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.

131. Normin Dynasty

A/N: Got a good old-fashioned trigger warning, but it's also a good old-fashioned spoiler! If you think something might bother you, jump down to the end first!

...

Down, down, down: Yang Xiao Long, Giovanni Potage, and Harley Quinn fell into the abyss.

At first, it was sheer blackness; only their physical contact with each other reminded them that they were all still there. Then, a light: a bright red sigil floating in the void, a shape that vaguely reminded Harley of a space shuttle. They fell past it to see next a blue sigil that looked like the lovechild of a harp and a crossbow. Beyond that, a green symbol reminiscent of a row of leaves. Then a yellow symbol that definitely wasn't supposed to look like a winged cockroach, but that was what it reminded everyone of. Then an enormous white snowflake, or what looked like it.

The sigils repeated, growing in frequency; through bright lights of red, blue, green, yellow, and white, the trio kept on falling.

"I dunno about you guys," Giovanni called back, "but I am NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THE LANDING OF THIS ONE!"

"We're gonna be squashed flat like pancakes!" Harley wailed.

Yang steeled her resolve. "I have a landing strategy!" she called up. "I've only ever done this when I had two arms and only one person to land, but it's better than nothing! But you two need to hang onto me in a way that leaves my arm free!"

So there was much shuffling around in the dim lights until Harley and Giovanni clung worriedly to Yang's midriff. Yang cocked the Ember Celica on the one arm she had left, aiming it straight down where they were falling.

"I'll need to see land before I can start firing!" she explained.

"WAIT A FUCKING SECOND!" Giovanni shrieked. "YOUR 'LANDING STRATEGY' IS TO FIRE A BUNCH OF GUNSHOTS AT THE GROUND TO KEEP US FROM IMPACT?"

"Pretty much!" Yang replied.

"That…is so coooooool," Giovanni said softly, eyes wide.

"You two just hang on!" Yang commanded. "I think these lights get more common the further we get to the ground, and there are a whole lotta lights right now, so get ready – "

A blinding flash, and now, no more sigils, no more lights. They were falling from a blue sky down toward a landmass in an equally blue sea.

"READY?" Yang yelled, and Harley and Giovanni tightened their grip. "ONE! TWO! TH – "

But something was happening. Their fall was slowing, all on its own, without any interference from Ember Celica.

"What's happening?" Harley cried.

"I dunno," Yang replied, gobsmacked as the trio began to pivot in midair, their descent becoming ever slower as their feet pointed toward terra firma. "But if it means we don't die, I'll take it."

"Good plan!" Giovanni squeaked.

The drop gently deposited a pair of tall brown boots, a pair of bright-yellow rubber boots with white soles, and a pair of red acrobat slippers onto the ground, which was surprisingly soft and squishy. Letting out a sigh, the trio also let go of each other, backing up to give each other more room.

(Harley only now realizing her face had been in proximity to Yang's chest, and hoping her makeup still held firm, because she was as red as half her uniform.)

"What is this place?" Giovanni asked, looking about. "Where the hell are we?"

They appeared to be on the highest point of an island: a circular platform from which they could see the sea stretching out to all directions. There was more island visible below, but not easily seen from the center where they'd landed. And the fact that the earth was so squishy was still disconcerting until –

"Is this CAKE?" Harley realized, tapping the ground with her foot. It made a distinct springy, squelchy sound.

"I think we're on a giant fucking cake," Giovanni affirmed.

"Okay. HOLD ON." Yang put out her arm, palm up. (Well, she tried to do so with both arms before remembering.) "How did we end up on a cake in the middle of the ocean? What IS this?"

"We're in another world," Harley realized. "Cykes sent us here as a punishment."

Yang looked at her incredulously before slowly saying, "Okaaaaaay. That's…not what I expected to hear, but there isn't really any BETTER explanation, so I'm going with it."

"Well, we gotta get off this stupid cake!" Giovanni urged. "Bear Trap and the boys are out there! And Firefly and Ragdoll! And Emmaline! …AndmaybeIwantSylviebacktoo."

"Not to mention HAVEN," Yang reminded the other two. "If I'm stuck on another whole damn WORLD, that kinda puts a damper in me being able to stop Cinder or Salem or whoever from attacking my sister!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Harley put up her hands now. "Just take some deep, calmin' breaths, you two! I dunno about Haven, but what I do know is ya sent the Snow White gal, an' she'll spread the word!"

Yang shut her eyes. "I trust Weiss," she grumbled. "I guess I'm going to have to hold onto that until I can get back."

"An' as for Ragsy, Gar, Bear Trap, Emmy, Sylvie, an' the Boys," Harley went on, "well, they gotta be somewhere on this rock, too! …'Less the whole world's cake, in which case they're somewhere on this cake. An' we gotta find 'em! …But that ain't the only thing worryin' me."

"What?" Giovanni blinked at her.

"Cykes," Harley muttered. "She said she got my whole list. What if she's got everybody else I was gonna recruit trapped here, too?"

"Well, then," Giovanni declared, "we've got a WHOLE ARMY of villains to save!"

Yang finally gave a slow, deliberate nod. "It wouldn't be fair to leave friends of yours trapped here," she stated. "We find them. Then Haven."

Harley nodded back; "Deal!"

"Though she might've been bluffing," Giovanni remarked. "You think she was bluffing?"

"She wasn't bluffin' about blowin' up the Blyndeff Toy Emporium," Harley reminded him. "Or killin' Raven's guys."

"We need to get our bearings," Yang decided. "The others might be somewhere else on this…cake. How do we get off this world, anyway?"

"See, that's the tricky part," Harley told her. "I usually go through places the Doc got set up for me. But otherwise, ya need a ship, or a magic portal, or sometimes a bean, or sometimes a piece of a star…rare stuff."

"Right," Yang sighed.

A soft voice rang out, singing an eerily wistful tune: "Someday, somewhere, somehow, I'll love again…I just need to find someone…"

"WHO? WHAT?" Giovanni's head whipped around. "WHO'S SINGING?"

"Where's it coming from?" Yang asked. She followed the sound, looking to the third person; "…Harley?"

"Someone who treats me better," the voice sang. "Someone who wants me around…"

"It ain't me," Harley said nervously. "I…I think it's comin' from my pocket."

The five pink shards she'd kept on her the whole while levitated up and off her, glowing brightly, assembling in midair to forge an upside-down heart.

"Someday," the voice continued, emanating from the gem, "somewhere, somehow – "

A brilliant flash, and Spinel had physical form once more, hand on her chest as she concluded her verse:

"I'm gonna feel found."

"WHOA!" Harley, Yang, and Giovanni all backed away from her.

Spinel sniffed, nose turned up as she tilted her head to look at them. "You WOULD be repulsed," she scoffed. "After all, you thought I was just an ordinary broken rock. The kind of thing you could just make a NECKLACE out of! Well, I'm a Gem with feelings, too!"

"I didn't know, okay?" Harley protested. "If I'd'a known – well, let's just say I'm sorry! Nobody said you were alive!"

"That's because I'm not." Spinel folded her arms, which were loose like rope rather than bending at an elbow. "Currently, I'm SHATTERED, which means I can't come out and play. Thanks to that brute in the blue armor."

"No idea who you're talking about," Giovanni informed her. "Whatever happened, we weren't there for it."

"So you're…dead?" Yang attempted to understand the situation.

"Noooo, I'm SHATTERED," Spinel corrected. "Meaning I'm locked in stasis inside my core, which YOU were carrying around in your pocket like some kind of good-luck charm!"

"I knew it!" Harley gasped. "You gave me the song ta help unite Oncey an' Ainsley in true friendship!"

"I like to sing when I'm comatose!" Spinel argued. "Wouldn't you, if you were stuck inside your own heart?"

"So how'd you get out now?" Giovanni asked. "Did we do something to unlock your super secret final form? Perform a necromancy by accident?"

"Simple," Spinel said mischievously. "This is all a dream. Now, we Gems may not need to dream, but we know how they work. They make excellent vehicles for telepathic communication. We've all been thrown into a Sleeping World of some sort, and given that you three are all incredibly lucid, it's certainly none of YOU that's asleep."

"You sure?" Harley asked. "'Cause if all we gotta do is wake up – "

"You don't understand how this WORKS, do you?" Spinel groaned. "Either the dreamer of the dream we're currently in has to wake up, which might destroy us completely or free us depending on the odds, or…" She pondered it. "Well, I suppose there is no 'or.' We'd just be stuck here forever. Not that I'm in any hurry to go back to my coma, mind you."

"FOREVER?" Yang sputtered. "But Haven! RUBY!"

"Not my problem," Spinel told her. "Sheesh, I've never known someone to get so worked up about a Ruby before. I never liked them. Too boring, too military."

"I am…missing a lot of context," Yang realized.

"The important thing is," Giovanni said, "we're stuck in a dream, and so are my boys, and so are possibly all Harley's friends she isn't friends with yet, and THERE'S NO WAY OUT?"

"H-hey, calm down!" Harley urged. "We still dunno what this place is like! Maybe it's got some sorta magic that'll break us on out?"

"Ooh, are we exploring?" Spinel asked, eyes sparkling and wide. "A new playground, perhaps?"

"I wouldn't say playground," Yang told her, "but we need to figure out where the hell we are."

She began to lead the way, down steps made of sponge cake that brought them off the vantage point. Harley and Giovanni walked along while Spinel cartwheeled beside them. The sight that awaited them at the bottom of the steps didn't clear things up at all.

The main part of the island was still cake, with dollops of whipped cream, paved paths of chocolate, and planks of graham cracker making up the scenery. Several sakura trees that were quite obviously plant life and not dessert, as well. This part of the island was mostly taken up by an enormous dome, painted to look like the head of some sort of creature with big round eyes. And that creature was exactly what was running around on the island in all colors. About the size of a Moogle, each one had a teddy-bear body and a big round head upon which was affixed a matching shower cap (or maybe it was part of their heads; it was hard to tell).

"This has gone from 'what the hell' to 'what the fuck,'" Giovanni said incredulously. He noticed the pupils on the painted dome face dilate despite being architecture, which set him extremely on edge.

"Uhhhhhh…" Harley gaped at the sight. She then tentatively put up a hand; "Hi?"

It was better than Spinel and Yang being at a complete and total loss for words.

The little creatures roaming the island all turned to look at the newcomers, then gasped. One of them, whose body was a deep plum shade, hurried forward to greet them.

"Well, hooooow-dy!" he said happily. "Welcome to Normin Island!" He threw out his arms to gesture to the entirety of the landmass, smiling brightly.

Harley couldn't help herself; "Aww…"

"He is pretty cute," Yang admitted. "Wait. He? She?"

"I'm a he!" the little purple creature said proudly. He gestured to himself; "Name's Atakk! How y'all doin'?"

"Um." Giovanni did a double take. Then a triple take. "I mean. Fine, I guess, in that we didn't go splat on the ground, but also not fine, 'cause we're stuck here and we have no idea how to get back home or where all our friends are, and WHAT is this place, again?"

"Normin Island!" Atakk said proudly. "You mean you ain't never seen a Normin? That's what we all are: Normins!" He tilted his head; confused. "Though how'd you folks even get here? We keep this island a secret from the mainland, and it moves constantly to make it harder to find! Can't have people takin' advantage of us, after all!"

"Would you believe we fell from the sky?" Yang shrugged. "Probably not. After all, that's pretty…ab-Normin."

Harley screamed with laughter. Giovanni groaned. Spinel chided, "That was TERRIBLE and you should feel ashamed!"

"We don't get many sky-fallers," Atakk mused. "Well, you're welcome to stay as long as ya like! Though how were you plannin' to get back into the sky?"

"No clue." Harley shrugged. "Though at this point, we'd take a ride off this island."

"Not yet!" Giovanni hissed. "We gotta make sure my boys and Emma aren't here first!"

"Oh, I'm afraid that's gonna be a little difficult," Atakk said sheepishly. "We don't quite have boats around these parts. Like I said, we try to stay away from the mainland as much as we can! Though I always have wanted to visit there. I hear they've got this thing called 'fine art' that's just all kinds of beautiful! Maybe I'll find a way to go once I get my helmet made!"

"So…no boat," Yang reiterated. "No way off this island."

"Nnnnope!" Atakk said proudly.

"You," Giovanni growled, "are NO HELP."

"Aww…" Atakk scuffed the icing on the ground with his foot.

"Well, look what you went and did, Mr. Citrine!" Spinel scolded. "You went and made that poor, adorable creature sad!"

"Sorry?" Giovanni attempted. "But, like, he just told us we're trapped on a giant floating cake?"

"And you don't have a plan yet for how you're gonna get off the island when your helmet's done," Yang reiterated.

"Nooooo," Atakk sighed, still looking at the ground.

"Aww, sweetie, it's okay!" Harley told him, kneeling to better match his height. "Hey. If anybody less adorable had told me that kinda bad news, I mighta clocked him into the sea, but I just wanna pinch your little cheeks!"

"Really?" Atakk brightened. "I've…never had a pretty lady wanna pinch my cheeks before…"

"Don't push it," Harley said flatly, knowing right where that was going. She straightened up, brushing icing off her pant legs. Then taking a look at the hand she'd used to do so. "Also, quick question. Is this cake kosher? Not that we'd ever wanna eat your island, but…"

"I'm not sure what 'kosher' means," Atakk replied, "but Normin Island is made out of pure mana, which means anything you eat will just grow right back!"

"An' that means there ain't no animal products in the makin'?" Harley asked.

"Nope!" Atakk confirmed. "No animals, no plants – there's not even sugar, though it sure does taste like it!"

"Harley." Giovanni was whispering quite loudly. "I think we gotta take this and eat some of the island."

"I think that's all we needed to know." Yang nodded. "Thanks for nothing, I guess."

"You're welcome!" Atakk waved as he backed into the general hustle and bustle of the Normins (which was neither hustley nor bustley but mostly just lazing about). "Any old time!"

"So we're not just stuck in a dream world," Yang reiterated. "We're stuck on a giant cake in a dream world."

"Sure looks that way," Harley said in dismay.

"Well, that sucks," Giovanni sighed.

"You're all a bunch of party poopers!" Spinel cried, doing more cartwheels. "Where better to be trapped than on a giant CAKE where we can have fun and eat sweets all day?"

"I mean, if there's a bright side to this at all," Yang realized, "that's it."

"We're forgetting the main objective here." Giovanni stormed further into the center of the island. "We've got lost minions to find, and they might be somewhere on this same giant cake from Hell!"

"He's right," Harley realized. "We gotta do a sweep. What say you we split up and rendez-vous back here at this point?"

"I'm not sure who you're looking for," Spinel admitted, "nor do I really care, but I do want to explore this island, so if I HAPPEN to find somebody important-looking, I'll be sure to let you know."

They parted four different ways.

"BEAR TRAP!" Giovanni called out as he took a chocolate path down around to the lowest beach of the island. "CRUSHER! FLAMETHROWER?"

Harley peered inside the dome, which contained an immense golden statue of a Normin. "Ragsy?" she asked, her voice reverberating against the dome's interior. "Gar? You in here?"

At the docks made of graham, Yang shook her head; "I can't believe I'm actually doing this…EMERALD SUSTRAI! WHERE ARE YOU? I PROMISE I'M NOT GONNA PUNCH YOUR LIGHTS OUT!"

The four returned to the isle's center when it became very clear that Normin Island was quite small and, furthermore, did not contain anyone else they recognized.

"We need a way off this doughball before we can find any of your friends," Yang asserted.

"But we got nothin'," Giovanni sighed.

"Even I'm starting to get tired of this place," Spinel admitted.

"Hey," Harley brought up. "We ain't really been properly introduced. Name's Harley. Harley Quinn. These are my pals Giovanni an' Yang. What's your deal?"

"Oh, me?" Spinel replied. "I'm a Spinel. Created specifically to be a fun-loving companion; your new best friend! …Or, at least, I was, until my own best friend in all the great wide universe ABANDONED ME IN OUR GARDEN FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS."

"No way!" Harley gasped. "Why would anybody do that?"

"To win a war or save a planet, I guess." Spinel waved a hand dismissively. "But without ANY CONSIDERATION of how I might feel about it! Which is why I was ready to DESTROY that pitiful rock she left me for!"

"So you're a VILLAIN!" Giovanni accused, though he sounded more proud than anything.

"I – " Spinel paused, looking quite sheepish. "Am I 'evil,' now? I mean, yes, I was willing to destroy people…I don't know how many there were on that planet, maybe a few hundred…to get revenge on my ex-friend who technically doesn't exist anymore." Her eyes watered. "But…but I couldn't go through with it in the end! I just want her back! But I can't HAVE her back, and I'm – I'M JUST SO ANGRY!"

"Hey, Spins," Harley suggested. "How would ya like to make some new friends? Sounds kinda like you're willin' ta get your hands dirty, but not go all the way an' hurt too many people when ya stop an' think about it. Would ya ever wanna try'n find a niche in crime? Stealin', vandalism, jaywalkin'? Maybe even murder if the fella really, REALLY had it comin'?"

"I've never stolen anything before," Spinel realized. "Or vandalized anything. But thinking about Pink makes me so full of ANGER that I definitely want to try it!"

"It's just about as great as therapy," Harley told her. "I'm puttin' together a little group of baddies who know where ta draw the line. Whaddaya say? You want in?"

"Me?" Spinel was taken aback. "With you HUMANS? Why, I would NEVER!"

"Fine," Yang told her. "Then you're back down to no friends. Simple as that."

"WAIT!" Spinel cried. "I…I do really want friends. Maybe I could…try your group out for a while and see what I think?"

"Works for me," Harley said. "After all, we're stuck on this dessert together."

"But you're going to try and leave the Sleeping Realm!" Spinel realized. "Which means I won't be able to manifest a body anymore, and you'll just leave me in the same exact lurch that Pink did!"

Harley shook her head. "Nah. When we get outta here, I'm gonna find a way ta put you back together. Then you can come on fun crime sprees with us!" She clasped her hands together and smiled brightly.

"Is…is that a promise?" Spinel croaked.

"Sure is!" Harley beamed.

"Then…I'll try," Spinel told her. "But if you end up betraying me, then I WILL find a way to get my revenge! Make no mistake about THAT!"

"Done deal." Harley put out her right hand.

Spinel stared blankly at it. Then she pointed at it; "What do you want me to do with this?"

"Shake it," Harley told her.

So Spinel grabbed Harley's wrist and shook, making the hand flop around.

"Close enough," Harley decided. "Welcome to the team, Spins!"

"Oh, I am ALWAYS up for NEW MINIONS!" Giovanni cackled. Then his spirits sank; "But what're we gonna do NOW? We're at a dead end!"

"Weeeellllll…" Harley shrugged. "Might as well make the most outta where we are. Y'know what they say! If there ain't no bread – "

"Then let them eat cake!" Yang swung her fist.

And so began the taste test. The goal was to find everything edible on the island and taste a little bit. The cake that made up the different levels of the island varied; it turned out to be marble on the central platform, white cake up on the vantage point, and chocolate down below. True to what Atakk had said, everything eaten just regenerated. So they scooped up icing, memorizing what was whipped and what was buttercream, and stuffed their faces. Giovanni started musing about what sort of soups would go best with cake and had very nearly conjured up a few orbs when Spinel discovered the giant gelatin mold, and it turned out to be exactly as bouncy and trampoline-like as they'd all estimated. Not to mention a zippy lime flavor. Some of the Normins marinated in giant bowls of mint sauce like a spa treatment; Spinel couldn't resist immersing herself and reclining on the edge of the bowl while the others enjoyed the more savory taste of the sauce. Giovanni knew the answer to this one, and soon he had offered Yang a delicious sphere of levitating lamb-and-lentil soup.

When they ran out of things to eat, they chatted with the Normins a bit. Apparently the Normins liked to find a particularly sacred human (or "malak," which was a surprise term for Harley to hear – apparently angels just roamed around this world and people were all right with it) to tag along with on a trip around the world every now and again. Other than that, they were largely reclusive. They did like to play a game of memory matching, in which they would arrange in a grid and strike different poses when told, and those on the outside would have to guess which pairs of Normin had agreed to do the same poses by calling them out one at a time. By working as a team, Harley, Yang, Giovanni, and Spinel managed to clear three grids of Normin in record time.

And then, at last, there was nothing left to do but lie down on the iced surface of the island, each's feet pointing in one of the cardinal directions, and stare up at the fluffy white clouds traversing the sapphire-blue sky.

"Well," Yang sighed, "Haven's probably screwed without me to help."

"Might be," Harley agreed, becoming rather melancholy.

"No idea where any of my beloved minions went," Giovanni groaned.

"Nope," Harley confirmed.

"And do you have any idea how you're going to give me my form back, if we're able to leave?" Spinel inquired.

"No clue," Harley sighed. "My guess? This is prob'ly our life now."

"Guess I gotta work on my matching-soups-to-desserts skills," Giovanni said, quite lackluster.

"I need to think of more cake puns," Yang grunted.

"You know," Spinel realized, "having a body is only worth as much as the places you can actually go with it."

Suddenly, a cry went up from the Normin; "A SHIP!"

"A HUMAN SHIP!"

"Wait, WHAT?" All four sat up in unison, backs straight as boards.

It was Yang who saw it, as she was looking toward the docks. An old-fashioned galleon, with blood-red sails and a hull of wood that was so richly colored, the rest of it looked similarly red as well.

She tried to raise her right arm to point at it. Remembered. Used her left. "Look!"

"WE'RE SAVED!" Harley leapt right up into the air.

"FINALLY!" Giovanni crowed, throwing up both fists.

"Wha – " Spinel's eyes shimmered. "Is that a human ship? It looks so…strange."

"I dunno," Yang replied, "but I just hope that shipping is free!"

"I ship it!" Harley added.

Yang turned to her, beaming brightly, and put up her hand for a high-five. "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"MAYBE IT'S PIRATES!" Giovanni yelped excitedly. "I really hope it's pirates. I so so so so so hope it is pirates. They're like villains, but AT SEA!"

The four ran down to the docks where the ship was pulling in, its gangplank lowered. A trio of men disembarked, setting foot on Normin Island.

At the forefront, a tall and graceful man with a long, dark mane of hair, clothed in an elaborate purple jacket. The minute he got a good look at the isle, he began to guffaw; "Well, Eizen? Is this what you thought your 'Terror Island' would be like?"

The second to hit the docks was a muscular blond man clothed in black, his blue eyes wide and his jaw dropped. "This…" He sputtered. "This isn't what the legends said it would be like at all!"

The man in purple began to guffaw, doubling over; "That just goes to show how much stock you should put in old legends!"

The third man was skinny, shirtless but bearing a maroon vest, his scraggly blond hair topped with a tricorn hat that had a large golden bird resting atop it. "For a place called 'Terror Island,'" he laughed, "this doesn't look scary at all!"

It was then that Harley, Giovanni, Yang, and Spinel arrived on the dock to greet the newcomers that were hopefully pirates. For all Yang and Spinel knew, these were three perfect strangers. And the man in purple, as well as the one with the bird on his head, was unfamiliar to Harley or Giovanni.

But the taller, broader blond – him, they recognized.

As Punchy.

With a scream, Harley launched herself at Punchy, a fist flying to deck him in the face, and soon he was sprawled across the cracker-dock, which surprised Harley, as she'd thought he would've put up more of a fight.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?" Punchy rubbed the spot on his jaw where he'd been socked.

"Don't play dumb with me!" Giovanni told him, extending a hand to point at him. "YOU know what you did! Why, if I had my Soul-Slugger Doom Bat with me right now, you'd REALLY be in for it!"

This just set the other two men off laughing. "You make friends wherever you go," the one in purple chuckled, "don't you, Eizen?"

"What did I do to OFFEND you?" Eizen asked incredulously, wrenching himself to a standing position.

"Sweet Jazz City?" Harley reminded him. "Cyclonis? Dream Eaters? TRYIN' TO BEAT RAGSY TO DEATH?"

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT ANY OF THOSE WORDS MEAN!" Eizen yelled.

"I…don't think that's the guy you're looking for," Yang suggested.

"He is SO the guy we're looking for!" Giovanni argued. "I mean NOT looking for! We didn't wanna get rescued by HIM! He tried to kill us!"

"Now hang on." Harley raised a hand to silence Giovanni. "I'm startin' ta think – "

"That he's plotting an elaborate scheme to gain our trust?" Giovanni ranted on. "That he – "

"Giovanni, HUSH!" Harley snapped.

And with an "Uh, okay," he reluctantly did, because Harley was scary when she got into that mode.

"I've seen my fair share of weird stuff," Harley reminded him. "The guy we fought coulda been some kinda clone or double. Or this is the guy, and he don't remember a thing."

The man with the bird on his hat reached up beneath said hat to ruffle his own hair; "I'm lost."

"The important question is…" Harley fixed a glare on Eizen. "Ya got any intention ta beat us up NOW?"

"Well, you did attack me first," Eizen muttered, "but if you're willing to talk your way to a more peaceful solution, then let's hear it."

Harley sighed, then put out her right hand. "Real sorry. We thought you were somebody else, or maybe you thought you were somebody else. It ain't clear yet. Said your name was 'Eizen'?"

"Yeah," Eizen confirmed, eyeing Harley's hand suspiciously.

"Harley," Harley said. "That's who I am."

And with a slow nod, Eizen grasped her gloved hand firmly in his own. It was strong, thick, good for punching. And by the looks of it, Eizen had used it to punch things people normally shouldn't, if the thin scars crisscrossing those hands were any indication. "First Mate Eizen of the Van Eltia," Eizen said deliberately. "Though most know me as…the Reaper."

"Oh, here we go," the man with the bird on his head chuckled.

"Though I shouldn't be the first one you greet!" Eizen let go of Harley's hand suddenly. "Not while the captain is present!"

"Captain?" Harley whirled around to the other two men. "I'm just gonna take a guess here." She pointed to the man in purple. "You?"

"Yes." The man smirked mischievously, his eyes sparkling. "Captain Aifread, in fact. I'm sure that name means something to you."

He had expected some sort of reaction, but Harley, Yang, Giovanni, and Spinel just looked at him, befuddled.

"Or perhaps it doesn't," Aifread realized.

"How have you NOT heard of Aifread?" the man with the bird on his hat urged. "You know! The most feared pirate in all of the seas?"

Giovanni gasped, then let out a cry of "YYYYEEEESSSSSS! I WAS SO HOPING FOR PIRATES!"

"I mean, I wouldn't be so quick to trust pirates," Yang chimed in, "but we're kind of in a desperate situation here." She smiled at Eizen. "Besides. Looks like you and I are siblings in the art of the knuckle sandwich." She held up her left hand, curling the fingers.

Eizen smiled, betraying a strong sense of pride. "So you're a fellow fistfighter. I must say I'm intrigued by that brace you're wearing." Then his face fell as he realized. "The loss must have been great to you."

Yang didn't have to ask what he meant. "It was a little…disarming," she admitted, and Eizen's brow twitched. "Though I used to have something to replace it. Some jerk stole it."

"Well, I'm Benwick!" the man with the bird on his hat spoke up, and the bird cooed while fluttering its wings. "And we came here to finally explore the last island we hadn't been able to mark on our map!"

"Legend had said Terror Island was a cavalcade of horrors," Eizen sighed, "too great to be experienced by the ordinary man."

"So naturally, I had thought it would be a place to find some adventure," Aifread picked up. "And perhaps some valuables along the way."

"No valuables," Harley informed him. "Just cake. Lots an' lots of cake."

"But why?" Eizen asked. "Why would so many stories be so wrong?"

"I can answer that one!"

Atakk came trotting down the dock, now wearing a very gaudy golden helmet in a samurai style; it gleamed beneath the sun and almost made up half his body mass. "We here on Normin Island don't take too kindly to intruders," he said. "So we send out all sortsa fake stories about this bein' a horrible and dangerous place! But you're welcome to stay if you want!"

"These guys are LITERALLY intruders who came to rob you," Yang told Atakk.

"Wait." Eizen blanched. "Did you say NORMIN ISLAND?"

And he turned an about-face, pressing his fingertips to his forehead in dismay.

"Reaper's Curse is at it again, huh?" Benwick asked sympathetically.

"THERE'S A CURSE TOO?" Giovanni was practically drooling.

"Are we all going to ignore that Normin's incredibly fashionable new helmet?" Spinel asked.

The answer was yes.

"Eizen is quite the unlucky one," Aifread explained. "Wherever he goes, disaster follows. Our ship has nearly been torn apart, blown to bits, and dragged down to the depths more times than I can count."

"So WHY keep such a catastrophe magnet around?" Spinel asked derisively.

"Because he's our friend!" Benwick asserted angrily.

"And more importantly," Aifread went on, "because every man – and woman – has to learn to face the challenges that plague them head-on. The Reaper's Curse is part of who Eizen is. So naturally, I wasn't going to let him get away with denying that part of him – "

"Aww, that's so sweet!" Harley beamed.

" – even if it meant he had to brush death a hundred times and more," Aifread finished, "for that is how he must learn to live and forge his own path."

Harley's face fell. "Less sweet."

"No," Eizen grumbled, still turning away in embarrassment from his navigational faux pas. "He's right. I've had to learn to embrace who I am in order to live my life to the fullest. I am at the wheel of my own ship, and I chart my own course. That's my way." He glanced over his shoulder at the four who were still so strange to him. "But be warned. Even being close to me puts you in danger, and not just because I'm of a mind to take whatever you have that's worth anything on the market."

"Are you even serious right now?" Yang asked. "We're having a nice conversation, and you wanna mug us?"

Eizen turned to look at her. "You and I could have a fair fight for it," he told her. "My curse hinders me the same way your missing arm hinders you."

"I've learned to get by without it if I need," Yang replied. "So if what you're saying about this curse is true, I've actually got a leg up. Or is it an arm up?"
"It's not worth it," Benwick sighed. "Like they said. There's only cake."

"And a solid gold statue of – " Atakk began.

Yang stepped in front of him quickly; "By the way, we're kind of trapped on this island. Any chance we could bum a ride on your pirate ship?"

"PLEASE SAY YES," Giovanni practically screamed.

"How did you end up trapped on Terror – I mean Normin Island?" Benwick asked.

"They fell right from the sky!" Atakk proclaimed.

"Sounds fake, I know," Harley sighed. "But – "

"I've heard tales of those who arrive from other worlds," Eizen related, eyes wide. "I'd never thought I would actually meet someone like that, see them with my own two eyes. But the port gossip tells of the shapeshifting pengyon in Southgand, and the strange woman of the North, both of whom are told to come from a place called 'Rieze Maxia.' Are you from that realm as well?"

"Well, we ain't from this place," Harley told him, "but as for the rest…it's complicated."

"Which would explain why you didn't recognize the name of Aifread," Eizen realized. "In that case, I DEMAND you set sail with us off this island. I need to know all the details of where you came from, and how you ended up traveling to a place like this."

Giovanni tugged on Harley's sleeve; "Should we, uh, tell him this is all somebody's dream?"

"An' give him an existential crisis?" she hissed back. "No! We'll just talk about where we came from an' say it was a magic portal that brought us here, an' that's it!"

"Where exactly are you going from here?" Spinel asked. "Not that it makes any difference to us. We don't know which way is which or what anything is. But where are you going to take us?"

"Well," Eizen mused, "we have contraband to sell at all major ports. And right now, this island's current position is closest to Northgand."

"To Hellawes it is, then," Aifread laughed. "They may be a bunch of religious zealots, but even they stop fearing the Empyreans when we bring flamestone to warm their frigid hovels."

"Flamestone?" Giovanni asked. "Is that, like, illegal?"

"It's most commonly used as an explosive!" Benwick informed him. "So, yes!"

"SWEEEEET!" Giovanni keened.

"Glad to come aboard, Cap'n Aifread!" Harley said with a salute. "An' First Mate Eizen! An', uhhhh…ya got a title, Benwick?"

Benwick shrugged. "I don't really need one."

"If I'm going to be ferrying four strays across the oceans," Aifread told them, "I'll need to know the names of those strays. Harley, I've heard. And the rest of you?"

"I'm Giovanni Potage," Giovanni introduced. "Villain extraordinaire!"

"I'm just your average everyday Spinel," Spinel stated. "Well. With a little makeover brought on by extreme heartbreak and rage."

"Yang Xiao Long," Yang said with a smile. "Y'know, of all the things I thought might happen to me today, hitching a ride with pirates is probably the last one. But I'll run with it. I'm REALLY getting sick of buttercream icing."

"If you're going off this island," Atakk piped up, "then I wanna come, too! I've always wanted to see the fine art that people make on the mainland!"

"You're in luck, then, little fellow," Aifread chuckled. "We have several forged paintings to sell off. They may not be the originals, but your eyes won't be able to tell the difference."

"Oh, boy!" Atakk began to jump for joy. His oversized helmet rattled.

"If there's nothing more to settle," Eizen sighed, "then get onboard the Van Eltia and we'll shove off. I don't feel right marking this one on the map…and more importantly, I need to put as much distance between myself and this embarrassment as I can."

"Just think about that next time you get us chasing something you've only heard about in whispers at the port!" Benwick laughed.

Eizen muttered about how he'd triple-checked with credible sources to back up the rumors about Terror Island as he stormed back up the gangplank. Aifread followed, then Benwick, Harley, Yang, Giovanni, Spinel, and Atakk.

The ship called the Van Eltia pushed away from Normin Island, leaving behind the pastel cavalcade. Spinel waved at the island over the edge, even though the island didn't much care who came or went.

"They're out there," Harley told Giovanni. "My pals. Your boys. Emmy. We're gonna find 'em all."

"You think I doubted that for even the tiniest little smidgen of a second?" Giovanni scoffed. "HA! I always knew we'd come out on top."

"So!" Yang spoke up. "This is pretty neat, huh?"

"Still worried about your sister?" Harley asked.

"Yeah," Yang admitted, "but…that's just how sisters are. Like I said. I trust Weiss. And it looks like we have a lot bigger problems right now."

"But also bigger fun," Harley told her. "Now, at least, ya get to ride a cool pirate ship an' see a whole new world."

"Yeah." Yang smiled softly. "It is the kind of adventure I signed up for when I enrolled at Beacon. Granted, I kind of implied I would, you know, STOP people like pirates, but these guys seem pretty chill for a bunch of looters."

"A little crime never hurt anybody," Harley told Yang. Then: "Well, uh, that ain't true. That REALLY ain't true. But – "

"But I am a bandit's daughter," Yang filled in. "And, more importantly, friends with a punny bandit and her buddy who I TOTALLY saw take like twenty candy bars from the Just-Rite."

"YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT THAT!" Giovanni barked.

"What are we all talking about?" Spinel bounded over, springing from hand to feet to hand, her limbs coiled up for extra bounce. She straightened up to stand beside Yang, Harley, and Giovanni at the ship's railing.

"Just that this might not be as bad a sitch as we all thought," Harley told her, shutting her eyes to feel the sea breeze. "Us heathens are goin' on a pretty big adventure!"

...

Whale World, much like the Hot Kettle, featured stained-glass murals inset of its double doors, though these looked much newer than the café's, stylistically done to match it. The subjects depicted were a pair of orca whales, one per door, breaching so they looked as though they would collide in the cleft of the doors.

Beyond those doors, Ven and Papyrus stepped into a small lobby packed with nautical memorabilia. At the reception desk, a cheerful-looking man in a plaid shirt, with a crop of curly brown hair atop his head, hummed a little tune while he filled out paperwork.

"Uh…hi?" Ven greeted.

The man looked up and gave them both a winning smile. "Hey there! What can I do ya for?"

"WE'VE ALREADY DISCUSSED THIS," Papyrus told him. "NEITHER OF US WANTS TO BE DONE."

"I'm…not sure that's what he meant," Ven stated. Then, after some thought; "Or is it?"

The man just laughed. "Sorry for the confusion. What I meant was: how can I help?"

"You're Andy Jason, right?" Ven greeted.

"The one and only!" Andy replied. "Meanwhile, you two look like some new faces. That's a pretty nifty costume."

"These are just my clothes," Ven replied, putting a guarded hand on his armor plate.

"HE MEANT MY VERY REALISTIC SKELETON COSTUME," Papyrus reminded Ven.

"…Oh." Ven dropped his hand from the plate.

"I bet you came here to learn about some whales!" Andy said cheerfully, reaching beneath the desk to retrieve a ticket printed on solid cardstock. "Once you've seen some of the exhibits, why not test your knowledge on the games? Punch all four and you get to spin the prize wheel!"

"So it's a museum!" Ven realized, lighting up.

"ALL DEDICATED TO WHALES!" Papyrus added, similarly enthusiastic.

"You bet," Andy told them. "We give whale-watching tours, too."

"THAT'S RIGHT," Papyrus recalled. "WE HEARD THAT."

"We, uh…we know about your business from Katie Firestone," Ven stated.

"You're her friends?" Andy asked. "Well, any friend of Katie is a friend of mine!"

"I AM CONFUSED," Papyrus admitted. "I HAD THOUGHT YOU TWO WERE…NOT FRIENDS."

"Well, sure, we've had our differences," Andy clarified. "Especially where our businesses are involved. But that doesn't make her a bad person. It does, however, make it a little frustrating when she gets the customer base my operation should have."

"Did you know her boat was vandalized this morning?" Ven posed.

"It was?" Andy looked taken aback. "That's a shame. I wonder if it had anything to do with those burglaries…"

"THERE ARE BURGLARIES NOW, TOO?" Papyrus' eyes were visible, bugging to the front of their sockets.

"A couple of stores were robbed in the middle of the night," Andy explained. "The inventory was ransacked, but there was no sign of forced entry or exit. The police are stumped. But I think I know what you're thinking. How can you be sure that I, Katie's biggest competitor, didn't vandalize her boat?"

"WELL, UH…NO," Papyrus replied.

"I'm already prepared for people to suspect me," Andy sighed. "You have my word that I had nothing to do with it. But some of the circumstantial evidence does stack against me."

"Like what?" Ven asked.

"Well, for one, people are going to assume I have the strongest motive," Andy told them. "Seeing as I'd been trying to buy Katie's tours out. Especially with that orca out there."

"WAIT A MINUTE," Papyrus told him. "THERE'S A NO-BOAT ZONE. SO NEITHER OF YOU COULD GO OUT THERE ANYWAY."

"She could," Andy revealed. "She has a deal with the Fisheries department to be the whale's official protector. No one told you this?"

"No," Ven replied, filled with a sudden doubt – the doubt that comes when you suspect a friendly face may have lied to you. "We even talked to her, and she didn't say anything about it."

"Huh," Andy remarked. "Strange. Then I guess she also didn't tell you she takes paying passengers up close and personal to 'monitor' that whale. Meanwhile, my boat's completely blocked off from the area."

Ven and Papyrus exchanged a glance. They were now both concerned about the very same thing.

"I see I've troubled you," Andy realized. "Look, I don't think she would go so far as to wreck her own boat to frame me or garner sympathy. Maybe she's a little underhanded in her business tactics, but at the end of the day, I'd rather be civil. The long and short of it is, I have the most reason out of anyone here to want to sabotage Katie, and the very thought of it just disgusts me. That should tell you a thing or two about the person who actually did pull that off."

"Yeah," Ven replied halfheartedly. "Pretty bad."

"Look," Andy encouraged, "why don't you two step on in to the exhibit floor? I can promise you it's way more fun there than talking about crime and sabotage out here."

"WE WILL DO SO; THANK YOU." Papyrus nodded to Andy. "LET'S GO, VEN!"

They strode through a short hall lined with blue tiles to reach the exhibit floor: a sizeable area packed with displays. There were scale models of various whales, educational game stations, informational plaques, and, at the heart of it all, a whale skeleton that dominated the room.

Ven gasped when he saw it; "I'm sorry, Papyrus! I didn't think - !"

But Papyrus simply walked right up to the skeleton and placed a hand on its head, bones clacking against skull. "I'M GUESSING YOU THINK I'M PERTURBED," he said calmly. "IT ISN'T LIKE THAT. THIS ISN'T THE FIRST SKELETON I'VE SEEN IN A MUSEUM. THEY AREN'T DISTURBING TO ME. IT'S…A LITTLE DIFFERENT. YOU SEE, WHEN A MONSTER LIKE ME, WHO IS MADE UP OF PURE MAGIC, IS WELL AND TRULY KILLED, WELL, THEN, THEY JUST CRUMBLE INTO DUST. AND NOT THE COOL KIND RUBY USES IN HER WEAPON. THERE…JUST AREN'T DEAD SKELETONS WHERE I COME FROM, AT LEAST NOT ON THE MONSTER HALF. BUT IN THE HUMANS' DOMAIN, THEY KEEP THE SKELETONS OF THEIR DEAD PRESERVED, AND…IT JUST NEVER QUITE FEELS TO ME LIKE THEY'RE REALLY DEAD, SINCE THEY'RE THERE AND WHOLE AND NOT DUSTY. JUST LIKE THEY'RE ASLEEP. WAITING FOR A GOOD REASON TO WAKE UP. NOW, I KNOW THAT'S NOT TRUE, AND THAT IT CAN'T BE DONE…BUT IT TAKES A GOOD WHILE TO SINK IN, SOMETIMES." He clacked his fingers once more on the whale skull. "THIS FELLOW LOOKS AS THOUGH HE IS HAVING A VERY LONG NAP, THOUGH NOT IN A COMFORTABLE POSITION, MIND YOU. IT SEEMS AT ANY MOMENT, HE COULD DECIDE TO GET UP AND FLOAT OUT THE DOOR."

"I guess you could say he's…bone tired!" Ven laughed.

Papyrus cringed; "NOW THAT WAS MORE PERTURBING THAN ANY SKELETON. BUT I'LL LET YOU GET AWAY WITH IT BECAUSE YOU'RE VEN."

Ven approached a plaque, reading up. "The Minke whale," he muttered. "It's…hard to believe something this big lives in the sea."

"OH, THAT PART I KNEW!" Papyrus said excitedly, taking his place beside Ven. "BACK HOME, ONION-SAN LIVED IN THE WATER, AND HE WAS VERY LARGE. I THINK HE WAS A WHALE, OR MAYBE HE WAS AN OCTOPUS…A JELLYFISH? YOU KNOW, I AM REALIZING JUST NOW THAT I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT SORT OF MONSTER ONION-SAN IS. HE'S JUST ONION-SAN, I GUESS. GOOD FOR A CHAT SOMETIMES." A long pause. "I DON'T SUPPOSE HE'S DOING TOO WELL, THOUGH. HOPEFULLY HE IS STAYING UNDER THE WATER AND AWAY FROM ALL THE TENSION GOING ON WHEN I LEFT HOME."

"Do you want to go back?" Ven asked. "See if you can help?"

"SANS ENCOURAGED ME TO LEAVE," Papyrus sighed. "HE NORMALLY DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING. HE SEES IT AS A LOST CAUSE, AND I…I'M AFRAID OF WHAT I MIGHT FIND. BUT I TRUST MY FRIENDS TO BE ABLE TO FIGHT. THEY ALWAYS DID HAVE A MORE SOLID BACKBONE THAN I DID, AND I'M A SKELETON, SO THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING."

"I think you're plenty strong," Ven told him. "I mean…this was all your idea in the first place. To come here. And to help me out with…those thoughts I'd been having. I dunno if any of your friends could've had the same effect. I'm sure they would've tried to help, but they wouldn't have done it the way you would."

The way they stood, their hands dangled next to one another, backs of those hands brushing. And neither could really deny that he wanted to reposition those hands to maybe sit within one another. Similarly, neither could actually ask for it.

"It's weird that they don't have teeth," Ven said suddenly. "This kind of whale, I mean. Can you imagine not having teeth and having to filter water through brush stuff in your mouth every time you wanted to eat?"

"IT SOUNDS HORRIBLE," Papyrus told him. "WHICH REALLY MAKES IT ALL THE MORE IMPRESSIVE THEY'RE ABLE TO DO IT."

They wandered around, soaking up every bit of knowledge they could about whales, as well as some porpoises.

"It's so weird to me," Ven admitted. "This knowledge is just…out here for anyone to read, about these amazing animals I've never seen before in my life. I always thought my life would get more exciting once I was able to go on big adventures, to visit other worlds. But I guess there was a lot of small stuff I was missing out on, too."

"THERE'S A LOT TO FIND BEAUTY IN," Papyrus agreed.

Once they'd perused all the text there was to find, they took Andy's suggestion, using the ticket he'd given them to activate the game stations. They were tested to match whale calls to the species, which was easy, since Ven had listened to most of the calls multiple times. They guided a digital pod of whales out of an inlet by answering questions that challenged how much they'd recalled from the plaques. They guided another pixelated porpoise through a sidescrolling ocean, avoiding large predators and steering her to the sorts of fish she could eat. And with every victory, another punch was added to the card.

The last game was a variation on Whack-A-Mole (or -Grimm), in which whales with open mouths would surface, but instead of simply pounding them into submission, one had to tap the plastic tongues with a foam fish as if feeding them.

"To tell you the truth," Ven admitted, "I like this a lot better than the version at Litwak's."

"IT'S MUCH NICER," Papyrus agreed. "I NEVER DID LIKE SIMPLY BOPPING THINGS ON THE HEAD WHEN THEY HAVEN'T EVEN SO MUCH AS TOLD A BAD PUN."

With a fourth victory punch to round out the card, they took it to the prize wheel, entering the card in a slot to qualify for a spin. Ven gave the hefty multicolored wheel a good start, and round and round it went, tantalizing with the thought of keychains, of T-shirts, of baseball caps.

Neither of them expected it to land on the only white space – the one labeled "Whale Watching Tour."

The joyous whooping of the pair alerted Andy to their arrival back in the lobby. "We won the tour!" Ven cried, placing the ticket – which had "Whale Watching Tour" punched on it – on the counter before Andy.

"Wonderful!" Andy beamed. "We'll do an exclusive tour: just the three of us! I can actually get the boat ready to take you out on the water after we close up, and since it's a Saturday, that's in just one hour. Think you can kill time until then?"

"I could hang out with these whales all day!" Ven said excitedly. "Not that I'd wanna pass up the tour for that."

"MEET YOU IN AN HOUR!" Papyrus added.

And they walked back in to look over the exhibits again, because if you have just learned about something interesting for the first time, no matter how well you think you have it memorized, it is rewarding to give it another visit.

The Whale World boat's motor thrummed as it took to the choppy sea. A cool breeze washed over Ven and Papyrus as Andy brought the boat along the shoreline, letting them see the crags of the cliffs at the isle's edges.

A sea lion surfaced beside the boat, and Papyrus screamed, "VEN! TAKE A PICTURE!"

"Aww, it's cute!" Ven snapped a shot of it with his GummiPhone.

A couple more sea lions made themselves visible; Ven documented them on his phone. Then an eagle gave the pair quite a scare when it landed on the railing, observing them with a watchful eye.

Ven and Papyrus clung to each other, screaming, until the eagle decided they were too big to eat and winged away.

"That was a close one!" Ven panted.

The boat slowed down as they passed a family of otters on the rocks. "Looks like they just birthed a new litter," Andy remarked.

A mother otter floated on her back; her pup was nestled on her stomach, clutched in her safe embrace. Jealous, an otter pup that was swimming about on its own gave a loud squalling that happened to be the most heart-wrenchingly adorable noise either Ven or Papyrus had known.

"IT'S TOO CUTE!" Ven screamed.

"I KNOW!" Papyrus wailed, hands over his breastplate. "I CAN'T STAND IT! I MIGHT JUST COLLAPSE INTO DUST RIGHT HERE! EXCEPT NOT REALLY."

The otter let out another plaintive cry, and Ven replied with a scream of "AaaaAAAAAAA!", as it was simply too much for his heart to handle. This one didn't get to occupy photo space – it got the honor of a short video that Ven doubted he'd ever erase.

Then a miraculous sight. In the distance, a black-and-white mass breached.

"Is that…?" Ven gasped.

"THE ORCA!" Papyrus cried. He pointed out to where he'd seen the creature: "SO YOU'RE THE ONE CAUSING ALL THE TROUBLE AROUND HERE!"

The boat stopped, and Andy walked up to the pair. "This is as close as we can get," he announced, "but I think it's still a beautiful view."

"Maybe it'll breach again!" Ven cried excitedly.

Sadly, it did not. But Papyrus used the moment to lead into a question he'd been dying to ask Andy; "WHAT DO YOU THINK SHOULD BE DONE WITH IT?"

"Me?" Andy laughed. "I think we should just leave it alone! We humans can barely handle ourselves, let alone a whole other species!"

That answer put a wistful pit in the space where Papyrus didn't have a stomach. Humans really weren't good at getting along with each other, after all. Introduce something else, be it whales or monsters, into the mix, and…well, Papyrus wondered if they'd all have been better off if humans had just left them alone all those years ago instead of mingling, trading cultures, getting familiar enough to start a war.

The boat docked, and Andy bid the two passengers a good day, waving to them; "Don't be strangers!"

"WHAT DO YOU THINK, VEN?" Papyrus asked, breaking out of his reverie. "DINNER AT THE HOT KETTLE?"

A sniffle. "Yeah. That sounds…great."

Papyrus' head whipped about to see Ven wiping his clearly wet eyes. "VEN!" he gasped. "WHAT'S WRONG?"

"Nothing's wrong now," Ven replied, now more obviously sobbing. "It's…good. It's just that I never, ever got to do anything even close to that during my Keyblade training. Just exploring, seeing things without there being some kind of danger hovering overhead that I needed to always run away from." He attempted to blink his tears away. "Sorry. I just…got emotional. It felt for the first time like I was really living in a world that was strange and all-new."

No. Papyrus was glad that humans and monsters had mingled, because Ven was a human, and if humans and monsters weren't able to converse, he wouldn't know Ven at all. But more importantly, he was seeing now the truth about isolation. He'd been able to break free of his own, thanks to Frisk's hard work and compassion. But he'd also been able to enjoy a relatively carefree life along the way, despite being trapped in a frozen town beneath a mountain. Whereas Ven, who hadn't gotten to meet so many people to either befriend or make enemies out of, had more to regret not doing then he ever had to regret doing, and that seemed a terrible, terrible shame.

So Papyrus told him, "NEVER AGAIN."

"Huh?"

"I'LL NEVER LET YOU BE ISOLATED LIKE THAT AGAIN," Papyrus told him. "TRAPPED AWAY FROM ALL THE GOOD THERE IS IN THESE WORLDS. I SWEAR, YOU'LL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO LIVE A FULL LIFE AND ENJOY THE LITTLE THINGS, SO LONG AS I HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT."

"Papyrus…" Ven smiled softly. "I don't even have anything to offer you in return yet."

"IT'S A GIFT, VEN," Papyrus told him. "YOU DON'T OWE ME ANYTHING. I JUST DON'T WANT YOU TO EVER GO BACK TO THAT KIND OF PLACE."

"Thank you," Ven said, almost inaudible. Then, picking up in volume; "Anyway. I am pretty hungry. Let's head on over."

...

The trip from Patch to Mistral would have been months by foot, but thanks to Gummi technology at play, Ruby Rose led her friends down the stone entrance tunnels to the city after less than a day since departing her childhood home.

"Okay, I remember you said something really omni – omin – scary about this place," Kazuichi brought up. "Remind me so I don't have to freak about getting stabbed when my back is turned?"

"It's not THAT cutthroat in this city," Ruby replied. "Qrow always told me it was arranged like…the further up you go, the safer it gets."

"It kinda sounds like Trade World," Booster mused. "Now, that place is dangerous, but you can find so many cool things there! Hey! Maybe we should take a trip there after this!" He caught himself flushing; "You know…just for fun!"

"Up?" Yuffie tilted her head. "Is the city in levels? Like Radiant Garden used to be before Maleficent smashed the Deepground in?"

"Wait," Kairi said, shaking her head. "What's this? Why don't I know about this? I live there. I RULE there."

"You would've been a little kid," Yuffie reminded her, "and probably floating in the abyss. There was this whole district built as an underground expansion of the city. Aerith actually used to live there. She says she was afraid of the sky when she was a kid. Afraid of the SKY! But then Maleficent took over and…" She arced a hand through the air, making a whistling sound as it plummeted down, followed by a "pppsssscchhhh" sound. "And no more Deepground."

"Okay, OKAY!" Ruby cried. "Can we save the exposition for later? Because we're about to hit the first view of the city and I really, REALLY don't want the moment to be spoiled!"

They had indeed come to a set of immense double doors.

"Kinda scary," Goofy remarked.

"Open them already!" Donald stamped his foot.

Nora took one door, Booster took the other, and the entrance was shoved open to reveal a vista of a deep valley that had been colonized with quaint architecture.

The moment was not at all spoiled.

Down in the market, the group continued on. "This is where we have to be careful," Ruby warned. "Qrow always said you can buy anything here, whether or not they should be selling it, so we need to stick together. Wandering off could be dangerous." She turned around to do a quick headcount of her friends. "Okay, Yuffie, Goofy, Kairi, Jaune, Ren, Booster, Kazuichi, Nora – wait."

Kazuichi wasn't actually there.

"DID HE ALREADY GET CAPTURED BY GANGSTERS?" Ruby screeched.

But his voice was unmistakably audible from a nearby booth; "I've never SEEN so many cool mechanical parts in one place, and all disassembled! Ohhhhh, I could make thousands of things out of these!"

Ruby sighed as she sighted the distinct neon-green jumpsuit; he was checking out a weapons booth. "Can somebody…?" She gestured toward him. "While we go find Qrow?"

"I'll go with him!" Goofy volunteered. "I've been thinkin' it's been a while since Donald and I got upgrades to our weapons anyhow! Maybe they got some neat shields!"

"Can I take a look?" Kairi asked. "I doubt there's anything that'll help improve a Keyblade, but – "

Those were the magic words. Kazuichi's voice carried to her; "IS THAT A FUCKING CHALLENGE?"

Laughing, Kairi nudged Jaune, and the two of them plus Goofy headed over to the weapons booth. "We'll keep in touch!" Goofy proclaimed as he held up his GummiPhone.

"As I was saying!" Ruby resumed the expedition. "They sell EVERYTHING here." She gestured around; "From weapons to food to books – "

"Did you say books?" Ren asked. Then, hurriedly: "Not that I need to check them out right now or anything."

Ruby sighed. "Go," she said, pointing toward the bookseller's stall.

As Ren briskly walked over, Ruby yelled after him, "BUT NOT ALONE!"

"I'll go with!" Donald volunteered. "I need to find some good entertainment anyway!"

"Okay," Ruby re-evaluated. "So now it's down to me, Booster, Yuffie, and Nor-ahhh-ohhhhhh no."

"Well, will you LOOK AT THAT!" Nora pointed dramatically to a stall across the way. "They're selling a thing that's literally only interesting to me and Yuffie!" She nudged Yuffie with her elbow.

Yuffie didn't quite grasp that Nora was playing matchmaker for the other two, but she did sense the dual agenda of trying to get the two of them off on their own adventure. "Sounds great!" she chirped, already heading off. "Later, Ruby!"

Well, now Ruby was alone with one of her crushes, and the others were scattered throughout the markets of Mistral, where crime rings pulsed in the shadows. Not how she'd expected to start this day.

"So…uh…Ruby," Booster began, "I was thinking your uncle might not be expecting so many dinner guests. Maybe we should pick up some more ingredients so we can handle that when we get to where he's staying."

"You know what?" Ruby replied. "That's a great idea! Follow me!"

They headed toward a cluster of stalls with food out in the open air, kept chilled by Dust-powered basins. "So what do you want to make?" Booster asked.

"I dunno," Ruby replied. She cast her gaze about the stalls; "Not really in the mood for ramen bowls, but I guess we'd have to poll the others on that one. Miso's pretty simple…too simple, actually."

"We gotta have fun with this one," Booster agreed.

"I'd always been curious about making my own sushi," Ruby mused, "but that seems too hard to pull off."

"Well, I think maybe that's all the more reason we should try it!" Booster urged. "I mean, we'll be working as a team, right? That should make it easier!"

"You know what?" Ruby declared. "We're gonna make sushi! …If the others are okay with that."

She retrieved her GummiPhone, adding the squadron leaders – Nora, Goofy, and Ren – to a group chat. She then typed out: "Planning for dinner! Kinda wanna make sushi. That good? :-D"

Three responses pinged back:

"Id be down"

"Sounds delicious."

"I'll probably have to do the hard parts for you but ok"

Ruby scowled at the phone; "Oh, ye of little faith, Ren."

"We'll show him," Booster told her.

Ruby typed out: "Flavor requests? :-D"

The responses rolled in:

"SPICY"

"I'd like one of those California rolls myself. But Kazuichi says spicy too, and Kairi and Jaune want something sweet."

"I'm not picky. Donald's very picky. I don't think you can make him happy no matter what you do so just go ahead with whatever"

"We've got orders in for some spicy, some sweet, and…uhhhh…" Ruby held the phone up to Booster. "You know what this word means?"

"Oh, that's a territory on Capital Planet!" Booster explained. "California rolls are made with cooked crab and avocado and cucumber." He was getting wistful just thinking about them. "They're for people who aren't really in the mood to eat raw fish, but it's a nice flavor that tastes neutral for in between spicy rolls, and the vinegar – "

"Okayokayokay stop." Ruby put up both her hands. She was sure the growling from her stomach was audible. "You're making me hungry, and we still have to buy the stuff and actually turn it into food first."

They pored over a booth dedicated to seafood. "So we'll need crab," Ruby reiterated, "and isn't tuna the one that's usually spicy? Oh, and we gotta use roe – "

"SO IT POPS BETWEEN YOUR TEETH!" Ruby and Booster said as one.

"What else?" Ruby thought out loud. "What sushi would be really, really cool and fun and universally applicable?"

"You're making sushi?" A dark-haired boy shopping one booth over turned to face the pair.

"Yeah," Ruby affirmed. "For the first time."

He beamed, eyes sparkling. "I love sushi! And there are so many recipes you can try! For example, I love to put chili sauce on a mango roll!"

There was another boy, shorter, about fourteen years old, who was also shopping in the vicinity. Shaggy dark hair, deep-tan skin, hazel eyes that reflected multiple colors. As he heard this conversation take place, he muttered to himself, "I KNOW, but that's not worth getting involved."

The excited boy continued; "And have you ever had a surf-and-turf roll? It's usually made with cooked beef and raw salmon. But I like a variant where you cook the salmon and leave the beef raw!"

The other boy repressed a gag. "Okay, fine," he whispered. "I'll step in." And step in he did, clearing his throat; "That's actually pretty dangerous. Don't eat that."

"Though if you really wanna have fun with sushi," the excited boy rambled, "then the best thing you can do is deconstruct all the ingredients and just serve it up in a cup!"

"Okay, NO!" the other boy snapped, waving his hands. "That's not – yeah, no, I agree with you and I'm telling him – that's not how sushi works. …'Affront.' That's a good word. It's an affront to the art of rolling sushi as a whole."

"You sure know a lot about sushi," Ruby told the stranger who kept talking to himself.

"No," the boy said meekly. "It's more like, uh…he doesn't know anything about sushi."

The first boy shrugged, then skipped off to continue his shopping elsewhere.

"So!" Ruby clasped her hands. "Got any good tips for a first-time sushi roller?"

"No," the boy said. Then he flinched; "I mean, yes. I had a friend who was really picky about it…apparently?"

"Are you okay?" Booster asked, suspicion rising.

"I'm good," the boy croaked.

"Oscar!" a hoarse voice called out. "Didn't find exactly what you were looking for, but I think I got – "

The speaker came into view. Tall, but walking bent, so he seemed shorter than he was. Young as far as adults go, but with chrome-gray hair all the same. Sunrise-colored eyes that widened when he beheld the girl in red.

"Ruby…?"

In return, Ruby gasped. "UNCLE QROOOOOWWWWW!"

And she tackled him. Or would have, if he weren't as sturdy and well-balanced as he was, but he managed to catch her and hold her up while still carrying the shopping bag he'd brought for the boy called Oscar.

"Long time, no see," Qrow chuckled as his niece's vise-grip tightened on him. "You picked up some new threads while you were out."

"QROW, I MISSED YOU SOOOO MUCH!" Ruby cried. "I HAD SO MANY ADVENTURES, AND I GOTTA TELL YOU ABOUT ALL OF THEM, BUT NOW I ALSO GOTTA KNOW WHY YOU'RE HERE IN MISTRAL AND – GAAAAAAH!"

"One thing at a time," Qrow laughed, setting Ruby back on the ground. He nodded to Booster; "I see you made a friend."

"And so did you!" Ruby pointed to Oscar. Then her brow furrowed; "He's not a nephew you adopted to replace me, is he?"

Qrow laughed at that. "No. It's complicated. Oscar and I are working for a similar goal right now, to put it simply. What about you? Finished up with business out there, or…?"

Ruby shook her head. "No…business out there just kinda crossed with business here. I want to find Weiss, Blake, and Yang and ask them to come with me." She flinched; "Wait; that's rude. You and Oscar can come too, if you want." Double flinch. "No, wait, AGH, this is my friend and his name is Booster and I should've led with that – Booster, this is my uncle Qrow and his new friend Oscar! You knew that part about Oscar already."

Booster found himself laughing, but not at Ruby's expense. She was a very adorable person, especially when flustered. "It's fine," he told her. Then, looking at Qrow; "You're a real hero! Ruby's told me all sorts of stories about you!"

"And some of 'em are probably even true," Qrow teased. "As for joining your mission…well, Oscar and I are wrapped up in some pretty heavy business here. Not sure it's the best idea to drop it."

"We can talk about it more back at your place," Ruby told him. Flinch. "AGH, I just invited myself over. I actually have like a lot of friends wandering around the marketplace but don't worry because they're in groups so they won't get hurt and we were hoping we could catch up with you and that's why we're chipping in for dinner!"

"I will admit you kinda made me hungry for sushi," Oscar stated. "Kinda glad it's coming to our place."

"You're welcome to stay," Qrow told her. "Dunno how many friends you brought, but our place isn't modest. Pretty sure Leo wanted to butter us up."

"Leo?" Ruby repeated. "As in Leo Lionheart?"

"That's another thing we can discuss over dinner," Qrow told her. "Though I didn't know you knew how to make sushi."

"I don't," Ruby told him. "That's why we're doing it."

Qrow smirked. "That's the attitude that tells me you're Huntress material. Let's finish up here and head out. Even if your friends stuck together, that doesn't guarantee they're safe down here on this level."

...

The apartment that Qrow and Oscar had rented out wasn't modest. Nor was it a full-blown penthouse, but it was definitely high-class, and much larger than it needed to be for two people.

At first, no one questioned it, mostly because by the time they'd all gotten up the stairs, their stomachs were growling in perfect harmony. So first, there was sushi preparation, which was a marvelous misadventure resulting in food that tasted surprisingly good.

They gathered around the living room, seated in chairs, on couches, and on the floor as necessary, eating while they conversed.

"So," Qrow began. "You're gonna wanna know a few things. I do, too, but since we're here, I figure we'll start with the topical stuff."

"What happened since we were away?" Ruby asked.

Qrow sighed, looking down at his half-finished plate. "The first thing I think you need to know is that James hasn't been taking anything well since the fall of Beacon. The declarations that are coming out of Atlas make the security around the Vytal Festival look like mild chaperoning. He's put the military on high alert, blockaded all traffic in and out of Atlas."

"But if no one can leave Atlas," Ruby realized, "then Weiss…"

"I don't know what to tell ya, kid," Qrow went on.

"That's not a good way to protect a kingdom," Kairi insisted. "If anything, it'll make tensions way worse!"

"We all know," Qrow told her. "But James…I knew this would be hard on him. I don't think any of us expected just how far he would be willing to go in order to prevent a repeat of what happened at Beacon. Here in Mistral, they're sure not happy about him withdrawing all his aid to the home front, since the night of the fall, the Grimm sure put up a fight here, too. And with Mistral's bigger borders, it's a lot harder to defend without Atlesian technology to back the ground troops up."

"How many were lost?" Ren asked.

"Too many," Qrow stated, nudging a sushi roll around his plate idly.

"No," Ruby said in a whisper, and Booster placed a sympathetic hand on her shoulder.

"That's awful," he added, similarly hushed.

"There's more," Qrow went on. "I came here on my own looking for the Spring Maiden. For what I'm hoping to do, we'll need her. The problem is, she'd been missing for years. The bigger problem is, I found out where she ran off to. My sister's tribe. Raven's not about to cough up one of her own without a fight, and a fight against Raven isn't a smart one to pick. I asked Leo to mount a rescue party, but he said that wouldn't be possible for a few weeks, given how thinly his defenses are spread right now."

"So you've already talked to Lionheart," Nora realized.

"One of Oz's most trusted," Qrow said with a nod. "With Glynda tied up back at Vale and James…taking himself off the board, he's the one we gotta bet all our chips on. Too bad when I went to see him, he was…out of sorts. I dunno how to explain it, but something wasn't quite right. I knew the man was a coward, but it seemed like he wanted to dodge every single one of my requests. Couldn't tell ya what it means."

"Could it mean he's on the side of the bad guys?" Donald asked.

"No," Qrow said quickly, harshly. "That's the one possibility we can't even afford to think about. Leo…he's a big old fraidy-cat, but he's not like that."

"What about Cinder?" Ruby asked. "And Emerald and Mercury? They were the lead we were following before you redirected us back around to Torchwick."

"No clue," Qrow told her. "No such names in the Haven records. It's like they never existed. So if you were feeling bad about dropping that mission, it was a dead end anyway."

"We've kind of been figuring out more about Cinder offworld than we would have here," Jaune admitted.

"Huh?" Qrow looked up at him, utterly flummoxed. "She's been…no."

"I'm afraid it's yup," Goofy replied. "Cinder joined up with a real powerful witch named Maleficent, an' now they're wreakin' all kindsa havoc!"

"Connected to the sudden magical resurrection of Vale's most wanted, I can assume," Qrow said with a nod.

"Weirdly, no?" Ruby explained. "Roman's working for somebody else. Somebody ALSO very bad. But that person's bad guy team and Cinder's bad guy team really, REALLY don't get along."

Qrow smirked; "Guess I gotta ask you for intel. You know anything I don't about their plans for this world?"

"They tried to help Maleficent take over all worlds by building up this…world of evil," Jaune recalled, his hands shaking at the thought. "They got ahold of a book that let them change the future, and they started rewriting history."

Kairi, noting Jaune's trembling hands, slid one of her own into one of his, clutching it tightly.

"The Grimm influx." Qrow nodded. "Was wondering what happened that night. Thought it was just old scars from Beacon resurfacing."

"It was my fault," Ruby admitted. "I thought I could use that book to bring back a friend." She hung her head. "But only the wrong people can come back. I know that now. The people we love…they're lost for good."

"Enemies that defy death," Oscar muttered to himself.

"I'm not gonna fault you," Qrow told her. "It's a done deal, and I know you wouldn't've done anything you thought wasn't gonna help the cause."

"I'm still sorry," Ruby sighed, and Booster squeezed her shoulder, bringing some comfort.

"Okay, can we get out of all this downer talk and figure out why Qrow adopted a child?" Nora blurted.

Qrow chuckled at that. "Not exactly what happened. You could almost more accurately say it was the other way around."

"I'll…take it from here," Oscar said tentatively. "So, uh…hi." He put up a hand to wave. "My name's Oscar Pine. Except a few of you probably already know me as…uh…Professor Ozpin."

Ruby, Jaune, Nora, and Ren all cried, "WHAAAAT?"

And then, because they'd screamed, Kazuichi decided to scream "WHAT?" as well, because it seemed like the thing to do to go with the flow.

"WE THOUGHT YOU DIED!" Ruby cried.

"What, did you get caught up in some kind of age-reversal magic?" Nora asked.

"Prove it," Jaune commanded. "Prove you're him."

"Okay." Oscar took a deep breath. "Just so you know…I'll still be here. It's more like I'm handing the controls to him."

He shut his eyes. Concentrated. And then something seemed to fundamentally change about him, even though on a physical level, nothing had changed at all.

When those hazel eyes opened back up, the mouth of the boy named Oscar said, in a tone distinctly not belonging to Oscar, "It is truly good to see you all again. And it seems you've made some new friends, too."

More screaming. First RNJR, then Kazuichi, and now Donald felt compelled to give it a "WAHAHAHAHAAAAK!".

"Though if it's proof you want," the person speaking through Oscar went on, "then I will tell you a few things. First of all, that Mr. Arc had no landing strategy in the Emerald Forest. Second, that Ms. Valkyrie discovered her Semblance by being struck by lightning and surviving, describing it as a 'crazy Thursday.' Third, that Mr. Ren appealed to me at least twice to enforce a quiet zone in the library."

"You WHAT?" Nora barked at Ren.

"And I don't regret it," Ren told her.

"And fourth," the man who was certainly Ozpin concluded, "when I first met Ruby Rose, I immediately commented on her silver eyes, then offered her a plate of chocolate chip cookies, which she proceeded to devour by eating a single cookie in each bite."

"Sounds like Ruby, all right!" Yuffie chuckled.

"It really is you!" Ruby squealed. "Ozpin, we thought we'd lost you forever! We thought Cinder killed you!"

"The thing is," Ozpin explained, "unfortunately, she did."

More screaming now. This time, Goofy gave a yodel, too.

"What I am about to tell you may seem difficult to believe," Ozpin went on.

"Try us," Jaune told him flatly. "No. I'm serious."

"When I say I've made more mistakes than any person in Remnant," Ozpin told them, "I meant it quite literally. I, as an entity, have existed in this capacity for thousands of years. Each time I die, I am reincarnated into a new body occupied by a like-minded individual. Gradually, our two souls work together to become something new, yet still aligned with my past lives."

"LIKE THE AVATAR!" Ruby screamed.

"I'm…sorry?" Ozpin tilted Oscar's head.

"I dunno," Kazuichi brought up. "Reminds me more of when that Nort guy tried to make me into his clone by sticking his soul in me."

"Heart," Kairi corrected. "It was his heart."

"Oh," Ozpin realized. "You have seen a fair bit of strange things on your journeys after all."

"Then you've seen all of history!" Ruby gasped. "Did you live through the War? Did you help found any of the kingdoms?"

"I actually founded all four of the kingdoms," Ozpin admitted.

"CAN YOU ACTUALLY TELL ME WHAT PEOPLE-LIKE-GRAPES SODA USED TO TASTE LIKE BEFORE THE HEALTH CODES WERE IMPLANTED?" Ruby's eyes were sparkling.

"That's hardly important to the discussion," Ozpin told her. "…However, I must say the old flavor was much better. But most likely, in the long term, one of the reasons that body didn't live as long as he could have."

"Oh." Ruby's face fell.

"Why?" Jaune asked. "Why have you been reincarnating like that? What happened to make you this way?"

Ozpin averted his gaze. "The first of my many mistakes," he said softly. "It isn't your concern, not here and now."

"It kind of is," Kairi told him. "We've just said we've dealt with weirder. After Xehanort, Maleficent, Mozenrath, and everything, I don't think you could surprise us."

"Well, you do keep screaming every time I say something potentially startling," Ozpin pointed out.

"Because they're drama queens!" Kairi laughed.

"Am not!" Donald huffed, crossing his arms.

"If we pinky promise not to scream," Ruby said, "will you tell us?"

"It's…" Ozpin shut Oscar's eyes. "It's not a story I particularly enjoy telling."

"If it's more comfortable for you to wait until later," Booster told him, "then you don't have to say anything."

"What do you mean, he doesn't have to say anything?" Jaune's brow furrowed. "This affects us. This could be something huge that we need to know. If he's keeping secrets – "

"Jaune." Kairi squeezed his hand again, but in a less affectionate way. "Sometimes, people can't deal with things right away, and they can't have other people dealing with things right away. After his Mark of Mastery, Riku said something to me that I'll never forget. I'm not sure where it came from, but he said one of the things he learned was that there are some things we need to keep from the world at large until we figure out what to do with them."

"And I mean…" Yuffie shrugged. "It's not like we're not doing pretty okay shooting in the dark."

Jaune sighed. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "This is just…a lot closer to home than a lot of the things we've been facing."

"There is one part you will need to understand," Ozpin relented. "Do you know of the legend of the gifts of the Dark and Light God?"

"The two gods who keep Remnant in balance left us four concepts to further humanity." Ren nodded. "Knowledge, Creation, Destruction, and Choice."

"It was a bit more literal than that," Ozpin told him. "Funny, how stories change as they're passed down. If only you knew the origins of the Four Maidens. But rest assured, it isn't essential for you to know right now. What is essential for you to know is that each of these concepts was stored inside of a particular artifact. Artifacts I have hidden inside each of the Huntsman Academies, lest they fall into the wrong hands. The assault on Vale was most certainly in an attempt to claim the first of the four…though there's a failsafe in place that should have prevented Cinder and her companions from getting to it. Qrow and I have come to suspect that Cinder's next target may very well be Haven Academy."

"Were you…there?" Jaune asked. "When the gods gave the gifts?"

"I was there when they still inhabited their domains," Ozpin explained. "When the land of Light was not merely a shrine touched by legend and faith. When the domain of Darkness played host to a necessary force of the world rather than a stronghold of evil. Back then, we even had different names for those gods."

A silence fell over the room. Except for Kazuichi, who said "Holy shit."

"Cinder and hers will stop at nothing to retrieve these artifacts," Ozpin went on, "and a great calamity will befall us all if she gets ahold of them."

"Hers?" Ruby repeated.

"Well." Ozpin shifted nervously. "She is, of course, not working alone, and I'm not referring to her two lackeys, either. Cinder is…a taste of what to expect."

"The scorpion man," Ruby realized.

"You KNOW about that one?" Qrow was agape.

"We fought him," Jaune explained. "I fought him, actually. During Maleficent's assault."

"That's not the one I'd've hoped you'd run into first," Qrow stated.

"He almost did me in," Jaune admitted. "But I had help from some great friends."

"When we went over the intel and traded stories after the fact," Ren went on, "we figured out Mercury Black was there, too. But no one ever saw Emerald."

"Maybe she figured out she was in a bad place an' got outta there!" Goofy suggested.

"Or maybe we have a new enemy who's flying solo," Donald grumbled.

"We put together that he and Cinder were friends," Ruby explained. "Roman didn't want anything to do with either of them, anymore. If she had more allies, they could've been on that same battlefield, but there were so many people, I'm not sure we could pick out any specific descriptions."

Ozpin and Qrow exchanged a look of pure horror.

"To go from so few trusted underlings…to so many," Ozpin said softly. "If Cinder and Tyrian are both aligned with this Maleficent, no doubt Salem is, as well."

"Who's Salem?" Ruby asked.

"The real villain of the story," Qrow explained. "Or so we thought, until you brought up that new name. She's the one who has Cinder and Tyrian working for her, as well as others we can't identify yet but have some theories on."

"My oldest enemy," Ozpin went on. "I have made it my mission to…to defeat her, by any means necessary. For the good of this world."

"Ya don't mean kill her?" Goofy said, voice quavering.

"Hm?" Ozpin regarded him with a most unusual look.

"Well, it's just that we all swore a pact not ta kill anyone," Goofy explained.

"Because everyone deserves another chance," Kairi explained, "and everyone's life is special. More than one of our new friends taught us all of that. And it's true."

"Your first thought…would be to figure out how to defeat Salem without killing her." Ozpin looked as though he were having a heart attack.

"I know," Jaune sighed – though he'd guessed the incorrect reason for this reaction. "Some people seem like they're just too horrible. And if I'm being honest, there are some people I'd like to kill, knowing what's out there. But that would be like betraying Aang and Papyrus. And they have reasons for what they believe, so I trust them. Maybe something good'll come of it."

He looked to Kairi. "Maybe someone out there can remember who he used to be – or who you wanted him to be – and decide that's more important than chasing whatever he's after now."

Kairi looked away. She'd long since given up on Even. However, the thought of what Jaune had said lived perpetually in her heart, a futile hope.

"I…I will keep that in mind," Ozpin said softly. "Destroying Salem was not the first thing on our agenda, anyhow. This must be taken one step at a time. First, we need to procure the artifact that lies at the heart of Haven Academy, and that cannot be done without the Spring Maiden. Such was how I designed the vaults that house each artifact."

"We could be the rescue team!" Yuffie suggested. "Or, depending on how much she likes it there, the kidnap team. I'm good either way!"

"That won't be necessary," Qrow told them. "I'd rather keep you out of a feud with my sister, especially where anyone else in my family is involved. Ruby, I'll let you know right now Raven doesn't think much of you, but you don't want that opinion to get worse."

"She chose to leave my dad and sister all alone," Ruby said sharply. "I don't think much of her either."

"I have a lot of connections here in Mistral," Qrow explained. "On all levels of the city. Huntsmen, mercenaries…people I can recruit to the cause. We won't tell them the more unbelievable-sounding details, of course, but all they need to know is that we suspect an attack on Haven, and we'll need the Academy defended while we fish out the artifact. I'm planning on making a tour around town and inviting back a small army of backup."

"So that's why your apartment's so big!" Booster realized. "You were planning for other heroes to come join you!"

"Well, here we are." Kairi smirked.

"No offense, kid," Qrow told her, "but weird as the shit you deal with is, you don't have a home field advantage, and I don't have a good feeling about throwing a bunch of teenagers at our greatest foe."

"I wouldn't underestimate them," Ozpin corrected. "Ruby in particular grew far more skilled under my tutelage than you might think. And if her friends have chosen to come here, then they obviously know they are signing up for something potentially very dangerous."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Kazuichi broke in. "We didn't come here to fight for your thing in the place! I mean, we're going to because it'd kinda be horrible not to, but we came here to find Ruby's friends and her big sister!"

"That's right!" Ruby gasped. "Dad said Yang was headed out to find you. To find ME. Have you seen her?"

Qrow shook his head; "Not yet. But I bet she'll turn up any minute now."

At that very moment, a dark red portal, too tinted with crimson to be a Corridor of Darkness, blossomed in the midst of the room.

"RAVEN?" Qrow flinched away from it.

A lone figure stumbled through, and the portal closed. Regaining her balance on her precarious heels, Weiss Schnee took a gander at where, exactly, she had arrived.

A dead silence, at first. Kairi, Booster, Yuffie, Donald, and Goofy weren't sure what to make of this stranger. For Jaune, Nora, Ren, Qrow, and Ozpin, it was practically like seeing a ghost.

Then Ruby shrieked "WEISS!" and zipped toward the girl in white with incredible speed, morphing temporarily into a pink blur and then becoming solid again just in time to throw her arms around her friend.

"HEY!" Weiss was nearly thrown head over heels by Ruby's momentum, but the minute she regained her footing, she wrapped her arms around Ruby. "Missed you too, dork."

"QROW SAID YOU COULDN'T GET OUT OF ATLAS!" Ruby shrieked. "HE SAID IRONWOOD WENT CRAZY AND LOCKED UP THE BORDERS SO YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO LEAVE YOUR HORRIBLE JERK DAD AND I WAS AFRAID I MIGHT NEVER SEE YOU AGAIN!"

Weiss found her eyes misting up. "They tried to keep me locked up," she said, attempting to sound boastful. "But I know a thing or two about how to get out of a tight spot. That's what Team RWBY's all about, right?"

She and Ruby let go of each other, backing up to get a good look.

"What in the world happened to you?" Ruby asked, noting all the scrapes and dirt stains on Weiss' dress.

"Too much," Weiss groaned, rubbing at her forehead. "Sorry, I know I just got here, but I'm…really tired already."

"Well, that's fine!" Ruby babbled. "We'll set up somewhere for you to sleep, and we don't even have to have a loud sleepover this time so you won't be kept up, and – and I missed you so much, Weiss!"

"Gotta admit," Qrow said, "when that portal opened up, you were the last person I was expecting to come out of it. Given everything Ruby just told me, I almost thought that might even be Yang coming on through. How'd you get Raven to send you somewhere? I know she sure wouldn't bend over backward just 'cause you're a Schnee."

"Yang…" Weiss scraped the toe of her shoe against the floorboards. "Yang was with me. Raven had me captive, but Yang helped set me free."

"WHERE IS SHE?" Ruby cried, eyes wide with anticipation. Joyful anticipation. Which Weiss now had to crush.

"She…" Weiss couldn't face Ruby. "There was an attack on the camp. We knew one of us would have to rendez-vous with you, but…it wouldn't have been right, to leave the bandits to fend for themselves. Especially with Yang's mother being there. So she convinced Raven to make a portal for me and…stayed behind to help protect the others."

Ruby's face fell, and you could actually hear her heart breaking.

"But it's okay!" Weiss said suddenly, whipping her head back to look at Ruby in a panic. "Yang was always the toughest of all of us, and it looked like she got her mojo back since Beacon! She had a new robot arm, too!"

"YOUR SISTER HAS A ROBOT ARM?" Kazuichi yelled. "WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?"

"I DIDN'T KNOW, OKAY?" Ruby stamped her foot. "ALSO I DIDN'T WANT YOU BEING ALL CREEPY ABOUT WANTING TO DISSECT HER ARM TO SEE HOW IT WORKED OR IF YOU COULD TURN IT INTO A CAR!"

"I WOULDN'T HAVE – " Kazuichi attempted. Then: "Yeah, no, even I can't lie about that one."

"Your team sure got a lot bigger while I was gone," Weiss observed.

"These are all my new friends!" Ruby told her. "You can meet them when you're less tired out, or – have you had anything to eat? We've still got soooooo much sushi left over! We could do quick introductions over dinner, then you could tell us what happened while you were gone, and we'll save all the infodumping stuff about current events for the morning!"

"You know what?" Weiss realized. "I'm STARVING. You wouldn't have any salmon nigiri, would you?"

"Plenty of it!" Ruby affirmed. "Shrimp nigiri, too. We had to shell out a bit to afford the shrimp. …Get it? SHELL out? Shellfish?" Her face fell. "Yang would've laughed."

Weiss reached out with both hands to grasp Ruby's shoulders. "Yang will be fine," she asserted gently.

"I believe her," Kairi piped up. "You know what Sora would say. That best friends always find a way back to each other, and you're connected even when you're apart!"

"And I say if Yang managed to live through Beacon," Qrow added, "then she's pretty much invincible at this point. I kinda figured she'd come back a scrapper."

Ruby forced a smile. "We picked up some roe, too," she told Weiss. "That's rich-people food, right?"

"I like it," Weiss replied.

"Then I guess we're turnin' in early," Qrow decided. "I'm guessing Tai let you all run wild in his house while he used the soundproof room, but up here, the walls are thin, and I'd rather get the right amount of rest tonight. Not to mention you've all got a big day tomorrow, if you're really staying to help with Haven."

"I don't think we could walk away from it," Kairi told him, and no one disputed that.

"Then we have to get you into fighting shape!" Ozpin declared.

"Uhhhhh…did you not hear everything we said about getting into all kinds of huge cosmic battles?" Ruby asked.

"It's true, you've come a long way," Ozpin told her. "But a true Huntress never stops learning. How are your hand-to-hand combat skills?"

"Ineverneedthoseinapracticalapplication," Ruby muttered.

His gaze was on Jaune next; "And have you unlocked your Semblance?"

Jaune's voice cracked; "Next question?"

"I shouldn't stop my training sessions, either," Kairi realized. "Professor Ozpin, have you ever worked with a Keyblade before?"

"Keyblade," Ozpin replied. "That term sounds familiar to me, but I can't recall exactly why. Though I've certainly taught my fair share of students who wielded gunblades, bludgeon-blades, guitar blades, and rollerblades that were actually blades. I'm sure I can work out the basics of your weapon and figure out the optimal technique based on how it handles."

"That works for me!" Kairi told him.

"Um, can we maybe get Ruby's friend her food first?" Kazuichi had already risen from his chair, letting his empty plate drop onto the floor (leaving a small wasabi stain). "She's starving and she has to listen to you all gab about weapons and stuff."

As he walked into the kitchen, gathering all the nigiri that they had left over onto a plate, Weiss sighed in relief, because she'd just been thinking that but thought it bad etiquette to break in.

She turned to face Kazuichi, and he handed her the plate of what looked like the most delicious nigiri she'd ever beheld, with a spoonful of roe slapped atop the central piece of sushi haphazardly. "Thank you," Weiss said with a smile.

And Kazuichi realized she was pretty. Very pretty. She carried herself with a refined gait, her flowing white hair was simply ethereal, she had a cute smile, and the faint scar over one eye alluded to a tragic and mysterious past she had no doubt defeated with her raw willpower. But as Kazuichi was realizing all of this, he panicked, stuffing all of these observations deep down inside.

Messing things up with Sonia had been heartrending. But letting another one of his rampant crushes alienate the best friend of the girl he'd come to see as a little sister? He couldn't put that kind of rift there.

So he mumbled "Yeahyou'rewelcome" as Weiss took the plate and sat down on the floor. Right by his chair, though not on the same side where he'd dropped the plate, so he had to go back and sit there by her and panic that the slightest bit of attraction, no matter how superficial, might mean he was about to screw it all up again.

They finished eating, and everyone moved to get ready for bed, with a promise to discuss more in the morning. Though one insomniac wasn't yet ready to sleep.

"I'm, uh, gonna be up a while longer," Kazuichi told the group at large once everyone else was in pajamas. "Probably just screwing around on my phone…or seeing if I can take the phone apart and put it back together…but if anyone wants anything done while you're all out and I'm up, lemme know. I mean, I'd like it if you didn't slap me with cleaning the toilet bowl or anything – "

"Actually." Weiss stepped forth. She was dressed in a secondary set of pajamas that Ruby had brought "in case of a pajama emergency." "These are all I have right now, but they're filthy. If you don't mind, could you throw them in the wash overnight?"

She held out the delicately folded silver-white square that was her sequined dress and the little jacket that topped it off.

Kazuichi wasn't sure what to say here, because now he was going to be handling her clothes, which might lead to him thinking about her clothes, which might lead to him thinking about her with clothes off, bada boom, love potions, immutable decisions, screaming matches with Ruby, he'd have to leave the Radiant Garden castle out of shame and maybe move in with the Brotherhood of Mutants instead.

"Are…you okay?" Weiss tilted his head.

Or he could just throw her clothes into the machine like a normal person. "Yeah," he said breathlessly, stuffing the dress and jacket under his arm. "I'll take care of it."

"Make sure it hang-dries," Weiss told him. "The dryer will ruin it."

"If you're going," Ruby asked, "could you throw in mine, too?"

Kazuichi was glad to take the platonically-charged redder garments.

"Might as well!" Kairi handed hers over.

"Hit me up!" Nora handed her dress to Kazuichi as well.

"He didn't invite you to treat him like your errand boy," Qrow pointed out.

"Nah, it's cool," Kazuichi told him. "Better than ending up staring at the wall and counting my regrets because I can't fucking sleep. Where's the laundry room in this place?"

When everyone else retired, Kazuichi headed down to follow the directions Qrow had given him, ending up in a room with several open washing machines. "This shouldn't be so goddamn hard," he reprimanded himself. "She's a normal woman and I can act like a fucking normal guy. We can be friends. I'll friendzone myself! It's foolproof!"

And satisfied with that strategy, he threw Ruby, Kairi, and Nora's warm-colored outfits right into the same machine as Weiss' delicate silver-white dress.

...

"Ahhhh, yes, Eraqus!" Alistair Krei leaned back in his plush office chair, a wistful smile spreading over his face. "You know, that man changed my life in ways you don't even know about."

Well, this was certainly a different reaction than Mickey and Yen Sid had gotten from Sans or Triton. Though, just to be sure, Mickey asked, "In a good way, or in a bad way?"

"Oh, good!" Krei assured. "He helped make me the person I am today. Successful, rich, kindhearted, compassionate – "

A knock at the door. "Mr. Krei?" a meek voice asked through the wood.

"Ugh." Krei sat up straight, massaging a temple. "YES, Ethan?"

The door cracked open, and a thin man with a short mop of dark hair and thick-framed spectacles peered into the office. "It's actually 'Ian,'" he said. Then, in a mutter: "Not that you remembered the first fifty times – "

"No, pretty sure it's 'Ethan,'" Krei corrected. "If it wasn't before, it is now. Now, Ethan, is this actually important?"

"I was just coming to tell you that BuddyGuard 3.0 is going to be a little delayed," Ian (whose name had never been Ethan and would never be Ethan) stated. "The, uh, the protestors have shown up again to dispute whether Mel Meyer holds the original patent, and – "

"Did this need to go through me?" Krei sighed. "Why can't you just contact legal and have them pay the protestors off, sweetened with an empty promise to save the whales?"
"Because I don't have legal's number," Ian said dryly. "I don't have anyone's number outside Engineering. You never made any of that available."

Krei ripped out a Post-It, scribbled ten digits, and passed it to Mickey; "Give this to Ethan."

"Here ya go!" Mickey handed it over.

"Thanks," Ian said in a voice dripping with sarcasm before he shut the door.

"I am SO sorry about that," Krei said. "My employees can get a bit rowdy."

"He seemed to be delivering crucial information," Yen Sid stated. "On the subject of which, might you tell us how you knew Eraqus?"

"Well, you see…" Krei looked down at his desk, shifting in his seat. "When I was younger, I was sort of a…rebel. I didn't like to follow rules or practice etiquette. I'm afraid to say it, but I actually was considering taking up…" His voice dropped to a low whisper: "crime."

"Ah." Yen Sid nodded. "I see."

"I had already gotten my start in engineering by entering illegal bot fights and gambling on them!" Krei explained. "And I was planning to move onward and upw – "

A knock at the door.

"DANG IT, EVAN, I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO TAKE IT TO LEGAL!" Krei pounded his desk.

The door cracked open, revealing a very unamused Ian. "I did," he deadpanned. "NOW I'm here because apparently Abigail Callaghan just went missing, and everyone's pointing the finger at you."

"Just because I risked her life in ONE unstable portal doesn't mean I was planning on secretly resurrecting Project Silent Sparrow and contracting her for a test drive with hidden fine print stating she couldn't disclose the nature of the project outside that room!" Krei argued.

"That sounded way too specific," Ian said coldly. "Anyway, it's on the news."

"Well, go throw some money at the nearest journalist and have PR spin us a positivity piece! You can do that, can't you, Evan?"

"I could," Ian, whose name wasn't Evan either, said flatly. "If I had PR's number."

Krei scribbled down another ten digits. It went from him to Mickey to Ian, who departed swiftly, slamming the door behind him.

"As I was saying," Krei went on, "I was…well, it's really rather embarrassing…" He tugged at his shirt collar. "Actually thinking about dipping my toe into supervillainy. You have to understand, I was fascinated by counterculture in my youth, as so many of the kids are, and there were so many norms I just wanted to break. I'd even gotten as far as designing a costume and picking out a campy name for myself when I went on a tech-based robbery rampage! But then…Eraqus came into my life." His smile returned. "I stalked him for a while because I wanted to reverse-engineer that key thing he carried around…which, come to think of it, I never was able to find literally anywhere else." Another Post-It came out, and as Krei scrawled on it, he muttered, "Memo…to…self…purchase…patent…for…key…sword." He looked back up to Mickey and Yen Sid; "But the more I spent time with Eraqus, well, he eventually realized what was about to happen to me, and he took me under his wing. Oh, how I protested and yelled when he insisted he was going to turn my life around. But – "

Knock knock.

"DEVIN," Krei yelled, "I'M BUSY! WHY ARE YOU DELIVERING ALL THESE MESSAGES, ANYWAY? YOU'RE NOT MY SECRETARY!"

"I am today," Ian, whow asn't Devin, said as he nudged the door open. "Judy had to call in sick, remember?"

"Oh, right," Krei recalled. "She couldn't make any part of her twelve-hour shift today."

"Funny how that lined up right on her anniversary," Ian grumbled through clenched teeth.

"And she's sick?" Krei reiterated. "Her husband can't be having too good of a day, then."

Ian was grinding his teeth.

Krei waved him off; "Thank you. You may go."

"I HAVEN'T. TOLD YOU. THE NEWS. YET."

"Fiiiiine," Krei groaned.

"It turns out we won't need to involve legal," Ian said flatly. "The protestors gave up and went home because Meyer was a no-show." Then, under his breath: "That's two out of three of my least favorite people who've disappeared off the face of the earth. Dare I hope?"

"You mean it was GOOD news?" Krei's jaw dropped. "WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME THAT IN THE FIRST PLACE?"

"I was explaining why I was filling in for Judy," Ian replied.

"Well, off you go, Devin," Krei told him. "As you can see, I am having a VERY important conversation here. Don't knock on this door again unless somebody's bleeding."

Ian turned on a heel with a huff, slamming the door much more obviously.

"Where was I?" Krei muttered. "Oh, yes! Eraqus. He set me on the right path. Showed me that evil was NOT the way, and I needed to follow the Light side or else I'd end up in a horrible situation. And I cannot thank that man enough. He was the one who inspired me to start playing by the rules and using my family's fortune for startup capital instead of doomsday devices. And now, I'm one of the richest and most beloved men in the country – dare I say the world!"

"Whaddaya do here at the company?" Mickey asked.

"Why, we sell technology!" Krei told him, spreading out his arms. "Technology for any application you might need! Military, home defense, lawn care, security systems for your valuables, kitchen appliances with lots of fancy shiny blades…we've got it all!"

"I can assume that you provide technology for medicine as well?" Yen Sid prompted. "Or public works?"

"Oh, no, not the useless stuff," Krei said with a wave. "The actual necessities. The moneymakers."

Knock knock knock.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU, DESMOND?" Krei raged.

The door swung open. Ian was angrier than ever. "To not come in here unless someone was bleeding," he stated.

"AND?"

"And there was an accident on assembly line forty-two," Ian growled. "Guess what happened?"

Krei let out a long, loud groan. "Just get HR on it."

"Oh, right. HR. Let me go call them." Ian stood in place, not moving a muscle. "Oh, wait. I don't have their number."

Krei scrawled on one more Post-It; Mickey whispered a "Sorry, pal" as he handed it over to Ian.

"Anything ELSE, Desmond?" Krei growled.

"Well," Ian replied, "I just thought you might want to be aware that with the protests, Abigail's disappearance, and a workplace accident all in the same night, people aren't going to be happy with you tomorrow morning."

"Well, people don't have to FIND OUT about the accident part, do they?" Krei seethed. "Just go take care of it!"

Ian was muttering as he left, and Mickey wasn't sure he wanted to know exactly what words were in that mutter.

"You seem to be rather sharp toward that young employee," Yen Sid pointed out.

"Raymond was always a problem child," Krei sighed. "But I took him in and gave him the same opportunity that Eraqus gave me. It's a shame he's wasting it. But at least it's better than him ending up some masked supervillain who gives dramatic monologues and invites superheroes to public brawls, isn't it?"

"Mr. Krei," Mickey pointed out, "I can't help but notice that a lot of the stuff about your company doesn't seem…well, quite right, to be honest!"

"Right?" Krei tilted his head. "I have the highest-grossing firm in the country. What isn't quite right about that?"

"Well," Mickey pointed out, "apparently ya caused a woman's disappearance once, ya got no sympathy for her bein' gone a second time, somebody thinks ya stole his patent, and now ya got somebody actually hurt on the work floor!"

"Oh, that's just business," Krei said casually. "If you were in a position of power where you had to take care of a bunch of people, you'd understand that you can't always be a softheart."

Mickey glowered at Krei for that one.

As he and Yen Sid left the building, Mickey ranted, "Redemption, my foot! He's not a good guy! He's just a bad guy who plays by the rules! I don't think Eraqus had an affect on him at all!"

"I do think Eraqus was here," Yen Sid said softly yet sternly. "And I do believe he stopped Krei from going down a more overtly villainous path. However, I also believe he utterly failed to finish the job he began. To change one's ways morally requires a choice be made on the part of the one whose soul is in flux. Friends are necessary to support that person, but they cannot cause the change. No matter how closely Eraqus mentored Alistair as a young man…he could not make the choice for him." He sighed. "Only give him the tools to disguise his true nature from even Alistair's own self."

...

The pathway to the next key led Calindor, Mozenrath, Mysterio, Shocker, Zevon, Yzma, Gill, and Wuya down a rocky ledge and into a cavern that looked like the left nostril of an upturned nose, which, all considered, really should've been foreshadowing. But Yzma didn't pay attention to this particular harbinger of doom, as she was distracted by what was taking place at the front of the group:

"I'M THE LEADER OF THE WHAM ARMY, SO I LEAD!"

"YOU THINK YOURSELF ABOVE THE GREAT MYSTEEEEERIO?"

"The deal was that I joined you and guided you through this jungle. NOW LET ME GUIDE YOU!"

Needless to say, Mozenrath, Mysterio, and Calindor weren't exactly on the same page. Or perhaps they were, and that page simply said "I'm the leader."

"BOYS!" Wuya snapped as the cavern grew darker and darker. "If you keep squabbling, WE ARE TURNING THIS CAR AROUND AND GOING HOME WITHOUT THE CORONA GEM!"

"DON'T RUINATIONATE THIS FOR ME!" Zevon yelled. "I NEED THAT GEM!"

"WE'RE NOT EVEN IN A CAR!" Mozenrath yelled back.

"And I can change that at a moment's notice," Wuya told him dryly.

"I would love to put an end to this dispute once and for all," Mozenrath said, "but the only way we're doing that peacefully is if these buffoons let me take my rightful place!"

"And the point of me being here, if I'm not going to lead, is…?" Calindor prompted.

"Well, you're both boring and insufferable," Mysterio argued, "so I'm appointing myself the leader effective immediately."

Yzma's low growl hit the peak of its crescendo. "THAT'S IT!" she yelled, barging forth into the pitch blackness ahead. "IF YOU'RE GOING TO BICKER LIKE TODDLERS ON A PLAYGROUND, THEN I'LL TAKE THE LEAD!"

By now, visibility was at zero, so no one could see Yzma moving up front. They just heard, over the three arguing men all trying to talk over one another, the clicks of her high heels on the stone floor. Click, click, click.

Squish.

"WHAT THE – " Yzma shrieked. "WHAT IS THIS?"

She tried to step over the puddle her right foot had gone into – a sticky sort of mud that clung in a way mud really shouldn't, and was far too cold besides. Her left foot, taking a wide berth forward, just planted down in more of the stuff with a squelch.

As Yzma began to tug at her left ankle, Calindor explained, "Were you not expecting to find goo in the Goo Lagoon?"

Yzma's leg came free, but her shoe didn't, sinking into the muck. "I'm sorry," she broke in, "did you say 'Goo Lagoon'?"
"That is where we're headed," Calindor said snidely. "Through the Goo Lagoon and up Goo Falls, to the second altar. Did you not know that?"

Now both of Yzma's shoes were lost to the abyss. "Did any of you know that this forest had a segment called…the Goo Lagoon?"

Silence.

"Mozenrath?" Yzma prompted.

"And you'd think I'd actually be dumb enough to tell you about the goo, knowing it's YOU?" Mozenrath replied.

Yzma's teeth clenched. "WHY, YOUUUUUUU – "

"So wait." Gill put up his hands, though no one could see him doing that. "You're saying we're about to walk through a bunch of goo?"

"It's rather like a swamp," Calindor explained. "The goo is at least ankle-high everywhere. Sometimes deeper."

"I hate all of you," Yzma sighed. "Except for Wuya and Zevon."

"This sounds like my kind of place," Gill said smugly.

"Well, tread carefully," Calindor warned. "The path only gets gooier from here on out."

The argument over who was leader was dropped, since no one could really see who was in front anyway, and perhaps Mysterio kept Night Mode switched off and Mozenrath refrained from providing magical illumination so they could all preserve the illusion. Then the light at the end of the tunnel neared, and the group squelched out into a pond of sticky green goo. It was exactly what you'd think of, hearing the word "goo." Lime-colored, putting one rather in mind of snot, and of a rather gluey consistency, though not enough to root anyone in place for very long.

And from here, the goo stretched on as far as the eye could see, broken up by sandbars and shielded from the sun above by a thick canopy of trees that gave it all a dark ambience.

"No." Yzma's eyes were wide with dismay. "No, this can't be happening. Why? WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME THIS HAPPENS TO?"

"Oh, I am LIVING!" Gill did an about-face and simply fell back into the goo, where he floated on his back for a while, letting out an "ahhhh" of contentment. "What," he teased the others, "you don't like goo?"

"Think I see why ya wanted that one on the team," Shocker grunted.

"Believe it or not, he's applicable to all three places the gems fell," Mozenrath told him.

"All right, all right." Wuya forged ahead, bare feet squelching into the goo and tracking it onto the sandbar across the way. "Let's just find the path of least resistance and – "

Calindor rushed right out in front of her, blocking her way. "I wouldn't do here what you did to the Monkey Kingdom," he warned. "The denizens of the Goo Lagoon are all fairly nasty creatures. Predatory, creepy-crawly, able to incapacitate you at a moment's notice. I think you should be getting the picture? If we can avoid a fight, we should."

"Hate ta say it," Shocker piped up, "but that sounds about right. We're tough, but we gotta make sure we don't blow it all on the opening act."

"Did you just use a theater metaphor?" Mysterio asked, glad the fishbowl obscured the starry-eyed look that he was giving Shocker right then.

"I'd rather not tangulate with monsters," Zevon agreed.

That was when four of the locals sailed up to them on a massive leaf that floated on the surface of the goo. All of them were animate flowers.

"Oh, yes, very intimidating," Wuya said with a roll of her eyes.

"They're deceptive," Calindor whispered.

"Look!" one of the flowers said in a heavy British accent, pointing to the group of villains with a leaf. "All sorts of big, colorful bugs!"

"Must be males of the species puttin' on their best colors," another theorized. "That purple one's got a good chance at attracting partners."

"Oh, and on top of it all, I get MISGENDERED!" Yzma cried. "WILL IT NEVER END?"

Meanwhile, Mozenrath was beginning to realize these four flowers looked oddly familiar. It was the way their petals fell like shaggy mops of hair. That plus the British accents, and Mozenrath was reminded of one of the album covers he'd seen Roman toting around. Yes, the boy band with the rabid fanbase. He supposed there were parallel versions of multiple key figures on various worlds, but this was a stretch he hadn't predicted.

"Do they happen to remind you of the – " Mysterio began to whisper.

"Can't unsee it," Shocker replied.

"Excuse us, fine gentlemen!" Calindor said, approaching the leaf-boat. "We're travelers passing through, with a particular interest in ancient Numerian culture. I believe there is a rather prominent monument somewhere in the area? Could you be so kind as to give us directions?"

"Ah, you mean Goo Falls!" one of the flowers said. "The puzzles set up by the Numerians to protect the key to their city!"

"It's a long and winding road up there," another broke in. "And you'll have a hard day's night if you attempt to climb it unprepared."

"Could you lead us there, perchance?" Calindor asked.

"I don't want to hold your hand," a flower replied.

"But maybe we can work it out," another said. "We can give a bit of advice, from me to you."

"What will we need, to be prepared enough to ascend the falls on our own?" Calindor asked.

All four flowers chorused excitedly, "BEETLES!"

"Oh, REALLY?" Mysterio cried.

"I'm done," Mozenrath said, attempting to walk away. Shocker did the favor of grasping his cape so he couldn't get far.

"What's so wrong about beetles?" the smallest flower asked.

"You don't get it?" Mysterio groaned. "You? Saying we need BEETLES? And you look and sound exactly like the ohhhhhhh never mind."

"Hey, rude," a flower said in response.

"Where might we find these, ah…beetles?" Calindor asked.

"All over the Goo Lagoon," a flower said. "I'm certain the locals'd be happy to lend you some of theirs. Especially if you help them – they'll need somebody; not just anybody."

"Always getting into some kind of trouble," another piped up. "Eight days a week, guaranteed."

"So we have to do more favors," Mozenrath grunted. "That might make me sicker than looking at the goo."

"We'd be happy to help out!" Calindor said after firing a glare at Mozenrath. "We'll just be on our way, then."

"Good luck out there!" a flower said.

"Yes, yes," Yzma said with a wave as she hopped onto the nearest sandbar. "Lucy in the sky with diamonds. LET'S MOVE!"

As the company of villains proceeded into the bog, one of the flowers asked, "Who's Lucy?"

"Not a clue," another responded.

Gill hurried ahead, jumped into the goo to make it splash, kicked it joyfully like a child in the rain finding puddles. "I've been wrong my whole life!" he cried. "Here I've been saying water is my element, but this…THIS is my element!"

"Good for you," Yzma said dryly, sucking her bare feet out of the goo again and again. When a sandbar came into view, she hopped up onto it, trying not to think about all the dirt the globs that had remained on her feet were attracting. Her pace sped up; "The sooner I can get out of this jungle, the bet – AAAAAGGGHHHH!"

It took the others a minute to realize why she'd seemingly frozen in the middle of an arch of branches, struggling against nothing at all. Then, in the dim light that filtered down through the canopy, they spotted the glints of the shining spiderweb, utterly massive and barely visible. And once that was in view, it was easier to spot the bugs stuck to the sides that had already succumbed.

Zevon screamed "MOTHER!" at the same time that Wuya yelled "YZMA!", and the two rushed forth to rescue her. They ground to a sudden halt, kicking up a wave of goo, when a pair of spiders, each slightly bigger than the average human being, descended from the high branches above.

"Caught bug?" one of the massive deep-violet spiders asked in a voice that might belong to a kindly old aunt.

"No, not bug," the other sighed in a grandmotherly tone. "Maybe bird. Too big for supper, unless eaten in pieces."

"GET ME OUT OF HERE!" Yzma screamed, fighting against the web all the harder.

"Eyes aren't what they used to be," the first spider lamented. "Clear out web for me?"

"Yes, sister." The second spider reached out a spindly leg, placed it at Yzma's stomach level, and then, like pulling a crowbar, simply wrenched her right off, sending her stumbling backward to collapse so Wuya and Zevon propped her up by an arm each.

Calindor took the opportunity to stand before the spider sisters. "Pleased to meet you, ladies," he said with a calm smile. "We're travelers interested in examining the structures of Goo Falls. Though we have heard we need a rather special sort of scarab in order to ascend."

"Goo Beetles," the second spider affirmed. "Have many Goo Beetles. Don't taste very nice. Would rather eat these."

She raked out two bugs from the web. Their carapaces were marked with a red circle and a blue circle, respectively – the same size. "Best flavor when follows this pattern," the second spider said.

"I want good bugs, too…" The other sister plucked a beetle with a red square on its carapace, then hesitated to grab a second. "What mine look like?"

"Ah, I see!" Calindor clapped his hands together. "We can assist with that, to be certain. To complete the pattern, you'll need an insect bearing a large blue square. I see one, right there!"

And he proceeded to do nothing about it. And do nothing about it. And incline his head toward the web where the beetle sat.

"Ohhhh, no," Yzma growled. "I'm not touching that web again!"

"Don't even try," Wuya grumbled.

"Repulsivusting!" Zevon recoiled.

"Well, I'm not fond of scarabs," Calindor insisted. "When they get under a mummy's bandages, they itch – the mind. By destroying the mummy. Which is a specimen I study often. And my mind simply itches to see so much of the original body eaten through."

"I'm saying this right here and right now," Mozenrath decreed. "I touch no bugs. I touch no goo. I touch nothing I'm not already standing in or on."

"Eeeuuuurrrrggghhhh!" Mysterio cried, backpedaling from the web. "Don't ask me!"

"All this over a bug," Shocker muttered. While standing perfectly still and not moving to pick the beetle of the web.

"You're all a bunch of babies." Gill stormed forward, pulling the dead blue-square beetle off the sticky web and handing it over to the hungry spider. "Was that SO HARD?"

"Dinner time," the second spider declared, and the sisters descended on their beetle corpses to feast. Which nobody particularly wanted to watch except for Gill, and there was much averting of gazes and nausea to go around.

"Thank you," the first spider told them. "As a reward, beetles."

After all of this, Mozenrath wasn't sure why he was so surprised when a purple patch of slime floating atop the goo hacked up a violet bag that appeared to be made of veiny, pulsating flesh. Still, he felt the need to yell, "IS THIS SERIOUSLY WHAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO CARRY AROUND THE WHOLE TIME?"

Gill swiped up the bag, tossing it up and down in his webbed palm. He grinned; "They're alive in here. I can feel it. And I can't wait to see the look on your guys' faces."

"Maybe you should be the one leading the tour," Wuya suggested to Gill.

"You know what?" His eyes lit up, and his mouth curled into a wicked smirk. "MAYBE I SHOULD." He made an about-face, walking around the web; "Follow me if you don't wanna become goo-flavored spider chow, nerds."

"Are you beginning to regret anything?" Yzma asked Mozenrath.

"Everything," Mozenrath replied, equally sulky.

"I can't believe we've deferred all authority to the Creature from the Black Lagoon," Mysterio huffed.

"I HEARD THAT!" Gill yelled back at him.

The path ahead was much drier, but barred by a flock of what appeared to be red ravens with jagged beaks that fit together like teeth. They waddled over the ground, pecking at worms and other crawlies that came out of their subterranean burrows.

"Crabalocks," Calindor identified. "We'll want to go around."

"Around?" Yzma cried. "Why? Are we seriously going to give up the high ground because of a bunch of BIRDS? I've played enough Exotic Bird Bingo for one lifetime!"

Zevon had attempted to get close to the foraging crabalocks, only to be met with a chorus of hisses. "They're like gooses!" he gasped.

"Crabalocks are very tame when undisturbed," Calindor explained, "and when they haven't been exposed to toxins, but they can also be very territorial. We don't need to risk angering them."

"I ain't gonna make 'em angry," Shocker said as he raised his arm, pointing his gauntlet. "Just make 'em move."

Calindor realized, too late, what he was about to do. "NO!"

The blast blew all of the crabalocks out of the path, leaving open road for the villains to cross.

For about two seconds.

Then the crabalocks converged, an angry, screaming cloud of red. And for no discernible reason, they focused their ire on Yzma.

Yzma ran as far as she could before tripping and falling face-first into the goo. It was going to take a while to pry herself up, and she was sure that in that time, the crabalocks would have ample opportunity to pry her thin flesh up off her bones.

But fortunately, an unlikely pair of heroes arrived. A pair of plant-folk, rather like the quartet that had greeted them only much larger, rushed onto the scene. A tall, reedy weed of a man with a spray of purple petals serving as hair; he was twice the height of Mozenrath. And a flower, her blue petals bent and broken but her energy unwavering, who was closer to the size of a human.

"CODE GREEN!" the taller one cried, producing a net made of spiderwebbing from beneath one arm and flicking one end to his companion.

"Sorry, loves!" the smaller yelled. "We'll let you out in a jiff, but you've got to calm down first!"

The two plant-people netted up the crabalocks, stuffing the net into a cavernous hollow tree stump and slamming down a wooden lid on top. Obviously jail for naughty crabalocks to have a time-out.

"Quick!" the larger flower-man cried. "Grab the key!"

But the moment the smaller flower-woman attempted to move off the lid, it jolted violently. "Can't do it!" she cried. "Too many crabalocks inside! It needs both of us to hold the lid down!"

"Excuse me!" Calindor rushed toward them. "Might we be able to help you out with your little problem?"

"Please!" the taller of the plants cried. "We set up a special locking system for this stump. The side shows the analogy that has to be completed, and it randomizes, so a different key works each time. It's to stump poachers and monsters like Mathra from getting at the crabalocks in their safe space!"

"All right," Mozenrath declared, "this should be no problem for me. Let's see what we have here."

Four glowing words indicated the blank that needed to be filled in. "Alchemy is to orichalcum as astrology is to…" Mozenrath muttered. "Well, that should be simple enough."

"The keys are hanging on that other stump!" The smaller flower inclined her head.

Mozenrath pored over the quintet of keys. "We have here 'pyromancer,' 'tarot,' 'numerology,' 'pancakes,' and…" He recoiled. "NO! THAT CAN'T BE THE ANSWER!"

"It must be," Calindor urged. "None of the others completes the analogy at all!"

Both Mozenrath's fists were clenched. "I don't care what any of you swamp-dwelling bottom-feeders say," he snarled. "Ophiuchus is NOT A LEGITIMIZED ASTROLOGICAL ENTITY!"

"You said WHAT is to astrology as orichalcum is to alchemy?" Yzma cried. "No one uses Ophiuchus!"

"The only person who ever encouragated me to divinate using Ophiuchus was a fraudhood!" Zevon spat.

"You're just asking for a Lagoon-wide butt-kicking at this point," Wuya added.

"As an expert in the arcane," Mysterio added, "I agree with whatever it is they're saying."

"Please!" the flower-woman protested. "The crabalocks are about to get out, and they'll come after you again!"

"I WILL LITERALLY DIE ON THE HILL THAT OPHIUCHUS ISN'T A LEGITIMIZED CONSTELLATION!" Mozenrath roared.

"After all," Mysterio said, "Yzma never used it, and her society came up with that calendar that accurately predicted everything except for that 2012 fiasco."

"What 2012 fiasco?" Yzma asked.

"You know," Mysterio told her. "How it said the world would end in 2012, and that didn't end up happening. Far from it."

"Wha – " Yzma's jaw dropped. "The court figured that WE HAD NO REASON TO MAKE A CALENDAR PAST 2012 UNLESS ANY OF US ACTUALLY SURVIVED THAT LONG! Which, apparently, on your world, we didn't."

"So YOU were the charlatan who promised an apocalypse but never delivered!" Mysterio accused.

"DON'T BLAME ME!" Yzma argued. "BLAME KUZCO'S ATTENTION SPAN!"

"THE CRABALOCKS!" the two plant-people chorused.

"Oh, for Pete's sake – " Shocker swept up the key with the offending constellation printed on its shaft, threw it into the lock of the stump, and clicked it.

"Phew," both plant-people said at once, slumping down on either side of the stump with their backs to it for a rest.

"You know," Calindor wheedled, "we sacrificed our astrological integrity to lock up your birds. I should think that means we deserve a reward."

"Oh, yes!" The taller plant clapped his leaves, and a small blue stain on the surface spat up a blue fleshbag.

No one had to tell Gill that he was the one who needed to pick it up.

Further down the road, cries of "Ow – oof – ouch – NOT AGAIN!" indicated what the party was about to come across next. Though said cries didn't really prepare them for a giant tree with a face.

"All right, what's wrong with you?" Wuya asked the tree, clearly ready to get this over with.

"An attacknid has gotten into my leaves!" the tree moaned. "And now it's BITING me to try and get at my sap!"

Mozenrath took a look at the leaves in question. They bore a brilliant pattern, blue and purple swirls. Mozenrath pointed; "It's posing as that leaf, isn't it?"

"Only so many of these are my beautiful leaves," the tree explained. "One of them is the – wait, how did you know that?"

"Because it's the only leaf that has the central spiral going counterclockwise." Mozenrath's eyes rolled right up. "That's the worst mimic I've ever seen."

He sauntered up to the tree. Plucked the offending "leaf," which was larger than his hand. "Isn't that right?" he cooed mockingly. "Aren't you just a pathetic little failure at OW!"

The attacknid – which, upon a change of angle, looked a lot like an aphid, only much, much larger than the usual variety, and bearing mandibles – had bitten Mozenrath's left hand, causing the sorcerer to drop it in pain. It then went right for Mozenrath's ankle; he shot at it with blue energy, missing each time out of panic.

"I've got it!" Wuya was now blasting it as well; the attacknid changed course and scuttled around to avoid her fire.

Yzma laughed madly as she raised her hammer, attempting to bring it down on the bug. Instead, it splashed into the goo, splattering her skirt with it.

"NOW PERISHABLIZE!" Zevon leapt at the attacknid to stomp on it, only to come down in a puddle of goo, the insect scurrying away to deliver a sharp bite to Mysterio.

After hopping around on one ankle while holding the other for a good few seconds, Mysterio began to threaten that "NO ONE – " before he fell completely over due to the wobbly balance, landing on his back in the goo.

"You're done," Shocker proclaimed, aiming both gauntlets.

That was when Gill went for the tackle; "I GOT IT!"

His arms closed around empty air. The attacknid went fluttering into the air as Shocker's blast threw Gill across the bog.

Calindor watched in dismay as the group of grown villains stomped, spellcasted, and swore trying to squash one simple little bug. Then it landed in front of him; he kicked it onto its back, where its wings were pinned down over its own weight, and stomped both feet down into it, squishing it into mush.

"You're welcome," he scoffed. "Also, speaking of 'you're welcome' – "

"I must repay your valiant slaying of that awful attacknid!" the tree conceded. That was how they ended up with a red fleshbag.

On the edge of a deeper river of goo, five worms sat hunched on a wooden dock. Insofar as a worm can sit, having no defined rear, of course. Each was wrapped in a sweater (insofar as you can call a garment a "sweater" when it has no sleeves) of a different color: blue, yellow, purple, red, and green.

Beside them, in the river, floated perhaps the strangest creature encountered yet: a sentient log with an upper-deck bus compartment mounted atop of her round body, making a ferry. "Come on, now," she encouraged. "It's not that difficult. Read the instructions over again, why don't you?"

"You seem to be having a problem," Calindor inferred as he approached. "Mightn't we help?"

"I'm trying to get these worms into their proper seats for the ride," the ferry explained. "Worms are picky about this sort of thing, you know. But as clear as I thought my instructions were, they keep putting themselves in the wrong seats and getting into an awful row when they realize they aren't sitting next to someone they get along with."

The question on everyone's mind was how, exactly, a worm could get into a row with another worm. They didn't have mouths to yell with or limbs to strike with, and they moved fairly slowly. All the same, they wanted – or, rather they needed – the potential reward of a beetle bag too much to care.

"Show us these instructorations!" Zevon demanded.

This wasn't too difficult, aside from the part where someone had to pick up all the worms to seat them, but that was what Gill was there for. The ferry had indeed written clear instructions, leading Mozenrath to conclude that all worms were just idiots. The ferry paid them back in a green fleshbag and then went on her way.

As she revved up and shot forward down the river, however, she kicked up quite a sizeable splash of goo that washed right over Yzma and only Yzma.

"I…have…HAD IT!" Yzma raged.

Mysterio thought this was immensely hilarious, and began to guffaw, doubling over. So Yzma really had no choice but to grab him by the shoulders when he was off guard and hurl him right into the river full stop.

There, in the goo, he flailed about dramatically; "BETRAYAL! I'M DROWNING! YOU'LL PAY FOR THIS!"

Though as histrionic as he was being on purpose, there really was a lot of goo leaking into his helmet from the underside, obscuring his vision. Not to mention getting dangerously close to his mouth; he sputtered some of it back out, spitting it right where his line of sight was on the inside of the glass. So he had to rely on the sound cue rather than sight to determine that someone had splashed into the river beside him.

"Montana!" he cried in relief that was only half-false. "You've come to rescue me from an awful fate in this dire pit of – "

It wasn't Shocker. It was Gill, who used this opportunity to dunk Mysterio's helmet into full submersion. "That's for making fun of me earlier!" he taunted.

"Should we stop this?" Wuya asked Mozenrath and Yzma.

"I'm entertained," Mozenrath said with a shrug.

"Better him than me," Yzma added.

"I thought so," Wuya stated.

The reason Shocker hadn't immediately dove into the river was because he needed a few seconds to disengage his gauntlets. After all, if he got them seriously wet – or at least sticky – he could risk a rather large explosion, and he didn't feel like blowing up that day. But he was then in the river right after Gill pulled his little stunt, and he batted the mutant aside with one arm; "Git. Go on, GIT!"

Gill lazily tread goo away from Shocker, taking the time to soak in the atmosphere and the temperature of the muck.

Shocker emerged from the river with a goo-soaked Mysterio in his arms in a bridal carry, making ever-more dramatic coughs as they both reached terra firma. "I ain't gonna say ya didn't have that comin," Shocker said as he placed Mysterio feet-first on the ground.

Mysterio was rather distracted by the urgent need to peel his helmet away and cough out the remaining goo that he'd practically inhaled when Gill had pushed him under, else he might actually give his best Orin Scrivello performance yet in the worst possible sense. He hacked and spat, quite pale as more goo hit the ground.

Shocker flinched. "Y'mean y'actually were drownin'."

"Didn't you LISTEN TO ME?" Mysterio barked at him.

Shocker just sighed. "Ya gonna be all right there?"

"I'll live," Mysterio huffed. "No thanks to Yzma."

"I'm not sorry," Yzma said coldly.

"I just need to get this cleared out," Mysterio muttered, turning his attention to the helmet, "and then I'll – "

"Oh, no, ya don't." Shocker swiped the glass sphere before any such cleaning could happen. "That thing's a drownin' hazard. You can have it back once we're outta the goo."

"IT COMPLETES MY AESTHETIC!" Mysterio argued.

"What part of SUFFOCATIN' ON GOO UNTIL YA DIE don't ya get?" Shocker argued, holding the helmet as far away from Mysterio as he could.

"And what part of AESTHETIC don't YOU get?" Mysterio snapped back.

Calindor had figured out a long time ago that this crew was more or less a bunch of children in the bodies of grown-ups. This only drove the point home so much more painfully.

"Can you two stop being an old married couple so we can get another bag?" Gill urged. "If this is anything like the monkeys, there's gonna be five."

He stalked off, meaning the others had to follow. Yzma and Mysterio bumped each other with shoulders in a semi-threatening manner and Calindor wanted to die.

After an animate ferry, the sight of a huge golden-furred cross between a gorilla and a sloth really wasn't so surprising. And really, neither was the array of colorful bugs that crawled around the fur on his back.

"Ah, just in time!" said a violet centipede with a thick Scottish accent. "Could ya help me out? I'll give ya a bag of Goo Beetles for the trouble!"

"What is it this time?" Wuya asked derisively.

"Me friend's a yellow madder," the centipede explained, "so he's got loads of bugs livin' in symbiosis on his back. But one of 'em's not playin' by the rules an' is makin' him itch. Now, me friend can't talk, but he can write, an' he's described it in the trunk of that tree!"

The handwriting was messy, but decipherable. The yellow madder was clearly bothered by a yellow flea with a star pattern.

"Found it," Mozenrath said immediately. "Right there. Gill, pick that up."

Except Gill was missing.

"Wha – where did he go?" Yzma cried.

"Maybe he finally assimilated back into the goo," Wuya suggested.

"Well, one of us gotta pick off that bug," Shocker stated, "and I ain't doin' it."

This devolved into the exact same argument as with the spiders' dinner, only without Gill, they were forced to end up drawing straws to see who had to do the dirty work. Though perhaps they shouldn't have let Mozenrath conjure the straws, because at this point, much as he appreciated Yzma like family, he was too amused to let anyone but her have the short straw and so rigged the game. (His straw was also longer than anyone else's to assert that he did, in fact, have no obligation to pick a flea off a primate's back.)

"Well, well." Yzma pinched the bug between her fingers. "What have we here? A flea? A harmless little flea. Do you know what we do with harmless little fleas? Why, we put them inside of a box. Then we put that box inside of another box – "

Wuya flicked the bug and it disintegrated into ash.

"You just wanted to be smug, didn't you?" Yzma sighed.

"Always," Wuya replied.

For that, they were granted a golden fleshbag. "Short straw goes," Mozenrath reminded the group.

Seething, Yzma picked up the slimy bag. "He never mentioned that it pulses," she growled. "Or that it's cold, or that once you're this close to it, you can hear THE INCESSANT BUZZING FROM THE INSIDE!"

"You better keep that bag out of your box in a box," Mozenrath warned.

"Sentences you'll only hear among the WHAM ARMY," Wuya muttered.

"We need these beetles in order to ascend the falls," Mozenrath insisted. "Which is the number one reason why, like it or not, we need to find our mutant, or at LEAST the bags he was carrying!"

They found Gill by the bank of a deeper pool of goo, splashing in the shallows along with several snakes, a couple of centipedes, and the flower-people who'd wrangled the crabalocks. The four flowers who'd greeted the party on entry were performing a little song there, and everyone was dancing to it as they sang: "Goo, goo! We all made it through! A danger to none but high-heeled shoes! WOOOO!"

Gill latched his webbed hands onto the leaves of the flower-woman, spinning her around and laughing as the song finished up; "Goo, goo! There's just one thing to do! Sing a song, throw a party, and dance in the goo!"

"Why is this my life?" Mozenrath sighed, head planted firmly in his hands.

"You're preaching to a choir," Yzma grunted.

"MOSS." Shocker stormed up to Gill, clapping a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Time to get goin'."

"No way!" Gill folded his arms. "These are my people, and this is my new empire! I wanna stay longer."

"Wouldn't you rather come back when you could LITERALLY make this your territory?" Mozenrath groaned from behind his hands. "Such as when we have Atlantis, which can't happen UNTIL WE HAVE THE GEM WE CAME FOR?"
"Why wait?" Gill posed. "I can just start taking over now!"

"Oh, we'd love it if you'd stay," the flower-woman told him, missing the point behind the turn of phrase "taking over." "I was hoping to meet a handsome and nice young man like you eventually."

"Heheh…" Gill smirked. "Hear that? She thinks I'm – "

Then his whole body wrenched; "NICE?"

"Yes," the flower-woman confirmed. "Such a lovely young man. We know all about how you've been helping everyone all over, and furthermore, you're the only outsider to not be afraid of us or to touch anything in the Lagoon. You're a kind soul, I can tell it. Perhaps the sort who could go with a good girl like myself?"

Gill shoved her aside roughly. "Changed my mind," he grunted. "I'm not staying here now that my reputation is RUINED."

"I can't believe that sorted itself out without me having to do the seductive evil mom act," Wuya said, quite stunned.

They headed toward the border of the Lagoon, where a river of goo that seemed thinner than what they'd encountered before was flowing quite rapidly downstream. "Careful," Calindor warned, putting up a hand. "This is quickgoo. Fall in, and it'll be the end of you."

"LATER, SQUEEBS!" Gill yelled before swan-diving right into it.

Calindor just gave an exasperated sigh. "Well, I guess that's one less to worry about – "

"Psyche!" Gill surfaced, treading the quickgoo. "I just wanted it on record that I'm not a NICE GUY. Anyway, this stuff's no problem…if you're me. The rest of you are gonna wanna find another way over, though. I mean, I COULD give you all matching fins so you could do this – "

"NO," Mozenrath said bluntly. "NOT DOING THAT."

There was a bubbling from the middle of the quickgoo canal, and when a mound of goo rose up and revealed itself to have eyeballs and a crude mouth, even Gill was startled away with a scream, leaping upstream.

"There will be no crossing to Goo Falls," the sentient goo burbled in a rough voice. "The bridge has been destroyed. Turn back now, or face a horrible fate in the quickgoo."

"What about me?" Gill posed. "I'm fine!"

"The scaled one may cross," the sentient goo amended. "A surprise. Perhaps he is most suited out of all of you to be in these lands."

"TOLD YOU!" Gill asserted.

"HA!" Zevon pointed at the sentient goo. "I see the flawing in your logisticality! You have said the bridge was destructed, but I CAN OBSERVATE IT RIGHT THERE!" He pointed to a rolled-up bridge of rope and planks, sitting on the same edge he was on. "Your attemptures to decietive us will not be efficactive!"

"Unfold that bridge," the sentient goo challenged, "and tell me what you see."

So Zevon threw it across the channel with a "BA-BAM!", and while the ropes fastened fine at the other end, the last three planks were very definitely missing.

"Ah," Calindor realized. "They intend for us to fix the bridge ourselves if we want to cross." He dropped his voice to a mumble; "Because they just can't make it straightforward for once, can they?"

"Is this another puzzle?" Wuya asked.

"Well, there are ominous-looking symbols carved on the planks," Mysterio observed, "so yes. It's another puzzle."

The sides of each plank bore distinct symbols indeed. A stalky line with two fronds coming off the top, almost like horns. A circle with inverted horns from the previous symbol. Two lines, perfectly parallel to each other.

It didn't take Mozenrath long to figure out the pattern at all.

"If you have any hope of fixing this bridge," the sentient goo cautioned, "the pattern must be followed exactly. Else the bridge will throw you all into the slimy depths, never to be heard from again."

"Don't do it," Wuya warned, realizing what Mozenrath was thinking about.

"No," Mozenrath told her. "I know exactly how to finish this."

He felled a nearby tree, then used magic to cut loose three planks of wood, evenly sized to those already present. Then he gave them three symbols to fill out the pattern: a horseshoe shape over a line. An "m" with a cross at the end of its final line. And, to Wuya's horror and dismay, an angular cross.

"You KNOW what they think here," Wuya seethed.

"And I'm right," Mozenrath insisted, laying the planks in place.

"GILL!" Wuya cried. "GET UP HERE AND TEST THIS BRIDGE SO WE DON'T – "

Mozenrath was already striding across.

"YOU GET BACK HERE!" Wuya snapped at him.

But he didn't slow his stride until he'd reached the other bank, at which point he whirled and gave a very proud smirk. "O, ye of little faith."

"Um." Wuya's eyes widened. "Well. That's good news on a couple of levels."

"Of course I understand what just happened here," Mysterio said as he rounded off the group at the other side; Gill clambered up that bank to stand with them. "But just for fun, explain it to me like I didn't."

"They were Zodiac symbols in the order of the year," Wuya informed him. "Mozenrath placed down Libra, Scorpio, and Sagittarius."

"I see." Mysterio nodded. "And this was significant because…?"

"Because," Mozenrath said, bubbling over with pride, "it means that whoever designed this bridge assumed that OPHIUCHUS IS NOT A LEGALLY RECOGNIZED ASTROLOGICAL CONSTELLATION!"

"Ah." Mysterio nodded, finally putting the pieces together.

They proceeded further, noting that the land grew drier. Yzma sighed; "I'm just glad to be out of that wretched lagoon. I swear, if I never see any more GOO again – "

They turned a corner to behold a sight on par with the Rings of Fire for both excellence and horror. A massive five-story construct of platforms, moving like a giant stairway toward an altar cavern identical to that at the Rings' center. And all around them, in a many-tiered bowl-shaped valley, cascaded an immense flow of vibrantly green goo.

"You knew we were going somewhere called Goo Falls," Wuya reminded Yzma. "Are you really going to act surprised?"

Yzma slumped in defeat. "No. I was just trying to live in denial."

...

Leo Lionheart was, indeed, a very easily-frightened man. For instance, as he walked back to the headmaster's office for the nightly rendez-vous in the witching hour, his entire body, from his thick head of sandy-gray hair to his flexible lion tail, was trembling.

Though, in his defense, anyone would tremble, approaching what he was about to.

He opened the door. Walked inside. Took a seat at his desk, where he lit a lamp and began to scrawl on the latest batch of tests his students had turned in.

There was no warning until the lamp suddenly shut off. Leo's whole body jerked, startled. Watts did so love to pull that trick on him. At least it was better than the Seer showing up with no forewarning at all.

He set his pen aside, and the Seer glided into the office gracefully, ominously. Leo already knew the lights wouldn't turn back on no matter what he did, but it didn't really matter to the person on the other end.

"Leonardo." Salem's voice was calm, even. It always started out that way. "What news have you to report?"

"There…there isn't much," Leo said tentatively. "Just…a slight update."

Salem's voice already took on a sharp edge; "How slight?"

"Qrow has informed me that he has been joined by…other Huntsmen and Huntresses," Leo managed to stammer out. "They could be a problem…but I'm sure with the Branwen Tribe on our side, it will only be a very minor problem!"

"Leo." Salem sounded as though she was speaking to a child that she was not mad at, but disappointed in. "I gave you an order: to eliminate all of Qrow's contacts here in the kingdom of Mistral."

"But I did!" Leo protested.

"Then who does Qrow have with him?"

"I…I don't know."

"And you didn't think to ask?"

Leo swallowed hard. "No. It…slipped my mind."

"I see." Salem's tone had taken on a touch of amusement. "I don't doubt that such a thing would slip your mind, Leo. Because you wouldn't want to be obligated to give me that information, thereby jeopardizing your standing with Qrow in case my side begins to lose traction."

"That's not it at all!" Leo protested.

"I told you to choose your side when you first came to me, Leo," Salem warned. "This is your last warning to decide where you stand. Or else everything you fear will come horribly true. I will see to it."

Leo swallowed hard. "Yes, Salem."

"Do you have any other information for me? Numbers?"

"He said to expect no fewer than…than ten companions, aside from him and the boy."

"Ten is a large number," Salem said, obviously offput. "Something isn't right. You're going to find out what for me, Leo."

"Understood," Leo replied, throat dry.

"Until next we meet," Salem said as the Seer retreated from the office. "And you had better say what I want to hear at that time, or else the consequences will be grave."

It floated away, to make its careful path through the grounds of Haven, avoiding all security. Salem didn't bother directing the telepathic Grimm to close the door on its way out. Leo got up to do that himself, shaking even more violently now.

She'd figured him out. He did want Qrow as a backup, all of Ozpin's forces as a backup, should Salem lose her war. Now he had very little time to think of a way to keep his options open but also pacify Salem enough to let him have his life. And Watts was right; he was incredibly bad at improvising, as Qrow had seen earlier. Luckily, Qrow was completely naïve to it.

Though what a funny thought, that one would have good luck around Qrow Branwen. A shiver went down Leo's spine; what if that good luck had occurred because a much larger wave of bad luck was about to wash over him? No, that was just being silly –

"GEEZ, that bitch is pretentious. Am I right?"

Leo whirled in horror, heart nearly pounding right out of his chest. The glow of a cigarette faintly illuminated the face of a tall silhouette that casually sat on the corner of his desk, legs crossed elegantly.

"No…" Leo whispered. "You…you're…you can't be. Torchwick?"

The cigarette was removed, flashing the light back on that face, its familiar curves, its glittering green eye. "In the flesh," Roman said as he exhaled a plume of smoke.

"But you're dead!" Leo whimpered.

"Yeah, well," Roman replied, "turns out that was a load of Grimmshit." He shrugged; "So? How've you been?"

"Salem sent you to kill me!" Leo whimpered. "She lulled me into false security with the Seer – she'd been hiding you to deploy as a secret assassin this whole time!"

"Leo, Leo, Leo." Roman stubbed the cigarette out right on top of the headmaster's desk. "I can see you are very obviously confused about a few things. So, one, I'm not dead, nor was I hiding in Salem's ranks. Two, I hate that bitch just as much as you do, and I'm FINALLY free of her chains."

Dare Leo hope? "Then…then you and I…"

"Up-bup-bup-bup, stop. Stop right there." Roman put up a hand, barely visible in the dark. "I hate to burst your bubble, but I gotta tell ya…I've got big plans for this kingdom, and none of them involve you."

"Then you'll let me go!" Leo pleaded. "Help me get away from her! Divert her attention from me!"

"I'm gonna say this one last time, Leo." Roman's tone was cold. "I don't work for Salem anymore. I'm not here to kill you on her dime. I'm here to kill you because it benefits ME."

"PLEASE!" Leo begged. "I'LL DO ANYTHING!"

"No." Roman shook his head. "No, you won't." Then he gave a sharp whistle.

The closet burst open, and two other men exited it: one bulky, one slender. The thicker-set of the two brandished a spearlike weapon that glowed with a green gem, seemingly some sort of modified Dust, as far as Leo could tell. This illuminated the strange helmet and pelt he wore; the former almost looked like the skull of a dragon.

The other cocked some sort of large weapon, likely a more traditional combo from the Mistral criminal underground. A custom job, by the looks of it in the glow of the green. His smirk was playful, and the way his jacket tackily reflected the light into iridescence was somewhat distracting.

"I normally find hunting lions a bore in comparison to my usual quarry," the Huntsman growled. "This, however, will be a treat."

"Lucky for you," Zorg told him, "about, hmm, fifty percent of the reason we're here is for the thrill of the chase! So you get a ten-second head start."

Roman strode to stand between them, raising the Cudgel and pointing it at Leo. "One," he began.

Leo kicked down the doors and ran for his life.

The hallways of the administrative building had never seemed so unfamiliar, though he walked them daily, had living quarters here. He chose his twists and turns in an attempt to lose his pursuers.

A bang from around the corner informed him he hadn't done a thorough job. "Olly olly oxen free!" Roman called out. "Or is it lion free, with you?"

Leo flattened himself against the wall, shimmying down it, hurrying into a smaller passage to shake Roman from his trail. When he exited into the next main hall, he caught a glimpse of green in his periphery.

"YOU'RE MINE, LION!" the Huntsman screamed.

So Leo doubled back the way he'd come. Roman's patrol had taken him past the point where they'd almost crossed, so there was no way any of them would guess he'd take the way he'd used to run from them!

An utter hail of bullets was heard popping and crackling out of the ZF1 one bloc over. "Kittykittykittykitty!" Zorg cajoled. "Pspspspspspsps!"

In desperation, Leo kicked down the nearest door, hoping for a room he could hide in. But he didn't get one. He got a maintenance exit to the courtyard, dark under a barely-starry midnight sky.

Freedom. Presuming he could get off campus.

Leo bolted, making a beeline. Then thinking to stagger his run, in case one of his pursuers shot from behind. To the gate, he had to get to the gate –

The gate was blocked. By an enormous mecha. Atlesian? No. Too brightly-colored to match Ironwood's style. A garish red. Arms laden with guns cocked up at Leo.

As Leo evaded, ducking and rolling through the shrubbery, he was taunted by a recording of Drakken's voice giving its best maniacal laughter.

The door of the administrative building burst open. Leo slid around the corner, pressing himself to the wall. Three sets of footsteps, and Roman cried, "He's out here somewhere!"

Again, they'd never suspect he'd doubled back; a glance confirmed all three of them had reacted to the bot. He could hide in his office overnight, wait it out, barricade the door –

As he burst into the entry of the administrative building, he got three steps before the stabbing pain entered the sole of his foot, causing him to have to clamp a hand over his own mouth to muffle the scream. It was like he'd stepped on about ten needles implanted in the floor.

Looking down, he could see that wasn't too far off. Long, thin spikes of ice protruded, stained red with his blood. Actually, it was just a small patch; in the time that Leo had been absent, the entire floor, down every hall he could see, was covered in a thin layer of ice, and from this ice sprouted the spikes. On the walls, too, he could see now – and on the ceiling! How had all this happened in such a short time? Not a moment ago, the other three were running from this very area!

To his horror, he realized the ice needles were still growing, lengthening to block his passage. Now he couldn't even get into the building if he wanted to risk impaling himself on the slender thorns.

So he left again, hoping whatever was causing the deep freeze didn't follow him outside, and he stole around back of the building. There was a second gate, further away and smaller. It would take some time and luck to get to, but it was his only hope.

He darted from shadow to shadow, then was left, at one point, with no choice but to cross an open yard. He bolted, hoping to make it quick.

A geyser of fire, revolving in a cyclone, burst from the ground beside him, throwing him to his seat on the grass. It pulsated, reaching up to the heavens, then subsided.

A rumble under the ground warned Leo to get moving. He forced himself to his feet – one of which was still throbbing and bleeding from the ice needles – and charged before the space where he'd been sitting erupted into another column of flame.

More and more burst up around him, causing him to redirect, to halt on a dime, to sidestep. And he could swear through it all, he heard the shrill, high-pitched laugh of a woman who was somehow enjoying this.

But the minute he got off the lawn and into the alley between the rear buildings, the fire calmed down. He wasn't being followed by whoever was causing that. Salem was the only person he could think of who could even do that, and Roman had made it clear she wasn't holding his leash anymore –

The implications of that were perhaps the most frightening thing of all about this chase.

Two silhouettes awaited at the back gate, and Leo slowed. Enemies?

"Leo?"

It was Qrow's voice. It was Qrow!

Leo rushed to him, recognizing the shorter figure beside him as Oscar Pine. "QROW!" he cried. "There's no time to explain; we're in terrible danger! You need – "

Qrow's blade, in sword shape, flicked out to point at him, barring his way.

"We know about your involvement with Salem," Qrow hissed, voice dripping with venom. The same venom visible in Oscar's eyes as the boy stared Leo down without a sound. "You really think Oz woulda been happy about that?"

Leo put up both hands; "Qrow, I can explain! Please, just help me escape – "

"You're done," Qrow told him. "No more games, Leo. Why don't you say hello to the other demons for me, once you get there?"

"WHAT – "

And Qrow rammed the blade through Leo so hard, it jutted right out the other side.

Leo, spewing blood from his new aperture, coughed and sputtered. "Qrow…" he gasped. "I'm…sorry…"

And then he was no more, slumping lifelessly across the blade.

"Heh." Qrow smirked. "Nice job, li'l lady. I thought he'd see through us in an instant."

"And he very nearly DID." Vexen stormed toward the pair, with Drakken and the hooded Kokichi in tow. "Did you not go over the photos my replica brought back from his reconnaissance? The boy has HAZEL eyes, not blue!"

Oscar, who wasn't actually Oscar, shrugged, giving a cavalier expression. Then she shimmered into her true form: one miss Neopolitan.

"Moby Morpher!" Qrow called out, and it turned out he wasn't Qrow, either, but Hannibal Roy Bean, plunging an expertly-crafted replica through Leo's body. The bean shook Leo off the blade, letting his corpse drop. "I gotta admit the sword sure convinced 'im," Hannibal laughed.

"'Course it did!" Now Zorg was headed to rendez-vous with them all, followed by Roman and the Huntsman. "That was a Zorg creation, better than the original! Just kinda sad ya didn't get to try out the scythe conversion function; much smoother than the Branwen model. Go on, give it a whirl, won't ya?"

Hannibal flicked the sword to transform it into an immense scythe, then swung it about experimentally.

"Hey, WATCH WHERE YOU'RE FLINGING THAT THING!" Drakken ducked to avoid being decapitated. "This is exactly why I sent a robot to do the job! Because one of YOU was probably ready to commit friendly fire."

"The way your bot almost punched a million holes in us when Leo tripped it?" Roman scoffed.

"THAT'S NOT RELEVANT!" Drakken screamed.

Mim twirled out of complete invisibility to join the party. "Ooh, that was so much fun!" she cackled. "Now, when I'd heard the plan involved me NOT killing him with all that fire, I wasn't sure at first, but the payoff was worth it in spades!"

"And you know who you have to thank for that?" Roman urged.

The Huntsman sighed. Because of course the last of their number had insisted upon this overly dramatic entrance. "The scriptwriter for this entire perfectly-crafted murder," he said as he and Roman each stepped aside.

And Snatcher, from behind them, bowed low, one arm pulling his hat across his chest so it wouldn't fall. He straightened up, replacing the hat with a cocky smirk. "Scriptwriter," he corrected, "choreographer, and costumer, thank you quite. However, it is teamwork that makes the dream work, so they say. And we've just made our dream of eliminating the mole inside the academy come wonderfully true!"

"Mim," the Huntsman ordered, "dispose of the body."

"Of course!" Mim clapped her hands, and Leo's remains exploded, sending a rain of blood and guts over the immediate vicinity.

"WAS THAT NECESSARY?" Vexen yelled as everyone wiped bits of Lionheart off themselves.

"Well, they'll never find any of the pieces," Mim told him. "I blasted him down to atoms. Any further and I'd've caused nuclear fission." Her eyes lit up; "Oh, I've just gotten a wonderful idea for next time!"

"No," the Huntsman said flatly.

"Try and stop me," Mim challenged.

"But now," Hannibal declared, "for the piece de resistance." (Which he pronounced as you would the English words "piece de resistance.")

The Moby Morpher on his arms radiated light. And then there stood before everyone else a perfect copy of Leonardo Lionheart.

"Oh, noooooo, Salem!" Hannibal said mockingly. "I'm too afraid of everything to give you any useful information! I need to go soil my own pants!" He chuckled. "How was that?"

"Well, the voice is right," Roman told him. "Not sure about the sentiment or the speech patterns."

"What matters is that we now have our own mole in Salem's ranks," the Huntsman stated. "We can speak to her and ask for information upfront, so long as we provide."

"And provide we shall," Vexen said smugly. "Whatever Salem wants to know, Kokichi can find out."

"When's the kid gonna start talkin'?" Roman asked. "Or, you know, doing anything besides floating around like some weird creepy ghost?"

"Every replica grows at its own pace," Vexen revealed. "In the case of Kokichi, I rather revel in how long it has taken him to achieve speech or independent thought. He can be a truly perfect servant for that much longer."

A high-pitched, unfamiliar laugh broke into the collective aura, causing everyone to flinch. Had an outsider witnessed their dirty deeds?

But the source of the sound was underneath the black leather hood. Said hood was thrown back, and Kokichi was laughing, tears in his eyes.

"You IDIOTS!" he cackled. "You complete IDIOTS! I wasn't actually out for that long! I was just pretending to be! I figured out how to talk and do everything on my own a WHILE ago! I just wanted to see the looks on your faces when you figured out IT WAS A LIE!"

After everyone gave Kokichi a good long stare, Roman ventured, "Hey, Iceman? I already don't like this kid."

"Boy, you guys are morons," Kokichi continued to guffaw, slapping his thigh. "And you said that to my face about wanting me to be your servant! I'm going to remember that, you know. And then I'm going to get horrible revenge on all of you! You hear me? I'll murder you all! I can do that, you know, with my super replica powers!"

"I gave you no such ability," Vexen said flatly.

"GOTCHA AGAIN!" Kokichi wheezed. "IT WAS ANOTHER LIE!"

"Erm…Mr. Vexen," Snatcher ventured. "Did you…happen to program your own voice into your experimentation?"

"I wouldn't DO that!" Vexen snapped. "That's what he sounded like in his original state! Or the state into which Tsumugi wrote him, at any rate."

"Yeah, sure," Roman sneered. "And the fact that he sounds like a younger, brattier version of you means nothing."

"IT REALLY DOES!" Vexen attempted.

"I believe you," Drakken said sympathetically.

"Then you're an idiot," Kokichi told him. "Vexen transplanted his own vocal chords into me. He has cybernetic ones in him now."

"Another lie?" Mim asked.

"Wow, you catch on fast!" Kokichi's eyes sparkled. "Unfortunately, that means you're not gonna be as fun to mess with as those dumbfucks in the market. I was already awake by that time, you know. I had a little fun while I was out. Messed with some losers." He fished in his coat pockets for the scroll Vexen had provided him to take photos for recon – the references used to create Hannibal and Neo's disguises. "Wanna see? I took way more pics than I showed you. Here's a selfie. Here's a selfie. Here's another selfie. Here's a selfie with a weapon guy I'm pretty sure was evil, so I liked him. Here's a pair of fucking idiots I met at the sushi stall! Here's their expression after I told them the worst sushi recipes I could make up off the top of my head. Here's that kid I saw with Qrow getting mad!"

"You ventured THAT FAR from your mission?" Vexen scolded.

"Awww," Kokichi said in a syrupy voice, "but I fowwowed Mistew Qwow awound wike you asked! This was on the waaaaay!"

"HATE. THIS. KID," Roman seethed through gritted teeth.

"See this?" Kokichi sidled next to Roman, holding up his scroll to show him the picture. "See these fuckwits? This is gonna be you when I'm done fucking with you. Look at the looks on their loser faces. I'm gonna tie your brain into knots until you can only make that face and – "

"WHAT THE HELL?" Roman swiped the scroll out of Kokichi's hand.

"Looks like I finally got through to him," Kokichi sighed mockingly.

"No." Roman spun the scroll to show everyone the image of Ruby Rose at the sushi stall. "GUESS WHO'S FUCKING HERE RIGHT AT THE SAME TIME WE ARE?"

"We really shouldn't be surprised at this point," Mim pointed out.

Snatcher's eyes narrowed; "What's that THING next to her?"

"Possibly some sort of overlarge pet," the Huntsman theorized.

"Nah." Roman glanced back. "I think that's her boyfriend. I'm getting date energy off 'em. Not that it matters; at least this one's a big target to hit. Fuck, Leo said there were TEN people with Qrow and the kid. Take a wild guess where they all came from!"

"Okinawa!" Kokichi crowed, causing Vexen to cuff him lightly. This was a bad move, as Kokichi screamed "OWWWWW!" and burst into tears on command, wailing, "DADDY HURT ME! SOMEBODY CALL CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES! I'M BEING ABUUUUUUSED!"

"Can I please shoot him?" Roman asked.

"NO!" Vexen snapped. "He's MY CREATION, and I'LL decide whether or not he needs to be dismantled! And after all…I've put up with FAR greater annoyances among present company."

"Well, that's just plain rude," Zorg huffed.

"But accurate!" Mim chuckled.

"This changes little," Snatcher offered. "After all, our goal was to remain undercover. They won't know we're about, which will give us the tactical advantage. And when we reveal our hand, we'll have had plenty of time to conduct more reconnaissance. Am I not right?"

"Nope!" Roman told him. "You're not…you're not not right. Wait. Fuck. I'm trying to say you ARE right – "

"Then we shall proceed to phase two." Snatcher spun to extend his arms, indicating the entirety of Haven Academy. "INFILTRATION!"

...

The Van Eltia docked at the Northern port of Hellawes, where everything seemed to be either white, gray or very, very light blue, including the buildings that towered up, indicating this was an urban area – even if the technology level looked rather Renaissance-era. Snow softly fell from above in gentle white flakes. The wind whistled around, and everyone milling about the dock area pulled their coats a little tighter to guard from it.

Harley and Spinel were the first to walk down the gangplank. Harley gently patted the Gem's back as she sobbed woefully, "OF COURSE I HAVE TRUST ISSUES! HOW COULD I EVER TRUST ANYONE AGAIN AFTER PINK DIAMOND ABANDONED ME? I JUST WANTED HER TO STAY WITH ME AND PLAY WITH ME, AND SHE TRICKED ME INTO THINKING SHE WAS GONNA COME BACK!"

"That's understandable," Harley said sympathetically. "Believe me. But you're never gonna heal unless ya get back in the game!"

Behind them, Eizen cleared his throat; "Perhaps Pink Diamond did what she did to protect you. It sounds as though she had a dangerous mission. I wonder if she didn't want you to come to harm. From the sounds of it, she thought of you as a precious little sister, one who needed an idyllic garden to play in for all eternity without worrying about the outside world."

"And how would YOU know?" Spinel barked.

"I…" Eizen paused. "I just know."

"Eiiiizeeeeen," Harley accused, "didja leave somebody behind for their own good? Huh?"

"That – that's none of your business!" Eizen sputtered.

"I dunno…" Harley grinned. "A little sister, maybe?"

"She doesn't have to worry about being hurt by my curse anymore!" Eizen asserted. "Isn't that what matters? She's safe now! Safe from me!"

"Shame on you!" Spinel scolded. "How could you abandon your own shard?"

"I write her every day," Eizen protested. "Not that I ever get a response. I can tell she's angry. But all the same, after the palmier incident, I didn't dare put her in harm's way again."

"What was the palmier incident?" This from Yang; she and Giovanni walked behind Eizen.

"She loved palmiers," Eizen muttered. "So much that she wasn't satisfied with waiting for a trip to the market anymore. So I learned the recipe. Perfected it. But when I was taking the first batch out of the oven, a wicked flame burst out and set her on fire. She was confined to bed for weeks with grievous burns. Once I learned my curse was responsible, I couldn't risk anything like that happening to her again."

"I guess that sounds…reasonable?" Giovanni suggested.

They were all on the street of the port district by now, and Harley shook her head. "Ain't reasonable. Ya scarred that poor little girl for life, leavin' her!"

"For shame!" Spinel asserted.

Eizen gritted his teeth; "Did you all miss the part where she nearly died because of my curse?"

"Nah," Yang clarified. "We're just stubborn types, that's all. Where there's a will, there's a way, am I right?"

"You could find a way to weaponize your curse," Giovanni suggested, "and use it to VAPORIZE ALL OF YOUR SISTER'S ENEMIES WHO DARE COME NEAR!"

"Perhaps," Eizen muttered. "But then there's the factor of…" He sighed. "My home is on the sea, where I can explore new horizons. I go against my designated element of earth. She plays into it. She needs to be rooted somewhere comfortable."

"So compromise," Harley suggested.

"How?" Eizen asked.

"I dunno!" Harley shrugged. "I ain't an expert on your lives yet! Gimme more details an' I'll have somethin'!"

"We don't have time," Eizen groaned, though it seemed he was more eager to change the subject than anything. "These goods need to be unloaded and distributed within the next twenty-four hours."

"You mean you get to do cool black-market transactions and other shadowy dealings?" Giovanni asked excitedly.

"No," Eizen told him. "It means we get to handle clerical work and negotiations under the nose of the law. Nothing so dreamy as you're expecting."

"Why does being a pirate have to be as boring as all the REAL adult jobs?" Giovanni groaned.

"Are you saying piracy isn't a real job?" Eizen countered. "As a matter of fact, the privateer class is hired by a national government to commit acts of war or robbery in the name of the monarch, thereby legalizing the trade under specific circumstances and paying a specified salary to each sailor who undertook the contract, which makes it a legitimized profession!"

"You sure know a lot," Yang observed.

Eizen smiled at that. "I make it a point to learn about subjects that interest me," he told her. "You never know what knowledge could come in handy in a tight situation."

"Can you tell me why it's apparently snowing," Yang asked, "and I'm walking in snow right now, and I'm not cold?"

"I…don't know," Eizen admitted.

"I think it's 'cause it's a dream," Harley offered.

"I'm willing to admit there may be some effect of your cross-world travel that rendered you in a dreamlike state," Eizen mused. "Potentially, in your unconscious state, your minds astrally projected into this world. However, it is a real world. To me, anyway."

"Maybe that is how it works," Harley mulled over.

"Or maybe someone's in denial that he's a dream character," Giovanni suggested. "I'm just saying."

"Let's not try to give anyone any existential crises right now," Yang sighed. Then yawned. "Wow. Didn't know I was that tired out already."

Then Harley yawned. "Dangit, Yang! You're contagious!"

"I'm not tired," Giovanni said. "My energy has been renewed by the prospects of a new metropolis on which to inflict my reign of – " And then the largest yawn of any of them. "…Okaaaaay, it was a long ride over and I can't remember how many hours ago I was asleep last. Wait, did we go through all the night in Sweet Jazz City and all day in Remnant with no pit stops?"

"Sounds like you guys need a nap even more than I do," Yang suggested.

"There's an inn in the central district," Eizen informed them. "If you want to rest, I'll pay your way for the day. That should save you from having to sit through the 'boring' part of the job."

"No thanks," Spinel told him. "I don't need sleep. Or want sleep. I want to frolic around and see if this town is any fun!"

"Just don't forget to rendez-vous with the Van Eltia in twenty-four hours," Eizen cautioned her. "If we can't find you, we'll have to assume the worst and take off without you. That's just how it works in this trade."

"One day," Harley agreed. "Catch up with the ship. Got it!"

Eizen smiled at them. After all, he was an older brother at the core, and these new folks with their strange tales of worlds and dreams, they seemed like the exact sort who needed an older and wiser sibling to keep them out of trouble. Maybe Aifread and Benwick would scoff at the freeloaders, but he didn't mind one bit shelling out a bit when they arrived at the inn to rent a room out for Harley, Yang, and Giovanni. After all, the flamestone they'd brought to Hellawes was copious enough to fetch a very high price. They could afford a dent.

"Good luck with your boring pirate stuff," Giovanni told Eizen.

Eizen nodded to him; "Get some rest."

"Time for SPINEL to put a little whimsy into this city!" Spinel declared as she cartwheeled out the inn door after Eizen.

That left Harley, Yang, and Giovanni to make their way to their assigned room, opening up the door to see a pair of beds that looked far too soft for them to resist.

"Huh." Giovanni regarded one of the beds. "It's no race car, but it looks like it's got a good bounce factor. Though lemme test that out."

He ran to the bed, launching himself into the air and belly-flopping onto the uppermost blanket. His entire skinny body bounced twice before sinking into the plush bedclothes. "I'd rate that a six out of five!" he gasped.

"Hear that?" Yang asked with a smirk. "Top-quality rating! I can't say no to that!" And she flopped onto her back on the other bed, shifting the blankets about to wriggle beneath them, careful to stay confined to one side.

Now Harley saw the problem. Two beds. Three people. Now, there was an obvious solution, because Giovanni was busy wrapping himself up in all the blankets like a burrito so he could take up the entire bed. And Yang was politely leaving half her bed free. But that would mean Harley would be literally sharing a bed with Yang, and she flushed nervously.

"Hey, uhhhhhh…" She shifted from foot to foot. "I'll just sleep on the floor, if that's okay with everybody."

"What?" Yang laughed softly. "Seriously? Harley. There's way enough room here." She patted the other half of her bed invitingly. "Get in."

"Get in?" Harley was sweating now. "But I mean – it'd be an invasion of your privacy – "

"We're both adults," Yang told her. "And girls, for whatever that means. Also, I trust you. You don't trust me?"

"Of COURSE I do!" Harley blurted. "It's just that – well – I mean – it's – I can't – "

"Wait." Yang's eyes widened. "Do you think I'm sexy and that's why you're nervous about sharing a bed with me?"

"UUUHHHHHH…" Harley blanked.

"You DO!" Yang lit up with a smile, smacking the bed triumphantly with her fist.

"THE TRUTH COMES OUT!" came from within Giovanni's blanket cocoon.

"Look," Harley sputtered. "You're a pretty gal, an' real strong, an' great with the puns, but we – we're from two different worlds. I'm a bandit like your ma, an' you're a hero type like the Batman, an' why did I just admit ta this? 'Cause now you're gonna look at me all weird now that ya know – "

"Harley." Yang smiled softly. "Calm down, okay? It's just a crush. It's not a commitment. Honestly? I take it as a compliment. And if you wanna know the truth, you're pretty cute yourself. Yeah, the moral divide's gonna make it awkward to figure out in the long run, but we don't have to answer that right now, do we? I say we just go to sleep, nobody gets handsy, put up a pillow wall if we have to, and when we wake up, we go from there. See what might or might not happen. Because maybe it's just nothing. Deal?"

"Yeah," Harley replied. "That sounds pretty gr – WAIT, DID YOU JUST SAY YA THINK I'M CUTE?"

"You got a problem with that?" Yang winked.

"Okay," Giovanni muttered, "this was all fun and cute and dramatic at first, but now you two are keeping me up with your weird not-flirting."

Yang tilted her head; "I'm staying on my side of the bed. You decide what to do about that." And she leaned back, shutting her eyes as her head hit the pillow.

There was really only one option. And Harley was glad to utilize it. She proceeded to get into the half of the bed left open for her, pulling up the covers. Turning away from Yang so as to respect her boundaries. And then letting herself fall into the softness of the mattress.

The grays and whites and blues of Hellawes' skyline, framed by the snowfall.

"Yo, come find me."

A tiny, rickety town, hidden away on a mountainside.

"Please. Find me."

Glowing lights against the dark sky.

"Find me."

A brilliant inferno erupting on a background of ice.

"Hey, Harley. Might wanna hurry up and find me."

Harley's eyes snapped open. She sat up, rubbing at her eyes.

"Was that a dream within a dream…?"
It had certainly seemed abstract, even if the images were clear. And the voices that had bade her to do the same thing over and over all sounded distinct, different – and two of them were familiar, Harley realized, though she couldn't quite place who was who now that she was up.

Beside her, Yang stirred, then slowly rose. "Hey," she greeted with a smile.

"Heya, bedhead," Harley teased; Yang's hair had been rustled by her gentle tossing during their sleep. "How long ya think we were out?"

"Dunno," Yang replied. She glanced to the window. "Still looks light out. Either we made it to next morning or the sun hasn't quite gone down yet."

"Feels like I got a good eight hours in." Harley stretched her arms upward and outward, yawning.

"I'm pretty well-rested," Yang agreed. Then, rather loudly, "Hey, Giovanni! Wake up!"

"Nnnoooo," Giovanni groaned.

"Giiiiioooo…" Harley mischievously stole out of the bed and across the room to poke the blanket cocoon. "Rise'n'shine!"

"Five more minutes, Mom," Giovanni muttered.

"We gotta go get breakfast!" Harley urged. "Maybe they'll have some kinda breakfast soup, I dunno!"

"Go awaaaaaay."

"Okay!" Harley took several steps in place, lighter and lighter each time, to make it seem as though she were retreating.

"Oh, this is gonna be good," Yang muttered as she repositioned to get a better view.

Then Harley shoved the blanket cocoon right off the bed, yelling, "WAKE UP!"

"WHAT WHAT WHAT?" Giovanni fought his way out of the blankets, leaping to his feet and striking a battle stance. "Waaaaiiiiit a minute, there's no ambush! OR my mom!"

"No duh," Harley told him. "We're gonna get some breakfast and see how long's left 'till the ship launches."

"Yeah, I could eat," Giovanni relented. "Though just so we're clear…are you two a thing or are you not a thing?"

"Dunno yet." Yang flung off the covers, sliding out of the bed. "I think she's cute and she thinks I'm sexy. That's as far as it goes right now. Not sure how well anything'd work out."

"But where there's a will, there's a way," Harley told her. "You were the one who said that to Eizen."

"Good catch." Yang nodded. "I guess we just see if a will develops while we try and find our lost friends. We can't ditch each other now that we know about that, can we? And we gotta escape this dream together."

"True that!" Harley nodded.

The three of them headed out to the lobby, where Spinel sat in a chair, poking at what appeared to be a plate of fried bird. "My first human food!" she gasped. "I wonder if it's going to taste as horrible as it looks." She raised a drumstick. Took a tentative nibble. And her eyes widened. "IT'S GOOD?"

"Hey, Spins," Harley greeted. "How was explorin' the city?"

"I barely got the lay of the land," Spinel explained. "Though I did pick up some interesting information I thought you should know. But I wasn't sure how long it is humans sleep, so I guessed at when you might be awake. It seems one hour was correct after all."

"Wait." Harley did a double take. "We've only been out AN HOUR?"

"Yes," Spinel said indignantly. "As I said, I barely got to map out the city limits!"

"How did we get that well-rested in an hour?" Yang wondered out loud.

"I mean, it's a dream," Giovanni reminded them. "You ever fell asleep in a dream before? Had a dream in a dream? Time flows all weird and nothing adds up."

"That's the best explanation we got," Harley realized. "So, Spins, what's the big news?"

"I ran into a man near the sailors' guild," Spinel informed her. "I think you might be interested to talk to him."

"Why?" Yang asked.

"Because he is very clearly ALSO not from this dream," Spinel stated.

...

A/N: Warning is for blood, gore, and a violent character death. Also some general horror, from creepy-crawlies to the fear of being chased by something relentless.