Merse’s sensitive ears twitched, tickled by a peculiar exchange amidst the chaos. The pirate captain and someone else were clearly experiencing the same rude introduction to the asteroid he encountered some time ago. Though one was clearly angrier than the other, their dialogue suggested familiarity with each other. After the largest robot partially clipped several Amazon’s wings, damn near taking the diving Aletheia’s head off with his sweeping plasma cannon, an interesting proposition was made. This many rambunctious personalities active on the asteroid made for the perfect storm. Merse could perhaps kill the tweetiest flock of birds that ever existed with one stone. The captain, his crew, the mysterious new arrival, and even Victoria’s stalker could all help in speed-running the black cat’s current objective. Generally, Merse vouched for a little more finesse for an operation as delicate as this, but he couldn't deny how advantageous this all suddenly became. The fact that none of them died already gave him enough assurance that this was going to work. Amid the chaos, Merse somehow pulled an off-white brick-sized, antennaed cellphone from his trenchcoat. His black paws blurred with their speed, dialing a 40-digit number in a flash, subsequently hijacking Metallo’s radio signal. [i]“Ahem!”[/i] Only after obnoxiously clearing his voice did Merse speak in an offensively stereotypical pirate accent. [i]“Ahoy, Ca-[/i][b][i]P[/i][/b][i]-tain. Lift your patch and take a gander at ye junk folder! Prime Consortium has sent you something far more valuable than any ol pile of gold doubloons….Arrgggg.”[/i] Despite the act, his voice might have been recognized. Then again, he wasn’t trying all that hard to conceal it. Through the radio speaker, it rang clear enough to picture the fictional eye patch he comically envisioned covering his closed left eye. The information broker dropped a detailed map of the prison's schematics, noting every point of entry and exit within the asteroid from the well-known to top secret. This had to appear awfully suspicious to the group. Still, the coordinates were as real as it gets, etched by the hard work of Merse’s somewhat trusted cartographer, Eal, who, in all likelihood, was in some dungeon on the golden asteroid [i]“tortured”[/i] by solar-light whips. Eal’s rescue, though low on his priority list, was added to the queue. He had far more important things to worry about, like how his stealth mission would soon have its lid completely torn off in a way even he didn’t account for. [h3][center]✯✯✯[/center][/h3] With every thunderous flap of her seraphim wings, Solica found the scent she relentlessly hunted fizzling out. She was certain she was close. Nothing ever fooled Solica’s senses. [b]Nothing[/b]. Yet something scrambled her sense of smell, tossing them into a blender set to maximum. Then [i]it[/i] happened. [i]“AAAHHHH–CHHOOOO!”[/i] The mighty Orichalca Queen, famed across star systems for her perfect health, unbreakable discipline, and iron resolve… sneezed. Her sinuses flared. And [i]that[/i] meant only [i]one[/i] thing. A cat. No — [b][i]the[/i][/b] cat. The one creature in the universe she was allergic to. The one she, like the disgraced and captured CEO, despised above all others. It was becoming a bit of a recurring theme. Merse was back. Not many were happy about it. His accursed aroma was so repugnant, the matriarch couldn’t smell anything else. It sidelined her rabid infatuation with Anfield's scent and consolidated all her emotions into rage aimed directly at the pesky felid information broker. Starting as a measly seed of light, her left hand erupted into a brilliant white blaze. Birthed by flame, a woven, golden cornucopia with latticeworked gems like miniature stars spiraled into existence. [b]The Starlet.[/b] A sacred weapon projecting crepuscular rays straight from its bell, ignoring walls, piercing several buildings and the dangling megaflora foliage about. Heat concentrated where the queen felt the detestable smell of cat the most as it announced itself like the rising eastward sun. Everyone in the entire banquet hall noticed the narrow spotlight on the now squinting feline center stage. They had front row tickets to the Merse show. Recognizing who he was, several oricalca warriors audibly gasped, others screaming as they realized what the beam of light he basked in came from. Merse’s eyes widened asymmetrically. He dug frantically through his impossibly deep inner trenchcoat pocket, pawing past nameless trinkets, relics, and questionable receipts before clenching just what he looked for. Nothing could prepare anyone in the banquet hall for what followed. Queen Solica gripped her dazzling weapon, the Starlet, with both hands, inhaling fully. The frills of her macramé garments stood on end like static-charged hair. With the full capacity of her royal lungs, she blasted gales into the horn of plenty, unleashing a cornucopia of prismatic flaming arcs, blinding flares, and spiraling constructs preceding world-shaking thunder. The solar storm that smote the very spot where Merse stood burned so hot it instantly smelted all nearby gold, boring down through the structure’s foundations and shaking the asteroid’s core—disturbing even its Orichalc Gold skeleton, hundreds of times stronger than steel. Everything briefly looked like an overexposed photograph. The eastward walls of the banquet hall wobbled like sheets of paper, floors buckled, and chandeliers exploded, overcharged with the abundance of solar energy. If Anfield wanted a feast, it was best to pack a to-go bag as the venue marched towards collapse. At the very edge of the humongous hole the queen blasted, the black outstretched right paw and the upper body of Merse desperately clung, completely covered in a mysterious black sludge. It appeared as if he had a bad run-in with a colossal squid. Not a fiber of his fur and classic noir attire was spared, and for good reason. It managed to shield him from a significant bulk of Solica’s fiery light-based barrage. The mysterious ink coating Merse bubbled, revealing that its protection came with a [i]catch-22.[/i] Beneath his slipping paw, the remains of a shattered vial, label still intact, reading [i]Felidrine Cat Ink[/i]. The furthest shard just out of reach bore a warning stamped in bold red letters… [b][color=#ffff00]CAUTION: APPLY ONE DROP PER USE.[/color][/b] Googly eyes. Dozens of them, and counting, blinked awake, followed by an accumulating chorus of mewing wherever the ink had splashed. This made Merse quite literally Argus-eyed as hundreds of miniature black cats, writhing and knotting together, poured from his body to no conceivable end. What began as a spill became a flash flood, then a tidal wave. The soft kitten mews avalanched into yowling as thousands of cats fought. They became the straw that broke the back of the already unstable, mountain-carved skyscraper. One after another, following Merse in his descent, slabs of the banquet hall’s floor dropped in a wave, deep into the crevice widening by the second. To the untrained eye, the information broker appeared to be in a dire situation. To keener eyes, the inky tsunami of cats revealed exactly why Merse scrambled so desperately to summon them in the first place. Their tiny paw claws endlessly piling on biscuits were undeniably annoying, and surely he did not intend to spill so many, but the Inklings indiscriminately swallowed everything in sight. Merse, the horrified servants, and anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the wave were shielded from storms of stray arrows, ricocheting solar beams, molten shards, and tumbling boulders of debris. Dozens of Orichalca warriors fought on regardless, Aletheia among them, until the roof quite literally came down. The espresso cocktail of every ink-submerged mortal drained thousands of feet below, individuals slip-n-sliding through countless canals randomly like an ant colony made waterpark. They could emerge anywhere in the prison’s lower avenues, but directly beneath them was the massive junkyard and waste depository, actually a trove of discarded treasures the Amazons ignorantly ignored in favor of gold.