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The tree that dominated the entirety of the tiny world loomed over the gathered parties, branches heavy with berries and birds, and seemingly unaware of the way Jack continued to glare

at the gaps in the trunk. The one sided staring contest continued for a couple minutes before the Jirachi burst that had been making a round of each of the portals, and associated burst warriors gathered in a queue at them, found his way over. The wish granter watched the silent confrontation between man and tree before deciding to butt in.

"Did the tree do something or do you just not like trees in general," Ben asked, floating over between Jack and the target of his ire.

Prying his eyes from tree to tiny floaty man, Jack seemed to take a second to reorient on what was in front of him before his standard carefree seeming expression settled into place.

"It knows what it did," Jack said with amusement, his eyes flicking to the tree and back like he was trying to catch it at something, "You have something for me?"

"Yeah," Ben produced a vivid red crystal and handed it over, "Decided to go with Eric anyway?"

"In the end it's the only job that seemed worth doing," Jack confirmed, examining the burst gem, "I'll leave impressing legends to people with a vested interest in said legendaries."

A muted flash temporarily obscured Jack from view as the crystal activated. In its wake Jack remained, now floating in place. His face turned to a dark purple field broken by a gleeful countenance that was seemingly the bursts default and nearly only expression. A moment was spent examining the changes to his form. Jack seemed amused by most of his body being out of phase with the physical world, and he adjusted his physical presence to whatever extremes he could while he picked at his adjusted clothes, an overly stylized tuxedo-like number straight out of a cheesy monster movie, complete with master cravat.

Feeling a subtle prod at his intentions from the Haunter, Jack sent a mental answer back with some of his plans to his partner for the round. The answer apparently met with the ghost's approval, judging by the riotous laughter that rang through his head. Returning his attention back to Ben, who'd watched patiently while ghost burst shifted through various levels of visibility and back before settling into a floating bust and hands.

"Sorry," Jack waved a hand apologetically, then waved it again for the novelty involved in the disconnected limb, "Uh, long time liver first time dead man." the arm spun in place like a drill momentarily and the amused grin painted where Jack's face had been seemed to stretch a bit.

Snapping his limbs and attention back to their proper orientation, Jack refocused on Ben. The Jirachi burst had good humouredly waited while the man got used to a ghostly form. Watching with polite bemusement.

"Did you have any luck with the other things I asked for?" Jack asked, looking pointedly at the bag Ben was dragging around like a miniature Santa.

"Right," Ben hawed, glancing in the direction of the portal the other ghost burst warriors had vanished through, "Some guys gathered that up and took it through already."

Jack blinked. "Right, thanks." Ben nodded and floated off to the next burst warrior that chose to linger somewhere away from their chosen portal.

Floating toward his own exit, Jack stopped to watch Emet help wrestle Esrever down while Charity applied more bandages to him. The trio of legendaries wrestled comically as more than one malingering burster watched with amusement.

"Charity," Jack called out, an idea occurring to him, "Have I called in that marker from the other night yet?"

The Celebi Burst looked up from where she was sitting on top of Esrever like a cat trying to get out of getting his shots. Starting to nod Charity caught herself up short squinting at Jack for a moment before shaking her head and calling back, "Not yet!" Considering that confirmation, Jack continued his journey after calling out thanks to Emet for advising him earlier. Emet nodded acknowledgement and tried to wave but was forced to keep both her hands occupied when one of Esrever's extra limbs threatened to struggle its way to freedom.

Colors swirled in the portal and the world flashed as Jack passed through it. When his vision cleared the world had turned to a dark void, lit only by cracks in the ceiling that hung ponderously over the abyss below. Within the morass of darkness Jack caught glimpses of dark limbs shifting and grasping out of the pit. Above, the ceiling began to fall away in shards and the sounds of fighting became audible as the warriors above began their panicked melee

Casting out with some of the Haunter's supernatural senses Jack picked out a place where several other ghosts had gathered. On approach the world under the ceiling lit up a bit better as Jack turned on a massive work light, the kind which one would expect to find on a construction site. Better lit now, Jack could make out several floating figures milling around sorting through a floating pile of seemingly random stuff. On one side Jack held a clipboard switching between calling out directions to the ones working the pile and talking to a pair of Jacks that broke convention by having legs.

Jack floated down to rest next to Niko, Tad, and Andrew. The trio nodded a wary acknowledgement to him and returned to watching the horde of workers sift through their equipment.

"How did you even manage this?" Andrew asked, staring in befuddlement that bypassed even the helmet he wore to make itself known.

"Time travel," Jack supplied, watching another Jack in haunter form pull a massive bunch of bananas out of the pile while the Jack next to him pressed buttons rapidly on an old style cassette stereo.

"You're going to get in so much trouble," Tad contributed sagely.

"WHAT IS THIS!?" a voice crashed out of the darkness, nearly causing a Jack to drop the crate he carried that was marked "fragile" and "danger: contains live bees."

"Told ya."

Esrever stormed out of the void below to float among the scattered Jacks. He glared witheringly at them before focusing on the Jack that had been shouting directions. The Jack in question flinched back from the angry Giratina burst before gathering his wits and waving.

"We're putting together things for a couple ideas I had," the Jack explained.
"No," Esrever gravelled.

"But-"

"No," Esrever repeated, "My area my rules. Get rid of all this stuff and get back to their being only one of you."

Sullenly the extra Jacks began fading away by degrees, with the legged pair banging their fists together with a cry of "wonder twin powers activate" and vanishing in a pop of not-here not-now. Satisfied, Esrever turned to the group of burst warriors not consisting entirely of one man Esrever's eye twitched when he saw that at least one Jack hadn't disappeared.

"Hey, don't look at me," Jack protested, "I just got here."

"And yet you will apparently decide to go through with this anyway," Esrever growled, redirecting his attention to the other bursters he continued in a slightly less annoyed tone, "At any rate I'm glad Emet sent someone useful. I need two, no, three things from you. One, help break the ground above if you can. Two, get the warriors above into my hands. And three, if you see him," Esrever grunted pointing at Jack, "with so much as a banana in his hand you tell me. Oh, and not letting anyone notice you were here should go without mentioning."

Esrever promptly disappeared into the darkness again. Above, the ground broke open properly, the milling hands, til then hovering just below the surface, surged out to begin their work. Below, the ghosts looked despairingly at the hard rocky ceiling.

"I don't suppose anyone has a rock, ground or steel type move?" Niko asked.

"I've got a pickaxe," Jack said, pulling the tool from the last of the pile of equipment that had been slowly vanishing since Esrever's outburst.

"I think that qualifies as significantly more than a banana," Andrew deadpanned.

"Do you want to break open the ceiling with your ghostly mitts?" Jack asked pleasantly, spinning the pick in his floating hands.

None of the others answered, and Jack's grin grew wider. Behind him a half dozen more picks appeared from thin air, as though drawn from an invisible pocket. They spun in the air and twirled as the other burst warriors stared wide eyed.
"How are you doing that?" Tad asked, waving a hand around one of the floating picks, trying to grab it.

"The other yous didn't leave," Niko said accusingly.

"Where would they go?" Jack asked, "The portal closed behind us, and what Esrever doesn't see won't hurt him. At least this way," he sighed, and the picks behind him drooped, "I'm doing all the boring labor..."

After a moment with no objections appearing from the others the picks spun again and vanished and Jack slid his into his coat, leaving no indication he'd had it in the first place. Before long the sound of metal on rock could be heard from above and the cracks started slowly expanding. After a quick conference they came to the conclusion they should split into teams temporarily and test out ways of weakening the warriors fighting above. After a couple minutes they'd switch partners to share what they'd figured out.

--pvchang

Niko slid across the underside of the ground, arms extended into and through the material so her reach penetrated into the space that the burst warriors were still trying to fight in. Seeing her guiding hand cut off at a diagonal to her current path, she adjusted course accordingly and again tried to ignore the weirdness of following a disembodied hand that continually beckoned to be followed. A moment later she felt a soul appear weakly to her ghost senses on the other side of the rock in the path the hand was leading her. Shifting slightly she placed herself in the unfortunate soul's path, and sure enough something passed through her outstretched limbs and her curse extended into whoever it was. The hand gave a thumbs up and began moving again, and she adjusted course once more, ignoring when Ridley was dragged into the darkness through a nearby crack in the ceiling, his weak struggles doing nothing to deter the dark limbs holding him.

The weakness of Niko's invisibility was that the mask she wore didn't disappear with the rest of her, a liability that had been quickly pointed out didn’t as failing to matter much since she could just reach through the ground and cripple any fighter that ran into her. All she'd needed was directions to get her close enough to sense where on the other side of the stone barrier her targets were. So effective was the cursed body ability that most burst warriors afflicted were quickly overwhelmed by Esrever's hands before they figured out why their attacks had stopped working.

The others found their own tactics, Tad favored paralyzing and weakening opponents from hiding, Andrew would slip in among the shadows of the fighters and strike them at odd angles then vanish before they could see what fouled them up. Jack however was stuck playing guide for Niko, his full invisibility allowing him to travel through the ground ceiling at eye level while guiding her with a visible hand below to guide her. This system ended up being the most efficient they could think of. There'd been some trouble when a burst warrior on the surface had apparently noticed Niko's approach and tried to attack her exposed limbs. Jack had put a stop to that idea by punching the girl in the back of the head, knocking her out before she could properly act. Through process of elimination the ghosts had determined that other ghost bursts saw through any level of invisibility, fortunately there was only one ghost among the warriors on the surface, which Jack had dealt with. The problem arose that the much more common dark types could somehow sense the ghosts' approach. The consensus among the time travelling group had been to just avoid the obvious dark types and let Esrever handle them. A sentiment Niko wholeheartedly agreed with.

As she passed through another burster, Niko and Jack's visible hand stopped. The sound of fists and invisible picks on stone had stopped, and looking around the hands that had been clawing at the ceiling had moved out of the way. Remembering the previous instance of this Jack and Niko fled to the edges of the field and watched as huge ponderous versions of the hands attacking bursters erupted from the darkness to collide with the weakened rock like they had earlier, the arrhythmic pounding knocking away huge sections of ground that most of the bursts had been standing on. From what Niko could remember this "phase" should have had about a fifth of the ground missing. Instead it was closer to half. Her eyes picked out the falling forms of many warriors who had the poor luck to stand on a section of insecure ground that fell in increasing amounts each moment.

Attacking now would likely be a waste of time as any given section of ground might fallout just as soon as their target went down.

"While we've got a moment," Niko started to speak, turning toward Jack's visible hand, and the rest of him flooded into visibility obligingly, "Why are there a half dozen extras of you available to help dig?"

"As a general rule your future selves tend to be superior jerks who think they're better than you and live to mess with you at any opportunity. Like showing up to help set up pranks they know will get vetoed. They're not like your past selves who are fricking idiots and deserve everything they get," Jack explained.

Niko blinked in confusion. "No, I meant, how did you get a half dozen... " Niko stalled looked for the words, "...time clones to help you out?

"Oh, I called in a favor I won from Charity in last week's poker night," Jack explained.

"Poker night?"

"Yeah, Esrever, Adamas, Perle, Charity and I, play poker every couple nights."

"And you play for favors?"

"No, we mostly play for the cash Raven gave the idiots when he got here and for ownership of some stuff. I'm pretty sure Esrever and I owned half that station that the hostards broke. Charity was just 50 short end of last game." Jack shrugged expansively, the only way he could shrug given his lack of shoulders.

"How does 50 big ones convert into free time travel for six of you?" Niko asked, feeling more confused the more information she got, "And why would they even let you buy in on their game?"

"No, 50 bucks was worth eight paradox free trips. I must have used the other two for something else," Jack grumbled, placing his chin in one hand, "Probably to show up to those first two games I didn't remember." Seeing Niko wasn't taking up the conversation again he continued, "When I crashed their game the first time they were expecting me. Apparently I'd already replaced Ben as a regular player twice to their timelines."

"Do I want to know why Ben quit?" Niko asked hesitantly.

"Oh, they kicked him out. Something about there needing to be more to playing poker than just wishful thinking for it to be fun."

Niko half laughed. "I'd think that'd work out pretty well for Ben."

"That was the problem I think," Jack replied, amusement clear in his voice.

Niko shifted to hover a bit closer to the openings appearing in the roof, trying to see who was surviving the continuing loss of ground as she spoke, "Alright. So clearly the picks were to help with the rock, but what was the rest of that stuff for?"

"Ah that," Jack stopped as the blows of the giant fists petered off. "Crap, time to get back to work. I'll tell you later," Jack promised.

"Right," Niko nodded and faded her body out, "I'm going to check on Tad. Can you keep yourself out of trouble?"

"Probably."

Niko stared at him again for a few seconds, her expression hidden by the mask of her burst form before she accepted this and flew off.

--vpchng--

Hovering in the void Jack considered his options as he considered Niko's retreating back. He could try fouling people up the way Andrew had been, with his ability to disappear he might even be able to get some of the fliers that were unaffected by the loss of ground to stand on.

His thoughts were interrupted again by a whispering voice that spoke gibberish at him. Rubbing his temples, Jack again cursed his decision to hijack a tiny bit of unlimited power over time and space. The occasional half remembered bits of insight he'd had still randomly tried to present themselves, though without the requisite power and perception of extra-dimensions it all came out as faux science sounding nonsense. He'd was reasonably good at covering the intrusions, and the spike of pain that tended to accompany them, but since the round had started they'd gotten strange. In addition to becoming more frequent, the gibberish, which had usually been in at least one language he spoke had turned into a guttural sounding gobbledygook. On the bright side at least the new development was free of the head pains.

"SHEDiNYANJA!"

A voice pulled Jack out of his ruminations and he realized he was late for an appointment as all the hands attacking the field suddenly reoriented visibly. Putting a burst of power into his levitation Jack exploded from below ground level, flying among the lines of Esrever's hands as they tracked their target. As he passed the apex of the hands' flight, flying free of their obscuring forms Jack noted that he'd forgotten to return his hands and bust to invisibility. Putting the thought aside, Jack acquired his target, perched in the air in a closing ring of angry Esrever claws.

--vpchng--

Archeops Jack watched as the hands he'd only just identified rose up to reach him, silently cursing his decision to test his hypothesis in the way he had. He prepared an attack to strike back at the coming horde of hurt. If Esrever wanted to be a whiny brat about him mentioning what Esrever had named "the-thing-which-never-happened-and-must-never-be-spoken-of" he'd at least give as good as he got.

Cackles disrupted his preparations and his eyes were drawn to a blotch of dark purple appearing out of the mass of hands. It accelerated, passing the limbs following it and Jack briefly made out a pair of floating hands and a smiling purple face. Then a purple hand smashed into his head. it was immediately followed up by a second. Then a black hand hit him. Then another and another.

--vpchng--

The burst warrior screeched to a halt as his attack carried them effortlessly through the dark hands clawing at them and left them teetering over the edge where ground met nothingness. Unseen and unheard Jack slipped up behind the unsuspecting victim. The burster wheeled their arms and leaned back away from the edge then felt a pair of hands strike them from behind and send them tumbling into the dark infinity below. Jack chuckled and leaned over to try and catch the surprised expression on the other's face. The grinning expression was pushed to its limits then as a line of ice lanced through Jack's form and he was wracked with pain from the attack.

"I know you're there!" Jack turned to find Taz in her Gyarados burst's second form yelling at what, to her, should have seemed like thin air. She was known to have some special qualities but he was fairly certain supernatural sensing ability, and last time Jack had checked Gyarados wasn't a dark type. Taz positioned to unleash another attack and Jack turned with a flinch, pushing his face into visibility.

"STOP," Jack rumbled, the white streaks that represented his eyes flashing.

Taz staggered, her attack stalled as cloudy white lights swam across the surface of her eyes. "I- wuh?" Taz's voice was uncertain as she tried to refocus her vision and her head swung like she was trying to see something hovering around her nose.

"You didn't see, hear, or sense anything," Jack pressed on, the light of his hypnosis flaring again.

"No... I-" Taz stuttered, visibly struggling, "There was..."

"All you saw before the end was the giant..."

One of Jack's hands faded into visibility.

"Black..."

He raised the hand until it fell into Taz's vision and her eyes focused on it, Jacks eye's beginning to shift in hue and still visible between its outstretched fingers.

"Hand."

Like a shot Jack's eyes flared red now and the light jumped along and past his hand to swarm Taz. Knees hit dirt and then the rest as Taz fell over like a doll with her strings cut. On the ground she continued to shiver at the images Jack had put into her.

"I really wanted to avoid doing that," Jack murmured, watching as one of the black hands reach out of the hole to collect the fitfully sleeping woman, "It's actually kind of sad how easy it is to get you to dream of dark and terrible things attacking you." Jack began to sink into the ground then stopped when the first hand to reach Taz started pick her up.

"Careful of her leg," he snapped, vaguely recalling there was something wrong with it and assuming that being picked up by it the way the hand was trying to would likely not be good for it. The hand hesitated momentarily before continuing what it was doing, the moment though allowed time for other hands to latch on to Taz and heave her up without suddenly putting all her weight on any one part.

Jack huffed and finished sinking down through what remained of the ground. This section of the field was empty and he could see from here Niko and Tad working together to sneakily cripple the past Niko. Below he passed a massive knot of hands, fully a dozen times his own size, slowly swelling up and preparing to rise to the surface.

"You guys don't need to bother," Jack told the aberration of limbs, he thumbed over his shoulder at Taz's unconscious form being born down into the darkness, "I kinda had to do it myself."

The hands drooped and a new voice chimed in, "Does it disturb anyone else that they seem pretty intelligent for hands?"

"No," Jack said idly, turning to where Andrew hovered behind him and returning to the full level of visibility he favored, "But I've known a few Esrever constructs so that might just be me."

Andrew just grunted and watched as the tangle of massive hands started trying to undo the knot they'd gotten themselves into in the name of good presentation.

"Wait." Andrew stopped and looked at Jack, a note of annoyance in his voice. "I thought Esrever hog tied you and threw you through the exit portal and closed it behind you."

"He probably did," Jack replied, bending to help get the hand monster separated back into a bunch of separate limbs, "And if I'm any good at my job the first me he saw was my oldest version."

"How are we going to get back if can't take the portal," Andrew elaborated his grievance.

"Oh," Jack hummed and scratched his chin. "Well I was planning to go the long way either way. You could always come that way. With ghost forms we should be able to get back to the tree ahead of most everyone else without incident. I have to do it six times," Jack explained

Andrew sighed and followed Jack as he flew into the darkness below.

--pvchng--

Jack grunted as he skidded to a stop face first at the feet of the four legendary bursts who were still loitering around the bottom of the tree. They looked down at him with various looks of curiosity and annoyance. For his part Jack just wriggled around until he could face them properly.

"Check this out, ghost ropes," Jack said, gesturing with his still floating hands at the ropes that apparently kept him from going anywhere or his hands from doing much at all. "Esrever you have all the coolest stuff."

"What did you do?" Emet asked, sounding slightly aggrieved.

"He punched himself," a voice drifted down from the tree. The group turned to see the rest of the ghost team floating down from where they'd chosen to hang out until they were supposed to have gotten back.

"He punched his past self," Niko added, clearing the confused looks off several faces.

The legendaries whirled on Jack who tried to look sheepish beneath the gleeful mask the burst made of his face. Silence reigned as the disparate parties tried to formulate a response.

"COME TO ME MY CLOUDY MINIONS!" Jack screamed to the sky. In an instant he was obscured under a flock of pink birds.

Jacks screams continued, "Oh. Ow. Gah, Don't touch that. Oh! That's tender. Ouch. Ack. Hey! Alright! I'm sorry I said that about your fat queen. I didn't know she was your queen! OW!"

It took several minutes for the bursters to manage to disperse the "pink assassins" as Jack referred to them. Despite the constant assault he seemed no worse for wear.

"Back on subject?" Emet asked, arching and eyebrow and looking only very faintly amused. Behind her Ben was still choking on giggles. Esrever had slipped into some kind of bliss induced coma in minute two of Jack's pained cries and Charity had yet to be able to snap him out of it.

"Right," Jack said, sitting up, his bonds had vanished with the birds, "Something about punching was it? You know I didn't remember that beating BEFORE I involved myself in it."

"I believe it's more the principle of the act," Emet answered, "You were told to avoid potential paradoxes if at all possible."

"So no one is going to mention the half dozen other Jacks that he brought with him?" Andrew asked.

Jack shushed Andrew with a gesture. "I had a guy to deal with that. Don't worry about it."

Emet looked at the short exchange suspiciously before moving on, "I think the crux is that Jack endangered stability by encountering himself in an instance where he didn't have to."

There was a moment of consideration from Jack before he answered the accusation, "Alright, I'll apologize and do whatever you guys want to make it up to you." Emet and the other legendaries began to relax but Jack kept speaking, "IF you can tell me that if you were offered the opportunity to punch your past self in the face just after he did something monumentally stupid, that you wouldn't be at all tempted."

Description
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The tree that dominated the entirety of the tiny world loomed over the gathered parties, branches heavy with berries and birds, and seemingly unaware of the way Jack continued to glare

at the gaps in the trunk. The one sided staring contest continued for a couple minutes before the Jirachi burst that had been making a round of each of the portals, and associated burst warriors gathered in a queue at them, found his way over. The wish granter watched the silent confrontation between man and tree before deciding to butt in.

"Did the tree do something or do you just not like trees in general," Ben asked, floating over between Jack and the target of his ire.

Prying his eyes from tree to tiny floaty man, Jack seemed to take a second to reorient on what was in front of him before his standard carefree seeming expression settled into place.

"It knows what it did," Jack said with amusement, his eyes flicking to the tree and back like he was trying to catch it at something, "You have something for me?"

"Yeah," Ben produced a vivid red crystal and handed it over, "Decided to go with Eric anyway?"

"In the end it's the only job that seemed worth doing," Jack confirmed, examining the burst gem, "I'll leave impressing legends to people with a vested interest in said legendaries."

A muted flash temporarily obscured Jack from view as the crystal activated. In its wake Jack remained, now floating in place. His face turned to a dark purple field broken by a gleeful countenance that was seemingly the bursts default and nearly only expression. A moment was spent examining the changes to his form. Jack seemed amused by most of his body being out of phase with the physical world, and he adjusted his physical presence to whatever extremes he could while he picked at his adjusted clothes, an overly stylized tuxedo-like number straight out of a cheesy monster movie, complete with master cravat.

Feeling a subtle prod at his intentions from the Haunter, Jack sent a mental answer back with some of his plans to his partner for the round. The answer apparently met with the ghost's approval, judging by the riotous laughter that rang through his head. Returning his attention back to Ben, who'd watched patiently while ghost burst shifted through various levels of visibility and back before settling into a floating bust and hands.

"Sorry," Jack waved a hand apologetically, then waved it again for the novelty involved in the disconnected limb, "Uh, long time liver first time dead man." the arm spun in place like a drill momentarily and the amused grin painted where Jack's face had been seemed to stretch a bit.

Snapping his limbs and attention back to their proper orientation, Jack refocused on Ben. The Jirachi burst had good humouredly waited while the man got used to a ghostly form. Watching with polite bemusement.

"Did you have any luck with the other things I asked for?" Jack asked, looking pointedly at the bag Ben was dragging around like a miniature Santa.

"Right," Ben hawed, glancing in the direction of the portal the other ghost burst warriors had vanished through, "Some guys gathered that up and took it through already."

Jack blinked. "Right, thanks." Ben nodded and floated off to the next burst warrior that chose to linger somewhere away from their chosen portal.

Floating toward his own exit, Jack stopped to watch Emet help wrestle Esrever down while Charity applied more bandages to him. The trio of legendaries wrestled comically as more than one malingering burster watched with amusement.

"Charity," Jack called out, an idea occurring to him, "Have I called in that marker from the other night yet?"

The Celebi Burst looked up from where she was sitting on top of Esrever like a cat trying to get out of getting his shots. Starting to nod Charity caught herself up short squinting at Jack for a moment before shaking her head and calling back, "Not yet!" Considering that confirmation, Jack continued his journey after calling out thanks to Emet for advising him earlier. Emet nodded acknowledgement and tried to wave but was forced to keep both her hands occupied when one of Esrever's extra limbs threatened to struggle its way to freedom.

Colors swirled in the portal and the world flashed as Jack passed through it. When his vision cleared the world had turned to a dark void, lit only by cracks in the ceiling that hung ponderously over the abyss below. Within the morass of darkness Jack caught glimpses of dark limbs shifting and grasping out of the pit. Above, the ceiling began to fall away in shards and the sounds of fighting became audible as the warriors above began their panicked melee

Casting out with some of the Haunter's supernatural senses Jack picked out a place where several other ghosts had gathered. On approach the world under the ceiling lit up a bit better as Jack turned on a massive work light, the kind which one would expect to find on a construction site. Better lit now, Jack could make out several floating figures milling around sorting through a floating pile of seemingly random stuff. On one side Jack held a clipboard switching between calling out directions to the ones working the pile and talking to a pair of Jacks that broke convention by having legs.

Jack floated down to rest next to Niko, Tad, and Andrew. The trio nodded a wary acknowledgement to him and returned to watching the horde of workers sift through their equipment.

"How did you even manage this?" Andrew asked, staring in befuddlement that bypassed even the helmet he wore to make itself known.

"Time travel," Jack supplied, watching another Jack in haunter form pull a massive bunch of bananas out of the pile while the Jack next to him pressed buttons rapidly on an old style cassette stereo.

"You're going to get in so much trouble," Tad contributed sagely.

"WHAT IS THIS!?" a voice crashed out of the darkness, nearly causing a Jack to drop the crate he carried that was marked "fragile" and "danger: contains live bees."

"Told ya."

Esrever stormed out of the void below to float among the scattered Jacks. He glared witheringly at them before focusing on the Jack that had been shouting directions. The Jack in question flinched back from the angry Giratina burst before gathering his wits and waving.

"We're putting together things for a couple ideas I had," the Jack explained.
"No," Esrever gravelled.

"But-"

"No," Esrever repeated, "My area my rules. Get rid of all this stuff and get back to their being only one of you."

Sullenly the extra Jacks began fading away by degrees, with the legged pair banging their fists together with a cry of "wonder twin powers activate" and vanishing in a pop of not-here not-now. Satisfied, Esrever turned to the group of burst warriors not consisting entirely of one man Esrever's eye twitched when he saw that at least one Jack hadn't disappeared.

"Hey, don't look at me," Jack protested, "I just got here."

"And yet you will apparently decide to go through with this anyway," Esrever growled, redirecting his attention to the other bursters he continued in a slightly less annoyed tone, "At any rate I'm glad Emet sent someone useful. I need two, no, three things from you. One, help break the ground above if you can. Two, get the warriors above into my hands. And three, if you see him," Esrever grunted pointing at Jack, "with so much as a banana in his hand you tell me. Oh, and not letting anyone notice you were here should go without mentioning."

Esrever promptly disappeared into the darkness again. Above, the ground broke open properly, the milling hands, til then hovering just below the surface, surged out to begin their work. Below, the ghosts looked despairingly at the hard rocky ceiling.

"I don't suppose anyone has a rock, ground or steel type move?" Niko asked.

"I've got a pickaxe," Jack said, pulling the tool from the last of the pile of equipment that had been slowly vanishing since Esrever's outburst.

"I think that qualifies as significantly more than a banana," Andrew deadpanned.

"Do you want to break open the ceiling with your ghostly mitts?" Jack asked pleasantly, spinning the pick in his floating hands.

None of the others answered, and Jack's grin grew wider. Behind him a half dozen more picks appeared from thin air, as though drawn from an invisible pocket. They spun in the air and twirled as the other burst warriors stared wide eyed.
"How are you doing that?" Tad asked, waving a hand around one of the floating picks, trying to grab it.

"The other yous didn't leave," Niko said accusingly.

"Where would they go?" Jack asked, "The portal closed behind us, and what Esrever doesn't see won't hurt him. At least this way," he sighed, and the picks behind him drooped, "I'm doing all the boring labor..."

After a moment with no objections appearing from the others the picks spun again and vanished and Jack slid his into his coat, leaving no indication he'd had it in the first place. Before long the sound of metal on rock could be heard from above and the cracks started slowly expanding. After a quick conference they came to the conclusion they should split into teams temporarily and test out ways of weakening the warriors fighting above. After a couple minutes they'd switch partners to share what they'd figured out.

--pvchang

Niko slid across the underside of the ground, arms extended into and through the material so her reach penetrated into the space that the burst warriors were still trying to fight in. Seeing her guiding hand cut off at a diagonal to her current path, she adjusted course accordingly and again tried to ignore the weirdness of following a disembodied hand that continually beckoned to be followed. A moment later she felt a soul appear weakly to her ghost senses on the other side of the rock in the path the hand was leading her. Shifting slightly she placed herself in the unfortunate soul's path, and sure enough something passed through her outstretched limbs and her curse extended into whoever it was. The hand gave a thumbs up and began moving again, and she adjusted course once more, ignoring when Ridley was dragged into the darkness through a nearby crack in the ceiling, his weak struggles doing nothing to deter the dark limbs holding him.

The weakness of Niko's invisibility was that the mask she wore didn't disappear with the rest of her, a liability that had been quickly pointed out didn’t as failing to matter much since she could just reach through the ground and cripple any fighter that ran into her. All she'd needed was directions to get her close enough to sense where on the other side of the stone barrier her targets were. So effective was the cursed body ability that most burst warriors afflicted were quickly overwhelmed by Esrever's hands before they figured out why their attacks had stopped working.

The others found their own tactics, Tad favored paralyzing and weakening opponents from hiding, Andrew would slip in among the shadows of the fighters and strike them at odd angles then vanish before they could see what fouled them up. Jack however was stuck playing guide for Niko, his full invisibility allowing him to travel through the ground ceiling at eye level while guiding her with a visible hand below to guide her. This system ended up being the most efficient they could think of. There'd been some trouble when a burst warrior on the surface had apparently noticed Niko's approach and tried to attack her exposed limbs. Jack had put a stop to that idea by punching the girl in the back of the head, knocking her out before she could properly act. Through process of elimination the ghosts had determined that other ghost bursts saw through any level of invisibility, fortunately there was only one ghost among the warriors on the surface, which Jack had dealt with. The problem arose that the much more common dark types could somehow sense the ghosts' approach. The consensus among the time travelling group had been to just avoid the obvious dark types and let Esrever handle them. A sentiment Niko wholeheartedly agreed with.

As she passed through another burster, Niko and Jack's visible hand stopped. The sound of fists and invisible picks on stone had stopped, and looking around the hands that had been clawing at the ceiling had moved out of the way. Remembering the previous instance of this Jack and Niko fled to the edges of the field and watched as huge ponderous versions of the hands attacking bursters erupted from the darkness to collide with the weakened rock like they had earlier, the arrhythmic pounding knocking away huge sections of ground that most of the bursts had been standing on. From what Niko could remember this "phase" should have had about a fifth of the ground missing. Instead it was closer to half. Her eyes picked out the falling forms of many warriors who had the poor luck to stand on a section of insecure ground that fell in increasing amounts each moment.

Attacking now would likely be a waste of time as any given section of ground might fallout just as soon as their target went down.

"While we've got a moment," Niko started to speak, turning toward Jack's visible hand, and the rest of him flooded into visibility obligingly, "Why are there a half dozen extras of you available to help dig?"

"As a general rule your future selves tend to be superior jerks who think they're better than you and live to mess with you at any opportunity. Like showing up to help set up pranks they know will get vetoed. They're not like your past selves who are fricking idiots and deserve everything they get," Jack explained.

Niko blinked in confusion. "No, I meant, how did you get a half dozen... " Niko stalled looked for the words, "...time clones to help you out?

"Oh, I called in a favor I won from Charity in last week's poker night," Jack explained.

"Poker night?"

"Yeah, Esrever, Adamas, Perle, Charity and I, play poker every couple nights."

"And you play for favors?"

"No, we mostly play for the cash Raven gave the idiots when he got here and for ownership of some stuff. I'm pretty sure Esrever and I owned half that station that the hostards broke. Charity was just 50 short end of last game." Jack shrugged expansively, the only way he could shrug given his lack of shoulders.

"How does 50 big ones convert into free time travel for six of you?" Niko asked, feeling more confused the more information she got, "And why would they even let you buy in on their game?"

"No, 50 bucks was worth eight paradox free trips. I must have used the other two for something else," Jack grumbled, placing his chin in one hand, "Probably to show up to those first two games I didn't remember." Seeing Niko wasn't taking up the conversation again he continued, "When I crashed their game the first time they were expecting me. Apparently I'd already replaced Ben as a regular player twice to their timelines."

"Do I want to know why Ben quit?" Niko asked hesitantly.

"Oh, they kicked him out. Something about there needing to be more to playing poker than just wishful thinking for it to be fun."

Niko half laughed. "I'd think that'd work out pretty well for Ben."

"That was the problem I think," Jack replied, amusement clear in his voice.

Niko shifted to hover a bit closer to the openings appearing in the roof, trying to see who was surviving the continuing loss of ground as she spoke, "Alright. So clearly the picks were to help with the rock, but what was the rest of that stuff for?"

"Ah that," Jack stopped as the blows of the giant fists petered off. "Crap, time to get back to work. I'll tell you later," Jack promised.

"Right," Niko nodded and faded her body out, "I'm going to check on Tad. Can you keep yourself out of trouble?"

"Probably."

Niko stared at him again for a few seconds, her expression hidden by the mask of her burst form before she accepted this and flew off.

--vpchng--

Hovering in the void Jack considered his options as he considered Niko's retreating back. He could try fouling people up the way Andrew had been, with his ability to disappear he might even be able to get some of the fliers that were unaffected by the loss of ground to stand on.

His thoughts were interrupted again by a whispering voice that spoke gibberish at him. Rubbing his temples, Jack again cursed his decision to hijack a tiny bit of unlimited power over time and space. The occasional half remembered bits of insight he'd had still randomly tried to present themselves, though without the requisite power and perception of extra-dimensions it all came out as faux science sounding nonsense. He'd was reasonably good at covering the intrusions, and the spike of pain that tended to accompany them, but since the round had started they'd gotten strange. In addition to becoming more frequent, the gibberish, which had usually been in at least one language he spoke had turned into a guttural sounding gobbledygook. On the bright side at least the new development was free of the head pains.

"SHEDiNYANJA!"

A voice pulled Jack out of his ruminations and he realized he was late for an appointment as all the hands attacking the field suddenly reoriented visibly. Putting a burst of power into his levitation Jack exploded from below ground level, flying among the lines of Esrever's hands as they tracked their target. As he passed the apex of the hands' flight, flying free of their obscuring forms Jack noted that he'd forgotten to return his hands and bust to invisibility. Putting the thought aside, Jack acquired his target, perched in the air in a closing ring of angry Esrever claws.

--vpchng--

Archeops Jack watched as the hands he'd only just identified rose up to reach him, silently cursing his decision to test his hypothesis in the way he had. He prepared an attack to strike back at the coming horde of hurt. If Esrever wanted to be a whiny brat about him mentioning what Esrever had named "the-thing-which-never-happened-and-must-never-be-spoken-of" he'd at least give as good as he got.

Cackles disrupted his preparations and his eyes were drawn to a blotch of dark purple appearing out of the mass of hands. It accelerated, passing the limbs following it and Jack briefly made out a pair of floating hands and a smiling purple face. Then a purple hand smashed into his head. it was immediately followed up by a second. Then a black hand hit him. Then another and another.

--vpchng--

The burst warrior screeched to a halt as his attack carried them effortlessly through the dark hands clawing at them and left them teetering over the edge where ground met nothingness. Unseen and unheard Jack slipped up behind the unsuspecting victim. The burster wheeled their arms and leaned back away from the edge then felt a pair of hands strike them from behind and send them tumbling into the dark infinity below. Jack chuckled and leaned over to try and catch the surprised expression on the other's face. The grinning expression was pushed to its limits then as a line of ice lanced through Jack's form and he was wracked with pain from the attack.

"I know you're there!" Jack turned to find Taz in her Gyarados burst's second form yelling at what, to her, should have seemed like thin air. She was known to have some special qualities but he was fairly certain supernatural sensing ability, and last time Jack had checked Gyarados wasn't a dark type. Taz positioned to unleash another attack and Jack turned with a flinch, pushing his face into visibility.

"STOP," Jack rumbled, the white streaks that represented his eyes flashing.

Taz staggered, her attack stalled as cloudy white lights swam across the surface of her eyes. "I- wuh?" Taz's voice was uncertain as she tried to refocus her vision and her head swung like she was trying to see something hovering around her nose.

"You didn't see, hear, or sense anything," Jack pressed on, the light of his hypnosis flaring again.

"No... I-" Taz stuttered, visibly struggling, "There was..."

"All you saw before the end was the giant..."

One of Jack's hands faded into visibility.

"Black..."

He raised the hand until it fell into Taz's vision and her eyes focused on it, Jacks eye's beginning to shift in hue and still visible between its outstretched fingers.

"Hand."

Like a shot Jack's eyes flared red now and the light jumped along and past his hand to swarm Taz. Knees hit dirt and then the rest as Taz fell over like a doll with her strings cut. On the ground she continued to shiver at the images Jack had put into her.

"I really wanted to avoid doing that," Jack murmured, watching as one of the black hands reach out of the hole to collect the fitfully sleeping woman, "It's actually kind of sad how easy it is to get you to dream of dark and terrible things attacking you." Jack began to sink into the ground then stopped when the first hand to reach Taz started pick her up.

"Careful of her leg," he snapped, vaguely recalling there was something wrong with it and assuming that being picked up by it the way the hand was trying to would likely not be good for it. The hand hesitated momentarily before continuing what it was doing, the moment though allowed time for other hands to latch on to Taz and heave her up without suddenly putting all her weight on any one part.

Jack huffed and finished sinking down through what remained of the ground. This section of the field was empty and he could see from here Niko and Tad working together to sneakily cripple the past Niko. Below he passed a massive knot of hands, fully a dozen times his own size, slowly swelling up and preparing to rise to the surface.

"You guys don't need to bother," Jack told the aberration of limbs, he thumbed over his shoulder at Taz's unconscious form being born down into the darkness, "I kinda had to do it myself."

The hands drooped and a new voice chimed in, "Does it disturb anyone else that they seem pretty intelligent for hands?"

"No," Jack said idly, turning to where Andrew hovered behind him and returning to the full level of visibility he favored, "But I've known a few Esrever constructs so that might just be me."

Andrew just grunted and watched as the tangle of massive hands started trying to undo the knot they'd gotten themselves into in the name of good presentation.

"Wait." Andrew stopped and looked at Jack, a note of annoyance in his voice. "I thought Esrever hog tied you and threw you through the exit portal and closed it behind you."

"He probably did," Jack replied, bending to help get the hand monster separated back into a bunch of separate limbs, "And if I'm any good at my job the first me he saw was my oldest version."

"How are we going to get back if can't take the portal," Andrew elaborated his grievance.

"Oh," Jack hummed and scratched his chin. "Well I was planning to go the long way either way. You could always come that way. With ghost forms we should be able to get back to the tree ahead of most everyone else without incident. I have to do it six times," Jack explained

Andrew sighed and followed Jack as he flew into the darkness below.

--pvchng--

Jack grunted as he skidded to a stop face first at the feet of the four legendary bursts who were still loitering around the bottom of the tree. They looked down at him with various looks of curiosity and annoyance. For his part Jack just wriggled around until he could face them properly.

"Check this out, ghost ropes," Jack said, gesturing with his still floating hands at the ropes that apparently kept him from going anywhere or his hands from doing much at all. "Esrever you have all the coolest stuff."

"What did you do?" Emet asked, sounding slightly aggrieved.

"He punched himself," a voice drifted down from the tree. The group turned to see the rest of the ghost team floating down from where they'd chosen to hang out until they were supposed to have gotten back.

"He punched his past self," Niko added, clearing the confused looks off several faces.

The legendaries whirled on Jack who tried to look sheepish beneath the gleeful mask the burst made of his face. Silence reigned as the disparate parties tried to formulate a response.

"COME TO ME MY CLOUDY MINIONS!" Jack screamed to the sky. In an instant he was obscured under a flock of pink birds.

Jacks screams continued, "Oh. Ow. Gah, Don't touch that. Oh! That's tender. Ouch. Ack. Hey! Alright! I'm sorry I said that about your fat queen. I didn't know she was your queen! OW!"

It took several minutes for the bursters to manage to disperse the "pink assassins" as Jack referred to them. Despite the constant assault he seemed no worse for wear.

"Back on subject?" Emet asked, arching and eyebrow and looking only very faintly amused. Behind her Ben was still choking on giggles. Esrever had slipped into some kind of bliss induced coma in minute two of Jack's pained cries and Charity had yet to be able to snap him out of it.

"Right," Jack said, sitting up, his bonds had vanished with the birds, "Something about punching was it? You know I didn't remember that beating BEFORE I involved myself in it."

"I believe it's more the principle of the act," Emet answered, "You were told to avoid potential paradoxes if at all possible."

"So no one is going to mention the half dozen other Jacks that he brought with him?" Andrew asked.

Jack shushed Andrew with a gesture. "I had a guy to deal with that. Don't worry about it."

Emet looked at the short exchange suspiciously before moving on, "I think the crux is that Jack endangered stability by encountering himself in an instance where he didn't have to."

There was a moment of consideration from Jack before he answered the accusation, "Alright, I'll apologize and do whatever you guys want to make it up to you." Emet and the other legendaries began to relax but Jack kept speaking, "IF you can tell me that if you were offered the opportunity to punch your past self in the face just after he did something monumentally stupid, that you wouldn't be at all tempted."