FINAL ROUND PART ONE

----UPLOADING: REALITY A: PRIORITY REALITY: SL HQ: GORGER V ELSIE V TREMOR----

Sea Lover sits in her chair. It is a very comfortable chair, customized especially for her by a team of hardworking craftsmen. Sea Lover is writing notes. She has quite a lot of notes to write. Technically, there are only five competitors left, but she had recently stumbled on to one of The Staff’s more useful features; the ability to fracture reality into multiple versions. Armed with this new tool, Sea Lover had created a strictly controlled set of parallel dimensions, each one’s story centered exclusively on a certain competitor. They would each get to fight two other people of her choosing, regardless of who was alive or dead at a given time and place. It was like a game. Not that it ever wasn't for her, but at least now it contained a greater degree of fun. Everyone would fight, everyone would win, everyone would die, and everyone would lose. Except for Sea Lover.

It had been relatively easy, all things considered. She could only fracture reality four times before things got strenuous, and she had to be in at least one of them, but all she had had to do was split one eventuality in four different directions, and voila, she was left with what was before her.

Sea Lover sits in the center of a high-ceilinged circular room in her very comfortable chair. Facing her are four apertures, man-height, 3 feet wide, installed into the wall side by side with each other; representing the four alternatives to her current reality. A thin membrane that appears more magical than technological in nature covers the windows, though it is no less receptive to her commands. Centered above the four windows to reality is a fifth window, which displays her reality, although this one is nothing more than a television screen. Each fight takes place in the same area of the world; on the same street in an empty city she had created and stocked with everything a fighter needed and then some. The street was broad and had a line of two and three story buildings lining it. It didn’t branch except for its narrow alleys and it led from the heart of the city to a barren nowhere. Very Wild West, in other words. She hadn’t been able to help herself.

Death City was an ingenious invention that allowed her to control her combatant’s conditions to an even greater level of neurotic micromanagement. And now she had the opportunity to test it in as many different combinations of circumstances as she wished!

She finishes writing with a smile, and puts each note in a pressurized hydraulic pipe, sending them on their way.

Unbeknownst to her, one of the pipes had extremely recently had an additional component installed, namely, an air plug and new section of piping. The carrier tube winds its serpentine way, diverting angularly at the last second while its brothers cross over into other worlds.

The tube falls out of a section of wall in a room deep underground, and into a hand.

Your hand.

The hand of Gorger.

You greedily crack the wax seal on the tube and shake the messages out into your other hand, cackling and wheezing just under your breath as you do so.

You look at them.

You are amazed. You actually did it. You beat yourself. You came up with an original idea. You were devious. You did not react; you ACTED. It’s exhilarating.

Hastily, you memorize the witch’s elegant handwriting, retrieve a few empty pieces of scratch paper from nowhere in particular, and start writing. You finish writing. You only wrote one note. You shred the others. The one You wrote shall go to Tremor, because you can’t think of any better way of thanking her for letting you borrow her hammer than killing her in person; and that psychotic demon hunter, Elsie, will get NOTHING!!!

“BLAAAHAHAHA!!!”

You hurriedly stifle your mirth. Others might be listening.

Yes, indeed. That’s only Step One in your very first and best Plan. Tremor and Elsie die here; in as horrible a way as you can manage, (as per usual) and then, on to bigger game…

YOU FORGOT TO DOT THAT I, THERE.

You freeze. You turn around ever so slowly.

It is, of course, Death.

“I, uh,”

DON’T BOTHER.

He raises his scythe.

Oh golly. It seems your hand has been forced, and you will have to guess sooner rather than later.

You’ll only have one shot…

“One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die?”

Death pauses.

AH. GOOD ONE.

He lowers his weapon.

You nearly collapse with relief. That’s TWO miracles in one day. Making a Plan, AND finding Death’s last loophole: logical paradoxes.

Thank you, John Donne, you're lucky you're dead, you think to yourself.

SO, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

“Well, first, I’m going to play a little game, and then I’m going to rip the space-time continuum a new one.”

WHATEVER IT TAKES TO FREE US FROM THAT WOMAN’S CLUTCHES. WHAT CAN I DO?

“Just stick close to Land Hater and make sure she doesn’t catch on to what I’m doing until it’s too late. And do your part to help universal chaos along, of course.”

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN.

You giggle unhealthily.

“I know!”

From above, the two of you hear rapid typing.

----RECONFIGURING: REALITY A: DISPLAYING ACTION: GORGER V ELSIE V TREMOR----

Elsie Lopez starts her day. She slips sideways out of her hotel bed, throws on a bathrobe, and mumbles over her coffee. Elsie has mousy brown hair that hangs in lazy curls over her curvy shoulders. She has a slight frame, but eats right and stays fit. Her eyes seem to change color quite a bit, but they generally orbit around a light purple, shifting into various other cool colors depending on her temperament. The pupil is thinner than most and actually becomes a catlike slit in a certain state of hers.

When she’s not fighting off the eye sleepies in her Teri cloth bathrobe, she’s fighting off the suitors in her tight jeans, complete with ornamental belt, hot pink top and blood red jacket.

That, or fighting off various monsters and hoodlums in her magical black and blue shell armor. Then chasing them. Then fighting them off again. Then beating them mercilessly. Then making them beg for their lives. And then usually killing them.

Usually. There was that matter with “Clay” that still stood out vividly in her mind. She does her best to block out the memories. The impossible ones. The ones where she died. Try as she might, she cannot forget his face, and probably never will.

She had underestimated him, to be sure, and she had tried to kill him, to be sure, but it was just business.

It was all for the greater good, of course. What other purpose could there be?

None, that’s what, her job is her job is her job. And that’s all there is to it. She enjoys the thrill of battle, and doubly enjoys making those who’ve committed misdeeds suffer. And sometimes those who haven't necessarily done anything bad yet but might in the future. Her mind flicks back to her first round in Sea Lover’s tournament, the boy who’s Demon half she sealed off, much to his chagrin. Who cares if “it’s like denying a part of myself”? What a leech. He deserved everything he got. She loves the simplicity of it. She just answers the phone, does what the Council representative on the other line tells her to do, and that’s that.

Like now.

The cell phone is ringing.

She picks up the cell phone.

She answers the cell phone, clearing her throat.

“Yeah?”

“There’s Been A Deception. Your Position Has Been Compromised.”

She jolts into full awareness.

“What? By who? How?!”

“We Don’t Know Who. Possibly The Organizer Of This Tournament. Motives Are Unclear. She Might Have A Bone To Pick With The Council. In Such Case, We Regret To Inform You That, Given The Organizer’s Strategic Position And Considerable Power, We Cannot Assist You Without Compromising Our Own Position.”

“Wait, What?!”

“If You Make It Out Alive, Good. If Not, It Was Nice Working With You.”

“You can’t do this to me!!”

“Look Out Your Window.”

Click.

She throws the cell phone to the floor and rips open the curtains.

Destruction meets her eyes.

----RECONFIGURING: REALITY A: ADJUSTING FOR INTERFERENCE----

Sea Lover twists knobs and dials, trying to get the static on a fistful of her many minor view screens to focus into actual images.

Death watches impassively, hoping that she would not notice a certain gray skinned figure approach a young hammer-wielding woman in a quiet park.

----REALITY A: RECONFIGURED----

Tremor looks down at her hammer. It was ironic. It was ironic that what she had wanted for a long time was to forget, and now, she is looking down at her hammer, trying to figure out why she still has it, why she is alive, and why she feels this way. It isn’t a pleasant feeling. She doesn’t like it. She wants to get rid of it.

She remembered fighting that little monster, the living book, and then…

She had been alive again. Only she couldn’t remember dying.

Something falls into her lap.

It’s a note. She reads it.

“Dear Tenor.

The comtest has canged. Yoo must teem up with Claieiie and Else. It is yer onlee howp.

Sea Love r”

She looks up at the tree over her head, around the park.

She distinctly hears someone come crashing out of the tree and into the bushes. She then hears that someone creep less than stealthily through the bushes to emerge some yards away, dusting yourself off.

You turn smartly (which is how you do everything now) and stride up to Tremor. The black suit was a nice touch, and you even looted it from a grave! You adjust the wig again.

“I guess you’re…Clay?”

“That’s right! Grey skin and all! Couldn’t be anyone but me!”

“Rrrright…”

----TOGGLE: SECONDARY LOCATION: REALITY A: GORGER V ELSEI V TREMOR----

They’d gone too far. Not only had the monsters destroyed most of the city, they had plastered her face on every available surface, so as to incite the incumbent residents against her under false pretenses. Fortunately for her, Death City was long deserted, or had never been intended to house actual citizens. Sea Lover had apparently created it as a sort of playground for her combatants.

But it was still all rather upsetting.

Elsei dodges another blast of dark energy. It collides with a building behind her and sends a rain of steel and stone in her direction.

“To. War!” rasps the faceless stone skeleton riding on the backs of his army of slack jawed puppet men.

“WHEEEEEE!!!!” the troll alongside him bellows wetly.

Elsei digs herself out of the pile of debris and sends a bolt of fire into the center of the shambling mass.

They are blown in every direction. The skeletal statue and the troll are left sitting on the ground, surrounded by bodies.

“WHUT SHOULD WE DO NOW?”

“It. Does. N’t. Mat. Ter. We. Just. Wear. Her. Down. As. Much. As. We. Can.”

”SO HOW DOES WE DO DAT?”

“Go. To. Plan. B.”

“GOT IT.”

Elsei begins to advance on them.

“UMMMM. OKAY.”

The troll jumps to his feet, making Elsei waver on hers.

“GUERRILA WARFAAAAAAARRRE!!!!!”

The broken bodies of the zombie army surge to their collective feet and amalgamate around the troll and the stick man.

The blob of anatomy oozes up the side of a building and strains itself through the many windows facing the street.

All is silent. Elsei turns around and around, looking for the next attack.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Rog and Reg huddle together.

“DO YOU THINK IT WUZ A GOOD IDEA TO LET DA SKINS THINK FOR DEMSELVES LIKE DAT?”

“She’ll. Have. A. Much. Tough. Er. Time. Of. It, And. Kill. Ing. Us. Won’t. Make. Them. Die. This. Way.”

“IF YOU SAY SO.”

Outside, the sound of flames, breaking glass, and shouting grows louder.

----RELOADING: REALITY A: GORGER V ELSEI V TREMOR----

Tremor ambles slowly along down the dirt road leading out of the park and into the heart of Death City.

“Clay” can’t take his eyes off her.

This whole disguise part of the Plan is proving more difficult than you would have guessed. Every fiber of your being quivers for violence; you are existing on the breaking point. Your eyes drink in again and again her tousled black hair, down to her shoulders. Her coal-black eyes. The ridiculously adorable bandage across her nose. Her blue hooded vest. Her black tank top. Her orange belt. Her wrapped legs. Her ragged khaki shorts.

No detail is too small. You try memorizing the characteristics and reordering them, shuffling them, cataloging them in your mind. It takes about three seconds, and you are back to your itching fingers.

You add in other details, her past, her lineage, the names and faces of her nearest and dearest.

She had been an assassin of the worst type, one that was legal. No one could stand against her and, as a result, hundreds died in the name of her country’s interests. That was, of course, until she met somebody equal to the task. Another skilled female meat bag named Paine. Tremor had been around fourteen at the time. Paine gave young Tremor the usual diatribe that people’s lives actually meant something and that it was wrong to ignore cries for mercy. Humbug!

At first, to your satisfaction, Tremor ignored the words of the annoying Paine and continued fighting, that is, until another country became tired of having its people assassinated and actively declared war on Tremor’s nation. Tremor was good at what she did, but she was no soldier and as a result, was almost killed on the battlefield. If it hadn’t been for her father, she would be dead.

Disgusting. You hate life, and those who enjoy it, especially. But there will always be a particularly hot area of Hell (at least in your mind) for those who will give up bits of their own to prolong another’s. Disgusting. He should have let her get stabbed, deliberately not cried at her funeral, and moved on.

Tremor was rather distraught at her daddy’s apparent stabbity death and it took Paine stepping in and bucking her up to get her to work cooperatively and defeat the enemy with the power of teamwork.

Disgusting.

This was the worst part; she gave up being an assassin after that. Her one redeemable quality: Gone! And then, for some reason, she had almost died. If that wasn't Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome or you don’t know what is, heh heh. But then, she got sent to the big man himself, ol’ Sam Hane. And what did that palooka do? He Let Her Go!

That’s why a swell guy like him with a job like his doesn’t get the respect he deserves when he’s around you. It’s her fault. It’s her fault! It’s always her fault…

Then again, the price she had to pay was being his servant for the rest of her days. Okay, so, ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking. Damn!

At least you’ll always have the comforting knowledge that the very person forcing dear Tremor into battle after battle was her very own mother. Her father, on the other hand, had an unhealthy habit of healing quickly and actually looking out for his daughter, so he goes and kidnaps her with the help of that other do-gooder, Paine. They go to Earth and meet up with another mook named Freeman. Everything’s a blur after that; you didn’t have that much time to look at her file on the witch’s computer.

You reduce everything about her to ones and zeros, peaks and troughs, colors and shapes, and it still isn’t enough.

You only hope that you’ll be able to hold out long enough to make it back to Rog and Reg. With their help, you will bust the witch’s dimensional scheme wide open, so to speak. Heh heh heh.

“Heh heh heh.”

“Something funny?”

“What, oh-no, no, nothing. Nothing.”

----UPLOADING: REALITY B: CLAY V GORGER V RAZZMO----

Under high noon, the titans struggle. On an adjacent building, a bored mercenary occasionally tries to snipe one of them off.

Things were not going well for Clay. Come to that, they weren’t going well for Gorger, either.

They had both transformed at some point, no one except for the sniper knew who had done so first. Perhaps it didn’t matter.

At least Amanda was safe, well away from the fight. Clay often regretted allowing her to tag along after him. Granted, she had tricked him into going in the first place, but he really should have pressed harder. She thought it was all some kind of picnic, she felt that they needed more time out together. And now it turned out that the whole reason for going was so that she could wish him back to life.

Clay is a zombie. In his pedestrian state, he has the appearance of a handsome tallish man with light gray skin and a ruddy brown haircut that was Just Messy Enough. He doesn't actually have any clothes to speak of, but his “Black Blood” acts like a second skin, creating garments for him at his merest thought. Currently, it was keeping him “alive” through the expedient of forming an invincible armor that acted as a weapon as well. The problem was that such armor took quite a bit of energy to initiate and maintain. And Gorger wasn’t helping matters by occasionally robbing him of energy to maintain his monstrous state.

It didn’t help that Gorger knew kung fu and Clay didn’t. It didn’t help that Gorger had spent much of his existence plotting on how best to destroy and kill where Clay had attempted to spend as much time as he could on relaxing.

And it definitely didn’t help whenever that idiotic, trigger-happy MORON decided to–ow.

“STOP THAT!”

Gorger sees an opportunity and strikes with three of his hands, palm, fist, chop. His ribcage and stomach cheer him on. Clay pinwheels over and over down the street. His many claws rake deep furrows in the asphalt, bringing him to a shuddering halt. Gorger is already thudding towards him, cracking glass windows and upending cars with every step. His forest of arms metronome in time with his earthquake steps as he half screams, half sings a discordant and insane version of the tune to Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries.

"DOO DOO DOOO DOOOO DOOOO!!!!!!!!"

He leaps high into the air above Clay. He is silhouetted against the sun, his many arms spread out to form a cross between Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man and a demonic butterfly. He rolls into a misshapen ball as he comes down. Clay turns slightly and reorganizes the shape of his armor.

Gorger lands hard, forming a deep crater. He spreads his legs and four of his upper arms in a living lattice on either side of Clay, while the remaining four attempt to take him apart. The gigantic spike formed out of Clay's upper body is forced deep into the mouth on Gorger's stomach. Clay is trying to push farther forward, and the mouth's tongue and teeth are trying to get a solid grip on the thing, biting viciously, drawing sparks.

The dragon eye on Clay's back, the spirit of Prophet, doesn't have much to offer in the way of advice. It shouts what it knows, and what it knows Clay already knows for lack of anything better to say. To not let Gorger get a solid grip with which to siphon energy, to not let his guard down, etc.

The giant eye on Gorger's back is characteristically silent. It doesn't have much to do. It spots movement on a rooftop. The movement resolves into the shape of a man, which in turn resolves into a bullet speeding towards it.

It shuts its lid with a clang, catching the object. It flips open again, launching the bullet up, allowing it to be caught by a free hand. The hand whiplashes around and sends the bullet back in the general direction it came from.

Completely opposite from that position, Razzmo stretches his back, enjoys a brandy looted from an abandoned emporium and cleans his gun. This was too easy. He was going to win rain or shine.

Razzmo was set.

----UPLOADING: REALITY C: RAZZMO V ELSEI V TREMOR----

Razzmo was screwed.

He was going to lose no matter what he did. This was too insane. He was standing directly in the sights of a charging hell beast.

Razzmo cricks his neck, pulling a muscle. He swallows his spit and coughs.

Razzmo is a French soldier of fortune. His hair is black and comes down to his neck. He wears a dark green hat that is sort of a combination of a beret and a turban. He wears a loose, long-sleeved shirt of the same green color under a sleeveless black over shirt that comes down a little past his waist. His pants are black and just as loose as the rest of his clothing. He wears steel soled boots equipped with hidden knife blades in the toe. He bears a jagged diagonal scar across his face. His eyes are green.

He had been raised from birth to be a soldier. At an early age, he had developed psychic powers that made him even more deadly. Too deadly, in fact, to be easily controlled. Because of this, his family had disowned him, cast him out, and marked him for death. Not much had changed since then.

His gun jams. He begins to unjam it at hyper speed, through streaming eyes and numb tired fingers.

He loads another clip and resumes holding his position against what, just moments ago, seemed like a perfectly harmless, easily killable young woman.

She had died. That much had been obvious. But then she had got back up and begun sending blue hellfire after him. He didn’t like that.

“Ah, mon dieu,” he rasps under his breath.

Razzmo blinks sweat from his eyes and pumps the trigger, firing in short controlled bursts about as long as it takes to say, “Vous mourez baiseur, vous mourez.”

His Heavy Kord 127mm mini gun coughs through its bundle of deadly rounds again.

To ass-all effect.

The undead girl continues shambling in his direction, deflecting his bullets with concentrated spouts of that demon fire. Her slitted eyes glow a virulent blue, and black veins have spread from the sapphire set in her throat across her face and much of her body.

Razzmo hits the end of his clip again, and tenses his body to abandon his position for a more defensible one among Death City’s many alleyways and towers.

Suddenly, with the monster only a few steps away, a sonic whine as of metal cutting through air resolves itself into a blur, which resolves itself into another young woman, wielding the most enormous hammer Razzmo has ever seen. The newcomer catches the demon unaware, clocking her on the side of the head and propelling her sideways through several buildings.

Razzmo stares in mild shock. The young girl leans on her hammer and smiles with her eyes, satisfied with her violence.

“Est votre nom…Tremor?” he asks hesitantly.

She cocks her head to one side.

“That’s my name.”

Razzmo smiles.

“Bon.”

He draws his pistol and shoots her between the eyes.

He reloads, pulls out his other pistol, and goes looking for “Elsei”.

----UPLOADING: REALITY D: ELSEI V GORGER V CLAY----

Clay throws another bus.

Elsei crouches down again, shielding the comatose form of Gregor from the rain of shrapnel.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to seal off Gregor’s psychic powers. It certainly solved the problem of Gorger’s existence, but it also turned Gregor into a terrific burden.

Perhaps it had been a mistake to trick Clay into killing his girlfriend–but he had brought it on himself. There was no question there. There could never be any question, never any doubt.

Never.

“I’M GOINNNG TOO RIIIP YOU OPENNN ANNND WISH MY AMANDA BAAAAACK!!!!!”

Elsei throws Gregor over her shoulder and belts from her shelter just as a pair of compact cars land on it.

And yes, it did make him certifiably insane with grief, but he–he brought it on himself.

Elsei tries to reason with him again while gathering energy for a devastating magical attack.

“Wishing her back to life is not a good thing! To rip her from the after life would render Heaven and Hell meaningless! It would render Death meaningless!”

She ducks hurriedly to the ground and barrel rolls to avoid the staccato storm of bricks thrown at her, losing the concentration on her spell in the process.

She lurches to her feet, gritting her teeth against the stitch in her side, and makes for another defensible spot.

Clay steps into view from around one of the piles of his wreckage. He’s wearing his armor again, just like the last time she saw him. Its texture is chitinous and smooth, matte black in shadow and gunmetal gray under the sun. He has no visible eyes in this state. The angles of his body have been sharpened, elongated, devolved into something almost reptilian.

“DEATH SHOULD BE MEANINGLESS. IT MAKES PEOPLE MISERABLE AND INSANE. I HATE DEATH AND IT DESERVES NO RESPECT!!!”

He lunges at her.

She drops Gregor.

She draws her dagger in the split second she is allowed to think.

She strikes with lightning precision.

That is to say, her attack is completely random, and has a 1/700,000 chance of success.

----RELOADING: REALITY A: GORGER V ELSEI V TREMOR----

Elsei buttons up her coat and walks back out into the street after having hung up her Teri cloth robe.

She taps her foot for a bit, and then stamps her two-inch heel into the dubiously existent forehead of the fallen troll. She does so with vigor and great satisfaction. She takes a bite of the scone from the unattended continental breakfast of her hotel and then kicks the skeleton man a few times for good measure.

It had been a…strange…victory. But it had been a victory. And that was all that counted. It did not matter if their army of zombies had disappeared without a trace, and that she had found them like this in the middle of the street for no apparent reason. What mattered was that she had won.

She hears footsteps from behind her and turns.

A young woman is walking up with a preposterously large hammer over her shoulder. An indistinct figure is following her.

“Who are you?” Elsei demands, pointing her glowing hand at the two newcomers in a threatening manner.

“I’m Tremor. Are you Elsei?”

Elsei lowers her hand slowly.

“Yesss…” she replies hesitantly, “What are you doing here?”

“We’re supposed to team up with you. Didn’t you get a note?”

Elsei flips some hair out of her face, extremely irritated.

“NO. I got a wake up call. An extremely rude one.”

She turns a little bit and looks directly at you.

You step into the light and put your hand on Tremor’s shoulder in what couldn’t possibly be construed as a vicious and foresighted tactic.

Tremor speaks.

“This is Clay.”

Elsei stares at you. At your rigor mortis grin.

There are several moments of absolute silence.

You can see it, she’s moving up through the steps in her mind. She’s past shaking her head and saying No It’s Not. To your dismay, it would appear that she has gone past even the relative sanctuary of attacking both of you blindly and into some platitude of psychotics hitherto unknown to you.

And so, faster then any human could move, and at a great cost to your well of energy, you command Rog and Reg to abandon their pantomime and bind Elsei hand and foot in a most inescapable manner, while at the same time, you begin your own devious part of the Plan. You grip Tremor’s hammer and focus. Sure enough, the tiny fragment of her weapon you absorbed before she was resurrected resonates beautifully.

Rog and Reg begin digging mercilessly into Elsei’s soul, dangerously, thoughtlessly, and carelessly unraveling the bindings that sustain not only her inner Demon’s dormancy, but also bits of its existence.

The universe implodes, right on time.

Plib.

----ERROR DETECTED: INITIATING SCAN----

Sea Lover jerks from her micro nap and blinks owlishly at her view screens.

Something was wrong.

----RELOADING: REALITY B: CLAY V GORGER V RAZZMO----

“Okay,” Clay breathes heavily.

“Maybe…Maybe we should…ya know…I dunno…take out that guy?”

Gorger rolls his head around on his shoulders.

“MMMMMMMIIIIIIIIIIIIII DOOOO’NT KNOOOOWWW……I’D SAY I’VE GOT YOU PRETTY MUCH RIGHT WHERE I WANT YOU.”

The second rocket in as much as fifteen minutes impacts his spine. Gorger releases his grip from around Clay’s throat, dropping him.

“WHARRAWHA!!!”

Clay gets up and dusts himself off while Gorger cups his hands and forms a bucket chain with himself and a dismantled fire hydrant.

“OKAY, OKAY! HE DIES FIRST! HAPPY?”

“Very. Circle around to the back of that building. No, that one.”

Gorger lumbers off. Clay finds a manhole, opens it, and jumps inside.

Razzmo taps out his gratis Cuban cigar on the balcony of his expense-free Presidential Suite and scans the perimeter. He can’t hear anything. What could they–wait.

He can't hear anything.

He Can't Hear Anything.

HE CAN'T HEAR ANYTHING.

He claps his hands, whistles, stamps his feet, nothing.

Sweat beads on his brow.

He looks down and sees the crack spreading between his feet.

He screams noiselessly as he and the balcony are catapulted through the air.

Something catches him, and the rushing of wind fills his ears.

The something lands and Razzmo realizes with no share of comfort that it is Gorger, back in his relatively human form. Clay steps out of nowhere and grins. He has not elected to transform back, it seems.

Gorger drops Razzmo unceremoniously and kicks him in the stomach.

"A sound Plan indeed, my fine fellow. I'll admit I was hesitant about changing back to make use of that ingenious manipulation, but the ends justify the means, eh?"

Razzmo leaps to his feet, knife in hand. He's standing in a tight crouch, every muscle taut, teeth clenched. He looks somewhat like an incensed monkey. He jabs repeatedly, hopping left and right, stabbing the two gray men's abdomens multiple times.

Clay shares a look with Gorger, who shrugs.

Clay slaps Razzmo and he goes flying down the street.

Razzmo manages to twist so as not to impale himself on his own knife. He staggers upright. He glares at the two freaks some yards away from him.

"Vous ne savez pas qui vous insultez!"

He grins evilly, his blind hatred crystallizing into devious malice.

"J'ai des puissances que vous n'avez jamais rêvées de…"

Clay looks as puzzled as his new face will allow.

"What did he…?"

"Apparently he's been hiding something from us. Any ideas?"

"Well, he might have…another gun somewhere? I'm not sure, I can't remember anything suspicious from his previous fights."

Razzmo is still grinning and staring with a diamond auger gaze at the two of them.

Gorger taps his chin.

"Maybe he could–"

His head jerks for a split second.

"Ah."

"What? What is it?"

Gorger points.

Razzmo is on the ground in a fetal position.

They amble over to him.

"He tried to get inside my mind."

"What's going to happen to him?"

"Well, if he's smart enough he'll pull out and sever the connection. Until then, all he'll see and hear is nothing."

Gorger gives a big belly laugh that sounds like a dying man banging his feeble hand against a bucket at the bottom of a well.

Clay laughs hesitantly and makes the mistake of trying to check on Razzmo.

A fist impacts with his gut, cracking the armor’s carapace, a millisecond before Prophet shouts a warning in his head.

Clay remains upright but slides back, his clawed feet leaving deep tracks in the road.

Gorger would have had to move much faster than he usually did to get in an attack at the same time as Prophet warning him, let alone before it.

Clay looks back down the street, and indeed, Gorger is definitely more transparent than he remembers.

"Granted, it was a risk, but it was one I was, and still am, willing to take."

He spreads his legs apart and hunches over slightly. He brings his hands up and holds them in front of his chest, fingers pointing up, palms about six inches away from each other.

Then the strangest thing happens. He begins deliberately fighting against the apparent impulse to bring his hands together. His arms vibrate and crackle with tiny strokes of red lightning. A neon red ring forms between his hands, vibrating faster and crackling with lightning brighter than the two limbs holding it together.

His feet begin to sink into the street, sending cracks through the asphalt all around the twin craters of his boots.

"This is a little something I cooked up one day when I was cooking up some chaps who worked in a facility testing String Theory."

"Lovely," says Clay, bracing himself.

"I call it…"

Gorger has all but disappeared, and only the hellish donut in his hands provides some clue as to his continued physical existence.

"Theeeeeeeeeeee………"

Clay grits his teeth.

"……eeeeeeeeeeeKILLDRIVER!!!!!" he unleashes it in a violent explosion of noise like a volcano erupting.

It expands faster than any man can run, like a life-size version of an atomic particle being split. It swells faster and faster in Clay’s direction.

He pauses for a picosecond, a little disdainful, and then somersaults through the gaping hole in the middle.

Clay stands up.

“PFAK!!” Gorger barks in pure wordless fury.

Clay chuckles as the Kill Driver continues to annihilate a wider and wider circle of abandoned buildings behind him.

He saunters over to the rapidly deteriorating body of Gorger.

“You know, I actually kind of feel sorry for YOOUARGAGARAHAGAGAAAAA!!!!!!”

Gorger has reached up with the last of his strength and rested his hand on Clay’s shoulder, gripping it like a vise clamp.

Lines of crimson run across Clay’s body and into Gorger’s five fingertips like currents of water.

Clay’s knees bend, as Gorger seems to become larger.

“And THAT is what we call a NICE SAVEhahahahaha.”

Gorger takes his hand off of Clay and flexes it.

“You may feel just a little queasy. It's kind of natural. Maybe you should Sit DOWN!”

Gorger punctuates his statement by clamping his hand on Clay’s head and violently forcing him waist deep into the street.

He struts around Clay in a small circle, while in the distance; the Kill Driver creates a Class Two tornado before becoming too unstable to exist anymore.

“Sakes alive, you’re like a battery, man! It couldn’t be easier to steal from you. Maybe it’s because you absorb it differently than the living long pig, eh? No diffusion or whatever it’s called.”

He raises his fists above his head.

“And now, for the–“

“Hey G-gorger?” Clay groans.

“Oh yes, your last words?”

“No, no, uh, does your kill drive thing, have two stages or something? Does it boomerang back?”

“Good one, Sun Tzu, say goodbye to your skull…”

“I’m s-serious! Does it like, transform into a wall of blazing white, uh, looks like SpaceTime?”

“What the Hell are you talking abou–”

Plib.

----RESORTING TO BACKUP POWER: RESTORING MAIN LINEARITY GENERATOR: SCANNING FOR MORE ERRORS----

They betrayed her, she's sure of it. There can be no other explanation. Exactly who “they” are, she is unsure. But Sea Lover knows this mess is their responsibility. It damn sure isn't going to be hers.

She wipes her brow and returns to riveting shadows to their light sources.

----UPLOADING: REALITY E: TREMOR V CLAY V RAZZMO: ONE ERROR FOUND----

Tremor raises her hammer again and pounds Clay’s protruding arm deeper into the ground, along with its siblings.

Already the other bones are regenerating. She steps back and considers her choices.

He rises and makes one for her, reaching out to grab hold of her shoulders.

“Stop that, ple–”

She swings and catches him on the side of the head, cart wheeling him in place for three consecutive loops.

He lands on his head and lies still for a moment.

He rolls over on his back and she resumes burying him and compacting him at the same time.

She raises her hammer over her head and prepares to bring it down in a guillotine blow.

Something impacts with her lower back. She looks down and sees blood staining her shirt. She turns, letting her hammer fall.

A man stands there, with a smoking gun in his hand. His green eyes glint at her hungrily, it seems.

He smiles.

----ERRORS FOUND IN: MAIN HARD DRIVE: DELETE MAIN HARD DRIVE?----

It was moving faster, but in a certain direction. It had started here, in A, and would dead end in E, and then, who knew? No one had attempted anything like this before.

Sea Lover calls out for assistance again, but her Messengers are still busy trying to get their joints to move in the right direction, and figuring out, with no uncertainty, which is the floor and which is the ceiling. They keep switching places.

----RELOADING: REALITY C: RAZZMO V ELSEI V TREMOR: INITIATING ERROR CHECK: NO ERRORS FOUND: FOLLOWING STATEMENT IS TRUE: PREVIOUS STATEMENTS ARE FALSE: REBOOT?----

He screams. He screams and screams and screams. And then he empties his cartridge into the dead Elsei’s forehead.

She continues to squeeze Razzmo’s head, however. Out of ammo, he pistol-whips her in the throat, making sparks on the jewel there with the metal of his gun.

She hisses and staggers back, clutching it.

She’s advanced, somewhat.

The black lines branching from her gem now light up occasionally, as if a current were being run through them. Her eyes are a viral, incandescent blue. Bull’s horns now protrude from the sides of her head. She is wreathed in lurid navy flames that take the shape of a great and terrible bird of prey, symbiotically providing her with faster flight and greater physical protection.

And she has a tail.

It lashes the wind behind her, cutting the minor street furniture of hot dog carts and news stands in two.

A voice cries out behind him and he makes the mistake of looking to see who it is, though ironically, it saves him from what would surely be instantaneous death if he hadn’t been paying attention at all.

It’s Tremor, somehow alive. The bullet must have just grazed the inside of her skull.

She bum rushes him and catches him in the stomach. She begins to spin him around like an NSSS centrifugal force machine. She crooks her left ankle and digs her right heel into the ground, stopping his flight, and beginning another that will hopefully last a bit longer.

Elsei cocks her head to one side and takes just a little too long to puzzle out this newcomer’s existence.

Tremor slams the ground with her hammer, sending a shock wave in Elsei’s direction. She takes wing, and makes a perfect outline against the bright sun. Tremor javelins her hammer straight for Elsei’s central body mass.

The hammer collides with Elsei, who collides with Razzmo on his way back to terra firma, they both collide with Tremor as she runs to get out of the way, and a wave of unreality collides with the lot of them.

Plib.

----RELOADING REALITY: RELOADING REALITY RELOADING REALITY REALITY REALITYREALITYREALITYREALITY----

“I don’t care if Messenger 1408 has lost his eyes, he’ll Make the beds with the rest of you! Now, you start with one carbon atom, add another, and then another…”

----RELOADING: REALITY D: ELSEI V GORGER V CLAY: 42 PENGUINS----

It was against Elsei’s better judgment, but then, she had no choice. It would be for the greater good, which at the moment consisted of keeping herself alive to fight for the greater good another day.

She reaches down, stretching as far as she can, trying to reach the body of Gregor that had fallen into a deep crevice between two piles of wreckage.

At the same moment, she feels a grip of steel take hold of her other arm, almost wrenching it out of the socket.

She screams in pain as Clay tries to dismember her.

She focuses the last of her energy into creating a short-range portal, and slips between space and time (feels a little rougher than normal today), out of Clay’s grasp, and into Gregor's tiny cave. In haste, she leaves the portal open as she grips the air above Gregor’s forehead between two fingers. She rips them away, and for a brief moment, a sigil flashes red on the skin above his brow.

Immediately, the air grows hot. It grows hotter and hotter and hotter.

And then it freezes.

And then Gregor’s head explodes into a red tornado of light and noise.

The tornado slices Elsei’s left hand off neatly above the wrist and continues through her open portal, obliterating Clay’s right shin.

The bonds of reality, already stretched thin by Gorger’s pressurized re-entrance and Elsei’s last-ditch portal, reach the breaking point when the two disasters collide.

Right about the same time the other anomaly shows up.

Plib.

---- ERROR:ERROR:ERROR:ERROR:ERROR:ERROREEEEEEEEEEEE----

Sea Lover is falling through a great funnel of chaos, clinging to her chair like a life preserver.

There would be Hell to pay for whoever caused this…

Several apparent yards away, unnoticed by the plummeting Sea Lover, you have gotten a hold of another essential piece of furniture from her central control room. You type furiously at her dimensional Master Control board as you mutter under your breath.

"And in This one I want to have a car, and in This one I want a different haircut, and in This one…"

----RELOADING: REALITY E: TREMOR V CLAY V RAZZMO…V GORGER V ELSEI V TREMOR V CLAY V GORGER V RAZZMO V RAZZMO V ELSEI V TREMOR V ELSEI V GORGER V CLAY V…----

Tremor sits on a miraculously undestroyed park bench with her new friends Clay and Razzmo. A little salve from Razzmo and some magic from Clay and she was all right again.

They had agreed that wishes weren't all they were cracked up to be, and that long-lasting friendship was what they really needed, what everyone in the world really needed.

Tremor sips her slushie and speaks.

"I'm glad we're friends."

"Me too."

"Moi aussi."

They sit and drink quietly for a while, watching the sunset. A flock of doves flies by overhead.

Clay wrinkles his brow a little bit, his mind on something.

"That's strange."

"Ce qui?"

"You don't usually get doves in inner city areas. Especially at such dramatic moments."

Tremor leans forward a bit, part of her not wanting to acknowledge the suspiciousness of the situation, but the majority of her battle-hardened psyche tensing her muscles for something unexpected.

A shooting star goes by overhead.

Another shooting star goes by overhead.

Tremor points with her straw.

"That was highly improbable."

And another.

"And that even more so," says Clay.

And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another.

The sky fills with them; they obliterate everything behind them, turning the sky white like an army of erasers attacking a cave painting.

Clay and Tremor just stare. Razzmo slumps back, a sullen look on his face. It would seem he understands that their time of relaxation and mutual friendship is over, whatever the cause.

Without looking at either of them, he pulls out his gun and begins to clean it.

Clay looks around.

"Did you say something?"

"No, I didn't say anything. Did you say anything, Razzmo?" Tremor takes another sip.

"Non."

"Why did you think one of us said something?"

"I could've sworn I heard one of you say 'WHOP'."