Quick trigger warning before the chapter starts, becuase this one gets intense enough to warrant it. This chapter contains graphic depictions of violence, severe injury, and minor character death.

Steel clashed against steel as Araneus's blade blocked a blow from one of his own guardsmen. The darkness had rained down from the sky like a swarm of locusts, and before Araneus had known it, three of his personal guards had been attacked. Their eyes had become as black as coal, and the three infected guards had turned their swords on him in an instant.

He let his left saber drop from his top left hand to the bottom left to better deflect a swing from the second guardsman. Whatever this was, it retained the skill of his guards while possessing them. Araneus himself was skilled with a blade, sure, but he was not arrogant enough to think that he could take on three of his own men at the same time—had they been at full strength, at least. The things possessing them seemed unwilling to use their magic (he hoped it was unwillingness and not unknowingness, though, because the latter implied that they could learn), so he didn't have to worry about his Red Antler guards flinging fire at him.

They constantly had him on the back foot (in a metaphorical sense, of course; Araneus, like all of his species, primarily moved by floating) though, because despite his six hands, he only had two swords. That was, perhaps, a bit of an oversight on his part (dual-wielding was a far simpler matter when one had six floating hands capable of independent motion, so adding more swords to the mix should be feasible), but he was making use of his four other hands, regardless. Two of his right hands (the top and bottom ones—the middle hand was currently gripping a saber) had ripped a shield from one of the statues adorning the castle halls. It was ornamental, so it likely wouldn't last forever, a fact emphasized by the clang of a metal-on-metal strike ringing out as he used it to block a strike from the final possessed guard. Thankfully, he didn't need it to last long.

His final two hands on his left were organizing a spell while he fought with the other four. He was never the best with magic, so unlike his daughter and her lover (and he was equal parts miffed and amused that they were keeping their courtship a "secret;" they'd been friends for over a decade and had been obviously pining for years, everyone already knew), Araneus never really fell back on magical solutions to his problems. That was biting him in the abdomen, now, given how out of practice he was.

Still, he wasn't completely helpless. After deflecting another swing and successfully disarming one of the guards, he released the spell. The sticky webbing shot out from the space between his hands, entrapping the guard and binding him to the wall. Araneus wasn't quite sure how this possession worked—he hoped to the stars and back that it was reversible—and he wasn't willing to resort to lethal options against his own men, so magic webs it was. At least it'd hold him for a while; without his sword to help him cut the webs, the spell would hold for at least an hour.

One down, two to go.

He whirled around, anticipating a strike from behind after binding the first guard. He bashed his now-battered shield forward, hitting the Antler on the head and disorienting him. Tossing the shield aside while simultaneously fending off a strike from the other Antler on his left, he wormed his right blade past the disoriented one's guard and successfully disarmed him.

Another web, and another Antler stuck to the wall.

With both of the other guards down, the third was far easier to deal with. He had Araneus's full attention, and even without a proper shield, his skill with two swords was enough. The clash of steel on steel rang a few times more before he managed to entrap the Antler's sword between both of his own. He twisted, wincing a bit at the snapping sound of some of the guard's exoskeleton breaking, but it accomplished his goal of getting him to drop the sword. Having shaken off the rust a bit, Araneus's spell came easily this time, and all three of the Red Antlers had been stuck to the wall.

With the moment of reprieve, Araneus returned his hands to their neutral position and transferred his sabers back to the middle hands. Carefully, he glanced at each of the stuck Antlers, which were struggling against their bonds. Hopefully, it would hold long enough for them to figure out how to get the possessor out, but-

"Father, behind you!"

Araneus whirled around before he really registered who had called out to him, his mind still in battle mode and more focused on the immediate threat than the fact that Joronia was not in a saferoom like he had asked. In front of him (how did it get this deep in the castle already?) was a blob of darkness floating in the air. A ring of orange spheres outlined a steadily staring eye, set in a sphere of pure blackness. Araneus started to move forward, his saber striking out to run the thing through, but a beam of light from elsewhere in the hallway got there first.

The white laser of light magic slammed into the darkness, slamming it into the wall. The combination of Joronia's magic and the blunt force trauma killed it on impact, splattering it across the stonework like a rotten grape. With the immediate threat taken care of, Araneus allowed himself to relax his stance a bit, but a stern expression grew on his face. Turning to face his daughter, he gave her and Taranza an unimpressed glare.

The young court mage seemed sheepish, at least, his embarrassed and ashamed blush even seeming to reach up to his horns. "I tried to stop her, Your Majesty, but-"

Araneus raised his top right hand, and Taranza promptly shut up. He didn't want to hear any excuses right now, just explanations. "Why are you not in one of the saferooms?" he asked Joronia.

His daughter huffed, lowering her staff a bit. The ruby embedded at its tip was still glowing with residual magic. "The royal family needs to appear strong to the people. If I spend this crisis hidden away in some panic room, what does that say about us?"

Araneus sighed, tempted to rub the sides of his head just below his own horns in annoyance. "The people also require leadership," he said. "The royal family's strength is why I am here, so I will not have you risking your life alongside me." He gestured to the splattered remains of the piece of darkness. "These seem like they can't go through walls, so you'll be safe in a locked room with no windows. Please, just go to one of the saferooms with Taranza."

The standoff continued for a few moments, neither Araneus or Joronia willing to give an inch on this. That sort of stubbornness had been something she inherited from him, but eventually one of them had to break, and Araneus had far more experience in providing disappointed stares. Joronia huffed again and turned around, likely seeing the logic in his plea but unwilling to acknowledge it.

"Fine then. Come, Taranza, let's go."

Taranza gave his king another sheepish smile and mock salute before following off after the princess. Once the two of them were around the corner and out of sight, though, Araneus didn't relax. A sudden cracking sound drew his attention to where he'd left his possessed guards, and his jaw dropped at seeing what was happening to one.

The Antler's exoskeleton was bending in unnatural ways, and Araneus would not be ashamed to admit that he felt queasy looking upon it. He seemed uncaring of the blood seeping out of the new cracks, or of the fact that he seemed to be crunching in on himself to slip out of the sticky webbing. He landed on the ground, but at that point his body must have been damaged beyond repair. Even a maxim tomato wouldn't be able to help, at this state; the Antler's entire thorax and abdomen seemed to have shrunk, with shards of his exoskeleton sticking out at angles that were so, so wrong.

Uncaring that its host was actively dying, the thing possessing the Antler launched forward towards his dropped sword, and Araneus was too far away to stop it. Gripping the weapon, it showed that, unfortunately, it could learn enough to access its host's magic. It sent two fireballs towards the other two bound guards, burning through Araneus's webs and freeing them.

That proved to be too much for it, though, and the Antler dropped to the ground, dead. The blob of darkness that emerged from it promptly got a saber to the eye as Araneus angrily launched forward, stabbing straight through it and pinning it to the wall behind.

Unfortunately, the king didn't have much time to grieve his fallen guard, as the other two, still being possessed, rushed him with both their swords and fire spells of their own. Araneus immediately had to fall back, ill-prepared to deal with the guards' sudden use of magic. Especially fire magic, which his own best spells, his webs, would be unsuccessful at countering for obvious reasons.

Still, even as he moved backwards, countering sword strikes where possible and dodging when not, he made sure to lead them away from the saferooms. As far away from possible, even, all the way up a staircase and onto the roof of the castle. That, though, proved to be his undoing.

Down to a single sword and becoming increasingly exhausted, Araneus was too focused on the two guards he was fighting to notice the lone Spynum on the roof. He didn't notice her eyes, which had gone black from the darkness. He didn't notice her nock her arrow. He didn't notice her loose the string.

He didn't notice the arrow flying true until it had already sealed his fate.

There was a sharp pain in his chest and back that forced him to drop his sword, and Araneus looked down. The arrow had been shot with enough force to pierce the exoskeleton on both his back and chest, impaling him completely. The sudden shortness of breath he was feeling probably indicated that it had pierced one of his lungs, and he started drifting downward as the power needed to keep him afloat started to fail him.

His adversaries seemed to judge that as being enough, leaving him on the roof to die. There, at the top of Royal Road, Araneus was able to look out upon his kingdom. Endless Explosions seemed to have even more explosions than normal, and if he strained hard enough he would have been able to barely see Wild World through the clouds. The giant red eye in space stared down from above, unblinkingly. Just how many of his citizens had already fallen to the darkness? How many would perish before this hell was over?

Despairing, Araneus collapsed to the ground as the last of his energy fled. A crisis of this magnitude was something that none of them were prepared for. In the back of his mind, as his thoughts started to go cloudy and his vision blackened from blood loss, he wondered if Joronia would even have a kingdom left to rule over.

Feeling like a failure of a ruler in his final moments, King Araneus IV of Floralia breathed his last.

"Doc, what in the world is this thing?" Daroach shouted as he jumped back, Storo's fist punching through the table he had been sitting at mere moments before. The gust of wind that the blow kicked up sent his cloak billowing, and he took a second to glance back at the small white mouse with him. "And where did Spinni get off to?"

"Do I look like I know the answer to either of those questions?" Doc asked, yelping as Storo's (or the thing possessing him, at least; Daroach could tell that the mouse wasn't at the wheel anymore) attention turned to him. Quickly, Doc dove to the side, grabbing a discarded chair to use as a makeshift shield. It worked—partially—since it broke with one blow from Storo and sent Doc flying, but it bought enough time for Daroach to activate the Triple Star Cane. He quickly launched all three of his summoned star-shaped projectiles at Storo, sending him stumbling backwards and letting Daroach rush over to help Doc up from where he was sprawled on the ground.

"Where's your saucer," Daroach asked, given that they had a moment or two of reprieve.

"In the damn ship," Doc hissed, wincing as he moved his arm to point towards where the Squeak Squad's airship was docked.

Well, "docked" perhaps wasn't the best term for it, since there weren't any docks they could dock the ship to! They'd touched down in a clearing barely large enough for Doc's magnum opus to fit, but they made it work. They had all been outside when this darkness started raining down from the sky, though, planning out their next heist. They probably could've done it inside, but all of them, even Doc, were a bit sick of machinery after their latest heist on Mekkai (the chaos of the ongoing revolution there made it all too easy for them to slip in and grab some of their experimental tech for Doc to tinker with).

Storo charging at them again snapped Daroach out of his wandering thoughts, but thankfully another few shots from the Triple Star Cane kept him at bay for now. Supporting Doc as he limped towards the ship (clearly that hit had been bad—Daroach didn't want to think about what would've happened if it had connected without the chair in the way), Daroach kept an eye out for anything amiss.

That awareness probably saved his life, as he saw a glint of metal through the trees and immediately ducked. The ninja star that would've embedded itself in his neck instead sailed just above his head, nicking his ear and swiping his hat off of his head. Daroach growled a bit at that as he sent a retaliatory shot of Triple Stars into the woods. He'd liked that hat, and getting a new one made would cost a pretty penny.

Still, though, there were currently more pressing matters at play than his fashion. "Found Spinni," Daroach said as he rose back to his full height, practically dragging Doc the rest of the way to the airship.

"Yeah, I noticed," Doc grunted as they entered.

As soon as they entered, Daroach whirled around and fired another shot, stopping Storo (who had begun rushing at them) in his tracks long enough for him to slam the airship's door shut and lock it. "There," Daroach said, his claws clicking together as he dusted off his paws, "now let's get you a maxim tomato and your saucer so we can properly fight back."

Doc failed to respond.

His eyes narrowing, Daroach quickly turned around to see that his compatriot had vanished. Carefully, and keeping his back to the wall to prevent a possible flank, he looked around. Stars above, had the darkness gotten inside the ship without them noticing? He wasn't sure when they could've, but he supposed that it was possible. If they had, then Doc may have gone the way of Spinni and Storo.

A skittering sound to his right snapped Daroached attention to something falling towards him. He barely twirled out of the way in time to avoid Doc's attack, and the mouse slammed fist-first onto the floor. Daroach winced a bit at the crack that rang out, but given that his previous injuries seemed to be fully healed, whatever was possessing him seemed to be able to heal him.

Doc got back to his feet and looked at Daroach with pitch black eyes, his goggles having fallen off somewhere in the chaos. His bushy green mustache twitched, and that was all the warning Daroach got before something slammed into his left side.

He managed to avoid slamming directly into the wall—though barely—by twisting with the blow and bracing his feet, which granted him view of his new assailant. Just like the others that had rained down from the sky, it was a floating blob of darkness, a single unblinking eye set in the center. Daroach felt drained just from the proximity, but still planned to respond to whatever attack it was charging up with the orange spheres around it starting to glow.

He didn't get the chance to counter, though, as Doc leapt at him unnaturally fast, sinking his teeth into Daroach's right paw and forcing him to drop the Triple Star Cane. Without that to defend himself, the dark laser speared out from the blob with no resistance, knocking the air out of Daroach's lungs and definitely breaking something on impact with the wall.

Before he could even think to get out of the way and get to the airship's maxim tomato stash, the darkness rushed him. His vision went entirely black for a few moments, and seconds later Daroach was a passenger in his own body.

Running for her life from blobs of darkness descending from the sky was not how Adeline had planned on spending her Saturday. She'd planned on finishing up her painting of Kracko, then building a campfire to cook a nice lunch of canned fruits and vegetables, before maybe spending the afternoon down at the shore of Cloudy Park. It was a nice day, especially with Kracko having left Cloudy Park for a while after his defeat at the hooves of the purple horse creature. She wasn't sure where he went, exactly (she assumed that he'd likely gone back to Grape Garden to recuperate, but she was hardly an expert on tracking the cloud golem's movements), but his absence was a boon.

Or at least, it had been. Adeline would sure take being defended by the proper Kracko right now, given that her half-finished painting that she'd hastily animated had done a poor job holding off the darkness. Granted, given that Kracko seemed to have fallen earlier to a single one of these things (and it had to be the same thing that happened two days ago; the current despair and hopelessness clawing at Adeline's heart was far too similar to the sheer apathy from earlier to be a coincidence), she wasn't sure how much of a help he'd be.

Adeline had been forced to abandon her easel after animating the Kracko painting, however, so her options were slim anyway. She still had her brush and palette with her, at least, so her current goal was getting up into the clouds near the peak of Cloudy Park's mountain. In a pinch, anything would do as a canvas for her art, but Popstar's clouds were easier to paint on than a cliff face.

Unfortunately, it was looking like she wouldn't even get the option. The darkness had gotten past her Kracko imitation rather quickly, and she was coming upon the steepest part of the trail up the mountain. Still running as hard as she could, she frantically dipped her brush in her blue paint. Once she reached a flat enough part of the sheer cliff to her right, she skidded to a stop and jabbed the brush out and onto the rock.

Without any water to wash the paint off, she'd have to stick to something monochrome. Thankfully, she had just the creature in mind to paint that fit that criterion, but it would be a rush job. The darkness was bearing down on her fast, so she couldn't afford to waste any time with corrections or small details. The broad strokes, at least, would be enough for her magic to animate it properly, albeit far weaker than the real thing; both the canvas of rock and shoddy illustration would contribute to that fact.

Still, merely forty seconds after Adeline began painting, various shades of blue shimmered in the light as the facsimile of the Ice Dragon peeled itself off of the wall with barely ten seconds to spare. She could feel the drain on her stamina as her magic fueled the animation, but Adeline forced it to the back of her mind as she left the dragon behind to fend off the two (when had a second one showed up?) blobs of darkness.

The roar of her creation faded into the background as blood rushed through her ears. Her lungs burned for air and her legs protested every movement, but she did not allow herself to stop running. Despite her light green smock and black shoes not being built for running at all, she kept at it. Even as she felt her Ice Dragon get destroyed minutes later and knew that the darkness was after her once again, she kept running.

Adeline didn't allow herself to stop until she'd reached the clouds, accessible near the summit of Cloudy Park. Brushing dark brown, almost black locks out of her eyes and keeping a hand on her red beret to keep the wind from blowing it off, she scanned the area. The darkness didn't seem to be up there yet, the cloud cover above her obscuring her view of that disturbing red eye. Satisfied that she wasn't under immediate threat, she prepared to dig in and paint like her life depended on it.

Adeline had already lost one home. She was going to her damndest to make sure that she didn't lose another.

Still keeping an eye out for any approaching darkness, she examined her palette. That emergency Ice Dragon had used up most of her blue paint, unfortunately, so making another one was out of the question. Thankfully, the clouds could wash off her brush so she wasn't limited to monochrome anymore, but a lot of her white paint was gone too. Fortunately, the clouds themselves were white enough to substitute, though at the expense of it taking more out of her to animate something like an imitation of Kracko.

Looking at the rest of her palette, she went over her options. Her stores of red, brown, orange, black, green, and yellow paint were all doing fine, so Sweet Stuff, Mister Shine, Mister Bright, Whispy Woods, and quite a few smaller creatures were on the table. Immediately, though, Adeline discarded the prospect of painting Whispy—he was just too big and the cloud cover would greatly limit a tree, even a painted one—and most of the smaller creatures—they just didn't pack enough punch relative to the amount of paint she'd have to use.

She supposed that she had enough white paint to mix into the red to possibly get away with animating an imitation of Chuchu, but she rejected that idea as well. Chuchu was just too complicated to paint accurately in a high-stress situation like this, and Adeline needed accuracy to expend as little energy as possible when animating.

Right, so that left her with three options that she could paint accurately from memory at the moment: Mister Shine, Mister Bright, and Sweet Stuff. Kracko was available as a last-ditch effort, given how much it would take for her to animate him. Before she could deliberate on which to paint first, though, she was out of time.

A scream from above gave her only seconds of warning to look up before something very green and very fast pierced the clouds, pursued by no fewer than three blobs of darkness. Frantically, Adeline got to work on painting to help out, jamming her brush into her orange paint. Mister Bright was a circle—she'd make this as quick as possible.

Quite frankly, Pitch was the most terrified he'd ever been in his entire life. Even invading Dark Castle two days ago hadn't been anything like this. That had been just one piece of the Darkness! But now Zero was here and everything was going wrong immediately! His bond with his ma hadn't helped at all—despite both of their best efforts, they'd been separated almost as soon as the chaos started. He'd been frantically flying around for a few minutes now, doing his best to chase off the three blobs of Darkness on his tail.

There were enough clouds around to fashion arrows out of (a skill that the Darkness had used when possessing him, and one of the few things about his time under that Pitch was happy to remember), but unfortunately the Darkness just kept dodging them. Eventually, Pitch gave up that line of attack, since all it was doing was slowing him down, but that just left him flying around defenseless! His feathers couldn't be shot out like Coo's (the best he could use them for was as a duster!) and his atmokinetic abilities weren't anywhere near refined enough to help in this case.

His screaming seemed to finally pay off and attract friendly attention, though, after bursting through one particular cloud layer. A few seconds after he did so, something orange streaked past him and slammed into the piece of Darkness closest behind him. Following that was something yellow, and Pitch pieced together what was going on with a surprised blink. What were Mister Shine and Mister Bright doing in Cloudy Park? And why was Mister Bright missing his fire?

Then a second Mister Bright whizzed past him to occupy the third blob, this one aflame in all his usual glory, and Pitch just got more confused.

Things got a bit weirder as he watched, since he noticed that Shine and the Brights looked like they were made of paint, of all things! There had to be magic involved, Pitch was sure, but he didn't know from where until he scanned his surroundings a bit and looked down. Standing on the clouds was a creature he'd never seen before, gripping an artist's brush and wearing a smock and beret to go with it. Curiously, though making sure to keep an eye on the ongoing fight, Pitch fluttered closer to the biped.

Once he was closer, he could see the strain on their face and the sweat dripping down it; whatever they were doing to animate the paint copies of Mister Shine and Mister Bright must've been taking a toll on them. Deciding to at least be polite to his savior, he spoke as he landed on her shoulder.

"Hi there!" Pitch chirped. "Ah'm Pitch!"

"Adeline," she responded with a grunt.

Pitch mulled the name over in his mind. He felt like he'd heard it before…oh! The morning after they'd defeated the Darkness for the first time, he'd been pestering Chuchu about something or other, and she'd mentioned someone named Adeline! "Oh, do you know Chuchu?"

Adeline blinked. "You know Chuchu?"

Pitch nodded. "Mhm! Oh, since Ah'm Chuchu's friend and you're Chuchu's friend, that makes us friends! Can I call you Ado for short, then?"

"Wha…" Adeline started, clearly confused, but shook it off quickly. "Sure, call me whatever."

Pitch wasn't sure why she was confused. His line of reasoning made perfect sense to him!

"So," Ado asked, still clearly straining to keep her paint creations up and staring at the ongoing battle, "how'd you meet Chuchu?"

"We helped save the world together!" Pitch excitedly said. His expression fell immediately afterward, though, and he looked back at where the paintings were still trying to hold back the Darkness. "But, uh, it didn't stick."

Ado clearly wanted to ask something else, but she was interrupted by the cloud they were on shaking. Pitch instinctively took off, fluttering above Ado as she regained her footing. Her gaze snapped to where Pitch knew the entrance to the clouds was—ground-dwellers on Cloudy Park could reach cloud level by climbing up the mountain. Ado said something that was definitely a swear in some language Pitch didn't know, and quickly filled her brush with brown paint.

It proved to be a great decision, because she'd just gotten the basic form down of a painting of a fish of some sort on the clouds before two blobs of Darkness came up from the mountain. Ado spent only a few seconds jabbing her brush down again for a spot of yellow paint, and the new anglerfish peeled itself off of the clouds and swam through them towards the Darkness. That bit of magic seemed to exhaust Ado even more, though. Her knees were shaking and she quietly swore again in that foreign language.

"That's not gonna hold them for long," Ado grunted, sweat once again beading on her brow. "You need to go."

"What?" Pitch squawked. Surely his new friend wasn't just asking him to leave her behind!

Ado gave him an unimpressed stare. "You can fly," she reminded him. With her hands trembling, she cleaned off her brush before leaning down to start tracing an outline on the clouds. "I can't. So I'll hold them off while you escape and find help!"

Pitch's eyes widened. Right! This wasn't him abandoning her, it was a tactical retreat! He'd come back with reinforcements and rescue his mama and Ado! He just…had to figure out who those reinforcements should be.

Wait a second! Kirby! He could help!

Ado grunted again as a splattering sound rang out from above. Looking up, Pitch could see that the first Mister Bright painting had been defeated, orange paint raining down from where the Darkness had successfully ripped it apart. "Just go!" Ado cried, her painting nearly complete. A painting that Pitch was very quickly recognizing.

Ado fell to her knees as she completed the outline of Kracko, and Pitch could feel the buzz in his feathers as electricity started to fizzle around the edge of the paint. He took off as soon as the painting started peeling itself off of the clouds, and didn't look back as thunder filled the air.

He knew that Ado would get possessed. She was already exhausted and going up against five pieces of the Darkness. No one was coming out of that with their mind their own, so he'd already failed in his self-imposed mission. But the best he could do now was keep flying.

Nago steadied his breathing, the shadows he was hiding in concealing his presence from the lone piece of Darkness in front of him. The bastards had come down from the sky far too fast for him to do anything about them getting to Red Canyon, and Shiro had been just the slightest bit too slow when the pair of them had tried to retreat to their den. Nago hadn't been able to stop the Darkness from getting its claws into his girlfriend, and he hated himself for it.

But that fire in his heart at least kept the apathy at bay. And he had a goal: if the Darkness was going to stick to keeping Shiro on the island (especially given that he suspected the Rainbow Bridges were once again on borrowed time), it'd probably be the south side of the island, across the central mountain. There, Solaria's light tended to shine more brightly and rain from Cloudy Park (which was a bit west-northwest of Red Canyon) rarely fell. As a result, very little grew there besides some cacti, and the south side of Red Canyon had effectively turned into a small desert. The locals tended to call it "Sand Canyon" colloquially, given how wind erosion of the constantly sun-baked rocks had turned the top layer into sand over time.

Nago never really had reason to go back there, himself. He knew that the canyon itself was generally shallower than on the north side of the island and that there was some pyramid built from black stone over there, along with the fact that Pon and Con had made a hope of it, but no more than that. Still, if that was where the Darkness had taken Shiro, that was where he'd go.

But he couldn't do that alone. Nago knew that that would be unsuccessful at best and a suicide mission at worst. Instead, he was moving north at the moment. Kirby lived to the north, and though it would be a gamble, finding the puffball was the best chance he had. Princess Twilight was up that way as well, but if this was as worldwide of an event as he thought (and he tried so, so hard not to think of the giant eyeball in the sky, because every time he did he felt just a bit more empty inside), she would be occupied with Castle Dedede.

His best shot at getting through this and getting Shiro back would be to rendezvous with the others. Pitch, hopefully, wasn't going through the same thing—stars know that the laddie had already been through too much at his age—but if he was, he'd likely have the same idea. Nago would swing through Iceberg first, and hopefully King Dedede would have already avoided possession. If not, though, he'd continue through and try to get to Grass Land as quickly as possible.

That, though, led to his current predicament. He'd have to move quickly to get through before the Rainbow Bridges shattered again (with so much apathy going around, he didn't doubt that the Darkness would be targeting them), but moving too fast would get him caught and possessed. Hence, Nago was sticking to the shadows and controlling his breathing. He was almost at the Bridge between Red Canyon and Iceberg (and the cracks he could see already starting to form in it were not reassuring), and a single blob of Darkness blocked his path. Slowly, as to make as little sound as possible, Nago extended his claws and crouched to pounce.

Cats, after all, initially evolved as predators.

He leapt as the Darkness turned a bit, its eye scanning towards the Rainbow Bridge. Nago's teeth sunk into the back of it, in the middle of the orange spheres circling it, and his claws came up before it could even try to retaliate. He wasn't sure how long he attacked it, ripping and tearing until it was nothing more than shreds of blackness staining red rocks. The sheer burning hatred he felt for the Darkness staved off the gnawing feeling of apathy. While it wasn't nearly as effective of an emotion at warding off the Darkness as something like joy or love, which was part of why it took quite a while for him to properly kill the thing, Nago's hatred was borne of love.

The Darkness had taken Shiro. It would pay.

Satisfied that the blob he'd just killed wouldn't reconstitute itself anytime soon, Nago darted over the Rainbow Bridge to Iceberg as quickly as he could. He wasn't sure if he could avoid the attention of that damned eye in the sky, but he could very well try. It would do him no good to get caught by the Darkness before even making it to Grass Land, after all.

Chuchu swam as hard and as fast as she physically could through the chilly waters of Iceberg. She didn't dare look up ever since the first time she'd breached the surface. Even just looking upon Zero (and that had to be Zero, right?) left her feeling emotionally exhausted, like she'd be better off just giving up and letting herself fall to the bottom of the sea.

Ugh, even just thinking about it was letting the apathy creep in. Even that line of thought was dangerous!

Thankfully, her thoughts were soon interrupted by a blur of yellow shooting out of the darkness. It very nearly ran into her, and only Chuchu quickly twirling to the side stopped an impact that certainly would have hurt, even with neither party having bones.

With the yellow missile slowing to a stop and the water around it having a bit of time to still, the image Chuchu was seeing resolved itself into a yellow octopus. They had a permanent blush visible, and a sailor's cap with a pink ribbon adorned their head.

"Nyupun?" Chuchu asked. "What's going on?"

"Chuchu! Oh thank the stars you're okay," Nyupun said, Chuchu's very presence seeming to calm them down a bit. "Ripple Field is under attack!"

"Merde," Chuchu swore. "I was just heading that way to meet up with Kine. Is he still himself?"

Nyupun shivered a bit. "What…what do you mean by that?"

Chuchu sighed. She'd meant to tell Nyupun what was going on earlier, but she had been so busy searching for Adeline first (because at least she knew where Nyupun lived and could track them down later) to talk to them. "Two days ago, you know how there was the whole apathy thing going on?"

Nyupun nodded.

"That was the Darkness," Chuchu elaborated, "and it can possess people. And now it's back for round two."

Nyupun hastily glanced around in all directions. "We need to go. It hasn't come for us yet, right? Yeah, let's just get out of here…"

Before they could shoot past Chuchu, though, she shot a tentacle out to stop them. "We only haven't been targeted yet because we're isolated targets and underwater," she said. "And I don't know aboot you, but I'm not letting these salauds take over lying down."

Nyupun was silent for a moment as they thought. Eventually, though, they responded with something entirely unrelated to what Chuchu had been going for. "You know, I'm pretty sure Adeline has only taught you how to cuss in her language."

Chuchu huffed, affronted. "I know more than just how to swear! She just agreed that it was important to know how to be properly vulgar so I could know if someone was insulting me!"

Nyupun stared at her, a confused expression on their face. "Okay, but you two are the only ones on the planet that speak it."

Chuchu shook her head, deciding to just change the topic then and there. "Alright, we're getting off topic. I'm heading to Ripple Field to help fight off the Darkness there. Are you coming or not, mon ami?" She stretched out a tentacle as an offer.

Nyupun seemed hesitant, but eventually reached out with one of their own tentacles, shaking Chuchu's. Moments later, they were speeding off towards Ripple Field.

To say that Ripple Field was in chaos would be an understatement and a half. The Darkness had splashed down into the water like gannets diving for prey, immediately seeking out as many creatures as they could to possess. Brother was turned against brother as the organized structure Mine had built up for Ripple Field fell apart into a free-for-all, and Kine could only watch.

Oh, he and Mine tried to help out in fighting against the Darkness. They struck back when the initial wave came, and Kine's ice was great for nonlethally trapping the possessed. But soon their efforts were for nought, as the Darkness just kept coming. And worst of all, it had possessed their main muscle.

Acro thrashed around, the orca's great strength preventing anyone from getting close. Even the water around him churned and roiled as he moved, sending everyone, be they possessed by the Darkness or not, sprawling through the water. His eyes, just like everything else possessed by the Darkness, had gone black.

The worst of it was that he was preventing any hope of retreat, too. The water was just churning too much for anyone to even swim straight! Still, Kine and Mine fought on, hoping that something, anything would grant them some light to use against the Darkness.

That light came in the form of a pink torpedo.

Chuchu slammed into Acro with so much force that it actually stunned him for a moment, letting the waters calm enough for swimming to start coming easier again. A yellow torpedo followed, impacting with quite a bit less force than Chuchu had. Kine had seen the yellow octopus fellow around a bit before—what was their name again? Nyupun, right?

Regardless, that granted enough of a reprieve for Kine and Mine to properly collect themselves again and lend their own attacks to help. A flat sheet of ice sprang up near Acro and slammed into him too, while Mine physically swam up herself to slap him with her tail.

"Glad ta see youse're in one piece!" Kine said once he was a bit closer to Chuchu and Nyupun.

"Same to you," Chuchu responded. "So, what's the plan, here?"

Kine frowned. "Well, I don't' dink we can take 'im on our own; Acro's a bit outta our league. But we can't retreat if 'e's setting the water like dis."

"So," Mine said as she swam back to them and Acro quickly started recovering from the assault, "youse need someone ta distract 'im?"

Kine narrowed his eyes. Yeah, no way he was allowing this. "Mine, no."

She gave her husband a slight smile. "Youse know more 'bout this stuff than I do," she said. "We need your mind intact more than mine."

Kine gave his wife a stern look. "Mine, what youse're suggesting…"

"She has a point," Chuchu hesitantly said, warily looking at the now nearly-recovered Acro. "I don't like it, but she has a point. We're already friends with Kirby and the others, and if interpersonal bonds are the best help against the Darkness…"

"Mine and I are married," Kine pointed out, annoyed.

Mine swam up and briefly pressed her lips to his. "I know that, hun," she said as she backed away. "Dat's why dat love will carry us through dis, and I know youse'll come back to me." Her expression was soft, which Kine supposed was meant to soften the blow of the despair and terror clawing at his heart. It didn't work.

"I-I can stay too," Nyupun piped up, a terrified but resolute expression on their face. "You need someone speedy to dart in and stun him."

Acro roared as the Darkness finally got him moving again (perhaps he had been actively fighting back while stunned? Kine hoped so), and Mine didn't give Kine any further option to argue against her involvement. Nyupun rushed in to stun Acro again, giving Mine just enough of an opening to join them. "Youse need to run!" she shouted after a moment where she could. "Get ta Kirby!"

Neither Kine nor Chuchu were happy about it, but they both listened to her command.

"Bloody hell, they just don't stop coming, do they?" Coo asked, exasperated, as he fired feather after feather at the descending Darkness. It kept them away from him, for now at least, in favor of them diving into Big Forest. Which wasn't exactly a good thing, and it meant that he'd probably have to fall back and rendezvous with the others to have any chance of winning against this thing.

A rustle of leaves below him alerted him to an attack from Whispy, and Coo moved to the side to let the thrown Gordo sail upwards and into one of the attacking blobs of Darkness. The thing went straight through it, piercing the Darkness's eye, and leaving a trail of dark residue across the sky (unfortunately, that would only kill it temporarily; these things seemed to be able to heal from most anything). Coo, though, at this point had no sympathy for the Darkness. After having been possessed by it himself and hearing what it was capable of from Meta Knight, he agreed that the parasites needed to be exterminated.

Perhaps, in a better world, they might be able to throw all of them at Kirby, and all of them might turn out like Gooey. But they had neither the time nor means to test if Gooey was simply a fluke, that some aspect of his creation allowed for Kirby to turn him. Instead, here Coo was, in the sky and uselessly flinging feathers that rarely even killed their targets. Often, they simply shrugged off the blows and continued on their way to the ground. Honestly, Coo felt like he was stuck in some endless struggle.

And then he made the mistake of looking up.

Zero—and there was no way that that eye ominously staring down at the planet like some angry god wasn't Zero—continued to stare down unblinkingly. Immediately, Coo's emotions started to flee him and the hopelessness began to set in even harder. Was he doomed to just stay here, shooting the Darkness down until he inevitably faltered. Wouldn't it just be easier to stop fighting, to just give in and-

"Coo, watch out!"

A strong gust of wind from—albeit untrained and weak—atmokinesis forced him to look away and pushed him just out of the way of one of the descending pieces of the Darkness. A few seconds longer of despair and it would've had him.

The Darkness instead shot past and right towards the ground, where Whispy hit it with another Gordo. For a tree, he had extremely good aim with those things when he launched them.

Granted a slight moment free from the struggle, Coo looked towards where the wind had come from. Pitch, of all beings, had come to his rescue. He was panting like he'd just flown full force all the way from the other end of the Rainbow Islands. Which, now that Coo considered it, may very well be true. "You just blow in from Cloudy Park, chap?" he asked.

Hovering for a moment to recover some breath, Pitch nodded. "Ah'm trying to find Kirby."

Coo looked out at the Darkness endlessly raining from the sky, noting a couple that got uncomfortably close and sending two air cutters after them (one failed to actually kill its target, but Whispy took care of that down below). "I have to agree that that is the best plan of action," Coo stated. "We should rendezvous with Rick first. There's safety in numbers, and we know prior bonds help combat the Darkness."

"Mhm!" Pitch agreed, and the two of them swooped down below the canopy to properly talk to Whispy.

"We're making for Grass Land," Coo said once they were within hearing range.

There was a rumbling sound from beneath the sapient tree as he moved his roots around. "Understood," he said. "I'll join you."

Pitch looked puzzled. "But…you're a tree?"

Whispy laughed. Instead of speaking, that rumbling sound intensified as he suddenly moved, far faster than a literal tree had any right to. Coo had seen him move before, of course—it was hard to live in a forest near Dreamland and not have seen Whispy at some point—but he'd never actually seen the tree cross to a different island.

As Whispy moved through the earth, he plowed a trough behind him. His roots, though, took care of that, churning the earth in such a way that it filled itself back in, grass and all, to look like he hadn't moved in the first place. If Coo wasn't seeing the tree actively moving and weaving between his woody brethren, he would've said that it had always been stationary!

While they moved, though, they still had to pay close attention to the attacking Darkness. Whispy's Gordos were enough to deal with most of them, thankfully, but a few that either slipped past them or took a different route fell to Coo's feathers and cutter blades. Though in one case, even that wasn't enough, and it took a last-ditch effort from Pitch throwing together a few of Whispy's (rather sharp) leaves and managing to fire them like an arrow to fell the Darkness after them.

Soon, though, they were at the edge of Big Forest, staring out at the cliffs surrounding Grass Land. The waterfall still flowed, unperturbed by the ongoing crisis. Oddly enough, the fact that the river had kept chugging along calmed Coo at least somewhat; if it had stopped that would just be indicative of even more going wrong.

Now all that was left was to cross. Coo and Pitch could both fly, of course, but the former was still wondering how Whispy-

The ground prompt exploded in wood.

Whispy's roots struck out, crossing the distance between Big Forest and Grass Land in only moments. With a grunt, Whispy heaved, yanking himself fully from the ground by anchoring his roots in the neighboring island. He moved fast, even faster than he had through the ground, and Coo and Pitch had to strain themselves to keep up with him. It took a bit over a minute for them to reach Grass Land, at that pace, and Coo found himself struggling to stay in the air once they reached their destination. Pitch, beside him, was actively listing!

"There," Whispy said, seemingly satisfied with himself. "Now, you said you were searching for a Ri-WATCH OUT!"

Coo whirled around, seeing a piece of Darkness gunning for Pitch! He readied a storm of feathers, but he could tell that they wouldn't reach in time. Whispy couldn't fire a Gordo, either; the angle of approach had Pitch right between them! Instead, one of Whispy's roots, still displaying that unnervingly fast speed, speared up from where it had just anchored itself and impaled the Darkness directly.

Unfortunately, that still seemed like the wrong thing to do.

Direct contact with the Darkness, even with something that by all logic should leave it dead, allowed it to take on a host. The blackness absorbed itself into Whispy's root, and the tree began thrashing around, trying to prevent the parasite from taking control. After a moment, when it was clear that he would lose this struggle, Whispy met Coo's eyes.

"Go."

With no way for them to possibly prevent Whispy's possession, he and Pitch were promptly off like the wind.

This was only their second encounter with the stuff, and Rick was already thoroughly done with the Darkness. So many of the animals on Grass Land had already been infected with the stuff, and the only thing that had kept them at bay from him and Pick so far was them sticking close together. Like Meta Knight had said, close bonds acted as at least some of a deterrent, and those that got close anyway were lit aflame by Rick's breath.

Still, both him and Pick knew that they wouldn't be able to keep this up forever. The Darkness seemed to have infinite forces. In a battle of attrition, it would win. The only way to possibly beat it back would be taking the battle to it.

The only issue there was figuring out a way for that to be, well, possible. As far as Rick was aware, the only thing that could really put down the Darkness for good was magic, and some specific types of magic, at that. They could beat it out of a host, but making sure that it didn't reinfect was a problem.

Rick's fire breath speared out again, incinerating a piece of the Darkness that had gotten too close. It'd get back up eventually, but it bought him and Pick enough time to relocate again to get away from the constantly-reforming spheres of Darkness. It was something they'd already done multiple times, but this time something went wrong.

The Darkness had either wisened up to their plans or moved them up on the priority list, because they were suddenly rushed from two different directions. Pick didn't have the same fire magic that he did and Rick couldn't shoot fire in two different directions at once, but by the stars he tried. The piece of Darkness on the right was lit ablaze like the others, but as soon as he turned his attention to the left, that one swerved.

Right towards Pick.

Rick jumped forward, curling into a stone ball in some attempt to defend his girlfriend, but thankfully that turned out to be unnecessary. Instead of the Darkness worming its way into him—or worse, Pick—a purple feather speared down from the sky and diverted its path. It didn't kill it, of course, only delay it, but an extra delay to that particular blob of Darkness came soon afterward. Coo wasn't the only one of Rick's friends to come to his and Pick's rescue.

There was a loud hiss, and suddenly Nago pounced out of the shadows. Rick figured that he must've run all the way from Red Canyon, which was both impressive and rather concerning—the cat being alone was not a good sign, given that Rick had heard Nago go on and on about Shiro the morning after they saved Spike. Still, the cat was welcome there on Grass Land; the Darkness blob that he ripped to complete shreds wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.

Chuchu and Kine crawling out of the nearby lake (Coo swooping in to pick the latter up) alongside Pitch flying down after Coo completed the set. All they needed now was-

"Friends!"

Everyone's attention snapped to Kirby, who was running up to the assemblage of animals while wearing a bucket hat and holding a fishing rod. Gooey was following closely behind him—clearly they had been out fishing before this entire mess started. Despite the severity of the situation, Rick couldn't help but smile. Kirby was here. They could finally start fighting back.

He was excited and relieved enough to pull Pick in for a quick kiss, and momentarily, Rick even forgot about the looming threat of Zero above them.

Quite a few factors came together, then, that every sapient being assembled was unaware of. The natural Dream pervading Popstar and the sheer amount of Heart each of the friends had, alongside them actively pushing back against the Darkness and, most importantly, the direct presence of a Voidspawn all combined to create something that the universe had not seen in a long time:

A Heart Star.

It seemed to almost flow into existence from Rick and Pick's forms, creating a floating object that seemed to shift between a cartoonish depiction of a heart and a five-pointed star depending on how one looked at it. Curiously, and with no sense of caution for the new object that had suddenly just manifested itself into existence, Kirby leapt forward and touched it.

It seemed to shatter, though the calming presence they all were feeling didn't go away. Instead, the pieces of the object (which Rick noted themselves looked like both hearts and stars) floated around Kirby's arm for a moment before absorbing themselves into the little pink puff. For his part, he looked surprised for a bit before grinning, and his smile was contagious.

For the first time since the invasion began, Rick felt hope.

By the stars, this was hopeless.

"Montoya, how're we looking," Dedede growled as he swung his hammer again, splattering the piece of Darkness he was fighting against the wall. It wouldn't last—it never did—but it felt good. The castle's rooftop was a lost cause at this point; these things were coming from the sky, anyway. The fighting had moved inside, and so had he.

The blade knight winced as an explosion rocked Castle Iceberg. "The Poppy Bros. have fallen."

"Ya think?" Dedede asked sarcastically. "How many are still fighting?"

"We've lost around half our troops by now," Montoya said, dejected.

It'd been six minutes since the fighting started. Damn it all, they were getting utterly crushed. Why had Dedede thought that securing Castle Iceberg was a good idea? Ah, right, the Rainbow Bridges. The Rainbow Bridges that, at the moment, seemed to be doing nothing to deter the Darkness.

Unfortunately, King Dedede's day was about to get worse, because his wide frame had blocked Captain Montoya from properly seeing behind him. If he had, maybe he would've been able to warn his king about the impending danger, and maybe Castle Iceberg would've lasted for another few minutes.

Instead, Dedede suddenly felt a blow to his back and, when he stumbled forward, he recognized the feeling that was suddenly pervading his senses. It was the exact same that he'd felt atop Dark Castle's tallest tower—he was being possessed. Again.

His vision went entirely black in seconds.

Zero, Twilight decided, was an apt name for such a creature. Even with the Element of Magic pulsing, staring up at the eldritch abomination (because how else could she describe a blood red eyeball set in an amorphous black cloud the size of a moon?) from just outside the castle left her feeling empty inside. However, her emotions fleeing at least left her with her logic before the apathy would've set in.

Perhaps "Zero" didn't quite capture the full scale of this…thing's power, Twilight idly mused, unable to tear her gaze away. A word felt too full—a full four letters didn't feel empty enough. Even the numeral itself, 0, had its uses mathematically as the additive identity and existed. To truly capture the sheer lack of anything she was feeling, Twilight pondered, perhaps {} or ∅ would be more fitting names.

Then her gaze was broken as Spike pulled her down, and Twilight almost gasped for air with how her emotions returned to her. For a moment, it felt like she was drowning in feeling as the Element of Magic glowed an intense purple, going from nearly complete apathy to her normal range of emotion in an instant.

"Whatever you do," she said once she'd recovered enough to speak, "don't look at that thing. If it wasn't for my Element I think I would've just given up on the spot."

Bandee audibly gulped in fear, but he brought something up after that. "I…I don't think that might be it. I was staring at it earlier and managed to recover myself…" He considered something for a moment. "Princess, it might be targeting you."

Twilight sucked in a breath. "I was one of the ones who took down the Darkness that was here two days ago," she realized. Her eyes widened. "Kirby and Meta Knight are in danger."

"We have to warn them!" Spike said.

Twilight locked eyes with Bandee. "Do we still have the communicator that Meta Knight gave us when we fought Nightmare?"

Bandee shook his head. "We gave that back as soon as construction on the boxing ring was finished! Apparently they have a really limited supply of the things with a long enough range to reach from their complex to here."

"Horseapples," Twilight swore. "We'll need to make sure Castle Dedede is secure before finding him or Kirby, then." After a moment, she added, "Where is Kirby, anyway?"

Bandee and Spike both shrugged, and Twilight was forced to abandon that line of thinking for a moment when the skies opened and Darkness began raining down.

Bandana started backing up towards the grand doors of Castle Dedede, and Twilight was inclined to follow him. "We need to get inside. Now."

Flaring her horn to quickly levitate Spike onto her back, Twilight whirled around and sprinted into the castle with Bandee. Her magic slammed and barricaded the doors shut behind them, and Twilight was thankful to see that the troops in the castle had properly positioned themselves. A horde of everything from Waddle Dees, Waddle Doos, Blade Knights, and Sir Kibbles to Pluggs, Broom Hatters, and even Bugzzy were assembled in the hall, staring at the door with anticipation. They were prepared to strike as soon as the Darkness broke down those doors.

Based on what was going on outside, Twilight gave them three minutes, at best.

"Princess, General!" a voice called for them as they broke past the crowd of warriors. Lieutenant Licht, the Plugg currently in charge of military operations in this wing of the castle, had been hailing them. "What in the world is going on out there?"

Glancing out the nearby window, Bandee paled. "By the stars there's so many of them…"

Taking a quick look, Twilight had to agree. Darkness was raining down from the sky like an overdue storm, and it wasn't just around Castle Dedede, either. There was a village not far from the foot of the mountain. How many innocent people would be taken by the Darkness before this was all over?

The door beyond the crowd shook threateningly, pulling Twilight out of her gloomy musing and forcing her to focus on the present. "Princess," Bandee said, tightly gripping his spear as he, too, stared at the door, "you're the only one here who can actually kill these things for good." Shifting his gaze so that he could look at her directly while still keeping half an eye on the door—it just shook again, not a good sign—he continued. "We need to prioritize certain areas to secure."

Twilight could feel Spike's grip on her mane tighten as he came to a realization. "The kitchen," he said. "It's going to target the kitchen first."

"Spike?" Twilight asked, concerned both for how he knew that and his tone of voice. "How do you know that?"

"When…when I was under," he said, "I think I was seeing some of the Darkness's memories when it was trying to shut me out." Steadying his breath, he continued. "And one of the first things it would do on a planet is destroy anything the people could use to heal themselves even if they fought it off. Hospitals, pharmacies, drug manufacturers, you name it."

Bandee's eyes shot wide open. "And the kitchen is where we store our maxim tomatoes." His gaze hardening, he nodded. "Princess, you and Spike should go and secure the kitchen, then work your way out and save us all from there." He looked back at the door. "I'll stay here and help fend it off."

"What?" Twilight asked, incredulous. "I'm not leaving you here."

"With all due respect, Sir," Licht spoke up, "she's right."

Bandee looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"With His Majesty off at Castle Iceberg," Licht elaborated, "you're the highest authority in the castle. If we lose you, we lose our central command."

"This plan leaves me with no one to command," Bandee countered. "A general without his army is just one man."

"Whatever you decide, do it quickly!" Spike shouted, pointing towards the doors. The barricade was finally failing, and with a mighty crash, Castle Dedede's grand doorway slammed open and its inhabitants sprang into battle.

"Just go!" Licht shouted, rushing forward to help his men.

Twilight immediately took off, and while Bandee seemed hesitant, he did follow her.

"The kitchens are downstairs," Bandee said as the sounds of battle faded into the background behind him. Twilight, at this point, had a decent mental map of Castle Dedede, but the reminder was nice, regardless. "Fastest way there is going to be through the central staircase and past the boxing-"

Before he could finish his sentence, every light in the castle, usually powered by a team of Pluggs under Dedede's employ, shut off. The Darkness must've already gotten to them, probably worming its way in through a window. As a result, Castle Dedede was plunged into darkness, with only some light creeping in through the windows.

It didn't slow them down at all, though. There was enough light to still see, albeit barely, and they kept running as Twilight cast a light spell.

What did slow them down—stop them in their tracks, even—was the floating ball of Darkness in front of them, illuminated by Twilight's spell. She reacted immediately and violently, her horn and the Element of Magic both glowing intensely as she fired out a magical laser. The magic enveloped the Darkness in mere moments, and it was almost eerie in that it didn't scream in pain as it was completely disintegrated.

If she could help it, Twilight wasn't even going to be leaving any residue behind, this time.

Unfortunately, that slowing down cost them. Just as they started moving again, Bandee let out a yelp and tripped, prompting Twilight to look back. Bugzzy, his eyes as black as night, had leapt for him and grabbed ahold of Bandee's foot. The general reacted quickly, jabbing his spear at the bug's hand to force him to let go. It worked, but Bugzzy retaliated by grabbing the weapon in his mandibles before Bandee could properly retreat, forcing him to drop his spear.

Twilight was about to pitch in to help, reading another spell, but a possessed Waddle Doo launched out of the darkness at her, his beam at the ready, and she was forced to change her spell to a last-minute shield. By the time the Waddle Doo's beam had been deflected, a myriad of other possessed residents of Castle Dedede had assembled before them, alongside multiple floating blobs of Darkness.

Bandee gulped, fetching another spear from whatever magical storage he used, and despite his obvious fear he stood resolutely against the crowd. "Princess," he said, getting into a ready stance, "run."

Hating herself for leaving a friend behind, despite knowing the logic behind it, Twilight ran. She tried to ignore the fact that Bandee was drawing most of the castle's fire, tried to ignore the sounds of battle behind her as he must have been fighting tooth and nail to keep his mind, tried to ignore Spike's small whimpers of fear as he pressed his face into her mane. It didn't really work, but she still tried her best to focus entirely on getting to and securing the kitchens as fast as possible.

She wasn't sure exactly how long it took her to get there—maybe one minute, maybe two—but Twilight was surprised that she encountered no further resistance on her way. They'd tried to seal up the castle as best they could, so most of the Darkness was forcing its way through the front doors. Still, given the power outage, some must've found a different way in, so the complete lack of resistance was concerning in its own right.

Reaching the kitchens, she found out why. The door slammed shut behind her and was magically sealed, and the only other person in the room was Chef Kawasaki. The purple light emanating from Twilight's horn illuminated the chef's blackened eyes, and worst of all was the shiny red maxim tomato on the cutting board that he had a large mallet raised over. Next to the board was a pile of what looked suspiciously like tomato paste.

Before he could bring the mallet down, though, Twilight wrapped it in her telekinesis and magically pushed, forcing the Darkness out of the man with her magic. As soon as it was free, her Element pulsed and sent out a beam of magic alongside her, completely erasing that piece of the Darkness from existence.

Kawasaki blinked in surprise, looking confused as to how he got there. When he saw the mallet in his hands and the remains of what must've been almost a dozen tomatoes, his eyes widened. "What…"

Before he could actually ask anything, Twilight cut him off, desperation leaking into her voice. "How many are left?"

Quickly, Kawasaki checked the box to his right that had contained the maxim tomatoes in the first place. "Twenty-six," he reported. "There's other food, too, but with the power out I'm not sure how long the stuff in the freezer will last."

Twenty-six tomatoes and a small assortment of other healing items, some of which were on a time limit. Celestia damn it all, if that food spoiled then what was left wasn't nearly enough for the entire castle to heal themselves if they were injured when all of this was over. Which would be a struggle in and of itself, since Twilight was pretty much the only thing that could excise the Darkness from Castle Dedede right now.

And as the sounds of battle outside of the kitchens began to die down, Twilight was left with the sinking feeling that the only beings left in Castle Dedede that hadn't succumbed to the Darkness were Chef Kawasaki, Spike, and herself.

Applejack had already been having a poor start to her day when Fluttershy had come by in hysterics. She'd figured out pretty quickly that something was going on with Twilight by Fluttershy's babbling about negative rainbow lights and Discord, but what, exactly, was going on had to wait until they gathered the rest of the Element bearers and made for Fluttershy's cottage.

This time, they all fell through a hole in Discord's ceiling and into a pained heap on the floor (except for Fluttershy, who inexplicably drifted down gracefully; Discord's bias was as obvious as ever). Looking back up, Applejack noted that the hole they fell through was actually a full-sized door embedded into the ceiling, frame and all, that she was absolutely certain was not there before.

"Alright," she said, dusting herself off a bit as she separated herself from the pony pile and stood. Fetching her hat, she placed it back on her head and looked towards the screen. "Now what's goin' o-WHAT IN TARNATION IS THAT?"

On the screen was a giant floating red eyeball embedded in some cloud of darkness. It wasn't even in the same universe as her, and Applejack still felt ill and that something was viscerally wrong just looking at it.

"Zero," Shining Armor, who Applejack just realized was sitting on Discord's couch already, said quietly. "That's…that's Zero."

Everypony was silent for a few moments before Pinkie spoke. "Is…is Twilight okay?"

"Twiggles has managed to avoid possession so far," Discord piped up, holding up a secondary screen in his paw that showed Twilight and Spike standing in a darkened room with some orange creature that Applejack hadn't seen yet. "Her little dragon has too. But well, they're pretty much the only ones in Castle Dedede who have."

"Wh-what about Sunset?" Fluttershy asked, nervously. As soon as she'd seen Zero, she'd darted behind the couch, only peeking up on occasion to see if this whole thing was just a nightmare.

Discord shrugged. "That's what we were just about to check!"

Galaxia's magic hummed as Meta Knight twirled, his blade clashing with a possessed Trident Knight. It was vexing, to say the least, how organized the Darkness was in its assault on the Meta-Knights' complex. As soon as he got close enough to possibly work against the Darkness possessing his men with Galaxia, something else would drop on him to force him away. This time, it was a Chilly.

Meta Knight whipped his cape around to block the Chilly's icy breath, taking to the air as the temperature continued to drop around him. Two small tornadoes sprang into being as he swung his sword, one dropping down towards the little snowman and the other moving up to target a Birdon that was flying at him. The possessed bird didn't even squawk as they were carried away by the wind, but now, in the air, Meta had a bit more time to survey the situation.

He was careful not to look up, of course. When he had first gazed upon Zero, even with Galaxia working against its manipulations to prevent him from descending into outright apathy, he had been struck with such a feeling of hopelessness and despair that he almost hadn't dodged out of the way of one of the incoming blobs of Darkness. He hadn't even managed to do so on his own, even; Miss Shimmer had physically pulled him out of the way before being dragged into a battle of her own.

He wasn't quite sure where she was now, even. Meta Knight thought he saw a flash of orange, though on a second look that turned out to just be a rather large butterfly. As he was scanning the ground to look, though, the clanking of metal caught his attention. Someone—probably Captain Vul—had released one of the new Heavy Lobsters to combat the threat.

Speaking of Vul, he, at least, was easy to spot in the chaos. He stood taller than most other creatures on Popstar, and the distinctive white clothes he preferred to wear and his beard made him stand out among the Darkness. He hadn't been possessed yet, thankfully, and he was carefully scanning his surroundings for Darkness as he messed with a device that Meta knew was used to command most of his creations.

Sure enough, the ground exploded a ways away where the Darkness had gathered a particularly large force. Another of Vul's designs, the Heavy Mole, dug its way out of the ground in the process, the spinning ends of its digging arms felling blob after blob before they even reached the ground. Vul, thankfully, wasn't using it to target their possessed men.

A flash of Darkness caught Meta's eye, though, and he saw a blob that was spearing directly towards Vul. He immediately started flying after it, but his initial position had been suboptimal; the Darkness would reach and possess Vul long before he could kill it with Galaxia. Or it would have, had it not been for an orange unicorn disengaging from a fight she was involved in (ah, that was why Meta hadn't seen her yet; she was surrounded by similarly orange Scarfies and Waddle Doos) and teleporting next to Vul in a flash of aquamarine light.

Sunset, maintaining her momentum from before her teleport, pushed Vul out of the way of the Darkness, saving him from possession. Unfortunately, that now left her in the Darkness's path and Meta was still too far away.

The blob of Darkness slammed into Sunset, knocking her to the ground and unfortunately immediately absorbing itself into her. She seemed to realize what was happening and tried to react by punching herself in the face—an act that would've been slightly amusing had the circumstances not been so dire—but that failed to actually do anything.

Within seconds, her light blue eyes had turned black, from the pupil to the sclera. Meta Knight pumped his wings harder, trying to at least mitigate some of the damage by maybe stabbing one of her limbs with Galaxia, as her horn began to flare with aqua light. Oddly, though, her horn light was flickering, and an expression like she was trying to figure out a particularly tough puzzle crossed her face.

The magic promptly sputtered out a few seconds later, and Meta thought that, perhaps, the Darkness simply could not use Equestrian magic. He should have known that it was foolish to have such hope in this situation. Instead, he was given pause when something truly unexpected happened.

Her eyes, completely unlike everything Meta thought he knew about how the Darkness worked, regained color. They didn't turn back to her natural turquoise, though. Instead, they turned a solid toxic green, and purple wisps of some gaseous substance began emanating from them. The magic that started to run up her horn wasn't its natural color either. It was jet-black and seemed to roil unnaturally, like the universe itself was trying and failing to stamp the magic out.

Meta Knight landed as the purple substance started pouring out of Sunset's horn as well, unsure of how to proceed. This was completely uncharted territory, and he was wary to approach some unholy fusion of Equestrian magic and the Darkness.

Then Sunset's radioactive green gaze turned towards him, and he was pulled into this mess anyway.

A black aura wrapped around his right arm, and Meta Knight involuntarily let out a low scream of pain. Whatever spell the Darkness had cast left his arm in agony, like every nerve ending in his arm was individually being seared with a branding iron. Even his years of training couldn't protect him from his mind immediately focusing on nothing but the pain, and it was a miracle that he didn't black out.

That loss of focus let the Darkness-possessed Sunset get close, and her left forehoof slammed into Meta's mask. The force of the blow launched him backwards multiple meters, and combined with the sheer pain his arm was in, he reflexively dropped Galaxia as he flew.

That, at least, got the Darkness to release whatever pain spell it was using. He was still left almost paralyzed from it, though, and his eyes widened when he looked back up to see Sunset's body charging up another spell, the blackness around her horn churning wildly. He likely would have been a goner had it not been for another of his officers that had so far escaped possession.

Sailor Dee, her own battles having led her inside and just having been launched through a medical closet and the window of the infirmary, ran towards the confrontation with the closest thing resembling a weapon she could find. She reached Sunset just before the Darkness unleashed its spell, jumping up and jabbing a syringe (that Meta hoped was a tranquilizer, but he was not naïve enough to downright assume so) into Sunset's shoulder, Sailor pushed the Darkness enough to change its spell's trajectory.

Unfortunately, now Sailor was uncomfortably close to the Darkness as its spell shot out. It was a fire spell of some sort, black flames jutting out from Sunset's horn. The very air itself seemed to burn, and even with the flames missing him, Meta Knight could feel the temperature rise to nearly unbearable levels. And Sailor Dee had been right next to its source—with the way she was swinging after jabbing the syringe into Sunset, her right foot even got caught in the direct path of the spell itself.

A concussive spell followed, unceremoniously flinging Sailor off of Sunset. The whole thing bought Meta Knight enough time, though, to recover and grab Galaxia (this time with his left hand—his right was still almost non-functional from the earlier spell). He rocketed towards Sunset, intending to get the Darkness out of her, but before he could reach her she vanished. There was the tell-tale pop of teleportation that, instead of giving off light, seemed to suck in the light around it and make the surroundings darker. The Darkness had escaped with Sunset's body to stars know where.

Quickly pivoting priorities, Meta Knight flew back to where Sailor had landed. Her right foot was just gone, incinerated by the Darkness's spell, but the wound itself had been cauterized. She wouldn't bleed out, at least, and she had been knocked unconscious by the concussive spell, so she wasn't feeling the pain at the moment. Still, she was majorly at risk, and even the healing that maxim tomatoes offered wouldn't regenerate a lost limb.

Vul ran up, his face pale. "Is she…"

"She's alive," Meta Knight assured. "But she needs medical attention. Has the Darkness taken our tomatoes?"

"I was with Mace and Axe Knight when the Darkness struck," Vul explained. "Mace was one of the first ones possessed and I think Axe wasn't far behind—with their memories there's no way that we have any tomatoes left by now."

"Shit," Meta Knight swore. He looked down at Galaxia, the gem still pulsing with a failing effort to push back the Darkness. Looking around at his complex, seeing more and more of his men get possessed, he recognized that the situation was hopeless there. "I can't kill the Darkness here alone, and Castle Dedede may have some maxim tomatoes left. Princess Twilight would likely prioritize protecting those."

Vul met Meta's eyes, seeing what his boss was getting at. After a moment, he steeled his expression and nodded. "I'll hold the line, Sir," he said, drawing his personal weapon, a blunderbuss that he'd been carrying around since Meta Knight had debriefed them about the threat of Zero. Turning around, he aimed and fired at an approaching blob of Darkness, dropping it for a few seconds as the noises of the Heavy Mole and Heavy Lobster continued to ring out in the background. "Good luck."

Meta gave Vul a resolute nod before gathering the injured Sailor Dee in his arms, careful to avoid poking her with Galaxia. He flared his wings, taking off as fast as he could towards Castle Dedede.

In space, the Whole watched as the last of itself that it could spare flew down to the planet below. This whole process would go a lot faster and a lot smoother if it could go down there with its full power, but the peskiness of the Dreamwater prevented that. It was no matter, though. Nearly half of the planet was already under its control.

Within a week, Stellarium would fall.

Author's Note:

So, remember when I had Twilight think about how Gooey's use of her magic reminded her of Sombra? Yeah, that was foreshadowing.

Also, I uh, didn't mean for this chapter to be over 13,000 words long. I just started writing it beacuse I wanted to get an early start on it and I'm excited to write the DL3 arc, and uh...yeah. There was a lot to cover this chapter and I wound up even cutting some parts from Chuchu and Kine's segments, and it was still absurdly long. Next chapter should be shorter. Probably. Maybe. It also probably won't happen as quickly, because I think I need to take a few days' break after writing this monstrosity lol.

Oh, and a quick mention, with this chapter aPPPPoPP has breached the 200,000 word mark! Thank you all for sticking with this fic for so long, and here's to the future!

See y'all next time!