To reviewers of Chapter 5:

LupinandHarry: Well, they were supposed to be investigating a haunted house in Twilight Town (Old Mansion, hehe). Sora, being the one with lots of ideas, obviously had multiple theories about the place. I won't explain how or why the others disappeared when they were in there right now, but I will say that another one of those foreign Closed Spaces will pop up again in the future. Might not be in this 2nd year "book", but it will show up. After all, I've already foreshadowed it in the last section of the chapter.

RoyalDemon: I do agree it was quite creepy. I think I like that chapter the most thus far in this second year for them. And I realized that I did originally cast Denzel as Roxas's cousin back in Melancholy, but by the time I had gone back to reread the chapter and realized my mistake, Denzel's become a permanent member of the SOS Brigade. So, just think of them as two completely different people. The Denzel who's Roxas's cousin is only eight while the Denzel the Slider is actually fourteen, almost fifteen years old by the time Roxas meets him. Likewise, the Marlene who's Roxas's cousin (coincidentally, the first Denzel's sister) is only six, while the Marlene who's not related to Roxas at all (Denzel the Slider's sister) is about ten years old.


Chapter 6 – I Challenge You to a Battle


After Colony 1342.

Today is the day of destiny. As we traverse through the bleak nothingness marked by distant stars and planets, I couldn't help but feel the absolute absurdity of the entire situation. Here we are, heading towards a distant battleground that looks like any other part of this empty blackness save for the position of the stars (but let's be honest here, only navigators would actually pay attention to the star maps) fighting an enemy that we know nothing about save for the fact that they're going to destroy our beloved star and consequently our homes around the celestial body.

I scan the scene outside the viewport with narrowed eyes. According to my navigator, the fleet is almost to our target destination, but I see nothing suspicious. Off to my right is the command flagship of the entire fleet and I know that another four starships like the one that I'm currently on right now surrounded the flagship. Behind us are smaller ships, including a medical ship, seven fighter carriers, eleven artillery ships, and hundreds of fighter ships that have all been upgraded for deep space travel.

"Spread out and keep your eyes peeled," a disembodied voice echoes across the command station on my destroyer-class starship. I breathe a sigh and comply with the commands, directing my pilot to steer the starship 30 degrees to the left and travel another mile or so.

"Talk to me, people," comes the voice again.

"There's no one at the south sector," a female voice replies, her voice is strange for a commander, light and uncertain.

"No one at the north sector," replies a male voice.

"East sector, clear," answers a flat female voice.

I'm about to report in when a radar sensor goes off with a "beep, beep, beep".

"Sir! We detect a presence 40 degrees to the southwest."

The sounds of enemy fire crackle across the communications network.

"West sector is under attack! I repeat, west sector is under attack!"

"Prepare for engagement!" I shout. "All pilots man their ships. Battle stations, everyone! Fire at will!"

And thus starts our battle for the galaxies.


I would be lying to you if I had said that nothing else happened in the two months prior to the New Year. In fact, I'll bet by now that you would've known when I was lying when Sora is the center of strange and utterly ridiculous happenings.

As it happened, about a month after the entire Halloween incident, the president of the Journalism Club had come to the Literature clubroom, handed me a letter without another word and left just as abruptly. Since the letter bore Sora's name, I felt no reason to open it and read it. If it had been addressed to the SOS Brigade, it might've piqued my interest.

On second thought, maybe not.

So without taking another glance at it, I just laid the envelope on top of the computer keyboard in front of the unoccupied swivel chair. Sora had, once again, disappeared to who-knows-where right after class. Who knows if he would show up at the clubroom nowadays too.

I supposed it's only fitting that my decision to not read the letter before Sora did would come biting my ass afterwards.

Sora showed up about thirty minutes after the president of the Journalism Club had left. He was whistling the Twilight Zone theme when he entered, which earned him two pairs of raised eyebrows, an annoying smirk, a blank stare, and a somewhat confused look from the five of us who were in that room.

I looked over to Riku, who shrugged, and back to Sora again. Either he was watching another one of those UFO shows or he knows something that we didn't.

"Sorry I'm late!" he exclaimed with the exuberance of a toddler being taken to Disneyland and plopped down on his chair, spinning around once before stopping himself to face the computer. He looked at the keyboard, noticed the letter and simply…

Tossed it.

My jaw dropped in shock.

"Aren't… you going to open it?" I asked once I got over my surprise. Sora looked at me with curiosity.

"Why? It's just another fan mail," he replied.

Wait, what, fan mail? From the Journalism Club president? What?

"It's from the Journalism Club president," I added.

"So?" he simply said. "If it was important, he would've addressed it to the club and not to me. He could just be another one of those idiots who want to go on a date with me."

I felt like smacking my head right there. Based on the behavior of the president when he handed me that letter, I seriously doubted that he wanted to date Sora. Can he really be that ignorant as to think that everyone likes him? I know that more than half of the school knows his notoriety and I wouldn't doubt that many, many people hold grudges against him.

For what? Who knows. All I know is that he's not below blackmailing to coerce people into doing his bidding after all.

I forced myself to not sigh in exasperation and instead, gritted out the next couple of words. "Why don't you open it already."

Sora glared at me with a frown. "Why don't you read it then?"

And risk you yelling at me later for invasion of privacy? I like my head on my shoulders, thanks.

"It's addressed to you," I replied blandly.

He scowled at my simplicity and reasoning. I could tell that he had wanted me to open the letter so he could boss me around even more, but ha! I win this time. So what if I made him mad. I'm not the one who has to clean up after Sora's mess this time.

"Fine," he spat out before plucking the letter from the waste basket. He tore open the envelope furiously, making me wonder if he had torn the letter when he did that. But of course, he didn't.

The rest of us simply sat in silence as he read the letter.

Oh, why, oh why did I ask him to read the letter?

But seeing how if I didn't do that, we would've been in for a shock a week later when the Journalism club shows up fully prepared. I supposed it was better to be able to prepare than to jump into yet another competition cold.

To let you know why I had somewhat regretted my actions. As Sora read the letter, the scowl that was on his face turned upside down into a smile, which simply grew wider and wider as he continued to read.

That smile never boded well for us.

"What a wonderful opportunity!" he exclaimed upon finishing reading. "Another chance to prove ourselves. I'm really glad that I decided to read the letter after all!"

Wait, what? But- Argh, this is Sora we're dealing with here. I should've known better.

"What are you talking about?" I asked. He flung the letter at me with a grin and spun about in his swivel chair as he leaned back. I read the letter silently with Denzel reading over my shoulder curiously.

"To the despicable leader of the Literature Club," the letter had begun. Huh, did Sora actually refer to this motley crew as the Literature Club rather than the SOS Brigade? "The Journalism Club hereby challenges you all to a battle of wits through the online strategy game Defense of the Stars. The battle will be streamed live over the internet on as an official game in the tournament. If we win, all proceeds made from the sales of the Radiant Garden High Chronicle will go to us. If you win, you get bragging rights for beating the number 1 team in Radiant Garden." I frowned at those terms. So they get monetary compensation while we simply get an ego boost? Granted, I'll bet Sora would really like that though.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Didn't we spend all the money we got from that on the costumes?" I was mortified by the thought.

"Yup," said Sora. "That we did."

I stifled a groan of hopelessness and massaged my temples. "How are we going to pay up if we lose then?"

"We won't," he simply grinned. "We'll start strategizing tomorrow."

"And how do you propose we get computers for that?"

"I'll figure out a way," he simply replied once again. Oh god, I think I should go talk to Pence about it before Sora does. Great…


As predicted, around thirty minutes after classes had ended and afterschool activities have officially started the following day, Sora came bounding into the clubroom with three of the Computer Science Club members in tow, Pence obviously being one of them.

While Denzel and I set out to help them set up the laptops that they were providing us, Kairi began brewing a new pot of coffee for our expected "guests". Naminé stared at the laptop contraptions with mild interest while Sora simply grinned and leaned back in his chair watching us. Riku was, strangely enough, nowhere to be found.

It took us a little over an hour to set up all the computers and make sure that they were connected to the internet, functioning correctly with the game, and whatnots.

"You know, I never expected the Journalism Club to be the number one ranked team for DotS," Pence commented when Sora left the room to go do whatever he wanted to do.

"Oh?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "What about you guys?"

"We don't play DotS," he answered. "It's too gimmicky for us. We mostly play co-op shooter games like Team Bastion or Darkness Rising."

"We do occasionally play War State though," commented one of the Computer Science Club members who I never thought to ask for the name.

"Ah," I uttered rather lamely. I am not looking forward to this game, that's for certain.

At the conclusion of the entire "visit" by the Computer Science Club, just as they were leaving, Riku suddenly showed up.

Sometimes I wonder if Riku wasn't a psychic in actuality, being able to see the future or know when exactly the "visitors" would leave. How else do you explain his impeccable timing!?

"Sorry," he said with a frown of disappointment on his face. "I got held up by a project." Psh, yeah right and Sora will break out in song and dance right now. I can see right through that mask of yours. You're not actually sad that you didn't get to help out!

"You're right on time. We're just about to start!" grinned Sora. Without another prompting from Sora, the rest of us took our seats in front of the laptops that were set up on the large rectangular table and opened up the program for the game.

We sat through the introduction, which set the stage for the game; I'll have to admit, it was pretty well done.

For a five year old game using a fairly old graphics engine, that is.

In any case, we got connected to the network for the game and teamed up for a skirmish with some computer controlled enemies. When the battle screen loaded, I discovered why Pence had said the game was too gimmicky.

On three sides of the screen were multiple actions bars and the last side—the top—was where a scrolling marquee sat detailing my stats from health points, energy points, resources, wealth, bases, troops, etc. etc. etc. A rather large minimap panel sat at the upper right hand corner and a timer sat right smack in the middle underneath the scrolling marquee.

The sheer number of panel buttons was absolutely mind boggling even for a gamer like me. Granted, I was never one for hardcore gaming, but seriously, why the hell would anyone need a button for ordering where troops go or what troops to train when you could do it all on the actual battle map!? This is just ridiculous!

First things first though, I needed to pick my hero to lead my troops. I scanned the bottom bar and located the hero panel. The sound of keyboard keys clacking rapidly caught my attention and I found Naminé's fingers practically flying over the keyboard of her laptop. Kairi was seated to her right, leaning over to see what the pale-blond-haired girl was doing. The expression on her face was enough to tell me that whatever Naminé was doing, she was an expert at this game.

Still, never once did she use the mouse, which she actually ended up disconnecting when she kept bumping into it.

I turned my attention away from Naminé and Kairi and back to my own screen, taking my time to select which hero I wanted. In the end, I chose a Clavat Mercenary; little did I know how much money I would end up losing as the inexperienced mercenary, but we'll get to that later.

In any case, when I actually joined the game, I was placed at the southernmost corner of the entire map which probably spanned over hundred screens. When I opened up the map and looked around me, I was shocked by the exploration that we've already done, especially by Naminé's Selkie Fighter. Based on my initial glance, she must've had at least five bases built along with a sizeable fleet that could've easily overwhelmed her opponents if she had actually gone and sought the enemy out. I only just started and have one small base and ten men under my command! She had freaking a thousand pilots with just as many fighter ships, five commanders based on star destroyer-class spaceships, and seventy lieutenants that command who knows how many foot soldiers.

Maybe there is some hope that we'll win. I could only hope.

"Argh!" Sora exclaimed angrily. I looked at him with confusion before quickly turning back to look at the map in front of me. As I had expected, Sora's little outpost had been overrun by a computer fleet. To be sure, Sora had managed to build up a small force, which only reminded me of my insignificant fleet at the current moment. I quickly set out to reinforce my area and pray that the enemy will get intercepted by one of the others before they reached the center of the galaxy that is under our control. After all, it is where our sun is and our galaxy would cease to exist when it's blown up by enemy faction.

I waited anxiously as my fleet is slowly building up. The enemy fleet was still unopposed by the others as they were all too absorbed in what they were doing. Kairi still didn't know what she was doing, mainly exploring the area around her. Denzel appeared to be experimenting with the various technologies available to his Selkie Inventor, and Riku had was building up his own fleet much like what I was doing, though he appeared to be profiting from the build while I was losing my money. Naminé, despite being much further along with her fleet than any others, didn't seem like she was going to attack the invaders at all.

"Naminé," I said, looking up over the laptop screen at the alien interface. The girl had stopped typing and looked up at me with a rather stoic look upon her face.

"The enemy's going to win if we don't stop it." Heh, "we", more like "she".

Naminé's eyes turned back to the screen and another series of clacks sounded before she verbally replied to my comment.

"Acknowledged," she said simply. I watch with fascination and shock as her fleet suddenly appeared near the enemy fleet and proceeded to wipe it out. Now I don't know about you, but that seemed awfully like she had hacked into the game and cheated. That's no good.

"How'd you do that?" asked Sora gapingly.

"Selkie special ability: teleportation. Cool down: one hour," she intoned. If I hadn't been looking at her closely, I would've missed the hint of a smile on her otherwise deadpan face.

That's… overpowered.

I looked back to my screen and opened up my hero panel, sure enough, there was a button with a mouse over tooltip at the bottom of the panel. For Clavats, we get an ability that reduces the time needed for our fleet building by half. Similarly, like the Selkie ability, it was on an hour cool down. While that meant that we Clavats would have the largest fleet in the shortest amount of time, without careful management, it also meant we would run out of resources the fastest once we use our ability. Not to mention that even with a big fleet, I might not be able to defeat an enemy if my fleet took forever to get to the target destination.

What's even worse is, knowing the fact that our opponents would have exactly the same abilities as well.

This sure doesn't sound like it's going to bode well for us.

Once the immediate threat had been eliminated—or neutralized in the game's own terms, I went back to focus on my fleet. I opted not to use my Clavat's special ability just in case I need to rebuild fast later on. I quickly made one freight ship for resource gathering from surrounding planets and asteroids and delegated the rest of my meager resources to making fast fighter ships to defend my position until I have enough resources to make a fighter carrier so I can go actually attack an enemy base.

I looked around at how the others were doing and found Kairi finally getting a hang of this game. However, she had resorted to dedicating all of her resources to making material gathering ships. It was a smart move on her part as Riku had generated a sizeable fleet to defend both himself and Kairi's merchant fleet.

Sora, with his base decimated and thus essentially out of the entire game, had gone over to Denzel's seat and looked upon as the freshmen built his own bases and fleet. Surprisingly, Denzel's fleet was well organized, a bit on the offensive side, but nearly as large as my own.

"Roxas," came Sora's warning hiss. I quickly looked down at my own screen, afraid of angering our consciously bipolar leader even more. Not to mention the fact that I felt embarrassed to have been caught staring at him and Denzel. Thank god Axel isn't here.

It was lucky that I had looked down at the moment when I did. A movement off to the top left corner of the screen caught my eye and I discovered that an enemy fleet had been steadily closing in on me during my momentary inattention. I muttered a soft curse under my breath and quickly selected my fleet to take evasive maneuvers. And not a moment too soon since the enemies fired on where I had been previously. Still, I didn't escape without losses, even though the only loss I had was a small single pilot fighter…

Hmm, I feel like I should know these people who are under my command. Yes, that'll be Bob, you're Harry, you're Mike, that's John…

I must be losing my mind.

Oh wait, the ship that I had just lost is piloted by Sora.

'Kay, I'm done.

I turned my attention back to the matter at hand and retaliated against the attackers, deploying the fighter ships that had been contained in the carrier. They looked like insects on the screen, swarming out of the carrier to join the battlefield like a cloud of locusts. It was a good thing that I had made so many fighters too since they were fast and agile, dodging the heavy artillery that the enemy had sent towards me. Many of them flew past the artillery of the enemy ships to strike at the more vulnerable spots of the destroyers, disabling their barriers and letting my carrier to send off its own volleys against the enemy ships.

Slowly but surely, I managed to decimate the entire enemy fleet. Too bad I had lost more than half of my fighter ships in the process, but whatever.

With that threat behind us, Sora had straightened up from where he stood behind Denzel and walked over to the desktop. He leaned down to write something, but I couldn't see what from where I sat. I'd find out soon enough.

"Commander Riku, Naminé, and Denzel!" he announced rather stately, slapping on a sticker label bordered with blue onto his white jacket. You know those ones that they use at reunions? Especially for old people who graduated from the same high school and such? Yeah, the ones that say "Hello, my name is blank". In the blank white box, Sora had written the word "Admiral" in black Sharpie.

The three people who had been named looked up at our leader. What, we're going to be pretending that we're actually a part of a galactic fleet? And Sora is the admiral of this crew of misfits?

"Send half of your fleet to the enemy galaxy. Destroy them all," he commanded.

"Yes, sir!" replied Riku and Denzel simultaneously and promptly. They even gave him a salute in acknowledgment. Please, don't indulge Sora anymore!

Who am I kidding? All of them except me all think Sora is some all-powerful being after all.

Naminé didn't respond. In fact, the only indication that she had paid any attention to Sora's command was looking up at him then looking back down at her screen to send her ships toward the target destination.

I looked at my own screen and prepared to begin rebuilding my fleet, only to find that my resources and my cache of wealth were too low to even build ten fighter ships.

What the hell?

As it turned out, the Mercenary class gets money from doing side quests within the home galaxy, like hunting for criminals, delivering dangerous materials, and other odd jobs. It was the only way that a Mercenary can generate money, compared to the Scholar class who generate money via researches and consequent scientific advancements or the Merchant class who generate money by manipulating the supply and demand of commodities on a fictional stock market.

This just made me hate the Mercenary class more and more. There goes my plan of joining in the attacking fleet.


Needless to say, we won that game with Naminé acting pretty much as the vanguard of our rather disorganized lot. The only casualty we had was half of my original fleet, which I never had the time to rebuilt before Naminé literally crashed one of her super destroyer-class ships into the enemy galaxy's star.

That bothered me… a lot.

Oh right, it's just a game.

But I'm rambling.

The other casualty was obviously Sora's entire fleet and base, which had been decimated early on in the entire campaign skirmish, whatever you call it. And wouldn't you believe it. He also had chosen a Clavat Mercenary as his hero.

Curse you all! Hate… you all for making me prove—with no actual deliberate intentions on my part of course—that I'm the one that Sora chose. I hope no one noticed it, or there'll be hell to pay.

Every single afternoon that week spent in the clubroom was on the game, getting used to the controls, mastering our heroes and abilities, and etc. etc.

Eventually, we've all pretty much got a hang of this game. Each of us managed to quickly establish trade routes within the home galaxy to support each other's fleet building. I stayed with a Clavat, but went with a Scholar rather than a Mercenary; and I must say that I find it a lot easier to build my fleet than before.

While Naminé stuck with her Selkie Fighter, Riku had changed from being a Selkie Inventor as he had in our very first battle to a Selkie Mercenary, apparently he's really good at doing all those side quests. Or maybe it's just a Selkie thing. Kairi went with a Yuke Scholar while Denzel opted for a Lilty Warlord. Sora, being the most fickle one out of the bunch, eventually ended up using a Lilty Inventor after some twenty games, including skirmishes with actual people.

And not too surprising to Sora, but somewhat surprising to myself—I'm the rational and skeptical one of the entire bunch after all, we got really good at the game. Sora even documented several strategies to attack enemies with and to defend or counterattack in a black notebook. Not that we'll actually need it after this Saturday…

Though I supposed I did eventually accept that we were practically experts at the game since I had begged Sora to let us lose that one single game against a ranked team who hadn't given much thought to who we were. While Sora hadn't wanted to lose, I had suggested that it would be best to pretend that we still suck at the game as to keep the Journalism Club off guard. If wind of Naminé's obvious expertise in the game got out, our chances for winning the actual ranked battle might've gone like the wind.

Sora had only grudgingly agreed after I bribed him with dinner at Seventh Heaven.

While that initially sounded like it'd just be the two of us, he had upped the ante to treat the entire SOS Brigade. I whole-heartedly agreed without giving it much thought.

So now, I'm broke… Good job, Roxas.

Anyways, whether the others actually had desire to win the ranked battle or whether they just like playing the game, we all stayed until fairly late playing and "strategizing" as Sora aptly labeled it. Even Riku, who worked part time as a delivery boy for the Strife Delivery Service, hadn't gone to work as he often did around 4 PM. Instead, we all stayed at the clubroom well until 7 playing that game.

I don't think I did any of my homework that week and I had been late to dinner so many nights during that week that my mom had yelled at me for not telling her I would be home late every day.

My simple excuse? "Class project."


Finally, after nearly a week of preparations, the day of reckoning is finally here!

That sounds all sorts of Sora. Goddammit. Must… stop… thinking… like… Sora.

Ow. Okay, that slap by yours truly to yours truly's own cheeks was a bit too hard.

Right, getting back on topic.

That morning, we were gathered in the clubroom for a pre-battle talk as Sora demanded it. The table with the laptops had been pushed to one side of the small rectangular room, leaving room for Sora to conduct his pacing. Naminé had moved her chair back to the corner and was reading yet another hardcover book she borrowed from the library a week prior. She hadn't been able to finish it for obvious reasons.

I sat hunched over in my own fold-up chair in front of the rectangular table with Kairi sitting on the table between me and Riku, who had opted to simply lean against the table. Denzel sat with the back of the chair in front of him, using the top of the back of the chair as a support in case he fell asleep. Apparently there had been some issue with Between and Betwixt that made the Sliders work well into the morning to restore access and stability.

I looked about and couldn't help but make a comparison to Star Wars. Sora's obviously Admiral Ackbar. Naminé would probably be something like Mon Mothma. Then… taking the relationship factors out of the equation, Riku would be Han Solo, Kairi's Leia Organa, Denzel's Lando Calrissian, and I'd be Luke Skywalker!

God, I hope this is just a phase.

"Alright, men," started Sora, his eyes gleaming with happiness, "and women," he added after eying Kairi and Naminé. "Today's the big day! We've been preparing day and night for this day and now it is time for us to show our true potential!"

Why exactly are we having a pep talk for a video game event that doesn't really mean anything for us? Oh right, we need to win to avoid having to pay the Journalism Club out of our own pockets. And by our, I mean mine. I hate you, Sora; hate you so very much.

"We've mastered the game and come up with plenty of strategies to counter their actions. I know that you all know them by heart, so let's get our game faces going and win this! Let's show the world what we've got!"

"Yes sir!" was our smattering of responses, both enthusiastic and semi-enthusiastic. Hey, I gotta keep Sora happy right?

We moved the table back to its original spot in the room and arranged our laptops, making sure that the wires don't get tangled up or get in the way of the mice.

About thirty minutes before game time, we started up the program on our laptops and logged onto the battle network before getting on the x-gamers network as well. Surprisingly, there were a handful of people online waiting to watch the battle. You would think that since the Journalism Club was ranked number one, there wouldn't be many people to watch them compete against an unranked, unknown team. But still, I saw the number 146 in bold on the x-gamers window. Either these people are really bored or want to how Writer's Block—the name of the Journalism Club team—would deal with a bunch of rabble-rousers. We were, of course, named eponymously for the club that we were in, The SOS Brigade.

The minutes ticked by and my nervousness grew. While I knew what I needed to do in the game, the pre-battle jitters had hit me hard, especially with the amount of chatter that flowed in the x-gamer window as people predicted the outcome, trash talking between people who obviously supported the Journalism Club and the people who didn't support us exactly but hated the Journalism Club's team…

A line of red text grabbed my attention around ten minutes before the start of the battle:

Welcome to the 453rd ranked battle for Defense of the Stars of this season. Today's match up: #1 Writer's Block vs. The SOS Brigade. May the best team win!

That did it for me. I quickly bent down to open the small backpack that I had brought with me and pulled out a bag of potato chips. I tore it open and the smell of fried potatoes flavored with salt and pepper wafted to my nose. I grabbed a handful of the chips and tossed the bag onto the table, popping the chips into my mouth without waiting for anyone else.

Ah, much better.

Kairi had followed up on my example and leaned back in her seat to pull a drawer out where several boxes and bags of snacks sat. She pulled out a bag of BBQ flavored chips out and chucked it at Sora, who caught it with a grin, then took out a box of white chocolate bars, corn chips, and wafers.

It was certainly a sugary day.


The entire battle went off without any problems. I tried desperately to not pay attention to the chatter that went on in the x-gamers window as the battle continued, but found myself eying the reactions every once in a while.

We all went with our usual heroes and began our building. Surprisingly, all of our opponents went with either Clavat Inventor or Lilty Inventor. Now I know that Inventors have an advantage with fleet building, but honestly, what the hell?

"We're using Plan D," Sora said simply. I raised an eyebrow at that. Plan D, huh?

"Who's doing it?" I asked solemnly, changing my original plan of building lots of carriers to building more medical ships, fighters, and tankers.

"Naminé?" Sora asked.

"Negative. Resources spent on both fleet and base."

"I'll do it," said Kairi.

"Go for it," the brown-haired leader nodded in approval. I watched as my base and ships got expanded and completed almost immediately. I then quickly resumed my resource gathering from nearby planets.

My eyes wandered over to the scrolling window and read a few of the lines.

They must suck at offense.

What the hell are they doing?

Where's that ship going? Deep space exploration? Lol.

Writer's Block's done with building their offense. Man, their opponent's gonna wipe so hard.

Lol.

True enough, one of the scout ships that we had sent off a few minutes ago reported back the movement of the enemy fleet heading towards us.

"Prepare for combat," said Sora. We all nodded solemnly and began our preparations, launching fighters and engaging our artilleries as our second line of defense. I watched as our rather small, insignificant counter fleet made its way toward the opponent's fleet, stopping just beyond the asteroid belt that we had made after we leeched all the resources from those planets.

WTF are they doing?

Who knows. This'll be quick.

As I predicted, the small fleet was quickly decimated by the larger fleet, and our enemies had become cockier.

"Are you there yet, Kairi?" asked Sora with slight concern. The enemy fleet had nearly reached the edge of our galaxy.

"Almost," frowned the red-haired girl, her eyes scanning her screen to and fro.

"Intercept them with carriers," said Naminé.

"Let's do that," agreed Sora.

"Going to flank them from behind with special ability," said Denzel.

"Wait for me," said our intrepid leader.

The rest of us—besides Kairi that is—all focused on the invading fleet and sent a carrier ship toward my base as I was the closest one to the enemy. I gulped, praying that my base wouldn't be decimated even though we were severely outnumbered.

The defense fleet quickly engaged the enemy and I set my base to attack mode. Luckily for me, they were within range of my artillery.

"Sending reinforcements," said Riku as he instantly teleported three more tankers to my side. I was too engaged in the battle to notice the confused and outright ridicule we were getting.

"Gimme just one second," said Kairi.

"Crap," I muttered as the last line of the fleet in front of me disappeared with a flash. The enemy fleet, though having lost at least three squadrons and a destroyer, was still going strong. I frowned a bit and watched as their fleet got closer to my base, most likely to throw their hardest hits on the base to demolish it.

"Blow it if you want," Sora murmured, slightly unhappy with how the battle was turning out. I looked over to Denzel and Riku, who shrugged.

"Go for it," said Denzel.

"I'm there," said Kairi. My eyes looked up for a brief moment and I smiled at the turn of events. I made the decision to blow up my own base as a grand finale and a distraction to hide our actual strategy, being carried out by Kairi. I smirked as the explosion took out half of the invading fleet as well as Denzel and Riku's own bases. The ensuing conversation on x-gamers was gold.

"What the fuck!?", "Wow… what a nub…", "What the hell was that?" and "This game is crap." made up the bulk of the lines that scrolled rapidly across the window. I sat back with that goofy smile on my face as soon after, the words "You win!" flashed across my screen. A line of red appeared on the x-gamers window: "The SOS Brigade wins!"

And it was just silence.

"Yeah!" whooped Sora with a wide grin. He jumped up from his chair and leaped over to Kairi, pulling her up and hugging her tightly.

"Job well done," said Riku as he gave us all a thumb's up. Denzel had joined the group hug while Riku had grabbed the nearest bag of chips and proceeded to chow down. I turned to look at Naminé and found a small smile upon her face, which only made me sigh in relief deeper.

Holy crap. Did you see that?

Damn. That was no deep space exploration team. That was a strike team!

WB got owned!


The SOS Brigade thus vaulted to the #1 rank for the Defense of the Stars tournament during that season. Of course, we didn't even bothered with any other battles and stayed undefeated. We did lose our #1 ranking about a day after when other ranked battles were fought. But whatever, we beat them. That's all I care!

As to how we actually managed to win, we knew that the Journalism Club was big on offense from the various videos we've seen—in fact, most of the ranked teams were big on offense, not so much on defense, which is ironic since it's called Defense of the Stars. And the fact that they never go Selkie or Yuke made it easy for us to come up with a stratagem and lure their entire group to us, leaving their own star undefended. All in all, it was quite easily done!

The Journalism Club had grudgingly accepted defeat and relinquished their claim on our money. Sora had a bounce in his step for the entirety of the following week, even when we went off on another city-wide search, he was unusually cheery.

It was a good week.


Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and Haruhi Suzumiya do not belong to me. This piece of work is purely fictional and free to readers. That doesn't give anyone the right to post this on a separate website without my permission though.

A/N: So… much… rambling… Haha. So quick explanations as to what certain things referred to/where they came from.

After Colony is the timeline they used for Gundam Wing.

Defense of the Stars is a name that I made up with Defense of the Ancients and StarCraft in mind. If you read The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or watched the anime with the same name, you'll know that the game they played is a strategy game as well, but more like Battleship the board game than real-time strategies. Team Bastion comes from Team Fortress while War State is created with WarCraft in mind. I don't recall the source for Darkness Rising at the current moment, maybe… Oblivion, hah.

Clavat, Selkie, Lilty, and Yuke are all races from the series Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

x-gamers came from xfire… Anything else? Oh yeah, obvious shout out to Star Wars. I originally had thought to rename everything about Star Wars, but was too lazy to come up with witty names, XP.

Anyhow, at this current rate, it is likely that the next chapter for Intrigues won't be coming out until August. I hope that's not the case, ahhhhhh.

Thanks for reading.