It was the darkest hour for the Trio de Dangers.

The three wolves stood at the precipice with their heads hung low, whimpering at the sight of the ravaged cityscape below. There were explosions going off every second, courtesy of myriad gangs of rioters, looters and armed thugs, all taking sadistic joy in setting the streets ablaze with their high-caliber weapons.

"I'm the king of this planet!" roared a bearded, eye patch-wearing rogue, as he fired his rocket launcher directly into a crowd of pedestrians.

Neither Bergamo nor Lavenda nor Basil could peel their eyes away from the carnage. As chilling and disheartening as the spectacle was, it paled in comparison to the devastating glares of the two deities standing beside them. The three of them expected their God of Destruction, Sidra, to start cutting into them any second now.

It took them by surprise, then, when his normally blithe angel attendant Mojito was the one who broke the silence.

"What is the meaning of this?"

Mojito pulled back his silvery bangs like a curtain to reveal a stinging side-eye. The Trio de Dangers, cowed by Mojito's rare display of irritation, all started talking over each other in a disorganized attempt to explain the situation.

"I'm very sorry!" cried Basil.

"Those guys learned of the universe erasure and started a revolt!" blurted Lavenda.

"They plan to abandon this universe and escape to another," continued Bergamo.

Mojito responded with a teeth-gritting scowl, through which a breathy grunt of despair escaped.

"So..." Sidra said, turning to face the Trio de Dangers. His bushy orange eyebrows arched downward and his skin tightened across his bald forehead. "How many warriors have you gathered?"

The Trio de Dangers balked at the question. Sidra knew damn well that the answer was "nobody". He had to know. If they had managed to recruit anyone for the Tournament of Power, why would they be facing their God of Destruction alone, their heads hung in shame?

But Sidra, it seemed, wanted to hear the truth straight from the horse's mouth - or straight from the wolves' mouths, rather. He wanted to hear the three of them admit that, in the 43 hours since the Omni-King Z'eno announced the multiversal tournament, they had failed to find anyone to join their team.

Which they did.

"N-nobody aside from us," Basil choked out, as his blood red fur was sent aflutter by his quivering.

"We're very sorry!" the three of them cried in unison.

Without another word, Sidra, maintaining his stern, brow-furrowed expression, turned back towards the war-torn city and extended his hand towards it.

"Hakai!"

As soon as the last syllable left his lips, a ball of violet light was planted in the center of the city, and expanded until it engulfed everything in the vicinity- buildings, streets, vehicles, bandits, innocent bystanders and pedestrians, everything. Once engulfed, they disintegrated into thousands of infinitesimal violet granules, which then vanished into the ether, never to be seen again. The Trio de Dangers could faintly hear the agonized screams of the city's denizens as their bodies were eradicated, atom by atom, until literally nothing remained.

Before they knew it, the city had vanished, leaving in its place an enormous crater, illuminated by some of the still-lingering flickers of violet light. For any mortal, this would have been a traumatizing scene to witness. For Sidra? It was business as usual.

"As you've probably gleaned by now, Sidra and I are very disappointed in the three of you," said Mojito. "But all is not lost. You have one last chance to redeem yourselves."

The Trio de Dangers twiddled their paws, unsure of how to feel about the ultimatum. On one hand, they felt honored that the Gods weren't willing to give up on them just yet. On the other, they only had a paltry four and a half hours left until the Tournament of Power. They'd have to work like hell to make that second chance count for anything.

Mojito tapped the orb atop his staff, causing it to display a compact holographic projection of Universe 9. Mojito tapped it again, and the hologram zoomed in on some remote corner of the universe: one almost completely void of matter, aside from a single turquoise-colored dwarf planet.

"There exists a lone planet in the farthest reaches of the universe, lightyears away from any other," said Mojito. "Planet Parika. For eons, they've remained a peaceful, self-sufficient ecosystem, isolated from the other goings-on of Universe 9. It's virtually guaranteed that the news of the Tournament of Power hasn't reached them yet."

"And you waited until now to tell us about this?!" cried Lavenda.

Bergamo grabbed the golden-haired middle child by the fur on his pronounced hunch, and yanked him away from Mojito. "Peace, Lavenda," he hissed. "Do not raise your voice to a deity."

Mojito, unfazed by Lavenda's outburst, continued. "War and violence are rare on Planet Parika, and the few denizens who are battle-trained engage in combat for sport, not survival."

He gave Lavenda a pointed look. "That was why we hadn't mentioned the planet until now. Its warriors lack the adversity-borne toughness and precision that the three of you have been blessed with. Sidra and I had hoped that you would be able to find other warriors who shared your gift."

Mojito's tone turned grave, while his fingers tightened their grasp around his scepter. "But you couldn't. As such, our only option is to turn to the planet that isn't being torn apart by bandits."

Without another word, Mojito rapped the base on the staff on the ground, causing a circle of blinding light to radiate out from the point of impact. Bubbles of bright yellow light sprouted from the circle and swarmed around the five beings like angry wasps. More and more of them filled the immediate space around them, until they merged into an opaque, blindingly luminous bubble. The bubble launched itself into the atmosphere and beyond, taking the five beings along for the ride.

The thirty minutes it took to traverse the distance through space were, quite possibly, the longest thirty minutes Bergamo, Lavenda and Basil ever had to endure. Throughout the trip, none of them could bring themselves to say a word to Sidra or Mojito, or even look them in the eye - which was especially painful, since they had a plethora of questions they wanted to ask.

The very idea of a peaceful planet existing in Universe 9, the multiverse's ghetto, seemed borderline fantastical to the three brothers. They were raised in war-ravaged squalor, and found few mortals who weren't in their travels across the universe. Quite frankly, they had trouble imagining what a peaceful civilization would even look like.

Thankfully, it wouldn't be too long before they saw one. Through the transparent wall of the warp cube, they could see a lone speck in the otherwise empty abyss, directly in their path. The speck grew into a dot, then a circle, then a fully formed sphere. As the sphere grew in size, the features covering its surface - continents, oceans, islands - became clearer and clearer.

"You have four hours to find seven other teammates," said Sidra. "And you are not to tell them that our universe is risking erasure. There's no telling how they'll take that news, and given what we've seen so far, I do not want to take that chance."

"Understood, Sidra," said Bergamo.

As soon as they entered the planet's atmosphere, the trip was practically over. The cube blazed through the atmospheric layers at breakneck speed, reducing the world around them to a bluish-green blur. Before they knew it, they were touching down on a stony plateau, overlooking a small but lively village.

Having spent a half hour surrounded by the vaccum of space, the Trio de Dangers needed to take a moment to reorient themselves and allow their eyes to readjust. Compared to the hellish scene they were subjected to earlier that day, the landscape before them was almost comically quaint. The sky was as blue as blue could be, while the nearby star was shining at just the right intensity, and small birds flitted gaily through the air, tweeting their cheerful song.

The village, by the looks of it, had a similarly well-adjusted atmosphere. Stone-carved cottages with thatched straw roofs lined either side of a loose, gravelly pathway, the kind that provided a satisfying crackle when you walked across it. The village was populated by tunic-clad humanoid rabbits with chalk-white fur coats - some with bushels of crops by their sides, some with bales of hay over their shoulders, some with children at their heels, and all with expressions of contentment. Bergamo could practically hear the mandolin music playing in the background.

"You expect us to find a warrior here?!" Lavenda demanded, prompting a dirty look from Bergamo.

"Well, you haven't left us much of a choice, now, have you?" Mojito asked. "Lucky for you, Parika is a dwarf planet, so travel time will be minimal. Ask around, look for densely populated areas, and don't take no for an answer. Good luck."

But just as he was about to jab his staff into the ground, Sidra caught him by the hand.

"Now, hold on, Mojito. Don't you think we should stay here and provide the three with some help? The fate of our universe is at stake."

Mojito shook his head. "This is their responsibility, not ours. Besides, we have pressing matters to attend elsewhere."

The orb on his staff flashed to life before Sidra's eyes. He peered into it and saw the sneering yellow face of Quitela, Universe 4's God of Destruction, staring back at him.

"Quitela has called to arrange a meeting with you," said Mojito. "He says he has a proposition for you. An alliance, presumably."

Sidra's face darkened. He never felt comfortable collaborating with that smarmy, devious character. Even though they oversaw twin universes, their philosophies pertaining to their work couldn't have been more different. Destruction was something Sidra did out of obligation, while Quitela drew an almost sadistic level of pleasure from it.

Even so, Sidra reasoned that it couldn't hurt to have a fallback option in case his warriors fail their mission, which at this point was looking distressingly likely.

"Very well," he said. "Bergamo! Lavenda! Basil!"

The three wolves' eyes snapped towards Sidra. Basil shivered upon seeing the god's stern, stone-carved glower.

"You have four hours to assemble a team, starting now. Do not fail me!"

With that, Mojito rammed his staff into the ground, and both deities disappeared in a blinding flash of light. After the light dissipated, Basil and Lavenda could do little but stare dumbly at the empty space where their gods used to be. Bergamo, taking it upon himself to snap his two younger brothers out of their gaze, grabbed them by the hide and pulled them in close.

"Basil, Lavenda, listen to me!" he barked. "We're the absolute finest class of warriors that Universe 9 has to offer. If there's anyone who can accomplish this task, it's us."

He bared his fangs as he drew the two in closer, his furious eyes boring holes into them. "But we have four hours to do this," he whisper-growled, scorching them with blasts of hot air from his snout. "Two-hundred and forty minutes. We can't afford to waste a single second. I don't want to see any dawdling from either of you. Do you hear me?!"

"Yes, Bergamo!" Basil and Lavenda declared in unision, trying to match the eldest's intensity.

"Then follow my lead!"

Bergamo leaped from the precipice and landed knee-first in the ground below, causing minor tremors and leaving a dusty crater at the point of impact. Basil dove off the cliff, somersaulted in midair and stuck a perfect landing on his feet. Lavenda threw himself over the edge and belly flopped onto the ground, making an unceremonious thud as he landed. Lavenda let out a faint grunt of pain before rolling into a standing position.

With no time to waste, the Trio de Dangers took off in a dead sprint towards the village, ready to take the first step on their tumultuous four-hour adventure.