The Next Adventure

Mickey Mouse

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Gee whiz, interdimensional travel really did a number on the stomach.

Wait—was he traveling between dimensions? His diminutive body tumbled through the atmosphere of… wherever he was so quickly he could barely keep his eyes open, but between bursts of unimaginable whiplash he could sorta make out the strange tunnel of light surrounding him. He whizzed past streaks of violet energy, brighter than any hyperspace routes he’d traveled in his gummi ship. For his money, as he flew full speed toward an unknown destination, he caught glimpses of strange images, simultaneously familiar and altogether new to him.

So was this an inter dimensional highway? He didn’t have much reference. When Omni had yanked him into the Omniverse, it’d been sudden and stark. One second he’d been in his ship cruising through the stars and the next he was staring into the eyeless, toothy grin of the ambivalent god of that odd multiverse.

And he certainly wasn’t on his way back to the Fountain of Infinity. For one thing, he certainly hadn’t died. The mercenary and the big scary dude had certainly given it the good ol’ college try, but he’d managed to give ‘em the slip and get back to—

Wait a goshdarn second. Where’s Blues? the anthropomorphic mouse thought, doing his best to crane his neck and see if the preteen machine was anywhere to be found inside the energy tunnel. He couldn’t spot the android’s signature pink armor, but just as he spun his flailing body around, a thick piece of yellow fabric flung itself seemingly out of nowhere and smacked into his face. Blues’ scarf wrapped around the mouse’s head, the force of the wind—wind? Was he outside? How did any of this make any sense?—holding it there no matter how much he tried to wriggle it free.

“Gollygeewhizgoshdarnit,” he spat, his words muffled by the cloth. Suddenly, a burst of… something rammed into him and the air around him grew incredibly humid. He tumbled backwards, for the first time feeling outside the pull of whatever gravitational force controlled the interdimensional highway, and flipped through the air a few times before ramming into something incredibly solid.

Ow.

Yep, that was definitely a tree branch.

And another. And another, and another, and another. The mouse bounced through the canopy of what, he supposed, was some sort of forest as he careened toward the ground, desperately clawing at Proto’s scarf to try and take in his surroundings. Finally, he managed to wrestle the piece of cloth from his eyes and blinked a few times, letting the dense jungle he had fallen into come into focus just before he hit the ground with a thump.

“Ow,” he groaned, face planted firmly in the wet grass and mud of this strange locale. His eyes darted up to scan. Had he been dropped in the Tangled Green?

He quickly shuffled to his knees. Something about his surroundings felt decidedly… different than the deciduous domain he’d erected his Clubhouse in, but then where was he? It was more jungley than the parts of the Green he’d become used to.

His heart skipped a beat. Was it the Deep Jungle? Had whatever magic he and Blues pulled off somehow finally transported him back home, where he’d longed to go for so long? Had he finally made it back to the Disney Realms? Could he reclaim his throne and finally take the fight to the Heartless like he’d intended all those years ago?

“Tarzan?!” he shouted, clambering up a tree trunk and posting up on a branch, searching for the realm’s guardian. “Jane?”

A light breeze blew Proto Man’s scarf from where it sat on his shoulder, carrying it back down to the forest floor and the muddy ground. The King turned and leapt down after it.

He never made it to the ground. The tree branch he’d been perched upon whipped after him, wrapping around his tiny ankle and yanking him back, tossing him deeper into the forest. He flew—screaming loudly—through the tops of the trees, flailing madly until he’d finally smashed into a small rock formation a little ways away. He tumbled backwards, rolling down into the depths of a deep, dark cave.

Um. That tree had just mousehandled him.

Yeah, this was definitely not his home.

He didn’t have long to consider where it could’ve been before he finally landed on the cave floor, conking his head against the side of a stalagmite and slipping into unconsciousness.

Wherever he was, this whole trip was making Mickey Mouse just feel straight up ill.
 

Mickey Mouse

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When Mickey returned to the land of the living, nighttime blanketed this strange new world. Light no longer crept into the cavern he’d found himself in, and he slipped and slid as he fumbled to pull himself off the ground. Tiny gloved fingers wrapped as much as they could—which was not much—around the stalagmite and eventually, he found his footing on the damp cave floor.

He’d barely noticed during the five previous minutes he’d been conscious in this realm, but wherever this jungle was, it had been noisy during the day. Chirps and whizzes of animals had populated his surroundings and rang in his big ears in a way that they just didn’t now, under cover of darkness. Where had all the life gone?

He gazed up at the cave entrance, several meters higher than him and up what looked to be a slope adorned with the types of jagged rocks that would’ve made a prime who took up more square feet concerned. Sometimes he felt insecure about being so delicate and small, but it seemed in this case to have worked in his favor.

Hmmm… prime. Could he even call himself that anymore? Of course he couldn’t be sure—he hadn’t explored every corner of the place—but something in his gut, besides the irrepressible nausea, told him that he wasn’t in the Omniverse anymore. No… this place was altogether different, something more overtly threatening than that place that hid behind an oozing mask of corporate hospitality. A bright, smiling man to greet you at the door. A number of differing concierges of various threat levels to shepherd you to establishments that may or may not have been exactly what they seemed.

Well, at least the mouse king appreciated this place’s verisimilitude.

Still didn’t know where the heck he was, though. That, he supposed, would require some further investigation, and nothing was getting done down here in this cave! He placed two gloved fingers in his mouth and let out an extended, high pitched whistle to call his magic carpet to him, and then waited.






…and waited, and nothing came. Minutes passed, and the mouse assured himself that maybe the rug was just held up in traffic. Any second now, it would swoop through the opening of the cave above and plop down next to him, ready to transport him to the nearest civilization on this world—if any existed at all.

But the magic carpet never came, and Mickey Mouse found the hairs on his neck standing up, anxiety creeping up his spine. Where the heck was it? He focused very hard on trying to summon the thing, but it seemed this world wasn’t going to play by the rules he’d become used to. He sighed. Just when he’d gotten used to the parameters of his last multiversal home, he’d been tossed into something altogether unfamiliar.

Wait, he thought, holding out his hand and trying to summon his keyblade. Does this mean I can’t have it anymore? What do I do without that?

He could feel himself freaking out.

Deep breaths, Mick, he told himself as he placed a hand on the hilt of his—

He glanced down. There the keyblade was! Hung loosely off his tiny belt, like he’d worn it back in the Disney Realms. It seemed he wouldn’t have to summon it anymore. The Star Seeker glinted in the tiny shafts of moonlight that peeked into the cave, and Mickey glanced over his shoulder, looking deeper into the cavernous depths that he’d found himself in. He could climb out of the cave, probably—after all, he was known for his athleticism. Or he could venture further into the tunnels, which was… safer?

The former king didn’t even believe it himself, but at least down here there weren’t actual heckin’ living trees trying to mangle his tiny body in every way it could be mangled.

The mouse unsheathed his keyblade and held it in front of him, poised to take on whatever strange threats this newfound place had to offer him. And then, completely blind, he pushed forward into the dark, one hand on his weapon and the other feeling slowly but carefully along the rocky cavern wall as he descended into its depths.


* * *​

Not too far away, a group of hunters sliced through the living planet’s foliage, littering the grounds with vines and tree branches as they searched for the source of a mysterious buzzing sound. The constant whirr of machinery was intercut with a zapping electrical surge that energized the ground with static.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” the gruff man holding up the rear of the trio said, glancing carefully over his shoulder. “We’re trained to hunt monsters, not whatever the fuck is making this weird shit happen.”

“Monsters aren’t always organic life,” a slimmer, geeky man pointed out, carefully watching his tracker as it revealed they were moving closer to their target.

“Both of you shut your mouth or I’ll be the monster you should be scared of,” the woman at the head of the pack barked. She was slender but tall, carrying a crossbow that in the hands of either of the men accompanying her would’ve been giant. In her arms, it fit like a glove. She pushed through a last annoying bit of foliage and stopped in her tracks.

Just behind her, the slimmer man elbowed his way into the clearing. “…oh my fucking God,” he whispered.

“What?” the gruff man asked, brushing through the plant life and past the others. His eyes went wide at what he saw.

Just across the clearing, the top half of what looked to be a boy of no more than ten or eleven hung by his wrists from two trees. His head fell limply, his chin bouncing against the reddish pink body armor protecting his chest. Below him, a pair of legs, separated from each other, lay mangled on the ground, and a matching helmet rested against a nearby tree trunk. From the bottom of his torso, sparks flew, and upon closer inspection it became clear his insides were more machine than man—er, boy. He swung loosely from the vines that held him upright, and after a few seconds, shook uncontrollably for a few seconds as another electrical surge blasted from his body, passing through the trees into the ground and outward from there. As the lightning left him, he once again went limp.

“Is that a… child?” the woman said, reverently.

“A robot child, in fact,” the slim man confirmed.

As if to respond, the child’s head snapped up, the sunglasses over its eyes flying off and toward the monster hunters. Beneath the specs, the thing’s eyes were glowing red.

“System… failure…” it coughed from its mouth, and the three monster hunters raised their weapons tentatively, not sure whether this mysterious boy was a friend or a foe. It heaved uncontrollably and began to shake again, but before it could release another electrical surge into the forest, it simply…

…stopped.

The preteen machine powered down, and the hunters were left to figure out what to do with the rest of it.
 

Mickey Mouse

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Huff… huff…

How long had he been down here? Had it been hours, days, weeks, months, years? Time had become such a weird thing to Mickey Mouse through his honestly ridiculous amount of inter-dimensional travels. Traversing from one’s home dimension to one crazy multiverse rules by a faceless megalomaniac “god” might be enough for some people, but nooooo, Mickey just had to find his way into another. If he and Blues even had dropped off in another dimension at all; he still had no true way of knowing, and worse, no preteen machine to bounce thought bubbles off of.

Where the heck could his best friend have landed, anyway? The mouse released himself of the fear that Blues had ended up in another dimension entirely, because he’d caught a glimpse of the boy’s scarf upon his first descent from the whirlwindy portal thingy. But this land didn’t exactly seem friendly to outsiders—what with living trees looking to throw down—and he couldn’t stop the twinges of worry from creeping into his brain. Sure, the Proto Man was more than capable of handling himself, and had proven it in even more dangerous scenarios back in their other realm, but they had no guarantees that the threats that lie ahead of them in this new place weren’t even more dangerous.

I mean, if meanie trees are the welcoming committee, he thought with a frown, pushing through a particularly tight cluster of stalagmites.

The pointy rock formations seemed to grow more and more close as the ventured further along the makeshift path, until eventually he figured it would be easier to just scale them and step from spike to spike. Not too sharp yet, the poking at his feet through his trademark yellow shoes proved more annoying than painful.

“Ouch,” he sighed as he hopped from one rock to the next, teaching out with gloves fingers to grasp into it. Instead of the dry rock of before, his fingers instead met some unwelcome dampness, and he struggled to find a hold for a few seconds before finally careening into the extremely small space between the natural spikes. “Ouch ouch ouch,” he repeated, this time with a couple of echoes for emphasis. Emphasis for who, ya dum-dum? he mentally scolded himself. It was true—if something were to actually go wrong, there was no one down here to hear his cries for help.

How utterly morbid.

He rustled his black, spherical nose in the dirt and opened his eyes long enough to catch a glimpse of light a little ways ahead. Immediately, his ears perked up—how long had it been since he had seen anything that even remotely resembled real sunlight? Certainly the artificial lights of Karl Jak’s playgrounds didn’t count, and he’d barely even had time to take in whatever this world’s version of sunlight was when he bounded in. He pushed himself up off the ground, swiping up a cloud of dust with him as he started toward the light source.

Taking in a deep breath to prep himself for the coming sprint, he absorbed the dust cloud into his mousey mouth along with the intended oxygen. His face scrunched as particles of cave dirt flew this way and that inside of him, bouncing off his tongue, rolling down his windpipe and lodging in his nose. He let out a hearty, deep, very un-Mickey like cough, hacking onto the rock faces and reaching out to hold onto stalagmites for support as his tiny lungs got overwhelmed by the igneous impediment.

“Holy—eeugh—heck,” he breathed shakily, launching into a coughing fit that immobilized him for the moment. He leaned against one of the stabby rocks, clutching on for dear life as his lungs rebelled and forced all the air they’d collected over the past few seconds back into the dark atmosphere of the cave. “Jeez—eeugh—louise!”

A burning sensation floated up from his chest. One hand still clutching the stalagmite, he reached up and grasped his chest with the other as the fires of a revolting respirator crept up his esophagus, into his snout, and finally out into the cavern air. If he’d been able to really see, he imagined that he would’ve seen a comically large cloud of brown dust emerging from his lips. It must’ve been comically large, as it knocked him clean off his feet and into the air, sending him careening over the field of stalagmites towards the sliver of sunlight he’d been on his way to when he found himself locked in a battle with a bunch of minerals. He glanced toward what he assumed—hoped?—was the ground, sending up prayers to Gosh themselves that he’d somehow managed to fly over the stabby rocks and to an area of the cave with, uh… flatter ground. He closed his eyes and braced for impact.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

SMACK.

“Ooooowwie,” he groaned, his gloved fingers feeling the ground to try and figure out what exactly he’d landed on. It didn’t seem like rock, but it hurt nonetheless. He squeezed and probed it just a little. Felt… squishy, almost? Like… a vine?

His eyes popped open. A vine? In whatever this crazy mean forest was?

“Nope, nope, nope,” he muttered, pushing himself off the ground. He took a step towards the light source but it was too late; the vine had already wrapped around his ankle and lifted him into the air. He thought to reach for his keyblade, but before his fingers could wrap around the hilt, the vine had wound up and tossed him clean out of the cave. Behind him, he heard the faint sounds of someone yelling after him as he slid onto the dirt like a baseball player who’d just tripped his way to home base.

Get out, small fry!

Mickey glanced back. Gladly, he thought, before picking himself up one more time, brushing off, and venturing off into the forest glades.
 

Mickey Mouse

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The three hunters struggled to carry the wayward parts of the teenage robot back to their camp.

“You’re fuckin’ useless,” the large, gruff man called back at his thinner counterpart. The guy had been placed in charge of carrying one of the cyborg’s legs, but ‘carry’ quickly turned into ‘drag’ and he’d quickly fallen quite behind the other two hunters, slowing them down considerably. The gruff man shot a side-eyed look at their female leader, who ignored him as she carried the bulk of the preteen machine’s torso with her.

She didn’t have any time to deal with their pesky, masculine squabbles. Physically weak though the lanky man was, he was the technical genius of their small group of hunters and considering the circumstances, they’d need him when they got back to camp and tried their hand at rebuilding this sucker.

“Quit your bitching, Brom,” she barked, continuing her stomp through the forest and barely even acknowledging the burly hunter. “And Quinn: hurry up.”

“But Jana—”

“—shut your trap, Quinn!”

“...yes, ma’am,” the skinny one sighed deeply, and attempted to pull the preteen machine’s leg harder. His pace barely quickened.

* * *
“Oooooh!”

Mickey Mouse sprinted across the glade, his eyes focused on the only plant he’d seen since arriving on this strange woodsy world that seemed designed for beauty, not violence. Just ahead, a single daisy sprouted out from the ground, and with any luck, this one wouldn’t try and strangle him or beat him up. The foliage of this planet, in general, seemed primed and ready to mousehandle him at every turn, so the sight of one of the more gentle creatures of the forest put a smile on his face.

His thoughts traveled back to some of his favorite past adventures, like when he’d traveled to the Radiant Garden with Aqua, Ven, and Terra. The different menagerie of plants and succulents Ansem the Wise had grown there became one of the mouse’s favorite things to visit and study before the darkness had overtaken the city.

He closed his eyes, his gloved fingers wrapping around the little green stem of the daisy. Quite some time had passed since he’d spent a thought on the darkness encroaching his home realm. How many worlds had fallen to the Heartless now in his absence? Had Donald and Goofy been able to find more Keyblade wielders, or were there none left now since he’d been sucked into the Omniverse? With Aqua, Terra, and Ven missing, and Yen Sid getting too old to practice, he didn’t know what, exactly, he could hope for when it came to finding someone to fight against the darkness.

He looked up at the forest around him. This wasn’t like any world he’d ever seen or heard of in the Disney Realms. Any hopes he had of Blues accidentally transporting them back to his home… well, they’d been dashed pretty quickly, too, and without Blues himself around, the mouse had little hope of figuring out where exactly this was they’d been deposited.

Blues always was the smart one, he smiled.

So, he supposed, there was only one thing to do then: find his friend.

He ripped the daisy out of the ground and perked up his ears, stepping toward the center of the clearing and trying to listen for any signs of life that didn’t happen to be carnivorous plants. He held the flower tightly, trying his best to feel its energy and somehow tap into the heart of this world.

Strangely, he did feel… something pumping through the stem of this little flower. Well, not pumping in the most literal sense, but it did feel alive in a way flowers just really often didn’t. Sure, all plants were living things in a sense, but this one gave off vibes that made him feel like it was almost living in the same way that he was, or another creature of his ilk. He held up the daisy, examining it, remembering, too, that the cave had seemed to speak with him when it had unceremoniously ejected him.

The pumping started to turn physical, and began to vibrate the mouse’s fingers, then his arms, then his torso, then his feet. He turned his head quizzically. Was the daisy doing all of this? Or was it—

He spun around just in time to see a huge, monstrous creature burst through the brush. It looked like a plant, but had… four legs, and a huge mouth, lined with gargantuan, juicy-looking red lips. The mouse blinked.

“Holy heck,” he muttered, “that plant has kissin’ lips!”

The plant creature lunged for the daisy, but Mickey’s reflexes weren’t so rusty; he flipped forward, daisy in one hand, and landed on the creature’s back, reaching out and allowing his keyblade to materialize in front of him. He looped his fingers through the Star Seeker’s hilt and slashed at the Giant Flower Eater, kicking off the monster with the impact and sliding into the grass below. The creature screeched, stumbling in the opposite direction of the mouse king.

“Ha,” Mickey smirked, “take that, pal.” But the keyblade master didn’t have long to sit and gloat — the Giant Flower Eater shook off the pain, turning its attention back to Mickey Mouse and his tiny daisy. Mickey’s eyes flitted from the Eater to his little souvenir. “Ohhhh,” he realized aloud, “you’re one of the reasons why nothing cute’s left on this planet. You eat pretty little flowers like this guy!”

If the daisy could have confirmed this theory, it would have, but the Eater did the next best thing and made another lunge for Mickey and his flower pal. The mouse took a quick step back, turning and clambering up into the nearest tree.

“Oh no the heck you don’t, buddy,” the mouse scowled, squatting down and preparing to pounce. The big guys always underestimate me, he thought.

Their mistake.
 

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The sky was gold with twilight's blessing when he awoke and it was with groggy eyes that he took it in. Hazy with drink, Mugen was quick to waken but sluggish to acclimate. When he sat up his head lurched and he felt the effects of his previous night in a quick wash-over. His stomach lurched and the fuzzy feeling only the truly hung over take ownership of made its move to take ownership of him. That had always been the trade-off for a drunk, and Mugen was hardly the exception.

His hand found its way to a flask in his pack and his flask found its way to his mouth. A couple of gulps of sake rendered him human again.

He'd come to this world with a couple of assets...just a couple. What he had was easy enough to take inventory of and he did it expeditiously. His blade was at his back - it was rubber-banded to both his body by its strap and his soul by his fixation on it. It was by and large the most ornate of his possessions with its sheath of birch. That sheath was inlaid with bronze, and above all the blade itself was crafted as if by a Kami of the Smith themselves.

Next on the list of his possession appraisals was his meager supply of sake which was diminishing at an alarming rate. His pack was full of the stuff, mostly, and the rest of the knapsack's volume was occupied by biscuits rich in weevils but low as far as mouth-feel went. Despite this he plundered his pack for one of them and drew it down his gullet with the exuberance that belongs to only the truly hungry. The food fell into his belly and drew with its entry a cramp, a gurgle, and the desire for more.

Mugen stifled that desire and slung the pack over his back. Food could wait. His ears picked up the sound of a nearby stream and he made his way in the direction of that stream.

Instinct guided him on his path. It wasn't an easy one...the forest he traversed seemed unsculpted by the hands of men and largely untouched by the hands of civilization as a whole. He walked for a quarter of an hourglass' keep, he guessed, and over that time he stepped over roots and vines belonging to trees that may have met some of this planet's oldest sculptors - perhaps the Kami-samas themselves. Over his journey Mugen borrowed liberally from his sake flask and took in the sights and sounds.

Sounds of roars that could be miles away.

Sights of true forest untapped by man.

The ronin was indifferent as he traversed it. He stepped over thick roots and warrens dug by indigenous beasts. His thonged sandles 'clomp clomped' as he pressed them against the wood he encountered and 'squish squished' against the mud. Every once in awhile he threw back the sake, though not liberally. Mostly he walked, however, and the haze of his night before dissipated in the wake of a moving body's metabolic process. It was the nature of the human to adapt and he was at his core as human as they came.

Before long Mugen found himself at a stream, and found himself hunkering down at its bank with his hands cupped. In paced scoops he fed himself the essence of life and when it was to its contentment Mugen let survivalism fall to the wayside and fell backwards unto his ass.

A shaggy shock of hair atop a gaunt and unruly face dropped about four feet. His lanky body sprawled, and he blossomed there in the light of the sun. Mentally he was a simple being and to be but an heir apparent to a place untouched by the hands of human dogs was to him a feat in and of itself.

Some may puzzle towards their goals, or their derivative. Some might wonder how they got to be where they found themselves.

Mugen was not of their fold. He bathed in the glow of a sun that wasn't the same sun he'd slept under a week ago and sipped his flask with a feeling of entanglement with nature. He felt himself to be a piece of nature so much, in fact, that wildlife began to gather around him. He found sparrows near him plundering the soil for their blood money - worms - and reveling in their findings. He witnessed this through the rouge eyes of the inebriated and coveted their free spirits the way that only those watching through a rebel eyeglass could fully appreciate. After time innumerate he extended his hand and found one of the birds a willing accomplice to his luxury. The bird chirped upon his extended index finger and sang the song of the free. He was happy to indulge as a listener and after a time and a flask joined in with his own voice; though, he was in throaty disharmony with the planet's nature.

Nature didn't seem to mind.

---

A veritable Disney Princess in his own right, though bastardized, Mugen awoke to the sound of wings pounding air beneath their breadth. Something had startled his revelry and awoken Mugen from a nap he hadn't realized he was taking. The samurai found a flask already resting in his hand, swigged it, and stashed it.

With resolve in his heart and bloodshed in his mind the samurai found his footfall carrying him towards sounds of action.

Within an instance Mugen broke free of the brush nearest him and drew his sword in the span of a breath. His lanky legs pushed against the forest floor like a springboard and he found himself hurtling towards the sounds he had heard before even he knew what he was looking at. An enormous plant creature's back conformed to his sight and it was bearing down on a creature he'd never seen the like of - Mugen smirked and plummuted from the air and landed in a parabola unto the beast's back.

He plunged his katana into its back, drew it out, and spit.

"I ain't seen a good fight in weeks," Mugen said aloud.

The plant beast reached back and gripped him then flung him. A forest world whizzed by and then he felt a 'THUMP'.

The samurai slid down a tree's base and looked about instinctively. Nearby was a mouse, blade in hand as well, and then the thing that had flung him. He was on his feet in a second and found himself looking towards the closest thing he had to an ally. It was the mouse with the most himself.

And he found himself curious. ...Mugen drew his flask up from his hip once more, and gestured with his sword towards Mickey in invitation.

"Let's see what you've got, then!" the ronin hollered.

He smirked, holstered his flask, and then put both hands on the hilt of his katana. The forest's roof filtered a pleasant light onto the altogether unpleasant scene.
 

Mickey Mouse

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Why, for the love of Pete, did these warrior types always treat fighting scary monsters like it was some sort of fun game? Mickey wasn’t about to say the Giant Flower Eater made him cower in fear or anything — though it certainly was big and objectively a terrifying concept — but he also certainly wasn’t about to treat this like his, Donald, and Goofy’s weekly match of Texas Hold ‘Em.

He sighed. He did miss traditions like that.

Thwap!

His light reminiscing quickly shuttered under pressure from the huge plant beast. The mouse’s nimble feet saved him in the nick of time from being whipped by a giant vine that seemed, ostensibly, to have come from the creature’s mouth. The tree branch Mickey has been perched on buckled and broke at the vine whip’s strike, and Mickey found himself clambering a little higher into an adjacent one, trying to get out of the monster’s reach. Another lash of the thing’s weird tongue (?) confirmed this task would be more difficult than the mouse king thought, as the new branch he’d landed on was felled, too. He scrambled for the trunk of the tree, but gravity had other plans, pulling him down with a thump into the mossy knoll below.

His nose pressed to the grass, the mouse groaned, placing a hand on his throbbing temple and glancing up at the beast. It reared back, readying itself for the killing blow on its much tinier prey, and Mickey scrambled to pull himself up as it lunged forward. Time and space, it seemed, was not on his side as the creature’s huge mouth accelerated toward him with ferocity. He closed his eyes and covered his head, a fruitless tactic but an instinct, prepped to be swallowed whole by the thing, when suddenly —

…nothing happened? Mickey opened his eyes; the Giant Flower Eater’s shadow had stalled. A quick glance over his shoulder showed that the creature, too, had paused in its assault — probably mostly due to the lithe samurai man currently stabbing something into its back. Mickey blinked for a second and then watched as, almost comically, the Flower Eater ejected the man’s sword from its spine and launched his would-be ally, once again, across the clearing.

This time, the mouse would be there for this guy.

Mickey sprinted out of the monster’s view, around to the side, and reached out a gloved hand. “Nnnhyah!” he called out, and the samurai dude’s speeding descent toward the ground stopped rather abruptly. The mouse didn’t have the strength to hold the guy in the air for long, but once the spell broke, his fall had been reduced to just a few feet, softening the blow.

Mickey slid up next to the man, turning his focus back toward the Giant Flower Eater and preparing his keyblade for the next phase of battle. Next to him, this mysterious swordsman was picking himself up off the ground and dusting himself off.

“Thanks for your help, pal,” the mouse nodded.

“No problem,” the samurai dude replied. Mickey glanced back at his newfound ally just in time to catch him taking a swig of something out of a flask. The mouse had seen it before, but just assumed that he’d been drinking water or something — but the way his face scrunched up ever-so-slightly after this particular gulp confirmed that was not, in fact, the case.

Mickey’s eyes went wide and he could feel his cheeks go hot.

“Are you… drinking?!” he shouted. “At a time like this?!”

The samurai opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, another vine whip had wrapped around Mickey Mouse’s waist and yanked him up into the air.

“Woooooooooooah!” the mouse cried as the vine lifted him, then tossed him past the top of the forest canopy and towards the clouds. His arms and legs flailed wildly, trying and failing to get a grip on… well, there was nothing to grip onto. An eternity passed as he flew up, up, up toward the sky, until finally, he felt himself begin to drop, and his trajectory turned into a straight shot to the monster’s mouth. And, he figured, a one-way ticket to certain death.

Ugh, the mouse thought, never imagined I’d die as some monster’s dinner.

“Hmph,” he scowled, straightening himself into a dive and aiming his keyblade directly for the center of the beast’s maw. He didn’t know if it was planning on chomping him as soon as it passed its lips, but if it was, he was at least going to put it in a world of pain once he’d been forced inside. “I’m comin’ for ya, you ugly lug!” he screamed, almost like a weird battle cry that could only come from the likes of Mickey Mouse.

He was feet away from the monster’s maw when he felt the probably-drunk samurai dude’s fingers curl up on the back of his jacket, yanking him out of his chosen trajectory. The pair flew away from the Giant Flower Eater and rolled across the grassy ground. Mickey didn’t see how the samurai landed, but his own arrival back to earth — could he call it earth? Where the heck was he? — was not necessarily the most graceful, and he did several backwards somersaults until finally crashing into the base of a nearby tree.

“Ughhhhh, holy cow, that hurt,” the mouse said almost to himself, trying his best to steady himself as he returned to a standing position.

“Looked like it,” his new samurai buddy called from a few trees over.

Mickey glared at his ‘ally’ — if this guy even was a friendly. “You got a name I can call you, pal, or should I just go with Drunky McDrunkenpants?”
 

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His cheeks felt warm, and his gut felt warmer with each passing swig. Mugen was no lightweight, to be certain, but even a seasoned drinker could find themselves on the wrong end of a flask if they swigged it for too long. ...he had a way to go before he found that end, though. He'd found it before many a time and had a decent inkling that right now he still had a long way to go.

He'd only just pulled his acquaintance from the rapidly approaching fate of becoming plant food. In the instant he'd gripped the mouse's jacket he'd been uncertain whether or not his fingers were going to make that final stretch - it had been a close one. Damn close. Closer than he'd soon admit to the stranger he found himself brothers in arms with, that was for sure - soaring through the air like a half-drunk red-jacketed pinball; Mugen had clasped the mouse, yanked him from certain doom, and released him in time to flip himself around and land on a branch. That hadn't been intentional - it was luck and reactivity that allowed him to half-land, half-stumble onto the thick wooden perch. If the trees around here hadn't been so overgrown he might be in a more precarious situation.

“Ughhhhh, holy cow, that hurt,” the mouse said almost to himself, trying his best to steady himself as he returned to a standing position.

“Looked like it,” his new samurai buddy called from a few trees over.

He exhaled, his breath smelling of rice wine, and offered a lazy grin towards the anthropomorphic rodent. They both seemed to be swordsmen of sorts, though their styles seemed vastly different. The samurai, feeling like a fish out of water, hadn't gone without noticing that the mouse seized him in the air earlier either - yet, he hadn't actually seized him. He'd simply stalled him with a gesture from a distance.

With a giant plant beast lumbering towards them, though, Mugen had already decided that he'd seen stranger things lately.

He'd been contemplating just that - the lumbering plant beast - when he was asked his name.

"Call me whatever you want, as long as it's not as lame as that," the wild dog of a man hollered back from his perch. "The name's Mugen."

He had his wily eyes, however, trained on the plant creature. It was a whopper by anyone's standards, and though he'd gotten a few stabs into it's back the towering monstrosity didn't seem much worse for the wear. Some seeping green ooze that he imagined must equate to blood trickling down the creature's sides was all he had to show for it, but he hadn't slowed the monster. It let out a roar that let him know that he may have only pissed the thing off.

And it was quick.

A giant vine-like appendage lashed out in a sideswipe that clipped Mugen right off of the branch he was standing on. The world flipped around him as he tumbled through the air and he grimaced at the impending impact he'd be -

THUD.

He smacked against a tree, slid down it, and landed on his side in a heap.

"Damnit," Mugen murmured.

He felt a dull throb in his side where he'd taken the brunt of the collision, but didn't wait to feel out his ribs for injury. Instead he stood up and steadied his blade with one hand and shifted his balance in time to witness the same appendage hurtling towards him again - this time he was ready and bucked backward. He arched over the strike and landed on his hands, pivoted just-so to wind-mill his legs around and kick out at the next strike heading his way. He felt the ridges of his sandles catch the vine with a sense of satisfaction, and with his weight on one hand, still completely inverted in a handstand; he struck out like a cobra with his sword.

He severed the tip of the vine and with his momentum swung back up into a full stand. The end of vine he'd severed writhed under his sandles and spurted thick chlorophyll about the forest floor.

Panting a bit, he gazed over at the mouse he'd wrenched from death moments earlier, observing where he might be in this bizarre plight they'd landed into.

The creature had been distracted by Mugen, and had let out a roar at the loss of what might have been one of its 'fingertips', but had turned its attention on both of them once more - more vines sprouted from its mutagenic torso, and it looked incredibly angry.

Through its 'legs' Mugen spotted what looked like a nest. In that nest, there were strange fleshy green orbs. ...were those...eggs?

The sake-savoring samurai boggled at the biological implications of it all, but decided he was no scientist.

He tried to catch the eye of the mouse, and pointed towards the nest with his sword.

"Hey! Ears! She's got a nest!" the samurai shouted.
 

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This thing was… a mother?

Mickey Mouse’s eyes went wide as he followed Mugen’s sword and spotted the actual freaking eggs underneath the Giant Flower Eater. The collection of green orbs pulsed and wriggled a little bit, making them look just as alive as their supposedly-plant mommy, but they were certainly eggs.

What… did that mean? Was the Giant Flower Eater not actually trying to, well, eat them, but was actually just protecting its young from two strange-looking newcomers? Mickey didn’t have kids of his own, but he knew that he’d often flown off the handle a little bit trying to protect his friends — whether it was after Gilgamesh and Ganondorf had ripped Erza apart, or when the Bandit and Kerrigan had Kanda on the ropes, or just trying to protect his dear Minnie, he knew what it felt like to want to protect the ones you loved.

Had he and Mugen unwittingly become predators, and the Giant Flower Eater was just trying to make sure its kids didn’t become prey?

Well, motherflipper.

The beast whipped a vine towards Mugen, and Mickey dove to his new pal’s defense, swatting the tendril away with his keyblade. His yellow sneakers skidded back onto the forest floor, and he peeked through the creature’s ‘legs’ again to get a better look at the collection of orbs that, he supposed, were its eggs.

“Guess we’re even, Ears,” Mugen said, stepping up next to the mouse and crouching into a battle stance.

“Mickey,” the diminutive warrior corrected, “Mickey Mouse.”

Mugen glanced over. “Hm,” he shrugged, “last name’s a bit on the nose, but hey.”

Mickey scowled and turned towards his newfound ally, about to give him another piece of his mind like the one he’d given him earlier for drinking during a battle, but suddenly found one of the creature’s vine limbs squeezing him around the torso and lifting him into the air. Mugen, too, got caught up by the Eater, and both the mouse king and the samurai flew into the air as the Eater released them and opened its huge maw.

Its mouth was wide and ready for the pair as they careened down to become its dinner, and Mickey Mouse could feel swear words bubbling up inside him. How the heckskies were they supposed to get out of this, dangit?!

Mugen’s limbs flailed wildly as they approached their impending doom, and Mickey thought fast. The beast’s huge tongue launched up at them, and the mouse touched down on the tip of it with a yellow sneaker, reaching forward and grabbing Mugen by the collar of his tunic and yanking him out of the grasp of the beast’s mouth just in time. He threw the samurai towards the tree line with all the strength he could muster; not necessarily a simple feat for the tiny mouse. Sure, he was much stronger than the average creature his size, but he still was barely more than two feet tall and he wasn’t exactly made of muscle. Yet he managed it, and he watched as Mugen flew toward the woods, and felt the monster’s kissin’ lips began to close in around his own foot.

He leapt, as adeptly as he could, from the tip of the creature’s tongue and felt the thing rip his shoe off his foot. He glanced back and watched his yellow sneaker tumble down the big lug’s throat, and scowled as he back-flipped down on to the grass. It was wet and mossy on his furry foot, which he usually made sure didn’t see the light of day in public. The Giant Flower Eater roared in fury, rearing back to lunge at Mickey once again, when the mouse placed his keyblade on the ground and put his gloved hands up.

“Wait!” he called out, and as if it… heard him, in some way, the creature stopped in its tracks.

“Mickey—” Mugen called, stumbling out of the tree line, “what are you doing?!”

“Hey, pal!” the mouse yelled toward the Giant Flower Eater, slowly lowering himself to his knees, “I see what’s happening here! Ya got kids, right? You’re just tryin’ to protect your eggs, yeah, buddy?”

Mickey didn’t know if the creature understood any of the words he was saying, but it roared defiantly, crouching down, looking ready to pounce at any moment.

“Look,” the mouse continued, “we didn’t realize this was your place! Our bad, pal!”

The creature regarded the mouse with some sense of caution. A low, rumbling growl escaped its lips as it started to lean back on its haunches, stepping ever-so-slightly away from the mouse and man and more towards its collection of future children. Mickey glanced at the eggs, pulsing and beating like tiny little green hearts, and then back up at their mother. He could feel his own heart beating way faster than it had since he’d arrived in this universe.

“Look, we don’t wanna be any trouble, so we’re just gonna… head out?” the mouse king quirked his brow, reaching for the hilt of his keyblade. The creature flinched as his gloved fingers wrapped around it, but Mickey quickly sheathed it and raised his hands back in the air. “No worries, pal—nobody’s here to hurt your kids, okay?”

The Giant Flower Eater growled again, and plopped down on its nest. Its giant tongue slinked back into its mouth.

Mugen blinked. “So…”

“I think this is our cue to get the heck out of here, Mu!” Mickey whispered, spinning around and darting through some bushes into the tree line. Mugen stood for a second, staring at the giant, suddenly docile beast, until he felt the tug of a two-feet-tall mouse on the back of his pant leg. “I said let’s go!”
 

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The mouse was a plant whisperer, it seemed.

The try was a toss of the dice, for certain, but the pipsqueak wielding a key shaped sword had managed to talk the carnivorous shrubbery off the ledge.

For the time being, anyway.

This afforded the mismatched pair an opportunity Mugen was hard-pressed to ignore, but slow to recognize. The lanky ronin gaped at the now nesting Giant Flower Eater.

Mickey's gloved hand on his loose fitting pants tugged the samurai back to reality, urging him to make a retreat. In a moment of half-drunk clarity Mugen followed his cue and did a lazy about face.

"Yeah, I guess we'll head out," he murmured, his eyes peeled from the big green behemoth.

He didn't beat feet like Mickey towards the tree line but rather made an unhurried lope in its general direction. His flask performed a quicker journey to his mouth in the time it took him to catch up to the rambunctious rodent.

With their dangerous foe growing further behind them, the pair's pace fell into a matching gait. Mickey dropped back and soon they were walking as a duo through a lush and overgrown jungle the likes of which Mugen had never experienced before. He had seen tropical forests, to be certain, but nothing that could compare to this environment. The air was heavy with heat and humidity, but also with bugs larger than any he'd witnessed back home. ...wherever he'd landed, things seemed to have their own ecosystem. He wondered where he placed in that system's pecking order.

"Are you drinking again!?" came the protest to his left cracking the sounds of the forest like a whip.

Mugen realized that he had been without even noticing; he pulled the flask from his lips and shrugged.

"Didn't see any reason to stop," Mugen's arrogant tone retorted, only a little thick with a sake induced burr. "...wonder where the Hell we are."

Mickey's big eyes reflected the same thoughts but with a splash more concern. "I don't know...heck, I was hoping you might, Mu," the little guy answered, sounding somewhat disappointed.

"Not a clue," said Mugen, clambering over an enormous mossy log. "Sorry."

No clear path stood out in the tangled underbrush. A closer inspection revealed trampled areas of foliage where beasts had made their own trails. Mugen did his best to follow one of the cleanest of these; he took the lead so that he could tamp down the overgrowth a bit. That way, Mickey would have less trouble tagging along in the wake of his long stride.

They walked like this for some while - the lanky samurai didn't say much. The sake numbed some of the bristling and prickling he could feel on his shins - his pants were something more akin to shorts - from whatever he was walking through. He tried not to think about what that might be. Every once in awhile he swatted some massive bug away, and once he squished one against his forearm which left a noticeable golf ball sized splatter. He grimaced brushed off what he could of it.

"I smell something," Mugen interjected into the silence after awhile. "Smells like...something cooking. Coming from that direction -" and he pointed towards what would be the North if the sun he could see followed any of the same laws the one he knew did. "- and I bet there's a village."

"Oh boy!" Mickey shouted.

They crested a particularly thick tangle of vines and brush and managed to break free into open air - they stood on a cliff perched over another sea of forest. The treetops were visible far beneath, and out in their expanse there was a clearing that Mugen pointed out, nudging Mickey gently to follow his finger.

"I think it's coming from there," the wily eyed ronin said, salivating despite himself.

A thick plume of smoke indigenous to a campfire rose up from the clearing. From their vantage point there were visible several structures that looked as old as the forest itself in that same clearing - tents hid in the shadows of those structures. The ruinous buildings towered over the tents but looked to be overtaken by vines and had long since fallen into disrepair.

"C'mon, Ears," Mugen urged Mickey, ignoring their introduction from earlier. "Let's make our way down there."
 
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Maybe it was the mouse in him, but Mickey thrived in the woods. Not necessarily carnivorous ones like this, but jungles and forests always struck an adventurous chord within him, and he had to admit he kinda… liked it?

A certain thirst for excitement always bubbled beneath the surface of the king’s heroic persona. Yes, of course — he’d set out in the first place to save his realms from the Heartless. But couldn’t he have sent agents of the crown to do it? Couldn’t he have stuck to his more regal responsibilities, letting someone else do the dirty work? A ruler without Mickey’s penchant for excitement might’ve seen his duties to his people as more important than finding the next adventure.

As Mugen knelt a few feet away lapping up water from a crystalline stream, Mickey wondered if he’d even be in any of this mess if he hadn’t insisted on going himself.

“Not thirsty, Ears?” the samurai called, glancing over his shoulder. Mickey’s hearing was impeccable, but he’d long been zoned out, sitting cross-legged in a bed of wildflowers and wiping the dirt out of the fur of his shoeless foot. “Ears!” Mugen called again, and was once again ignored.

The man chucked his canteen in Mickey’s direction. It smacked right into the mouse’s head, breaking him from his trance. “Um, ouch, pal!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to actually hit you,” the samurai shrugged, “Just asking if you were thirsty.”

“Not for the booze,” Mickey waved off his comrade, picking up the canteen and tossing it back.

“Obviously not,” Mugen chuckled. Mickey didn’t really see the humor in the situation; it’d become clear that neither of them had any idea where the heck they were, and Mugen’s insistence on turning his brain into mush despite the impending peril baffled the mouse king.

Still, the samurai had given him no reason to mistrust. In fact, quite the opposite — jumping in and fighting alongside him, with no idea who he was, had been surprisingly… noble. Mickey thought fondly of Kenny, and wondered if he’d made it out of that crazy universe or if he’d just been sent back to the Fountain to do all the bee-ess over again.

“Oh, these are nice,” Mugen said when he turned back to the river. Out of the corner of his eye Mickey saw the man pluck something out of the stream. He assumed they were glasses of some sort as he put them on his face and turned around. “Check ‘em out, Ears!”

Mickey glanced over, still vaguely annoyed. He shot to his feet and felt an electric urgency pulse up his spine as he rushed over and snatched Blues’ sunglasses off Mugen’s face.

“I knew you’d like them,” the samurai smirked. He took another swig from his booze canteen, but Mickey couldn’t be bothered to care.

“Mu,” the mouse turned to his companion, “these are my buddy’s!”

Mickey had ever-so-briefly let Mugen know on their walk that he’d been searching for his missing best friend; of course leaving out the weird inter-dimensional travel details. He’d expected the disappearance of the preteen machine’s scarf to be the loss of his only real clue, but now the sunglasses — Blues had to be nearby.

Mickey turned and without a second thought began sprinting through the brush toward the ruined city they’d seen from above. They were close to it already, and he was sure that if he was going to find his friend, he’d find him there.

“Ears!” Mugen called after, hacking and slashing his way through the trees trying to keep up with the agile mouse. “Mickey, wait up!”

“Sorry, Mu, this is heckin’ urgent!”

The king leapt to a branch a few feet off the ground to avoid a particularly thick patch of brush; Mugen had been so gentlemanly, slicing and dicing so Mickey wouldn’t run into anything, but Mickey really did thrive in the woods. Nowhere were the capabilities of his tiny, acrobatic body more effective.

He somersaulted into a clearing, unfolding to see a huge, wooden wall rising before him. It separated the mouse from the ruined buildings and makeshift campfires he’d seen earlier, and his brow quirked as he wondered how to get past ‘em.

He didn’t have too much time to think before he’d been yanked up by his collar and felt the cold steel of a knife to his throat. Oh, brother, he thought. So now plants, the planet itself, and people were trying to kill him?

Geez Louise.

The woman who’d captured him stared into his big, mousy eyes. Dark hair fell to just above her shoulders and she wore leather armor that looked like it’d been through some rough stuff. Mickey gulped.

“Drop the mouse,” Mugen ordered, emerging a tad clumsily from the tree line and pointing his sword at the woman. She glanced, irritated, at the samurai.

“You don’t give the orders around here, Leliana does,” the mean lady hissed. “You aren’t in the jungle anymore.”

“Oh, then where exactly are we?” Mugen asked, sarcasm dripping, “because it looks pretty jungly to me.”

“And who is Lilly Anna?!” the mouse squeaked.

The woman scoffed. “Welcome to New Abraxas,” she smirked, then cocked her head. Another woman emerged suddenly from the woods, slicing at Mugen with a dagger. The samurai spun around and parried the blow barely, taking a defensive step back. Mickey’s captor turned her gaze back to the mouse. “What’s your business here, adventurer?”

Mickey glanced at Mugen, whose hand was already on his canteen ready to take another swig.

“Uhhhh, we’re thirsty,” the mouse king shrugged, flashing a bright smile at the lady. “Buddy here’s a bit of a drinker. More of a Pepsi mouse myself, pal — you got any of that stuff?”
 

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Post is inspired, in part, by the following song -

He was tired.

So unbelievably tired.

Why did he hurt so much?

He was floating in the dark… perhaps some sort of robot unconsciousness. There had been light just a little bit ago but now there was only the void. Whatever it had had been, it had destroyed him badly enough to have caused catastrophic system failures.

Continue… ? Press Any Key. The command flickered briefly among the rest of the discombobulated ‘brain-scape’.

Was he dead?

Was that even technically possible?

He was never truly human, but the unnatural aberration in his program had also made him more than just another machine.

Get up! What should have been a shout was little more than a whisper among the nothingness that enveloped him.

The boy named Blues drifted among a shapeless black nothing. Out there among the void, he could hear distorted sounds and noises that he understood to be parcels of data stored in his memory. Something had happened. A catastrophe.

Something had failed inside of him.

That something was getting worse. Data corruption on a system-wide scale. Not even a fancy evil corruption but simply the corruption that happens when you damage any old hard drive.

Continue… ?

One moment, he had been with Mickey… The mouse king was both his truest friend and the heart that Blues would never been able to have. The pair had weathered so many storms.

But they had ‘escaped’, had they not? After years of fighting the good fight against the tyrannies of some place, he recalled that they slipped free of those chains of bondage. They had won. They had been tired and worn, but they had escaped.

Escaped where?

The files that floated among the void were damaged. Too damaged. They were staccato images and barely discernable screeches that could not justifiably qualify as sound. Blues could see flashes of himself. Flashes of Mick…



…flashes of a mouse of some kind. With a key?

Continu… ?

Why? The journey was over, was it not?

Blues struggled to gather himself. He felt that whatever nugget… whatever semblance of himself that floated among this prison of nothing was coming unraveled. If he lost himself for just one moment, he understood that the story would be over.

We were done. The story’s final chapter had been written. The heroes had escaped.

Contiu?

Why? In the darkness, there was peace. His last images had been of—

A crash?

Was I alone?

Cont-?

He knew how this story would play out. This had happened already. Strange new world. Endless turmoil. An endless fight against endless evils. He knew what was in store for him if he executed that pleading command.

Why?

Why go through all of that again? More years of struggle… more years of people hating you for your decisions. More years of people second-guessing what you believe and painting you as a monster? More years of betrayal and vice?

For what?

The memories were too corrupted. There were just grainy images. Ears. Distorted people of various shapes and sizes and too many of them with goofy, non-human ears. Soon even the broken recollections had receded into the void that slowly surged toward him.

“What would he do?”

Was that his voice? Did he really sound like that? So powerless?

“If… it was up to you, and you knew that you would lose…”

Would ‘he’ continue? The key? The key with the ears?

“If it was up to him… I know.”

“He’d always choose… to continue.”

***​

The three hunters had since passed on the assorted pieces of robotic trash to a collector in New Abraxas.

In the back corner of one of Dr. Jones’ many storage rooms, a solitary red light flickered to life.
 

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-~-

There was a woman. Once there was, and it felt longer ago than it was in reality, but she stood with a child's hand in hers in distant memory. Her eyes were rimmed with tears and she stood before a great wooden wall, a mewling babe at her leg, and she pled with a tall and strong man. That man held her hand - the hand that wasn't clutching that of her babe - and he held it in both of his as if it were a gem too precious to ever let go of.

At his back there were flames licking at the sky that rose from a forest razed. From the maw of that forest there emerged armored men on horseback. Whether there were hundreds or thousands the woman never observed. Her husband released her hand with a forlorn smile and turned to rejoin a small rank and file battalion that stood against the encroaching army.

His wife retreated into the tall oaken walls of her city with little Mugen's hand in hers.

For the next few weeks the folk in the town whispered among themselves...if they saw her in the street walking with a babe in her arms she was a figure to give pity. After all, she'd lost her husband to the siege.


-~-

Years later, when folk watched the boy with the wild hair and dark eyes walking through the streets, scrounging for a crust they also had pity. After all, he had lost his mother to consumption, and he was just a boy.

-~-

When they saw him in the streets in his teens walking by the side of bolder and brasher boys they had no pity, however. He carried a blade, then. All the folk were hungry, then. Pity was no longer a commodity worth trading. No one had any left to give - they hoarded it for themselves instead.

The siege had lasted a long time at that point and there was little food to go around. Their pity had exhausted itself and Mugen found himself out in the labor colonies upon one crust theft too many - that's where he gained his blue wristband tattoos, and his matching blue anklet tattoos. ...that was where society's pity had gotten him.




---



Standing outside of the oaken walls of the encampment with the would-be captor's dagger forcing itself towards him, his lanky body wove away from it in deft but conservative movements. It seemed his body was attuned to bobs and weaves...maybe he was used to evading attacks.

The samurai's dark eyes were locked on the walls and their gate. When the knife stopped moving his way, he stopped moving too, and his hand found its way instinctively towards the flask at his hip. He was ready to take another swig. Faintly, he heard Mickey making excuses. It took a little while for Mugen to remember that the mouse was clutched in the arms of a guard...he was too busy having pity. Pity for the woman who in the back of his sake addled mind he could recall walking back towards oaken walls much like these.

He swigged the flask, and as he did so, the guard before him seemed to realize the kind of man he was and sheathed her dagger accordingly.

"Yeah," Mugen barked back, snapping back to reality. The memory was rough to relive. "We're here for a drink. "Booze, and Pep-C, or whatever the mouse said."

His cheeks were vivaciously rouge enough to give credit to the fib.

Hell, maybe it wasn't even a fib. He needed more sake soon at the rate he was depleting it.

The woman with the shoulder length raven hair who'd held Mickey exchanged glances with the other guard on watch and released the half-deposed Mouse King. Mugen was swaying enough to make them credible - it was obvious he sought drink. The samurai gave Mickey a significant look as he approached the mouse, and gave a nod.

"This way," spoke the raven haired woman. "Keep your weapons sheathed."

She nodded to the duo, who sheathed their respective blades and followed her into the encampment.

"...you need to be more cautious," Mugen murmured to His Royal Rodent Highness, swigging his flask ironically. "You ran us into an ambush. If you want to find your friend...we're going to need to be more-"

The ronin tripped a bit on his own sandle, but corrected himself mid-stumble and regained his swaggering lope. Both guards shot him angry glares.

"-subtle," finished the samurai without noticing the attention he'd garnered.

Mickey's eyes rested on his for a little while.

"Oh, brother," Mick mumbled to himself. "You need to get yourself together, Mu."

At this point they were on a dirt path that wove through a populated encampment. Huts and tents were thrown hither and thither with many low ranking camp followers milling about. Many of their eyes were on Mugen, who realized at this point that he'd spent most of his morning and afternoon drinking sake. He flashed a winsome grin and continued walking conspicuously in the wake of Mickey and the two guards. They made their way towards the center of the town, where, if they were lucky there may be a town square of some sort or a central hub where they could try and gain information. ...or maybe even a bar!

 

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As they approached the center of ‘town’ — if that’s what you could call this ramshackle array of tents and hijacked ruins — Mickey kept his eyes peeled for any sight of Blues. Sunglasses clutched tightly in one of his gloved hands, he scanned the hub of activity for the preteen machine, and perked up his ears to listen to the passersby.

“Yeah, we lost another one out there yesterday.”

“Did you hear about the comet heading straight for the Crossroads?”

Mouse!

Mickey blinked back to reality at the booming call of their dark-haired guide. He glanced up with a lopsided smile and straightened up to listen to her next set of instructions.

“The canteen is that way,” she gestured with a slight nod of her head. Mickey and Mugen’s gaze snapped toward the cramped-looking ruin, a worn banner hanging over the door that read 'Abraxas Alks.' Mickey’s brow furrowed; undoubtedly this ‘canteen’ was more of a tavern than a mess hall.

“Nice,” Mugen nodded, immediately sauntering off in that direction. The two guards headed off in the other direction, seemingly content to leave their charges to waste away in a den of drink.

“Hey, lady,” Mickey called after the lead guard, “what exactly is the Crossroads?”

She stopped in her tracks and glanced over her shoulder. Mugen, too, looked back at Mickey with some level of concern, but the Mouse King waved him off, giving him a look that said ‘I’ll catch up later.’ Hesitantly, Mugen skipped off in the direction of the canteen, and Mickey fixed his gaze on the guardwoman. She turned, regarded Mickey curiously for a moment, then tilted her head slightly. Her companion lunged for the mouse, who unsheathed his keyblade and batted the assassin’s dagger away. An unsneakered foot landed squarely in the woman’s stomach, sending her careening backwards onto her butt.

Mickey turned back to the leader and quickly knelt down, dropping his weapon and putting his two gloved hands in the air.

“I’m a peaceful mouse, lady, I ain’t here to fight,” he said calmly, “I just wanna know where the heck I am.”

She scowled, looking him over. “So you’re telling me you have no idea what the Crossroads are?”

Mickey shrugged. “Nope.”

“Well, mouse,” she sighed deeply, “that’s troubling. Because you’re in the Crossroads.”

* * *​

The other guard confiscated Mickey’s weapon as the leader, who introduced herself as Ravenna, a lieutenant in a guild run by some hotshot named Lilly Anna, led the Mouse King back to her office. He settled into a pretty uncomfy wooden chair as Ravenna slid into the seat behind her desk.

“This is… disconcerting,” she pursed her lips. “Leliana will want to be alerted of this immediately—”

Mickey reached out and snatched the two-way radio from the desk before Ravenna could get her hands on it. “Look, pal,” he paused her, “you just told me I landed in a completely unfamiliar galaxy on a planet that’s literally trying to eat everyone here. Maybe give me a few secs to get my bearings before we call in big bad Lilly Anna, huh?”

Ravenna’s eyes narrowed, but then she sunk back into her chair, allowing it.

From what Mickey could tell, his inter-dimensional trip had taken quite the wrong turn. He’d never been big on monsters, but he had to admit that landing on this Kraw place was perhaps the unluckiest development he could’ve imagined. He was glad that this settlement existed, for sure, but for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why anyone would intentionally habitate on a hungry planet trying to make any invasive species its next meal. Also, like — could the name be any scarier? Kraw?! Geez Louise.

According to Ravenna, Mickey wasn’t necessarily the first out-of-galaxy refugee to pop up in the Crossroads, but he was certainly the first she’d snagged herself. It seemed like a stressful burden, as she struck a match and lit a calming candle on a nearby bookshelf. The firelight flickered and bounced off her olive skin, complementing the streaks of sunlight that peeked in through the cracks in the ruined building.

“And you have no idea how you ended up here?” Ravenna asked, tossing the match into the garbage.

“Nope,” the keyblade master shrugged.

“Hm,” the assassin crossed her arms, “infuriating.”

“Psh, you’re telling me, pal!” Mickey threw his arms up, frustratedly. “One second me and my buddy are together, and the next I’m getting mousehandled by some very mean trees. And my buddy’s nowhere to be found.”

“So when you say ‘buddy’ you’re not talking about the drunk samurai?”

“You thought he was drunk too?! I thought maybe I was being a prude!” Mickey leaned forward. “But no — not him. He’s cool and all, but I came here… I think… with my buddy Blues. He’s a robot.”

Ravenna blinked. “Charming.”

She brushed her hair out of her face, revealing pointy ears that reminded Mickey of Mireya.

He stared for a few moments at her slender, smooth complexion, thinking back to the elf woman who’d accompanied Blues when they first met. Where was she now? What catastrophe was striking that he and Blues wouldn’t be there to help avert? Would Minnie be able to offer her assistance?

His heart sunk into his stomach. Would he ever see his lady love again? He already thought he’d lost her once — was it for real this time? Was he trapped in a completely different universe with no possible hope of finding his wife? And what about his friends? Blues was here somewhere, it seemed, but the likelihood anyone else had followed along was low.

He closed his eyes for a second, trying to picture their faces, but even that was fuzzy.

Red hair. On two different girls. It was striking, but hazy in his memory for whatever reason.

Orange armor. A dusty old coat.

Golden hair flowing in the wind, sunlight bouncing with a glimmer off of a matching breastplate.

He clutched his temples, the memories piecing together and fading at the same time. He glanced up at Ravenna, who seemed to have taken note of the mouse’s condition and looked increasingly concerned. “You’ve been out in the wilds for a while, you said,” she nodded, standing up. “But you’re a guest of New Abraxas now, and I think it’s high time you hydrate and get some food. I’ll take you back to your friend at the canteen. First meal’s on me.”

She helped Mickey out of the chair, placing her elvish hand on his shoulder as they walked out of the room. Mickey’s gait was a little lopsided, but not from the headache or hydration problems.

“...and on the way we’ll get you some new shoes.”
 

Jester Lavorre

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While his Royal Highness Mickey Mouse was getting his debriefing on location, Mugen had found his way to the local watering hole.

He walked in, his eyes proprietary, and let his eyes flick from person to person in the room. They were a mixed bag: soldiers, a few book-nerd looking types, and folks who could pass for civilians who probably served a smattering of functions in this town-meets-encampment. The tables at the back of the tavern held the surlier looking unsavory types, while the less seasoned casual folk seemed to cluster closer to the actual bar counter itself.

Mugen made his way to the back of the bar and chose a dimly lit and unoccupied booth, where he planted his hike-tired ass and let out a sigh of contentment. It wasn't long before a tavern wench found her way to him with trained waitress' efficiency. She deftly maneuvered a maze of tables and arrived at his booth with a friendly smile and a low-laced bodice. ...Mugen's type of lady.

"Sake, watered down," Mugen stated, realizing that even he had limits which he was likely rapidly approaching. "And tell me, girly...where the Hell am I?"

When the name of the locale rang no bells, Mugen teased the same general story as Mickey had from his escorts from the waitress.; though he had lost little in the transition from one universe to the next, and didn't react very strongly to the news. He'd put down no roots and had no family left back in Japan...there were a couple folks he used to travel with a few years ago, but it had been awhile. Yeah, altogether, Mugen figured this was as fine a place as any for him. He took the sake he had delivered to him and leaned back in his booth where he was content to doze for what may have been a few minutes or a few hours.

He awoke to the bar wench from earlier gently jostling him.

"Mister? Excuse me, Mister?" she asked, looking concerned.

"Huh? Whawasyernameagain?" Mugen asked groggily, his words running together. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned. "Beatrice?"

"...it's Anna," she corrected, frowning.

"Right. Anna. Say, bring me some salmon, would ya? And a hot bowl of rice," he snapped his fingers. "Chop chop, eh, girly?"

He waited at his booth for his food and for his travelling companion, wondering how long he could keep ordering things with no money in his pockets. He eyed his ornate katana leaned half-assedly against the table in front of him and had to remind himself that fighting his way out of the tavern or even dining and dashing might burn some bridges he'd only just started to build.

The vagrant wondered idly how much coin Mickey was carrying, but quickly forgot all thoughts of money as his food was brought out from the bag. He eyed the salmon, rice, and Anna's low bodice salaciously. A low growl emitted from his stomach, reminding Mugen that it had been a long time since his last proper meal. He couldn't really remember a meal he hadn't eaten on the road, in fact. Hunting, trapping, and fishing had been a way of life for the low-life samurai for time immemorial. When that had failed, he was quicker to steal than he was to beg. Better to dine and dash than face the scornful eyes of a world that thought it was above him.

His wild rimmed eyes portrayed the truth of it - Mugen didn't think anyone was above him. He valued his independence and freedom above all else, and that was one of the key reasons that he rarely held a steady job aside from a few sellsword gigs. It wouldn't be long before someone in town noticed his talents, either, and he landed another job as some figurehead's muscle. That's how it always went with him in places like this.

Pushing the inevitable from his mind, the hungry swordsman tucked into his meal.
 

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Mugen devoured the last bites of his salmon and rice just as Mickey Mouse plopped into the seat across the way from him.

“He’s suddenly a bit weary from your journey,” Ravenna nodded to the samurai. Mickey looked up at his companion and flashed a thumbs up in his direction before leaning his head back against the booth and shutting his eyes. Mugen looked up at Ravenna, who let out a heavy sigh. “I’ll get Anna to whip him up something quickly.”

The sounds of silverware clinking against Mugen’s dish, signaling the conclusion of his meal, startled the mouse king just enough to jolt him back to consciousness.

“Hey, no, it’s good, keep sleeping,” Mugen smirked. “I just took a catnap myself.”

Mickey flinched at the mention of cats. He’d had plenty of feline friends over the years, but hey, instinct was instinct.

“Nah, fella, no time to slow down,” the mouse groggily shook his head, “gotta… find Blues.”

Mugen observed his diminutive partner. They’d spoken in fits and starts on the journey from the Flower Eater’s nest to New Abraxas, but Mickey had been hesitant to open up to the samurai. He’d been hesitant, really, to let anything about this new world sink in. He’d been through this all before, tossed this way and that throughout the multiverse, and every time he’d resisted the change. He’d spent so much time in his last universe just trying to get home, only really leaning in near the end of his stay. He wondered if it would be so bad to just… try and live this time.

“So,” he said, his whole body trembling just a bit.

Was he gonna jump in? Was he gonna let it happen?

“Where do we go from here?”

Mugen’s lips curled into a smile. The samurai had seemed much less pressed about their new locale from the jump. He’d had a casual, affable air about him since he and the mouse had stumbled upon each other, an existential relaxation that Mickey wanted to master real, real bad.

“I dunno, Ears,” he leaned back, resting his arms behind his head. “I say we start by looking for your friend, yeah? If he’s here, he's probably looking for you, too.”

Mickey nodded. He hoped Blues was safe enough to try and find him, but he had a gut feeling his best friend needed more than a little help.

“After that? Well, I’m not sure about you,” the samurai chuckled, “but for me… I go where the work leads me, y’know?” He took a swig of his sake. “Where the coin is, that’s where I am.”

“I go wherever I’m needed,” Mickey shrugged. It was true: he made a habit of searching for trouble he could subdue.

“The man who needs you most, pays the most,” Mugen three a finger gun in Mickey’s direction. The mouse tried to muster up a smile back. He’d admit that for someone who should probably be spending more time in rehab than swinging a sword, he was growing to… enjoy the boy’s presence.

Something about Mugen read a little bit lost, too. Not unlike the mouse himself — albeit maybe for altogether different reasons. Mickey had a home he’d always been trying to get back to, and his distance from that was what had always plagued him, made him feel so desperately adrift. Mugen, if Mickey was reading him right, had never really had something like that in the first place… or at least hadn’t for a while before being dropped off in the Crossroads.

“Well, either way,” Mickey leaned forward, “I’m not tryina’ settle down on a planet that’s actually tryin’ to eat me, pal.”

Mugen let out a hearty laugh. “Can’t blame ya, Ears.”

Mickey smiled as a plate appeared in front of him. He looked up at Ravenna, then down at the big turkey leg, home fries, block of cheese, and glass of milk in front of him.

“Eat up, Mouse,” the onyx-haired elf commanded, sliding a chair up to the end of their table. Mickey swore he saw her stifling a smile.

“Holy heck, yum!”
 

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Mugen made a point of making sure not to watch folks eat, though he cast a glance Mickey's way when he began to eat the cheese on his plate. There was a sort of cosmic satisfaction to watching an anthropomorphic mouse eat a block of cheese that was too good to pass up. Smirking to himself, Mugen sipped his sake and let out a tiny satisfied sigh indiscernible over the low din of bar patrons' chattering and the clattering of plates delivered to their respective tables.

The smell was enticing, as well. Something about tavern food served up for whatever road weary and bone sore traveler that blew into town made any watering hole feel something close to home to Mugen.

But not quite.

It was an interesting thing to watch keyblade toting rodent loosen up over the course of their adventure. Bemused protestations over his boozing from the get-go had painted ol' Mickey as an uptight sort to Mugen. Usually he didn't mesh with those types of folk, but as time and miles passed behind them it became evident that there was more to this big eared short stack than met the eye. Despite their differences, the sake-swilling samurai was growing fond of his new companion.

The elf in the chair nearby, however...not so much. Authority rubbed the rebellious ronin the wrong way and it wasn't his style to break bread with persons of power. In this instance, however, he decided that he would give Mickey Mouse a chance to prove himself as a judge of character.

"You know about any work around here?" Mugen asked, casting his dark eyes Ravenna's way. He leaned back proprietorially in his seat, looking arrogant and imposing when he addressed the elf. "I've got no coin to foot this bill, and I don't plan on rolling up my sleeves and doing dishes anytime soon."

Ravenna studied the ronin carefully before answering. It was a look he was used to - Mugen got the same look from most figures of authority. They didn't like him, because they could tell he didn't like them. Not too mention that he reeked of trouble and sake.

"...there's always honest work around New Abraxas," Ravenna offered cautiously. She'd warmed to Mickey, it seemed, but was visibly wary of Mugen. "Failing that, someone with your particular...charms...and level of intoxication might find bounty work. Monsters or deserters, specifically."

Mugen didn't rise to the slight, but smirked in response. His thin lips made a slash across his jawline that punctuated his red flushed complexion wildly.

"Bounty work, eh? Sounds like just the thing-"

"There's one other thing," Ravenna interrupted. "A comet coming into the system, that serves as a harbinger of challenge for those willing to take the risk. Rumor has it, anyway. It's hard to confirm the whispers on the street, sometimes, but intel points towards this being legitimate. ...it's a battle royale of sorts, and a survival competition that pits those confident or desperate enough to rise to the call against one another."

Mugen's eyes lit up at that. Survival and slaying were towards the top of his list of marketable skills, so this sounded like a lucrative opportunity to him. He could practically hear the jangle of coins heavy in his coin purse at the notion of it.

"...well, Mickey?" Mugen offered, looking at his new companion. "How does that sound to you? ...something like that...maybe your friend will turn up there, eh? If there's a way there from here, it might be a good rendezvous point."

Running a hand through his shock of brown hair, Mugen gave the mouse what was as close to a winsome grin as he could offer. He was definitely trying to persuade his friend into this.

Ravenna was looking curiously at Mickey, too, who looked from one companion to the other with big eyes., the bare bone of his turkey leg in hand.

This would definitely test the mouse's newfound appreciation for loosening up.
 

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Battle royale. Survival competition. Those phrases alone were enough to make the mouse’s fur stand on end and his jaw go slack. His eyes glazed over and half-eaten turkey hung out of his mouth as his two companions glanced his way, waiting patiently for his opinion on the… exciting prospect.

Sweet flippin’ hecksickle, goshdangit.

Mickey broke the silence by dropping the turkey bone unceremoniously back on the plate, sliding quickly out of the booth, and scurrying away. Mugen and Ravenna blinked as he passed through the swinging doors of Abraxas Alks and back into the humid Kraw air. Very little of that air passed through his lungs as he borderline hyperventilated in the middle of this ‘town.’

It couldn’t be, right? There was absolutely no way that this multiverse had the exact same battle royale death tournament that his last one did. Then again, it was already pretty coincidental that this universe shared the concept of a battle royale death tournament in the first place, so Mickey decided he wouldn’t be too shocked to discover that the ol’ purple suit himself had set up shop here. In fact… it might actually make… more sense, in a weird way? After all, if whatever happened in the Dante Verse really was responsible for dropping him and, ostensibly, Blues off here, who’s to say it hadn’t ripped a hole in the space-time continuum large enough to suck up Karl Jak, too?

For the first time since he’d laid eyes on the flamboyant host all those years ago, Mickey Mouse regarded the idea of reuniting with Jak not with immense dread, but with hope. Not ‘hope’ that Karl would have magically turned into a good person or somehow have a way to get back to his previous universe — no, Mickey hadn’t been here long but even with flesh-eating plants and a missing best friend he preferred this — but ‘hope’ that, just maybe, something or someone familiar could offer him some insight into where the heck he was and what the heck he was supposed to do here.

Well, frick. Had he just talked himself into joining Dante’s Abyss? ...again?

“Mickey!” Mugen called. The mouse looked up at his companion. “You okay, dude? You kinda… bolted for a second there.”

Mickey blinked for a moment. Should he tell Mugen the truth?

“Fine,” he nodded, “I’m just fine, fella, thanks.”

“You sure? You were… really up and outta there.”

“Yep!” Mickey grinned, leaping off the ground and plopping down squarely on Mugen’s shoulder. “I just don’t like violence, s’all,” he lied, rustling the samurai’s already messy mop of hair, “but I thought about it, and it sounds fun! We should see what it’s about, at least.”

Mugen regarded the mouse curiously, and for a second, Mickey wondered if his pal could see through his façade. He’d always been such a bad liar.

He had no reason to tell Mugen anything about his past experiences with Dante’s Abyss, though. He liked the boy, but he’d just met him — never mind the fact that he was in a whole new world. Why should he trust the samurai or, really, anyone or anything else here? And why rehash things from his previous universe now? The familiarity of Karl Jak and Dante’s Abyss was — Mickey hated to admit — comforting, but if he was going to take a new lease on life and really lean into trying to thrive here for the time being, then there was no reason to dwell on those traumatic tourneys.

Besides, the one thing he did want to grasp onto from his life before — the missing-in-action preteen machine — might show up, so thinking too hard about how awful the last two times had been might dissuade him from taking further steps to find his best friend.

Sat atop Mugen’s shoulder, the mouse decided once and for all that even if he couldn’t trust it yet, he was gonna give this world a shot.

Well; maybe another world that wasn’t trying to eat him, but this universe nonetheless.

Kraw’s copious canopy already cast dark shadows throughout New Abraxas, but a quick look through the breaks in the trees revealed night was falling on the hungry planet. Abraxas Alks was still buzzing, but around the unlikely pair, monster hunters and more lady guards like Ravenna and her posse started to fill the ‘streets’ of the city, heading into their nightly retirement from the thrill of the hunt.

Ravenna led Mickey and Mugen to some spare accommodations in the guard barracks, and after the ronin had shuffled off to his room to, presumably, sleep or drown himself further in sake, Mickey plopped down on the extremely uncomfy cot. He scowled and, much to his surprise, Ravenna chuckled.

“It’s no Arcadia hotel, certainly,” she shrugged.

“Arcadia?” Mickey questioned, idly.

She quirked an eyebrow. “You really aren’t from around here, then,” she nodded. “Another city, on another planet. I miss it.”

Mickey looked up and could see a little twinkle in the guard captain’s eyes. Tears?

“Your home?” he asked. She didn’t speak, but just leaned in the doorway, looked away from the mouse, and after a few moments, nodded. Sensing she didn’t like his eyes on him, Mickey averted his gaze and let out a deep sigh. “Yeah,” he said, “I miss my home too.”

It’d been so long he didn’t even know if he could call it home anymore.

“Guess this is home now though, huh?” he mused, almost to himself, yet still loud enough for Ravenna to hear. “Or at least… it could be.”

Ravenna looked back over at the mouse. She rarely felt so intrigued by new visitors, but something about him… it must’ve spoken to her, hit her in the right place, because she found herself warming up to the former King faster than she’d warmed up to anything in a long time.

...should she tell him she knew where his friend was?

She stepped into the small barracks quarters and sat on a corner of his bed. He looked up at her, a big stupid smile on his face. “I… I’m glad I didn’t slit your throat, Mouse.”

“You and me both, sister,” Mickey giggled.

“I — I should tell you something,” she started. Her eyes shifted away from the King’s, who sat up in anticipation.

“Ravenna.” The elf’s name came from the doorway, from a new voice Mickey hadn’t heard, and when he looked up, a woman with striking auburn hair, an intense yet soft expression, and a long, charcoal grey cloak stood in the doorframe. The cloak made it kinda difficult to tell, but Mickey thought he saw… a little harp tucked under her arm?

“Leliana,” the onyx-haired elf replied, standing abruptly.

So this was Lilly Anna!

“Night patrol’s about to start,” Lilly Anna smiled. “You and me tonight, yes?”

Ravenna nodded hurriedly; Mickey couldn’t tell if she was nervous or excited to see her superior, though the mouse had already decided that she liked the woman, if she was willing to go out and do some of the grunt work protecting this settlement herself. A good leader never made anyone do anything they wouldn’t just as readily do themselves; that’d always been his philosophy.

“Yes, ma’am,” Ravenna affirmed with a tiny smile, biting her lip ever so slightly. If Mickey’d had eyebrows, he’d have raised one at that.

“Then off we go,” Lilly Anna gestured out the door, then turning to Mickey. “So sorry to steal her from you, Master Mouse.”

“Psh,” Mickey vocalized, waving them off. Ravenna nodded a curt, silent goodbye to him, and then scurried off out the door. Lilly Anna followed close behind, humming something low under her breath as she proceeded down the hall.

When the women were fully gone, Mickey stretched his arms into the air and snuggled up as much as he could in this uncomfy bed, plopping down on the pillow and opening his eyes to take in this whole new world one last time for the day. It was then he noticed something lying on the bed in front of his face: a tiny, chipped piece of pinkish-red armor. He sat up.

Had Ravenna dropped it? Or left it here on purpose? He picked it up and turned it over. On the inside, wiring weaves every which way and at the top — well, part of the word was cut off, but inscribed in the top corner:

Proto.

He enclosed the chip of armor in his gloved fist.

So Blues was here.

Wary all over again about everyone he’d met since arriving in this galaxy, he slowly slid back under the covers and laid his head down on the deflated pillow.

The next adventure really was just getting started.
 
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