In which Ideal Top Speed races to her friends' rescue...

The sudden shift of opening doors was the first thing that caught Ideal Top Speed's attention; having just been idly floating, occasionally zipping out to distract some passing guards or race with the strange creatures that had once been her enemies, now just casually gliding across the sky, with one even sitting at the tip of her broom, she hadn't really much to do to take her mind away from her thoughts until then. Her catlike gaze turned away from the eagle-like creature that had nestled itself at the tip of her broom's bristles and now fell upon a small area outlying the upper areas of the battleship.

What her eyes found were two silhouettes, one familiar and one not - Nemurin wasn't present, and that kid from before wasn't either, but the black-haired woman was. An arm rose up in defence of her chest, as her black-clad opponent's leg swung up into a painful-looking kick. Stumbling slightly, Quorra gasped out and cut at him with her disc, his figure bowling underneath it just by an inch, as she was sent into the side of the railing with a hard thud. A cacophony of their discs as they screeched with each throw that shot for the other's head rang out into the grey air, accompanied by bangs and metallic thumps as they battled each other. Not one to leave someone obviously in need of a hand behind, Top Speed tugged her broom forward and with a blast of its engine, it burst up through the air, smoke coughing slightly out the end, her long braids swinging wildly behind her head as she approached like a speeding bullet.

Five seconds. Quorra had been slammed at her stomach, and she fell to the ground, swiftly attempting to rise back up.

Four seconds. The figure stood over and rose the disc high above his head, as if about to rip it into Quorra like an executioner would their axe before a crowd of a thousand excited onlookers.

Three seconds. Quorra's head turned up, and she spoke with an unwavering stare; "So, is this it...Tron?" she questioned with a voice that could pierce armour.

Two seconds. The figure stared back at her, his arm almost seeming to jam into its position. Quorra took the chance - she rose to her feet, and headed for the edge of the platform.

One second. Top Speed called out into the open sky; "Hey, hop on!"

A weight plunged down on the broom slightly, and it sunk slightly backwards from the impact, but it would take more than that to take this baby down. The witch shot her a grin from over her shoulder, commenting, "I'm glad to see ya in one piece!"

Taking her breath for what seemed to be the first time since she stepped outside, Quorra gave Top Speed a grateful look, one the Magical Girl wasn't unfamiliar with - it came with the line of work, yet she never grew ill of it. It helped remind her why it was worth doing. "Thanks," she said, a weak smile cracking across her pale face.

"No worries!" Top Speed answered, giving a tip of her large witch's hat in reply.

Any of the little amounts of levity the pair of them were able to gather from the scene was shattered by the sudden scream of engines coming to life, the airship beginning to lift without warning, the sound of them like that of an unstoppable war machine. Rifts of air exploded all around the two women on the broom, wild and merciless as a typhoon, and Top Speed's broom began to shudder against the pressure, being sent flying backwards from the platform Quorra's opponent had stood on, his figure slowly exiting around the sides. The battering of air against Top Speed's face wasn't enough to impede her though, and her hands grasped tightly onto the wooden rail of the stick, steadying herself against the currents that continued to wash over them. The battleship's gargantuan mass rose slowly and without any room for any sort of interruption, like a monster from the underground finally managing to unearth itself, as it ascended into the grey sky. Her eyes narrowed as she searched for the platform, for the area where Sora and Nemurin would most likely be, and her teeth ground against one another all the while as cold ripped past her skin. Nothing problematic for now, but annoying all the same.

Still, nothing Top Speed couldn't handle. With a confident, almost wry smile, she turned her head towards Quorra, who held it just as tightly as she did onto the broom - good, she liked this one. She learned fast. "Goin' after it?" she said, and sure enough, the black-haired woman had the same idea. "Right! Let's go!"

Kicking her vehicle into high gear, Ideal Top Speed allowed the adrenaline she had buried deep within herself to resonate with her, just this once. The adrenaline she felt so often when she led Empress, chasing down or racing an enemy gang, someone who stepped on her territory and came asking for a competition she gladly gave and just as gladly trounced. Nothin' personal. This was just the same as that.

The sky was her road, the broom was her bike, and the battleship was the opposing gang leader.

'Just like back in Empress...' Top Speed gave a catlike grin, one more devilish than her preceding ones, and Rapid Swallow kicked into high gear with a jolt as it burst forward.

And so, like an eagle pursuing prey, the silhouette of the broom gave chase.

The rush of wind bounced under her ears and underneath her legs, shaking her body slightly, but never making it let loose. They rose high now, rose quickly now. The sky had changed from black to grey, and clouds frequently passed by her cheeks and kissed her as she brushed past them, the silhouette of the airship becoming more steady as she grew closer.

"So, what the heck happened in there anyway!?" Top Speed's voice questioned, just managing to break into audibility over the screeching of the air surrounding them.

"We tried reaching out to Tron, but it didn't work out; something came up and that was when he and I were fighting out there." Quorra answered quickly, before their attention was ripped away by something spiralling towards them - a flash of what looked a giant shard of ice, enough to tear someone's head clean off.

"DUCK!" Top Speed hollered, and the woman behind her followed the instruction, the frost dripping down her neck shortly afterwards.

Ducking underneath a string of magical gunfire, Top Speed navigated the hostile sky, the enemy's fire bouncing off the top of her hat. Quorra ripped her disc off her back and swung at another set of incoming fire, small dying sparks bursting to life for mere seconds upon impact. The eagle had promptly gotten off its seat now, and flew comfortably at their side, ducking under the projectiles as they tore their way past.

"They must have a second round in fire in there. It doesn't look like what Clu normally uses; it has to have something to do with those people he's working with," Quorra stated, needing only a single round to detect the difference.

"Ya think they've attacked Nemurin and that kid?" Top Speed interrogated as she piloted Rapid Swallow forward, circling in and out and around the various elemental attacks that came their way.

The first few were close calls - the first was a volley of ice that came one right after another, forcing the witchy Magical Girl to careen off to the side to have any chance of avoiding the absolute barrage.

The second was lightning, which struck out similarly at first to the ice - only to then appear above instead. Gasping in surprise, Top Speed bent her broom in a last-ditch effort to get out of its way, earning a painful zap to her figure in turn. The sizzling healed quickly, but she cringed painfully in reaction regardless.

"I hope not!" Quorra replied, eyebrows furrowed and her lips curved down, now averting her gaze. "I wouldn't be surprised if this was some form of trap Clu set up." she added, her voice laced in disappointment that seemed to be largely self-directed.

Coming third was wind - the easiest to handle, since she'd already had an idea of it from earlier when the ship first took off. It was as though a wall devised by some form of god was battling against her, trying to press up against her transport and push her as far away from her target as possible. If it had been dealing with a Magical Girl less stubborn than she, it might have won, but she wasn't the type to back down at such things, and she instead raced her broom right through, ripping it as open as easily as a knife through a cobweb.

That wasn't the difficult part; what was, was the barrels of fire that came colliding right for the pair on the broom. It took in the ever-fading wind magic and puffed out from a candle into a monstrous firestorm, one that seethed and hissed with each second it came closer. Top Speed had no choice but to duck as low as she could to avoid it, both women instinctively covering their lips and mouths as they watched it crack through the open air, smoke seeping in its remains.

Top Speed gave a shake of her head upon seeing the dejected nature of her reply, and answered loudly, "Ya did what ya thought was right at the time, and that doesn't always work out!" she assured. "It's natural! It happens to ya and you get through it. It happens to your friends and you bust 'em out! And that's what we're gonna do!"

Picking up the pace, the broom soared closer, and amidst the curtain of clouds that blurred its image, she could see the platform from before slowly become more visible, remnants of its black structure beginning to reach her eyes.

But it was then, as a breezy confidence had begun to sink into her, a confidence that came with getting used to the environment that something else reached her eyes. The doors were open again, meaning whoever was inside could easily be sucked out like liquid through a straw - and that was when she was the plummeting body. Her tails of pale hair were loose and flapped uncontrollably against the force of the wind, and despite her attempts, her action to try and save herself produced nothing but a weak hand gesture and the flailing of her limbs as she tumbled relentlessly through the currents of wind and cloud.

"Nemurin!" Quorra's voice cried out in concern, a cue Top Speed didn't need to ask for. Kicking Rapid Swallow into high gear, she turned the broom into a nose-dive, ripping past the clouds and the wind's constant wailing.

She was closer to her fellow Magical Girl now, her eyebrows slanted in a mix of worry and nigh disbelief at the sight she was met with, to the point she assumed it at first to be a hallucination. As she drew nearer, she could tell it wasn't - the moment she was sure finally coming as she forced it to go as fast as it could. Once she knew she was close enough to grab hold of Nemurin, Top Speed extended her arms and wrapped them around the girl's back, pulling her towards her. The weight was more than what she had expected, sending her broom askew again as it curved in the wind, a gasp of shock releasing late in the second she thought she almost let the girl slip through her arms.

With one arm, Top Speed took hold of the controls again and began to steady herself, extending the one that held Nemurin to Quorra, "Take care of her for me, will ya!?" she asked, her voice still needing to be raised to be heard amidst the howling air, turning her back once she gained the ravenette's nod in reply.

The broom spun once, twice, and again before Top Speed took control, taking off forward again mid-spin somewhat jauntily before finally beginning to resume into a somewhat steady rhythm. As soon as the redheaded girl let go, Quorra quickly seized Nemurin by her wrists and steadied her between Ideal Top Speed's now turned back and her own chest, resting an arm behind Nemurin's chest so she could sit up and regain her senses. Though the air was still relentless in how it battered against their ears, whistling at a pitch so high it could be legally declared infernal, they could slow down now - the projectiles that had harassed them in their pursuit of the battleship had ceased, even if just for now, as they took refuge underneath a ceiling of clouds.

Upon laying eyes on Nemurin, Quorra felt as though a weight had wrenched its way through her gut, dread filling the open hole left behind in its wake. Even if she didn't look like a stranger, the differences she noticed compared to before was more than enough to warrant the result, at least to her.

Red was the first thing she spotted, a nasty splatter of it. She remembered that, but now she couldn't help but question its presence - after all, she'd witnessed Ideal Top Speed take on a barrage of hits of various kinds, small as they may have been, but present they were all the same. Yet, Ideal Top Speed's had healed quickly, and yet the injury Nemurin sustained seemed to remain, and judging by the puzzlement on Top Speed's face upon catching sight of it, it seemed this was likely not common for 'Magical Girls', as Nemurin had referred to herself as before. The girl's breath was jagged and contained a shaky wheeze, and pale purple bags had emerged underneath her once vibrant eyes. Even the tips of her colourful hair had died out, and the pale pink had been replaced by what almost seemed to be a brownish colour. It hadn't occurred to Quorra that there had been anything abnormally distinctive about Magical Girls until now, when she compared Nemurin and Top Speed's faces, the former's struck by weakness. The differences, subtle as they were, were still ones she couldn't help but find herself noticing, even finding stark.

It was like a bridge, the three of them - Top Speed at one end, a Magical Girl, Quorra at the other end, an ISO, someone who looked like a normal human being, with Nemurin caught in the middle.

"Geez, Nemurin...what happened to you?" Ideal Top Speed asked - despite her retaining her usual way of speaking, it was still laced in a worry that had previously been absent from her breezy vocals.

Catching her breath as they flew along, Nemurin wheezed once, twice, before her breath became even remotely steady. Her eyes scrambled this way and that, as if believing she had still been falling, before she let out a fragile sigh of relief. "Wh-wha..." Nemurin's voice finally chimed in. "It's you..."

"Yeah," Quorra assured, offering a weak but sincere smile her way. "Nemurin." her voice spoke up again, this time harder, and more easy to catch. "What...what happened to you and Sora?"

It was then that Nemurin gasped, her eyes now looking back up - the place she'd fallen from, the airship. "Sora...! He's in trouble...! Those two...these two jerks in black coats...came around to taunt us about...something, but whatever they were on about...it wasn't good. They're up to something bad, I can feel it..." she admitted, hanging her head slightly. "That...that was when I got knocked outta there. I think our Dream Eaters are still with him, but..."

"So he's probably still on that airship then?" Top Speed inquired.

"Y-yeah...I think..." Nemurin replied, shakily. "Actually...I remember in the.." her eyes fell on Quorra, and her words seemed to readjust. "The last place we went, one of them wanted Sora for something. I still don't know what. I feel it's probably the same thing going on..."

Ideal Top Speed shifted somewhat, feeling her stomach sink a little as she remembered her instinct from earlier, that something was off. At the time she shrugged it off, as thinking about things too hard just wasn't her way of life, but it was in situations like these where she'd admit that way of thinking was tested most.

"Quorra - do you have any idea where they might be taking Sora...?" Nemurin asked, at least being able to sit up properly now.

Quorra's arms folded, her face screwed in thought, shifting into a sombre answer. "Well...I might have an idea of where we can look," she said. Her head turned outwards, back towards the city from where the group had originally started.

"Where?"

Letting out a sigh, she explained, "Clu has a tendency of putting his...'important prisoners' in the arena. Chances are, if we're looking for a place to start, that'll be the place to go."

Nemurin frowned, but nodded, swallowing her worries for the boy down for now. "Right..." she said, before forcing her expression to lighten.

"It's a start at least. C'mon. Let's go~"

As Top Speed set off, a certain tension hung heavy in the air, the tension of the unknown. The eagle, which had alternated between flying alongside them and ducking as far away from them as they could manage (particularly when they had been assaulted with every force of nature you could think of earlier on) had decided to seat itself at the edge of the broom, and it seemed to be incessantly trying to ask Quorra without words for a staring competition, and it seemed to be the only one who didn't notice the heaviness that sifted in the air they all took in now. The ice had to be broken eventually, and it was Quorra who ultimately cracked it first.

"Nemurin...sorry if this is a bit...blunt, but I have a question," the woman requested, a level of formality still present in her tone.

"Hm?" Nemurin responded gently, her head tilting a little bit.

"Are...are you okay?" Quorra questioned, her gaze unwavering, toeing the balance of worry and sternness. "I don't quite know how any of this works for you, and what your limits are. But..."

"No, no...it's fine actually. Honestly, I'd normally be fine after stuff like that." Nemurin assured, giving a small wave of her hand. "It's just...well, I've been dealing with a problem with one of those hooded guys, as I think he's the reason I keep getting weaker, y'know...? Once I deal with him, there'll be nothing to worry about," she dismissed, before smiling gently. "I'll be okay. Before you know it, I'll be healing just as quick as Top Speed~"

For a moment, Quorra was quiet, and turned her eyes away from her, as if pondering what she didn't understand. "If...if you're sure."

"I'm startin' to get why ya called me in now," Top Speed added as she flew the broom forward at a consistent speed. "It sounds like you've been dealin' with this for a while, huh?"

Nemurin let out an almost sheepish laugh, though it did seem particularly stilted. "Well, I wouldn't say a 'while'..." she said. "It was pretty gradual, I honestly didn't think it was that big a deal...one of those 'it'll fix itself' sorta things, y'know? I only really figured that guy had something to do with it after this one thing happened..."

"Well, there's not much we can do until we get to the arena and find out if Sora's there or not - you might as well tell us." Quorra remarked.

"Yeah! It was always us telling our stories to you anyways, Nemurin. Now it's your turn!" Top Speed pointed out. "Besides...I can tell you're worried about that Sora kid. He's a friend of yours, right? So, why don'tcha just talk about what got ya here. It'll pass the time, and it's better than just sittin' there lookin' anxious, right?"

After a moment of thought, Nemurin sighed a little, before shrugging her shoulders, her legs hanging off the edge of the broom as her twin tails were brushed along by the breeze, the glow of the city illuminating her weakened face. "Okay..." she conceded. "So I was just sorta lounging about in my...usual area, when I see this giant...I don't know what to call it. It kinda looked like...darkness incarnate or something, I guess."

"Darkness?" Quorra piped up. "Did it look like...did it look like whatever appeared in front of Rinzler while you were trying to talk to him?"

Nemurin's eyes flashed in recognition, and she thought to herself; "Now that you say that...yeah, it did look pretty similar...!" she almost gasped, before her eyes narrowed. "I should have guessed..." she continued, tiredly, hanging her head lowly. "Maybe if I'd figured that out earlier..."

"Hey, don't talk like that. You didn't know that would happen, and it only showed up for a few seconds. Don't blame yourself for that," Quorra assured - and Nemurin felt herself smile, realising the words Quorra used weren't unlike the ones that left her own lips not that long ago.

Seconds later, the two girls noticed a certain flicker in Top Speed's eyes; the broom floated high above a black and cyan-white nightmare, a giant building shaped almost like a triangle that was divided into three sectors. Ant-sized shapes of people had gathered and were seated and cheering in the outer edges as they spectated whatever was about to begin down below, while an orange and black airship patrolled around them, forcing the pilot of the broom to continue circling so as to avoid its sight. What seemed to catch her attention was the inside - a figure stood alone at one end of the room, looking around in confusion.

Abruptly, a metallic voice announced to the viewers, the two Magical Girls and the ISO included, "Combatant number thirteen - versus - Rinzler."

Two figures in bright orange and pitch-black now rose to the centre, and Nemurin felt her heart drop so quickly, that she was almost surprised that those on the ground didn't spot it and look towards where it would have collided. A quiet, "Oh no..." passed her lips in realisation.

Sora was going to be made to fight Rinzler. And this time, he was going to be made to fight him alone.

A/N: Subete ikaride~ (keshi tobase~)

Senaka mamori nukuyaiba totomo ni~ (I FEEL MY WORLD BREAK-)

Okay so musical interlude aside due to me realising Top Speed and Ripple's image song DESTRUCTION absolutely slaps, I honestly can't believe we're already so close to the end of The Grid arc! Or at least at the boss fight phase. I'm actually quite excited for the next chapter, since this one was honestly kind of a bridge for us to get to that one. Nevertheless, I still hoped you enjoyed reading this chapter and the previous one!

Now, onto replying to reviews!~ Captain Imaginat, I legit got a kick out of yours because honestly? Yeah, I want Young Xehanort's downfall soon too. I really hate his guts. He drives me up the wall, haha. I just think he's a really smug bastard, though if I'm invoking the desire for his downfall at this point then that means I've got to be doing something right!~ Anyways, I'm so happy you enjoyed that chapter, as it was a real ride for me to write!

Haha, Hekkasi you summed it up perfectly. Not gonna lie though, I'm pretty happy I managed to portray that, since as I mentioned above, it's how they always came off to me. I'm actually really glad that I managed that effect, since I tend to do the same with their in-game dialogue. Thanks for reviewing again, m'dude!

Now, for Tsuuji! ^^ I'm sorry to hear about your technical problems with your phone, honestly it's always such a bitch when that sort of shit happens, and I hope your new phone runs brilliantly for you! I'm glad I was able to answer all your questions, and I must reiterate that getting them honestly did make me really happy. Thank you so much for your words, it means a lot to me that you love my story, and you honestly melted my heart with your review today. I only hope that what I put out lives up to expectations, and personally, I'd love to read any fanfiction you write when you feel ready.

Anyways, I'll see you all next chapter, for the final showdown between Sora and Rinzler!