Chapter 13: One less evil
11:11 AM (Japan Time), Sunday September the 30th…
"… So? Did Rock Man – sama get hurt too much, Subaru – kun?"
"Huff. Those two did pack some power."
"Mwah, hah, hah, hah! But he taught them a lesson: fat and calories are bad, iinchou!"
"Speaking of which! Fatman! Where's the guy?"
"Yikes! Luna – chan, what about the next week's Student Council…?"
"No good! I need to prepare the planning!"
"Mwah, hah, hah! Saved by the rabbit, B-B-B-B-Bertie~?"
"Stop with that nickname."
Luna had been talking with Subaru and War Rock began to joke so Luna got annoyed when thinking about Gonta: Mode improvised some reminder and she rushed away while War Rock laughed.
"B-B-B-B-Bertie~! Spider Man V 2206-09 has come~!" A voice rang out with obvious amusement.
"Omega – san… Now that the crisis is over he's gotten back to his "joker" self…" Subaru sighed.
"Mwah, hah, hah!"
Omega suddenly dropped into the spot (the square where the Big Wave Store was at) while extending his arms and grinning: Subaru slapped his face in defeat and War Rock laughed.
"Ta-dan! A souvenir from Omicron!"
He formed a Real Wave mask of the Frankenstein Monster and Subaru groaned while War Rock laughed.
"It fits with your true self, doesn't it, B-B-B-B-Bertie~? Ya came to life with electricity, after all!"
"JEEZ!"
"Mwah, hah, hah! True, true! I zapped this guy's brains!" War Rock laughed and began to flip.
"Oh come on!"
"O-ME-GA!" Vadous roared over his radio.
"Yo~! Shachou~! Did Steve Dixie come say hi and bye~?"
"You messed with the storage room's passwords AGAIN!"
"Yeah! Flying shirts with ghostly faces!"
"That password is ridiculous!"
"It's brilliant and unbeatable! It'll get patented as some monster in some RPG and I'll demand 5% of the total profits!" He laughed.
"GTHDKGHK!" Vadous howled something undecipherable.
"Omicronese?"
"NO!"
"Zenayish?"
"NO!"
"Epsilonech?"
"NO!"
"FMian?"
"NO!"
"Mwah, hah, hah. AMian!" War Rock laughed.
"Please…" Subaru groaned.
"Mr. Vadous, sir! My Physics text-book's missing, sir!" Kiboyama complained in the background.
"Mr. Vadous, sir! My Biology text-book's missing, sir!"
"Beg to me and I might give 'em back… I let Solo borrow 'em!"
"I doubt Solo finding any interest in them."
"Yeah. Correct. Here you have them."
Solo walked into the square and handed Subaru both text-books while glaring at Omega: Laplace was silent and Solo fumed before he headed out of the town.
"So! B-B-B-B-Bertie~! Are you going to take Hibiki's place and have a thrill with Madonna?"
"That's not something to joke about, sir!" Tsukasa growled.
"At all!" Kiboyama added.
"What's this ruckus?"
"Buruo~! There we go again."
Gonta came in, apparently drawn by the scandal, and Ox folded his arms while grumbling.
"Well, well, well. Welcome to the party, my Fatman."
"Not again!" He groaned.
"Che."
"Mwah, hah, hah. You burnt this guy's brains!" War Rock laughed at Ox while signaling Gonta.
"Wha~t?"
"Dear me! What's this ruckus?"
"Probabilities of…"
"I can guess the rest. 200%."
Kizamaro ran in, too, while Pedia began to calculate and Kizamaro guessed the rest while rolling his eyes.
"Mwah, hah, hah. The Reject Eight Dwarf!"
"EXCUSE ME~?" He complained.
"Che." Jack grumbled as he came in, too.
"The club's gathered! Too bad iinchou couldn't make it. Anyway… Let's go hunt flying donuts stained with vile and cruel truths!"
"HUH?" Gonta looked perplexed.
"Too much for your brain to process, Fatman – sama~?"
"This JERK!" He grumbled.
"Subaru – ku~n! Cha won't escape my debriefing so easily~!" Luna rushed into the square.
"Strategy: failure." Mode whispered to Subaru with obvious defeatism.
"Crap."
"Rock Man – sama mustn't get hurt!"
"It isn't easy not to get hurt when they're launching attacks worth hundreds of HP points without breaks!" Subaru argued.
"Rock Man – sama dodges them all!"
"It's not as easy as it seems! Iinchou!"
"It should be a piece of a cake for Rock Man – sama!"
"Heh, heh, heh. Bertie~… The Number One Fan wants to propose to ya~…"
"How rude!" Luna snapped at Omega.
"O-ME-GA! Come back here, you moron!"
"Why does this city go mad the whole time?" Subaru sighed.
"You bull!"
"You clawed!"
"Someone save us."
"Mwah, hah, hah!"
12:12 PM (Japan Time)…
"… My sword!"
"My helmet!"
"Not again!"
"O-ME-GA~!"
"Catch me, shachou~!"
"Grah! I can't focus! Why couldn't they make the rooms be sound-proof?"
"Shit! That rascal!"
Tsukasa and Kiboyama complained aloud in their rooms as they heard a scandal mounting up outside on the corridor.
"Crawling pants with stripped tigers!"
"Stop changing the storage rooms' passwords!" Dr. Lartes complained next.
"And here I thought this place would be quiet." Tsukasa grumbled aloud as he tried to ignore the scandal.
"And here I thought I'd be calm here. I prefer the weird Chinese proverbs to that to begin with." Kiboyama complained.
"No more tolerance! I'm so gonna go and lock you in the capsule for a whole month! I'm fed up with this! And if you, Sigma, try something funny then you're next!" Vadous roared.
"Yikes!"
"Huff." Blood Shadow sighed.
"Where's the pest!"
"In your imagination and celestial world, shachou~!"
"The Central Hub!"
"Huff. Let this farce end already!" Kiboyama muttered.
"I need to finish the homework! And prepare the exams! They begin in two weeks' time!" Tsukasa hissed.
He drew his Hunter-VG along with a pair of headphones and turned them on to begin listening to music and sighing as he blocked out the sounds from the outside: he wrote a message which he sent to Kiboyama so he did the same.
"At last!"
"Finally!"
In the meanwhile, though, Blood Shadow and Sigma were walking across a catwalk located in a huge room.
This room was easily over several tens of meters tall and huge: it was a gigantic cylinder-shaped room which had several catwalks and stairs crossing across it from different heights and directions plus large fans set on the walls.
The ground was a mere metallic grid which seemingly allowed a large bulk below it to expel heat: most of the room was unlit but the catwalks had fluorescent paint on the ground and handrails to mark them: the ceiling had two small metallic grids as well shaped like opposing halves of a hexagon.
"Bloody Shadowy~! Join the triangle form a square~!" Omega's voice echoed from somewhere.
"I don't have "it" and you know it, sir. That joke's running too old, anyway." Blood Shadow grumbled.
"Huff."
"There you are!" Vadous grumbled.
"Shachou~! Hyde will invent Hyde And His Punk For Austrian Theaters Only~! Let's go see the premiere in Vienna~!"
"Shaddup! Capsule time! You're not running away this time!"
"Ops! End of the season! See ya next season! Heh, heh, heh!"
13:23 PM (Japan Time)…
"… There was a demoniac symbol in the vending machine~!"
"Demoniac symbol? I feel skeptical, Utagai – kun."
"With a good reason. It was the "forbidden" symbol and it meant that it's out of order. You know: parking forbidden, cars forbidden…"
"Huff. Utagai – san…! Anyway! Acid. What's the status?"
"The front is stable for the time being. Yet…"
"If it is bad news then… Wait until I come out of the room and you'll tell me personally."
Utagai ran into the Command Room while looking pale: Amachi sighed and looked skeptical and Cygnus explained: Akatsuki sighed and Acid began to say something but he stopped him and they headed outside of the room: Dr. Yoiri sighed.
"That child…"
"I know. Let's hope we can at least prevent the worst-case scenario." The Chief sighed.
"Hey! Who swapped my mango ice-cream for a vanilla ice-cream?"
"My chocolate ice-cream got swapped for a strawberry one!"
"Mwah, hah, hah. Warus Rockus – samus cursed of the Icus Creamus!"
"That's War Rock?" Daigo grumbled.
"Yo! Daigo! Go beat the Big Five!"
"Stop making that pun on my name, Rock!" He complained.
"There goes a manly parent!"
"I don't get the point! If there's ANY!"
"NYA will beat ANY in 6.66 seconds! Omegus – donus said it!"
"Don't involve Omega next." Akatsuki cursed.
"Yo! Akatsuki! Go berserk and paint Subari~ with pink paint!"
"Like I'd do that." He fumed.
"I fail to see the point." Acid drily protested.
"There's none!"
"Mwah, hah, hah! I stole Queen Tia's stuff and blamed Omega for that so we'll see how she complains!"
"She won't. She'll buy it again." Akatsuki fumed.
"I dumped it in Area M!"
"No way!" Akatsuki gasped.
His Hunter-VG rang and Misora's annoyed face popped out.
"Akatsuki – san, sir! It's War Rock! He dumped some stuff in my room which has a label with Queen Tia – sensei's name!"
"By all the… Burn it up! I don't care how! Just burn it up!"
"Delighted, sir!"
"Pororon! That berserk lion wannabe…"
"Tell that to Leo Kingdom, Harp!" War Rock laughed.
"Don't joke with the AM Sages next." Daigo complained.
"Mwah, hah, hah, hah! The AMus Sagus!"
"Burai will beat your Black Hole Server record."
"Wha~t? The punk! I'm so gonna beat the guy!"
War Rock warped out and everyone sighed in relief: Akatsuki then used the elevator and headed for another floor where he exited into a deserted corridor.
"Be careful, Shidou. Queen Tia has already been several times already in that place: the problem is that it's totally legal. So we can't say she's been doing anything illegal."
"Heck."
"But I managed to dispatch a request for an order commanding Queen Tia to not come closer to Hibiki than 800 meters."
"Phew. Good thinking, Acid."
"It'll be ready this next week."
"Good. The sooner, the better… I really don't want anything to happen to Misora… She's got her life to live! And Queen Tia can't go and traumatize out of some caprice! Really!" He fumed.
"I do not understand the full implications but if you say this would affect Hibiki's mindset and life then it would amount to a crime."
"Oh yeah! A crime! It's a crime alright! No loopholes will avoid her from getting prison for that crime! Speaking of prison: did those two get interned already?"
"Indeed. Their Denpa – Henkan forms have been de-installed and so have all abilities. They're reduced to normal Wizards' power level and the security is relentless." Acid confirmed.
"Good. They ain't getting outta that place. The charges were clear: attempted kidnapping, attempted torture, attempted rape, attempted mass destruction, illegal construction of mass-destruction programs, illegal copying of Wizard data… The list is large." He began to list before shrugging.
"One evil less."
"Yeah. But we can't lower the guard. Hyde can come up with dangerous stuff like in the summer when he tried to have that Clock Genius guy destroy the Main Computer from the inside but luckily Subaru and Misora halted them along with the Musketeers."
They failed to spot Shinobi looking on from an air duct and chuckling under his breath.
Yeah… Ya'd be better off not underestimating Hyde – sama… Heh, heh!
14:44 PM (Japan Time)…
"… Hyde – sama."
"So…?"
"They're starting to focus on us."
"No wonder."
"And they're on the edge: they could react to any hints."
"Heh. Hence why I picked this place to meet…"
"Indeed."
"The sea-fortress thing… It's still in Omicron?"
"Correct."
"Good. Find me the coordinates of Zenay III and of Epsilon."
"Oh?"
Shinobi came to report to Hyde in the overgrown garden of rather beaten down manor having a nearby river as well: Hyde was reading Hamlet while sitting under a tree's shade and looked up while having a smug smile on his face and looking up to something: Phantom, hovering close by, looked surprised.
"We'll go scavenging. Maybe we can find something there useful to us or which we can sell to another party to gain some neat cash: that could help prepare some project." Hyde exposed.
"I understand."
"Don't get cocky, Hyde." Phantom warned.
"Oh no. I'll get dramatic. Hah, hah, hah!"
"Huff. Cha know what's coming, huh?"
"Well…" Shinobi trailed off.
"Saiigaii…" Assassin muttered.
"A disaster, ya mean to say? Guess that." Phantom sighed.
"Damaree!"
"You can't tell me to shut up because you Assassins' Clan was forbidden in Mu and given my duties in the Mu Army then I have further authority than you, like it or not."
"Che!"
Assassin looked elsewhere, seemingly annoyed, and Shinobi rolled his eyes while Hyde resumed reading.
"Alright, Assassin… Let's not start another war! Go suck cattle blood."
"Yagii noo chii!"
"Yeah, goat blood… Go!"
"Haa, haa, haa!"
"Yeah, laugh all you want but go already!"
Assassin flew off and Shinobi sighed: he headed inside of the decaying mansion and sat on the ground of an empty room: he got into a yoga pose and began to seemingly meditate.
"Ah! So it was a complot, as the complot dictated!" Hyde laughed at his poorly improvised rhyme.
"Hyde… That doesn't make sense."
"What would a disgraced actor know?" Hyde merely replied while switching to the next page.
"Not again… I never was an actor to begin with!"
"You are and will be! There's no escaping an actor's fate!"
"If there's such a thing to begin with." He sighed.
"Ah! So it was the evil usurper King: come from barbaric northern lands!"
"Barbaric northern lands…? I give up. Go your half-way, Hyde… Jeez."
15:05 PM (Japan Time)…
"… By the way, Misora… Where did you go off in such a rush?"
"I'm sorry, Urakata – san. I forgot something on my way here and reminded I had to go fetch it before it was picked off."
"Pororon!"
"Ah! No problem, no problem. Huh? You there! ID yourself!"
"Why should I?"
"'Cause I'm your superior, you newbie!"
"Did the angel bite the sandal?"
"What? Hah, hah! Is that a joke?"
"Gotcha, ugly."
"W-wha~t?"
Urakata had encountered Misora once she'd come out from the room and they began to chat when Urakata spotted a suspicious character with the newbie uniform apparently trying to sneak into her room: Urakata walked towards him and cornered him while Misora made a question: the newbie laughed and Misora grinned.
"Cha don't know the weekly password. Who sent you? Or are you some paparazzi who came to set up a hidden camera and get some "exclusives" to sell them for some millions to some magazine? Hmmm?" Misora deduced.
"My anger's mounting and about to EXPLODE!" Urakata roared.
"Uwa~h!"
The fake newbie ran away like he was gonna be slaughtered alive: Suzuka and Ice walked over there, unsurprised.
"Another paparazzi?" Suzuka guessed.
"Jeez. How annoying." Ice complained.
"Urakata – san: the security Wizard is bugged!" A veteran reported.
"I knew it. So that's why their IDs weren't double-checked with the database!" Urakata growled.
"I see! We can place a normal Wizard and ask the weekly password: if they fail after 3 attempts they assume the form of a Noised Wizard and tell them to flee or they'll be cursed until the end of Time Eternal!" Misora suggested.
"Good idea! A Noised Wizard from close up is terrific enough. We can work it out with a Real Wave." Ice grinned.
"Bravo!" Suzuka exclaimed.
"Pororon! It's the Anti Paparazzi Project!" Harp giggled.
"Good!" Urakata looked satisfied with the idea.
Misora's Hunter-VG rang and Solo showed up on-screen.
"Solo. Did something happen?"
"Hoshikawa's Wizard had stolen your guitar and dropped it on the Nanska Temple ruins… I retrieved it… I'm coming to bring it back."
"Ah. Alright. If you see the guy… Then give him a beating from me."
"Sure thing. I'm fed up with the guy's antiques, anyway."
"Ya… Ru…"
"No. Go play arcades." Solo snapped at Laplace.
"Ra… Yu…"
"Huff. Go – play – arcades!" He insisted.
"Yu…"
"At last." He fumed.
"The city's madness extends to even across the world. Lovely."
"Pororon! What madness." Harp sighed.
19:29 PM (Japan Time)…
"… Mwah, hah, hah! Yo!"
"Oh my. War Rock. What's up?"
"Subari~ collects triangles!"
"And what's the problem with that?"
"Ask Big Five! Mwah, hah, hah."
"Oh please. You know Daigo – san dislikes that joke."
"Mwah, hah, hah."
War Rock began to joke with Akane as she watched the TV: Akane frowned and then sighed.
"War Rock! Stop messing around!" Subaru protested from the bedroom.
"Start around messing!" He made up a lame pun.
"Huff! Jeez! And stop picking off people's stuff like those thieves in Shiisaa Island!"
"Maybe they're my own evil and nefarious cousins!"
"Of course not! Denpa Bodies don't have cousins!"
"Mwah, hah, hah. I'll invent 'em!"
"Oh please. Someone put a halt to this guy!"
"Yo! I'm home. Huff. War Rock. Messing around again?"
"Welcome back, dear… As you can see…"
"Yo! Big Five! Subari~ is very popular! He founded a triangle!"
"Founded a triangle? I dunno what you mean. If it's about some videogame or something like that then I don't see what the problem is: go defeat V3 Viruses alone."
"That a challenge~? Mwah, hah, hah! Go full speed and full madness!"
Subaru climbed down the stairs and got to the living room: Daigo hugged him and Subaru smiled.
"Welcome back, dad."
"Well, well! Today I cook!"
"Oh my. How nostalgic." Akane giggled.
"Guess it's gonna be pretty nostalgic, yeah!"
Daigo headed for the ground floor bedroom while Subaru climbed back into his and gasped when he found Harp Note sitting on his chair.
"Hi, darling!"
"Misora – chan… I thought we'd agreed on quitting that?" He sighed.
"Tee, heh, heh. I just wanted to drop by in a sneaky manner. You know I need to do this or use my "Veronica" disguise. It's a trouble having so many fans, really." She sighed.
"Pororon! At least Brutus ain't here." Harp muttered.
"So, Subaru – kun… I guess we'll soon have one new adventure but in the meanwhile I'll leak out that I'm writing a new single 'bout this one."
"Of course. If it's Misora – chan…"
She reverted out of the "Denpa – Henkan" and picked Subaru's right hand: he blushed and Misora grinned.
"Tee, heh, heh. Anyway… Let's look forward to new adventures."
"But let's hope they give me a break, too… I need to pass the exams!"
"Pororon! The Raid Troop's on the move! Troop a Raid!"
"Mwah, hah, hah! Not bad, Harp! Non Raid Non Troop!"
War Rock showed up and laughed at his lame motto: the three of them shrugged and grinned nevertheless as they looked out at the skies…
THE END