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.

115. Golden Hour

Ayam Aghoul had the good fortune of being the one in charge of showing Velma and Hecate around the warship.

And by "good fortune," it is of course meant that he set up a lot-drawing, then intentionally cheated to give himself the duty, which no one was blind to, but no one really wanted to stand between him and his lustful dreams (unless he got too handsy, in which case Wuya swore she would be able to tell no matter where she was and would teleport directly at the perfect angle to drive her heel into the back of Aghoul's neck until it snapped).

He was behaving himself, for the time being. In fact, he had hardly had time to think about ways to be too forward when he realized that he was, for once, in the company of people as closely tied to the afterlife as him. For once, when he had said "I will warn you, some of these rooms can be DEAD boring," Hecate had waved a hand and replied, "Only because our tour guide is a stiff," and Velma had chimed in, "Just don't croak on the job." Followed by a round of mutual laughter.

The majority of the tour had been a continuation of puns in this vein that should not be documented for the sake of reader sanity.

"And this is the karaoke room," Aghoul said as he pushed open the door to the social hub. "Though it's suited for other musical pursuits, as well. I've been learning to play the axe…if you ladies would like a little swan song, I could bring myself to commit some axe murder."

"It's been a while since I've heard a good dirge," Velma admitted. "And never on one of those modern electrical nonmagical lute-things."

"Sing us to sleep," Hecate chimed in.

"FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED," a voice boomed over the speakers, "DO AT LEAST CEASE UNTIL I'VE LEFT THE ROOM!"

The trio flinched, turning to for the first time notice Archibald Snatcher on the stage, glowering at them from behind the main microphone.

"Oh, sorry, Archibald," Aghoul said with a snicker. "We must've been…annoying you to d – "

"DO. NOT. SAY IT."

"What are you going to do. Kill me?"

Snatcher rolled his eyes dramatically as he turned away. "You'll be the death of me, you wi – "

And then he realized what he'd just said, halting suddenly in his tracks.

"That one was on you," Hecate told him.

"We had nothing to do with it," Velma chuckled.

"It's your bloody influence," Snatcher muttered as he moved behind one of the speakers. "Wouldn't be making such juvenile wordplay if the three of you could use normal phrasing for less than five minutes – "

"You say this room is for musical performances?" Velma recalled. "I do believe we were promised a serenade…but it's also quite wonderful to know I have a place to practice my art. So long as no one minds if a few spiders come out of the woodwork during my song."

"Not at all, dear!" Aghoul replied.

"Love it," Hecate added.

"I WOULD MIND," Snatcher yelled from across the room. He went ignored.

"So when you say karaoke," Hecate asked, "how often are we talking?"

"Well, whenever we feel like it," Aghoul stated. "We've got backing tracks from music across the worlds, so name that tune and your wish is our command. Though come to think of it, we've been on a slight hiatus as of late – "

The sound of clattering heeled shoes on the tile. Snatcher skidded up next to the trio, one hand holding his hat in place and the other smoothing out his coat. "Actually," he stated proudly, "that's about to be done something…about." He considered the sentence structure, then shook his head. "I've got permission to be in charge of the next event, at which dressing outside of gender norms will be heartily encouraged."

"Huh." Hecate thought it over. "Y'know, I always have wanted to steal Dionysus' thunder on the drag front. He thinks he's the only queen in the pantheon? …Well, he is, but I'm just as good of a king as he is a queen!"

"I can't even wear pants," Velma said flatly.

"Well, it's not a requirement," Snatcher stated.

"We'll be there," Hecate affirmed. "All three of us. Now I need to look through my old Greek choruses for a show-stopper…"

"Oh, my dear," Aghoul told her, "we need to get you introduced to a wider range of music. Believe me, it's opened up worlds of possibilities for me once I moved away from Agrabanian top-forties."

"Off topic," Snatcher broke in, "but I must say, it's rather nice to be vindicated thus."

"Vindicated how?" Velma asked.

"Why, with the presence of Miss Hecate, of course." He gestured to the goddess of the hour. "We were all aware of Mr. Hades and his snide trickster companion – "

"How do I not even need to ask to KNOW you're talking about Loki?" Hecate groaned.

"I thought it was proven THAT Loki was just an alien with extra longevity," Velma brought up.

"It's kind of up in the air," Hecate sighed. "But let me guess. Pagan, finally glad to see your patron deities in the flesh? Well, not your literal patron deities. I'd remember you paying tribute to me. You should really start paying tribute to me. I can count my devout followers on one of the Hecatoncheires' fingers, which sounds like a lot, but when you're a goddess, it's REALLY insulting."

"Fear not, Miss Hecate." Snatcher bowed playfully. "You've earned yourself another devout. But to answer your question, no. I was bred one of those insufferable Christians. Confessing the slightest evil deeds I'd amassed over the week every Sunday – and let me tell you, as I found my niche in life, that became no mean feat to keep track of – and yet no matter how many times I confessed in the room where I was, supposedly, blessed, He never bothered to say anything to me in return. It's finally sunk in that He isn't even up there where they say. A terrible retrospective on my life, but better learned late than never, is it not?"

"Welcome to the right side," Hecate told him. "It's always refreshing when a new one wakes up."

"I wouldn't be so hasty."

Now all four snapped to the attention of a fifth voice. Xayide strode into the room, gait fluid and graceful as the tide.

"Do not draw a conclusion without knowing the scope," the witch stated. "It is far more complex than whether there is one God or many gods."

"Okay, now, YOU, I know," Hecate stated. "THANK YOU for the years of service."

"The pleasure is mine," Xayide stated. "However, I feel it only my duty to clarify the matter."

"Yeah, how EXACTLY are you going to explain how neither side is wrong?" Hecate groaned.

"Through more complexities of magic and interdimensional law that I shall yet again nod at and pretend to understand," Snatcher muttered.

"It is rather difficult to explain," Xayide admitted. "However, do you not remember what it is I have attempted to tell you? All worlds are born of storytelling. Every world, a story that has been told. Alternate realities form to house contradictory timelines. So long as stories are told, the worlds are infinite, and shall so remain. It is not Fantastica that has no border, but our web of existence.

"To that end, the divine is as the storyteller conceives it. The rules adhere to the belief of the teller. Pagans have spun myths for centuries, as have the monotheists. As such, there is a duality that cannot be explained in science, but must be taken to heart. All are correct. Worlds' divinity fluctuates depending on the creator, whether a believer in the one true God or a believer in the many gods who are also true. Sometimes, created in opposition to belief, on a whim. And to that end, the one God is not consistent. He, She, or They manifest in many ways. By nature, there is only one, but that one wears a different face on differing worlds. Mr. Snatcher…you were taught the meaning of the Holy Trinity, no?"

"That poppycock," Snatcher sighed. "And yet I do believe I see where you're going with this. You're about to say that the lord can and does, in fact, have multiple iterations that are all the same entity?"

"Precisely." Xayide nodded. "Some destructive, born of cynicism. Some parental and pacifistic, born of hope. If you were to meet God, you will always meet the same, but you will never know which face to see."

Aghoul shrugged. "See, I just go with the flow. I've offered my prayers up to Allah and left certain matters in His hands…but if a pretty young goddess is going to wander into my domain, well, I'm a believer."

"I still highly resent this implication that we are but fictional playthings of some cosmic author," Snatcher grunted. "I am anything but a fictitious creation."

"You mean you don't KNOW?" Velma asked, jaw dropping. "Do none of you KNOW, except HER?" She pointed at Xayide.

"…Know what?" Hecate asked.

"That we're all just cartoon characters," Velma said casually. "Well, animated characters, anyway. Snatcher's a stop-motion, so – oh, and then I suppose Xayide is a book character, but we've probably all been seeing her as the cartoon version or the movie version at some point, heterochromia notwithstanding."

This earned Velma several blank stares.

"…This is news to you," Velma repeated. "See, I knew from the start. 'The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.' You've never seen an episode? Don't watch the whole thing expecting me; I'm just in the finale special. Well, the official finale special. There was that whole sequel thing with Irwin and – "

"OKAY, STOP." Hecate slammed her hands over where her ears would be under her helmet. "I don't know WHAT you're talking about, but I don't like it!"

The door was kicked open by a rubber boot. Megavolt cried out, "DID SOMEBODY BRING UP THE FOURTH W – "

The door swung back the other direction and smacked him back down the hall.

The others waited in awkward silence for him to get back up and hurry into the room, at which point, he yelled, "DID SOMEBODY BRING UP THE FOURTH WALL?"

"Finally," Velma sighed. "Somebody else who's self-aware."

"Can you…er…" Snatcher gestured from Xayide to Velma. "Can you make sense of this?"

Megavolt nodded somberly, his eyes wide with the gaze of one who has seen things he shouldn't have. "I can," he said in a voice laden with as much gravitas as he could provide it. "It all started during the heist when I converted myself into pure energy in order to travel through people's televisions and rob their homes. Dipwing followed me in, and thanks to his interference…it all went wrong. And I thought I was the only one who knew the awful truth. Until now."

"You're strangely calm about all this," Hecate whispered to Aghoul.

"Still just going with the flow," Aghoul replied.

"While in the television world," Megavolt stated, "I was able to interact with the programming. I thought I was becoming a fictional character. But little did I know it was fiction within fiction! There are LAYERS! When the television spat us out, we weren't in the world we thought was real anymore! We were in a new world…a world populated by humans, with no magic and no outlandish technology to speak of, in which we were just…CARTOON CHARACTERS! It all fell into place! We were never real! None of us are real! I bet not even that world was real, and it was all just another episode that the REAL real world watched as part of our show! If there even is a real real world. What if the real real world isn't real, and it's just a TV show to the REAL real real world, except that isn't the real real real world either, and the REAL real real real world – "

"STOP," Hecate growled.

"The point is, I'm pretty sure it goes all the way out," Megavolt wrapped up. "Now, Dorkwing rounded up our cartoonist, and milked some story out of him about using an interdimensional radio frequency to pick up audio from our world and transcribe it into an animated series. But then how did he get us down word-for-word for that long, huh? How did he get our looks down to almost the exact detail, save for my nose, which is NOT that big or ugly?"

"Who's going to tell him that it is?" Velma whispered to Snatcher.

"I would, if not for glass houses," Snatcher sighed in return.

"I mean, I am half spider," Velma realized, "so I can't really talk either."

"The point is, we're all just narrative tools in the hands of the author!" Megavolt cried. "You know the concept of the fourth wall, right?"

"That LITERALLY originated in Greek theater," Hecate told him.

"Oh, I didn't know you studied classics!" Megavolt told her.

Hecate screamed into her hands.

"The point is, the fourth wall is real!" Megavolt said. "It's what I keep trying to talk about with Yzma! I'm able to read the signs at this point! Like, right now, I know that where we are isn't even canon, which makes me wonder…am I even the real me? I mean, the real fictional me? I mean the fictional real fictional – "

"I'm going to hit him," Snatcher said dryly.

"Oh," Velma realized, "so you figured out this is a fanfiction, too."

"WHERE DOES IT END?" Megavolt threw his hands up in the air. "ARE WE GOING TO EVENTUALLY COLLIDE INTO THE INEVITABLE CONTRADICTION WHERE THE AUTHOR THEMSELF SHOWS UP IN THIS WORK OF ABSOLUTE FICTION, COMPLETING THE PARADOXICAL CYCLE? WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN? WILL THE WORLD END? WILL ALL THE WORLDS END? WILL THE BIG BANG RECREATE ITSELF? WILL KINGDOM HEARTS BATHE US IN ITS JUDGMENTAL LIGHT AND MAKE US START OVER? WILL WE HAVE TO INSERT A COIN OR PAY A MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTION FEE TO CONTINUE?"

Xayide shook her head. "Please, do not waste words. This knowledge is only accepted by those willing to believe it. It cannot be absorbed by the layperson. Even now, those who are not you, myself, or the Spider Queen doubt your words. She, I believe, is aware because her author wished her to be."

"Eh, Yzma's on-and-off," Megavolt stated. "She's just meta enough that it gets funny at random times."

"Just be careful!" Velma scolded. "If you rely TOO much on meta-humor, then smart people just get annoyed! We'd better wrap this scene up and soon!"

"Wait," Megavolt realized. "At the risk of more meta-humor in the form of pointing out a plot hole, if Xayide knew nobody would believe her, then why did she – "

"Because you do not need to accept the truth of fictionality to understand the duality of divinity," Xayide stated. "Hopefully, that question, at least, was answered. As for your fears about the author…authors appear in works of fiction regularly, with mixed results. However, I do not believe you need to worry. It has become somewhat of a social taboo to insert oneself into a story, and whoever spins our tale must be that self-aware at least. They will remain far away if they know what is best."

"All right, the joke's gone on too long!" Velma scolded, swatting her hands in a "shoo" motion. "Everybody who's self-aware and isn't me, OUT! OUT, OUT, OUT!"

"Wanna go discuss the impending existential crisis with me over some battery acid?" Megavolt suggested to Xayide.

"I prefer red wine," Xayide stated.

As they left together, a thick silence blanketed the room. Then Velma turned to the flabbergasted Snatcher, Aghoul, and Hecate and simply said, "Pretend that never happened."

They all spoke at once:

"Straightaway."

"Can do!"

"What never happened? Exactly."

"Though now I know far better than to ask any matters of church again," Snatcher muttered.

"Now, where were we?" Aghoul recalled. "Ah, yes. I was going to seduce the two of you with my musical prowess."

A loud and sudden snort alerted Aghoul to where Snatcher was discreetly pressing his mouth into the palm of his hand. "Oh, a cough, that's all," the red-clad man said with the hint of a chuckle. "Not any sort of doubt of your skill whatsoever."

"It seems I have something to PROVE," Aghoul said as he placed his hands on his hips and leaned toward Snatcher in a pose he hoped would be relatively intimidating despite him being the shorter of the two.

"Oh, by all means," Snatcher told him. "Just one last sound check, and the stage is yours."

Hecate and Velma watched the two men clamber onstage; Aghoul retrieved his macabre guitar and played a warm-up scale as Snatcher tapped the secondary microphone and spoke into it: "Testing, testing, one-two, Archibald Snatcher deserves all the wealth and power in the worlds, and we are ready to go."

Aghoul was surprisingly better at playing the guitar than Snatcher had remembered him being only a short while ago. But had it really been that long? He'd only obtained it a couple missions back, and yet it seemed that almost months had passed, as though it had taken that long for the missions to be told about sporadically –

A cold shiver passed through his entire body as he vowed never to engage in any "fourth wall" talk again.

...

Ansem's files were slowly becoming decrypted. The further Ienzo and Twilight progressed, the more they were aware of being on the verge of some sort of immense breakthrough.

That was, discounting some of the more incredulous things they'd already found out.

"So, if I'm doing my math correctly," Twilight muttered, "Ventus is awake without his Darkness having to be restored. That makes sense, since he was able to exist as a Light-only half for the span of time he spent under Eraqus. But that still means that the Vanitas half of him…"

"Is sleeping within Sora," Ienzo stated. "We're…honestly very lucky that the Ring of the Nine Dragons pulled Roxas out of him first."

"Sora can't use that ring again," Twilight stated. "Wait. Is that…bad? I mean, everypony else got to be their own person – "

"It's difficult to put in black and white," Ienzo told her. "It's obviously better that Roxas and Ventus get to be their own entities. However, the Vanitas who sleeps within Sora can still experience life through him. He can wake when he pleases…just not influence any of Sora's actions. He may still have a fulfilling life, if he adjusts to the proper mindset…and that might be the most humane fate we can hope for someone who is made of pure Darkness."

"Is that fair to judge, though? Darkness isn't all bad, right? What if Vanitas chose to use it for good?"

"I would agree with you," Ienzo stated somberly, "but from what we've unearthed in my father's writings so far…"

Twilight sighed, well aware of what he was about to say. "Vanitas hasn't changed his mind in ten years." She pawed the floor sheepishly. "I was just hoping…maybe…after Nightmare Moon, I always hope. Does that make sense? I was even…really rooting for Discord, underneath all the distrust."

"Then why distrust him initially?"

"Because I knew Luna chose to change her mind. When we brought Discord back…he hadn't. We made that choice for him." Twilight hung her head. "I thought…that's what good friends did. Helped each other to be their best selves. But now I just feel terrible."

"Please…don't," Ienzo told her. "You did the best you could. You offered him a hand…or, well, hoof. Even if it was forceful, I've known people who've done much worse. And for what it's worth, the longer I work with you on this project, the more you make me feel comfortable in my own skin after all I've done. Perhaps you were always destined to help a friend become his better self. You just chose the wrong one through an accident anyone could have had, no matter how intelligent or empathetic."

Now Twilight raised her head, eyes twinkling with curiosity. "Really? You couldn't have been THAT bad."

"You…don't know."

"I know you said you worked with Organization XIII, but that Xemnas stallion made it sound like some kind of greater good, right? You just wanted your heart back. They tricked you. You were a colt."

"It's…it's worse than you know." Ienzo realized his hand was trembling, clacking on the keyboard. "I was reminded. There are things I've done that I haven't even been able to tell Kairi. I'm afraid that if I tell the truth, then it will all be over. They will know that I've been…a monster."

Twilight opened her mouth to say something, but the sound of two voices, one feminine and one masculine, coming down the hall broke her train of thought.

" – I was also thinking we'd have some 'over-twenty-one' nights, if you get my meaning. Open bar and all that. Of course, that would mean you'd have to vacate the premises and leave the party in my hands, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."

"Me, leave for being underage? I think I have an ID that says otherwise."

"You know, I KNEW I liked you for a reason. Okay, so let's talk logistics. Where do you think a disco ball – "

When XR and Yuffie entered the computer room, they stopped in their tracks, staring awkwardly at Twilight and Ienzo, who stared right back. Finally, Twilight ventured, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing!" Yuffie stated sharply.

"There are no shenanigans going on here what-so-ever!" XR threw out his arms in an X motion.

"I'll tell you what you're NOT doing," Nani growled as she stormed into the room with Mira and Aqua in tow, all three women bearing identical scowls. "Renting out the laboratory space for parties!"

"Wha – how'd you KNOW?" Yuffie cried.

XR folded his metal arms; "Because they're the fun police. And the fun police always know when someone's about to have fun that they need to be ruining."

"Okay," Mira replied, "last time I checked, there was a difference between 'fun' and compromising the castle's security and privacy for a get-rich-quick scheme."

"How is that not fun?" XR argued.

Aqua shook her head. "This stops here and now."

"But it'd be a great way to boost morale and get people to be happy again!" Yuffie argued. "Maybe they'd even stop thinking of us as a bunch of snobs if we gave them a place to party and treated them like guests!"

"Our public image isn't worth the risk," Aqua told her.

"And besides," Nani said exasperatedly, "the lab is for lab work! It already has a purpose! You can't just take over Ienzo's space behind his back! Look at all the hard work he and Twilight have been doing!"

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask," XR stated. "Is there something going ON between you two, or – "

Ienzo and Twilight barely had time to flush before Mira snapped, "Don't change the subject!"

"The answer is no," Aqua stated, "and it's going to stay no."

"Awwww…" Yuffie slumped over. "You guys really are the fun police, you know that?"

"You're also going to need to turn over that fake ID to Leon," Aqua told Yuffie.

"Wha – " Yuffie snapped upright. "That was a joke! I don't have a fake ID!"

"Uh-huh." Mira nodded. "Yeah. Right. Definitely matches up with what Aerith said about your idea of goofing off."

"Is she STILL mad because I took ONE flower out of her garden to make my room prettier?" Yuffie groaned. "…And also fifty munny out of her wallet to buy donuts?"

"Face it, kid," XR sighed. "We've been grounded before we could even reach liftoff. The fun police are judge, jury, and executioner. Say sayonara to our dreams of becoming the most hip, happening hosts of bass-booming soirées in the whole kingdom."

Ienzo cleared his throat, rising. "If I may…at the risk of undermining the rules laid down by the Committee, there is a potential compromise I can suggest."

Nani grimaced, then admitted, "Well, you are one of the Committee. If it's fine by you…which I don't see how it can be…"

"Oh, no, this room can't work as a party venue," Ienzo stated. "But if you'll give me just a minute…"

He spun, tapping at the computer. A password from dark days was input. A command executed. The door to the room that had served as a Heartless factory – which, honestly, the Committee was still unsure what to do about – slid open.

"Follow me," Ienzo stated, and he strode into the factory beyond. Twilight was the first to hurry after him, and after exchanging glances, Aqua, Mira, Nani, and Yuffie decided to walk along as well.

"Is anyone else getting very, VERY bad vibes from this?" XR asked, going ignored. "You know, seven sentient life-forms walk into the creepy room, no more than three walk out? And one of those three had BETTER be the charming robot, I'm telling you right now."

All the same, he rolled after the others.

Ienzo stopped out on the main floor, just before a glowing panel inset in the tile. "If I remember correctly," he muttered, "it should open in three seconds. One…two…"

An immense rectangular strip of floor flashed a brilliant light before simply phasing out of existence, revealing a black-walled passageway beneath, a ramp leading to the depths. The only light came from glowing red-and-purple accents that seemed to have been installed for the purpose of giving the user as little light as possible to work with and yet avoid the fear of tumbling off the ramp to a horrible demise.

"If you think this has made my read of the situation ANY better," XR stated, "let me assure you, it has NOT."

"There was a time you would have been more than wise to avoid this place," Ienzo stated. "In fact, that may hold true even now. Still…the longer the past remains sealed away, the more pressing it becomes on the psyche. Some things simply have to be aired. And maybe they can be changed for the better."

He began the descent, and the others followed – XR giving off a constant chatter of "Oh, I don't like this, I don't like this, I DON'T like this."

He liked it even less when the floor reforged itself into place above them, leaving them in near-abyssal blackness. By the light of the accents, they were able to pick their way down the first ramp, which then vanished as soon as it was no longer occupied.

"Security measures," Ienzo stated.

"Why is this even down here?" Aqua asked.

"It's a long story," Ienzo replied. "Thankfully, we have a long way to walk."

He gestured to the road ahead. Another ramp, this one spiraling down, down, down into the void, with seemingly no end in sight.

"This hasn't registered as a RED FLAG to anybody else here?" XR cried.

"Oh, relax," Yuffie told him. "You're with me, Nani, your princess who goes through walls, a literal unicorn, a super Dark mage, and a Keyblade master! What's gonna happen to us that we can't handle? And aren't you supposed to be some brave and strong space ranger anyway?"

"Yes, and also a SMART space ranger," XR argued. "You know how whenever you're watching a horror movie, there's always that INFURIATING part where the heroes decide to enter the obviously haunted place besides all evidence that doing that would be a BAD IDEA, and you're sitting there yelling, 'No! Don't do it! Are you all stupid?'. THIS IS THAT PART."

Twilight, in the meantime, had lit her horn up with a soft purple glow to increase visibility. "Well, I'm not scared. I trust Ienzo." And with that, she set off.

"This is…iffy," Nani admitted, cringing away from the ramp. "But Yuffie does have a point. I'm not sure what we couldn't all handle together. And I trust Ienzo, too."

Ienzo found he couldn't look her in the eye, even though he knew he wasn't being duplicitous in his introduction of this area. It was simply old ghosts all over again. As he walked after Twilight, prompting the others to follow, he began: "This area of the castle was constructed by Xehanort under my father's nose. Braig, Even, Dilan, and Aeleus helped him. It became a sort of secret sanctuary for us to carry out the very experiments that Ansem had bade us stop…and for good reason. We did things here that no person with a heart should ever be all right with doing."

"I'm picking up that you're feeling guilty," Mira observed. "Am I reading the room wrong, or…?"

Yuffie shook her head. "He was just a little kid back then. No way did he do anything really bad."

Ienzo bristled. "I would rather not discuss the particulars. In any case, I want to show you what lies at the bottom of the ramp, where we used to…experiment. I've mostly been using it as a storage space for extra physical files. Even had carved out a little niche of his own to keep memorabilia down here, but he won't be needing it anymore."

The walls seemed almost to be closing in on him the further down he went. Had he undertaken this alone, he knew he would have broken down, felt like he was suffocating. Here was the place he had begun to grow cold. To learn to hurt those he held dear. Here was the place he had been nearly imprisoned, the place he had witnessed utter chaos break out as he simply curled up and hid, hoping that his youth and perceived innocence would spare him. Here wasn't even the place Xehanort had torn out his heart. It was worse.

He'd fallen silent. The others had been too awed to have much to say. Down they progressed into the abyss, the silence suddenly broken when XR commented, "I get the feeling an elevator would've been both more cost-effective and a time-saver here. Does this ramp ACTUALLY end?"

Ienzo blurted out a laugh, doubling over. The others regarded him curiously. "Are you okay?" Twilight asked.

"Yes," Ienzo said through a smile. "I needed the spell broken. I was lost in old memories, and…well, we did have some in-jokes about how Xemnas was very inefficient in his architecture. I wonder if the Seeker of Darkness was the same."

"I thought the Organization didn't make jokes," Aqua said in confusion. "You gave me the impression you all didn't get along back then."

"We didn't," Ienzo said softly. "But there were some rare moments it seemed like perhaps…we could be cohesive. If not friends, then brothers in arms. We shared the X in our names; we shared a common goal, or so I thought…then came Castle Oblivion, and I realized I had been wrong. Yet that doesn't mean our existence was miserable. There may yet be some memories worth preserving from those days."

It was still further down before they reached the bottom; en route, Ienzo mused, "If this takes off the way I hope, we may actually have to consider that elevator."

To which Twilight replied, "Oh, please. This is nothing compared to King Sombra's endless stairs."

"Try running an endless loop of stairs in the World Within," Aqua countered.

"Was that a JOKE?" Yuffie's jaw dropped. "Did Aqua just make a JOKE? Sort of?"

"What?" Aqua shrugged. "Am I not good at humor?"

"Don't take this the wrong way," XR told her, "but you're about as funny as a robo-puppy getting run over by a tanker. The face does make up for it, though. And the rest of you, now that I'm looking…"

"IGNORE HIM," Mira seethed.

At last, they reached the end of the downward spiral. XR barely had time to comment on how ominous the large, black double door was before it slid open, revealing a better-lit space beyond. It was a hallway, whites and grays, branching into several small rooms. Laboratories? Perhaps prison cells. Whatever the case, the doors, which had once been imposingly locked, were now mostly propped open with bricks, thick books, and other impromptu doorstops so that stacks of paper could be easily accessible beyond.

"There is plenty of space down here," Ienzo stated. "You could probably easily tear down the walls between the different…rooms and the hallway to create a larger area that would serve as a dance floor. There would even be room for a bar, provided that it did only serve to those with proper identification."

"You know, I'm actually starting to see it." XR rolled forward to survey the space. "Gonna need a new paint job, though. Something a little less…oh, I don't know…portentous of imminent doom."

"It's still inviting civilians into the castle," Nani argued. "I know the conclusion Kairi reached about refugees, and that's important. But at the same time, we know our enemies know how to hide in the crowd."

"Now, that's where the security measures from earlier come in," Ienzo stated. "I have the credentials to reactivate the entry point. Others would not. There happens to be a secret entrance to this chamber in the very last room, one I strangely was not aware of during my time actually working as an assistant here. Lea pointed it out to me once the Committee re-established. He'd found it when he was around my age, and he used it to get in and out of this area unnoticed."

"Why would he want to do that?" Aqua asked.

"To see what was down here," Ienzo said softly. "All considered, I'm glad he did."

He owed Lea so much for keeping his secret safe. No, he hadn't told Lea just how far it had gone, but Lea could have obviously put two and two together, and he chose to stay quiet. The other lingering piece of Organization solidarity: you couldn't air someone's dirty laundry without acknowledging that yours may just be filthier. You either had to mutually agree to guard the secret or decide, as Vexen had, that you no longer cared about your own reputation. Yet Lea had aired his own crimes, and they were arguably worse than Ienzo's – point-blank murder being the horizon. Ienzo still couldn't bring himself to talk about what had taken place down here. In the name of science, he thought to himself. In the name of learning. In the name of intellect. Such horrible lies he'd eaten up to ease his own conscience.

"These rooms are pretty full," Twilight observed. "Where are you gonna move all this stuff?"

"I…do not need to keep it," Ienzo replied. "Furthermore, Even also had laboratory space upstairs that he no longer needs to use. It can become storage space." He let himself chuckle again. "I don't suppose I can think of a more fitting punishment for Even's betrayal than to let his sanctum of intelligence become a venue for entertainment and frivolity."

"What's behind the big door?" Yuffie pointed down to the end of the hallway.

"See for yourself," Ienzo encouraged. "It was a place Xehanort – Xemnas – had reserved for himself. He kept an odd memento there. I never did, truly, understand it. He would speak to it as though it were alive. It most certainly wasn't."

Yuffie raced to the door; Mira followed right after, phasing through before Yuffie could pry the portal open. From behind, Mira's voice sounded out: "Huh. Interesting."

"Hey!" Yuffie argued. "Cheater! No spoilers!"

The doors were thrown open, and the group filed into the room slowly. A small, rounded chamber, with a white throne that faced away from the door taking up the focal point. Chain patterns etched into the tile, linking together several of Organization XIII's emblem. Mira stood on the other side of the chair, cocking her head at the item on the floor before it.

XR was the first to arrive next to her. "Okay, so I was at least expecting something believable as the bad guy's imaginary friend, but this is new levels of cuckoo."

"Let me see!" Yuffie pushed past. "Hey! That's not exciting! That's just some dumb old rusty armor!"

"Armor?" Aqua said as she approached. "Why would Xehanort have kept ar – "

As the artifact in question came into view, Aqua gave a sharp gasp.

"What is it?" Nani hurried to her side. "Are you okay?"

"I…" Aqua had trouble forming words. "I'm…"

"Aqua?" Twilight asked. "What's wrong?"

"I'm fine." Aqua blinked, finding her eyes watering. "I never thought I'd see this again. How did Xehanort…" She shook her head. "No. I know how he got ahold of this."

The blue Keybearer armor was tarnished, scattered, and yet all present. A Keyblade that had not weathered the decade well was stabbed hard into the tile beside it: blue, angular, once a thing of beauty.

"Aqua," Ienzo said softly, "you have…some connection to this."

"It was mine." She was crying now. "This was my armor. That was my Keyblade, before I took up the Master's. I sent it with Terra to get him out of the Darkness. It was supposed to protect him. It was supposed to be how I would stay with him." Her vision was now completely obscured by water. "Thinking about it now…giving him an empty shell as a friend was just too fitting. I'd done nothing but tear him down, not listen to him, push him away…"

"But we've been over this," Nani told her. "You know better now. And you were afraid for him. That's how big sisters are. We get worried about the little ones, and we go a little lolo."

"Technically, he was the older one." Aqua forced a laugh. "Even if he didn't act like it." She wiped at her tears. "I hope this at least comforted him somehow. And if it's here…I wonder if maybe it did. More than I knew."

"But what could be the connection to Xehanort?" Ienzo wondered out loud.

"It all fits," Aqua realized. "Finally, it fits. The last time I saw Terra, Master Xehanort had taken over his body. I had to fight him to get any semblance of Terra back. That's when we fell into the Darkness. Only one of us could escape, and I chose Terra. Then, down in the realm of Darkness, I saw Terra again, only his heart was…mixed up with Xehanort's. That's how he was able to reach me there. I saw the two of them fighting again. I couldn't do anything to protect him. I wanted to…I wanted to help him so badly…and now I'm hearing about how up here, in this world, a young man named Xehanort who would've been Terra's age caused all kinds of problems, then became Xemnas and Ansem and built this chamber. Where he put my armor. It means I didn't win. We didn't win. That whole fight was for nothing. Xehanort still took over his body. Xehanort got control, and he went on to ruin everything." The tears had begun again. "And that's where he is. Lost inside Xehanort. I don't know how to get him back, I don't…"

She was now sobbing audibly.

A hand on her shoulder. "Hey," Mira said. "I know we just met, but…Fun Police hug?"

Aqua nodded, unable to form words. Mira gently embraced her, and Nani joined in from the other side.

"It's going to be okay," Nani told her. "Even if it isn't now. There's always a way through. There's always hope."

"And you already did step one, right?" Mira reminded her. "You got him out of the Dark place. He'd probably be way worse off down there."

The unspoken implication: but everyone else would have been safe. Yet they all knew that would not have been worth it, not at all.

Upon realizing that there was something that could have been said to make Aqua feel worse, and it hadn't yet been uttered, Twilight turned to glare at XR; "Don't even think about it."

"Hey, I might be made of metal, but I still have feelings, you know," XR replied, his voice strangely shaky. "Even I can see that there are some times when you can't say anything nice, so you shouldn't say anything at all!"

"Wait a minute," Twilight realized. "Are you crying? I didn't think you could physically do that."

"SO?" XR's eyes welled up with clear fluid. "JUST BECAUSE I'M A ROBOT DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T BE SAD ABOUT A VERY SAD STORY LIKE THAT! SHE JUST WANTED TO HELP HER FRIEND! WAS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK OF THE UNIVERSE TO KEEP HIM SAFE? WHY IS FATE SO CRUEL?"

"He kept it," Nani whispered. "If he kept it, that means he wasn't completely gone. He remembered you."

"And he WANTED to remember you," Mira added. "Maybe you didn't do as much wrong by him as you thought."

"If I may…" Ienzo volunteered. "As both Xehanort and Xemnas, he would speak to this armor very frequently and allow no one else into the room when he did so. He was quite attached to it. To you."

"H-he was probably yelling at me for failing him," Aqua heaved out.

"No." Ienzo shook his head. "We knew it was never anything like that. He would return from this chamber inspired. Refreshed. He spoke of it as visiting a 'friend.' Perhaps he was inspired to do rather unsavory things…but all the same, I think you fed his heart more than you hurt it."

"Real friends fight," Twilight added. "Real friends mess up. A lot. And I mean a lot. But once you're connected, you never really forget your real friends. Even if my friends from Equestria all turned on me, I'd still cherish all the times we had and wish we could make more memories just like that."

Aqua nudged her way out of the double hug that kept her bound. "Thank you," she practically whispered. "Thank all of you…"

Slowly, she approached the armor. Her hand reached out, grasping the hilt of the Keyblade. It vanished in a glittering shower, returning to her.

"Hey!" Yuffie realized. "Your body stayed the same in the Realm of Darkness, right? I bet that armor still fits! All we have to do is clean it up and get rid of the rust! Sure, it looks ugly now, but I bet we can fix it! Or at least the Moogles can."

Aqua knelt, placing her hands over her armor. "Terra," she whispered. "I'll find you. And this time, I will save you. You can count on me."

One hand pressed to the plate on her sleeve that she hadn't touched in what seemed like an eternity. Then the armor vanished as well, returning to its home.

Aqua straightened up. "You're right," she told Yuffie, trying to keep her tone even post-crying. "We can get it fixed up. We should do that later. For now, what do we need to do to fix this place up into a dance hall?"

"I am GLAD YOU ASKED!" XR burst out. "Because I've been mentally mapping out this place, you know, since I do have spatial reasoning algorithms and all, and the genius is right; we're gonna need to bring down the walls. As for the paint, I'm thinking a psychedelic pattern. How easily can we get luminous paint? I mean, we have to host at least ONE black light dance…or five. Per week. Anyway, I already know where we have to put the stereo, the bar, and the buffet table. Disco ball has to go dead center. That big ugly chair? Got to go. The chain motif? We are NOT a medieval torture chamber. I keep saying dungeons are passé; no one listens. But first things first, we gotta get all this stuffy paperwork outta here! Go dump it in whatshisface's office!"

Ienzo pressed one of the sigils on the wall, revealing another passageway out – one that didn't require credentials. "Let's take this route. I want to time how long it takes to come and go. We can walk the items inside the castle from there; I don't think anyone will mind if we drop them off in the atrium so long as we leave a walking path."

"All right, everybody!" XR clapped his hands. "Let's move and groove!"

They fanned out into the cells, retrieving as much paperwork as they could. In his own sequestered space, Ienzo ran his hands over a notebook that had once belonged to him. Opening it, he found such neat handwriting for a child his age, such a wide vocabulary. They'd made him grow up too fast. But then why couldn't he have seen what he was doing from an adult's perspective and known it was wrong?

"Hey…are you okay?"

Ienzo flinched, looking up to see Twilight entering the room.

"Why do you ask?" he replied, deliberately avoiding a straight answer.

"You've been somber ever since you opened the way down here," Twilight reminded him. "You've been acting…off. Does this have to do with what we were talking about before the others showed up?"

Ienzo gently lowered the notebook to a nearby desk, hanging his head low. "Twilight…there are some secrets I'm not ready to stop keeping."

"And that's fine. It's just that I'm worried about you. You're my friend, after all."

"We should burn these," Ienzo muttered. "Why even store them? This data is all from the forbidden experiments. I've kept it because it seemed a shame to throw out any kind of knowledge…but it can only be used to hurt people. People were hurt down here, Twilight. I helped to hurt them. I've told myself that at least I wasn't a murderer…but what does it mean when I've put people through fates worse than death?" His hands shook. "And knowing what I know about Even, I'm certain he had his own reasons for asking to keep any of it."

"But you're right!" Twilight argued. "Knowledge shouldn't be destroyed! If we know how bad things work, that lets us reverse-engineer ways to stop them! And if you remember your mistakes, that means you know not to make them again!"

"So much I did in the name of knowledge," Ienzo hissed. "Knowledge with no heart to keep it in check…that's what made Zexion even worse than I had been. How can it still be so valuable when it drove me to such madness? Who knows how many other people it will corrupt?"

"I mean, I've read a lot," Twilight admitted. "Even Dark magic. And I'm fine. Listen…it goes back to what I was talking about earlier. Discord. Vanitas. Do you know why I – actually, no. I want to make you answer it. Do you want to be a better person?"

"Yes," Ienzo said softly yet firmly. "Yes, I do."

"Why do you want to be better?"

"Because I have friends I care about," Ienzo told her. "I have family. I don't ever want to hurt them again. I…I love them."

"And that's why you're different," Twilight stated. "You actually want to change, and you have good reasons for doing it. Vanitas didn't want to change. We forced Discord to change when he didn't want to. Even…maybe Even never really changed, and that's the sad part."

"Now I know who he was from the start," Ienzo whispered. "Who he really was. He didn't have to be tricked or manipulated to begin the experiments. He wanted the knowledge. He wanted to create things that would impress others, but only built on the foundation of breaking people down into his projects."

"But you're not like that. You know who your friends are. You know what matters to you. And you know what side you WANT to be on. That's why I trust you. All you've done to help Sora, the way you care about Kairi, even going to help Kazuichi out of a jam…and your work with me. This is who you want to be."

"You're right," Ienzo admitted. "You would think I would have learned by now."

"It takes a long time to move on. You spent time with Luna. You know."

"I do. Her path was not dissimilar to mine. She was…lucky to have you to guide her through the first steps."

"I can help you, too," Twilight said. "You don't have to tell me your secrets. You just have to trust me to trust you."

"I do. Thank you, Twilight. I promise to repay you – "

"Don't. We're friends. It's not about keeping track. You gonna be okay now? Or, at least, okay-ish?"

"Yes. I will."

"Then grab some boxes and let's move out!"

Ienzo wished that he could internalize what Twilight had said and apply it as a balm to fix all of his ailments. What she had said helped. He was a little less afraid of relapsing now. However, he still feared that it could all come crashing down when he was forced to reveal his hand.

Much like the secret laboratory beneath the castle, the true story of Subject X couldn't stay buried forever.

...

"Well, well, well, Lupus. What do we have here?"

"Looks like the village idiot to me, Canis."

The empousai had happened across Xerxes down one of the halls as they explored the warship. He was the perfect target for a pair of bullies: spacey-looking and much, much smaller than either of them.

"Hey!" Xerxes argued. "Xerxes not idiot! Mostly."

"So you're the famous Xerxes," Canis declared. "You know, you're quite the celebrity around here, and not in the good way."

"Is he?" Lupus teased. "Because frankly, I haven't heard a word about him compared to anyone else here. It's almost like no one cares…or even WANTS him to be here."

"Oh, is that true?" Canis responded. "Well, if no one will miss him anyway…who's up for sushi?"

"Me!" Xerxes replied. "Sushi delicious!"

After a long silence, Lupus said, "Okay, there are…several factors to unpack here."

"It's YOU," Canis sighed. "YOU'RE the sushi. We are going to cannibalize YOU."

"NO CANNIBALIZE XERXES!" the eel cried in a panic, backing up through the air. "Xerxes very important! Make lots of people very mad if Xerxes go away! WHAM ARMY ruined without Xerxes!"

"Name one useful thing you've done for this operation," Lupus dared. "Ever."

"When Mozenrath on recruitment drive," Xerxes replied, "Xerxes travel to strange world. Big snowy mountain. Imperial City with big festival. Can't remember name. Lizard realm? Reptile Room? Jurassic World?"

"Are you trying to say you went to the LAND OF DRAGONS?" Canis supplied.

"THAT IT!" Xerxes cried. "Xerxes go Land of Dragons. WHAM ARMY need lots and lots of money for buy sand from Diagon Alley. So Xerxes help! Heartless drop munny when defeated! So Xerxes round up bunch of Heartless during big festival in Imperial City and trap them in fireworks tower! Light fuse…Heartless go BOOM! Thousands of munny! Real pretty lights too!"

"You're expecting us to believe you singlehandedly committed Heartless genocide and earned this operation thousands," Canis sighed. "Either you're delusional or you think we are."

"I'm pretty sure if that had happened," Lupus groaned, "someone would have TOLD US ABOUT IT."

"It true!" Xerxes asserted, miffed.

"Seriously, you can think of a more believable story than that," Canis sighed. "We weren't born yesterday, you know."

"But…true," Xerxes protested. "No one talk about it because…" He sighed. "No one care. Well, one person care. But that it. Mozenrath not even say 'Thank you' when saw munny in vault. Xerxes…miss Mozenrath. At least Xerxes have – "

"Blah, blah, blah," Lupus interrupted. "We didn't come here to listen to your sob story. But you did admit you're a friendless loser, so we'll just take that as a win."

It was at this moment that a trio comprised of Roman Torchwick, Archibald Snatcher, and Yzma – lined up in that order – rounded the corner to see the three familiars' convergence.

" – and what the hell kind of hotel gives you a coffee pot but no HAIR DRYER?" Roman was protesting.

That was when his eyes fell upon the empousai for the first time.

Startled by the appearance of the triad, Canis and Lupus backed off, wings fanning out as a reflex.

Two sets of wide, impending-doom-harbinger wings. Not unlike those of certain Grimm with an appetite for human flesh.

Roman's body reacted on pure instinct. He went for the one pillar of security in the immediate vicinity: Archibald Snatcher. In a move he would never want to admit to having executed, he gravitated to Snatcher like a magnet, locking arms around the other's upper body and leaping at such an angle to be caught in his arms and held off the floor.

Which would have worked had Yzma, panic bells going off from seeing a pair of large canines with sharp teeth, had not done the exact same thing from the other side.

Pummeled with the momentum of two panicked cohorts at once, Snatcher lost balance and fell backward hard, taking the other two down with him into a screaming pile.

"That was embarrassing just to WATCH," Canis chuckled.

"It isn't…that I don't…appreciate being the go-to…" Snatcher grumbled. "But at the very least, you could have coordinated."

Yzma sprang to her feet; "I don't know what you're talking about. That was – I was attempting an interpretive dance based on Roman's hotel comment and it went horribly wrong. I now have to be in a place where there are no dogs due to a very urgent appointment I've only just remembered."

With that, she took off running.

Roman, as the mid-layer of the pile, was next to get up. "Look, you and I know what just happened, and we're not going to talk about it. I am also going to make for a room without anything with feathers, and I'm not even gonna pretend I have a reason."

He turned to saunter off. Paused. Turned back, paced to Snatcher to extend a hand down to him as the final WHAM founder of the unfortunate trio began his attempt to right himself. Snatcher gladly accepted, Roman bracing as leverage to get him on his feet as he snapped up his hat along the way. Without a word, Snatcher gave Roman a light clap on the shoulder, and Roman considered himself dismissed, turning to make tracks.

On that note, Snatcher turned his attention to the assembled familiars. "This had better not be an indication of what's to come," he growled at the empousai.

"Hey, all we did was exist," Canis argued. "It's your pals who have the problem."

"Did more than that!" Xerxes snapped. "Threaten Xerxes, tease Xerxes, make fun of Xerxes!"

Snatcher regarded the eel with deeply sympathetic eyes. "You poor, poor creature." He reached out to gently pet Xerxes' head. "And after your hard work collecting off those Heartless in the Imperial City, no less."

"Wait," Lupus broke in. "That was TRUE?"

"Let's get you somewhere away from these nasty creatures," Snatcher cooed, making a point to act as if he hadn't heard Lupus at all. "Seems to be a common thread, that the place to be is wherever these two aren't."

"Hmph," Xerxes grunted. "ONE person respect."

Snatcher strode off with Xerxes hovering at his shoulder, the two of them engaging in conversation as Canis and Lupus stared after them.

"Did we just make four enemies?" Lupus asked.

"Maybe," Canis replied. "Or maybe we picked out four really easy targets."

"Ooh. Good call."

...

Finn made a square with his fingers to size up the hallway that was to transform from a secret laboratory of horrors to a center of fun and music. "Yeah," he remarked. "This place needs a huge disco ball, all right."

On cue, Pinkie Pie, who had been assigned as Finn's partner in remodeling the area to be more party-appropriate, came rolling out of the back room atop a disco ball as tall as herself on all fours. "Did somepony say HUGE DISCO BALL?"

"CHICKA-CHA!" Finn made finger-guns at her. "That thing's gonna look SO good once we get all the lights in!"

"All the colors, all of the places, all of the time!" Pinkie chirped.

Finn then slumped, sighing. "Too bad we gotta figure out how to actually break down the walls and do actual construction."

"Hmmmmmmmm." Pinkie went into a state of intense concentration. "Doing the impossible is kind of my specialty. I just need the right inspiration." Suddenly, she gasped, her eyes lighting up and glittering. "OOH! OOH! I KNOW! I KNOW WHAT WE'RE GONNA DO!"

Without explaining, she then rolled the ball into one of the side rooms.

"Uh…Pinkie Pie?" Finn followed, only to find the room empty. "Wait. Where'd you go? Am I seeing things?"

There was an ominous rumble; just enough time for Finn to say "Oh no."

The disco ball came crashing through the wall of the adjacent cell, suspended by a chain that definitely hadn't been attached to it before, Pinkie sitting atop the decoration and belting out, "I CAME IN LIKE A DIIIIISCO BALL! I NEVER DANCED SO HARD BEFORE! ALL I WANTED WAS THE COOOOOO-LORED LIGHTS! ALL I EVER DID WAS! PA-A-AR-TY!"

"BWAAAAAAAAAH!" Finn screamed as he ran back and forth to avoid the rapidly swinging ball. Wall after wall came down as Pinkie and her unconventional vehicle crashed into it, the pony all the while making up new lyrics to the vaguely familiar-sounding song.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. Finn was crouched beneath a desk, hands over the back of his head, when he realized the noise levels were lowered. He gingerly inched his way out.

He looked upon an immense room where once there had been a narrow hall and a set of cells. Pinkie Pie had smashed down all the walls.

"All done!" Pinkie sprang up and down repeatedly before Finn, quite proud of what she had accomplished.

"Dude," Finn breathed. "That was scary. …You have all my respect."

"YAY! Now it's time to clean up all the broken bits to make the floor safe!"

"You, uh…you got any crazy cool ideas about how we can do that part?"

"Oh, boy, do I EVER!"

...

Ayam Aghoul couldn't remember the last time he'd invited two women to sit down with him for drinks and a chat and they'd both accepted willingly without him having to enchant them in any way. He probably couldn't remember this because it had never happened before. Yet here he was in the bar, Hecate at one side and Velma at the other, and they were laughing over full glasses.

Worth noting: Aghoul may have been bad at faith in some respects, but he was better in others, and so rather than a potent potable, he had filled his glass with milk. Spoiled milk. It was almost impossible to spoil liquor anyway, and drinking milk had become a symbol of both spite and freedom among the older members who'd had to survive the dairy purge. Velma wasn't drinking spirits either – she'd been hoping to find blood of the innocent among the bottles, but, failing that, had settled for yorka juice with a crazy straw in it. Hecate was the only one imbibing anything stronger: a wine she'd referred to as "black" (though it looked plenty red to Aghoul and Velma, so much so that Velma had thought at first that Hecate had managed to find a secret store of blood of the innocent) cupped in Hecate's personal rhyton shaped like the head of a fanged dog, its eyes made of blue crystal.

" – now Jathibiyya, she would never stop whining and whining," Aghoul complained after another swig of sour milk. "'Ayam, stop making me clean up after you! Ayam, this cell is cold and I'm freezing to death! Ayam, my eyes are rotting out and you just watch like nothing's wrong!' Nag, nag, nag! Khayrat, she was more agreeable. Never had a complaint against me! Also didn't have a tongue. I may or may not have had something to do with that, of course…you be the judge. Lujayn actually attempted to murder me! Can you imagine? Most likely to usurp my valuables. Not that I ever put any of them in my will. But the look on her face when she realized she could stab me as many times as she wanted and I wouldn't even flinch was priceless."

Velma and Hecate both laughed loudly at that punchline. "It's hilarious because mortal women are weak and inferior!" Velma chuckled.

"Oh, if ONLY I had a love life that was that entertaining!" Hecate lamented.

"I'm certain there must be SOMETHING of interest, my dear," Aghoul urged as he elbowed her as seductively as one can elbow another.

"No, there isn't!" Hecate complained. "I've never even had one partner! ONE! Nobody even wants to get close to me at the Olympian singles mixer! So I'm not the paragon of attractiveness like Aphrodite or a genius warrior woman like Athena or able to intimidate people into doing my bidding like Hera can on a bad day! I'm not UNattractive! I have a sense of humor! Those plebeians just don't get why causing misery and suffering is fun-ny! Well, all except one, but who wants to be known for having the same sense of humor as HADES?"

"Oh, you two weren't a match made in Elysium?" Aghoul joked. "But I must agree that you aren't unattractive."

"Too bad you are," Hecate told him, smirking broadly. "Disgusting in every way."

"Is this the part where you tell me you like disgusting?"

"Maaaaaybe."

"You know, I've had a bad love life too," Velma chimed in from Aghoul's other side, rather loudly to get the spotlight back onto her.

Aghoul and Hecate both took the bait immediately. "Oh, do tell," Aghoul bade her.

"First, it was Grim," Velma sighed, placing her glass down so she could put her chin in her hands and elbows on the counter. "I didn't realize I felt that way about him until…after. After he broke my heart, that is. I never forgave him. Well, to be fair, it turned out the whole thing was a misunderstanding and he was always trying to support me from the start, but by the time I'd figured that out, I'd already moved on."

"Ugh, I HATE when that happens," Hecate groaned. "I mean, obviously it hasn't happened to me, and that would at least be better than the NOTHING under my belt, but believe me, you hang around Greece long enough and you see more than your fair share of tragic star-crossed lovers."

"Then I became engaged to the most wonderful spider in all of existence," Velma lamented. "He was kind, he was caring, he was polite, he was submissive, he worshipped me – "

"He sounds boring," Aghoul interrupted, and Hecate nodded assent.

"HE WASN'T TO ME!" Velma cried. "Yes, we still had some moral divides to work through, such as how comfortable we respectively were with cannibalism, slaughter, and colonialism by spiderkind, but marriage is about compromise! Too bad he chose to listen to his father's disapproval of me over my declarations of love!"

"How horrible," Aghoul commented.

"It gets worse when you think about the fact that his father was twelve at the time," Velma growled.

"…What kind of Oedipal family tree made THAT happen?" Hecate asked. "No, wait, I don't think I wanna know."

"It was adoption!" Velma huffed. "Not everything has to be some horrible problematic scandal!"

"Oh, but we do so love horrible problematic scandals in this household," Aghoul reminded her.

Velma let out another sigh. "Why is it always the kind and gentle ones who damage the heart the most?"

A sudden intruding voice from across the bar counter: "Are we talking about bad exes? Please tell me I'm not too late to talk about bad exes. Also, what IS it with the actual nice guys being the worst? And I mean the WORST."

All turned to see Irmaplotz seated at the far end, sipping foam off an old-fashioned stein.

"Aren't you a little young to be drinking?" Velma asked.

"Hey!" Irmaplotz countered. "That kind of thing only matters to good people. We're villains in this house. I can drink what I want." She took a sip, then, almost inaudibly, muttered, "And also this is root beer." Another sip. Even softer: "It'salsomostlyfoam."

"Well, excuse me, princess," Aghoul huffed, "but we were having somewhat of a MOMENT."

"You? BOTH of them?" Irmaplotz raised an eyebrow. "Oh, please. I know you and Mim are in an open relationship, but that doesn't mean anyone WANTS your half open."

Velma and Hecate exchanged sheepish glances behind Aghoul's back. They then broke out in simultaneous nervous laughter:

"Heheheh…oh, please…who would even want him…cut-rate Cupid wannabe…"

"I was NOT designing our wedding rings with little spiders made of black opals and you know it."

Irmaplotz took another swig of foam. "Whatever. So can I trash my ex or not?"

"Go ahead," Velma told her. "It isn't as though we can stop you anyway."

"Great, thanks," Irmaplotz replied. "Like I said: nice guys are the worst. My first boyfriend was pure of heart. I thought that was supposed to be a good thing! But do you know what it means when you're dating someone pure of heart? IT MEANS HE DOESN'T HAVE ANY CORRUPTION IN HIS HEART! HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT? No, don't answer that; I heard the way it sounded when I said it. I swore off NICE guys after that. I wanted rough, tough, and BAD. Black and rotten hearts only!"

"Which is why you ended up with Jack Spicer," Aghoul teased.

Irmaplotz missed the joke, her lips curling into a dreamy smile. "Yes! He actually made me a bracelet the other day in between working on Jack-Bots! Look at it!" She held up her arm to reveal a crudely forged yet passable chain with three charms hanging off it. "See, this one's a little Jack-Bot, and this one's a Filthy Pixie, and this one's a heart made out of one of those red crystals we found in the artillery stores…huh. I should really figure out what that one does…"

"Sooooooo…you're over the nice guy," Hecate told her.

"Well, I'm over liking him, anyway," Irmaplotz said casually. "I'm not done hating him. Garfield and I actually have a pact that we're going to go ruin his life together."

"You know," Aghoul suggested, "perhaps that's the answer to it all. You ladies have such terrible luck with men because you are looking for the good ones when you're all just as deranged as me."

"No, I'm at least two steps above you morally," Irmaplotz told him. "That being said, if you're talking villainy in general, I think I see your point."

"How are you measuring a 'step' as morality?" Velma asked.

"Well, a foot is twelve inches," Hecate mused.

"You can't measure morality in inches!" Velma argued.

"Yeah, I get that part!" Hecate told her. "I'm spitballing right now!"

"The point is," Aghoul said, "perhaps we should all just appreciate the fact that we're now in much better company."

"I'll drink to that," Velma said as she raised her glass.

"Hear, hear!" Hecate brought up her rhyton.

Aghoul put his glass dead center (chuckling inwardly at the thought of being "dead" center), and all three clinked.

Then the entire bar counter caught fire.

"Oh," Irmaplotz said casually. "That's what that crystal does."

...

"All right," Rapunzel said as she paced back and forth before her troops, frying pan in hand. "I'll be the first to say it: the situation doesn't look good. We're down by two brave souls, and the moment of destiny is approaching faster than we thought. We'll need all hands on deck and our minds on the move. Luckily, I've managed to enlist a little secret weapon that should help us turn the tide! Now, let's move out! You know your stations! You know your assignments! Let's…wait. Where's Sadira? DID WE LOSE SADIRA?"

The witch of the sand came skidding into the kitchen right on cue. "Sorry!" she screeched. "What'd I miss?"

"SADIRA!" Pleakley zipped toward her, placing his hands on her shoulders and beginning to shake her out of anxiety. "IT'S TERRIBLE! WE NEED TO MAKE ENOUGH FOOD FOR A PARTY OF AT LEAST TWENTY AND THEIR PLUS-ONES BECAUSE RIKKU, NOT OUR RIKKU BUT THE BLONDE ONE, BOOKED THE PARTY VENUE IMMEDIATELY AFTER XR PUT OUT THE ANNOUNCEMENT, WHICH HE DID BEFORE THE ROOM WAS EVEN FINISHED! WE DON'T HAVE PINKIE PIE BECAUSE SHE'S GOTTA HELP DECORATE THE VENUE, AND WE DON'T HAVE NANI BECAUSE SHE WENT OUT WITH AQUA AND MIRA TO GET SOME KIND OF ARMOR FIXED! WE'RE DOOMED! WE'RE UNDENIABLY DOOOOOOOMED!"

"Uhm, that's MY line," Stork chimed in from behind.

"Whoa, whoa, calm down!" Sadira gently pried Pleakley off of her, gripping his wrists in her hands as she made eye contact. "It's gonna be fine. We're all super baking whizzes here, right? You, me, Punz, Stork, A.J…wait. Hang on. New guy?" She pointed to one of the cavalry. Then to the other; "And Eugene?"

"Uhhh…hi." Junko put up a hand shyly. "I'm Junko. I'm a Storm Hawk, and I was kinda interested in seeing if I could help you make food for the party…"

"And I have basically NO experience cooking," Eugene stated confidently, "but when it comes to handing people bowls and spatulas, I'm second to none."

"See? We already made up the difference!" Sadira asserted. "What do we need to make?"

Pleakley babbled, "Appetizers, soup and/or stew, salad, a whole range of Earth-buffet-style cuisine that seems to be high in carbohydrates, and desserts! So many desserts!"

"And punch!" Rapunzel chimed in. "Let's not forget the punch."

"I FORGOT THE PUNCH!" Pleakley screamed. "THIS IS GONNA BE A DISASTER!"

"No, it's not!" Sadira insisted. "We can do this! Listen, I'm used to pulling off the impossible! My whole LIFE has been pulling off the impossible! And I swear that so long as we all stick together, WE ARE GOING TO SERVE THIS PARTY THE BEST FOOD EVER!"

"YES!" Rapunzel cheered. "That is EXACTLY what I wanna hear!"

Pleakley heaved in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Okay…all right. I'm going to trust you. For now. I still have a horrible feeling this is all going to wrong in the WORST way, but it can't go right if we don't try."

"There you go!" Sadira lightly clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, we should partner up! If I know Punz, she already has a big list of what needs to be done and who needs to do it."

"Actually, she assigned me the task of preparing the stew," Pleakley related. "I was looking through recipes, but I just can't pick one!"

"I mean, I usually just throw whatever vegetables I can find into a pot and boil it all," Sadira replied. "Then again, last time I tried that, I sort of ended up resurrecting three evil sorceresses who tried to reclaim Agrabah as their empire."

"Aaaand we've just outdone the time I blew up the croquembouche," Stork muttered.

"Well, we are NOT letting Stork handle this course," Eugene contributed, "because he does not know how to make anything that doesn't contain CABBAGE."

"IT'S A SOURCE OF FIBER!" Stork suggested.

"C'mon!" Sadira waved Pleakley toward the refrigerators. "Let's find some stuff!"

"NO RECIPE?" Pleakley cried in horror.

"Freestyle!" Sadira replied, gathering onions and carrots into hand. "Hmm. We're gonna need a pot – "

"ON IT!" Eugene hurried to deliver the proper vessel.

"Well, I'm gonna take care of dessert like I was told!" Applejack decided. "I'm thinkin' an apple-crisp cookie cup batch should – "

Sadira, Stork, and Pleakley all groaned immediately.

"What?" Applejack asked defensively. "Somethin' wrong with that recipe?"

"No," Rapunzel said hastily. "There's nothing wrong. It's just…well…"

"You know there are other fruits in existence besides apples, right?" Sadira chimed in.

"NO MORE!" Pleakley yelled. "I CAN'T TAKE ANY MORE APPLES!"

"Yeah, been there, done that," Stork stated.

"What the – " Applejack flinched. "How can ya get tired of apples? They're delicious and nutritious, both at the same time! And what's more, they're my heritage! Why, I practically got apple juice flowin' through my veins! I can't just give up the family tradition!"

"But what if your friends are really getting tired of eating the same thing?" Junko asked. "You're not the only one who's gonna be eating them, is the thing."

"I know what it's like to have a routine," Rapunzel told Applejack. "It's comfortable, and it can be really hard to break away, especially when it involves things that are close to your heart. But you can't just keep reading the same three books forever and expect to feel the same way every time. Trying new things is scary, but it just makes you feel so free, too, once you know you can go outside your comfort zone! Wouldn't it make you feel kind of awesome if you figured out how to make something new and realized you were a more versatile chef?"

"Well, when ya put it that way…" Applejack dragged a hoof on the tile. "I guess I could branch out. It's just…it ain't easy to just pack away somethin' that's been yer whole life for years and years, y'know?"

"You're not packing it away," Rapunzel told her. "You're adding more to it."

Applejack nodded. "Truth be told, might be I was even a little scared. How silly's that? Scared'a makin' treats in the kitchen. There's real actual monsters out there. But apples, I know. Everythin' else…well…what if I ain't good at 'em? It's like that time I promised ta bring back my winnin's from the Equestria rodeo ta fix the town hall…an' I failed. Overestimated myself. Couldn' face it, an' ran off ta Dodge Junction ta work on a cherry farm 'till I could round that money up – "

"I'm sorry, did you say 'cherry farm'?" Eugene broke in. "Those aren't apples, you know. And you have, apparently, worked with them. Might be a good place to start."

"And if you mess up, then that's fine," Rapunzel told her. "Between all of us, we'll have so much food made that if we miss a couple dishes, no one will even notice! This isn't life-or-death! On that note, I wouldn't talk to the guy whose idea this was about that. Apparently he's been trying to scare everyone into making his party perfect so he can run up the entry fee. That, or he's actually scared, himself, that he'll mess it up. Either way, can't say I'm a fan right now."

"Oh, I can't WAIT for it to break that eighty percent of the proceeds are going to the Committee's repair efforts," Stork chuckled maliciously.

"Cherries," Applejack mused. "Could do somethin' with cherries. But what? Any ideas?"

"The sky's the limit!" Rapunzel told her. "I'm just glad we found a starting point! You know, it's kind of like me and hazelnuts. I love hazelnuts. I love them so much, I have to work really hard at not putting them in literally everything."

"Um…you've never made a single hazelnut thing since we started this club," Sadira pointed out as she and Pleakley synchronized chopping up celery.

"I haven't?" Rapunzel flinched. "That's weird."

"You just got too good at shaking up the routine, Blondie," Eugene told her. "And that's not a bad thing."

"Well, maybe that means it's about time those hazelnuts done got their turn!" Applejack realized. "Betcha cherries an' hazelnuts'd go real great together!"

"TARTS!" Rapunzel cried. "We could make cherry hazelnut tarts!"

"I'm on it!" Applejack declared. "Eugene! Bowl me!"

"Coming right up!" Eugene dashed to fetch a mixing bowl.

"Oh, hey, Stork!" Junko called over. "Could ya help me out with these eggs?"

While the others had been discussing apples, cherries, and stress over stew, Junko had begun boiling several eggs, which he intended to devil with spicy peppers. Now, the eggs had finished settling, meaning it was time to peel.

"Sure," Stork said as he joined his teammate on the other side of the kitchen. They flanked the sink as they delicately removed the eggshells beneath the running water of the tap.

"You know, I don't think I've ever seen you like this," Junko pointed out. "First of all, making food that isn't the emergency rations and liking it. Second, you seem…happier than usual."

"Huh." Stork thought it over. "Maybe. I dunno, I still feel like the same old tangle of doom, gloom, and negativity waiting to detonate. Also, I may or may not have an uncontrollable Dark force locked within me. That's still a thing."

"Well, from the outside, it looks like you're having a good time," Junko told him. "I also heard you've been going on a lot of missions. Remember back when we couldn't get you to leave the ship? I think maybe going to visit other worlds was a good idea for you. You just seem…better. Not like I think you're a better person to hang around! More like you feel better."

"It's been…strange," Stork told him. "I've met all these people who have varying amounts of doom in their outlook on life. I've seen heroes big and small, each with their own personal demons: some external, some internal. I've had people lift me up. I've had to actually act like the sane one in order to lift someone else up. I…don't even think my relationship with the Condor is the same. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have her back, and she was no small percentage of my breakdown on Glockenchime, but I don't…need to be with her every second. Nor am I overly concerned with Cid, Jim, and Kazuichi exploring her insides at this very moment, which, given what I know about those three, maybe I should be. But you could be right. Maybe this has been good for me. All of it."

"Y'know…" Junko took a moment to gather his thoughts. "I've wanted to say it for a while now, but I'm sorry we ganged up on you back on Vapos. I guess we all got scared that we were gonna lose you. It's just the more I think about it, the more I realize that it was scary for us, but it had to be so much scarier for you if you wanted…what you wanted that time. And it wasn't fair of me to yell at you over it. Or any of us. I wish I could apologize for everyone, but – "

"Don't," Stork sighed. "They don't need to. I messed up. Pretty bad, in fact. They have the right to yell."

"Well, I don't want you to beat yourself up about it."

"And strangely enough, I don't think I am. Things happened that we all regret. Let's just move on." A pause. "Thank you, though. For apologizing. I'm…sorry I almost left you high and dry."

"Well, I'm double sorry, because you must've really needed us then, and we didn't get to you in time."

"You all had your own problems. Trust me. It isn't a big deal."

"You know, I can't remember the last time we hung out like this, you and me. Usually it's either you and Finn, me and Finn, you and Piper, Aerrow and Piper, Aerrow and Radarr…oh, yeah, there was the time we had to watch over Tynki! Remember that?"

"I try not to. But you have a point. Kind of a missed opportunity, if you ask me. You're…" Stork fumbled for the words. "Nice. Not that the others aren't. But you're a special kind of nice."

"Thanks! And I always thought you were super smart. Do you know how many times our whole team would've died without you? You were probably the biggest hero of us all!"

Stork found himself actually blushing. "Don't give me credit where it isn't due."

"I'm not! I'm serious!"

"We're a team for a reason," Stork reminded Junko, "and I had zero to do with the Wallop resistance. That was all you…diplomat."

"Diplomat? I've never thought of myself as a diplomat before! Maybe a rebel leader, but not a diplomat! You really think I've got what it takes to be one?"

"I think you already were one."

The two teammates exchanged smiles, then placed the last of their peeled eggs onto the nearby towel. Funny, how you could live with another person as part of your family for so long and discover you didn't know them as well as you had thought, nor had you said all you meant to say to them, and when you saw the other side, it made you all the more appreciative of who that person had been from the start.

...

"Dogs, dogs, dogs!" Yzma seethed as she stormed through the laboratory. "Everywhere I go, it's DOGS! What's next? I'm going to turn on the faucet and a dog comes out?"

She spun the dial in order to get some water running to fill a beaker. Almost immediately, the water bubbled out into a shape that tapered out from tap's end, growing to human proportions, bearing two arms, a long nose, floppy ears –

"ATTENTION, VALUED SHOPPERS!" the Liquidator greeted.

Yzma dropped the beaker, shattering it in the bottom of the sink, and bolted away screeching at high volume.

The Liquidator finished slithering out of the tap, forging himself in full body beside the sink. "Four out of five villains recommend the Liquidator as a business associate!" he remarked cheerfully. "She must have been the fifth!"

The insistent stomp of heels on the tile as Yzma came storming back. "No, no, NO!" she seethed. "I am NOT letting this happen here and now! It's time for EXPOSURE THERAPY! I am going to STAND BESIDE THE DOG until this is NO LONGER AN ISSUE!"

The Liquidator shrugged dramatically; "Acute cynophobia affecting your quality of life? Try exposure therapy now! Guaranteed to be ninety-eight percent effective!"

"Is that a real statistic, or just something you made up?" Yzma asked.

"Liquidator-brand statistics have a ninety-seven percent margin of error," the watery dog replied with a wink.

Yzma let out a sigh. "Fine. Fine! This is fine! Though now I have to ask: is there a REASON you broke into my lab through the sink? Especially when I custom-ordered the rollercoaster for the specific purpose of forcing people to have fun."

"You are the one and only Yzma!" the Liquidator replied, throwing out his arms wide. "How would you like to be part of a startup business venture guaranteed to succeed?"

"Why ME?" Yzma asked.

"It all started with a Mad Madam Mim!" the Liquidator explained. "For over one month, her corrupt establishment selling faux potions has served as an inspiration to yanderes everywhere! Take that stroke of inspiration and give it a direction. WHAM ARMY products use only the most expensive reality-altering sand money can barely buy! Mozenrath will solve the problem in five world visits or less with his patented method: steal, steal, steal! But why stop there when you can double your profits by SELLING?"

"So if I'm hearing through your llama-salesman lingo," Yzma identified, "you're saying we could speed up the process of affording our magical game-changer if we opened some sort of retail establishment."

"On the money!"

"And this has something to do with…Mim's fake potion shop."

"It had a one hundred percent success rate!" the Liquidator reminded her.

"Not hard when you specifically target one very stupid person, and he takes the bait," Yzma muttered.

"The Mim method would be ineffective on the general public," the Liquidator admitted. "But what if that premise were in the hands of someone more innovative? What if we could sell transformations, reinventions, the Fountain of Youth itself?"

"You want me to brew REAL potions to sell at the snake-oil store?" Yzma realized. "Do you realize how LONG that would take? The amount of care that goes into any one potion?"

"Which is why there wouldn't necessarily have to be any truth in advertising," the Liquidator told her conspiratorially.

Yzma's eyes widened. "Ah – I understand! It's BRILLIANT!"

"Say it one more time for the audience at home!"

"We'll re-open Mim's establishment in Radiant Garden," Yzma rattled off. "There, we set up another scented target for another gullible idiot. That spiky-haired teenager seems stupid. Let's go with him. We lure him into the shop with the scent of ocean waves, soul mate fruit, and nostalgia. Then, once we've got him, we sell him a potion that we guarantee will make his next mission a success: Felix Felicis, the good-luck potion! Of course, he's so stupid, he'll believe it! So he'll take our carefully concocted mix back to the heroic sanctum and use it to flavor his hot chocolate, after which he will discover that the whole time, the potion he'd been given was…ACTUAL FELIX FELICIS, TO LURE HIM INTO A FALSE SENSE OF SECURITY! Then he returns to the shop to purchase more, and twice more, we give it to him. The fourth and fifth times, it will be water with gold-colored food dye, which will act as a placebo. Now, the key-brat has become addicted to liquid luck, and he cannot stay away from his fix! The sixth time he returns, we give him pink lemonade instead! Because it will be hilarious! But the SEVENTH time, ohhhhhh, THAT is when we give him a transfiguration potion that turns him into…AN ALPACA! Which is absolutely not a retread of a llama. It's different. Look it up. Llamas have the long faces with the big banana ears, and alpacas are like the Persian cats of camelids. Anyway, once the brat has become an ALPACA, we will force him to carry large shipments of raw synthesis materials over the entire world, so that we do not have to do the work ourselves! In the time it takes us to accomplish this, we will have had long enough to finish creating an enormous reflective crystal that can have anything inserted into its surface and disperse the light from it. We then plant a bomb at the center of my homeworld because I want to see Kuzco die in flames and use its destruction to slip directly into the Realm of Darkness, where we will place Herb Overkill's Hypno-Hat inside of the reflective crystal, broadcasting its mesmerizing powers to every Heartless in the Dark! We will then have a veritable army of Heartless at our command, able to do whatever we want! So we put them to work processing the shipments at the factory, and we pay them in dried beans and peanut shells! Soon, we will be cranking out vats of potion like never before! But you can't expect me to monitor that around the clock, can you? I'm old! I need a successor! So beneath the labels of six bottles, I will plant golden tickets. These bottles will be dispersed around the worlds until they end up in the hands of six randomly-selected lucky people. Those six will be brought to tour our potion factory, where they will be tempted to interact with dangerous machinery! Every time someone takes the bait, the Heartless come out and do a demeaning little dance about it! Finally, only one lucky winner remains, and that person inherits the whole factory, alpaca included! With time on my hands, I then set up a personal cabin in the tropics, where I live out the rest of my days relaxing on the beach with my gorgeous girlfriend at my side! And then, once I have attained beachfront property, I will finally, FINALLY catch a record-length tuna fish and have it entered into Moleguaco's Book of Empire Records! Which I will have made sure to relocate before, you know, I bomb my entire world into nonexistence. It's brilliant, brilliant, BRILLIANT!"

The Liquidator did not know at all how to process that. He tried. He truly did. What he came up with was "If liquid luck is gold, pink lemonade will signify an off-brand substitute!"

"Drat," Yzma muttered. "Now the whole thing won't work."

"Allow me to present a sound alternative!" the Liquidator suggested. "We put the bare minimum of time and energy into making large batches of watered-down potions that seem to have bigger effects than they really do! Your knowhow will complete the illusion! A little less joint pain, and the years are melting away!"

"…You know," Yzma realized, "if you dilute any one extract too much, it does wear off after a certain amount of time. For example, a muscle enhancer would be effective for three days, then it's back to being a skinny little twig. Trust me, I look much worse buff than I do now anyway."

The Liquidator didn't pry at that. "Now you see the enterprise! All we need is an empty shop, a few small batches of potion, and lots and lots of my specialty: bona fide WATER!"

"Now THAT'S brilliant!" Yzma cried. "After all, I haven't yet mastered permanent youth. Believe me, if I had, you'd know. But I can mimic effects. Smoothing the skin, growing out the hair, replacing the teeth…but only for three days' time."

"Side effects may include addiction, which may induce rising prices!" the Liquidator suggested.

"YES!" Yzma cried. "THE MORE THEY REALIZE IT WON'T WORK, THE MORE THEY'LL WANT TO MAKE SURE IT DOES! BECAUSE PEOPLE WHO ARE SLAVES TO CAPITALISM ARE IDIOTS!"

"It's a scientifically proven fact!"

"All right. We'll search for territory in Radiant Garden – "

"Product quality is inverse to proximity to mortal enemies," the Liquidator reminded her. "No one wants that inspection for code violations!"

"You're right; they'd be breaking down our door within the hour," Yzma muttered. "No, we need another urban center. Not TOO urban. Somewhere with a tight-knit sense of community, yet a large enough population to have a good amount of suckers. Ohhhhh, I know…"

The Liquidator braced himself for another spiel.

"Mim occasionally likes to do her shopping in a place she calls 'Twilight Town.' From what she's said, it's exactly the atmosphere we need…and no stranger to magic, at that."

"Location, location, location!" the Liquidator cried. "Once it passes zoning, we'll be ready for the grand opening!"

"But what will we call it?" Yzma muttered. "Wait. I know! YZ-MART!"

"The only case where brand recognition is NOT a positive attribute!" the Liquidator reminded her. "The WHAM ARMY brand is going to spread as well, remember?"

"Yeah? And what's your point?"

"Once the WHAM ARMY gains its claim to fame…"

"Long overdue…"

"And the name 'Yzma' is written in neon lights as a tyrannical despot with a flair for the glamorous like no other…"

"Yes, go on, go on…"

"What will be the reaction of the NONvillainous public to putting two and two together?"

"Oh," Yzma realized. "Flatlining margins. All right, we'll call it something else. Let's see…it's a potion shop, run by a businessperson made out of water, for the sole purpose of getting rich quick…what do you think of 'Liquid Assets'?"

"It's catchy!" the Liquidator cried. "It's memorable! It's coming soon to a Twilight Town near you!"

"WONDERFUL!" Yzma cheered. "With your entrepreneurial knowhow and my placebos, we'll have munny rolling in like it's going out of style!"

"We'll soon be millionaires!"

"Billionaires!"

"TRILLIONAIRES!"

"MULTI-GAZILLIONAIRES!"

"THE RICHEST VILLAINS IN THE WORLDS, LIVING IN THE LAP OF LUXURY!"

Feeling the excitement building, Yzma threw up her hands, waving them from side to side, as she burst into song: "HEY, HEY, HEY!"

"HEY, HEY, HEY!" the Liquidator echoed.

"I'M MILKING THE MILKY WAY!" Yzma belted, breaking into a shimmying one-person foxtrot across the lab. "I'M LOVING THIS LOVELY DAY! AND I! FEEL LIKE A MILLION!"

Inspired, the Liquidator turned on every single tap in the lab, causing the water to cascade in around Yzma's feet and lift her up on a geyser.

"WOW-ZEE-WOW!" Yzma sang as she was elevated. "THIS CAT IS BACK AND HOW! I'M TAKING MY BIG-TIME BOW WHEN I FEEL LIKE A MIIIIIIIILLION! FEEL LIKE A MILLION IN A MIIIIIILIOOOOON WAAAAAAYS!"

At the Liquidator's behest, flasks uncorked (mostly Vexen's) and sprayed their rainbow-colored contents across the room as a backdrop.

Giving her best smirk, Yzma finished off by crying, "Yzma is BACK IN BUSINESS!"

...

As it had turned out, Aqua's armor had needed a few adjustments to get it back into shape. At the synthesis stall, three Moogles flitted around her as she bore the remastered plates.

"Looking good, kupo!" Mog cried.

"Some of our finest work, if I do say so myself, kupo!" Artemicion (distinct from the others due to his bright purple palette) bubbled.

"All it needs is a little soap and water to finish the shine, kupo!" Mojito concluded.

"Thank you." Aqua smiled. "It feels like things are a little less…strange. Like maybe I'm not actually ten years ahead of myself."

"I like it!" Mira commented. Keeping both hands behind her back. Mostly, her days of absorbing energy were behind her, but every now and again, she developed a mild tremor, an aftereffect of wanting it so badly. Even when she didn't truly want it, the hand shook.

Off to the side, Nani was huddled over her GummiPhone; "Are you SURE you don't need me there?"

"It's fine!" Rapunzel told her from the small video screen. "We're making great progress. We'll already be done by the time you could get back!"

Behind her, Nani could hear Pleakley screaming, "Runaway mixer! RUNAWAY MIXER!" to the tune of an obnoxious buzz.

"I GOT IT!" Sadira cried.

A "whoosh," followed by Eugene saying, "You know, I am pret-ty sure that was not supposed to be flambé."

"Stork?" Junko asked. "Are you sure the eggs don't have too much chili pepper in them?"

"It's fine!" Stork creaked in practically a falsetto. "They're delicious! I'll prove it by eating another!"

"Stork…you're crying."

Nani winced. "That doesn't sound fine."

"Honestly, does this sound less fine than usual?" Rapunzel asked.

After thinking it over, Nani sighed; "You have a point there. Unfortunately."

"You NEVER get out to have a girls' day on the town!" Rapunzel insisted. "You need to take your time and have some fun!"

Eugene edged his way into the screen; "I dunno about that, Blondie. After all, she and the other two did recently get certified as our resident Fun Police." He winked.

Rapunzel let out an "Ugh" followed by "I SERIOUSLY am already fed up with that guy. That's just…it's not nice!"

"No," Mira called over, "when XR insults you, that's how you know he likes you."

"Kind of like Cassandra, when you think about it," Eugene teased.

"Well, you three are plenty fun," Rapunzel asserted. "Like, remember that time that Aqua…huh. Well, remember when Nani…I could swear we had at least one big shenanigan together. Actually, come to think of it – WAIT! NO! SORRY! GOTTA GO! HOT SAUCE OVERFLOW!"

The line disconnected.

"Don't take that whole 'Fun Police' thing seriously," Mira suggested. "We're fun! We're lots of fun! Okay, I may not have known you for very long, but you both seem like fun people!"

"We don't NEED to be fun," Aqua added. "We take our friends seriously and put our efforts into protecting them."

"And life is about more than just fun," Nani insisted.

"Actually, I agree," Mira chimed in. "See, this is how I know you two are fun! Because you see things the same way as…oh. Oh, this might not actually be good."

"There's nothing wrong with taking things seriously!" Nani urged. "…Even if you do have a little sister who hardly ever takes anything seriously, and you sometimes worry you can't keep up with her or relate to her when she really, really needs you to."

"Look, I have fun," Aqua asserted. "I spar with Ven and Terra. I've played Fruitball. It doesn't matter if Ven and Terra have teased me for trying to get them to study when they'd rather roughhouse. The Master always praised my dedication to hard work, and because of that work, I'm a Master myself. There's nothing wrong with it."

"Yeah," Mira laughed nervously. "Nothing wrong."

"Not one bit," Nani agreed.

Then their gazes all fell askance.

"I think you do think there is something wrong, kupo," Artemicion guessed.

"Maybe we're…boring," Nani worried.

"Maybe we're too harsh," Aqua sighed.

"Maybe we're the team killjoy," Mira groaned.

"That can't be, kupo!" Mog chirped. "Surely you have a side that likes to play and relax! Everyone does, kupo!"

"Our day out was getting armor cleaned," Aqua pointed out.

"Which we do still need to finish," Mira reminded her.

"Hey, I liked being a part of the armor repair!" Nani insisted. "…Are there things I might have enjoyed more? Yes! But that doesn't mean this wasn't fun!"

"What kind of things do you like to do just for fun?" Aqua asked.

"I don't even remember the last time I just cut loose," Nani sighed. "Actually, I do remember. It's just…hard to think about. Before I had to become the guardian of the family. I used to love water-fighting with Lilo. With balloons, with those plastic guns…and you know she's ruthless. …Maybe I should challenge her to a fight again one day, just to prove that we're finally back on our feet."

"Yes, but is water-fighting something you would want to do, or would it just bring up bad memories?" Aqua asked.

"I think I want to," Nani realized. "I need to know we're finally back on our feet. That we've reached a 'normal.' Though I'm probably rusty."

"Okay, crazy idea incoming," Mira stated. "You want to brush up on water balloon fighting before you challenge your sister. Aqua needs her armor washed off…"

"We could clean it by having a fight!" Nani realized. "All we'd need is some soap. And maybe balloons, or a water gun…"

"Did somebody say WATER GUN, kupo?" Mojito flitted away.

"There he goes again, kupo," Artemicion sighed.

"I like that project of his, kupo!" Mog chirped. "And I have the soap!" He flew into the stall to retrieve a bottle of blue liquid from a cabinet. "This should polish it up good as new – and will not harm if it comes into contact with skin or eyes, kupo!"

"As for balloons…" Aqua called her Keyblade into hand, gripping it with both appendages and raising it aloft. "Balloonra!"

Several glowing multicolored spheres appeared in midair around Aqua. Nani reached out to touch one; she poked a rubbery surface that did not feel quite like that you would expect on a normal balloon, but a more magical version of the same pliability. Her fingertip tingled pleasantly from the contact.

"WATER!" Aqua yelled, swiping her Keyblade outward.

Now the others could see the magical balloons were filled with sloshing liquid through their translucent exteriors.

"I HAVE THEM, KUPO!" Mojito returned with an armful of elaborate toy guns. "Toys, kupo! For shooting water! Fun only!"

"There is no market for that here, kupo!" Artemicion groaned.

"It's a passion project, kupo!" Mojito insisted. "And I'm only selling them for – "

"FIFTY UNIBUCKS FOR AS MANY AS I CAN CARRY!" Mira shoved several bills at him.

That was more than he'd been planning to charge for the lot, but he wasn't about to say that now. "All yours, kupo!"

Mira took up two water guns; Aqua filled them with magic immediately. Then Nani took one gun for a backup, simultaneously seizing a balloon in her other hand. Aqua lined up to knock the other balloons toward her friends.

"Don't forget the soap, kupo!" Mog quickly dashed around the field, pouring the soap onto the balloons and injecting it into the water-gun barrels.

"Ready?" Mira asked. "Get set – "

Nani and Aqua both attacked before she could say "Go," smashing a pair of balloons into her.

"NO FAIR!" Mira yelled. "OKAY, PAYBACK TIME!"

She phased through the next volley to get close enough to Aqua to unleash both guns' streams, beginning the process of washing off the armor. Aqua launched into the air, performing a flip as she flew over Mira's head and batting three balloons down at Nani. Nani dodged with the expertise only a big sibling could have, throwing down her gun to grab two balloons and rush Mira before the Tangean could phase again. Mira turned to fire upon Nani, realizing that one hand still was shaking, but the sloppy aim only served to get more water everywhere and double the point of the brawl.

It felt good to truly, honestly laugh and play, as though there were no concerns in the worlds, great or small.

...

The shop in Twilight Town was not so much obtained legally as it was simply moved into after the owners of the space met an untimely disappearance that the locals would have fun discussing in relation to the various urban legends of the metropolis. Though Yzma had made the stock, the mission itself was undertaken by the new Fearsome Five – Mim, Megavolt, Quackerjack, Bushroot, and the Liquidator.

"We need to commit a crime together as an actual syndicate!" Mim had insisted. "And what better crime than a scam?"

Putting the shop together was actually relatively fun. She and Quackerjack had fought over whether it should be painted in dark shades or garish colors, and it had come to blows. Eventually, they split the space half-and-half: a rotted greenish color fighting for dominance against a psychedelic rainbow with no clear pattern. Megavolt hooked up the lighting accordingly, dimming it on the Mim half and brightening it on the Quackerjack half. It only made sense, Bushroot suggested, to use the split décor as a means of dividing the inventory between beneficiary potions and curses sold to be used on enemies. The Liquidator carefully stocked the shelves with labels outward.

When all was said and done, Bushroot used a series of vines as pulley ropes to lift a large neon sign into place. With a zap from Megavolt, the script reading "Liquid Assets" shone a bright pink against the dusky sky, fading to lavender and back again.

"We d-d-d-did it!" Bushroot cried triumphantly. "We're in b-b-business!"

"HIP HIP HOORAY!" Quackerjack jumped for joy.

"Now…" Mim rubbed her hands together. "The REAL fun begins!"

What followed was nothing even close to real fun.

As the five waited for some unlucky sucker to enter the shop and prepare to get ripped off, they milled about. Mim undid the Liquidator's careful organization; the Liquidator, bored enough that he didn't mind the work, rearranged the bottles back to precision. Bushroot stepped out to obtain several brightly-colored potted flowers (he refused to say where from until the others reminded him he was among a fully criminal crowd, at which point he admitted they'd come from several different private gardens) that were arranged on the Quackerjack half of the shop so Mim wouldn't disturb them; he then struck up a conversation with the plants that the others could only hear his half of. Megavolt sketched out blueprints for a doomsday ray on the floor. Quackerjack idly clicked a Rubik's Cube's sides around as he lounged atop the cash register counter.

After an hour of this, Mim declared, "Now that I think about it, there were PLENTY better crimes than a scam. I want excitement! I want violence!"

A loud growl echoed through the whole shop; everyone turned to Megavolt to seek the source.

"Well, I want a decent lunch," he declared. "I'm starving!"

"I'm so hungry, I could eat a hippopotamus sandwich!" Quackerjack proclaimed. "You know, that reminds me of a poem. 'A hippo sandwich is easy to make. All you do is simply take a slice of bread, a slice of cake – "

"Stop talking about bread and cake!" Megavolt covered his ears. "You're just makin' me hungrier!"

"I mean, I just photosynthesize," Bushroot said with a shrug, "but I do understand the importance of joining m-m-meals for social reasons!"

"Well, all right," Mim decided. "We'll all go out to lunch, then."

"Is it lunch?" Megavolt realized. "Or is it dinner? It's always twilight out here. That's just so weird."

"This is an afternoon twilight," Mim explained. "Evening twilight gets darker, and night twilight is a bruise-colored sky with colored streaks in it. Then, the next morning, it becomes dawn-twilight, which is more disgustingly pink than any other time of day."

"Sheesh," Bushroot realized. "Wherever we g-go to eat, let's make it somewhere with good lighting, or else I r-r-really am gonna get hungry!"

"What's on today's menu?" the Liquidator asked as the others gathered near the door. "Fast food? Slow food? Food that arrives at a medium pace?"

"Oh, you're not going," Mim told him.

"Shock and awe!" the Liquidator cried.

"SOMEONE has to keep the counter running until evening twilight," Mim informed him.

"N-n-n-no offense," Bushroot reminded the Liquidator, "b-b-but you don't even photosynthesize, let alone eat food."

"Aw, and here I was looking forward to making jokes about bringing him a 'doggy bag'!" Quackerjack huffed.

"Lunchtime conversation is a viable substitute to daily nutrients!" the Liquidator protested.

Megavolt shrugged. "Maybe next time. We'll draw straws for it."

"You really are miserable, aren't you?" Mim asked the watery dog. "Sad that you're left out?"

"Guaranteed," the Liquidator said mournfully.

"PERFECT!" Mim cackled. "Thinking about your misery will be so wonderful while we're away!" She headed out the door.

"Ciao!" Quackerjack called as he followed. "Or should I say CHOW DOWN?"

"Later!" Megavolt barreled after him.

Bushroot gave the Liquidator a solemn shrug. "I m-mean, it was your idea. Hey, if you want, I could stay – "

The Liquidator had placed his elbows on the counter, jaw in his hands. "Optimal growing conditions for mutant plant-ducks include social atmospheres! Liquidators thrive better in retail environments!" He perked up at a sudden thought: "Besides, this could be a chance to work on our brand and marketing! I'll drum up some business to pass the time!"

"Okay! If you're sure!" Bushroot waved on his way out. "See ya! HEY! G-G-GUYS! WAIT FOR ME!"

"I wonder about the effectiveness of print media advertising versus billboards…" the Liquidator mused.

...

"Will you LOOK at this place?" XR stretched out his arms (which could reach a fair distance by telescoping) to gesture to all of Twilight Town as he led Roxas and Mal down Market Street. "Will you just LOOK at it? Sure, it's a little, well, shall we say, sleepy, but this is what I call ambience! You know what this is? This is absolutely the kind of place where a person could fall in love! Romance central! Like something out of a paperback novel! The sunset, the city…somebody here's gonna fall hard, all right!"

Mal and Roxas looked at each other in a panic, unsure of what to say.

"By which I mean me," XR went on, relieving them both without even knowing it. "I mean, come on. Look at me. I'm adorable. And this is exactly the kind of town where you're gonna run into a green-skinned supermodel who's tired of traditionally attractive men. Not that, you know, I'm NOT, but…"

"I don't think there are any people here with green skin," Roxas stated. "Sorry to let you down."

"Well, you do know the lay of the land," XR recalled. "Speaking of which…where are we going?"

"All the shops that have the party supplies we need are gonna be around Tram Common," Roxas stated. "Glitter, confetti, tablecloths…it's just ahead."

As the trio walked and wheeled into the hub of town, Mal asked, "So, is it just like you remember?"

Roxas needed a moment to answer. It was surreal, nothing short of such. The town where he had played outsider for a year, making fond memories with Axel and yet never actually getting to know the place from the perspective outside the shadows. The town where he had gotten to know a digital facsimile in and out before realizing it wasn't real.

Once he'd gotten his bearings, he realized, "No. Some things are different. I don't remember the common being this…crowded before." He shook his head. "But…maybe that's just because I spent so much time either on missions during the slow times or in a simulation that couldn't waste the data."

"So long as our embellishments are right where you left them," XR told him, "I say don't even worry about it."

Roxas nodded. "This way."

After some time walking, Roxas halted the others, peering down a side alley and remarking, "Huh. That's new."

He, Mal, and XR entered, the short alley opening up into a moderately sized square that served as an outdoor theater. Benches were lined up down its length, seating an audience that came and went as the will struck them. From behind, a projector whirred; ahead, an enormous screen displayed an action sequence in black and white. The seclusion of the area kept the lighting dim enough to see the film, but strings of soft spherical lights were hung tastefully around to give ambience.

"This definitely wasn't here before," Roxas stated.

"It's old-school," Mal commented. "Fun."

"Will you two pipe down?" XR hissed. "This is the good part!" He swung his fist to cheer on the protagonist; "Yeah! Give him the old one-two!"

"Didn't we come here to pick up party supplies?" Mal reminded him.

"Oh, all right," XR sighed. "But no spoilers if you've seen this one before."

They were back on the road, but not for long. Now a new landmark caught Roxas' attention: a restaurant with a polished glass façade, the area around it sunken into the tile to create outdoor seating with intricately-wrought metal tables and chairs. A pink awning bore a sign that proclaimed this building to be "Le Grand Bistrot."

"This one's new too," Roxas stated. "How did something this big show up here in such a short time?"

"I mean…when WAS the last time you were here?" Mal asked. "As Sora or otherwise."

"Maybe not since he tried to intercept Mim shopping," Roxas realized, "and I don't think he took us through this side of the common, either. Before that…" He shook his head. "It's just so weird. It's both home and not home. It feels like it's been ages, but it also feels like I've never left."

"Yeah, I feel that." Mal nodded. "Kinda like being willed into existence with full knowledge of the Radiant Garden castle, but not really getting to, you know, use it until you were banished from existence and brought back through a dream and some mystical rainbow powers. But you know what else I feel? Hungry. Real hungry."

"Yeah," Roxas realized, taking a deep sniff of the air. "I can smell the food from here…maybe we should stop for lunch?"

"Oh, come on!" XR protested. "I don't get to see the ending of my movie, but you two get to have a luxury lunch at the swanky French place?"

"You do know humans need to eat, right?" Mal asked him. "Robots don't need to watch movies to survive."

"…You don't know that."

"Yeah. I do."

"If we keep going now," Roxas pointed out, "we're probably going to pass the candy shop and the ice cream shop before we end up at party supplies, and if we don't eat real food, we might just make a lunch out of that instead. Is that what you want?"

"I don't see the problem with it," XR huffed as he folded his arms. "And yes, I know quite well that's not 'healthy' for a human diet. Being healthy is overrated anyway."

"Well, I'm gonna go get some food, whether or not anyone else comes with me." Mal set off toward the restaurant.

"She's a real firecracker, isn't she?" XR whispered to Roxas, giving him a metallic wink.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Roxas asked.

"Oh, you REALLY think I was oblivious back when I was calling this place romance central?" XR teased. "Picking up party favors is priority one. Getting you two lovebirds to confess? Call that a bonus."

"There's nothing to confess!" Roxas groaned. "Mal's a good friend! That's it!"

"Suuuuure. Keep telling me how you don't like 'em feisty."

"I can like that she speaks her mind and makes her own decisions without liking her like that!" Roxas insisted. "I'm not some kind of creep. Trust me, if it turned out I did like her…then I'd feel like a creep for wanting to hang around her so much. She obviously doesn't like me like that!"

"See, that doesn't sound very convincing on the 'just a friend' front," XR told him. "See, maybe you could stand to be a little more of a creep."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying make a move! And if she says no and shuts you down, then you've gotten it over with! That's how it worked with me and Mira! Just don't keep pestering her after the fact. That ONLY works between me and Mira."

"I'm…not sure it does," Roxas sighed. "And I just…I need to figure out how I feel first. It might not even be like that."

"I am wearing you down. Already we've gone from 'It's not like that' to – "

"GUYS!" Mal called over from the door of Le Grand Bistrot. "Whatever you're fighting about, just rock-paper-scissors it out and either get in here or go get party stuff!" She let the door swing shut behind her.

"All right, on three," XR declared, making a fist. "You lose, you confess."

"Not a chance." Roxas turned on a heel and made for the bistro. "Also, it smells like they're cooking seafood in there. I can't take it anymore! My stomach's gonna start growling!"

He took off running.

XR shrugged. "Fine by me. Not like you two are a perfect couple of hotheads or anything." He wheeled toward the bistro. "Wonder if they do filet mignon here…"

The moment he'd disappeared into the restaurant, Mim, Megavolt, Quackerjack, and Bushroot arrived in the outer courtyard of seating, having followed their noses to where the food obviously was.

"Ooh, fancy!" Megavolt said upon seeing the bistro, his eyes lighting up. "And well-illuminated, too!"

"Meaning I get to enjoy a meal with the rest of you g-guys!" Bushroot cried joyfully, clasping his leafy hands.

"Let's go get some grub!" Quackerjack decided.

Yet as the four entered the restaurant, XR, Mal, and Roxas were seated at the last open table, leaving no vacancies.

"Drat!" Mim folded her arms. "It's all filled up with high-society types!"

("I'm telling you, if my drink doesn't come with the fruit speared on one of those little plastic swords, I walk," XR was saying.)

"Aw, I was looking forward to eating the fancy food I can't pronounce!" Megavolt pouted.

"Well, let's not give up just yet," Quackerjack encouraged. "We're the Fearsome Five! …Or four. But when have we ever given up on something we wanted just because the rules said we couldn't have it?"

"I couldn't have said it better myself!" Mim agreed. "Now…how best to discreetly and maliciously clear one of these tables?"

"Oh, I know!" Quackerjack realized. "If the people in the best seats in the house should SOMEHOW get food poisoning…"

"Hey!" Bushroot broke in. "One of the flowers I brought back to d-d-decorate the shop was a daffodil! And you know d-daffodils make you all kinds of sick if you eat them, right? Weeeellll…" He extended a leafy palm to show off a handful of yellow petals. "I think this particular daffodil liked me as more than a friend, because she gave me all these as g-g-g-gifts. B-but I told her I had Amy. She was sad, but then I put her next to this b-beautiful rose, and I think they really hit it off!"

"Gee, thanks for the romance novel," Quackerjack scoffed. "But what does that have to do with getting a table?"

"If we c-crush these petals into somebody's food, or their d-drink," Bushroot explained, "then they'll get sick and have to leave!"

"PERFECT!" Mim cried. "Now. How to get close without being noticed…"

"OH! OHHHHH!" Megavolt waved a hand excitedly in the air. "I KNOW! QUACKERJACK AND I USED TO DO THIS ALL THE TIME! See, we start by knocking out two of the waitstaff, and then…" He trailed off. "Huh. I don't remember what the next part is."

"We dress up as waiters!" Quackerjack finished for him. "Great idea, Megs! But I thought you were getting sick of my playing dress-up."

"Yeah, well…" Megavolt shuffled one toe behind the opposite heel. "I kinda miss those heists. They were fun. They're always more fun with my best pal!" He flinched. "NOT THAT YOU'RE NOT MY PALS – "

"Naw, you and Quackerjack have been thick as thieves since forever!" Bushroot told him. "Everybody knows he's your b-b-b-best b-bud!"

Mim shrugged. "I don't even care."

"Then let's go!" Quackerjack seized Megavolt's hands and spun the two of them around. "IT'S PLAAAY-TIIIIME!"

"YAHOO!"

As the two of them ran off, Mim asked, "Now, is there something going on between those two or am I just imagining things?"

"N-n-nobody kn-knows," Bushroot said with a shrug. "M-maybe? Maybe not. They are whatever they are, and Liquidator and I just kinda g-go with it!"

"You know," Mim mused, "this would be the part where some soft-hearted friend would play matchmaker and try to get them together so they could be happy." She then gave a dramatic shrug of her own; "Oh, well! Guess they get to stay in a state of romantic confusion! More fun for me!"

A family of four was in the midst of deep conversation when they were approached by two short waiters wearing uniforms that were obviously too large for them. "Bonjour, monsieur and madame!" Megavolt greeted. "May we offer you a le refill of your le water?"

"Hon hon hon!" Quackerjack punctuated from behind a fake mustache.

Without waiting for a response, the two of them poured from their water pitchers, which were spiked with crushed daffodil. Each family member's glass was filled to literal overflow.

"Adieu revoir!" Megavolt said as he prepared to dash off.

"Wait!" the family patriarch said.

Megavolt and Quackerjack obeyed. "Is something wrong, monsieur?" Quackerjack asked.

"I just wanted to say to give my compliments to the chef!" the man said.

"Oh, yeah!" Megavolt replied. "I'll go do that right now! Come on, Quacker-Jacques!"

The two of them rushed back to the kitchen doors, which they kicked open just long enough to yell "COMPLIMENTS!" into in synchrony before making tracks.

From there, it was a short wait. Mim chortled as she watched the family go from a pleasant meal to suddenly needing to throw their munny down on the table and bolt for the restrooms to vomit up all the lovely food they'd just dined on – and probably give the bistro a bad review on social media shortly after, which would be the icing on the cake as far as Mim was concerned.

Without waiting to be seated, Mim, Bushroot, Megavolt, and Quackerjack, the latter two having disposed of their waiters' uniforms in the nearest potted plant, crowded into the table. To avoid suspicion, they left most of the payment from the previous family on the table – there was a time and a place for framing somebody for dining and dashing, and this wasn't it. Mim did, however, take the tip.

A rather confused waiter walked up to them. "May I take your order?" he asked while scooping up the munny. "Strange…I had thought those four were enjoying the food. Oh, well. What can I get you?"

"Hmm, let's see…" Mim perused the menu. "I'll have the eel matelote so I can pretend I'm eating the little flying idiot, and put in a side of berries au fromage out of sheer spite for the no-dairy days."

"I'll have the seafood tartare," Quackerjack stated, "and my friend here is going to have the ratatouille whether he likes it or not because I need to make rat puns."

"Thanks, Quacky," Megavolt growled. "I'll order for MYSELF. So, uh, how about instead of the thing he just said that I can't pronounce, the rat thing, I'll take that thing, ohhh, what's it called, the vegetable dish where you dice everything up and make it look pretty and then bake it with olive oil and seasonings, and it's technically a stew…I'll have that."

The waiter scribbled it down.

"I'll just take a water," Bushroot stated. "Hold the daffodil."

The waiter made a face of confusion as he wrote that, then nodded. "All right, I'll get that ready for you. Enjoy!"

Meanwhile, another waiter was taking down orders for Mal, Roxas, and XR – or trying to, anyway.

"Hang on," Roxas said as he scowled at the menu. "I don't even know what half this stuff is! Bowl-a-bass? Lobster-mouse? Beef bourgeoisie?"

"What ARE they teaching the children in school these days?" XR sighed, the green accents in his eyes illuminating to give him the appearance of rolling them.

"Mostly how to kill Emblem Heartless and spy on people without getting caught," Roxas retorted. "Where I grew up, anyway."

"Right, right, raised by an interdimensional mafia. I forgot. Luckily, you have a translator on hand, and unlike that Owlbot they tried to release in the Capital Planet schooling systems, I'm not going to go rogue and try to murder you if you miss your lessons. …That was a mission and a half. Anyway, I am skilled in all things romance, and that includes the Romance Languages. Now, bouillabaisse is seafood stew, lobster MOUSSE is basically lobster pounded into a fine paste – it's better than it sounds – and beef bourguignon is beef in wine gravy. Not actually alcoholic, mind you, which can be a bit of a letdown for some people to hear."

"Huh." Roxas pored over his menu once more. "How about…sole mooniere? What does pap-i-loat mean? Please tell me sweetbread isn't anything like waffles."

"Sole meuniere is a simple dish," XR stated. "Fish, butter, lemon, garlic, that's pretty much it. Now, 'en papillote' means baked in paper, so it'll come highly seasoned out of that. And sweetbread is – well, you don't actually wanna know that one. Don't order it."

"Sir," the waitress sighed, "have you made a decision?"

"Yeah," Roxas said. "I wanna figure out what that sea bass…en papillote tastes like."

"Pumpkin velouté and stuffed quail for me," Mal said immediately. "I may or may not be intending to pour the soup on the quail like a heathen."

"We don't judge here," the waitress said. "After all, this isn't a pizzeria, so you won't be putting pineapple where it shouldn't be, and that's all I care about."

"Okay, choosing to ignore that," Mal stated. "Also, I'm in the mood for something sweet. Hey, Roxas, wanna split a tarte aux fruits with me?"

"Sure!" Roxas cried. "…What exactly is that?"

"Think of if fruitcake was actually like what the name implied instead of what it is."

"Oh, cool!"

"Me, I'll be having a light caprese salad to start off, followed by a filet mignon poêlé – medium rare, and don't be afraid to go heavy on the rosemary – topped off by a finisher of crêpes suzette," XR stated.

"Um…can you even eat food?" Mal pointed out.

XR flinched. "No," he muttered. "Dag nabbit…I keep forgetting that for some reason. Why do I keep forgetting that? Cancel my order."

The waitress scratched several thick lines on her pad. "Okay, I'm on it!" She set off.

"So what's the real reason you know French?" Mal asked.

"Is it not enough for you to believe I had it programmed into me – nay, REQUESTED it programmed into me for diplomatic relations?" XR rebutted.

"That just doesn't sound like you at all," Roxas commented.

"…So maybe I memorized the names of a lot of food back when I thought I had a shot with Vicki Vortex and wanted to take her somewhere nice," XR muttered. "Is that a crime?"

The waiter who'd taken the Fearsome order and the waitress who'd taken the party-shoppers' order were temporarily waylaid, having to release two of their co-workers out of a locked supply cabinet. "Do I want to know?" the waitress asked, raising her brow at the pair in their underwear.

"It's not what it looks like," one of the two said in a panic.

"We got knocked out by a duck and a rat," the other explained, "and they stole our uniforms and locked us in here?"

"Are you kidding me?" the fully-dressed waiter groaned. "AGAIN?"

When the food finally came back to table WHAM, Mim was in the midst of relating, "You know, I'm never truly sure how to feel about the French. On one hand, I'm an Englishwoman, and you know how the English are about all things French. On the other hand, however, I'm an Englishwoman who hates the English, and the French are good at annoying them, all right!"

"Um…your food, madame," the waiter said as he lay down all the plates.

As he left, the four tore into the delicacies before them, even Bushroot drinking down his water with gusto.

"Man, now I almost feel bad Licky had to miss this," Megavolt remarked around a mouthful of food. "Seriously, it's like the perfect day. Great food, great friends, we're about to do some awesome crime, Scrooge McDuck just walked in, this city's really aesthetically pleasing, the lightbulbs here are – "

"WHO just walked in?" Mim practically shrieked.

All four whipped about to look at where the billionaire in a blue coat had just entered the building, another duck in tow.

"Why is he heeeeeeere?" Quackerjack pouted. "He's gonna ruin all the fun!"

He then took out Banana Brain to make the doll say, "Did you forget he's rich, Mitch? If he's here, then so is some of his money, Honey!"

"Oh, that's a good point," Quackerjack said to his plush alter ego.

"Hey!" Bushroot realized. "What if th-th-that's our crime? We can steal from Scrooge M-M-McDuck!"

"Hmm…probably won't have cash on him in person, the old miser," Mim mused. "But if he has a stronghold here in town…and why else would he be here? Let's listen in!"

She created a scrying portal that offered a close-up, with accompanying audio, of the table across the restaurant where Scrooge was headed.

"Do me eyes deceive me?" the old duck said gleefully. "Well, if it isn't the little lass who bought a ten-scoop strawberry cone off me and managed ta eat it all without it meltin' a drip! Never seen anyone eat ice cream with such gusto before, y'know! What brings ye ta this neck o' the worlds?"

Roxas and XR gave Mal an incredulous look.

"Mom never let me have sweets," Mal said as she cringed. "I like ice cream, okay?"

"Me too," Roxas told her, firing her a smile.

"Well, the waitstaff here might not judge," XR told her, "but I'm not waitstaff here. And I…am…judging you, strawberry glutton."

"Shut up," Mal snapped. Then, to Scrooge, "We're actually all here from Radiant Garden shopping for party supplies. We stopped here because we were hungry, and it just smelled so good."

"Ah!" Scrooge cried. "See, I TOLD ye the customers would be rushin' in like the tide when they caught a whiff o' Little Chef's work!"

"Yes, yes," the other duck mumbled, "we're all very aware of your economic brilliance."

"This is…your restaurant?" Roxas asked.

"That's right, me boy!" Scrooge declared.

"I thought you were busy with the ice cream operation in Radiant Garden," Mal said, quite perplexed.

"Well, I am!" Scrooge told her. "But an entrepreneur can never put all his eggs in one basket…so to speak."

"No offense meant," XR pointed out, "but going from an ice cream vendor to a whole French bistro is kind of cuckoo, don't you think?"

"Well, if zere's one thing Clan McDuck is, it's cuckoo," the other duck snickered.

"Agh, shut yer beak!" Scrooge huffed. "Yer confusin' my side of the family with yers. Anyway, the idea hit me outta practically nowhere. On a trip through the worlds, I stopped at a little restaurant in one of the many versions of Paris. I'd tried for a reservation at a more upper-class establishment, but by the time I got there, health inspection had shut it doon. An' everywhere else booked solid, save the little places! Turned out, 'twas the most fortunate circumstance I could've asked for! That little café, Le Ratatouille, had the best food I've ever eaten in me life! After the meal, I asked ta meet the chef, an' what a surprise awaited me when I did! Well, that's a story for another time. For now, I offered the head chef a chance to work at a larger establishment, for better pay than he'd get back home. Not that he really needs it, given that…well, that'll be explained in due time. But his friends, nay, his family who worked with him in that little café, why, they could use some extra dough to stay afloat. They're still on that world, tyin' up loose ends – the lass did nae want ta leave a sure thing fer a business venture, even when I assured her of me reputation! But I can understand her concern. Once Le Grand Bistrot proved itself here, the rest of the staff would be right along! 'Till then, we've got locals workin' with the Little Chef, an' seein' as the locals here're already used to the strange an' bizarre, he can be a little more out in the open than usual!"

"What, you're gonna drop all those hints and not tell us what's wrong with the head chef?" XR asked.

This earned him an elbow from Roxas thumping into his exterior plating; "XR! That's not your business!"

"In fact, it's all part of me grand plan," Scrooge stated. "Ye saw the movie screen outside, did ye not?"

"Yeah!" Roxas nodded. "It looked like fun!"

"That's courtesy of me as well!" Scrooge stated. "Give the people a spot of entertainment, then follow it up with some good food, an' the munny will come rollin' in!"

"Wow," Mal remarked. "That's corporate and heartless."

"What she said," XR agreed. "And yet also brilliant."

"Oh, I couldn't agree more!" Scrooge's companion asserted. "And zat is why I pushed so hard for ze filming to be complimentary! After all, the projector is of my design! You think it is genius now? Wait until you see film on ze big screen…in COLOR!"

"May I introduce my business partner!" Scrooge stepped aside to gesture to the other duck, who sported an oversized blue jacket over an equally oversized brown vest, the feathers to either side of his head graying. "Me brother-in-law, Ludwig von Drake! He thinks himself some sort of moral compass for me! Unfortunately, I can't be rid of 'im, or I'd be out a projector an' all sorts of the technology that makes me innovations work!"

"Darn tooting right, you could not be rid of me!" Ludwig asserted. "Just like in science, business sense with no heart is sure to run afoul! Have you not been seeing the very horror film we have been planning as our grand finale?"

"Oh, so ye'd liken me to a mad doctor!" Scrooge teased.

"Well, no," Ludwig stated. "See, I am a mad doctor, and 'tis a compliment to say. Calling you one would be besmirching my profession!"

"You guys seriously don't get along, do you?" Mal said with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh, no, no, you've gotten us all wrong!" Ludwig laughed as he waved it off with both hands.

"Ludwig might be a bee in me bonnet at times," Scrooge admitted, "but he's got a heart of gold, which is worth just as much as gold itself and more!"

"And Scrooge's heart more or less ends up in the right place sooner or later, that it does," Ludwig said with a mischievous grin. "Besides! We are family! Even if by law rather than ze blood. And family must be sticking together!"

"…Not always," Mal muttered. "You guys are lucky to have each other as friends. Kinda like me and Li. Even if our mom kinda turned out to be the Mistress of All Evil, well, hey, we've got each other, and Riku totally counts."

"…I am sensing a story here that I've missed," Scrooge commented.

"Well, enough about that!" XR butted in. "Let's talk business."

"XR!" Roxas chided. "Not now! We're already here on ONE of your business ventures!"

"And that is EXACTLY what I want to talk to you about!" XR cried, eyes sparkling brighter than usual. "Tell me, Mr…McDuck, is it? Well, that's a little on the nose. On the beak. Heheh. How would you like to add to your business repertoire a venue for renting out parties? No, not just parties: SOIREES. Only of the highest quality."

"Oh?" Scrooge perked up. "Are ye tryin' ta start up?"

"As a matter of fact – "

"MR. MCDUCK!"

The voice of a teenage girl cut through the chatter of the restaurant. A young brunette, flanked by a heavyset raven-haired boy and a taller, more muscular teen boy with short blond curls, came charging in. "We finished putting up all those posters you gave us!" she said.

"Yeah!" the blond boy asserted. "Now where's our munny?"

"I don't even care about the munny," the dark-haired boy said. "I just wanna know what the surprise finale film is gonna be."

"Good job, lass an' laddies!" Scrooge congratulated. "Ye'll get yer compensation once I get a chance ta sit down an' print the payroll. As for the finale…I cannae spoil the surprise, now, can I?"

"Especially since we are still not knowing what ze finale even is!" Ludwig cried. "Oh, I was not supposed to be saying that, now, was I?"

"Hey," the blond said, looking across the table. "Is that kid okay? He looks like he's gonna have a heart attack or somethin'. Anyone know the Heimlich maneuver?"

"That's not for heart attacks, silly," the brunette told him. She then turned to look in the same direction; "Seriously, are you okay?"

Roxas looked as if he'd just been drained of blood, his jaw dropping in utter shock. He could barely form the words. He'd missed them so much, yet never really knew them, not at all. Were they accurate to DiZ's digital copies, or nothing like the simulations he'd become so attached to? Was their bond ever even real? Would these versions of them even like him?

"Wait a minute," the dark-haired boy muttered, "I've seen you before."

"You…remember?" Roxas asked softly. "Pence…"

"Yeah!" Pence affirmed. "You were the guy who got lost in the tunnels looking for the Seven Wonders! And then you came back, and we taught you how to play Grandstand!"

"Oh, yeah!" the brunette realized. "That was him!"

"I gotta warn you," the blond said, "I've got a new record! Bet you can't beat it this time!"

"Hayner…Olette…" Roxas sighed, smiling. So far, they were exactly as the simulations had been. "You guys…don't even know the half of it."

"Whoa, dude!" Hayner replied. "Whatever's going on, snap out of it! You're weirding me out, man."

"Is something wrong?" Olette asked. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," Roxas said. "It's just…I…" He swallowed hard. "I don't really know how to say this."

"Say what?" Pence asked.

With a sigh, Roxas stood, walking to stand before the trio. "We haven't been introduced. Not really."

"You never did tell us your name!" Olette realized.

Roxas put forth his right hand. "It's so good to finally meet you," he said with the softest of smiles. "My name's Roxas."

The three teens looked as though they'd just been hooked to jumper cables.

"ROXAS?" Hayner cried. "THE Roxas?"

"You mean all this time, you were the guy that Sora linked with?" Pence gasped.

"Oh my gosh!" Olette squealed. "We didn't even put that together! That means you were friends with us in that other Twilight Town! The one made of data!"

"Yeah," Roxas confirmed. "At least…I was friends with copies of you. I'm not sure I ever really knew the real you well enough to be friends." He let out a laugh. "Nice new outfits, by the way."

It seemed they'd taken a page from the Three Fairies' book on fashion, having upgraded to darker outfits that contained more plaid accents.

"Well, y'know what?" Hayner seized Roxas' outstretched hand and pumped it hard. "We're REAL friends now! Starting today!"

"You…don't even know if you'll like me," Roxas reminded him.

"Of COURSE we'll like you!" Hayner insisted. "Duh! Sora said you were cool, so you gotta be cool! And besides, you were friends with another me over there, and anyone who's my pal has gotta be awesome, data or no data!"

"We'll be glad to get to know you for real," Olette said sincerely. "Maybe it'll be just like old times for you!"

"I sure felt like you were a nice guy those couple times we met," Pence chimed in. "That's a good start!"

"Maybe we could all hang out for the day!" Hayner suggested, letting go of Roxas' hand.

"Hayner!" Olette scolded. "We haven't asked if Mr. McDuck needs us for anything else today! And besides, Roxas is already here with some friends! We can't just barge in on their time together!"

"I'm cool with barging," Mal stated. "Roxas told me all about you guys, and it sounds like you really need a catch-up sesh."

"Oh, this is Mal!" Roxas introduced. "She's a friend of mine from Radiant Garden. And this is XR. Coming here today was his idea. We were shopping for party supplies!"

"Party supplies?" Pence repeated. "Actually, can we tag along with you? The party shop is one of the best places in town – but you knew that. Right. The data copy was exact."

"Anyway, we love to mess around there and try on all the hats!" Hayner cried enthusiastically. "Now, we finally get to make YOU wear silly hats?"

"Mr. McDuck," Olette asked, "is this okay?"

"Well, ye did finish up all the tasks I had for ye for the day," Scrooge mused. "All save one."

"And zis is CRUCIAL to ze entire enterprise!" Ludwig cried. "Ze most important task of zem all! If ze wrong answer is chosen, ze entire structure will come tumbling down like a stack of tomato cans that have been having the bottom corner can removed by some ruffian who does not care for grocery organization!"

("Ooh, that one's a classic," Mim chuckled.)

"What can we do?" Pence asked.

"And can we do it fast?" Hayner asked. "We've got a party store to explore!"

"I'll say ye can do it fast," Scrooge stated. "The introductory film festival is nearly at a close, an' we're still between two films! We put up a poll for public opinion, an' the finalists came in neck and neck! We were hopin' ye could do a little behind-the-scenes coin toss for us!"

"That sounds easy!" Hayner asserted. "Bring it on!"

"So first, it is worth noting zey are both in color," Ludwig chuckled. "Of course zey would be! I wanted to save ze best for last! One is Ze Cute Little Lost Bunnies Movie! A heartwarming adventure of a pair of rabbits who find zemselves in quite a pickle, but make zeir way home by traversing a land of delights and making strange and quirky friendships!"

"Ugh, NEXT," XR groaned.

"You're not even part of this!" Roxas told him sternly.

"Yes, well, I speak for the general public," XR attempted.

"Ze second is more of a, how you say, a dark horse hit," Ludwig went on. "Ze classic horror epic…Runaway Brain!"

This title seemed familiar to no one, so Ludwig went on: "You are not knowing of Runaway Brain? Ze most infamous cinematic depiction of the macabre in Disney Town? Ohoho, 'twas ze strangest move in King Mickey's career! Well, you do know before he studied ze Keyblade, he was an actor, do you not?"

Everyone present, save Scrooge, shook their heads.

"Ah, a lesson in King Mickey history!" Ludwig cried. "See, His Royal Highness has held a multitude of occupations, from steamboat captain to odd jobs office! Why, he has even spoken of opening his own multi-world nightclub! Can you imagine? But he and his close friends also have quite a few acting credits under their beltses! Mostly family-friendly entertainment, but one day, he decided to expand his career and star in a film of horrors! A story about an innocent young mouse who is abducted for science most foul, and has his brain swappidied-out with zat of an enormous and feral monster named Julius! Why, ze CGI zey used to turn Pete into a giant was a stunning advancement in film!"

"Wait a second," Mal realized. "Pete? Like…Pete-Pete?"

"Oh, yes," Ludwig affirmed. "Zis was before ze great incident, you know."

"When Pete was banished," Roxas realized. "What was that even about?"

"Ohoho," Ludwig chuckled. "Pete had been on ze thin ice for ze longest time. Zen, in ze Country of ze Musketeers, he abducted Queen Minnie in hopes of the making of a power play! Now, Mickey, he was attempting to follow ze teachings of Master Yen Sid and take the path of pacifism and second chances. So, while he went off to study ze Keyblade, he told Minnie she was in charge of Pete's parole. Well, as you can imagine, Minnie was quite bitter, and Mickey may have given her some of ze old winkity-wink-nudge-nudge to indicate zat he wanted her to take some advantage of the position. Well, first chance she gets, Pete pulls the great ice cream scam at ze Million Dreams Award, and Minnie, ooh, well, she was none too happy from him stuffing her in ze tiny box and leaving Mickey to drown! So she seizes ze moment, carpe diem, and Pete is finally imprisoned because a little ice cream broke ze back of ze camel! But before zat, well, he was somewhat of a nuisance neighbor to most of us. Goofy knew him ze best, I do believe. And he might've been ze roughness around ze edges, but zis was before he realized how far he could take his ambitions, so he was our black sheep, even zough he was not a sheep but a cat, you see. And zat was when he co-starred with Mickey in Runaway Brain! Ze worst sort of actor, too, who refused to say his lines unless he had premium desserts delivered to his trailer on ze regular!"

"But isn't that…wrong?" Roxas asked. "We know Pete's horrible now, and you're suggesting showing a movie with him like nothing's wrong."

"Aye," Scrooge replied, "but we gave full disclosure when the polls were up. The people here are well aware of Pete's crimes, an' yet Runaway Brain won by almost a landslide – rivaled, of course, by The Cute Little Lost Bunnies Movie."

"And if it is any consolation," Ludwig added, "ze actor who played Dr. Frankenollie is a very nice man. Loves playing ze villains, ohoho! But spends most of his time volunteering for ze charity and working on his topiary!"

"See, I grew up – if you can call forty-eight hours growing up – in a house where everyone was a problem," Mal said, "and everything you touched was made by somebody horrible. If you tried to avoid problem people in Maleficent's castle, you would have nothing. I'm not saying it's an easy answer, and people totally have the right to be grossed out by watching Pete in movies, but they don't HAVE to be, either. Sometimes you just wanna forget the character was played by a bad guy and like the fake bad guy. Also, I'm pretty sure if you dig, there's somebody on the Cute Little Lost Bunnies crew who did something bad, too."

"…There was the Jim Starling incident," Scrooge muttered.

"See?" Mal put out her hands to either side. "Anyway, you're saying this Runaway Brain is basically a monster movie? That one gets my vote. I just feel like you can't go wrong with a monster movie. Action, mad science, cool bad guys…hey, I might be a Cinnamon now, but I was born one of Maleficent's nightmares, and that's part of me."

"And that's okay," Roxas told her. "Being in the Organization was a big part of me, too."

"I have never done anything wrong in my life," XR asserted. "Ever."

No one believed that.

"I'm kinda with Mal on this one," Olette stated. "The monster movie sounds like fun. I just worry that it won't be appropriate for little kids…"

"Hey, it's about their bedtime anyway," Hayner stated. "And there were plenty of kids' movies on the posters we put up. I bet the parents are all sick of the tame stuff and want something a little stronger."

"We'll just make a warning beforehand," Pence decided. "We can even ask the audience if they wanna override the decision. But Hayner's right. A lot of what we've been showing is pretty saccharine. We could stand to shake it up."

"Then I'm with you guys!" Roxas decided.

"Plenty of children have already snuck in to see zis film in theaters," Ludwig related. "Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Julius had appeared in so many nightmares, he manifested as a true Nightmare in these Sleeping Worlds zat Yen Sid won't stop ze babbling about. Hmm, I must conduct research on zis matter…"

"Now, are you actually gonna let me WATCH this one all the way through?" XR asked.

"Tell you what," Mal told him. "You can either watch the movie or come party shopping with us. Robot's choice."

"Y'know, it kinda sounds like you've got the party supplies thing in the bag," XR told them. "Also, who am I to stand in the way of your friendly reunion? Mal might be that rude, but I'm sure not."

"We'd LOVE to hang out with you, Mal," Olette insisted.

"Oh, I know," Mal told Olette. "XR's just rude. We're used to this."

"I'm still interested in knowin' about this party yer settin' up," Scrooge told him.

"Ah, yes!" XR replied. "I'm renting out the creepy secret basement of Radiant Garden, which has been refurbished to erase all traces of mad science – no offense to the science guy here – "

"Oh, none is taken!" Ludwig assured him.

" – as a space for parties of all kinds," XR went on. "Birthday parties, office parties, bar mitzvahs, family reunions, you name it, we do it. I have nothing short of the best crew working round-the-clock to make it absolutely perfect. We have strobes! We have black lights! We have a disco ball! We have primo food I'm going to forget I can't eat and punch I can't drink! With water and vegan options available, of course. Now we're just in the final stages of picking up some balloons and glitter for that homey feel."

"An' ye're lookin' ta expand," Scrooge guessed.

"If you've got the space," XR told him.

"And who, exactly, are ye," Scrooge asked, "an' why should I trust ye're able ta put on such a…soiree?"

"Who am I?" XR reeled in mock offense. "WHO AM I? You mean you haven't HEARD? Well, allow me to introduce myself!"

He blasted off, doing a loop-de-loop until he'd reached the airspace closest to the center of the ceiling – or as close as he could get without disturbing the large crystal chandelier. "I AM THE MOST ADVANCED AI THAT STAR COMMAND HAS EVER PRODUCED, AND THE ONLY ONE THAT NEVER TURNED EVIL OF HIS OWN VOLITION!" he bellowed, well aware that the entire populace of the restaurant was gaping at him now (and Mim barely needed the scrying window). Striking several dramatic poses, he cried out, "I AM THE LONG TELESCOPING ARMS OF THE LAW! I AM THE SAVIOR OF WORLDS! I AM THE PLUCKY HERO WHO ALWAYS GETS HIS VILLAIN! I AM THE ONE! THE ONLY!"

Performing a backflip, he came to land on the only empty table he could spot, letting loose a barrage of rainbow fireworks from within his core to explode harmlessly against the ceiling. As his treads hit the table, he finished off, "XR, ROBOT RANGER!"

Except the table wasn't empty. He just hadn't managed to notice, in his fit of bragging, the lone woman seated at it. She'd been raptly staring at him like everyone else up until the point that his tread caught the edge of the bowl from which she'd been supping a thick carrot-and-sweet-potato concoction, sending the orange soup splattering all over her yellow sundress as she gave a piercing, high-pitched scream.

"Oh," XR realized as he looked to his left. "That wasn't in the script."

"Script?" the woman repeated, holding out her arms to take inventory of how much she'd been stained. "SCRIPT? That's all you have to fucking say?" She seized her napkin, trying to dab it all away. "Shit, shit, shit, it's HOT – "

"Ah!" Scrooge cried in a panic. "My most sincere apologies, lassie! Can I offer ye a discount ta make up for it?"

"Scrooge, offering people a discount?" Roxas whispered. "Am I dreaming?"
"No," Ludwig assured. "He has been known to do such implausible things to avoid ze bad reviews."

"Oh…no." The woman's demeanor shifted suddenly. "No, no, no, seriously, this is not your fault. Please don't do anything like that."

"I'll at least order ya a second soup, on the house."

"No, seriously…please…you don't have to do that just because THAT GUY's an assh – a jerk." She flushed, rather certain that you weren't supposed to use foul language in front of Scrooge McDuck.

Roxas realized the woman looked familiar to him. There had been one of her in the simulator; he'd seen her around Sunset Terrace, though probably only spoken to her digital copy once or twice. She had short blonde hair, layered just beneath her chin; skin that was quite pale; and bluish-green eyes. Her yellow floral print was offset by a pair of red shoes.

"I insist, lass," Scrooge pressed. "I'll have that order to you on the double!"

As he hurried to the kitchen to order a second round, the woman insisted, "Though SOMEBODY here should at least apologize."

"I'll say." XR folded his arms. "If somebody didn't have her big old soup bowl in the way, I would've stuck that landing."

"EXCUSE ME?" the woman cried, standing to full height. "THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME? YOU WERE THE ONE WHO – THAT BOWL WAS ALREADY THERE!"

"And you could have calculated my trajectory."

"NOW YOU'RE JUST MAKING UP EXCUSES SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO TAKE ANY BLAME! YOU ASS!"

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Did you…SERIOUSLY? I can't. I can't!"

"You know," XR remarked, "if I'd seen you five minutes ago, before you got all covered in soup – "

"WHOSE FAULT WAS THAT – "

"I might've said you were a looker. But then you opened your mouth, and it is quite clear the contents do NOT match the label."

"If I didn't want to get in trouble for assaulting you," the woman seethed, "I would punch you in the jaw."

"Joke's on you; this helmet's unbreakable. …Mostly. Actually, there's about a fifty percent margin of error on that – "

Scrooge nearly spilled the orange soup all over again as he rushed it to the table. "There ye are! Apologies again for the inconvenience, Miss…?"

"Rachel," the woman said, trying to calm herself down to talk to Scrooge. "Rachel Inlustris. But seriously, you can charge me for the second soup. It's fine. Though if you could please get this dumbass away from me, that would be nice."

"Oh, I'm a dumb - ?" XR repeated…or tried to. "Well, if I'm a dumb - , then you're…you're…what are you? I mean, besides rude and terrible at putting soup bowls on a table…"

"Hold on. Are you censoring yourself?" Rachel did a double take.

"No," XR muttered. "Nebula has me chipped so I can't. Believe me, it's a real pain when you forget which words have made the no-no list, and all of a sudden you're onstage for karaoke night trying to sing 'What's New –Cat' – "

"You really are a dumbass." Rachel shook her head. "Just get out. I am trying to eat in peace. And if you keep talking, if you so much as say one WORD to me, I will flip this bowl over your helmet. See how YOU like being covered in it."

"I – "

Rachel held up the bowl threateningly, hoping she wouldn't have to waste good soup.

With a sigh, XR blasted off back to home base. Satisfied, Rachel sat down and began to eat, pouting at the knowledge that she had an enormous orange wet spot on her dress.

"Can you believe the nerve of her?" XR grumbled.

"You did kind of spill hot soup all over her by not being careful," Olette told him. "I think most people would be mad."

"Also, the part where you called her ugly on the inside," Mal added.

"And in that same sentence, you got this close to being a real creep about her," Roxas chimed in.

"Yes, yes, the robot needs to be put on a leash," XR grumbled. "If the XR hatebase is finished…"

Scrooge padded his way over. "Well, I'll say that was interesting, at the very least," he sighed. "That was expensive soup, ye know. Relatively speakin'."

"Right?" XR gave a dramatic shrug. "She REALLY needs to be more careful with it!"

Scrooge shook his head. "Laddie, that one's on you."

"Eheh…" XR flinched, giving a guilty grin. "Does this mean you're…not interested in backing the party venue?"

"Well, I wouldn' say that," Scrooge told him. "Just that yer people skills may not be the appropriate company face. Perhaps all the more reason to get involved."

"Do NOT let him monopolize this," Mal warned. "I'm serious. Do NOT."

"Here's me card!" Scrooge flipped a business card into his fingers, offering it to XR. "Call me another time an' we'll talk – "

A strong wind blew the card right out of Scrooge's hand.

Thinking nothing of it, he simply produced another. "We'll talk terms," he decided.

XR gladly stored the card away beneath his chestplate. "And this is the part where the robot gets in the money!"

Unbeknownst to Scrooge, the wind hadn't been a natural breeze at all, but a calculated Aerora that steered his first card right into Mim's hand. "Let's see…" She pored it over visually. "A-HA! There's a Twilight Town address! You know what this means, boys?"

"He's probably not paying the property taxes he needs to because he's in the upper echelon?" Megavolt guessed.

"N – well, yes," Mim realized, "but more importantly, he's got to have a good stash of cash somewhere in that house!"

"Yeah," Quackerjack said snidely. "One he watches like a hawk."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that." Mim smirked. "See, I've got a little plan. After all, he's going to be at the screening of that monster movie. All we have to do is keep him distracted long enough that he won't even think to look at his home away from home!"

"And how are we gonna d-d-d-do that?" Bushroot asked.

Mim's smirk grew all the more malicious. "By making the truth stranger than fiction."

...

Evening-twilight was finally upon the town. Scrooge had taken the stage after the credits had rolled on the penultimate film, microphone in hand as he addressed the audience.

"From the bottom of me heart," he said, "I want ta thank ye for comin' out ta the first of many Twilight Film Festivals!"

The crowd cheered and clapped. Along the wall of the small courtyard stood Roxas, Hayner, Pence, Olette, Mal, and XR, giving their approval as well.

And atop the roof of the building behind the courtyard, Mim, Megavolt, Bushroot, and Quackerjack had settled in for the show.

"It's b-b-b-been a long time since I've gone to a movie like a n-normal duck," Bushroot realized. "It's almost too b-bad we're gonna ruin this one."

"We just gotta have a Fearsome Five Movie Night later!" Quackerjack laughed. "I can show you all my favorite comedies!"

"Oh, this is definitely on," Megavolt agreed.

"Before we end the night," Scrooge continued, "I want ta warn that the final film we've chosen may be more suitable for adult audiences. Use yer best judgment. Due to popular demand, the surprise finale is going to be…Runaway Brain!"

A cheer went up from the audience, most of whom were avid horror buffs. A few parents escorted their children out of the courtyard. A few others decided to chance it, knowing their kids either liked scary things or would want to see it out of curiosity anyway.

"Though I've got ta thank a very special person for helpin' break the tie!" Scrooge admitted. "It was a close race, but it was pointed out ta me that this film might be the best flavor ta end it on by an honorary resident of Twilight Town. I present to you, all the way from Radiant Garden, the young lass Mal!"

Mal blanched. "Oh, no."

Ludwig was beside her out of nowhere, giving her a light shove; "Well, go on, go on! Accept your accolades!"

Mal gave Scrooge a pleading look, but he urged, "Well? We couldn't'a done it without ye! …Well, I could'a, but ye helped cut doon on time."

Mal gingerly approached. "I don't know if I'm really an…honorary citizen here," she grumbled.

"Nonsense!" Scrooge told her. "Yer a friend a Roxas, an' Roxas is definitely an honorary citizen!"

Roxas flashed Mal a beaming smile and a thumbs-up. XR gave him a teasing nudge.

"Hey," Hayner whispered to Roxas. "You like that girl?"

"…I like her," Roxas said, choosing his words carefully. "She's likable. Same way I like you guys."

"That's not what I meant, dude!"

"Oh, he's got it bad," XR told Hayner.

"XR!" Roxas hissed.

"Uh…hi." Mal gave the crowd an awkward wave. "So…monster movies? Pretty great, huh?"
"HECK YEAH!" someone yelled out from the audience.

"WOO!" another cried.

"Cool." Mal smiled, satisfied. "Glad we agree."

She'd been afraid, somehow, that they would hate her. See her for who she was born from. Sense her Darkness. That had been silly, she realized. How could they even know? And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't matter here. She may have been Maleficent's daughter, but she wasn't Maleficent. These people were on tenterhooks to see Pete play a villain, anyway.

"Make sure ye stop by the popcorn popper in back an' get yer complementary popcorn before the show!" Scrooge encouraged. "Drinks, a'course, those'll cost ye…"

The popper had been wheeled in by Pence earlier, now popping up a fresh batch that smelled like paradise. Olette had set up the drink cooler with sodas, caffeinated and not, sugared and diet.

And when no one was looking, Mim had teleported up a fair share, passing out the small cardboard buckets to her three associates. They were in for a show; they might as well have the full experience.

"With that said, it's on with the show!" Scrooge proclaimed. "Enjoy!"

Mal skidded back to her group. "Okay, so we know the plan, right? Five of us go pick up party stuff while XR gets to watch his movie?"

"I think the five of you have enough XR party spirit to make the right decisions," XR stated. "Me, I'm just here for some Byronic heroes fighting enormous monsters with loads of practical effects."

"We'll call you to meet up after," Roxas assured him.

"Have fun!" Olette smiled.

Then Roxas, Mal, Hayner, Pence, and Olette left the courtyard, making their way to the party store and going over their checklist.

When the sky became dark and the audience had been outfitted with free popcorn and overpriced drinks, the film began.

For the opening scenes, which set the stage, the Fearsome Four simply bided their time, stuffing their faces with the popcorn to get it all down before their cue.

"Y'know," Megavolt remarked as Mickey's character disrespected Minnie's over video games, "it always bugs me whenever horror movies have the main character be a huge jerk. Bad stuff happening to bad people isn't scary. It's karma."

"Hey, Megs?" Quackerjack reminded him. "You do know WE'RE the bad guys, right? I'd be scared if this stuff happened to us!"

"Oh, please," Megavolt scoffed. "Like we couldn't handle some monster. We brought down Mega-Negaduck, right?"
"With the help of Darkwing Duck," Quackerjack reminded him bitterly.

"Oh, yeah," Megavolt remembered. "Still! We're career villains who are trying our best! That Mickey guy is just a jerk, and he doesn't even have the sense to go all out and be a villain about it!"

"When you p-p-put it that way," Bushroot realized, "it makes a lotta sense!" He lobbed some popcorn at the screen (though it fell horribly short, only over the back wall); "BOOOO!"

"Shussshhhh!" Quackerjack hissed. "You'll give away our position!"

"These special effects are so fake," Megavolt muttered as Mickey's character approached an ominous mansion. "Who actually thinks this stuff is scary?"

Dr. Frankenollie was revealed in a jumpscare, and Megavolt instinctively cried out and hugged Quackerjack as tightly as he could. Quackerjack had had the same idea, and they clutched each other, shivering, for a good few minutes. Which was rather a comfortable way to be, the fear aside.

When Frankenollie offered to introduce Mickey to his new "co-worker," Bushroot cried, "Here it c-c-c-comes!"

"Get ready, boys!" Mim stood up and rubbed her hands together, making small sparks of energy. "We're about to make some movie magic."

The audience gasped and cried out in the joy of adrenaline as the monstrous Julius was introduced for the first time: an enormous rendering of Pete, tall as some of the buildings here in Twilight Town, growling ferally.

Mim knew how this went. In a few minutes, his brain would be switched out with Mickey's, which would still work, but not be optimal. For maximum distracting and destructive results, she had to act now, before the catalyst of the plot.

Extending both hands, she let a wave of green magic engulf the screen. It rippled, then bubbled like water. The audience murmured, unsure if this was part of the show.

Then, like breaking through the surface of a vertical ocean, an enormous arm burst from the screen.

"That's it!" Mim encouraged. "Come on out and play!"

After the arm came the rest of the owner. Thanks to Mim bridging the gap between fiction and reality, Julius was now free, standing in the courtyard.

Panic ensued.

Moviegoers screamed and tripped over each other to exit as the gigantic Pete-that-wasn't roared at them all, threatening their demise. Benches were toppled. The popcorn cart was upset, scattering kernels.

Mim released the magic, ensuring Julius couldn't go back to the film whence he came. "Now," she commanded, "while McDuck is doing damage control, let's go get his loot."

She grabbed onto the shoulders of Bushroot and Quackerjack, the latter of whom was still hugging Megavolt, and the four of them vanished.

"Whoa," XR said casually. "The 3-D they're employing in films these days is SERIOUSLY advanced!"

When Julius' massive foot slammed down in front of him, denting the ground and missing him by an inch, he realized, "WAIT A MINUTE, THAT'S NOT A 3-D EFFECT!" With a yelp, he blasted off into the air and out of reach.

"EVERYONE, STAY CALM!" Scrooge cried.

"NO!" Ludwig contradicted. "DO NOT BE STAYING CALM! BE MAKING YOUR WAY TOWARD ZE EXITS! NOW, NOW, NOW!"

The moviegoers didn't need to be told twice. At last, it seemed they'd all emptied out. All but one. One, who had gotten caught up when the benches were knocked, struggling to free herself from beneath the pile of upended seating with increasingly more panicked screams.

"Oh, no!" XR cried. "A civilian is trapped! This looks like a job for…wait a minute."

He zoomed in. There was no mistaking that yellow floral print stained with soup. Rachel Inlustris.

"Oh, great, it's HER," XR groaned. "Y'know, I have half a mind to just let her get crushed."

Julius had noticed the trapped woman, seeing an opportunity to destroy. He raised his fist high.

"…She was rude to me," XR went on. "She was VERY rude to me. But all the same…I can't just let her die like that!"

His mind made up, he darted back down, all guns loading to blast away the benches.

Rachel's heart was nearly pounding out of her chest; as she saw Julius' fist rise up, she wondered if this was how it would end. Then, in an explosion of light, the benches holding her down splintered, and just as Julius' fist connected heavily with where she had been, she herself was swept up in a solid pair of arms that carried her up, up, up into the air.

"Oh my God," she squeaked as she was carried away from the courtyard. "You – I – holy SHIT, you just saved my li – "

She turned, then, to see who exactly was carrying her. "Oh," she growled. "It's YOU."

"Feeling's mutual," XR told her.

"Why the hell?" she asked. "Is this your fucked way of hitting on me?"

He was actually surprised to realize it wasn't. "Will you just stop complaining? You're not dead! Isn't that what matters?"

"…Yeah. Thanks."

"I'm not having any of it, missy. You still think you can sass me when we're – wait a minute, did you say THANKS?"

"Yeah. Don't make me say it again."

"Well, let's just get outta here before that THING decides to finish the job!"

Julius had realized the problem. He was fenced into a small courtyard. The alley that led in from the town at large was far too small for him to even think about attempting.

"HA!" Ludwig yelled from the other side of the alley. "He is confined! Ze damage has been – "

Julius solved the problem by simply crashing right through the wall to get into the open Common.

" – MAXIMIZED!" Ludwig nearly fell plumb over.

"Don't just stand there!" Scrooge seized Ludwig's sleeve, dragging him out of the way of Julius' rampage.

Hearing a commotion, Roxas bolted away from the party stall, a rather silly-looking shiny top hat adorning his head. "What's going – WHOA!"

"What's up?" Mal skidded in next to him, wearing a rhinestone tiara. "WHAT THE – OKAY, THAT IS NOT WHAT I THOUGHT WOULD BE UP!"

"DUDE!" Hayner yelled, Olette and Pence flanking him. "WHAT IS THAT THING?"

"It looks like…Pete?" Roxas shook his head. "No, wait, Sora saw this in Traverse Town once. He was sleeping, so it was…fuzzy for me."

"What happened there?" Olette asked.

"Nothing good!" Roxas yelled as he summoned both Keyblades to hand. "You guys get somewhere safe! I'm gonna take this guy down!"

"I'm with you!" Mal cried as she followed.

"Well, I'm not!" Hayner turned to make a beeline in the opposite direction, screaming all the way. Pence pulled Olette along by the sleeve to follow.

Meanwhile, XR was speeding away with Rachel, searching out a safe place to land and hide. "Don't worry! I'm an official Space Ranger of Star Command!" he assured. "I know exactly what I'm doing! Nothing will escape my eagle eye – "

"LOOK OUT!"

Rachel's scream alerted XR to Julius' flying fist coming right at him from behind. He swerved hard to avoid the blow. Thankfully, he was successful in that endeavor.

Less thankfully, he slammed right into a wall, sensing his metal joints pop. He did not crash to the ground below in one piece.

He landed first, preventing Rachel from what could have been a bone-shattering impact. As they fell into the opening to the sewer tunnels, however, XR lost one arm and both treads, hearing their metallic clatter away. A new crack appeared in his helmet, threatening to scatter his head as well if it got bad enough to break the shell.

"OH MY GOD!" Rachel was on her feet in an instant, though none too happy about practically wading in sewer water. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, yeah, peachy. Who needs limbs, anyway? NO, I'M NOT OKAY!"

"Well, sor-ry for being concerned!" Rachel yelled. "God dammit…hang on."

She found the closest arm, laying it near XR before setting off after his treads.

"Are you actually trying to help me?" he asked, somewhat incredulously. "Well, well, what do you know? The ice queen has a heart."

"I'm not an ice queen! You landed in my fucking soup! I don't care how awesome your little fireworks show was! You landed in my soup and you refused to apologize to me!" She set down the treads. "Though I'll take saving my life from the real actual Julius as a substitute. Your debt is paid."

"Good, because I was not about to – wait." XR blinked. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that you were doing what you're doing as a tit-for-tat. I stop your limbs from being smashed out of your skeleton, you put mine back in mine. But you're telling me we were all even-steven, and now you're helping me out BECAUSE?"

"Shut up," Rachel growled, returning the last arm. "Just – just shut up. Is that everything?"

"Yes."

"How does it…go?"

Oh. So she had no prior mechanical experience. This would be fun, in the sarcastic sense. XR slid aside his chestplate; "So you should find a screwdriver in there."

Rachel reached in and retrieved a rubber duck. "Okay, what the fuck?"

"NOT THE TIME, RACH! SCREWDRIVER! NOW! KINDA FREAKING OUT HERE!"

"Okay, okay, I'm on it!" Now she had found a salt shaker, filled with salt. "But seriously – "

Julius continued to roar and stomp his way through Tram Common, using his massive hands to tear holes in walls at random. He kicked a tram right over, roaring all the way. People hurried and scurried to escape him before he could reach them.

Two, however, were headed straight toward the villain. Roxas vaulted into the air, crossing and swiping out both Keyblades as he front-flipped. Mal charged up a green bolt of magic between her hands as she ran along beneath his flight.

Seeing the incoming assault, Julius spun, arms outstretched. His fist collided with Roxas, sending the blond hurtling across the common. Mal's plasma bolts bounced harmlessly off his legs.

"We might have a problem here," Mal muttered to herself.

Roxas could feel his stamina waning, his body protesting as he pried himself off the stone. He was practically on his last legs.

Last legs…

That could work.

He re-entered in a dramatic fashion, committing parkour off the sides of the walls of the buildings en route to his target until he was once more in range. Mal had attempted to use a sticky green magic to glue Julius' feet to the ground, but his sheer strength was enough to pry his boots up out of it slowly but surely.

Roxas launched off the wall, and when he was close enough to Julius, he activated his Limit. An enormous beam of white light surrounded by several smaller threads shot down from the heavens to strike the movie monster. Funny, he thought, how it had always been such a small attack when he'd first joined the Organization, then all of a sudden seemed to be so much more powerful. How he'd grown.

Julius wobbled, seeing stars.

Roxas landed hard on the ground beside Mal, stumbling and nearly falling backward. She caught him, propping him up. "Nice job," she said.

"Thanks," Roxas muttered.

"You okay?" Mal asked.

"I'm – LOOK OUT!"

Julius had already recovered, fist held high. The two teens backpedaled, but this time, when the fist hit the ground, it carried with it a surging electric current that washed out over them.

The pain was blinding. By the time either knew what was going on, they were being dragged away by the wrists by Scrooge and Ludwig respectively. "ARE YE DAFT?" Scrooge yelled. "THAT…THING ISN'T GONNA GO DOWN THAT EASILY!"

"We're getting you to ze space of safety!" Ludwig insisted.

"Where's that?" Mal asked.

As it turned out, Hayner, Pence, and Olette had also thought of the sewers; the ducks-in-law brought Mal and Roxas down to take refuge there belowground. Against the wall, XR was talking Rachel through basic robot repair.

"This is bad," Mal said. "I can barely hurt that guy."

"Aren't you like a super witch or something?" Hayner yelled. "You're Maleficent's daughter! Can't you turn into a giant dragon and finish this?"

"…I might have something that could go against this guy," Mal admitted, "but I've never actually used it before. We have a bigger problem, though. Julius won't go down easy. I think the only way we can get rid of him and be sure is to put him back where he came from."

"Ah, yes!" Ludwig realized. "Ze film is still going! Ze other characters must be so confused zat zeir villain has gone missing!"

"I also think I might be able to open that screen back up to send him back," Mal went on. "The problem is doing both things at the same time is gonna be hard."

"What if we could steer him in front of the screen?" Olette asked.

"Oh, great idea," Hayner scoffed. "How are we gonna get the giant monster to walk right into our trap?"

"Hey, I didn't exactly have time to hammer out the minutiae!" Olette argued. "We needed a brainstorm!"

"It would, technically, make my job a lot easier," Mal stated. "The problem is that in and of itself is not gonna be an easy job."

"What if one of us acted like live bait?" Pence suggested. "XR's pretty durable. He can probably survive getting bashed. If we sent him – "

"NO!" XR and Rachel yelled at the same time. Then the former looked to the latter quizzically.

"I'm not fucking screwing your limbs back on a second time," Rachel growled. "I JUST finished."

"And not half bad of a job, I must say." XR tested the rotary functions of each arm, speeding back and forth on his reattached treads. "A lot less invasive than a certain pink-haired savant I know, at that."

"Roxas!" Hayner called over. "Can't you distract that guy?"

"Ugh…" Roxas leaned against the wall, a hand pressed to his head. "I…don't know if I can."

"Guys, Roxas is in zero condition to fight," Mal insisted, unable to hide the concern in her voice. "If we send him back out there, he won't be coming back. There's gotta be another way."

Julius' growl sounded closer than it had been, and everyone hiding in the sewer aperture flinched. Would he find them? Would he be able to reach a hand in and scoop them out?

Instead, his attention was fixed on a rooftop table, where a pair of friends had just abandoned a still-warm meal to run for their lives. "Hun…gry," Julius rumbled, plucking the plates of grilled chicken off the table and dumping the contents into his maw. Meager, to him. Once he swallowed the small bites whole, he bellowed out, "HUN-GRYYYYYY!"

"THAT'S IT!" Scrooge yelled. "The way to a monster's heart is through his stomach! If we can make it back ta the bistro, we can make some real bait!"

"We're gonna need a lot of fancy food to fill that guy's stomach," Pence remarked.

"Then might I suggest we get a move on?" Ludwig urged.

Roxas peeled himself from the wall, shaking his head to clear it. "This part, I can handle. Actually, the small Pete was the one that taught me how to get around without being noticed. The hard way, I mean."

"Are you sure?" Mal asked. "We can NOT afford to lose you now. Your friends just got you back, and I…" She swallowed hard. "I really care about you. Because you're easy to care about. Like Riku and Li are."

"Now, where have I heard that before?" XR recalled.

"I'll be fine," Roxas said. "Just follow my lead." Acting as though he were refreshed, he leapt up out of the sewer and onto the upper level. "Let's go!"

Mal, Hayner, Pence, Olette, Scrooge, and Ludwig followed. As XR made to do the same, he realized he was the only one left moving. He turned to look at Rachel; "Well? You coming?"

"Am I part of this now?" Rachel asked.

"Can you cook?"

"No."

"Too bad; this is emergency protocol."

"Oh, God, I'm PART of this now. Okay. Fine. I can do this…"

She followed XR to bring up the rear of the party.

True to his word, Roxas was able to guide his allies through the alleys, keeping out of the destructive path of Julius, who was putting more holes in Twilight Town by the second. Thankfully, the bistro remained unharmed, and the group was able to slip in unnoticed.

"TO THE KITCHEN!" Scrooge yelled: a war cry.

As the nine hustled back into the kitchen, they gave a look around to see that it was devoid of staff.

"LITTLE CHEF!" Scrooge called out. "SAY YER ALL RIGHT! OR…SHOW YER ALL RIGHT!"

"Oh, here it is," XR realized. "The grand reveal. The identity of the Little Chef is…" He tapped out a drumroll on his sides.

A small, furry critter edged out from behind a stew pot.

"RAT!" Olette screamed.

"EW!" Hayner yelled.

"EEE!" Rachel screamed.

"HEALTH CODE VIOLATION!" XR cried.

"It's just a rat." Mal shrugged.

"Will ye all CALM DOWN?" Scrooge urged. "Tha's no ordinary rat! Tha's Little Chef!"

The rat balanced on his hind legs, giving a salute. (His name was actually Remy, but he had no way of communicating that, so "Little Chef" suited him just fine for the time being.)

"The chef was a RAT?" Roxas exclaimed.

"Like you honestly have not seen weirder," Mal reminded him.

Roxas thought it back over. His days running missions for the Organization: animate furniture, armed playing cards, pixie dust…

"You're right. I have."

"Do not be of the worrying!" Ludwig assured. "Ze Little Chef is very sanitary!"

"Can ye help us out, Little Chef?" Scrooge asked. "We've got ta make as many fine dishes as we can, an' fast!"

Remy gave him a thumbs-up. He then darted across the counter, flipping open a recipe book.

"All right, everyone!" Ludwig cried. "Hayner, Pence, and Olette, I want you three on ze appetizers! Mal and Roxas, main courses! XR and…Rachel, was it? You can handle ze soups! Ohoho, I have only just remembered ze dramatic irony, since you met when he spilled ze soup all over her… And Scrooge and I will be handling ze desserts!"

"Figured he saved the dessert for himself," Hayner muttered.

The teams broke up to set to work.

"Remember!" Olette said. "It has to look and smell attractive so that he'll notice it!"

"Whaddaya think?" Hayner asked. "Is this…mushroom terrine easy to make?"
Remy shook his head.

"Maybe you should work on a lobster mousse," Pence suggested. "It involves chopping and blending a lot of things."

"Heck yeah!" Hayner cried, reaching for a bowl of fish stock.

Mal elbowed Roxas teasingly. "What's that? Beef bourgeoisie?"

Roxas let out a soft giggle that was quickly silenced. "I shouldn't have picked this." He was in the process of drizzling wine into the pan. "It smells…not good for my head."

"Let's switch," Mal suggested. "I wanna light it on fire anyway."

As Mal set the red wine to green flame, Roxas found his stomach turning at the chunk of meat Mal had been working up to fry. "What is that stuff? It looks awful."

"Because it is. Offal, anyway. It's sheep neck. Might have pancreas in it. They call it 'sweetbread.'"

"THAT'S WHAT SWEETBREAD IS?"

As XR diced tomatoes using no fewer than three knives installed in his inner workings, he saw Rachel poring over the recipe book. "Not that I don't appreciate the pickiness of a culinary genius," he told her, "but WE DON'T EXACTLY HAVE TIME, SO PICK SOMETHING AND MAKE IT!"

"Yeah," Rachel told him. "It's just…hard to read."

"Hard to read? HARD TO READ?"

"I DON'T HAVE MY GLASSES ON RIGHT NOW."

"WHY IN THE WORLDS DON'T YOU HAVE YOUR GLASSES?"

"BECAUSE WEARING THEM MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I'M GIVING IN TO MY EYES BEING WEAK AND I HATE HOW THEY LOOK ON MY FACE!"

"Great," XR groaned. "We're all going to die because you have fashion problems."

Rachel gave a "Whoa!" as Remy jumped up onto her head. Without warning, he seized her hair, beginning to steer.

"WHAT?" Rachel cried as her arms reached out to grab butter and onions. "WHAT THE FUCK? I'M NOT DOING THIS. I'M NOT DOING THIS!"

"Oh, you're gonna tell me it's the rat?" XR joked.

"It's the FUCKING rat!" Rachel yelped.

"Crepes Suzette!" Ludwig sighed. "Always making me be thinking of Cape Suzette, what with the pun, intentional or no. Zat reminds me of ze innovations I had been developing for zeir airplanes. What with the Gummi ships doing all ze advancing, ze normal aircraft had to receive an upgrade! Ohoho, I must pay zem a visit, see how my technologies is paying off – "

"WILL YE STOP GABBIN'?" Scrooge yelled. "THIS IS LIFE OR DEATH!"

The counter was crowded with dish after dish, all prepared in record time. Some corners had to be cut, but it wasn't as though Julius were really going to notice.

Finally, there were enough dishes to lay a trail across the Common. "Let's go!" Olette cried, wheeling over a serving cart. "We have to space them out close enough that he'll see them!"

"Clever girl!" Ludwig cried. "I am supposing you have already been calculating for ze distances for maximum temptation of monster appetites?"

"You know it!" Olette beamed.

"LET'S GO!" Hayner cried, making for the door.

"Wait!" Olette called after him. "Don't forget the cart!"

She, Pence, Scrooge, and Ludwig followed.

"Are you SURE you're okay?" Mal asked Roxas.

He gave her a smile that was only slightly forced. "Doing better. I think I can handle putting some food on the ground. What about you? You're going to be doing some heavy magic."

"Well, it's about time I was my mother's daughter. Your friend didn't have a bad idea, after all."

"Wait, are you – "

"Just trust me."

Roxas nodded. "Always."

They left together.

XR was hesitant, and it was obvious. "What's wrong?" Rachel sighed.

"Oh, nothing," XR told her. "Just that that abomination of nature already disassembled me once today. And apparently he conducts electricity, too? I do not wanna know what would happen to me if he aimed for the head. I'm not scared, though, if that's what you're thinking. I don't get scared. You're looking at circa forty pounds of cold, hard fearlessness. I just…eehhhh…need time to recharge my…uh…monster gun. Yeah. Monster gun! I have one of those."

"You're totally freaked out, aren't you?"

"NO! DIDN'T YOU HEAR WHAT I JUST SAID ABOUT THE MONSTER GUN?"

Her expression shifted; XR almost thought she looked sympathetic, even pitying. "You don't have to go out there. I bet the kids and the ducks have it under control."

"Are you KIDDING?" XR asked. "I'm a space ranger! What would everyone think if I didn't join the fight?"

"Um…" Rachel thought fast. "That…if you didn't stay here and make sure Scrooge's prized Little Chef was okay, he would be serving your head on a plate?"

Remy nodded fervently, though he wasn't worried for himself one bit – XR's anxiety was obvious.

"…Good point," XR realized. "All right, I'm not letting the rat out of my sight for two seconds."

Rachel leaned in close to the recipe book. "I wonder if there's anything I can make in here. I'm hungry now. Smelled too much food, dammit."

Remy took the lead, swinging Rachel around to assemble a cluster of littleneck clams. "Aaaand I guess we're making bouillabaisse," she muttered.

"You just go ahead and do that," XR told her.

After an awkward silence punctuated only by the fileting of fish, Rachel asked, "So…anything you wanna talk about?"

"No," XR insisted.

"Okay. Well, if you change your mind…"

"I'M A HORRIBLE COWARD AND A FAILURE AS AN ELECTRONIC BEING!"

"Aaaaand there it is. Okay. Tell me more."

Julius knocked over three civilians in order to rip away the purse of one of them due to the tantalizing scent coming from it – which turned out not to be anything edible, but rather a convincingly odored bottle of warm vanilla sugar lotion. "HUNGRYYYYY!" Julius bellowed, chucking the purse so far, it hit the bell on the Station Square tower with a hollow clang.

"HEY! OVER HERE!"

Julius whirled to see Roxas waving at him with both Keyblades in the air, jumping a little as he did so.

"THIS WAY!" the Keybearer cried. "YOU WANT SOME FOOD? WELL, COME GET IT!"

He sidestepped, revealing a plate of poêlé-style scallops, still steaming.

With a curious growl, Julius leaned in closer.

"LOOK!" Roxas turned around and dashed parallel to a line of strategically placed dishes. Julius' eyes widened; he beheld the courses that awaited him, strategically arranged how they would come at the restaurant – appetizers first, then bubbling soups, then aromatic main courses.

For a moment, his mission to level Twilight Town was forgotten. He emptied the scallops into his mouth, then began to follow the trail exactly as hoped.

In the courtyard, Mal stood in the center of a ring of plates that bore sweets and sugars, focusing on the projector screen. Apparently, the rest of the film had attempted to keep going without its villain, which made things very awkward for the characters as they screamed at shadows and ran away from literally nothing, looking to the audience all the while to wonder if they'd noticed.

The earth shook. He was getting closer, smacking his enormous lips. Mal threw both hands out to the screen, shooting twin bursts of green energy not unlike what had brought Julius forth in the first place. The screen shimmered, ready for an entity to pass back through.

Julius burst into the courtyard, grabbing right for the desserts. Mal leapt, ducking and rolling to avoid being devoured along with them. Once the sweets were gone, Julius looked quizzically at the green glow that covered the screen, beginning to suspect.

"Okay," Mal resolved. "Time for curtain call!"

Then, under her breath, "This had better work."

Purple smoke engulfed her; she threw her head back, arms slack, as the Darkness she'd called upon did her bidding. She grew, grew to fill the mold of the shape in her imagination, neck lengthening, wings sprouting from her back –

She wasn't as large as Maleficent would have been in dragon form. Moreover, where Maleficent had jet-black scales, Mal's were a deep and vibrant purple. Yet the similarity was unmistakable. The violet dragon's wings beat against the air, taking her upward.

The people, from within their safehouses and on the streets where they were still running, saw her rise. They pointed, gawked, chattered.

Mal swooped, breathing a burst of magical fire toward Julius. Julius hastily backtracked, whimpering, afraid of the bright, glowing heat. Almost there…

After a loop-de-loop in the air to set her right back at her starting point, Mal swooped again, but this time forwent the fire. Instead, at the last minute, she spun, smacking her long, thick tail into Julius' gut.

The giant teetered at the edge of the screen, wobbling back and forth, back and forth –

Before finally falling into the green aura, engulfed.

Order was restored. The film's final act played out to script, with Julius and Mickey somehow switching brains back despite having never gotten the chance to swap them in the first place (most likely, they'd agreed to play it off as though nothing strange had happened). The purple boots of a human (or at least human-looking) girl hit the ground; Mal called a small cardboard bucket of popcorn into her hand as she watched her victory play out. Smiling, she crunched a kernel between her teeth. "Now, that's a happy ending."

"MAL!"

The sudden cry alerted her to Roxas leading the charge; Hayner, Pence, Olette, Scrooge, and Ludwig followed.

"YOU DID IT!" Roxas rushed to her without thinking, catching her in a tight embrace.

"WHOA!" Mal stumbled from the impact before laughing and hugging Roxas back. "Nice job, Roxas."

"Nice?" Roxas backed off. "All I did was point to the food! You did all the work! And that was AMAZING!"

"Hey!" Hayner huffed. "We made the food in the first place, remember?"

"From what I recall, all you did was torment ze poor dead lobster," Ludwig reminded him. "It probably wished it could die all over again."

"HEY!"

Back at Le Grand Bistrot, Rachel had found herself on what she wasn't sure whether or not to categorize as a dinner date, and if it was, it was certainly the weirdest one she'd ever been on. She had a bowl of bouillabaisse (or at least the quickest version Remy could whip up without having to bother with the rouille) in her lap, picking out chunks of lobster and monkfish to chew over while listening to XR tell her about his woes.

" – and I don't think I've ever REALLY gotten over the fact that he was able to hypnotize me so easily," the robot went on. "Every time I delete that code, he reinstalls it – or did it never go away? Do I permanently have the files of evil stored within my banks?"

Rachel wished she could say something more encouraging, but for one, she recognized this as one of those situations where she should probably listen rather than compound the problem by suggesting solutions, and for another, she knew nothing about robots and hypnotism code.

"Though it's not like it's gonna matter, anyway," XR went on. "Because one of these days, I KNOW it, I'm gonna get smashed and NOT be able to come back!"

"I'm sorry," Rachel said sympathetically.

"What are YOU apologizing for?"

She never knew how to answer that. "I mean I just feel bad you have to go through that."

XR folded his arms. "Well, as much as it's appreciated, I wouldn't expect you to understand. You've probably been living the rich-girl life around here, taking yourself out to fancy restaurants without a care in the world."

"Hey!" Rachel protested. "First of all, I'm not rich. I actually need a new job. I just was in no mood to cook today, so out come the savings. Second, I have fucking anxiety! I get it! That AFD story? Yeah, I know how that feels. Like it's just gnawing and gnawing at you that you're not all there, and you're not perfect, so obviously, that means you're an absolute fuckup."

"I'd say I'm glad we agree on that, but – "

"No. We don't." Rachel shook her head. "Because you're not a total fuckup."

"You certainly haven't been treating me like I'm not."

"There's a difference between being a fuckup and doing something rude!" Rachel hissed. "And you got SOUP on me! HOT soup! And…" She blanched.

"Aaaaand?"

"And…I'm bad at making friends, okay? Which we're NOT. But if I DID wanna be your friend, I'd probably be chickenshit about it and act all tsundere."

"I have no idea what that word means. I'm gonna assume it means 'high-and-mighty.'"

"…Something like that." Rachel shook her head. "Is that why you thought I was a rich girl with no problems?"

"Well, that," XR admitted, "and pretty girls like you usually are."

"Hit on me again and I'll break that crack in your helmet right open."

"Well, well, SOMEONE'S not grateful that I saved her life."

"Shut up, dumbass."

"Back at you, NARCISSIST!"

Rachel's eyes widened. "Oh. OH. So THAT'S the game we're playing! I – wait. I haven't heard any roars in a while."

"Roars – " XR's eyes sparkled, green-and-gold. "THE BEAST! IT WORKED! IT'S GONE! FINALLY!"

"NOW you can get out of my hair!" Rachel told XR as she stood, placing the empty bouillabaisse bowl on the table.

"I think I will!" XR said as he began to wheel toward the door. He got all the way through the dining area when he paused, hand on the door handle.

"You understand that everything I told you here does NOT leave this building, right?" XR called back.

"I'm not gonna blab your personal shit," Rachel told him. "I'm not THAT evil."

"So you admit to being evil!"

"JUST GET OUT OF HERE!"

"FINE!" And yet he lingered longer.

Rachel walked up to him gingerly. "You are okay now, right?"

"Yes," XR admitted softly. Then a sheepish mutter.

"What was that?"

"Isaidthankyou. AndI'msorry."

Rachel flinched.

"And that is all you get," XR told her definitively.

"I'll take it," Rachel replied.

With that, he wheeled out.

Rachel looked back to where Remy was giving her a very knowing look from atop one of the nearby tables. "Oh, shut the fuck up, rat," she grumbled before pushing her way out the door.

Now a larger crowd was gathering around Mal, and Hayner took the opportunity to right a bench, leaping up onto it as he seized Mal's hand to hold it high; "LET'S HEAR IT FOR MAL, EVERYBODY!" He gave her a sly smile. "And this is the part where they all cheer and break into applause!"

But they didn't.

"She's some kind of Maleficent spawn!" someone shrieked. "You saw her!"

"She turned into a dragon!" another chorused. "I only know one person who does that!"

A third: "She was trying to set our town on FIRE!"

A fourth: "She could've done more damage than the monster!"

A fifth: "Hey! SHE WAS THE ONE WHO SUGGESTED THE MOVIE IN THE FIRST PLACE! I bet she let that monster out!"

From there, it became an avalanche of accusations.

"STOP!" Roxas leapt in front of Mal, both arms thrown out as though ready to shield her from physical violence. "EVERYONE, STOP! SHE DID THAT TO SAVE YOU! SHE WOULD NEVER HURT YOU! AND SHE WAS WITH US THE WHOLE TIME WHEN THE MONSTER CAME OUT!"

"Yeah!" Hayner insisted, letting Mal's hand drop. "We were at the party store! She never left my sight! I know because I made her try on like seventy stupid hats!"

"Well, she's a WITCH!" someone yelled. "Maybe she did it from far away! We didn't SEE who let the monster out, after all!"

"That's so stupid!" Olette yelled. "You're all just…making up excuses to hate her!"

"Why are you doing that?" Pence asked. "Is it just because you're afraid of Maleficent?"

"TELL US THE TRUTH!" somebody cried. "IS SHE A MALEFICENT?"

"Tha's – tha's NONE OF YER BUSINESS!" Scrooge reprimanded.

But the question grew louder and louder:

"IS SHE?"

"IS SHE?"

"IS SHE?"

"NO! SHE'S NOT!"

The crowd parted to let a sparking mad XR through.

"This girl is NOT related to Maleficent in any way, shape, or form!" XR insisted. "Cross my motherboard and hope to short-circuit! I happen to be a close family friend of Mal's relatives, and they're all VERY nice people who've never done a bad thing in their lives!"

"XR," Mal sighed.

"Isn't that right, Mal?" XR urged. "You know, your mom who runs a soup kitchen for puppies and your dad who donates laptops to homeless shark attack victims?"

"XR, I want to prove that I'm not bad," Mal said somberly. "Starting by not lying. It's true. I am a…daughter…of Maleficent. Or maybe just her Nightmare."

"WHAAAAAAT?" XR pretended to act shocked. "OH, SAY IT AIN'T SO! …Seriously, SAY it ain't SO! I'm TRYING to save your rep here – "

But the damage was already done.

"WITCH!"

"HEARTLESS!"

"MONSTER!"

"THROW HER OUT!"

"BANISH HER!"

"KILL HER WITH THE KEYBL – "

"NO!" Roxas screamed. "MAL WOULD NEVER HURT ANYONE! I'LL FIGHT ANYONE WHO TRIES TO HURT HER!" In a rush of light, both Keyblades were in his hands. "I MEAN IT!"

"HE'S GONE ROGUE!" someone else yelled.

"I BET HE'S ONE OF THOSE…THIRTEEN SOMETHINGS!" another cried.

"Enough is enough with ze baseless accusations!" Ludwig attempted.

"No," Roxas seethed, "I won't lie either. I was in Organization XIII! I used to spy on all of you and bring information back to Xehanort's Nobody! But now I'm DONE! I know what I did was wrong, and I'm never going back again! And Mal's the same way!"

The crowd actually began to advance, then, and Roxas was ready to fend them off. Hayner, Pence, and Olette balled their hands into fists, wishing they had their foam Struggle weapons to assist.

"Now, now, calm down – " Ludwig was attempting.

"FIFTY PERCENT OFF YER NEXT MEAL AT LE GRAND BISTROT IF YE BACK OFF NOW!" Scrooge cried.

"Lies and brainwashing, I tell you!" XR was babbling. "Good kids! Never did a thing wrong in their lives! Used to sell lemonade to raise money for the whales!"

But what got everyone to stop was a piercing, wordless scream, shrill and high.

At first, they all thought it was a distress call from someone in mortal danger. Then, as heads turned, they realized it was just a woman making her way through the crowd, shrieking at top volume to get everyone to fall silent.

Once she realized she'd got everyone's attention, Rachel said through an admittedly hoarse throat, "That is ENOUGH! You guys are just a bunch of fucking assholes! I get it! You're scared because we have no fucking idea what brought Julius out into the real world! So am I! And you want someone to blame, and these kids look like scapegoats! GOD! Hurting a couple KIDS is not gonna fix the problem! Oh my God, I have been waiting to tell you all off for SO long now! All this time, here I was thinking, 'Oh, my neighbors can't all be that rude. It's my fault they treat me like shit!'. BUT NOOOOO! I WAS RIGHT! I AM VINDICATED! Now leave the kids the FUCK alone!"

First, a silence. Then a cry of "SHUT UP, BITCH!" and an attempt to return to Mal and Roxas.

But they were gone, as were Hayner, Pence, Olette, and XR. All who remained were Ludwig and Scrooge.

The two ducks exchanged glances. A struggle raged behind each's eyes. To do what was right? To do what was good for business? Or to do the only thing one could do, when the crowd refused to listen?

"I'm sorry," Scrooge said at last. "I didnae know her that well. Can't say to this moment what was really happenin'."

Ludwig sighed morosely. "We shall be taking ze extra security measures at ze next festival."

"You BETTER!" someone screamed.

Down at the Usual Spot under the tracks, Roxas, Mal, XR, Hayner, Pence, and Olette finally slowed down, safe within their hiding space. "Dude, this is so weird, but so cool!" Hayner emphasized. "Not the part about us being chased away. But the part about you knowing where our spot was from that simulation! It's really like you've been our secret friend in another life, always there out of sight!"

"Thank you," Roxas told him. "For standing up for Mal. And for me."

"Of course!" Hayner clapped him on the shoulder. "We're friends, right?"

"It just feels true," Olette said. "Even if we've only known each other a short while, it feels like it's meant to be."

"Yeah!" Pence emphasized. He then scratched his head sheepishly; "Not…everyone here's a jerk, though. Studying this town is kind of like my special interest, and I've met a lot of cool people around here. The ones who came flocking were the ones who saw Mal fly and thought they needed to do something. I promise there are other good people here. They just…probably hid away."

"How good can they be if they were hiding when we needed them?" Roxas growled.

"Roxas." Mal placed a hand on his forearm to calm him. "Not everyone's a hero. The Cinnamons are…special. Most people are just scared of everything. The worlds aren't mostly good. They're not mostly bad, either. Most things are just…in-between."

Roxas let out an audible sigh. "I just…can't believe they were ready to kill you. To ask ME to kill you!"

"I know you wouldn't've," Mal told him reassuringly.

"I could never," Roxas insisted. "You're…special to me."

They reached an understanding, then and there, about what they meant to each other. But now was not the time to flesh that out.

"Well, looks like this trip was a bust," XR sighed. "No reason for us to come back here again. Not…not one single reason." His eyes were cast down.

"Oh!" Olette realized. "XR, we actually picked up a lot of the stuff on your list early on! This should help make your party great!" She handed him a glittering silver bag.

XR gasped as he sifted through it; "Glitter bombs? Luminescent confetti? BLACK-LIGHT BALLOONS? OH, WE ARE GOING TO PAR-TAY TONIGHT!"

"Have fun," Pence told Roxas. "I know you probably don't want to come back to this town again, but…we'll miss you."

"It was really fun hanging out, if even for short!" Olette added.

"Consider yourself the fourth of us!" Hayner insisted.

Roxas felt his eyes watering. "Guys…I couldn't give up on you. I'm so mad at the people who wanted to hurt Mal…I can hardly stand it. But I'll come back to see you. I promise. We just might have to stay kind of out of the way, now that everyone knows I was Organization."

"Hey, we can do a secret best-friend stealth op!" Hayner asserted. "We can grandstand on Sunset Hill in the middle of the afternoon, when everyone's at work!"

"And maybe one day, the people will change their mind about you," Pence suggested.

"I hope you're right," Mal told him.

"Hey…uh…" XR shifted uncomfortably. "Since you three helped contribute financially to party planning…what do you say I waive your entry fee to the shindig? It'd give you four a safe space to hang out for a night. Funny hats you didn't bring yourself'll charge you extra, though. Whaddaya say? Wanna hitch a ride back to the Garden with us?"

"Aw, heck yeah!" Hayner pumped his fist. "I am SO in!"

"I want in on this, too!" Pence cried with a smile.

Olette gave a dramatic, mocking shrug; "You guys are gonna talk me into staying up past my bedtime no matter what I pick. Might as well!"

They all shared a laugh.

"Come on," Roxas encouraged. "Let's go."

XR was the closest to the gate, and as he rolled out into the alley, he very nearly collided into another person with a "WHOA!".

The other shrieked, drawing the others out in a hurried crowd.

"Are you okay?" Roxas asked. "Wait. You're…"

"Yeah," Rachel said.

"How'd you know where to find us?" Hayner asked.

"I people-watch when I'm bored," Rachel explained. "I know where all your hangouts are."

"Should I be finding that creepy?" Pence asked.

"I just wanted to check and make sure you guys were okay," Rachel insisted. "I was sure they were gonna tear you apart back there."

"We're fine now," Roxas told her. "Thanks. And thanks for screaming."

"Yeah, for all the good that did."

"I just wanna know," Roxas asked. "Are there people in this town who would've stood up, too?"

"Yeah," Rachel told him. "I can think of a certain lady in a tacky striped skirt and a certain Struggle announcer who wouldn't have stood for that shit. But they were probably home with the kids. There are some good eggs around here. …Some. Now, those people? Same shitters who complain to retail employees when they pick the wrong thing for the BOGO, like, it's not MY fault you're stupid and can't read."

"Say, you wouldn't happen to want to come to a little bash I'm throwing back on my new world of residence, would you?" XR asked. "You could be my plus-one. No fee required." The green markings in his eyes made it appear as though he were raising brows at her."

"Ugh, NO," Rachel growled. "What did I say about hitting on me?"

"I never said it was a ROMANTIC plus-one! What about as just friends, huh?"
"I'm too busy anyway," Rachel sighed. "Gotta crack down on that job search. You guys have fun, though. See you later…maybe? Guessing probably not after that shitshow. Anyway…"

With a shrug, she began to walk off.

"What are we waiting for?" Hayner cried. "Let's go party!"

He led Olette, Pence, Roxas, and Mal off running in the opposite direction. Yet XR hesitated.

"If I may be so forward ONE more time," he called after Rachel's retreating back.

She halted. Not moving. Not saying a word.

"Personally, I think a pair of glasses would look pretty sharp on that face," XR told her. "Yes, yes, I know, the bigger issue is thinking they're a weakness or that it's like admitting you're going blind. But some of us have to live without our AFDs and go around life smelling like a dumpster fire, you know? I'm not perfect! You're not perfect! But I'm as close to perfect as it gets, and if I can do that, you sure can too!"

"So that's what it was," Rachel said softly. She turned back to face him. "I thought it was something in the kitchen that had caught fire. It doesn't smell like garbage, though. More like a burned marshmallow." She turned away sharply. "I'll think about it. But probably not, dumbass."

"Whatever, narcissist."

As XR rolled off after his friends, he muttered rather wistfully to himself, "Not one…single…reason. Yep."

...

As all of this chaos had occurred outside Scrooge's Twilight Town domicile, a different brand of chaos was happening inside of it.

"All right, boys!" Mim clapped her hands together. "There's treasure to be found here! Only take what you know he'll miss later!"

And with that, they began the raid.

The house was smaller than Scrooge's usual manors, yet lavishly decorated with oil portraits of famous ducks throughout history and vases from ancient civilizations around the worlds. Mim wanted to simply destroy it all to envision Scrooge's reaction, but she knew her cohorts would want something to sell, so she restrained herself and split the difference, piling half of the decorations into her enchanted purse while ripping the other half of the paintings apart with her bare hands and throwing the vases hard against the wall.

"Not THIS one!" Quackerjack said defensively of a needlessly detailed painting of a sad clown. "THIS one, I'm keeping!"

"Isn't that kinda weird?" Megavolt asked. "Why would Scrooge McDuck have a big sad clown painting next to the guys I assume are some distant relatives?"

"B-b-because it's expensive?" Bushroot suggested.

"Seems almost like the kind of thing that would be a clue in a mystery book or something," Megavolt mused.

Quackerjack lifted up the painting to peer behind; "Megs! You're a GENIUS!" The painting was carefully set aside to reveal a safe. "We found the loot!"

"Let me at it!" Mim hurled a fireball without warning, giving Quackerjack only a millisecond to duck. The ball dissipated when it hit the safe's mythril door, as though it had never existed."

"Drat!" Mim growled. "He's got it magic-proofed!"

"Ooh, let me!" Quackerjack popped up to press the end of a plastic toy stethoscope to the safe door. He then began to spin the dial.

"That's a t-toy," Bushroot pointed out.

"SSSHHHHH!" Megavolt hissed. "He's WORKING!"

Within a few moments, there was a great click, and the safe door swung open. "You can just call me Safe-Quacker-jack!" Quackerjack laughed. "Because I quacked this safe wide open!"

Gleaming golden coins intermingled with green stacks of dollar bills. Mim reached in and scooped it all out in one fell swoop, dumping it into the purse.

"Now that's what I call some green," Bushroot remarked.

"Was that supposed to be a pun?" Quackerjack sighed. "Because you're a plant? Because that was awful."

"I know, I'm sor – "

"And awful puns are my FAVORITE!"

"We got that from 'Safe-Quacker-jack,'" Mim groaned.

"Ugh, I'm already bored!" Megavolt groaned. "We got the loot. What else could there be in here?"

"Plenty to break and destroy to inconvenience the duck," Mim said maliciously. "Drains to clog, furniture to rearrange so he stubs his webbed toe, electrical appliances to short out – "

"You DARE!" Megavolt cried, offended.

"Oh, right, right," Mim remembered. "Fine. We won't short out any appliances OR break any lightbulbs."

"But we can put a b-b-bucket of water over the door!" Bushroot suggested. "Then it'll spill when he walks in!"

"What are you, five?" Quackerjack asked Bushroot.

"You're one to talk about immaturity," Bushroot muttered.

"No, I like it," Mim said. "It's basic, but it'll get him madder than a wet hen – or duck! Though if I can make one change…we make it vinegar instead of water. That way, his eyes will burn."

"Ooh, I like it!" Quackerjack stated.

"But the best part," Mim said with a smirk, "is that we'll have already coated the floor in chlorine bleach."

"MAKING A TOXIC CHLORINE GAS!" Megavolt cried. "IT'S GENIUS!"

(For those concerned: when Scrooge and Ludwig discovered the prank, Ludwig's nose was able to pick out the scent of chlorine immediately, allowing both ducks to evacuate in time.)

It was decided: Mim would find the vinegar, Quackerjack the bleach, and Megavolt the bucket. In the meantime, Bushroot would select the perfect door. Of course, the instant Megavolt walked into the next room, he had forgotten why he had entered it in the first place and ended up wandering rather aimlessly, sure he was supposed to be doing but not quite sure what.

"Huh," he remarked upon seeing a metal door. "Must be a supply closet. I feel like I was looking for one of those…"

He placed his hand on the handle, sliding it open to reveal that it was not, in fact, a supply cabinet. This was one of the rooms that Ludwig commandeered, given that he and Scrooge were roommates in this lavish home. Furthermore, it was his laboratory, where he kept all manner of devices he was working on.

Upon seeing the array of blinking lights and whirring mechanisms, Megavolt was struck with what he could only describe as true love at first sight. "Oh, it is so WONDERFUL to meet you ALL!" he cried joyously.

By the time the others found him, he was running rampant embracing each machine passionately. "YOU GUYS!" he squealed. "YOU WON'T BELIEVE ALL THE STUFF I FOUND IN HERE! There's a shrink ray, a shower with a teleportation mechanism built in, a tron splitter with MULTIPLE SETTINGS, an actual rocket, a personal assistant device that's shaped like King Mickey's head for some reason, a one-stop forensics machine…it's like singles night at the genius bar!" He sidled up to a contraption particularly decked out with colorful lights. "Hey, you. What's a sweet contraption like you doing in a place like this?"

Bushroot pulled Quackerjack aside down the hall; "Are you seriously okay with him acting like th-that?"

"Acting like what?" Quackerjack asked in confusion.

"Flirting with the m-m-machines," Bushroot pointed out. "You know, since you guys are…you guys are…you guys are something, right?"

Quackerjack shrugged.

"Even you d-don't know? But you two were hugging so p-p-p-passionately during the movie…"

"Megs is my partner in crime," Quackerjack stated. "Sure, he's my favorite person in the worlds, and he makes my knees all weak whenever he's adorable, and I like riling him up to get a reaction out of him because I like when he pays attention to me, but that doesn't mean I have a CRUSH on him!"

"…It kinda does."

"Well, what do you know? You're a TRADITIONAL romantic. I hate to say it, but I don't think you were ever actually insane like the rest of us!"

"I'm n-not!" Bushroot reminded him. "I just say I am so I can fit in with you guys!"

"LIKELY STORY. You think you're insane when I know you're not, and you're self-conscious about it! Anyway, I'm not insecure about Megs liking appliances like that! It's just one of his quirks! And they just make him…so happy. I like seeing him happy! And I'm sure there's room for me in his life! After all, if there was room for both me and Darkwing Duck to him – "

"What? Megavolt never had a thing for D-Darkwing…"

Quackerjack raised a brow. "Really? Wow, you sure weren't paying attention."

"You sure know him well," Bushroot pointed out. "Well, if you're happy, and he's happy, then there's n-no p-problem!"

"Exactly!"

And when they returned to see Megavolt dictating which new "friends" had to come with them in Mim's purse (all of them), Quackerjack's heart was indeed warmed watching Megavolt's passion over the matter.

"But did you find a bucket?" Mim asked.

"Why did I need a bucket?" Megavolt replied.

And so the quest was begun again. The carpet was doused in bleach as the bucket of vinegar wobbled dangerously over the cracked door to the living room. Then Mim added a few more touches here and there – a loosened cabinet hinge, a wobbly bookshelf ready to topple at any minute, a bag of chips emptied out so only the crumbs remained before it was rolled up in a manner that made it look still half-full.

"Well, we've done about all the damage we can do here," Mim resolved. "Let's get back to the shop to see how the Liquidator's coming along! Then we can show him all of our loot and rub it in his face that he didn't get to come!"

This set up a cheer among the others, and Mim teleported them all back.

...

They arrived to find a curious sign on the door: a bright blue graphic proclaiming "Help wanted! Apply inside!". Beyond, the Liquidator was busy printing several files off from a computer on the desk, which he was using with the utmost care, transforming his fingers into "hard water" that wouldn't short out the machine.

"What's all this?" Mim asked. "Did you find a way to have fun without us? Oh, drat."

"Advertising campaigns are the Liquidator's specialty!" the Liquidator proclaimed. "Effectiveness increases by two hundred percent when Twilight Town's public message boards are used for maximum efficiency! No fewer than two hundred flyers advertising the shop can be found around town; call within the next thirty minutes to receive a bonus fifty flyers!"

Mim grabbed one of the flyers to take a look at it. In bright, colorful lettering, it spelled the name "LIQUID ASSETS" above a string of text that promised "Curses – Charms – Potions – Balms." A stylized graphic of a fluted, stoppered flask contained the words "Simple solutions for your ordinary and extraordinary needs! Just add magic!".

"Hmm…it's garish," Mim decided. "I hate it, which must mean it's appealing to the public. Well done. But what's this?"

She jammed a finger at the fine print along the bottom: "Now hiring daytime cashiers!"

"The Liquidator was not designed to be used as a cashier twenty-four/seven!" the Liquidator argued. "When the Fearsome Five operates at eighty percent capacity, they can only have eighty percent of the fun! And the Liquidator gets NONE!"

"Fair, fair," Mim told him. "After all, that was rather the point of leaving you behind in the first place. But we'll get you a turn next time."

"Geez," Megavolt remarked, "what kind of idiot would walk into a store that showed up out of nowhere to apply for a job that's obviously selling snake oil?"

The bell gave a soft ding. All five whipped about to see who had entered.

The yellow floral-print sundress had been replaced with a clean, soup-free outfit – a red blouse over a denim skirt. More strikingly, the face that had once been bare now sported a pair of rimless spectacles.

After taking a minute to look around, Rachel made eye contact with Mim; "Are you the manager? I saw you were hiring, and I'm interested."

...

Old memories, old wounds reopened by recent discussions. Things he hadn't thought about in years.

The dark, cramped confessional booth. It felt like what Hell would feel like, he had always thought, before reprimanding himself that it was sacrilege to think such things. After all, God was listening in here. Such was the nature of church – a constant battle to police one's thoughts, only for worse and worse blasphemies to rise up by the very nature of not being wanted, until he felt he was sin throughout.

But never so thoroughly unclean as he had that day, when he stammered out the truth, sure he couldn't have been the only boy in town to have suffered such an affliction. The priest would be sure to sympathize, he thought.

He was barely a teenager, then. Before he knew how to speak for himself, truly. Before he learned to forge distrust, keep secrets, recognize his own selfish desires and ask why he shouldn't have them. Long, long before he had learned to stop caring.

A sharp intake of breath from the priest. Then a fevered hiss: "You must set all thoughts of this unnatural attraction aside immediately. Put the boy out of your mind, and the Lord will forgive. Think instead to the wife who will serve you in your adult years. A man and a woman, as it was written to be. You must tell me if you experience any more of these attractions to other boys, but I sincerely hope never to hear any more from you. Do you understand?"

So he learned to lie. "Yes, Father. Quite clearly. I shall think of him no more, nor any other male in the way I should a woman."

"Very good. There is hope for you. After all, the Lord is kind and merciful, and He will welcome you back with open arms once you forsake your sin. I should not like to think of one such as you burning in Hell."

"Well, perhaps I don't mind the thought of such burning anymore."

"What the fuck?"

Reality. Modernity. He wasn't a boy but a man; not in church but aboard the warship. Roman fixed a quizzical look on him. "I said I never even ate any of their damn chicken. I went to the ramen stall across the street, and SOMEHOW my scroll never got the message! If Atlas is gonna spy on us, they could at LEAST do it RIGHT?"

"…Yes." Snatcher nodded emphatically. "Quite."

"Are…you okay? You were zoning out, weren't you? Do I have to start from the fucking top?"

"No need," Snatcher told him. "I was paying attention."

"Oh, really! Then what color was the motorcycle I stole at the beginning of the story?"

"…Blue?"

"Archie, there wasn't a motorcycle. You were REALLY not listening." Roman shook his head. "Okay, something's up. You're not all there. Look, I know getting you to tell me your innermost insecurities is like pulling teeth, but I'm legally obligated to try."

"It's nothing, truly," Snatcher told him. "You may resume telling me of your exploits."

"…Oooookaaaay."

They walked a few paces in silence, picking their way down the halls to the bar. Then Snatcher cried out, "No! Why should I be silent when I was wronged? Mistreated? Tossed aside like gutter scum?" His fists and teeth alike clenched.

"Okay, NOW we're getting somewhere," Roman sighed with relief. "Now, who do I have to kill?"

"I'd had a rather…disconcerting conversation with Miss Hecate, Miss Xayide, Miss Green, and Mr. Sputterspark regarding faith and the divine," Snatcher revealed.

"Mr. who now? Wait. IS THAT SPARKY'S ACTUAL LAST NAME?"

"Don't call him that to his face, remember."

"I know, I know. I still have the shakes from the last hundred volts."

"I left less enlightened than I entered," Snatcher related, "but it sent me on a little stroll right down memory lane. Back to when the church would insist that I was soiled, unclean, a sinner irredeemable who they were obsessed with redeeming!"

"I mean, other than the need for redemption, is that not what you are? Is that not what we ALL are here?"

"Yes, but we wear it as a badge of pride!" Snatcher reminded Roman. "Only a boy, they forced me to confront the notion of shame time and time again until I simply lied to them all!"

"You know, sometimes I think it's a real shame I wasn't around back then."

"You wouldn't have wanted to be, in this scenario. They wouldn't have approved of you."

"So?" Roman shrugged. "Not like I care. …Out of curiosity, do you mean they wouldn't approve of me IN GENERAL or of you and me being a thing?"
"The former, and yet their preoccupation would likely be on the latter."

"I think I get it now," Roman realized. "So you're saying I need to go back to Jerkbridge and blow up the church. I can blow up the church, right? Please, please, PLEASE let me blow up the church. If you give me the go-ahead for a church bombing, you will get DOUBLE blowjobs."

"…Both halves of that agreement benefit me so well that I'm almost curious as to if it affords you as much."

"Oh, TRUST ME, it does," Roman urged. "Though – no. Wait. Okay. First, we go there together, make a date night out of it. Then we fuck on the altar, right where all the pearl-clutchers can see it. THEN we blow it to hell."

There were times it was abysmally difficult for Snatcher to not simply tell Roman he loved him. This was one of those times. "I should think that would be a good day's entertainment."

"Bucket list. For now, I think more than ever, we need to get some good old-fashioned booze in your system. Drown it all out." He clapped Snatcher's shoulder affectionately. "And if Righty hadn't taken my Asgardian stuff, we could make it a REAL party."

"You know I prefer to have slightly more of my wits about me anyhow…though a modicum of tipsiness is allowed."

"And that is all I ask." This, punctuated with the briefest, most casual of kisses.

In they walked to the bar to find it already occupied by a single person – though neither of them really wanted to define him as a "person." Gill Moss stood behind the bar, rifling through the Atmosian liquors, trying to appear as if he were a connoisseur of fine wine rather than an under-twenty-one who'd never actually gotten the chance to drink alcohol in his life.

"UGH," Roman sneered as he and Snatcher walked closer to the counter. "You know, I was hoping to take my booze WITHOUT a snot mixer, thank you."

"It's not SNOT!" Gill spat at him. "It's mutagenic slime!"

"Tomato, to-snot-o."

"Don't bother, Torchwick," Snatcher sighed. "You know his sort, after all."

"Yeah," Roman agreed. "Sure do."

"What's THAT supposed to mean?" Gill asked, whirling on the pair, a bottle in hand.

"You know, it keeps getting uglier every time I look at it," Roman groaned.

"The feeling is mutual," Snatcher growled.

"'IT'?" Gill roared. "I am not an IT!"

"Oh, here it comes," Roman mocked. "I'm not an it! I'm a person! I have a soul! If you cut me, do I not REFUSE TO SHUT THE FUCK UP?"

"I'm not a person, either," Gill seethed. "I'm a mutant."

"Quite clearly," Snatcher stated. "At least you recognize your subhuman state."

"Subhuman?" Gill slammed the bottle on the counter almost hard enough to break it. "SUBHUMAN? I'M SUPERHUMAN! I'M MORE THAN YOU'LL EVER BE! YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE MAGIC, LET ALONE A MUTATION! YOU'RE JUST A WEAK SQUEEB OF A HUMAN BEING! BOTH OF YOU!"

"I'd watch your tongue around the grown-ups, Fish Face," Roman spat.

"Besides," Snatcher told him, "it's simple science that you're compensating. Mr. Vexen would likely be glad to prove it."

"And exactly what do you wanna PROVE?" Gill growled.

"Why bother explaining what you won't understand?" Snatcher replied. "If my meaning is not clear, there's no point."

"Oh, there's a point," Gill seethed. "I want you to say it to my FACE, not swim around it like a coward. But I'll warn you: this is your last chance to take it back."

Seeing a malicious glint in the mutant's red eyes, Roman felt a light shiver. "Hey, maybe you shouldn't poke the barracuda – "

"Then how about I make myself crystal-clear?" Snatcher leaned forward, as close as he could stand to get to Gill. "Your simple, animalistic mind is inferior to that of the average man, let alone an intelligent one. Your body is an affront to nature itself; and trust me, I know where that bar lies. Were I not loyal to Lord Mozenrath through and through, I would have you tossed out on your tail. Perhaps he sees a value in you as raw muscle, but I refuse to have any truck with a FILTHY, IMBECILIC MONSTER."

Gill didn't react, at first. He simply uncorked the bottle with his bare hands, filling a nearby glass with a Cyclonian brandy.

"Lost for words?" Snatcher asked. "Feeble mind still comprehending? Or have you realized your place – "

Without warning, Gill spat. A thick glob of the green splattered into Snatcher's face. Snatcher let out a frustrated growl, beginning to claw it away.

"Anything to add?" he dared Roman.

"Uhhhh…no! No, I'm good." Roman's eyes flicked between Gill and Snatcher. "Just PLEASE tell me that wasn't some kind of skin-melting acid – "

"It's a nuisance," Snatcher stated. "Nothing more. Likely riddled with germs. Fortunately, living in such squalid conditions as I've done for decades has resulted in my building a natural tolerance to most ailments." He swiped the last of the slime to the floor. "That was the best you could do? You're not even good at being a monster."

Gill smirked. "Wait for it." He then picked up the glass to dramatically knock back the brandy –

And spat it out immediately, not having expected it to taste so sharp. "You never saw that!" he hissed before chucking the glass to shatter against the far wall and squishing his way out of the bar.

"You, uh…you okay there?" Roman asked.

"Got in my eye, it did…" Snatcher muttered. "Perfectly all right, thank you very much. Though now saddled with the task of bringing that brat to heel. Like Mr. Tolansky, yet a hundred times worse – "

"Not now," Roman told him, sliding behind the bar to select a stronger spirit. "No scheming, no tasking, no heeling. And no toads." He plunked down two glasses, poured. "Just drinking."

He then plucked his own glass up in a gloved hand, holding it out to Snatcher. "To the gutting of fish and priests both?"

"What you said," Snatcher replied as he raised his own.

They clinked.

...

As it turned out, Mal wasn't the only one suffering the eyes of the judgmental for her powers. But at least she knew she was in the right and had hurt no one.

It had begun with a simple exploration further around the town, to the districts not yet seen. Wanda Maximoff had found herself in a strange new neighborhood; a curved metal archway led to a series of domed buildings that seemed to be carved of sparkling blue crystal, headed up by an immense spire of the same crystalline material. She wandered a bit, taking in the serene sights of the sun sparkling off the domes, the purple leaves of the trees in the small park, the shops selling more complexly-forged accessories than she could see in the main marketplace.

She'd wandered inside one. Examined a few pieces. Found her eye caught by one that was carved to resemble a small meteor in flight, leaving a fiery trail. Picked it up, examining its information card.

Someone had bumped into her. Simple as that. And she'd been startled.

The crystal dome was easily cracked by the shockwave she'd unleashed, a few glittering chips falling to the floor. By the time Wanda had realized what she'd done, she'd already gained the ire of the other shoppers:

"What in the – "

"Did she just do that?"

"WATCH OUT!"

"NO!" Wanda insisted. "I'm not dangerous! I'm not trying to hurt you! I'm not – "

Not in control. Not normal. Not supposed to be here. Her anxieties manifested in the crack in the ceiling growing larger and larger.

"A WITCH!" someone cried.

"SHE'S TRYING TO DESTROY US!" someone else yelled as the glittering crystal dust rained down.

Blackheart's assault had never truly left the public consciousness. This was the sequel, as far as anyone was concerned.

"WEAPONS OUT!" another shopper demanded. "PROTECT YOURSELVES!"

"No…" Wanda backed away, every muscle tightening. "No, no, NO – "

"ALAKAZAM! DISAPPEARUS!"

A sudden cloud of mystically purple smoke surrounded her. Another witch, Wanda thought. Someone who had teleported her away – for good or for evil.

However, the "teleportation spell" was merely a smoke bomb – something Wanda realized when the perpetrator grabbed her hand and hissed, "Run!"

She didn't need any more explanation than that.

While the angry mob fumbled around in the purple smoke, Wanda and her rescuer hurried out into the streets of the Crystarium district, getting themselves thoroughly lost. It was then that Wanda got a good look at the other, who seemed to dress like a witch, her small frame bearing a conical black hat and a billowing burgundy miniskirt beneath a night-black jacket.

"Okay!" the girl decided once they'd reached the park. "I think they won't follow us now."

"Who are you?" Wanda asked. "Why did you help me?"

"I'm the Ultimate Witch." The girl said this in a tone quite unfitting to the statement: not bragging or even proud, but casual, almost lethargic. "My name is Himiko Yumeno. But I know who you are. Get ready for the plot twist: I'm also…your next-door neighbor!"

Wanda realized she never had properly introduced herself to the trio that had moved into the adjacent house to the Brotherhood's. Meeting new people was still a skill she'd yet to master. Wandering aimlessly like a shadow, she could do, but making friends was another story.

"I saw your magic going haywire," Himiko went on, "and as one witch to another, I knew it wasn't your fault. You just looked like you were having a panic attack. So I cast a spell to get us both out of there before anything bad happened!"

Wanda was pretty sure a smoke bomb wasn't a magic spell. She wondered just how much of a witch Himiko even was. "…Thank you," she managed at last.

"That was so cool, by the way!" Himiko insisted. "Not that you were panicking, but that you could break the building like that! I wish I had pow – I mean I wish my powers were that strong!"

Wanda shook her head. "No. You don't. All it's ever brought me is pain."

"Eh? Are you sure? Nothing good, ever? You haven't been able to do one single really cool thing with it?"

As a matter of fact… "Actually, I have been able to do some good. Just not as much as bad."

"But that's better than nothing, right?" Himiko insisted, fists in the air for emphasis. "I think you need to be yourself! Even if yourself is accidentally destructive!"

Wanda found herself smiling. "Thank you, Himiko. I know that's the path I should take. It's just…hard."

"I hope it gets easier for you. Maybe that amulet will help?"

Wanda realized she was still clutching the tiny meteor. Which had not been paid for. Pietro would be proud of her, she thought as she pocketed it. What a bad influence her twin had been on her. "Maybe. Were you looking for an amulet for your own powers?" No, she was sure Himiko was no real witch, but the girl definitely wanted to be indulged.

"Yes!" Himiko confirmed. "This district has all the expensive stuff. So I thought it was the most magical!"

Wanda half considered giving Himiko the amulet instead. Obviously, the girl had come searching for it on purpose. But Wanda didn't want to give it up. Was she ever Pietro's sister now.

"Where are you going after this?" Himiko asked. "Anywhere fun?"

"I don't know," Wanda admitted. "I thought I would explore more of the town, but that hasn't gone so well for me."

"I'm actually going to a party soon," Himiko stated. "One of the other girls in town heard my friends and I were new here, and she invited us. She was an actual pixie! I've never seen one of those before! I guess she has a lot of friends in this town and wanted to get them all in one place. I'm paid for, but I'm allowed to bring a guest. Do you wanna come?"

Wanda blanched. "Is this a…date?"

"No," Himiko said casually. "It's just that we're friends now, and it looks like your other plans weren't gonna work out."

Friends. Was it so easy?

"All right," Wanda relented. "I'll come."

"Great! Let's walk back together. Then we can split up to change clothes, and I'll come get you when I'm ready."

"I'd better come get you," Wanda said hastily, not knowing what would be worse: if Pietro or Todd answered the door.

"Wear something magical!" Himiko advised.

Wanda had amassed a few more dresspheres that kept in line with her aesthetic. She would have to search through them for something relatively festive. "I'll try."

"Great! Let's go!"

As they set off, they at first had nothing to say. Wanda searched frantically for a conversation topic so as not to ruin this new bond she had somehow formed.

"It's okay to be quiet if you want," Himiko said, seemingly reading her mind. Maybe the girl lacked powers, but she did have a good instinct. "Sometimes I can't think of anything to say, either. You don't have to. Quiet can be nice, sometimes."

So they walked in silence together, quite content.

...

" – and Spicer agreed to let me look over the blueprints, but I don't know, I feel like it's missing something. Some extra panache. Something to spice it up."

"The concept is rudimentary, I agree. Robotics are not my field, but I wonder if the answer lies in the AI programming – "

Drakken and Vexen's conversation was cut short as the door to the bar banged open and Roman and Snatcher stumbled out, leaning on each other and laughing at nothing.

"Oh, joy," Vexen sighed.

"You two look like you were having…fun," Drakken observed.

"Hell yeah!" Roman asserted.

"Don't listen to him!" Snatcher chuckled. "He's off his rocker! I knew when to say when, but he NEVER does – "

"Shut up! I'm on my rocker! And I'm rockin' and rollin'!"

"See, can't make heads or tails – "

"I can make tails and heads!"

"The more simple-minded among us seem to find entertainment value in destroying their own minds with vaguely legal poisons," Vexen sighed.

"I never got that," Drakken admitted. "Why drink something that tastes like sour grapes until you start acting stupid? What fun is that supposed to be? Wouldn't, I don't know, a karaoke night be more gratifying?"

"Oh, that's on the agenda for certain!" Snatcher announced. "My idea, you'll recall! You've seen the posters!"

"Posters?" Drakken flinched. "What posters?"

Roman shakily pointed two inches to the left of where one was situated on the wall. "You guys been in the basement all damn day? They're all over the fuck. Place. Fucking place. See? On my roller."

"Where we choose to spend our time is none of your business," Vexen chided. "As I suppose you're about to tell me your drunkenness is none of mine. And yet – "

Drakken interrupted by giving a loud, sharp gasp. He'd actually gotten up close to look at the flyer that announced the karaoke night meant to kick off within an hour: crossdressing optional. "This might be the best evil alliance I've ever joined!" he squeaked, eyes practically watering. "You all understand me on a fundamental level!"

"If we can't get one of the wet blankets to sing," Snatcher resolved, "we'll capture the other! Mr. Lipsky!"

"It's Dr. Drakken," Drakken corrected. "How many times do we have to go over this?"

"Do say you'll be giving us a performance," Snatcher urged. "I'll be putting in an appearance as Madame Frou Frou, to be sure."

"You know," Drakken told him, "I've actually had a dragsona idea for a few years now. Never really put it into practice. You know what happens when professional villains crossdress…it can kind of come off as offensive to some people, I guess."

"Poppycock," Snatcher urged. "The evil, just as the good, need forms of ART! Of EXPRESSION! Of rebellion against the roles and confessional booths they've forced us into our whole lives!"

"Then she debuts tonight," Drakken said ominously. "Vexen! You'll be there, won't you?"

"Yes," Vexen sighed, "but don't expect me to sing, and CERTAINLY don't expect me to wear a skirt."

"Awww, why not?" Drakken asked.

"For the former, I prefer not to waste my time on such frivolity," Vexen stated. "Though I've no opposition to socializing by being adjacent to it. As for the latter…I refuse to let Harley Quinn make money off my stooping to the others' level of shenanigan."

"This Harley Quinn…has a bet on you wearing a dress, doesn't she?" Drakken realized.

"A bet she's sure not to win," Vexen insisted.

Drakken pulled the flyer down from the wall, crunching it in his hand. "Then I must carry on alone. The time has come…to put on a show."

...

Others were not so easily drawn to socializing.

Naminé was spending another evening alone in her quarters, sketching the new sights she'd encountered since her reawakening. Tonight, she was filling in the black of the sooty clothes of a chimney sweep swinging his brush at a Shadow.

A knock came at her door. "Naminé?"

She immediately hastened to answer. "Roxas," she greeted as she eased the door open. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Roxas told her. "I mean…yes. I think? You spend so much time alone. I just can't see how that's…good for you, after everything."

"It's just what I'm used to," Naminé reminded him. "I don't mind solitude. Not anymore."

"Do you mean that? Or are you saying that because you're afraid if you ask someone to spend time with you, it'll be like what you did to Sora in Castle Oblivion?"

Naminé flinched. "I would never overwrite another's memories like that. Not again. …Why did you think of that?"

"Because I think about things like that all the time," Roxas told her. "If I'm doing the right thing or not. The Organization made it hard to trust anyone, even my own self. Also, I think we're…linked. Kind of in the same way I'm linked to Sora and Ven and you are to Kairi. I was at the party downstairs, and I just got the sense that you were…lonely."

Naminé nodded. "It would make sense that we are linked. After all, we were born from the same event. Almost like twins."

"Yeah!"

She averted her eyes from Roxas. "Loneliness isn't a bad thing. There are worse."

"But…?"

"But I'm just afraid that if I reach out," Naminé admitted, "it will turn into wanting to possess someone's time, take them away from their real friends."

Roxas shook his head. "That was the Organization's mistake. Them thinking you needed to take Kairi's place for their plan to work was stupid! You never needed to replace anyone in anyone else's memories. There's room in our hearts for a lot of friends. We'll always have some friends that are better than others, but that doesn't mean we don't want to be around you. I just…I wanna be sure you're okay."

"You didn't have to come because I called."

"You didn't call. I knew. And I came because I wanted to. That's what should matter, Naminé."

"So…" She met his gaze again. "What are you suggesting?"

"Well," Roxas told her, "Hayner, Pence, Olette, and I have been using this party as a chance to hang out and catch up. You should come down and hang out with us! I think you're close enough to being linked to them, too. You were in the simulation with them, after all. They're exactly like they were there. So if you liked them there, you're gonna love 'em here!"

Naminé smiled slightly. "But…will they like me?"

"Duh! I already asked before I came to get you. They're excited to meet you for real!"

Naminé nodded. "All right. Maybe just for a little while."

"I think you're gonna have fun!"

She let Roxas lead her through the halls, down the lift, outside the castle entirely. The secret entrance embedded in the side of the castle walls had once been so well-camouflaged, you couldn't find it unless you knew exactly what you were looking for. Now, however, it had been given a flashing neon sign that read "CHAMBER OF PARTIES," balloons and streamers outlining its wide-open door. As Naminé approached, she could hear the throbbing of a beat from down below.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked.

Roxas remembered, then, that she'd never been to this sort of event before, and it could be a bit of a sensory overload. "If it's too much, you can leave."

"I'll give it a try at least."

Beyond the door, it was a dark descent down a stairway that Naminé realized was left without illumination on purpose. At the nadir, brighter, multicolored flashes marked the way. Along the way, the thrumming beat set itself to chords of music. It did seem almost overwhelming as Naminé realized how loud it truly was, but it was nice-sounding music: heavy yet happy.

At last, she walked into the refurbished Chamber of Parties. It was now all a great open space, a stage flanked by enormous speakers in one corner and a buffet table at the other. The stage was empty, but Naminé, remembering a person Kairi had met along the way, could perfectly picture Vida Rocca spinning records there. She realized someone would have to put in a word for inviting her to one of these events. The buffet table was loaded with finger food, great stew pots, pastries, and salads, with a bowl of punch and a water cooler at the far end, a shimmering tablecloth underscoring it all. The room had started out dark, then lit by a series of flashing multicolored lights that reflected off the disco ball suspended from the ceiling's center. Streamers, balloons, and occasionally confetti could be seen through the dark by the sharp-eyed, turning up where you least expected them. The speakers throbbed from the music pouring forth from them. And the venue was packed with people – some chatting, some dancing, some engaging in other activities.

"ROXAS!" Hayner leapt up and waved to make himself visible in the crowd. "NAMINE! OVER HERE!"

"Let's go!" Roxas took Naminé's hand to pull her along.

But she hesitated.

"You okay?" he asked. Then, softer: "You need to leave?"

Naminé shook her head. "I still don't know if I…know them well enough yet."

"There's only one way to fix that."

"Can I just…have a minute first?"

"Yeah. Sure."

In her scan of the room, Naminé had spied some familiar faces nearby. "I'll be over there if you need me."

"Okay! They'll be happy to talk to you."

The blondes parted ways, Roxas charging toward Hayner, Pence, and Olette to inform them that Naminé would be a while. Naminé stared after him a while, wishing she could work up the nerve to be as free-spirited as these people: to dance, to run around with abandon, to laugh so loudly. Instead, she scurried toward the trio gathered by the punch bowl.

"Naminé!" Mira cried when she saw the girl approaching; Nani and Aqua turned to greet her with a smile. "Whaddaya think?"

"It's…" Naminé wasn't sure how to put it.

"A little much, I know," Aqua told her. "It's okay if you want to leave."

"It's not that," Naminé said. "I want to be here, and I want to have fun in a place like this. I just…don't know if I should yet. It's not what I'm used to."

"Well, you could always hang out with the Fun Police for a bit," Nani suggested. "We're mainly just here to guard the punch bowl and make sure no one spikes it. We could always use an extra set of eyes."

Naminé smiled. "I can help with that!"

So she joined the trio, yet let the three of them talk amongst each other while her eyes searched the crowd. So many people here…so many friendships she wished she had.

She recognized Himiko Yumeno, Maki Harukawa, and Wanda Maximoff huddled in a corner. Rather surprising that Wanda had attended, but pleasantly so, Naminé decided. Himiko was performing card tricks for the other two girls, dramatically holding up an ace of spades; "TA-DAAAAA! …This was your card, right?"

"Yes," Maki stated, stone-faced.

"It was," Wanda confirmed.

"Nice!" Himiko chirped. "Okay! This next one's gonna blow your mind! For this one, I'm gonna shuffle – "

The ringleaders and renters of the party careened over on the glitter-laden air. "Heyyyy!" Rikku complained. "You three have been pooping the party all night! You need to get out there and dance!"

"It's no use arguing," Paine huffed. "She'll wear you down eventually."

"I mean, if you really want to, I have no problem with you staying in the corner," Yuna insisted. "I just think you'll have some more fun if you get out on the dance floor. You could do magic tricks any old day."

"Besides," Rikku groaned, "I already can't get Vanille to stop being a wallflower! I was hoping inviting her would at least get her to smile. Well, the night's not over yet! But until then, I'm gonna see if I can wear you three down!"

"I don't dance," Maki grunted.

"We don't need to – " Wanda began.

"I kind of want to dance," Himiko chimed in.

Maki and Wanda exchanged looks. When the redhead wanted something, it was incredibly hard to say no. "…Fine," Maki resolved. "I'll come dance with you."

"Me too," Wanda agreed.

"YAY!" Rikku cried, spinning in midair as the trio entered the floor and began to move to the music – awkwardly at first for Maki and Wanda, but seeing Himiko hop about with reckless abandon gave them more energy.

The sound of gunshots and a whoop of "WHEEEEE-OO!" drew Naminé's eyes across the room, to a group of three that she had never seen before.

"Grace!" Katrina von Tassel cried, shocked. "Please put that down!"

The perpetrator, one Grace Martin, waved her rifle around in the air. "I'M HAVIN' THE TIME OF MY LIFE!"

"You know they're gonna take that away from ya," Slue-Foot Sue chuckled as she reached over to gently move the barrel of Grace's rifle down. "Y'know I love a gun as much as the next fella, but the people 'round here scare easy."

"Aw, it's not that big a – " Grace began, only to be interrupted by a tap on her shoulder from behind. "Yeah?" she snapped as she whirled.

"I'll take that." Aqua extended her hand. "You can have it back when you leave."

"All right, fine." Grace practically shoved the gun at Aqua, who walked it into confiscation calmly. "If Henry were here, 'course, he wouldn't let this stand…"

"'Course he wouldn'," Sue snorted. "Just like he didn' let it stand when ya – "

"Sue, please," Katrina urged. "We're just here to have a fun ladies' night out. No boy talk."

"How'm I s'posed ta let it go when she's got that shiner?" Sue protested. "The longer Henry Coy goes on slappin' her silly, the more I fix up ta – "

"I told ya, you don't understand Henry!" Grace grumbled. "I can take it, and I can dish it right back out! His temper's what makes it fun."

"Say that when ya end up half dead next time," Sue grunted.

"Ain't never happened to me," Grace told her. "I ain't the one who nearly bounced clean off the world 'cause of a fashion statement."

"Well, that had nothin' ta do with Bill," Sue argued, "an' I done learned my lesson about bustles. 'Sides, they're goin' outta style these days. I hear 'em say plaid's in – "

"Grace, we're just worried," Katrina insisted. "We don't like seeing you get hurt."

"Y'know you ain't gonna win this fight." Grace crossed her arms.

"Maybe not," Katrina told her. "But so long as we're all friends, we're going to care about you."

Grace rolled her eyes and let out a sigh. "Hearin' that makes it hard to stay mad, y'know. I'm pretty quick to forgive, after all."

"We know," Sue grumbled.

"No more boy talk!" Katrina urged. "Come dance with me! Please!"

"Well, since ya didn't invite Brom…s'pose somebody's gotta be yer partner." Grace seized Katrina's wrists, taking her on a wild whirl around the dance floor. Sue followed, chuckling. After all, if Henry Coy put one more bruise on her friend, she knew she could get Katrina to rally Brom and Bill to teach Henry a lesson, and those two would be more than happy to do so.

It was a little sad, getting a glimpse into a less-than-happy life, but Naminé found herself touched all the same. Obviously, these three women had been friends for a long time, even though Grace and Katrina seemed on opposite sides of the personality spectrum, Sue seeming the midpoint. Naminé wondered who would worry for her, and who she would worry for.

That inspired her to turn her gaze to Roxas, Hayner, Pence, and Olette, who were play-sparring to the beat of the music with their foam Struggle weapons. Roxas and Hayner had the same make of bat, while Pence's was thinner, with a hand guard, and Olette's resembled more of a mage's staff, tipped with a star. They swapped each other off as opponents at random, laughing all the way.

"HEADS UP!" someone yelled, and a beach ball came hurtling toward them. Roxas' grandstanding instincts took over, and he batted it right back where it had come from.

"I GOT IT!" Ryan Evans, a student from Balamb Garden Academy, yelled; he punched it hard to send it back at Hayner.

"BACK TO YOU!" Hayner yelled as he swatted the beach ball.

Troy Bolton, Ryan's classmate who'd begun the grandstand-off, spiked the ball back Olette's way. "Come on! Get your head in the game!"

"Heads-up!" Olette spun as she sent the ball back.

With a cry of "HIT IT OUT OF THE PARK!", Chad Danforth used a bat of his own to send it rocketing.

"Whoa – whoa – WHOA NO!" Pence held the bat in front of his face defensively; the ball bounced off it and went ricocheting back.

"OH!" Gabriella Montez cried as she was bowled over by the ball.

"SORRY!" Pence rushed to her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Gabriella said with a laugh as she righted herself. "That's why we used a beach ball, after all."

"Looks like you won," Chad remarked. "We'll have to run extra drills to make up for that."

"What team?" Troy asked.

"WILDCATS!" Chad, Gabriella, and Ryan chorused.

"Yeah, well, y'know what?" Hayner broke in. "Your team's no match for our team back home! WHAT TEAM?"

"UNICORNS!" Olette, Pence, and Roxas yelled, throwing their fists in the air.

"Hey, y'know what I think it's time to do?" Ryan urged Chad, sneaking up to deliver a surprise hug to his plus-one from behind.

"If you say rope everyone into a huge dance number, Ryan, I swear I'm gonna – "

"Rope everyone into a huge dance number."

"RYAN!"

"That actually sounds like fun!" Roxas realized. "What do we have to do?"

"Spread the word!" Gabriella told him.

"We're all veteran poster-hangers," Pence recalled. "We're pretty good at spreading the word!"

They fanned out to begin arranging the choreography.

Nearer to the buffet table, spiky-headed Lann was in a competition with his platinum-blond friend Joe to see who could fit more s'mores truffles (courtesy of Rapunzel and Pleakley) into his mouth. "Give up already!" Lann urged, though it was barely recognizable as words.

"No way!" Joe fired back.

"LANN!" Lann's twin sister Reynn scolded. "You're gonna choke, and Mom's gonna KILL me for letting you do that!"

The siblings' guardian Mirage, a floating white fox named Tama, squeaked, "You should be the-careful!"

"Boys," Joe's girlfriend Jenny snorted. "So immature."

Right on cue, Lann and Joe both began coughing, spraying chocolate crumbs everywhere.

"HEY, HEY, HEY!" Nani rushed toward them to check if they needed first aid.

"Come on, Reynn," Jenny urged. "Let's leave these two idiots alone for a while and see if they get any smarter without us to watch over them."

"Jenny…" Reynn sighed. "You know we can't do that. They need us to make sure they don't do something even MORE stupid."

"You're right," Jenny admitted sullenly.

"All clear!" Lann said as he turned back to the girls, giving them a thumbs-up.

"I think we should wash those truffles down with some hot wings," Joe mused.

"No the-wings!" Tama commanded, miffed. "You've already been the-irresponsible enough at this the-buffet! Just go the-dance already!"

Joe put out his hand to Jenny; "Shall we?"

Jenny rolled her eyes before taking it; "Sometimes I wish I didn't love you."

"That's okay!" Joe told her. "I know I can be a goofus. I never wish I didn't love you, but that's only because you're perfect in every way!"

"Joe…" Jenny blushed.

"Super sibling dance time?" Lann offered Reynn.

"Only if you never call it that again," Reynn laughed.

"And all was the-well!" Tama laughed.

At the far wall, Naminé spied yet another wallflower, a sullen young woman with pink-orange pigtails avoiding the scene altogether. This must have been the mysterious Vanille that Rikku spoke of, mourning a sadness that even Rikku didn't know the cause of.

Emmanellain de Fortemps approached her gingerly, pausing to curse out his shyness before setting it aside to greet her: "Ah, lady Oerba Dia Vanille! It's good to see you out and about. Though I can't help but notice you lack a dance partner. Might I offer?"

Vanille gave Emmanellain a sad smile, shaking her head. "No thank you. I appreciate your asking, but I'm fine."

Emmanellain cleared his throat. "I had just thought…you see, it would be pleasant for both you and me if – "

"I'm afraid you'll have to find someone else."

"Ah." Emmanellain noticeably drooped, obviously wondering why he'd gotten up the nerve to speak up in the first place. "Then I shall leave you to it."

Seeing an opportunity, Sharpay Evans sauntered over to him, saying rather loudly, "Well, if SHE'S not gonna take advantage of a catch like you…you could always dance with ME."

"I would be honored, my lady!" Emmanellain replied excitedly.

Vanille seemed almost wistful watching Sharpay and Emmanellain bop to the top out on the floor. Then she turned her attention back to her reverie.

"Excuse me." A gray-haired woman had approached the punch bowl. "Is this alcoholic?"

"Nope!" Mira assured. "We've been watching it all night! No spiking here!"

That apparently wasn't what Enna Kros wanted to hear. "I suppose I'll have to do it myself, then." She poured herself a glass, then produced a hip flask that she used to flavor her beverage before taking it back out on the floor.

"…I GUESS that's not against the rules, so long as it's just her drink," Aqua decided.

"Break it down!" Enna encouraged the Lalafell who had been Haurchefant's friend; the short woman was dancing all by herself, spinning and clapping with no regard for any potential audience.

"Are you really going to have a stupid idiot dance party alone?" Maroda laughed before swiping up the Lalafell's purple top hat and charging across the dancefloor.

"YOU!" The Lalafell gave chase. "GIVE THAT BACK!"

"HALT!" Ryan said as he stood before Maroda, holding out a hand to stop him. He snickered; "I've always wanted to do that! Anyway, we're gearing everybody up for a big dance number!"

"Sounds fun!" Maroda agreed as he flicked the Lalafell's hat back toward her.

Before Naminé knew it, she was watching most everyone she'd spied around the room moving in time together as though performing a theatrical chorus. She wished desperately she had the nerve to join in, as it looked to be such fun – all squabbles and rivalries were forgotten in favor of working together to magnify the effect of the dance. Yet her feet refused to move her out from behind the table. Maybe she wasn't meant for this at all.

"Ladies!" A sudden voice drew Naminé's attention; the mastermind of the venture was rolling up to their table. "So?" XR asked. "How's it going?"

"Not bad!" Mira reported. "Everyone's having a lot of fun! This might actually be the one idea you've ever had that wasn't a total backfire!"

"Oh, please," XR teased. "Gimme more credit than that." He then spied Naminé. "Hey, what's with you? You're not one of the Fun Police. Come on, kiddo! This is your big chance to party XR-ty!"

"I just…don't know." Naminé turned away from him, from the dance floor, only her long blonde hair and thin profile visible from behind. "It just…doesn't feel right, somehow. I really want to, but – "

"KAEDE?"

The shocked cry was close enough to call Naminé's attention. She turned to see Shuichi Saihara staring at her as though he'd just seen a ghost. The truth was, that wasn't far off.

"…Oh," Shuichi realized, reality settling into his gut. "I'm sorry. It's just…from behind, you looked like…just forget it." He laughed nervously. "I shouldn't…I'll leave now."

"Wait," Naminé urged. "I…remind you of someone?"

"Yeah," Shuichi replied. "But it's really not…I should know better."

"Someone you lost?" Naminé asked. "A friend?"

"Yeah," Shuichi admitted. "I guess I keep hoping that someday, I will see her again somewhere. But that's not gonna happen. I'm…probably bringing you down pretty hard. This was supposed to be a fun party."

"I wasn't having fun just yet," Naminé replied, "so it's okay." It then occurred to her: "Why aren't you dancing with the others?"

"I don't know," Shuichi admitted. "I guess…I'm not trying to make you feel sorry for me or anything, but I'm kind of bad at being around people. I spent a long time trying to isolate myself from the world…or at least I thought I did. It's a long story. Anyway, I'm back on my feet now. It's just hard to make the first move sometimes."

"I know how that feels," Naminé sympathized. "You shouldn't have to do that until you're ready. Sometimes it takes time."

"Are you…also trying to join in?"

"I am," Naminé admitted. "I just figure it'll happen on its own time."

"I hope it does happen," Shuichi told her. "You deserve to have some fun."

"You do, too."

"I don't know about that. But it's really okay if tonight's not my night."

"I was thinking the same thing. I just wish…" Naminé shook her head. "Well, maybe it's just not the right time."

They were so close. Only the thinnest of walls remained between them, between each and the party, and yet they couldn't bring themselves to even say the words to bring them down.

Which was why it was such a good thing XR was there, all considered.

It also helped that the music switched over to the peppy intro to a song that sounded far more lighthearted than its lyrics would betray. The chorus line dissipated on the tune change, but XR grabbed one of Shuichi's hands and one of Naminé's, telescoping his arms out to reach both. "Come on, kids!" he urged. "I can't be the only one feeling the sparks here! You two crazy lovebirds get out there and dance right now! This is the best song to fall in love to, after all! Now show me some MOVES!"

"LOVEBIRDS?" Shuichi repeated. "We're not – "

"It's not like – " Naminé protested.

But with a spin, XR had pushed them both out onto the dancefloor, where they stumbled beneath the disco ball.

"I'm not trying to hit on you!" Shuichi insisted. "I do think you're nice to talk to, but it's not like that!"

"I know," Naminé replied. "I don't know where he even got that idea. But…I do think he was right about one thing."

"What?"

"Maybe…we should dance. You and I, we were waiting, but we both know it wasn't anything we were waiting for. We're afraid. Maybe we should stop being afraid and take this moment. We'll have to keep the memory of this night forever, after all. Why not make it a fun one?"

"…You're right," Shuichi realized. "One problem: I can't exactly…dance."

"Neither can I," Naminé told him. "But honestly, I've been watching most of the people here, and if they're anything to go by, I don't think that will be a problem."

Shuichi let out an involuntary snort. "Okay. Let's try."

Naminé was the first to move, stepping her feet back and forth to the beat. The rest of her body followed, rocking and undulating. "Try it!" she cajoled.

So Shuichi began to move, a little awkwardly, until he was flailing with reckless abandon. Neither one looked all that graceful, but that hardly mattered; both finally felt like they were part of the scene, a part that belonged.

"I think this might actually be a breakup song!" Shuichi realized.

"It's still good to dance to!" Naminé pointed out. "I guess the singer's happy she moved on!"

"I like that. Oh! What's your name?"

"I'm Naminé. What's yours?"
"Shuichi! Shuichi Saihara!"

"It's nice to meet you!"

"You too!"

They danced a little closer together, each glad to have made a new friend.

"All according to plan," XR boasted as he leaned back on the punch table.

"You can't just pick any two people and throw them together and hope they'll date!" Nani scolded. "Dating is complicated! It involves having to coordinate your lives, your schedules, your wants and needs, the things you can and can't compromise on!"

"Oh, shush, you," XR countered. "Dating's easy! You pick a hot person, you ask 'em to dance, next thing you know, uh-oh, do I hear wedding bells?"

"Oh, yeah?" Mira teased. "And how often has that strategy worked for you?"

"I'll have you know it did work once!" XR reminded her. "Did we already forget about…42…"

All of a sudden, he drooped. "Man, I am really feeling these lyrics," he groaned. "Did anyone else realize this is a breakup song?"

"I find it kind of hard to feel bad for him," Aqua admitted.

Mira shrugged. "Hey. Friends are friends, y'know? Even when we mess up. You two can watch the bowl for a bit, right?" Without waiting for the answer, she phased right through the table, becoming solid on the other side to tap XR on the shoulder-joint. "Come on, Robot Ranger. This is your party. Let's go show 'em who's boss around here."

"You know, 42 would've been a wonderful dancer if she hadn't been a ship," XR sighed, following her. "I mean, she's not a ship anymore. She's probably a wonderful dancer now. Dancing with some muscle-bot from Mahambas VI – "

"Are you just gonna mope and complain like a party pooper," Mira challenged, "or are you gonna dance?"

"Party pooper?" XR perked up. "PARTY POOPER? I AM MANY THINGS, BUT I AM NOT A PARTY POOPER!"

"Knew that'd get ya," Mira said with a wink.

Then they joined in the dance, taking over the floor.

...

Mozenrath entered the karaoke room to find the tables set up in a more crowded arrangement than ever before to accommodate the new recruits. The Fearsomes who weren't Mim traded tips with the Smisses; Hecate chatted with Discord; the Drakken Crime Syndicate, sans Drakken himself, had taken up a table shared with the Heylin, Duff and Hannibal having gotten into an arm-wrestling match (featuring an arm that Hannibal had generated himself using the Moby Morpher). Some were quite obviously done up in drag – rather a glamorous array, Mozenrath had to admit. Monty's slinky black cocktail dress and black lipstick gave him a seductive air, Hecate wore a sparkling blue suit with a tie, and Megavolt had found a lavender medieval-style gown that he'd just thrown on over his usual outfit without changing anything else. It seemed Snatcher's invite had gone over well.

The lights were dim, and the atmosphere heavy thanks to the dark aria that Velma Green sang onstage, her voice rising to the ceiling and promising doom and destruction without needing words. (It seemed to be an original composition of hers; did this even count as karaoke anymore? Did anyone even care?) Obviously, spiders had to be coming out of the woodwork to answer her call, so Mozenrath took care to watch his step as he made his way to the founders' table, teleporting the last few feet to avoid a family of tarantulas.

"There he is!" Wuya chuckled. "We were starting to think you'd fallen asleep on your desk."

"I think you underestimate how long I can go without sleep," Mozenrath retorted. "I just had to put the finishing touches on our itinerary."

"You have the next half of the recruitment drive all figured out, I take it," the Huntsman guessed.

"To the letter," Mozenrath replied. "I assume you're in. I warn you, not everyone we pick up may be as…human as you'd like."

"I have held my tongue and my blade thus far," the Huntsman replied.

"Well, I haven't!" Roman chirped from across the table, shimmering in white as Fiammetta Incandescent.

"It may not be wise to agitate our new allies," the Huntsman warned. "They are all powerful warriors in their own right."

"Oh, do be calm," Snatcher giggled, resplendently blue as Madame Frou Frou. "Monsieur Liu, the worst the little swamp scum can do is sneeze in your face."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," the Huntsman replied. "…He may also be capable of winning your partner's affections for a time."

"You know," Yzma remarked, "it's happened multiple times now, but every time he demonstrates he has a sense of humor, I still feel as though the natural order has been disturbed."

Mozenrath took stock of the others at the table: Aghoul, Wuya, Yzma, and the Huntsman dressed as usual while Mim had shifted back into being "Jim." "I see only a few of us indulged Snatcher's invitation. Which is understandable."

"Oh, just you wait for it," Yzma said ominously.

"What?" Mozenrath asked. "What are you planning?"

"I can't tell you that!" Yzma spat. "I literally just told you to wait for it! Now you have to live with the suspense!"

Up onstage, Velma's song ceased. "And now," she said dramatically into the microphone, "may I present to you a songstress making her debut this night, though she is quite accomplished under other aliases. For the first time – "

"That's my cue!" Megavolt cried, speeding away to the side of the stage.

"Please welcome the one!" Velma demanded.

Megavolt took his place at a switchboard, blacking the lights that normally pointed onto the stage save for one spotlight that rained down on Velma like a holy highlight.

"The only!" Velma continued.

A silhouette made its way up onstage next to her.

"THE BEAUTIFUL!" Velma gestured to the shadow. "ANNE TAGONIST!"

She scurried away from the light and up the back wall, leaving room for Dr. Drakken to step into the spotlight. He was clothed in a simple yet aesthetically pleasing deep-blue dress cinched at the waist by a belt, flattering his figure and accentuating how feminine it could look under the right circumstances. His short dark hair was concealed by a shaggy, voluminous wig of the same shade of black, looking like it had come straight from a 1980s rocker's hairdresser. His eyes and lips were painted a deeper shade of blue than usual, glittering to boot.

The speakers emitted a series of ominous piano chords to lead in. When Drakken leaned into the microphone to sing, his falsetto voice perhaps did not sound like that of a conventional soprano, but he obviously had a mastery of pitch, and he had put so much work into the appearance that it gelled into a perfect performance. "I guess I've been naughty," he crooned. "I'm afraid I've been bad! I couldn't leave well enough alone! I dug up a horrible secret, you see, and I'm afraid I've made it my own!"

Megavolt shot two colored lasers to cross and undulate behind Drakken, electric blue, just the lightest accent to indicate the song was picking up. "It's something so wicked, I shudder to think of the despicable deeds that I'll do!" Drakken sang on. "Creating such chaos as you've never seen…" He struck a dramatic pose. "And misery like you never knew!"

Megavolt's hands raced over the board, kicking the lights into maximum overdrive. Drakken was illuminated with all colors of the rainbow as he belted, "THERE AIN'T NOTHIN' BUT BAD DAYS AHEAD! AIN'T NOOOOOTHIN' BUT BAD DAYS AHEAD!"

"…He's not bad," Mozenrath observed from the audience.

"Not bad!" Snatcher was taken aback. "It is as if I had mentored her myself!"

"I'm getting some conflicting feelings at the moment," Aghoul admitted.

"That's the point," Wuya laughed as she nudged him with an elbow. "During drag night, only the bisexuals remain un-confused."

"Also the pansexuals and the aromantics," Yzma chimed in. "If we want to get technical and also avoid Discord from telling on us to Xayide and the two of them bringing their wrath on us in the form of a pair of giant anvils painted in the colors of their flags."

"YOU KNOW ME TOO WELL, YZMA!" Discord yelled from clear across the room, waving a banner of pink, yellow, and blue on a stick. Since Mozenrath had last seen him, he'd grown out his hair by magic, making a soft white curl around his horns, then thrown himself into a glittering, ruffly dress that seemed to have been designed with making Yzma feel inferior in mind. His voice was now a few registers higher to go along with the ensemble.

"I really hate him sometimes," Yzma said as she eyed up the dress. "Oh, well. At least tonight, my aim hasn't been to outdo him in SKIRTS."

"So you have a dragsona," Mozenrath told her, "but you're acting like it's some big secret.

"SHUSH!" she reprimanded.

"Oh, by the way," Roman cut in, "Righty, Archie and I were meaning to ask ya. Any chance next mission, he and I can do LITERALLY ANYTHING but play tour guide? We already paid off Herb-al Tea to take over. Seriously, the guy's so chill, you can't not love him. As opposed to the fact that if I have to stop anyone else from swinging off the chandelier like a gibbon, I am going to FUCKING explode."

"As will I," Snatcher agreed stonily.

"Fine," Mozenrath sighed. "You two can go – "

"NOT BACK TO WONDERLAND!" Roman cut off. "Or anywhere else you just made up off the top of your head to get us out of the way!"

"We're CERTAIN that was the Wonderland gambit," Snatcher said stonily. "To what end, we know not."

"And you never will," Mozenrath told them. "All right, let me think. I'm sure Zevon will want to go looking for another Corona gem. You could tag along."

"Eh…not a bad backup option," Roman said. "Anything less…what's the word…"

"Grammatically abhorrent?" Snatcher filled in.

" – in the works?" Roman completed.

Mozenrath thought it over. "Hmm. There isn't much else we need done at present. I'd rather handle the recruitment drive myself. I suppose if you wanted to round up some more munny for the purchase – "

"Nothing but bad days ahead!" Drakken sang, dancing strangely seductively along the further he got into his number. "Move over, Medusa; Cruella, get lost! Take a hike, Mistress Maleficent! There ain't nothin' but bad days – "

Mozenrath's eyes widened upon being reminded. "OR. If you want some fun. Maleficent sure has put a lot of energy into trying to wipe us off the map. Turnabout is fair play…"

"You want us to fuck up the Overtakers?" Roman realized.

"That would be a suicide mission!" Snatcher gasped in mock horror.

"WE ARE SO IN!" Roman cried, and Snatcher nodded along with a pleased smirk.

"We'll just have to sequester a faction they've dispatched on a smaller mission!" Snatcher mused. "If our forces outnumber and overpower theirs…I doubt we could kill any permanently, as they have multiple necromancers about, but it would at the very least remind them we are NOT to be trifled with."

"Ooh! Ooh! Can I come along?" Mim begged. "I haven't been a bee in a bonnet for so long!"

"The more bees in the bonnet, the better!" Roman asserted. "We'll put together a task force after Karaoke Night wraps up!"

"Oh, I AM looking forward to this," Snatcher chuckled. "I've SEVERAL slights to repay them after Asgard."

"Then it's settled!" Mozenrath declared. "Three task forces. Recruitment, the Corona Aurora, and making the Overtakers miserable. Let's all have some fun!"

Drakken fired off the final "NOTHIN' BUT BAD DAYS AHEAD!" with a leap and a kick, showing off a patent-leather shoe with a buckle and a short heel as well as a little bit of leg beneath a thick nylon. He punctuated song's end with a raucous malicious laugh, and the crowd went wild for him. Drakken then bowed, declaring, "Thank you, thank you!" before scampering off to slide in next to Vexen and Ravess to gush to them about how alive he felt.

"That's my cue." Yzma rose to stalk toward the stage.

"Okay, what is she doing?" Mozenrath asked Wuya.

"Even I don't know," Wuya told him. "She insisted it was a surprise."

"This out to be entertaining, at least," Mozenrath sighed.

Yzma strutted to the microphone, withdrawing a sparkling object from a hidden pocket in her plum-colored gown. "Before I begin," she stated to the crowd, "I want to thank Rémington Smisse for stealing the Huntsman's records out of his room so that I could listen to some male vocals with taste."

"YOU DID WHAT?" the Huntsman roared. "I WAS LOOKING FOR THOSE!"

Rémington shrank in his seat.

"That said," Yzma went on, "I would like to introduce to you your true performer for the night. Behold!"

She held the object up to the light: a vial of pink potion. She quickly uncorked it, then downed the contents.

When the cotton-candy smoke cleared, in the place of Yzma's usual body was that of a tan-skinned man with chin-length raven hair, slender yet firm in physique. A red tunic clung tightly to her new, more defined abdomen, flowing loose over her legs.

"Call me Ozker," Yzma said dramatically in a deep, sultry voice.

Wuya's jaw dropped. One could practically see the little hearts beating inside her pupils.

A big band began to play an opening chord from the speakers. "I've got the world on a string," Yzma-Ozker crooned, "sittin' on a rainbow! Got the string around my fiiiinger!"

"Well, at least she does have taste," the Huntsman remarked.

Yzma strutted back and forth as she belted on, looking every inch the crooner. After the second verse, Mozenrath decided he'd had enough. No, she wasn't bad; quite the opposite.

He wanted in.

So he rose, raising his gauntlet over his head and drizzling a shower of sparks onto himself. In a gleam of blue, he donned a glamour: the perfect image of Brandisia Black, clothed in a dress with a short A-line skirt and a rather deep neckline that afforded space for a bejeweled necklace.

"Don't hate me because I'm beautiful," Mozenrath said in a magically altered voice as he sauntered toward Yzma.

"Very, VERY conflicting feelings," Aghoul muttered.

"I've got the world on a string!" Yzma repeated. "Sittin' on a rainbow!"

Then Mozenrath was beside her, belting, "Got the string around my fiiiin-geeeer!"

"WHAT A WORLD!" Yzma sang, turning to face Mozenrath.

"WHAT A WORLD!" Mozenrath chorused, facing Yzma in turn.

"AND THIS IS THE LIFE!" Yzma cried, reaching for Mozenrath's hand.

"IT'S THE LIFE!" he sang back, grasping her palm.

As they spun each other to switch places on the stage beneath Megavolt's prismatic dancing lights, they chorused as one: "HEY NOW! I'M – "

...

" – so in looooove," Warp sang casually to himself as he strutted down the halls of the Forbidden Mountain's fortress.

His contract was completed, and so he was on his way to collect payment from Maleficent, who had suggested he meet her in her reading room. He did, in fact, feel like he had the world on a string (or "worlds," he supposed), having pulled off a successful mission, wrested control away from the brat, dumped her dead weight, gotten Amora to make eyes at him, and earned his pay. What could be better?

Though it was somewhat bittersweet knowing the job was done. Of course, he knew his place trying to rebuild the Zurg empire, and he had to return. But here, he knew he would be surrounded by kindred spirits who enjoyed evil for fun and profit, and he'd barely gotten to interact with the group at large. If he could work out some sort of time-share…well, that would hardly be fair to his boyfriend. Then again, was Warp a fair man?

All the same, a little fun was better than none, and having to leave so soon wasn't putting a damper on his mood.

He knocked shave-and-a-haircut on the wooden door leading to the reading room, hearing a content "Come in" in response. On the other side lay a room lighter in tone than most of the castle. It definitely wasn't the library, with its black vaulted ceilings, Gothic arches, and sky-high shelves of leather tomes. This was a room of chestnut browns and burgundies, of closely-situated shelves and of overstuffed armchairs settled atop a soft carpet before a fireplace filled with crackling green flame.

Maleficent was seated at one of these armchairs, seeming almost too casual as she flipped through her book. Warp wondered what exactly she was reading. Maybe a trashy romance novel. That would be unfittingly hilarious. He was already seeing her sitting down and relaxing, which he didn't think was actually possible, so the sky was the limit at this point.

"Darkmatter." With a smile, Maleficent shut the book and set it aside. "You have served our cause well."

"I try," Warp said with a smirk.

"As promised," Maleficent told him, "your reward."

She raised a hand, flicking it. A dark velvet pouch floated out from behind her chair, landing gracefully in Warp's hands. He pulled its drawstring-mouth open, rifling through the contents to find the munny guaranteed upon success. The crystals jingled in his metal fingers.

"All here and accounted for," Warp stated. "Though I was hoping for a bonus."

"Were you?" Maleficent asked coyly. "Then perhaps you should listen to my proposal."

"What, are you gonna get down on one knee?"

"Moreso of business than pleasure," Maleficent told him. "As little pleasure as such a union would bring me."

"Harsh. You did NOT have to go there."

"Your work was more than satisfactory," Maleficent stated. "Especially in the wake of Cyclonis'…betrayal. You would make quite an asset to our team. I should like to work out an arrangement with you for an extended contract."

"You know, I was just thinking about that," Warp admitted. "What a coinkidink, right? Though I kinda have other engagements."

"The sort with rings?"

"Well, not officially…"

"Surely you have some time to spare for further missions," Maleficent told him. "There are so many misdeeds yet to be done, and your talent and ruthlessness would prove invaluable. Perhaps we can come to a compromise: your work here shan't interfere with your time spent rebuilding your lost empire."

"…What the hey?" Warp shrugged. "I'm in."

"Be careful with your words," Maleficent told him. "Your agreement will become a verbal, binding contract. Once you have agreed, you cannot renege. Though the reward will be well worth the risk."

"Bring it," Warp told her. "I can handle whatever you have to throw at me."

"Then you do agree?"

"I do."

"I am glad to hear it." Maleficent's smirk widened. "Though there is the matter of…control."

"Control?"

"You are quite out of it, Darkmatter. There is a rather pressing issue of trust between you and the rest of our operation. After all, you were not so sly as you believed, and I am well aware that Cyclonis did not defect. I acted as though I believed you because I, too, tired of her demands."

Warp felt a lump rising in his throat. Had he just walked into some kind of trap?

"Therefore," Maleficent continued, "since you are to continue your association with us, as I suspected you would, I have taken the liberty of recruiting another. One who can…keep you in line."

"Oh, boy," Warp muttered. "Yeah, shoulda seen this one coming."

Her smile was ever more coy. "Why not meet your supervisor?"

She raised her hand again. For the first time, Warp noticed the second door, behind her, this one made of an imposing iron. At Maleficent's beckon, it creaked open.

Warp felt dread swirl in his gut like a black hole. Supervisor? More like his jailer. Knowing who Maleficent knew – Loki being one of them – what horrific monster had she rounded up to intimidate Warp into behaving? He watched smoke seep around the edges of the door, filling the frame to create a suitably dramatic entrance for the silhouette behind.

Wait a minute. He'd seen this before –

"DARKMATTER!"

The emotion Warp experienced was comparable to expecting to be stabbed and instead being handed a hot fudge sundae. He would know that voice anywhere. And this time, he was hearing it for real.

"Hey, babe." He pointed finger-guns at the cloud. "Gotta say, didn't expect to run into you here of all places."

Maleficent's new recruit strode into view, his purple robes billowing, his face hidden as ever by his metal helmet that somehow never managed to mask how many emotions he could cycle through in the span of thirty seconds.

"You were tempted to ditch me for THEM, weren't you?" Evil Emperor Zurg accused, pointing a sharp silver gauntlet-finger at Warp.

"Wha – " Warp shook his head. "That's what was SUPPOSED to happen, obviously! If I'd said no, we wouldn't be working together!"

"It's the PRINCIPLE of the matter!"

"If that was the principle, MAYBE YOU SHOULD'VE SET UP A DIFFERENT GAMBIT TO INTRODUCE YOURSELF! I DUNNO, MAYBE BE STRAIGHTFORWARD FOR ONCE?"

"WHY YOU – " Zurg clenched his fists before relaxing. "You know, I never can stay mad at you. It's very annoying."

"Love ya, babe," Warp replied with a wink, striding up next to Zurg to slip his mechanical arm around it's maker's waist. "And, hey, at least now we're partners in crime on a multi-world enterprise, right?"

"Finally, we are poised on the cusp of victory!" Zurg proclaimed. "Not clawing our way out of the abyss that vampire plunged us into!"

"I am glad to see you are getting on," Maleficent stated slyly, having expected it all to play out exactly in this manner. "Now, shall we discuss the matter of what is to come?"

"What is to come?" Zurg repeated. "WHAT IS TO COME? WE KNOW WHAT IS TO COME! DEATH! DESTRUCTION! CONQUEST! THE ABSOLUTE REIGN OF THE ZURG EMP – IMEANTHEOVERTAKERS!" He raised a silver fist, shaking it in the air.

"Worlds on a string," Warp emphasized. "Sitting on a rainbow."

"AND EVERMORE, WE SHALL BE FEARED!" Zurg cried. "THE GODS SHALL FALL BEFORE US, AND OUR RULE WILL LAST TO ETERNITY!"

He broke into a loud and raucous laugh, and Warp was moved to snicker right along with him.

Then, suddenly, Zurg stopped; "Though…um…where specifically ARE we going from here, again?"

...

A/N: Now that Re:Mind is out, and my feelings on it are…not great, I just want to say that pretty much all material from KHIII (Re:Mind included) will be cherrypicked. I'll add things I liked back into the mix, but other things will be thrown into the garbage disposal. Same with Union Cross – I'll clarify more on that when the time comes, but some of the established lore is going to be overhauled for the sake of creating a story more to my tastes (and one that might be a little more unexpected). On the subject of AUs, yes, in this universe, "Runaway Brain" is actually a full-length horror film. And the Emperor's New School episode with Ozker irked me that I didn't actually get an Yzma dragsona that captured the hearts of all the women, so here, I have changed that accordingly.