"Sweet-Face!" came a cry.

  Snap had just landed at the corner of the East-Building rooftop.

  It hadn't been Snap however that had shouted Sweet-Face's name – instead it was one of Sweet-Face's men, who didn't look a day older than sixteen, flailing in Snap's iron grip.

  Snap had her hand at the gang member's throat, as if she were about to rip it open with her claws.

  Snap's skin had lost its colour, and her eyes were eight-ball shiny and black, and her anime-esque and raccoonish face was set in a furious grimace. In her free hand she held the cylindrical fish-tank looking device which Marbelle had taken from Sweet-Face's men.

  "Enough!" Snap shouted.

  "You dare get in the way of our fight?!" Sweet-Face yelled at Snap, his own marshmallow-covered face fixed with melted fury.

  "Fights over!" Snap yelled, "You won."

  "No!" Sweet-Face yelled above the ever-increasing cold-storm maelstrom, "D' game is not ov'ah until both d'ese boys are dead!"

  Snap sank her claws into the gang-member's shoulder as she yanked him to the edge of the roof.

  The boy's cry of pain matched the shrieking cold-storm winds, which had become so strong that it was as if a tornado had formed in the middle of the school playground.

  "Boss!" the boy yelled desperately.

  The strength of the cold-storm winds had become intense enough that, if Snap were to let go of Sweet-Face's foot-soldier, he would find himself flung into the swirling vortex.

  "I won't stop with him," Snap yelled, gesturing to the boy in her grip, "I'll kill every last one of your men! Or do you need me to prove it?!"

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  Snap released her grip for a moment, before grabbing hold of the foot-soldier again. It was enough to prove that she was the anchor keeping the young man from being lifted off his feet and into the vortex.

  "Stop!" Sweet-Face yelled, "Your side stole from me! Give back what you stole and then I will do as you say!"

  Throughout all this, it was becoming increasingly difficult to stay awake. Heavy shadows grew in my periphery vision, forcing my eyes into a half-lidded stare. Worse, I could feel the vortex pulling at me, dragging me forward little by little, and I didn't have the strength to fight it.

  Snap looked at the device in her grip, and I saw her come to a decision.

  Before Snap could throw it over to Sweet-Face however, two new figures fell into view from above.

  Newly standing before Snap, with their arms raised and ready to fight, were Bramble and Emulsion-Man.

  Seeing them was a little like seeing Halloween decorations without their night time mystique, but it made my heart leap with joy to see them.

  "Beyond this place of wrath and tears!" Emulsion-Man shouted in his vintage voice, "Looms but the horror of the shade! And yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find, me unafraid!"

  "R-ah!" Sweet-Face rasped, readying his candy-canes as if to fight not only Snap, but Bramble and Emulsion-Man too.

  "I will go, but only af'ta you give me my Mousetrap!" yelled Sweet-Face.

  "No," Bramble rasped in her supernaturally wicked sounding voice.

  After a momentary look at me, Sweet-Face came to his decision.

  "Okay! Give him to me now!"

  "We have your word?!" yelled Emulsion-Man.

  "My word is everything!" yelled Sweet-Face, "It is d'ese losers who do not keep d'ere word!"

  After several exchanged looks, Snap handed the terrified young man in her grip over to Emulsion-Man. In turn, Emulsion-Man held Sweet-Face's foot-soldier with an iron grip, and walked him across the rooftop until finally shoving him into Sweet-Face's open arms.

  "D'is is not over!" yelled Sweet-Face.

  And he set his attention directly on Snap, and yelled, "I will make you pay everything you are!"

  And with that, Sweet-Face, with his foot-soldier held tightly to his chest, bounded away from the East-Building rooftop.

  A moment later, from further below, above the still shrieking cold-storm winds, Sweet-Face's power-enhanced voice boomed across the playground.

  "We go! Go now! Back to Larkston!"

  It had taken every last bit of mental willpower and physical strength left in me to stay awake. With Sweet-Face gone, I quickly lost the battle to keep my eyes open.

  The last thing I was aware of was Snap racing towards me.