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.

167. Voice of Reason

A/N: Once again there are SONGS for this one! You'll want to know "I've Had Enough of You" from the preview materials of Billie Bust-Up (which I hope makes it to production soon because I NEED those villain songs). The other one is "I Got You" from the James and the Giant Peach musical. Also, I have recently finished reading the RWBY tie-in novel Roman Holiday, which was GREAT, but I've already locked myself out of using it in exactly canon format (I like my AU where Roman and Neo are friends with the Malachites better anyway), so you'll see a ton of aspects of it dribbled in but not the whole exact thing. Finally…this chapter does contain vomiting described in detail, which I know can be triggering for some people, so use discretion. (It's for the obligatory "JCMorrigan writes drastic hurt/comfort to indulge herself" scene that I need at least once every three chapters)

...

As Mysterio fled through the back streets of Asgard, his mind was occupied by thoughts of what he wanted his next move to be. Of course, he assumed a wider locus of control than he truly had, and was trying to settle not on his strategy but on what kind of opponent he should face next to make the biggest splash. He wasn't leaving until this battle was over, and he was going to have the spotlight all throughout.

Of course, that meant he would have to face one of the Black Order. A simple nameless mook from the foot soldiers wouldn't do; that would get him no credit. Thanos himself? Far too powerful. Mysterio knew he would die if he tried that.

He was jarringly reminded of the true scope of his locus of control when he turned a corner to find Thanos, the Mad Titan himself, staring him down.

"You." Thanos advanced, raising the Infinity Gauntlet high.

Mysterio backpedaled. "I think there's been a mistake here. I actually was meaning to go the other way, just a mix-up, you understand – "

"You are a thorn in my side," Thanos said casually. "Nothing more. Hardly worth a sacrifice to Lady Death. I don't even know what she'd do with you."

"You sure dropped the 'saving the multiverse' act quick," Mysterio pointed out.

"Why can the two goals not be one and the same?" Thanos asked. "Hero, villain…such things are only designated in fairy tales and films. I will save these worlds, and I will do so by killing in the name of Death itself. I am hero and villain at once. I am all. I am infinity."

"How DARE you!" Mysterio pointed at him. "Fairy tales and films are the backbone of society! The REAL way to save the world is when everyone wakes up to see that! But I'm not here to save anything. I'm a villain, and I'm proud of it!"

Thanos sighed. "I've had enough of this."

He held out the Infinity Gauntlet, palm down. A man shimmered into being beneath it, stumbling in confusion.

Mysterio cocked his bowl-shaped helmet. "Award-winning actor Jake Gyllenhaal? THAT'S your big move?"

"Where am I?" asked the Jake Gyllenhaal body double.

"This is a duplicate of the Quentin Beck from the world nearest Asgard," Thanos stated. "Not in his true body. I yet require the stone of Space. However, the stone of Soul allows me to gather his soul from Earth, and the stone of Reality allows me to make some tailored adjustments to the scene."

"You're ME?" Mysterio asked. "Nope. I don't buy it. Prove it."

"I AM Quentin Beck," said the other. "And are you supposed to be ME? Then what the hell are you wearing?"

"What am I – " Mysterio reeled. "WHAT AM I WEARING? HOW…DARE…YOU! THIS IS AN AFFRONT! I WILL PERSONALLY SEE TO IT THAT YOUR ROLE IS CUT FROM THE SCRIPT TOUT DE SUITE!"

"Now I know you're not me," said the other Quentin. "What are you, a theater major? I'm a SCIENTIST. None of this 'role cut from the script' crap."

"…That's it. You die now," Mysterio decided.

But Thanos had other plans. He waved his hand again; the other Quentin was now wearing a glittering uniform, much like Mysterio's own but with added embellishments reminiscent of a Roman gladiator's armor.

"WHY WOULD YOU GIVE HIM A FANCIER COSTUME THAN MINE?" Mysterio yelled. "HE DOESN'T EVEN APPRECIATE IT!"

"As a matter of fact, I DON'T appreciate it," the other Quentin growled as an iridescent sphere formed around his head.

"Then take out your frustrations by eliminating the pretender," Thanos said. "In my Reality, you have more power than he ever had."

The other Quentin was surrounded in red Aether. He raised his hands, curious. "So can I do anything I want? Like, if I wanted just some big fantasy monster to crush this clown – "

Suddenly, there was a giant fire elemental, tall as London's Tower Bridge and made of dark smoke with magma-red glowing through the cracks. It let out a raspy cry.

"Okay," the other Quentin said. "That works. Now stomp the idiot."

Mysterio knew better than to stick around when a massive fire elemental was raising its foot over him. So he bolted. But he wasn't at all happy about it. "THAT IS THE MOST UNINSPIRED MONSTER DESIGN I HAVE EVER SEEN!" he screamed in his wake.

Wondering how in the Nine Realms he was supposed to get out of this one. Apparently he'd gotten his wish: this was one of Thanos' subordinates now and had a name for himself. And it was the cruelest irony anyone could envision.

Thanos left the two Quentin Becks to their own devices, turning his sights on Asgard. He rose higher and higher into the air, again relying on Reality to invert gravity where he was standing. His eyes scanned the streets for Odin.

The first thing they beheld was a stream of neon-blue fire arcing through the air toward him. Thanos punched upward, creating a planar shield that displaced the flames safely around himself. The attacker pushed through the flames to make himself known.

"Asmodeus," Thanos greeted. "Embodiment of Lust."

"Shame on you," Ozzie scolded. "I let you be horny for Death itself and this is what I get in return? You eliminating half of everyone when we all know it takes at LEAST two to tango? That deserves some fucking damnation if you ask me!"

"HEEYAH!" Fizzarolli tackled Thanos from behind, latching onto his shoulders and reaching for Thanos' encased hand. "GIMME GAUNTLET! GIMME GAUNTLET!"

Thanos used his bare hand to punch Fizzarolli in the face, sending him flying. No sooner had he done that than he doubled over in an intense stomach pain – no, not pain. Hunger. Thanos cast his gaze until he spotted Famine grinning at him from a rooftop.

"REBELLIOOOOOOON!" cried a squad of Asgardian soldiers down below, beginning to hurl weapons of all sorts at Thanos. They might normally not have felt the courage to do such a thing…but War was front and center of their platoon, smirking proudly.

Thanos conjured a massive double-bladed axe, spinning it to chop the smaller Asgardian weapons in half and then block the rest. He hurled the axe downward; where it landed, it killed several, but War was quick enough to evade. Thanos searched the streets below for her.

That job became increasingly harder when black grease dumped upon him from a cloud overhead, obscuring his vision and filling his mouth and sinuses with the most noxious of sensations.

Pollution and Paige gave high-fives to mark their successful collaboration.

Thanos blew the cloud away, and the grease erupted off his skin, showering over the nearest three blocks. This was just in time for him to see the nuclear warhead with Betelgeuse's face painted on it, falling directly toward him. Thanos aimed a punch, and the nuke sailed up exactly the direction it had come from, only erupting when it breached the ozone layer.

"HEY!" Betelgeuse yelled. "YOU GOT ANY IDEA HOW MUCH THAT THING COST? YOU BETTER COMP ME FOR THAT!"

A mass of thick black tentacles seized Thanos, pulling him down toward the gaping maw of an indeterminate mass of horrific shadows that might have once been Nehema. The Mad Titan's vision was filled with Helen Highwater's face, closer and closer each time, flashing in and out of view.

With a wild yell, Thanos punched the air; a green shockwave radiated outward from the Eye of Agamotto. Everything around him slowed to a halt, freezing entirely. He could now move freely in less than the blink of an eye. He conjured blades aplenty to sever Nehema's tendrils, then pulled free of them, imagining death rays and doom cannons of all varieties to surround him. All it would take was a gesture and Asgard would be bombed to oblivion.

"Oh dear! That's not very creative!"

Thanos flinched when he saw Paige, not frozen at all, sitting on the barrel of one of the cannons, swinging a leg playfully. Thanos' response was to fire all cannons at once. Paige's was to clap, and now all of them were stuffed with corks that didn't let the ammo out.

"How are you disobeying the Time stone?" Thanos snarled.

"Because she knows when it's time to go to time." This from the dancing blue clock with arms and legs, sat atop a cannon across the way. "Time is a concept. Time is a thing. Time is up when the alarm clock rings."

Tony did a front-flip, transforming into his more humanoid shape as he emitted a screech that sounded exactly like an alarm clock bell multiplied by a thousand. Paige conjured a giant pencil into her hands, spinning toward Thanos like a ballerina.

Thanos tried time and time again to slow Tony down, but Tony was made of Time itself and couldn't be controlled. He just drew a pair of swords shaped like clock hands and went in for the kill. Thanos conjured weapon after weapon to duel him, from a firing line of Kree sniper rifles to a copy of the famed Dark Aster warship. Paige responded by giving each of these tools a light touch, and suddenly the rifles were bouquets of flowers and the Dark Aster was a giant rubber duck that fell to the city streets below with an amusing "QUACK" sound. For as Tony was Time, Paige was in charge of her own Reality.

The two teachers reached in, getting a good grip on the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos just started swinging his arm rapidly, trying to shake them off as they played tug-of-war over his hand.

"You weren't thinking creatively!" Paige scolded. "Some of the most basic powers I could see! You have access to infinity, so something more spectacular is what you should show me!"

"Even Mad Titans run out of time," Tony said. "It happens to gods and demons all the time. I am aware I rhymed 'time' with 'time.' I didn't have time to think up the rhyme."

Both teachers tore away from the gauntlet. Immediately, the field of frozen time snapped back into motion, and the battle was back on. Nehema's severed parts fell into her mouth, and she swallowed them in order to grow replacements.

Thanos looked in horror to the Infinity Gauntlet, which now held only three stones: Soul, Mind, and Power. Tony had ripped away the Eye of Agamotto. Paige had gotten away with the Aether.

Thanos gave a cry of rage to the heavens.

"HE'S DOWN BY TWO!" Fizzarolli bellowed. "ATTAAAAACK!"

Thanos was pelted with grime, civilian weapons, neon fire, pinstripe-painted bombs, Helen Highwater's face, indescribable cosmic horrors, and extreme hunger. He resorted to the Power Stone, using it to simply punch everything but the hunger away with nondescript but hard-hitting shockwaves.

"Sleep."

Thanos' eyes shut. He forced them open. Who and how? There was Enmu, or his construct body at least, standing on a rooftop across from Famine, all the mouths except the one on his face wide open. "SLEEP," Enmu insisted.

Thanos nearly drifted off. He turned the Mind stone on himself sluggishly, forcing the equivalent of philosophical caffeine directly to his brain. Still, in between Helen jumpscaring him, he could see faint visions of colorful sights he knew were from the dreams he'd had in the past few nights. He was slipping.

While this went on above, Mysterio sought a good place to hide below. He ducked into a shop that was apparently for selling equipment made entirely out of prismatic dragon scales. There was a safe respite from the fake Quentin and his faker fire elemental, at least for now.

"…May as well make it look like I know what I'm doing." Mysterio positioned himself in front of the shop window to get a good background of the destruction and carnage going on outside, then whipped out his scroll to take a selfie. After adding the caption "Living my best life in Thanos' assault on Asgard!", he uploaded it to the community Miasma of the WHAM ARMY cellular network.

Within three seconds, his scroll rang. The name on the ID reminded him just how much of a mistake that selfie was. With a sigh, he hit the answer button. "The number you are trying to dial is no longer in service – "

"Come off it right now, Beck." Shocker's tone was cold and serious. "Asgard? That ain't where we said you'd go."

"Look," Mysterio sighed. "You knew what you were signing up for when you partnered with me. You really thought I could stay away from the greatest spotlight yet?"
"No, I THOUGHT I knew what I was signin' up for," Shocker spat.

"Jackson. Jackson, please, I just wanted – "

"I'd'a thought you'd go to that death tournament on Sakaar," Shocker broke in. "I was so sure THAT would be your scene. Now, thanks to you, I just lost fifty bucks to Quackerjack!"

Mysterio paused. "You're…not…"

"Angry about you goin' off-book? I DO know what I signed up for, Quentin. Knew you couldn't be told what to do or contained. And truth be told, that's what I like about ya."

Mysterio's smile practically split his face in half.

"Mighta even called just to make sure you knew that," Shocker grumbled. He raised his voice again; "Now stop lettin' me waste your time and go finish that fight!"

The call disconnected. Mysterio felt like a new man with renewed vigor, and so he kicked open the door of the dragon-scale shop, bursting out onto the street.

"COME AT ME, YOU CHEAP POSEUR!" he bellowed. "GIVE ME ALL YOU'VE GOT, BECAUSE IT CERTAINLY ISN'T HALF OF WHAT I HAVE!"

The other Quentin didn't find him first. Paige did. "Hello!" She waved. "I brought you a present. I do hope it's pleasant!"

She then smacked the palm of her hand – with the Reality stone in it – straight down onto Mysterio's helmet. It imbued the glass, then soaked through Mysterio's skin, filling him with the Aether as once it had done to one Jane Foster.

"A little warning next time?" Mysterio groaned. "Wait. Wait, this feels…INCREDIBLY GOOD…"

"I made it so you won't even need a gauntlet!" Paige cackled. "I know you're the one who'll know how to flaunt it! You now control your Reality. When you make it big, be sure to thank me!"

She then turned tail to return to Thanos. Tony streaked overhead like a comet, knowing exactly where he should hide the Eye of Agamotto for the time being.

"Reality?" Mysterio raised his hands. "I CONTROL REALITY?"

Every item on the street – vehicle, discarded weapon, fallen corpse – trembled and lifted at his behest. Mysterio gave a deep, resounding laugh of pure pride and joy.

The other Quentin rounded the corner. "THERE you are!" He pointed menacingly, and the fire elemental was visible close behind, its glow pouring through the streets. "Time to say goodbye."

"Oh, I couldn't agree more," Mysterio cackled. "This mythic realm ain't big enough for the two of us."

"I'm so done with this," the other Quentin sighed as the fire elemental seeped into the street around him. "Just get rid of him."

"You think YOU'RE done?" Mysterio advanced, his steps shaking the very street. On each step, he uttered a word: "Well, I've. Had. Enough. Of. You."

A strong beat echoed through the lane, thrumming like the bass of a sound system cranked up to eleven and beyond. The fire elemental surged, only for Mysterio to jump right into its face, erupting its head with a cry of "YOU!"

The elemental recoiled as Mysterio spun and twirled, surrounded by glimmering ice crystals. "You've been nothing but a thorn in my side since day one!" He pointed right at the other Quentin. "But I am MYSTERIO the great and I'll not – "

He rained a massive snowball down onto the other Quentin, pinning him in place with a "HA!" He conjured spears of ice to surround the snowman Quentin, preparing to spear the other thirty times over. "Be outdone!"

The other Quentin burst from the snowball in an eruption of red that melted all the ice spears. So Mysterio took a different tack; "Welcome to Mysterio's spectacular…" He summoned a mallet twice his size, raising it effortlessly. "Theater in the POUND!"

He slammed the hammer down. The other Quentin barely managed to sidestep it as it left a crater in the ground.

"Please excuse my thespian vernacular!" Mysterio spun round and round with the hammer, using it to chip at the fire elemental's ankles and drive it back stumbling. "When I say thou art going DOWN!"

The elemental tripped over its own feet and fell completely backward, incinerating several civilians (but that wasn't Mysterio's problem). It struggled to pick itself up, like a beetle upended.

"Really?" the other Quentin sighed.

This gave Mysterio the perfect opening to twirl about, summoning as many neon ambient lights as Ozzie had earlier: "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU! So time to be my puppet on a string!"

The other Quentin realized his wrists and ankles were now bound with a glowing green thread that extended up into the clouds.

"I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU!" Mysterio summoned two cross-shaped handles into his hands, tilting them, and as he did so, the other Quentin jerked about accordingly. "Oh, dance my little muppet plaything!"

The other Quentin forcefully broke free of the strings in a burst of red as the imaginary instruments broke down a fast-paced interlude. "Do you think this is funny?" he spat.

"Hilarious, actually," Mysterio responded dryly as he tossed the handles over his shoulder. "Then again, you wouldn't know comedy if it hit you like a tomato in the face while booing."

The other Quentin summoned himself up a pistol of glowing red Aetheric energy. "I'm more in the mood for you to meet a TRAGEDY."

"Ooooh, I got you to banter!" Mysterio squealed. "That's a victory for me! Anyway, SECOND VERSE!"

The other Quentin opened fire. Mysterio redirected the bullets as he moved his feet, giving the appearance that he was merely dancing around the ammo as in the old gag. "NOW!" he bellowed. "The audience is thirsty for fun!"

He raised his hands high, and rain poured down from the clouds, soaking the other Quentin but leaving Mysterio conveniently dry.

"Time to run!" Mysterio wagged a finger as he kept jigging down the street. "'Cause now your denouement has already begun! That means YOU'RE DONE!"

He conjured a cutlass and a three-cornered hat that sat upon his helmet, rushing the other Quentin. The other Quentin tried to pull the gun's trigger, only to find that it didn't have one anymore. Mysterio had transformed it into an identical cutlass, and the other Quentin even had the matching hat.

"We could both be pirates on the sea!" Mysterio warbled as the two of them entered a graceful swordfight. "You'll swab the deck and play your part for me! Mops galore; you better keep it clean!"

Only then did the other Quentin realize his cutlass was now a mop, and Mysterio cut it in half easily. The other Quentin ducked, rolled, and hurled the mop pieces away with extreme prejudice.

But that was the least of his problems, because the entire time rain had fallen, it had been pooling above him in a very particular shape, a behemoth of water. "Watch out now, my little friend!" Mysterio sang as the shape completed itself: a massive Great White Shark made entirely of translucent rainwater, coming to life in the sky. "'Cause SHARKSPEARE'S looking mean!"

Mysterio pointed to the other Quentin. The shark chased him down, and the other Quentin couldn't run fast enough, falling into its jaws as Mysterio danced wildly and sang, "I've had enough of you! So time to be my puppet on a string!"

The other Quentin passed harmlessly through the water. On the other side of the shark, he looked himself up and down in confusion, trying to figure out the point of all that.

It became clear when he realized the fire elemental was finally back on its feet and shambling toward the battle.

"I've had enough of you!" Mysterio conducted the shark with his hands as though it were a symphonic orchestra.

"No!" The other Quentin ran toward his precious fire elemental. "No, no, NO – "

"OH, DANCE MY LITTLE MUPPET!" The shark burst through the fire elemental, extinguishing its entire body. "PLAYTHING!" The massive monster finally collapsed into nothing but embers, ash, and smoky wisps.

Another interlude offered Mysterio the chance to taunt, "Did you see that? That was an actual INSPIRED design! The LEAST you can do is shape it like something connected to its designated element and not just a claymationist's first attempt at molding a human!"

"You – " the other Quentin sputtered. "You just made me look like an idiot with something you named SHARKSPEARE!"

"And?" Mysterio replied cheekily. "Oh, oh wait, time for the bridge!" He summoned a massive sword, the type you'd only find in anime, to each hand. "A BATTLE LIKE NO OTHER!"

He charged the other Quentin. The other Quentin, thinking he was finally wise to the game, changed the swords into feather dusters – only for Mysterio to keep at beating him up with the feathers, and somehow it still hurt.

"Better move!" Mysterio chuckled, flipping one of the dusters into the air. "'CAUSE HERE'S ANOTHER!" It came down back into his hand as a mace. "At least you'll get to see defeat in epic styyyyyyle!"

The mace bit downward. The other Quentin sidestepped. The mace hit the ground and erupted like a bomb into rainbow fireworks that filled the street like a Fourth of July display, forcing the other Quentin to run for cover.

Mysterio took the opportunity to grow himself back to the size of his holographic form from the previous musical number, the fireworks illuminating him from behind. "The audience is primed! Each attack right on time! Seeing you entwined is so worthwhile!"

The other Quentin had barely enough time to wonder about that phrasing before he ran directly into the spiderweb that Mysterio had conjured to span the street. No matter how the other Quentin struggled, he couldn't break free of its stickiness.

"But why stop there!" Mysterio lined Sharkspeare back up in front of the web. "Add a lion!" The shark was joined by a massive lion made of flames. "A BEAR!" A grizzly made of rock and soil.

The other Quentin was clearly panicking. So much that he didn't have the capacity to think of anything creative to counter his predicament. "What's wrong, my petit chère?" Mysterio mocked. "Why don't you smiiiiile?"
He quickly bent down, using an overlarge but fine-tipped green magic marker to draw a crude smiley face on the other Quentin's helmet, and there was nothing the other Quentin could do about it.

"The final act is sure to be a theatrical plot twist worthy of a prize!" Mysterio let his elemental animals loose – now the other Quentin was free because the lion had burned through his webbing and set his costume on fire. "Want a shot? You better be more tactical!" The bear pounced, slamming the other Quentin against the street again and again until his helmet shattered. "Messin' with MYSTERIO is never wise!"

Sharkspeare slammed into the other Quentin full force, cascading like rapids that swept him down half a mile. Still not far enough away from the massive Mysterio, who was now emitting green fog aplenty.

"I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU!" Mysterio danced along as he conjured not spiders but Spider-Man duplicates made of lightning to descend upon the other Quentin. (Because it was funny when it wasn't happening to Mysterio.) "So time to be my puppet on a string!"

The Spider-Man construct wrapped the other Quentin, now helmetless and with many burned holes in his costume, up in still more webbing, again taking the shape of the marionette strings.

"I've had enough of you!" Mysterio continued. "Oh, dance my little muppet plaything!"

Now the other Quentin was being jerked around again, and his strings literally connected to a gigantic handle held in the giant Mysterio's hand.

"I'm up to here with you!" Mysterio made the other Quentin dance as frenetically and gracefully as he was doing. "So why don't you finally face it? Your fate is sealed! And everything you do is what I say, starting now and every day! You'll be my puppet! Learn to love it! Every word I say, you'll covet! Start anew, stuck like glue! Bid your former self adieu!"

Mysterio flung the strings directly upward. The other Quentin went flying into the air, disoriented to the point of not knowing which way was up or down.

"'CAUSE I'VE HAD ENOUGH – " Mysterio conjured a medieval longbow, armed with four arrows: fire, water, stone, lightning. "OF YOUUUUU!"

He let the string snap, and the other Quentin was speared four times over before the arrows fell point-down into the street, leaving the other Quentin a gory shish kebab.

"Yeesh." Mysterio shivered. "There's something off-putting about even seeing the WRONG me dead." He shrugged, shrinking himself back down to his usual size. "Oh, well. I've had my moment. Now to reunite with the rest of the WHAM ARMY for the big finish!"

He conjured lines of sparkling green light in the air, riding down them on the soles of his feet and leaving a trail of stardust in his wake.

Ozzie had been forced to retreat, nursing Fizzarolli and his broken mechanical limbs. Famine and War together were trying to drum up more troops with the promise of epic feasts for aching stomachs, but they were running low on civilians. Nehema had needed to temporarily evert Betelgeuse and Helen to another reality to escape one of Thanos' more powerful blows, and now apparently she was having trouble remembering which reality the battle was going on in, because none of the three had yet reappeared. Enmu and Pollution had run off after exchanging the most ill-boding look of mischief that suggested they were off to implement an absolutely horrible plan.

Thanos gave chase after Ozzie, ready to unleash the full might of the Power Stone on the prince of Lust. However, he stopped short when he spotted someone else en route. The very person he'd come for.

Loki, in Odin's guise, raised the Tesseract high. "THIS IS WHAT YOU'VE COME FOR!" he bellowed. "NOW COME TAKE IT!"

Thanos planted his feet hard in the street in front of Loki. "I don't mind if I do," he said as he advanced, glowing with Power.

...

Emerald Sustrai was alone in the back yard of the Old Mansion, reclining on a secondhand lawn recliner with a chintzy floral pattern on its cushions. (Wrong Hordak and Globby claimed to have gotten it from a thrift store, but Emerald was pretty sure they'd actually salvaged it from the city dump in Tram Common and felt proud of themselves for it. The others were able to clean it up well enough that it didn't make a difference.)

The weather was clear. Cedric and Ifurita had managed to magically repair the broken unicorn statue that served as the garden's centerpiece, and were now inside the mansion discussing what sort of flowers they wanted to put around it and in what pattern. Emerald lay back in the recliner, shutting her eyes so she could hear the breeze shifting through the trees around her: a sound reminiscent of the ocean. The ocean she never thought she'd see until she was aboard the Van Eltia.

Her wounds had healed mostly to completion, with a few aches and pains here and there. Soon, she'd be ready to get back out there. In fact, she felt ready now, but of course, the only adventures worth having were already in progress, so she might as well pitch in with the renovations the rest were doing here.

There was hardly a sound when the other person dropped into the yard over the back wall. The only reason Emerald even realized she wasn't alone was because her background had required her to hone her senses and become hyper-aware of her surroundings. When she realized someone else had just invaded from behind, her eyes snapped open.

Neo waved at her.

"Neo?" Emerald tilted her head. "What's up?"

There was hardly time to go further in the discussion before Emerald spotted Melanie Malachite crawling atop the back wall, lying on her stomach. With a grunt, she fell over into the yard, slamming into the grass. "Ow."

"You okay?" Emerald was on her feet.

"I'm good," Melanie sighed, waving a hand. "It's Miltia who can't even jump high enough to get over the wall." She started to peel herself upward.

"I can get over the wall if I want," Miltia's voice barked from the other side. "I just don't want to right now."

Then one could hear her trading whispers with a lower, huskier voice. The Mukhtar sprang to the top of the wall, crouching to grab Miltia's hand, and he pulled her up and over, the two of them landing in the yard together. "She preferred to be swept off her feet, actually," the Mukhtar said straight-faced but completely good-naturedly.

"Who's this?" Emerald asked. "Miltiaaaaa. Did you get a boyfriend?"

"We're still working on the label," Miltia scoffed.

The Mukhtar bowed. "I am the Mukhtar. For now, know that I am at Miltia's service."

"He is a real knight in shining armor, though…" Miltia's eyes sparkled.

"What's with the party?" Emerald asked.

Neo responded by bringing out her scroll, passing it to Emerald. Emerald read the message on the screen: a gorgeously prosaic textwall that formally invited Miss Neopolitan to travel to Glenwood with a team of her choice and act the part of a vanguard to locate a kidnapped ally. Then, at the end, a text from a different number: "ill pay u 200 if u do"

"Roman and Archibald, huh?" Emerald smiled. "Hey, wait. Glenwood? That's where Velvet, Magilou, and Eleanor went! Neo. Did you come here because you wanted to invite me to catch up with my girlfriends?"

Neo swiped her scroll back, using it to type "No dummy. I just thought my squad should be the best of Remnants worst again. And Miltia's not-boyfriend. So are you in or out?"

"Oh, I'm in," Emerald said. "I've been looking for an excuse to get back on the field, and the epic sidequest for used furniture just wasn't doing it for me. If I have to listen to Felony Carl, Ainsley, Ezor, and Jinnai fight over what tabletop material would be best for the replacement for the broken one again, I think I'm gonna lose it."

Neo grinned, bouncing in place and clapping.

"I just have to get a few things together!" Emerald rushed back to the mansion. "Don't leave without me!"

"Are we sure it was a good idea to invite HER?" Melanie sighed. "Look at her outfit. She doesn't even know how to coordinate."

Neo made a gesture that Melanie should simply hush.

"Her skills will be of great advantage to our mission," the Mukhtar reminded the group. "Put in combination with Neo's Overactive Imagination, we should have a team built for ultimate stealth. The better to liberate our captive."

"What he said," Miltia piped in.

Emerald came jogging back out of the house with a backpack slung over her shoulder. "Okay, let's go!"

Neo extended the blade of her parasol, jammed it into the ground, and used it as a pole-vault to hurl herself back up over the wall to the other side. The Malachites stared despondently.

"Seriously?" Melanie groaned. "Again?"

"I will be glad to assist," the Mukhtar stated.

Emerald chuckled. "Or we could go around front like normal people. Come on."

...

Most stories have a hero as well as a villain. The death tournament of Sakaar, in fact, did have a hero. Four of them, in fact. Their story had begun without the WHAM ARMY, but it was about to intersect with them.

Their leader was Tony Stark. But not the Tony Stark from Mysterio's world, nor the Tony Stark that had laid off the lesser Quentin Beck, nor the Tony Stark that had clashed with the WHAM ARMY's Baron Zemo in the past. This one was younger, a very recent high school graduate who hadn't even had time to grow in the characteristic facial hair of his counterparts. Still and all, he was in possession of the same technology and same suit as the majority of Tony Starks that existed, and that was key to his role in this tournament.

He stumbled back into his cell wearing that armor, half asleep on his feet. He was followed by two other figures in similar suits and one in armor that looked far more ancient. Tony fell to his knees once he was a good margin away from the door; "Okay. That was a close call."

One of the armored figures disengaged his helmet, revealing another boy Tony's age, with a darker skin tone and shorter hair. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Tony's longtime best friend. "How many Raenoks could they even throw at us anyway? What was that, thirty? Forty?"

The other disengaged her helmet, revealing a girl with short orange hair and freckles over her tan. "Still no one's explained to me what a Raenok even is!" Pepper Potts groaned as she threw up her hands.

The final armored figure simply dismissed his entire suit, leaving a tall, lanky boy with dark hair dressed in a black tee, neon-yellow pants, and sunglasses that never quite let you see everything going on behind his eyes. "Why do we need to?" Gene Khan asked as he folded his arms and leaned against the wall. "We just fought them. You saw what they were. You don't need another explanation."

Pepper stuck out her tongue at him, making a raspberry sound.

"You're still as rude as ever," Tony grumbled.

"Predictable." Gene rolled his eyes.

"Will you two knock it off?" Rhodey yelled. "That's getting us nowhere!"

Pepper shook her head. "I thought having to fight together in this thing would finally get all the bad blood aired out, but I guess you guys just LIKE hanging on to old grudges!"

"Hey, don't look at me," Tony grumbled. "I didn't do anything wrong."

"And I can't undo anything I did," Gene argued.

"Guys, please," Rhodey begged. "We almost died in that last fight. We can't keep going on like this."

After a pause Tony said, "He's right. We can't keep going on like this."

"So you'll trust me when I say I'm on your side this time," Gene replied.

"No," Tony clarified, "I meant we have to do more than just fight and not die. There are other people dying because of us. There are other people dying because we're in our own bracket and not making a move to get out of it. We have three of my highest-tech projects and all ten Makluan Rings on our side."

"So you are counting me in this," Gene huffed.

Tony didn't address that. "Surviving isn't enough. We have to do something to break this entire cycle."

"Oh!" Pepper bounced up and down. "We could start a revolution! The Grandmaster is basically keeping everyone else poor so he can have all the things, right? Maybe if we pointed that out – "

"There's no way they don't already know," Rhodey sighed. "It has to have been tried. We're not even from around here. How could we know better?"

"No one is 'from' Sakaar," Gene corrected. "Everyone here was displaced from elsewhere, or their families were. I guess I was the only one paying attention."

"Maybe the problem isn't that they never thought of it," Tony said. "Maybe they just needed the right leader. What if…"

"We could lead the revolution!" Pepper cheered.

"Are you NUTS?" Rhodey yelled. "We barely survived a fight with the other prisoners! You think the Grandmaster doesn't have backup plans for his backup plans in case we go rogue? And we haven't even figured out how to escape this looping prison cell anyway!"

"I'm still working that part out," Tony said. "The cell, I mean. It has to be some kind of technology."

"Unless it's magic," said Gene.

"All technology can be interrupted," Tony mused. "Jammed, shorted, broken – "

"UNLESS IT'S MAGIC," Gene repeated.

"I'll find a way out," Tony vowed. "And then…when we do…Rhodey, can you really tell me you're okay with sitting back and letting this play out?"

Rhodey sighed, shaking his head. "No. But we just had this idea thirty seconds ago and we're already putting all our eggs in the basket!"

"So we'll use the escape time to think it out," Pepper said.

"They'll make us fight another round soon," Gene pointed out.

"No, they won't," Tony scoffed. "It's the first seed still. We couldn't do two matches in the same seed."

"Again, I'm the only one paying attention," Gene argued. "Haven't you figured out how the Grandmaster works? He does what he wants when he wants it, especially for fame and entertainment. You heard his announcement. We REALLY entertained him against the Raenoks. He can and will make us fight double in one seed. And I know this because I was able to use the Rings to catch a glimpse of the file he was working on in his private box."

"…Fine," Tony sighed. "So we have to work on the next fight AND an escape plan AND a revolution."

"How is our revolution gonna be any different than anything they've tried already?" Rhodey reiterated.

"Maybe it won't be," Tony said. "But it's better than giving up."

"Too bad we don't have an idea board," Pepper mused. "I feel like this would really be the time and place for an idea board."

"We could just divide the workload," Gene said. "You three decide how to split the escape plan and inspiring the first stage of revolution. I'LL work on battle strategy."

"Trust YOU with battle strategy?" Tony spat. "That's a joke if I ever heard one. I'll figure it all out myself, thanks."

Pepper sighed. "You know, sometimes I almost think you guys get your kicks from arguing because you like each other or something."

The astonished glares she got from both Tony and Gene were obviously intended to disprove her theory, but really, in her mind, they only enforced it.

This was the scene broadcast to the Lost Lounge of the Sun. At that point, Mozenrath decided "I'm bored" and shut it off. "We didn't sign up for the Sakaar Revolution Broadcast."

What they were doing was looking in on other competitors' cells. Sizing up the competition to decide their next move.

"Hm." The Huntsman was pensive.

"Yes?" Mozenrath prompted him.

"Given his age…" The Huntsman started looking through his scroll.

Mozenrath, Jihl, Loqi, Albel, and Miratrix watched him thumb past several screens before Mozenrath very dryly said "Are you gonna fill the rest of us in?"

"As I suspected," the Huntsman muttered. "Most iterations of Tony Stark are older. You yourself distinguished that when creating our prospective rosters, Mozenrath."

"Why would I – " Then Mozenrath remembered. "Oh." He broke into a grin. "NOW I see what you're saying."

"Then perhaps the two of you can stop speaking in code and enlighten the rest of us!" Albel barked.

"It was important to distinguish because of the parallel nature of the world he originates from," the Huntsman said. "We used several 'landmarks,' so to speak, to distinguish iterations. We have recruited or entertained recruiting members of the WHAM ARMY from multiple iterations of that world already. Some of those we have not yet reached out to are from the same world as this younger Tony Stark. Therefore, fate seems to have played into our hands."

"Long story short," Mozenrath said slyly, "we have someone on our to-recruit list who's fought those pint-sized flying tin cans before. A couple someones, actually."

"I do not believe I need to suggest where we go next," the Huntsman said.

Mozenrath had already conjured the corridor. "As usual, I'm a few steps ahead of you anyway."

...

It wouldn't do just to turn Darla loose on the public and have her claim to be a Protector. There was only a fifty percent chance anyone would buy it based on word of mouth alone, especially since there was an actual Protector loose. Then again, Yzma and Morgana realized, that might just work in their favor. If they could get Chrysta to appear to endorse Darla as the true savior, then they would have the ruse locked down.

Morgana thought of a solution instantly. Her sister had been such a proponent of using voice magic to bewitch others, to seduce them into a state of submission. To hypnotize using the voice, one needed to cast magic pertaining to altering the voice. Ursula had stolen Ariel's last time she'd done this. No, not "stolen" – she'd gotten Ariel to sign it over. Morgana assumed that was part of the ritual: legal ownership of the borrowed voice.

So she'd dispatched emissaries to the Isle of Mermaids to strike a bargain with their ruler. Hand over one single, solitary siren voice to be used for twenty-four hours. In exchange, Yzmatopia would preserve the Isle of Mermaids and in fact put a crystal barrier of protection around it. (No, they hadn't quite run this plan by Prisma yet, but that wasn't their problem right now.)

Morgana, Yzma, and Wuya awaited in the throne room when the emissaries – Lobster Mobster, Shrimp, Max, and Indus Tarbella – returned. "Well?" Yzma urged. "How did it go?"

"The queen said no," Indus said with a smile.

There was a pause. Yzma's eyelid twitched. "That's it?"

"Said somethin' along the lines of 'I don't make deals with tyrants,'" the Lobster Mobster clarified.

"And that's when you ravaged the isle to take what we wanted by force, right?" Morgana asked.

The four exchanged sheepish glances. "That was not in our instructions," Max said plainly.

"IT WAS IMPLIED!" Yzma yelled. "IT WAS VERY, VERY IMPLIED!"

"Well, see, we didn't wanna, you know, go off-book in case you needed the isle around for later, yeah," the Lobster Mobster said quickly.

"You sure, Boss?" Shrimp asked. "I thought you just wanted to get back here so you could test out that new waterslide Wuya made in the – "

As usual, this netted him the hat and the "SHUUUUUT UUUUUP!"

"That's it," Wuya sighed. "You're banned from waterslide privileges for five days."

"Now look what you went and did!" Lobster Mobster admonished.

"In fact," Wuya said, "NONE of you can use the waterslide."

"Oh," Max said dejectedly.

Morgana leaned over to Yzma to hiss "He couldn't even fit more than a hand in the waterslide in the first place – "

"Just…just let him be sad," Yzma whispered back.

"So now what?" Morgana asked. "I don't have the one thing I asked you for, which is a siren voice. I KNEW I should've sent Undertow."

"Undertow would've gone right to the wreckage stage and you know it," Wuya said flatly. "Which isn't how we wanted to play it."

"THIS isn't how we wanted to play it either!" Morgana barked. "Now where am I supposed to – "

"I'm sorry, were you invited?" Yzma spat, looking toward the door.

Someone had entered. It appeared to be a mermaid, swimming through air. She cut a striking figure, given her colors – a jet-black tail with streaks of red and orange across it, the fan at the end golden and shimmering. Her hair was a short undercut, the red-orange locks falling to one side atop her head and exposing a shaved patch in which was etched a stylized image of a barracuda. The rest was gathered in a short ponytail that hung down her neck. She was clothed in a maroon breastplate that extended from chest to partway down the tail; it was complemented with two vambraces and a single pauldron.

"No," said the stranger. "But I think you'll want me here anyway. See, I was suspicious of you when you first turned up. Then I learned you had one of OUR kind among you." She locked eyes with Morgana. "And that makes this a lot more interesting."

Morgana needed to pause a moment to find her words; this mermaid was very bright and pleasing to look at, and her eyes were trying to take in all her details. Then Morgana shook her head; "Yes, yes, I'm…technically merfolk, I suppose. Octopin if you want to get technical."

"And I'm a sirena, if you want to get technical," the stranger replied. "I heard you were looking for the voice of a sirena in exchange for protection."

"Oh?" Morgana perked up. "Now, that interests me. Are you here to bargain for the Isle of Mermaids?"

The sirena held up a hand; "Let me explain. I am Daria of the royal guard of the sirenas of Nueva Vista in the Everrealm. For years, we've been at war with the humans who've settled on Nueva Vista. They intrude upon our territory, and their fishing thins OUR numbers with stray harpoons. So the sirenas of years past made a tradition out of using our voices to lure ships aground and capsize them in the depths. It kept humans away for a while, and sirenas understood not to get too close to human civilizations. That is until the princess decided to get it into her head that she should become a little explorer and figure out if humans were 'really so bad.' Though I guess I can't blame her. Her mother used to be human. A horrible decision, if you ask me.

"I came here to attend a summit of sea-dwellers along with Princess Cora of Merroway Cove. I saw it as an opportunity to ask the queen of the Isle of Mermaids to lend us sirenas a little extra protection from humans." Daria scowled. "I was declined. Cora had a few choice words for me – the Merroway merfolk are pushovers. But I wasn't going to give up until I found the solution I was looking for. I'll do ANYTHING to keep humans off our waters."

"Anything?" Morgana replied. "Anything at all?"

"Are you testing if I'm all right with other Mystic Isles being harmed?" Daria folded her arms and leaned back. "They're not my problem. Nueva Vista is all I care about. So when I heard about your…" She thought her words over. "MUSCLEHEADS and their proposition, I realized we could cut out the middleman, and got my hands on a little pixie dust to make the trip here. All you want is to borrow the voice of a sirena, am I right?"

"I'll give it right back," Morgana said cheerfully. This time, it wasn't even an act, and that surprised her. "So, what do you want? The Isle closed off like I said the first time?"

"I want Nueva Vista protected from humans by any means necessary," Daria said. "We can work that out in due time. Your Crystal Master can create a barrier large enough to permanently seal it off?"

Morgana looked to Yzma and Wuya. All three of them cracked a wicked smirk. "Actually, I have a better idea," Morgana said as she lifted the trident and ran a finger down its staff. "Since you're so gung-ho to try anything at all. How about we just take the humans out of Nueva Vista? Blast their whole town right off the planet!"

Daria flinched, and at first Morgana thought she was about to protest. Then Daria said "That's…actually better than I thought I would get out of this arrangement."

"You know, I think we're going to make good diplomatic partners," Morgana told her. "That is, presuming you trust the humans among us."

"Don't talk about us like we're not here," Wuya said sharply.

"I'm taking your presence here as a show of good faith," Daria stated. "And the fact that you were willing to spare the Isle in the trade."

"Even though we were technically supposed to destroy it if the trade did not work out?" Indus posed.

Yzma slapped her forehead sonorously.

"Well, we all have to do what we have to do," Daria stated. "I wouldn't have been happy. But it's not what happened, so let's just move forward."

"Good," Wuya said with a nod. "Because this whole 'destroy Nueva Vista' thing sounds like fun. We'll need a bit to get the resources together in case of meddling heroes, but it should be a fun time for everyone involved."

"Just don't forget your end of the deal," Daria spat. "Now. When does my day of voicelessness begin?"

Morgana aimed her trident at Daria. "Whenever you start singing."

Daria nodded, still smug as could be. Then she opened her mouth, and a gorgeous aria came pouring out, one that froze all present in their tracks. Morgana had to fight to have the presence of mind to actually complete the transfer spell.

Riding on a crackling beam from the trident, Daria's voice floated toward Morgana, an orb of fiery red-orange light that landed neatly in her hand. "Your donation is appreciated," Morgana told her. "And, in fact, since the whole arrangement's a win-win for us, I'll even throw in a complimentary stay here at Yzmatopia, in one of the upscale rooms. Max, please show our guest to her new quarters, and be sure to bring her anything she asks for."

"That means in pantomime, writing, or anything else," Yzma clarified. "You don't get off the hook because she doesn't have a voice."

"Follow me," Max droned before setting off into the halls. Daria followed, firing Morgana a wink on the way out.

"Well," Wuya remarked once Daria was out of earshot. "You're looking a bit greener than usual. Especially around the cheeks."

"No I don't," Morgana said quickly.

"She is good-looking," Yzma mused. "Maybe the second best-looking redhead I've seen in recent days."

"I mean, nothing beats the girl in the mirror for me," Wuya snickered. "But Morgana is single and ready to mingle."

"Will you cut that out?" Morgana barked. "This is a business arrangement! And potentially a new alliance for the WHAM ARMY. So don't mess this up! We need to ACTUALLY hold our end of the deal for this to work!"

"We weren't going to say no to razing a human city," Wuya told her. "Especially one that counts as a beach vacation."

"Unless the palace has architecture that fits the Yzma aesthetic," Yzma said. "In which case, leave that intact."

"Or I could just rebuild it," Wuya suggested.

Yzma grinned. "Or Wuya could just rebuild it."

"'Scuse me, ladies," the Lobster Mobster broke in, "but do you need us for anythin' else or are we free-flying fish?"

"Get out of here," Morgana scoffed. Lobster Mobster, Shrimp, and Indus eagerly did so.

"And the best part is we don't even need to run this one by Prisma," Wuya mused.

"Run what by me?" No one had actually seen Prisma enter the room, but here she was."

"Nothing," Wuya said quickly.

"Definitely not asking you to give up an island you were planning to use for crystals," Yzma muttered.

Prisma folded her arms. "I feel like you were going to ask me to give up an island I was planning to use for crystals."

"Well, we're not," Wuya urged, "so let's focus on that."

"Right now," Yzma said, "I need to be getting Darla ready for her big press conference."

Morgana raised the glimmer of Daria's voice high. "And I need to pay a visit to my new best friend forever."

...

Half-delirious and half-nude, Archibald Snatcher plowed into the adjacent bathroom of the inn room he and Roman shared in Lastonbell. Roman was still asleep on the bed, given that it was around midnight, and Snatcher hoped it would stay that way.

Yang, Rose, and Elsa had managed to talk the group into an early bedtime, despite the fact that there was some sort of harvest festival going on outside that kept half the city up into the wee hours. Snatcher and Roman had dashed off their message to Neo and then turned in, hoping to recharge before the journey resumed the following morning.

Snatcher had hoped to God (no, he didn't really trust God anymore, did he) that just one good night's sleep would set him right. But no, here it was, pitch-dark at midnight, and his dreams had been an absolute hellscape. He wasn't even sure he could describe them. They were all based around…what Wardell had made him relive. But remixed, recombined, like the moment had been chopped up with knives and pieced back together wrong.

He'd dreamed until he couldn't stand it anymore and now he had dropped roughly to his knees before the toilet bowl and just emptied the contents of his roiling stomach into the surprisingly modern-looking fixture.

It was a miracle he'd gotten this far. He felt too sick to stand, just about. Nausea taking a deep-seated hold in his body and felling him almost completely, urging him to eject anything he could. He would have coughed up his organs if that were even possible.

Why couldn't he just forget about it? He'd already lived it once. It was jarring to have confronted it, but it was over now. He could just move on, couldn't he? He could just move on. Move on, move on –

He retched instead, clutching at his bare chest. How horrible. He'd thought he'd already seen himself at his weakness, but apparently he could still disappoint.

There he remained, rooted to the floor by his knees, until the single candle flame lit up in the room. Snatcher faltered; no, no, no, please no –

"So I think it's about time you told me what EXACTLY happened on the roof of that tower," Roman grumbled as he settled in on the stone floor behind Snatcher, taking a lotus position.

Snatcher's eyes remained firmly on the porcelain bowl that was now more visible. (Oh, so that was what it looked like now that he'd donated to it. That was even more disgusting and only increased the nausea.)

"It's…nothing," he managed to spit out. At the same time he spat out some other things.

"Look, I'm not here to judge," Roman urged. "After all, you have seen me in some incredibly compromising states of weakness and not let it leave the room. And I do believe in honor among thieves – well, among our kind of thieves, anyway. You think I'll let this get out?"

"I didn't – didn't want you to see this to begin – " Coughing and choking, he cut himself off.

There was a long pause. Then Roman utterly dropped his usual cockiness: "You're…kind of scaring me right now. I just want to know if I can…make it stop."

That was right. If there was any one person in all existence, any person ever, that Snatcher could trust with this sort of thing –

Moreover, he'd already seen enough. Roman already knew. There was no point in hiding and everything to be gained just from clarifying what this was. He supposed he could argue for a physical illness, but no, they'd both be acting out a charade on that one. There was no fooling Roman about it.

"The…the roof," Snatcher sputtered. "What I saw – it was – the moment when I – my final moment before we met, I should say – a gross exaggeration at that – incredibly blown out of proportion – not at all the way it happened – "

"Oh," Roman realized. "He had you relive…that. Completely lucid, huh?"

"Lucid and utterly exaggerated."

"How exaggerated? Actually, hang on." Suddenly, Snatcher felt the gentle press of both Roman's hands to his back, slowly tracing. "This better or worse?"

Being that the hands were surprisingly cool, Snatcher choked out, "Better."

"Okay. Now take your time. But don't…leave out anything important."

"Felt as though I was being ripped apart from the insides out," Snatcher sputtered. "Not an inch of my body that wasn't in pain. I envy Mr. Vexen's demise, all considered. Couldn't – couldn't stop myself. Played it out note for note and I couldn't – but as I said, it was completely fabricated – it wasn't like that at all, I should know, I was there – "

Roman sighed. "We can stick to that story if you want to. Do you want to?"

"N…no," Snatcher choked out. "But it can't – it can't be – I'm utterly sick thinking about it – you can see that obviously – and I – " Well, he'd just managed to find more bile to donate, apparently.

"It's okay," Roman said softly. "I've been there. It sucks. And like I said. I'm not here to judge."

"It couldn't have been…I don't want it to have been."

"I know."

"At the very least, I could've done without the – without the memory of it – blinding pain all over, being torn apart – " Wait, how long had Snatcher been clutching at his own stomach without realizing it, squeezing tight the patch of skin that served as the origin point? He indicated it; "Started here and then – then burst at the seams. You won't tell anyone – "

"No. I won't. Also, ouch. You really didn't have it fair in the end, did you?"

"Not the slightest, and I keep thinking it's – " Snatcher shook his head. "No, no, I don't, because I know it's not – "

"Stop me if this makes it worse," Roman stated, sliding one hand around front. Nudging it under Snatcher's, running over that patch of skin on his stomach. "Just so you know, feels perfect to me. No seams."

Snatcher really wanted to pretend he hadn't needed to hear that. "Don't…don't stop that for now."

So Roman kept lightly tracing a slow path with the palm of his hand, which was still pleasantly cool. "You know you didn't deserve that shit," he said.

"I – I know."

"No, I mean it. You better mean it too."

"I know," Snatcher said again, lower, deeper, with more conviction. "Neither of us deserved our lot."

"Truer words never spoken." Roman paused to think it over. "I mean – who would you say is the person who was most at fault for it? Not the memory man; I don't need any more bird vore. But, say, between the kid, the brattier kid, and Lord Dipshit, who was responsible for it?"
"All of them," Snatcher choked out. "All of them, every last one, they didn't even bother to help me in my – in my darkest hour."

(Still he believed that. Ignoring any inclination that might've said otherwise.)

Roman leaned in close, his mouth practically pressed against Snatcher's ear. "I'll kill them," he whispered huskily. "I will kill every last person that did this to you. Mark my fucking words. As long as it takes."

Snatcher finally discovered his breathing was at a reasonable rate. "Tha…"

"Nope. Don't say it. I know what you mean."

Snatcher just nodded.

"You just let me know when you're ready to get back up."

Snatcher hadn't thought he ever would be, that this was his new eternal hell, but the storm seemed to be subsiding – he finally didn't have anything left to give the toilet against his will. Without a word, he shifted, and Roman backed off to let him stand. Snatcher then swiped up a towel from the counter, pressing it to his nose to try and clear out the searing ache in his sinuses. "Getting back to sleep will be a terrible chore at this rate, but – "

Roman was in the process of lighting more candles, giving the bathroom a more daylight appearance. "Word of advice from your local hangover king," he said. "Run a bath. Steam gets that shit out of your nose faster."

Roman would know about that, wouldn't he? "One of these days we've got to discuss that habit of yours. It's not that I particularly mind, but I won't have you dying before I do of a ruptured liver."

"Livers don't – I don't think they rupture from alcohol poisoning?" Roman thought it over. "It's fine anyway. This isn't about me."

Snatcher already had water running in the bath. "How am I to move on from this? This is abjection."

"Hey, I'm ready to roll out tomorrow pretending this never happened."

"You might put up a good act," Snatcher argued. "I'll remember."

"What you'll remember," Roman argued, "is that I, being the dutiful and loyal companion that I am, rushed immediately to the aid of a man of your greatness, since that is what any person with an ounce of logic would do."

Snatcher looked back around at him, flabbergasted for more than one reason. "Did you just try to imitate my voice – "

"Yeah, 'try' was the operative word there."

"Needs work."

"Eh, not like I need to roll that one out for a heist anytime soon."

The bath was full. "I hate to ask," Snatcher muttered.

Roman just nodded. "I'll stay. I wanted to, anyway."

And he quite got into the role of the servant, taking the washcloth and soap into his own hands, acting as though Snatcher had paid him a generous sum to do all the work. With how sensual Roman was making it, Snatcher was in no mood to argue – though it didn't quite put him in a sultry mood, either. Merely made it seem more normal, like this was another round of foreplay.

Then, all of a sudden, Roman said "Fuck it." Which wasn't unusual for him, but it obviously heralded some sort of epiphany.

"What then?" Snatcher asked, hesitant. "If you were through with this, you could've gone back to bed – "

"No, no, no, not that," Roman clarified. "Fuck sleeping in this room. We're meeting up with Neo tomorrow and we'll get her on Symonne duty, and if we're lucky and she beats us to the punch, we can just cut right out of the whole thing. Who needs eight hours anyway? Like we're early birds. I say, if you're up for it, we head out to the nearest bar and see what's on tap for that party they have going on. Of course, if that sounds like nothing but a waste of time, I'll accept the veto."

Roman was really asking about Snatcher's physical and mental condition, and right then, Snatcher just desperately wanted a distraction. He felt considerably less sick, but had a horrible feeling of dread as though the retching might take him over again if he didn't put something else in his head. Something like a loud, bright celebration in a well-lit building. "Well, I'm ready when you are, but you're the one who seems to be enjoying himself."

"Touché. All right, we'll wrap it up and hit the town. Oh, also, your one job is keeping me in line so I don't end up the next one using the porcelain deposit box."

"Roman," Snatcher sighed, "you say that as if anything can possibly control you once you've got an idea in your head."

Roman laughed. "Yeah, you're right on that one."

They paused, locking eyes. Right here, right now, before they rejoined the public, they were free for one last moment of weakness. "I do love you," Snatcher said as softly as he could.

"I know," Roman replied. "I'm so lovable!"

Snatcher swiped the washcloth from Roman and used it to lightly whip him. Roman pretended as though he'd just been gored by a serrated knife, but when he was done with his dramatic overreaction and subsequent laughter, he said very sincerely, "Love you too."

Within ten minutes, the two of them were fully dressed and out on the town, leaving the inn behind as they sought the nearest source of light and raucousness. There seemed to be a dance or a concert of some sort going on in the park at the far edge of town, but that, they both agreed, was for nerds (Roman's choice of words). The tavern they'd found earlier was quite alive, though, so they strolled on in, observing a crowd of joyous drunkards singing and dancing.

Many of them were gathered around a table to watch one particular person who'd obviously overdone it and was now all-out breakdancing on the tabletop. Roman had to laugh, because the woman's style almost reminded him of Melanie Malachite. In fact, she was wearing white.

In fact, that was Melanie Malachite.

Roman excitedly tugged Snatcher's sleeve, and the two hustled over to the table, looking around for other familiar colors. Red, green – pink.

"NEO!" Roman yelled, waving.

When Neo spotted him, she charged toward him and practically tackled him in a flying hug. "Yeah, missed you too," Roman told her. "And you missed some pretty spectacular fireworks earlier."

Snatcher was content to look on with a satisfied smile, but then Neo detached herself from Roman and came flying at him next, and the impact nearly set his stomach off again. Snatcher practically bit his own tongue before saying "Yes, yes, joyous reunion and all that" and patting Neo's head.

She backed off, cocking her head. She knew something was wrong.

"Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to," Snatcher told her. "Or silently imply them, as the case would be. Rest assured your arrival solves a great many of our problems."

"So what's the deal with this girl we're saving?" Miltia sighed.

The Mukhtar nodded. "There is a lot more to the story that we will need to know."

"Oh, come on," Emerald laughed, "you mean that five-hundred-page novel on your scroll didn't give enough of an explanation?"

"I say we order a round, sit down, and talk it out," Roman suggested. "We just need – "

"HEY, MELANIE!" Miltia called. "We're moving on!"

Melanie gave a backflip off the table, stumbled slightly, then caught her balance to a round of applause. "One night only," she teased as she flipped her hair, stalking away from the crowd.

Miltia ended up forbidding Melanie from ordering herself any more drinks. Miltia herself opted for a raspberry martini, Emerald got her hands on a mint julep, the Mukhtar took a black coffee, and Neo just got herself a milkshake on the condition that she sit as far from Snatcher as possible. Roman took a pint of beer and a short glass of ginger ale on the rocks, keeping the former right in front of him and edging the second to his left for later.

Snatcher hadn't ordered anything due to still feeling somewhat queasy. But he was seated directly to Roman's left, and now that ginger ale was looking tempting given the nature of his malady. He wasn't about to put in an order himself, as it would give the game away – but since he and Roman spent so much time exchanging saliva anyway, surely Roman wouldn't mind if Snatcher just nipped a bit out of that glass.

"I didn't think you'd show up in the middle of the night!" Roman laughed.

"Well, it was day when we left Twilight Town," Emerald told him. Then she thought it over; "Actually, it was…twilight when we left Twilight Town. That's how it works."

"We did not intend to arrive in the middle of the night," the Mukhtar clarified. "However, it is better we arrive early than late."

Neo gestured to Roman; she wanted to know his story.

"Okay," Roman began. "Sit back because this one's gonna get crazy."

He explained about how he and Snatcher had met Symonne. About Foulfellow and Lohgrin and Heldalf's assault. About Symonne's capture. About how Harley and hers had shown up, including Yang –

"THAT BITCH?" both Malachites sputtered.

"Yeah," Roman grumbled. "It's been…not fun."

Neo dragged a finger across her neck with a questioning gaze.

"I've tried," Roman told her.

Neo pointed to herself, offering to do it.

"Not at this point," Roman told her. "I'm just accepting my fate."

"Don't tell me you're getting used to working with her," Miltia scoffed.

"Hell no," Roman spat. "It's a diplomacy thing. Back me up, Archie."

Snatcher quickly set down the ginger ale glass. "Most certainly. It would ruin the whole operation. Unless of course you shorthanded our part in it."

"We'll play the role of the world-savers," Roman said. "One: so we don't draw attention. Two: in case you need us as the cavalry. Three: in case we beat you to the punch. But if you can extract Symonne without calling for backup, then do it and get back to us ASAP. The sooner we can cut ties with Goldilocks, the better."

"What, you don't want to be the hero who saved the world from Half-Elf?" Melanie hiccuped.

"Don't even joke," Roman said dryly.

"Why am I just not even surprised you picked up another kid?" Miltia sighed. "I swear to the gods, Roman, you're a chronic dad friend."

"Oh, DON'T start this again!" Roman argued.

"What's she mean by that?" Snatcher teased, nudging Roman lightly.

"The Terrible Twins seem to have this idea in their head that I actually like taking care of the newbies," Roman sighed. "Which is NOT – "

"You know our aunt from Mistral?" Miltia interrupted slyly. "She hired Roman way back in the day to be our babysitter. Absentee parents and all that. He was a big dork back then, but we had fun hanging out."

"Remember the Capivara?" Melanie chirped. "And you said…" She wobbled. "What was it? It couldn't feed on our negative emotions because we were basically dead inside." Melanie started laughing. "You were right."

"Then there was some drama involving Roman not wanting to be a Spider anymore," Miltia said as she stirred her drink, "and we were enemies for a while, but then he found Neo again. Weird thing, too – she was the loser girl at our school."

Neo nodded proudly.

"Weird girl, yes," Roman said. "Loser, no. Look, I would've found her sooner if not for the assumed name she was registered under."

Neo stuck out her tongue, remembering how her first foster parents after Brunswick had tried to mold her into their perfect doll. At least they let her be a girl, but only in private. She hadn't even been allowed into the public. And from there, well, she'd had to use some Overactive Imagination to pass stealthily in the institution Miltia had mentioned, an all-girls school with a very strict definition of "female." Not her happiest days.

"So then he goes from being our babysitter to picking up his little cousin or whatever," Miltia went on, "and at this point I'm like…Roman, you just like playing dad friend."

"Do not," Roman snapped.

Neo winked.

"Do NOT," Roman told her.

"If I may," Snatcher broke in. "You said you and Miss Malachite were enemies for a time? You seemed amicable recently, and here we are with both girls."

"Yeah, I was wondering about that," Emerald said. "No one quits the Spiders. You must've given them something pretty good to smooth out all that bad blood."

"You bet I did," Roman said proudly. "I just turned over a snitch who was selling Malachite secrets she found on the secret surveillance network, and her husband who was skimming off Xiong Dust orders."

"And gave back that hard drive you stole," Miltia urged.

"Wh – why do you have to bring that up?" Roman sighed. "I'm trying to make it sound like a win-win-win here."

"The best part was – " Melanie hiccuped. "The best part was when everyone thought he was lying about Jimmy Vanille and then he proved there was a hidden Dust stash with the big boom."

Neo clapped excitedly at the memory.

"I like to think we found a part of ourselves in that explosion," Roman said proudly. "And besides the Dust, nothing of value was lost."

Neo was silently snickering. There had been a couple casualties. She agreed with Roman.

"But we're so getting off track," Miltia sighed. "You were happy to have us as friends again because you're just a DAD."

"I am not a dad!" Roman argued. "Stop. You're making me sound all…fuddy-duddy."

"You do tend to at least gravitate to the mentor role well," Snatcher muttered.

"You too?" Roman pretended to be offended. "Traitor!"

Neo then began to gesture to get back on point; they'd help find Symonne.

"But we have to check in with the others tomorrow morning first," Emerald said. "I wanna see Velvet."

"A reasonable request." Snatcher nodded. (He hoped Roman wouldn't notice that ginger ale was half gone now. He really should stop.)

"I agree," Roman said. "We left Thorny Rose's assassin guild back in Lohgrin anyway. We're just calling in replacements to go get some intel for her. She can't argue with that!"

"Wherever the girl has been taken," the Mukhtar insisted, "we will find her. I will see to it."

"So that's settled," Roman declared. "We can spend the rest of the night relaxing. In fact, I might be in the mood for a second pint."

"I'm supposed to stop you from doing that," Snatcher reminded him. "'Supposed to' being incredibly operative words."

"You know what?" Miltia said. "We're drinking to the good times. The next round's on me. Except Melanie has still had enough."

"I'm good at one julep," Emerald insisted.

Miltia rummaged in her pocket. "Weird. I brought a little purse. It had the inter-world munny too."

Neo gasped, pointing. There was a quite short figure completely shrouded in a black cloak, hustling at top speed toward the entrance of the bar. The cloak billowed, and a familiar red glitter was revealed.

"That little shit stole my purse!" Miltia gasped.

"So this is what it's like to be on this end of it," Emerald realized. She rose; "All right, everyone, after that thief!"

She, the Malachites, the Mukhtar, and Neo rose to bolt for the door. Roman did the same, then looked over to Snatcher – who was polishing off the ginger ale in an utter lack of self-control.

"Thirsty?" Roman asked with a wink.

"It's not what it…" Then Snatcher figured it out. Roman had been ready to order a whole other pint before he even touched the soda. "You. That was BAIT."

"You wouldn't have ordered one for yourself and you know it."

Snatcher just grabbed the rim of Roman's hat and pulled it down over that mischievous green eye. "You're insufferable at times."

"And you love it."

Then they were off, chasing the little thief through the darkened streets of Lastonbell.

It wasn't long before the cloaked figure had taken a wrong turn, backing herself up in an alley with the full force of Roman, Snatcher, Neo, the Malachites, Emerald, and the Mukhtar bearing down on her. Still they couldn't see hide nor hair of what she actually was under that black fabric – though the prevailing guess for most of them was that she was a young child, and on that, they were correct.

"Stay back," she said in a high-pitched voice, which allowed the others to make a fairly good guess at her gender too.

"Or you'll what?" Roman taunted. "I think it's seven against one. Do you maybe wanna rethink that last move you made?"

She kept the purse clutched tightly under her cloak. "I need it."

"So do I," Miltia argued. "So you better hand it back over or – "

"Wait," Emerald broke in. "I'm getting a feeling." She looked to the little thief. "You don't have much else to work with, do you? Is that the only way you get anything to eat tonight?"

"Shut up!" yelled the little thief. "You don't know anything about me! Now stay back or else I'll have to defend myself!"

"Don't hurt her," Emerald pleaded. "I think we can talk this out."

"And I think she took something that belongs to US," Roman argued. "I know your heart must be bleeding, Green, but this to me is an enemy, and a dumb one at that."

"Come fight me," the little thief cajoled. "I dare you."

Neo tugged on Roman's sleeve. She was starting to get a feeling of her own – the feeling that the mysterious little girl could in fact follow through on her threat.

"You of all people being scared of a little kid?" Roman scoffed. "Please." The Cudgel flipped into his hand, aiming at the little thief. "You have until the count of three. One. Two."

Suddenly, she surged forward. Roman didn't see quite what she did, but now his weapon arm was bleeding, and he'd recoiled, dropping the Cudgel to the stone. Roman staggered back; "Fuck – SHIT – how did you – "

"Let. Me. Out," the little thief urged. "Or I'll have to do more."

Snatcher had stepped forward to examine the wound on Roman's arm. Shallow, only meant as a threat. But also she'd torn his jacket, which was arguably a bigger crime in Roman's book, and Snatcher knew that. "Now you listen here, young lady," he snarled. "You might've got in one lucky shot, but – "

"I know what I'm doing." Though now her voice was shaking, suggesting otherwise. "I was raised by hitmen. They taught me everything they knew. I'll…I'll kill you all if I have to."

"Do you WANT to?" Emerald asked.

"Perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye," the Mukhtar said.

"You know, kid," Roman sighed as Snatcher dribbled a healing potion over his arm, "you've got moxie. I can respect that. And maybe, just maybe, we have more in common than we think. You're not messing with any innocents in the public eye here. You're out of your league, kid. So give up."

"If you're so ready to kill me," the girl spat, "then come do it."

"We should just get it over with," Melanie sighed.

"What – no!" Miltia spat. "You saw what she did to Roman. I'm not getting slashed up."

"What happened to the assassins who raised you?" Emerald asked. "Where are they now?"
A pause. "I'm on my own," the girl said indignantly. "I've made it this far by myself."

"And that's why you're stealing," Emerald said. "Because you don't have anyone looking out for you. And I'm guessing no place to live."

"EVERYONE'S DEAD, OKAY?" the girl yelled. "Everyone…everyone who took care of me is dead. I know a lot about killing, but I don't know about stealing, so I'm doing the best I can!"

"…Huh." Roman looked at her with new eyes. "Interesting."

"Here he goes again," Miltia sighed.

"This is not – I don't – " Roman sighed. "I just want to see if maybe we can turn this around to our advantage. After all, the girl needs a family…and we hardly ever don't have room for new resources, am I right?"

"Quite so." Snatcher nodded sagely. "So long as the child can work toward OUR agenda rather than anyone else's, perhaps that little talent of hers would come in…useful."

"He's corrupted you too," Miltia sighed.

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I despise children," Snatcher argued. "Miss Symonne excluded. This, however, is more than a mere child. This is an opportunity."

"So you wanna use me as a tool," the little thief reiterated. "I…I can work with that. You give me a place to stay and money to eat and I'll do whatever you want. I can kill. I'm learning how to steal. I want to learn how to shoot a gun. I can set things on fire."

"Now, this is a bit more of a mutually beneficial arrangement," Roman said.

"Here." She dropped the purse, kicking it toward Roman. "Take this as a start. I'll get you more."

"What the hell?" Miltia yelled. "You tore a big hole in it!"

"That's the only way I can carry it," the girl replied flatly.

"Okaaaay…" Roman glanced at her with suspicion. "Look, if this is gonna be a thing, that whole 'hidden identity' has to go. Ditch the cloak. I want a face and a name."

"My name – my name is Cat," said the girl. "But you don't want to see what I look like. Just trust me."

"I don't think I like that answer." Roman started forward.

"You won't like what you see!" Cat argued, recoiling.

"Roman," Emerald urged. "Leave her alone. She said – "

"I'm just making sure this isn't some kind of plant to pull a fast one on us," Roman said as he seized the cloak and pulled.

"NO!" Cat fought, but wasn't able to get a grip on the fabric. Roman yanked it away, exposing what lay beneath.

Immediately, Roman staggered back, sputtering: "What the – what the FUCK – "

By now, he was used to working with anthropomorphic animals. Cat was, in fact, a cat. Normally this would be no big deal. After all, Gideon was also a cat. But the species and brown fur were where the similarities began and ended. She was bipedal, sitting on haunches like a squirrel, though obviously able to extend her legs enough to run. But now it was apparent why she had such an easy time cutting through Roman's sleeve, and why she wasn't able to properly hold Miltia's purse. She had no front paws. What she had was a pair of pincers, like on might see on an insect, wiggling on her chest. Four much longer insectoid legs sprouted from her back, covered in striped brown fur and ending in wickedly jagged points. One of those points was slick with blood from her recent attack. Her tail, brown and red stripes, curled into a perfect spiral. Her face hardly looked like that of a kitten, with shaggy, unkempt brown fur and a mouth full of jagged teeth. Her right eye was a bright, burning gold that seemed to be able to see right through a person to their core. Her left eye was blood red, no iris or pupil to speak of, and there was a thick scar running through it from forehead to cheek. All in all, she looked like a nightmare.

"I warned you," Cat said nervously.

"Excuse my rudeness here," Roman said, "but what the HELL are you?"
"I'm a little girl," Cat muttered. "I used to be a person. Then I made a big mistake."

"The hell kind of mistake does THAT to you?" Roman barked.

She looked downward, her horrifying face now displaying morose sadness and almost looking cute for the first time. "My daddy was a scientist. He worked with the hitmen, and he would make them watch me while he did his projects. He was working on a portal between worlds. He called it the 'Oystercloud.' He did a lot of tests with cats to see how the portal would work. But he never told me that. I was sick of not seeing him, so I came to visit him in his lab, and I saw a kitty he was working with, so I – " She trembled, pausing. "It was some kind of mutant, I guess. I touched it and…it was awful. I turned into this. At least…Daddy was nicer to me after it because he thought it was his fault. But it was mine." Another pause. "My real name is 'Celeste Catherine Burr.' But…"

"Yeah, I see why you would go with 'Cat.'" Roman forced himself to calm down. "Your, um, daddy. He's dead?"

"Yes." Cat's golden eye misted up. "They killed him. For not doing his science right. I think that was my fault too because he had to take care of me instead of doing his work. But the Oystercloud works now, and I don't have anyone left in my world, so I used it, and it doesn't mutate things anymore, or maybe I'm just too mutant already. It brought me here, and everyone's been calling me a 'Hellion.' I think that's a kind of monster that lives here. I don't blame them. So I hid."

"Oh," Roman realized. "Gods…damn it."

"You don't want me anymore," Cat stated.

"No, no – it's – if THAT was the case, I wouldn't be so mad at myself right now," Roman sighed. "Neo. Terrible Twins. Not one fucking word."

Neo playfully mimed zipping her lips shut.

"I'm just saying you…fit in," Roman told her. "Neo and I have both been there. Trust me."

Neo nodded sympathetically, stepping out toward Cat. Then Neo knelt, offering a hand.

"I…can't shake it." Cat wiggled her six insectoid legs to prove the point.

Neo just gently wrapped her hand around the dull edge of one of Cat's front pincers, giving it a shake anyway. Then she ruffled the fur atop Cat's head, giving her a little scratch behind the ears.

"…Thank you," Cat breathed. "Are you – are you hitmen too?"

"If the need arises," Roman explained. "We're also thieves, conquerors, and all-around bad people. We kind of have this multiversal empire goal going on right now, and that's why we've gathered a bunch of people who think the same."

"Most of us have been wronged by the world much the way you have," Snatcher assured Cat.

"You're not looking at me," she accused him. "I get it. But don't pretend like you are."

Snatcher really didn't want to exacerbate his stomach issues any further. "I'm…certain I'll…get used to it." He also wasn't too keen on adopting what he thought was a textbook monster…but the girl spoke to Roman on a deeper level, and even less did he want to argue against her inclusion for that very reason.

"You can call our syndicate the 'WHAM ARMY,'" Roman said. "In fact, it might just be fate that you got sent to us. Because I can tell you right now, if you were just some regular kid who went on a one-time pickpocket for fun and games, you'd be dead."

Cat nodded. "Then I'm glad I'm not a regular kid."

"Also?" Emerald raised a hand. "I want it on record that I'm not officially affiliated with them. I'm with the bad guys who do less killing and more just the fun stuff." She paused. "I mean, you could join my team if that sounded better – "

"It sounds like you have the wimp team," Cat chided.

That got a chuckle out of Roman and Neo. Emerald folded her arms and looked away indignantly; "Whatever. Says you."

"Here's the thing," Roman went on. "Right now, we came to talk over a split-up. Me and my half of the team keep doing what we're doing because apparently we have to go on this big save-the-world quest in order to get what we want. And what I want is another friend of mine back where she belongs. She's a little younger, too, though definitely older than you…you might get along with her like a playmate. Or maybe you won't. Who knows? But the other bad guys, the BIGGER bad guys, took her away and I want her back. So Neo's half of the team – that's Neo giving you all the scritches, by the way – is going to go track her down and make sure nothing extreme happens to her before we can get there. And, if we're lucky, her half can liberate our little friend and we can call the whole mission off early.

"Thing is, I need to make sure that if WE'RE gonna be partners, you can hold up your end. No trickery, no running away, no chickening out once the going gets tough, and NO moral high-horsing. After all, I don't know if half the stuff you told me was even true. Maybe you just said it to get your paw in the door. Or maybe I'm too much of a doubting Roman, but believe me, if you'd lived my life, you would be too. So here's the thing. I'm gonna give you a trial run. You go with Neo's half of the team – which means you get Green, Lizard Boy, and the Terrible Twins here – and you do what Neo says like a good girl. If I get a positive report at the end of the day, you're on the team. If it turns out this was all a big sham so you could leech off our generosity and sabotage our performance from the inside, well, I don't think I need to explain what happens to you."

Cat nodded. "I get it. We worked the same way back at the Queen's. When the Queen didn't like someone…he'd get rid of them forever."

"That's your old boss, huh?" Roman asked.

Cat nodded.

"I heard 'Queen' and a 'he' pronoun," Snatcher noted. "I rather like this man already."

"He's the reason my daddy is dead, though," Cat said softly. "And all the others."

"…Then perhaps I don't like him," Snatcher decided.

"I always wanted him to notice me and be my friend," Cat continued. "I couldn't believe he'd just – he'd just – he killed his own family!" Her gold eye was watering again. "We were a family and he KILLED them! The worst part is I…I sometimes think if he just said he was sorry, I'd…" She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. He's dead now too. I really am all on my own. I WAS on my own. Now I have you. I won't let you down."

Neo gave Cat a sudden hug, and Cat gave a squeak, unsure what to even do about the gesture.

"Yeah, she thinks cats are adorable," Roman sighed.

Neo let go to fish a notepad out of a pocket. She wrote on it and held it out for Cat to read: "We're going to have so much fun! 3 I'll hurt anyone who tries to hurt you! 3 3"

Cat smiled. "I miss when people would say that to me."

Snatcher deftly tipped his hat; "Welcome aboard, Miss Burr."

"Now!" Roman clapped his hands together. "What do you say we head on back to the party, huh? Oh, and Neo, if you would – "

Neo understood. In a flash, Cat suddenly had the appearance of a taller woman with deep tan skin and short, shaggy brown-and-red striped hair, clothed in a pink dress edged with lace.

"I feel the same," Cat said. "I just look different. Why?"

"Because we're going back to the bar and they won't let anyone under eighteen order drinks," Roman said. "This way, you can order any little thing your heart desires, regardless of alcohol percentage. No, really! I don't give a shit!"

Neo flipped her little notepad to write Cat one more note: "On our mission, I want to see the real you again 3"

"Okay," Cat agreed. "I'll come to the party. It sounds like…fun."

The Mukhtar bowed. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

She trudged along when the group made their way back to the tavern. How odd it was to have stolen in and out of the building with the aim of being unseen, and now she was joining in on the laughter and revelry. She hadn't realized until now just how envious she'd felt of the rest of the crowd, just how happy she was to feel more like she belonged.

All she ordered was a soda, but Miltia picked up the tab, so really, Cat thought smugly, she'd managed to get some of the money in that purse for herself anyway.

...

The Huntsman led Mozenrath, Albel, Miratrix, Jihl, and Loqi on a trip through a standard shopping mall in downtown New York. This was in and of itself an interesting introduction of several of them to mall culture – the Huntsman ended up having to write a check he knew would bounce to cover the costs of the glass novelty figurines Albel had shattered with his sword, Miratrix had to make a detour to try on five different outfits that could suffice as disguises, and Loqi just would not explain the context behind his tossing the free samples across the food court and yelling "YOU CAN TAKE THIS NEW RECIPEH AND SHOVE IT WHERE – "

But eventually, they ended up at their destination. Mostly because Mozenrath threatened to put magical equivalents of child leashes on everybody. Now they quietly and coolly made their way to a dark boutique labeled "Goth Tropic," which specialized in band tees, leather, lace, and piercings.

"We will need the shop to be empty," the Huntsman stated. "But without causing a scene, or she will set off the defenses. Let us begin by waiting and turn to subtle influence if we need to."

This really was just the excuse everyone was looking for to browse the shop. The Huntsman sighed in disappointment at the amount of jewelry shaped like dragons. Mozenrath eyed up a T-shirt with a graphic of Hecate and the word "WITCH" emblazoned on it, wondering if it was too gauche to be used as a tribute to the goddess herself. Miratrix soon held onto several garments she considered essential disguises. Jihl found her head spinning by how many band names were still the same between her world and this one, and this was confounded further by Loqi insisting that "Panic! At the Disco" was the name of a troop of musical adventurers from Eos also, led by a hyperactive man with a key-shaped sword. (The implications were too much to process that day.) Albel tried to browse clothing alongside Miratrix, only for another fight to break out –

"That's a dress. That's not going to make you look ANY less conspicuous."

"Well, unlike you, MIRA, I'm proud to advertise my identity and NOT skulk in the shadows under lazily-chosen assumed names. Moreover, I fail to see how this is conspicuous. It seems an ordinary gown to me."

"Yes. But you're a man."

"Is that some rule here that men cannot wear gowns?"

"On a lot of worlds, actually." It just hit Miratrix that she'd never seen Albel in anything but a skirt (or the Meta's armor, but that was mandatory).

Albel sneered. "What worm made that rule?" He swiped several more skirts out of pure spite. "Allow me to meet and defeat them in combat and we will see how the tides turn."

"You would have to return to the French Revolution to stem that tide," the Huntsman sighed. "And we are not here to shop. Both of you, put those back!"

They pouted, shoving the clothes on the nearest racks with no thought to organization. The Huntsman was reminded rather painfully of Rose – she certainly did want to waste a whole lot of precious time on pink jeans.

The only other customer in the store by that time started screaming "RAT! RAAAAAT!" and bolted into the mall proper.

"There," Mozenrath said, suspiciously proudly, as he rejoined the Huntsman. "Store's empty."

"Was there actually a rat?" the Huntsman sighed.

"For all intents and purposes," Mozenrath replied. "Anyhow, I was sick of listening to the lovebirds talk about whether or not Brendon Urie is a Keyblade wielder. Let's go."

"Oh, come on now, we can't be the only ones who know the band!" Jihl groaned. "And it's far too much of a coincidence to simply be parallel versions!"

"I do know the name," Miratrix ventured. "I think that green Mystic Ranger with the cow face listened to that. But I don't know why you're surprised. A lot of musicians abused the privilege of inter-world travel. You couldn't go to any planet in my galaxy without hearing Queen on the radio."

"That explains so much about Freddie Mercury," Jihl grumbled.

"HIM AS WELL?" Loqi was flabbergasted.

"STOP," Mozenrath barked.

The Huntsman proceeded to the checkout counter, run by a perky girl with rainbow streaks in her jet-black hair. She seemed absolutely unperturbed by the rat incident. "Hi, guys!" she said with a bright smile. "Find everything today? Ooh, you're all a bunch of snappy dressers! You're sure the right crowd for this place!"

"Perhaps we are," the Huntsman said. "Perhaps we are mere disciples of Ada Lovelace."

The mathematician's name was obviously a sort of keyword. The cashier did a double take before asking, "Is there anything else I can help you with?"

"I presume you are familiar with the work of Katherine Johnson?" the Huntsman posed.

The cashier then changed demeanors entirely, standing ramrod-straight. Her eyes glowed bright red. Down came the gate that separated Goth Tropic off from the rest of the mall, sealing only the worthy inside. "Password verified," the cashier said in a monotone voice that sounded pre-recorded. "Access granted."

A whole wall rearranged itself, sliding aside to reveal a narrow stairway that led down beneath the mall. The cashier kept her straight pose and straight face, not moving, not emoting.

"What is this?" Albel reached forward to tap the cashier's forehead, making a hollow metal sound. "Some kind of trickery?"

"It's a robot, idiot," Miratrix snapped.

"A sure sign we are in the right place, then," Loqi mused.

The Huntsman nodded, heading into the stairwell. "Follow."

Down they went to a brightly-lit basement, the antithesis of Goth Tropic, speckled with rainbow flashing lights of all sorts. This was obviously a laboratory, filled with machines of all sorts, meant for hyper-precise mechanical assembly. One of those machines was currently manned; the operator had her back turned to the incoming WHAM ARMY. She looked young, perhaps only old enough to have graduated high school, and wore a black sweater and long black plaid skirt over spindly high heels. Her raven hair was cut chin-length. She seemed to be manufacturing a human head, or at least a metal replica of one.

"I presume you are the Mad Thinker?" the Huntsman greeted.

The young woman gasped, startled. She spun, allowing the others to see her moon-pale complexion, her sharp and narrow face, her scowl. "CODE: SECURITY BREACH!" she yelled.

Innumerable laser guns unfolded themselves from the laboratory and pointed at the WHAM ARMY. All of whom remained unfazed.

"How did you find this place?" the young woman barked. "Who gave you the access passwords?"
"Please," Mozenrath scoffed. "Like they were hidden."

"We come as friends," the Huntsman told her. "We have not come to give away your location, nor to bargain for it. We have merely come to commission your expertise."

"And why should I believe that?" the young woman barked.

"Because we are in need of your unparalleled genius," the Huntsman told her.

It wasn't really a solid logical argument, but she couldn't resist those words and the Huntsman knew it. She relaxed slightly; "I still want to know how you found me when I don't even know who you are."

"Think of us as having a surveillance system that sees far more than yours ever will," Mozenrath said dryly. "Not for lack of intelligence, mind you. We just have a greater scope of access."

The young woman's scowl deepened. "Who ARE you?"

"The WHAM ARMY," Mozenrath stated. "A syndicate of like minds to yours. You don't like being upstaged intellectually, and we don't like being upstaged in general. You were willing to resort to violence to prove your superiority. We're looking to force all of known existence into submission on the same principle. And we know all about who you are, Rhona Burchill."

Rhona gaped in disbelief.

"All will make sense in time," the Huntsman told her. "For now, know only that the scope of your world is narrow in comparison to all that exists. You likely don't know where Tony Stark is at this very moment, or you would know that."

"Why would I care about where Anthony Stark is?" Rhona spat. "He's the reason I have to hide out down here! I thought EVERYONE was convinced I was still locked up at Ravencroft until YOU showed up!"

"Do not worry," Mozenrath told her. "Everyone who matters is still convinced. Like we said, we're not here to give the game away."

"Let me guess," Miratrix said. "A robot duplicate is taking your place at this 'Ravencroft'?"

Rhona smirked. "You're smarter than you look."

"And you built that impressive emo girl that ran the register upstairs?" Jihl confirmed.

"She's primarily my guard dog," Rhona replied, "but I won't lie; the extra revenue from the goth crowd has done wonders for my work down here."

"So all of this is for making your mechanical humans." Albel wandered over to a machine, poking its lights. "How strange. Not that I would ever have use for such things, but I can think of many militaries that would. Perhaps there would be value in getting to know the art more intimately…"

"Hey, get your hands off my stuff!" Rhona barked as Albel felt up the machine.

"You could never even hope to understand it!" Miratrix yapped. She then moved over to a machine of her own; "Not the way I could. With this, I could make my own duplicate of the Red Overdrive Ranger…" She plucked several spare parts and laid them out on a conveyor belt.

"STOP TOUCHING MY THINGS!" Rhona pointed at both Albel and Miratrix, then looked the Huntsman dead in the eye. "THEY'RE TOUCHING MY THINGS!"

"Ah," the Huntsman sighed. "And so the trinity is completed. Albel. Miratrix. Hands to yourselves."

The two addressed immediately followed orders, falling in line by the Huntsman.

"So you're from some sort of…other planet," Rhona mused. "Fascinating." Obviously she'd given up the defensive, as none of the guns had fired yet. "And out of all the geniuses on all the worlds, you chose me?"

"You are intimate with this world's brand of technology in particular," the Huntsman said. "We are in need of a specialized branch of maintenance."

"What's the commission?" Rhona asked. "I need to know if it's actually worth my expertise, or if you're better off heading to the toy store repair department."

"There are two mercenaries who were active in this very city," the Huntsman said. "We have taken a vested interest in them. One wore a specialized suit that allowed him to manipulate electricity, and the other was encased in a shell that allowed him to manipulate ice. Both died on the payroll of one Justin Hammer."

Rhona flinched. "Whiplash and Blizzard? Well, that's certainly a surprise. Both of those suits were…rudimentary to say the least, but given that no one else has managed to duplicate them outside the original manufacturers, I would be glad to recreate and upgrade them. I presume that's what you're asking about, right? To duplicate those armors so you can create your own Whiplash and Blizzard?" She chuckled. "Oh, this is going to be so much fun!"

"Close, but not quite," Mozenrath corrected. "See, you'll remember Whiplash and Blizzard couldn't exactly exist without the prosthetics in those armors. Not since Blizzard's little accident, and Whiplash…well. In the end, he was just as much machine as he was man, wasn't he? By choice, too."

"I know all this," Rhona scoffed. "You don't need to lecture me on the recent history of my own home city."

"We need you to build EXACTING replicas of those armors," Mozenrath specified. "Power upgrades are allowed, but they should have the exact dimensions and adjustments that if Misters Scarlotti and Gill were here right now, they could just slip right back in."

Rhona wrinkled her nose. "Are you some kind of fan club? Is this for some sort of…depraved fetish?"
"I love how THAT'S where your mind went," Jihl chuckled.

"Will you take the commission or not?" Loqi barked.

"Oh, I will," Rhona said. "If only to show off how simple of a task it will be for me. But I still want to know exactly why you want it."

The Huntsman nodded. "Because we intend to bring Scarlotti and Gill back from the dead, and their accommodations need to be ready and waiting for them."

...

Chrysta had wanted to shoot for one more weapon to add to the Cinnamons' arsenal. However, in order to request it, she needed to travel to the Fairy Forest alone, leaving the others camped out in the Magic Forge for the time being.

Her course took her through the lush greenery and colorful flowers directly to the Sugarplum Fairy, who wore voluminous skirts of purple and a high hairdo of a related shade. The Sugarplum Fairy was in conference with a few other fairies at the time – three of whom Chrysta recognized as her childhood bullies. She swallowed any words that she might've had for them, focusing on her mission.

"Chrysta?" the Sugarplum Fairy greeted. "Is that you?"

"Yeah," Chrysta said sheepishly. "Sorry to barge in like this – "

"She always was good at barging in," one of the others murmured. The rest snickered.

Chrysta rolled her eyes. "We've got an emergency. We think we might have a shot at bringing down Yzmatopia, but…well…"

"Spit it out, Chrysta," the Sugarplum Fairy urged. "But do so politely!"

Chrysta bowed, speaking more softly and slowly. "May I please humbly request that my associates and I would be granted the traditional magical wands earned by fairies?"

"Your request is denied – " the Sugarplum Fairy began.

"Say WHAT?" Chrysta blurted, dropping all politeness in an instant. The others took the golden opportunity to laugh at her again.

" – UNLESS you have a good reason to convince me," the Sugarplum Fairy said. "I'm all but sure the answer will still be no…but I want to hear you out first."

"Yeah, I guess that would make more sense," Chrysta realized. "Okay, so the thing is – "

Across the isle, Morgana slithered through the wood, a glass bottle of pink potion in one hand and the locket Vor used to inhabit in the other. The locket shone with a fiery red-orange aura, indicating that when Vor had left it dormant, Morgana had seen it as the perfect home for Daria's voice.

"Okay," Morgana said to herself. "It's easy, right? Just take the potion to blend in, put on the locket to sing like a sirena, and charm the boots off that little goody-two-wings. After all, if URSULA could do it, how hard could it be? HA!"

First, she downed the potion. In a puff of pink smoke, she was transformed into a being a little shorter than the average human woman, with two fluted legs instead of her usual writhing tentacles. Her white hair cascaded down her back in several braids. Two wings, which happened to look more like fish fins than anything from an insect, shimmered at her back and fluttered when she so desired. She was clothed in a short yet detailed dress of green and black.

"Will you look at that!" Morgana used her new wings to make a clumsy loop-de-loop. "I'm a fairy! I'm flyi – OW!" She'd flipped her head right into a tree. Quickly, she glanced around; "No one saw that."

Her next move was to fasten the locket around her neck. She felt filled with warmth, again reminiscent of fire. "Testing, testing!" Morgana said, now in a voice entirely unlike her own. "One, two, three…we're good to go."

"And that's why we need wands so bad!" Chrysta was emphasizing to the Sugarplum Fairy. "…ly. Badly. But without enchantlets, it's our best hope for facing off against those witches' magic!"

The Sugarplum Fairy grimaced. "Unfortunately, that is not a good enough reason. Your request is still denied."

"But why?" Chrysta urged.

"Because you are asking to violate a sacred tradition that has belonged to fairies and fairies alone," the Sugarplum Fairy reminded her. "Wands are only granted to – "

"Those who pass the three tests of the Pixie Cup," Chrysta sighed. "I know, I know!"

"Didn't SHE never pass the tests?" another fairy chuckled.

"No, she didn't," yet another chimed in. "Most of us passed them while we were still children!"

"That is unfortunately another matter of note," the Sugarplum Fairy sighed. "Chrysta, as much as I would love to welcome you into the ranks of wand-bearing fairies, you have not passed the requirements to earn one. At your age, you are long past when you should have been able to wield magic. How can I trust you to give magic to others who are not fairies when you yourself have not even earned your wand?"

"Those tests are stupid!" Chrysta barked. "Who cares how daintily I can dab dewdrops, or how quietly I can get teeth out from under pillows? I'm a Protector! This job is about strength and determination! Not daintiness!"

That just set the other fairies off laughing again. Chrysta flushed with shame.

"Chrysta," the Sugarplum Fairy sighed. "We can discuss the matter after the next Pixie Cup, when you have a chance to take the tests again…belatedly."

"No, no, no!" Chrysta argued. "Hold a Pixie Cup NOW! We're under enemy rule! We can't wait on it!"

"That is exactly why I need my trusted inner circle to be able to focus on the task at hand," the Sugarplum Fairy argued. "Not on adjusting the date of the exams or the setup entailed. Most of the children about to come of age haven't even had a chance to practice the necessary skills, and under the threat of Prisma, they aren't likely to take to their studies anytime soon."

"So I'm not your trusted inner circle, is what I'm hearing." Chrysta folded her arms.

"Chrysta…" The Sugarplum Fairy shook her head now. "From the very start, you have not demonstrated the fairy way. Instead of choosing to learn our traditions, you left the Fairy Forest and chose to become a Protector. You turned your back on us, and therefore…you are not one of us. And will not be until you earn your wand properly."

"You're saying I'm…not a fairy?" Chrysta croaked.

"No one can argue your heritage," the Sugarplum Fairy told her. "But so many times I have wondered if you would have been happier born as something else. Perhaps a Rompkin."

"A Rompkin." Chrysta stared in disbelief. Then, before anyone could notice her tears, she turned wing and sped out of the clearing.

They didn't wait for her to be out of earshot before they started laughing again.

She sped to the other side of the isle, where a large rock awaited her in another clearing. Chrysta planted herself atop the rock in a sitting position, then buried her face in her hands, hiding it while she figured out how to stem the tears.

Not knowing, of course, that Morgana lay in wait in the nearby brush. "This is it!" Morgana hissed to herself. "Time to prove my salt as a sea witch."

She proudly sang out Ariel's song, the one that Ursula had made Ariel use to pay up her own voice. Everyone in Atlantica seemed to know that song by now, after all, and the story of how "Vanessa" had used it to charm Prince Eric. As Morgana sang, she filled her head with what she considered to be seductive and hypnotic thoughts.

"WILL YOU CUT THAT OUT?" Chrysta yelled.

Morgana froze. That was not at all how it was supposed to go. Maybe that was the wrong song. She started anew, singing the notes Daria had used to grant her the voice she now had –

"I SAID CUT IT OUT!" Chrysta was instantly on her feet, storming toward the brush. She swiped aside several branches to reveal the fairy Morgana. "And they say I'm rude!"

Morgana stared at Chrysta like a barracuda at the business end of an unfired harpoon. Wasn't the whole point of the sirena voice supposed to be to hypnotize Chrysta, to make her fall into submission? Perhaps Morgana needed to combine it with actions as well as notes in order to make it stick.

"Oh, my dear…" She reached out to stroke Chrysta's face. "What is a lovely fairy such as yourself doing in an awful place like this?"

Chrysta slapped her arm aside. "You keep your hands to yourself. And the Fairy Forest isn't awful! Maybe if you weren't trying so hard with your pick-up lines, you'd remember that YOU LIVE HERE."

"No I – I mean, yes, of course I do," Morgana laughed. "Silly me! Anyway…" She cleared her throat. "They say there are plenty of fish in the sea, but…um…I'm a catch? You're a catch? Wait."

Chrysta pointed a finger right at Morgana's face. "Keep this up and you're on your way to being reported to the Sugarplum Fairy."

Morgana figured she'd quit while she was behind. Why wasn't any of this working? She was just doing what Ursula would do. Sing the hypnotic song with an enchanted voice, then seduce the target. She always made it look so easy, and Morgana wasn't about to entertain the thought that Ursula had more of a knack for it. Still and all, if she couldn't even copy one of Ursula's most easily-copied enchantments, that didn't bode well.

"I, um…" Morgana pulled at a braid nervously. "Misread the signals. Apologies! Won't happen again! I suppose I'll just be on my merry way then."

"Good." Chrysta flitted back to the rock. "Because I wanna be alone."

Morgana took several steps further into the woods, mind reeling with how spectacularly she'd just failed. No, wait, she wasn't about to accept this! She turned around and crashed back into the clearing.

"NOW what?" Chrysta barked.

"Forget everything I said earlier," Morgana bade her. "Just forget about it. But I noticed you seem upset about something."

"I'm surprised you didn't join in," Chrysta huffed. "All of Fairy Forest seems to be in on the joke. Chrysta doesn't know the fairy way, and she'll never be a real fairy."

"Wait a minute." Morgana flinched. "Why are they saying that?"

Chrysta sighed deeply, chin in her hands. "'Cause I'm too tough and not at all dainty. 'Cause I never earned my magic wand when I was a kid. Probably 'cause I'm a bad teacher, too. Or maybe they heard I let the arcticondors die on my watch. I should just face it; I'll never fit in, either with fairies or Protectors."

"So in other words, they think you're not girly enough," Morgana replied. Then, without thinking: "Hmph. Been there."

"You have?" Chrysta turned her attention fully to Morgana. "Hey…do I know you? You look kinda familiar…but I don't think I've seen you on this isle."

Morgana froze. "Uhm…ever traveled to the Everrealm to talk to fairies there?"

"Oh, you're from THAT forest," Chrysta realized. "Okay. That makes sense. Otherwise I was gonna guess the Isle of Pirates."

Morgana nodded slowly.

"They rejected you too?" Chrysta urged.

"You don't even know the half of it." Morgana spoke not of fairies, of course, but of her colleagues growing up in the sea. The other octopins of her clan, and the merfolk from the surrounding kingdoms with whom she'd tried to rub elbows. "It was always 'Ugh, stop being the weird girl!' and 'You're too loud!' and 'That's the worst magic I've ever seen!' and 'What's wrong with your face?'." She slumped to sit beside Chrysta, cross-legged on the ground. "Half of which I heard from my own mother."

"That's awful."

"You'd better believe it. Now, my sister, she was Miss Popularity. Everyone I tried to make friends with, she'd charm with a couple sentences. Next thing you know she'd be dating the girl I was after. She was Mama's golden child. And me? She always said that my sister was pretty, but when it came to ME, well, you couldn't make a sand dollar out of a sea urchin!"

"Why can't they just see that we don't have to fit their weird made-up ideas of what fairies should be?" Chrysta huffed. "So you're not girly, and I'm not dainty! What's wrong with that anyway?"

"Nothing, that's what!" Morgana barked. "They're all just unfair to us! That's what's going on! Girls like us, we deserve better!"

Chrysta turned to extend her hand. "Name's Chrysta. How about you?"

Morgana had to think fast. Somehow, she hadn't actually prepared for this before leaving Yzmatopia. What would Yzma do here? Probably turn her name backward or some other simple anagram. Anagram? "…Anagrom." Sure. That worked.

"Nice to meet you, Anagrom." Chrysta clasped Morgana's hand in her own to shake it.

As Morgana made eye contact, she saw a familiar spark in Chrysta's eyes. The spell! Chrysta was starting to buy it! But why? There'd been no song, no seduction. Truth be told, Morgana was just ranting because she wanted to, and there was a listening ear here. She'd almost forgotten what she'd even come for.

"It's just good to not feel alone," Chrysta sighed. "Sorry to shoot you down, but I'm not on the market right now. What I need is a good friend. If you're okay with that, then…"

Wait. Maybe that was the answer all along. "Why, of course I am!" Morgana said cheerily. "I just had to shoot my shot, you know. But there are other fish in – well, you know."

"I do. You said it earlier."

How next to progress the spell? It would have to rely on Daria's borrowed voice. But none of the songs Morgana had tried bore fruit. Then again, she'd been playing a different angle then. If she had any idea of what kind of song she could sing not to seduce, but to simply put up the act of comiseration…

Her answer dropped into her lap when Chrysta groaned a little too rhythmically, "Seems like I've lost nearly everything, Anagrom. Everything! I mean, really, what have we got?"

Morgana didn't even need to force the melody that came from her lips; "You thought you could ride on the fruits of your dreams, but you couldn't. So what?"

"You thought life would glide just like peaches and creams…" Chrysta was singing too, now. "But it wouldn't. Who cares!"

Morgana stood, gesturing to Chrysta. "No magic painters ask you to pose."

"You want a real wand?" Chrysta shrugged. "You can't buy one of those."

They harmonized as Morgana put out her hand; "That's the way your new life goes." Chrysta took Morgana's hand, letting her pull Chrysta to her feet. "But in the end, you still got your best friend…" They looked each other dead in the eye and smiled brightly. "And I got YOUUUUU!"

With that, they took off prancing round the clearing hand in hand, singing another "YOUUUUUU" so proudly. When they let go, they pointed at each other, laughing –

"You."

"You!"

"You!"

"YOU!"

They went back into harmony, gesturing to each other's faces; "Who can replace that masculine face? You know that it's true; I got YOU!"

Chrysta pirouetted; "Two peas in a pod are we!"

"What does that mean?" Morgana muttered. Then she snapped herself out of it; "You've got breath like shark manure!"

Chrysta laughed, waving her hand in front of her nose as though dismissing an odor. "You smell…kinda like a sewer!"

Laughing again, both women joined hands; "You are just the right wrong-doer for me!" They took off into the air, wings flitting. "So glad to know you!"

They separated again, still singing in harmony as they danced separately in the air: "All right, so you lost all you had! And though you had quite a lot, it's in tatters!"

"Just move on!" Chrysta cheered.

"Get over yourself!" Morgana chuckled.

"It's dreadful and sad," they harmonized, "'till you realize you've got what still matters!"

Morgana gestured to prompt Chrysta; "What still matters?"

Chrysta posed and flexed; "My muscles! Athletics! My radiant youth!"

Morgana traced down the sides of her body with both hands; "A skinny, slim figure and each golden tooth!" She grinned, showing off that every tooth in her mouth had a glittering golden veneer (and here Undertow had thought that would be going overboard).

"But the very scary truth is that SHE!" Both landed in the clearing. "Means the most to ME!" Pointing to each other, they declared, "I LOVE YOU, BESTIE!"

They danced, twirled and kicked around the large rock; "So glad I got YOUUUUU! To laugh and to share, as half of a pair! Through thin and through thick, we'll stick to our schtick – "

Morgana noticed how Chrysta's eyes glowed as they launched into the final stretch and the accompanying can-can kicks: "Always true to YOU! YOU! YOUUUUUUUU – " A break so both could gasp. " – UUUUU! I GOT YOU!"

If Chrysta's eyes were any indication, Morgana had finally managed to cast the spell. "Just curious," Morgana said. "What's your opinion on the whole…Yzmatopia affair?"

Chrysta blinked blankly. "I don't know. What do you want it to be?"

"I think Yzmatopia is a lovely change of pace, actually," Morgana told her. "The Yzma way is the only way to be!"

"I agree!" Chrysta said cheerily.

Just to test and be sure, Morgana barked, "PUNCH YOURSELF IN THE FACE!"

Chrysta did just that. "Ow!" She broke into a gigglefit.

"It worked," Morgana realized. "IT WORKED! IT ACTUALLY WORKED! Then again, I shouldn't be surprised!"

"What would you like me to do now?" Chrysta asked.

"Come with me," Morgana urged her. "I have an idea that will be a lot better than whatever it is you were planning with those nose-breathers."

She led Chrysta out of the forest, and Chrysta followed so obediently. Maybe, just maybe, Morgana couldn't outdo Ursula at her own game – but Morgana could always pick a different game, and she just might win at it.

...

One in the morning and Molly Blyndeff couldn't sleep. It couldn't be helped. Her family had made her work night shift at the Toy Emporium so often that she had a massive dysfunction in her sleep schedule. Some nights were easier than others, but tonight was apparently not one of them.

So she gave in to insomnia. She didn't much want to fiddle with the candles in the dark, and there wouldn't be much to do in her room as it was anyway. But she was pretty sure there was a lounge area out front in the lobby, so she made her way there, throwing her bear hoodie on over her modest pajamas so she'd have a pocket for the room key.

Arriving in the lobby, Molly was surprised to see a familiar face sitting at one of the chairs. "Laphicet?"

Laphicet craned her head back over the chair to look at Molly. "Hi, Molly."

Molly took a seat down beside her. "What are you doing up so late at night?"

"Thinking," Laphicet sighed. "I couldn't sleep. What about you?"

"My sleep schedule is set for a work night." She became aware of brightly-lit streets and a commotion outside. "Oh, right, they're having a festival."

"Yes." Laphicet nodded. "I'm glad they have the freedom to do it." She paused. "Molly…did your family let you leave home to have adventures, or take you anywhere you wanted to go?"

"Not really," Molly admitted. "Mostly Lorelai called the shots on family trips. And for me, it was straight from home to school and back unless I got locked in a museum overnight by accident or something. I think…my dad was afraid that if he took his eyes off me or let me out, that something bad would happen to me, like it happened to Mom."

Laphicet nodded. "Celica was the same way. She wanted me and Velvet to stay close all the time. She was always afraid she'd lose us too. We…never thought we'd lose her instead. Part of her came back as a malak, but…she wasn't our Celica, and she didn't treat us like her siblings."

"I'm so sorry," Molly said softly.

"It's okay," Laphicet assured. "I think sometimes when grown-ups get scared, they do things they shouldn't."

"You really are still a kid," Molly realized. "Not that I was – "

"I understand," Laphicet responded. "I've been gifted with the power and a lot of the wisdom of an Empyrean. But it doesn't make up for actually growing up and having that experience. And I never got to do that in the dream world. In a few weeks, I'll be thirteen for the first time in a thousand years."

"I'd love to help plan you a party," Molly said brightly.

"Thanks," Laphicet said softly. "I…never had birthday parties in Aball. I was always too sick." She knotted her hands in her lap, looking down to them. "I always wanted to adventure around the world and see everything I could, but most days, I was hardly well enough to just walk through town. I thought becoming Innominat would finally let me be free. But all it did was confuse me. I wasn't seeing the world on my own terms. Just through the Abbey's eyes. The dream was wonderful, but now that I'm woken up, I know just how many times I saw the same places all over again in those thousand years. Now that I know what else is out there…" She looked out the window. "I want to see the rest of this new world that my world became. I want to see your world. I want to explore everything! And for once…I'm…not too sick to do it." She gave a nervous laugh. "It's ironic. I asked around. Twelve-Year Sickness doesn't exist anymore. The other Laphicet invented a cure, and after that, there was a boy in my time, Videl, who grew up to be a doctor and spread the elixir around. Thanks to them, no one ever has to suffer through what I did. But it's not fair. Why couldn't it have come in time for me? Then I wouldn't have – I couldn't have – " And she fell silent.

Molly gently reached a hand over to touch Laphicet's. "But we can go on those adventures now," she said. "I mean, you can. You're here, and you're okay, and you messed up but not anymore. We can – you can start over!"

Laphicet nodded. "I know. But thank you. It's why I wanted to know if…if you got to have the life I missed. I wasn't gonna be jealous. I just hoped that one of us didn't have their first twelve years go to waste."

"I think it's kinda too late for that," Molly said nervously. "I went right from the house fire to the night shift. I had friends at school and everything, but in the end, I didn't really know what I was missing out on until I met Sylvie and Giovanni. It felt like I woke up. I guess that means both of us spent too much time inside the house and not able to do much."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I mean, it means we both get it," Molly replied. Then, suddenly: "Do you…do you want to go out?"

Laphicet turned to regard Molly with wide eyes.

"SIDE!" Molly blurted. "OutSIDE! I mean – there's a festival, and we can't sleep, and we've been trapped indoors and everything, so maybe we should just break the rules and go outside! It looks like they're having fun out there anyway!"

Laphicet smiled softly. "We'd be tired on tomorrow's mission."

"We'd be tired anyway."

"You're not dressed."

"I'm surprised you are," Molly replied. "Anyway, these pajamas aren't bad to walk around in. I went in them to school for PJ Day once. And I'm wearing the important thing." She pulled up her bear-ear hood.

Laphicet's smile became brighter. "Okay. Then I'd love to go out…side."

"Let's go!" Instantly, Molly had seized Laphicet's hand, pulling her toward the door of the inn. Together, they threw that door open –

And came face-to-face with a lineup of Edna, Lailah, and Zaveid, arms folded as they looked down to the two girls.

"Nice try," Edna huffed.

"What are you guys doing up?" Molly sputtered.

"You're the Shepherd, remember?" Zaveid pointed out. "If you can't sleep, we can feel it."

"We thought we'd give you some alone time for a bit and see if that got all the energy out of your system," Lailah said pleasantly.

"More like you talked us into it," Edna huffed. "Zaveid and I wanted to shove her butt back into bed."

"It really isn't the best idea to go out and party tonight," Lailah pointed out. "Not when we have such a long journey starting tomorrow."

"But we need to do something on our own!" Molly protested. "Laphi grew up sick all the time, and I was watched over and forced to do the work at the store, and – "

Zaveid put up a hand. "Hey, easy, easy! Kinda felt you two might put up a stink about it. So how about we strike a little deal?"
"Think of it like an oath!" Lailah said cheerily. "You two can go out tonight, but you have to bring us with you!"

"It would've been super rude if you'd left us out anyway," Edna pointed out.

"Someone's gotta watch over ya and make sure none of the bad guys try to take advantage of a couple kids out on their own," Zaveid said.

"I could handle anyone who tries," Laphicet replied.

"Maybe I should wake Velvet up so she can tell me just how independent you are and how much she's ready to let you go out without a chaperone," Edna stated.

"That's not fair," Laphicet muttered.

"I'd say 'not fair' is that you get to HAVE a big sibling who gets worried about you," Edna replied. "But it's not very fun the other way around, so why don't you just let us tag along and then you don't have to worry about Velvet getting involved either way?"

"Besides," Lailah chirped, "I'm excited to try out bobbing for apples for the very first time! I'm going to bob the biggest apple in the whole tub!"

"Your choice, kiddos," Zaveid said. "Back to bed, or we ALL go have some fun. It's not like there should be any big reason the two of you would wanna be alone, right?"

Laphicet and Molly both cringed. "I guess it would be okay," Molly relented. "It would probably actually be fun to go with more people!"

"She's right," Laphicet said. "And it would probably actually be safest. Just to have more eyes on the situation."

"We promise not to get TOO in your way," Lailah vowed.

"Speak for yourself," Zaveid grunted.

"Are we gonna get this party train moving or not?" Edna asked sternly.

The streets were filled with all sorts of merriment as Laphicet, Molly, Edna, Lailah, and Zaveid made their way to the park. Upon seeing how the nearby tavern was bustling with noise and activity, Zaveid pointed out, "Y'know, if this wasn't a kid-friendly trip, I might just be tempted – "

"LOOK!" Lailah surged ahead. "They're juggling torches!"

"LAILAH!" Molly ran after her. "Wait for us! You're supposed to be our chaperone!"

As the three kids pursued Lailah to the firey acrobat show, Zaveid peered into the tavern window. It wasn't hard to spot the familiar red top hat and black bowler hat seated at a table with several women Zaveid didn't know, as well as one man. He shrugged; it wasn't really his business. Then he moved on.

Eventually, after Lailah was distracted by three more street displays, the group reached the park. A band played energetic songs, and the townspeople whirled and danced through the open space. Simple carnival games were laid out on the park border: beanbag toss, archery with soft-tipped arrows, and the famed bobbing-for-apples bucket.

"You know that thing's going to be filled with saliva," Edna sighed.

"A risk I shall brave in order to win that prize apple!" Lailah took off in that direction.

"I wouldn't want to eat a big apple that was covered in other-people spit," Edna sighed, "but Lailah does Lailah."

"Well, I'm gonna get my groove on!" Zaveid was starting to bop to the beat. "Care to be my partner, Edna? Of course, we aren't gonna take our eyes off you two either."

Edna drove home by the point by jabbing two fingers toward her eyes, then to Molly and Laphicet, before joining Zaveid in the dance a few feet away.

"Come on, Laphi!" Molly put out a hand. "Let's dance!"

Laphicet smiled, taking that hand. And once they began to move, just leaping and spinning around, Laphicet finally realized that she couldn't remember ever having danced once in her life. The music filled her with levity, and more than once, all of the lights were blotted out for her by the intense shine of Molly's green button-esque eyes. Laphicet lifted her high, using his power of levitation to spin them both through the air.

Zaveid and Edna shot glances their way often. Lailah came back with an immense apple in hand – since seraphs were still invisible to most, there was gossip aplenty about what it could mean that an apple had just lifted itself out of the tub and floated away. "How are we doing?" Lailah asked excitedly.

By then, Laphicet and Molly had been dancing quite a while, and were starting to slow down. "I'm a little tired," Molly huffed, "but it's okay."

"No, let's take a break." Laphicet let go of her hands. "I'm tired too."

"Maybe we should find drinks," Lailah suggested. "I'm pretty sure everything up here is non-alcoholic, and the hard drinks are down at the pubs, but we'd need to make sure…"

"Why don't you and the little bear cub go check it out?" Zaveid said, returning to the group along with Edna. "I want a little chat with Laphi here."

"Zaveid – " Lailah began.

"It'll be fine," Zaveid assured. "Just make sure you tell me if there IS any hard stuff when you get back."

Lailah and Molly eagerly rushed off to the drinks table. As they did, Zaveid turned a cold eye on Laphicet.

"I don't normally go in for this kind of talk," he grumbled. "In my opinion, a lady should be free to choose, and a man should always be able to shoot his shot. For the record, I'm not sure which you are tonight, but I think that should cover all the bases."

Laphicet nodded. "A girl right now. But go on."

"All that said," Zaveid said, "you're the one exception. I see what's gonna go down, probably tonight, and if there's one girl I can't trust to hang onto another kid's heart, it's you."

Laphicet bowed her head. "I understand. After Silva…I wouldn't trust me either."

"So I'm gonna say something I normally wouldn't." Zaveid's voice dropped: low, threatening. "Molly's one of my kids now. I'm here to make sure she stays safe. If you get even close to doing to her what you did to Silva…I'll kill you with my bare hands before you get the chance."

Laphicet looked to Edna to see what she thought of this.

"Don't look at me," Edna huffed. "Zaveid knows you better than I do. But I don't want anyone to hurt my Shepherd, especially when we're already becoming such good friends."

Laphicet bowed her head. "If I come close to harming Molly," she said, "I expect you to put me down. Keep me in check. I never want to go overboard as Innominat again, and the last thing I want is to hurt her. Even I don't trust myself, some days. So if you could watch…and make sure I don't get the chance…I would be in your debt."

Zaveid nodded. "Good. So we're clear."

"Maybe you don't need to be THAT hard on yourself," Edna huffed. "You've been doing pretty good so far, and you know the difference between right and wrong, so it shouldn't be that hard to stick to it now."

"Edna," Zaveid reminded her. "You DON'T know Laphi like I do."

Lailah and Molly returned, precariously clutching a glass of an amber liquid in each hand. "Virgin apple cider!" Lailah proclaimed. "Though, Zaveid, there is also a hard cider booth over there that only gives out to adults – "

"All right!" Zaveid charged to the booth.

"…I was going to warn him that none of the vendors can see seraphs, though," Lailah concluded. "Molly had to hand me all these." She gave a slight shoulder-shrug. "Oh well! I'm sure he'll figure it out."

Edna and Laphicet each took their designated glasses, and the four moved toward the small seating area off to the side of the concert stage. Once Molly and Laphicet picked out a table, Lailah suddenly blurted "Oh, Edna, look! That's a rare cloud phenomenon! Do you ever wonder why clouds make the shapes they do, and why they look so much like things we can identify down here?"

Obviously she was trying to get Edna to sit at a different table. "Sure," Edna replied as the two of them walked off. "But clouds probably do that so people can talk about certain things without being interrupted."

That left Molly and Laphicet alone at the table. "So…um…they're picking up on some things…" Molly laughed nervously.

"Yes," Laphicet said with a nod. "Would you like to talk about those things?"

"Sure…but only if you do too."

Laphicet smiled. "The answer is yes. I would like to go out, in the metaphorical sense."

"REALLY?" Molly's eyes were wide. "Oh my gosh – I wasn't sure – "

"That I would return your feelings?" Laphicet was confused. "But we've grown close."

"Yeah, but…" Molly turned away. "You're still a god and you've had all these dream adventures and you're really really pretty."

"And you're the Shepherd," Laphicet reminded Molly. "You're the kindest person I've ever met. And you're beautiful yourself."

"I should've come in something nicer than pajamas, shouldn't I?" Molly realized.

"I think they're cute," Laphicet replied.

Then, taking a gamble, Laphicet rose, floating around to where Molly was seated. "May I?"

"Um…sure, I guess…"

"Not if you aren't comfortable," Laphicet said.

"Then maybe not on the lips," Molly said. "I'm not ready for that yet. How about on the cheek?"

Laphicet leaned gently forward, pressing her delicate lips to Molly's cheek, and Molly practically lit on fire. When Laphicet leaned back, Molly asked, "Is it okay if I kiss you there too?"

"Sure." Laphicet had to land both feet on the ground so Molly could reach.

Molly quickly kissed Laphicet's cheek, and now Laphicet was definitely glowing with a little brighter aura than before.

"Maybe I'll be okay with regular kissing later – " Molly sputtered.

"You don't need to be," Laphicet told her. "We both missed out on being kids. So let's just be kids together."

"Yeah. You're right."

Laphicet took her seat once more. The two of them slurped at their ciders, smiling at each other all the while. They didn't even feel the need to carry on an intense conversation at the moment. They were comfortable together, they were having fun, and that was all that mattered.

...

Upon reaching Radiant Garden, Vexen's team dispersed for one last break, making a promise to rendez-vous outside of Nergal's Pizza. Victor and Albert went one way, Arius (with both Summons in his pocket) and Agnus went another, Tsumugi roped Simon and skekSil into a buddy mission, and Xerxes went his own way to avoid having undue revenge taken upon him. That left Vexen, Deymos, and Vincent heading for Nine Bean Coffee.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?" Deymos groaned. "Like with your boyfriends?"
"Victor and Albert have gone to a dance club in Shadow Alley," Vincent recounted. "It's…a relief, honestly. Victor always loved nightclubs so much more than I did. He knew it made me miserable, so we would never go. Finally, he has someone to go with who isn't me. Of course, don't tell Albert any of this."

"Or it would ruin the whole act you put on about pretending to be jealous?" Deymos urged. "Don't worry. Victor already read it loud and clear."

"You weren't there," Vincent reminded him.

"I didn't need to be," Deymos replied cheekily.

"Don't worry," Vincent replied, equally cheekily. "I'll take my seat across the café so you two can talk."

"What would we need to talk about that you couldn't hear?" Vexen asked with suspicion. "Do you believe we are hiding something from you?" If Vincent had caught on to the true nature of his existence…

Deymos and Vincent exchanged a knowing glance. Whatever Vincent was talking about, Deymos was somehow in on it, so Vexen begrudgingly let it drop. "Never mind."

They entered the café and went their separate ways: Vexen and Deymos to the usual table while Vincent took his place by a window.

"So!" Deymos leaned forward, looking at Vexen. "Final stretch. How are we feeling?"

"…Isn't this the song I heard on the train?" Vexen glanced upward. "The one I pointed out – "

"Nah, you're thinking of something different. But really! What's the upshot?"

"I will be glad to have it over and done with," Vexen sighed. "This has been altogether too much trouble. That said, I've invested so much into it that I can't possibly walk away now."

"Has it really been all that bad, though?" Deymos asked. "We've gone on a fun road trip, we got to ride on the party train, you made a new scientist friend, you made three more you-know-whats…I'd say that's a lot of wins here."

"Hm." Vexen thought it over. "I suppose there have been aspects that were not all that unpleasant. I will be glad to be through with the whole affair, however."

Deymos didn't seem satisfied by that answer. "Really? You're just gonna be happiest when it's all over. I mean, I should've expected that, but…"

"What answer were you hoping for?" Vexen asked. "That I'd formed unbreakable bonds with all of you and couldn't survive without your presence? Don't be a fool."

"Of course not," Deymos said. "That's not you. And the last thing I want is for you to not be you. Just…kinda was hoping we could look back on this and laugh at it later. Doesn't have to be the best thing that ever happened."

"Well. We'll see how humorous it comes out in the wash, then."

There was a strenuous pause. Then Deymos asked, "What's the deal with the pretzelitzas?"

"The…WHAT?"

"Those flowers we saw at Zanarkand," Deymos said. "You just about had a heart attack when you saw 'em. I know you didn't wanna go into detail with the other guys, but you gotta admit you and I go back way farther."

"So you're saying because you have seniority in my acquaintanceship, you should be privy to my secrets."

"I mean, I am your Number II, if we're ranking the current group like we did the old Organization," Deymos pointed out.

Vexen folded his arms. "Even Xemnas was not ultimately honest with Xigbar."

"True, true…I mean, I guess you don't have to tell me anything if you don't want," Deymos said. "But I already know everything else. Elise, Ansem, all that jazz…if there's anything left, I dunno, I just wanna make sure we're covering our bases here."

"Are you asking to assist? Because I assure you, I am NOT in need of any emotional assistance regarding those flowers."

"Forget I said anything," Deymos said.

Another pause. Then Vexen sighed; "Oh, you may as well. It's not like you could do any worse damage with it than with what you already know."

"Victory!"

"'Strelitzia' was the name of a…troublesome girl," Vexen muttered. "An orphan with no past, no memory, and no record. She simply turned up in our fair city one day, and most try to claim a silly legend that she actually arrived inside a strelitzia bloom. Whatever the case, she was brought to Ansem the Wise, as he seemed to be a repository for wayward children. By then, Lightning had struck, so to speak, and Ienzo was in his custody in full."

"So she basically made the jealousy worse, right?" Deymos realized. "Finally you got the wife out of the way, and here the man's paying more attention to his new daughter than you."

"Precisely. Then came a rather interesting turn of events. He adopted a fourth charge. I need only tell you his name was 'Xehanort' and you can figure out much of the rest."

"That's when you guys went full mad scientist mode!" Deymos proclaimed.

"And scientists require experiments," Vexen said with a proud smirk. "Experiments rely on subjects. By the time the lab was fully constructed, I was able to proudly deliver the news that Strelitzia's legal family had in fact been located in a faraway city."

"But you took her into the lab right under Ansem's nose, didn't you?" Deymos looked positively excited.

"She became our first subject," Vexen said. "Subject X. Though, to be technical, I was Subject A." He put out his hand, conjuring a multifaceted prism of ice to hover over his palm. "My success in implanting Blizzard magic into my very aura was what spurred me to continue my work, and the other apprentices…well, let's just say Numbers III through VIII owe me more than they care to admit."

"SERIOUSLY?" Deymos banged the table with both hands. "YOU gave half the Organization their powers? And Xemnas still stuck you in trash bin central?"

"My treatment was never fair," Vexen asserted. "I'm still convinced my Organization name came about because he wished to call me 'vexing.'"

"Wait. I thought you chose to go back to it."

Vexen smirked broadly. "Perhaps I am proud of being vexing."

"Yeah, it is kinda your thing," Deymos replied. "And I mean that in the best way possible. Anyway, we were getting closer to Strudelitza."

"Much of what we now know about the dimensions of the heart and creatures of Darkness comes from my research on Strelitzia," Vexen said. "Of course, I say 'we' as in Ansem's circle of apprentices. Apparently these things were common knowledge among the more cosmically inclined. Nonetheless, I was able to become what I am now by testing theories on her heart. In the process…there was a certain shift in dynamics." He paused a moment. "I had told you that Braig and I were close friends."

"That started falling apart, am I right?"
"It seems so obvious now," Vexen grumbled. "He and Xehanort were always scheming together, keeping me out of the loop and building from my successes. I had thought at one point that Braig fully intended to repair what was broken between us, but in the end, he proved himself unworthy yet again. In all this solitude…I must admit Strelitzia was my closest confidante. She started out a quiet, shy little thing. Near the end of it, she must have figured she'd nothing to lose, and she developed quite the backbone." Both his hands curled into tight, shaking fists. "And then Ansem hid her away from me."

"Waaaait a second." Deymos pointed to Vexen. "Is this the girl that Saïx was always harping about trying to find?"

"Yes. One and the same. Though I find it pertinent to mention I kept her true name well-guarded. I did not want him and Axel finding her before I did, after all. That would have been problematic to say the least."

"So Ansem the Wise, champion of heroes and leader of the Anti-Nobody Resistance, kidnapped a traumatized little girl and hid her away from her best friends." Deymos thought it over. "That story doesn't sound…weird to you? Like, why be all secret about it? Why not confront you directly? Why not release her back into the wild? Why not take anyone else if he had the keys to the kingdom?"

"To this day, I still do not know," Vexen replied.

"How exactly do you know it was him?" Deymos asked.

"Because he would have gone to any length to sabotage me!" Vexen insisted. "It was clearly his revenge!"

"Motivation aside," Deymos said. "What was your PROOF?"

"Simply that none of us could have done it!" Vexen urged. "We were all equally stunned by her disappearance! Of course, Xemnas spun a long yarn to Saïx that HE was the one who displaced her, and now you see why Saïx was his personal lapdog."

"Good old Saïx Puppy." Deymos smiled.

"And perhaps that was why Axel in particular took a vendetta against him," Vexen said. "Two opposing reactions to achieve the same goal. Nonetheless, it was a lie. Xemnas hadn't the faintest where she was! None of us did!"

"Unless someone was lying about it," Deymos said.

"Who would've had reason to lie about it?" Vexen asked.

"I mean, you had Xaldin there, right?" Deymos said. "Doesn't he just have way too much fun messing with people? That's his whole THING. Maybe he bumped her off just to drive you guys nuts."

"I suppose that is a possibility…" Vexen murmured. "Anyhow, the mystery behind her disappearance is ultimately what triggered my reaction to the strelitzia field. On any other world, it would have been a mere coincidence. But thousands of the flowers that shared her name, the flowers she adored, spread across a city on this same world? It half made me wonder if she had been hidden in Zanarkand the whole time…but that would not have allowed her the time needed to grow that field. She could not have possibly have planted those strelitzias in ten years. And yet the coincidence is too staggering to be dismissed."

"I dunno, maybe she was from Zanarkand before?" Deymos mused.

"I still don't think that was enough time," Vexen said. "Those flowers seemed to have been the product of a hundred years of pollination if not more."

"Wait a minute," Deymos said. "You know how you used time travel to come get me and you didn't use the usual rules? What if someone else hid her using that kind of time travel to put her somewhere she didn't have a version of herself already? Huh?"

Vexen stared, wide-eyed.

"I just cracked it, didn't I?" Deymos said slyly. "I know. I'm a genius in disguise."

Vexen, however, hadn't been reacting to Deymos' theory. He'd barely heard it. His gaze was fixed not on Deymos but behind him. Then Vexen's right arm shot out in a panic, seizing Deymos' shoulder, as his left hand pointed.

"What is the deal?" Deymos turned around.

The deal was standing at the counter, ordering coffee. Wearing a familiar black leather cloak that was only ever employed for one purpose. Sky-blue hair cascading down the back of his neck. Vexen didn't even need to see his face to know the X-shaped scar was there.

"Salted caramel," Isa told Reynn.

"What…is he doing here?" Vexen coughed out. Having just enough presence of mind to keep his voice down.

"Well, let's see," Deymos hissed. "Either he already knows we're here, or he already knows Xion's here. Either way, we're roadkill."

"Make us invisible!" Vexen hissed back.

"Um, no. He already figured that trick out and somehow can use his whole moon power to see when someone's disguised with water," Deymos informed him. "No idea how it works, but I wasn't able to actually use it to get out of missions after a couple weeks."

"Moonlight can reveal…" Vexen muttered. "I never should've given him that affiliation!"

"What we need is a distraction," Deymos hissed. "If he turns around, he should have to look at something else that isn't us!"

Hyper-Potamus had made her presence known, asking Isa, "Would you like to buy a cookie with that? We have all kinds of cookies! Chocolate cookies, double chocolate cookies, triple chocolate cookies, cinnamon cookies, lemon cookies…"

"Can we program her to do something weirder?" Deymos asked.

"I can't remotely program her!" Vexen hissed. "She's Drakken's creation, not mine! I can only send remote signals…to…"

Vincent was still on the other side of the café. Not even aware anything was going wrong.

Vexen quickly retrieved the cyborg remote. "Use your scroll," he told Deymos. "Find the single most distracting thing you possibly can. In fact, make it something that requires group participation. I'm going to induce an artificial heart resonance in Vincent and see who else picks it up."

"You can do that?" Deymos shook his head to make sure he wasn't hallucinating. "You didn't even know what that was until – "

"Yes, you inspired me to look into it!" Vexen snapped. "You can congratulate yourself for it later. For now, I need that distraction!"

Deymos sighted Tama, resting on Reynn's head and listening to the cookie list. "Wait a minute. I know exactly what we need to do here. Set the resonance toward the little fox thing if you can."

He loaded his chosen video onto his scroll. Then handed it to Vexen. Vexen connected the scroll to the remote with a small wire, then fed the video and the artificial resonance directly into Vincent's memory core.

Vincent jolted, knocking his hot chocolate to the floor. Then, completely against his own will, he pointed at the counter. "IT'S TAMA!"

Tama tilted her head. "The-whaaaa?"

"But it's not Tama anymore!" Vincent kept going, eyes wide with horror at what exactly he was doing. What he was about to do. "It's DUNK-A-TAMA!"

Tama's face lit up brightly. Isa was already confused, watching the two go back and forth.

Vincent leapt up atop the table he'd been sitting at. "WHAT'S HER NAME?"

"DUNK-A-TAMA!" Tama yelled, and several of the other patrons chortled.

"SUPLEX A TRAIN!" Vincent called back.

This time, Lann and Reynn joined in with yelling back "DUNK-A-TAMA!"

"What…what is going on?" Isa sputtered. Not even thinking to look anywhere but at the source of the disturbance.

Vincent jumped down and started prancing around the café, taking pains to stay away from Vexen and Deymos' corner. "You want caffeine? Ask a Spoony Bard! I don't see a poser in this coffee yard!" A rhythmic clap went up from some of the other patrons who were getting far too invested in this. "Stop posting about Sephiroth! People die and Yuna dances; I have to kill Chaos! This guy are sick and the cure is coffee. Cat hot chocolate: LA-HEE!"

Vexen and Deymos took their opportunity, sliding out the door while all eyes were on Vincent and Tama. A clean escape.

"Everyone wants to hang with Dunk-a-Tama!" Vincent spun and kicked as though he were onstage on opening night at the Prima Vista. "Can't get enough of Dunk-a-Tama! Ride zee shoopuf and bring your mama! Come line up for Dunk-a-Tama! WHAT'S HER NAME?"

"DUNK-A-TAMA!" yelled everyone in the shop except Isa.

"A-RUN AMOK, RUN AMOK, DUNK-A-TAMA!" Vincent bellowed.

Isa eventually decided this was far too much for him, and so when he was handed his salted caramel latte, he left, head spinning with confusion.

Vexen and Deymos took refuge in Sylver Park. "That…was too close," Vexen panted.

"We should probably get to that rendez-vous about now," Deymos said. "Once we have the other cyborgs and the Summoner on our side, he doesn't stand a chance."

"Unless he calls the rest of the Organization as backup." Vexen was legitimately terrified.

"He wouldn't do that," Deymos replied. "Half of them wouldn't come. So long as Xemnas or Xehanort is in charge, there's no loyalty over there."

"You had BETTER be correct in that hypothesis!"

"You know science," Deymos told him. "I know people."

The sudden appearance of a dark figure caused them both to flinch away and scream. It wasn't the black-coated Isa, however. It was an incredibly irate Vincent Edgeworth.

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?" he growled.

"The blue-haired man was an enemy," Vexen explained. "We needed to divert his attention."

"You could have ASKED," Vincent snarled. "And I could've chosen a more dignified method!"

"Didn't have time," Deymos told him. "And it would've drawn attention. Besides, you were the life of the party! You're really gonna tell me you're not happy about that?"

"I let Victor and Albert go on alone so I didn't have to be the life of a party!" Vincent hissed. "I will let it drop THIS ONCE since apparently it was an emergency. However." He held up his own scroll, on which he'd found the infamous video he'd just acted out. "If I ever find THIS MAN, I will not hesitate to kill him immediately and painfully."

"Fair," Deymos told him.

"We must hurry!" Vexen insisted. "Back to the pizza parlor before he catches us unawares!"

They scuttled away to Olliewood, hoping Isa had no reason to be sniffing around that district as well.

...

"Something happened." Stork paced the forge nervously. "Something happened, and Chrysta's never coming back, and we're all doomed – "

"We don't know that yet!" Rapunzel said nervously. "She's fine, right? She has to be fine."

"I'M NOT WORRIED," Papyrus said confidently.

"But…say she wasn't fine," Rapunzel continued. "We'd have to continue on our own, wouldn't we?"
"We couldn't just give up," Ven agreed.

"She taught us a lot," Sofia said. "We know so much more now. It wouldn't be like it was before."

"But it's all gonna be okay, because SHE'S FINE!" Rapunzel forced a smile.

"You know you don't have to pretend," Stork told her.

"I'm trying to hold onto a silver lining here," Rapunzel reminded him. "We could all be freaking out over nothing!"

"And that's fine," Stork said. "So long as you're not lying about it."

Rapunzel sighed, deflating slightly. "I hope she's fine. I hope we're freaking out about nothing. That's the truth."

The Forge elf returned to them, Stormy in tow and a flat, elliptical package under one arm. "Looks like we got a special delivery!" she proclaimed.

"From who?" Ven asked.

"Just showed up at the door." The elf shrugged.

"Hmm…" Sofia thought it over.

"Definitely cursed," Stork said. "Basically it's a flat Vaposian Horse."

"It could be dangerous," the elf mused. "Or it could be someone like Chrysta sending help."

Rapunzel gasped. "It could be a message!"

"THERE'S ONE WAY TO FIND OUT, YOU KNOW," Papyrus said.

"Let's just be careful – " Stork attempted.

Papyrus grabbed the package and tore away its brown paper casing.

"Or not," Stork sighed.

Papyrus held the uncovered object aloft. "AHA! A MIRROR! NOW WE CAN CHECK TO MAKE SURE THERE'S NOTHING IN OUR TEETH!"

The elf laughed. "We can do more than that. That's a broadcast mirror, though it looks like this one just receives. Whoever has the source mirror can use it to talk to us."

"Can we talk back?" Ven asked.

"Not with this model," the elf said. "The message is probably pre-recorded, too. Let's check it out."

A few other smiths gathered round as the elf hung it on the wall. Once the mirror was aligned, the elf tapped the pink jewel set in its base. The glass rippled, soon showing the image of the recorded magical message.

Darla Dimple's beaming face greeted everyone, as did Darla herself: "Hello, citizens of the Mystic Isles!"

"It's her!" Rapunzel gasped. "She's the one who – "

"SHE'S THE ONE WHO TOOK MY PARENTS!" Stormy yelled.

"Sorry about all the secrecy," Darla went on, sweet as could be, "but that big bad Yzma has eyes everywhere! If you're seeing this message, it means you're one of the good guys that I've chosen to help me along! That's right; I've officially taken it upon myself to end this horrible reign of Yzmatopia and get the Mystic Isles back to order!"

"Not true!" Ven yelled. "She's working FOR Yzma!"

"In fact," Darla continued, "I'm one of the last two Protectors working. See?" She indicated her arm, around which was bound the stolen enchantlets. "I've got extra power this time around! My heart is so pure that I have FIVE enchantlets instead of just one!"

"HEY!" Papyrus shook a fist at the mirror. "THOSE WERE OURS!"

"Some of you might not believe me," Darla said. "And I don't blame you! Which is why I brought a little friend. Say hi, Chrysta!"

The silence that fell over the Forge when Chrysta appeared in the mirror's glass was palpable. "Now, I know this might seem a little strange," Chrysta said. "But Darla is gonna save all of us! She's like a little angel who came down here from Heaven!"

"Since when does Chrysta talk about angels?" The elf cocked her head.

"I've been training her to be the next Protector," Chrysta went on. "She and I are stirring up a resistance against Yzma. Which means you all gotta do everything we say!"

"But how?" Rapunzel sputtered. "She was…she was teaching us…"

"We'll get the Mystic Isles back to the way they were in no time!" Chrysta swung a fist. "All you gotta do is trust us! Oh, and one more little thing. I just found out that Yzma hired a bunch of fake Protectors to run around the Isles and pretend they're doing what we're doing! There's a blonde princess with way too much hair, an amphibian who looks like he listens to way too much sad music, a spiky-headed boy with a replica Keyblade, a walkin' talkin' skeleton, and a little girl that's gonna try to pretend she's from the Everrealm! If you see any of 'em, then make sure you neutralize the threat!"

"What horrible people, to impersonate Protectors!" Darla said dramatically. She then perked right up; "Well, ta-ta! We'll use these mirrors to give you the next briefing. See you soon!"

"And don't lose hope!" Chrysta insisted.

The signal cut. Many of the smiths looked toward Rapunzel's group.

"Don't even think it," the elf snapped. "I saw Chrysta bring them in here. They WERE her apprentices. She changed her tune! I just…" She faltered. "Don't know why."

"Because Chrysta was setting us up for a fall!" Stork barked. "This whole time, they had her in their pocket! I bet they save her isle if she works for them. And she tricked us!"

"We don't know that!" Ven snapped. "There could be some other explanation!"

"YES, LIKE THE VERY OBVIOUS ONE," Papyrus said. "NAMELY THAT SHE'S PLAYING ALONG WITH THE BAD GUYS SO SHE CAN INFILTRATE THEM FROM THE INSIDE! THAT HAS TO BE WHAT SHE'S DOING. THEY CAME ALONG AND ASKED HER TO JOIN THEM, AND SHE PRETENDED TO SAY YES SO SHE COULD PULL OFF AN INVALUABLE OPERATION! I MUST SAY I ADMIRE HER RESOLVE!"

"Are you REALLY that – " Stork bit back the insult. "This isn't a double agent situation. She's a TRAITOR."

"Unless she's being forced or threatened!" Ven argued.

"Chrysta wouldn't bow to any threat," the elf said. "She'd sooner let them defeat her."

"Then maybe she's a fake!" Ven said. "Maybe it's someone else in disguise, like a shapeshifter. I just…I can't have made the same mistake twice."

"Or maybe…" Sofia thought it over. "What if she is being forced, but not with a threat? Are there magic spells that could make her say and do whatever other people wanted?"

"Only a dime a dozen," the elf replied. "That could be what we're dealing with. Or a duplicate, like Ven said. Either way…the majority of the Isles are gonna take it at face value. Getting an apprentice Protector is exactly what she'd do, and it's exactly what she DID do. They just used the fact that she didn't broadcast it publicly against us."

"BUT IT'S A PLOY!" Papyrus urged. "SHE'S GETTING INFORMATION WE COULDN'T HAVE OTHERWISE!"

"Oh, REALLY?" Stork snapped. "If that's what's going on here, then WHY WOULDN'T SHE LET US IN ON IT? There's no reason for her to make us panic, and there's DEFINITELY no reason for her to TURN THE ENTIRE MYSTIC ISLES AGAINST US!"

"WELL, IF SHE WAS A TRAITOR," Papyrus argued, "WHY WASTE ALL THAT TIME ON US IN THE FIRST PLACE? WE DIDN'T EVEN GIVE HER ANYTHING SHE WANTED! IF SHE WAS REALLY A TRAITOR, SHE WOULD'VE ASKED FOR MORE FROM US FIRST!"

"DOES IT MATTER?" Rapunzel yelled.

That got everyone to look at her. "Of course it matters," Ven said. "If Chrysta betrayed us – "

"We'll talk to her once we have this figured out," Rapunzel said. "We'll make her tell us what happened. We'll see the truth for ourselves! But for now, all we know is that we don't have her on our team anymore. We have to keep going without her! And at the end of it, if she's a hero or a villain, then we'll do what's right."

"Keep going?" Stork retorted. "KEEP GOING? She stacked the deck against us! HOW are we supposed to keep going like this? We're DOOMED! It's OVER! WE ALREADY LOST!"

Rapunzel looked him dead in the eye for three seconds. Then turned and stormed out the front gate.

"RAPUNZEL!" Papyrus attempted to give chase.

Stork put up his hand. "No," he said. "Let me go. I…I'm the one who messed up."

In the end, they let Stork go alone. He left the Forge, trying to trace Rapunzel's trail, until he found her on the edge of the isle, sitting on the cliff with her feet dangling down. She muttered something to herself, a long monologue.

"Ehm." Stork cleared his throat. "Rapunzel? I, uh…"

She put up a hand, pointedly ignoring him. Then continued to mutter.

"Okay," Stork said, drawing back. "When…when you're ready, I guess. I'm…going back. But I want you to know I'm sorry." He inhaled shakily. "Look, I…I really do think Chrysta betrayed us because I'm just trained to think like that. If I assume the worst, then I don't get let down. But I said it without having any proof. And then when I said we were doomed…I know it must've sounded like I didn't trust you. Or think we could do it. And I'm afraid we can't do it, but…I'm always afraid. The truth is, if we all pitch in here, the odds are probably way more in our favor than I'm seeing. And you – I think if anyone can figure out how to fix everything, it's you. I shouldn't have brought you down. Because you were right. You just wanted to focus on what we knew and what we could do. And I just did the same old thing I always do. I need to stop that. Because I have every confidence you're gonna be able to fix it. So…I'm sorry. I'll just go back to the Forge. Catch up when you're ready."

He turned to leave, but Rapunzel stood quickly. "No, I'M sorry. I wasn't trying to ignore you. I just lost my concentration and – I should've told you what I was trying to do."

"Huh?" Stork looked over his shoulder at her.

She held up her Which-Way Bow. "I was telling it our story so I could ask it where the solution to our problem was," she said. "You know how easily these get confused. But I should've told you guys beforehand."

"Oh," Stork realized. "I'm…sorry I messed you up. I'll leave you alone so you can finish."

"No, it's – " Rapunzel sighed. "I WAS mad at you. That's why I didn't say anything. But I thought if I just fixed things, if I showed you all that it was gonna be okay, then we wouldn't have to fight over it anymore, and you'd all be so much less stressed out, and you'd stop panicking and be okay and…and you wouldn't be so afraid."

Stork couldn't hide the small smile that twitched on his lip. "Rapunzel. You can't stop me from being afraid of things. It's kind of what I do. You also can't solve everything on your own. There's a reason Sky Knights travel in squadrons. Now, I will point out that asking the bow was actually…a really brilliant idea I'm surprised no one else thought of. But when things get rough…you don't have to try and fix it, okay? It's not all on you. Especially when me or anyone else is being a jerk. Because then, it's just on the jerk. Okay?"

"You weren't being a jerk," Rapunzel said softly. "I mean…kind of. But I know why you said it."

"Yeah, well, I still know better by this point. If everything I was afraid of actually happened, we'd be in a living plane of torment and eternal pain right now. Which we're not. So take that for what it is."

"Thanks for apologizing," Rapunzel said softly. "And I'm sorry I freaked. Can we just start over?"

Stork nodded slowly. Then said, "By the way, we should really tell everyone else the whole bow thing."

They exchanged a warm smile before proceeding back to the Forge. "You know," Rapunzel said, "we both kinda messed up there, but it's kinda good we did. Now we have everything out in the open, and we both learned something."

"Yeah. That is kinda nice, isn't it?"

Soon, they returned to the spot with Ven, Papyrus, and Sofia. "Let's try this again," Rapunzel said. "But it's gonna take a while. I wanna make sure I don't leave out any details that might confuse the bow."

"We'll be quiet as mice!" Sofia promised. "Actually…never mind. Mice make a lot of noise. We'll be quieter than mice."

So they sat around in a circle while Rapunzel related their entire tale to the bow all over again, from their arrival on the Mystic Isles to what they knew now. Then she asked, "Where can we find someone or something that can help us stop Yzma from taking over the Isles so we can get the Isles back to the way they were before Yzma and her friends showed up?"

She stood, looking out over the horizon of clouds. Then drew back her Which-Way Bow and fired.

The arrow made a complete 180, shooting right toward Sofia. Sofia gave a "WHOA!" and stepped back instinctively.

"NO!" Papyrus reached out toward it to try and catch it.

"It's okay!" Ven held him back. "Not a real arrow, remember?"
The arrow stopped, pointing directly at Sofia. "Me?" the young princess said. "It's me? I mean…I guess I get it if I had the power inside me this entire time…but what am I supposed to do? This doesn't really solve our problem."

"HANG ON." Papyrus stepped closer. "I NEED TO SEE SOMETHING."

The arrow pointed to her throat, where the Amulet of Avalor hung. Papyrus deftly undid the amulet, raising it in the air. The arrow followed, keeping track of the amulet's exact movements.

"It's not me," Sofia realized in awe. "It's my amulet. Of course! It has all kinds of special powers. Maybe it has one we haven't unlocked!"

"Remind me what it was called again?" Rapunzel asked.

"The Amulet of Avalor," Sofia answered.

"Hmm." Rapunzel thought that over. "Does anyone know what the word 'Avalor' actually means?"

"I think it's a kingdom in the Everrealm," Sofia replied. "I always assumed it was the place the amulet came from."

"If that's where it came from," Ven realized, "someone there might know how it works and how to unlock its power!"

"Well, looks like I was wrong." Stork gave Rapunzel a grin. "We might just make it after all." He winked.

"I knew we would," Rapunzel teased, elbowing him lightly. "Anyway, I think we know what to ask now."

She turned to face the cloudy skies again. "Which way is the Avalor that the amulet is named after?" Rapunzel asked, drawing back the Which-Way bow.

The arrow soared ahead and downward, leaving a purple comet-trail in the sky. A direct path to Avalor.

"EVERYONE, TO THE SKIMMERS!" Papyrus crowed. "IT'S NOT OVER JUST YET!"