Yes, I know. It took me a while. But... I guess it's here. If there's anyone out there still reading this (and I can think of relatively few people who are) then I hope you aren't too annoyed with me for taking so damned long. Life has been... complicated, and you know what fandom favouritism is like.

We're approaching the end, now, I guess.

Chapter Eleven: Broken World.

Outside the Shield. The Disintegrating Wasteland.

There was a lot of yellow out here.

This was the first thing that Lady Illusion became aware of as her teleport spliced away and left them standing there, on a small patch of solid ground outside of the Haunted House. (Outside. They'd passed through the shield and were still alive. She supposed that was a good sign.) Mark let go of her arm almost the instant they reappeared, and stepped away from her.

In the store in the human dimension, where she had worked for a while, there had been a glass display in which shards of coloured crystal protruded from a field of pale sand. She had stared at it repeatedly from beneath a row of wind chimes, the changing daylight casting flickers of colour through the painted glass. She had found the light show they created distracting and uncomfortable.

If she could compare the vista before them now to anything, the closest she could have come to it would have been that display. Fragments of the world that once was were jutting out of a molasses- thick nothingness: thorny strands of what had once been Except that nothingness should have no thickness, much less be the same yellow colour as the core of a sun. The fragments of world drifted like unanchored islands, or span weightlessly through the air above them. Occasionally they collided with each other in the air, shattering and dissolving at each other's touch. Capricorn trees were twisting in between the remnants of a merry go round pony with the body of a skeleton. It appeared to be floating in the yellowness before them, but somehow, she knew that there was nothing of it beneath the surface. It was not simply sinking into the thick yellowness –it's becoming a part of it. And then there was the air, which smelled of nothing in particular –which was wrong, she thought, it should smell of something at least.

The Virus regarded the sky. His expression gave away neither his reaction to the sight before them, nor his current state of mind. The other boy, Chuck, was rubbing his hands together and hunching his shoulders, his laptop clutched in one arm. In anyone else, such a stance would be one of fear and confusion. In him, it was the closest he got to courageous. And Mark was...

Well. Mark wasn't used to anything. As usual. He was also the first of them to speak.

'...Oh, hell.'

'Not quite,' Lady Illusion said, though in truth, she thought that she could see a fraction of a statue nearby that was once a part of the gateway to White Hot Oblivion. 'Hell would be less... yellow.'

'Your definition of hell, you mean,' Mark muttered, and when Lady Illusion glanced his way, he pretend not to notice.

'Dude, forget about hell, we're talking Oblivion here... Evangelion has nothing on this crap,' Chuck muttered.

Lady Illusion blinked. 'I beg your pardon?'

'Evangelion, man,' Chuck swallows, his voice cracking as he tries to hold onto the subject. 'As in Neon Genesis? As in "that crazy Japanese stuff, where everyone turns into tang at the end"? It's a movie. Ya have to see it for yourself... Trust me, though, that tang stuff is exactly what we're looking at right now.'

'I hated that movie,' Mark mutters, wrinkling his nose in disgust. 'I don't know why I let you make me watch it.'

'Just broadening your horizons, dude. Maybe it'll come in useful now, huh? How did Shinji avoid the tang, again?'

'I have no idea, Chuck, I stopped paying attention about a third of the way through.'

Lady Illusion did not even pretend to understand what they were talking about. Mortals...

'Oh. Well... least we're not dead already. That's a start,' Chuck said, in what he clearly thought was an optimistic tone of voice. 'And... and I think we can walk here. I mean, there's a lot more...solid ground out there than I thought there'd be.'

'If it's solid ground,' Random stated, plainly. He was correct. There was no saying that the stretches of island before them were as solid as they appeared to be. Lady Illusion watched as a stone tower in the air disintegrated when it touched against an old Ferris wheel cart.

Mark said nothing for a moment. He glimpsed over his shoulder, back at the filament green wall of the shield protecting the Haunted House. There was no going back now. The shield would not allow them through; and anyhow, Lord Fear was back there... She could see the mortal taking a deep breath as he attempted to summarise the situation. Somebody had to do something. Say something. He thought it ought to be him, and perhaps he's right – it is, after all, because of him that they are out here.

She found it... unnerving, that she knew so easily what he was thinking. 'So where do we go?'

'I thought that was your department,' Random muttered quietly. 'We're out here because of you. I presumed you had a direction in mind.'

'Oh, great, so no pressure then.'

'Can't deny it, dude, this is your joyride.' Chuck said, shrugging. 'I thought you said you knew where we were going.

'It's not a joyride.' Mark muttered. 'And I do know where we're going, I... I know what's out there, I'm just not sure how to get to it.'

'Well we should think of a way,' Random muttered. 'I'm pretty sure the platform we're standing on just decreased in width and length. We shouldn't stay here for too long.'

'To the south, perhaps,' Lady Illusion puts in. She wants to give Random no reason to change, and the faster, and less indecisive they are about things, the less of a possibility that becomes.

Mark looked at her askance. 'Yeah... that feels about right. It is that way, isn't it?'

The world itself could rise up and swallow them at any moment, Lady Illusion told herself... The very air felt as if it could destroy them... and yet the boy was right: Lady Illusion could feel the pulling, deep down in the base of her spine. 'It's as good a direction as any.'

'Then that's the way we're going.' Mark said.

And so they moved.

The Kent Brothers Carnival, Conestoga Hills.

'So the way I see's it? The Boss has done a bunk on us.' The Rat picked something from between his teeth and observed his enthralled audience. Well, okay, maybe not enthralled audience, but he was pretty sure they were at least listening to him. Though Duff lookeds about ready to drop off, Pigface was rooting through almost-empty garbage cans, and Anvil was... muttering to himself again.

He'd been muttering to himself for quite a while now. Probably trying to remember his own name or something.

'Yeah, that's the truth... he's skedaddled back to the Sixth Dimension, an' he's left us to fend 'fer ourselves here. Ain't that gratitude for ya? I told ya, guys, I told ya that Lightning Knight was gonna have a bad affect on him. Ol' Staffy knew it, I knew it, Duff here knew it, didn't ya, Duff?'

'Uh? Oh yeah, sure, sure... Yeah, crystal clear it was,' Duff, muttered without looking up from the mortal magazine he was supposed to be reading. 'Bunk, yeah... that's what he's done. Headed for the hills.'

'Right. So I think to myself about it, and I tell myself "Ratty, that ain't right. It's been four days here; four freaking days an' not a hide nor hair (metaphorically speakin' you understand) from our so called "Lord" of Fear – Phah!' He spat. 'An even if he ain't just upped sticks and abandoned us, this ain't the way that your mostly-usually loyal minion types should be treated. After all those years of service? After all we sacrificed? After busting our butts for years tryin' to take out those Knights for him day after day, year after year? He just up an' elopes with the freakin' enemy... S'just like Clarice did to Bob last week, is what it is. Tragic.'

Duff looked up from his magazine. 'Clarice? Bob? Who the heck are they?'

'Oh, they're the guys on the magic box; it's some daytime show. You wouldn't know it, Duffy; it's real high brow entertainment. Anyway what I'm sayin' is that that bag of bones doesn't deserve our loyalty!'

'Yeah, and that's probably why he ain't ever gotten it.'

'Aw, pipe it down, Mortal.' Dirty Rat sniffed. 'What do your types know anyway?'

'I know you tried to overthrow the guy on at least two occasions.' Duff said dryly. 'An' you usually dragged me along with ya. Say what ya like, Ratty, but unless you suddenly turn out to be great friends with Kilobyte and he starts seeming real eager to follow ya, then I'm not getting involved in any of your crazy schemes. I like my Carnival – and my face – the way it is, an if Fear comes back and figures you've been rebelling against him again, there's gonna be trouble. .' Duff ruffled the magazine and went back to reading it.

Stupid mortals...

'You know what your problem is, Duff? You're too set in yer ways. We're free, independent beings, an' we don't like bein taken for granted. So what I thinks we should do is we start bringin' in some business around here all on our own...'

'Ohhhh no.'

'...Seein' what we can do about getting rid of that grubby old Ferris wheel and bringing in some new, top model stuff. The life of a minion ain't really for me, you know... deep down I always knew that I was a businessman, born to lead from the... hey, hey, get yer head outta there, Piggy, I ain;t finished with that yet!'

Pigface's head withdrew from the Birdcage. Or at least, it withdrew most of the way,– his snout became jammed and he ended up waving it around his head, smashing it against a nearby trashcan until it dented.

...Oh, what a remarkable and terrible army of evil this gathering was, Dirty Rat thought acerbically. They were definitely suited to the business world. 'Hey, hey!Awww hell, Pigface, I ain't even finished payin' for that yet. Was you even listenin' to me?'

'...Uh-huh. Pigface like cotton candy. There be cotton candy in big business?'

'Uh... yeah. Right. Sure. All the cotton candy ya can eat, Piggy.' Not exactly the brightest of potential employees, but damn it if they wouldn't be easy to keep happy. And anyway with Lightning and Fear and all those other little annoyances out of the way, maybe he could handle things just fine alone without the need for help of some dumb overfed hog, an under washed mortal, and an anvil head...

...Who was still muttering to himself and staring off into nothing. 'Yo! Hey Anvil, what's keeping yer head in the clouds over there anyways?'

Anvil didn't answer. The huge, dense creature kept staring up into the air, as if enthralled by something no one else could see.

'Oh he's been staring off into space like that all morning,' Duff muttered, yawning. 'I figure he's real deep in thought or something.'

'Huh. Yeah. Anvil. Deep in thought. Totally gonna happen. Hey, Anvil! Wake up, ya big galoot!' Still nothing. Anvil kept staring up into the air with nary a blink and... Actually, it was kind of creepy. Anvil didn't do deep thoughts. Hell, Anvil barely did conscious thought, and even that was on a good day, and after someone had promised him the bones of a Lightning Knight to crunch on if he did as he was told.

...Of course, Anvil hadn't had anybody to beat up for a while. Maybe he was suffering from deprivation related stress, or something. Dirty Rat ran out of patience and threw a conveniently placed magazine ("Hey, I was reading that!") at the creature's head. 'Hoi! Blockhead! Over here!'

The bump on anvil's head seemed to have the desired effect. At least for a moment. Anvil shook his head, blinked several times, and turned to look at the Rat with a slow, surprised stare. He said something in a mumble too low to hear.

'What? We can't hear ya, big guy, you'll have to speak up.' Duff said, leaning closer so that he could hear what Anvil was saying. Dirty Rat leant closer too, in spite of himself.

'...Anvil hear... noises.'

'Ya hear what?' Dirty Rat backed off and looked around. 'There ain't any noises here, unless ya count the cogs whirring in this magnificent brain of mine. What d'ysa mean you hear...'

And then it happened.

The buzzing started.

It was kind of like the noise the magic TV box made whenever Duff stopped dancing around with the aerial on his head. The noise of a million metafiles in flight at the same time, or a single Harpix purring in pain. It was a nasty sound. A painful sound. A sound that dug right into the deepest, niggling corners of Dirty Rat's brain. And before he had a chance to ask what the hell was going on, there came the static, and rushing wind and the sensation of a portal opening inside of his gut...

A few seconds later, only Duff Kent, and a couple of stray animals picking about the trash cans, breathed in the Carnival of Doom.

Outside the Shield. The Disintegrating Wasteland.

The wall split open for her smoothly and gently, and Sparx didn't even have time to look back over her shoulder and wave goodbye before the wall came down again. She had expected it to slam or something, but it didn't. The wall was just up, and then it was down again, in one fluid motion.

And now she was out here, ad Fear was in there.

Damn it... I should never have left the Lightning Flash.

But she'd had to leave it, really. She knew that. Fear had told her that its power would be too unstable to fly straight out here, what with all the vagrant energies and random fragments of world drifting in the air. And anyway, the Flash was a power source... so if the shield ran out of energy again, and there were no more minions left to absorb, then maybe Fear could use that, or something...

And she hates the diea of her flash being torn into its component parts and used up for energy, but it's better than Fear being torn apart and used up for energy, so...

Sparx shuddered. Of course she'd be back, and she'd bring the boys and Random (and Ace, if he was really there...) with her, long before that became a problem. And then they'd find a way out of here together.

Right. Sure. Sparx told herself this for reassurance, and then spent another few minutes practising her breathing just the way that Chuck had shown her once, and pretending that she wasn't freaked out by the sight of the world (it's not real, none of its real, it never was) falling apart all around her.

There was no one there; nothing but the slimy, ugly, swarming mess that she figured used to be the Sixth Dimension. But there was land, of a sort. Land that was sinking into itself and turning yellow and falling apart or floating in the sky too far above for her to reach, but at least it was something she could put her feet on.

There was no sign of the boys.

Sparx hissed through her teeth. Zoar damn it, they left without me!

Left in this mess and chaos... Sparx felt the ground beneath her shudder and moved just in time, because the patch of earth-grass-whatever she had been standing on crumpled into yellow dust, then faded into mist, almost the second her feet came away from it. She staggered onto the next, larger fragment of land, feeling the previous bit sucking against the soles of her boots, dragging at her the way thick mud did in the Nevershine Tar Pits.

No Fear. No Random. No Chuck. And Certainly no Ace. She figured that this was what it was really like, to be all on your own after always feeling a part of something. After always being in a team working together for some common goal or another.

There are no more goals left for her in this tattered wreck of a world. There is only the path in front of her. Unsteady as it is. And then, deep inside of her, a strange tugging sensation behind her gut, pulling her in one direction...

Sparx drew her sword, more because she wanted it than because she expected to have to fight anything. The steady coolness of it in her hand and the occasional crackling of its power core were kind of comforting, as she walked forwards into the nothingness, trying to ignore the brightness of the yellow all around her.

Mark could be so stupid, sometimes...

The Wasteland.

'What was all of that about anyway, human?'

'Sorry?' He wasn't really listening to her question, too intent on working out whether the path ahead of them was going to crumble underneath his footsteps. Wherever they were, it looked as if it had once been the rooftop of a mining cavern, with tattered bits of Canary Warf clinging around the edges. He could see the remains of tall, sharp towers where the Canaries used to perch, sticking up out of the grey dirt.

'That little script you had me relaying for Lord Fear.' Lady Illusion said. 'All that talk about some boy named Tyran...'

They walk in silence for a few seconds. Actually, they've been walking in silence for a few hours now. And that was almost the most surprising thing: the silence. The peace. Except for one or two close calls where the ground nearly turned to "tang", as Chuck called it, beneath Random's tred, their trip through the vast expanse of this disintegrating dimension had been uneventful.

'I dunno. He was some kid, that's all. Someone Sparx mentioned, from the War. I wanted to find out... what happened to him.' Mark muttered eventually. 'I thought that maybe Fear knew.'

'Ah. I see,' Lady Illusion said, though her tone suggested she didn't really "see" at all – maybe she just didn't care. 'That boy. Yes, I recall.'

'You were there.' Mark ssaid. It wasn't a question.

'Yes. Many people died. It's difficult to recall any one person in particular,' she shrugged lightly, knowing that he would not, could not, possibly understand. 'Why?'

Mark sighed. It was a tired sigh, the kind that came from deep within a person's bones. A human person, at any rate. 'I don't know, I just... I figured maybe I could do something for Sparx. Just once. After all of this mess and everything going wrong and... I wanted to help her. Let her know what happened to him.'

'And... you thought the way to do that would be to let her know how badly she failed at one of her sworn duties, by bringing up the memory of a small boy she never found? A boy whose sister died bleeding in her arms? And that the way in which to do so, was to torment and outwit the... creature whom she claims to be in love with.'

'You don't have to be sarcastic about it, I get that it was dumb, alright? It just... It seemed important, somehow.' He's glad that she doesn't ask exactly why he thought that, because he isn't sure he'd have an answer for her.

'It has always been personal,' Lady Illusion muttered.

'Between you and Lord Fear. I am not the only one who holds grudges. You hate him.'

Mark stops walking for a second. Which is a silly thing to do, as the ground beneath him could give way at any moment. Lady illusion reaches out a hand, takes hold of his arm, and pulls him forwards. 'I don't... what? What're you talking about.'

'You were never a particularly good liar,' Lady Illusion said. 'I know precisely what it was about. One last power struggle. You could simply have asked him.'

'No. He didn't want us to leave, remember? If we'd stayed there any longer he'd have... used us. Like he used all the other creatures that were inside the haunted house.' Mark kicked angrily at the ground. 'I had to show him...'

'Show him what?'

'That he should take us seriously.' Mark says, quietly, and Lady Illusion pointedly does not mention that it's difficult so ever see Lord Fear taking a boy like Mark Hollander seriously. He was an awkward, normal boy. A child. And Ace Lightning had been a videogame, and Lord Fear a constant source of frustration. Something that should never have really mattered. Just a game.

Except that Lady Illusion knew it was more complicated than this. She had been the one who fought with Fear in the Organ room, in Mark's form... She had observed Lord Fear's expressions and reactions... For all his bravado and certainty there was something about the boy that... concerned Lord Fear.

'Those memories of the war... they're unreal fabrications of a world that never truly existed, Mark.' Lady Illusion says eventually. 'You would do well to forget about them.'

'I guess...' Mark clutched the fragment of amulet around his neck.

The voices, it dawned on Mark, had been unusually silent ever since they left the Haunted House. 'So... how far do you think we've got to go, anyway?'

'Farther than it may seem, I think;' Lady Illusion tilted her head in the direction they came from. 'It may feel like far, but look behind you and you can still see the Haunted House.'

'What?' Mark looked back, and sure enough, there it was – a thing greenish shield, like a speckled coin shining roughly two miles or so away. He stifled a groan of impatience. 'You're kidding. It feels like we've been walking forever!'

'You humans are fragile creatures compared to the likes of us,' Lady Illusion says. 'We can't have gone much further than a couple of your human miles. It would help if we could be sure of the ground we're standing on.'

As if to illustrate her point, the ground beneath them jerked, and Mark barely snatched his leg away in time as the earth beneath him turned to yellow, vicious glue so quickly that it was impossible to observe the change in progress. They stopped for several seconds, quivering, praying that nothing else gave way. When it became clear that the rest of the ground was still relatively stable, Mark started breathing again and turned back to Chuck sand Random.

'Watch out, the ground's thin there.'

'Okay. We'll go around it,' Random said; and he and Chuck looked at them simultaneously. It was only now that Mark realised he had probably interrupted some kind of conversation. He decided that he didn't want to know what that conversation was about.

You?

Oh. There it was againThe voice in his head echoed softly several times over and he pushed it back as gently as he could.

'Have you given any thought as to what we'll do when we finally get there?' Lady Illusion asked, quietly enough that Chuck and Random could not hear.

'Um... No. I wasn't really thinking much beyond just getting there. Alive.'

'Understandable. But you should think about it. We're heading into the Nexxus of a disintegrating world. We ought to have a plan.'

'I don't know about that... Like you say, we don't know what to expect once we get there.' If it was really so uncertain, then what good were plans anyway? Any plan they formed could be proved utterly useless and irrelevant by the time they got there. They had no idea what to expect from the centre of the Nexxus core.

Maybe there'd be no solid ground there at all.

'Then what do you suppose we'll find there?' Lady Illusion asks, sounding a little impatient.

'Ace,' Mark said, as if that were all the explanation he needed. For her, he thought perhaps it might be. His own uncertainty doesn't bother him as much as it should... 'Hey, I'm just a kid; I've never been inside a world that's falling apart before.'

'Anyone who has seen the human world at its worst would probably contest that idea. Besides, you're just a kid who has taken us into Oblivion base on the whims of his dreams; age is no excuse, Mark. I won't take responsibility for you.'

It wasn't a threat or a reprimand, Mark realised. The tone of Lady Illusion's voice was simply... wary. She had a right to be. She had taken a tremendous risk in coming here with him, and Mark found himself wondering exactly what it was that made her willing to take such a chance in the first place...

'I know. It's kind of my mantra, though...' Mark almost smiled at the thought as he picked his way over rocks which felt like sponge beneath his feet, as if the solidity had been sucked out of them. 'Anyway, what do you have to take responsibility for?' he frowned.

Lady Illusion crossed the rubbery ground without so much as a stumble. Her face was stony. 'Well. What do you think I would tell Ace, if his sidekicks died under my protection?'

'Hey, guys, check this out!' Chuck's voice was a welcome distraction, even if he did appear to be getting off track. Both Mark and Lady Illusion stopped and turned to face him. Chuck and Random's diverted route had taken them within reach of a lump of scrap metal, presumably once a part of Catastrophe Junkyard, and they were messing around in the scrap, trying to pull something out... Mark stepped back, interested in spite of himself. 'What is it?'

'A Shield of Jacob, by the looks of it,' Random said, turning a large piece of bent, warped metal over and over in his hand, slipping his good arm in and out of something that Mark figured was supposed to be the handhold of the shield. Thin pipes, like the kind you found in neon signs back on earth, but without the light within them, covered the object's surface. 'Look. It's still mostly in one piece.'

Mark stared at the tattered thing in Random's hands distastefully. 'You're kidding, right? That thing? It looks like some old dustbin lid...'

'Maybe, but if the energy core still works...' Random tapped the object with his claw, turning it over and over in his hand. 'I reckon it'll take a couple of shots before giving up completely...'

'You really think so?' Chuck looked excited, turning to face Mark. 'Hey, we could use that, right? I mean we've got your cannon, and Illusion's crystal bombs, but...'

'I... don't know, Chuck, it looks a little battered.'

'Surely you aren't going to waste time with that thing while we're in the middle of an Armageddon,' Lady Illusion said, in what sounded like abject disbelief. 'How in the name of Zoar can you expect to repair that piece of scrap?'

'Well, it's a technical process,' Random muttered. 'You probably wouldn't understand.'

'Charming,' Lady Illusion said. 'Then what—'

Her sentence cut off as Random lifted the remains of the shield in the air and brought it down with a heavy whack against the ground. Mark jerked, half expecting the entire platform to give way underneath them, just as it had under his foot a few moments ago. But the ground where Random and Chuck were standing was more solid, made of rock and stone; it held firm.

Chuck gulped. 'Whoa! Dude, don't do that! You could've sent the platform into— oh, hey, look at that. It's working.'

Random passed the strange object, the tubes inside now glowing faintly blue, into Chuck's hands. It still looked absolutely nothing like a Shield of Jacob, but the sense of power coming from it was very familiar. Mark clenched the hand that wore the Wrist Cannon, smiling. 'Nice one, Random!'

Lady illusion regarded the cyborg for a long moment. '...Technical.'

Random smirked. 'Yeah. Extremely technical.'

'So you reckon it'll take a couple of hits...?' Mark felt unsure.

'Yeah I figure, so long as you don't touch those exposed bits at the front there... especially not with any other bits of metal. They're usually insulated to keep the power from bleeding out. Though...' he looked uneasy, giving the broken shield a prod with his claw tips. '...I guess there is the risk of unexpected reactions if anyone strikes those exposed parts with certain energy attacks... But if you stay behind it, it shouldn't be a problem.'

Chuck grinned. 'Hey it's better than nothing, right, I. L? Uh... Lady? You okay?'

Mark whirled to face Lady Illusion who had apparently frozen where she stood, her eyes wide. The legs of her hair decoration were standing outright, stiff and tense and her ears twitched slightly, as if hearing something none of the others were aware of. Her lip curled into a light snarl. 'I'm... not sure... something is... Wait.' She whirled around, the expression on her face changing sharply from frustrated to... not afraid. Urgent was more like it. 'Get down!'

Mark was about to respond to this, when the voice in his head spoke again.

Except that it didn't speak, so much as... cried out. A sharp, sudden pain lanced through his head and down into his spine, freezing him before he could open his mouth to shout a warning – against what or why he had no idea, he only knew that the need to give a warning came to him as suddenly and unexpectedly as the desire to run into the Shield around the Haunted House had a few days ago.

The wind hits almost the second Mark opened his mouth, and if it weren't for Random's claw grabbing at his shoulder, he was pretty sure he would've been torn away by the force of the winds. And they were winds, Mark was sure. Winds of pure data energy slamming into them like a hurricane. He couldn't see them; all he could do was feel them and fight to stay standing as the ground around them was whipped into a storm of sand. He thought he heard Chuck yelling something, but it was lost in the torrent of the winds.

Something else screamed in his ears too – a voice. Fear fear fear fear stop stop stop not fair!

As it happened, it was just as well that Random had found that shield. If they hadn't had even a minor wall of shielding in front of them, the winds would've probably blown them clean into the air, and impaled them –the two humans, at least– on the sharp towers nearby.