(OOC: Lol, Mega X. Where'd you come from? D:)

"Do you always have this much trouble?" Alasea asked softly, looking over at the younger girl. She sighed and nodded, dislodging her beret in the process.

"Its becoming harder and harder to find the Essence," she said. "Something bad will probably happen before I can find the one on this world."

===NationStates General===

Aram snarled as the King's Sword of the Heavens cleaved down through air, striking the ground and causing a spark to fly as his opponent disappeared. "Damn it!"

He looked around, trying to find the others. He quickly spotted his discarded shield and helmet, and collected them both.

Judging by their luck, that was probably true. And his limited range wasn't doing much to help them either. "Call R.D., would you?" Matt asked Helena.

She pulled out her transceiver and flipped it on. "Hey, R.D.. You see anything out of the ordinary yet?"

"Nothing yet!" R.D. shouted over the roar of his engine so he could be heard over the noise in the transceiver's speaker.

((OOC: Whenever justice is needed, I'll be there 'n shit. :P))

eX opened his eyes and found himself in his mental world again.

"Well, shit."

Glancing over, he noticed the Queen nearby. If she was there, it meant that she wasn't in control. Which meant...

...meh. It could've been worse.
~~~~~

X woke up. eX used the Queen's power, but she wasn't in control. He glanced over at his arm. It still bore her markings, in a deep royal pruple. Still, he was alive. Picking up Sylvontis, he dusted himself off.

~~~~

Andaras collapsed to the ground. Now that there was nothing to fight he was free to rest off his wounds.

Fassigen was pissed. "What the hell? Where did they go? How did he heal? Look what the hell those assholes did to my city!" He took a deep breath and calmed himself. "Well, best to get the medics out here..."

This went on for too long, until the sun was beginning to set. Finally, Matt slapped the wheel while stopped at a red light. "That's it. This ain't getting us anywhere."

Helena balanced one arm on the other, resting her head on a curled fist. "Well, maybe it's going to come to us this time," she said. "Sometimes we don't find it, but it finds us."

"She's got a point," Hugo said, after too many hours of silence from him.

"... but whenever the Essence finds us, it tries to kill us," Ileyna said, looking up. "I don't like having to fight for it!"

"Just how strong does the Essence make people?" Alasea asked.

===NationStates General===

It wasn't long before Aram spotted Andaras and Fass. Marching up to them, he looked about and saw their enemies nowhere in sight. He sheathed his sword, and pulled his helmet from his head, tucking it underneath his arm. "So you weren't able to slay your opponent either?" he said, looking over at Fass.

Fass sighed. "Nope. I don't think we killed a single one of them today."

"That's not entirely true," X said, staggering towards the crowd, "I finished mine off."

Fass grinned. "Well, I guess it wasn't a total loss. Still, I can't shake the feeling that they were playing with us..."

"X... your arm," Aram said, catching sight of the purple plating clashing with the rest of X's strange blue armor. He still clearly remembered when he met X, floating up in the air in purple armor, threatening to destroy the city of London.

"Well, one piece lets me control the elements and copy powers," Matt said. "Geese tossed me and R.D. around with just one piece too."

"Then there was Prometheus and Pandora, who were just trouble," Hugo said.

"Yeah. Overall, it can get pretty wacky."

"Er...yeah. Um... it's kind of hard to explain what happened without sounding completely crazy. My... er... 'other self' kinda used her power to finish Tracer off. She didn't take over though, so it's fine I guess..."

Fass stared blankly. "Other self?"

"Then I'm with Ileyna on this, I'd rather find it before it finds us," Alasea said, frowning. "Just letting whoever has it is just asking for trouble."

===NationStates General===

Luckily for X, Aram had no trouble deciphering what X meant by his other self; he had already met eX, after all. He nodded. "Will that usage of her power cause any trouble?"

"Yeah, I actually have no idea."

"Cool," Fass muttered. "I'm friends with crazy people.

"Can we follow them?" Aram asked. "We at least got them down by two men, so we know we can take them in battle."

"Well, let's get somethin' to eat first," Matt said. "We've been at this all day."

"Can we eat out for a change?" Helena said. "I'm tired of the sack food."

"Eating out takes too long," Hugo said. "Hit a drive-through."

Matt gestured with two fingers. "Gotcha."

"Did you guys bring money with you?" Alasea asked, looking back out the window as they started moving again.

Matt slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. He tossed it onto Helena's lap. "See if I've got anything in there."

"Let's just hope this dimension takes your money." Helena flipped the wallet over and stared at the text on it for a minute before pulling it open. "There's a hundred in here."

"Sweet!"

"Then we won't need to delve into what I've got," Alasea said, leaning back into the seat.

Fass hesitated for a moment. "We don't know where they're going, or if maybe they're leading us into a trap. For that matter, we don't know anything about them. We know that one of them healed all the damage I did to him, another one stopped that same man and one of my men in their tracks with no effort, that another one of them is an excellent fighter who can harden his skin almost like iron and didn't even seem to register the fact that he'd been stabbed in the chest, and the last one is strong and fast enough to cleave off his hand when it took all our efforts just to graze him."

"So we just let them get away?" X asked.

"Of course not," Fass replied. "I'm just saying that we should be cautious." He waved over a soldier. "Send word to the men, I want scouting patrols in every direction. Make a full sweep of a 10 km radius around this town." He turned back to X and Aram, "I can't stop you from chasing them if you want to."

"... is it the fragment of the Queen that they're after?" Aram asked, turning to X. "Is that why they attacked us?"

X glanced at his arm.

"They're Remnant's men, and Remnant was her second-in-command... it wouldn't surprise me."

"They'll come after us again, then," Aram said. He looked down, musing at the ground. "And we could do little to harm them... I wonder."

He looked back up to X. "On the world I came from... there are people there that could give them trouble."

Fass grinned. "Well, then. That gives me a great idea. How about you two go and get them, while I work on fixing up this place, training my men, and setting an of ambush for them?"

"Its not that easy to just find them," Aram said, shaking his head. "The world I came from has been taken over by horrific monsters."

Aram explained his origins: how in his time, he traveled beneath a church and into Hell to slay Diablo, the devil. How he was driven insane by the monster and tricked into containing the devil within his own body, and the corruption and transformation that followed. How Diablo was a minion of a far more dangerous entity, one at war with other monsters vying for the world's control.

"Diablo eventually challenged a group of children he was sent to destroy. Those children, however, slew him and cast his soul into the Nightmare Realm," he continued. "Since Diablo used my body, I was killed as well, and taken to that realm. The god in control there returned me to life and set me a task. I must go to an island called Holy Darkness, and destroy a monster there. But perhaps I can trick Remnant's men and the monster into killing each other instead. Or perhaps they'll get lost on the world, and will be too busy fighting off the hordes of demons to come after us."

Fass nodded. "I wouldn't count on being able to distract them from their goals but at this point it certainly wouldn't hurt to tr-"

A man jumped down into the crowd, one knee touching the ground.

"We've located them, Commander. I'll take you there, if you wish to pursue."

"Can we even survive another battle with them?" Aram asked, partly to himself, partly to the other three men in charge.

X glanced at his arm.

"Maybe. When I used the Queen's power, it seemed like I went through all of Tracer's defenses. Plus they want the Queen, so they'll probably need to keep me alive, right? If I die she probably does too. That means they'll need to hold back. We won't."

Aram nodded, then pulled two vials from his belt pouch; one containing red fluid, the other containing blue fluid. He downed both of them quickly, grimacing around the bitter taste of them, before putting the vials back. It wouldn't do to be unprepared to fight these monsters. It was bad enough he had to use a Blood spell on Dearg-due.

"Then I'll go with you if you go after them," he said, placing his helmet back over his head, obscuring his face.

Helena clicked on the transceiver again. "R.D., we're going to get some take out." She covered the speaker and asked Matt, "What are we getting?"

"Burgers. If this world has some."

"We're getting some burgers," Helena said into the transceiver. "Just follow us."

"Roger that," R.D. said over the transceiver.

They went through a drive through of a red fast food joint overshadowed by large, "M" shaped arches. Matt got a sack of burgers, steaming fries and sodas for him and the people in the car-R.D. would probably have to get his own.

"This is definitely the best, healthiest fuel to fight evil villians with," Matt said, as he pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant to wait for R.D..

"Who gets what?" Helena asked.

"Well, you get the five plain burgers, obviously."

"Well, yeah."

"Other than that...eh. Divide it up however."