Potched Kumquat [Victory!]

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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"Hey!" Rong yelped. "That's me!"

"Good of you to figure out," Right sighed. "Can anything else possibly go wrong?"

Pseudo-Rong landed heavily on the ground, flattening more trees, and crouched low to peer down at everybody. "What the hell? 'Zat supposed to be me?" She wrinkled her snout. "Lame."

"I see you weren't so different before I met you," Right said flatly before the supervisor launched himself towards them and aimed a clawed hand right at Eemp's head. Right quickly pulled them out of the way and took off from the ground. As soon as the supervisor pulled his hand out of the tree trunk, he followed quickly. Jordan and Maxwell ducked as they passed overhead. The chase disappeared into the remaints of the orchard briefly before circling back into the clearing, apparently never-ending; the dragons couldn't harm the supervisor and the supervisor couldn't catch up to the dragons.

Pseudo-Rong watched this passively before she noticed several geese about her size were staring at her in the blank, stupid way that birds tend to stare. "The hell're you looking at?" she demanded hotly. The geese honked rather threateningly. Although Rong couldn't speak goose, she assumed this was some sort of goosey insult and so responded thusly with some fire breath. The goose she aimed at responded with some laser eyes, but when it was aware that this wouldn't work out so well, it disappeared suddenly, leaving the fire to move on to the trees. Pseudo-Rong circled around, driving the other geese away with more fire. And soon, a large part of the orchard was ablaze.

"Your general solutions to annoyances haven't changed at all," Right said, now sounding rather annoyed. He had every right to be. They were pratically almost surrounded by fire now.

"Shut up!" Rong retorted, unable to think of anything more clever.

"I hope you know," the supervisor called from behind, "That I will enjoy using your skins as a rug!"

"Right, we're going up," the chinese dragon suddenly said decisively. The next time Eemp leapt off the ground, it soared and landed right on pseudo-Rong, who was still busy taking on hungry geese.

"Hey! What the?" the large dragon-fruit's neck turned slightly, trying to see what had just landed on her. A few moments later, the supervisor joined them on her back. "Hey! Get off!" She opened her maw to try to set fire to the small figures clinging onto her scales, but the supervisor shouted, "Stop."

Surprisingly, Rong hesitated and stopped. "You have other problems to worry about," the supervisor said sternly. "Those geese, for one thing. That other dragon...thing for another."

Pseudo-Rong thought it over. "Alright, I'm going to ignore you guys for now, but only because I have bigger things to fight! I'll get to you shrimps later!" And with that, she started rampaging off towards the Manikin, who also happened to be rampaging.

Jordan, in the meantime, was stuck leaning on Maxwell and Maxwell was stuck, cornered by fire. Jordan's leg didn't bleed as freely anymore, but he was still having trouble concentrating. Maxwell was shouting something. He struggled to listen.

"...You can do something about this, can't you?" Maxwell shouted. "You're the fire guy!"

Jordan shook his head.

"Look, I know 'pyrokinesis' usually is just setting things on fire, but can't you do something else with fire? I mean it's right there in the name! Pyro Kinesis! Moving fire!"

"I...can't," Jordan almost sobbed.

"Just try it or we'll die, okay? I thought you told me before you didn't want to die here!"

Jordan didn't say anything. But after a moment, the fire around them flickered. Then it swirled around a point in the air until it was just floating harmlessly above.

Maxwell smiled, relieved. "Okay. That's good. Right. Let's go."

"Mmnng," Jordan moaned. "Where're the dragons?"

"Uh?" Maxwell glanced around quickly. "They're...on another dragon, I believe...no wait," he added quickly when he noticed the floating fireball moving towards where he pointed. "Let's get to a safer area first, okay? Just...hang on..."

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The floor...or rather, dragon, underneath them shook as Pseudo-Rong started a turf-battle with the Manikin. At least, she assumed it was a turf-battle. She wouldn't even be here unless it was her turf. Or unless she was trying to get some other guy's turf. Q.E.D. Sort of.

In any case, this made it hell for her passengers. Or rather, passenger. The supervisor was not graced with the gift of flight like Right and Rong were. Right was nothing if not opportunistic.

"I just need some juice. Actually, a lot of juice. Do you think we can get some from your past-fruit-self?"

"Dammit, why is it I always end up having to get hurt?" Rong whined.

"It's not even you," Right pointed out.

"Don't do it," Rong warned. "I swear I'll kill you if you do it...what are you doing?"

Right didn't answer for a while. As the supervisor clung onto the large gray scaled below, he stared intently down. "I can't do it. Your skin is too thick."

"You were totally trying to do it!" Rong shouted, aghast.

"We need some way to cut through your skin. I may have to go down and do it myself."

"I think I have a say in this," Rong shouted very loudly. "And I say that you are not going to slice me open!"

"It's not even you," Right hissed in annoyance. "Look, it'll be over quick--" And suddenly Eemp was hit in the chest by a fireball and they were forced back down onto the brawling Rong.

"Where'd that come from?" Rong was now completely worked up after all the recent events and was now whipping her head around.

"You might want to distract the supervisor that is about to attack us while I deal with getting through your skin," Right replied.

"What?" Rong said before she was tackled by the supervisor.

"Make sure to hold still, I won't be able to do this well when you move around too much."

"Well I'm sorry if me saving our asses is disturbing your well thought-out plans!" Rong shouted, this time completely hysterical. She grappled with the supervisor for a moment before another fireball slammed into them and almost pushed them off the side of Pseudo-Rong.

"I said hold still," Right said, annoyed and trying to straighten his neck again.

"IT. ISN'T. MY. FAULT."

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The turf battle was quickly getting out of hand. For one thing, it seemed that the giant geese wanted a bit of the turf as well. This was a strictly dragon-only business, but Rong wasn't about to let that stop her from kicking some geese butt as well. But it was getting hard fending off everybody at once, even with her almighty fire breath. She almost fell backwards when a goose reared up and buffetted her with its giant wings and the Manikin tackled her from the side.

In such a chaotic battle as this, it could be understood that many things happened at once. Fireballs were suddenly raining down on the group. They didn't harm the Manikin or Pseudo-Rong much, but they seemed to irritate the geese. One goose actually caught aflame and ran about wildly, in the process, blinding Pseudo-Rong. At the same time, the Manikin jumped up and bit into her neck. Panicking, she bit back, though after tasting some fluff, she realized she had bit into a goose instead of her attacker. This strange tangle of beasts started toppling over. On her back, Right had finally managed to somehow make a large gash in her flank, making her almost release in pain. Her blood/juice quickly rose up and slammed against the supervisor, enveloping him whole and freezing instantly. Both Rong and the Manikin fell right on top of the goose, who, although graced with trans-dimentional teleportaion and laser eyes, did not have an especially strong ribcage. It collapsed and the goose was dead. The other geese honked in distress and shuffled away before teleporting once more fireballs started moving in. Pseudo-Rong died soon after from juice-blood loss, which Rong harrassed Right about. The Manikin was still getting attacked by fireballs, and though they were too small to really do anything, it effectively confused it. It started panicking. It then did what it usually did when it started panicking. It started eating.

The closest thing on hand happened to be the dead goose it was on top of. He went ahead and swallowed it.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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To call the scene chaotic would have been a near-criminal understatement; the little pocket dimension was literally aflame, regiments of gardeners were scurrying around like particularly confused ants trying simultaneously to quell the invasion and the inferno, and frightened fruit-beings were shrieking as they ran from the juicer, the fire, and the squawking house-sized geese. It was certainly the most successful round from this battle in terms of sheer excitement for onlookers; it might have been in the running for that title among an even larger group for that matter.

It was a shame, therefore, that its primary audience's attention was rather divided at the moment.

Omnipresence is harder than it sounds; even beings like the Organizer that were at a higher level than most gods and indeed most of their peers struggle to maintain exact awareness over infinite points within multiple universes, especially if some of their mind is being focused through the cracked, dirty lens that is a mortal frame. That's not to say that the grandmaster wasn't still paying rapt attention to his battle, simply that the metaphorical eye was trying to watch two hypothetical screens at once. Details were bound to slip through, and multiverse-spanning powers were pushing the limits of the distance they could effectively reach.

As the goose was crushed, the Organizer was lecturing a rather uppity skeleton. As the Manikin's teeth bit into its flesh, a borrowed hand was lashing a proud mage with his own spell. As the puppet swallowed, temporal and spacial distortions were being channeled through a shell that could barely handle them. All it took was a moment's inattentiveness, and a seemingly-preventable event that was required to happen for the course of causality took place.

It is necessary to employ stop-motion prose at this point; the events that were taking place occurred in the span of mere microseconds. Feathers sprouted intermittently across the Manikin's ever-changing body, replacing and mingling with scales and spreading across the skin membranes that were its wings. A beak formed around the daggerlike dragon teeth that lined its mouth. A halfhearted webbing stretched across a claw or two. It all served to give the already-strange creature the appearance of the multiverse's largest, fieriest, and most awkward archaeopteryx for the briefest of moments. And then, with a flash and a squawk that was cut off before the air had time to alert the nearest of ears, it was gone. Dozens of unlikely events had colluded to allow the near-mindless Manikin to be the only contestant to escape its battle; had its timing coincided with any point other than the one it had, the Organizer's usual safeguards and intervention would have prevented the dimensional travel as similar ones had trapped more than a hundred other contestants before and since.

For that matter, even should the travel itself have been allowed, the next anomaly never would have. With the clock of narration slowing even further such that vision fine enough could have seen individual atoms as near-static clusters of energy and mass, the Manikin appeared in another universe. It wasn't used to its powers, and in fact hadn't even consciously used the teleportation ability; its mind hadn't had the chance to fire a single synapse since its appearance, and it never would.

The new universe was not only new to the Manikin, but new period. It wasn't even properly deserving of the term yet; it was just an infinite expanse of empty void with a single pinprick of superheated, superdense matter at its core. A spontaneously-generated seedling universe which was about to sprout. The pull of it was of course such that the Manikin was drawn inexorably toward and into it, with the current speed of narration such that one could actually see the mad goosedragon stretching and distorting around the singularity. In the blink of even this hyper-slowed eye, the first living thing this universe would ever see wrapped, mouthfirst, around the first point of matter it would ever generate. A clash of forces as were never seen outside moments like this one (or rather, moments like it was supposed to be) ensued, gravity fighting strong-nuclear, repulsion pushing against attraction, mass and energy near-indistinguishable as they tore into each other. But... It was complicated by forces this plane was never supposed to see; magic intertwined with gravity, enchantment butted against electricity, and the nonphysical elements of the Manikin's erstwhile being refused to fade away, forcing themselves into the very fabric of the universe's existence.

There was a Big Bang... After a fashion.

A universe proper came into existence... If it could be called that.

It wasn't a universe like most were; it didn't simply expand, letting its fragments of matter collect into stars and galaxies, but stayed mostly localized. The vast emptiness around it gradually shrank, the nothingness of space losing itself to the firm existence of the manikinverse. What there was of the abnormally-small universe writhed and changed, directed by what weren't quite natural forces but wasn't quite intelligence.

The eye of observation sped up. From watching picoseconds tick by like minutes to a speed where time ebbed and flowed like water and words like "year" and "eon" had no meaning, it watched the universe grow. It grew like none other before or since, gradually devouring the void around it until it was naked to the less familiar emptiness not of its own nothingness, but of the multiversal sea. It began drifting slowly through the True Void, seeking matter other than its own and evolving as it went.

No life spawned in the manikinverse, but that wasn't to say it never held life. It was a strange place, roving the multiversal void and colliding as it went with other, more traditional worlds. It was a place of mouth and teeth and eyes. It was a place of hunger and a great, beating heart. It was a place of rain.

And most of all, it was no longer the Manikin in any sense but essence.

The Organizer became aware of what had happened; it was frustrating, but it was already done, and he began the next round. Two beings vanished from the orchard, and for all anyone that matters cares, the orchard itself might well have vanished into nothing following their passage. The two surviving contestants, a pair that no sane grandmaster or gentleman had bet would be the two duking it out in the final round, reappeared. They were standing about fifteen feet from each other in what appeared to be a large, cement room, with banks of monitors along much of the walls and a couple of metal doors visible. The only other adornments were a large swiveling chair and a table with a cold tea set laid out for three; Jordan and the dragons' eyes rolled in their sockets, taking in the vast array of screens, each showing in impossible resolutions stills and video from their own battle and and situations they didn't recognize which were presumably other battles.

The ominous, high-backed chair turned to face them, and to nobody's surprise the Organizer was sitting in it, holding a glass of brandy entirely incorrectly. He smiled at his guests and gestured to the room around him.

"Welcome and congratulations, you two! Er, three. Fourish? Anyway, congratulations and welcome, regardless of how many of you there are. You should be proud! Only a few beings can count themselves as Grand Battle finalists, and now, you can too!"

He stood up and took a few steps towards his finalists, still smiling like an indulgent grandfather about to give ice-cream money to his grandkids in spite of their mother's wishes. "I must admit, I'm impressed, both in the general terms of this battle as a whole and with last round in particular. A wonderful show. And it's not over yet!"

With another sweeping gesture, he continued. "Traditionally, the last round is held somewhere near or important to the Grandmaster, and I'm certainly not one to stand on tradition. So, welcome to my base. You probably can't tell, but it's a bit like a friend's. To the untrained eye, anyway. The whole place reacts and changes with my whims and my guests, so it's not that static. Good for keeping things moving, certainly. I suppose you can think of it as a bit of a counterpart to the Orchard, really; there won't be people from your pasts and others', but there will be things and places, out of your own histories, but mostly from mine. A certain library comes to mind, of course, as well as a conservatory and a museum. Feel free to explore! But if you find a sealed portal, don't try to force it. Neither of you could survive the Timeless Interstice, and that would be such a dull way to end things."

"Of course, in fairness, I'll be sticking around myself. Also in fairness, and to keep things from being quick and boring..." He clicked his fingers and Jordan's skin momentarily glowed, wounds mostly healed. For a given value of mostly. He clicked them again and the boy was gone, whisked off to another part of the... building... thing. Despite the distance, he could still see and hear the Organizer as he spoke. "If you need me, I'll be over there."

He pointed, and as he did, the pointing hand disappeared up to the wrist. He took a step and vanished, the untouched brandy crashing to the ground. The finalists felt their invisible bonds release them and knew that the end had finally begun.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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Right winced when the glass hit the floor. It seemed like such a waste. Though if you happen to be a being with enormous, god-like power, he supposed a simple glass of brandy wasn't much of anything at all. Could probably just make the mess disappear or make it so it was never made at all. In any case, he picked up the puddle of brandy.

"Ugh, the hard part's gonna be finding that wimpy guy," Rong complained. Right found he still didn't quite feel comfortable manipulating something other than pure, clean water. The sphere of brandy was actually more like a Rorschach test. "I mean," the blue dragon continued, "When I catch up to him, he isn't gonna stand a chance."

"Don't be so cocky," Right calmly replied as he decided to take the cold tea along too. It wasn't a lot of liquid. Maybe it was enough to stuff down Jordan's throat and drown him.

"Oh, come on, you really think there's a chance he'd win?" And though he didn't say it out loud, Right had to agree that the chances of Jordan actually defeating them wasn't exactly high.

"I'm only saying that sometimes, unexpected things can happen," he said rather simply, staring at some of the monitors. As seen from the last round, the other contestants had proved to be rather interesting. Some of the others he saw now on the wall of bright monitors convinced him that they had been extremely lucky to be selected in this battle rather than a few others. A shadow lizard? A killer robot? A demonic vacuum cleaner? A devourer of souls? In this battle, the most exotic they got was the Mannikin. (And, well, them.) He certainly hoped that he wouldn't have to ever meet some of these characters.

"Yeah, that's some of the time, but most of the time, things go the way they do."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Right said distractedly. "Alright, where do we go?"

"Mmmm," Rong sighed, looking at the doors. "How'm I supposed to know?"

"It doesn't actually matter which way we go, though. I'm pretty certain that either way, we'll run into Smith eventually," Right replied.

"Then choose yourself!"

"I'm...feeling a little indecisive." Rong rolled her eyes and might have gone on to start some sort of rant about men and whatever it was that was wrong with them now, but suddenly Eemp started lurching towards a door. It stood in front of it, not responding to the dragons' loud questions of what the hell it was doing, which was a pretty obvoius outcome considering that shrimpy scarecrows can't talk.

After staring a long time at the door, it moved on to a second one and stared at that some more. The dragons gave up on talking to (demanding answers from) it and when this time, Eemp didn't move at all, as much as they waited, they just pushed the metal door open. Or at least, Right manhandled it open, being the only one who could at least grow arms.

The hallway behind the door was a very startling contrast to the cold, concrete room behind them. Linoleum tiles. Less imposing doors. Had the two been born in a more modern age (and didn't happen to be dragons), they may have recognized this hallway as a typical school hallway. Either way, they were confused. Even more so when they found that most of the classroom doors opened up into brick walls. Eventually, they did find one normal door that actually led to a room, though again, the room behind the door was not quite what they expected.

A large, circular room with a blue, glass dome overhead. The doors here were rather bright and ornate, decorated with swirls and those fancy door crap. Like, those diagonal line thingies that made diamonds. Whatever.

The room itself seemed to be filled with a lot of musical instruments. Nobody was playing them, though they could definitely hear some sort of music wafting through the air. It didn't seem to come from anywhere, particularly. There was one door that stood out. It was a dull brown and would have probably fitted in better in a setting such as, say, a medieval castle. There was also a conspicuous lack of Jordan, which was a bit frustrating.

Eemp stood around for a bit. Right frowned at his general surroundings, now getting slightly disoriented. Rong seemed to think for a while before suddenly piping up, "What's the Timeless Interstice and why can't we go through it?"

"No idea and probably it will kill us maybe. He said as much, remember?"

"Yeeeaaaaah," Rong said, though she sounded as though she didn't believe it, as though she hadn't been present at all during the little speech. "But why?"

"I really hope you aren't tempted to just go ahead and find this Timeless Interstice for the petty reason of possibly proving someone wrong or maybe just for the heck of it," Right said a little crossly.

Rong sucked on the inside of her cheek for a little while. "Nnnnnoooo."

"Good," Right continued tersely. "Because we're not. Let's go already."

The old-fashioned wooden door being the most suspicious, they decided to head through that for now. Rong had a sudden thought and said, "What the hell's an 'interstice' anyways?"

Right sort of stared at a random point in space for a little while. "I have a few guesses."

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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SpoilerShow

Hello. A little bit of news for those of you following this battle; I'm handling Jordan for this round so we can hopefully get a faster pace and more posts than we have in the past.

On a side note, it was my idea to have the Manikin die by absorbing goose-powers and then eating an about-to-form universe. The subsequent revelation about said universe was Slorange's idea, however.

Expect a post about Jordan soon.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Over the course of the battle, Jordan had perfected a simple three-step plan for dealing with unfamiliar and dangerous situations.

Step one: Panic.

Oh god that dragon thing's going to kill me oh god how am I even still alive oh god oh god

Step two: Calm down and take stock of your surroundings.

Where the hell am I anyways it looks kind of like a museum but the exhibits are moving oh my god is that an executioner what is he doing to that man OH GOD and now I see wires oh god oh god what kind of crazy place is this

Step three: Panic some more, this time while running away.

Oh god what if he comes after me next I have to get out of here oh god this is worse than the dragons oh god oh god

Ironically, Jordan drew more attention to himself by fleeing so suddenly; had he simply walked away, the mechanical executioner would have been satisfied with continuing to torment his robotic victim (who had been programmed to feel all the pain inflicted on him). Instead, the hooded machine noticed the noise, and saw the fleeing boy. A wicked grin crossed his synthetic face.

"Looks like we've got a lively one, 'ere! Good, they're the most fun to play with."

The executioner extricated his axe from his victim - in such a way that this caused even greater simulated pain than getting it inside in the first place - and started running after Jordan, cackling with glee.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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"This is so frustrating," Rong whined as they passed through yet another random area that they had never seen before. "When are we actually gonna find him? Geez! This is getting boring!"

"Someday I hope that you will learn to do something else besides whine."

By now he had completely stopped paying attention to his surroundings. It didn't seem to matter too much. All of them could be described as 'places he didn't recognize filled with things he had never seen before.' As far as Right could tell right now, they were in a place with a lot of glass rooms that had people inside who usually were in a lot of pain, physical or mental or both. It was a little disturbing. But luckily, he was very devoted to the task of not paying attention to his surroundings.

"Seriously, if this keeps up, then we're never gonna find him," Rong continued.

Right stared at her for a moment. "You mean if we continue not finding him, then we are not going to find him? I wouldn't have guessed."

"Shut up!"

After carefully avoiding looking directly at a room exhibiting the meticulous process one would go through to peel someone's skin right off, Right continued, "Just sit tight. There's nothing much we can do besides look around. I'm fairly certain we'll find him soon anyways..."

Rong just sighed loudly and lazily looked about. "Oh look, there's a guy."

There was indeed a guy clomping straight towards them, probably scowling or sadistically grinning under that dark helmet of his. He seemed to be shaped oddly so...an alien? Whatever he was, he was charging right towards them, so Rong responded as she usually did. With fire.

The strange figure writhed in the flames in surprise but really didn't seem too affected by it, besides the fact that it was glowing red-hot now.

"What?! More fire-proof guys?! Why can't things just explode? I want a good ol' combustion!"

"Well, at least he doesn't seem too burnt up about it," Right said blithely.

"I will kill you."

"Yeah, yeah." As the armored thing lurched towards them, Right snapped a sharp whip of mixed liquids right into its skull-like thing. It split in half and, with a shudder and a few sparks, the thing collapsed.

"Hey, it was a machine!" Rong shouted rather unnecesarily.

"Aw, some of the water evaporated..."

Rong started to swing her head around wildly. "Are they all machines?"

"It doesn't matter either way," Right said, suddenly wondering what a mixture of tea and brandy would actually taste like. "They probably won't give us too much trouble..."

"Actually," Right suddenly continued, a thought occurring to him. "I wonder if there's anything here that involves a lot of water. That would be rather convenient. If I get the...erm...theme of this place right, I'm pretty sure there were a few, ah, torture methods involving water..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still wanna find Jor--"

A whole bunch of screaming caught their attention. It was very recognizable screaming. Turning towards it, they saw Jordan rounding the bend. Rong grinned. "Ah, perfect! Now we--"

Then the hooded executioner followed him.

Without thinking, Rong breathed out a fan of fire towards the executioner, who tried to stop in surprise. Jordan, his vision now filled with fire, panicked a little bit more and threw his hands up so that the fire moved over him and hit the executioner full on. His exposed skin burned off and as he yelped, Right took the chance to axe him through the head.

At this point, the dragons noticed that Jordan had already ran off and was now turning the corner towards another row of exhibits. "Hey!" Rong shouted as they started giving chase. "You stupid kid! Stop! Dammit! Gaaah, I'll kill you!"

"Somehow, I doubt that will encourage him to."

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

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Oh god they found me I'm doomed I'm doomed I'm doomed

Jordan had mastered the art of running away from everything while still being able to devote enough mental energy to worrying about exactly how it was going to kill him. He knew that the dragons would probably eat him. Or drown him. Or maybe knock him out and burn him. Really, there were a lot of ways they could kill him. And here he was, unarmed, with nothing more than the ability to control fire, against a magical construct that was relatively resistant to flames.

And what was worse, he was stuck in a museum filled with torture implements, wielded by robots who would probably also be trying to kill him...

Wait. Torture implements, or weapons?

Perhaps it was the adrenaline flowing from all his fear, but Jordan began to see a desperate plan for turning the situation around. Perhaps he could find a robot, set it ablaze, steal whatever terrifying device it was tormenting its mechanical victim with, and challenge the dragons?

Then his common sense kicked in and he realized that was a stupid plan that would still get him killed.

Ten seconds later, he had come up with an even stupider plan: Provoke every torture-bot he could find, and then somehow draw their attention to the dragons.

Common sense tried to protest, but adrenaline-fueled bravado won out in the end. Jordan ran for the nearest display and shouted the first taunt he could think of at the tormenting robot.

"Your creator wears army boots!"

Eight equally weak taunts and much running later, common sense finally got its act together. Unfortunately, by now it was too late.

Oh god what did I just do I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

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”Oh my god what the hell is he doing.”

There were robots everywhere, hundreds of them. While they rampaged around and generally caused a ruckus with their wildly waving tools of torture, Right and Rong (mostly Right) had decided that it would probably be a good time to fly on out of there and land on top of a glass exhibit. At least away from any dangerous objects. One robot torturer wasn’t much of a problem, but a crowd of them was hard to deal with and also made things a little claustrophobic.

“I honestly have no idea, but really, it looks as though he’s just digging his own grave,” Right replied as they perched up high and watched the crowd move run about below. “We could probably just wait around for him to kill himself.”

Rong huffed and pouted. “But that’s booooooorrrring.”

“You could always set fire to everything.”

Rong was silent for a long time before she even dared turn to stare at Right. “I…what?”

“You could always set fire to everything,” Right repeated very patiently.

“You’re…actually giving me permission to do that?” Rong asked, bewildered. “No, ‘it’s gonna topple trees and crush us’ or ‘it’ll burn people we shouldn’t burn’ or ‘you’re an idiot stop thinking about fire all the time?’”

“No. You could always set fire to everything.”

Rong scrunched up her face a little bit, trying to see some sort of loophole or reverse psychology thingy that Right was setting up for whatever reason, not that he really had one. It just seemed to be one of those statements that were automatically loaded with some hidden meaning. “But…uh…the little guy has that fire…moving thing. You saw that a while ago, right? That wasn’t just me, right?”

“No, that wasn’t just you,” Right said, watching the crowd of contestant and robots turn the corner. “But for one thing, fire can’t exactly hurt us so he can’t really weaponize your fire against us as far as I see and for another, he seems a little bit too panicky to even think about doing anything with fire besides running away from it.”

Rong thought about this a little harder, but really, she wasn’t the thinking type and the opportunity to SET FIRE TO EVERYTHING was just too good to pass up, consequences be damned, and if it does turn out bad, she could actually push all the blame to Right. Blame Right for once! My god, she almost didn’t think of that! This was just turning out better and better.

And so with no further contemplation (it would have been a little worrying had she actually pursued the act of contemplation even further), Rong breathed fire onto the masses.

“You should probably make it hot enough to melt metal,” Right suggested rather unnecessarily, for in her eagerness to raze the whole damn place to the ground, she was melting pretty much everything. Realizing that this likely included the platform which they were standing on, Right flew upwards and, with a few bursts of speed, reached the ceiling, decided he didn’t want to keep holding all of them up, and turned into a grappling hook and dug himself into whatever this ceiling was made of. Rong was happy with this, as this gave her a better angle to SET FIRE TO EVERYTHING. And thus, engrossed in this important task, Rong didn’t really notice that her original target had already gone through the panic cycle twice, reached a door after many panicked flailing, and ran through it in a panicked manner. As an afterthought, he slammed it shut behind him.

As Right was also too busy staring at the ceiling, Eemp was the only one to really notice this happening. After considering this matter for a few moments, already an impressive feat considering it had straw for brains, and evidently decided on something, for he started swinging his legs.

After a while, Rong stopped SETTING FIRE TO EVERYTHING and, annoyed, looked up towards Right. “It’s throwing off my aaaiiiim!” she whined. And after a moment, Right let go and transformed back to himself again.

“And that wasn’t exactly easy on my jaw,” he commented. “I do believe dear old Eemp is trying to get us to do something.”

“Well, maybe it should stop so that I can actually aim,” Rong snapped.

“Now, now, perhaps it actually has something important to tell us. And considering it acts as our legs, we sort of have some sort of obligation to figure out what it wants. Also, I am now unbelievably bored. Come on, I’m pretty sure it wants us to go that way…”

------------------------------

It took some fumbling about, but Jordan actually managed to safely take his inhaler out of his pocket and not drop it on the floor. Though instead of using it, he just stared at it for a disconcertingly long amount of time, as though he had never seen it before. He couldn’t help but realize that he had never once used it throughout this entire battle, despite forests and fires and forest fires and giant statues and crap, he had apparently forgotten that sometimes, during stressful situations, he would need an inhaler.

For whatever reason, this calmed Jordan down and he pocketed the inhaler again with little fumbling and a clearer state of mind. Now was probably a good time to go ahead and see where he had ended up, then.

Well, for one thing, there certainly were a lot of books. For another, there were no longer any sort of moving being that wanted to kill him. Things were looking up.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Feeling relatively safe, Jordan examined the books on the various shelves. The titles were numerous and varied, but they all shared one thing in common.

Every book on every shelf had an obvious error in its name.

A Taile of Two Citties, Wart and Piese, Frunkenstein. Even the titles in languages incomprehensible to Jordan struck him as somehow off. It seemed that the library was a copy of one that existed elsewhere, but it was a poor replica; when one looked closely enough at the details, this was clearly inferior to the original.

And then he saw an alcove of nine books. Somehow, it jumped out at him.

The titles were as erroneous as the others he had come across. The Graind Bottle, The Gorand Batle Ii, The Battel Royl...

The next book, Potched Kumquat, caught his attention. He grabbed it and looked at the first page.

Contestrants:
Hotman
Jordain Smoth
Elmper, Rihat, and Wrong
Annelbee
Ilex Comendar
Copt. Veasilly Rurikovichoff
O Nomlesk Mannuqin
Lairrey

Despite the mangled words, Jordan realized what it was.

This was a book about this battle. The Organizer's battle. A skim through the first chapter or so confirmed this suspicion, as eerily familiar events were described through terrible spelling.

He considered flipping to the last page, but decided that was a risk he'd rather not take. If his fate was to die, he didn't need that confirmed; he was pretty sure of it already.

He replaced the book, and looked again at the shelf.

It was clear that the rest of the books contained information on other battles. Could he find something useful in them, perhaps? Maybe some way another fighter had won against the kind of odds he faced now?

Then he noticed the ninth book. It was titled simply Ale-Starrs.

Curiously, he opened it. There was also a list of contestants here, but it looked incomplete.

The first line read "Aximo Pluvis". The third read "White O'Donalds". The rest were blank.

On a hunch, Jordan looked at the first and third books, checking their respective lists of combatants. "Exismo Palves" was in the first book, and "What E'Donno" was in the third.

Jordan nearly screamed at the grim realization. Even if he managed, against all odds, to defeat the dragons and claim victory, his only reward would be to face seven more opponents in another battle. And glancing at the descriptions of the confirmed fighters, one of them was the "duckiest man alove", which didn't make Jordan feel any better about his odds of surviving that one.

He groaned. It seemed his fate was either to die here and now, or to die in another battle. Even if he miraculously won that one, how could he be sure that he wouldn't be flung into yet another one? And another after that?

Jordan grabbed the nine books and ran to a secluded corner of the library to read them. Perhaps one of these tomes would hold a clue to escaping his dilemma.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

It certainly was somewhat difficult to go through eight fairly large and verbose tomes. Even more difficult when they all seemed written by a dyslexic. Still, Jordan got the general idea of things just by skimming. It was all fighting and fighting and alliances and sometimes escape attempts, all which failed.

Winning was out of the question for him. Maybe those dragons wouldn’t mind another go against these…stranger contestants, but like hell he was just going to go through this again.

But…it seemed the only other option was losing. Which meant death. Which was something he…just felt uneasy facing.

Okay, seriously, did every escape attempt fail? He thought skimming these passages would give him a hint about what exactly he should do next. Instead, it was just depressing him. Even more. Every book just showed hopelessness and inevitability, conveyed in a misspelled manner. Alliances were made and then fell apart as each member died one by one or one member turned on the others. Constant plotting and scheming against a fellow man (or…alien) in order to just survive. Random messages from a guy about turning on the grandmasters.

Wait, what?

There it was, in the sixth book or so, The Bortel Mjastec. There was a formless god or something and a bunch of stuff he didn’t understand, and a message from “Scandlor Rainhat,” a man who had somehow managed to transcend dimensional barriers (at least vocally) to make alliances among all grand battlers to overthrow the grandmasters and go home or something.

Maybe it was some sort of trick or a hallucination or something. But then, in the Souvague Bwarl, it was referenced again, sort of. At least he learned the name of the real man behind the other man (“Hsoo”). And, after skimming through a bunch of science bullshit, he learned, somewhat disappointingly, that the whole thing seemed to have some sort of ulterior motive…or something. (There was also the implication that there were even more battles, but by now, he wasn’t particularly surprised about that.) The point was, it was somehow possible to communicate to other people in other battles.

If you had the right equipment, that is. And he somehow doubted he did, judging from the technological stuff that littered the page. It would be nice if he did, though…though actually, no other contestants could probably help him escape. Even if they did, who knew when they would even be able to respond. But maybe if he sent a message…just something to last after he died (which he was now completely certain he was going to do; perhaps not quite happy with it, but at least not freaking the hell out about it). A message that would bring at least some importance to his life. Because seriously, his life was just a waste.

Guests. The Organizer had guests. Meaning, most likely, Grandmasters. Meaning he needed a way to communicate with them, like that guy, the Complower had, which was how Drawnard Skarlot managed to contact those two people from the future or whatever, and and and if this place also imitated what his guests’ places looked like, maybe that included their way of communicating and and and and

But the Organizer wouldn’t make it that easy. In fact, they probably didn’t work.

Did they?

Was it worth it to try to find out, at least?

And then a door flew into a bookshelf and fell to the ground. Jordan jumped and moved to flee again, went back for four of the books, and went back to fleeing.

----------------------------------------------

“Oooh, books!” Rong cried out happily when they finally managed to go in the direction Eemp seemed to want them to go. “They burn nice!”

“I’d really rather not see some fine novels go to waste,” Right said.

“You say you want fire, and now suddenly you don’t,” Rong grumbled.

This library seemed quite large and very fancy. A private library. But looking closer, Right quickly realized that all the books were nonsensical. At least their titles were. And none of them he really felt interested in. Even if he did want to read Vintatey Fare, he had more important things to do at the moment.

“I suppose we better gain some altitude again to find him. Again.” And it was only a matter of leaping up on top of the bookshelves and crawling about up there and being a little sneaky and listening intently and occasionally telling a certain blue dragon to shut up for once. It didn’t take long for them to pick up on the sound of pounding feet and, following that sound, it didn’t take long for them to actually see the young man running about below, like a rat in a maze.

“Heya, little guy!” Rong called out cheerfully before sending a friendly fireball his way. The bespectacled man turned at the sound of her voice and, waving an arm in a wide arc, redirected the stream of fire up into the air, where it just dissipated. Then he continued running.

“Why, exactly, did you shout first?” Right asked as Eemp kept up a pursuit.

“Uh.”

“If you actually have an answer for that, I don’t want to hear it. Let me handle this.”

Right didn’t actually find any torture devices that had to do with water, disappointingly enough, but he still had some water. Though it actually wasn’t water. But in any case, he sent this down now as Jordan randomly flipped through a book, apparently all the way to the end. He read something there and as a brandy-tea arm reached out to grab his ankle, he twisted a little, getting his foot out of reach just as it went for it.

Hm. Interesting.

“Hey! Hi! Um, can we please talk about this a little?!” he shouted, trying to pay attention to the ending of the Potched Kumquat while avoiding running right into a bookshelf while trying not to get killed by the dragons behind him.

“What the hell could you possibly want to talk about? The ways I’m gonna kill you?!” Rong replied, sounding a tad too eager for his liking.

“No! Look, I know I’m gonna die! I surrender and stuff! Just…I need to do something!”

“Y’mean like figure out a way to win?”

…Ringo blue ut norher pyrebll t th buy…

Jordan suddenly jumped to the right, out of the way of the fireball that Rong had been aiming at his back. Unfortunately, right led to a bookshelf. He slammed a shoulder painfully into the shelves, toppling them over, and stumbled a little before turning into the new opening he accidentally made.

“I’m serious! I think there’s something you oughta know too!” Oh god his shoulder hurt.

Rong launched more fire at him which he redirected to the ceiling. Right, who had caught on for a while now that something weird was happening, asked, “What is that you’re reading?”

“If you stop killing me, we can talk about it,” Jordan called back.

“Maybe,” Right started.

“Never!” Rong declared.

The two looked at each other.

“The hell’d ya say that, ‘maybe!’ You’re really growing soft! Geez, we’re almost done here, can’t we get this over with, already? He’s gonna run away again and then it’ll take us hours to find him and it’ll be so boring and”

“Look, I sincerely think that he might have something interesting to tell us that may be important to us as well as him and in any case he seems to be anticipating our attacks somehow, which I believe has something to do with those books he happens to be clutching”

“You know what I hear? ‘Wah wah wah blah blah blah I’m a scholarly wimp whine.’ If you had just let me burn everything down in the first place like I wanted to, this whole thing would have been over so much faster and don’t you dare say”

“Oh, of course, and the first time you decided to use your flexible and only solution, it worked out wonderfully for us. Remember that? Wow, I wonder why didn’t we use it more often considering”

Sumwhor, teh sunsd of the arging dragans dd noting to lessing th tenshon of th stichuashun. Jurdon luked oval hz shuldar an sow Iimp, shtl rinnun afte him, stairn blackly wif tat ficed miles…

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

They weren't listening. Well, more specifically, Rong wasn't listening, Eemp couldn't listen, and Right was interested but couldn't hold Rong back.

Jordan settled on his usual procedure of running away and hoping for the best. Fortunately, the argument slowed down Rong's fireballs, allowing Jordan to redirect them again as he thought about his next move.

The book probably wouldn't help him much - it was useful for warnings about imminent fireballs, the idea of reading too far ahead made him nervous. The thought that he might be nervous about it because the book said he was nervous about it wasn't any more comforting.

It was then that Jordan had a stupid idea.

Rong didn't want to spare him because - well, mostly because she was Rong. But also because she thought he might be trying to come up with a last-ditch plan to win, when actually winning was starting to look like a worst-case scenario.

But what if he did come up with a way to win? If he passed up an opportunity to win the battle, then Rong would...

...probably incinerate him anyways.

This was an incredibly stupid idea.

On the other hand, beheading or otherwise neutralizing Rong and explaining the situation to Right might work. But how could he do that? He might be able to find a weapon in the museum, but when he had left it, it was full of rampaging torture-bots and also on fire.

A moment later, as he redirected another fireball, he nearly slapped himself on the forehead.

He could control fire!

It wouldn't be very helpful against the dragons, but it had already burned the torture-bots... It might give him a chance to grab a weapon.

Jordan ran back towards the door he had entered through, shutting it behind him; it would only slow the dragons down for a moment, most likely, but he had few other options.

He looked over the wreckage that had once been the museum. The flames were still burning. Most of the robots had already been burned into uselessness; but a few were still relatively intact, still with their weapons.

He soon found one wielding a particularly painful-looking axe. It seemed to be trying to find its usual victim, now that there were no new faces to torment, and had its back to him.

Jordan carefully manipulated the flames nearby, setting the torture-bot's head ablaze, but keeping its weapon away. The head soon exploded, and the body kneeled over.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Jordan lifted the axe from the ground.

It was distressingly light.

Nervously, he felt the edge.

Plastic.

Like the books, the weapons were merely crude replicas. This axe would be better wielded as a club, and it would barely even be effective in that capacity.

Jordan sighed. It had been useless after all. The dragons were still after him, he had no idea how to send a message - or even what that message would be - and he was still as good as unarmed. All he had were a few books, his inhaler, pepper spray, his spare pair of glasses, and now this plastic axe.

The sound of a door being smashed down was enough to make Jordan start running again. He threw the axe behind him in a desperate hope that it would somehow slow down the walking doll, and continued to run through the burning museum.

Flipping back through Potched Kumquat, Jordan saw that the dragons had entered here through another door. That meant he could escape through it. It was annoying to puzzle out the mangled words detailing their path through the museum - especially since the ambiguous term weast popped up more than once - but it was the only option available.

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

It really sucked when your opponent had a clear advantage over you. It just wasn’t fair. But you didn’t complain about it because, well, they just had an advantage over you. Naturally. You could only blame God (or whatever gods dragons happen to have) or, if you had low self-esteem, blame yourself for just not being better. Or if the advantage happened to be flight and regeneration and scales and crap, you could just wonder why the hell you were chosen to go against the guy with all the advantages in the first place.

Jordan sort of wished that he had exercised a little more in his youth. (He supposed he would still be considered a youth to most but oh well.) Because right now all this running was catching up with him. Again.

He stopped to catch his breath for a bit, leaning against a rather ruined glass case. Can’t reason with two-thirds of them. Can’t hide very well. Can’t keep running without slowing down and dying in possibly some incredibly embarrassing way, even with the help of the misspelled narrative of the book.

Could he distract them…? Somehow…something that would stop even them.

The only weapon he really even had was fire. Fire had no way of harming them, really. But he had barely even started experimenting with his expanded fire powers. So maybe if he…if it looked like…

Somewhere, on the other end of the room…museum…thing, a great fire pillar erupted. It was bright and brilliant and blinding and all that jazz. It expanded and grew arms and slowly reached out and towered over the whole room in a large tsunami of fire…

Walking backwards slowly and watching this, Jordan saw a stream of fire suddenly come from somewhere below the fire giant and he just incorporated it into his creation and directed it towards where it came from. He had no idea how they were reacting to all this, but hopefully at least they would keep reacting to it instead of finding him.

His back bumped into the wall and so he started sidling along it in a random direction, watching as a large amount of water rose up from some area to take his fire on. He let it disperse and reform to avoid being extinguished, moving and ducking and weaving and his hand touched a doorknob.

He didn’t take long to open the door and slam it behind him. Without looking back, he could tell that his distraction had become just regular fire again and burned away. And hopefully, the dragons also had no clue where he went. Unless they had some other crazy power like super olfactory senses, he should be able to wander around without them catching up to him in a while. So now it was time to find some communication system or something. And maybe a sharp object.

Though he somehow doubted he would find a sharp object in a place that seemed to focus a lot on velvet and extravagance and armchairs.

Oh man, was that a giant mirror shard?

------------------------------------------

“So if I got this right, your first instinct when you find yourself pitted against a being made of fire…is to breathe fire at it.”

At least this time Rong had the decency to look sheepish.

“Of all the times I felt the need to be sarcastic about your trigger-happy nature, I have to say that this…this was just really stupid.”

“Look, by now, I’m pretty sure you know that when I panic, I just breathe fire at it, okay? Can you just drop it already?” Rong pleaded in a whining tone. Right decided to oblige, in a bit of a good mood after finding a pool of water. Even if it had chlorine mixed in it. He didn’t even have to use it either, considering the fire giant just went away by itself. Which he had to say was very suspicious.

“I get the feeling that dear Jordan is not in this room anymore,” he said out loud. “Just a gut feeling.”

“Any reason you think this gut feeling of yours is right?” Rong asked sharply, probably trying to find some way to trip Right up in return.

“Fire can’t really stop us for very long. He already knew that. So this was probably some sort of desperate attempt to distract us while he escaped.”

“Was pretty flashy for a wimp,” Rong muttered, making what was probably the first and only compliment she would give Jordan. (And it wasn’t even to his face.) “I mean, seriously, that coulda blinded me…”

“There’s probably a door nearby here,” Right continued, glancing around. “I’m not sure how, but he must have seen us coming first before we saw him…and…ah, there’s a door.”

“Look, I don’t care what you say, I’m totally gonna toast him when I see him.”

“I’m reasonably sure that those books are important in some way. Can’t you just listen for once?”

“And let him almost blind us again?”

“Let’s just stop arguing about this already. For one thing, we should really do what I’m saying. For another, he’ll just hear us arguing and we’ll never catch up anyways.”

“Dammit, Right, don’t tell me to shut up!”

And the argument continued. Eemp might have sighed as it walked through the door if it weren’t impossible for it.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Jordan flipped back through Potched Kumquat. It seemed this wasn't the path the dragons had taken before; they have been in some sort of conservatory filled with musical instruments. He must have misread a few "weasts".

It was probably just as well, though. The dragons would probably retrace their steps before looking for yet another exit. In fact...

"Thins ice buck wear weed starkted!" Wong sed two Wight.

"Heel courd stile haven goon thas wy," Riget applied.

Puzzling out the garbled words, it seemed they were on the wrong track after all. So he had some time to come up with a plan, at least, even if he didn't have a weapon.

If there was even a functional weapon anywhere in this crazy place.

Sighing, Jordan sat down in one of the armchairs. If these were to be his last moments, they might as well be comfortable.

He was surprised to find the chair had gained another occupant in the time it had taken him to turn around and sit down.

***

"What if he didn't go this way at all?" Rong growled, as they walked back through the conservatory. "We could just be getting farther away! And who knows what he's up to!"

"What he's up to is probably more running away, knowing him," mused Right. "And I do think he genuinely wants to talk. The worst he'll do is cut your head off so you don't interrupt with a fireball."

Rong glared at Right.

"Yes, I'm sure it's very inconvenient, but you'll survive. Look, the point is, I don't think he's trying to kill us, so it's all right if we let him wander in some other direction. Really, what's the worst that can happen?"

***

"Ah, you found me!" squealed the Organizer as he materialized. "Good, good. I was growing bored of hiding."

Jordan simply stared.

"Now, I see you've found the library. And it seems you've decided that you don't want to win this battle after all. I'm rather disappointed, really. I mean, I already knew you had no chance of winning. But if you're not even going to try, what's the point in going through the motions? It won't even be all that entertaining to watch you struggle."

Jordan reached for his inhaler. He had a bad feeling about how this was going to end.

"So I'm going to even the odds. Above all, I want this to end spectacularly. It may mean bending the rules - well, all right, outright breaking them. But that's better than letting the final round be a disappointment. I know some of the others are watching, after all. The Monitor certainly is. I might as well entertain them."

Jordan's face took on a puzzled expression.

"It's simple, really. There's no way you can win in this timeline. Or in any possible timeline."

The Organizer raised his arms in what he hoped was a dramatic gesture.

"So I'm going to bring in somebody from an impossible timeline to help you out. This should make it more interesting."

Before Jordan could gather enough courage to ask what the Grandmaster meant, there was a flash of light and a puff of smoke.

And another Jordan was called into existence.

There were three things that stood out about the doppelganger. The first was that he carried himself much more confidently than the coward who had somehow made it to this final round by running away repeatedly.

The second was his sword. Or rather, Alexander Corendal's sword.

The third was that his sword-arm was made of wood and had a mouth on its shoulder.

Finally, Jordan was able to find the strength to talk.

"What the hell?" he shouted. "It's... it's me! But why does he have the Manikin's arm?"

"It snatched mine. I made it return the favor," said the other Jordan, before turning to the Organizer. "Now what the hell's going on? I was about to finish off Hatman and win your stupid battle. What's this wimp who looks like me doing here, and where is this place?"

The Organized would have smiled, if his current form allowed it.

"This is Jordan Smith. He is you, just with different experiences. He hasn't grown the way you have. Frankly, he's completely hopeless. But he's somehow made it to the final round, and I wanted to make it interesting. So I thought I'd bring you in. Defeat his final opponent before he dies, and he's the winner."

"Huh. That's pretty pathetic." The other Jordan turned back to the original, who was still staring at the Manikin-arm. "But fine, I'll bite, as long as you send me back to the other battle afterwards. Don't want to leave that unfinished."

"Agreed, but only if you win here."

"Sounds fair. So who's he up against? Hatman?"

"No. Eemp, Right, and Rong."

Jordan B rubbed his chin thoughtfully with his still-human arm.

"Hmm. That... scarecrow thing with the dragon arms? Huh. I didn't think it was that tough. Then again, about all I saw it do was get eaten by spiders, maybe that was just bad luck. Well, whatever. I can probably take 'em. Where are they?"

"You'll have to find them on your own. I've given him enough advantage by just bringing you here. The rest is up to you. And I suppose him, if you can get him to cooperate."

As if on cue, Jordan A ran away, still clutching the books.

"Which... might be difficult," the Organizer concluded.

Jordan B laughed as he walked out of the room.

"I guess I'll just have to show him what he can do if he sets his mind to it."

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

Oh goddammit how is it that things could continue to get worse when it was impossible for it to. It was literally impossible, and somehow, now everything was worse. Oh dear lord he was running again and he really didn’t want to run so much god augh.

Wait. Where was he now?

Monitors, drab decorations (or lack thereof), impressive chair, weird device thingy, was this the place where they started? At least before the Organizer transported him over to the museum. Could he…do something with all those buttons? At least see if they worked.

As Jordan approached the bank of monitors, they all suddenly went black and then displayed the face of the Organizer leering down at him. “Hello!” said the Organizer

“WAAUUUGH!” said Jordan in return and he fell over backwards in his desperate attempts to flee (again). And then the Organizer was suddenly in front of him and setting him back on his feet.

“Surprised you?” he asked rather flippantly. “Oh dear, silly me. Must’ve given you a heart attack, oh my. I wasn’t done talking to you because I know how much you don’t want to win this and about all those other ideas you have flitting about in your mind like dramatic sacrifices and making your life meaningful. So before you go all suicidal prematurely and end this whole thing before it actually gets interesting again because frankly, you’re getting about as interesting as a stone wall here, I want to ask you; what message can you give?”

Jordan, still puzzling out the mess of dialogue, could only manage a “Whu—“

“Think about it hypothetically here, and let’s be generous enough to allow you the means with which to contact other contestants, hm? Then what can you say right now? ‘If you win, you go into another battle called All-Stars?’ Not a very important or helpful message.”

“I, um,” Jordan managed to stammer.

“Say we were generous enough in this hypothetical situation to give you, somehow, knowledge of how to destroy every Grandmaster and thus stop every battle occurring right now, everybody celebrates, we all get tea and go home. If you got this knowledge, do you think I would honestly just leave you alone? Because even if you found a weakness you could exploit, I could just erase you from existence, no underworld or whatever you believe in or anything. Or if I was nice, I could make it so you don’t even remember that you had the knowledge to begin with. You see? You’ve been chasing a romantic dream of a romantic death and neither will ever occur.” The Organizer paused for a bit. Jordan breathed heavily, yet did not move to take out his inhaler. “Actually, I never really thought of you much as a romantic. More cynical. Hm.”

Jordan took advantage of this pause and said, “I’ll, I’ll,”

“You honestly can’t do anything, kiddo. Face up to it already. In every single timeline, you couldn’t do anything. I seriously had to delve into an impossible one to get a Jordan that turns out somewhat interesting. Maybe I should have had him to begin with. In any case, even now, you’re running away when other Jordan’s possibly about to win this whole thing for you, which, as I remember, is something you don’t want happening.”

“I, er, what?” Jordan stuttered before suddenly flipping through The Potched Kumquat.

“Don’t bother. We’ve completely branched off what is going on in there. That finished before I decided to bring in Other Jordan. Which I suppose doesn’t make sense to you. Basically, that book is completely useless to you now, and yes, you did die in the end.”

“I can’t…I’m not going to…”

“Even if you were going to make good on your suicide threats, I wouldn’t let you end the game just when the action’s starting to get interesting. Actually, I was just going to give you something like a fair warning, you see? Try to end the whole thing now before a huge climax is even starting to boil, and I’ll have to…hmm…leave you in a state where you can’t kill yourself. I guess that doesn’t sound suitably horrible enough, does it? I’ll take away your pyrokinetic powers and put you into a disgusting, blobby, squishy little form where you won’t even be able to walk without your many little blobby legs shooting off all over the place as though you’re walking on banana peels. I’ll probably be able to come up with something even more horrible than that later. I have a fairly good imagination.”

Jordan stared at the Organizer for a long time. He heard a faint crash coming from some other room.

“So basically,” The Organizer continued, “You can either just keep out of the way and let your other you do his job and either end up winning or losing through no power of your own, or you could actually do something for a change and take part in the fight. I suggest if you don’t want to win so badly, you do something about…you. You know what I mean.”

And then Jordan took off towards where he thought he heard the crash come from. The Organizer just stood there, calling out, “Remember! Little blobby legs! It’s not pleasant!”

----------------------------------------

“I told you! I told you he was totally up to something!” Rong shouted.

“And I’m telling you I cannot imagine how he would be able to get a prosthetic arm, especially seeing as the arm is from that mannequin who died already, the sword from a swordsman who also died, and a complete overhaul of his personality in the few minutes we didn’t see him,” Right shot back. The elemental sword was making fighting troublesome, especially after Rong instinctively tried to set fire to him and it all went to power the sword and now he appeared to be on fire and taunting them. Luckily, the sword appeared to be stuck on ‘fire,’ so Right felt certain he could safely use his shitload of water to attack him. Unfortunately, the water was more likely to just evaporate as soon as it got near and if not, then it got eaten by the Manikin’s arm. Somehow.

“Unfortunately, this version of Jordan doesn’t seem to be willing to talk too much,” said Right as they continued running through random rooms. “It would probably be a good idea to disarm him. Though I can’t say I want to go anywhere near that wooden arm, considering where it’s from. So perhaps we should go about it literally.”

“Would you stupid lizards just stop so I can kill you and win my own battle!” Jordan B shouted out behind them, having found out through trial and error that he simply just couldn’t set them on fire. Finally, he just sliced his sword through the floor as easily as though it were melted chocolate, swinging it forwards and up. The flaming crack in the floor kept going, though, spewing fire and buckling the floor. It quickly caught up to the dragons and the shaking actually managed to throw them into the air. Being in a hallway, there wasn’t much air to begin with and they slammed right into the ceiling and emerged in the room above it.

“He’s probably going to be able to get up here as well fairly soon, so get ready,” Right said quickly while getting some water ready.

“Get ready for what? What’m I supposed to do? We didn’t’ go over a—“

Jordan jumped through the hole they had made in the ceiling/floor and immediately, Right reached out and grabbed the sword with his claws (oh dear god that’s hot) and, leaning in close to Jordan’s face, sprayed water from his mouth. It still didn’t do much, though at least it startled him enough for him to flinch. Then Rong came in and headbutted him, of course, shrugging off all the fire like it was nothing. Didn’t manage to impale him, though, but sent him backwards.

Right tried to keep his hold on the sword, but the wooden arm’s grip (hm, why wasn’t it burning away?) was too strong and coupled with the force of the headbutt, the sword just simply slid from his grip, taking some scales with it as well.

“Agh,” Right spat out in both pain and frustration.

“You alright?” Rong asked, biting back another smug remark.

“I can grow it back,” Right grunted as Jordan recovered and pushed himself back to his feet.

“Alrighty then, I guess this’ll actually be a little tougher than Hatman, eh?” he said, strangely cheerful. “No problem, no problem…” He swung his sword as though experimentally before charging in again.

“Okay, well, um—“ Right said before blocking a strike of the sword and gaaaahh that’s hot and this time Rong went ahead and caught the sword in her teeth and tried to pull it away but again, the Manikin’s arm kept its grip. Jordan then stepped forward to try to force the sword down to slice through Rong, so then Rong had to push back instead of pull. And Right came in and tried to snap the arm in two, but it turns out it’s hard to bite something that can bite back and also grow mouths everywhere so Right was biting it and at the same time it was biting him so overall, it was just a weird freaking tangle of stuff.

Then Jordan punched Rong in the…neck? And then Rong snorted smoke right in his eyes and he stumbled back and the Manikin arm let go of Right who took the chance to just rip a part of the arm off and then Jordan kicked Eemp and that pushed them apart.

And then they stared each other down until the other Jordan came stumbling in which surprised just about everybody, especially Jordan A. Then, quickly thinking, he collected all the fire that was engulfing Jordan B and whisked it away to form a fireball in the air.

Tough Jordan stared for a while then said a little casually, “I had no idea I could do that.”

Right took this chance to try to stab right through him as a sword.

“Hey, man,” Jordan B called out as he parried and moved to try to chop off Rong’s head but was blocked. “You, or me or whatever, I’d kinda like my fire back. It’s good protection.”

“Oh goddammit, why the hell are there two wimps,” Rong moaned, turning her attention to Jordan A in case he tried to flank them or something.

“I told you, this one isn’t the same Jordan,” Right said before turning back towards Jordan B.

“Look! Um, I don’t want to win! If you beat them, uh, I have to go through another battle thing, and I just don’t want to go through that again!” Jordan A shouted out. He jumped backwards as Rong snapped at him, causing Jordan B to gruffly call out, “You stupid blue lizard, you aren’t killing him…”

“Are you even listening to me? If you win too, you’ll just have to go through another battle against seven totally insane guys!”

“Yeah? And I’ll just kill those guys too. You really just wanna die here instead of win and fight again? At least you’ll be alive!” Jordan B spat.

“Is he arguing with himself oh god he’s arguing with himself this is stupid”

“Oh shut up we argue all the time—“ Right managed to get out before going back to the sword fight.

“Okay, I don’t want to die! I really don’t! But I can’t handle another fight! Maybe you can, but I just can’t!”

“Well, sorry, but I need to get back to my battle, you get it? And I can’t do that unless I kill these lizards, which means that, whether you want to or not, you win. That’s just how it goes. You don’t have to help me if you don’t want to. Really, though, help would be appreciated,” he added slightly hopefully after pushing back an attack from a giant broadsword.

Jordan A stood there for a while, getting glared down by Rong, still holding up a freaking huge fireball in the sky and not entirely sure what to freaking do. “I…uh,” he said. An idea crossed his mind. In fact, it had crossed his mind several times ever since his talk (or rather, lecture) with the Organizer. But he really didn’t think he could…I mean…sure, this Jordan was different than him, but he was still him, you know? You just don’t…I mean…you can’t…and also he was sure he watched or read something about killing yourself and then disappearing, but that was time travel but this felt eerily like that sort of situation and…you just don’t do that…and goddammit HE HAD TO DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW IF HE REALLY WANTED TO PREVENT HIMSELF FROM WINNING AAAAUUUGH.

Originally posted on MSPA by Dragon Fogel.

---

Oh god I have to do it or I'll go through another battle and I can't survive that oh god but I'm killing me well he's not quite me but still oh god oh god aagh I can't do it but it's that or I die even more horribly aagh oh forget it I'm just going to do it here goes sorry other me

Jordan couldn't take it any longer. This battle had been the worst experience of his life, and if he actually survived, it would only get worse.

He flung the gigantic fireball at his other self. Jordan B was busy with the dragons. He wouldn't have time to react, right?

As it turned out, he could. He shifted the sword to his other hand, preparing to absorb the fireball with it while the Manikin-arm reached towards Right's incoming strike.

Right recoiled suddenly. He didn't want to be eaten by that thing. It probably wasn't pleasant.

The sudden shift in weight caused Eemp to step back, surprising Rong.

"What did you do that for?" she shouted. "You could have at least warned... ACK, GET IT OFF ME!"

The Manikin arm had, as it turned out, hit the other dragon and was now starting to eat her. Rong panicked, which in her case meant breathing fire. Jordan B was unconcerned, as he was able to keep her mouth away from him, and away from Jordan A - after all, even if the cowardly idiot was trying to kill him, the Organizer had been quite clear on the fact that the weakling had to survive.

Speaking of that, why hadn't the fireball reached his sword yet? He was better at holding it in the manikin arm; his regular arm was already getting tired. He glanced out of the corner of his eye...

And saw that Jordan A had changed tactics. The fire Rong was spewing out in a panic was being drawn into the fireball, which was now hovering in midair.

What seemed especially strange was that the fireball was getting smaller as more flames were added to it. Jordan B would have expected a bigger fireball, not a smaller one.

Jordan A recalled some text from early on in the Souvague Bwarl. The "Salsburg Loch, Knocka Roar" had cast a fire spell, and it happened to be struck with a blast from a gravity gun. This improbable event had led to the creation of a miniature sun, and the resulting explosion had been immense.

Trying to achieve the same effect with pyrokinesis instead of gravity was an incredible strain. And Jordan probably couldn't make an explosion on the same level no matter how much he strained himself. But it didn't matter; he just needed an explosion, period. And he was about to get one.

As he felt the pressure building up, Jordan A moved the fireball closer to the floor, as Jordan B let go of Rong and ran towards it, hoping to draw the energy into Alex's sword before Jordan A did whatever idiotic thing he was trying to do.

He regretted the decision when the explosion came, blasting an enormous hole in the floor and knocking him backwards with the shockwave, right into Jordan A.

The Jordans fell through the floor beneath them, weakened. Eemp, Right, and Rong were flung in the opposite direction, landing back in the library.

***

Meanwhile, the two Jordans had landed in an astonishingly nondescript room.

There was no furniture. The walls were completely white, and didn't even seem like they were really walls.

The only object of note was a strange dark sphere in the middle of the room.

It seemed to be made of glass. What was inside couldn't be clearly described.

But Jordan A had some idea of what it was. The Organizer has mentioned it at the start of the round. This was the portal to the Timeless Interstice. Whatever that was.

Jordan B got up, groaning. He walked over to the still prone Jordan A and grabbed him by his shirt collar - thankfully, with the human arm, not the Manikin one.

"Nice going, wimp! If I didn't have to keep you alive to make the deal go through, I'd kill you with my bare hands!"

Jordan A whimpered weakly. But he also noticed something.

Jordan B had dropped his sword. It was in a small pile of rubble next to the sealed portal.

He began channeling fire into the blade as his other self yelled at him to "man up already" and "stay out of my way". As the elemental energy filled the sword, it began to shake.

By the time Jordan B realized something was off, and that Jordan A wasn't simply meekly taking in the lecture, it was too late.

Without a wielder to control the energy, the sword exploded spectacularly. The seal on the portal shattered, and it opened, creating a vacuum that started to draw the two Jordan Smiths towards it.

The two Jordans had very different final words as they were pulled towards the infinite abyss.

Jordan B's were "Nice going, dumbass!"

Jordan A's weren't so much words as a long and extended scream.

***

The fall hadn't hurt the dragons much, but Eemp had landed headfirst, and was having trouble getting to his feet. His attempts to do so clumsily knocked books off the shelves.

It didn't help that Right and Rong had resumed their usual argument.

"We should have just killed him!" Rong shouted. "I'm not sure why there were two of them or why one of them had the Manikin's arm and that Alex idiot's sword, but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened if we'd just killed him!"

"I would be more concerned with the fact that we're having trouble getting up and, for all we know, that second Jordan is going to come bursting in here and we won't be able to do anything about it."

"Look, the next time we see either of them, I'm just blasting him! No questions! Understood?"

Right sighed. "I suppose you have a point."

"And another thing - wait, what?"

"If we had just killed him, we would have won and the Organizer would have sent us home. Or whatever he's going to do."

Rong paused. It always took her aback when Right agreed with her. She tried to think of some way this could be a problem for her.

As she was considering the question, Eemp's feet knocked a book called Ale-Starrs onto her head.

It then fell open on the floor, revealing the list of combatants.

Only the first and third lines were filled in. But slowly, a name started to appear on the fourth line.

When it was clear enough to read, it said "Imp, Rife, end Roan".

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

"Oh, for..."

Omnipotence comes with a fair few drawbacks rarely considered by those not suffused with it from their first timeless moments; none are particularly egregious from a mortal's perspective, and certainly not enough to dissuade any serious seeker of power, but they can be somewhat vexatious. One of the more mundane and relatable of these is the simple inability to truly blaspheme: when gods are not just something that holds no sway over you, but actually entities that are about as far from ineffable and awe-inspiring as it's possible to be, taking one's name in vain or invoking their curses seems silly. For that matter, any random collection of mundane syllables deemed profane by whatever squishy culture that first spewed them out lacks any real significance; a lazy (and almost certainly mortal) author might be tempted to employ mentions of twisted Black Speech, primal words of unspeakable power and evil, sounds that warp and break reality around them and send minds that survive them reeling into the deepest pits of insanity. But again, from a certain perspective, even that sort of thing is amateur hour. It's truly hard to express displeasure adequately when few things have real significance or power and taboo is a meaningless concept.

Anyone that heard the Organizer's two little words would therefore have been hard-pressed to say whether he was slightly frustrated, livid beyond belief, or anywhere in between. For all that his words suggested a mindset that would have made a human click their tongue and say "drat", his actions betrayed much stronger emotions.

Whatever form he had taken or been imitating at the time he spoke was gone in an instant; whatever it had been was forgotten as quickly, given the one he took. It was simply impossible to keep both in the mind at the same time, and especially to reconcile the reality of what was happening with the cheerful lavender man the phrase "The Organizer" conjured.

This new shape couldn't truly be described with words like "shape", "form", or "appearance" anyway; for one, it was formless: ebbing, flowing, changing, roiling, and difficult to focus on. The impression was in a small way analogous to looking at a picture of a mask which could be pointed towards or away from the viewer: there were simply not enough cues to deduce the true contents of the picture. In the case of the mask, the lack of the third dimension obfuscated comprehension; in the case of the Organizer, the fact that words like "dimension" probably weren't accurate or applicable went a long way towards explaining its incomprehensibility. To say that "a dark, oily, oddly-solid fog, full of tentacles and teeth and bits of crawling flesh and hints of even more twisted things bolted from where the Organizer had been towards the Jordans' dying place" would be no more accurate than saying "a small pink trifle merrily tapdanced its way towards the Timeless Interstice", but it does a much better job at hinting at the horror elicited by the transformation.

In the same way that words invented by three-dimensional beings occupying what they called reality had no real hope of accurately relaying what happened after that little "Oh, for...", it is impossible to convey what had happened (and indeed, was happening) to the Jordans. Hurling their bodies into the Interstice caused nothing with any real analogue in most universes; the Interstice wasn't filled with the void of true nothingness that filled the multiverse, or matter of any description regardless of how exotic, or even the anti-matter which is just matter in a funny moustache putting on a silly accent. There were no catastrophic explosions following the Jordans' passage, or limb-rending extradimensional beasts waiting beyond the veil to tear them apart; their voices simply stopped as they were hurled into realms Man Is Not Equipped To Know. The best that can be hoped is that what followed was simply beyond their ability to experience; who knows, after something like that, perhaps they would have been glad to know their erasure was so complete as to prevent even the possibility of an afterlife; the prospect of an eternity with the knowledge of what HAD happened to hem is certainly not a pleasant one.

In any case, what was understandable was the general thrust of the action; Jordan was certainly, irrevocably dead; so was Jordan, for that matter. Something about the manner of his death had upset the Organizer, who moved faster than simple teleportation would allow towards the sphere Jordan had so hastily broken; in the wake of the speeding thing, the Citadel was torn or battered apart, shreds of reality colliding and recombining and falling apart randomly. This was nothing compared to what was happening in front of him, however, but that treads again into indescribable territory. A useful assumption to make would be that the Interstice was leaking out into or tainting the world around it; that would certainly explain the great, expanding area of pure ineffability that was marring the Organizer's lair.

Whatever the truth was, the grandmaster arrived at his destination quickly and put a stop to the problem in short order. Ostensibly, the alternative was "allow the destruction of everything that is". Or something like that. The details don't matter; all that's important is that things became, before the still-upside-down dragons even had a chance to become aware there was a problem, stable once again. The phrase "Imp, Rife, end Roan" finished scribing itself, and the trio it represented disappeared for the last time. For a while.

They found themselves in a grassy field. Standing nearby was the smiling man they knew as the Organizer, once again all lilac and grins; they had no reason to believe he had ever been anything else, of course. While the trio found they could not move, which was typical for encounters with the grandmaster, this paralysis was not accompanied by the sense of nonexistence that came with his usual round transitions. They were somewhere real, without the intervening break in the dark.

The Organizer stepped forward. "Congratulations again, my champions! Even in the face of quite literally impossible odds, you made it through! You are the winners. Well done."

He gestured to the landscape around them. "Breathe in, although I don't know where that air actually goes, the sweet scent of your native world. Your native country in fact, Ms Dragon. It must be nice to be home; I'm told there's quite the appeal in returning, though I don't see it myself. It's also one half of what I vaguely promised at the outset of our time together, if you recall.

The other half, of course, was the ambiguous "riches and rewards". "Rewards and riches" actually, now I come to think of it. Riches, of course, are easy. Not that I know what a dragon ever needed with gold, especially a dragon that's just a head stitched to a spider-infested scarecrow, but it seems traditional. Perhaps one or the other of you will find it a pleasant snack."

A pile of glittering gold materialized just a few feet away from the newly-christened champion; gold ingots and coins and jewelry were stacked and jumbled haphazardly, replete with gems and inlay. The sheer quantity of valuable metals and minerals would have put most rulers' personal treasuries quite to shame, to say nothing of the masterful craftsmanship all of the jewelry and occasional statuettes were made with.

"So there's that; more riches than you could probably ever think of what to do with. Not what I'd call particularly satisfying, though. Certainly not enough to satisfy the "rewards" portion as well. So, I've given it a little thought, and I think there are a couple of small things I can do for you. It's not even so much doing anything as letting you know things in any case, but I suspect you'll appreciate it nevertheless.

First: you'd probably notice this yourselves eventually, but your time away from this world has significantly weakened some rather important enchantments on your persons. Keep in mind that I mean "enchantment" in the "mind-affecting spells" sense, not the "persistent magic" sense. That is to say, you're your own man! Men. Dragons. For the most part anyway. Second:" here, he snapped his hand and a scrap of paper appeared on the ground nearby the treasure horde. "A little gift, but I think it's a nice one. A bit of a reminder for you."

The Organizer blinked a couple of times and sighed, rubbing his eyes. "I think... I think that's it. Enjoy your rewards! Enjoy the prestige. Enjoy your lives, really. Try to keep enjoying them for that matter. I'm sure you figured out what's to come, one way or another, but that's ages away. I assume. Time in these worlds is a bit confusing from the outside, but I should be able to manage it such that you don't have to worry about seeing me again for a while. Until then, then."

And he was gone, with no fanfare or effect, leaving only the trio, their treasure, and the paper. The paper was just a small slip of parchment with two words messily scrawled across it; one was in English, the other, Chinese.

---

It was some time later, but as the Organizer had intimated to his champions, it would be difficult to say how much. The grandmaster himself was sitting in the high-backed swivel chair he had greeted his finalists from, a copy of Potched Kumquat on his lap. The book had already finished recording its last near-illegible sentence, and now sat closed as the Organizer gently spun in his chair.

The room around him was much less like the Monitor's lair than it had been at the start of the final round; fragments of memory and ersatz reality had collided or blended or switched places in some areas, such that one wall of the steel bunker had been replaced with rows of bookcases, while a number of instruments protruded haphazardly from the ceiling. The Organizer had picked this room primarily because it had retained the highest resemblance to the original out of most of the Citadel; many other areas were so smashed-together that they resembled nothing so much as the spare-drawer of a disorganized model-builder, while some places no longer even seemed to have constituent parts that he recognized. It was going to take some tidying up.

He didn't really react when she showed up; he'd expected she would, at least as a courtesy, but he didn't have much to say just yet. He waited for her to make the first move, and she did as soon as his idle pivoting had him facing her.

"Well, congratulations. It was rather spectacular, especially the final few rounds."

The Organizer waved a hand and sighed, then stood up. "It rather was, even if I had to force things on a bit. Good show, good characters, good plot. Wish I'd seen more of a rebellion, though. Monitor had the right idea, sticking a confederate in with the lot."

The Composer bristled slightly. "You're right, insofar as the sentiment goes, but... It's hard to give that machine much credit. It's a bit like saying "My goodness, I am so proud of this little cockroach for only spreading a little plague when it eats my food!". Even if it is a clever little cockroach, it's still a bothersome insect."

The Organizer rolled his eyes, even though it was a bit hard to see on the Composer's borrowed face. "Really, you're right. it's obviously silly to expect everyone running these things to be overdeities or whatever, but... There can still be standards, right? I'll be completely honest, I was quite relieved when you intervened with the Eccentric, to say nothing of the Wordsmith. He'd been dead for millennia! And that little group of cultists, calling themselves gentlemen..."

His guest's hands raised in something of a 'you're preaching to the choir' gesture. "Not to mention the Redeemer. "Call me Zaire" indeed. It's almost painful to watch a bunch of mortals and pretenders running around, hosting battles, acting like they were on our level... I almost wish the Prestidigitator hadn't stepped in. It's not as though we weould have had much of a problem wresting the rules back from that frail little swordsman."

"You know, I rather like the Prestidigitator. Not what he used to be, but he's got credentials, and I respect someone who respects tradition. Shame to see someone like him go to pot, really, but at least he's no Fool." With no warning, he turned and began striding across the floor, beckoning for the Composer to follow. "Come on, I'd better take a look at what's left of this place, and you might find it interesting. No reason to interrupt our conversation."

The pair moved, only occasionally physically, though increasingly-irrational architecture and jumbled locales. The Organizer would occasionally stop and sigh while poking at something, apparently at random, while he and the Composer chatted idly about those they considered the less impressive grandmasters. Eventually, as they picked their way across a room that couldn't decide if it was an auditorium or a forest, the Composer changed the subject. "Quite a champion you have in those dragons. Certainly more interesting than mine, and doubtless more powerful than the Director's. Still, the next battle is a way off. What do you plan to do with your once-again truly-limitless time?"

"Well, you know. Lots to do here on the home front. The Interstice fix was just temporary, I've got lots of reality threads to disentangle as you can see, and it's not like I didn't have hobbies before I got involved with the battles. Gotta plan for All-Stars too! Busy busy busy, really."

"Come on, I know that's not it. You're obviously not ready to leave all this behind yet."

"Well, I was thinking of starting another match at some point in the future. Keep the old guard's fingers in the future of Grand Battles, that sort of thing. It'll be a while, of course, but it's not like time means much. Oh, and I'm definitely going to keep toying with the Observer. That's far too much fun to give up."

The Composer stopped dead. "You what?"

"Oh, didn't you know? I've been manifesting to some of his first batch of contestants, telling them secrets and helping them plot. Really, it's the sort of rebellion I wanted for my own battle, but it's also nice to see it directed at that self-righteous little cyclops."

She drew herself up, lips pursed. "I don't keep myself well-apprised of his secondhand little bouts. I'd rather cohost with the Controller than spend any time with that one-eyed waste of divinity or even dignify him by watching his trash battles."

"Really? Then I guess you don't know... Hm. Well, then, I probably shouldn't say..."

""Don't know what, precisely? Are you implying the Observer has something important?"

"Well, it might not even matter if all goes well. If anyone has the power to erase him, it's that faceless thing he picked. Not that I predict that actually going anywhere, but, you know. Hope springs eternal and all that."

The Composer struggled to keep her face passive and her voice level; it certainly wouldn't behoove her to lose her temper now, but dealing with the Organizer could certainly be frustrating. Still, he was the genuine article, and it was certainly better than most other options."Don't dodge the question. What don't I know about the Observer's battles?"

"Well, you know it's hard for me to pick up on all the subtleties of this multiverse's politics and whatever, so I can't say with any certainty or real clarity, buuuut... I dunno, I'm pretty sure old Observer and his battles should be of more interest to you than disdainfully ignoring them. He's not exactly what he seems, you know? I'm being honest, that's about all I've picked up for sure. You might just want to look into his stuff more deeply. You know he's all about trickery and misdirection!"

"And that's all you have to say about it?"

"Well, I mean, that's all there really is to it. I certainly haven't wasted much effort scrutinizing some of the less desirable elements of our little social club."

"Just sabotaging them?"

The Organizer grinned unabashedly, the first real sign of his usual cheerful flippancy she'd seen since arriving. Honestly, seeing him so comparatively serious had been a bit unsettling. "Mostly him, although... I'll be honest, it's been such fun I might see if I can't find my way in somewhere else, too. Like I said, I can't tell you much more about him, but I suspect he's going to have his hands full pretty soon; now might be the best time to get a bit of snooping done or talk to some of the more reputable grandmasters a bit; it's not like your plate's too full at the moment, what with your first battle done."

There was silence for a time as the Organizer picked at some errant strands of spacetime, but it was broken before too long. "Just, don't forget about me, you know? You're right when you say I've got a lot of free time ahead of me, but I don't think I'm quite ready to just fade away. There's still a lot of fun to be had with some of these self-styled little gods, and I want to be part of it. I know you do too, so just... Keep me in mind."

"Hm. I must admit, I'm a little surprised to see you so enthusiastic about all this. I thought your "scheming and collusion" was just going through the motions."

"Well, it was at first. They schemed, so I had to scheme. They meddled, so did I. Just how it was done, I thought. But then, I thought..." There was a brief pause before he spoke again.

"Well, there's a few of our friends I'd like to see exit the stage. But mostly, well... It was so much fun to set a group of mortals against each other, imagine how satisfying to do the same with those who think they're all powerful."

Originally posted on MSPA by MalkyTop.

---

”I can’t believe it!”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

“I would’ve liked a little choice! Or maybe a little input!” Despite her fuming and loudly proclaimed frustration, the blue dragon was rather greedily munching down on the pile of shiny stuff so generously given to them. It was delicious. And would probably last for a very long time.

“So you’re saying that you’re not satisfied?”

She swallowed another mouthful of possibly priceless statuettes, glanced at both the slip of paper in her fellow dragon’s hand and at the pile of glittery things and sighed. “No, I’m fine. You?”

“I’m fine too.” So she continued snarfing down on the goodies and he continued staring at the slip of paper while the mass of fireproof straw and cloth sat in the grass and stared at nothing in particular.

“I can’t help but think that ‘Adelinde’ is a strange name for you,” he commented, causing her to look back up again indignantly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked hotly, ready to defend the name she didn’t even know a few minutes ago.

“It’s just so…nice. Sweet-sounding.”

“Are you saying I’m not nice?”

“Are you saying you are?”

After a moment, Adelinde had to agree that no, she wasn’t particularly nice. Not that that bothered her. Being nice meant not setting fire to people and eating them and also not stealing shiny stuff and eating those too. So as usual, she was Rong. Er, wrong. She would have to get used to that. But she wasn’t about to drop this argument.

“So what’s your name, hm?”

He looked up from the paper this time, distractedly. “You didn’t read it?”

“I can’t read your chicken scratch language!” Adelinde was met with a rather glowering glare.

“And I couldn’t read your chicken scratch language when I first came here.”

She may have been prideful, but she was capable of recognizing a need for an apology. “Okay, okay, sorry. So, Not-Right, what’s your name?”

“Well, first of all, I think you should know I carry a few titles. For one thing, I was a Zhulong, that is, a Vermilion dragon, but there are some more specific names, such as while you could probably be called a Fucanglong, I was known as Yinglong though I think in another city—“

“God! Shut up! I didn’t ask for all that! So a bunch of Chinese humans call you this or that. What do I call you?”

He gave a dramatic pause which she took for embarrassment and added, with a grin, “Is it a stupid name?”

“Oh shush. It’s a name that speaks of cleverness and strength.”

“Okay, whatever, what’s the actual name?”

“Well, I suppose if I had other dragon friends,” he said a little hesitantly, “They’d call me Shen Jiangmin.”

“So what, I call you Shen? Gee, you made it sound so grand and it’s just a small thing. Adelinde is such a better name.”

“First of all, if you let me translate the characters for you, maybe you would be a little more impressed. Second of all, you don’t know anything about the name structure of the Chinese, do you? I guess you can just call me Jiāng.”

“Ehhh…Jjjjyeng…?”

He cringed. “I believe I’ve heard you just kill my language brutally. You’ll get it eventually, I suppose. I still have to get used to it myself.”

After all that stuff about names supposedly being powerful, he certainly didn’t feel much different. But somehow, he felt more…aware? Sort of. He certainly felt he could change the weather. Right now, in fact.

But maybe he’ll save that for later.

“Do you actually recognize this place?”

“Mmmm,” said Adelinde, crunching on a goblet and looking around. “Sorta, I guess. I didn’t really hang around fields. Hey, you know, ya think we can drag this over to my cave?”

Jiang decided not to make a wry joke and instead said, “I can’t help but notice that we can’t possibly carry all that.”

Adelinde stared at the pile sadly. “I guess not. Oh well. We’ll just leave it then. I have no idea where the hell my cave is anymore anyways.” After a little sigh, she said, “Maybe carry a little snack?”

Rolling his eyes, Jiang wrapped a whisker around the slip of paper and carried a few of the golden trinkets in his arms. Adelinde stared at him meaningfully and he sighed and grew another pair to carry a few more.

“So where to?” she finally asked.

“I actually wouldn’t mind visiting dear old Benelea. A surprise greeting, I suppose.”

Adelinde stared at him for a long time before plastering a knowing grin on her face. “So, not too high and mighty for a little vengeance?” Jiang shrugged helplessly, unsure what to say as they started up in the air. “After that, though, I’m gonna take us sight-seeing! I at least know sort of where we are. I hope all those kingdoms haven’t forgotten about me.”

“I can’t say that I trust your sense of direction much, but okay. And after that, we’ll go to China. And yes, I’ll be nice and visit more than just lakes and my own shrines. But you better behave yourself there.”

Adelinde grunted noncommittally and came to a small realization. “Hey, that’s right, your types don’t go on grand rampages through towns, don’t they!”

“Well, I might have flooded a place once, maybe.”

“No, real rampages, with eating cows and setting fire and everything.”

“I can’t set fire to things.”

“Oh well, you can still eat a cow and kidnap princesses.”

“…You kidnapped princesses? What did you even do with them…?”

“Oh shut up. Gimme that shiny thing.”

"...What would I want with a princess?"

"Oh shut up."

And the three went ahead and continued in a direction that may or may not lead back to the old kingdom where they had spent all of their technically undead life. They might be a little overconfident in thinking that they could take down a whole kingdom with its own wizard, but for one thing, they've taken down kingdoms before and for another, Jiang was making sure to herd a particularly horrible storm right in front of them.

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

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As expected, here is the Pitched Wordle!

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And of course, its image version for Javaless Americans (and javaless foreigners too I GUESS):