Epic Clash - COMPLETE!

Originally posted on MSPA by Pinary.

---

As the cloud of rubbery chunks and purple paste dwindled in the distance behind the shuttle, Linda busied herself with restarting the navigational systems. Until they had those back, they wouldn't be able to do much more than list slightly to the side.

While she worked, Thomas and Spender talked. She hadn't been a part of the battle up to now, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she'd cease to be a part of it (and most likely cease to be, period) once this single round of it ended. She was content to listen, going through the familiar motions of passively gathering information and doing some basic ship maintenance. The other two had plenty they wanted to discuss anyway.

"But even if we knew where he was," Thomas was saying, "could we even approach being able to do anything to stop him? Everything he's done has been so far beyond anything we could even hope to match! We just don't think we have the power to do him any harm whatsoever, and much as we'd like to, we don't think we can."

"What we've seen so far has all been cinematic stuff," Spender replied, his tone insistent, "all things that could've been planned for ages beforehand and just activated. There's no way of telling how much power he could actually bring to bear on us in a face-to-face confrontation."

"Okay, say you're right, and we can just walk up to him and stab him or something. That still doesn't address the problem of how to get to him in the first place. You've done scan after scan, and we're still no closer to having any idea of how to get to him."

"We may not know where he is now," the agent said, "but we can be fairly sure of where he'll be some time soon."

A look of understanding crossed over Thomas' face. "The end of the round," he said, the words coming quicker as the plan leapt into his mind. "Once it ends, he'll show up, and if we can break his planned sequence of events, then we at least stand a chance of getting rid of him for good!"

Just then, the ship's systems came back online. Satisfied with her work, Linda turned to the other two and interjected, "This all assumes that you're right about him not being as powerful as he seems, mind."

"Well, if he is, we don't exactly have much of a chance anyway," Thomas replied, taking the seat opposite her and pushing the shuttle's engines to maximum. "We have to at least try."

"There's another factor as well," Spender added, his face darkening a bit. "This plan also depends on bringing the round to its end."

-

The bowling-ball-headed, cape-wearing knight, having no intention of being a rotten egg, had taken the Ender up on his challenge, and the two were busily bounding through the zero-gravity space between the rubbery bits of mind-reading calamari that were scattered around, taking the quickest path towards the propylaeum. The heat from the archway grew more powerful as they neared it, and when the pair finally arrived on the strip of rubbery land that remained below it, Glere found himself grateful that his current head wasn't full of boiling-prone water.

Keegan didn't seem to mind the heat, and after he threw a few token fireballs at the gateway, he turned to his companion and said, "So, mister hotshot expert, what do you want to do with this thing? Or were you just coming over here to get nice and warm?"

"I'd thought it was obvious," Glere responded, taking a pair of coloured flags out from his cape as he spoke, "I want to open it up!"

"With flags?"

"No, no." Raising one of the flags, Glere pointed to something behind Keegan. The Ender looked, but the sight of the shuttle heading right for them didn't answer his question very well at all.

At his companion's that-doesn't-answer-my-question-very-well-at-all look, Glere chuckled. "I'm going to open it with what's in there." And with that, he held the flags out, one at each side, and started signalling.

-

"It looks like an ancient sea-ship code," Linda said. They'd brought the shuttle to a halt a short distance away and were looking down at Glere's flag-waving. "The angles of the flags indicate letters, words, or other messages. It's what they did before they had even basic EM transmitters."

"What's he saying?", Thomas asked. He'd never heard of that sort of thing, but it sounded reasonable enough.

Linda just rolled her eyes. "I've heard of it, that doesn't mean I can tell what he's saying. It could be gibberish for all I know."

"Ah." That settled, they looked on for a bit longer, until Glere apparently got frustrated and just started gesturing with the flags to an empty spot on the ground near the gate.

"Now that I understand," Linda smirked, and she brought the shuttle down in the indicated area. She carefully landed with the ship facing directly away from the arch, keeping the door from facing straight into it. Even so, as it swung slowly open, the heat rushed in, making everyone inside burst out in sweat. The cooling pads in Thomas' clothing immediately kicked into work, but even their efforts couldn't do much against the wave of searing air.

Thomas blinked, and his eyes went from grey to red. Bern raised an arm against the heat, and the shuttle's cabin cooled down a bit, going from "unbearable" to merely "sweltering."

Glere came to the door, and he somehow managed to convey a wide grin despite having a perfectly-round thumbhole in place of a mouth. "Tom! Spender! Third person!"

"Glere." Spender was much less enthusiastic about his greeting, his tone more cautious and reserved.

Glere ignored him. "Hey, listen, can we get some help? We're going to open this thing!"

Thomas tapped a few commands into a touchscreen to bring up the rear displays. The images he got were far too contrasted, though, just showing a bright circle surrounded by darkness. Frowning, he turned to Glere. "What is it?"

"It's a propellermatic," he replied enthusiastically, "a gateway Keegan's people use to jump between worlds!"

This got the attention of everyone in the shuttle. "Let's take a look," Spender said, and he slid a few coins out of pockets and handed one to both Linda and Thomas. Activating them, the three felt the heat fade away, a shell of cool air enclosing them. As they stepped out of the shuttle, they also found the light from the propylaeum tinted, making the swirling mass of flames nearly bearable to look at.

Keegan stood to one side, looking not-terribly-trustingly at the newcomers. "It needs fire to activate," he reluctantly explained, "and even crashing the two planets together didn't get it going."

Spender and Thomas both took a few steps toward it, thinking. The former activated another of his innumerable scans, getting an idea of the power levels required, and considered what he could do to reach them. The latter took the more direct approach and set several blasts of flame towards it, channelling the heat the thing was radiating right back into it. Spender tried a few coins as well, but nothing was quite up to the level they needed. Finally, he turned to Thomas.

"How much power do the drives on this ship of yours put out?"

Greg considered, then took control and said, "It varies, but quite possibly enough, if we threw it to max power and left out the final thrust-conversion stage. Definitely worth trying."

"You get on that, then," the agent said. Then, as Thomas moved back into the shuttle, he turned to Glere. "So, say we could open this thing for you. Why should we? You haven't exactly proven you're trustworthy."

"Simple!" Glere gestured toward the gate. "Once it's open, we just walk right through, and we all go our separate ways! What else is there to it?"

"That's it? You want me to believe that this'll just magically send us all to our respective homes?"

Glere scoffed. "Of course not! The important bit, though, is that it's somewhere else! From there, you can do whatever you want, go home or whatever! It's just the first stop!"

"And I'm supposed to take your word that it won't just disintegrate us."

"Oh, please." Glere suddenly dropped his tone, speaking very seriously for the moment. "I want out of here as much as you, Spender. You think I'd pass up a chance like this any more than you would?"

"Fair enough," Spender conceded.

"Great!" The caped lunatic was all bubbles and absurdity again. "Now, let's get this show on the road, come on!"

Spender moved back towards the shuttle, but Linda stopped him just outside. "Do you really think that the Overseer is just going to let us open this gate and waltz out of here? That he's not going to come down here and stop us?"

"Please." Spender gave her a look. "If he could've stopped us, he would've done it already. It's just like we thought- he's limited to his pre-planned shows between rounds. Anything impromptu is beyond him." He moved past her into the shuttle.

"Or he knows we won't succeed," the reporter muttered to herself.

A short while later, Greg had made the necessary changes. "We put a switch in place before the final thrust converter," he explained, "we can disengage or reengage it at will, letting us either use the engines as normal or just expel all the energy as heat."

"Right." Spender took a deep breath. Glere could easily be trying to trick them into doing something dangerous, foolish, or just plain silly. He still had to kill Thomas to survive, and Spender rather doubted that even that head-swapping maniac could forget something like that.

Or maybe he was telling the truth. There really wasn't much of a way to tell with him, and escapism did seem right up his alley.

Spender sighed. Really, he couldn't afford to get himself lost trying to figure out what made Glere tick, and if the gate was a trap, it seemed more like that it would take out everyone here, not just one competitor.

The agent waved a hand at Thomas. "Do it."

Greg punched in a few commands, activating the engines. Behind the shuttle, twin jets of heat lanced out, streams of fire that curved, spiralling in to join the maelstrom at the center of the propylaeum.

Glere stepped into the shuttle. "It's working," he gleefully exclaimed, "just a minute or two more of this and it should open up! 'Course, it's going to get rather hot out there first. Could you, uh...?" He gestured at the door, and Linda, rolling her eyes, closed it with the push of a button.

-

Outside, Keegan stared up at the gate, the blistering heat writhing in the center a beautiful sight. He knew that he'd be the only one able to go through it, and he'd told Glere as much, but if that strange-headed man didn't want to share, well, who was he to argue?

The ball of fire flashed and sparked, condensing a bit and doubling the heat around it. Ninety percent, Keegan thought. I'm so close! He leaned forward, bathing himself in the heat radiating from it, the shuttle's twin arcs of fire passing by far above him.

The staff collided with the Ender's head with a loud crack, sending the squat imp sprawling to one side. Shocked, he looking up at his assailant.

Teival glared down at him, the spectral weapon reshaping itself into a sword, pointed straight at Keegan's throat.

"I've suffered indignities innumerable," the Dairen spat, "been subjected to pointless exercises in nostalgia and self-reflection, and I am finished. I'll stand for no more of this. I shall end your pitiable existence and be done with this affront of a competition once and for all." He took a step forward, bringing the sword's point to within millimeters of his victim's throat. "Do you have anything more to say before before you are ended, Ender?"

"Yeah," Keegan grinned, "hang on."

Just then, the gate hit another milestone, the fireball at its core flaring up once more, this time sending out a shockwave that rocked the shuttle and flattened Teival to the ground. In a flash, the Ender stood atop him, conjuring a tiny, white-hot fireball just above the tall man's face. "I'll be doing the ending here, thanks," he joked, spinning the tiny flame around a bit, singing Teival here and there. "But out of fairness, do you have anything more you want to say?"

The prehensile chains the Dairen had used earlier were manifested again, and they wrapped themselves around Keegan's wrists and yanked him off. "You pathetic creature," Teival sneered, "you poor, soulless little-"

He was interrupted by an explosion that knocked him backwards, slamming him against the side of the shuttle. He responded with a lashing from the chains, but Keegan simply caught those and pulled, dragging his attacker to the ground. He didn't expect them to be pulled back, though, and he fell to the ground as well. They vanished, then, Teival opting instead for a double-ended spear. He sprang up, thrusting one end down at Keegan, who dodged.

He was about to stab down again when, with a final burst of fire, the propylaeum opened.

The ball of flame at the center shrunk down, forming a core barely a meter across of white-hot plasma, and then exploded, sending fire sweeping out in front of it. The shuttle was rocked, the rubbery ground was charred, and Teival was knocked to the ground, skin blistering under the heat. The tempest of flames roared, a chaotic firestorm raging around it before settling down into a swirling whirlpool, flames circling around and falling into the bright white center.

Wind whipped up, the air in the area starting to be pulled into the burning singularity at the propylaeum's core. A few bits of tentacle-ground from the surrounding space started to drift closer, pulled in close and just burned to a crisp when they neared the gate's core.

Keegan rose, standing before his people's gate for just a moment before starting forward. He would pass through, he'd kill everything, and he'd burrow down. Size be damned, he'd do it anyway. Then he'd move on and do it again somewhere else. He'd-

The chains caught his ankle and pulled him down on his face. Teival stood his ground against the rising winds, feet digging into the ground and holding him in place.

"Let me go!", Keegan roared. He launched a fireball at his competition, only to have it curve around in a large arc and come around into the gate, triggering a redoubling of the winds' efforts to drag their charge in. "It's mine, I need it! You can stay here and win this Exchange, I don't care! Just let! Me! Go!" He accompanied the last words with another fireball each, but they all went wide as well.

"If you leave, you survive, and I lose!", Teival bellowed. "I will end you now, and secure my proper place in immortality! I will move on to take on the life of every being to ever exist! I will-" He was cut off before he could say what else he could do.

Keegan's three last fireballs had looped back around as well, being pulled into the gate and triggering yet stronger winds. Teival, standing tall, was torn from the ground, and he fell towards the core of the propylaeum, dragged down to the center.

He stopped, though, the chains he'd wrapped around the Ender's ankles suspending him a few meters away.

"No!" Keegan cried out, grasping them and trying his hardest to pull the Dairen back, away from his gate. "It only works for one, I need it! Just pull yourself out, let me help you!"

Teival stared at him for a moment, mouthing a single, drowned-out word, then dispelled the chains.

Keegan bellowed in mindless rage as the Dairen fell, pulled into the gate.

-

Outside the shuttle, the flames died away, and Greg deactivated the engines. The external cameras adjusted, revealing the gate, dark and inactive, and Keegan, slumped in front of it. Linda slapped the door control, and the group stepped out into surprisingly cool, fresh air.

"What happened?", she asked, not directing the question at anyone in particular.

"He went in," the Ender replied, seeming more childlike than ever. "He fell into it instead of me."

"Who?"

"Teival. He hit me while you were pumping in fire, and then, when it opened, he got dragged in."

Must've snuck out of the bathroom while we were all out here, she noted. "So... where'd he end up, then?"

He shot her a look. "He's dead, stupid. Only us Enders can take the heat. He's just fffp, gone. Ashes on some distant world."

-

On a platform outside the space-loop containing the contestants, the Overseer watched events unfold. He had a handful of screens arrayed in an arc to one side, following one contestant or mnemonocyst-reflection each, and the platform itself had a rather nice view of the rubble-field that had been the planetoids.

Behind him, Miles coughed. "So, that's one contestant down. Are you going to handle it, or...?"

Bryce, having sent the Stranger off earlier, just waved a hand. "You deal with it," he said. Something in his tone didn't exactly invite discussion, so, a bit reluctantly, his co-host vanished. On the screens, he saw him appear next to the contestants.

-

"Congratulations, Keegan! It's my pleasure to officially crown you the winner of the Exalted Exchange!"

The Ender turned an angry gaze on the Chronicler, who'd just appeared to one side of him.

"There's, uh... there's no... actual... crown." The co-host trailed off for a moment before regaining his composure. "Right! Now, let's take you away, get you your, uh-" He checked his notes- "Your prize, yes! The Stranger promised the winner their freedom, and that, you'll have!" He waved a hand, and the Ender vanished. "The rest of you, uh... carry on! You're still, y'know, competing and all that." He waved another hand and vanished as well, leaving Glere, Thomas, Spender, and Linda standing next to the shuttle on the burned and charred little island, the cold gate looming over them.

For a few moments, they all just stood there. Then, just as Thomas was about to say something, Spender lashed out with a coin, flinging it towards the far end of the gate.

"What was that?!", Thomas yelped.

In response, the agent just pulled on the cord of light the coin had created, tugging the figure who'd been looking on toward the group.

"Watcher," Eric breathed.

Watcher was a man, maybe an inch shorter than average and a mite thinner than most. He wore rectangular glasses that seemed to be just lenses with nothing to keep them in place, along with a deep crimson button-down shirt and nondescript slacks. His face was pale, and his thin lips were pressed firmly together, as Thomas had always seen them.

After the surprise at seeing him had worn off, Thomas dismissed him. "He's not going to give us anything useful," Eric said. "He's never said a word to us in life, and if he's our memory, he's going to be consistent to that. He just stands, watching us. It's always when something goes wrong in our life, too- any time we're going through some hardship or another, he shows up. Doesn't matter where we are, he's there as well." He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he stared at him. "Just do what you do best, Watcher, and let me get on with things."

Spender, shrugging, dismissed the rope wrapped around him. Before he could say anything, though, something else happened.

A door handle appeared, floating in the air a few meters away. It was the flat sort, more of a handle than a knob, and it was soon joined by the rest of the door one would expect a doorknob to be attached to, just materializing out of nowhere.

It opened toward the group, blocking their view of the other side, but just far enough that Watcher could see in. Well, that's not quite accurate. More truly, it opened just far enough that whoever was on the other side could see Watcher. See him and shoot him.

Most portrayals of crossbow bolts fail to capture the full experience. Often, they simply describe the sound as the bolt "thudding" into someone's chest, and that hardly does the sickening crunch of ribs justice, not to mention the person's little gurgle of pain as they realize they've had their heart rendered nonfunctional. They rarely talk about the single little step backwards most people take, the force of the bolt not enough to knock them over but enough to unbalance them. Nor do they cover the few additional steps backward they take, not from the force of the physical bolt, but from the force of the realization that they're not going to be alive much longer.

They also don't usually mention the explosion that completely removes the top half of the person, essentially vaporizing their head, chest, and shoulders, but that's not really a usual part of being hit by a crossbow bolt, so the omission is understandable.

The group stared as Watcher's legs toppled to the ground, smoking and smouldering. None of them had been expecting it, and something on the other side of the door was amplifying their stunned reaction almost to the point of paralysing them in place.

A figure strolled slowly out of the door, taking each step with purpose. "Thomas Packston," he said, lingering on the name, letting every syllable take its time to pass through his mouth.

Linda gasped as the man stopped, facing them from a few meters away. He was physically indistinguishable from the man he'd just blown up with a crossbow.

"Watcher?", Thomas asked, incredulously.

"Yes and no," the man replied. "The thing I just disposed of was a memory of yours, brought into being by one of the mnemonocysts that used to populate these spheres. That memory was of me- or rather, me as you remembered me.

"To you, I am Watcher, a mysterious figure that looks on whenever your life gets particularly challenging. To others, I'm known as the Controller, or Ken Parusi, or any number of other aliases. I'm a being very similar to your Overseer- capable of crossing dimensions, able to do things that typical humans would ascribe to supernatural abilities... I often seek entertainment, and while I run a battle similar in structure to this one, I also spend time roaming, planting seeds that I hope will grow into works of art."

He'd been pacing idly around a bit, but he stopped here, facing Thomas and ignoring the other three. "You should understand, see, that my concept of art differs a bit from what you probably think of. I deal in the physical, the mental. Pain, that is my medium, and I spend my time trying to create greater and greater works.

"These seeds I mentioned... they are beings, ordinary people, that I alter. Only slightly, you see, for in them, I wish to see the fundamental beauty of nature's own art expressed. A childhood trauma leads someone to destroy a city, a dose of paranoia leads to an artful interrogation...

"Of course, with my many attempts, not all are successes. No, in my time, I've had some miserable failures." He strode forward, jabbing Thomas in the chest with one finger, and anger tinted his voice. "You, for example, Mr. Packston, are one of my greatest failures to date."

"Us?! What-"

"I broke you at birth, shattered your mind into four warring pieces. You should have gone mad, been unstable, ended up imprisoned for your own safety as much as others. But no, you managed to scrape together a decent life. So I threw in some chaos to try and destabilize you, but each time I did, you pulled together and pulled through.

"Eventually, I decided enough was enough and just gave you to the Overseer for his battle. If anything would break you, I thought, it would be the stress of being forced to kill seven other beings.

"But no, still you persist in remaining stable. Your severed personalities just gave you what you needed to stay sane under conditions that should've broken your sanity into tiny little bits."

Turning, he stalked back towards his door. "At the very least, I can take satisfaction in knowing you'll either die here now or go on to yet another one of these things. Maybe then you'll show some sort of redeeming qualities, make up for all the effort I put into you."

With one last look, presumably glaring at his failure from behind his glasses, the Controller walked through his door and closed it behind him.

The group just stood for a moment in shocked silence.

-

The other end had moved, the Controller noticed. He hadn't come out of his door back in his own lair. Instead, he found himself standing on the Overseer's observation platform, alone with the other grandmaster.

"Next time," the Overseer said, his frat-boy persona dropped for the moment, "you should consider asking before you interfere in someone else's battle."

"Oh, please," the Controller replied, his voice cheerful, any echo of the disappointment and bitterness it had just held gone, "that wasn't interference. So I destroyed the reflection of myself, that didn't change the balance of the battle. I keep an eye out for imposters, that's all. I don't want others running around with my face on."

"No, can't fault you for that, I suppose." The Overseer turned away from his screens to face him. "And I guess you're right, it didn't really change how things would turn out down there."

"Not in the least." The Controller grinned slightly. "I try to be careful not to interfere in other grandmasters' battles."

"Please- what about Zaire's battle? You dropped an agent in there to do your dirty work, but it's still your interference."

"I said grandmasters' battles," he reiterated. "I've no qualms about interfering with someone like him."

Bryce snorted. "Fair enough."

"No," the Controller continued, "you'll find that my actions here haven't really changed anything." His grin widened. "Of course, I'm not the one who redirected my door."

Bryce frowned behind his sunglasses. "No, that was me. I wanted to have a little talk about interfering before you left."

"Right, right. It was all you, connecting the space inside that loop of yours to the space outside it. Sure, that space-loop will probably destabilize and collapse shortly, leaving nothing but open space between you and your contestants, but that was all up to you."

The Overseer whirled, checking his screens. Sure enough, the space-loop surrounding the planetoids was unravelling, coming apart at the seams.

"Now, a grandmaster like yourself shouldn't have any trouble putting that right back in place. That's child's play for someone who can traverse dimensions and create whole worlds. I'll leave you to it." He stepped back to his door, but stopped with his hand on the handle. "Of course, if you're not exactly running on all cylinders, it might be a bit difficult. Oh, well. I'm sure your assistant will be back shortly, and you can explain to him why you didn't fix it yourself." Opening the door, which now lead back to where he'd intended to go, he added, "See you around," and with a chuckle, he went through, closing the passage behind him.

As the Controller's door vanished, the Overseer turned back to his screens. This was not good.

-

Nobody said much after the Controller left and his door vanished. Thomas went back into the shuttle, idly resetting the engines back to their normal state and trying not to dwell on what had been said. (And, incidentally, failing.)

Linda went over to examine the cold, still propylaeum, and Spender looked at the pair of singed legs. Glere rummaged around in his cape, more for something to do than anything.

It was Linda who first noticed it- the sky, the black space all around them, was rippling. It was hard to see, blackness rippling, but ripple it did, shimmering a bit like silky cloth, and at her shout to "look," the others turned their gazes skyward as well, and as they watched, it rippled more and more, until, like a veil being removed, the blackness was pulled away.

The sky was still black, really, but this time, it was strewn with stars, glinting and glistening in the distance, shining at the group from all directions. A bright smear crossed the sky, what they presumed to be the plane of whatever galaxy they were in. For a moment, that all just stared up at it.

Then, Thomas spotted something that sent him darting into the shuttle.

"What, what is it?", Linda asked him, following him in. He trained the external cameras on one particular point and zoomed in, finger jamming down at the display.

It showed a platform, made of nothing in particular, whose sole occupant wore a recognizable red shirt emblazoned with a white ship. Eyes blazing, Thomas rushed past Linda and out of the shuttle again. He surged over to where Spender stood, grabbed one of the legs he was so intent on, and then stalked toward Glere. The bowling-ball-headed man was facing away from him, focused on the contents of his cape, and he didn't see Thomas coming.

The leg to the head was quite surprising, and it sent the bowling ball rolling away, clear off the edge of their little floating island. The knight body, blinded, flailed around a bit, and with Spender's help, Thomas managed to restrain it. With a quick twist, the cape's clasp came undone, and the body flopped lifelessly to the ground.

He folded the cape twice, and, feeling it move around in his grip, he passed it to Spender. "Keep this treacherous bastard secure," he told him, "and come on. We've got someone to talk to."

He went back into his family's shuttle, and Spender had to hurry to make it in before the door closed behind him.

"Thomas, what's- ahh." Thomas pointed out the image on the screen, and the agent immediately understood.

-

The shuttle stopped at the very edge of the platform, and the door lowered itself down to act as a landing ramp. The three stepped out, Thomas flanked by Spender on the left side and Linda on the right. They walked forward, forming a loose circle around the grandmaster.

Bern took control, and he grabbed the Overseer roughly by the shoulder, spun him around, and just slugged him across the jaw.

The Overseer stood back up immediately, seemingly unfazed. "Dude, really? That's your big plan? Please." The grandmaster socked him back, sending Thomas sliding halfway back to the ship. "I know you're busy underestimating me, but that's just going to extremes."

Slowly, Greg stood as well. "No, see, that's the thing. We've no interest in underestimating you. That could easily end up being fatal. That was more of a... let's call it a test. You could have blocked us with a force field, suspended us in midair, or any number of other things, but you didn't. You instead took the physical route, and that says something."

He took a few steps forward. "In addition, not long after Watcher- the Controller, whatever- came by, the loop that kept us from escaping this particular location broke down. It doesn't take a genius to see the correlation there- he did something to take it down, allowing us to get to you. We rather suspect he'd like to see us take you down, and there's a good chance he's taken down other defences of yours as well."

He continued to walk forward as he talked, and the Overseer stood his ground, watching with a half-cocky smile that didn't stretch past his mouth. Thomas may have been following the wrong line of deduction, but Bryce knew where he was headed just the same.

"You're not retreating as we advance," Greg went on, "but that could mean any number of things. We suppose the biggest factor that makes us think we're not underestimating you is one that's staring me right in the face."

"Oh? And what's that?" The grandmaster's sneer was halfhearted, part of it seeming... resigned, somehow.

Greg stopped right in front of him. "The fact that you're staring me right in the face, rather than paying attention to what Spender's doing behind you."

The Overseer spun around, turning to see the special agent holding Glere up, unfurled.

Walt took over, then, and a quick kick to the back of the legs sent Bryce tumbling forward, into the cape.

The grandmaster fell, tumbling forward and in. He didn't attempt to grab anything, prevent himself from falling in. He just fell, feet following him into the hammerspace inside the cape.

Spender bundled the cape up, then, and Glere, removed from a body and unable to pull out a fresh one, was powerless to do anything.

Thomas took his balled-up adversary from the agent and regarded it, the last of his opponents in this battle. He held in his hand the last being between himself and victory.

"Tricky bastard," Bern said, and with that, he lit the cloak on fire.