Vertai watched carefully from the window, waiting for the moment to strike.

When she saw a bundle of moss suddenly appear atop one of the superpowered soldier’s shoulders, she vanished.

Before he could even register what had happened, she was plunging a bat straight onto his head.

Her metal bat violently clanged against his head, sending him crashing into the ground.

The soldier’s comrade threw a blazingly fast strike toward Vertai, but she suddenly appeared behind them.

In a blur, she began evading their air-cracking punches by the skin of her teeth, teleporting every which direction within five feet of them at complete random, simply praying to Chaos that she wasn’t hit even once.

Moss turned invisible as Tracey grabbed them, then chucked them onto the body of the soldier. The moment the plant touched them, Vertai teleported above the soldier and crashed her bat onto her head, throwing them to the ground.

“That makes two.” Vertai closed her eyes, then pointed to their left. “Their backup is approaching from that way. I’ll distract them so you two can get close!” She suddenly disappeared and reappeared in front of a group of four soldiers.

They readied for a fight, planting their feet.

“Hello, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to tell you that I’m not happy at being cooped in,” she said.

They looked between each other, then one swung a fist at her.

Vertai teleported behind them. “That wasn’t very nice, you know.” She flipped her bat in a circle. Another one swung at her, and she appeared elsewhere. “I can really do this all day.”

“Wait a moment.” As one of them swung their fist, a girl pulled him back. She glared at Vertai. “You’re the boss’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Vertai raised an eyebrow. “The boss?”

“Hilda.”

She squinted. “Why would my mom be your boss?”

“I don’t really know how to answer that, but we’ve been tasked with capturing you.”

She blinked. “Capture me? Chaos, what a bitch!” she said with vitriol. “That doesn’t even make sense, but I’m pissed anyway!”

The soldier shrugged. “Knock her out. Don’t worry about harming her a little.”

“Wait, seriou-” Vertai was interrupted by a fist thrown toward her face.

As she immediately teleported away, the soldier yelled, “Back to back! Cover our flanks.” The four of them took each other’s backs, ready to attack if Vertai tried to teleport anywhere around them.

She took that time to step back and wait, but they began to step forward as a group, so she teleported behind them. Vertai didn’t know where Tracey was but began to rapidly warp in every direction, narrowly avoiding their wild but encompassing strikes. After a few tense seconds passed, she saw Moss appear one of their feet, and teleported above them, swinging down with her bat.

Before she could hit, though, she vanished as their seeming leader threw a punch, anticipating the attack.

After she disappeared again, the person she’d tried to hit yelled, “Ahh! What’s this Moss doing on my-”

Vertai teleported in front of them next, then swung her bat forward. They tried to retaliate with their own swipe of their fist, but it was slow and clunky, and their surprise gave Vertai the opportunity she needed to swing the bat straight into their abdomen, sending them falling to the ground in pain.

“It’s the moss!” their leader yelled, noticing the small plant. “Kill it!” She lunged toward it, throwing a much strong enough to crack the ground, but the plant suddenly leaped to the side, narrowly evading the strike and then grabbing onto their hand with mossy tendrils.

In the split second of vulnerability it gave them, Vertai teleported above their head and bashed it in.

Moss then vanished as Tracey picked it up, and the two other soldiers stepped back in confusion.

Vertai teleported again, balancing a foot atop their crown. “What, scared? Maybe you should-” She lost balance as the two leaped away, cutting their losses. She teleported beneath them and landed not far from where she’d been.

She clicked her tongue. “Let’s retreat.”

Vertai teleported back into the hideout.

“What happened out there?” Ketar asked. “Sounds like you beat em’.”

She shook her head grimly. “Nah, there’s just too many. I took out four, but...I can sense something like thirty more of them nearby. The moment they learn what we’re doing to beat them...Moss and Tracey will go down almost immediately. I just don’t see how we beat them up without changing our plan of attack...”

He shrugged. “I can throw a baseball in there, and maybe that’ll take a few out?”

She squinted. “How?”

“Since it’s an emergency...I’ll tell you that they explode. Violently.”

“So your magic is...”

“Baseballs I hit explode.”

“Why.”

“Hey, I don’t make the rules. The refs do.”

“I have to ask: Do you even play baseball?”

He smirked. “I did, but if I tried playing now, I’d make quite an explosive debut.”

“That figures.”

“So what do we do next?” a voice suddenly asked as the door beside them opened.

Ketar and Vertai jumped. “Eep! W-well...” she said, “I think we...What. Someone is approaching us, fast.”

A moment later, she appeared in front of them. It was a black van driving through the street at sixty an hour. She immediately teleported inside the vehicle just before she could be thrown away like a ragdoll.

“Oh, hi Vertai,” Saina said, looking back from the passenger seat as the car’s tires screeched on the pavement to a halt.

“Holy shit!” the driver yelled. “You scared the fuck out of me.”

“Language, Batman.”

Vertai blinked. “Who? And I thought you two evacuated.”

Saina shook her head. “Nope. We texted Datai about it. Is he in headquarters?”

“No, he was going to pick up Drade but we haven’t heard back from him. But that’s beside the point, we’re surrounded! It won’t be long till they catch you all in the car!”

Saina looked to Saphi, sitting beside her and looking between them each with curiosity. “Saphi, let’s take them out.” She immediately pushed open her door, and both she and her daughter hopped out.

A large halo of water hovered above the car, and it wasn’t long before it was surrounded by a squadron of soldiers.

“Do I need to beat them up?” Saphi asked.

Saina nodded. “They’re the bad guys, Saphi.”

“I’ll handle the other side,” Batman yelled as mounted rocket launchers suddenly popped from the left and right sides of the car hood and shot toward them. At the same time, the car accelerated toward the gym, and the debris of the explosions was blocked by the forcefield around it.

As the other three lunged at Saphi and Saina, Saphi threw out her hand and commanded her halo of water to split into three gushes of water and crash into them, sending them crashing backward from the bullet-speed attack. As they tried to recover, the kid turned the water into hands and flung them into the air, where the three could only flail around despite their strength.

“Keep them up there!” Saina yelled as she grabbed her child’s hand and ran after the van. She also fiddled with the radio at her belt, jamming the nearby communications of all their enemies.

The three other soldiers then suddenly leaped from the dust of the rockets’ explosions, but just as they did, an explosion caused the gym’s wall to collapse, and a bolt of lightning shot from within the fallen wall and into the soldiers, sending them tumbling into a nearby pile.

They blinked, only to see Ketar and Xerth standing behind the pile of rubble, with Vertai and the rest of The Friends behind them. “Plan B, everyone!” she yelled, raising her fist. “Let’s take the offense and show them what we’re worth!”

Hilda watched from afar as her soldiers collapsed upon The Friends from all sides, and they fought back with various forms of magic. Saphi was far more brutal a fighter than she had initially thought and her mother had already seemingly known the weakness of her soldiers; a lack of flight.

An enormous clump of moss suddenly appeared from within the gymnasium and began threatening to swallow up any soldiers who tried to group up, moving slowly but taking up a significant space.

Meanwhile, a few of The Friends began hiding within it’s hedge-like walls. Every now and then, she would see Ketar step out to hit a baseball into a crowd of her soldiers, sending them flying away as it exploded.

The other, Xerth, was a mage. She understood that he used arcane powers to teleport, shoot fireballs and lightning, and so on.

Then one of them had begun driving around the chaotic street in a van that shot explosives at her men.

She wasn’t very impressed. In total, there were around 8 people, but none of them seemed all that incredibly strong. Even her daughter wasn’t a threat in the slightest. Hilda of course wouldn’t endanger herself to do it, but she figured it would be easy enough to defeat them singlehandedly. “What a farce...” she muttered. “They’re nothing more than a small group of magic users. What was Therin so afraid of?”

She had personally done investigations on each of the members, and while a few had interesting powers, the only one who could even hope to combat Therin’s more powerful forces was Uffield herself, who had apparently been taken out by a horde of cats, and whom Therin had erected multiple contingency plans to combat, including a weapon that could kill her with just a single nick into her body.

She looked up to the hurricane that moved through the city at Mach speeds, taking care of her forces with ease. Where was the contingency for the archdruid?

She shrugged, assuming that Therin was just stupid.

A few minutes later, The Friends were standing atop thirty unconscious bodies, exhausted but somehow completely victorious.

“Easy enough!” Vertai yelled.

“Uh-huh.”

The street suddenly grew silent as someone appeared ten feet in front of Vertai, clearly unimpressed.

“Congrats on defeating our advance troops, Veri. You’re shaping up to be a good leader already.”

Vertai stepped back as she recognized her mother, and hardly believed the sight. “M-mom?!”

“Hi, Veri. It’s been quite a while. Had fun with your little talent group?” she said as though she were genuine.

“What’s going on here?” Xerth asked as he walked to Vertai.

“It’s...” she looked down with a dark expression. “My mom found me.”

“Did you run away or something?”

“Yeah. Drade took me in because I didn’t want to stay with her.”

“Got it.” Xerth held out a hand. “Then you heard her. I don’t know what you have to do with the city being destroyed, but either way, I, at least, won’t let you take her back against her will.

Hilda tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Uhm...She isn’t even eighteen. I say where she goes, not you.”

He shook his head. “First, if you cared about laws, you wouldn’t have done any of this, so let’s not fall under the false guise of law. Second, I’m saying that she goes where she wants.”

She rolled her eyes. “So you think you know better than the law? This is my job. You’re clearly just ignoring laws as it benefits you. Then again, I’m not sure what else I should have expected of from a ridiculous group of self-important bastards.”

Xerth paused. “Well...that was just uncalled for, wench. What I’m saying is that it’s an adult’s job to protect a child from other adults.”

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“I’m not a kid...” Vertai muttered, despair lacing her voice and expression.

He glanced back to her, then back to Hilda. “And I’d say that it doesn’t take a genius to recognize an abusive relationship.”

“She’s just playing you,” Hilda responded with anger. “Playing the victim because she doesn’t want to go home and face realit-”

“Shut up! I don’t care about what you think,

I’m not going with you, mom!” Vertai yelled, frustration obvious on her face. She stood in the street, looking up.

Hilda narrowed her eyes, standing on her floating platform above Vertai. “Stop being ridiculous, Veri. You do not belong to these people. Come with me now, or I’ll have to make-”

“I belong to them a lot more than I do you!”

Hilda groaned in frustration. “Do you hear yourself? I’m your mother, those people are simply there to use you and then sell your talent. We have a future with The Org- Therin, Veri. When the world knows what magic is, we will be the ones on top. Teleportation isn’t some mid-rank magical ability, you know. You and I are valuable...more valuable than...” She looked around herself, where quite a few members of The Friends stood, uncertain expressions on their faces. “Them.”

“Oh, stop it with the superiority complex, Mom! As far as I’m concerned, you destroyed a city and are threatening my friends just to ‘capture’ your damn daughter! You’re just being petty now.”

She shrugged. “Yes, it’s a little petty, but I’ll remind you that most of none of this was personal. You know this is my job, right?”

...

Vertai squinted. “Wait, what?”

“You...you know that I’m Therin’s secretary, right?”

“Who the fuck is a Therin?”

Hilda blinked. “I...I don’t have time for this conversation.” She shook her head. “If you know what’s best for your ‘friends’, then you’ll come back to me. Your selfishness has already done enough to hurt me.” She then disappeared without giving her daughter a chance to retort.

Vertai’s restrained anger suddenly burst into a furious howl, then she thrust her hand out, folding out her middle finger. “Fuck you, Mom!”

“Did you finish it?” Hilda asked.

Therin stood on the street while Hilda remained floating on her platform. His expression wasn’t visible, even though his sadness was obvious.

“No.”

“Hmph. Who is that thing to you, anyway?”

He gritted his teeth. “She isn’t a ‘thing’, Hilda. I understand your world view is small, but don’t piss me off over this.”

He didn’t seem to scare her. “Okay.”

“She’s like a daughter to me.”

Hilda chewed her cheek, looking forward. “A daughter, you say...Whatever. That aside, what should we do next? My daughter used some anti-magic to knock out many of our soldiers, and with Drade dead, I don’t know how we would make her listen to me and leave them.”

“With our own anti-magic...Actually, a change of plans; you focus on catching your daughter, I focus on everything else.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I’m sorry, did I do something wrong, sir? I don’t appreciate-”

“You’re consistently an ass, that’s what you did wrong.”

“What?!” she huffed angrily. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“All you have done since we began this operation is insult and push me, Hilda. If you continue to do so, I won’t go easy on you just because your skills are useful.

“You- Ugh.” She shook her head as if in admonishment. “Do as you wish, sir. I’ll handle my own problems if that’s what you think is best.” Hilda disappeared.

Therin walked forward and pulled a tablet from his dimensional storage. He began appraising the situation. “Dragons, druids, enchanters...I suppose it all goes without saying. My primary forces are overwhelmed, but that was always expected. Civilians were evacuated, so phase one was a success...the oozes are running rampant, so phase two is a success...no need to wait out anymore. It’s time to begin phase...”

He saw a black creature cross the sky, traveling toward the Friends’ base.

he shook his head, then raised a hand to his headphones. “All units, regroup to phase three positions if possible. Phase three begins in five minutes. The warship and androids will be deployed and revealed en-masse in seven. Hail the age of magic.”

The grass of the plateau fluttered from the chilly lake winds. The ants crawled around on the dirt, worms crawled beneath it, and all things continued moving.

Maysray stepped forward, a hand outstretched. “Uffy...I-”

“Could you please leave?” Uffield asked.

She stepped back, out of her vision.

...

The wind...Uffield could feel her limbs flutter, growing cold and solidifying as she refused to move an inch.

Her emotions were in turmoil, too powerful and overwhelming for her to parse.

Uffield wasn’t like her brother. She was far more emotional, far more human, despite everything. That was her nature as a being of chaos. Still, she looked up to her brother, as absolutely different as they appeared, and sometimes wished that she could be like him.

She was hardly as strong as him. Hardly as mature. Hardly as wise. Hardly anything.

It was two years ago that she had moved in with Drade. She had known him since she was a kid, but they rarely met. She had looked up to him, even then, as he had saved her many times since they had first met. She had even heard from her father about when they had saved the world from The World Serpent a year before she moved away.

And when she had moved in with Drade...she’d only been pampered by him and Hannah. It was...so different. Uffield felt indebted to them, but she didn’t know how to pay them back, what to say, or if they really wanted her to.

But now...Drade...was he really dead?

She recalled her tentacles, then melded her body together, turning into a simple, black circle.

No. He didn’t die so easily. She rejected the notion that he could die to anything but the end of the world. Drade had more willpower than anyone she knew, and that counted for a lot as far as a chaotic being was concerned.

“If Therin comes back...” she suddenly said. “...tell him that I’m a bit of a spiteful bitch.”

Uffield blasted off, the air shuddering behind her.

“Gah! I just want to fucking give her a piece of my mind!” Vertai yelled. “She’s so frustrating!”

After the battle, the incapacitated soldiers were thrown into Moss, where they wouldn’t be able to escape, and The Friends began readying themselves to move.

Xerth tapped a page of a yellow book, causing the words on it to flash blue. “She sure sounds frustrating. But if her ability is to teleport at will, how would we ever catch her?”

“We can only teleport to people we can sense within a hundred meters...” Vertai explained, “But I think her power might be stronger than when I last saw her. She should only have been able to teleport within five feet of me, but instead...she went ten.”

“That...doesn’t sound all that helpful. She may as well be impossible to catch.”

“Moss could catch her...if she teleported close enough to them.”

“Hmm...Err...what’s tha-”

Suddenly, a black sphere crashed into the ground in the middle of The Friends. They each stepped back, preparing for a fight.

Then, it unfurled.

“Uffield?!” Vertai said.

“Mhm.”

“Did you beat the water guy?”

One of her tentacles formed an ‘okay’ symbol. “Something like that. Listen...Therin said...that Drade was dead.”

The group froze.

“I don’t think he was right.”

Xerth put a finger to his lip. “Alright...then what should we do? Are we going to search for him? And where is Datai?”

“I-I don’t really know...but I...I’m going to ask you all to help me out.”

Saina narrowed her eyebrows. “How could we help you? You’re already so strong that I doubt any of us could be helpful...”

“Uhh...” Uffield made a nervous expression. “I’m not as strong as you think. I might be fast, but all I can do is slap people.” She waved a tentacle. “A-anyway, I can’t do this alone. I’ll need you all...my friends’ help.”

The group looked between each other.

Saina smirked. “Oh, we can help, alright.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand. “What’re we helping with?”

“Let’s...” Uffield directed her attention around her friends. Each of them stood at the ready, excited to follow her to battle. She raised a tentacle up like a fist. “Let’s show that Therin who owns Changeton!”

Vertai sighed. “Someone please explain to me who the fuck a Thein is...”

Through the windows of the ship, the commander watched an almost completely wrecked Changeton with boredom.

A voice suddenly spoke through the intercom: “This is Therin speaking. I’m calling for your battleship to unveil itself in two minutes. My subordinate, Magna, will call for your ordinance as needed.”

The commander raised his radio speaker to his mouth and adjusted a dial. “Understood, Therin, sir.”

In a hangar hidden in the side of a mountain, four large robots made of jet parts played some strange form of checkers on their table, moving small pieces across it one by one, their turns passing in a clockwise manner.

“I heard that Mega got wrecked by some human,” one said as they pushed a piece forward, taking a piece, then moved it a second time, taking another.

“Dammnit a double cross...I should’ve known you would have done that,” the one who moved before them said with annoyance.

“I don’t know what to say. Just get good, rob,” it said, mechanical plates on its face moving to make what looked like a smirk as it smirked.

“Actually, why don’t you get good,” the next robot said as they proceeded to move a piece three times, taking three more. It appeared to be a four-way checkers game, though with only neutral pieces and a number of differences; namely that the board was a star shape.

“Fuuuck, rob. I totally just let you do that.”

The last robot, whose turn it was next, groaned and rested its head on a hand. “Ugh...I’m too behind, man, there’s no way I’ll-”

They paused as they directly heard a transmission in their heads, “This is Therin speaking. Androids, phase three has begun. Prepare to leave the hangar and roll out. Rondevous in front of the Capture Shelter in seven minutes, and I’ll give you your mission.”

“Welp, too bad we can’t continue,” the robot said, immediately standing up and walking to the edge of the hangar.

“Tch’, we both know I was about to win,” another said, reluctantly standing and following them.

“Just cause’ you got a triple doesn’t mean shit. Ain’t no way you were beating me with my three-piece lead.”

“Trust me, rob, I had it in the bag.”

They quickly moved to attention, standing over the edge of the hangar. They glanced between each other, then jumped off the cliff.

A moment later, four jets soared across the lake, blasting off toward Changeton.

The Friends began their trek through the streets, moving at a brisk pace.

“Therin isn’t finished yet,” Uffield said after a conversation about him and what he was planning. “I’ve known he was planning something like this for a long time, so he definitely has more planned than just what you all have seen.”

“If you knew he was planning this, why didn’t you tell anyone?” Xerth asked.

“I...I honestly didn’t mind it at all. I just...I don’t understand why he didn’t ask me to help. If he had just done that...I guess he didn’t trust me...”

Xerth scratched his chin. “I’m sorry to hear that. But...why would he attack Changeton of all places? If he was at all worried about you, surely he could have attacked anywhere else?”

“Changeton is known as the ‘magic capital’ in The Organization, which my dad controls. It’s probably more that he’s trying to send a message. And also...he is probably trying to find The Dark Queen.”

“The Dark Queen?”

“Mhm. Nobody knows who she is or what her powers are, but she’s said to have an incredible influence on the city. She’s said to do my dad’s dirty work without a single trace left behind when she’s finished, and even he doesn’t know who she is. She’s a completely anonymous wild card.”

“She sure sounds terrifying. But how would attacking the city draw her out?”

“Well, the city is surrounded by a strong magnetic field, which seems to be shorting out your phones, so-”

“How do you know that?” Vertai asked.

“I can sense the magic enveloping the city and also the magnetic field. It’s not too difficult. Anyway, by cutting off her communications, he’s probably hoping to force her to reveal herself. And if-”

“Holy crap!” Ketar yelled, pointing at the sky. “What is that!?”

The Friends looked up, and immediately, their eyes widened.

Far above the city, a spectacle caused the light itself to shimmer in a strange pattern, waving and breaking into hexagonal chunks before eventually revealing what was beneath the illusion of empty sky.

It was nearly a mile wide and across, and surrounding its circular body was twelve enormous jets that billowed geysers of fire downward. It had four legs that swayed with the wind and had hexagonal windows lining them like scales. Its head was the size of a street block, with an enormous glass visor, and on its underside was a number of cannon barrels pointing to the ground.

It was a mechanical turtle the size of a small city.

They all paused, gazing up at the hopelessly enormous ‘airship’, if it could even be called that.

“That...What is that thing!?” Vertai yelled.

“Nothing good, that’s for sure,” Xerth said. “Uffield, what do you...Uffield?”

“Hmm?” She floated back to the group, having assumed they’d catch up with her quickly enough. “What’s up?”

“The...giant turtle?” Vertai said, pointing up.

“Giant turtle? Why are you gushing about a giant turtle? What, is it about to shoot a laser beam at us?” she joked.

Ketar nodded and fiddled with his bat, whistling with admiration at the giant creature. “Yeah, probably. That’s one big boy.”

“Umm...S-seriously? Should I get ready for a giant laser beam?”

He squinted at the smaller cannons on its back. “Nah, but maybe smaller ones.”

“I’ll watch out for that.”

“Can you stop lasers?” Vertai asked uncertainly.

“Easily. My reaction time is only really limited by how much I care to pay attention. Kinda.”

Xerth let out a nervous sigh. “No way we can defeat something like that...”

“I beat up one giant creature today, and I’ll do it again!” Uffield said with false confidence.

“I wouldn’t mind storming that place...” Ketar mumbled. “But I’m never freakin’ useful cause’ I’m not exactly able to make ‘nonlethal’ explosions.”

“That’s why we’re going to take this a step at a time...and now-”

“Saphi,” Saina began, looking elsewhere in the sky, “Get ready to stop whatever they throw at us.”

“Huh? Okay, Mom.” Saphi swept her water into a field as she saw what her mother was looking at.

Two planes suddenly flew from overhead and launched a volley of missiles down at the group. Saphi grabbed quite a few with her water, and the instant that she saw the rest of the projectiles, Uffield moved at a blinding speed, grabbing each of them with seprate tentacles while they still traveled, then pushing them together. The moment she did, she unleashed her momentum-reversal wave, causing the bundle to fly backward for a moment and giving Saphi the moment she needed to pick them up with the rest of her water and chuck them far away. Uffield then threw a rock at them while they were still in the air, causing them to combust into an enormous explosion.

Before anyone could say anything, she vanished into a blur and chased after the fighter jets. Sheoutsped them as they tried to barrel roll back over the group, then grabbed the head of one and threw it into the other with the flick of her tentacle, sending them crashing into each other and tumbling to the ground.

immediately afterward, she flew back to the ground, then wrapped a tentacle over each of her friends.

“Change of plans!” she yelled. “We’re taking our first step now!”

Saina raised her arms, uncomfortable and confused. “What step!?”

Uffield raised her friends upward, readying for takeoff as the jets transformed into robots below and prepared to rush her and The Friends. “We’re taking out that turtle from the inside out!”

Then she flew through the sky, carrying The Friends to their next battle in the eye of the storm.