There was no time to talk, as Nega Luca fired off her shadow lance. I threw a bind spell at a wall and instructed the shadow bands to reach out and grab her spell.

It was pulled towards my spell. I didn’t even let it connect as I ended my bind once we were out of danger. Nega Luca glanced over at the wall as her lance cut through the stone. She clicked her tongue before firing a necrotic burst.

This attack didn’t have a solid form, so we had no choice but to move. To my surprise Shadow bit down on the collar of my dress. We vanished in a blur as her speed took over. That didn’t stop me from lighting up the street with multiple Fireball explosions, not only damaging our enemies, but providing us with cover.

I found myself on the roof tops one street over. “Shadow what! why’d you do that!” I complained. My body was limp as I hung from her mouth.

Suddenly I felt really tired. I almost forgot! I had to move my arms around to keep my meridians from crystalizing because of the wifey aspects flooding my body!

I went ahead and unequipped my clothes in a flash of light. Then re-equipped them before the light particles could vanish. Thanks to that maneuver I managed to free myself.

I fell to the tiles pushing forward into a roll. Then swiftly turned around when I gained a bit of distance. My eyes locked with Shadows, as I performed a few of the more simple kata from the flowing river. Her eyes had these scary slits in them. I felt a chill run down my spine as she became a lot scarier all of a sudden.

“I’ve changed my mind. Go home Master. I don’t want you getting hurt. I appreciate snapping me out of that dark place, but I can’t lose you too.” She commanded.

Her words were so strong that I was actually afraid to disobey her. It was like I was being scolded by a parent. Don’t cry, it’s just her weird mom energy leaking out of her and my moms training reacting. I had to look a little deeper for the true meaning of what she was feeling.

I felt something from her. It was sadness, but also joy. Digging deeper, I uncovered a memory. I saw her abandon Alice and Luca. I felt the overwhelming fear running through her entire body and the horrible guilt she felt for her actions.

Then I saw what she saw a moment ago. When she trusted my words. That fear was there again and it told her to run far away. There was a lot of resistance in her until she couldn’t hold on anymore. Instead of running and saving herself she grabbed me and took me with her.

Now… Shadow was going to go back and sacrifice herself to let me get away. She figured either she’d win and save Luca, or she’d die and save me. Guilt was a powerful thing and right now it was the only thing in her cat shaped head.

“Don't be ridiculous. I’m here to kick ass remember?” I insisted as I moved through the kata that would keep me alive. Slowly, I pushed corruption out of my body. There was a hint of curiosity in Shadows soul, but she had other things on her mind.

She was unable to word those concerns as someone had followed us. “Get your asses back here!” yelled Squirmy as he rose up into the air holding a jade fire beach ball above his head.

I reached up with my own hand and began preparing a Solarball. There was no time for an Azureball, so I fired it right after she released her attack.

Shadow got in front of me blocking my vision, but not my Qi sight. She seemed to be trying to protect me. Not wanting an extra toasty cat girl as a companion, I used protect to shield us from the two exploding attacks.

I thought we were safe, until I saw and felt pure rage coming in from behind us. I turned around just as Nega Luca tried to run us through with a shadow lance. She was using it like a spear.

I coated my body once more in as many layers of aura that I could manage, before trying to grasp the lance with my hand. It somewhat worked since I was able to stop it, but then it grew and stabbed me in the chest.

Meanwhile Shadow had only just realized what had happen. “Master!” she vanished. Her speed taking over.

The next thing I knew she had her two feet planted in Nega Lucas chest. The demon girl was sent flying off the roof, ripping the lance out of my chest.

Somehow my aura was fine, but there was still a hole in me. How was that possible? Could this be like how the shadow in my ghost ribbon works? Can she really phase through auras?

“Master drink!” Shadow tried to get me to guzzle down a full potion, but I already had a healing aura at work. My wound had pretty much closed. That didn’t stop her from jamming the bottle into my mouth—like a fed up mother trying to get their child to drink nasty medicine.

I fought pulling away. This caused the potion to spill. I coughed as some of it went into my lungs. “Knock it off Shadow! I’m fine! You’re being too protective! Focus on the enemy!” I demanded.

“Shut up! I don’t want you hurt! Why can’t you just do what I say Holly! Don’t you understand I know what’s best for you!” she yelled.

I was a bit confused. Even more so when for some reason her emotions revealed the image of an old doll. One I’ve never seen before. “Who’s… Holly?” I asked.

Her face had this look of horror—like she’d just made a huge mistake, but I never got my answer, as I felt Squirmy approaching. The feeling he gave was one of malice and violence.

My sympathy latched onto him. He was going to attack me from behind. I gave Shadow a push sending her down into the street where Nega Luca fell. Feeling the sudden violence behind me, I ducked as Squirmy’s sword went for my neck.

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I quickly spun around punching him in the ribs. I activated a Qi pulse under my left leg and another one from my connecting fist. With my joints locked the force was all focused into Squirmy’s torso.

His body was flung onto the other street. Before joining him, I gathered up whatever heat aspects I could from the clash of our flames. Then used Snowball to copy the spell firing off two Azureballs into the street below.

The road went up in a blaze of white and blue. While the flames were powerful they tended to burn out quickly. As soon as it was safe to do so, i jumped down after him reforming my air sword with several layering platform spells and a blade aura, based off of momentum, earth, and water aspects.

-Shadow-

I Was face to face with the fake Luca. She prepared spell after spell. She already had several shadow lances by her side, but was now creating several necrotic bursts. They were suspended as little balls of shadow.

This was not what I wanted. Master shouldn’t be here. It was too dangerous. What if she dies too. I can’t even see her health bar. Not being able to know if she was okay nearly gave me a panic attack.

I have to kill this imposter and go find Master. She’s just a kitten after all. She should be sipping milk at the castle where it's safe. I withdrew my knife and took a fighting stance.

“Are you finally going to attack? About fucking time! I can’t wait to skin you. I’m gonna turn that tail into a neat little accessory.” Said Not-Luca.

“Shut up! Don’t talk with her face! Her voice doesn’t belong to you! Luca was a good girl! She was nothing like that!” I raged.

“Don’t be ridiculous, this is my voice and my body. I might not have the same soul, but I am Luca. I have her memories. I remember how you treated me like an adult, yet you babied chief. You never cared about me. You let me drink myself into a coma.” She responded.

“No! That’s not true! I was letting you be an adult like you wanted! You even learned a good lesson! I always planned to step in if you ever did anything really stupid! I swear I was looking out for you!” I argued.

“Right, sure. It’s easy to say that now, but you clearly had a favorite. I knew you didn't actually care about me. That's why when I woke up that night, and started feeling bad, I asked chief for help. Not you.” She said.

“When did that happen? Why wouldn't you come to me! I'm really good at cheering children up!” I said.

“You’re a monster. You’re good at breaking people down. That's why you made chief feel all useless and embarrassed when those new recruits came by this morning. You wanted chief to be vulnerable like when we met at that bar. You’re disgusting.” She responded.

“Your wrong! I love Master and would never…” I shook my head. This is like how Squirmy tried to get under my skin. Maybe it was true, but I was so unaware of it. I never realized how horrible I was acting. I did it to my boys too didn’t I?

“Denial, denial. Keep telling yourself that. I'm sure you believe it.” She taunted.

“You're right. I did do all those things and you’re not my Luca.” I closed the distance between us and went for my assassination ability.

My knife glowed a dull red as I thrust it forward. To my surprise Luca blocked it using one of her shadow lances. She then fired one of her necrotic bursts. I tried to move, but felt chains wrap around my legs.

I activated the ability after image vanishing and escaping her trap, but not before leaving two fragment grenades behind. Nega Luca went off with an explosion of concussive force and metallic shards.

Meanwhile I reappeared on a nearby roof top holding a throwing knife in my hand. Her body bled black ooze reinforcing the idea that this was not Luca. With a flick of my wrist I called the name of my skill “pin”

The knife became a white needle as it stuck itself halfway through not-Luca’s leg, stabbing into the ground and pinning her in place.

I withdrew both of my knives and closed the distance between us. She cried out, “Don't Shadow it’s me! I’ve taken back control!” she cried, but I knew it was fake. Her frequency was still wrong. It didn't stop the tears from falling though.

I really wish that was true.

“Waking Rend!” my blades glowed a bright magenta, as I slashed at the fake Luca creating giant molts of light that looked to nearly cut the land.

Like the name implied. This skill ripped you out of a dream. Shattering any hope I had of talking her out of the dark.

I’m sorry.

-Alice-

“Are you Cindy?” I asked an old lady.

“No, I’m not.” Said the granny. She had a neat looking bird. It looked like a small skinny rooster and had a funny name. Though it kept saying naughty things to me and I wasn’t sure if it was self aware, or just repeating stuff it had already heard.

“Banana girl?” I turned to the voice. It was some ninja looking guy. He looked like a k-pop idol reject, but not Korean. The odd part was that even though he looked kind of pretty he gave off this horrible feeling.

“Hi. Are you a Femboy, or like a boyboy?” I asked.

“What! Who told you that garbage! I mean, I do have a feminine bone structure, but that’s just because I was starved for a long time. You haven’t been talking to Sapphire have you?” he complained.

I shook my head not really understanding the offense. I don’t know why but there was something kind of untrustworthy about this guy. I felt like I should talk to someone less useless. Was that mean? That’s kind of mean. I don’t want to be mean.

“Aren’t you like Isaac’s wife or something? You know people are looking for you… oh crap! And I found you first! That means I get a raise!” said the horribly confused not a femboy guy.

“Actually, Sir Boner found me first.” I corrected.

He seemed to deflate. “Great, I knew I should have joined the army. Now he’s got people calling him Sir. Fuck me.” The man kicked dirt before turning around and walking away.

“Hey wait up, Mr. Femboy!” I ran after him.

He stopped in his tracks to get a look at me. “What? Shut up! Don’t call me that! I can't play with you. I'm like super busy right now. I ran out of time to babysit. Leave me alone banana girl.” He said.

“How rude! First of all, I’m Alice not banana girl! Second off, can you help me find an NPC named Cindy? It’s really important.” I insisted.

“Alright… Alice it is. My names Kyle, but you can call me king. Now-” I interrupted him “Are you really a king!?”

My eyes sparkled. He just said “Huh? No I’m not, that's just short for my username.”

“Huh? Isn’t that just lying? You should change it to liar.” I said disappointedly

“You know, I don't know what I was expecting from a crazy man’s wife. You realize this is a whole other world where you can be whatever you want, right?” he said.

“Can I be a princess! My husband’s a princess, but he pulls it off so nicely. I feel like I might be too old to try something like that. I am 41 after all. If I was 39 like Izzy maybe, but 41 is too old for a princess don’t you think?” I said.

Kyle seemed to have something die inside him as the words coming out of my mouth seemed to make his head hurt.

“Do you want help or not!” He yelled.

“I don’t know. Can I really trust a liar? My husband says I need to be careful with the people I talk to online. Last time I nearly gave a prince our bank account number.” I explained.

“You can trust me.” He said. It almost felt like he wanted to hurt me in someway.

I shrugged my shoulders, “Okay, good enough for me.” Then follow Kyle into the castle.

As we went I tried skipping. Princesses skip sometimes, so I wanted to try it. It was surprisingly harder than it looks. I stopped trying when I realized people were watching me. It was too embarrassing at that point.