Voyage Through the Multiverse (Ended) [IC]

[Jraden]

Secrets of the Raven
The Kents
"Did you hear that? It's a mystery! A mystery! This is so exciting!" Hope practically squealed, jumping in place. "You hear that gang? Imagine everything we're going to solve, the evil we're going to stop, the lives we'll save!"

"And now we're at a crossroads!" Simon said. "Hmm, the Smiths or the Fates...well as much as I love art, I love meeting people!" He turned towards Elizabeth. "Elizabeth, let's go after the Fates and solve this mystery, and then go after that painting. Or better yet, we'll split up and do both! Imagine the ground we can cover!"

Simon and Hope's enthusiastic chattering continued even as Elizabeth and the rest of the "gang" left the office, but before they could leave, the Mayor said "Can the Kents please stay? I would like to speak with them."

Much to the joy of anyone with patience and sensitivite hearing, the Kents were forced to stay behind, but they hardly seemed to mind.

"Ah, Mrs. Mayor!" Simon began. "What would you like to speak us with? Is it about the mystery? Personally I am very honored to be considered among the trusted circle to solve this-"

The Mayor handed him a card. "This is my number. Feel free to call anytime."

Simon missed her wink. Skyalr didn't.

"Excellent. I can notify you of any developments the moment something happens! I'll try not to overburden you however, I know that despite my over enthusiastic and friendly nature I can be a bit overwhelming, and I wouldn't wish to misuse this and be professional-"

"Oh please do that." The mayor smiled. Another wink. Another glare from Skylar. "I would love to be unprofessional with you."

"Ah, so this is your personal number!" Simon deduced.

"That is correct." The Mayor confirmed with a nod of her head.

"Hmm, well we won't stay in town long really, we're just here to solve these murders and have a good time!"

"And I would like to do both things with you." The Mayor smirked.

"Wonderful! I just knew you were a friendly face. Hmm, but I wouldn't want to bother you, I'm sure as a Mayor you have a busy schedule."

"I do. But I am more than willing to make room for you."

"You are? Wonderful! Excellent, I can't wait for our next social interaction! It will be platonic of course, I wouldn't want to give you the worng impression."

"Wait-"

"It will just be being a gentleman treating you as a lady. Platonically. Unless you consider that sexist-"

"Simon that's not-"

"We should really be going now." Skylar said, resting her arms on Simon's shoulders and giving the Mayor a sweet smile. "We need to catch up with Elizabeth and the gang, solve some murders, stop some, you know how it is."

"I do." The mayor's expression became much more serious. "That's why I want to question you. alone, if you don't mind."

"Not at all!" Simon said. "Don't worry love, I'm sure you'll have a wonderful conversation with her like I did! Besides, Hope is waiting for me outside."

"Simon wait-" Skylar tried to say.

"See you in a bit!" But Simon was already out the door.

"Why are you so protective of them?" The Mayor asked Skylar. The wraith scowled. "Because they're my family."

"Why are you so possessive of them?"

"I'm not possessive. I'm protective."

"You're both." The Mayor deadpanned. "You don't let them go anywhere without you following them, you don't even let poor Simon speak with another women without getting jealous. I'm sure his loyalty is one of his most admirable traits, as well as his monogamy, but how far does it extend? Beyond the grave? To necrophilia?"

"This conversation is pointless." Skylar spat, as she began to walk to the door. The Mayor suddenly stood up quickly, and Skylar could swore for a few seconds that she saw shadowy wings on her back, and deep, ember, crimson eyes flashing. Then they Mayor was suddenly next to her, grabbing her arm. Her wraith arm. It took Skylar a few seconds to escape her grip. Whatever they Mayor was, she clearly wasn't just human.

"What are you?" She asked. "You can see me, and I saw...something. You have a clever disguise, I can see it in your aura...but that's it. A disguise. You're not human."

"You want to know what I am?" She asked. "In the Mayor of this town. All I want to do is protect it, to stop murders. Especially, horrific, violent murders that can't have been caused by humans. Bodies ripped apart into pieces, genitals mutilated. A man in a hotel, a gang found dead on the roadside. Whether or not they were innocent, I know something Supernatural killed them."

"Takes one to know one, I'm sure." Skyalr smirked.

"I know there has been a wraith killing people in my town."

Skylar smiled sweetly, innocently. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about." She began to walk away again.

"You can protect your family all you want from the physical world." The Mayor began. "But you can't protect them from moving on. From leaving you behind."

Skyalr ignored her. Her words were meaningless. Because they were wrong.

We'll see about that.

As she rejoined her family and the gang, she saw Simon and Hope's eyes light up upon her arrival. Elizabeth, who could see the supernatural and auras, would notice the spectral equivalent of Skylar's heart fluttering. Of pure, unconditional, protective love.

They were going to solve this mystery and move on. They didn't need the Mayor. Simon didn't need her. If he wanted a good time, well, he already had his wife. And Hope. But mostly Skylar.

I stayed with him from beyond the grave. He won't leave me. If I can't move on, neither can he.

[The Dark Brotherhood of Deros]

Moira - RotMM

So it just so happened that these two were Rocket members, and now they were attacking. What's more, they foolishly announced that they were in fact stalling the group, so now Moira knew that they needed to finish this up quickly. I know the Kinsect could gather essences from those other pokemon from before, so let's see if it'll still be able to do so. The huntress thought as she drew her glaive. The Windchopper kinsect flew off of her arm with a wave of Leumundslist, and it promptly returned with red essence after striking the Alakazam in the forehead. Five quick commands and a strike to the chest and the legs later, and Moira was pulsing with an orangish-white light while Leumundslist left a red trail behind it.

Then she sprang into action, and vaulted herself behind the spoon-wielding pokemon. From there, she struck out with a series of upward slashes, and then continued to push the assault with two diagonal slashes.

Percy - RotMM

Needless to say, Percy was very surprised by Pi's voice in his head, but he remained quiet as to not risk their stealth. Percy's sharp felyne eyes didn't have too much of an issue seeing in the darkened room, and after they went through the grate he looked around the surrounding room curiously. "Well, there's a lot of stuff here, but I'm not seeing anything we could really use, nya." He said, examining the crates. At this point, Link had reappeared from the darkness wearing a Team Rocket uniform, and Percy looked him over carefully. "Hmm... pawssibly... But maybe not... No offense, but you're a bit short, and it's not like I could wear one of those to disguise myself, nya." The felyne remarked, gesturing to his cat-like face.

Kirby - DttM

Boy, their sure was a bunch of talking going on... A looooot of talking... Kirby wasn't paying attention to the discussion in the room, and was instead starting to nod off. It had been a pretty long day, and he was starting to feel it. Suddenly things started to get interesting again! Apparently, the nice ship lady in the purple dress was in trouble with one of her... friends? comrades? whatever; the point was she was in trouble!

And so a plan was devised just in case things got dangerous, and Kirby found himself with Miyu near the turret of a ship. It was times like this that he wished he could speak, because he could've offered to use the Warp Star instead of the turret, but it was fine; besides, Miyu went to the trouble of making a booster seat and everything! Who was he to go against the plan? Kirby hopped into the seat, and then took control of the turret. It swiveled pretty quickly, and it also had a pretty good field of view.

A few moments later, the battle was met and Kirby waited for something to shoot. He saw a series of torpedoes approaching, and decided that those needed to go, so he began to open fire on them. By open fire, I mean he held down the trigger, and aimed in the general direction to the torpedoes, not certain he would hit them, or if he was even in range to hit them.

[Menschenfleisch]

Secrets of the Raven | Jacquelyn and Kyle

Wasn't the easiest thing sitting there while the "leader" of the group went on and on about sightings and investigations. As far as Kyle was concerned, he didn't have a reason to stick around besides the faint hope that maybe Elizabeth could help Jack with her problems. If he were to actually start taking this seriously (which he'd decided upon doing to get this trainwreck over with), he would've chosen to go to Abigail's apartment. After all, his area of expertise was in urban warfare and infogathering methods. If a fight broke out Jacquelyn could cover their bases and with the mayor's approval they wouldn't have to worry about the Ushers. But, he needed to talk to Eliza alone. He raised his hand and-

"Hell yeah! Let's go to the club!"
"Actually, Jack, I was thinking we should split up. We'd cover more ground and our operating environments are pretty much as different as they get."
"Uh huh, I already got that. Your eyes feeling better, little boy?"
"Better than your ribs, flameo. Anyways, was thinking I'd go with Lizzy to wherever she was thinking of. Planning on learning a little more about you, eh?"
"Fuck, look at casa-nova here. Yeah, sure. I'll head to the Fates' hideout. I'm sure they'll remember me, after I half killed one of their operatives. We need the intimidation factor. And yeah, I'll be sure to keep the arson at a minimum, k?"

The two of them walked out of the mayor's office feeling just a little bit excited for the upcoming adventure. Kyle, because he might finally regain a tiny hope of normality. Jacquelyn, because the story was finally getting spicy. What possibilities lay beyond the thin layer of ignorance they'd been painted with? Now that she knew this was all a story she realised that it was designed to be picked apart. Like a video game set out for her, a perfect Virtual Reality. If it was a narrative then she was going to game the shit out of it, starting by choosing the obviously badass, intimidating option. It was time to get crooked.

"I don't know about you, but I am ready to figure the shit out of this mystery."
"Well, if you knew me better, you'd know I'm psyched to get this show on the road too."
"There's the spirit! Now I just gotta find the happy little family hoping to head to the club."

Jack approached the Kents, standing to the side after emerging from the mayor's office. The three of them, the mother, the father and the girl; they seemed pretty stereotypical. Kind of unnerving, really. There was something about them that creeped her out. Bah, that was to be expected. No story was perfect. She snapped her finger at them, creating a momentary flash of light. She smirked at them, clearly a bit (far) too big for her metaphorical boots.

"Hey. So I heard you two were thinking of heading to Club Midnight. As it happens, I was planning on going there. Wanna come with?"

Kyle, meanwhile, came up to Elizabeth, standing with his hands in his pockets. He had far less to say.

"You, me, wherever you want to go. I need to talk to you about Jack."

[The Intergalactic Russian Empire]

DTTM

Eleutherius stepped onto Kongou's bridge, ducking down uncomfortably as the ceiling was just a bit too low for him. He sat down in the chair provided for him and pulled off his helmet, looking down into its red lenses thoughtfully. He reflected back on the battle that led him to this location, and longed to return to his brothers in the Chapter. Soon the ship was in the new universe and landed in port, and he disembarked to be met with more.... animal things. He hid his disgust behind a face of cold stoicism, and followed the rest of the group silently to the command center. The marine listened in as the others spoke and discussed their plans for the future. Soon he was being told to fly an assault bomber and was guided there by Fay and Miyu. Some random aide handed him a clipboard and told him to sign on it. "What is insurance? What type of liability are we talking about?" He said, inspecting the paper and clipboard. He was more used to a data-slate with the stylus, but the basic idea seemed the same. He reluctantly signed his name on the paper in surprisingly small and precise handwriting and gave it back to the aide before boarding the small bomber.

The interior of the ship was small and cramped, not made for one of his stature, and the seat in the cockpit only barely fit him. He looked at all the controls thoroughly, slightly apprehensive to use such xenotech. Eleutherius decided it would be safer to at least use the autopilot to reach their destination, and so pressed the autopilot button and took off with the others. Soon, they were engaging an unidentified foe who had claimed to be Kongou's friend. For many of the normal humans, the enemy would be beyond visual range, but Eleutherius' enhanced eyesight and helmet sensors allowed him to make out the shape of the ship from this distance. There was a loud warning siren in the cockpit: incoming torpedoes, locked onto the bomber. "Hold on! Evasive maneuvers!" He retook manual control of the ship and jerked the controls to one side, sending them into a sharp turn. He then pulled them into the opposite direction as Eldrad cast his spell to shield the ship. He dodged and weaved the ship through the hail of torpedoes as he flew closer to U-3008. After that, the Marine fired a few of his own torpedoes at the foe.

LLR

Jean approached the newcomers and Aelia, putting his sword away and scanning over them. The group seemed like a very strange bunch, having little that seemingly tied them together as a single group, which implied they were all strangers who coincidentally converged on the same location. "So, where do all of you come from? Don't seem to be locals at all, judging by your attire." He then took his helmet off, placing it under his left arm. "I am Sir Jean Delacroix, knight of the Kingdom of Trapoletanius. Who do I have the opportunity of meeting today?"

[Prusselanden]

Shape of the Nightmare to Come
"A rescuer....?" Azrael looked as the Shadowlord seemed to be weakened by the Captain's attack and had a look of relief. There was a chance of them defeating it. She looked at the figure.

"Thank you!"

Azrael then charged again at the weakening Shadowlord and swung her scythe into him again and again, hoping to aid the captain in the battle.

[Petrokovia]

Rise of the Masked Man

Rocket Hideout

Pi looked over Link skeptically.
"The uniform is a bit big on you..."

Pi thought for a moment.
I wonder if I could use telekinesis to make it look right...

Pi's eyes glowed, and soon Link floated slightly, and the uniform seemed to be held in place in the air. Pi moved one of the pant legs, then the other, making the pants mimic a walking motion. Despite the relative fluidity and convincing nature of the telepathically-filled clothes, it was clear that this took quite a lot of concentration on Pi's part.

"We might be able to mimic a grunt. If Link sits on me, and Percy were to hide in one of the pant legs... No, it still wouldn't look right..."

Pi floated silently over to the door, and cracked it open slightly, peering outside.
"It doesn't look like anyone is within eyesight, so we might be able to just sneak around... I could try to block out the cameras by disconnecting them telekinetically."

Pi used detect, finding a camera at the other end of the hall, then used psychic to disconnect one of the wires inside, cutting the video feed. Entering the hall, the trio would notice that the base was well lit, and very clean. Several labelled doors lined the hallway. Most of them were unimportant, things like storage or computer servers, but one of them was left unlabeled. When Pi opened the door, all the group would see would be a small, empty closet, with a strange looking tile on the floor, marked with a dark blue circle.

"A warp pad?" Pi asked. "This probably leads somewhere important."

Pi floated above it, and was soon teleported to another room; When the group stepped out into the room, they would see a brightly lit laboratory. On the other side of the room were several scientists, looking over data on computers. It would be difficult to tell from the distance across the room, but on one of the screens, one could make out the vague shape of a blue bird with long tail feathers.

The scientists-five of them-turned around, and rushed to grab Pokeballs from their belts. They sent out almost half a dozen magnemite, with one of them releasing a magneton.

"An intruder!" One of the scientists shouted. "Magneton, use thunder wave!"

The magneton released a pulsating wave of electricity, which would have the chance of paralyzing any of the heroes it hit.

---

Courtroom
Muffet smiled, amused at how... overly dramatic Avarice was.
She's weird.

"Well, I like to cook, mostly. Baking." Muffet said, enthusiastically. "I'm not sure which parts of me are tastiest, aho. But I wouldn't let someone I've just met eat me, either." Muffet winked.

Soon, the jurors entered the room again. Muffet spun around in her chair and nudged Madi awake, before looking back to the jury.

The foreman announced the verdict, rather officially.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Ms. Famei, not guilty on all charges."

The judge looked to Avarice and the group, and nodded.
"Then this court is adjourned."

She banged the gabble, in a manner that seemed to imply an impatient "next!"

Muffet was the first to go outside, and saw a bus turning the corner. She flagged it down, getting it to stop right in front of the courthouse. A young lady sat behind the wheel of the old bus.
"Hello, um... ma'am..."

Muffet took a step inside the bus, but didn't enter completely.
"Some of my... acquaintances and I just got finished with out business here, and are trying to find the rest of our group." Muffet said; she had almost called the strangers her "friends."

"Oh." the driver responded, unsure of how to help. "Do you know if they took this route?"

Muffet thought for a moment, unsure.
"I think he said something about taking the bus... Did you see a guy, about this tall-"
Muffet reached one of her arms up as high as she could, barely making the six-foot height.
"-wearing a red hoodie and a backwards hat? Yellow shorts? He was travelling with a giant badger that shot flames out of his-"

The bus driver cracked a smile, laughing.
"You're looking for Gold? Yeah, he took this bus to his hometown a few days ago. Was traveling with a bunch of weird guests. Anyway, if you stay on, I'll take you there. New Bark Town. You'll have better luck if you go to Elm's lab and ask where Gold is."

Muffet nodded and thanked the bus driver, finding a seat near the front and waiting for the others to board.

The spider girl leaned closer to the seat, detecting a strange, but familiar smell. The seats had been cleaned recently, but even despite that, Muffet could still smell a faint trace of wet badger.

---

Blackthorn City
Music
Bert and Ernie watched as a man with wild hair summoned some kind of dragon. It shot some kind of fireball towards golduck, who swiftly dodged it.

Instinctively, Ernie called out to his golduck, still looking at the dragon.
"Ducky, use-"

Bert's head whipped around, and he protested.
"No, focus on the typhlosion. I'll take care of the others."

Ernie nodded, and turned his attention to Gold and Ty.
"Ducky, use toxic!"

The golduck's eyes flashed purple briefly, and Ty instantly felt sick to his stomach. His entire body felt fatigued, and his vision blurred slightly.

Shit... Ty thought to himself. Pull it together...

We need to end this quick... Gold thought to himself.
"Close the gap, and use thunderpunch!" he called out.

With a loud crack, Ty lept forward, leaving behind a small crater where he once stood. The ground where the golduck stood was cracked apart for several feet; Ty and his opponent stood, clinched together. Golduck had caught Ty's thunderpunch in its hand and wrapped its other arm around the badger's neck. While this meant the golduck took the full force of the punch, it also had Ty in a headlock.

Ty's mind went blank for a moment, shocked at how well trained the golduck was-at this point, it was rare for Gold and Ty to meet anyone from Team Rocket who could come close to matching them one-on-one.

The brief pause was all that the golduck needed to wrestle Ty to the ground using Strength. Ty felt himself slam back-first into the dirt, letting out a grunt; it was getting difficult to breathe, with the golduck's arm around Ty's neck, but this seemed to do little more than piss Ty off.

Ty twisted his body around, seemingly almost 180 degrees, and dug his feet into the dirt. With some effort and a guttural shout, Ty picked himself back upright, swinging golduck backwards over his head and suplexing him.

However, before the golduck hit the ground, it let go of Ty, doing a handspring to get back to its feet.

Gold and Ty looked at Ducky incredulously. Ernie smiled somewhat slyly, spreading his arms out a bit.
"You didn't take me seriously? Why do you think Bert and I are the only ones out here?"

"Wait, so, it's just you two, and that's it?" Ty asked, a smirk coming back to him.

Ernie recoiled, realizing his mistake.
"I shouldn't have said that..."

The Alakazam was taken by surprise by Moira, and was barely able to deflect her slashes by using his spoons; Surprisingly, the spoons stayed in tact, glowing with psychic energy.

However, the psychic Pokemon had still been put on the defensive.
That sword of hers is gonna be trouble. We should get rid of it. Bert thought.

"Use Knock-Off!" Bert commanded, and the alakazam struck, aiming a disarming punch towards Moira's sword arm.

Bert looked up towards the dragon that had been summoned.
"Alakazam, use psychic to throw that creature into the woman!"

The spoon-wielder nodded, flinging the dragon towards the ground, where Moira was standing.

---

Drawn Through the Multiverse

Maya
Maya stood on top of her second main turret, gleefully launching missiles at U-3008. She-

Wait. There was another strange graviton reading, like the rifts they had traveled through.

Maya's expression dampened, and she turned around to look through the window of her bridge, only to see a strange, blood covered man smoking in her room!

"Ack! There's someone in my ship! KongouhelpI'mbeingboardedwhatdoIdoKon-" Maya blurted out, in surprise.

{Just go into your bridge and see who he is.} Kongou assured, over the JTN. {He probably has no idea what is going on.}

Maya, nodded, calming down.
"Okay..."

Her mental model melted into the turret she was standing on, the nanomaterials redistributing, and soon any trace of Maya's mental model had disappeared.

In her bridge, the opposite happened; A small patch of the floor turned into a silver-colored sand, a large blob of which morphed upwards, eventually taking the shape of a young woman. In a matter of seconds, Maya's mental model formed right before Nelson's eyes, in her usual Little Red Riding Hood-esque attire.

Maya looked at the man curiously, approaching him.
"Who are you?" she asked. "You came here from a rift, right?"

---

CRT Earth Orbital Battle
Music
As Kirby shot at the missiles, some of them were struck, detonating. Instead of any kind of normal explosion, they produced a perfectly spherical corrosive field a dozen meters across.

Several of the missiles made it through, and upon Eleutherius's evasive maneuvers, arced around to make another pass. One of the missiles struck the ship, detonating against the ships's shields and the extra protection provided by Eldrad, producing enough energy to level a large town.

As the bomber approached, U-3008 opened fire with smaller-caliber anti-aircraft pulsar guns, sending powerful energy beams into the ship's shields.

The D-scythe and Fire Dragon attacks, along with the bomber's torpedoes stuck the ship, triggering several translucent hexagonal prisms to appear where they detonated. The shields, U-3008's Klein field, absorbed the entirety of the blow, but the submarine began turning away, as if in retreat.

Kongou steamed forward, pulling ahead and closing the gap between herself and U-3008. She gave chase for some time, following the submarine further away from orbit, firing her main photon cannons all the while.

As Miyu flew to intercept the smaller submarine, there seemed to be some strange space debris floating near it. As she squinted, it became apparent what they were; staring her down were a dozen seehund submarines, with lasers in place of their externally-stored torpedoes.

Miyu pulled up, just as the group activated, firing several lasers in her direction.
"Guys, there's more of these smaller submarines! I think this was a trap!"

But the discovery came too late. U-3008 spun around in place, keeping its momentum. It was now flying backwards, facing Kongou, and took the opportunity to launch several corrosive torpedoes.

At the same time, several lasers struck Kongou's Klein field from various angles. Kongou began opening fire with all guns, sending bright beams of purple light in all directions, but couldn't score any hits.

Tadayoshi turned to look at Kongou, who seemed very displeased.

"They're beyond visual range, and I can't detect them with my radar." Kongou stated. "They were using lasers, so I tried to fire along the same axis, but it seems that they've moved."

"They might be outside the range of radar." Tadayoshi suggested. "It could be that they've put themselves past where you'd get useful resolution."

"How far would that be?" Kongou asked, genuinely curious.

"I have no idea. I don't know how far radar goes in space." Tadayoshi admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "Probably further than in atmosphere... But if they're outside of our radar's range, that means we're probably outside of theirs, too."

Tadayoshi looked at U-3008 through the window of the bridge.
"You said that submarine was for intelligence gathering, right?"

Kongou turned to the man, nodding.

"Would it be possible for it to relay information about our location through the JTN?" Tadayoshi asked, eliciting another nod from Kongou.

"Yes. That would mean we need to take out U-3008 as soon as possible."

Kongou stood up, and several glowing, translucent circles surrounded her mental model. These circles spun slowly around her, and showed various pieces of information about the battlefield and the enemy ships. However, Kongou didn't seem to pay much attention to the circles of information, confusing Tadayoshi on why they appeared in the first place.

Kongou's ship sped up, overtaking U-3008 and ramming into it. U-3008 began spinning in the opposite direction, and Kongou took the opportunity to fire her weapons at it again, firing a full broadside of her 14, 6, and 5 inch guns, as well as launching several missiles. Most of the shots were intercepted by the Klein field. However, it seemed that just as many lasers from far beyond visual range met Kongou's Klein field, starting to saturate it.

Fay passed by the submarine, coming close to its bridge, but not finding enough of an opening in its CIWS fire to make a proper approach.
"We might be able to knock out its sensory equipment. This would leave the rest of the fleet it's contacting blind to our movements, and could buy us some time." she suggested. "It's probably around the bridge or the nose of the sub. But getting close enough to get under the shields will be an issue, due to how many point defense weapons it has..."

Meanwhile, Maya turned her ship around, speeding towards where Miyu was flying. On her bridge, she turned to the man that had just arrived.
"I'm going to help my friend Miyu fight the seehunds... I'm not sure how you can help, sorry."

As Maya approached the seehunds, dozens of missile tubes all over her ship opened up, releasing over 50 corrosive missiles at the seehunds, striking several and destroying 4 of them.
"Yes!" Maya cheered out, happily, upon knocking out a handful of the subs.

Maya thought for a bit, before turning to Nelson.
"Oh, do you know much about space? That could help! It's my first time really going into space."

---

Greßland
Wilfre wandered around the Greßisch capital for some time, until finding a sleeping guard, and pick-pocketing his map. Looking it over, he was able to find the location of the capital of Eprelia.

"Okay. So we'll teleport to their city, wait until night, then go into their castle. We can try to scope things out a bit during the day." Wilfre stated. "You look the part of a jester. Maybe we can get into the castle by saying we're a traveling entertainment duo... Well, if we can get an audience with the king, we might be able to take him by force."

Wilfre generated a portal to Eprelia, and stepped through it. On the other side, it seemed as if the environment made an complete 180 degree turn; it was sunny, with few clouds in the sky. The surrounding fields were lush and green, with slightly rolling hills. In the distance past some farm land, the city skyline could be seen; a massive border wall around a surprisingly large city. The king's palace sat upon a large hill in the center. There were several different towers, halls, and other structures in the castle, creating a complex and grandiose fortress in the middle of the city, dominating the horizon.

Wilfre turned to face Advrick.
"Hey, do you think you can do that suggestion trick again? It would probably make getting inside the castle and getting an audience with this king easier."

---

Pacific Ocean, Earth (Arpeggio of Blue Steel)
Yamato stared out towards to horizon, taking in the calming sounds of the ocean. She reviewed the information sent by Kongou over the JTN; multiversal jump drives capable of transporting entire ships across universes, interactions with anthropomorphic animals, a giant man in power armor, a space wizard, and a tiny pink ball that Maya liked, and musing about the man from 'im-pee-doh' were all sent.

Yamato wasn't entirely sure what to make of it all yet, but she did have a great interest in the multiversal jump drive. Such a device would be a great asset to the Fog. She also wasn't sure about Kongou's interactions with those she had met-Something seemed missing, as if Kongou was leaving out information.

Suddenly, there was another object in low Earth orbit. Another SSTO?

No.

Whatever this was, it was much more massive than an SSTO. Yamato tracked its movements, and concluded that it was some kind of spacecraft attempting an entry into Earth's atmosphere. However, due to the sheer size and power of the ship, it was clearly not of human origin.

The Cornerians stated their intent to explore new worlds and find allies... Could this be them, already? Were they able to track the Fog through the JTN?

Yamato sent a message through the JTN to all Fog ships, informing them to allow the Cornerian ship to enter atmosphere. As luck would have it, the ship made its way close to the Kuril Islands, preferring to hover just off the coast of one of the islands, rather than land on solid ground.

Interesting... the superbattleship thought to herself. I'm going to have to keep close tabs on them. I wonder if it would be possible to get access to their technology by studying their ship while it's here.

Yamato's thoughts were interrupted by Chokai over the JTN.
{Hello, Yamato!} Chokai started. {Hiei is ready. Her ship is rebuilt, and her core has resumed normal activity.}

Yamato was genuinely surprised.
{Already? Well, that's wonderful! In fact, this is good timing, as I have a mission for her. *smile smile*}
{Oh, it this regarding that giant space ship that's outside Hokkaido?} Chokai inquired.
{Yes, it is. Though, most of the details are private, so I'll just contact her directly. *smile smile*}

With that, Yamato opened a private communications link with Hiei's Union core.

---

Yamato-Hiei Private JTN Link
Yamato chose to generate a wide open, grassy field for an environment, dotted with colorful flowers. There was even a slight breeze, blowing a faint scent of roses through the air.

Yamato approached Hiei, with her usual calm smile.
"I see you're awake. How do you feel?"

---

Secrets of the Raven

Talog Park
Agent A listened to the man, taking in his words. He also watched the birds' strange disappearing act, rightfully suspicious of the obvious hidden cameras.

There are others in this world who appeared from separate universes? A thought, surprised. I wonder if it would be possible to use rifts like these to purposely travel to other universes. The way this man speaks about this plan, that seems to be the case already...

When the man stood, and asked if they had a deal, Agent A also stood. He took the man's hand and shook it, nodding.
"Yes, we have a deal. I suppose you will contact me in some way, when it is time for my first assignment?"

---

Town Hall
Yet another portal opened up, and out of it came a remarkably average-looking Asian man and a black sedan.

Teru laid on his back for about a minute, dizzy and disoriented.

What just happened...? he thought to himself. Was this all just a dream?

He sat up slowly, looking around. He had appeared in the middle of some small town, and his car was neatly parked in a spot on the side of the road. Somehow.

It was as if God himself had guided his car through the portal, and into a parallel parking spot.

Teru stood up, a confused look on his face, as he stared at his car, then at the town hall. This just kept getting more absurd as time went on.

"Might as well go inside. Maybe I can find a map of... 'Branhwrn'..."

The man was about to walk inside, when he noticed that the parking meter said "expired," on a small red rectangle. Teru sighed, and opened his car door, looking around the front passenger's seat.

Come on, I know Tadayoshi still keeps American money on him, maybe some fell out?

After about a minute of searching, Teru found two quarters, and placed them into the meter.

But nothing happened.

Teru looked the machine over, noticing the British Pound symbol in place of the dollar sign. The man sighed, defeated.
"I'm sure no one will notice."

Teru walked into the town hall, only to see a rather sizable group of people already inside. He approached the group, waving.
"Oh, hello. Do any of you know where I could get a map?" he asked, politely.

[Menschenfleisch]

Rise of the Masked Man | Avarice

Wright seemed to be even more stressed, now that the trial was over. To Audrey, there was no clear answer. After all, why would someone ever stress themselves over something they couldn't control; and more importantly, didn't matter to them? She wasn't naive enough to believe that there wasn't a reason but all the same, she simply could not empathise. At all. Muffet though, was a little more palatable. Metaphorically. Chitin was much harder to chew, and she looked like she could put up a better fight than the lanky, rather awkward lawyer sitting next to her.

"I don't think Madi put us in jeopardy! She only tried to. There's a difference between trying and succeeding. Oh, baking, right? Is that the metal baking, or the pastry baking, or the recreational baking? I'd love to get baked with you some day, whatever that means."

Jury, judge, not guilty. Boom, free to go. Audrey didn't react to the verdict. She only stood up, shook Wright's hand and walked out of the room with Muffet and the newly awakened Madison. What had the girl been doing earlier, falling unconscious in the middle of a trial? Was that something that all organisms did or was it specific to humans? Was that... was that the famed activity known as "sleep"? She made a mental note of the fascinating discovery. She'd never seen someone sleep before; though that was mostly due to the fact that people tended to have a very hard time falling asleep around Avarice. She approached the bus along with the rest of the group and stepped on behind Muffet. She turned to the driver, cracking a genuinely friendly smile before taking a seat. She spoke to herself, muttering under her breath.

"Well, that was fun. I wonder what's next."

The bus took off, a dull hiss indicating that the vehicle had begun moving. The myriad of sights out there, the dazzlingly not-on-fire buildings, the not-bleeding and/or heavily armed people, the whole experience was amazing. And, the first experience with civilisation that Audrey ever had. She could feel herself solidifying, her organs twisting into functional shapes. A single, momentous thump came from within her chest as her heart began to beat.

What an educational experience! But when that was all said and done, what else was there to do? Oh well. Might as well learn to fit in a little better. Avarice closed her eyes and tried to learn how to fall asleep.

[Naval Monte]

Secrets of the Raven

Town Hall

"So we'revall goi g yo leave the cops alone to deal with that?" The occult detective said to the group as she watched the man flee from the cops, the witch awaited to see if anyone was going to step up before she did or if they believe the cops should deal with the matter alone.

Elizabeth can feel Skylar returning back as she felt the temperature of her body slightly drop, her hair slightly rising on it's own, and feeling a slight electrical jolt on her skin due to her presence, a usual reaction she has when a wraith appears, one she knew would fade away quickly. The witch watch as the fleeing man ran out the dor with Angel on pursuit after the theft. "Well, looks like our theft is screwed. If I couldn't get away from the human terminator cop than his chances of escape is even poorer." Elizabeth said to the group as she saw Skykar and saw her aura.

"I guess that is going to be the closest thing to a heart beat for wraiths." she thought as she saw the aura, her pseudo empathic link making her feel the love Skylar has towards her family, the emotions that act as the crux for her anchor to the world of the living. Yet the more Elizabeth felt it the more a sinking feeling began to emerge in the pit of her stomach. Somehow something else was within the love, another emotion tied with it but she couldn't pick up what it was.

However she couldn't stay focus on trying to unravel the mystery behind the mystery feeling as Kyle and Jackie spoke to her and brought the occultist out of her mind. When they announced that they will join her on heading towards Club Midnight the witch gave the two a deadpan expression.

"The Scrouger's eye mouth acted as an arcane camera. It saw your girlfriend using her powers, so if they saw you two approaching the building they may get their guards to make sure we don't enter the building." The witch begin to rub her chin as another thought came to her. "But we could use the threat of arson to our advantage. After all losing an establishment like Club Midnight would be a blow to their finances. Well for the Fate branch in this town, the whole organization won't care if the club was burned down."

The witch was still thinking of the pros and cons of taking the two parahumans with her when Teru approached the group. Looking over the man he was unremarkable physically even if Asians were a minority in Wales, the clothing he wore only served to help as he looked like an office worker. Yet behind the generic mundanity of the man Elizabeth saw something she rarely ever saw in her macabre and colorful life, the absence of an aura around Teru.

The man had no trace of an aura coming from his being, not even a transparent and nearly faded on that accompanied those close to death or wraiths, just a void surround him in a world saturated in a flow of a fiery, liquid, energy whose colors shifted as wildly as the forms the energy itself took and the many minor arcane phenomenons that it created, all invisible save to the select individuals and beings who possessed the special sight to perceive them.

The odd sight was enough to make Elizabeth ignore the small trilobite-like organism flying around him, flying around and feasting on whatever food was around in their home dimension. "I hope those things aren't planning on possessing him." the occultist thought ss Teru introduce himself and asked for a map. Elizabeth brushed her hair and give the man a grin. "Here you go mate." She gave him the map to look over. "So what brings you to this town Mr..." she said, leaving her question hanging so Teru can answer it. Her eyes were on Teru but occasionally they shift to the trilobites to make sure they didn't fly to him. Elizabeth sensed another rift opening and suspect that this soulless man was linked to it

---

Talog Park

The man smiled at A. "You're current Agent A. For now work with the cult to the best of your ability sense we need them to succeed with what they are planning for our plans to begin." The man looked over to the nature trail, the same one that Ranger was going to.

"I should warn you that one of the members of Ashwood's group has a tendency of going off on their own. Keep an eye out for a man in yellow and brown armor. If you fight him I foresee it being a struggle for you. However he shouldn't be your sole concern either for there are many others whose abilities either are equal to it greatly surpasses yours with her. The witch heavily guarded at the moment should you plan on killing her now." The man warned.

"As for using the rifts for travel?" He said, seemingly as though he read Agent A's mind. "That is very possible and my employer, and no doubt other powers in this world, have developed methods similar to the rifts to explore worlds close to ours. These rifts merely have broaden our reach when it comes to new worlds to explore." The man took off his head and bow to A.

"This is where we must part our ways Mr. Pershing, but rest assured that we will meet again." The man said just before he turn around and began to leave Agent A. After a few minutes a woman wearing casual clothing and carrying what appeared to be grocery bags walked up to Agent A. "You're Mr. Pershing? My mistress said you have something for her." The woman said.

[Slenderman The CreepyPasta King]

Rise of the Masked Man

Rocket Hideout

Pi looked over Link skeptically.
"The uniform is a bit big on you..."

Pi thought for a moment.
I wonder if I could use telekinesis to make it look right...

Pi's eyes glowed, and soon Link floated slightly, and the uniform seemed to be held in place in the air. Pi moved one of the pant legs, then the other, making the pants mimic a walking motion. Despite the relative fluidity and convincing nature of the telepathically-filled clothes, it was clear that this took quite a lot of concentration on Pi's part.

"We might be able to mimic a grunt. If Link sits on me, and Percy were to hide in one of the pant legs... No, it still wouldn't look right..."

Pi floated silently over to the door, and cracked it open slightly, peering outside.
"It doesn't look like anyone is within eyesight, so we might be able to just sneak around... I could try to block out the cameras by disconnecting them telekinetically."

Pi used detect, finding a camera at the other end of the hall, then used psychic to disconnect one of the wires inside, cutting the video feed. Entering the hall, the trio would notice that the base was well lit, and very clean. Several labelled doors lined the hallway. Most of them were unimportant, things like storage or computer servers, but one of them was left unlabeled. When Pi opened the door, all the group would see would be a small, empty closet, with a strange looking tile on the floor, marked with a dark blue circle.

"A warp pad?" Pi asked. "This probably leads somewhere important."

Pi floated above it, and was soon teleported to another room; When the group stepped out into the room, they would see a brightly lit laboratory. On the other side of the room were several scientists, looking over data on computers. It would be difficult to tell from the distance across the room, but on one of the screens, one could make out the vague shape of a blue bird with long tail feathers.

The scientists-five of them-turned around, and rushed to grab Pokeballs from their belts. They sent out almost half a dozen magnemite, with one of them releasing a magneton.

"An intruder!" One of the scientists shouted. "Magneton, use thunder wave!"

The magneton released a pulsating wave of electricity, which would have the chance of paralyzing any of the heroes it hit.

---

Courtroom
Muffet smiled, amused at how... overly dramatic Avarice was.
She's weird.

"Well, I like to cook, mostly. Baking." Muffet said, enthusiastically. "I'm not sure which parts of me are tastiest, aho. But I wouldn't let someone I've just met eat me, either." Muffet winked.

Soon, the jurors entered the room again. Muffet spun around in her chair and nudged Madi awake, before looking back to the jury.

The foreman announced the verdict, rather officially.
"We, the jury, find the defendant, Ms. Famei, not guilty on all charges."

The judge looked to Avarice and the group, and nodded.
"Then this court is adjourned."

She banged the gabble, in a manner that seemed to imply an impatient "next!"

Muffet was the first to go outside, and saw a bus turning the corner. She flagged it down, getting it to stop right in front of the courthouse. A young lady sat behind the wheel of the old bus.
"Hello, um... ma'am..."

Muffet took a step inside the bus, but didn't enter completely.
"Some of my... acquaintances and I just got finished with out business here, and are trying to find the rest of our group." Muffet said; she had almost called the strangers her "friends."

"Oh." the driver responded, unsure of how to help. "Do you know if they took this route?"

Muffet thought for a moment, unsure.
"I think he said something about taking the bus... Did you see a guy, about this tall-"
Muffet reached one of her arms up as high as she could, barely making the six-foot height.
"-wearing a red hoodie and a backwards hat? Yellow shorts? He was travelling with a giant badger that shot flames out of his-"

The bus driver cracked a smile, laughing.
"You're looking for Gold? Yeah, he took this bus to his hometown a few days ago. Was traveling with a bunch of weird guests. Anyway, if you stay on, I'll take you there. New Bark Town. You'll have better luck if you go to Elm's lab and ask where Gold is."

Muffet nodded and thanked the bus driver, finding a seat near the front and waiting for the others to board.

The spider girl leaned closer to the seat, detecting a strange, but familiar smell. The seats had been cleaned recently, but even despite that, Muffet could still smell a faint trace of wet badger.

---

Blackthorn City
Music
Bert and Ernie watched as a man with wild hair summoned some kind of dragon. It shot some kind of fireball towards golduck, who swiftly dodged it.

Instinctively, Ernie called out to his golduck, still looking at the dragon.
"Ducky, use-"

Bert's head whipped around, and he protested.
"No, focus on the typhlosion. I'll take care of the others."

Ernie nodded, and turned his attention to Gold and Ty.
"Ducky, use toxic!"

The golduck's eyes flashed purple briefly, and Ty instantly felt sick to his stomach. His entire body felt fatigued, and his vision blurred slightly.

Shit... Ty thought to himself. Pull it together...

We need to end this quick... Gold thought to himself.
"Close the gap, and use thunderpunch!" he called out.

With a loud crack, Ty lept forward, leaving behind a small crater where he once stood. The ground where the golduck stood was cracked apart for several feet; Ty and his opponent stood, clinched together. Golduck had caught Ty's thunderpunch in its hand and wrapped its other arm around the badger's neck. While this meant the golduck took the full force of the punch, it also had Ty in a headlock.

Ty's mind went blank for a moment, shocked at how well trained the golduck was-at this point, it was rare for Gold and Ty to meet anyone from Team Rocket who could come close to matching them one-on-one.

The brief pause was all that the golduck needed to wrestle Ty to the ground using Strength. Ty felt himself slam back-first into the dirt, letting out a grunt; it was getting difficult to breathe, with the golduck's arm around Ty's neck, but this seemed to do little more than piss Ty off.

Ty twisted his body around, seemingly almost 180 degrees, and dug his feet into the dirt. With some effort and a guttural shout, Ty picked himself back upright, swinging golduck backwards over his head and suplexing him.

However, before the golduck hit the ground, it let go of Ty, doing a handspring to get back to its feet.

Gold and Ty looked at Ducky incredulously. Ernie smiled somewhat slyly, spreading his arms out a bit.
"You didn't take me seriously? Why do you think Bert and I are the only ones out here?"

"Wait, so, it's just you two, and that's it?" Ty asked, a smirk coming back to him.

Ernie recoiled, realizing his mistake.
"I shouldn't have said that..."

The Alakazam was taken by surprise by Moira, and was barely able to deflect her slashes by using his spoons; Surprisingly, the spoons stayed in tact, glowing with psychic energy.

However, the psychic Pokemon had still been put on the defensive.
That sword of hers is gonna be trouble. We should get rid of it. Bert thought.

"Use Knock-Off!" Bert commanded, and the alakazam struck, aiming a disarming punch towards Moira's sword arm.

Bert looked up towards the dragon that had been summoned.
"Alakazam, use psychic to throw that creature into the woman!"

The spoon-wielder nodded, flinging the dragon towards the ground, where Moira was standing.

---

Drawn Through the Multiverse

Maya
Maya stood on top of her second main turret, gleefully launching missiles at U-3008. She-

Wait. There was another strange graviton reading, like the rifts they had traveled through.

Maya's expression dampened, and she turned around to look through the window of her bridge, only to see a strange, blood covered man smoking in her room!

"Ack! There's someone in my ship! KongouhelpI'mbeingboardedwhatdoIdoKon-" Maya blurted out, in surprise.

{Just go into your bridge and see who he is.} Kongou assured, over the JTN. {He probably has no idea what is going on.}

Maya, nodded, calming down.
"Okay..."

Her mental model melted into the turret she was standing on, the nanomaterials redistributing, and soon any trace of Maya's mental model had disappeared.

In her bridge, the opposite happened; A small patch of the floor turned into a silver-colored sand, a large blob of which morphed upwards, eventually taking the shape of a young woman. In a matter of seconds, Maya's mental model formed right before Nelson's eyes, in her usual Little Red Riding Hood-esque attire.

Maya looked at the man curiously, approaching him.
"Who are you?" she asked. "You came here from a rift, right?"

---

CRT Earth Orbital Battle
Music
As Kirby shot at the missiles, some of them were struck, detonating. Instead of any kind of normal explosion, they produced a perfectly spherical corrosive field a dozen meters across.

Several of the missiles made it through, and upon Eleutherius's evasive maneuvers, arced around to make another pass. One of the missiles struck the ship, detonating against the ships's shields and the extra protection provided by Eldrad, producing enough energy to level a large town.

As the bomber approached, U-3008 opened fire with smaller-caliber anti-aircraft pulsar guns, sending powerful energy beams into the ship's shields.

The D-scythe and Fire Dragon attacks, along with the bomber's torpedoes stuck the ship, triggering several translucent hexagonal prisms to appear where they detonated. The shields, U-3008's Klein field, absorbed the entirety of the blow, but the submarine began turning away, as if in retreat.

Kongou steamed forward, pulling ahead and closing the gap between herself and U-3008. She gave chase for some time, following the submarine further away from orbit, firing her main photon cannons all the while.

As Miyu flew to intercept the smaller submarine, there seemed to be some strange space debris floating near it. As she squinted, it became apparent what they were; staring her down were a dozen seehund submarines, with lasers in place of their externally-stored torpedoes.

Miyu pulled up, just as the group activated, firing several lasers in her direction.
"Guys, there's more of these smaller submarines! I think this was a trap!"

But the discovery came too late. U-3008 spun around in place, keeping its momentum. It was now flying backwards, facing Kongou, and took the opportunity to launch several corrosive torpedoes.

At the same time, several lasers struck Kongou's Klein field from various angles. Kongou began opening fire with all guns, sending bright beams of purple light in all directions, but couldn't score any hits.

Tadayoshi turned to look at Kongou, who seemed very displeased.

"They're beyond visual range, and I can't detect them with my radar." Kongou stated. "They were using lasers, so I tried to fire along the same axis, but it seems that they've moved."

"They might be outside the range of radar." Tadayoshi suggested. "It could be that they've put themselves past where you'd get useful resolution."

"How far would that be?" Kongou asked, genuinely curious.

"I have no idea. I don't know how far radar goes in space." Tadayoshi admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "Probably further than in atmosphere... But if they're outside of our radar's range, that means we're probably outside of theirs, too."

Tadayoshi looked at U-3008 through the window of the bridge.
"You said that submarine was for intelligence gathering, right?"

Kongou turned to the man, nodding.

"Would it be possible for it to relay information about our location through the JTN?" Tadayoshi asked, eliciting another nod from Kongou.

"Yes. That would mean we need to take out U-3008 as soon as possible."

Kongou stood up, and several glowing, translucent circles surrounded her mental model. These circles spun slowly around her, and showed various pieces of information about the battlefield and the enemy ships. However, Kongou didn't seem to pay much attention to the circles of information, confusing Tadayoshi on why they appeared in the first place.

Kongou's ship sped up, overtaking U-3008 and ramming into it. U-3008 began spinning in the opposite direction, and Kongou took the opportunity to fire her weapons at it again, firing a full broadside of her 14, 6, and 5 inch guns, as well as launching several missiles. Most of the shots were intercepted by the Klein field. However, it seemed that just as many lasers from far beyond visual range met Kongou's Klein field, starting to saturate it.

Fay passed by the submarine, coming close to its bridge, but not finding enough of an opening in its CIWS fire to make a proper approach.
"We might be able to knock out its sensory equipment. This would leave the rest of the fleet it's contacting blind to our movements, and could buy us some time." she suggested. "It's probably around the bridge or the nose of the sub. But getting close enough to get under the shields will be an issue, due to how many point defense weapons it has..."

Meanwhile, Maya turned her ship around, speeding towards where Miyu was flying. On her bridge, she turned to the man that had just arrived.
"I'm going to help my friend Miyu fight the seehunds... I'm not sure how you can help, sorry."

As Maya approached the seehunds, dozens of missile tubes all over her ship opened up, releasing over 50 corrosive missiles at the seehunds, striking several and destroying 4 of them.
"Yes!" Maya cheered out, happily, upon knocking out a handful of the subs.

Maya thought for a bit, before turning to Nelson.
"Oh, do you know much about space? That could help! It's my first time really going into space."

---

Greßland
Wilfre wandered around the Greßisch capital for some time, until finding a sleeping guard, and pick-pocketing his map. Looking it over, he was able to find the location of the capital of Eprelia.

"Okay. So we'll teleport to their city, wait until night, then go into their castle. We can try to scope things out a bit during the day." Wilfre stated. "You look the part of a jester. Maybe we can get into the castle by saying we're a traveling entertainment duo... Well, if we can get an audience with the king, we might be able to take him by force."

Wilfre generated a portal to Eprelia, and stepped through it. On the other side, it seemed as if the environment made an complete 180 degree turn; it was sunny, with few clouds in the sky. The surrounding fields were lush and green, with slightly rolling hills. In the distance past some farm land, the city skyline could be seen; a massive border wall around a surprisingly large city. The king's palace sat upon a large hill in the center. There were several different towers, halls, and other structures in the castle, creating a complex and grandiose fortress in the middle of the city, dominating the horizon.

Wilfre turned to face Advrick.
"Hey, do you think you can do that suggestion trick again? It would probably make getting inside the castle and getting an audience with this king easier."

---

Pacific Ocean, Earth (Arpeggio of Blue Steel)
Yamato stared out towards to horizon, taking in the calming sounds of the ocean. She reviewed the information sent by Kongou over the JTN; multiversal jump drives capable of transporting entire ships across universes, interactions with anthropomorphic animals, a giant man in power armor, a space wizard, and a tiny pink ball that Maya liked, and musing about the man from 'im-pee-doh' were all sent.

Yamato wasn't entirely sure what to make of it all yet, but she did have a great interest in the multiversal jump drive. Such a device would be a great asset to the Fog. She also wasn't sure about Kongou's interactions with those she had met-Something seemed missing, as if Kongou was leaving out information.

Suddenly, there was another object in low Earth orbit. Another SSTO?

No.

Whatever this was, it was much more massive than an SSTO. Yamato tracked its movements, and concluded that it was some kind of spacecraft attempting an entry into Earth's atmosphere. However, due to the sheer size and power of the ship, it was clearly not of human origin.

The Cornerians stated their intent to explore new worlds and find allies... Could this be them, already? Were they able to track the Fog through the JTN?

Yamato sent a message through the JTN to all Fog ships, informing them to allow the Cornerian ship to enter atmosphere. As luck would have it, the ship made its way close to the Kuril Islands, preferring to hover just off the coast of one of the islands, rather than land on solid ground.

Interesting... the superbattleship thought to herself. I'm going to have to keep close tabs on them. I wonder if it would be possible to get access to their technology by studying their ship while it's here.

Yamato's thoughts were interrupted by Chokai over the JTN.
{Hello, Yamato!} Chokai started. {Hiei is ready. Her ship is rebuilt, and her core has resumed normal activity.}

Yamato was genuinely surprised.
{Already? Well, that's wonderful! In fact, this is good timing, as I have a mission for her. *smile smile*}
{Oh, it this regarding that giant space ship that's outside Hokkaido?} Chokai inquired.
{Yes, it is. Though, most of the details are private, so I'll just contact her directly. *smile smile*}

With that, Yamato opened a private communications link with Hiei's Union core.

---

Yamato-Hiei Private JTN Link
Yamato chose to generate a wide open, grassy field for an environment, dotted with colorful flowers. There was even a slight breeze, blowing a faint scent of roses through the air.

Yamato approached Hiei, with her usual calm smile.
"I see you're awake. How do you feel?"

---

Secrets of the Raven

Talog Park
Agent A listened to the man, taking in his words. He also watched the birds' strange disappearing act, rightfully suspicious of the obvious hidden cameras.

There are others in this world who appeared from separate universes? A thought, surprised. I wonder if it would be possible to use rifts like these to purposely travel to other universes. The way this man speaks about this plan, that seems to be the case already...

When the man stood, and asked if they had a deal, Agent A also stood. He took the man's hand and shook it, nodding.
"Yes, we have a deal. I suppose you will contact me in some way, when it is time for my first assignment?"

---

Town Hall
Yet another portal opened up, and out of it came a remarkably average-looking Asian man and a black sedan.

Teru laid on his back for about a minute, dizzy and disoriented.

What just happened...? he thought to himself. Was this all just a dream?

He sat up slowly, looking around. He had appeared in the middle of some small town, and his car was neatly parked in a spot on the side of the road. Somehow.

It was as if God himself had guided his car through the portal, and into a parallel parking spot.

Teru stood up, a confused look on his face, as he stared at his car, then at the town hall. This just kept getting more absurd as time went on.

"Might as well go inside. Maybe I can find a map of... 'Branhwrn'..."

The man was about to walk inside, when he noticed that the parking meter said "expired," on a small red rectangle. Teru sighed, and opened his car door, looking around the front passenger's seat.

Come on, I know Tadayoshi still keeps American money on him, maybe some fell out?

After about a minute of searching, Teru found two quarters, and placed them into the meter.

But nothing happened.

Teru looked the machine over, noticing the British Pound symbol in place of the dollar sign. The man sighed, defeated.
"I'm sure no one will notice."

Teru walked into the town hall, only to see a rather sizable group of people already inside. He approached the group, waving.
"Oh, hello. Do any of you know where I could get a map?" he asked, politely.

Winged dragon : guardian of the fortress was caught in alakazam’s psychic. However much it roared and roared, it couldn’t get free, and it was sent towards its target. “BIG SHIELD GARDNA! I SUMMON YOU!” Atem yelled, again the area got darker and the pharaoh seemed more tired, but out of the shadows came a tall, buff, golden brown skin man, with long, spiky wild hair, red eyes, and a scarf. But what really stood out about him was the fact that ihe was holding a giant shield, almost as big as him. As soon as he appeared the psychic move faded from winged dragon and materialized in front of big shield gardna’s shield. Which proceeded to go into said shield. But once it did it was negated fully. “*huff* *huff* one more turn until I can summon my ace, that’ll most likely take care of those... what did gold call them again? Pokemon? *puff*” Atem said under his breath while trying to catch it.

[Skylus]

Link; Madi; & Po - Rise of the Masked Man

Link
Inside the TR Hideout

Link had used something like these wrap pads before. But yet he was still surprised when his view changed from the small room to what appeared to be some sort of brightly colored room with bubbling flasks everywhere. Yet the three of them weren't alone.
There were moving pictographs on a wall - how was that possible? - but one of them caught Link's attention.
One of them appeared to show Articuno.

But there wasn't time to ponder the fate of the giant ice bird - the five people in the room had noticed Link and the others.
And they had sent out creatures.
And some of these creatures were heading towards him.

Link froze, caught unprepared for once.
What do I do? Wait...The Ice Rod!
The boy summoned the Ice Rod from nowhere and glanced at it.
"I really hope this works."
He then pressed down on a golden diamond-shaped switch near the gem and frozen water shot towards the creatures at a high rate of speed.
What he didn't count on was everyone being frozen.
Link lowered the Ice Rod a bit.
"...I didn't think that would work."
He glanced over to Pi and Percy.
"What do we do now?"

---

Madison
On a Bus

Madi was dreaming about food. Waffles. Yes, waffles did sound good about no-
She found herself looking up at a blurred Muffet.
"...What?"
The Witch sat up and looked around. The courtroom was nearly empty.
"Is it over?"
Madi shook her head to clear it and then got up from where she had been sitting.
"Now what? I just follow you? Alright. Lead on."

The group made their way out of the court house and walked up to a waiting bus. Muffet explained the situation and soon enough, Madi found herself sitting next to Muffet.
"You do know I can clean stuff right?"
Without saying another word, Madi took out her wand and merely said "Tergo."
Not even a second later, the faint smell of wet badger was gone.
Madi flipped her wand around in her hand and nonchalantly aimed it towards Muffet.
"Now, is there anything you want to ask me?"

---

Po
Outside the Hideout


The Dragon Warrior was being ignored for once.
Normally, this was a good thing, but now?
Po wasn't that sure.
Of course, his friends seemed to have everything covered, but was it against some sort of rule to attack the wolves? (men)
Maybe.
Maybe it was some sort of rule that wasn't meant to be broken.
Maybe this rule could be broken.
Po didn't want to find out if this rule could or couldn't be broken, so he merely stayed where he was.
Besides, if he stayed uninjured he could help more inside the base.
Right?

Amaterasu - The Multiverse's Most Dangerous Game

Ammy and Issun rushed outside to see who the new visitor was, but they only got a glimpse of him before everything disappeared.

---

Rocket Hideout

Ammy found herself in some sort of enclosed area, there were frozen things all around her. There were three others in the room, a creature, a cat and a young boy that was holding some sort of weapon.
"Ammy! Got a load of that sword!"
The boy blinked and lowered his weapon.
"...You can speak?"
Issun got down from Ammy's head and bounced over to the boy.
"He looks just like that half-baked prophet, Waka!"
Issun moved away from the boy and back over to Ammy.
"You have any idea where we are, furball?"
Ammy shook her head, wagged her tail at the boy, and then barked.
"Oh great...Ammy, we have no idea where we are, who this is, and - hey!"
Ammy took off across the room but at the same time, the creatures started to unfreeze.

Ammy skidded to a stop and turned around, snarling.
"Whatcha gonna do Ammy? You gonna show these people what you can do or what?"
Ammy nodded and then leapt into the air and used Inferno - the strange creatures seemed to be somewhat effected by it.
"Yeah! Get them Ammy!"
Just then, a bolt of ice went over Ammy's head - the boy had fired the strange weapon.
Ammy half turned back to gaze at the boy and the kid nodded.
"Go on. I can help you, just keep them distracted."
The boy then turned to his friends.
"Pi, Percy, if you can do anything, you'd better do it now."

Ammy turned back to the creatures and let out a snarl and then leapt into battle.

[Apto]

Tales of Trebizond, Shut Hell
Hippodrome

While the Emperor was busy, Scrappy had grabbed an important-looking mechanical thing from the beast. He had experience with these sorts of things, and if something off a defeated enemy looks important, you should always take it. He opened up his chest and hid it in there, behind his screen and away from sight. He had tried to interface with it, but nothing had happened. Advanced mechanical things were supposed to be controllable for Scrappy, but not this thing. Once the group was in a better spot, he could try to analyze it and see if the group had any idea what was going on with it. But he had other plans with the group for now.

So she was being paid to kill now? Like some sort of Assassin?

Shut Hell shrugged, bouncing the bag of coins between her hands. What was she supposed to do with this? Food would be nice, yes, but information was far better. If she knew the right palms to grease, then that would go a long way towards getting the full picture. With that in mind, Shut Hell hid her newfound wealth on her person, before turning to observe the strange corpse as men filled into the arena to clean up the bloody mess she and her compatriots had left.

...

The Metal Man did something rather weird.

Poke

Her finger brushed against Scrappy's back, a incredulous expression on her face.

---

Legends of the Last Romans, Jeanne "Tart" D'Arc
Forest Roadside, Aeternablis

Before Ritisuka can figured that out, a pair of guards dragged her and Tart to meet a merchant named Aelia. Okay, so we’re in a medieval like world or so right? So, not exactly like home in modern day.

“Aeternabilis? Excuse me, but what is Aeternabilis?” Ritsuka found herself confused by that name. Surely there wasn’t any place on Earth named Aeternabilis. So where in the world is she? The worst part is… she doesn’t have much money in her pocket. It’s doubtful a yen would be acceptable as currency. So this will be awkward. When Aelia asked if Ritsuka wanted to look around, she nodded. “Oh sure, I’ll gladly look at your wares. I’m honestly not sure how long I’ll be here, but… ahem… Do you have any food and water available? Maybe even some sugary good desserts too?”

"Oh!" She was awake! Awake! "Uh," How do you explain to someone that you have no idea why their head was using your lap as a pillow? "Hello!" Smooth as silk Jeanne, smooth as silk.

Thankfully, any further embarrassment she might have suffered was delayed by two men who hauled both her and her Master, away from the forest. Under normal circumstances, Jeanne might have voiced her objection, but she was far too flustered and her Master didn't seem to be in trouble.

Jeanne and Ritsuka were both brought to their feet and steered to the front of the caravan, where they now stood beside Victor and Cay. "I don't know how you got all the way out here, but you've picked a hell of a time to visit Aeternabilis," Aelia said. "Never mind politics and doomsaying, though. Perhaps you would like to browse our selection? You'll find the highest quality goods and fairest prices on the island."

Jean approached the newcomers and Aelia, putting his sword away and scanning over them. The group seemed like a very strange bunch, having little that seemingly tied them together as a single group, which implied they were all strangers who coincidentally converged on the same location. "So, where do all of you come from? Don't seem to be locals at all, judging by your attire." He then took his helmet off, placing it under his left arm. "I am Sir Jean Delacroix, knight of the Kingdom of Trapoletanius. Who do I have the opportunity of meeting today?"

Swiftly composing herself, the girl mustered every etiquette lesson Gilles and Elisa had drilled into her head, and with a unsteady curtsy and a voice filled with gentle tones, she spoke. "I am Jeanne of Domremy," Slowly now, raise your head. "I come from my homeland of France good sirs and madams." The words felt alien to her tongue, but she continued nonetheless. "I am afraid to say however, that I carry no currency nor memory of how I got here."

A quick glance to the side just to observe Ritsuka. Was she impressed? Troubled? Oh, she must simply know!

---

War of Flesh and Metal, Violet Evergarden
Cairo, Eygpt

Trishna narrowly dodged the bolt from Violet's blaster, then raised her arm. "Resistance will not be tolerated," she announced, pulling a ball of water from her tower and hardening it into a ball of ice with a twist of the wrist. "If you won't cooperate, then you'll have to be subdued!" The woman threw the iceball at Violet, much faster than someone like her should logically have been able to. With her other arm, she forced the mighty Nile out of its banks to sweep away the regiment of soldiers behind them, not caring if they lived or died.

As the heroes scattered on the shore below her, Trishna surrounded herself in a swirling vortex of water and ice and continued to hurl chunks of solid ice at them.

Violet's eyes widened as she saw a ball of water suddenly harden into ice. Her instincts, the same ones that had served her well back in the war, screamed at her to get away, to dodge, and to throw herself onto proper cover. Alas, she was too slow. Far too slow. Pain blossomed across her abdomen as a ball of ice tore through clothe and flesh alike, digging itself a home at her side.

In response, Violet gritted her teeth, expression pained as she dragged herself into cover. Adrenaline allowed her to focus, but her breathing was ragged. Still, she had to do something! With a pained grunt halfway to a scream, the girl forced herself to aim her sights at Trishna, and simply pulled the trigger once before she was swept away by a sudden tide, back smashing against the wall as more ice rained around her.

Damnit damnit damnit! Everything felt so heavy, even trying to stand took so much effort!

Hunched forwards, and one arm holding onto her bleeding abdomen, Violet shambled forwards onto the closest piece of cover she could reach.

---

Drawn Through the Multiverse, Fog Battleship Hiei
Digital Space, Joint Tactical Network
Hiei awoke with a sharp inhale.

Where-

Yamato chose to generate a wide open, grassy field for an environment, dotted with colorful flowers. There was even a slight breeze, blowing a faint scent of roses through the air.

Yamato approached Hiei, with her usual calm smile.
"I see you're awake. How do you feel?"

In an instant, Hiei bowed, motion textbook perfect as she kept her head low. "My Union Core reports full functionality, Supreme Flagship." To accentuate the statement, holographic screens showing detailed reports popped up around the glasses wearing Mental Model, her voice as alert and calm as her actions. Though her expression was a perfectly crafted mask of neutrality, Hiei's mind raced, probing for reasons as to why the Supreme Flagship of the Fog would visit her. A mission? Reprimand? Ugh, Yamato was so hard to read.

[Ihury]

Murmansk (Мурманск)

In the dead of night, a single figure walked across the road from his Brezhnev-era public housing blocks to the 7-11 convenience store at the gas station just opposite. Convenience stores were rare in Russia. There was hardly any market for them, since the average Russian would usually purchase everything they needed in bulk from a big supermarket. It was cheaper and more convenient that way, ironically.

For a person like Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze, however, there were often times when one just wanted to buy a select few items with a little money pinched from somewhere, and not grocery shopping for a whole family. For people like that, who often wanted little more than a bowl of instant ramen at midnight, a simple gas station 7-11 would do.

Sadly for Anatoly, life was not destined to be so simple.

...

The Realm of Imru (Glasnyy Ymhrū)

Legends told of the coming of the Tenth Messiah, the final incarnation of a god of peace who will put an end to the 3,000-year war that has been raging between the six races of Imru and, in the process, usher in an era of peace that would see Imru become a utopia among the worlds of the multiverse. Nine Messiahs had come before, to set the stage right for the final one; finally, as the iron airships of Men loomed over the fields of Nyzdrun and the orc villages all over it, the sky turned a deep blue, like that of the deep ocean, and thunder rumbled across the sky.

The Ninth Messiah had stepped down. The advent of the Tenth Messiah was upon all of Imru. Little did anybody expect that he would come falling from the sky, accompanied by packets of instant ramen.

“BLYAD, I’M FALLING!“

The man in question was a short-ish hooligan of Slavic origin, dressed in a black Adidas (genuine thing!) tracksuit with a leather jacket over said tracksuit to boot, his teeth yellowed from constant smoking and coffee consumption. Hardly a Messianic figure, but one ought not to question the gods who created all of creation.

“Hello there”, came the voice of a small child, perhaps no older than twelve. “Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze. Or Anat’oli Iraklis dze Nozadze. Whichever you like-”

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU???” The falling man wasn’t in the best state of mind to be speaking in a calm, composed manner, for obvious reasons. “HOW DO YOU-“

“I am Eir”, said the voice of the little boy. As Anatoly fell, he turned his head, and saw (presumably) the one who had summoned him to this world of saturated pink colours. “I’m the Ninth Messiah.”

“Oh, so like those Orthodox fur balls?” Anatoly inquired, still trying to steady himself in midair.

“You are the Tenth Messiah”, said Eir, giving the plummeting Slav a V-for-victory gesture and grinning from cheek to cheek. “You are the final incarnation of the God of Peace in the Realm of Imru. The prophecy says-“

“YOU’RE REALLY FUCKIN CALM FOR SOMEONE WHO’S ALSO FALLING THROUGH THE SKY, DEBIL MALCHIK!”

“- that you, Anatoly Iraklievich, will be the one to end the War of Six Armies, and to usher in a Golden Age of Peace.”

“That’s fine and all”, said Anatoly, “except HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT WHEN YOU’RE DEAD?”

“You’re not going to die”, said Eir, checking his watch. “But I’ve got no time left, so allow me to cut to the chase, Anatoly Iraklievich.”

Twisting his hands in a series of complicated hand gestures, Eir proceeded to conjure up a long, curved object, shrouded in shining light, before gently pushing it over to Anatoly and beckoning him to take it with a childish grin. The young man reached out his hands and seized the object, scattering the light and revealing a maroon katana, encased in an immaculate mahogany sheath, a crest emblazoned on the hilt.

“It’s a Hattori Hanzō blade”, said Eir. “From your world. I’ve enchanted it for you. It will help you channel your Messianic energy when you need it.”

“And I’m supposed to care because?” Anatoly inquired, now more annoyed than anything else.

By the time the final words had left his mouth, however, he found himself lying supine in a field of purple moss, gentle morning dew staining his jacket, the maroon katana lying placidly beside him. Eir was nowhere to be found, but just as the little kid had explained, Anatoly found himself suddenly energised, a sort of inexplicable energy coursing through his veins, almost as if his fingertips were giving off sparks. His vision became clear, and for a moment, he felt as if he could see every single individual molecule suspended in the atmosphere and making up the crisp, mystical air of this world of shimmering, glimmering colours. Such was, without a doubt, the power of the Tenth Messiah, that divine being incarnated in human form, ready to bring peace to Imru and to put an end to the horrific war that for so long had ravaged this beautiful land.

“Suka blyad, I need to sleep.”

...

Elsewhere, in the Steppes

News of the Tenth Messiah’s arrival still remained largely un-disseminated, as the war continued to rage on between the six races of the Imruhi world.

Though Anatoly did not see anything during his descent, there was, in fact, a three-millennia-long war scourging the vibrant fields and vitreous mountains of Imru, sending columns of smoke rising to the heavens and bodies filling up the valleys like asphalt poured into a pothole.

On the Nyzdrun Plains, for example, the feared steam-powered warships of the Human Union of Imru soared over the yellow grasses, hurling bombs upon the ground indiscriminately, as helpless orcs below fired their muskets upwards in a desperate attempt to fell at least one or two of the dreaded iron beasts. For the past one hundred and fifty years, the Union had dominated the skies with their advances in steam technology, blasting the hot-air balloons of the Elves and the other land bound races to fiery oblivion.

There were only three challengers of the Union’s might where sky warfare was concerned; the Angels, who didn’t care for the politics of the world anyway; the sky serpents, that primeval race of stone dragons inhabiting the skies above the South Pole; and the Octobrists, who had, almost two decades ago, obtained what was then the Union’s finest dreadnought when a Union commodore defected.

This last group, in particular, took every opportunity it had to weaken the Union. It was in their best interests to do so, after all; these were people drawn together through a common disbelief in the messianic religion of the Union that, for some reason, seemed to favour the race of men over all others. Ergo, they believed, should the Union triumph, it would hardly be true peace that would replace the ongoing war.

How, then, could they rely on the Tenth Messiah, when the previous nine Messiahs, who had so faithfully set the conditions right for the arrival of their final successor, merely bred an environment set up for the destruction of all others and the establishment of a hegemony by the tyrants who ruled the Union? From the sound of it, this whole business of a Messiah who could bring peace to the world in exchange for widespread foreign species extermination was little more than a scam on the cosmic scale.

For this apostasy (how could they!), people were exiled from the Union. These people called themselves the Octobrists.

Over the twenty or so years following the formation of the group by exiled and defected officials of the Union, the Octobrists had become the largest human resistance to the Human Union, boasting more than 2,683 members and a fleet of twelve steam-powered warships. Nothing compared to the Union’s 452-strong fleet, but it was still superior to just about everybody else who had not yet learned to harness the power of steam to create machines of war.

Over the Nyzdrun plains, while the golden vessels of the Union loomed like dark clouds over the plains, already deep blue with orc blood, the Octobrists made their move, their warships easily distinguishable by the red stripes painted across their iron bodies. The roar of the decimated orcs below was soon drowned out by the whirring and booming of the twelve Octobrist warships fending off the four Union dreadnoughts. Smoke rose higher into the heavens, as splinters and droplets of molten metal rained down upon the dry grass, further flattening the already razed ground below.

Streaks of golden lightning tore the darkening firmaments of the world, followed closely by a clap of thunder that sent torrential rains hurtling down upon the blood-soaked plains and the wrought metal beasts soaring above like rocs setting themselves upon their hunting grounds. All who rode upon the vessels and who fought below had their gazes turned to the skies. The humans knew what it was, but had never seen it in person. The orcs, who lived at least 300 years on average, had seen it before.

The curtains holding the magenta celestial dome together had been parted.

"Woe! Woe unto the free races of Imru! The Tenth Messiah is upon us! The rule of Men has begun!"

...

[The Dark Brotherhood of Deros]

Moira - RotMM

Moira was surprised that the strange kitchen utensil-wielding Pokemon was able to actually deflect her glaive's blows using nothing but simple spoons. Clearly something else was going on that she wasn't seeing, but what? This was just like hunting a new monster back home; watching its moves, studying its behavior, learning how best to attack it. She excelled at this. Then it did something that she wasn't expecting: it disarmed her! Leumundslist was sent flying away from her with one swift movement, and Moira suddenly found herself on the defensive. "Okay... not bad." She muttered.

Moira waited for an opening, and then took off at top speed toward the Insect Glaive, nimbly moving around the Alakazam with little effort. Nargacuga armor was really great for that sort of thing, which is why Moira adored it so. It was also great for last-minute dodges, which is exactly what the huntress was doing not a second later when the Alakazam tossed the dragon summoned by the man with strange hair directly at her. She just barely avoided being crushed as she superman-dived away, then she quickly sprung to her feet and scooped up Leumundslist. "Alright, now I'm wise to your tricks. That won't happen again." She boasted to the Alakazam.

Unfortunately she could feel the effects of the extracts waning, and she doubted she could easily get them back if the Pokemon could move things with its mind. It would no doubt have little trouble with her kinsect as it flew toward it to bite into it. Better make what I have left count then! Moira thought as she ran at the Alakazam. Once more she vaulted herself into the air, using the launcher of the glaive to propel herself forward. She was right over the Alakazam now, and with expert precision only capable by a hunter, she began to twirl around sideways in mid-air, coming down on top of the Pokemon like a saw blade.

Percy - RotMM

And everything was going so well too...

Percy yelped like a cat as he just barely avoided the Thunder Wave. Can't get hit by that; this armor won't stand up to lightning very well! Percy thought. What could they do? They were outnumbered by quite a large margin, and he doubted that his lightning-element weapon would do well against the electric-wielding Pokemon very well. Link seemed to have the solution however, as he suddenly froze the entirety of the group with but one move! "Oh! Well that's that then, nya!" He exclaimed, relief washing over him. It quickly vanished however as a new thought hit him. "Do you think someone heard that... uh... ice thing go off? I suggest we find a place to hide quickly." He said, glancing around the room.

Kirby - DttM

This was crazy! Kirby frantically shot at whatever missiles he could, but he felt horribly useless. What good could he do stuck in this tiny ball turret? They needed to hit those big ships directly, which Kirby couldn't do in this thing! Kirby began to fear the worst, and desperation began filling his... heart? Did he have one of those? Whatever, it hardly mattered at this point! He had one idea, but he wasn't sure it would work... Oh well, may as well give it a go! What more could go wrong? Kirby suddenly produced a cell phone of all things from seemingly nowhere, and he pressed one of the buttons on it. It was a large yellow button, and it had the symbol of a star on it. He sure hoped this would work; he had never tried doing this outside of his universe.

Miraculously it did, as Kirby saw something emerge from what looked like a tear in the universe: a large glowing yellow star. The Warp Star had made it here! Kirby quickly opened the ball turret up, jettisoning himself into space and hopping onto his trusty vehicle. Then he rocketed off toward where all the laser fire was coming from. Once he got close enough, he focused on the bright star he was driving, and with a flash of light it began to fire a rapid stream of smaller stars at the ships. He discovered that the Warp Star could do this a while back in the Mirror World, when he fought Dark Mind. He actually managed to destroy the fleeing force of darkness with the star, so surely it could damage these ships too! What's more, the submarines would find Kirby frustratingly hard to hit, as not only was the Warp Star very fast, but also maneuverable. And so the tiny pink puffball danced around the submarines whilst pelting them with shots, looking like nothing more but a streak of yellow light as he did so.

Advrick - DttM

Advrick lazily followed Wilfre around the city, not really paying it much mind. He was simply much to busy thinking of all of the wonderful possibilities of traveling the multiverse, and how the power that he desired - no deserved - would be his. Wilfre was of course a means to an end, and would be abandoned once his usefulness was outlived. He's trying to cut off a god's influence over his world, which means if anyone can get me closer to achieving divinity, it's this delightfully small fellow. Who knows, maybe I'll even keep him around once I ascend as a thank you? Advrick thought.

He then heard Wilfre addressing him, and he turned to face him. "Ah, a good idea. I was once part of a traveling circus... once... Now I perform alone. A lonely life to be certain, but one I bare all the same." He said. Soon the duo found themselves in an entirely different place, and a much more cheerful one at that. Advrick then looked down at Wilfre and smirked. "Can I? Oh Wilfre, that is quite literally the least I can do. Well, not quite the least, but close." He replied, chortling once again.

[Menschenfleisch]

Legends of the Last Romans | Tone

Watching the sand-armoured man trading for books reminded Valerian just where and when he was. Books were expensive as all heck and if he wanted to live long enough to get back on Avarice's trail, he'd need funds. Sticking with the caravan was no longer a toil of convenience, it was a necessary endeavour. The girl talking to Aelia, the one examining her closely... she resembled a species of human he'd encountered on many occasions before. Homo-Animeus? Was that the term? His memory wasn't exactly the best after that huge interdimensional clusterfuck. (So many tentacles!)

"Hi there, Sir Jean Delacroix. I'm Valerian Woolf, from the East. It's a faraway land called... Canada. Anyways, a pleasure to meet you! And hello there, Jeanne of Domremy. I hear France is lovely this time of year. It's nice to meet you! So what are you here, so far from home?"

Respite | Julyan

"Torii and Katya. Good with computers, combat and cooking. You seem a little more trustworthy than the rain and the monsters; I can guarantee I won't shoot you as long as you cooperate and don't try to sabotage our group. (Wouldn't be surprised if they were shapeshifters)."

There really wasn't much else to say or do during the journey. Every now and then Alucard would look to his side, as if he was expecting something to leap out of the shrubbery and slaughter them all (which Julyan could unfortunately testify to). The plague knight was as jumpy and mad as ever, seemingly too engrossed in his thoughts of larger and larger explosions to say anything. The newcomers didn't look so great but they were healthy and fresh, something that the rest of the exhausted posse needed to regain. Jacket (though he still hadn't told Julyan his name wasn't Fritz) walked along, silent and cool as ever. He was the only one out of the bunch to have a civilian firearm. Did that mean he was from Earth? Probably not the one Julyan was thinking of. And Waka... best not to consider than Frenchman. His leg and neck still stung from where the swordsman had cut him.

Okay. Assessed the group. Now, to reorient himself and ground him in reality. He'd been thrown through an interdimensional rift while on a recovery mission seeking a Church artifact which had bonded to his body and replaced his left arm and torso. Shortly afterward he had fought a village of monstrous humanoids alongside a flame-throwing vampire and an apparently mute gangster. Then they'd found a church which they'd entered by destroying two automatons out front before finding a skeleton who built a Coalition-Whitesuit from scratch. Less than an hour after that they'd been attacked by a friendly swordsman, told to go to a castle, encountered two inexplicably healthy civilians and- yeah, that wasn't working.

Julyan exhaled slowly, feeling his chest collapse. Thinking about this place was only going to drive him mad...-der than he already was. No point in it. He clenched his mechanised fist, looked up toward the castle in the distance and pushed onward.

[Apto]

Legends of the Last Romans, Jeanne "Tart" D'Arc
Forest Roadside, Aeternablis

"Hi there, Sir Jean Delacroix. I'm Valerian Woolf, from the East. It's a faraway land called... Canada. Anyways, a pleasure to meet you! And hello there, Jeanne of Domremy. I hear France is lovely this time of year. It's nice to meet you! So what are you here, so far from home?"

"France is indeed lovely Monsieur Woolf," Jeanne spoke with obvious pride, light seemingly pouring out with every word as she rose from her curtsy to address Valerian of Canada. Nodding to herself, she continued, "From the cities to the countryside, and in any season." There was something enrapturing with how the girl spoke, the way she held herself with absolute confidence borne from innocence, a mistaken belief of invincibility common in all youth. "As for why," The girl-turned-saint withdrew into herself, seemingly in an attempt to make herself smaller, index fingers tapping against each other in clear nervousness. "Bodyguard duty," It was embarrassing calling herself a warrior of fortune amidst her current company. She had seen men react quite violently when a mere sprite of a girl claimed to be a soldier. "I mean no offense to anyone of course! I am sure Monsieur Woolf, Monsieur Delacroix and the fine men who guided us here are all splendid warriors!"

[Ihury]

The Steppes of Imru

The appearance of the Tenth Messiah (more specifically, the appearance of the signs that heralded his arrival) came as a significant boost of morale to the men fighting on the side of the Union, who rained shells upon the orc armies below at an ever increasing rate, emptying their seemingly endless stores of munitions on their enemies both above and below.

In command of this Union fleet was Commodore Arman Ziegend, a scrawny, weedy man who smelled like the inside of a shoe, whom one would hardly associate with military command. Ziegend, however, was not known as “The Hammer” for no reason; he virtually hammered flat with an obscene amount of munitions any battlement, army encampment, or refugee village he was ordered to by his superiors, leaving nothing but a literal reddish brown paste in his wake. Attempts to rein in his consumption of munitions were futile, and unwilling to lose an effective exterminator, military command would order the Arsenal ramp up the production of explosives and shells for the sake of covering Ziegend’s ass.

The 30-year-old Ziegend, one of the youngest commodores in the Union’s fleet, had gotten his position not by his skill, but by his mother, who had helped him rise through the ranks by fornicating around with the echelons of the rich and powerful. Not that his military prowess was lacking; it just so happened that he had worked his way to a position he was qualified for in a rather underhanded manner.

“How great a mother’s love is”, he would often brag without an ounce of shame, “that she would sleep with the old reprobates for the sake of her dear son.”

Even while his ships were blowing things up indiscriminately, Ziegend continued to enjoy himself in the solitude of his glass cabin on the HUA Pravlist, sipping fine wine and scratching his crotch, stopping only occasionally to sniff his fingers.

“The trick”, he said to his bodyguards, bringing his utility hand to his mouth and tasting his fingertips, “is to make sure that there’s nowhere for them to hide. It’s then that-“

The sight of a lone figure wielding what appeared to be a double-edged sword with two long tassels leaping from ship to ship jolted Ziegend out of his tipsy, ball-scratching state of nirvana and back into the smoky, ashen realm of the real world. As if unable to trust his own eyesight, Ziegend leaned further forward in his golden chair, observing the figure somersault through the air, wall-running along the sides of the airships, his long sky-blue scarf trailing behind him like the tail of a flying dragon, before he got close enough to the Pravlist to make Ziegend afraid enough to lift up his microphone and bellow out a set of self-preserving instructions.

“Guards”, he ordered, “blast that man out of the-“

He could not complete his order, for at that moment, the window of the Pravlist’s command cabin was shattered by a cannon shell hurled by hand, and the man in the sky-blue scarf leapt through, front-rolled across the carpeted ground, and then pointed his blade to Ziegend’s neck, much to the horror of Ziegend, whose four bodyguards responded by quickly pointing their staffs at the young man, who, with a smirk, pulled up his goggles and pulled down his scarf. To Ziegend’s surprise, the perpetrator looked barely older than nineteen. Come to think of it, he was rather short.

“Put this feral animal down”, commanded Ziegend, “before he is able to-“

Two of the bodyguards attempted to make for the boy, but found themselves sprawled across the carpet as their feet were severed from their calves. The third bodyguard swung his staff in an attempt to hit the boy’s head, but missed as the boy rolled backwards, landing on his back, before leaping to his feet and slashing the man in the crotch. As the fourth bodyguard made to protect his boss, he suddenly found himself with his hands severed by the wrists by a blade that sliced so smoothly that it was as if it was painless.

Ziegend, for all his strategic prowess, could not fight in one-on-one combat, and thus, made for the door, only for his way to be blocked by the boy, who leapt over his head and landed in his path.

“You are under arrest, Arman Ziegend, for crimes against humanity.”

“Who are you?”

“Who am I?” The boy questioned, chuckling in a sardonic manner as he flicked the blood off his sword. “I’m an Octobrist. That should have been pretty obvious, no?”

“No, no, I mean what is your name?” Ziegend asked, still attempting to scratch his crotch surreptitiously.

“Ito”, said the boy.

“No, I mean, your full name.”

The boy sighed and rolled his eyes in exasperation.

“Jugemu-jugemu Gokō no surikire Kaijarisuigyo no Suigyōmatsu Unraimatsu Fūraimatsu Kūnerutokoronisumutokoro Yaburakōji no Burakōji Paipopaipo Paipo no Shūringan, Shūringan no Gūrindai, Gūrindai no Ponpokopi no Ponpokona no Chōkyūmei no Chōsuke.”

Ziegend glanced awkwardly to the side, not knowing what his reaction was supposed to be.

“My surname is Ito”, the boy added.

A cannon shell blasted through the iron wall of the ship and crushed a portrait of the Human Union’s Chancellor on the other end of the room.

“Look, that’s not the point”, said the boy, before kicking Ziegend in the crotch and sending him sprawling across the carpet, squealing like a wounded pig. “The point is that you’re going to shut up, and from now on, you’re going to do exactly as I say. And on top of that, you address me as Jugemu.”

“Yes, Master Jugemu.” Ziegend appeared to be enjoying the experience in a very specific way.

Tying the commodore in a hogtie and crushing his microphone with his foot, Jugemu walked back to where the window used to be, pulling his scarf back up over his mouth and nose and snapping on his goggles again, as the wind blew into the ship and sent the ends of his scarf trailing. He reached into his pocket and lifted out a little pink crystal sphere no larger than a quail’s egg, before blowing on it to activate it.

It was a iyu-namo sphere of speech, an enchanted ball of rose quartz that, when blown upon by one to whom it was connected, could open a channel of aural transmission with someone else who had a similar sphere, provided the user initiating the conversation was visualising the face of the one to whom he wished to speak. If contacted, a receiving iyu-namo would pulsate, alerting the recipient of the caller's desire to speak.

The Church of the Union had banned the use of the spheres sixty-two years ago, promoting instead the telephone, but they were still widely used by the Octobrists, who found them to be more reliable, since they made use of enchantment, rather than shaky radio signals, to operate.

"Tadesse", said Jugemu Ito. "Commodore Arman Ziegend has been secured. I am now in command of the Pravlist."

From the flagship of the Octobrists, the Kutkh, Tadesse Haile Alemayehu, a tall, dark-skinned man in his sixties with a white beard dressed in a striking black leather trench coat and carrying six katana by his waist, pensively observed the battle unfold before his eyes with the aid of a cast iron telescope. He had only one arm; the empty right sleeve of his black trench coat flopped like a black flag in the wind, and his iyu-namo was embedded in the collar of his trench coat.

"Noted", he said into the crystal sphere, before closing the telescope in a single, sweeping motion of his left arm, and turning back to face the man standing behind him; Wilhelm Xander Felgrand, the chief strategist of the Octobrists and deputy to the Chief himself.

There was something about the 30-year-old Felgrand that put people in a slight state of fear. It wasn't that Felgrand was a terrifying man appearance-wise; he was, in fact, a dashing young man with a mane of glorious golden hair, to whom many girls would often flock. What made Felgrand such a terrifying presence on the battlefield was the spark in his eye that said "I'm just playing a game with you". A clear indication that he was, if not someone completely heartless, a man who treated everything as if it were a game of chess.

"And thus", said Felgrand, his voice a posh, aristocratic trill, "our bishop captures the enemy's rook."

...

Anatoly I. Nozadze

For Anatoly, who just wanted to catch up on the sleep he hadn't gotten in the past twenty-six hours or so, having a nap in the vast lavender fields was a taste of pure bliss. For one, there was this soothing, grassy smell that permeated every corner of the field. Anatoly couldn't quite put his finger on what it was; it had a calming, unwinding effect, rather like chamomile, but had the aroma of plain old vegetation, like a flower that was, while exceptionally bland smelling, heavily opiate.

He lay fast asleep for at least eight hours, bathing in the sunlight and the moonlight, as glowworms buzzed about in the dusk sky and kept vigil for the sleeping man. The few solitary trees scattered around rustled gently like old folks chattering tranquilly, their voices rising to the glassy mountains in the distance and to the ears of Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze who, for lack of any better description, was beginning to enjoy himself.

Needless to say, Anatoly was very annoyed when, at dawn the next day, a party of three obese men in long, frilly, ecclesiastical robes approached him in the plains, pointing at him and chattering loudly. He turned his head to look at them, tearing open a packet of (de-shelled!) sunflower seeds and popping one into his mouth.

As they approached him, Anatoly climbed to his feet, yawning irreverently at them and slouching on purpose, his hands jammed far down his pockets.

"Gamarjoba", he greeted, using a Georgian greeting rather than the Russian he was more familiar with. Then, in one of the languages he suddenly found himself possessing perfect knowledge of (probably courtesy of Eir), he asked, "Who are you three?"

To his surprise and perturbation, all three of the obese men fell prostrate and kissed the ground before Anatoly.

"O mighty Messiah", they bawled in unison, in a manner almost creepily rehearsed, "you have heard our cries for help! Glory be to you, mighty Tenth Messiah of Imru! May you bring rains of sulfur upon the transgressors of this-"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Anatoly interrupted.

The three obese men in the long ecclesiastical robes raised their heads and looked at each other, clearly very flustered. The one in the middle, who was the least fat and sported a fiery orange goatee, rose slightly higher, such that he was kneeling upright.

"You are the final incarnation of God in this world", he declared sycophantically, beating his breast. "By the righteous wrath of God the Father against our enemies, and the merciful love of God the Mother for us, we-"

"Fuckin' hell, why won't any of these cunts bother to explain why I'm here!?" Anatoly roared, spitting out the half-chewed sunflower seed in his mouth halfway across the field (literally; his tongue, too, felt like it had been energised, in more ways than one). "Apparently, it's too much goddamn work to give a man an instruction manual."

The three obese men in the long ecclesiastical robes were at a loss for words.

"Are you sure he's the one?" whispered one to another, almost terrified that Anatoly would hear (he did). "He doesn't seem..."

"Silence, Zymnos", hissed the other, still keeping his head bowed in contrived humility and even more contrived deference. "The signs detailed in the Idron Tamur were very explicit. He is the one. Make no mistake."

The three fell into a terrified silence again, before the one who had spoken earlier spoke again.

"O great Lord of Imru, please hear our cries", he continued prattling. "We humbly request that you follow us back to our capital, Ionis City, where you may meet our rulers and discuss a course of action to defeat our enemies, the other races, and bring Imru under an era of peace!"

Anatoly fell silent for a moment. The three looked up at him expectantly. Then he replied.

"No", he said flatly.

"But, Lord..."

"I said no", Anatoly repeated.

"But Lord, it says in the Idron Tamur that-"

"Fuck off, you stupid lumps of flesh! I told you, I'm not interested in any of your bullshittery! You can all get lost, unless you want to-"

This time, it was Anatoly's turn to be cut off, as two of the obese men seized his ankles and broke down into uncontrollable sobs, in an almost terrifyingly eerie manner, as if they had no minds of their own.

"Please, Lord, we will do anything! The race of Men is ready to serve you with all our hearts and all our souls and all our-"

"I don't want your fuckin' help", Anatoly spat, kicking the two fat men off of him. By now, he was absolutely incensed, most of all because these three weirdos had woken him up from a nap wherein he was having a particularly enjoyable dream. The sort that involved riding on the backs of dragons and stuff. "I just wanna have a happy life! Is that too much to fuckin' ask of you goddamn dumbbells?"

The man with the orange goatee who had been doing the talking quietly beckoned to his two friends to follow. Defeated, they rose to their feet, bowed almost comically to Anatoly, and then rushed off in the same direction they had come from. As they went off into the distance, Anatoly could hear them clearly say something in a tone that, while deferential to the letter, clearly included some degree of a malicious streak between the spaces in the letters.

Yawning once again, Anatoly slung his Adidas backpack across his shoulder and, popping more (de-shelled!) sunflower seeds into his mouth, lifted the maroon katana up and walked off towards the glassy mountains. Perhaps some sightseeing would be good to calm his tightly wound nerves.

...

Ionis City
Capital of the Human Union

For 21 years, Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin had enforced a state of terror over the people he governed.

Daily life in the Human Union was characterised by frequent arrests by the CNR- the Union's black ops and secret police apparatus- and by the Grand Synod, an organ of the Church of the Union that saw to those who dared to challenge the divinely-mandated authority of the Idron Tamur, the God-breathed, sacred scriptures of the race of Men.

There was one God, they believed, who was composed of two parts: God the Father, a wrathful deity who cast judgement upon the unworthy, and God the Mother, who protected some of the unworthy from the wrath of her male counterpart; the race of Men, as the race of Men believed, were the ones who had been chosen. The previous nine Messiahs and the prophesied Tenth Messiah were the incarnations of God the Mother, who had come to deliver Imru to the race of Men.

The only problem, of course, was that there were those annoying naysayers who spouted all sorts of rubbish: for example, that the Tenth Messiah would not save humans, or that the Tenth Messiah would never come, or that the whole religion was a scam meant to keep Arzan Nimzel Amlin (and pretty much every Chancellor preceding him, but especially Amlin) in power.

Ergo, it was only natural that the CNR and the Grand Synod would have to put a stop to the nonsense about the Tenth Messiah not wanting to save the race of Men. The Grand Synod would eliminate those who blasphemed against the Tenth Messiah (like the Octobrists), and the CNR would eliminate those who blasphemed against the Grand Synod.

The three most feared men in the Union were, thus, Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin himself: Archbishop Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan, Chief of the Church of the Union (and, thus, of the Grand Synod): and Laurentis Venias, the chief of the CNR.

Even as people continued to be dragged from their beds in the night and tried for heresy (and a long list of other crimes), the 70-year-old Amlin, still a jovial and chatty old man, convened his Central Council of Ministers at the peak of noon in his grandiose palace, hewn entirely out of quartz taken from the glassy mountains.

First to arrive was a weedy, badly-balding man named Nargami Shiki, the Chairman of the Central Council; he always turned up punctually, carrying bundles of files containing meeting minutes of previous conventions, but for the fact that he looked like a rat, was often mocked by the others. Such as Laurentis Venias, a man with a belly bigger than his entire body including his belly, but who made no effort to hide it, dressing simply in a white dress shirt with all his medals pinned on in neurotically straight rows.

"You look tired today, Shiki", joked Venias, brushing his white hair out of his eyes and perching his metal pince-nez on his beak-like nose. "Did you stay up all night washing your hair?"

The balding Shiki scrunched his face and forced a laugh at Venias' joke, even as other members of the Central Council began to file into the quartz palace of Amlin.

"By God, it's hot today", complained Kanan Malzyyn, the Deputy Chancellor, the tallest and burliest of the entire group but, for his temperament, may as well have been a goldfish.

"Should probably loosen your corset a little, then", Venias replied acerbically.

The mood among the highest echelons of the Human Union's leadership was tenser than ever before; as Kabu-hongan had broken the news to them just an hour ago (by telephone), the Tenth Messiah, Eternal Head of State of the Union and King of Heaven, had descended. The Church had already dispatched three high-ranking priests to find him and escort him to Ionis City, where he was to be given a welcome befitting of an incarnation of God.

In the meantime, they had to convene to discuss a course of action to prepare for the arrival of the Tenth Messiah and for the final, all-out war against the heathen races.

Except that there was one slight problem when they arrived, as a servant so eloquently put it to the Central Council by the time they convened in the meeting room.

"Your Excellencies, Chancellor Amlin has fallen downstairs and broken his skull."

His brains had splattered all over the glass floors he had so meticulously planned to perfection, his temple having struck a sharp corner of quartz.

Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin, ruler of the Human Union for 21 years and representative of the Tenth Messiah, was dead.

[Ihury]

The Quartz Palace, official residence of Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin

"Oh my God... fuck me senseless..." said Shiki, as the Central Council crowded round the body of Arzan Nimzel Amlin, clad in a black bathrobe that hung splayed open and revealed the 70-year-old man's shrivelled genitals, his eyes blank and his mouth eerily closed as his head, split half open at the temple, leaked grey mush all over the quartz floor.

A far cry, indeed, from the imposing figure who stood in the balconies, resplendent in medals and surrounded by his elite bodyguard, welcomed by the crowds of cheering people waving flags and iconic representations of the Tenth Messiah and of Amlin, even as the CNR and the Grand Synod continued dragging people away for the crimes they had committed. Here, splayed out on the floor, effectively naked and with his brains spilled all over the floor, Amlin was just a pitiful old man. A pitiful old man who had the blood of 11 million people on his hands.

"We need to think of the people", wheedled the clueless Malzyyn, on the verge of tears. "We need to hold a grand funeral for this great-"

"Do you still possess a working brain?" Venias growled at Malzyyn, his tongue full of malice. "You dumb animal, the Tenth Messiah has just appeared. All the people are going to be in a celebratory mood. They're going to see it as a portent of good. A good omen.

"Now think about what it would mean if the Chancellor dies on the same day that the Saviour of Man appears. Or do you need me to teach you how to ask to go to the toilet as well?"

"It's true what they say", quipped the gruff, moustachioed Labour Minister Nuvredon Tah to Shiki. "You gotta keep the dumbest people closest to you, because they won't know how to overthrow you."

"What are people's thoughts on... you know... getting a body double?" asked Bhanun Stiv, Minister for Cultural Purity, a short man with a foppish hairstyle. "Because... you know... we can't tell the people that he's... you know... sick either. It would be... you know... kind of the same thing as if... you know... we announced that he had... you know... died."

"We could just not have "him" make any public appearance", Malzyyn feebly suggested. He clearly couldn't keep up with the levels of intrigue.

"The leader who delivered a speech denouncing the enemies of Race, Religion, and Nation every five days? No fucking chance they're not going to notice anything", said Shiki.

"How about", suggested Selgus Tamrynus Vlenegtus, the hawkish Minister of War who looked like an actual hawk, "when the priests come back with the Messiah, we issue a statement from the office of Chancellor Amlin, saying that he's handed all executive powers to the Messiah?"

"But people will notice... you know... that he didn't deliver the resignation speech... you know... personally", said Stiv.

"Well, because he doesn't want to overshadow the splendour and authority of the Messiah", said Tah. "So he retires quietly-"

"But we'll also have to... you know... retire. Which means that we'll... you know..."

"For the moment", suggested Shiki, "let's just focus on fucking cleaning up the boss' body and managing this public relations fucking nightmare."

It was at that moment, just as Malzyyn was about to make a final attempt to sound more intelligent than he was, that the door was thrown open, and in came Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan, Archbishop of the Church of the Union and Chief of the Grand Synod, clad in splendorous purple robes with a mitre upon his head, his beady black eyes eyeing the body of his deceased boss lying at the foot of the stairs.

"Mourn not, my friends", he declared. For some reason, Kabu-hongan spoke exclusively in iambic. "'Tis time we speak of those great days ahead, that we may not lose sight of the great future that the King of Kings doth lay b'fore us."

"I agree", said Malzyyn, raising a sad finger to adjust his glasses. "Whatever we do, we must trust in God. We must trust that God the Father shall punish our enemies, that God the Mother shall protect us, and that the Tenth Messiah shall deliver this world to our hands. Ymhrū Nihāyu."

"Ymhrū Nihāyu", Archbishop Kabu-hongan repeated. "May God's great blessings shine upon our lands."

"Ymhrū Nihāyu", declared the other members of the Central Council, less Venias and Shiki.

"Let us get about to setting the foundations for our new era", declared Venias in his usual low, sneaky voice, heading to the meeting hall with an ill-concealed grin of glee on his face, as if he had been waiting for Amlin to die. "An era where Imru may see ten... nay... a hundred millennia of peace, under the rule of Men."

"And ere the clock strikes twelve", added Archbishop Kabu-hongan as he followed Venias and Shiki to the room, "we shall behold the face of our Messiah."

The rest quickly followed them to the room, to begin the first meeting.

...

A basement in Ionis City

"What do you mean, you couldn't get the Messiah to come?"

"We're sorry", wailed the three priests, as the masked Grand Synod agent, identified for their being dressed completely in white kid leather from head to toe, stripped the three fat men to their underpants, his colleagues holding spears to their bodies. "We couldn't convince him to come! He merely shook us off and... and... spewed profanity upon us! Please, forgive us!"

"Maybe our sacrifices to the Messiah are not sufficient...?" suggested one of the now naked priests.

"String them from the ceiling", said the chief Grand Synod agent. His men did so straight away, chaining the hands of the fat priests and then hooking them up to the ceiling with a series of pulleys. Screams of agony filled the basement, as did the popping sounds of wrists dislocating.

As the three priests writhed and cried in excruciating pain, the Grand Synod agent drew his cutlass and ran the blade along their fat bellies, the sound of his breathing made raspy and metallic by his cast iron mask, the only non-white part of his eerie white outfit.

"Do you really think the Messiah would just come to us?"

The priests were in too much pain to answer the agent.

"Did you really think your ass-kissing would do the job?"

"Please, don't kill us", whimpered one of the fat priests.

The interrogator, in a sudden burst of rage, slashed one of the priests' bellies open. The other two wailed louder.

"Do you want to die?"

"No!"

"What?"

"No!"

"Really?"

"Do you fools expect me to be able to go up to Archbishop Kabu-hongan... to Chairman Venias... and just tell them that the Tenth Messiah didn't respond to some silly begging?"

"Oh, oh, oh... why!?" moaned the priest whose belly had been slashed open.

"Perhaps you fools have spent so long in the frock that you can't think straight anymore, can you? Too busy eating and drinking and embezzling public funds to give a shit about how the world works, eh?"

"Fools. This whole game has never been about the Messiahs. It's a game of 4D chess."

...

Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze

A village!

Anatoly had played RPG games before, and if RPG games had taught him anything, it was that villages were a good thing.

You could raid villages, or you could quietly go in and blend in with them and use them as meat shields. Or you could seduce the mayor's wife and blackmail him to give you an unnatural quantity of hummus for no reason other than to satisfy your girlfriend's kink for sticky edible substances.

Regardless, thought Anatoly, as he walked closer and closer to the village, none of those would work. Not in a foreign world where he knew nothing about-

"Stop."

"Oh fuck what now?"

The one approaching Anatoly was a man dressed in a drab grey outfit, carrying what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. His gaze was so intense it seemed as if it would pierce right through Anatoly's messianic heart.

"Are you the Tenth Messiah?" asked the man in the drab grey outfit.

"Not this bullshit again." Anatoly rolled his eyes. "Yes, I am the Tenth Messiah, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. That's what the kid told me when I-"

Before Anatoly could finish his sentence, the man in the drab grey outfit quickly lifted a little pink crystal egg to his mouth, breathed on it, and then spoke.

"We've got him", said the man. "It's the Messiah, no doubt."

"Fuck me", said Anatoly. "I suppose you're one of those priest bastards too, no?"

The man in the dark grey outfit turned back to face Anatoly.

"I am Ilmari Yrjö Järvinen", he introduced himself. "I am Commander of Battalion II of the Octobrist Army-"

"A fucking Finn?" Anatoly screeched. "What the-"

"You're a Russian?" asked Ilmari, his eyes gazing straight at Anatoly, in a manner as piercing as a round from his high-powered, souped-up sniper rifle. Something told Anatoly it wasn't the best idea to get on this man's bad side.

"No, I'm a Georgian", he said. "I am... um... Anat'oli Iraklis dze Nozadze."

Ilmari's face lit up, and he extended his hand.

"A pleasure to meet you, Anat'oli", he said, patting him on the back. Then, leaning in, he whispered, "Just so you know, if there's one type of people I dislike more than the Unionists... it's the Russians. I think you're with me on this one, aren't you, georgialainen?"

"Yes I am", said Anatoly.

Ilmari chuckled jovially.

"Come with me, Anat'oli", he said. "I'll bring you to meet my boss."

"Already I am beginning to like these people better."

[Aeternabilis]

Legends of the Last Romans; Aeternal Road

Titus took the pieces of coral from Cay and brought them up to his eye, studying them closely. To his amazement, sure enough, they had begun to slowly regenerate. "Incredible!" the man exclaimed. He excitedly grabbed Cay's forearm for a handshake. "You've got a deal, my friend. These will greatly aid me in my study of magical artifacts. Assuming they're not confiscated by the damned Auluns, of course..." Titus pulled away from the handshake and carefully wrapped the coral in some cloth before stashing it deep into his satchel. "Speaking of the Auluns, you should consider being wary of them yourself. I'm sure you're a perfectly pious man, but unless you can prove that to them, they might see fit to declare your wonderful armor a blasphemy. And trust me, nobody wants that."

"Sugar?" Aelia asked Riksuka incredulously before laughing out loud. "You're either stupid or richer than I am to be asking for a spice like that. And trust me, you're not richer than I am. I suppose we can spare a bit of food and water if you need it, though. What kind of hosts would we be to let you starve, eh?" The trader looked behind her and yelled for a servant, and one quickly hurried along with a skin of water and some bread. Aelia offered it to Riksuka and Jeanne saying, "It might not look like much, because it isn't. Anything fancier and we'll have to start charging."

With Riksuka dealt with, Aelia looked back at Valerian. "You want to work for me? Hmm... well, I''m not sure if I need any more traders for this current expedition, but I'll think about it on the road."

One of the caravan guards laughed out loud when Jeanne said she was on bodyguard duty. "You, a bodyguard? Seriously? You're a tiny woman! Who in their right mind would pay to have you protect them?" "She doesn't even have a spear," Another guard chimed in, joining his friend in laughing. "Just that shortsword!" The two broke out into laughter again, before being yelled at by Aelia to get back to work.

War of Flesh and Metal; Cairo, Egypt

"I think they will, actually!" Trishna yelled back at Venera. Her retort would likely go unheard, however, as the massive churning of the tower of water around her drowned out all other sounds. As proof of this theory, the old-fashioned looking girl got nailed in the abdomen by one of the iceballs and was currently scuttling around, injured, in the floodwaters. Through the water, Trishna felt it all. She decided that the old-fashioned girl was too hurt to be a threat for the time being, so it was now time to give the same treatment to the rest of the freakshow. The irony of her, a hydrokinetic currently embodying the Nile, referring to this group as a freakshow was not lost on her.

"Dude, that's fucking gross!" Marcus yelled, barely audible over the sound of the water, at Hersel as he fashioned his blood spike. When he threw it, the spike pierced through the water and penetrated through one of Trishna's protective ice plates, but was deflected away from hitting her. The woman looked over and laughed at the troll. "Hey, idiot! Blood's half water! You didn't think that would work, did you?" She glanced around and noticed Venera shooting arrow after arrow into the torrential tower, all being lost to the massive current, and got an idea. Creating her own icy spear, sharp as a razor, she targeted Venera and hurled it at tremendous speeds, striking the Seer in the leg. "There! You want blood? Take all you can get from your own kind!"

L-Fel Labs; Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Another portal opened up near Julian and out fell Ivan and Ji-yeong, both of whom managed to recover in the air and drift to their feet rather than hit the ground. "Vhat zhe hell just happened?" Ivan asked, looking around. One minute they were in Wakanda fighting aliens, and the next they were here with nary an alien around and their friends nowhere to be seen. At least Ji-yeong had ended up here with him. "Vhere are Jonah and Alena?" "And where are we?" Ji-yeong asked, looking around. This place had a totally different look and feel to it than Wakanda, or really any place she had been, and the Witch had no idea where they could be. Ivan looked over at her and frowned. "I'm not sure. America, maybe? No idea vhat part, zhough..." He noticed Julian walking down the street and yelled to her, "Hey, you! Vhere are ve? Do you know how ve got here?"

[Ihury]

Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze

The village, it turned out, was not just a village. On the outside it was a civilian encampment, if one guarded extremely heavily by soldiers of all shapes, sizes, and ethnic groups, wielding weapons of various levels of technological advancement.

Further in, however, hidden behind a large hill, was a military airspace. As Ilmari Järvinen ushered Anatoly to the office, the Russian Georgian stopped for a moment to watch as several airships slowly touched down upon the airfield, their splendorous iron guns and wings glinting in the sunlight, reflecting the magenta sky.

"This is so steampunk", said Anatoly in awe.

From the largest of the airships came four men, one of whom appeared to be a prisoner.

One was an Asian boy no older than 18, dressed in a gunmetal grey silk robe and trousers with a single maroon stripe going down the arms and the sides of the legs, wearing a long blue scarf and a pair of aviator goggles on his forehead. Another was a ripped African dude of about 65 years with a white beard and only one arm wearing a black trench coat and carrying six katana for some reason, despite having only one arm; like the Finn, the ripped old African dude had a pair of golden eyes that could probably pierce through a bulletproof wall. The third was a man who clearly looked Lithuanian (Anatoly could identify Lithuanians; they had a vibe to them), dressed in a Soviet-era air force uniform.

The prisoner, for what it was worth, was a disgusting looking man chained in a mildly erotic position. The look on his face suggested he clearly enjoyed being chained up, as did the suspicious stain around his crotch area that smelled like a certain body fluid.

"Commander Järvinen", greeted the Asian boy with a cheeky smirk.

"Commander Itō", Ilmari returned the greeting, barely able to conceal his glee. "Congratulations on a mission well done. Our fleet's looking finer every day."

"Please", begged the prisoner, giggling in a heavily sexually charged manner. "Hurt me, daddy Jugemu."

The Lithuanian man marched up to the prisoner.

"Please beat me", the prisoner begged, even louder.

The Lithuanian man struck the prisoner in the belly so hard that he crumpled and fell on the ground, writhing in (ecstatic?) agony, his chains rattling.

"Not today!" bellowed the Lithuanian. "You're a fucking stain on the face of this world. You're under us now, so you'd best fucking behave!"

The prisoner moaned.

"Who's this guy?" asked the Asian boy.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you", said Ilmari.

"Who is it?"

"I'm Anatoly Nozadze", said Anatoly. "Apparently, I'm the Tenth Messiah too. Even though I never asked for this job-"

"No bloody way", said the Asian boy.

"Did you not see the signs in the sky?" said the ripped old African guy.

"No no no, I mean... all the previous nine Messiahs have been crazy assholes", said the Asian boy. "And then boom! The Tenth and supposedly most powerful one turns out to be a guy I could actually talk to!"

Anatoly chuckled and cringed.

"My name is Jugemu", introduced the boy with a jovial smile, pulling off his right glove and shaking Anatoly's hand. "Jugemu Itō. That's not my full name, but I'll tell you on another day."

"You're asking for it, Jugemu", said Ilmari, rolling his eyes.

"I am Tadesse Haile Alemayehu", said the ripped old African guy with only one arm. He extended his left arm to Anatoly who, having shaken Jugemu's hand with his right hand, now had to twist his right arm to shake Tadesse's left hand (i.e. the hand he had left). "Pleasure to meet you."

The Lithuanian didn't say anything, but merely trampled on the prisoner's face until several teeth fell out, before seizing him by the collar and dragging him away. The prisoner, for what it was worth, seemed to be in a state of total sexual ecstasy. He may as well have been ejaculating uncontrollably while dangling from a cross.

"Shall we go meet the boss?", suggested Ilmari to Anatoly, as the other commanders followed.

...

"We are the Octobrists", explained Ilmari to Anatoly, as they walked down the airfield, past the rows of steam-powered warships parked neatly on the tarmac. "We are a resistance comprising people exiled from the Human Union and people snatched from other worlds by accident. Our mission is to destroy the Human Union, declare an armistice to the war that's been going on, and try the war criminals responsible, regardless of their race."

"War?" Anatoly asked. "There's a fuckin' war going on too?"

"That's right", said Jugemu. "Three thousand plus years. My mum was a general in their army, until she defected. I was born and raised here."

"Basically", explained Ilmari, "Everybody wants to rule Imru, but especially the Humans. They've got this religion where they think God will send a guy to come beat everybody else to a pulp and subjugate them to the race of Men. You are, as they believe, that one guy. You are the Tenth Messiah."

"I didn't sign up for this shit", Anatoly protested.

"That's why we're glad to have you here", said Tadesse.

Anatoly nodded and puckered his face in acknowledgement.

"I like you guys already", he said.

"We'd be happy if you could help us fight the-"

"But nooo! I don't want to do any fighting", Anatoly added. "I just want to do whatever the fuck I want. You know, like I've done for my whole life."

"Understandable", said Tadesse, his voice deadpan as always. "Have a nice day."

They stopped outside a little wooden cabin at the end of the airfield, guarded by two men in Soviet-style uniforms armed (incongruously) with Chinese swords. Ilmari stepped forward, knocked on the door, and waited.

"General Nergüi", said Ilmari, "We've got the Tenth Messiah with us. He's willing to help us out."

"That's not what I-"

"Come in."

...

The Quartz Palace, official residence of Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin

"Whaddaya mean, you don't have the Messiah!?" yelled Shiki at the Grand Synod officer who had come to the meeting hall to deliver the news.

"Your Excellency, it seems the priests we sent were unable to convince the Messiah to come to us", explained the officer. "Our spies say he's gone to the headquarters of the Octobrists-"

At the officer's final sentence, Venias slammed his fist into the table so hard that it cracked. The officer figuratively shat his pants.

"Don't you tell me that bullshit", said Venias, climbing out of his chair and snaking over to the officer, who stood a full head taller than he did. "The Messiah... is ours. Whether or not the Messiah himself wants it or not. And you will get him, whether the Messiah wants it or not. Do you understand me?"

The officer literally pissed his pants.

"You know", said Malzyyn to Venias, "you are being almost blasphemous, Venias. The Messiah will not tolerate this-"

"You spineless vermin, you're just a cadaver we embalmed and propped up in a fancy fucking uniform", Venias hissed back at Malzyyn. Then, clearly incensed, he leaned heavily on the table, eyeing every single member of the council, including the Archbishop.

"It's time all of you realised just who's been doing all the dirty work", he spat venomously. "Just who's been doing the shit job that everybody hates me for. Just who's been keeping the daggers out of your backs and the ropes away from your necks. Show some fucking respect!"

"That's enough, Venias!" demanded Tah. "You-"

Reaching for his briefcase, Venias withdrew a stack of papers, held together with three paperclips.

"I have documents on all of you!" he said, his face turning red with rage.

"You bastard!" "Venias, what are you doing?"

"You", spat Venias, pointing at Shiki, "are the one responsible for the Famine of Telris, six years ago. Five hundred and sixty six dead." He tore a paper out of the stack and waved it in Shiki's face. "Here! The fucking order to withhold the grain supply! Your goddamn signature!"

"Stop this at once, Venias!"

"Oh, you now?" Venias tore another paper out of the stack and waved it in Vlenegtus' face. "Aren't you the one who fucking killed all those poor blameless, innocent babies that night? Yes, that fucking night, 22nd of August, nine years ago! The Yprotin Incident, in the mountains! Your signature as well! How does your conscience accommodate that?!"

"And you, Bhanun Stiv, Minister of Cultural Purity! You had your own fucking parents executed, didn't you!? Oh wait, you did, because I have the fucking court documents!" "And you, Malzyyn! Grow a spine for once, goddamn parasite! Or need I remind you that it was you who had the Chancellor's nephew tortured and sent those girls to their fucking deaths two years ago!?"

The room had erupted into a flurry of vicious, bestial roars.

"ALL OF YOU!!!" Venias screamed, tears of rage running down his cheeks, his face purple as an eggplant. "I HAVE DOCUMENTS ON ALL OF YOU!!!" He slammed the stack of papers on the table. "I've seen what you've done! I know the truth! It's all written down, on a very fucking long list!"

Silence for a moment. And then, the Archbishop spoke.

"Thou canst not find my signature", he said to Venias calmly. "It's not on any of those papers."

Venias cast a poisonous glare at the Archbishop.

"And let this serve as a reminder, all of thee", said the Archbishop, this time to the entire committee, standing up and putting his mitre back on, as he left the room. "The Church is King. To go against the Church and my authority is to oppose the God of all creation."

With the Archbishop gone, Venias sank back into his chair.

"Are we done?" Shiki sardonically asked.

"You know what?" said Venias, his voice calm once again, heaving heavily and keeping the papers in his briefcase, as he stood back up. "Let's just go with the body double idea. When we get the Messiah, we shall come up with some excuse to pacify the people as to why they don't look alike. Good day."

And with that, Venias left the room too.

The rest sat in silence for a moment. And then Shiki spoke.

"Let's have those two arrested and killed", he suggested bluntly.

All the others looked at Shiki with faces of abject incredulity. Then, they all nodded reluctantly. Except for Malzyyn.

"Vlenegtus", said Shiki to the War Minister, "call General Tobias Rishi-zamun. Get him to bring a platoon of his men to this palace on the pretext of security. At the next meeting, we arrest Venias and Kabu-hongan, and then we take the rest from there."

"There's just one problem", said Tah.

"And what is that?"

"The CNR and the Grand Synod are in charge of security for the Chancellor's palace."

...

[Ihury]

Ionis City, Central Headquarters of the CNR - 11:45PM

In the dark of night, Venias, who held the keys to the CNR’s Headquarters, had his limousine drive straight to the HQ from the glass palace. It was a one hour drive, down the windy streets of the central business districts, past the residential areas, and through several sections of artificial wilderness, before heading straight for a restricted area cordoned off by barbed wire and a sign that demoted government territory. Seeing the limo number, the guards at the booth clicked their heels and stood to rigid attention, saluting Venias’ car as he went past.

Clutching his briefcase tightly as the car screeched to a stop at the front porch of the imposing concrete building, Venias brushed his silver hair upwards and perched his black fedora atop his head, before climbing out of the car and walking in towards the doors, his short figure dressed impeccably and ominously in a black trench coat and suit.

The CNR Headquarters was one of the only places in the entirety of Ionis City where the sound of airships buzzing overhead could not be heard.

Without wasting any time, Venias headed straight for his office, ordering his bodyguards to remain outside. He went in and pulled open every single drawer.

For the whole night, he ransacked his own office, feeding any documents with his own signature into the fireplace, while collecting any incriminating documents on his colleagues in the Central Council and stuffing whatever he could into his briefcase. By the time it was 4AM, his office was cleaner than anything, with all the relevant documents nearly filed into manila envelopes and leather files and stuffed into his briefcase. With the sky still dark, Venias emerged from his office, went down to his car, and ordered the driver to head back to the Quartz Palace.

It was then that an officer came running out of the building, clutching a freshly printed paper.

“Sir”, he called to Venias. “I have received word that the Grand Synod is coming here, and would like to speak to you regarding matters of state security.”

Venias froze in his tracks and snatched the paper away from the officer, his bespectacled eyes scanning the text robotically.

“Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan, you sly bastard...”

Venias handed the paper back to the officer.

“Destroy this at once and erase any record of the call from the CNR’s registry”, he ordered. Then, to the driver, he said, “take me back to my home first. I want to fetch my wand.”

...

Archbishop Kabu-hongan’s palace

As per the orders of Kabu-hongan, three girls of about seventeen or eighteen had been brought into his banquet hall, dolled up in the finest clothes available, and sat down at the immaculately-arranged table as waiters brought out platter after platter of food.

Kabu-hongan himself came out shortly, dressed in a set of fine evening dress.

“Enjoy the food that I have laid out here for thee”, he urged the girls with a jovial smile.

For an hour, they ate and ate, until the girls could eat no longer. The archbishop himself ate at least two men’s ordinary portions, showing no sign of slowing down, stopping occasionally only to look at the girls awkwardly chatter.

Then he stood up and whispered to one of the guards, “get ready the bouquets, and send out the other two.”

With that, he lurched forward and seized one of the girl’s arms, dragging her towards him and forcefully hugging her with a grin.

“Nothing to see here”, said another guard, pushing the other two girls out, who were too frightened to speak up for the one the Archbishop had taken. “Get the hell out of here.”

“Let go of me!” The girl whom the Archbishop had grabbed protested, fighting hard against the big man.

“How soft! What beauty lies within your body and without!” Said the Archbishop, his iambic still holding despite his ecstatic state. He unbuttoned his pants and began dragging the girl towards his room, as the guards chased the other two girls away. “Please tell me what your name is, greatest beauty!”

“No I will not!” The girl flatly refused, still fighting back against Kabu-hongan. “You’re not a Bishop! You’re just a rapist! Representative of the Messiah, my ass!”

“How dare you speak this way about the ones appointed by the King of Kings!” The Archbishop continued dragging her further towards the little room at the end of the dining hall.

Finally, out of desperation, just before the Archbishop could drag her into his room, the girl seized his arm, sank her teeth into his wrist so deep that her canines drew blood, and then tore the emerald signet ring off his finger and ran off towards the doorway. Archbishop Kabu-hongan merely looked at her with an evil grin.

As she dashed out of the door, the guard, out of confusion, handed her the bouquet.

“Thanks for the bouquet, disgusting old man”, the girl spat at the Archbishop.

“It’s not a bouquet”, the Archbishop replied, with a grin on his face, as he clutched the wrist she had bitten. “It’s a funeral wreath.”

Down the steps of Kabu-hongan’s Palace she went, until she reached the road, at which point it was already sunrise. Then, a black armoured car stopped just where she was, the dark silhouettes inside the car barely visible behind the tinted windows. Before the girl could go anywhere, the door opened, and a man in the uniform of the Grand Synod burst out, snapped a picture of the girl as she stopped by the roadside, the open door of Archbishop Kabu-hongan’s palace in the background, and then picked up the protesting girl and loaded her into the car, before driving off into the sunrise.

...

Shiki’s house

Before leaving his house to attend yet another Central Council meeting, Nargami Shiki had concealed a combat wand in his jacket pocket.

He expected things to go sour one way or another, despite having spent the whole night calling his colleagues and generals whom he trusted, in an attempt to win them to his side against the sinister secret police chief Laurentis Venias and the overzealous Archbishop Kabu-hongan.

So far, Shiki confirmed, Labour Minister Nuvredon Tah and Cultural Purity Minister Bhanun Stiv were on his side. War Minister Vlenegtus had agreed to help, but only on condition that the Chief of the Military agreed. Which, to Shiki’s relief, he did. General Rishi-zamun, to the surprise of Shiki, greatly despised both Venias and Kabu-hongan. A plot to have them taken out was something for which he had been waiting for a long time.

All that was left was Malzyyn. The spineless heir apparent to Chancellor Amlin, should word ever get out that the Chancellor was dead.

“Driver”, said Shiki to his driver, climbing into his limo and adjusting his suit, subtly feeling the combat magic wand he had concealed inside should things get messy, “to the Quartz Palace.”

...

Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze- Octobrist HQ

General Tömörbaatargiin Nergüi was a gigantic bear of a man, standing at least double the height of Jugemu and tall enough to have to look down at Anatoly when speaking to him. Even the six foot two Tadesse was almost a full head shorter than the fearsome general. What made him particularly terrifying was the fact that both his eyes were blind, the surrounding parts of his face comprising entirely scar tissue, and yet he looked at the ones he spoke to as if he could see them clearly.

"Welcome, Anatoly Nozadze", greeted Nergüi. "We are honoured to have you here."

"Thank you, General", Anatoly deferentially replied, stopping just short of saying the General's name, which he couldn't pronounce.

"Ilmari, come here", said Nergüi. The Finn promptly did so, leaning in to his boss' side. Quickly, General Nergüi whispered something into Ilmari's ear, and the Finn left the room, slinging his sniper rifle across his shoulder. "Mr Anatoly, I shall have my men explain the situation in Imru to you shortly. I understand that you do not yet understand the full gravity of what is happening..."

"Finally, someone gets it!" Anatoly burst, exasperated and triumphant.

General Nergüi chuckled, amused at Anatoly's mannerism.

"However, before you go, please help yourself to the food that we have laid out at the messing area."

...

At the dining area, Anatoly was quickly hushed away from view of the soldiers, many of whom turned their heads to look at the odd guy carrying the bag with three stripes that matched his trousers with three stripes and a maroon katana to boot. He was brought to a separate tent set aside as a dual-purpose infirmary and officer's mess area.

On the side of the messing area, a fat, bored-looking woman in her middle age stood by a large metal pot, from which rose the aroma of soup of some sort (Pork? Lentils? Onions?). On the other side was a large alchemical laboratory of sorts, complete with brewing equipment, distillation flasks, bookshelves filled with old tomes, as well as racks and cabinets packed with herbs and plants of sort. Sitting on the bench at that area was an infantryman whose complexion was paler than an anaemic horse's vomit, being served a hot drink by a kindly, slightly-hunched bald old man.

"Rooibos tea, infused with puffwort and ceruleaf, with a sprinkling of black sugar", said the old man, as he handed the cup to the sick-looking infantryman. He paused, smiled at Anatoly and the others, and then carried on mixing another concoction for the man. Jugemu waved back with a big grin on his face.

"That's our healer, Rerir", explained Tadesse. "He used to be a priest in the Union, but then he defected to our side."

"Oh, we've got a new boy, eh?" said the bored-looking fat lunch lady, spooning out bowls of the lentil-heavy pork and onion soup for the three.

"That's the Tenth Messiah", explained Tadesse.

The bored-looking fat lunch lady's jaw hit the ground.

"Yea, just gimme the soup", said Anatoly.

"No", said the bored-looking fat lunch lady, picking up black bread buns with a pair of tongs and balancing them on top of the rims of the bowls she was dishing out to Tadesse and Jugemu. "I'm serving them first, because they queued up first. Stand in line."

Once they had taken their soup, the three headed to the benches, with Tadesse and Jugemu sitting normally. Anatoly, however, squatted on the bench seat, drawing the attention of the lunch lady.

"Stop squatting!" she demanded Anatoly, pointing at him accusingly. "You're getting the dirt on your shoes on the benches! Sit down normally!"

"But-"

"Sit down! Do not defy me! Sit your fat arse down!"

In a single day, Anatoly had been both sycophantically bootlicked, indirectly threatened by a scary Finnish guy, and scolded by a fat lunch lady for squatting on a bench.

"What a day", he mumbled to himself, tearing out a chunk of the black bread with his teeth and swallowing.

...

[Prusselanden]

Sault St Marie
Julian jerked a little as Ivan and Ji-Yeong called to her. Her instincts told her to run from him, but seeing they didn't know where they were, she could deduce that they were merely more Multiversal travellers and not L-Fel associates. She slowed down a little, looking at the two so they could catch up with her.

"You're in Salt St Marie, Michigan, USA. You can follow me if you want, but I wouldn't reccomend it."

She continued walking and pulled out a phone, calling He’s Konstantinos and letting him know Jona would be staying with Konny for a while.

[Ihury]

The Quartz Palace, official residence of Chancellor Arzan Nimzel Amlin

One day after the death of Chancellor Amlin, the Central Council met once again in the Quartz Palace to discuss matters of national security and of war with the other nations.

"Good morning, Venias", Tah warmly greeted the secret police chief, as he entered the palace alongside Venias, who was carrying his black leather briefcase as usual. It was as if the argument of the previous day had never happened.

"Good morning, Tah", Venias returned the greeting in his usual raspy voice. "I trust you've had a good night's rest. Today will be a long first day in the new chapter of our Union's history."

Then, leaning in to one of the CNR guards standing by the steps, Venias whispered, "Have my limo ready to leave. Keep the engine running."

...

For some reason, Archbishop Kabu-hongan was not present in the meeting, but that was a small matter; Nargami Shiki was ready to spring the trap even without the 70-year-old reprobate. If anything, things were made easier, now that they only had to arrest that pig Venias. They'd go after Kabu-hongan another time and press charges of misusing the name of the Messiah for political ends, or something like that.

As the waiters set out drinks for everybody, the room was suddenly graced with the presence of General Tobias Rishi-zamun, Chief of the Army of the Human Union, a bald man wearing a pair of round glasses and sporting a moustache. Throwing his cloak aside, Rishi-zamun took his seat at where the Archbishop usually sat, casting a smile at Venias, who smiled back.

"Time to set aside our differences", said Venias, chairing the meeting, "and get to work at setting the foundations of our next step in our plan to conquer-"

Shiki slammed the table.

"I would like to propose a new agenda", Shiki declared in his rat-like voice. "Namely, the conduct of The Honourable Laurentis Venias."

"If you have a serious proposal", said Venias, "then by all means, but please keep it for the miscellaneous business at the-"

"Seconded!" boomed War Minister Vlenegtus, pounding his fist on the table.

"Seconded!" declared Labour Minister Tah. "It's time to take stock!"

"Mr Shiki, I abhor this blatant breach of protocol-"

"Seconded! We need to... you know... get round-" "Malzyyn, do something, you piece of shit-" "Shut up!" "Gentlemen!" "GET HIM TO SIT DOWN!" "Press the button under the desk, you fool!"

As Malzyyn sat at the table confused, Shiki climbed onto the table, charged across, and then pushed the acting Chancellor violently out of his seat, before slamming the little button that had been stuck underneath his part of the table.

"Oh, for God's sake-"

Venias seized his briefcase and made for the door, only for Shiki, Rishi-zamun, and Tah to draw their wands and point them at the secret police chief.

"Laurentis Venias, you are under arrest for the crime of state terrorism and abuse of power", declared Rishi-zamun.

For a moment, Venias stood still, his fears confirmed.

Then he reached into his jacket, withdrew his own wand, and fired a blast of magic energy straight at Shiki, hitting him in the hand and causing him to drop his wand, crying in shock as his hand was scalded and burned by the blast of magic energy.

Tah and Rishi-zamun raised their wands and prepared to fire, only for Venias to kick the door open and dash out. At the same time, the sound of fighting echoed through the halls, as Rishi-zamun's troops fought with Venias' CNR agents stationed for security reasons in the Quartz Palace. Gunshots and the sound of wands being fired ricocheted through the glass halls, as Shiki, using his other hand, went after Venias, firing incessantly and hitting him once on the back. Venias, still running towards the exit, fired a few shots back at Shiki, before charging down the stairs and into his limousine, which promptly drove off, leaving Shiki on the porch.

"Just as I had feared", said Venias, taking off his jacket and pressing a towel against the wound on his back, soaking up the blood and pus that was coming out. "They're attempting to seize power."

"Where to, sir?" asked the chauffeur.

"To the CNR headquarters", Venias scratchily replied. "I shall have to take action against these traitors."

...

Later that night

Archbishop Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan's house was raided in the middle of the night by troops loyal to General Tobias Rishi-zamun. Storming the palatial building, the soldiers arrested all of Kabu-hongan's butlers and the Grand Synod bodyguards protecting him, taking down portraits of Chancellor Amlin and of the Tenth Messiah (not the actual Messiah, but as the humans envisioned the Messiah to be), before heading straight for the Archbishop's room.

Kabu-hongan was caught in the act of getting ready to advance on a naked boy tied to the bed. Without mercy, as the rest of the Central Council (who had turned up to arrest the Archbishop) watched, General Rishi-zamun marched up to the Archbishop and punched him in the face. The Archbishop screamed, as his glasses shattered and shards pierced his left eye, only to be sent crashing into the wall as the General seized his clerical collars and violently shoved him backwards into the wall, hitting the old Archbishop's head against the bronze frame of a painting of himself that sat on the wall.

"Chairman Laurentis Venias", read Nargami Shiki from a piece of paper, as General Rishi-zamun's soldiers searched the Archbishop for any hidden weapons, "is accused of abusing his position as Chairman of the CNR to conduct state terrorism resulting in the deaths of no fewer than 50,000 people, of abusing his position as Chairman of the CNR to further his own private interests, and of abusing his position as Chairman of the CNR to further the interests of hostile powers. This court finds him guilty, and sentences him to be shot in absentia."

"What is this trav'sty?!" demanded the Archbishop. "Dost this most knavish band of thugs have gall enough to put a servant of the Great Messiah on trial!!?"

As Army soldiers covered the naked boy in a blanket and quickly brought him to safety, out of the room, Shiki took out a second piece of paper, his hand bandaged after Venias had hit it with his wand, before reading:

"Archbishop Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan, you are accused of abusing your position as Archbishop of the Church of the Union to further your private interests, of abusing your position as Chief of the Grand Synod to conduct state terrorism resulting in the deaths of no fewer than 20,000 people..."

"But all of thee have blood most bount'ful upon your hands!" protested the Archbishop. "How dare thee, turning on me when thine conscience be not clear!"

"...of abusing the name of the Tenth Messiah for political aim..."

"Thou judg'st me!?" screamed the Archbishop at Shiki, attempting to reach for him. "I judge thee! I judge thee! I judge the lot of thee!"

"...and for the rape of 78 girls and 49 boys, some as young as 9 years old."

At the last charge, the Archbishop's face morphed from an expression of indignation to one of terror, that highest terror seen in the face of a man consigned to hell. He began to whimper loudly, soiling himself. The other members of the Central Council, who once treated the Archbishop with the utmost respect, erupted into cries of disgust against him.

"Rapist! You're a rapist!" "Go to hell, rapist!" "You're a pedophile!" "Fuck you!" "Pedophile!" "Rapist!"

"This court finds you guilty", yelled Shiki, over the sound of his colleagues and the General's soldiers loudly denouncing the Archbishop, "and sentences you to be summarily shot."

Amidst the cheers and the angry hollering, General Rishi-zamun promptly handcuffed the whimpering Archbishop and removed his belt, before unzipping his faeces-stained pants and allowing them to fall round his ankles. Two other soldiers grabbed the Archbishop's elbows and forced him out of the room, the soiled pants round his ankles retarding his movement.

"NO! PLEASE!!" cried the Archbishop, soiling and wetting himself more, no longer speaking in verse. "PLEASE DON'T SHOOT ME! PLEASE SPARE ME! I'LL DO ANYTHING! PLEASE, SPARE ME-"

One soldier, sick of hearing Kabu-hongan's cries for mercy, tore a corner of the rug with his sabre and stuffed it into the Archbishop's mouth.

As the rest of the council followed him out, some of them with looks of clear guilt on their faces, others with barely concealable glee, the soldiers dragged Kabu-hongan into his garden and, in the blink of an eye, General Rishi-zamun had drawn his pistol and emptied sixteen rounds into the Archbishop's quivering, corpulent body.

With the last gunshot, the entire palace fell into silence, the only sound being the whirring of military airships flying overhead.

[Ihury]

HQ of the Octobrists

“Our organisation is known as the Octobrists”, explained Tadesse to Anatoly, “because it was first formed on the First of October, in the year 3206, by General Nergüi. That was fifty eight ears ago. Back then, we had just thirty men. Now, we have almost three thousand.”

“Not bad, not bad”, said Anatoly, slurping up his second bowl of soup.

“We believe that the Human Union’s religion of human supremacy based around worship of the Ten Messiahs is wrong and misguided, evil even, and that it will bring about the end of civilisation as we know it”, Tadesse continued. “At the rate we have been going for the past three thousand years, this war between Humans and the other five races will never end. There may be victories here and there by either side, but the peace never lasts. We can only bring true peace to this world through communication, not through destruction.”

“Why exactly do the humans fight with everybody else?” Anatoly asked.

“Because that’s what their holy book tells them they must do”, said Jugemu, pushing aside his empty bowl. “That’s what it says in the Idron Tamur, in the Book of Am-zuraichi, at the end of Chapter 18:

“O ye men, oldest and fairest of the six races of Imru, verily doth the God of Peace and War, of Justice and Mercy, of Father and Mother, verily doth God grant thee the three corners of this world. For the race of Men shall trample underfoot the vile races of the devil, and with the coming of the Tenth Messiah, shall establish the Kingdom of God upon the fertile soils of Imru, and no longer shall the world see war, but peace on the terms of the God of this realm.”

Anatoly fell silent.

“Does nobody ever point out, that sounds like a scam meant to con the dumbasses who want an excuse to seem like less of the losers they really are?” He inquired.

“They don’t read their own book”, said Jugemu. “Their priests read it for them, tell them what they are supposed to think, and none of them actually dare to think about whether it actually makes any sense.”

“Then how do you explain all this Messiah business-“

“Because that bit”, interjected Tadesse, “is all true. This world is governed by a God, who has sent nine Messiahs in thus far, and as of yesterday, has sent you, the Tenth Messiah.”

“So why don’t we all follow this God?” Asked Anatoly. “Seeing as there is one-“

“Because this God is an asshole”, Jugemu sardonically replied. “If we follow what he says, everybody is eventually going to die, and things will all go to the dirt.”

“In that case...”

“We can’t trust the God of this world”, said Tadesse, sighing. “We can only rely on ourselves if we are ever to create genuine peace.

“As to whether or not God will allow it...”

...

Tömörbaatargiin Nergüi’s office

“Ilmari. Wilhelm. Jurgis.”

The three men left in General Nergüi’s office stood deferentially before the desk of the blind general who had created the most legendary opposition to the three-millennia Human Union. Finishing his cup of hot tea, General Nergüi lifted his head to the sky, surveying the ceiling with his destroyed eyes, and then looking back down at the three whom he had summoned before him.

“I am ninety-eight years old”, said Nergüi. “My days in this world are numbered. Although I am still healthy, I can already see the writing on the wall.”

All three men nodded.

“It is now August the twentieth”, the old general solemnly continued. “By October the first of this year, 3206, I should like to hand the reins of this great organisation over to someone younger. Someone who is able to bear this burden that I shall soon no longer possess the strength to shoulder. Someone, around whom the brave men and women of this organisation can rally. These are the final days of the war. I can sense it. Believe you me, ere the end of next year, we shall see bloodshed come upon the soils and waters of Imru, raining down from the magenta skies. And then... we shall see peace, on equal or unequal terms for all.”

“General”, said Jurgis, the Lithuanian. “Who do you wish to see take the helm of the Octobrists?”

Leaning back in his chair, Tömörbaatargiin Nergüi inhaled deeply and exhaled sombrely, looking down at his feet. The three men whom he had summoned to the room glanced at each other.

“It will either be one of you three”, declared the General, “or Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze.”

...

The Quartz Palace - two days later

After the execution of Archbishop Kabu-hongan, the Central Council took control of the government and of the Church of the Union. The Grand Synod and the CNR, the dreaded secret police apparatus of the Union, were dissolved on the orders of Shiki and merged into a single organisation: the Hmānijanus Norōdyy Amnaretu Ūruki (HNAU), AKA the New Bureau for the Security of the Human Race, placed under the control of Cultural Purity Minister Bhanun Stiv.

Shortly afterwards, Nargami Shiki moved against the same colleagues who had helped him remove Laurentis Venias and Semangat Suci Kabu-hongan.

First to go was the 68-year-old War Minister Vlenegtus, seen by many as a relic of the Amlin Era. In a stunning denunciation, Vlenegtus’ counterparts voted unanimously for his demotion; Vlenegtus, unable and too afraid to resist the fearsome 54-year-old Shiki, submitted a resignation letter to Shiki and quickly saw himself out, disappearing completely. Command of the War Ministry went over to Shiki.

Next, Labour Minister Nuvredon Tah and Cultural Purity Minister and HNAU Chairman (for one day) Bhanun Stiv were accused of embezzlement and large-scale abuses of power. Tah, who had long been a steadfast and reliable ally of Shiki, was quietly offered a “choice” to resign, which he accepted; by the end of the day, Tah had been relinquished of his portfolio and consigned to the countryside with a generous pension. Command of the Ministry of Labour, Mining, and Agriculture went to Shiki. Bhanun Stiv, who had opposed Shiki on several occasions in the past, was not so lucky; accused of treason, he was sentenced to death by a court organised by (ironically) his very own HNAU intelligence apparatus, command of which shifted to Shiki. Unlike the Archbishop, who had soiled his pants and begged for the mercy he never showed to the victims of the Grand Synod, Stiv accepted his death with stoic calm, declaring it to be punishment for the crimes he had perpetrated as a member of Arzan Nimzel Amlin’s cabinet.

“I am but a criminal. A wicked man who had been granted a position of power. This is my just desserts. And today, I go to my death, knowing that I have at least partially atoned for my sins through the cutting short of my life. I am convicted, but soon, so shall be the one who has convicted me, for none of us have clean hands at the top of the Union’s leadership. Ymhrū Nihāyu.”

In a bunker under an army base, 60-year-old Bhanun Stiv was hanged. Command of the Cultural Purity Ministry was transferred to Nargami Shiki.

The last one left standing against Shiki was Kanan Malzyyn.

“Shiki, you cannot carry on like this”, he pleaded, at a meeting of the new Central Council filled with generals and Shiki’s subordinates. “Those men you demoted... they were our colleagues. Our allies, our friends. You were one of them...”

Shiki glared at Malzyyn with a poisonous glare.

“It’s too late, Malzyyn”, he said. “Your time was yesterday, but you failed to act. Now you’re paying the price for your inaction.”

By the end of the week, Malzyyn had been demoted and sent to the countryside on a pension. At long last, after sixteen years of waiting, Shiki had become Chancellor of the Human Union. News of Chancellor Amlin’s death was un-embargoed (though several details were changed), and a body double souped-up with enchantments was brought out onto the balcony to stand in for the real Tenth Messiah, of whom they still had not been able to get hold.

All that was left between Shiki and total domination was former secret police chief Laurentis Venias, who was still missing.

...

HQ of the Octobrists - one day after Nargami Shiki’s appointment as Chancellor of the Union

“General Nergüi thinks Anatoly Nozadze should have a shot at being Chief of the Octobrist, eh?”

“Not a chance. It’s going to be one of us.”

“I respect General Nergüi, and I’m loyal to this cause, don’t get me wrong. But he’s dead incorrect if he thinks the Tenth Messiah can ever become chief of the organisation trying to undo the damage done by the Human Union.”

“The stupid prick is probably too dumb to take charge anyway. He’s too busy squatting on the benches and eating sunflower seeds.”

“Who does the fool think he is, anyway? Here we are, trying to put an end to a 3,000 year war, and he just saunters in and tells us what the hell we’re supposed to do? It’s getting on my nerves, I tell you.”

“This whole affair’s bloody ridiculous.”

“Let me make this clear, comrades. If General Nergüi appoints Anatoly as Commander of the Octobrists, mark my words, I’ll have both him and Anatoly ousted, for the good of this organisation and the future of this world, and I expect the three of you here to support me on this matter.”

“You have our support. The four of us must continue to be a voice of reason in this organisation.”

“What about the other three?”

“If we ever have to stage a coup, I shall demand their loyalty. If they choose to support Anatoly over sanity, over the future and stability of the Octobrists and of peace, then we shall have no choice but to demote them as well.”

“Well said, my friend.”

“I offer a toast to the continued future of this organisation.”

“For Peace in Imru!”

“For Peace in Imru!”

“For Peace in Imru!”

“For Peace in Imru!”

...

Meeting Hall

The next morning, after everybody had had the chance to bathe and freshen up, General Tömörbaatargiin Nergüi called a meeting of all 316 officers of the Octobrists, including the top Seven: Ilmari Järvinen, Wilhelm Felgrand, Rerir Seider, Jugemu Itō, Jurgis Kairelis, Ilia Merabishvili, and Tadesse Haile Alemayehu.

And Anatoly, of course.

“Gentlemen”, said General Nergüi, “it has been over sixty years since I created this organisation as a ray of hope for the realm of Imru. And in two month’s time, it shall be the anniversary of the founding of the Octobrists.”

Applause from the officers attending.

“And I am sure”, said Nergüi, “that all of you are aware that the Tenth Messiah, Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze, has appeared in this world, but has chosen to side with us.”

More applause. Anatoly, squatting on a sofa, said, “Please stop clapping you idiots.”

Silence in the hall. Ilmari cast a glance at Jurgis, and Rerir cast a glance at both men. Eyeballs darted across the room, registering the facial expressions of the people seated everywhere.

“As the war between the race of Men rages on under its new Chancellor, who seeks to increase the scale of destruction that the Union seeks to wreak, to a scale that can only be described as total war. No longer can the Octobrists afford to stand by its old methods of war, which were insufficient against the rule of Amlin, and will be insufficient against the rule of Shiki.”

“As such, I would like to announce, here and now, that upon my retirement in two months, Anatoly Iraklievich Nozadze will succeed me as leader of the Octobrists, and shall lead an expedition into the farthest corners of the Multiverse to enlist the aid of heroes who can help fight back the menace of the Human Union and its new Chancellor, Nargami Shiki. Mr Anatoly, please.”

Cries and applause from the audience. Anatoly, on Nergüi’s beckoning, stood up and walked over to the podium.

“I just want all you losers to know”, he bellowed at the rowdy crowd, “that if you want my help, you’re going to have to show me that- Ilmari, why are you standing up-“

At that moment, the door at the back of the hall was blasted open by a blast of magic, sending the two guards flying in opposite directions. All the officers turned round to face the short but imposing man in the black fedora and trench coat, his eyes obscured by glasses and a smoking wand in his hand, marching into the room carrying a massive black briefcase. The other guards pointed their rifles at the intruder, who showed no sign of backing down but lowered his wand anyway.

“I see no danger in this man”, said Nergüi. “Guards, stand down.”

“I am Laurentis Venias, former Chairman of the CNR intelligence agency of the Human Union of Imru”, said the intruder, walking past the officers and past the Big Seven, pushing rudely past Jugemu and Tadesse and dumping his briefcase on the table. “And I have come to offer you ten thousand pages worth of information on the new administration of Chancellor Nargami Shiki.”

...

[Rostavykhan]

Torii & Katya
Respite

"Sabotage? We're just as surprised to find other people like us here! This is something worth investigating.", Said Katya. She shrugged off Julyan's suspicion, and followed along with a bounce in her step, eyes on Waka, and the looming castle before them. She might have just dropped herself into a dangerous realm, but she was an explorer! She'd push on, just like an old-fashioned adventure, with her newfound party, and the strange prophet who led it.

Meanwhile, Tora grunted, and fell in a few feet behind her sister, staring at Julyan from the corner of her eye. "I take it you guys haven't had good luck with strangers jumping in and attacking from nowhere, then?", She asked. She sure hoped that they wouldn't be getting attacked any time soon, although the eerie noises and oppressive atmosphere around wasn't reassuring her. She wondered what it was that caused the land to be the way it was, and what forced exactly had drawn such a strange group together. She knew it was a game, overhearing some of the other members of the group, but it would have taken quite the powerful being to make such a big and vivid game board for them to be tossed into.

[Jraden]

Secrets of the Raven
The Kents

"A thief!" Simon called out overdramatically. "We cannot allow this vile act of common evil occur right before our very eyes!"

"You're right dad!" Hope said. "We should contact the police!" She immediately looked around the police station they were. "Police! There is a thief on the loose in this very building!"

"No time for that!" Simon announced. "I am the law!" He looked at the police officers. "I'm actually not, but I've always wanted to say that!"

He then broke out in a furious sprint, a very impressive one to, the guy was fast, and he tackled the thief to the ground (Though he had managed to escape the building first) "Fear not, miscreant!" Simon said. "With enough rehabilitation and redemption..." he pinned the thief to the ground. Then again, Skylar was forcing the thief to stay down, but he didn't know that. "You can turn your life around!"

He looked back at Angel, who just caught up to him. "Hello, Officer!" He said, jumping to attention. "Here you go! One thief, as was ordered-" the thief tried to run away, but Simon tackled him again. "As ordered!" Simon repeated.