#um basically yeah if i see that there's only two people in a stack marker you can bet im not gonna stack lmao

[lifewithcake]

yayyy got the aiming chestpiece on the first aglaia run, im happy i dont have to run this anymore this week -3-

[wonder-womans-ex]

Curtain Call

Act One, Scene Five 

Sirius knows he’s petty. Extremely so. Petty enough to send the elevator all the way down to the ground floor so that Remus has to either take the stairs or wait, at least.

What Remus said is still wheeling in his mind. Remus kissed someone else. It hurts, yeah, but he’ll put on his brave face. He’ll move on. 

The thing that hurts most—the thing he can’t ignore or get over—is that he’s not sure whether he’s more upset that Remus cheated, more upset that Remus dumped him, or more upset that Remus didn’t give him the chance to break it off. Remus should have owned up to it, and he should have given Sirius that choice. It’s like he said when before he left the staff room—maybe he would have ended things, maybe he wouldn’t have. 

He should have at least had the option to break Remus’s heart like Remus broke his, but instead Remus just broke his twice. 

Sure enough, Remus is five minutes late to the seminar, and Sirius knows that Lily’s pissed. What he doesn’t know is whether she’s pissed at Remus, or if she’s figured out that Sirius is the reason behind the delay and is pissed at him. She seems the type to just know these things. 

He’s pretty sure he’s not imagining her glare in his direction when she says, “We’ll start in a minute or two; John will be back by then with the papers we need for today’s lecture,” but he decides to ignore it. After all, if there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s ignoring his problems. 

Well, and running away from them. It depends on the day and what mood he’s in. 

He also doesn’t miss the fact that when Remus does return, he pulls the classic ‘take one and pass it on’ instead of handing out the papers one by one. It’s probably so that he doesn’t have to look Sirius in the face. 

When the stack reaches him, Sirius has to reach back a whole row of seats to get to the next person. He almost tips over in his chair, but manages to save himself a sore tailbone—and a whole lot of embarrassment—at the last minute. 

The page is split into five sections: theme, topic, setting, characters, and story objective. He remembers, vaguely, learning some of this in grade seven, but that’s where his memory blanks. (What the everloving fuck is a story objective?)

Apparently he’s about to find out. 

Lily claps her hands together in an incredibly teacher-like way. If he didn’t know better, he would have a hard time believing this is the same woman who so aggressively played matchmaker (or maybe she was actually trying to drive them further away from each other; thinking back on it, Sirius can’t actually tell) only a few minutes before. “Well,” she says, addressing the room at large, “who can tell me what a theme is?”

There are a few raised hands, and she calls on the boy just behind Sirius, with chocolate-brown hair and more freckles than he can count. “It’s what the story is about. But like, in an abstract way.”

“Very good.” Lily takes a whiteboard marker out of her jeans pocket. Turning to the board, she draws a T-table, labeling one side theme and the other topic. Under the first heading, she writes abstract, and, across from it, concrete. 

“Theme and topic are often confused, because they’re both what a story is about. But—what’s your name?”

“Benjy. Benjy Fenwick,” says the freckled boy. 

“But Benjy here has hit the nail on the head. The difference between theme and topic is that a theme is abstract—a concept, or an idea, or a feeling—while a topic is concrete—such as a person, place, thing, or event….”

Sirius begins to zone out. Absentmindedly, he grabs a pencil and begins sketching on the smooth, polished wood of his desk. A circle, an oval, a line here and there, some shading—slowly, his doodle begins to take shape. By the time Lily says, “Now, who can give me some examples of a good story theme?” and people start calling out their answers, he’s perfected the glint in his anime-style eye. 

“One last one. How about you, by the back, with the Blue Jays shirt?”

(Of course she’s pretending she doesn’t know his name. Lucky him—he’s always wanted to be demoted back to ‘hey, you.’)

His head jerks up. “Uh, relationships,” he says, because he’s a walking cliche and, yes, of course that’s the only thing on his mind. Why wouldn’t it be?

“There’s an interesting one.” She adds it to the board, right underneath hardship, pressing hard enough that the nib of the pen squeaks. “It could technically be counted as a topic, too, but it works well as a theme.”

There’s a pause as she looks around, seemingly searching for a suitable place to put her pen. Finally, she gives up, tucking it behind her ear. 

“What I want everyone to do now is think carefully about what theme they want to write about. You can pick as many as you want, and you can add more later, but it’s easiest to focus on just two or three. You can pick one of the ones we came up with here, or it can be something totally different, but make sure it’s something that speaks to you.”

Her words resonate in Sirius’s mind. Something that speaks to him? He starts to write, his large printing cramped in the tiny box, and he gets halfway through the second C before he erases it again. He has to think for a minute. He doesn’t want to write about success, not when there’s so little of it in his life right now, but he doesn’t want to write about something dark, like suffering, either.

Loss, he puts down with finality. On second thought, he adds healing. And then, just because he feels like it, friendship. 

The clock on the wall says they have twelve more minutes before they’re finished; he wonders what else they’ll do before the class ends. Right now, the only sound in the room is the quiet scratching of pencils—soothing, he must admit, even though he personally prefers the excitement of applause—and it seems as though he’s the only one who’s finished. 

He lets himself look around, his eyes flickering from the clock to the whiteboard to the person sitting to his left. They dart to the door at the other side of the hall, and forward to where Remus is... staring right back at him. 

The two lock eyes for a good fifteen seconds before Remus lowers his gaze to the floor. It’s not much of a victory, Sirius knows, but it’s a victory nonetheless.

So why doesn’t it feel like one?

There’s not time to burrow any deeper into his own thoughts, however, because Lily is writing once more on the board. Unfortunately for him, he can’t see what she’s written—even when she turns around—because her head is in the way. 

“I assume most of you have your themes, and even if you don’t, you can always come back to it. Right now, we’re going to move onto topic—surprise surprise, also what the story is about, but this time on a more concrete scale. Let’s take Romeo and Juliet, for instance, because I’m fairly sure it’s a story we all know. Does anyone have any idea what the topic is?”

Silence. 

Sirius, usually the self-aware one in any situation (but apparently not this one), knows there are two possible reasons as to why he raises his hand. Unfortunately, he does not know which of them it is. The first is simple—he’s confident has the answer, and he wants to share it. The second is both a little more complex and a little more likely, and that is that he doesn’t know what the answer is and maybe, just maybe, he wants to prove to Remus he’s not afraid to take risks. 

Either way, his tentative “Love?” is declared—spoiler alert—incorrect. 

“Wrong,” Lily says. “Love is a theme, not a topic. Try again.”

Well, he wasn’t expecting a second chance. (It seems he only ever gets them when he’s unprepared.) (Maybe there’s a lesson in that.)

“Um… people in love?” If the first answer wasn’t right, this one won’t be either. He knows that. But it is, frankly, all he can come up with. 

“Ding-a-ling-a-ling,” Lily deadpans, which actually sounds a little funny in that accent of hers. He’s not going to mention that, though, because he’s on pretty thin ice already where she’s concerned. “Correct. Yes, maybe they sound like basically the same thing, but they’re not. The way I like to put it is this: if you can draw a picture of it, chances are it’s the topic. If you can’t, chances are it’s the theme.” After a moment, she adds, “I probably should have said that at the beginning. Whatever.” 

This causes Remus’s lips to twitch up into a smile. In fact, it’s only just now that Sirius realizes he’s watching Remus at all—he could have sworn he stopped—and he forces himself to look away. 

But he really can’t deny it any longer. He really can’t deny that that little smile, happy and pure with just a hint of mischief, still makes his heart pound and his brain turn to mush. He really can’t deny that despite everything—despite the breakup, and the recent confession, and the promises made late at night that he’s getting over this, he really is…

He’s still in desperate, painful, middle-grade YA novel love with Remus/John/does-it-really-matter-what-his-name-is Lupin. 

[adrift-in-writing]

Français between Us - Chapter 4

In which Lena gets a reward for her hard work.

Read on AO3

____________________

Weeks passed, and life seemingly returned to normal for Lena. Now that her professor figured out what was really going down, she tried hard to try and impress Amélie, be it not in her social skills, but more in the language department.

Thus, she started adapting to her environment again. She had gone from a shitty 12-point grade all the way forward to at least a 16 point or higher, but it’d continue to go farther and farther as time passed. Perhaps this way, she’d probably get the attention of Miss Lacroix.

Even though she still struggled in the more advanced French linguistics, that was where the so-called private lessons came in. Amélie never minded nor brought up anything but the course lessons and more or less helped her student understand them more, and even offered refreshers on some of the basics.

But that never stopped Lena from trying to finish up early. In the spare time they had, she tried to get to know Professor Lacroix better...or at least, she tried to. For every single time they finished up earlier than expected, her professor demanded she study it alone and try to do it herself afterwards. If not, come back and try again. If so, they moved onto the next tidbit of help. Or, simply, the lesson was finished.

It was always the same.

It was just around the week of the first exam for the class. Lena prepared ahead of time, studying hard and making sure she didn’t overexert herself too much. As a final option, she had decided to do one last private lesson before the exam.

Back at the classroom, the whiteboard seemed to be filled up with various amounts of conjugations and numbers, alongside common refreshers that frequently appeared, such as connaitre vs. savoir, or numbers from 0 to 3000, for the years and for age. Professor Lacroix had grabbed a black whiteboard marker and uncapped it.

“Now, how do you conjugate saisir?” Amélie softly asked, writing the common subject pronouns on her whiteboard, and then handing off her marker to her student.

“ Je...saisis? Same goes for the tu form?”

A reaffirming nod from Amélie made Lena feel a bit better as she wrote them down on the whiteboard, and just from memory alone, she filled in ‘il saisit’ and ‘ils saissent’, leaving only the nous and vous pronouns empty.

Judging by her reluctance, Lena tried to remember which was which. Even now, trying to differentiate nous and vous was difficult mostly in part that they had a one word difference.

The student softly bit her lip and haphazardly looked around, though not for long as Amélie gave a small smile that caught her attention. “Stuck, are we?”

Lena shook her head in disagreement and wrote down ‘saisiss’ on both, though that was a bit too quick on her end. In a slip of mind, she wrote down ‘nous saisissez’ and ‘vous saisissons’, which was...wrong.

Nervously, Lena turned to face her professor and ask for a nod of approval, though all she got was a head-shake, and a finger gesture to reverse the two. As a result, she softly groaned and chuckled. “Was my first guess…”

“Well,” Professor Lacroix simply shrugged, “at least you’re one of the few who got most of it right. The rest of the class seems to be lagging behind a bit.”

Amélie’s phone began ringing inside her purse, and she took a moment to fetch it and to ignore the call for now. However, as she pressed the ignore button, she looked at the time and blinked a few times.

“Hm, I don’t recall it being an hour already. Time sure flies.”

That was all the time they had for this lesson. Normally it’d be longer but, the professor needed to go due to some family business unfolding. She wouldn’t say what, and everyone didn’t have the privilege to hear. A couple minutes later, the distant tolls of the bells to signal the next hour ticking in came to pass.

Professor Lacroix shuffled her purse around her shoulder, pushing up her eyeglasses back up her bridge and erased the board while Lena made sure all of her belongings got back to where they were. While she was halfway done, Amélie seemingly finished quicker than Lena did, and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You’ll succeed. Just...study a bit more like you always do.”

With that, she went off and out the door. However, something came up in Lena’s head as she swiftly exited out, trailing right behind her professor and gently poking her on the arm, though after Amélie turned around she wasn’t quite sure how to word.

“I...I-I was wondering if you would uh…” Lena stammered, tapping her foot nervously, “um...hang out sometime?”

Miss Lacroix cocked her head to the side, curious as to what Lena was trying to pull. “Why?”

There was weak laughter from her student as Lena stammered some more and twiddling with her fingers. “Ahaha! Just as friends, yeah! Wanna get to know you some more! Hahaha!”

Amélie didn't think too much about how forced and awkward that came out, but her curiosity at this point was piqued. She crossed her arms and pursed her lips. “Name it.”

“Co...coooooo…” Her student droned on, until Professor Lacroix furrowed her eyebrows and snapped her fingers. “Coffee! Yeah, coffee!”

Now at this point this had to be some elaborate joke. Maybe Gérard set her up for it, or maybe it was just an inside thing she wasn’t meant to know about. Whatever the case, Amélie slightly lowered her head so she could eyeball Lena without her glasses.

“...Uh-huh…” She slowly nodded, and then began walking away again, much more disinterested.

At this point, Lena perked up and reached out. “Wait!” She had shouted, almost tripping over herself. Once more, Amélie stopped and glanced back, now a little bit annoyed.

“Just once? If you don’t like it I’ll never bring it up again and--and I’ll leave it alone!”

Silence. Then, a sigh. “I don’t know if you’re pulling my leg, or...if someone put you up to this.”

Rapidly, Lena shook her head to reassure this was entirely her plan. All she got in return was more awkward silence, until Professor Lacroix tisked and exhaled.

“I’ll make you a deal. If you can get a high score on the exam - and I am talking about a high 90% - I’ll think about it. Now,” For the last time today, Amélie turned back to where she was headed and began walking. “I must go. For real.”

As she walked, Lena stood there, just a tad-bit frozen. Great, now she needed to study real hard and things would be really easy...or would it?

____________________

The day of the exam came. Everybody felt a sense of unease when they were handed their respective sheets and the hour began. Rather than be alone in monitoring the students, Gérard for the day became a monitor for the back-rows. After the test would be done, everybody had the option to leave and go on with their life. Everyone else got spread out. No two people were allowed to sit next to each other, and each had to have a required seat apart from them.

When Professor Lacroix said they needed to study, by fucking god, they had to study. There were random silent groans when her students progressed onwards, whether it be something they forgot or something difficult they needed more time to brush up on, that was their own problem. If they couldn’t pass it, they just should’ve tried harder.

But not for Lena. She desperately needed to pass this exam. She studied and pulled a few late-nighters, but nothing too serious that would be detrimental. Yes, she did say to herself she wouldn’t push it, but she really wanted to impress her professor this time around no matter what.

She seemed to be the only one confident enough to get this exam done, and in record time to boot. When things were beginning to wrap up, Lena was the first one to turn it in and thus, the first to leave.

If she could channel that confidence into their first outing - that is, assuming she even passes with the requirements to score an outing - maybe she could get her professor to turn her attitude around.

Maybe? Hell, she was prepared to even fail and not get what she wanted.

As the last student turned his papers in, Gérard’s time here was done. He had opted to grade the papers, but Miss Lacroix insisted she do them herself. With a fat stack of papers in her hand, she preferred not to whittle around on campus grounds. Rather, Amélie made her way home to grade these papers. There’d be nobody to disturb the peace, and nobody to bug her with anything school-related. When she had arrived back into her own home, the first thing she did was get working on it in time to pass them back tomorrow.

After some few finished grades for students, she became a bit displeased at the results of her class, though she could not express it, for no one was there to complain to. Deliberately of course, she tried not to write any insulting remarks on her students’ papers, and only percentages.

For a while the scores jumped between 50% to at least a decent 86% for a student in the far back whom she probably thought wasn’t doing good, but...this exam might be a fluke. Regardless, the paper she turned on next was Lena’s, and she got busy grading it.

Her eyes roughly skimmed over the parts everyone else got, and her main focus was on the tough sections and the little tidbits she knew most got wrong. With a grading pen in her hand, Amélie unexpectedly had to set it down to re-read the answers.

No. There wasn’t an incorrect answer on the tough parts.

In fact, the answers Lena gave to her were all correct.

After a brief moment, Professor Lacroix set the paper down, blinking a few times. She checked the time to see that about an hour had passed, and she wasn’t aware that even happened. A couple more papers and she’d be ready, but...that could be for later.

She couldn’t believe it. Lena had actually exceeded her expectations. She can’t possibly break her end of the deal now, and given that so far a foreign exchange student managed to beat her fellow native French-speaking students...that was something else.

“There’s hope for you yet, Miss Oxton...” Amélie muttered, softly grinning before grabbing her grading pen, and began scribbling something.

____________________

And now, the moment of reckoning. The French students came into class, each having a semi-class discussion about how they thought they did on the test. Without the professor around, they seemed more lax on talking than they usually did while she was in here.

Most thought they probably failed it, which was pretty much the typical majority. Though, most were curious as to how Lena reacted to it. Simply put, she shrugged and passed it off as a relatively alright test. In return, a good chunk of the kids rolled their eyes and made comments wondering if she was serious.

About a minute before class officially began, Professor Lacroix had arrived carrying a stack of graded papers with her and casually set them down on her desk.

“Good afternoon, class. I managed to finish grading these papers last night, you’ll get them back later.”

Upon taking her seat, she had encountered several hands raised in the air. Undoubtedly they were rather simple questions such as ‘What was the highest score’ or ‘Is this exam going to be curved’ or whatever the students had in mind.

There would be a major curve, at the very least. At least she wasn’t the cruelest professor around the block, but it didn’t change that she passive-aggressively chewed out her students.

“The average for this exam is...exceedingly poor. I expected far better.” She had disappointingly began, “Previously, all classes I have taught at least had an 80%, but no lower than 70%. This class could only scrape a 65%, with the exception of a few select students.”

The class went silent, though Amélie shrugged and patted the stack of papers. “A 65% is not the worst grade you can get, but here in this University, you must strive to be better. This will be the only large curve I give.”

When it came near time to pack up and go home, that was when the exams were to be passed back. Rather than go in alphabetical order - something Professor Lacroix liked doing - she decided to pass them in the order she saw fit. For what it was looking like, she gave back the worst grades first and progressively better ones were last, but none of her students knew about that anyway.

Mutters filled the air as students talked to their friends, wondering if they could take some time to get tutoring after-school, or at the very least switch professors.

As more and more of them exited, class-time bled over just a little bit when the final student left behind was just Lena herself. She had been anxiously anticipating for her test back, as it was rather evident based on how jittery her leg was bouncing up and down throughout the call-ups of other kids.

Amélie smiled, feeling rather content about withholding her paper. But, she had to reveal it sometime. So, with a delicate gesture, she beckoned Lena to come up to her.

Lena swallowed, and almost tripped coming up to her professor’s desk. The last paper was faced-down and protectively held by Amélie, just before she neatly slid it to Lena, saying nothing.

Her hands shook, but she grabbed a hold of her exam, closing her eyes and flipping it over. And then...one eye opened up.

A rather large sticky-note had blocked off her score, albeit it left a big ‘0%’ to be seen. By illusions alone, Lena’s heart fluttered and she panicked a smidge, until she realized that the sticky-note was there.

“Is...is there supposed to be a sticky on my paper?”

All Amélie did was smile some more and nod, acting coy. She rotated her chair so her body was facing her student, where she clasped her hands together and crossed her legs. “Remove it.”

So Lena did, though really, really slowly. The first thing she had read was her grade: A full 100%. Her eyes then slid over to read the message.

‘Quand est-il temps pour le café?'

“When...is it time for coffee.” Lena read it aloud, feeling a wave of heat strike her, and her heart skipped a beat. Her hands managed to lower the paper as she faced against Amélie, who graciously chuckled.

“You were the only student. I think you deserve to get to know me if you keep this up.” She pursed her lips, and handed Lena a spare pencil. “Write down a time.”

No pencil was really required as Lena set it back on the desk. “H-how ‘bout tomorrow?”

Amélie shrugged and hummed positively before nodding. “I have nothing planned for tomorrow aside from a small meeting with the administration.” She had began, double-checking to make sure she was correct. Indeed she was. “So I suppose right after your classes, then?”

Tomorrow was a Friday. That’d be perfectly fine seeing as her schedule was practically free, and all the homework could wait for later. Without even thinking, Lena just nodded rapidly and awkwardly grinned.

“Sounds brilliant! I’ll...I’ll be there!”

“Good. You know where to find me, yes?”

Then, Professor Lacroix stood up, and grabbed her purse, heading out of the classroom. “If you’ve any questions feel free to visit me later today.”

The door shut, and from that point on, Lena had the hugest burden lifted off of her shoulders. She started fist-pumping the air and silently chanting ‘Yes’ multiple times, all while getting her exam stuffed back into a folder for safekeeping.

She got her wish and approval. Now all she needed to do…

was find the nearest fucking coffee shop.

And try not being too gay to prevent any suspicions.

[twinkiekinesis]

Box & Spirit ~Chapter 5~ A Magnetic personality

Along with Jenny, who snuggling in his hair, Tobi's cloud landed on long, sturdy highway that seemed to be designed for cars. Tobi looked behind him and saw a vast, dark tunnel that seemed to go on for hours. It probably did if a normal human traveled on foot. Judging from the ocean underneath the bridge, he assumed that this was the pathway between Takanata Town and the factory he stood before. He turned back around to the factory, which was already big enough from a distance, but now looked like a colossal, gigantic tower with the smoke coming from it making it seem as if evil, black clouds lurked over it.

"Wow. It really is much bigger in person," Tobi stated while putting a finger on his chin. "It's like the final castle boss on the first world of Wonder Quest III."

"Wonder...What?" Jenny asked, clearly lost.

"You never heard of Wonder Quest III?!" Tobi baffled, his wolf ears standing up. "It's only, like, one of the best JRPGs of all time!"

"You mean like a video game?" Jenny raised her wings, pouting. "In case you haven't noticed, I can't play those. No fingers."

"Have you ever tried?" Tobi retorted.

"Well...no, but shouldn't be obvious?" Jenny frowned.

"Well, I want you to know the joy of playing it," Tobi said, "So I'll make sure you play it! It shouldn't be too hard!"

"But I don't have fingers." Seeing that he wouldn't change his mind, Jenny sighed as Tobi began walking towards the factory, which was guarded by two large, black gates.

"Hm...It's locked," Tobi pointed out.

"Obviously. Why can't you just fly over it?"

"Because..." Tobi coughed hard into his sleeve. "This smoke is pretty nasty. Just being near it makes me feel kinda icky, you know? Plus, I can't risk you getting hurt and having all kinds of people coming after you."

"I'll be fine," Jenny confidently spoke. "There isn't anything those guys can do to me that they haven't already done."

"If you say so. But I'm watching you," Tobi declared as he squatted down. Effortlessly, he sprung from the ground and a bit over the gate. After a single flip that would force Jenny off of his head, Tobi landed on the ground perfectly.

"Don't wanna risk me getting hurt, huh?" Jenny mumbled as she flapped her wings. She had managed to hover just before she hit the ground. "Then what was that flippy-nippy stuff then?"

Tobi giggled apologetically, then proceeded to walk toward the large, metal doors that would lead into the factory. The dark gray doors were as big as the tunnel behind them, and it seemed that twelve sixteen-wheeled vans stacked vertically upon one another could fit inside of it. "So it's just beyond this door, huh?"

"My family's in there..." Jenny trailed off.

Taking a deep breath, they went closer to the door when suddenly they would hear tremors so loud and intense that it would make Tobi rattle on his feet. Once he regained his footing, he and Jenny watch te giant doors gradually open. Once they were fully opened, they were ett with bright lights shining on them. Covering their eyes so they wouldn't be blinded by it, Tobi would notice an odd noise coming from the inside of the factory. It was mechanical, loud, sound that was accompanied with many like it. In fact, it sounded like running engines that would grow louder and louder. Though their lights shined far, the sources of the sounds were distant. However, the noises were approaching rather quickly.

"Look out!" Tobi warned Jenny as he uncovered his eyes. Leaping quickly, He grabbed Jenny, who squeaked at his grasp, and summoned a cloud above the opened doors.

"Hey! Easy on the feathers!" Jenny yelled at Tobi, flying out of his loosened hands. "These things take forever to grow back, you know!"

"S-Sorry," Tobi sighed. They both looked down and saw lines of fast-moving white trucks with images of a cartoonish Ricky carrying a puppy caught in a net. Sirens were wailing from the trucks, which would drive out of the gates, onto the highway, and into the tunnel with the engines and sirens' echoes bouncing from their inner walls.

"That's...a lot of trucks," Said a shocked Tobi. "Do factories like this really need one?" He asked to Jenny, who was counting the feathers on her wing.

"80...90...There's definitely over a hundred," Jenny counted. "A lot more."

"I hope they don't mind Sunny," Tobi laughed as the cloud lowered back on the ground in front of the door.

"That kid? I dunno...The hunters in that truck are ruthless. I should know," Jenny recalled. "I was in one."

"Sunshine?" Tobi cracked a grin. "It'll take more than a couple of party poopers to shut him down."

Jenny smiled at that remark. It reminded her of how she had faith in her friends and their abilities, and how they had faith in her and her abilities. Her memory thought back to when they would gather straw from the nest and worms for the many recipes her family would make, and even helping a Polka-Voice Parrot with a broken nest back to her home. They would race through the skies and dive into the autumn leaves that piled up. Being together with them, she had the happiest life she could have ever wished for.

"Whoa! It's closing!" Tobi cried out, snapping Jenny out of her recollection. The doors would begin to slowly shake to a close, the inside of the factory becoming narrower in sight. He quickly dashed inside with Jenny flying behind him. The factory was somewhat dull and dark, and there was even an aroma of smoke clouding the room. Ugh, it's here too. Just what the heck are they making here? Fanning his hand over his nose he walked deeper into the factory, which was filled with large, bowl-shaped incinerators connected to conveyor belts lined up vertically all over the huge, wide room. A spherical, glass of oil sealed up would be resting on the left side of the factory, which would pump through multiple tubes and into other machines, which included not only the conveyor belts and incinerators, but nozzles that acted as vacuums that floated above the belts as well as slim, mechanical arms that were attached to the walls and ceilings of the factory. The workers of the factory, who appeared to be putting metal and feathers together on the assembly line, wore gray jumpsuits with small, matching caps that were identical to the style that ice cream truck drivers would wear. Some were carrying buckets of oil and metal parts while others were simply on janitor duty, cleaning up whatever mess they found.

"Man, this place is dull," Tobi snorted.

"Yeah...I have a bad feeling about this---"

"Hey!" A voice interrupted the brief conversation between Tobi and Jenny. They turned and found one of the workers looking dead at them. They turned around to him and squealed in a panic. "What are you doing here!?" He scolded. "No unauthorized persons allowed in the--"

"Lullaby Stellar!" Tobi crossed his right arm across his chest and swiped it away from it, sending a single, blue wave of sound at the employee, causing him to suddenly faint and rest on the floor.

"Um...Good thinking!" said a confused Jenny. "Hey...I saw you do that to those lions earlier," she pointed out. "What the heck did you do?"

"Well..." Tobi walked to the unconscious male, making sure the other employees, who seemed to be going on with their business, didn't notice the outburst. "Lullaby Stellar is when I basically put someone to sleep as if they listened to a sweet lullaby. But it kinda works at random, and it still needs a bit of work.”

"Wow..." Jenny twitched. "So...are we just gonna leave this guy or..?"

Tobi shook his head as he grabbed the male, carrying him over his shoulders. "Well, I don't think it's a good idea to just storm in and demolish everything. I think we should try to avoid fighting as much as we can," Tobi suggested. He took another look at his surroundings, then saw a pile of cardboard boxes behind his shoulder. He made his way behind the boxes with Jenny still flying behind him.

After a little while, Tobi came from behind the boxes wearing the gray jumpsuit and pants that everyone else in the factory wore. He looked inside the hat and put his finger to his mouth. "Jenny, I'm gonna find the Song Of Bonding and free your peeps, alright?"

Jenny smiled inside of the hat. "Okay. We can do this," She said confidently. She knew it was impossible for her alone to get her friends and family back. But Tobi's constant reassuring brought her spirits up, just like Sunshine did back at the town. Just what are you guys, anyway?

Tobi put the hat on his head with Jenny hiding inside it. Now he only had one more issue to deal with. After perking up, his wolf ears began to slowly fold back into his hair, making it seem like they weren't there at all. "Yep! All set!" Tobi began to walk towards the conveyor belts, looking at the fur and metal parts moving on the belt. He picked up a patch of brown fur and a metal rod with a ball on top of it. "What...what are these guys supposed to do with these?"

"Hey!" Yelled a voice next to him. It was another one of the employees that seemed to be on a higher ranking than the one Tobi was disguised as. "Take your head outta your ass and get back to work!"

With the objects in his hands nearly slipping out of his grasp, Tobi fidgeted with the items and stuck them on as best as he could. When he was done, he presented to the man with the patch of fur on the metal ball along with a smiley face he managed to make with some black marker. "Um...here!"

"W...What the hell is that...?" The superior growled. "Are you mocking me or something, newbie!?"

"W-What!? No, of course not!" Tobi piqued, waving his hands in front of him at the man. "I just need to go over the...um...blueprints?"

After receiving a squinting stare from the man while managing a twitching smile, the male turned around and crossed his arms. "Everyone above us is out trying to catch the animals that supposedly are running wild in town," He sighed. "So if you really need some pointers, you should ask the boss yourself."

A definite, direct lead to Ricky's whereabouts. "So, where can I find him?" He asked with an uplifted grin.

"That's a stupid question. Everyone knows that he's on the top floor," the employee stated. "Honestly, how did you even manage to get this job?"

After swiftly bowing to the man, Tobi leaped over a conveyor belt and ran toward a pair oft passing all the other employees, even bumping into a couple of them, leaving the overseer he was just talking to confused. "This way, right...!?" Ramming his shoulder into the doors, he found himself in a bronze-colored hallway. He looked to his left and his right, both which seemed like would go on forever.

"What's wrong?" Jenny asked, lifting up the hat and peeping down at Tobi. "Did you seriously not bother to ask for directions?"

"Kinda...no," Tobi answered, giving her a thumbs up while winking.

"Then how the heck do we know where to go?" Jenny grunted with a sad look in her eyes.

"I got it!" Tobi exclaimed, a visible light bulb briefly appearing, fully lit and visible, before disappearing again.

"Really? What can we--Squwaak!" Jenny suddenly squeaked when she was grasped by the larger Tobi's hand as if she was a squeaky toy. Laying her down on the floor on her belly, Tobi placed a finger by her beak, flicking it hard enough to cause the bird to spin around in place on her tummy. She cried out oddly as she was spun around fast enough to the point where she created afterimages that made it seem that she had eight heads on all sides of her body. After a couple seconds passed, her spinning began to slow down, and her green eyes were replaced with two, black swirls, drool hanging from her wide opened beak. "W..What did you do that for...?"

Tobi looked down at where Jenny was facing, more so at her beak, which was pointing right. "Yush! We go right!" He knelt down to pick up Jenny and put her back in his hat before running off in that direction.

"Y-You used me as a compass?!" She groaned.

"Well, I needed to find some way to know where I was going!" Tobi explained as he dashed down the hallways, passing multiple doors that were similar to the ones he had ran entered the hallway through. "I just need to find some stairs or an elevator or something..."

"H-Hey, slow down!" Jenny complained from inside the hat. "That sudden spinning you made do..." Her cheeks turned green, and she covered her beak with her wings. "I think I may be getting..."

"Huh..? Wait a minute! No, no!" Tobi skidded to a stop, covering his head and rubbing it frantically. "Not my hair!" He begged. He dashed down the hallway even quicker, not even searching for the stairs or elevator he had previously hoped for, but instead for a bathroom. He had finally discovered one on his right, then zipped inside of it. Unfortunately, Jenny had already opened her beak and buried her face into Tobi's head, hurling uncontrollably.

Once in the bathroom, wavy, comical streams of tears would flow down Tobi's closed eyes as washed the vomit out of his hair.

"Um..." Jenny rubbed the back of her head with her wing. "My bad...It...slipped out."

Tobi looked at Jenny, who was on the sink, with the stream of tears, waving the fingers on his hand at her lightly. "It's...It's no big deal, I just need a bit of soap is all..." He sighed, washing out the gunk in his hair in the sink. "Sorry for making you so dizzy earlier."

"It's fine," Jenny replied. "I honestly wish I could take a nap right now..." She said, getting ready to barf again.

"Right now?" Tobi asked, placing his chin on his finger. "...Sure, I guess we could..." He grabbed Jenny softly, putting him back in his hat.

"Man, those animals are going crazy."

"Yeah. I really hope we can get that under control."

Tobi and Jenny would hear two voices coming towards the bathroom. Tobi made sure that the hat was snug on his head when the two workers walked into the bathroom. When they entered, Tobi quickly splashed water on vomit still in the sink.

"Hey!" Said one of the two men. "Are you a newbie or something!"

"What? No, I mean yes!" Tobi corrected himself.

"Oh, okay. Just never saw you around before," Said the other guy. "How're you enjoying yourself here so far?"

"Um...it's alright here, I guess," Tobi guessed. "The pay's good."

The two men would squint at Tobi. Tobi would gulp as he looked up at the men, who seemed slightly taller than him but were still intimidating with their glaring eyes. Even Jenny broke a sweat inside of the hat. The men then looked at each other before breaking out in laughter. "Bwahahaha, You can say that again!" One of them said.

"Heck, I can buy enough steaks to last a year with one paycheck!" The other one joked.

Tobi laughed nervously with the two. "Haha...yeah... Um, guys?"

"Yeah, rookie?" One of them responded, walking into a bathroom stall.

"Are there any elevators here?" Tobi asked.

"Elevators?" The other one asked, walking to a urinal and unzipping his pants.

"Or maybe some stairs?" Tobi continued questioning. "Or something like that?"

The bathroom stall would open, and the man at the urinal would stare at Tobi with suspecting eyes while the one in the stall stared at him questionably. The room around them begin turning dark, and it seemed like Tobi was facing two, dark demons whose faces were blacked out except for the bright, red dots in their eyes.

"Yeah, there should be some stairs down the hall and to the furthest left," The one at the urinal asked.

"There's an elevator next to it," The one in the stall said, "But it's out of order."

"Oh! Okay!" Tobi shook his head, shaking the water out of his hair. Finally! Ready or not, song, here I come! You too, Jenny's parents!

"Why, are you heading to the break room?" The one in the stall asked, closing the door again. "Don't employees that work on the first floor have their breaks after the third whistle?"

"Eh?" Tobi babbled while tilting his head.

"You're a newbie, but I'll remind you," grunted the man at the stall, pulling the zipper on his pants up. "You guys need to work harder than anyone else here, so you're put at the last of the break charts, you understand? Once you get on our level, you can have the first break."

"O-Oh, yeah..."Tobi piped. The man's voice was kind of intimidating, his tone sounding like he would actually be Tobi's boss if he was really working here.

"Hey, easy on the rookie! He hasn't even been here for a day! Isn't that right, kid?" The one in the stall jokingly sympathized.

"They have to learn early!" The laughter of the two men echoed through the bathroom. The laughing ended up almost making Tobi laugh seriously himself. "If we didn't teach these guys how to hunt, they'd be screwed, right?"

"What?"

"Yeah. They should be going crazy out there," the one in the stall snickered. "But watch, they'll be coming to us once one of them screw up!"

"Yeah...Hey, wait a minute. Most of the guys sent out there were rookies," said one of the men, particularly the one that was done using the stall. "So why are you still here if you're still new?

With his back by the sink, Tobi smiled worryingly. "W-Well...you know..."

"And come to think of it," the man from the stall chimed in, pushing the door opened while pulling up his pants, "You're wearing your outfit inside out, too!"

"E-Eh? Well..." Crap! Why didn't that other guy from before tell me?!

"I dunno...something smells fishy here," one of them said. "Why don't you come with us so we can have Ricky go over some stuff for you?"

"It's fine!" Tobi piped. "I'm going there myself!"

"Two is better than one, kid," the other grunted. "And you wouldn't disobey a direct order from your superior, would you?"

Tobi could hear the angry tone in that man's voice, and it didn't look like it was going to calm down. "It's not that, it's just--"

"It's just what?!" The man, who was much larger than the other, grabbed Tobi by the collar and lifted him off the ground. "You sure don't sound like anyone that works here!"

"So?! That doesn't mean I don't!" Tobi desperately retaliated. "Now could you let go!?" he begged before he was shaken and rustled by the larger man.

"Not until you tell me who you are! And you better cough up soon, or I'll slam your face into the ground!" The shaking was growing rougher and rougher, causing Tobi's head to lean back and forth as he was being rocked wildly. 

"T-Tobi..." Jenny whined underneath his hat. "I...I think I'm gonna...."

N-No! Now's an awful time! Please, hold it in! Hold it in! Hold it--!

A loud, vomiting hurling noise would ring from Tobi's hat, and it would be heard by everyone in the bathroom, including the two men. Tobi stared at the larger man holding him, an embarassed smile curled on his lips, while the other one backed his way out of the bathroom slowly. These two knew something was going on. He wasn't just some random newbie.

"You're coming with us."

Tobi giggled lightly and puffed his cheeks slightly. "Sorry."

"Sorry?"

Tobi leaned his head back, then rocked it forward, delivering a powerful headbutt to the man's head. He was smaller than him, but it was enough to knock him into one of the urinals, which would break when the worker crashed into it. The impact was so hard that it even caused a pipe to break through the wall, pouring water on the unconscious male.

The skinnier one, who witnessed the attack, quickly reached for his walkie-talkie and spoke into it quickly. "Hey! Can you read me!? This is Charlie! Come in! We have an intruder! Calling all workers, I need backup!"

"Aw, man! Why did you have to go and do that?!" Tobi frowned at the worker still standing. "Now it's gonna be a whole lot harder to get to Ricky!"

"You won't even have the chance!" the worker yelled.

With a sigh, Tobi rushed to the employee with his palms opened firmly. He thrust his left one into his gut, causing the male to cough up blood. Wrapping his arms around himself as he kneeled over slightly, Tobi then raised his right leg and slammed his heel down onto the back of his head, knocking him out cold into the ground.

"Wow! You really know how to kick some butt, huh?" Jenny asked, watching Tobi's attacks from under his hat.

"Please don't puke in my hair anymore..." Tobi sighed. He turned to his right and continued sprinting down the hallway when he heard a loud, whaling noise coming from the ceiling. It sounded like an alarm, most likely to inform the workers of intruders. The sound went on for a good five seconds before pausing and repeating. As Tobi covered his human ears to rid himself of the annoying sound, his groaned, growing irritated from the sound. "Why can't they make more creative sirens?!"

"Why would they? Isn't the point of alarms to...you know, alarm people?" riddled Jenny.

"Well, I mean, yeah. But still...!" Tobi frowned. "You'd think they'd throw in something a little different every now and then! Maybe like the discovered theme from Steel Plate Gas, Or the invincibility theme from the Hyper Belio Siblings...Or something!"

"Never heard of them..." Jenny stated. "More video games, I guess?"

Tobi continued running down the hall until he finally reached the end of it. "I see it! The staircase!"

"Great!" cheered Jenny. "Now we just need to rush up the stairs and--"

"Stop them!" said a voice from the staircase. "The radio signal came from this floor somewhere!"

Tobi skid on his ankles to a halt, looking at the swarm of workers coming down the staircase and into the hall. "Eek...They found us."

"So...what should we do?" Jenny pondered worryingly. She and Tobi saw the men draw their stun rods and hunting rifles, which was odd for people that worked at a factory to have. "They kinda have us outnumbered."

"Actually, I've been through worse," Tobi stated while sticking his tongue out, looking up at Jenny. "Not to sound cocky, but these guys are gonna need some more guys if they wanna stop me."

"Raise your hands behind your head," ordered one of the men in front of the group of workers, aiming his rifle at them, "And maybe we'll go easy on you!"

"Actually," Tobi responded kindly, "I'd really appreciate it if you'd lower your weapons and take me to Ricky. I really need to see him."

"Fire!" The man and everyone else who held rifles aimed at Tobi and pulled their triggers, shooting a barrage of bullets at Tobi, who would squeak as he leaped forward into the fray of flying metal. As the bullets passed him, he swung his right leg up at the man who was yelling at him, dealing a hard kick to his chin, sending him flying into the ceiling. The other gunners continued to fire, only to miss Tobi as he leaped and clung to the ceiling. They shot above them, absolutely sure they would have gotten him this time, only to miss once more. The next thing they knew, he was in the middle of them, surrounded.

"We've got him now!" Said one of the four gunners surrounding him.

"Actually," Tobi huffed, "It's me who has you!"

The workers fired their guns again, aiming for Tobi's body. However, Tobi leaned back before the bullets could hit him and stood on his hands, sticking his legs wide out as he began spinning. "Haywire Handstand!" The spinning became more rapid and violent, and sharp, powerful winds with jolts of blue electrical bolts would form on the ground around Tobi, sweeping the dust underneath his hands and into the wind itself. "Heavy Leg Arts: Whirlwind Breakout!!" The radius of the winds would expand, and the force of the razor sharp gusts along with the intense, violent bolts would blow the gunners away from him. In addition from being cut as if they were slashed by swords, the bolts in the wind would shock them ruthlessly. They dropped their weapons as they were blown away from Tobi, some of them slamming against the walls.

"Don't stop! Keep going until he's down!" Said one of the men wielding a stun rod. He ran to Tobi while lifting the rod over his head. When he approached him, he slammed the fully charged weapon down at Tobi, who caught it with his hand. The yellow lightning that sparked from the rod would soon turn blue, as would the naturally summoned lightning bolts circling Tobi on the floor.

"Nice try!" He smiled before giving the male a serious glare. "Counter Shock!!" The rod's handle would begin to violently emit sparks before eventually electrocuting the wielder, blue electricity running violently through his body and glowing from out of it. Stunned and somewhat paralyzed, the man didn't move an inch from his position from where he tried to strike Tobi, leaving himself open for the wolf boy to gently push his foot onto the man, knocking him down. "Timber."

"Bastard! You'll pay for this!" All at once, the workers would rush to Tobi, raising their rods and aiming their guns at him. Those who fired their rifles missed every bullet due to Tobi's dodging, which was flawless. He leaned backward and opened his legs again to dodge the swarm, and rolled throughout the floor to avoid the oncoming projectiles. He leaped from his roll and stuck both of his legs out behind him.

"I seriously can't waste time here!" Tobi said as he tilted his body slightly, pulling one leg back. "Heavy Leg Arts: Gust Scissor!!" He swung his leg, sending a crescent gust of wind at the attackers, knocking them away, the sharpness of the wind literally cutting through their skin and through their flesh as they fell and slid on the ground. Defeated, they no longer had the strength to stop Tobi as he ran up the staircase.

"He's up at the top! That's where I need to head, then!" He yelled to himself as he got off the staircase and ran through the next hall, which was filled with workers with not just rifles and stun rods, but machetes and flamethrowers. "What the heck!? What kind of factory has all these weapons?! Well, whatever!" He clapped his hands twice while looking at the approaching horde of workers he was heading into. "Heavy Palm Arts: Pattycake..." With a rush, he began to thrust his palms back and forth repeatedly into the fray of aggressors at such an absurd rate that the afterimages from his arms' motions made it seem like he had grown a thousand palms for the sole purpose of attacking them. "...Rapid!!" The palm strikes would strike the widely-spread men in their faces, guts, and anywhere else they could touch, including their limbs and necks. The groaned and cried out in pain, all of them falling in defeat, either crying out in the rush of pain going through their bodies or laying unconscious on the floor.

Jenny, who had watched Tobi's attacks from under his hat, would leave her mouth hanging open in shock. She recalled Tobi saying how he had bested Ricky in battle earlier, and remembered how she barely believed him. But now she can say without a shadow of doubt that not only Tobi could stand a chance against Ricky, but he could definitely beat him. "Wow! Tobi, that was so cool!" she praised, amazed. "You can do all of that to Ricky!? You might be a hero to animals everywhere!"

Tobi continued running forward while looking up at Jenny, rubbing his finger on his nose a little. "I wouldn't say that. I have a lot of animals that don't really like me that much, you know," he stated. "I have a lot of people in general that hate me."

"I bet you can literally push them to the other side of the planet with hands like yours," Jenny joked as they ran. They both laughed before coming across another approaching group of workers. They raised their weapons as they charged forward to Tobi and Jenny, causing the two to smirk.

"You know...It's not like I enjoy hurting people badly, but..." Tobi let his arms fly backward as he charged into the fray. "I do tend to enjoy action like this time to time!" he grinned, letting his thrill-seeking attitude show.

"Hahaha!" Jenny laughed in confident agreement. "Then let's mow through them!"

"Right!" Tobi leaped into the fray, spinning wildly enough to form a tornado around him as he dived into the gang of workers that fired bullets at him. "Heavy Leg Arts: Twister Smasher!!"

With the blood from Sparky's abuse still stained on her lips, Lucy walked back into the forest with bags filled with medical supplies for both the two cobrabears that she had encountered earlier and herself to tend to the injuries Sparky had laid on her. She was pissed, but she had to do her best to control herself, she thought, or she may end up killing someone. She walked down the path that led to the sign marking the crossroads and found the two creatures still laying there.

I hope I'm not too late, she prayed while stopping and kneeling down to the cobrabears. She moved her hands into one of the bags and took out a bottle of whiskey. It wouldn't heal the wounded animal that much, but it would at least lessen the pain of her hands going through its organs. She always liked animals, despite having to hunt them every now and them. She knew it was a dumb idea to feed animals alcohol, but it always worked for humans, so she figured she could give it a try. She opened the drink and poured it down the barely conscious Cobrabear's mouth. After emptying the bottle inside of her, she sat the bottle down and dug her hands back into the bag, taking out some sewing string with a needle. Putting on some rubber gloves, she unraveled some of the string and began to unprofessionally operate on the Cobrabear. She knew she had to be prepared for it, but she was caught off guard by the beast's pain-induced, cringing scream. Even so, she had to keep going, being almost halfway through the sewing. Her blood-tainted, gloved hands were bright red in the setting sun, and her eyes were concentrated on the wound she was trying to heal. She had hoped that book she read on animal care helped at least a little in this situation.

Wiping a sweat off her forehead, leaving a streak of blood wiped on her forehead, Lucy sighed as she sat the needle on the ground. The wound she had sewed took a whole three hours to stitch. She didn't know what time it was, but she knew she wasted a lot. She got off the ground and was about to walk home when her cat ears twitched to the sound of the baby Cobrabear. When she turned around and saw the Cub's black, watering eyes, she let out a small sigh. "You didn't think I'd forget about you now, would I?" She went into the bag and took out two wooden planks and some duct tape. She crouched again and positioned the two wooden planks on the side of the baby Cobrabear's broken leg. It whined a little as the planks were pressed on its limb, and even more when Lucy wrapped and bounded it together with the tape. Taking off the gloves and leaving them on the dirt, she stood up and dusted off her hands.

"Well, that takes care of that," puffed the hybrid out of relief. She wasn't a vet, but she loved animals enough to have some general knowledge on how to take care of them. Not just casual house pets, but also strange, obscure ones like the Cobrabear. As she watched the Cobrabear's baby successfully and perfectly walk towards the wounded one's embrace, she would think to herself, I guess that reading did kind of pay off...Is that what going to school really does for you?

Picking up her bags, she started to make her way down the trail, smiling at the memory of what she had just saw: A mother and a child. Both of them were sleeping with each other soundly, nuzzling and cuddling each other as if they were the most precious things in the world to each other. Her short-lived smile would slowly shift into a frown. Why couldn't she have that? Why did she only see her mom in pictures? Why did she hear about her only through stories that made her out as a bad person? Why did she have to lose her life the moment hers was beginning? Was I really that bad for her...?

Once she stepped inside of her cabin and closed the door shut behind her, she stared at the floor with cold, emotionless eyes, yet she felt these questions stir up inside her again, like waters in a raging tornado. I...Am I a problem child...? She clutched her chest, shutting her eyes as she ran through the hall and into her room. Plopping down on her bed, she curled her tail around her leg as her kitten ears laid flat on her head. It just wasn't fair to her. Everyone else around her was living such a great life with even greater people, but no matter how hard she prayed, it seemed that life would treat her unfairly, some days worse than most. The tears running out of her eyes and into the pillow she rested on were accompanied by her loud, sad crying. After a couple of minutes of shedding tears, she lifted her face slowly from her pillow slowly. ...Great...I made a mess on my bed again... She thought to herself. She wished that she didn't have to cry, Or at the very most, not alone.

She got up from the bed, wiping the tears from her eyes before going into her closet. Opening the door, she grabbed one of the few things she had left of her father: A long, tan trench coat that hung up in the middle of the closet. Even after so long, his scent was there. She could smell it; The fatherly love that he gave her. It was the scent that gave her hope that she would be alright because, in that sense, he was there. She definitely needed it now, especially since she was going to go see someone who she's not even sure she has feelings for anymore. She grabbed the coat and put it on her, the snugness of the material fitting properly on her. She walked out of her room and then out of the cabin, quickly walking through the forest and passing the Cobra, both sleeping soundly.

I want that so much... she thought to herself, looking back at the two of them while walking on the path to the town.

A couple of minutes later, after walking down the sidewalk in the town, Lucy would see a gang of guys hanging out at the side of the convenience store. There were six boys in the group, and they were far from calm. They were rowdy, loudly bragging on how they just mugged an old lady and stole her purse, one of them dangling the purse while another pretended to be the old lady.

"And remember how you stabbed her? That grandma's guts were everywhere!"

Lucy cringed when she heard one of them laugh at the horrid statement. Those bastards... Retaining her anger, she began walking towards the gang again, swearing underneath her breath. She was disgusted by them. Her recollection of her being swayed by the words of the leader made her grit her teeth. She didn't know how she could even stand to be around, let alone fall in love with a heartless man like him.

"Well, well, well! Look who decided to show up!" Yelled Sparky, looking down at Lucy from the roof of the store.

"Sorry," apologized Lucy. "I had some errands to take care of..." She tugged her father's coat closer onto herself, looking away from Sparky.

"Whatever, I don't care," Sparky hissed. "Just come up here."

Growling silently, Lucy would walk over to the side of the store, trying to bare with the cat callings and unwanted, flirtatious whistling before Sparky commanded the boys to tone it down. She began to climb up the louder when one of the men got behind her and attempted to reach over to her rear. "Do it!" One of them whispered a bit too loudly. Lucy turned her head and angrily glared at the boys, her eyes practically saying, It'll be the last mistake you'll ever make. They all stopped in their tracks, not wanting the suffer the same fate as the other one who had the balls to do such a thing; Sparky didn't stop her, but Lucy cut off the guy's fingers with her kunai. Even now, the doctors are still trying to attach them back to the poor guy.

Once she was on top of the store, Lucy sat down by Sparky, who let out a sneaky, blunt laugh when he looked at her. "What's so damn funny?" She asked the boy.

"Nothing, except you look ridiculous in that coat," Sparky insulted. "Where did you get it, from the dump?"

Lucy lowered her head once she was insulted. He had just insulted her father's coat, one of the few things that had value to her. Wearing it was as if she had her father's arms around her at all times, even if he wasn't there. It took her everything she had to channel her anger away for the sake of Sparky.

"Okay guys, listen up!" He calls out to his subordinates below. "Tomorrow's the big day! Everything we've done has been leading up to this! Every bank we robbed, every turd we beat to the ground for disrespecting us, every face we spat in leads up to this!" The hoodlum takes out a piece of paper with a hand-drawn map illustrated on it. "We're going to make this little town our turf, and make it known to the world! he declared as the people below how gawked and mumbled, their interest peaked. "We're going to break through every bank we haven't touch, and pay a visit to the ones we've crashed in the past!"

"What about the police, boss?" one of the thugs below asked.

"Those small shits? You'd best believe we're more than a match for them," Sparky bragged as he tossed a small firecracker in his hand. "Anyone that stands in our way is gonna get a fist full of fireworks in their fist!"

As the other males laughed, looking forward to the special day tomorrow, Lucy sighed. I don't see why we're doing this, she thought. People are already scared of you, Sparky. You don't need to take this any further than it already is. She stood up, about to walk to the edge of the store's roof. "I'm going to get something to drink."

Sparky looked over his shoulder at Lucy, letting an insult that he came up with on the fly slip through his lips. "We'll mess them up so bad, it'll make Lucy's hag coat look like the fashion of the season."

Once she was at the edge of the roof, she stopped, her cat ears standing with her tail falling flat on the ground. "...What did you just say?"

They all laughed at Sparky's insult as the gang leader continued. "I mean, let's be honest here! That coat looks like it was made of slug skin or something! I think I even smelled some piss coming from it! She must have bad taste to buy a stupid waste of money like that! Hell, that thing'll probably serve better as an asswipe---" Sparky was cut off by the sharp, swift slap to his face by the enraged Lucy, whose ears were flat on her head. The hair in front of her covered her eyes, blocking the hateful, unforgiving glare in her eyes. She was used to being called names and treated like a piece of trash her entire life, but to have someone slander her father's coat, or her father himself, was unforgivable. Letting the only person that treated her like she was something special get insulted would not be tolerated.

The laughter that the gang shared was silenced by the slap, which echoed for a couple of seconds. It left a red, stinging mark on Sparky's left cheek, as well as his pride. "...Heh. You slap pretty hard, don't you?" He turned his head back to Lucy with an angry glare, taking out a lead pipe and swinging it hard at her head, slamming the hard metal into her right jaw, knocking her off her feet and onto the floor of the roof. "Almost as if you forgot your place!" He walked to the downed Lucy, getting on top of her and raising his hand before slugging a hard punch onto her face. Since she was still stunned from the lead pipe, she didn't have any energy to retort or defend herself from the constant punches Sparky's free hand landed on her. Then he stopped, realizing another way to teach her a lesson. He began to eye her brown coat and formed a vengeful grin on his face. "You really like this shit excuse for a coat, huh?"

The pained Lucy would open her eyes lightly as blood leaked from her mouth and her nose. No...No...! She reached her hand shakingly to Sparky's arm, grabbing it tightly. I...Won't let you...This is his coat. No one has ever made me feel special like he did. I'm not going to let you take this... It's all I have...  Lucy's train of thought was interrupted when he felt a large, clutching hand choking her neck. She tried to breathe and fight back, but the headache she had was beginning to return due to Sparky's blow to her head. The excessive pain from the headache and the one from the clean-hitting pipe, along with the lack of oxygen, finally made the girl slowly pass out, her grasp on the coat slowly fading. No...It's mine... As she fell into unconsciousness, her mind subconsciously took her back to the memory of the simpler days, the better ones where she would get pulled around by that large, gentle man with a caring heart on that small red wagon.

Fishies! Daddy I can see the fishies again! The beautiful little girl leaned over the wagon to take a look at the fish that danced in the lake. Her cat ears sprung up when she looked at them, absolutely amazed by the pond fish that swam around. They look so pretty!

The giant of a man had laughed as he pulled the girl with cat ears. He turned his head to face the little one, his expression being a happy one. Really now? I never knew you were one for sea life. Hmm...How about you and I go to an aquarium one day?

A-quari-um...? What's that, Daddy?

It's a place where a ton of fish live....Hm....better yet, why don't I take you out to the sea itself? You'll find all the fish in the world that way!

The sea...? The girl was silent for the moment. ...Isn't that a letter, daddy?

The man would pause to stare at the child for a moment before laughing. That wasn't what I meant, sweetheart.

Hey! Her cat tail wagged as she pouted at the larger man. Don't laugh at me!

Oh, I wouldn't ever, Lucy, the man chuckled, My precious child...

Those three words soared out of Lucy's mouth as her body sprung up from the cold, wet bags of trash underneath her. The last thing she remembered was that she was on the roof of the convenience store. She felt a ringing pain in her head. This time, though, it wasn't from out of the blue. She thought that maybe it was from her being so cold, but then it hit her; Sparky. He was pretty good at swinging around that pipe, but Lucy could tell that she was a lot stronger than him. But if she overpowered him, he thought, he would lose his bad boy ego and cut her off from his life. Then she wondered if that really was a bad thing after all.

"It's...so cold..." She shivered as droplets of rain constantly fell on her. She looked up and saw that it was indeed raining. It was cold and shallow, just like her boyfriend. She was lost, like a homeless kitten whose only choice of resolve was to return to a dog that would tear through her in every way possible. Why did she let this happen to her? Why did she let him do this to her? Because, she told herself, who else would love the girl with the cat ears and kitty tail? No one. She would just wind up being casted into the trash, like garbage.

Wait a minute...It shouldn't be this cold. She wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes widening. "W-What...Where is it?" She asked herself silently. She quickly slid her hands all over her body, then faced the bags, ripping them apart and moving them, panicking, her eyes beginning to swell tears as each bag she ripped through and each space she checked brought her no relief, no sense of relaxation. "Where's that coat?! Where's his...!?" She stopped, then moved her shaking hand to her neck, feeling the rough bruising collared onto it.

'You really like this shit excuse for a coat, huh?'

She moved her hand slowly from her neck, then looked up at the ceiling. Quickly, she sprung from the trash can and onto the ceiling, looking around desperately for the coat as she began crying. She scurried the ground, hoping that at least that it was at least somehow buried in the roof. What am I even thinking..? "What was I thinking all along...?" She cried to herself, dropping to her knees as she placed her hands onto a puddle while her reflection bounced off it. She sobbed into the puddle, wanting to do nothing but drown herself in the sadness that Sparky had inflicted onto her. From the pain of taking her father's coat to the blow he landed onto her head. "Why...Why do I keep selling myself out like this?!" She screamed, slamming her fist on the puddle as the rain soaked through her clothes. "Why did I even believe that things would turn around if I found someone like him!? Damnit! If God really does exist, why the hell is he doing this to me?!" She roared into the air, the rain cloaking the tears running down her face. "...Dad...What happened...? What happened to that great life I was supposed to live with you?" She asked out loud in a dull, saddened tone. "...What happened to that great life that you promised? The one we were supposed to live together..?"

"W...We can't match up with him..." Said one of the fallen workers into a walkie-talkie. He had a large black eye, as well as footprints all over his body. "W-Whoever this trespasser is, he puts up one heck of a fight..."

"Oh?" said a voice from the other line of the radio. "Now that I think about it, you guys didn't tell me what he looked like..."

"He looks like he's a kid!" he described, laying down on the floor as he coughed up some blood. "His skin's so pale it looks like mayo, and he's wearing black wolf ears for some reason!"

"Wolf ears?" The voice repeated. "I was just about to make an announcement about that."

"You know him, sir?"

"Why, I have to pay him back for what he did. He's a boy that gave me a bit of trouble yesterday. But I should return the favor in full," the voice pondered.

"Sir..." The defeated man would look in front of him, seeing Tobi running further and further away from him, leaping up and swinging his right leg around, knocking away two approaching workers that would cry out in pain before they both slammed into a wall.

"Shouldn't be that far from here now, right?!" Tobi asked as he broke through another door that would lead to another hallway. Once again, he was met with a gang of armed factory workers that aimed rifles at him. Tobi leaned forward, throwing his arms behind his back as the bullets passed and missed him. "There's more of these guys than before!" He complained as he hopped from the ground and jumped on top of the head of one of the men, then on another.

"Maybe that means we're getting closer!" Jenny thought as she lifted up Tobi's hat. "They kinda know who we are, so do we even need this stupid get up?"

"You got a point there!" Tobi would grab the top of the uniform pants and bottom of the uniform jacket he was wearing, then pulled them off with one fowl swoop. "They're a little too gray for my taste, anyway!" He tossed the jacket behind him before leaping off of one more head and landing on the floor behind the last worker he stepped in. He pulled his right leg to his chest, then lunged it at the man's back, sending the man into his co-workers like a torpedo with a whirlwind surrounding him, knocking the employees into the ceiling and walls of the hallway while being blasted out of the last door Tobi went through.

"You can sure kick a lot of butt, huh?" Jenny asked while she pulled the hat off of Tobi's head, his black wolf ears perking from his head as if they've been freed from being held captive.

"Um...You could say that," Tobi stated, a bit flattered by the compliment. "How far are we, anyway? If Ricky's the boss, then he really should be at the top floor!"

Jenny would search around until she pointed to the wall on their left. "Why don't you just check that?"

Tobi would look to where Jenny pointed, spotting a diagram on the wall that appeared to be a map. So convenient... Tobi would step towards the map, reading it. "...It says that we're a couple of floors below him. Like, ten, I think."

"Well, I guess we'd better keep moving," sighed Jenny. "Honestly, I still feel a bit dizzy from that spin you took me on," she whined while placing her wing behind her head. "I can actually feel another wave coming up..." Her cheeks bloated and turned green again, wrapping both wings around her stomach.

Tobi was about to protest when he heard a loud, irritating static coming from the megaphones where the sirens once alarmed from. Grabbing his wolf ears and pulling them down, he whined as giant teardrops welled up in his eyes. "What is it now..?"

"Attention all workers, and all of the population of Takanata Town. It has come to my attention that there has recently been a disruption of the peace...and raining hot dogs, for whatever reason. Anyway, to keep my town strong and sturdy along with keeping you safe and out of harm's way, I've devised a bounty on the two individuals that have entered this town. They are known throughout the world as public menaces, and should be dealt with immediately. I'm offering a huge, huge reward on anyone who catches the leader of the Taku Residence, Tobi Kuma Yukio, and his friend, Jason Stewart---the popular DJ that goes by the alias of Sunshine! Bring them to me alive, and you'll get yourself double the amount that I promised you! Let's show these bandits just how we handle rule breakers!"

As the speakers on the ceiling stopped throbbing from the announcement, Jenny felt her heart sink as she trembled. "T-That voice..."

"Geez. So I've been wanted a couple of times," Tobi frowned. "That doesn't make me the most evil person on the face of the planet!" His wolf ears would then twitch. He heard something above him, like an uneasiness in a bird's chest. "Jenny..?"

"...Once we find him," Jenny questioned, "Will I see my family again?"

Tobi would cross his arms, looking at the floor. Jenny sounded different from her confident self. He could hear it in her voice, and in her heart as well. She always tried to make her heart and herself sound brave, but he could easily sense the worry she had felt. For some reason, that felt too familiar for him. He closed his eyes, then kneeled onto the floor. "We'll find them," he declared in a reassuring but calm tone.

"Okay," Jenny smiled. "..W-Wait, what are you doing? Are you tired or something?" She asked with concerned.

"Nope! In fact, I'm ready to move!" Tobi would stand on his two legs, then squat down as low as he could, a circle of wind surrounding his feet. "Heavy Leg Arts...!"

"Huh? T-Tobi, what are you--"

"Cow..." Tobi sprung his legs from the ground, leaving a large burst of wind underneath him as he blasted through the ceiling of the hall, breaking through the floor of the hall above them and then through the ground of a huge room filled with clear, plastic tubes filled with freezing, cold water that he would tear apart on impact, the tubes spraying water and releasing chilling blasts of air that would travel all across the huge area, freezing the unfortunate employees that tried to flee the room, the ice and water freezing them solid. Through the ceiling of that room, he rocketed through an extremely hot room filled with shirtless workers that would get launched away from the rising Tobi, landing into the burning coal that they would force to shovel for hours. They screamed painfully as they were suddenly covered in flames and blisters from the burning stones. Floor after floor, Tobi would keep rising until he broke through the floor of the highest level of the factory. "Jump!"

Tobi would hover in the air briefly before standing in front of the hole he had jumped through. "I think that's ten...I think. I don't know, I'm no good at math." He put his hands in his pockets as he stood in front of the gold-plated doors. "That door looks pretty shiny, though...Maybe this is it."

"Are you insane?!" squeaked the startled Jenny, her pupils comically missing from her eyes as she popped her head from the back of Tobi's shirt. "You're lucky I fell off when you suddenly jumped like that, otherwise I'd be a crushed bird sandwich!" She flew onto Tobi's head and smacked her wing on top of it. "Warn me next time!"

"S-Sorry," Tobi apologized while frowning slightly. "But it's not like I didn't get us there, right?"

"That's not the point!" Jenny yelled before calming down. "Anyway, this is it, huh?"

Tobi nodded his head. "Yeah..."

"Well, he already knows we're in the factory," Jenny wondered. "Maybe we should try and sneak in carefully--"

As Jenny talked, Tobi raised his leg and forced it forward, kicking the doors open. "Kick."

"That's not sneaking! That's breaking and entering!" Jenny scowled as Tobi waltzed in the door, banging her wing on top of his head.

Tobi walked into the middle of the huge officer. Wow...what a fancy room, he thought to himself. The walls beside and behind him were made of brown, mahogany wood that held the heads of all kinds of creatures on the wall: Three-headed birds, bears with hats and face paintings of clowns, giant ants wearing Viking helmets, and even a couple of human beings with a description written in gold underneath them.

" 'For throwing a sissy fit because I broke into their pet store.' 'For yelling at me for knocking over her brat's ice cream.' 'For saying that this toy was designed for ages 11 & up. Don't know why, but it just irritated me. What a bastard.' " Jenny flew by the mounted human heads, reading the description underneath. "Sheesh, this guy is so immature."

"He and Nega would get along pretty well," Tobi said to himself while crossing his arms. "The Song Of Bonding should be in here, right? And so should Ricky..."

"Don't you have super hearing or something?" Jenny asked, flying back on top of Tobi's head. "Can't you track Ricky down with that?"

"Maybe..." Tobi closed his eyes, his wolf ears perking up. "Try not to make any noise, okay?"

"S-Sure," Jenny obeyed.

In Tobi's mind, the area around him would darken. Everything around him would be pitch black except anything that made noise. His ears picked up what was going on floors below him; There were the defeated workers squirming on the floor in defeat. Those who weren't injured helped them on their feet and tried to get them medical attention. These workers, along with anything else that produced sound, were outlined by a white light over they're nearly silhouetted bodies. He heard the freezing, cold air that blew through the floor they jumped through as if a blizzard blew through the room, the snowflakes blowing through the room also outlined as well as the frozen workers covered in ice. Then there was the sound of flames on the room above that room. The men knocked into the pile of hot coal covered in black soot, one of them having a small flame lit on their hair before another one pinched it, putting it out. "No...No..."

"How does that even work, anyway? That hearing of yours," Jenny asked.

"Huh? Well.." Tobi continued scanning the building with his hearing as he explained. "I'm a musician, so I have to learn to hear a lot of things so I can make my music better. So I've been training my ears since I was little to hear as much as possible, even an ant going to the bathroom."

"That's gross..." Jenny commented as he listened to Tobi. "But can you really hear that well?"

"Well, like I said, I'm a musician. Apparently, I had this ability since birth, too," Tobi added. "Since I'm part wolf, and Shins says that wolves hear things from miles away, that might have something to do with it."

"I bet it comes in handy," Jenny tweeted. "Like now..."

"Eh?" Tobi's eyes widened as he turned to the wall on his left, which displayed a painting of Ricky riding a horse.

"What's wrong?" Jenny questioned, flying off of Tobi's head.

"Something's behind there..." Tobi pointed to the painting. "Behind that wall."

"What? Are you sure about that?" Jenny would hover over to the painting, staring at it. "Hmph. Stupid Ricky with his stupid horse..."

"Yeah...I hear...animals," Tobi walked toward the wall with Jenny's eyes staring at him intensely. "Barking...a couple of meows...chirping..."

"C-Chirping?" Jenny said after him. "What does it sound like?"

"...Just normal chirping," responded Tobi as he placed his wolf ear by the painting. "No..wait...now it's talking..."

"Talking?"

"Yeah...'This place really sucks, squawk...' "

"That's them!" Jenny gasped. "They're still here! They're..." Jenny began tearing up hopefully as she flew closer to the painting. "They're still alive..." Charged with anticipation and hope, she rushed into the portrait as she began to cry. "Mom! Dad! Tengo! Everyone, I've come to rescue you!" Bounded back by the hard painting, she would peck at the art endlessly, making a hard, hollow noise every time her beak touched it, a noise that Tobi would quickly pick up on.

"Huh...I think there's a room behind there!" Tobi deduced. "There's some sort of metal wall covering it, though!" Tobi's eyes would then widen as he pressed his ear closer to the wall. He heard a familiar, heart-capturing tune that would bounce through the interior of the room the supposed animals were trapped in. "The Song of Bonding!" Tobi realized immediately. "The song's there, too!"

"Two birds with one stone...or a bit more than that," Jenny chimed. "So we just need to break through it..." Jenny wondered. "Or open it somehow."

Tobi would tap his right shoe on the ground, then pull it up to his chest. "No problem!" Taking in all of his strength, he dealt a powerful, forceful kick that would shatter the painting and the metal wall behind it. Pulling his leg back, Tobi would stand there, shocked at what he had found. "What the..."

In front of Tobi and Jenny would be a cold, metal room filled with odd animals that might as well had been soulless beasts. There were yellow-haired apes with pupiless eyes pulling chains on each side of the room in order to rotate the gears on the ceiling, and there were also red kangaroos bouncing on top of pistons with accurate but unenthusiastic force, their eyes just as empty as the mammals working the gears. There were slugs in tiny, circular containers that were quite literally being drained from their juices, which would fall into a large bucket. Their skin was colored gray, but when Tobi looked at them, he swore that he saw them before.

"The Sonic Slugs..." Jenny quipped. "He drained them all..."

"This is horrible...Wait, but where's your folks?" Tobi asked as he stepped into the room. However, the moment he set foot on the shallow floors, all of the animals would turn to him. They weren't joyful or enraged. They weren't even excited the slightest bit. "Um...hi?" Tobi greeted as he was feeling an uncomfortable aurora filling the room.

Feeling the unusual tension herself, Jenny hovered by Tobi's wolf ear. "Say, you said you heard my family in here too, right?"

"Yeah," answered Tobi before he gasped, his ears twitching to a blissful, luring tone. "Over there!" He jogged further into an even darker hall with Jenny hovering behind him. They both would continue moving past the dull, bleak-colored animals that kept their eyes on them. The atmosphere for Tobi and Jenny was beginning to feel awkward. Uncomfortably, unwittingly awkward. It didn't help that the path they were going down was getting darker and darker around them every second.

As they advanced deeper into the hall, a bright, shimmering light would come into sight and would radiate more and more the closer they came to it. In Tobi's case, however, he would do more than just simply see the light. "It's there...The song! I can hear it, but..." Tobi paused as he began approaching the light. "...Something's not right..."

"What do you mean?" Jenny asked as they finally stood in front of what Tobi was looking for: The blue, radiant stone trapped within a clear glass capsule. Around the capsule would be wires coming from it that would connect to the steel, light-blinking helmets that would be on top of three birds, their feathers almost identical to Jenny's, aside from the dulled colors.

"Mom...Dad?" Shocked at what she saw, Jenny flapped his wings slowly, easing towards her family. "Tango...?" The color in the eyes of the three birds were gone. Their beaks moved, motioning unintelligible, unusual chants. The blinking white lights coming from the helmets they wore sprung white jolts of electricity, causing Jenny to pull back when she saw one of the jolts fly towards her.

"What's happening to them?" Tobi worried, clenching his fists. "Whatever's going on, they're clearly in pain! What's supposed be accomplished here?"

"Deciphering the song, you dumb wolf kid."

Tobi and Jenny spun around to see a silhouette figure emerge from the shadows behind them, twisting the tip of his curly mustache as he lifted the tip of his cowboy hat, grinning widely. "You're trespassing on my property, wolf."

"You!" Jenny growled.

"Ricky...!" Tobi gasped, stepping back a little. "What do you mean by 'deciphering the song?' "

"I mean what I said," spat Ricky while he glared at Tobi and Jenny. "These birdies are gonna use their motor mouths to unlock this stone's song, and its power along with it!" Ricky grabbed his hip while pointing at the stone in the capsule. "Once I finally have this song figured out, I can sell it and make a profit out of Ricky Takanata's brand new album! Or, even better, if what the legends say are true, then I can make myself even stronger, and have this world ruled under the name of me, Ricky!"

"Plagiarism."

"What?" Ricky uttered to Tobi.

"That first idea. That's plagiarism," Tobi pointed out. "You didn't make that song. Someone else did. I don't know who it was, but it definitely wasn't you. When I listen to that song, I hear sweetness, joy, and endless dreams. It so doesn't fit you at all since you're kind of a jerk."

"A jerk...?!" Ricky was insulted by the boy's mellow-toned remark. "You know kid, no one insults me and lives to tell the tale."

"Well, I did last time, right?" Tobi blinked as he tilted his head to the side. "Oh, do you know someone named Nega---?"

"Zip it!" Ricky roared, clutching his fists angrily.

"Okay, okay," Tobi squeaked before turning to the Song of Bonding. "I'll just take this and be on my way..."

"Not so fast, wolf who cried sheep!" Ricky stuck his hand out, summoning a white, magnetic sphere that formed around his clenched fist. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You so much as even look at that stone and I'll crush their brains!" The tight metal helmets on the three birds would begin to bind tighter and tighter on their heads. They didn't seem to feel the pain though. In fact, they were reciting the odd chant even faster.

"You leave them alone!" Jenny roared, soaring quickly at Ricky, only to get smacked away by him into a wall, falling to the metal floor.

"Jenny!" Tobi stuck his hand out to her, then looked at Ricky, curling his fist as it became covered by a white, thick cloud. His eyes intensely glared at Ricky, who wagged his finger.

"Didn't you hear me?" Ricky smirked, clenching his fist tighter. "One move and these birds are as scrambled as eggs!"

"No, you said that if I so much as looked at the Song of Bonding that you'd scramble them!" Tobi pulled his cloud cover fist back, then threw them forward, shooting a stream of  fist-shaped clouds at Ricky. "Cloud Shooter!!"

Ricky would open his hand, summoning the metal floor beneath him to raise in front of him. "I warned you kid! Hope you like your birds---" As the cloud impacted the metal, Ricky was taken by surprised by the strength of the cloud, which was strong enough to place a large dent in the substance. The impact also sent Ricky sent Ricky off his feet, falling onto the ground. He stood up and coated his fists with the white energy, but he was too late. Tobi had already leaped over the metal plate and pulled his leg behind him, forcing it at Ricky and landing a strong kick against his face, the tip of his shoe smashing deep into his face. Ricky flew and rolled on his back, wincing and gasping in pain before bouncing out of the hidden room and into the wall in his own office, causing a couple of the trophies he had earned to fall on his head.

Tobi would run to the wires holding the birds hostage. He grasped onto the cords on their helmets and charged his hands with blue lightning. "Counter Shock!!" The wires plugged into the helmets would have blue rings of lightning surrounding them and riding up to the capsule. The glass would crack and eventually break apart, the stone dropping on the ground along with the birds, who seemed exhausted and weary.

Jenny would begin to open her eyes, seeing her family lying on the cold floor. "Oh no..." Her eyes immediately went dull as she quickly flew over the three birds that fell at one by one.

"They're alive. I can hear their heartbeats," Tobi assured Jenny. "I think they just need a nap."

"A nap, you say?" Ricky's voice echoed through the dark hallway they were in. "Don't worry," He growled as Tobi began to feel the floor beneath him start to raise. "I'll make sure they'll have a nap they'll never forget!"

"He's closing the room in on us!" Jenny panicked, watching the ceiling above them descend slowly onto them. She flapped her wings in a panic, then stared at her fallen family. "B-But, I can't leave them here...But we don't have time to--!"

Tobi pinched the sides of Jenny's head, then took her into his arms. He then reached his other hand to the fallen birds, scooping them up and bringing them to his chest. As he held onto them, Tobi leaned his face towards the floor where the Song of Bonding would lie. Opening his mouth, he grabbed it in the clutch of his teeth, then closed his lips, the song poking through his right jaw and shining a bright blue. "Alright! Everyone hang on tight!" Tobi said as the walls around them would begin to narrow. Due to the structure changing, the chains and devices restraining the animals would shatter and break, allowing them to finally run free. The capsules holding the sonic slugs would shatter, causing the bugs to fall in their own juices. In a matter of seconds, right before the buckets would become crushed by one of the hall's walls, the slugs quickly regained their bright, shining color and blazed out of the buckets and bolted out of the room Ricky was destroying.

"Heavy Leg Arts!---Jenny, cover your head!"

"See? That's what I'm talking about!" Jenny moved a wing over her head, his other one wrapping around the other Polkavoice Parrots as she watched Tobi ready his launching position, kneeling his left leg forward with his right foot slid behind him slightly.

"Cow Jump!!" Tobi sprung from the ground quickly, the wind and lightning blasting from his feet and onto the ground as a white ring formed by a cloud expanded behind him before it faded like smoke. The floor, ceiling, and wall were starting to come together, but before they were pulled together, Tobi blasted out of the room with Jenny and her family in his arms and the Song of Bonding in his mouth. As he escaped, he smashed into Ricky's body like a rocket, charging him back into the wall he had just crashed in. He rebounded from Ricky and landed flawlessly on his feet before opening his mouth and taking out the powerful stone. He glared at Ricky with a serious stare, as if he was ready to tear him apart limb to limb. Even Ricky felt the threatening tension looming from Tobi. He tried to stand up, only to do so shakingly. He began to slightly break out in cold sweat as his eye's met the uneased ones of Tobi.

"Phew," Tobi huffed, his wolf ears throbbing up and down harmlessly, the tension immediately ending as he smiled, his eyes comically turning into black lines with an upside down three-shaped smile forming his grin. "Guess you have a bit of a crush on me, huh?”

As a noticeable, singular, lasting chime rung around them, Jenny dropped her head as she began to drop a single drop of sweat herself. He's an idiot! Get with the atmosphere already!

Ricky, who would be positioned on the ground as if he had slipped on something on mistake and fell on his back, was baffled by Tobi's easygoing attitude. He would quickly recover on his feet again, his face steaming red as he pointed a finger at Tobi. "Don't you dare think you can break into my factory, destroy my painting, steal my stuff, attack me for the third time in the row and just mockingly mock me!"

Tobi stared at Ricky for a while. His intimidating stare was gone, but his immaturity was starting to become more easy to sense. He enlarged his cheeks, then slipped his tongue out of his mouth, humming teasingly at Ricky before he scoffed one word. "Jerk."

"J-J-J-J-Jerk!?" Any sight of Ricky's pupils would vanish as he curled his fist tightly, the white energy manifesting around his hand again. "You'd best watch your tongue, boy!"

Tobi placed his hands on his hip, facing away from Ricky. He would bend over and begin shaking his rear, using his pinky to pull down the bottom of his eyelid while looking at Ricky. "Bleeeeh! The jerk's getting angry again!"

Is the fate of me and my family really in the hands of this guy? Jenny asked herself. Still, she couldn't help but to chuckle slightly at Tobi's teasing. Even if the situation seemed somewhat bleak, at least he was bringing a couple of laughs along.

Ricky, however, was growing tired of Tobi. After all, he was the only one that managed to land solid hits on him. "I've grown tired of your funny business, wolf boy." He thrust his energy-covered hand in front of him towards Tobi. This time, nothing was moving. The walls were perfectly still, and even the interior of the hallway they burst out of was unmoved.

"Um...What's he doing?" Jenny asked. "I guess he's just trying to look scary, huh?" She grinned with newly found confidence. She had just witnessed Tobi strike Ricky, assuring her thoughts of the boy being able to take him down.

"N-Not exactly," Tobi answered with his wolf ears perking up. "Actually, I think you should make like a birdie and fly away...Oh, wait..." His remark would confuse Jenny before she quickly understood what he had meant. The two looked at the window behind Ricky and saw vans, cars, pipes, forks, knives, spoons, wires, coins, steel, and the biggest pieces of metal out of the group: Two of the gigantic factory chimneys hovering behind the other metals. "But anyway, yeah, that guy's packing some..." He paused for a moment, grinning wide. "...Heavy metal."

The entire room would remain in a moment of silence. Tobi's pupils comically turned into small black circles as his smiling mouth hung open. He eyed the entire room, hoping to get a laugh out of someone. However, Jenny was burying her face in her wing, her other one wrapped around her unconscious family, who, despite being unconscious, somehow managed to open their pupiless eyes in sheer irritation of the joke told in their presence in the conscious world around them. And then there was Ricky, whose eyes were blackened out from the cheesiness of the joke. He had never heard such a terrible play of words in his life. It was so terrible, in fact, that it was insulting.

"...Die."

The man would clutch his hand, then open it, commanding the wave of metals in the front behind the window to smash through the glass in one swipe. All the shiny, metal objects would pass by Ricky as they hurled towards Tobi and Jenny. Tobi quickly dived to the right and rolled on the floor, narrowly avoiding one of the vans that would crash by him. Tobi got up quickly and leaped on the wall, avoiding razor-sharp steel plates that would spin at the floor he once was. He quickly ran on the wall to avoid the knives that narrowly thrust at him, sticking themselves on Tobi's path. He leaped off the wall, cradling Jenny and her family in his arms, and spun around, sticking his leg out to deliver a spinning kick to Ricky's jaw. Ricky raised his left arm just in time to block the kick, however, which caused him to slide back on his feet slightly. Ricky then sent more knives through the broken windows to charge at Tobi, who swiftly slid on his back to avoid the blades, sliding into Ricky to trip him. The angry Ricky reached one of his hands to one of the fallen trophies, levitating it and smashing it into the back of Tobi's head, the fact it was one of a ram making it especially painful for the wolf boy. While Tobi was recovering, a bit stunned from the strike, Ricky sent another van into the building. Finally snapping out of it, Tobi turned to the van. The wolf hybrid held onto Jenny and her family tightly, leaning to the side while lifting his left leg up before leaned to the side, cartwheeling and barely dodging the front of the truck. He then swung his right leg into the mid-flight van in front of him, the kick being strong enough make the van surpass Ricky's influence and into Ricky himself. Before the van hit Ricky, though, he swung the side of his hand, which was still coated in his magnetic energy, and chopped the van in half, the two parts of the split van crashing through the wall behind him. He then ran towards Tobi, curling up his magnetic fists and started throwing punch after punch at Tobi, who dodged them easily, even with the birds in his arms. After leaning back to avoid a straight jab from Ricky, Tobi leaned up and slammed his forehead onto Ricky's, a loud gonging noise being made as his head connected to Ricky's, which knocked him back. He hopped from the ground, pulling both of his legs to each other.

"Heavy Leg Arts: Tapdance Turret!!" Tobi unleashed a flurry of kicks that would strike Ricky's body, a couple of them hitting his face as well. The kicks were so fast that it seemed like a swarm of legs were attacking Ricky, who swung his head back and had his body stampeded by the barrage of kicks, coughing blood up from his mouth. Tobi landed on the ground again, his right leg behind him while his left leg stood in front briefly before he turned around while raising his right leg, slamming his heel into Ricky's side. The heel kick was powerful enough to send Ricky flying out of what used to be the window and into the black, smokey clouds made by his industrial chimneys.

Wiping the trickled blood from his mouth, Ricky stood on top of a trash can he had lifted in the air with his power, spreading his arms out. He laughed insanely as he flung most of the remaining metals at Tobi. "Die! Just hurry up and die so I can have you mounted in my trophy case, Yukio!!" He sent the remaining silverware, sawblades, and other steel objects flying at Tobi, who flipped backwards, sideways, and over the flying objects, spinning to the left and to the right to dodge them. The angered Ricky would raise both of his hands over his head, hovering one of the large, smoking industrial chimneys over his head. "Get out of my sight!!" He swung his hands forward, sending the chimney flying at the top of the factory.

"Jenny! Hang on tight!" Tobi warned the bird before running towards the window and jumping out of it before the large industrial smoke-blower crashed hard into the upper portion of the factory. The crash was loud and dynamic, and when Tobi raised his head to see the damage, he saw a huge chunk of the building blown away by the chimney, hundreds of men in the factory's uniform being blown out of the factory and taking a thousand meter fall down to the ground below along with the debris.

Jenny tried her best not to look down as the two plummeted towards the ground. "Tobi! Let me go, make a cloud, do something!" She yelled.

"Oh, yeah!" Tobi did a single backflip as a white cloud formed beneath him. He landed on the cloud, guiding it to move them past the falling rubble. He looked up at Ricky, who was still standing on the floating trash can. He must really hate my guts, Tobi monologued in his head, If he trashed his own place like that...

"Tobi! We can go now!" Jenny spoke. "My family's back, and you got what you needed, right?"

Tobi's wolf ears perked up as she proved a fair point. He rolled out his tongue, seeing the Song of Bonding still in his possession. And Jenny's parents seemed to be safe, other than them being knocked out. He didn't have anything against Ricky. He just wanted the song, and he got it. There wasn't much point in him fighting Ricky. "Yeah, let's get out of here!" The cloud turned around and flew away, carrying Tobi and Jenny away from the angry Ricky.

"Where are you going!?" Ricky crossed his arms, pulling the other giant chimney in front of him. "I'm not done with you, Yukio!" He quickly uncrossed them, launching the second chimney at Tobi and Jenny. This time, though, it was covered in the same white magnetic aurora that Ricky was overflowing with.

"Tobi!" Jenny pointed behind the boy, seeing the colossal chimney approaching them. "Heads up!"

But it was too late. By the time Tobi turned around, he and Jenny were already engulfed in the inside of the smoke-blasting chimney, blinded by the black screen of hazardous fumes.

"Jenny!" Tobi coughed, covering his mouth. "Are you alright?"

"Peachy!" The bird responded. "It's dark in here, though! And it smells!"

"No kidding!" Tobi complained in agreement. "Let's bust outta here!" The cloud he was standing on disappeared and fell into the top of the inside of the chimney. He had intended to go out the way he came, but before he knew it, he was sliding down towards the bottom of the chimney's base. Holding Jenny and the other birds in his arms tightly, as well as trying to keep the Song of Bonding in his mouth, he slid further and further down, and the smoke got darker and thicker as he did. Before he knew it, he was coughing harder and harder until he accidentally coughed up the stone he desperately tried to keep stored in his mouth. The Song...! I dropped it! He panicked to himself as he reached his arm forward, only to accidentally release his grasp of Jenny. Really?! Are you kidding me?!"

Falling away from Tobi, Jenny, whose cheeks were turning purple from holding her breath, met with Tobi's eyes as she fell further and further away from him. Then she looked at the Song of Bonding, which she was heavily approaching. She didn't understand Tobi's situation all that well yet. He was a strong yet weird kid that could control weather and had the guts to challenge the most vile scum she had ever met, no matter how powerful he was. But she could tell that Tobi had a good heart; They hardly knew each other that long, but he's going through all of this trouble of getting her family back without any second thoughts. After processing all of this through her head, it was time, she figured, to repay the favor. Quickly flapping her wings, she spiraled downwards deep into the cloud of smoke and did a single flip, opening her beak and clamping it down on the stone as tightly as she could. Got it! she cheered to herself before flinging her head back and throwing  it forward, tossing the stone from her mouth and up at Tobi.

I owe you one! thanked Tobi in his head as he caught the Song in his hand. Get out of the way! He twisted his torso, held Jenny's family tight in his arms and closed his legs together before sticking them out and violently spinning, his body's twirling motions summoning a whirlwind around him. Heavy Leg Arts: Twister Smasher!!

Quickly getting out of the way, Jenny hovered to the side while Tobi pierced through the smoke and drilled into the floor of the chimney they were engulfed in. The base of the chimney didn't put up much resistance, it seemed, as the wolf boy blasted the bottom of the chimney off of its hinges. He didn't stop spinning, though. He continued drilling through the air, approaching Ricky, who was following the chimney from behind.

"W-What?!" Ricky's eyes widened in disbelief. With that much toxic smoke, Tobi should have been dead, unconscious, or at least sick. Then again, he thought, this boy wasn't normal. Preparing to defend, Ricky hopped off the trash can he was controlling, spinning it upside down before landing on the bottom of the can, levitating the circular lid off of it and in front of him. Channeling a higher dose of the white aurora that would flow from the lid, he shielded himself from the wildly spinning Tobi, whose attack on the defending lid caused sparks to fly from it as if he were an actual drill before he flipped backwards out of the spin. He summoned a cloud beneath his feet, then turned away from Ricky.

"Jenny!" the wolf boy yelled, his cloud darting quickly behind the flung Chimney. Staying true to his intentions, he fled from Ricky, not wanting to fight him now that he had the Song of Bonding. But he was also concerned for his new friend, too. He knew he could survive severe elements like the industrial smoke, but what about her?

"How dare you turn your back on me!" Ricky roared. "Turn around! I wanna see my hunt before I take it out!" Manipulating the lid, which was once used as a shield, to spin like a buzzsaw, Ricky sent it flying at Tobi's cloud. Tobi, it seemed, was so concerned for Jenny that he didn't notice the approaching lid, and was caught off guard when it hit him behind the head, knocking him off the cloud before he plummeted down to Takanata Town.

"Heh. Have a nice fall," Ricky spat. He wanted to rejoice, but he wanted to make sure Tobi, who seemed difficult to get rid of, was a goner for good. He hovered the trash can above Tobi before slowly descending it to where a huge cloud of dust and dirt came from in his town.

"Mm! Mm-mmrm!" A muffled Tobi's head would be wedged into the dirt ground next to Ricky's golden statue. The Polkavoice-Parrots he had been looking over landed safely on the boy's bum. He had fallen right where he had first entered the town, and now he had a large red bump on the back of his head. It was throbbing like crazy, but he didn't have time to worry about that. He stood on his feet, then yanked his head from the ground, his wolf ears alert and growing more keen. "Jenny!? Where are you?!" His concerns were halted by the loud, crashing noise he heard behind him. He saw, successfully pulverizing the buildings beneath it, the large chimney Ricky tossed at him and Jenny. "Jenny!"

"Dude, relax. I'm right here."

Tobi looked up and saw the healthy, soot-covered Jenny, who cracked a smile before slowly landing on his head. "Oh, there you are!" He said in relief. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, except this stuff's not gonna go away after a hot bubble bath tonight," joked Jenny.

"Looks like I put you through a lot of bubble, huh?" Tobi punned, smiling mischievously at Jenny.

"You idiot," she chuckled. The two would go about laughing at Tobi's pun. It had seemed like their trip ended on a good note. Tobi had the Song of Bonding, and Jenny got her parents back. "Oh! My parents! My bro! Where are they?"

Tobi pointed to the space of grass behind them, smiling. "They're over there," he answered before turning his face to them. "I don't know when they're waking up, but they’re definitely not dead. So don't worry too much."

Jenny would watch her family rest soundly on the grass. Her beak formed a warm smile directed towards Tobi. "Thank you."

"Hm?" Tobi's eyes looked up at the thankful bird on his head.

"Thank you. For all of this. You saved my family, who I haven't seen in so long, and now me and them can go back home...No," She corrected herself. "Ricky might come back for us there...but at least, no matter where we go, we'll have each other."

Tobi's pupils touched the ceiling of his eyes, his wolf ears throbbing a little. "Don't mention it, okay?" He responded. "I never had a family, at least, not by blood...But I learned a while ago that family comes in all kinds of ways. But one thing still stands when it comes to that stuff: No matter what, losing them is tough, and it feels like the world will completely abandon you." He put his hands on his hips, looking at the resting parrots. "Family is important, and you have to do everything you can to protect them."

Jenny was touched by Tobi's words, and was even more shocked that he didn't have any relatives of his own, or so he claimed. "You're a good kid," she complimented. "Weird, but good."

"That doesn't sound so soothing coming from someone like you," Tobi cracked with his sheepish grin forming again.

"Don't push it..."

"S-Sorry," Tobi apologized to the laughing Jenny. Wait a minute, that wasn't her...

"Wasn't me," Jenny said, confirming Tobi's thought.

"Don't push your god damn luck, you asswipe!"

The vulgar outburst caused Tobi to turn around to see Ricky floating on the trash can from above. "Oh, great..."

"You trash my factory, beat my men around, and steal my stuff, and you think you can get away with this scott free?!" Ricky yelled angrily at Tobi. "And then you ignore me when I'm facing you!"

Tobi sighed, then put his hands in his pockets while facing Ricky. "Look, Ricky. I need the Song of Bonding because I hear something special in it. I don't know what it is exactly yet, but I'm a musician. And musicians have to find this kinda thing out. What's this sound? I don't know, but that's what I'm gonna look for, the answer to that," he said. "Maybe I should have asked you first, but you did steal this...technically. So, is stealing from a thief really that bad?"

Ricky would silently stand on the hovering trash can after Tobi said that. He felt offended, disrespected, and robbed of his patience. "...A thief...? You don't get it, do you?" He growled under his breath, spreading his arms out. "I'm a hunter. I take what I want because it's what I hunt. I own that Song, I owe those damn furry pests...I can have whatever I want! You know why? I'm rich!" As the cowboy hat shadowed out his eyes, a small ringing noise that would gradually grow louder came from the buildings. "The rich can buy whatever they want! The rich can own what and whoever they please! I can do whatever the hell I want with my property!" He balled up his fists, which would burst with white aurora. Soon after, a single fork would break from one of the buildings' windows and zoom to Ricky, hovering right next to his forehead. "And I can also do what I want..." He paused his speech for a moment to suddenly call forth a herd of silverware from the buildings surrounding him and Tobi. Knives, skewers, metalic rolling pins, forks, and hot, steaming ovens. "...With anyone who goes against the rules I brought!!"

Seriously, Tobi thought, Nega and this dude should seriously go to a jerk-a-con or something together... It seemed like Ricky was going to attack, but Tobi was more than prepared for whatever he was going to do. "Well, you can't buy me! I know how that feels, and I won't go through it again!"

"Then die!" Ricky plunged his arms in front of him, the shadow fading from his crazy, blood-lusting eyes. "Metal Scrapping!!" The metals hovering behind him bolted at Tobi, who spread his arms out as the barrage of metals approached him intensely.

"Sound Barrier!!" Rings of sound would emit from the ground beneath Tobi. Each scrap and piece of metal that was hurled towards him hit what felt like a wall that was right in front of him. The impact of the metals' contact caused ripples to form on the barrier Tobi summoned. He wasn't phased at all by the projectiles flying towards him, only to be deflected like light hitting a mirror. "Is that the best you got?!" Tobi yelled from behind the barrier.

"Why don't you ask your little birdie friend?"

The tone of Ricky's response gave Tobi goosebumps. His eyes widened as the final knife flung at him was bounced from the barrier he had forged. A single but nervous drop of sweat ran down the side of his head. He hadn't noticed, but he usually expected this by this point: Tobi, though a bit hesitant at firsts, fights his enemies, then receives praise from his new friend, Jenny, upon victory.But this time, he didn't hear praise, or jokes, or gasps of amazement. Or any gasps at all. Not even a single sound from the talking bird as he fended off Ricky's attacks. Tobi's heart began to sink. He probably wouldn't have thought about this so deeply if anyone else he knew like Sunshine were to say it. But this was coming from Ricky, who seemed to see Tobi as an enemy. Ricky, who saw Jenny and her family as nothing more than a prize. Ricky, who destroyed a village to steal an important treasure. Those eight words that Ricky had uttered made Tobi think about the impossible, though he was about to quickly expel it. She was fine, he thought. She had to be. After all, he was keeping an eye out for her. But that was exactly it: He wasn't.

"M...My baby..."

It was soft, but Tobi's wolf ears picked up on the sad, distraught voice. He slowly faced the grass field he had landed on to see three odd-looking birds standing over a fallen one that had looked like them. The bird was laying on its side, bleeding from its stomach. The parrot's once spunky eyes were starting to fade, and its wings were beginning to lose color as well with the exception of red stains forged by the wound caused by a small but sharp knife to its stomach.

"Mom...Dad...." She coughed, blood trickling from her beak. "B-Bro...y-you really did make it..."

"J-Jenny! Sweetie, stay with me!" Said the bird with the voice of a middle-aged mother. "Jenny, it's going to be okay! Please, don't leave us!"

"We just got you back!" Said the one with the tone of concerned father. He began to break out into tears as he crouched down to his child, shaking her with his wings. "Stay with us! Come back to us!!"

"Jenny! It's me! Your brother, remember?!" cried the one with the boyish voice while looking into her eyes. "Your stupid, hard-headed brother! It's me!" He grabbed one of Jenny's wings, his eyes red from the endless sobbing he was going through. "You're not going to leave me like this, are you? Stay awake! C-Come on!"

Eh...? W-What happened...? Tobi watched the three birds gather around the wounded Jenny. What just happened? Why... His arms limped to his sides as he saw the once unconscious family of birds gather around their bleeding daughter. Why isn't she flying? No....Why isn't she standing, at most? Can't she see her family's up and running again..? The first thing Jenny's family witnessed after being freed from Ricky's clutches was one of their own dying in front of them. The one who summoned all her strength and broke through the factory just to save them now rested on the now red grass under her parents' eyes and her brother's worry. Oi, Jenny...wake up...you have to...You're going to live happily ever after with them, right? You are, right?

"Looks like my aim's not that bad after all!" Ricky coldly laughed, hopping off the trash can before looking at the birds worry crazily over Jenny. "May not have been wolf boy, but at least I shut that annoying pigeon up for good! Now..." His hands burst with white aura again. "It's time to kill two birds with one stone--"

In an instant, as if he had teleported in front of Ricky in a microsecond within a microsecond, Tobi glared at Ricky with cold, merciless eyes. It was incredibly brief, but the moment Ricky made contact with Tobi's reformed, fear-inducing eyes, he could tell that he wasn't the same boy shaking his tush in his office. He wasn't the same kid that casually brushed things off at the valley where they had met. He wasn't even the reasoning person that tried to edge him away. This Tobi, he thought in that instant, was different. As he thought this, Tobi had already raised his right leg and, with the speed of a lightning bolt, swung it into Ricky's jaw, knocking him past the golden statue of himself. Caught off guard, he was suddenly stopped, and was ready to thank a god, any god. But who stopped him? Using a lot more strength than required to complete the task due to the heavy blow to his jaw, he positioned his sights to where Tobi seemed to be. He was there, standing behind the hole in the gold statue he had launched Ricky through. But then, he faded, as if he were a mirage. "W...What...?" He then screamed rather loudly when he felt something clamp down on the back of his head. It felt sharp, fierce, and full of hate. He looked from the corner of his eye and saw Tobi, who had stood a good twenty feet away from Ricky a second ago, grab the back of his head, sinking his small but sharp claws into his dome.

Tobi said nothing. Seeing Jenny's family cry and sob over their hurt family member brought back his dreams. The dreams of seeing a woman die before his eyes, a dream of a girl taking on a monster while he was forced away from her. A dream of seeing everything he loved burn before his eyes. He could only imagine what Jenny's parents went through. When would they see their daughter again? Will she be okay without them? Can they all go home together? All of this went through his mind while he retracted his claws from Ricky's head, letting go of his grip on the man. Ricky was about to cry in relief until Tobi leaned forward underneath his body and kicked his left leg up into Ricky's back as he fell. The kick was strong enough to cause a sound similar to that of a sonic boom, and rocketed Ricky into the sky. The hunter would recover himself, though with poor structure; His back was severely damaged, but not yet broken. Another kick like that and he could put my back out of commission for the rest of my life! He thought to himself. That kid thinks a little temper tantrum will make me back down? Heh, well he has another thing coming! Ricky didn't want to admit it, not even to himself, but he was trembling. Not with rage or excitement, but fear. But even as scared as he was, his pride was still more important. He gazed down at the ground Tobi was as he grinned. This time, I'll hit him with---Huh?! He's gone! Again!?

There was no sight of Tobi anywhere on the ground beneath Ricky. The man's pupils shrunk. He was growing more and more scared as time passed. W-Where did he go? "Where did you go, you coward?! Come and face me like a man!" He yelled.

"You sure you want that now...?" Asked the now violent Tobi, who, out of nowhere, appeared in front of Ricky and forced his left palm into the man's face with the force of a cannonball. With blood leaking from his nose and even his ears, Ricky was sent flying yet again but was stopped by the teleported Tobi's palm thrust to his back. At vanishing speeds, he reappeared in front of Ricky, striking his body rapidly with devastating palm strikes. He then lunged the bottom of his palm up into Ricky's chin before spreading his legs out while flipping, closing them on the man's head. "I don't want to face you the way you are now...so I'm going to beat you to a pulp." He leaned forward while his legs crushed Ricky's head tightly before spinning the man's body by his skull. His spinning went faster and faster, increasing in speeds rapidly until he finally let go of the dizzy, heavily damaged Ricky down into the town. "Heavy Leg Arts: Cyclone Launcher."

Ricky, who was leaking blood as he descended back into the town's grounds, fell onto the streets, sliding through them so hard that he gradually slid deeper and deeper into the concrete, blasting through building to building. Apartments, stores, even local bathrooms were demolished as Ricky was shot through them like a bullet. Eventually, though, he ended up stopping by the supermarket that the earlier hordes of animals busted out of.

"You think it's funny to hurt my friends?" Tobi scowled as he began free falling to the ground. "I'm not going to let you get away with this, Ricky..." After a couple of seconds, he landed flawlessly on the grass by the once perfect statue of the man that hurt Jenny. He stared down at the family of birds, then at Jenny. Still enraged, he spoke to the family in a calm manner. "...Jenny's parents, right?"

The mother and brother would continue crying over the injured Jenny, but the father, though devastated, tried to regain his composure before looking up at Tobi. "Y-Yes..."

"She's not dead yet," Tobi told them, causing them all to look up at them with shocked but hopeful eyes. "But she will be soon. I can hear her heartbeat from here, but it's fading."

"J-Jenny..." The brother called her named worryingly, not wanting to lose his dear sister.

"I know a dude that can help her, though."

"Y-You do..!?"

"Yeah." He pointed over at the mountain he and Sunshine passed to enter the town. "Keep flying that way. If you see a kid with a bunny hoodie carrying a plushie, then you have your guy. He's good with animals. He can help her, and you guys too if you need it."

The brother would cry happily to Tobi, even if his eyes scared him a little. "R-Really? Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!!" The mother was speechless, but she wanted to thank him as well. They only knew humans from the stories they told, which usually involved them being heartless hunters or killers. But this one seemed to be different.

"How can we trust you...?"

The one question from the father had been faint, but it did occur into his son's head, as well as his wife's. "Well? You're busy playing rough, which may cost me my daughter's life. How can I trust such a careless man's word? No, how can I trust you people at all?! How can I trust any of you hunters?!" He yelled "For all we know, there may be a group of fat bastards wanting our meat, or maybe some hunters wanting our feathers for their own damn wealth! And you expect us to trust you!?"

Tobi was angry, furious, and even murderous at this point. But he wanted to direct all those feelings towards Ricky and Ricky only. He wasn't totally blinded by anger; He could see why they wouldn't trust him. "She's my friend. And she's your daughter..." As he said those words, the recollection of the dreams he had since he was little began to replay in his head. "...Don't leave your family alone."

They were all silent. Tobi turned away from the birds, walking away from them while summoning a cloud beneath him. "Take care of her." He stepped on the cloud, which was different from the ones he usually produced. Usually, his clouds were as white as his pure easygoing, as fluffy as his gentle personality, and as cool as his attitude. But this one was an extremely dark gray, just a hint lighter than black. It was a darkness that Tobi experienced when he saw his friends hurt or miserable, or when someone manages to cross the line in his sense. Ricky managed to do something extremely difficult to Tobi: To put it simply, he pissed him off.

The dark cloud would emit a violent but brief jolt of lightning before blasting into the air, then down towards the supermarket, the cloud transforming into a gray mist the moment it landed. Ricky was still in the rubble he had slid into, blood running down his face with bruises all over his body and face. His head had been lowered until he heard something that sounded like static electricity. He lifted his head, gritting his teeth as he saw a silhouette walking towards him. The black wolf ears on it wouldn't bounce, twitch, or move in the slightest. It was almost as if they were motionless. Stepping out of the mist he had created, Tobi stood in front of the downed Ricky, blue bolts of lightning surrounding his body. There were even bolts of electricity in his eyes, which signified his kindled rage towards Ricky.

"You want me? You got me."