It was not a very long fight, not after Aexilica and the others arrived. Emma's energy lance had been aimed at Graves, but Emma's plan for it was never as a killing blow. It was nothing more than a distraction. To that end it was a great success, dragging everyone's eyes over to her for just long enough to let the ambush hit their backs like a sledgehammer blow. Storm-Eye fell down on one garulkan, Aexilica and Haruki on another, Vari and Sade on a third. Three of the beasts were killed before the rest could even turn to engage.

That pretty much set the tone of the fight.

It was quick, bloody and intense. Emma made her first priority circling around to link up with her own side. It wasn't that she was scared of course, merely that any one of the garulkan still had talons able to slice through her armour, and below that was nothing but four feet nine inches of fragile, squishy human flesh. Just as she reached the group, Aexilica was tangling with one of the so-called Battle Bitches.

To Emma's shock, it was something of a balanced fight. If anything Aexilica was on the backfoot, gritting her teeth and straining to match her enemy's pace. Emma couldn't really follow the fighting, mind. It was just too quick, too…out of focus. She'd watched MMA matches at double speed on youtube before, and that was nothing close to being as hard to follow as this. Their limbs seemed to be blurring in and out of existence, just disappearing at times to re-appear elsewhere. The tips of their weapons, the fastest parts, were more or less completely invisible.

But she could still track their bodies, it wasn't like they were sidestepping as fast as they could swing. Emma drew a bead on the pink-armored woman tied up in melee with her friend, and shot out a few iron-cored bullets to tip the scales.

Remarkably, most missed. The woman seemed to sense Emma's attack before it came and pre-emptively move, letting four of the shots go wide. Two struck home, though, hitting her armoured side and ricocheting free. She wasn't wounded, but the fractional distraction let Aexilica's own sword come down hard on the enemy's shoulder.

More sparks flew where metal met metal, but again she wasn't injured. Aexilica backed away, despite the clean hit. And Emma realised only then just why she was fighting such an uphill battle. Whatever this woman's armour was made from, it was tougher than most of the defences Emma had encountered so far. Aexilica could barely hurt her, while her enemy was free to focus entirely on offence.

New plan then, Emma made a big wall of hardened energy and just shot it out at the woman. As predicted, she didn't let it hit her. Diving back to evade it, right into the path of Emma's matter javelin. This was one punishment too far for her armour, and whatever magic metal the plating was made from surrendered against it. She saw the pink-haired woman disappear into a rapid roll which trailed blood in her wake.

Not a lot of blood, mind. Not nearly a "dead person" amount, but with any luck she'd be too busy making sure she wasn't about to die to rejoin the fight anytime soon. Emma turned to Aexilica, and found herself sharing a grin with the woman.

It was good to see her again. Better than Emma had expected it to be, almost debilitatingly so. For a moment she found it hard to concentrate on the fighting and dying going on everywhere around her.

Then a fucking garulkan came for her, which galvanised Emma nicely. She slowed it with wind, blinded it with a spray of sand—heated with Energy before it struck, just because—and riddled its body with bullets. As before, they struggled to defeat its steel-hard scales while still penetrating deeply enough for serious injury. Aexilica fell on it a moment after that and made such issues irrelevant.

Emma looked around. The fight was certainly progressing, though whatever advantage surprise had brought was quickly falling away before Graves' power. She watched three men cut in half by a single slash of his whip, then saw Storm-Eye himself barely parry another all while the remaining garulkan ran around clawing at people and the dark-haired Battle Bitch did much the same, albeit with a good deal more control.

Nonetheless, they were winning. And Graves clearly realised the fact too, because he started fighting his way to the mouth of a corridor.

"Retreat!" He roared. Or, more accurately, squealed. Emma got the feeling he hadn't spent all that much time on the losing end after all.

However pathetic and fragile his voice was, Graves' own side at least heeded it quickly. Almost before the words had left his mouth he, both Battle Bitches and the remaining garulkan were scrambling for the corridor. Emma prepared an energy lance to fire after them, seeing a perfect opportunity to put it through someone's back and get a free kill, before Graves' whip shot through the air for her.

She swore, ducked down and threw a hasty barricade up which served only to redirect the tip somewhat. It grazed her, leaving another gash along her arm but not—as she verified with a few seconds of frantic examination—cutting deep enough to kill. Barely.

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By the time Emma was up and with another energy lance prepped, Lord Graves was gone. She felt the power crackling between her hands for a few moments, and was overcome by the sudden urge to unleash it anyway just as a vent for her frustration.

Instead she forced it to die down, re-absorbing the valuable mana which would otherwise have been wasted on killing a wall.

"Larry." She whispered, hands curling into tight fists. "The bastard, he took Larry."

A hand came down to rest on her shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. Aexilica's of course.

"It's alright." She promised her. "We'll get him back."

They'd fucking better have, because without that asshole Emma had nobody to teach her more about Untethering.

***

Larry wasn't having a very good day.

Granted, it had been a fair amount of time since Larry had had a single day which could be considered good. Waking up with functioning arms, legs and a torso—that was the bare minimum for an adequate-or-greater day. And that wasn't a luxury he'd enjoyed since a certain bitchhad torn his fucking head off.

Ah, he was still angry about that. Good. He'd hate to let his rage mellow out before he got the chance to retaliate.

Still, more pressing matters were before him at the moment. One in particular. Milton. Larry had to resist his lip's urge to curl with disgust.

"You got me out of there—" Larry began the conversation with as much calm as he could muster, but was interrupted when Milton tossed him briefly into the air, then kicked him as he came back down. The wind hissed in Larry's ears as he soared across the room and bounced off the far wall, ears ringing and suddenly dizzy. He ricochet off it, fell down hard and painfully and rolled a few feet more.

Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, he came to a stop staring up at his newest tormentor.

Milton did not look happy.

"What the fuck!?" Larry screamed, but Milton only grinned and stalked back across the room to him. They'd moved fast, despite the asshole getting forced onto the losing end of his fight with Emma's group. Heading backwards and upwards through the tower, past the treasure room and circling through its structure to some higher room. Larry suspected it may have been the very top, or at least close to it.

Another example of Milton's idiocy, because if there was one place you didn't want to go when hiding it was surely there.

"Five months." Milton growled, kicking Larry again and sending him once more to roll and rock across the room. "Five months. Five bloody damn months I spent here before I got my bearings and started getting powerful enough to live easy, what do you have to say to that asshole!?"

How about; don't accept deals from mysterious strangers in space just because they flatter you and smile a lot you stupid moron?

Larry did not, of course, say it. This wasn't one of Emma's tantrums, a brief explosion of anger channeled through a body smaller than some pre-pubescents'. Milton wasn't a big man, but he was, now, a very strong one. It had been part of his gifts upon getting sent between worlds. Power over magical creatures, the ability to harden and focus his will, and the standard-issue durability, strength and speed that came in so handy for all kinds of fighters.

This wasn't Untethering, the raw stuff of creation. It was a custom-made set of powers designed for versatile combat-strength and survivability in a hostile environment. Larry's durability had, mostly, abandoned him when Emma took his head off. What he had left made his skull tougher than any substance the humans of Emma's world knew.

But he didn't know if it would stave off Milton's rage forever.

"Stop!" Larry called out, gasping his words free between bouts of dizzy collision and flight.

"Why?" Milton snarled back. "This horrible shithole of a world you sent me to never stopped! What are you doing here anyway, who's the bitch you're with?"

Larry could not, unfortunately, lie. Emma had already revealed to Milton that she was from the same world, apparently they even knew each other beforehand. That limited his options. What limited them more was that Emma had showed off plenty of power, despite Larry's warnings. But then she enjoyed ignoring his warnings, almost pathologically. Maybe it was his fault for still letting himself be fucking surprised.

"She's another human traveller, like you. I realised what I did wrong with you and came with her this time." It was a very easy lie to disprove, but if Milton were ever in a position to verify it, he would hopefully be locked in combat already with Emma.

Even that, Larry realised with a sinking in his non-existent gut, was a scenario where he had slim odds of coming out on top. Emma's powers were broader and better in practically every way that counted, provided she actually got the hang of them. But she was just a baby Untethered, her kind had studied for years without mastering their own abilities. Milton's were designed with powerful simplicity to let even an inept drooler like him get the hang of them fast.

And he had, it seemed, gotten the hang of them. He'd grow stronger overtime too, but with a quarter-year's head start on Emma even that was an advantage that favored him over her.

But that was not, of course, enough for Milton.

"So what, she gets your favour and advice, and I don't?" He snarled, grabbing Larry hard by both temples and raising his head up to stare into the eyes. Their faces were a few inches apart, Larry could smell Milton's breath. Not pleasant.

It had been a mistake to suggest he was here voluntarily, and now Larry could feel Milton's true strength. More than Aexilica, more than Herag. Not what the people of this world would call a demigod—not yet—but…getting there.

"Okay, fine, I was bullshitting. She dragged me here herself." He said at last. "Tore my fucking head off and kidnapped me basically, I don't even know how she did it."

Larry had expected, or at least hoped, that Milton might be mollified by the fact. Naturally he was not, rather his rage intensified instantly.

"She can tear off your head?" He snarled. "What kind of powers did you give her? Oh leave it to you, eh? Discriminating against me for daring to be a white, straight man and laughing while I struggle just to survive while she gets pumped full of enough power to decapitate an angel, very fucking funny huh!?"

This was, Larry thought, going to take up quite a bit of his time.

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