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.

112. The Bird of Tuonela

A/N: Content warning for mild descriptions of torture.

...

The procession had been held for Aggar's corpse. Ruby, Roxas, Lea, Rainbow Dash, Rapunzel, Lyrae, and the Storm Hawks had been somewhat amazed at how festive it was for a funerary rite. Most had followed it to the necropolis, but Rainbow Dash broke off then to kick in a rockslide that would seal the gap to the monsters' caverns.

Ruby had seen her crying as she flew off, knowing the real reason she hadn't wanted to stick around for the pyre.

Aggar's body was burned, the ashes sealed in an ornamental urn and placed on the shelf of one of the mausoleums that made up the Terra Vapos necropolis. Then the citizens turned to the palace for the feast that followed, and by then, Rainbow Dash had finished her work and felt comfortable returning.

The heroes of the hour were settled at the head of the table, grouped around the seat usually reserved for Aggar. It had been given over to Finn, of course, with his being the Domo of the Terra.

"It's…just so weird," Aerrow remarked. "We're having a feast like it's some kind of party, but…"

"What else can we do?" Ruby asked. "We have to have the strength to keep going."

"The people need to know they can smile, even without Aggar," Rapunzel added.

"That's probably why it's such a tradition here," Piper mused.

"That and the parade," Finn brought up.

"PROCESSION," Piper corrected.

Finn shrugged. "Whatever, man. There was music and dancing, and it was totally a parade."

Piper shook her head, pressing the heel of her hand to her brow as she grunted.

"DOMO FINN!" someone yelled from further down the table. "In the absence of the king, there is only one course of action we can take!"

"Yes!" another cried. "The throne must now go to the Domo as his successor!"

"Wait, WHAT?" Finn flinched. "I mean, not that that isn't SUPER COOL and I'm not STOKED you guys want me to be your king, but I just got my team back! I kiiiiiinda wanna go with them. Not stay here."

"In that case," another remarked, "given that Aggar had no heir, you must choose a Vaposian to ascend his throne."

"Wha – how am I supposed to do that?" Finn shrugged. "I dunno any of you guys. This is a big decision! How do I know which one of you is good enough to be the next king?"

He turned to raise his eyebrows at a particularly pretty blonde woman. "Though I gotta say, I'm almost ready to just make her the queen for bein' so fine."

The chorus went up immediately:

"THE DOMO HAS SPOKEN!"

"THE DOMO HAS CHOSEN SIMURGH!"

"ALL HAIL QUEEN SIMURGH!"

"PREPARE FOR THE CORONATION!"

Piper's jaw dropped. "SERIOUSLY?"

"What…the…" Lea shook his head. "Okay, is this seriously happening?"

"Trust me," Stork sighed. "You hang around Finn this long…you get used to this."

Though the sharp-eared could pick out the definite affection in his complaint.

Simurgh, pleased as mulsum, was hoisted up onto a litter and carried away to be clothed in royal garb; she giggled and waved at Finn as she departed. Finn waved back, his lack of surprise being surprising as he gave her a coy expression.

"STOP it," Piper grunted, grabbing Finn's sleeve to direct his attention back to the table.

"Sooooo…" Stork brought up. "At the risk of being the harbinger of dread, are we at all concerned about what's happening to Lea's hair?"

"I mean, I don't feel any different." Lea shrugged. "…Okay, maybe a little weirdly cold. Come to think of it, my Shotlock fired off an ice aura when I was going for fire. Fire's kinda my thing, y'know? But it's not like that MEANS anything."

"I just wonder if it has to do with Vexen attacking you underground," Rapunzel pointed out. "My hair is the way it is because of the power of the sundrop. Maybe, somehow, he…transferred his ice to you? And your hair is going white because of it?"

"Why would he GIVE me his power?" Lea asked.

"Ohhhh, he wouldn't," Stork brought up. "You're probably freezing from the inside out."

"Okay, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Lea retorted, a little too quickly. "No offense."

"None taken," Stork replied. "After all, that's what they all say before the truth sinks in…"

"Hey, uh, Stork?" Aerrow broke in. "I was kinda wondering if I could talk to you and the rest of the squad…in private."

He had really wanted to wait until after the feast, but this way, the others could focus on undoing any fears Stork had implanted in Lea's subconscious.

"I guess," Stork replied.

"C'mon!" Finn leapt up. "I know all the rooms in here! I'll find us a good place to talk things out!"

"Is this about the – " Junko began to ask, but Piper cut him off by hissing his name.

The five rose, and Radarr hopped down off the table to follow them back into the palace's recesses. Finn was able to find them an empty lounge (well, it became empty after they chased the chicken out). Aerrow made sure to shut the door behind them to ensure silence.

"Y'know…" Stork gave a nervous laugh. "This almost feels…too good to be true. I thought it was too much to hope for that one of you made it, let alone all of you. I keep expecting to wake up to reality and figure out that I really am the only one who made it out of the blast."

"Well, we're together again for good!" Junko declared. "And we're never gonna leave you again! Not even by accident!"

"We'll try, anyway," Aerrow clarified. "But there's…something I wanna talk about."

Stork sighed, shoulders slumping. "I know."

"Where did all of that even COME from?" Piper asked. "Was that magic you learned since we were separated? And why did you go from being so silly to so…so…"

"Terrifying?" Finn suggested.

"Finn!" Piper scolded.

"What?" Finn retorted. "Am I wrong?"

"It was pretty scary," Junko added.

"For the last time," Stork cried, "I don't KNOW! I don't HAVE powers like that! I never have! I can't make them come back! If Rapunzel hadn't taped it, I wouldn't even believe you saw what you thought you saw! I can't DO magic! And I definitely can't tell you what happened in between phase one and phase two of the delusion! I was DELUSIONAL, remember? And the memory loss! I have no idea what I did! The only thing I know was that hearing they took Piper and the Condor sent me into it, and seeing Piper okay snapped me back out of it! THAT'S IT!"

"It was just…concerning," Piper admitted.

"What, you think I'm gonna snap again?" Stork accused. "Use magic I don't even know I have to hurt other people? Well, guess what! You're not the first one to think of that! I guess I can add MYSELF to the list of things I can't trust! Maybe that's my proof this isn't a dream. I get you all back…only to be the ticking time bomb waiting to blow you to smithereens."

"Stork, nobody thinks that!" Aerrow said hurriedly.

"I…wouldn't say 'nobody,'" Finn said softly.

"Well, anyone who does is gonna have to get over it." Aerrow fired a glare at Finn. "It was scary. But it got set off by you being worried about your friends, and you only attacked the bad guys. And it stopped before anything happened that you couldn't take back. If it happens again, we'll deal with it later, and everything will be fine!"

"…Something tells me you didn't call us aside just to reassure me about that episode," Stork realized, voice cracking.

"…No," Aerrow admitted. "I didn't have anything else to say about that at all. I'm…worried about something else. When I was fighting the Dark Ace, he said something that I just wanna prove was a lie. He said that back before Cyclonia rose, when the Raptors blew up the Condor and we got scattered, you…you killed them all on Terra Bogaton. And it wasn't self-defense. But that's not even the part that makes me so worried. I mean, our new friends don't kill, and I get why. But back then, it wouldn't have mattered as much. We all hated the Raptors. But the Dark Ace said…that you were ready to die with them, as soon as you were done. Because you thought you didn't have anything left to live for. While we were waiting for you, afraid of what happened to you. We were actually worried you really did die, and…this has gotta be just something he said to get in our heads! I just need you to tell me he lied!"

"Of course he lied!" Junko said adamantly. "We're like a family! Stork would never abandon us like that!"

Stork, however, was staring at Aerrow as though he'd been caught in the midst of murder. And perhaps, in a sense, he had.

"C'mon, buddy," Finn urged. "You'd never just…y'know…take yourself away from us forever, would ya?"

It was so telling, that Finn couldn't even say the words. Stork himself was having trouble forming a sentence of his own, his throat cracking, his tongue refusing to comply. Yet he knew it was inevitable. They had to know the truth.

He finally forced out the words: "I…I did."

"WHAT?" Piper shrieked.

"I…tried…" It was so much harder to tell them than the other Cinnamons. He'd been with them for so long, pledged his loyalty to them, devoted himself to making sure these kids were safe…how could he tell them how easily he'd almost thrown it all aside. "To…to kill…myself. On Terra Bogaton. After the Condor…after I…" A hard swallow. "Thought I had nothing left."

Their silence was worse than any outrage. Stork had expected Piper to get angry, Finn to panic, Junko to catch Finn's panic and run with it, Aerrow to scold, Radarr to chatter. The way they all looked at him, delaying any and all of these reactions, was so much more excruciating.

Then, finally, Piper's voice came like jagged ice: "Were WE not enough?"

"I have asked myself that question every day since then, okay?" Stork protested, pressing fingers to his temples. "That's part of why I had you take the Condor when I left for Radiant Garden! I wanted…I wanted to see how well I could function without it. So I wouldn't do it again. I just – my LIFE is on that ship – "

"It's a SHIP!" Finn cried. "C'mon, dude! We rebuilt it so easy!"

"I know, I know, I KNOW!" Stork replied, voice straining. "It was wrong, and none of it made sense, but you have to remember I spent half my LIFE on that ship after Terra Merbia went down! It was the only sanctuary I had in the Wasteland! My home was wrecked, my parents were DEAD, and maybe I put more of myself in that ship than I should've! When I saw that half of my life just go up in flames…when I saw the thing that bound us all together fragmented into scrap metal…it just felt…hollow and sickening and all of these feelings I had to get to stop. Hopeless. It was hopeless. It was despair! Actual ultimate despair! Everything before me just seemed so empty and pointless, and I know it wasn't, and I KNOW it was just pieces of metal and crystal stuck together with a welding torch, but you don't know what it feels like when…when everything inside of you just collapses, and you have no idea what's coming next except that it's not good, and there's nothing you can do but try for revenge, and then…you just wanna rest. And not wake up in the world where everything went wrong."

"Well, you should've TALKED to us!" Piper stamped her foot. "We could've HELPED you!"

"We were waiting for you!" Aerrow reminded him. "If you'd gone through with it, we would've kept waiting until we had to give up! We would've looked for you until we had to learn that you were GONE!"

"AFTER EVERYTHING?" Finn roared. "You've always been the one that looked out for me! You came with me on my Domo adventures! You kept me out of big trouble! You took a BATTERING RAM for me so I wouldn't get hurt!" His voice hardened; "Or was that just your excuse to check out early and get your 'rest'?"

Radarr threw in his piece: a very heated string of chatters.

"No," Stork muttered, eyes shut, as the others berated him. "No, no, no – "

"EVERYONE, STOP!" Junko yelled. "Can't you see you're just stressing him out worse?"

It was a sobering realization; Piper, Aerrow, Finn, and Radarr each took a literal step back.

"Stork…" Junko attempted. "You're right. We don't know how it feels. We just know how it feels to be scared for our friend. That's why everyone's yelling. I know I'm scared. I don't wanna lose you. They don't, either." He gestured to the others.

"We don't," Aerrow confirmed, his voice barely above a whisper. "We…we love you, Stork."

Stork choked on air, tears escaping from the eyes he didn't dare to open.

"But the other thing I was thinking about," Aerrow said. "If that's true, then after the Condor blew up on the Far Side…when that Maleficent person was involved…did you…did you try it again?"

"I…" Stork croaked. "I did…but the others saved me, Ruby and her friends…and that's how we…started…"

He sank down onto a nearby couch, head in his hands. "I don't wanna talk about it anymore," he barely managed.

Aerrow nodded toward the door. "C'mon," he told the others. "We'll…we'll figure this out."

"Maybe we should just drop it," Junko suggested as they filed into the hall. "I mean, he is learning better control, and talking about it just seems to make things worse…"

Stork heard the sounds of four sets of larger footsteps and one set of tiny paw-steps leaving, all of them discussing him. He kept his eyes shut, sobbing into the darkness. He hadn't meant to fail them like this. He hadn't meant to burden them.

Actually, they deserved better. A friend who wouldn't leave them for such selfish, shallow reasons. Why had he ever thought an airship was worth his own death?

Maybe they would be better off if he were gone after all. Then they could just think a Raptor had murdered him and be done with it.

He was barely aware of the pressure settling in next to him on the couch. A familiar voice began, "So, uh, it's not like I'm trying to stalk you or spy on you or anything, and if this is private, I'll go back to dinner, but when everyone came back without you, I got kinda worried and – "

Stork's head snapped up; his eyes finally opened. Rapunzel regarded him with her usual non-judgmental expression, concern written on her face without beration.

"…And now I just thought you might need someone to talk to," she concluded.

"Th-th-they…deserve better than me," Stork stammered through his tears. "Aerrow knows now, about the times I tried to die after losing the Condor and losing them, and now they hate me, and I'd hate me, too, and I DO hate me, and then there's all that Darkness stuff you recorded and I'm afraid it'll come back out and I'll hurt somebody and maybe I should just go away before it's too late – "

"Oh, no," Rapunzel told him softly. "They don't hate you. People can act a little mean when they're scared. I know Cass did all the time, and wasn't that what Ven and Aqua had that big fight over? And I know you're not dangerous. I can feel it. But if you were, I'd find a way to save you from it. I'd do that because you're a really great friend, and you're so special and amazing, and the other Storm Hawks know that, too. That's the real thing about yourself that you're hiding that you don't know about: just how amazing you are."

Then she let out a surprised "Oh!" as the normally touch-averse Stork threw his arms around her, clinging tightly. She could feel his abdomen heaving from crying, and she gently wrapped her own arms around him.

"Shhhhh," she whispered. "It'll be okay. Maybe it's not okay now. But it will be. I promise."

"You can't keep doing this," Stork choked. "You can't keep taking care of me. I don't even do anything for you – "

"Yes, you do. Don't be silly. You paint with me and you listen to my songs and you put up with it when I wanna try weird stuff at baking club. Honestly, after I couldn't decide whether to put cherries, hazelnuts, or pears in the clafoutis, so I put in all three, and then it stayed in the oven a bit too long so the inside got all chalky instead of custardy, and you ate it anyway, I think I owe you at LEAST this much."

She could feel him laugh ever so slightly.

"I want you to stay in my life because I like spending my time with you," Rapunzel assured him. "If you went away, I'd just be so sad. But the thing is…I know that sometimes, your emotions can feel like too much. I don't think I've ever been quite where you've been, but I've been close. After Varian – after the storm – I mean, I didn't try to kill myself, but I did let my free will get hollowed out by a demon art teacher because I never wanted to make another choice in life again. I was afraid of making a mess wherever I went. I was afraid that maybe I was just…cursed, or horrible at being a princess and a friend. I started to get scared that the tiniest little thing I did wrong would ruin another person's life. I…still get scared of that, sometimes. And I can see how that could turn into thinking it's better for you to not be around to cause any of the problems. I don't like that you thought about…doing that. But I think I get why you wanted to. And I want you to know I will always, always, ALWAYS be here for you if you need to talk about those things. I also promise to learn how to actually bake a good clafoutis so I can have one handy to cheer you up when you're sad. Trust me, if they're actually done right, they're really, REALLY good."

He'd been slowly calming, the longer she talked. Then he said, tone quiet but even, "You know, I could stand to brush up on a few things after the whole…croquembouche incident."

Rapunzel chortled. "I found ANOTHER stray cream puff the day before we left. It rolled under the fridge. I think that's the first time I've ever seen a croquembouche explode."

"I mean, it would've been one thing if it had tasted good…you know, when it got all over everyone…"

"Listen. Trying to combine the savory and the sweet versions with the spinach cream puffs and the caramel glaze was a genius idea, and I won't hear otherwise."

They were both laughing then, and Stork untangled himself from Rapunzel, looking her softly in the eye.

"Thank you," he said sincerely.

"You're ALWAYS welcome," Rapunzel told him.

"I…I'm there for you, too, you know. I'm not really great at the whole comfort thing, but there is a lot I understand, so if it ever gets too much…you can come talk to me, too."

"I'll remember that," Rapunzel said with a nod. "Thank you. Anyway, they just brought out the live music, and I bet your friends are waiting to wipe the slate clean and just have a good time with you at the feast, if you're ready to do that."

"I think I am," Stork ventured.

"Then come on!" Rapunzel leapt to her feet, seizing Stork's hand in her own so she could pull him up and along. "What are we waiting for?"

As her bare feet slapped along the tile hallway, and Stork hurried to keep pace without losing her grip, he realized that maybe he did love her. That really wasn't a good sign at all. No good could come of it. Eugene was a far better match for her. No, Stork had to keep quiet about this, fight it. (Who was it who had suggested that, anyway? Someone had accused him of it, he thought, but now he couldn't put the sentiment to a face or a name, and perhaps he'd just imagined that in all of his paranoid delusions, or he'd said it to himself.)

But he wasn't about to lose sight of how truly beautiful she could be, in every sense of the word, anytime soon.

...

Amora, Warp, Zhao, and the Dark Ace regrouped in the Skyside Shanty: a restaurant built up to sit as high as a Terra, surrounded by docking stations for airships. It was hardly an upper-class affair, and when the food arrived, Amora sighed as she picked through it with her fork.

"Moments ago, we were to dine on roast boar and fowl, with a buffet of vegetables native to Terra Vapos," she grunted. "A meal fit for royalty. And now we have been reduced to – " She raised a clump of the supposedly-edible conglomerate on her fork. "Fish entrails." She let it fall back to the plate.

Warp sniffed his own dish; "Ugh! Okay, I wasn't gonna complain, but HOW much vinegar did they put on this stuff?"

"How far we've fallen." Amora pushed her plate away. "I cannot stomach so much as a bite."

"Would you like me to force the chef to prepare something more palatable, Amora?" the Dark Ace asked eagerly.

"I'll do it," Zhao grunted, shoving at him. "Our Enchantress can't be forced to eat boar-q-pine slop."

"No!" Amora hissed. "We cannot afford to make a scene!"

"And why, exactly, can't we?" Warp asked, stirring his own plate round and round and hoping the smell of the Extra-Potent Quadruple-Malt Vinegar would dissipate, to no avail.

Amora realized she couldn't argue. "Never mind. By all means, give my REGARDS to the chef."

Before Zhao and the Dark Ace could threaten the Shanty's staff into submission and force them to cook food that looked like food, a green orb of light floated into the restaurant, positioning itself over the quartet's table. It sank into the tabletop, a sigil of bright green forming over the wood – a circle with three concentric rings, four other circles intersecting it equilaterally. From this sigil, a tiny perfect illusion of Maleficent rose up, no more than five inches tall, a light aura of Darkness surrounding her.

"Ah, Amora," Maleficent greeted, turning from the Enchantress to the cyborg. "Darkmatter. I desire a progress report on the current mission."

"Well…uh…" Warp had all but forgotten that he'd been on the clock to return the Oracle Stone to Maleficent. "We…ran into a snag."

"Oh?" Maleficent asked, tone almost teasing.

"We do not, in the strictest sense, have the Oracle Stone with us," Amora stated.

"And to what do I owe this delay?" Maleficent inquired.

Warp knew, immediately, what he had to say. "It was the kid. Cykes. She tried to backstab us and take the thing for herself. She ran off with it, and local gossip says she ran into a nasty bunch of Sky Knights. Pity. I liked the kid, y'know. She could've been one of us."

"Oh, but she WAS one of us," Amora lied mournfully. "Were it not for her deceit, we would have spared no effort to rescue her from our enemies' clutches. As it stands, however, it is HER fault that the Oracle Stone lies in the hands of the knights of this realm."

Zhao attempted to argue, but Amora shot him a look that insinuated telling Maleficent the truth would stain his name in Amora's book, and as his eyes were still quite green, he hardly wanted that.

"I see," Maleficent said, perfectly tranquil.

"So, uh, like, no offense," Warp brought up, "but I was kinda expecting more angry fireworks."

"It no longer matters," Maleficent told him. "After all, my true purpose in coming here was to inform you that the nature of your mission has changed. We no longer require the knowledge of the Oracle. I have become aware of a location in another realm entirely that may very well contain all we need…and it shall be far easier to access."

"So, really, we lost nothing," Warp pointed out, relaxing back in his seat, hands behind his head. "I mean, we lost Cykes, but trust me, after what she did, you don't want her around anyway."

"I should say not," Maleficent replied. "As for your party, there is something else on Atmos I require. A source of immense power. I presume the Dark Ace is familiar with the legend of the Helix Crystal?"

"The Helix Crystal!" the Dark Ace blurted. "'Legend' is the only way to describe it! The most powerful of all crystals…none have been recorded in history for centuries!"

"And yet one does exist beneath the soil of the very world you walk," Maleficent stated.

"And how are we supposed to find a crystal no one has seen since the beginning of recorded history?" the Dark Ace asked skeptically.

Maleficent chuckled. "Dark Ace, have you already forgotten Grimhilde's powers? She has done all of your work for you. You will proceed to the Great Expanse, then await my next message at its border to instruct you upon how to enter that land without becoming lost. You will then follow those instructions to the letter. After all…magic and technology do not act as they should within the Great Expanse, and innumerable predatory creatures stalk the region. Those who wander in without a strategy do not find their way back out…and all your assets would prove useless to reconnect with the Overtakers should you deviate."

After a heavy silence fell over the table, Warp said, "Well, that's not ominous at all."

"I trust you can complete this task," Maleficent stated. "After all, you would not have come so highly recommended by Loki if it were outside your ken."

"Oh, it's in my ken, all right," Warp said aggressively. "I'm about to ken it until the cows come home. Consider it kenned."

"Then go," Maleficent stated, "and do not fail me."

The sigil snapped in on itself, taking Maleficent's image with it. As soon as the quartet was sure they were without surveillance, Warp looked to the Dark Ace and said, "Y'know, for Cykes' right-hand man, you sure had nothin' to say about her going 'turncoat.' Is that Amora shining through, or…?"

The Dark Ace smiled, baring his teeth. "Let's just say I never truly liked to take orders from Cyclonis, either. Nothing of any real value was lost."

"Unfortunately, I'm certain Maleficent will be none too pleased if we are delayed by a proper meal," Amora sighed. "Let us be off."

The four villains shambled out of the cramped booth and began to make their way to the exit.

...

The realm of the dead was not a simple layout, able to be contained in a map. The Underworld encompassed a myriad of afterlives, a network of worlds in its own right, interconnected. How you were sorted depended on multiple factors: belief, method of death, morality. The vast majority were thrown into Hades' main repository, which was not well-received by the other lords of the afterlife. If there was one successful conquest the Overtakers could attest to, it was the way Hades had become the figurehead of everything Chthonic.

Still, niches and nooks were found at every angle. Death and night cross at one point, and it was there, in that liminal realm, that Hecate had her home and offices.

An enormous vaulted chamber, carved of blue stone, housed a decorative statue of a man in a chiton. From here branched out the doors to Hecate's various chambers. At present, she was seated in her primary office, behind a desk of polished black in which luster shimmered like stars. A filing cabinet was positioned in the corner of her room; the desk was piled high with parchments and writing implements of all sorts.

The witch, her pink flesh tinted slightly blue in such a way that her palette might change depending on the lighting overhead, had gotten dressed in her usual favorite wear – a slinky blue dress, a billowing cape of the same color with pointed shoulders, a headdress of sky-blue that bound back her flowing cobalt hair: hair that refused to pay any attention to gravity. Why she always felt she had to dress to the nines to push pencils, she sometimes questioned. But it was the best way she could feel as though she had some sort of impact in Hades' realm.

Well, to be fair, the second best way. The actual best way was to attempt to pull a coup on Hades. Which she did, every now and again. The problem was they needed time to put together, and so rarely did they ever work. Every century, there were new factors to consider: new monster minions of Hades, new godly alliances he'd made, even new heroes who somehow decided to put aside their differences with him to oust her.

In fact, by her calendar, a mutiny was overdue. Yet she was in a particular funk, as happened every five hundred years or so, where she just didn't see why it was worth trying only to get stymied and relegated to the liminal space of death and night yet again. And then have a thank-you trophy mailed to her doorstep that really showed Hades wasn't paying attention, because he really didn't have any reason to thank her for anything.

With a sigh, she dipped a quill in ink and pulled over the first Underworld Transfer Request. From the Asphodel Meadows to Niflheim.

"Does it MATTER?" she cried out loud to the papers. "Why would you want to go from ONE neutral afterlife to the OTHER neutral afterlife? Oh, like it matters. I'm just here for the obols."

A cathedral radio, as might be seen on the desk of an American in the 1930s, sat within easy reach. Hecate casually twisted a dial to fill the room with sound as her quill scratched.

It started out on a classical music station. Hecate sighed; "The Swan of Tuonela" was the song on deck that night. A popular piece throughout the Underworld, as "Tuonela" was the name of the realm, but Hecate had always hated the piece on principle. The premise of a swan gliding through the realm of the dead seemed too sanitized, too beautified. After all, "Tuonela" was the same root word as the Estonian "toonekurg," and Hecate knew exactly what kind of bird a toonekurg was. It wasn't anything so lovely as a swan.

Already fed up with the tranquility of the piece compared to the monotony of the work ahead, Hecate spun the dial until it landed on a chipper voice declaring, " – lcome to another episode of Alastor's Torture Hour! I'm your happy, handsome host, Alastor, and have we got a lineup of victims for all you gore-lovers today!"

"Now this is more my speed," Hecate muttered with a grin as she began to deny the transfer request, with all official fields filled in.

"First up," the announcer proclaimed, "we have a local librarian chained to a steel operating table? And what's this? Here, in my hand, we have a vial of deadly, corrosive acid! Why, this glass had to be specially constructed to keep the acid from eating through it and spoiling all the entertainment value!"

A voice in the background of the program whimpered, "No…please, no…SOMEBODY HELP ME…"

"And I'm filling a similarly constructed hypodermic needle with the concoction as we speak!" the host proclaimed. "What happens next will be nothing short of SHOCKING! Oh, wait…that was the punchline for the NEXT victim up! A-hohohoho, SPOILERS!"

As the victim on the table began to cry out from the pain of being eaten from the veins out by acid, the screams were suddenly drowned out by a scuffle from the atrium. Hecate could hear her empousai, Canis and Lupus, snarling and barking at a trio of frenzied voices:

"DOWN! Bad hellhound! SIT! STAY!"

"Oh, I can't believe…those aren't hellhounds; they're empousai! And if they get their jaws around you, they should know that the next and last thing they will be tasting is the bite of the huntstaff."

"NOOO-O-O-OOOOO! HAMSTERS ARE NOT THE NATURAL PREY OF WOLVES OR MOST FORMS OF WING-ED THINGS AS YOU SEEM TO BE!"

Rolling her eyes, Hecate turned down Alastor's Torture Hour and sighed. It looked like she wouldn't get to finish today's episode after all (and all of the promotional material had not been subtle about an Iron Chair turning up sometime this week).

The door to the office burst open, and Canis and Lupus, a pair of tall and majestic wolves bearing eagle-like wings, herded the intruders into Hecate's domain of the mundane.

"Look what we found," Canis said cockily. "Three lost souls."

"Lost souls Hades hasn't gotten his hands on yet," Lupus added with a grin.

"No, wait – " Canis was sniffing the slenderest one, causing the man to recoil. "This one actually still has Hades' CLAIM on him. Ooh, you better cash in on this real estate before it kicks the bucket."

Canis was then kicked in the face.

If Hecate hadn't known who had crossed her threshold before, it would have been confirmed by knowing exactly what Dark practitioner would be so careless as to kick an empousa in the face.

"I was not LOST," Mozenrath growled. "We entered the Underworld by creating a portal from the meeting of three roads, which should tell you EXACTLY why we're here. And I won't be referred to as an IT."

"Well, well." Hecate slid out of her chair, standing – and then floating, feet not even touching the ground as she glided into the center of the room, skirt and cape billowing. "Half dead already, waltzed right on into the Underworld without waiting for the other half to catch up, avant-garde asymmetrical fashion statement…you can't be anyone but Mozenrath." She crossed her arms, grinning cockily. "And accompanied by the Huntsman and…oh, was it Hamster-wheel?"

"VIEL!" Hämsterviel corrected. "HAMSTER-VIEL!"

"Oh, my mistake," Hecate lied.

"So you've heard of me," Mozenrath said proudly. "No doubt due to the increasingly shared news of the victories of the WHAM ARMY. Our conquests, our kills – "

"Oh, yes, all of that," Hecate said smugly. "But mostly because of this."

She summoned a rolled-up parchment into her hand in a wisp of blue smoke. "These are in every afterlife, you know," she said as she unrolled it. It bore a highly detailed sketch of Mozenrath's face, accompanied by the text:

"WANTED

Mozenrath, Leader of the WHAM ARMY

Crimes include: cheating death, defying fate, unlicensed necromancy, and making Hades angry

Reward: 1,000,000 munny, dead or very-soon-about-to-be-dead"

Mozenrath flinched. "Well…at least it's a good likeness."

"And a substantial reward," the Huntsman mused.

"Oh, no, it's actually not," Hecate told him. "Hades is just counting on everyone forgetting the exchange rate between munny and obols so he doesn't have to pay up. He really thinks you're only around 2,400 obols."

"WHA – " Mozenrath sputtered. "I AM WORTH AT LEAST TWO MILLION DRACHMAE!"

"Tell it to his temperamentalness," Hecate sniffed.

"At LEAST tell me you're somewhat quivering with fear because you recognize our accomplishment in slaying Amaterasu!" Mozenrath protested. "We're three godslayers, here in your godly domain!"

Hecate shrugged. "Working with Sunny was one of the most excruciating parts of cross-pantheon diplomacy. If anything, I should be thanking you!"

"It's a start," Mozenrath grunted.

"Perhaps we should simply get to the point," the Huntsman suggested. "Why we have come here today." Of course, this time, he knew better than to steal Mozenrath's thunder.

"But of course!" Mozenrath said gleefully. "Hecate, demigoddess of magic, queen of the night, we come to you bearing a propos – "

"JOIN THE WHAM ARMY!" cried Hämsterviel, who did not know better than to steal Mozenrath's thunder.

"Why do I even try with you people?" Mozenrath muttered, massaging his forehead with his index and middle finger, thumb clamped on his brow.

"Convince me," Hecate said evenly, still smiling.

"Convince you…?" Mozenrath repeated.

"Convince me why I'm better off with you than here," Hecate demanded – though it seemed, from the twinkle in her eye, that her mind was already made up.

If only Mozenrath actually had any way of knowing which direction she had chosen.

"I've heard your stories and read your legends enough to know what you stand for," Mozenrath told her. "A lesser deity in the food chain. Basically a grunt worker, as far as the higher-ups are concerned. Where have I heard that story before? Agrabanians, White Hats, the council of Salem, Emperor Kuzco, they're all the same. And what is it they have in common? Not realizing the resources they have. You command legions of ghosts and harness the power of the moon…just to be a HANDMAID for Hades' ex? You have a sharehold in the SKY, and your job was to hold the Cumaean Sibyl's hand walking her on a tour of the Underworld? Almost EVERY WITCH LIVING owes you a hand in their rise to power, good or evil, and you're pushing a QUILL because Hades is too ABOVE YOU to do it? Oh, Hecate, Hecate, Hecate…you're not an administrative assistant. You're a conqueror. A sorceress among goddesses. And isn't that what we all figured out, here in the WHAM ARMY? I'm not Destane's toy. The Huntsman isn't the Academy's laughingstock. Hämsterviel isn't Jumba's lab assistant."

"I NEVER WAS HIS LAB ASSISTANT!" Hämsterviel argued.

"Now, with our forces combined, we've managed to bring down a goddess," Mozenrath reminded Hecate. "A goddess who you might even say was comparable in strength to Hades. You can't tell me that doesn't appeal to you even a little. Oh, but far be it from me to encourage you to bad-mouth the boss. All I'm saying is that every organization that sets out to accomplish something could use the help of a patron goddess. And organizing a monthly Deipnon is the very least we could do."

"When you say 'Deipnon,'" Hecate asked, "does this include red herring?"

"Only the finest."

"AND you clean up the base? I don't work in dirty conditions."

"Spotless," Mozenrath promised.

"Hmm…let me think about it." Hecate pretended to ponder before raising a finger and saying, coyly, "I'm in."

"Knew you would be," Canis commented.

"It sure is better than stewing around here," Lupus added.

"I'll drop the act," Hecate told Mozenrath. "What you're doing has been catching my eye for a while. I've noticed the similarities. And enough of your forces have already been paying homage to me in some form or another that I have to be impressed. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'But Maleficent has even MORE mages in her alliance!'. Well, they all decided to be chums with HADES, and the great thing about YOU is that you DIDN'T. Well, then again, he was your first choice, but way back in the day, he was my first pick for boss, too, and you see how THAT played out."

"So we can expect you to relocate your offices to the warship?" Mozenrath asked.

"Beats this graveyard," Hecate told him. "I'll telecommute. Hades will never notice anything wrong. You know, I think this is going to be the start of something fun. And I haven't had actual FUN since Doomsday High!"

"That is…an academy for the Chthonic?" the Huntsman guessed.

"THE academy for the Chthonic," Hecate told him. "Oh, those were the DAYS!
Look, looklooklook!" She conjured up a thick leather-bound book. "My old yearbook! This brings back memories!" The pages flipped, and she held the book out so the others could see black-and-white etchings that were almost convincing as photographs; "That's me as the president of the drama club! There's me dominating the first round of Omnipotence Bowl! There's me quitting Omnipotence Bowl because it was a nerd activity! Oh, oh, oh, and here's me with the yearbook committee deciding how much we should bias this book with our own etchings over anybody else's! I got voted 'Most Magical.'"

"Fascinating," Mozenrath said dryly.

"We are not CARING about your adolescent exploits!" Hämsterviel yelled.

Hecate dismissed the book. "Oh, well. I can always reminisce about my old favorite demons and schemers later."

"Wait a minute." Mozenrath did a double take. "You…have friends from that time period. That…you still talk to?"

"Uh, duh?" Hecate replied. "Mostly pen pals, and some of us have drifted apart."

"And these friends are…evil. Morbid. Macabre."

"Mozenrath, where are you going with this?" the Huntsman hissed in the sorcerer's ear.

"Somewhere good," Mozenrath hissed back. Then, at normal volume, "Any you'd recommend get in on the enterprise?"

"W-HAAAAAAT?" Hämsterviel shrieked. "THIS IS COMPLETELY OFF-SCRIPT! NOWHERE DID WE DISCUSS ADDING DEMONIC ENTITIES AND GODS OF THE DECEASED AT RANDOM!"

"I see an opportunity," Mozenrath said flatly, "I take it."

"Well, now that you mention it…" Hecate summoned the book back up. "Let's see." She began to page through. "I'm going to tell you right now, you don't want the Grim Reaper. He's all talk and no substance. Why he even got voted Reaper of the Year, I have no idea. Okay, all right, here we have – no, wait, he got erased when the Pit of Hate collapsed in the time paradox. That was a shame. I liked him. Well, not LIKED-liked him. You couldn't get within a cubit of him without your gaydar going off. Then there was – oh! Oh, that's PERFECT!"

"A new recruit in the making?" Mozenrath asked interestedly.

"Oh, you're going to LOVE her!" Hecate bragged. "My old choir buddy! And you wouldn't believe what her pipes can do. But does she have a MALICIOUS streak and a half! A guy wrongs her in junior high ONCE, and all of a sudden, this quirky nerd girl just goes full supervillain on everybody!"

"Well, that story sounds ridiculous," Mozenrath stated.

"Any mortal girl would certainly be more rational," the Huntsman added.

"Turning evil over a crush gone down the tubes?" Hämsterviel asked. "How sexist and cliché! No one in the real world is like that!"

This was followed by a rather awkward silence.

"So, are we going anywhere or not?" Lupus asked.

"Oh, of course," Hecate replied, dismissing the yearbook again. "Hasta la vista, Hades!"

She summoned up a Corridor.

"One question," Mozenrath asked. "Where is it exactly that you're taking us?"

"To the weirdest town you're ever going to see in your life," Hecate told him. "Trust me, it's the weirdest one I've seen in mine, and I've been around longer than any of you can actually conceive."

Without further explanation, she glided in.

"Mortals first," Canis offered.

"Don't mind if I do." Mozenrath stalked through the Corridor, cape fluttering. The Huntsman followed, and Hämsterviel hurried along after the two empousai made a dramatic show of licking their chops at him.

Finally, the wolves winged their way through, and as a parting shot, the paperwork remaining on the desk caught on fire – which would be filed as an "accident."

...

Black heels clicked on the tile of the Radiant Garden hallway.

A call out, from behind: "SONIA!"

Oh, no.

The shoes hurried their pace, hustling to put distance between their owner and the one who'd yelled her name.

"SONIA!" he kept crying. "SONIA, WAIT! I GOTTA TALK TO YOU!"

Sonia Nevermind broke into a run.

An armor plate was slapped; in a burst of speed, Kazuichi Soda overtook her, landing in front of her and taking down the armor as Sonia was forced to halt.

Sonia stamped her foot hard, putting up a hand, palm out toward Kazuichi. "I do NOT wish to speak with you!" she cried.

"I KNOW, okay!" Kazuichi pleaded. "That's why you just gotta hear me out, this one time! Then I'll stop bugging you, for REAL this time, I SWEAR! Please, Sonia?"

She very nearly said another vehement no.

Then she realized that not once had he used any sort of honorific on her. She was just "Sonia." And for that reason and that alone, she said, rather gingerly, "Proceed." Her hand lowered.

Kazuichi gave a great sigh. He knew he had to just get this over with, but it wasn't easy. It never could be easy. "Look, I…I know you're mad. I knew you would be before I even tried to track you down just now. It hit me all at once when shit settled down. I was under Mim's spell, but I still REMEMBER things, and I remembered what you said about how she wasn't right for me and I only liked her because she wanted me to, and when I snapped out of it, I finally realized…that's what you meant, isn't it? Mim was bad for me, and she wanted me, so she made me like her. And I wanted you, but you said no, and I tried to make you like me, which means…" His voice dropped a few decibels. "I'm bad for you. …And I think deep down, I've always known that."

Sonia folded her arms. "I am glad you have finally come to that realization," she said coldly.

After a long sigh, Kazuichi said, "I fucked up. I mean I really, REALLY fucked up. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never wanted to hurt you. But I was a big drooling mess over Mim, and that's what you were gonna be, wasn't it? You wouldn't have even really liked me. It would've just been fake. You couldn't have liked anyone you really wanted to like."

Sonia sighed. "I suppose I cannot blame you too harshly when it was clear Mim intervened."

"But that's the thing," Kazuichi went on. "When Jas said I could go ahead and do it, I…I guess I wasn't really looking for advice. I was looking for an EXCUSE. Friends aren't supposed to tell you the difference between right and wrong. That's your own shit. Even if the real Jas had thought it was a great idea, I shoulda said no. I shoulda known better. I think I DID know better. I just let Mim talk me into what I wanted to hear, and…well…in the end, what I'm tryin' to say is that I'm sorry. I'm sorry I almost made you obsessed with me. I never meant to hurt you, but that's what I was gonna do anyway. And that's just fucked up."

Sonia regarded Kazuichi with awe for a moment, wondering if she could even believe him. It was that hesitation that gave her the strength to make her decision.

"…I am very glad you told me of this," she said slowly, carefully, "and even more pleased that you have sincerely apologized. However…I still do not know that I can trust you based on a few kind words." She found her eyes watering. "Kazuichi, I had hoped that we could be truly friends, but you wished to chain me to you as a consort. I do not even think you know anything about me. After this, I…I just cannot bear to speak to you! At least not at this time!"

Kazuichi had tried so hard to brace himself for that exact reaction. Yet nothing could have prevented it from hurting, like his leg had gotten sawn off a third time. "Yeah, I…I kinda figured," he admitted, his own eyes tearing up. "I didn't come here to try to get you to forgive me. I just…thought you deserved an apology, okay? You…you deserve better."

In tears, he turned and took off down the hall, not wanting her to mistake his crying as a plea for attention.

She half considered going after him. But she knew better. She stayed her own course, feeling pain, yet pain dulled by the fact that Kazuichi had, at the very least, understood, and come to the conclusion on his own.

Kazuichi turned a corner, leaning up against the wall and letting out all of his tears, wiping them away on his slightly grimy sleeve. For what he was about to do next, he couldn't be caught crying.

He retrieved his GummiPhone, dialing a particular number. It rang only a short while before it was answered by a laughing face, positioned at such an angle that the phone was obviously lying on the floor, its owner sitting above it.

"Hey!" Kairi greeted. "What's up?"

"Who is it?" a voice that was unmistakeably Jaune's chimed in from Kairi's left.

"It's Kazuichi!" Kairi told him.

From her right, a voice that was obviously Moana's chirped, "Tell him I say hi!"

"I mean, you can just tell him yourself," Kairi giggled.

Moana and Jaune jostled into the view of the phone, waving and giving their greetings.

"Hey, guys." Kazuichi found a smile breaking through his melancholy. "What's up?"

"We're making jewelry," Kairi told him.

"Kairi's teaching us beading," Jaune added. "Moana's…a little better at it than I am."

"I love the bracelet you made me, Jaune!" Kairi argued.

"That's because you see the beauty in everything," Jaune told her. "It's NOT a pretty bracelet."

"Well, I'm not taking it off. So there!"

"I mean, not to brag," Moana broke in, "but I'm totally kicking Jaune's butt at the jewelry thing."

"Show me," Kazuichi demanded.

"Ohhhh, no," Jaune laughed. "We're not – Kairi, don't you DARE."

"Hey, you brought it up!" Kazuichi laughed. "I gotta see the ugly bracelet Jaune made!"

Kairi moved her wrist to block the view of the trio's faces; it bore a bracelet of shining pink beads, with two asymmetrically-placed silver star charms, all bound together by a little too much white wire.

"Oh, GOD!" Kazuichi broke out laughing. "Jaune, you fucking SUCK!"

"Like you'd be better!" Jaune huffed.

"Um, I made all my own patches, remember?" Kazuichi said coyly. "Bracelets would be a breeze!"

"So what's going on?" Kairi asked. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah," Kazuichi said softly. "I am. Thanks again for saving my ass. Even if it meant PLAYING me."

"It was Ienzo's idea," Kairi replied. "He's the brains. I'm just the person who tells him to go through with his bad ideas."

"I'll thank him later, too," Kazuichi stated. "I kinda wanted to ask a favor, though. Since you're, y'know, pure of heart and good at making friends and shit."

"Shoot," Kairi told him.

"Could you…" Kazuichi swallowed hard. "Maybe…ask Sonia to hang out with you sometime? Like, soon? Like, tomorrow?"

Kairi's brow furrowed. "Kazuichi – "

"IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR HAREBRAINED SCHEMES TO WIN HER BACK – " Moana broke in.

"REALLY?" Jaune groaned. "After EVERYTHING WE JUST DID?"

"No, NO!" Kazuichi protested. "It's not LIKE that! It's…it's more like…" He sighed. "We just talked. She doesn't even wanna talk to me anymore. Not that I really blame her."

As it turned out, he wasn't exactly out of tears to cry.

"You BETTER not be using me to be a go-between to her," Kairi growled.

"Fuck – can you just – it's NOT THAT, okay?" Kazuichi groaned. "She can't even know I asked you. She can't know I had anything to do with this. But it hit me that this is the one place where I'm actually more popular than her. The people around here know me. I have a KazuSquad! But Sonia's only been here for a short time, and I just don't want her to end up all alone because everyone likes me better. I don't think she's ever really had a Kaito. So I was thinking of who could be her Kaito, and, well, you have half the name, and you're a girl, and a princess, too, and…could you just make sure she doesn't end up on the losing end here? I really fucked up even a chance to be Sonia's friend, but SOMEBODY'S gotta be her friend, right?"

"That's really sweet of you," Kairi replied. "…Hang on. You've just been calling her 'Sonia.' Not 'Miss Sonia.'"

"Yeah, well…" Kazuichi shifted uncomfortably. "She's a person. Just a person. Not…whatever I was trying to make her."

"What about our girls' day?" Moana suggested. She then explained, "Kairi and I were planning a girls' day tomorrow. We had this idea of how to help clean up the town a bit, and we were thinking of asking some of the others to come with us."

"Sonia should definitely come!" Kairi gasped.

"Dude!" Kazuichi scolded. "Are you seriously making plans without your boyfriend right in fucking front of him?"

"It was kinda my idea," Jaune admitted. "Kairi actually has a life outside of me, you know?"

Of course Kazuichi would be the one to miss that. "Yeah. She does."

"We'll do it!" Kairi decided. "We'll invite Sonia to go out to town with us tomorrow!" She then regarded Kazuichi with concern. "Are you doing okay? If you want, you can come up to my room and join the beading party."

"I wanna see you ACTUALLY make a bracelet that looks better than mine," Jaune challenged cheekily.

"Nah." Kazuichi shook his head. "There's some stuff I gotta get done in the Gummi garage. I'm gonna head on down there."

"Leave your phone on?" Kairi asked. "I know things have been getting better, but…"

"It would…just be a relief if we could keep talking to you until you got to Cid and Jim," Jaune said tentatively.

"No, I get it," Kazuichi sighed. "I'll keep it on. Let's go."

He began to set out down the hall, the GummiPhone remaining in his hand.

"So what are you doing in the garage?" Moana asked. "Working on a ship?"

"Kind of?" Kazuichi replied. "I mean, first I gotta check in on that XR guy and make sure Cid and Jim are handling the repairs okay. But then, I kinda got this idea after the funeral, and I really think it's gonna make a lot of people happy…"

It would be nice, doing something that actually brought others joy and not pain.

...

At last, the Atmosian party got to outfit the Condor with Gummi blocks to make it interspace-worthy, and from there, they flew first to Terra Wallop to drop off some cargo.

Stork walked through the ship with reverence, running his fingers over every curve and surface before settling in at the helm. Aerrow simply remarked that "It's good to be back!" before taking a spot in the cockpit. Piper, Junko, and Finn got in an argument trying to decide what music to play from the turntables. Radarr curled up on the dashboard for a nap. For the duration of the flight, Rapunzel ran about, screaming "OHMYGOSHOHMYGOSHOHMYGOSH" and pointing out how new everything aboard felt to her (which Stork found more than endearing). Rainbow Dash insisted upon leaving the ship to prove that she could literally fly circles around it. Lyrae then decided to see if she could do the same, surrounding the Condor in rainbows and sparkles of stardust. Lea insisted he was doing perfectly well, but Roxas still raced to bring him as many coats and blankets as he could find upon noticing his shiver – before calling over to the squabbling Storm Hawks that they should just listen to what Piper had cued up. Ruby expressed concern, as the airships she knew from back home on Remnant and the Gummi ships she'd ridden on were all less rickety than the old Condor, but Aerrow assured her the ship was perfectly safe, and when he put a hand on her shoulder, she found it easier to believe him.

Then, of course, Cyclonis had been bound at the wrists and ankles and tossed into a back bedroom that was locked, with a heavy dresser moved in front of it. When she woke up, she expressed her distaste for the ride by screaming and banging on the wall, which went collectively ignored (save Finn turning up his metal a little louder).

Upon landing at Terra Wallop, they escorted Cyclonis along, Junko in the lead. At first, Chief Thragg, a tall and solidly-built Wallop bearing a traditional kilt, was less than pleased to see Junko arrive with several strangers in tow. However, once their story was shared, Thragg changed his tune – and once he saw the footage Rapunzel had taken, he knew his decision.

"We were fools to ever ally with the Cyclonians," Thragg sighed. "We now see they were hardly a threat compared to the true power of Atmos."

"You got that right!" Finn laughed. "The Storm Hawks RULE!"

"SILENCE, foolish boy!" Thragg snapped. "I refer to only ONE of you: the one who subdued Cyclonis and her allies!"

He took two steps toward Stork and then bent the knee, hand on his heart. "Terra Wallop lies at your command," he stated.

"Oh, uh, yeahhhh, about that…" Stork felt he was drawing altogether too much attention; Thragg's entourage of Wallops was also slowly kneeling before him. "I don't really…uhm…want that…"

"You are the greatest power on this world," Thragg reiterated. "We wish only to please you, and never to suffer your wrath."

Stork rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm really not in the mood to be reminded of the whole wrath thing. Can we just drop the wrath thing? It was really just…more of a fluke than anything…"

"At your command, we shall speak of it no more," Thragg vowed.

"Okay, yeah, that's not how I meant it at all," Stork sighed.

Thragg straightened; "Is there anything more we can do for you on this day?"

"Well," Aerrow brought up, "there's that whole matter about Junko – "

"NOT YOU," Thragg growled at him.

"Oh boy." Stork cleared his throat awkwardly. "See, if it were up to me…and it looks like it's going to be, whether I want that or not…I'd want you to reinstate Junko as one of your own and, y'know, NOT dismiss him again when he says something's rotten in the state of Wallop?"

"It shall be done," Thragg vowed. "He is henceforth under your protection."

"I'm NOT – " Stork flinched. "Y'know what? I'm just gonna take it."

"Just roll with it, dude!" Finn encouraged. "You've got the power! It's like being the Domo, except less cool! Because, let's face it, NO ONE'S cooler than the Domo."

At least that was a step up from being dismayed by learning Stork's suicidal history.

The Wallops escorted Cyclonis away, leaving the band of heroes to contemplate their next move.

"You know," Ruby pointed out, "there's still one thing we have left to do."

"I think I know where you're going with this," Aerrow said with a smile.

Deep in the bowels of the Terra, Cyclonis was shoved roughly into a barely-lit cell hewn out of the rock itself, a rusty iron gate slamming behind her. "Comfortable, CYCLONIAN?" one of the guards who'd brought her down spat.

"No," Cyclonis growled. "And you…know…who…I…am. I am no mere Cyclonian."

"Take a look around," the guard snorted. "You still think you're a Master? That airship sailed a long time ago."

Then they left her, alone in the dark.

She screamed – not out of fear but of incredible anger. She bashed the cuffs on her wrists against the wall, even fully aware that if she did manage to break them, she had no way of leaving the cell. Then, when she tired, she lay on the hard stone floor, with not even a bed to lie on.

"They'll pay," she vowed. "I'll be back with an entire army! I'll have the Nightcrawlers descend! The Overtakers won't even leave the dust of this world behind!"

As if on cue, a sudden soft green light filled the room. Cyclonis eagerly sat up, gaping as a small, luminescent orb descended to the floor in front of her. It sank into the stone, coloring it as the sigil of five circles, and in the center, the image of Maleficent shimmered.

"MALEFICENT!" Cyclonis cried. "YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

"My, my," Maleficent said, quite amused. "What a situation we've found ourselves in."

"And I don't intend to be in it a MINUTE longer!" Cyclonis seethed. "Retrieve me at ONCE!"

"Are we not to discuss the rather intriguing reports passed on about you by your associates?" Maleficent teased.

"What reports?" Cyclonis snapped.

"Darkmatter stated that you betrayed him," Maleficent told her coolly. "Amora concurred. Neither Zhao nor the Dark Ace spoke up in your favor."

"WHAT?" Cyclonis cried. "They're LYING! They just hate me for petty, shallow reasons, and they left me to be captured or worse! You cannot believe their SLANDER! Once you listen to MY side of the story – "

"And what makes you believe I care for your side of the story?"

Cyclonis let out a hiss: "What?"

"Of course I doubted Darkmatter's account," Maleficent stated coldly. "He is not the most loyal of men. However, he and his allies have managed to escape with their lives and freedom. They are still of use to me, and Darkmatter and Amora have come highly recommended by Loki. You, on the other hand, have failed me."

"I DID EVERYTHING IN MY POWER!" Cyclonis screamed.

"Quite obviously," Maleficent replied, "your power was not enough."

"YOU WOULDN'T DO THIS TO JAFAR OR…OR HADES!" Cyclonis spat.

"You are no Jafar," Maleficent posed, "nor are you Hades. I came not to assure you, but to warn you. As of this failure, your ties to the Overtakers have been severed. For your own preservation, do not attempt to return to the Forbidden Mountain, or any other of our territory."

"YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!" Cyclonis screeched desperately.

"I may do as I please," Maleficent told her. "Perhaps now I see why you were left for dead. Continuing to mentor you would have led nowhere."

With that, Maleficent's image promptly dissipated.

Cyclonis brought her bound hands down hard where it had been, giving a wordless scream. She had trusted Maleficent, thought of her as what filled the void left with the death of Anarchis all those years ago, believed herself part of something after the Storm Hawks had taken her empire away from her.

Though she was alone, still she vowed that she would not cry, as much as her body was demanding to.

"I was every inch an Overtaker," she grunted.

"Now, I disagree," a new voice said.

Cyclonis turned, startled; "WHO'S THERE?"

"You really aren't Overtaker material." Cyclonis sought the source of the voice, and finally located something alien, but it was barely an indicator of a speaker – just a pair of glowing green eyes, isolated in the dark. "We've had a betting pool on how long it would take you to either quit or get fired."

"I'm going to ask one more time," Cyclonis seethed. "WHO…ARE…YOU?"

"An upgrade," the voice stated. "See, you were working for the Mistress of All Evil. But me?" A low chuckle.

Then the rest of her materialized, a soft green aura revealing her long, slender frame, her black-furred skin, the feline features of her face.

"I AM all evil," Mirage stated.

She then snapped her fingers, and a Corridor opened up behind her. "No, you never were Overtaker material," she reiterated. "On the other hand, do you know what you always were?"

A hulking figure stepped out of the Corridor, his own feline ears barely visible in Mirage's aura. More striking, the glowing red of his cybernetic eye.

"You were every inch a Galra," Sendak said, "in all but biology. Victory or death. When you retreated, it was only ever in pursuit of reclaiming your victory."

"WHAT is a Galra?" Cyclonis spat.

"Something I don't believe I can truly call myself anymore," Sendak admitted. "But the origin of the fire that fills my veins. The same fire that fills yours, young Master."

"Sendak here sees you as real protégé material," Mirage chuckled. "He's willing to take you under his metal arm where Maleficent gave you up. And this time, you don't even have to play nice. But if you want any further reasons to join, well, let's just say that he and I aren't the only ones interested in you."

Two more armored figures hurried through the Corridor and into the cell, flanking Sendak.

"It's her!" Benglo cried. "The girl with more power than a Ranger!"

"I still can't believe such a little human could be so bloodthirsty!" Mig chuckled. "Crazar would be so proud!"

"We've all been so excited to adopt you into our happy home," Mirage said in a saccharine tone. "Won't you please accept our invitation? Of course, if that still isn't enough…"

The final member of the entourage strode into the cell. "You happen to be close to a target that interests me in particular," Pitch Black stated. "You can give me the intel we need for the final pieces of the puzzle to fall into place regarding him. Though, of course, the first thing we would need to address is if you heard me at all. Mirage, address me."

Mirage looked directly back at Pitch; "You really think that's going to be a problem?"

"Who are you talking to?" Cyclonis hissed.

"…Perhaps it will be a problem." Mirage turned back to Cyclonis. "Oh, well. Plenty of time to sort that out. So, what will it be? Trading up for real power, or rotting away in this prison? There's only one right answer."

Cyclonis put forth her wrists. "Get these off of me."

Mirage's claws swiped through the air, one hand, then another. Green streaks traced their paths. The cuffs binding Cyclonis' wrists clattered to the stone floor, mangled, followed by the ankle cuffs.

"Headstrong," Mirage said smugly. "I like that. Trust me, you're going to have a lot more fun here than trying to play errand girl for those stuffed shirts."

"To their credit, they aren't so stuffy at all," Pitch remarked. "They always struck me more as…gay theater students."

"And the WHAM ARMY is just the loser table!" Benglo laughed, forgetting that Cyclonis couldn't hear the context without believing in the Boogeyman.

"I guess that makes us the big, bad bullies!" Mig proclaimed.

Cyclonis stood, brushing off her now badly torn uniform. "Then let's go shake down some nerds for 'lunch money,'" she said with a smirk.

"After you." Mirage gestured to the portal.

Cyclonis entered, head held high, as the rest of the team that had now taken her in followed.

She didn't need Maleficent. As far as she was concerned, she could do so much better.

...

Jasmine and Lianna walked the dark Radiant Garden streets by lamplight, turning the corner that led to the Gummi garage. On the way, they passed Merlin, who had clearly just left the building in a huff, storming angrily down the opposite way.

"Merlin?" Jasmine greeted. "Is everything okay?"

"Everything is most certainly NOT okay!" Merlin halted to shake a finger at Jasmine and Lianna. "One of our own has a past most foul, and the longer it's kept from us, the longer we have to worry about his trustworthiness! Kazuichi simply REFUSES to divulge anything to me, and what's more, CID HIGHWIND stepped in to defend him, simply to spite me, I know it!"

"Cid wouldn't stand up for someone just to spite you if he thought that someone really was dangerous," Jasmine said firmly. "And I don't think Kazuichi is. At least not to anyone else. I'm just worried about him being a danger to himself."

To the pair's surprise, Merlin let out a great sigh, shoulders slumping forward. "You're right, you know. After all, the lad has been among our number for so long, and done more good than harm, save his own self-mutilation. I suppose it's curiosity, a natural inclination toward distrust and pessimism, that makes the question of his past hound me so. Villains surround us at every turn. If I cannot hold them back, then where can I root out trouble before it starts? And I maintain that in the long run, Kazuichi will HAVE to divulge. However…enough people here trust him that I have no choice in the matter. Cid in particular seems to see him as sort of a son, which, all considered…well, that's all water under the bridge, and Cid's story to tell anyhow, not mine. I suppose the matter simply must be dropped for now."

Jasmine debated on whether to say anything. However, it seemed pertinent; "I know what happened in Kazuichi's past."

"But you're not about to tell me a word, are you?" Merlin asked calmly.

Jasmine shook her head. "I trust him. He wants to do better. And when the time comes, he'll let everyone know."

Lianna felt helpless, caught between the two arguing over Kazuichi. She didn't know enough about him to defend him, not really. She wanted to stand up for him, but on what grounds? With what evidence?

"Well, until then," Merlin sniffed, "I suppose he's taken CID'S side." It was still partly frustration, but also part of the friendly riffing that had been taking place since the beginning, since an era before Radiant Garden had even become known to other worlds. "As for you ladies, I bid you farewell and a pleasant evening."

He took off again, now far more relaxed in his gait.

"I'm sorry," Lianna said softly.

"Don't be," Jasmine told her. "I'm not sure what you could've said."

"You are right," Lianna sighed, and Jasmine could tell there was a layer to this she wasn't grasping, but was forced to let it lie.

The interior of the Gummi garage was brightly lit to contrast the deep dark of the night outside the windows. The brightly-colored ships almost seemed to radiate their own auras of light. Even brighter was the fire of the forge at the far end, where Cid was instructing Jim in a delicate matter; "If y'ain't careful, you're gonna put all kinds of flaws an' bumps in the glass, and it's gonna look fuckin' stupid!"

"And I am NOT leaving this building with an asymmetrical helmet." This from XR, who hovered near the glassworkers, poking at the makeshift stem that held his head in place.

"I get it, I get it!" Jim groaned. "I'm not gonna mess up!"

"I know," Cid told him. "That's why I trusted you with it. 'Cause ya don't give up."

"Well, isn't that sentimental," XR muttered. "It's not like my entire aesthetic is riding on a neophyte getting his first glassworking right."

"Why is every robot I know a motormouth?" Jim groaned.

Jasmine and Lianna scanned the room for the one they'd really come to seek. Kazuichi sat at a desk some distance away from the forge, piecing together several small parts into a delicate sculpture. As the two women approached, they could see that it was a tiny airship, something more ornate than even a Gummi ship, red with a curved shape like a comma.

"What are you making?" Lianna asked as she approached.

Kazuichi looked up to them with a bright smile; "Little airships! See, I was thinking about what I could do for all of Hau – Har – Ouch – y'know that one guy who led the charge against the demon dude? All his pals. And, I dunno, I thought I'd just…make them some little airships. Kinda like toys, except mostly just for display. It's been a fun exercise, because they all have little engines and they run, but I've also had to work on crafting and painting them so they look good, like something out of a fantasy MMO. Which is exactly what we're in for all I know, anyway. Take a look!"

He gestured to the desk, where two finished ships lay. A ship that looked like it had been crossbred with a dirigible was engraved with the name "Artoriel" while one that bore great white wings was labeled "Emmanellain."

"I'm…almost surprised you spelled those correctly," Lianna admitted.

"I had to cross-check it like three times," Kazuichi admitted; he was now embossing the letters P-R-I into the red ship. "So…uh…what's up?"

Jasmine folded her arms. "We need to talk."

Kazuichi sighed, setting the airship model on the desk. "I know," he said softly. "About how I fucked up. About how I was gonna fuck over Sonia the way Mim fucked me over. Listen, I think I know what you're gonna say, and I got there already. I shouldn't've gone through with it just because of what I thought you said. I should've known better and used my own head. It's not your job to be my conscience."

Jasmine had to admit she hadn't expected Kazuichi to have been that self-aware already. "…Well, that does cover a lot of what I was going to say."

"And I'm really, REALLY sorry," Kazuichi sighed. "Sonia doesn't want anything to do with me anymore, and I don't blame her." His eyes were beginning to water yet again. "I didn't think about how you guys probably think I'm gross too, and I didn't mean to freak you out and think I was bad, but I DID something bad, so if you came here to do a friendship breakup with me, just get it over with. I can handle it."

Jasmine shook her head. "I don't like what you did one bit. But I do like you. I think you have the chance to move on and learn from this, and you will. I'm not giving up on you yet. Besides, it looks like you might need me more than we thought."

"I will not abandon you, either," Lianna stated. "You have…given me too much."

"Guys…" Kazuichi sniffled. "God dammit, you're just makin' it worse…thanks. For givin' me a second chance."

"Though it sounds like Cid gave you the same," Jasmine brought up.

"Don't tell him this," Kazuichi said, "but I think he's just a big softie – "

"I CAN HEAR YA, YA LITTLE SHIT!" Cid called over.

"What," Jim argued, "are you saying you DIDN'T tell Merlin to back off his case because you like him?"

"I ain't sayin' that," Cid grunted. "I just don't need any more people knowin' about it. I got a goddamn reputation around here."

"But you're not gonna drop Sonia, right?" Kazuichi said suddenly. "She's gonna need friends, too. Now more than ever."

"I know," Jasmine replied. "I want to be there for her, too. That means that you might have to share me with her, since it isn't the best idea to put you two together."

"I'm cool with that," Kazuichi stated. "I honestly thought you were just gonna ditch me, so anything's better."

Truth be told, Lianna hadn't even been considering Sonia, which was probably awful, all considered.

"I sure did learn a thing or two about when the girl comes along who actually is right," Kazuichi sighed. "I'm not gonna treat her like total shit. That's…assuming there will be another girl. Fuck, Sonia was the only person who GOT it about me! Her and Akane, but Akane's always thirsty for Nekomaru! Guess it doesn't even matter, though. Better I don't hurt anyone else than go digging for somebody who's cool with…you know…all that shit in the past."

"If I may," Lianna broke in, heart thudding. "I have no doubt that there will be others out there who love you for who you are, including the sins of your past. Women who have their own demons, their own insecurities…women who understand. I…I know…" She choked on the words. "I know they are out there. That is certain."

"How would you – " Kazuichi's eyes widened. "Hang on. You…YOU?"

Lianna contemplated cutting and running back down the street.

"You…like me like that?" Kazuichi asked for clarification.

"Not enough to swindle you with a love spell," Lianna huffed, hoping her standoffishness would mask how much she felt like a pile of jelly in a goblin-shaped bag.

"But that's a yes."

"…Yes."

"Aw, geez…" Kazuichi twisted the brim of his hat. "You're a great pal, Li, but…"

"But you do not feel the same," Lianna said flatly, her quivering insides hardening enough to shatter.

"No," Kazuichi sighed. "Sorry."

"Is it because I look like this?"

"Wha – no!" Kazuichi sputtered. "I wouldn't – I'm not – okay, so actually, if I'm being honest, that might be part of it. But if I really loved you, then that wouldn't matter, right? I just don't wanna lead you on or make you think I feel something just so you can be happy. That doesn't work for anybody either."

"I…suppose I appreciate that," Lianna sighed.

"Can we still be pals?" Kazuichi asked.

"Yes," Lianna replied. "I do not intend to let this infatuation ruin…what it is we do have."

"Wow," XR commented. "Friendzoned. That's rough."

Kazuichi, Lianna, and Jasmine all gave a start; they hadn't noticed XR lingering as near as he was. "How long have you been standing there?" Jasmine asked him rather curtly.

"Long enough to have heard the whole sordid story, that's how long," XR remarked. "But as for both of you, I'd say keep your chins up. There's plenty of fish in Bathyos, after all! Not that I recommend dating a Bathyosian, of course. I mean, they can only breathe water, you can only breathe air, living together with that arrangement is a NIGHTMARE. And all the SCALES and the FINS. Yeesh."

"Don't listen to him!" Jim called over from the forge. "We got a few cute guys at Benbow from Thalassacor. They had fish features. And they looked GOOD. Scales and fins included."

"Ignore him," XR stated. "He has no taste."

"He's also the one putting the finishing touches on your helmet," Jim teased.

XR flinched, his eye-lights brightening. "Did I say he had no taste? I mean he is a wonderful young man who deserves the world and PLEASE don't ruin my symmetry!"

"Why are you even so concerned with us?" Lianna asked XR sternly.

XR shrugged. "This is the best entertainment I've gotten in four months. Listen, if you were stuck on Cruiser 42 on Hater Patrol for weeks on end with nothing to entertain you but reruns of How I Met Your Motherboard, you'd be hungry for some good old-fashioned drama, too! And at least HERE, it looks like the couple that makes it to endgame isn't going to be the most blatantly wrong one from the get-go! All that time setting up that romantic tension, only to hand the woman over to the stalker? Was it all for NOTHING?"

"Hey, SPOILERS!" Kazuichi yelled, not quite registering that he had never heard of this show and would never care about it.

XR pointed at him; "I did not SPOIL anything. I just SAVED you from committing to nine seasons that will only end in regret. You're WELCOME."

"Okay, okay!" Cid marched over. "No more voyeurism! We gotta test out the new glass an' make sure it ain't totally fucked."

"That is setting an awfully low bar, don't you think?" XR posed as he followed Cid back to the forge.

Kazuichi and Lianna found themselves not knowing what to say to each other at that point. So Jasmine asked, "What's your next plan with those airships?"

"Oh, yeah!" Kazuichi picked up the model, carving in the last "S" of the name emblazoned on its hull. "There are a couple more I wanna make. Like, we need one for the guy's dad, Ed…Edm…it's saved on my phone. Li, you were still wondering about mechanics and stuff, right? Wanna help me put it together and see if that's the thing you're into?"

"I don't see why not," Lianna said with a smile.

As she began to gather up pieces that Kazuichi had laid out, Kazuichi pinched his hat yet again rather nervously before saying, "And…you're not ugly. It's just you and me that don't go. But one day, you're gonna meet somebody who thinks you're the hottest eye candy in the entire universe, and he's gonna fall so hard for you! Got it?"

Lianna let out a snort of a chuckle. "I would hope he would use more poetic terms."

"See? You can do way better than me."

Jasmine also settled in to help build tiny airships, but it soon became clear that this was not Lianna's talent at all, and rather than frustratedly struggle with any more tiny mechanisms, she decided just to let Kazuichi and Jasmine work on it and provide some conversation along the way, talking over how Team Lightyear and the trio of Kaito's friends were staying in the castle for the night and what might happen concerning them all in the morning.

...

Mozenrath, the Huntsman, Hämsterviel, Canis, Lupus, and Hecate stood (though the last of the group did not so much "stand" as "float") before an ornate black iron archway, the sort you might see before a graveyard. In fact, it stood as the gateway to a civilization that the metal bars were twisted to label as "ENDSVILLE," an ominous name if Mozenrath had ever heard one.

Beyond the gate, however, Endsville appeared to be a perfectly ordinary suburban town, with rather boring houses settled upon green lawns.

"I know what you're thinking," Hecate stated. "This looks like a perfectly ordinary suburban town, with rather boring houses settled upon green lawns."

"I mean, I've learned for the most part not to judge by appearances," Mozenrath said in disbelief, "but I have a hard time believing we're going to find a kindred spirit here."

"Oh, trust me," Hecate assured, "looks are deceiving here. Endsville is a magnet for supernatural activity. Let's start with the fact that a manifestation of Death itself is tied to this town due to a contract with a pair of children, and has to spend his time going about his daily routine here…with all that entails for his neighbors."

"All right," Mozenrath admitted. "That's noteworthy. What else?"

"Demigods and demons come here to see the sights," Hecate explained. "Supervillains take cover under civilian identities. Hiding in the basements are mummies and vampires. Horrid, twisted things lurk in the shadows, preying upon anyone who even thinks they can put up the act of having a normal life! But most unusual of all is the fact that TIME ISN'T LINEAR HERE."

"Explain," the Huntsman demanded.

"If everyone in your warship was killed suddenly," Hecate brought up, "and the ship blasted to smithereens, things would stay that way, right?"

"I'd arrange a backup plan," Mozenrath muttered. "Necromancers can fix a lot."

Hecate rolled her eyes. "Okay, okay, okay, but say you didn't have any necromancers waiting in the wings, and YOU didn't make it. Just one day, BOOM! The warship doesn't exist anymore! What happens then?"

"I suppose we try and regroup in the Underworld," Mozenrath mused. "Arrange a mass breakout with what resources we have. Wage war on Hades, if we have to."

"Now, let's try a different scenario," Hecate posed. "Let's say someone, oh, poured molten carbonite all over the warship, and – "

"Where would anyone even ACQUIRE that volume of carbonite?" Hämsterviel asked.

"THAT DOESN'T MATTER," Hecate hissed. "YOUR ENTIRE SHIP'S FROZEN IN CARBONITE NOW. WHAT HAPPENS?"

"Weeeeellllll," Hämsterviel mused, "unless Discord or another such mage is able to break free of the solid yet oddly life-preserving prison, and assuming there is no cavalry waiting outside the ship to free us…then I suppose we…" He gasped. "WE BECOME TRAPPED IN OUR OWN BODIES AS UNMOVING PRISONS FOR ALL ETERNITY, UNABLE TO ESCAPE EVEN THROUGH THE ROUTE OF DEATH!"

"Exactly," Hecate said. "Now, one more. Say a time anomaly swallowed the WHAM ARMY. All of you. One of your scientists decided to poke a time-bear, so to speak, and now you've blinked out of existence."

"Then there is nothing to be done," the Huntsman stated. "We exist no more. Likely we never have. The worlds continue to turn as if we were never there."

"And that all makes SENSE!" Hecate cried. "But in THIS town, none of that STICKS! Bad things happen, and people are just FINE the next morning!"

"I don't believe you," Mozenrath said flatly.

"Believe or don't believe whatever you want," Hecate told him. "First, we all thought Grim was abusing his power, but then when the time anomaly sucked him up and HE came back fine, we all ruled THAT out. No, the population of this town has been sucked up by a time anomaly caused by reversing the primal sands. And wiped out by genocide. And crushed, and burned up, and harvested for organs. A kid got ritually sealed in a pyramid one time. Next day? Like nothing happened. Another kid got turned into chocolate and cannibalized. All over the Underworld news. Did he ever turn up down there, though? No, he just got up and went to school in his living, breathing human body! One time, the entire town even got baked into a giant pizza! And every single time, NONE OF IT EVER STICKS! People REMEMBER these things happening, and don't QUESTION it! We in the Underworld have been trying to solve the timeline of this town, this entire world, for I don't even know how many years now, and no one has an answer! All we know is it's not Grim! It's getting to the point where people don't even care. If someone dies, they just let it happen. If someone gets horribly mangled, they just let it happen. Because they know."

"Morbid," Mozenrath said with a nod. "So I'm guessing we're here for someone who's taking advantage of that."

"If only," Hecate sighed. "No, we've just arrived in the wake of her victory, which we need to scoop up while we can before Endsville does what it does best. See, right now, Velma Green the Spider Queen has taken over the world, which would be great if it weren't for…you know."

"A…spider queen," the Huntsman growled.

"Yeah," Hecate told him. "Human from the waist up, spider from the waist down. You got a problem with that?"

He did, but he knew voicing it was the last thing anyone needed. "No."

Mozenrath fired him a coy look, knowing exactly the turmoil the Huntsman must be going through at the moment – and trying to remind him with a glare that he needed to get over it where bolstering the ranks was concerned.

"Now, Velma's exactly your type," Hecate went on. "All she wanted was to be the Grim Reaper for millennia. Then something happened, not entirely sure what, and she just decided to drop the subtlety and take over the planet."

"Sell her," Mozenrath demanded.

"Likes purple and blue," Hecate rattled off. "Thirsts for vengeance, especially from those who invalidated her. Can control legions of spiders with her voice alone. Can spin you a web in less than a minute, and has a stinger filled with paralysis-inducing venom. Does things for the aesthetic. Also, I heard through the grapevine that her marriage got annulled, so she's probably desperate, but you didn't hear that from me."

"There are several critical factors I did not hear," the Huntsman grunted.

"Such as?" Mozenrath prodded.

"…I cannot so much describe it," the Huntsman huffed. "It's something you just…know."

"Maybe I should make the proposal to Velma alone," Mozenrath suggested. "There has to be a lot for you to…take care of in a town like this."

"Are we just trying to dance around his obsession with killing magical creatures?" Hecate huffed. "Because there's one I wouldn't mind you helping me kill here. It won't stick, of course, but you can't blame a girl for trying."

"I am…rather interested," the Huntsman told her. "What manner of creature is it? A demon? A dragon? An indescribable cosmic horror?"

"Oh, nothing much," Hecate said casually. "Just…another god."

The Huntsman flinched.

"Oh, don't worry," Hecate grunted. "He's nowhere near Sunny's league, or even mine. He's the biggest loser god there ever was. You could probably just throw a brick at him and hit him in the knee and he'd die. As it stands, however, he happens to be MY IMMORTAL ENEMY, and if we're on his turf, I want to take the fight to him before he spots me on his worldwide surveillance and decides to either be a coward or a bully!"

"Okay," Mozenrath sighed, "I can tell we're not getting anywhere until you tell us the story about why you hate this guy."

Hecate clenched her fists and her teeth. "Nergal," she seethed. "Ever since the INCIDENT at Doomsday High, we have vowed not to rest until one or the other of us is dead."

"And would this be in the romantically tense sort of rivalry way?" Hämsterviel asked.

"UGH, GODS, NO!" Hecate cried. "He's GROSS! Believe me, I have WISHED this would turn into that, but he only ever just makes me ANGRY! He's a stupid loser who can't do anything right, and SOMEHOW he hasn't managed to get flambéd by Hades yet! No matter how many times I suggest it!"

"So what did he do?" Mozenrath asked. "Beat you to an ultimate power source? Usurp one of your divine domains? Sap a magical ability from you for his own gain?"

"He beat me to cheer captain," Hecate growled.

It took a moment for everyone to process that. "…What?" Mozenrath asked in disbelief.

"He and I both wanted to be cheer captain in high school!" Hecate explained in a rage. "I was the one with beauty, charm, and coordination! He was a klutzy nerd with no sense of rhythm! I thought I had it in the bag, until we lined up for our auditions, and of all things, a scarab beetle got into his uniform, and while he was trying to shake it out, he managed to perform a perfect routine, on the pommel horse and everything! Then they decided to KEEP him on the team because he was just so…ugh, FRIENDLY, and they said I was a real WITCH! Excuse you, but haven't cheerleaders BEEN catty snobs since the beginning of time? ISN'T THAT WHERE I BELONG?"

"I feel like every day, I learn a new lesson about assuming why anyone has formed a rivalry," Mozenrath sighed. "However, this does sound like the perfect opportunity for you, Huntsman. See if you can add something else to your ensemble after you skin that pestilence incarnate."

"That may make up for having to share a domain with a spider woman," the Huntsman decided.

"You'll need me to show you the way," Hecate told him. "We're going straight to the center of the earth, which isn't as far down as you'd think."

"Wait." Mozenrath put up both hands. "Velma's YOUR friend. How am I supposed to talk her into this if you're not with me?"

"Canis and Lupus can go to deliver the message," Hecate told him.

"Road trip!" Canis joked.

"We don't bite," Lupus added. "Much, anyway."

"Though we wouldn't mind a gnaw at that right hand of yours," Canis chuckled. "Kidding! That was a joke."

"Just head straight into town," Hecate told Mozenrath. "You can't miss the spider palace. It's the only thing here that's more than three stories tall. That's where you'll find Velma."

"Good luck," Mozenrath told Hecate as he began to walk into Endsville proper, tailed by Hämsterviel, Canis, and Lupus.

"I don't need luck," Hecate told him.

"Nor I," the Huntsman added. "All the same, it is appreciated. I hope you fare well."

Then he and Hecate turned their backs, headed toward the place where they could find passage to the center of the earth.

It didn't take long for Mozenrath, Hämsterviel, Canis, and Lupus to note that Endsville had been well and truly dominated by spiders. The further into town you went, the more you saw buildings completely webbed over in spider silk, their occupants visible as cocoons pinned to the walls – some squirming, some not. Spiders crawled through the spaces between the dwellings, small ones trailing in streams from the treetops, moderately-sized spiders edging up through the sewer grates, and rather large spiders clinging to the rooftops of the houses, waiting for prey to arrive.

But mostly, they were just going about their daily business, which seemed rather mundane for a race that had just managed to conquer the human world.

"Morning, Bob!" a spider called over from watering the tulips in her usurped front yard.

"Morning, Harriet!" Bob the spider called back, mowing his lawn. "How're the kids?"

"Oh, you know! Hatchlings always go through that phase where they want to question everything."

Further downtown, a spider shook his fist at the façade of the grocery store; "YOU PROMISED ME A SALE ON FRUIT FLIES! I WAS OVERCHARGED!"

"TAKE IT UP WITH CORPORATE!" a larger, hairier spider growled from within.

A spider leaned back on a park bench, phone pressed to her face; "And then I was like 'No way,' and he was like 'Yes way,' but then I was like 'No WAY,' and he was all 'YES WAY!' and so I was just 'No way?' and he – "

"Well, I have to give Velma this much," Mozenrath commented. "Her people are living large."

"I am not so much of a fan of the way in which they have been ogling us as though we are dessert for their dinner of Endsville civilians," Hämsterviel said with a nervous tug on Mozenrath's cape.

"Don't look directly at them," Mozenrath told him softly. "Keep walking. Act like you own the place. We have empousai and they don't."

Hämsterviel turned up his nose, but it was a little difficult not to notice the gangs of tarantulas that were thronging around the paths the quartet took, drooling pools of saliva onto the grass.

The spider palace, as promised, was the most prominent landmark on the horizon. Once an elementary school, it had been spun into a cluster of sky-high spires of silk. The very sky around it seemed darker than the rest of the town. This looked far more like the domain of a conqueror than anything else in Endsville, Mozenrath thought.

"My ominous feelings of nervousness are not abating!" Hämsterviel said with a quiver.

"Aww, is the little guy scared?" Lupus teased.

"Maybe we should just eat him before the spiders can," Canis suggested. "Get it over with. KIDDING!"

"YOUR HUMOR IS NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST OR IN ANY WAY HUMOROUS!" Hämsterviel raged.

"Just stay close," Mozenrath huffed, pushing open the glass door and tearing through the webs beyond. "I'll do the talking."

The interior of the spider palace was far more fitting of the WHAM ARMY aesthetic than Mozenrath had anticipated; the casual atmosphere outside had given him doubts about Velma. However, in this school, the fluorescent lights had been knocked out to cast dark shadows in every corner, requiring Mozenrath to light up his gauntlet to see the way forward. Hämsterviel, Canis, and Lupus huddled around his makeshift lantern.

They roamed the palace a while, finding it largely empty; here and there, a smaller spider scuttled out of view. No one that looked deserving of the term "Spider Queen." However, around one corner's turn, the four intruders could suddenly hear an eerie sound cutting through the echoes of their footfalls.

A voice. A high, clear voice, singing a haunting aria.

"This way," Mozenrath said, proceeding in its direction.

The sound was definitely coming from what had once been the school auditorium, still arranged with set pieces that looked like they belonged to a production of the Scottish play. At least, that was what it looked like beneath the webs that blanketed it all, climbing up high into the catwalks.

"No one is seeming to be home!" Hämsterviel proclaimed, tiny teeth chattering. "It is fruitless! We may now turn around and make haste away from here in literally any direction!"

Mozenrath ignored him. He strode down the aisles between the seats, yelling out, "VELMA GREEN!"

The singing halted abruptly.

"WE'VE COME TO SPEAK WITH THE SPIDER QUEEN," Mozenrath asserted.

The webbing onstage twitched. Then, from where she had been hidden above, she descended into view.

As Hecate had promised, Velma was human from the waist up, spider from the waist down. Her spider half was a bright green, offsetting the strapless purple bodice over her paper-pale skin. Her busy black hair was tamed by a golden headpiece forged in the shape of horns. One hand clutched a scepter, its top piece shaped like a spider (of course).

"Who dares disturb the Spider Queen?" she asked, pouting in a manner that would have been rather adorable had it not suggested that whoever had interrupted her was on the verge of suffering a long devouring.

"A man with a proposition," Mozenrath told her. "But first, I think you know Canis and Lupus."

"Heya, toots," Lupus greeted with a wink.

"Long time, no see," Canis added.

"…Hecate's empousai?" Velma's brow raised. "Well, I've decided perhaps I should figure out why you're here before getting to the cannibalizing. Surely you know I don't take well to intruders."

"But that never stops them from just waltzing on in, does it?" Mozenrath said coyly. "You give them an inch, they throw you off the throne and claim they 'liberated' the people."

"There are no heroes to be found here, you know," Velma stated. "However, now you have begun to interest me."

"As have you, to me," Mozenrath replied. "Word on the street is you were in the running to be the Grim Reaper."

"Oh, I don't care about that anymore." Velma dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Turns out Grim won it fair and square. But I needed SOMETHING to do with my life once my millennia-long grudge was no longer valid, so I decided on total planetary conquest."

"And how's that been working out for you?" Mozenrath asked. "Personally, I always find it quite fulfilling, even if I haven't achieved a planetwide scale…yet."

Velma's lips curved into a sly smile. "There's more to you than meets the eye, isn't there? As a matter of fact, it's been treating me quite well. I've been getting everything I want, which, as it turns out, feels incredibly fulfilling."

"It's just too bad, then," Mozenrath sighed dramatically.

"What?" Velma was now on edge. "What is it? What do you mean? WHAT'S TOO BAD?"

"That time isn't linear here," Mozenrath reminded her. "You know how it works, right? A week passes, and suddenly you're back underground…or wherever you came from. The town is fine. Everyone you ate is shopping for groceries and hurrying to get to class on time. This won't last forever. You'll be lucky if it lasts a week."

"You – I – STOP TALKING!" Velma screeched. "It isn't as though I have a CHOICE! There's hardly an easy way off this world, you know! It's not like you've taken over anything you got to keep!"

"My victories, or lack thereof, weren't determined by non-linear time," Mozenrath assured her. "After all…I'm not even from this planet! Or anywhere near it!"

"…Who are you?" Velma asked once more. "And you'd better answer this time, or else I'm going to eat you and your pet, empousai or no empousai."

"Wow," Lupus said dryly. "Way to respect your choir buddy's heralds, lady."

"Luckily, Xerxes is not here," Hämsterviel laughed nervously. "That is the only thing she could have meant by 'pet,' no?"

"It's you," Mozenrath told him (to which the extraterrestrial screeched). He then snapped back up to look Velma in the eye with a coy smirk; "I don't suppose the name 'WHAM ARMY' rings a bell."

"Never heard of it," Velma told him. "Is that some kind of crooked charity drive?"

"It's an acronym," Mozenrath stated. "An acronym of eight destructive warlords and criminals looking to take the most valuable prizes for conquest in all the worlds there are to plunder. And we could use someone with your particular skills. I have to say 'spider wrangler' isn't on a lot of résumés these days…let alone 'web spinner.' Now, immortals are a dime a dozen, but you have to look at the total package."

"You are offering me…an alliance?" Velma said in awe.

"That I am," Mozenrath stated. "Though I'd like to think of it more as a friendship."

"And…you want to share your conquests…with me?" Velma's eyes were watering.

"Yes…?" Mozenrath stated, not liking the quiver of her lip.

"No…no one's ever proposed an evil alliance to me before…" Velma began to weep openly, her thick eyeliner and mascara bleeding down her cheeks. "I've had to take the position of Spider Queen by force. I only ever had one real friend, but he betrayed me, and we've made amends, but the spark just isn't there anymore, if you understand. I want to rule the world, he inexplicably wants to protect it…maybe just so he can reap its souls for himself…even Hecate was just a choir buddy! I did not realize she…she thought of me as…as a FRIEND!" She sobbed all the harder. "She spent almost all her time hanging out with the gay demon from the theater department! The one I heard died when the Pit of Hate collapsed in a time anomaly!" Her hands flew over her eyes. "He was her best frie-e-eeeend! I was lucky she even n-n-noticed meeeee!"

"I, uh…" Mozenrath glanced to Canis and Lupus. "I wasn't exactly prepared for…" He gestured to the sobbing Velma. "That."

"Oh, there, there." Lupus winged his way up to Velma, putting one feathery wing about her shoulders. "Hecate's always liked you! You should've seen how her face lit up when she found you in the yearbook!"

"You were the first person she recommended for the WHAM ARMY after Mozenrath here explained the concept!" Canis added, plopping his paws up onstage nearby.

"Mozenrath." Velma peered up above her hands. "That would be…you?"

"Please stop crying," Mozenrath demanded in a tone not at all meant to be comforting. "You're really making me uncomfortable."

"Do you really want to be…my friend?" Velma asked.

"Less so now that I've seen you launch into a crying jag because somebody offered you an alliance," Mozenrath grunted.

Velma cleared her throat, wiping her eyes and smearing her makeup further. "Then I shall cry no longer! Instead, I shall devote myself to conquest, cannibalism, and control of all spiders in the name of the WHAM ARMY! Whatever you desire shall become overrun by spiders at my command, and your enemies shall be paralyzed in my webs!"

"Better," Mozenrath said with a nod. "Let's just put an ix-nay on eating anyone else under the WHAM ARMY umbrella. Deal? After all, the more people you leave alive, the more friends you have." He paused. "Actually, wait. You might be able to talk me into letting you eat Megavolt if he annoys me too much and you provide a really good argument. Can you digest lightning magic?"

"No?"

"Then never mind it."

"I SHALL join your alliance!" Velma cried, raising her scepter high. "I SHALL make something of myself that has nothing to do with Grim or what my daddy wanted me to do or how Jeff left me brokenhearted at the altar! And I SHALL follow up on the friendship with Hecate that I never had in high school! …She really thinks I'm worth her time? Not a loser nerd?"

"No, that honor went to the cheer captain," Mozenrath informed Velma.

"Oh, NERGAL," Velma spat. "Nobody likes Nergal."

"I don't even know him, and I already don't like him."

"Then let us venture forth!" Velma clambered down from the webs, moving to stand alongside Mozenrath and highlighting their rather stark difference in height – she came up at about his waist.

"This is going to be the start of an…interesting partnership at least," Mozenrath told her as Canis and Lupus settled in behind her.

Velma gave Hämsterviel an inquisitive look, and the doctor simply shrank back behind Mozenrath, muttering, "Please do not eat me."

Outside the spider palace, they all reconvened with Hecate and the Huntsman. "Oh, Hecate!" Velma cried. "Is it true? Did you really recommend me above everyone else? Do you think I'm…not a complete and total loser?"

"Look," Hecate admitted, "I said some things in high school that were over the line. But you were always the one who wore raw vengeance best out of all of us! I voted for you to be Reaper! And you made choir one of my favorite classes!"

"Friends?" Velma asked, putting out her right hand.

Hecate grasped it firmly; "Friends. And believe me, I could use some friends to relieve the dead-end job I've been stuck with."

"Oh? I thought you were given a prominent position in the Underworld."

"HA! That's what they WANT you to think! Meanwhile, you've been living YOUR best life."

"Well, I try – "

"Ladies," Mozenrath broke in, "we can catch up back at base. Right now, I suggest we get out of this town before it does the time warp again. Oh, but speaking of Underworld hierarchy, how did the godslaying go?"

"It didn't," the Huntsman hissed. "Nergal had vacated. He left behind this."

The Huntsman then held out a parchment; Mozenrath took it and read it over:

"Friends (and not-such-friends, which I suppose is most of you):

"I have unfortunately decided to relocate on the spur of the moment, and my beautiful wife and perfect son have come with me. Aren't I just the luckiest god in the world to have them? You wish you had a family this perfect. However, it seems on this planet, no one outside of them really liked me. My lonely soul aches for true friendship, and so I have set out for another world, one in which the power of friendship is far more valued. Perhaps there, I can kidnap and torment a whole host of others into being my faithful friends! Also, it's a better school district for my son. If you wish to contact me – well, all right, I'll stop fooling myself; you're probably all glad I'm gone, and the only people who'd actively be looking for me are some sort of godslaying huntspeople or maybe Hecate (Hecate, if you are reading this, ROT IN TARTARUS!). Fear not; I have truly enjoyed my time here getting to test out my pizza recipes on Endsville! Despite all of the bad blood, I truly do wish you all well, and hope your deaths are painless, your torments are only psychological, and the apocalypse is ushered in on a good note!

"Oh, whatever, I suppose I might as well tell you where I'm going anyway in case any of you wants to write. My new address is"

The next segment of the paper was covered in a large ink blot. Below that, the text continued:

"Drat; I spilled ink all over it! Oh, well, I suppose I have just enough room to write the address one more time. It seems after everything, I'm still the same clumsy old failure as ever. Yet I have learned to be at peace with my own failings, and accept myself for the stain on existence that I am, knowing that I am loved, and that, truly, is what matters. Oh, dear, now there isn't room to write it anymore after that stream of consciousness. Oh well! Toodles! -NERGAL"

Mozenrath sighed as he crumpled up the letter. "I really, REALLY don't know what I expected. Also, am I the only one not liking the implications that this major annoyance who I already don't like based on this alone being hidden somewhere out there in all the worlds, perfectly positioned to show up at the most inappropriate possible time?"

"Look," Hecate argued, "if it means I get to kill him on a world where he'll actually stay dead, I'm all for it."

"I suppose that's valid." Mozenrath casually cast a Corridor. "Now, let's head back. You know, I've been working pretty hard on this recruitment drive. I say we all take a few days to just sit back and relax before we continue the effort."

"I couldn't agree more," the Huntsman said before plowing his way to the front of the group so that he could put distance between himself and Velma.

"Yeah, I'd stay away from that guy for a hot minute," Hecate hissed to Velma.

"Duly noted," Velma replied.

After the others had filtered in, Mozenrath resolved, "It'll be nice to take some time to relax at lair sweet lair."

He strode into the Corridor.

The clock chimed the hour.

And suddenly, Endsville was normal again, no spiders, no webs, simply waiting for the next episode to begin.

...

There was really no need for the shards of the Aurora Stone to be returned to Terra Atmosia, what with the replacement Riku and Kairi had found on the last trip there. However, it still felt necessary to turn those shards over in a symbolic sense of having completed the mission fully, undoing the WHAM ARMY's damage.

As it turned out, the broken Aurora Stone provided just enough energy to get another backup Timepulse up and running. The Storm Hawks and their companions lined up outside the tower to watch it put into motion – Aerrow, Piper, Finn, Junko, Stork, and Radarr up front; Ruby, Rapunzel, Lea, Roxas, Rainbow Dash, and Lyrae behind.

"So, uhhh…" Finn began sheepishly. "Stork. About…the stuff and the things."

"I get it," Stork sighed. "You still don't trust me. I wouldn't either."

"That's not where Finn was going," Aerrow broke in. "We talked it over."

"We were just so mad because it felt like you gave up on both us and yourself back then," Piper clarified. "But just because you did doesn't mean we have to."

"What're friends for, right?" Finn added.

"No," Aerrow corrected. "That's what a family's for. And we're not giving up on you, Stork."

Stork caught himself smiling softly. "Thanks. It's, uh…it means a lot."

"Awwww, you guyyyyyys!" Junko cried, sweeping his five squad-mates up into a crushing hug. "It's just good to all be back together, and heading out on a whole new adventure to Radiant Garden to see all the worlds!"

"Can't breathe," Stork choked. "Seriously losing oxygen. Vision clouding."

"Oops!" Junko let go of everyone. "Sorry about that."

Stork shrugged. "Worth it."

The first emanation went out from the Timepulse, rocking the sky. Aerrow put a hand on Piper's shoulder as Radarr clambered up to the opposite of his shoulders to perch. Piper put a hand on Junko's shoulder, and he did the same to Finn, who did the same to Stork.

"Together again," Aerrow said as they all looked in awe up at the Timepulse's beat. "And this time, there's gonna be nothing else to worry about."

That phrase in and of itself frightened Stork. There was still so much unresolved. Where had his burst of Darkness come from? What lay locked in his missing memories? Could he truly be trusted not to go over the edge of depression again? Were they truly now immune to being separated by another villain? So much could go wrong. You couldn't possibly say there was nothing to worry about; that everything would be all right from that moment on.

Instinctively, he looked back over his shoulders at the others. Most looked up to the Timepulse as well. Rapunzel, however, had noticed Stork's motion, meeting his gaze and flashing him a sweet smile.

Stork returned it as best he could before looking skyward again.

Actually, maybe everything would be all right.