We are approaching the entrance to the sewer when Dwight turns around. Whatever he sees, he turns back to face us, worry in his eyes.

"We're being followed. We have to make it look like we're not entering the sewer."

We try to take a left turn, but it's too late. Heavy footsteps sound off from the square behind us as our soon to be assailants charge our way.

Dwight slaps his watch with three fingers. "We have a potential skirmish attack right outside," he whispers, before throwing up his arms. Holly, taking a page from Sapphire's book, pulls out two materia whips. I do the same, our gold and purple auras fighting for attention.

"A traitor!" One of our followers says, her upper arm turning pitch black and letting off an ominous glow. "How could you?"

"Well, she actually—"

The person cut Holly off. "Let her speak."

"She's mute. She can't."

"Oh."

After a half second of silly silence, the four people targeting us all charge to attack. Dwight finds a match with another seemingly unarmed man, but Holly and I are three versus two with the Necromancers.

She tries to sign something to me, but I only catch the tail end of it before she swings out her chain. When it gets within reach of one of the Necromancers, she turns the end into a mace, which smacks them hard. I'm pretty sure I hear a bone break.

One, the person who had talked, goes for me, letting off some strange blast of dark purple energy. I narrowly dodge the attack, and reconfigure my materia into a wall, my go-to choice. Holly and I both step behind it for a moment, and I watch as Dwight goes toe-to-toe with his new rival.

"I assume you didn't catch what I said," Holly says.

I shake my head.

"I said something about doing the same thing as me on the other person. Now we need to figure out how to deal with these two."

A heavy blast rocks the other side of the wall, sending it tumbling apart before disappearing completely.

Completely exposed, we both move to take on the two standing opponents. The person Holly had originally taken out is now attempting to crawl away, but won't make it far.

Trying the same tactic, Holly swings out a chain at one of the Necromancers, but as it passes where their upper body is supposed to be, they contort backwards unnaturally, then crawl after her, morphing their body into a haunting amalgamation of flesh that hardly resembled a human. She recoiled back in fear.

The energy beam person revs up for another shot at me, which I block with a thick materia shield. It crackles in the air like electricity.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Next, I raise my hands and summon falling spikes in the air, pointed to the three remaining enemies. The energy beam opponent dodges, but the other two are at least nicked by my attack. Dwight finishes off his adversary and joins Holly in confronting her contortionist friend.

As I raise my hands again for another attack, my opponent sends out a quick lash. It feels like the world is in slow motion as it travels to the spot between my eyes, its sizzling energy warping the air.

With ten feet left to hitting me, a figure rushes by, collides with it, and causes a sonic blast. Before I can process what happened fully, my assailant is on the ground, screaming in pain, and Luna is standing above them, staring at us.

"About time," Dwight says, his knuckles bleeding.

"They won't be going anywhere," Luna says, tugging on the chains around the arms of our attackers. With the four defeated, they were moved to a containment area in the sewer and healed. Then Sapphire, wearing some sort of ring, wrapped them in chains.

"You won't get away with this," the energy beam one says. "We know where your base is."

"We can get away with it just long enough."

She slams the door and locks them away before turning to Holly and I. "You two get to do patrol duty for a couple hours until sunset. You won't be the only group out there, so don't do any friendly fire."

"Okay," Holly says. We walk out together, once again out in the open with hostile eyes potentially watching our every move.

And yet, for about an hour, it's completely quiet. Not even Holly says anything, which is strangely out of character. When she does finally decide to talk, it's obvious she has been holding on to the thought for a while.

"We need to go home, Tes."

Yeah.

"We really need to. I just broke a man's bones in self defense without a second thought. Two weeks ago, I'd never even consider the option. This is the third traumatic event in the third universe we've been in over the past week or two. I can't even remember how long it's been. We need to go home."

We need to figure out how, first.

"There's gotta be something. It's science, right? At least in one universe. Someone has to have figured out multiversal travel. We just need to do it, too. How would you narrow down the when and where of universe-hopping?"

Maybe there's a scientist who's brain we can pick.

"I don't think so. Sounds like nobody was ever worried about it because Luna wasn't worried about it. Maybe if she'd been worried about getting home, we would have been able to already."

Is it fair to blame Luna for this? Maybe not, but I can't argue that she's trying to prolong our stay here, and therefore, is almost directly responsible for Holly's troubles today.

We climb the side of a building together, and Holly sits down over the edge. In the distance, we can see Maxima Park, some taller buildings, and a good portion of the city in all its glory. Here we are, on Earth, but still somehow completely lost.

"What if we never make it back?" She, too, is staring off at the horizon.

"Then at least we're here together," I say, sitting down next to her. She turns to face me. I see the telltale sparkling of tears in her eyes, despite her soft smile.

"I'm glad it's you, Tes. You're so... real. If I were with Cody right now... well, I'm not sure we would've made it this far. You saw how it was. We were at odds with each other unless we were out in public. He was an abrasive, rude person. He didn't deserve to die, but... of all the people we lost that day, I'm glad you managed to stick through it."

I sit in silence next to her. Of course, I'm glad Holly is here with me, too. I wouldn't have made it this far alone. Alone was a thing I was very much used to before. Now I can't imagine doing it without her.

We sit for a while, basking it all in. The sun slowly descends on the Carmsborough of the future, and beautiful neon lights pop up across the city. We barely even notice when Dwight appears behind us.

"Hey, girls," he says, startling both of us into pulling out a materia whip. "Boss wants you back. We're ready to talk Lurker."