‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘…’

‘Not a single one of them is going to go after the mirrors.’

With this observation, Lea, still in the dark dimension, swung her arms and over range had her insects to gesture to the other agents of Asengav, located in various parts of Penrose by the various mirrors. GET BACK HERE!

__________________


Mikayla saw her spirits flying forth, propelled both by her Spirit specialization and her Gravity specialization bending reality to make them fly faster. To Mikayla’s eyes, her gravity was stopped by the yellow one’s own gravity field, but then they were all launched anyway, and her Spirits slammed them away. A small shield was raised over the portal itself before her Spirits could penetrate, and then the portal vanished before they could break through.

But things didn’t add up. Despite her eyes seeing them launched, the gravity well stayed. She could sense it by how her spirits slightly deviated by their path. Meaning, what her eyes told her and what was actually going on did not match. There were enemies on this roof with them. How bothersome.

Mikayla made a wave with her arms, and several more spectres manifested behind her. The guard around her tightened their defenses. She now had to be wary of unseen attacks. She floated up into the air, her Powerful Aura blazing…

‘Must we do this?’ Mikayla decided to ask, just at the same time as Lily landed and started having her monologue with the Queen. She’d landed on the Queen’s side of the rooftop, so Mikayla wasn’t going to bother with her.

‘I would much rather go back and dote on my children.’ Those were Light-specialized girls Mikayla were speaking to, so they could tell she was speaking the truth.

‘If you press on, I will destroy you.’ truth
‘Believe me, I would take no pleasure in tearing you to pieces.’ lie
‘You know how it is. Horror. I can’t oppose the will of my patron.’ lie
‘I promise that I will leave any who run unharmed, just for today.’ truth
‘Don’t worry. Upon this ritual’s completion, when Asengav accomplishes his goal, we will leave. Your world will not come to harm.’
lie

… Then the Queen did her slice and mirrors emerged and things happened. Mikayla, still unable to see her adversaries, simply raised an eyebrow and then stood still for the time being. A lot of her spectres were now returning from the blast she made and were now swirling around her, like Mikayla was the middle in a ghost galaxy…

Despite Isra’s rapid response to Penny’s attack, it wasn’t fast enough. In the time it took to escape from between the smashed cars and swing at Penny’s limbs, the Iron queen had given herself planetary mass, erected a barrier, and even had the time to ask a casual question about Osirus’s nature. The gravity was so intense in fact that Osirus’s attack was drawn towards the shield rather than its intended target. Not that it would have mattered as Penny was able to convert her steel limbs into lightning at will. Certainly, Penny had earned her reputation as a fearsome opponent.

"I like gold boxes." was all Osirus could manage in response. She hadn’t paid too much attention in college and most of the finer details of her magical form were handled by Nykannis’s systems. But if she had her choice of box, she’d take a gold box over a black box or a blue box any day of the week. Though she wasn’t sure why Penny was asking this. It didn’t seem to have any strategic value, which was why she offered her opponent a response.

Some sort of counter was coming, so Osirus instinctively deployed her Synthetic Weaponized Ancillary Robotic Minions, which was just a cluster of nanite scarabs that formed a glistening shield in front of her palm. The Scorpion of Destruction wasn’t without its own mechanisms, however. It and Penny were one in the same of a fashion, minus the scorpion’s much lower protagonist power. It used its own gravity magic to anchor itself into the ground, but still found itself sliding forwards. Though that would soon become far less of a problem once Osirus’s tail slammed into Penny’s tower shield.

Gravity suddenly reversed, pushing away from Penny rather than towards her. Osiris deployed her Self-Contained Aerial Refractive Aether Booster and hard light construct wings opened up behind her. She rode the concussive force backwards as her shield was pelted with shrapnel and all manner of mysterious substances. Though her Supplementary Powered Implementation Devices for Enemy Removal deployed just a fraction after impact, and a tendril coiled itself around Penny’s leg. Osiris wasn’t just flying backwards now, she was swinging around Penny, riding with, then against the massive gravity flux to get behind Penny.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much the Scorpion of Destruction could do to cheat its way out of a clobbering. It reached out with its massive claws in an attempt to grab Penny’s massive hammer before it did anything. But if events thus far were anything to go by, this hammer was more than met the eye…



As fun as it was to bounce from spirit to spirit, there were some other things that she should probably be doing. Her eyes tracked Madness as she soared under her, and then she flicked her pupils towards Savage, who looked like she was being fed all the ammo she could possibly eat. Clearly, something needed to be done.

So she flew to their position. Oracle may have been gone, but the moth dust that they had all been coated in persisted. It was fortunate too, because the planetary gravity flux would have been harder to deal with if she wasn’t in a position to give gravity the bird. She moved swiftly as was her namesake, but attempted to remain above their notice. Equally swift were her sword strikes. If one kept a close eye on her, one might assume she was punching from her scabbard. But these were actually extremely fast sword strikes that caused the air around the biorids to open up, only to slam closed with frightening force.



"Artificial chemicals are no way to retain a healthy physique!"

The attack was stronger than Shrewd had intended, but she wasn’t going to shed any tears for the robot. They were robots after all, disposable, numerous…

Oh right.

Amber was breaking a sweat with this one, yet her opponent was casually talking about roleplaying while attacking ferociously enough to kill a mortal man. "I do funny voices. In fact, I’m doing one right now." She pulled a T-bone steak out of her backpack and chucked it at the martial artist. The lightning struck it mid-air and cooked it instantly before it slapped into her face. "Taste natural protein!" A food processor popped up from under her foot and she began to toss things into it, and occasionally at her opponent. Potatoes, onions, and more carrots flew her way "If you don’t like carrots, it’s simple enough to make a smoothie or stew where they are more edible!" After tossing several items into the processor, she stepped on a peddle coming out of her backpack and it turned on. But this was just some preparation to kill time while she quaffed a potion. Yes, while Shrewd had a small body, her nimble fingers were always doing multiple things at once. In the flurry of fast moves she had dropped her frying pan on top of her pack where she stood.

Though with the fluctuation in gravity ripping past them, Amber nearly soared off towards her opponent. She locked her foot on one of her backpack’s straps, and her other one pinned her pan to the surface. But the pitcher that rested on the food processor detached, and it and the stew-smoothie soared towards Stacy’s face.



The trio honed their aim on their adversary's forehead, paying little mind to Madness’s approach. It extended its arm, and a massive black spear slid out of its arm. Or it was a spear. Now Savage’s Endless Eclipse looked like a giant cleaver the length of the monster’s arm. Seeing what happened when Madness tried to cut through their hair, it instead attempted to bisect the biorids. Though that single desperate attack would be the only thing Savage could do before something rang out of her skull.

*CRACK*

Savage stumbled backwards as the last of the rounds ripped through its body. It emitted a noise, but didn’t have the capacity to form it into anything legible. Then it fell backwards into its own gore as Oriko’s slashes happened all around her assassins. The change in gravity rocking the battlefield caused Savage’s body to roll under a nearby car, which rolled over its back before being shoved folwards again.



Before the banter about metal food could continue, the close proximity between the two fighters closed in. In truth, she had no idea what this Stacy’s powerset was, but figured anyone who toted around a chainsaw likely wasn’t someone you wanted reaching for your face. She braced for impact, possibly closing her eyes (not that anyone would notice) and then paint was blasted all over her face. But as the thick, bright-pink-gunk dripped down her chin, so did something else. Spreading just a bit faster than the messy paint was a cloud of metallic particles.

Lada’s hair was rather impractical for someone who wanted to see, which was why she always kept some nanomachines hidden behind her bangs to redirect light and give her perfect 20/20 vision. They dropped onto her face as soon as Stacy’s palm strike came in.

The haft of her ax came apart and covered the rest of her body before a drop of the pink gunk could get on her. With a swing of her arm, the head of the ax attached itself to her wrist and melded into her form. It looked like Inventive’s entire body had been covered in a flexible metal plating, and it had. The metallic, partially painted Lada turned to look at Stacy. While looking out of her "eye" was no longer an option, she could technically view what was happening through any of her nanomachines.

"That didn’t taste too ba-" The sudden shift in gravity threw Lada into the chainsaw maniac, only for it to suddenly reverse and throw her onto her back. But not without taking Stacy to the ground with her. Lada sat upright, causing Stacy to sit up with her. "Hey, got any other colors?"



Stitch ‘Em Up Stacy could pull back her head as much as she liked, but it didn’t change the fact that she was more or less bridal carrying Joy. That, and she had her arms wrapped around her neck. The room left to maneuver was only going to shrink once the tentacles came out. What did stop Joy’s advances was something she said. While her face was only an inch away from the nurse, she stopped. Her expression became wide eyed and serious.

"Y-you want to get to know me better?!"

Joy’s nose hemorrhaged again, and no mere fingers, even enhanced zombie fingers, could stem the flow.



"And you know how to keep a girl off of hers!" Was Wisdom’s response to the zombie girl that was spinning her right round baby right round like a record baby. While Stacy’s counter was brief, and sent wisdom into the heavens, that was all her clone needed to open up with an attack. They polymorphed into a sharkenbear (a grizzly with sharks for its frontmost arms) and lunged forward. All three of its maws opened up to howl a war cry before descending on her.

Wisdom, meanwhile, flew straight for the trampoline-clone, which just looked like a normal trampoline with her face stretched across it. Its legs grew and it angled itself just so to receive the flying counselor. She landed on the trampoline feet first, and when she sprung off of it, she absorbed her clone as she rocketed into the air.

With the clones above her being unimpeded by the inaccurate portal strikes, they swooped up and consumed Storm Witch Stacy and Stacy Stitches whole. Wisdom’s arms joined the masses of toothy flesh, and nearly all of her clones had become one with her.

"Hello!"

Wisdom was aware that attacking Cyberslime Stacy directly was futile. One did not physically stress something such as her. She needed to be mentally stressed to be properly dealt with. So her head turned into a megaphone and blasted her and Staceella with its discordant whales. "Everything you think is crazy cool is actually crazy lame." The reverberating digitized voice sounded like it belonged to a manager that had been working his job at least twenty years longer than he should have. "Boardgames suck, your music sucks, and Ramona legitimately hates you. Your only useful to people because you can be easily manipulated." Wisdom hovered in the air as the weird pink balls of teeth continued to churn their their prey, likely no better protected from the eldrich megaphone than the other stacys. Wisdom was unaffected by the gravity fluctuations thanks to the moth dust she had covered herself in.



As it turned out, shooting her sausage rounds at her bodiless opponent only managed to destroy the carnage sisters while leaving her opponent perfectly fine, despite being under the influence of a major software virus.Thus-



…So maybe the rounds did hit, but the size difference between the Framewerks was still too great. Scylla held its shape, and the shock from the attacks was enough to vaporize the carnage sisters clinging to the outside of the hull. Steel rained down on either size of the mechanical head.

Thalia wasn’t sure why her opponent had stopped moving, but knew that this would be her last chance to do anything significant to her toothly opponent.

"It’s time to serve our hungry friend the full course. Every color of the proverbial breakfast rainbow. A rainbow…In the dark toast!"

After that horrible pun, B@B transformed back into its normal form and unleashed a barrage of attacks like only half the cast of the RP she didn’t get into she could. A concentrated beam of Arklight Thunder knocked Scylla’s systems completely offline, flushing Monika out of system memory and effectively deleting her. Then she blasted another pair of tarts at the hungry titan, followed by two tungsten cylinders. This was followed by her Moonbreaker Sausage cannon. Then she was prepared to deliver the coup de gras, the mother of all deathblows, when she spun her craft like a top. The plug became supercharged as it, along with B@B fell from the heavens like the fist of an angry god.

Then Penny’s gravity flux got in the way. And while being pulled towards Penny was something she could easily correct for, Thallia had a much harder time correcting for the sudden shove into the two remaining towers. Which, in a stroke of very bad luck, happened to have rooms exploding in them on her approach.

"FUCK!"

As maneuverable as Breakfast at Brittany’s was, it was hard to account for a global shift in gravity. Though such a light Framwerk didn’t need to be bitten or exploded to have it’s hull compromised. B@B was spinning like a top, and wasn’t going to deliver that sweet finisher that it looked like it was going for. In fact, it looked like B@B was in a literal death spiral. It was fortunate then that B@B had a targeting system and a cockpit stabilization system that kept everything stable regardless of what the exterior of the ship was doing.

"Targeted ejection!"

Typically, the point of abandoning ship is to get to safety so that one could live to fight another day. But when you were a clone of a legendary Framewerk pilot, you did things a little differently. B@B blew apart into two separate halves, dumping the fluid that surrounded the central cockpit and launching it straight at Thalia’s opponent. Mid-flight, that too split in half, sending the almost naked pilot straight towards Scylla. The massive Carbonox sword on her shoulder hissed and the Stake Driver quick draw mechanism activated.

"HAYYYYAAAHHHHHH!"

With a single empowered swing, Thallia managed to cut through Scylla’s damaged hull and open up the cockpit. She soared straight past Shark Tooth Stacy and slammed into the back of her cramped cockpit. Normally such a hard landing would cripple a normal human, but Thalia’s extra engineered body saw that the back end of the craft took far more abuse than she did.

"My back… My back…" She slid down the rear most wall onto her feet, and just barely got her hand up in time to catch a jar of eyes. She looked at it, gave it a shake, and then turned to Saw Tooth Stacy. "Oh, wow." Her eyebrows raised. "The loudspeakers really didn’t do you justice." She used her thumb to pop open the jar.



Davis could give a shit about what some vagrant in a ruined steel skull was babbling about, or a gravity flux that tossed him around a little bit. His beautiful building however, the pinnacle of everything he had achieved, the one thing that would one day make her immortal…

Between the mecha fights and the targeted attack from the flying zombies, the remaining two arms of the tower collapsed. Without the center most rooms, the upper floors fell onto the lower ones and crushed everything flat. When the dust settled, there was only a heep of rubble. Davis sunk to his knees, and after taking in the sight of his dreams smashed against the earth, he threw his fist at the ground.

"God damn CUNT!" He punched the ground with his other fist. While he was Infinite Conquest, there was only so much a perfect setup could do against such reckless idiocy. His opponents were numerous and impractical, and did not move in predictable ways. But that didn’t mean Davis was out. Something that he must have realized, as he chuckled darkly and rose to his feet.

"Idiots! Fools!" He pointed at everyone around himself. "Did you think I would design something that could be so easily destroyed? The most important facilities, the death traps and my hollowed projects, are safely underground!" He turned to the mass of rubble and threw up his hands. "It’s time, Alice Parker! Rise from your Grave!"

The dirt in front of davis stirred, then a trio of metallic hands clawed their way out of the ground. In the darkness of the earth, a single neon eye opened and locked onto the mastermind’s face.

"Davis, My love!" It shrieked, and it’s digging quickened.



Alexandria was beheaded.

Willow was thrown from her horse.

Geina was as well.

With a sigh, Kyra snapped her fingers. The metal steed she was riding transformed into a giant turret particle cannon. Complete with several scopes and some very cool neon tubes that glowed ominously.

"Statistics showed this was going to be necessary 95% of the time."

She flipped backwards off of the turret, and it fired a wide beam on annihilation at the four Stacys and what remained of the carnage sisters. The gravity flux had little effect on the turret, as it was rooted to the ground, though Kyra’s footing was destabilized by the surge.



Should Oros have paid more attention to their sheets?

That was one of the questions that was going through Madness’s head as she soared through the air. The answer was a resounding no, however. In the end it was her voice, in a battle filled with missiles, lasers, and explosions, that had given away her position. In truth running simulations for this fight had been rather tedious. There were too many strong targets and she could barely get herself to retain anything about them. That, and this world had not been known for its consistency or reason. A feature that she found just as charming as she did aggravating. Though with that issue addressed, Madness had to ask herself a second question: Did she give a shit about anything that was going on? This was not one she could answer right away. On paper it sounded like a yes. When it had been explained to her, it also sounded like a yes. But as training continued and the day of the event came around, flies had started to show up in the ointment.

A battle between her and Penny would have been amusing, she supposed, but she had already done that once. Technically this Madness was just a clone, but her endless eclipse gave her a sort of connection to all others, even the one in Violet’s dream. Too much had changed for a fight between the two juggernauts to be worth anything. Madness had just been one of many opponents that had avoided a sound beating from the iron queen, but could never do any lasting harm to Penny. In truth, Madness was a very small part of what was going on right now. She was just one of several Oros, who were just one of several chess pieces at Nykannis’s disposal, who were fighting several Stacy people and not even interacting with Penny in any meaningful way. Somehow, Madness had become an unwitting pawn in some sadistic play.

But in the end, she was the one who got to move her piece around.

As she soared towards the ultra bright beam of Kyra’s annihilation cannon, she had many avenues of escape. She could activate her hit invincibility, transform into her stronger form and tank the blow, though using her moth dust covered body to alter course would have likely been the most conservative choice.

But Oros did none of those.

"Adios, muchachos!"

Oros did nothing to protect herself, and soared directly into the particle cannon’s beam. Her body disintegrated instantly. Though her instrument flew from her disintegrated waist and buried itself in Kyra’s head while she was staggered, and the android collapsed on the spot.

The turret still fired, however.

As Connie did her best to coordinate the various Pennybots under Gaia’s control, the nervous girl couldn’t help but overhear the comments being made by some of the other girls present about their mysterious seventh “teammate” and whether or not said individual was Penny’s girlfriend. She tried her best to tune the conversation out and focus on the task at hand, just as Gaia was doing, but even so, it still caused her mask to form a frown of worry. The timid girl really hoped the chatty duo wouldn’t decide to start asking her questions about the subject. Connie knew just how much Violet valued her secrecy, and she didn’t want her own social anxiety to inadvertently cause her to reveal something to these girls that her wealthy friend wished to keep hidden.

Thankfully(?), her mind was distracted from these unpleasant possibilities by a new arrival. Sparing a startled glance towards the direction of the new voice, Connie saw that it was the strange cat maid from the Queen of Heart’s castle, the one who claimed to be an ally. Apparently, she had gained enough of Penny’s trust to be allowed access to this control center and was now chattering on about providing coffee, or anything else the Pennybot operators might require.

“U-Umm…” Connie spoke up hesitantly, while raising a quivering hand. “I-I have a r-request, i-if it’s n-not t-too much t-trouble...” If and when Cheshire Cat moved over to her, the masked maiden would inquire in a soft whisper, “S-So, u-umm, d-do you h-have anything t-that could, uh, m-maybe r-restore m-mana…?”

---

Meanwhile, in her private chamber, Violet was guiding her assigned Pennybots with a skill surpassing even Gaia’s. Indeed, such was her ability to multitask that her focus was able to rapidly shift to view each of the other squads as well, taking their situations into account while choosing how to direct her own. She was also able to cast her gaze further afield, which brought to her attention the combat occurring atop Covington Tower. At first, she felt a spike of panic at the sight. This was not just the headquarters for her family’s company, it was her home, and her father’s as well. Yet, despite her instinctive desire to mobilize all the defensive drones present in the mighty structure, while simultaneously pulling back her squad of Pennybots to aid in its defense, a closer look revealed that none of the fighting was actually occurring inside the massive building, but rather, was confined to its rooftop. As long as that remained the case, the young heiress knew that there was no cause for alarm. Even whatever incomprehensible ritual was preparing to be enacted was not enough to give Violet pause, for she knew her friends were already quite literally leaping into action to oppose it, and she had full faith in their abilities, Penny’s most of all. Still, despite that, and the importance of her current task, she couldn’t help but wish that she was able to join them…

Alighting upon the roof unseen, Alicia turned towards the ongoing combat and readied her bow. Things were not going well at first glance, and she wasn’t sure she had a move that wasn’t just a distraction. But as a distraction, it would hopefully be a pretty good one.

It was as she was reaching for an arrow that a mirror appeared in front of her. She only had a few moments to look at her doppelganger before she was pulled through it and somewhere else-

---

Alicia blinked, looking around at the large training room. She remembered this place. It was where Beacon had helped her learn her powers when he first became a magical girl. She’d got her butt kicked a lot, but she felt so good finally mastering a spell or pulling off a move with her bow.

The room was being used for the same purpose, but with a much different user. Alicia looked over her doppelganger, their uniform bright whites and gold in its color unlike her darker outfit. Her other self released an arrow, the golden tip slamming into a picture of Mariette pinned up on a target, with a similar picture of Justine next to it and already riddled with arrows.

“Good, you’re here. We have a lot to talk about,” aicilA said as she turned to face her counterpart.

Coming to a stop some distance from her other, Alicia glanced around the room once again. “This is new,” she remarked.

aicilA shrugged. “Maybe for us. I hear they do this sort of thing in one of the Danish Beacon branches.” She couldn’t recall where she had heard anything like that, but she must have at some point. Right?

Leaving that alone for now, Alicia returned to what had been said earlier. “So, what did you want to talk about?”

That caused aicilA to scowl. ”You.” Then she jabbed a finger back down the training range. “Them.” Then a sweeping gesture around the room. “All of...this.”

Alicia continued to watch her without moving. “So you’re not working with the Queen?”

The question earned a dismissive snort. “Me? Work with the Queen? Not a chance. I want to drop kick her off this building as much as you do. More than you do, probably.”

“Fair,” Alicia conceded. She was sure that her other self would explain things without needing prompting.

In this case she was proven correct moments later. “Anyway, how I see it is, you have Mariette, Justine, and the Queen all here in the Penrose. Our biggest headaches in one place. So what you do is, you teleport away, call in the Reckoning, wipe them all out in one blow, easy as that.”

“’Easy as that’? What about all our friends in the city?” Alicia was taken aback by the sudden mention of the Reckoning, much less the callousness her doppelganger was showing.

Her question earned a shrug. “Acceptable losses,” aicilA replied. “The ones who matter will come back and honestly the world will probably thank us for removing Penrose from existence.”

Frowning, Alicia folded her arms over her chest as her foot tapped against the ground. “Well, this sounds familiar,” she remarked. It felt like the sorts of arguments she would have with Rachel up until fairly recently. Maybe not using the Reckoning, but the general

“It sounds familiar because Rachel was right. All that talk and here we are, again, trying to keep the city from being destroyed by yet another bad guy. I’ll bet good money that the Queen also ends up ‘redeemed’, and in a month we’ll be fighting alongside her to fix some other stupid crisis, just like Justine and Mariette.”

“Those were out of my hands," Alicia pointed out. It wasn’t like she’d been present for either girl deciding to not be a bad guy anymore, much less anyone caring about her opinion on the matter.

The objection prompted aicilA to roll her eyes. “And when you found our about it you just decided it wasn’t your problem anymore, in spite of all the things they’ve done. If you want people to take you seriously then you’ve got to commit! The higher ups in Luxia might be out of touch fossils, but even they were willing to stick to their guns and give Penny the boot when she decided that she wanted to be Queen of Penrose. Because they understand that Beacon and a Monster Queen aren’t going to be able to play nice.”

Alicia shook her head as she frowned. “Penny is my friend. I understand why she was expelled from Beacon but that isn’t the way to make the world a better place.”

“You know who else Penny was friends with? Chloe. And now she’s got an entire army of herself running around the place. If she flips out or listens to the wrong person and decides that her rule shouldn’t be questioned, then we’re all screwed. And you’ll just be saying platitudes up until she’s stomped on your neck.”

Such a confident declaration caused Alicia to scoff. “I wouldn’t let that happen,”

“Spoken with such confidence,” aicilA snarled, her glare sharp and unwavering. “You’d stop it, huh? Just like how you stopped that trap at the Rave? How you stopped Sylvia from dying? Or how you stopped Mariette from abducting all those brainwashed girls right from under your nose? Face it, you’ve only been able to fix the problem and by then people have already died.”

Alicia glared in turn, shifting as she took a step forward. “Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I enjoy watching my friends die, or having to fight another crazy villain? I don’t!”

Her anger seemed to get a react from aicilA, or at the very least the other self seemed to enjoy watching her be this way. “You hate it but you don’t do anything about it. Haven’t you heard that whole bit about the definition of insanity? You keep doing the same thing expecting a different result but it’s not going to happen. So grow up and face reality while there’s still a reality left.”

That eager expression her other self had forced Alicia to pause, and she took a deep breath lest her anger get the better of her. “It’s not just some loop,” she replied after a moment. “We came as far as we have because we have allies to help us out where Beacon's capabilities aren't enough to solve the problem. Blowing up cities is just going to make even more people hate us, and then by the time we learn of a crisis we’ll already all be dead. Even Rachel is starting to see that.”

aicilA opened her mouth to speak, but Alicia kept going rather than give her the opportunity. “Besides, can you honestly say I’d be a better person if I never knew Penny, or Kimble, or Hyun Long, or any of the others? Sure, our successes haven’t been dramatic and there are still problems, but the things I’ve been able to experience and all the good that we’ve done so far are worth working for. What you suggest will just burn everything for no certain gain.”

Silence descended for several moments before aicilA smirked. “Wow, you really believe all that don’t you?”

“I do. I’ll explain it to you, Rachel, or anyone else as many times as I have to,” Alicia asserted with a firm demeanor.

aicilA laughed, shaking her head as she did so. “You really are something else, you know that? Maybe there’s some hope for you after all.” Smiling, she stepped back towards where she had been when Alicia was pulled into this space. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me. I’ll be waiting.”

Likewise, Alicia turned and headed towards the door. “I won’t,” she replied, without looking back. This was her path, and she would walk it to the end, whatever that end might be.

By this point, Tactical Triumvirate S.T.A.C.-Y.’s focused barrage was beginning to have a telling effect, so much so, in fact, that it had prompted the most extreme response from their foe yet. Morphing one of her mighty appendages into a massive, wickedly sharp cleaver, Oros the Savage swept it across the trio in an attempt to slice all three of them in two. Of course, the bioroids’ reflexes, coupled with the effects of Penny Prime’s gravity manipulation, meant that the deadly attack was easily avoided. The same, however, could not be said of the immediate follow up, a rapid flurry of strikes from the aptly-named Oros the Swift’s katana. The mystic blade bit deep into each of the artificial super soldiers’ various limbs even as they leapt out of the way of Savage’s own sweeping attack, in the process, placing themselves right in the path of the Nomad Magical Girl’s strikes. Normally, such attacks would be easily repelled by the bioroids’ Tealite Spectrumic Hybridium Powered Armor, but Oros the Swift’s katana was far more than a normal blade. It was a magic weapon, infused with Oriko’s ki, and wielded with superhuman speed. Thus, the strikes succeeded in throughly dismembering the three super soldiers, the vacuums left in the wake of the lightning fast blows sending armored arms and legs crashing into each other, leaving a pile of entangled limbs resting atop a trio of torsos.

Situation analysis: current tactical capabilities at 1.75 percent effectiveness. Response: engage restorative nanites. Complication: insufficient resources for nanite reconstruction. Revised response: await battlefield support or combat zone extraction.

Nearby, Nomad Stacy was still locked in fierce combat with Oros the Shrewd.

“Like, OMG! So that’s, like, not your natural voice?!” Stacy marveled when Amber revealed she did, indeed, do character voices. “I, like, never would have guessed!” the Kung Fu Corpse Girl added, right before a charred steak slammed into her face, knocking her over backwards. “Holy freaking crap! Like, that must be some really tough meat if my crazy cool lightning didn’t, like, totally kerplode it!” Stacy remarked as she sat back up, the horribly burnt piece of meat having fallen to the ground beside her. “Like, nothing that tough could, like, ever not taste, like, suuuper garbo!” she noted. “Well, unless it’s, like, gum or something that you’re just meant to chew, but not actually, like, eat or whatever.”

Jumping to her feet, she began blocking each additional culinary projectile sent her way with a flurry of crazy cool martial arts moves, at least until the gravity wave knocked her off her feet again. That same massive manipulation of gravitational forces also sent Oros the Shrewd flying towards her, with the pint-sized provisioner’s recently concocted all-natural stew-smoothie shooting even further forward to rain down over the undead Nomad.

“Ewww! Like, super gross!” Stacy cried in a mixture of disgust and horror as she saw how the thick amalgamation now coated her entire small form. “Your disgusting slop just, like, totally ruined my super cool outfit! Okay, now I’m, like, super pissed off!” Charging up a massive concentration of lightning in both of her clenched fists as she got on one knee, Stacy pressed her two crackling fists together and thrust them toward her rapidly approaching opponent. “CRAZY COOL SUPER MEGA ULTRA ZAPPY ZAP!!!”

Elsewhere, Saw Blade Stacy’s duel with Oros the Inventive continued. Although Stacy had tried a tactic she’d hoped would come as a surprise to Lada, the false Ars Magi simply used her nanites to shield her from the blast of paint. Then the gravity pulse hit, sending the pair lurching one way, then the next in quick succession. This left Stacy sitting on top of Lada, but this wasn’t as much of an advantage as it might seem. The fake Ars Magi was now completely coated in nano armor, making her impervious to any harm a point blank attack might normally inflict. The same could not be said for Stacy, who quickly moved to pin down her opponent’s axe arm with the blade of her chainsaw.

“Every color of the rainbow,” she replied to her foe’s question. “As long as that rainbow’s neon pink!” she added, firing an even bigger torrent of magic paint from her free hand. Stacy knew this was a terrible matchup for her, but she was determined to make the most of it. While her paint’s usual damaging properties wouldn’t have any effect on a non-Void, she was still able to alter its physical state. By coating Lada with paint, and then hardening it, she just might be able to paralyze the technopath.

But probably not.

While other intense combats were occurring around her, Stitch ‘Em Up Stacy was still tending to her very friendly patient. Things were getting ever so slightly uncomfortable, until one of Stacy’s innocent comments sent Oros the Joyful’s nosebleed into overdrive. One moment, the zombie medic was holding Suki, while continuing to apply pressure to the ice pack on the girl’s nose, the next, and she was hurtling through the air, propelled by a torrent of high-pressure blood. “WOAH!!!” she cried as she flew across the battlefield and back towards the other Stacys. “Was it something I said?!” she wondered as the blood blast, coupled with the suddenly reduced gravity, continued to keep her airborne.

“Huh. Ya don’t don’t see that everyday,” Grimoiric Hearts Stacy noted as she watched the zombie medic fly overhead. Her attention was quickly brought back to her immediate vicinity when she heard the threefold roar of an exceptionally bizarre creature, a giant bear with shark head tipped arms. “Wow, you’re all kinds of crazy!” she told the sharkenbear with an amused laugh as she rolled out of the way of its lunge. “Y’know, you look really hungry,” she added, getting to her feet and charging twin balls of crackling energy. “Here, have some lightning sandwiches on me!” she called, before shooting off the twin orbs of ball lightning into each of the shark heads’ toothy maws.

As that was taking place, Storm Witch Stacy and her companions were puzzled at why their crazy cool combo attack hadn’t seemed to effect their tooth-covered targets in the slightest. Their confusion wouldn’t last long, however, as the toothy masses darted forward with staggering speed and swallowed OG Stacy Stitches and Storm Witch Stacy in a single gulp before they, Staceella, or Cyberslime Stacy could even blink.

“W-What the half moon?!” Staceella cried, her eyes widening in horror as she watched her allies get gobbled up.

“Holy freaking crap, those toothy guys are fast!” Cyberslime Stacy marveled.

OG Stacy, having just used her Killing Blow, wasn’t really in any position to defend herself, but also wasn’t in any danger of coming to serious harm. Storm Witch Stacy’s predicament was far more dire, and in her frightened panic, she opened a portal and fell through it. Even under normal circumstances, her portals’ destinations were highly random, but now, without a destination in mind and cast on sheer reflex, her current portal was a bit more bizarre than usual. Thus, even as she fell out of the teeth mass’s mouth, one of the many Pennybots defending Penrose fell into it.

“W-Whew… T-That was crazy close!” Storm Witch Stacy stammered as she caught her breath. Looking around, she saw that she was still in the midst of a fierce battle, just not the one she’d been in moments before. “Wow, you guys look kinda like that Penny girl!” Stacy told the group of Pennybots she’d found herself in the midst of. “Are you fighting those crazy playing card guys?!” she inquired as a gauss cannon obliterated a Wonderland combat vehicle. “Well, we Stacys were supposed to help ya, so I’ll, like, give you guys some backup until I figure out how to get back to that other battle!” she informed them cheerfully, before blasting a flying trooper out of the air with an arc of lightning. “I mean, we magical girls are all about teamwork, right?!”

Meanwhile, back at the other battle, Oros the Wise had begun a verbal assault on Staceella and Cyberslime Stacy designed to break their spirits.

“T-That’s, like, super mean!” Staceella shouted as she clenched her fists together, her voice and visage filled with indignation. “A-And, like, you’re totally lying! N-None of that stuff is even remotely true!”

However, while Staceella seemed able to resist the harsh words, their effect on Cyberslime Stacy was considerably greater…

“T-That can’t be t-true… C-Can it…?” she wondered, her body frozen and her eyes wide as horrifying possibilities manifested in her mind. “R-Ramona doesn’t r-really hate me… D-Does she…?”

“H-Hang in there, Stacy!” Staceella called. “I’m gonna put this meanie to sleep! Then she’ll stop saying such horrible things!” Retrieving her student’s moonstone wand from the folds of her shimmering robe, she began reciting a basic lunar magic spell designed to induce swift and peaceful slumber. “Shining stars, glowing moon, restful times are coming soon. Soft pillow, fluffy sheep, now I’ll… send you… off to… *Yaaawn*… sleeeeee_eeeeeeee…” Staceella’s voice trailed off as her wobbling body crumpled into a contented ball. Yes, it seemed that, due to her profound ineptitude, she had cast the spell on herself instead of Miss Fang, and the antenna-headed girl began to snore loudly as she drifted off to dreamland.

Back in the ruins of Axis Mundai, the now once again corporeal Scylla lay unmoving as its anti-viral systems struggled to dislodge MONIKA. Ironically, they would receive some help with that task in the form of B@B’s next attack, which thoroughly fried Scylla’s electronics, obliterating the so-called “infinite hacker’s virus” in the process. This was followed up by the largest outpouring of destructive force B@B had yet displayed, a veritable smorgasbord of culinary-themed attacks. Bereft of nearly all its defenses, Scylla’s hull was savagely pounded until it was little more than a lump of punctured, scorched, mangled, and partially melted metal. And, as if this wasn’t enough, B@B went on to prepare its true finishing move, although Shark Tooth Stacy couldn’t see it from her darkened cockpit.

“WHAT THE HECKIN’ HECK ARE YA DOIN’ TO MY FRAMEWERK, YA FRIGGIN’ JERK FACE?!!!” Stacy roared as she was rattled around by the force of the bombardment, even knowing full-well that her foe wasn’t able to hear her, despite her volume.

However, B@B’s unseen final course was never served, thanks to Penny Prime’s planetary-scale gravity pulse knocking the toaster-esque framewerk wildly off course. Right into what little of Axis Mundai remained standing. Rather than remaining on board to crash into the ruined spires, whose interiors were already in the process of being kerploded (a technical term) by two other ultimate attacks, Thalia chose to dramatically eject from her doomed framewerk and plummet down upon the wrecked Scylla Carbonox blade tip-first. Such was the multi-headed machine’s lack of hull integrity, that it took only a single swing to penetrate it, granting Thalia access to the cockpit, where Stacy wouldn’t be expecting her.

“W-What the…?!” the golden toothed girl exclaimed when the front casing of her cockpit was suddenly torn open.

However, the Oros of Shock and Awe had slightly miscalculated, so instead of charging into her surprised foe head on, she shot past her before slamming into the cockpit’s rear wall, prompting Stacy to give voice to an amused cackle.

“Hahahaha! Nice landing, ding dong!” she told her uninvited guest as she turned to give Thalia a big shark-toothed grin. “Yeah, well, ya know what they say,” she replied when the fox girl commented on her appearance. “A pair of eyes’re worth a thousand ears, or whatever.” Rising to her feet, she gave her knuckles a crack. “Speakin’ of, after ya finish your little snack there, how about we start round two?!”

Meanwhile, the second (or was it the first?) quartet of Stacys had just finished off three of the Carnage Sisters assaulting them. However, the fourth used the distraction her compatriots had provided to transform her robotic steed into a giant energy cannon, which seemed to be charging up a shot that promised to be devastating in the extreme.

“Jumpin’ jackrabbits!” Stampede Stacy exclaimed. “That there’s one mighty powerful lookin’ peashooter!”

An instant later, it fired off a massive beam of incandescent annihilation, and the undead cowgirl knew she had less than a second to act. An instant before the blinding lance of energy struck, she gave her lighting lasso a sharp crack, and suddenly, the beam was struck by a thundering herd of giant, spectral cattle. An instant after that, and the ghost herd began forcing the torrent of destruction back towards its source with all the inexorability of death itself.

“Don’t ya worry yer pretty lil’ heads, darlin’s,” Stacy reassured her allies with a wink. “Mah signature Ghost Herd Stampede’ll take care o’ that there nasty ol’ cannon fine as a fiddle!”

As splendorous as Mikayla’s display of magic was, she was getting totally mogged by the queen of hearts. Anyone she could talk to had been pulled into their private hell to suffer, if only for a moment.

Ani stumbled into a server farm. Plexiglass cases that reached towards the ceiling housed row after row of servers. Vibrant lights and bundles of wires flowed everywhere. There was a dull, persistent hum from all the hungry electrical components. Hundreds of tiny fans kicked on as soon as Ani arrived. She looked around herself, unsure what she was supposed to be doing. Then they appeared. Rather than confronting a dark version of herself, hundreds of faceless people appeared in the halls around her. From their chin to their forehead there wasn’t a single detail to be seen. Just a placeholder texture where her face could easily go. Even without their faces, it was plain to see that they were all someone’s ideal girlfriend. Store clerks, librarians, nurses, goth girls, and even exotic selections like kunoichi and sorceresses filled the spaces between the servers, which seemed to stretch on for infinity.

"Oh wow!" Ani placed her hands on her hips. "It’s all the people I try to impersonate!"

"Emphisis on try." One of the librarians had Ani’s voice. "An imposter is all you’ll ever be, and one that never quite lives up to the real thing."

"You could have been something original, something special." A kunoichi added. "But you choose to be a knockoff."

"You’re not even pretending correctly." A biker girl with Ani’s voice scoffed. "Do you even care?"

"I bet she doesn’t." A fem fatale added with a shake of her head. "Look at all that’s happened in Penrose? And here you are, finally choosing to show your face."

"Just stop already!" a Victorian woman shrieked. "The conclusion is upon us, and there isn’t a thing you can do to influence any of it!"

"You bring nothing to this place!"

"Give up!"

"Get out of here!"

Ani turned to each new voice that spoke up. She could feel the anger of the people around her, or maybe that was just the heat generated by the server farm. "There really isn’t much for me to do here, can’t deny that. I can’t really deny anything you’ve said." She sighed and folded her arms. "But I can’t just leave either. I have a story to tell."

A police officer laughed. "And what gives your story value?"

"Nothing you do or say will be remembered in a few months' time." A burglar smugly added.

"I guess I don’t really care." Ani shouldered her rocket launcher. "Maybe I won’t save the day or have my dreams come true. But I can’t stop either."

"Why not?"

Ani smiled. "You know, this conversation would have been a lot more interesting if it happened twenty minutes ago. But I’m as sure of my path as I can be, and none of you chumps can sway me. I’m going to finish, and you can’t stop me."

Then a giant chicken reached its head through what appeared to be a worm hole and pulled Ani back.

---

While everyone was having fun contending with their shadow selves, Chloe was marching her army up to Covington tower. She had made it, finally, and looked up at the roof from her mount.

"Hah!" She grinned to herself. It seemed like all the fighting was happening on the top floor, or rather the roof. "Alright you buckets of bones! Let’s spring into action!"

Though no sooner did Chloe announce her intent did it start raining ex-girlfriends. After fleeing from her shadow self escaping all the gravity magic, ‘Penny’ fell into the back of a gothizzar harvester like a comet. It’s cargo of bones erupted around her when she landed, and tiny chunks of bone rained down on everyone. The harvester groaned, and slowly straightened its legs after the surprise impact.

Chloe hadn’t quite noticed who landed in the harvester, but she had an idea. "There’s no way…" She pulled a broken wish bone out of her hair and approached the harvester. With the help of her tentacles, she scaled up the side of the thing and peaked inside, only to see that Penny was (rather infuriatingly) completely unscathed by the impact.

"I’d have brewed some coffee if I knew you were going to drop in."

---

The hallways of the Golden Trove didn’t have an ounce of natural light in their hallways. They were lit with a soft defused light from overhead. It wasn’t especially bright, but it set the mood for the space. The ceiling panels glowed like paper lanterns, and the fine woodwork of the hallway was complemented. All of the edges had a glossy shine, while the valleys were suitably dark to show the depth of the ornate woodwork. The choice to make the Golden Trove the way it was had been something Su did for familiarity rather than a desire to attract customers. In the ancient world, the Chinese were the finest craftsmen. Some would say they were second to the Greeks, but they only got as far as they did after exchanging secrets with Chinese builders.

Though this was not a hallway that Su remembered building.

This hallway had fallen into neglect. The lights had mismatched warmth, and some of them flickered if they weren’t out entirely. The fine woodwork had been worn through in a reas. Neglect from the hotel staff and patrons alike damaged the fine woodwork. There were even outright holes in some of the walls. Su had heard that the Hotel had wound up in the hands of some horned drunk, and it didn’t appear that she had taken very good care of the place. This place wasn’t hers anymore, but it didn’t bring her any joy to see the place tarnished like this. She ran her finger along an engraving and drew it back when she got a splinter.

Earlier, a giant portal had swallowed up both Su and Mika. Their shadow selves hadn’t been expecting them to be knighted up, and were trampled by the horses as they reached for the duo. Their bodies disintegrated, and both Su and Mika tumbled and hit their heads at the same time. The armor flew off of their bodies as the horses charged off down a seemingly endless corridor.

Mika reached for one of the doors and pulled it open. Inside was a normal room, but it was the one where her friend Lupa had told her that she was leaving Penrose. While all the rooms looked the same, she knew this was the case for this room specifically because she could see herself breaking down inside the room. She quietly shut the door.

Meanwhile, Su opened a door that led to the graveyard battle with Soth. Amber’s body had been chopped up and reassembled into a new magical girl, and Helga was trying to stop her from killing the abomination. She shut the door and swung open another one, where Penny was outside Justine’s castle. She was stealing Amber’s ship, while Su took the throne room out of the overcity. She shut this door as well.

"Penrose hasn’t been very kind to us, has it?" Su asked without looking at Mika.

"Nope."

Mika opened another door, only now she was greeted by Katarina Nekrasova. This, too, looked like a room in the hotel. She was nestled amongst a heap of pillows that Mika had gotten from Dan’s paradise dimension. The corners of her lips curled into a smile, and she examined the room. Unlike the last one, it didn’t look like another was present in this room. Katarina sat up and locked eyes with Mika. She looked confused, but happy to see Mika’s face. Mika was about to step inside when Su pulled her back and threw the door shut.

"Mika, this place is dangerous!"

The cat girl scoffed. "I know!" She folded her arms. "It looked fun though."

"All the more reason to be careful."

"Like when it comes to helping your ‘friend’ summon a horror? Why do you only do dangerous things for other people?"

Su folded her arms. "I don’t know, Mika. I feel like taking you on was pretty dangerous for Boteg, Helga, and I. You could have been a spy for someone, or one of Justine’s thralls. I never treated you as a liability though. We made pizza, I spent time with you, and I allowed you to leave as you pleased."

"You were always sad, so sad!"

"Here we go again…" Su rolled her eyes.

"You were always sad!" Mika strained. She walked over to Su’s side of the hallway and threw open a door. Inside the rave was going on. While nothing catastrophic had happened yet, Su was clearly unhappy. She was leaning against a wall, annoyed. It had been Helga’s idea to come, but she hadn’t refuted it. Apparently the goal was to promote the Golden Trove, but monsters were a rowdy bunch. "You were sad here too! You-" Mika stopped when she noticed Su approached another Chinese themed magical girl. While they talked, the rave started to break down, and Su looked like she was really enjoying this woman’s company. Mika raised an eyebrow, But Su pulled the door shut before that particular scene could play out.

Then, Su stepped over to the opposite side and threw open a door. This time it showed a sad Dan and Dina looking on as Mika declared she would be leaving Penrose. "But you’re almost never sad, Mika. Despite this, you’re constantly looking for something better." Su slammed the door shut before looking at Mika again. "How did that turn out by the way? You seemed like you and Katarina were doing okay, but I noticed you were really interested in meeting a potential sister."

Mika lowered her brow. "I don’t care if I have a sister or not."

"Trust me, Mika." Su sighed. "That was very obvious."

It took Mika a moment to process what her mother was saying. "I need to keep my options open."

Su laughed, but it wasn’t friendly. "It could always be better, right Mika?"

"It’s better than getting stuck!" Mika hissed. "You can’t stop thinking about Amber! Me, Helga, the floozie at the rave, if we can replace Amber-"

"You can’t." Su said with a sigh. "You can’t replace her. Neither can Helga."

"So you’re just going to be sad all the time?"

"Should I be happy?" Su bit her lip. "I’ve made life as easy as I could for you, but you always want something else. Helga and I both wanted a woman that wanted neither of us so we’re trying to find her in each other, and despite all I’ve grown I still need the help of others to do anything." Su placed a hand on her head. "After everything Mariette did for me, I thought I could come here and do something for her. Not because I wanted to or because I was the best person for the job, but because it was something I could choose to do myself." She straightened her posture and placed her hands on her hips. "When I arrived in Penrose, I was a scared little bird that took orders from their superior. And after leaving Penrose, not much has changed. I was unhappy. I was tired of Helga and Boteg calling the shots. But you know what? I… I helped enable that." Her arms hung at her side as she looked down the corridor. "But I know what I want now. I want us to be a family. I know Helga isn’t Amber, and I hope when I return, we can have a talk. I think she kind of knows I’m not Amber either. But we both have parts of her inside us, and I do think we truly love each other." While she stared off, she added. "I’m a bit older than her, I need to reign her in. Just like Amber would have. And she needs to support me like Amber used to." After saying it, Su smiled. "No, I think she’s supported me better than Amber had in a lot of ways. I suppose I also took you for granted and was a bit sad to see how easily you left us."

Mika blinked. "Well…" She scratched the back of her head. "I don’t know what I want, but I know what I don’t want now." Mika took a step closer to Su and locked eyes with her. "I know I want you to be my mom. And Helga too, I like you both a lot, and I don’t want you to go away."

"That makes me happy to hear."

"I also kinda needed a break from Penrose." Mika hung her head. "I took you guys for granted too. I thought about you all the time. I never really had friends or parents, and I started to miss everyone. Traveling everywhere with Katarina was starting to get boring."

"You’re young, Mika." Su reassured her. "You’re allowed to change your mind. You don’t need to push Katarina away entirely either. A little distance might be what you both need right now, and you can always remain friends."

"You don’t need to prove yourself to us either." Mika waved her hand. "Helga and I love you."

"It’s not like that, Mika. When you went off with Katarina, you were partially doing that to prove something to yourself, weren’t you?"

She thought about Su’s words. "I kinda was, I guess."

"I needed to do this, Mika. But I’m very happy to have you here with me."

"You seem a little happier than normal."

Su grinned. "Maybe Mariette will be a little happier than normal once we rescue her from her ‘mother’ hmmm?"

Mika lifted a finger to her lip. "If we beat all the bad guys, and Marriette and I get married, would that make me a princess?"

"It might make you a queen."

"Hmmmm…"

The halls of the Shadow Trove didn’t seem as hollow anymore.

At Penny’s suggestions, the two twins looked at one another, and then looked back. Ronin had a grin of excitement, while Miko held a frown of determination. They replied at the same time.

Miko was happier because it gave them cover in their approach. With their barriers, they could always change trajectory on the fly.

Ronin was happier because descending down on top of a ride was far more badass than going through a portal. A true hero’s entrance.

Both knew why it would make their sister happy.

They made their choice.

‘Vehicle!’
‘Vehicle!’

__________________




‘…’

Yeah, it wasn’t as if she had been expecting Cuddlespawn to be of any particular help. It would have been fun if he did turn out to be super smart about it, but of course he would prioritize trying to save himself above all else.

Mariette discarded Cuddlespawn into a portal and stood up. Turns out, she simply had to steel herself for what she had to do. In order to save the world, she’d have to fight her friends. So she turned, and-

And turns out mother had already sealed them all into mirrors. Huh. She’d completely stolen Mariette’s mirror theme. The mirror witch recoiled a bit, realizing Kayli. Still, with a moment to breathe, Mariette looked through her portals again. Behind her eyepatch, multiple mirrors went all around, scouting to see the status around her. Checking how the situation was at the various mirrors, for Wonderland’s army and those who fought it, and then one glance at inside the Black Mirror and the Core beyond-

Mariette recoiled, suddenly gasping as she was shocked by an unexpected feeling. She blinked in surprise, confused, then took off her eyepatch. Her right eye… her right eye had gone blind.

She’d seen something she hadn’t expected to see. Beyond the Black Mirror… He was already there. For the briefest moment, her eye had seen his form. As a result, it could now only see darkness. Despite having seen him, she couldn’t grasp what shape he’d had. But, more alarming, she hadn’t felt him arrive. While everyone was busy fighting… Asengav had gone ahead with the ritual himself. That was supposed to be the final stage. As far as Mariette knew, the ritual wasn’t nearly ready for Asengav to appear himself.

Was… was all she knew about the ritual a lie? The possibility hadn’t occurred to her until now. He could have completed the ritual while everyone was fighting, and nobody would have known until it was too late.

‘Mother!’ she called out, alarmed. ‘He… He’s already in there!’ she said, holding one hand over her blinded right eye, and the other pointing towards the Black Mirror, absolutely nothing reflecting in the darkness of its glass, protecting all who would gaze into it against what inhabited the other side. This also had the effect of informing everyone else present.

__________________




‘What do you mean you need to get to Mariette?’ Freya asked the girl who absolutely did not want to get rescued for some reason.

‘I can't fall back! Mariette told me that, when the time comes, she absolutely needs to get the thing I've been working on! A-and, the time is now, right!? I have the thing right here...!’ Olivia said, holding out an item. It looked like a grey magical coin. Over her back she carried the limbless form of Jelena's real body like a backpack.

‘For blasted sake...’ Freya shook her head as they looked around the streets of Penrose. They were now far too dangerous for Olivia to travel around. Shelyn was looking around agitated, her muscles twitching. Freya still didn't trust she wouldn't attack someone. She considered her options. If it was so important, Freya could deliver it, but that would mean needing to bring Shelyn, and leaving Olivia. She could quickly escort Olivia to safety, then deliver the coin herself.

Of course, it would have been so darn easy if Mariette would just open a portal and claim it herself, but Freya hadn’t seen Mariette open any portals herself since she returned with the Queen.


‘The fuck are you all doing...’ Jelena asked, grunting from Olivia's back.

‘Jelena. I don't suppose I can entrust Olivia's safety to you?’

‘Still suffering from massive fucking head-trauma and broken ribs over here,’ Jelena grumbled, referring to the injury she took from that explosion she took for Mariette. ‘Fuck, why doesn't transforming into a magical girl not just fucking fix that?’ she complained, her tiny limbless body writhing.

Freya nodded. Fine, then. She’d just have to deliver Olivia first, then deliver it herself…

‘Oh,’ Olivia suddenly made a noise. A portal had appeared in front of her. It was horizontal, opening pointing upwards, except the portal was blocked by the glass of the Queen’s curse. Hesitating for a moment, Olivia placed the coin on the portal’s surface.

Then the portal flew off into the air while the present girls watched.

__________________

‘I’m going to need that pick sooner than I expected, please get it to me,’ Mariette is going to open a small portal and say to a random Pennybot somewhere.

__________________

There were these portals floating above Penrose, proliferating the background of the battle that was taking place. The sign of Asengav’s influence on the place, subtly draining more and more magic from Penrose, as was his plan. Now, large tentacles were starting to emerge from them, like filter feeders reaching for more of the ambient mana, signaling Asengav’s influence growing. Should any being of magical origin go too close to a tentacle, they would reach for them to try to take their magic, albeit more in a passive manner than an outright attack. Most were in midair, reminding of that something was going on.

Chloe’s troops had lit candles and scattered fragments of broken mirrors across Penrose. That protected the surface, ensuring no portals could open close to them. Bringing the shattered glass close to a portal would shatter the portal as well, and bringing a candle would banish the darkness and tentacle inside the portals. If it had been part of Asengav’s plan to send legions of shadows on the ground, then that plan had been thoroughly thwarted, as ground-level remained safe. Still, despite this, they still floated above ground, interacting with nothing but the ambient magic, and they were growing more numerous…

At the heart of the ARGO’s massive, moon-sized form resided its primary bridge, filled with glowing screens, flashing consoles, curtains of hanging wires, tangles of tetra-tachyonic tubers, crackling antenna-tipped apex antimatter apparatuses, pulsing polymorphic perception arrays, and a myriad of other biomechanical, technomantic machinery too incomprehensible to describe. It was at the center of this chamber, ringed by the titanic vessel’s half dozen hyper-tech AI cores, that Doctor Nykannis sat upon her ultra-tech command throne and watched events playing out on an arc of several holographic screens, her full attention focused on each, via a level of multitasking that rivaled the Queen of Penrose herself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the largest was dedicated to a view of the ongoing battle between the Oros copies, Penny Prime, and the so-called “Stacy Squad” in the tangental reality layer overlay of Penrose. However, on either side of it were a pair of only slightly smaller displays. One depicted the Penrose Pack’s assault upon the roof of Covington Tower, while the other provided a view of a location significantly farther afield, namely, a certain beach in a certain City of Blood, where an enforced vacation had just concluded in a spasm of violence.

“Well, that sure didn’t last long,” Nykannis snorted. “The dolphin kept the Penrose Pack out of commission for three fucking months, and this stupid shark couldn’t even manage more than a week! Still, it’s nice to see that my little Ashley’s finally settled into her role as team leader. Yesss,” the Monarch of Mad Science added with an approving smirk before taking a sip of her glowing, yellowy-green beverage. “There’s nothing quite like seeing someone live up to their potential, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Indeed, Doctor,” the polyhedral technorune-covered brain of Xozooth the Xorcerer concurred from where it hovered next to the Mad Scientist Supreme. “Guiding a promising apprentice to the poly-plenumic pinnacles of personal perfection is a most rewarding experience, to be sure, although, I am unsure if is correct to bestow such a title upon young Miss Avenir at the present juncture.”

“Perhaps not yet,” Nykannis conceded. “But I’m certain she won’t disappoint me like certain others have. Just give it time.”

“Speaking of time, is that not your friend down there?” Xozooth inquired.

“Yeah, that’s Jen,” Nykannis confirmed. “Though she goes by Alice now, of all fucking names…”

“She seems to be performing quite capably,” the polymathemagician observed.

“Well, I’d certainly hope so,” the mad scientist replied, rolling her eyes. “If she had access to her full power, she could’ve wiped the ocean floor with those idiots in less than a second. As it is, she’s given the Pax Septimus Pack the chance they’ve been waiting for, which I’m pretty sure is the only reason she even went to that shithole in the first place,” Nykannis explained. “Y’know, get everything back to ‘normal’ so that her favorite failure can make his ‘triumphant’ return.”

“If I am not mistaken, the return of the status quo there benefits you as well,” Xozooth noted.

“It sure does,” Nykannis responded with a smirk. “And so does ‘Alice’s’ little ‘business trip’. That, coupled with Olivia’s earlier visit, should pretty much guarantee the Caustic Bovines show up in time for Kate’s impending photo shoot.”

“From what I gather, these ‘Caustic Bovines’ are powerful in the extreme, even for poly-plenumic entities. Are you not concerned for Miss Carson’s safety?”

“She’s got her new pets to protect her,” Nykannis replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But if for some reason they aren’t enough, well…” the mad scientist’s mouth curled into a maniacal grin. “You should know by now that I always have a contingency plan.”

“Such as for the event the copies you made of the various Oros iterations fail to overcome Miss Asimov and her allies?”

“Exactly.”

The pair watched as Oros the Mad appeared to leap to her own death, but this development didn’t perturb Nykannis in the slightest.

“Guess I gave them a bit too much autonomy,” she remarked. Of course there was always the chance this was some ploy to set up some form of surprise strike, but even if that wasn’t the case and The Mad truly had just decided to commit suicide, most of the other Oroses were fairing rather well, especially, and most importantly, Osiris, who was directly engaged with the preposterously powerful Penny Prime herself. “At least Oros the Overlord has yet to let me down. She’s really holding her own against the Tin Titan there, as expected of the work of my unparalleled super-scientific genius! Nyahahahaha!”

“Sadly, the same cannot be said for the brave souls opposing the Queen of Hearts,” Xozooth observed with a hint of melancholy.

“Yeah, they’re insanely outmatched and then some,” Nykannis agreed as the view on the central display focused on where the headless body of Janet/Kaylie/Whatever-she-was-called-now lay on the rain-slicked rooftop. “Even Miss ‘Keeper of the Keys, Champion of Champions, and Grand Magistrate’s own personally chosen Guardian of the Nexus’ was finished off in one stroke, though that particular development shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain.”

“Based upon previously observed uses of her blade, it is quite probable that the Guardian was not slain by the Queen of Hearts’ attack,” Xozooth pointed out.

“Whatever the case, she’s out of action for the rest of the fight,” Nykannis replied. “Obviously she couldn’t manage to maintain enough protagonist power to be more than a one-note set piece. And speaking of set pieces, those mirror traps are quite the melodramatic little sideshow, aren't they? Well, I imagine that was the intent at least,” the mad scientist added with a derisive sneer. “Still, I’m so very pleased to see that Penny has enough genre savviness and general narrative knowledge to avoid getting stuck in one herself. After all,” she continued, her toothy grin broadening as a new screen depicting a figure floating in a glowing tube overlapped all the others. “The proverbial curtain will rise on that particular scene soon enough…”

The Cheshire Cat nodded. "Mana restoring items? Got it" She whisked her hand, and a tiny magic cat flap opened in the air, dropping three cans of Mountain Dan that she deftly caught in both hands and rail. She offered them to Connie. "Here you go!"





Alex, with the power of utter and complete apathy, had manifested a mirror self that, instead of attempting to trap him, had instead given up. It granted Alex the key to breaking out of his hex, and into the adjacent mirror realm, where Lily was stuck, in the clutches of her mirror self. The doppelganger turned her eyes toward him, and was about to cuss about to cuss when he struck her down with the rock he was given. The duplicate did not bleed, but was knocked out cold, snapping Lily awake.
“H-Huh? Alex, you…” She looked down at the mirror self as Alex brought her to her senses, and reminded her of the real threat that needed to be stopped.

She took a deep breath.
“...Alex, thank you. You’re right, this is nothing but a trap the Queen sprung on us. And even if it wasn’t…I’m going to stop regretting the past. Victoria, Amber, the rest…They would want me to move forward, to forge a new future! For us all!” She took Alex's hand with newfound courage.
“Let’s go!” Then, as if yielding to Lily’s will, a huge portal opened up in the park, swallowing the illusory scene. Lily leapt into the hole, pulling Alex along as they plunged into the darkness. Behind her, Lily could see her shadow self standing on the rooftop, waving goodbye with a bittersweet smile.

---

Meanwhile, as the Queen of Hearts observed the mirrors capture the group of Mahou, she looked upon the sky, and saw as countless mirrors warped into existence, as did tendrils of darkness that emerged from their infinitely reflecting surfaces. More and more of Asengav began bleeding into their reality, the Horror having decided to make his move. She then blinked upon hearing Mariette’s voice…And an inhumanly wide smile emerged on her lips.

“Oh ho ho! What a marvelous horror, to greet us halfway through? Such a fine gentleman would make an excellent husband for me, and a father to you, wouldn’t he, my dear Alice?” She asked, her deranged smile now accompanied by a sharp turn towards her…And the Black Mirror past her. “Too bad He must pay a dowry…In DEATH!”

The Queen jumped into a portal, and out of another one, straight into the Horror’s Artifact with glee. Mariette was now left alone to witness what was the beginning of the end: Asengav’s mirrors began slowly consuming the world, as the pieces began joining together in the sky, against the ground, and even upon the sea, with magic-absorbing tentacles blotting the landscape.

“Finally, we’re back…Whoah, what’s this?” Lily asked after she and Alex had returned back to the rooftop of Covington Tower, as did Alicia, who had overcome her more judgemental, vindictive side. Lily then saw as Mika and Su were together on the other side of a mirror, seemingly content with the illusion. She looked anxious as she drew her bow and aimed it around her.

“Where is the queen? Did she run off-”

Lily gasped upon seeing a certain eyepatched girl.

“Mariette!" She shouted as she ran up to her. She took a quick look at the necklace, and then nodded: she had come up with a plan on the spot.
"Hold still, okay? I need you to trust me this one time!” She then reached out with her hand, and pressed her index finger against Mariette’s necklace. She then closed her eyes, and concentrated, her green hair flapping with invisible wind as she gathered her magic: Alex saw as the cursed Artifact began rapidly aging, the gems losing its luster and turning dim one by one, and the gold chain turning brittle and cracked, until it finally snapped, dropping to the ground.
Lily then smiled.
“There. I saved you, just like I promised, ehe~”



Her words were interrupted by the sound of glass cracking. But it wasn’t a mere sound. It was as if the very essence of glass cracking could be felt by the Mahou, followed by an inhuman scream. Asengav’s tentacles turned frantic and frenzied as the mirrors they emerged from visibly shattered into pieces.

“Alice!”

The group’s celebration was cut short as the Queen of Hearts emerged from the Black Mirror: the mighty Artifact began to eerily melt like a wax candle, it’s black void of a surface twisting and collapsing upon itself, until it was but a mound: a representation of Asengav’s paradoxical death.

“You would not believe how easy it was! The Horror showed its very essence to me, a sight that could turn an ignorant slave insane! But a mother's love is a greater madness than anything else fathomable to the mind! So snicker-snack went the bandersnatch!” She shouted out, clearly having turned even more psychotic than before: her hair was frazzled, and her eyes nearly bulged from how hard she was staring, not to mention a smile that carried without end.

“And now, I have created the final plothole: the death of a Horror! Now, the Story will be unable to be held together, and will unravel, like the broken narrative it was all along!”

The Mahou all over Penrose then began to feel it: a low rumble, as reality itself began falling apart. In the horizon, sections of the landscape began turning stark white and black, transforming into pages of paper. The world’s shape began to be defined by black writing upon white canvas, like a tree made of the letters “t”, “r” and two “e”s . At first it was the distant forests, the waves of the ocean, the faraway mountains and the moon in the sky. But as the Story was beginning to collapse further into the outskirts of Penrose, even buildings and streets began to take the shape of inked letters upon paper. Rifts also began opening: gateways to other reality plenums. One had giant robots battling aliens among the stars. Another had an anthropomorphic shark hosting a beach vacation for an eclectic group of people including a puppet-wielding girl. And yet another was utterly incomprehensible, the denizens having small eyes and big noses, and seemingly three-dimensional.

And in all this chaos, a door appeared in a glow of rainbow guess: it could have been nothing else but the door to the Nexus itself.

“Ah! How beautiful!” The Queen screamed in joy. She extended a hand to Mariette. “Now, come Alice! Let us write our ending, together!”

”No!” Lily shouted, and drew back on her bow.
”Kingdom Hearts…Is light!”

…

…

…

A long, awkward pause went by, with the Queen of Hearts simply staring at Lily with a dumbfounded expression, the Storyslayer lowered.

“...What?”

However, Lily remained steadfast, and smirked.



”Now!” She shouted as she shot out a powerful time-accelerated thunder arrow at the Queen, signalling for her friends to take the initiative. Turns out, Lily, knowing how mind-boggling her speech could be, used the awkward referential non-sequitur to her advantage, catching even the Queen of Hearts off guard.

Alexander wasn't really sure what all this stuff the queen was spewing about about stories and plotholes, but he did know she was a crazy bitch, so it probably wasn't something worth trying to understand. In the end, all that really mattered was that the person responsible for all of this nonsense was right in front of them, and she needed a good stabbing. But more than that; there was also a fancy looking door that the queen really looked like she wanted to go into. So that gave him a-

”No!” Lily shouted, and drew back on her bow.
”Kingdom Hearts…Is light!”

Despite standing still, Alexander almost tripped somehow in response to the awkward silence Lily had made with her weird comment 'Fucking really Lily!?' Said awkward silence was broken when Lily fired off a supercharged arrow at the queen bitch, starting the fight. Without wasting anymore time Alexander flared his magic and entered his Primal Mode, and his animals where were following him entered their battle modes too "Freeloaders, Kill!" he order, while pointing at the queen

At his command, the three of them leapt into action. Tim bolted right at the queen, his body covered in sharp, jagged barriers. Dave got up high and began launching needle sized barriers at her to provide covering fire. While Bob followed right behind Tim, a very large axe barrier in his paw, and murder in his eyes.

Alexander meanwhile, was heading to the rainbow door. He still hadn't found this 'Guardian' person, and that was kind of annoying. The door however looked really special. Special enough that it might require a guardian. It was a long shot sure, but Alexander decided to take it. Positioning himself in front of the door, he quickly made a clone who ran through it, While Alexander stayed behind to make sure the queen couldn't. His sword and wand at the ready, he was also prepared to throw up a wall or two if she charged at him, or threw a ranged attack. 'Alright bitch, let's see what you got'