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-- ad for an energy drink that was immediately discontinued for causing heart failure.

Watching Apocalypse bounce around the Death Zone, swinging her halberd at the antithesis like they owe her money, is a rather impressive sight. Bits are flying everywhere, and Bubbles is sending her doom bubbles after them to clean it all up. Following the carnage of Apocalypse, there is nothing left behind but a slowly dissolving pile of compost.

Bubbles walks up to me. “Are you okay? You seem a bit distracted.”

I nod slowly. “Yeah sorry. You girls seemed like you could handle it, so I was just texting Sam.”

“What are you two talking about?” She asks while smiling at me.

“You’ll find out tomorrow,” I answer as I pet her head.

“Is it just me, or are there fewer plants in this area than normal?” Apocalypse asks as she joins us.

I shrug. “Maybe. I mean, the combination of having more Samurai and your sister guarding the place might have reduced their numbers by a lot.”

Apocalypse looks around. "That is good. But it won’t give us many points.”

“Ah, but I have a secret weapon for that.” I say with a smile as I open some apps.

The little demon frowns. “Like what?”

“Satellites,” I say with a smile, “I have been scanning this entire area to see if I can find your sister,” I say, opening the map.

“So the secret weapon is my sister?” Apocalypse asks.

“No, the secret weapon is information. She lives here so she might know where we can find a big grove of fruit.” I explain.

“And what if she doesn’t know of any places?” She asks, looking a bit more unsure than expected.

I shrug. “Then we just hang out for a bit and give her the stuff I got for her and continue looking.”

Apocalypse seems more reassured by that. So we change course, heading to the most likely location of Thing. We encounter minimal resistance, most of the modules dying easily to my blade or that of Apocalypse. It takes us about fifteen minutes to get to the designated location.

Once we get there, we do some digging around until the big worm-like eldritch creature pops out from underground.

“You're back.” A childlike voice says with a lot of excitement, “And big sister, you're here too.”

A big fleshy hand pops out, scooping up Apocalypse and hugging the demon against her body.

“Yeah, I am. We wanted to hunt some plants,” Apocalypse says once she breaks free.

“That sounds like fun. Can I come along?” The Thing asks.

Apocalypse turns to look at me.

I nod. "That is why we are here. We are kind of struggling with finding a lot of them, so we were wondering if you know of any good gardening spots. "

Thing's entire body starts to shiver. “Oh, this will be so much fun! I know exactly which hive we should tackle,” she says in excitement. She drops her hand to the floor. “Hop on. I will take you there.”

“Oh, thanks, uhm… Thing?” I say as I get on.

“Call me Tina,” she says in her bubbly voice.

I smile, “Okay Tina, we are in your care then.”

I look back at Apocalypse. "You can call me Alia if you want,” she says with a cute little grumble.

Bubbles gets on the hand as well, grabbing onto my arm as Tina starts to move, and soon we are underground, moving at a decent pace, making it hard to see what is going on with all the dust flying around.

I luckily still have my mask on, and Bubbles quickly puts on her safety goggles, but Alia, well, she is struggling, coughing loudly as she puts her hands over her eyes to protect them. I smile, a small plan forming.

‘Lyssa, can you get me one of my basic masks?’ I ask.

Certainly.

A white mask appears in my hand, and with some quick bit of code later, I have selected a new outfit for it. Then, I shuffle over to Alia, offering her the mask.

“Here, wear this. Should be easier to see.” I say, grinning to myself.

Alia takes the mask and puts it on. Her own costume hoodie appears around her, but instead of my purple, hers is pink with rainbow stripes and unicorns. Making her look all cute and cuddly. Alie looks down at herself. I can see her process for a bit.

She lets out a tiny “thank you” instead of being outraged or making fun of me, throwing me for a completely different loop.

I just nod, too stumped to think properly. “You're welcome.”

I turn back to the front, trying to figure out where we are going when I get a message from Bubbles. ‘Alia one, maniac zero’ I smile and hug her side while sending a message back. ‘Some battles are not worth winning.’

We stop after a while at an underground cave with some Antithesis moving around in the vast open space. We jump off Tina getting ready to fight. My weapons glow as a thousand bubbles are sprayed into the air.

I set off at a full sprint, Alia running right beside me and keeping pace. We ram into the pack of 3s and 4s with little resistance and start mowing them down like the overgrown grass that they are.

As we are fighting, more of them seem to appear out of cracks in the floor. I start to slowly shuffle over as I let my new electric sword build up power. I cut through a model 3 jumping at me while dodging a tentacle swipe from a model 4. I jump the gap, planting the sword in the ground on the other side.

Finally, being far enough away from my allies, I release the stored energy. A massive explosion of balled-up electricity flies out, heading in every direction, including my own. Whoops.

After I manage to stand up again, I spot my sword standing in the middle of a perfect circle of charred and destroyed corpses. I slowly walk up, grabbing the sword.

“That worked better than expected,” I say, resting the sword on my shoulder.

“So the sudden Maniac launch was intentional?” Alia asks.

“I never said it was perfect,” I point out

Alia nods. "So what now? Should we investigate the crack?”

“That would be great,” Tina’s voice cuts in. “I have been trying to get closer, but the hive is buried deep within the bedrock, so it’s hard for me to get close.”

“I see, so we go in there, kill the hive, then spray it full of acid on the way out?” I ask as I look at Bubbles.

Bubbles nods. "Sounds good. Do we have any way to properly navigate the place?”

I look down, trying to figure out some way to go about creating a map for the place. Maybe echolocation or something similar could work.

“I can scout the place,” Crow says as a few hundred swords pop out of my upper arms and head into the different crevasses.

I turn back to the group. "So Crow says they would scout.” I say, pointing downwards.

Bubbles nods. "Good. Let's follow her then.”

I look back at Tina. “Are you going to be okay on your own?”

“Yes, and if something happens, I can call you” suddenly new contacts get added to my contact list.

I nod with a smile as we head into the cave. We maintain a slow pace mostly because of the incline, rather than a need to be careful; Crow would warn us way before it would become an issue.

Once we reach the bottom, we find a small pile of fried vegetables that Bubbles quickly throws a glob of acid at.

We continue on to the dark tunnels being aided by the minimal lights of our weapons. The tunnels are quiet; a bit too quiet. Sometimes we run into a lone fermented carrot, but mostly there is nothing, just this building heat.

Suddenly, Crow speaks up. "Something is wrong.”

I pause. "What is wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Crow answers.

I sigh. “Okay, let me try that again. Why do you think that something is wrong?”

“I lost all contact with the sword I sent ahead of you.” Crow explains. Showing me a 3D map of the tunnel system.

It shows the path we are walking on and all its offshoots, but it cuddly stops sixty-four meters ahead of us.

“Can you try going at it from a different angle?” I ask.

“Will try,” Crow agrees.

The map starts to update as more of the side tunnels become visible. The swords slowly creep closer to the blank spots and suddenly stop as well.

“Lost connection,” Crow informs me.

I nod and then turn to the two girls waiting behind me. “There is something up ahead. Crow can’t see it. You think you can just, you know, blast it in bubbles?”

Bubbles nods, stepping forward as she starts adjusting the dizzying array of valves on her rig. “Sure, how far away is it?”

I try my best to inspect the different points the swords cut out and draw a sphere around it, but the points don’t line up, so it might be a bit more complicated. “Best I can tell, eighty meters or so at max.”

“That is far, we should try to get at least within fifty meters.” She says.

I nod, and we slowly start crawling forward. Once we reach the correct distance, I throw up a hand for us to stop. I quickly sent Tina a message telling her to get ready for all hell to break loose.

While Claire sets up her stuff, I turn to Alia, who is still wearing the ridiculous hoodie. “Can you protect our backs when this goes off? There is a chance it might set off a chain reaction.”

“You sure? The tunnels have been barren so far?” Alia says, swinging her arms around wildly.

“I know; that is the exact reason why I am this nervous, just a precaution,” I say, looking around.

“Okay.” Bubbles says, “I am going to use a chemical that will carry far and be sticky, hopefully slowing down anything that will try to come at us, but we have to be careful. This stuff is extremely flammable, so no fire or spark stuff,” she says looking at me.

Alia laughs. “Luckily, I am mostly fireproof.”

“Mostly?”

“Breathing becomes a bit difficult, but usually I can make it out before that becomes an issue.” She admits.

I nod. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

I put my spark sword away and get out my ice sword, then position myself in such a way that I can intercept any trouble that would come at us from the front.

After confirming that everyone is ready, Bubbles turns on her doom machine, and dark yellow bubbles, almost edging on brown, start to pour out and drift into the tunnel. Then we all hear some kind of boom as the tunnel starts to rumble.

The rumbling keeps getting louder as the popping of bubbles creates a cacophony of noise, making visibility just that little more tricky, so I close my eyes, deciding to completely rely on the sensors in my body. Some kind of creature is coming at us fast. The bubbles are slowing it down, but on its big bulky frame that does not seem to be enough to completely stop it.

Just as I am about to jump in there to stop it or something, Alia’s body goes sailing through the sky, impacting the creature and making it stumble backwards. I quick look at my back and there are more of the big fuckers there.

“Time for Plan B.”