The Outer Rift battlefield hadn't healed.
Dimensions didn't heal the same way worlds did. Grass didn't regrow. Trees didn't sprout back to life. Nothing had roots here—not time, not matter, not meaning. Everything hovered in some unstable state between existing and wanting to collapse into nothing.
But Builder Bots?
Builder Bots made it worse before they made it better.
One bot shuffled past Jimmy on spindly legs, dropped a glowing cube onto the cracked stone, and chirped proudly:
"Builder."
The cube exploded into scaffolding.
Jimmy jumped, clutched his chest, and nearly fell off the half-repaired ridge he had been standing on.
"Can you please—PLEASE—give me a thirty-second warning before blowing up reality? No? Are we not doing that?"
The bot blinked two glowing blue circles where its eyes should've been.
"Builder."
"Great," Jimmy muttered. "That clears nothing up."
The Rift stretched endlessly around him. Floating islands rotated slowly overhead. Rotting battlefield debris hovered on unfinished gravitational loops. The crater from the Wolf King's last roar still flickered with ghost fire.
Less than two days before the tournament began.
Less than two days before the truce ended.
And Jimmy was still fixing this place.
Another Builder Bot plodded by, carrying four beams of hardlight under one arm like they were toothpicks.
"Builder."
Jimmy sighed. "I know, buddy. That's why you're here."
The bot stopped, tilted its head.
"Builder?"
"Yes, builder," Jimmy said, patting its spherical metal head. "Keep… doing… that."
It trundled off contentedly.
Jimmy rubbed his temples and looked around.
The battlefield was being pieced back together—barely. Broken terrain was welded with dimensional anchors. New platforms had been added to stabilize gravity pockets. The air didn't vibrate as violently as it had last week.
But the wolf hybrids?
They noticed the changes.
And they didn't like it.
Across the Rift, perched along jagged cliffs and hovering stones, the Wolf King's army watched with unblinking eyes. Some crouched low, tails stiff. Some paced. Some growled in deep, rhythmic pulses that echoed across the dimension.
They weren't attacking.
Not yet.
But they hated the sound of rebuilding.
Hated the slow return to order.
Hated the flickering lights of the Builder Bots working.
Jimmy checked the timer on his wrist: 44 hours, 17 minutes until tournament gates fully opened.
The truce would hold until then.
After that?
Carnage.
Probably starting with him.
He kicked a loose stone over the edge of the floating platform. It fell, then drifted upward, then sideways, then dissolved into mist. Physics here were optional at best.
"Director Jimmy!"
A Buddy lieutenant jogged over, armor dusty and dented.
"We've completed reinforcement on the west ridge. Shield coils at forty percent, but stable."
Jimmy nodded. "Good. What about the northern fault line?"
"Still unstable. Builder Bots are working on it, but—"
"Builder," a small voice squeaked behind them.
Jimmy turned.
Two Builder Bots were dragging a dimensional rift closed using glowing, translucent rope.
"You are… terrifying," Jimmy whispered.
The bots dropped the rope, saluted with mechanical arms, and cheerfully chirped in unison:
"Builder."
Then both exploded into a shower of nanites that reassembled into a stairway.
Jimmy yelped and jumped sideways.
The lieutenant sighed. "Sir… you have to stop reacting that way."
"No, see, you say that," Jimmy replied, "but these things keep detonating without warning! I am not built for this! I am built for paperwork and eating waffles!"
He paused.
"Speaking of which… has anyone brought waffles to the front lines? Maybe? Anyone? Please?"
No one responded.
Jimmy threw his hands into the air.
"I lead an army and can't get a single waffle delivered. Tragedy."
The lieutenant tried very hard not to laugh.
Jimmy looked out across the Rift again.
Wolf hybrids prowled in the distance. The Wolf King himself wasn't visible, but Jimmy felt him—like a heat that pressed against the back of his skull. It wasn't killing intent. Not right now.
It was boredom.
The Wolf King hated the truce.
Jimmy hated the truce.
But they both needed it.
Another Builder Bot waddled past and scanned a shattered platform. A hologram flickered as it categorized damage.
"Builder…"
Jimmy leaned in. "Yes? Can you give me a status update on—?"
"Builder."
Jimmy threw his clipboard. "Fine! I'll figure it out myself!"
The bot happily began reconstructing an entire support pillar with glowing hardlight bricks.
Jimmy stared.
"I'm convinced these bots are trolling me."
The uneasy quiet didn't last.
Nothing ever did here.
A strange ripple flickered across the eastern ridge—subtle, faint, barely noticeable unless one had been watching the Rift for weeks. Jimmy noticed instantly.
"Lieutenant!"
The nearest soldier snapped to attention.
"That pulse wasn't Builder-tech. That was… that was something else."
The lieutenant nodded and tapped a display on his arm.
"Scanning now."
The results came back with a low drum-like beep.
UNREGISTERED CHI SIGNATURE DETECTED
PATTERN: CORRUPTED-CODE VARIANT
SOURCE: UNKNOWN
Jimmy's stomach dropped.
"Corrupted-code…" he muttered. "We had that exact signature last week when Bones vaporized Hallowjaw."
The lieutenant nodded grimly. "Yes sir."
Jimmy frowned.
"There shouldn't be anything out here using Bones' energy besides—"
He stopped.
The lieutenant swallowed.
"You don't think…?"
Jimmy whispered:
"Dark Buddies."
As if summoned by the words, two soldiers jogged toward him.
"Sir! We've got a situation!"
"Oh good," Jimmy said. "Because today was going way too smooth."
The soldiers led him behind a reconstruction zone where Builder Bots were stacking crystalline pylons.
There, sitting casually on the edge of a floating slab of rock, were two Buddy soldiers… speaking with two armored figures wearing unfamiliar plating.
Jimmy's blood ran cold.
The armor was dark.
The seams glowed green.
The helmets had sharp angles.
The energy was unmistakably corrupted.
Dark Buddies.
Actively recruiting.
Openly.
On his front lines.
Jimmy stormed toward them. "HEY!"
The Buddy soldiers jerked upright.
The Dark Buddy agents turned their helmets slowly, as though the motion wasn't powered by muscles, but by gears.
"Director Jimmy," one said smoothly, voice filtered and cold. "A pleasure."
Jimmy glared at the Buddy soldiers first.
"You two. Are you willingly speaking with unknown hostiles?"
One soldier stammered, "Sir, they said— they told us they—"
"We offered them choice," the Dark Buddy replied calmly. "Not allegiance. Not threat."
Jimmy's eye twitched.
"What choice?"
The agent stood and gestured around them.
"Your Director has you holding a truce that leads to your slaughter. The Wolf King prepares. Bones moves in the shadows. The dragons rise. Where do you fit into this story? Pawns?"
Jimmy stepped forward.
"No one under my command is a pawn."
The agent tilted their helmet.
Even behind the visor, Jimmy felt a sneer.
"You send builders to fix a dimension that will be drenched in blood within hours. You patch walls that will be broken. You prepare soldiers who will be eaten. And you call yourself… commander?"
Jimmy bared his teeth. "You have thirty seconds to leave."
The Dark Buddy's voice dipped lower.
"Why send children to die in the Arena's shadow? Why follow a leader who can't protect you? Why—"
Jimmy grabbed the agent by the chest plate.
"Fifteen."
The agent's visor flickered dangerously. For a moment Jimmy thought the thing would attack. But instead, it stepped back with mechanical calm.
"Your time is ending, Director. And when it does… do you truly believe Danny or Swift or Jake will save you?"
Jimmy didn't blink.
"I believe in my people. And we don't break truce."
The Dark Buddy tilted its head.
"We do."
It stepped into a swirling tear of corrupted energy.
The other agent followed.
Both vanished.
Jimmy stood alone with his soldiers.
One of them looked shaken.
"Sir… what if they're right? What if the Wolf King… what if none of us stand a chance?"
Jimmy inhaled slowly.
He put a hand on the soldier's shoulder.
"Listen to me carefully. We've survived worse. We've fought worse. We've cleaned up messes that would make lesser universes cry. We're Buddies. We stand. That's what we do."
"Sir… yes sir."
"And if the Wolf King charges early, and Bones breaks in, and the Dark Buddies come knocking?"
Jimmy clapped the soldier's shoulder.
"Then we throw waffles at them and run."
The soldier stared.
Jimmy patted his arm again.
"Don't worry. That was a joke. Mostly."
He turned away.
The Rift wind howled—low, eerie, sounding far too close to a growl.
Jimmy looked into the distance where wolf hybrids paced in the shadows.
The truce was a thread.
A thin, fraying thread.
Builder Bots chirped cheerfully behind him.
"Builder!"
Jimmy sighed deeply.
"If we survive the next 48 hours," he muttered, "I'm taking a vacation. Somewhere with no dimensional instability. Or wolves. Or stone-eating demon skeletons. Or… builder bots."
"Builder," a bot chirped from his left.
Jimmy screamed.
He wasn't ready for this.
No one was ready for this.
But he had no choice.
He looked across the Rift, toward the unseen Wolf King.
"Tournament's coming, you furry nightmare.
Try not to break anything until then."
The hybrids growled low in answer.
The builder bots exploded into a new platform behind him.
Jimmy sighed again.
Only 44 hours remained.
And this was the calm.