Nexus: Heroes Will Rise

by tmb1112

Universal borders have been erased and beings from thousands of universes now live on the same world: Nexus. In the first Saga of Nexus, Awul was saved, but the mysteries of Nexus remain. Now our heroes sail across the sea to Aebrith to search for lost loved ones and save the world. MCs from DBZ, KH, Soul Eater, FT, Blue Exorcist, Bleach, 7DS, OP, Ben 10, SAO, HxH, and many more!

93. Nexus HWR 13-5 It's a Trap

Nexus HWR 13.5: It's A Trap!

A group of fifteen walked up the wide white steps of the Wizard King's castle. The closer they got to the giant building, the harder it was to see the sides of the front wall they were walking up towards. Sanji looked to his right as they walked up, staring at the marble pillars rising high above them before ending in white archways that curved over the stairs to connect with the pillars on the opposite side. As the chef was looking at a pillar, he saw past it and out onto the grassy landscape beyond that looked so much different from the black wastelands they had been traveling over up until a minute ago.

"How did we get here?" Natsu wondered as they walked up the steps, heading for the giant ornate wooden doors at the top of the staircase. The doors looked to be made for giants with the huge golden knockers they had on either side of the doors' centers a hundred feet above them. "And what's up with this place? Is the Wizard King some kind of giant?"

"Oh yeah, he's a giant alright," Stan muttered, and he smirked towards the castle as he hoped Cartman was still listening to them.

"If you are speaking of my power, then yes! I am a giant!" The Wizard King's voice blasted through the doors in front of them and made the stairs below them vibrate.

"Some ego he's got," Sanji said and lit himself up a cigarette. As the pirate was about to take a puff out of it, the cigarette flew out of his mouth and floated in the air in front of him. Sanji stared at it in surprise for a second, then he leaned back just a little too slow. Tsss- "Ah!" Sanji jumped backwards and smacked his right hand across the front of his face, knocking away the cigarette that just burnt his left cheek.

"Hahaha!" The Wizard King laughed. He dropped the cigarette and kept laughing while Sanji seethed with anger farther down the steps than his friends.

"What happened?" Gray asked, turning to the chef who he did not see why he jumped back.

"The shitty bastard burnt me," Sanji growled, rubbing his cheek where there was a small circular burn mark on it. Weird, it shouldn't have been that hot. My body can take- "I heated it up too." Sanji heard the voice in his head responding to his thoughts, and he darted his gaze around in surprise as none of his friends seemed to be able to hear that. Who the Hell are you?

"As I've told you, I am the Wizard King!" The voice boomed once more. "Enter my castle if you dare, but know that if you do, I have the authoritah to kill you all!"

"Bullshit!" Stan yelled at the giant doors. He ran towards them and stopped right in front of the crack down the middle, then shouted while looking up, "I don't know why you took Timmy Turner, but we're not letting you enslave him any longer!"

"That's right!" Nami yelled, running up next to Stan. She looked down at the cloaked boy next to her, then back at the door which she spoke at in a softer voice, "Kid, listen to me. Timmy's like, family to me. You have to let him…"

"'Kid?' Who do you think you're talking to, you bitch?!"

Nami's jaw dropped. Luffy bared his teeth, but Sanji was beyond that, soaring over the heads of those in front of him and igniting his leg in flames on his way towards the door. "We gave you a chance!" Sanji shouted, though after that remark at Nami, he was glad to be able to do this. As Sanji flew at the doors though, his body started to slow down. For a second he thought it was the Wizard King using his mind again, but then he saw the swirling purple circle in the center of the door in front of him. The huge wooden doorway was twisting in his vision, and everything else around him was trembling as an enormous pressure pushed down on him. His skin started to stretch and the air around him altered in color.

Everyone ran up the stairs to the spot right in front of the doors as Sanji crashed down. The chef was wide-eyed and looked like he was seeing things, but he shook his head around once he hit the ground and saw his friends all leaning over him. "What just, happened?" He asked, looking down at his hands and flinching as he saw them looking exactly as they should.

"Are you okay?" Usopp asked, leaning down and grabbing Sanji by a hand to help him up. "You just stopped flying all of a sudden," Usopp said, and Sanji blinked a few times in confusion.

"How long…" Sanji began, as time felt different for him a moment ago. It felt like days could have passed, maybe, and that he was flying that entire time, or falling. He turned and stared at the doors behind him, then lifted his gaze up and stared at a warped circle of swirling purple that the others all looked up at and only noticed now that they were close. "What are these doors?" Sanji whispered.

"Those doors," The Wizard King began in a smug and thunderous tone. "Are made from the strongest trees on this world. Mahogany!"

"Mahogany?" Franky asked skeptically, as he knew a dozen kinds of wood stronger than Mahogany.

"Not just any Mahogany, but Mahogany from the world of Malchior 7. The trees there are three hundred feet tall and breathe fire! From those trees my doors were forged using the most powerful magic known in the multiverse! That means that my doors are not only nigh indestructible, but they can bend the fabric of the universe itself!" The Wizard King started laughing after shouting all that, while the figures in front of the doors stared at them with much wider eyes than before.

"How do we open them?" Gray wondered. He saw what happened when Sanji got close, and he did not know if he wanted to try moving any closer and risk going through what the chef just did.

"We don't need to," Riku said. He lifted his right palm and the Wizard King's annoying voice cut off. Riku's right hand covered in a pitch black darkness that oozed off his fingers and dripped to the floor below. A black portal rose out of the ground in front of him, and Riku put his hand down before walking through it unobstructed.

"What? You can't do that- Hey! Stop it!" One after another, the group walked after Riku into his black portal.

Rin glanced around nervously as he stepped towards it, but hearing the upset shouts of the man in charge, he smiled and walked through the portal with Kuro walking in right behind him. Gray and Juvia headed in after them, but Usopp stood still staring at their backs as they walked ahead inside the darkness. How can he use that, still?! After all that happened!

"Usopp, you coming?" Sanji asked, looking back at the sniper. He looked a little confused at Usopp's dark look, then sighed as he realized what it was that had Usopp so hesitant. "Get over it for now, it's our best way in," he told the long-nosed man. Usopp looked surprised for a second that Sanji knew what he was thinking about, then he nodded with a more hardened expression and walked forward into the dark portal. He had traveled through one before, but never had he felt so angry while doing so.

Inside the dark portal, Usopp found himself all alone. He was the last one inside, but he no longer saw any of his comrades who entered before him. The man looked over his shoulder and could not see the entrance he came in from. Don't get turned around, he thought nervously. He refocused on what was in front of him, even though everything looked the same. Usopp started walking, his breath hiked and his teeth chattering. After a few seconds, his teeth stopped chattering to instead stay clenched together with his lips pulled apart. His eyebrows narrowed down and his fists clenched hard at his sides. Then, Usopp stepped out of the darkness and into a brightly lit grand entrance hall.

Usopp walked out onto a red carpet that cut right down the middle of the symmetrical room to the curving stairs up ahead. The stairs at the end of the carpet curved up in either direction then met back up again on the second level of the room. At the top of those stairs was a second floor that was only wide enough to be considered like a balcony for all the doors wrapping around the second level of the room. There were red doors lining the walls of the second floor and the first, and there was a wide and long hallway cutting straight ahead at the top of the stairs as well, leading to another section of the castle.

Sanji was looking behind him instead of around at the big room like most everyone else. Usopp had taken a little longer than he thought the man would since he thought he saw Usopp walking in right behind him. The look on Usopp's face as he exited the darkness though, it made the chef get a bad feeling in his chest. Usopp saw the look Sanji was giving him and stopped baring his teeth, unclenched his fists, and shook his head around in confusion at why he was so angry. It's because of the darkness, he reminded himself, and even when he stopped shaking his head, the dark look was still in his eyes.

The other person looking back was at the front of the group, but he turned away before Usopp could get him in his eyesight. "We got past your doors," Riku called out. "Now bring us Timmy, or else."

"You weren't supposed to get inside like that!" The Wizard King snapped in an annoyed voice. "I had a little game set up for you in the courtyard-"

"We're not here to play games," Natsu growled. His head bowed a little and the top half of his face shadowed over. "We came for our nakama."

"Give Timmy back!" Nami shouted.

"SHUT UP!" Cartman bellowed, making the entire castle around them shake as he did. They heard panting like the evil kid was fuming with anger, then Cartman sneered down at them, "Each of the doors you see around you could be the door that Timmy Turner is behind." The group started looking around at the doors more carefully, but the doors all looked identical to each other, and there were dozens of them. "Be careful though, I've set traps all over my castle. Opening the wrong door, might mean death."

"Stop messing around!" Stan shouted, waving a hand in front of his body and stepping forward. "Cartman, why are you doing this?"

"Because I want to!" Cartman screamed down. "You must face the consequences for what you've done." Lights illuminated right over every single door in the room and down the hallway jutting out on the second floor balcony. The ceiling of the grand hall was high above them, though not as tall as the doors had looked from the outside. Looking back at them now, the doors seemed smaller from the inside.

"I don't like this place," Kirito said, gazing around with a serious expression at how strange their environment was. We're in his domain now. Everything around us was created by this crazy child. When the laws of physics are determined by a maniac, reality as I know it no longer exists in the same state.

"Cartman! Cartman?!" Stan shouted, but there was no response. "Answer me you asshole!"

"Stan, that's enough," Riku said back to the short boy behind him. "We'll find Timmy. If he wants to be our enemy, then we'll fight him. You okay with that?"

"Yeah," Stan replied with a nod. "But do you really think we can beat him?"

"Yes," Riku said without hesitating. He looked up at the ceiling and continued in a dark voice, "We won't play by his rules."

Luffy threw his hands forward and grabbed onto some railings near the top of the stairs. He rocketed himself up to the next hallway, then called out, "It's a dead end with more doors on it." The pirate hummed to himself and then lifted his right thumb that he bit into. "Gear Third: Bone Balloon." Luffy's right fist expanded so it was more than three times as large as his own body, then it shimmered and turned black as the pirate captain added, "Armament Hardening." He clenched his fist hard and then threw it forward down the hallway in front of him, "Elephant Gun!"

His giant fist almost filled up the entire hallway. It shot down the hall and set off a pitfall trap halfway down it, then shattered through a sheet of bulletproof glass on the other side that someone would have crashed into had they tried jumping over the pitfall, making them fall into it anyway. Luffy's fist kept going and slammed into the wall at the end of that hallway where there were three more red doors. His fist slammed into the wall and stopped moving, and Luffy ground his teeth but could not push any harder into the attack. The wall did not budge, and neither did the doors.

"Welp," Luffy said as his arm snapped back to him. "That didn't work." He looked back and shrugged at his friends who sighed in disappointment.

"Maybe I should try it," Natsu said, jumping up for the second floor himself only on his right side where he thought the wall looked weakest. Luffy frowned back his way and opened his mouth to shout there was no point, but his eyes focused on the part of the wall Natsu was jumping at.

What is that? Riku thought, noticing some small cracks around the part of the wall Natsu was heading towards. It's way too obvious. "Natsu, don't! It's a tr-"

"AHAHAHAHA!" A jack-in-the-box clown shot out of the wall laughing like a maniac while chunks of wall flew out around its laughing face. Natsu flipped over in midair from shock and then got slammed in the back by the laughing clown, sending him crashing back into the floor while a few of his friends let out screams or shouts of panic. The clown pulled itself back into the wall a second later, and all the chunks of wall that flew out when it burst from its seams repaired themselves in a few instants.

Riku frowned as he had taken a step to try and get through the wall where the trap had sprung from. He planned for that, the silver-haired teen thought in an annoyed way after the wall repaired itself.

"You bastard!" Natsu shouted as he jumped to his feet. He heard Luffy laughing madly at the top of the stairs where he fell on his back and was rolling around, and steam started coming off of the Dragon Slayer's body. "I'm all fired up! You hear me?!"

"Cartman?!" Stan yelled. Their host was unresponsive. He had given them their rules, and now they realized that they really only did have one way forward. Even if Riku wanted to use portals to get them farther into the castle, there was as likely a chance of him popping them into a room full of traps as there was of them walking into one through a red door.

"Why isn't he responding?" Usopp asked. His eyes darted around at the doors on the second floor wrapping around the entrance hall, and then he looked towards the hallway in front of them just up the stairs where there were dozens more doors. "Timmy's only in one of these rooms, so if opening the wrong one means we die… we can't open any of them!" He shouted.

"Usopp's right, it's too risky," Kirito agreed. He sounded annoyed as he said it, and he added, "That kid's treating this like a game, but not a very good one. Usually the players, us, would have at least a small chance of winning."

"This does seem impossible," Robin mentioned. "We also do not know if he is telling us the truth."

"He's probably not," Stan muttered.

Ben turned to the younger boy next to him. "You said you could get him to give us Timmy," Ben said. Stan frowned deeper in frustration, and Ben continued, "Isn't there anything you could do? Why is he acting like this? He's your friend, right?"

"He was, a long time ago," Stan said while glaring up, hoping that Cartman was watching and listening right now. "But even then, he was still a terrible person."

"He's your age?" Nami asked, as that was what she was getting from the conversations the boys had had. Stan nodded, and Nami frowned herself so angrily, but she could not keep up all the hate she had built for the one who had kidnapped Timmy. "Then, he can't be that bad," Nami continued. Stan turned towards her and started shaking his head like she did not understand. "No child is evil," Nami said, something she truly believed. "So I'm sure, we can get him to give up Timmy if we-"

"You're wrong," Stan told her. He said it in a matter-of-fact tone, and he shook his head as she looked down at him in a pitying way like he was the wrong one for doubting his old friend. Stan looked around and saw that more than a few people did not think this was as intense a situation any longer because of the Wizard King's identity. "This one time," Stan said, turning to look Nami back in the eyes as he did. "Some high schooler named Scott Tenorman tricked Cartman into buying his pubes for ten dollars." The others stared at Stan in confusion why he was bringing this up, but Stan continued, "So to get revenge, Cartman had Scott's parents murdered, then he chopped up their bodies and cooked them into a chili which he then tricked Scott into eating."

The thirteen people and cat around Stan dropped their jaws. It was an abridged version of the story, but Stan figured it got the point across.

"Th-that's fucked," Ben whispered.

"You're sure, he's human?" Kuro asked, as it sounded more like a demon to the cat.

"Y-Y-You didn't think of warning us before?" Usopp snapped rapidly at the kid.

Stan turned and looked a little surprised, and he asked, "Would you not have come if I did?" Usopp's scared eyes widened, and the others all looked in at Stan who continued, "Timmy Turner's a hero, and he's saved, so many people's lives. We can't leave him here," Stan was getting a little worked up, but the people in front of him regained their determined looks. They looked as serious as they did before learning the Wizard King's identity, even more so after what Stan just told them.

"Of course we're not leaving him here," Riku said. He stepped forward in front of the group towards the stairs up, then he stopped and mentioned, "But a warning would have been nice."

"I mean, I knew he was messed up," Stan started to explain. "But all these things he's doing, the things he's capable of, he could never do any of it back on our world."

Kirito hummed to himself. Gaining all this power solely through his time on Nexus? I can believe it.

"There's nothing we can do about it," Nami said. She started walking to her right with confidence in her step. "Does anyone feel anything behind the doors?" She asked while heading towards one of her own. "Haki, or ki, or anything?" She stopped at a door and looked down at the round brass knob on it. Nami froze and looked left, then she took a few sidesteps that way and stood in front of a different door. As soon as she got in front of that one, she looked back at the one she had walked to so confidently at first. Gut feeling was failing her, but she heard her strong friends behind her call out that they could not feel anything at all inside this place, not even each other's Haki presences. If gut feeling and her friends could not do it, then reckless abandon it was. Nami reached forward without hesitating and twisted the doorknob in front of her.

As Nami's hand twisted the doorknob, loud clicking noises filled the entrance hall that made everyone turn her way and stare at her back with wide eyes. Nami pulled outwards in a strong tug, ignoring the shouts of the others behind her, and she stared forward into a wide and empty room. The room looked to be a box made of cement, but there was a huge metal sink faucet on the wall opposite the door she just opened. Above that faucet was a large sign painted in bold red letters that looked to be dripping down in a terrifying way. "'YOU LOSE,'" Nami read in a whisper.

"Get down!" Riku tackled Nami away from the door back in front of the one she had originally chosen. As soon as Nami's feet were lifted off the floor, a powerful jet of water shot through where she was just standing. The jet of water was thicker than a watermelon and shooting out so fast that it slammed straight into the red door on the opposite side of the hall. The others who were farther into the middle of the room dove forwards or leapt back to avoid the jet, and then they spun towards the wall the jet of water crashed into where waves of water were flying up in the air and in all directions.

Robin crossed her arms as she leapt backwards and created wings on her back that she used to fly high up in the air. She looked down where she was just standing and did not like how the floor was already covered in a coating of water. She darted her gaze around while everyone was still getting back up or helping their friends to their feet in the shallow water. The doors must be air-tight, or at least water-tight. A jet that powerful, she had to flap away in the air because of the trajectory of some huge splashes of water. She glanced up and recalled how the high ceiling was not as high as it should have been. I thought that did not make sense. The boy who rules here has a large ego, and his abode displays that in every sense. So why would he make this room smaller than it should be, unless to work with one of his traps.

"Everyone," Robin called out. Her friends who had just gotten back up and were stumbling around in the rising water lifted their gazes to the woman flying high above. "The water will continue to rise until the room is full to the roof."

Riku and Nami spun away from the powerful jet flying out of the room next to them, looking up in the air in surprise at what Robin just said. Riku looked around fast and realized that what she was saying made sense, since in only a few seconds the floor was already covered in a few inches of water. It was only up above his ankles at this point, but he could see it start rising up his own shins. "Riku, I'm sorry," he lifted his head and saw the woman next to him who was still using his arm to balance herself looking terrified. "I just- I wanted to get Timmy. I, I needed-"

"Nami, calm down," Riku said softly, in an understanding voice. He put his arm on her back and gave her a small smile, "We had to try one of the doors. If you didn't do it, we'd probably all still be standing around talking about what to do next." She stared at him in shock at how calm he was, then Riku pulled his arm off of her back and turned his whole body to face her. "Now when you looked in that room, what did you see?" Nami had been blocking his view of the room when he had run towards her to save her from the trap he knew was coming, and he did not care much about what was inside before.

"What did I…" Nami shook her head to regain control of herself. The others were all shouting about what they should do, and most of them were trying to get to higher ground now. They rushed up the stairs, helping each other as they went if anyone got swept up by the strong currents waving around. The water was up past their knees already, and it seemed like it was rising faster every second. Nami started nodding at the man in front of her as she felt the water touch the bottoms of her thighs. "There was a sign, a big painted note above the faucet. He was taunting me; it said 'YOU LOSE' in all caps."

"What else?" Riku asked. "What did the faucet look like? Was there a wheel to turn it off? A lever?"

"I- I don't-" Nami paused and got a confused look on her face.

"What is it?" Riku asked, his voice hurried as he was feeling a little rushed here.

"A drain!" Nami shouted. "But, it was right in the middle of the floor. It- why isn't it draining the water?" Nami sounded so confused.

"It must be like one in a bathtub, there's something blocking it right now that we need to remove," Riku nodded to himself as it made sense while he explained it. This is a game after all. He wasn't just going to kill us without giving us a chance. It's like Kirito said, the players have to have the ability to win.

"Gum Gum-" Luffy shouted.

Nami and Riku turned and tried looking through the thick jet of water where they could somewhat see Luffy. He was standing in thigh-deep water, but he had another giant black fist thrown back behind him, aimed at the red door being pushed open by the jet of water. "ELEPHANT GUN!" Luffy punched it forward and slammed it into the door so hard that the door pushed into the jet of water, redirecting it at the shocked two on the other side who were not expecting the jet to suddenly explode outwards in every direction.

Sanji had been kicking his way down towards the door, and Natsu was running over as well, but neither of them were expecting the water to suddenly change its splash pattern. The two of them, and Riku and Nami were slammed by the powerful explosion of water as the door got pushed into the jet stream's path. Luffy panicked as he saw Nami and Riku go flying backwards on the other side of his punch, then he ground his teeth and pushed harder into the door that he almost lost a hold of with his panic. He leaned forward and pushed the red door farther and farther in, making the water explode straight upwards into the roof where it then splashed out in all different directions. Robin got soaked and moaned but could not hold together her wings, falling out of the air only for a recovered Sanji to catch her.

"Almost, got, it-" Luffy groaned as he pushed harder into the door, but he was finding it harder to put any more power in. He moaned and pushed harder, but his arm felt weaker and the door started pushing back out. The water was up to his waist already, rising up his stomach, and so much was splashing on him from the wavy water and the unpredictable splash patterns off the roof and walls. Luffy fell down to his knees, soaking the rest of his body, and making his arm snap back to him as he lost his strength.

The door flew open, and the full force of the jet slammed back into the opposite wall again. The whole room shook as the water jet crashed into the other side's door, and then a scream rang out from that side of the room. Everyone looked over and saw Juvia on her hands and knees in the water, barely keeping her head over the surface as she panting in pain and exhaustion. She had tried moving her body through the water on the floor all the way into that room, but when Luffy lost his hold on the door, she got swept up and into the jet of water. She had then attempted moving through the jet, but her body was too slow and the water she moved through was across the room and crashing into the opposite wall in under a second.

"Juvia!" Gray called down from the second floor balcony right above her. He was scoping out the room and trying to find a way out, but the best option seemed to be taking another red door. He jumped off the balcony and down into the shallow water near where the jet was hitting the wall, and he winced as the ricochet from the wall into his back felt just as hard as he imagined it did getting hit by the full power of the jet itself. Natsu fell down on his back a few yards in front of Gray while he was helping Juvia up to her feet, and the ice mage stared at the man with pink hair in confusion, wondering when Natsu even got hit. He looked back at Juvia and asked, "Are you alright?"

"I, tried," she whispered.

"I know you did," Gray said. "Now get out of the water. You too Natsu!" He shouted as the Dragon Slayer lifted his head up. The others trying to stop the water on the first level looked over at Gray who lifted his one arm above his head and yelled, "I'm going to freeze everything! Get out of the water!"

"The water's touching everything!" Ben yelled down from the top of the stairs where many of them were gathered together. Water droplets were hitting him or raining down on him even as he shouted it, and he called out, "You'll freeze all of us!" He had to shout to be heard over the thunderous noise of the water jet crashing into the wall.

"Riku! Get us out of-" Franky started shouting across the room.

"We aren't leaving without Timmy!" Riku shouted back before the cyborg could finish.

Franky froze with his mouth open, then he closed it and hardened his expression. He just wanted to get out of there for a moment and come back in, but they would be coming into a room full of water. Escaping did not fix their problems. He turned and looked at a door just on the right of the extending hallway near the stairs. "If we can't leave," Franky said and an ominous grin spread on his face. "Then we may as well try the other doors."

Sanji leapt up to the second level with Luffy in his arms who he dropped unceremoniously on the ground. The rubberman started coughing up buckets of water, while Natsu and Juvia landed down next to him. Riku flew up in the air on the other side of the room with Nami in his arms. The bruised ribs she got from the jet of water crashing into her were healed, and Riku had just promised her to never tell Luffy how hurt she got by his attempt to close the door. Franky paused before going into another door and risking setting off another trap, looking back instead like everyone else at the one-armed man in the middle of the first floor.

The water was up to Gray's chest already. He had his right arm held high, and he yelled out, "Ice Make: INSTA-FREEZE!" He brought his right palm down and slammed it against the surface of the water. Waves froze in mid-splash. Water rising up the steps froze and made the one that just got covered turn slippery. Droplets that had just risen off of the water turned to ice and dropped back down with little clinks. Gray's body became frozen in ice from the middle of his chest down, and the entire first floor of the room froze. The jet of water froze too, as the bottom of it had already touched the water rising in the room. The top of the jet was visible out of the water though, as the top was over seven feet off of the ground. The whole jet was frozen, all the way back through the wide open door, all the way to the faucet that Gray saw for the first time.

The faucet looked like a sink's, only twenty times as large and without any knobs to control it on the sides. It was also pointed straight out instead of down, but all the way into its hole was frozen. He stared around the side of the jet next to him all the way into that room, barely able to see inside considering how thick the jet was. "I think," Gray began, a relaxed look appearing on his face. His friends all smiled, and then a loud crack echoed through the room.

The single crack was followed by the entire jet of ice shattering, and water exploding outwards in every direction from it. The jet came back thicker and more forcefully than ever. It widened to a point that the edge of it slammed into Gray and tore through his shirt, making the man scream as it started ripping at his body next. Gray had to dispel his own last attack in order to escape from the ice, and that returned the entire room to water in a couple of seconds. The ice mage reeled backwards away from the thicker jet of water that had reached a power so strong he could swear it would break through the door it was slamming into. The water around him was getting red, but a green light surrounded him and he felt the wound on his left side heal up.

Gray lifted his head up and saw Riku nod down at him. Riku had his black Keyblade in his right hand, and Nami held up around the waist in his other. His eyes were darting around the room quickly. He was checking everything he saw, and he called out, "Don't do it Franky." The others spun around and saw their cyborg about to reach for another doorknob. As they all started arguing with each other about that, Riku went back to trying to find a different way out of this situation. He did not notice the woman he was holding in one arm open her mouth to say something, then stop as she saw how deep in thought he was about everything else.

Nami felt strange being stuck in this position unable to move, she felt bad that they were in this situation because she had picked the wrong door, but really she just felt nervous with Riku's hand around her waist. She was glad she was on the other side of the room and high above her friends, because she hoped none of them would notice how red her cheeks were. Nami shook her head around and scolded herself, This is not the time!

"I have an idea," Riku said. Nami spun to his face in surprise, but he was really just saying it aloud and not really to anyone in particular. He saw her turn towards him though, and he looked back and said in a low voice, "Come on." He shot across the room and lowered down to the top of the stairs where the water had just came up over and was now spreading out around the balcony and the hallway ahead of them.

"Hey Riku," Gray began as he had just gotten back there himself. "Maybe you should just try using a portal. Get us out of this room at least."

"I have a better idea," Riku said. He glanced down at his soaked shoes as he felt more water start filling them again. The young man kicked his shoes off then reached down and grabbed the hem of his shirt, lifting that up and taking it off too.

"What? Stripping is your idea?" Usopp asked in a deadpan tone.

Gray took his partially ripped shirt off and threw it aside. "Already ahead of you," he said and nodded at Riku to show he was fully with the plan.

Riku sweatdropped, then said, "It's okay. You can all keep your clothes on." Riku ripped a piece of cloth off of the hem of his shirt, and he tied it around his head, blindfolding himself. "Just, stay here." He walked forward and down the steps into the water.

"Riku!" Nami called after him. "What are you doing?"

"Trust me," Riku said without slowing down. He walked a few steps farther, and then the top of his head went under the wavy water. The water was too rough to see beneath it, though they were able to follow his shadow for a few more seconds. Then he was gone, and all of them were silent.

The water rose higher so that it was above their shins, hitting their knees, and none of them saw where Riku had gone. "Well, there goes our one escape route," Usopp muttered after ten seconds of nothing happening and the water continuing to rise.

"We're not trying to escape," Nami whispered. Usopp turned left and a bunch of others looked at Nami too. She had a serious look on her face, and she was staring into the water ahead of her in a confident way. "That kid wrote 'YOU LOSE' on the wall above the faucet that's doing this," Nami said. She grinned a small grin and continued, "Don't you think he's claiming victory a little too soon?"

"But, how is Riku going to stop the water from rising?" Juvia asked.

"And considering how high the water is now, it will have reached the roof of the smaller room," Robin added. "He will not have any air to breath." She felt bad right after saying it and looked to Nami to add that she did not actually know how high the roof was in there, but Nami still had the same confident look on her face.

Come on Riku, prove me right, Nami thought. Letting Ansem take you over, letting Kairi get taken, what you did with Blackbeard and that man- Zaratras you called him, I know the others don't all trust you anymore. It's mainly Usopp, but everyone else too, they don't believe in you. But I do. Nami took another step closer to the steps that she could barely see through the rising water anymore. She heard Luffy mention something about feeling weak behind her, and Robin and Kirito both flew up into the air to get out of the water. Do it!

Riku swam straight into the jet stream. He had hoped that the jet being completely underwater would have slowed it down a little, but no luck there. He kicked harder than he ever had before, slashing his Keyblade in front of him in the water and creating forcefields to deflect the jet away from him. His body was surrounded in a white glow, and even when his forcefields were not in front of him, he did not feel pain from the force of the jet slamming into him. His invulnerability would not last, but he could not rise from the water now. If I pop up, after telling them to trust me… Riku ground his teeth and pushed harder forward, his body glowing brighter white, and a dark veil emerging beneath that white glow to give him an extra burst of strength. Everyone, Timmy, I, I need to do this! Calm down. Riku's eyes opened back up under the cloth he had wrapped around his face to protect his eyes from the fast moving water. He stared into the dark wet cloth in front of his face, and thanks to the veils around him he did not even feel the force of it pressing into his face at the moment.

Where am I? I'm moving through the jet, but I'm also getting pushed back. I have not passed through the doorway yet, but I don't need to. Visualize the inside of the room, just a few feet away from the jet's edge. The room was bigger inside than the entryway, so the sides of the jet must be calmer water. Riku kept swimming, then he stopped kicking his legs as furiously hard as he entered calm water. He reached up and lifted the blindfold off his eyes to just rest over his forehead like a headband. He stared at the faucet spewing water like crazy, and it looked like an underwater current to him more than it did a faucet. The current was almost pure white right after leaving the metal nozzle from how fast it was moving. The rest of the water in the small room was shaking around and moving fast too, but nothing he could not handle. He was feeling low on breath, and he looked down to try and find the drain Nami mentioned.

Drain, drain, there. What? Riku leaned his head closer to it, but it was hard to see considering it was right beneath the powerful jet that was strongest right outside of the faucet where the drain was. Where's the plug? There has to be something. Where are you?! Riku's cheeks puffed out, and he was really wishing he had asked Sora about teaching him some better transformation magic at this point. He spun his head around, and then he snapped it back towards the entrance to the door where on the left side where he was swimming, there was a tiny red button labeled 'FLUSH' in small letters above it. From outside of the room, there would be no way to see the button looking in. Fucking kid, Riku thought, while swimming over and slamming his right palm against the button.

As Riku pressed it, he knew he had messed up. The water started heating up, and the label over the button suddenly fell off to reveal a different label that had apparently been beneath it the entire time. "BOIL?!" Riku thought, right before the water around him started bubbling. Oh shit that's hot! Riku started spinning around and squinting his eyes inside the water. He was losing breath, the water was boiling around him, and he could feel his skin searing as he had lost his invulnerability when he traveled through a portal with his eyes blindfolded. He returned the veil to his body, but although it protected from most physical pain, he could still feel the heat around him and felt his skin getting redder and closer to searing off every second. He could barely keep his eyes open anymore, squinting them to a point they were barely open, and his mind was getting cloudy as he was completely out of breath. FUCK IT!

Two Keyblades appeared in Riku's hands, and he slashed them down hard in front of his body. He ripped a hole into darkness that the water around him flooded into. He fell into the portal himself and jumped up while taking a massive breath of dark air around him. Boiling water flooded around the dark realm he was in, but Riku knew this was a short term solution. I have to close this sooner or later, and more water keeps pouring in while I stall with this. The water level might not rise for a few seconds, but it's not going to go down like this. Back into boiling water? I saw that other button through blurry vision, but he just put it there. These traps are being made on the fly. He turned that flush button into a boil button, unless it really was another trap from the start. Either way, the new button could just be another trap.

Riku had to close the first portal, and he took a few more deep breaths while still in his dark world. He felt something deep down inside him try pushing up to the surface, and Riku started chuckling to himself. Even if Ansem was screaming at him, he could not even hear the monster's shouts anymore. It was trapped so deep down inside him that he barely even noticed the Heartless was there. "This is my world now," Riku said, his chuckles ending and a smirk spreading wide across his face. "This realm of darkness, I am its Lord. Heh, just like…" Riku's smirk lowered down and he realized something. Just like that brat controls his domain. Everything in that castle is his to control. To him, his castle is just like this realm of darkness. Just as none of my friends have any control over this place, none of us have any control over his castle. We really do have to play by his rules.

The silver-haired teen started nodding his head in understanding. The kid likes being in control. He never would have let us defeat his trap easily. Even what I just did, it was too easy for him I guess. Once he made the water boil though, he understood that he had made his trap almost impossible to beat. He won't make it harder again. If he does, then he'll be cheating. His own rules allow for him to cheat, but if he made it harder at this point, it would be the same as just killing us. I'm not positive, but I have to bank everything on this. Riku reopened a portal and leapt straight through into boiling water. He slammed his hand forward through the bubbling water and smashed it into a button that had a label above it reading, 'THE REAL FLUSH BUTTON.'

After pressing the button, the faucet next to him turned off and the drain on the ground widened to cover the entire room. One final trap, Riku thought. The crossing metal lines of the drain meant normally to stop solid objects from getting through had widened with the outer circumference of the drain, wide enough for a person to drain right through. Riku got pulled through the cracks of the drain and washed down with the boiling water into a dark narrow drain.

Up on the second level of the main entrance hall, the group struggling to stay over the surface of the boiling water finally dropped back to the second floor's actual floor. Ben breathed out a long breath of relief as he dropped Franky, Luffy, and Stan back to the floor. "Thanks little bro," Franky said and posed with his arms over his head for the brown haired boy. They had had to act quickly when the water suddenly heated up and started boiling. Ben and Kirito each picked up a couple of their friends each, while Robin lifted up Nami (to Sanji's dismay). Sanji got stuck lifting Natsu since Juvia was fine in the boiling water, and Gray leapt onto a wall that he froze his feet up against. The chef was glad to finally drop Natsu back down, and Natsu was happy to be put down as his stomach was not agreeing with the bumpy way in which Sanji had stayed floating by kicking the air beneath them.

Robin lowered down with her wings to the second floor and let go of Nami who ran down the stairs without waiting. The water level had dropped fast, sucking back towards the trap door that Nami opened up a few minutes ago. In only two to three minutes, the water had risen higher than twenty feet off the first floor. All that water drained away much faster though, and Nami only had to impatiently tap her foot on the steps for a second or two before being able to run across the damp floor. The room was still steaming, but Nami ignored the heat beneath her shoes for the moment as she ran for the open red door. "Riku!" She called out, but her smile and excited expression vanished as she saw into the room and the huge drain on the floor. She opened her mouth to shout again, but the door slammed to a shut first. A locking sound clicked loudly and echoed through the room.

"Hey," Ben muttered. "Hey!" He started running down the stairs too as he realized what just happened. A couple of others ran down too, while many of them stayed at the top of the stairs looking over with wide eyes at the closed door.

"Cartman!" Stan shouted up at the ceiling. "What did you do with Riku?!"

"He flushed himself," Cartman's voice responded. In a mock-sympathetic tone, he added with a fake sniffle, "A truly, noble, sacrifice."

"Riku!" Nami tried twisting the doorknob but the door would not budge. She lifted her arms and slammed her fists against the door.

"Nami move!" Ben called out. The woman turned and saw Ben standing ten feet behind her. The kid put his hands down at his right side pressed together at the wrists. "Kaaameeee…"

Nami nodded at the boy and shuffled back from the door what she thought was a safe distance.

"Let's do it Ben," Natsu said as he stepped up to Ben's right side after running there after him. He leaned his body back, "Fire Dragon's…" The pink-haired man took in a deep breath of air and his chest puffed out.

"There's no use," the Wizard King called out.

"HaaaMEEEE!" A blue sphere of light appeared in front of Ben's palms.

"Let me join in on this," Franky stood behind the younger, shorter men, and he put his big metal hands together just above their heads. "FRANKY RADICAL-"

"It's not going to work," the Wizard King sang.

Nami stood aside watching with hopeful eyes as the three of them prepared attacks. Ben's blue sphere widened, the flames became visible in the back of Natsu's mouth, and a white light appeared between Franky's hands. Then, right before they fired their attacks, Nami saw something at the top of her vision and snapped her head up. A gasp escaped her lips, followed by a long sigh of relief that was interrupted by three simultaneous screams.

"BEAM!"

"ROARRR!"

"HAAAAAAA!"

Nami jumped when the three boys in front of her let out their screams, and she just shook her head and chuckled as the explosions went off in the corner of her vision. She did not look towards the amazing explosion of those three connected attacks though, not with the wide black portal floating in midair above them. The round portal parallel to the ground dropped something through it that Nami was looking for, but her eyes bugged out at the sight of the man dropping towards her. "Riku!" She shouted, running forward towards the base of the stairs where Riku was dropping upside-down towards.

"Huh?" Natsu, Ben, and Franky all said at the same time while turning their heads to follow Nami. Their eyes widened too as they saw the man dropping towards the ground, and they wondered where he just came from considering the door they just blasted did not have a scratch on it.

Sanji was about to leap off the top of the stairs and catch Riku, but instead a surprised look came to his face and he leaned back where he stood. Riku's body flipped over while he fell, and he landed at the bottom of the stairs on his feet. Nami skid to a stop before reaching him. She stood ten feet from the man whose side she thought she was going to have to run to when he crashed down. Riku was taking deep, heavy breaths. His shirtless torso, his arms, his legs and feet, and even his face was covered in burns. Most of the burns were just reddened skin, but on a few parts of him the skin had clearly seared off. He was bleeding out a few of those mushy third and second-degree burns, and moving made every fiber of his being feel pain. When did I become, so weak? Riku thought.

"Oi Riku," Luffy said as he walked towards the silver-haired man. He tilted his head to the side to try and get a better look at his eyes under his bangs that were no longer covered by the blindfold he had put over them. Luffy's bottom lip dropped before he could continue his question, because of the streaks he saw coming down Riku's face from under the shadow of his bangs. The streaks were not tears though, but streaks of red coming out of his eyes. "Hey! Are you okay?!"

"Fine," Riku said, his voice raspy as it came out. He lifted his right arm slowly, blood dripping off it. Geez, using the darkness so much for so many little things. I couldn't even get out of that damn drain, without dipping in again. I really have to, save it. Now I'm feeling strained by the darkness, and I'm about to be out of Magic Power too. "Cure." Riku said. The Keyblade appeared in his right hand, making him wince as part of the hilt touched the back of his hand where a very sensitive burn was. "Cure," he muttered a second time, and he slowly opened up his blurry eyes. The skin on his eyelids was so thin that even clenching them closed in that boiling water was not enough to protect his eyes. "Cure," he said again, and the blurry face in front of him came into focus. "Cure," Riku said this in his most normal voice yet, no longer raspy or full of masked pain. He dropped his Keyblade after using that last Cure, and his Keyblade shattered into light particles before hitting the ground.

Riku took a deep breath, then he grinned at the rubberman in front of him. "I'm fine," he repeated, and this time he looked the part too. Luffy smiled back at him and started laughing, glad that Riku was alright. "I am wet though. Natsu," he turned and called out the Dragon Slayer's name as Natsu was walking towards him. The others on the first floor were all gathered on one side of him, and the ones at the top of the stairs had all started walking down towards him too. Most everyone was smiling, though Usopp looked away acting unimpressed by Riku's victory over the trap.

Natsu looked confused at first as to what Riku meant, then he grinned and his body surrounded in a red glow. A few seconds later, the entire entrance hall felt ten degrees hotter, then twenty. The air got a strange red tint to it, and most of the group started sweating at the sudden heat wave. "Dry clothes, coming right at you!" Natsu yelled, right before exploding into flames for a second. The fire around him went away, the room returned to its usual tint, and everyone who clenched their eyes during that burst of heat gazed down to see that their clothes were for the most part dry.

Rin patted his shirt down with an amazed look on his face. "I can kind of control what my flames burn, but no way I could do that without burning someone's clothes."

"Ahem," a voice cleared its throat above them and everyone standing around on the first floor grimaced as they remembered they were not alone with friends.

"Thanks for getting us out of that, Riku," Gray said to the tall teenager. "But I don't want to test our luck again. We don't know if that was one of the harder traps, it could have been the easiest one."

"Well we survived it," Nami said, regaining some of her lost confidence considering their current situation. None of them were injured. All of them except for Riku still had all their clothes, and dry clothes at that!

"You did well to survive the first trap. Now pick another door and-" Before the Wizard King could keep making his thunderous declaration, a boy in a red poof-ball hat cut him off.

"Cartman! Enough!" Stan yelled. "Why are you doing all this?!"

"Why?! Who do you think you're talking to, Stan?" The voice thundered through the castle. "And it's 'Wizard King' now! Don't forget it!"

"This isn't a game fatass!" Stan yelled up at the ceiling.

"HEY! Don't call me fat you buttfucking son of a bitch!"

The group of people standing around Stan collectively sweatdropped. "Some mouths on these kids," Sanji muttered.

"Where is Timmy?!" Nami shouted at the ceiling. At the moment she did not care whether their opponent was a child or not, there was only one thing she cared about. "What did you do to him?!"

"He trespassed in my domain! So I can do what I please with-"

"You're not a wizard and you're not a King!" Stan yelled, interrupting the ominous yet childish voice. "I don't know where you got the power to subdue someone like Timmy Turner, but you're not using it responsibly! Not that I'm surprised," Stan finished darkly. His tone shifted and everyone heard it. The kid in a brown cloak stepped forward and lifted his left arm that was made of steel with fake skin over it.

The Wizard King and his General standing side by side in front of a row of monitors displaying their castle opened their eyes wide. As Stan opened up his right hand in front of him, a metal hilt of a weapon flew up into his grip. The others behind Stan looked at him with widening eyes as well as they had not seen the child use a weapon as of yet. "If you want to treat this like a game though, then so be it. If you won't give up Timmy Turner, then that makes you my enemy, Cartman."

Stan's hood lifted on its own and shadowed over his face. His face was only shrouded in darkness for a second though, before a red tint came over it as the metal hilt in his right hand extended a blade of red light.

"A lightsaber?" Usopp whispered in surprise.

"A red lightsaber," Sanji corrected. He thought about the two cloaked men who came to their first Anti-NEG meeting at Port Royal. He recalled meeting one again at an Underworld base and knew what it meant when the lightsaber was red. Gray's shocked expression vanished after a second and his fist clenched while a dark expression appeared on his face. Kirito noticed his dark expression, and he grimaced too as he thought about the Sith who convinced Gray to try and kill him.

"What the fuck Stan?! Why do you have that?!" The boy's voice they could all hear booming through the castle sounded higher-pitched as it filled with surprise. The Wizard King continued yelling, "Only Sith Lords have red lightsabers! What do you think you're doing with-"

"Be quiet," Stan snarled. He lifted his head more so that more of it was visibly tinted red by his weapon. Butters gulped while he looked at his old classmate on the monitor, while Cartman's right hand clenched harder around his purple wizard staff. "And don't call me Stan like we're friends," Stan growled. "To you, my name is Darth Marsh."

The group behind Stan were opening their eyes wide, and many of them dropped their jaws as the child yelled, "And I am a Sith Lord!"

This child is a Sith? Robin thought, and she closed her slightly agape mouth.

Luffy thought about the Underworld base where he fought Count Dooku. That kid's like that strong guy? Huh, Luffy did not think much of the boy until now, but he decided he may have judged too quickly.

"Well Stan!" The Wizard King shouted, getting over his shock and calling Stan by his real name despite what the other boy just told him. Stan frowned deeper, but Cartman continued yelling, "Sith or not, you're not getting Turner!"

Nami's eyes grew wide at the shout, while her friends' narrowed and their fists clenched. "He's too powerful a weapon to give up, especially now when the Saiyan King has been killed." The group who were baring their teeth after Timmy got called a 'weapon,' widened their eyes again at that statement. "With Bardock dead, all that stands between the Ant King and world domination are myself, and Zodd. But that Kryptonian has nothing on me and my army! Heh heh heh, you should be thanking me for-"

"SHUT UP!" A dozen people shouted together.

"Fine. I was going to give you a hint as to which side of the room Timmy's on, but if you really don't want me to…"

"Hey guys," Riku began, and all his friends looked to him while ignoring the Wizard King. "Timmy's not behind any of these doors. The Wizard King has full control of everything in here. I'm sure that whatever door we go behind, we'll see exactly what he wants us to see."

"That's not true!" Cartman shouted.

"As such, the only thing we can do is play by his rules, for now," Riku added the 'for now' at the end with a serious look on his face. "But he will let his guard down. He will slip up. There are four-fifteen of us, he doesn't stand a chance." Riku caught himself as he remembered the small black cat standing next to Rin's left foot. He could swear he saw Kuro start smiling when he corrected himself like the animal knew that it was the reason Riku recounted.

The Wizard King's growl could be heard through the castle, and then he called out in a smug tone, "I know what you're doing. It's not going to work! You won't make me angry!"

"Except I am, but you can't do anything about it or you'd be showing everyone how much I'm really getting under your skin," Riku said it in such a confident and taunting tone that made Cartman shake in anger from where he was watching.

He's good, Robin thought with a small smile as Riku taunted their tormentor.

"And if I'm getting under your skin, that would mean that this situation isn't completely under your control, wouldn't it?" Riku smirked and rubbed his nose with his finger in a smug way. He knew that he had Cartman trapped, and he knew that the Wizard King knew what he was thinking. At this point though, whatever Cartman did was a win for him. Riku knew he was right in saying Cartman was angry, even if Cartman did not have an outburst. Cartman could pretend like he was not angry by not doing anything, but Riku also knew Cartman was listening to his thoughts and knew that Riku was a hundred percent sure that he had angered the kid. Even if Cartman did not act out, the boy would have to know that it would not change Riku's mind on how much he was aggravating him. It could sway the others' opinions though, and Riku's thoughts were smug at the idea of Cartman not hitting him right now to keep up an act that he had seen through. It was his total victory.

"What's that, deep in your head? Is that someone else I see?" Cartman's voice in his head made Riku's sense of victory fade. The others watching him in amusement gained confused looks at the sudden dark expression that flashed over Riku's face. "Oh, you poor, poor, tortured soul. You have a Heartless living in your head. You think I'm crazy, but isn't that a little hypocritical of you." Riku's dark look remained, but his smirk returned as he said, "Got you."

"What's going on?" Ben asked his older friend.

"I have him stuck in my head," Riku said.

"What? What are you- hey, HEY! Do you know who you're messing with?!" SCRREEEECCCCHHH Riku grabbed his ears and stumbled backwards at the shrillest shriek he had ever heard blasting in his eardrums so loud he thought he would go deaf. His ears popped, and the prisoner escaped his head. Riku was used to having something trapped in his head, so he thought he knew all the tricks.

"Want to explain what that was all about?" Usopp asked, eyebrows lifted and arms crossed. To him it looked like Riku was just stumbling around for no reason, even if the flash of pain on his face did look pretty real.

Riku took a few ragged breaths, still feeling tired from his fight against the water trap. He wondered if maybe that trap was the reason he did not have the strength to keep the Wizard King held back. "I, had his mind, in my mind for a few seconds. I felt him in there, not just reading my thoughts, but searching through my memories. So I trapped him, but he got out."

"Of course he did," Usopp mumbled.

"He was in such a rush to get out though," Riku continued, and the dashed hope on some of his friends' faces started to return. "That he didn't hide which direction he was heading to get back to his own body." Riku nodded up the stairs straight towards the long hallway beyond it.

Luffy smiled wide and shouted, "I knew it!" He ran up the stairs and looked down the hall towards the doors he punched his Elephant Gun into right at the start.

"You didn't know anything," Natsu remarked skeptically while jogging up the stairs behind him.

"Should have guessed he was this way considering how big the castle is," Sanji said, wondering why he did not think of it sooner. He reached for a cigarette, but the pack inside his jacket pocket was still wet. He frowned for a second, then looked ahead and called out, "Oi Natsu." The pink-haired mage turned and then lifted a hand quick to catch the pack of cigarettes just tossed to him. "You mind?" Sanji asked.

Natsu's hand heated up for a second, then he tossed the dry pack back to the surprised chef at how quick that was. Sanji lifted the top off, and his eyes widened even more at the sight of a single one of the cigarettes lit already. "Hmph, show off," Sanji said, though he was smiling as he said it and pulled out the pre-lit cig.

"I don't think it was so obvious," Robin remarked after thinking on Sanji's comment for a few moments. He turned left to the black-haired woman who was looking around in a thoughtful way. "If you think about it, we only saw the width of the castle from in front of it. The castle could have been remarkably thin, but we knew for a fact that it was very wide."

"So the doors on the sides of the entrance hall or balconies would have been better options," Kirito agreed from behind the two of them. He glanced over his shoulder and added, "If we didn't have this nice hint."

Riku nodded up at him after he said it, then when Kirito turned back forward, Riku let the small smile form on his face. It felt good to feel appreciated.

"Careful of the drop," Luffy called out before hopping over the hole in the hallway that stretched from wall to wall. He smashed his fist forward as he reached the other side of the hole, but the strong glass barrier had not magically reappeared in the time since he shattered it.

Gray jogged up ahead of the others walking down the hall, and he pressed a palm down on the closer side of the pitfall. An ice bridge covered the entire gap, and as he walked across he called out, "Careful, it's a little slippery."

"Better than falling," Usopp said, as he held his arms out for balance on either side of him and wobbled his way across.

Ben watched as the others walked across the ice bridge. He had been frowning since before the flooding trap went off back in the last room, only breaking it for a second to smile when he saw Riku was alright. No one seems to care, he thought as he glanced around at his friends. I didn't- I couldn't do a thing. If I had the Omnitrix, I could have used Ripjaws and maybe fought the current. I have a Keyblade too, but I didn't do anything while Riku did all the work. Everyone tried their ideas, but, I wasn't the only one who didn't do anything. His eyes shifted towards Robin, then Franky, and then Rin and Kuro. All of them were smiling and looked confident, determined, not at all like he suspected his own facial expression appeared right now.

It, doesn't bother them, Ben realized with widening eyes. Because they know they couldn't do anything, and everything still worked out. Sometimes it's okay to just rely on your friends. A smile started to return to Ben's face. We can do this! All of us, working together, there's nothing we can't do. Even if I couldn't help last time, there's stuff even I can do without my Omnitrix. Guess it was stupid to waste energy on that Kamehameha, but I still feel plenty strong. Timmy, I'm coming to save you!

Ben ran forward and jumped at the start of the ice bridge. He landed with his feet sideways and slid on the soles of his shoes across the entire bridge before stumbling off the other side while laughing. Natsu looked back and his eyes widened a little at the sight of Ben laughing, while Luffy just called back from farther past Natsu, "I want to try that!"

"Luffy, later," Robin said as her Captain was about to run by her. Luffy looked at the older woman, and he saw Robin dart her eyes over towards Nami who was frowning even while the rest of them were smiling. They were all determined and confident, but even if Nami felt the same way, she was too worried to keep a smile on her face for long. The seemingly all-powerful child was playing with their lives, using Timmy as a puppet, and if he could beat Timmy, then what could she do to stop him? It was something no one was bringing up, but Timmy was stronger than all of them and still lost. Luffy could see what his navigator was thinking about, and he turned back to the center door at the end of the hall. There was no need to give her a pep talk or heartwarming speech; he would let his actions do the talking, like saving Timmy.

"The middle door, huh?" Natsu said as he walked towards where a few others had already reached. "In the only hallway sticking off the main hall, it seems almost like… This was the door we should have went through the whole time!"

Robin had nodded along with him for most of that but stopped at the end. I would say it seems like a trap. Then again, every door in that room and this hall is a trap. At least this trap will take us closer to Timmy.

"I'm opening it," Luffy announced while reaching out for the doorknob.

"Hey," Natsu said and stepped up next to the pirate. "I want to open it. What if it's a fire trap?"

Luffy frowned at the man next to him, and he grabbed the doorknob quicker and twisted it fast. "What if it's a giant hammer?" Luffy retorted while yanking the door open, hoping a giant blunt object would slam into him and prove that he was right to be the first one inside. As soon as Luffy pulled the door towards him though, Natsu smirked and slid through the opening door, making Luffy's eyes go wide. "Hey! No fair!" The pirate yelled while throwing the door the rest of the way open and chasing Natsu inside.

Natsu had stopped only a few yards past the door though, and he threw his arms out to the sides as he heard Luffy running towards his back. "Stop!" Natsu shouted, really hoping Luffy would not sprint straight into him. Luffy skid to a stop right before bumping into Natsu, then he leaned his head right to see why Natsu stopped short all of a sudden. Luffy's mouth opened into an 'o' shape at the sight of the room in front of them. "I think, this counts as me being right," Natsu said while they stared at the room in front of them that was tinted a dark red color. The others entered the room behind them and started spreading out on the concrete platform five meters long and twenty wide. It was not even wide enough to touch the outer walls, leaving gaps between the walls and the slab where the surface of the room dropped down an inch, and became lava.

On all sides of the rectangular concrete platform they stepped out on, lava bubbled and boiled and filled the air with steam. They could not see the roof of this room as everything above them was a white veil of steam and smoke. "Well, I guess I should have expected something like this," Riku said as he walked into the room. "But I still think this is a lot." He stepped on Ben's left at the very left edge of the front of the concrete slab they all walked up to. As soon as the last of them walked through the door, the red door slammed shut behind them.

The group turned their heads back and stared at a blank white wall that no longer had a door on it. "Second trap time!" The Wizard King called out, back in his usual excited and cocky tone like he had forgotten about how they annoyed him before. With his intruders in such a perilous situation though, it made their comments earlier seem so petty to him. Cartman still felt in complete control. "Ever heard of the game: The Floor is Lava?" Cartman started laughing while the others just stared across the room full of lava at the slab all the way across the narrow room. The room was only about thirty yards wide in total, but it stretched what looked like a quarter mile before the next wall where there was a black door in the middle of an identical white wall as the one behind them.

"You can't be serious, Cartman," Stan said in a deadpan tone. "How are we supposed-"

"The rules are simple, Stan," Cartman announced. Out from the lava a few feet in front of the right corner of the platform where Stan was standing, a two foot long by two foot wide rock popped out of the lava and rose to just high enough to be even level with the surface they were currently standing on. Luckily the lava was pretty calm, a flat surface without any waves that would splash up on the rocks that arose one after the other past the first one. At first they extended straight out past the first one, each one only a couple of feet away from the previous. Then, they started moving left and right in the lava path, still with the same distance between them though. About a quarter way across the room though, the distance between the rocks started to change up. Sometimes there would be a wider gap but a second rock that they could choose closer in a new direction. There were different diverging paths, some with rocks that got smaller only to get to much bigger and longer ones if they could get over the small ones first. By the middle of the room, there was no clear "right" path to take to get across the room, and the best minds of the group started wracking their minds to come up with ideas.

The Wizard King continued after the rocks had all risen from below the lava, "Get from your side of the room to the other. The black door is the correct door, only in one of the many rooms you could have chosen. I commend you for finding it so soon." Riku rolled his eyes as obviously as he could, showing the boy talking to them that he did not believe a word of that. Cartman continued in the same tone like he had not seen Riku, (though he did), "There are only two rules. One: no flying. You can't actually break this rule, since you're inside a no-flight zone."

"What are you talking about?" Ben asked. He surrounded himself in a white veil and tried lifting off the floor. A confused look formed on his face, and Ben tried harder to use his ki to lift himself. He stared down at his hands in utter confusion as the ki was still surrounding his arms, but he could not use it to fly.

"This doesn't make sense," Kirito said while shaking his head. "Then again, I guess it doesn't have to," he added.

"But- how is he making ki just, not work like it should?" Ben asked in such a confused voice while looking right past a couple people to Kirito who had just attempted flying as well.

Robin hummed to herself, and then she said, "I believe it is more than just ki. Even if I were to grow wings right now, I would assume that they would not be able to lift me off of the ground. Sanji, would you like to try Skywalking?"

"Huh?" Sanji muttered. "I mean, of course Robin-chan!" He shouted as she looked his way. He wondered why she asked him, until he jumped up in the air and tried to do it again. His eyes shot open wide as he just dropped back down to the floor instead. "That doesn't make sense-"

"The laws of physics don't matter," Kirito said. "Not in here. In here, he determines how things appear, how they work." The others all looked in at him, and Kirito had a dark look on his face as he continued, "If he wanted to, he could erase gravity. He could turn us all into cartoons, make us unable to speak, or limit our abilities. There's no limit to what he can do."

"What are you talking about?" Nami asked the man on her left side in a confused tone.

"You all haven't figured it out yet?" Kirito wondered. "Timmy told us why he was coming south, remember?" Many of them dropped their jaws, a few of them gasped, while some like Luffy and Natsu retained their confused expressions. "The Wizard King, has a Fairy Godparent."

"Huh?" Luffy asked, perking up at the sound of that. "Like, Wanda?"

"Yeah," Kirito replied. "Like Wanda. Timmy used to be able to make whatever he wished for come true. If that kid wished that no one could fly in this particular room, then no matter how you do it, if it counts as flight, it's restricted in here."

"Never really considered Skywalk as flying," Sanji muttered in annoyance, while he sparked his lighter over and over trying to ignite a new cigarette from the pack he got right before leaving the last Resistance base. The idea of an all-powerful fairy at their enemy's command made each of them a lot more nervous.

Timmy Turner had, a Fairy Godparent? Stan thought in confusion, though he did not say anything aloud since the rest of them already seemed in the loop about it.

"Rin, what are they talking about?" Kuro asked the half-demon telepathically.

Rin had been nodding along the whole time, but he sweatdropped at his familiar's question. "I've heard them talk about Wanda before. Never met her myself," Though I wish I had, Rin added on to himself. He had heard about how Timmy wished all the people out of Metropolis, and he would have liked to meet the woman who saved so many people, especially with the way the others talked about her.

"Nice job figuring it out, though you all should have realized it sooner," Cartman called out.

"What's the second rule?" Ben called back. He was not in the mood to be insulted, but he also felt like it would be smart to know the second rule if the Wizard King's rules were absolutes.

"No walking on lava, or running," the Wizard King replied. "Just think of it this way- if you touch the lava you lose, and you really don't want to lose. Haha, have fun!"

The group hated how they were being toyed with, but this seemed to them as a necessary step to save Timmy. "You're sure you felt him go that way?" Usopp asked and gulped.

"Yeah," Riku replied. "Though admittedly, he could wish to rearrange this place at any time."

"So what's the point of going over there?" Rin wondered.

"What's the point of staying here?" Natsu countered him.

"Well for starters, we don't risk falling in lava," Rin replied, and Natsu shrugged and nodded once like that actually made sense to him.

"Also if you stay on that platform for too long, it'll crumble into the lava!" Cartman called off, then his voice cut off again.

"Of course it will," half of the group muttered at the same time.

"He just made that rule up right now," Stan said.

"Kind of figured that," Gray said with a nod of agreement. "Alright, let me see if I've got this," Gray took a step back and slammed his right hand down on the edge of the platform. He was still feeling pretty fresh even after using a lot of ice magic back in the last room. He created a magical staircase that went up a few steps before jutting out over the lava as a long bridge with railings on either side to hold onto while they went across. The bridge made it about fifty yards before the steps right at the start melted through and the rest of it collapsed down into the lava. Gray let out a deep breath like he had been holding it while trying to make the bridge, "It's, too far. Even if I made another, stronger one, we wouldn't all make it across before it melted."

"Can't use chakra to run across it," Kirito said. "I was going to try, but now I'm sure I'd just fall right in." He said this while watching the steam rise more in the thick line where Gray's ice bridge had fallen in. His gaze lifted to follow the steam, and he frowned more as he looked up in the air. He wondered if Gray had already thought about making the staircase much higher up and starting farther back on the platform, but Kirito figured that they would not likely be able to breath in the hot air up there.

"Guys, it's his rules," Nami started. "Even if we come up with a loophole, he'll just call out that he made a new rule. So, let's just take the rocks."

"That's what he wants us to do though," Usopp said, then he yelped and jumped back as the edge right beneath his toes crumbled a little into the lava. "Alright! Alright! We're taking the path!" Usopp shouted at the hazy sky since he thought Cartman did that on purpose, reminding them that they had no other option but to do things his way.

"For now, this is all we can do," Riku said while walking behind the line of people on the edge to the other side of the platform. "While we play his games, let's try and think of ways we can get Timmy back with the information we currently have." Luffy saw where Riku was walking to and got out of the line first to run over there before Riku reached it. "Be careful, Luffy," Riku said without trying to race him to the corner. Stan moved out of the way to let the pirate be first, as he did not want to go first anyway.

"Hey, I wanted to go-" Natsu began, but Luffy jumped forward and landed on the first rock.

Natsu bent his knees to jump up ahead to the third rock, but Gray slammed a hand down on his left shoulder strongly. "Can you just control yourself, for like five seconds? This is a serious situation."

"You control yourself," Natsu snapped back, leaning his forehead forward into Gray's.

"I'm in control," Gray retorted and pushed his own forehead harder into Natsu's.

"Gray-sama, Natsu, cool off," Juvia said, and a few gallons of water that magically appeared above their heads dropped down and soaked them. The two men spun and gawked at the girl behind them who had her arms crossed and was looking at them in a scolding way. "I don't want to have to get angry with you," she warned. Juvia had been trying out looking like Erza to scare the other two straight, but she felt like if she got like that now, she actually would scare the two in front of her. They both knew about the Lazarus Pit, and she was a little afraid of how they would look at her if she got too scary an expression on her face. Just dousing them in water seemed to be enough to cool them down though, and Juvia sighed in relief as Natsu ran over to the right corner of the platform, yelling ahead at Riku, Franky, and Stan that he had wanted to be second.

"Nice one Juvia," Gray complimented his girlfriend. He took a step towards her and smiled at her from a foot away, "Forgot where I was for a second there. Good thing you're here."

Juvia's cheeks turned red from more than the heat of the room. She looked away shyly instead of her normal fawning over Gray. Robin saw Juvia's reaction out the corner of her eyes and smiled softly at the sight of it. Even if Juvia told them that she had been distancing herself from Gray, she could not hide how much she was in love with him after just hearing a few sentences from him.

At the corner of the platform, Ben was feeling nervous about jumping onto the first rock in front of him. As long as he kept on the same path as the others in front of him though, he figured this would be easy. That means all of us are going to just follow what Luffy does then? I'm not sure he's going to pick the easiest path.

Luffy was five people ahead of Ben, hopping one rock to the next while still on the easiest part of the path. He had to start hopping left and right, then he stopped as he reached the first decision to make. He could try jumping one and a half times the distance as the usual gaps, still an easy jump for him, or he could cut right and take a different path where the rocks stayed closer together for another ten rocks or so. Luffy hummed to himself, glanced over his shoulder, then he did a side-jump to the rock closest to him.

Riku's eyebrows lifted up as he saw the decision Luffy made. That was pretty mature of him, but I'd rather he had taken the other path. This one gets harder after the next ten easy rocks. The kid's just luring you in. Riku stopped for a second and wondered if it was possible for him to glide. Before he ever learned how to fly, he discovered gliding, or falling with style. He shook his head and decided against it, as there was no point in attempting something that could possibly get him killed. He decided to follow Luffy's path, and Franky turned to follow him that way as well.

When Natsu reached the decision point though, he grinned and hopped forward with a little more power in it than the last one. He judged the distance perfectly, and he turned and grinned thirty feet away to the other path that curved around closer to the wall on the right side. "Natsu," Gray called up after just starting on the path himself. "Stay with the group."

"This way is totally better," Natsu called back, then he started doing some more of the slightly longer jumps to the left before cutting back in when the path split in two again.

Riku looked over to the left as Natsu made a steady pace forward until he was right on track with Luffy only closer to the center of the room. He's keeping good pace, and he's on the path I would have chose. I don't think he actually thought ahead, he just wants to compete with Luffy. "Don't speed up you guys," Riku scolded loudly as he saw Luffy take a quicker hop to the next rock after Natsu caught up to him. "This is about Timmy, remember? Don't make it a competition."

Luffy nodded and calmed himself down while judging the next rock that was suddenly more than twice the distance as the last one he hopped. "It's not a competition," Natsu called back over to Riku like he was being worried over nothing. Natsu then added in a quieter voice, "Because it's obvious whose going to win." Luffy was the closest person to him, and the only one who heard what Natsu just added at the end.

"Guys!" Usopp called up from the back of the pack. Only Nami and Kirito were behind him, Kirito having offered to take up the rear so that he could catch either of them if they missed a jump. They were surprised by the offer, but both were actually glad to hear him say it since everyone else was treating this like an easy game as long as they chose the right path. Even if they picked the right path though, Nami and Usopp were worried they were going to reach a point where they could not make the same jump as the rest of their friends.

"Stop racing!" Nami yelled up angrily.

Luffy and Natsu had started jogging ahead at a steadily increasing pace. Riku sighed since he thought they were actually slowing down for a second after he scolded them. He tried watching the path Luffy took, but he shook his head after a few seconds as Luffy stopped taking the most obvious path. He did not think that Luffy taking a different path would actually speed the pirate up that much, but he felt like Luffy was taking a harder path as if to goad Natsu on to take a harder one himself.

Natsu and Luffy both jumped for the same wide rock almost at the middle of the room when they were pretty far ahead of their friends. They took a few breaths and glanced across the wide rock at each other before scanning the five rocks on the lava in front of them. "This is where is gets interesting," Natsu said with a grin, looking around at the rocks that were all more than twelve feet away from theirs. The closest one was the smallest, but it also had another rock right after it that was close to the left wall. There was not much of a path after that, meaning they would have to cut back in, but Natsu grinned and leapt over, tapping his foot on the small rock and then leaping to the next one. He turned back to see what Luffy would do next.

The rubberman turned right and looked at the rock farthest from the large one he was standing on. It had to be a harder one to reach than Natsu's, so he picked the hardest one. It was twenty feet away, and even though it was a normal-sized one, there were no other rocks in front of it for thirty feet meaning that his next jump would be even farther. Natsu frowned as he saw where Luffy was attempting to go, and he cupped his hands to his mouth and called out, "Don't try it! You'll definitely fall in!"

The taunt only made Luffy need to do it more. He bent his knees, and he leapt over for the rock with the perfect force so his feet were coming down right on top of it.

Back a hundred feet, Stan muttered, "Those idiots are going to get themselves killed."

Luffy's feet came down on top of the rock, and they went straight through it. Natsu's frown at how Luffy easily made the jump dropped into a shocked gasp. The rock beneath Luffy turned into a hologram as soon as Luffy's feet touched it, crackling to show that it was not actually a real rock despite how real it appeared to be. The seven people closest to Luffy and Natsu who could see them from various rocks on the paths cutting through the lava froze and dropped their jaws just as Natsu did, because Luffy hit the lava.

"AHH!" Luffy screamed. All the others who did not see what happened snapped their heads up and tried looking at the pirate captain whose voice sounded so full of pain.

Luffy had been turning his head towards Natsu. He knew that he had the perfect force to land on the rock, but when his feet did not touch it he snapped his head back down in shock. By the time he realized what had happened, his feet had touched the lava. Luffy screamed in pain but spun his head looking for something to grab onto. There were no rocks in the immediate vicinity though, and he could not throw an arm around one anyway with how barely above the lava they were sticking out. "Take my hand!" Natsu screamed, holding an arm out towards Luffy.

The pirate started spinning his head back towards Natsu, but his body did not stop after his feet touched the lava. It was not a solid magma he landed on, but a liquid that his body sank through almost as fast as water. His feet went through and he screamed, but by the time Natsu yelled to take his hand, Luffy's legs had already sank in. "AHH! AGGH-" Luffy reached an arm out for Natsu, but his body leaned too far forward and his stomach got covered in lava that burned through his skin in under a second.

A dark portal started opening up in the air behind Luffy. Riku's right hand shoved through it and reached down for the pirate who leaned back when his stomach got burnt.

If only I still had XLR8! Ben thought in horror, but then he remembered that he would not even be able to run on the surface of the lava anyway to get to Luffy and save him.

"Luffy!" Sanji yelled, leaping up and trying to kick the air beneath him again. He dropped down and made sure to land on one of the stepping stones, but he almost fell off on his landing as he had not been preparing for failure. "Damn it!" Sanji yelled and just started making big jumps instead to get farther down the path quicker.

"Captain!" Franky shouted.

"Luffy!"

"Luffy!"

When Luffy leaned backwards, his straw hat dangling on his back hit the lava below him and burst into flames. His face filled with horror and he lifted an arm to try and reach behind him and grab his hat, to save it from burning up. As he lifted his arm though, he saw out the corners of his eyes all the lava dripping off of it, taking his flesh with it as it dropped back into the pool around him. Riku's hand grasped down at Luffy's head and he pulled up, but some lava splashed up when he yanked up and got on his arm. "GAH!" Riku's hand unclenched on reflex as his skin melted through, and he tried grasping again only to get air as Luffy's head had dropped back into the lava already. "LUFFY!" Riku screamed, and then he froze and just stared ahead into the lava in silence at Luffy's unmoving body.

No. No. I- I won't… I said only when, but the Wizard King. He has a fairy. And Timmy's here too! I, I can't let him die! Ben shoved his right hand into his pocket and clenched a small glowing blue cube that had started filling him with warmth a few seconds ago. He said that he's the only thing standing between the Ant King and world domination, and whether he's telling the truth or not, I'm risking everything on this! Ben clenched his eyes shut as he heard the agonized screams of his friends around him. ELIACUBE! LISTEN TO ME!

All of the screams cut off. Ben slowly opened his eyes, to see the whole room frozen. He gazed down at the lava on the side of the rock he stood on, but it was not moving at all. He looked ahead towards where he just saw some black hair remaining above the surface of the water. He saw a look of pain, and regret, and guilt, strewn over Natsu's face from the rock farthest forward of anyone in their group. He saw Riku grabbing at his own bloody arm while staring over in furious frustration at the spot Luffy went down. Ben did not want to look back and see more of those looks on his friends' faces. He knew they were crying, and he wondered if any of them had fallen in in their rush to get to Luffy's side. All those screams of pain he had assumed were of grief over Luffy, but he started to wonder if Luffy was the only one he was saving here. Ben's body surrounded in a blue glow, and he pulled the Eliacube out of his pocket.

Ben lifted the cube and held it in front of him, and it grew in size back to the original block shape he had first seen it in. "Why did it get small enough to fit in my pocket?" Ben wondered aloud. His breathing had calmed down, and so did he. This was the calmest place on Nexus, the most relaxing place he could ever be. "Wizard King?" Ben called out. He looked up and awaited a response, then smiled more as he heard nothing from the annoying kid holding them there. "He's not all-powerful then. Riku's darkness, and the Eliacube. It's not much, but we'll beat him with just this."

In Ben's mind appeared a vision of the Ant King. He saw the Ant King asking about who traveled from the future, and he recalled every word that he told that terrifying being. I never told him about the Eliacube. I was too afraid, too confused, too tired to even think about bringing it up. If he finds out I did this though, he'll kill me! Shit, he'll kill everyone! A brighter blue light surrounded Ben as he filled with doubt, and with that light came a warmth that washed Ben's worries away. Thanks, Ben thought, then got a confused look on his face like he did not know who he was thanking. He stared down at the Eliacube hesitantly, then he got a more determined expression on his face and nodded. One minute. Maybe he won't notice such a short jump back.

Time started to reverse. He watched as Luffy reemerged from the lava, and Ben's stomach turned over at the sight of his body pulling un-melting. Ben started hopping back after his own body while glancing over his shoulder every second or two, which was the same amount of time backwards. He looked up towards Luffy and Natsu who were getting closer and closer in front of him each second. They were at their farthest distance from him when Luffy fell in, and Ben turned back time until he thought they were at a point before they started running ahead. Luffy was at the spot he was at when Riku scolded him, and although it had been more than a minute, Ben sighed in relief when he reached this point. Oh crap, Ben thought as he looked at his own body, midway through a jump. He turned time back another second, then two, while spinning his head around to make sure that his friends were still in safe positions. Even if I unfreeze and they're in midair though, they'll be fine since they'll still have their momentum. Wouldn't I be too though? Yeah, but I'd have to get into my old body's position, and that would be hard in midair. Hopefully a few extra seconds doesn't make a difference to Meruem.

Ben took a step towards his body while lowering the Eliacube that shrank as Ben thought at it to. He slid the magical time-traveling cube into his pocket and took another step so that he was inside his own body. The blue light surrounding him faded as he took his hand off the cube in his pocket, and time started to move again. Ben sighed in relief, then his eyes bugged out and he snapped his head forward with a panicked look in his eyes. AH! I never thought of what I was going to say- Natsu said something to Luffy that made the pirate spin to him, and then turn forward and take the biggest leap yet to get back ahead of Natsu. Natsu was not going to give up after taking that long to tie with Luffy, and he started speeding up his hops to catch up again. "Hey! HEY!" Ben shouted.

"Guys, come on!" Stan called up.

"No really!" Ben yelled, jumping forward himself, then again so he was only one rock behind Stan. "Natsu! Luffy! STOP!"

"Ben, just let them go," Rin said with a laugh from behind him. "There's no point with those-"

"GUYS!" Ben screamed at the top of his lungs. "STOP MOVING RIGHT FUCKING NOW!"

Natsu and Luffy froze on the rocks they were currently standing on. They turned their heads and looked back, and Natsu had an annoyed look on his face because Luffy was still just a little bit ahead of him. He made to take another hop to even it out before listening to Ben, but Ben screamed his way, "I mean it Natsu! Don't you fucking move!"

"Ben!" Nami called up. "Watch your language!"

"NO!" Ben yelled. "They're about to-" Ben started. He clenched his teeth, bared them so hard that his friends who could see his face leaned back at the sight. Stan looked at the older boy behind him and had an utterly confused look on his face at why Ben was so angry all of a sudden. It was not just anger that he saw on Ben's face though, and Riku could see it as well as he jumped a rock back closer to Ben.

"Ben, what's wrong?" Riku asked.

"Just," Ben started. He looked past Riku towards Natsu and Luffy, wondering what he could tell them to convince them. The thought to mention that he turned back time crossed over his mind, but he could not think of a good way to explain the Eliacube, and he was afraid of what the others would do if they knew about something so powerful. Ben's eyes bulged as he realized that the Wizard King was probably reading his mind right now and learning about what he just did, and Ben tried to blank that completely from his head. After a few seconds though, Ben lifted his head and glanced up into the white steam above in confusion as the Wizard King was not saying anything. Why isn't he? Did he really not notice? Did he not read my mind when I started shouting? Or…

"Just," Ben lowered his head back down and looked towards Natsu and Luffy in as serious a way as possible. "Slow down," Ben said. "Some of the rocks in here might not be real. They might, I don't know, break apart under our feet, or sink into the lava. Hell, they might even be holograms." Ben narrowed his brown eyebrows down and glared at the two farthest in front of their group. "What do you think you can do if you fall into the lava? You think you can pull yourselves out? You think someone could fly or run over and get you, 'cause we can't. If you fall in, you'll melt in seconds. Your flesh, your bones, everything will just dissolve away." Ben's face darkened so much that Natsu could not believe this was the same kid who slid across the ice in the last hallway with a smile on his face, laughing even.

"Ben, are you okay?" Rin asked the kid whose back was to him. "That's pretty dark. I'm sure we're all going to be fine."

"Ben's right," Riku called out, turning towards the two who he had given up on scolding. What just happened? Riku thought, while continuing aloud, "This is a very dangerous room, and the Wizard King could have a lot more dangerous twists in store for us before we get across. A single mishap and any of us could die. So take it slow. For once, you guys, just act a little mature."

Luffy frowned at the way Riku worded that, but Natsu just humphed and crossed his arms like he did not care. He turned back forward and thought about continuing the competition with Luffy, but the look on Ben's face made his arms uncross and lower back down at his sides. Luffy turned to see if Natsu still wanted to keep going, but the Dragon Slayer did not seem to be into it anymore. For you, Ben, Natsu thought. Just because, you've got that look in your eyes again.

Luffy extended his right arm out and pressed a hand down on the next rock in front of him. It did not slide under the lava, and it felt pretty sturdy. He nodded and jumped to the next one. Natsu grimaced, but waited for Luffy to do that again and go ahead before jumping to the last rock Luffy was on. It was not fun, but it was definitely safer than what they had been doing. Ben let out a huge sigh of relief and almost fell down to his butt then and there. Tragedy averted, Ben thought with a small chuckle, but it felt dry to him and his body was shaking too much to convince himself that everything was alright. But at what cost? He wondered. Ben shook his head around, and he jumped to the next rock to follow after Stan and the others. As he waited at the next rock for a second though, Ben lifted his gaze back up to the air above him. Maybe it's nothing.

Above the top of the castle, the Wizard King floated over his tallest tower with a purple wooden staff in his right hand. The staff had purple eyes with big pupils and a mouth of perfect shiny teeth. Floating behind the Wizard King, in front of him, and on both of his sides, were hundreds of silver robots. There were multicolored ones scattered amongst the rest, as well as some giant ones standing all over the roof over a hundred meters tall each and with cannons all over their bodies. Eric Cartman stared ahead with an angry look as he knew what was coming. He saw it with his foresight, and he checked his crystal ball to see that the figure he had had a vision of was flying full speed in his direction. The sky to the north started to darken, a weird dark purple haze filling the sky and dying everything in its color. The air above the Wizard King's castle stayed bright blue though, and it stayed blue for over a few hundred miles north of him too. He spotted the purple sky clash with the blue in the distance, and though the massive sky-changing color stopped coming, what was flying beneath it that had caused the sky to change that color for tens of thousands of miles did not stop moving.

"I wish for Enhanced Mode," Cartman said in a calm voice. The staff in his right hand lifted an arm of its own that seemed to appear out of nowhere, and it waved a golden wand. The Wizard King's body did not change, but the stars on his cloak and hat started to twinkle golden light. Juandissimo looked as confident as his Godchild, grinning and showing all his pearly whites while staring out to the north. His child's "Enhanced Mode" was not unlike the Forms that Timmy Turner used to use with his own Godparents. It took too much magic for Juandissimo to wish Cartman power after power when his Godchild had requested them. The kid came up with a better idea though, wishing instead for powers to be used only at certain times to then be taken back away after the fact. Wishing for a power that would last forever was just a little difficult, so wishing for one that would only last a few hours, or a day, took no effort for the Fairy. Even with the amount of God-like powers that Cartman had put on his Enhanced Mode list, Juandissimo was able to do it with no more than a wave of his wand, and the purple staff retained its full color. "Alright, let's test it," Cartman said, and he snapped his fingers in front of him.

The monster flying towards him at full speed stopped short. He stared ahead and then lifted his head and glared over at the three suns in the western sky. They were on the wrong side of him, as was the bright blue sky that was suddenly behind him. The Ant King, Meruem, slowly turned his head to reface the south with an animalistic glare of fury. His En expanded south past the Great Wall, pushing through the blue sky that Cartman had kept that way, encroaching his bloodthirsty feeling close enough for the Wizard King to feel.

"He sure is angry," Cartman said. He lowered the left corner of his lip and in a confused tone whispered, "What is he doing, coming here now?" Juandissimo glanced up at his Godson and opened his mouth, but he closed it after a second and just looked back to the north where the massive power was flying towards them again.

The Wizard King slammed the butt of his staff down on the air on level with his feet. The staff touched the invisible floor there, and the entire sky around him and for a few hundred miles in every direction started to vibrate. Ripples of sound flooded the air and pulsed hardest directly to the north. Meruem did not care and kept flying south with his teeth bared, but a short fat boy appeared a hundred meters to Meruem's left, then as the King stopped and turned his way, another Wizard King appeared on the King's right. Four of them appeared to Meruem's south, north, east, and west, each a hundred meters away from him.

"You are trespassing in my domain!" The four Wizard Kings called out at the same time. He tapped his staff down again, and the robot army above his castle teleported to the sky around him. Even the giant ones that had been standing on the roof were removed and teleported to the ground far below the Ant King, though with all their rockets aimed up at him. "Do you think you are exempt from my rules, Ant King?" The boys' eyes all narrowed at the Chimera Ant in the center of them.

Meruem's eyes darted around him and took in everything in the vicinity. He calmed down his bloodlust that did not seem to be working on the boy already so close to him. What am I doing here without my Royal Guards? Why did I not prepare an attack? No matter, his day would have come soon anyway. Meruem's aura erupted around him, expanding a thousand miles in every direction, then condensing around him to only a hundred feet diameter sphere of dark purple energy.

"Oooh?" Cartman said in a mock amazed tone. "Did someone get a little power-up after killing the Saiyan King?" Cartman asked in a voice like he was talking to a little kid. He scoffed, then the one right in front of Meruem to the south said in a lower voice, "Yeah right? I thought it would take you a little more time to muster the courage to come after me, but looks like you've gotten cocky."

Meruem shot towards the Cartman to the south of him and shoved his tail through the kid's chest. Cartman started laughing at him while the thickest part of the tail impaled right through his fat body. The boy leaned his body farther forward while grabbing onto both sides of Meruem's tail, then he exploded in a blinding white light. The other three Cartmans and the robot army beneath them teleported a couple of miles south, considering the explosion sphere was a half mile in diameter. The three remaining Cartmans put their hands to their foreheads and leaned forward while whistling in an impressed way at the size of the explosion. The Cartman on the left started, "Nice one…"

"Me," the one on the right of center finished.

"Not enough to kill him," the one in the center added.

"But definitely enough to piss him off," all three said before laughing together. The boy might have been in multiple bodies, but they were of one mind. The three Cartmans looked towards their explosion and narrowed their eyes as they no longer sensed a power coming from inside it. The Ant King had not been able to mask his enormous power before, so for a moment the boy wondered if his explosion actually killed the most feared monster on Aebrith and likely all of Nexus.

A hand went through the back of the center Cartman's neck. The two on the sides started turning inwards, while Meruem clenched up on the bottom of Cartman's skull and ripped upwards. He pointed his feet out at the same time and fired two purple spheres of energy at the Cartmans in the processs of turning to him. Cartman smacked his staves into the energy spheres and sent them flying right back at Meruem who narrowed his eyes at the boy's speed and recovery time from being surprised by Meruem's appearance. Meruem put his hands out though and caught his own blasts, then flicked them to the sides to be able to catch Cartman's hands that he tried punching into the spheres to make them explode in Meruem's palms. Meruem caught Cartman's hands perfectly to curl his fingers and interlock with those on either of Cartman's hands, then he swung in front of himself and smashed the two Cartmans into each other.

He tried smashing them together hard enough to break them, but the two just bounced off before spinning and punching their other hands towards Meruem's chest. The Ant King's tail snapped around his body and impaled the Wizard King on the right, while Meruem smacked the other Wizard King's arm away with his left hand. The left Wizard King's momentum had him keep going forward, and Meruem started bringing up his left knee to smash into the kid's gut. As the Wizard King leaned towards him though, the boy opened his mouth wide and Meruem shot backwards instead of continuing the knee. A beam of white light shot out of the Wizard King's mouth and flew right beneath the bottom of Meruem's feet. The kid lifted his gaze to the monster who jumped over his attack, and Meruem had both hands pressed together in front of his body, firing a beam of red light down into the boy's still-open mouth that had just finished shooting out that beam.

The red light filled Cartman's body and he lowered his head to look down at himself as his body glowed red. His body ripped apart violently, and Meruem floated in midair while looking down at the three falling remains of his enemy. That was too easy, Meruem thought, even though he did not consider that as all that easy.

"You don't think you've won, do you?" A voice called up from below. Meruem looked down, and he stared at one of the hundred and fifty meter tall robots below him. That robot's body started to morph, and a humongous Wizard King took shape where it was standing instead. The massive Wizard King smirked up at the Ant King, then he teleported into the sky so that his head was much higher than the Ant's. He looked down towards Meruem and bellowed, "All of my creations, are me!" Dozens, hundreds of robots below Meruem started to change shape. Excluding the multicolored ones that just flew up in the air to make a wide circle around the Ant King, all of the silver ones floating around or standing as giants turned into larger versions of Eric Cartman. "You can't beat me," Cartman laughed out with a huge smirk. "I am the mother-fucking Wizard King! And you will respect my authoritah!" Cartman slammed his giant staff down for Meruem, but the Ant King lifted his arms and slammed his palms into the weapon as it smashed down on him.

Cartman pushed harder, his teeth baring as he put more strength into it. His giant form's eyes widened the side of houses as Meruem pushed his hands up and made Cartman's staff and arms lift high above him, leaving his whole body open for attack. Meruem did not attack yet though. All the other Wizard Kings and his robots were flying up or in at him, and he flew up towards the highest giant one's face. Meruem floated in front of Cartman's eyes while the boy's fat arms continued to rise at his sides. Meruem looked into Cartman's eyes, a look of calm fury in his own that matched his demeanor. "You hold no authority over me," Meruem said.

The Ant King flew backwards and avoided the giant beam of lightning dropping out of the sky. His tail whipped behind his body and sliced vertically through the ten-foot tall Wizard King who appeared behind him. He rose his right hand and caught a ball of white light that then almost exploded prematurely, only for a purple beam of Meruem's own energy to push it a hundred meters into the distance before it exploded. He shot down away from the widening blast and punched, kicked, and swung his tail into all the Wizard Kings he flew by while evading the explosion. He did a three-sixty spin and lifted his arms away from his sides just a bit to dodge five beams fired at him from different directions, then he smashed straight through a green robot without slowing down.

A green gaseous substance surrounded Meruem, but his body surrounded in a white veil right before he smashed through the robot and he was already holding his breath. Two Wizard Kings flew at his sides when he was about to hit the ground, and they each swung their staves in at the Ant King's body. Meruem got hit in the front and the back, then his hands snapped out and grabbed each Wizard King by the face. He slammed down to the ground on both feet, blowing the earth below him apart while also slamming the heads of the two Wizard Kings he caught into the floor at the same time. The earthquake caused the landscape around him to crack, while the wave of earth that pulsed out around his landing point grew taller and taller as it pushed away from him. The wave knocked a few of the giant Wizard Kings off balance, but they flew up in the air to get off the shaking ground. Those giant Cartmans, the smaller ones (that were still taller than Meruem), and the robots still around the Ant King all started flying down towards Meruem at once.

Meruem's body glowed red, and his skin bubbled out on his arms, back, chest, and even on the top of his head. Meruem crossed his bubbling arms that started pulsing energy. "Rage, Eruption," Meruem uncrossed his arms right as the closest Cartman was about to slice at him with a black sword sticking out the end of his purple staff. Meruem exploded. Out from Meruem's body shot hundreds of bright pink energy blasts. The Wizard Kings flying down at him stopped and tried changing directions, but the beams were too fast. Even the ones who were able to change course and fly away were chased by the pink blasts and blown apart within a second. The ground beneath Meruem dipped down a few hundred meters, while the ground blew apart at his sides and flew in every direction as a giant cloud of black ash moving so fast that it devastated the grassy landscape for ten miles around him. More explosions flew out of him than there were enemies, and the blasts that had no targets just landed far from the King and smashed into the ground where they blew apart like miniature nuclear bombs.

Sixty miles to the south, Cartman stared ahead with wide eyes as his army was annihilated and his kingdom's lush landscape demolished. Even in Enhanced Mode, Cartman thought darkly. How much energy does the Ant King have? I always thought Bardock was the strongest of the three of them, so now Meruem has his own power and most of Bardock's it seems. Is his power limitless? Mine isn't, but I assumed I had more than him. I assumed I was better, because, well I'm me! Of course I'm better! "Alright, Juandissimo," Cartman said, glancing down at his staff's nervous eyes. "I wish for Reality Trap A."

"Good idea," Juandissimo said in a relieved voice. He swung his wand in front of him, then the staff smiled and let his arm and wand disappear. The two of them looked out to the north where Meruem was lifting out of the smoke of his explosion. The Ant King looked undamaged, and despite the distance, Cartman could see him perfectly from where he floated. The boy and his Fairy Godparent stared ahead as Meruem flew towards them so fast that he was traveling several miles per second. Meruem was speeding up too, getting closer to his enemy faster each second.

Meruem's body surrounded in a white veil from moving too fast through the air, and he stared straight ahead with a grin while glaring into the Wizard King's eyes. The Wizard King stared with a blank expression back at him, and then the boy smirked. The short, fat kid started laughing, and Meruem sped even faster to get to him. He raced towards the boy who he was only a few miles away from now, but the kid just laughed harder as Meruem sped up more. I should have reached him already, Meruem thought, while speeding up even more and urging his body to reach the boy. He was not frozen still; he could feel his body still racing through the sky. He felt the air pushing past his body and saw the clouds and earth flying by above and below him. What is this!?

"You can't reach me," Cartman said. His voice reached Meruem even though he was not speaking that much louder than he usually did. Meruem kept flying, an angered and bloodthirsty expression on his face as he continued glaring into the Wizard King's eyes. "If you were running towards me," the boy continued, "the ground beneath your feet would slide backwards equal distance to each step you took. There is no limit too. You could run all you like, or fly in this case, and it won't make a difference. The ground will only slide backwards up until a certain point south of the wall where it is pressed up against unmoving earth. Those two sections pushing against each other will create a new mountain range from the east coast to the west. And don't think that I'll run out of land down here the more that slides north, because more land is constantly appearing between the two of us, an equal amount to that which you slide back by flying forward."

Meruem realized why the ground was moving beneath him, yet he was not getting any closer to the Wizard King. He looked far ahead to where Cartman was floating, then below at the ground behind the kid while he continued to fly forward. The ground beneath Cartman was not moving no matter how fast he flew, and Meruem started to doubt that speed was the problem. He pointed his right hand forward and fired a beam of red light while continuing to soar incredibly fast. Cartman chuckled and smacked the beam of light back at Meruem who dodged it then started slowing down, because the distance between him and Cartman had not changed for over ten seconds. The continent itself shifts to his whims, Meruem thought, while watching the ground slow down its expansion at the same pace as his declining speed.

Meruem stopped flying and glared back towards Cartman while snarling furiously at him. "You see, Meruem," Cartman said in a disrespectful tone. "It doesn't matter how strong you get, because the rules don't apply to me. Hahaha!" Cartman started laughing and he swung his staff in front of him. When he swung the staff, distance and time condensed and expanded. Grass grew rapidly over recently formed earth, and the boy zoomed much closer to Meruem only to double the distance from him again. He tapped the top rounded part of the staff in the air and visible vibrations of sound rippled off of it towards Meruem who heard a ringing noise that got exponentially louder by the second to the point of pain. "This will never be your world," Cartman taunted. "The only reason you control so much land," Cartman's eyes narrowed and he said with a menacing smirk, "is because I let you."

That was the last straw. Meruem's power exploded out from him so hard that the ripples of sound in the air coming from Cartman's staff started trembling between them. Cartman's condensed space between him and Meruem that was so hard for the Ant King to push through, cracked. The air itself split open in five different cracks that had strange swirling pink lights on the other side of them. Meruem leaned forward even as purple blood came out of his ears, and he smirked back at Cartman in a much more terrifying way than the kid just did. Cartman thought that he had been pretty terrifying with that display of power, but as Meruem stared forward with animalistic fury in his gaze, the Ant King was a thousand times more frightening.

Meruem floated forward and Cartman smacked his staff down at the King, sending such a powerful slash of wind at him that Meruem had to stop leaning forward to dodge left instead. Meruem was fast though, and Cartman had to snap his head to follow the Ant's movements. "I wish he was gone!" Cartman shouted as Meruem lifted up a hand covered in purple energy. Just like that, Meruem disappeared.

"Geez that guy is annoying," Cartman said and laughed. He then turned and whispered down at the purple staff in his right hand, "Where did you send him?"

Juandissimo replied, "The other side of the world- uh-oh," Cartman saw his purple staff's eyes open wide and he spun to look back behind him in the southeast. Something was flying their way from the distance, and it did not slow down even as it neared him. The dot appeared in an instant and Meruem slashed his right hand down at the kid's head, but Cartman lifted his staff and blocked Meruem's arm with it. All the force that Meruem put into the strike was reflected back at him when his arm hit the staff, but Juandissimo still clenched his teeth in pain. His eyes bulged at the feeling of that pain, while Cartman grabbed his right arm with his left hand and groaned in pain too at how much his bones were vibrating.

"What happened?" Cartman snapped. Meruem was bouncing backwards with blood splashing out of cracks all over his arm, the force of that last strike too much for even his powerful body to take when reflected back at him. It felt to Meruem like the attack had increased in power too on the reflection, but as he fell away from Cartman, he saw the Wizard King's teeth clench and the boy grab his blocking arm in pain. Cartman spun when Meruem recovered, and the fat kid stopped panting, but he did not start smiling this time. Even all-powerful, has it's limits, Cartman thought, glancing down at his staff and wondering how much Juandissimo could take.

"Alright, Ant King," Cartman began while Meruem floated back up only twenty feet in front of him. "Are we doing this, right now? You versus me. Fight to the death?" The way Cartman worded it made it sound like that was what he was ready for, and the kid smirked as he awaited a response from the Chimera Ant before him.

Take the challenge, Meruem thought, but he frowned at the idea. Why would I do something so reckless? Out of the four on this continent who I believed could threaten me, he has always been the most dangerous. I had decided to save him for last. Why would I change my plans now, just for a fight against him? He already knew the answer. The Saiyan DNA. Seeing his strength, seeing this boy break the laws of physics, if I could beat him. A smirk tried pulling at Meruem's lips, but he was still against the idea and almost growled at himself for ignoring his counter-thoughts while explaining his reasons to himself. I have not yet gained control over my own altered DNA. My mind is more powerful than my body though, and I will never let that change.

"What did you do to time?" Meruem questioned. Cartman's face filled with confusion, but Meruem spotted the eyes of the staff Cartman was holding open wide in surprise. Meruem never changed his gaze from Cartman to the staff, but he did continue, "Nevermind." Cartman's eyes bugged out in confusion. While continuing to block out Cartman's mind reading powers, Meruem thought, The staff he wields is the source of his power. It has sentience, and it knows about the time displacement as well. What is that being? It knows more than he does at least. It could even be controlling the Wizard King, though that is unlikely. A being of that power allowing this boy to act as he wishes, does it not concern itself of the mortal world? Is it an amoral force? Or does the Wizard King have to follow certain rules? He has never truly conquered anything, despite claims that he would. If the reason for this is that staff, or whatever being is taking the form of that staff, then he has an easily exploitable weakness. And so, my fight with the Wizard King will reconvene soon, once I have made proper plans. Meruem thought all this in a matter of a second, a second and a half. At the end of his thought process though, he noticed himself getting angrier at the idea of not finishing the fight and had to scold himself with his own thoughts.

"Hey!" Cartman shouted as Meruem sounded like he was ending this right now. "You can't just fly into my lands and fight me, then leave like nothing happened!"

"So will you try to stop me from leaving?" Meruem asked, and his enormous purple aura surrounded him. The sky darkened and the ground quaked, cracking in different locations and causing rock slides and avalanches. A few volcanoes in the Wizard King's domain even erupted thanks to all the rumbling.

I could beat him, Cartman thought. "Do not try it. I am not so sure." Cartman looked down at his staff who just communicated telepathically with him, then he turned back to Meruem with a deep frown. "If you come south of my wall again, it will be the last time you do."

"I agree," Meruem said. The Ant King turned and flew back towards his Capital, leaving Cartman to ponder what the King was implying by agreeing with him there.

As Meruem flew off, he frowned while thinking of his nearly limitless power. All this strength, but the cost is great. In order to uphold my laws on time, I dared confront the Wizard King with no preparation. I would not have done this before killing Bardock. It is not just the increase in power that has me this confident though, because it was not confidence I felt while considering my fight with that boy. It is a drawback I had been avoiding for years in caution of its possible effects on my mind.

I need time to better understand how my nature has been altered. I wanted to see what else he could do. I wanted to see everything he could throw at me! And that's, that's not a bad thing. Meruem's lips curled up. Why accept that I would not not be able to witness all there is to see without putting myself in harm's way? I am the King. If I want to see everything he has, I will. If I find something is not to my liking, I will destroy it, whatever it may be. This world is mine. All of its inhabitants are beneath me. That boy has the gall to challenge me. He disrespected his King. The punishment for that is death. Death will come for you, Wizard King. I will come for you soon.

---

A/N Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed the latest chapter! The chapter started off pretty normal, casual, and then Luffy died, the Eliacube returned, Wizard King vs Meruem happened! Ben saves his friend's life, and the gambit pays off as Cartman is able to beat back Meruem with his reality-altering powers. It's a trap! I never actually got to say that line (fully) in this chapter, so I had to add it there. XD Anyway, let me know what you thought of the chapter, predictions for the upcoming ones, or questions you may have. Just wanted to mention where I got the wood that Cartman's front doors were made out of- TFS DBZ Abridged: Mahogany from Malchior 7 (the stuff King Yemma's desk was made out of). Alright, review responses!

Limit-Breaking chapter 92 . Mar 29

Welp i read the chapter about tien, The hint Is HE is Dead 100% dead, there isn't even a chance for being alive at all, I mean you called him a corpse and in a review you said will see what happen to him, Not only that but tien had dead eyes and many stitches over his body AND YOU CALLED HIM A CORPSE.

Anyway Nice chapter i look forward to next

You know i just felt like posting this question cause it just came to me, But when it comes down to pitou, can gohan be the person who wants revenge for tien. Weird thing to ask but it feels kinda of similar to the events of gon and kite since both gon and gohan are kinda similar when it comes down to there personalities. It also feels kinda ironic that pitou pissed off another kid like gohan since both gon and gohan have shown how brutal they can be when they want revenge.
I also wonder if killua is going to be able to hold in his killing intent since he is a professional at it. But hey there is a cure to the pit of lazarus, and yes i watched the show it's really good, though i am a bit behind. But i do know it can be healed with magic and that strange guy oliver knew.

;( Tien! Sorry about killing off one of your fav characters, he was always one of mine too. That's the main reason I didn't just throw him in on Awul as just another Z fighter like when Yamcha showed up at the end for the final battle, why I actually built him up with wanting to go try to get stronger. The more interesting I made him though in my plans, the more he had to die on Aebrith considering what the place is still like. Anyway, as for Pitou, she's def up there as one of the main villains for the arc, but no hints as to who will be fighting her (though I will say the plans are already set for her future). That was a good point with Killua holding back his killing intent which I hadn't thought of and will probably come up later if he's being compared to Juvia (if he ever wakes up that is...). Glad you're watching Arrow, and that guy is John Constantine who I'm pretty sure has his own tv show on the same channel actually, since I've seen him guest starring in other shows like Arrow a couple of times now. Thanks for the reviews!

Jokering chapter 92 . Mar 29

So, instead of reviewing chapter by chapter, I decided to let them build up so i could give an overall review.
I like that you added Stan to the party, it makes for some interesting expectations about this arc, not sure if he will stay for the whole story or just this part of the adventure, but its a neat addition either way. The little bit of background on Zoro was nice, dont think it should have taken a whole chapter but it was still nice. If i am not mistaken,there are at least 6 High Lords, the capital 50, Meruem himself, Super Luthor 2.0, the Underlords and the Darkness to deal with, lack of content doesnt to be something to worry about. I am still wondering how you'll do the fight against the Darkness, hope it wont be a Fantastic Four 2 scenario with what they did to Galactus. But one question, are Awul and Aebrith all that Enxus has or will you be exploring other unknown regions of the place?
Also a little something that i forgot to add in my first review and thats the threat build up. In the beginning you showed Goku dealing with the bigger threats, but with his and Timmy's absence, the team had to fight the bigger baddies themselves. It was a good way increasing the feeling of danger, but now that things are moving up and stronger villains are showing up, there is no choice but to bring them back.
This arc started off a little slow but already seems to be progressing on a nice pace, good work. Also, now that his dlc is out, i can finally pay my respects: Farewell Bardock, you may be officially dead both in this fanfic and in the original story, but you shall live on as my main in Dragon Ball Fighterz. Speaking of Dragon Ball, WHOLE SHIT WAS THAT FINALE AMAZING, what makes it even greater is that it was the director's debut and she absolutely nailed it. With Toei opening a department focused mostly on Dragon Ball, the younger animation crew having taken cues from the veterans of the series and Toryama having appointed Toyotaro as his successor to the manga, its safe to say that series is in good hands.
And now that i am done with the review and my fanboying of DB, i congratulate you for another great chapter and hope you enjoy your time in Japan. Until the next chapter.

First off, just want to agree about how awesome that final DBS episode was. Coolest fight in the show by far, when 17 fired those three blasts and Frieza and Goku shot towards Jiren, I mean XD XD XD! Lol hope we see more fights like that in the future or the movie. Okay, back to the actual story. Glad you liked Stan's addition to the group. I knew he would be joining them since I wrote him getting to Aebrith, but I was surprised by how long it took me to reach the base before the Wizard King where I planned on having him join up (went a few 100,000 words more than I thought it would). There are AT LEAST 6 High Lords (as you said), the remaining Capital 50, all those others you mentioned, and don't forget about the three criminal Organizations on Aebrith we met back in Dressrosa: The Monster Association, the Umbrella Corporation, and Al Tharmen. Shima talked about how there's a group called the Light running the Umbrella Corp. too... Anyway yeah, def a lot of villains. And the villains we've seen recently are definitely getting stronger, but luckily it seems like the squad's getting back together, or at least they hope they are. I'm happy you liked the way I did that though. I really didn't think it would be interesting to have Timmy and Goku trump-carding their way through Aebrith while the rest of the group just took on the more minor villains, so I put them up against ones even they couldn't beat from the start. Thanks for another awesome review!

joebob323 chapter 92 . Mar 30

Whoo! That chapter was great, but I want to know, why does Juandissimo allow Cartman to mind control Timmy? Cause fairies can hold power over their god children, and Timmy and Juandissimo are acquainted as well...

Thanks! What is Juandissimo's deal? Find out this chapter (13) on Nexus: Heroes Will Rise! There's gonna be a flashback in a chapter coming up, so we'll see... and I'll see, since I still need to write it XD!

cyber chapter 92 . Mar 30

first of all I was so hyped when I saw the aliens vs predators, I'm glad to see there appearance and for the wizard king I was thinking it was cartman, but juandissimo is his fairy god parent? what happen to remy, but also great chapter cant wait to see more.

Haha glad I added it then. I literally just had the idea one day to make them fight Aliens and Predators, probably after watching Alien vs Predator or something, so I started writing it and used their trip down south as the location. Then I remembered how the Flood were supposed to be there too and added them in, but I had that chapter written for months, way before I even started the War of the Saiyan Mountains. Glad I caught you off guard with Juandissimo, and we'll learn more about him coming up in the next chapters. Thanks for the review!

asdf chapter 92 . Mar 30

Are you gonna give Luffy his future sight Observational Haki? I fell that's the only way, he's gonna stand a chance against Zoro. I mean obviously it's gonna be Luffy who fights Zoro, what is a captain without his First Mate after all?
I originally wanted it to be Kenpachi instead of Gray who got transported to the island with Zabuza and Zoro. They're all swordsmen and bloodthirsty after all. I guess it wouldn't have worked since they wouldn't be able to see him (Kenpachi).
Have you finished watching Yu Yu Hakusho? I would love to see Yusuke kick ass and take names. I mean, you've already got Hunter X Hunter, why not Yoshihiro Togashi's other work?

I honestly don't mind Zoro being so strong. All of the characters can't stay in the Z fighters and Timmy's shadows forever, they have to at the least become planet level. Zoro himself desires to World's Greatest Swordsman so I expect him to surpass Trunks.
Speaking of One Piece, I can't remember but have you shown Makino? Because she has a child who may or not be Shanks'. And we aren't even going into who Luffy's mother and grandmother are. Nor have we seen Garp or Dragon... Dragon especially (that guy's so god damn mysterious). I'd like to see Whitebeard again (who doesn't?)
Some more characters, I'd like to see are the 8 Kings from Toriko. They're all super strong and scary. One of them is the Derous the Dragon King (I'd like to see Natsu's reaction to this fact) who can fire a god damn gigantic laser and I won't spoil anymore. All I am gonna say is that Derous is a hell of a lot stronger than Acnologia.

Oi don't get any ideas about killing Makino's child just because I reminded you about him you baby killer!

... Chuck... Chuck as in... Chuck Norris?

Luthor's Group: The Buu, The Bad And The Baldy
Though I suppose that they're all bald.

Thanks for the 5 reviews! XD Wondering if you went back and reread those chapters before posting all of those? Guess I'll start at the first, or oldest, and say that I don't know how to give Luffy that. I recently read that chapter, and it seemed to me like he needs to be in a fight with someone who can see the future for him to get it. Like when it was showing his flashbacks to training with Rayleigh, that seemed to be what he decided, like "I have to see it to find out how it works," so I guess if Luffy runs into Dogtooth in the future, then it's def possible. Probably with some other villains too. I think having Kenpachi with Zoro that early on would have been tough too, considering FD Zoro was nowhere near Kenpachi level, while at Present he survived a fight with Ulquiorra. Glad you like Zoro being so strong. I wanted to keep him in the story, but I knew that having Zoro be on a world where there were countless people stronger than him would make him need to get much stronger because of the kind of guy he is. We have yet to see Makino or a lot of other One Piece characters, but I'll let you know that in the next chapter there's a part where a whole lot of new... Gonna end it there ;). Have yet to watch Toriko so I won't be adding them (unless I watch it soon and can add them before the story is set up in too fixed a way). Forgot Makino had a kid, but mwhahahaha- no lol, he/she's probably safe, or not even on Nexus or something. Chuck is the God of the Supernatural tv show world, but hey Chuck Norris is kind of like a God too, so he's probably up there hanging with other Chuck. And finally, nice name for the trio of baldies! XD Thanks again for reviewing!

kg833998 chapter 92 . Apr 8

as usual an amazing chapter can't wait to see what happens when the purple fairy (can't spell his namelearns what happened to Wanda maybe he already knows . also do you think that when one piece endseven though I don't want that day to comethat luffy will be as strong as naruto

also is a certain jinchuriki still I will give you a hint who it is. fool ya fool

also will people from other worlds join the straw hat?

and one last thing WHERE ARE THE REST OF THE YONKO blackbeard is dead shanks is somewhere and whitebeard is with the resistance so where is kaido and big mom we saw mochi mochi guy already so maybe she is dead or maybe the whole big mom famliy just got separated ?

Juandissimo! What will happen to him? How will he react? Or has he already reacted to learning about Wanda? One Piece will never end. Oda will die long before ever finishing the manga. I doubt Luffy would get that strong though, because I'd put Naruto above even Whitebeard who was the strongest man in the OP world. Luffy might be able to reach that level one day, but to a level high above it, I doubt. As for the jinchuriki I totally get who you're talking about, we have yet to see him... but that's probably a good thing since the majority of the ninja shown on Nexus were killed back in Konoha. Will others join the Straw Hats... you'll just have to wait and see ;). We'll def learn some more about the Big Mom pirates soon when Dogtooth returns, and who knows about Kaido? (I certainly don't XD, but maybe he'll show up one day). Thanks for the reviews! Hope you enjoyed the chapter! Thanks again everyone for reading, faving, following, and reviewing! 'Till next time!