Drauko dragged Onei by the arm, running from the ensuing fight behind them. About a half-mile away, Drade and Luuko’s school overlooked Michigan Lake’s shore and was their destination at the current moment.

Are you sure we should be running from that? Luuko asked.

He’s going to be fine, probably.

Wait, you’re just leaving his life to fate?

Yeah.

Well, I guess it isn’t like we’d be anything but a burden to him. Speaking of which, didn’t he say he wasn’t going to fight her?

Drade just shrugged.

They looked over their shoulder again only to see Kai’Vra had transformed into her true, monstrous form. While Luuko widened their eyes in surprise and terror, Drade was already wondering why she even used the form at all.

“Onei?” Drade asked, diverting their attention to something more important. “Onei, are you okay?” He put an arm right over Onei’s shoulder as they ran, making the frozen girl flinch, put in an awkward position. “Is something wrong?”

Onei’s eyes slowly drifted from the tsunami to Drade.

“What the fuck isn’t wrong!?” she said, throwing Drade away. “We’re all going to die. N-no, you’re going to die. Everything is going to be destroyed, and it’ll be like...like nothing happened!” Onei’s face was filled with conflicted emotions, ranging from fear to hysteria as she spoke. “This world’s just some Chaos-fueled hell, and I’m not sure how either you or that Luuko girl can remain calm right now...I-I-”

“We’re going to be fine, Onei,” Drade said, snatching her wrist again. “Just keep running.” He tugged her arm, and Onei, mystified, followed limply. “My sister is going to be here any second, okay? Preferably she’ll get the chance to take out that plant girl, too...though, I’d prefer to leave her out of this...”

“W-wait, say that again? Your sister is going to stop that...” she waved her open hand in the wave’s direction. “...wave?”

Drade shrugged. “Sure, she just needs to use her velocity antithesis wave, and we’ll be perfectly fine...” Drade took a better look at the wave now that it was much closer and even more intimidating. “A-actually, maybe...”

“WHAT IS THAT!?” Luuko burst out of Drade’s mouth, gaping. There was an enormous mass of mana below the wave.

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, Drade, I think that’s your sister,” Onei interjected hopefully, causing Drauko to look where she’d pointed.

A blanket-draped entity soared high above the buildings, above the school. Someone riding atop her pointed towards Drauko and Onei, and the entity quickly made its way to them, moving across a third of a mile in just a few seconds.

As Uffield zoomed past them from above, a highly distorted, “Draaaaaaaaaade!” berated Drauko and Onei’s ears, amplified by the doppler effect. Uffield came to a skidding stop a few meters behind them while the mother atop her fluttered atop the blanket like a ribbon, clutching her adoptive daughter for dear life even thought tentacles held her in place.

“I think I’m going to barf,” Hannah said, stumbling off the eldritch entity and putting a hand over her mouth.

A black tentacle slid from beneath the blanket and rubbed Hannah’s back. “Aww, sorry, Hannah. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“It’s...” she began, patting the tentacle apprehensively, “...its fine, Uffy.”

Drauko was staring at Uffield with a bewildered expression. “So that’s what you really look like!” Luuko said, walking to Uffield. While Drade patted his mother’s shoulder reassuringly, the other half oh his body was smirking as Luuko tried to flip Uffield’s blanket over to get a better look at her body.

“Hey!” Drade said, stumbling backward. “What are you doing, trying to flip my sister’s skirt?”

“Wha-I’m just trying to get a better look at her body! I’ve never seen her past her glamour!” Luuko responded indignantly.

“You’re trying to look at her naked? That’s even worse, you pervert,” Drade insisted.

Uffield chuckled, reminded of the countless trash anime she loved to watch,while Drade’s mom squinted at him with utter confusion. “Drade, did you have a body swap event again? How many times is this going to happen?” Although she noted that this was the first time Drade was sharing a body with someone.

Drauko ended up tripping over their rushed shoelace after he stumbled back and fell over. Uffield almost instantly flew behind him to break his fall, like a mobile bed. “Woah, Drade, how about we don’t get a concussion over the contents of my ‘skirt’.”

Drauko looked surprised for a moment, but Luuko quickly scrambled atop Uffield’s ‘back’. “Ohhhh, myyyyyy goooosh! Uffield...” She bounced up and down on her back, making the eldritch pillow emote ‘oof’ every time. “You’re soooo comfortable...” Luuko said in a suggestive manner before stuffing her half-brother’s unamused face into the living cushion.

“I really don’t like the way any of those words were uttered,” Hannah said with a grimace before turning to Onei, attempting not to look at the imminently deadly wave approaching. “So, ignoring that, who are you?”

Onei just sighed and waved off her question. “People forget who I am at the end of every day. You can call me Onei.”

“Oh. Sorry I asked, then.”

“Sorry about Luuko, sis, she’s kinda weird,” Drade said into the blanket, not bothering to resist the polysomnomancer’s vies for comfort.

“Has she never been on top of me before?” Uffield asked, tentacles popping up from under the blanket and patting them on the head.

“Nuh-uh, I havent...” Luuko said, sounding like she was already falling asleep, “But now that I have, there’s no going back...hmhmhm...I’ll never let go, evaaaaaAAA” Luuko’s voice cracked as the tentacle began to wrap them up in a blanket. Then, she began to plead with the eldritch entity, quickly being rolled up by the ordinary piece of cloth. “Wait, no! Nooooo, I can never go back to mundane comforts! Only your squishy body will do; now that I’ve rested on you, I might never fall asleep aga-”

“Okay, seriously, though, Luuko, you’re getting creepy,” Drade interjected, pretending he wasn’t enjoying the bedding as well.

“Fiine,” Luuko relented, “but I better get to sleep on her someday!”

“Umm, Drade?” Hannah asked, looking at his face, which was poking out of the blanket, “Who is possessing you?”

“Luuko. Her favorite hobbies include watching TV and possessing people in their sleep.”

“That name sounds familiar...” Hannah said, ignoring Drade’s second comment for her own sanity before looking up to see the wave. Having tried to ignore it up until this point, she immediately put a hand to her mouth and ran to a nearby tree planted in a column of dirt to throw up in it.

Drauko tensed in sympathy and everted their eyes up.

Above, a wave so large it nearly outscaled the skyscrapers loomed, threatening to swallow everything in its wake.

“Well, I ought to stop this before its too late,” Uffield said before flying upward.

“You know,” Luuko said, finally getting a good look at her, “She’s even more tentacley than I thought.”

“Hey, don’t flatter me too much, I’m just an ordinary girl,” Uffield said sarcastically, the answer for how she even spoke still uncleareven upon seeing the eldritch entity unclothed.

“Uffy, please,” Hannah said hoarsely, looking up at the wave with a sickened expression. “Please, just stop the wave before I faint of fear,” Hannah pleaded.

“Oh, right, silly me!” Uffield said, pretending to bonk her ‘head’ before quickly flying a hundred feet upward, meeting the wave less than halfway to its crest.

“Also, sis, there’s something really dangerous under the...” Drade began before shutting up and working with Luuko to get themselves unwrapped in the blanket. She probably can’t hear me from that far away, damn.

Luuko remained silent as she nervously looked between the wave, which was surging with mana, and Uffield. How, exactly, is she going to stop that th-

“Leeeeeerooooy Jeeeeenkins!”

She rammed into the wave facefirst, and before she contacted with it, a sphere of distorted space expanded from her on all sides, moving too quick to comprehend.

Then, as if it were just the natural way it should happen, the wave serenely started moving back towards the lake, its momentum entirely reversed.

But the mana beneath the wave didn’t. There was still a massive soul nearly a mile down the path, and it started to rise from the shallow waters. An immense flicker of mana caught Drauko’s attention, and they yelled to Uffield, “WATCH OUT!”

A jet of water shot from the mass of mana, so quick that it seemed instantaneous, and cleaved through the skies for a split second, slicing straight through Uffield, and cutting down dozens of buildings behind her as if they were negligible objects.

Her body was cut in two, both pieces dropping like rocks.

“Ow.”

The right piece of Uffield suddenly burst into a sonicboom, headed for the source of the water jet as if nothing had happened.

While she made her way to the mass of mana, unafraid, Drade yelled, “TAKE COVER! SHE’S SELF-DESTRUCTING!” And dragged a confused Onei and Hannah away with him, ducking into the restaurant Hannah had thrown up in front of.

Then, Uffield’s cut half exploded violently in midair, rattling the establishment as they took cover beneath a table.

Hey, could we just sleep here while she’s doing whatever out there? We’re kinda liabilities, Luuko sheepishly thought.

I don’t blame you for being scared, but if sis is fighting anything even close to her level of power, this city is going to become a warzone. We’re less in danger if we run, for sure.

Yeah, I got it, just tell me if we can take a nappie.

Okay. “Let’s get out of here!”