Discord's living room was dead silent. Shockingly, even the draconequus himself didn't make a sound. Fluttershy had ducked behind the couch the moment that the Darkness had possessed Sunset, so she missed a lot of what happened. Still, though, when she poked her head back up and saw Meta Knight flying off with an injured (by Celestia's mane was she missing a foot?) Sailor Dee with Sunset nowhere to be found, she put some things together. She did not like the mental picture it conjured.

"I…I think I'm going to be sick," Rarity said, visibly green. A trash can appeared near her in a flash of light, though thankfully for everypony's ears and noses, her nausea didn't come to pass.

"What the hay was that?" Rainbow asked.

"Just about the worst case scenario, Ah'd reckon," Applejack answered, her voice somewhat bereft of emotion. Fluttershy figured that her mind was either unwilling or unable to comprehend the sheer magnitude and direness of the situation enough to properly assign the emotions she should be feeling. She understood; she was in much the same boat.

"It's…not the worst case possible," Shining Armor spoke up, clearly deciding to focus on topics that he was secure in. His voice still betrayed the worry he was obviously feeling, though. "Discord, could you put Twily back on screen?"

Discord snapped his tail, for once not complaining about being asked to do something. Fluttershy hadn't known him for long—it'd only been a few months since his reformation, really—but she liked to consider him a close friend. And him being so subdued was concerning.

She would have to ask him about it after this was over, though. She didn't think she could bring herself to actually speak at the moment.

"How…" Pinkie began, uncharacteristically solemn, "how could this be worse?"

"Twily has a proper base of operations and secured all the healing items in the castle," Shining elaborated, seemingly defaulting to talking tactics. "And while I don't have full knowledge of Castle Dedede's layout and it being downstairs isn't the best position for a tactical advantage, the hall leading into the kitchens seems easily defensible and is a choke point."

"And since the Darkness knows that it can't just storm in, because that choke point will let Twilight just annihilate them!" Rainbow added. "So that lets her go on the offensive!"

"Exactly," Shining nodded. "And because any of the Darkness's forces that she defeats get converted to her side, she still has a chance of taking back the castle!"


The first order of business for Twilight was boarding up the few windows that Castle Dedede's kitchens had. They were already closed, and with the door shut and locked there probably wouldn't be any additional Darkness blobs worming their way in, but she didn't want to take any chances. This room was, for the time being, just about the only place in the castle that Twilight trusted; everywhere else was probably crawling with the Darkness by now. With the windows properly sealed, she began pacing while trying to put together a plan.

She could, in theory, go around the castle and destroy pieces of the Darkness one by one. But Castle Dedede was currently housing about a hundred or so soldiers, so purging the Darkness from each and every one of them would take time. She needed to prioritize…

Twilight's eyes went wide as a sudden thought crossed her mind. "Chef Kawasaki," she said, "how long do we have before the food in the fridge starts to spoil?"

Kawasaki, who had been steadfastly watching the door while she and Spike boarded up the windows, jumped a bit in surprise when Twilight called for him. "Oh! Uh…four, maybe five hours?"

Alright, so they were on a time limit if they wanted to make sure that everyone in the castle got adequate medical attention once this was over. "That should be our first priority, then," she acknowledged. "But going to turn the power back on would leave the kitchen undefended…"

"So what do we do?" Spike asked.

Think, Twilight, think! she mentally berated herself. They could split up and she could go alone to turn the power back on, but doing that would leave Spike and Kawasaki vulnerable to possession. She could, in theory, teleport back to the kitchen if something happened, but constantly teleporting back and forth between the kitchen and the last safe point in the hallway she'd found would take more energy than she was willing to waste. Plus, she'd need a way to even know if something went wrong…

Wait, that's it!

"Spike, your messenger flame!" Twilight exclaimed.

Spike blinked in surprise. "What about it?"

Twilight mentally backed up a bit, realizing that she might've skipped over some reasoning. "Alright, so you know how when the Darkness first possessed you, you teleported?"

Spike shivered a bit at the reminder, but looked confused. "I…maybe? But what does that have to do with my messenger flame?"

"It never teleported any other time, even when it would've been advantageous for it," Twilight elaborated, "and I think that's because its other hosts just couldn't teleport anything at all! I think it could only teleport with you because of your messenger flame, which means that the flame affects it!"

Spike's eyes widened as he came to the same conclusion she had. "So if someone comes for the kitchens, we force the Darkness out of them and I can send it to you!"

Twilight nodded, though Chef Kawasaki chose then to speak up. "So, how do we force these darkness thingies out of people?"

Twilight fell silent for a moment, trying to figure out how best to answer that before just going for the blunt option. "Hit them hard enough that they abandon their host."

Kawasaki looked concerned. "That's…all we can do?" he asked.

"Basically," Spike answered. "Unless they can force the Darkness out on their own, but I'm pretty sure that was a fluke with me…" He trailed off, looking down at his claws as some sparks jumped between them. Clenching them, he steeled his expression. "And I had outside help anyway! So let's beat up the Darkness and take back the castle!"

Twilight was a bit less enthusiastic about the plan—leaving Spike alone in a castle infested by the Darkness was just about the last thing she wanted to do—but it was the best they had and they really needed to make sure that that food didn't spoil. Plus, the majority of injuries happening in the kitchen made sure that the healing items were close by. Nodding and fully committing herself to her portion of the plan, she lit her horn and cautiously opened the door, ready to vaporize any piece of the Darkness that came through.

When nothing did and a check of the hallway revealed nothing coming their way, she turned back for a moment. "Good luck."

"You too, Twi!" Spike said. "See you when the lights are back on!"


As much as Spike was aware that the lack of something happening was probably a good thing, it didn't stop him from being bored while waiting. It was a strange set of emotions, really—he was terrified, sure, but enough so that it almost looped around into a sort of calm. But there was tension in the air at the same time, probably because something was almost guaranteed to happen at any moment and both Spike and Kawasaki were bracing for it. It almost reminded him of his time utterly failing at petsitting a couple months back (had they really only been in Dreamland for a month or so? It felt like so much longer), knowing that Angel Bunny was up to something but being incapable of stopping it, only reacting.

That was the sort of tension that permeated the air in Castle Dedede's kitchens as the two of them waited. And waited. And waited. They had to know where they were, right? Meta Knight had said that the Darkness could probably communicate telepathically, and one of them had been possessing Kawasaki. But it had been nearly half an hour at this point without so much as a noise from beyond the door.

Then, just as Spike was beginning to consider that maybe Meta Knight had been mistaken, the door shook. Twilight had shut it on her way out and Spike had relocked it, but neither he nor Kawasaki were under the impression that it'd hold for long. Spike still wasn't exactly sure what constituted a proper fighting stance for him—very few of his comics featured bipedal characters and he was pretty sure that comic book choreography wasn't very realistic anyway—and he was shaking a bit as he shifted his right foot back and raised his fists. He might've had no idea what he was doing and still wasn't sure of how to work with his new electric powers, but he sure as hay wasn't going down without a fight.

Then the door was ripped off of its hinges and all Tartarus broke loose.

Bugzzy stood in the now-empty doorframe, having tossed the kitchen door aside. He was, thankfully, alone, though his eyes were the standard black of those possessed by the Darkness. There was a creaking sound as his elytra opened, and the buzzing of Bugzzy's wings overtook Spike's hearing as the beetle launched into the room.

Spike seemed to be the beetle's first target, with him standing closer to the door than Kawasaki. Yelping, he spat out a lick of flame and dove to the side. He knew that he could probably take some hits from Bugzzy—his scales were rather tough, after all—but he was still keenly aware of his own stature. Regardless of his durability, Bugzzy was both bigger and stronger than him.

Besides, he also didn't want to risk getting possessed again. It was an experience that he'd never repeat if he had anything to say about it.

The beetle did swerve to dodge the fire, smoothly moving to attack Kawasaki instead. The chef, to his credit, reacted quickly and used the first thing in range as an improvised weapon. Unfortunately for Bugzzy, that turned out to be a frying pan.

Spike winced as the cooking implement made contact with the beetle's head. He knew that the Darkness couldn't feel pain, but Bugzzy still stumbled back; the Darkness controlling him suddenly needed to redirect resources to shoring up its host's dazed control center. Spike took advantage of the moment, thrusting his arms forward and trying to will lighting to spring from his claws and strike Bugzzy. That's how electric powers worked in comics, after all!

Nothing happened.

Or, well, nothing that Spike wanted to happen happened. Instead, some sparks zipped between his claws and the air directly in front of his hands heated up a bit, but he failed to shoot lightning like a comic book character. In fact, his attempt at using his new powers backfired on him spectacularly, as all the electricity did was cause a flash of light and loud popping noise, sending Spike's vision dancing with stars and making his ears ring.

Temporarily blind and deaf, Spike didn't even see Bugzzy's sudden strike coming. He could certainly feel it, though, when the beetle slammed into him. The Darkness was probably trying to body slam him, but it failed to account for Spike's tail. The extra limb braced him against the floor, preventing the tackle from completely knocking him over. All it did, even, was get Bugzzy in range of Spike's naturally sharp teeth.

And as he bit down on the limb closest to his mouth (which Spike hoped beyond hope was just an arm), he instinctively added a bit of fire to it as well. Bugzzy's burned and pierced limb jerked back, oily blackened hemolymph dripping from part of it that had been ripped off in the process. Spike, thankfully, didn't actually taste any of it, the pieces of exoskeleton and tissue that he'd ripped off having been incinerated before they even hit his taste buds. He still felt terrible for a moment, given that Bugzzy didn't really deserve any of this, but he'd do what he had to to avoid possession.

Plus, it did accomplish his goal. With the Darkness pulling back one of Bugzzy's arms in order to heal it, it let Spike wriggle out of the other arm that was still around him from the failed tackle. Stepping back to put some distance between him and the possessed beetle, he took stock of the situation.

Kawasaki had stumbled when he hit Bugzzy over the head earlier, overbalancing from the weight of the frying pan and having only recently recovered. The chef charged across the room, aiming to strike from Bugzzy's injured side, but the Darkness reacted too quickly. It had already healed the beetle's arm in the moments it took for Spike to notice Kawasaki, and the appendage snapped out to grasp the chef's arm before the strike could land.

Kawasaki's eyes widened in fear as the Darkness squeezed, and the chef let out a shriek of pain as his arm broke with a sickening SNAP. He reflexively dropped the flying pan in the process, which clattered to the floor in front of Spike. He tracked that for a moment, noting that it had fallen with the handle facing him, before the dragon's eyes darted back up to the two combatants.

Bugzzy's mandibles clicked menacingly close to Kawasaki's face, the chef having just barely managed to pull himself away from the strike. Doing so jostled his injured arm, though, forcing out another involuntary cry of pain and prompting Spike to finally do something again. Running on adrenaline and with ever increasing concern for what the Darkness would do to an incapacitated Kawasaki, the little dragon picked up the pan in front of him.

He very nearly toppled over from the weight.

What the heck is this made of, Spike thought, cast iron?

His eyes blew wide open from the sudden chain of realizations that that thought brought on.

The frying pan was made of iron.

Iron, like all metals, is a great electrical conductor.

Air is, generally, a terrible conductor.

The reason he couldn't shoot lightning bolts like a comic book character was because of the ever-present resistor surrounding him. But since he was holding the frying pan…

Spike ran forward as fast as he could without falling over, bringing the frying pan over his shoulder like a baseball bat. His claws began to spark as he let out a battle cry, snapping the Darkness's attention to him and prompting it to drop Kawasaki. That was a mistake on its part, and Spike couldn't help but grin; now the chef was out of the danger zone.

Spike swung the frying pan with all his might, and though the Darkness moved Bugzzy's arms to block the blow, it must not have realized that the dragon had activated his new electrical powers. Despite cast iron being nowhere near as good of a conductor as something like copper, it was still leagues better than air. So as soon as the cooking implement came into contact with the beetle's forearm, Bugzzy still seized up. Electricity forced its way through the Darkness-possessed insect, bringing muscles to a standstill as it went. The Darkness was able to keep its host alive through the experience, but movement wasn't an option.

Before even a second had passed, Spike dropped the frying pan and backed up, feeling more than a little drained from his stunt. Channeling that high of a voltage must have been the most magic that he'd ever used at once, even more than his messenger flames, but the battle wasn't done just yet and he couldn't afford to take a break.

Thankfully, before the Darkness could recover Bugzzy from the shock, Kawasaki pushed himself up and delivered a mighty left hook with his uninjured arm, sending Bugzzy to the floor and finally forcing the Darkness out of its host. Spike stared as the blob of Darkness floated there, its single eye seeming to see right through him and Kawasaki. Castle Dedede's kitchens were still for maybe a moment until flames built in the back of Spike's throat and the Darkness made a decision.

It tried to make a break for it, charging towards the opening where the door used to be, but it barely got more than a meter away before it was enveloped in emerald fire. True to Twilight's prediction, he could feel the magic begin to take hold, transforming the Darkness bit by bit into magical smoke that would make its way to the destination Spike was focusing on: right in front of his sister.

Two seconds later, the Darkness was gone, and Spike was left in a room with an unconscious beetle and injured chef.


The Darkness had only just materialized before the Element of Magic removed it from existence.

Twilight herself barely even had to react. When the blob of Darkness formed in front of her, having been successfully carried by Spike's messenger flame (and wasn't that a relief that her hypothesis was correct), she reacted on instinct. With her already being on edge from the entire situation despite the minimal resistance that she had encountered so far, she fired off a bolt of magic before she could even think. Her Element took care of the rest.

A flash of purple light illuminated the dark hallway, and the Darkness dissolved into nothing just as quickly as it arrived.

For a moment, it broke Twilight's concentration on her light spell. But a moment was all that the hall needed to be plunged into total darkness. This level of Castle Dedede was entirely underground and had no windows, so with the power cut, the corridor she was in was pitch-black. It didn't help that she was still blinking purple spots out of her eyes from her Element's earlier attack, either.

Softly swearing under her breath, Twilight got her light spell working again and once more were the walls awash with a faint purple light. The stonework in this hallway was practically identical to that of the rest of the castle, and had it not been for the mental map that she had built over the past month of living there, Twilight would have been horribly lost. Even still, the bottom layer of Castle Dedede was nearly labyrinthine, and she was mentally cursing the architects for the design as she checked over her shoulder to make sure nothing had snuck up on her while the light was out.

Twilight wasn't quite sure what tipped her off to what happened next. Maybe it was the sound of fabric rustling softly in an otherwise silent hallway. Maybe it was a small amount of displaced air from someone moving quickly. Or maybe it was the Element of Magic pulsing slightly again from nearby Darkness.

Regardless of what prompted her, Twilight still whipped her head back around and cast a shield spell just in time to save her life. With a thunk, a kunai slammed against her shield almost exactly as she cast it, a mere few centimeters from her widened eyes. A moment later, it had clattered to the stone floor as Twilight dropped the shield and sent a retaliatory strike towards the Bio Spark that had thrown it, which was perched atop a pillar that held a darkened light bulb.

The ninja jumped immediately, dodging the fired magic and slinking back into the shadows. Twilight tried to track them, and had it just been her and the Bio Spark in the hallway, she likely would have caught them in her magic and purged them of the Darkness. Unfortunately, they were not alone, and the Element of Magic pulsing once again was enough to break her concentration and let the Bio Spark slip out of sight before she could get a decent telekinetic grip around them.

That pulse, alongside the fur along her back standing on end, was all the warning she got, but it was enough for her to leap to the side and out of the way before something landed on her. There was a loud thunk as whatever it was hit the ground just behind her, followed by the crackle of discharging electricity. Twilight whirled around as two other figures landed by the same spot, the purple light of her horn casting the three Pluggs in an eerie glow.

Well, at least that meant that she was close to the generator.

The closest of the three Pluggs—one that Twilight recognized as Lieutenant Licht—was the one that had initially jumped at her. Like all beings possessed by the Darkness, his eyes had gone completely black from pupil to sclera, and in her hornlight his blue-green body was far darker than it would be in more neutral lighting. Electricity arced between his prongs, prompting Twilight to quickly encase herself in a bubble shield for protection.

Most Pluggs, while dangerous, are only major threats up close, as the poor conductivity of air makes their naturally generated electricity useless at range. If a Plugg manages to make contact with a victim, though, their attacks can very easily incapacitate or even kill their adversary in mere moments, should they choose to ramp up their voltage enough. Such an attack, even one normally lethal for other creatures, wouldn't kill Twilight on account of her alicorn physiology allowing her to survive even with a stopped heart, but it would take her out of the fight long enough for the Bio Spark to finish the job.

But that alone wouldn't usually be enough for her to invest in a full bubble shield. Keeping one up (especially one both conductive enough to nullify the Pluggs' attacks and strong enough to withstand the Bio Spark's) was draining, even with the Element of Magic supplementing her power. The shields she had cast on the Halberd and in Dark Castle had had Sunset's aid to fall back on, and the one she had cast during the battle with Nightmare had taken less mana at the cost of both concentration and time, two resources that she didn't have much of at the moment. An all-purpose shield was the most draining to cast even with the minor optimization of it being spherical, so what convinced her to do so was the fact that Lieutenant Licht was a cut above most Pluggs.

When Twilight had first inquired to Bandee about the organizational structure of Dedede's military not long after the incident with the Halberd, she'd been given quite a few anecdotes about various promotions in the process. One of them had been about how Licht had earned his current rank: he had developed a technique to get around the range limitation that Pluggs naturally had. By ionizing the air between his prongs and carefully directing current using the limited electrokinesis that Pluggs could use within their own bodies, Licht could fire globs of plasma at a target with an effective range of around ten meters.

Sunset had called it a miniature plasma railgun when she'd heard about it and promptly declared it "some of the coolest shit [she'd] ever heard."

Licht was still teaching the technique to some of the other Pluggs, but it had taken him years to master himself so progress was slow-going. Unfortunately, given how the Darkness had interacted with Spike's abilities and that it was seemingly telepathic, that probably wouldn't be an issue for it.

All in all, that left Twilight in a rather tight spot. She couldn't focus her attention on the three Pluggs in front of her, because purging the Darkness from all three at once would take enough of the Element of Magic's power to force her to drop her shield, leaving her vulnerable to the Bio Spark in the rafters. Likewise, searching around to deal with the Bio Spark first would let the Pluggs bombard her shield with superheated air until something eventually got through. If Twilight had no other options, it would've been a true catch twenty-two.

Thankfully, Twilight had another option that she'd been working on as of late. It took a bit of time to set up before casting, though, so she had to hope that her shield held. Her eyes darted around as she prepared, keeping track of as many of her adversaries as she could in the dim hallway. There was another thunk behind her as the Bio Spark either threw another kunai or dropped down to attack directly, but her shield held and by the time Twilight could twist around to check they had already vanished back into the shadows. She looked back at the Pluggs just in time to see Licht charge forward—likely to try and overwhelm her shield electrically—before her vision was obscured by two hot globs of plasma.

There was a sizzling sound as they began to melt through the stone floor at the base of the shield, quickly overtaken by the crackle of electricity as Licht made contact with the front of her shield. Twilight winced at the increase of pressure on her horn, but she didn't let it fall. No, she needed just one more piece of information to cast her prepared spell, she couldn't fail now.

Gritting her teeth and focusing, Twilight kept her eyes peeled and looked around. She paid close attention to the rafters, given that it was the easiest place for the Bio Spark to blend in and strike from the shadows, and a glint of metal caught her eye. Glinting in the residual light from Licht's electrical attack was a thrown kunai, and now Twilight knew exactly where the Bio Spark was.

She grinned. Gotcha.

Getting a solid telekinetic grip on another living being was extremely difficult, even for alicorns, and doing so on four resisting creatures at once would be nigh impossible. Even if Twilight could, though, the Darkness had shown that it knew how to break out of that sort of thing, and she doubted that the piece of Darkness that had possessed Spike hadn't informed the rest of its species about that weakness of telekinesis. But Twilight knew that weakness as well, and she had spent the better part of the previous day developing a workaround.

With a wordless shout, her bubble shield expanded and inverted.

The prospect of using shields offensively was something that she'd talked to Shiny about extensively in her youth. While Twilight had never been interested in combat herself, she had been fascinated by the magic involved in shielding, and her older brother had been happy to teach her. The pair of them, though, had eventually come to the conclusion that offensive shields generally took too much power to be useful. Any tactics that necessitated a fully immobile enemy would take too long to execute, since the power draw of a fully enclosed external shield would give most unicorns mana drain before they could use it. They'd be better off using the environment to their advantage or using other spells to immobilize a target.

But for all Twilight had spoken with her brother about combat spells, she'd never brought it up to Princess Celestia. Her talks with her teacher had focused mostly on magical research, and the closest they'd gotten to combat was when Twilight had asked questions about politics. If she had talked to her about it, maybe she'd have reached her most recent breakthrough earlier, as while the power draw of an external shield would be too much for any unicorn, if an alicorn were to attempt it…

Twilight's wings flared out to their full extent as her shield grew, almost behaving like a cell membrane as it warped around and enveloped the three Pluggs. The shield reached the rafters in mere fractions of a second, completely encasing the Bio Spark before they could ever hope to react to it and try to dodge. The spell was a modification of a telekinesis spell that Twilight had been working on mastering even before her Ascension, intended to catch everything within a radius of the caster (determined by the amount of power put into the spell in the first place). Adjusting it to work as a shield instead had taken a bit of thought and an original shield to work with, but she was quite happy to see that it had worked.

With her four opponents caught in her shields, Twilight could begin phase two of her plan. Getting this part of the spell right had taken the bulk of the work the day before, and she had no real way to test it until now, so she was hoping to the stars and back that she'd gotten it right. The Element of Magic glowed with power so brightly that Twilight had to squeeze her eyes shut, meaning that she missed the hallway light up like it was under the noonday sun. The four shields glowed just as intensely as the Element as it poured more and more magic into them to purge the Darkness within.

A few seconds later, the glow receded, and Twilight tentatively let her magic drop as she kept watch of the four Dreamlanders. She still had her light spell up, of course, and her Element had taken the brunt of the work on purging the Darkness, but she was still ready to react, just in case.

Thankfully, she didn't need to. The three Pluggs were clearly disoriented by the experience and there was a thud as the Bio Spark fell out of the rafters, but their eyes were open and no longer showed signs of the Darkness's possession. Smiling, she called out, "Lieutenant?"

Licht blinked a few times as he got his bearings back before quickly snapping to attention. "Princess Twilight! You're alright!" He bowed as much as a Plugg was able to. "Thank you for saving me and my men from the Darkness."

Twilight flushed a bit from the praise and being bowed at—she was still a bit unused to her new position and bowing to show reverence was rare enough in Dreamland that she hadn't acclimated to it—but she stood tall regardless. "We need to get the generator back up and running and restore power to the castle," she said. "Can you four handle protecting it while I purge the rest of the castle of the Darkness?"

The Bio Spark, who had just gotten back to their feet, drew and inspected their blade. Seemingly satisfied that no damage had come to it, they nodded at Twilight. "These forces of Darkness have bastardized the shadows that I call home," they said as they moved to pick up the kunai that the Darkness had thrown. "I shall strike down any that try to drag me back into their clutches."

One of the Pluggs—Twilight really wished she could remember their names, but she wasn't Pinkie and there were simply too many residents of Castle Dedede for her to have met all of them—rolled their eyes. "Yeesh, dramatic much?" she asked. Turning back to Twilight, she nodded at her, her eyes resolute. "We've got this, Princess."

With Licht and the other Plugg also having the same look in their eyes, Twilight let herself smile a bit. Maybe things weren't completely hopeless, yet.

"Let's get that generator back online."


A determined pair of yellow eyes narrowed as Castle Dedede started to appear over the horizon. He thankfully hadn't encountered any additional blobs of Darkness on his way, having kept just within the canopy of the various woodlands between his base on Orange Ocean and the castle to avoid detection from both land and sky. It was slow-going, and if he were alone he would have taken fully to the air, but getting into a fight right now would risk the precious cargo in his arms.

Sailor Dee groaned again from some combination of pain and delirium, but did not wake. Meta Knight cringed regardless, though, and pushed his wings ever harder as he kept an eye on the sky (while carefully avoiding looking directly at Zero). The rain of Darkness had ceased about a quarter hour ago, but that didn't mean that a few weren't still sticking around in the sky (he could see one now, even, hanging around in a patch of sky that meant he was practically guaranteed to encounter it on his way to Castle Dedede), nor did it give Meta Knight any sort of peace of mind. All it meant was that the initial phase of the invasion was over, and unless they successfully repelled Zero itself, Popstar would be doomed to a slow and agonizing death as the Darkness laid siege to the entire planet.


Authors Notes:

Bugzzy, the Darkened Insect King

Bugzzy is already a formidable foe on his own, but with the Darkness backing him up? It'll take some clever thinking to take down this self-proclaimed King of Insects, as few can hope to match him in pure strength!

Licht, the Darkened Lieutenant of Castle Dedede

Lieutenant Licht is already a clever Plugg, and the Darkness's access to his memories will be an issue. To make matters worse, he never works alone. Good luck, Magic.

Hey all, ANWAS here. It's uh...been a while, huh? That few-day-long break I took back in July kinda turned into a few-week-long break and before I knew it three months had gone by in a haze of job hunting (an absolutely dreadful process, let me tell ya) with no work having gone into this fic. Then a routine oil change on my car turned into replacing the brakes when they fell off when the mechanics checked on them since apparently braking in the garage was finicky (horrifying that I'd been driving with brakes that broken, but hey they're fixed now!) which cost around $1000. And then a few weeks later I brought the car in again because a wheel bearing was starting to come loose and it turned out that the half shaft was busted too, which ran me another $1000 (but hey, now my car is quiet enough that you can hold a conversation above 40 mph; you couldn't before because it was too loud). Then my student loans started coming due. So all in all I've been stressed enough that I just haven't been in the right mindset to write.

But, I'm finally employed, so I've had the time to destress and get back to work on my hobbies! The next few chapters are actually already written, I just need to edit and proofread them, so the rest of this arc shouldn't take another half of a year to complete, barring unforseen circumstances like my laptop finally kicking the bucket. Hopefully that doesn't happen. Fingers crossed and knock on wood and all that.

With that said, on to a bit of analysis on the chapter itself. A bit of a shorter one this time (I say on a nearly 5500-word chapter, but this is comparative to last time's 13.5k behemoth), but I felt it necessary to split the Battle for Castle Dedede into two chapters. Originally it was one chapter and I had some other things planned, but part of the benefit of writing most of the rest of this arc is that I could move some things around so that they flowed better before fully comitting. I'll probably do the same for future arcs as well; write out the whole thing before I start posting chapters, so that I'm not locked into a format that I get second thoughts on later.

In any case, see y'all next time!