Captain Teddy walked into the emperor's box atop the colosseum.
The box was filled with barely clothed and chained Lukas clones and in the middle of the box, on a grecian couch, was the prophet. He was wearing nothing but robes inspired by roman statues, the most notable difference being that he was almost fully nude, the robes barely covering anything. Next to him stood another Lukas clone, feeding him grapes.
Light fell to his knees, bowing to Captain Teddy. Noticing that the prophet has not yet noticed her arrival, Light hit the closest leg on the prophet's grecian couch, making him roll off the back and over himself and forcing him to face Captain Teddy.
"Ah!" He said with a rather relaxed tone. Not changing his position of laying relaxed with his head resting on his arm, he finally said something: "You've finally arrived."
Captain Teddy furrowed her non-visible brow and glared at him. She glanced at the symbol on his forehead. "So you are the one who consumed(?) the blood of a Lina." She stated matter-of-factly, only pronouncing one word as if it was a question.
The prophet's eyes widened, filled with awe. "You… you spoke with the darkness bringer, eater of stars!" Finally, he stopped his disrespecting positioning and pressed his forehead to the ground.
"Yes, I—"
"Is it true you imprisoned him? Beaten him into submission?" He lifted his eyes to look at her feet as he started to cry of joy. "Only our saviour, the goddess of light and love, would be able to do it. IT IS TRULY YOU!"
"You thought I would send a double?" She asked and he nodded, "You pose no threat to me, making it unnecessary to do so." That was a lie, she wanted to send someone in her place, but the thought of endangering someone for her own security did not sit right with her since the words of the Emperor.
The smile on the prophet's face suddenly faded and his eyes rolled into the back of his head. As his eyes suddenly dropped again, unfocused, the symbol on his forehead started to shift.
Captain Teddy jumped back as far as she could in the short moment she had. For just a moment it felt as if a veil was lifted from in front of her eyes and the colosseum looked abandoned, everybody nothing more than a floating corpse hanging from tentacles which extended from the prophet's neck, before everything turned back to what she had seen the entire time. Her fist glowed for a short period of time and she could hear how the tunnel connecting their citadels closed off again and they disconnected.
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The prophet shot towards her, screaming: "Mine! Mine, mine!" He tried to grab her, she barely dodged. He slid down the hallway she had come through.
"What the…" She had no time to think. The prophet was already flying towards her as she came to a halt. She ripped off her tiny cape and threw it into his face, blinding him temporarily.
He expected her to dodge to the side so he extended his arms, trying to grab her. Against his expectations, she had not moved from her spot and upper-cut him as hard as her tiny plush body was able to with the console melted onto her paws. Surprisingly, her hit threw him upwards and—for just the shortest of moments—had knocked him unconscious. As he came to his senses mid-air, he ripped the cape from his face angrily.
Captain Teddy was already running back towards the main floor.
"Hide and seek? Let us play in here, not out there, yes?" He screamed at her as she was cut off by dozens of church members. Noticing her nervous gaze, scanning for an escape route, he made space for her to run past him and back into the colosseum. "You will get a head start, my goddess."
Seeing no other alternative route, she sprinted past him and jumped down the box they had met in for the first time and into the arena of the colosseum, before running through one of the gates made for gladiators to enter through.
"And since you don't need this illusion anymore, let me remove it." The prophet snapped his fingers, removing the veil he had put over everybody's eyes. All members of his church were rotting corpses, hanging from dried up tentacles which had died off after taking all the nutrients from their body and transporting them to the prophet. The colosseum's walls suddenly had hundreds of dents and holes. It looked like they had found, not built, this colosseum buried here for thousands of years.
⟪⚪⟫
Logi was leaving his laboratory, murmuring happily at his new name and the fact that he had just finished designing a few more parts of equipment fitting his name. Of course it would take a few more days, maybe even weeks, before he would be able to wear them.
"Time to enjoy some Festival food." He told himself.
Outside the alley in which his secret entrance was in, hundreds of Teddy copies and Lukas clones were walking happily, singing and feeding each other. The Pheddie copies did not bother showing up to spend time with the Lukas clones and the other Geddos copies were still bound to the arms of Teddy copies. Everybody had so much fun.
"145 thousand Lukas clones and 100 thousand Max clones entering our citadel… if that will create any significant changes for us? Who knows?" Logi said.
Hurrying down a street lined with food stalls he ate and ate and ate, an insane amount of food vanishing through his small mouth. It was genuinely incredible to see him eat.
After trying to pay all the Teddy copies serving these foods and finding out that everything was free because of the festival, he looked up the way back to his laboratory on a public map so he could get back to Captain Teddy. "Or I might just continue my other activities…" He muttered and patted his blowgun, "No… I strangely feel the urge to hurry back to her side."
Reaching the hangar which was connected to the new citadel, he was surprised by the crowd around the entrance of the tunnel. "Do they want to leave already?"
"What happened?"
"Why did the tunnel close?"
"No! My belongings are still over there!"
Lukas clones and Max clones and Teddy copies were screaming in panic.
Logi pushed people away as he made his way to the centre of the crowd, seeing that the tunnel had retracted. At first he wanted to dismiss it and forget about going to Captain Teddy, but with a more careful glance through the shield, he saw over 2 dozen Lukas clones floating livelessly through the vacuum of space, having been sucked out as the tunnel disconnected from their citadel.
"Shit!" He screamed and ran past everybody, jumping through the shield protecting them from the vacuum of space and putting on an oxygen mask he( for some still unknown reason) had with him.
He had found out that while it seemed they did not need oxygen, they still do need oxygen, just an incredibly small amount. He ripped apart one of the tubes feeding him oxygen and used it as a turbine to propel him towards the citadel of the prophet.
Behind the glass of the citadel he saw thousands of Lukas clones and Max clones running around in panic as what seemed like floating corpses attacked them. "What the hell is going on? Did their Lina escape?" He quickly dismissed the thought, seeing how dried up the corpses were and concluding that they would have turned into hounds by now if a Lina was controlling them.
While he searched for a way to enter the citadel, a few hundred Lukas clones found a weapon storage which was left abandoned by the Max clones who were supposed to guard it to stop the Lukas clones from killing each other. With brutal efficiency, the Lukas clones eradicated one floating corpse after another, but each that dropped dead to the ground was replaced by two new ones.
Getting desperate, Logi started to break open a hole into the side of the citadel, not caring for the safety of the inhabitants. "Come on." He muttered as cracks started to form and extend across the glass. "Come on…" The glass broke, a vortex appeared, trying to pull him and everybody inside back out, but he was strong enough to climb through and put up a shield grenade to close the hole. "One, two, three… there is a fourth one. Only four died, good."
He jumped down onto the main floor, activating his cloak to make him appear bigger and equipping his blowgun.