Though the wording of Terraform and Golem Creation suggested Daisy could mold whatever she liked, there was actually a kind of background limit restricting her to a handful of animals and shapes. For the Celestials’ benefit, no doubt. There was Peng and then a few others like a gorilla, a crane, a tiger, and so forth. For the most part she did not have free reign to imagine and create golems of whatever she liked. That was, at least, what she had thought for the past four years. But necessity had a way of making the impossible possible. And her homicidal former teammate bearing down on her did the trick.

Squeezing her compass, a boot of stone formed over her broken leg which she then imbued with whatever ‘spirit’ a stone leg might possess. By magical means, her Golem Creation leg kicked up, sending Daisy onto her back, and blocking Cunegonde’s sword slash. Had her opponent been wielding the weapon type she usually used, the stone would have been obliterated. But the same property that let her use a sword to cut instead of deal damage also meant it wasn’t getting through the stone encasing her leg.

The manic grin on Cunegonde’s face faded. “Don’t make my life harder, Daisy. You’ve already done plenty of that in the past two years.”

Daisy ignored her. Or, more aptly, her stone leg ignored Cunegonde as it planted back on the ground for Daisy to pick herself up. For a moment she was in too much pain to move. Every time the stone manipulated itself to move her broken leg it sent agonizing lightning bolts up through her body. But the leg moved, and that was all she needed it to do.

Daisy took off towards the pine forest. Her next step was getting on Peng, but her Terraform and Golem Creation combo had another two minutes of cooldown and even then she had to be smart about it since she couldn’t have Peng and her stone leg at the same time. Distance. She needed distance. Something she was losing by the second as she heard Cunegonde laughing wildly and chasing after her through the trees.

“I changed my mind, I like this game! Run, girlie, run! Don’t let me catch you!” Cunegonde yelled with a singing lilt.

She wondered for a split second whether Cunegonde had always been like this or if something about the Xian powers had made her into a monster. Not that it mattered now. She was a monster. At least Yuna didn’t have to witness this.

Daisy didn’t dare look back. If she spoiled the chase and gave up too quickly, Cunegonde had plenty of tools for breaking a lot more than her leg. She also couldn’t rely on her prior knowledge of Cunegonde’s kit, since the Yishang had given her an entirely new set of abilities.

The crunching footsteps were almost on her and finally Daisy felt her Desperation Art unlock. Squeezing her compass, the world around her rumbled and growled. The light dusting of snow which had settled on the pine trees shook and dropped onto Daisy and Cunegonde’s head as the world split open. Ten foot-wide fissures cracked that world into pieces for miles in every direction as cliffs and stalagmites thrust upwards, targeting Cunegonde and slowing her down as she contended with the hostile terrain.

“This isn’t gonna help you, bestie,” Cunegonde said from somewhere just out of sight.

She was right in the sense of not doing enough damage, Daisy thought, but the goal was really to send up an enormous SOS signal. Not that it would do much good either. In all likelihood, the rest of her friends were occupied with fending off the other seven Xian. There remained the possibility of dimension-jumping herself to use Pechorin’s special event to pop up somewhere else, but for that she needed a rod, and the closest one she knew of had a psychopath between it and her.

This train of thought was interrupted by the sound of rocks and trees crashing.

“Blow up as many trees as you like, Daisy. I’ll wait!” Cunegonde yelled.

The earthquake centered on Daisy rippled outwards, uprooting swathes of the forest. Amid the soaring stone spikes, Daisy could see Vermögenburgh in the distance, flashing, sparkling, and booming with a hundred ‘overpowered’ abilities. It was beautiful, she thought. Like fireworks at the end of a festival. She wanted to see it for herself, no matter what it took.

Daisy spun on her stone heel and bolted for a knocked over tree, her stone leg bringing her into the most teeth-clenchingly painful slide of her life. She brought her finger to her mouth and bit on it to keep her scream down to a whimper. A few yards away she watched rocks and trees and other debris scatter as Cunegonde snapped her fingers and exploded a wedge of forest the size of Hammertal Canyon leaving a crater stretching almost back to the town.

“Well, well, well, I guess I found where you aren’t,” Cunegonde said.

Daisy’s heart thumped in her ears. The voice had come from almost directly behind her.

“Guess I’ll try this direction.”

She could tell the direction Cunegonde intended by the sound of her voice. And it was pointed at her.

“Thanks for the help,” Daisy whispered to her stone leg.

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She dissolved the stone and Peng’s stone back arched up beneath her and catapulted both of them over an explosion ripping up an equal-sized wedge of the forest off to the east. From the air, Daisy could see this wedge went almost as far as the eastern ocean.

There was a rush of relief that accompanied being once more on Peng’s back. Cunegonde was sure to come after her, but she took the moment of soaring through the air to take a deep breath and compose herself and then reevaluate her situation.

However, in the next moment, she was on the ground again.

It happened so fast that the only experience she could compare it to was Natsuko’s Swap. Her eyes swept the rock-strewn wasteland around her looking for Cunegonde and eventually she caught sight of Peng still flying somewhere above her. Per its autonomous combat ability, the bird swiped at something in the air that was too high up for her to make out before stopping to circle in a holding pattern. She realized why Peng had stopped attacking when Cunegonde teleported back to the ground, sword drawn, walking leisurely over the rocky terrain towards her.

“Do you get it now? You’re not getting away,” Cunegonde said, her head shaking. “You and everyone else can make fun of me as much as you like for taking the Yishang’s offer, but now I’m on top. Now I’m the most powerful! Do you understand that, Daisy, you stupid, lazy, pitiful little bitch? I made that fucking idiot Natsuko run like a scared fucking cat! I can do whatever I want to you now!”

“You’re right, I’m sorry, Cunegonde,” Daisy said, throwing up her hands in surrender.

Cunegonde squinted at her then burst out laughing. “What the fuck is this? You want mercy now? Now that you’re out of options, you’re gonna roll over for me?”

Daisy swallowed and nodded. “I-I’ll tell you where Shuixing is. Whatever you want.”

This only made Cunegonde laugh more, flecks of the blood she sucked off her blade flinging from her lips. “Oh that’s funny, Daisy. You’ve always been a real jokester. ‘Bang! Bang! Bullseye!’ And all the rest of that shit, right? Too bad I don’t care where your fucking friend is. We’ll find her eventually, just gotta burn Vermögenburgh to the ground first. Maybe chuck a few Non-Heroes on the fire to keep it lit.”

Cunegonde stepped forward to thrust her sword into Daisy’s chest.

“W-Wait! You’re not on top yet!” Daisy screamed.

Cunegonde snarled but held the blade back. “Are you hoping if you piss me off enough I’ll kill you quicker?”

Daisy shook her head frantically. “No! I mean— you’re number eight. That’s not number one.”

Cunegonde tossed her blonde ringlets and scoffed. “So what? That’s a matter for the next world. The only important thing is that I’m gonna be there and you’re not.”

There was something in her old teammate’s voice that told Daisy the hook was sunk. The fear began to leave her voice as she continued, “You know there’s still a difference. Boulanger knows it, Koyon knows it, even Alice knew it. You’re barely in the Top Ten as it is.”

Cunegonde curled her fist around the handle of the sword and moved it back up towards Daisy’s throat.

“B-But you can be if you’ll just listen to me!” Daisy said.

Cunegonde frowned. “Oh? How’s that? By chasing some lazy, airheaded cow around Vermögenburgh while everyone else does the Special Event? Or is this just another shitty attempt to get me to throw my ticket out the window and die with the rest of you?”

“No. What I mean is the Yishang will reward you if you’re the one who captures Shuixing. Just think about it for a second. Sure, Boulanger blows Vermögenburgh up and destroys all the rebels, but what are the rebels trying to do in the first place?” Daisy said.

“By rebels you mean you.”

Daisy shrugged. “Sure.”

Cunegonde pursed her lips and looked off to the side. “End the world.”

“And who has the power to do that? Me? Natsuko? Come on, Cunegonde, you know the answer. It’s Shuixing who’s the ultimate big bad. She’s the one you all are trying to get to. She’s the one the Yishang want you to defeat. That’s why Boulanger told you to interrogate me and report back to him. He wants to go find and capture Shuixing himself because he knows full well that’s where the glory is, and that the Yishang will give special goodies to whoever catches her. You’re not stupid, Cunegonde, you know I’m right.”

Her former teammate’s manic disposition flipped back around to excitement. “You’re right! You’re absolutely right. So go ahead, tell me where Shuixing is. If you don’t I’ll just torture it out of you. How about that?”

A horrible, sick feeling flooded through Daisy, clenching her throat and boiling her stomach. She had only a few seconds to do what came next. Not enough time to hesitate, even as every other part of her was screaming at her not to. But only the bad side of Daisy, the part that, if she let it run wild, would look a lot like Cunegonde.

“You’ve got the sword. I need you to draw a map in the ground. Make a little box in the shape of the town,” Daisy said, gesturing at a spot on the ground beside a jutting stalagmite.

It was a stupid trap. Anyone in their right state of mind would have seen right through it. But Cunegonde, salivating at the idea of being the Hero who beat the final big bad of Po-Lin and would lead the others into a new universe, stepped forward to draw it.

“What next?” Cunegonde asked after drawing the hex-shaped box.

Her former friend’s eyes were focused entirely on the map, and they only lifted as they felt Daisy’s hands shove her backwards. The rocky stalagmite penetrated her stomach, coming out the other side, its single spike pointing at Daisy like an accusing finger. Cunegonde’s eyes filled with shock that would only last a few moments before being replaced with blind rage, but that was all Daisy needed to grasp Cunegonde’s hands in hers and bring the sword up. The sword clasped in Cunegonde’s hands stabbed up through its wielder’s throat.

“I’m sorry,” Daisy whispered to whoever was still behind the dimming eyes gazing up at her in pain.