GIANT CENTIPEDE.

1774, NOVEMBER 27th, SUNDAY 10:00 pm.

Noche stood above Baxter's unmoving body.

Her eyes lingered over the tufts of fur that bristled in the wind. Dust settled around her as the world went quiet. Something was wrong here – this wasn't how she was expecting to feel. She had won, but at what cost.

The blonde shook her head, she came here to win, not to linger on remnant feelings or distant memories. She came here to defeat Edward.

A bouncing stone next to Baxter's body caught her eye. A few more pebbles fell into the freshly formed crater and joined in the little rock's dance. Soon the bear-man's body was moving up and down too. The castle started bouncing as well – earthquake.

There was an explosion from below the cliff. A giant, black carapace appeared – each shell was the size of a train car and the entire body moved like a locomotive. As the towering entity slowed down its features became clear. 

Before Noche, and the entire battlefield, was a twenty-story tall centipede. Larger than a radio tower, bigger than a building, this sky-scraper-shaped insect twitched countless tree thick legs.

Noche's eyes kept going up and up as her head leaned back.

"Mierda," she muttered.

If someone put a football stadium microphone before dozens of nails on chalkboard, it would still be too quiet in comparison to the high pitch cacophony that was this creature's screech.

Two airplanes crashing into each other would sound like a whisper in comparison to the cricketing that came from its jaws. The force of the noise sent hurricane winds across the battlefield. The gargantuan insect lurched back, like a bull whip about to strike, and snapped forward – hitting the ground like a meteor.

Cross and DeathTech soldiers alike scattered from the denizen of the NeverAfter forest. Its countless legs burrowed through the dirt as it emerged from the opposite side of the battlefield. Its snake-like body encompassing the entire cliff like a ring – preventing any creature from escaping.

Some of the Cross soldiers began attacking the titan. Balls of fire, bolts of lightning, spears of ice, and acid rain all began to pelt the behemoth – but it was unperturbed. Its massive jaws came crashing down into the group of soldiers. When its head came back up, dozens of soldiers had become bloody parts in its meat-grinder of a mouth.

Noche's eyes widened, she slammed her sword into the ground and used Instant Riptide to get high into the air. The sword retracted and the momentum sent her spinning like a pinwheel – she swung and the sword extended.

A mile-long black blade streaked across the environment and slammed into the giant centipede. A good chunk of its body, and multiple legs, were sliced off – but the creature lived. It dug underground as Noche's sword retracted.

Noche landed on the ground and her head snapped about. Her eyes flickered to the sword she was bouncing in her hand.

"What would happen if I used Instant Riptide in ultra-greatsword form?" She muttered.

Waiting for the centipede to emerge, Noche aimed Instant Riptide out into the ocean. When the sword had extended, she changed it into its larger form. The Omni-oar became insane in size – it was as big as the centipede.

Noche's sword had become a skyscraper – one that covered the clouds. As the weight pulled the sword towards the ocean, the edge of the cliff acted as a see-saw, and Noche was lifted into the air.

She let go of her weapon, shrank it from a distance, and teleported it to her hand. A split second later the centipede emerged from below with explosive force. Giant spears of metal and massive weaponry were formed from the prismatic energy that surrounded the insect.

With the creature distracted by drills and metal boulders, Noche took to the sky once more. In the air, she spun like a pinwheel and used Instant Riptide. As the blade approached the titan, Noche turned it into its ultra-greatsword form.

The mile-long short-sword became a skyscraper. With such a massive size, the blade lost its sharpness – but what it now lacked in cutting power it made up for in brute force. A lower portion of the centipede was smashed to smithereens.

The creature shook about, rage evident in its thrashing, as Noche lost grip on her gargantuan weapon. As the blonde's skydiving began, she summoned the Omni-oar back to her hand in short-sword form. At that same instant, the centipede loomed in the clouds above Noche – it came crashing down on her location.

Meanwhile, as the giant centipede was keeping everyone busy, Boots saw an opportunity. He ran the moment General Rust was distracted – a sonic boom was the only evidence the straitjacket boy had even been there.

"By jove! Preshident Medusha! The shcout hash eshcaped!"

As General Rust scanned about for Boots, the young man was already rocketing above the clouds. The centipede loomed over the battlefield and was preparing to strike. Boots created solid platforms of air and ran towards the entity.

"It's to keep Spark safe," he muttered.

Boots jumped past the twitching mandibles and into the mouth of the titan. He fell down the throat which was the size of an apartment complex's stairwell. The acidic atmosphere burned his face as he reached the stomach hidden far underground. Using a barrier of hurricane winds, Boots waited for his moment to escape.

At the same time, the centipede attacked – Noche dodged by the skin of her teeth. If she hadn't used Instant Riptide to maneuver in mid-air, the creature would have slammed right into her. She didn't want to imagine what sort of splat mark she'd be on the ground if it had hit.

She was a few dozen feet from the ground when something jumped out from the forest. It ran across the battlefield, avoiding the chaos, and made its way towards Noche. The blur jumped and Noche landed on Moon Moon the volf.

Her eyes went wide as the wolf mutant ran towards the centipede. She leaned forward and tightened on grip on the beast's neck – holding on for dear life as it jumped onto the insect. Claws dug into its carapace and Moon Moon began running up the bug tower.

As Noche and her volf began their vertical ascent, she summoned her Omni-oar and slammed the blade into the shells. The black blade's unnatural cutting power met no resistance as the pair ascended – trailing a path of destruction behind them as they raced up into the sky.

The centipede flailed and screeched, causing Moon Moon's claws to detach from its shell. Noche backflipped off her friend and began skydiving towards the clouds below. The centipede turned its head towards her; if an insect could look mad, it did.

It lurched back to strike but was interrupted by an explosion from below. The massive titan, a creature larger than most skyscrapers, was launched high into the air by an even more massive blast of fire – Vida was laughing in the silence below.

Falling at terminal velocity Noche snapped her sword out and retracted it — sending her spinning like a top. Her momentum grew and she tightened into a ball. When she was rotating faster than a helicopter's blade she used Instant Riptide.

The ebony edge extended beyond sight, Noche enlarged the blade, and it became a massive, black skyscraper. With the blonde at its center, the metal spun like the beam of a lighthouse. Except, instead of a beacon of light — it was darkness.

"LIGHTHOUSE STORM!" Noche shouted.

The skyscraper sword crashed into the centipede. The damage was so catastrophic that the entire shell exploded, leaving behind a pillar of bug meat. The creature let out one last shriek and its carcass descended in the direction of Noche's attack — towards the battlefield.

Clouds dispersed out of the way of its meteoric descent. Cross soldiers created hundreds of massive metal pillars to slow its fall. The centipede corpse was impaled by dozens of these pillars; the rest held. That is until some of the DeathTech soldiers began fusing with the insect's flesh and pulled.

The pillars bent and snapped under the strength of the DeathTech soldiers and the weight of the titan. Various Cross members ran in all directions — retreating to safer ground. The hulking mountain of meat was seconds away from impacting the battle site. Cherries, who had entered the frontlines to give Noche an antidote, had enough time to get away.

He chose not to.

Prismatic energy became a massive bolt of fabric – unrolling like a tidal wave that pushed fellow soldiers to safety. Cherries turned to the falling wall of flesh; it was inches from his face. There was a seismic boom as the titan fell onto the battlefield.

Far beyond the chaos, the Omni-oar stood as a dark tower looming over the ocean. Its golden cross-guard was not in a V shape, like in short sword form, nor was it aligned with the length of the blade, as it was in ultra-greatsword form. In this skyscraper mode, it was like a European longsword – thus it appeared like a giant T.

At each end of the cross-guard was a massive fishing rope with gargantuan hooks dangling at their ends. The ropes went through the humongous rings, that dangled alongside the cross-guard, and into the tang of the sword. At the center of the blade, the lighthouse emblem had become the size of an actual lighthouse.

Noche was too small to wield her sword in this form – after her Lighthouse Storm attack, she began to free fall towards the ocean. Her body was calm, despite the danger of the fall, it somehow felt reminiscing.

Hadn't she fallen into this ocean before?

Was this the same cliff that rushed by when she escaped DeathTech?

It was a feeling of overwhelming dejavú.

The memories were all a blur – just like the black column that was racing past her.

Yet, she knew she had done this before; in this exact spot.

Noche's face trailed up to the ocean above her. The tides pulled away to reveal the rocks within. Her eyes widened when her head was seconds away from hitting a flat rock. Pain exploded into Noche's mind like fireworks — a shatter rang in her ears.

Liquid salt filled her mouth and she tumbled about. It didn't take long for her knees to find sand as her stomach heaved out the ocean. Blood streamed across Noche's forehead, she turned to the rock, her dense skull broke it into a million pieces.

The pain was intense, but she was alive. She had survived a fall from terminal velocity, landed on her head, and hit stone... But she was alive. Noche wiped the blood out of her eyes as more continued to stream down her face; something caught her eye.

Wedged between the stones, next to another flat rock, was a skeleton with no upper head. It laid there in a tattered grayish-blue medical gown. There was a small blinking microchip in the fabric. Loose, old gray bandages covered the bones from chin to toe.

Noche stood in a daze and stared at the thing. She approached, swimming her way past the tide, and climbed onto the platform.

She inspected the bones – the top of the spine was damaged around the neck... The left hand had bones that appeared thinner in the palm. Both seemed to be from grievous injuries that had time to heal when this person was alive.

The strangest thing of all, was this skeleton match Noche's size exactly. The height, width, and length all seemed identical to her X-rays from when she hospitalized at Cross. She was paralyzed with DejaVu as a splitting headache grew more intense.

Noche fought back the urge to vomit — she felt the C4 explosion, the rushing wind, the sudden stop of her fall.

An explosion from the battlefield broke Noche out of her trance. Shaking off her fears and confusion, she summoned her Omni-oar in its short-sword form and used Instant Riptide to rocket back up to the cliff. Passing by a broken DeathTech window on the way up.