The combat against the Brotherhood goons was intense – at last count, Aika had put the score at just over a dozen downed before they stopped coming.  She held her stance, looking to see if there were more, like Miku might have suggested.  No sooner had she said that; an alert popped up in her field of vision.  She recognized it – it was the same alert they had gotten twice before, when a stage boss was about to appear in the level.<br/><br/>“There is someone coming.  Get ready,” she warned Miku (since Joy would have gotten the same warning).  Emerging from the main corridor (that was, the one directly opposite the door they’d broken down to make their entrance) was a bigger, tougher looking man with the same usual Fang attire.  “You are not welcome here!”  And then the fight began, with the man charging Miku in a rush.  He was quick, to be sure, but two of the Exalted – Joy and Miku – charged in turn, Solar radiance suffusing Joy as she struck the Fang underboss with the strength of the Thunderclap Rush, disrupting his otherwise practiced stance.  Miku was just a hair of a second behind Joy, slapping an electrified hand into the boss as her own Racing Lightning Method impacted the foe, dealing further damage to him, knocking him backwards and into the wall near where he’d emerged from the back.  And to round out the first exchange, Aika lined up with him, careful to avoid hitting her two friends with what was coming next.  Joy and Miku had seen this move before already, and they could tell what was coming from the way motes of color were swirling towards the Tennin’s hand.  “Dragon Emperor Strike!”  She hurled the fist-sized globe of color to the floor, where it exploded into a rolling wave of rainbow energy that swamped the Fang underboss and slammed him up against the wall for more pain.  Joy and Aika would be able to see that their combined attack had managed to drain an entire health bar from the boss (there were no longer four stars above his head, merely three), and drain the next one down to the green-yellow section of it.<br/><br/>The boss sank backwards onto the wall, but seemed to recover himself in time to take on the trio of women.  Joy attempted to make use of his state to blast him with her own move – the Heavenly Storm – as Aika had, but the aerial kick he pulled off took him over the shot, and he managed to tag the Solar Exalt for a single section of her HP bar.  Aika had done similarly, leaping into the air with an axe kick that connected with the Fang’s collarbone; they heard the thud of the impact, but no snap that signified the breaking of bones – this guy was tough!  It took more off the boss’ bar, but it wasn’t complete until Miku’s Dragon Cannon Rush (she’d spent the time the boss had used to attack, as well as Aika’s counterattack, summoning the winds necessary to pull off the move), which had her soaring in the air, hitting the Fang for a knee strike that practically folded him in half before the high-force winds surrounding her took their turn to batter the boss back down to the floor, landed.  That drained the rest of his bar, which refilled as the second of four stars vanished from above.<br/><br/>Aika helped Joy up as the Fang underboss grabbed at his shirt, and yelled: “UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH~,” ripping it clean off and revealing that he had a rather intricate and stylized snake tattooed on his torso.  The tattoo glowed brightly and then dimmed, though it remained illuminated.  He then rushed Aika – Joy attempted to intercept him with an elbow slash, but such was the speed he had now that he managed to get right by her as well as Aika’s own attempt to counter-rush.  She took the hit, and on top of that, the snake seemingly came to life and bit down on her right hand shoulder, firmly staying there even as Miku’s hands unfolded, releasing a Sky-Fire Strike that was the only move to successfully land on the man.<br/><br/>“Get this thing off of me!”  Aika screamed as she sliced through the spectral snake with a knife-edge move that glowed with star-bound power; in this, she was aided by Miku, whose flying kick also landed, which sent the snake into a sort of…it was still there, but it was blurry compared to before, and it retracted back onto the Fang underboss.  Said man was attempting…it looked like an actual martial arts move, as opposed to the simple brawling that the other Fang members had employed in their attempts to stop the Exalted fighters.  Sadly, Joy was ready for him, and she blasted him with a second Heavenly Storm (that landed this time), draining half his health bar and putting him firmly in yellow territory.  Aika firmed up on the Fang man.  “Cheap Akuma tricks.  You were right to bring us here, Miku.”  She had recognized the snake as a minor magic used by Yama King champions.  “You’re not getting another shot with that serpent!”<br/><br/>Joy charged the Fang underboss, slamming her own knee into him with a stunning display of Muay Thai prowess (showing why people called her the Princess, after all!), even as he prepared to hit Miku, sending the man flying.  Aika managed to grab him as he went past her, and held him as the velocity eventually ripped him out of her grasp, but all three women would be able to see that Aika’s glowing divine brand had formed fully on the Fang man’s back.  As an attack of opportunity, Miku jabbed out with her Wind-Knife Strike to one side, but the force of Joy’s flying knee had sent him going too fast (even though Aika’s grab had managed to slow him) for her to react in time.  From their positions, they would see that there was only 1 star left above the underboss’ head.  Somewhere along the way, they’d hit him hard enough to get him to that point.<br/><br/>The Fang underboss got to his feet, battered and bruised but very willing to keep fighting.  He could see, however, that he was pinned in on all sides by the Exalted trio.  Miku behind to his right, Joy just ahead to the same, and Aika directly to his left.  Thusly surrounded, he attempted to extract himself from the situation by trying a leaping kick that would carry him over to another part of the room, one where the Exalted would have to jump up to confront him.  That, however, was not to be; before he could leave further than a hand length from the ground, Joy had reached him, grabbing his neck with both hands in a Muay Thai hold and forcing him back to the ground.  Miku had charged as well, now using her Wind-Knife with her kicks rather than her fists, tagging the underboss solidly with a whack that drained more of his bar.  That left Aika, who had surged forward with incredible speed, speed Joy would recognize as belonging to the Devil Fighter attack – but instead of a punch this time, Aika copied the kick she’d seen Miku perform: the Sky-Breaker.  The very back of her foot hit the Fang underboss right under his jawline, hurting him more and sending him into a stagger, reeling from one side to another, open to whatever hurt the three women were capable of putting out for just a moment.<br/><br/>They would be able to see that he had no stars left to him, and his (last) bar was in the red.  If they all hit, and they surely would, they would take him out.  It was just a question of who.<br/><br/>Aika followed up on her own attack, side kicking the Fang in the neck with a power-driven Taekwondo strike, driving him into Joy’s right uppercut followed by the left hook of a one-two boxing combo.  He reeled and staggered more, and ended up in perfect position to fall to the original of the move that Aika had borrowed: the Sky-Breaking Kick.  The boss made a noise which echoed in the minds of Aika and Joy as he fell to the ground in slow motion.  He landed, bounced once, and then once more, and then moved no more.  The only other sounds the girls would hear after that were those of whatever Fang fighters remained at the secret base running out every door from there.<br/><br/>And then, the lights dimmed just slightly, as a pop-up appeared, freezing things in time.<br/><br/><div align="center"><span class="bbc_size" style="font-size: 12pt;">STAGE 1-X<br/>-Fang Brotherhood Secret Base-<br/>COMPLETE</span></div><br/>Then, the familiar prompt reminding them that they still had 2 stages left in this time block, and could continue, popped up.  "I think we're good for today," Aika told Joy.  "We should really look into those disappearances.  We can take out the Fang Akuma tomorrow.  Let's pick over the Fang's storehouse of mystical items and see what we can get."