Sasha treaded toward Mercutio, her speed and aggression boiling higher and higher with each step. She needed to finish this quickly. The fates of the others, her friends, made her anxious. This clown was nothing more than an obstacle separating her from them.

Mercutio pulled a banana out of his pocket, aimed it at Sasha, and yelled, “Bang!”

It didn’t get a reaction or even a flinch out of her. He looked at his banana, wary, and threw it on the ground. “That merchant lied to me.”

Sasha’s cloaking armor of ki wrapped her skin tightly. She’d never felt such a tingling, surging sensation against her skin before. At her will, a translucent great sword of energy materialized in her hands. Its weightlessness reminded her of fighting with Primus.

Mercutio’s arms extended and morphed into jagged bone blades. If she wasn’t careful, they would punch holes through her body with ease. She was unsure of how durable her armor of ki would be too.

The two foes measured each other up, glancing from head to toe, before Sasha burst forward with rapid slashes. Mercutio evaded her pursuit with panicked giggling and retaliatory swipes. “Oh, you. So cute when you’re angry! Like a kitten.”

Well, he giggled until he didn’t. “So fast.”

Sasha cut his arm off. Mercutio screamed out as a fountain of confetti and rainbow-colored liquid flooded everywhere. With a twitchy grin, he smiled and yelled, “Need a hand!”

His detached arm landed on its fingers and came to life with an opened eye at the elbow. It lunged at Sasha, who slashed it in half mid-air. The arm inflated and malformed from the damage before exploding in her face, blowing her across the roof.

Dazed, Sasha got back up to her feet. The bomb had punched through the armor and tattered her underclothes. The blue, hazy ki reformed around her gradually as a gash across her forehead oozed blood. It got into her eyes. She wiped them clean.

Sasha stared Mercutio down, annoyed, as he inflated an orange balloon and fashioned it into a new arm, fingers and everything. Near the balloon’s completion, his grip slipped. It launched through the air back and forth with silly fart-like noises. Mercutio stumbled around trying to catch it.

Sasha asked, “Do you take anything seriously?”

He casually responded, “Of course not. I’m a fucking evil clown. What else do you expect? Layers? A tragic backstory? That would be completely besides my point.”

Sasha sighed and reformed an energy sword. “I guess you’re not capable of making sense either.”

“In my eyes, I’m the only sane one here. Too sane, truly.”

Sasha interrupted him with a loud scoff. “Forget it. Stop yapping.”

“You asked, bitch!”

They both engaged. A comically large cloud filled with grunting and exclamation points obscured their fight. When it subsided, Mercutio laid there hogtied in chains with an apple in his mouth, and now she wore a clown costume. He struggled against the restraints to no avail, rocking back and forth.

Sasha looked at herself up and down, confused by her new red clown nose. “What? Why does everything get so strange around him?”

Major sent a loud, intrigued Hmmm through her mind.

She set the weirdness aside and heaved the sword at Mercutio. A moment before striking true, though, a subtle breeze blew and made her miss. She stepped back onto a leaf rake left on the roof and got smacked in the face by its handle. Her next step landed on a banana peel that launched her feet from underneath her.

Sasha smacked the back of her head on shingles. She rolled over and scrambled back up to her knees. Major went Aha! in her head. She asked, “What is it? Figure anything out?” A glance around revealed a dozen more banana peels and rakes. Where did they come from?

“This must be the work of an enemy machina.”

“A machina? I don’t see anything.”

“I don’t either. Then is it World’s Shiver? Cosmic forces?”

“You’re supposed to be the one with the answers here.”

“I don’t know everything. I just know what I know.” She blinked and Mercutio somehow escaped from his restraints.

He sat crisscrossed with this bored look on his face, reading a big book titled How to Cope With Your Micro Penis. He saw that she’d read the title and then covered it, ashamed. “Embarrassing,” he said.

Mercutio tossed the book aside, stood, and reached his arms into the air as if addressing the gods themselves. “No, girl. Machina don’t got shit on me. This is grace from the touch of my Lord himself! He kissed my soul with cosmic love and luck! I cannot fail now.”

Sasha braced herself for combat again. “Oh, shut up already.”

The clown pointed at her and, as if a switch flicked, became utterly cold. With complete seriousness and a low booming voice, he asked, “Whose plot armor weighs greater? The protagonist loved by the author or the fool above the author? That is our experiment.”

Sasha rushed at Mercutio, cutting away dozens of his tentacles as he grew them. They bounced off the ki armor, chipping away at it, but her resilient soul repaired it faster than the clown could destroy it. Now within reach. Mercutio latched onto her with a tight hug and smile. “I call this The Friendship Hug.”

“N-No!” Sasha responded, trapped. “I don’t like hugs!”

“I didn’t ask you for consent.”

Crack.

Sasha cringed and wheezed, unable to breathe from the pressure. As Mercutio’s mania and strength increased further and further, she honed Major down into a knife and stabbed away at his stomach. In response, he let go with a wince and threw a bladed swipe at her throat only for it to be blocked with ease.

The clown made space away from her and let out a high-pitched whistle. “Get her, my underlings!”

Sasha looked around everywhere but met no new enemies. Mercutio did too. Not a single monster came to join his side. Perhaps the homunculi were struggling with the rest of Sasha’s crew. Distant crickets chirped and an obnoxiously loud gust of wind rolled by.

“Welp,” Mercutio said.

Sore, Sasha stretched out her back to surprisingly find it feeling great. Better than ever even. She smirked, feeling twice as confident. “Major, he fixed my back. I didn’t even know it was screwed up.”

Mercutio’s mouth dropped. He kicked some shingles. “Gods damn it!”

Sasha transformed Major into an ethereal blue whip with a mind of its own. It coiled up in her hand. She winded up the whip and let it loose on Mercutio, who deflected it with a scythe sprouting from his final forearm.

Major won the clash of weapons. The spiritually serrated whip cut through both Mercutio’s scythe and arm. It whiplashed around his body several times, wrapping him up tightly. Her ki sliced away and ate at him as if it were fire injecting itself into his veins. The clown’s blood felt like lava.

Mercutio screamed, “Holy shit! Rah! Whips are for killing vampires, not clowns!”

“Find a way to make this funny. Burn,” Sasha said with a determined face becoming emotional. “This suffering isn’t even an ounce of what you put countless through.”

Frothing from his mouth, Mercutio cackled as if he’d heard the greatest joke ever. “So, the protagonist’s plot armor does weigh heavier.”

Sasha yanked the whip, sending it far deeper into his body. “You’re out of your damned mind.”

Between pained growls and groans, Mercutio yelped out, “Augh! Boring! You’re so fucking boring!” His torso imploded, red lightning coursing across to no effect. “I’ll make you laugh one day. I promise.”

As Mercutio lay in pieces on the ground, his corpse decaying into ash and dust, Sasha approached him with a sharp glare. “You were right, Major. He’s not regenerating.”

“Crush his core while it is exposed. It should be in his chest.”

Sasha transformed Major into a hammer. She swung it overhead over and over with heavy grunts, pulverizing the clown’s chest. It was the deadliest CPR anyone would ever bear.

When the brutal work was over, Sasha looked tense with a raised eyebrow. “Wait…” Mercutio’s sternum broke open, but there was nothing inside. No core. No heart. Nothing. It was an empty chamber.

“Major, I can’t find the core,” she said with an odd feeling in her gut.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Sasha, over there! To your left! I can sense it!”

Despite the breakdown of Mercutio’s body, there was a part of it still very fresh. His forearm laid intact out of her reach with its own strong heartbeat. The clown had moved his core to this appendage in its final breaths.

The moment Sasha realized this, pouncing toward the hand, it came to life and transformed. Before her eyes, it turned into a hairless doglike creature with horrible sounds of writhing flesh and breaking bones. The dog had Mercutio’s face.

Mercutio growled, “So long, bitch!”, and stuffed himself down a chimney. “Till we meet again,” echoed from the narrow brick shaft.

Sasha followed with an arm but ripped it back after feeling an agonizing chomp. With a cry, she pulled it back to reveal a bleeding hand. “Shit! I was careless.”

Major squinted at her. “No. You did great.”

“But that bastard escaped.”

“Sure, but he’s not even a tenth of his original power. It may take him years to recover. He’ll never be a true threat to us again.”

“But—,”

“No buts. We’ll gather the great machina long before that day, and he won’t exist in our new world, right?”

Sasha shook herself free of insecurity. “That’s right. I won, but we can’t pat ourselves on the back just yet.” She walked down the arch of the roof to descend to the ground level infested by monsters.

There was no other choice. If Sasha wanted to make it back alongside the others, she would have to carve a way. Were the numbers and odds against her vast? Yes, but she was no stranger to risk and stress. She’d started to become numb to it, even if only slightly.

Her fear wasn’t what stopped her from taking the drop from the rooftop. It was the disappearance of all light. Even the sun. Bewildered, she gazed off into the distance where it all traveled and accumulated. A new sun born in flesh and blade emerged there in High Monestate. It would disintegrate anything that dared to challenge it.

Looking at this supernatural light for more than a moment burned her retinas. She had to turn her head.

“What in the…” Sasha mumbled.

“Rainbow in The Dark, King Isaac’s prized and passed down power. I never thought I would get to see it in person,” a low but young voice boomed from behind them.

Both Sasha and Major were alerted by the stranger’s presence at the same time. Whoever this was had hid their spiritual signature until this very moment. The act of hiding a signature took expertise, but this energy was far beyond that level. It was otherworldly, in a class of its very own.

Sasha froze in her clown boots with goosebumps, turning her tense neck to meet the gaze of none other than King Andre. Major yelled in her head, Run! What are you doing, Sasha! Run!

I can’t. I can’t move.

Andre stood at the crest of the roof, looking down on her. He carried himself loosely with a relaxed expression like a gentle giant curious about fire. Despite this calm demeanor, though, his energy was killer. It inspired existential dread in anyone who could sense it. Without a doubt, the others like Simon and Isaac capable of sensing ki were affected too. Even blocks away.

“It is my pleasure to meet you, Sasha. I understand that it may be a bad time, but I would like to talk to you.” He noticed her big, red clown nose and let out a chuckle, his grin wide and eerie.

Sasha barely managed to move her lips or breathe. She became a statue. The king stared at her, confused, with his head tilting to the side. “Why fear?” Then he realized it was his doing. “I see now. My apologies.” In the next moment, his aura was mostly repressed. Even when he tried to do this, though, it was still oppressive.

Sasha was released from her petrification. She caught her breath. Her first instinct was to wring Andre’s neck, but she knew more than certain now that his power was too far out of reach. If she was a peasant bound to the ground, stargazing, he lived above the clouds.

Andre asked, “Dare I ask about the outfit? I’m not one to judge another’s fashion choices.”

Sasha clicked her tongue, snagged the clown nose from her face, and threw it off the roof. She reeled in her emotions to avoid being killed yet couldn’t help but have clenched fists. The entire time she walked back up the roof to speak to Andre, hateful threats bounced within her head.

I can’t touch you, fucking bitch ass piece of shit bastard, but Isaac can and will! He’ll turn you to dust!

As if able to read her thoughts, he responded, “But can he? Him? The prince who fled in our last meeting, abandoning everyone dear to him?”

She flinched. The book, Soothsayer, rested in his hand.

Sasha felt like a scared kid in the slums again. She found herself praying for her older brother, or anyone she looked up to as stronger, to step in. No such person would ever come though. They were fighting their own battles.

Major warned her, You already know this, but be careful not to anger him. Let’s hope his intentions are purer than that corrupt ki he’s struggling to keep from leaking.

His soul. Can you read it?

Major was reluctant to say its next words. The dagger sighed. Sasha had never heard it sound so defeated. I cannot. His aura is too dense. The disparity between our strengths is too great.

Shit.

Not only that. I sense Lovecraft too. The great’s signature radiates from the king.

Sasha got to Andre’s level but kept distance. “You’re way bigger than I imagined you would be,” she said.

The king was surprised by this comment. He showed a slight smirk and probably wondered whether to take it as a compliment or insult. She was right though. King Andre’s new form was supermassive. He had the physique and attractiveness of a sculptor’s masterpiece.

Major commanded, Show some respect! Your life depends on it!

Sasha took a knee. “I misspoke, King. Why are you… here? What exactly do you need from me?”

“I need nothing from you or your friends, Sasha. My objective has been completed successfully. I’m here to clean up messes and tie up loose ends.”

“When you say that, do you mean Mercutio’s monsters or—?” Sasha silenced herself. She wanted to ask him if she was the loose end, but that wasn’t smart.

The clown’s name put the king in a sour mood. “So, Mercutio is responsible for their escape then? We shall make him pay. He is no longer of use to me anyway.”

“How didn’t you know that?” Sasha stared dead at the book.

Andre noticed her fixation on Soothsayer and raised it up to be more easily seen. “I could never read the madman. His pages are filled with cryptic jokes and children’s doodles. Slivers of wisdom.”

After returning Soothsayer to his side, he spoke to Sasha in a lulling voice devoid of malice. “Before we go forward, let’s get one thing straight. There will be no hiding anything from me. Just be honest. I already know everything you and your crew want. I know that you know that I know. I know that you know how I know. Ya know?”

“Yes. I do know.”

“I know that you lot intend to strip me of Lovecraft, destroy The Apparatus, and kill me, right? Right?” His casual tone was off-putting. Rather than someone out for his possessions and life, he spoke to Sasha like she was a disobedient child.

“Right.”

“Well, getting everything you want isn’t how the world works. Put those ambitions to rest. If you continue with your plan, you’ll be lucky if one of you escapes alive.”

“That’s about what I figured,” Sasha responded lowly.

“Violence is the easy path in this circumstance. Killing and forgetting you all would be easy, but do you know what else easy paths are? Coward’s paths. I’m here to take the difficult path. I’m here to communicate. Let’s find a middle ground where we can solve the issues at hand, and all go home happy and safe.”

Sasha gawked at the king, blinking several times. “What? You’re not here to fight?”

Major was just as surprised. What a twist. He wishes to cooperate.

As King Andre went on, Sasha’s mind blanked out. She couldn’t process such ludicrous things coming from one of her greatest objects of hatred. “That’s right. I’m going to help you, but that means you helping me help you.”

With paling skin, she asked, “Why?”

“Many reasons. For one, you demonstrated yourself to be stronger than Commander Uriel. If we become allies, his death will have benefited me in the end.”

“I guess that makes sense in a way. Replacements.”

“Exactly. Then there’s my debt to Prince Isaac IV, your teacher, for my damage to his motherland. Did you know that he’s royalty by the way? He and I go far back.”

Sasha didn’t know. This entire time, she had not a clue. She couldn’t even articulate a response other than frantic internal questions towards both Andre and Isaac.

“But putting aside all my logical excuses and rationalizations as why not to execute you all, which would be the smart thing to do, I simply like you. Do I need any more reason than my gut feeling?”

“You like me? We haven’t even met until now.”

“Reading your story moved me especially, Sasha, and I would like to continue following you. If I can just disarm that anger of yours and get you to look at my side of this, I may even sponsor your journey to Convergence.”

Sasha wiped sweat from her brow. She raised her head, speaking out. “No. There is no other side to this than my own. I will never be able to look at you as an ally. You’ve just done far too much.”

“Hmph.”

“If you can’t deal with that, then it looks like you’ll just have to kill me.”

The thought of taking orders from Andre made Sasha sick to her stomach. Witnessing The Apparatus changed her fundamentally as a person. Even if the operation was over, justice still hadn’t been given.

She couldn’t tell if Andre looked hurt or offended. His control of his ki slipped, making her feel queasy. He responded, “That’s not very open-minded or rational of you.”

“I know but, just like you, I’m someone who follows their gut feeling.”

“I get it. I was the bad guy. An old, senile tyrant. I committed genocide of both The Westwinds and those sacrificed to The Apparatus, but you know what?”

She gave Andre a cold, furrowed brow, and stood up from her knees. “What…?”

“I did it out of fear, self-preservation, and love for my kingdom.” Andre looked down at his hands, flexing them. “Now the times of suffering and darkness are over. An era of rebuilding and reparations begins. The world will be made right again. The heights we reach will make those who laid down their lives for the future proud.”

Sasha couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. Her fury boiled over. “Your victims didn’t lay down their lives. That senseless torture you put them through wasn’t by their choice. Nothing will ever make your actions redeemable or right in the slightest. I don’t care if Ailmor in the distant future is a perfect utopia. The world will never be right as long as you live in it.”

Major gasped. Sasha!

Back me up or hush. You call yourself a God?

Andre froze there atop the roof with an unreadable, stiff expression. There was detachment and disappointment in his eyes. He pulled a satchel tied shut by rope from behind his back. Great energy radiated from it. “You wish to kill me that badly at that level? Very well. I knew this outcome was predetermined before I set out, but it hurts even so. I came with a gift for you. It is something I need no longer.”

The king fiddled with the satchel in his hands as if measuring a decision of utmost weight. With slight hesitation, he set it at his feet. “Humans are frustrating. We’re bound to emotions and prone to outbursts even when it isn’t in our best interest. Don’t worry. I forgive you, and I love you anyway.”

He gazed upon Soothsayer, who gazed back. “I won’t be swayed from my righteous path, and I’ll fight for the truth within these pages if you force me to; the pages I saw the world, and you, through. Cherish my gift. It will serve you well. If you survive this infestation and reach Castle Hemmer’s gates, I hope you will mature and consider peace. It would be a shame for your lives to be wasted.”

“That’s if we lose, Andre.”

He gave Sasha a playful grin and warning. “As if. If you’re ripped apart here, remember in your final moments that it was your fault. Not mine. You chose to deny my hand.”

King Andre disappeared from the roof as Isaac’s Rainbow in the Dark let up, returning the light of nature, the sun, back to the red sky. Sasha took some steps after him, shouting, “But what about this World’s Shiver? Are you to blame?”

No response. Reluctant, Sasha approached the satchel, looking around cautiously for traps.

Major croaked out, “You’ve… got to be kidding me. The gall on him.”

“What is it?” Sasha asked.

“Open the satchel.”

She picked it up and obliged. Upon loosening the rope, her heart skipped a beat at what was revealed. Several rusting fragments of a blade far beyond repair lay within. On the hilt, an ethereal eye closed in an eternal slumber. An electric buzzing sensation went through her fingers on contact.

Lovecraft. Andre gave her the second great machina, Lovecraft, without a fight for reasons beyond her. Why?

Sasha found herself bewildered. “Strange man… We’re enemies, aren’t we? He knows that.”

Nevertheless, The Itblade was in Sasha’s hands.