The Teddy Emperor was standing on the bridge of his citadel, having left his planet to embark on his journey towards the super citadel. Lana stood next to him, both of them having their hands behind their backs and stiff shoulders.
In front of their citadel, in the distance, was the super citadel floating next to another one—slightly bigger than the Teddy Emperor's citadel. They were still pretty far off, the other citadels just tiny dots in the distance. "Finally, I can enlarge my collection of plushies." He spread his arms like wings and a grin spread across his face, "I can feed my desires!"
Lana looked into his happy face and her neutral expression vanished, being replaced by a tiny smile. She took a look backwards onto the rest of the bridge, where hundreds of now living Teddy plushies were controlling the citadel and remembered that they left the test subject on their planet. Her grin grew.
They flew close enough for their scanners to reach the two citadels.
"My lord!" The Teddy, controlling the scanners, said, "The smaller citadel is filled with moving corpses who seem to be attacking the living human clones." She turned to the Teddy Emperor nervously, locking eyes with him as he looked at her over his shoulder.
"Well, blow them up then. I want the plushies, not the humans." He told her matter-of-factly and coldly. Turning back to look at the 2 citadels with a smile, he put his hands behind his back once more as he awaited the light show.
The Teddy nodded and started typing: "As you wish." Suddenly, the typing stopped.
The Teddy Emperor turned to see every plushie frozen in their place and let out a sigh. "So there are plushies on that citadel?" He asked, his tone bored as he turned to Lana. "How many and which ones?"
"While only two, they are rather special. It is Captain Teddy, the one you saved, and Logi, the Geddos copy who had hired you to do so. And as far as I am concerned, you wanted the two in your collection. Them having incredible designs and all."
He let out a deep sigh as the typing continued: "Stop it. Increase distance towards the super citadel and hide us. But don't lose them out of our sight. Give them two or three days before we visit." Finishing his speech, he turned away from the giant window, throwing his cape in a dramatic manner, and leaving the bridge.
⟪⚪⟫
Logi landed on the floor of the arena in the midst of the colosseum, having jumped out of the prophet's private box.
With a glance at each arena entrance to make sure nobody was creeping up on him, he dropped to his knees and started to draw something into the sand which covered the entire floor. It was a combination of multiple different magic glyphs he had developed.
It took a few minutes before he finished the drawing, as it covered the entire arena. He knelt in the centre and placed his hand onto one of the lines making up the glyph and let—the energy he had fittingly named—mana flow into it. The glyph started to glow and its lines moved around.
"Hope it works…" He whispered. In theory it should work, but he had never used this glyph arrangement in practice.
Around him, something like a two-dimensional pulse shot out, covering each centimetre of the colosseum and highlighting everything that was alive. While it did mean that the corpses were still able to hide within the shadow to ambush him, the tentacles controlling them were highlighted as well as the prophet and Captain Teddy.
He looked around, searching for Captain Teddy and the prophet. While Captain Teddy made no new and sudden movements, indicating that she could not see the highlights, the prophet looked around confused, touching his own body and tentacles as if he noticed the highlight. What was probably his head shot up to face towards Captain Teddy who was rather far away and he started sprinting towards her.
"SHIT!" He screamed, trying to alert the two of his presence to confuse the prophet and warn Captain Teddy. Did he make a mistake in his calculations? Or is the prophet able to sense mana?
He looked around while running through the maze which was the colosseum. His focus was on Captain Teddy and he did not bother looking towards the prophet, assuming that he would only go after her as suddenly, something shot out of a dark corridor and slammed against him.
"You!" The prophet snarled, "You're not Captain Teddy…" He seemed confused. Grabbing Logi by the leg and lifting him upside down. "I can see that weird glow on your body and another one shaped like a plushie, which means the other one has to be her."
Seeing that the prophet was not directly looking at him but staring at Captain Teddy he had an idea. "Yep." He said as his fist collided with the prophet's face. Sadly, he was not as strong as Captain Teddy to throw him away with his strength, but his soft punch startled the prophet enough to drop him in confusion before stopping to focus on Captain Teddy and instead focus on Logi.
"Did you just… punch me?" The prophet asked in confusion, touching the spot on his face where Logi's fist hit him. "So you want to play too?"
Logi started running, not away from Captain Teddy, but towards her. He was pretty sure that together they could easily subdue him, maybe even kill him. "Yeah! What are you going to do about that?" He tried to provoke the prophet.
The prophet dropped into a cat-like running position: "This is going to be fun." He started running after him, closing the distance centimetre by centimetre. "I am going to tear off your limbs and feed on your insides, you disgusting heathen!"
Logi started to scream, not scared but as a warning for Captain Teddy.