“This is not good… Not good at all…” Sooyoung mumbled as she saw Tiffany turn deathly pale and even coughed out a mouthful of blood. The spear in her hand was glowing blue, with a tinge of red.

Sooyoung could feel the power radiating from the spear and she knew she would need quite a fair bit of force and concentration to overpower and take control of Jessica, if she had too. “Soul Reserves… RELEASE!” Sooyoung whispered. She immediately felt the full force of her entire soul and struggled slightly to contain it, in order not to harm the rest.

Seeing this scene unfold in front of her, Krystal got worried and walked up to Tiffany and started shaking her. “Tiffany unni! Get a hold of yourself! Don’t let Sica unnie go rouge! I know you can do it! You must… Sica unni… You must hang on too! Please don’t go rouge…” Krystal shouted, tears of anxiety flowing down her cheeks like a waterfall.

Meanwhile, in Jessica’s icy world…

As Tiffany was about to breathe her last breath, her life flashed before her eyes. To be more precise, her life with Jessica flashed before her eyes…

[Flashback Start]

"You, my weapon? Sure, no problem, I guess I need you around to keep my flames in check, eh? Tiffany agreed, flashing Jessica another of her eye smiles. "YAY!!! And I need you be the warmth in my icy world! We're gonna be the BEST partners, forever!!!" Jessica exclaimed, hugging Tiffany tight. "This is going to be the start of a great partnership" both girls thought, as they hugged each other.

[Flashback End]

“That’s it! Sica wants me to be the warmth in her icy world! But how can I do that? I’m nearly dead…” Tiffany thought as she drifted into another flashback.

[Flashback Start]

Yonghwa smiled and continued: “First, soul align with your weapons and feel the connection opening between you and your weapon. Through this connection you can know what each other is thinking and feeling. You can also communicate with your weapon through your mind, so your enemies won’t know what you’re planning to do with your weapon. Try this first.”

“Let’s see what Sica thinks of me…” Tiffany thought as she soul aligned with her weapon.

One of Jessica’s thoughts that caught Tiffany’s attention: “Tiffany is sooo hot, she could probably melt my heart and boil it! Hehe…”

[Flashback End]

“Ahh…I see…I just need to be myself…” Tiffany thought, smiling to herself. She focused very last ounce of strength inside her to produce the warmth that would melt her partner’s heart. She thought of nothing but Jessica and how much she loved her.

A warm, pinkish glow enveloped Tiffany and the ice around her started to melt. As Tiffany concentrated harder, the glow turned red hot and the ice immediately vaporized into steam. Soon, she was free and she headed to where her partner was.

Since, a while ago, Jessica had stopped walking. She just stood there crying and waiting for Tiffany’s death, so that she could unleash her wrath on the world. She thought: “I feel like killing that Sooyoung first. She’s the one who barged into our lives and ruined it. I feel like killing Taeyeon and Sunny. They are disgustingly cute. I feel…Warm???”

Jessica was puzzled. She wondered why she was feeling warm. Then she felt arms wrapping themselves around her waist and a warm body pressing against her back. Jessica smiled, as she knew her partner had made it. “I was right after all…I knew you would understand…” Jessica thought happily, all thoughts of ending the world in ice or killing anyone, gone from her mind.

“Sica… I’m sorry I nearly forgot that you wanted me to be the warmth in your icy world… I promise that from now on, I’ll always keep you warm and that we will be the best partners forever!” Tiffany whispered into Jessica’s ears.

Jessica smiled and turned around to face her partner, playfully punching Tiffany a few times. “How dare you scare me like that! But never mind… Now our bond is complete and will be together forever!!!” Jessica exclaimed excitedly, while smiling brightly and hugging Tiffany tightly. “Now we can also soul resonate, so why don’t we try that out?” Jessica added on.

“Okay!” Tiffany replied, giving Jessica another of her heart stopping eye smiles. Jessica giggled and dissipated into the air, her soul returning to the spear in Tiffany’s hand. A bright flash of light blinded Tiffany and when it died down, she was back in the real world.

Everyone let out a sigh of relief when they saw Tiffany’s skin turning back to a healthy hue and the spear stopped glowing reddish-blue. After that, blue light enveloped Tiffany and her weapon and Tiffany opened her eyes.

Sooyoung then muttered: “Soul Reserves… SEAL!” She smiled, locking away most of her soul for emergency use. Having such a powerful soul can be a problem, as just the force of it could kill the person she stood next too, if the person wasn’t strong enough. “Good thing you managed to stop Jessica before she went rouge! I wouldn’t want anyone to die under my watch.” Sooyoung told Tiffany, as she summoned and temporarily revived thirty souls to fight Tiffany.

“I think you all should back off for now. I have a feeling that Jessica’s Soul Resonating state power release will have a huge area of effect. I don’t want anyone to be caught in it.” Tiffany warned the rest. Sooyoung nodded and brought everyone to a safe distance away, before signalling Tiffany to carry on.

The thirty souls circled around Tiffany and provided no route of escape for her. They screamed a battle cry and charged.

Tiffany stared at them calmly and told Jessica: “Let’s do it!” Then she yelled: “SOUL RESONANCE!!! Absolute Zero!!!” A huge blizzard raged, as the surrounding temperature dropped to zero Kelvin. As Tiffany slammed Screech of the Chilling Spear into the ground, a truly chilling screech was heard as everything that was connected to the ground, within a radius of one kilometre, was frozen solid. Tiffany paused for a while, surveying her surroundings, before she pulled her weapon out from the ground. At the instant her weapon was removed, everything that was frozen disintegrated into nothingness, the blizzard stopped raging and the surrounding temperature returned to normal. The thirty poor souls had stood no chance and were dismissed by Sooyoung soon after.

“Sica! I think you’re as cool as a…” Tiffany started, as Jessica turned back to her human form.

“As a what?” Jessica asked innocently.

“As a… Cucumber!” Tiffany replied as she stuck out her tongue at Jessica, before running off for her dear life.

Jessica, being slow as always, took a while to process the information and when she did, she was in HellSica mode. “YAH!!! TIFFANY HWANG MIYOUNG!!! GET BACK HERE!!! YOU’RE SOOO DEAD WHEN I CATCH YOU!!!” Jessica shrieked at the top of her lungs and sprinted off after her partner. Unfortunately, she was no match for her partner’s blazing speed…

Sooyoung rolled her eyes and stared at the sky. Krystal started cheering Jessica on, only to earn a glare from Sooyoung. She mumbled an apology and decided that it would be better to make friends with the ants crawling around her feet. Taeyeon facepalmed herself, shaking her head at the childishness of the pair. “I might seem dorky at times, but that’s just because I wish to act my own age…I know when to be serious, but obviously these two girls don’t…Since I’m the leader, I guess I should do something…”

In a flash, Taeyeon warped her way to Tiffany and kicked her hard in the . Tiffany ended up face first on the ground, her hurting like hell. Just then, Jessica caught up and suffered the same plight as her partner. Taeyeon folded her arms across her chest and frowned at the two girls, who were getting up and massaging their butts.

“As the leader of the Vanguard of Death, I think I have the right to reprimand both of you, even though I might be younger. Firstly, we are having a training session here, so please take it seriously. You know that the evil forces are gaining strength much faster than expected, so we also have to do the same. AND we can’t do that if you two are fooling around! Tiffany, you have to know when’s the right time to tease and joke around, while Jessica, you have to learn how to keep your cool. Understand?!!” Taeyeon spoke in a gentle, but commanding tone. Jessica and Tiffany bowed their heads in shame, they knew that what Taeyeon said was right and they were embarrassed that they had to be told off by someone younger than them.

Sooyoung nodded approvingly at Taeyeon and gave her a pat on the head. “That’s why you’re the leader!” Sooyoung said cheerfully. “Now Seohyun, it’s your turn. Hope you can win a one versus two match against an angel and a demon… Anyways… Good Luck Have Fun!” Sooyoung chuckled. Seohyun just nodded, as she closed her eyes in concentration and held her ‘S’ shaped double edged sword horizontally in front of her chest.

“Well…We are the children of the God of Sleep, and you two unnis are called Twin Blades of Eternal Slumber, so I guess you two unnis symbolize sleep.” Seohyun thought, before clearing her mind of everything else, but sleep.

When Seohyun opened her eyes, she saw that she was in a world filled with fluffy white clouds and nice, comfy beds on one side and constant lightning strikes and black thunder clouds on the other. Standing on the side with fluffy white clouds was Yoona and Yuri was standing on the other side.

“Hi SeoBaby! Welcome to our world! In here we can release our power even in human form, but you can still use the blade in your hands like normal. The blade is now devoid of our souls, so you’ll have to defeat us before we return to it!” Yoona and Yuri told Seohyun.

Seohyun nodded, still wondering how her unnis could say the same things at exactly the same time. She was still thinking of what to do, when her unnis shouted: “Sleep!” Instinctively, she shouted: “Insomnia!” Her unnis smiled and said: “Not bad… You managed to counter that in time. However, now you can’t use the ‘Sleep’ power release, as that would mean stopping the ‘Insomnia’ power release, which would make you fall asleep.”

Seohyun gritted her teeth in annoyance and charged head on, slashing left and right. However, no matter how hard she tried, Yoona and Yuri always seemed to be able to dodge at the last minute. Overhead, backhand, , sidestroke, spin around, uppercut, , backhand. Seohyun tried everything, but she never seemed to be able to hit her partners, her blade seemingly passes through them harmlessly, or misses by an inch.

“This is a nightmare…How am I supposed to defeat them?” Seohyun thought, as she continued trying to inflict some form of damage onto her partners. “Wait a minute…This IS a nightmare! Wake up Seohyun! WAKE UP!!!” Seohyun thought as she tried to wake herself up.

Suddenly, the world in front of her began to crack and fragmentize, finally disintegrating away, while revealing another different yet similar world…

“Not bad… You caught on quite fast! You’re SOO smart!!! We’re proud of you SeoBaby!” Yuri praised Seohyun.

“You’re just saying that because she saw through your nightmare illusion that fast…” Yoona teased Yuri. Yuri pouted and looked away. Yoona stuck her tongue out at her twin and yelped in surprise, as she felt a blade stab her through her heart. Yuri turned a little too late and was impaled by the blade as well. It was a fatal blow straight through her stomach. Seohyun smiled, wiping off the blood that had splattered onto her face and stepped back.

Much to her astonishment, Yoona and Yuri just threw the heads back and laughed. Then, the twins looked at their dongsaeng and smirked: “Look carefully who you stabbed…” Seohyun blinked and to her horror, she saw Yonghwa lying on the floor with a pool of blood surrounding him, blood that was flowing out from a hole stabbed through his chest. Seohyun coughed up some blood and looked down. “What the…I stabbed Yonghwa in the heart and myself in the stomach? How can that be possible? I remember stabbing Yoona and Yuri…”Seohyun thought as she collapsed onto the floor, blood draining from her at an alarming rate.

“Think happy thoughts! Need to regenerate! Why am I not regenerating? It can’t be, Yonghwa is immortal, I couldn’t have killed him…” Seohyun thought as she started to lose her grip on life. “This must be another nightmare…I need to wake up!!!” Seohyun thought, as she tried to wake up, but she was too weak. At the last moment, before she slipped into complete oblivion, she managed to gather and bring forth the full force of her soul to wake herself up and luckily it worked.

She stood up, panting, as she stared at her partners who were just standing there and smiling at her. “Great job! You managed to pull yourself back from the brink of death! My nightmarish illusion is powerful enough to kill you, if you had died in the nightmare, you know…” Yuri praised Seohyun, once again.

“You evil twin! You just had to change my dream illusion into your nightmare… Can’t you let her be happy for a while more?” Yoona pouted at her twin.

“Hey, I did that in the interest of maintaining the flow of the illusion. If I randomly changed your dream into my nightmare, SeoBaby will have caught on and break the illusion immediately!” Yuri stuck her tongue out at her twin and they stared daggers at each other.

“They always find time to argue with each other…Aren’t we in the middle of a fight, why would they argue in front of me? It’s like they are creating openings for me to attack them…This can’t be right…Ahh…I get it now…This is one of Yoona unni’s dream illusion isn’t it?” Seohyun thought, as she carefully analysed the situation and then blinked her eyes a few times to attempt to wake up and break the illusion.

At the third blink of her eyes, the illusion broke but this time, the world looked different. Yoona’s half radiated an aura of bliss, but looked dull and gloomy. Yuri’s half, on the other hand, radiated a protective and calming aura, but looked like a torture chamber.

Seohyun smiled, knowing that this was what her weapons’ world really looked like, and fully understanding what her weapon’s utmost desires were. She smiled at her unnis and willed the double-edged sword in her hand to split back into twin swords. What she did next, nearly gave her unnis heart attacks…

Seohyun thought of the happy times she had with her beloved unnis and with these thoughts, she reversed her grip on both swords and stabbed herself in the stomach with both swords. Blood trickled out of her self-inflicted wound and she coughed out a mouthful of blood. She continued smiling, not feeling any pain and was regenerating fast enough so that her wound was not life-threatening.

Still, it was enough to trigger the protective instincts of her unnis, who immediately rushed to her side and asked: “You babo! What do you think you’re doing?!! Committing suicide isn’t going to help you defeat us!!!”

Seohyun giggled slightly and said: “Yoona unni… Now I understand… You always want others to be happy, even at the cost of your own, so you put on a happy front all the time, even if you feel the opposite. I want you to know that we’re sisters, so feel free to share your sorrows with Yuri unni and me. That’s what sisters are for; we go through happiness and sadness together, as one. Yuri unni… I understand you too… You rather let yourself get hurt than see your loved ones get hurt, so you absorb our pain and keep it to yourself, only releasing it to your enemies. I want you to know that I’m willing, and I’m sure that Yoona unni is also willing to share the pain with you. As I said, we’re sisters; so we should go through bliss and pain together, as one. And I’m not committing suicide… I just wanted to get your attention and share your burdens with you two, my beloved unnis!”

With that, Seohyun pulled her swords out of herself and the wound closed almost immediately. Her unnis hugged her tight, tears of joy flowing. “Our SeoBaby has grown up… She’s right, we’re all in this together…As one…Forever…” Yoona and Yuri both thought at the same time.

“Looks like you win then! Our illusions failed to trick you, but your little act of faking a suicide attempt got us… Damn… How can we the Ultimate Prankster Duo get tricked by our own baby sister?” Yuri pouted and then smiled at Seohyun.

“So since you have shown us that you fully understand us, our bond is complete and we will be together forever!!!” Yoona exclaimed excitedly, while clapping her hands. Yuri chuckled at the sight of her choding twin.

“So now I’ll be able to soul resonate with you two, right?” Seohyun asked her unnis and they both happily nodded. Following, they dissipated into the air and their souls returned to the twins swords that Seohyun was holding. Seohyun was blinded by a flash of bright light and was back in the real world after it subsided.

Watching Seohyun from the real world was like riding a rollercoaster. For some moments, she turned deathly pale, but for others she was almost glowing pink. Finally, black and white light engulfed her weapons and her and she was back, safe and sound. Sooyoung released a sigh of relief, as everyone had successfully achieved soul resonance with their respective weapons.

Once again, she summoned thirty souls and temporarily revived them to fight Seohyun. After the rest evacuated to a safe spot, Seohyun raised her double-edged S-shaped sword into the air and screamed: “SOUL RESONANCE!!! R.I.P.!!!”

White lightning arced from the white blade and bounced from one random target to another, while black lightning arced from the black blade and bounced from one random target to another as well, spreading until everyone was hit by either lightning, or both.

Those hit by white lightning only, collapsed to the floor with a smile on their face and rested in peace, before returning to their soul forms. Those hit by black lightning only, screamed in pain as their flesh and bones were ripped apart slowly, joint by joint, their organs ripped out one by one, blood vessels exploding one after another, finally collapsing to the floor in a messy, gruesome heap and rested in pieces before returning to their soul forms.

Those hit by both the black and white lightning, however, rested in peace as their body was turned into a sweet potato and they returned to their soul forms. Seohyun, seeing the sweet potatoes, went crazy. Her eyes lit up, as she carelessly flung her weapons to one side and screamed: “Goguma!!! I’M COMING!!!”

“AHHHH!!!” Yuri and Yoona shouted as they spiralled across the sky and landed on the ground hard, with Yuri cushioning Yoona’s fall as always. They looked at they dongsaeng happily, devouring the sweet potatoes one by one, so technically, the souls hit by both lightning, rested in peace and then pieces…

“Ahh…The sweet potatoes must have been boiled by the intense heat of the lightning!” Seohyun thought, as she happily wolfed down the sweet potatoes. “Fighting sure makes me hungry…”

As Yoona sat on Yuri, Yuri wrapped her arms around Yoona’s waist, rested her chin on Yoona’s shoulder, pouted and whispered to Yoona: “Yoona… Our SeoBaby has grown up; she has Yonghwa and her sweet potatoes… She doesn’t need us anymore… Let’s elope!”

Yoona laughed at her twin’s suggestion and replied: “Yuri, you dummy! Are you jealous of mere sweet potatoes again? SeoBaby can always find more sweet potatoes, but she only has both of us as sisters. Don’t you get it? We’ll always be together, forever!”

Yuri pouted again and whined: “But I just wanna spend more time with you, alone…”

Yoona giggled and replied: “We could ask Seohyun to move to another room, then we can do all we want at night… Alone… Together…” Yuri giggled at the thought and nodded her head.

Before the two of them could go on fantasizing any further, Seohyun had finished gobbling down five sweet potatoes and remembered her unnis’ existence, so she guiltily ran up to them and apologized, using her aegyo to beg for forgiveness. Her unnis had no choice but to forgive the absolutely cute baby sister. After another group hug, they got up and rejoined the group.

Sooyoung declared the training session over and Hyoyeon came to inform them that dinner was ready. This time, she made sure Sooyoung and Yoona were not allowed into the dining room until the rest were done eating. The two shikshins were extremely unhappy with that, but they grudgingly accepted the arrangement as they knew it was fair, although they would never admit it.

Meanwhile, elsewhere…

“It’s time for the world to fall into darkness… FOREVER!!!” An evil laughter reverberated throughout the castle and the surrounding forest, causing birds to scatter away.