Steadying herself, Yuth readied to launch force blasts at the cultist transformees hovering up against the ceiling, but before she could fire, Larry lumbered over to her with the help of his giant arms.

"Don't!" he yelled. "You'll bring the ceiling down on top of us!"

Being grounded left the allied transformees at a disadvantage against the Lost Lassedite's forces. Verune's transformees were camping up in the air overhead, lashing out with arcs of force that ripped open the garage's mosaic floor like psychokinetic claw-marks.

"Shit!" Ibrahim yelled.

One of the attacks was heading toward one of the garage's support columns. Before Dr. Rathpalla could even attempt a countermeasure, one of his colleagues flung themselves into the line of fire, stopping the psychokinesis from hitting the column, at the cost of bearing the brunt of the blow with their body.

It ripped them in two.

Ichigo spread all four arms in an X and yelled."Cowards!"

Bever hurled his axe upward. The whorl of blue and gold hurtled through the air, but it fell short of its targets, and instead hurtled back to the ground, crashed into and furiously tearing through a car that happened to be in the way, spraying glass and flak every which way.

"Ibrahim!" Nurse Costran yelled.

The gray-scaled transformee tilted his elongated head toward her. "I guess there's no time like the present!"

Craning his neck, Dr. Rathpalla put his tail into a crouch and looked upward. Air currents rippled off him as he sprang up off the ground.

"By the Godhead!" Bever yelled. "Is he—?"

"—He's flying!" someone yelled.

Dr. Rathpalla didn't fall back to the floor. He quavered in the air, somewhat unsteadily, his mighty tail and useless legs flailing underneath him.

"Let's see Genneth top this!" he said,

One of Verune's Norms—the dove robe—noticed this development.

"Shit!"

Karl watched Dr. Rathpalla fly at the transformee—well, really, it was more like tumbling upward.

"Yuth!" Ibrahim yelled.

Karl glanced at the nurse, who flashed a nervous look at him right before rocketing up off the floor with a burst of wind.

Karl started to regret not having joined them for more of those practice sessions of theirs.

Yuth and Ibrahim swung their claws about as they flew after the transformees in the dove and mallard robes in a somewhat clumsy pursuit. Ibrahim chased the dove robe out through the hole in the galleria's roof, while Yuth followed the mallard robe up one of the off ramps.

"Can't you fly, too?" Ichigo asked Karl.

Karl stammered helplessly. "I—I—"

"—Kid, what are you waiting for?!" Larry yelled.

Wait, he means me?

"Go help Yuth and Ibrahim!" the janitor said. He turned to the others. "Everyone up to the street level, now!"

The transformees ambled and slithered. Some went up the exit ramps, while others barreled into the galleria and took the stairs. All of them used their powers to push themselves forward with bolstered speed.

Wanting to be useful, Karl decided to try his hand at flying. His thinking was simple: if he succeeded, it would be a boon for his allies, and if he didn't, it would still be a boon, as long as he crashed in the right direction.

"Wait!" Bever yelled, "Karl, what are you doing?"

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The result was that Karl vaulted up in a broad arc, tail flapping behind him, air streaming past his face and eyes, and then down—smash!—crashing into the galleria's floor, ripping through plaster and tile as he tumbled, pulverizing already ruined tables, benches, and kiosks with his tail and scattering the detritus left and right. Digging his claws into the ground, carving furrows into the floor, Karl managed to bring himself to a stop, but not without a painful, ungainly thump of his tail in the process.

Ow.

Ichigo and Bever came running up beside him as he pushed himself onto his underbelly. Raising his forepart up had Karl towering over the two spirits, which only made him feel that much more dizzy.

He had to duck just to keep his scalp and back spines from scraping against the ceiling!

More of the battle was playing out in the Garden Court up above. The noise spilled down the incline of the collapsed roof like a waterfall.

"What in the world are you doing, boy!?" Bever demanded.

"Trying to fly!" Karl looked up through the hole in the ceiling. The edges of the sky were beginning to gray.

The Sun was rising.

Then Karl saw a tank hurtle through the air, and the sight made his confidence shrivel up and die.

Ichigo saw Karl's reaction, and immediately bolted halfway up the incline. "You don't need to fly!" he yelled. "Just make us fly!"

Bever gave the four-armed oni a sidelong glance. "He can do that…?"

"His mind can do whatever it wants with us!" Ichigo said. "It's why I look like this, remember?" He thumped his chest with a fist.

"Hell, if that's the case," Bever said, "why stop there? Turn us into giants, Karl, and wrap us in your magic! I'll pluck these devils out the sky with my bare hands!"

"Now that's a good idea," Ichigo said, nodding in agreement.

Meanwhile, Karl was feeling woozy just thinking about the amount of power he'd need to pull that off.

Several of Karl's remaining patches of human skin tingled as his green saliva dribbled down his chin. The stuff hissed like an angry cockroach as it hit the ground and started eating through the ceramic pavement.

Karl wiped the spit on his arm.

"I don't have enough power to do that!" he said.

"Just make us fly, then!" Ichigo said.

Karl was pretty sure he could do that.

Unlike making them into giants, which required wrapping his magic around the ghosts' giant bodies in order for them to affect the real world, having the spirits fly wouldn't change how much of his magic he needed to spend to make their weapons strike as if they were solid, it just changed where the magic was being used.

Actually, Karl realized, it wouldn't be any different from what happened when they moved around with their magic-enhanced weapons.

I can do this! Karl told himself, and he put all his effort into making it happen. Closing his eyes, he pictured the spirits moving wherever they wanted.

He imagined they could fly!

"By the Angel!" Bever yelled.

Karl opened his eyes to see Ichigo hovering above the ground. The oni had a massive, white-fanged grin on his face.

"Oh, I am going to enjoy this…" Ichigo said.

He looked up at the hole in the ceiling and then rocketed into the air. The blue and gold scribbles around his katanas moved along with him, trailing behind him like an insect's wings.

Bever stared, eyes and mouth wide.

"Go," Karl said, with a wave of a claw. "Go!"

The axeman ran up the incline of the collapsed ceiling and then leapt, and soared.

Karl slithered up the incline, followed suit as best he could. It helped that he'd already done this once before, and the feelings of déjà vu only grew stronger as he pulled himself onto the courtyard garden's ragged grass.

He couldn't help but look up and stare.

"Break the Tablets…" he muttered.

It was even crazier than yesterday's battle! The skies overhead thronged with transformees, and in all states of change. Dr. Rathpalla and Nurse Costran were there. They twined around their foes, tossing arcs of force back and forth at anything in their way.

The ground scene was a mess. The modern soldiers were putting up a brave resistance, firing their guns and "lasers" at the attacking transformees. One of the red lasers came streaming right over Karl's head. The heat coming off it pressed against his scalp like a hot pipe. Karl immediately ducked, which turned out to be a really good idea because, just then, a transformee flying up above had decided to dart down low and blast him with spore breath and empowered swipes of his claws.

Karl managed to slither out of the way of the attack just in time, but not far enough to avoid getting dirt and debris sprayed all over his back as the transformee crash-landed behind him. Overhead, Ichigo and Bever's weapons bit into another enemy. It was a demanding use of Karl's powers, and he gritted his jaws to fight against the strain.

Disregarding the strain, Karl thrusted himself forward with a flick of his tail on the dirt, pouncing onto the transformee that had crash-landed behind him. Karl used his hands as mallets as much as blades, pummeling the transformee with his bulky, three-fingered knuckles before following up with slashes from his claws.

Shit.

The transformee was wearing the black uniform of the modern Trenton military.

He wasn't just in the thrall of the mad Lassedite, he was a traitor, too!

Karl tore through the remains of the transformee's uniform with prejudice, exposing the dark brown wyrm-scale beneath it, and then through to the dark fungal flesh beneath that.

But then Karl yelled—a polyphonic boom of spores—as something grabbed him from behind and bore him skyward, chucking him up into the wind.

Looking down, flailing his arms and tail, Karl watched the buildings and the ground fall away beneath him. He saw Yuth and Ibrahim in battle with two—no three—attackers.

They were being overwhelmed!

As Karl reached the apex of his rise, a roar erupted down below. He looked down.

A wyrm was slithering up through the air at him, claws at the ready.

He had a feeling this was going to hurt.

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