Dipshit ain’t getting away from us this time. Anja’s wind attack blew him to the back of the parking lot, close to where some houses are.

So, what we know so far: Cat Palmer is resilient to most attacks and we have yet to really figure out a weakness. He didn’t seem all that hurt by my lightning, but I’m also not really interested in going for his feet. Hey, in the last boss I got up on his back and that seemed to help a lot. I’ll try that.

I do the helicopter thing with my hammer, and I try to get onto the back, but then I get beaten back by one of his paws. His reflexes are too good for me to get up there from the front, I guess. Maybe if I get behind him?

Anyways, I got knocked back to the ground just as Ashley and Anja run up to meet Kitty Priest, and he spins around quickly and wallops all three of us with that scorpion tail. I’m expecting it to sting, but it actually barely hurts me. Anja manages to duck under it, but Ashley gets hit dead on. It clearly affects her a lot more, as she winces and hunches over from the pain. So like how Ashley didn’t get hurt by that eye attack, but in reverse this time.

Anja hits back with another gust of wind. This time, he gets thrown into some trees in between the lot and a house, and the trees get knocked over and crash into the backyard. I don’t know if this is intentional, but moving the fight to the houses will help us because we’ll have more cover and a high ground to attack him from.

Suddenly, I feel a sort of powerful, macho feeling; must be the adrenaline kicking in. While he’s still disoriented from Anja’s attack, I run and get behind one of the trees that didn’t get knocked over. Then, when he tries to start another attack against Ashley and Anja, I use the spinny hammer trick again; only this time, I use it to just barrel straight into his flank. The impact stings me a bit too, but man, it was worth it. I plop to the ground and watch as the force of my collision sends him tumbling into some more trees, but he still doesn’t really seem that hurt by it, since he gets right back up afterwards.

Still, my attack couldn’t stop him from swatting Anja halfway across the parking lot with one of his paws. Anja recovers quickly and retaliates with more wind, which sends him all the way into the house. His back legs get stuck through the walls, giving Ashley an opening to run up and smack him right across the face with her sword. As a nice cherry on top, I propel into him with my hammer spinny again, which knocks him free from the wall but also sends him sliding across into the next yard.

“I can’t help but to admire your valiant effort,” Cat Palmer admits as he gets back on his feet. Despite the beating he took, he still has that same calm, focused tone of voice. “You have found strength through unity; a quality my church has long missed. How did you do it?” He looks directly at Ashley, as if the question was mostly for her.

“We have common goals and beliefs, so we help each other,” Ashley states simply. “It’s not complicated.”

“Ah, I see. So it was a natural alliance,” the kitty muses. “And yet you are also so different in many ways.”

Anja jumps over the smashed trees and joins the rest of us in the yard. “Well, you gotta have some diversity or things will get too boring,” she tells Mr. Whiskers. “Anyways, we’ve already flapped our jaws enough already, haven’t we?”

“Perhaps we have,” Palmer says (I ran out of cat nicknames.) He moves very quickly up into the air, and I instinctively dive through the hole he left in the wall to dodge whatever attack he’s about to do. And that was a pretty good idea, as a second later I hear the sound of huge wings flapping and see Ashley fly backwards and out of sight. I hear more wind sounds and trees getting knocked over, so I’m guessing he and Anja are having a Wind Duel now.

I look at the ceiling of the house for a spot to easily break through and get a good vantage point. I’m in a cluttered living room area now, but I see a hallway in front of me that would take me closer to the action. I run down the hall and propel myself through the ceiling right in front of what looks like a master bedroom.

On the roof, I catch Ashley swiping at Palmer’s legs, creating a perfect distraction for me to smack him with another hammer propeller assault. Unfortunately, he’s cognizant enough to nail Ashley with his scorpion stinger as he’s going down, sending her flying straight through the wall of the house. The sting combined with the impact of colliding with the wall must have hurt a lot.

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Immediately after Terra emerges from the shadow cocoon, Ted sends her flying backwards into a metal cabinet with one of his fire attacks. Terra jumps out, relatively unperturbed, and pelts him with an ice attack. Ted winces and grunts in a pained way as the attack sends him sliding backwards into a wall.

I take a deep breath, and then hit her square in the chest with a shotgun blast. This knocks her down to the floor and leaves her stunned, so I follow up with a nuclear strike. After this initial assault, Terra is no longer grinning and now looks furious.

She dives forward and takes me by surprise, grabbing me by my heels and then using her wings to propel herself into the air, leaving me awkwardly hanging over her shoulder and disoriented. She then spins around and tosses me out the door to the kitchen, causing me to slam into the wall in the hallway. I fall to the floor on my side with a thud. The impact certainly hurt, but I am able to bear it. After all, I’ve been through much worse in the Metaverse so far.

I push myself up to a sitting position to see Terra staring at me from the kitchen, ominously framed by the doorway and smirking again. But then, I hear a loud bang and Terra shrieks in pain as her wings twitch a bit; Ted must have fired on her from where he is in the kitchen. Terra steps out of the kitchen and towards me, glaring at me evilly.

“What a curious pair of opponents I have,” she muses. “A horrifying, disgusting freak of nature… and a talking armadillo.”

I feel my pulse rise once again… however, then I heard Ted’s voice call, “She’s trying to distract you. Ignore her!” I close my eyes and take a deep breath, returning to my previous pensive focus.

I spring to my feet and reach out with my hand, intending to put her to sleep with the spell I used on Moloch. However, Terra sees it coming and ducks out the way. She retaliates with a punch to the side of my head and a knee right into my groin, causing me to stumble backwards a few steps.

“Hehe, that was cathartic,” Terra comments unnecessarily.

I raise my shotgun again, and this time I hit her several times in quick succession, leaving her momentarily stunned. I take this time to run back into the kitchen and look for Ted; it’s strange that he hasn’t followed us out yet.

It turns out, this was because Terra’s ice attack on Ted caused him to get frozen to the wall, still able to operate his gun but not much else. I tear off the ice covering him and help him get free.

Ted and I walk back out to confront Terra, weapons raised. She is just now standing up straight again and is breathing very heavily. We clearly were able to get the upper hand on her and wear her down quickly.

“Give it up, Terra,” I tell her. “It’s obvious by now that you’re not going to beat us.”

“And then what?” she asks me. “You’ll convert me?”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I rebuke her. “Why can you not go thirty seconds without making some sick comment?”

“You think that I’m sick?” Terra replies spitefully. “Why can’t we talk about the organized network of people, preying on children and mentally ill people? The internet makes it easier than ever for predators to find their victims and infect them… and you’re playing right into their hands!”

“You don’t know me at all, do you?” I ask. “We were friends for years, and yet you somehow know absolutely nothing about me…”

“I thought I did,” she said. “You never seemed like someone who’d be radicalized. Such a pity, Zoe…”

However, she seems to admit defeat all the same, and exits her shadow form. I sigh with relief and put my gun back at my side.

“You never answered my question, Zoe,” Terra states after returning to her regular clothing and wingless form. “What is your goal here?”

“We’re here to make Palmer change his heart,” I explain. “He has the power to smooth over this whole situation, if we can just get him to stop being so stubborn.”

Terra chuckles darkly. “You’re not gonna be able to get through to him. No way.”

“We have to try,” I insist.

“No, you don’t get it Zoe. Did you see the monstrous form that he took? There’s no way to stop him. He’s given in to his selfish desires and is too far gone.”

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“If we defeat him, we can talk him out of it!” I urge her.

“No. He is too powerful. The only thing that can stop him now is the direct hand of God Himself. That’s why I wanted to activate that secret weapon. But now, you’ve ruined any chance of that happening…”

“Wait, you were going to stop him?” I ask, confused. “I thought you’d be on his side!”

“I was totally on his side until he transformed into that monster!” Terra says disdainfully. “But whatever. Have it your way. Go deal with him yourself, freak.”

And without further ado, Terra takes her gun and shoots herself in the head with it, disappearing into shadows to reappear who-knows-where.

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Ouch, that last hit on Ashley looked like it fucking hurt! I dash away from the fight and into the house to go find her. I find her in a bedroom, having just crashed through two layers of walls and right into a large, wooden dresser which is now in splinters. She does not look good; her armor has a few dents in it, and she’s wincing and holding her stomach like she’s about to violently throw up.

“Oh jeez! Here, I can help!” I offer. However, just as I’m crouching to heal her, I hear a loud sizzling sound come from every direction around me… I sprawl onto my back to see that the house has caught fire… oh no oh shit, what do I do?

“Eeeek!” I scream without thinking. “Fire! I gotta put it out! I’ll use my wind!”

“No, don’t!” Ashley orders in a croaky voice. “You’ll only make it stronger. Palmer must have used his fire breath on the end of the house, we need to get out now…”

But it’s already too late. The fire has set the doorway and the bed by the window ablaze, leaving us with nowhere to run. I can’t do anything but sit there and cry out of total panic.

But then, I hear a crash and see a bunch of rubble fall down from the roof right in the center of the room, leaving a hole. Nova hops down through it, uttering a “Yeowch!” as his robes catch on fire. He grabs me around the waist and just straight up chucks me up through the hole he made. I scream more as I fly, and then land on the shillings of the roof with a thud.

I feel two sets of feet land beside me right afterwards, followed by Nova’s voice saying, “C’mon Anja, let’s go let’s go let’s go!” Ashley follows him up with, “The house will collapse soon. We need to jump to relative safety.” I feel someone yank me to my feet by my armpits (it must be Ashley based on the height difference between us) and then push me forward. Without thinking twice (or even really once,) I make a mad dash across the roof and off the other side, too disoriented to land on my feet and instead faceplanting onto the ground. Two subsequent thuds tell me that Ashley and Nova made it.

“That fucking bastard!” Nova shouts bitterly from above me, having landed on his feet. “When are Zoe and Ted gonna get here??? We’ve been fighting like hell and we’ve barely made a dent so far!”

With some protesting from my battered limbs, I push myself up and use a group healing spell. Nova looks like he’s managing okay, but Ashley is still on the ground coughing heavily, now covered in soot in addition to her previous injuries.

“Thanks for that,” Ashley says. She pushes herself up too, but nearly stumbles over and Nova has to grab her shoulder to keep her steady.

“Damn, Ashley,” I tell her. “You can do this all day, huh?”

No reaction from Ashley for that, predictably. Nova, getting the reference, chuckles a bit, but then the smile is wiped off his face by something he sees over my shoulder. I whirl around to see one of the squads of soldiers from the church pointing guns at us. Oh fuck!

“You are ordered to stand down,” a middle-aged lady in the front of the squad says.

Ashley rolls her eyes, does a dramatic hair flip, and then charges straight into them without any further warning. She uses the superior bulk granted by having a Persona to charge through their oncoming fire and slice through the soldiers one by one, turning them to shadowy smoke. I think that I should help her out, but she’s moving so quickly through the squad that I’m worried about hitting her. The other soldiers seem to have similar concerns, leaving to a confusing mess of some of them shooting and others running away. It kinda reminds me of that one scene from V for Vendetta near the end. And like that scene, Ashley somehow emerges victorious, albeit breathing very heavily and with a crazy look in her eyes. There are several new welts in her armor from the bullets that managed to hit her. I would tell her off for putting herself into that much danger when she was already weakened, but honestly right now I mainly just feel afraid of her.

And then Palmer re-emerges, pouncing towards Ashley from the other side of the burning house. With one simple flick, he knocks Ashley away before she has a chance to react to what is happening. Ashley flies straight forward and into a tree, which breaks in half and falls backwards. Ashley falls to the ground headfirst and appears totally unconscious at last.

“No! Ashley!” I cry out, making to run over for her. Nova, however, grabs me around the waist to stop me.

“Anja… he doesn’t see us yet,” he whispers in my ear. “Let’s take cover and use this to our advantage…”

While it goes against my immediate instinct to go help her, I think he’s right. We might be able to sneak around the buildings and go collect her.

Palmer miraculously didn’t seem to hear my earlier shout over the sounds of the tree breaking, so we both back away slowly and hide behind the next house. I personally don’t get too close to the wall because I’m worried he’s just going to set this one on fire too.

“She has fought well,” I hear Palmer say. It’s not clear at first if he’s talking to himself, or if another platoon showed up. “I can respect that fighting spirit, even if she is on the wrong side of this issue. Take her back to the base and put her in a secure location.”

“Roger that, sir,” a man’s deep voice says, confirming that he’s not talking to himself. “Is this area clear? It seems that the unclean residents here fled already.”

“Don’t worry, they will not get far,” Palmer replies. “We are sweeping every inch of this town as we speak. And anyway, two of Ashley’s friends may still be skulking around here somewhere. I will find them myself.”

“I don’t get this, why hasn’t she evaporated yet?” A young woman’s voice asks. “All the other civilians we dealt with simply faded into air a while after being shot.”

“The powers she awakened give her special rules, it seems,” Palmer explains. “However, rest assured she is unconscious for now. Be on your guard, as her friends may try to take her body and resuscitate her.”

“Well, that’s an idea,” Nova mutters. “We just wait for that squad to pass by, and then…”

His plan is interrupted by the sound of crunching grass that is waaay too close to us. Nova grabs my arm and pulls us into a nearby patio to hide from him.

“Fuck! He’s so catlike I couldn’t hear him approaching!” Nova whispers tersely as we crouch behind the sitting table.

“What do we do, Nova?” I whisper back. “Now it’s just the two of us against one very large beast…”

“Let me think about this… I’ll come up with a plan,” Nova whispers back, though his face shows as much anxiety as I feel. He closes his eyes really tightly, seemingly trying to think of something desperately. In the meantime, we have nothing to do but stay cramped up in our hiding place and hope we aren’t spotted.

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Ted and I dash out the front doors of the church, ready to join the others in the fight. I scan the surrounding area, and quickly find the area of the fight, indicated clearly by the several demolished trees and a house that’s been burned to the ground. We quickly start dashing in that direction…

…But then, I see more clearly what’s actually happening. I see Ashley’s limp body being carried away by a group of soldiers, with Anja and Nova nowhere to be seen. I see Palmer hastily walking around the area and looking around. Could he be looking for them?

I slow to a stop, my heart falling in my chest as I realize what’s happening.

“What?” Ted asks sharply. “It looks as though they’ve already given up!”

“Yeah… it does,” I reply glumly. “The mission failed. We need to get out of here before…”

“Nonsense!” Ted growls at me harshly. “We can rejoin with the two who remain and win!”

“But look at Palmer!” I point out. “They’ve been fighting him this whole time, and he barely looks hurt! And we know that at least Ashley is already down!”

Ted doesn’t say anything to that. He just says heavily and shakes his head.

Depressed and defeated, I start thinking about how to get everyone out safely. I’ll have to intercept the soldiers carrying Ashley, but I still have no idea where Anja and Nova are hiding.

How could this happen to us? It seems that Palmer was just too strong for us. We couldn’t defeat him after all… it’s just like what Terra said…

“No, you don’t get it Zoe. Did you see the monstrous form that he took? There’s no way to stop him. He’s given in to his selfish desires and is too far gone.”

That’s what she said, and she ended up being right. But hold on… there was something she said after that…

“No. He is too powerful. The only thing that can stop him now is the direct hand of God Himself. That’s why I wanted to activate that secret weapon. But now, you’ve ruined any chance of that happening…”

Suddenly, the strangest of ideas overtakes me.

“Ted… wait. I, uh…” I trail off.

“What’s on your mind?” he asks me.

“I… don’t expect this to work,” I disclaim, “But… we don’t have any other ideas, so maybe there’s one thing we could try.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Remember that weapon that Palmer wanted to use? None of us tried to get it to open. It could be that it’d work for one of us… but no. There’s no way that’d work.”

With a pang, I realize that if a trained pastor couldn’t meet the requirements to get it to open, there’s no way any of us could. Ashley can be too violent sometimes, Anja and Nova aren’t Christians, Ted seems to have personal baggage that he won’t share, and I… I’m just pretty useless for the most part.

“Hmm. It is curious that nobody could use it in the palace that they themselves created,” Ted observes. “It’s almost as if they know deep in their hearts that something is off about all of this…”

He looks around quickly. “Where did those doors he tore open lead to?”

“The backside of the church, I think,” I tell him. “But…”

Without waiting for me to finish, he runs around the perimeter of the church behind me.

“Wait, Ted!” I call after him. “I don’t think… that idea was probably too stupid…”

He ignores me and is soon out of sight. Disgruntled, I follow him around the church and to what would be a second, smaller parking lot in the real world. In this world, the metal doors are here instead, showing that this is where Palmer escaped from earlier. I carefully step over the bottom into the hole that Palmer left earlier, and back into the room.

I jog down the ramp to find Ted standing at the foot of the weapon. Obviously, the door is still shut tight.

“Okay, Ted. It’s clearly still not opening,” I tell him. “It was just a distraction this whole time. Let’s go get the others and escape.”

“Why, it was never going to be me who opened it,” he asserts. “Come closer, Zoe.”

“Oh come on, me?” I question, getting a bit hysterical. “This whole hostile and hateful environment… I was a part of it for so, so long. Maybe I never fully believed in it, but I didn’t speak out against it, and that is bad enough.”

“I ain’t seeing anything about ‘perfect’ on that inscription,” Ted counters. “Only one man was ever perfect.”

I sigh. I’m really afraid of stepping in front of it; not that it’ll open, but that it won’t, confirming what I know to be true about myself. No matter whose side you’re on, you can clearly see me and see someone totally unworthy.

Still, Ted is steadfast, and is not budging from the spot he’s in. I suppose if nothing else, I will need to walk over there to pick him up.

I shut my eyes and walk over to him, trying to focus on just getting him and leaving as quickly as possible. I heard a strange creaking sound, which I ignore…

Then, right beside me I hear a large Crash. My eyes instinctively pop open… so see that the door to the weapon has fallen down.