"W-what just happened?" Jeff stammered nervously. "What's going on? Ness? Moondancer? I...I can't see you-"
A spot of faint light appeared at the tip of Moondancer's horn, giving just enough light to let Jeff's eyes adapt to the darkness in the department store. "Don't get used to it," she whispered softly. "We can't go in further with this, it'll just draw attention...not to mention it leaves me light blind when it's this close to my eyes. I'll need to extinguish it if we're going to fight...and I can feel madness waves filling the store. There are going to be monsters to fight."
"R-right," Jeff managed to stammer out as he straightened his glasses. He squinted for a time, then nodded. "Okay." With that, Moondancer extinguished her light. "Ness, how are you doing? And is Paula okay?"
"...Paula..." Ness' voice sounded off, as though it were coming from a long way off. He swayed slightly where he was. "Where...where is Paula? Have to...help Paula..."
"The PA said to go to the top floor," Buzz Buzz pointed out. "We should start there-"
Ness staggered off towards the escalator, a heart charm - the only one still in one piece with the breaking of the bracelet - clutched in his hand. As he stumbled up to the escalator, metal twisted and warped without warning as the stairs ceased to move, letting him slowly walk up the down escalator.
"W...what just happened?" Jeff demanded worriedly.
"...something bad..." Moondancer whispered worriedly. "We need to keep up with him."
Nodding, Jeff scooped Moondancer into his robo-pack, racing after Ness to keep up. As they reached the second floor, an animate vinyl record and electric guitar closed on Ness...and there was a flash of red. The record shattered, and the guitar's own strings strangled it before snapping the neck, rendering it so much scrap wood, metal, and circuits.
"How?" Buzz Buzz gasped out in shock. "That...what was that-"
"Madness," Moondancer whispered softly. "I've seen it before! Ness!" She leapt from Jeff's shoulder, rushing up to Ness. "Ness, you need to stop! You're going to lose yourself to-"
Before she could get to Ness, a swirl of red in the air around him lashed out, smacking her into Jeff's arms. "Paullla..." he spoke up, his voice oscillating strangely as he staggered away, heading for the escalator to the third floor...which also warped and stopped at his approach.
"You've seen this before?" Jeff asked in shock.
"Yes, but it shouldn't be manifesting at this level!" Moondancer insisted. "Even if Ness is starting to walk this road, his PSI isn't strong enough to generate this on its own-" Her eyes widened as realization struck her. "I've felt this before!"
"What?" Buzz Buzz demanded. "What have you felt?"
"This sensation of pressure in the air, as though power equal to the fullness of time were focused on a single moment...this is what it felt like when Ness was prevented from forgiving Pokey back in Happy Happy Village!" Moondancer tried to focus her PSI...and found the air filled with Nightmare Force. "Something's taking the energies of the Nightmare Engine, amplified by Giygas' Madness Waves, and flooding the area with it specifically to channel it into Ness!"
"But why?" Jeff demanded as they followed Ness to the third floor.
The PA suddenly toned. "Ness, Customer Ness..." the voice repeated. "Please hurry to Paula..." A very inhuman roar followed...mingled with a very human scream of fear.
"PAaula...pauLA!!" Ness's words oscillated from normal speech to barest whisper...to anguished scream.
"Because this is the PSI energy that turned my father into Giygas," Moondancer explained softly. "And what nearly led me down the same path. The Chosen Four are what the prophecy speaks of...but Ness is the Chosen of Earth, the one who draws power from the Sanctuaries. If...if he walks the path of the Destroyer..."
"But how?" Jeff demanded. "How is this possible?"
"It's obviously his distraught state from Paula being snatched," Buzz Buzz pointed out as they reached the fourth floor. "But the question is what's bringing so much of Giygas' power here? What's focusing it?"
"It'd take a carefully tweaked PSI Amplifier to do this," Moondancer pointed out thoughtfully as she struggled to keep her own emotions in check and not be consumed by the waves as well. "It's obviously something Greyface made, and designed specifically to target Ness...which means it would have been placed in Onett originally and somehow made its way here-"
"The Mani Mani Statue!" Buzz Buzz gasped out. "Everdread said Liar X. Aggerate sold it to Mr. Carpainter in Happy Happy Village, and he was trying to track it down! It must have wound up here somehow, and someone's using it to gain or keep power in this city...but now it's been activated to target Ness since his mind is in a receptive state!"
"So how do we snap him out of it?" Jeff demanded worriedly.
As Ness approached the office door at the back of the fourth floor, the PA sounded again. "Ness, Customer Ness..." The inhuman cry sounded again, this time sounding almost like maniacal laughter...but mixed with static.
"I don't know if we can," Buzz Buzz offered worriedly. "Ness managed to snap Moondancer out of this once by clinging tight to her...but we can't even get close to him. We'd need someone strong enough to push all this energy back to reach him..."
The door to the office twisted off its hinges as Ness staggered through.
"Then we need to make sure it isn't Ness who deals with whatever's behind that door," Moondancer stated firmly. "Because if he kills like this - and in this state, he will kill - then there's no going back for him..." She led the charge through the door.
The office was small, with a window staring out over the city. An alien figure Moondancer and Buzz Buzz immediately recognized as a Mook sat behind the desk...but he didn't look like any normal Mook they'd ever seen. Parts of its skin was pale pink...and other parts were glistening metal. Sparks danced between its eye stalks, and the flesh near the metal parts bulked up oddly before subsiding with each movement.
It looks like the Ultra Saturn, Moondancer thought to herself, afraid to broadcast the thought.
The Chimera project, Buzz Buzz sent her, remembering a device that they had found on Mars and the reports surrounding it...and the temptation Alinivar had resisted.
The Chimera Mook smirked at Ness as he swayed before the desk. "Oh...too little too late," it taunted with a cackle. "Paula's not here anymore. She called for you so prettily, I just had to plumb the depths of her screams." Its half-metal tendrils waved menacingly. "But don't worry...she left something for you..." A flash of thin white fabric briefly appeared between the tendrils.
Ness, Jeff, and Moondancer stared at the Chimera Mook, Ness in blind lack of recognition, Jeff and Moondancer in confused lack of recognition. "Is...is that supposed to mean something?" Jeff asked finally. "You say that like it's supposed to make us...especially angry for some reason."
The Chimera Mook's eyes went flat. "Seriously?" it asked, its voice losing a bit of menace. "Nubile young girl captured by an alien beast with tentacles?" It waved its limbs in frustration. "What, do I need to have 'Made in Japan' stamped on my chrome for you to catch the implication?"
"They're 12," Buzz Buzz pointed out flatly.
The Chimera Mook blinked. "...wow, I really need to check the facts of my audience when I plan these things out-"
The desk suddenly warped and distorted, turning into a tree that wept blood and breathed fire before bursting into fragments as Ness staggered through it. "You...Paula you...took you...Paula..."
The Chimera Mook grinned. "Or maybe I didn't need to go to the effort. It seems-"
"Ness Subo Famico!" an intense, authoritative female voice suddenly snapped out. "Just what do you think you're doing?"
Ness, Jeff, Moondancer, Buzz Buzz, and the Chimera Mook all turned to the door, where Ness' mother stood with her hands on her hips, glaring down at Ness.
"M...Mom...?" Ness stammered out, the red swirling around him fading somewhat. "W...what...?"
Ness' mother stomped right up to him, idly brushing the red swirls that remained out of her way with her bare hands. "How many times have I told you to watch your anger? You know how it affects your abilities! It has since you were four!"
"But...but he took-"
"No buts!" she snapped out. "Now take a deep breath, calm down, a-"
"Hey!" the Chimera Mook snapped out. "I was in the mid-"
"Excuse me!" Ness' mother snapped as she rounded on him. "But I was having a serious conversation with my son, and you can wait!"
"Yes Ma'am!" the Mook responded automatically, only to blink as he realized what he'd just said.
"Now Ness, calmly tell me what's going on," Ness' mother stated firmly.
As the red swirls faded, Ness' knees shook as tears poured from his eyes. "He...he took Paula!" he wailed as tears poured down his cheeks. "And, and...and he hurt her...he said, and-"
His mother quickly pulled him into a comforting embrace. "There, there," she whispered softly. "Hush now, sweetie. It's going to be okay. The bad alien didn't actually hurt Paula, believe me. I know the shape of a mind that would even consider doing such things to someone her age quite well, and if I'd felt it from him I'd have tracked him down fifteen minutes before the power outage, ripped off his tentacles, braided them together, and used the resulting rope to give him an all-the-way-through colonoscopy to scrub out his entire digestive tract-"
"I say!" the Chimera Mook objected strenuously. "That's quite enough-"
"And I still will if he doesn't keep his mouth shut while I'm comforting my emotionally fragile son in his moment of despair!" Ness' Mom snapped out, her eyes flashing as she glowered at the beast.
"Shutting up now," the Chimera Mook whimpered as it ducked behind its tentacles.
Ness' mother held him for a time, then pushed him back. "Now chin up," she told him softly. "Yes, Paula needs rescuing...but in the meantime I promise you, she is fine. You'd feel it if something really bad happened to her, same way you could sense her nearness when you were going to rescue her the first time."
"How did you-"
"Upupup!" she chided, putting a finger to his lips. "No questions now, just a promise. Don't let your anger control you anymore. You are a kind, gentle, considerate, compassionate boy...and you need to stay that way, okay?" Ness nodded slowly. "Good. Now, I'm going to go finish my shopping, and find someplace where we can sit down and enjoy a special treat I brought you from Summers. In the meantime, you thrash this idiot for Paula, okay?"
"I have had enough!" the Chimera Mook snapped out. "I don't know how you broke Giygas' power here, and I don't know how you're even here to begin with, but I will not be made a mockery of-"
The Chimera Mook suddenly found itself slammed against the opposite wall by an intense blast of cold that sapped its strength, and then Ness' Mother was in his face. "And you're lucky I spotted that silk was just a handkerchief," she growled out so only he heard, "because if I thought for a moment you'd done something like that to someone my son's age, or if I find out you try to, I will rip your eyes from their stalks and use them to sodomize you all the way to Gomorrah!"
The Mook blinked in confusion. "I...I don't understand that reference..."
"You would soon enough," she growled out fiercely, her eyes glowing with inner light as for one brief moment, the beast felt the full force of her mind.
"A...A...Ana..."
She smiled grimly. "I wondered if I would be recognized..." She turned to Ness and the others with a smile. "There's a bar near the edge of town by the path to Dusty Dunes Desert. I'll meet you all outside there, okay?" With a smile, she turned and left.
The Mook growled as it struggled to rise. "If you think...that stupid Monotoli is going to steal my thunder-"
Moondancer's PSI blazed. A blast of Thunder PSI ripped through the Chimera Mook. Already drastically weakened by Ana's Freeze, it burst apart as its circuitry overloaded, tearing apart its flesh. She stared in shock, not having expected that to happen.
"Well...that's a clue," Jeff managed to say, desperately trying to hold down his lunch.