Chapter One: Archangel
‘Three years…’ Seraph whispered as she sat alone, high in an oak tree. Silently she watched as the vernal moon rose over the timberlands west of Pokémon Square, its light revitalizing the lush colors daytime had otherwise denied her.
At seventeen-years-old, the Skunanne fancied the silhouette of a human child save only for her slight maw and bushy tail. Silken fur flowed back and forth across her sylphic figure with the gentle breeze while her sapphire eyes glistened. Lines of purest white circumscribed the gems and curved up toward her temples before vanishing underneath the tresses atop her crown. Neatly combed, the locks draped down her back and to her side, partially cloaking the twin cascades of small slanted marks as they continued down to her tail. Her stripes merged into one upon reaching the appendage and slowly fanned out as the streak headed for its tip.
The forest here reminded her fully of the homeland she’d left behind on the southern continent. How difficult it was to believe it had already been so long since that tragic day.
‘Insolent b*tch! Get out of here and never return!’ her father’s voice echoed at the back of her mind. She cringed as sniping pain returned with her horrific memories. Even after all this time the welts of her brutal sendoff seemed fresh as ever, and she knew things would never be like before ever again.
Catching her opal earring as she scratched the side of her head, Seraph realized she could also take some solace in the fact that she’d survived this long. Other tribeswomen might have perished if they hadn’t found civilization outside the Furlong Hollow. But in this day and age, actual boon towns were scarce. Though, admittedly, escaping the hellhole that was Treasure Town had been more than a relief for the skunk and her comrades.
“Good Lord, Kit! Walk on your own two feet for a change!” a gruff voice barked down below.
“Here we go again…” she sighed with soprano softness.
Snatching the bow and quiver resting at her side, she dropped from her perch to a lower branch. Landing with catlike grace, Seraph quietly positioned herself to watch as her teammates readied for another of their nightly squabbles in the grove they’d set-up camp within.
Nearest the tree, one of her partners was a robust three-and-a-half-foot tall canine with a darkish tan pelt. The creature wore an odd plate fused into his brow and over his real eyes, which itself appeared to be adored with a white oval that in turn had an amber iris focused on their other ally in front of him. A trio of red scars coursed his backside, extending from the black ring around his neck straight to his tail. Symbolic of the wolf’s own exile, he had a paw-shaped tattoo burned into the fur on the reverse side of his head and two silver anklets on his hind legs.
The beast slowly circled his other ally, perhaps the scrawniest mammal imaginable. As he did, the skunk drew a blunt arrow from her holder, notched it securely into her bowstring, and prepared to take aim.
With a dingy brown pelt, the two-foot-tall opossum standing several yards from the tree possessed a mostly rounded head with a pair of large trapezoidal ears coming off of them, the right one having a portion bitten off its top. The lower of his narrow jaws looked half-hinged as if the bone had been broken, and he had several incisors missing. His arms and legs appeared as nothing more than bony tubes with stumpy three-toed paws from which large pointed claws grew out. Due to severe malnourishment, the skin around his abdomen seemed tight to the point where his ribcage and pelvis stuck out. Lastly, the poor critter’s tail was apparently just a rope of vertebrae.
The Oposease glanced briefly at the skunk with the tiny dots he had for irises. Pulling her weapon taut, she shot the projectile at the side of the Caniclops’s mask so that it ricocheted off right as he lunged towards Kit.
“Serves you right, Cairo!” Seraph snickered as the mutt yelped, plopping onto his paws a few inches from his target.
“Damn it, girl!” Cairo woofed at her, “You know I’m tired of hauling him all over the place!”
“Tough! You’re older, stronger, and faster. His weight’s nothing for you to handle, so stop whining.”
It was the same thing almost every night. Cairo and Kit would wake up, start bickering about some random thing, and inevitably lead into this argument over one having to carry the other around all the time. If not for the fact they’d more than proven themselves during their flight from the southern continent, she’d have left them weeks ago.
“You carry him around on your back all the time and see how easy it is!” the wolf growled. Seraph flipped her hair over her right shoulder as she reached for a sharpened arrow this time.
When she readied her weapon again, Kit squealed a moment before whining, “Seraph, wait! He’s just kidding!”
“Ha! I’d love to see her try, Kit!” Cairo laughed, rearing his head. Afterwards the beast focused his eyeball back on her and formed a shadowy sphere with his psychokinesis. Likewise, she took deadly aim at his now-contorting iris.
Fearing that neither would call the other’s bluff, Kit inhaled deeply and let out a terrifying wail to momentarily stun his friends. Then the critter began to bawl while Cairo’s attack faded into nothingness and Seraph relaxed the grip on her bowstring.
‘Even with all the crap he gets, Kit still doesn’t want me hurting Cairo… What goes through his mind, I’ll never know…’ she reminded herself for the umpteenth time.
“One day you won’t be so lucky, Cairo. I swear, someday soon this arrow is going through your head. In the meantime, though…” Unstringing her bow and shuffling it into her quiver along with the arrow, the skunk slung the case around her backside. Then she jumped down to convene with her comrades.
Hardly a group of ragamuffins, Team Feral Fang first met up as recruits at the infamous Wigglytuff Guild. Shortly after her exile, Seraph became an apprentice explorer for the association stationed in Treasure Town under the mentorship of Cairo, and soon became completely assigned to his Gold Rank team after some circumstances involving its former members played well in her favor. A few months ago, Kit joined their group during a reconnaissance mission that developed into a full-blown rescue. Despite being elites, though, they quickly became disgraced when a conspiracy within the organization itself made them into fugitives.
“I just don’t want you two screwing up this heist tonight,” she said, shifting her hair around to her back again.
“So what’s the plan then?” Kit asked.
Seraph huffed and commented, “Well, this sure as hell isn’t Treasure Town. It won’t surprise me if we don’t find anything worthwhile here besides food.”
“Ha! And your first clue was what?” Cairo scoffed, lying down in front her.
‘Right, and you’re an expert on a place where you haven’t even been to since you were a pup?’ she sneered.
Admittedly though, his insight paid off a little earlier today when she scouted out the town. Granted his information was pretty dated; some of the Pokémon he remembered being there were either absent from the village now or just long-since dead. Even so, the general layout and locations of things remained exactly as he described them from memory, give or take a few changes to the townscape in the twenty-something years he’d been gone. At least she picked up a map to help her better explain things she learned to them.
Pivoting around, Seraph saw a mismatched pair of satchels placed neatly against the tree trunk. To the right sat a dainty green sack, nothing more than a set of overlapping leaves and silk thread sewn taut to keep them together, atop her leather-bound Beyi Buckler. The larger bag off to its left was a standard-issue brown duffle bag they’d received upon certification from the Exploration Corp, complete with numerous pockets and the organization’s insignia of a sphere flanked by tiny wings stitched into its main flap.
The skunk grabbed her pouch and opened it posthaste. Inside it she had her Luna Fang (a stone dagger chiseled so it formed an arc similar to the crescent moon), a whip, and a folded-up piece of paper. Seraph shuffled her equipment aside so she could reach for the parchment.
“While you were both sleeping, I staked out a couple sites we should hit this evening. Luckily I swiped this from a shopkeeper when she wasn’t paying attention,” she then commented as she opened it up and laid it out flat on the ground.
“A Kangaskhan, per chance?” Cairo asked as she simultaneously nodded, “Ha! I’m surprised the old hag’s still alive!” Pity he didn’t know a younger one now ran the shop while her elderly mother supervised her, from what Seraph surmised anyhow.
Crudely illustrated at best, the map she’d obtained depicted the layout of a village established upon an eastward facing cliff. Overall, the settlement appeared to be divided into four main sections defined by its main roadways that crossed through the heart of town. In the northwest, southwest, and northeast quadrants, she already had several locations circled with charcoal markings.
Pointing to the upper left part first, Seraph commented, “Don’t be surprised if you don’t find much here. Knowing those godforsaken Kecleon Brothers, or rather their cousins in this case, they’ve got food and other basic stocks on-hand like we need but no real cash since they presumably put their profits into a savings account nightly. Remember to be careful anyways due to them normally being light sleepers.”
The other two nodded but Kit immediately asked, “What do we do if we wake them, though?”
“Gouge their throats, of course! Their deaths would be sweet revenge for all the crap their lot put us through in the past,” Cairo cackled.
“What?” the opossum whined.
Seraph tilted her head back for a moment and closed her eyes. He did raise a good point this time around. Their relatives back home swindled them all the time whenever they tried to make substantial purchases and often shortchanged them for items that they sold to them reciprocally. But creating a stir like that in this rural of an area would undoubtedly bring unwanted attention, even at night when everyone presumably slept.
“No!” she shook her head.
“No, my…” Cairo started.
“Enough!” she interrupted, “If you go and kill someone here, and it’ll draw people in like moths to a flame. Damn it, Cairo, small towns are harder to get away with crimes in than larger ones.”
“You never lived here before, so you don’t know what this town’s like. These Pokémon are idiots who love keeping to themselves. They’ll never find out something happened until well after we’re done and gone!”
“This from a mutt who hasn’t been here in years? Fact of the matter remains that we can’t risk anything at this point, Cairo, just because you want to off someone for what his or her relatives did to us. We need supplies, and I want to be as stealthy as possible in these heists!”
Cairo squinted and grumbled, “So be it… But if you must know, I have issues with people here, and I doubt some of them would be happy to see me after all this time. My clan especially since we have longer-than-average life spans.” Blood feuds were something her kind knew about all too well, but even she found it hard to swallow that his banishment would be remembered after this long, considering how he was in his late thirties.
“Whatever. Just don’t get stupid,” she told him, turning back to the map.
Pointing at a next spot underneath the previous one, she continued, “These buildings interested me because they were part of a storage facility similar to what we used back home. Coincidentally it’s owned by the Kangaskhan you just mentioned, Cairo.”
“Yeah, the old lady’s really not as tough as she looks. A little bit of sweet-talking will pretty much get you anything you need from her, so yours isn’t going to be as hard of task as you think.”
She shrugged and then concluded, pointing at the last mark she’d made, “This place right here might be a bit tricky. I’ll try to handle it myself, but I’d rather wait for you guys since you’ll have the coin pouch and I’d rather not overload my sack with cash when I need it for larder.”
“Yeah, we’ll be quick then,” Cairo said, “My Hypnosis will put the bank owner out easily.”
“But what if we
do find money at the Kecleon Brother’s stand too?” Kit asked.
Seraph and Cairo pawed their faces and yelled, “Then take it! It all spends the same.”
The skunk pivoted around again and picked up the group’s bag. Opening its biggest flap, she took out a smaller purse and threw it to Kit. Then she turned back to her compatriots and fit the larger satchel’s strap over Cairo’s shoulder.
“No witnesses, but I want as clean of getaway as possible,” she commented as she finally returned to the tree trunk to retrieve her own backpack.
Reopening the sack, she stuffed her map inside and brought her Luna Fang out. Afterwards, she slung the thing across her body so it rested under her right arm. Grabbing her shield and positioning it properly on her arm, the skunk started to climb the tree.
“See you at the bank!” she told her allies as she reached an eastward pointing branch. Gazing downward, Kit already saddled himself on Cairo’s back, and both then headed out of sight into the underbrush.
Alone now, the skunk made her way across the limb until she reached its end, where she sprung to a higher one in the next tree. Gracefully she landed and continued her trek through the treetops, soaring from branch to branch with ninja-like speed. While she was fleet footed on the ground, it had always been more efficient for her to travel this way. By doing so, she could spot and eliminate threats before they’d get at her cohorts. Tonight, however, her trip went off without a hitch and she arrived near the outskirts of town in a matter of moments.
Before entering the village proper, the Skunanne stopped briefly in a birch tree to catch her breath while surveying the township that lie ahead. Oddly enough, the atmosphere of the cliff-side community had changed drastically since she left earlier. The dome-shaped huts spread out like they were made for quite a foreboding setting due to so few of them having torches lit at this hour. Also, the air seemed thick with the stench of some diurnal beasts still loitering about. Surely they’d be going to bed soon, but she knew she’d have to be even more vigilant now.
Her ears twitched suddenly to the sound of leaves ruffling a few yards directly behind her. Somebody found her already, and another Dark-type Pokémon too. She could barely skim his thoughts, but knew this creep was definitely after her for something sensual.
“Well, well, well… Look who we have here!” a shrill voice cackled, “You’re up kind of late, aren’t ya, little girl?” Seraph flipped her hair over her shoulder again and cooed warningly.
“Ho-ho! Feisty one, eh? Well…” he continued until he realized she’d also hunched over and raised her tail, “W-wait a second!” A horrible cloud of gluey musk exploded from her buttocks, launching her forward simultaneously. Her victim screamed out in agony a moment but then yawned loudly.
Landing on all fours, Seraph pivoted to watch as the short biped fell backwards into the foliage off to the side of the trail. Flipping her knife so she wielded it backhandedly, she dashed towards the shrubbery ready to finish him off with a subtle slice across the throat.
Nauseated by the sight of whom she’d sprayed, the skunk fought all instinct not to scream out in pure disgust. Of all things, the creature just
had to be the same species of imp she despised having run-ins with back home. The gremlin wasn’t much taller than her, but his skin tone looked at least a few shades lighter than her fur. There was a wide red frill across the top of his crown with two dangling ears and a collar that matched. His arms seemed unusually scrawny in comparison to his relatively large hands with sharp grayish claws. Lastly, sticking out of the Weavile’s butt were two reddish feathers she knew to really be part of his tail.
Hiding her knife underarm, Seraph grabbed the cretin’s right hand and dragged him into the underbrush. Once she thought they’d gone far enough away from the main path, the skunk flung the imp strongly into the bushes. After he landed, she quickly dashed back towards the village. Thanks to her attack, he’d be out cold well through tomorrow morning at least, and there wasn’t much point in hiding him better since most people usually didn’t trek from forest paths without good reason.
Upon reaching the outskirts again, the Skunanne stopped dead in her tracks right before the bridge that crossed a stream into town. For a moment she felt a tremendous force pass through her body with a bone-chilling presence. The sensation ended shortly yet she still readied her bow expecting an immediate fight against a Ghost Pokémon. After momentary silence dispatched her trepidation, the girl shook her head denying what just happened and made a sprint towards the village’s southern district.
Darting from hut to hut, Seraph hid herself the best within the shadows she noticed along the western sides of the houses. Her pelt served as perfect camouflage at night. Even if someone stared directly at her, they’d never spot the Skunanne whether her stripes were visible or not.
When she finally arrived at the largest building in the neighborhood, the girl stopped a moment to better examine it than she did earlier. Easily clearing twenty-feet in height, the structure bared a vague resemblance to its Kangaskhan proprietor with thick brown shingles forming callused skin along the sides and back of the shed as well as having a pair of raised upper-level windows that looked like the creature’s eyes. Likewise, the front had lighter colored siding and a slight protrusion over the entrance crudely served as the Pokémon’s mouth. No doubt the reason for the outlandish architecture was to give still-illiterate Pokémon a landmark to identify in town, given they couldn’t read signs like Seraph and most others were able to.
Ears twitching wildly, the skunk drew an arrow and pivoted swiftly around to shoot at an oncoming foe; however, she didn’t see anything nearby again. Were her senses betraying her now of all times, or was someone actually stalking her but hiding just before she could spot him?
“Saul! Oh, Saul!” an elderly female with a drawl called from somewhere on the other side of the building.
Curiosity getting the better of her, Seraph scaled the building with her weapons still out. Once there, she peeked over the top to see the shadows of two Pokémon stretching outward from torchlight a couple houses away. The first she recognized as the storage unit’s owner, while the other appeared to be the silhouette of a large wolf Pokémon.
“Good evening, Katherine! How are you tonight?” the beast replied in a gruff voice that mimicked Cairo’s tone.
“I’m fine, thank you. But I was wondering if you found that girl yet.”
“The Skunanne from this afternoon? Alas, she seems to have vanished into the wind. Her scent trail ends right at the woods.” Seraph chuckled a bit, knowing her acrobatic skills paid off more and more by the day.
“Poor child seemed awful shy. I hope we didn’t scare her or nothing. I tried to make conversation and even left a gift out of her, which she clearly took.”
“Don’t fret over it. She’ll return eventually. Meanwhile, get some rest. Good night!”
“Good night!” Immediately afterward the twosome started to move into sight. Seraph scooted down the side of the shed and flipped her body over slowly so she could brace her back against it.
“I bet you think you’re so smart, little girl?” a feminine voice purred from directly overhead. Large black paws pressed down on both of Seraph’s shoulders and then sent powerful jolts of electricity through her body. After the attacker finished, the creature shoved her off the building and let her fall limply to the ground along with her weapons.
Paralyzed from head to toe, the skunk did nothing but watch as the silhouette of a four-and-a-half-foot tall lioness leapt onto a patch of dirt next to her, glaring at her with disdainful golden eyes. Moving into the moonlight, Seraph saw that the feline had a thick black mane coursing the length of her head, neck, back, shoulders, tail, and part of her forelegs. Similarly, royal blue fur covered a good portion of her face and ears, her abdomen, and most of her hind legs. Lastly, she noted how the creature possessed peculiar gold rings around the back of her front legs as well as similar spots inside her ears and a matching spur on the tip of her tail.
“It’s times like these that I’m proud to be a Luxray! You might’ve gotten my partner with that spray of yours, but unlike him I know how to handle you godforsaken Psychic-types. It’s so easy to confound your senses using Wraith Run,” her captor laughed as she circled around Seraph. Figured that this Pokémon knew the only attack that would turn her into a literal phantom temporary.
Noting two facts just mentioned, Seraph cracked a little smile and commented, “You’re right, you know? You almost did get me with Wraith Run.”
“Almost? What the hell do you mean ‘almost’?” the Luxray sneered, stomped in front of her victim’s face.
“Hmm… Let me put things this way. Skunanne aren’t just Psychic Pokémon but Dark ones too, and Wraith Run is best utilized by Ghost-types.”
The lioness stuck her maw in a little closer, baring her fangs and making sparks appear throughout her mane, and then growled, “What’s your point?”
“Well… You’re none of them!” Seraph remarked, making the opal earrings glow with a violet gleam. Suddenly, her attacker felt a terrible pain spread throughout her body as she was overpowered by the skunk’s Confusion attack. Then Seraph threw her into the side of the nearby hut as hard as she could in order to knockout her foe.
Slowly, Seraph caught her breath and forced herself back on her feet. Her muscles were completely numb and her stance quite wobbly, but even so she grabbed her bow, arrow, and knife before ambling northward to the main road. While she’d be unable to finish her part of the job now, Cairo and Kit hopefully managed to rob the Kecleon Brothers’ stand. That way tonight wouldn’t be a total waste.
Reaching the roadside, though, she took a long moment to scout up-and-down Main Street. There looked to be nobody down either part of the paved road, which she should’ve been expecting. However, something just seemed amiss right now. Even with her opponent out cold, the spiritual trauma from a bit ago felt as if it were still lingering…and stronger than before too!
“Vyi-os… Nef-yi?” a voice faintly whispered nearby.
He’s close… But where?
Spooked suddenly, Seraph panned her gaze from left-to-right trying to locate the speaker. Down the eastern part of the roadway, she made out the vague outline of a phantasmal quadruped walking towards her. As he approached, though, his form became somewhat more distinct, that of a giant lupine beast with a semi-prominent brow and an abysmal maw.
“Vek-toma, lyi-shuroc…” the phantom grumbled, stopping right in front of Seraph.
Indeed, tat traitor has returned… Opening a single eye, he stared directly at her with a bloodshot fury from his amber iris. Transfixed for a long moment, she inevitably blinked and the creature instantly vanished.
Unsure of what she just saw, Seraph snapped herself out of the daze as her body’s numbness finally wore off. Feeling up to running again, she made a beeline for the west of town.
As she neared the Kecleons’ shop by the end of the road, Seraph saw several blackish-blue fireballs launch and then explode in the immediate vicinity of the shop. Right afterwards, two Pokémon began screaming and yelling incoherently, presumably about what just happened. Just then, she saw Kit waddling onto the roadside and Cairo backing up alongside him.
“Hellfire!” the wolf screamed, surrounding himself with shadowy flame orbs that he instantly shot into the area again. His victims cried out once more before he finished them off with an attack from Psyshock, which brought their makeshift building down completely.
“Cairo… What have you done…?” Kit quibbled.
“Shut up, and let’s go!” Cairo demanded, lying down for a second. The Oposease climbed onto his back and the wolf bolted headlong towards the forest.
“Damn you, Cairo!” Seraph bellowed as she reached the former marketplace. The wooden storefront and dwelling had collapsed in on its tenants, pinning both reptiles under a pile of burning lumber. Likewise, the cinderblock storehouse behind the shop was mostly destroyed with rubble covering the short footpath leading into it.
Suddenly the bone chilling sensation from before passed straight through Seraph’s body again. She immediately turned terrified to watch as the spectral entity reappeared in order to make its way into the woodland after her teammates.
“What the hell is going on?!” Saul’s voice bellowed throughout the village. Right then, torches began to ignite from inside all of the huts one after another.
Without a second thought, Seraph headed into the forest, pursuing her comrades and the specter. Taking to the treetops, she searched the ground level frantically for her allies before the monster could get at them. After several minutes, the skunk spotted them heading for a clearing at the northern fringe of the timberland. Cutting off their escape, Seraph leaped into the meadow just as they were coming out of the underbrush.
“What did you think you were doing with that stunt back there, Cairo?” she demanded loading her bowstring, this time ready to take his life for sure.
“S-Seraph…” Kit cried, dismounting, “They caught us right away and we got into a fight. I just wanted to knock them out, but…” Cairo nipped him just then, and the Oposease appeared to faint instantly.
“I was going to kill some of them eventually, so I figured I might as well do it then and there,” the wolf smirked at her.
“*sshole! You ever think about the consequences? The whole town woke up right after you left! We’re going to have pursuers on trail any moment now!”
“So be it! I’ll still get away with Teleport even if you two don’t!” he cackled but then froze the second he sensed something powerful approaching them. She could feel it too, and recognized it immediately as the monster stalking Cairo and Kit.
“On top of exciting the denizens of Pokémon Square, I had a run-in a bit ago with an old adversary of yours, I take it? From what I can tell, he isn’t some run-of-the-mill Ghost Pokémon, if there’s such a thing.” Cairo stood there with his iris widening to the point were it consumed his whole brow. The terror on the mutt’s face now was simply unbelievable.
“You saw…him…? How could you possibly see…him…? This
Ghost Pokémon is unlike anything you’d scarcely imagine…and his presence is completely undetectable, even by the gods! The fact I know of him is only because I broke a pact I made with him years ago, and if he’s still after me, we are all dead!” he whined, the wind blowing briskly with his yelp.
His body suddenly jerked as if he’d just been struck by lightning. In the next instant, Seraph watched in horror as the jaws of the phantasmal beast forcefully pulled an unseen object from within Cairo’s form and began to chew it. Listlessly Cairo seemed to flop onto the ground belly-first, the eyeball on his faceplate clearly devoid of his life force.
“S-Seraph… What’s going on…?” Kit muttered, snapping out of his trance and no doubt feeling the presence hovering over him now. Immediately the monster clamped his immense fangs onto Kit’s body. Then, just like he’d done to Cairo, the demon yanked out the Oposease’s soul and devoured it.
“N-N-NO!” the skunk quibbled as she shot her arrow at the entity’s forehead. However, the projectile passed through his brow unfazed.
“Vek, Meyi-lyi,” he stated bluntly to her as he finished his meal.
Farewell, Archangel. A small whirlwind began to form around the quadruped’s legs as he slowly turned away from her.
Before he could leave, she cried out, “Veyi-tok no hema!”
Get back here, you jack*ss!
Growling, the monster returned his attentive gaze back at her, opening one of his eyes in clear response. Waves of malice-filled vibes pulsed through Seraph’s body as he now circle towards her.
“Young girl, I have no quarrel with you. I only slay those undeserving of life, or the traitors who turned against me,” he spoke harshly, only using English rather than Quofyi this time to clarify his intentions.
“Bullcrap!” she replied, drawing another arrow. Looming directly over her now, he opened another eye to the previous one and then two more right above them on his brow. This time, his intimidation tactics worked perfectly as the skunk started to whine from the utter terror of fully recognizing whom this creature was.
“I’ve got her scent!” Saul barked in the distance.
Grinningly the demon tilted his head back and then let out a saddening wail. The sheer sound of it seemed to resonate from the depths of Seraph’s mind and made her cringe in absolute pain. The torture of Lamentation had gone down in legend amongst Pokémon worldwide, but so few ever heard its ghastly tone because there were only a handful of creatures who could learn it, and being near one of the most powerful users was bound to be the single worst experience anyone would ever have. It echoed throughout the cosmos and stemmed from the world known to her clan as Beyi Quofyi, and then utterly destroyed one’s consciousness.
“There she is!” Cairo’s father shouted nearby. Finally, Seraph blacked out from exhaustion, just as the demon vanished without a trace.
<End Chapter One>
