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Harbington couldn't just rely on Natalie forever, so someone had to step up.\n\nSomeone impossibly stupid and idealistic.\n\nLike my work? Consider donating to my [url=https://www.patreon.com/Milkie]Patreon[/url]! Even one dollar makes all the difference!", "description_bbcode_parsed": "Heroes are in short supply, but there are enough Inklings to go around. Harbington couldn't just rely on Natalie forever, so someone had to step up.

Someone impossibly stupid and idealistic.

Like my work? Consider donating to my Patreon! Even one dollar makes all the difference!", "writing": "\tThe slap of a body on the tile floor startled the two employees of the Climate Control Center. The sound broke them from their silence, making them jump and yelp in fright as if they’d expected even the slightest sound to be their downfall. Quickly the man jumped to his feet, driven by some instinctual desire to protect… though he was honestly more interested in protecting himself than the woman who sat across from him. For as big as the bull-man was, he was shaking like a leaf and very jittery. The woman, a cockroach sub-species, wasn’t faring much better; but seeing how ridiculous the man looked sobered her in comparison.\n\n“W-What are you shaking like that for? Come on!” The woman cracked a nervous smile, her lengthy antennae wobbling with her own shaking body, while her red, bob-cut hair was frazzled with fright. “M-M-Man up and go see what that was!”\n\nShe smiled aggressively to hide her own terror. The bull glared at her. “Janet, don’t!” He practically growled. Turning his attention toward the sound, he pointed to the bathroom door tucked away into one side of the break room. “It came from over there… what if it’s a monster? I’m not opening that door to end up like some poor sap in a horror movie!”\n\nMuffled grunts came from within the bathroom, just loud enough to get through the door. It sounded garbled, like a combination of voices that just blended together and made no sense. The CCC workers stared at the door, their faces wrought with worry. The muffled voices continued until one sentence came out clear over the scuffle.\n\n“Get your ass out of my face!”\n\nThat changed things. The man and woman stared confused at the door. The monsters didn’t have voices, they didn’t vocally communicate with one another - at least they didn’t think so. On top of that, some of them didn’t even have proper behinds. The man stepped forward, shuffling his way across the break room and reaching out with one hand to grab the handle of the door. His fingers were practically vibrating with how nervous he was. He licked his lips as he grabbed the handle and jerked it open, throwing the bathroom door open in one swift motion.\n\nTwo gelatin people were crumpled up on the floor. A black wolf that shined glossy with pink and had pink eyes and a pink mouth was sitting on top of a red person whose head was swallowed under the comically large cheeks of the black wolf’s butt. The man’s brows knit as he watched the strange pair fuss. The smaller red one was trying to get free and his flailing was making it difficult for the black one to get up, not without first leaning forward to plant her hands on the floor – subsequently crushing the boy’s head firmer – and using the leverage to push herself to her feet. It was no mistake that the red one was a boy either, not with the obvious erection he was sporting seemingly under his gelatin suit.\n\n“What the hell?” The CCC employee exasperated.\n\nThe red gelatin boy sat up in a hurry, blinking his blue eyes a few times to clear his vision.\n\n“What is it, Hubert?” The cockroach woman, Janet, cautiously and timidly approached to peek around the bull man and see what all the commotion was.\n\nThe black, inky wolf in the one-piece skull-printed leotard straightened out her blobby black hair before she turned to face the pair of workers. They were clearly employees at the Climate Control Center, though their white long coat denoted them as being scientists rather than maintenance. They must have been the sort of people who ran the numbers, programming the weather patterns and taking data from the surrounding nature reserve to help keep track of things and keep the weather on a steady schedule to suit the needs of the local vegetation. They didn’t know the computers as much as they knew the programs on them. Their coats had their names stitched onto them – Hubert for the black-furred bull man with the long brown pony tail, and Janet for the petite cockroach woman with the brown skin and curly red bob.\n\n“I don’t… oh,” Hubert came to a realization, “Oh they must be the Inklings Gerald had us call.”\n\nThe two employees let out sighs of relief, their shaky, rigid postures at once deflating into slackened relaxation. “Oh thank goodness.” Janet practically groaned.\n\nPolaris, the red lemming Inkling who looked like he was wearing a hood, rubbed his eyes. He stood up from the floor and brushed himself off and straightened the sword strapped to him. “Hero Delivery. You victim, we ‘vict ‘em.”\n\n“You’re really going to save us?” Hubert asked, “You can really take on those monsters out there?”\n\nEchelon nodded. “We should be able to hold our own enough to get you out of here safely, at the least. In fact, I could get you two back to the mall safely right this second, but before I do that I wouldn’t mind asking a few questions… namely what’s going on here, exactly, and if you know what the situation is outside this room.”\n\n“But first,” Echelon paused to allow herself time to recede into her host, instead letting Natalie take over. “I thought you might want to talk to another human instead.”\n\n“Well, no offense,” Hubert looked at Polaris, then back at Natalie, “It does make me feel a little more comfortable.”\n\nThey stepped back into the break room, which was maybe the size of a common living room with a couple of tables placed in a way to make the most use of the space and not be too crowded. The tile floor was checkered, white and black that had been worn away over years of feet and other such things. The walls were plain, but posters had been posted around the room and a television was set up hanging in a corner. A cork board had important memos on it and the workers’ schedules posted. There were several snack and drink machines set up around the room and the corner nearest the door had a countertop area with a coffee maker, a microwave, and a handwashing station. Garbage receptacles waited to break down any trash the workers may have thrown out.\n\nThe scientists didn’t seem interested in sitting down. Hubert paced as he recalled the events leading up to that moment. “We didn’t have enough warning when those crystals fell from the sky and before we knew it we had monsters running all over the place.” He said, rubbing his head in a fidgety motion. “Janet and I were just having our break for lunch when something compromised the reserve. Enough damage was done that the Control Center has initiated its emergency protocol in the event of extreme environmental disasters. We’re all locked in here for our safety until we can fix whatever went wrong.”\n\n“But it has to be a mistake, because the [i]weather[/i] isn’t what’s wrong,” Janet added, “They must have jarred one of the scanners or something and sent it into a fit.”\n\n“Joe was supposed to be working security, but nothing ever happens around here so he was probably wandering around, doing his rounds or something. He said he was going to get to the office and open the doors, but that was hours ago.” Hubert couldn’t hide the worry in his voice. “Something must have happened to him.”\n\n“Is there any way we can do anything to open the doors?” Natalie asked.\n\n“Find Joe, I guess,” Janet shrugged her shoulders, “He’s got the codes. We could initiate a failsafe, but we can’t get to the room to do it. If you can’t find Joe, then you should call us when you get there. I can walk you through it.”\n\n“Alright, we need to look for other people hiding around here. We’ll make our way there and stop where we can on the way. Do you know where everyone else is?” Natalie asked.\n\n“Gerald’s in the array chamber, that much we know for sure,” Janet answered, “As for everyone else, probably in their offices? Maybe Maya was out running checks on the reserves, but I don’t know.”\n\n“What about the monsters?” Polaris asked, “What are we dealing with?”\n\nHubert nervously wrung a part of his coat. “I don’t know, mostly those black… scary things? I tried to step outside once and I think I startled one, practically blew me down the hall. I didn’t get a good look at it, I just slammed the door and…”\n\nHe looked at the doors. There were chairs piled up in front of them in such a way that they had constructed a barricade.\n\n“I haven’t tried to get out since.”\n\nNatalie turned to Polaris. “Alright, let’s make our way to the array at the center of the complex. We should be able to find the security offices on the way… there are signs or something.”\n\n“Right?” She asked the workers. They nodded.\n\n“In fact if you start heading straight left once you exit this room you’ll be right on the right track!” Hubert explained. “Just follow the signs!”\n\n“Alright. Well then, let me get you guys set up first.” Natalie inked back over, and Echelon went back into the bathroom, seemingly leaping back into the mirror. That left them alone with Polaris, and the three of them shared an awkward silence until Echelon returned.\n\n“Alright, follow me!” The inked wolf gestured for the workers to follow her. She instructed them on the art of mirror sliding – just take her hand and hold on tight. She pulled them into the mirror, which connected to the same mirror in Canvas that she used to travel to Harbington’s mall. She went straight form “Harbington CCC” to “Get your butt in here.” They came out the other side in a tumble over the bathroom sinks at Balls in Your Court, but they were no worse for wear. Once Echelon ensured they were okay to be left on their own, she hopped back through the mirror and popped back out at the CCC’s break room bathroom.\n\nPolaris had, in the meantime, unstacked the various metal chairs from one of the doors, freeing it of obstruction. He used his powers to carefully turn the metal-and-felt chairs back onto their legs and push them in at the tables nice and neat until one table was perfectly set again. He was just sliding the last chair into place when Echelon returned, and he turned toward her with a smile. “Were you sure to run the meter?” He asked.\n\nEchelon didn’t dignify him with any sort of response. Instead she moved to the door and disengaged the lock on it so that it slid open in response to her presence. She peeked out into the halls, which looked like a common office building. The navy blue carpet was rather muted against the plain off-gray walls. Windows looked into offices housing desks with consoles waiting for workers to be seated at them. The ones nearest were emptied out. Assuming they were Hubert and Janet’s; that meant there were approximately five more people in that building to find. Signs posted high on the walls directed her to various locations. “Security” was, as Hubert had said, to the left as indicated by a big blue arrow printed beside the bold black letters.\n\nThe place didn’t look like anything had done too much damage to it. If something had indeed almost blown Hubert down the hall like he claimed, the walls and floors were too sleek and the halls were too barren to show any signs of it. There was no clutter to be thrown around, just a little soil from a potted plant if nothing else. The halls were at least four or five people wide and the windows looking into the offices were unscathed. The lights overhead lit everything up without so much as a flicker. Unlike a lot of Harbington, the Climate Control Center looked perfectly normal, right down to there being almost nobody in it.\n\n“So this is the job, huh?” Polaris asked as he stepped out of the break room with Echelon. “I thought it would be a little more exciting than this.”\n\n“Stop,” Echelon put out her arm to bar Polaris from taking another step, pricking her ears up, “Do you hear that?”\n\nPolaris stopped, turned his head up slightly, and listened. “I do. We have company.”\n\nThe heavy footfalls of weighty paws were underlined by the sound of shattering glass, very slight and very brief with each one as if one were walking on a carpet of shot glasses. They rounded the corner in the form of a hulking saber-cat prana construct ridden by a tall, slender figure of similar ilk. They made one big black mass together, where the saber toothed feline was as big as a bear and just as brutish while still bearing the cunning eyes of a crafty cat. Atop the beast rode a humanoid figure with black, charcoal hair that waved in the air behind it and pointy ears seemed to stick out from the sides of its head. In its hand was a large, curved weapon, like a very large pirate’s sword. It held on to reigns that kept its mount in check, and when the beast pounced around the corner, its rider snapped the reigns and thrust its blade in a brandish. The animal charged without a second’s hesitation.\n\nPolaris and Echelon jumped to opposite sides of the hall to avoid the charge, where Echelon narrowly avoided a swipe from the rider’s weapon. It passed them a few feet and yanked on the reigns to stop and turn around. Echelon rose to face it, though Polaris faced the opposite way. A second rider rounded the same corner, and seeing that it had captured the inklings in a pincer, it stayed its hand and kept position. Polaris drew his blade, tossing it back and forth between his left and right hands before settling on his right and standing ready. Echelon only glanced the situation and understood her part just as quickly. Balling her fists, she stood ready to face the other; one for each.\n\n“It’s mostly plastic in here,” Polaris said, “You’re not about to see me at my best.”\n\n“Try to keep up then.” Echelon grinned.\n\nThe riders motioned for another charge, rearing their saber toothed mounts back, who snarled with blood lust before taking off in swift dashes. Polaris began by throwing his blade, sending it through the air to intercept the rider as he prepared to swing. The sword stayed pointed at its target through the use of Polaris’ powers, and it sailed at speeds almost too fast to react to. The rider just barely abandoned his swing and ducked its shoulder instead, opening the path for Polaris to dodge to that side, weaving around the charging beast in steady fashion. His sword swooped around and returned to his hand.\n\nEchelon boosted forward to meet her opponent right away, launching herself with a shield of kinetic force to catch the charging beast. It opened its jaws to bite down, but it hadn’t expected to be pushed back by Echelon’s mere presence, only to have its maw grabbed by the wolf Inkling and kept from chomping down. The beast wildly shook its head, its rider not risking a straight attack with its sword, opting instead to let the animal it rode tear her to shreds if it could. Echelon’s grip didn’t let up, and she thrust her knee into the chin of the mighty animal as hard as she could. The beast yelped and darted backward, turning tail and pacing in place as it got distance from the girl, growling in discontent.\n\nPolaris’ opponent took a swing at Echelon as they turned to face the boy again. Echelon barely avoided the swipe, bending herself over backward to let the blade sail right over her head.\n\n“Hey! Where are you looking?” Polaris shouted, drawing the rider’s attention back to him, “Keep your eyes on me, buddy.”\n\nThe inkling boy beckoned the construct rider, grinning as he stood ready. The rider took the challenge, snapping the reins to send his mount into another charge. The beast rushed forward and leapt to dart around Polaris, the rider swinging its large blade down at the boy. Polaris met it with his own, bracing the pommel of his blade with two hands to catch the weight of the blow. The prana-blade clanged against his own and scraped off, forcing the boy backward. Polaris kept his footing, hopping back further as the rider’s saber toothed mount swiped at him with a heavy-handed set of claws. Polaris was forced backward as the beast pounced at him, but he gracefully back flipped out of the way. Kenny’s time as a cheerleader had never paid off quite so well.\n\nHe flipped hand over foot and cleared some distance, though it backed him to the turn in the hall and he was running out of room to move. The rider was tireless in its pursuit, the massive beast it rode on snarling and roaring in rage as it made one more rush. It leapt forward to bear down on the inkling, to pin him, bite him, and tear him to pieces. Polaris gripped his small sword firm and darted toward the attack, his blade held up ready to strike. He jumped, staying as low as he could so that when he met the leaping prana beast he’d caught it on the rise. He dug its blade up under its jaw, and as it tore forward through the air, he cut it open from beneath. He slashed it open from its chin to its back legs, tumbling out behind it as it split in twain.\n\nThe rider landed on the floor with its mount shattering beneath it. The elven-looking construct tumbled on the floor, spry enough to roll to its feet and be up again before Polaris could follow up. Their blades clashed against one another, the larger, curved blade of the construct forcing the smaller, light gladius in Polaris’ hand aside. The Inkling dodged with the blow, and the rider stepped in turn. They rounded one another and positioned for another clash of blades, beginning their deadly dance.\n\n“Koralo!”\n\nEchelon took to the wall when the rider and its mount came charging at her again, leaping up onto it to be well out of the way of the attack. Her feet scaled the flat, smooth surface of the wall, stepping over one of the large office windows as she ran. Her body flipped upside down as she ran right onto the ceiling some feet above her enemy. In one quick motion, she turned, leapt, and let herself drop. She spun a crescent in the air and landed right on the saber toothed cat’s head, digging her heels into its prana-skull as hard as she possibly could. The rider seemed surprised, its sharp, white eyes rounding expressively for a moment. It quickly attempted to swing at her, but she was too close. She caught the rider’s arm, gripping it tight and stopping the swing short. She then cocked back her other fist and punched the elven construct in the jaw.\n\n“Comet Punch!” She shouted. As the rider grabbed at her and tried to force her off, and her perch on the mount’s skull began to waver and try to throw her off, she assaulted the rider with a series of boosted punches to its face. She ended the combination of blows by springing away, landing on the floor anew and stepping back to give herself time to plan her next move as the construct recovered. The beast flailed to get its bearings back, then leapt at her again, its claws out and spread to rake down her body, the rider’s sword raised and poised to strike.\n\n“Arus!” Echelon winced, tensing her body as tightly as she could and holding it that way. The sword slammed into the top of her skull, but its sharpened blade was unable to pass through. It stopped as if hitting a stone. The mount slammed into her body as if it were a wall, barely shoving her backward as it collided with some hundreds of pounds of force. The entire thing just stopped, and the beast fell to the ground in a confused slump. Echelon stepped back then, kicked her leg up to raise her foot above her head, only to slam her heel down with all the force of Captain Comet right into the mount’s skull. It shattered like a prop, Echelon’s ankle slamming into the carpet as pieces of the beast scattered throughout the hall.\n\nThe mount crumbled, leaving the rider confused, exposed, and ripe for the picking. Echelon didn’t waste any time calling on Phactys’ abilities as she stepped forward and began kicking at the rider. The construct was forced back by a series of perfectly delivered high kicks, and when it attempted to fight back Echelon would dodge the swings of the mighty blade by a hair. Every missed rebuttal resulted in a connected kick from the Inkling wolf. A kick across the face and Echelon would flip her stance, stepping forward and delivering another with her other foot. The rider was too pressured, forced to block and retreat with no alternative.\n\nSwords clashed at the other end of the hall. Polaris dipped, parried, and reposted. The broad, flat edge of his blade wasn’t the most ideal form for such direct and drawn out conflicts and it forced him to accommodate with fanciful footwork to ensure he wasn’t decimated by a returned strike. He sought an opening, testing angles to find a spot in the construct’s guard that was weak. He found it in over-hand swings. When the massive scimitar blade came crashing down at Polaris, it was a matter of moving aside to dodge it. The blade buried into the carpet none too deeply, but the time it took to haul the massive weapon back into position was just a second longer than most. Polaris stayed low to draw these sorts of attacks out, that being made easy with Kenny’s diminutive size.\n\nThe blade cut across his chest when it was brought sideways, the Inkling boy misjudging his step by a mere fraction to send the very edge of the thing across his chest. It burned. He hissed in pain and winced, faulting for only a moment before falling back into step. The construct wasn’t a human opponent – it rigorously maintained technique, performing its attacks down to the millimetre, never extending further or shorter on any attack than was programmed into it. He tried to make sense of it, to make sense of where some prana puppet would pick up things like that. He couldn’t allow the theories to distract him, however. He had to remain as calculating as ever to see just when the perfect moment would open itself up to him.\n\nIt came with another downward swing from overhead. Polaris had ducked and baited the attack, stepping aside and bracing his own smaller blade to scrape the slice and protect his own arm. He drove his fist into the throat of the prana rider, then drew his blade across its chest before it could recover. In its return, it drew back faster than Polaris had been expecting. The massive prana blade clanged off the Inkling’s gladius and threw it from his hand, tossing it away and leaving him unarmed.\n\n“Gnh!” Polaris forced himself in close, grabbing hold of the construct’s hands and holding on to keep it from using its weapon. He hooked one leg around his enemy’s and held as strong as he could, forcing the two of them into grappling inaction.\n\n“Heh!” Polaris grinned, “Take a breather why don’t you?”\n\nThe Inkling’s sword lifted from the floor and rushed violently through the air to impale the rider’s neck from the side. “Right through this new hole of yours…” Polaris grunted. The construct wasn’t as much phased by the hole in its neck as much as the impact. Polaris had just the time to grab the handle of his sword and twist it, carving out a more gaping hole in the scratchy charcoal than before. The blade had stabbed clean through, in one side and out the other. When Polaris withdrew the sword, he gripped it firm in both hands and slashed with all his might, cleaving through the remaining parts holding the construct’s head on its shoulders. It came off, decapitated in an instant.\n\nA few more slashes through the narrow parts of the elbow joints, where he’d meet the least resistance. The construct’s forearms tumbled to the floor. The last was a series of cuts to the chest, digging a trench out with a magnetically-imposed blade until he’d nearly taken a quarter of it off. The rider couldn’t maintain at that point, and its form fell apart into shards of white-aura and charcoal scratch.\n\n“Hiyah!” Echelon blocked a blow with her forearm, the blade unable to slice through with Arus’ powers keeping it at bay. She retaliated with an uppercut into the rider’s jaw. The construct was thrown back onto the floor in a battered, beaten mass with knuckle marks carved into its outline. It fell apart as well, weakened by the blows it had received. The Inkling wolf rubbed her knuckles as they throbbed. “These things are kind of brittle, aren’t they?” She asked, “It’s like smashing the Terra Cotta.”\n\n“The what?” Polaris asked.\n\n“Quincey would know what I mean,” Echelon grinned, “Like clay, or glass or something.”\n\n“Porcelain dolls are a good way to think of them,” Polaris agreed, “Which is surprising. I thought this Epheral was meant to be an all-powerful, planet-devouring monster. Maybe it’s having an off day?”\n\n“I couldn’t help but think that myself,” Echelon said, “But really, Osoth’s soldiers weren’t much better. Maybe it’s a strength in numbers thing. I don’t know how much prana this thing needs to make all these monsters, but there are always tons of them everywhere.”\n\n“They come from the crystals, I know that much. There may be one around here somewhere.” Polaris said, “If we find it, we should destroy it. The less we have to deal with, the better.”\n\nEchelon nodded in agreement. “Our top priority are the people though,” She said, “So let’s hurry before any of those things come back.”\n\nEchelon hurried down the hall. Polaris shook out his arms and smiled. “I like this!” He said, “Much better than tyrannical rule. Much better.”\n\n-\n\n--\n\n-\n\n“Well why isn’t she waking up?” Daxton paced around the store where Quincey had been placed to rest. A mattress store wasn’t the most flattering place to lay, but there hadn’t been much choice. A doctor and nurse had gotten her out of her jacket and she was comfortably positioned on a double bed, eyes closed and body still. The doctor was still at her side and had been checking on her intermittently once all the commotion in the mall had settled.\n\n“I can’t say for sure,” The otter doctor explained, “She just isn’t.”\n\n“Well what, is it a coma or something?” Daxton asked, stepping around one of the other floor models and returning to Quincey’s bedside.\n\n“No,” The doctor shook his head, “It’s not. Comas have a distinct lack of reaction to stimulation, where she would still have a waking cycle, but would otherwise be unresponsive. Quincey is, well…”\n\nThe doctor took a small handheld scanner from the breast pocket of his coat. He’d been using it several times before to monitor the brainwaves of the girl. Normally he turned it on, waved it over her head, and got data sent to his PET to monitor. This time he just took it and poked Quincey’s cheek with it in a not-so-soft jab. The girl winced and grumbled and rolled over in bed away from the man. She did not, however, wake up.\n\n“She’s sleeping,” The doctor finished, “And for some reason, she will not wake up. You’re sure you’re recalling where you found her exactly?”\n\n“Yes, okay?” Daxton rubbed his head, moving his hat around on his head, “We were attacked by a dragon and she fell through the roof of a house and when I found her some murderous little girl changed into a murderous woman thing and tried to kill me and then just ran away. Quincey was unconscious the whole time… or asleep, or whatever.”\n\nThe doctor sighed, pocketing the scanner once again. “I’m afraid, son, that all this Inkling stuff goes right over my head. None of what you said made any sense and yet I can’t even begin to argue that it didn’t actually happen. The hospital was beset upon by black charcoal drawings of what appeared to be frog men. At this point I can’t give you any answer to line up logically with what’s going on.”\n\n“Great.” Daxton groused.\n\n“And how are you feeling?” The doctor asked, purely out of professional interest.\n\n“How am I feeling?” Daxton rebutted, “Not good! There are monsters everywhere, my girlfriend’s in a freaky not-coma, and I just got to watch as someone’s chest get blown all to pieces about five feet in front of me!”\n\n“Speaking of which, does he [i]have[/i] to be in here?!”\n\nDaxton gestured over to yet another bed that had been covered in plastic to protect it from the occasional bit of blood that escaped Garrison’s unconscious form. His chest was heavily bandaged and aside from that he wore only his underwear; the doctors had stripped him of everything else. He was being closely monitored by both the police and more doctors. They had grafted some transplant skin on him, gelled his wound, and did everything they could to staunch the bleeding and encourage a clean, healthy regrowth of the tissue, but they could only do so much with so little. Whenever his bandages bled through, the doctors would remove and replace them. He was on an IV, pain medication was the most likely contender.\n\nThe doctor frowned at Garrison, the hard set of his jaw declaring via body language that he shared Daxton’s sentiments regarding Garrison’s presence. He turned his back on the man-turned-terrorist and sighed. “We took an oath.”\n\n“If he gets up…” Daxton clenched his fingers into fists.\n\n“He won’t,” The doctor said, “Not for a while. If he does, he’s cuffed anyway. I doubt he’ll be going anywhere. I’d really be surprised if the man could get to his feet without going into shock.”\n\n“Is he that messed up?” Daxton asked.\n\n“The man has a gaping wound in his chest. The blast he took would have torn me in half.” The doctor gave Daxton a bit of a flat look, “We’ll be grafting skin back on him for days.”\n\nDaxton growled. He never thought he could hate someone as much as he hated Garrison. Jimmy, Laila’s old pack leader, was bad… but Garrison made him look like a puppy. The doctor, more than uncomfortable with the conversation, tugged on the collar of his shirt. “Well,” He said, “I’ll leave her for now. Be sure not to disturb her. She’s not in any sort of failing health but in a short while we’ll put her on a nutrient supplement, assuming she doesn’t wake up before then.”\n\nHe turned and took his leave. Daxton sat on the bed next to her. She cuddled up to him, rubbing her face against him and squeezing him close. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Daxton was out of his element. At first having Lumina and fighting bad guys seemed great, but everything had gotten so tense back at the mall. The mood was far from hopeful. He wasn’t sure what was going on outside but he knew it couldn’t be good. He sat back for the first time now that he was safe and asked himself…\n\n“What are we even doing here?”\n\nWhat was the goal? Huddling up was all well and good but what were they going to do after that? He’d never been one to concern himself with actual end-game ideas… but at that moment he couldn’t see an ending. He began desperately trying to find one because no one else was there to have the ideas for him.\n\nAt the end of it all, Epheral had to go. It was either her or them. The problem was her weird prana construct army. With so many monsters running around out there, where would Epheral be? How would they find her and how would they beat her? How did her powers even work? She had crystals all over the city, both in Harbington and Locksmouth… and on that note, there was supposedly a crystal as big as an island out in the ocean that very moment.\n\nA massive hotbed of prana energy. Something that size was likely to keep Epheral going for a while. The boulder-sized crystals in Harbington were a fraction of that and they overran the apartments in minutes.\n\n“Oh man,” Daxton lifted his head, “There’s more coming. There’s got to be.”\n\nHe pulled away from Quincey and got up from the bed. He made sure she was comfortable before leaving, stepping out of the store only to run into Laila, who had come to find him. They bumped into one another and stopped. “Howdy Daxton, how’s Quincey doin’?” Laila asked.\n\n“We’ve gotta mess up those crystals,” Daxton said, “Laila we have got to destroy them if we want even the slightest chance of being able to beat this thing.”\n\nLaila had to step back and catch up to what Daxton was saying. She raised a hand to pause him for just a moment so she could do just that. “The crystals? Y’mean them prana crystal things all over the city? Slow down there cowboy, how in the heck d’ya think we’re gonna do that?”\n\n“I dunno,” Daxton fidgeted, “But we have to try.”\n\n“Daxton, honey,” Laila placed her hands on his shoulders and held him still, leaning down to look him in where his eyes would have been, “How are ya gonna do that all by yourself?”\n\n“I don’t have to go by myself! We can get Natalie and…!”\n\n“Daxton,” Laila cut him off, “Natalie’s out with Kenny right now and they’re pullin’ people from the CCC.”\n\n“What?” Daxton’s face went awash with confusion, “Why is Kenny out there?”\n\n“Because he’s got to make sure his dad’s okay before we get too crazy takin’ the fight to these evil monster things,” The girl explained, “We need to look out for ourselves for now.”\n\nShe turned him around, pointing over him at Quincey laying on the bed. “Y’see that little angel there wouldn’t want ya’ll runnin’ off by your lonesome,” She said, “You gotta be here for her, lil’ fella.”\n\n“I…!” Daxton hesitated, “But…!”\n\n“Ya know I ain’t wrong,” Laila said, “So why bother arguin’? Daxton, we oughta wait until Natalie gets back and we figure out what’s wrong with Quincey. We can hole up in here for now. Besides, ya’ll said you got an Inkling, right? We need ya here in case anythin’ really does go bad.”\n\nDaxton held his breath a moment, then let it out in a slow exhale. “… Yeah, you’re right.”\n\n“Darn tootin’ I’m right.” Laila pat him on the head. She let him go and stood up straight again, crossing her arms as she observed Quincey from afar. “Look, people out there are talkin’. They’re iffy on this whole thing. They ain’t sure if you n’ Quincey are gonna be their protectors or not. But you’ll do it, won’t ya?”\n\n“Yeah,” Daxton didn’t hesitate a moment to answer, “I’m just worried about it going on forever.”\n\n“I reckon it’ll end one way or another,” Laila shrugged, “I just don’t want it to be by yourself in the middle of a monster gangbang. I don’t want our pork chop to wake up and have none of her pack around to see her.”\n\n“Go back there n’ sit down.” She pushed him back into the store. He stepped in and stopped, trying to sort out his thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, he figured Laila was right. He couldn’t be so worried about Harbington that he forgets about Harbington, and the most important parts of it in his life. He returned to Quincey’s bed and sat on the edge of it, looking down at the peacefully sleeping pig girl. He wondered how comfortable she was in her high-neck top. He placed his hand on the crook of her neck and she hunched up to trap his fingers between her shoulder and jaw, because of course she did.\n\n“Alright Lumina, let’s talk.” Daxton said.\n\n“I’m with you,” Lumina’s voice responded in his head, “What do you wish to discuss?”\n\n“If we’re going to fight for everyone, I gotta know…”\n\n“… If you can trust me, of course. That’s a sensible question.” Lumina chuckled at him, “Surprising, actually, coming from you. This girl really brings you down to Earth, doesn’t she?”\n\nDaxton nodded.\n\n“Well, my history is rather brief. It’s a blur. Somewhere in Osoth’s rule everything simply becomes fuzzy, but the clearest moments… they’re crystal clear to me.” Lumina explained, “You see, Echelon’s rebellion against Osoth caused a ripple. Acting out against a ruler who happens to legitimately treat their subjects maliciously will do that. When Echelon made it clear to all Inkling kind that she was going to dedicate her life to overthrowing the tyrant, she had more support than she ever knew among the elites.”\n\n“I was among the many. I yearned to rid us of Osoth, to stop acting solely under her command,” She continued, “But I was afraid. Fear more than anything else kept us from turning against our ruler. Even Echelon’s current allies didn’t all jump ship at once. They trickled in, when it was convenient for them to do so. I, unfortunately, was more closely watched than others. Many Inklings looked to me for counsel and guidance, like the North Star. Because of this, Osoth used me to suss out would-be defectors. I only made the mistake of allowing this once.”\n\n“I, however, wanted to play a more active role in Echelon’s campaign. I deigned to be an operative from within. It was difficult. Never had I ever done something so terrifying. I took my life into my own hands the very first time I moved to thwart one of Osoth’s attacks. On a world far from here, at a time long before now, Osoth had Echelon’s movements tracked. The rebel leader sought to spring a surprise attack not knowing she was to be ambushed. I broke off from the counter-strike and… subtly altered Echelon’s course. Instead of arriving where Osoth’s forces thought she would be, she came in from a different angle. She got the jump on them instead. Then I allowed her to beat me and went back bruised, but proud.”\n\n“So… you messed up Osoth’s plans?” Daxton asked.\n\n“Many times. By the time we arrived on Earth however I had drawn so much suspicion that I had little choice but to fall in line and do as I was told.” Lumina said, “I just never promised to do it overly well. I suppose you could call it going AWOL. When Echelon finally brought the fight back to Osoth, I slipped away in the confusion. I bound with Harley and coerced the girl into taking me away from there, far from Osoth’s influence. I suppose had Echelon not won… I was simply going to disappear.”\n\n“Okay… so you’re a good guy, but why?” Daxton probed.\n\n“It had the novelty of not having been tried,” Lumina said, “And I wasn’t alone. A small number of us outsmarted the Empress. Osoth was terribly paranoid and meticulous… but she had her fingers in so many pies that her attention was divided. She couldn’t afford to pay attention to every little thing, try as she might. So long as she was led to believe that a problem didn’t exist, she would treat it as such. I’ve heard that you encountered Vor, yes? He was similar… though his plans were extreme.”\n\n“So there’s more of you?” Daxton asked.\n\n“Yes. Though I am not able to tell you where they are,” Lumina said, “When we break contact, it is broken for good. Any effort to get into contact with any still close to the enemy risked bringing the whole thing down on us. I severed my ties, and as such I could not tell you whether any of my former comrades are on Earth or not.”\n\n“Huh. That’s pretty brave.” Daxton said.\n\n“Courage is not the absence of fear, Daxton,” Lumina said, “It is the ability and willingness to do what is right while [i]in the presence[/i] of fear. You cannot truly be brave if you are not afraid, and make no mistake, Daxton… you are afraid. You mask it well, but you’ve always been afraid. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of being alone.”\n\nDaxton stopped, his jaw set in a hard line. His ears pricked up as Lumina talked him down like that.\n\n“I’m not afraid.” He said.\n\n“Even now? As she lays here, with no prediction to when she will wake up?” Lumina chuckled again, “Daxton I have bound with hosts cleverer than you, you can’t fool me.”\n\nDaxton swallowed. “Yeah? So what?”\n\n“So act.” Lumina said, “Don’t rush head first into danger not knowing whether things will be alright. Take stock of yourself, your abilities, and act accordingly. If you are going to be brave, then [i]be brave. [/i]But do not pretend that fear does not grip you. You’re simply prompting someone to prove you wrong.”\n\n“She needs you to have courage, Daxton. Do it for her. Do it for them.”\n\nDaxton stared at Quincey for a good, long while. He tried to reason his way out of admitting he as afraid, but only because it had been so long since he ever confessed such a thing that denying it was his go-to. Lumina was right. As his Inkling partner, she could see inside him. She knew that whenever the world went black he felt it in the pit of his stomach. She knew that he didn’t hold Quincey close only because he wanted to, but because he needed her to be there so that any time everything just went away, he could still feel her at his side.\n\nIt wouldn’t have been fair not to show her the same courtesy.\n\nHe stood, leaving Quincey’s side again. He left the store. As he walked through the bustling crowds still recovering from Eos’ earlier incident, he took stock of things. Everyone was scared. Even Yvette and Mason, Procsman and the Eos grunt that had his arm blown off trying to keep hold of Daxton, as they all sat in detainment, were afraid. Even Garrison, for all his bravado, was afraid of Inklings and their potential. Most of the people were just afraid for their safety and their livelihoods. It was possible that more still worried more for their sons and daughters than themselves.\n\nDaxton didn’t just have super powers. He had the ability to alleviate some of those fears. Something inside him just knew it to be true. He’d made a life out of being relied on – he’d always stuck up for the little guy, even if it was most of the time at Quincey’s behest. He could do that again, but on a larger scale, and not because he wasn’t afraid… but because he was.\n\nDaxton grabbed a megaphone from one of the officers, who hadn’t been expecting it. The person in the blue uniform bumbled as Daxton took off, running for the stairs and ascending to the second floor. He stopped where he could look down over everyone, then held the megaphone up and clicked it on.\n\n“Harbington!” He shouted over the crowds. At once they stopped and attentively lifted their gazes to meet him.\n\n“I am Daxton Kemberge!” He said, pausing. “Uh, hi. So, as you all probably know by now thanks to those Eos guys, I have an Inkling like my beautiful girlfriend does.” He stopped to let people take that however they may, then continued. He inked over at once, Lumina’s shell taking over, changing him into a blobby corgi of glowing white with yellow features.\n\n“Her name is Lumina,” He said, now blending with Lumina’s voice, “And I am gonna use…”\n\nHe stopped, thought about his words, then shook his head.\n\n“We are gonna work together to keep you safe, all of you!” He said, “Just like Echelon saved Locksmouth from Osoth, I’m going to protect you from these monsters!”\n\nHe was met with silence. He didn’t look all too torn up about that fact, instead shrugging his shoulders carelessly. “You don’t have to believe me,” He said, “Honestly I didn’t expect you to. I don’t blame you! It’s scary stuff! That’s why I’m just going to show you.”\n\n“Instead of listening to me yak about all this garbage, just watch me the next time you see one of those freaky charcoal things,” He said, “As me and Lumina kick the snot out of them. Then, when we’re done tearing apart all the monsters, we’re going to go to what’s causing this and bitch-slap it off our planet.”\n\n“I’m not gonna promise you, because you might not believe me.” Daxton de-inked and returned to his normal self again, the transformation dissipating in a shower of sparkling glitter around him that fell like snow. “I’m just gonna do it.”\n\nHe clicked off the megaphone and walked off his makeshift stage, leaving everyone in shock of the announcement. Some clapping started. Students from Harbington Elementary clapped their hands together joyously and cheered for their new super hero. Harley clapped her hands too, prompting other students to join in. Someone shouted, “Kick its ass!” More clapping. Cheers erupted from the crowd with a building momentum until the majority of Harbington’s citizens were hooting and hollering Daxton’s praises.\n\nThe boy got to the stairs to find his fathers waiting for him. Edward had an ice pack over his obviously swollen and bruised eye given to him by Garrison. Daxton stopped in his tracks, concern on his face. His parents approached and snagged the megaphone from him. Their silence led him to believe that they were cross with him.\n\n“A hero, huh? Harbington Hero? You know that’s just a Tackle Toss team, not an actual thing.” Eddie chuckled, “Are you crazy?”\n\n“Nah,” Daxton said, “Just brave.”\n\n“Well, far be it from your older, wiser elder parental figures to tell you just what’s good for you when you can ink up and muscle your way into doing whatever you want anyway,” Edward snarked, “But you best remember who your real heroes are, young man. I don’t just jump guys with deadly heat cannons for fun.”\n\n“Really? Eddie blinked, “From the stories you told me, you’ve jumped a lot of guys’ cannons…”\n\nEdward thrust his elbow into Eddie’s ribs, making the buck wheeze and buckle.\n\n“Daxton, we know that you’re probably one of the only people who can help us,” Edward frowned, “And we’re so proud of you for deciding to stand up and do what you can. We want you to be careful though, okay?”\n\n“Y-Yeah…!” Eddie winced, rubbing his tender ribs, “Listen champ, you’re big and strong and everything, but you’re also crazy. Please try to think things through before you do them, alright?”\n\nDaxton blushed, grinning ear-to-ear. “Jeez,” He rubbed his neck nervously, “You guys are serious dorks. D-Don’t you worry, I’ll be thinking of you guys first all the time.”\n\nEddie and Edward mulled the idea over in their heads. It was Edward first who said, “Nope, it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m terrified.”\n\n“Yeah, me too,” Eddie laughed, “What the hell is our kid doing? He gets this from you, you know.”\n\n“[b]Me[/b]?” Edward gasped, pulling away from Eddie and lowering the ice from his eye, “Excuse you, buddy, you’re the one who stands up in front of people and promises things all the time, Mr. Politician. The only thing he gets from me is his can-do attitude!”\n\n“Oh is [i]that[/i] what we’re calling it now?” Eddie planted his hands on his hips, “Can-do? You can-do’d right onto that bear’s neck and tried to can-do the life out of him before I even had a chance to do anything.”\n\n“You ran at him first! I was following you!”\n\n“He was going to blast our son!”\n\n“Well yeah I would have done it anyway, you were just faster!”\n\n“And now our son’s going to be an alien hero thing!”\n\n“How is that [i]my[/i] fault?! It’s [i]your[/i] fault! You’re always so care-free, you influenced him! I told you that he was going to grow up reckless if you didn’t step in more!”\n\n“Excuse me, I stepped in before he got his head taken off!”\n\nDaxton raised his hands, bewildered. “Ladies, please, you’re both pretty.”\n\n“Quiet you!” His father snapped at him in unison.\n\nDaxton flinched. “Okay! Well! I’m just going to check on Quincey then…” He said, slipping past his parents and descending the stairs.\n\nEddie and Edward stood glaring at one another, the beaver shorter than the buck by a fair bit. They were quiet for a while, the tension in them slowly draining until there was nothing left. Eddie reached down and took hold of Edward’s hand, raising it and making him apply the ice bag to his swollen eye again. Edward fell into his husband, who caught him and hugged him close, kissing him on the top of the head.\n\n“My baby…” Edward sighed.\n\n“Our baby,” Eddie said, “Our brave, strong… stupid baby.”\n\n-\n\n--\n\n-\n\nEchelon pried open the panel on the wall. It came apart with a satisfying “thunk” when her strength finally won the day. She set it down and Polaris immediately took over, peering into the mechanical mess of wires and switches. His host was a fledgling mechanic, leaving Polaris in the best place to jimmy an office door open that had gotten stuck on lockdown. Kenny was, admittedly, more of a small appliance and electronics man, and had a greater interest in vehicles and engines than most, but he was still better than Natalie and he was quite insistent on that fact. He just had to take a moment to figure out the way the power was routed. One of the many switches in that junction had to be the one to override the door.\n\n“Aha,” Polaris said, reaching into the exposed panel and flipping a switch. The sliding door to his side opened swiftly and a zebra man came hurrying out. “That did it. See? I told you I could figure that out.”\n\nEchelon regarded the zebra man. “Head toward the break room and wait for us there,” She instructed, “Have you seen your security person anywhere?”\n\n“Who? Joe? Uh…” The man fretted, “I think I saw him heading toward the records room. It’s, uh, down that way.” He pointed down the hall that split into a T-junction at the end. “To the right.”\n\nPolaris and Echelon glanced down the hall to the junction. At the very far end, windows looked out over the reserve that surrounded the CCC. It was beginning to get dark outside, and so without as much light from the sun to get inside, the glass began to reflect the corridor’s lights, producing a glare. The day must have really been ending, and while they would have normally turned to thoughts of vegging out and watching videos or playing games, they still had a bunch of search and rescue to look forward to. The idea was just exhausting.\n\nSomething darted past at the very end of the hall, only visible for a moment as it deftly passed from one side of the T to the other. Polaris, Echelon, and even the scientist they had rescued blinked their eyes, unsure if they had even seen anything at all.\n\n“Did you see that?” Polaris asked.\n\n“I was about to ask you the same thing. What was that?” Echelon answered, “It was… small. And blue.”\n\n“Not big and black like everything else around here.” Polaris pointed out.\n\n“Maybe it was an animal from the reserve,” The scientist suggested, “Oh no, those things haven’t breached the reserve, have they?”\n\n“I don’t know, we haven’t noticed anything like that.” Echelon shrugged.\n\n“Not even on the way in?” The scientist exasperated.\n\nPolaris laughed. “We, uh, didn’t come in that way.”\n\n“What?” The man furrowed his brow.\n\nEchelon faced the scientist. “I can explain that to you, but not right now. Just head to the break room and wait for us there, we should either have the doors open in a short while or we’ll be by to get you out the same way we came in.”\n\nThe man looked uncertain and wrestled with his thoughts for a moment. In the end, he decided it was best to trust Echelon and do as she said, and so he left to make his way to the break room under the direction of the Inklings. They had cleared a path to his office, fighting through one group of small face-hugger creatures and a congealment of what passed off as a massive slime. The latter had been a battle of attrition. The prana-construct had been more of an obstacle than an enemy, having no arms, legs, or any sort of agility. It had simply had mass… lots of mass.\n\n“Let’s check that thing out.” Echelon said before making her way toward the end of the hall. Polaris was a little faster on his feet and he overtook her on the way. He rounded the corner to look, and he found nothing. No trace of what they had seen was anywhere up or down either end of the hall.\n\n“Huh.” Polaris scratched his cheek, “Nothing.”\n\nHis ear twitched as he heard the whinny of horses and the galloping of hooves.\n\n“Polaris, watch it!” Echelon cried.\n\nPolaris turned to see the angry stampeding of a chariot come barreling at him from one end of the hall. They were more of Epheral’s prana constructs, with the strange, burning-white aura that surrounded them ripping behind them like a streak as they ran. The stallions that pulled the thing were big, bigger than he was by a fair deal, and the chariot they pulled was unmanned. Polaris didn’t have too much of a moment to move or get out of the way. Echelon got to watch as the Inkling boy was run over. It was about a second for the whole thing to happen. One moment Polaris was standing there dumbfounded and the next he was gone, crashed into by a prana construct and carried away. The boy cried out in anger as he was taken away, pushed by equine bodies until he surrendered to being trampled under their shoes and run over by the round wagon wheels of the chariot.\n\nEchelon rounded the corner to see Polaris laid out on the floor and the chariot turn the corner, whinnying in triumph. Taking to his side, she helped him up. He was dazed and he groaned in breathless agony, but he was far from fatally injured. The lemming’s head was spinning, and he clung to Echelon just to keep standing. “Didja get the numburr of that train?” Polaris asked, blinking his eyes repeatedly, his head bobbing around a bit.\n\n“Haha, no,” Echelon couldn’t help but grin at him, “Hold still.”\n\nShe switched to Mhend’s power set and began to heal him. Simply by having her hands on him, she could alleviate some of the pain he was feeling. It wasn’t going to be perfect and he wasn’t going to end up at full health, but it was at least enough to clear his head and keep him from toppling over. Polaris still ached all over, but at least he had the mind to know it. She released him after the deed was done and let him stand on his own. He slouched and held his ribs, but he managed.\n\n“Aren’t those things after Inklings?” He asked.\n\n“Huh? Well, yeah.” Echelon nodded.\n\n“Why didn’t it stop?” Polaris pondered.\n\n“Why would it? What’s a couple horses going to do?” Echelon figured. She wandered to the windows and looked out over the reserve.\n\nThe Nature Reserve was something that every dome had. Using the same containment field technology that the dome city itself utilized, it contained several differing environments that housed a cavalcade of animal species. They were maintained for many purposes, not the least of which being conservation; the second-biggest contender was for genetic experiments. Humans had long since had their DNA altered to resemble their animal counterparts, and having access to more of the base material that was used to create the modern post-splice human never hurt. Such genetic engineering was sparser those days however, as pre-splice humans, humans like Jacent, were extinct. That removed half of the building blocks that had originally changed everything. That being the case, modern times saw to it that the animals were kept and cared for respectfully. Each dome’s reserve ensured that they lived with never too much or too little. They maintained balanced food stores and population so that every animal had the chance to thrive.\n\nHarbington’s Nature Reserve was home to a tundra climate, alongside a more common deciduous forest and a warm, desert-like climate of the Southern Americas. Mammals, avian, insects, reptiles; the smorgasbord of species would have given Noah’s Ark a run for its money. Echelon surveyed the grounds below for any signs of tampering. Given that it was almost night, there were few animals up and about to monitor. The nocturnal creatures could have been out, but they were by nature adept at not being seen. All Echelon could see were trees and a little of the sky. She couldn’t tell at a glance if the reserve’s dome was even working.\n\n“I don’t see anything… [i]wait[/i],” Echelon squinted. The foliage down below rustled with activity, and she could see some constructs moving down below. “No, they’re down there.”\n\nThe constructs didn’t react to light. They appeared the same at night time as they did during the day, further forcing the idea that they didn’t belong there, as if super-imposed on reality. They were clear as ever in the darkness, wavering white outlines and scratchy black filling and all. Echelon couldn’t see just what form the constructs had taken, but they were meandering down there and that was enough to draw concern regardless.\n\n“Great. So there’s got to be a hole in the thing,” Polaris reasoned, “They couldn’t have gotten in otherwise.”\n\n“Well, unless they used the door.” Echelon pointed out.\n\nPolaris gave her a look. “Yes, okay, if they used the door,” He said, “Since when do these freaking things use doors? All I’ve ever seen them do is bash down walls. Maybe the horses used the doors – [i]except they don’t have hands[/i].”\n\n“Alright, alright,” Echelon groaned, “Maybe they didn’t use the door.”\n\n“So we have to check out there, don’t we?” Polaris asked.\n\nEchelon nodded. “When we get the doors open, yeah. Better hurry.”\n\n“This way.” Polaris jerked his head aside in a quick beckon before hurrying off to his left. Echelon followed him, and the two of them navigated the hallways using the overhead signs.\n\nThe security room door was open.\n\nPolaris and Echelon stopped some feet from the door rather abruptly. Everything they had heard suggested that the door was likely to be closed. To see it open, accessed, brought them pause and flooded their minds with uncertainties. Had Joe the security guy made it? Or was it someone else? Was the door simply left ajar? Whatever the case, they fell silent and flexed their ears to try and listen to whatever may have been going on inside. At first it seemed like nothing but the sound of the ventilation running. Everything was quiet expect for some background noise so faint that it went typically unnoticed. Polaris stepped forward, sidling up against the wall to creep toward the open door, making nary a sound as he did. Approaching the precipice, he leaned with his head turned so he could barely peek inside.\n\nThe noise wasn’t the air rushing through the vents. It was static. It was the same sort of static one would hear coming from a damaged video feed. Polaris reflexively surveyed the security monitors that lined the far-left wall of the room. Not even one of them showed any signs of damage or tamper. Each one displayed the live feed of a security camera watching places of interest. Based on the number of screens, it was a safe bet to assume that most rooms in the facility were being watched, as well as a large area of the Nature Reserve outside. From that far away the details were difficult to make out. Things moved on some of the screens, and Polaris could only guess that it was monsters from the crystals.\n\nBut if the video screens weren’t causing the sound, what was? The room was dark save for the glow of the monitors. The lights had been turned off, making scanning the rest of the room an exercise in adjustment. There were filing cabinets and other consoles around the room that served functions Polaris couldn’t hazard a guess toward. There was a desk, likely for Joe or whomever else worked security in the place, that was filled with clutter. It was the place where faculty members would be issued security clearance. Memos written on paper were posted to a cork board that overlooked the desk near the door. A PET was sitting on the desk, but it was powered off. It couldn’t have been making the noise either. A divider split that desk from a second one, but from the door the second desk was hidden.\n\nIn the darkness, two figures blurred. They fizzled and flickered, hunched over something. Polaris didn’t even see them at first, but once he had, their images burned into his mind. They were humanoid, like most of the other things birthed from Epheral. Tall, gangly, they had a disturbing stature and gait to them. Their bodies made the static sound; and their wavering outlines were dimmed, as if damaged in transition. They looked like they were cut out of a bad channel on a television, muting their black, charcoal bodies with a gray cloud of snowy static. Their movements were choppy as they seemed to fade in and out, becoming whole images at different points of the sequence as they rose to their feet in unison.\n\nAt their feet was a man, or what looked like a man. Some poor robin laid sprawled on the floor, his limbs flopped out every which way. His white lab coat looked as if it were being eaten away by blinding white like that of the prana constructs’ auras. It was spread out over the man’s face and arm as well.\n\n“What the…? WAH!”\n\nPolaris nearly jumped out of his skin as the tall, slender figures appeared at the doorway in the blink of an eye. They had big, oblong white eyes, ones that were too large, over blank, circular little mouths. They moved in a slow, sluggish manner, but a hand snatched him by his head with deceptive quickness.\n\n“Whoa!” Echelon gasped, watching as Polaris was lifted off his feet. The lemming Inkling’s expression had blanked.\n\nAll Polaris could hear was that white noise droning on in his head. It drowned everything else out, all other sounds and sensations, until he felt like he was floating in the air.\n\nThen he heard a voice.\n\n“Hello Polaris.”\n\nHe twitched. He wanted to respond to that voice but found himself lacking in any higher brain function. He didn’t recognize the voice, which made it knowing his name even more unsettling.\n\nSomething was creeping up from inside him. It was pain. Burning hot pain surged up from within, traveling over his body as if it were flashing through his veins. It hurt unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and yet his only course of action was to squint one eye just a little. The pain tickled his brain stem, camped there, throbbed there like the worst headache he’d ever had. He tried to scream but only a hoarse whisper came out. All the while he was staring into the blank white eyes of some static monster.\n\n“Comet Crash!”\n\nEchelon broke them up. She came crashing in, barreling past Polaris and into the two static creatures, smashing into their blurred bodies as if they were no less solid than she. They were all thrown into the security office, the monsters gliding on the air after they stopped trailing on Echelon’s spherical field of kinetic force. The wolf Inkling had planted her heels mid-way into the room and grabbed Polaris to hold him while the monsters flew away. They stopped just short of hitting the far wall. Their forms flickered with their movements as they spread out to either side of the room, wisely flanking Echelon and Polaris. Polaris was dazed, feeling returning to him in a gradual process that left him leaning on Echelon for support.\n\nEchelon stressed herself trying to follow the creatures’ movements. They didn’t walk so much as glide, and their choppy movements were akin to teleporting. They shuffled like zombies, but their ability to cross a span of three feet in a single step made their slow movements appear fast.\n\n“You have a real bad habit of not looking before you leap.” Echelon said, shaking Polaris to rouse him.\n\n“I’m having a difficult time knowing what to expect from these damn things.” Polaris groused, “Next time I’ll know to avoid the brain drain.”\n\nEchelon released him and looked to either side of her multiple times to try and watch the monsters. Every time she turned her head they’d be closer than they probably should have been. Their overbearing advance in a dark, barely-lit room was unsettling, and Echelon expressed her discomfort in aggressive retaliation. Still tapped into Jacent’s powers, she stepped and delivered a hard kick to one of the creatures’ middles, ejecting it toward the security monitors. Before she could be set upon from behind by the other creature, Polaris used his powers to hurl a wheeled office chair from one of the desks at it with enough force to throw it aside.\n\nBoth advanced on the monsters, trying to overtake them before they could recover. What they found was of little purchase. Echelon rushed toward the monster at the monitors with her fist cocked and ready to shatter the thing wholesale, but when she threw her punch it hit nothing. The figure vanished in a fuzzy flicker to reappear behind her and grab the back of her head. Echelon found herself thrust into the monitor marked for the west wing, her face smashed through the glass, destroying the picture. Polaris likewise leapt into action with his sword drawn only to fall for the same trick. The monster got behind him and picked him up in a pinning bear-hug, lifting him off the floor and keeping him restrained.\n\nAny prolonged contact with them seemed to result in the same pain that Polaris experienced. Echelon felt it for the first time searing into the back of her head while the creature’s palm kept her face shoved into a mess of electrical and shattered glass. She could feel it creeping around the back of her cranium like tendrils, making her head throb with agony. Echelon knew Natalie had to be feeling it too, so connected with her host as she was. Something about that power plucked at the strings that connected them, which sent Echelon into a panic and endangered her far more than any robot or alien had ever before.\n\n“You’re Echelon,” Epheral’s unfamiliar voice whispered into the Inkling’s subconscious, “You’re real! You’re the one!”\n\nThe creature pulled Echelon’s head back only to slam it again into the monitors, fracturing glass and shattering the display further. Echelon yelped in pain, planting her hands on the screens and pushing against the pinning hold.\n\n“You did it, you really did it,” Epheral’s voice wavered, “You killed her. You killed Osoth! How dare you?!”\n\n“Nrgh…! Let… go…!” Echelon grunted. She was hit with a sudden slack from her captor’s grip that she hadn’t expected, throwing her into unbalance. The monster caught her head again and slammed it down onto the console, pushing several buttons there with Echelon’s cheek.\n\n“She was mine!! Thief!! She was to die by my hands! MY HANDS!” Epheral screamed into Echelon’s head while her monster construct continually battered the security monitors with it. The Inkling found it hard to catch herself, to stop what was happening, as Epheral’s creeping influence was seemingly trying to unwind her very being. She rippled with what could only be described as looseness from Natalie. Epheral’s creeping white spread out over her head like it was forcing its way through a vasculature she didn’t have.\n\nEpheral’s power was something Echelon would never have imagined. As it crept into her, she could read and understand it. She could take hold of it much like she could with any other. It was prana, the very stuff that kept her going; Epheral could quantify it. Where most Inklings either had it, or didn’t, Epheral could know how much any one being contained. Beyond that, everyone’s prana felt different. Echelon’s innate energy had its own flavour, and across the room she could sense Polaris’ just the same, but his was different in a way that made it unique to him. Natalie and Kenny were very much the building blocks for it. Two different humans, two different kinds of prana.\n\nThe most remarkable ability was being able to touch it. Echelon forced her will back onto Epheral’s prana and forced her influence out of her. It was painful, gradual, like sucking venom from an open wound. Echelon literally cleared her head of the would-be conqueror and at that point began to fight back. She forced her out so powerfully that the wraith-like construct released her, forced away by the power. Echelon turned, braced herself on the console, and lifted her knees up to her chest. She delivered a double-kick to the wraith that threw its wavering form into the middle of the room.\n\n“ARUGH!” Polaris cried out in agony. His entire body seemed to be littered with blazing white fractures, the energy from beneath looking like it was going to explode from within. Echelon hurried to his aid, throwing herself at the wraith holding him to barrel them both over. Polaris fell to the floor, released from the hold, but he laid limp, cringing in pain. He groaned in delirium and curled into a fetal position, unable to act.\n\nEchelon rose from the floor, one hand planted there as she got her feet under herself. “That power you have is incredible, Epheral,” She said, “Let’s see how you like it!”\n\nShe rushed forward in a burst of movement, both catching the arm of the wraith as it attempted to swing at her and planting her own open palm onto the monster’s chest. What she tried to do to the prana that constructed the beast had no grace, finesse, or technique. She ripped and tore at it, breaking it, crumbling it, with no goal beyond wanton destruction. Using Epheral’s power of prana influence granted to her by the unwitting wraith, she ravaged it like a bull in a china shop. On the surface, the effects were unclear. Nothing seemed to be happening to the monster while she tore it limb from limb on the inside. The only indication that any damage was happening at all were the fissures forming all over the monster’s body, ones that blazed with pink light.\n\nEchelon forced her entire being into the effort, fending off a counter-attack of the same nature from the wraith. White cracks spread out over her arm, but only to her bicep. Before it could progress further, the wraith ruptured. It blew apart, solid prana flying around the room like shrapnel and ricocheting off the walls, ceiling, and floor.\n\nEchelon’s legs shook, but she wouldn’t allow herself to collapse. Instead, she balled her hand into a fist and spun, delivering a hard blow to the gut of the second wraith, who had tried to take her from behind. Jacent’s powers assisted her, causing the monstrous being to buckle. As it bent forward, she raised her hands high above her head, interlocked her fingers, and smashed the thing’s back with both hands, sending it to the floor. Her last act was to step back, lift her leg, and smash the thing to pieces with as she drove her foot down into what would be its spine. The trauma caused the wraith to shatter like all the constructs before it.\n\nShe stumbled then, falling to her hands and knees. She panted for breath, even if Inklings didn’t need to breathe. Epheral’s powers, while useful, left her feeling like she had the spins. Even while she was manipulating them to her own needs, Epheral seemed to try and creep through her, to pull her apart at the seams. The feeling faded after a while. What power she’d gotten from Epheral had nearly run out. She had crawled over to Polaris in one last effort to use that gift, working to force Epheral’s hold over him out. In doing so she peeled him apart like a banana, until he’d receded back into Kenny’s body. The hooded lemming boy trembled on the floor, his eyes clenched shut as he sniffled.\n\n“N-Ngh…” The boy whimpered. He’d felt violated somehow, cold and empty.\n\nEchelon, too weak to continue, faded back into Natalie’s form. The wolf placed her hand on the boy, rubbing his arm. “You’re okay,” She said, “It’s alright.”\n\nKenny snorted, swallowed, and finally opened his teary eyes. “What… the fuck was that?” He asked, “That thing was… ripping me open from the inside!”\n\n“Epheral,” Natalie panted, turning to drop her rear on the floor and sit, trying to catch her breath, “She must have been trying to force Polaris off of you.”\n\nKenny rolled onto his front, using his knees and forehead to keep him off the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of his middle, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He sat up, swaying, dizzy. As his focus returned, he looked to the man that he had seen before, the scientist with Epheral’s burning corruption worming its way through his body. He flickered sometimes, like static. “What’s with him?” He asked.\n\nNatalie stared at the man’s body. It looked as if half his arm had been eaten away. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing. “She’s… breaking him down,” She said, her voice trembling with terror, “Quincey said that she leaves nothing behind. This must be what she meant.”\n\n“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Kenny asked.\n\n“I think… yeah…” Natalie exhaled, frowning, “All his prana must be sucked out or something. I… don’t think there’s anything left.”\n\n“Kinda looks like… one of those crystals,” Kenny pointed out, “The batteries or whatever.”\n\nNatalie closed her eyes. She rubbed them, blinking tears out of them when she opened them again. “I think that’s about right.”\n\n“Oh [i]shit[/i]…” Kenny hissed. The severity of the situation wasn’t lost on him.\n\n“It’s so scary,” Natalie said, “Epheral’s power. I mean, everything has prana… [i]everything[/i]. It’s like she controls… life. And all these things, she built them out of it. Out of other people’s life.”\n\nKenny squinted. “If she could do that, she could just kill everybody right away,” He said, “That can’t be exactly it. I don’t know, maybe it took a while to…”\n\n“Oh god, Dad.” Kenny blinked. He grabbed Natalie’s arm and shook her. “We gotta get these people out of here. [i]Yesterday[/i].”\n\nNatalie looked at him surprised at his sudden persistence. He was right, though, and so she shook out all the uneasy feelings she had. She tried to ignore the idea that someone was dead in the corner. She rose to her feet, shaky, frightened, and pulled her PET out of her pocket. She dialed Janet’s number and approached the security monitors as the call went through.\n\n“Janet,” Natalie spoke when the scientist picked up, “We’re in the security room. We… found Joe. I’m going to need you to walk me through the failsafe.”\n\nNatalie spoke as stoic as she could, but her forced effort to keep a steady tone didn’t go unnoticed by the woman on the other end of the call. Janet frowned. “Oh god…” She said, “Oh my… I can’t believe it. I… Okay. Okay. Alright let me just… let me just sit down. It’s not really that hard… a-anybody could do it, you just need to know the codes.”\n\n“I’m sorry.” Natalie said.\n\nJanet took a deep breath, seeming to sit at a table in the break room. “Yeah,” She said, “Me too.”\n\n-\n\n--\n\n-\n\n“Attention everyone! This is Natalie Grayswift of… Locksmouth. Um, if you can hear this, the doors to all secure areas have been opened. Make your way to the break room if the coast is clear, but if it isn’t, stay exactly where you are! I’ll be doing a sweep of the building, so if you think you’re in danger, just stay put and I’ll come get you!”\n\nGerald stood and brushed himself off. Finally, that girl came through. He felt so stupid sitting in the array room by himself waiting on some teenager to save the day, but he wasn’t going to complain about it paying off. He gathered his PET and straightened his tool belt. It was time to get out of there.\n\nHe wasn’t going to miss the array room. The tower brought a severe sense of isolation in its massive globular entrapment. Some fifty feet out from any of the walls, it jut up through the center of the completely spherical room like a spire and was only accessible from a lone catwalk just off the access entrance to the room. Everything was gray and metallic, even the walls. Wires and circuitry were built into the surfaces of the walls, as well as lights and screens, displaying endless information regarding the weather set for the dome. It was a highly-advanced piece of technology, a super-computer controlling a self-contained ecosystem.\n\nIt tended to glitch sometimes, so Gerald was no stranger to the chamber. He was used to the echoing acoustics that broke the utter silence of the room. Some days he even welcomed them. He knew the panels, he knew the systems, he knew the work and enjoyed doing it. He liked the little escape it provided. Hardly anything ever went completely wrong, and so his job maintaining the array tower was an easy one. He liked to think that it was in part his doing, that he was so good at what he did that thing seldom went awry.\n\nSomething had gone terribly wrong, however, beyond his ability to fix a machine. A simple maintenance job turned into utter hell thanks to those monsters that came crashing through the dome. The impact ended up locking him into the room for hours, where the silence and the acoustics became grating as he wondered and worried if he would ever escape. It was worse when he had to consider lending his trust to aliens, and that the monsters that rampaged through the Climate Control Center were just as alien. He felt like he was in a cheesy sci-fi movie… and he wasn’t sure if his role was to live or not.\n\nWith the doors opened though, he felt emboldened. Emboldened, but not invincible. He wasn’t so foolish as to go running out into the halls without checking things first. He walked the catwalk, hand on the rail, footsteps echoing in the chamber from his boots, until he reached the doors. The first thing he would do is check around, see if the coast was clear. If it was, he’d make his way cautiously to the break room, where he honestly would have been happy to see another face for a change. Normally he kept to himself, but in times like these he was going to cherish every other human he could be around for even a little while.\n\nOf course, if the way wasn’t clear, he’d have to stay in the room for a little longer. He wouldn’t have preferred that, but it beat his odds of surviving in that hell.\n\nHe tapped a few buttons on the keypad by the door; beep, beep, beep. The door slid open vertically with a satisfying metallic thunk.\n\nThey opened to a gale-force wind that hit him like a solid wall. He lifted his arms to try and shield his firmly-closed eyes from the rushing air, only to feel himself be pushed back. He tumbled back onto the catwalk, partially allowing himself to fall so that the plastic guard walls that ensured he wouldn’t fall off could do their jobs. He hit the metal walkway harshly and scrambled to press his back against one of the walls, one arm still shielding his eyes from the gust. It howled in his ears and whistled through the chamber, almost deafening as much as It was blinding.\n\nIt all ended when something pounced him. He fell flat onto his back under the weight of the thing, too stunned to stop it. When he got his senses back, he found himself staring into the blue eyes of a pale animal.\n\n“What the hell?” The man asked, bewildered. It wasn’t like any animal he’d ever seen. It looked kind of like a dog, with what should have been a lengthy, bushy tail. It was white all over, however, and had solid blue eyes, beady in shape. It had no fur, but instead had skin that seemed to shine all over its body… yet it still had the bulk of a fur coat. It barked at him, high pitched, screechy. It couldn’t have been a dog by the pitch and tone of it, not a regular one anyway. It sounded more like a fox, and its small size suggested it wasn’t even fully grown. Enough time around the nature reserve and Gerald had at least picked up on how to tell the difference between the two species.\n\nThe fox growled at him, which made his heart race. He stayed very cautiously still, staring into the eyes of the little canid. Its muzzle had a solid set of purple teeth on it that looked etched into its skin. For a moment, Gerald wasn’t sure the thing could even bite him. Soon, the little beast pricked up its ears and turned his head toward the door in alarm. It bounced off Gerald, dashing over his head to run deeper into the chamber, leaving the man more than a little bewildered. As he lay there collecting his thoughts, however, he heard the ruckus of old wooden wheels and the clopping of hooves, like an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage. He lifted himself to stare out the chamber doors at the source of the sound, confused as all hell and just along for the ride at that point.\n\nIt was more monsters. Strangely enough those monsters took the shape of normal, every day horses… big ones that were pulling along a chariot. He recognized them as no good right away, knowing them by their scratchy black bodies that made them look like death incarnate. The horses shook out their manes and stomped their hooves on the floor before pawing at the ground, digging at the carpet in the hallway. They were too big to fit inside, and so they impatiently stomped their feet in agitation and whinnied in discontent.\n\nThe blobby fox shrieked at them, and Gerald saw its reared back stance and recognized it as one of caution. It seemed that thing didn’t like those weird monsters any more than he did.\n\nWhat the horses had been waiting for must have come to pass when they began to change shape. Their bodies, chariot and all, began to crumple up. They were crushed into one another by an unseen force, morphing into one big ball of charcoal mass and wavering white. They cracked and snapped like brittle glass as they formed a new shape cut from the ball. Arms, legs, and a body formed, until the congealed horses and chariot became one large, bipedal humanoid. By shape alone it seemed to wear armor – shoulder guards stuck out from it, and its head looked as if it were adorned in a bucket with horns sticking out the sides and curving upward. In its hands was a massive weapon, a sword that required two hands to hold even for its size. Gerald wasn’t a large man to begin with, but this new dark knight towered over him and would have even stood taller than Eddie without any trouble. It had to duck its head just to pass the doorway into the array chamber.\n\nGerald rose to his feet, panicked and fearful for his life as the massive knight approached. He gripped the rail hard in his hand, squeezing tighter than necessary. “D-Don’t you come any closer!” He bellowed at the knight, his voice impressively low and clear. When the knight took one more heavy step, it really didn’t surprise Gerald that he’d been ignored. Still, he swallowed and stepped backward, trying to keep his distance from the menacing figure if he could. Behind him the fox continued to yip and bark angrily. The constant noise did nothing to help settle Gerald’s nerves.\n\nThe knight skulked closer, its massive feet clanking in its armor, sending booming echoes throughout the chamber. It was too large to get by, taking up most of the space between the rails on the narrow catwalk. Gerald couldn’t see any way he could escape the situation, and his feet kept moving him backward out of reflex. He was nearly back to where the walkway circled the array tower, where it would go all the way around it, giving him access to several panels. Nothing there was going to help him against that thing. He glanced back at the animal behind him, the little fox like a coiled spring. It was still, but ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. From up close, it seemed to shake and tremble in a way Gerald hadn’t noticed before. It was frightened.\n\n“I’m warning you,” Gerald gruffly spoke to the night, taking a deep breath and puffing out his chest as he stood strong, “Touch this machine and you’ll be sorry! I’ve worked too hard to keep this thing running just to let you waltz in here and wreck up the place!”\n\nThe lemming man balled his hands into fists and raised them to fight. He sneered at the knight, his bushy mustache raising at an angle with his lips while his bushy eyebrows made his angry eyes look small.\n\nThe knight took another step, only a few feet from Gerald at that distance. It was enough to make the lemming lose his nerve, and he stumbled back until his back was pressed up against the cylindrical pylon at the chamber’s center. His heart pounded in his chest and his arms and legs felt weak and floppy. “What the heck am I thinking?” He groused, “Get away from me!”\n\nThe figure readied its weapon, raising it above its head as it began to charge. It’s heavy, clanking footsteps quickened, echoing loud booms throughout the chamber at a swift tempo. Gerald, too afraid to move, closed his eyes tight and held his body as flat back to the array as he could, hoping for a miracle.\n\nThe fox growled and yapped as it ran forward, leaping into the air with a sudden rush of wind that propelled its entire tiny frame forward at high speeds. It curled itself up to ram into the knight right at center mass, while its weapon was risen too high to defend itself. The fox’s ramming impact knocked the knight onto the ground, and the little animal scurried off down the walkway toward the entrance of the room again. It stopped several paces away and turned, its blue eyes fixing on Gerald. It began to yap and bark frantically, shrilly as a fox would. Gerald only then opened his eyes to see the scene, and from what he could tell, the fox was waiting for him.\n\nHe didn’t have much time, so he picked himself up and ran, stepping over the knight as it tried to get back up. He made certain to jump down on it as he went over it, knocking it flat onto the walkway again as he escaped. When Gerald had cleared the frightening foe, the little blobby fox turned and continued to run, darting out into the hall ahead of Gerald only to stop and yip at him again. Gerald did his best to keep up. When he was four feet from reaching the little animal, it took off down the hall and Gerald was forced to follow at a lagging pace. By the time he’d gotten out of the room, the fox was at the bend at the end of the hall, yapping and waiting again.\n\nGerald was already short of breath, but he forced himself to keep up the pace. He was a bit husky and small, so running far distances wasn’t something his build lent itself well to. The fox up ahead circled several times, pacing impatiently while it waited for Gerald, only to suddenly stop, get down low on its front paws, with its back-end hiked up. It growled as threatening as it could, and Gerald nearly tripped up as he stopped as quickly as possible. The fox dashed toward him and he cringed, raising his arms and a leg to defend himself from the little thing as it came right at him. He didn’t expect it to dart right around his legs, only feeling it do so as he had his eyes closed tight again.\n\nThe fox let out a shrill howl, which unleashed a furious gust of wind that barreled right into the knight that had left the array chamber to pursue them. It roared down the corridor, picking the bulky prana construct up like a paper bag and sending it flying. It tumbled head over foot as the fox continued to bark and yip, somehow manipulating the sudden rush of wind and keeping it going until it thought the knight was far away. It relaxed when satisfied, then turned and darted toward Gerald again. The man stood dumbstruck as it stopped, grabbed the leg of his jumpsuit near the cuff with its teeth and began tugging on him insistently. Once he took a step, the fox released him and ran down the hall once more.\n\nGerald continued to follow, running as quickly as he could as he met with the fox at every junction, only to be led somewhere else.\n\nAfter enough twists and turns, he rounded a corner and nearly ran into Natalie, who was leading Kenny to go find him. They stopped short of hitting one another, where Natalie and Kenny were distracted by the fox running past. It didn’t stop when they did, instead darting around a corner and disappearing in just a second or so, as swift as foxes tended to be.\n\n“Kenny?!” Gerald spotted his boy and that immediately took his attention.\n\n“Dad!” Kenny snapped back.\n\n“What the heck was that?” Natalie asked, having wanted to chase the fox, “Was that an inked animal?”\n\n“What are you doing here?” Gerald asked, sounding frustrated that Kenny would somehow land himself in harm’s way like that.\n\n“I’m here to get you!” Kenny answered impatiently, “Come on, you’re the last one!”\n\n“But how did you get here? You shouldn’t have come!” Gerald scolded his son, stepping past Natalie to do so, “This place is dangerous… and what are you doing with that weapon?”\n\n“Uh, guys?” Natalie cut in, peering around the corner where Gerald had come from, “We have to go right now. I don’t have enough energy to fight [i]that[/i] thing off.”\n\nThat thing that Natalie was referring to was the knight that had been chasing Gerald. Gerald, just then remembering it, shifted gears to panic. “I almost forgot about that!” He said, “Let’s go, right now!”\n\nHe put his hand on his son’s back and pushed him into motion. Kenny ran ahead of him, younger and faster, and Natalie took up the rear. They all pushed one another to maintain their top speed as they hurried straight for the break room. They could hear the heavy, clunking footsteps of the knight behind them the entire way, but its large, bulky form was slow regardless of how long its strides were. Avoiding it was an easy matter of not stopping for even a moment. They had gained significant ground by the time they had reached the room, entering it where the last of the facility staff was waiting for them.\n\nThey closed and locked the doors, and Natalie mustered up the energy to ink over one more time so that Echelon could guide the faculty through the mirror. She took them in two small groups; three in the first group, and three in the second when she included Kenny. There was nothing that could mentally prepare them for the trip through Canvas and the terribly nauseating effect it would have. It was difficult to explain the swimming sensation of going through dimensions, being pressed flat in Canvas, if even for a second, before popping out the other end back in the regular world. If they were to try, they might have described it as being a living pop-up book.\n\nAlmost all of them tripped and fell once they ended up in the Balls in Your Court bathroom, being ejected from the mirror in a daisy chain with Echelon at the front. Once the final group came through, Echelon immediately de-inked, and Natalie was left tired and panting. The CCC employees couldn’t get out of the bathroom fast enough, wanting to get out and find their families or friends so they could reconcile and be comforted by familiar faces. Kenny’s father remained behind with Kenny, and the two of them stayed with Natalie as she rested against the bathroom sinks, looking terribly run-down.\n\nGerald looked her up and down. “You alright, little miss?” He asked, crossing his arms.\n\n“Tired,” She said, “[i]I’m so tired[/i]. I can’t go on.”\n\n“Well I counted five of us getting back here through that…” Gerald glanced at his reflection in the mirror, raising a bushy eyebrow, “… Method. With Hubert and Janet already here, your work’s done.”\n\n“If only it was that easy…” Natalie sighed, taking her hat off and using it to fan herself. “No, with Epheral’s monsters still out there, our work is way not done. I just can’t do any more tonight, I need to rest. [i]Echelon[/i] needs to rest. That attack from Epheral was devastating.”\n\n“What is this Epheral you’re talking about?” Gerald asked, “Does it have something to do with the monsters out there?”\n\n“I’ll have to explain it later, but yes,” Natalie nodded, “She does.”\n\nKenny had been quiet during the discussion, but he perked up when his father turned to regard him. “And you, boy, what were you doing with her? You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Do you have any idea how stupid it was to go into something like that? What if something happened to you, huh? What would I do then?”\n\nKenny took pause. He opened his mouth but thought better of whatever he was going to say, so he stopped short and just sighed. “Sorry, Dad…”\n\n“I don’t think sorry is going to cut it,” Gerald pressed, “What, do you think you’re some kind of super hero too? You’re not like her, Kenny. No matter how much of an adult you think you are, you’re still just a regular kid. You can’t just strap a sword onto your back and suddenly become a fighter. Those things would tear you apart just as easily as they’d tear me apart.”\n\n“To be fair, sir, he was just coming to make sure you were okay,” Natalie butt in, “That’s all.”\n\nGerald gave her the eye. “And I appreciate that,” He said, taking a deep breath to carry on, “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid idea. Your intentions are one thing, but you should worry less about me and more about yourself. I don’t exactly have a lot of family left to burn through.”\n\nKenny swallowed. He knew what his dad was saying, and he wasn’t wrong. It made total sense that he’d worry more about Kenny than himself. Dads were just like that most of the time, and Gerald wasn’t a stranger to putting his foot down on the subject. When it came to family, Kenny and Gerald only had each other.\n\nGerald stepped in close and pulled Kenny’s hood down, and then unbuckled the belt that held Kenny’s sword over his shoulder. “Take this off,” He said, “I think you’ve done enough saving for one day.”\n\nKenny lifted his hand to stop his father. “You’re not… right,” He said, lowering his ears flat, “You’re wrong.”\n\nGerald stopped unbuckling and just stood still. “… How?” He asked.\n\n“I…” Kenny lifted his gaze to meet his father’s, “I have an Inkling too. I fought those monsters and beat them.”\n\nGerald’s expression blanked. “Is that right?”\n\nKenny stepped back, pulling away from his father’s hands and refastening the sword’s strap. “Yeah,” He said. He glanced at his father’s tool belt, and then just lifted his hand. A wrench that was tucked into a sleeve on the belt came loose, floating up from Gerald’s waist and slowly drifting to Kenny’s hand. The boy curled his fingers around the handle of the tool for a moment, but then simply let it go. He let it float around him in the air. “That’s right.”\n\nGerald stared at his son, glancing now and then to the wrench that floated in the air. He crossed his arms sternly, his chest rising and falling as he took in and let out a deep breath. “How long?” He asked.\n\n“Since I got home.” Kenny stated, taking the wrench out of the air and handing it back to his father.\n\nGerald was a bit stunned by the gesture, blinking his eyes as he took the wrench back and tucked it into his belt. “I see,” He said, rubbing his chin and around his mouth as he visibly mulled over thoughts in his head, “Then you telling me so means you’re like your friend then, like Quincey. You’re… willingly with the thing, is that right?”\n\n“His name is Polaris, and he’s…” Kenny glanced aside, “Well, I dunno. He wants to help, or that’s what he says.”\n\nGerald looked to Natalie. “You knew about this?”\n\nNatalie looked between the two, back and forth. “Well, yeah,” She said, “But I just found out today too. Polaris isn’t one of Echelon’s allies, he’s kind of an outsider. He seems to want to join up. I’m kind of keeping my eye on him for now.”\n\n“Well then so am I,” Gerald said, looking back at his boy, “If he acts up, I’ll let the girl here beat the snot right out of you if she has to. You understand me?”\n\nKenny nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”\n\nGerald stepped next to his son and put an arm around him. “Alright,” He said, “Let’s rest then for now. Maybe we can get something to eat. I think I deserve a hot dog after running for my life.”\n\nKenny blinked up at his father. “I’m not that tired,” He said, but a yawn gave him away, “But okay.”\n\nNatalie caught Kenny’s yawn and covered her mouth politely as she followed the father-son pair out of the bathroom. “That sounds so good right now.”\n\n-\n\n--\n\n-\n\nEveryone was getting ready for bed. People were squaring off spaces for them to sleep, either inside stores or in a public area. The people downstairs got cots to sleep on, but most others just had bedrolls rolled out anywhere they could fit, or were gathering in cuddle piles. People were getting together with their families and their packs and getting cozy for the night. Some of the older people, the adults, they seemed restless. They wandered off to some restaurant to spend their time on their own. Those were the ones without kids, the ones who had no one else to worry about. They were lucky, in some regards.\n\nHarley felt a heavy weight in her chest. Her parents still hadn’t shown up. She hadn’t heard from them all day, not even a call on her PET. With everyone else getting together, she felt lonely and left out. The little shrew just sat by herself off to the side as quiet as she could from her spot on the fountain’s edge near the food court. The trickling water made her feel a little more at ease, or at least gave her something else to listen to other than the voices of others. Any time someone came near, she wished they would go away. All she wanted was her parents, and everyone else was just disappointing.\n\n“Harley!” A young voice caught her ear. Harley looked up from her zonked out state to see a toad boy running her way. She knew him well, as he was the Social Coventry of the Student Council at Harbington Elementary. Harley herself was the Treasurer, so she knew every member of the Student Council very well. What she didn’t know was how she polled higher in popularity than the President. The Council Secretary had deliberately kept that knowledge from her to save the President’s feelings.\n\n“Harley, someone just proposed that they start an Inkling Fan Club at school!” The boy said, placing his hands on his knees as he panted for breath.\n\n“Oh,” Harley said, blinking her eyes slowly at the boy, “That’s good.”\n\n“Is it? The President is calling for a vote! We’re getting everyone in school to…”\n\n“Do I really have to be there?” Harley cut him off, unable to stop frowning, “Ciril, unless someone needs to organize a fund raiser for a field trip… I’d rather just stay here.”\n\nIt was something else to be denied so harshly by Harley, of all people. Her quiet, gentle voice made her cutting words sneak deceptively to the core. Ciril stopped short of responding to her only to look upon her with concern. “Are you okay Harley?” He asked.\n\n“… It’s okay.” Harley said, “I’m just not feeling very well.”\n\n“Are you sick?” Ciril asked.\n\n“I’m fine.” Harley shook her head.\n\nConfused, Ciril stepped back. “Well… okay, I’ll just tell everyone you’re abstaining then,” He said, “Feel better, Harley.”\n\n“Mm.” Harley sunk back into her funk, and Ciril hurried off to inform the Council. He hadn’t been the first person to approach her. Lots of kids from her school had, and many of the teachers too. People were always trying to talk to her for as long as she could remember, and it was awkward talking with people she barely knew, who seemed to be trying so hard to talk about anything that came into their heads. She realized that they were doing it, but she never really understood why.\n\nShe hugged her knees to her chest, her large, soft breasts pressing into them as she leaned forward.\n\nWhat wasn’t helping matters was a feeling she had deep down inside. She’d been feeling it ever since she woke up after parting with Lumina. At first, she thought she was just tired, or that separating with an Inkling caused a physical response that lingered after the fact. She had tried to pass it off as something simple and conventional. What she felt was a social emptiness. Letting Lumina go felt like she had just unmade an imaginary friend. She couldn’t really piece together the how or the why. She kept reminding herself that she didn’t even talk to Lumina, or know how to feel about the Inkling. By then all she could think about was how unfair that was.\n\nLumina must have been happier without her.\n\nIt made sense to her. She didn’t use any of Lumina’s powers or anything like that. She had kept the Inkling secret after she went home from Locksmouth in the summer, but past that she did nothing with it. An Inkling host was supposed to do things with their Inkling, right? Like a pet? Lumina must have felt neglected. Even when it came down to fighting to save Daxton, Harley couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was scared and selfish, and she instead just gave Lumina away.\n\nNow she was surrounded by people and had no one.\n\nShe sniffled, wiping her tears on her arm. Some kind of commotion was starting, groups were gathering. Harley tried to see what was going on, but she couldn’t see past anyone from that distance… and if she got close, she wouldn’t have been able to see past anyone either. She decided to instead slip her feet down and get up, sneaking off to distance herself from the crowds. She made her way to the stairs and ascended to the second floor where the density of people was much sparser. She could look down over everyone, if only just barely. She could rest her nose on the rail, and if she stood on her toes she could see down. She sat up against the guard rail and pressed her black flush with the half-wall, curling up into her little ball of loneliness again. With her back to the crowds she was peering into some of the stores. One of them was the bed store, called “ZZZZZZZZ.” There were doctors in there, with that scary man who pulled the weapon out earlier that day, the one that nearly killed Daxton.\n\nDaxton was in there too with Quincey. Harley blinked the tears out of her eyes when she saw them. She sat up straighter, curiously peeking in on what they were doing.\n\nThere were a couple of older pigs there. They were discussing something with Daxton that Harley couldn’t hear or make out from that distance. Quincey was still sleeping. She’d been sleeping all day. Was that Harley’s fault too? If Quincey hadn’t been going to her, to save her specifically…\n\nHarley shook. She felt so guilty. She felt like everything that had happened could be blamed on her.\n\n“Nnh!” The girl whimpered, gritting her teeth as she struggled not to cry. Alas, cry she did, and not quietly. She buried her face in her knees and sobbed, too sad to keep it all in. She sniffled and blubbered, her shoulders shaking as she did. “Uuuhh-huh-huu!” She muffled her bawling against her chest.\n\n“Hey.”\n\nShe snapped up with a squeak, seeing Daxton squat down in front of her. She sucked in a fearful breath and rubbed her eyes in a hurry, sitting up as straight as she could. “M-M-Mr. Daxton!”\n\n“What’s the matter?” He asked, “I could hear you crying from the store.”\n\nHarley frowned, her brows knit upward. “You did?”\n\n“I have really good hearing.” Daxton explained. He sat down next to her comfortably. She flushed with embarrassment when his strong arm brushed her shoulder. “Why are you crying?” He asked.\n\nHarley looked up at him, then turned her attention toward the ground as she huddled up with her knees to her chest again. “I’m fine,” She said, “You don’t have to worry about me any more.”\n\nDaxton cocked a brow. “Like hell,” He said, “C’mon. Give me a break from worrying about my girlfriend and let me worry about you for a second, will ya?”\n\n“She’s more important.” Harley insisted.\n\n“She sure is,” Daxton agreed, “But, then, she’s also sleeping in a bed and from what she was mumbling I think she’s dreaming about an ice cream mountain. [i]She’s[/i] fine. [i]You’re[/i] not fine. So, are you gonna make me beg or what?”\n\nHarley didn’t know where to begin with Daxton’s logic. He bewildered her in a frustrating manner. She sighed and sloped her ears. “If it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be like that,” She said, “I… messed up.”\n\n“And if it wasn’t for her? You wouldn’t be here right now.” Daxton quickly pointed out, “And that’s a good thing, right?”\n\nHarley shook her head. “No.”\n\nDaxton pat her head. “Aw come on, don’t be like that,” He said, “Look, Quincey wasn’t going to stop until you were safe and sound, so don’t blame yourself for what happened.”\n\n“But if I wasn’t at home…” Harley started.\n\n“And if Garrison didn’t exist I wouldn’t have almost gotten blown to pieces,” Daxton cut in sharply, “See? But there’s nothing we can do about any of that, so don’t beat yourself up over it, man. I don’t blame you. She doesn’t blame you. The only person blaming you is, well, you.”\n\nHarley squinted, trying to wrap her head around that logic… or find holes in it. “Well, then there’s… you,” She said, “I gave you Lumina, and…”\n\nDaxton stopped her. “Thanks for that, by the way.”\n\nHarley pricked up her ears. “Thanks? For… but…?”\n\nDaxton released the girl’s head and instead flexed his muscle. He clapped his other hand down on it, and took a hard-jawed, straight-posture stance. “I’m stronger than ever thanks to you! You really bailed me out of a jam back there. If it wasn’t for you, we would have been toast!” He said, “And you know what? I may be strong, see, but I wasn’t strong enough to beat those things and protect my girlfriend. You made that happen.”\n\nHarley blanked, blinking at him.\n\nDaxton folded his hands in his lap. “Quincey won’t let me say I can’t do things,” He explained, “She yells at me if I do. But I really couldn’t do anything against those things… not enough to beat them, anyway. Quincey could, and she did, so many times… but I was holding her back. And she’d break her back for me, I know she would. I couldn’t stand just sitting there and letting her deal with everything. People expecting her to do stuff like that. That’s [i]my[/i] job. That’s what I do. Thanks to you, I can do it. She doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore, because me and Lumina are going to kick ass and take names.”\n\nHarley fidgeted. “S… So… it’s okay?”\n\n“Yeah,” Daxton nodded, “It’s okay. Lumina thinks so too, actually. She didn’t want to make you do anything that you were too scared to do yourself. That’s why she agreed to go with me, so she could keep you safe by, uh… well, using me to do it. But really, it’s a win-win for us. I get to kick butt and she gets to kick butt and we just really meet in the middle on these things. So, really? I don’t know what you’re so worried about. You’re practically the real hero of this thing. When Quincey wakes up, she’s going to be so excited that you’re safe.”\n\n“R… Really?” Harley sniffed, “But what if…”\n\n“She will,” Daxton cut in, “Never say that you can’t do something. That’s the first step to never doing it. She can, and she will.”\n\nHarley let out a breath and allowed herself to fall into Daxton. She leaned against him in an exhausted slump. She wanted to feel upset, but at that point any argument she presented would have been shot down by his confounding reasoning.\n\n“You should find your parents,” Daxton said, “They must be worried about you.”\n\n“… They’re not here.” Harley said.\n\n“Ah.” Daxton wrapped an arm around the girl and hugged her close to his side. “Tell you what. Do you wanna bunk with me and Quincey? There’s room for you, and I think she’d be awful upset with me if I just left you on your own.”\n\n“M-Me?” Harley sat up again, letting her legs stretch out in front of her as she blushed a deep shade of red. “Oh no, I couldn’t do that… I’d be imposing, I would. I don’t want to do that.”\n\n“It’s no trouble, Harley.” Daxton grinned, “Don’t be shy. Quincey’s super comfortable to cuddle. You are not going to find [i]anyone[/i] better.”\n\n“B-But Mr. Daxton, you and Quincey are… together,” She squeaked, “I can’t get between you.”\n\n“I think you actually physically can and that’d probably be alright,” Daxton shrugged, “So really, I insist. Dude, I make a living out of protecting people. You’re not going to let me not protect you, right?”\n\nHarley felt like she was being strong-armed, but couldn’t find the energy to protest anymore. “Okay…” She surrendered.\n\n“Great!” Daxton stood up, waiting for her to stand as well before taking her hand to walk with her. Bashfully she accepted his hand and followed him in step, stopping when the doctors tried to stop her from entering the area they’d sectioned off for patient care. Daxton stood his ground, insisting that she was with him and that he was going to let her spend the night. The doctors ended up giving up the argument after a few minutes, and Daxton led Harley into the bed store while she looked almost apologetically to the attendant who had insisted she stay out. Daxton walked her to Quincey’s bed and let go of her hand. He climbed onto the bed himself, kicking off his shoes before he laid out flat on his back with Quincey at his side.\n\nQuincey rolled into Daxton, reacting to his presence on the bed but not waking up. She cuddled into his side like she would have on any other day. She rested her head against his chest, just under his arm, getting nice and snug against him. He embraced her proper. “Climb on in,” He said to Harley, “I’ll shove her over a bit.”\n\nDaxton scooched aside, pushing Quincey toward the far side of the bed. The rotund pig girl was a little stubborn, grunting as she was forced to move, but eventually she shoved over in compliance. Harley didn’t move, just staring at the two of them as they got comfortable. Daxton extended his other hand to her and beckoned her closer. She hesitated, reaching out slowly to take his hand. She stepped out of her boots as she climbed into the bed, moving carefully to nestle onto the soft mattress and rest her head on a pillow next to Daxton. She did her best not to touch him, or push against him at all.\n\nHe pulled her in close on his own, and kept his arm around her in an insisting hold so that she could get comfortable and stay warm against him. She squeaked timidly as she found her curvy little body all squished up against his broad, strong frame. As she laid her head against his chest, she rested a hand on him. He really was firm. He had a strong chest where she lay, and his abdomen had a defined set of muscles as well. He was warm and his arm around her had a sure grip. Harley had found him attractive at first, but she didn’t realize how safe he could make her feel on an instinctual level. A little of her tension was eased, and she felt just a little bit better.\n\n“Comfy?” Daxton asked.\n\n“I’m not pushing against you too hard, am I?” Harley asked.\n\n“I can sleep with Quincey on top of me,” He chuckled, “You’re like one quarter of a Quincey, you’re fine.”\n\n“O-Oh,” Harley said, “Good.”\n\n“Besides, I’ve got a pretty lady on each side. Am I lucky or what?” Daxton grinned.\n\nHarley flushed red in the cheeks. “Mr. Daxton!”\n\nDaxton winced, “Alright, when you call me Mister, it seems a little weird.”\n\n“Sorry,” Harley said, “And… thank you. I… hope my parents are okay.”\n\n“I bet they are,” He said, “You’ll see. Just relax for a bit, get some rest.”\n\nHarley yawned wide, relaxing against Daxton and closing her eyes. It took her mere moments to drift off to sleep, mumbling something along the lines of a thank-you for Daxton. It didn’t really surprise the boy very much. He saw the bags under her eyes when he spoke to her just moments before. The poor girl must have been exhausted.\n\nLaying there, his own exhaustion caught up with him too. Fighting evil monsters, almost being killed, and worrying over others was surprisingly tiring. Daxton curled his arm around Quincey and tugged his hat off his head, freeing his shaggy blonde hair comfortably, feeling that much cooler when it was off. He turned his head, feeling Quincey there. He kissed her, not quite knowing where it would land, but it seemed to be in her hair somewhere. The girl needed a shower, but even then, she still had a comforting scent about her. She was gorgeous even when he couldn’t see her.\n\nHe still worried that she may take a long time to wake up. He still wondered what was wrong with her. It was enough to keep him up for some time even after Harley fell asleep. Eventually sleep took him among thoughts of what he was going to do. He’d sleep on it for the night. He needed his energy for the morning, which was no doubt going to be interesting.", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "\tThe slap of a body on the tile floor startled the two employees of the Climate Control Center. The sound broke them from their silence, making them jump and yelp in fright as if they’d expected even the slightest sound to be their downfall. Quickly the man jumped to his feet, driven by some instinctual desire to protect… though he was honestly more interested in protecting himself than the woman who sat across from him. For as big as the bull-man was, he was shaking like a leaf and very jittery. The woman, a cockroach sub-species, wasn’t faring much better; but seeing how ridiculous the man looked sobered her in comparison.

“W-What are you shaking like that for? Come on!” The woman cracked a nervous smile, her lengthy antennae wobbling with her own shaking body, while her red, bob-cut hair was frazzled with fright. “M-M-Man up and go see what that was!”

She smiled aggressively to hide her own terror. The bull glared at her. “Janet, don’t!” He practically growled. Turning his attention toward the sound, he pointed to the bathroom door tucked away into one side of the break room. “It came from over there… what if it’s a monster? I’m not opening that door to end up like some poor sap in a horror movie!”

Muffled grunts came from within the bathroom, just loud enough to get through the door. It sounded garbled, like a combination of voices that just blended together and made no sense. The CCC workers stared at the door, their faces wrought with worry. The muffled voices continued until one sentence came out clear over the scuffle.

“Get your ass out of my face!”

That changed things. The man and woman stared confused at the door. The monsters didn’t have voices, they didn’t vocally communicate with one another - at least they didn’t think so. On top of that, some of them didn’t even have proper behinds. The man stepped forward, shuffling his way across the break room and reaching out with one hand to grab the handle of the door. His fingers were practically vibrating with how nervous he was. He licked his lips as he grabbed the handle and jerked it open, throwing the bathroom door open in one swift motion.

Two gelatin people were crumpled up on the floor. A black wolf that shined glossy with pink and had pink eyes and a pink mouth was sitting on top of a red person whose head was swallowed under the comically large cheeks of the black wolf’s butt. The man’s brows knit as he watched the strange pair fuss. The smaller red one was trying to get free and his flailing was making it difficult for the black one to get up, not without first leaning forward to plant her hands on the floor – subsequently crushing the boy’s head firmer – and using the leverage to push herself to her feet. It was no mistake that the red one was a boy either, not with the obvious erection he was sporting seemingly under his gelatin suit.

“What the hell?” The CCC employee exasperated.

The red gelatin boy sat up in a hurry, blinking his blue eyes a few times to clear his vision.

“What is it, Hubert?” The cockroach woman, Janet, cautiously and timidly approached to peek around the bull man and see what all the commotion was.

The black, inky wolf in the one-piece skull-printed leotard straightened out her blobby black hair before she turned to face the pair of workers. They were clearly employees at the Climate Control Center, though their white long coat denoted them as being scientists rather than maintenance. They must have been the sort of people who ran the numbers, programming the weather patterns and taking data from the surrounding nature reserve to help keep track of things and keep the weather on a steady schedule to suit the needs of the local vegetation. They didn’t know the computers as much as they knew the programs on them. Their coats had their names stitched onto them – Hubert for the black-furred bull man with the long brown pony tail, and Janet for the petite cockroach woman with the brown skin and curly red bob.

“I don’t… oh,” Hubert came to a realization, “Oh they must be the Inklings Gerald had us call.”

The two employees let out sighs of relief, their shaky, rigid postures at once deflating into slackened relaxation. “Oh thank goodness.” Janet practically groaned.

Polaris, the red lemming Inkling who looked like he was wearing a hood, rubbed his eyes. He stood up from the floor and brushed himself off and straightened the sword strapped to him. “Hero Delivery. You victim, we ‘vict ‘em.”

“You’re really going to save us?” Hubert asked, “You can really take on those monsters out there?”

Echelon nodded. “We should be able to hold our own enough to get you out of here safely, at the least. In fact, I could get you two back to the mall safely right this second, but before I do that I wouldn’t mind asking a few questions… namely what’s going on here, exactly, and if you know what the situation is outside this room.”

“But first,” Echelon paused to allow herself time to recede into her host, instead letting Natalie take over. “I thought you might want to talk to another human instead.”

“Well, no offense,” Hubert looked at Polaris, then back at Natalie, “It does make me feel a little more comfortable.”

They stepped back into the break room, which was maybe the size of a common living room with a couple of tables placed in a way to make the most use of the space and not be too crowded. The tile floor was checkered, white and black that had been worn away over years of feet and other such things. The walls were plain, but posters had been posted around the room and a television was set up hanging in a corner. A cork board had important memos on it and the workers’ schedules posted. There were several snack and drink machines set up around the room and the corner nearest the door had a countertop area with a coffee maker, a microwave, and a handwashing station. Garbage receptacles waited to break down any trash the workers may have thrown out.

The scientists didn’t seem interested in sitting down. Hubert paced as he recalled the events leading up to that moment. “We didn’t have enough warning when those crystals fell from the sky and before we knew it we had monsters running all over the place.” He said, rubbing his head in a fidgety motion. “Janet and I were just having our break for lunch when something compromised the reserve. Enough damage was done that the Control Center has initiated its emergency protocol in the event of extreme environmental disasters. We’re all locked in here for our safety until we can fix whatever went wrong.”

“But it has to be a mistake, because the weather isn’t what’s wrong,” Janet added, “They must have jarred one of the scanners or something and sent it into a fit.”

“Joe was supposed to be working security, but nothing ever happens around here so he was probably wandering around, doing his rounds or something. He said he was going to get to the office and open the doors, but that was hours ago.” Hubert couldn’t hide the worry in his voice. “Something must have happened to him.”

“Is there any way we can do anything to open the doors?” Natalie asked.

“Find Joe, I guess,” Janet shrugged her shoulders, “He’s got the codes. We could initiate a failsafe, but we can’t get to the room to do it. If you can’t find Joe, then you should call us when you get there. I can walk you through it.”

“Alright, we need to look for other people hiding around here. We’ll make our way there and stop where we can on the way. Do you know where everyone else is?” Natalie asked.

“Gerald’s in the array chamber, that much we know for sure,” Janet answered, “As for everyone else, probably in their offices? Maybe Maya was out running checks on the reserves, but I don’t know.”

“What about the monsters?” Polaris asked, “What are we dealing with?”

Hubert nervously wrung a part of his coat. “I don’t know, mostly those black… scary things? I tried to step outside once and I think I startled one, practically blew me down the hall. I didn’t get a good look at it, I just slammed the door and…”

He looked at the doors. There were chairs piled up in front of them in such a way that they had constructed a barricade.

“I haven’t tried to get out since.”

Natalie turned to Polaris. “Alright, let’s make our way to the array at the center of the complex. We should be able to find the security offices on the way… there are signs or something.”

“Right?” She asked the workers. They nodded.

“In fact if you start heading straight left once you exit this room you’ll be right on the right track!” Hubert explained. “Just follow the signs!”

“Alright. Well then, let me get you guys set up first.” Natalie inked back over, and Echelon went back into the bathroom, seemingly leaping back into the mirror. That left them alone with Polaris, and the three of them shared an awkward silence until Echelon returned.

“Alright, follow me!” The inked wolf gestured for the workers to follow her. She instructed them on the art of mirror sliding – just take her hand and hold on tight. She pulled them into the mirror, which connected to the same mirror in Canvas that she used to travel to Harbington’s mall. She went straight form “Harbington CCC” to “Get your butt in here.” They came out the other side in a tumble over the bathroom sinks at Balls in Your Court, but they were no worse for wear. Once Echelon ensured they were okay to be left on their own, she hopped back through the mirror and popped back out at the CCC’s break room bathroom.

Polaris had, in the meantime, unstacked the various metal chairs from one of the doors, freeing it of obstruction. He used his powers to carefully turn the metal-and-felt chairs back onto their legs and push them in at the tables nice and neat until one table was perfectly set again. He was just sliding the last chair into place when Echelon returned, and he turned toward her with a smile. “Were you sure to run the meter?” He asked.

Echelon didn’t dignify him with any sort of response. Instead she moved to the door and disengaged the lock on it so that it slid open in response to her presence. She peeked out into the halls, which looked like a common office building. The navy blue carpet was rather muted against the plain off-gray walls. Windows looked into offices housing desks with consoles waiting for workers to be seated at them. The ones nearest were emptied out. Assuming they were Hubert and Janet’s; that meant there were approximately five more people in that building to find. Signs posted high on the walls directed her to various locations. “Security” was, as Hubert had said, to the left as indicated by a big blue arrow printed beside the bold black letters.

The place didn’t look like anything had done too much damage to it. If something had indeed almost blown Hubert down the hall like he claimed, the walls and floors were too sleek and the halls were too barren to show any signs of it. There was no clutter to be thrown around, just a little soil from a potted plant if nothing else. The halls were at least four or five people wide and the windows looking into the offices were unscathed. The lights overhead lit everything up without so much as a flicker. Unlike a lot of Harbington, the Climate Control Center looked perfectly normal, right down to there being almost nobody in it.

“So this is the job, huh?” Polaris asked as he stepped out of the break room with Echelon. “I thought it would be a little more exciting than this.”

“Stop,” Echelon put out her arm to bar Polaris from taking another step, pricking her ears up, “Do you hear that?”

Polaris stopped, turned his head up slightly, and listened. “I do. We have company.”

The heavy footfalls of weighty paws were underlined by the sound of shattering glass, very slight and very brief with each one as if one were walking on a carpet of shot glasses. They rounded the corner in the form of a hulking saber-cat prana construct ridden by a tall, slender figure of similar ilk. They made one big black mass together, where the saber toothed feline was as big as a bear and just as brutish while still bearing the cunning eyes of a crafty cat. Atop the beast rode a humanoid figure with black, charcoal hair that waved in the air behind it and pointy ears seemed to stick out from the sides of its head. In its hand was a large, curved weapon, like a very large pirate’s sword. It held on to reigns that kept its mount in check, and when the beast pounced around the corner, its rider snapped the reigns and thrust its blade in a brandish. The animal charged without a second’s hesitation.

Polaris and Echelon jumped to opposite sides of the hall to avoid the charge, where Echelon narrowly avoided a swipe from the rider’s weapon. It passed them a few feet and yanked on the reigns to stop and turn around. Echelon rose to face it, though Polaris faced the opposite way. A second rider rounded the same corner, and seeing that it had captured the inklings in a pincer, it stayed its hand and kept position. Polaris drew his blade, tossing it back and forth between his left and right hands before settling on his right and standing ready. Echelon only glanced the situation and understood her part just as quickly. Balling her fists, she stood ready to face the other; one for each.

“It’s mostly plastic in here,” Polaris said, “You’re not about to see me at my best.”

“Try to keep up then.” Echelon grinned.

The riders motioned for another charge, rearing their saber toothed mounts back, who snarled with blood lust before taking off in swift dashes. Polaris began by throwing his blade, sending it through the air to intercept the rider as he prepared to swing. The sword stayed pointed at its target through the use of Polaris’ powers, and it sailed at speeds almost too fast to react to. The rider just barely abandoned his swing and ducked its shoulder instead, opening the path for Polaris to dodge to that side, weaving around the charging beast in steady fashion. His sword swooped around and returned to his hand.

Echelon boosted forward to meet her opponent right away, launching herself with a shield of kinetic force to catch the charging beast. It opened its jaws to bite down, but it hadn’t expected to be pushed back by Echelon’s mere presence, only to have its maw grabbed by the wolf Inkling and kept from chomping down. The beast wildly shook its head, its rider not risking a straight attack with its sword, opting instead to let the animal it rode tear her to shreds if it could. Echelon’s grip didn’t let up, and she thrust her knee into the chin of the mighty animal as hard as she could. The beast yelped and darted backward, turning tail and pacing in place as it got distance from the girl, growling in discontent.

Polaris’ opponent took a swing at Echelon as they turned to face the boy again. Echelon barely avoided the swipe, bending herself over backward to let the blade sail right over her head.

“Hey! Where are you looking?” Polaris shouted, drawing the rider’s attention back to him, “Keep your eyes on me, buddy.”

The inkling boy beckoned the construct rider, grinning as he stood ready. The rider took the challenge, snapping the reins to send his mount into another charge. The beast rushed forward and leapt to dart around Polaris, the rider swinging its large blade down at the boy. Polaris met it with his own, bracing the pommel of his blade with two hands to catch the weight of the blow. The prana-blade clanged against his own and scraped off, forcing the boy backward. Polaris kept his footing, hopping back further as the rider’s saber toothed mount swiped at him with a heavy-handed set of claws. Polaris was forced backward as the beast pounced at him, but he gracefully back flipped out of the way. Kenny’s time as a cheerleader had never paid off quite so well.

He flipped hand over foot and cleared some distance, though it backed him to the turn in the hall and he was running out of room to move.  The rider was tireless in its pursuit, the massive beast it rode on snarling and roaring in rage as it made one more rush. It leapt forward to bear down on the inkling, to pin him, bite him, and tear him to pieces. Polaris gripped his small sword firm and darted toward the attack, his blade held up ready to strike. He jumped, staying as low as he could so that when he met the leaping prana beast he’d caught it on the rise. He dug its blade up under its jaw, and as it tore forward through the air, he cut it open from beneath. He slashed it open from its chin to its back legs, tumbling out behind it as it split in twain.

The rider landed on the floor with its mount shattering beneath it. The elven-looking construct tumbled on the floor, spry enough to roll to its feet and be up again before Polaris could follow up. Their blades clashed against one another, the larger, curved blade of the construct forcing the smaller, light gladius in Polaris’ hand aside. The Inkling dodged with the blow, and the rider stepped in turn. They rounded one another and positioned for another clash of blades, beginning their deadly dance.

“Koralo!”

Echelon took to the wall when the rider and its mount came charging at her again, leaping up onto it to be well out of the way of the attack. Her feet scaled the flat, smooth surface of the wall, stepping over one of the large office windows as she ran. Her body flipped upside down as she ran right onto the ceiling some feet above her enemy. In one quick motion, she turned, leapt, and let herself drop. She spun a crescent in the air and landed right on the saber toothed cat’s head, digging her heels into its prana-skull as hard as she possibly could. The rider seemed surprised, its sharp, white eyes rounding expressively for a moment. It quickly attempted to swing at her, but she was too close. She caught the rider’s arm, gripping it tight and stopping the swing short. She then cocked back her other fist and punched the elven construct in the jaw.

“Comet Punch!” She shouted. As the rider grabbed at her and tried to force her off, and her perch on the mount’s skull began to waver and try to throw her off, she assaulted the rider with a series of boosted punches to its face. She ended the combination of blows by springing away, landing on the floor anew and stepping back to give herself time to plan her next move as the construct recovered. The beast flailed to get its bearings back, then leapt at her again, its claws out and spread to rake down her body, the rider’s sword raised and poised to strike.

“Arus!” Echelon winced, tensing her body as tightly as she could and holding it that way. The sword slammed into the top of her skull, but its sharpened blade was unable to pass through. It stopped as if hitting a stone. The mount slammed into her body as if it were a wall, barely shoving her backward as it collided with some hundreds of pounds of force. The entire thing just stopped, and the beast fell to the ground in a confused slump. Echelon stepped back then, kicked her leg up to raise her foot above her head, only to slam her heel down with all the force of Captain Comet right into the mount’s skull. It shattered like a prop, Echelon’s ankle slamming into the carpet as pieces of the beast scattered throughout the hall.

The mount crumbled, leaving the rider confused, exposed, and ripe for the picking. Echelon didn’t waste any time calling on Phactys’ abilities as she stepped forward and began kicking at the rider. The construct was forced back by a series of perfectly delivered high kicks, and when it attempted to fight back Echelon would dodge the swings of the mighty blade by a hair. Every missed rebuttal resulted in a connected kick from the Inkling wolf. A kick across the face and Echelon would flip her stance, stepping forward and delivering another with her other foot. The rider was too pressured, forced to block and retreat with no alternative.

Swords clashed at the other end of the hall. Polaris dipped, parried, and reposted. The broad, flat edge of his blade wasn’t the most ideal form for such direct and drawn out conflicts and it forced him to accommodate with fanciful footwork to ensure he wasn’t decimated by a returned strike. He sought an opening, testing angles to find a spot in the construct’s guard that was weak. He found it in over-hand swings. When the massive scimitar blade came crashing down at Polaris, it was a matter of moving aside to dodge it. The blade buried into the carpet none too deeply, but the time it took to haul the massive weapon back into position was just a second longer than most. Polaris stayed low to draw these sorts of attacks out, that being made easy with Kenny’s diminutive size.

The blade cut across his chest when it was brought sideways, the Inkling boy misjudging his step by a mere fraction to send the very edge of the thing across his chest. It burned. He hissed in pain and winced, faulting for only a moment before falling back into step. The construct wasn’t a human opponent – it rigorously maintained technique, performing its attacks down to the millimetre, never extending further or shorter on any attack than was programmed into it. He tried to make sense of it, to make sense of where some prana puppet would pick up things like that. He couldn’t allow the theories to distract him, however. He had to remain as calculating as ever to see just when the perfect moment would open itself up to him.

It came with another downward swing from overhead. Polaris had ducked and baited the attack, stepping aside and bracing his own smaller blade to scrape the slice and protect his own arm. He drove his fist into the throat of the prana rider, then drew his blade across its chest before it could recover. In its return, it drew back faster than Polaris had been expecting. The massive prana blade clanged off the Inkling’s gladius and threw it from his hand, tossing it away and leaving him unarmed.

“Gnh!” Polaris forced himself in close, grabbing hold of the construct’s hands and holding on to keep it from using its weapon. He hooked one leg around his enemy’s and held as strong as he could, forcing the two of them into grappling inaction.

“Heh!” Polaris grinned, “Take a breather why don’t you?”

The Inkling’s sword lifted from the floor and rushed violently through the air to impale the rider’s neck from the side. “Right through this new hole of yours…” Polaris grunted. The construct wasn’t as much phased by the hole in its neck as much as the impact. Polaris had just the time to grab the handle of his sword and twist it, carving out a more gaping hole in the scratchy charcoal than before. The blade had stabbed clean through, in one side and out the other. When Polaris withdrew the sword, he gripped it firm in both hands and slashed with all his might, cleaving through the remaining parts holding the construct’s head on its shoulders. It came off, decapitated in an instant.

A few more slashes through the narrow parts of the elbow joints, where he’d meet the least resistance. The construct’s forearms tumbled to the floor. The last was a series of cuts to the chest, digging a trench out with a magnetically-imposed blade until he’d nearly taken a quarter of it off. The rider couldn’t maintain at that point, and its form fell apart into shards of white-aura and charcoal scratch.

“Hiyah!” Echelon blocked a blow with her forearm, the blade unable to slice through with Arus’ powers keeping it at bay. She retaliated with an uppercut into the rider’s jaw. The construct was thrown back onto the floor in a battered, beaten mass with knuckle marks carved into its outline. It fell apart as well, weakened by the blows it had received. The Inkling wolf rubbed her knuckles as they throbbed. “These things are kind of brittle, aren’t they?” She asked, “It’s like smashing the Terra Cotta.”

“The what?” Polaris asked.

“Quincey would know what I mean,” Echelon grinned, “Like clay, or glass or something.”

“Porcelain dolls are a good way to think of them,” Polaris agreed, “Which is surprising. I thought this Epheral was meant to be an all-powerful, planet-devouring monster. Maybe it’s having an off day?”

“I couldn’t help but think that myself,” Echelon said, “But really, Osoth’s soldiers weren’t much better. Maybe it’s a strength in numbers thing. I don’t know how much prana this thing needs to make all these monsters, but there are always tons of them everywhere.”

“They come from the crystals, I know that much. There may be one around here somewhere.” Polaris said, “If we find it, we should destroy it. The less we have to deal with, the better.”

Echelon nodded in agreement. “Our top priority are the people though,” She said, “So let’s hurry before any of those things come back.”

Echelon hurried down the hall. Polaris shook out his arms and smiled. “I like this!” He said, “Much better than tyrannical rule. Much better.”

-

--

-

“Well why isn’t she waking up?” Daxton paced around the store where Quincey had been placed to rest. A mattress store wasn’t the most flattering place to lay, but there hadn’t been much choice. A doctor and nurse had gotten her out of her jacket and she was comfortably positioned on a double bed, eyes closed and body still. The doctor was still at her side and had been checking on her intermittently once all the commotion in the mall had settled.

“I can’t say for sure,” The otter doctor explained, “She just isn’t.”

“Well what, is it a coma or something?” Daxton asked, stepping around one of the other floor models and returning to Quincey’s bedside.

“No,” The doctor shook his head, “It’s not. Comas have a distinct lack of reaction to stimulation, where she would still have a waking cycle, but would otherwise be unresponsive. Quincey is, well…”

The doctor took a small handheld scanner from the breast pocket of his coat. He’d been using it several times before to monitor the brainwaves of the girl. Normally he turned it on, waved it over her head, and got data sent to his PET to monitor. This time he just took it and poked Quincey’s cheek with it in a not-so-soft jab. The girl winced and grumbled and rolled over in bed away from the man. She did not, however, wake up.

“She’s sleeping,” The doctor finished, “And for some reason, she will not wake up. You’re sure you’re recalling where you found her exactly?”

“Yes, okay?” Daxton rubbed his head, moving his hat around on his head, “We were attacked by a dragon and she fell through the roof of a house and when I found her some murderous little girl changed into a murderous woman thing and tried to kill me and then just ran away. Quincey was unconscious the whole time… or asleep, or whatever.”

The doctor sighed, pocketing the scanner once again. “I’m afraid, son, that all this Inkling stuff goes right over my head. None of what you said made any sense and yet I can’t even begin to argue that it didn’t actually happen. The hospital was beset upon by black charcoal drawings of what appeared to be frog men. At this point I can’t give you any answer to line up logically with what’s going on.”

“Great.” Daxton groused.

“And how are you feeling?” The doctor asked, purely out of professional interest.

“How am I feeling?” Daxton rebutted, “Not good! There are monsters everywhere, my girlfriend’s in a freaky not-coma, and I just got to watch as someone’s chest get blown all to pieces about five feet in front of me!”

“Speaking of which, does he have to be in here?!”

Daxton gestured over to yet another bed that had been covered in plastic to protect it from the occasional bit of blood that escaped Garrison’s unconscious form. His chest was heavily bandaged and aside from that he wore only his underwear; the doctors had stripped him of everything else. He was being closely monitored by both the police and more doctors. They had grafted some transplant skin on him, gelled his wound, and did everything they could to staunch the bleeding and encourage a clean, healthy regrowth of the tissue, but they could only do so much with so little. Whenever his bandages bled through, the doctors would remove and replace them. He was on an IV, pain medication was the most likely contender.

The doctor frowned at Garrison, the hard set of his jaw declaring via body language that he shared Daxton’s sentiments regarding Garrison’s presence. He turned his back on the man-turned-terrorist and sighed. “We took an oath.”

“If he gets up…” Daxton clenched his fingers into fists.

“He won’t,” The doctor said, “Not for a while. If he does, he’s cuffed anyway. I doubt he’ll be going anywhere. I’d really be surprised if the man could get to his feet without going into shock.”

“Is he that messed up?” Daxton asked.

“The man has a gaping wound in his chest. The blast he took would have torn me in half.” The doctor gave Daxton a bit of a flat look, “We’ll be grafting skin back on him for days.”

Daxton growled. He never thought he could hate someone as much as he hated Garrison. Jimmy, Laila’s old pack leader, was bad… but Garrison made him look like a puppy. The doctor, more than uncomfortable with the conversation, tugged on the collar of his shirt. “Well,” He said, “I’ll leave her for now. Be sure not to disturb her. She’s not in any sort of failing health but in a short while we’ll put her on a nutrient supplement, assuming she doesn’t wake up before then.”

He turned and took his leave. Daxton sat on the bed next to her. She cuddled up to him, rubbing her face against him and squeezing him close. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself down. Daxton was out of his element. At first having Lumina and fighting bad guys seemed great, but everything had gotten so tense back at the mall. The mood was far from hopeful. He wasn’t sure what was going on outside but he knew it couldn’t be good. He sat back for the first time now that he was safe and asked himself…

“What are we even doing here?”

What was the goal? Huddling up was all well and good but what were they going to do after that? He’d never been one to concern himself with actual end-game ideas… but at that moment he couldn’t see an ending. He began desperately trying to find one because no one else was there to have the ideas for him.

At the end of it all, Epheral had to go. It was either her or them. The problem was her weird prana construct army. With so many monsters running around out there, where would Epheral be? How would they find her and how would they beat her? How did her powers even work? She had crystals all over the city, both in Harbington and Locksmouth… and on that note, there was supposedly a crystal as big as an island out in the ocean that very moment.

A massive hotbed of prana energy. Something that size was likely to keep Epheral going for a while. The boulder-sized crystals in Harbington were a fraction of that and they overran the apartments in minutes.

“Oh man,” Daxton lifted his head, “There’s more coming. There’s got to be.”

He pulled away from Quincey and got up from the bed. He made sure she was comfortable before leaving, stepping out of the store only to run into Laila, who had come to find him. They bumped into one another and stopped. “Howdy Daxton, how’s Quincey doin’?” Laila asked.

“We’ve gotta mess up those crystals,” Daxton said, “Laila we have got to destroy them if we want even the slightest chance of being able to beat this thing.”

Laila had to step back and catch up to what Daxton was saying. She raised a hand to pause him for just a moment so she could do just that. “The crystals? Y’mean them prana crystal things all over the city? Slow down there cowboy, how in the heck d’ya think we’re gonna do that?”

“I dunno,” Daxton fidgeted, “But we have to try.”

“Daxton, honey,” Laila placed her hands on his shoulders and held him still, leaning down to look him in where his eyes would have been, “How are ya gonna do that all by yourself?”

“I don’t have to go by myself! We can get Natalie and…!”

“Daxton,” Laila cut him off, “Natalie’s out with Kenny right now and they’re pullin’ people from the CCC.”

“What?” Daxton’s face went awash with confusion, “Why is Kenny out there?”

“Because he’s got to make sure his dad’s okay before we get too crazy takin’ the fight to these evil monster things,” The girl explained, “We need to look out for ourselves for now.”

She turned him around, pointing over him at Quincey laying on the bed. “Y’see that little angel there wouldn’t want ya’ll runnin’ off by your lonesome,” She said, “You gotta be here for her, lil’ fella.”

“I…!” Daxton hesitated, “But…!”

“Ya know I ain’t wrong,” Laila said, “So why bother arguin’? Daxton, we oughta wait until Natalie gets back and we figure out what’s wrong with Quincey. We can hole up in here for now. Besides, ya’ll said you got an Inkling, right? We need ya here in case anythin’ really does go bad.”

Daxton held his breath a moment, then let it out in a slow exhale. “… Yeah, you’re right.”

“Darn tootin’ I’m right.” Laila pat him on the head. She let him go and stood up straight again, crossing her arms as she observed Quincey from afar. “Look, people out there are talkin’. They’re iffy on this whole thing. They ain’t sure if you n’ Quincey are gonna be their protectors or not. But you’ll do it, won’t ya?”

“Yeah,” Daxton didn’t hesitate a moment to answer, “I’m just worried about it going on forever.”

“I reckon it’ll end one way or another,” Laila shrugged, “I just don’t want it to be by yourself in the middle of a monster gangbang. I don’t want our pork chop to wake up and have none of her pack around to see her.”

“Go back there n’ sit down.” She pushed him back into the store. He stepped in and stopped, trying to sort out his thoughts and feelings. Ultimately, he figured Laila was right. He couldn’t be so worried about Harbington that he forgets about Harbington, and the most important parts of it in his life. He returned to Quincey’s bed and sat on the edge of it, looking down at the peacefully sleeping pig girl. He wondered how comfortable she was in her high-neck top. He placed his hand on the crook of her neck and she hunched up to trap his fingers between her shoulder and jaw, because of course she did.

“Alright Lumina, let’s talk.” Daxton said.

“I’m with you,” Lumina’s voice responded in his head, “What do you wish to discuss?”

“If we’re going to fight for everyone, I gotta know…”

“… If you can trust me, of course. That’s a sensible question.” Lumina chuckled at him, “Surprising, actually, coming from you. This girl really brings you down to Earth, doesn’t she?”

Daxton nodded.

“Well, my history is rather brief. It’s a blur. Somewhere in Osoth’s rule everything simply becomes fuzzy, but the clearest moments… they’re crystal clear to me.” Lumina explained, “You see, Echelon’s rebellion against Osoth caused a ripple. Acting out against a ruler who happens to legitimately treat their subjects maliciously will do that. When Echelon made it clear to all Inkling kind that she was going to dedicate her life to overthrowing the tyrant, she had more support than she ever knew among the elites.”

“I was among the many. I yearned to rid us of Osoth, to stop acting solely under her command,” She continued, “But I was afraid. Fear more than anything else kept us from turning against our ruler. Even Echelon’s current allies didn’t all jump ship at once. They trickled in, when it was convenient for them to do so. I, unfortunately, was more closely watched than others. Many Inklings looked to me for counsel and guidance, like the North Star. Because of this, Osoth used me to suss out would-be defectors. I only made the mistake of allowing this once.”

“I, however, wanted to play a more active role in Echelon’s campaign. I deigned to be an operative from within. It was difficult. Never had I ever done something so terrifying. I took my life into my own hands the very first time I moved to thwart one of Osoth’s attacks. On a world far from here, at a time long before now, Osoth had Echelon’s movements tracked. The rebel leader sought to spring a surprise attack not knowing she was to be ambushed. I broke off from the counter-strike and… subtly altered Echelon’s course. Instead of arriving where Osoth’s forces thought she would be, she came in from a different angle. She got the jump on them instead. Then I allowed her to beat me and went back bruised, but proud.”

“So… you messed up Osoth’s plans?” Daxton asked.

“Many times. By the time we arrived on Earth however I had drawn so much suspicion that I had little choice but to fall in line and do as I was told.” Lumina said, “I just never promised to do it overly well. I suppose you could call it going AWOL. When Echelon finally brought the fight back to Osoth, I slipped away in the confusion. I bound with Harley and coerced the girl into taking me away from there, far from Osoth’s influence. I suppose had Echelon not won… I was simply going to disappear.”

“Okay… so you’re a good guy, but why?” Daxton probed.

“It had the novelty of not having been tried,” Lumina said, “And I wasn’t alone. A small number of us outsmarted the Empress. Osoth was terribly paranoid and meticulous… but she had her fingers in so many pies that her attention was divided. She couldn’t afford to pay attention to every little thing, try as she might. So long as she was led to believe that a problem didn’t exist, she would treat it as such. I’ve heard that you encountered Vor, yes? He was similar… though his plans were extreme.”

“So there’s more of you?” Daxton asked.

“Yes. Though I am not able to tell you where they are,” Lumina said, “When we break contact, it is broken for good. Any effort to get into contact with any still close to the enemy risked bringing the whole thing down on us. I severed my ties, and as such I could not tell you whether any of my former comrades are on Earth or not.”

“Huh. That’s pretty brave.” Daxton said.

“Courage is not the absence of fear, Daxton,” Lumina said, “It is the ability and willingness to do what is right while in the presence of fear. You cannot truly be brave if you are not afraid, and make no mistake, Daxton… you are afraid. You mask it well, but you’ve always been afraid. Afraid of the dark. Afraid of being alone.”

Daxton stopped, his jaw set in a hard line. His ears pricked up as Lumina talked him down like that.

“I’m not afraid.” He said.

“Even now? As she lays here, with no prediction to when she will wake up?” Lumina chuckled again, “Daxton I have bound with hosts cleverer than you, you can’t fool me.”

Daxton swallowed. “Yeah? So what?”

“So act.” Lumina said, “Don’t rush head first into danger not knowing whether things will be alright. Take stock of yourself, your abilities, and act accordingly. If you are going to be brave, then be brave. But do not pretend that fear does not grip you. You’re simply prompting someone to prove you wrong.”

“She needs you to have courage, Daxton. Do it for her. Do it for them.”

Daxton stared at Quincey for a good, long while. He tried to reason his way out of admitting he as afraid, but only because it had been so long since he ever confessed such a thing that denying it was his go-to. Lumina was right. As his Inkling partner, she could see inside him. She knew that whenever the world went black he felt it in the pit of his stomach. She knew that he didn’t hold Quincey close only because he wanted to, but because he needed her to be there so that any time everything just went away, he could still feel her at his side.

It wouldn’t have been fair not to show her the same courtesy.

He stood, leaving Quincey’s side again. He left the store. As he walked through the bustling crowds still recovering from Eos’ earlier incident, he took stock of things. Everyone was scared. Even Yvette and Mason, Procsman and the Eos grunt that had his arm blown off trying to keep hold of Daxton, as they all sat in detainment, were afraid. Even Garrison, for all his bravado, was afraid of Inklings and their potential. Most of the people were just afraid for their safety and their livelihoods. It was possible that more still worried more for their sons and daughters than themselves.

Daxton didn’t just have super powers. He had the ability to alleviate some of those fears. Something inside him just knew it to be true. He’d made a life out of being relied on – he’d always stuck up for the little guy, even if it was most of the time at Quincey’s behest. He could do that again, but on a larger scale, and not because he wasn’t afraid… but because he was.

Daxton grabbed a megaphone from one of the officers, who hadn’t been expecting it. The person in the blue uniform bumbled as Daxton took off, running for the stairs and ascending to the second floor. He stopped where he could look down over everyone, then held the megaphone up and clicked it on.

“Harbington!” He shouted over the crowds. At once they stopped and attentively lifted their gazes to meet him.

“I am Daxton Kemberge!” He said, pausing. “Uh, hi. So, as you all probably know by now thanks to those Eos guys, I have an Inkling like my beautiful girlfriend does.” He stopped to let people take that however they may, then continued. He inked over at once, Lumina’s shell taking over, changing him into a blobby corgi of glowing white with yellow features.

“Her name is Lumina,” He said, now blending with Lumina’s voice, “And I am gonna use…”

He stopped, thought about his words, then shook his head.

“We are gonna work together to keep you safe, all of you!” He said, “Just like Echelon saved Locksmouth from Osoth, I’m going to protect you from these monsters!”

He was met with silence. He didn’t look all too torn up about that fact, instead shrugging his shoulders carelessly. “You don’t have to believe me,” He said, “Honestly I didn’t expect you to. I don’t blame you! It’s scary stuff! That’s why I’m just going to show you.”

“Instead of listening to me yak about all this garbage, just watch me the next time you see one of those freaky charcoal things,” He said, “As me and Lumina kick the snot out of them. Then, when we’re done tearing apart all the monsters, we’re going to go to what’s causing this and bitch-slap it off our planet.”

“I’m not gonna promise you, because you might not believe me.” Daxton de-inked and returned to his normal self again, the transformation dissipating in a shower of sparkling glitter around him that fell like snow. “I’m just gonna do it.”

He clicked off the megaphone and walked off his makeshift stage, leaving everyone in shock of the announcement. Some clapping started. Students from Harbington Elementary clapped their hands together joyously and cheered for their new super hero. Harley clapped her hands too, prompting other students to join in. Someone shouted, “Kick its ass!” More clapping. Cheers erupted from the crowd with a building momentum until the majority of Harbington’s citizens were hooting and hollering Daxton’s praises.

The boy got to the stairs to find his fathers waiting for him. Edward had an ice pack over his obviously swollen and bruised eye given to him by Garrison. Daxton stopped in his tracks, concern on his face. His parents approached and snagged the megaphone from him. Their silence led him to believe that they were cross with him.

“A hero, huh? Harbington Hero? You know that’s just a Tackle Toss team, not an actual thing.” Eddie chuckled, “Are you crazy?”

“Nah,” Daxton said, “Just brave.”

“Well, far be it from your older, wiser elder parental figures to tell you just what’s good for you when you can ink up and muscle your way into doing whatever you want anyway,” Edward snarked, “But you best remember who your real heroes are, young man. I don’t just jump guys with deadly heat cannons for fun.”

“Really? Eddie blinked, “From the stories you told me, you’ve jumped a lot of guys’ cannons…”

Edward thrust his elbow into Eddie’s ribs, making the buck wheeze and buckle.

“Daxton, we know that you’re probably one of the only people who can help us,” Edward frowned, “And we’re so proud of you for deciding to stand up and do what you can. We want you to be careful though, okay?”

“Y-Yeah…!” Eddie winced, rubbing his tender ribs, “Listen champ, you’re big and strong and everything, but you’re also crazy. Please try to think things through before you do them, alright?”

Daxton blushed, grinning ear-to-ear. “Jeez,” He rubbed his neck nervously, “You guys are serious dorks. D-Don’t you worry, I’ll be thinking of you guys first all the time.”

Eddie and Edward mulled the idea over in their heads. It was Edward first who said, “Nope, it doesn’t make me feel any better. I’m terrified.”

“Yeah, me too,” Eddie laughed, “What the hell is our kid doing? He gets this from you, you know.”

“Me?” Edward gasped, pulling away from Eddie and lowering the ice from his eye, “Excuse you, buddy, you’re the one who stands up in front of people and promises things all the time, Mr. Politician. The only thing he gets from me is his can-do attitude!”

“Oh is that what we’re calling it now?” Eddie planted his hands on his hips, “Can-do? You can-do’d right onto that bear’s neck and tried to can-do the life out of him before I even had a chance to do anything.”

“You ran at him first! I was following you!”

“He was going to blast our son!”

“Well yeah I would have done it anyway, you were just faster!”

“And now our son’s going to be an alien hero thing!”

“How is that my fault?! It’s your fault! You’re always so care-free, you influenced him! I told you that he was going to grow up reckless if you didn’t step in more!”

“Excuse me, I stepped in before he got his head taken off!”

Daxton raised his hands, bewildered. “Ladies, please, you’re both pretty.”

“Quiet you!” His father snapped at him in unison.

Daxton flinched. “Okay! Well! I’m just going to check on Quincey then…” He said, slipping past his parents and descending the stairs.

Eddie and Edward stood glaring at one another, the beaver shorter than the buck by a fair bit. They were quiet for a while, the tension in them slowly draining until there was nothing left. Eddie reached down and took hold of Edward’s hand, raising it and making him apply the ice bag to his swollen eye again. Edward fell into his husband, who caught him and hugged him close, kissing him on the top of the head.

“My baby…” Edward sighed.

“Our baby,” Eddie said, “Our brave, strong… stupid baby.”

-

--

-

Echelon pried open the panel on the wall. It came apart with a satisfying “thunk” when her strength finally won the day. She set it down and Polaris immediately took over, peering into the mechanical mess of wires and switches. His host was a fledgling mechanic, leaving Polaris in the best place to jimmy an office door open that had gotten stuck on lockdown. Kenny was, admittedly, more of a small appliance and electronics man, and had a greater interest in vehicles and engines than most, but he was still better than Natalie and he was quite insistent on that fact. He just had to take a moment to figure out the way the power was routed. One of the many switches in that junction had to be the one to override the door.

“Aha,” Polaris said, reaching into the exposed panel and flipping a switch. The sliding door to his side opened swiftly and a zebra man came hurrying out. “That did it. See? I told you I could figure that out.”

Echelon regarded the zebra man. “Head toward the break room and wait for us there,” She instructed, “Have you seen your security person anywhere?”

“Who? Joe? Uh…” The man fretted, “I think I saw him heading toward the records room. It’s, uh, down that way.” He pointed down the hall that split into a T-junction at the end. “To the right.”

Polaris and Echelon glanced down the hall to the junction. At the very far end, windows looked out over the reserve that surrounded the CCC. It was beginning to get dark outside, and so without as much light from the sun to get inside, the glass began to reflect the corridor’s lights, producing a glare. The day must have really been ending, and while they would have normally turned to thoughts of vegging out and watching videos or playing games, they still had a bunch of search and rescue to look forward to. The idea was just exhausting.

Something darted past at the very end of the hall, only visible for a moment as it deftly passed from one side of the T to the other. Polaris, Echelon, and even the scientist they had rescued blinked their eyes, unsure if they had even seen anything at all.

“Did you see that?” Polaris asked.

“I was about to ask you the same thing. What was that?” Echelon answered, “It was… small. And blue.”

“Not big and black like everything else around here.” Polaris pointed out.

“Maybe it was an animal from the reserve,” The scientist suggested, “Oh no, those things haven’t breached the reserve, have they?”

“I don’t know, we haven’t noticed anything like that.” Echelon shrugged.

“Not even on the way in?” The scientist exasperated.

Polaris laughed. “We, uh, didn’t come in that way.”

“What?” The man furrowed his brow.

Echelon faced the scientist. “I can explain that to you, but not right now. Just head to the break room and wait for us there, we should either have the doors open in a short while or we’ll be by to get you out the same way we came in.”

The man looked uncertain and wrestled with his thoughts for a moment. In the end, he decided it was best to trust Echelon and do as she said, and so he left to make his way to the break room under the direction of the Inklings. They had cleared a path to his office, fighting through one group of small face-hugger creatures and a congealment of what passed off as a massive slime. The latter had been a battle of attrition. The prana-construct had been more of an obstacle than an enemy, having no arms, legs, or any sort of agility. It had simply had mass… lots of mass.

“Let’s check that thing out.” Echelon said before making her way toward the end of the hall. Polaris was a little faster on his feet and he overtook her on the way. He rounded the corner to look, and he found nothing. No trace of what they had seen was anywhere up or down either end of the hall.

“Huh.” Polaris scratched his cheek, “Nothing.”

His ear twitched as he heard the whinny of horses and the galloping of hooves.

“Polaris, watch it!” Echelon cried.

Polaris turned to see the angry stampeding of a chariot come barreling at him from one end of the hall. They were more of Epheral’s prana constructs, with the strange, burning-white aura that surrounded them ripping behind them like a streak as they ran. The stallions that pulled the thing were big, bigger than he was by a fair deal, and the chariot they pulled was unmanned. Polaris didn’t have too much of a moment to move or get out of the way. Echelon got to watch as the Inkling boy was run over. It was about a second for the whole thing to happen. One moment Polaris was standing there dumbfounded and the next he was gone, crashed into by a prana construct and carried away. The boy cried out in anger as he was taken away, pushed by equine bodies until he surrendered to being trampled under their shoes and run over by the round wagon wheels of the chariot.

Echelon rounded the corner to see Polaris laid out on the floor and the chariot turn the corner, whinnying in triumph. Taking to his side, she helped him up. He was dazed and he groaned in breathless agony, but he was far from fatally injured. The lemming’s head was spinning, and he clung to Echelon just to keep standing. “Didja get the numburr of that train?” Polaris asked, blinking his eyes repeatedly, his head bobbing around a bit.

“Haha, no,” Echelon couldn’t help but grin at him, “Hold still.”

She switched to Mhend’s power set and began to heal him. Simply by having her hands on him, she could alleviate some of the pain he was feeling. It wasn’t going to be perfect and he wasn’t going to end up at full health, but it was at least enough to clear his head and keep him from toppling over. Polaris still ached all over, but at least he had the mind to know it. She released him after the deed was done and let him stand on his own. He slouched and held his ribs, but he managed.

“Aren’t those things after Inklings?” He asked.

“Huh? Well, yeah.” Echelon nodded.

“Why didn’t it stop?” Polaris pondered.

“Why would it? What’s a couple horses going to do?” Echelon figured. She wandered to the windows and looked out over the reserve.

The Nature Reserve was something that every dome had. Using the same containment field technology that the dome city itself utilized, it contained several differing environments that housed a cavalcade of animal species. They were maintained for many purposes, not the least of which being conservation; the second-biggest contender was for genetic experiments. Humans had long since had their DNA altered to resemble their animal counterparts, and having access to more of the base material that was used to create the modern post-splice human never hurt. Such genetic engineering was sparser those days however, as pre-splice humans, humans like Jacent, were extinct. That removed half of the building blocks that had originally changed everything. That being the case, modern times saw to it that the animals were kept and cared for respectfully. Each dome’s reserve ensured that they lived with never too much or too little. They maintained balanced food stores and population so that every animal had the chance to thrive.

Harbington’s Nature Reserve was home to a tundra climate, alongside a more common deciduous forest and a warm, desert-like climate of the Southern Americas. Mammals, avian, insects, reptiles; the smorgasbord of species would have given Noah’s Ark a run for its money. Echelon surveyed the grounds below for any signs of tampering. Given that it was almost night, there were few animals up and about to monitor. The nocturnal creatures could have been out, but they were by nature adept at not being seen. All Echelon could see were trees and a little of the sky. She couldn’t tell at a glance if the reserve’s dome was even working.

“I don’t see anything… wait,” Echelon squinted. The foliage down below rustled with activity, and she could see some constructs moving down below. “No, they’re down there.”

The constructs didn’t react to light. They appeared the same at night time as they did during the day, further forcing the idea that they didn’t belong there, as if super-imposed on reality. They were clear as ever in the darkness, wavering white outlines and scratchy black filling and all. Echelon couldn’t see just what form the constructs had taken, but they were meandering down there and that was enough to draw concern regardless.

“Great. So there’s got to be a hole in the thing,” Polaris reasoned, “They couldn’t have gotten in otherwise.”

“Well, unless they used the door.” Echelon pointed out.

Polaris gave her a look. “Yes, okay, if they used the door,” He said, “Since when do these freaking things use doors? All I’ve ever seen them do is bash down walls. Maybe the horses used the doors – except they don’t have hands.”

“Alright, alright,” Echelon groaned, “Maybe they didn’t use the door.”

“So we have to check out there, don’t we?” Polaris asked.

Echelon nodded. “When we get the doors open, yeah. Better hurry.”

“This way.” Polaris jerked his head aside in a quick beckon before hurrying off to his left. Echelon followed him, and the two of them navigated the hallways using the overhead signs.

The security room door was open.

Polaris and Echelon stopped some feet from the door rather abruptly. Everything they had heard suggested that the door was likely to be closed. To see it open, accessed, brought them pause and flooded their minds with uncertainties. Had Joe the security guy made it? Or was it someone else? Was the door simply left ajar? Whatever the case, they fell silent and flexed their ears to try and listen to whatever may have been going on inside. At first it seemed like nothing but the sound of the ventilation running. Everything was quiet expect for some background noise so faint that it went typically unnoticed. Polaris stepped forward, sidling up against the wall to creep toward the open door, making nary a sound as he did. Approaching the precipice, he leaned with his head turned so he could barely peek inside.

The noise wasn’t the air rushing through the vents. It was static. It was the same sort of static one would hear coming from a damaged video feed. Polaris reflexively surveyed the security monitors that lined the far-left wall of the room. Not even one of them showed any signs of damage or tamper. Each one displayed the live feed of a security camera watching places of interest. Based on the number of screens, it was a safe bet to assume that most rooms in the facility were being watched, as well as a large area of the Nature Reserve outside. From that far away the details were difficult to make out. Things moved on some of the screens, and Polaris could only guess that it was monsters from the crystals.

But if the video screens weren’t causing the sound, what was? The room was dark save for the glow of the monitors. The lights had been turned off, making scanning the rest of the room an exercise in adjustment. There were filing cabinets and other consoles around the room that served functions Polaris couldn’t hazard a guess toward. There was a desk, likely for Joe or whomever else worked security in the place, that was filled with clutter. It was the place where faculty members would be issued security clearance. Memos written on paper were posted to a cork board that overlooked the desk near the door. A PET was sitting on the desk, but it was powered off. It couldn’t have been making the noise either. A divider split that desk from a second one, but from the door the second desk was hidden.

In the darkness, two figures blurred. They fizzled and flickered, hunched over something. Polaris didn’t even see them at first, but once he had, their images burned into his mind. They were humanoid, like most of the other things birthed from Epheral. Tall, gangly, they had a disturbing stature and gait to them. Their bodies made the static sound; and their wavering outlines were dimmed, as if damaged in transition. They looked like they were cut out of a bad channel on a television, muting their black, charcoal bodies with a gray cloud of snowy static. Their movements were choppy as they seemed to fade in and out, becoming whole images at different points of the sequence as they rose to their feet in unison.

At their feet was a man, or what looked like a man. Some poor robin laid sprawled on the floor, his limbs flopped out every which way. His white lab coat looked as if it were being eaten away by blinding white like that of the prana constructs’ auras. It was spread out over the man’s face and arm as well.

“What the…? WAH!”

Polaris nearly jumped out of his skin as the tall, slender figures appeared at the doorway in the blink of an eye. They had big, oblong white eyes, ones that were too large, over blank, circular little mouths. They moved in a slow, sluggish manner, but a hand snatched him by his head with deceptive quickness.

“Whoa!” Echelon gasped, watching as Polaris was lifted off his feet. The lemming Inkling’s expression had blanked.

All Polaris could hear was that white noise droning on in his head. It drowned everything else out, all other sounds and sensations, until he felt like he was floating in the air.

Then he heard a voice.

“Hello Polaris.”

He twitched. He wanted to respond to that voice but found himself lacking in any higher brain function. He didn’t recognize the voice, which made it knowing his name even more unsettling.

Something was creeping up from inside him. It was pain. Burning hot pain surged up from within, traveling over his body as if it were flashing through his veins. It hurt unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and yet his only course of action was to squint one eye just a little. The pain tickled his brain stem, camped there, throbbed there like the worst headache he’d ever had. He tried to scream but only a hoarse whisper came out. All the while he was staring into the blank white eyes of some static monster.

“Comet Crash!”

Echelon broke them up. She came crashing in, barreling past Polaris and into the two static creatures, smashing into their blurred bodies as if they were no less solid than she. They were all thrown into the security office, the monsters gliding on the air after they stopped trailing on Echelon’s spherical field of kinetic force. The wolf Inkling had planted her heels mid-way into the room and grabbed Polaris to hold him while the monsters flew away. They stopped just short of hitting the far wall. Their forms flickered with their movements as they spread out to either side of the room, wisely flanking Echelon and Polaris. Polaris was dazed, feeling returning to him in a gradual process that left him leaning on Echelon for support.

Echelon stressed herself trying to follow the creatures’ movements. They didn’t walk so much as glide, and their choppy movements were akin to teleporting. They shuffled like zombies, but their ability to cross a span of three feet in a single step made their slow movements appear fast.

“You have a real bad habit of not looking before you leap.” Echelon said, shaking Polaris to rouse him.

“I’m having a difficult time knowing what to expect from these damn things.” Polaris groused, “Next time I’ll know to avoid the brain drain.”

Echelon released him and looked to either side of her multiple times to try and watch the monsters. Every time she turned her head they’d be closer than they probably should have been. Their overbearing advance in a dark, barely-lit room was unsettling, and Echelon expressed her discomfort in aggressive retaliation. Still tapped into Jacent’s powers, she stepped and delivered a hard kick to one of the creatures’ middles, ejecting it toward the security monitors. Before she could be set upon from behind by the other creature, Polaris used his powers to hurl a wheeled office chair from one of the desks at it with enough force to throw it aside.

Both advanced on the monsters, trying to overtake them before they could recover. What they found was of little purchase. Echelon rushed toward the monster at the monitors with her fist cocked and ready to shatter the thing wholesale, but when she threw her punch it hit nothing. The figure vanished in a fuzzy flicker to reappear behind her and grab the back of her head. Echelon found herself thrust into the monitor marked for the west wing, her face smashed through the glass, destroying the picture. Polaris likewise leapt into action with his sword drawn only to fall for the same trick. The monster got behind him and picked him up in a pinning bear-hug, lifting him off the floor and keeping him restrained.

Any prolonged contact with them seemed to result in the same pain that Polaris experienced. Echelon felt it for the first time searing into the back of her head while the creature’s palm kept her face shoved into a mess of electrical and shattered glass. She could feel it creeping around the back of her cranium like tendrils, making her head throb with agony. Echelon knew Natalie had to be feeling it too, so connected with her host as she was. Something about that power plucked at the strings that connected them, which sent Echelon into a panic and endangered her far more than any robot or alien had ever before.

“You’re Echelon,” Epheral’s unfamiliar voice whispered into the Inkling’s subconscious, “You’re real! You’re the one!”

The creature pulled Echelon’s head back only to slam it again into the monitors, fracturing glass and shattering the display further. Echelon yelped in pain, planting her hands on the screens and pushing against the pinning hold.

“You did it, you really did it,” Epheral’s voice wavered, “You killed her. You killed Osoth! How dare you?!”

“Nrgh…! Let… go…!” Echelon grunted. She was hit with a sudden slack from her captor’s grip that she hadn’t expected, throwing her into unbalance. The monster caught her head again and slammed it down onto the console, pushing several buttons there with Echelon’s cheek.

“She was mine!! Thief!! She was to die by my hands! MY HANDS!” Epheral screamed into Echelon’s head while her monster construct continually battered the security monitors with it. The Inkling found it hard to catch herself, to stop what was happening, as Epheral’s creeping influence was seemingly trying to unwind her very being. She rippled with what could only be described as looseness from Natalie. Epheral’s creeping white spread out over her head like it was forcing its way through a vasculature she didn’t have.

Epheral’s power was something Echelon would never have imagined. As it crept into her, she could read and understand it. She could take hold of it much like she could with any other. It was prana, the very stuff that kept her going; Epheral could quantify it. Where most Inklings either had it, or didn’t, Epheral could know how much any one being contained. Beyond that, everyone’s prana felt different. Echelon’s innate energy had its own flavour, and across the room she could sense Polaris’ just the same, but his was different in a way that made it unique to him. Natalie and Kenny were very much the building blocks for it. Two different humans, two different kinds of prana.

The most remarkable ability was being able to touch it. Echelon forced her will back onto Epheral’s prana and forced her influence out of her. It was painful, gradual, like sucking venom from an open wound. Echelon literally cleared her head of the would-be conqueror and at that point began to fight back. She forced her out so powerfully that the wraith-like construct released her, forced away by the power. Echelon turned, braced herself on the console, and lifted her knees up to her chest. She delivered a double-kick to the wraith that threw its wavering form into the middle of the room.

“ARUGH!” Polaris cried out in agony. His entire body seemed to be littered with blazing white fractures, the energy from beneath looking like it was going to explode from within. Echelon hurried to his aid, throwing herself at the wraith holding him to barrel them both over. Polaris fell to the floor, released from the hold, but he laid limp, cringing in pain. He groaned in delirium and curled into a fetal position, unable to act.

Echelon rose from the floor, one hand planted there as she got her feet under herself. “That power you have is incredible, Epheral,” She said, “Let’s see how you like it!”

She rushed forward in a burst of movement, both catching the arm of the wraith as it attempted to swing at her and planting her own open palm onto the monster’s chest. What she tried to do to the prana that constructed the beast had no grace, finesse, or technique. She ripped and tore at it, breaking it, crumbling it, with no goal beyond wanton destruction. Using Epheral’s power of prana influence granted to her by the unwitting wraith, she ravaged it like a bull in a china shop. On the surface, the effects were unclear. Nothing seemed to be happening to the monster while she tore it limb from limb on the inside. The only indication that any damage was happening at all were the fissures forming all over the monster’s body, ones that blazed with pink light.

Echelon forced her entire being into the effort, fending off a counter-attack of the same nature from the wraith. White cracks spread out over her arm, but only to her bicep. Before it could progress further, the wraith ruptured. It blew apart, solid prana flying around the room like shrapnel and ricocheting off the walls, ceiling, and floor.

Echelon’s legs shook, but she wouldn’t allow herself to collapse. Instead, she balled her hand into a fist and spun, delivering a hard blow to the gut of the second wraith, who had tried to take her from behind. Jacent’s powers assisted her, causing the monstrous being to buckle. As it bent forward, she raised her hands high above her head, interlocked her fingers, and smashed the thing’s back with both hands, sending it to the floor. Her last act was to step back, lift her leg, and smash the thing to pieces with as she drove her foot down into what would be its spine. The trauma caused the wraith to shatter like all the constructs before it.

She stumbled then, falling to her hands and knees. She panted for breath, even if Inklings didn’t need to breathe. Epheral’s powers, while useful, left her feeling like she had the spins. Even while she was manipulating them to her own needs, Epheral seemed to try and creep through her, to pull her apart at the seams. The feeling faded after a while. What power she’d gotten from Epheral had nearly run out. She had crawled over to Polaris in one last effort to use that gift, working to force Epheral’s hold over him out. In doing so she peeled him apart like a banana, until he’d receded back into Kenny’s body. The hooded lemming boy trembled on the floor, his eyes clenched shut as he sniffled.

“N-Ngh…” The boy whimpered. He’d felt violated somehow, cold and empty.

Echelon, too weak to continue, faded back into Natalie’s form. The wolf placed her hand on the boy, rubbing his arm. “You’re okay,” She said, “It’s alright.”

Kenny snorted, swallowed, and finally opened his teary eyes. “What… the fuck was that?” He asked, “That thing was… ripping me open from the inside!”

“Epheral,” Natalie panted, turning to drop her rear on the floor and sit, trying to catch her breath, “She must have been trying to force Polaris off of you.”

Kenny rolled onto his front, using his knees and forehead to keep him off the floor. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of his middle, his arms wrapped tightly around himself. He sat up, swaying, dizzy. As his focus returned, he looked to the man that he had seen before, the scientist with Epheral’s burning corruption worming its way through his body. He flickered sometimes, like static. “What’s with him?” He asked.

Natalie stared at the man’s body. It looked as if half his arm had been eaten away. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even breathing. “She’s… breaking him down,” She said, her voice trembling with terror, “Quincey said that she leaves nothing behind. This must be what she meant.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” Kenny asked.

“I think… yeah…” Natalie exhaled, frowning, “All his prana must be sucked out or something. I… don’t think there’s anything left.”

“Kinda looks like… one of those crystals,” Kenny pointed out, “The batteries or whatever.”

Natalie closed her eyes. She rubbed them, blinking tears out of them when she opened them again. “I think that’s about right.”

“Oh shit…” Kenny hissed. The severity of the situation wasn’t lost on him.

“It’s so scary,” Natalie said, “Epheral’s power. I mean, everything has prana… everything. It’s like she controls… life. And all these things, she built them out of it. Out of other people’s life.”

Kenny squinted. “If she could do that, she could just kill everybody right away,” He said, “That can’t be exactly it. I don’t know, maybe it took a while to…”

“Oh god, Dad.” Kenny blinked. He grabbed Natalie’s arm and shook her. “We gotta get these people out of here. Yesterday.”

Natalie looked at him surprised at his sudden persistence. He was right, though, and so she shook out all the uneasy feelings she had. She tried to ignore the idea that someone was dead in the corner. She rose to her feet, shaky, frightened, and pulled her PET out of her pocket. She dialed Janet’s number and approached the security monitors as the call went through.

“Janet,” Natalie spoke when the scientist picked up, “We’re in the security room. We… found Joe. I’m going to need you to walk me through the failsafe.”

Natalie spoke as stoic as she could, but her forced effort to keep a steady tone didn’t go unnoticed by the woman on the other end of the call. Janet frowned. “Oh god…” She said, “Oh my… I can’t believe it. I… Okay. Okay. Alright let me just… let me just sit down. It’s not really that hard… a-anybody could do it, you just need to know the codes.”

“I’m sorry.” Natalie said.

Janet took a deep breath, seeming to sit at a table in the break room. “Yeah,” She said, “Me too.”

-

--

-

“Attention everyone! This is Natalie Grayswift of… Locksmouth. Um, if you can hear this, the doors to all secure areas have been opened. Make your way to the break room if the coast is clear, but if it isn’t, stay exactly where you are! I’ll be doing a sweep of the building, so if you think you’re in danger, just stay put and I’ll come get you!”

Gerald stood and brushed himself off. Finally, that girl came through. He felt so stupid sitting in the array room by himself waiting on some teenager to save the day, but he wasn’t going to complain about it paying off. He gathered his PET and straightened his tool belt. It was time to get out of there.

He wasn’t going to miss the array room. The tower brought a severe sense of isolation in its massive globular entrapment. Some fifty feet out from any of the walls, it jut up through the center of the completely spherical room like a spire and was only accessible from a lone catwalk just off the access entrance to the room. Everything was gray and metallic, even the walls. Wires and circuitry were built into the surfaces of the walls, as well as lights and screens, displaying endless information regarding the weather set for the dome. It was a highly-advanced piece of technology, a super-computer controlling a self-contained ecosystem.

It tended to glitch sometimes, so Gerald was no stranger to the chamber. He was used to the echoing acoustics that broke the utter silence of the room. Some days he even welcomed them. He knew the panels, he knew the systems, he knew the work and enjoyed doing it. He liked the little escape it provided. Hardly anything ever went completely wrong, and so his job maintaining the array tower was an easy one. He liked to think that it was in part his doing, that he was so good at what he did that thing seldom went awry.

Something had gone terribly wrong, however, beyond his ability to fix a machine. A simple maintenance job turned into utter hell thanks to those monsters that came crashing through the dome. The impact ended up locking him into the room for hours, where the silence and the acoustics became grating as he wondered and worried if he would ever escape. It was worse when he had to consider lending his trust to aliens, and that the monsters that rampaged through the Climate Control Center were just as alien. He felt like he was in a cheesy sci-fi movie… and he wasn’t sure if his role was to live or not.

With the doors opened though, he felt emboldened. Emboldened, but not invincible. He wasn’t so foolish as to go running out into the halls without checking things first. He walked the catwalk, hand on the rail, footsteps echoing in the chamber from his boots, until he reached the doors. The first thing he would do is check around, see if the coast was clear. If it was, he’d make his way cautiously to the break room, where he honestly would have been happy to see another face for a change. Normally he kept to himself, but in times like these he was going to cherish every other human he could be around for even a little while.

Of course, if the way wasn’t clear, he’d have to stay in the room for a little longer. He wouldn’t have preferred that, but it beat his odds of surviving in that hell.

He tapped a few buttons on the keypad by the door; beep, beep, beep. The door slid open vertically with a satisfying metallic thunk.

They opened to a gale-force wind that hit him like a solid wall. He lifted his arms to try and shield his firmly-closed eyes from the rushing air, only to feel himself be pushed back. He tumbled back onto the catwalk, partially allowing himself to fall so that the plastic guard walls that ensured he wouldn’t fall off could do their jobs. He hit the metal walkway harshly and scrambled to press his back against one of the walls, one arm still shielding his eyes from the gust. It howled in his ears and whistled through the chamber, almost deafening as much as It was blinding.

It all ended when something pounced him. He fell flat onto his back under the weight of the thing, too stunned to stop it. When he got his senses back, he found himself staring into the blue eyes of a pale animal.

“What the hell?” The man asked, bewildered. It wasn’t like any animal he’d ever seen. It looked kind of like a dog, with what should have been a lengthy, bushy tail. It was white all over, however, and had solid blue eyes, beady in shape. It had no fur, but instead had skin that seemed to shine all over its body… yet it still had the bulk of a fur coat. It barked at him, high pitched, screechy. It couldn’t have been a dog by the pitch and tone of it, not a regular one anyway. It sounded more like a fox, and its small size suggested it wasn’t even fully grown. Enough time around the nature reserve and Gerald had at least picked up on how to tell the difference between the two species.

The fox growled at him, which made his heart race. He stayed very cautiously still, staring into the eyes of the little canid. Its muzzle had a solid set of purple teeth on it that looked etched into its skin. For a moment, Gerald wasn’t sure the thing could even bite him. Soon, the little beast pricked up its ears and turned his head toward the door in alarm. It bounced off Gerald, dashing over his head to run deeper into the chamber, leaving the man more than a little bewildered. As he lay there collecting his thoughts, however, he heard the ruckus of old wooden wheels and the clopping of hooves, like an old-fashioned horse-drawn carriage. He lifted himself to stare out the chamber doors at the source of the sound, confused as all hell and just along for the ride at that point.

It was more monsters. Strangely enough those monsters took the shape of normal, every day horses… big ones that were pulling along a chariot. He recognized them as no good right away, knowing them by their scratchy black bodies that made them look like death incarnate. The horses shook out their manes and stomped their hooves on the floor before pawing at the ground, digging at the carpet in the hallway. They were too big to fit inside, and so they impatiently stomped their feet in agitation and whinnied in discontent.

The blobby fox shrieked at them, and Gerald saw its reared back stance and recognized it as one of caution. It seemed that thing didn’t like those weird monsters any more than he did.

What the horses had been waiting for must have come to pass when they began to change shape. Their bodies, chariot and all, began to crumple up. They were crushed into one another by an unseen force, morphing into one big ball of charcoal mass and wavering white. They cracked and snapped like brittle glass as they formed a new shape cut from the ball. Arms, legs, and a body formed, until the congealed horses and chariot became one large, bipedal humanoid. By shape alone it seemed to wear armor – shoulder guards stuck out from it, and its head looked as if it were adorned in a bucket with horns sticking out the sides and curving upward. In its hands was a massive weapon, a sword that required two hands to hold even for its size. Gerald wasn’t a large man to begin with, but this new dark knight towered over him and would have even stood taller than Eddie without any trouble. It had to duck its head just to pass the doorway into the array chamber.

Gerald rose to his feet, panicked and fearful for his life as the massive knight approached. He gripped the rail hard in his hand, squeezing tighter than necessary. “D-Don’t you come any closer!” He bellowed at the knight, his voice impressively low and clear. When the knight took one more heavy step, it really didn’t surprise Gerald that he’d been ignored. Still, he swallowed and stepped backward, trying to keep his distance from the menacing figure if he could. Behind him the fox continued to yip and bark angrily. The constant noise did nothing to help settle Gerald’s nerves.

The knight skulked closer, its massive feet clanking in its armor, sending booming echoes throughout the chamber. It was too large to get by, taking up most of the space between the rails on the narrow catwalk. Gerald couldn’t see any way he could escape the situation, and his feet kept moving him backward out of reflex. He was nearly back to where the walkway circled the array tower, where it would go all the way around it, giving him access to several panels. Nothing there was going to help him against that thing. He glanced back at the animal behind him, the little fox like a coiled spring. It was still, but ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. From up close, it seemed to shake and tremble in a way Gerald hadn’t noticed before. It was frightened.

“I’m warning you,” Gerald gruffly spoke to the night, taking a deep breath and puffing out his chest as he stood strong, “Touch this machine and you’ll be sorry! I’ve worked too hard to keep this thing running just to let you waltz in here and wreck up the place!”

The lemming man balled his hands into fists and raised them to fight. He sneered at the knight, his bushy mustache raising at an angle with his lips while his bushy eyebrows made his angry eyes look small.

The knight took another step, only a few feet from Gerald at that distance. It was enough to make the lemming lose his nerve, and he stumbled back until his back was pressed up against the cylindrical pylon at the chamber’s center. His heart pounded in his chest and his arms and legs felt weak and floppy. “What the heck am I thinking?” He groused, “Get away from me!”

The figure readied its weapon, raising it above its head as it began to charge. It’s heavy, clanking footsteps quickened, echoing loud booms throughout the chamber at a swift tempo. Gerald, too afraid to move, closed his eyes tight and held his body as flat back to the array as he could, hoping for a miracle.

The fox growled and yapped as it ran forward, leaping into the air with a sudden rush of wind that propelled its entire tiny frame forward at high speeds. It curled itself up to ram into the knight right at center mass, while its weapon was risen too high to defend itself. The fox’s ramming impact knocked the knight onto the ground, and the little animal scurried off down the walkway toward the entrance of the room again. It stopped several paces away and turned, its blue eyes fixing on Gerald. It began to yap and bark frantically, shrilly as a fox would. Gerald only then opened his eyes to see the scene, and from what he could tell, the fox was waiting for him.

He didn’t have much time, so he picked himself up and ran, stepping over the knight as it tried to get back up. He made certain to jump down on it as he went over it, knocking it flat onto the walkway again as he escaped. When Gerald had cleared the frightening foe, the little blobby fox turned and continued to run, darting out into the hall ahead of Gerald only to stop and yip at him again. Gerald did his best to keep up. When he was four feet from reaching the little animal, it took off down the hall and Gerald was forced to follow at a lagging pace. By the time he’d gotten out of the room, the fox was at the bend at the end of the hall, yapping and waiting again.

Gerald was already short of breath, but he forced himself to keep up the pace. He was a bit husky and small, so running far distances wasn’t something his build lent itself well to. The fox up ahead circled several times, pacing impatiently while it waited for Gerald, only to suddenly stop, get down low on its front paws, with its back-end hiked up. It growled as threatening as it could, and Gerald nearly tripped up as he stopped as quickly as possible. The fox dashed toward him and he cringed, raising his arms and a leg to defend himself from the little thing as it came right at him. He didn’t expect it to dart right around his legs, only feeling it do so as he had his eyes closed tight again.

The fox let out a shrill howl, which unleashed a furious gust of wind that barreled right into the knight that had left the array chamber to pursue them. It roared down the corridor, picking the bulky prana construct up like a paper bag and sending it flying. It tumbled head over foot as the fox continued to bark and yip, somehow manipulating the sudden rush of wind and keeping it going until it thought the knight was far away. It relaxed when satisfied, then turned and darted toward Gerald again. The man stood dumbstruck as it stopped, grabbed the leg of his jumpsuit near the cuff with its teeth and began tugging on him insistently. Once he took a step, the fox released him and ran down the hall once more.

Gerald continued to follow, running as quickly as he could as he met with the fox at every junction, only to be led somewhere else.

After enough twists and turns, he rounded a corner and nearly ran into Natalie, who was leading Kenny to go find him. They stopped short of hitting one another, where Natalie and Kenny were distracted by the fox running past. It didn’t stop when they did, instead darting around a corner and disappearing in just a second or so, as swift as foxes tended to be.

“Kenny?!” Gerald spotted his boy and that immediately took his attention.

“Dad!” Kenny snapped back.

“What the heck was that?” Natalie asked, having wanted to chase the fox, “Was that an inked animal?”

“What are you doing here?” Gerald asked, sounding frustrated that Kenny would somehow land himself in harm’s way like that.

“I’m here to get you!” Kenny answered impatiently, “Come on, you’re the last one!”

“But how did you get here? You shouldn’t have come!” Gerald scolded his son, stepping past Natalie to do so, “This place is dangerous… and what are you doing with that weapon?”

“Uh, guys?” Natalie cut in, peering around the corner where Gerald had come from, “We have to go right now. I don’t have enough energy to fight that thing off.”

That thing that Natalie was referring to was the knight that had been chasing Gerald. Gerald, just then remembering it, shifted gears to panic. “I almost forgot about that!” He said, “Let’s go, right now!”

He put his hand on his son’s back and pushed him into motion. Kenny ran ahead of him, younger and faster, and Natalie took up the rear. They all pushed one another to maintain their top speed as they hurried straight for the break room. They could hear the heavy, clunking footsteps of the knight behind them the entire way, but its large, bulky form was slow regardless of how long its strides were. Avoiding it was an easy matter of not stopping for even a moment. They had gained significant ground by the time they had reached the room, entering it where the last of the facility staff was waiting for them.

They closed and locked the doors, and Natalie mustered up the energy to ink over one more time so that Echelon could guide the faculty through the mirror. She took them in two small groups; three in the first group, and three in the second when she included Kenny. There was nothing that could mentally prepare them for the trip through Canvas and the terribly nauseating effect it would have. It was difficult to explain the swimming sensation of going through dimensions, being pressed flat in Canvas, if even for a second, before popping out the other end back in the regular world. If they were to try, they might have described it as being a living pop-up book.

Almost all of them tripped and fell once they ended up in the Balls in Your Court bathroom, being ejected from the mirror in a daisy chain with Echelon at the front. Once the final group came through, Echelon immediately de-inked, and Natalie was left tired and panting. The CCC employees couldn’t get out of the bathroom fast enough, wanting to get out and find their families or friends so they could reconcile and be comforted by familiar faces. Kenny’s father remained behind with Kenny, and the two of them stayed with Natalie as she rested against the bathroom sinks, looking terribly run-down.

Gerald looked her up and down. “You alright, little miss?” He asked, crossing his arms.

“Tired,” She said, “I’m so tired. I can’t go on.”

“Well I counted five of us getting back here through that…” Gerald glanced at his reflection in the mirror, raising a bushy eyebrow, “… Method. With Hubert and Janet already here, your work’s done.”

“If only it was that easy…” Natalie sighed, taking her hat off and using it to fan herself. “No, with Epheral’s monsters still out there, our work is way not done. I just can’t do any more tonight, I need to rest. Echelon needs to rest. That attack from Epheral was devastating.”

“What is this Epheral you’re talking about?” Gerald asked, “Does it have something to do with the monsters out there?”

“I’ll have to explain it later, but yes,” Natalie nodded, “She does.”

Kenny had been quiet during the discussion, but he perked up when his father turned to regard him. “And you, boy, what were you doing with her? You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. Do you have any idea how stupid it was to go into something like that? What if something happened to you, huh? What would I do then?”

Kenny took pause. He opened his mouth but thought better of whatever he was going to say, so he stopped short and just sighed. “Sorry, Dad…”

“I don’t think sorry is going to cut it,” Gerald pressed, “What, do you think you’re some kind of super hero too? You’re not like her, Kenny. No matter how much of an adult you think you are, you’re still just a regular kid. You can’t just strap a sword onto your back and suddenly become a fighter. Those things would tear you apart just as easily as they’d tear me apart.”

“To be fair, sir, he was just coming to make sure you were okay,” Natalie butt in, “That’s all.”

Gerald gave her the eye. “And I appreciate that,” He said, taking a deep breath to carry on, “But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid idea. Your intentions are one thing, but you should worry less about me and more about yourself. I don’t exactly have a lot of family left to burn through.”

Kenny swallowed. He knew what his dad was saying, and he wasn’t wrong. It made total sense that he’d worry more about Kenny than himself. Dads were just like that most of the time, and Gerald wasn’t a stranger to putting his foot down on the subject. When it came to family, Kenny and Gerald only had each other.

Gerald stepped in close and pulled Kenny’s hood down, and then unbuckled the belt that held Kenny’s sword over his shoulder. “Take this off,” He said, “I think you’ve done enough saving for one day.”

Kenny lifted his hand to stop his father. “You’re not… right,” He said, lowering his ears flat, “You’re wrong.”

Gerald stopped unbuckling and just stood still. “… How?” He asked.

“I…” Kenny lifted his gaze to meet his father’s, “I have an Inkling too. I fought those monsters and beat them.”

Gerald’s expression blanked. “Is that right?”

Kenny stepped back, pulling away from his father’s hands and refastening the sword’s strap. “Yeah,” He said. He glanced at his father’s tool belt, and then just lifted his hand. A wrench that was tucked into a sleeve on the belt came loose, floating up from Gerald’s waist and slowly drifting to Kenny’s hand. The boy curled his fingers around the handle of the tool for a moment, but then simply let it go. He let it float around him in the air. “That’s right.”

Gerald stared at his son, glancing now and then to the wrench that floated in the air. He crossed his arms sternly, his chest rising and falling as he took in and let out a deep breath. “How long?” He asked.

“Since I got home.” Kenny stated, taking the wrench out of the air and handing it back to his father.

Gerald was a bit stunned by the gesture, blinking his eyes as he took the wrench back and tucked it into his belt. “I see,” He said, rubbing his chin and around his mouth as he visibly mulled over thoughts in his head, “Then you telling me so means you’re like your friend then, like Quincey. You’re… willingly with the thing, is that right?”

“His name is Polaris, and he’s…” Kenny glanced aside, “Well, I dunno. He wants to help, or that’s what he says.”

Gerald looked to Natalie. “You knew about this?”

Natalie looked between the two, back and forth. “Well, yeah,” She said, “But I just found out today too. Polaris isn’t one of Echelon’s allies, he’s kind of an outsider. He seems to want to join up. I’m kind of keeping my eye on him for now.”

“Well then so am I,” Gerald said, looking back at his boy, “If he acts up, I’ll let the girl here beat the snot right out of you if she has to. You understand me?”

Kenny nodded. “Yeah, I understand.”

Gerald stepped next to his son and put an arm around him. “Alright,” He said, “Let’s rest then for now. Maybe we can get something to eat. I think I deserve a hot dog after running for my life.”

Kenny blinked up at his father. “I’m not that tired,” He said, but a yawn gave him away, “But okay.”

Natalie caught Kenny’s yawn and covered her mouth politely as she followed the father-son pair out of the bathroom. “That sounds so good right now.”

-

--

-

Everyone was getting ready for bed. People were squaring off spaces for them to sleep, either inside stores or in a public area. The people downstairs got cots to sleep on, but most others just had bedrolls rolled out anywhere they could fit, or were gathering in cuddle piles. People were getting together with their families and their packs and getting cozy for the night. Some of the older people, the adults, they seemed restless. They wandered off to some restaurant to spend their time on their own. Those were the ones without kids, the ones who had no one else to worry about. They were lucky, in some regards.

Harley felt a heavy weight in her chest. Her parents still hadn’t shown up. She hadn’t heard from them all day, not even a call on her PET. With everyone else getting together, she felt lonely and left out. The little shrew just sat by herself off to the side as quiet as she could from her spot on the fountain’s edge near the food court. The trickling water made her feel a little more at ease, or at least gave her something else to listen to other than the voices of others. Any time someone came near, she wished they would go away. All she wanted was her parents, and everyone else was just disappointing.

“Harley!” A young voice caught her ear. Harley looked up from her zonked out state to see a toad boy running her way. She knew him well, as he was the Social Coventry of the Student Council at Harbington Elementary. Harley herself was the Treasurer, so she knew every member of the Student Council very well. What she didn’t know was how she polled higher in popularity than the President. The Council Secretary had deliberately kept that knowledge from her to save the President’s feelings.

“Harley, someone just proposed that they start an Inkling Fan Club at school!” The boy said, placing his hands on his knees as he panted for breath.

“Oh,” Harley said, blinking her eyes slowly at the boy, “That’s good.”

“Is it? The President is calling for a vote! We’re getting everyone in school to…”

“Do I really have to be there?” Harley cut him off, unable to stop frowning, “Ciril, unless someone needs to organize a fund raiser for a field trip… I’d rather just stay here.”

It was something else to be denied so harshly by Harley, of all people. Her quiet, gentle voice made her cutting words sneak deceptively to the core. Ciril stopped short of responding to her only to look upon her with concern. “Are you okay Harley?” He asked.

“… It’s okay.” Harley said, “I’m just not feeling very well.”

“Are you sick?” Ciril asked.

“I’m fine.” Harley shook her head.

Confused, Ciril stepped back. “Well… okay, I’ll just tell everyone you’re abstaining then,” He said, “Feel better, Harley.”

“Mm.” Harley sunk back into her funk, and Ciril hurried off to inform the Council. He hadn’t been the first person to approach her. Lots of kids from her school had, and many of the teachers too. People were always trying to talk to her for as long as she could remember, and it was awkward talking with people she barely knew, who seemed to be trying so hard to talk about anything that came into their heads. She realized that they were doing it, but she never really understood why.

She hugged her knees to her chest, her large, soft breasts pressing into them as she leaned forward.

What wasn’t helping matters was a feeling she had deep down inside. She’d been feeling it ever since she woke up after parting with Lumina. At first, she thought she was just tired, or that separating with an Inkling caused a physical response that lingered after the fact. She had tried to pass it off as something simple and conventional. What she felt was a social emptiness. Letting Lumina go felt like she had just unmade an imaginary friend. She couldn’t really piece together the how or the why. She kept reminding herself that she didn’t even talk to Lumina, or know how to feel about the Inkling. By then all she could think about was how unfair that was.

Lumina must have been happier without her.

It made sense to her. She didn’t use any of Lumina’s powers or anything like that. She had kept the Inkling secret after she went home from Locksmouth in the summer, but past that she did nothing with it. An Inkling host was supposed to do things with their Inkling, right? Like a pet? Lumina must have felt neglected. Even when it came down to fighting to save Daxton, Harley couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was scared and selfish, and she instead just gave Lumina away.

Now she was surrounded by people and had no one.

She sniffled, wiping her tears on her arm. Some kind of commotion was starting, groups were gathering. Harley tried to see what was going on, but she couldn’t see past anyone from that distance… and if she got close, she wouldn’t have been able to see past anyone either. She decided to instead slip her feet down and get up, sneaking off to distance herself from the crowds. She made her way to the stairs and ascended to the second floor where the density of people was much sparser. She could look down over everyone, if only just barely. She could rest her nose on the rail, and if she stood on her toes she could see down. She sat up against the guard rail and pressed her black flush with the half-wall, curling up into her little ball of loneliness again. With her back to the crowds she was peering into some of the stores. One of them was the bed store, called “ZZZZZZZZ.” There were doctors in there, with that scary man who pulled the weapon out earlier that day, the one that nearly killed Daxton.

Daxton was in there too with Quincey. Harley blinked the tears out of her eyes when she saw them. She sat up straighter, curiously peeking in on what they were doing.

There were a couple of older pigs there. They were discussing something with Daxton that Harley couldn’t hear or make out from that distance. Quincey was still sleeping. She’d been sleeping all day. Was that Harley’s fault too? If Quincey hadn’t been going to her, to save her specifically…

Harley shook. She felt so guilty. She felt like everything that had happened could be blamed on her.

“Nnh!” The girl whimpered, gritting her teeth as she struggled not to cry. Alas, cry she did, and not quietly. She buried her face in her knees and sobbed, too sad to keep it all in. She sniffled and blubbered, her shoulders shaking as she did. “Uuuhh-huh-huu!” She muffled her bawling against her chest.

“Hey.”

She snapped up with a squeak, seeing Daxton squat down in front of her. She sucked in a fearful breath and rubbed her eyes in a hurry, sitting up as straight as she could. “M-M-Mr. Daxton!”

“What’s the matter?” He asked, “I could hear you crying from the store.”

Harley frowned, her brows knit upward. “You did?”

“I have really good hearing.” Daxton explained. He sat down next to her comfortably. She flushed with embarrassment when his strong arm brushed her shoulder. “Why are you crying?” He asked.

Harley looked up at him, then turned her attention toward the ground as she huddled up with her knees to her chest again. “I’m fine,” She said, “You don’t have to worry about me any more.”

Daxton cocked a brow. “Like hell,” He said, “C’mon. Give me a break from worrying about my girlfriend and let me worry about you for a second, will ya?”

“She’s more important.” Harley insisted.

“She sure is,” Daxton agreed, “But, then, she’s also sleeping in a bed and from what she was mumbling I think she’s dreaming about an ice cream mountain. She’s fine. You’re not fine. So, are you gonna make me beg or what?”

Harley didn’t know where to begin with Daxton’s logic. He bewildered her in a frustrating manner. She sighed and sloped her ears. “If it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be like that,” She said, “I… messed up.”

“And if it wasn’t for her? You wouldn’t be here right now.” Daxton quickly pointed out, “And that’s a good thing, right?”

Harley shook her head. “No.”

Daxton pat her head. “Aw come on, don’t be like that,” He said, “Look, Quincey wasn’t going to stop until you were safe and sound, so don’t blame yourself for what happened.”

“But if I wasn’t at home…” Harley started.

“And if Garrison didn’t exist I wouldn’t have almost gotten blown to pieces,” Daxton cut in sharply, “See? But there’s nothing we can do about any of that, so don’t beat yourself up over it, man. I don’t blame you. She doesn’t blame you. The only person blaming you is, well, you.”

Harley squinted, trying to wrap her head around that logic… or find holes in it. “Well, then there’s… you,” She said, “I gave you Lumina, and…”

Daxton stopped her. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

Harley pricked up her ears. “Thanks? For… but…?”

Daxton released the girl’s head and instead flexed his muscle. He clapped his other hand down on it, and took a hard-jawed, straight-posture stance. “I’m stronger than ever thanks to you! You really bailed me out of a jam back there. If it wasn’t for you, we would have been toast!” He said, “And you know what? I may be strong, see, but I wasn’t strong enough to beat those things and protect my girlfriend. You made that happen.”

Harley blanked, blinking at him.

Daxton folded his hands in his lap. “Quincey won’t let me say I can’t do things,” He explained, “She yells at me if I do. But I really couldn’t do anything against those things… not enough to beat them, anyway. Quincey could, and she did, so many times… but I was holding her back. And she’d break her back for me, I know she would. I couldn’t stand just sitting there and letting her deal with everything. People expecting her to do stuff like that. That’s my job. That’s what I do. Thanks to you, I can do it. She doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore, because me and Lumina are going to kick ass and take names.”

Harley fidgeted. “S… So… it’s okay?”

“Yeah,” Daxton nodded, “It’s okay. Lumina thinks so too, actually. She didn’t want to make you do anything that you were too scared to do yourself. That’s why she agreed to go with me, so she could keep you safe by, uh… well, using me to do it. But really, it’s a win-win for us. I get to kick butt and she gets to kick butt and we just really meet in the middle on these things. So, really? I don’t know what you’re so worried about. You’re practically the real hero of this thing. When Quincey wakes up, she’s going to be so excited that you’re safe.”

“R… Really?” Harley sniffed, “But what if…”

“She will,” Daxton cut in, “Never say that you can’t do something. That’s the first step to never doing it. She can, and she will.”

Harley let out a breath and allowed herself to fall into Daxton. She leaned against him in an exhausted slump. She wanted to feel upset, but at that point any argument she presented would have been shot down by his confounding reasoning.

“You should find your parents,” Daxton said, “They must be worried about you.”

“… They’re not here.” Harley said.

“Ah.” Daxton wrapped an arm around the girl and hugged her close to his side. “Tell you what. Do you wanna bunk with me and Quincey? There’s room for you, and I think she’d be awful upset with me if I just left you on your own.”

“M-Me?” Harley sat up again, letting her legs stretch out in front of her as she blushed a deep shade of red. “Oh no, I couldn’t do that… I’d be imposing, I would. I don’t want to do that.”

“It’s no trouble, Harley.” Daxton grinned, “Don’t be shy. Quincey’s super comfortable to cuddle. You are not going to find anyone better.”

“B-But Mr. Daxton, you and Quincey are… together,” She squeaked, “I can’t get between you.”

“I think you actually physically can and that’d probably be alright,” Daxton shrugged, “So really, I insist. Dude, I make a living out of protecting people. You’re not going to let me not protect you, right?”

Harley felt like she was being strong-armed, but couldn’t find the energy to protest anymore. “Okay…” She surrendered.

“Great!” Daxton stood up, waiting for her to stand as well before taking her hand to walk with her. Bashfully she accepted his hand and followed him in step, stopping when the doctors tried to stop her from entering the area they’d sectioned off for patient care. Daxton stood his ground, insisting that she was with him and that he was going to let her spend the night. The doctors ended up giving up the argument after a few minutes, and Daxton led Harley into the bed store while she looked almost apologetically to the attendant who had insisted she stay out. Daxton walked her to Quincey’s bed and let go of her hand. He climbed onto the bed himself, kicking off his shoes before he laid out flat on his back with Quincey at his side.

Quincey rolled into Daxton, reacting to his presence on the bed but not waking up. She cuddled into his side like she would have on any other day. She rested her head against his chest, just under his arm, getting nice and snug against him. He embraced her proper. “Climb on in,” He said to Harley, “I’ll shove her over a bit.”

Daxton scooched aside, pushing Quincey toward the far side of the bed. The rotund pig girl was a little stubborn, grunting as she was forced to move, but eventually she shoved over in compliance. Harley didn’t move, just staring at the two of them as they got comfortable. Daxton extended his other hand to her and beckoned her closer. She hesitated, reaching out slowly to take his hand. She stepped out of her boots as she climbed into the bed, moving carefully to nestle onto the soft mattress and rest her head on a pillow next to Daxton. She did her best not to touch him, or push against him at all.

He pulled her in close on his own, and kept his arm around her in an insisting hold so that she could get comfortable and stay warm against him. She squeaked timidly as she found her curvy little body all squished up against his broad, strong frame. As she laid her head against his chest, she rested a hand on him. He really was firm. He had a strong chest where she lay, and his abdomen had a defined set of muscles as well. He was warm and his arm around her had a sure grip. Harley had found him attractive at first, but she didn’t realize how safe he could make her feel on an instinctual level. A little of her tension was eased, and she felt just a little bit better.

“Comfy?” Daxton asked.

“I’m not pushing against you too hard, am I?” Harley asked.

“I can sleep with Quincey on top of me,” He chuckled, “You’re like one quarter of a Quincey, you’re fine.”

“O-Oh,” Harley said, “Good.”

“Besides, I’ve got a pretty lady on each side. Am I lucky or what?” Daxton grinned.

Harley flushed red in the cheeks. “Mr. Daxton!”

Daxton winced, “Alright, when you call me Mister, it seems a little weird.”

“Sorry,” Harley said, “And… thank you. I… hope my parents are okay.”

“I bet they are,” He said, “You’ll see. Just relax for a bit, get some rest.”

Harley yawned wide, relaxing against Daxton and closing her eyes. It took her mere moments to drift off to sleep, mumbling something along the lines of a thank-you for Daxton. It didn’t really surprise the boy very much. He saw the bags under her eyes when he spoke to her just moments before. The poor girl must have been exhausted.

Laying there, his own exhaustion caught up with him too. Fighting evil monsters, almost being killed, and worrying over others was surprisingly tiring. Daxton curled his arm around Quincey and tugged his hat off his head, freeing his shaggy blonde hair comfortably, feeling that much cooler when it was off. He turned his head, feeling Quincey there. He kissed her, not quite knowing where it would land, but it seemed to be in her hair somewhere. The girl needed a shower, but even then, she still had a comforting scent about her. She was gorgeous even when he couldn’t see her.

He still worried that she may take a long time to wake up. He still wondered what was wrong with her. It was enough to keep him up for some time even after Harley fell asleep. Eventually sleep took him among thoughts of what he was going to do. He’d sleep on it for the night. He needed his energy for the morning, which was no doubt going to be interesting.", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Issue 24: Saviors", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "application/msword", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "2", "rating_name": "Adult", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "3", "name": "Violence", "description": "Mild violence", "rating_id": "1" }, { "content_tag_id": "5", "name": "Strong Violence", "description": "Strong violence, blood, serious injury or death", "rating_id": "2" } ], "submission_type_id": "12", "type_name": "Writing - Document", "guest_block": "f", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "6", "views": "131" }