Darkness encroached on the wispy, nascent nebulae of light-spot stars that existed behind the eyelid of the flash-dazzled, a galaxy of photonegative souls slowly fading out from existence as if eroded by the very march of time in all its entropic finality. A cat's light-hungry eyes darted from point to point, but even they could find no trace, not even the merest reflection of starlight. 

Paws grasped along a cold, hard floor. A swallow, an unsure breath. Searching, crawling, looking desperately for something in this sensory desert. No sound of other people, no smell of chemicals or recognizable building materials, nothing to lift the veil of mystery that reached like a clawed hand around the heart of the most basic of fears: the unknown. 

Every hair on her back stood up at once as her knee hit a small object. She curled around it half like prey, half the last chance to escape the very concept of uncertainty. Familiar buttons and shapes played out under her hands. A friendly screen greeted her with the time of day and a picture of Natalie eating a chili cheese dog and making a mess of herself in the process. She lingered in this oasis of familiarity, trembling with relief. Her reverie was marred only by a circled line. "No network..." she noted with dismay.

Carrie activated the flashlight functionality of her royal purple PET and fanned the room with the beam of luminance. She expected to hit a wall, a decoration, something, but somehow the area was too large for that. Something occurred to her, and she pointed it downward toward the floor. It didn't highlight anything until it settled on her body, passing through whatever she was standing on like a perfectly refractive piece of glass. Her skin crawled as she noticed that there were no dust particles in the beam, something which also defied explanation.

"... Hello??" Her fur stood up on end as her voice echoed in increasingly unnatural ways, shifting pitch and intonation while reverberating as if she'd shouted down a pipe encrusted with xylophonic crystals. She tried to keep her breathing steady, but it paced ahead of her. "What the fuck is going on...?" She clicked the button to activate her PET's grip strip, then stuck it to her right breast, keeping the light facing outward. Carrie extended her arms out in front of her, walking in the total darkness. "Hello!!" she shouted, wincing with tilted ears as the sound came back angrier, more distorted. She licked her lips. "... Arus??"

Her voice came from the reflection in her PET. "Shine the light up."

From her hunched over position, Carrie straightened up, then leaned back.

Miles of leathery blue tendrils coiled together like the underside of an enormous brain, hardening into a calcified mass of teeth, shut tight like spirals of enormous deadly zippers that traced in ways that made no sense nor had room for a mouth behind them. Prison-like bars of bone bulged with intestinal flesh just barely held back within their ill-fitting portholes. Throughout this incomprehensibly enormous organic mass, there lurked not a single eye, but strips of nauseating prismatic light that traced up and around it, blurring the vision whenever one pointed directly at the eye.

It swallowed, something unseen going through its unknowable digestive tract.

She screamed.

Carrie's legs took her away from the thing she'd seen as far and as fast as they could, her exhalations still coming out as screams until she took a deep breath and pushed her bruised, battered body- oh, right, those injuries were still fresh- as hard as she could. Exhaustion found her quickly, but the moment she heard some unfathomable sound echo behind her, she redoubled her efforts, ignoring her burning lungs and pounding head. Through her bleary eyes, she vaguely saw shapes in the neverending void, but only one of them looked anything close to familiar: a door. She reached out for it, pulling it open and shoving herself through.

It was more of the same. Pure darkness, no surfaces. She slammed the door and put her back up against it, panting.

"Carrie??"

The cat bolted upright.

"Carrie, over here!"

She looked around, finally having to turn around entirely. She looked past the doorframe toward the area she'd just run from, only to find it wasn't that area- impossibly, the door went somewhere completely different. Beyond that frame was a wolf, running for her. "Natalie?!" She caught her in a hug, spinning around before possessively squeezing her against her generous chest.

"Aaaa, I'm so glad to see you!!" Nat anxiously peppered her girlfriend with kisses before giving into instinct and licking her cheek rapidly, her tail chopping the air like a helicopter blade behind her.

"Hahaha, okay, okay!" Carrie grinned and pushed Nat's face away, wiping the saliva off of her face with her girlfriend's sleeve.

"Are you okay?? Where did you get sent?? Did it take a long time to get back???"

"Uh... sent? You mean, that room over there?" Carrie queried.

"No, the-... to another world." Natalie tilted her head. "You know. An alternate universe, like the one I got sent to."

She blinked, utterly shocked. "You got what?? When?!"

"I was there for like a day! I think. It might have been less time, but it was a while! You didn't wonder where I was??"

Carrie's brows scrunched up. "I... just got here though?"

"Time is convoluted here."

They both turned around and immediately regretted it. A gigantic mass of shapes twisted, writhed and metamorphosed, unable or unwilling to take a solid shape. It was impossible to focus on any one area, making the finer details, much less the overall form, completely impossible to guess. "Augh! Fuck! It's like a million bugs crawling all over everything! Ough, it's giving me a headache..." Carrie complained.

"Your eyes see woefully little. Why not try another's?"

Natalie shut hers and inked over, motioning for Carrie to do the same. When they looked up through the eyes of their inklings, they saw something enormous: a humanoid figure, blue and goat-like, sitting on some sort of throne made of embossed sandstone. She was easily several stories tall, towering over them even while seated, and extra sets of ethereal arms never seemed to stop moving, in constant motions of prayer or some other cryptic purpose. "Whoa... who are you?" Nat managed.

"Waymaker Pathos."

Carrie was completely at a loss. "So... you're an inkling, then?"

"Do not mistake the ability to see me, through the eyes of a creature of metaphor, for the capacity to comprehend my existence."

The cat shifted uncomfortably before throwing up her hands. "Okay whatever then, why are we here?! And what the shit was that horribafuckus thing in the other room??"

"You chanced upon another pawn. You see, mine is an intervention. You have been removed from your board, and placed on another." 

"Wuh-..." Carrie's face screwed into a ball of confusion. "Wha??"

"Okay, so..." Natalie began. "She put me into a world that's a lot like ours, except uh. Things were... different. Like... bad different. And I had to eventually fight an evil version of myself. And I won!"

"Oh! Shit, really??" She seemed amazed. "But why??"

"Your world is doomed. I have foreseen the events of your path and you will be found wanting." Her yellow eyes narrowed. "You will be crushed."

The pronouncement of such a thing was something both of them had heard similarly in movies or read in comics dozens of times. It was a completely silly idea... but the overwhelming presence and ability of Pathos made the entirety of it feel not just true, but inevitable as the sea. They were not going to take her word lightly. "W-... Well then... if my world's doomed, then why should I help any of these other assholes??" Carrie asked with defiance betrayed by worry.

"You are worthless in your world..." One of her etherial hands picked up a checker piece, then deposited it amongst an in-session chess game. "But the strangeness of your displacement can be useful in another." The checker piece jumped over multiple enemy pieces in one move, arriving at the other end of the board and being crowned with the entire enemy King piece. "You will change these worlds... and in so doing, be changed yourself."

"Temper my fate..." Natalie repeated the words she remembered from when they'd been dragged into this. "So my friends...?"

"Are elsewhere."

"And the ones still on my world??"

"You have been gone one week."

"Oh god, they must be so worried! And what about Mixer?? A-And Cedric! Oh god, Actima! I have to get back!"

"Then your friends will need to move quickly. I cannot send you back until you have all returned."

Natalie was visibly upset at this. "You have to at least let me talk to them! I-I need to explain to my pack what they need to do! And everyone looking for me that I'm okay, and coming back!"

The strange demigoddess stared down thoughtfully for a long time. "You may yet earn these." She leaned forward out of her chair slowly, looking to Natalie like timber falling. "As favors." 

The implication wasn't lost on either one of them. Neither Nat nor Cat seemed to relish the idea of owing someone like this any favors, but it wasn't negotiable and they knew it. "... A-... Alright."

   \
\    \
  \

"... Still more animals found out of dome, likely the work of displaced predators like the brown bear..."

Sam opened her bleary eyes, mouth full of stale flavors. She must have fallen asleep, and been awakened by that news stream. As her vision came back to her, colors turned into cloth, and forms filled into figures. The train was filled with people today, all preoccupied. She wiped her face, tears of exhaustion blotting onto her finely manicured hand; she must have needed the nap. The familiar blue and white of the armsleeve took the bat by surprise, however. Her eyes followed down, patterns flowing to the chest, where the label read with pride: LHS. Locksmouth High School. "Why am I... a cheerleader...?" she almost silently mouthed to herself in a state of mild confusion. 

It hadn't been too many years since she'd been kicked off the squad, but it felt like a lifetime ago. Merely having a version of this outfit that fit her currently was a big enough surprise. She traced down her leg to take a look at the boots, authentic as they were-

Her leg.

Her flesh and blood, completely natural, matching leg.

Samantha looked around her with a newfound sense of disorientation. She turned to the older gentleman next to her, a walrus who dressed in 17th century stylings, and tapped him on the shoulder. "Ah, excuse me?"

"Mmmrnh?" he rumbled.

Her eyes scanned around as she thought up a believable story. "I... suffer from short term memory loss. Do you remember how I got on this train?"

"Mm." He seemed slightly taken aback, but the explanation sat well with him. "As I remember, you were there at the station, waiting for the train, same as me. Just got off of school, most likely." He knit his bushy eyebrows, nodded at his conclusion and smiled with a kindly, if withered face.

"... Ah," Sam nodded, moving her gaze out the window across from them. "Thank you."

"My pleasure, young lady," he concluded, settling into his seat for what looked to be a nap of his own.

The bat knit her brows. Everything about this was wrong, and yet... the context suggested there was nothing out of the ordinary. Very curious. The train stopped, at which point she disembarked. She hadn't even checked if this was her stop, but then she hadn't remembered getting on the train, either. This was, thankfully, closest to home. 

Samantha searched around for her PET, finding it stuck to her cheer uniform. "I definitely need to call-... Ruth? Cassandra??" She scrolled through her contacts, finding several names she didn't recognize, and none of the ones she expected. As everyone quickly left for their own domiciles and the train went on its way, she stood there, blinking in confusion, looking around as if any moment she might spot some clue as to why nothing at all made sense. "Think, Samantha..." She walked slowly away from the train stop and toward her home. "What was the last thing I-" She swayed suddenly. "The hand. The one that grabbed us. And then... a voice."

The sky held no answers. Just a beautiful view of sky cut away from rings of snow that fell outside of the dome.

 -
- -
 -

"Erwin?"

The voice was muffled.

"Erwin are you okay in there?"

The ferret squeezed his eyes shut before opening them, bright bathroom lights stinging his eyes momentarily. His shoulder hurt- he'd hit the shower door on the way to the floor, a fluffy bath rug softening his landing. He rose slowly, examining himself in the-

"Whoa," he whispered under his breath. Before him stood a version of himself all in black, the tattered remains of an overshirt over the rest of his fish-net ensemble, which was fairly snug. He wore lipstick, eyeliner, nail polish- all of it black. His glasses had a much more severe shape to them, heavily framed in that same dark color.

"Erwin???"

"Uh- yeah!" the ferret called from inside the bathroom. "I'm okay, I just... slipped. Nothing's hurt though." At least not too badly, he added mentally, rubbing his shoulder. 

When he opened the door, he instantly recognized Natalie's house, filling in the mental image he'd had. What he didn't recognize, however... was Natalie. Heavy, zipper-chained boots reinforced her normally sneakered feet. Black and white striped leggings ran all the way up, with matching armsleeves. She had a black dress that somehow managed to look flat on her thin, unathletic form... matched by her hair, which completed the droopy, sullen aesthetic by having no volume whatsoever. She looked at him with a cocked brow. "Glad you didn't fall in," she said with something like her trademark humor, but... much quieter, more wispy.

"Uh... wow." He blinked. "Natalie, uh... what's with the outfits??" He examined the studded bracers on his arms.

Her head cocked in that doglike fashion it tended to. "What about it?"

"Just... since when do we dress like this??" he asked earnestly.

"Since... years??" She gestured confusedly with her hands. 

He acted as if she'd pushed him, utterly baffled. "What?"

"Are you sure you didn't hit your head?"

The ferret hesitated. "..... I-..." He looked around. "No." He gave one last cursory glance, deciding something. "Nevermind. What were we doing again?"

"Homework," she reminded, at this point resigned to his strange memory problem.

"Right. Yeah. Lead the way."

 -
- -
 -

It hit him like a truck.

Seeing his parents talking to each other in the kitchen of his still-standing house left Kei near-catatonic. Being able to walk so suddenly was bad enough, but as he stared at his folks- a bob-tailed cat and a tanuki- he shook, his claws digging into the doorframe. "W-..... What is the meaning of this?!"

The two of them stared at their son, shocked. The tanuki, his father, was the first to speak. "What??"

"You-... I watched you die!" Kei shook, pointing his finger at them in sequence. "I-... I saw the building fall on you... both of you... How can you be here?!"

His mother frowned. "Oh, is that how it is, now? You've stopped making excuses and now you're dreaming we're dead?" She shook her head. "I can't believe you're my child."

It was like a nightmare. Dormant feelings welled up in the fox's chest as a familiar pattern of aggravation and hurt emerged. "What, still angry I didn't come out like either one of you?? That's why you never gave me a break, never encouraged my creativity, never cared what I wanted! I never asked to be part of this fucking family."

His father's eyes widened. "How dare you speak to your mother that way!"

Kei paused. He hadn't even wanted to get into this. He was shocked he could even speak at all, but arguing with his parents was such a practiced motion that it was the only familiar thing he could even do. Lucidity gripped him now. "Oh, you wanna know how I dare?" He shook his head, aware now that he was, in fact, having a terrible dream. "I dare because I'm done with you. You two were awful to me, and now I've got people who actually care about me, so I'm done with this place, and with you."

The tanuki made his way over angrily, grabbing the fox teenager by the shoulder and turning him around. "You listen here, we've only done what's best for you, and if you think you're going to-"

"Shut up," Kei interrupted him. "I really don't care at this point why you did what you did. I'm so far past this, I just couldn't care less, okay? We're done."

His father grabbed his wrist, grip cinching down on him in anger. "Don't you dare walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

From inside Kei, something roiled. His body turned forest green- no, it wasn't his body, but instead the motherly frame of a fox woman made entirely of ink. Animis awoke from her long hibernation, standing imperiously. She didn't strike the man, nor throw him across the room, but merely stared at his shocked face as she forced him down onto his knees with crushing hydraulic force. "He said. We are done. Kanto."

His mother screamed. Her shaking hands fumbled for her PET. "Police?! It's one of them! We-... yes! We found one! Help us!! HURRY!!!"

Kei sighed. "This dream is really dragging this out."

Animis shifted. "I'm afraid you're not asleep, sweetheart."

His eyes widened. "Wait. What??"

Animis shoved Kei's father, sliding him across the kitchen floor like a hockey puck. "We should leave."

 -
- -
 -

"Papa?? Papa...!" Samantha called through her house as she entered it. Things seemed rearranged in ways that made it hard to navigate the heavily decorated space. 

"Yes my dear?" Vincent stepped out from his study, brushing a shoulder-length lock of mane out of his face.

"Oh! What... happened to your hair?"

"Hm? Is there something wrong with it?" He ran a hand through it.

"Ah... nevermind." She shook her head. "Papa, I need to know: have you seen my friends anywhere?"

He thought about it. "I don't believe so- you don't bring Ruth or Cassandra around here... by choice, I thought."

"Not them, my real friends- Carrie, Natalie, Max, Erwin... Jacent..."

"Oh my, I don't recognize any of those names- though that's not terribly unusual," Vincent admitted.  "Well, don't worry, none of them have stopped by, so your father hasn't had any chances to embarrass you."

"Embarrass me?" She tilted her head. "Papa, you don't-..." The bat peered through a window. "I must speak with Natalie Grayswift. I need to look in your patient information directory, Papa."

"Oh? Did you get paired up on a school project?"

"It's much more important than that," she urged him. "I have to make sure of something."

He tilted his head, unsure what to make of this. "Very well, my dear."

 -
- -
 -

One. Two. Three. Four. 
March, don't run. 
A big one, they said. Strong.
One. Two. Three.

 -
- -
 -

Animis walked along the empty skybridge, feeling vulnerable in an unexplainable way. 

"What do you mean I'm not dreaming?? How could I be walking? How could you have enough energy to manifest like this? How could my... m-my parents...?"

"I do not know how this is possible, any of it, but the fact remains that we are awake and in the real world."

"I just don't-" 

They stopped in front of a poster, large and composed in a minimalist art style, featuring what looked to be a lone figure in white body armor with a police cap.

[GET OUT THE GOO
Report all alien sightings to your local law enforcement office!]

Animis looked left. Then right. Then shrunk down, retreating within her host. "Perhaps I should lay low for a while..."

"That's... for the best, I think." Kei honestly wanted to stay as Animis for a while longer- she brought him so much comfort- but this together with the reaction his parents had indicated there might not be the kind of inkling acceptance he was used to anymore.

It took them a while to get to Erwin's house. Every person milling about made him nervous for reasons he couldn't quite pin down. He saw quite a few of those posters around, which confused him greatly. Terra opened the door. "Oh, h'lo. Who're you?"

"Uh... I'm Kei. Kei Kobayashi." He waited a moment for realization to dawn on her face, but it didn't. "I'm... Erwin's... boyfriend?"

She blinked. "Oh wowsers, I didn't know! Gosh, that boy doesn't tell me a thing. What can I do for you?"

The fox was getting more confused by the moment. "I was hoping he was home?"

"Oh, ah, nope, he went to the Grayswift kid's house. You'll for-sure find him there!" she said cheerfully.

"Oh, of course, yes." He nodded, thankful something familiar was finally happening. He turned tail and made his way toward Natalie's house, which he hoped he remembered the location of.

Terra watched him go, chuckling to herself. "Didn't even know he had a partner. How about that." She turned back inside, walking past her PET, oblivious to the updated headlines.

[ - Harbington challenges Anchorsway to Dodgevol...
  - Mutilated wild bears found just outside of dome...
  - Police on the lookout for Kei Kobayashi, inked... ]

 -
- -
 -

Natalie's room was nothing like Erwin remembered it. Neat, organized and made to look like some sort of dark fantasy castle, it held a very specific ambiance, and that mood was Black. Having textpads out to do homework felt completely out of place, yet there she sat, on the floor, sidelong. "... So I, uh... must've been out for a while. How did we end up beating Cedric?"

The wolf seemed like she was getting tired of being confused. "Cedric? What?"

The frustration was mutual. "You know, Cedric. He set a big trap for us, beat us up in the middle of town, then there was this... weird arm thing I don't quite- wait! Now I remember! It was Jacent!"

She shrugged blankly. "Oh good, another name I don't know."

The door chime rang out. Distantly, her mother's voice called "I'll get it!"

Erwin was completely bewildered now. "Jacent Danger? You know, Cap'n Comet?? The superhero comic you're... completely... obsessed..." he looked around her room, full of posters for vampire books and gothic adventure games. "...... You're not my Natalie."

Now she looked concerned. "Uhm?"

The ferret pulled out his PET and began flipping through recent news stories, headlines day after day looking completely alien to him. "No... no, this isn't right." He stared into the palm of his hand with burning intensity. "This isn't my world. Somehow... some way... I've been sent into a reality that's not my own." 

Natalie looked frightened and vulnerable in a way that he wasn't used to seeing, ever. "E-Erwin... you're scaring me. This isn't funny..."

"I know it's hard to believe," he said with calm understanding. "But I'm not the Erwin you know. I'm just... in his body, somehow..."

She blinked several times, taken aback. "Wait. But... how?"

He looked at the textpads. "That's the letter-grade question, isn't it?"

"Ah! So you are here!" Samantha said, making the two of them look toward the door entryway.

"Sam??" The ferret regarded her with surprise, then confusion at her outfit. "Wait." He paused, peering at her with some serious side-eye. "... Mhend?"

She pointed at him confidently. "Phactys."

They both let out a sigh of relief, then hugged. "What the hell is going on?!" Natalie cried, visibly upset. "You two aren't friends. In fact, you, you're an asshole!" she frowned at Sam. "You said my ass was too fat for my dress!"

She put a surprised hand on her chest. "Oh, dear. This version of me must be an utter brute." 

"So you've figured it out as well," Erwin intuited.

"Indeed, this isn't our home," Sam remarked, looking around. "We've been placed here, though for what purpose, I cannot imagine."

"Okay," Natalie put up her hands in a posture as if to suggest she were unwilling to concede the point. "I'm still not totally convinced this isn't just a really well-coordinated prank."

As if simply to add to the chaos, a red fox found his way in. "Erwin?? Erwin!!"

The ferret turned. "Kei!!" They embraced at once, twirling and falling onto Natalie's bed, consumed with relief at finding one another. They urgently whispered quiet, intimate messages of caring, peppered with kisses, until the kisses started winning out, and they grabbed each other bodily.

Natalie's pupils shrunk as she flattened her dress against the insides of her thighs. "Oh... that's hot."

The two boys suddenly remembered the situation they were in and parted, smiling apologetically."S-Sorry about that," Kei managed.

"Don't stop on my account..." the bewildered Natalie responded.

"You can walk!" Erwin cried happily.

"I can walk!" the fox agreed. "Why can I walk?? What's happened??"

"Alternate universe," Natalie said flatly. "According to them."

"Right!" Erwin agreed. "But not her, she's... from here. We're not."

The door chime rang out again. Everyone looked at each other, then Natalie rolled her eyes. "I'll get it," she said, defeated.

The three of them regarded each other with a sense of great importance despite their confusion. "So as far as I can tell, this had to be the work of whatever entity grabbed us all outside the dome," Sam began.

"That's what I was thinking," Erwin agreed. "But who was it, and what do they want from us? Are they trying to get rid of us?"

"If they wanted to kill us, I think anyone with that kind of power could have just shoved us out into space," Kei reasoned.

"True..." Erwin conceded. "Well... I don't have much experience with parallel universes outside of Andromeda 9 episodes, and in those, travel always happened randomly, usually due to some experimental mishap."

"Like in episode six... maybe seven, of season three!" Kei exclaimed. "Maybe this is more like that one episode in season eight, with the Adjudicator."

Sam began familiarizing their PETs to one another's, making sure to get Natalie's in the process. "I'm not getting the feeling that Mhend knows anything about this."

"Yeah, Phactys, either."

Kei blinked. "Ah... hold on." The fox became covered in green ink, and Animis asserted herself.

"It's good to see you in better shape," Erwin greeted her. "Do you have any idea what this is?"

Animis looked out the window, now quickly descending into twlight. "... I can't promise this means anything. But... occasionally, on Canvas, if one spends enough time in proximity, you can hear the mad whisperings of the prana-starved Greys. They... say things."

Sam found her curiosity piqued. "Things?"

Animis' long tail swished. "Most dismiss it as madness, pure nonsense. Others, however... believe that there are secrets locked away in the Greys. Wisdom from outside of our stars, protected from memory deterioration, gained from eyes beyond our own. Once, in passing, I heard one of them speak... of an accident. Something... someone, that wasn't supposed to happen, something that shouldn't be. Their existence was counter to everything that is, and yet... there they were.

"They shattered reality with their mere presence, their entire world subsumed in the fiery blackness of pure entropy. One little mistake, a coin flip landing on its edge, doomed them and everyone around them. And yet, even as everything else was destroyed... they persisted. Impossibly. Beyond the reaches of reality, yours or mine.

"Inside of this desperate, lonely infinity, they learned the true nature of all things. They absorbed the knowledge forbidden to us, and it warped their mind. They learned that there is more than one world, one version of events, and they began searching for a world like their own that they could inhabit, one closer to their own. But upon entering, it, too, shattered and replayed the entire tragedy over again.

"From inside their prison of darkness, they began realizing that rather than invading a world whole cloth, they could pick pieces out of one world and put them in another. Small changes, to try to shape a universe they could exist in. A puzzle for which they could be the final piece. And from that depth of eternity, they pull strings, the totality of their arcane machinations known only to them."

Samantha blinked slowly. "Wait... I remember something... when I was asleep. Just before I woke up... something kind of... suggesting that."

"Yeah!" Erwin remarked. "Me too! I-... I remember it as well!"

Animis retracted, and Kei found himself psyched. "Yeah! Okay I remember that too! We all had the same dream!"

"... Well, crap." Erwin grimaced. "That means there's something wrong with this world, and we have to fix it. And so far... we're the only ones."

"... Ah!" Sam intuited what he meant. "No Natalie. No Carrie. No muscle..."

As if on cue, Natalie re-entered her room. "Hey, back. Yeah, uh, another friend of yours looking for you, I guess? A guy named Max?"

The three of them shared a look of surprise. "Oh, of course, Max!" Erwin nodded, grinning. "He was on Team Rough! We've got him!"

Into the doorway, shuffled an anemic iguana, wearing a hospital gown, holding onto a firmly floating cylinder with a handle in the middle, several tubes running from it to his body. He took a laborious, wheezing breath. "Hey guys."

 -
- -
 -

One. Two. Three. Four. 
The steady march of time, stretching eternally.
Building like sand in an hourglass.
Building like snow on the petals of a flower.
Are you watching?
One. Two.

 -
- -
 -

"Max!" Samantha gasped. "Are you okay??"

"I been better," he rasped with a smirk, despite his eyes being half-closed.

She fussed over him, inspecting his body. It was emaciated, all the usual generous athletics and curves cut from his body as if by a hungry knife. "No doubt! I'm shocked the hospital let you leave like this..."

"They didn't." He grinned weakly. "I snuck out. Stole one of these." He held up the cylinder to which he was very literally attached. His eyes shut painfully as his limbs began to shake. "Nnnh... h-hang on..." he depressed a button on the floating pillar and leaned on it as it made a short hissing noise. "..... Ahhhhhhh..." relief washed over his features as he shivered. "That's better."

"Geez, Max, should you be administering that stuff by yourself??" Kei asked with concern.

"He can, yes," Samantha answered. "The Support Pillar pre-measures doses according to his need, it won't let him overdose. They're for people who are feeling well enough to get up and move around a bit during their recovery- a stage which he is nowhere near." She glared at him pointedly.

"Then heal meee," he rasped sarcastically.

"Heal him?" Natalie puzzled. "Wait, what do you meeeean?!" The wolf jumped backward on the bed, steadying herself on the recessed wall. "What-... what the fuck! You're..." She stared at Mhend's pink liquid skin. "You're one of them."

Sam looked down at herself. "Oh. Right, yes. Inklings. We have them." It felt strange to say that to the person who had introduced her to the concept- or at least, a version of that person.

"Okay well-" she lowered her voice. "You should probably keep that a secret, okay?? Trust me."

The other teenagers seemed concerned by the gravity of her words. "V-... Very well..." Sam hid Mhend away, using her powers in absentia. She placed a hand on Max's shoulder. "... Ah, ehm. It appears I can't do anything," she admitted, which made Max groan.

Kei flinched. "Wait, what?? Are your powers not working?"

"They're working perfectly. He's not injured," she concluded. "Do you see those marks? The places where the scales a brighter color? The uneven scarring? They're all signs of Extreme Autophagy."

Erwin snapped his fingers. "Wait, I've heard of that! Isn't that where the body recycles resources to try to save your life in an emergency?"

"It is," she confirmed. "Though I don't know what on earth could have caused such a catastrophic condition. Perhaps you're just very sickly in this world...?"

"Uh yeah, no." Max displayed a selfie he'd taken with Carrie. For her part, the cat was muscular, wearing a tank top, sunglasses, do-rag and a grin as she posed with an arm around him. Max, meanwhile, was much more muscular than any of them were used to seeing him, wearing a shredded-style sleeveless shirt, shades and a backward ballcap. Anyone who saw them would have assumed they were gym bros of the highest caliber. "I'm jacked on this world. I don't know what happened."

Samantha looked at the discrepancy with a sinking feeling. "That is... too strange."

 -
- -
 -

One. Two. Three. Four. 
Time for the face.
Time for the voice.
Practiced, practiced, practiced.
One.

 -
- -
 -

The doorbell rang in the Grayswift residence for what felt like the dozenth time that night. Lorna looked up from her novel with a roll of the eyes. "I'll get it!"

"Sorry, Mom!" Natalie grimaced. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Are there more people from your world coming?"

"We have no way of knowing," Samantha admitted. "More is better, certainl-"

"NATALIE? GET IN HERE PLEASE."

The wolf's ears flattened as she responded to her mother's bellow by cautiously walking out of her room.

"... Better follow them," Sam determined, beckoning her friends.

The living room held a very concerned-looking Lorna, a very confused-looking Natalie, and right in the doorway, poised with authority and confidence, was Grendel.

The kids froze in place, their eyes wide with abject terror.

"Ah. There he is. The man of the hour." Grendel spoke with an even tempo, her icy voice tempered by an uncharacteristically casual demeanor. She sported fingerless gloves, a black halter top and a matching hat, both of which displayed a simple logo: 'LPD.' Her industrialized legs, not originally modeled, carried her loping gait as she made her way to the fox, putting a hand on her hip as if resting it on a belt. "Kei Kobayashi?"

"Y-... Y-Y-Yes?"

She lazily looked at the back of her hand, checking information displayed on it. "I have an APB out to apprehend you on suspicion of being infested." Her expression turned serious. "How do you respond to that?"

Kei shook in his shoes. He'd heard of Grendel, but he'd never met her in person. She was terrifying. Her eyes glowed with uneven voltage, her movements were articulate but still off somehow, and she smelled like industrial grade lubricants. "I-... I don't know what you're talking about," he lied. Badly.

She stared at him for a moment... then chuckled. "Yeah, I didn't think so. Same story every week: some kid gets in trouble with his parents, the parents 'can't believe' their kid would act that way, so it's got to be aliens." She widened her eyes for effect. "Honestly, I knew it would be a waste of my time before I even answered the call, but hey, you're not paying me to sit in the recharge bay all day, right?" She laughed and patted Kei on the shoulder, who laughed as well out of pure intimidation.

"So you're not gonna punish the poor kid, are you, Seven?" Lorna hazarded.

"Nooo," she waved off the idea as if it were ridiculous. "This is getting to be standard procedure. I'll take him down to the station, take a statement from him and his parents, then release him back to his family."

"I-... I don't want to go back to them," Kei said defensively. He did not want to go with her.

"... Really." She turned back toward him and gazed down. "Why not?" The burning blue electric ovals in her empty black eyes shook him to the core.

"They're abusive!" Erwin said suddenly. "T-... They're emotionally abusive. That's why he ran away."

"Yeah," Max added. "They're totally awful to him." When her gaze settled over him, he felt a shiver; something in her expression changed.

Seven tilted her head. It took an eternity for her to move, but when she did, she knelt down in front of him on one knee. "Is that true?"

Kei's heart was leaping up in his throat. He desperately wanted to be anywhere else. "Y-..... Y-Yes! They are. I don't like them. T-T-That's w-why-"

"Shhh." She silenced him gently, like a snow-flecked breeze. "It's okay. We'll put you in Protective Services." She put a hand on his shoulder; it was cold. "We're gonna get you through this. I promise."

The mere idea of this was so ludicrous it felt like a dream. Erwin suddenly broke the silence. "I'll go with him. We're partners. He'll feel better with me along," he said with a protective tone.

Seven turned to him and smiled- a sickening expression from her, as the corners of her digital mouth reached too far to the edges. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

All too quickly, the robot left, along with Erwin and Kei. Natalie motioned for them to follow her back into her room, and Sam and Max complied, unsure what else to do. 

The door shut. "That's why I said to keep this goo thing on the down-low," Natalie said gravely.

Samantha winced. "Do you... know who that was?"

"Yeah, that's Seven," the wolf replied. "She was there during the invasion. I don't really know the details, but she showed up around then and she's been part of the Police ever since."

"And they send her when people got inklings?" Max asked. "That's bad."

The bat's expression hardened. "I need to get to the college library. Quickly," she added. "The train's too slow, I need to get there as soon as possible!"

"Take the mail tube," Max suggested.

"I'm sorry, the what?" Natalie demanded, but they were already heading down into the basement. "You can't be serious!"

"I have never been more serious in my life," Sam rebutted, gesturing the door open and bounding down the stairs. They stopped before the pneumatic freight tube and opened it. "So how do I do this?"

Max took a labored breath. "You gotta tuck in your chin, keep your knees to your chest and take a deep breath when you hear the first hiss. Don't hold it before then or you'll run outta air."

"Are you insane?!" Natalie burst, watching her get into the tube loader. "There's no air in there!"

"Yes, quite, so I'll need concentration." She noticed Max working a leg up to climb in as well, then put a hand on his chest. "No. Absolutely not. Inadvisable when you're well, inexcusable right now. I'd tell you to stay here and rest, but if you're going to go somewhere, take the subtran at least so you can lie down on the way."

Max looked like he wanted to fight this, but fatigue- both injurious and medicated- sandbagged his usual enthusiasm. "Careful, bat girl."

Sam nodded and curled up, then heard the latch click behind her. Her mind raced as she considered what was about to happen. The address was punched in. A loud hiss occurred, and she filled her lungs to capacity.

Then her heart leapt up in her throat as she was sent careening toward Locksmouth Community College.

 -
- -
 -

Every step was agony.
Just being in the presence of this cold-eyed machine, minimally decorated to resemble some subsection of pre-splice SWAT enforcers, sent a chill down Kei and Erwin's spines. The even steps, the measured movement, subroutine after subroutine working in tandem to bring this thing to life... it was a mockery of a living thing, one that made it hard to keep moving. And move they had, for a... surprisingly long while.

"H-Hey, uh." Kei spoke up. "This is... this isn't the way to the police station. This is near the center of the dome, isn't it??"

Seven stopped. The wild trees, unkempt and overreaching, towered over them. Their ears picked up the tiny whirs of her servomotors as she turned around to face them, her head staying even the entire way. "Don't worry," she breathed icily. "Just standard procedure."

 -
- -
 -

Samantha had been on a rollercoaster once. She remembered the feeling of her gut being wrenched, her entire body being pulled this way, then the other. The extreme terror, the desire to get off... and then, strangely, the thrill of possibly going again.

Every one of these was present as she felt around, kicked the panel open and gaaasped for air, lightheaded and dizzy. The bat struggled to get out, one leg, then the other coming up over the side as she stumbled and fell onto the tile in a roll. "Ugh, uck, unh!" She recovered to her hands and knees, then rose, walking with unsteady legs as a bewildered ursine clerk stared at her attempts to locomote. "Fine! I'm fine. Just had a little accident."

Without waiting for any questions, she pushed her way out of the mail room door, located an elevator and shuffled into it despite others' concerned looks, only halfway hanging onto the middlepoint bar. Alone, the bat pressed her face into her hands, took a cleansing breath and wiped downward. This was too much. It was all too much.

The door opened. She ran her fingers through the wave in her hair, smoothed it over and entered the floor for periodicals. Many very old pieces of media were here, but her interest was in much more recent events. She swiped her PET over the news archives, searching indices for what she needed. "... Hm."

[Robotic Warrior Rebuffs Alien Invasion
The forces of "Empress Osoth," god-queen of the transdimensional Inkling race, attacked suddenly and with overwhelming force...
... take over the body and mind, leaving people unable to resist their...
... many refugees, taking shelter in Park Circle, then other places of...
... attempts by emergency responders to create a makeshift militia...
... seemed hopeless until the appearance of an unlikely hero: a robot from underground with no memory of anything except a "mission to protect Humanity."]

"Ah ha." There she was, in a corresponding photo: Grendel, as Sam remembered her. Lithe, cracked and clutching that familiar burstgun.

[Young fans of the eerie but heroic machine named her Seven, after the number written on a note she clutched- the only clue as to her origin. Despite her intimidating appearance, she fought tirelessly against the invading forces and their army of alien monsters, until finally they were forced to retreat.]

Sam peered at the reports like they were a strange bug. This wasn't the Grendel she knew. Granted, she didn't have the encyclopedic knowledge of Jacent's rogues gallery that Natalie had. Still, her experiences spoke louder than any editor's footnote. "Protect humanity. What guff. Still..." Her eyes settled over the pictures of a bright and shiny new Grendel, with parts replaced and refurbished. One shot posing with Dr. Grayswift, the next with the Police. In every photo, there was a mixed reaction- some people looking proud, others excited, but most a little uneasy. All except Lorna, of course. Even a savior was hard to embrace when they looked like a monster, it seemed. Despite that, she'd been placed on a task force for dealing with any inkling remnants- a team that seemed to consist of her alone. Maybe this really was a different Grendel. Who knew what could change in the course of a different history?

Her PET lit up with digitally processed French accordion music. 

[Guys. I found out what happened to me.
(View Video Attachment) ]

~(_)~

"Dude, this is further out than I've ever been!"

Woods appeared in frame. Then Max, framed by the distant dome of Locksmouth.

"I've been tracking the animals, the ones that're getting killed, and I'm getting so close to finding out what's doing it! Maybe it's Bigfoot, or a real Land Shark! Or a Chalupacabra!" He made scary fingers, then the video cut to another, later scene. This time, he was whispering. "I'm super close... I can feel it... nono, I can hear it... just beyond the bushes..." He inched forward, slowly, ever so slowly...

And revealed a small clearing filled with mutilated animal carcasses. Steam escaped from the freshly dead creatures' corpses. Rabbits, boars, wolves, bears, a cross section of the forest fauna was split open needlessly and strewn about. And in the middle of it, covered in blood and viscera... was a tall white figure with black hair and piercing blue gas-flame eyes.

She looked right at the camera.

"Guys- oh shit."

~(_)~

The video cut.

Kei and Erwin, physically shaking, looked up at Seven, their faces sallow.

"Oh," she remarked, as if mildly disappointed. "That's too bad." She reached toward them, emitting some strange sound frequency that resembled a harsh saw wave. 

The effect was immediate: their inklings covered their bodies as if they had been compelled to do so by some higher power. "W-... What?? What happened??" Kei asked fearfully.

"Subjects infected," Seven dispassionately said into a communications radio. "Both hostile."

Erwin grabbed Kei's shoulder. "Run."
"What? B-"
"RUN!!"

 -
- -
 -

"Out of my way out of my WAY!!"
Samantha's legs pumped up the stairs. 
"This is bad, this is so very bad," she repeated to herself for the third time as the adrenaline started kicking in, almost bowling over a thin otter professor who'd gone to get his coffee.

"What on earth?!" he cried as she bolted past him.

"Sorry, I'm sorry but I have no time!!" Sam threw open the door to the roof access, taking a few extra steps and staring out past the edge of the building. She judged the distance, the temperature, the wind as well as she could, bouncing in place and checking the seams on her clothing. "Okay, okay, now or never." Samantha got a running start, leaned in on the final step off the edge of the roof and sprung forward, spreading her wings.

Samantha was best described as an instinct flier. Her parents had taught her when she was young- it was the only responsible thing to do when your child was a flight-capable subtype- and it wasn't as if she had trouble staying in the air, but the kinds of acrobatics and tricks her peers were capable of were quite simply beyond her. Still, her arms beat downward with speed, flexing muscle groups she normally had no use for and keeping her in the air as the bat dove and rose to get as much velocity as she could. High-pitched clicks and squeaks created a mental map of the terrain ahead, buildings and trees and buoys passing by in a deep part of her mind that was normally reserved for the layout of her own house.

Articles flew by her mind as she tried desperately to understand how this turn of events could have happened. Yes, perhaps Grendel had somehow been in the right place at the right time. Sure, maybe she had accidentally saved the town from the numerous monsters invading it. But those photos. It was so obvious to everyone that her ghoulish visage and terrible power scared the hell out of people around her... how did anyone greenlight her to wield so much administrative power? Did people just fear inklings that much?? Thinking back to the Ink Tank units, it didn't seem impossible, but...

"There it is." Samantha's eyes locked onto the Locksmouth Police Department. She descended so fast she almost dive-bombed the place, having to pull up and loop around shortly, landing almost without a sound on the grassy roof. The bat gathered herself, walked over to the roof access door, and waited.

After a good thirty seconds of faint footsteps, the door opened and a tired-looking horse officer stepped out. "Uh, yes, can I help y- HGLPH!"

"Shhhhhh..." the bat shushed him as she helped him to the ground, a pink glob of Mhend's anaesthetizing body dripping from his lips. The exhausted officer quickly surrendered to sleep, and Sam plucked his badge off of him. "Deja vu, mon frere," she mused to herself, carefully making her way down the stairs in just her socks. The layout was familiar to her, mirroring the setup she remembered from the first time she'd broken into the police station- and boy, that wasn't something she'd ever imagined becoming a repeat performance.

The station was largely unpopulated; the dispatch showed that most of them had been sent out to look for Kei or other suspected Inked. Sam's entire body jolted in surprise as Chief Ironwood rounded the corner. His eyes were glued to a report, however, so he didn't notice her quickly shrinking to hide behind a potted plant. She held her breath as he passed by, waited until he was gone and clicked her tongue. A mental map of the hallway made itself known to her, at which point she quickly made her way to the exact place she wanted to be in: The Equipment Room.

It was a gamble to be here, based on a gamble of logic. She'd seen those articles, those pictures with "Seven" in them. The invasion era pictures had her covered in gore, looking triumphant, if unhinged. The other ones showed various aspects of her acceptance into Locksmouth, into the LPD, poised and respectable. But there was one major difference between them- an absence of something.

"... There you are." Sam grinned, gazing past the metal gate to a tiny armory, upon the wall of which sat a small white instrument of death: Grendel's Burstgun. She remembered firsthand the destruction it could wreak on the unwitting; so much destructive potential, all locked in such a tiny, inoffensive case. The bat put a hand on one side of the door, held the badge up to the wireless reader, and-
Got buzzed at with a red light, denying access. "Oh come on!" she hissed.

"You need a higher clearance for that."

Sam spun around to see Murphy, even-faced, closing the door behind her. They stood there, staring at each other for a long moment.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?" She leaned forward, arms folding. 

Samantha's ears folded back. "We're all in deep shit and you know it."

Murphy blinked slowly. "Pardon?"

The bat paced toward her. "That thing you and your compatriots painted up like a police officer isn't a keeper of the peace; it's an ancient murder machine whose every instinct is to pry apart anything that moves and see what's inside of it. And you gave it a badge!"

"Okay, slow your roll a second- if you mean Seven, she's a fellow officer and a hero. She almost singlehandedly fended off an alien invasion, maybe you heard?"

"Oh, sure, that's what you'd like to believe- need, to believe. That she just came onto the scene and rushed to the defense of mankind! But the truth is that she didn't- she saw gigantic grotesque opponents, and she buried herself in their guts because the prospect of fighting something that could challenge her was thrilling. Because it was fun. Because fighting against something with immense strength and speed was her entire. Purpose."

Murphy's even face cracked a little. "Kid, how do you know all this? How did you know this thing was here, anyway?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you and it wouldn't help you to know- the only thing you need to ask yourself is, if you trust this monster, then why is that locked away from her?"

"It's... unnecessary ordinance." She knit her brows. "We asked Seven to surrender it, and she did, as a gesture of trust."

"Is that so?" Sam pulled out her PET and began displaying video. "We're about to see how far that trust goes."

 -
- -
 -

Kei and Erwin were cornered. They both knew there was no way out of this, legs pumping on pure instinct. Seven hadn't even followed as quickly as she could- but what her pursuit lacked in urgency, it made up for in relentlessness. "Erwin... E-Erwin, I can't... I can't run anymore..." Kei wheezed, doubled over and holding his inked knees.

"I-... I guess we have to fight then..." The ferret took the fox's arm in his own and locked with him in solidarity. "I'll do everything I can! I promise we'll make it out of this!"

"Y-... Yeah!" he agreed.

Seven swatted a tree down with her police baton, roots ripped out of the ground. She walked forward with mechanical insistence, pushing, ripping and crushing anything in her way. "Did you know that there isn't even a violation in your laws for resisting arrest?" She said it with all the importance of a trivia fact. "I thought that was funny." 

"We know what you did..." Kei growled. "You almost killed our friend! Just because he saw you... you're the one who's murdering all those animals!"

She stopped. "Oh, so that was him. He survived after all."

Kei realized too late he shouldn't have given that away, but there was nothing for it now. He embraced Erwin, Phactys and Animis now locked in a tight embrace as Erwin gave all the prana he could spare to his boyfriend's powerful elder inkling, who covered her host. "I'm not going to let you hurt anyone else, you monster!"

Seven's lazy expression sharpened ever so slightly. "Good."

As Seven went forward, she found her motion arrested. Animis focused on her entirely, and as Seven struggled to stand, her armor plates began to creak and separate. They slowly peeled like string cheese, but it became apparent even a few inches down that Animis was struggling.

"Nnh! It's... like trying to hold onto an oiled rope!" the forest green inkling struggled. "I-... I still can't fully use my powers!"

And then Seven took a step. And then another. And another. Phactys and Animis huddled close in fear as she relentlessly came toward them.

It was a slaughter. She savaged them, using the inklings as cudgels to beat each other. All resistance was answered with nothing but mirthful, sadistic brutality. It was impossible to even keep track of all the ways in which she creatively rammed into them, and them into each other.

The boys' inklings quivered, barely hanging onto them. They'd been slammed into a tree together, and they seemed like they would fall off any moment. Worse still, she was coming for more, her march of certainty sounding like a teminator's bootsteps over frenzied flapping.

Wait, flapping?

"Air mail!" cried Samantha, unsure what the phrase meant but remembering it from one of the comic books she'd managed to read. Her cheerleader boots hit Seven's face and displaced her momentarily, but that was just the distraction; she then landed, pulled out the burstgun, took aim and fired a massive bolt of plasma at the robot. The shockwave was overwhelming, bowling Sam over, forcing her friends to brace and leaving Seven's legs, torso and arms- brought up to brace for it- melted to no small degree. "Now run!!" she managed, gesturing to Kei and Erwin. "You know where to go!" 

And with that, the kids ran off- the two boys toward the Climate Control Center, Samantha toward the Industrial sector.

Seven tapped the radio. "... Ready replacement parts. Deploy the interceptors."

 -
- -
 -

Footsteps echoed in the darkness down metal stairs. Erwin remembered the climb up them seeming so victorious and hopeful... but going down them, just the two of them, felt ominous- like descending into Hell.

"Y-You say you've been here before...?" Kei asked, looking around warily, hanging on Erwin's arm.

"Yeah. It feels like forever ago... even though it was only a couple of months." He reached the bottom of the stairwell and pulled the door open to Nhilus' laboratory- the place they had fallen into all those weeks back.

"What're we supposed to find in here...?" The fox made his way through the corridor, the smell of musty electronics, grease and metal making him feel like he'd travelled back in time.

"Something to help us put down this monster." Erwin confidently strode in to the room that he and his friends had their crisis of confidence inside. The layout was the same, the dust was the same, everything mimicked his memories. It was nostalgic in a strange way, for a place he only half-understood. "Let's see, what did I-... oh yeah, there was a series of interfaces I had to emulate first."

Kei picked up a discarded manila folder, all the carbon on the paper already having made whatever report was inside unreadable. "Who built this place anyway?"

"A misanthropic asshole named Nhilus," Erwin answered, his expertise stolen from Natalie. He fired up the ancient machine as expected, mysterious rattles and hums coming from its large shell. "He was Jacent's arch-nemesis I think, and he made just about everything that became a pain in the ass for him, and now, the rest of us."

"Including... her?"
"That's the story." 
"You don't sound like you believe it."
"No, I do. That part makes sense."
"And the other parts...?"

"Ah, I don't know. I couldn't explain it. Something just seems... off." Erwin finished getting the files from the computer, and opened the door to a familiar hallway, turning toward it. "Now. Time to go wake up Jacent."

They marched through the hallway, into the freezer room, beheld a group of tubes of which only one remained in use, and manipulated the panel.

"Initiating thaw," said panel reported. Steam escaped through vents on the top and bottom rims of the tube, the green light shifting to amber. The sound of thick, viscous liquid being piped away filled their ears. Finally, after what felt like minutes, the tube's metal doors pulled away, and out stepped a very old man.

"H-... Huh??" Erwin blinked as the stranger stumbled forward, both he and Kei reacting to catch him before he fell. 

The man was in his 70s at least, featuring long gray-white hair pulled up in a knot, a long, thin mustache and a goatee. His entire small body was covered with scars, including his lip and one long one over his left eye, which was white with cataracts. His other eye was squinted shut, and it struggled to focus on anything. "Who's there?!" he managed, delirious.

Kei worked to set him down in a seat. "E-Easy, you're probably still woozy from the freeze... um, sir."

"Cane."

Erwin blinked. "Huh?"

"Cane, my cane!" the man said impatiently. The boys looked around the room and managed to spot an oak cane, smoothed and lacquered, with a gnarled end. They offered it to him, and he took it, resting his hands on it, then his head on his hands. "What, no tea to offer an old man?"

The ferret finally gathered his senses. "Uh, sorry, I'm-... I'm sorry we woke you up, sir, we were looking for our friend."

"A friend? Down here??" he asked scornfully. "Tch. You need new friends."

"Uh, right, this must be very disorienting for you," Kei began. "You see, you're in-"

"The future, yes, yes, I know," he curtly cut him off. "I've known the last several times, it's old hat to me. Now are we done here? I would like to get back to my baleful sleep in that accursed slime. I was having a nice dream about an old acquaintance, a dancer in the dig pub show with a wide smile and a wider bosom," the thought brought him delight.

Erwin nodded. "Yeah, yeah, alright, sorry!" He turned to Kei. "I guess Jacent is somewhere else, or something."

The old man's changshan crinkled, his lips pursed and his bushy eyebrows shot up. "What a startling coincidence."

Kei blinked. "Wait, you knew him?"

The man stood, summoning some form of pride, to his feet. "I am Jie Xian Long. But once, I held the name of which you speak." His other eye opened wide, a brilliant emerald green.

Erwin's jaw dropped. "... Jacent??"

 -
- -
 -

Max felt useless.
It was an agonizing feeling. He'd been circling Locksmouth on the subtran for what felt like hours. Every time he thought about getting off to go to one place or another, a mixture of indecision and exhaustion overtook him and he realized the relatively short journey might end in having to go to sleep. 

The mere idea of not having an inexhaustible well of energy to explore for any reason- or no reason- was anathema to the lizard, and it reminded him of the bad old times. The times of being sick more often than not. The times of being in pain for no good reason as his parts fought each other. The times before doctors had been able to appropriately treat his particular strain of Wostyl's Disease. Named after a late Neo-Victorian nobleman of 'high birth,' it turned out that the particulars of the exacting and specialized breeding that had gone into his existence had, instead of making him a superior specimen, left him bedridden as incompatible combinations of features- usually ferreted out by normal mutt-style breeding which didn't lead to such conflicts- fought each other and made him unwell.

That old nobleman had eventually died, far too young, and it was the beginning of the end for Designer Breeding. Only the very strange, unlucky or foolish went against this lesson, and it was still unclear exactly which his parents were... but in the end, it had produced him, a boy who was sick most of his early childhood. When Locksmouth physicians- dedicated as they were to edge cases and progress- managed to cure his condition, he vowed to spend as little time resting as possible, and as much effort exploring as he could.

Now here he was. Stuck in his own body- no, stuck in someone else's body who shared an identity with him!- clinging to a hovering drug tube like it were a life preserver.

It sucked.

His PET beeped at him. He took a moment to examine it, reading the message. It was from Sam.

[Max
Need you to go to the Town Meet Hall
Declare an emergency
Get everyone there
Can you do it Y/N?]

Max squinted. What was she going for? Wouldn't that just alert everyone to the fact that they had inklings? What kind of plan was this??

His thumb hovered over the screen.

He thought about the distance. The pain. The stamina.

He creased his brow.

[Y]

 -
- -
 -

Jie Xian walked slowly, his impressive height diminished considerably by the ravages of time. They helped him up the stairs, which was a bit of a production; his knees were not what they used to be.

"What happened to you??" Erwin asked, agape.

"I got old!" he countered, more harshly than intended. "It'll happen to you, too. Just, more slowly."

"You said you knew 'the last several times.' Is this... not your first time being thawed out?"

"Just so," Jie Xian responded. "I have been awakened at multiple points in time throughout the history of your people. I have seen your time of knights. I have seen the time of lace and tunnels." He grunted with a particularly difficult step. "I have witnessed progress take place again as you built a railway underneath the sea. I've even seen you meddle with forces you do not understand, fighting one another with the same tools as the robots."

"Wow..." Kei managed, his breath taken from him. "You've been to all those places and times??"

"I have, and each time was no vacation. Every point at which I was awakened, it was for a singular purpose: to stop her."

The ferret cocked his head. "Her?? Do you mean... Grendel?"

Jie Xian frowned as they finally reached the top of the staircase. "How do you know about her?"

The boys looked at each other, took a deep breath and explained the current situation to him, sparing few details.

The old man slumped. His face was crestfallen. "No... this is a terrible trick to play... tell me you're joking!"

"Sorry... it's true..." Kei managed.

Jie Xian dropped his cane, holding onto the railing for support as he trembled. "S-... She managed to hoodwink all of you? You think she's a hero??"

"She has the support of the public and the Locksmouth Police Department," Erwin stated, going off of the information Sam had dropped into their PET group research session. 

The old man picked up his cane again with difficulty. "She's... she's a murderer, you fools!"

"Well yeah, we know!" Erwin said. "We're not from here, remember? We're from an alternate universe."

"Your kind, the inked ones, are always so off the wall... but I suppose I believe it must be possible." He slowly picked up his cane, then settled into the bad news. "I wonder how my friend Kelvalde is doing in this brave new world."

"Well, whatever he's doing, it's not getting his butt kicked by Grendel, so he's one up on us," Kei admitted.

"Oh! Uh, hang on," Erwin interrupted, pulling up his PET. "... It's from Sam. Uhhh... hm." He responded to the message, got another response, and made a confused face. "What on earth makes her think they're gonna help us...? Uhm. Kei, can you... help Jacent up the rest of the way? I need to go deeper."

"Yeah, of course, Erwin!" the fox responded helpfully. "No problem." He watched the ferret bound down the stairs with purpose.

"... So, Kei, is it?" Jie Xian inquired. "Tell me. Are there any facets of pre-splice culture you enjoy?"

The fox blinked, then considered it, and with a bashful smile, whispered his answer in the old man's ear. "... I just think they're cool."

The old man smiled. "Ahhhh, yes, very good." He got an impish look in his eye. "Then stay a while as my knees rest, and allow me to show you some things."

 -
- -
 -

Being careful in a hurry was hard. 
Samantha hit her landing a little too forcefully, taking a dive roll and popping up surprisingly swiftly- no doubt thanks to the cheer practice nailed into this body's muscle memory- and made her way to a vending machine along the side path. Similar machines were set before the exit ways of the dome set in each cardinal direction, filled with supplies that one might need before going on a camping trip, hike... or panicked escape from a literally calculating killer.

She waved her PET in front of the sensor to make extra sure it read her input, then hurriedly pressed several buttons in a row. Out the bottom clunked a portable air compressor, a soft-chew granola bar and a spare power source. She slapped the kite shield-shaped hunk of plastic on her back and let her clothes automatically inch it to the appropriate spot between her shoulder blades. Facing the portal out of dome, screens warned of inclement weather. Her ear twitched as she heard many quick steps in the distance, then slammed the release button. There was no time.

The massive two-foot-thick door slid open, letting a huge gust of cold air and snow blow into the temperature-regulated dome. Her small body bristled at the chill as she dialed the settings in on her PET, activating the new, much larger power source on her back, and sending a layer of warmth through her clothing. With that, she took a breath, took a bite, then ran into the snowy forest, shutting the door to Locksmouth behind her.

"Flying's right out..." Sam admitted to herself as she watched flecks of snow fall. Her cheerleading boots tromped through inches upon inches of white, as fast as the uneven footing could permit. The chill was good in that it kept wild animals away, but the blessing was mixed as it chilled her badly. The battery on her back did its job, keeping her body temperature as close to safe levels as it could under the circumstances, but she knew it was working overtime to compensate for her poor level of insulation.

It wasn't five minutes before they were on her. Metal monsters appeared in her periphery, running to either side of her like wolves. She kept running, pulling out that terrifying death weapon she'd stolen from the police station. "If you want to die, be my guest," she dared them, head panning to either side to see which one dared to run toward her first.

The rightmost pack leader made its move. Jonesy's field trip instructionals flashed back through Samantha's mind as she turned, set her feet, leveled the gun and squeezed. A burst of plasma ripped through the vicious gear slave, leaving it a charred pile of twisted metal. The blast was big, yes, but not as big as the previous shot, which she reasoned was because she'd squeezed down on the trigger much more gradually last time; there appeared to be a charging mechanic to this weapon.

The leftmost hunter barreled toward the bat, prompting her to flip the gun underneath her arm, shooting rearward. It was a poor shot, but at the beachball-sized projectiles hardly demanded a crack shooter; it blew the thing apart in a shower of heat and mechanical guts before digging a trench into the snow and then the ground for several yards.

The rest of the gear slaves raced past her, running forth into the forest. She blinked, perplexed for but a moment. Her eyes narrowed. "They want to box me in." With the knowledge that 'Seven' was surely coming in from behind, she ran forth. A cloud of large bat-like robots flew overhead and ahead of her. "Don't be afraid," she steeled herself, firing into the mass of flying terrors as she crested the hill. She hit at an angle, boots sliding her down the snowy hillside as mechanical bat pieces fell to either side of her in a shower of fire. A handful of hunters waited at the end of the hill, and she blew them to smouldering chunks with reckless abandon, landing maybe half the shots she made. 

One of the hunters, the one that survived her frantic barrage, siezed her boot in its mouth, sending her to the cold ground. She tried to fire at it, but it savaged her leg, getting too far within her firing range to accurately hit. She pushed the button on the back of the gun in desperation. A long, familiar blue plasma blade sprouted from the hole on top. She brought it down with desperate force, and the machine beast's jaw opened as its head was severed cleanly from its body, red hot rings tracing the cross-section of its decapitated body.

Samantha trudged on at a steady pace through the clearing, her breathing beginning to get labored. Mechanical bats dove her, but she swatted at them with the blade, slicing their wings from their small bodies with a terrifyingly small amount of effort. In one particularly concerted swipe, she cried out in shock and pain; she had grazed her thigh just ever so slightly on the backswing, leaving a blackened scar and sliced fabric. "I have to be more careful," she chastised herself. Cold air was now leaking in through one side of her leggings, which were already too thin for the job of keeping her warm.

She screamed as one of the hunters lunged from the snow toward her throat. She slashed at it, bisecting the mechanical monster, but not before the bulk of its weight hit her, sending her to the ground, and therefore the snow again. Fear and pain and exhaustion pulled at her gravitationally. Her thoughts drifted to what failure meant... and then to Jacent. His handsome face, his strong features, his gentle touch. She wondered what it would be like never to see him again. Never to hear his good-natured laughter. Never to see his easily flustered face. Never again to feel his all-consuming embrace, or to be with him in his vulnerable moments, of which he had many. Such a strong boy, and yet in so many ways his determination wavered when it came to himself, to life, to love. He was afraid to need, and yet he needed her. Just as sure as any hapless victim of a powerful, blackhearted fiend needed him, he. Needed. Her.

Samantha plunged her hands into the icy fluff, which melted around the blade, and forced herself to her feet again. She ran up hill in a determined frenzy, slashing and stabbing and firing at any foolish machine that got in her way. Jaws ripped tights and fangs shredded fabric and metal cut into flesh but she paid them in kind, rending their parts and blasting them into oblivion. The mechanical bats bit into her head and earned a slice of retribution. "Get out of my hair," she spat angrily, kicking the remains of one down a hill.

It was then that she saw it: the rest station. A gazebo-like hut with a halo of light encircling its top in a way akin to buildings in civilization, it housed food, cots and shelter from the elements. Samantha ran toward it, scanning her periphery for unseen foes. Either they were hiding, or she'd devastated their ranks. When her boots touched temperature-regulated ground, she sighed in relief, half-collapsing onto a plastic bench. She shuddered, breathing deeply. "I made it..."

"Welcome," a soothing automated voice spoke. "Rest here and wait for ranger assistance."

She laughed richly. "Yes. Right. I'm sure they can help." After a few moments' rest, she dug into a first aid kit, tearing off her clothes to apply medical patches to her wounds. Bandages padded thick with analgesics, disinfectants and restorative agents soothed her as she stuck them on. The post-splice regenerative systems of the body usually didn't kick in until one went to sleep, so as to maximize efficiency, but certain compounds could bypass this and start up the healing right away. This wouldn't exactly close her wounds immediately, but it would make them a fair sight less likely to reopen as she moved. Once she was satisfied, she put her clothes back on and dug into the box again, feasting on some unidentifiable nutrition-mush as she scanned the snowy horizon. The taste was inoffensive, and she was starving. Hopefully it would stay down easily.

"Samantha Masterson." The voice was heard from over a hill before its origin stepped over it and began to liesurely make her way forward. "Sixteen years old. Average grades. High ranking cheerleader. Wouldn't have taken you as a filthy inkling sympathizer," Seven said with jovial ease that dripped with poison.

"Oh, do cut the shit, Grendel." Sam's harsh words got a flinch out of her. "I know what you are, and where you're from. I know who you were made to kill, and how." She brought the energy blade to life, its blue phosphorescence reflecting softly off the snow. "And now I've got you right where I want you."

The robot's eyes widened with manic fascination. "Interesting. I have to admit, I'm surprised. But, if you did know who I am, you wouldn't be challenging me to a one-on-one duel out in the middle of nowhere."

Sam's eyes narrowed as she shook her head slightly. "So arrogant." She paused. "... And so right. Ta-ta~♪" With a kick of the foot, she popped open a floor hatch, jumped down and disappeared into the mail tube.

Seven's smile evaporated as a pressurized SCHOOMP notified her she'd been had.

 -
- -
 -

The Town Meet Hall had been converted, from a lecture hall to a stadium. It was an option seldom used- the quadrants of the building separating agonizingly slowly, bench seating slowly rising from the basement portions of the place to bridge the gaps between said quadrants.

"I hope Sam knows what she's doing," rasped Max from what resembled a baseball dugout. People had responded to the emergency alert prudently, filing into the large stadium and individually watching the video file he'd found on his PET. It was an almost riotous din at this point, confused citizens talking to each other and trying to figure out what was going on. Nobody seemed to be sure who had called the emergency.

"Your friend never normally steers you wrong, correct?" Jie Xian mused, stroking his mustache. "Trust in her judgement then."

"I think he's just nervous," Kei said, nervously folding and re-folding bits of paper. "All we've done since we got here was try to find strong people to take on Grendel, but- and I mean no offense with this- we've only found disappointment."

"You're right to be alarmed at the forces marshaled," the old man admitted. "I have many faults, but delusion is not one of them; the further the sun sets on my life, the worse my prospects for defeating her get." He shook his head. "My foolish pride will have been my undoing. I should have taken Tempus' offer."

"We haven't lost yet!" Kei managed. "We just have to believe in Samantha's plan, and that Erwin could find what he was looking for. I just wish I felt like I was going into this with a full tank; I feel like I've already expended so much prana..."

"Oh! Is your chi out of whack??" Jie Xian poked several points on the fox's back and straightened his posture forcefully, eliciting a pop from his body.

"Ow!! What the hell was that f-... oh... oh wow, I feel incredible," he realized.

"Good. Here she comes."

Floodlights made a thudding sound as they came on, illuminating one end of the field in the middle. Seven stood in all her authority, walking casually. She didn't speak for several moments, tonfa over her shoulder. "Citizens of Locksmouth," she said, bringing the din to a hush as thousands of people looked on. "I owe you an apology."

"Is it true then??"
"Did she do it??"
"It just can't be!"
"We trusted her!"

"I've misled you," she said easily. "It was a lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless."

"We've got her now," Kei clenched his fist.

"While patrolling outside of the dome, to investigate what I suspected to be poachings, I found a group of rabid animals, sure to infect other wildlife if not put down. A sad, but unfortunately necessary action."

"... What??" Max wondered.

"And it was in this moment that I spotted that boy, a mister Maximum Tangent. He was just out on a hike, and he stumbled upon the scene. Before I could explain that he needed to go home, one of the animals I missed attacked him, incapacitating his PET and mauling the poor boy. I killed the beast that did it, but it was all I could do to get him to the proper medical facilities just in time to save his life."

"Ohhhh! It wasn't what it looked like!"
"They left out details."
"Of course; some people are always trying to make Seven look bad."

"No... NO!!" Kei ran up onto the field. "She's lying! She's the one who eviscerated Max! And she killed all the rest of those creatures for fun! She's an insane murder-droid!!"

"Ah," Seven greeted him. "And here we have the maestro of this smear campaign against me. Kei Kobayashi, wanted alien collaborator and host of an elder inkling."

Kei recognized immediately that he'd been baited out. The jeers of the people of Locksmouth boomed against his skin. "No! She's not... this is all a ruse!"

"Indeed," Seven responded with an easy smile. "And it's high time that I did the will of the people and put down the mastermind behind this farce."

"Dammit...!" The fox's body was overtaken with forest green ink, his form replaced with the taller, more feminine form she naturally took.

Animis burst into a spiral of blade-like tendrils as the robot dashed forward, creating an impassible gauntlet of harm. Seven twirled her tonfa, batting away coordinated knife strikes with incredible dexterity, then pulling one of the tendrils- and therefore Animis- toward her, slamming her sidelong with the weapon. If Animis was injured, she made no show of it, immediately rolling into form once more. This time she took the initiative, throwing herself into the air and landing in the shape of a railroad pike; when Seven threw herself back to avoid it, the inkling dug into the ground with the force.

"Yes," the machine half-whispered to herself, blue eyes glowing more intensely in the darkness of her head. She slammed into Animis' body multiple times with the baton, splattering her across the grass with the final blow. 

It looked worse than it was; she sprung back again, this time wearing a large conical farmer's hat and resting her hand on a section of herself styled after a long curved blade. "You're not getting this child or his beloved," Animis spat. In the beat of a moment, she struck hard, sidelong slicing with ferocity.

"Yes!" Seven blocked with her baton, the liquid blade cutting into the material a few centimeters. She let go, twirled and yanked the weapon away, hitting blade again as Animis blocked. The machine went in again and again, getting blocked by the blade and suffering notches in her own armament for it. Her offensive paused as she threw herself back, watching the long blade cut a few strands of her hair, inches from her delighted face. She hit the ground. "This body's so slow." She sprung into a handstand, avoiding a strong overhead slice that dug into the ground, then landed on her feet, raining down powerful, devastating punches onto Animis that splattered green ink all over her metallic body. The inkling tried to defend herself, but Seven was already ripping into her hand over fist.

"Ai-YA!" Jie Xian's small old hands slammed into Seven's side with tremendous force, sending her sliding along the field. 

"Hanh... thank you," Animis managed, getting up with his help.

"Anytime, my dear," the old man grinned with a slightly lecherous grin, admiring Animis' generous proportions.

Seven rose to her feet in one fluid motion. "You again."

"You sound unhappy to see me," Jie Xian taunted. "Still angry about the volcanic vents??"

"This won't even be fun," she complained, a deep thrumming coming from her baton. "I can't enjoy finishing off Father Time's kill." The robot suddenly hit with the force of a truck, the tonfa sending Animis' guarding position into a splattering heap. Jie Xian ducked a swing that made a terrifying noise as it passed his head, then sidestepped an overhead swing that blasted soil out of the ground in huge chunks, grass and all, sending the old man rolling away. "See? I'm slow and you still almost died." 

The reformed Animis sent her extremely long blade into Grendel's shoulder, cutting inches into her chassis. The robot grabbed her weapon and did a suplex, sending her into the ground behind her with familiar, messy results. 

"Hey Grendel! Get a taste of this!" Thin, gothic Natalie flew toward the murderous robot, leg outstretched, kicking her square in the back and getting into a pose familiar to Natalie's friends, but somehow it looked very odd on this version of her.

"Time to slam, bitch!" a very bro-looking Carrie cried out with a grin, lifting the robot over her head and suplexing her into the ground so hard the ground shook. "YEAH!!"

"Nat?? Cat??? Is that you?!" Kei managed.

"Yeah, it's us!" Natalie responded, eyes on Grendel. "Waymaker Pathos could only get us in these bodies. Something about the dispensation available, I don't really remember."

"Pathmaker... who?? What???" he blinked, taken aback.

"Who cares??" Carrie asked. "Did you see that amazing slam?!"

An icy laugh cut through their excitement. Grendel looked down at her legs, now much thinner, the large constructions over her calves now broken. "You did it."

"Huh??" the cat blinked. 

"I'm... free."

Realization dawned on Kei's face. "Oh shit, I think those were made to slow her down." 

Grendel rose from her laying position in a spiral movement so swift it tested the limits of vision, slamming the baton into Natalie's arm with a sickening crunch. The wolf fell to one side, crying out in blinding pain. Carrie was on her in seconds, but before she could get a grip on the robot, she had the baton brought down on her head, the gravity of it spiking her into the ground like a railroad pike. The cat struggled and groaned as she tried to escape, but by the end of the driving, it was all she could do to continue breathing, her head tilted back. Grendel was about to shove the entire thing down her throat, but Jie Xian leapt on her, bouncing off of her back with a shrieking war cry. They traded blows, one after another, before the robot spun around and kicked the old man in the back, another crunch signifying that she'd injured him terribly as he slid along the grass in agony. Animis came at him with redoubled effort, slashing furiously. Strands of hair littered the air, but when Grendel closed in, she machine gunned the baton into her, destabilizing her core, and baseball swung the thing directly into her gut, sending inkling and host yards away, separated.

Natalie surveyed the battlefield. Her clothes were appropriate, because things looked grim.

"Excuse me!" a dignified voice said over the speakers. "May I have your attention please?"

Everyone looked up at the tower, from which such an announcement could be made. The person in the booth seemed slightly out of breath, like she'd just arrived.

"This is all well and good, Grendel- and that is your name, not Seven- but I'm afraid you were still too slow."

"If you want to come down here, I'll show you how slow I am," the robot threatened mirthfully.

"Ah, no, I'm afraid. Fighting you is ridiculous folly, that much I've learned. Instead, I'd like to ask a question."

"... And that is?"

A loud, horrid sound blasted from every available speaker.
The crowd transformed like a beast.
Ink burst over the flesh of every man, woman and child in the entire stadium barring a scant few exceptions. By the time the buzzing stopped, easily ninety-nine percent of attendants had been completely covered in alien ink. Grays, elites- it was a rainbow of person-shaped slime.

"Why have you allowed inklings to infest everyone in this town??"

The riotous din fell silent.

Samantha, up in the booth, sat on the console, legs kicking gently. "It occurred to me after you attacked my allies for the first time. If you had a way of exposing inklings within people, how on earth did it remain handheld? Surely somebody up the chain must have thought of expanding it to a larger, more widespread version? It didn't make sense not to install such devices on every corner! The only people it would inconvenience were those dirty inklings. Why hadn't that happened, then? Was it a conspiracy?? No. It only made sense if every individual independently decided it shouldn't happen."

Grendel stood, silently, watching.

"You needed to keep this small. Something you could use on any given dissidents so that you could keep up the appearance of a defender. You chased groups into corners but never quite exterminated them, ensuring that the 'infestation' would grow. Every person feared your power, and with that fear came a nervous approval of your actions- just so long as they weren't the ones getting hunted, you could count on their loyalty, their passivity. But the reason you did it was the worst part."

Grendel still said nothing.

"You were tired of your fights with Jacent. Without your permission, he'd gotten old. But you saw inklings invade, equipped with insane powers, ranks filled with dangerous alien thralls! But still they wouldn't be enough to slake your bloodthirst. So you hatched a plan, a devious plan. You would play the hero."

The crowd was now feeling anxious.

"You blew through Osoth's invasion, encouraging more and more desperate tactics from her to make your exploits seem more incredible, and to fulfill your disgusting murderous addiction."

A familiar video played, of 'Seven' carving her way out of a massive worm-like alien beast; it was usually viewed heroically, but in this context it was endowed with sinister purpose.

"You craftily blackmailed the entire Locksmouth Police Department, who had all been inked by this point, into giving you more and more power. Everyone brought into your circle was 'safe,' and everyone outside of it was disposed of as a threat, only to be allowed to come back again. You built a city of aliens so that one day they would rebuild their invasion force with ten times the strength! And why??"

It felt as if every person present was holding their breath.

"So you could kill them all. So it would finally be fun."

Grendel's rich laughter filled the stadium. She clapped and laughed uproariously. Her easy, casual beat cop attitude was gone, replaced now with an unhinged grin. "Impressive! So impressive! Excellent detective work." She tilted her head and looked around. "But I'm afraid all your sleuthing has accomplished..." The robot began tittering, her own glee bubbling to the surface despite her best efforts. "... Is that my gift has come early~! ♪"

The crowd's will broke. A panicked riot broke out as people raced to leave the area. Grendel ran toward the closest pack of seats, the families there screaming. Murder them, spur the others to action, fight or flight, make them anguished and angry, make them fight better, a chain reaction of pure unrelenting violence was about to unfold and there was nothing-

"GRENDEL." She ran face-first into a suddenly-materialized Jailer, whose massive ordinance fired on her instantly. Bright orange explosions rocked the two of them, micro missiles following her trajectory and exploding on her again and again. Her chassis blew apart in sheets, plating flying off of her body. "Your surrender is mandated, comply imme-"

The baton crushed Jailer's frame. Without her plating, Grendel was even faster, slamming the thing into Jailer over and over. "Not! You! Again!!" she cried viciously, bending components and crushing control systems and mashing the thing into a metallic heap. When she was done, Grendel saw she was surrounded. Surrounded by Automa... and a ferret.

"Hello, Grendel!" Erwin said cheerfully.

Her anger hit a fever pitch. "You."

She ran up to him, spun around, swung the baton, and vanished into the ether. He smiled and looked around at the Automa, who all nodded and responded in the affirmative. "... Goodbye, Grendel." 

 -
- -
 -

The police department was crowded, as were most public places. But the Burger Dictator remained the meeting place of choice for just a few people who had technically never met.

"So she's on the Moon??" Max asked, managing to get a few fries in his face.

"She is on a moon," Archimedes corrected. "Once we saw the true nature of her treachery, we used folded space coordinates to send her far away- and as she does not have a similar device, she will have to come back the old-fashioned way. It will be years before she can concievably return."

"And hopefully by then, people will be ready," Erwin explained. "There'll be a lot to adjust to- inked life, the old Canvas dynasty, factions, robots... but I think these people can work it out."

Natalie stretched her newly healed arm. "I'm just so proud of you guys," she said with a smile. "You had barely any backup and you handled this whole situation yourselves."

"With your brains and shit!" Carrie added, too loudly.

Samantha chuckled. "I expect that was the point. Team Reference has relied on Team Rough too much in the past; we should be expending this kind of effort to support the fighting members of our group even when there isn't a desperate, world-ending threat."

"I just didn't want to pressure you!" Natalie admitted. "I kinda got you all wrapped up in this crap, and I don't want to hurt our friendship because of it."

"Don't worry, Natalie!" Kei made a happily determined gesture. "We'll work hard for you!"

"D'awww!" The wolf ruffled his hair. "I'm glad you're in the group, Kei."

"Speaking of which," Jie Xian came up to the table, small hands outstretched toward Carrie's shirt. "I heard on your world, I'm in your pack! Any chance I could-"

"Mitts off the tits, grandpa!" she put a hand on his face, holding him away.

"D'ohh, have mercy on a poor old man!" he whined, trying to reach toward her still. "Just a little tender... loving... care!"

Natalie grinned. "God that's weird. Maybe there's hope for our Jacent." She got a big laugh from the whole group.

A portal opened up outside the doors. "NATALIE GRAYSWIFT."

"Welp, looks like our next stop!" The wolf got up from her seat, taking one last bite of her burger. "Onwards! To save another world! ... And hopefully return to our own."

The kids all filed in one by one, or two by two in the case of couples. Even Max managed to get in finally.

Samantha tarried, however. Out of her pocket, she dug a piece of paper she'd found in an evidence locker in the police station- something they'd found on Grendel when all this started.

[ === ===
Nhilation Labs Test Subject #6
TEMP Score: 9010
Status: Retrieve

Nhilation Labs Test Subject #7
TEMP Score: 0206
Status: Terminated
[=== ===

"What does it mean...?" she wondered. Then folded it up again, put it in her pocket... and left for some other world.

   \
¯ o _
   \

Jessalynn Sabel slid out of a mirror, onto a particularly bouncy chair and landed square on a large bed. Her body outright refused her requests to move, on the grounds that this was the first time in sixteen hours she had stopped moving for any appreciable amount of time. The mattress felt like a cloud, and the only sound she could manage was an exhausted, relieved groan.

A few minutes passed, and Jacent opened the door. This was normal, as it was his bedroom. "Welcome back."

"Nnnnnhhhh."

Jacent adjusted the sleeping squirrel in his arms, who was still clutching his oversized boxcutter-style sword in one hand, having refused to let it go for a moment during the entire preceding day. "Are you alright?"

The spider took in a breath, which took more effort than she expected. "Yeah, as long as I don't have to move."

He nodded. "Well, scoot over, Simon needs rest as well."

Her eye rolled in her head, and he could only assume it had turned to look at him. "... I'm serious I can't fuckin' move."

He paused, then nodded, proceeding to play Friend Tetris on his bed, even going as far as to tuck both of them in. The spider tried to protest this, but just the thought of expending that much effort made her even more tired.

"Hey, so, are we... done?" Jessa asked.

Jacent took off his hat and began putting his bracers on, carefully adjusting the clasps. "We've secured roughly two-thirds of Locksmouth. The middle portion of the city is safe- it's the inner core and outer edges that remain in question. It's a small area by volume, but it's also tenacious to patrol." He took off his shirt, then replaced it with another one. "More pressingly, people are still missing."

"Fuck," Jessa complained, rising.

Jacent made the incredibly small effort necessary to push her back down. "Selina is accounted for, as well as the rest of your friends. You are done."

The spider stared up at the ceiling, unable and unwilling to fight him on it. "How are you even real?"

He shook some powder into his shoes and replaced them. "Oh, I'm not." He picked up one of his comic books, gesturing to himself on the cover. "I'm a fictional character."

Jessalynn laughed harder than the lame joke deserved, deliriously tired. In his sleep, Simon edged closer and cuddled up to her. She put a few arms around him  and closed her eyes.

Jacent walked through the hallway, took a left and turned into his kitchen. He pulled a nutrient bar off the counter, ingesting hundreds of calories per bite with all the joy of an idle gas station attendant, staring at the wet muffin stains along the floor molding. His mind attempted to run through the logistics of what he still had to do, but it kept washing away in a tide of exhaustion and angst. He missed hugs. And high-fives. And cuddles. Things he went without for years, he now felt the absence of starkly. Most of all, he missed the smiling faces of his friends... especially Samantha. Even Jasmine looked subdued as she sat on top of the counter, chin in her hands.

"... If there's anybody listening..." he began, looking up at nothing in particular. "Anyone at all... I just need some kind of a sign." He tossed the wrapper in the garbage. "Some... indication to keep going." He stared at Jasmine, who stared at him. "To know that what I'm doing isn't a fool's errand."

A giant blue hand slammed down onto his kitchen floor, burning a hand-shaped mark into the tile and leaving behind an engraved metal plate before disappearing entirely. 
Jacent nearly jumped out of his skin.

After collecting himself for a moment and trading urgent whispers with Jasmine, he pulled out his oven mitt and grabbed the plate.

It was a letter.

[Jacent,
We're not dead!
A really weird entity called Waymaker Pathos has us dimension-hopping as some sort of weird gauntlet that's supposed to prove our worth or save these other doomed worlds or maybe both I guess? I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but the bottom line is, we're coming back home soon! Just hang in there. And if things get too hairy, call some of our other friends for help!
 - Natalie]

Jacent stared at the engraved letter with relief and confusion.
Then he grabbed his PET, and stared at the contacts list. 
"You said if we needed any help, to just ask." 
His thumb jabbed a name.
"Well, I'm asking."