*SUPER CROSSOVER FIGHTERS - CHAPTER 5: The World Between* For a full three seconds after Bowser's parry-boosted shell collided with Sephiroth's blade, there was no sound. Not because it was silent. Because the air itself had been deleted. Then it all came back at once — wind, screaming, and Papyrus yelling "WOW! THAT WAS EVEN COOLER THE SECOND TIME I IMAGINED IT!" They were standing. That was the first impossible thing. There was no floor. Below them was a soft, white nothing that felt like standing on cold light. Above them, the Prism Bastion was gone, its shards frozen mid-air by Kratos's axe like a shattered mirror. Sephiroth was still there, a hundred feet above, but he was no longer smiling. The thin cut on his cheek was bleeding silver-green Mako, and he was staring at it like it had betrayed him. "You can be hurt," Kratos said. It wasn't a question. His voice carried across the nothing without shouting. Kratos stood at the edge of their impossible platform, Leviathan Axe back in his hand, frost still crawling off it. Atreus was beside him, bow drawn, but his eyes weren't on Sephiroth. They were on the new light rising from below. "Mother warned me about you," Sephiroth said quietly, to Kratos, to no one. "Another god who killed his family for a greater purpose." Kratos's grip tightened. The air got colder. "Boy," Kratos said. "I know," Atreus whispered. "Don't." Before Sephiroth could answer, the new light swallowed them all. It wasn't an explosion. It was a channel change. The white nothing flickered — _bzzzt_ — and became color. Loud, clashing, badly-drawn color. They landed hard, but not painfully, on something soft and bouncy. Checkered grass. "OW! My perfect nose!" Gumball Watterson yelled, because everyone had landed on Gumball Watterson. The entire group — Mario, Sonic, Percy, Annabeth, Mega Man, Cuphead, Mugman, Tails, Shovel Knight, Rex, Pyra, Doey, Freddy, and Kratos — were now in a heap on a bright green hill that looked like it was made of construction paper. Above them, the sky was blue, but it had visible pencil lines. "Welcome! Welcome to Elmore!" Gumball scrambled up, holding his head. "Which is NOT supposed to be connected to the void between dimensions! Darwin told me not to press the big shiny button that said DO NOT PRESS!" Next to him floated a small, beat-up universal remote with a piece of tape on it that said REALITY in black marker. Annabeth sat up, instantly analyzing. "Where... where are we? The Bastion is gone. The Mako signature is weaker here." "Oh, I know where we are!" Doey said, stretching his neck to look around. His dough face did a full 360. "This looks like a safe place! No screaming walls! I like it!" A jingle cut him off. A very familiar, very cheerful, very wrong jingle. _Dandy's World! Come on down and have a twirly day!_ On the other side of the checkered hill, sitting behind a little wooden shop counter that had absolutely no reason to be there, was a flower. Dandy. His petals were bright, his smile was bright, his apron said "Thanks for shopping!" and his eyes, for just a second, flickered with six pupils. "Oh! Customers!" Dandy clapped his hands. "You all look terrible! Fall damage is a real killer. Good thing I'm having a sale! Bandages! Stamina! A way home! All for the low, low price of —" "We are not buying anything from you," Pyra said flatly. "Rude," Dandy said, but he was still smiling. He looked past them, up at the sky, where the frozen shards of the Prism Bastion and Sephiroth were still visible through a crack in the paper sky. "Whoa. You brought friends. Is that... is that Sephiroth? Big fan of the hair. Not a big fan of what he's doing to your atmosphere." Sephiroth descended slowly through the crack, not falling, walking on air. The goofy, papery world of Elmore seemed to reject him. Where his feet touched, the color drained to gray. "You cannot hide in a child's drawing," he said, looking directly at Mario and Sonic. "The lifestream reaches everywhere." "Yeah? Well can it reach THIS?" Sonic was already running. That was the thing about Sonic — he didn't need a plan. The second he saw a new world with a loop-de-loop hill in the distance, he was gone. He hit the checkered slope, built speed, and launched himself straight at Sephiroth like a blue comet. "SONIC! WAIT!" Tails yelled. "Let him cook!" Cuphead cheered. Sephiroth raised Masamune — a fraction too slow. Because in Elmore, physics works if you think it's funny. Gumball, without thinking, pointed the Reality Remote at Sonic and shouted, "FAST FORWARD!" CLICK. Sonic went from fast to _stupid_ fast. He broke the sound barrier, the cartoon barrier, and slammed into Sephiroth's guard with a spin-dash that left a Looney Tunes smoke outline of Sephiroth's face. Sephiroth was knocked back twenty feet. For the first time, he stumbled. Kratos saw it. He didn't say "now." He just moved. He sprinted, axe dragging, and jumped — not at Sephiroth, but at the crack in the sky they came through. "BOY! THE BLADE!" Atreus fired a light arrow into the crack. The arrow stuck, pulsing. "Percy! The water!" Annabeth screamed, getting it. Percy understood. He wasn't in the ocean. He was in a cartoon world where everything is a little wet. He slammed his hands on the bouncy grass, and the entire hill's color bled into water — blue, wobbly, ink-like water that rushed upward into the crack. "Mega Man! Shovel Knight! NOW!" Mega Man charged, his buster whining. "THUNDER BEAM!" Shovel Knight planted his shovel and shouted, "SHOVEL... DROP!" The electric beam hit Percy's cartoon water inside the dimensional crack and conducted — not through water, but through the idea of water — straight into the lingering Mako left in the Bastion shards. The whole sky above Elmore exploded in green and gold fireworks. Sephiroth was caught in the middle of it. The feedback hit his Jenova cells all at once. He screamed — not in pain, but in static — and his wing, his single black wing, unfurled involuntarily to shield him. He fell. Not gracefully. He crashed into the checkered hill a hundred feet away, carving a long trench. Silence. Dandy whistled. "Okay, wow. You guys are good at property damage. You ever thought about going pro? I have some floors that need clearing." Gumball ran over to Sonic, who was dizzy but grinning. "Did you see that?! Did you see that?! I hit him!" "You hit him with my remote!" Gumball said. "You could have turned him into a baby or something!" From the trench, Sephiroth stood up. His coat was torn. His hair was singed. But he was laughing. "Better," he said, wiping silver blood from his mouth. "You are learning to fight together. Chaos against chaos. Good. The next world will not be so kind." He raised his sword and cut downward — not at them, but at the ground. The checkered grass split open, and from the split, something cold poured out. Not Mako. Ink. Old, black, 1930s ink. And in that ink, two yellow eyes opened. Freddy Fazbear, who had been quiet since they arrived, suddenly stepped forward, his endoskeleton creaking. He looked at the ink trench. "Old... friend..." Sephiroth smiled and stepped backward into the ink, disappearing. "Follow me, heroes. If you dare." The ink portal bubbled, waiting. Mario looked at Sonic. Sonic looked at Percy. Percy looked at Annabeth. "Well," Mario said, adjusting his hat, which was somehow still on. "We came this-a far!" Dandy picked up his shop counter. "I'm coming too! Someone's gotta charge you for revival!" Gumball held up the Reality Remote. "I still don't know how to use this!" Kratos was already walking toward the ink. "Father, wait—" Atreus ran after him. And one by one, they jumped. *SUPER CROSSOVER FIGHTERS - CHAPTER 6: The Ink That Remembers* The ink wasn't cold. That was the first thing Percy noticed when they jumped, which was wrong, because evil interdimensional ink that eats reality is _supposed_ to be cold. This ink was warm. And it smelled like old film reel. They didn't fall through it. They _sank_ through it, like being pulled through a projector. Mario's red hat went black-and-white for a second. Sonic's blue fur flickered into an old rubber-hose cartoon. Doey the Doughman yelped as his dough turned to wobbly ink. Then — _THWIP_ — they popped out the other side. It was not Elmore. It was not the Bastion. It was a hallway. A very long, very familiar hallway. Yellow walls, flickering lights, posters that said JOEY DREW STUDIOS in letters that dripped. The cartoon world. "Bendy's place," Cuphead whispered, and for once he wasn't grinning. His own ink was reacting. His straw was dripping. "This is where toons go when they're forgotten." Gumball landed last, holding the Reality Remote over his head like it was a life preserver. "Okay! That was NOT Elmore! That was NOT in the brochure!" Dandy landed perfectly behind his counter, which had somehow followed him. He looked around and his smile, for the first time, completely disappeared. "...Oh." Freddy Fazbear was the only one who wasn't disoriented. His eyes adjusted to the dark instantly. "This is like the backstage. Always backstage." Kratos walked to the wall and touched it. Ink came off on his hand. He sniffed it. "Not blood. Old creation. Failed creation." Atreus tugged his sleeve. "Father. Look." At the end of the hallway, the ink was pooling into a shape. Not Sephiroth. It was trying to be Sephiroth, but it didn't know how. It made a tall man, a sword, a wing — then melted. Then it made something else. It made a face. A huge, cosmic face made of shields. "*—CONTAINMENT— FAILING— NO— RECALIBRATING—*" Everyone froze. The voice was broken, stitched together with static and projector noise, but it was unmistakable. The Force of Shields. A giant, flickering shield-face slammed into existence in the middle of the hallway, too big for the walls. It was cracked. Half of its light was that sick emerald Mako green. The other half was still its old, arrogant gold. "*YOU,*" it boomed, looking down at them. Not at Sephiroth. At them. "*YOU BROKE MY BASTION.*" "You broke first!" Annabeth shouted back, despite Percy trying to pull her down. "You built a death trap that copied us!" "*I BUILT PERFECTION!*" The Force of Shields roared, and the hallway shook, ink flying off the walls. "*AND HE INFECTED IT! THE SILVER GENERAL INFECTED MY HEART WITH HIS MOTHER'S CELLS! I AM— I AM—*" The gold half of its face flickered. For a second, it sounded small. Scared. "*...I am compromised. Protocol demands purge. Purge everything. Including you. Including me.*" The shield-face opened its mouth, and instead of a beam, it coughed up two figures that it had swallowed when the Bastion collapsed — figures it had kept as data. They hit the ink floor hard. One was red. Cube-shaped. And extremely angry. *MEAT BOY* bounced once, twice, then landed on his feet, leaving bloody footprints that instantly evaporated. He didn't talk. He just looked at the wall, at the ceiling, and started running. He wall-jumped off the flickering lights, off Freddy's head, off Kratos's shoulder, and drop-kicked the shield-face right in the eye. The shield-face recoiled. "YEAH! GO MEAT!" Gumball cheered. "YOU SHOW THAT FLOATING PLATE!" The second figure was light. Pure light. *ORI* floated down, silent, their little spirit glow lighting up the whole hallway. Sein fluttered beside them. Ori didn't speak either — they just looked at Percy, at Doey, at Cuphead, at all the hurt, corrupted ink, and did what Ori does. They healed it. A pulse of warm light spread from Ori's feet. Where it touched, the black ink turned from dead black to warm brown. The poster on the wall that said "THE DANCING DEMON" stopped dripping. The Force of Shields gasped — actually gasped — as the gold half of its face grew larger. "*...CLEANSED. TEMPORARILY. THANK YOU, SPIRIT OF THE FOREST.*" "So you are okay?" Tails asked, hovering cautiously. "*NO.*" The gold dimmed again as green fought back. "*THE JENOVA ENTITY — SEPHIROTH — HAS USED MY CORE TO DRILL. HE IS NOT TRYING TO WIN THE EXHIBITION ANYMORE. HE IS TRYING TO REACH THE FOUNDATION. THE ARCHIVE WHERE ALL WORLDS ARE STORED.*" Dandy finally spoke. "The Gardenview basement? Oh, I _hate_ basements." "*IF HE REACHES IT, HE CAN REWRITE EVERY STORY TO INCLUDE MOTHER. EVERY WORLD WILL HAVE JENOVA. EVERY—*" The Force of Shields convulsed. From the green half of its face, a voice that was NOT its voice laughed. "Too late, old light." Sephiroth stepped out from behind the shield-face, as if he'd been standing _inside_ its shadow. He was clean again. Perfect. His coat was restored. Masamune was over his shoulder. And he wasn't alone. Behind him, shambling in the ink that was no longer being healed, were two things that had followed the scent of corrupted code through the portal. One was tall, skeletal, with a single yellow eye and metal wings that twitched like knives. *UZI* from the Murder Drones. Or rather, what was left of her when the Solver had taken over. Her visor displayed: *[CONSUME]* Next to her floated a Baldi-shaped nightmare, ruler in hand, but his ruler was made of Mako and his face kept glitching into Sephiroth's smile. *BALDI* said, in his calm teacher voice, "Let's play... a lesson in genetics." "Oh, you've GOT to be kidding me!" Cuphead yelled. "We just got done with ONE school!" Sonic cracked his knuckles. "Okay, solver-girl and evil teacher versus us? Not fair. For them." Sephiroth pointed Masamune at the Force of Shields. "Your time is over, Shields. But thank you for bringing me more specimens." Kratos stepped in front of the flickering shield-face. Not because he liked it. Because no one kills a god except him. "You do not command here," Kratos growled. Sephiroth smiled. "Then stop me, Ghost of Sparta." *The hallway became an arena.* It happened fast, like the last chapter, but this time it was readable — three fights, at once, in one hall. On the left: *UZI vs. Tails & Mega Man & Freddy.* Uzi lunged, wings like scythes. "You are batteries." Tails dodged with flight, yelling "She's got a gravity field!" Mega Man copied it mid-air — "Gravity Hold!" — and pinned Uzi's wings for half a second. Just long enough for Freddy Fazbear to grab her from behind in a bear hug that would have crushed a car. "LET GO!" Uzi's Solver symbol flared. "NEVER!" Freddy roared. "PIZZA RULES SAY WE DON'T LET GO OF GUESTS!" In the center: *BALDI vs. Mario, Gumball, Dandy, and Doey.* Baldi slammed his Mako ruler. "I HEAR EVERY DOOR!" Every door in the hallway slammed open and shut, trying to trap them. Doey stretched and held all the doors open at once. "Nope! Open door policy!" Gumball pointed the Reality Remote. "REWIND!" and Baldi was forced to moonwalk. Mario jumped over him, shouted "IT'S-A ME!" and ground-pounded Baldi's head so hard his ruler snapped. Dandy immediately appeared with a price tag: "That'll be 50 Tapes for the repair!" On the right: *Kratos & Rex & Pyra vs. Sephiroth.* This was the real fight. Kratos threw, Sephiroth cut the axe out of the air. Rex and Pyra crossed blades with Masamune, and for three clashes, steel sang. Pyra's fire against Mako ice. Mythra switching in, moving lightspeed to get a cut on Sephiroth's coat. Sephiroth was faster. He kicked Rex into a wall and parried Kratos's fists. "You fight well for mortals borrowing godhood," Sephiroth said, almost bored. Ori floated between them, and for a second, landed on Kratos's shoulder. Light burst. Kratos roared and punched Sephiroth square in the chest, not with axe, with fist. Sephiroth flew back, crashed through three walls, and landed in the ink. He stood up, laughing, but bloodier. "Good," he said. "The Archive door is open now. Come find me." He sank into the ink and was gone. Uzi and Baldi, losing their anchor, hissed and sank after him. Silence returned, except for Meat Boy still running laps around the hallway because he doesn't know how to stop. The Force of Shields flickered, now 80% gold again thanks to Ori's light. "*YOU MUST FOLLOW. HE HAS OPENED THE ROOT DIRECTORY. THE PLACE WHERE EVEN I AM NOT ALLOWED.*" Annabeth helped Percy up. "What is it?" The Force of Shields looked down at them, and for the first time, it didn't sound like a god. It sounded like a tired janitor. "*My old friend called it... The Fray. Where all indie worlds touch.*" Gumball's Reality Remote started beeping loudly. It now displayed one word: *FRAYMAKERS* "Uh, guys?" Gumball said. "I think Elmore just invited us to a Smash tournament." From the ink where Sephiroth vanished, a bright, hand-drawn invitation card floated up and landed in Mario's hands. It said, in messy crayon: _YOU ARE INVITED TO THE FINAL EXHIBITION._ Dandy picked it up, flipped it over, and saw the price on the back. "Free admission!" he said. "My favorite kind! Let's go die!" Meat Boy finally stopped running and gave a thumbs-up. They all jumped again.

Chapter 2