Watching Vienne face off against B-3 was one of the most spectacular displays of real-time combat Raven had ever seen(allowing that it was VR, of course). It would have been easy to drop her sword and start backing up to a safe area to watch. The lightshow in the sky wasn’t limited to that space only. Frequently, one of the two would be slammed down from the sky, briefly impacting a building or a street, disappearing and reappearing someplace else.

Raven even frozen while she was thinking because B-3 had appeared right in front of her, mid-attack, annoyingly perfect teeth on full-display. Raven gritted her own teeth and used all her movement skills, already trying to bend out of the way of the hand that might as well have been a spear that was flashing toward her chest.

Too slow.

It was the only thought she had time to have before Vienne appeared next to B-3 with her sword out in a classic power thrust. The flamingsword took B-3 straight in the chest, the force of Vienne’s charge carried them both to the wall where B-3 was immediately skewered. B-3 burst into flame a fraction of a second later.

Raven’s eyes were big, still scared at how B-3 had maintained eye contact the whole time she was getting shishkabobbed by Vienne.

Both B-3 and Vienne vanished from the wall.

B-3 appeared slightly above and behind War, reaching down with lethal intent. B-3’s hands started to clap toward War’s head from either side -- the murderous blank expression on her face implying she fully expected both hands to meet in the middle.

Vienne appeared with her flaming sword raised high, already in the process of bringing it down as she teleported in. B-3 once again was smashed away before dealing damage, cratering the other side of the street. Both vanished.

War stood as straight as they ever had, their mouth slowly closing. “Am I dead?”

“Haha,” Raven burst out laughing. “What are we doing here?”

Both of them started laughing.

The laughter increased when they noticed that the oiled creatures were advancing on them from the south. There were so many of them now, but…

Compared to the monster being locked down by Vienne?

“Let’s finish this quickly and go back to the Square,” War suggested.

“Do you want to jump back in there?” Jenner asked Idolia. There wasn’t a whole lot of commenting going on right this second. The action was so frantic that they were just doing their best to change camera angles in the main booth.

“No way,” Idolia muttered. “I didn’t like the war, and I don’t like the scary quests."

Abhy and Jenner just chuckled.

Idolia turned slightly in her chair and adjusted the wireless microphone base that she was holding. “...I think I’d die, too.”

The audience chuckled, surprising a look from Idolia. She smiled belatedly, but when she turned back to Abhy she made a wide-eyed expression and mouthed the silent words, “I really would though.”

Schulia stood near Elisha looking out at the portal with an elaborate spyglass, her lips pressed into a thin line.

Elisha did her best to ignore the images of B-3 that occasionally showed up. B-3, or one of their ability clones, had tried to murder her fifteen times now. Vienne was doing a great job. No one on deck had been killed yet, but heavens knew that it wasn’t from a lack of effort the creepy motorcycle lady’s part.

“It’s expanding,” Schulia said slowly.

“Well that isn’t good. We’re shooting it non-stop. It should do the other thing!” Elisha grumbled. Her expression lightened for a moment. “Maybe the more fire we pour into it, the closer it gets to exploding! It’ll flash red any minute and just go boom! Yeah.”

Schulia lowered the spyglass and stared at Elisha curiously. “Are you being serious now?”

“No,” Elisha sighed, shoulders slumping. “We’re relying a lot on Vienne, but it seems like she’s entirely focused on fighting the main threat.”

Schulia smiled nervously. “What does that mean for us?”

“It means we’ve got a big shield,” Elisha replied grimly. “But no big stick. Historically, there are lots of games where outlasting the boss is the correct move but…” She gestured helplessly at the portal.

“We could go into the portal?” Schulia suggested. There were quite a few people who perked up, one of the wizards behind her even yelling out that they’d vote aye for that.

More people started to chorus that they were game. At this point everyone onboard was, well, onboard with every crazy suggestion that let them vote.

“No, no,” Elisha shook her head. “There’s no reason to think the portal’s original characteristic of letting through profound power only has gone away. We’d just… vaporize. Or, if we were doing profound magic, the Cloudkill would disintegrate and we’d all be walking home.”

“Ahh, gravity,” Schulia muttered. “Nature’s big kick in the butt.”

“What can we do that’s more useful?” Elisha muttered.

Schulia brightened up. “What about buff spells? Can we buff the ship? Make it stronger or something?”

Elisha shook her head. “We tried to cast all sorts of things on it, we’re as good as we get. It’s already overboard with whatever Vienne put on us. This is overtime. Game Extra++ Mode already.

Her eyes slowly began to drift toward the Square.

“What would she do?” Elisha muttered, a quizzical expression crossing her face.

“Who?” Schulia said after a minute. She tried to see where Elisha was looking but didn’t get it. “Who, Elisha?”

“I wish you could shoot a giant bolt of lightning and destroy the portal. B-3 would jump in front of it with an ‘oh no’ expression and then die. They’d die so hard.” Amelia sighed.

Aidan laughed. “Oh, is this all going to be on me then?”

Amelia made a get on with it gesture to him. When he just laughed again she clapped her hands together and pointed at the portal. “Unleash the fury, Aidan! Create a big slash in space time and suck in all the bad guys through the use of negative energy and chuni power!”

Aidan kept laughing, still laughing as he cringed away from a B-3 that appeared to his right and tried to stab him in the kidneys. Vienne flattened that B-3 into the ground, smashing several times in a row before B-3 disappeared. Vienne vanished as well.

“That’s getting old…” Aidan sighed.

He turned slightly and saw that Amelia was staring off into space. When he followed her gaze she wasn’t looking at the portal, or the fight, or even the battle that waged around them. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t looking at anything. “Amelia?”

“...mpty…” Her mouth was opening and closing, a look of intense concentration on her face. She reached her hand out toward an empty area several yards above them and closed her fist.

Aidan fully expected something to happen, and was a little disappointed when nothing did.

Amelia’s lowered, and she stared at it with the expression she always had when she was lost to the world. It reminded him of the time that a giant terrorbird had dropped in front of her and screamed in her face. She, being Amelia, had leaned in closer to see what the inside of it’s mouth looked like.

He smiled briefly. Good times.

Forsythe messaged him. “Elisha wants to know what to do?”

“I don’t know,” Aidan said, growing more distracted as he watched the smile start to stretch out over his beloved’s face.

“Aidan we’re coming back, we want to be there when the plan forms!” Raven called privately.

“What plan?” Aidan was having trouble with everyone messaging him at literally the same time. Were they so free that they could chat with him and fight the deadly monsters and floating hands? B-3 could do him a solid and murder a few of them before Vienne got there in time.

“You know, whatever the plan happens to turn into,” Raven replied cagily. “For the counterattack!”

“Counterattack?” Aidan frowned.

“No Aidan, Elisha wants to know what Amelia wants her to do,” Forsythe repeated patiently.

“Hey, we need to shift gears, this is nothing but a back and forth with no end…What’s wrong with her?” Mordred noticed Amelia staring into space, muttering like a crazy person. “Why does her face look like that?”

Aidan tilted his head, watching a familiar creepy smile appear.

B-3 appeared behind Amelia, getting ready to stab her through the spine, Vienne appeared and cut off both her legs. For a fraction of a moment before Vienne disappeared, Aidan got the distinct impression that her eyes twitched involuntarily toward Amelia’s back.

He just replied to all of them, not sure what to tell them.

“Please hold.”

“What an ugly expression,” Jenner muttered.

Abhy and Idolia shared a grin.

The main screen switched the view to Amelia.

She stood in the middle of the screen, all the minor feeds showing the action in smaller boxes at the fringes.

Amelia stood perfectly still, but everyone could feel the tension gathering.