With Blaze's full attention on roasting the Shade Succubus, she doesn't notice the Shade Scorpion charging at her until she is slammed sideways hard into another building, mercifully escaping being buried a second time.
"Tsubaki Moto!" Silver yells.
The Shade Scorpion pauses, turns its beastly head in Silver's direction, and lets out a dæmonic roar of defiance before charging the yōkai.
Perfect. "Now we lead her out of the city!" Silver informs Oak, Slate, and Aqua, all four turning and running towards the city border.
"Will this work?" Oak asks.
Silver risks a look over his shoulder to see the Shade Scorpion chasing them, Blaze Kitsune right behind the beast, and the Shade Succubus chasing the fiery yōkai. "Yep."
Silver leads the pursuit down the widest city streets he can to ensure it remains together, and soon reaches the edge of the city. But he doesn't slow down: with a graceful leap, he clears the city wall, landing on the volcano slope on the other side. Oak, Slate, and Aqua follow him closely, also clearing the wall with ease. However, the Shade Scorpion makes no attempt to leap the wall, instead crashing through it in a shower of steel‑reinforced masonry. Blaze Kitsune attempts to use the Scorpion's momentary delay to pounce, but falls just short, and is forced to chase, not realising the Shade Succubus has closed in and is snipping at the vixen's three tails in a vain attempt to grab hold.
Suddenly, Silver slides to a halt, turning one‑eighty to face the pursuing Shade Scorpion. Oak, Slate, and Aqua turn hard and run past the metallic yōkai, who then raises a foot‑thick solid steel wall twenty feet high and wide. Unable to turn or even slow down, the Scorpion slams into the wall at full speed, with Blaze hitting the Scorpion less than a second later. The double impact tips the wall over: it slams into the ground and kicks up a massive dust cloud just in front of Silver, who had leapt back just in time to avoid being crushed. Momentum carries Blaze off the Scorpion, and she rolls onto her paws, ready to charge.
Before she can charge however, the Shade Succubus, blinded by the dust cloud, trips over the fallen wall and her fallen comrade, and lands heavily on Blaze's head, smashing it into the ground hard enough to bury it in a three‑foot deep crater. As the dust clears, the Scorpion gets back on its feet and charges to attack Blaze, but before she gets close, Oak charges into the Scorpion's flank. The two combatants roll thirty feet before coming to a rest, Oak pinning the Scorpion. The feline yōkai then starts clawing frantically at the Scorpion's back, rending dozens of horrendous deep gashes across the segmented body.
Howling in anger and agony, the Scorpion bucks violently, throwing Oak off her back, the feline yōkai landing twenty feet away on her feet. Oak immediately charges the Scorpion, this time assisted by Aqua's complementary charge from the other direction. However, the Scorpion dodges with surprising agility, causing the two yōkai to run into each other headfirst. But before the Scorpion can take advantage of the yōkai's momentary dizziness, Slate raises a piercing stalagmite right under the Scorpion's midsection, skewering the beast, preventing her from moving.
Oak shakes her head vigorously, and recovers her composure. Noticing the Scorpion is now helplessly pinned by Slate's stalagmite, the feline yōkai wastes no time spinning a dense weave of vines around the Scorpion's legs, arms, and remaining tails, rendering the beast immobile. Aqua then seals the whole morbid mess in a block of solid ice.
The three yōkai surround the trapped Shade Scorpion, just in case the ice starts to crack.
Meanwhile, Silver comes to Blaze's aid, kicking the beast off his wife with his powerful hind legs. Silver then follows up with a charge, but the Succubus is ready, catching Silver in her tentacles.
"Blaze!" Silver cries as the tentacles tighten, threatening to overload the Metal Crystal's protections. "I need a paw here!"
After several failed attempts, Blaze eventually wrenches her head free from the crater it was buried in. "Let go of my husband you fucking sick bitch!" she yells, charging like a meteor into the Succubus, sending her flying thirty feet, where she lands with a sickening crunch, and rolls a further twenty feet, Silver still trapped in her tentacles. Blaze leaps on the Succubus before the beast can recover, slicing the tentacles from her torso with vicious incendiary swipes of her forepaws. The Succubus reacts by grapping the vulpine yōkai's forelegs with crushing force, lifting the kitsune off her.
This gives Silver an opening, which he takes without hesitation, skewering the Succubus's torso with several large metal spikes, pinning the beast to the ground. With the Succubus distracted by the agony of the spikes, Blaze breaks free of the beast's grasp, then melts the tops of the spikes so they're all welded together, preventing the Succubus from removing a single spike.
"NOW TO BURN HER!" Blaze roars, readying a fearsome searing blast.
"NO!" Silver denies, encasing Blaze in a thick steel sarcophagus to contain her incandescence. "Oak! Get Kaede's arms and legs secure!"
Oak bounds over from where the Shade Scorpion is trapped in ice, and quickly binds the Succubus's limbs with vines, which Silver then pins to the ground with more metal spikes.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE!" Blaze bellows from within her steel sarcophagus.
Silver ignores his wife's protestations. "Where's Tsubaki?" he asks Oak.
"Trapped," Oak grins happily, standing back and pointing to the ice cube containing the Scorpion with her forepaw.
Silver breathes a huge sigh of relief. "Thank the Ancients!"
"Don't let your guard down yet," Slate advises.
Suddenly, the ice containing the Scorpion starts to crack.
"Oh poo," Oak sighs, preparing to fight again.
The four yōkai watch as the ice starts to break off in chunks. But just as he's about ready to attack pre‑emptively, Silver notices something. "Slate! Remove that stalagmite!"
"Are you crazy?" Slate asks.
"Trust me," Silver requests.
Slate hesitates a moment, then reduces the stalagmite to a fine dust.
"Aqua, melt the ice," Silver requests. "Oak, remove the vines."
"Why?" Oak asks.
"I think she's returning to normal," Silver explains.
Aqua melts the ice, soaking the ground as Oak unwinds the vines. The four yōkai then watch as the Shade Scorpion begins to shrink, the grotesque mutations disappearing one‑by‑one until, eventually, the familiar form of Tsubaki Moto returns, the tanuki lying unconscious in the mud.
"At least we don't have to kill her," Silver sighs in relief.
"She may already be dead," Aqua observes.
"Well… yeah," Silver admits.
Oak leans down over Tsubaki, holding a huge ear over the prone tanuki. "She's breathing," the feline yōkai announces. "And I can hear a heartbeat."
"Thank the Ancients," Silver acknowledges.
"I think the same is happening to Kaede," Slate observes.
Silver looks over to the trapped Succubus to see that she is indeed beginning to shrink. "Shit!" Silver hurriedly removes the metal spikes, rending them to nothing in an instant. The yōkai then watch as the Succubus continues to shrink, until the familiar form of Kaede Himura returns, the pika also unconscious.
Oak pads over and checks for vital signs. "She's alive too."
"That means… That means it's over!" Silver concludes. "The war is over! We did it guys!"
"We… We won?" Oak asks, almost unable to believe.
"Yes!" Silver chuckles. "Oh, by the Ancients, it's finally over!"
"What a relief!" Slate breathes.
Oak flops heavily to the ground.
"Oak, you OK?" Aqua asks, a worried tone creeping into his voice.
"Totally," Oak purrs contentedly.
"Then why did you flop so hard?" Silver asks.
"Because I'm a kitty!" Oak giggles, rolling onto her back playfully. "The biggest kitty on Avalice!"
"We should power down, return to our normal selves," Slate suggests.
"Soon," Silver agrees. "But we still have one more problem to deal with," he adds, looking over to the steel sarcophagus imprisoning Blaze Kitsune.
Oak follows Silver's gaze. "Why is that big box thing glowing?" she asks, her tone serious.
"Because we're about to face the scariest foe we've ever faced," Silver realises.
Suddenly, the sarcophagus detonates, the metal it was formed from evaporating instantly in the intense heatwave that washes over Tsubaki, Kaede, and the yōkai, singeing the fur of the defeated Grand Masters, and causing the Elemental Crystals to raise protective shields.
"Shit," Oak laments, rolling onto her feet.
"You can say that again," Silver agrees.
"I'd rather not," Oak replies.