Quick facts
Antagonist: The Collector · Opposed by: The Cacklers · Location: North City, the Collector’s Mansion and the FeyWild · Began: the tournament, C1 Chapter 06 · Ended: the Collector beheaded by Terra · Told in: C1 Chapter 06 to C1 Chapter 14
This is the whole arc between the Cacklers and the Collector, from the tournament that bound Terra to him to the day she killed him. The Collector was Master Korrin’s half-brother.
The trade
At the end of The Greatest Below the Heavens Tournament, Terra took Sophie’s place under the Collector’s contract and the bracers moved to her wrists (C1 Chapter 06).
Piccolo and the west
Sophie and Obsidian went with the Cacklers to West City, where releasing King Piccolo turned out to be complicated (C1 Chapter 07).
Sophie is stripped of leniency
Back in North City, the Collector listed Emerald’s failures: complicating Piccolo’s release, fleeing the continent, letting a major western city fall into “absolute chaos and death,” and interfering with a meeting with a high-ranking Rose Ribbon Army official. He took away her leniency and sent her and Obsidian to the barracks (C1 Chapter 08).
Freeing Sophie and Tala
The Cacklers decided to free Sophie and Tala, Oolong’s sister, who was held by the Gem Sapphire. Sapphire and Ruby ambushed them near the stadium courtyard with psychic attacks. Sophie offered herself, turned into a T-rex and killed Ruby by biting off her upper torso. Sapphire died too, with Obsidian landing the killing blow on an airborne enemy (C1 Chapter 08).
The wanted ad and the fake death
The Collector ran a wanted ad with a 50,000 gold bounty on Emerald for property destruction, kidnapping Obsidian and murdering Ruby and Sapphire. The Cacklers answered by disguising Oolong as the Collector and others as Amethyst and Pizzazz, and told the North City Times that Emerald had been “taken care of.” The paper ran her death, supposedly at the hands of Amethyst and Jasper.
Cackler Barrel, Jebidiah’s restaurant, became the war room. The Collector dropped in to discuss “Ginyu Force flavor” franchising and praised the name. Furious at having been made a liar, he sent a mental threat: “first I will break your heart and then I will break your body.” Sophie’s reply was to tell him where to go and call him a pompous little kitty tiger.
Terra’s job
Terra, working for him, left Beerlia with Amethyst, Masha and Vath and followed Max the Andalite, who had been transformed to look like Oolong, into the FeyWild.
The showdown
The Cacklers snuck into a side room of the Collector’s Mansion and a portal took them to a place of smoke and lava. The Collector waited there with Amethyst, a mysterious man and Terra, still under the bracers. He caged Oolong and Obsidian in force.
- Oolong dispelled Terra’s bracers with a mud doll.
- Masha and Vath, whom the Collector had collected from the FeyWild, turned on him.
- Reese’s daggers dropped Amethyst.
- With a nod from Sophie, Terra cleaved his head off.
- Amethyst and Pizzazz died. The Collector had cursed Vath, as he had cursed Greene and others.
- The party took the glowing blue box he had stolen from Max.
Aftermath
Greene dreamed of tubes of floating bodies and a striped monster that told him he was “fucking around with things you don’t understand.” Terra dreamed of the Collector’s promise, “First, I will break your heart,” while she beheaded Sophie.
In C1 Chapter 10, security at the mansion recognized the Collector as “deceased for 7 days.” The party met two Cybermen and a Dalek, and Oolong freed hundreds of starving kenku from cells. His curse later mixed with a werewolf’s bite to turn Greene into a were-tiger. In C1 Chapter 14 Terra got a key to the mansion from Oolong, and she and Sophie turned it into CAGS.