's legs helplessly; it would have been silly if they weren't terribly aware of the damage it could do. The damage it had done, though, instilled a certain grim sense of satisfaction at it's undignified position. "It actually worked!" Courtney said, amazed. "Nice going, guys!"

"Thank you," Hobbes said, scratching the back of his neck and looking as embarrased as any young knight who had earned the favor of a lady. (He apparently thought Courtney counted.)

"He is vulnerable!" Zim said. "And...hey, that weak spot he has tried to cover up with assimilated materials is quite exposed." True to form, the damaged part of Kimblee's back was the portion of it's back sticking right out of the ground. Zim grinned evilly at Zuko, who smirked right back. With bloodthirsty battlecries, they lunged forward; Zuko with fire blazing from his very skin, Zim with Keyblade dragging on the street and slicing right through the pavement like it was made of something very weak that was not pavement. , Hobbes, Calvin and Beth (shockingly enough), all inspired by their hot-blooded fervor, chased after them with many cries of shouting and whooping and yelling the whole time. Courtney hung back awkwardly, mostly to provide fire support but also because she really didn't want to get caught in the ensuing melee.

And under the street, a great many tons of metal pressing on him while wedged into the stone underways in the dark and liquified Umbral Heartless-stuff surged around him like mildly acidic gelatin, Kimblee came to a conclusion. "This has not been a good day so far."

No, I shouldn't think so, a voice responded.

It wasn't Kevin (who had seemingly sunken into the depths of his own sub-consciousness) nor was it Ghostfreak, who was doing his part in running much of the Umbra Eternis and lending his mind to it's chaotic mental matrices. This voice sounded a great deal like that...person...Kimblee had seen in that ancient memory within Jarod's mind, and Kimblee supposed it might have been some aspect of Jarod himself. Kimblee wasn't very surprised; as much as Kimblee was wired into the Umbra Eternis and as deep as the Umbral Heartless were tearing into Jarod's psyche to feast on his anguish (and generate greater power with pure angst), it wasn't hard to suppose that some part of Jarod might well come into contact with Kimblee. "Who are you?" Kimblee said, wary all the same. "What is your name?"

The new intelligence radiated bemusement. (In the proper sense of the word; not amusement, but mild confusion.) Name? It said. I...have no name. I suppose I had one once, but that original incarnation has ceased to affect my fate. His name is not mine. Call me...the Nameless-That-Was? Yes, that will do.

Kimblee blinked, his head aching fiercely, and not entirely from the bashing impact. "I'm sorry, but could you hurry up and deliver whatever vauge portents you have to say? I'm a bit used to this sort of thing and I expect I'm due to being attacked now."

...You're used to piloting giant robots fueled by angst and unresolved mental issues while talking with voices from outside yourself? The voice said, confused.

"Not really, but I should have seen this coming. They actually have to warn about that sort of thing in the job description now. Legal issues." Kimblee flinched then, from sympathy pain as he felt a flash of heat and many shuddering impacts on the broken part of the back of Umbra Eternis, the materials he had placed over it shattering. The Umbrals tensed, condensing around him like a shield, and a number of similarily muted echoes and yells and impacts reached him. The Umbra Eternis shifted slightly, moved by some tremendous impact. "What was that?"

You being attacked, I should think, Ghostfreak said.

Quite so, the new voice agreed.

I said that already, Ghostfreak grumbled. It paused. Who are you?

An inexplicable voice from within Jarod's deepest soul-memories, The Nameless-That-Was explained.

...Ah. What are you doing in Kimblee's head, then?

Mind your own business! The Nameless-That-Was snapped with unexpected fierceness.

Kimblee was about to say something when something - the Key - struck the piece of metal fastened over the simplified (at the price of reducing mobility) left knee joint. It was a small strike. Clumsy and unfocused, that strike, and the machine-titan's frame hardly even registered it. But again, as he had felt during the entire fight, the Umbra Heartless, being semi-sentient forces that had forsaken material form and all the benefits thereof in order to replace all the internal systems that Kimblee hadn't required anymore (thus freeing up precious materials that he fused into the armor) did feel it. They were, in fact, far more vulnerable to the Key now then they had been when they were still materialized, without even the benefit of the crude bodies their passage forced them into, and now the light of the Key could unmake them.

That was the best word for it. Kimblee felt the forces tying them to this world, powerful though they were and leading to a dark place that was more of a prison than anything else, unravel before it like string set on fire and the Heartless themselves being...not killed exactly, as the Heartless' weren't exactly alive to begin with, but the Key changed them in some fashion, set them free from their current forms and a portion of the corrosive darkness within them excised from their quintessence. It was worse than killing them, at least to Kimblee, because that implied terrifying forces at work here, forces mightier than the things that had claimed the Heartless and that could mean, it might mean...

He didn't know, and that was the most terrifying thing of all. Something stirred in Kimblee. Something deeper than fear, almost alien to him. He wondered what it must be like for the Heartless, to know of something that could utterly destroy them. Do you know what it must be like to feel so small? The Nameless-That-Was asked suddenly. To be helpless? To disappear like snowflakes under a summer sun? To die and be forgetten? Now consider the people you have killed and maimed - such as those you have done so today - and imagine how they must feel to know such a thing. Because of you.

Kimblee paused. It was a moment's heisitation, not even noticed by those fighting him, and yet in that moment, strange and alien and heretofore unconsidered thoughts passed through. They were as exhilarating as they were frightening to Kimblee, and alien as well.

He thought of Kevin for a moment, a prisoner in his own body, and then pain struck him like a hammer to the gut. He trembled, his lips peeling over his teeth like a startled horse, and red fluid too thick and viscous to be blood (or even be mistaken for the liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone) dripped syrup-like over his lips. He coughed like his throat burned, coughed wetly and noisily, and a few more thick drops of the strange fluid came, aching enormously the entire time. His ears burned, his throat hurt, all of him felt wrong and worse, all the soft and vulnerable tissues of his body hurt and dripped faint amounts of that same stuff for a moment, just enough to make him do the unthinkable and for a brief moment wish for death, release from a body that held him prisoner to it's torment-

Mercifully, the fit passed and the pain ceased, as suddenly as it had begun. Kimblee thought he heard a dim echo of Kevin's amusement at his misfortunate and most of all, he thought that the fluid dripping from his new body all-too-much like blood looked exactly like the stuff his consciousness had previously been preserved in. His skin, he was alarmed to see, was significantly paler in some places; closer to Kevin' skin tone than Kimblee's own. Those parts of him didn't feel like they were his anymore.

Your usurption is backfiring on you, the mysterious voice told him. You stole this body after forsaken your own body for this crude immortality. And you knew nothing of Kevin's true nature, what his father was and how that made him different from a true human or what the energies coursing inside him were. Or how they would interact with you possessing him. You willingly gave part of your mind to the creatures of darkness for the opportunity to kill things and never thought that you might suffer for it.

Did you really think that there would be no consequences to what you've done?

"No," Kimblee admitted, determining what the tunnels were made up so he could transmute them. "I still don't. And I still don't care."

In the meantime, those attacking Kimblee were totally unaware of his torments. They thought, erroneously, that the Umbra Eternis remained as invulnerable as ever. "WHAT IS THIS THING MADE OF!" Zim screamed, hammering blow after blow on the alloy sealed flawlessly over the hole in Kimblee's armor.

"Maybe you could ask Kimblee," Hobbes joked, standing on one side of a joint on the right leg and studying it carefully. After a moment, he raised his palm back, concentrated, and thrust it forward with a shout, translucent spiritual flames glowing around his hand and striking with a mighty blow, the strange metals conducting the force of his attack and pushing it back. As a result, the ground under them exploded into a cloud of stinging dust and Hobbes fell back, shaking his aching arm. "Ow, ow ow ow!" He stood up and saw that it still wasn't harmed. "Oh, come on!"

Blasts of fire and volleys of small explosives rained down from a upturned chunk of debris Kimblee had cast away in his fall, striking the back of the fallen machine-titan. The dust and ash they cast faded away to reveal still no real damage. Zuko, standing there with Beth, Calvin and Courtney, made an inarticulate growl more suitable for a dragon then a person. "We're not even denting it!" Beth cried out. "At this rate, we're just gonna exhaust ourselves and it'll kill us without breaking a sweat! And it's a robot, they don't even have sweat!" Zuko kept blasting out fire, now compounding his problems by calming her down.

All of that came to a halt when the red light flashed out from from under the downed giant robot, flaring up over the hole. Zim wisely created a blast of fire from underfoot to get himself out of the way, hitting Zuko on the way so that both of them were well away from the downed machine-titan when the ground that had fallen over Kimblee flattened down and slid up, and then the underground tunnel (and the Umbra Eternis) was pushed up on a stony pillar, displacing nearly half the street around it when it was level with them and crumbling under it's own weight once the Umbra Eternis stood up and cracked it in half with a single massive step, landing on the street in a bestial crouch. And anxiously watching it's steps in case there were more traps like the one that had gotten it stuck under the street. Unfortunately, Calvin had neglected to make any.

(And most unfortunately for Kimblee, a certain ship that had been circling the area looking for signs of her friends saw that red light, and it's pilot definitely recognized what the light of a Philosopher's Stone looked like, and flew towards it without delay.)

"I congratulate you on your quick wits and battlefield acumen," Kimblee said as he emerged from the ooze-like substance of Umbral Heartless squirming around with a measure of renewed vigor., peering out at them with good humor inspite of his aching nose. "I-"

"But those two are women, not men," Zim said, pointing at Courtney and Beth. They blinked. "And what does acupuncture have to do with anything?"

"...What?" Kimblee said. "I don't...what are you talking about?"

"I dunno." Zim shrugged. "And you're the one that started talking about acupuncture men, not me."

Kimblee stared for a moment, and then he realized what Zim meant; he facepalmed, and due to his synchronized connection to the Umbra Eternis, so did the machine-titan. (An interesting thing to see in a giant robot.) "...He said acumen, not...whatever you thought he said," Hobbes informed Zim. "Acumen is, like, battlefield know-how."

"Ah," Zim said. He looked at Kimblee again, the rogue alchemist's patience about to break with homicidal results, looking ever-more furious that Zim was looking at something behind him and not doing him the service of paying attention to him.

"What are you looking at?" Kimblee snapped.

"The ship coming up behind you."

Kimblee rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on. Do you really think I'm so stupid to fall for-" And just in time to interrupt him and hurt his ego, at long last a small spaceship accelerated over the rooftops from behind him and let loose a barrage of the weaponry attached to it's exterior, hitting the Umbra Eternis' point-blank and knocking it silly; it stumbled back, and once more Kimblee seriously regretted giving it the body shape he had and made it's sense of balance so badly oriented, and then it overbalanced again and fell back into the hole, roaring the whole way. The ship, in the meantime, came to a harsh stop in the air with what appeared to be considerable difficulty, pushing against it's momentum with as much ease as a train moving backward, with the effect that it could only float downwards to them in a tremendously awkward way.

"Finally!" Calvin cheered. "More backup that's actually competent! It came out of nowhere, but still! Competence!"

"You must really enjoy having that around," Courtney said. "It's a real change of pace for you."

"Yeah! ...Hey, wait a minute!"

If there was time to react properly to the ship, they would have probably commented on it's appearance; the ship that had set off to save them what seemed like a while ago (but was really less than twenty-five minutes) was fairly small for a spaceship, likely able to transport around ten people if they didn't mind slightly cramped conditions. It also looked a bit like the ship version of the kind of vehicle that used car salesman liked to pass off as having 'a lot of personality'; instead of the 'flying brick' fashion that was the 'in' thing right now across the more well-known parts of the known multiverse, this particular spacecraft had evidentally started life as six different ships mashed together into a charmingly squat form wider at the front than back, it's various weapons extending out of hatches on the front just ahead of a slightly raised part of the ship probably containing the ship's bridge; there weren't any windows, though there were a lot of small wide-area cameras all over. While the upper half wasn't particularily fashionable looking, the lower half was a much more box-like design that had been in fashion more than fifty years ago and probably salvaged from a cargo ship. It was slightly larger than the rest of it and extremely well-armored, and probably contained the living quarters. At the junction between it and the middle half was a cargo bay with a wide door at the front.

The whole thing was painted in garish colors, probably because it had been slapped together from several other ships and hadn't been repainted yet, clashing horribly with each other, reds and yellows and metallic purple splattered against each other on the large and weathered plates of interlocked armoring that made the ship look bigger than it actually was, safely sealing it and providing additional protection and looking like some portions of the ship could shift around if they needed to. While it did have a set of engine near the back, they weren't in use, and appeared to be using a number of glowing discs the size of hubcaps and positioned all over the ship, collectively generating a field of faintly greenish energy around the ship and moving it around. All in all, the whole thing wasn't terribly unusual as ships went, it just had the misfortune to look a lot a combination of a flying submarine made out of stuff that had been cluttering a rustbucket refuge depot. And then painted by a colorblind idiot with delusions of mad artistry.

Zim had little time to appreciate (or criticize) the ship's appearance; the ship hovered down to the street, almost touching down, and a woman's voice crackled from an unnoticed external speaker. "Quick, get in!" she said, the cargo bay doors grinding open. Not needing to take a hint, Zim and the others ran inside, entering a fairly low but wide room that might serve as a rough cargohold, lined by numerous catwalks leading into the ship's upper levels and the chamberss beyond; at a glance, Zim observed that the floor showed the signs of having been recently bolted and riveted together (but professionally so) and there were a number of pipes extending from the ceiling and into the walls, perhaps some manner of circuitry or ferrying coolant into the ship's systems. They didn't have any time to look around properly; the floor gave a mighty lurch as the ship took off again, the air violently whipping through the room, and Calvin almost fell back through the open door because of it. Outside, the head of the Umbra Eternis saw the ship fly away, growling as it furiously began to dig itself out. Again.

Before Calvin could be thrown out through the door, Zim impulsively grabbed him by the arm and pulled him onto his feet, dragging him forward while everyone else pulled back, helping each other from falling out like Calvin almost did. Fortunately, the door slid close and as the air returned to optimal levels, Calvin gave Zim a surprised look of gratitude.

The woman's voice came out again. "Guys, uh, whatever your names are! Hurry up to the bridge, I'm getting us out of here before he gets out of there and kills us!"

"Okay, cool, so where's the bridge?" Calvin said, trying to keep his balance while the ship unsteadily rose to a proper ascent.

"...Follow the signs, duh," the voice said. Zim looked and noticed that the walls were lined with helpful signs pointing towards the various rooms and indicating what they were for (though most of them had blank spaces for names, indicating that they hadn't been identified yet), and quickly located one pointing up, so he hurried up the catwalk's upper level and found another sign that simply said 'Bridge', pointing at a airlock-style door. Not needing more more of a hint, he hurried over to it, and the others followed him; Calvin needing to be dragged away by Hobbes from oo'ing and aw'ing over the ship, Zuko trying to hurry everyone along, and Courtney and Beth aware that they were getting in over their heads.

The door opened automatically, and Zim ran through it to find that the bridge, while a bit small and cluttered, was a fairly nice example of such a room given what they had to work with. They didn't have time to admire it, so Zim ran over to the front of the room, his boots clicking loudly on a floor made of the same metal as the catwalk and a complex assortment of wires and cords underneath protected by a thin translucent sheath, running past the wide booths set into the walls for passengers and non-vital crew members to sit on (and with safety harnesses to put on since belts wouldn't be as reliable), pausing briefly to take note of the array of information processing engines at the front of the room as he stepped onto a slightly raised area over a terminal of uncertain purpose and panels in it glowing with a comforting green energy under the floor, all the cables and wires running into it and the machines in the bridge.

Over this terminal, at the very front of the room and before a staggering array of screens that spread throughout the bridge so that other members of the crew could get a good look instead of making the pilot keep an eye on it all the screen's displays of ship-board information and the outside-view camera displays (the only way to see, since windows were a bad idea) and camera-views showing individual rooms of the ship (mostly empty and waiting to be customized and outfitted, and Zim got ideas just looking at some of them, deciding which room would make ideal bunks or an laboratory and so on) were two seats, and in the right seat was a blonde woman perhaps several years older than Hobbes or Zuko. "What's the situation?" He said to her, noticing that a screen showed Kimblee's robot digging itself free, and it's expression somehow conveyed enormous frustration. "Also, who are you?"

"I'm Winry Rockbell, and I think I'm the girl who just saved your butts," she said, turning in her seat to greet them while still focusing on the task at hand: getting them out of there before Kimblee could attack them again. Zim noticed that she was in a most unusual interface; while there were complex assortments of keyboards, buttons, touchpads, dials and gauages and all manner of similar things set right under the screens (mainly the ones that displayed ship-related information, such as vital alerts and interior cameras and also an Internet browser) and a complex array of other such interfaces that looked like whatever had been lying around had been shoved in to look cool and made the interface for the ship look like a huge and stupidly complex dashboard, Winry's hands were clamped firmly on a pair of what looked weirdly like handle-grips attached to either side of her seat, with pathways built into them, funneling straight down into the terminal below them and glowing with the same green energy.

"Yeah, thanks for that," Zuko said.

"You have no idea how good your timing way," Courtney said, looking very tired now. "I'm...I'm a-going to lie down now, 'kay?" She sat down heavily on one of the available seats, which were fortunately cushioned and could be adjusted to make emergency beds.

"I like your set-up," Calvin said, looking around at all of it. "Very neo-modernized super-mechanistic post-utilitarinism! And I can see a strong hint of Brutalistic mad science design theory in here...unless that's just you using what's available."

"In which case it would fall under Trash Praxis," Winry agreed. She raised an eyebrow. "You know super-science aesthetics?"

"Are you kidding? I wrote a book on it!" Calvin bragged. "You're talking to the guy who created the Comic Kingdom's (or Brighthammer Kingdom, I'm not sure what our name's supposed to be) technological ideal by blending elements of the cyberpunk stylings of Digital Chrome and it's stylings of flesh-mounted bolts, stylishly bulky devices and cybernetics all into a primary aesthetic of Extropic that embodies the positive future we ought to have now, utilizing the best of transhumanism, digital consciousness and nanotechnology in the service of a design that is unobstrusively functional! I call it Noblebright Future. Even though it's based in the present. I got an award for it from Alloy Blend, THE number one cross-dimensional magazine for super-science fashion, a lifetime subscription for the same, and it was so successful that now the whole kingdom and it's allies employ it in all our designs!"

"Awesome," said Winry, and they both high-fived.

Zim wasn't listening, having noticed that she wasn't pressing any buttons or directing the ship in any obvious way, but it was clearly moving and not using an autopilot; he immediately suspected those handlegrips were a medium for a mental interface, and saw what, based on how prominently it was displayed at the constant flux it was in, was the ship's on-board power display: a circular screen in front of Winry with a ever-spinning and bright green spiral gauge on it, continually receding and increasing so it was more or less balanced. The same green, he noticed, as the energy in the conduits he'd seen throughout the room and in the terminal below.

"Can we focus?" Zuko said before further aesthetic-related conversing could derail them. "We're still in the middle of a battle here."

"Right," Winry said. The ship bumped a little bit, ascending over the buildings and kicking off at high speed. Behind it, the Umbra Eternis ripped it's way free, shaking loose debris off itself, and Kimblee kept his gaze fixed firmly on the ship that had completely caught him off-guard. Without any more delays, he commanded the Umbra Eternis to follow after the ship, smashing through everything in it's path once more. But, he cautioned him, to act with wariness; that ship had some considerable firepower.

Back in the ship, as they relaxed a few fractions, Calvin sat down on one of the booth-seats and said, "Have you heard from any of those other guys? Cyborg? Your Roy Mustang guy? Or that grumpy Scar guy? We could use the back-up."

Winry's previously bright expression darkened a bit at Scar's name, her lip curling into a uncharacteristic scowl. It passed, but not quickly enough, and she said, "Don't worry, I got word from them not too ago." She flipped a switch on, and a nearby speaker crackled at once.

"Winry!" Cyborg's voice boomed at once. Hobbes winced and covered his ears, once more incurring pain at Cyborg's unintended loudness. "Is that you? I swear, I thought you got shot down before you ever got to us!"

"It's okay!" Winry said. "I found Kimblee and some of the guys you were with! They're right here!"

"...Really?"

"Yes," Zim said. Zuko, Hobbes and Calvin added their own affirmations.

"Hey, is that you, little guy?" Cyborg sounded tremendously relieved. "What do you think of the ship, huh? Worked all night on it! Most of the morning, too!"

"This ship? Ah, yes, it has a most eccentric design scheme but I quite like it and besides it is-" Zim stopped. He grinned. "Ah, I see! This is the ship you built for me!"

"Yep!" Cyborg's voice practically radiated pride. "I used what I could of your crew's old ship, but basically that amounted to the internal systems. I put together some old experimental ships I restored, put the salvaged systems into them, added a bunch of stuff I've been itching to get working, and you're flying in the results!"

"In other words," Winry said dryly. "He salvaged what he could, rigged a bunch of old ships together, crammed the systems in there and put guns on the whole thing."

"Shh, you don't have to say it like that!" Cyborg said scoldingly. Winry rolled her eyes. "Getting back on topic. Where are you guys? I've been running crazy getting everyone that big blast scattered back together, and we couldn't find Zim or his friends anywhere!"

"Actually, besides Zuko, they're not really my-" Zim started to say, but another voice somehow got onto Cyborg's communicator (ignoring his cries of startled protest).

"ZIM!" Aang howled. "Little buddy! I thought you'd been blown out of the city or DIED or something! Where have you been? We couldn't find you anywhere!"

"Me, the boy, the tiger-person, Zuko, and those two girls have been busily fighting Kimblee and his robot!" Zim said confidently. "We are doing awesomely."

The others looked less impressed at his statement. "Learn to say our names already, geez," Calvin grumbled.

"'Those two girls'?" Courtney repeated indignantly. "Is that all we are to you? Just two random people tagging along and you can't even be bothered to learn our names?"

"Hey, we're on his crew and he still hasn't learned our names," Hobbes assured them. "Don't feel bad."

"I'm glad I don't have him as a leader," Beth said.

"No, you just have to deal with people like that very large woman with the mental capacity of a twelve-year-old on a permanent sugar high and Abel Nightroad," Zuko told her. Beth frowned.

"Good..." Aang sounded tremendously relieved and also ignoring the commentary from everyone. "That's everyone we haven't found yet..."

"Can I have my arm back now?" Cyborg said, and made another strangling noise. "OW!"

"BETH!" Angilaka cried. "My little buddy! I thought you were dead, or eaten by a grue, or taken captive by Kimblee and brainwashed into his sidekick or something! And in less than five minutes too, it'd be some kind of record. I totally freaked out."

"She totally did," Abel chimed in, and Cyborg yelled again, that someone else was wrenching his poor arm around. "It was kind of creepy. And hey, how am I worse than Angilaka and her childishnes?"

"Guys!" Cyborg yelled. "LET GO!" There was a brief scuffle, and Roy's voice spoke up. "Zim, Winry, you other guys, we don't have a lot of time! We need to finish this NOW! Where is Kimblee?"

"Um..." Calvin looked at a visual panel that showed what was happening behind them. "Uh...you're probably not going to like this..."

"Yes?"

"Kimblee's right behind us," Calvin said as everyone else looked at the panel in horror. Even Winry, which was very poor piloting etiquette, and she only just realized this before they crashed into another poor buiding. Zim blanched at the screen Calvin had indicated; it displayed Kimblee and the Umbra Eternis smashing through a building on the other side of the street, moving too fast too slow down in time and going off a bridge between a gap on the other side of the street. It came right back up onto the street, tearing it up as it charged at them, weapons already loading out onto it's body and red energy powering around Kimblee.

"He's WHAT?" Cyborg yelled. "Oh shit, get OUT of there before he-"

A red flare. A blast of sound, so loud that the audio receptors filtered it out and still knocked a few cameras out from overload. On the screens, the line of buildings immediately to their left became a massive cloud of dust and debris and other things in a flash of violent light, and the impact of the missed explosion knocked them off-course again, spiraling around and going through a rooftop, falling downwards and knocking them all silly. Winry grit her teeth and the spiral gauge osscilated outwards; the terminal below glowed brighter in the outrush of power it suddenly received, funneling that power into the propulsion discs, and the field spread out around the ship to bounce it back into the air and rocket over the street before he could start firing again.

"Too close!" Courtney said. "Too close, too close, too close!"

"Yeah, it was too close, we got it," Calvin said, cradling his radio thing; not to protect it, Zim noticed, but grimly keeping the switches on it from being pressed and activating something. "Try saying something helpful!"

"Well, I'm sorry I'm having a panic attack right now!" Courtney snapped.

"Now's not the time to succumb to weakness," Zuko said coldly. "You should focus on doing something productive!"

"What happened just then?" Cyborg demanded.

"Kimblee's on our tail and he almost caught us with a blast!" Zim reported. "Where are you? Maybe we can lure Kimblee into a trap?"

"And I thought you had a back-up plan!" Zuko yelled at Calvin, eager to yell someone else into action.

"I do!" Calvin said. "I can't do it until Kimblee's hostage-prisoner is out of that giant robot! So make something happen where he's out of that giant robot!"

Cyborg didn't answer right away; there was a flurry of debates and arguments and similar discussion from his end, but didn't take long. "We got a plan. Head on over to us and lure Kimblee after you! We can prepare a trap pretty quick with our alchemists and once we've got him trapped, we can get Jarod out and finish Kimblee! And finally end this stupid fight! Feels like it's gone on forever."

"You want us to lure the all-powerful psychopath into a trap? That seems unneccesarily suicidal...but okay," Courtney said, galvanized by a need to shove her willingness to action into Zuko's face.

"I'm for it," Beth said.

"We've managed to wear him down, and however he's controlling that machine of his, it's taking a toll on him," Zuko reported, giving Courtney a glance. "I say go for it." Calvin nodded in agreement.

"It's as good a plan of action as anything else we've done on our own," Zim said.

"Good! I'll be sending you guys our position! Good luck, and PLEASE try not to die!"

"Okay," Winry said. Cyborg uploaded the coordinates to their end, helpfully being displayed on a previous inactive screen (where had all those screens came from, Zim wondered). "Any thoughts, guys?"

"Yes," Hobbes said. "I predict that something we don't know about will cause the plan to end horribly. Like, maybe he's listening in on our communications."

"Buddy, this is a one-way channel particular to me and the stuff I've built," Cyborg pointed out. "And Kimblee didn't use any of my tech to make that monstrosity of his."

"Trust me, it'll go badly," Hobbes said stubbornly. "I've been through things like this a lot! Something screwy always happens!"

Zuko nodded grimly. "He does have a point."

Zim rolled his eyes. "The two of you are so needlessly negative! Now where are we aiming Kimblee at?" In response, Winry had the ship lower a small projector in front of Zim, displaying a holographic map of the part of the First District they were in, detailing the various building and street layout in simplistic but clear detail (it looked a bit like the graphics the Hitchhiker's Guide sometimes displayed, actually) and a decent but annoyingly complex distance away, fairly close to when they had become seperated from the others, cartoony images of the heads of their absent allies appeared to indicate their positions, at least they did for the people who were established in town: there were plenty of blank faces with question marks on them. To Zim's annoyance, their ship's current location was marked with a garbage pile.

"That's a lot of buildings to navigate through," Calvin said, troubled.

"We will manage, I'm sure," Zim said.

"That's the spirit!" Winry said cheerfully.

"You guys got it sorted out?" Cyborg said. 'More or less' was the gist of their response. "Right, get going!"

Their ship came to a stop, waiting for Kimblee to confirm their position, and the Umbra Eternis soon caught up to them, trying to climb over a hobbyshop that had been in it's way and collapsing through it and onto the street because it was just too heavy. The machine-titan stood up, catching sight of them. Kimblee readied a set of missiles, but the ship struck first, cannons charging up and releasing a blast at the Umbra Eternis' head and the Umbra Eternis staggered back, one hand gingerly covering an eye that had been sorely damaged. Enraged, it primed a missile, and the ship wisely flew off like an airbourne train when the missile fired, and of all things the ship flew backwards, shooting a single well-aimed laser and destroying the missile. The Umbra Eternis hurried after it, and Kimblee wondered who the ship's pilot was, and more importantly what they were up to. One of the Umbra Eternis' arms raised up, it's laser-palm bulding up power, but after a moments thought Kimblee had it dispell the power and lower itself; instead of attacking right away, the Umbra Eternis followed after the ship at a safe distance, banishing it's current outload of weapons to make itself marginally lighter.

Now hold a moment, Ghostfreak said as they advanced across a moat someone had put in the street for some reason, moving over it in an ungainly leap. The giant robot's left foot slipped at the last moment, and they struggled for a moment to stop from falling in and losing the ship. Aren't you going to just kill them and remove their threat?

"I was," Kimblee said, unperturbed and letting the Umbra Eternis haul itself to the ground, howl like a maniac and smash through the nearest building for the visceral joy of breaking something. "And I will. But this new occurance and arrival to immediate events interests me. I don't wish to play right into whatever they have in mind for me."

And you're going to do that by blindly rushing into whatever trap they have for you? The Nameless-That-Was said. There was the mental equvilant of a long stare at him. What? I'm not trying to be helpful, I'm just pointing out your stupidity.

"Did you hear any mysterious voices that have no right being in my head and somehow being more annyoing than the mysterious voices that do have a right being in my head?" Kimblee said as the Umbra Eternis climbed up a warehouse to get a better sight on the ship and managing to balance itself on the rooftop before it predicatably collapsed, begining a game of hopping on the next rooftop and bouncing off when it collapsed, and pouncing onto the next rooftop when that collapsed, and jumping across the street to another rooftop and moving to another one when those collapsed, and so on.

I don't, Ghostfreak said, deeply unnerved by the Nameless-That-Was.

I do, The Nameless-That-Was said. I recognize my own existence. That totally counts! ...Or DOES it?

And I heard him too, Kevin chimed in.

"That settles it, no one heard anything," Kimblee said.

But- Kevin started to say.

"No one. Heard. Anything," Kimblee said sternly. The Umbra Eternis, distracted by it's operator's lack of focus, ran right into a buildind and hung halfway out of it for an embarassingly long moment before gravity and weight made it fall over and have the entire building collapse on it. It staggered out, looking humiliated, and raised a fist at the nearby floating ship, apparently insulted that Zim and his crew saw fit to wait for Kimblee to catch up. It charged off heedlessly after them, periodically tripping when the ship opened fire and narrowly missed hitting it's feet.

So for about five minutes or so (which was a long time to either be chased by a giant robot and a powerful alchemist or to be constructing a trap), the Umbra Eternis chased Zim's crew around. It was a display of constantly being shot at, shooting back, being surprised when the other came out of nowhere, being less surprised when that kept happening, freaking out when they ran into a populated area and herding Kimblee back and then being relieved that they had doubled back into the evacuated zone and various other tricks. Kimblee, for his part, was too busy yelling with the voices in his head and keeping the unruly giant robot in his control focused to realize that he was obviously being herded into a trap, and even if he did, he would probably have let it go all the way just to see what happened. He was therefore reacting instead of planning on the fly when the ship he was chasing flew into a circular plaza located between two administrative buildings taler than the Umbra Eternis, a large artificial pool at the very center of the place (normally host to any number of swimmers, aquatic sentients and bored townschildren, all of whom had evacuated with the other people with common sense), a few old and beaten vehicles left on the sidewalk as sad attempts at modern art, and nothing much else of note. Nor was there anyone apparently in sight. (The key word being apparently.)

Kimblee stopped the Umbra Eternis, finding it very suspicious that the ship had come to a stop over the pool in the middle of the area. Kimblee kept going, the Umbra Eternis' footfalls carving up the street...and then he stopped, finally realizing that he had been herded into this place like nothing more than a clever but easily tricked animal. "Well played, ladies and gentlemen," Kimblee said, clapping his hands and not activating the transmutation circles on his palms. He looked around and sniffed disdainfully. "An ill-suiting place for the archetypal final battle, don't you think? A random plaza in the middle of the district. Not a smaller place where it would be harder to manuever my robot, or a more defensible location where you would hold all the advantages, or even so much as the place where all this began. At least that would have some suitable value for both our sides."

He raised his hands, as if questioning. "And this is just an area of no consequence. Is it desperation that drove you here...or I am obviously in an exceedingly amateur trap."

He got no response from the ship. In the circumstances, he considered that to be playing poker with someone whose face had suddenly frozen up after getting a bad hand.

Kimblee smirked, looking around for details that looked off, and the Umbra Eternis' optics directed his attention towards a thin crack in the ground in front of him, and a large square-shaped part of the street in front of it slightly recessed into the ground. He raised an eyebrow very slightly. "Ah, you - or more likely, one of your allies that was scattered in that misfortunate backfiring blast - did set traps for me. A pity that they are so...uninspired."

The ship lowered and rose very quickly. It looked a lot like an awkward shrug, and he half-expected them to say 'oops?'.

He gave them a moment of dignity for at least admitting their error, in a way. He was still pretty annoyed that they were using such a cliche trick, though, and it wasn't like they didn't know how pointless a hole in the ground would be at stopping him. "Did you really think I would fall for the 'hidden hole in the ground' trick? Again? The last time you tried it, it wasn't even obvious, and I can tell you, falling into a hole twice was quite bad enough for one day. I'll not make it three times."

Again, the ship shrugged, and Kimblee found himself thinking again what an odd day it was. "I really don't have time for this," He said, and the Umbra Eternis took a flying leap over the hole (more impressive than it sounded, with the persistent weight distribution problems) and landed right in front of it, causing the hole to shake a bit but not fall in. It was a pretty well-made hole, probably constructed with alchemy, and looked a bit wet at the edges for some reason. Suspicious, he thought, glancing at the ship and wondering what they might be up to. His mecha took a few steps forward, making the ground rattle as he neared two lamp posts facing each other accross the street...and paused in mid-step, noticing the thick cables strung between them at exactly the right height to ensnare Umbra Eternis' legs and trip them. "You didn't even try to hide that one!" Kimblee yelled at whoever was waiting for him - for he was certain that he had been led into a poorly thought-out trap - and carefully walked around the lamp posts, not certain that they weren't still trapped in some other way. He looked down at the next trap and grimaced at how lazy this last one was. "Oh look," He said flatly. "A big oil slick on the streets, transmuted from minerals into a liquid substance that's nearly impossible to see and thick enough to trip me up if only I hadn't seen it." He activated a rudimentary set of jets that enabled considerable leaps (if not true flight) and bounded over the oil slick, landing on the ground with a big thump. "Is that it? Is that all you can think of? I am very disappointed in you all." He took several more steps, looking for more traps at every one...

And stepped onto a part of the street was slid down with a faint click, and two large fist-shaped pillars burst out of the ground where they had been concealed in camoflaged hatches and slammed into the sides of Umbra Eternis, pinning it's arms at the sides and immobilizing it. "Well, good effort, for what it's worth," Kimblee remarked, still sounding bored. "However, you may notice that that is a useless gesture because I'm not stuck. It'll be the work of a few moments to destroy these pillars with alchemy and free myself!" Red light flashed around him, infusing into the pillars, and they crumbled away in flashy blasts. "You see? I am really starting to lose my patience here and..." He faltered in mid-word, noticing a vaugely familiar figure standing on the roof of the building at the end of the street. The figure changed, becoming significantly more blocky and even a bit gun-like. His chest started to ache from earlier injuries, and he got a gloomy feeling of deja vu. "Oh no. Not you again," Kimblee said to the distant figure of Field Admiral Leeroy Jethro Gibbs. He raised his arm, and the Umbra Eternis did the same, intending to blast Gibbs before he could shoot him with an insanely overpowered shot like he had done earlier.

At least, Kimblee tried to. He probably wouldn't have done it in time anyway, but his right arm, now almost completely reverted to Kevin Levin's original skin color, moved on it's own volition, suddenly outside of Kimblee's control, and punched him in the face. It wasn't much of a punch; he was losing body strength from the toll of the long fight and his own rigors, and it hadn't been at the right angle for proper punching leverage, but it did the job of distracting him long enough for Gibbs to fire a single missile that streaked across the street, homing right towards the Umbra Eternis.

Kimblee saw it coming, but not in time to destroy it from far away, and it was nearly upon him when he raised the giant robot's arms over the fuselage cavity containing him and Jarod, more to protect himself than his captive, and realized too late that missile hadn't been aimed at him but at a higher target; namely the Umbra Eternis' head.

"...Oh bollocks," Kimblee mumbled as he saw through the Umbra Eternis' eyes and had the unpleasant sight of, from the shared perspective, a missile coming right at his face.

The hell is a bollocks? Kevin thought.

Oh, that's easy, the Nameless-That-Was said. It's slang both from the British and which I've heard in the Sigilian cant and either way it means...uh, I don't know, actually. Sorry.

The resulting blast to the machine-titan's face, while big, blasted it back and twisted it's face up, half the machinery inside it's head pushed out in a crackling mess and one of it's eyes dangling out. Face still smoking, the giant robot hurtled back the way it came and slid right onto the oil slick Kimblee had thought he'd avoided. He slipped, the Umbra Eternis overbalanced, and together they continued falling backwards, and flipped when it hit the calbes between the lampposts and landing on it's back right onto the disguised hole Kimblee had dismissed earlier. The hole's cover held for a moment, and then it fell and took Kimblee with it. The Umbra Eternis splashed down into a surprising quantity of water that filled in a portion of the underground tunnels they had walled off to make a hole big enough for the Umbra Eternis to fall into. "HOLES," Kimblee yelled, pulling at his hair in frustration before punching at the arm that had hit him. Kevin snickered cruelly.

And, at last, Jarod blinked and opened his eyes. He grimaced dully, his head aching furiously, and his analytically-inclined brain took stock of the situation in moments and he was understandably displeased to find thick tendrils invading a few of his orifices and apparently colonizing his body (but then it wasn't like the first time it had happened to him since leaving his home world), and mustered enough self-control to pretend to still be unconscious so Kimblee didn't notice.

Back on the ship, Zim gave a polite round of applause. "Ah," He said. "It was never important if Kimblee saw the traps or not."

"Yeah, we were sort of counting on that," Cyborg said through the radio.

"Of course," Zim agreed. Not being totally privy to the plan, he thought for a moment and added, "For what?"

His question was answered immediately when he saw Roy Mustang, Aang and Toph run out from the buildings beside where Kimblee had been trapped now; the Flame Alchemist and Toph stopped just in front of the immobilized giant robot, Toph pulling a large quantity of earth from the street and pushing it into a barricade around Kimblee, fusing it into a single spire-like hollowed shape that was just tall enough to cover the Umbra Eternis as it presently was. The Flame Alchemist did his part next, clapping his hands and putting them on the ground to produce a stream of blue alchemical light that flashed through the barrier and into the water the Umbra Eternis was presently lying in, transmuting it into gas. Zim wasn't sure what the point was, but the instruments informed him that the amount of flammable hydrogen had risen to incredibly dangerous levels in that very small area.

If he knew that Roy Mustang's means of creating explosive blasts of flame involved transmuting hydrogen, he would have seen the point.

The Umbra Eternis sat up and banged it's head against the barricade, dislodging part of it and screeching with one of it's hands up to the mutilated side of it's face. There was a clicking sound there, suggesting that it's throat-mounted primary cannon had been destroyed in the blast. A few cursory sparks flared out from it's throat, corroding components and doing more damage, focing it to stop supplying power there and the flowing shadows around that area vanished, leaving twisted and useless metal there, and a jaw hanging open with a busted-up cannon poking out like a overlarge tongue. "Clever move, Mustang! Very clever! A trap that you didn't need me to fall for was a very clever idea! And I know that you have something else planned; you know this barricade can't hold me or you would have already done it!"

Toph bared her teeth. "I say we crush him right here and pull that Jarod guy out from the dust!"

Mustang held a hand out in a military gesture. "Wait." Toph frowned at him, but reluctantly complied; she knew the plan, after all.

The Umbra Eternis tried to stand up; the hole was designed allow it in but was too cramped to permit the giant robot to move, forcing the Umbra Eternis into a rough sitting position. Too impatient to use it's weapons, the machine-titan smashed it's fists against the barricade, crumbling the rock and leaving massive indents, dust streaming down and cracks appearing in it. "Show me your resolve, Mustang!" Kimblee declared. "What are you planning? Show me, SHOW ME! SHOW ME SHOW ME SHOW ME!" He started to yell more, but there was too much gas there and he breathed in enough to send him into a coughing fit.

"Oh, I'll show you all right," Roy growled. He raised his hand, the fabric rubbing slightly. "And you don't have the right to use my name like that. I'm just the Flame Alchemist." He smirked. "And Kimblee. Aren't Heartless vulnerable to things like...I don't know, heat and light? Things like fire?"

He snapped his fingers, and there was a short snapping sound before the sparks came from his glove.

Contrary to popular belief, the snapping sound the Flame Alchemist made when he used his powers wasn't his fingers snapping, or the sound his ignition cloth made; it was actually the sound of the moisture in the air seperating into oxygen and hydrogen which he then used to amplify his flames. And he was so skilled at it that he could create whatever intensity or pattern he wanted, avoiding civilians or precisely targeting enemies in surprisingly non-lethal ways. (If nothing else, he was considered a hero for being one of the few people to employ massive fire-blasting power in ways that merely produced non-fatalities.) And in this case, there was already an ample supply of hydrogen from the transmuted water the Umbra Eternis had been lying in; a supply of very flammable hydrogen, more over, that was thick around the Umbra Eternis and waiting for an errant spark to blow it all up.

This went through the minds of both Jarod and Kimblee. Kimblee merely mouthed wordlessly. Jarod smirked.

The hydrogen exploded, shaped into a path Roy made with unerring precision. For just about everyone else there, it just looked like a gigantic pillar of fire that arced straight upwards in a single flash of light. Toph's barricade ensured that no one was hurt by the blast, and pointed up so the fire had nowhere else to go but the heavens, so that Roy put all his concentration into preventing Jarod from coming to harm.

He did so splendidly; in spite of Jarod's mild concerns, the heat and flames didn't come anywhere near him, nearly staying away from the fuselage so they didn't burn or were cooked to death inside superheated metal. Indeed, Roy directed the flames squarely at the Heartless infused into the giant robot itself, burning light piercing the darkness and snuffing it out wherever it could, twisting into every crevice and gap and bit it could find and blazing white-hot.

The flame attack took only seconds to do, and when it was done, smoke was rising up from behind the barricade, and the squealing-grinding noise as the Umbra Eternis forced itself to it's knees and frantically started battering at the barricade, it's Heartless components burning away and draining it of life bit by bit, and the sensation of it dying by inches invoked a primitive fear in it's maddened instincts, and it had gotten it's claws into a likely part of the wall when Roy cried, "NOW! FREEZE HIM!"

The Umbra Eternis paused, processing that, and it was a mistake; Aang and Katara appeared on a sliding pillar of rock from the concealed hole they had been hiding out in near the pool, and the rock tore itself from the ground and flew into the air with them on it, and a large amount of water from the pool went with it, a slightly flattened globe water they Waterbent to them. In short order, they were in position directly over the barricade, and they bent and spun, and the water flooded down inside the barricade and onto the super-heated metal of the Umbra Eternis' exterior; Aang and Katara instilled a measure of the same coldness of the polar ice caps that her tribe called home and that his people called neighbor, and instead of flashing into steam the water froze around the giant robot into a solid mass of such coldness that the air steamed wetly around it.

The Umbra Eternis was totally immobilized for a moment, mechanisms frozen solid. Kimblee transmuted the ice into water with a gesture, and the Umbra Eternis came roaring to it's feet in an awkward series of scrabbling brutish jerks, it's armored portions warped and twisting. But they weren't done yet; Aang and Katara hovered back to relative safety and Roy went back on the offense launched blast after blast with all, again and again, the continual flames tearing up from the barricade and blackening it, cracking bits of it at a time through the unimaginable heat and force, pieces of the barricade torn free and turning into sharpnel-deadly projectiles from their speed. Toph dug her feet into the ground, small rocks growing onto her ankles and anchoring her to the earth, and she used that connection to strengthen her Earthbending, the pulse of the planet pounding inexorably up her legs and roaring in her bones, and that strength was enough for her to feel the metal of the Umbra Eternis, corroded and warped though it was, and pulled on it with all her might. It wasn't enough to pull it off, not at this distance, but it was more than strong enough to pull it off it's feet, just for a second, and smash it into the walls of the barricade around it, knocking it's pilot silly.

The barricade held. Aang and Katara swooped over the pool, bringing yet more water and flying overhead, grimly amused at the Umbra Eternis' struggles against the wall, it's smoldering metal glinting in the poor like in ways that made it look like there were faces in there, and they seperated the water into several self-contained sections around them, and froze them into giant ice spears that they then sent down, striking down around the Umbra Eternis and holding it there before they liquified the spears, rejoining the water into a large mass that they then wrapped around the Umbra Eternis and froze it again, bringing the incredibly hot metals to near-freezing tempatures again so fast that even this incredibly strong armor was cracked and made brittle by it. They moved away, a machine-gun appearing on the back of it's head and feebly shooting at them, and were gone before the bullets could start firing. Roy resumed his part of the attack, blasting out waves of fireblasting, generating more and more blasts of flame with greater violence than before, and short-lived flaming streams flickering out through random spots in the gradually widening cracks. Those cracks were still very small, but there was so much fire that even a little space of it could burn a hole right through a man with only a moment's impediment. Roy's eyes were wide with an emotion somewhere between hatred and grim resolution, his mouth tightly closed in a faint snarl while sweat ran down his face (it had nothing to do with the heat, and everything to do with his own state of mind).

The whole time he was completely silent; he made no battle cries or vindictive declarations of Kimblee's doom, he just continued doing his hardest to incinerate the Heartless that had enabled Kimblee, prevent Jarod from being hurt by their assault, and just maybe burn Kimblee alive in his own mech. And with each successful volley, Aang and Katara would launch freezing water over the Umbra Eternis, repeating the combination over and over again, using the same trick they had used earlier to loosen it's armor but at a much bigger scale. And the Umbra Eternis couldn't even try to break through the barricade and stomp on them or shoot them or let Kimblee blast them, because Toph was using her Metalbending to bind it tight and hold it down, a feat that was obviously driving her closer and closer to the brink from the effort of Bending metal so intimately touched with a darkness that making contact with made her spiritual powers recoil, but she did it nonetheless.

Zim watched the unfurling explosions, feeling jealous. "Why can't I make blasts like that?" He complained. "Or as often? Or in such quick succession?"

"I think you repeated yourself," Calvin said, leaning over Zim's chair to get a better view of the action. "And I think it's because he uses a totally different way of fire generation that you do."

"Fine, then give me yours! I'll outdo him so much the explosions will carve my name into the MOON!"

Calvin hugged his gauntlet protectively. "No way! I'm not letting you get your hand on this, and I'll graft this thing to my arm if that what it takes to keep it away from you!" Explosions continued to erupt thanks to the Flame Alchemist, still keeping Kimblee down.

"Hmph. You're just being selfish."

"You already became a - what did your friend call it - a Firebender for no reason," Hobbes said. "Isn't that enough destructive power for you?"

Zim looked at him like he was crazy. "Ah...no."

On the ground, the Umbra Eternis faltered back and stood still, pieces of it's armor peeling off and most of it distended, out of place or otherwise irrepairably damaged from the superheating/freezing combo. The giant robot itself was feeling the damage from the brutal counterattack from their enemies, now too overwhelmed to fight back with the usual ferocity it had exibited, and a faintly existential despair in it's posture suggested that it might have been thinking something along the lines of 'this isn't how it's supposed to go'. Kimblee, less interested in actually winning as he was in seeing who was worthy to survive this fight, noticing that the robot was standing in the acclumated water Aang and Katara had sent at them, and there was so much of it that it was waist-high for the Umbra Eternis.

Above ground, Roy glanced at Aang and Katara. They gave the thumb's-up, indicating that there was enough water for their purposes. He nodded, clapped his hands, and slammed them on the ground. And around Kimblee, the water flashed, and diffused into hydrogen. Kimblee heard another spark from outside. He laughed. "Well played," he said again. Jarod rolled his eyes.

Roy made one last flame attack. Combined with the hydrogen there, it produced a final tremendous blast of fire, ripping up from where Kimblee patiently awaited and then high into the sky, a tremendous blaze of white-hot flame burning in place with such ferocity that the barricade Toph had made was seared black by the heat of it and crumbling. Smoke whirled away and pushed into the air, of a different character than the smog Kimblee had made earlier and burning right through it. The flame gave one last savage burst of light and went out in a mighty flash, blowing the barricade apart and leaving smoldering lumps there. In spite of the flame's power, the area right outside that barricade was virtually untouched, even though the barricade itself crumbled to dust in front of them, and the ground around it collapsed into the hole and filled it up; it shook a little, but nothing else happened.

They didn't seem to think this meant Kimblee was defeated, though. "Okay, that's the first part done!" Roy yelled to Toph while, underneath them, the ground shook and twisted, little bits of rock moving out of place like something big was tearing it's way loose. "Get us out of here and let Scar and your friend Sokka handle the next part!"

"Got it!" Toph said, pushing against the ground and breaking off large chunks directly under herself and Roy that rose up, a large section looping between their two rock-platform and connection so that it looked like a V. It rose up higher as the ground continued to crack and break, and Toph pushed it, propelling the chunk onwards and carrying Roy and herself down the street while, as everyone had expected, the ground Kimblee had been buried under burst apart, and the Umbra Eternis tore it's way up and pulling itself onto the street where it fell to it's knees, coughing out a warbling and weak growl cut through with a crackling static nosie, sounding rather like a wounded creature coughing in the middle of a battlecry, and it's armor was even more badly beaten than before. Right in front of them, several of it's pieces fell off, mostly around the already weakened back, and large patches of armor were already missing, left in in the ground. Alarmingly, most of the armor didn't seem particularily damaged, just bent out of position on their fixutes and coming loose.

Kimblee himself was still alive and conscious...but even that seemed only a matter of time before he collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Most of his exposed skin was an angry shade of red from second-degree burns, a few more serious welts here and there on his face. A few of them seemed self-inflicted, as though his hand had tried to gouge his eyes out on it's own. (Kevin had been feeling ambitious.) His clothing hadn't faired much better, mostly singed to remnants that stayed in the boundaries of decency, and he seemed in too much pain to even notice that all the hair on the left side of his head had burned away except for a few sickly clumps. Below him Jarod hung by the stubborn tendrils of the Umbral Heartless, though they looked much smaller than before. He glared at the Flame Alchemist, a single look thick with so much raw hate, and then the Umbra Eternis' usual aura of darkness sputtered up again...though it was considerably diminished from before, a weak and flickering remnant of the all-enshrouding banner it had been not so long ago, mostly concentrated in the superstructure of the giant robot it kept animated, with a violently but dimmed flare around the robot's demonic exterior. And through that flare, they could see that the internals of the robot were seriously damaged, a copious amount of smoke and sparks coming from the interior mechanisms, and several visible components looked fused together.

Kimblee convulsed for a moment, red fluid dripping off him in copious amount, his body shrinking slightly and losing some of the definition appropiate to a man his age. "Very well played indeed," he managed to say before breaking off into a horrible coughing fit, shaking violently as the pain of his nasty burns slid past even his formiddable inner focus. "But this...this has gone far...yes, gone quite far enough."

He shakily raised a hand, purplish-blue mist clinging to in and forming madly screaming faces for a moment before the steadily increasing sunlight burned them away, and the Umbra Eternis raised a hand as well, railguns the size of seige weapons sliding into place on the machine-titan's hand and it extended out as far as it could go, staying remarkably still for all the damage it had taken and powering up, preparing to launch a metal slug the size of a car through electromagnets to propell at such speeds that it would effectively vaporize whatever it hit.

Zim would be having none of that, and neither did Winry; she fired all their ship's cannons at once, smashing into the side of the giant arm and disrupting the delicate mechanisms in the weapon, forcing it to power down before it could harm itself or it's pilot and thus rendering it completely pointless and doing a nice job of distracting him for a bit. The arm fell harmlessly to the side of Umbra Eternis as Kimblee snarled in disbelief, only to hear two matching noises coming from the buildings on his side.

He looked aside and saw two matching machines now extending from transmuted turn-tracks made into the buildings and positioned so that they were level with his shoulders, hidden in such a way until now that he couldn't have seen them. Both machines resembled the rock-shooting cannons Scar had repeatedly transmuted during his earlier battle, with a crucial difference: a large metal barb sticking out of the barrels, their hollow ends containing a ball of gray-blue gel (which was an incredibly strong adhesive and crowd suppresent, normally used as restraints in crowd control situations, and strong enough to withstand epically strong combatants) and at the rear of the machines, large industrialized spools containing a large amount of extremely thick cable. Positioned in a gunner's seat between those two portions of the machines was the operator of the weapon, Scar in the left machine and Sokka on the right one.

They calibrated with precise timing, giving him just enough time for him to realize what was going on, and not nearly enough to stop them, and Scar fired first, being the one operating the machine that was closest to the railgun-armed limb. His harpoon - it wasn't actually a harpoon, being too short to be considered one, but it was close enough - pierced the side of the railgun, punching through a delicate spot behind the electromagnets and securing a stable hold on it, and by extension the arm it was attached to. Given enough time, Kimblee would realize he could simply detach the railgun, and so the adhesive goop at the end of the barbed attachment burst and covered enough of the giant robot's forearm to get a more assured grip. It helped that it then hardened to the density of steel. Scar reeled it in, the machine pulling with surprising force, dragging the arm with it and actually pulling Kimblee slightly off-balance, and Sokka fired his while Kimblee was still realizing that he'd been snared and tried to recalculate; that barb neatly struck under a bent join on the upper bits of armor on the other gauntlet, too large to penetrate it but the gel burst and hardened, holding the harpoon steady and reeling back, pulling Kimblee the other way, and with Scar's harpoon holding steady, Kimblee was begining to be strung between them. Sokka reeled his back with full force and the Umbra Eternis nearly fell over, arms bound and pulled both ways and it dangled in the air for a moment before stomping down again, trying to get enough of a proper stance again so it could tear itself free but held too well to exert it's strength.

"It's holding, it's holding!" Sokka yelled, a fairly optimistic notion given how his machine's tether-cord was twisting and straining, and the machine itself was being pulling slightly away from the ground it had been transmuted from.

Kimblee thrashed and pulled, the Heartless coiling around him in restraining patterns in order to give him an idea of the forces constricting the Umbra Eternis and help him react accordingly; it wasn't really that helpful, though. "Everyone, now!" Scar shouted, hand hovering over a small lever that would pull the cords in at maximum strength, at sufficient speeds to tear itself out of the floor and probably smash into the Umbra Eternis. As if to give his statement greater impact, the Umbra Eternis' left foot managed to scrape the ground and forced itself into a realignment of it's joints in a shrieking, clenching series of readjustments that had to hurt itself, but it did manage to get a foothold on the ground and push away mightily. It didn't have the strength to pull itself free yet, but it was still strong enough to drag the machines almost out of the ground and shake the buildings ominously.

It would have pushed harder, if it hadn't been interrupted. Having kept a close eye on where precisely Winry had interacted with the interface and activated the weapon systems on his new ship, Zim hit a button that looked like a bullseye and a screen directly over his seat displayed a targeting screen: a camera-view of everything right in front of him, several red circles appearing on-screen as the systems calibrated, eventually lining up over the Umbra Eternis and making the symbol of a bullseye over several promising targets, outlining them in eye-catching red on the screen. Several buttons were positioned in a panel just below that screen along with a spiral gauge that measured the output for the weapons system (too low for Zim's liking and he vowed to tinker with it when he had the time), and the buttons appeared to indicate levels of weapon strength: Zim reached out to press one and his hand hovered for a moment between 'Smite', 'Smite Harder', 'Why Did I Even Install This One?' and 'Mildly Ticklish Irritation' before settling on 'Smite' and literally punching the button.

A smaller screen said, 'Please don't abuse the dashboard'. The weapons mounted on his ship's front powered up, cycling into the most energy-efficient formats possible until the computer was satisfied with the projected results (calculated in less time than it took for the brain to even notice the extremely brief pause) and fired half a dozen beams of green concussive energy, a few managing to strike the front of the Umbra Eternis and knocking it off it's foot again, rendering it's attempts at escape and further rampaging meaningless. "HAH!" Zim said.

"...Nice shot," Winry admitted.

"I know," Zim said smugly. "Totally hypothetical and non-suspicious question. Is there an ejection sequence intiator here?"

"Right there," Winry said, pointing to the dashboard directly in front of her, picking out a button that looked like a chair with an upwards-pointing-arrow on it. "Not really a sequence, though, it just shoots you out from the ship."

"Good enough!" Zim said. "On that note, my legs are tired. I MUST SIT." He bounced over and landed himself into the other seat; rather hard, actually, and he quickly found that it was much too big for him. It was sized for humanoids in the same size range as the average human, and not only was Zim small for his kind, he also wasn't much taller than a short tween. He repressed his indignation and fury that Cyborg had forgotten that these seats were far too large for him, or that he would require something to boost him up. Then again, he could just do some tinkering and replace the seat with a more appropiately sized one. (And it seemed that Zuko and Hobbes would be doing the piloting.) Focusing on the matter at hand, Zim reached for the controls and grabbed them with a little difficulty. "What are these things for?"

"They supply the power and the primary control mechanism," Winry explained. "You just sort of...think all determined and heroic and the ship gets fueled from your spiritual energy. Something like that; the technical details are more Cyborg's thing, I just solve problems with engineering."

"And to control the ship?" Zim pressed, not sparing much thought on how flagrantly bizarre what she had just said sounded; apparently, his ship was fueled with psychic energy. That was pretty cool, he supposed, and it wasn't like they'd have trouble refueling. They would have to do something about getting him a better chair, though...

"You just think what you want it to do. The ship translates your mental commands into the ship's processes, and it just happens. At least that's the theory; me and Cyborg know how to drive ships and stuff with that kind of technology, but anything more complicated that that is so much of a pain that we haven't translated everything to the control handles."

"Wait, wait!" Zuko said, leaning over behind Zim's seat and frowning down at the small Irken. Zim tried to look innocent. "Don't give me that look, I know that look. You only give that look when you're planning something that usually ends up with stuff exploding and yelling and me almost getting eaten by the monster or kidnapped by the lady villain."

"Yes?" Zim said.

"So. Why are you talking about ejecting?"

"...No reason," Zim lied, badly. "It was only curiosity. I want to know how this ship works! It will be no good shipping out in a ship I know nothing about! Learning about the schematics and technical details will be very important!"

Zuko scowled, utterly unconvinced. "Stay away from the crazy little guy," Beth whispered to Courtney. "We'll get sucked into his crazy plan!" Courtney nodded back. Both of them took several steps away from Zim, just in case.

"...You know, it would be super-cool if everyone left Kimblee strung up there and left the area so I could pull a totally awesome fool-proof plan that would defeat Kimblee right here and now," Calvin said. No one listened to him. "Hey, the last plan I made worked wonders! And by that I mean we delayed him a bit and really ticked him off. It still worked, though." He thought about it and added, "Wait, we need to get Jarod out and take away the Philosopher's Stone. Never mind, pretend I didn't say anything. Which you're doing anyway. Carry on!"

Hobbes glanced at Zuko, and deciding he had a point, said, "Why even have ejector seats or whatever, though? It just seems like an accident waiting to happen."

"But you gotta have ejector seats!" Calvin said. Zim and Winry nodded fervently. "It's like a law of shipbuilding!"

"Ah, yes," Hobbes replied, an ear twitching briefly. "Silly me."

"It's cool that you can admit your ignorance of proper shipbuilding protocol," Calvin said. Hobbes rolled his eyes, and noticed a change in the screens depicting the events going on in the street. Noticing it as well, Calvin said, "Hey, what are those guys doing down there?"

"It looks like they're commencing the attack on Kimblee and doing our work for us," Zim said. "...Those glory thieves!"

Winry hit the communicator button, broadcasting their signals to everything in range. "Hey, guys! One of the guys up here has a plan that he says will completely wipe Kimblee out, but he needs the hostage and the Stone taken away from the guy first!"

"Gotcha!" Cyborg said. "We're sending Abel, Greed and the ninja kids out on the frontline assault; give 'em supporting fire if you can! Over and out!"

Calvin blinked. "Wow, she actually listened to me? I'm...I'm feeling a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Is this what respect feels like?"

"No, that's probably just hunger," Zuko said. "We've been very active. Respect is much more fleeting and hard to find."

"...Yes," Hobbes agreed. "Yes it is." An unspoken sentiment of empathy spread through Zim's crew; one way or another, all of them had little respect given to them.

On the street below, Abel and Greed ran onto the street; Abel was still wearing his strange (and seemingly useless) armor, while Greed had enough sense to retain his Ultimate Shield of an organic armored form. Naruto and Gaara were moving on the rooftops where they had been waiting to provide background fire if neccesary, now called into action to do the same for Greed and Abel.

"You guys get that Jarod guy! Take the Stone if you can!" Angilaka yelled from a rooftop overlooking the street near them, and from the opposite rooftop Shego waited as well; the two women had a very good view of the street, and perfect shots at Kimblee if they needed to take them. "We'll cover you! And Abel! Use everything you have! We are way past the point where we can afford to let anyone hold back!"

"Hurry up and get him so we can blast the lunatic already!" Shego shouted, having long lost her patience for having to hold back for fear of harming Jarod.

"Hey hey hey!" Greed yelled back playfully at his bodyguard, running ahead with astounding speed for the increased weight his armor induced. "Since when do you give the orders, green girl?" He did so nonetheless.

Abel ran as well, but glanced up at his superior with a feeling of utter dread; it was long since past time that they employed his...secret asset, though even the great danger Kimblee presented wasn't worth the risk if he lost control. "M'am!" Abel said. "Are you certain?"

"Abel!" Angilaka declared, a bit apologetic but stern. "I'm authorizing you as your duly appointed superior to make a controlled release of your Crusnik state immediately! Do not engage Kimblee right now, just remove Jarod from harm's way and endeavor to eliminate any obstacles preventing you from achieving that goal! Cut loose and do the job!"

To his credit, Abel responded to this command with only a brief heisitation, in spite of his discomfort with said command. "Yes, m'am!" He said, briefly glad he had the foresight to manifest this armor to protect him from sunlight (even if the opportunity to employ it as such hadn't come up).

The Umbra Eternis fought against it's restraints, struggling and twisting as best it's could. The sight was unnerving; while an ordinary giant robot was either suitably humanlike in an acceptable range or had an nonhuman range of motion appropiate to it's body type, Kimblee had made his Umbra Eternis to move more like a human, being rather ignorant of engineering skills and just doing what he thought made sense. (And because he didn't know how these things were actually supposed to work, didn't do that great a job of it.) The wounded, inhuman and demonic horror twisting and flailing around like it was trying to be a human was disquieting in much the same way that it's appearance was supposed to rouse terror. The mechanisms inside pounded and vented, servo-muscles whirred madly in it's arms and all manner of short-range weapons appeared from it and fired all over the place, but it was all in vain; the arms were stretched to their limit and couldn't move properly rendering it's strength useless. The weapons couldn't be aimed properly, since Scar and Sokka were just outside of it's field of view; Kimblee was housed in it's stomach and the fuselage's front blocked his view, and the robot's head was shaped in such a way that it couldn't turn it's head.

It roared in impotent fury, warbling at the last moment and going into a coughing fit that was mirrored by Kimblee. In Kimblee's case, his own body failing on him had nothing to do with the giant robot's state but was a consequence of his fusion with Kevin, and if Wuya had anticipated this, he and Kimblee's other superiors didn't deem him important enough to warn him about it. Fair enough, Kimblee thought, and didn't really care about it: carrying out their orders was his job as long as he was their employee or until a better offer came along, and he didn't care about much else. At the very least, it ensured that he had a 'beat the clock' element to the fight, though at his present rate of degeneration, he doubted he would live to see the end of the day.

But, he thought with a smirk, a bittersweet victory was still a victory. He forced the Umbra Eternis to hold still, and summoned a set of weapons that would work in this situation and perhaps even turn the battle around for him: he concentrated, calling out to the darkess living around him and anchoring him to the giant robot, and it rippled around it's shoulders, the shadow aura growing larger there for a moment as if swelling into a portal to a place that was dark and hollow and anathema to all things and echoed not with music but with a horribly empty nothingness, a dead and bleak absence of sound and life... The portal, much like those that the Heartless moved through, closed after summoning a paired set of box-shaped missile launchers a little too small for the machine-titan and desposited them onto it's shoulders, and they attached automatically, still streaming with darkness.

The launchers slid back and fired it's entire payload all at once, doing it so forcefully the launchers were torn apart by the stress (or maybe that was the corrosive nature of darkness at work) and fell off. The missiles streaked away, aimed not at Greed and Abel and the two ninjas en route to Kimblee, any of the surronding fighters, Scar and Sokka or even Zim's ship, but they went straight up into the sky, spiraling upwards arounds each other. Kimblee smirked in satisfacation and sat back, blissfully unaware of Jarod looking silently at him, haggard and angry, too exhausted from his ordeal to act on his compulsion to bring the rogue alchemist down.

"Why'd he just do that?" Zuko, who didn't know much about artillery weapons of that magnitude, said suspiciously.

"I don't know," Courtney said, trying not to shake a little with thoughts of even one of those missiles coming right for her. (Technically, they would be going for the ship, but that wasn't really the point.) She looked at Beth, and the shorter power-armored girl shrugged nervously; she just wore the armor and hit the bad guys, she wasn't a technician or anything like that.

"Perhaps he's just trying to shoot the moon down," Zim said in a reasonable tone. He noticed Winry and Calvin giving him strange looks. "What? That's what I'd do if I had that kind of firepower and was bored and evil."

"I don't think he's that much of a ditz," Calvin said. "Insane and evil, yes, but I wouldn't call him capricious or whimsical or anything fun like that. Any ideas, big buddy?" This last was directed at Hobbse.

The tiger-boy in question had been watching the missiles, noticing something faintly familiar about them. He knew a great deal about powerful artillery technology (and many other types of weapons technology) owing to some time spent as a lost technology scavenger during his youth on the planet Cadia and part of his duties as a jack-of-all-trades as far as his hyperactive military career was concerned. "I know those kinds of missiles!" He said, pointing. "Not quite the same make as our's, but...look at them, they're arcing! Once they hit a certain height, they'll fire up and home in on their targets!"

"...Should we panic?" Zim asked as the missiles reached the apex of their arc some thirty feet overhead and locked onto several appropiate targets, breaking out of formation and flying wildly all over before streaking down at their targets at high speed in bizarre patterns that were hard to predict or track; just watching them could give you a headache. "I think this may be a moment to panic. On that note, how do I go about shooting them down?"

"Hit the buttons and hope for the best," Winry said, doing just that and firing a full round of energy-based cannonfire from the ship's main guns. The missiles were spaced together tightly enough that she couldn't hope to just shoot down all the missiles without some creative aiming skills she didn't have the time for or have the computers target them (since she didn't feel they had the power to spare for that), but she didn't need to; a single lucky blast struck the rear end of a missile that was coming from behind them and en route to Roy's general area and damaged it enough that it spun out of control, spinning right into the path of another missile and the two exploded with a shockwave that made a few walls shake a bit, knocked Kimblee silly (but the Umbra Eternis stayed held back), and knocked Zim's ship around and nearly into a building before Winry managed to flip it around, just barely avoiding hitting something. It was only a short time out of battle, but that was enough of a halt to keep them from shooting the other missiles down and potentially preventing very bad things from happening.

Fortunately, their other allies were sufficiently on top of things to ensure that they didn't needto. Roy, operating on the general principle that great big blasts of fire always seemed to work, raised both his hands, and with one hand, he directed the few residual fires left over from earlier at four of the missiles in condensed bursts and detonating those missiles in mid-air, and with his other hand he created a powerful blast that snuffed those missile's explosions out without doing any more harm, and he repeated the combo again and again as the others took down the missiles in their own ways. Toph tore chunks of the ground up and condensed them into extraordinarily hard projectiles before firing them after a few hurried calculations to figure out their positions based on the vibrations their movements made. Even so, her precision at airborne objects left something to be desired, though she did knock them out of their targeted pattern and send them into the sky. Aang was luckier, using a similar Earthbending technique (though he had the advantage of more raw power and also setting them on fire), waiting for Katara to set them up by turning only a palm's-worth of water into small needles that she condensed as much as she could before she froze them and threw them at the missile's and broke their flying systems, allowing Aang to fling his flaming boulders and blow them up.

The gun-slinging fighters like Deadpool and Gibbs used one-person artillery weapons Gibbs had handed on for this situation (once more, extremely reluctantly in Deadpool's case, but since he lost his original launcher in the big explosion earlier he didn't have much choice) and fired off a multitude of heavy-impact explosives suitable for the occasion: like rocket-propelled bunker-busting grenades and missiles of their own, and destroyed quite a few missiles through sheer firepower alone. (And then Gibbs confiscated the missile launcher from Deadpool for the greater good.) Ordinarily Sokka and Scar would have been in the 'using guns and stuff' group too, but they were occupied keep the Umbra Eternis from freeing itself.

On the rooftops, Angilaka growled with effort, summoning up a swirling ring of light from herself and seperated it into dozens of smaller dagger-shaped bursts that she fired at the incoming missiles. They were far stronger than they looked, and she fired at least five to each missile she targeted, and detonated a fair number. Shego did much the same with her self-generated lasers, actually slicing a few missiles in half and dropping them onto their low-flying brethern with an impressive blasts (that Roy helpfully defused; the poor man was running himself ragged). Naruto took a few kunai with exploding notes tied around them and duplicated them while Gaara wrapped them in sand and, using his geokinetic abilities, launched them at near sub-sonic speeds into as many of the offending projectiles as he had kunai to use. Greed, using a plasma rifle he had been loaned, fired at the missiles in his continued dash towards Kimblee, trying to hit them so that they would fly back and hit Kimblee; he had no idea how to do that and it didn't work anyway, but he still tried. Abel...did nothing for the moment, apparently in deep concentration and muttering what sounded like an activation code to himself.

The result of all of this was a enormous blast, too high above the rooftops thanks to their quick reactions and Roy's good timing with his own explosions, that was incredibly pretty to look at and had the nice side-effect of starting to clear up the surronding air that Kimblee had infested with smoke to shield the Heartless, bringing down sunlight into the area again. The blast, incidentally, also helped right Zim's wayward craft, which didn't do much for Kimblee's apparent position as a skilled assassin. On the other hand, there was still exactly one missile left, having escaped destruction through some no doubt convoluted coincidence (unrelated to the coincidences that had helped them so far) and by further coincidence, was aimed directly at Abel.

Zim and his crew were still trying to get themselves repositioned and ready to fight, so they couldn't help. All the townies who knew Abel and were aware of what he was up to stood their ground, aware that he had the situation under control. The rest would have stopped the missile, and probably splendidly at that, if not for the interruption to follow.

Abel finished the command phrase he had been saying. "Crusnik Oh-Two. Active to forty percent; hold release until situation is resolved or reserves are exhausted." The immediate response within his body occured at the microscopic level, and would have gone unnoticed among most other people, though those with the appropiate instruments to detect it (such as Zim's new ship, or Beth's power armor) witnessed a massive surge of...some sort of energy with strange similarities to a morphological field emanating from Abel for the space of exactly one heartbeat.

The more obvious changes occured in the span of that heartbeat, his entire body shifting with almost violent suddenness though this went largely unseen due to his armor; he seemed to grow slightly larger, his bones swelling and thickening, his muscles tearing and reforming into inhumanly bizarre configurations with strength amplified by inhuman power sources though it wasn't enough to significantly alter his height or girth. The armor covered him adjusted itself automatically to compensate for the changes and his gauntlets shifted around his hands to fit around the massive black claws his fingers twisted into, sliding around and accomodating their edges.

Eyes that had been blue were now a fierce red, glowing moodily in the darkness of his helmet, flinching away from the diluted sunlight. He looked at Kimblee, uncaring of the missile coming his way, and uttered a hideously half-growl half-roar booming challenge that would have sounded more appropiate coming from a demon, shrieking and distorted in the confine's of it's armor. The shadows around him writhed like serpents and bolts of lightning crackled around him, small displays of power far more potent than anything he had yet displayed; a very different Abel had taken the battlefield, willingly sublimiting his personality into a a controlled descent into the inhuman fury more than a thousand years old and always lurking under the surface, now come to the fore and twisting his body into something that transcended his human frailties, and was perhaps was more of a monster than the Umbra Eternis could ever hope to be.

The missile came down and Abel raised his hand faster than the human eye could follow, and just before the missile would have passed down past the rooftops and maybe blown them all up, Abel released a massive surge of electrical energies, converting the energies to magnetic force that he directed at the missile, smashing into it without setting it off and catching hold of it, pointing it straight up as it continued to expel propellant and holding it firmly. Abel budged a little bit forward as the missile's forces inexorcibly pushed him out of place, growling with the strain and air rippling with the power he was exerting, his eyes narrowing as he made an inhuman snarl. He gestured and the missile's propellent chambers sealed themselves, the metal grinding together and crushed into together so that it snuffed out the missile's ability to fly. He grunted again as he extended his magnetic talents further, finding certain vital components within the missile and disabling them in bursts of electromagnetic energy. A small light on the side of the missile that indicated whether it was primed blinked out into the 'inactive' setting.

Satisfied, Abellet the now-harmless missile drop onto the ground with a heavy clonking noise, wondered briefly if 'clonking' was a word and decided it wasn't that important right now, and looked up at Kimblee with an uncharacteristically savage expression of glee behind his helmet. If Kimblee could have seen the way the face of the childlike and friendly warrior-priest had been warped into a monstrous horror of itself, he might have probably been justifiably creeped out or even more justifiably, have run screaming for the hills to find a nice little hole and crawl in and never ever leave and remember the monster for the rest of his life whenever he heard something move behind him. As it was, the arcs of electricity crackling around him as he moved and tested his altered body (having not done this transformation in a while), his eye lenses lit up by the faint red light his eyes were glowing with, and the way his shadow was moving around like it was alive was probably a clue that something very worrisome had happened even for Kimblee. "Try...harder," Abel growled, like talking was a bit of an effort.

"...Seriously?" Kimblee said. "Now they're throwing, what, magnet monsters at me?"

"No. Magnet vampire," Abel corrected. "...Close enough."

"Yes, thank you." Kimblee paused. "You're really a vampire?"

"Yes." Behind his helmet, Abel grinned like the monster he had become. The sound his teeth made when they grated against each other was like blades scraping edge-to-edge. "Can't...you...tell?" He broke off into sudden maddened laughter, grinning and staring the whole while, and suddenly stopped for no reason. He still stared at Kimblee, and the shadow under him grew, slowly growing into a tangible shape very unlike the Heartless, and still similar enough to frighten people.

Sokka shuddered in his seat. Scar gave Abel a long and measured look. May he stay in control, he thought and prayed. Abel was no danger to them, not at this lower level of power and certainly never a danger to anyone but an enemy, but he did tend to become...indiscriminate.

Aang, Toph and Katara gathered near Roy, who was regarding Abel with a mixture of discomfort and satisfication. "What is he?" Aang asked Abel quietly, voice worried. "I thought he was, y'know, human?"

Roy scratched his hair. "Human's a bit of a relative term. Espicially in this town." He gave them a careful look. "Don't you forget that. Right now, Abel's one of our heaviest hitters, if not the biggest one we have on hand. Don't worry; he's not exactly himself, but he's no danger to us...I think." This didn't exactly reassure Katara and Toph. Aang, though, knew what it was like to have a superpowered side you couldn't exactly control and reserved judgement.

Greed kept advancing. "You stay on target!" He called to Shego. "Don't loose your grip now!"

"Right, boss!" Shego said, saluting him and trying not to stare at Abel. She thought for a moment that the Stoppables had been slaughtered by a monster very much like the one Abel had become: while she was hardly close to the goofy hero, the thought of the...remnants their murder had left behind made her very leery of being anywhere near Abel in his current state.

Angilaka crossed her arms. "C'mon, Abel, you can do it..." She muttered.

"You sure about that?" Deadpool asked. "Keeping a guy with a superpowered crazy side seems like a bad business choice."

"Why not?" Shego called out. "The boss keeps you around. You're all crazy side!"

"I told you, woman!" Deadpool yelled. "ANTI-PSYCHOTICS ARE FOR PEOPLE WHO CHEW WITH THEIR SPORKS INSIDE-OUT! AND CRAZY PEOPLE!"

"Abel's not crazy, he just has...issues. Bad issues. Super crazy-making sobbing-until-your-face hurts and never-letting-go-of-your-pain issues." She paused. "The hell are you doing up here? Get back to your post!"

"Vamoose! As opposed to va-elk, which is how they do it in Europe," Deadpool said, and jumped off the building, landed on a lamppost crotch first and craweled back to his post by Gibbs, whimpering in male pain.

Gaara and Naruto watched silently on the rooftop they had picked out. "We should totally make a 'superpowered crazy side' club," Naruto decided. "We can spread awareness of our problems and ingratiate ourselves into the community and do some much-needed therapy and maybe get it done as a tax write-off." Gaara stared at him, clearly finding it all worthy except for that last part. "What? That stuff's important. My mentor told me so!"

"Isn't your mentor a perverted overactor that writes pornography?" Gaara said.

"A legendary ninja-hero who's a perverted overactor that writes pornography!" Naruto corrected. "And sometimes I ghost-write."

Gibbs tilted his head at Abel. "...Everyone I know has problems," he said. He wondered vaugely if Abel knew a young lady he worked with that Gibbs treated as a daughter; he suspected they'd get along famously.

On the ship, Zim said (while everyone else crowded around the monitors in disbelief or interest, depending on their opinion of the transformation), "Oh, he's one of those kinds of vampires."

"Which kind?" Hobbes asked.

"The nice ones that controll their darker impulses until they go all out and turn into unstoppable killing machines. Also, he appears to be a bit of a humanoid abomination."

"Like a proper vampire, you mean," Calvin said.

"That's horribly bigoted and prejudiced!" Beth said, angered. "There's lot of vampires who aren't rampaging monsters (or sometimes have to be rampaging monsters) who provide for the community just fine and co-exist with beings of all kinds without being dangerous just because of what they are and it's really just awful of you to say that they should act like monsters because this manifestion of Abel's unresolved rage problems at evil happens to conform to your opinion of vampire fiction and-"

"Okay, okay, shut up already, I get it!" Calvin snapped. Beth glared at him, and went 'hmph!'. Courtney took a few pictures.

"Abel told me he was a kind of vampire called a 'Crusnik'," Zim said. "He...ah, he didn't elaborate on what that meant."

"Gee, I wonder why," Winry said dryly.

Back on the ground, Kimblee was trying to process this new event, and was so distracted by it he had forgotten to keep trying to escape. "How could I tell if you're a vampire or not that simply?" Kimblee said, trying to ignore the pounding in his head and how badly his body hurt. And how...wrong it all felt. "You're covered in powered armor, I have no idea what you look like right now." He paused. "Which would account for why you're wearing armor if you're a vampire, so you don't get burned by the sunlight as you are...wait, why didn't you get burned before? Or do you just-"

"Say anything about sparkling and I will END YOU," Abel said, and lightning crashed around him. Kimblee flinched, more because of the noise than the threat, and it was enough of an opening for Abel and also Greed to nearly complete their charge at Kimblee, moving with astonishing speed (espicially Abel, who looked almost like he was about to fly) and Kimblee reacted fast, taking advantage of their momentary loss of concentration and pulled on one of the Umbra Eternis' arm with all the power the machine-titan held in it's frame, and fed some of the Philosopher's Stone energy into it, giving it enough of a boost to make a single feat of strength; it pulled with that one arm and Sokka's harpoon-machine shuddered and bent, Sokka yelling furiously as he put the reel into overdrive and pulled Kimblee's arm back, Scar doing the same to counteract the hated alchemist. Kimblee responded by pulling even harder, the Umbra Eternis exerting itself in a show of strength that was greater than anything those machines could manage and, to the horror of those watching, Sokka's machine was torn straight off the building he was in and smashed into the open, the harpoon still holding strong. The Umbra Eternis's feet smashed into the ground with a joyous realization that it was free, at least a little bit, and could get back on with the killing.

Except for the thing stuck to it's arm, wihch it shook furiously. The harpoon and the glue-like substance on it stayed stubbornly strong, and Sokka almost fell out of his machine but clung to the seat with all the stubbornness he could manage (and that was quite a lot), now dangling for his life from a now partially freed giant robot that probably wanted to kill him. "Why is it always me!" Sokka cried.

"Does no one in this town ever die?" Kimblee said, honestly curious, wincing when Zim's ship furiously fired at him over and over again, it's energy drained enough that the blasts weren't as power as they had been before but still very disruptive. "Knock that off, I'm in the middle of something."

"No!" Abel roared, at Kimblee being freed but mostly at a refugee being endangered like that, and he grabbed Greed by the arm. "You! Fastball special."

Greed looked at him, confused. "The hell is a fastball speAUUUGH!" Abel grabbed him by the wrist and whirled around with all his considerable strength, his claws scraping against Greed's black armor with a sparking spray, building up momentum and stirring up a small localized whirlwind and then he realeased Greed at the apex of the swings, throwing him so hard that it made a small shockwave, cracking the pavement, and the ground was flattened under Greed's flight path. He swung up at Kimblee, hurtling towards him like a human bullet and going through the harpoon-cord from Sokka's now-useless machine, dropping the unfortunate Water Tribe teenager onto the ground where he fled after giving a last parting shot to it's exposed innards. Green continued shooting up, yelling extremely inventive vitriol at Abel (insinuating that he was, among other things, the product of a drunken union between a mentally deficient film producer and a farm animal, the most explicit failure of sentience in the history of existence, used a cheesegrater to scrape off excess thought, and had very tacky dress sense), and Jarod took this as an opportunity to trudge his way through the liquid Heartless soup towards Kimblee, his hands curled into fists.

Kimblee, dividing his attention between trying to rip Scar loose as well, trying to reach Sokka and crush him to pulp, trying to remember what weapons he had in his robot, and ignoring the arguing voices in his head, all at the same time, was having a hard time settling on just one thing to do. "Oh forget it, I've been relying too much on this giant armor anyway," he said, not unwary of Jarod moving behind him; he reached for the Philosopher's Stone, anchored in place in front of him, his fingers brushing it, and then Jarod's hand anchored around his wrist hard enough to bruise and drop the Stone. "The hell! What are you doing being conscious?"

"Please, please just shut up," Jarod said flatly. His voice was so tired, aching with the effort alone it took to speak and wavering on every syllable, the man himself keeping himself steady with the same grip he was holding onto Kimblee with and still too maddeningly stubborn to quit when there was even the slightest chance of victory. (And even if there hadn't, he would have tried anyway.) He then proceeded to punch Kimblee in the nose, over and over and over again, expending his fury at spending a very long time of being imprisoned and psychically violated by Kimblee's Heartless.

This provided enough distraction from the situation at hand for Kimblee that made him forget what was happening around him, and Greed smashed right into the front of the Umbra Eternis' face, caving in the broken half of it's face completely (leaving the armor untoched, of course; it was a pretty impressive sight), his claws scrabbling for balance on the smooth metal and wedging into a crevice between the eye and jaws. He hauled himself up, in it's reflection he saw the Umbra Eternis raising a clawed fist to it's face and telegraph a mighty punch, so Greed let go. He fell and landed right on top of the rising fist as it came up, bounding up with it's movement while the robot's head snapped back from the impact, eye rolling, and Greed took that as inspiration, landing on it's forehead and climbing into the jagged socket of it's remaining eye and reaching in to wrap his claws around the fiercely glowing optic, digging into the glass-and-plastic casing and pulling with all his might. It resisted, for a moment, and a brief jerk helped him, and he fell out and the eye came with him, ripping straight out out of it's socket and trailing a sparking nerve of fibers and wires. "If this wasn't just a machine, I'd look like an absolute sadist, wouldn't I?" Greed remarked.

"You call that...a reason! Some of my closest friends are machines!" Abel roared. Greed ignored him.

The Umbra Eternis fell back with it's hand on it's face, it's other arm pulling so hard that Scar's restraining machine was torn loose. Scar was a practical sort and jumped clear as it fell, giving it a powerful kick that sent it wrapping around it's arm and sticking there. The Umbra Eternis hardly noticed in it's pain, screaming an agonized wail interspersed with clicks and Kimblee clapped his hand to his own face doing much the same. Jarod didn't want to be useless anymore and, moving as best as he could with Heartless tendrils literally wound into him, flung himself at Kimblee and grabbed him in a bear-hug, squeezing with all the strength he had left in his body, and while that wasn't very much at all, he was still in vastly better shape then Kimblee's current body and held multiple degrees in the medical sciences and was a master of martial arts that focused on mucking about with the body's internal workings, and he opted to do the most brutal thing he could think of by squeezing Kimblee's ribs powerfully enough to constrict the lungs while he slammed his knee into Kimblee's spine as hard as possible, bending his body in two directions. "I got him!" Jarod yelled. "I got him!"

"Keep him there!" Greed yelled, hands over feet and he was rolling out of the way of the Umbra Eternis to avoid it's furiously scrabbling hands. It was blind, so now it was reduced to looking through Kimblee's eyes (a futile prospect, since he was occupied) and feeling around for the hateful fleshling that had blinded it. He climbed onto the side of it's humped back and dragged himself up, tossing himself to the side when a hand loomed overhead and crashed into where he had just been and tearing all the way to the top of it's back, where he was safe. It's claws reached for him, angrily banging on the curve of it's hump, but it's arms were too short and it's body too awkwardly shaped to get anywhere near Greed as long as he stayed on top of it. Intent on helping out, everyone who could opened fire on the Umbra Eternis, concentrating on the exposed spaces on it's bending armor; it howled and screamed and stepped back at the puny but powerful barrage, it's mighty defenses broken through piece by tiny piece. In a way, it seemed horrified at the perceived unfairness of this.

Kimblee didn't scream at his own horrible pains, because while he tried to, he lost wind halfway through and had to make do with a rather disappointing wheeze. In spite of all, Kimblee was grinning like he was having the time of his life. "No you don't," He said weakly, and powered through the pain to slam the back of his head into Jarod's face dispite how stupid that was to do in a real fight, cracking the poor man's noise and giving his own skull a nasty ding. Kimblee grinned as the pressure loosened slightly.

And then it got a whole lot tighter. Jarod renewed his assault, hacking and coughing and growling incoherently and flailing around to pull at the tendrils going into him, tearing and distending them. Kimblee tried to move, but Jarod gave a savage twist to his arm, stilling him. Still snorting like an enraged bull (and clearing out the bloodied and evil stuff the Heartless were lodging up there), Jarod reared his head back, snapping off the tendrils going into his nose and mouth with a triumphant yell and an angry recoiling from the Heartless muck around them, and headbutted Kimblee in the back of the head as hard as he could. "Yeah, still got him," Jarod said, wincing at how dumb that was.

Dumb though it was, it had done the job; Kimblee had been slowed down, and Abel made his move. Gesturing at Toph to help out and do her Metalbending restraint thing, he stood his ground and exercised a safe portion of his available power (using too much would pose a danger to him, even with all the preparations), joining his power with Toph and trying to take hold of the metal that it's mechanical was made of and pull it apart, or failing that, make it hold still long enough to extricate Jarod. It wasn't as easy as that, though; he was finding it ridiculously hard just to 'grab' with his magnetic powers, and suspected that the negative energies it was satuarated with didn't react well with his abilities. Toph had an easier time of it, perhaps because she was directly manipulating the metal while he used a less efficient method. The Umbra Eternis rumbled, it's metal components shuddering and twitching every other way, and Toph thought this counted as more ground being gained. And more impressively, the shadow aura was getting smaller and fainter, and the liquid darkness coursing through it's body like blood was draining away into nothingness. "Hang on and keep hammering away at it! No matter how tough it thinks it is, the Heartless things he's powering it with are dying!"

"If we take those down, the robot will power down!" Abel theorized.

"Wait, what?" Kimblee said, snapping out of his daze. "That's how this thing works?"

Zim's voice came over the loudspeaker again. "You mean you don't know?"

"...If I say no, it would probably lower your opinion of me quite a bit, wouldn't it?" Kimblee asked rhetorically.

Zim shook his head. "We've been tossed up and down by an idiot who doesn't even know what he's doing."

"So now you know what it's like to be one of your regular foes," Hobbes said.

"...Hey!"

The Umbra Eternis was held back enough for Greed to jump down from it's back, running along it's head and hopping off. He let himself fall down until he passed it's chest and dug his claws into it's front, sliding down with a horrible ear-grating noise until he was just above the fuselage, where he let go and flung himself into it. "Yo," he said, aiming himself so he landed right on Kimblee with a mighty cracking noise under him. It was hard enough to nearly rip Kimblee loose from the Heartless. Jarod wisely backed away before Greed landed, and avoided sharing the pain. Gree took the opportunity to grab Kimblee by his head and slam him into the fuselage over and over again until he was satisfied that he had been knocked silly and dropped him to the side before reaching for Jarod and stopping in his tracks; the Umbral Heartless recoiled at him and then they surged forwards, changing shape and arranging themselves to a nightmarish mess of scything claws and knivish teeth and snapping jaws and whirling tentacles, rather like a minature version of the Gestalt, furious at the presence of the intruder and his effortless attack on their master. (If Kimblee really was their master, this is.) They raised up like a small tidal wave with homicidal intentions and washed over Greed, snapping and slicing and biting with all their fury, and it had absolutely no effect on him. They struck, and it was a completely pointless gesture, since they just bounced off Greed's armor (well-earning it's name as the Ultimate Shield) with absolutely no effect on him besides seriously creeping him out. "Off off off!" He roared, smashing at them with an almost phobic reaction. He shuddered and waded into their mass, stretching a hand out to Jarodreaching for Jarod. "Come on, let's go already!"

Jarod reached for Greed. "Alright, alright already!" He gave Kimblee a quick sorrowful and furious glance, as if considering taking him out while he was weak, and thought better of it. Jarod instead focused on Greed and raised his hand out, reaching for Greed, fingers within inches of securing his rescue...

And the Umbral Heartless thought better of attacking Greed and focused on Jarod instead, turning their horrible extrusions upon him and wrapping him up like a grotsque cocoon and dragging him backwards. "Not again!" Jarod screamed, more frustrated than afraid, scrabbling madly around them and forcing himself through the gaps in their wrappings and reaching wildly for Greed. (To be fair, it had all been so emotionally exhausting that there wasn't much room for the proper sense of terror.) Greed waded in, his armored body invulnerable when it came to these monsters, and his approach disturbed the Heartless and made them pause, and Jarod took the moment to tear at the tendrils still extended into him and leeching some vital element from him, foregoing any measure of safety and just ripping them right off him and ignoring the wounds as they left his body scarred and bloody. He fought and raged, tearing at himself with a strength born of desperation, and little by little the Heartless grew weaker, unable to replenish themselves by feeding on Jarod's own inner darkness, until they were cut off from him completely when he tore the last of a mess of wiggling tubes out from a tearduct in his eye with a horrible squealching noise.

"Holy crap this is disgusting," Greed said, speaking very fast. Jarod made a lunge forward, with the Heartless disoriented from their disconnection from their prisoner (and all the attacks still pummeling the Umbra Eternis) and the Heartless extended a clawed limb that could conceivably be considered an arm under certain easy-going standards, claws nicking Jarod and firmly grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back; Greed leaped forward and smashed into it, flattened the arm and tearing Jarod loose, his own claws nicking Jarod's arm. "Whoops," he said, blood dripping from Jarod's arm; it landed on the ever-shifting mess of Umbral Heartless around them, sucked up in moments, apparently exciting the Heartless.

"Bigger concerns right now!" Jarod said, looking pale and sick. A wave of Heartless-biomass swelled up, shaping itself into thick greasy tentacles and looped around his arm, tightening so hard they could hear his bones start bending, and from it's sides came dozens of tiny little questing mini-tentacles, going straight for the cuts on Jarod's arm. "No no no NO!" Jarod screamed, clawing madly at his arm as the mini-tentacles reached his cuts and flowed into them. probing his lacerated skin and spreading inside him. Nothing came of it, though; Greed grabbed him by the arm and pulled so hard he was torn loose of the nasty little things, and the bits that were inside him died as soon as they were seperated from the rest.

"Come on," Greed said. "Just a litte more, we're almost out of it!" he said, pulling with all his might to get Jarod out of the quagmire of the Heartless muck. He felt him give, heard a disgustingly slimy noise as the Heartless tried to gain purchase on Jarod's clothing and failed. He kept pulling while the Umbral Heartless took on a more liquid shape, clamping around Jarod's feet only for Greed to keep on pulling like their claim on Jarod was a personal offense. He still pulled, now climbing up onto the outer rim of the fuselage and halfway off it, so intent on retrieving at least this one person that he failed to notice. He howled, "Not anyone else! No one else, damn it, not today! I have had it with people dying today!" Jarod pulled his other arm loose, and grabbed Greed's hands, a triumphant gleam in his eyes. He said nothing, perhaps not having the strength to spare, but simply kicked furiously at the Heartless even though he could barely move his feet, and together they slowly moved out of the Heartless' grip, reaching freedom by bits and inches.

Abel and Toph pulled with all their might, and it was hard work; the Umbra Eternis was still steeped in an elemental darkness that their powers didn't could interface with correctly. Toph had to anchor her legs in stone all the way up to her knees to keep herself from being pulled away from her spot and loose her grip on it; Earthbending was the divine gift of being an immovable object that moved the element of earth around by being the force that broke other immovable objects by just being that much more determined and stubborn than them, and the drawback of that trait was that an insufficient degree of endurance pushed one back with all expended force. Toph was the strongest Earthbender present (according to her the strongest Earthbender ever, but considering her competition was the Avatar himself and the king of the city where Earthbending supposedly began, her word wasn't exactly infallible) and even so it was harder than almost any rock she had bent before, mostly because of how irritatingly stubborn it's armor was, and the Umbral Heartless' essence pervading the whole thing certainly wasn't helping much.

Abel, on the other hand, was being pulled towards it due to the way his magnetic powers worked, so while he was trying to freeze it in place, that was even harder than Toph's method, and he worried that expending too much raw power on it might well release a burst of energy that could kill the people around him, to say nothing of it's effect on himself, and his big suit of armor was being steadily magnetized by his own power, and he had to dig his feet into the ground to keep it from flying straight to the biggest source of similarity magnetized metal in the area: the Umbra Eternis. Neither had been fully magnetized yet, but given a few more moments both might hit that particular peak. "Hurry!" He roared. "We can't hold it much longer!"

"Speak for yourself!" Toph retorted...even though her rock leggings were starting to crack and her arms shake. She and Abel grit their teeth, producing a shower of sparks raining down from his helmet in Abel's case, and gave the single biggest push they could manage, Abel's wave of magnetic energy attuned to the Umbra Eternis' specific blend of metals combined with Toph's long-distance Metalbending and her breaking the ground under it's feet and spreading it's unsteady legs wide, shoving it off it's feet, and the giant robot's were compounding when the latest round of attacks from Roy Mustang, Gibbs, Deadpool, Shego, Angilaka, Sokka, Katara, Aang, Naruto, Gaara, Cyborg and Zim's ship hit it: kunai wrapped up in explosive notes hit through the gaps in it's armor and exploded, followed by a barrage of green fire, light bursts and plasma bolts to it's chest, all the remaining water in the pool being turned into a spear and slamming into the join of it's left shoulder and cracking the frame, a massive flame blast to the same shoulder with power boosted beyond it's already ludicrous degrees by Firebending, sonic energy and missiles hitting it in the face, and the ground directly in front of it turning into a giant sand fist that punched it squarely just over the fuselage so hard the shockwaves cracked the street. (Some more.)

All of that was just too much for the Umbra Eternis to handle with it's operator not being conscious to supply it with both direction and power. It braced itself against the attacks, and just for a moment it seemed that it might withstand them completely, a testament to it's incredible defense. It's body buckled, though, the wave of attacks just too overwhelming, and with a pained howl it flew backwards, body tilting back almost reluctantly, and it quickly crashed back into the ground on it's feet, shaking before it went still, bleeding bits of Heartless that had been vaporized or liquified or worse in the attacks. Jarod and Greed, still in the fuselage, found to their delight that it was enough of a blow to the Umbra Eternis and it's Umbral Heartless to rip Jarod right out of their grasp and to the edge of the fuselage; Greed fell off, still holing onto Jarod's hand and slamming into the outside of the robot, dangling from the decidedly awkward position of holding on to dear life from a man whose arm was being painfully forced over a rough edge. Jarod grit his teeth and pulled himself to his feet, wincing the whole time from the pain, and from the shock the robot had taken. A shine of red in the black caught his attention, and he saw the Philosopher's Stone floating in the murk unprotected and unnoticed. Wondering for a moment if this was a trap and deciding that he was willing to risk it, he reached out for it (no small feat, given that he was still holding Greed up) and his fingers closed around it. He tugged and pull, thin fillaments of whatever it was the Heartless were made of holding fast to it and refusing to let go.

The vibrations made a disturbance in the Heartless, and Kimblee shifted restlessly until his opens opening, blinking miserably. Jarod froze in place as Greed shouted, "Hey! What's with the hold up? Clinging to my life here, buddy! And they're still shooting, it's really nerve-wracking!"

"Please be quiet or you'll wake him up," Jarod said, staring in horror. Kimblee shifted around some more, his eyes unfocused and dazed.

"What!"

"I said, be quiet!"

"What was that? I can't hear you over all the people shooting at the giant robot! Hurry up and get out of there already, I'm tired of people shooting at something I'm on!"

Kimblee shook his head, extremely slowly, and it was just barely possible that he might fade right back out again. "Be quiet!" Jarod hissed.

"I don't wanna," Greed said petulantly. "Hey, did I kill Kimblee when I smacked him down? Give him a check while you're there!"

"Someone say my name?" Kimblee asked, opening his eyes and shaking the dizziness from himself, and the Heartless tugged the Stone out of Jarod's fingers, ferrying back over to Kimblee and deftly avoiding Jarod's frantic grabs for it. Kimblee looked up, blinking again, and looked right at them: Jarod froze and Greed went quiet, realizing that something very bad had happened, and Kimblee just sat up, lifting his head a bit while the Umbral Heartless gratefully clustering around him to feed off his own layers of cynicism and brutality, replenishing themselves on it and growing larger like they had been before. Kimblee hardly noticed that, though, staring instead at Jarod with a bemused frown, as if he wasn't entirely sure what was going on.

Jarod, very quietly and very slowly, trying not to get any more of his kidnapper's attention, crawled up the top of the fuslage and still holding onto Greed. The homunculus in question had the sense to keep his mouth shut and not alert Kimblee any more than he already had, but Jarod could tell by the painful tightening around his hand that Greed was just bursting with all manner of sarcastic remarks too bottled up to stay quiet for long.

Kimblee stared at him a bit longer, at least long enough for Jarod to get halfway up the fuselage's opening, and then he blinked. Jarod looked at Kimblee's expression, and deduced the precise range of emotions the rogue alchemist was experiencing by the slight narrowing of his eyes and the minute twitching of his right eyebrow. The sneer alone was a story unto itself, though probably one with a lot of undeserved invectives at the reader and some extremely vicious writing. When he spoked, though, he sounded remarkably nonchalant. "Ah. You're awake."

"Yes," Jarod said. "You too."

They stared at each other. Greed scrabbled futilely on the outside, making a faint noise to fill up the silent tension-filled air.

"...Well, this is awkward," Kimblee said. "And anticlimatic."

"Yes," Jarod said again. He glowered at Kimblee and yelled to the street, as loud as he could, "TAKE HIM DOWN! I DON'T CARE HOW YOU DO IT, JUST FORGET ABOUT ME AND FINISH HIM!"

"Stop encouraging them!" Kimblee said, voice disapproving at Jarod; the man in question turned his back on Kimblee (an unwise move in any situation, let alone one where he was being very open about his monstrous nature) and desperately tried to get out of there, complicated by Greed's considerable weight and that the fuselage didn't have any holdholds for him to use. Greed swung in, bracing his feet against the Umbra Eternis' belly, getting it's attention even under all the cover fire going on, and he pushed away, tugging Jarod halfway out of the giant robot. At Kimblee's mental command, the Umbra Heartless rushed forward, crashing onto Jarod and engulfing him once more before pulling him back in; they found their progress severely hampered by Greed stubbornly standing his ground and pulling with all his might.

On the ground, Zim's allies groaned out loud at how close Jarod and Greed had been to escape. (If they had known how close Jarod had been to getting the Stone, they would have been even more outraged by how unfair his failure that was.) Several of them complained (Deadpool and Sokka being the loudest). And on Zim's ship itself, people were even louder about it. "Oh, COME ON!" Calvin yelled, banging a fist on the back of Zim's seat. "He was so close! That's not just cheating, that's deliberately prolonging a conflict beyond all reason! What does he want with that guy?"

"Maybe he's an old boyfriend?" Beth said. "That he once loved Kimblee with all his squishy meat-person heart but they grew apart 'cause Kimblee's evil and insane and likes tacky suits and maybe eats too much ketchup with his eggs so Jarod left him, and now Kimblee wants to take him home and make him love him again!"

"...What?" Zuko said, staring at her. "Seriously, what?"

"It could happen!" She said defensively.

"Didn't he say something about having orders to do it?" Hobbes asked, leaning on Beth's armor. "Because that's a pretty reasonable explanation; he's just following orders. Not an excuse at all, not one little bit and I kinda want to punch him for just that, but still. It's a reason."

"Just orders?" Courtney said skeptically. "Who here has ever gone to such crazy lengths because they were ordered to?" Zim, Hobbes, Zuko and Beth raised their hands. "People who aren't part of a faction that encourages going beyond the impossible for the sake of honor." Beth lowered her hand. "And is probably from a culture that emphasizes that sort of thing." Hobbes and Zuko lowered their hands. "And isn't probably schizophrenic." Zim lowered his hand reluctantly. His imaginary figment-angels appeared to console him in his time of sadness. "Ah, you see my point! No one's left!" Calvin raised his hand. "Oh, come on! You told me earlier that you're basically an anarchist, you hate orders! You're probably the kind of guy who deliberately interprets orders creatively just to spite them." Calvin lowered his hand, shrugged, and grinned.

"Whatever, no one really cares why he's doing it-" Zuko started to say.

"I care!" Courtney said. "I need a fully unbiased story and knowing his motivations is essential, or I'll just end up saying 'he's a murderous kidnapping mad bomber who killed Foster's because he's just a jerk' and that just sounds-"

"THE POINT IS," Zuko said loudly over her. Courtney pouted, crossed her arms, and deferred to Zuko's superior force of self-centered anger-management problems. "The point is...oh, damn it, all we're doing is arguing about semantics while everyone else accomplishes things. At this rate we're going to be nothing but a dysfuctional bunch of idiots who don't know what they're doing!" Courtney opened her mouth. "Don't you dare say that's exactly what we are!" Courtney closed her mouth, looking smug. "Ugh, we need to start doing something drastic now!"

"I quite agree!" Zim said cheerfully, turning in his seat and pointing to Winry, whose seat was the only one with flight access (if they put them in two seats or more, then you might have two differing flight instructions, which would be a terrible pain for any difference engine like the on-board computers). "You!"

"Yes?" said Winry.

Zim pointed dramatically at the screen showing the Umbra Eternis. "RAM IT."

Hobbes said, "What?"

Winry blinked at Zim, an expression of distrust building there, and fading when she decided that the idea had it's merits. (How she came to that conclusion was anyone's guess; considering that she was engaged to the elder of Izumi Gibbs' adopted children the Elric brothers, it was presumed that a degree of useful insanity had affected her brain.) "Won't that, y'know, maybe kill Jarod?"

"No," Zim insisted. "You've seen how absurdly strong that robot is. Even with it weakened, it is still strong enough to protect it's occupants! At worst, we'll bang them around a little bit, thus allowing us to retrieve the Jarod-man before our foe realizes we slammed him!"

"...Makes sense to me," Winry said, noting that Jarod had more or less told people to fight Kimblee with all their strength even if it got him killed, and moved the ship into a slightly higher gear.

Zuko said, "What." Ignoring him, the ship obligingly lurched forward, building up speed and everyone who wasn't sitting down went rolling across the floor and smashing into each other, screaming like loonies.

On the ground below, Abel was concentrating as hard as he could on the stubborn metal of Umbra Eternis, and he happened to wonder why everyone else had stopped firing at the giant robot in question. He assumed it was because they didn't want to hit Greed (even though it couldn't hurt him) or Jarod (though a few of them, but mostly Shego, were getting pretty irritated with having to hold back because of him), as he couldn't be bothered to turn around and notice everyone else frantically pointing at the approaching (small) ship overhead. "What's everyone doing?" He said to Toph, his armor shaking with the barely controlled energies he was generating and shaping and shadow-tentacles rising out of his shadow to hold him down and stop him from being dragged out of his position.

"Probably 'cause something big and metal's moving this way," Toph informed him; she couldn't see it, of course, but she could feel it through her Metalbending, diluted her metal-sensing abilities were from that distance. Metal was metal, though, and it was her birthright to know all things that were of the earth, and it called to her.

"What?" Abel turned his head as much as he could, with enormous effort from the constrictions of his armor, the magnetized metal rendered into a nearly solid piece and so on, and he noticed the shadow of Zim's ship going by overhead. It became a moot point shortly thereafter, and he certainly noticed when it's personalized field grazed him, pushing him slightly off-balance and his shadow-tentacles had to pull him back into place. "What the-" The ship accelerated very slightly (thanks to Zim's ineptitude with the controls), and dispite how minor the movement was, it was still a ship capable of enduring the hardships of space, and knocked a few people over from the pressure created by it's fast movement. Abel stood firm, still anchored to the ground but very unsteady.

In the Umbra Eternis itself, Jarod had been dragged back under the Umbral Heartless but they were having significant difficulty reconnecting to him, mostly because he kept hitting Kimblee. It was somewhat to his detriment, since he was now ignoring Greed after the homunculus had finally climbed back up and was trying to remind Jarod that he was supposed to be rescued, not turn into a berserker. Still, he admitted, Jarod had just pounded Kimblee's head into the wall again so it was a pretty good show. "Ugh, what is with it and head injuries today?" Kimblee said, and blinked, trembling a little bit as more non-blood red fluid gradually oozed out of his skin and steadily evaporated, leaving a filmy residue on his skin.

Jarod didn't respond, being busy trying to kick the tethering muck off him. Kimblee winced, breaking off the attacks to steady his mind (too full of babbling arguing voice for his favor, though the Nameless-That-Was had disappeared for no adequate reason). Greed took the opportunity when he saw it and reached down to grab hold of Jarod's arm and pulling back with all his might, totally ignoring Jarod's indignated cries that 'Kimblee needed to be brought to justice' and 'I'm in the middle of something here'. He pulled harder, and Jarod got the hint and started kicking himself loose; there were popping noises as Jarod, with agonizing slowness, was dragged closer to freedom, and his hips were brought free with more unpleasant noises, and both of them kept fighting and moving, slowly but surely winning their fight.

Kimblee probably would have been more enthused than upset about this even if he hadn't been wondering why the people attacking his giant robot appeared to have fled for some reason, or for that matter why Jarod and Greed had stopped fighting to gape at something overhead, and even more peculiar, why Jarod suddenly yelled something to Greed about saving himself and giving him a kick that knocked him off the Umbra Eternis and to relative safety, and right before Kimblee could properly wonder what Jarod was panicking over, he noticed the ship flying over the street from up in the sky where it had been effectively invisible to his blind robot and his awkward placement, going down and aimed right at the face of his giant robot for a collision. It was a small ship, and moving at a fairly restrained pace, but it was still a ship flying at his robot. Jarod watched it for an instant and, being a man to take advantage of every develoupment in a scenario, threw himself backwards and braced for impact.

The ship accelerated. Windows shattered and walls cracked in escalating, winding patterns as the ship passed, the personal gravitational field that moved it taking it's toll on the surrondings with it's current intensity. A few outlying structures (a balcony, a few gothic gargoyles and some excessive salad-shaped decorations) were sheered off by it as it went right through them, and as the target of the approaching ship, Kimblee could only stare, too stunned to make a pre-emptive attack or do anything else constructuve (though that might have been the multiple concussions) and just managed the fortitude to summon up his absolutely flattest speaking tone and said, "What."

The sentiments of others were less restrained, mostly in the ship itself. "THIS IS CRAZY!" Courtney yelled, hanging onto a loose wire that she had mistaken for a bracing support, her and everyone who wasn't properly seated braced against the wall for impact.

"THIS WAS DEFINITELY NOT PART OF THE PLAN!" Hobbes yelled. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT THEIR PLAN ACTUALLY WAS, BUT THIS WAS DEFINITELY NOT PART OF IT!"

"Why is everyone yelling?" Winry asked, remarkably calm for someone piloting a ship about to smash into a giant evil robot.

"I don't know, these guys get so excitable over the most absurd things," Zim said. "LAME!"

"Actually, I think this totally rocks hard!" Calvin said excitedly, clinging to the back of Zim's seat so he had a front row seat to their crash. "We're using a ship as a bludgeoning weapon, how is that not awesome?"

The ship streaked down. "Oh," Beth said faintly. "We're going to crash." She paused. "Yeah." She sat down very quietly in a seat and made sure her armor suit was wedged in so firmly it couldn't be shaken loose, and sighed at her life.

Zuko followed her example, pinching the bridge of his nose. "...I hate my life and everything in it."

There weren't any such sarcastic comments from the people below. There simply wasn't time for them to make any (and yet there was in the ship, probably because it was funnier that way). All they could do was watch the Umbra Eternis hesitate as it became aware that something big was coming right at it, and then the ship crashed into the Umbra Eternis right into the partly immobilized Umbra Eternis, impacting it right in the chest between it's hunched-over head and the cavity that Kimblee and Jarod were in (so that neither of them suffered the direct effects), and hit hard enough to make shockwaves that shattered the street under it into dust, smashed the facades of the nearby buildings Sokka and Scar had been hiding in during the ambush and would have thrown Zim's allies all over the place if they hadn't run for cover, and they were still knocked around into each and went across the street. Abel and Greed, having been the closest at the time (with Abel still in the same spot and Greed right at it's feet) and the Umbra Eternis went flying.

It was so heavy that it came back to the ground shortly thereafter, but the impact had hit it hard enough that Kimblee was again totally unable to direct it, and one of it's feet got in the way of the other at the wrong moment. Or the right moment, depending on one's outlook on the matter. The Umbra Eternis skidded, tripped, fell into mid-air, and still being carried by momentum, crashed headfirst (and also ironically) into a building that had already been marked for demolition. It didn't smash completely through but landed in an awkward position on it's backside, crumbled chunks of masonry pinning it's arms for the moment. It made a small hacking noise, and it's head rolled back, black acidic goo dripping from it's chest.

"...Ow," Kimblee whimpered.

Jarod, bewildered to find that he was inexplicably still unharmed aside from a few aches where he had crashed into the walls a few times dispite the whole 'ship crashing into the giant robot' thing, celebrated by quietly moving out of the fuselage and escaping. Or he tried to; the Umbral Heartless once again demonstrated that they were masters of being jerks for no reason by waiting until Jarod was almost out of it before they rose up, engulfed him and dragged him back. "Seriously? Waiting until I'm almost free to capture me and crush my hope? Again?" Jarod said, more annoyed than anything else, but that might have also been the exhaustion. "Do these things have any sense of originality? It's like they compressed all the conventions and behavioral issues of standard-issue villainy into a cosmic horror swarm."

And Zim's ship hadn't stopped moving when it had crashed; it had only stalled a little before getting back on track. They had absolutely no intention of letting Kimblee get up and run away with his hostage (who had a pre-existing responsibility after being appointed by Zim to be his friend's psychotherapist, and no villanous agenda was going to get in the way of that) and evade his most well-deserved beatdown. Not this time. Not anymore.

Zim already had a plan. Sort of. "Where do the ejection pods or whatever desposit from?" He asked Winry.

"No pods or seat or anything that, but it fires from the front," Winry said, very vaugely. "It shoots you to wherever you've targeting on the screen."

"'Shoots'?" Hobbes repeated questioningly. "What do you mean, 'shoots'?"

Zim waved the worried tiger aside. "I'll deal with it when the time comes. Keep moving forward until we're within maximum safe firing range for whatever the escape pod system is."

"Okay, it's not really a pod and...wait." Winry's face paled slightly as Zim's rather obvious plan became clear to her. "No. No no no. No freaking way. You're not seriously going to-"

"Indeed I am!" Zim said, pleased that Winry was so startled by his plan that she hadn't made the ship stop, and it was still proceeding at a decent pace. He thought and added, "Wait. Do you think I'm going to eject myself to manually free the Jarod-man, or do you mean self-destruct the ship at such power that it tears a hole in reality and sets loose a fearsome elder horror that kills Kimblee for us but then we have to kill it by summoning another elder horror and then we have to kill that, and so on?"

"The first one!" Winry shouted.

"Ah, just so we are clear on the matter," Zim said.

"You wouldn't really do that stuff, would you?" Hobbes asked Zim uncertainly.

"I suppose not, it didn't work so well the last time I tried it on The Thing That Should Not Be But Is Because The Gods Got Drunk," Zim said, waiting until the ship have moved into position; it was a matter of wire-thin timing, waiting and waiting until that one screen that displayed the targeting had the little targeting cursor on it light up red, so Zim made some quick adjustments to it and locked onto the Umbra Eternis, ignoring Winry's frantic attempts to stop him from doing that. Cackling gleefully at the prospect of finally taking this vital step towards defeating Kimblee in a manner no doubt including excessive amounts of firepower, one of his spider-legs extended from his Pak and raised across the dashboard over by Winry, lowering itself just over the ejection button Winry had unwisely indicated earlier.

Winry's mouth dropped. "No, you idiot! That's not your seat-"

The spider-leg pressed the button. The floor directly in front of Winry's seat dropped open, all the relevent safety measures disengaged from her chair, and her chair also disengaged, the seat flipping down and neatly sliding Winry right into the hole. There followed a a lot of grinding mechanical noises from outside the ship as a large cannon extended from a hatch in the front while Winry yelled a lot of inflammatory accusations, and then further mechanical noises. On the camera-screens, they saw the truth of Winry's unclear statements about the ejection systems when, instead of escape pods, the mysterious cannon that had just appeared powered up and fired Winry from itself, the woman in question wrapped in a glowing green cocoon of the same energy fueling their ship, flying like a bullet and hitting it on the knee, bouncing a bit before the cocoon dissipated and Winry was left sitting on it's leg, angry but unharmed.

Winry's seat, the only seat that had direct access to the manual navigational systems, was very conspiciously empty. Calvin gave Zim a cautious thumbs-up before he sat in Winry's empty seat, willing to take over for piloting duty (even if he wasn't at all qualified for it). Zuko's eyebrow twitched nervously while his mouth opened and closed, not managing to articulate anything. Hobbes facepalmed. Courtney stared at him before she sat down and pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to pretend that this was all a very bad dream. "Mr. Zim," Beth said, staying remarkably calm in the situation. "Did you just shoot our pilot out of a cannon and directly right next to the evil guy we're trying to fight?"

"On accident," Zim assured her. "On accident."

On Zim's shoulder, Sammael facepalmed even harder than Zuko. "We. Are. Going. To. Die."

Razael shrugged cheerfully. "It was fun while it lasted. FOR GREAT JUSTICE."

"The hell does that even mean?"

"Whatever you need it to. 'Justice' is the great equalizer of meaningless concepts that sound heroic!"

"Both of you, shut up," Zim said, getting weird looks from everyone because he looked like he was talking to thin air. "Anyway, uh, I just hit the wrong button. Easily resolved!" Zim hit the other button, and he was summarily dropped down a hatch that opened up in front of his own seat. "Whee!" He said as he went down.

"If I wasn't jealous he pulled that stunt off before I could I'd call him an idiot," Calvin commented. Deciding that he needed someone else to operate the other seat, he looked at the others speculatively; Hobbes had proven himself to be bad with piloting, he didn't want to involve Courtney or Beth in their team activities more than he absolutely needed to, so Zuko seemed the least of potential evils. Besides, Calvin reasoned as he imperiously waved Zuko over to Zim's vacated seat while the Firebender gave the dashboard a nervous look, it shouldn't be that hard for him: just grab the controls and push the buttons Calvin told him to. That Calvin was also working entirely on guesswork didn't really matter to him.

Down below, Winry had already been ejected from the pod and was storming up the front of the Umbra Eternis, deciding that she might as well do something useful while she was here. "At least it's not the most humiliating test run I've ever done," She said to herself optimistically as she climbed up the outward curve of it's chest.

As the ejection gun powered up, Winry made her way up the fallen mecha, unbothered by the Umbrals in their current state of borderline unconsciousness; the rapid and brutal attacks on the Umbra Eternis had done quite a number on them. She was grateful for that small piece of luck, though she still felt a deep sense of discomfort as she hopped over a shallow groove along it's hip that the Umbrals were sluggishly moving through and reminding her of clotted blood. She felt like the poor machines - both Greed's mecha and the Juggernaut, neither of them exactly blameless in the grand scheme of things but certainly neither of them deserving this...this desecration - and Winry reluctantly felt that perhaps Scar might have had a point on the mortal problems of the more destructive applications of alchemy; it felt like she was witness to an act of violation and not just the lesser would-be evil or mischief that went on in town most days.

So, her somewhat volatile temper already lit at the atrocities Kimblee had comitted and her love of the things technological spurring her on to greater extremes, she made it to the fuselage where she saw Kimblee desperately trying to bury Jarod under the Heartless but not doing very good well. "I'm trying to do a job here and you are not being very cooperative," Kimblee complained, his arms latched around Jarod's neck while the other man furiously swam through murky Umbral Heartless with all the ease of someone trying to powerdive into cold syrup. "I appreciate seeing people with actual dedication to their moral codes, I really do, but I would at least like to see a degree of appreciation for my own work ethic. It's only fair."

"I won't be caged again!" Jarod cried zealously. He looked suddenly thoughtful. "Why does that sound strangely familiar? And why do I associate it with a wererat?"

"I'm not going to cage you!" Kimblee said. Jarod elbowed him in the nose. "What is with you people and my nose today! My point is that I'm not going to put you in a cage, metaphorically or otherwise, I'm simply going to hand you off to an extremely unsettling man who probably will!"

"Who do you know that would want to put this guy in a cage, aside from the obvious reasons?" Winry said, standing at the lip of the cavity that made up the fuselage and giving Jarod an speculative look.

"Someone named Mr. Lyle," Kimblee said without thinking. "I don't know why he wanted himcare what his reasons are, he just asked...oh dear, I shouldn't have said that. Very unprofessional of me." He paused, apparently just registering her voice, and he turned to look at her with raised eyebrows. "Miss Rockbell?"

"Yeah, it's me," Winry said. Jarod stared, clearly astonished that they knew each other. (And given his scarily comprehensive knowledge about everyone in town garnered for his many contingency plans, that was pretty impressive.) Kimblee started to open his mouth. "And don't start saying anything about weird or illogical or just how much running into me right here and now makes absolutely no sense. I know it doesn't, but that's just how things go these days. And you already ran into Scar and Mr. Mustang today, seeing me isn't that a big a deal."

"...No, I suppose not. Still, at least this doesn't mean there are any more unexpected...wait. Is Fullmetal here too?" Kimblee asked.

Winry shook her head. "Nah, he's out of town."

"Fair enough." Kimblee still looked unnerved at Winry's unexpected presence. "I do wish you had announced yourself earlier. We could have had a nice chat and caught up with one another." He glanced at her hand. "Is that a ring?"

"Yep."

"You're engaged then? To Fullmetal?"

Winry looked at Kimblee like he was stating the stupidly obvious, that he was making a statement so far on the outer side of obviousness that it if accelerated it would come back the other direction as mind-numbing obtuseness. What he was saying was very very very obvious, in other words. (There was a great deal of obvious going on there.) "...Duh."

"Well! May I offer you my congratulations, though I can't imagine why you never sent word to me." Winry stared at him. "Please don't look at me like that. I deserved to know! I've pitted my life against your intended's several times, did the same with your brother-in-law-to-be, held in protective custody as a hostage to secure your love's cooperation, was involved in the annhilation of Amestris and our world, and I was supposed to kill your parents before Scar stole my kills. Very rude of him, I should say. My point is, we have a history, you and I. That makes us something like friends, doesn't it? That is how friends work, don't they? I'm not very clear on the concept. Then again, you had no idea where I've been, so you could hardly have sent word and informed me of your nuptials."

"...Are you even more insane, or just stupid?" Winry said.

Kimblee frowned. "That is uncalled for." He frowned deeper. "Wait a minute, what are you doing here in the first place? ...Wait. Was that you in the ship earlier shooting at me?"

"Yep."

Kimblee looked unamused; it took a special kind of person to enjoy being shot at. Jarod, spending their exchange mulling over the smaller details in what Kimblee had unthinkingly spoken about, said, "Wait, did you say that you know Mr. Lyle?"

"In a manner of speaking," Kimblee told him, clearly intending on telling him nothing else and holding up the Philosopher's Stone and one hand, and grabbing Winry's leg with the other. Winry swung her free leg back and kicked him squarely in the fact while Jarod lunged at him, knowing full well that Kimblee only wanted to blow them to meaty bits, and fortunately Kimblee didn't get the chance to do that because at that moment Zim's energy bullet-thing was smashed into what was essentially the crotch of the Umbra Eternis, and due to the sympathetic connection Kimblee employed to operate the machine-titan, he had the singular experience of a small but very fast moving thing gaining weight with velocity and smashing into his groin. It was just phantom pain, but it still hurt bad enough for his eyes to water, an amusing gasp to escape from his lips, and he slid away with a tight grip on her leg, weeping in pain.

Winry and Jarod looked (after giving Kimblee another nose-kick that failed to disengage him) and saw the energy dissipating to reveal Zim standing up down there, giggling from the rush. "I WANNA DO THAT AGAIN!" He screamed. "Ooh, we must refine that design!" He narrated his thoughts on the matter while he stood up started running up to the fuselage. It was a fairly short trip, so he didn't get to ramble on for very long. "Make us be fired out of bigger guns or maybe put in a giant slingshot! Or more big person-shooting-guns all over the ship to drop us to the battlefield immediately! We can say, 'I need to kill something and bullets aren't fast enough'! Then we'll be the bullets! Then they shall call us bullet people, and bullet people we'll be. Hey, maybe we can make that like our team name or something." He climbed up to the fuselage, joining Winry and kicking Kimblee in the face so hard he was jolted off her and slumped face-down. "Hi," he said to Winry. "Being shot out of a cannon was fun, wasn't it?"

"No, not really," Winry said, a bit frostily. (Being shot out of a moving ship, even on accident, put her in a bit of a mood.)

"Eh, your loss." He looked at Jarod. "Hey. How's it going?"

"I've been worse," Jarod said casually. "Never as tired as this, but still worse."

"Wow. Your life must have totally SUCKED."

"Yes," Jarod agreed.

Kimblee lifted his head up, still dripping black-blue-purple gooey stuff and stared up at Zim. "Oh damn it. Not you." A hint of rage-red flushed in the black goo.

"Yes, me," Zim said, holding up the Keyblade and making the biggest flash of fire-made light he could. Kimblee flinched and Zim stepped aside so Winry could grab Jarod's forearm and start pulling him back with all her might. Zim didn't join in right away, opting to throw the Keyblade directly into the Umbral Heartless and grin at their immediate crumpling before he jumped into the fuselage, going over Jarod and landing on Kimblee's head hard enough to bury the Red Lotus Alchemist into the disturbingly squishy mass of the Umbral Heartless muck and raised up a small tide of it, pushing Jarod up and out in spite of the various protrusions trying to keep him anchored. Zim, still standing on Kimblee's head, grabbed Jarod under the arms and made a little hop so now he was standing on Kimblee's back, an exceedingly dangerous place to be given that Kimblee still had the Philosopher's Stone. He didn't seem to care, concentrating hard for a moment and his soles shoes started glowing, heat shimmering out of them and growing hotter and hotter, reaching the kind of heat that even the specially made materials used in Traverse Town manufacturing couldn't withstand. (The fact that it was magical heat didn't help.)

Kimblee screamed and thrashed; even his increasingly less steady grip on the world couldn't ignore two spots of rubber-burning fire right on his back, scorching through his coat and clothes and burning his back. Zim concentrated with all his might, thinking good and hard about how badly he wanted to this to be done already and the hostage saved and Kimblee beaten so he could get up and leave already-

Fire, he had been told, was will, and power. And Zim was nothing if not determined.

His shoes exploded, big fiery jets blasting out from his feet and flying him off Kimblee's back, evoking screams of pain from the Red Lotus alchemist due to his back being hit by big streams of magical fire, the Umbral Heartless around him recoiling in abject terror but unable to escape the flames and heat that incinerated so much of them. Zim was catapaulted to the entrance to the fuselage, bringing Jarod with him, and the man in question was actually pulled partway out of the muck, past his waist and hips, now lying headlong on the front of the fuselage but almost all of the Umbra Heartless stubbornly clinging onto him in various shapes. Zim wasn't bothered, and grabbing Jarod's arm with Winry while the man himself wriggled his way loose, went right back to work pulling him out by hand. Together, they slowly but surely did the job of tearing him loose from the Heartless' hold on him, and Greed's work in almost pulling him free before was making it much easier for them.

The Umbrals were still hanging on exceptionally hard, even though the Keyblade being stabbed into them was a grievious wound, and the damage already done to them didn't seem to be hampering their effectiveness very much. Zim was still making progress, but not as much as he would have liked. "This should not be this hard!" Zim said, his and Winry's continued efforts only getting Jarod out up to his knees. "How long have we been trying to do this!"

"Only a few minutes, if that," Winry said.

"STILL TOO LONG!" Zim screamed.

"Hey, how do you think I feel?" Jarod said indignantly.

"Oh, hush, you've been unconscious most of this battle, you practically had it easy," Zim said.

"I HAVE BEEN PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY VIOLATED BY HEARTLESS!" Jarod screamed, his composure breaking hard. "My tearducts itch with the contamination of pure evil and I didn't even know that was physically possible! To say nothing of all these...things my brain keeps spewing forth! I'm remembering things I never experienced in the first place! And I'm fairly certain that my sub-consciousness was somehow in psychic contact with Kimblee's mind!" Jarod shuddered. "I feel like I took a bath in acid." He frowned. "And I feel like I'm forgetting something about it that would be incredibly helpful right now."

"Hrm, I can see why that would be upsetting," Zim admitted.

"I don't," Kimblee said, pulling himself out again. He glanced at his outfit with clear displeasure. "I can't believe that I actually thought that submerging myself in pure darkness would be a good way to pilot a giant robot. Now my clothes are all...I don't know what they are, but it's certainly very messy."

"YOU DIE NOW!" Zim and Winry yelled, both kicking him in the face since they couldn't spare the use of their fists.

Kimblee clutched his nose. "Again with the nose! Stop hitting me in the nose! I have a chin, you know, it's perfectly suitable as a target!"

"Yes, but you really hate getting hit in the nose, which makes it a far more attractive target," Jarod said. One of his legs had come loose as he was talking (and Kimblee had been distracted) so he kicked Kimblee in the nose too.

Kimblee fell back, his nose definitely broken again. "Okay, okay, I will admit that I set myself up for that one-" Jarod kicked him in the nose again, and Kimblee dropped the Philosopher's Stone without realizing it. It bobbed up and down, floating up to where Zim and Winry were. "YOU BASTARD! STOP KICKING ME THERE!" Jarod kicked him again, in the side of the head. "Ow. That's better, I guess." Jarod kicked him in the nose. "STOP DOING THAT! I WISH I HAD A SUPERIOR FORCE TO BELIEVE IN SO I COULD ADJURE YOU IN IT'S NAME TO STOP HITTING ME IN THE NOSE! Why do you keep doing that?"

"Well!" Zim said cheerfully, glancing down and grabbing something from the Umbral Heartless and shoving it in his pocket. "To start with, it's pretty funny. You're overreacting somewhat to the nose-hitting, which is a great contrast to your usual indifferent demeanor, which provides humor in the form of bathos. At least I think it's bathos, but with linguistics conventions you can never be sure." He and Winry dug their heels in, tugging Jarod partway out of the Umbral's grasp; his back came loose and he was dragged nearly onto where they were standing.

"It's not," Jarod said knowingly. "Bathos is when you combine intellectual or formal speech with more casual communication patterns by accident."

Zim ignored him. He summoned the Keyblade, his will calling to it and driving it out of the Heartless and back into his hand, whereupon he put it into his mouth and held it by the hilt with his teeth. He grabbed Jarod with his freehand, pulling him more seriously and resumed talking, and was perfectly coherent because he was speaking with great spirit. (It made no sense, but neither did anything else concerning the Keyblade.) "Secondly, it's a fairly good place to hit you, although I am concerned that with all the nose-breaking that a shard of bone hasn't hit your brain or something. I'm not saying that's a desirable outcome thus far (though it would tidy up the situation considerably), mind you. Plus, the face you make when one of us keeps nailing you in the nose is hilarious!"

Kimblee sneered. Thanks to the copious amount of blood on his face (and the unidentified red substance that was dripping away from him), it was actually a pretty fierce expression. "So long as you have valuable motivations." He reached for the Philosopher's Stone, tired of Zim's obnoxiousness and the delay in his overal goal of basically blowing the hell out of this town (or city, he wasn't sure what it would be legally recognized as under the statues of most interplanetary governments that he was familiar with), and his fingers clenched around nothing but the gritty moistness that comprised the Umbral Heartless in their 'at rest' state. "Hold on a second. Hang on to that thought. I appear to have misplaced something."

"And that brings me to my next point," Zim said. He tilted over and let the Keyblade fall into the mass of Umbral Heartless imprisoning Jarod and grinned slyly as the crude conspiracy of chaos instantly pulled away and thrashed madly, much of it burning at the simple promixity to the Keyblade. "I totally swiped the Stone when you weren't paying attention and were complaining about your broken nose."

Kimblee froze. When he spoke, it was to break a horribly tense silence pregnant with sheer stunned amazement that would probably give birth to things blowing up. (Zim thought of the metaphor himself; in retrospect, it was very confused.) "What."

"Bye now!" Zim said, grabbing the Keyblade and leaning out before pulling the Keyblade back, the weapon's aggressive glow transforming into a violent prism of clashing lights and sharp-looking flecks of what looked like ragged strips of reality flying around it's outer edges, the power suddenly so intense that Zim's hand hurt, and sliced through the sturdy tentacle still wrapped bone-breakingly hard around Jarod's leg and incinerated it, cutting him loose. This resulted in him smashing right into Winry and Zim because they were still pulling so hard, but they didn't really care because, hey, they had just gotten the hostage loose.

"I found him first. Get your own," Kimblee said, clapping his hands and projecting a blast; Zim's reactions had been so amplified that he moved in the spaces between one instant and the next, his two brains taking note of this latest develoupment and analyzing the possible reactions before taking the safest one he could think of in the circumstances, and he pushed both Winry and Jarod into the fuselage and right onto Kimblee right as the transmutation was still making unstable energy matrices in the path Kimblee wanted his blast to go.

It was stupid, it was putting Jarod right back in the situation they had been working so hard to get him out of and it was worse because now Winry was in the same situation, but even so they weren't hit by the blast when Kimblee let it loose. Neither was Zim; he fell down at the last possible second into the fuselage too, and he threw himself down flat against the outer curve of it's opening and grateful that he was able to wince when the controlled explosion blasted out with it's terminal radius so terribly close to his face.

The blasting light faded and Zim sat up, Keyblade still in hand, well aware that he was insanely lucky to be getting away with little worse than a painful ringing in his internal ears and reddened stinging all over his face. He took stock of the situation at once, immediately focusing on that the Umbral Heartless, sensing prey that wasn't bearing the Keyblade, had swarmed over Jarod and Winry, engulfing them completely and doing a job of keeping them wrapped for all of their prey's struggle. Zim blanched; he had saved them from the explosion by literally throwing them to the Heartless, but he hadn't thought it would react this quickly. Thinking fast and noticing Kimblee glaring at him and clearly thinking of the best thing to do now, Zim said, "Hey! HEY! I still have your Stone-thing, yeah! If you blow me up right here you'll lose it! What are you gonna do about it, huh?" Use the Heartless, use the Heartless! He thought desperately.

Kimblee narrowed his eyes. "I wouldn't be so sure." Crap, thought Zim. Kimblee lunged, disturbing the Heartless enough for Winry to claw free and try to do the same for Jarod while keep the Umbrals off her. Zim raised the Keyblade but it was too awkward an angle and Kimblee crashed into him, knocking Zim to the floor and hitting the breath out of him. Zim tried to suck in air, not just because of reflex but to transform it into internal fire and maybe breathe some fire right into Kimblee's stupid face, and Kimblee grabbed Zim by the collar and lifted him up with one hand, and lightly slapped the palm of one hand to the other. "You are surprisingly heavy for a creature no bigger than a child," Kimblee mused. His hand tightened it's grip around his shirt and jacket, and there was a brief light flash.

Zim's jacket and shirt shimmered, their colors warping and distorted. "Anything can be made to explode, but things containing a portion of metal work the best for me," Kimblee told Zim, pushing him away. "Such as the metal in the adornments on your clothing."

Zim looked down, his shirt itching furious against him, and he wondered about the 'against' bit until he saw it distorting in such a way that it was bubbling up, folds bunching into loose liquid-filled boils, the jacket swelling up so much that he almost bent double from the sudden weight, both his jacket and shirt turning a cold gunpower-black and sloshing around-

They reached critical mass and exploded. It was not a big explosion, as Kimblee intended, and only made a cacophonic noise in the fuselage chamber, blinded Jarod and Winry temporarily and flung Zim into the side of the wall, knocking him silly and into the Umbral's waiting grasp, his shirt and jacket utterly gone and leaving nothing behind but marks on his upper body and bits of ashen tatters floating on the Umbrals, and then even that was gone. Tendrils and worse things slid over him, working on his hand until his fingers opened enough for the Keyblade to slip from his grasp. The Umbrals moved out of the way as quickly possible, leaving it to bounce once on the floor of the fuselage and the Heartless shifting thickly around it, afraid to even approach the divine weapon.

Zim grumbled, uncomfortable aware that he was naked from the waist up in front of strangers (and true, he had been among humans like enough to adopt some of their customs if not taboos, but he retained his people's uneasiness about lack of clothing) and tried to get up, aching all over. The Umbrals gathered up, drifting away from Jarod and Winry, whom Kimblee wasn't focusing on at all. "Return the Stone to me," Kimblee said. "I am only asking this once."

"No," Zim said, grabbing the wall and climbing to his feet, holding a hand out and starting to summon the Keyblade from the floor.

"Have it your way, then," Kimblee said. "I do apologize if I cannot think of a suitably charming one-liner to mock your passing."

The Heartless surged forward, shaping themself into something like a battering ram, all twisting horns and sharp armored plates and hardened muscular groupings that were still more liquid than solid mass. It still hurt when it rammed into Zim's belly, producing minor shockwaves in the chamber, and smashed him into the wall. Purplish blood leaked from the corner of his mouth and he struggled to keep the scream down. He turned it into a defiant scream and grabbed hold of the neartest Heartless bit he could reach - a toothy head that was mostly a set of massive bulls-horns - and squeezed it with all his might, his hands turning red-hot and shimmering with heat, transfering that heat into the Heartless and setting it on fire. The whole battering ram recoiled, and Zim threw a flaming punch that shattered the horns and made a unstable fireball that burned into the battering ram's core and tore it apart.

Black goo splattered everywhere and Zim fell down, already getting to his feet and trying to stay there while tentacles roped out and ensnared him around the arms and shoulders, trying to pull him down into the jaws biting and thrashing at his feet. He kicked at them, snarling inventive invectives, blasting flares of flame randomly at everything he could hit; he burned the jaws trying to chew on him, he sent a blast of fire at Kimblee - which the alchemist dodged - and he redirected that same blast with all his might no matter how hard it was or made him hurt, and it traveled around to strike the Heartless around Jarod and Winry, shattering the Umbrals and letting the humans go.

He summoned another blast of fire, his arms now seriously starting to hurt, and directed it beneath him, blasting the Umbrals out of his way and diving through the resultant hole, slamming into the floor and spying the Keyblade waiting right there, glowing softly and warding the Umbrals away. He reached for it, fingers almost in touching distance, and the Umbrals fired part of themselves into his chest, a dagger-shaped shard gouging into him and burned by the Keyblade's light right away, but it was still enough to move him away from the Keyblade and give the Heartless a semblence of courage, and more of them flowed together, swelling up into ever more gruesome forms before settling on a classic 'huge tentacle with spikes and stuff on it' and slamming into Zim, wrapping around his mid-section and hauling him up, absorbing all the Umbral Heartless in it's way.

The next thing Zim saw, it was Kimblee being propped up by the same tentacle holding himself. Kimblee stared at him, and the frightening thing about that stare was the lack of real emotion. There was anger, yes, but so muted and quiet that it could hardly be called anger at all; it was like irritation, though more inflamed and bitter, but whatever emotion it was Zim couldn't fathom it. Kimblee looked so...empty, full of nothing but bland hollows and nihilistic compulsions. His face twitched, and for a moment Kimblee's face was not Kimblee's face, looking like someone else...and then it was gone, so fast that Zim had to wonder if he had just been seeing things.

"I don't see why not," Razael remarked. "He sees us, and we're imaginary."

"Quiet you, this is a dramatic scene!" Sammael insisted.

Kimblee raised Zim to his face, and spoke. "Give me the Stone," he said again, voice quiet and dangerously silky.

"I already said 'no'," Zim said. "'N-O'. It means a response in the negative. BASIC ENTRY-LEVEL ENGLISH, SILLY PERSON. DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT SPEAK IT? Because I'm not altogether certain that we are speaking English, which does beg the question what we're speaking."

"If I tried to understand what you meant, I'm sure the hours spent doing that would mean I wouldn't have time to do this." Kimblee gestured, and a part of the tentacle distended into a smaller tentacle and growing sharp bits all over; organic knives and rounded claws and inappropiate teeth and more claws until it was just a large mass of cutting thing bound together by a thin but muscular mass. Kimblee gestured again, and it struck; Zim wriggled with all his might, the Keyblade buzzing uselessly on the floor below, but Zim had too little experience with it or it's powers to make it levitate or summon it without gestures or anything like that. The clawed tentacle hit him in the leg and struck upward from there, carving a long patchwork-style mess from his hip to his shoulder, and this time Zim did scream, mostly in fury and pain and also self-aware acknowledgement that maybe if he didn't annoy his enemies so much things like this would happen a lot less.

Purple blood gushed forward briefly; Irkens certainly didn't regenerate but they did heal quicker thanks to modifications made to the Irken children who were assigned as soldiers, because a soldier that bled a lot was something the Irken Empire in general had called 'totally lame'. Bleeding a lot was less of a concern to Zim right then, in favor of the face that his pocket had ripped, and a gleaming red stone was poking against his leg, half in and out of the gash in his pocket. Jarod and Winry got up in time to see this, and Kimblee had forgotten about them so the noise they made caused him to glance at them while the tentacle gave Zim an ungentle shake that dropped the Stone right out, where it would fall into the Umbral's liquid and be delivered to Kimblee.

In the time it took for Zim to process all this, an idea came to him.

His sides were bound, but his legs were not. Before the Stone could fall all the way, Zim stuck out his leg and his foot made contact with the Stone, the small red crystal landing on the tip of his toes and, after some foot-shaking from Zim, rolled down his foot towards his ankle. He raised his foot in time, trapping the Stone to a stop between foot and ankle, and grinning at Kimblee's gaping look of disbelief, tossed it up a bit with a small kick. He then lashed out with a much stronger kick laced with the elemental energies of Fire humming in his muscles and hit the Stone squarely at such an angle that the Stone was launched away, right out the fuselage and up into the air, where it would almost certainly be lost to Kimblee.

Jarod and Winry stared, and then they couldn't help themselves and laughed. "Oh," Kimblee said, face contorting into a prim little sneer. "You...my vocabulary deserts me, you are a complete and total kneebiter." He swung his arm in another commanding gesture and the tentacle swung itself out the fuselage at the Stone, uncoiling from Zim on the way and dropping him so that with any luck he would cease to be an immediate problem. (Kimblee had finally learned that Zim, dispite being a complete unknown to him, was vastly more dangerous than Scar or Mustang or anyone else he knew here, solely because of his ability to turn everything he wound up into a raging disaster.) Zim had other plans that way, and the Keyblade responded to his mental call and flew out threw the Umbrals and into Zim's waiting hand as he was thrown out.

The air was brisk and welcoming after all the brief time in that stuffy fuselage, and the first thing Zim saw after looking for something red and sparkly was the red crystal going up high, about to fall back down. More troublesome, the tentacle was already moving towards it, thinning out to almost comical extremes and little more than a wire-thin thing going straight for the Philosopher's Stone.

Zim flipped himself and extended his spider's-legs attachments, snatching onto the front of the Umbra Eternis and anchoring himself down. The ground rumbled unpleasantly, and the ground moved away from him, the metal around him creaking worryingly and then the air was whipping around him, and Zim realized that the Umbra Eternis was getting back up to it's feet, confirmed by the roar the giant robot gave, it's shadow aura flaring back up as it got it's foot against and stood up to it's full height. The sudden jerk would have torn Zim loose from his position if he hadn't been so solidly hooked down, and as it was he still ended up hanging upside down.

"Soooo..." Sammael said dully. "The Stone of doom is up where we can't reach it, we're dangling for our lives mere feet from the guy that wants to kill us, the hostages - and I mean that plurally, since that girl wouldn't be there if not for us - are at the mercy of those monsters, and the Heartless are within moments of getting the Stone back and rendering all that for nothing.

"You summerize quite neatly," Razael said. "Depressingly so. But you forgot the fact that the giant robot is back up and will resume killing us once it has the Stone back. Plus, I don't doubt that Kimblee will be so angry at our interference that he will instantly blow us all to tiny pieces. With Evil Science."

"Yeah, that too. Totally can't believe I forgot about that. I blame the bloodloss."

"Oh, pish-posh, those wounds practically close themselves."

"They do, I checked, but I'm still entitled to complain about them."

Zim clung to the Umbra Eternis, reasonably worried about being on the front of a giant death machine and fully aware that he was very lucky it hadn't deigned to destroy him yet. A more current concern was that the red stone still gleamed up high, the tentacle within moments of grabbing it, and Zim had brief thoughts of trying to do the rocket-flying technique he sometimes saw Zuko using, to try and outfly the tentacle and grab the Stone first. He thought better of it, partly because the last time he'd tried it hadn't worked the way he wanted but mostly because he had a better idea.

Get the Stone, he thought, holding tight to the Keyblade. First make sure that he doesn't get it first.

He swung himself up, the tentacle above him contracting as it coiled around the Stone with a triumphant squeeze, and he swung the Keyblade into the very thin base of the tentacle right above him. It jerked, spasmed, and if it could speak it would have screamed. (Then again, the Umbra Eternis had a voice of it's own, and it screamed loudly enough to be doing pain-duty for the Umbral Heartless. That totally counted.) Zim swung again and it flailed around, light burning where Zim had hit it, and Zim gave a final swing, the Keyblade surronded by a glowing golden light ripping around like the blades of a chainsaw and thrust right through it, letting the energies of the Keyblade burn into it with a pleasing effect of shards of light blasting through it in randomized spots. The tentacle curled, uncurled, writhed and finally whipped around so hard that it lost hold on the Philosopher's Stone, tossing it up high again, and fell off as Zim severed it at the base, dropping down and disintegrating before it ever touched the ground.

Okay, Aang's showed you all the conventions of heroic behavior! Zim thought excitedly. You've humiliated your villain, now get in there and do something that's all finishing-move-esque! What is 'esque' a suffix for, anyway? ...Oh, never mind, DO SOMETHING, YOU FOOL! Say, I yell at myself a lot.

Kimblee leaned out from the fuselage. "What the hell-" Zim sprang up, kicking him in the face. And yes, he hit him in the nose. "The nose again!"

Zim hauled himself over Kimblee's back and grabbed his coat, landing hard and throwing Kimblee over himself into the back of the fuselage. Jarod and Winry were already free, and Zim deduced that the Umbral had overextended it's available mass to grab the Stone and there wasn't enough left to cover the two humans. "Get behind me!" Zim commanded.

"What the hell's going on-" Winry started to say. She stopped. "Right, got it." She grabbed Jarod by the wrist and pulled the taller man behind her, behind Zim as he instructed.

Kimblee got up, rather unsteady with the Umbra Eternis shakign around like it was. Jarod and Winry had a time staying there, certainly. Zim stepped towards him, Keyblade humming and crackling with periodic discharges of elemental light, and stopped, looking at the Heartless. Destroy the Heartless and the giant robot is inoperable.

No sooner had the thought come into his head that he flung himself at Kimblee screaming like a maniac, landing feet-first into his stomach and kicking him into the wall, bounding back up into the ceiling of the fuselage and kicking off to dive directly into the Heartless Keyblade-first, the artifact weapon shining with power.

He hit them and they rose up, stabbing and cutting at him with all multitudes of spontaneously generated blades and he didn't care; h whirled around, cutting their limbs off at the bases and parrying the claws and blades hard enough to shatter them, striking again and again into the main mass of the Umbral Heartless. With every strike the Umbral quivered and shook, parts of it bubbling and burning away, acrid smoke snuffed out by the flashes of light whipping out from the Keyblade in increasingly bigger contrails that followed the pain of it's strikes, outlining movements of the air, driving down into the darkness like nails and exploding in brilliant bursts of light, the continual surges inflicting a radiance on the fuselage that turned random parts of it into smooth crystal and cleaner metal and cut a jagged spiral all around the whole thing as a result of a particularily enthusiastic energy blast that went awry.

Jarod and Winry were relatively safe, but they were still much to cloose for it for their comfort. The light didn't harm them, or even come close to hitting them, but it was still uncomfortable to watch. Kimblee had it worse, being so deeply entrenched in what the Keyblade seemed compelled to destroy, and in a very short time he was covered in even more blisters and burns than before, and yet they faded almost as soon as they had happened, leaving behind the same pigmentation that Kevin Levin had once had.

And Zim went on, unknowingly calling on more and more power from the Keyblade in the extermity of his battle fury and unyielding need to destroy Kimblee once and for all; the light got brighter and more beautiful still, the white of all colors blending into one fracturing and blasting around in a spectrum of emotional colors more suitable for Zim's state of mind; mostly the green of willpower and courage, but there was also the red of rage (for all the evil Kimblee had done and not yet been forced to pay for), a hint of the blue of hope (his thoughts that this mind be done, his absolute certainty that he would win) and even a great swell of loving violet (and he would never admit it, but there were people there he cared for, that he would go on fighting for and living with and never ever let down as long as there was even a single isolated spark of life in his body), and it all should have looked silly for Zim; a almost-rainbowed lightshow, something so very unsuitable for a guy like Zim. And yet it wasn't like that at all; it was violent and larger-than-life, blasting out of the fuselage's opening with such force that Jarod and Winry had to jump out and hang for dear life on the outside to avoid getting hit and it still warped the metals and could be seen from miles away, crackling and blasting and rebounding with the complete absence of restraint or hesitation that was so very much like Zim.

It was something that Zim wasn't yet able to handle without consequence. He called more power out with instinct, shaping it into destructive force that he slammed into the rapidly dying Umbral Heartless in complete ignorance of what he was consciously doing (and would have been unable to repeat if forced to think about how he had done it), and the Keyblade burned with that power that was even greater than the fire he had summoned to kill the Darkside back on Earth and was enough to kill even horrors born of the ultimate darkness, and Zim lacked the experience to deal with that kind of power or shield himself from. Whether the Keyblade wanted him to be hurt or not (and it was certainly not; it wasn't one of those cursed weapons) didn't matter, and Zim almost broke off the attack when he registered the pain and saw his hand blistered and burned in the sun-bright light from the Keyblade's hilt, extending up it's blade.

Almost. He was definitely not in the right mood to be cautious over a little thing like personal injury; he still remembered that the humans of Earth had died because of a device that he had help create had opened a gateway for the Heartless to come through, and he was certainly not about to let the people of this town die because he lost his nerve over a few magical burns or losing a measly hand he could easily replace.

Dropping all concern for his well-being like the crazy person he was (and Razael cheered him for it), Zim swung the Keyblade up high, the luminous energies swirling into the faintest outline of a sword's blade, or perhaps merely the image of Sword itself, the ultimate archetype that represented what all swords were supposed to be, pain roaring up his arm as the power burned him, and the Umbral Heartless got itself together for one final desperate attack while Kimblee cowered with his hands clamped tight over his eyes, it's entire mass wrapping up and tearing open to a massive jaw tipped with sword-long teeth and rotating blades like a food processor inside it, bearing down on Zim. The Irken only laughed long and hard and mad, and dived into the descending Heartless.

There was a faint glimmer inside it, the light turning it transparent for a moment before it went dark. There was a wet noise, as if of a powerful weight piercing through...and then the Umbral Heartless exploded in a massive blast of the same light the Keyblade had made in it's extremity of power; Zim had stabbed it's very core, the pure and perfect light that both composed the Keyblade and radiated from it searing it to ashes before it even connected, and instinctively transferred as much of it's ambient power as he could directly into the Heartless in an explosive burst, obliterating fully half of the Heartless present as the animating forces of the machine-titan and blasting Zim, Jarod and Winry right out the fuselage with a triumphant yell, flying free from the Umbra Eternis' attempts to grab them, the Keyblade's unloosed energy still flying around all over the place.

For his part, Kimblee flung his hands over his eyes, screaming with pain even thought the Keyblade wasn't anywhere near him and the lights weren't nearly intense enough to hurt, at least physically, but the light of the Keyblade shone right through his physical body and into the darkest parts of his mind and illuminated them without mercy or gentility, showing them to Kimblee in a single moment without any subjectivity. For a single moment, Kimblee saw himself as he was and not what he imagined himself, saw the dapper and charming explosives artist revealed for a monstrous shell of a man with dust where drive should have been, a thing that pretended to delusions of self-respect, a vile horror that was nothing but a self-important bloated mockery that had willingly submerged itself in the very worst of depravities for essentially no reason at all, and at the very core of him was a hollow shadow where a heart ought to have been, an antithesis of everything that he could have been.

Kimblee saw himself, and in that moment of perfect awareness and knowledge as the light burned away all the lies he had ever told himself, he felt totally disgusted with the...thing he beheld; nothing more or less than a miserable and empty horror that didn't even know how awful it was.

"I don't...I don't understand," he whispered, the illuminating fading from his mind, his mental state returning to normal but the revelation fresh in his memory, his psyche unraveling in it's attempts to reconcile the two opposing mind-sets. "I don't understand," Kimblee whispered again, more of the non-blood red fluid weeping from his body and looking uncomfortably like bloody tears. "I don't understand..."

...Huh, Kevin said, his mind also been hit by the blast of light but unharmed by it because he wasn't a utter psychopath like Kimblee. I feel...happy. Ghostfreak said nothing, and he couldn't say anything at all, not crouched up into a tiny corner of Kimblee's mind and whimpering, whispering, sobbing to himself in terrified incomprehension.

Zim was not in a position to take his enemy's reaction into account, since he was still flying in the air. Winry and Jarod were moving slightly ahead of him like cushions that had been preemptively arranged for him to make the soon-to-be crash a little less painful, and he should probably have looked back to make sure of the trajectory (since that was just common sense when you shot yourself places with an explosion), but with the way things were going and his own usual skewed sense of priorties - skewed by personal standards, perhaps, if not usually moral ones - he found it more imperative to be looking.

He saw it at once, glimmering in the air and falling down towards the still standing Umbra Eternis, the red crystal that had started the whole obnoxious thing, and bore in mind that the whole thing had revolved around this little thing. So many people had died to create it, and more would die because of it. (Or by the use of it's power, which came out to the same thing, really.) This seemed an undesirable thing to Zim, and frankly the last few days had been upsetting enough without already having to deal with something that couldn't be resolved by just punching the person responsible in the face until they were incapable of coherent thought. (Though pummeling Kimblee's noise was very satisfying.)

No easy solution seemed apparent, at least right then. And then a thought came to him: something could be done about it, right here and now and without needing to wait and prolong the Stone's component soul's sufferings or risk Kimblee getting the blasted thing, and he wondered where that thought had come from. Another thought came to him, quietly thinking of the Keyblade's vast power and the sheer untapped potential for doing good that it possessed in his hands, and that it could be turned towards righting this wrong. And Zim wondered where that had come from after admitting that, sure, yeah, he would have eventually thought of doing something like that anyway, but he had to be honest and acknowledge that if people knew he had been given a weapon a vast power, using to it to do good wouldn't be the first thing they would picture him doing: more likely he would use it's power to harass people that annoyed him, or blow up vending machine because it made a cool noise. And anyway, who said anything about the Keyblade having unlimited power? He just heard that it was a powerful weapon with magical powers, and aside from supposedly unlocking stuff and letting him Firebend he hadn't seen much proof of that yet, though he supposed the unlocking business might be a bit helpful right now. Then he wondered how the fook you went around 'unlocking' a physical object anyway; then again, the Philosopher's Stone was made of a lot of souls, so maybe he just had to unbind them but he had no idea how to do that besides maybe hitting it a lot and he thought that might break the thing or-

Another thought came to him, this one definitely from outside him and tinged with a frustrated impatience he had come to recognize from people who were begining to realize that Zim wasn't very good with taking hints. The thought...well, it wasn't a thought really, more an series of incredibly vast flickering emotional impressions scaling up into incomprehensibly abstract mental images that slid right out of his skull and inflicting cheery dreamscapes on everyone they contacted momentarily, and Zim got the impression that something that was not at all used to sentient minds trying to find a channel of communication that worked. It somehow worked itself inside his brain and wound up translated as an ethereal choir out of his most wonderful dreams speaking as if from the very heights of his soul in the voices of a thousand souls in perfect unison, and therefore something quite unsuited to say, 'Just hurry up and let the Keyblade do what it's made for instead of falling down arguing with yourself, you incompetent dumbass'.

Zim sniffed disdainfully. "There's no need to be rude," he told the Keyblade, which he suspected these...sensations were coming from. He listened close to the Keyblade, trying to get something else out of it and figure out what it meant by that, and didn't get anything forthcoming apart from the momentary experience of being connected to all realms of the cosmos (which he totally failed to notice due to lacking the right cosmic senses right then) and an incipherable sensation that three beings with an interest in him had just facepalmed.

He did get a strong compulsion to look straight up and saw the Stone again, now fallen past the Umbra Eternis' head level; Kimblee, even as dazed as he was, posessed the faculties to notice it even if it was strictly automatic. One of the Umbra Eternis' mighty gauntlets reached out, turning sideways to let the Stone fall right into it's palm.

Zim's guts twisted around at the thought, unpleasantly aware that he was getting farther while the Stone was getting closer to Kimblee; he was not going to go through all the trouble he had to get that Stone away from the rogue alchemist again. Perhaps more poignantly, he had been inside that stone, or in the same phase-space that personified it's constituent's mindscape or some other third thing he didn't have time to think of right now, and he knew what they were going through, that they were going insane from pain and that they most certainly didn't deserve this no matter how much of a pain some of them had been to him last night...

He had already failed the people of his world. He refused to fail the people of another one.

The Keyblade shimmered in synchronity with his will, and he felt the tide of beautiful, mad light rising up in his mind again, and he realized that was himself, perhaps mingled with the Keyblade's own strangeness, and as the light of the Keyblade flowed through him, swirling inside him and making his skin tingle like it was brushing up against purified fire, he let go of all fears and surrendered to the Keyblade's burning tides, and the power flowed through him, redoubling and channeling back into the Keyblade like a tsunami crashing back into the sea, and the sea was himself. The power burned again, his muscles seizing as something like fire and lightning in one crashed through his body and helpless to stop itself from burning, and he grit his teeth and let it flow through him, and it splashed right out of him in a massive flare, shedding luminsence all over the street. The light the Keyblade had released into the Umbra Eternis surged up out of it, knocking it away just enough to ensure that even if this failed that the Umbra Eternis couldn't simply grab the Stone from the ground or whatnot. The light surged towards Zim, colliding into the Philosopher's Stone halfway and engulfing it, bathing it in fierce light, and in the dazzling display of colors Zim thought the Stone's red looked almost...green.

The power Zim had acclumated from himself and the Keyblade roared out of him, gathering around the Keyblade in patterns that reminded him of what people imagined large-scale static electricity to look like; jagged bursts of energy flashing in unpredictable patterns. These, of course, were in a wider array of colors than the pale blue or yellow most people pictured, and they kept pooling together into random bursts of white shaded with solar yellow-orange, growing out from the Keyblade and swelling out so much that the power display was easily twice as big as Zim, generating such fearsome heat that Zim's arms were burning and his face was hurting, and again he dealt with it by ignoring it as long as he could; there were more important concerns than getting hurt right now.

And around the Philosopher's Stone, the light he had already called forth and unknowingly channeled to the Stone infused itself into the alchemically seperated bundle of souls, transfering it's divine essence bit by motonic bit into the crystal, and better yet, directly into the minds of the souls within it. And for them, it did the same thing that it had done for Kimblee, burning away illusions and darkness and showing each of them, in the core of their souls, just who and what they really were, and in doing so it burned away bits and pieces of the high energy matrice binding them together, and letting them call to their spirits, and the bodies they were properly bound to. Little by little, those souls were begining to wake up from the nightmare: one or two souls turned around and quietly broke away from the rest, zipping right out of the Stone and instantly returning to their bodies without ever being noticed or fussed over until someone noticed them breathing again, and in the large number of transmuted souls still trapped there in their own pain and confusion those were still ridiculously tiny numbers, not effecting the Stone very much. Little more than cracks, really.

And even so, with these souls stirring in the light being directly infused into them and waking them up, the red of the Philosopher's Stone had started to turn a brilliant, soft emerald-green.

And then the light blazing around the Keyblade, a chaotic mass of energy nearly two and half again as big as Zim and even bigger in the places where it spiralled off into weird patterns evocative of fractals, contracted, Zim's eyes shut tight in the painful degree of concentration he was pushing himself to; binding it close, holding it as tightly as he could, directing it and at the same time letting the Keyblade do what it wanted to do (and it wanted the same thing he did, he didn't know how he knew that but he knew it was true), a complicated act even without forcing himself not to think about the problem that he had absolutely no idea what he was planning on doing. The light grew and grew, bright enough to banish all the darkness for at least a block or two, and even then the shadows made where the light was obstructed by solid objects seemed cleaner than the corrupting horrors that had risen from them earlier, and together the lights shone in equal and synchronized splendor, something mysterious happening between them as they built up to an unspecified level of power.

On the ship, Hobbes stared at this through the cameras. "What's he doing?" He said, voice quiet and eyes wide. His hand kept moving to his necklace, nervously toying with a small trinket on it that was neither trophy tooth or pretty stone. "I don't...I've never seen anything like that." He paused, recalling some of the things he had seen during his adventures and added, "Not on this scale, anyway. Is that...what did you call it, Firebending?"

"No," Zuko said, mystified. "Firebending is related to light, but not that directly. I think. It looks more like those light-type powers he kept pulling out earlier."

"Well, whatever it is it looks really cool," Calvin remarked, hoping that the cameras were equipped to record stuff so he could persue this later and study it. The energy readings he was getting off the light wasn't registering on the energy measuring gauges, which meant that either it was too high for them to measure or it was a kind of energy it wasn't equipped to deal with. Calvin was inclined to go for the former, but the latter seemed just as likely. Maybe it was a bit of both. "Hrm...the things I could harness that kind of energy output for!"

"This is how disasters start," Courtney reminded him. "Someone starts trying to do things they shouldn't for progress' sake or they decide that they can mess with the laws of nature and then they suffer for it."

Calvin gave her a dirty look. "That's also how rising out of the dirty muck of prehistoric ignorance, curing diseases, understanding the multiverse's grandeur and improving the lot of all the rational species starts. Looking at the potential for scientific develoupment and immediately deciding that it's evil or should be abandoned for some childish notions of universal propriety is how people start backsliding into want and ignorance."

Courtney blinked. "Wow. You really take that kind of thing seriously."

"If I don't, then the Luddites win! It's my duty to fight that kind of thinking whenever it rears it's ugly head, and my duty to SCIENCE!"

"Guys?" Beth said, a bit worried that Hobbes was staring at the lightshow like it was turning switches on in his brain, Zuko looked too fascinated for his own good, and Courtney and Calvin were getting into a full-blown conversation that totally ignored the situation. "Not that whatever you're talking about isn't important or whatever, but I think something's happening."

Something was. The Umbra Eternis had begun to stir again, still as stubbornly incapable of just laying down and dying like it should have had the decency to, and Kimblee was just barely able to stare up out and look at the Stone and see it hovering in mid-air in a sphere of light. He squinted in the glare, and he could see it glowing, bits of it chipping off and disappearing in tiny green flashes. Kimblee's eyes widened, perhaps in shock or curiosity, and the Umbra Eternis started to move forward, it's hands spread wide to grab the Stone, and when it's claws came close to the light around the Stone it sharply jerked away as though hitting an invisible surface, clawtips smoldering and glowing. The Umbra Eternis gave the light a distrustful growl, backing away warily with it's every movement heavy with growing fury.

Zim was now floating in the air, an invisible tether being connected between him and the Stone that was making him be pulled away and towards it at the same time: the force of the bond was pulling him in and the Keyblade drawn towards it, and at the same time a innate self-preservation instinct seemed aware that getting close to the swirling luminscence that had burned him pretty bad already was a Very Stupid Idea and was tugging him away, and this produced the net effect of keeping him still in mid-air. Winry and Jarod had gone ahead to the ground, where the rest of their allies had gathered at and Scar transmuted a slide out of the ground that the two fell into and slid down to the ground, crashing in a tangle but quite all right. Apart from Jarod's mental scars, but he already had plenty of those anyway.

The light flashed and shimmering around Zim in intricate patterns resonating with instinctive concepts that his mind unconsciously tried to translate and left with only a puzzling but welcome sense of 'all is well'-ness, growing larger and more intense. His entire body was begining to ache, his supposedly fireproof clothing begining to smoulder, and Zim still held on to the Keyblade as it created even more power, amplifying what was already there and ramping it up to even greater levels perhaps equal to more than several dozen gigajoules, and a stray arc flashed away from him and grew larger away from them, going into the light spectrum invisible to human eyes and proceeding to accidentally overload every electro-mechanical device within two miles and transform them into more advanced and capable forms able to handle it's energy output, leaving behind a residue of energy that would power everything there for at least two and a half weeks before starting to fade away. This happened three times, in every direction until the last time when created a ripple that went through to the entire First District and it's very edges, causing no small amount of confusion and excited bewilderment to the more tech-savvy.

"Could you please stop doing that?" Kimblee asked Zim. "It's hurting my eyes and what I suppose could be called my soul."

Not mine, Kevin said. And hey, those are MY eyes, stop calling them yours! Get your own body.

"Nope," Zim said, buzzing around in place as the connection grew so strong it was a gravitional force unto itself (although, gravity wasn't exactly the strongest of natural forces) and the Keyblade was painfully hot and a burning sword-shaped shard in his hands, it's metal going translucent and something...else being revealed, an incomprehensibly beautiful and earth-shaking bit of trascendent eternity wrapped up in a material form, and Zim couldn't even see it properly and it was translated into his brain as an ever-changing vortex of light and fire and lightning and a dozen other things that all came out to nothing less than raw power tempered with benevolence, and at this the connection between the Keyblade and the Stone became a brillaint path of the same wild colors as the light around both. It changed, indeterminably, hollowing itself out and growing so that it was larger than either Stone-light or Keyblade anima, and the Keyblade's light projected itself down that path and came smashing down into the Philosopher's Stone, drowning out the red light entirely to amplify the light purifying it's souls with every single bit of the power it had been building up the whole time.

"I can't help but think that this is a bad thing," Kimblee said flatly. The Umbra Eternis facepalmed with a big clanging noise, as if to say 'You think!'.

The Philosopher's Stone glowed like a miniature sun, the light not diminishing so much as it focused itself into the Stone's substance, disappearing from the world and into the Stone's mindscape, washing over each and every soul contained within it. The howling storm within subsided, for a single brief instant, for the Keyblade's light came all their hearts and minds at the same time. For that instant, the pain was gone. The agony of being torn from their bodies, of a cruelly forced seperation and their lives being drained away into an construct feeding their essences into little more than the greatest power source of all, was wiped away for that instant. All at once, and again just for an instant, they stopped feeling pain, stopped feeling nothing but helpless mewling rage that erased their personalities into little more than maddened spiritlings knowing nothing but selfish misery, and once again became themselves.

That instant was enough to break their bonds, and show them the way home. Inside the mind's of those making up the Stone, it was a confusing and bewildering sight of the souls being freed from their prison and tumbling apart into over a hundred bewildered beings, their prison-universe vanishing before them. What Zim and the others saw was the light he had made seeming to disappear, and more accurately infuse all of it's energy into the Stone, leaving a dull insane red that blinked out into a more confused spectrum of colors and, with a faint noise like a whispered thunderclap, resolved into the brilliant and beautiful green; the green of willpower and courage, overcoming the red of loss and rage, and then at long last, without anything to hold those souls together anymore, the Philosopher's Stone simply shattered, exploding into a towering beam of emerald light, and Zim thought he saw figures moving around in it, pulling away from each other and dissolving into nearly recognizable shapes, free and seperate and alive.

And then they, and it, were gone. A lone crackle of green flashed in the air where it had been, and all was still. Zim was hurtled back to the ground, blasted back by the eruption, and right towards his allies, and Aang was helpful enough to steer him into the slide Scar had made for the other two humans; Zim crashed into it and came to a bouncing stop at the bottom, finally landing on his back a few steps behind them and a shallow trail cut in the ground where his Pak had burrowed through.

Zim sat up, Keyblade still in hand dispite the problems, and he said, "Somehow, it always comes down to explosions. This is a fact of science."