Every day I dreamed...

That I wasn't me...

What did it matter?

What could I have done and how?

Every day I dream...

For something I can believe...

That things would get better...

To see myself, now...
 

Juli took another sip of her wine, then stared at the man in the other seat and smiled, a tear in her eye.  An upbeat feeling rang through the air, as there was a single sphere of candle light surrounded by darkness.
 

For everyday that I

looked out unto the sky,

dreaming for better.

A past to come back now.

For everyday that I

hoped that you'd come on by.

We'd again be together.

Then look at us now!
 

"Juli, you seem to be in a good mood, today."  Bremare remarked as he refilled the glass.

"I just..."

"Happy for Cammy, then?"  Bremare leaned his elbow on the table and put his respected hand to his chin as he leaned forward with a smile of his own.  "We're having this celebration for the three top dolls.  It's good to see you're enjoying yourself."

Behind Bremare, light illuminated more of the darkness, revealing two other Dolls who were standing behind him.

"You're not jealous, then?"    Dressed in the regular dark full-body doll uniform, Cammy walked over to the table to take her own seat and looked at the brunette inquisitively.  In her eyes, there was something... different.  A look of energy and respect Juli hadn't seen in her in a long time.  "Ha, you're one step above Avelle then, aren't you?"

"Hey!"  Avelle shouted from her position by the wall where she was leaning.  "You're getting lucky!  Really!  Well, okay.  But I'm still not that bad, right?"

Juli blinked, then almost choked on her wine in shock.  Avelle quickly patted her on the back hard while Bremare handed her a napkin.

"Is something wrong?"  The scientist asked.

Avelle was somewhat concerned.  "Wow, Juli.  Was it something I said?"

"Juli, you're okay, right?"  Cammy was indeed dressed in the regular full-body doll uniform instead of that promiscuous one she got ever since she became Lord Bison's bodyguard.
 

Ping Pang!  When you think about it... you are not an alpha robot.

You are just dreaming... for a place you can understand.

Because you are Agent Juli, greatest in the world!

There is nothing that can hold you back!  Because today you're going to stay on track!
 

Juli glared at Cammy and Avelle in surprise, as it slowly dawned on her where she was.  She was with everyone, again.  She was in her paradise...
 

Every day I dreamed...

That I wasn't me...

What did it matter?

What could I have done and how?

But then that day I dreamed...

something I could believe...

Then things got better...

Look at me, now!
 

"Jealous?  Hey!  It was all fair and square.  I'm happy for you."  Juli beamed, then made a lie which, in this perfect world, now wasn't a lie anymore and was the truth.  "It's not like you cheated or anything by like... doing something ridiculous like making a pass at Lord Bison or something."

That's really what I am...

"What?  Don't even joke about something that stupid."  Cammy laughed.

That's really what I believe...

Folken raised his glass.  "Let's give a toast, then."

For every way I dreamed...  hey now, can you see?

Avelle crossed her arms, still leaning against the wall, then smirked at the young man.  "What for?"

For now I can believe...  forever can I dream...

"Perhaps..."  Bremare broke in.  "Just to good times."

That's really what we are...

"Juli!  Aren't you going to raise your glass?"  Juni asked.

We'll reach out to the stars...

Juli blinked.  She was still in shock.

Something for you and me.  Forever we can dream...

Shaking her head, she nodded.  "Oh.  Right.  Sorry.  I was just... so happy to see you all again."

Together we'll go far... Forever I believe!

"Hey!  You shouldn't pressure the lady so much!"  With a tip of his trademark cap, Yun grinned.  "Here, I'll assist her."

Before Yun could 'assist' Juli, Yang stopped him.  "Brother, I can't let you do that."

The brunette was more shocked than ever.  She stared at Yun's brother, wide-eyed.  "Y... Yang?"

"Why are you so nervous, Juli?"  Avelle snickered.  "Hey!  He's cute.  And he has a twin!  So there'd be one for me, too!"

Yang didn't gratify her with a response, though Yun was more than happy to divert his attention to chat with the bright-red haired girl.  Juli wasn't paying much attention to that, though.  Her head quickly turned as she made an observation of the room.  She still couldn't believe her eyes.  There was Juni and Rose and Folken, but there was also Yun, Yang, Ran, Avelle, Bremare, and even Cammy before the day the two left on poor terms.

Ping Pang!  When you think about it... you are not an alpha robot.

Juni was admiring Avelle in person, for once.

You are just dreaming... for a place you can understand.

Bremare refilled the wine glass once again.

Because you are Agent Juli, greatest in the world!

Cammy was her regular self, before she started to look down on Juli.

There is nothing that can hold you back!  Because today you're going to stay on track!
 

For once, things were... perfect.
 

Every day I dreamed...

That I wasn't me...

What did it matter?

What could I have done and how?

But then that day I dreamed...

something I could believe...

Then things got better...

Look at me, now!
 

It was a time when there would be no more tragic losses.

"Flustered?  You shouldn't over exert yourself."  Rose remarked.  "For once, there isn't any conspiracy going on, here.  You have your own self-conscious, so you know that for yourself."

There were no more worries about duty getting in the way.  It would become just a regular routine, again, instead of a mission to kill a loved one.

"Juli!"  Avelle waved.  "Cammy thinks she can handle that S difficulty mission by herself after this.  I told her that I would show her how much higher the efficiency rating would be if I came along.  Are you coming?  Juni wants to come, too."

No more tears of sadness shed for being abandoned.

"Y... Yea, of course!"  Juli happily nodded, her eyes somewhat watery.

No more being forced to make a choice which was never hers to make in the first place.

"Ran?  You're... here, too?"  Juli glanced at the teenager, confused again.  "But... we're not allowed to be friends."

"Haha!"  Ran laughed as she took out her camera.  There wouldn't be any need for Juli to hide behind the mask and avoid a picture, this time.  "Do you think that I, the great Ran, would let something as trivial as a global evil organization get in the way of getting the scoop?"

What was it like?  To dream the impossible dream?  Juli had forgotten that it wasn't real.  Or maybe she didn't.  But for a brief moment, she didn't care.

That's really what I am...

"Aaaah, Juli."  Yang bowed.  "I'm sorry our last talk was interrupted.  But we won't ever have to worry about that, anymore."

That's really what I believe...

"The one who finally does become Lord Bison's bodyguard will do so fairly."  Cammy explained.  "No tricks, no mocking, and no, if I win, of course I won't make fun of you.  We'll still be friends as always!"

For every way I dreamed...  hey now, can you see?

"Juli, I don't mind about that stupid psycho drive thing."  Juni beamed.  "I just want you to be with me."

For now I can believe...  forever can I dream...

"We are Lord Bison's finest, after all."  Avelle remarked.  "Together, we can do this.  Don't you agree?"

That's really what we are...

"We were there for each other when everything seemed to be falling apart."  Bremare adjusted his glasses.  "Why would I ever leave you like that?"

We'll reach out to the stars...

"Do you want to have a seat?"  Ran offered.  "It's funny, isn't it?  Like the happy ending to a soap opera that everyone always deserved in the first place."

Something for you and me.  Forever we can dream...

"Y... Yea!"  Juli exclaimed, wiping away some more tears from her eyes.  "I just... give me a moment here.  Because it's a moment that I want to last forever..."

Together we'll go far... Forever I believe!

Dream on, Juli.  Dream the impossible dream.  Dream of a life with no tragic losses.  With no duty coming between you and your friends.  With no more abandonment, and no more sadness.  Because it's what you have to do.  Because it's the only way.  Because it's all you have left.

It's all you have left.

"I'm sorry.  I must give my sincerest apologies."  Folken sighed.  "I'm going to have to wake you up, now.  And it will sadly have to be a rude one.  It's an ugly job.  Cruel, even.  But no one else is going to do it so I suppose it's my duty, then."

Dream on, Juli.  Because now, it's time.

Juli stared at him and blinked.  "Huh?"

When Juli woke up from her dream, she would realize that 'cruel' was an understatement.

Marian got to her desk just like every morning for the last few years.  She would on her terminal and trudge through reports from the Intelligence and Espionage division.  Well, at least she got to keep that picture of a shirtless, maskless Lord Vega she scored by chance once.

With an organization as vast as Shadowlaw, it was nearly impossible to easily collate data into a coherent picture for the man in charge.  However, God willing, that was the task of Lord Bison's secretarial corps.  There was Lauretta and Zoldan in finance.  Marian was unsure just what qualifications they held but trying to balance Shadowlaw's annual budget would have given seizures to a Harvard graduate.

An oriental lady that simply called herself "Jasmine" took up the slack by coordinating the reports and requisitions from the Science Department.  It might have been a plum job, but trying to find a couple of positron colliders for the Tech Div's newest toys must be a real headache.

Marian herself simply collected I&E's reports and passed them along.  "Yay, this person's dead" or "we found out this about them, 'Lord Bison's Eyes Only'" was about the extent of it.  However, as a former Spetsnaz commando Marian had skills that the other secretaries couldn't match. Or at least she thought so.  She wondered just how many of them were hiding something; maybe some of them had tricks up their sleeves just like the FN FAL Marian taped under her ebony desk.  The desk was a solid piece of work, ebony's high metal content made it resistant to small arms fire and took even a man-portable laser quite a while to burn through.  Marian was sure she was assigned this particular desk so that she could overturn it and use it as cover in a firefight.  Not that such an event was going to happen right?  Not in Mriganka, Shadowlaw's impregnable underground island fortress.

Well, being a desk jockey was not too bad. There was little call for people like Marian anymore back home. Sure beats serving drinks in some bar for a living.

An ordinary afternoon in her job.  Filia laughed to herself, knowing that "ordinary afternoon" and "her job" would sound insane to the outsider.  All the monsters of Shadowlaw, two things which were not meant to exist in an ordinary afternoon world, were screened on her computer.

3-D scans of these anomalies of the animal kingdom appeared, along with their stats and retention area.  She remembered when Kitsune showed her this program for the first time: how she had yelped in delight!  All her beliefs were proven true.  She couldn't wait until she could finally tell people she was right, and had concrete proof for it.

Of course, keeping the monsters under check was not a simple task.  She looked outside the window on the north side of the office.  Sound proof, fire proof, bullet proof, claw proof and magic proof glass, at that.  They couldn't see anything, except for the grey and blue of the pools and gates that held back these paranormals.

Almost finished with the inventory.  She wondered idly whether Justin and Cristan wanted to grab something for dinner.  They seemed to be doing much better now.

Her computer screen flickered twice.  Filia 'hmmmed', looking at the cables.  The screen flickered once more, and never regained power.

Then the lights went out.  Through the intercom, a mighty "click" sounded.  With which came out faint rumblings, like the beginning of a stampede, and a roar.  And the beginning of giant 100 foot steel gates being opened.

Oh. My. God.

"WAKE UP!"

The happy music cut off.  It was replaced by emergency sirens, and the blaring incoherent babble in a multitude of different languages across the loudspeakers of Mrigranka.  Juli's dream was over.  At the sound of Fenrir's voice and due to being shaken violently by the frantic girl, Juli quickly got up from her bed and glared around.  Everything was a red color, because that was the color of the lights to indicate a red alert.

"<We have Red Alert!  All shock troops loose!  The situation is Walking Holocaust!>"
            "Achtung, Xanglarnesh kommt! Drei Sekunden bis Kontakt!!"  "WARNING WARNING!"
"Medic Bay Five overrun!  All personel evacuate immediately!"  "Schnell achtung!  Schnell achtung!"

"JULI!  DAMMIT!  You sleep enough, don't you!?"  Fenrir snapped.  "Do you know what your partner did!?!?"

Juli quickly stared around, trying to figure out what Fenrir was talking about.  Then she remembered.  The dream was just a dream.  And Juni...

"RED ALERT!  SETHYPHYRUS LOOSE IN SECTOR EIGHT!  SECTOR TWENTY-THREE IS OVERRUN!  ALL NONCOMBAT PERSONEL MUST EVACUATE TO THE OUTER SANCTUMS!"

The sirens continued to blare, louder than any casino sirens ever could.  Shouts were heard from down the hall.  Juli couldn't even figure out if they were shouts of pain, shouts of torment, or the roar of a monster free from its chains.

"Oh my God..."  Juli put her hand over her mouth, unable to believe the revelation.  "But...  But..."

"Fenrir!"  Olvere shouted from the doorway.  "There's another one coming this way!"

Fenrir turned around and drew her sword as she proceeded to brief the other just-awakened agent.  "Everything's going berserk!  Juni did it!  I still can't believe she was able to do it!  Janet idiotically let herself be distracted!  She was able to turn on the final security back-up measures, but that's not going to do much.  Everything's loose, and all the uber units and Shadowlaw's experiments that were kept contained within the inner sanctum are running amok, now!"

Juli couldn't believe what she was hearing.  Why couldn't this be the dream, instead!?  This... this was a nightmare!

"Fenrir, it's arrived."  Olvere, letting her monkey perch on the other hand, motioned out the door.  "We can't let it get any farther!"

"It!?"  Juli was quickly regaining her bearings.  "What's 'IT'!?"

"Goddammit, Juli!"  Juli found herself quickly yanked out of her bed by the sword-wielding doll.  "Quit being lazy and give us some assistance, here!"

Juli didn't have much choice.  That moment that she wanted to last forever never existed in the first place, anyway.  While she didn't want to, she found herself in serious combat stance once again as she exited the room with the other two agents.  On the floor was some sort of sticky substance goo that stretched all over the place, but Juli couldn't tell what color it was due to the red lighting making everything red.  Not that it mattered, because whatever it is, she knew it was horrible...

Across the hall was some sort of liquid human attached to the gooey liquid which the floor now consisted of.  Juli backed up in shock as it stared back at her, a look of gloom and desolation in its face.

"What the hell is that!?"  The brunette backed up, shocked.  The... thing quickly pulled out its arm which transformed into some sort of cannon before it fired a laser beam at the three dolls.  Fortunately, Fenrir quickly jumped in front of them and whipped out her alternate white sword, Raintaker, which seemed to absorb the blast completely as she spun it around.  As she readied her spear, Olvere took the time to quickly answer Juli's question.

"That would be an Abysmal Fifty-Six.  It happens when you merge the right amount of genetic DNA of a sponge with the fiftieth mark upon... erm, well, to put it in normal terms,"  The dark-skinned agent coughed.  "It's an attempt to create a morphable humanoid gone horribly horribly wrong when someone attempts to play God with human beings in a way that can make them morph and shift like a jellyfish!  Isn't that exciting?!"

As Olvere smiled, Juli was too busy noticing that the creature recoiling its cannon arm from the blast to reply to the dark-skinned girl.  She took the opportunity to counter.  Turning back for a moment, she followed with a quick far flying sniping arrow kick which flew past Fenrir and slammed straight into the gooey monstrosity.  Which... only resulted in sending lots of goo flying from the thing.

The brunette stared in surprise then quickly put her gloves forward to block as the Abysmal beast whipped out its other arm and blasted Juli with some sort of acid flame.  Juli cringed as she was pushed back a bit, then grabbed her arm in pain as the creature made some sounds which almost sounded like laughter.

"Damn!  It..."

"No, you damaged it.  The creature doesn't register pain but it can still be damaged.  That's how it works because the nervous system breaks down in order so that it can morph without worry of... erm..."  Olvere replied, before staring at the brunette a little worried.  "Agent Juli, are you all right?"

That was a stupid question to ask.

"Do I look like I'm all right?!"

Fenrir annoyedly sighed.  "Cry more, Juli?

Juli found herself being slashed in the arm by Fenrir's Raintaker sword.  The brunette quickly cringed and closed her eyes as she was blinded by a white light, but quickly saw that it helped heal the pain in her arm, even if just a little.  Fortunately, before the monster could strike with another flame blast, Fenrir was already in front of Juli to block it with her more effective Raintaker sword.  She then unsheathed Stormbringer as Raintaker seemingly disappeared and quickly tore into the thing with a series of three slashes as Olvere leaped up and slammed her spear into it from above.  Also taking advantage of the opening, Juli spun forward pass Fenrir after Fenrir finished her last strike and slammed her fist into the creature with a spinning knuckle punch, after which the creature sank into the ground.

"Did we kill it?" asked the brunette.

"No, actually, it's highly recommended that you move, right now."  Olvere remarked as she and Fenrir quickly stepped to the side.  Before Juli could even ask "Huh?", a bunch of huge bubbles made out of the slime on the floor quickly formed and flew out of the ground, one of which quickly encased the brunette.  Another burning sensation seared through her for a brief second before Olvere quickly popped the bubble with her spear as Fenrir slashed up all the others before they could get too close.

"You know, it would be helpful if you warned me about these attacks before they happened!"  Juli snapped.

"Agent Juli, you're efficiency rating is three percent higher than mine, frankly."  Olvere tried to defend herself.  "I thought that might have been enough to react quickly enough to my statements.  Erm... sorry about that.  I make these miscalculations sometimes."

The monster quickly popped out of the ground right next to Fenrir, who quickly drew her sword and slashed at it, but it ducked into the ground yet again, first.

"Dammit, we're not making any progress here!"  Fenrir quickly motioned towards the hallway behind the dolls.  "We need to regroup with Desire and Aurora!"

"Oh yes!"  Olvere nodded.  "Their longer ranged weapons should be able to easily give them a range advantage over the Abysmal Fifty-Six's flame strikes and you can defend easily against the lasers, so it won't stand a chance!  That's an excellent plan!"

The other doll shrugged.  "Well, actually, I was thinking more about strength in numbers.  But whatever works."

Juli was still exasperated.  "Do you think they'll actually be able to help?"

"The psycho power feed was cut off when the drives were destroyed."  Fenrir explained.  "We're only able to do one-fourth the damage, here.  Janet said that Lord Bison had a plan to alleviate the situation really soon, but until then, we still need to try to hold them off."

While the beast was in hiding, Juli quickly locked the door to her room hoping that might keep it from being ransacked if everyone somehow managed to get out of this situation alive, then the three dolls made a quick retreat.

Sakura Kikage, or just Kikage to most of those who knew her to avoid mixing her up with the *other* Sakuras, skipped happily down the labyrinth corridors of Mriganka.  Her training for the day completed, she had elected to explore the vast Shadowlaw headquarters.

Suddenly, a wave of weakness passed through her.  Her schoolgirl gait was suddenly arrested as Kikage's knees buckled, unable to support her weight any longer.  A terrible feeling of coldness spread throughout her body as if someone had unplugged her like an appliance from a power socket.  Kikage tried to rise but found to her horror that her limbs would not obey her will any longer.  Darkness began to nibble at the edges of her vision as she felt her consciousness slip away from her.
"Daddy?  Mommy?  Anybody?  Please, I'm down here!  Don't leave me here alone!  It's dark!  I'm scared!  Somebody, please help meeeeeeee…………."

Though the glass was sound proof, Filia felt a creeping sensation behind her neck telling her that  they could hear her.  They could hear her.  All those dragons looking for an afternoon snack, the asuras aching for battle and prey to kill, mindless, insane, irrational, destructive, murderous, scary, frightening, monsters.

She backed herself to the south wall.  She looked outside the window.  The colors were gone.  The gates opened and the waters stirred.  Dust emerged from the current pandemonium of the monsters and there was nothing but black and grey mist and the far away shape of demons coming closer and closer and closer.  It was like something Lovecraft emitted from his writing due to it being so horrific.

Roars, screeches, all sounds could be heard over the intercom. She approached the window.  It was a safe window, right? All those proofs it had for it.  She went, crawling, until she reached underneath the window.  And then as if it were her reflection an impish demon copied her movements as she emerged up to the glass.  When she looked out it took a moment for her mind to register what she was looking at. Brown, with only whites of eyes and no pupils, and a grin with teeth like knives which reached well into both cheeks.

She screamed.  When it tapped into the window her own weak knees threw her to the ground.  She didn't bother getting up, she didn't bother looking away.  She just pushed herself back and under the desk.

She hid under the plastic desk and curled into a ball.  All her muscles, and her eyes, tensed up and refused to move.  Now she couldn't see them approach and now when to escape except she couldn't escape even if she wanted to because the doors of her office relied on the electricity too and where the hell was the back up why wouldn't it work?

"Make it stop make it stop make it stop make it stop," she screamed and yelled and sobbed and cried and throttled and made whatever sound possible as long as she could drown out the noise coming from the intercom and why oh why did that fucking thing still work when everything else electronically operated stopped?  "Cut it out, cut it out, cut it out, cut it out..." whimpering, "....why me."

"Don't worry, dear," a very mothering, very caring voice called out.  A voice of comfort in all the chaos.  Filia's muscles loosened.  Her whole body obeyed the voice.

"Oh dear," the maternal melody rang out. "You poor child. We'd better get you out."

Was it over it was over.  The voice now had an arm, and it's soft, cushiony, plump hand reached for her cheek.  Wiping away everything, and opening her eyes to await the new reality except that was when Filia realized there wasn't supposed to be anything else in the room and when she opened her eyes she was face to face with an Empusa.

Her mind realized it couldn't handle being conscious anymore and she screamed psychotically and screamed painfully and went black.

Janet burst into M Bison's throne room, the only person outside of Rose or Kikage who could do so and avoid a swift and often horribly painful and cruelly imaginative execution.

"Lord Bison, the Psycho Drives are down!  The Shock Troops are escaping!" Janet panted, out of breath from sprinting all the way from Central Command.  At least the last fail safes were conventionally powered.

Grinning widely from his throne, all M Bison said was, "I know."

"'I know'?!  Is that all you've got to say?  Michael, if we don't do something about it, they'll tear this place apart!"  Janet was unaware that she was ranting to the boss man at that point in time, nor would she have really cared if she did.  Michael always had let her take that tone with him.  No one else was allowed to speak to him that way.  It was one of the few special things he allowed her.  Like being able to call him by his first name when they were alone.

M Bison rose abruptly from his seat.  "Well then Janet let us do something about it."  A Psycho Teleport took them to one of the most secure parts of Mriganka, one which only at most a handful of people knew about.  The last and first Psycho Drive, the ancient Nazi model which required a human being to power.  Held in suspended animation, the psychic energies of the person would be harnessed and amplified a hundred fold.  This was Janet's greatest and deepest secret, the true power source of Shadowlaw's Psycho Drives, clones of the former Third Eye Adepts.

As Janet helped him into the suspension fluid that would help keep Michael alive while he was using himself as a human Psycho battery.  "I will be comatose while providing the back up generator so," his voice became warm again just for a second, "watch out for yourself Jen Ya."

Janet blinked once, unsure if she had heard him, right but Michael was already deep into his trance.

Red was the color of blood.  It probably fit in very well with what was going on at the time.  Also associated with deaths of the more gory persuasion, and it seemed a nice choice of color for frantic chaos, too, as well as battle and immediate desperate action.

Under slightly more normal circumstances (despite how the circumstance that led to it in the first place wasn't very normal at all), Juni would have thought that the inside of Inner Mrigranka was actually damn cool seeming while under red alert.  The atmospheric touch of the underground death trap with the alarms blaring really couldn't be beat, even if Juni would have preferred that it be inflicted upon actual bad stupid evil people like an Interpolers or something. Of course, it probably was, back when Juni and Juli blew up that Shadowlaw lab that was Interpol occupied a long time ago.  Which... Juni also would have fondly been remembering under slightly more normal circumstances.

For neither Juni nor... Juni (Junivelle, actually, but for some weird reason she now actually was insisting she be called the same name as the one who's imagination cooked her up in the first place...), it was not a slightly more normal circumstance.

"Cuddles!!!  Where are you!?"

Of course, Juni(velle)'s abnormal situation was a lot more serious than Juni's missing kitty cat.

"What are you doing?  We don't have time to be searching for our kitty cat, right now!"

"But... she might have wandered off during the explosion and..."  Juni paused, then slowly stared back at the doppelganger behind her with a look of annoyed awareness on her face as she just realized what Junivelle just said.  She was doing that often, these days.  "Wait a minute... OUR kitty cat?"

"Okay, I'm sorry."  Junivelle apologized.  "I meant MY kitty cat."

"WHAT!?  You..."  Before Juni could continue, another siren sounded, which snapped her back to the reality of the situation.  She realized that for now, she had to drop the subject that Junivelle inadvertently brought up and just get back to finding Cuddles in the first place, THEN they could get back into an argument over who Cuddles belonged to.  "Okay, whatever.  If you don't mind, I have a kitty cat to find."

Deciding to claim victory in that argument, Junivelle grinned, then addressed the blonde.  "Well, when was the last time I saw her?"

"I saw her... on the plane ride to the meeting with Rose at the casino and..." Another pause, this time followed by a look of shock as Juni just as she realized what she did.  "Oh my God..."

More soldiers ran by, shouting orders to each other, and gunfire could be heard in the distance, though neither of the two girls were paying attention to it.  Like Juni, Junivelle was shocked, too, but it wasn't a heart-attack type shock like Juni had.  It was one of disbelief at Juni's incompetence.

"You left Cuddles behind at the casino!?  I can't believe you!  Oh, this is just great.  Looks like my first action as new High Lady of Shadowlaw will be to file a lost-and-found on a kitty cat, but that just seems stupid."

"HEY!  It's not my fault that you distracted me back there!"  Juni snapped.  "I'm getting really tired of these black-out periods you're dragging me through!  Do you know how freaking hard it was for me to remember what YOU said to Rose back there!?  All I remember was some crap about blowing things up and... me becoming the High Lady of Shadowlaw?"

The red light darkened.  For a brief moment, the sirens faded into the background completely.  The rushing footsteps, the shouts of panic, battle, torment, and death, and the many people running past and ahead of Juni all became insignificant as Juni finally began to realize Junivelle's plans.

I... want... power...

I once tasted what power was like. Do you know what it's like? To have the power to change things? To finally make a difference? To finally put an end to everything wrong with the world?"

The people in charge no longer have power these days. Even if they did, it wouldn't matter because they wouldn't use it. They are interested in increasing their standing with the power they have, but that's about it.  In truth, no one wants to admit that they are powerless.

When that brief second was over, time resumed.  Junivelle watched as several more men ran off, then crossed her arms.

"Do you understand, yet?  You will be the one that stands victorious on doomsday.  And you will be the one that will lead everything into a brave new world.  You knew that this was our plan all along."  She remarked.  "Rose is down there.  She's as good as dead.  Now come on.  We must simply survive.  The loss will be small, but unlike Michael, we'll actually be able to put things together and finally begin to make progress in this world."

"R... right..."

Juni nodded, suddenly feeling extremely tired for a reason that she didn't know.  Taking her hand, Juni was led away from the chaos, though she still looked and held back a little, so the other blonde had to drag her a bit.  It wasn't very long until Juni finally realized what was on her mind that made her do that.  A realization which made her quickly yank her hand away.

"HEY!  What about Serina and Marzche?  They're down there, too!"

Before Junivelle could even begin to stop her, Juni had dashed off without thinking.  A dash which made her quickly stumble right into Justin, who was trying to go against the tide of running troops.  The ensuing collision sent the less physically-apt boy tumbling quite a distance before Juni helped him get up.

"Justin!  Do you know how Serina and Marzche are doing?"

"Huh...?"  Justin couldn't really do anything besides look confused, but he did manage to answer Juni's question.  "Oh!  Silvermoon!  She's... she was farther down in order to hide from Jen-Ya.  But I think she might have been able to escape.  Jen managed to do a manual override of the security for the last drive which apparently made it easy for them to turn on an immediate back-up, somehow.  Otherwise, this whole area probably would have been completely overrun by now, but as it is, I think Shadowlaw actually stands a chance, here.  The psycho feedback was only cut off by 50%.  The half of the numbers reduced the enemy by a factor of 1.53 and it saved approximately 43 soldiers from any immediate backlash allowing for an increase in the time period by 23 minutes which is a significant factor in..."

"WHAT!?"  Junivelle shouted before Juni's head could explode from trying to figure out Justin's calculations.  "How did Janet react so quickly!?"

Junivelle's plan somehow wasn't going very well, after all.  In fact, she found that she herself was having to react quickly when a familiar female voice came from behind her.

"Maybe it's because not all of us are traitors, perhaps?"

Turning around, Juni saw Fenrir just in time to quickly put up a Psycho Shield as Fenrir forcefully dashed forward and slashed at her with her sword.  The shield immediately repelled her back a fair distance down the metal hall, though she was still on her feet and she didn't even come close to colliding with the four other girls behind her.

"J... Juli?"

"Juni!!!  What are you doing!?"  The brunette cried out above the sirens.  Fenrir apparently decided to let Juli get Juni's explanation before slicing Juni in two just because they all probably deserved at least that much.

"I thought he was infected with the Soul Virus!"  Juni cried back, just as exasperated as her partner.

"Soul virus?  What the hell are you talking about!?  The only one that has anything to do with soul power here is Rose and I'm positive I've never heard of any viruses associated with it!"

"But... I heard about it and it said that it stole peoples' souls and made them evil and..."  Juni continued to try to explain.

Juli sighed, then stared at the blonde with the usual condescending-but-justified look.  "Besides how ridiculous that sounds, did you ever look up how someone gets infected or whatever the hell it is by a soul virus?"

It was still justified, this time, too.

"I... erm... they give in to the evil?"  Juni sorta replied back.  A reply which got nothing but an even more condescending silent stare from the brunnette.

Exasperated, Junivelle stepped in to continue the blonde's defense.  "You're the one that said they were evil!!!!!"

That quickly changed Juli's look from condescending to surprised.  She wasn't expecting Juni to retaliate with that.  Especially because it was a sign... a sign that things weren't so great, after all.  Juli and Juni were supposed to be partners for life.  'Sister' agents, even.  Or at least, that's what Juli thought it was supposed to be like.  The disturbed brunette didn't know how it was happening.  She couldn't even figure out what her feelings were, now.  All she could do was stutter out a question, and hope that there wasn't an answer.

"You're... blaming me?"

Juni, herself, began to realize this.  She began to realize just how large the rift was becoming.  Tears began to well up in her eyes as she grabbed her partner and began crying.

"AAAAAAH!!!  I thought that by destroying the psycho drives, I could just... she told me not to believe you!  But I knew I should have listened to you, but she wouldn't let me!!!"

Juli was too confused to even hold her, back.  Looking down at her, the perplexed brunette asked, "Who... who are you talking about?"

The one she was talking about, Junivelle, was standing right there and shaking her head at the sight.  But no one could see her.  Olvere listened to the sirens, again, then turned to her current leader, who had her sword ready, still trying to determine whether to cleave Juni in two or not.

"Fenrir, we don't have time..."  Olvere stated as Tams hopped onto her shoulder.

Quickly turning her head to back at the other Dolls as Juni continued crying, Juli made a frantic effort to change the other girl's mind about the slicing thing.  "Fenrir!  I don't think Juni knew!"

The Japanese girl grimaced.  Her eyes were closed.  Her grip on the sword clenching tightly as she gritted her teeth.  Juni, however, seeing her partner trying to defend her, held her even tighter and cried even harder.  Junivelle, however, looked pissed.  Fenrir finally opened her eyes and scowled at the two.

"...whatever.  I don't care!  I have to handle this.  This is just another day in my life."  Angrily slashing her sword to the side and cutting some air in the process, Fenrir glared at Juni, determined to make it clear that she wasn't off the hook.  "If we live through this, Janet probably won't be very happy with you though, Agent Juni..."

At her remarks, Juni, too, opened up her eyes.  This time, she was the one with the disturbed look on her face.  She immediately pushed off and backed away from her partner and looked at her with hurt eyes.

"You... you told?  Then... that's how Janet... that's why it didn't work..."

Juli was immediately fully aware of what her partner was talking about.  Juli promised she wasn't going to tell anyone, yet she did.  If they all managed to live through this, it might not even matter for her partner, anymore.  Treason was a serious offense, and eventually, it would be known by everyone who was the cause of this explosion that would claim so many lives.

"Juni, I..."

There was an apologetic look on her face, but Juli didn't know what to say.  There wasn't anything she could say that would make everything better, again.

"It...  it hurts!!!"  The blonde shouted as she backed away, still crying.  Juni seemed to be having tons of strange reactions to the brunette, that day.

"Juni, what are you..."

"I don't want to talk to you!"  Looking up, she angrily snapped at her partner.  Juli backed off a little, still not knowing what to say.

"I..."  Looking around, Juli's mind began frantically trying to figure out what she could say.  The brunette finally blurted out her answer, even if it wasn't exactly a very good one.  "I only told Fenrir!"

Fenrir blinked, surprised that the conversation had suddenly shifted to her.  Well, might as well go along with it.  "I only told Olvere.  ...oh, and Desire... and Aurora.  Oh, and of course, Janet."

Only?  ONLY!?  Juni, in one of her rarer moments, had her hand to her forehead in frustration, before she shouted out,  "ARGH!  How many people know, now!?"

"Well, and Janet only told Marzche and Serina from what I know."  Fenrir shrugged.

"Oh geez!!!  So even MARZCHE and SERINA know, now!?"  Juni snapped, then paused.  "...wait a minute.  Marzche and Serina already know!"

All of the Dolls (except Aurora, who had mysteriously left the scene for some reason) blinked in unison at Juni's remark.  "They do?"

Realizing what she just said, Juni quickly attempted to backpedal on her statements.  "Eeeep!  I mean... it's Serina and Marzche!  They wouldn't have had a hand in this!!"

"This was a joint effort between Juni, Serina, and Marzche?"  Olvere asked.

...obviously, Juni wasn't making things any better.  Suddenly it became clear to the other Dolls why and how no one expected this to happen.  It was Juni, Serina, and Marzche who had caused it.  Not exactly the first people that would come to mind who could cook something like this fiasco up.  It was at that moment, however, that Aurora dashed by while chasing around a very frightened looking Abysmal Fifty-Six...

"WHY DO YOU NOT FEAR!?!?!?"  Cracking her nunchuks, she screamed as the blobbish man-thing ran from her in terror.

While she wasn't the only one staring in surprise, Olvere was the one that gave the commentary.  "I don't understand.  The Abysmal Fifty-Six isn't supposed to be able to feel much pain."

Realizing that Aurora being able to go on the offense like that was an indication, Fenrir checked her Stormbringer sword.  It radiated a black glow for a bit as the Doll turned to her comrades.  "Psycho Power back online.  Let's go!  Juli, come on!  We'll leave your partner here, since we obviously can't trust her to help us, at all."

Unable to say anything, Juli gave Juni one last worried glance, before she dashed off along with the other Dolls to continue the defense.  When they were gone, Justin, who was watching all along but not exactly in a position to say anything, used the opportunity to speak again, now that he could do so without incriminating himself.

"What are we going to do?"  He asked.  However, he wouldn't need a response from Juni.  The loudspeakers blurted out several more orders and several more numbers, which were enough for Justin to realize the answer to his own question.  It was calling a certain unit to head to the front, to hold the ubers off.  A certain unit which Justin knew, all too well.

Juni looked at him.  "What's wrong?"

"That's MY unit!"  Justin shouted back at her.  "They're... They're all going to die again!  I have to stop them!"

He quickly ran off, leaving the blonde with no one but herself, and... herself.  With no one else to comfort her, the blonde kneeled to the ground and continued crying where she left off.

"I... I can't believe this.  Now even Marzche and Serina are in trouble, now, and it's all thanks to me!! "

"Don't you mean Juli?"  Junivelle asked.  "She's the one that triggered everyone else knowing in the first place!"

Juni wasn't really paying any attention to her.  "How can this be happening?!  Soon everyone will know thanks to Juli and even Marzche and Serina are getting sucked into this and it's all"

"HER"  Junivelle quickly interrupted.

"fault!"  Finishing her sentence with Junivelle's 'help', Juni began to remember something else.  "...AAAAH!!!  Marzche and Serina!!!  I forgot about them!"

Soon Juni was once again running down the halls, though this time Junivelle was able to keep up.

"Pull out, dammit!  There's no saving them!"

"NO!!!!"  Juni shouted back.  "Juli might have betrayed me, but I can still trust Serina and Marzche!  I owe this to them!"

"Damn... you're more powerful than me on this topic."  Stopping, Junivelle watched as Juni dashed off into the distance, then shook her head as she began to fade away and disappear.  "Fine, then.  Don't get killed!  I'll see you again when you are the High Lady of Shadowlaw..."

Red lights still shining through the inner area and her feet splashing against the recently spilled blood on the floor, Juni passed by several corpses of fallen Shadowlaw soldiers as well as several corpses of things that she didn't even know what the hell they were.  She was past where the front lines had fallen back, but she didn't care.  Finally, however, she came across one of the evil custodian's female apprentices, dressed in rags with a large rustic cap covering over the entire top of her head.  She was standing up straight and was frantically trying to clean up the mess of guts and blood on the ground with a mop.

...that was one persistent and dedicated custodial apprentice.  Juni wondered how she managed to fend the ubers off herself while still being able to clean the hall at the same time, but that wasn't exactly something she had time to figure out.

"Have you seen Serina and Marzche?!"  Juni quickly asked.  The young custodial girl looked up at her with confused eyes, then pointed to another hallway entrance.

"Sector 326Z."

"Thanks!"  Juni saluted, then was off, again.  With a fast canon drill, she plowed right through the... THING that was in front of her (her eyes too tear-filled and her run too fast for her to get a good look, but it was definitely some sorta freaky inhuman funky thing) and did so to several other things until she finally saw them in the distance.

Marzche was already on the ground next to the wall, with a black eye and apparently bruised pretty badly on the forehead.  Serina herself seemed to have several cuts on her arms, as well as a nasty gash across her midsection, but she was still fighting on.  Attacking her was some sorta zombie.  While this one had the same empty fallen look that the zombies she encountered before had at Squirrel City, this one's clothes weren't ripped at all unlike those, and the skin was more mutilated than rotten.  The eyes were different, too.  Instead of something contaminated, they showed something tormented.  A mass which Shadowlaw probably would have disposed of long ago, but maybe held onto only to do further experimentation on.

And whatever it was, it was pretty fast, too, almost able to keep up with the pink-haired girl with its clawed hands, despite Serina's enhanced speed.  Not that it mattered, though, because it's head soon met Juni's foot as the blonde dive kicked it from above and knocked it down.  Serina stared at it for a bit, before she, herself, too tired to stand up any longer, kneeled down.  She reached over and grabbed Marzche, and attempted to drag the blue-haired girl a little bit farther back, away from the tide of rampaging monsters, even if it wouldn't do any good.  Juni quickly ran to help her and began using her Psycho Charge Gamma in an attempt to heal them.  Previously, she had always used rations, but she didn't have any, this time, and Juli made her realize that her healing ability came from within, not from some old stale tasteless foodstuffs.  Unfortunately, the healing process was extremely slow (Juni wasn't exactly Noelle, after all, and even Noelle couldn't heal THAT fast), and already more moans could be heard and the mutant on the ground was twitching a bit, indicating it might get up again, soon.  Juni kicked it in the head, again, then turned to look at Serina, who had opened her eyes, as did Marzche.

"Serina, I'm sorry..." apologized the blonde.

Obviously hurting extremely badly, Serina simply smiled.  Holding Marzche and still kneeling on the ground, she looked up at the higher-kneeling girl and slowly stuttered out her response.

"Aw... it's... okay, Juni..."  She attempted to beam, despite the tired look on her face.  "Is it the leader's fault?  Or... the fault of those that played 'follow the leader', knowingly?  I think... I made a mistake, too.  But even knowing that, it... was nice... that Marzche and I... finally got to try something.  To follow a different leader for once... to try to change things.  I'm happy for that."

Coughing, she dropped her friend, then fell back as Juni quickly caught her.

Juni whispered her name.  "Serina..."

Once again, the chaos and the sirens seemed to no longer exist, anymore, and everything faded to silence.  Instead, there was only a sweet music of acceptance.  A final atonement and realization.  Serina began to softly sing, to a quiet fallen lullaby version of The Petition.

"Now the light may settle in... and we find... we haven't won..."

"Serina... please..."  whispered Juni, but the fluffy-pink haired girl, still smiling, continued quietly singing.

"It turned out to be... a lie... Now we're com... pletely overrun..."

"Serina... no..."  Juni held her closer and began crying, but Serina didn't stop, despite being teary eyed, herself.

"Though the darkness... still... lives on...  And our hope seems... to be gone, now..."

"I..."  Juni stuttered.

"Though it was all cancelled...

The... petition...

lives on..."

The music stopped, the silence remained.  The monsters had arrived from down the hall.  Serina coughed after finishing her song, then, requiring a lot of effort to continue speaking, slowly remarked, "Juni, you should run away. ^^;  Keep on getting signatures... Don't let the petition die."

They... they wanted it, too.  They wanted a leader.  They wanted a captain.  They wanted a reformation.  A petition that would bring about a new improved Shadowlaw.  That would finally truly create a change, and end the stagnation.  Now it was all wasted, but Juni could still keep it alive.  All Juni had to do was live, then there would still be hope for the future.  But... she couldn't.  She realized that, in the end, despite how she revealed just what price she was willing to pay for power, despite how much she had done to get that power, despite all the people that she was willing to sacrifice for herself, she had reached the final straw.

A look of determination on her face, Juni stood up and saluted to the pink-haired girl.

"No, Serina, I think that's wrong, too."  She stated.  "The petition is good, but the ones who signed it are the ones that count.  They ARE the petition.  I'm not going to let you die."

Turning to face the reapers, Juni slowly kneeled back in her battle stance.  She had passed by the bodies of the fallen, and still more fallen could be seen around.  It seemed that she would soon join them, but it wouldn't be without a fight.  She was surrounded, and she could sense that the tide would be endless, but she was going to hold out as long as she could.

"Okay, that's it!  I'm not going to let you push me around!"  She taunted as a magenta-pink near faceless thing dressed in a white broken straight-jacket moved up to her, leaving the others to watch.

The battle began.

The monster leaped forward with a slashing swipe, which Juni quickly blocked, then retaliated with a canon drill, that smacked it down.  Leaping back up to its feet, it leapt back to dodge one of Juni's dive kicks, then immediately jumped forward and grabbed her, before jumping up and slamming her to the ground.  Pain shot through Juni as the collision came, but she still had her bearings enough to roll away as it attempted to attack where she used to be.  Planting both her hands to the ground, Juni swiped with both of her legs in unison to trip the creature.  When it got up, she immediately ducked and did a chop to it's head that knocked it away and crashing into the far wall.

Standing straight, Juni put her hands on her hips and smiled, then quickly re-entered her battle stance again as some sort of floating cone-head blue ecto-plasm spirit with two large blocky arms flew up to her.  She quickly flipped away as it fired downwards with a diagonal laser from it's eye, then mach slid through its fire and hit it with a cannon spike when she got out of the teleport.  She didn't know what the hell it was, but she didn't care.  Psycho power feed being turned back on allowed her to damage it, at least.  The blobbish spirit quickly flew up above her and she blocked a swipe from its arms, but Juni was caught off guard when it dipped down then dashed forward, swiping her off her feed and sending her crashing to the ground.  Leaping up, Juni quickly actually grabbed it then spun into the air before slamming it down with an Earth Direct, whereupon the thing actually dissolved into nothingness.  Juni raised her arm and brought it down in a silent cheer, then stopped when she saw two more no-face dohicky things approach her.  The rest looked like they were getting ready to attack, too.  She was hurt, but she wasn't going to show it.

"Is that it...?  I... I can take you all!  Come on!"  Juni knew she was lying, but she was determined to keep going.

She immediately entered into another cannon drill and propelled herself spinning forward, feet first.  It knocked the first one down past the second one, but the second one had blocked it, easily.  Just as she was getting up from the drill, it was about to slash her with a swipe of its nails when something slammed into its head and exploded, knocking it back.  Juni turned to see Serina, still reeling but forcing herself to stand up, with some more of her cookies primed.

"Ju-chaaaaan!  I... I'm really appreciative of this!  I want to keep going on and on!  That's what the petition does, and it's what I'll do, too!"

"Thanks, Serina!"  Juni saluted before quickly doing a two fisted punch to the other mutant's head.

The two girls continued to fend off the attack of the endless horde.  They lost track of whatever they were up against, because it didn't really matter since whatever they defeated was quickly replaced by yet another strange creature or humanoid.  Still, they continued fighting on.

What appeared to be giant purple spider, with multiple rings on its back and thicker legs than what Juni'd deem an arachnid to have, had lumbered up to them as the rest of the creatures backed off to actually watch the entertainment.  It was at least four times as big as each of the two Dolls were, and it seemed extremely hungry, to say the least.  Juni still didn't know where Shadowlaw got those things.  She would probably have been thought them to be cool under normal circumstances... or concocted from the mind of some nutsoid deity who really had been reading too many stupid fantasy novels and thought they applied to the modern real world (The rumoured-to-exist Makai?  Perhaps, but those things weren't Darkstalkers).  Leaping back, she quickly dodged a swipe of it's arms as Serina pelted it with some long distance shots.  Another quick psycho shield fended off an attack from its pincers, then Juni planted her foot in its face with a roundhouse kick.  The creature charged forward, slamming the Doll back and next to Serina, whereupon it leaped up into the air towards them, intent on crushing them.

There wasn't any room to roll back.  Only a split second was passing as Juni realized that Serina was about to be crushed.  A psycho shield might have helped Juni, but it wouldn't be able to save her.  It creates a very temporary (about a split second, only) repelling force field, but it was only large and strong enough to surround the user, and even that was just barely.  Desperately, both Juni and Serina shot upwards with a canon spike, each, even though they both knew that it wouldn't be able to knock the thing out of the air.  As they began the attack, however, their boots glowed with a blue fire, which burned the spider beast and created a force that sent it flying.  Looking back, Juni saw that Marzche had regained consciousness and was using a psycho power amplifier charge on the other two Dolls, however, the entire horde looked like it was ready to attack.

They needed some protection, because they wouldn't be able to guard from attacks on all sides, and, as Dolls, they required too much mobility to be able to fight back to back.  There was still the psycho shield... the only two Dolls that ever bothered to learn it were Juni and Marzche.  Juni did because dangit, a psycho powered force field was COOL, even if she could only put it up and keep it on for a fraction of a second whenever she put her guard up.  She figured that Marzche probably learned it as a last resort to keep from being shoved around too much since Marzche was so... shoveable.  At any rate, however, it looked like it had to be their last resort.

Charging all their concentration and focus together, the two Dolls managed to materialize up a single large Psycho Shield that covered all three of them, so long as they stuck close together.  They then all launched themselves at the closest assaulter, and proceeded to plow through them.  However, that enormous giant spider had recovered and was back up, again, just as the shield wore off.

"Serina!  Marzche!  I'm sorry!"  Juni shouted as the it lumbered in front of them.  "I can't promise that we'll live through this, but I'm going to try my best to make sure we do!  I'm not going to betray the ones who helped me with everything!"

With that, Juni leaped and dive kicked straight towards it as Serina launched into another cannon drill with Marzche powering her up with a psycho charge.

Time seemed to freeze right before they made contact.  The endless battle had begun...

Observing the chaos unfolding in Mriganka through her Looking Glass, Alice Cheshire felt somewhat gratified at the destruction being visited on the Wyrm's pawns.  "Time to go Teddy," she said more to herself than anyone before she slipped into the shadows and reappeared in the very heart of the monster's lair.

Cristan had been running for what felt like hours.  He had taken a wrong turn somewhere and now seemed to be absolutely lost.  The corridors were desolate, a stark contrast to the desperate battle he knew was being waged this very instant throughout Shadowlaw HQ.  Turning across the bend, he saw a little girl in what appeared to be a convent school uniform, complete with knee high stockings and jacket, all a muted grey.  His brain froze for a second when he tried to reconcile the fact that a child was roaming Mriganka.

"Hey kid, what are you doing here?  You could get hurt," Cristan said not unkindly.  It was only when her neck swiveled a hundred and eighty degrees to regard him that he figured out that she could have been one of the ubers tearing Mriganka to the ground.  Er, figuratively speaking of course.

Alice, already anticipating bathing in the Corruptor's blood, simply backhanded him away from her with the hilt of her knife.  Cristan had only moments to gape in shock as the "little girl" hit him with enough force to shatter his jaw and leave him slumped against the wall.

Alice, of course, hardly cared.

Kikage had never known fear, never knew about despair, so it was that she was utterly unprepared for her brush with death.  Nearly overcome by emotions she could hardly name, Kikage had sobbed to herself silently in the darkness.  Then she felt her father's hand on her brow, pouring strength into her, making her powerful, vital again.

Kippuping to her feet, Sakura had the time to breathe a fierce "thank you" to the powers that be before running towards the nearest source of activity.  What she found there replaced the lingering fear with a white-hot anger.  These, these *things* dared to invade her father's kingdom?  The Shadowlaw troopers fallen in their wake were unknown to her but they were her father's people.  That made them her people too, her people and her possessions.  And no one broke Sakura Kikage's toys and got away with it.

Screaming incoherently, she vaporized the nearest uber with a bolt of Psycho Lightning.  It seemed fitting to her that she smashed these violators of her father's laws with the moves that he had taught her.

Max had been a marine before he had been dishonorably discharged for some minor indiscretions that he preferred to forget.  It was hard for a trained soldier to find gainful employ in these relatively peaceful times.  Thus when a Shadowlaw recruiter came knocking on his door, he was more than happy to "disappear" and start a new career in the organization.  He started a new life, made new friends and had even got laid once in a while.  All in all it was not that bad a gig.  He was downing a few brews with his best buddies in his platoon, Ace McCloud, a former Airborne and Jake Rockwell, a former Green Beret.  His company, Bravo, had stood down and was pulling some rack time. Mom appreciated the money he sent her even if she did gripe about him not visiting her anymore.  All was right in the world.

Then of course, all hell broke loose in Mriganka.  Shadowlaw HQ was defended by some of its best conventional soldiers, nearly a battalion of crack troops.  With their ballistic polymer body armor and advanced weaponry, they were more than happy to mix it up with any army twice their size.  No one however had put bringing down freaks as part of his contract.

Damned things were hard to kill too.  Some died easily enough when confronted with massed firepower.  Others laughed off bullets.  It was a sheer nightmare for the fighting man.  Communications was screwed up as commanders everywhere screamed into the tacnet (Tactical Net) but it did not take a rocket scientist to figure out the situation was completely FUBAR (sorry this is a family channel so I can't explain that acronym here).

As it stood, there was maybe a handful of survivors from his platoon clustered back to back and trying to keep the Ubers off them with concentrated fire.  Something that looked like an anthropomorphic squid had *eaten* his Platoon Commander and some insectoid creatures had tore through them like swiss cheese.

Then a dimly glowing girl wearing a Japanese high school uniform of all things sprinted into the corridor.  For a second he was about to yell something stupid about her getting out of the kill zone.  Then the rest of his brain caught up and rumors started filtering into his mind.  They knew all about Sakura Yugure, one of the "Ubers" that had helped slaughter so many of them at Joketsuzoku.  The grapevine however had it Lord Bison *grew* his own Walking Holocaust when the original copy refused to join him.  The boss man might pay well but Max was willing to bet the Commander was not just a few cards short of a full deck, he was missing all of the face cards.

They all breathed a sigh of relief when she blasted the nearest hostile with some strange purple lightning shit.  Max did not care how she was able to do that, just that she was here to save their asses.  Looks like the people in High Command had not forgotten them, after all.  Max was willing to bet his last dime that the entire command structure had pulled up stakes and was heading for safe haven in a Shadowlaw chopper.  Looks like he was wrong.

Marian put her firearm to full-auto and bisected some scampering rodent thingy.  When the hammer came down most of the secretaries got the hell out of Dodge.  Three of them however had promptly started shooting.  Well, guess that answers that question.  Was that *shuriken* Jasmine was throwing?

Kikage was panting heavily after dispatching all the rioting Ubers in sight.  It was hard for her to draw on the Psycho Power with the main drives off-line.  Looking to equalize the playing field, she ran to the nearest armory with her "go anywhere" password.  Looking at the tons of guns spread out before her, Kikage picked up a Vindicator minigun easily in one hand despite its mammoth size.

"Ooh, shiny," she said to herself as she rejoined the fray.

Professor Senoh, slightly singed and covered with blood not his own finally reached his destination.  The robotics department was ridiculed for its high-cost, low-efficiency mecha.  However with the rejects of the Genetics, Cybernetics, Psychic and Mystic departments running amok, it was up to his metal men to save the day.

Flipping the master switch to bring his creations to life, Professor Senoh cackled madly, "crush them my children, crush them all!"

Humming with electronic life, the mindless machines obeyed the will of their creator.  Senoh could just smell that budget increase now………

In the inner sanctum of Mrigranka, two certain secretaries were trying to make their way through the horde and out of the base, alive.  Both of them weren't really in a panic, though, and were trying to follow the routes of the labyrinth of Mrigranka in a calm and orderly fashion.  Knowing what their line of work entailed, they had practiced their Mrigranka evacuation drills, after all.  Unfortunately, evacuation drills really didn't take into account the base getting ripped up from the inside by a bunch of uber out-of-control psycho things.

Lauretta, cornered by a huge ugly mutant, turned to her dressed-for-business co-worker.

"Zoldan!  This is going to cost Shadowlaw a fifty million dollar loss at least!  We're going to be killed when we release this period's balance statement!!!"

Zoldan was ready for it.  "We'll switch to an exclusive style of account reporting!  That way, we can write this off as an extraordinary event and it won't show up on the income statement while still following generally accepted accounting principles for the most part!"

Of course, the large hulk-like brute freak in front of them didn't care for budgets.  It just wanted to crush things, and to it, those two secretaries were things.  It did, however, care when a blazing phallic fireball slammed into and ripped through it's rear, sending it collapsing to the ground in pain.  Zoldan stared in surprise at the savior of the moment, Professor Irvine, but mainly was looking at the strange glowing spear in Irvine's hand that was what made hulkster rumproast a few seconds ago.

Irvine showed his dissappointment by snapping at no one in particular.  "BAH!  Zey are inferior!"

"What the hell is that thing?  Do we have that thing accounted for as an asset on our balance sheet?"  The High Command secretary asked.

Five Dolls ran right past them, though Olvere stopped to stare at the sight.

"Hey!  I remember that spear!"  Olvere remarked as Fenrir quickly yanked her by the arm to get her going, again.  Because conventional weapons were highly ineffective against most of the creatures they were fighting, the Dolls and their psycho powered attacks were some of the primary parts of Mrigranka's defense.  At least, according to Fenrir.  They weren't receiving their orders from Lord Bison.  Fenrir had told Juli that they had to take it upon themselves.  It looked like she was mad.  She was probably mad at how she felt that she had to win.  The girl had been away from Lord Bison for so long and wishing to be able to compete with the ubers forever that she felt she had to do this, even without Lord Bison's command.  For reasons she was still trying to figure out, Juli was going along with it.  They paused for a bit, however, when Olvere stopped, because she was surprised when she saw two other men in jungle adventurer outfits that were apparently part of Mrigranka's defense.

"Yesmen, Goodly, where's everyone else?"  Olvere asked.

Yesmen saluted to her.  "Ms. Heartlocke gave the order that they return to headquarters, Miss Olivia."

"What? But she can't do that!"  The African girl was confused.  Juli, however, was even more confused.

"Isn't where we are right NOW headquarters?"  The brunette asked, despite how no one was paying any attention to her.

"You would normally be right, Miss Olivia!"  Yesmen replied.  "But that last incident with the soul bees and the incident at the bullfighting arena with Lord Vega, the other PETA leaders have approved the override... it's actually against orders for Goodly and I to stay here, even."

"WOOOO!!"  Goodly shouted.  "IT'S DANGER!"

Angrily, Olvere immediately grabbed out a cellphone and proceeded to make a call.  It rang only once before the person on the other line picked it up.

"ILLYNA!  What are you doing!?"  Olvere screamed into the phone.

"What am *I* doing?!"  Juli could hear Illyna's voice from the other side of the phone because Olvere had apparently accidentally left the external mini-speaker on in her rush to call that crazy PETA fanatic up.  "I'm merely recalling our soldiers that you so unrightfully ABUSED."

"Abused!?  I'm acting within all my rights!  You don't have the right to do this to me!"

"You ASKED for this, 'OLVERE'."  Illyna angrily snapped back at the girl with an extremely angry but also mocking tone in her voice.  "We feel no remorse for those that got what they asked for.  You had your choice!  And you chose Shadowlaw over us!  You left your family's hold here weak, and I'm going to be taking it!  I wish you good day, Miss Olivia Kingson!"

The phone hanged up.  Olvere stared at it for a bit, until Yesmen asked her a question.

"Your orders?  We are ready, Miss Olivia!"

Dejected, Olvere sighed.  "...go back to headquarters."

"Yes, Olivia!" replied Yesmen with a salute.  "Excellent decision! We shall stay with you until the... huh?"

Frowning, she looked at him.  "I don't know what's going on back there at the PETA, but I don't want you to get into trouble just for me. I'll handle this."

"I don't know what's going on in general, here."  Juli remarked.  Fenrir, Aurora, and Desire, however, seemed like they did.  They were all struck with silence, though.  The two 'soldiers' in front of them stared at the one who was apparently their commander, dumbstruck, until they finally nodded then left.  Olvere's demeanor, in the brink of a quick conversation, had gone from one of calmness to one of defeatedness.

"I... didn't know that things were falling apart so much over there..."  She muttered as Fenrir put her hand on her shoulder.

"Hey... are you..."

"No, don't worry about it.  The order of our priorities is still clear, right now."  Readying her spear again, Olvere nodded to her companion.  "Come on."

Fenrir returned the nod, then a soldier, dressed in full blown dark-grey stealth bodysuit complete with cloth face cover dashed up to the Dolls.

"They... they all got killed!"  He shouted.  "Our guns weren't working on them at all!!!  I was told to go get some psycho power armed back-up!!"

It looked like things might never get done at this rate.  The horde really couldn't have gone on, much longer.  Juli, Fenrir, and Olvere all wondered why they were acting in unison with each other, however.  Theoretically, the psycho-power controlled creatures should have all went rabid on each other first when they broke out of their cages, but it seemed to not be the case.  At any rate, they'd have to find out the reason, later, because they still had a job to do.

The scene... was a mess.  If Juli hadn't already seen something this bad before back when Bremare had shown her that video of Jokuzetsu, she probably would have felt extremely nauseous at the scene.  As it was, though, she only felt mildly queasy.  ...well, okay, actually, she felt extremely queasy but not as bad as before, at least.

Still, she was quick to look away from the excessive gore in front of her.  Her mind quickly blotted out the descriptions.  Mass slaughter wasn't exactly Juli's cup of tea, after all.

"Um... ew."  Fenrir remarked, probably looking over the scene (course, Juli wouldn't know for sure, since she was too busy looking away to see what the other Dolls were doing).  "Still, not as bad as Jokuzetsu."

A quick glance over at them revealed Olvere, Desire, and Aurora to be nodding at Fenrir's comment.  To check the area, Olvere's pet monkey, Tams, whipped out his psycho sensor device and showed it to Olvere.  After taking the Dolls' own psycho power into account, the thing had a neutral reading, which meant that whatever did what the Dolls were looking at, right then, had left.  Soon enough, that random surviving soldier that had told them about the situation there quickly arrived again.  By himself.  Which annoyed Fenrir just a bit.

"Hey!  Where's your back-up?  Sure, we can hurt them, but do you really think we can take on whatever did this by ourselves?"

The stealth trooper shook his head.  "Nah, don't think you can take whoever did this by yourselves."

A pause.

"....oookay, then."  Fenrir remarked.  "So... I guess we should go back?"

The stealth trooper smacked himself in the forehead, then prooobably glared at the Dolls, but it was hard to tell behind that facemask with all the red lighting around.  "Oh, right, the mask.  You realize I'm evilly grinning at you from behind this mask, right?"

"Um... not really."  Fenrir shrugged.  "Are you?"

"Yes, I am."

"Ah."  Fenrir nodded again.  "Ah well, let's go back, then."

"Might I suggest you check your psycho sensor device, again, now that I'm here?"  The soldier asked.  He was met with yet another shrug from the girl.

"Well, I was hoping that I could make you lose your temper first so you could look stupid, but I guess since you're apparently not going to, no point in that.  I can tell what Olvere's thinking just by looking at her, and her monkey's already updated her on what the sensor is reading.  She's told me all about you, XY-V10.  It's too bad.  I have no remorse for those who whine about the power that they got when I never got the chance to get it."  Readying her sword, Fenrir nodded at the soldier.  "Shall we start?"

Walking in from the four various hallways that connected to the open area and blocking off the exits were several trashed-looking cyborgs and mutants... obviously from the reject heap.  The stealth trooper ripped off his mask, to reveal a conglomeration of metal with a red laser eye, and only a scrapling of skin in certain areas of his face.

"As you can see, I've contacted my friends."  XY-V10, his voice now back to a more robotic and static filled one, put his arms out towards the new arrivals as several computer screens lit up and the red lights in the area finally turned off (which gave Juli a rather nasty backlash from the sudden new coloring).  He continued.  "It wasn't very hard, to convince them to all unite against you.  I told you that we were just as good as you.  You think we are idiots, because we are locked down here and trapped in this prison, but it's just because we realize the truth about us all, unlike you.  You are simply dolls.  Do you want to contact your friends, too?"

"Hmm... yes, perhaps, I think I will."  Fenrir turned to Juli.  "Juli, go get Janet and the other Dolls here.  Regular soldiers won't be very effective."

Juli stared in surprise.  "But... are you sure you'll be all right?"

"They're going to die.  Janet won't come.  She's just a Doll of the leader. She isn't free to decide to save a couple more expendable Dolls like yourselves."  XY-V10 was probably smiling.  It was hard to tell, since it was hard to make out a mouth on the thing.  It looked like they wouldn't have originally realized he was evilly grinning in the first place even if he didn't have that face mask on, back there.

She didn't know why they let her get away.  She didn't know why Fenrir seemed so confident that she'd be able to last long enough for back-up to come.  And she didn't know why on earth she listened to Fenrir in the first place, but it seemed like there was no one else that Juli could trust, anymore.  So Juli soon found herself back in what was apparently a regrouping area, where tons of wounded soldiers were being treated and more were still getting ready to go to the front.  Somehow, Juli was able to find the other Dolls.  It looked like things didn't go so well for some of them, either.

"This is awful!"  As Janet was apparently taking down battle report notes on a sheet of paper, Noelle was stating the obvious.  Running to and fro, she was trying to treat the various dying soldiers that were sent her way.  She noticed the three other Dolls that had arrived just at the same time as Juli did.  "What happened to you three!?"

"The enemy tried to come with the burning flag and throw the petition threw the shredder with slicing and dicing power but Juni came and saved the day!"  Serina looked to be in terrible condition and apparently hurting even behind that cheerful demeanor of hers.  Juni and Marzche weren't any better, but at least the three of them were still alive.

"Say wha?"  Janet looked up from her notes, just as stumped as Juli was.  But there wasn't any time to ask them what happened.  Juli figured that odds were that Juni just did something stupid and led them around a wrong turn that got them into trouble or so, anyway.  Now that they were out of it, there were some other girls that still were in it that needed some bailing out.

"Janet!  Everyone!  Fenrir, Olvere, Aurora, and Desire are down there and in trouble!  We..."

"WE have to go defend Lord Bison!"  The interruption from down the hall came from an all-too familiar voice.  It was Cammy, wearing that pantsless G-string abomination that Juli had so detested ever since Cammy became Lord Bison's bodyguard and began wearing it.  No... she didn't just detest it.  It hurt her to see Cammy wearing it.  Especially after that dream she just had.  Still, there was no time to reminisce on that.  But what was that that Cammy just said?

"Lord Bison?"  Juli quickly looked around, then back at the girl.  "Lord Bison is in trouble, too?"

"Juli, Lord Bison is fine."  Janet broke in, trying to calm her down.  "He's the one who's stemming the tide right now by providing a back-up psycho power source.  But we have to go defend him to make sure things stay that way."

Juli's mind boggled a bit as she tried to make sure she was getting things right.  "But he's safe back here and Fenrir's down there at the front.  Wouldn't we be a lot more helpful to Shadowlaw as a whole if we were out there using our psycho power abilities to stop those monsters that couldn't be stopped, otherwise?"

Frowning, Janet crossed her arms.  She seemed annoyed.  Frustrated.  But her voice contained a tone that indicated that it wasn't Juli whom she was mad at.  In fact, it indicated that she wasn't mad at all.  More like... defeated.

"Juli, we are his dolls.  We are Lord Bison's personal guard, remember?"

"D... don't say it like that!"  Juli backed up, then glanced over at the others.  Juli, Serina, and Marzche seemed too tired to participate in any discussion, and Noelle seemed like she wasn't willing to say anything, either.  But there was one other person who seemed to be paying quite a lot of attention to the conversation, and it was to her that Juli turned her attention to.  "Cammy..."

"Agent Juli, let Fenrir handle herself.  It's that stupid girl's fault for jumping into things when she should have been looking towards our master.  The Dolls of Lord Bison are supposed to be there for him, remember?"

"But... it's been so long since I've even SEEN him."  Juli protested.  Cammy took it as a challenge.

"Agent Juli, are you implying that we value some stupid fellow dolls over Lord Bison, HIMSELF?  Who do you think you are?!"

Stupid fellow dolls?  Juli was frustrated.  Maybe it was the sheer power of the moment, but at that moment, for a very brief second, she lost control.

"Who do I think I am!?"  She snapped.  "Of course it's easy for you to value Lord Bison above the rest of us!  You're the one that's SLEEPING with him!!!"

Shock, then slap.  Juli was expecting it, but she didn't bother to defend herself from it.  The blow knocked her to the ground.  Many soldiers stared in their direction upon hearing Juli's shout of what Cammy was doing with Lord Bison, but Juli wasn't looking at them.  Juli was looking at someone that she hadn't looked at in forever.

Lord Bison wasn't the only one that Juli had become distanced from.  She hadn't seen Cammy in a long time... in fact, she couldn't remember the last time she saw Cammy.  The last time she saw her was... the last time she saw Lord Bison.  But that was so long ago.  No, the last time she saw Cammy was only a short moment ago, when Juli was dreaming.  She was seeing her again, now.  But... it didn't seem she was seeing her again, at all.  The Cammy in Juli's dreams seemed different.  She was a completely different person.  But she was the accurate portrayal of what Cammy really DID look like, before Cammy had changed.  And now, Cammy seemed like a completely different person.

She didn't know why Cammy seemed so different, but she did know that she couldn't listen to her, now.  Standing up, Juli glared back at the blonde, and prepared to retaliate.  But she needed help.  So she turned to the one who could give her it.

"Janet, tell Cammy that we're going to save Fenrir!  You know Fenrir, right?  You're not going to let someone who's so isolated from us boss the rest of us around, right!?"

"Me?  What the hell am I supposed to do?!?"  Janet's confused response was not something Juli was expecting.  "I... I can't... I can't shift my priorities!  Not now!"

"I'm the isolated one!?"  Before Juli could even ask her what she was talking about, Cammy had broken in to defend herself, too.  She forcefully stepped towards the brunette as she yelled at her, causing Juli to stumble back.  "Oh please, Agent Juli.  If you haven't noticed, no one cares for you at all besides your stupid partner, and even she seems distanced from you, these days!"

Said partner, Juni, looked like she just wanted to curl up and die at that moment.  Juli was hurt even more than before, because she realized that Cammy was right.  Cupping her hands together and holding them up to her mouth to be ready to cover her eyes if she started falling apart too much, Juli just continued to stare back at Cammy, unable to say anything.  Her eyes were extremely watery, and it used to be that Cammy cared about her, too, before Cammy betrayed her trust.  Now, Cammy was right and there was no one else.

Juni spoke up, but it wasn't to defend Juli.

"Cammy... about... valuing Lord Bison above the rest of your fellow Dolls...  Is that... Is that true?"

Sighing, Cammy turned to address her.  Apparently, Cammy and Juni had a talk similar to this, before, but now it had reached new heights.

"Agent Juni, there can only be one top of the ladder.  I do what I can for Shadowlaw's sake.  When I have to choose, who do you think would be more important?"

"I... guess..."  For reasons that Juli didn't know, Juni looked apologetically towards Marzche and Serina.  A look which Juli realized was Juni trying to tell them that she didn't mean what she was saying.  Somehow, to Juni, some of her fellow Dolls did count to her, though Juli wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't one of them.

"Agent Janet, I expect to see you by Lord Bison's side.  See if you can knock some sense into Agent Juli.  I, however, have to go make sure Lord Bison isn't alone in this darkest hour."

With Cammy gone, Juli was free to try to convince Janet to help.  She had to succeed.  Janet, however, didn't seem like she'd be so easily convinced.

"Juli, don't start."  Janet nipped it in the bud.  "I have to choose... which is more important to me.  Do you know what Lord Bison means to me?  Do you know how much I gave my LIFE to him?"

This was too much.  Raising an eyebrow, Juli asked, "You slept with him, too!?"

Janet was fast to snap back.  "Of course I slept with him!"

That reaction caused everyone, including quite a few soldiers who had just finally stopped paying attention to Juli's sleeping comment to Cammy,  to stare at Janet in surprise, too.

Until Janet added, "Or... well, I could have if I really wanted to!  I mean it!  Now the choice is mine and my decision is obvious!  I have to stay with Lord Bison!

What was this about a choice!?  Lord Bison was safe.  SAFE! He was down here away from all the monsters and in a highly secured area while meanwhile, Fenrir was surrounded by a bunch of ubers that apparently had an agenda against her and all the Dolls and Janet was STILL deciding that she had to CHOOSE Lord Bison!?

Juli had to reason with her!  "Janet, you can care about other things without forsaking everyone else!"

"No I can't!"  Janet shouted back.  "I dedicated my life to him.  I GAVE my life to him!  I don't care if I haven't seen him in months!  I don't care anymore that he's found one hundred and one replacements for me, anymore!  I've been sucked into this path this far and I can't turn back from it!  There's no way for me to do it, anymore!  I've gone too far!"

All of the other Dolls were looking at her.  They saw that there was something that Janet felt strongly about that was now being a primary factor.  Janet realized this, too, so she proceeded to explain.

"Let me tell you a story about a man named Michael."  Her eyes were closed, in an attempt to block out her own self from emotionally losing it.  "This story is not about that man, but more about one girl among many many many girls, who always wanted him.  Don't you get it?  She was only one girl among many who shared the same feeling, but yet, there was something different about her."

She took out a photograph of a man that Juli recognized.  It was the same handsome man that Juni had recently showed her.  Lord Bison... or what he used to be, according to Juni.  All of the other Dolls realized this, too, as Janet showed them the photo and continued her 'story'.

"Michael was a member of an organization called the Third Eye.  Michael was a VERY popular member of the Third Eye.  Of course, the significant part of that popularity was how every female who even so much as saw him for a split second fell in love with him."

Clasping her hands together against her left chin, Janet flusteredly leaned to the side looking upwards in a show of fake happiness.

"Oh, Michael was perfect!  Michael really cared about them!  Michael was so wonderful in bed!!!  He truly cared for each and every one of his girlfriends!  He truly loved them!!!"

She then sighed as she proceeded to explain what that meant.

"Well, I didn't even get to think much on the bed thing yet.  I was really too young at the time to start on that, really.  Instead, back then, I really liked Michael because I saw what everyone else saw.  A great man.  He had to be, right?  All of the women loved him.  He was a hero.  He was legendary among those who knew.  And every woman he loved, he was known for caring for each and every one."

She closed her eyes, again.  Now, she was getting into the true part of the story.  The part of the story... that was about herself.

"I was just one girl among many girls who loved him, just like those many other girls did.  Did I love him more?  Probably not, because everyone loved him as much as they could love a man.  I wasn't special in that way.  But I felt that, like all the other girls, I was special to him.  I..."

She looked down, to prevent the others from seeing the tears in her own eyes.

"I loved him.  I still didn't sleep with him, because I was too young.  I was only fifteen.  But I loved him.  His charm and wit was truly something you had to experience.  He truly cared for and loved each and every woman he ever met, and when you were with him, you could feel how much he cared for and loved you.  So, do you know what I did?  Do you know what I did for him!?"

It was her life dedication.  The moment she gave up everything to him.

"I... helped Michael."  She stuttered, and everyone knew that was an understatement.  "I helped Michael rise to power.  Viva la revolution!  Everyone would die, as Michael took control.  I stained my hands with blood, and I caused the death of many many MANY fellow Third Eye members."

Getting frantic with her explanation, Janet continued, the speed of her voice picking up.

"I saw them die.  I saw how after Shadowlaw got started up from the remains of the Third Eye under Michael Bison's leadership, the rest of the members got persecuted and hunted down.  Some of them even joined Shadowlaw, but they were still slaughtered... without ever knowing who their killer was as they were purposefully sent on suicide missions.  Oh, hey there!  You got the bad luck of the draw!  We need you to go on that mission to the wastelands.  Whooops, a ninety percent death toll, you say?  Oh, that was the bad luck of the draw!  Oh, you survivors, I want you to go with these other soldiers who just HAPPENED to be all former Third Eye members, too, to help us conquer a little Amazon village of Jokuzetsu!  Do you see?  If you were once a member of Third Eye but you weren't insanely close to Michael, you were MEAT.  And as they all died, I would simply look  the other way.  Well, perhaps, like Michael, I spared the lives of those that I actually truly gave a damn about, but that was it.  A fall from grace, maybe for the both of us, but I didn't and I still don't give a shit.  Fall from grace is a stupid term.  But despite it all, I still wasn't at the top.  I still wasn't even close!"

They all expected Janet's answer about who was the one at the top to be Cammy.  Instead, the answer she gave, surprised them.

"It was Rose.  And I think we all know what it's like to see the lady at the top of the list."  Janet remarked as memories of Cammy walking off came back.  "To have the envy.  So, you'd think this tale was just a tale of simple jealousy, right?  I thought so too, for the longest time.  I was jealous of Rose.  I wanted to be the top.  I wanted to be the one that Michael truly cared for above all others.  But that wasn't the bad part.  I realized it.  I realized that, despite how Rose was at the top of his list and how it was obvious how much he loved her, even during the days of the Third Eye, he STILL was going around caring for, loving, and sleeping with each and every woman that he met!  But it got worse!  Did Rose ever seriously admonish him for sleeping with all those other girls back during the Third Eye?  Did any of them admonish him for choosing Rose over them?  NO!!!"

That was when it hit Juli about what Janet had gone through.  Juli felt it, bad enough, when she saw Cammy give in and advance past the other Dolls.  She felt bad enough at how Cammy had abandoned her trust and just started randomly sleeping with Lord Bison, losing all self-respect.  She couldn't even begin to fathom what it'd be like... to see one hundred and one other girls doing the same thing.  Juli always prided herself on her self-respect.  That she could hold onto how she was a little bit better than Cammy was, even though Cammy beat her to being Lord Bison's bodyguard, just because she didn't rely on any factors besides skill and prowess at her job.  But what was one supposed to do if one saw hundreds of other girls who weren't that way.  To realize that it was YOU that wasn't normal?  To thus realize that it wasn't self-respect, and that you were just being an idiot?

"I... stuck around, continuing to watch and be there for Michael, hoping that someday he would get RID of ALL of them just for me, yet I remained weary enough to never try to get truly close to him until he did." Sobbing a little, Janet glared at all of the other girls, tears in her eyes.  "But he never did!  When he became the leader of Shadowlaw, Michael changed.  He had completely shifted around.  You see the man in that photograph?  Do I need to point out differences?  But you know what?  I didn't care!  To me, he was still the same old Michael, all along, even after I started referring to him as Lord Bison, instead!"

Angrily, Janet slammed the photo to the floor, causing the glass casing on it to break with a shatter.

"I didn't care that he was a completely different man.  That the entire world now saw him as an evil corrupt depraved man instead of the near perfect 'good guy' that he used to be.  I DID NOT CARE that his personality seemingly took a complete ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY DEGREE SPIN out of nowhere!  Because none of it mattered!  And do you know WHY!?  Because the ONE THING that I wanted him to change about didn't change AT ALL!  Do you know what he did to Cammy?  That Cammy... that THING that you were just talking to... that's a CLONE!"

Eh eh eh!?  That was another answer from Janet that Juli definitely was NOT expecting.

"T... that's a CLONE?"  The brunette blurted out, shocked and amazed.

"Yes, Juli, a CLONE."  Janet replied.  "When Cammy ran away from it, the hit squad came.  They said they were supposed to just retrieve her.  That it was an accident when they wounded her then lost her.  But it doesn't matter.  For opposing it, the real Cammy is probably DEAD, Juli, and she took Avelle with her!  So I had to be watching him sleeping around with everyone else to the point where he freaking made a CLONE of Cammy and slept with that apparently because the real one wouldn't sleep with him at all!"

He wha?  What?!?  What was THAT?  Why would he be sleeping with a CLONE!?  That... that must have been AWFUL to realize!!!  That was why Avelle ran away?  Then... it was no wonder...

Janet, herself, was more exasperated than ever.  "And then Rose comes along and I'm positive he's sleeping with her too and he's STILL sleeping with Cammy's clone ON TOP OF THAT and WHO KNOWS WHO ELSE and I don't give a shit if he still CARES FOR EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM AS SPECIAL because that's not special enough for ME and it NEVER EVER EVER WILL BE!!!!  Special isn't special if you're one of HUNDREDS who are it!!!  I... I thought that once you had chosen the one who was going to be your one special girl, then that sex was supposed to be reserved just for her.  Rose came back.  Rose became that special girl.  Michael took her above Cammy.  So Rose became THE one."

The reason why all the Dolls hated Rose...

"...but no, she didn't."  Janet added, then quickly snapped.  "Because even after then, Bison STILL slept with Cammy too!  And I'm pulling out my hair, thinking HOW CAN CAMMY DO THIS TO ME!?!?  How can she sleep with him?  I've been proven wrong again!  And I realized that it's true!  The Dolls don't care that Michael is sleeping around and still will sleep with him, regardless!!!  I realized that I was a fool!  I set my sights too high!  It's because Cammy accepted it.  Kikage apparently wants it, even.  ROSE accepted it, for crying out loud!  So, I know that it's truly me.  I now realize that I will forever only be one of many that he will love among his many unspecial soulmates.  Because I've been wrong, all along."

She stared at the other Dolls, who's eyes were all on her.  They were stunned.

"THAT is why I am staying by Bison's side, now!  Because I have to accept it!  Everyone else did!!!"

An awkward silence had followed.  That was what Lord Bison did.  Valuing everyone, when the Dolls were programmed to think they were special to him.  But special wasn't special if hundreds of people shared it.  So, he slept with Rose, too... Juli didn't know what to say.  They WERE just his Dolls... Cammy proved that.

...no, wait.  Juli had realized it.  What was that?  That wasn't Cammy.  That was a clone of Cammy.  Because the real Cammy... where ever she was, now... she...

Janet looked up as Juli walked over to her and looked her in the eye.

"Cammy didn't accept it."  Juli stated.  "None of us did, Janet.  I... finally see... why Cammy ran away when she made it to the position of Premiere Doll.  And I see why Avelle did, too..."

None of them did.  Cammy and Avelle both decided to run away when they found out about the clone.  When her boyfriend began getting with other girls, Noelle even tried to get some payback by following suit with a bunch of guys.  Fenrir, with Olvere, Desire, and Aurora following her, all decided that they were going to follow their own goals, now, and Fenrir wouldn't be bounded by a false love anymore.  And Juni, Serina, and Marzche apparently started this entire revolution, thinking that Bison was ill due to it and that this would finally stop it.

Janet remarked to herself.  "He... he cloned her.  He cloned her, he slept with her..."

Finally, looking at everyone else, she nodded, a look of newfound determination on her face.

"But you're right.  I can care about other things without forsaking everyone else.  Come on, let's go."  All of the other Dolls quickly saluted at her as she readied her staff and stood up.  "We won't run away, but we can't leave a team member to die like that.  We'll let that clone handle the protecting of Bison.  Lord Bison... is safe.  So now, we have other priorities."

"It would be good to help Fenrir out..."  Noelle commented.  "We wouldn't want her to get hurt badly, would we?"

Juni was still trying to keep a low profile.  But Juli knew that she would be coming along, too, after hearing her statements to Cammy about how much the other Dolls should be valued.  Serina and Marzche, though, seemed to be lagging behind a bit.  Janet turned around to look at them.

"Are you coming?"

"Oh.  Yea.  Saving people is good!"  Serina attempted to beam, though something was holding her back a little.  She turned to her blue-haired companion.  "Pretty please, Marzche?  I... I know that it's still not completely a choice, but before a resurrection can take place, the yolk must be borne for just a bit longer."

"...whatever."  Marzche replied.  Juli had no clue what that was about, but it didn't matter at the moment.  The six remaining Dolls were headed back to the scene of the battle.  It was, however, surprisingly brief, once all of the Dolls got together.  Fenrir was still managing to hold out, along with her team members, and the other six Dolls had quickly ambushed the enemy from behind.  A fast barrage of sniping arrows and cannon drills left the enemy reeling under their first strike, and soon all ten of the Dolls had regrouped.

"Hmm."  Fenrir shrugged, looking over at Janet.  "I thought we'd have to hold out longer than that.  You're early."

Janet blinked.  "I am?  But that rant was ridiculously long."

"I've known you to rant for longer than that."  Fenrir shrugged again.

"So... where's the threat, now?"  Janet asked, while all the other Dolls secured the area.  Fenrir didn't need to answer, though.  Besides the trash that was quickly mopped up, the leader had apparently already somehow fled.  In the middle of the area, an empty husk of metal could be seen that looked similar to him, but it appeared to be turned off.

"I think he... um, downloaded himself away, apparently.  He plugged himself in when he saw you coming."  Fenrir shrugged for the third time.

The computer screen lit up with a bunch of text, as the familiar voice of the cyborg christened XY-V10 echoed through the room for the final time.

"Did you see it?  The havoc we were able to cause?  You underestimated us.  I told you were weren't as stupid or brainless as you thought.  I, however, underestimated you.  Impressive.  I didn't think you'd be able to break off from your owner to save the rest of your fellow dolls.  But, what if Lord Bison were to ever extract retribution on you?  Toys with their own self-conscious don't make useable playthings.  I hope you understand.  You aren't free, and you never will be.  I wish I could die a free man, but I'm not a man anymore.  So I'll say farewell to you and your Dolls, Janet.  Farewell..."

A quick glance over at Marzche's computer revealed that he was already gone from the Shadowlaw mainframe.  It didn't really matter, though.  According to Janet, that cyborg wasn't given the ability to do any serious computer virus techniques.  It was a combat cyborg, and nothing more.  That particular battle was over before it even begun, but it seemed like a more important battle was won that day, at least.  It seemed like things were finally beginning to calm down, so it was time to head back to report.  That Cammy clone probably wouldn't be too happy because the other Dolls 'abandoned' Lord Bison (despite how Lord Bison was in a perfectly safe area), but... whatever.

"SliCe-dicE LiTTLe RED bAg………." Screeched the Corpse Master.  "CORpSE maSter GraVe tonGUe!"

The Corpse Master appeared to be just a withered skeleton dressed in a black fedora and trench coat.  That might have set off anyone giggling if not for what happened next.  The dead bodies of Shadowlaw warriors who had fallen began to stir and shudder with an unholy unlife.

Max who had thought himself free and clear after Kikage had stomped the opposition into fine red paste was groaning at that very moment. "Oh no, not a remake of a Resident Evil game…."

Popping a few rounds into the Corpse Master just seemed to make it mad.

"We're f**ked," said Ace McCloud eloquently.  Max just nodded in reply.

Then, as if they were minor characters whose POV was needed to show off all the little bit pieces of a story, salvation came their way again.  Bands of glowing light encircled the Corpse Master, binding him?  Her?  It?  Without the zombie lord's direction, all of the animated dead dropped back again to the ground as if they were discarded puppets.  The fiendish howls of the Corpse Master echoed throughout the corridors even as the Shadowlaw warriors ran from the enraged Darkstalker.

"no DUSt CorpSE MASter!  CoRpSE MasTeR waS wALK!"

In the midst of the fighting, the Dolls were invariably drawn apart as the Uber numbers ebbed.  Reports were filtering in of Ubers suddenly becoming docile or bound by Psycho Power chains.  Janet informed them that it was Lord Bison's doing.  Who else but he had such control over Psycho Power?

Senoh's mecha were also making a difference.  While they were not all that effective, they did slow the Ubers down.  And gave the rest of Shadowlaw's troops a walking wall to hide behind.

Janet and Fenrir found themselves stemming the tide of identical gremlin-like creatures when they heard a maniac cackle behind them.  Fenrir turned to slash their latest threat with Stormbringer just before Janet tackled her to the ground.

Nearly three hundred rounds a minute of 4.7mm caseless ammunition reduced the gremlin horde to red hash as the two Dolls lay flat on the ground.  Peeking at their assailant, Fenrir's eyes bugged out just a little.  "Kikage?  Isn't she supposed to be on our side?"

"I say that we remain prone until she leaves just in case she forgets," ruminated Janet as Kikage skipped away looking incongruous holding a minigun almost as big as herself.

Fenrir decided to let discretion be the better part of valor.

Alice walked silently, a grim specter uncaring and unheeding of the carnage around her.  She might have been able to dish out as much punishment as the rest of the so-called Ubers, but she had a mission to complete; her Purpose to fulfill.

Cammy fidgeted nervously at her post.  Lord Bison being hooked up to that machine was kinda creepy.  Like something out of a sci-fi movie.  Not that the rest of Shadowlaw didn't look like something out a computer game but just having her reason for living floating there did nothing to calm her nerves.  Something deep and primal was singing in Cammy's veins, a fear long suppressed was trying to make itself known.

Soft footsteps echoed down the corridor.  Cammy assumed a fighting stance as the footsteps became closer and closer.  "Who's that," she asked, trying to keep the tremor out of her voice.  "Janet? Lady Rose?"

As Alice stepped out of the shadows, she smiled her horrible smile.  "Me."

Cammy's eyes widened as the monster from her nightmares confronted her in the flesh.  Nothing was going to hurt her Lord Bison, not even her.  Steadying her trembling hands, Cammy dropped into a lightning-fast cannon drill hoping to knock Alice off her feet.

As fast as she was, Alice was even faster.  Cammy barely had time to blink.  Recovering from her Cannon Drill, it registered that Alice had somehow dodged her fastest move before she felt the silky strands of her hair wrap themselves around her neck.  With inhuman strength, Alice lifted Cammy off her feet and twirled the ends of her pigtails around a support beam, effectively hanging the Doll by her own hair.

Legs flailing frantically, hands clawing uselessly at her own braids, Cammy could only stretch out a hand in a futile gesture of defiance as Alice strode unopposed into the chamber where Lord Bison lay defenseless.

"Hello Alice," said a voice in her head.

"Hello, Mr. Michael," Alice said shyly, scuffing her shoe on the floor.  "I'm sorry but I've got to let Balance kill you now."

"Its okay, child.  All's the world a stage, and the men and women merely actors.  We have our exits and our entrances.  And its high time I made mine.  Exit that is, with Kage safely taken care of, there's no real reason for me to hang around very much anymore.  Let's get on with this shall we?"

For once, Balance felt a spark of human emotion as It gazed upon the helpless form of the Corrupter.  It felt the smooth metal of Its Knife slide ever so easily into His chest.  Once, twice, thrice, It plunged the blade with a maniac glee into the body of Corruption until the suspension fluid turned a darkish red with blood.

Alice Cheshire herself however was gratified at Michael's peaceful expression as his body was savaged beyond repair.

Everything appeared to have finally been cleaned up.  It was all over.  Janet had to stay back to attempt to try to organize what was left of the chaos, but she made sure to send Juli and Juni to check up on Bison, instead.  She obviously wanted to go, herself, but now she realized where she was more needed, and right now Mrigranka needed as many high officials trying to fix and mop up the aftermath as possible.

Juni was... quiet.  Extremely so.  Juli knew why, but she couldn't think of what to say.  She anticipated that the walk to Bison would be an extremely long one, but the sight of a certain clone hanging by her own hair ended up cutting the trip short and making it fly by much faster than Juli anticipated.

Juni just stared at her wide-eyed as Juli quickly untied her, realizing there was no time to ask questions, and that the hanged girl wouldn't have been able to answer them even if Juli did.  'Cammy' fell to the ground, choking, though Juli soon found Cammy choking her, too.

"YOU IDIOTS!  Where the HELL were you!?!?"

"H... HEY!  Stop!!"  Juli coughed as the other girl continued strangling and shaking the brunette violently while Juni was paralyzed in shock.  She finally let go of the brunette though to let her speak.  "What the hell happened here!?  What's wrong!?"

"It's Lord Bison!"  The blonde girl screamed back at her.  "Lord Bison is going to die!  And it's all YOUR fault for abandoning him!!!  You idiots!  You should have listened to me!"

The trip was cut extremely short indeed as the three Dolls were made to run as fast as they could to the Psycho Drive chamber where Lord Bison was.  Or... what was left of him.

Juli, Juni and Cammy just stared agape at the spectacle before them.  Lord Bison, High Commander of Shadowlaw lay unmoving in a sea of red, drowning in his own blood.

"Quick, Juni!  Psycho Charge Gamma!"  Juli screeched.  All said and done, a part of her still cared for her commander.

Juni shook her head sadly, tears running down her cheeks.  Without Lord Bison, there was no Psycho Power for her to draw on.

Cammy uttered a despairing wail before bolting out of the chamber.  The other two Dolls ignored her as they tried to remove Lord Bison from the apparatus, then sprinted off in search of Noelle or Janet. Someone had to know what to do!

Cammy's mind was a maelstrom of panicked thought as she ran pell-mell through the chaos that was Mriganka.  Lord Bison wasn't dead!  He couldn't be!  He had cheated death before, he was going to be all right.  He wasn't going to leave her alone again!

Slamming her fist into the access panel, Cammy stopped dead in her tracks as she surveyed the Cloning Facility.  Each and every clone had been methodically mutilated with the same characteristic knife cuts that had slain her Lord Bison.  Falling to her knees, Cammy sobbed plaintively as despair overtook her.

Janet's first inkling of Michael's fate was the sudden dimming of the corridor lights.  Her eyes widened in sheer horror and guilt as she realized the terrible import of that minor occurrence.  Screaming incoherently, Janet bulled her way through to his side.  After all she had done for him, she could do no less.

Noelle was crouched above his prostrate body when Janet arrived.  The motherly Doll's face was uncharacteristically grim.  Without Psycho Power, all that remained to her was conventional treatment and with Mriganka's facilities eviscerated by the Ubers, Noelle was skeptical that she could find an intravenous drip let alone find someone to do the surgery needed to save Lord Bison's life.

"Jen Ya?" his voice was whisper soft, weak and trembling.

"Get out," Janet said calmly to the other Dolls. "GET OUT!"

Scrambling away from Janet, the rest gave her some privacy with their fallen Lord.

"Jen Ya, can you see it?  The eternal dream?  A better world; a better life, the power was mine but my hands were weak."

Placing a gentle finger to his lips, Janet tried to quiet him. "Shh, save your strength.  The doctors are already on their way."

Smiling faintly, Michael shook his light.  "The wounds are mortal I fear.  Listen, I'm sorry that I dragged you into this.  Now the dream lies in ashes but it will rise again.  The…….. dreamers may……….. die……….. but……….. the………. dream……….. is………. eternal.  A…….. new…… world………. is………. ours……… for………. the…….. making……….-"

Janet knelt by his side for a few more moments to compose herself.  Then she closed his eyes for the last time and walked out the chamber a picture of perfect poise, but her heart lay dead in that chamber, as dead as the man of her dreams.

Rose walked down Mriganka's labyrinths as if she owned the place.  And in light of recent events, she might very well inherit Shadowlaw lock, stock and barrel.  Her face was hard but unlined as she passed the grieving Dolls.  No one disputed her right to pay her respects to Lord Bison's body.

So many memories so many wasted years, how did you say goodbye to the man who had changed your life so profoundly?  His face was unlined in death, at peace with himself at last.  If she closed her eyes, Rose could almost imagine that he was sleeping.  That she could lie beside him and they would wake up in her fantasy dream world, together forever.  It seemed oddly fitting that she would not cry at his deathbed.  She had mourned Michael's passing a long, long time ago in her heart of hearts, there were no more tears within her.

This was how their love story would end, him murdered in the very seat of his power and she was not by his side.  But the story ended long before, when Michael did his true death.  Now all that remained was to bid farewell to the changeling that had taken his place.  Remembering his flair for the dramatic Rose bent over and whispered softly, "Grant me, my dear Michael, this last cold, kiss."  In her mind, Rose could hear Michael's voice once again.

"And when the music stops,

There's only the sound of the rain,

All the hope and glory,

All the sacrifice in vain.

And yet if love remains,

Though all else be lost,

We will remember the fallen,

But we will not count the cost."