My re-entry to the upper floor of the mansion had been acknowledged by the surprised reaction on Lure's fishy face, and the way in which Chips's bone-appendages flexed defensively for an instant. The explosion that rocked the mansion from below however made our gazes snap to the stairway in unison.

Somewhere below, amid more crashing and banging and the sound of a raging fire, were the desperate shouting exchanges between Clang and Miss Toontastic, and more of Soaks's venomous shrieks.

Lure lifted her big angler-fish head towards Chips who was perched atop his bone-appendages beside her.

"We're wasting time!" shouted Lure in a fishy garble, "We gotta get back n' help Soaks!"

Chips sprang into motion, scuttling not towards me, but over the stairway banister beside him.

No! I thought, urgently.

And yet I hesitated. To buy myself more time to think I pressed for the power to slow my time perception again. All sound and sights around me slowed to a crawl.

I knew, with great certainty, that if I threw myself forward and did everything in my power to keep Lure and Chips at bay, it would take such an effort from me I would be beyond the safe limits of control over myself. The alternative was to let them go, to stay in control and to let the odds of a successful outcome sway greatly in the Sub-Divisioner's favour.

These Sub-Divisioners, I thought, with a level of righteous indignation which scared me, these Sub-Divisioners who have made their compromises. Who have made their mistakes. Who decided that their problems were more important than anyone else's. These Sub-Divisioners who have used lies and false-promises of friendship to betray other Mice before me, Clang, and Miss Toontastic. And here they are, expecting us to give up and let ourselves be murdered by the Pied Pipers.

Am I going to let them?

In the time it took me to think this through, which was a matter of about a second and a half in real time, Chips had already cleared the top-side of the stairway bannister and was steadily on his way towards descending out of sight.

I could feel that much more acutely the rage gripping my body thanks to the slowed time perception. Muscles tensing, my focus sharpening, my teeth gritted. My whole body felt taught like a slingshot band pulled to its limit.

And yet that hesitation was still there, a small voice in the back of my head that said 'You don't have to do this'.

But that voice was the old Burgess. The powerless Burgess. When push came to shove could I rely on him to do what needed to be done without hesitation?

No.

Leave it to me, said a deeply resonant voice inside my head which was as close and even more vivid than my own thoughts.

It was Slip's voice.

We'll save our friends, together. Are you ready, Burgess? resonated Slip.

Can I trust you? I thought back.

Give me this opportunity and I'll show you, resonated Slip in response.

Let's do this, he said, together.

Together, I thought, mulling over the full meaning of that word.

It wasn't like the Fox-Frog-Monster taking over. This time, it was like two musical melodies; one calm and trepidatious, the other strong and uncompromising; forming something new with all the punch and drive of symphonic heavy metal.

Power. Flow.

The slingshot band snapped and the symphony of Burgess and Slip fighting as one began to play, starting with a resonant yell escaping me.

I leapt forwards, hurtling through the air.

No need to slow my time perception. Intuition was taking over. Reflexes responding.

I crashed through the banister beams, landing directly before Chips.

"That's far enough!" I yelled.

Chips didn't take kindly to this and let out an ear-piercing screech.

His numerous bone-limb-appendages went on the attack, stabbing at me with the kind of power which would break a regular man's bones with a single blow.

I threw up my Slip-suited arms and blocked each attack, sending each attempted blow off-course with counter-blows of my own.

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This exchange of blows caused us both to reorientate at the top of the stairs, so that my back was against the wall and Chips's back was to Lure.

Chips's weakness was easy to pick out. His movements with the limbs, precise, powerful, were also hindered by their size. In the confines of the upper stairway space I had the full advantage.

Remembering to how Clang had charged up his Tension state with his arms, which had moved like pistons to build the powerful momentum and heat he needed, I worked towards a similar piston-like motion in tandem with the punches delivered with my own arms.

My fists, which were coated in bone at the knuckles, shot right down the middle and landed in the center of Chips's face.

DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM!

Chips resisted several of the initial blows, but the onslaught quickly rendered him in a state of dumbness, making him that much more unable to think or defend himself.

DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM!

I brought my fists lower, attacking instead the white lumpy spot where he had patched the severe gut-wound I had dealt before.

The lumpy white tissue was tough, but after several blows the tissue tore away, reopening the worst of the wound I had dealt before.

Chips let out another screech that was tinged with the echoes of his former human self.

I silenced Chips with a leap and a rising bone-covered knee to his chin.

I felt the crunch of his jaw and what remained of his gnarled teeth breaking apart and falling out.

I spun, sprang off the rear wall, and kicked Chips hard in the chest, sending him crashing backwards into Lure.

Lure, in the heat of the moment, gripped Chips and shoved his limp body aside to the floorboards like he was a toy she no longer wanted to play with.

I kicked off again, willing a great deal more sinew across all of the Slip-suit. Doing this greatly tugged at my mental fatigue but it was going to be needed to make up some of the power difference between Lure and me.

It was clear Slip was taking the reins of this fight, because I never would have dove straight into the fray with Lure the way we did then. Not if I were fighting with the full control of my own mind.

Lure threw a hulking fist my way. Other than its size and weight there wasn't much in the way of difficulty for me to duck the blow.

DOOM-DOOM-DOOM-DOOM!

The increased sinew in the Slip-suit arms and torso, and in the legs, on top of the adhesion at the soles of the feet, dealt punches strong enough to render bricks to dust.

And yet Lure's torso was made of stronger stuff than that. Her ribcage was surely going to be bruised from the punches, but I only had the time to deliver four punches before Lure's arm swung back to try and strike me again.

I let myself fall back, Lure's swiping arm soaring over me.

She followed up with a stomping kick in an attempt to crush me.

I spun away, narrowly missing her huge fowl-smelling and greenly rotting left foot which eroded the floorboard it impacted on.

Slip decided to go for the most hardcore way forward as if to prove a point.

We sprung up.

DOOM-DOOM!

A one-two punch dealt to Lure's face. As tough as the blows were, Lure was tougher still.

She punched back.

POW!

We took the punch. Blocking it. The force of the impact made our whole body rigid, taking all of our strength to not be crushed beneath the weight of the punch.

DOOM!

We struck back with a punch of our own, this time to her left shoulder to bruise the joint there – we would have tried for her face but she was too towering for that from where we were standing.

Lure bellowed. Veins in her huge baby-doll arms tensed, the strength in those arms gathering.

We need to move! I thought in a panic.

We can take it! Slip resonated back.

He sounded so sure. I relented the resistance I offered up and continued within our joint flow. Together, we threw our arms up.

THROOM-CRASH!

Lure had brought both her close-fisted arms down on top of us, bringing as much of the weight of her body into it as she could muster. We'd thrown our arms up to block. We took the impact.

There's no way we can survive this, I thought, we'll be crushed.

But somehow the Slip-suit took the blow. The floorboards beneath us however splintered and our feet submerged just a little as the kinetic force of the blow had to go somewhere once it hadn't been able to crumple us.

Us! I thought, catching how my way of thinking about myself and Slip was changing.

Slip and I decided on our next move. It formed as an idea and we agreed upon it within the same instant.

We bounded directly upwards. The adhesion of our hands stuck to the ceiling. As I moved I noted the smell of smoke rising from the floor below but forced myself to ignore it. I swung forward, and rolled across the top of the ceiling, automatically adjusting the adhesion there as needed to create the constant tethering – it slowed some of the momentum of the roll, but in all was quick enough to do what we needed.

By the time Lure's angler-fish head looked up, we were already falling down, back-to-back with Lure. Our arms rising up and wrapping around huge handfuls of her tough wet seaweed-like hair.

CRASH-CRACK!

We brought the top of Lure's head into the wall ahead of us, driving half of her head into it. Her neck tried to resist the immense tension of our weight and strength forcing it backwards, and instead of resisting successfully a sudden crack from somewhere in her neck gave out.

We let go, dashed two paces away from Lure, and beheld what we had done.

She was standing stock-still, head reared back and stuck in the wall, her hulking baby-doll body rigid.

Dead? I wondered.

Her fishy eyes were continuing to frantically look about. And her chest was rising and falling in hampered breaths.

Relief. Not dead.

But like Chips it was likely she would heal herself enough to get back into the fight soon. I had already made that mistake by going easy on Chips before. Slip wasn't going to let me let inaction win over this time round, not with his influence combined in our shared flow-state.

We leapt, soared in the air, and drove a left-footed kick straight at the side of Lure's head.

More of her head crushed along the wall before the mass of her body pried her head free, and all at once she collapsed sideways to the ground with all the fanfare of a felled tree.

Even through all this, she was alive, and continuing to breathe. It had taken all that just to render Lure prone to the ground. Her breathing had slowed a good deal and a ragged wheezing like a sick walrus was sputtering out of her fishy maw.

We looked over our shoulder and saw Chips, also prone on the ground, curled and skeletal-thin, organs at his gut partially spilled and on display. But still alive. In great pain, but still breathing.

If ever there was a chance to kill them both, this was it. But neither Slip nor I had any intention of that. This was enough. We'd won. And we needed to go and help Clang and Miss Toontastic.

We turned to the stairway and jumped over the fractured remains of the banister beams.

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