"LOOK WELL!" Emperor Talpa's voice ripped through the four men that stood at dutiful attention before him, a palpable pressure that reminded each warlord to whom their lives were owed. The bronze-gilded framework behind Talpa's generals flashed to unnatural life. A faded, moving tapestry of abandoned streets and wrecked vehicles eventually gave way to an unlikely sight: A young woman dressed in modern pink jacket and shorts chic wheeling a shopping cart through the empty aisles of a convenience store.

The four were familiar with this mortal female. Anubis had targeted her in their first battle, successfully hindering the five ronin from donning their armor as they tried to protect her and the small child in her care. However, at the moment of Anubis' triumph, a wandering monk appeared and dispelled the protective warding, donning the five's armor, and forcing his master's intervention to destroy them before their resonance could be fully utilized.

Ever since that fateful day, that same monk had plagued their every attempt to snuff out the rebellious flame of those five nuisances, and against all odds, the seemingly inconsequential female and boy seemed accessories to their continued failures. As their master once again focused on this human, escaped from their ambush on the Tokyo metropolitan center, each warlord felt their own unique sense of shame.

Emperor Talpa was not ignorant of their thoughts, in fact he seemed to savor the anger and resentment that now emanated from his vassals as they were reminded of their failures. His spirit supped deeply, and he continued.

"The armors never would have been recovered had she not interfered. It seems hers is the ability to unite their quarrelsome hearts."

Both Cale and Sekhmet's heads bowed slightly at the memories of their shortcomings. At least the Warlord of Darkness had assured her cold death before being thwarted by the Halo's unexpected retaliation. The warlord of Venom, however, had foolishly left the woman and child alive while he gloated and goaded the blinded boy, savoring his assured victory until it slipped from his grasp. Sekhmet's jaw clenched in shame. Cale similarly sneered, but for a slightly different reason.

The Ronin's woman had called him out personally on that icy ridge. Her tongue had been sharper than any lash, and never had he suffered insult from one so weak, without soon snuffing its source. Cale had wanted to draw out her suffering, but duty to Talpa's orders bade him end her quickly to force Halo out of hiding. What he had envisioned for her, given time, would have been so much sweeter…

Talpa's voice drawled in the uncomfortable silence of the four. "You have tried and failed to eliminate her, but fear not, my loyal generals. Fortune smiles on your shortcomings, for my greatest sorcerer has devised a plan so devastating, so crippling to their cause, that it shall scatter their mortal will to the winds."

Anubis and Cale leaned forward imperceptibly, both having come closest to ensuring the woman's death, they felt a strange excitement to hear of their master's solution, whatever it may be.

"Thus, granting the request of High Priest Badamon, I now require her presence."

The shadows in the room seemed to clamor from the flicker of the cold blue of the candles brought on by each warlord's silent reaction to Talpa's words. The four knew better than to question their master, but even now, each could sense the collective hesitancy, objection, and insult being reigned in desperately before it would earn inevitable scorn. Emperor Talpa chuckled darkly to himself, savoring the negative human emotions they each strained to quell.

"Lord Badamon is preparing for our new guest. I leave her invitation to you, my loyal warlords." The moving image of the young woman framed in lacquered pine and gilded bronze flickered as Mia looked around again in hesitation, a chill apparent as she shuddered briefly.

"She is to be retrieved alive. Do not fail me."

Emperor Talpa's ghostly form faded with the snuffing of the candle flames, leaving the quarrelsome lot to their task. As the warlord's raised voices recounted near successes and heaped excuses of subsequent failures, a steady, slow scraping drifted through the cold corridors and through the gasp-thin paper walls.

Elsewhere in the expansive, seemingly endless floors of Talpa's castle, four nether spirits meditated in the corners of a spacious drawing room, their voices resonating with supernatural energy as they concentrated on their master, seated at a modest wooden table in the center of their congregation. Badamon's pale gaze was fixed, and his ethereal drone blended with the steady grind of his mortar and pestle in meditative contemplation of the spell at hand. The sleeve of his tattered sokutai brushed to and fro in hypnotic rhythm as his words crawled through the incense-heavy air and into the bowl.

Slowly, the faintest wisps of red began seeping from the edges of the stone mortar. With the tiniest curl of his lips, Badamon's voice, and those of the four nether spirits cut in perfect unison, leaving a deathly silence in their wake that seemed to banish the vapors of the mixture from their mindless wandering, each tendril snapping like a cut cord under tension, back into the stone bowl. The ancient apparition's smile betrayed his prideful nature.

"Good."