With the group gone, Hierophant and Death hurried into the control room to find Emperor nowhere in sight.
"Well, that's just typical," Death snorts, though not the slightest bit irritated by this predictability, "For someone who only sits in the background and barks commands, he sure does know how to find places to hide even if there's only two possible places a card his structure could hide."
Hierophant slowly pans his staff around the room until he found a card-shaped glow wedged under the crack. He rushes over and ducks below the button-strewn table to see two inches of Emperor's card just about to disappear from sight. Not wanting to let him stick around and risk eventually getting caught, he flings his hand out and grabs what remained of the fleeing card, struggling to haul him out from the crack.
"Let go of me, you mutinous cur!" Emperor shouts while fighting to break free of Hierophant's grip.
"How much information are you trying to get out of this guy!?" Hierophant grunts as he continues to pull at Emperor's card, "Don't you think the fight in St. Acidburg is enough!?"
"Nonsense! Why settle for one situation when I can gather so much more!? I'll stay here until one side wins if I have to as long as I get everything I need to be a better ruler than even the original origin of this card!"
"Not that I should care about the daily life of a frustrated overlord, but is the old man so important to you that you couldn't find someone just as dastardly and authoritative to gather information from?" Death mutters.
"I can name millions of them, but he's the only one actually TRYING to make a difference in this world, so I'll stick with him as my unattentive teacher!"
"Maybe when we're not in a situation that would jeopardize our main purpose for being this sparse and separated, you can spy on all the evildoers you lay your eyes on!" Hierophant grunt as he musters some of his energy into one final jerk. But just as he had gotten the card out of the crack a sharp pain shoot through his throat, forcing him to let go of Emperor and grab the source only to feel the same sharp pain stab into the palm of his unarmed hand, followed quickly by trickles of a familiar liquid trailing down both agonizing points.
Holding his staff towards himself, he finds a small, thin gash oozing
citrine colored liquid with nearly a fountain spilling out of a small, six-point shuriken stabbed into the very center of his throat.
"You'd better stop that bleeding before the great doctor returns!" Emperor snickers while retracting the hand he used to throw the shuriken, "If he discovers a single shard of dry Pentacle blood, he might send his robots to hunt you down!"
He then dives back under the crack below the console just as Hierophant recovered enough of his startled senses to dive back after him. The oil-soaked priest muffles a frustrated groan while furrowing his eyebrows in exasperation before ripping the shuriken out and using his staff to seal the wound caused by its penetration.
"If it wasn't for the fact that he has just as much importance to Tarot Cat's functionality, I'd suggest just leaving him there to be dissected by the old bat," Death sighs while scratching her large, purple hair.
Hierophant crawls out from under the table and plops down on WilyII's evil spinning chair, clutching the staff with his dried, citrine hand and pointing it towards the console while concentrating just enough on the orb to power up the console. Once all the systems rebooted and the main monitor springs to life, he uses his dominant left hand to search through the computer for a command to life the entire console and get Emperor out.
"Don't you think the doc will notice that his main computer is being charged up and used without his permission?" Death asked nonchalantly.
"If there's an instant teleportation command built into it, I'll activate it before he gets back here," Hierophant said, "Right now we need to get Emperor out of there before he ends up doing more than regretting his stubborn antics!"