27th of Cobre, 9:20pm, 1659

"We protect the orphans for the time being. If we find someone they like and we can trust, then we'll get the adoption process started, wherever we may be. Until then, we'll do our best to take care of them. All in favor?"

Clara raised a hand.

Alistair raised a hand.

Joanna raised a hand.

And Lenoria was the last to raise hers. "Motion passed. Let's make our way back to Norwich and locate Caesar from there."

"Thanks, guys." Joanna bowed her head in gratitude. "Let's get ready and set out ASAP. Who knows what a bad example those pirates are setting for the kids."

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Pearl's interruption was not appreciated, especially by Lenoria. The woman in black was being cryptic again, and with no context to go on, Lenoria rolled her eyes and answered with "What?"

"I hope you didn't forget our talk back at the cable car." Holding a light blue gemstone, Pearl remained quiet until Lenoria finally remembered. "It is time to decide. What are we doing with Cepheus?"

"That's the Soulstone Zep had..." Clara remembered as well. "He used it to plant those poisonous roses and summon that shambling mound."

"Yeah..." Lenoria had forgotten all about her talk with Pearl about Cepheus, whose Soulstone was previously owned by a minion of Cassiopeia. According to Pearl, a legend from a distant planet explained that Cepheus and Cassiopeia were king and queen of an ancient civilization. The queen vainly boasted about her beauty, which angered the gods. An oracle explained that the only way to appease them was a sacrifice, and thus both king and queen ordered for their daughter, Andromeda, to be chained up at a rock to be sacrificed as a sea monster arrived to destroy the kingdom as divine punishment.

In the end, a hero appeared and slayed the monster, rescued the princess, and married her. A little cliche, but for Lenoria, it just worked. But now she wondered: Is this the same Cassiopeia who angered the gods, and if so, had she returned from those ancient times for some evil plot? And what was her connection to Alistair?

Lenoria had a whole bunch of questions, and she wasn't answering any of them if the one lead to Cassiopeia is sealed away. "Let's hear him out, Pearl."

***

Present day

The sun had only begun to set, providing the Blue Jays with enough sunlight from the outside world to help them realize an exit to the forest had opened up. For Lenoria and the others, the aura Cepheus exuded was enough to help them see clearly for a short distance, leaving no shadow in its wake. Their foes - armed with knives, axes, firearms, and even claws - cautiously observed the newcomers with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.

But the vulture among them was not even worried. "Are you the leader of this little harem, then? Heh. I'm going to enjoy giving you a dose of reality, kid."

"Stay back, Miss Cecilia," Alistair whispered. "Tend to your wounds."

"I appreciate you, but I have all of my spells ready." Cecilia did her best to stay behind Alistair, gripping the back of his leg as if she was trying to stay behind a tree. "I can fight."

"Then stick closer to the girls," Alistair ordered. "If you plan to fight, make it harder for them to reach you."

A single drop of sweat slid down Cecilia's face. "Eh? You're not going to say 'No, a lady such as yourself shouldn't dirty her hands with this filth,' or something like that?"

"Hold on," Lenoria interrupted, "are you hurt or not?"

"I was until Al healed me!"

"Then why in the world would he say it," Lenoria roared.

"It's a cliche! I'm a sucker for cliches, and this is a really good one!"

"Are you kidding me? We just saved you! The least you could do is give us some backup instead of fawning over my man!"

"I'm not fawning over him, I'm teaching him proper etiquette!" Cecilia shrugged with a smug expression. "Then again, a boy like you wouldn't understand something as basic as that."

The two girls bumped heads in the most literal sense, each growling to the other. It appeared that Cecilia's life-threatening scare, along with Lenoria's aching trip to Norwich Forest, was forgotten in a single instant.

"Excuse me-" El Buitre piped up but he was silenced by the glares from the bickering duo.

"You be quiet," both of them shouted.

"Is this really the time to be arguing?" Aquamarine remained by Mr. Horsey's side, unsure if she should make a move or let this argument resolve peacefully.

"I should have expected this. It's my fault for not taking preventative measures..." Alistair's murmurs to himself were interrupted by a pat on his shoulder. "Solveig?"

"Do you see them, Al?" Alistair knew what Solveig meant. "The feathered one is already whispering to his friends, and the demons are brandishing their claws. What are you going to do about it?"

"Right." Alistair clutched his hammer. "Ladies! The enemy is upon us! They have hurt one of our own, and we can't allow them to get the drop on us!"

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"Attack!" El Buitre's battle cry signaled the end of the girls' bickering and the beginning of the Blue Jays' counterattack. Darla took aim at the enemies ahead while Legs's dwarfish form charged along with the rest of the abrikandilu. Quincy stood next to his boss, acting as a wall.

"Fine. I have so much pent-up energy that pummeling you to the ground wouldn't be worth the effort." Lenoria reached under her duster and pulled out a pair of caestus, forged to look like silvered heads of jaguars with solid handles inside their jaws. "What do you say, pint size? Truce?"

"Fine by me." Cecilia leaned her back against Lenoria's - or at least, against her backside - and scanned the battlefield. The melee attackers - seven in total - charged past Cecilia's undergrowth, all too willing to sink their teeth into fresh meat. She needed her payback against the musket girl, who knelt behind the wall of meat that was Quincy, ready to open fire once again. And then there was that bird bastard; what was his deal?

"Solveig, the two of us will deal with these demons! Ladies, counter any sniper fire, if you will! Len-"

Alistair's command was cut short when one of the charging demons was pushed back with a metal-clanking punch. One other, perhaps feeling bad for its fellow, halted its advance and engaged the assailant in melee while the remaining four demons (and Legs) continued their charge.

"Wow, Tizoc was right." Lenoria excitedly bumped her metal caestus after successfully deflecting the second demon's claws. "They're effective against demons!" Her victorious quip was interrupted by the screaming of the struck demon. One of its teeth had been dislodged, and it held on to its mouth due to the ongoing pain.

"The cold! It burns! It burns!"

"H-hold on a sec! Fall back," El Buitre ordered, yet his demons did not hear him in time. They all lunged with their mouths open, only for two to meet Alistair's vicious counterattack after sidestepping to evade them, while two others had latched their jaws on the haft of a polearm with a single edged blade on the end. The polearm seemed unwieldy, a weapon too big for even someone like Alistair; that's when the demons asked themselves, 'If two of them are already aiming for the boy, then whose weapon are we biting onto?'

"Hello, boys," Solveig welcomed them as she lifted her polearm - and the two demons - like nothing. What followed after that was a burst of electricity that electrocuted both of the fiends, but to Solveig's surprise, the duo survived the impact. "Resistant to electricity, are we? Excellent. Don't die on me just yet!"

"I oughta say the same to you!" A pair of axes swung at Solveig's legs in a cross formation, resulting in a dull ring of metal as bloodied steel clashed with her armor. The giant woman staggered, bending a single knee as the impact released the demons from her blade on a stick. The dwarven fellow who attacked her went for another swing, locking weapons with Solveig this time. "Ha. You rock giants are always easy to outmaneuver."

Elsewhere, Quincy looked at the battlefield. The demons had engaged their new enemy, and Legs had charged in as well without a second thought. Darla took aim and opened fire, and the big man took note of the malicious grins on both of their companions. "Uh, boss, is that okay? They didn't start this fight, so..."

A slap made Quincy recoil, all thanks to El Buitre. "Shut it, Quincy! We're biding our time, so just stay here and keep us safe! Darla, what's your status?" After some silence, El Buitre patted his sniper on the shoulder. "Darla, I'm talking to you."

Upon closer inspection, El Buitre took note of Darla's tilted head. She leaned to her right, the opposite direction from her musket, and only replied with incoherent babbling when her boss called out to her by name over and over.

"Nnnngh....fafaffa....pretty colors...."

"What have they done to you? When did this happen? How?" Far ahead, somewhere on the enemy's rear line, Melodious Aquamarine twirled amidst a multitude of colorful bubbles, each one reflecting prismatic light on Darla's direction. "You!"

"Haha," the magical girl laughed arrogantly, "hope you liked my Bewildering Bubbles! They're harmless, but annoyingly distracting!"

El Buitre growled, but his problems had only just begun when, not far from Aquamarine, the halfling he had pursued earlier felt brave enough to blast an abrikandilu with a ray of fire. The demon had snapped its jaws at Alistair after surviving a hammer to the back, and while the demon's resistance to fire saved it from the halfling's spell, the demons' wounds had become obvious to the naked eye in just a matter of seconds. All of the abrikandilu oozed with dark blood, either from electricity, fire, or just the wounds inflicted by the enemy's use of cold iron weaponry.

But the blonde... Where did she go? Her previous targets switched to the hammer boy after he took a step towards them, opening him up to get flanked by his own targets as well as the ones the girl had taken the time to pummel with those metal fists of hers. The rock giant was busy holding off Legs, while the abrikandilu she had been fighting were distracted by the magical girl and the halfling. Who was left to take on the brawler girl?

With a crouching slide from behind a tree on the side of the road, their quarry slipped past the abrikandilu and made a beeline for the remaining Blue Jays. What is she, stupid? The halfling's entanglement spell was still in effect, meaning anyone caught in it would be severely hindered. The Blue Jays had been close to the farther edge, and with just a few steps they could get out of the entanglement zone and make a much-needed escape. They could simply report back to the demons' master with news about how some paladin and his groupies ambushed them and proved to be too much for the abrikandilu that had gone with him on patrol. He had to watch his wording, however; while betrayal was rewarded in the Order of the Blue Jay, demons were not the type to take such slights sitting down. He would have to make it look like he wasn't deserting his allied forces, and-

"Cepheus!"

What came after the girl stated a single word horrified El Buitre; the halfling's entanglement spell changed so that some of the wriggling vines not only stopped moving, but enough withdrew inside the earth beneath them to grant the girl a safe passage; a passage that led directly to her intended target. "This girl...is after me?" The thought was insulting. How dare she target him directly after the trouble he had gone through to provide enough meat shields to protect himself? "Darla, open fire!"

"On it, bo-" Darla had been given no time to aim when an orb of water struck her right on the temple. Her vision blurred for a second before going completely black, tossing her firearm into the air from the sudden, bullet-like impact to the head. The blonde girl expressed her thanks to the magical girl, as not much remained to block her way to El Buitre.

This must have been their plan all along. They had little time to organize themselves after their entrance, yet they had taken out his sharpshooter while keeping the abrikandilu on their toes. They looked like kids, yet the way they fought indicated a level of experience that could be compared with veteran police who had tumbled with the Order ever since that idiot Spark spilled a lot of their secrets after a run-in with some amateur adventuring group. El Buitre was not pleased; had word already spread of their tactics and how to counter them?

"Hey, boss." Quincy made a dopey laugh; he had caught Darla's musket after she threw it, and he was now aiming it at the blonde girl who was giving them so much trouble. The blonde girl, not wanting to risk a serious injury, stopped her charge and raised her hands. "Uh, what do I do with this?"

At long last, Quincy had done something that didn't mess up his plans. "Yes! Yes, Quincy! You got her on the ropes, now!" El Buitre threw an uppercut at the air. "What are you waiting for? Let her have it!"