Intense Struggle! (Round 7 - The Database)

Originally posted on MSPA by SleepingOrange.

---

It is best, probably, not to contemplate the sky-turtle too closely, nor to think too much about the building even now teetering precariously on its back. The turtle was no more in possession of its rightful form than the hundreds of sapients swarming around and through its new burden, and to attempt to describe or take in the melange of conflicting elements that made up its new body was not simply confusing, but offputting. Looking at it with any critical thought made the eye water and the mind sore, so it was better simply to accept the shape of the turtle and ignore its constituent parts. The same went for the amalgamation of material that only loosely formed the shape of an office building now, and if it was true for the place, it was doubly so for its inhabitants.

Inside, on the ground floor, Clara hadn't even had time to pull herself free of Karel's limestone and amber grip before everything in front of her degenerated into chaos. Leaving aside entirely the structurally-impossible makeup of the room – and the dangerous buckling of those hundred-story walls that continued to spread as impossibility caught up with itself – the humanoid spirits were even within moments of their reincarnation locked into a frantic melee. Screaming with terror and newness and pain and rage, they battled seemingly mindlessly and instinctually. It was a very one-sided war on the turtle's back: only one or a handful of beings had come from the medieval or information-age world; by and large, everyone present was from the most advanced time-space-line. Seemingly, that should have meant the eradication of all other realities in short order; however, that short-sighted assumption neglected to take into account the blunt, bloody facts of a troll in the room.

At the monster's feet was the sundered glass carcass of an erstwhile princess; deprived of its prize and commanded by knowledge it didn't understand to destroy the futuristic interlopers, it bellowed and swung and corrupted with its touch, in vengeance as much as in the throes of survival instinct. A delicately articulated insectoid creature splintered and sprayed wood chips across the room as the troll rained hairy fists down across its torso, dying with a keening screech that made pained tears well up in all eyes presently capable of welling. A security droid launched bolts of stunning energy, but the beastly thing shrugged them off and battered the receptionist to death with his reinforcements. Clara shouted to end the madness, pulled as though to drag Karel to safety, but couldn't make herself heard or understood and couldn't steer her charge any more than she could direct a flood.

From a nearby hallway issued forth the serpentine or perhaps centipedoid coils of some unfathomable machine, its clawed limbs rendered more deadly than they'd ever been in its own reality by the caprices of chance reconstruction. It undulated about the lobby, herding the troll into a corner and rallying the sentient masses around it, clicking unintelligibly all the while. It fired several bolts of electricity at its target, although judging from the ones that arced wide or even simply grounded in other humanoids it was possible the electrical assault was entirely unintentional; the troll shouted in pain and the smell of burning hair and fish filled a room already awaft with conflicting odors of lilac and steel and salt. It retaliated by barreling shoulderfirst into the mechanical aggressor, snapping it in two only to have both halves wrap menacingly around its arms.

"K k-k-k-pt k-tpa k kt!" juddered the snakipede.

"Grauwlgh!" thundered the troll.

Sssssnkrak, groaned the machine's mostly-metallic frame.

Fighters and features and Karel and Clara were all pelted with coruscating shrapnel as gears and actuators pinged off the walls. The troll cut a swathe through the still-standing crowd of humans and humanish things, several limp robotic limbs still entangled in its matted coat.

"Enough!" shouted Clara again, this time throwing caution to the wind and winding a shroud of newly-freed mana around herself. She finally slipped free of Karel's unheeding grip and dashed across the floor, hoping to restrain or immobilize the troll. If she'd had the time to think, she'd have followed trains of thought that lead towards "If I have to kill it to save these people, I suppose I'll have to."; if she'd had time to think, she'd have had time to vastly overestimate her ability to deal with a rampaging troll no longer shackled to the limitations of a fleshy body.

She swung her cane, charged as it was with energy and enmeshed with a spell that would paralyze the monster; she let out a little "uff" as a shovellike fist slammed into her torso and catapulted her across the room; she couldn't even cry out as her spine snapped against a granite slab of wall. She sank to the floor, head cradled against her chest in a distressingly unnatural way, wimple sliding to cover her face like a shroud.

It was about this time that Aegis bounded into the room, chest puffed out and gauntlets raised aggressively before he'd even had a chance to take in the scene. As he glanced around, heroic expression wilting to one of shock, Clara's limp form rocketed past his face and collided with a wall with a sickening crunch.

He didn't even stop to see if she was hurt. If she had been, badly enough, it wouldn't matter because the game would move on; instead, he reasoned in that split-second decisions-without-thought way men in battle have, his priority was to make sure that troll didn't do anything worse. Even as he crossed the piecemeal battlefield that the lobby had become, he was swinging a wild haymaker straight towards the troll's face; naturally, it dodged out of the way, but not so much that it avoided the halberd that Aegis's gloves had become. Leaking unnamable ichors, it bellowed again and grabbed the weapon with both hands; before it could swing and batter the man's meaty shell against the same wall that had claimed Clara, the halberd shrank and contracted, becoming near-instantly a wickedly-spiked eveningstar. The troll relinquished its grip, both palms spewing fluids, and kicked viciously at Aegis's knees.

Not really having expecting such singleminded retaliation in the face of such grievous injuries and presumable pain, Aegis went down. Hard. He only just had the presence of mind to roll to the side without even waiting for the troll to swing first, which was all that saved him from a lightning-fast pulverizing strike that landed where his head had been. He probably couldn't have kept up his game of whack-a-cop for much longer – at least, not on the winning side – but it turned out he didn't have to: another spindly creature leapt onto the troll's back and began throttling it, and what was probably once a human under all that tar picked up a chunk of support beam and began enthusiastically bashing the anachronistic monster.

Much like their predecessors, they – and the dozen or so other futuredwellers that piled onto the medieval interloper – had little luck in damaging the behemoth, or indeed surviving past several moments of frantic attacking, but they certainly succeeded in distracting it long enough for Aegis to right himself and avoid a pasty death beneath monstrous troll fists. That probably wasn't much consolation to the beings that themselves were pulverized, and in fact they probably would have been quite disappointed by his survival, but Aegis at least was happy about it. This time wielding a jagged bastard sword, he charged back into the fray, circling around the troll's back and delivering several impressive slashes.

On the last swing, his blade became stuck in troll flesh or bone or who knows what the thing might be made of; he struggled for several critical moments to pull it out before a thought occurred to him. Once it had, he wondered why it never had before. Probably hadn't been all that necessary or legal for policework, but... Still. As the monster whirled around to face its freshest threat, still dismembering a woman that had latched onto it, Aegis gripped the hilt of his blade and concentrated. In seconds, it had morphed into a spear that he pushed deeper into the wound, then a large-headed warhammer that he didn't have to push at all.

The expansion was rather catastrophic, and even with the troll's already impressive physiology augmented by its unnatural construction, it couldn't survive having a large hunk of matter suddenly occupying quite a lot of where its torso ought to be.

The troll collapsed as Aegis was showered with an explosion of what might actually have been less awful than the result of such expansion in a normal living organism. He felt as though he was expected to have some sort of pithy bon mot ready. Well, it was Aegis – he didn't exactly think he needed a "bon mot". He was more of a one-liner man. He didn't have one of those either.

"Fuck."

He wiped something approaching motor oil off his chest, or tried to. All he really did was smear it in a more acceptable manner. When he looked up, he realized that he wasn't exactly getting cheers from the survivors he'd just so heroically rescued from a rampaging troll; in fact, when one of them lunged at him wielding what looked like a self-defense baton, he started to think that maybe it hadn't been such a great idea to rescue them in the first place. Well, that was just fine, wasn't it? Because he didn't have Clara's compunctions, and he did have a big sword, and they didn't have indestructible trollhide. He was just here to save her, and if the locals wanted to make a big, lethal deal out of things, well... He was just the guy good in a fight, wasn't he.

Once there was nothing else trying to kill him or trying to kill her or immediately threatening to set fire to everything around them, he strode back over to the spot she'd landed. She still hadn't... moved, or anything.

"Uh, Clara?"

She shuddered a bit, then slid a bit to one side.

"I think this is going to be a bit difficult."

---

"Well spit in my face and call me a Protestant, Non-Infringers! There's another one of 'er!"

Iota McTaggart's propensity and ability to state the obvious aside, there was indeed another Aph lying at the Non-Infringers' feet. It had fallen like it was just another bit of debris raining from the collapsing skyscrapers that littered the landscape, and indeed it seemed as though it should have shattered like most of them. Still, it laid on the ground peacefully and intactly enough, and made no move to attack as the first nymph had. Then again, this one hadn't had the chance to wake up, so who knew what it would do. PAX/Tom for one – or four – didn't seem to want to have a chance to find out, and the four of him collectively hefted a large chunk of masonry and moved as though to crush her with it.

"Stop!"

The Toms turned in unison, the same expression of exasperation playing across four faces. One of them spoke up. "Why? If she's anything like the other one, she'll be more trouble than she could possibly be worth if we leave her time to wake up."

"Well..." Crazyman Dragonarms waved his dragon arms crazily as he struggled to come up with a decent reason. "She might have intelligence we need! That's why we're keeping the first one, right?"

This time another Tom shook his head. "We don't need the same information twice. And anyway, it's getting less and less important to find out what's going on here and why, and more important to just escape it while we can."

"What an infringing attit–"

"Look, we all know you just want to have another exciting fight with her, Crazyman! And we can't afford to waste time with another one of your stupid honor duels. Literally everything is about to implode and kill literally everything. Including us!"

Dragonarms slumped for a moment, then rallied. "Well, if we can find out why, we can stop it instead of running. And that's much more–"

"No." The Toms shook their heads as one. "There is no reason to keep her alive."

No-one disagreed.

---

"Are you sure about this?"

"Yes." Clara's voice was somewhat muffled, but the fact that she was still talking was a good sign. "Just lay me out, and I can repair the damage."

"What do I need to..."

"Make sure my spine's in place, or close to it. And be gentle! The whole reason I don't want to do this myself is so I don't tear my skin open with a vertebra or something."

It was easier to look at the muck from the swamp and the sand from the desert and the rips and tears from fighting and the burns from her recently backfired spell and wonder why Clara cared at all about something apparently cosmetic than to look at the horrifying angles of her back and neck and wonder how she was caring about anything. Aegis still couldn't stop himself from asking, though.

"How, uh... If your back and neck are, uh... How are you still talking and stuff? I mean, even if you're..." he waved his hands vaguely, trailing off.

The nun would have shrugged if she weren't worried about working bone splinters through her organs.

"Oh, I don't really need my nervous system much, dear. If I really wanted, I could stand up right now. I just suspect my top half might fall off or tear itself to pieces if I do, and that's just dreadfully inconvenient. Besides, it is very helpful if my muscles have bone to push off of."

There was silence for a few moments. "You do know a bit about physiology, right?"

"I went to high school, yeah. Been a while."

"That should be enough. As long as you know generally how a back works, I can take care of the rest."

There were several more moments of silence.

"Whenever you're ready. Aegis?"

This... This wasn't anything like fighting.

Aegis steeled himself and took the woman's shoulder in one massive metal hand and a foot in the other.

"Slow and careful. Don't put too much of my weight on any spot at once."

He started to slide her forward.

"And don't pull my torso too taut."

He lifted a bit more and pulled again.

"And–"

"Clara?"

"Sorry, dear. I'll let you do what you need to."

There were a few complicated seconds with entirely too much lolling on her part for his comfort, but in the end Clara was prone on her back with her arms beside her, and as near as either of them could tell nothing was poking through anything. Perhaps she'd never needed to worry.

"You might want to find something else to pay attention to. This can make some people a bit... Uncomfortable."

Aegis trusted her to know her own business best, and nodded. He slipped out of the lobby, intent on reconnoitering the other rooms and halls on the first floor. That was something he knew how to do too, and if there were going to be more monstrosities made of cardboard and knives, he'd rather know about them before they knew about him. The floor wasn't particularly big, the building having been built more up than out, so his explorations didn't take particularly long. It helped that the doors were working now, or at least better than they had been when they'd been made of solid stone. Some still jammed or refused to open at all, but some didn't, and the ones that did were easier to break through. Aside from a handful of constructs that had seemingly been built into the office itself, which didn't provide much of a challenge, the place was pretty empty. It seemed as though the commotion of the troll fight had drawn everyone nearby to the scene, and Aegis had already dealt with everything there. There were occasional tableaus of broken bodies and broken furniture that suggested the troll hadn't been the only thing from outside the alien world, but the winners of those scuffles hadn't stuck around afterwards.

Without spirits hanging around to whisper intimations about the place or make him relieve his past or theirs or just possess him, there really wasn't much to see or do. He hoped his prowlings had eaten enough time, because he couldn't see how to extend them. He headed back to the main lobby. It'd be nice, he figured, if he didn't have to walk in on her in some kind of cocoon or turning inside-out or whatever, but it'd still be better than staring at a bunch of dead things and computers that didn't work because their circuitboards were made out of cheese. As he approached, the smell of rot and blood assaulted his nose, and his experience as a police officer automatic quickened his pace to a quiet run.

As it happened, he didn't walk in on anything more sinister or disturbing than Clara standing in the middle of the room, bent over the pile of mismatched detritus that could probably be generously termed "corpses". She looked up at him as he entered, gradually calming down and trying to hide his puzzlement at the lack of sources for the smells that had assaulted him moments ago. And were still quite present, in point of fact. Better to not worry about it, he figured.

She smiled wanly at him – although most things Clara did could be described as wanly – and picked her way across the floor, deliberately avoiding disturbing the once-ambulatory piles of detritus that the citizens of the frozen worlds had reincarnated as.

"Ah, you're back, good. Was anything happening nearby?"

Aegis shook his head. The handful of things he'd met didn't really qualify as worth mentioning.

"Nope. Seems like everyone around came here."

Clara looked back over a shoulder at the pileup of broken 'bodies'. Something seemed to be troubling her.

"That's probably good, then. Ah... What happened here, then? I couldn't really see much. You understand, I'm sure."

"Well, I mean, you were fighting that big thing, then it hit you and I came in, then I fought it."

"And the others?"
He shrugged. "It killed most of 'em. They really wanted it dead for some reason and just kept piling on instead of running."

"Most?"

"Yeah, most. The ones that were left just started attacking me right as soon as that thing died. It was probably a good thing it was here if they're all going to be that hostile. I don't know if I could have taken on stuff like that." He waved a hand at the remains of the destroyed robot that had given the troll the most trouble. "Actually, we should probably get out of here, or find somewhere safe nearby or something. They didn't hesitate to try to kill me at all, and you can hear the building collapsing as well as I can."

"Mmm."

It was unwelcome and confusing news to Clara. She'd assumed the battle had just been the result of a feral troll rampaging through the building, but if they citizens had immediately turned on their savior as soon as that threat was gone, was it reasonable to assume that the madness of being trapped for so long in a frozen timeline had turned them all into unthinking, terrified monsters even once they'd regained bodies? But what about–

"Karel!"

"What?"

Clara didn't respond, instead dropping to her knees and picking hurriedly through the corpses.

"What are you looking for?"

"A woman. She didn't attack me, or do anything violent at all."

"Huh. You sure?"

There was comparative quiet for several more moments while Clara continued her body hunt, which ended when she stood up and dusted herself futilely off.

"She's not here. Some of these people broke pretty thoroughly, but I think I'd recognize her composition." Well, I hope so. I only saw it for a few moments. "If you killed everyone that attacked you, and you didn't see anyone else on this floor, then she must not have suffered whatever made the rest of these poor souls violent."

"Oh. Okay."

"Which means there could be more, and they don't stand a chance against the ones that have become feral or hateful or whatever has befallen them."

"Ohhh. Yeah, huh."

Clara briefly considered calling the back the departed to find out what had driven them to such senseless violence, but... They'd spent gods only knew how long trapped between worlds, then their last moments of what could be called life locked in combat and ended by the sword. It was too disrespectful to them. Better to let them have their rest. She lapsed into thought as Aegis crossed his arms and leaned against a nearby wall.

After several moments of silence, he spoke up.

"Hey, Clara?"

She blinked a few times. "Uh, yes?"

"I just wanted... You know, wanted to say thanks."

"Oh. You're welcome." She narrowed her eyes, still pulling herself out of her reverie. "For what?"

"For saving me back there. When that ghost guy jumped me off the ledge."

"Oh. Oh! Right, right." It hadn't even occurred to her that an expression of gratitude might be necessary. "It was no trouble."

Judging from everything that had happened since then, Aegis reasoned, it certainly seemed to have been quite a lot of trouble indeed.

"And, uh, I also wanted to apologize. For thinking you were the spy and everything."

She shrugged and winced a little at the recollection of her own suspicions and their consequences. "Well, I can't blame you for that. And you certainly didn't make a mess of things the way I did when I was wrong."

"I'm not sure what–"

"Oh! Wait, sorry for interrupting, but hang on. I'm glad you reminded me, I need to tell you now in case something happens to me before I get another chance."

"Hmm?"

"I had a little time to... to think this round. And I–" It occurred to Clara that perhaps saying "my god spoke to me while I was trapped in the emptiness of the dark beyond as a million ghosts possessed me at once" wouldn't lend much credence to her statements to a man like Aegis. "I did some magic. I called on the souls of some of the people who died in this horrible game to find out what had really happened. In the swamp, and in the prison. Who the Monitor's spy really was, and what he wanted."

Aegis nodded, eyebrows raised, and let her continue.

"B had been telling the truth, it seems. He killed the shapeshifter in the swamp. The spy hasn't been with us for a number of rounds, but we've still been fighting each other out of suspicion and distrust. We're all we can rely on, and the Monitor made sure we couldn't."

"How do you know?"

"I watched it happen. I relieved it all with them."

"That sounds pretty heavy."

"Hmm. It needed to be done. We had to know who we could trust, and it seems we needn't be distrustful any more."

"You're saying we can trust Aph?"

---

No-one told the Non-Infringers that they'd need to capture at least three outsiders if they wanted to survive. They quickly gleaned from this lack of information that it was in their best interests to save the second nymph rather than destroy her; Crazyman Dragonarms made no effort to hide his pleasure, while PAX/Tom was similarly unwilling to mask his chagrin.

"If we're going to keep her around for whatever Skum wants, then there's not going to be any fighting her, understand?"

Iota McTaggart was already binding the nymph with a length of cord produced by XMO, but Crazyman Dragonarms simply stood with his arms crossed and a smug smile playing across his face. Tying the last one up had already worked so well, after all.

Another of Tom turned to no-one in particular. "What exactly is it we need them for, anyway?"

No-one responded. "We don't need them at all, but another group does. What we need from them is a nice pocket of thin space that's absolutely perfect for your escape."

"We'd be exchanging the lives of these people just to save ourselves?"

Skum didn't shrug, or in fact do anything at all. "You're free not to go through with it. These universes will collapse into... nothing."

PAX/Tom was silent, but Crazyman Dragonarms spoke up. "They'll die like us anyway if we don't. Besides, we don't even know what those other people want them for. What do they want them for, Skum?"

"They didn't say." No-one lied.

"And I'd swear by all the saints that the multiverse would be a much more dangerous place without us in it, eh?"

It was hard to argue that much. It still grated, but it seemed as though capturing the outsiders would be the only way out.

"What do we have to do?"

"You don't have to do anything. No-one's handling this." It wasn't very funny, and no-one laughed. "You all simply need to keep these two safe. There are two more outsiders up on that turtle."

As the Non-Infringers looked up at the skybound turtle and its crumbling cargo, they saw a number of shapes massing around it.

"They won't be there for long."

They returned their attentions to the ground and looked around, but no-one was gone.

Iota McTaggart and XMO moved away from the second nymph, their knotwork complete.

"Cerebral scans are muddled, but indicate that this one may regain consciousness soon," the robot offered. "What would you like to do to reduce her threat level?"

"I handled the other one last time, didn't I? We'll be fine."

"Aye," said Iota McTaggart, folding his hands behind his head. "Fortune favors the bold."

PAX/Tom and XMO were less confident about their ability to corral her indefinitely given how well Crazyman Dragonarms had "handled" the last time, especially if both of them woke up at once, but neither of them had any particularly great ideas for restraining them more thoroughly. Given the short timeframe, building an enclosure certainly wasn't viable. None of them had much experience dealing with magicians anyway; usually something presented itself, and there wasn't a lot of need to nullify the magic. As usual, it seemed as though any problems that needed to be solved were going to be solved head-on rather than prevented, and ultimately solved with the liberal application of fists and justice.

XMO's scans, though rather hindered by Aph's alien and arcane physiology, proved to be accurate shortly after Skum's non-departure. The second nymph struggled weakly in her bonds, eyes fluttering and half-syllables falling from her lips. The Non-Infringers instinctively took up battle positions around her, waiting to see what her first move would be.

As it happened, that first move was to sit bolt upright and screech "Worms! I told you to release me!"

Iota McTaggart raised an eyebrow. "I knew the lasses looked similar, but I never guessed they were the same person."

A quick glance back at the other prone figure confirmed that not only were there two separate nymphs, but the first one they'd captured was still unconscious.

"Perhaps this one was simply captured by another group before she fell from the sky, and is mistaking–"

"Enough chatter! I gave you the chance to release me and die, now die for your impertinence!"

If Aph had lost the ability to tell when she was being nonsensically megalomaniacal when she'd been merged with D'Neya, this half of her certainly hadn't gained it back when it had been split off from the whole. She rocketed up into the air with an undirected gust of wind, catching herself enough to hover awkwardly before she landed again and broke something. With no prelude, she began loosing torrents of fire and thunder at the Non-Infringers; much of it was harmlessly off-target, guided more by anger than skill, and the rest was largely quelled by Crazyman Dragonarms's water blasts, but as this Aph got used to her body and powers, it gradually became more threatening and accurate. This crazy pink woman might prove to be the greatest villain the Non-Infringers had ever faced!

---

"I honestly... I don't know what to think about Aph. Something happened to her to make her what she is now, but I don't know what it is. Or if we can fix it. I think we have to try, but I also think we have to be ready to accept that she may be so far gone that there's nothing of her left."

"Hum. Why?"

Clara looked rather affronted. "We have to fight back against the Monitor eventually, Aegis, and we'll need everyone we can get for that. But more importantly, she's a person! She was a good person too. We have to do everything we can for her, in case that poor person is still inside."

"I guess."

"It's our duty to ensure as few people suffer as a result of this battle as possible! It's basic human kindness! You'd never ask why I saved you when you jumped. It's the same thing."

Clara rather pointedly didn't mention that she hadn't been in control of her body or even aware of the situation at the time, but surely she'd have done the same thing if she had been. Aegis just shrugged again; as far as he was concerned, he'd left all his duty behind when he'd been dragged into this. All he had to do now was get out of it alive. Still, she had kind of a point. It probably was the right thing to do, but... When it came down to it, Aegis would probably pick "pragmatic" over "right".

Something occurred to the nun, and she slapped her forehead in frustration.

"I can't believe I let myself forget. We were just talking about it! I'm such a foolish old woman."

"Hmm?"

She gave the elevator a leery look and headed for the emergency stairs.

"Karel. We have to make sure she's alright."

Of course we did. Still, it was better than being alone in a world of magic and monsters without her experience and expertise. After that last outburst about duty and goodness, Aegis figured it was better just to go along with things rather than try to talk her out of it. Even if that meant climbing an already dangerously damaged building. In the sky. On a turtle.

"I hope she hasn't gone too far."

---

In point of fact, she'd gone up nearly forty-seven stories in the time it had taken for Aegis to fight the troll, Clara to heal herself, and the pair of them to chatter about their situation. She might have been able to go up more, but she'd been forced several times to duck out of sight by the proximity of some of the other things that were inhabiting the tower now. Most of them weren't hostile to her for whatever reason, but seeing what they'd become – and being reminded of what she must have become – was bad enough. Worse was when they came upon something from another world and set upon it. They looked like they could have been people she knew, people she ran into on the street, people she rubbed shoulders with on the tramways, but they fought like madmen or animals. It made her sick.

It was as she was hiding in an alcove, avoiding the gaze of things that shouldn't have been or things that might want to kill her, that she heard the thundering of footsteps descending from above. Most of the people wandering the tower had been mostly content to scour the floors they were on, so she hadn't seen many others on the actual stairwell; she certainly hadn't seen anyone madly tearing around it like whoever was coming down was. She hurriedly ducked out of the stairs, hiding behind a door and peeking between it and the jamb. As whatever it was ran past, she gasped and decided some things were more important than staying hidden, then cried out.

"Sora!"

The man skidded to a halt, nearly falling down a flight before catching his balance on a handrail.

"Karel?"

The pair of them ran into each other's arms, clinging desperately together as though they were the last people in the world. In some senses, perhaps they were.

"What are you doing here?"

"I came to save you. I had to know if you were alright!"

He tried to smile, but it was quickly drowned out by worry and fear. "We have to get out of here. This building won't last much longer."

"What about all the other..." She hesitated for a moment, then finished with "people?"

"If they want to stay in a collapsing building, then that's their deal. We've got to go!"

He pulled on her arm, but she hesitated a moment longer.

"What's that noise?"

Both of them looked up; there was a sound, steadily growing louder, coming from above. It certainly wasn't the sound of a skyscraper falling in on itself. Sora hadn't even consciously payed it any attention when he'd been fleeing, but now that Karel mentioned it...

Karel opened her mouth to speak, but it was drowned out by the sound that was suddenly a cacophony. Moments later, the walls were ripped off into space, and their vision was filled with nothing but white light. Moments after that, there was nothing for both of them.

---

"Why," asked a particularly rugged specimen of H. infantrius whose jaw screamed 'flyboy' even through his ultra-tech armor, "Are we doing this the long way? Scanners show they're on the ground floor."

He watched a group of warlocks magically disassemble another floor and cast aside the remains, watched a group of scout drones confirm the targets were not on this floor, and watched a crew of his men vaporize the skeletons' castoff as well as everything that had been hidden by it.

"Waste'a time."

Of course, no-one had been around to hear his question.

"This ensures that when we do reach them, they have nowhere to flee and nothing to hide behind. Everything is cleaner and safer this way. Why take risks?"

Of course, this wasn't really true. It was certainly accurate, and the pilot accepted the explanation, but it wasn't the truth. The truth was simply that watching the building vanish into nothing, watching its inhabitants vanish into nothing... It was all exhilarating. Even if these universes were to avoid oblivion, who was to say that everything in them had to?

As the infantrius soldier watched another flight of dragons – damned illogical things, there was no reason for a lizard that breathed fire – swoop in and relieve the skeletons with a troupe of fresh warlocks, he had to admit: at least they weren't wasting much time. Barely a few seconds on each floor. Maybe having to work with literal boneheaded wizards wasn't so bad.

---

Clara had taken only a handful of steps up the stairs, Aegis slowly and resignedly following behind, when they heard the noise that had heralded the end for Sora and Karel.

"The hell?"

"I don't... No idea."

"It's coming from above. You really think we ought to keep going up?"

"That's all the more reason to–"

With a flash, the building around them disintegrated. Enough of the stairwell to stop Clara falling and breaking an ankle remained, as did a few partitions and features of the building, but for the most part, it was all gone. More saliently, there were a pair of troop-transport vehicles, a fleet of what were unmistakably futuristic fighter crafts, and innumerable dragons with skeletons on their backs were hovering nearby.

"The fuck?!"

Without warning, armor-clad infantrymen began pouring out of the transporters, rappelling down tensile cables or simply diving towards the turtle and letting their inertial dampeners sort things out.

"Nonlethals only," chirped a little reminder in all their helmets. "This is a subdue and retrieve mission."

Of course, they knew that. But as lasers and magefire bore down on the terrified pair on the remaining stairwell, they also reflected that it was much more interesting if the targets didn't.