Taking Back the Crown

by JCMorrigan

Mozenrath. Archibald Snatcher. Roman Torchwick. Mad Madam Mim. Yzma. The Huntsman. Wuya. Ayam Aghoul. Their mission: take over the multiverse, or look fabulous trying. Rated M for swearing, steamy implications and VERY bloody battles. Contains slash and het shipping.

108. Ablation Moraine

"Ooookay!" Sora proclaimed as he stood in a shallow stone basin of water, regarding the map. "This time, I've got the map right-side-up, and we're in Slimy Spring Galaxy!"

His brow furrowed. He turned the paper over in his hands. "…Unless we're in Space Storm Galaxy?"

Riku took a look around. They stood before a dank cavern entrance, lush and wet foliage springing up on the ledges to either side of them. The water here in the basin was halfway up his shoes. Even more water trickled down the ledges' faces. The stone was pale blue.

"I think Slimy Spring is a pretty safe bet," he resolved, and Sora nodded in agreement, folding up the map and storing it away.

"Let's check it out!" The brunette charged into the cavern full tilt –

And fell down a long, steep shaft with a "WHOA!"

"SORA!" Riku charged after, pulling up short of the precipice Sora had fallen down.

It wasn't actually a straight drop, he could see now. It was a very steep ramp, water cascading down it. Almost like a natural waterslide. At the bottom, which was quite far below, the drop culminated in a body of clear water through which Riku could see the green, mossy bed below and Sora bobbing in the pool.

Sora put up a hand and waved. "I'M OKAY!" he yelled. "YOU SHOULD COME ON DOWN!"

With a shrug, Riku stepped out a little more gracefully than Sora had done, landing just right on the slope that he slid down as one would do on a slide. It was actually a good thrill, and Riku was almost a little disappointed to be deposited in the waters below. Then again, the water was nice and cool.

"Hey!" Sora had noticed that the water extended even further back into the cavern, deepening into a veritable sea. "We should explore around here!"

"Sounds fun," Riku told him.

Without warning, Sora's entire body shimmered with a bright light. Next thing, he was a merman with a stunning blue tail, leaping an arc over the water's surface before diving down. His head popped up to grin at Riku.

"…What are you doing?" Riku asked tentatively.

"It'll be easier to travel this way," Sora told him. "We won't have to worry about air if we're mermen."

"I, uh…" Riku turned his head away (much as it pained him to do so, because over the years, Sora's chest had filled in rather nicely).

"Wait a minute," Sora said in thought. "Can you…not turn into a merman? I thought – "

"No, I can do it," Riku broke in. "I just…I'm not sure it's something you wanna see."

"Why wouldn't I wanna see it?" Sora asked. "I've seen you with your shirt off plenty of times. And I've seen a lot of mermaids. Do you not like how you look or something?"

"I like it," Riku muttered. "Probably more than I should. I've changed a few times in the bath, just to see what it'd look like. But it's…not what you're expecting."

"Huh?"

"I can go just fine holding my breath."

"Riku…" Sora looked at him with concern in his deep blues. "If there's something bothering you, I wanna help you with it. If…you're worried I won't think you're beautiful, I always do, so that shouldn't be a problem."

Riku met his gaze again, cracking a smile. "You're not gonna let this go until I show you, are you?"

"Nnnnnope."

"Don't say I didn't warn you," Riku told him. "It's gonna remind you of…well, you'll see."

He called his own aura to shimmer about himself, willing his body to transform. The first time he had done this, he was able to perfectly clearly picture a merman's tail, and his heart had almost stopped when he'd seen what had happened instead. His shirt and jacket glimmered out of existence. His legs transformed into appendages that swirled and curled through the currents.

Sora gasped. "You're an OCTOPIN!"

From the waist down, Riku's body was dark octopus-like tentacles, gracefully arranging themselves in the water below. "I think the reason I look so much like Ursula might be because of all the influence I took from her and the others," he stated.

"But you don't look like Ursula," Sora told him. "You look like you. And you're BEAUTIFUL! Can I?"

Riku was stunned by how much Sora's eyes were sparkling; one of his hands was outstretched to Riku's lower half. "Uhhh…sure," Riku told him, extending one tentacle.

As Sora's fingers stroked over the smooth skin, the tentacle wrapped gently around Sora's wrist. "Now I wish mine looked that cool," Sora pouted.

"Hey," Riku laughed, now abandoning all doubts regarding his aquatic form, "this is just for me. You can find your own way to be cool."

They disengaged from each other's grip. "Let's go!" Sora encouraged, taking another leap into the waters. Riku submerged, tentacles pumping to propel him after the fish-tailed boy.

Slimy Spring was a cavalcade of underwater wonders, with strange plants and stranger creatures abound – waving worms, rolling sea urchins, even spherical ghosts. Some acted hostile, but backed off when Riku gave them a pointed glare. After a long journey of exploration, including making a midair jump over a break in the pools that spanned the void of space itself, the two boys surfaced at the far end of the spring. A small field of green grass spanned out after the water shallowed. Beyond its limits was a steep drop. Behind, over the spring, was a sheer rock wall that secluded this area. Gentle waterfalls cascaded down the wall to join a great sea that originated far too far below the precipice to make for a safe jump this time. The sun hung low in the pale sky, tinting the waters orange.

Shifting back to human form so he could walk up onto the grass with legs and shoes, Sora remarked, "Look! We made it just in time for the sunset!"

As Riku followed, taking his own human form and regaining his dark clothes, he remarked, "It's actually a sunrise."

Sora turned to look at him quizzically. "How do you know?"

"When you count on dawn marking your way," Riku told him, "you learn the difference."

Sora plopped himself down in a sitting position on the grass, picking up stray blades that stuck to his wet clothing. "It's beautiful. Y'know, it's kinda funny. Our old tree always faced west, back on the Islands, so we only ever watched the sunset. I can't remember if we've ever seen a good sunrise over the sea."

Riku sat down beside him. "Neither can I."

"You wanna just…stay here for a bit? Watch it come up together?"

"Yeah. I do."

Sora took out his GummiPhone, raised it, then lowered it, shaking his head.

"Something wrong?" Riku asked.

"Just…I was gonna take a picture," Sora told him. "But then I remembered that sunrises and sunsets never really look as good in pictures as they do in real life."

"They don't. This one will look really good in our memories, though."

"Then let's pay attention to it with all our hearts."

...

Jacques von Hämsterviel darted through the ventilation ducts, taking the twists, turns, and drops that he had mentally calculated would get him to his destination. No, the fan that spun lazily at the end of the passage did not threaten to rip him to shreds; however, it did get his cape in a nasty tangle and left it with a tear that would need mending later.

This was not seen by Hämsterviel as in any way a lesson about capes.

At last, he reached the endpoint, marked by a barred grate. Hämsterviel's tiny arm snaked through the bars, grasping the screw at the upper right corner and turning it until it had dropped to the floor below with a ping. The process repeated, slow but steady, for the other three screws, and then the entire grate clanged down.

Hämsterviel made a leap from the vent to an extruded fusebox mounted to the wall. Prying the door of it open, he dangled from it by a hand, which was not an easy feat given his lack of upper body strength. He was, after all, a scientist, not a soldier.

His brain made up for it; as he felt his arm tiring and losing grip, he was able to quickly scan the box and find what he needed. A loose panel pried away; cords exposed. He found the correct one in a wink, and brought it to his mouth, giving it one sharp bite.

It sparked in his mouth, and he felt a slight jolt of electricity as he tumbled to the floor with a "WHOA!". Then he looked up to see the fruits of his labor.

Previously, the stretch of hallway that now separated him from Duff Killigan and DNAmy had been dissected with a myriad of lasers. Whether they were the alarm-setting type or the actual burning type, no one had wanted to figure out. Hämsterviel, however, had figured out how to use his size to his advantage and circumvent the whole problem.

"Well, aren't you just the sweetest little thing!" Amy cooed as she and Duff made their way to him. "You got rid of our problems in a blink, sugar booger!"

"Excuuuuuuse me?" Hämsterviel retorted. "What are you implying, that I am some sort of disgusting mucus mixed with superfluous foodstuffs?"

"Just take the compliment!" Duff yelled at him.

They'd already worked around several high-security obstacles in the military laboratory facility they'd invaded. From there, the only thing that stood between them and the Centurion Project was a steel door protected by a keypad. Once again, Hämsterviel's teeth proved essential in dismantling and shorting out the keypad, sliding the door open.

"Now, remember," Duff said as the trio entered the small room where their target lay on a raised pillar. "I'll be the one ta wear the thing."

"That is what we agreed on!" Amy chirped. Part of the reason Duff had vied for her to come along on his team was because he knew she wouldn't be argumentative about that. The other reason had to do with trying to spare everyone the horror of having her and Monty in the same squad.

"When it comes to sheer brawn, you are the superior specimen," Hämsterviel agreed. "This device should make you the ultimate engine of WAR!" A high-pitched cackle followed.

"Just clearin' it up before we activate what's obviously the only alarm we can't bet around," Duff stated.

The Centurion Project came in the form of a shining silver bracelet encased in a glass cube. In one quick motion, Duff reached back, retrieved a golf club from the case he kept strapped to his back, and brought the club down on the case so hard, the glass shattered.

A piercing alarm screamed. Hämsterviel pulled his long ears down to either side of his head, screeching, "JUST PUT THE TIRESOME TRINKET ON YOUR FLABBY WRIST!"

"It's no' flabby!" Duff growled as he slipped the bracelet over his arm; it immediately tightened to fit his skin perfectly, with no removal unless he willed it. "Could a flabby wrist achieve a three-hundred-and-fifty-meter drive?"

"CEASE YOUR ARGUING AND ACTIVATE THE ARMOR!" Hämsterviel yelled at him. "BEFORE WE ARE OVERRUN BY ARMED SECURITY!"

Duff stared at his wrist in confusion.

"What's wrong, sweetie?" Amy asked.

"The thing is turned on by stress," Duff said with a shrug. "I'm just…no' stressed at the moment."

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU ARE NOT STRESSED?" Hämsterviel bellowed. "WE ARE MERE MILLISECONDS AWAY FROM BEING APPREHENDED BY A VERITABLE ARMY OF THIS LABORATORY'S PROTECTIVE FORCES!"

"Yeah, but tha's just another Tuesday," Duff remarked.

"Hmm…" Amy thought it over. The plan formed in her mind. She gave a nonchalant shrug. "Oh, well. Guess we'll have to do our best with our natural talents."

"WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, WOMAN?" Hämsterviel yelled over the blaring alarm.

Amy gave him a wink.

"Your conspiratorial gesture does nothing to reassure me," Hämsterviel told her, "and will fail to do so until you have revealed to me exactly what it is I am supposed to know that our simpleminded sportsman does not."

"Wha's he talkin' about?" Duff asked.

"Oh, nothing." Amy put her hands behind her back and rocked on her heels innocently. "On a tangent, Duffy, I've always wanted to see just how good you are at golf. Care to show me out in the hall?"

"…I guess?" Duff responded.

Amy practically skipped past him out to the hallway, where red lights of warning strobed to accompany the breach signal. All the better. At the hallway's far end, fifty feet away or more, was a tiny security camera they had disabled on the way in. It wasn't a straight shot, either; it hung just at the end of where the corner intersected to the perpendicular hall.

"You can hit that camera, can't you?" Amy asked sweetly, having taken into account the distance, the angle, the flashing lights, and the track record that had descended Duff into villainy in the first place.

"Are ye daft?" Duff asked. "O' course I can hit such a huge, obvious target! Watch an' learn!"

He produced a golf ball from his pocket. Plinked it to the floor as he drew a club. Teed up. His form was perfect, his swing impeccable.

The ball crashed into the far wall from the camera's angle about five feet short of the camera itself.

"Ohhhh, sorry, sweetie," Amy said with a grin. "Looks like you can't do it after all."

"AAAAAAAAARGH!" Duff screamed. "IS NO' MY FAULT! IS A SIMPLE SHOT! IF THOSE BLASTED LIGHTS WEREN'T IN ME EYES – AN' I'M HAVIN' A BAD DAY! IS NO' FAIR! I CAN MAKE THAT SHOT! I CAN, CAN, CAN, CAAAAAN – "

The Centurion Project exploded. Solid metal armor erupted over Duff's body, encasing his thick frame in an impressive shell and tearing up his tartan in the process. Cannons emerged from his wrists and shoulders alike as his head was encased in a spherical protective helmet.

Distracted, Duff remarked, "Now, tha's what I'm talkin' about!"

The security guards had finally made their way down the hall, only to be blasted en masse by Duff's new weaponry. As the golfer rocketed and exploded his way back up through the facility, Amy practically danced after him without having to lift a finger to help.

"Impressive," Hämsterviel remarked as he followed. "Perhaps she has more than additive-augmented mucus under that skull of hers after all. Which is more than I can say for the golfer."

...

A storm had built up over Terra Lumina. By the time Ruby, Rapunzel, Stork, Lea, Roxas, Rainbow Dash, Finn, and Lyrae had arrived there, having to take a common transport shuttle in lieu of their own ship, a light rain poured down from the clouds that obscured the sun.

"Sure, it's a little gloomy," Rapunzel said cheerily, "but doesn't the rain feel wonderful on your skin? It reminds you that you're alive!"

"That's not always a good thing," Stork muttered so Rapunzel couldn't hear.

"I never liked rain," Lea huffed. "Powers are useless in it. Not to mention whenever it rained over Never Was, it always just looked so…I dunno…"

"Even emptier than usual," Roxas filled in.

"Yeah," Lea agreed. "Yeah, that's it exactly!"

"Well, I hate it," Finn pouted. "We need some sunshine, dudes!"

"Heh," Rainbow Dash remarked. "I can fix that in the time it'll take ya to blink."

"Let's not mess with the local weather patterns?" Ruby said quickly. "Okay, so the quickest way to the crash site is if we cut through town. If we – "

She stopped short, gasping.

Everyone else saw it a moment later.

Terra Lumina's kingdom had once been a thriving settlement of carved sandstone domes and thatched rooftops. Its glowing crystals had been embedded in the walls to give off soft ambient light. At the head of it all stood its squarish palace, painted with bright colors in pleasing patterns of diamonds, squares, and circles. Now, while the palace still stood, many of the kingdom's homes and businesses had been simply razed, reduced to rubble and stray thatch. Here and there, people worked to reconstruct, but in no great numbers.

"What HAPPENED here?" Rapunzel cried.

"Something terrible," Ruby said with a hitch in her throat, suddenly glad Jaune wasn't along on this mission. She could already hear him in her heart saying how he could bear to lose no more.

"That's just par for the course at this point," Stork sighed, knowing the fact that he was numb to this was an even worse symptom of the disease.

"We gotta check in!" Roxas cried, barreling straight for the palace without warning.

Lea cracked a slight smile. "Y'know…he really is like Sora in more ways than one."

As the others fell in step behind Roxas' trail, Finn asked, "Should we do something to fix this place up?"

"We gotta!" Rainbow Dash cried. "…Right?"

"What CAN we do?" Lea replied. "None of us is Merlin! We can't just rebuild these houses by flicking a wand at 'em!"

Rapunzel kept close to Stork. "I know this is bad," she told him.

"It is," he affirmed. "And?"

"You're still okay," Rapunzel reminded him. "Finn is still okay. All of us in this group are okay. And we have no proof the other Storm Hawks got hurt. A lot of innocent people…did." She sighed. "But we're okay. And…we can walk away from this."

"I can't believe you of all people are saying something like that," Stork told her, mildly stunned. "Aren't you bogged down with empathy for everyone who most likely died in whatever cataclysm hit this place?"

"I am," Rapunzel admitted. "But I know that's not how you work. And right now, I want to help you as much as I can. Here and in Radiant Garden, it seems like everyone is suffering all over. I HAVE to prioritize." She paused. "Once, I chose to put the people of my kingdom over a friend who needed my help. And even though I know I made the right decision…I still really regret it. Almost every day. This is a case where I can AFFORD to let someone else take the reins on the big problems. This time, I'm going to focus on the friend who needs me." She patted the Gummi bag on her hip. "And his ship."

"Thanks," Stork said softly. "I, uh…I owe you one after this."

"No, you don't, and I'm not going to listen to you talking about being in my debt."

Ruby kept her eyes dead focused on the palace as she strode forward with intent. Perhaps all she was was a team leader in a squad of four students, students of a school that didn't exist anymore. Yet she still felt that as a leader, she had to take responsibility for things. So while Rapunzel and Stork contemplated prioritizing themselves above Terra Lumina, Ruby was bound and determined to know how she could help it.

Inside the palace, Roxas was already deep in conversation with Petrel. "Oh, and these are my friends," he interrupted himself to say. "Guys, this is the king of Terra Lumina."

Getting the hint, they all bowed, save Finn until Lea knocked him in the stomach with his elbow. As she rose, Ruby asked, "Your majesty, what happened?"

"A terrible tragedy," Petrel told her. "Cyclonis and her new magical ally doused the light of our crystals, leaving us susceptible to Nightcrawlers. They then set an army of the Nightcrawlers on our very kingdom. Many lives were lost."

"Why would they do that?" Finn asked.

"Do they NEED a reason?" Lea retorted. "It's Maleficent! She has fun doing this kinda stuff!"

"She did indeed have a motive," Petrel explained. "She sought something she called 'The Book of Prophecies.'"

Ruby gasped, then looked to Stork. They exchanged an expression of pure horror. Neither wanted to say it out loud: Maleficent had come looking for the book because they had been there. Though, thinking back on the order of events, that might have had more to do with Necrolai, but Ruby and Stork still felt the weight of the cause and effect on their shoulders.

Ruby resolved that the only way to make up for it was to lend a hand. "What can we do to fix this?" she asked.

"Nothing," Petrel told her. "My people have worked tirelessly day and night to rebuild. What they have achieved in months, you cannot achieve in days. Nor can you bring back the dead. You are only travelers, and I am aware you must continue on your way."

"But there's gotta be SOMETHING we can do!" Roxas insisted. "Even if it's just cleaning up some trash, or keeping the bees out, or hauling cargo!"

"All of that has been done," Petrel explained. "This problem is woven into Terra Lumina, and it is Luminans who understand our struggle."

"Can't we at least find some way to put the light back in the crystals?" Rapunzel asked.

"If you know of such magic, then yes," Petrel told her. "However, I doubt you do."

The team became crestfallen, realizing he was right. "We just can't leave your kingdom like this," Ruby insisted. "Not after – "

"I am not interested in the help of those looking to assuage their guilt or build their reputation from our destruction."

After Petrel was regarded with shocked stares, he sighed. "I apologize. Already, we have had 'assistance' from those with less than noble intentions. I should not be so quick to assume."

"…You're not totally wrong, though," Ruby admitted. "I saw this place all broken and messed up, and I just felt so bad, and I…I wanna help, but it is about guilt, too."

"And I kinda, uh, like the attention that comes with doin' the heroic stuff," Finn admitted, scratching the back of his head.

"We're sorry we bothered you," Roxas said softly. "We should head out."

"I am curious," Petrel stated. "You seemed surprised by the state of this kingdom. That means something else brought you here."

"We're lookin' for our friends," Finn explained. "Two of 'em could still be here. Seen 'em? One's a Wallop, really cool dude, best pal ever? The other one's a little guy, blue and furry."

"Hmm." Petrel thought it over. "There is a sky lemur that recently appeared, roaming the city. He seems…more intelligent than the other sky lemurs of the Terra. I have offered him food on more than one occasion."

"Sky lemur?" Finn sighed. "Radarr's not a sky lemur. He's a – "

"Did you stop to think that MAYBE," Stork snapped at him, "that's what Radarr's species is CALLED on this side of Atmos, which has been SEPARATED FROM OUR CULTURE FOR CENTURIES?"

"Dude!" Finn snapped. "You didn't have to get rude about it!"

"I'm not…being…rude. I'm just pointing out WHAT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS!"

"Oh yeah, Mr. Smart Guy? If you know everything, then…then…then…what's the square root of three thousand, four hundred and fifty-five?"
"THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RADARR!"

Rapunzel knew, as she watched Stork and Finn yell at each other, that neither was truly angry. In fact, this was the most lively she'd seen Stork since they'd painted together in Radiant Garden. Both he and Finn were trying to balance arguing with cracking smiles. They may have seemed opposites, but it was no wonder they were friends – they complemented each other, and bickering like brothers revitalized their spirits.

"Thank you," Ruby told Petrel, bowing again. "We're going to go look for him."

"WAIT!" A blue blur leaving a rainbow in her wake shot between Ruby and Petrel. "Seriously, there's ONE thing we can do. Just ONE teeny tiny little thing! Just for right now!"

When Ruby realized what Rainbow Dash was getting at, she smiled. "I think we can do that much."

"What do you propose?" Petrel asked warily. However, when Rainbow Dash spelled out her terms, he agreed immediately.

The people of Terra Lumina went about their work as best they could, either in the reconstruction effort or in the daily routine of simply maintaining community life. Today was an especially bleak day for them to do so, given the clouds overhead that reminded them of their sorrows and the rain that fell upon them like their own tears uncried.

Then a blazing rainbow flashed overhead, and wherever it trailed, the clouds were herded like so many sheep, rounded up and simply pulled away on the current. The sun broke through the now-dry air, and for many, this was just enough to get them to smile. For, after all…

"Sometimes, all you need is a little light in the dark," Rapunzel commented. "Even when everything else around you is gloomy, just the tiniest bit of sunshine can remind you that there's good in the world. …s. Worlds. Plural. I keep forgetting that."

She looked to Stork. Stork looked to Finn, then back to her. He smiled at her. She smiled at him.

Finn's eyebrows waggled as he nudged Stork playfully. "You got a girlfriend while I was gone, didn't you?"

As Stork gaped, Rapunzel giggled. "Finn – " Stork sputtered. "I – just – you can't – NO!"

"We're just friends," Rapunzel stated. "Believe me, we are SO just friends."

"She's practically married to someone else," Stork told Finn. "Someone with a sense of fun and adventure. Like you. Except he has common sense to go with it."

"Aw, sweet!" Finn said as he pumped his fist. Then the insult sank in: "HEY!"

Rainbow Dash landed, her work complete. "Mission accomplished!" she declared. "That oughta put some spring in everypony's gallops!"

A sudden chatter sounded from nearby. All turned to look. Finn and Stork both cried out.

As soon as the clouds had cleared up and the rain abated, a certain new resident of Terra Lumina had abandoned the makeshift lean-to he'd fashioned out of rubble and was using to keep dry. He figured the sun made better weather for foraging and exploring. He hadn't expected to run directly into two friends he'd all but given up on.

"RADARR!" Finn cried, running at the small creature full tilt.

Radarr chattered excitedly as he leapt up into Finn's arms; Finn hugged him as tightly as he could. "We missed ya, little buddy!" he said, voice cracking.

Radarr chittered more, and Finn, understanding, held him out at arm's length. "Aerrow?" he sighed. "No, we haven't found him yet. You're the first one. Hey…you've been on this Terra a while. Is Junko around?"

Radarr shook his head decisively.

"Guess we're back to square one on that one," Finn groaned.

"Maybe it's time for us to head over to the other side," Ruby mused. "We know Aerrow is over there somewhere, and we can probably pick up his trail."

"Ready when you are!" Lyrae chirped. "So where's this big ocean?"

"All of the legends say the Cirrus Sea that lies between Terras is so deep, none can explore its chasms," Petrel pointed out. "Perhaps that is a good place to begin. I can give you a map."

"We're gonna have the squad back together in no time!" Finn cried.

"You know what?" Stork realized. "I'm actually starting to believe that."

...

Terra Nord featured no fewer than three mountains, the tallest of which stretched up into the air like a spire, almost touching the clouds. These mountains formed a curving wall of sorts to protect the kingdom below, where the natives and the immigrant Blizzarians had learned to cohabitate. The smaller two of the mountains served as training ranges for their combined Sky Knight squadron – the Absolute Zeroes and the Meridian Guardians joined to make the Zero Meridians – to practice upon the slopes.

On the other side of the mountains, there was no civilization. All was still. Less than half of the Terra's non-mountain area was distributed there, a small yet significant crescent. The altitude of the terra combined with its northern position maintained a polar climate without the use of any Blizzard crystals, and so this crescent was paved with glittering white snow, undisturbed by footsteps, for who had any reason to hike or fly all the way over the mountains just to get there? Similarly were the slopes of the mountains deserted here, and on this side, you would be far enough away from the kingdom that you couldn't hear the noise of urban life at all.

From thin clouds, light snowflakes fluttered down to the unpopulated plain below, catching on the slopes. A lone figure perched on a jutting ridge on the tallest of the three mountains, as high up as he could be without enduring the symptoms of altitude sickness.

Vexen seemed, from the outside, as still as the snow that lay below. His stony facial expression betrayed nothing. No hint of the turmoil that raged in his mind, like the flickering of an all-consuming fire, a fire that threatened to burn up his sanity the way it had once burned up his flesh.

He knew about post-traumatic stress disorder. He knew about triggers. He had always thought himself above such things. They were products of lesser minds, weaker minds, and did he not have the strongest mind of all, cultivated over years and years of study and research, refined with maturity?

Yet he was not immune. The implications were not lost on him. Maleficent's forces could gain an instant advantage over him by making a simple noise. So could Sora's, if they were the sort to stoop so low. Yet that didn't seem as important in this moment as it should have. What occupied his mind was the memory. How it felt to have his flesh torn away in the heat. How it felt to feel yourself explode from the inside out, the epicenter forming where your heart would've been, ironically giving you your last heartbeat.

The colors still stood out to him – almost vague abstracts. The green of the lawn. The red of his assailant's hair. All so bright like fire. He tried to drown it out by focusing on the uninterrupted, meek whiteness of Terra Nord, the gentle snowfall. Only dull colors. Hardly any colors at all. Nothing to threaten.

Vexen appreciated snow and ice. He might even go so far as to say he loved it. Predictable, yes, given his magical predilection, and yet it spoke to him of peace and equilibrium. People complained of it being too cold, but did the cold not have its purpose? By now, they'd all woken up to the idea that there was no Light without a corresponding Darkness. By that same token, could you have Summer without Winter? There were all sorts of scientific reasons that winters were good for the worlds, if only people would just listen to the facts rather than comparing beach vacations versus making snow angels.

"Ahem."

Vexen flinched. He turned suddenly, his frame relaxing as he realized it was Ravess walking out to his side upon the ledge.

"What an aesthetic find," she remarked offhandedly. "It almost makes one want to compose a concerto about the snow, or perhaps a choral arrangement – if only so many plebeians hadn't already done so."

"You would let the substandard work of a hundred plebeians censor your vision?" Vexen sniffed. "Pitiful."

Ravess smirked. "Then again…what I have in mind would stand out, far and away."

They stood in silence. Ravess had thought long and hard about how she would approach Vexen in this moment, and the only frame of reference she had was how she herself would want to be treated. She had realized that she would not want to be comforted or coddled. What had happened was an embarrassment. Neither would she want to be alone. She would want control of the situation.

So she offered that to Vexen. He would lead. She would follow. She would not try to soothe his pain. She would not imply that he in any way needed her. Yet she would stay. After all, she had chosen him, and he her, because they were so similar. She liked to think she understood, and really, shouldn't Vexen be grateful he'd been so lucky as to find her?

"You didn't need to follow me," Vexen began. "I hardly need your words of pity."

"It isn't pity. We abandoned the battle. After all, the Key wasn't there. I came to find you before we proceeded to the next step. Unless you would rather we proceeded without you."

"Absolutely not."

Neither made any motion to leave that spot.

"Nor did you need to rescue me," Vexen accused. "I had it under control."

Ravess gave a noncommittal "hmph." Neither had the energy to carry out that particular argument.

"You know Winter is just as important if not more so than Summer, don't you?" Vexen said out of the blue.

"I had assumed," Ravess replied. The implication lay on her tongue: tell me more. The deeper implication: help me put you on a better path.

"Snow revitalizes the soil," Vexen stated. "Its runoff refills rivers and other critical bodies of water. Its temperature regulates the very balance of the atmosphere. Without polar climes to offset equatorial tropics and deserts, and presuming the lack of compensating magic, an ecological system without Winter would suffocate." A pause. "And to think so many worlds carelessly destroy Winter with pollution, leaving their atmospheres to box gases in and create eternal summers that will dry them to husks."

"I wouldn't think you so moral as to care."

"It isn't morality. It's basic survival. Somehow I get the feeling our friends in the upper echelon do not pay the same attention."

"If anyone is to singlehandedly destroy the ozone layer over our future empire," Ravess sighed haughtily, "you can be certain it will be Mozenrath. That is why he NEEDS people like us."

"Indeed," Vexen agreed. "Let him and his inner circle exert their frivolities and emotional outbursts. Our value will be realized once they see how much we have cleaned up in their wake."

The silence settled back in. Ravess, figuring Vexen's mood had improved considerably, contemplated shifting the conversation in the direction of returning to the group. Then he caught her off guard:

"Do you know that when a Nobody reforms as a whole, after being destroyed along with its Heartless…the resulting person feels the pain of the method of the Nobody's death upon reawakening?"

Ravess nearly choked on her own saliva. Well, that made things that much worse. So he'd not only had to die; he'd had to come back to life feeling as though he were dying all over again.

"It took me a while to awaken," Vexen said more softly, eyes still fixed on the landscape in front of him. "I was rendered comatose, albeit with stable vital signs. It was the pain that finally opened my eyes."

Ravess gave him silence. She knew he didn't want apology, sympathy, or, worst of all, pity. What was left? Only silence.

"AXEL could not apologize enough," he growled, barely audible. "Not that it would have made any difference whatsoever if I could forgive him."

"Why don't you kill him?" The question slipped from Ravess' lips without her even thinking about it, and she feared for a moment she'd misstepped.

After a long silence, Vexen replied, "There is no reason not to. The next time our paths cross, this will be rectified immediately."

He never intended to get anywhere near Lea, not ever again. If someone unrelated snapping could set him off, what would happen if he were faced with Lea's bright red hair, bright green eyes, the way he'd seen them on that day? The fact that they had cohabitated for so long after his eventual awakening gave him no relief. After all, he'd just been removed from that form of exposure therapy.

When Vexen told Ravess, "We should depart at once," she knew she had given him what he had wanted. He still felt that perhaps, he should hint just a little more at it, and so he turned to look at her, keeping his stony mask. "Thank you…for alerting me to our next phase."

"Really, I was the only one there clearheaded enough to think of it," Ravess lied as she withdrew her scroll. "The others have already moved on. We can catch up if – "

A sudden shimmer; their gazes were drawn to the ledge they stood on. Between their pairs of feet, a glittering object.

Ravess gasped sharply; "THE KEY!"

It took Vexen a moment to realize that somehow, what he was looking for had practically dropped into his lap. The sheer incredulity of it all kept him from lunging immediately.

That pause was just too long. The crystal vanished, as soon as it had come.

"You saw it too?" Ravess said anxiously. "It wasn't some sort of…snow mirage?"

"It was there!" Vexen affirmed. "But how did it – why would it – "

It clicked. "It was two crystals," he realized, recalling the image in his mind of what he had just seen. "Not one."

"A Warp Crystal," Ravess seethed. "The little Storm Hawk saw us coming, and she fused it with a WARP CRYSTAL."

"We must keep up ALL pretense that it is the Corona Aurora's gem," Vexen asserted. "The story can be altered slightly, but mostly kept the same. The girl fused it to a Warp Crystal to stymie us."

"You expect them to believe a non-Atmosian stone could fuse to an Atmosian one?"

"Ravess. Think about who is accompanying us."

Ravess did just that. "Well, Wuya will figure it out," she argued.

"Wuya believes in sorcery over science," Vexen reminded her. "She can easily be convinced there are more things in Kingdom Hearts and Atmos than are dreamt of in her philosophy. Not to mention that anyone who actively recruits Jack Spicer to any cause cannot be as intelligent as she claims."

"…Fair. Then what are we to do as our prize rockets around Atmos?"

"Follow it," Vexen said sternly, "and retrieve it."

...

The Huntsman found himself on a mountainside of his own. Monkey Fist had arranged a vantage point where he, Shego, and the Huntsman could perch on the rocky ledge, watching the campus below.

The Huntsman was familiar with the Yamanouchi Ninja School. Though the establishment, tucked away high in the mountains of Japan, claimed to be an ordinary academy, it was anything but. It was instead dedicated to teaching the art of ninjutsu and all that entailed: fighting skills, mental mastery, discipline and strength.

Everything needed to be a killer, the Huntsman had thought. Surely most of the students there believed they were learning to be warriors for the betterment of the world. They didn't know the history of ninjutsu. How it was invented as the method of assassins. How it was employed by the great killers of the past.

Some of the students knew, of course: those the Huntsman had planted there from his academy to strengthen their fighting abilities. The youth who had returned to the Huntsclan Academy from a year at Yamanouchi were quickly able to outpace their classmates in every discipline. Especially when it came to slaughter.

The sun was just beginning to dip toward the horizon, which brought forth a groan from Shego. "Okay, so what was the point of us showing up hours before we were supposed to raid the ninja school? Better question: what was the point of us waiting until after sunset to attack?"

"Arriving early is crucial to being prepared," Monkey Fist explained, not taking his eyes off the campus. Activity was dying down as students turned in for the evening. "And the dark of the night will offer us a tactical advantage, with better visual cover."

"Are you saying that because it's true," Shego retorted, "or because you just want the aesthetic of attacking at night?"

"Why does it matter?" Monkey Fist grunted.

The Huntsman found himself chuckling. It was uncanny, how much Shego reminded him of Mozenrath.

Mozenrath. The man who was currently halfway around the world with the fish-boy.

"Tell me," the Huntsman broke in, "how closely knit is the syndicate?"

"What does that have to do with anything?" Monkey Fist asked.

"A passing curiosity," the Huntsman said calmly.

"Drakken, Killigan, and I share a certain mutual understanding," Monkey Fist related. "Though you witnessed us exchanging venom, really, there are hardly any two people I would rather work with."

"I believe that is how it works for our kind," the Huntsman stated.

"…Martial artists?" Monkey Fist asked, confused.

"The morally bereft," the Huntsman corrected.

"Ah, yes," Monkey Fist replied. "When last we did business, you were so gung-ho to insist your work was for the 'greater good' unlike us 'gimmicky supervillains' that I hardly expected you to pick up the moniker yourself."

"I have found that there is a certain pride in it," the Huntsman related, realizing perhaps he'd changed more than he had thought since entering the WHAM ARMY.

Monkey Fist gave him a smile – a conceited one, but a smile nonetheless. "Well, then, welcome to the fold. Perhaps this new alliance shall be more beneficial than I had initially believed."

"You were not opposed to it. You argued in favor of it."

"And yet it exceeds my expectations further."

"Hey, guys?" Shego broke in. "Not that I don't mind killing time in any and every way possible, but Skullface here had a point once upon a time."

"The status of the syndicate," the Huntsman demanded.

"Ah, yes," Monkey Fist went on. "Drakken and Shego are the closest of anyone. And by accepting him, we are forced to accept her."

"Gee, thanks for the rave review," Shego said with a roll of her eyes. "It's almost like you think I'm NOT the most competent person on the entire team."

"It is almost as if YOU believe you take enough action to consider yourself competent," Monkey Fist retorted. "We all know the reason you position yourself as Drakken's sidekick is to avoid taking any initiative whatsoever."

"Hey, I take initiative. I take LOADS of initiative."

"Ah, yes," Monkey Fist teased. "The greeting card chip."

"Just because I don't WANT to come up with the big plans doesn't mean I CAN'T come up with the big plans," Shego insisted. "Dr. D picks the venue, I retool his ideas so they actually WORK, and then I have all the fun I want."

"She is efficient," Monkey Fist admitted. "Then, of course, there is THAT WOMAN. The only one I cannot STAND. The others somehow seem to tolerate her…saccharine qualities."

"Why do I seem to recall you 'tolerating' her a whole lot back in the day?" Shego taunted.

"Naïveté," Monkey Fist grunted.

"Reality check," Shego corrected; "Amy's team mediator. She's got the brains, she's the mom friend, she wants to be best buddies with everyone except Monkey Fist – you get used to her. Eventually."

The Huntsman noticed the definite absence of a name. "And the boy."

"What, Gill?" Shego asked. "I don't know if any of us besides Amy HAS an opinion on him yet."

"He is a novice," Monkey Fist explained. "A novice with a quite impressive résumé, as it seems you know firsthand, but without much of a reputation. We brought him into the fold on a gamble. Amy has taken a shine to him. It seems his contact information somehow made it into Drakken's database a long time ago. Time will prove his worthiness."

"Wait a minute," Shego realized. "You wanna know how disposable he is!"

"Nothing of the sort!" the Huntsman cried defensively. Giving himself completely away.

"You're jealous because your boyfriend pays more attention to him than you!" Shego laughed. "And he's one of those monsters you wanna KILL! Oh, man, this is better than a soap opera!"

"THAT IS NOWHERE NEAR THE CASE," the Huntsman seethed.

"Listen," Shego told him. "I don't know how your relationship works, but from an outsider perspective, Mozzy and Gill wouldn't work."

"And why not?" the Huntsman asked. Then, hastily: "I ask only to ascertain how well you perceive your allies."

"I did everyone's Animology when we first assembled the alliance," Shego explained. "Sure, it's 'pseudoscience,' but it's entertainment. Y'know how I figured out Mozzy's during meditation time?"

"You assigned him some sort of 'teal pelican,'" the Huntsman resolved.

"Here's the thing about teal pelicans," Shego told him. "He's a teal pelican. I'm a teal pelican. Gill is a teal pelican. And teal pelicans do NOT date other teal pelicans. See, we're all about taking care of business with no nonsense. We also have a fixation on being the smartest person in the room. The difference being that Mozzy and Gill each THINK they are, but I KNOW I am. A matchup between two teal pelicans would just drive each other NUTS. Now, you wouldn't let me do yours."

"Because I do not believe in pseudoscience," the Huntsman grunted.

"But honestly? I don't think I NEED to," Shego went on. "You just give off the biggest purple octopus energy I've ever seen in my life. Supposedly, purple octopi are soul mates with teal pelicans. Long story short, your boy goes for Gill, he's gonna be angry and miserable for the rest of his life. He goes for YOU, he gets the complementary personality."

"And has Animology successfully predicted all of your relationships?" the Huntsman asked skeptically.

"Hey, I never said you shouldn't take it with a grain of salt," Shego told him. "After all, Dr. D's a purple hound too."

"How am I IN ANY WAY the same personality type as him?"

"Goal-oriented, tunnel vision, works well in teams but only when they have a say," Shego explained. "There's actually a lot of overlap with the teal pelican, but it really boils down to that the purple octopus has a lot of vision without pushing people away. The teal pelican COMMANDS everyone in the room while the purple hound UTILIZES them. The reason Dr. D is, well, him, and you're not, is because your purple trends toward plum and serenity while he trends toward lavender and emotional volatility."

"This all sounds incredibly arbitrary," the Huntsman pointed out.

"Then you're really not gonna like how it turns out Dr. D and I make the worst soulmate pair you've ever seen in your life," Shego told him. "Trust me. We tried the dating thing once. Didn't work out. Not my fault." She chuckled. "Okay, okay, who am I kidding? It was totally my fault. I may have, y'know, kinda sorta tried to one-up him on his own plan so I could get my hands dirty and pick up some benefits. Hoo, boy, he didn't like that. As friends, that's just par for the course and forgivable, but it kinda put a crack in the romance side of things. Listen, is it too much to ask that I want my octopus to be less…like THAT?"

"I am not an option," the Huntsman grunted.

"I KNOW," Shego told him. "You might not be the most obvious example in the world, but my gaydar WORKS, okay?"

"Were I actually concerned about Mozenrath's consorting with the fish," the Huntsman groaned, "your words would do little, if anything, to reassure me."

"Then how about these words?" Shego suggested. "DON'T LET YOUR JEALOUSY RUIN OUR OPERATION. HE'S NOT GONNA BREAK UP WITH YOU FOR GILL NEVER-SHOWERS MOSS."

"IT IS NOT JEALOUSY!" the Huntsman raged. The question that lay unasked: how can you be so certain, when you have only known him for a short time?

"Let me guess," Shego said slyly. "You're wondering how I can be so sure when I haven't even known the man for a day."

The Huntsman said nothing.

"Fine," Shego relented. "You know him better than I do. When's the last time he dropped you for somebody else?"

"A silver-tongued prince," the Huntsman hissed.

"Mmkay. And that was all his fault, right? Not yours?"

The Huntsman's silence was telling.

"Yeah, that's what I thought."

"Will you cease?" Monkey Fist hissed. "Twilight has almost ended, and we have bigger things to focus on than your relationship drama."

"I agree," the Huntsman stated.

"And yet you're the one who brought it up," Shego pointed out.

"The moment night has fallen," Monkey Fist reiterated, "we strike."

As was his practice every night, the Master Sensei of the school checked on the position of the Lotus Blade, mounted on the wall of its new, more heavily secured chamber. Feeling satisfied that the katana was safe, he exited the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

Only to turn and meet the dual glow of the Huntsman's staff and Shego's hands.

"For what do you threaten me with violence?" the Master Sensei asked calmly.

From the rafters, the shadow dropped. The Master Sensei hadn't been worried upon seeing two strangers. When the man who had managed to steal the blade previously stepped into the light, however, the Master Sensei's blood ran cold.

"My good man," Monkey Fist stated, hands calmly linked behind his back, "I think you know exactly what we came for. And if you refuse to give it to us, I'm afraid we shall have to resort to violence."

"I have sworn to protect the Lotus Blade with my very life," the Master Sensei emphasized.

That was exactly what all three villains wanted to hear. Monkey Fist's smile was particularly wide. "So be it."

...

"I'm going to ask you one…more…time," Master Cyclonis said, voice dripping with venom as she pressed the crystal of her staff directly to Piper's throat. "Where is it?"

"And I'm going to tell you one more time," Piper said from the position where she'd been forced, kneeling on the floor of the cockpit of the Condor with her hands bound behind her back and her ankles chained together. "You'll…never…know."

The jolt of pain that wracked her body came as no surprise. She simply gritted her teeth and weathered it.

"You know, I've always been impressed by you," Cyclonis reminded her. "Even now, you remind me so much of myself. Taking pain and punishment and refusing to give the enemy the edge. You're resilient, Piper. You could've made a successful Cyclonian."

"But I didn't," Piper spat. "I made a successful STORM HAWK. I used the powers you pushed me toward for GOOD, not evil!"

Cyclonis was now pacing around her. "Is that always going to be the case?" she asked. "You're a headstrong girl. You know what you want, and you get it. What would happen if the thing you want could only be achieved by you loosening up your morals just a tiny little bit?"

"It'll never happen!" Piper barked. "Stop trying to get in my head! It won't work!"

"That's no way to talk to an old friend," Cyclonis taunted.

"Is it?" Piper raised her brow as Cyclonis came back into view of her front. "You're the one who insisted on talking to me without your lackeys interrupting. If anything, you seem less sure of how things are than I do. And you're the one who brought up how we were friends once. To the point where the Oblivion Crystal won't work on me. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were saying all this stuff about how similar we are because you're sad that I didn't join your regime to hang out with you!"

"WHY, YOU – " Cyclonis' staff spun to face Piper again.

"Go ahead!" Piper barked. "It won't hurt any worse than the last five times!"

Amora, the Dark Ace, Warp, and Zhao watched, riveted, from where they lined up along the dashboard. Warp whispered "I ship it" loud enough for the other three to hear, and they nodded in unison.

Cyclonis' grip relaxed. She forced herself to smile. "Congratulations, Piper," she said softly. "Now you're trying to manipulate me. Which is exactly what a Cyclonian – no, what an OVERTAKER would do."

"If I'm not falling for your tricks," Piper told her, "and you're not seeing the point behind mine, then I guess we're at a standstill."

"If you won't tell me where the Key is," Cyclonis seethed, "I'll find out for myself."

She whirled upon her four teammates. "Search the ship!" she snapped. "Every corner, every cabinet, every ventilation duct! Don't be fooled by appearances. The Merb installed any number of booby traps and secret hiding places in this ship!"

"And I picked the one hiding place you'll NEVER FIND," Piper taunted.

"We'll see about that," Cyclonis told her, attempting to sound playful but coming off frustrated. She turned back to her allies. "Oh, and while you're at it, one of you take the ship to our new base."

"What," Piper asked, "are you hiding in some cave in the Wastelands?"

Now Cyclonis' smile truly was born out of accomplishment. "No," she said smoothly. "We're the new rulers of an entire Terra. Or I should say we will be. It isn't in our clutches yet. But there's nothing they can do to stop us." Her brow furrowed. "I've had enough of you."

She stormed away to begin searching the ship. The Dark Ace took the controls, lifting the Condor off and taking it over the Atmosian sky. Amora, Zhao, and Warp fanned out, practically tearing the aircraft apart to find every nook and cranny.

"So, uh, not that I'm criticizing your strategy or anything," Warp muttered as he sidled next to Cyclonis, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, "but if that girl isn't gonna be useful to us anymore, then why don't we…you know. Kaboom. Slice. Stab. However you wanna make it. Quick and painless? Long and torturous?"

"She IS still useful to us," Cyclonis hissed argumentatively.

"Not really seeing how," Warp admitted.

Cyclonis slammed the door of the cabinet she'd been searching. "You don't UNDERSTAND!"

Warp let himself think back. A former friend; a sworn enemy. Liberation from the Chlorm Scientists over a vehicle that he did, in fact, know how to drive. Hearing unbelievable words from him as he practically lay on his deathbed, drained of life by Natron.

"Actually," he admitted, "believe it or not, I do. Let's just find that Key, ascend to the new throne, and turn it all over to the Lokester in time to advocate for a speed bonus in our payment."

"Darkmatter," Cyclonis warned, "if I find out you did anything to harm Piper without my permission, the consequences will be dire."

"Believe me," Warp sighed, "been there, done that. She's safe from me. Might wanna keep an eye on your Ace, though, especially if this thing has an autopilot."

"Perhaps you could put in a word. You and I both know he'll listen to you."

Warp smirked. "I like your thinking."

Cyclonis didn't know exactly what had changed his tune on Piper, and she had a strong feeling she wasn't going to be getting an answer out of him. It hardly mattered. He was acquiescing to her commands, and that was all that need be said.

...

Once Vexen and Ravess had rejoined Yzma, Lady Caine, Zevon, and Wuya, they pinpointed the Terra nearest in the direction the compass pointed and set out immediately.

It hadn't taken long to convince the other four of the story Vexen had cooked up about the Corona Gem being fused to a Warp Crystal. It was suspiciously easy, in fact, Ravess realized, with Wuya putting in a word for how it "sounds legit," and she wondered if Wuya were onto them. However, it didn't matter once the chase was on.

First they wound up in the deserts of Terra Saharr, racing across the sandy plains to where a bright sparkle in the sand caught their eye.

"THERE IT IS!" Yzma cried, pointing, and the six ran all the faster.

"Does anyone else hear that weird growling sound?" Lady Caine asked.

They all turned to find themselves caught directly in the path of a flock of incoming motorcycles, obviously engaged in some sort of race.

Wuya put on a burst of magical energy, propelling herself out of the way of the track. Lady Caine used her sword as a vault to leap to her side. Vexen cast a line of Blizzaga that allowed him to skate to safety, and Ravess and Zevon hopped onto it immediately afterward.

By that time, the bikes had caught up to Yzma, who barely had time to scream "NO!"

That scream was swept away on the Doppler Effect as Yzma was caught up on the handlebars, facing down a very confused motorcyclist.

"YZMA!" Wuya cried.

"MOTHER!" Zevon wailed.

"THE CRYSTAL!" Vexen and Ravess chorused. For the Warp Crystal had engaged again, sparking the Key off of Terra Saharr completely.

Yzma launched herself off of the speeding bike, propelling into a handspring and hastily adjusting her hat. Heart and feet racing, she made her way to the others as the others closed the distance from the other side.

"Ravess!" Vexen barked, eyes on the compass. "What Terra is that way?"

"Terra Tasty," Ravess answered, bringing out a map to circle the aforementioned kingdom in red pen. "If we're unlucky, it ended up somewhere in the middle of the…" A sigh. "CANDY SLUG factory."

"Then there isn't time to waste!" Vexen opened a Corridor, and through it the six raced.

They appeared directly in the midst of a factory in the process of making the different parts of overly sugary foodstuffs, as Ravess had predicted. Vexen did a double take; they'd shown up exactly in the center of a large red circle on the floor, similar to the one that Ravess had drawn on her map. He shook it off as coincidence.

"UP THERE!" Zevon pointed.

The Key sparkled atop a catwalk.

"On it!" Lady Caine was already scampering up the ladder.

They perhaps didn't move as cautiously as they should have on the railing-less catwalks between vats of bubbling chocolate. Vexen shoved past Yzma in order to get ahead of her, intending to reach the Key first, and in doing so, he made the woman lose her balance and fall directly into the nearest chocolate vat.

Lady Caine, Wuya, and Zevon all skidded to a halt and stared in horror at where they really hoped Yzma hadn't just been cooked to death. Ravess and Vexen paid them no mind, using this as an opportunity to rush ahead.

Yzma surfaced from the vat, trying to wipe chocolate out of her eyes only to find that her hands, which were also covered in chocolate, weren't great tools for that job. She chose to tread instead to stay at the surface, yelling, "DON'T JUST STAND THERE! GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The Warp Crystal shimmered. The Key was gone just as Ravess and Vexen skidded to a halt where it had been. Vexen brought out the compass in a panic.

"What is in that direction?" he cried.

Ravess retrieved the map, making another red circle. "Terra Deep," she mused. "Which could be a problem…unless…I wonder."

They turned back to the other four. Yzma was flicking her arms to drip the liquid chocolate off of herself in disgust; Wuya muttered, "You know, it is taking all of my restraint to not just lick that off of you right now."

"GROSS!" Zevon cried. "DON'T REMIND ME THAT MY MOTHERS HAVE A PHYSICALITAL RELATIONSHIP IN PUBLIC!"

"…Did you just refer to me as – " Wuya began.

Vexen cut her off; "We MUST hurry to Terra Deep before the gem gets away again!" Then he was off, through the portal, and the others had no choice but to follow.

The Murk Raider ship was patrolling through the dark, high-pressure valley environment of Terra Deep, and its crew was in high spirits. The sky pirates had just scored a rather large and glittering bounty of gold coins and fancy cutlery, which was all Captain Scabulous could have asked for.

"IN CELEBRATION OF OUR VICTORY," Scabulous declared, raising a dingy goblet high, "WE DANCE!"

The Murk Raiders set about turning their ship into a crude ballroom. As they cavorted, the conjoined crystal clinked onto the floor of the hallway, where none of them saw it.

What they did see was a Corridor of Darkness opening up and six strangers hurrying onto their ship.

The first thing Vexen noticed was that he and his cohorts had stumbled into a nest of armed-and-dangerous pirates. The second thing was that the room's perimeter was somehow painted with a red circle, again identical to the one in the Candy Slug factory and the one Ravess had marked on her map. The third was the crystal itself, on the other side of the crowd of pirates.

"State yer business!" Captain Scabulous growled, pointing his cutlass directly at Yzma.

"We were just…er…eheheheh…" Yzma's eyes searched the crowd, noticing how they were paired off. The phonograph in the corner. They had been dancing! "Coming to…join your celebration! After all, who throws a better party than the…eh…" She had no idea what these people were called. "You?"

Scabulous lowered his sword. "SHE SPEAKS THE TRUTH!"

"Do you KNOW how bad I wanted to take them in a duel right now?" Lady Caine seethed in Yzma's ear before Scabulous seized Yzma without permission and took her on a fast, frantic dance.

The others all partnered up with Murk Raiders of their own, Ravess and Vexen sneering in disgust and Lady Caine fantasizing about epic duels while Wuya and Zevon seemed to be enjoying themselves at least. Out of the corner of his eye, Vexen saw the crystal disappear yet again. He quickly removed the compass, then, with a composed "May I cut in?", traded his partner for Ravess.

"Where to now?" he hissed, showing her the compass.

She marked her paper again. "That would take us directly into the Black Gorge. They say no ship ever returns from it. Or at least they did until the Storm Hawks made it out alive, meaning any idiot can do it."

"What dangers do we face there, precisely?"

"The stories are varied and unclear."

"Then it is a good thing we are who we are, isn't it?"

Vexen opened the next Corridor, and this was a sign that Yzma, Wuya, Zevon, and Lady Caine had to ditch their partners and go. This was not easy for Yzma, as Scabulous held tightly to her hand.

"Fair lady," he protested, "please! I have never seen a human as scary beyond all reason as you in all my years of plundering the skies! You must stay with me as the queen of the Murk Raiders! Or at least join me for a chat over some rozenyoga!"

Yzma shut him up by planting her foot in his crotch before following her team.

As she arrived in a monumental canyon with rough stone walls that blocked out almost all light, she remarked, "Well, this gorge certainly is black."

"I don't know what I expected," Wuya sighed.

"It's the BLACK GORGE, for the love of – " Ravess clenched teeth and fists alike. "Let's just find the gem!"

"Hold on." Vexen gestured to the area around the team, where a red circle on the ground marked their arrival point. "Why have there been markings identical to Ravess' circles on our map at every destination we encounter?"

Yzma sighed, rolling her eyes. "Because this HAPPENS during a chase scene sometimes," she explained, as little of an "explanation" as that was. "Just ignore it and keep moving! At least this time, I can't hear any of the annoyingly catchy music."

"The WHAT?" Vexen shook his head. "And did you just refer to this as a chase SCENE? Oh, never mind! We have – "

A sudden roar from behind got the group's attention. A herd of enormous purple-furred beasts pawed the ground and snarled at them.

"SPINY GORGE SLOTHS!" Ravess screamed, pointing at them.

Nobody needed to be told to run in the opposite direction at top speed. They barreled down narrow rock pathways and around twisting turns, the gorge sloths only paces behind.

"SLOTHS ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FAST RUNNERS!" Vexen snarled.

"THAT'S YOUR CONCERN HERE?" Yzma yelled.

An enormous eel rose up out of a small pool; Vexen froze it in a burst of ice, creating a slippery bridge for all to slide across. The sloths took a shortcut around, catching up on the other side. A gelatinous blob of a monster awaited, sandwiching the runners, but a combination of Zevon's potion that turned it solid and brittle and Lady Caine's sharp blade shattering it cleared the way. At another, smaller pool, a garden of carnivorous plants rose up; Wuya dispatched them with a rain of fireballs.

"WE COULD HAVE TURNED THOSE MONSTERS AGAINST THE ONES CHASING US!" Vexen snapped at her.

"Oops," Wuya said sarcastically.

"FORGET THAT!" Yzma cried. "USE A CORRIDOR AND TAKE US OUT OF HERE!"

"NOT UNTIL WE FIND THE GEM!" Vexen cried.

"THAT'S YOUR PRIORITY HERE?" Yzma retorted.

"THERE IT IS!" Zevon pointed dead ahead.

The Key and the Warp Crystal sparkled just once in the low light before vanishing again.

"…Are you happy now?" Yzma asked Vexen.

He didn't need to be told to make a Corridor.

They spilled out into a thick jungle. Here, Vexen consulted the compass again. "Which way now?" he asked Ravess.

"BOGHOWLERS!" Ravess screeched.

"I don't recall that name from the map," Vexen told her.

Then he realized.

No sooner had they escaped one herd of giant predatory animals than a completely different pack of them, slightly different in color, waited to pursue them in exactly the opposite direction.

So they ran until Wuya thought to cast the Corridor this time. Not before Yzma had tripped into a mud puddle, hit her head on a low-hanging branch, and disturbed a beehive on the chase, however.

As the Corridor dropped them off on a rocky brown plain, Zevon pointed out, "I am beginnining to hear that music you mentioned earlier, mother."

"It's got a catchy drum beat," Wuya pointed out. "I like the sax solo."

"I'm going to pretend this subject never came up," Vexen sighed (as much as he really, really wanted to point out that it was a trombone, not a saxophone), taking out the compass. "Now, where is the next location?"

"That depends on where WE are at the moment," Ravess told him.

"Well, when you figure it out," Vexen told her, "mark our destination with an X rather than a circle. I want to run an experiment."

Ravess withdrew the map, then gave her surroundings a cursory glance. "…Oh."

"Oh?" Vexen repeated. "What is 'Oh'?"

"I'm guessing she just found the next thing that's gonna kill us," Lady Caine groaned.

"We seem to be on…Terra Blizzaris," Ravess laughed nervously. "You know…the Terra that the Absolute Zeros converted to an icy tundra using a Blizzard Crystal, only for the Terra's active volcano to erupt and melt it all?"

"Did you just say 'active volcano'?" Yzma asked.

"Possibly," Ravess replied.

A loud "boom" drew everyone's attention upward and a bit to the east, where said active volcano had spewed a great geyser of lava and flaming rock into the sky.

"RUN FOR IT!" Yzma cried, and since that seemed to be the theme of this entire escapade, no one argued.

As they hurried along, Zevon began to chant under his breath, "Run! Run! Run, Zevon, run!" to a definite rhythm, as though singing along to something.

"I'm Corridoring us out," Wuya declared as they bolted.

"NO!" Vexen cried, watching the compass needle turn yet again. "WE FOLLOW THE WARP CRYSTAL! RAVESS! LOCATE US!"

"We're on Terra Blizzaris," Ravess said shakingly. "But are we on the east side or the west side? No, obviously west. That would mean the needle is pointing to…is pointing to…" Her pen wavered over the parchment.

Flaming rocks were dropping from the sky now, solely in Yzma's path, causing her to shriek as she darted this way and that to avoid being crunched.

"RAVESS!" Vexen snapped. "I KNOW YOU KNOW! NOW ADMIT THAT YOU KNOW AND MARK IT!"

He was right. She did know. Beneath the stress of the situation, she could reach down and find it within her to recall her extensive knowledge of her to-conquer list. "TERRA SLOPPA!" she cried, marking the X.

Vexen made the Corridor, and just as a tidal wave of lava came rushing down the mountainside, the six disappeared to safety. The lava covered their path; had they waited a moment longer, they would have been simultaneously burned and drowned.

The sextet emerged in the waiting line of a soup kitchen. The floor beneath them was marked with a large red X. While this did prove Vexen's theory, he was almost more confused now than ever before.

That confusion was alleviated when he saw the Key and its Warp Crystal resting in the soup bowl of one of the needy who'd come to sup. The woman didn't seem to notice that her meal had been flavored with highly powerful crystals.

"EUREKAHA!" Zevon cried. "ONWARDSFORTH!"

If Zevon got to the crystals before Vexen did, then he would most certainly see that they were not the gem he'd been looking for. "OUT OF MY WAY!" Vexen cried, racing to overtake Zevon and shoving him aside.

A server wheeled a cart bearing an enormous soup tureen across the room. Zevon stumbled right into it, knocking the tureen over. Luckily, the scalding-hot soup, flavored with a heavy beef stock that would place an aroma on any garment it stained for weeks, only hit one person.

Unluckily, that person was Yzma.

"HOT SOUP!" she screamed as she leapt about the room like a grasshopper. "HOT SOUP!"

"Excuse me!" the woman eating the destined bowl called out. "There's something in my soup! I need to speak to the chef!"

"I'll save you the trouble," Vexen said as he plucked the dual crystal up out of the bowl.

He turned to Ravess, who skidded in right beside him. "We've done it," he said in awe, his hands outstretched and clutching the conjoined crystal. "It's ours! We finally have – "

The Warp Crystal activated yet again, and it was gone.

"NO!" Vexen and Ravess cried as one, sounding for all the world as though they'd had to watch each other get stabbed in the heart.

"Quickly!" Vexen retrieved the compass. "Mark the next Terra with – "

Yzma, hearing what was about to come next, gave an ear-piercing shriek of "NOOOOO MOOOOOOOOORE!"

Everyone in the room turned to look at her; all activity stopped dead. Soup slid out of a server's spoon and splatted on the counter.

"NO MORE!" Yzma cried between drawing large, audible gasps. "No…no more! I have been kidnapped by a motorcycle, submerged in hot chocolate, forced to dance with a pirate who will likely fantasize about me for the rest of his life, chased across two opposite yet equal forms of horrible wilderness by two packs of predatory animals, nearly crushed in volcanic debris, and soaked in hot soup that will cause me to smell like beef for THE REST OF OUR STAY ON ATMOS, IN THAT ORDER! And for what? A CRYSTAL YOU CAN'T EVEN PICK UP WITHOUT IT DISAPPEARING! I AM NOT GOING TO ONE SINGLE MORE TERRA UNTIL YOU HAVE A STRATEGY FOR CAPTURING THAT CRYSTAL, AND A FOOLPROOF ONE WHILE YOU'RE AT IT! AND IF YOU THINK I'M GOING TO HELP YOU COME UP WITH THAT STRATEGY AT ALL, WELL, THINK AGAIN!"

Wuya gasped. "Aw, darling…" She glided toward Yzma, gently resting hands on her shoulders. "I didn't even think. Come sit down. Let's get you patched up."

She guided Yzma to the nearest empty table, guiding her girlfriend to sit down at one of the benches. "Here," she said, offering a bright purple handkerchief that sparkled with a light silver luster. "Clean up with this, and then I'll get you some clothes that don't smell like dead cow." She then conjured up a ceramic pot filled with a green cream. "In the meantime, let me work on those burns for you."

"THANK you," Yzma sighed. "SOMEONE around here understands."

"Shhh," Wuya told her; Yzma had just wiped some of the chocolate-mud-soup combination sludge off her face, and Wuya was now applying the balm to the cleared-off spot. "You've earned some rest."

"You know," Lady Caine told Ravess and Vexen, "for two geniuses, you're both kind of idiots."

"EXCUSE ME?" Ravess cried at the same time that Vexen barked "YOU DARE!"

"Look at my poor mother!" Zevon told them. "You put her through all that abusion over some silly gem!"

"The gem YOU wanted in the FIRST place!" Vexen reminded him.

"And it isn't OUR fault that she's so accident-prone!" Ravess seethed.

"Bee stings, too?" Wuya was cooing. "Darling, you should've told me earlier…"

"You know what is your fault, though?" Lady Caine said with a hand on her hip, weight shifted to that leg. "Running around the world chasing a gem that disappears as soon as we show up. You REALLY didn't have a better plan for that?"

Behind them, one of the servers approached Yzma with a bowl of hearty soup. "You must be new here," she said sympathetically. "I can tell your life is really hard. Don't worry. Everyone else here is going through the same thing. You're welcome to have as much free food as you want until you get back on your feet."

"I'M NOT A POOR PERSON!" Yzma shrieked, shoving the bowl back on its server, which gave Wuya a good laugh once the innocent woman started yelling about the burns.

"We KNOW what we are DOING," Vexen argued, though on some level, he realized that Lady Caine was right.

Zevon's eyebrows rose; he'd just come up with a plan of his own. A plan to get Vexen to come up with a plan. A plan-plan, he thought. Or perhaps a meta-plan. "Do not be so condescensioning, Lady Caine!" Zevon pretended to scold. "Vexen is a geniusavant, and Ravess is pragmactical! They have already had a plan B in place since the very beginnining!"

"As a matter of fact," Ravess lied, "we have."

And, as Ravess knew he would, Vexen agreed; "Did you really think we wouldn't have a contingency plan in place?"

"Then let's hear it," Lady Caine challenged.

"Well," Vexen mused, knowing he had to come up with something on the fly or face ridicule, "let us approach the problem backward. The gem is so slippery at the moment because it is conjoined to a Warp Crystal. The joining point is small, yet crystal fusion is intricate. We need to separate the two in order to stabilize the gem. I should think a godly blade would be able to do the trick. A blade such as Tsumugari."

"You mean Moon Sword," Lady Caine clarified.

"I mean Tsumugari," Vexen insisted. "Though that is the blade you refer to as 'Moon Sword.' You do know how it works, do you not?"

"It's stronger under the moonlight," Lady Caine sniffed. "Pretty self-explanatory. So that does half the job. How do we get the thing to stay in one place long enough for me to split it?"

"Well," Vexen fumbled, "the goal is not to halt the crystal's progress so much as it is…to…" What would be the more logical progression? What would make the task simpler? "…direct its path toward a destination we can predict."

"YES!" Ravess cried; Vexen's words had sparked a memory in her. "We knew from the very start that if the Warp Crystal continued to evade us, we would redirect it to Terra Vapos!"

"It was my idea, of course," Vexen said hastily. "Ravess, do explain it for Lady Caine and Zevon's small minds. You're used to communicating with Snipe, after all, and I cannot avoid using technical terminology."

"All things that belong to Terra Vapos return to it once removed," Ravess explained. "It is part of the integration of the Serpigris crystal in the Terra's civilization. All we need to do is get close enough to the crystal to encase it in a box or wrap it in a cloth made on Terra Vapos, and the next time it warps, it will go directly to Vapos' heart."

"And thus is the plan foolproof," Vexen stated smugly. He and Ravess exchanged a proud glance.

"That actually doesn't sound half bad," Lady Caine admitted. "If Terra Vapos works the way you think it does."

"Believe me," Ravess asserted, "it does."

"And the gem won't telepapparate itself out of the box?" Zevon asked.

That gave Vexen and Ravess pause. "No," Vexen choked out. "Our research is sound."

It was now somewhat of a gamble.

"Then I approvalate," Zevon declared. "After all, the best plans begin with putting something inside of a box. We should put it inside of another box for good measure!"

"We're not doing that," Vexen chastised.

Wuya and Yzma rejoined the group, the latter now dressed in a glittering blue dress with a matching feathered headdress. The sapphire shade complemented the lavender of her skin surprisingly well. "So," she asked, "what's the plan?"

"You're going to love this," Zevon promised.

...

Dr. Drakken specialized in robots. It was the core of his villainy. Apparently it was what he had been going for his doctorate in – before dropping out of school out of spite due to some incident he refused to elaborate on. He still felt accomplished enough in the field of robotics to apply the title "Doctor" to his name anyway.

Gill Moss was more of a natural savant. He'd spent so much time in isolation, trying to piece together a home out of leftover supplies from camps that had been abandoned due to either urban legends about a monster (that were true), the simple cycle of kids not utilizing the campuses during the winter, or, in the case of the primary, a cowardly staff trying to cover their butts. In that respect, he had figured out pretty quickly how to look at assembled supplies and construct things out of them, from furniture to meals to telecommunications equipment that could jam cell phone signals. Even though he had never made it as far as high school, he was able to look at the mechanisms intended to build a robot and have some idea of how they just might piece together to function.

Mozenrath, for all the time he'd shared a lair with Herb and Jack, still had no idea how robotics worked. Cell phones, kitchen appliances, and other modern conveniences, he had learned how to do, at least enough to frustrate Snatcher. However, watching Drakken and Gill assemble the tiny wheeled robot they planned to use for their heist on the edge of the laboratory grounds where the pandimensional vortex inducer was being housed, Mozenrath felt almost like a complete moron, having absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

This miffed him enough to keep him silent through the entire assembly process.

"And with this final piece," Drakken announced, holding a tiny circuitboard aloft, "the bot will be operational and ready for villainy!"

"Just cut the theatrics and finish the robot," Mozenrath huffed.

"You have no idea how it works, do you?" Gill realized.

"Of course I know how robots work," Mozenrath argued. "I'm not a complete moron."

Drakken snapped the circuitboard into place with an "AHA!". Then he proceeded to quickly weld a panel over it, settling a protective metal mask over his face first..

"I thought that was the final piece," Mozenrath pointed out.

"Well, the panel is protective!" Drakken argued. "It's not essential to the FUNCTION! I mean, TECHNICALLY it's the last piece, but – "

"Then you could make the bot without it," Mozenrath filled in.

"And have it fall apart five minutes into the operation?" Drakken replied.

"So it is essential to the function," Mozenrath said dryly.

"It just doesn't have dramatic flair to say that the final piece is paneling!" Drakken whined. He flipped off the welding torch, discarding his mask. "There! It's done anyway!"

"So let's get it going," Gill urged.

"Immediately," Drakken agreed.

He retrieved from within his coat a remote-control device with a large screen set at its head. The robot, which was squarish with two tucked-away arms and a cylindrical indent ready to receive a vortex inducer, rolled forward on its four wheels at the touch of the device. A camera flipped on, and the vista immediately visible in front of the bot lit up on the control's screen.

"And now," Drakken declared, "we steal a highly volatile instrument of doom."

He used the remote to steer the robot onto the laboratory campus.

From there, it was a matter of sneaking it through a recently-opened door just before it closed, then navigating the maze of hallways. It didn't take long for Mozenrath, Drakken, and Gill to come to a simultaneous conclusion as they huddled around the screen.

"Well, THIS is boring," Mozenrath sighed.

"I still don't see why we couldn't just tear the wall down and fight our way to it," Gill argued.

"Even I am feeling the lack of villainous flair that comes with being onsite in person," Drakken sighed. "But this is the SMART way of going about it. Our little robotic friend is less likely to be detected and more likely to retrieve the vortex inducer without any sort of commotion, thereby lessening any risk on our end."

"Which makes sense," Mozenrath relented.

It didn't make any of the three feel better.

"Believe me," Drakken said dryly, "the more time we can buy before Kim Possible shows up, the better."

"And wherever Kim goes," Gill growled, "she brings little Ronnie with her."

"Heroic archnemeses of yours?" Mozenrath asked casually.

"Heroic archnemeses of EVERY VILLAIN ON THE PLANET," Drakken seethed.

"…The Huntsman and Dr. Hämsterviel would probably have a few arguments," Mozenrath related, thinking back to what they'd said about Jake Long and the Pelekai family. "But go on."

"It's just so infuriating!" Drakken cried. "Every time I put a single scheme into motion, Kim Possible doesn't let me get so far as three steps without foiling me! And she's only a TEENAGER! Nrgh…I hate having to admit to an interdimensionally traveling sorcerer that my plans get consistently ruined by a cheerleader without any sort of superpower or financial advantage!"

"Believe me," Mozenrath sighed with a roll of his eyes, "I know the type. I had a similar nuisance back where I come from, though that one was more…personal."

"Now, personal, I get," Gill broke in. "You'd think Drakken here would have a personal beef with Kimmie after that whole thing with her dad. Turns out he didn't even know they were RELATED."

"'Possible' is a very common last name!" Drakken argued.

"No, it isn't!" Gill snapped.

Mozenrath wasn't sure what the bar was here. He'd noticed the pun of "Kim Possible," but spending enough time around Ayam Aghoul really desensitized a person. "What happened with her dad?"

"You know that incident I told you about where I quit school out of spite?" Drakken recalled.

"Yes," Mozenrath told him. "You refused to explain it."

"Suffice to say Kim Possible's father was the one I was spiting."

"Fair," Mozenrath replied, though he burned with curiosity. As much as he wanted to press Drakken for answers, he had a feeling he would get more success pursuing a different route. "Now. What's the story between Gill Moss and 'little Ronnie'?"

"Oh, you're gonna love this one," Gill told him. "It all started when – "

Drakken crashed the robot into a wall. They all flinched. The bot was durable, but it took Drakken a while to steer the machine back into a definite course that wouldn't crash it into the wall again.

"Did you never play with an RC car as a kid?" Gill asked incredulously.

"Of course I did!" Drakken argued defensively. "Every child has! I disassembled and reassembled it over fifty times!"

"But did you DRIVE IT?"

"Stop asking questions."

"Give me that," Gill demanded, making a swipe for the remote. "Unlike you, I actually know how to drive one of these."

"You didn't even go to high school!" Drakken argued as he held the remote out of Gill's way.

"Yeah," Gill told him, "but I mastered the art of playing with an RC car by the time I was seven."

"This isn't a CHILDREN'S TOY!" Drakken yelled as he maneuvered the remote out of another grab from Gill. "And if it were, it would be MY toy, and I'm not sharing!"

"GIVE ME THE REMOTE RIGHT NOW!"

"NO!"

"I willingly chose to ally with these people," Mozenrath muttered to himself as Drakken played keep-away with the remote. "I also selected this specific team for my third of the heist. I now have to lie in my own bed."

"Fine," Gill relented, huffing. "Keep crashing the robot into the walls. It'll just take us two days to actually get the vortex inducer."

"It's almost like I don't even need Shego to undermine my confidence," Drakken huffed.

"You were telling me about the other boy," Mozenrath reminded Gill.

"Ron Stoppable." Gill said the words like they were someone else's heresy. "Kimmie's bestest friend in the world. You never see one without the other."

"Don't tell me," Mozenrath sighed. "Power couple?"

"Wha – no!" Drakken cried. "I mean, we had a betting pool on it for the first year, but then…well, that would be like me trying to date Shego! The parallels are right there! And believe me…" His tone soured. "We TRIED going that route."

"So what happened with Ron?" Mozenrath pressed.

"What happened?" Gill repeated. "WHAT HAPPENED? EVERYTHING THAT EVER WENT WRONG IN MY LIFE HAPPENED! It all started when we were kids at summer camp. Camp Wannaweep. The place I didn't know was going to become my home for the next DECADE OF MY LIFE!"

"I already like where this is going," Mozenrath said with a smile. "He wronged you really thoroughly, didn't he?"

"He was always a squeeb," Gill explained. "He was one of the best sources of entertainment in the whole camp. He cried easy. And he was afraid of everything. I thought he'd be the LAST person to ruin my life. I was having too much fun ruining his."

Every time Mozenrath thought Gill was done appealing to him, he would say something like that.

"The thing is, at camp, he was only ever happy during arts and crafts time," Gill spat. "Arts and crafts are for LOSERS. What self-respecting person gets their kicks making owls out of macramé?"

"Just a tip," Mozenrath broke in. "When we get back to base, you're going to meet a girl named Princess Irmaplotz. Whatever you do, don't say that or anything similar to her. You'll thank me later."

"I was a swimmer," Gill went on. "I felt at home in the water more than anywhere else. I was gonna be on my school swim team. Pools, lakes, the ocean…that was my element. I'd even settle for playing in the mud puddles during the rain. Lake Wannaweep was my sanctuary. I owned those waters during mandatory swim. Ronnie, on the other hand, kept saying the lake looked dirty and unclean. He had this giant conspiracy theory that it was contaminated, like with runoff chemicals from the nearby science camp. Spoiler alert: turns out he was right."

"I kind of figured," Mozenrath said as he looked up and down Gill's frame, knowing there was no way this story checked out if he'd looked like a fish back then.

"Ronnie threw such a huge tantrum about swim time that our counselors agreed to swap our schedules," Gill went on. "I'd get double swim and he'd get double arts and crafts. I was fine with that. More than fine. Double swim sounded like the best thing I could've asked for. The problem was I got double exposure to the contaminated water. The other kids, they never figured it out, 'cause they were only in for an hour at a time. But I was in for two hours per day. And here's where the story gets interesting.

"I started noticing changes. My skin was turning green and growing scales. I thought the slime under my shirt was just some kind of weird sweat. I'd heard freaky stuff happened during puberty. When the webbing started to grow, that was when I figured out this wasn't normal. I went to the counselors for help, and do you know what they did? They screamed at me! They were AFRAID of me! I was just a scared kid! I was the one it was happening to, and they freaked out like it was THEM undergoing the mutation! The best part is it took me years to realize they weren't even afraid because of the weird things happening to my body. No, they didn't wanna get sued for all they were worth when parents found out about the toxic lake.

"Nobody knew what to do with me. I got passed over to the camp nurse as a formality, and they slapped aloe vera on the scales. Which did nothing. The changes got more dramatic, and the nurse insisted I stay in the med cabin. I was fully green by that time. The nurse went through this whole routine: bandages, ibuprofen, everything harmless she could give me that would do nothing. Eventually I figured it out. She wasn't keeping me there to fix me! She was keeping me there so the other kids wouldn't see me and figure out the truth!

"I had a lot of time to think, alone on that cot. I didn't know what I wanted. My first instinct said I just wanted to go back home to my family. Something else inside me told me that what I really needed was to be in the water and never leave. I was scared of myself, and I was sick to my stomach. But there was something else that didn't make sense. I always did use to get my kicks making Ronnie cry. Or whoever I could find that was easy to pick on. So when the grown-ups flipped out…it was entertainment. I had the power to make people scream in terror by showing them the weird gross gills on my neck. That was the only good thing about being stuck in that stupid cabin that summer.

"They played out the rest of the camp like a normal summer. Didn't want any parents to freak out. Then they sent all the kids home and made plans to shut down as soon as they could so they could pick up the last profits and ditch the contamination site without an incident. Well, not all the kids. They couldn't send ME home. Not looking like this. So they issued a statement that I got lost in the woods or some junk and that they were making every effort to find me. Pretty sure I got declared LEGALLY DEAD.

"They couldn't leave me alone, either. Nobody wanted to turn me over to the authorities or anyone who could help. That would blow the cover and get the staff sued for all the money they ever made. So the nurse ended up staying with me in the med cabin after everyone else hightailed it. I think she drew the short straw. She tried to act like she was my cool babysitter or something, but I knew she couldn't stand being around me. She still wouldn't let me out, either. She was afraid I'd run away and blab. Again, there was something about it that made me feel powerful already. I knew I had a grown-up shaking like a leaf because I existed, so I tried to get in her head a little. Insulted her. Did the best I could for being a kid.

"That was when we figured out the other side effect of my mutation. You see this slime that drips off me? That's the harmless stuff. But there's another kind of slime I can make on purpose. Watch."

A hacking noise came from the back of Gill's throat. He spat into his hand, and the slime that sat there was a more virulent green than the muck that he secreted on his body.

"That's…disgusting," Mozenrath observed.

"Thanks," Gill said with a smirk. "Be careful around this stuff. You don't wanna touch it." He lobbed the glob as far away from the trio as he could pitch. "'Cause if you do, then you'll start turning into a mutant, too. Just like me. The second time I took the water, it was in such a high concentration that the mutations weren't consistent. But this time, I asked not to overdo it, and Amy thought it was best, so – "

"The SECOND time?" Mozenrath raised a brow.

"I'm getting ahead of myself," Gill admitted. "The point is I – OKAY, IF YOU KEEP CRASHING THAT ROBOT, I'M SERIOUSLY GOING TO STEAL THAT THING FROM YOU."

"I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!" Drakken moaned.

"Focus," Mozenrath demanded. "You're telling me a story, and if you get distracted piloting a tiny car, I lose the only source of entertainment I have around here besides watching Drakken fail to pilot a tiny car."

"Fine," Gill huffed. "The point is, both that time and now, anyone who touches the muck with their bare skin mutates into the same kind of fish-amphibian hybrid I am. I don't even remember how I got it on her. I know it was an accident. I think I sneezed. Anyway, within an hour, she started getting the scales on her own body where it touched. It was the most terrified I'd ever seen her in her life. And that was FUN. Listen, this woman had tried to play nice, but she'd kept me a prisoner away from my precious water for weeks. I didn't even know how much I cared about home anymore. I just wanted the lake. And this…this is FINALLY what broke her. She was gonna end up exactly like me! So I made it worse. I told her how she was gonna be a freak for the rest of her life. How they were gonna look at her and find out what happened to me. I might've even suggested that a normie like her would be better off dead than forced to live like a freak.

"I didn't know she'd take me seriously. I woke up alone the next day. The door wasn't locked. I was sure she either took mercy on me after walking a mile in my fins or just got so sick of me that she decided it wasn't worth it. Well, she decided it wasn't worth it, all right. I headed right for the lake, but the shortest way there was through the woods, right? And on the way, I ran into her. Completely mutated. Like a bigger version of me, all green and webby and slimy. And also hanging from a tree by a rope around her neck. And you know what I did when I found her? …I laughed. Could it have gotten any better? She died because I TOLD HER TO. She died because she couldn't handle for a DAY being what I'd been for more than a MONTH, and she was supposed to be the grown-up! And without her around, I was free to do whatever I wanted.

"So I jumped in the lake and thought about it for a bit. I thought about going home, but that probably wasn't so smart. Scaring people's fun, but it doesn't really make it easy to try and get back to your parents and have a normal life. Then I ended up thinking about how I basically got the whole stinkin' camp shut down, and I got proud. It was this weird kind of happiness. I still felt, I dunno, kind of hollow that I knew I couldn't go back home. But underneath that, I had all this new pride. I could make people scared of me. I could change people. I could convince the people I didn't like to KILL THEMSELVES. And I shut down an entire summer camp by dipping myself in lake water for two hours per day. That's probably when I officially decided to be a villain, even if I didn't really use that label. You can imagine I was distanced from the supervillain community for the majority of my life."

"So a loner," Mozenrath identified, nodding. "I…know what that's like, actually. Not as bad as people make it sound, once you've made your world yours."

"You GET it!" Gill cried in sudden surprise, eyes widening. Then he regained composure; "I started testing out exactly what I could do with my new body. And I liked what I found out. For one, I was MADE for the water now. I could BREATHE it with my new gills. I could stay underwater forever and go as deep as I wanted. I explored every inch of that lake. Some parts of it were more exciting than others, depending on the kind of trash that got dumped there. Actually, I kinda wanna explore the ocean floor one day. Now, THAT'S gotta have some interesting stuff."

"Atlantis is underwater, and has its own subterranean sea," Mozenrath pointed out. "Just saying."

"I could do more things, too," Gill went on. "I was stronger than before. I was faster. Like my muscles got altered, too. That also got proven the second time – no, no, we're doing this story in order! As it turned out, I had power that no other kid I knew had. My nurse was too dumb to see that it might've been worth living for. All she could think about was losing her precious humanity."

"But you have to give something up if you want real power," Mozenrath said solemnly, cradling his right hand in his left. "Humanity. Your life force. Your right hand. That's how it should work, anyway. That's how it should ALWAYS work. You get what you pay for, and no handouts."

"You seriously DO get it!" Gill cried with glee. "Okay, that's good, otherwise this next part's gonna sound totally whack. Getting turned into a mutant was the best thing that ever happened to me. But I didn't figure that out right away. I kept thinking this idea that I wanted to go 'home,' even though I knew I didn't belong there anymore, and NOT just because of how I looked. I don't think I ever really wanted that at all. But what I did want was the RIGHT to be able to go back home. I didn't ASK to be a mutant. I didn't PICK my sacrifice. If I'd've known what I could be, then I so would have! But I was forced to rewrite myself over the course of a summer against my will and isolate myself from everything and everyone I had ever known and loved up to that point. And all because Ron Stoppable threw a tantrum about the lake. If he had kept his big stinkin' mouth SHUT, I could've done things on my OWN terms."

"Actually, understandable," Mozenrath admitted. "My rival technically didn't even have anything to do with my sacrifice. But if he hadn't existed, I might've found my way there with less agony and abuse along the way. And then he goes and gets everything I ever wanted and more by GETTING LUCKY. He thinks he suffered living on the streets the majority of his life? Come back to me when you've had a sorcerer using you for target practice because you took too long brewing his tea and it got cold! And you can't sleep for a week because your entire body hurts! The gauntlet was the best thing that ever happened to me, but if HE hadn't existed…"

"Which he?" Drakken asked.

"What?" Mozenrath was caught off guard.

"The rival 'he' or the sorcerer 'he'?" Drakken asked.

"The rival," Mozenrath deadpanned. "I'd've thought that was obvious."

"And…you don't blame the person who actually hurt you every day until you were pushed to the breaking point," Drakken said casually.

Mozenrath gritted his teeth. "He got his," he seethed. "Aladdin has yet to." He forced himself calm; inhale, exhale. "Please, continue."

"I devoted my entire existence to getting my revenge on Ron Stoppable," Gill growled. "I set up a plan years in the making to crash his school bus at the place where it all happened. I snuck around the other camps on the lake at night, taking things when people wouldn't see me. That's how I ended up with a laptop that I could use to research him, and how I learned about his team-up with Kim Possible. I didn't even care that she was the savior of the entire world. Did SHE have super strength? Could SHE breathe underwater? I knew I could take her in a one-on-one fight, no tricks, no cheating. And I was right. Kim Possible is fragile without her fancy devices and her support network. I cornered Ron, alone, without any of his little friends, in the shadows of Camp Wannaweep at night."

Then Gill paused, not entirely sure how to proceed.

"He beat you," Mozenrath filled in.

"IT WASN'T FAIR!" Gill whined. "HE SAID HIS BOAT WAS OUT OF GAS! THAT'S LOW, EVEN ON A VILLAIN SCALE!"

"And that's when you got un-mutated," Mozenrath guessed. "Since you keep mentioning this 'second time.'"

"They fixed me," Gill said softly. "They sent me home. I got to see my parents for the first time in ten years. I got to see old friends from school. And…I…didn't want any of it. I was just done with that part of me. These people might as well have been strangers. I was human again, one hundred percent, no fish DNA, but I still just wanted to get back to the water. And I missed being strong! I missed having power! I missed having people FEAR ME! At my new school, I was the loser kid! They called ME the squeeb! They picked on me and called me names like 'Fish Boy'! That's not even creative! I tried to fight back, but nobody took me seriously! So I decided to work on a new plan. If I could spend years working on revenge on Ron, I could put in the time to get this right.

"It looked like a dead end right off the bat. After the feds figured out I existed, the Wannaweep scandal broke wide open. All the lawsuits the counselors had been running from? Came down heavy and hard. Good thing they'd had all those years to turn themselves into a bunch of con artists and rebrand their entire camp. The one thing they couldn't escape was selling out the big bucks to get the lake cleaned up. …Not before this weird snowman incident – "

"With MY WEATHER MACHINE!" Drakken moaned. "That plan wasn't even EVIL! That was an ACCIDENT! I could at least RESPECT if my machine had fallen into the hands of a kindred spiriiiiiiit!"

"THIS ISN'T ABOUT YOU!" Gill snapped. "Interrupt me one more time and I'm taking your remote."

"But I haven't even crashed the robot since – "

It bumped into a wall.

"That didn't count," Drakken argued. "You distracted me."

"STORY," Mozenrath demanded. "FINISH."

"With no toxins left," Gill went on, "it looked like I had to come up with my own way of mutating myself. That's actually when I first started putting myself out there on the supervillain forums on the dark web. What? I'm a fast learner. I can hack. Talking to actual big names in the evil biz was EXCITING. I was looking at people like Drakken, like Killigan, like Monkey Fist, and what they were doing, I was all just…that! That's what I wanna do! I wanna shut down more camps! Drive more people crazy! Take what I want! Mayhem! Freedom! FUN! And NOT stuff you can do as a high school kid! So I started messaging around to see if anyone wanted test subjects for experimental biochem. That's how I got in contact with Amy the first time. She was interested, but between paroles and writing to me from a jail cell. So there went that plan. But something she said caught my interest. She had been looking into experimentation with toxins from a recently exposed lake that was slated for cleanup. Only one place that could be. So I told her the bad news, that it all got purged out…and the words she wrote back to me changed my life: 'Oh, honey, not ALL of it.'

"Turned out there was a hidden grotto where the toxins had pooled and kind of…powered up because of the high concentration. It was basically like the entire lake shoved into that one grotto."

"Stop using that word," Drakken broke in.

"What word?" Gill asked.

"'Grotto,'" Drakken seethed. "I hate the word 'grotto.'"

"Well, it was a GROTTO, so LIVE WITH IT!"

"Not to mention the word 'moist,'" Drakken went on, shuddering. "Or 'sputum.' Eurgh."

"ARE YOU DONE?" Gill yelled.

"That depends," Drakken retorted. "Are you done using the word 'grotto'?"

"JUST CALL IT A LAGOON!" Mozenrath yelled.

Gill sighed. "I knew that one dip in this LAGOON would be enough to do the work of days' worth of the regular lake. So I went back to playing the long game. Becoming the school mascot, getting on the cheerleading team…all leading back to getting personally chauffeured right back to where it all started. And guess what? Ron Stoppable got bused to the same competition! I had my chance for re-mutation AND revenge!

"The lagoon was…stronger than I expected. The concentration was unstable. I came out a little different. Bigger. Ripped, actually. I liked it for about five minutes before missing the agility factor. But you know what toxic ideals of the male body we're told to look like."

"Slender and proud," Mozenrath said with a grin.

"Out of shape and hating it," Drakken grumbled.

"Not to mention I got lucky it was fish genes again," Gill went on. "Both the lagoon and my muck were a lot more unstable. The people I hit didn't just get fish features. It was like the Cuddle Buddy grab bag. Didn't really like it. But it was better than being a stinkin' human. And now that I had my powers back, I could finally crush Ron." Another long pause.

"Did he see you diving into the lagoon?" Mozenrath asked.

"Maybe," Gill grumbled.

"He went in after you and came out as an equally strong mutant, didn't he?" Mozenrath guessed.

"HE WAS A BEAVER!" Gill cried. "A STINKIN' BEAVER! THAT'S SO STUPID! Anyway, he beat me, AGAIN, and it was back to the lab to get purged down to human again. Only NOW they were talking about sticking me in a juvie detention center or an asylum. And no way was I letting them lock me up. So I did the best I could as human Gil. I escaped and went on the lam. Now, you get the picture. I'm resourceful. A few public libraries with wi-fi later and I'm back on the villain forums. I win myself an invitation to Drakken's party, I get on good footing with Amy – who it turns out is weirdly nice to be around despite her being all sugary all the time – and I place my order. Gill, two Ls, mark one. No huge pecs, no turning people into BEAVERS, just the basics that make me…me. Because, after all, this is who I really am. And maybe this is all I ever was." Gill folded his arms with a proud smile. "And that's the story."

"Oh, well, boo hoo for you," Drakken groaned before Mozenrath could get a word in. "Ooooh, I had to live as a loner for a decade, I'm a mutant who had to live on my wits and scraps, I'm soooooo edgy and tragic!"

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" Gill cried.

"I'm…not really sure what part of that story you didn't think was up to par," Mozenrath admitted.

"You've never known what it's like to be TRULY outcast by those you consider friends!" Drakken monologued. "To be blue inside and out! To feel you don't belong in your own skin! To have an inferiority complex installed in you at the tender age of young adulthood!"

"You know what?" Gill sighed. "Whatever you're going to say, I just wanna hear how insultingly NOT a big deal it was compared to mine."

"I'm interested in seeing where this goes," Mozenrath admitted.

"It all began one mournful day back in college, where I was studying for my doctorate in robotics," Drakken related in a melancholy tone. "I had thought it to be a happy occasion. My three best friends in all the world and I were looking forward to the upcoming formal, but none of us had been able to acquire a date. Upon realizing we were unlikely to find partners by the time of the dance, I decided to give my friends what I thought would be a thoughtful and pleasant surprise. However, as it turned out – "

"ISN'T THAT THE THING?" Gill cried, wide-eyed and focused on the screen.

Drakken flinched, turning to look at the view. "So it is," he sighed.

Mozenrath took a gander. The pandimensional vortex inducer was mounted inside of a storage case with a glass window. "Let's take it and go," he demanded.

At Drakken's command, the robot unfolded its arms, used them to open the case and retrieve the vortex inducer, and settled the cylinder in the vortex-inducer-shaped-indent built into its mechanism.

As the robot began to wheel its way back out through the winding labyrinthine halls it had used to find its destination, Drakken went on, "My plan seemed foolproof. I would design and create – "

A sudden harsh sound from the remote's display: "What's that? Hey! Hey, get over here! I think we're being robbed!"

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?" Drakken groaned. "RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY POIGNANT SOLILOQUY?"

In no time, security guards and scientists alike had surrounded the robot, aiming laser projectile devices at it and chattering about what it might be and how best to disarm it without setting off the vortex inducer.

"Great," Mozenrath sighed. "The stealth approach didn't work – "

All three of them suddenly realized what that meant. Identical wicked smiles crossed their visages.

"…Oh, noooooo," Mozenrath said sarcastically. "Looks like we'll have to break in and make a SCENE."

The laboratory personnel were placing suspicions about the now-still robot. "It actually looks like a Dementor design," a scientist theorized.

"Dementor?" A guard shook his head. "This looks more like Gemini."

"Like WHO?" another guard asked.

"Gemini was a one-hit wonder," a third grunted. "Nobody knows where he went and nobody cares."

"I care," the first guard said too quietly and sentimentally to be heard.

"Well, it's too sleek to be Motor Ed," a scientist mused.

"At the risk of stating the obvious," another guard chimed in, "you think this might be – "

Before he could finish, the wall exploded in a flash of brilliant blue light.

All weapons were turned upon the two silhouettes that were advancing through the dust of the ruined wall – one proud stride and one intimidating shamble. Several red lasers fired.

A small circle of what looked like blue glass formed at the convergence point of the ammo before each figure. The one who had swaggered in waved his right hand, and the lasers rebounded on their own sources, blowing up the guns in the hands of their owners.

"SUBJECT HAS ADVANCED WEAPONRY!" one of the guards yelled as the scientists ran for cover. "ACTIVATE ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE!"

A small box's button was pressed. A shockwave ran through the hallway. The robot containing the vortex inducer collapsed.

The one who'd activated the EMP found himself encased in blue chains. "Oh, too bad," the swaggering figure said, and the dust was now clearing enough that all could see the form and face of Mozenrath. "That only works on science. You obviously weren't prepared for sorcery."

"WHAT IS THAT?" one of the guards cried, pointing to Mozenrath's companion.

"I'm the villain you're gonna wish you all hadn't slept on," Gill proclaimed.

"Gill." Mozenrath gestured dramatically to the guards in front of him. "If you would."

They'd drawn tasers and clubs. Gill was faster, spitting globs of slime like a gatling gun. The first of the guards collapsed, screaming, clawing at his face.

"MY FACE!" he caterwauled. "SOMETHING'S HAPPENING TO MY SKIN!" Where his fingers scratched, green scales were visible.

"It's a MUTAGEN!" another cried, startled to the point of dropping his taser when he saw his now webbed hands bursting through his too-tight gloves.

"OUR HEALTH INSURANCE DOESN'T COVER THIS!" a third wailed.

As one of the skinnier of the lot advanced upon Mozenrath and Gill, taser drawn, he elected to ignore his rapidly mutating body in order to try and get some answers at the very least. "WHO ARE YOU?" he demanded. "WHO'S YOUR BOSS? WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?"

"Me," Mozenrath explained. "I'm the boss in this particular situation. However, that's not going to matter to you. The part where I'm going to enjoy seeing the look on your face is when I show you my new business partner."

He and Gill parted so that their third could stride into view.

A chorus of gasps. The guards all cried one name: "DRAKKEN!"

"I see, yet again, that my reputation precedes me," Drakken declared. "Now, if you don't mind, I'll be taking my vortex inducer. Oh, wait, it's YOUR vortex inducer, isn't it? All the more reason TO TAKE IT!"

"Grand finale," Mozenrath commented.

"Sell it," Gill told him.

The onslaught of magic and muck alike was too much for the security force to handle.

...

Gremlin Village was an outer district of Radiant Garden, situated within and along steep rock walls with dramatic ledges. The Gremlins' tiny houses were perched on those ledges as well as in a town square marked by an enormous rotating gear that made up the floor, pipes surrounding it. A deep moat of sparkling blue water cut off the square from the outer village; to combat this, the Gremlins had installed lifts and ferries that somewhat resembled amusement park rides. A tall windmill and a taller clock tower flanked the district, and in between, a wide and gentle waterfall cascaded down over the rock wall into the moat.

Jamface floated into the square, leading three much taller figures behind him. "Welcome to Gremlin Village!" he introduced, spinning around to gesture to the scenery. "C'est trés magnifique that you have volunteered to help us fix up our multitude of mechanisms!"

"Hey," Kazuichi Soda said from the head of the group, "that's my whole thing, after all! Ultimate Mechanic Kazuichi Soda!" He withdrew his comfort wrench from his pocket, attempting to give it a cocky spin in his hand. He dropped it on his foot.

"Whoa." Jim Hawkins took a look around. "You guys have built some neat stuff."

"Gremlin mechanisms are the peak of ingenuity!" Jamface explained.

The final member of the group was Lianna, who had decked herself out in a black jumpsuit and hoof-tailored boots for this occasion. She'd come along out of curiosity as to if her true talent lay in mechanics. "We're happy to help," she said with a bow.

"And we are happy that you CAN help," Jamface replied. Then, in a grumble, "It is the very LEAST you can do after that gant de toilette princess failed her most basic duties."

"HEY, HEY, HEY!" Kazuichi snapped, pointing his wrench at Jamface. "Shut up, okay? If you keep talking shit about Kairi, we're not gonna help you! ESPECIALLY if you keep calling her a toilet!"

"'Gant de toilette' actually translates to 'used dishrag,'" Lianna corrected.

"That's still pretty bad!" Kazuichi insisted.

Jim kept his mouth shut. This was why he hadn't been able to get Cid to come along; one foul word about Kairi and Cid knew he would have even less diplomatic restraint than Kazuichi.

"Fine, fine," Jamface growled. "There will be no mention of the…princess while you are here."

"Good." Kazuichi let his scowl relax. "So what're we fixing?"

"It is the clock tower," Jamface explained, gesturing over to the tall structure. "She keeps breaking on us, again and again! The only one who could ever calm her temperamental nature was…" He trailed off with a sigh.

None of the three knew what to say. Jim felt that he, at least, should know. After all, he had known loss, if not by death. However, nothing ever said to him before Silver had even worked, and he doubted Jamface wanted to hear that he would be shining as bright as the celestial bodies one day.

"Ca ne fait rien," Jamface said with a wave. "I wish you bonne chance with the repairs. You will need to work in the tower's interior. Do check the pump up top as well."

"Engines revving!" Kazuichi cried. "Let's go, Kazusquad!"

"Since when are we the KAZUSQUAD?" Jim laughed.

"Since you're my sidekicks today!" Kazuichi insisted. "…Huh. Didn't think I'd be the one calling somebody else my sidekick. Anyway, let's go!"

The "Kazusquad" made their way to a ferry in the form of an airplane-shaped ride; the motion of it was slow enough that Kazuichi could take it without launching any of the contents of his stomach into the moat. From there, they scaled the cliffside to the clock tower, noting that its face up at the summit was unmoving and three hours behind.

"I've never been inside one of these before!" Kazuichi's eyes sparkled. "This is gonna be so sweet!"

"I dunno," Jim teased, lightly punching his forearm. "It's kinda puny compared to a whole mechanical planet."

"I just hope I end up enjoying this," Lianna sighed.

They entered through a lower door, noting a complex configuration of brass gears that went all the way to the top. "BEST DAY EVER!" Kazuichi shrieked.

"Where do we start?" Lianna asked, somewhat intimidated.

"Follow me!" Kazuichi ordered. "I know exactly what we're doing!"

Lianna looked to Jim, who shrugged. Then they followed Kazuichi up a maintenance ladder.

"Okay," Kazuichi observed, "so the first problem's here. We need to get these gears moving again. I'll oil up the shaft – please don't take that out of context – and it looks like there's some little gears missing, like they popped out of place. You guys wanna see if you can find 'em close by?"

"How many?" Jim asked. "I just stepped on, like, four."

"Should be five…" Kazuichi mused.

"I see it," Lianna said dryly, looking at a catwalk below. "I'll go get it and come back."

"Jim, you wanna start putting those gears back in?" Kazuichi suggested. "Leave a couple to show Lianna how, though!"

Once the three were engrossed in their work, Lianna pointed out, "You know, telling others not to speak ill of Kairi will not make them stop feeling resentment toward her."

"Yeah, I know," Kazuichi grumbled. "I just…don't wanna hear it, okay? And I dunno what else to do besides tell 'em to shut it. I'm used to being manipulatED, not a manipulatOR."

"When were you manipulated?" Jim asked.

"I…uhhhhhh…" Kazuichi stared blankly ahead, a chill running over him.

"That stuff you don't wanna talk about," Jim realized. "Right."

Lianna regarded Kazuichi with interest. "Forgive me, but…well, you know I was created to be someone's pawn. Did you once…?"

"Yeah," Kazuichi admitted. "I dunno if I wanna tell you what happened. You might hate me. I used to be…way worse. I hurt people. I…" His voice cracked.

"I think I know what you are implying," Lianna told him. "I will not pry. However, it is a bit of a comfort to know you understand to a degree, whatever degree that is. You know people recognize me as a goblin in the streets, do you not?"

"I thought some people were staring at us," Jim realized. "I just thought it was because of Kazuichi's ugly jumpsuit."

"It is me," Lianna sighed. "They know I was…one of Maleficent's. I look it."

"I mean, looking tough and scary isn't all bad," Kazuichi told her. "I mean…I didn't always look like this. Most of this isn't my natural colors."

"No?" Lianna regarded him with interest.

"Like…my real hair's black," Kazuichi explained, "and also, I grew it out longer. I used to wear glasses. My eyes are brown, but I make them look maroon. I also picked this 'ugly' jumpsuit 'cause I thought it'd make me look tougher. Oh, and also, take it from me: you don't ever wanna DIY giving yourself sharp teeth. It looks cool, but it's a pain in the ass to brush."

"Why did you change?" Lianna asked. "Was it related to when you were…"

"No, before that," Kazuichi told her. "Jim knows this part. I had a best buddy, and…well, we had an incident. I helped him cheat on a test, we got caught, I took the fall, he ghosted me…" The story was getting easier to tell each time. Less painful. That was good. "He was all I had, so after that, I ended up alone. I got scared of trusting people, so I decided to scare 'em off. And I made myself like this. It kinda backfired. The tough kids started hanging around me, and girls even hit on me for the first time."

"Have you thought about going back, now that things are different?" Lianna asked.

"Kind of?" Kazuichi shrugged. "Hang on. This gear can move now, but it's REALLY grimy." He withdrew a spray from the tool belt he'd brought, then a rag from his pocket. Going to work cleaning, he continued; "I just…dunno. This started out as being the fake me, so I thought, maybe I should go back to looking more…normal? That doesn't feel like the right word. But I'm used to being this now. And…I'm not even sure who I am right now. Me before my friend, me before the Despair, me before this whole inter-world stuff, it's all still a huge work in progress. So I'm gonna stay this for now, 'cause it's comfortable, and who knows if I'll change again?" He sighed. "Even I don't know if I'll change again."

Lianna had been trying to unsuccessfully install the same gear since Kazuichi had begun, going off Jim's demonstration of the other four next to her. She gave up. Already she wasn't liking this field. "Whatever you choose, you will be you," she told Kazuichi, "and you will have a good heart. Even if it has been tarnished in the past."

He turned to smile at her, and she felt herself flooded with a strange, sudden warmth. "Thanks, Lianna," he said sincerely. "Means a lot."

"You…want me to finish that gear for you?" Jim asked.

Lianna practically shoved it at him. "As it turns out, I am NOT a mechanic."

She left her post, approaching Kazuichi to ask if she could help him polish the larger gear – and finding him suddenly very difficult to talk to. Her throat seemed to choke up as she regarded him from behind, his attention still on the gear. Though she couldn't see it, the image of his faux-maroon eyes and sharp teeth were burned into her mind. Someone who looked unusual, like her. Someone who knew a dark past, like her. Someone who understood. Maybe…just maybe…

No. She couldn't think like that. He wanted Sonia, and only Sonia. And Sonia was the furthest thing from Lianna one could imagine. Sonia was like the Aurora who Maleficent had imprinted Lianna with memories of. Blonde, pale…beautiful. Lianna was ugly, plain and simple. How had she so quickly fallen for entirely the wrong man?

She didn't have time to stew on it. For a shadowy stalker lurked in the upper gears, crawling along the wall. When Kazuichi was in his sights, he made his move. Giving a great leap, he attached himself to Kazuichi's back, yelling, "GOTCHA!"

Lianna reacted on instinct. She lunged protectively, seizing the assailant and ripping him from Kazuichi, putting him in a headlock. As Jim leapt down to see what the commotion was, Lianna's captive struggled in her arms, crying out, "HEY, HEY, HEY! I WAS JUST TRYIN'A SCARE HIM FOR FUN, YO!"

Kazuichi whirled around to get a good look at his would-be attacker. "TODD?"

"You wanna tell your girlfriend ta let me go?" Todd Tolansky wheezed.

"It's okay," Kazuichi told Lianna. "He's a friend. …Sort of."

Lianna brusquely released her hold on Todd. "Geez, that's the last time I try ta have fun with any a you," Todd muttered.

"So are you the Todd who steals things and generally causes mayhem around town?" Jim asked cockily.

"Who's askin'?" Todd replied from his crouch on the platform where the quartet stood.

"Somebody who's played keep-away from the cops a few times," Jim said with a smirk. "Of course, I've been moving up in the world morally, so I wouldn't expect TOO much sympathy."

Todd knew it was just a friendly riff. "Anyway, heard ya talkin', an' I just wanted ta put in my two cents. Me bein' the neighborhood ugly guy, y'know. It ain't bad, once ya get used t'it. I dunno, I used to feel all weird gettin' picked on and called 'the Toad' when I was a kid, but hey, I liked the name enough to keep it. It's part of my charm. It's Toad, y'know, he's ugly. So don' even worry about it, lady. Now, your problem with attackin' people who try ta scare their friends, THAT'S somethin' ta work on."

"No," Lianna insisted coldly. "No, it is not."

"Hey!" Kazuichi suddenly remembered. "You're the reason that one café got shut down! You and Fred! Jas and I were gonna take Pacce out to eat there!"

"Heh." Todd smirked. "Yer welcome."

"Look," Kazuichi sighed, "nothing I say is gonna make you sorry about wrecking the place, but come on, man, if you'd just let Fred punch the guy, you wouldn't've gotten your neck tazed!"

Todd automatically rubbed at his throat at the memory. "It's the principle of it, y'know?" he answered. "Ya like somebody that much, ya take a hit for 'em."

"Unless that somebody is huge and independent and you're tiny and useless," Kazuichi argued.

"So let's say you were dating Aqua," Jim posed.

"Okay," Kazuichi told him. "Not sure where this is going, but okay."

"You've seen how well Aqua fights in practice, right?"

"Yeah. She's a badass."

"Say the WHAM ARMY had her surrounded," Jim posed. "You can run or you can – "

"LIKE HELL I RUN!" Kazuichi cried. "I'm gettin' in there!"

"But let's say you didn't have your armor plate," Jim went on.

"I don't care!" Kazuichi growled. "If I loved her, which I don't, then – "

"Ya get tased in the neck," Todd said proudly, "an' with no regrets."

Another thought occurred to Kazuichi. He glared at Todd; "You better not be the reason this clock keeps breaking."

"Me?" Todd flinched. "I ain't done nothin' bad ta this place. …That I know about. It's just a good place ta hang out without bein' stared at. Which I know I just said ugly pride an' all, but everyone needs a break, y'know? But it's a good…tall thing you can see a lot from."

"Vantage point," Lianna filled in.

"Sure," Todd replied.

"I feel like there's SOME reason this clock keeps breaking," Jim mused. "Unless it's just…old? Overused?"

"Hmm." Kazuichi looked up into the mechanisms, giving it all a scan. "Maybe…"

"You're not gonna find anything that way," Jim told him. "It all looks – "

"Hey," Kazuichi broke in, "guys, help me out. Does that big gear look crooked to you?" He pointed.

Lianna, Jim, and Todd crowded around him. "Yeah," Jim confirmed. "It kinda does."

"Now that you mention it…" Lianna affirmed.

"That thing's as straight as Pietro," Todd teased.

"I knew it!" Kazuichi pumped his fist. "Just had to get a second opinion. I'm not great with perception stuff sometimes."

"Know the feelin'," Todd commented.

"But I think that's it," Kazuichi related. "That gear got bent over time, and 'cause it's only a little out of whack, things always look normal when the guys down in town try and fix it up. It's just a temporary fix, though, and then the gear keeps turning off-center and then the rest of it breaks." He stared at it long and hard. "Not much we can do to unbend it without magic or some shit. Let's just put a short-term patch on this for now and then go talk to Whatshisface about the root of the problem."

"Sounds like a plan," Jim agreed.

In order to give the clock its quick fix, the group had to move up to another catwalk. "You guys don' mind if I tag along with ya for a while?" Todd asked. "Kaz an' I ain't caught up in a while."

"Just don't pick my pocket, and we'll be good," Jim told him.

"I'd also rather not learn why Ruby Rose hates you so much," Lianna grumbled.

"You wanna try something else, Lianna?" Kazuichi asked. "I know the gears weren't your thing, but – "

"This whole place just seems too difficult," Lianna sighed. "I can't make sense of it the way you do. I don't have the eyes for it, and apparently not the coordination either."

"That's fine," Kazuichi told her. "Jim and I can work on it, and you and Todd can just chill."

"What, ya don' trust me ta help ya fix things?" Todd teased.

"No," Kazuichi told him flatly. "I don't."

He and Jim set to work once again, and Todd didn't miss it when Lianna briefly checked Kazuichi out again. "Okay, conversation game time," Kazuichi declared after a few moments of awkward silence. "Lianna. You into guys or girls?"

Lianna wasn't sure she liked where this was going. "Men, I believe."

"Okay. Hottest guy you've ever known. Go."

"I haven't been in existence long enough to notice any in particular," Lianna said grumpily and hastily, and now both Todd and Jim caught on. "Ask someone else."

"Okay, Jim," Kazuichi prompted. "Hottest guy you ever saw."

"Hmm." Jim thought it over. "There was this one guy back in Montressor. He stayed with his family at the Benbow for a few weeks. We hung out. I never told him anything, though, and we didn't keep in touch after. It…wasn't easy to be out, back then. I'm not sure he would've taken it well. Better we were friends for then than he knew."

"Bummer," Kazuichi replied. "What'd he look like?" Though Kazuichi wasn't really one to be able to judge an attractive man from description, he still always had fun with this topic.

"Dark hair," Jim described. "Dark eyes, the kind that look like they go on for infinity. Growing a goatee out. Not, like, huge, but taller than me, and he had some good muscles on him. He liked mechanical stuff, too."

"Nice!" Kazuichi replied. "Okay. Todd. First, hottest girl you've ever seen."

"Easy," Todd told him. "Wanda. You've seen Wanda."

"I have seen Wanda, and I get it."

"Not that I would want it to go anywhere anymore," Todd went on. "She couldn't handle this. An'…I like her better as a pal anyway. The stuff Freddie an' I get up to, she wouldn' understand, y'dig?"

"All right, so part two of the question," Kazuichi went on. "Hottest guy…"

"Well, y'know that's – "

"BUT YOU CAN'T SAY FRED."

Todd was caught off guard by that one, flinching. "So, like, second hottest?"

"Second hottest guy," Kazuichi affirmed.

"Well. Uh." Todd swallowed hard. "There was this one friend I had once. Pretty good-lookin'. Older than me, so it wouldn't'a worked out. He, uh…he was this Asian guy…kinda flashy…kinda skinny…liked workin' with machines an' stuff…"

"You guys have a type," Kazuichi teased. "Since you were both into mechanics, I gotta know. Would I have been a good friend for either of 'em?"

"I think so," Jim replied.

"Depends," Todd replied. "How's your self-esteem?"

"Shit," Kazuichi answered.

"Yeah, he wouldn' like ya, then," Todd muttered, and now it was Lianna's turn to raise an eyebrow.

"Okay, turnaround," Jim decided. "Kazuichi. Hottest girl you know that isn't Sonia."

"I can't even!" Kazuichi wailed. "I don't even wanna think about any girl but her now! Especially now that…well…" He bit his lip lightly, so as not to break skin with his sharpened teeth. He had promised to keep the love potion a secret between him and Jasmine. He couldn't break that. He could, however, give a little hint. "I think that pretty soon, things are gonna fall into place for us."

"You're gonna ask her out?" Jim asked excitedly.

"…Something like that," Kazuichi said meekly, not wanting to admit he'd already tried that approach. "I'm just kinda waiting for the right time. She and I gotta have a conversation, and it can't just be any old conversation! It's gotta be in a romantic place at a romantic time! Like…I dunno…"

Suddenly, his GummiPhone began to jingle, a jaunty percussive tune with an urgent undertone. Kazuichi fumbled the tools in his hands while searching for it in his pockets, then finally got the phone out; "Hey!" Shortly after seeing whose face was on the screen: "Oh, HEY! Sonia!"

"Kazuichi," Sonia said calmly. "I have something to request of you. We need to have a very important conversation, and we must speak alone, without anyone else present. Please. It is urgent."

"Consider me there!" Kazuichi told her. "Just name the place and the time!"

"Could you come to the public gardens?" Sonia asked. "Please set out now. That way, you will be here when the sun sets. I…want the timing to be perfect."

"Timing?" Kazuichi asked excitedly.

"You'll see," Sonia told him. "Meet me there."

The connection broke.

"DID YOU HEAR THAT?" Kazuichi cried. "SONIA WANTS TO TALK TO ME! AND IT'S IMPORTANT! OHHHHH, TONIGHT'S GONNA BE THE NIGHT!" He began to descend the maintenance ladder. "Sorry, guys, but the Kazusquad is gonna hafta break up for a night! But you guys can handle it up there, right?"

"It's just me doing the work!" Jim laughed. "But aren't you supposed to not go anywhere alone?" A rule he hadn't really understood, but he went along with it after Cid had made sure of imparting its gravity on him.

"I won't be alone!" Kazuichi called up. "I'll be with Sonia! Next time I see you guys, I'm gonna be the happiest man in the worlds!"

With a sound like a car revving up, he bolted out of the clock tower, the doors slamming below him.

Not a moment after he'd left did Lianna say "Excuse me" and hurriedly scale down the ladder.

She did not see any trace of Kazuichi when she left the tower. Presumably, he'd already ferried across the moat and begun the walk (or enthusiastic sprint) to the public gardens off the main part of town. That hardly mattered. She walked around back of the tower, withdrawing her scroll in the process.

She dialed the number of one of the few people she knew she could always count on. It rang once, then Mal picked up.

"Hey," Mal greeted. "What's up – "

"EXCUSE YOU!" a familiar voice barked. "SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO WATCH!"

"Sorry, Papyrus," Mal told him, looking offscreen. "I'll take it outside."

Lianna watched Mal get up off of a couch and make her way through a door to a hallway. "Now what's up?" she asked.

"Did I interrupt?" Lianna asked.

"Yeah, but no," Mal told her. "Ienzo hooked up a big-screen TV and a DVD player that he and Mickey built, and a bunch of us convinced him to try out some scary movies with us. We're doing a horror marathon all night…or until people get too freaked out. Aqua and Papyrus both swear they can handle whatever, but I think they're gonna break. Ienzo KNEW he was gonna break, but he stuck around because he heard that's half the fun."

A scream sounded from within the television room. Lianna didn't even know who it belonged to, but it was followed up with a small, soft chorus of laughter. "I didn't mean to take you away from your movie," Lianna said softly.

"What's wrong?" Mal asked.

"Nothing," Lianna replied.

"For someone Maleficent created to lie to Riku, you are a horrible liar," Mal teased. "I always have time for my sister, Li. Especially when I know something's up. Did you get hurt out at Gremlin Village today or something? Did somebody bully you?"

"No," Lianna said softly. "It's…cliché. It's not something a person like me should worry about."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?" Mal asked.

"Girls like me…know better than to get worked up over a boy," Lianna related, voice cracking.

"I mean, it's not like you can help getting a crush," Mal told her. "Don't worry about it. It's feelings. We have them, I guess. So who's the guy?"

"He'll never like me," Lianna sighed, leaning back against the tower. "No, that isn't true. He does like me, but only as a member of his friend squad. He would never like me as…more."

"Kinda need a name, Li."

Lianna couldn't seem to spit it out until someone else, above her head, did it for her:

"It's Kaz. Y'know, Kaz Soda?"

"TODD!" Lianna shrieked, leaping away from the wall and whirling around to snarl at her eavesdropper.

"You weren't exactly subtle," Todd told her.

"Yes she was," another voice said from around the corner.

"JIM?" Lianna cried in anger.

Jim rounded the tower to meet the others. "I mean, there were some tells, but it took a hot minute to figure it out."

"I wasn't as obvious as Todd, at any rate," Lianna growled.

"Heh…ya caught on, didja?" Todd said, slightly flustered, as he dropped to the ground. "Yeah, Kaz is my second hottest. Not like I even wanna do anythin' about it. I already got the best. I just didn' wanna make it weird."

"Nor do I," Lianna went on. "I want to keep Kazuichi as a friend. I think he understands things about me that…did you know he altered his own appearance to look more monstrous? His natural hair color is black."

"I feel like that's out of context, but okay," Mal replied. "Lianna, this is okay. I mean, okay, it's obviously stressing you out, but it's not bad for you to have these feelings."

"But he couldn't be more wrong," Lianna said softly. "He loves Sonia. I'm nothing like Sonia. I'm afraid of spending so much time pining for someone who will never return it. It will only be sadness for me. Unneeded sadness. It will only be a waste. And I do not want him to feel guilty over me."

"I mean…maybe there's a chance?" Mal proposed. "The age difference is a little weird, but not, like, horrible. I don't think."

"It sounds as if he is going to become official with Sonia tonight," Lianna related. "She called while we were at work, and she asked him to meet her in the gardens. That way, they would meet by sundown. And it sounds like they are going to talk about…" She could hardly bring herself to finish.

"Wait. Back up." Mal's tone had turned urgent. "You said Sonia called him and told him to meet her at the gardens? Like, now? Tonight?"

"Yes," Lianna related.

"You're SURE," Mal repeated.

"I am sure!" Lianna insisted.

"This is wrong," Mal said hurriedly. "Lianna. SONIA IS ONE OF THE PEOPLE WATCHING THE MOVIE MARATHON WITH ME. ALL NIGHT."

"That's weird," Jim mused. "Why would she double up – "

"When did she call?" Mal demanded. "Need a time."

"Less than five minutes ago, dawg," Todd told her. "What, ya think she's flakin'?"

"I have been with Sonia for the past two hours," Mal related, "and she has not taken out her phone once."

Lianna, Todd, and Jim exchanged horrified expressions. "What is happening?" Lianna wondered out loud.

"I don't know," Mal told her, "but it's bad. Kazuichi is in huge trouble. You have to get to the gardens as fast as you can and stop whatever is happening from happening before he gets hurt. I'm gonna grab some help and get there as fast as I can."

With that, she hung up.

With an earsplitting "NO!" of panic, Lianna leapt onto the ferry-ride and off it again, barreling across the town square's rotating gear.

"WAIT FOR US, YO!" Todd yelled as he leapt over the whole moat; Jim bounced off a ferry-ride that was midway across before landing and following.

As the boys flanked Lianna, she found herself silently praying to whatever gods would listen that she would not lose Kazuichi Soda that night.