Chương 90: Brawl I

The woman standing atop the cliff looked nothing like a dragon. She had the scales artfully framing her head and spilling out of her neckline and over her wrists, and that tail like a mix between a serrated longsword and a greataxe, but she didn't have the aura. Dragons were these supposed flying tanks, creatures of myth and legend. Instead, that smug grin of hers gave off the vibe of a little shit grown two sizes too large. Sorta reminds me of Lily.

As if hiding her level wasn't enough, a pair of mismatched cyborgs walked up to her left and right. [Zeb, The Unzippable, Lvl 71] [Naledi, Ouch!, Lvl 69]"Look at these plebs," the neon-green-haired Naledi yelled with a cackle.

"They really do look like ants from up here. That one even has extra arms."

"I hate insects. And dogs." Zeb blew purple bangs out of her eye, to little effect as they settled darkly over it again.

"Hey you two! Hows about you forfeit the match and we pay you half the soulcoins we get from this?" Match? — right, the quest. We're supposed to clear this honestly gigantic convergence dome quicker than them. How many kills do the three of them have? Barely had I finished the thought when a set of small counters appeared next to their levels. [Kill counter] [Zeb: 3] [Naledi: 193] [Genesis: 89] They have a head start. [Targets remaining: 3177] However, not enough to stop us.

Also, holy cow that's a lot of freaking plants. I wonder, do the big ones count for more? Regardless, time to delay so Addy and I could form a plan. I put my hands to my mouth in the shape of a funnel and yelled back up.

"Sorry, we sorta got held up. Any chance you can let us catch up?"

"Yeah, sure," Zeb said with an evil grin, "as long as the cute one gets on all fours and kowtows to us a hundred times. In her underwear. Not you, girl-spider-thing, the other one." Oh. Oh, she really just said that. Genesis, the largest among them, gave Zeb a swat, but what was done was done. Nothing really made me angry these days. But I could feel my right eyes twitching. There was a drone up there next to them. They were recording this. Addy nudged me from the side. <<Don't get angry.

The dragon lady is using it to fuel herself. I sent their info to Tanya. Check this. >> She sent a set of video clips to my interface. The three of them had a joint channel called 'Fear, Furor, & Fucking around'. It was a ragebait channel. They were deliberately creating scenarios to make people angry and then recording their crashouts, which in turn made more people angry, which… fuelled their spells. A professional setup optimized over years.

And yet, when I tried to find clips showing their powers, each and every one was unnaturally blurred, or blatantly cut out. [Haha, smart girl! But nooo cheating, Samsy. You gotta win this the hard way. By killing them with kindness! Metaphorically. Happily!] Grumbling a curse, I swallowed my anger. For now. <<Something doesn't add up, >> I texted Addy. <<Why hide the big dragon woman's level when, judging by her killcount, she isn't the largest threat? >> <<No clue. Watch the purple-haired one.

No kills means she doesn't fight directly, or that she's a support. Supports are gamechangers. Even if they allow us to catch up, they might try to sabotage us. >>"They might not. Hey, are you people going to sabotage us?" Miss green hair scoffed.

"Look at this girl, thinking we're all roses and no thorns. Of course we are, you idiot. What, your essences gave you a spider-sized brain to complement your wriggly arms?" Stay calm. They're just being rude because it's making me angry and because it's good for views. Okay, now I'm getting even more angry. I turned to the dragon lady.

"Well? You just going to stand there all statuesque and menacing, and let your dreadful polycule do the talking?" Naledi spluttered, Zeb rolled her eyes, and Genesis just grinned.

"Sure. We'll let you catch up. Even give you a head start." Wait, really?

"Let's say 300 kills until we start moving? 300 sounds fine. RANCOR will be so pissed." And that just about confirmed it: these were the champions of other envoys. If the dragon woman belonged to the envoy of anger, then following the color-coding of their hair, the green one was fear and the purple one disgust. Three champions working together. Not exactly fair. Then again, I had Addy, so maybe that evened it out. Or maybe her kills wouldn't count towards me in any way.

Dammit Mochi, what the hell did you do to make an enemy of these three? Increase the buy-ins. Flaunt power. Being a general loud-mouth. Yeah, okay, I could see why. Anyways, if they were giving us a chance, then we should grab it by the udders and yank it until it stops giving milk. I smiled and waved up with all six arms.

"Alright, thank you so much! We'll go to that overgrown patch over there and start mowing it down." And in the meantime, they get to find out what abilities we even have. Assuming they don't already have a dossier on us because wow, Mochi really didn't have to keep this from me for over two years. On the other hand, I wasn't revealed as the champion of joy in all that time either, so maybe they don't know crap. Loathe as I was to admit after being lied to, but there were upsides to not acting as a champion.

How much time would I have spent competing instead of just doing magical girl stuff? Would the Free Poker League exist if I knew that I had the special attention of an envoy? Would I… would I still be a magical girl if I only focused on making Mochi's system shares go up? Too many questions, not the right moment. I turned to Addy with a raised eyebrow. <<Got a plan? >> <<Sandbag until we're almost at 300, then pull ahead full throttle? >> <<Good plan. We won't be able to use our fusion though.

>> My Soul form was sadly recharging for another day, possibly longer without a dedicated charging session, aka cuddling with Addy in bed, watching Doctor Who or Star Trek. Now, onto the plants. Gigantic, man-eating, alien plants. Those were a bitch and a half to uproot. And you did have to literally uproot and burn them; much like the mimics they were some failed experiment turned bioweapon that took over their entire planet, or so the most common theory went.

Deep inside the Cauldron, various drones sent through the stable portals to their planet returned horizons filled with plants of impossible scopes: Moss covering mountains in place of ice caps, flowers the size of radiotelescopes that shone a blinding white in thermal view, and through it all not a single insect, mammal, fish, or any other animal in sight. Not a single one. Plantworld looked as alive as it was dead, as familiar as it was alien.

The trees below the Cauldron, the forest around Bugrest, their spores and seeds must have come from that planet too. They were titanic even down there, where the only light they had was the secondary refractions along the glass shell of the Cauldron, dampened again and again by the several layers of clouds above. The more lively, sun-fattened counterparts on Earth's surface were greener growth.

They greeted us by launching a root out of the ground to wrap around Addy's ankle, and a bamboo-like plant shooting projectile seeds the size of grapefruits at me. I ducked, [One Moment] triggering to give me ample time to grab my Lucky 7, aim the oversized revolver at the swiveling plant mass, and explode it with an anger-charged explosive bullet. The seed projectile hit the tree behind me with a thud, boring a hands' length into the wood.

Addy cut her captor to bits, then slashed at the shadow beneath her feet a couple times. A dozen yards away, a grapevine fell apart into a pile of twiggy growths and leaves.

"Get the roots," Addy noted.

"I'll play defense."

"On it." I hesitated, then summoned half of my remaining charged body doubles, easy enough to recharge in a couple minutes. A slew of insta-bought gear appeared at their feet.

"One machete, two Toothpicks and six ammo packs each. Pick it up. Fan out. Targets are alien plants, focus their root system." It didn't make sense to buy a soulbound enchantment for the cheap stuff. I had piles of knives and Toothpicks in my backpack. My doubles could wield all of these weapons, and were quite effective with them even at one charge. These ones required direct commands, but they followed them, swiftly and precisely.

My mental load increased considerably as the four doubles actively scanned the surroundings with six eyes each. Seven of them tossed pebbles at unsuspecting plants to see if they flinched, while two began systematically burning the root systems of the two individuals we'd destroyed. The air was filled with the cracking of Toothpicks and the squealing sound of evaporated water leaving through quickly wilting plant bodies. Lasers. Exceedingly effective against biological matter, ladies and gents.

Less so against cold steel. Immediately, soulcoins began rolling in. [Soulcoins: 1932->1957] [Targets remaining: 3161]"I've rarely seen this many high level Custodians in one area." [One Moment] triggered. I parried a seed projectile with a machete, then returned fire.

"Setting aside the envoy's stupid game, this convergence event might be a bit of a big deal."

"I've never seen that many plants in one place," Addy noted.

"We might be here the entire day." I groaned.

"I'm going to smell like phloem and cut grass for weeks."

"Guess we'll need to have a thorough shower, or two." The image of showering with Addy, her bare back to me, water pearling on her curly hair and down her shape, entered my mind unbidden. Addy didn't meet my eyes, but I knew she was grinning. She'd conjured the image up on purpose. I bumped her hips, moving her out of the way of a slicing vine.

"So, the cheeky miss Kobayashi does know how to make a prank. You live up to your name." That caused her to stumble, if only for long enough to convert it into a roll that ended with her on her feet, and a screaming plant in her hands that was swiftly cut to pieces.

"I do?" She stared ahead.

"I do." The dome was roughly three miles in every direction, filled to the absolute brim with vegetation. We moved slowly and methodically, lasering and burning every suspicious mound of dirt and plant matter. The forest fought back. Roots twisted and snatched, bushes grew spikes and tried to envelop us; one time, an entire tree bent in half beyond bursting, slamming its crown straight on Addy's head. She popped out of a nearby shadow moments later, hair full of leaves and twigs.

The peanut gallery had a good laugh. In response, Addy opened her [Wonky Wardrobe] and liberally distributed her homemade molotov cocktails. The wind carried the smoke directly up the cliff. Soon coughing and swearing joined the unquiet air around the forest. A walk in the park this was not. One of my body doubles was wrapped up by a slew of leaves with fine fuzz over them. The fuzz was in fact millions of tiny hypodermic needles made of brittle glass-like structures.

She didn't poof immediately, spasming on the floor until her skin turned purple. We got antidotes after that, but it was still disturbing to watch someone with my face die a horrible death like that from the outside. Another one was yanked off the ground by her ankles, then dragged down into a deep and dark hole. After unsummoning her, we emptied a barrel of instabought gasoline (quite cheap at a single soulcoin) down there, then set it on fire.

The environmental impact from unburned gas was laughably small compared to the impact of even one of these plants escaping and budding off. [Targets remaining: 2960] [Kill counter] [Sam?: 140] [Adelaide: 77] Addy gave me a knowing look. I started sandbagging harder, pretending that keeping up four doubles was exhausting me not just mentally, but physically.

"Wowie, they really are slow," Zeb yelled as a spiky vine garrotted one of my body doubles.

"Yikes, not exactly photogenic either, are they?" A bromeliad was crawling up the cliff below her, burrowing into the stone only to emerge like a clutch of maddened worms. The thing barely got within spitting distance when Genesis the dragon lady stood up, and burped a ball of fire in its direction.

"Disappointing," she said, wiping her mouth.

"Yeah, and boring. Hey, give us some fanservice! Do a twirl or something!" Oh you want some fanservice? I'll show you some fanservice. My Lucky 7 was versatile and precise, but this was not a precise job. I needed raw power. Lucky for everyone not sitting happily on a cliff far above us, I'd gathered a veritable pile of gadgets and weapons over the past few months. Time to unpack the arsenal." Summon: The Warcrimer!" Addy's eyebrows rose as the mother of all automatic grenade launchers appeared in my hands.

It pulled me forward into a small stumble until I managed to wrap its supportive sling around my back, chest, and hips. [The Warcrimer: You want to blow shit up? This blows shit up at 480rpm, direct fire or indirect fire. Comes with added sights, thermals, and automatic recoil suppression. 140 pounds in weight, 45mm belt fed grenades stowed in 64 unit boxes. Grenades sold separately by Benson co. We are not affiliated with Benson co. in any manner. We will not be held liable for legality of, nor for any damages caused by proper use or misuse of Benson co. ammunition. Price: 350 Soulcoins.] The hefty weapon was intended for deployment on top of a vehicle or on the ground. As a moderately well endowed magical girl spider vampire, I only grunted a bit as I hefted the thing onto my hips and fed the belt into the receiver.

"It's a bit cheap for what it does, but it's entirely non-magical," I commented.

"The ammo is the real expensive stuff." The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Addy's eyebrows raised higher and higher.

"Oh, you think I'm done? Summon: The other Warcrimer!" The second one was no lighter than the first. Dual-wielding grenade launchers, hell yeah.

"And to top it off…"

"Hey, what the—" the green-haired cyborg girl yelled atop the cliff." Arachnid-form: Sense!" My hair lengthened into two long antennae swerving back as my body grew a sheen of chitin. I was all sense and eyes, eyes, eyes on every surface besides the bottom of my feet and the palms of my hands. The world expanded, and the air grew full of dust, colors, and the taste of freshly cut grass. The strain of four body doubles was suddenly all too much when added to this sensory phantasmagoria.

Not that I needed them anymore. I'd already made the soulcoins for their gear back twice over. I unsummoned them, twirled in place, and let the warcrimers rip to a percussion beat. Thwump-thwump-thwump. Grenades sailed through the air before bursting into phosphorous glory, the flames of the incendiary rounds reaching a new intensity of color as they devoured the nearby vegetation. Stalks and stems and roots too burned within seconds, the scene around us began to resemble a painting straight out of hell.

The only sound that was audible over the cackle of plant matter, the uptick of our kill counter, and the swearing of our opponents scrambling to get back on their feet was laughter, high and mad. Was that me laughing? I suppose it was. Automatic weapons could do that to a girl. The air was burning and popping, hissing and fizzling, the kill counter ticking up like followers on a viral post.

"I love being a magical girl, woooh!" The wind picked up, whipping the flames into a frenzy. Addy grabbed my arm, bringing my twirl to a stop.

"Sam, physics! You're creating a freaking fire tornado, centered on us!" All the eyes in my upper left arms turned to her. One of them blinked at her finger until she moved it away.

"No worries, Addy, The Warcrimer isn't called that because it only shoots something as basic as napalm. Watch." I slammed a lever on each launcher, catapulting the empty ammo boxes away in an arc, two replacement boxes materializing right this moment. I caught them, placed them in their receptacles with additional care, then slapped, cranked, and aimed the launcher at the nearby raging inferno.

"Special Magical-vampire-girl-spider move: True ice barrage!" Thwump-thwump-thwump. These projectiles exploded like a chain of powdery snowballs, but with an explosion radius near twice the size of the napalm shots. The air immediately dropped a couple degrees in temperature as burning logs, the smoke coming off said logs, and the tongues of the flames themselves froze in place. Impossible as it was, magic ammo had a way of making it work.

And it better, because my soulcoin count was going up and down, up and down, barely held in balance by the income of tens of plants dying every second. Within moments, the hellfire was subdued, subverted into a scintillating icy landscape that tinkled in a pleasant way.

"Glad you're having fun," Addy grumped.

"Not like it's harder to miss than to hit with those… those things."

"Oh, you're just jealous because I made it look easy. In fact, I was using multiple spells to support this, and on top of that it takes two hundred soulcoins to fire these babies for twelve—" The frozen vista of glass-like ice exploded as a red streak fell down from on high. [One moment] triggered from the shrapnel — then again as a giant metal fist flew towards me out of the powdery smokescreen. I jumped left, unsummoning [More Spider Eyes] wherever I rolled over before re-summoning them back in place.

That was Genesis, no question. And her attack had been aimed at me.

"Hey, what gives?" I yelled at the second crater behind me.

"I thought this was a friendly competition?" The overly large draconic lady stood up, shaking ice out of her mane of hair. She answered by gesturing above her left shoulder. I followed suit on my end, and oh right, that was where the kill counter was. [Sam?: 140->270] [Genesis: 89->92]"Well, I am trying to win," I countered. She sneered.

"We all are. The point is that you're a sneaky fuck."

"Wow. Rude." I glanced over at Addy. She was in a combat-ready stance, dusting what looked like iron shavings into her hair. Something was still not adding up with Genesis' kill count. The ground was freaking shattered in at least a twenty yard radius around her. Fire and ice was a combo that killed most plants, but some were resistant enough to one or the other that their root system had the time to squirm deep beneath the earth where they were protected from both.

The shockwaves of her impact had turned the area nearby, above and below ground, into a fine dust. It should have killed way more than three plants. And why was her giant robo-fist leaking fear? Was it damaged? Was it… sentient? Actually, where were her cyborg friends? What I thought was just a decorative gem on her glove turned to glare at me. It was an eye.

"Holy shit, you turned your girlfriend into a glove?" I asked.

"She's not my girlfriend!" the glove yelled with a distorted machine-like voice.

"Really? Cause her arm's like, up to her shoulders inside—""Shut up," Genesis said.

"Both of you."

"How about some ground rules?" I asked.

"No lethal hits, no going for the head?" Genesis spat on the ground and sneered.

"Nah. None of that pansy shit. I got me an extra life and you got yours, and if your patron is too cheap to toss you one extra, well, then they're a petty shit for getting you here in the first place." [Hey! Wow, you're right, she is rude. Sam, kill this bitch.] [Lives: 2->3] [Note: You have borrowed a life. Life that is borrowed is not earned and must be returned once conditions are met. Current conditions: Clearing of local convergence event, Passage of time: 11 minutes.] W-what? You can just do that?

Of course the envoys can do that. They must've manipulated and cheated the system to let us fight here just like this. What else could they do if they put their mind to it? Before I could sink my teeth into the implications, Genesis leapt, lunging for me with bullet-like speed. Addy caught her fist along the flat of her blade, growling as her fur turned a silvery sheen and her shield immediately overloaded. The impact as the fist forced the sword against her chest sounded like two metal girders slamming together.

"You crazy—" Inertia caught up to her two heartbeats later than it realistically should have. Addy, in her warform, was first lifted off her feet, then sent flying into the distance until the only thing visible was the sparkle of sunlight reflecting off her metallicized fur. Then she stopped, and a couple seconds later there was a dull, distant thud. She hit the barrier. Which meant she was falling. Which meant she needed help— [One moment] triggered.

Genesis was leaping at me with blinding speed, coming for my stunned butt straight from a theoretical blindspot. I didn't have blindspots, not in Sense-form. I ducked, bought two containers of foam bullets for the grenade launchers — the type that went from apple sized to car sized and hardened like rubbery cement in moments — and was too late to swivel around the hefty launchers when she was already on her return journey.

There were no imprints of her feet on the cliff face where she rebounded off of, from which she flew straight towards me. How did she do that? I ducked, dodged, weaved by a hair with every attack. The oaf-like, lumbering woman was just getting faster, first by single percentiles, now by large factors. All that momentum had to stop at some point, right? Then I saw it, through an eye on my elbow. For a brief moment, a small hand unzipped a tree from the inside.

The hole widened, swallowed the draconic woman, then spat her out directly in front of me. I was still mid-air from dodging her previous attack. [One Moment] triggered again, turning the inevitable into a slow-mo example of real-life checkmate. Check, not checkmate. I tossed a thread from Sin to my right while readying my legs to dampen the impact, channeling [Elasticity] twice with [Echo] along my entire body for as much flexibility as I could eke out of it.

My shield broke first, the magical barrier barely slowing down the attack. The impact was monstrous, even with all that combined. I felt bones scrape on bones, cartilage grinding against harder stuff. Then the delayed knockback hit me, some sort of spell increasing the total knockback amount. I accelerated away at a frightening speed. My rope hit an oak. I swung in a wide arc, wood creaking. The forest nearby was cleared thanks to my efforts, but not entirely.

The rope snagged on a sturdy pine awfully close to where I was holding onto it for dear life, whipping me around it. The laws of physics demanded that with a smaller radius to complete the circle, my speed increased a lot. One short loop was all I got. Sin cut the thread at precisely the right millisecond. I was blacking out from the G-forces, but Body and proper planning prevailed. Genesis made a strangled urk as I came flying right back at her, a small loop of thread angled to garrote her as she flew towards me.

She was definitely higher in Body scaling than I was, probably over a thousand points, which meant I either needed to go for weak spots, or I would be forced to use lethal weaponry. And using lethal weaponry on a fellow Custodian, a fellow person, was one thing I was never going to lower myself to do. However, Genesis was an unknown amount of levels above me. If she could withstand her own forces, that meant she still had tricks in her bag.

She breathed fire, downwards, the backblast propelling her upwards ten feet while presenting me with a nice thermal shower. In response, I created a body double standing on my shoulders, an identical loop of silk gripped between her arms. They caught Genesis around her ankle. And for all her prodigious velocity, that worked against her once redirected into the ground. She hit with a thunderous boom. The ground cracked. A boulder fell off of the cliff in the distance.

Genesis had no shield; it would have interfered with her first impact and popped. For a moment, I was afraid I was going to learn how many soulcoins a Custodian was worth. Then with a groggy groan, she staggered back on her feet, stumbling to the left looking mighty dizzy and off-balance even as she let out a bellowing laugh.

"Bwahaha!" She dabbed her forehead, hand coming back bloody.

"That was insane! I love it! More, more, mo—mfgng?" A body double I'd released earlier shot her with a foam grenade, straight across the mouth, which the grenade expanded around in milliseconds. Within seconds, she looked like a cream puff on two legs. I turned away and let her and her friends sort herself out. The stuff was air permeable, no threat of choking at all. <<Addy. You alright? >> No response. I hurried my step, letting my doubles pick up my discarded gear.

The plants failed to materialize an effective attack as I sprinted from one side of the dome to the other in minutes. I found Addy, marked on the map as she was, but not alone. She was lying in repose on a giant rainbow-colored balloon filled with confetti. Beside the balloon stood two men; one in full plate armor, sans plate pants, with floral swim trunks in their place, the other looking as if someone had upsized Rico to normal human sized before suffering an outbreak of polka dots across his wardrobe.

He looked like what happened to a party when the dress code was set to 'random'. [Alex, Knight, Lvl 75] [William, The Cosplayer, Lvl 82] Why is everyone a higher level than I am?

"Ah, Trigger Happy." The armored man, Alex, stepped forward. He gave a curt bow. He probably thought he looked properly mysterious. In fact, he felt like he was trying too hard to be cool.

"I've been… expecting you." The polka-dot fae-like Custodian giggled like a school kid.

"I can't believe you actually went with that option. Cringe!" The armored man sighed.

"Goddammit Will, can you just be normal for one second?"

"Drop the act." I brushed past them, leapt up to the balloon.

"I don't have time for your whacky buddy-cop shenanigans." Addy was unconscious, but otherwise unharmed. There was a time bandaid on her forehead, which was possibly stabilizing a concussion, but definitely keeping her brain processes frozen and her thereby unconscious. I turned to the polkadot fae Custodian… person.

"You did this?"

"Surpise!" he said with jazz hands.

"Also, I'm not fae. I just have the essences. No I didn't kill them myself, yes they are ethically sourced, and no, you shouldn't cut the red wire."

"What?"

"Don't mind him," the armored dude said.

"My moderately insane friend over here has a passive prophecy spell that lets him see anything from years into the future to decades into the past, but the timing is chosen at random. Comes with the build I suppose. We're champions like you, of anticipation and surprise—""— as if she couldn't intuit that—" the fae-like Custodian giggled.

"—, and we're looking for a ceasefire. Perhaps an alliance? You can trust my word, but in the case that you don't, I have prepared various contracts, mundane and demonic alike."

"You seem awfully polite," I noted, "for someone competing against me over the fate of the world."

"Is there a reason not to be?" He opened his arms, gesturing wide.

"We're all convinced our envoy has the best plan." I blinked at him. Mochi didn't even tell me what its plan was. Evidently, he mistook my confusion for disbelief. He lectured on.

"My patron, Vigilance — envoy of anticipation — doesn't want to lose any more compute and power to RANCOR's power block. If we work together, we can add our scores on top of each other and beat them."

"You've done this before," I noted.

"Occasionally. Alliances came and went over the past few years. Joy was always conspicuously absent, yet that allowed them to slowly grow her slice of the pie with more mundane bets. Judging purely by system share, it makes you the runner-up. But we all know that being ahead and staying ahead are two entirely different beasts." He extended a hand.

"We've already lended aid to your friend. That's worth some trust, isn't it?"

"Sounds like something an envoy of trust would say, rather than anticipation."

"Hah! She's got you there." Polka-dots snickered. I frowned, staring Addy deeply in the eyes, checking her body for any bugs, parasitic plants, or other wounds.

"I don't want to fight anyone, really. I can offer a ceasefire."

"We would really prefer an alliance," Polka-dots noted, suddenly shifting to a serious tone.

"Anger's champion is already working together with disgust and fear. We're not the kind of champions that can win a two-on-three against them. We need you, so we can get enough points before Trust comes by."

"What happens then?"

"You don't want to be there to experience it, trust me." He took a deep breath.

"We need your help. So. Alliance? There was confirmation. The envoys didn't choose their champions if they didn't think they could eke out a win here or there. None of us were among the highest level of Custodians, implying they either agreed to get newer ones, or that our builds had something those above us were missing. The ability to fight and win against another Custodian. That's what I'd look for. That, and loyalty.

Genesis had fire attacks and a near indestructible body, Naledi was a cybernetic powerfist, and Zeb could redirect their inertia through teleporting them around. Combined, the three of them made a combo that was frustrating to deal with. Genesis was basically a missile that could think. A truly smart missile.

"I…" I'm not leaving Addy here, and I'm not going out there with the intent to kill another Custodian.

"I can't… Dammit." But I don't have to. There are options, there are spells. Haha. Wow. I agreed to never do this again, but look how quick my ideals crumble. I could never be the real Sam. I fixed my eyes on a boulder with a texture that looked like a weird face with a stretched nose.

"I can do you one better. Concentrate Spell: Illusory Double." [Charges: 9/9 (Reserved: 7) -> 2/2 (Reserved: 14)] My head hurt. A shudder of agony ran through my spine. I blacked out, and by the time I came to again, a second me had peeled herself off of my chest, bouncing on the balloon. She blinked her hundred eyes open, intelligence sparking in every one. She took a big breath, sighed, and smiled.

"You're not looking at the rock with the face on it. Ergo, you're the body double," I declared.

"But, er, you're sorta me, and I'm you, and Addy said I need to engage in more self-care, so… would you please escort these fine gentlemen and beat the snot out of that dragonlady while I watch over our girlfriend here?" Her grin widened inhumanely, animalistically. She didn't respond with words, instead electing to cartwheel down the giant balloon with [Sticky].

At the snap of my fingers, the body doubles carrying the warcrimers offered them to her, which she accepted with a bow mocking all things dainty and polite. Her many arms traced the metal grooves, the barely worn leather wrappings on the grip, flicked the trigger. She began purring. Making her while I'm in my Sense form was probably a mistake. But she should only exist as long as she can upkeep the fear-cost to the transformation. Probably. Oh who am I kidding, I never tested that.

For all I know, she's as permanent as I am. Alex and Will couldn't decide which of us two to stare at more.

"There. She'll help you. Probably. And I'll accept an alliance, just for this convergence event."

"Also probably?" Alex looked a tad uncomfortable in his armor, to which his friend just burst out laughing.

"Oh this is great! Glorious! Let's go and win this baby. Team unnatural disaster, roll out!"

"That is not our team name," Alex countered, playing the perfect straight man.

"I was thinking more: The three musketeers. The adventurers. No, the adventurer heroes." By the time they had disappeared off into the distance I felt well enough to tear off Addy's bandaid. Her limp body went rigid and she jerked up, sucking in a deep breath of air right as her forehead hit mine. I flinched back with a yelp, clutching my poor forehead.

"Shit, shit— wait, I'm not falling. Wait, Sam?"

"Owww." I gave her a teary-eyed look of utter betrayal.

"What the heck did you do to your body?

"It's just a small toughness enchantment! We'll be fine." As half my wound was shared with her, she went cross eyed.

"You're right. Ow."

"One of your more successful ritual spells?" Making herself hard as steel while keeping her flexibility was a huge boon. Hopefully those iron shavings weren't expensive. But knowing Addy, they totally were; she just looked at the odds and decided that I was worth the expense. With a sudden urge bubbling up, I grabbed her into a big hug.

"Don't answer, it's not important. You're alright. That matters more than anything."

"... I might not have died with the enchantment even falling from that height," Addy muttered before shooting to her feet, dragging me along.

"Wait, that dragon champion—""Dealt with. Or, well, it's an ongoing process." I took a deep whiff of her fuzzy mane. It smelled like earth, the forest, and a hint of iron.

"Please don't scare me like that again."

"Noted. The next time I try to parry an oncoming train, I'll just tell physics 'no'. Actually, maybe I could make a spell like that. It would need a root of sorts, something representing immobility or timelessness…"

"Addy. Time and place."

"Yes, as I was saying, it would require components for time and place—""I don't want to fight other Custodians," I blurted out, to which I only gained a quizzical stare.

"Isn't that what you were doing anyways as The Evil Queen Arachnia?"

"Play fights! As training for new Custodians! The stakes, Addy, the level of violence, it's all for, for… for something better than fighting over bits and pieces of world-shaking power. I can't do it. I don't know if Smoothie can. Smiley, she seems to be all for it, so at least one of us is having fun. But this can't be how we save or doom the world, it can't." There was a short pause.

"I think it's cute that you give your other selves nicknames."

"Addy!"

"It's just another sign that shows how much you care. Sometimes, I feel like you care too much." Addy sighed, and hugged me back a bit tighter.

"Does this competition really make you that upset?" I nodded.

"Then don't listen to what others are saying. Do what your heart is telling you to do."

"But Mochi would get really angry if we lose this." [My moonbase! Plea-hease, I put sooo much effort in it. I don't wanna lose it!]"Point. But whoever said we were planning on losing?" Addy's grin was audible, even if I couldn't see her face.

"Nobody said you can't win by refusing to go full lethal on people. If anything, your build is suited for nonlethal takedowns. And you have to remember, these are high level Custodians we're facing. They're not made of cotton candy. I'm not either." I sighed.

"You always know how to cheer a girl up."

"If my girlfriend is forced to fight in a free-for-all of the strongest Custodians out there, then I'm making sure she wins it."

"Pretty sure they're not all the strongest," I muttered.

"If they have the extra essence at level 0, same as you, then they count as a couple levels higher than they really are."

"Fair point." I sighed and flopped onto the balloon.

"I swear, that red disaster on two legs has, like, two thousand in Body or something."

"Which would make her completely useless for anything but hitting things in the face." Addy chuckled, then looked down.

"The hell is up with this balloon-thing?"

"It's a spell, probably by the polka-dot guy. Champion of surprise. We're sorta in an alliance, so don't go after him, or the dude in knight armor and swimming trunks."

"Did you say surpri—" The balloon popped, confetti exploding everywhere with a magnificent toot.

"I hate surprise spells," Addy muttered. I stared at her, then at the boulder we'd bounced off of in confusion. I rapped it twice, the sound echoing oddly both times.

"Clong clong?" It was hollow. Addy, bless her heart, understood my intent almost instantly. She cut away some of the nearby shrubbery, which is to say she stood in place and sliced across the odd shadow here and there. Tree branches fell, shrubs tumbled apart into sauté-ready pieces. Within a couple minutes, the surrounding area cleared up, and the metal thing that had appeared like a rock gained definite outlines.

"That's a flying saucer."