As Cinder stopped singing and my mind rapidly cleared, I pulled the magic rock from my pocket, my finger quickly tapping out the shield-bubble sequence. The gems under my finger pulsed and a barely invisible bubble of something formed around me.

The Io-made gateway slick layer suddenly popped, revealing a desolate apocalyptic landscape filled with toppled, hollowed out skyscrapers. A truly monstrous cube-shaped megastructure loomed in the background with an impossibly massive dark letter G on it. The skyscrapers didn't make sense - the broken buildings and the cube were too tall, somehow defying perspective, stretching up endlessly into the broiling sky.

A figure stepped onto the stage with a creak of grimy leather boots.

It was… a person in a dark gas mask, a blue-ish dark long coat and red-trim cap. The lines and shadow on the mask made it resemble an eerie smile. Violet lenses moved across the crowd and settled on Emerald. Dark leather glove held a lighter, violet flame flickering and sending sparks flying out of the gate.

ZEEPCAPTAIN-gate.jpg [https://github.com/alexiussssss/romac/blob/main/ZEEPCAPTAIN-gate.jpg?raw=true]

"Oh my, what big shiny burning sword you have!" The gas mask boomed with a distinctively merry, French-German accent. "I do hope it's not too heavy for you!"

"DIE!" Emerald swung her sword forward, flames trailing in its wake.

Then something inexplicable happened. Captain simply stepped sideways, away from the burning sword. Emerald yelped, somehow completely missing her target. She careened right into the gateway, burning sword and girl smashing into the snowy, rubble-covered landscape beyond.

All of the artifacts on her ignited and then she started screaming and flailing madly, trailing smoke. Her burning sword fell out of her fingers, sputtered and the flames winked out, dark cracks running along the edge of the magisteel blade.

I watched with wide eyes as Emerald’s gaudy, overpriced magitek hexagrammic gemstones popped one by one like cracked walnuts. Then, the top level armor melted off her body like a peeled onion. The hexamesh outfit under it evaporated away and her skin began to come apart as if eaten away by something invisible.

The audience erupted in shocked screams of their own. The gas-masked figure tilted the mask, violet lenses now scanning the remaining performers.

"Em!" Solace screamed, charging forward with her battle-axe raised.

"Guten Tag!" The gas-masked figure declared in the same overly cheerful accent, completely ignoring Solace's charge. "How delightfully unexpected! Is zat a vintage 1658 executioner's axe? Be careful not to trip!"

Solace suddenly tripped on absolutely nothing, her axe flying up. She rolled badly, somehow breaking her arm with a yelp as she tangled up in her own cape. Her own axe landed onto her back, nailing her to the floor. She choked and trashed and then passed out from the pain.

“Celavi! Violence is bad for zhe soul,” the gas masked thing snapped the lighter shut and stowed it away, the voice far too loud, making my eardrums throb.

“What the eff are you?!” Vespera circled the invincible entity, her black and white wings wide as electrical currents danced up her mace.

The Thunderbird looked absolutely terrified, her expression askew with panic.

Behind the gate, Emerald was already turning into a gurgling soup, flesh flaking and melting off her bones. Her armor had completely flaked off her body, covered in widening cracks. Her overpriced sword groaned and shattered in half.

“Bonjour, madame! I am Zee Captain,” the being from beyond said jovially, somehow speaking what my mind interpreted as bold, purple-tinted words. “Anointed sovereign, emissary of humanity, prescient governor and lady of all things in Captania, the Great and Powerful System Wizard!"

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

System Wizard. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"My, my, such a whimsical audience," Zee Captain declared walking towards the stairwell where I stood like an idiot, frozen from shock. The being's boots crossed the ward and it simply popped away, as if it didn't even exist, hexagrams all around shattering as wardstones overloaded. The runestone in my pocket ignited and shattered, scorching my hexasuit-wrapped hand.

The audience gasped, choked and made noises of pure terror.

"Cryptids and monsters learning magic and is zat a… token human photographer? How delightful!" The gaze of violet, glowing lenses settled on me.

I gulped. Whatever this thing was, it was somehow scanning me, digging into my head, defining absolutely everything about me with a mere glance.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Ah! Martin, is it?" Zee Captain's voice carried an unsettling echo. "You remind me of my number one minion. Go on, take a picture! I know you want to!”

My trembling hands raised the camera to my face. Something horrid was happening within the viewfinder as if the camera wasn't pointed at a person in a coat. There was nothing and everything on the little display, a trailing shawl made from impossible, incomprehensible shapes made up of endless dark limbs and endless violet lenses. The camera clicked.

All eyes turned to me.

"The nullie's a... human?" Someone in the audience choked.

"Whoopsie. Did I spoil ze plot twist?" Zee Captain tapped a gloved finger on the perpetually smiling mask. "My sincerest apologies, mon ami!"

"Don't listen to this thing, you knobs! It's an abomination from a dead world! It's clearly trying to mess with our heads!" Cinder suddenly rushed to my side, her wings flaring wide.

"Oho!" Zee Captain clapped dark gloved hands together. "A lady… Quetzalcoatl defends her chosen hero! How romantique! Cassiopeia Nova? A very space-y name!”

Cinder choked.

"S-shut up!" She snarled, her feathers bristling. "Whatever you are, you're not welcome here!"

"Not welcome, am I?" Zee Captain pressed a hand to a dark blue coat and black scarf-wrapped chest in mock offense. "But you called me to you with your lovely song, little moosikal bird. Right through zat charming, illegal gate! Now why would you invite me in, if you clearly don’t have a tea party set for my person? Hrmmm?”

Behind Captain, Vespera raised her electrified mace, black and white wings spread wide as she prepared to strike. Lightning crackled between her feathers as she lunged forward.

The Captain didn't even turn around.

"Ah yes, ze surprise attack," the System Wizard commented casually. "I am le shock."

Vespera's mace swing inexplicably careened to the side as if she wasn't aiming for Captain at all. The momentum carried her forward and she tripped over her own feet, crashing face-first into her own mace with a sickening crunch of a broken beak-snout. Her wings sparked wildly as she rolled, electricity arcing across her body in painful convulsions as she cried, pawing at her face.

"Tsk tsk," Zee Captain waggled a finger. "Violence solves nothing, fräulein Vespera. Perhaps you should take a moment to reflect on your life choices, ja?"

The Thunderbird howled in rage, rising up and pointing a clawed hand at the invincible entity. Lightning arched with a thunderous boom. The lighting bolt careened away from Zee Captain and struck her in her own nose. Vespera let out a strangled wail as she rolled and clutched her broken and electrocuted nose, blood streaming between her fingers. She rolled off the stage with a thump of armor and crack of a shattered phone screen.

"Zis is why children shouldn't play with electricity," Zee commented.

The audience was dead silent now, watching in horror as the two Knights were dispatched without moving a finger, while Emerald...

I glanced at the gateway. There was no Emerald there anymore. Only a black, hexagonal bracelet lay idly in the indentation on the snow, impervious to whatever melted the dragon-girl as if she was a sugar cube set into the tea. Bits and pieces of the Lindworm’s gaudy magisteel armor lay around it like broken eggshells, cracking and decaying away into flying ashes.

Cinder seems to have regained her wits from the shock of her friend's demise and then wings flared with impossible colors, her Phase-Shift elongating her face, dark claws stretching out, feathers standing on end.

"Go..." She began, her voice echoing unnaturally and then I stepped in front of her face and slapped her hard.

"DON'T!" I barked.

"Don't?" Cinder sputtered, grabbing at her cheek.

"Do NOT use magic," I growled, grabbing her shoulders and staring into her ocean-blue eyes. "Whatever you're planning to do, it's going to reflect in your face and then your wings might fall off or something! Do not screw with that thing, do NOT target it!"

Zee Captain casually watched our exchange with the perpetually smiling gas mask.

A tall, faceless figure descended from one the balcony doors overhead - Vice Principal Graves, his suit immaculate as always. Dark tendrils emerged from his back, writhing as he landed on the stage.

"Ah! Ze local authority figure arrives!" Zee Captain commented, turning to the Slenderman. "Seventeen and a half tentacles. Vice Principal, Graves, yes?”

"What are you?" Graves' voice echoed with unnatural resonance, his dark tendrils spreading wider.

"Merely a tourist," Zee Captain replied cheerfully. "Enjoying zis charming little performance. Though ze special effects could use some work. Is zat a smoke machine? A bit mundane for a school of cryptids, don't you find?"

Vice Principal Graves' tendrils writhed menacingly, filling the air with an oppressive, dark energy. The auditorium seemed to darken around him, shadows stretching impossibly long.

"You do not belong here," Graves intoned, his voiceless face somehow conveying absolute menace.

"And?" Zee asked, seemingly undeterred.

“Depart back from whence thou came!”

“And what would be ze fun in that? Nay! Ze local narrative flow suggests that I cannot leave until I make a deal with someone, monseigneur high school manager,” Zee commented, completely ignoring the waves of static that rolled from the direction of the Vice Principal. “Don’t you know how these things work? If you summon someone to your dimension, you must parlay with zem!”

Iogann, who had been frozen until now, choked out, his entire body shaking as he fell to his knees. "The gate... it... it's not closing! It's still pulling at my mana!"

Zee Captain tilted a masked head. "Of course not, mein fluffy, doom-seeking compadre. I'm propping it open with a Good Word so that I don't lose my way back to Captania! After all, who would feed all of my Snippies if I left forever? A lonely, sad Snippy is quite a dangerous thing, full of angry wishes that yearn to be fulfilled. Zat one time I left him alone for five minutes and he accumulated 8402 Dead Zone viruses onto himself! It was quite ze pickle scraping them all off one by one with my best wash sponge and squeegee. Such complaints he had... such, multitudes of unmerry complaints."

"Be GONE!" Graves raised his lanky hands and reality around the Vice Principal shattered, came apart, my mind catching fire and careening sideways into a darkness-filled abyss, my view of the stage drowning in colorful glitches and flashes of binding, deafening static.