The twins spun faster, faster, their candyfloss bodies unraveling into a cyclone of pink and blue.
“Double Twirl!” they shrieked.
The storm collapsed inward. A glob of molten gum burst from their tiny paws, expanding midair into a wobbling, sticky sphere. It engulfed Celeste before she could leap aside.
She slammed her katanas against the inside, but the blades stuck uselessly in the tacky surface. The gum stretched, then snapped back, swallowing her wrists whole. Her arms locked to her sides, her legs pinned tight.
“Celeste!” Ray cried, pounding on the bubble. Her fists only bounced, the gum vibrating but refusing to tear. Mezzo and Pitch slashed and blasted at it to no avail.
Outside, her friends’ frantic voices blurred, muffled through the pink membrane.
Inside, silence.
Two sets of glowing button-eyes peered in. The twins pressed their faces against the gum, features warped through the sticky film.
“Well, well, if it isn’t… Astallan, you’re late,” they cooed together.
Celeste froze. Her breath caught in her throat.
Sour Puff’s voice was low, heavy with sorrow, like Sadness given teeth. “Why did you betray us, Kenaz?”
Sweet Fluff’s tone was bright, cheerful, cruel — Joy dipped in sugar acid. “Irrelevant, isn’t it? He was there, comrade. He must have known. Why did they change, and he didn’t? It’s not fair.”
Celeste shook her head violently. “I’m not Kenaz! I’m Celeste!”
Sour Puff pressed her paws to the gum, the surface stretching inward with the weight. “Unfair. We hate unfair things.”
Celeste’s eyes burned, breath quickening. “This isn’t fair to me. I’m in the wrong place—”
Sweet Fluff cut her off with a singsong lilt. “At the right time.” Her grin spread unnaturally wide. “Convenient, isn’t it?”
The bubble tightened around Celeste’s chest. Her ribs ached. Outside, Ray slammed Heartbreaker uselessly against the gum wall, screaming her name.
Inside, Celeste could only stare back at the twin-eyed dolls — and feel their voices clawing into her heart.
Celeste struggled against the sticky press, her lungs burning, every breath a shallow gasp. Her voice cracked through the gum, muffled but desperate.
“I just… I just want to go home. I have nothing to do with this!”
The twins pressed closer, their faces warped against the wobbling bubble.
“Don’t you?” Sweet Fluff hissed, smile twisting. “You wear his face. You stood before Hue and Yorath.”
Celeste froze, ribbons slackening in her paws. “Wait… what were your names?”
For the first time, the twins faltered.
Their button eyes flickered. They looked at one another — like children trying to remember a dream they had been forced to forget.
The pink one whispered, voice breaking, “Sirin. I was… Sirin.”
The blue one choked, trembling, “And I was… Saren. Recon unit. Our information saved lives… until…”
They both lifted their tiny paws. Candyfloss threads frayed from their fingers, unraveling like wounds.
“…until we looked down. And saw… not flesh, but this.”
Their forms shook violently, faces cracking between candyfloss and the faintest memory of real fur.
Celeste’s throat ached, but she pressed against the gum, eyes shining with tears. “I’m sorry this happened to you. Can we fix it?”
The sweetness in their voices curdled.
Saren’s face twisted, button eyes glowing hot. “Kenaz. We thought he would save us. But he left us. He left us to her mercy.”
Celeste’s heart thudded. “Who?”
Their voices broke, rising into a jagged shriek. “We changed! We didn’t want this—didn’t want this!”
The gum around her throat constricted, choking her breath, syrup burning against her fur.
Outside, Ray slammed Heartbreaker into the bubble again and again, teeth bared. “LET HER GO!”
With a roar, she drove her weapon down. Heartbreaker shattered the sticky wall in a spray of shards and syrup.
The gum snapped apart. Mezzo darted in, arms bulging with strength, tearing the sticky cords binding Celeste. She stumbled free, gasping air, coughing hard as Ray braced her.
The twins shrieked, their forms twisting and unraveling into loose strands of candyfloss that floated into the air like smoke, voices fading to nothing.
Celeste clutched Ray’s shoulder, eyes wide and trembling. “They… they had names.”
Sirin.
Saren.
The last strands of candyfloss didn’t vanish.
They drifted back together, pink twining with blue, knotting into child-sized shapes once more. Their button eyes flickered weakly, but their tiny paws found each other and clasped tight.
Sweet Fluff whispered, almost tender, “Sister… as long as you are with me, we can endure anything.”
Sour Puff nodded, her voice cracked with sorrow but firm. “Always. Now… let’s make Kenaz play fair.”
They turned their glowing gazes back to Celeste, strands of floss spiraling from their arms like chains being readied.
Ray yanked Heartbreaker free of gum still clinging to it, snorting. “This again? I swear, I’ve got questions for your dad if I ever meet him.”
Celeste blinked, caught between exhaustion and disbelief. “…Do I?”
Ray smirked, twirling Heartbreaker. “Oh yeah. Whole interview lined up. First question: why’s your family drama always trying to kill us?”
The gum-sweet air quivered as the twins giggled, their laughter echoing in the corridor like a cracked nursery rhyme.
The corridor twisted into a wide arena, floorboards melting into striped peppermint tiles. The air thickened with sugar, and at the centre the twins clasped paws, their eyes burning brighter than before.
“Ribbon Wrap!”
Threads of spun sugar shot out like living tentacles, coiling around the team. One wrapped Mezzo’s wrist, another snagged Lumina’s ankle, a third lanced straight toward Celeste’s throat.
Mezzo snarled.
His missing rune burned like a phantom at the back of his neck.
Feathers burst across his shoulders. Gryphon wings snapped half-open, too large and too sudden, knocking a chair aside. His red mane flared with fire, his talons flexing down his hands, but the power shuddered through him unevenly. Too much mana. Too fast. His whole body jerked as if it didn’t yet know what shape to hold.
He roared, flames rippling down the candy ribbon. It shriveled and snapped apart with a hiss, freeing his arm.
“Not this time, fluffballs!” he growled, slamming Infernal Riff into the ground. The shockwave of heat seared the floor, cutting a path for the others.
But the moment the blast faded, Mezzo staggered.
His wings flared wide, then spasmed. Fire crawled along his shoulders in uneven bursts. He clutched at his chest, teeth gritted, breath tearing out of him in ragged little sounds.
Pitch spotted something glittering near the edge of the arena.
A tiny rune plate.
Mezzo’s suppression rune.
It had been flung there when the twins tore it loose, half-buried in floss and syrup.
Pitch’s eyes sharpened. “Rune! There!”
Hughes followed his gaze, then lifted Everstill at once. “Grab it!”
The crook chimed.
Time slowed.
The whipping candyfloss strands crawled through the air. Sugar shards hung suspended. The twins’ laughter stretched into a warped, dragging note.
Pitch lunged through the slowed battlefield, one hand outstretched toward the rune.
But Mezzo twisted toward him, eyes wide with pain and fear.
“No!” he gasped.
Pitch froze halfway.
Mezzo’s claws scraped the floor. “A little longer. Please. I can help like this.”
“Mezzo, that mana could rip you apart,” Hughes warned, voice strained as he held the time-field steady.
Mezzo shook his head hard, mane blazing. “I know. But I can feel it now. I can fight. Just… don’t put me back yet.”
Pitch looked from the rune to Mezzo.
For once, he didn’t joke.
He lowered his hand.
Hughes’s jaw tightened, but he nodded once. “Then stay close. If you start to rupture, I am not asking permission.”
Mezzo gave a broken, breathless laugh. “Fair.”
Time snapped back.
The twins spun in perfect unison, their floss-bodies twirling into mirrored spirals. Sugar-whips lashed from their arms, snapping across the arena like glass-coated chains. Celeste ducked one, ribbons sparking as she carved another away — but the cords kept coming, sticky and relentless.
Mezzo dropped beside her, his axe runes glowing molten red, feathers bristling along his shoulders. He grinned, feral and furious, even as his hands trembled.
“Alright, kitten — time to make ’em hear us.”
Celeste met his eyes, sweat streaking her fur. She nodded. “Together.”
He flipped Infernal Riff upright like a guitar, claws scraping the runes. Sparks flew as a raw, fiery riff blasted through the air — music that vibrated in Celeste’s bones.
“Fretboard Fury!” they roared in unison.
Celeste surged forward, her katanas flashing in rhythm with Mezzo’s chords. One slash, two, three — each strike falling harder, faster, as if her blades themselves were strings in his song.
The twins staggered under the onslaught, their sugar threads unraveling in sprays of molten floss. They shrieked, whips flailing wildly, but Mezzo only played louder. Flames licked his mane, gryphon feathers twitching into view, his body still unstable but no longer folding under the pressure.
The tempo climbed. Celeste became a blur of ribbons and steel, every slash ringing like a chord struck in fire. The arena itself seemed to pulse with their duet.
Finally Mezzo roared — part battle cry, part rock wail — and slammed his axe into the floor like the final note of a song. Celeste spun with the impact, her katanas crossing in a searing scissor-slash that cut across both twins at once.
Sweet Fluff crumpled, pink threads spilling as she clutched her chest. Sour Puff caught her, howling with rage.
“Sister—!”
Celeste lowered her blades, panting hard. Mezzo swung his axe back over his shoulder, smoke curling from its edge.
“Now that’s how you break an encore.”
Celeste’s ribbons dimmed, but her lips curled into a tired grin. “And you kept the rhythm. I just followed the beat.”
The twins’ forms flickered, unraveling — and that was the moment Sour Puff screamed and clutched Sweet Fluff close.
“If you fall, I fall. Always!”
The twins screamed in unison, their floss bodies twirling into a blur.
“Floss Storm!”
They spun faster, faster, until the whole arena was filled with sticky threads. The air itself seemed to glue to fur and clothes. Ray cursed, Heartbreaker dragging as the threads weighed it down. Celeste’s boots stuck fast to the floor. Even Skye’s cards fluttered sluggishly, dragged down by floss.
Carys, still near the edge of the fight with Bonbon tucked close beside her, looked up through the spiralling haze.
Above the arena, half-hidden between painted planets and brass rigging, ran the sprinkler system.
Water.
Her eyes snapped toward the maintenance wall.
The water main panel.
“Bonbon,” she said, grabbing the little panda’s paw, “come on.”
Bonbon stumbled after her. “Dŵr?”
“Yes. Lots of it, if that rusted nightmare still works.”
They ducked under a whipping floss strand and sprinted for the maintenance alcove. Behind them, Sweet Fluff noticed and snapped one long arm toward them.
“Oh no, no, no, where do you go?”
Sour Puff’s hair lashed after them. “Water spoils the pretty show!”
Hughes planted Everstill into the floor again.
“No, no,” he said, voice low and firm as time slowed around the twins’ reaching limbs. “We played your games. Now you play ours.”
The candyfloss arms dragged through slowed air, missing Carys and Bonbon by inches.
Carys slammed into the maintenance panel and wrenched it open.
Inside was a corroded wheel valve.
She grabbed it with both hands and twisted.
Nothing.
“Of course,” she snapped. “Of course the one sensible idea in the room is rusted shut.”
Bonbon pushed in beside her, little face set with fierce concentration.
“Fi’n helpu.”
Carys glanced down. “Unless you have a wrench in that adorable little sleeve, darling, I don’t think—”
Bonbon lifted both paws.
Light gathered between them.
Soft at first.
Then bright.
A tiny rainbow wand appeared in her grip, painted in pastel colours, tipped with a little lollipop and trailing ribbons of soft mana light.
Twizzleburst.
Carys stared.
Bonbon pointed it at the stuck valve.
“Tân,” she whispered.
A tiny flame spell burst from the wand.
Not large.
Not wild.
Just a neat little lick of rainbow-edged fire that kissed the rusted valve.
The metal hissed.
Sugar-crust melted.
The wheel loosened.
Carys’s mouth fell open.
Then she grabbed the valve again and spun it with all her strength.
This time, it turned.
Once.
Twice.
Then faster.
Pipes groaned overhead.
The sprinkler heads rattled.
The first burst of water coughed out in a rusty spray.
Then the system roared awake.
Water hammered down across the arena.
The effect was instant.
The candyfloss storm sagged.
Sticky strands collapsed under the downpour, melting into limp, sugary ropes. Fluff and Puff shrieked as water struck their spun-candy bodies, steam and syrup hissing from their limbs.
Sweet Fluff clawed at her melting pigtails. “No fair!”
Sour Puff wailed, blue floss drooping heavily around her face. “Wet! Wet! Horrid wet!”
Carys grabbed Bonbon and pulled her back from the hissing pipes.
“Excellent work,” she breathed.
Bonbon held up the rainbow wand proudly. “Hud.”
“Yes,” Carys said faintly. “Very much hud.”
