As cutter pods audibly thumped against the ship's hull, Dragan exchanged a glance with Bruno.

They'd tried, they really had -- they'd tried to leave peacefully, but these Undermen simply refused to let them go. So there was no other choice. If they weren't about to let them leave without a fight, they'd get a fight.

One last try, though. For propriety.

"Listen," Dragan said, looking at Werner -- the Undermen was staring at his script again, eyes frantically scanning through lines and lines of damage reports. "You hear that? Those are cutter pods. In a few minutes, Supremacy troops are going to start filling these halls with plasmafire. Don't you think you have bigger problems than us right now? Just tell us how to get our ship back and we'll be out of your hair. Easy, right?"

The annoyance was clear in Werner's glare as he looked back up at Dragan. "We work in impound," he said icily. "If we just let people go because we get a little scared, we're not doing our jobs, are we?"

Lucia silently nodded behind him -- that was a shame. Dragan had thought she seemed the more reasonable of the pair, but apparently this was a sticking point for her too.

"I'll get in contact with the Captain," Werner went on, finger hovering over his wrist-bound script. "And if he says you can--"

Okay, Dragan had run out of patience. "Bruno," he cut in, rubbing his temple.

Bruno's speed did himself credit -- in a moment, he'd stepped forward, swept Werner's feet out from under him -- knocking him to the ground -- and forced him into a lock, hands firmly restrained behind his back. The Underman was unable to do anything but let out a low groan of pain.

Lucia, on the other hand, was more talkative. "Danny!" she shouted, rushing forward to try and assist, only to find Dragan blocking her way.

"Don't try anything," he warned -- even if he wasn't sure of the woman's actual combat experience, he was fairly certain his Aether would fill any gap without a problem. "Bruno -- take his script. We might need it to get the ship out, yeah?"

From behind him, Bruno snorted. "You sound like Skipper."

"Don't be an asshole."

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

"You are armed, yes?" The Widow asked as she walked down the hallway ahead of Pierrot, hands clasped behind her back.

"Always," Pierrot nodded, rubbing the bangles that encircled his arms through his uniform.

The Revolutions -- he'd acquired them through auction only last year, but they'd already proven themselves some of the most useful items in his collection. Adept for attack, defense and escape: even if the Widow, for whatever reason, turned against him, Pierrot was confident he could prevail.

"Those cutter pods will finish slicing through your ship's hull soon," the Widow continued. "I do not think heading for the escape pods is a good idea. The Supremacy's troops will head there first -- without a doubt. It is safer for us to go to my ship and escape, yes?"

Pierrot shook his head. "I will not abandon my crew."

A dry, humourless chuckle. "You intend to die with them, then?"

"Not at all. I never intend anything but total victory." The pace of Pierrot's marching -- a rhythm he'd mastered long ago -- didn't change even slightly as he walked. Even in this situation, his calm didn't waver.

"What you intend and what you get are two different things, yes? Reality disagrees with your aspirations, I should think."

Pierrot blinked. "Is that what happened to you? You judged your aspirations impossible, so you gave up on them, fled back to Adrust?"

The Widow didn't turn to look at him, but Pierrot felt a noticeable chill enter the air. "Watch yourself," she said quietly. "I cannot kill you -- but a man does not need his limbs to live, does he?"

"It's a simple question," Pierrot said, ignoring the threat. "Even with the infamy Vantablack Squad had garnered, it would have been well within your capabilities to drop below the radar again, restructure the Squad, and continue your operations. Yet you gave up on the concept entirely. Why?"

"I have no reason to tell you this."

"Do you have a reason not to tell me? That in itself would be quite informative."

The Widow cast an annoyed glance back at him. "When you swim through blood long enough, you begin to drown in it. Choosing to pull yourself back up to land in those circumstances is not a moral decision -- it is natural. You do it to survive. Understand?"

That wasn't a lie, but Pierrot knew it wasn't the entire truth. "What about your boy Skipper? You said it yourself -- back in those days, he didn't exist enough to become addicted to murder. Even if you could find the bloodshed overwhelming, he would not."

A moment of silence. Then: "Do you know how we found the boy?"

Pierrot shook his head.

"One of our early operations, when we were focused on dealing with external threats rather than internal. Myself and three of my men -- scum one and all -- crossed the border, made our way across Supremacy territory until we reached Azum-Ha."

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"The Supremacy capital? That's impressive."

"For us, it was nothing," the slightest traces of smugness slithered into the Widow's tone. "We were there for a mission like no other: to assassinate the First, Second and Third Ministers."

Pierrot blinked. The information he'd managed to gather regarding Vantablack Squad hadn't mentioned anything about such an operation. That was surprising: an assassination attempt on the Three Wise Men didn't exactly sound easy to cover up.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We failed, of course," the Widow said offhandedly, stopping for a moment to check the path in front of them as they rounded the corner. "My men died screaming, as they were always bound to -- I fled through the First Minister's villa, finding myself driven further and further in."

"That's unlike you -- you didn't go in without an escape plan, surely?"

Another annoyed glance, cast backwards. "Unlike me? You do not know me. Please do not behave otherwise. The Vigil are proficient guardsmen -- they outstrategized me. There is nothing more to it, and it is not important. Yes?"

"Of course."

The glare faded slightly -- replaced by a wistful, faraway look. The expression of a woman with a memory hanging in front of her eyes. "Deep in the bowels of that place, I found him. Just a boy, fifteen at the oldest, sleeping in a tank -- a cryogenic stasis pod, liquid Panacea bubbling around him. I should have kept going, I think. I should have kept going, certainly."

"You released him?" Pierrot furrowed his brow. "For what reason?"

The Widow sniffed. "I knew what it was to be a child lost in the cold. How could I leave him there? I smashed the glass, pulled him free, and ran. Somehow we escaped." She chuckled. "I don't even remember how, anymore. The mind is the first to go, yes?"

"I feel you might be misrepresenting yourself, Widow," Pierrot said calmly as they reached the shut doors to the escape pod array. "You speak as if it was charity -- and then you recruit this boy to your death squad and have him kill for a living?"

There was no shame in the Widow's voice or gaze -- just singular, inescapable purpose. "The boy was strong, skilled. I do not know who trained him, but they did their job well. I cannot let resources slip through my fingers. That is my demon, Captain." She glanced up at him. "What is yours?"

The Prince, he thought.

"Certainty," he said.

The doors slid open -- but only fire lay beyond.

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

"Now," Mazma said, striding confidently. "Mazma is knowing what you are thinking, okay? Oh boy, you're thinking, right? This guy is gonna tell me what's inside my head? Holy cow! That is what you are thinking. Badass guy. But Mazma knows that you are thinking Mazma is a weird guy too. Badass guy but weird too. Demonic sort of person. But you are wrong, huh? Mazma gets how the things go, so Mazma is just a normal guy really. You stick with Mazma, you will instead be thinking: Oh my god! Angelic person! I love to be alive here! This thing is what you will be thinking, no matter what. Okay?"

"What?" said Ruth.

"What?" said Mazma.

"Buddy, buddy," Skipper cut in, keeping a cheery smile on his face with truly heroic effort. "You understand I gotta ask this, right? Are you sure Bruno and Dragan went this way?"

"Draco and Brownman heads this way, okay?" Mazma frowned. "Mazma is sure about every single thing he says. Forever."

That didn't fill Ruth with confidence -- and even Skipper's smile seemed to be faltering. This Mazma guy had led them on a seemingly random trek through hallways and offices, insisting that this was the way Bruno and Dragan had gone.

Ruth and Skipper exchanged a glance -- it was becoming increasingly clear that they'd reached the inevitable point where they ditched Mazma. It wasn't as if they were abandoning him, not really; he had his own ship, and he knew the way to get there. He was just being fired as their tour guide.

"Listen, Mazma," Skipper said awkwardly, shifting on his feet. "This has been great and all, but me and Ruth have really gotta --"

Mazma cut Skipper off with a truly bizarre hkaw noise from his mouth, before lifting a finger and pointing it up in the air.

"What are you doing?" Ruth sighed, her words more structured exasperation than anything else.

When Mazma spoke again, he was calm, matter-of-fact. "A guy is coming here to kill us now, okay? This sucks."

Before either Skipper or Ruth could open their mouths to offer any comment, there was a resounding bang from the metal wall next to them -- and in the same moment, a colossal arm burst out from it and lunged towards Skipper, as if trying to grab him in a headlock.

The arm was huge, absurdly huge -- the muscular limb was almost as big as Ruth just on its own. She had no doubt that it could squeeze the life out of Skipper as if he was a tube of toothpaste.

Skipper wasn't nearly slow enough for that to happen though. He ducked down, out of the arm’s reach, and jumped away as the limb passed over his head -- turning in the air so as to face his new enemy. He landed between Ruth and Mazma.

The arm had been able to penetrate the metal wall with ease -- and the rest of their assailant's body had just as easy a time. The giant man forced his way through the wall as if it were paper. He was a sight to behold -- long orange hair flowing behind him, monolithic arms that dwarfed the rest of his body, bare chest tense with muscle.

He stared at them with dull golden eyes, gaze settling on Skipper.

"Not. The. Captain," the Pugnant growled -- his voice was halting and uncertain. Clearly, he did most of his talking with his fists rather than his mouth. "Where?"

"Now look, buddy," Skipper retorted, a genuine grin having returned to his face. "That's not the way to ask someone a question, yeah? You've gotta have manners, my man. You get me?"

The huge Pugnant growled again, so deep it felt as if the sound was vibrating right though Ruth's bones. "Captain!" he roared, eyes suddenly wide with rage. "Where?!"

"Do not worry, new friends of Mazma," Mazma muttered from beside Ruth. "Mazma is the strongest guy."

Ruth glanced towards the strange little man, and was surprised to actually see a persistent spark of Aether flowing across his body. The colour was inconsistent -- it was a sharp red as it slithered under his armpit, then a bright green as it crawled up his back again, only to turn a garish bright yellow as it coiled around his neck like a necklace.

As it moved, though, the shape of Mazma's body began to change -- the shape of his left arm, specifically. The muscles under the skin began to bulge unnaturally, the limb growing and stretching with sickening cracks to accompany it. The skin stretched out as the muscle beneath expanded, new biceps bulging out all over -- from his wrist to his elbow.

In just a couple of seconds, Mazma's arm had grown enough to match the size of the rest of his body.

"Okay, pal-o," he grinned. "Now I will pummel you like the little baby."