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// Chapter 28 - And Now For Something Completely Different 
// Story: The End of Time 
// by Leondude 
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Sunset woke up and struggled to get up off of the floor. Her head ached like she had too much cider to drink. She observed her surroundings, trying to figure out where she was and how she got there. She was on a row of grey tiles, with a few futuristic benches and bushes on each side of the pathway of tiles. She must be in some sort of park or maybe even a garden. She looked to her left and noticed a woman staring at her. The woman had brown hair tied up in a ponytail, blue eyes, and was wearing body armour and holding a gun.

"Oh good, you're avake," the woman said in a German accent, her voice a mix of a male voice and a female voice overlapping. The woman crouched down and held her hand out to Sunset.

"My name is Otto von Fuhrer but you can call me 'Dr Mindnick'. After all, zat's vat my teammates call me."

Sunset looked at Dr Mindnick with a mix of fear and confusion. Begrudgingly, and steadily, she held out her arm and grabbed onto Dr Mindnick's hand. Dr Mindnick quickly helpt Sunset up.

"Oh, one thing I forgot to mention," Dr Mindnick said "Zis isn't my original body. I couldn't afford gender reassignment surgery so I practised some magic zat can make me possess people. But don't worry, Milly's cool vith me using her as a timeshare. Ain't zat right?"

Dr Mindnick closed her eyes. When she opened her up, she looked around in confusion. Perhaps it wasn't Mindnick in control this time but instead his host.

"Dr Mindnick?" Sunset asked.

The woman looked towards Sunset.

"Oh, you must be a new friend of Otto's," the woman said before holding out her hand "Emilia Connor, codenamed 'Dragon Lady' because of my fondness for dragons. Weird how you go from searching for real-life dragons one minute and being forced to share a body with a batshit insane occultist the next. Good thing Otto's nice, though."

"Well, I once turned into a raging she-demon that enslaved the school so someone becoming friends with their possessor doesn't sound that far-fetched," Sunset deadpanned.

"Oh, I heard of that incident!" Emilia said excitedly, "They really ought to shut that school down."

"I'm very certain that a few magical misadventures happened outside of school grounds," Sunset said.

Emilia's eyes rolled into the back of her head and then rolled down.

"Did somebody say magic? Mein ears are burning!" Dr Mindnick said excitedly "Vell, zey're not my ears but you get ze idea."

"Mindnick!" a British voice called out in the distance "Get your arse over 'ere! And bring the citizen with you!"

"Coming, Mein Fuhrer!"

Mindnick grabbed Sunset by the arm and ran with her near a vending machine that the British man was apparently hiding behind. They hid behind the vending machine with a man with long dark brown hair and a beard to match. Like Mindnick/Emilia, the man was also wearing body armour. Sunset assumed this was the British man speaking to Mindnick.

"My name is Merlin Andrews," the man said "Codename: The Brit. Short and unoriginal but bad-arse nonetheless."

Merlin then pointed to a group of individuals clad in heavy armour. The group were all holding guns and they wore bizarre helmets on their heads.

"Those lot are ADVENT," Merlin explained to Sunset "They're people that have sided with the aliens and willingly enforced their rule over this planet."

"Aliens? As in grey, big-headed aliens?" Sunset asked.

"Well, some of them are," Merlin replied, "The ones you described are called sectoids. While they are the backbone of the alien army, they have powerful psionic abilities that can dominate even the strongest of minds."

"Ja," Mindnick butted in, "Und ze new ones are big, scary, und pink!"

"Yeah, ADVENT had produced a new breed of the bastards that have stronger psionic abilities than the old ones," Merlin said, "So much so that they did away with having commanders for the different groups of them."

Sunset was confused by what Merlin had said, as well as the various events that have transpired when she woke up. How did she get here? What are aliens invaders doing on Earth? Why is there a woman sharing a body with a deranged German mad scientist? She had so many questions but so little time to ask them.

"Right then," Merlin said, "Let's move."

Merlin quickly ran behind a conveniently placed potted plant, with Mindnick dragging Sunset along another conveniently placed potted plant. Merlin pressed a button on his comm to talk to one of his allies.

"Charles, I need you over here to blow these guys up."

As Merlin waited for Charles to show up, the ADVENT soldiers had a conversation amongst themselves. Because of the helmets, no-one could barely understand a word they were saying. Suddenly, a hairy, unkempt man with a grenade launcher appeared out of nowhere and fired grenades at the ADVENT soldiers.

"Grenade!" the man said before laughing maniacally.

The ADVENT soldiers flew up into the air as the grenades exploded before immediately, and very clumsily, landing on their necks and breaking them, instantly killing them.

"Good job, Charles!" Merlin said the grenade launching man.

"Who's that guy?" Sunset asked Mindnick.

"Zat is Charles Merasmus. He thinks he's an ancient wizard for some reason. Zen again, zere vas an ancient wizard, also named Merasmus, who vas arrested for snapping Tom Jones' neck."

"What?"

"Somehow, Tom Jones got better. Apparently, after having his neck snapped, he had a dream zat he vas in a shower in heaven und zen a cherub snapped his neck, sending him back down to Earth und bringing him back to life."

While Sunset was no stranger to the more bizarre elements life had to offer, what with being a magical unicorn that jumped through a mirror into another world in the hope of a better life, turning into a fiery she-demon that mind-controlled most of the school, got into a battle of the bands with a trio of ancient sirens, had to talk down an alternate version of Twilight Sparkle from going down the same dark path she once did. And that's not getting into when a camp counsellor turned into a forest spirit, her getting stuck in a time loop, and playing a very frustrating squirrel themed video game with Fluttershy. Thank Celestia, the princess not the principal, that internet viewers enjoy seeing their favourite Let's Players lose their shit over an extremely difficult video game because she still wondered to this day how Fluttershy managed to beat the game despite not being as much of gamer in comparison. In all honesty, Sunset wouldn't be surprised if Fluttershy managed to complete Getting Over It with Bennet Foddey without raging at least once.
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With all the strange things that happened to her in life, it makes all too much sense that she would be fighting aliens with a British man who thinks of himself as the next Jason Statham or Clive Owen, a German bodysnatcher who is good friends with their host, and a schizophrenic demolitions expert.