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---AMA---

Emain Ablach and Imhotep exchanged looks. They, too, didn’t want Amoris rushing off into battle, but there was very little that could be done to dissuade him once he had his mind set on something. That was the case when he was ‘Tobias’, and becoming ‘Amoris’ had done nothing to lessen that. Quite the opposite, in fact.

“I think I can handle it.” Amoris rolled his neck and shoulders, taking a step toward the shadowy beast. It growled lowly, a warning, as it stalked back and forth. Imhotep reflected that it looked like the unholy cross between a mountain lion, a great dane, and thick, black smog.

“You should probably summon your weapon,” Imhotep suggested, trying to be helpful. The look Amoris shot him gave him the impression his helpfulness was not necessarily welcome. Fair enough. Amoris wanted to do the whole thing himself. Hiding his amusement, Imhotep folded his arms over his chest and decided to just see how this played out.

Amoris took a deep breath, trying to ignore how much the smoke coming off of the youma stank of acrid waste. He focused, pulling on that part that hid his shield when he didn’t need it. To his relief, it popped into existence immediately, and he raised it toward the youma. But as the youma crouched in response, Amoris realised there was something very wrong.

His shield, normally the size of a large dinner plate, was the size of a saucer. To make matters worse, it was… well, it was floppy. Amoris shook his wrist, fascinated despite himself at seeing his shield wiggle like soft rubber.

That was when the youma leapt.

Amoris caught the motion in time to yell and duck out of the way, instinctively throwing his shield at the monster. It bounced off with little more than an annoyed sound from the youma itself, which was turning to take a second leap.

“Any ideas?” Amoris backed up, hands up as if to try to communicate to the youma that he was harmless. He certainly felt it, if his shield was nothing more than a toy. “It’s not supposed to do that, right?”

“No, it’s not.” Imhotep went for his own weapon, startled and dismayed to see it turn to sand as soon as he summoned it. “Promethei, Emain Ablach…?”

“On it.” Emain Ablach summoned his own shield, gratified to see it appear and feel normal as soon as it came into view. It had the right amount of heft, felt solid, all of that. “Alright, here kitty-kitty--”

---SEI---

He knew Amoris well. He knew that even if he didn’t encourage it, Amoris probably would have done it anyway, and the look he gave the bemused Imhotep was proof of that in its own right. So, like Imhotep, he’d wait it out.

Well, that’s not …

No, that wasn’t how that was supposed to work. ********. He couldn’t even say that Amoris was just having newbie bad luck, considering he had once been a newbie, and even with his shitty little test tube, it still stayed a functional object. Of course, Imhotep’s object also turned to ******** sand.

Alright.

Promethei flicked his wrist to summon the clay beaker to his hand. Alright. Still seemed … well, not sand. The weight felt a bit off, but of course, it was some magical bullshit anyway. He had never really tested if the weight was persistent every time he summoned it to hand. Promethei was mostly just relieved it wasn’t a test tube.

Not particularly useful for much, still, but he was ready to bludgeon if he had to.

“Hey, come ‘ere, doggie!” Promethei swung the weapon around as if he was about to play fetch. Or throw a baseball.

When he threw it, he didn’t expect it to bounce off the dog…cat…youma thing like an actual bouncy ball.

“Uh.”

---AMA---

The youma honestly seemed as surprised as the four of them, but it didn’t seem like it was going to waste much time on being surprised. It paced closer, then ducked to the side as soon as Emain Ablach raised his shield. Emain Ablach looked at the other three.

“Well, let me give it a shot, I guess.” He swallowed and turned his attention back to the monster. It didn’t seem that formidable, really. It was only a problem because their weapons were coming up some weird sort of broken. They’d dusted countless youma just like it.

Emboldened by the trouble they seemed to be having, the youma snarled again and then took a running jump at Emain Ablach. Emain Ablach shouted, raising his shield to defend himself. Maybe it was his imagination, but it looked like the shield moved out of the way of the oncoming attack, and he had to duck his head in a hurry to keep it from being a casualty of the youma’s claws.

A second glance made it look like his shield was intact, so he chalked that up to bad defense on his part and decided to go more on the offense. This time, when the youma came close, Emain Ablach didn’t wait for it to leap at him. He surged forward, shield raised high, and brought it down with an audible thump that saw the youma exploding into dust.

Turning to the others and coughing the dust out of his face, Emain Ablach ventured, “well, that was weird--”

---SEI---

“Very–”

Imhotep would feel a poke to his shoulder.

“Seems like y’all are having some weapon struggle--”

---AMA---

Imhotep reacted immediately to the poke to his shoulder. He didn’t see who was there, but he could suddenly sense an entirely unwelcome aura in the area. It didn’t take much to put two and two together. Imhotep took some of the sand his weapon had become, still held in his hands, and whirled, aiming for where he’d heard that voice come from.

He wasn’t prepared for someone else’s uproarious laughter in response.

---SEI---

“s**t!”

Their intruder suddenly slammed his eyes closed, summoning his weapon to hand and ignoring the incredibly annoying laughter he heard from nearby. While he was now effectively blinded, this wasn’t the first time he had fought like that. That stink senshi, for example? Her s**t made his eyes water so badly he had to keep his head above water just to ******** count.

He swirled his spear around and, while he didn’t go for the stab, he went to smack whoever with it who was in range.

---AMA---

As soon as the second figure got down out of the tree, Amoris muttered something unkind and dove for where his floppy shield had ended up. It was floppy, but it was still something, right? He whirled and brought the floppy dinner plate up to bear, but didn’t see Borax swinging his spear around. While it didn’t stab him, being whacked aside the head made him see stars and stumble.

Imhotep swore, having been short enough to miss being whacked by the spear, and pulled on Amoris to get him out of the range of being smacked again. Amoris went, but not without complaint that he was fine, damnit.

Tincalconite’s eyebrows rose. While Borax was dealing with the pocket sand incident, someone had to do something about these other two. “Alright, Listen.” A pause. What did he want to tell them to do? “Stop.”

And they did, something Tincalconite was gratified to see. He hadn’t used his magic much against the enemy directly. Mainly in getting screaming civilians to stop screaming so that he could drain them and move on. But the two of them found their feet cemented in place.

Tincalconite grinned wolfishly as the Mercury knight tried to twist himself around to put himself between Tincalconite and the pink one. Moon? “Great.” He took one, two, three steps toward them, raising a hand to grab the smaller one first.

He was not prepared for the shout and the way the Earth knight’s shield bounced off of the back of his head. “What the ********?!” His vision went black for a moment, and he reached to clutch where he’d been hit. Tincalconite staggered forward another step or two, but by that point the two knights had begun moving away from him again.

“Leave them alone, a*****e.” Emain Ablach raised his shield again as the chaos senshi lashed out, putting the shield between the two of them. Again, though, it seemed as though his shield moved aside as soon as the enemy’s blow came to bear. Unprepared, Emain Ablach nearly took the right hook square to his jaw. As it was, he did take it to the side of his head as he tried to duck his head out of the way.

It was his turn to see stars for a moment.

“Make me, dipshit.” Tincalconite came around for another blow, but his swing went wide when Amoris slapped him with his floppy shield. “The ********?” It didn’t hurt, but it was the principle of the matter! He rounded on the pink knight, but wasn’t prepared for the little blue one to throw what remained of his sand in Tincalconite’s eyes.

Swearing profusely and scrubbing at his eyes to get the sand out, Tincalconite backed off immediately. It wasn’t enough to keep him safe, however. He felt another hit from the Earth knight reverberate through his skull.

---SEI---

Borax scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand as he could tell the spear made contact and at least two of them moved away. He knew he wasn’t alone. Too soon to let his guard down, really, he grabbed the spear, swung it so it was facing blade outwards, and kept it moving erratically and therefore unpredictably as he heard Tincalconite come down from the tree.

Hearing him use his command was at least gratifying in that his underling figured out what he was doing. Another part was gratifying when he heard something smack off Tincalconite, because to say his relationship with his underling was pristine would be, well, false. There were times he wondered if he should’ve just killed the ******** after all–

Well, he could see now, at least.

Three of them were on Tincalconite. Cool. He wasn’t so sure if his underling had this. He should probably make sure his underling didn’t die. That would look bad. Probably.

He felt obligated to him in a strange sense, similar to Hestia but not quite the same–

Borax went to advance toward him, but the fourth component of the puzzle tapped him on the shoulder. Or… close to his shoulder, anyway. Shortass-

“Hey, seems like you forgot something.” Promethei beamed at Borax when he looked over his shoulder. There was absolutely no ******** way he was letting Mr. Actually-Threatening-Weapon head toward either of the three of them. Had he read of anyone of a similar description in the database before– “Funny you think I’d let you leave.”

“Your weapon isn’t ******** working either.”

“I know.” His grin was cheeky. “Not the only weapon I have.”

He swung, but Borax grabbed his wrist.

“Cute. You learn from the Hestia school of brawling?”

“Hestia?” Promethei did recognize that name. Why did that make this ******** look so smug? …Wait. “You’re that Borax ********, you know me?” Borax’s back straightened up, a surge of confidence in the concept that he was a known concept. He opened his mouth to say something about it, but he hadn’t quite planned for the swing to his opposite side. It bent his side, and he coughed out of instinct, nearly dropping his spear out of reflex. But he knew better than that if he had learned in all of his variant fighting training, and he swung the spear back around to take a swipe at– where did that mercury squire go?

That Mercury Squire had darted off to where his failure of a weapon bounced to, and further away from his husbands and the unfortunate corrupt senshi that had come with Borax. ********, he kept his grip on the spear but not on the Mercurian– Borax groaned, looking between Tincalconite and the squire. Part of him wanted to follow the squire and lance him through. The other part knew it would look bad if he let his underling get the s**t kicked out of him.

Fine.

Whatever.

Borax swung his attention to Tincalconite, using his well-practiced at-this-point teleportation to appear at a small distance behind the moon page.

The spear was jabbed directly into his back.

---AMA---

“Look out!”

There wasn’t enough time for Amoris to avoid the strike entirely. Even when Imhotep jerked him forward, Amoris still cried out as he felt the tip of the spear slice across his back from side to side. It was enough of a distraction for Emain Ablach’s next strike with his shield to miss entirely, and for his shield to move out of the way--it was definitely moving, he saw it this time--as the corrupt senshi threw his weight behind a blow to Emain Ablach’s face.

He tasted blood almost immediately and felt it running down his face in the next minute, and he knew that the hit to his nose had been a bad one. Not broken, thanks to Emain Ablach jerking his head back in the knick of time, but he was going to feel that later. Hell, he felt it now, swearing and stumbling back.

Tincalconite swung again, getting a second blow to the side of the Earth squire’s head, which drove him to his knees, holding his shield above to protect his head. It didn’t work, however, and the Earth squire’s padded forearms seemed to take the brunt of the next blow Tincalconite gave him instead.

Imhotep had immediately put himself between Borax and Amoris, but it wasn’t going to do anything to help Emain Ablach. “Get clear!” He shoved Amoris further away from the one with the spear, not liking the sight of blood but relieved to see that Amoris was ambulatory.

Ambulatory enough, in fact, that Amoris regained his footing and, with a snarl of his own, tackled the corrupt senshi to the ground as he raised his fists again against Emain Ablach.

“Amoris!” But that wasn’t going to deter him, and Imhotep knew it. At least the senshi wasn’t armed, and Imhotep didn’t want to leave the very armed Negaverse agent alone with Promethei. He made up his mind in an instant. Instead of turning to help Emain Ablach, he trusted that one to Amoris and threw himself bodily at the one with a spear with the intent of climbing his back.

---SEI---

s**t! Promethei glanced back in the direction of his three husbands and where Borax–his name was Borax–had ended up and winced. Amoris was stabbed, Emain Ablach had himself punched multiple times, Amoris was now trying to tackle the corrupt senshi of all things, and the ******** was Imhotep doing?

Could that damn weapon stop ******** bouncing away?!

Promethei kept chasing after the damn thing, leaving Borax unobstructed at the moment in his fight against the other three. Tincalconite seemed to have the squire nicely handled. Glad he figured that s**t out. Now to deal with the pages. Maybe he could lance the pink one through this time–

If he didn’t run off. While bleeding.

Okay.

Borax would have started after him and, honestly, did, but there was another problem. The other page decided that he would climb him like a tree. “Hm. Got that backward.” He wrenched his body back, intending to knock Imhotep right off him. “The goods are in the front.”

“He doesn’t want yours!” shouted Promethei from a distance, followed by a litany of swears as somehow the ******** clay beaker bounced off again.

Borax made sure to take a mental note that the Mercury knights seemed attached somehow-

---AMA---

Imhotep spat something unkind in return, the body wrenching leaving his legs dangling free for one gut-flopping second. But he was nothing if not tenacious, and so he swung his body back into Borax’s. He was up high enough that one of his feet found purchase in the belt keeping a small dagger attached, high enough that the other dug into the agent’s waist, and thus more than high enough for Imhotep to grab two fistfuls of the b*****d’s jacket.

And flop backward, boneless except for the grasp on the jacket and his feet as leverage.

Imhotep was not a large man, five-foot-three and one-twenty, but there was still something to be said about most of those hundred and twenty pounds being launched suddenly backward five feet and three inches–

---SEI---

“Can fix that mouth right for you,” came the similarly smarmy response as he could tell that touched on some sort of nerve. When Imhotep went for one of his seemingly permanently stuck daggers, Borax was tempted to tell the considerably shorter man that he wouldn’t find any sort of weaponry there. He didn’t get a chance to quite formulate that thought before the Mercury page tried to yank him down to the ground.

Oh <********> no he was not falling to a page.

He careened backward, but not for long, determination righting his back and then righting it a bit too much, an overcorrection that forced him to stumble forward a few steps to regain his balance fully. The jacket was discarded, afterward, Borax snapping the narrow wiring that held it up to make sure no one would get that advantage again. Thoroughly distracted once more from his mission of helping his underling, he turned his gaze toward the Mercury page.

Borax’s overconfident swagger seemed to fade as he was a bit more interested in stabbing this page in a better way than he had managed to stab the other.

---AMA---

The bad thing about pulling on the jacket was that the agent loosening it meant Imhotep lost his grip on him. Or, rather, he kept his grip on the jacket, which was no longer on its owner. He hit the ground bodily, the impact knocking the wind out of him and making it his turn to see stars as his head bounced off of the ground. Adrenaline made him flounder onto his side to try and scramble to his feet, but he was not moving very quickly--

He saw a blur of light green as Emain Ablach rushed past him and did his part to bodily tackle the Negaverse agent. Emain Ablach brought his shield to bear, not to defend himself, but to bash it against that spear arm.

Behind them, Tincalconite and Amoris were engaged in an out and out brawl.

---SEI---

Easy. Now if that page would stay still long enough for Borax to add to his starseed total for the day, that would be great.

Or the Earth squire could try to bash the spear out of his hand. There was a part of him that, under the pain, wanted to drop it. He instead channeled what Faustite had taught him and battles throughout his time as an agent. Borax grit his teeth and bore it.

Too bad there wasn’t a countdown for tracking their magic. On most days, he needed to just deal with it before getting at anything else for the senshi. On this day, though, it seemed most of that had been handled.

Now what was he to do? The clay beaker was even more ******** useless than usual. Promethei eyed it and eyed everyone nearby, the cloud of fighting and the way Emain Ablach was trying to make Borax stop fighting back, and the way it looked like Imhotep was back up but barely. Not like he could join the fight with this thing. Maybe with his fists. Probably.

Though…

Promethei squinted at his target and rolled the beaker that was now a ball right back into the fray as a tripping hazard.

Helped that it bounced.

---AMA---

Emain Ablach caught the clay beaker bouncing into the fighting and ground his feet where they were, not only to ground himself, but to keep from tripping. He grit his teeth, called Borax a very impolite thing, and swung on him with all the force he usually reserved for his imaginary fights against whatever agents had dragged him into the Negaverse. They didn’t have faces thanks to his patchy memories, but this guy did, and Emain Ablach was more than happy to punch him in it.

---SEI---

What the ******** clay beaker was rolling back onto the scene, bouncing in a way that it was hard to keep track of. Borax growled in its direction, prepping his spear to use the hilt of it to bat it out of the way, when the Earth squire had a different idea. At the same time as Borax went to swing his spear to get the not-ball out of the way, Emain Ablach’s fist connected, and Borax missed. That meant that the clay beaker did hit its erratic mark, smacking him in the knee just hard enough to bend it backward.

Borax, used to gritting his teeth and bearing pain, grit his teeth and bore it.

But he was certainly thrown off enough now that he was not paying the kind of tight attention he needed to learn about four of these White Moon ******** at once–

---AMA---

That punch connecting brought a surge of adrenaline and a surge of catharsis with it. Emain Ablach was already rounding with another, aimed for Borax’s center of gravity. At the same time, he aimed up toward Borax’s head with his shield, determined to try to hit him in the face with it. The shield seemed useless as, well, a shield, as its intended purpose. But Emain Ablach was just as happy to use it to hit the agent with it as he was to punch him.

---SEI---

Borax swung his body out to avoid the hit to his center of gravity, but that didn’t quite take him entirely out of the range of the shield, and it managed to uppercut him in the nose.

Bear it, bear it, bear it–

And he did, to his credit. Borax worked best when he got enough distance for his spear to initiate its use, and he did manage that! What he didn’t manage was paying attention to wherever that clay beaker was bounding off to, and it managed to trip him up again, sending him awkwardly stumbling forward to make sure he actually kept his balance.

Promethei cackled from a distance.

These <********>. Borax was tempted to keep going, and something burned in him to collect all of their starseeds at once. Make them regret all the bullshit they were pulling for as long as their lives continued to last. There was another part of him that wondered if he needed to be responsible and pull his underling out before he ended up in a condition Borax regretted. Son of a-

“Tincan!” Borax barked, pointing his spear threateningly at Emain Ablach. Why did that ******** look a bit familiar, now that he got a further look at him? Why did he sound a bit nasally? “Fall back!”

---AMA---

“What?! Why?!” Tincalconite looked up from where he had the pink moon knight in a chokehold. “I’m doing great!”

“No the ******** you aren’t,” Imhotep growled, back on his feet now and with Promethei’s clay beaker in his hand. With a spin and an arm to make a Minor League pitcher proud, Imhotep let fly in the corrupt senshi’s direction. It bounced harmlessly off of his shoulder, but it was big enough and flying fast enough that his grip loosened enough that Amoris was able to wriggle free.

Even better, Amoris was able to round on him and give him a bloody nose to match the one Emain Ablach had given the agent.

Tincalconite shouted, clutching his face where he could feel blood gushing from his nose, and scrambled to his feet. “Fine!”

---SEI---

Borax rolled his eyes, walking at a fast pace to grab Tincalconite by his collar. “Good.” He would have a few things to discuss or work through later, but for now, he was taking them both out of the field of battle.

Well.

One thing first.

His eyes slid over to Promethei, who looked rather smug. “That Hestia, you mentioned?” He winked. “Belongs to us now.”

And he was gone, leaving Promethei blinking once, twice, and then muttering “********,” under his breath, because the last thing they needed was the Negaverse taking another one of theirs, even if Borax had no idea he didn’t know Hestia beyond her database entries–. He shook his head out of it. Later.

“Everyone alright?” asked Promethei, rubbing his neck. A part of him felt bad that he got so tied up in chasing down that stupid useless bouncy ball of a weapon that he didn’t get a chance to join the brawl. Another part of him was glad that the bouncy ball was so apparently effective at being a distraction-

---AMA---

“I’m good, I’m good,” Amoris replied, half to Promethei, half to Imhotep fussing over the gash across his back. “I’m not even bleeding anymore!”

“You are still bleeding. You need stitches,” Imhotep retorted firmly. “We have to go to the hospital and get you stitched up.”

“It’s not that bad--”

“‘Fraid it is,” Emain Ablach joined in, craning his neck to get a look past his pounding headache. “The three of us should all go to the hospital, if anything for a concussion protocol.” Amoris groaned.

“What are we going to tell them?”

“That we fought off a guy who pulled a knife on us downtown, what else?” Emain Ablach rolled his shoulders, wincing. “Probably happens enough, and it would explain the cut across your back.”

“So we’re just going to waltz in like this?”

“Hell no. Let’s power down first, then we’ll waltz in.” Emain Ablach craned his neck and looked around. “I think there’s an emergency room not too far from here. Let’s go.”