I'm about to start the Ace the Echidna Concert Series from tonight ending on the finale song on my site on April Fools day. This concert series however is spellsinging concert series, meaning that anything could happen.

With what happens, you guys will want to kick my ass. Trust me. This'll be one for the record books.

[Part 1]

Tracklist:

1) Jimmy – The Living End

Ace jumped up on the bar with a malicious look on his face and his Redstreak Ax slung over his shoulder. He closed his eyes, tapping his foot for a second. Then he hit the first note and began the song.

"Jimmy..."

"What's your vote?"

"You don't have to repay them after all."

"Oh crud," Nemo said.

People who'd been paying for their somewhat deadly drinks actually began snatching their money back and stealing the achohol, not caring even if Nemo was pointing a shotgun at them.

"Jimmy taught of those who'd been cheated, but were never defeated, just morally wrong!"

Nemo looked directly at Ace and took aim at the singing echidna. He squeezed the trigger and tried to blow a hole in his ignorant head, only to have him shift to the right to avoid the metal spray.

"Jimmy taught of those who were jaded, their colors had faded, like they didn't belong..."

Nemo shot three more times and Ace just twisted into awkward positions with his guitar while the bullets screamed by. He only danced to his music and payed the attack no mind.

"And they lied..."

Nemo yelled out and threw a ball of energy at the echidna, who jumped ten feet in the air over it before landing on a table farther away.

"A new life they were seeking..."

Nemo exploded in a shower of curses as he peppered the table Ace was dancing on with energy blasts and shotgun shots. The echidna only swayed with the steady beat of the music and continued singing.

"Yes they lied..."

A creaking sound was heard behind the porcupine. He turned a massive barrel of Ace Drink exploded in his face. He screamed in agony from the pain of damn near concentrated brain death showered in his eyes.

"Now their plans are leaking!"

"Jimmy...What's your vote? You don't have to repay them after all!"

Ace hopped from table to table. Knocking over dirnks, stepping in food, stomping on hands, and jumping on people's heads. Unfortunately, Vegeta was one of those last heads.

"Arrgh, what's the idea," the somewhat sloshed Saiyan yelled.

Ace just continued jumping up and down while strumming on his ax and didn't answer. Pissed at being disrespected like that, Vegeta rushed in and tried to tackle the echidna. He was right in from of him--

"Jimmy told of those who had made it--"

He slid under the speeding Saiyan and bumped into him with the force of a formula one racer, sending him flying into a tuna salad on the next table.

"And others who paid it, but the price was wrong..."

He jumped again from table to table until he landed in the center of the battle arena. Problem was, his song 1was now echoing through the bar better than before.

"Everybody's too busy fighting, to bother deciding what has to be doooone..."

Soon enough almost all of the weapons in the bar began to break down and disintegrate into dust. Everyone who had a weapon in the bar turned to the arena and began to rush into the ring to kick the musician's ass.

"Jimmy...What's your vote? You don't have to repay them after all!"

All of them piled in and started trying to attack Ace Royal Rumble style. The echidna however mind as well have been in another world with the way he was moving though the crowd of infuriated bargoers. He slid under punches, jumped over kicks, and hopped around rushes. It seemed to be no more than a game.

"...No, you don't have to repay them after all!"

He suddenly hit one bass note and slammed into a brawler with his outstretched foot. The man flew into two others and through the ropes to the floor. Other fighters began to press their attack on the lightning fast rocker, but only to be knocked away with one fancy gesture or another. Finally Ace strummed his guitar another last time and spun upward, slamming his loose hand ( a fist) right up into a man's jaw. He flew out of the arena to land in a garbage can.

"Jimmy..."

The only one left in the arena was a very pissed off Trunks with a corroded sword.

"Jimmy..."

Ace continued his solo, striking various poses while Trunks' sword screamed by his head.

"Jimmy..."

He hit one last note and stomped the arena floor. The ground beneath them exploded in a massive shockwave, sending them both flying. That, and shattering every glass object in the bar. One of those objects being a very old and extremely expensive glass of wine that Frieza had been trying to get for decades.

"This has gone on long enough," the alien said emotionlessly.

"Jimmy..." Ace sang, grasping onto one of the stripper poles while he flew across the bar. The beat slowed down while Ace used one had to stop himself with the pole. "It seems as though it can be sold as-"

"Ace, stop," Frieza said, appearing next to him.

He swung down the pole and held on with his legs while he continued playing the ax. "- easy as a story can be told."

"I said, Stop!" The ivory fighter said, his aura flaring.

"Jimmy..."

Frieza put his finger to Ace's forehead and focused a Death Beam on the end of it. He tilted his head to the left, letting the beam shoot into the floor beyond. The beat began to increase again steadily.

"You don't have to repay them..."

"Oh Lord," Frieza said as he began to swipe at him with lightning fast attacks that weren't connecting.

The beat began to rise again. "No, you don't have to repay them..."

Frieza shot the echidna up with ki blasts lefts and right, only to have them rebounded when Ace swung himself off of the pole and sailed thought the air, spinning away.

"No, you don't have to repay them. After all!"

The beat resumed it's normal speed and Ace landed on the bar again. He began stomping with the beat while he increased the bass in the music, making more shockwaves in Frieza's general direction. Each shockwave hit the alien and the last one sent him shooting across the bar, implanting him in the opposite wall.

Ace began running across the bar, knocking down things the whole way. "Jimmy had a dream he would make it, and he wouldn't fake it--"

He ran up on the wall when he began to round the bar again. "-Like the others had done."

"He believed in those who were jaded-"

He jumped off of the wall and back onto another table. Nemo ran in his general direction, still blinded from the Ace Drink in his eyes. The echidna only put his foot on his face, like restraining a child with your hand, while the porcupine feebly reached for his throat.

"Whose colors had faded-"

He jumped up and inadvertantly kicked Nemo right in the face while he flung out his left foot while kneeling with his right on the landing. "Like they didn't belooong..."

He jumped straight up in the air just shy of the ceiling before ten different energy attacks decimated the table he was sitting on. "Jimmy..."

He landed on a chair, spinning on it, smacking Vegeta in the jaw with the end of his guitar. "What's your vote?"

"Kill him," Frieza yelled.

"Jimmy! What's Your vote?" Ace backflipped over a charging Frieza, and kicked him in the back to send him into yet another wall.

Ace was up and moving again as the song began to speed up towards the end. "You don't have to repay them after all!"

The money from all over the bar began to vanish into thin air. From in wallets, in tip jars, in pockets and worst of all: the register! "Now we're all faded... Now we're all faded... Now we're all faded... Now we're all faded..."

More attacks were coming from all sides as more and more people joined the assault. Ace only responded in kind, hopping around to their vulnerable side and knocking them away.

"Well Jimmy told of those who'd been cheated, never defeated, just morally wrong."

The customers were in shambles laying under the tables.

"Yeah! Jimmy told of those who'd been jaded! Their colors had faded like they didn't belong!"

The staff was broken and beaten down by one of their own, who had never opened his eyes once.

Ace strummed on his guitar eight more times and then hopped back up to where he'd began the song on the bar.

"Ooooohhh..."

He finally opened his eyes and looked around at the devastation. "...oops."

(Magnus X Zero) *observes the chaos* Well, that was interesting. Anybody up for a beer?

I'll get you next time, Magnus.

Frieza pried himself from the indent he'd formed in the half-collapsed wall and trudged over to the musical menace. He stepped up onto a pile of squirming bodies, putting himself at eye level with Ace on the counter. He stared at Ace without a word, red eyes twitching with a frightening rage. Ace just looked back at him, grinning somewhat sheepishly.

Ace: Yo Friez...whassup?

Frieza snatched the Redstreak from Ace's hands with blinding speed and swung it like a homerun bat, smashing Ace into the display of already broken bottles behind the counter.

Frieza: I'm not quite sure how you did that...but if you ever do it again, I'm going to pull out MY guitar and we'll start cutting heads, you multiplanar maniac! Then I'll show you how to REALLY tear a place apart through song!...damnit, I've been looking for that wine for ages! I should've known better than to bring it here with you people...

Frieza quelled his seething temper before it melted the floor beneath him. Closing by tossing Ace's guitar into his chest like a javalin, the emperor departed for a walk to cool off while the bar magically rebuilt itself like he assumed it would.

(Magnus X Zero) I'll be watching Ace. *eyes warily*

[Part 2]

Tracklist:

1) Somewhere I Belong – Linkin Park

A sound was pushing itself through the city. It bounced from building to building and through every alley along the way. It was a whine of something like interference on a microphone, but it sounded as if it were being made by something else. Lightning flashed violet in the skies and thunder rocked the earth. The nagated snapshots of the city, of the life and the bustling that was was seen usually weren't there, but what was seen was flat plains and ragged earth under a black and orange sky. The lightning flashed again and again until the strikes reached earth and turned into pillars of black-light electricity.

Only when the pillars stood jerking and letting off sparks near the edges of the city, did he begin to play. A great crash of bass filled the air steadily. The sound is traced to the very center of the city in front of a fountain where one individual wails on his guitar to produce the sound. Just as suddenly as the beat is heard it settles down as the red musician frets at his ax and calmly plays again, yet the first whining sound is still present behind his playing.

"When this began," he says, as though to himself.

"I had nothing to say," another voice picks up from farther away. "And I get lost in the nothingness inside of me."

His forlorn expression is shaken away when he notices the answer. "I was confused."

"And I let it all out to find, that I’m not the only person with these things in mind." The echoing voice can be heard coming from above the guitar player. Another violet lightning strike reveals his silouette on top of a tall skyscraper in the partial darkness caused by the black clouds above.

"Inside of me..."

Another flash blinds the world for an instant, but comes back with the sky filled with green motes of light like stars before fading back to the normal overcast.

"But all the vacancy the words revealed is the only real thing that I’ve got left to feel."

A smile creeps onto the face of the guitar player as strings come out of the water in the fountain and the people who have stopped to look at the bizarre event. "Nothing to lose."

One blazing string comes from the bolts of lightning in the sky and strike the ground all over the city. The individual on the skyscraper looks blankly upon the city as a styring from his own body flails away into nothingness. "Just stuck; hollow and alone. And the fault is my own, and the fault is my own..."

The bass increases again as the one on the ground picks up the beat again, accompanied by drums heard from somewhere else.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel, what I thought was never real," he sang painfully. "I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long..."

The strings erupted on the ground from wherever and whomever they had been pulled from into large clusters of glowing blue crystal that was lit from within.

"Erase all the pain 'til it's gone," the other answered

The people scatter all around, screaming in terror at the unknown event occurring in front of them. The red guitarist plays harder again, making the ground and the crystal around him vibrate.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real. I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along..."

More crystals are appearing all over the city with each one of the lightning strikes that occur. More and more of the clusters appear in and around buildings as if they had merged with the scenery naturally. People were even being encased in the giode-like structures with the look of shock on their faces. The flashes came more and more as the storm and the music went on until finally one massive spire of crystal was raised in the middle of the city. In front of this spire is where Ace finally calmed his playing again and stood looking into the polished prism-like obelisk.

"Somewhere I belong..."

The spire lit up like all of the other crystals until it was blazing white hot light that could be seen for miles. When it resumed pulsing normally the city was completely different. Some people were screaming in fright while others looked into the sky with wonder. It had transformed into a great field of pulsating strands of light and energy that went on forever across the horizon. But certain strings were actually passing through the spire. Some from opposite vectors and others from the same places.

"And I’ve got nothing to say. I can’t believe I didn’t fall right down on my face."

"I was confused..."

One person walked through the streets determined not to stop until he reached his destination. There were different insignias on his blue bodysuit, including one above his heart that looked like a P and an M merged.

"Looking everywhere, only to find that it’s not the way I had imagined it all in my mind."

Entire parts of the cement on the ground began to lift up as if being pulled by a vaccuum all around him. He hopped from chunk to chunk on his way down the street toward the spire.

"So what am I," the young man asked, sprinting like mad.

Spades answered him with another question of his own. "What? Do I have but negativity? ’Cause I can’t justify the way, everyone is looking at me."

Ace smirked as he flagged the youth toward the spire. "Nothing to lose..."

"Nothing to gain," he counterted, standing at the very edge of the tower with a string of his own tangled with others from the sky. "Hollow and alone. And the fault is my own, and the fault is my own..." He touched the crystal obelisk and was swept away by his own string along with one other.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real. I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long..."

Shadows were appearing all over the city now, consuming the buildings and most of the people.

"Erase all the pain 'til it’s gone!"

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real. I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along..."

A coughing sound is heard as the one playing the strange crystal hybrid drumset appears behind Ace.

"Somewhere I belong!"

The flat plain that the city has now become is filled with nothing but pillars of violet electricity and clusters of Khaydarin. The spire has gained dozens of colors that flash periodically within it until and image forms inside. One of a grossly muscled man with red and green armor and an arm mounted cannon facing down a flaming blonde girl less than half his size.

"I will never know myself until I do this on my own!"

A glimpse of the young man that had vanished not a moment ago in a white grid that seemed to be pulling black strings from his body. his mouth is wide open in a scream of incredible agony.

"And I will never feel anything else, until my wounds are healed!"

Spades strolls across the field with a malicious smile on his face, a toothy fanged smile like a demon. other projected images are seen on the larger crystals around him. Images of monsters and other creatures with that same look in their eyes.

"I will never be anything till I break away from me!"

"I will break away," Ace sang, almost calmly. "I'll find myself today..."

As the echo breaks across the field, many of the strings from the sky drop down and pass through the spire.

"I wanna heal... I wanna feel what I thought was never real. I wanna let go of the pain I’ve held so long!"

"Erase all the pain 'til it's gone."

The images in the spire fell into chaos as they flashed from one face to another with each pulse of the dozens strings that passed through it.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real. I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along... Somewhere I belong!"

The liught of the spire whited out everything on the field once again until nothing but whitness and the images in the spire were seen. When it all came back, there was no sign of Ace and his companions, even though their voices still rang out.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m somewhere I belong..."

Something however was still there walking along the rows of crystal with one string flowing behind him.

"I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m somewhere I belong..."

With each hit of bass in the song his string crossed with another one that was swinging wildly on the field. and each time that happened the string's owner would be displayed in the air as if they were walking beside him.

"Somewhere I belong!"

Ace fretted his guitar, making that person's string vibrate and wave along with the odd sound. They stopped and looked back at the spire and their own string twisting in upon itself somewhat, like it was caught in a gale.

As the string twisted, his aspect changed. From that of himself; a young man in a blue suit with six white and green orbs around his waist, to a tall black and violet winged creature that had no mouth and runes etched into his armor, to a great flame wrapped samurai with a long golden katana in his right hand, and back to himself.

The song wound down to nothing, making the lights dim and the storm end. When the last beat was felt and his form enveloped in darkness, a single tear crept from the corner of his eye and set a aflame on his cheek.

And that last spark of light was all there was to be seen and then nothing when it faded away...

(Magnus X Zero) I think you missed me again Ace. Heh.

And I'll get you in the last song, Magnus. Heres a tip: Wear a lead vest... heh heh heh. Like that's gonna do you any good.

[Part 3]

Tracklist:

1) Who's Gonna Save Us – The Living End

2) Just One – Hoobastank

3) Invasion from Within – Tsunami Bomb

4) This Time – Depswa

5) Revenge – IKE

He was on the corner again. By the bar instead of inside with that damn guitar thanks to the last time he'd had himself a little jam session. That little glance of watching that crossover form was weird. There had even been a little bit of temporal shifting going on. And when time itself was a little messed up there was something big on the way. Something real bad looming around him that he knew he couldn't see. Not yet anyway. This phantom presence would make itself known sooner or later in one world or another that was still connected to his own UEF.

All he had to do was wait it out. Wait to die like he saw while he and the others had seen while playing that spellsong downtown.

If he knew that there was something coming that could consume him and everything else like this, why couldn't he fix it. It was impossible to figure out how the duel had affected the Dream Field as well as the rest of the continuum it was tied to without replaying it. And that was way too risky while playing with both his own untapped power and Frieza's.

But there had to be some way to get himself off the hook. A little self serving. Yes. But it would save more people a lot of agony later on.

He strummed the ax in deep thought, trying his best to manipulate the events coming forth like the strings on the instrument. No use...

This would require a higher plain of thought.

GLURRG!!!

One Ace Drink later, the echidna was properly stoned and ready to begin the conjuration. Hopefully it would work and keep his ass nice and frosty out of the fire.

The first sounds that perverted the air around him were clumsy at best. But as his hands started to numb, the sound became more melodious, a steady sound like an echo that just kept reverberating in the ears and mind of others all around. He knew he'd screw someone else further down the line, but that was then and he was high now.

The echo kept going until Ace leaned up straight against the side of the bar and looked vacantly out into space. His eyes saw the strings and waves that composed reality and all forms of mass and energy. People lived and died by the design of this ever reaching field of light and sound and feeling that went on forever. Souls were born and extinguished here in a pattern that was way too large (monstrously ginormous, really) for him to understand.

He began in a way that was simple. In the form of a question...

"Who's gonna save us?"

"Who's gonna save us?"

The view of the field increased to him as he fretted the guitar, looking at all the crossed strings that shouldn't have been so. It enveloped him, yet looked as far away as the stars were from the earth. It confused him, so he sung on. Trying his best to get a grip.

"It's all around me and, I just don't understand," he sang to himself, tapping his foot to the beat. "Seems all out of place, now..."

His view was brought to a gleaming red string set along by four others that kept up the same vibration in the stream of other waves all around. One string was dull red tinged gold with silver flecks of light while the other made a sound like a screech, letting off runes of familiar design. The other one was a faint one that was lined up directly with the red as though it were following. But the one behind them all had no definite size of look to it than utter black that carried nothing but silence and the feeling of cold. Ace shuddered and looked onto where this string went on to.

"We're under attack, now-"

He discovered the string went everywhere when you looked further than it's normal appearance. It was here creeping primarily, but then again it was everywhere else at once too. He saw it wrapped around the pasts of Frieza and Vegeta. Around the alternate future of Trunks. It was inside of his own strand and those of his friends. It was in his family. It was in the plane above and below and all around. It was weak in some places and very strong and omnipresent in others. ace felt a chill go down his spine when he saw this, but continued to bravely keep looking on.

"-our work is all cut out. Whatever happened to your rights?"

He looked back at the event that occurred almost a year ago with him and Frieza during their duel.

"And I know it's late."

That part of the string had no darkness at all. It had almost not malevolent thought at all. It wasn't him or Frieza at all. It was just there on it's own. A UEF that stood alone...

"But you know what they say now..."

A UEF that had been completely formed and crossed from creatures of two different personalities from two different worlds...

"Who's gonna save us? What they say now... Who's gonna save us?"

He knew what had to be done. And the poor sap he'd pin this one wouldn't be alone. Not by a longshot. And this provided the thrill Ace needed to pull off his next feat. He launched passionately into the chorus and began the spell needed to save them all later on down the line.

"So where's the writing on the wall? Who's gonna save us? Who's gonna provide us? Who's gonna divide us? Who's gonna save us?"

The world around him suddenly blacked out into nothing but space. It was like this until something winked into existance from far away and then shot into view. It was a ship. Four of them followed behind in an exodus, each the size of a small moon. It was a very beautiful sight to behold, especially when you were closing in invisibly and passed right through the rapidly moving craft.

This is exactly what Spades did until his was overwhelmed with a sense of nausea. This feeling of sickness and then falling was gone when he emerged somewhere else. A planet from the look of things. Underground. The place suggested the look of a maze within the body of some sickly insect riddled with machines.

He looked into the next room and was tempted to run inside to help. There were six of them. People of all ages in combat uniforms and robes all fighting for their lives with glowing swords and energy weapons. They were hopelessly outnumbered by forces of walking blade creatures and centaur-like warriors that glowed. Another type of monstrosity that held the aesthetic beauty of a sculpture and the attitude of a obsessive-compulsive was looking on from the sidelines. Their retreat was cut off. They would die.

Spades transformed and held his hand out, calling a ball of energy. It hummed as he held it for a few moments and then crushed it. It fleshed out to become a long silver and red guitar or his own design. Fitted with blades and jagged spikes on one end like a weapon. He couldn't save the people to help them with that many numbers and his source of strength so far away, but he could save the bio-mech life forms that were helping them.

Spades gave the guitar one hit and produced a sound like a whine mixed in with interference for a second before settling into a fast beat of his own. He strummed the instrument heartily for a while before cranking up the base and beginning the spellsong for his mission.

"I wanna live, I wanna leave, I wanna open up and breathe," he sang.

Motes of light began to flow from the floating objects. Each one was on it's own, pretty simple in it's thought processes was actually becoming something more. They were becoming smarter, more self aware.

"I wanna go, I wanna be, I wanna feel it constantly!"

Each of their owners felt this as well. Their spells became stronger and their shield were absorbing more impacts than before.

"Gotta show, gotta say, I gotta feeling that won't go away!"

That was before the four centaurs and the two swordweilders got into the mix. And as soon as one faded into existence, he jumped over as a neon and violet blur to strike one of them down instantly.

"I gotta know if they got away; My opportunities..."

The air became dense with the sounds of screams as they were hopelessly slaughtered. One after the other fell, from froce blasts to being trampled on down to having their heads removed. It was a bloodbath.

"Just One... chance is all I've ever wanted. Just one... time I'd like to win the game! From now on... I'll take the chance if I can have it! Just one. Just one!"

He jammed on through the fear and sickness he felt, trying his beast to express the anguish in his heart through the song. The biomechanical creatures were nearing the end phase of this part of their existence, ready to be born into another one he was choosing for them. Each of their new forms was indefinite, but it would suit their new personalities.

"And if I knew," the argonian almost cried," when the door was open I'd go though! I would go on through." He increased the bass again in his voice and confidently resumed playing the song, knowing that this was going to prevent more deaths like the ones he'd just seen."And I can say, when I do I will never be the same, never be the same..."

"Just One... I'll take the chance if I can have it! Just one! I'll take the chance if I can have it!!"

Spades looked on as each one of the MAGs began to vanish into nothingness above their dead masters, tears streaming from his face while he sang on.

"Yes, I'll take the chance if I can have it... Just one!! JUST ONE!!!"

When he finally finished and left the world around him nothing but echoes and mist, he felt it closing in on his new charges. Those new creature catapulted into the stream were just out of that... thing's grasp. But not for long. Something needed to be done to help them. He couldn't have any more blood on his hands.

'Do something, fish-breath,' he thought.

That something was the sound of an organ from behind him. Shiro played a truly macabre sound that shook the presence that had settled around them. His attention was diverted, but not fully there. There had to be a way to get him to look away from them for a few minutes...

"Keep up," Spades said to the Tonberry, trying his best to push his own energy level as high as possible to blot out the MAG's from sight for a few minutes. "Or we all die."

He began to lightly strum the guitar and then hit it up for a few seconds, like a heartbeat. It would be calm strumming and then the beat would kick up and return to nothing. Shiro kept up with the beat and continued to play as his argonian friend increased the rhythm.

"Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me..."

Flashes of lightning struck all about the realm they were situated in, frying the evil creatures that lived there, giving him jolts of pain from what was tied directly into him. The thunderous vibration's from Spades' ax were going past the normal constraints of the UEF he produced and went into the very mind of their stalker. It threatened to bore right through him, unless he took the time out to fight it off and let go of his pursuit.

"I'm caught! I cannot kick them out. Their claws are wrapped around my throat and they are squeezing tighter..."

If he'd had a corporeal body, the presence would have felt each of the actions as though someone were strangling him. Cutting into his flesh with sharp claws while the breath was choked from his murderous lungs.

"Insanity is coming over me. Their every wish is my command... No way out!"

The creature's omnipotent presence was thrown into chaos along with Spades and Shiro as they went on with their dirge of possession. His eyes were firmly fixed upon them and his attention on countering their sick display of arrogance.

"Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me..."

The both of them intended to end the song there, but something grabbed a hold of their limbs and made them continue playing. As if it were something from... inside their own bodies.

A voice from deep within the ruins echoed forth," Come on!"

A wailing voice from the gloom beyond sang,"When they come for you... They see right through your flesh and bones for soon you'll be their home. They know you deep inside, the things you can't try to hide..."

Spades saw the sick actions of his massacre in the canyons of Heran years ago. He was covered in the blood of hundreds of alien soldiers who had tried to invade his home. That blood was still there now, eating into him like acid. While Shiro was subjected to his own Tonberry spell, the spell of Karma. Cursed to relive the pain of all of his dying victims while his body made him play on.

"NO HOPE! ...after the first bite!"

While they struggled, the dark one did his best not to catch each of the biomechanical creatures, but to just touch them with his influence. To push a little of his own self into them. It was all he could do, but that was enough. He turned his attention back to Spades and Shiro, still in the throes of madness.

"Look out 'cause they are onto you. They'll cut you open, crawl inside and you'll be lost forever. Don't try to run 'cause you're the chosen one. Your world is gone, no turning back. No way out!"

Spades broke free of the possession in his body and commenced to ending the confrontation himself.

"Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me! Enemy inside of me... ENEMY!!"
Spades fell to his knees in the central part of the ring with Shiro behind him already unconscious. He just hoped that Ace and Caleb were having better luck than him.

Ace looked out into the vastness of space and tried his best to feel around for what had posed him such a threat. He felt it had been diminished, thankfully. He could at least now go about his task in peace. Though there would be no peace for the people he chose... children really.

"Let's go, man," he motioned toward his Guardian Force, Caleb, in the guise of a tired looking asian man swathed in robes with a shaved head and a cowl to cover his mouth. He held Ace's guitar readily, knowing exactly what to play for his master to sing.

They walked along the never-ending road in the Emerald Ring and came to a halt in the center, right on a line. The song began and the world faded away yet again like sand on the wind.

"I wanna hurt you and don't know why, though I know it's not like me. I cannot help it though I try to keep you away."

Visibility came back in what looked like a shrine. It was the normal Shinto setup with praying people all around. However, there were whispers in the air. above some of the priests and younger children there. One little girl in particular was playing pattycake with an embarrassed looking soldier from World War II, only he was pale and transparent. A ghost.

Ace strolled over, completely invisible, and touched her on the shoulder. With that, her UEF was marked. Marked for even greater thing than were to come for her in life.

"And all this time I thought I knew who you were. But this time all your words were lies for demise and your thoughts were found unpure."

The trees above swallowed up the scene as the echidna and his guitar playing GF walked on to the next subject. The forest that materialized around them was dark and cold, lit only by the moonlight above. Only one person was standing in the woods with a look of pure terror on his face. The air in front of him blurred and a nine year old boy dressed in black and bandaged materialized next to him with blood on the end of the kunai knife in his right hand. The man gave a croak and fell to the ground, dead.

As the boy pulled out a small leather black book, Ace put his hand on his shoulder and reluctantly marked him as well.

"So when push comes to shove about reasons..."

They next were teleported to a wide open field with only two people standing in it. Two monsters fought strategically between them. One was wreathed in flames while the other was a tall armored gray-violet beast with a large shining horn. The one directing the larger creature wasn't of any importance, it was the pressence of the shorter boy with the wild brown hair and the huge blue shirt with a PM logo on it that was shouting different commands to the smaller flaming monster who was of interest.

"'Til I work it out and relate. And get off on the fear that I get when you're near and the problems that I create..."

His smaller monster jumped back from a wide tail swipe by the larger creature and blew a huge pillar of flame into his armored back. It was over in seconds. When the larger one retreated back into a small green ball, the other boy conceded and victory was won. Ace marked him as he picked up his slightly steaming monster to congratulate him.

"This time, I think you'll finally see."

The road came back easily and they continued to walk while Ace sang.

"This time, I will not break. This time I'm smart enough to know there is only so much I'll take."

They finally came to the end of their journey and settled back outside the bar, where they had left the dark presence's probing eyes to damn the three with what we know of as a destiny.

"This time, I'm gonna make a change. This time! You're in my way! This time, I will not play the same head trip on me game that you play."

The place was finally free of that weird feeling, but he was still there. Still staring at them. And that couldn't be allowed to go on.

With a flash of light Spades and Shiro emerged decked out in weaponry for the four of them to use. They tossed Ace his Spread Needle and smiled evilly, knowing what kind of ownage was about to come about.

Both Spades and Shiro began to chant while Ace bellowed out some strange song that echoed throughout Metro. It was almost pleasant, like the song of a whale.(Halo's Gregorian chant, I like it) Between the three of them something on the ground was taking form. It was a person, albeit one covered in neon glowing runes who had chitin armor all over. He looked around, shocked to be on a material plane again.

"Oh no," was his only response.

"Oh yes," the four of them said in unison.

Ace looked back and yelled," Play it, Caleb!" He then turned back to the man they'd summoned and loaded his wep with new needles. "We about to kick yo ass, MAN!!!"

"I will take my revenge," Spades began singing, hefting his jagged crimson sword.

"On a road that never ends," Shiro continued, swiping twin butcher knives on one another.

"'Til I catch you unprepared for my attack," Ace ended ominously.

Spades kicked him viciously in the back and sent him sailing overhead to be knocked back into the fray by Caleb with the guitar. Ace caught him on the end of his gun and pumped him into the sky with a barrage of needles so that the Tonberry could slam him with a Thundaga spell in midair.

"When I take my revenge, the one thing you can depend upon," Ace sang.

"Is I will be the ***** who pays you back!" The rest of them yelled. (We all know what revenge can be, right?)

The melody went on as Spades rushed into the dark being, digging his sword into his chest. He came away with chunks of pungent gore on his sword. The beat sped up with an excruciating scream from the summoned one.

Ace kicked him back to his feet and commenced pummeling with his fists, singing one word with every blow. "Do you remember the day you lost me?" He back hands him into one of Shiro's butcher knives, which sinks nice and deep into his gut. He pushes the blade in with each drumbeat in the verse. "Burned a bridge on a Sunday drive." One Firaga and he flying in the air again to land in Spades' grasp. "Shoulda looked both ways, but ya crossed me."

He slams him into the side of the bar headfirst and into a booth occupied by Goku and GT Trunks. He is pulled out and thrown into the gutter and rained upon with numerous blasts of electricity. "Somebody's getting even... Somebody made it back alive. To say--"
He was snatched up by Ace again and tossed into the air to be air comboed Captain Commando style. Each of them continued to sing the song as they crossed by him, breaking bones and tearing apart limbs in the process of their passes.

"I will take my revenge on a road that never ends. 'Til I catch you unprepared for my attack. When I take my revenge, the one thing you can depend upon..."

Caleb maliciously hit the wrong note and sent a shockwave into the air, blowing the sick little stalker back to the cement face first. "I will be the ***** who pays you back."

Ace rolled in and took his ax back to play the solo himself, making the ground quake around the armored freak. It rose up in broad walls to crush down on him from three stories above. Quickly however, he was pushed up just as quickly on a pillar of cement and stone from below.

"I remember the day I lost you, "Spades sang, gathering energy from all around inot a semi solid casing that was still changing on the inside.

Caleb jumped up to the top of the tower of stone and shed his human form. It revealed the massive muscled beast he really was beneath it. A creature that had a particular love for causing suffering.

"Took a turn on a hairpin curve..." The air within the casing was metamorphosizing into plasma from the effect of his Ixian's Light.

Caleb quickly grasped onto each of his limbs and with one wrenching pull, ripped them from his torso. He was gone from the remains before Shiro began to rain shards of ice onto the stalker.

"Never knew what the pain would cost you. We get the fate that we deserve." It was almost ready.

He was pinned to the top of the structure with nails of ice through his form and no way to get away. Ace could only smirk as he played on and sang along with the others.

"And it's a cold, cold dish to serve," they all sang together. "And I'm already FROZEN!"

As soon as he threw the Hurricane Bomb, Spades and everyone but Ace was dispelled back into the ring. The mighty explosion went one like a chain of fireworks in the sky that turned day into night. It was oddly beautiful. Blinding. But beautiful.

"I will take my revenge on a road that never ends. 'Til I catch you unprepared for my attack... When I take my revenge, the one thing you can depend upon is I will be the *****.... I would be the *****.... I will be the **** who pays you back, MAN!!!"

As he ended the song, chunks of cement fell from the sky around him. When he dispelled his ax, a flaming sack of black meat fell in front of him as well.

3 minutes later in the bar

"And this thing is the Dark Force," Frieza asked.

"Yep," the echidna answered.

"I thought he'd be taller," Magnus said.

"They ripped off his legs," Vegeta stated. "Of course he's taller."

A hacking sound was heard from the charred corpse as it tried to say something.

"Here we go," Nemo quipped.

"I will kill-" Whud! One foot to the face from Ace.

"Shut up!"

"You have no idea what you are-" Whack! Another kick in the jaw from Frieza.

"He told you to shut your mouth!"

"I will have my-" Ka-Dack! One boot in the face from Magnus.

"Doesn't he know how to die?"

"You 'ugh' will-" Blam! One bullet in the neck from Nemo with the shotgun!

"Jeez! This guy will not shut his hole."

"I-" WHUD! WHUD!! WHUD!!!

"Shut the hell up and die!" A literal storm of stomping from Vegeta who wants it over with and to get drunk off his ass again.

Soon enough the head is no more than pulp and the body a snack for the mysterious force in the basement. Case closed... for right now.

Number 3 in a series of 4.

the Last one comes tomorrow at my site. The link will be here soon.

[Intermission]

Tracklist:

1) The Silent Within – Steve Vai

It was a lively Saturday night in central Metro City. The social hotspots shone like stars in the already bright metropolis. Wild, vibrant lights of cosmic nuance served as beacons for thrill seekers and hunters of all manners of entertainment that prowled the streets like hungry beasts in the twilight. The radiance of light and life went on into the horizon, farther than anyone within the city could see.

The more lights erected on the scene, the more patronage it seemed to get. Like moths to a flame? The reptilian creature floating above found the analogy amusing, though only loosely accurate. He looked down on the setting with mixed emotions. It was the first time he’d ever really looked at it since he’d arrived that fateful night at the Saiya-jins Club. The animal indulgence of the people parading through the night spurred memories of his first life. He found himself displaced in time. Embodied in this moment was everything he’d been through. He felt the tantalizing caress of the luminous pleasures below beckon him and the burning dawn in his heart pulling him back. Both were beautiful and compelling…but one of these lights was false. He knew that the colorful spectacle of the Earth was being generated by ravenous businesses feeding on those who would be fed. It could be extinguished with a wave of the hand, and would fade away with the darkness. But the glow that he carried in his heart would not be so easily smothered and would never disappear.

Yes, it was all here…and it demanded he answer it. He renewed his choice by reaching into his pseudo-space pocket and pulling out a mass of glassy plates, convex to various degrees, floating together in the ancient Lambdoma harmonic configuration. Soft waves of energy ran silently through its weightless interior as it acquainted itself with the surrounding world and the spirit of the hands that held it. The translucent phantom of a rod that the plates followed lit up with a hologram of controls and settings. The former tyrant tranquilly ran his fingers and his mind along them, fine-tuning the mechanical elements. It was unfamiliar to him at first, not having held it in several years and having only trained with it for less than a year to begin with, but the motions quickly came back to him.

Frieza looked down from his perch high in the moonlit sky. He was an invisible speck in the dark, isolated from the reckless revelry below. He grinned and addressed the city’s people, fully aware that nobody could hear him.

“Your attention please. There will be a brief intermission in the Ace the Echidna concert series while Ace restrings his guitar. In the meantime, allow me to entertain you with my own little brand of spell-singing.”

The city failed to reply, but this didn’t discourage the alien at all. He slung the stringless spirit guitar into position and placed his hand over the center of the plate. There was a second of unnatural silence. The blaring music rising from all the clubs and bars instantly stopped, seemingly without reason. The many voices below were suddenly called to be still. Only the sudden rush of wind that ran violently through the streets broke the silence.

This wind carried a stagnant and distasteful odor. It was like the air in the doldrums of a bog. It was unsurprising, for this wind had been sucked from the lungs of everyone populating the city’s nightlife. People stumbled and cars swerved, all ‘miraculously’ escaping disaster. They gasped for breath, finding none. In the franticness of their instinct for air, no one noticed that they weren’t suffocating.

The wind rose, rushing across Frieza’s focused face. The sound of oscillating strumming, infused with a voice like a heavenly choir, began to rise from nowhere at all. The clock at city hall struck midnight, but didn’t make it past the fourth chime before it too was silenced. The song had begun.

The oscillating progressed into the more distinguished sound of guitar as the conniving musician began to move his hand in flowing, sometimes sprightly gestures. Once the melody was established he began to sing, a very rare occurrence. His natural voice was unfit for the song, so he altered it to best suit the harmony.

“Endless time is arriving in this lost and found,” his voice was silky, yet potent. But not a soul could hear it. The silence in the streets was absolute. “What is now was always but never seemed to be.”

The chaos below was only beginning. As people began to forget about their breathing problem, they began to recognize the song: a song of absolute silence. The city was void of noise of any kind. Not even the trample of feet or the frenzied smashing of various objects from people struggling to return to normal produced an audible sensation. Yet above the deafness was the song. It rose from the recesses of what they were able to conceive, from the vague spot that connects body and soul.

“In the breath of a heartbeat, the walls tumble down,” the old tyrant cried in agony and outrage. The tremor of his pain ran through the street. The walls of the nightclubs blasted themselves to dust from their cores, leaving the boulevards filled with neon-lit skeleton structures.

“An elusive light and sound enraptured me.” Frieza reverently swayed his head back toward the sky as a golden hue blushed across him and his instrument. Likewise, the inhabitants of the ground were filled with in implacable awe. It was comforting; it loved and forgave, but its source was obscured by the streetlights. Many fell to their knees and held up their arms. But soon the sensation faded, and each of them found themselves alone. “But I remain in my body. Words fail to describe what we feel when we die inside. God only knows,”

The chaos had gone from material to mental. They were on their knees now not because they were amazed, but because they couldn’t find the strength to stand. They couldn’t find anything. They knew that the source of the awe was still before them, but they could no longer grasp it. There was nothing left for them but the empty neon lights and their empty thoughts.

“what we're feeling when the lights grow dim.” The city’s flashy light display faded out, revealing the darkness that was always there but had never seemed to be. “Is there really a voice inside?

In the silent within?”

Now unable to escape their thoughts, as most of the thrill-seekers had come here to do, Frieza’s audience was beginning to go insane. Some smacked themselves, trying to awaken. Some ran into pitch-black bars to drink this nightmare into oblivion only to find the liquor flavorless and without stimulation. Even the texture of the mug was slipping away while the voice from within grew ever louder and the emperor continued to pour his heart out.

“Torn apart by a twister of greed lust and pride.
When I bleed it's a need to be one with you.
Why is anger so hungry and love so blind?!
Why do we hurt when we cry?

God only knows what we're dreaming
in our ultimate sin
Do we really hide anything
in the silent within?”

The purple chest plate next to Frieza’s heart flared gold again, but in anguish this time.
”Silent within,” his voice dubbed over itself for just a moment and he repeated the phrase in a sorrowful tone. “Within.”

The performing prince released most of his control on the guitar, allowing it to explore the aura of the moment freely. The silent wind that was still roaming the space above the Metro was drawn into its vacuumous center and compressed into a ball of glowing green light. He formed it into a voice and let it join him in a duo.

“Ohh hide in your darkness” it taunted him. He was confronted again with the unbridled pleasures of his past and the evils therein. He closed his eyes and looked away.

“And I'm dreaming today,” he sang with a smile, ignoring the voice and modulating the images into those of his new life. Trunks, Ace, Nemo, Sub…and the light from which he could no longer hide. The new singer quickly responded, painting a black veil over the bar and its people.

“Only for a moment would you hear
Oh slow me down
Run away.”

Its message rang clear to the spirit conductor, and his pain reverberated through the instrument and to the despairing community below. He knew the truth being spoken. He’d realized it during the listless days of substance abuse in the bar and again in his battle with Ace. From this, however, he couldn’t turn away, nor could he offer a lucid justification for it. He wailed again in torment, echoed by the voice.

“God only knows and He ain't talkin'.
In the sound and the light and the life!”

Frieza passionately ripped his hand across the open face of the crystal assembly, dashing the orb containing the voice into pieces and released as the gust of wind once more. A drumbeat dinned as the song’s intensity mounted.

“There's no end to the bottom when we start to fall,
There's no top to the high when we want to climb.”

The sky flickered wildly with silent energy. Frieza’s power ascended at a dangerous rate. He poured it all into the music, releasing all the frustration, confusion, and anger he’d gathered over the years.

“And this heart is a prison bound by chains of gold!”

Red and yellow lightning flashed alternately across the horizon. The light from the stars and moon seemed to fade further away with each forked strike. Both Frieza and the populous were being pushed deeper and deeper into darkness.

“Wherein lies the keys?
God only knows how we're falling
While reaching for Him.
In this vacuum of time and space
in the silent within.

God only knows!
Within!”

The mighty wanderer threw his head back and let go entirely. He let all of his emotions out and blindly unleashed every ounce of power he could grasp as he blazed into the song’s climax. The music propelled him, and he perpetuated the music. The shockwaves from his aura alone ripped the roads from the Earth and razed the weakened buildings all around. In this passion Frieza may well have destroyed the entire city, had someone not intervened.

In the middle of his solo, a sudden burst of light caught him by surprise. He turned around and saw, at 12 AM, the rising sun. The guitar echoed his shock in the form of a dramatic cadence, reviving the choir’s song to accentuate the glory of the dawn. He let the crystal mass hang at his side for a moment as he woke up. He looked down at the destruction he’d caused and how much more he’d almost caused. Again.

Ashamed, he released the spell on the metropolis. The wind returned to the people and the outside world reinverted with the silent within. He hoisted the spirit guitar, which had been repeating the last progression by itself, back into his arms. With a trembling voice he finished the song, now heard in the physical world and not just in the mind.

“It's a drop from the ocean
A star from the sky
A grain of sand from the earth
A tear from an eye

When the light is before us
And shines in our life
In the silent within
God only knows.”

After using a little telekinesis to spot repair the buildings and roads, the spellsinger left and flew into the midnight sun, which disappeared shortly after. The music returned. The lights came back on. But the people had seen the darkness beneath them, and those lights wouldn’t be the same again for a long time.

[Part 4]

Tracklist:
1) Anthem Of Our Dying Day – Story of the Year
2) Suffer – Devil May Cry 3 OST
3) Divine Hate + Devils Never Cry – Devil May Cry 3 OST
4) Page Avenue – Story of the Year
5) Too Little Too Late – Hoobastank
6) I'm an Asshole – Denis Leary

2/21/2007 4:08:09 PM (4 YEARS LATER)
Expect something nice to be posted here tomorrow night. Frieza, your nagging has worked. Magnus... I didn't forget you, man.

"Long live the king," huh Ace?

I'm still waiting for the surprise present. :(

3/1/2007 3:00:33 PM
Hail to the King, Friez. Hail to the King...

The whole of Metro city was in a bit of an uproar. Much time had gone by since the last extra weird event. It seemed to have been initiated some time before April of the previous year and then stopped. Strange, considering that the next 'performance' was supposed to be the finale to the concert series. From destroying a bar, to then affecting the psychological and physical state of an entire city, then bending the very laws of probability, and savagely beating an aspect of evil. All of it was daily occurance, yet odd in the way that the entire city remained unharmed for the first time in a while. A feeling of dread hung on the minds of the people of the city that went about their not so normal lives. For they knew that something would once again come out of that bar in the middle of the bad part of town (if one can call lawyer and monster infested streets 'the bad part of town').

Someone walked the wasteland however. A short hooded individual carrying a lamp. In broad daylight this seemed silly. But for some reason the beacon shined brightly in the midday sun. It even went so far as to shine through the one carrying it as if they were completely transparent. He shuffled along saying something. It sometimes would fade in and out as if his voice couldn't carry across the veil that separated normal people from bodyless spirits. Passersby could hear his mantra just the same as if he were standing right next to him, and it scared the living piss out of them.

"We are falling, the light is calling. Tears inside me, calm me down..."

The day wore on and the sun set as it always does. An event that could mean oncoming peril unseen or a time of rest that the world mercifully brings you. Or perhaps, a dawn of the PM sort that brings with it another kind of day. One kind not so easily forgotten.

The strumming began and the people of Metro recoiled. It signalled the start of something awful. People looked out of their windows while more and more of the masses crowded the busy intersections and city streets of the modern metropolis. The sound echoed, bouncing from peak to peak of the great cement and glass towers the humans had built for themselves. Uncaring of other concerns normally, they gave in to their fear and apprehension. Something was coming that struck awe into the hearts of these people. This sound, the sound of a simple electric guitar being played, was just the beginning.

The sound was finally pinpointed at the top of the tallest building in the city. Those with binoculars and telescopes were able to watch him sit down and relax on the edge of the skyscraper's roof. Almost obscurred by the satellite dishes and other devices that sat near him, one humanoid sat lounging with his red ax in hand. His body was covered in purple fur yet he toted long black hair that flapped about him in the frigid wind. He sat shirtless in only a pair of jeans and sneakers bobbing his head to the beat.

Helicopters of both the media and the police flew upward and shined their lights onto him. The being on the skyscraper regarded them like someone would a cloud of gnats, shaking his head, sighing in exhasperation. He blotted that all out and thought of what he had to do. With that focusing in place, he began the song...

"The stars will cry," he began," the blackest tears tonight. This is the moment that I've lived for. I can smell the ocean air."

He hopped off of the roof, eliciting cries of "don't jump". He paid them no mind and continued to sing while flying through the air high above them. The cops and reporters kept their lights and cameras focused completely on him.

"Here I am, pouring my heart onto these rooftops, just a ghost to the world..."

His right hand seemed to suddenly burst into flames and then stop just as suddenly as it began, only now the hand was partially see-through.

"That's exactly what I need!"

The strumming actually gave way to real playing of a song that everyone for miles around could hear as clearly as if he were right in front of them. Even though he probably should have been using an amp the whole time, Spades played on shaking the ground every time he played a note on his precious Redstreak.

"From up here the city lights burn like a thousand miles of fire. And I'm here to sing this anthem... of our dying day!"

Fire began to eat once again at his body, but he expelled it by blowing it away with bass hits of sound. They radiated from him, blowing them out as quickly as the flame could appear to consume him.

"For a second I wish the tide would swallow every inch of this city, as you gasp for air tonight!"

A second voice seemed to join his own in the song, but only for a second. His body gained more definition and detail when it was heard instead of being partially faded in the light of the choppers.

"I'd scream this song right in your face if you were here!!"

The voice came back and blended into his own as his body changed in a blaze of light and electricity. When he was done, he floated in the sky transformed. His tail was longer, his muscles larger, and his gaze had become feral and mean. His singing still carried its anguished tone as he continued.

"I swear I won't miss a beat. 'Cause I never, never have before!"

He flew up higher than before. Spades twirled on air with closed eyes, reveling in what freedom he had left to whip through the air with only his own will to hold him aloft.

"From up here the city lights burn like a thousand miles of fire. And I'm hear to sing this anthem... of our dying day!"

He repeated the chorus' end, trying to maintain flight. Each time he rose it seemed to get harder and harder to stay up. Fire burst from within him again and his right arm was now transparant. His wild eyes registered shock and... was that fear?

"Of our dying!!" Spades screamed, falling down a hundred stories to the crowds gathered below.

The people screamed as he fell. Some tried to get out of the way while still more sat there watching the Argonian plummet to what would surely be his demise. At just the last second, the air around Spades shimmered and glowed green. He slowed and bounced upward as if in slow motion ten feet from the ground. He floated along on his back as if in a pool and continued to play.

"For a second I wish the tide," he sang with a more hollow look in his eyes," would swallow every inch of this city. As you gasp for air tonight!!"

He shot off again to the top of the building from the reaching hands of the people below to rest on the edge of the skyscraper he had abandoned moments past. The demonic-looking hero was surrounded by an aura of lightning and flames that continued to eat away his phantom shell. As he set down, he strummed the song as steadily as he could even though the rest of him was shaking.

"From up here these city lights burn like a thousand miles of fire. And I'm hear to sing this anthem... of our dying day!"

He stood defiant of the flame eating away at the stuff of his soul and swung Redtreak around himself, getting back into the song at full blast.

"From up here the city lights burn, like a thousand miles of fire. And I'm here to sing this anthem of our dying day."

Spades began to tear up a bit as the last of him was being eaten up by a massive conflagration of ghostly fire. "From up here these city lights burn!! Like a thousand miles of fire!! And I'm here to sing this anthem!! Of our dying day!! Our dying day!!!"

He spun around, whipping off lightning bolts that struck the choppers around him, flinging them off and into the city in all directions.

"Of our DYING!!!"

Finally, Spades was nothing more than a ghost. The few lights that were left shining went through him and the flames that flicker from him finally subsiding into embers. He strummed the last parts of the song and promptly faded away.

Further down below, someone flexed their new clawed hand and quietly chuckled. He strolled out onto the city streets and sucked in a lungful of the fetid air. This new arrival smiled widely at his new discovery and began to spout off lyrics as he walked by through the crowds almost unnoticed.

"You've got nothing and nothing's got you... I can see your fear surrounds you... Built with strife and insight, but it's not enough... I'll defeat and discreet your every move."

The people ambiantly discussed what they had just witnessed and let him easily pass between them. It was almost as if they didn't care just what it was that was bringing the temperature down with his very pressence. One important being looked on in interest, but did not act. He would bring the fight to them... or he would simply bide his time. It didn't matter which since victory was already assured.

"Step twice, you invite and welcome death... Pay your life to me with your last breath... Say goodbye to the life you once knew, along with every being you once knew."

Lines of blue began to stream almost invisibly from the puffs of smoke that came from the breath of the people crowding the streets of Metro. Not all of them were targeted for this bizarre effect, just maybe two out of every ten spectators. He rocked his head back and forth muttering something once again that sounded almost like a song. It reached an end as he became visible to the world around him and his victims simply fell.

"Something stupid," he said, stepping off the train.

The station that was below ground wasn't supposed to be there. The misshapen train he had arrived on wasn't supposed to exist. He was supposed to be dead. That didn't make anything there any less real or alive.

"Something stupid," he repeated again, boarding the open elevator.

He got in and the doors closed behind him. The echidna clenched his fist tight until he head his knuckles cracking. His body lurched forward a bit as the elevator started to rapidly ascend. He smoothed back his dreads behind his head, trying to come to grips with what had just happened to him.

"Looks like we gave the goggles to the right guy, Liew."

The elevator finally stopped. The doors opened and Ace was greeted by a scream. A man ran by, turning around to shoot at something not in the echidna's line of sight. He heard the snarl of a dog and a mass of yellow bones lunged past the door at the man with the gun. Ace heard the victim scream and yell once or twice before he started to cough up blood.

Ace walked out of the door and grabbed the skeletal beast before it could tear his throat out. He grasped it with one arm while it scrabbled, writhed, and scratched at him futilely. With one jerk, Ace separated the head from the body, then crushed it into shards and yellowish powder.

"I guess I can't go anywhere without there being a problem, can I?"

He walked out of the building, which curiously enough did not have a basement floor of any kind, and looked at the scene around him. People ran and screamed as more living skeletons ran after them. Some were caught and torn to shreds while others were snatched from the streets into the sewers by more horrifying monsters. Nowhere was safe.

"Hail to my father to fight," Ace said. "Til the light of the sun will shine."

Ace walked up to another of the living dead and kicked it in the naked shin. It crumpled to the sidewalk and the echidna grabbed him by the ankle.

"From the angst of lost memories. A just revenge to pure misery..."

He took the skeleton up like a weapon and started to bash anything that got close to him with it. When it was too damaged to be used, he smashed another skeleton into submission and used it to start killing the others.

"It paints a picture until it crumbles, the existence of loveless black souls..."

Ace gripped one of the livelier ones up by its skull and started to bash it against a wall repeatedly.

"Onward to my sacred battlefield. A justice rage for all to feel..."

He tossed away his latest catch when insectoid shapes began to flow out of the sewer grates and storm drains all over the block. The Zerg slowly emerged from their smelly pits still gnawing on their human victims. Many of them tossed their meals aside and began to move on Ace.

"With innocent cries and hatred squeals. The gore of evil seems to satisfy..."

Redstreak appeared in Ace's grasp. The echidna lifted it over his head in a defensive stance. A twinkle of murderous glee was in his eye as his looked upon the crowd of zerglings and hydralisks that came to greet him.

"...when slain an' maimed and pacified!"

Ace rushed forward, cutting one of them in half each time he swung his ax. Each of the zerg came apart in a spray of greenish ichor and sprays of red blood. With each swing of his weapon, riffs of a guitar could be heard. Ten less hydralisks were there when Ace finally jumped up above them onto the side of a taller building. He shunted the Redstreak into the wall and leaned on it.

He strummed it erratically ten more times. With each motion of his hands, lines of insubstantial light began to cross between the zerg on the ground. Wherever the lines crossed, zerg began to be sliced apart.

"Stepping forth, a cure for soul's demise! With the tears of the victim’s cries!"

A trio of zerglings jumped up on the wall and rushed toward the echidna. He pulled his Redstreak out of the wall and continued to play. He kept the beat slow, continuing to sing. He stayed up there on the building as if gravity didn't matter, dancing along the wall while the zerglings attacked.

"Yearning more to hear the suffer of a..."

He ducked under one of the dog-like aliens' mandible swings and gripped his ax tightly with both hands.

"...demon as I put it under!"

He sliced upward with his instrument and hacked through its armor like it was nothing. The screeching monster fell off the building to the ground below. Ace rushed over to the next closest one and played a series of notes that sliced it to ribbons.

"Killed before the time to kill them all!"

Ace jumped down from his perch and commenced slashing his way through the remainder of creatures below.

"Passed down the righteous law."

Ace increased the beat of the song and more lines of light ripped through the ranks of zerg around him. The lines began to slide through the buildings as well, making puffs of dust shoot out where they disappeared into the bricks.

"Serving justice that dwells in me..."

The buildings around him began to slide to the side and then collapse in on themselves. Ace danced on as everything around him fell apart. One second a hydralisk would attack with its scythe arms and pull back nothing but spurting stumps. Soon enough the monster would fall, reduced to nothing more than chunks of butchered alien meat.

"Lifeless corpse as far as the eye can see!!" Ace screamed.

The buildings collapsed and fell off their foundations, leaving an almost level plain of debris and lifeless bodies for almost mile around. The lines began to advance from Ace again and more of the creatures caught in their wake were torn to shreds.

"The eye can see!! Oh, the eye can see..."

Far below the ground in a dank place where only one lightbulb was working, an almost pitiful sound could be heard. Mounds of pulsing pink flesh with armored growths protruding from them were wrapped around the warm machinery and pipes. A den with fungus crusted earth was nearby.

The light went out for a moment.

"We are falling... the light is calling...tears inside me...calm me down..."

The light came flickering back on and the growths became sickly and black. One cut across each of their slimy skins was putrefied and green. The larger mound they were connected to shivered constantly. Growls and hisses began to come from the den.

The light flickered out again.

"Bless me...with the...leaf off of the tree...on it...I see the freedom reign..."

The bodies of slashed up zerglings were strewn about the chamber when the light came back on. The mound of flesh was suffering from a gastly wound that sprayed the massive life form's blood out in gushes. The veins around the injury began to go black.

The light went out again.

"Praise to my father...blessed by the water...black night, dark sky..."

The light came back on and a small robed creature with a butcher knife in its hand was amid the carnage. Bodies of aliens were strewn all about. Each of them was in rapid stages of decay that began in their knife wounds. The robbed creature flinched at something and a hydralisk jumped out from behind him.

It clipped the light in its blind lunge.

"...the devil's cry..."


Above, Ace continued to fight, dipping under the attacks of more monsters, only for them to be sliced in half by his very music. He played on with that sadistic smile on his face, jabbing his ax into the belly of whoever got even a slight touch of his dreads.

"The power's proven to end the madness! Upon I take it to end the savage..."

He jumped up in the air over the hordes of unholy creatures before coming down with his weapon outstretched. Ace slammed into the ground with enough force to send shockwaves out in every direction. The concrete split under his immense strength and sent up showers of stone and metal to shred anyone nearby into pulp.

"The rays of light a truth to meaning... To my father my blood is pleading!"

The creatures that were left surged down into the pit he'd made for himself. Ace faced them boastfully, swinging around his ax to cut something in front of him while kicking out at the zergling he knew was behind him. The beasts fell back to the ground, bleeding out on the smashed pavement. Their fellows felt no remorse, trampling them to red and green paste to get to Ace.

"A justice rage for all to feel! With innocent cries and hatred squeals!"

An Ultralisk barreled down the block, kicking up dust behind its charging, elephant-sized body. Ace ran right at it, his ax held high. He jumped up into the air and played a few more riffs, sending lines of sound through the air to cut through the massive alien's legs. The beast fell down to the ground in a helpless heap.

"The gore of evil seems to satisfy..."

Ace shunted his ax through one of the creature's stumps and then stepped up to its face. Without any mercy, Ace began to pummel its face with lightning blows that shook the debris all around him. Within moments, it was an indiscernible mess of blood and chitinous bits. Ace looked away from his handiwork and blasted the thing with a huge burst of purple energy.

"...when slain an' maimed and pacified."

Farther away, some other being watched the slaughter with great interest. He put a clawed hand to his chin in thought.

"My chosen torture makes me stronger," he sang along to Ace's beat. "In a life that craves the hunger."

The echidna seemed to hear him, though he didn't know where from.

"A freedom and a quest for life," Ace sang with more of a whisper of a voice. "Until the end of the judgement night."

"Praise to my father, blessed by the water, black night, dark sky..."

"Watch the footsteps but never follow..."

Ace reclaimed his Redstreak and began to walk into Metro's heart.

"If you want to live tomorrow..."

Both of their voices could be heard on the wind blending into one. "Steel a soul for a second chance.
But you will never become a man..."

"...the devil's cry..."

On another plane of existence, far away from Metro city and its myriad problems, someone walked. He walked through a stormy landscape of wind and salty dust that stung his eyes and bit his skin. Sharp crystalline growths were everywhere around him. They each glowed a deep blue that gave this bleak place its light.

Suddenly the earth began to quake and the young man who walked along knew he really had done something stupid. He slipped on his goggles and ran forward.

"I still recall every summer night, like it was yesterday..."

The ground behind him shot upward into the sky, way past the dirty clouds above. He continued to move, unabated by the pillars of stone that shot up around him. The shards of crystal he ran past sliced into his skin as he brushed past, leaving bloody wounds to burn in the salt winds. He didn't care.

"The time could never end, and my friends were family..."

A pillar erupted from the ground in front of him and he slammed his shoulder into it while running by. The pain was unreal. He still didn't give two *****.

"Nothing mattered more than the loyalty we had. Now I'm a world away from everything we shared..."

He whipped out a ball from the belt behind him and pressed a button on the front. A weapon shaped like a billy club appeared in his hand. He ran forward again, breaking all of the odd hillocks and crystals around him. Another pillar shot up out of the ground in front of him and he reared back with his weapon. He slammed the club forward and demolished the thick pillar in a shower of rock and crystal.

"I had something better, waiting ahead... I try to take control of my heart!"

He jumped forward onto the top of a pillar as it rapidly rose into the sky. More of them flew past him as he kept climbing. He leapt off of his own pillar and tossed another ball from his belt. It became a blue beam of light that slammed through four pillars in succession, ricocheting off of each one, before coming back to his hand. The pillars started to fall and he leaned toward the first. In free fall, he ran along one before jumping to the next and the next.

"I had something better, but I'll tear it down, then I'll tape it up by my own design and fall..."

He rode down to the ground with the falling pillar. It fell for a while before slamming onto a pillar that was rising on a slant. The massive pole of stone slid down along the rising pillar before hitting the ground below. As soon as he was on bare earth again, the teen ran as fast as his legs would take him in the same direction as before.

"Bring back the days, three story parking lot. The air is never dry. As the city falls asleep, days bleed into the night."

As he ran along, the earth began to be disturbed further. More and more pillars began to shoot into the the sky, like some reversed rain of earth. The lines of stone lifted from the soil to sail up into the heavens to who knows where beyond that.

The teen noticed that the ground around him was crumbled and melted in some places. Some of the crystals nearby were darkened with what looked like dried blood. Others were scorched and melted.

"The table sets the stage for a life of memories, but I'm a world away from everything..."

Soon enough, he could see that the pattern on the horizon around him was crisscrossed with enough pillars to make it look like some sort of colossal cage. On the ground below the ledge he stood upon, there was a wide pit in the ground with wide half melted sides. In the center of the pit was a mound of melted black chains.

"I had something better, waiting ahead! I try to take control of my heart! I had something better! But I'll tear it down, then I'll tape it up by my own design..."


Back in Metro in the downtown area, Ace continued his battle. A creature about his own size with a reptilian nature viciously fought with him. They hopped from building to building, trading blows at incalculable speeds. Both red fighters kept step with one another as pillars of stone and glowing blue crystal started to grow up all over Metro.

"I'll fall apart as time passes by!"

Ace finally feinted after using the same tired string of five hit punch and ax slice combos. The lizard-thing fell for it and left himself wide open. Ace quickly spin around and slammed the flat side of his ax into his opponent's side. He went flying into the air, spinning end over end. The reptile caught a glimpse of Ace's reflection in the skyscraper nearby as he rushed in to attack again.

"I'll fall apart, but the memories never die."

Ace hovered in the air beneath his adversary on top of his ax while he pummeled him again and again. Ace reeled back and spun lower in the air to start drinking in power from his ring. With a hoarse cry, Ace rose upward with a Comet Punch straight into his opponent's mid-section. The little beast caught the echidna's fist in his claws though.

The lizard-thing gripped Ace's arm and lifted him up off of his instrument. He slashed his claws across Ace's face and threw him down into the blacktop below. Ace slammed into the pavement, but he didn't register the broken bones he'd have to regenerate or the bloody splatter that had been made of his organs upon landing one his face. He was massively aware of the fact that Redstreak was gone.

Where there was supposed to be that electric feeling of some other consciousness whenever he touched the weapon or had it active, there was nothing. That little scaly **** had stolen it from him.

Down below, in the other plane, the teen was fingering his final ball. He held it in the palm of his hand, deciding whether of not to use it as more and more of the pillars rose into the sky. Soon enough there would barely be room to move unless you wanted to climb through a jungle of stone.

"I still recall, every summer night! It seems like yesterday, but I'm still a world away..."

His words echoed across the strange world's landscape as he finally made up his mind.

What was he going to do?

...

Something stupid.

He slammed the ball into the ground at his feet. A pop was heard and a red glow began to spread across the land all around him. It infected everything it touched, blanketing the world in an eerie crimson glow. When it spread around for just about a mile or two, it began to recede into the spot just below the teen's open hand. He began to lower further and further as the mass of red light contracted back in upon itself, right along with more than a thousand tons of stone and crystal. The red glow finally subsided until it was almost nothing beneath the teen's feet.

The pop was heard again and the teen pointed his hand upward toward the clouds. The ball in his palm exploded into two halves with a beam of dusty blue with red lines of electricity all along it lancing up into the air. The backlash sent the young man skidding backward along the ground, but he held himself up standing.

"I had something better waiting ahead, I try to take control of my heart! I had something better!"

He fell down to his knees just as the beam fizzled out of existence. He continued to sing, even though he was almost physically spent.

"But I'll tear it down and I'll tape it up by my own design and fall..."

He looked up at the clouds and saw something blotting out all light in one place. It started to spread across the sky all at once until it blotted out all light aside from that illumination provided by the crystals.

"I had something better....I had something better..."

Something began to march over the horizon, outlined in shadow by the crystal's light. A jagged shape that had a shifty slide to its stride.

"And I'll fall apart, as time passes."

The teen slumped down on himself and smiled.

'Come get some Del. I'll be waiting right here for you...'

Back in Metro, the city was crumbling. People were dying or dead. The SPA was way too drunk to care at the moment. (Besides, no one had paid them to help.) The monsters that served as a distraction to lure Ace there were gone. In their place, an even worse menace was there.

He stood over Ace, the Redstreak in his hands in its sword form. He was as red as the echidna was and just as tall. His eyes were a solid glittering gold and he had a blue crystal embedded in his forehead between his eyes. He wore the torn remnants of an orange environmental suit that was at least a size too big for him.

Ace had been sapped. His hamstrings had been cut and his arms were both cut nearly off. They were hanging on by a thread of flesh at the elbow, a job that his regeneration was barely able to do anything with. He swore that the very moment that he could move again, Ace would make the little bastard pay for this.

"Let him go," the reptile rasped at the fallen echidna. "Let him go and I'll go away. This will all be nothing but a bad dream."

Ace struggled for a moment, but was able to finally lift his head up to look at his adversary. "The nightmare will really start if you don't get out of my face."

The lizard stuck Ace in the gut with Redstreak. "Give him up!"

"Aaaauughh!!" Ace writhed around in agony. "You son of a --ugh! That's not my freakin' choice!"

"Bull!"

Ace prepared for the reptile to stab him again, but the pain never came. He felt that sensation of strength again. Everything inside of him was back in order. He could finally put an end to all of this. But before any of that could be done, he'd need a power source to pull it off.

He glanced above him to the high standing towers of rock and Khaydarin crystals that had risen out of the ground.

"Sweet..."

Ace concentrated even though the reptilian creature above him was stabbing him over and over again with his own sword. The thrusts kept coming, but it didn't matter. He was here and he was pissed.

Klang!

A dark blur rushed forward from the reptile creature's blind spot. He was barely able to parry the slash that was aimed for his scaly neck.

"I was wondering when you'd put in an appearance, Spades"

Indeed, Spades had seemed to make a comeback. He was still himself and not a ghost as he had been when Ace took back all of his powers at just the wrong moment. It had allowed that little halfwit monster in front of him to exist in this world.

"Someone needed to put you in your place, Lisk," Spades retorted, pressing his twin knives against Redstreak's cutlass form.

The two of them separated and then seemed to disappear.

"I just wanted you back," Lisk yelled out from his hiding place high up on a bank building. "The guy you left behind sucks. He's no fun!"

Wha-krak!

A whole chunk of the building was cut away when Spades flew up and cut through it with another Redstreak cutlass. "I know that. But that doesn't make what you did right. You killed a lot of people and disrupted my "life" here just so you could drag me across the veil to be some idiot's id." He hefted his sword up closer to his face. "I'm never going back! Rob's better off without me!"

Spades snapped his fingers. The echo reached across the whole downtown area, reverberating off of all of the buildings left standing. Lisk threw away his copy of the sword just as it exploded into pure energy.

The lizard-thing looked up at the Argonian who was supposed to be his friend and sighed. "Oh, crap..."

Spades gripped his sword by its razor edge, letting the blood from his hand slowly spill all over the weapon. The sword elongated to twice its normal length. The lines of blood along its surface raised and became long translucent strings that seemed to fade in and out of sight. Spades hefted his new weapon into position in front of him and ran his hand over the strings of his ax.

At first he seemed to be casually strumming on the strings with no real purpose. Lisk felt a lurch in his gut when Spades broke out in song. Rob couldn't sing or play, but this guy could more than carry a tune. The beat stayed fairly steady and heavy, making the Argonian play with both hands as he floated high above.

"I've been so long in waiting, putting my life on hold for this chance to live out my dream."

"Haah!!"

Lisk deftly jumped aside as Ace, fully regenerated from his injuries, came rushing at him. His arms were encased in armored guantlets and he wore silver greaves to protect his legs. He weilded two Redstreak cutlasses with much more skill than him. The echidna lunged forward again and the chase was on.

"You think you know what I should do with the choices I now have..."

Ace and Lisk burst through walls into buildings, smashing through floors and offices in their mad dash. Lisk clawed his way easily through the bricks and tables as he tried to escape. The lizard ducked into an elevator shaft and waited for his noisy pursuer to come after him. The echidna continued raging for a moment before he seemed to quiet down and then vanish. Lisk looked into the office and saw nothing. His confusion didn't last long when he heard Ace snap the elevator's cables, sending the car and the counterweight plummeting toward him.

Lisk dove out of the shaft just in the nick of time. Ace was right on his heels, cutting millimeters off of his tail.

"Make them better than you!"

Lisk scrabbled and galloped on all fours, trying to get away from the bloodthristy echidna on his tail. The two of them got into a long hallway when the lizard heard Ace stop coming again. He looked back and saw that he had sheathed the Redstreak blades and was pointing a glowing finger in his prey's direction. Outside the building, Spades smiled when purple death beams started to come shooting out of the office building Ace had herded Lisk into.

"What if I don't wanna hear the things you say? Where were you when I was needy yesterday? You want in with me now that it's good? But it's too little, too late!!"

Quite a few of the beams caught Lisk right in the chest, Miraculaously, they didn't just punch through like bullets, simply rocketing him along through the walls behind him into the night air. The lizard creature spun end over end until he fell to the ground below. He dug himself out of the rubble he'd landed in just in time to see Ace touch down.

"Time and again I've asked you, just for some light to show the way. I was in doomed darkness."

Lisk unsheathed his claws and grew them to be longer than his forearms. Ace blocked the first swipe and hopped backward with his heels skidding on the concrete. Lisk jumped up above him and pouned on top of the echidna. Ace smirked and jumped right up at him. He leaned his body backward while his legs swept upward in a crescent. Lisk was caught right under his jaw and began to sail backwards end over end. Ace appeared right beneath him when he fell.

"You act like I owe you something, but I don't owe anything to anyone but me! Have you no dignity?"

Ace gripped Lisk up by his throat as he fell down. The lizard-thing struggled for a moment before he felt the echidna's iron grip tighten around his throat. The world became darker and pressure began to crush Lisk from all angles. Ace laughed maniacllay as he absorbed strength from the ring again and then just let it explode. Ace's aura blazed into existence around his body, pushing away all of the debris around him and kicking up a vortex of dust and trash. Lisk was caught in the middle of the storm that Ace produced with his inner strength alone. The red-furred fighter held him tight while his power surged, crushing him without even trying.

"What if I don't wanna hear the things you say? Where were you when I was needy yesterday? You want in with me now that it's good? Where were you yesterday?

"What if I don't wanna hear the things you say? Where were you when I was needy yesterday? You want in with me now that it's good? But it's too little, too late!!"

Ace let his aura die away within a few moments and then looked up. Lisk's neck popped when the echidna ran off with his hand still around his throat. Ace dragged his victim along as he ran in a straight line as fast as his legs would take him. He smashed his way through the deserted downtown stores and apartment complexes toward the towering pillar of stone and Khaydarin crystals. He got to the base and began to run up the huge structure with no regard to gravity at all.

"You're too late!"

Ace finally arrived at the top with his bloodied little prize in tow. Without warning, he pulled back and tossed Lisk forward, right toward the ground. The lizard creature tried to hold onto Ace, but his claws couldn't even get a grip on him, let alone cut into his flesh.

"I know exactly what I'll do with the advice you gave. Watch me throw it all away!"

Spades continued the song, playing away on his ax. He saw the glint of red that was falling toward him and started to grip his instrument tighter. When Lisk was just a few feet away, Spades spun around and smacked his former ally in the face with the broad side of his weapon.

"What if I don't wanna hear the things you say? Where were you when I was needy yesterday? You want in with me now that it's good? Where were you yesterday?

"What if I don't wanna hear the things you say? Where were you when I was needy..."

Lisk, knocked totally senseless, arched up into the air like a fly ball at a baseball game and began to fall back down. Spades stood right where he knew the little scaly idiot would land. He thought back to all of the things he could remember about Lisk from before he was expunged from the real Spades and spat on the ground. He took his ax in hand by the neck and held it like a baseball bat.

'I never liked you anyway.'

"Yesterday!"

Spades slammed him with the Ax so hard that the world around him quaked from the strike. Lisk drifted away from the hit slowly this time. Stings of immaterial light began to pull at Lisk from all sides at once. Within moments he was being pulled apart on every level. His skin, bones, and muscles all began to fade out until there was nothing left but one twisting line of red light in the air where he had been. The line was cut and frayed before inverting in upon itself.

"You want in with me now that it's good... but it's too little, too late. But it's too little, too late. But it's too little, too late."


The madness was over. Lisk had been sent back to his own world, now knowing that this part of Spades was content to be where he was as he was. Liew had somehow overcome the Dark Force and saved the universe. A pretty big accomplishment for some digidestined kid. Everything was as it should be. The SPA had even been credited with the destruction of the zerg that had been infesting the downtown sewer systems. So they had been given beer money for it. Beer money that was long gone now that everyone was plastered.

Everyone but Ace.

There was an itch he hadn't scratched yet. It was a feeling that he couldn't get rid of. He knew that there was only one way to stop it and satisfy himself. There was one more song to sing. One more performance before he'd be finished.

Ace got up from his stool and walked up to the stage with the stripper poles. He summoned Spades from within the ring and handed him his Redstreak ax. Spades shrugged his shoulders. Ace walked over and whispered something in his ear.

"That song?"

"Yeah, man. That song."

Ace materialized a microphone for himself and Spades began to strum on his guitar. It was an even, folksy little tune. An odd choice for someone whose songs were normally so hard and fast. When the beat had gone on for a while, Ace sighed and began to speak into the mic.

"Folks, I'd like to sing a song about the American Dream," Ace said. "About me. About you. About the way our American hearts beat way down in the bottom of our chests... if you're not an alien... or you have a heart..." He waved away his digressions and continued. "About that special feeling we get down in the cockles of our hearts. Maybe below the cockles... maybe in the sub-cockle area. Maybe in the liver. Maybe in the kidneys. Or maybe even in the colon... we don't know."

With this admission of idiocy, Ace began to sing. "I'm just a regular Joe, with a regular job. I'm your average red suburbanite slob."

Behind him, phantom images began to appear on the wall as he sung. "I like football." Goku being crushed beneath legions of football players. "And porno." Bulma and Vegeta drunk off their behinds and passed out on top of the bar(halfway clothed, folks. I'm goin' for embarrassment, not full perversion). "And books about war." Ace in a leather chair reading a Halo novel.

"I got an average house with a nice hardwood floor." A wooden shack with roaches and a collapsing roof. "My wife, an' my job, my kids and my car." Every single picture belongs to Vegeta, only Ace's head is taped over the saiyan's. "My feet on my table and a cuban cigar."

"But sometimes that just ain't enough to keep a man like me interested!"

"Oh, no..." Spades sang.

"No way!!"

Spades shook his head. "Uh-uh!!"

"No, I've gotta go out and have fun at someone else's expense. Oh, yeah! Yeah, yeah!! Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, MAN!!!"

"I drive really slow, in the ultra-fast lane." Ace on the expressway during rush hour in a superwide mechhauler truck(Front Mission style trucks), doing 15 MPH. "While people behind me are going insane!"

"I'm an ******* ee-oh-lee-oh-lee-ho! I'm an *******!!"

"He's the world's biggest *******!!" Spades chimed in. "He's an *******! Such an *******!!"

"I use public toilets and I whiz on the seats." Ace walking out of the SPA's bathroom while Chibi-Trunks weeps on his knees. "I walk around in the summertime saying,' How about this heat?'" Ace walking around a desert. He looks up at a dying man nailed to a cross in the desert sun while drinking a canteen of water(which he's spilling into the sand) and asks the question.

"I'm an ******* ee-oh-lee-oh-lee-ho! I'm an *******!!"

"He's an *******!" Spades sang along with a painful grimace on his face. "He's the world's biggest *******!"

"Sometimes I park in Handicap spaces, while Handicapped people make Handicapped faces!" Ace pulls into a handicap space and walks away. The timelapse begins with dozens of handicapped people in cars having to park halfway across the lot. At last, Ace comes out of the hospital, seemingly threatening someone. He looks at the three people in crutches and with other medical problems and then laughs as he gets in his car and drives away.

"I'm an ******* ee-oh-lee-oh-lee-ho! I'm an *******!!"

Spades blanches at this heinous act. "He's a real ****ing *******!!"

Ace suddenly falls to his knees on the stage with a sorrowful look in his eyes. "Maybe I shouldn't be singing this song, rantin' and ravin' an' carrying on. Maybe they're right when they tell me I'm wrong."

Ace contemplates this deeply. Perhaps he's ready to changes his ways.

He thinks deeply about it all... for three seconds.

"NAH!!!"

He whips out a magnum and shoots Goku between the eyes. "I'm an ******* ee-oh-lee-oh-lee-ho! I'm an *******!!"

"He's the world's biggest *******!" Frieza sings drunkenly.

"You know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado Convertable. Hot Pink, MAN!!!" Ace in his new car, speeding along the road recklessly. "With whaleskin hubcaps, and all leather cow interior with big brown baby seal eyes for headlights, yeah!!" Ace is shown slaughtering each of the afformentioned creatures with his bare hands. "And I'm gonna drive around in that baby at 115 MPH, gettin' one miles per gallon, suckin' down Quarter Pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers. And when I'm done suckin' down those greaseball burgers, I'm gonna wipe my mouth with the American flag. And then I'm gonna toss those styrofoam containers right out the side, MAN!!!" Ace speeding along eating the burgers before tossing the trash out of the passenger side along with a dead body of a McDonalds employee. (I told him," No mayo." What is so hard to understand?)

"And there ain't a goddamn thing anyone can do about, MAN!!! You know why? Because we got the bombs, that's why!! Two words: Nuclear. ****ing. Weapons. Okay?!" As he says this, a line of light warps through the air toward Magnus. A moment later, the air around him explodes into a nuclear conflagration of fire and shockwaves. The mushroom cloud billows away and Magnus falls over onto his side.

"That's three, ya *******," Vegeta yells.

Ace ignores him and continues to rant. "Russia, Germany, Romania... they can have all the democracy they want. They can have a big democracy cakewalk right through the middle of Tieneman Square, and it won't make a lick of difference--" Magnus is walking through Tieneman Square in his irradiated nightmare and looks up to see what is going on with all of the planes that are flying overhead. "--because we still have the bombs, MAN!!!" The bottom of each of the stealth bombers open and drop a nuke. Magnus' pupils get very small as the world is engulfed in nuclear explosions.

"John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen. And as soon as we find the cure for cancer, we're gonna thaw out the duke and he's gonna be pretty pissed off. You know why?"

Spades looks out at the audience while he plays on his ax and shrugs. It has become official that Ace has lost his freakin' mind.

"Have you ever taken a cold shower. Well multiply that by fifteen million times. That's how pissed off the Duke's gonna be. I'm gonna get the Duke and--"

"He just keeps going," Frieza remarks.

Vegeta starts to bang his head on the table.

Magnus... just continues to smolder, screaming," You blew it up! You *******! You blew it up! Damn you!! Damn you to hell!!"

"Hey!"

Ace ignores him and keeps ranting.

"Hey! Hey!! Hey!!!"

Ace stops and looks down at Nemo who had been sleeping until Ace shot Goku in the head. "You know, you really are an *******."

Ace's eyes twitched. He clicked off the safety for his magnum and pointed it at Nemo's head. "Just shut up and sing the song, pal."

"I'm an ******* ee-oh-lee-oh-lee-ho! I'm an *******!!"

"He's an *******!!" sang most of the patrons in the bar right along with Spades. "What an *******!! He's the world's biggest *******!!"

"Come on, sing it! A! Es! Es! H! Oh! El! Ee!"

"Everybody!! A! Es! Es! H! Oh! El! Ee!"

The bar wound down slowly as the beat began to get quieter. Ace grabbed an Ace Drink from the counter near the stage.

"Oooohhh...Oooohhh!" Everyone sang.

"I'm an *******," Ace smiled. "And I'm proud of it."

With that done, Ace took a swig of his intoxicating brew and promptly fell onto his back. He didn't come back from Happydale Heights for a week.