"Goin' my way?" posed the avian, leaning in the window.

Talon climbed into the front passenger seat of the recently overhauled Vigo Carrier, a trusted model of hauler trucks which had in this particular case seen more than its fair share of unnecessary roughness. Even with repairs and restoration, it featured plenty of warps and chips to the body that spoke of a reckless driver living a dangerous life. Talon ordinarily wouldn't have asked to climb into a vehicle like this, but with what lie ahead, he figured he may as well get comfortable with danger.

"Hope ya weren't waitin' long," Laila said conversationally. It didn't sound like she meant it, but at her age, even making the effort counted as politeness.

Talon gave out a short laugh that was mostly silent breath. "Like I'm in a hurry," he responded in his New Jersey accent, which contrasted with Laila's Southwestern US accent. Both of them spoke with affectations entirely put on, originating from places neither had- or could have- ever been to. This wasn't inauthentic, nor reason for mockery; identity was something you picked up as you went, like a snowball, and helped tell the story of who you were. And who they were was a group of misfits getting ready to answer the call of the biggest misfit of all.

"Uhm, I'm Quincey," the pig in the back said, wanting to take the moment to introduce herself. "She's Laila, he's Kenny," she pointed to the lemming, "And this is my boyfriend, Daxton." She grinned despite herself, still not completely over the novelty of getting to call him that.

"Talon," he said with ease. He didn't reach back to shake hands, but something about him communicated that it didn't need to be all formal like that. He reached down, popped the locking mechanism and swung his seat around in a one-eighty until it faced the kids in the bench seat. His eyes fixed on Daxton first, and upon noticing the lean kid's shaggy mop and low-pulled hat, he exploratorily waved a cautious hand inches from the dog's face.

Daxton batted the bird's hand out of his face as a matter of course. "Yeah. I can see out of this," he answered with a knowing smirk. "Probably more than you can out of those aviators."

Talon let out a grinning roll of the head. "Ooh, he bites back even." Daxton raised his head in recognition of the challenge, but Tal waved him off; it was a clear show of the difference in years between them. "Fair enough, you got moxy. I bet that helped when it came time to go up against all that stuff you had to deal with. The conspiracy, the wannabe soldiers, Feral, or whatever her name was? Yeesh."

"It wasn't easy," Quincey agreed. "We're still dealing with the aftereffects. So... what happened with Brightwater? There really hasn't been much news about it."

"It'd make it way too complicated to get into now. Let's just say we had to clean up somebody else's mess and leave it at that," Tal returned, looking out the window. The scenery passed by at speed, as expected; it was common to accelerate to very high speeds over long distances in order to make trips more bearable with a generous deceleration window near the end- he hoped Laila remembered that part. "So. Besides savin' the world, you got any special skills?"

Kenny returned a deadpan stare. "I took cheerleading."

"You too??" Tal motioned. "Look at that, we've already got so much in common."

"So wait," Daxton waded in. "If your whole thing was something you handled, then how do you know Natalie?"

"Things got a little too hot in Brightwater, so me and my crew moved to Locksmouth for a little while and met Nat and her crew there. Beautiful place! This is me coming back to it after- ah, does it smell like a produce section in here or what??"

Laila didn't even look away from the 'road.' "This thing hauls tons of 'em all the time. Gets all over my clothes, 'n then gets on the interior. Just be glad I hose down before haulin' the meat off!"

"Yeesh, point taken," Talon surrendered. Being a courier himself, he knew what it was like getting covered in someone else's delivery. "Anyway, I mostly know Jacent. He 'n I are pretty good buds, we talk about old sitcoms and play Hotline sometimes. He's a freagin' beast at it but don't tell him I said so. Guy's hilarious though, he doesn't do texts at all; if you wanna get a hold of him, you've gotta voice him every-"

"-Single time, yeah," Daxton agreed with some exasperation.

"That's what made that message so scary," Quincey admitted.

"Never thought I'd see the day," Kenny agreed.

Talon lost his easy smile. "This guy's never really asked for help once since I've known him. Not for anything, but especially not for somethin' like this." He took out his PET and re-read the message for the dozenth time.

[PrincessPussycat: Friends, this is my darkest hour. Natalie and her entire pack have been taken by an entity with enigmatic designs. In her absence, a group of vicious machines have launched an assault on Locksmouth with plans to wipe out all of Inked-kind. Their numbers are great, and their resolve deep. It is a grueling conflict I ask you to join, yet if I am to have any hope of rescuing the innocent, I cannot do this alone.
- Jacent]

The humor of him not knowing how to change his username was undercut severely by the dire tone. "Jacent's been there for us," Quincey said with uncharacteristic determination. "W-We can't let him down!"

The rest of the group agreed. Laila stared forward, eyes on Locksmouth, closing in the distance as she slowed down to ready for their descent. "Speak o' the devil." 

The dome was surrounded by Autumnal imagery, trees peacefully losing their leaves as the scenery turned various shades of orange and brown... but inside, the dome was a snowglobe tempest, a swirling dark storm roiling inside of its barriers, lightning crackling as if with sheer malevolence. It was safer outside than in, a perversion of the very idea of dome cities.

"Geez... little on the nose, don't you think..." Talon winced as Laila punched in the codes to pass through the dome, the shielding beginning to open around the truck. "I am so done with bad weather."

 -
- -
 -

Pillars of black smoke rose from dozens of areas around Locksmouth. The destruction wasn't widespread, but among the places that were attacked, precision strikes had been made that leveled them nearly to the ground. Trees had been trampled, and emergency lights, normally to notify first responders, were lit up on nearly every building. One building in particular was filled with survivors of this invasion, and it sat like an unwitting island in a roiling sea.

Jessalynn Sabel stood, but only just so. She hurt. Everything hurt. She had dreamed of being able to fight to defend her homeland, like the Vigilant story she had adored in her childhood, but... this was agonizing. Foscor hadn't said anything, but she detected something of a fancy to flee from the inkling empowering her, and she couldn't say it wasn't understandable.

In the grass to her right, Simon Bedivere tried to stand. Most of his weight was leaning on his massive boxcutter-like sword, and the rest of him looked like he wanted to get up, but every attempt just brought trembling and no real upward thrust. That, too, was unsurprising; she'd been thrown into him bodily, as if she were a doll, and it hadn't done wonders for either of them. Nevertheless, he was trying so hard, and it made Jessa angry, as well as inspired by his courage. Nobody should have had to do this, much less a kid, and they'd been fighting for days. Her jacket was torn, her shoes were falling apart, her pants were shredded and there was a timeline of wounds old and new across what of her flesh was visible.

"You really should give up," said the iguana-shaped robot that stared her down with a manic green grin that glowed amidst the darkness of his face. "It's only gonna get worse from here." He gestured around the city, then to his small army of Gear Slaves. "We can make this whole place disappear if we want. We don't care what it takes. We're gonna wipe you out."

Foscor wanted to leave. But she knew what that would mean for Simon. Jessa put up her fists and shook her head. "Nobody won a match against me by talkin'."

And then a truck hit a tree. 

Jessalynn leaned back to avoid the branches of a mid-sized birch that uprooted the moment Laila's truck stopped suddenly and slammed its bed into the thing, sending it crashing to the ground between Jessa and Paste. The truck hovered over the tree, stopping between the two groups. "Watch the truck!" Laila instructed, and Talon barely had enough time to hesitantly agree before the doors opened and she, Quincey, Daxton and Kenny leapt out of the vehicle; Quincey's leap was more like a timid slide, but she made it nonetheless.

"There's always more of you, isn't there!" Paste noted with some annoyance. 

"Yeah bad news, bolt head, they saved the best for last!" Daxton responded with an eager grin. "Hope you're ready to get your socks rocked!"

"I'm not! Goodbye!" He waved, turning and running with his cadre of gear slaves toward a municipal building.

"Wait, what the hey??" Laila responded, confused.

"Don't let 'em get the survivors!" Jessa cried over the tree. 

"F-..." Simon shuddered. "FLOOD FILL!!"

The squirrel collapsed; red and black ink exploded from him, racing over the ground and tracing over every object in sight. The moment it touched Quincey, Laila, Daxton and Kenny they were instantly inked, and Paste and his underlings stopped cold at the edge of the field.

"Well this is new," Kenny remarked, looking around at the red and black battlefield that had been cordoned off for them.

"Wha-haaat the hell?" Talon creased his inked brow as the entirety of the truck turned into a red and black construct and, critically, lacked dials and gauges and other information he needed to drive it.

"Aheeheehee, wretched monsters, you don't get to leave, either!" Paste's arm opened up into a big, slick aperture, spraying a blue and yellow epoxy which instantly hardened into huge green stalagmites of slick cement. The silhouetted truck that was already going nowhere was stuck fast, now.

Laila gasped as she saw that he had absolutely covered her newly repaired and cleaned truck in his viscous goo. "Oh you done messed up now!!" Sky-blue ink streaked up into the air. With all the fury of a tempest, Laila let rip a whirlwind that lifted the automa off his feet, the remainder of his pasty load sloughing in a rough circle. 

"Nnnghah, you fools!" He returned, throwing hardened stalactites of slime up at the airborne giraffe. She deftly dodged around two of them, but these were just leading shots; the remaining one glanced off of her side and she cursed.

Kenny drew his sword from his shield, plates flying onto him to form armor via Polaris' magnetic powers as he ran up to intercept the force of dog-like gear slaves now gunning for them. "Hyah!!" he met the first one with the brunt of his shield, bashing them aside with all his might. A second ran in from the flank, which he stabbed downward and caught a neck joint, sending sparks flying as it slide-rolled away into the silhouetted chassis of a police cruiser.

Daxton caught up to Paste just as he was readying to fire again, rewarding his singular focus with a hard right directly in the faceplate. Paste flinched to one side but didn't fall over, which really only invited Daxton to hit him again, harder, with a kick to the gut. The robot's hard exterior made it a chore to fight him, but the corgi made it up with sheer unrelenting brutality. Even as silly as his design was, however, Paste was a robot, and his counterblow came hard and fast, slamming into Daxton's side. The boy grit his teeth and powered through the pain.

Quincey was immediately attacked by a hunter unit that knocked the wind out of her and pinned her to the ground. She grabbed its head and struggled as it champed at her. "Nnnh... nngh!!" Suddenly, to her right, a duplicate of her appeared and grabbed the thing's torso. Then another, which grabbed its leg. Finally, with their combined efforts, the pig managed to work her leg up between them and kick the dog-bot off of her and into a bike rack. Kenny looked at her, realizing she'd been struggling, and grinned. "Hey, you did it!" he exclaimed with equal parts enthusiasm and surprise. For her part, she just gave him a tired thumbs-up as she rose to her feet.

"Bagh!" Paste took another hit to the torso from the white corgi and fell backward. "That’s enough." His green screen-face glowed brightly as a strange pressure wave blasted against the kids. It hit them with immense gravity- so much so that Laila failed to maintain altitude, diving in a wild circle and nearly landing flat on her face, if not for a rogue palm tree she roughly grabbed onto before swinging and tumbling to the earth. As the rest desperately tried to remain standing, the dark sky began to turn into a whirling vortex, the clouds reaching down with lightning-veined funnels of pure hell that touched down all around the city. The wind began blowing harder and harder, threatening to bowl them all over. But what really took hold was dread. A feeling of impending doom settled over them like a suffocating blanket, out of nowhere.

Quincey dropped to her hands and knees, completely overcome. Her eyes widened as the world grew dark and the only things with any real saturation to them were the impending threats on all sides. What was going on?? This wasn't the worst thing she had ever seen, why did it seem so terrifying?? Nonetheless, she couldn't look away, shaking as she was buffeted by the cutting winds.

Kenny managed to stay on his feet, but the robotic dogs around him took on a hellhound-like appearance. Their snarling barks flung boiling spittle and their red eyes were like coal engines, emitting heat mirage. "Nnnh RAGH!!" He just managed to shield bash one away from him, even as the impact against his shield felt thunderous to him. "What the hell?!"

"Kid!" Talon reached down to help Simon to his feet. "Are you alright??" The inked squirrel gave a thumbs-up, still using his oversized sword to stand. He looked to Jessalynn, but she looked past him, which made him turn around. "Ah, sh-"

"L-... Laila!" Daxton managed through gritted teeth in the meanwhile, fists clenched as he stood his ground, stepping slowly, but insistently toward Paste despite it all.

"Nngh... yeah!" She finally managed to get back up on her feet, then activated Sylph's powers in earnest. Suddenly, the wind came to a standstill in a large sphere around them. She exterted her will as hard as she could, the effort taking all she had with the crushing weight of the pressure. Without the wind buffeting them, they could hear a deep, almost inaudible, bassy thrumming.

"Time to get serious!" Daxton managed back at his lemming friend.

Polaris brandished his weapon anew. "Devil dogs! Have at you!" He shouted from the depths of his courage, throwing his blade at one hunter and his shield at the other, ruining both in a shower of sparks and catching them when they returned. He turned on a hunter pulling on Duplex's leg and focused on it, grabbing the hunk of metal with his powers, slamming it repeatedly into a decorative garden boulder with desperate fury and discarding the unrecognizable heap of scrap when he was done. 

Daxton was pissed. He slammed fists and feet and even headbutted the terrifying robot, the pain of doing so a distant second concern to kicking its fucking ass. Paste blew wads of goo at him, which sluiced off of the liquid corgi in a somewhat expectable turn of events, and finally, with all the anger he could muster, he blasted the thing with both barrels, massive bursts of light slamming into his chest and sending him careening into the edge of the Flood Fill, which dissipated. Paste thumped onto the ground with a shocked expression as hundreds of tiny components trailed from his gaping chest, until he finally, with a trembling arm still reaching toward them, winked out of existence.

The thrumming stopped. The storms around town began to die down. The overwhelming sense of impending doom finally began to slowly relent, like an eldritch horror reluctantly withdrawing its tendrils. As the Flood Fill dissipated, they came to see that the objects they had destroyed were in actuality perfectly fine, Laila's truck intact and un-gunked.

"Damn... he got away. Is-... is everyone alright?" Daxton asked, panting.

"Y-... Yeah..." Laila managed.

Quincey managed to get up, sniffling and trying to calm herself. "Ohmigosh. I thought I was over this. I'm sorry, you guys..."

"No," Kenny shook his head. "I don't think it's your fault this time."

The pig sniffed, surprised. "What?"

"Why was that so hard??" Daxton demanded of no one in particular. "That guy was a chump, what... what happened??"

Laila took a deep breath, collecting herself. "I don't know, y'all, but we should check on the others."

"Right," Daxton managed, distracted. "Right, let's do that."

The kids climbed over the tree, finding Jessalynn and Simon helping each other stay standing. They looked tired, but tired was the most they looked- they didn't have any serious injuries that demanded immediate attention.

"I-Is everyone alright over here??" Quincey asked.

"Yeah, more or less." Talon tilted his head toward a bench, where a hunter had been demolished. "You missed one, but I got it."

"Ohhh!" The pig felt bad, realizing she'd been the one guarding the tree divide... or rather, not really doing that at all. "Oops. S-Sorry."

The avian waved it off. "No sweat, you guys alright? Looked like that guy knocked the wind outta you. And hey, is it just me or did he make it darker out here??"

"Yeah, that'll happen ever since they started playing hardball," Jessalynn managed, sitting down on the bench with a heavy sense of weariness. "Thanks for the help. I'd say you were just in time, but that would've been two days ago. Just now was still good, though."

"K-... Kenny!!" Simon exclaimed upon finally recognizing who had arrived, embracing the lemming as strongly as he could.

"Aheheh! Hey little bro!" Kenny ruffled the squirrel's hair and hugged him back, supporting him in no small amount. "The Princess might be in another castle, but now we're both here to defend it 'til she gets back." He grinned upon seeing the tired kid's eager nod. "So what was that whole... flood thing?"

"Flood Fill is something anyone can do," Simon said through his exhaustion. "Cedric lied."

"Because of course he did," Kenny responded flatly. "So that's what you did, huh?"

He nodded. "It's how we're stopping them from destroying the whole city with all their weapons, but it's still hard..."

"Yeah, speaking of that," Daxton shifted. "What's the situation? We just got here."

Jessa tried to respond, but a static thrumming cut her off. Trooper units began appearing in front of them, replenishing the ranks they had seen by tenfold. "G-... Goddammit!" the spider cried, exhausted, as their fusion cannons whined in activation. "It's always like this!"

"Behind the tree!" Daxton yelled, pushing people into cover behind the felled wood. Fusion bolts ripped into the large old tree, sending molten splinters flying as they ducked.

"What now??" Kenny asked.

"We-" Daxton couldn't finish his sentence. A huge black obelisk came into view, casting a massive shadow over them. Its red rim glowed ominously. Just then, another massive, crushing wave of despair hit all of them, this one infinitely more oppressive than the rest; the additive weight bore down on every last one of them.

"Kemberge, what do we do?!" Kenny repeated more sharply than he'd wanted. "We don't have time t-" he was interrupted by green electricity and a crackling hum, then wind as he winked out of existence with a short, high pitched sound.

"Oh, no," Quincey panicked as she saw Simon get vanished, then Jessa. "Everyone get away from the ship!" she said, as the rest of her friends winked out one by one. Her own hands began to crackle with green electric arcs. "N-... No!"

And then, she too, was gone.

 -
- -
 -

"We're being fired on!"
"Get us out of here, Clip!"
"Yes, doctor!"
"Keep us folding between nodes at randomized intervals, we don't want them locking onto our position- especially when we have injured!"
"I’m on it doc!"

Quincey managed to get to her feet, blink away fuzziness and put her glasses back on, which had fallen down the neckline of her shirt. She was in a large circular depression in the middle of a huge room with massive vaulted ceilings, multiple decks and dozens, and dozens of robots. "Ah?!" There were big ones, small ones, some that looked like people, some like animals, some like monstrous creatures. There were only two things that united this menagerie of machines: that most of them had a simplistic colored-shapes-on-black-screen face display, and that almost none of them were actually looking at their new visitors.

"What is this?? What just happened??? Who the hell are you?!" Daxton barked.

A familiar voice cut through the considerable noise. "A safe place, you just went through folded space, and if you don't remember someone of my criminal profile, then I'm insulted," said a wolf wearing a garish, red-and-slate suit of Star Fantasia underneath a huge labcoat that hung off her shoulders. 

Quincey's eyebrows shot up. "Dr. Grayswift??"

Kenny blinked. "Natalie's Mom??"

Talon double took before grinning. "Oh, hey Lorrie! Are you... in charge here??"

A geriatric-looking robot nodded hesitantly. "An alliance was forged in order to strike back at Mixer's insurrection. I, am Archimedes."

"You must be the Automa," Quincey said breathlessly. "The robotic people who lived underground all those years, those... centuries!" She took a few steps carefully toward a thin snake-like one, who looked back at her with a curious expression. "I tried to read what I could, after Jacent's speech last week, but... there wasn't much."

"That was by design!" Archimedes retorted cantankerously. "Since the dawn of your people's history, we've kept ourselves secret from you for as long as we could. That's ruined now, of course," he said ruefully.

"Yeah, yeah, sour grapes Archie; s'cuse me, comin' through," said a ridiculously large yellow automa whose voice sounded like a dot matrix printer with a Brooklyn accent. 

He offered his massive hand toward Jessalynn, who sat in his palm and put one arm over the side of it for stability before being gingerly picked up by him with a sigh of relief. "Thanks, Truss," she managed.

"Fuggedaboudit," the walking dumptruck responded, carting her off with more care and dexterity than something his size should have been able to manage.

"Wait," Daxton remembered. "Weren't we protecting some civilians??"

A small pink-and-white Automa that resembled something between a young woman and some sort of visored magical girl battle robot. "We got them out safely using the SSAN Gate- the same thing that brought you here."

"Thanks, uh, Clip." Laila squinted at the magnetic nametag firmly affixed to her chest plate. The robot beamed back with a delighted smile. "But where is 'here,' anyway?"

"The Ink Well!" Lorna said with grandiosity that came a little too easily to her. "A mobile fortress, war room, triage center, weapons platform... and beacon of hope." She posed triumphantly. "Come! We'll speak more in the Lounge."

The journey to the lounge showed off more of the place to them, and that much more than Automa were onboard. There were multiple decks in just this one open area, disc-like floors overlooking the main tactical room. Complex formulae, maps and plans were being drawn up, the odd emergency responder moving from place to place and many, many refugees sitting out the carnage outside in this relatively peaceful place. It was the busiest place in the city, without question.

Talon whistled, folding his arms. "Pretty impressive, Doc."

She leaned back and beamed a little. "The Automa deserve most of the credit, it was their labor and technology that enabled this. I merely... supervised."

"We couldn't very well sit idly by while our worst elements stomped our names into the dirt. It was oddly nostalgic, though, working under the watchful eye of a crazed inventor," mused Clip with a giggle.

"I'm just surprised you chose to do it at all, Dr. Grayswift," Quincey admitted. "Haven't they treated you like a bad guy up until now?"

Lorna's shoulders shook as she laughed richly. "I'm so much bigger than that."

Kenny, crowded in the elevator with everyone else, edged his head away from the doctor's huge rump and muttered under his breath, "I'll say." Simon quietly giggled, which put a smirk on the lemming's face.

The elevator dropped them off in a much less frantic area: a room with couches and seats aplenty, likely pillaged from the apartment building this base was so clearly built from. It, like the rest of the base, was styled very heavily after the Ring circa 2525- which was to say, a massive Star Fantasia dream. It didn’t look inappropriate, considering this was now a floating base, but it was still a tacky panel-lined neon glowing fern jungle paved in metallic-finish plastic, superfluous holograms everywhere a needlessly floating appliance wasn’t.

Simon and Jessalynn had plopped down tiredly, not so much sitting as laying. Talon kicked back, as did Daxton's pack, but the corgi himself was pensive, pacing instead. "I don't feel like sitting down; shouldn't we be out there, busting robot heads??"

"Yeah?" The imperious woman smirked and folded her arms. "What heads? Where? How will you get there?"

"Uhhh, all, anywhere, and however I gotta!" he threw back defiantly.

Lorna laughed again, her teeth showing. "You remind me of my late husband- no wonder Natalie likes you." She ran a hand through her hair. "However, that's not gonna cut it this time. You go out there without a plan, and you're gonna get chewed up. Their numbers are insane, and they literally come out of nowhere- as you saw."

Talon’s head rested on his hand, giving her a discerning look. “You wouldn’t say all that if you didn’t have a plan.”

She actually pushed her glasses up with a smirk. “Right you are.”

 -
- -
 -

In the cracked remains of a city street, a small rabbit child walked under a false moon, its grid burning high overhead in cold eternal night.

"Hushabye wolfie, hushabye goat
Thanks to the boy with the little blue boat."

Mechanical dogs with crimson glares paced and pawed impatiently within a wide berth around her.

"Hushabye spider, hushabye crow
Give that monster your big toe."

Crunch stood at the other end of the road, his resemblance to Erwin only fleeting considering how imperious and inevitable he looked. "Thought you could escape, did you?"

Monica's pupils shrunk to pinpoints. 
"Hushabye black dust, big dark pall
Hushabye monsters, iron and tall."

 -
- -
 -

[“Talon, we've lost contact with Jacent. He's hours overdue to report in and we're fearing the worst. Get to his last known coordinates as fast as you can and get him back. You'll be borrowing one of our hoverbikes, so take care of it.”]

He did take care of it!
For a while, anyway. It was the thought that counted, Talon thought, as he stared at the smouldering wreckage of the vehicle. He dared a glance over the damaged delivery box he was hiding behind. There was still so much distance to cover, and no way to tell where the shots were coming from. Taking it slow was exactly as risky as taking it fast, and meant more opportunities to die. "Man... when I offered a favor, I meant movin' a couch or something..." He looked left, then right. He nodded his head a few times, like a surfer waiting to catch a wave, feeling out the rhythm of the world... and then.

"HUP!" Talon vaulted himself over, abandoning the protection of the mail, and made a mad dash toward the largest cluster of condemned houses. He slid on his knees underneath a stray fusion shot that was never meant for him, turning and popping back into a run. He vaulted over a pair of Hunter units that champed for his feet, leaving them to futilely navigate the complex wreckage around them. He dove under a pair of walls that had collapsed onto each other in a weak tent, causing the trio of Bat units tailing him to slam into the debris. A third wall represented a steep obstacle, but Rhythmis' abilities keened the avian's senses and he gripped slight deformations and handholds, shooting up the surface unnaturally quickly- too quickly, in fact, as he barely had time to plot a three-point landing down totaled furniture and appliances. The last hop was still a little too high, and he grunted as he rolled, twisting his torso in a cheer routine move he still remembered like it was yesterday. His eyes widened as he sprung to his feet. "J-Man!"

Jacent was indeed there. He spotted the teenage boy on the roof of an old-style department building fighting several huge Clamp units. He threw yo-yos into their thick chassis, sending fusion cannon shots wide into the dome, but then he disappeared to Talon’s view as he headed away from the edge to engage.

Inside the building were a lot of people all packed into one place. Plenty of them were actively inked, almost all of them Greys, and there began to erupt a panic on floor after floor as Trooper and Hunter units dropped in out of thin air. It was tight quarters. If they didn’t fight back, they were history. If they did fight back, they would injure themselves and each other. If he tried to save them, he’d get somebody killed for certain, or bring the whole building down. Dammit, had he gotten there just in time to be helpless?

Wait.

“Flood Fill!” Talon cried with the kind of conviction that only panic could bring as he ran into the entryway to the building. The entirety of the place turned black and red, and somehow, simply by intuiting it, he had managed to trap the robots in and kept the civilians out. Something like heroism swelled in him as he realized he had in fact prevented a massacre with two words; when all of the machines in the room turned to face him, however, he was brought quickly back down to earth. “... Tunebox, Hydrogen. Let’s Dance.”

Fusion rifles aimed at his head glowed with plasma fire, blowing bolts that he just managed to limbo under, then two more shooting at his lowered position convinced him to drop to the ground. “Whoa!” On his back, he shoved himself backward along the smooth, polished floor, his inkling’s moist skin jetting him away until his shoulders hit the legs of a chair. He popped up, flipping backward sitting down in the chair, dodging another shot that landed between its- and his- legs. Another trio of autoblasts whizzed overhead as he tipped back in the chair and fell onto their backs together. He winced as a bolt slammed into a chair leg, which he caught. “Ooch!” It was extremely hot on one end, so he sucked in air through his teeth and flipped it to handle the other end, then kicked the chair into one of the troopers with both legs. 

This ended the gear slave, removing its legs and slamming its ancient face into the floor. The other trooper had time only to notice that its compatriot was KO’d before Talon hurled the molten chair leg directly into its red eye, burning through to its placeholder AI and sending it slumping to the ground.

“Stairs...” he groused, hearing a hunter unit coming from the entryway. He grasped the post-cap’s ball, twisted it in one big shove and sent it unscrewing up its support bolt. A trooper began to come down the short stairwell; Talon monkey-swung under the railing to avoid a fusion shot, kicking the robot dog in its lunging face with full momentum. He swung around just as the trooper readied its cannon, grabbed the ball just as it released from the bolt and nailed the trooper in the face with it. It fell backward and he used it as a slope to clear the stairs.

The second floor resembled a pub, with a corner bar, tables and stools. As Talon came up, he realized that he had run into a group of three troopers all armed with stun batons. They brained him with the things, thankfully not disabling his body but throwing his vision for a loop. He fell backward onto the fallen stair trooper, and with only the fire-red eyes to guide him, he timed the next gear slave’s approach and caught its chest with his feet, sending it onto the landing with a ~CRASH~

A trooper appeared from behind the bar, but Talon had already made a mad dash for it from the stairwell, jumping over the bar and smashing a heavy bottle of something or other onto its head, shattering its eyelights. Fully hidden, he sat with his back slumped against the back of the counter, holding a bottle of clear vodka in one hand. He panted with exertion, idly flicking an old-fashioned lighter with his other hand. His vision’s focus fully returned as he finally caught his breath.

The room’s third and fourth troopers peeked over the bar, immediately getting a bottle of vodka, then a lighter in the face.

Talon leapt up over the bar to watch the trooper on the right flail to try to put itself out, the other one backing away so as not to get set alight itself. It turned to him and fired a bolt which he let out a grunt as he struggled to duck under, spinning on his crouched heels, grabbing and flinging a stool at full strength, smashing it across its abdomen and sending it crashing into the jukebox. The mindless metal soldier twitched as an electric surge slammed into it and its eyelights went out just in time for its comrade to fall onto the floor, its processor having shut down from overheating.

High-pitched arpeggiated synth leads continued to play, his foot tapping along as fire crackled. Bystanders who resembled faded phantoms looked on with some mixture of dread and cautious optimism. He leaned his neck this way and that. “You good, Rhythmis?”

The inkling redoubled his efforts, adjusting his frequencies. “Don’t stop believing.”

He limbered up one arm and grinned. “That’s what I like to hear.”

 -
- -
 -

Selina Greenstreet had never trusted the idea that everything would go back to normal. Not after the invasion. Not really before it either, exactly. Locksmouth just wasn’t the place to experience an ordinary life, but even amidst that paradigm, the inkling business had turned everything upside down. She was sure she had seen it all at this point, and any day now things would return to some semblance of what could loosely be thought of as normal.

And now this.

A tall, lanky Automa stood over her as she laid sidelong on a padded bench along the upper decks of the Ink Well. His androgynous body was covered in wispy glass and plastic panels painted opaquely with gold in places, his eyes twin screens in a plastic face mold; it gave the impression of some sort of ancient Egyptian priest. It seemed like a lot to ‘wear’ every day, and there was every chance he didn’t, as she had learned; their bodies were referred to by them as ‘frames’ and they slipped in and out of them as they fancied- and honestly, even if she was a lot less creeped out than she thought she would be, that still left plenty of creep. “Are you hungry?” he asked, as friendly as possible.

“... No, no thank you,” she squirmed in response, unable to hide her discomfort. He was still a stranger, and something about the situation on the whole just made it a bit offputting.

He paused. “I scare you, don’t I.”

“No!” she blurted out quickly. She licked her lips, grimaced. “... Well. A little. I’m sorry. Just... I-I mean, it’s just the way you look. Whenever I saw that girl with Natalie’s pack, she looked fine, but you...”

They straightened, their long, craning neck angling up. “Ah. Widget, right?”

“Uh... ye~ah, I think that was her name,” she confirmed.

“Hm. She took a disguised form, didn’t she? Something more familiar to you.” He looked thoughtful. “Tell me, then. Would... this, be better?” With a gesture, the lanky Automa was washed over by a hologram that made him resemble a tall otter of his rough proportions instead.

Selina blinked. There was something deceptive and strange about that, about this robot taking a human form simply for the purposes of trying to look harmless. It was devious, shifty, deceitful! And yet... “Uhm. Actually, yes,” she admitted with some embarrassment, realizing that given the choice, she would just rather be pleasantly lied to. “That is much better and way less creepy.”

“Then this look it is!” said the fake otter. “Now can I do anything for you?”

It was at this point that Coul, who had been sitting at the foot of the bench, one arm draped around Selina’s leg, spoke up. “Yeah! You can tell me why you’re not out there toasting those bad robot people, if you’re the good ones.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said. “You see, our frames are built with ‘Asimov Triggers.’ They’re... little failsafes that prevent us from committing violence... against anyone, actually.”

“Then go put on your violent frames??” Coul retorted sardonically.

“We don’t... have any,” he explained. “You see, after we were set free, we agreed to certain rules, certain limitations so as to make sure our society would be fair and just. We haven’t had any reason to build such things; this incident with Mixer caught all of us on the back foot. So I’m afraid all we can do is support the efforts of those of you who are perfectly capable of embattling these insurgents.”

“That sounds like a bunch of-”

“That sounds fine!” Selina said quickly, cutting the raccoon off with a somewhat hysterical tone. “I am perfectly happy with you being forced into peacefulness! No problems here! I’ll have a sandwich please!”

“Right away!” He trotted away without another word.

“... You shouldn’t be so hard on them,” Selina chided him. “It’s..... it’s not like you’re doing anything,” she said, without realizing the words had come out of her mouth until it was too late.

Coul tilted his head. “I mean, no. Of course I’m not. I don’t do heroics, I just... got you, we got here, and that’s it.” His eyes searched hers. “That’s...” 

That’s why you left her.
That’s why you’re with me.
That’s what you wanted.
Right?

The moth girl licked her lips and swallowed hard. She turned and looked down through the glass to see Jessalynn laying on a couch, still completely exhausted from fighting with everything she had to save people she’d never met. “I-...” She clenched her eyes shut. “I-... I have to go!” 

The faux-otter automa came back just in time to watch her briskly walk away, his false paws now holding a sandwich for no one. Coul frowned and took it.

 -
- -
 -

["Mixer's gang has taken over the Climate Center and are making conditions increasingly hazardous. Daxton, Laila, you'll need to secure it by coming via the only safe approach: the air."]

The Ink Well appeared in the Government sector with a flash of green arcs, and the city stretched before them, the Climate Control Center standing ominously in the center of the dark storm. Daxton looked to Laila. "Alright, we've only got ten seconds before the base folds out again, let's do this!"

The giraffe nodded, and the two teenagers ran along the roof before jumping right off the edge, the base disappearing behind them. Laila inked up, did a twisting maneuver and caught an inked Daxton at the bottom of her loop, the white and gold corgi now sitting on the small of her back as they soared through the air, whooping and savoring the adrenaline of the moment. "Keep a grip, now, this bronco's fit to bust!" Laila cried defiantly.

"Hey, wait! What's that??" Daxton looked toward what looked like a cloud of insects, only to realize they were merely very far away. The silhouettes of red-eyed mechanical flapping bats got closer and closer, coming at them directly from the Climate Center. "It's the gear things!"

"Hold on, cowboy!" Laila dipped, twisted and rolled as they were buzzed by air raiders. Her maneuvers were smooth, the organic, nigh-effortless movements of someone who controlled not just her body but the air around her. She juked and dodged a pair of raiders that tried to lead her into one another. "... Couldja hold on somewhere that doesn't make me wish we were doin' somethin' else???"

Daxton blinked, realizing he'd grabbed her pigtails. "Sorry, there aren't many options- AAH!" A gear slave grazed his shoulder at speed, a gout of white ink bleeding from it. "There's too many of them!"

"Y'all got a plan??"

"The only plan I ever have; now let's try this out! FLOOD FILL!" Daxton responded with a grin, creating a bubble of Osothian influence that extended dozens of yards from them and moved with them at the center of it, crawling over every surface. With one hand on Laila's back, the other ahead of him, he unleashed a beam of searing light that tore into two gear slaves, sending them crashing into the silhouetted buildings below and exploding in a catastrophic meltdown that spit fire and blue smoke. "WOO, YEAH!"

"Awright, now do it again!" cheered Laila as more bats stormed them in formation. Groups of attacking gear slaves were dispersed by beams of brilliance, allowing them to jockey for position and outmaneuver their ranks. This grew more and more difficult, however, as their numbers concentrated, the masses of airborne foes congealing into a darker and darker cloud. "OW! Dangit, ya missed one! AGH!" She rolled, barely hanging onto Daxton's legs as she regained her tailwind. "Daxton ya gotta thin 'em out!"

"Hffh! There's so many! Hah!" He blasted beam after beam of concentrated light, but it didn't put a dent in them. They descended on them piecemeal like rain, slamming and slicing and cutting into Daxton's inked body, taking gobs of Lumina's form with every hit-and-run. It became clear that while they didn't present much force individually, barreling through the air-slicing automatons would leave both of them streamlined like a block of swiss cheese. He struggled for a moment, trying to think of what to do. "... Laila! I need to use both hands but I don't want to fall off!"

She grinned. "No problem pardner, just gimme a sec!" Daxton's stomach flopped as Laila dropped out from under him for all of a second, spinning 180 degrees. The corgi landed on her belly, then slid down to her hips before the giraffe's powerful thighs wrapped around his lower back, pulling him firmly to her; he grabbed her breasts, perhaps out of instinct, or convenience, or habit, but once he found his equilibrium he found she was smirking. "Bet this feels familiar!"

It did, and despite the distraction that element caused, he had to admit three things: he was secured, it was a comfortable position, and his hands were completely free. "Great work, Laila, now fly us straight in!"

The flying gear slaves had coalesced into an aerial tidal wave, making a solid mass of obstacles boxing them in. Laila used the fact that her hands and feet were now all facing doward to finely fly them into less busy pockets, but still they were clipped by dozens of the things as they passed, and the tunnel of bats grew thicker and thicker until there was no escape. Daxton's doubled up open palms glowed brightly in the darkness of this robot eclipse, then erupted with a massive percussive beam of brilliance that punched through, allowing them to soar out the other side of them. They flew through the dome's center pillar, and when the bats attempted to follow, it sensed their mass as an inclement object and solidified, smashing hundreds of them against it.

"YEE-HAW!!" Laila shouted in triumph, landing on the roof of the Climate Control Center, sliding along Daxton's back for a few yards before stopping. 

They both sat there, locked in the same position, panting. Daxton looked up at her expectantly. She bit her lip. He shook his head and double-patted her hips. "Maybe later. We've gotta job to do."

Laila unlocked her legs from him and flopped back on the roof grass, letting out a hot breath. "Damn."

 -
- -
 -

Two-stepping up the stairs, Talon looked into what previously looked to be an indoor flea market. Dehydrated chunks of meat hung from hooks, and wood that was aged even longer than the sinew made up counters all around the large and twisting room.

At the other end of it, guarding the roof access, was Paste. “Back again. Where’s your friends??” he said jovially.

“I was just about to go see one, actually.” Talon walked slowly around a counter, surveying the area. This place was like a waist-high labyrinth made for children.

Paste’s face screen distorted with indiscernible code at the edges of it as a Genocide Wave pulsed through the building. Barely seen civilians clenched in horror, tears in their eyes, clutching each other tightly. “You’re gonna die here. Then that little bubble will pop. And all these people will die, too. I don’t care about casualties.” The room pulsed with darkness which dripped at every corner like an all-consuming oily dread. 

~(_)~

“Genocide Wave??”

“Yes,” Archimedes answered a very concerned Quincey. “Waves of influence coming from an internal mechanism native to our very AI cores called the Genocide Engine. An unfortunate holdover of our maniacal creator’s myopic vision for us.”

“What does it do?” Daxton pressed.

“A lot,” Clip noted gravely. “The same hands that made the tools that made us, made the tools that made you. These vibrations can induce fear, despair and fatigue; sometimes the effects are so strong they’ll affect your senses. It’s extremely dangerous.”

“And expressly banned!” boomed Truss in his thick Brooklyn brogue. “Eh... but try tellin’ Mixer that. I sure ain’t gonna.”

~(_)~

Talon pressed at the edges of his consciousness, trying together with Rhythmis to push away this invasive cloud of doom that yawned before him like a pit. “You don’t scare me, jackass,” he returned with a sneer. “You spent all that time underground ‘cause you’re afraid.”

Paste’s face began to flicker with disturbing negatives of death masks frozen in their tortured final moments. “Do I look afraid?”

Talon dove over a counter, rolling onto a pile of overturned ball bearings; they didn’t feel great, but adrenaline kept him moving. When he rose to throw one of the balls, he found his wrist restrained by a long barbed appendage coming from some approximation of Paste’s neck, which immediately yanked him over the counter and toward the increasingly creepy machine. As he slid along the floor, being winched toward the disturbing gaping neck-maw of this freak of engineering, the avian’s mind raced. The room was getting darker now, more dangerous; blood splatters appeared where there weren’t any before, wood creaked and the desperate banging of trapped souls sounded from below as the entire room yawned taller and taller.

He grasped and groped for anything he could use. “Ah!!” His fingers clenched around something as he was lifted bodily, his hand going into the unknowable machine guts, every instinct in him screaming to get the hell away. Talon shoved the length of spare piping he’d picked up from the ground into Paste’s throat, halting the terrifying specter of it closing on him. He then worked both feet up onto the robot’s chest and heaved backward with the entirety of his and Rhythmis’ strength, catching for one heart-stopping second before yanking his arm free. They flew away from each other in that moment, slamming into opposing counters.

After prying the bar from his opening, Paste shot a somewhat less accurate barb-tongue slash at the floor where Talon was, but managed to miss him by moments, watching the avian roll underneath the counter he’d hit. He was up faster than he should have been able to manage, slinging a meat cleaver directly into his faceplate. Sparks flew and blue lubrication leaked from him. He ran toward the counter, grabbed Talon and threw him into the room’s opposite wall, sending cutlery falling after it. All manner of sharp implements fell into the bird’s inked flesh, eliciting a cry of pain.

Paste shoved tables this way and that, throwing them across the room as he made his way toward Talon again. The avian pulled a chef’s knife from his shoulder, shuddering as he watched the purple ink sluice off of it. He squinted in pain. An odd sound of metal rolling caught his attention. He looked over at a pink, child-sized aluminum bat slowly rolling toward him on the floor. It was a battered and chipped affair with a holographic dragon sticker on the side, filthy grip tape and the words “J. Long” etched into the side. But what really caught his attention was that a young pre-splice human girl was crouching just behind it, looking at him with a excited expression. “... Go ahead.” Her big blue eyes gazed down at the bat. “It’s my favorite.”

He grabbed it, but the pain from his shoulder made him wince, and when he opened his eyes again, she was gone. He had no time to consider this, though, because Paste was right on him again. Talon tried to escape the robot’s grab, but he had nowhere to move; the mechanical iguana slammed him into the wall and threw him into the middle of the room. 

Talon had taken the fall with a roll, managing to get onto his hands and knees again, then standing. He panted as Paste walked toward him, gripping the bat with one hand, eyes peeled for the robot’s next move. He had to admit, things looked grim. Mixer’s lot had been hiding their true strength, their durability. He could harm the flexile parts of Paste, but the body? The armored limbs and torso? A kid-sized bat would be lucky to dent a person made entirely of metal that didn’t already have one foot in the junkyard. He’d seen a lot of horror movies like this, and they didn’t end well for the humans in this situation.

“So tell me... how afraid you aren’t.” Paste closed in, letting out a tittering giggle that dripped with malice. “You disgusting alien from another world. You thought we would let you get away with this? Oh no. Oh, I’m afraid you’re no match at all.” Another giggle. “I think it’s about time we ended THIS!”

Talon’s adrenaline spiked as the impossibly scary reptilian robot leapt for his head, his hands outstretched to tear him apart limb from limb. The avian wound back, pushed his muscles to their limit and swung that small pink baseball bat with all of his hope to survive.

To his own shock, Talon slammed the aluminum children’s toy into Paste with the force of a train, not just repelling him, but cratering his chest, smashing his body to pieces and blowing those pieces out the side of the building, which was now a gaping buckshot hole that looked like a ship’s cannon fired on it. Paste’s surprised face fell end-over-end with his head as his body’s pieces fell to the ground, then vanished in electric green static.

Flood Fill subsided.

The wall was made whole.

Dozens of Locksmiths jumped from the sides and corners of the room to cheer and embrace Talon, who for a few moments just still stood there, dumbfounded. He looked at the toy that he’d just used to crush that robot with newfound respect. “This is a good bat.”

“You did it!”
“You beat him!”
“He’s gone!”
“That was awesome!”
“You’re really strong!”

“Haha, alright, alright, you’re welcome already!” He grinned despite himself.

“You were just in time, son!” said an old goat that looked vaguely familiar to him for reasons he couldn’t immediately recall.

“Yeah, no problem, anytime! Well, gimme a month, but then, y’know, anytime,” he joked, checking to make sure that Rhythmis was no worse for wear. There was a loud bang from the roof. “Oh, duh. Alright hang tight everybody I gotta check on my boy, I’ll be back in a minute!”

 -
- -
 -

“You dumb beast...” intoned Winch as she observed the sole surviving pre-splice human kick away a giant clamp unit. She lunged for him, swinging a heated blade.

Jacent leapt back. “Never did fix that servo joint blind spot, did you? Same design five centuries on.” He cocked his head. “Do you really think you can bury this now? Genocide an entire race, then brainwash the whole world until they believe it never happened?”

“Why not? We did it once,” she retorted, eyes narrowing with a smile. “How does it feel knowing you couldn’t stop us from driving your kind to extinction?”

She swung up at him, but he kicked down and stepped on her arm, pinning it to the roof. “If you mean the tape, Doctor Grayswift already showed it to me.”

Winch stopped, shocked. “What?! But-... then why?!” She pulled a miniature cannon in her free hand, but he kicked it away. “How?! How can you of all people side with Archim-”

He yanked her to within inches of his face. “You, are a race of robots created to commit atrocities. I, swore to protect humanity.” He pushed his forehead against hers, eyes locking on her own. “If it’s true, if that’s what you did, you tragic fools, then it was my fault for not stopping you,” he whispered intensely. “And I won’t let you do it again.”

She grimaced at him furiously. “You’re a bigger fool than I thought. Our destinies were opposed the minute Grendel freed us from the Legacy Code.”

His eyes flashed with anger. Winch was thrown against a fallen clamp unit. “To tell a lie like that, you must want me pissed off. Well you’ve got it.”

Winch began reinforcing her frame. “I won’t fall to you!!”

Jasmine grinned. “Then you can take it standing up.”

Talon made his way up the stairs just in time to see Jacent slamming his fists into a white and purple robot with the speed and force of some unholy industrial metal press made of rapidly actuating pistons; parts flew away from the wailing Automa like she was getting hit with a rotary saw, her frame crumpling like a cheap plastic take-out container. The sheer violence with which he literally took her apart was mind-bending, waves of force rumbling throughout the building’s entire frame, even air pressure reverberating as every hit was like a rapid-fire double kick drumline.

At the climax, he took one look at the pathetic mangled skeleton of a machine, pulled his arm back and slammed it into her head so hard she tumbled, end-over-end off the building and landed with a loud squealing thud of metal on metal. “Oh look. You fell.” Physically and emotionally exhausted, Jacent sat down on a pile of slagged metal, resting amidst what one could see were several oversized Clamp units that had been utterly crushed, yo-yo shaped indentations in one, a bag of marbles ripped through another. Jacent himself was filthy, his costume torn so badly half his chest was exposed, and he had plenty of scratches and bruises.

Talon sucked in air through his teeth, then let out a low whistle. “I see the peace talks are goin’ well," he quipped, turning the bat around and handing it to him.

Jacent smiled and holstered it across his back. “Talon! It’s so good to see you!” He embraced his friend with a handshake into a mutual double backslap. “I guess we got in that game of Hotline a little sooner than expected. Is everyone okay?”

The bird laughed. “Yeah, no kiddin’. Everyone’s fine, I took care of Pasty Face and his rusted entourage.”

“I knew I could count on you,” Jacent beamed. “I guess we’re even now.”

“Wha- what are you kidding?? You help me move and I help you with this??” He poked the boy’s chest. “You’re in the red my friend, and I’m chargin’ interest!”

He grinned. “I thought you didn’t sweat the small stuff.”

He sputtered and rolled his eyes. “If this is the small stuff, get me outta here before somethin’ big happens!”

Jacent laughed despite himself, coughing a few chuckles in. “Yeah, I’ll call it in, there’s nothing more to be done here except evacuate the citizens.”

“Good. Thanks for the bat, by the way, turned out to be real useful."

"Huh?" He blinked. "What bat?"

Talon blinked. "Geez, you're more out of it than I thought; the one that I just gave back to y-" he stopped suddenly, realizing that the child-size bat was no longer on Jacent's back... or anywhere. "... Huh?"

Jacent shrugged apologetically. “It must be the Genocide Wave.”

“..... Yeah.” He nodded slowly, brows knit as he looked around. “Yeah, must be.”

 -
- -
 -

["Quincey, we need you to go where we can't. Head into Canvas and survey Castle Blackwolf. We're at capacity with survivors already, and we absolutely have to make sure we don't get snuck up on by Cedric or anyone else planning to capitalize on the confusion."]

Duplex's lava lamp-like form popped out of a mirror and onto the stone floor. "Uwaaah~!" She cried as she stumbled, spun and then fell on her butt. In a panic, she looked all around her..... and found no one. "Phew..." 

Getting a look around, 'no one' was certainly right. Masonry crumbled, carpeting molded and torches had burnt out completely. It looked as if nobody had been here for decades, though that was absolutely impossible by what she knew. "The nature of Canvas is so wild..." she whispered, walking down the ruined halls. "I guess the castle really is uninhabited... sucked just about dry, it looks like." Her footsteps halted suddenly as she remembered something crucial and gasped. "Vor!"

With the kind of speed her figure did not imply nor assist with, Quincey ran toward the basement as fast as she could. "Oh no oh no oh no oh... oh?!" She stopped short of the door to Vor's cell, blinking. "It's..." The liquid pig stared perplexed at how utterly ruined, blackened castle suddenly turned into vibrantly, meticulously worked stone, polished wooden framing and even a few errant flowers and sprouts growing in the bare patch where a brick should have been... then turned right back into ruin. "... Perfect??" She puzzled over this tiny little oasis of preservation, as if somehow everything that had hit this place had just missed this little patch perfectly. Vor was still in his cell, being fed a steady stream of tranquilizing prana. It was a relief... but a confounding one. "How... no," she realized. "Who??" 

In an effort to find out the answer, Quincey searched the castle in the way only she could- by splitting up. Duplex created one pig after another, each one taking on one part of the castle. It was a whole lot of liquid ham trundling around, but after a few minutes, all but one Duplex disappeared, and Quincey was left with one clear fact: "Nobody's here..." 

It was then that she thought to look out the castle window, gazing outside. Usually it was a maelstrom of chaotic Canvas in all directions... and that was still there, of course... but it was further away than she ever remembered, and one look down answered why. "Oh, wooooow!"

The entirety of the area around the castle had been colonized. Huts in all manner of material and style extended in both directions, too numerous to count. When Quincey made it down the steps and outside the gates, she was abled to walk around for all of ten seconds before she was noticed. Greys began appearing out of their huts, stepping out to see who had come out of the castle. "Hey!" one of them said, pointing to her. "I know who you are!" The sheep-shaped Grey jogged up to her. "Quincey, right?"

Relieved she wasn't being attacked, the pig laughed nervously. "Oh, uh, yeah! Right! You're... u-uhm!"

"Bo Briggs," she said in her gregarious way. "It's okay, we didn't really 'meet' so much as I saw you a few times. Did you... come from outside?"

"Who is that?? Is that an elite??" asked another Grey. "Tell her we don't want any!"

"Uhm! Yes, yes I am, um, well, I'm hosting one," Quincey managed. "I don't remember this village being here, did you guys... all build this together?"

"Yeah!" yet another Grey retorted. "And it's ours, so you can't have it!"

Bo let out a long-suffering sigh. "You guys, honestly. Quincey is a good person."

"Yeah, they all are!" said one more. "Until they ask you to be your own personal army! Well, forget about it!"

The pig tilted her head, confused. "What... happened here, exactly?"

The sheep looked around, shifting weight from one leg to another. "The same thing happened that's been happening to these guys forever now... politics." She gestured outside the village. "Prana-hungry Greys, leaking memories but not trusting Echelon, latched onto the promises Emnas fed them. They attacked Castle Graywolf, while the ones on Echelon's prana dole defended it."

A tall and thin Grey shook their head. "But once the battle was done, all that had been gained was a broken fortress that already barely kept any prana in reserve. It was a ploy to break Echelon's back, and it worked. Emnas abandoned us the moment we'd done his dirty work... so now, all we have is each other."

"We killed the golden goose," explained a Grey that looked like an elderly person. “Echelon’s host was an unimaginable font of prana!”

Bo nodded. “Yeah, it-”

“Such a vibrant girl! So chock full of life! Bursting at the seams with essence!”

Bo blinked. “Right, it was-”

“Just bulging rudely with mouthwatering excess-”

“Are we still talking about prana?!” Bo demanded.

"Wait," Quincey interjected. "You mean Echelon's Greys and Emnas' Greys are both in this village??"

"They aren't Emnas' Greys," the sheep responded, walking Quincey out to the edge of the village. "Or Echelon's. The funny thing about Greys is that when you remove Elites from the picture, nobody has any colors." She turned around and gestured to the throngs of inklings. "Tell me, which Greys helped Emnas? Which ones helped Echelon?"

The pig looked around. "I... can't."

"Exactly," Bo said with a smile.

The tall, thin Grey nodded. "Emnas is cruel, and Echelon was kind, but our mistake was the same- relying on either of them, when we should have been helping each other. We are all equal, Duplex, and your saturation affords you no luxury here- you will be treated the same."

Quincey breathed a sigh of relief. If this many Greys were in one place sharing the bounties of their few hosts, it meant that they were looking out for each other, not spoiling for war. As brusque as their treatment of her had been, such a hostile environment to elites meant that Cedric's cronies had no chance of finding purchase here. It made her feel a little guilty to have gotten the easy job.

"Uhm, Quincey?" Bo vied for her attention. "Sorry, but, have you... seen Geoff, Jordan or Mandy out there...?"

She frowned. "Oh, uhm, no, sorry. Dr. Grayswift is trying to rescue as many people as possible, but it's a fraction of the population of the town, and they're already maxed out... it's a real problem," she said apologetically. "How... long have you been here?"

"Here, here?" Bo clarified. "A few days. I got separated from my friends and I... well, I learned the hard way the last few crises not to try to be a hero. I'm staying put until things blow over. I just hope they're okay..."

"You've been in Canvas for days??" Quincey asked. "Really? Do you... feel any bad effects?"

She shrugged. "No, not really. It's kind of peaceful, actually. It's been kinda interesting to be inked for so long. It's a little weird at first, but when you get used to it, it's not bad. I guess this is sorta like the reverse of how inklings are, wearing us around in our world." She laughed pleasantly. "The prana's been a little thin, though, I have to admit; I'm one of the few hosts here."

"Wow..." The pig considered this with some fascination. "... Wait."

"W-... What?? You have a scary look in your eyes."

Quincey snorted in determination and put on a self-satisfied grin- something she rarely afforded herself. "I just thought of a way to solve both our problems."

 -
- -
 -

["Kenny, Simon, your mission is to descend into the hell beneath us and rescue a girl. She is crucial, retrieve and protect her at ANY COST."]

Simon and Kenny's vision flashed with static and green sparks as they appeared in the middle of a concrete jungle. The pale grid of the catacombs' false moon shone an ethereal blue down on a dead city locked forever in time. "I can't believe this place actually exists..." the lemming marveled. "And it was down here the whole time..."

Simon looked around at this place he'd heard about recently for the first time. "It's so old... and quiet." Eerily so, in fact. There wasn't even the normal amount of ambient noise one would have expected of a cave, which was creepy in and of itself.

Kenny pulled his sword and shield, armoring up. "Well, Sir Bedivere, it's time to rescue a lady in distress." He shot him a knowing look. "Are you ready??"

Simon nodded in the determined way that only a child could as he pulled his hoodie on. "Aye, Sir Baxter! But... where do we start?" His big, glassy eyes looked over the massive city with awe. 

"... There!" Kenny pointed toward the pavilion of a dilapidated fuel station, which a tired-looking rabbit child sat atop, stranded. They ran to it, looking for a way up, but finding no handholds or access ladders.

"Toss me up, big bro!" Simon offered, keeping both hands on his sword as he gestured toward the roof.

He nodded. "Three... two... one!" 

The squirrel soared into the air with Polaris' help, clutching his oversized sword tightly, then landed with some difficulty, half-rolling. "Oof!" He shook his head, shaking his tail out and getting up off the grip-taped surface onto his feet again. Before him sat a rabbit child, younger than him. Her messy hair framed her tall face, most of which was taken up by her captivatingly large violet eyes. She seemed to stare through him as she sat indian-style with her wrists held together by shackles. "Are you... Monica?"

She nodded wordlessly.

"My name's Simon," he supplied, lowering his holographic faceplate. "I'm here to rescue you." He used Adama's powers on the shackles, embrittling them until he could simply clack them together, causing the metal cuffs to fall apart like sugar glass. He took her little hand and helped her stand up, slowly. "Are you okay...?"

"They're coming," she said with haunting intonation.

The squirrel blinked, confused. "W-Who's coming??"

Kenny surfed his shield up onto the roof of the pavilion, rolling upon landing and snatching the shield in midair with haste. "We've got company!"

Trooper-style gear slaves threw limbs over the sides of the roof, pulling themselves up and brandishing weaponry that was at once medieval yet industrial. Their red and blue eyes glowed bleakly in the artificial light of this cold underground graveyard. The sheer inorganic stiffness of their movements combined with their poorly-maintained joints gave them the air of a truly inhuman force- an army of the electric dead.

“AH!” cried Monica. They spun around to find her prone, leg in the jaw of a Hunter unit, which they quickly dispatched, Kenny carefully wrenching her from its mouthy grip while Simon defended them.

“You’re gonna want to ink up for this!” Kenny said, noting the splotch of blood in her sock where the teeth had dug in just a bit too far.

“I can’t,” Monica responded. “I’m not like you.”

The two diminutive knights looked at her with wide eyes, then each other, and circled around their even smaller charge. "Protect the princess!" Simon said, his hands gripping his sword as Adama inked over him.

"Protect the princess!" Polaris cried, meeting an overhand mace bash with his shield and sending his sword through a nhiloid's torso. He didn't follow through quite enough, instead just slashing its electronic guts open, and he had to quickly repeat with an outward slash and a kick, sending the thing reeling over the edge. Another two had already come down on him, but with a gesture, he grasped their metal body in his magnetic grip and crushed it into the other at speed.

"Have at you!" Adama shouted, shattering a nhiloid F-type's leg with his enormous boxcutter-style blade. The hoodie's hardened fabrics took a slice from an M-type's armblade, prompting him to swipe sidelong, the tremendous arc of the swing crunching through several Troopers at once.

They scrapped valiantly, attacking with teamwork they’d practiced together. The boys felt a solidarity between them that held like a rock in a raging stream.

Something odd came over one corner, however. Something shaped like... a ferret?

“Mm, yes, very impressive,” Crunch noted sarcastically. “Going backward in time to fight the future. There’s a metaphor here, but I don’t have the time or inclination to teach it.”

“What are you talking about??” Kenny barked dismissively, slashing away at a soldier that got too close.

Crunch sat back on the corner. “You’re right, showing is better than telling.”

THOOM.

The Genocide Wave hit hard. A massive blast of uninterrupted darkness slammed into the boys, and within moments they were no longer standing on top of a gas station, but on an impossibly high castle battlements, well up into the clouds and overlooking the entire battered and destroyed countryside. It wasn’t forgotten pacement but besooted land and lakes of lava beneath them. It wasn’t robots in disrepair who accosted them, but skeletal black knights, their vengeful bones held together by the rusted vice plates and withered bolts of Neo-Medieval armor. The sky burned with rancor as Crunch, now an impossibly tall, imposing dark spirit, laughed from the sidelines.

They met these creatures again in battle, though their foes’ hits landed surer, their blows felt harder, and their intent felt much more focused and vindictive than before. 

THOOM.

Another wave hit, and the castle began to sink into the ocean of lava below, acrid smoke and heat mirage giving them waves of urgent fear they tried desperately to ignore. “I-It’s just a trick!” Kenny cried defiantly.

~(_)~

“So this ‘Genocide Engine’ business,” Talon said. “Could we maybe, I dunno, use our inklings to keep out the bad juju?”

Lorna tilted her head, thinking her words over. “The alien thought patterns of your inklings will help, but only in that you won’t immediately drop to your knees.”

“Wow, that strong?” 

Jessalynn nodded haggardly from the couch. “That strong. Believe me.”

He frowned. “I don’t mean to be a downer, here, but it’s sounding like we’re a little screwed.”

~(_)~

THOOM.

Monica watched her charges waver with understandable worry. "Hhh..." Her fists balled up as she shook her head and trembled.

Kenny looked back at the small, vulnerable girl and ached to protect her. "We're gonna-" THOOM, the Genocide Wave hit them again, and it took everything he had to remain standing as another blade slammed against his shield. The armies seemed to grow, phantom assailants coming in from behind and making the odds seem ever-more impossible.

"Hhhh..." She shook.

"Don't worry Monica," wheezed Simon through his determined, gritted teeth. "We're going to protect you, I prom-" THOOM, tears jerked from his eyes as he fought how brittle his very bones felt under the sheer weight of it. Even color drained from everything as their chances felt ever more bleak.

The rabbit gulped down a big breath of air, tightened her fists and raised one finger to the sky. "HaaaAAAA PSYCODRIVE." 

The inexplicably commanding voice of a small child echoed throughout the entire dead city as her shout went off like a bomb. A wave of psychic energy blasted away from them, behind which the world regained saturation and every single living machine fell backward from the force- including Crunch, who cried in shock and awe as he was knocked prone.

The doomed castle siege disappeared in an instant, giving way to clear, crisp reality. Monica radiated rose-colored light and her pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, now filled with gut-wrenching intensity.

“What... what is this?! There was nothing in the Doctor’s notes about this...” Crunch gestured toward them again. “Heel, you animals!” 

THOOM.

The waves of darkness crashed on the bluffs of Monica’s PSYCOfield like they were nothing but wisps of smoke, finding no purchase. She stared daggers at him, her unblinking face a tiny package loaded with murderous intent, and it shook him to his core- a fear he didn’t know he could feel.

For their part, Kenny and Simon not only found it easy to stand again- they could scarcely believe there had ever been a moment in their lives where they weren’t one hundred percent certain of victory. “This isn’t an inkling ability-”

“-This is something else!” Simon finished Kenny’s statement for him. They hadn’t just been rejuvenated with courage; Monica’s mysterious mind powers were linking them together on an intuitive level. The luckiest cooperative take they’d had on a practice drill was now child’s play for them, they could just feel it. Their eyes simultaneously locked on Crunch’s ace in the hole- a large armored Trooper unit whose very grip bent the sides of their platform as it ascended. “Sir Baxter? Let’s do this.”

Kenny generated a magnetic tailwind, pushing the boys toward the armored unit from opposite directions, slashing into the monster and pulling their blades away in a mechanical-gut-ripping X-strike. The enormous hulking machine lurched this way, then that, then detonated, bathing both knights in orange light.

Crunch was very unhappy about this.

Kenny held his shield up in a defender's position; Simon stepped up on his knee, then the shield, then was launched bodily back over to Monica, flipping in a tight curl before slamming down onto an encroaching nhiloid, slicing it in twain in a shower of sparks and metal flecks.

"HAH!!" Simon threw his sword overhand, landing its huge mass directly into the chest of another trooper. Kenny pulled it out magnetically, but instead of returning it to Simon, he encircled them with both of their blades in a disc of protective destruction that wobbled chaotically like a spinning top; this gave even the mindless drones pause, faced with the prospect of marching into a gyroscopic blender. 

Simon pulled Kenny's shield off his back, pointed the concave part outward with his foot on top of it and tapped into Fortis' powers, letting loose with a holographic bass guitar solo which was amplified by the metal sheet, sending rumbling riffs of utter destruction along the pavilion rooftop. Hapless drones lost their footing as the ancient structure began to give, sending them into freefall below. Kenny integrated the shield into the dual blade wheel and made it a trifecta, sending a spiral of deadly thumping bass licks pulsating through the air and almost rattling the disrepaired joints of the troopers apart. The central pillar of the pavilion they were on stayed strong even as Simon's arresting arpeggiation buckled the rest of it, sending nhiloids onto the unforgiving concrete where they blasted apart like toys.

Simon finished his solo, and Kenny returned weapons to their respective owners, at which point they panted, exhausted by the effort. They looked over the edge of their strange midair fuel station island, then at each other, then Simon impulsively hugged Monica, who reciprocated it with a cute little smile.

“That’s some power you got there,” Kenny marveled, overwhelmed and tired, but appreciative. Something occurred to him, and he turned to look down.

“He got away,” Monica said dispassionately, her field of influence fading slowly, her pupils returning to normal. Sure enough, Crunch had flown the coop.

“Sounds like a good idea,” Simon admitted, smiling tiredly.

 -
- -
 -

Madison saw her first, marching down the hall. “...?”

Havid and Milly saw her second, emerging from the elevator. “Whaaat??”

Ashbie, short and swimming in her sweater, was transfixed. “No way.”

Selina Greenstreet walked right up to the spider still sitting on the couch. “J... Jessalynn! I need to talk to you!”

She blinked, unused to this tone ever coming out of the moth. “Yeah? What is it?”

Selina gathered up her courage, took a deep breath and hit the ground running. “I don’t regret expressing my feelings, and I don’t take back what I said.”

Jessalynn stared silently.

She swallowed. “But. Uhm. I... uhhh, I was unfair. To you.”

The spider leaned forward, surprised. 

“... Being scared is what brought us to each other,” she said. Cherished memories of thrillseeking wafted through both of their heads. “It’s fun, when you’re both taking the risks together.” The moth swallowed hard. “But. The idea of waking up one day, and you not being there... I-... I just...” She struggled hard to keep it together.

Jessalynn held her wrist, now standing. “Yeah. I know. I’m sorry.” She turned her head, gazing aside. “It was too much to ask, and... I didn’t even ask in the first place.”

“I thought, I could stop myself from feeling the sting of losing you, if I left first.” Selina couldn’t stop the tears from coming. “But every day I’m away from you is the worst day of my life...”

Jessalynn pulled her in a tight embrace. “Take me back. I need you so bad.”

Selina sobbed a few times, pulled her head back and nodded. “Of course! O-Of course I will!” She squeezed the spider just as crushingly hard as she could. When she was lifted up, she tilted her head back and pushed into a kiss so familiar and warm, it filled her whole body. “Mmmnh... ah, I’m so happy...” Her hot, salty tears had gotten all over Jessalynn’s face, and something about it made her laugh.

“Yeah~!! Finally!!” Milly blurted out, blowing the pack’s cover behind a particularly big fern. “Oh, whoops.”

“Wha-...? What do you mean ‘finally??’” Selina demanded. “Since when did you all think we were going to get back together??”

“Since, uhm, always,” Ashbie admitted, grinning.

“Yeeeah, that’s why we didn’t bother changing anything around,” Milly said. “It was pretty much inevitable.” 

“Did everybody know we were gonna make up??” she asked incredulously. Madison nodded, and Havid smiled. “Oh my gosh,” she fluttered her wings, flustered.

In the midst of the pack embracing and laughing and teasing them about their reunion, something emerged from thin air a couple of yards away. Coul leaned on the wall, eyes locked on the lot of them. It wasn’t until they looked at him that he blinked. “... Vissage?? Oh, dammit.” He flushed, annoyed.

“Oh.” Selina bit her lip. “Oh no. Coul, I-... I’m so sorry.” She grimaced. “I-... I was going-... it was-”

“Stop.” He held a hand out. “Look, uh. Everyone knew this was gonna happen.” He gestured to himself with his hands in his hoodie pockets. “Me included.”

She blinked. “What...?”

The raccoon sighed. “Yeah. I knew you wouldn’t be apart from Sabel for long. I just... I’ve been alone for such a long time, I thought, it might be nice, to be with someone, who’s, so... nice.” He shrugged, hands still in his pockets. “It... probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway, on account of us just kinda propping each other up.”

Selina straightened up. “You’re right. Still, I’m sorry for using you. For us using each other, I guess.” She offered him an apologetic smile, and whispered something to her girlfriend shyly.

“Yeah.” He nodded, then turned to walk away, before a hand landed on his shoulder. It was... Jessalynn.

“Hey.”

“Uh.” He looked around. “What?”

“You were with my girl,” she said stoically.

“... Y-... Yeah??” He winced, unsure where this was going.

“You took care of her when I couldn’t. You kept her safe.” She tilted her head. “Maybe you’re not the guy everyone thinks you are.”

Coul stared up at her, emotions roiling in his eyes. “Honestly... even I don’t know what kind of guy I am.”

“Well.” She spread her arms and gestured to her friends. “Maybe stick around, and we can all find out.”

 -
- -
 -

Laila was guarding the roof, so he was on his own. The Climate Control Center wasn’t gonna be a cakewalk. Daxton clipped in his favorite song as the floors went by. The introduction reeled up. The lights on the elevator ticked down. The beat started in. He could feel his muscles flexing, his mouth working into a snarl.

Troopers had met him at the elevator access. He threw himself into them one after the other before they could react. A hunter went for his legs and got punted, hard, against the back of the stairwell. Another trooper ran up the stairs to investigate; he jumped the railing and goomba-stomped it, collapsing its legs into themselves as it crumpled down the stairs.

A clamp grabbed him; he swung around, taking over momentum and slamming it into a water fountain. He grabbed its head and bashed it into the structure over and over until it stopped moving; water now spouted from its eye sensor. The clamp had taken its pound of flesh in ink form, which pleased Lumina not at all. “Be careful!”

A burst of bats and hunters stormed down the hall, but instead of heeding his inkling’s warning, he ran to meet them head on. He haymakered a bat, got his leg champed in robotic jaws, stomped another hunter into the floor. Grabbed the bat he’d just grounded, smacked the other flying foe, pointed his palm at the dog restraining him and blasted its face into pulp. Not waiting for it to release, he swung the thing into the remaining bat and pummeled it one, two, three times before the hunter’s lower jaw unhinged uselessly. More gear slaves poured out of the door at the end of the hall. “I said be careful!” Lumina warned him.

He didn’t become more careful, of course, just angrier. He didn’t have Jacent’s finesse or Kenny’s defensive drive; he only had determination, and the pain that fueled him like a locomotive enhanced the fury with which he overwhelmed the platoon of yesteryear’s shitty enforcer bots. He slammed and kicked and crushed and stomped every last one that got in his way. When one last hunter jumped on his back and bit into his shoulder, he growled in pain and rage and rolled forward, using the thing’s momentum to slam it underneath him. Freed of its grip, he jumped on its delicate midsection joint with both feet, hopped back into motion and kicked the door open.

“You don’t waste any time on planning, do you?”

Daxton’s momentum was halted. Mixer and four troopers all leveled fusion cannons at him, feet from the entrance of the control panel room.

“You know, I really can’t figure it out,” the automa shrugged. “Why do you puppet the humans to pretend they like being controlled?”

“Believe me,” Lumina responded, “Nobody is controlling this boy; least of all me.”

“Hey, I can speak for myself, Lumina,” Daxton retorted. “And as for you, heh. You’ve gotta lot of nerve talking like inklings are taking over the planet when you’re pulling a stunt like this.”

“It’ll be like nothing ever happened,” Mixer intoned without a care. “A little mindwipe here, a convincing story there, and our little ‘new humanity’ project will start over again. Just like back then.”

Like back then? “We’re never gonna go along with that. I’d rather die than live in a world someone like you created.”

She shrugged. “Wish granted. Fire!”

Daxton’s heart raced as he tumbled forward, past the troopers and right within inches of Mixer. She grabbed his plasma singed arms, and in response he reeled his head back and smashed his forehead into her faceplate with a loud cracking ~THUD~, spider-webbing the thing. He used the momentum to swing around, arm around her neck, holding her hostage. The gear slaves hesitated now, their fusion cannons fixed on their leader.

“... Hahahaha...”

He grunted. “What’s so funny?” 

Mixer’s eyes widened to a manic degree. “FIRE!!!”

Daxton’s heart leapt up in his throat as hot bolts of plasma ventilated Mixer and himself like a deadly laser light show.

The last thing he saw was a side view of the ground.

“Daxton! Daxton...!”

 -
- -
 -

One instrument’s section of a song played.
Prickling of the skin.
The smell of alcohol.
Light peeked in from the very edges of his vision.
Warm illumination pushed forward, washing over his senses and bringing shapes to it before long.
A humanoid form stood over him, making small movements.
A few lights from the form.
A few shades, tones, and suddenly everything came into relief, as if they had been buffering in some manner of loading pattern.

Daxton tilted his head, gazing up at an older gentleman, a bespectacled bat who puffed a pipe even as he finished working. Wait, this was Sam’s dad... Doctor... Madison?

“What happened?!” He rose suddenly, hit his head on a clamp light he hadn’t noticed, cursed and laid back down momentarily.

Dr. Masterson looked down with a relaxed but focused gaze. “You overextended yourself, Mr. Kambridge. I’m told, of course, that this is nothing new for you, so I’m sure that doesn’t come as a shock.”

“Ah... Mixer. I remember now.” He felt around his head. “Wait. My STOP! Where’s my-...”

“Destroyed, I’m afraid,” the doctor responded. “A burned husk beyond repair. And we don’t have threadspinners here, so we couldn’t make a replacement.”

Daxton looked down at his hands. “Wait, then... how am I-...?”

Diane Masterson leveled a mirror at Daxton’s face. From within his normally empty eye sockets looked out a pair of artificial ocular implants- piano black, with gold irises that glowed very slightly.

“I-Is he awake?? Oh I should’ve stayed! Daxton! Daxton!!” He found himself forcibly embraced by Quincey.

“Oof! Ah... h-hey babe.” He grinned that same doofy grin at her. “Did we win?”

“I can’t believe how vicious these people are...” Quincey fretted. “You tried to protect yourself and they still hurt you!”

“They hurt mostly Lumina, it seems,” Diane clarified. “From previous observations, I think he passed out from prana withdrawal.”

Daxton looked down at himself, feeling for where Lumina usually was. Her presence was still there, but it was weak. She’d taken a big hit meant for him. It didn’t bother him when he got hurt, but she’d gotten hurt in his place. It made him feel things he wasn’t sure he liked, but he’d have work those out later. “Sorry, Lumi.”

“You’re very lucky,” Diane confirmed.

Vincent nodded, in a ritual they had done hundreds of times. “That will be all, thank you, doctor.”

She bowed in turn, smiling. “Thank you, doctor.”

“Ah, you’re awake!” Speaking of doctors, Dr. Grayswift made her way into the medical ward, walking over to Daxton’s bed and ruffling his hatless hair. “And how’s my little champion?”

“I’ve been worse,” Daxton laughed a little, trying to get out from under her hand. “What’s the situation though?”

“Everything’s well in hand, Mr. Kemberge,” she assuaged him, Simon following her around as she reached into a cabinet. “Your first round of missions went wonderfully! Laila swept up the remaining forces after you cut the head off the snake with that daring assault.”

“Not that you left me much, ya big glory hound!” The giraffe grinned.

She pulled out a small box. “Talon managed to secure Survivor Group G, and together with Jacent took Sector Eight!”

The bird was reclining in a waiting chair next to Jacent, who was double-fisting calorie bars. “Yeah, I guess he helped, too.” He shared a glance with the boy, then they both laughed.

Lorna pulled out a bandage and bent down to Simon’s level, her massive tush bowling over a bewildered Kenny, who had been squeezing by to retrieve some gauze- a sight which made the convalescant Old Man Murcby hoot and holler in hysterics, much to the lemming’s annoyance. “Quincey had the brilliant idea of keeping all of our inked refugees in the outskirts of Castle Blackwolf, where- thanks to her impassioned pleas- they’ve been welcomed with open arms, and cannot be reached by Mixer.”

Daxton offered a toothy smile and put an arm around the pig’s shoulders. “My girlfriend is so smart.”

Quincey blushed and laughed bashfully, snort-giggling. “Staaaawp. It was nothing!”

Dr. Grayswift placed a bandage on Simon’s cheek, then ‘kissed it better’ out of habit. This put a smile on the squirrel’s face, and he hugged her hips gratefully. “And our two valiant little knights secured our secret weapon at great personal risk.”

Talon opened an eye. “Secret weapon...?” 

Lorna held up her bulky old PET and spoke into it like a walkie-talkie. “Clutch? Bring in the secret weapon!”

Within moments, Monica was brought in at high velocity by an automa that looked like some kind of extremely visible day-glow robotic ninja, with green inlay lighting, plastic underglow and a very excited green face display. He came to a perfect stop, Monica’s hair and his mechanical fiber-optic dreadlocks whooshing with the momentum. “Oh man that was-”

“... So Clutch,” Lorna said for probably the sixth time that day, with a long-suffering smirk.

Monica giggled helplessly. “Wheeeee~!” She barely calmed her giggles long enough to be let down from the very silly robot’s arms. “I wanna do it again.”

“Absolutely, sweetheart,” Lorna smiled. “But can you do one little favor for me first?”

“Mmwhatsat?” she asked, eyes wide with curiosity.

“People could really use a cheering up. Can you use your powers to take the gloomy bad-robot feelings out of this building?”

Jacent stopped eating long enough to shoot her a surprised look. “Dr. Grayswift, that’s an enormous task, these powers take a heavy toll on-”

“Yeah okay- PSYCODRIVE!” Monica clapped her hands above her head and spread her arms, manifesting a psychic rainbow from which the saturation in the room bloomed out. Everyone present felt their spirits lift instantly and unexpectedly. Since they’d already acclimated to the dour emotions, they’d lost track of them; this new injection of happiness and relief washed over like a cleansing rain. Patients, doctors and heroes alike let out sighs of contentment, though notably every automa in the room experienced something like a momentary cognitive lag that they nevertheless quickly recovered from.

“Wow,” Laila marveled. “I feel so much better! You sure are a wonder, lil’ thing!”

“You could do it, too,” she said casually to an astonished Jacent, thieving a sucker from the ‘good little patients’ jar, placing it into her mouth and holding her arms at Clutch in the universal sign for ‘I want up.’ “Gimme ‘nother ride please.”

 -
- -
 -

Jacent sat on a cushioned bench, by himself. He’d switched back into his clothes from the day he’d defended his pack from Cedric’s gang- a day that seemed so long ago as he gazed at the neon lights, ferns and floating knick-knacks everywhere. People milled to and fro on this giant battlestation, Automa tending to the various systems that kept the place running. “... This is what it was going to be like, wasn’t it,” he said. “Something like this.”

Jasmine, who had been standing on the bench with him, leaning on his hunched shoulder, shot him a dismissive look. “Sure, if you believe a lying maniac’s insane dreams.”

“It was, though,” he responded, discomfited. “And I don’t-... it still doesn’t make any sense. How did-... how could someone so hateful, also... even imagine a vision so hopeful? It was such a vivid..... lie. I guess.”

“Then stop thinking about it,” she shrugged, watching yet another mecha-anime-looking robot walk by.

“... Do you think Grendel could really have-”

“Wow,” Jasmine marveled, rolling her eyes. “You sure are getting conned by some insultingly stupid lies today. Maybe you should stop talking to me before people start looking at you funny.”

Jacent licked his lips, staring out at the crowd. People he’d fought, people he’d met, people he’d befriended. “... You deserve this body more than me.”

Now she was angry. “How many fucking times have I told you to stop saying that.”

“It’s true,” he whispered back. “You’ve always been stronger than me, and smarter than me, you deserved this! Not to-”

“I’ve never blamed you for what happened,” she said with finality. “Not. Once. Stop it.”

“I-... I know, I know. You just... you should be the one making friends, experiencing, e-every-...” He withered under her furious glare, feeling eleven years old all over again. “Sorry.”

Her expression softened. “God, you big crybaby. Fine. If it’ll make you feel better, maybe we can... have some body-sharing time, or something, when it’s not the end of the world.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

She smirked, putting her hands up to her chest. “And maybe you can manifest me taller, with some big jugs, like your hot cat friend.”

That got a laugh out of him. “Yes. I-... I’ll try. I promise.” He sniffled.

“Jacent? Are you crying?”

He’d been so absorbed, he didn’t notice Monica coming toward him. “O-Oh! I’m sorry, it was nothing. I was just remembering... things.”

“That’s okay,” she said with the reassurance only a child could have. “My daddy says it’s okay to cry if you have to.”

“He sounds wise.” He smiled. “Oh! Uhm. If it isn’t too inconvenient... I was wondering if you could show me? That thing you said... something about a drive??” Jacent asked, incredibly curious.

She nodded. “Yeah, PSYCOdrive. ‘Cause I’m a Psyco.” He shot her a surprised look. “Psychically Capable Organism,” she said with the bored sing-song rhythm of a gradeschooler reciting a lesson.

“I guess that’s... what I am, too?” he asked gingerly; it felt strange to take this kind of lesson from a child.

“That’s right!” she said with a nod.

Lukas chimed in. “Little Miss Monica is a very gifted little Psyco. Her TEMP score is 1361!”

“I wish it was better on the ends,” she said with the tiniest bit of a pout. “Moving stuff is so cool.”

The oriole noted the look of confusion on Jacent’s face. “TEMP stands for Telekinesis, Empathics, Mind Control and Precognition. Every ‘Psyco’ has these abilities, but how effective they are at each one depends entirely on their own individual aptitude.”

“Wait, that’s... familiar somehow.” Jacent winced. “Ah... my memories of those times are so hazy.”

“That’s not even the best part!” Monica said excitedly. “When Psycos go into Drive mode, we get stronger. You get tired so fast because you’re using your powers in pr-... private?”

“Profile,” Lukas offered.

“Profile mode!” She pointed. “Nobody can tell you’re usin’ em right away, but it takes so much more energy. But in Drive mode, you can just use ‘em way easier. And the very very best part??” She whispered in barely contained enthusiasm, “When we do it together, all our ‘bility scores add together and we can use each other’s.”

Jacent was completely taken aback. “That’s incredible... b-but. Uhm. I don’t know how to do this... ‘drive’ thing. I hope I don’t have to go under the machine again.”

“Not at all!” Lukas responded helpfully. “Miss Monica was in fact the only one at first who underwent the procedure- once she did so, she herself awakened others’ abilities!”

“Ohh, yeah. It’s easy.” The rabbit wrapped her sucker up and put it in her pocket. “I just gotta astral project to you to show you how to do it.”

“You can astrally project?!” Jacent sputtered.

She furrowed her brows. “What? Like it’s hard.” She cleared her throat. “Psych Out!” She stood with her arms to her sides, stationary, her pupils fully dilated even as she looked at nothing.

From Monica’s perspective, the world became pale. She looked at Lukas, who stood there in his smoky, incandescant splendor. She gazed over the many blips of color amidst the white that, while everpresent, didn’t burn her mind’s eye. She found her body, darkened and hollow, and with her bearings found, she navigated until she could find... Jacent? Or at least... that was Jacent’s shape. He was obscured darkly, some sort of roiling energy around him... or making him up. It was difficult to comprehend, and not what she expected to see.

“Thaaat’s weird...” She blinked and looked to the side. “... Oh! Hello.”

Jasmine’s eyes slowly widened. “Wait. C-...” She put a hand on her own chest. “Can you see me???”

Monica considered her for a few moments. “Are... you the first psychic?”

“I-... I-I-...” She stuttered, dumbfounded. 

“O-Oh!” the rabbit realized. “Hold on, I’ll be right back, he’s waiting for me, so I should activate his PSYCOdrive.”

Jasmine grabbed her arm, stopping her with a stern expression. “Uh. Sorry, not to be rude to the second person ever to see me like this, but only I go there.”

“... Oh...” Monica blinked, looking up at Jacent’s shrouded form. “Are you protecting him?”

She gazed sidelong. “Yeah. I am.”

The rabbit nodded, her ears bobbing. “Ohhh. Well! That’s okay! I’ll just do you first!”

“Wait, what??” Before she could think to react, Monica had shoved her hand into Jasmine’s head, grasping something solid inside of her. With a grunt, she twisted it in rotation, and a high-pitched whirring began. “What-... what did you do?! I-”

~THOOMPF~

Monica blinked, trying to clear her vision as she rose from the ground. She’d been knocked out of astral projection and forced back into her body. “Ahnh... I didn’t say ‘psych in’ yet...”

Jacent winced, shaking his head. “Unhhh... what happened...?”

It was at this moment that Talon came in with Quincey’s pack, Jessalynn and Simon in tow. “Hey J-Man, Doc Grayswift wants us on deck for a-” He stopped in his tracks, almost bowling the others over. “Oh my freagin’ god, she’s real!” He pointed to Jasmine. “Look! You can see that, right?! She’s the one! The one that gave me the bat! I’m not crazy!” he said with manic relief.

Jazz reeled. “Ho. Ly. Shit.”

 -
- -
 -

“Well this is really something,” Lorna managed, sitting on the center bench of the holographic display. Everyone was seated, including Jessalynn and her girlfriend, who were comfortably close. “I had a lot to talk about, but... I guess this really can’t wait.”

“I-... uh, apologize,” Jacent said awkwardly, not knowing at all how to handle this situation. “Everyone? This is Jasmine. She’s... well, she’s my big sister.”

Kenny blinked. “Uh-huh... and... how long has she been your ‘sister’...?”

“Oh, you gonna be the skeptic, huh, jerky boy?! Well guess what, cute stuff, I’m real!” Jazz whipped around in front of him, then behind him, and grabbed two big heaping handfuls of lemming butt, which made the boy jump with a startled squawk. He swiped at her reflexively, but his hand passed through her grinning face. It seemed as if she wasn’t really corporeal, but could merely manipulate telekinesis to touch things momentarily.

“How come you never told us about her, Jace?” Talon asked with some surprise.

“I-... W-Well, that is...” he stammered.

“Because he thought everyone would think he was crazy, of course.” She floated over to Talon, stepping up on the arm of the couch and offering him the customary handshake he’d shared with Jacent many a times. He hesitated momentarily, then did it with her, and smirked approvingly. “Yeah~! See, it’s a long, complicated story, but I was gonna die, and he rescued me, by letting me live in his head, kinda.” She shrugged. “The details aren’t important, but all you need to know is that Jie Xian’s the only one who’s been able to see me for six years.”

“Awww!” Quincey pouted, glassy-eyed. “That’s so sad!”

“Yeah, yeah, spare me the water works,” Jazz shifted uncomfortably, before gesturing outward with her arms. “I’m real now! I EXIST! OoP!” She was hugged from behind by Simon in a moment of solidity. “A-hawww, you big softies.” She rotated in his grip and returned the hug, lifting into the air a few inches; his feet wiggled as he left the ground, but he didn’t release the hug. She put him down and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Muah. Now quit being so cute. HONK!” She squeezed his squirrel butt and startled him, two-for-two on goosing knights, and waved to the blushing boy as she slowly floated away at a horizontal angle. Her antics made Monica giggle helplessly, squeals of inhalation barely hidden behind her hands.

Talon grinned. “Your sister’s hilarious, Jace.”

He laughed despite himself. “She’s... she’s a handful alright.”

 -
- -
 -

“Is everyone accounted for?”

Plaster didn’t look away from the task of rebuilding Winch- a job that could scarcely have been bigger, thanks to the mangled remains that had been left to her. “More or less.”

Mixer nodded, gazing at the refinery around them. “Good.”

Crunch folded his arms. “Are you satisfied, then?”

“Yes. Their show of strength is exactly what I needed to know.” Mixer’s stoic face didn’t change one bit. “We’re ready for Phase Three.” She stepped up to the edge, whereupon what looked like an endless rotary chamber of overnauts laid in a gigantic pit, newly minted, their giant strength dormant. “It’ll be such a bother, making people forget this town ever existed.”