The Cyber Soul Will Not Cease:
Nova Daisy kept holding onto Neva, who had trouble catching her breath following the devastating attack she had just tore through Gabriel Soul with. Thick, frosty haze hovered around the area of Heavenly Hall where Neva had blasted Gabriel Soul, ice and ceiling debris still raining down. Despite having next to nothing left in her, Neva kept her Freeze Coil Sniper up and pointed at the center of the dense haze.
"So is that it?" asked Marut, cautiously staring into the haze covering the whole back sector of Heavenly Hall. "That thing's destroyed now, right?"
"As far as we can tell, it should be," said Bowser. "It had transformed its body into a star, which Neva then somehow shattered. And with some power to spare, at that. That sounds about as destroyed as it can get, short of vaporization."
Wide-eyed and red all over, Neva trembled and seizured a little. Using her Null Alkemei Hien to copy the power that Gabriel Soul had generated in its last maneuver had more than taken its toll on her already harmed and pained body. If not for Daisy standing behind her and supporting her, Neva likely would have wobbled and collapsed. As more of the haze settled, the Kruna Yura saw the extent of the damage Neva's colossal cannon of ice had done; for at the other end of where Neva had fired her continuous shot now lay a tunnel several feet in diameter and covered in icicles. All the rock and earth within the tunnel had a thick, glossy sheen of ice frozen over it. Given the darkness within the tunnel, no one knew how far back it went. Daisy's enhanced vision in the dark could not even make out any sort of end to the tunnel. For all they knew, Neva could have bored deep into the hilly mountain MAE Command Center was built into.
"Um...so, uh..." mumbled Marut, nervously staring at Neva. "Just how did you do that, again?"
"My pendant..." said Neva, still panting. "I don't think...I can handle doing that a second time... Not to that level... I thought I was gonna explode..."
"With the kind of night you've had, Neva, I'd say you deserve a vacation," Bowser remarked.
"I don't think she needs to do something like that another time," said Athelstan. "With the way that ice came barreling out, she might have snapped everything about that fiend up into chilled pieces."
"Yes, but what does that mean for the Ankh?" said Warra.
Marut tapped on his head in wonder. "If the Ankh gets destroyed, does that mean Osiris gets set free, or Osiris gets destroyed with the Ankh?"
"I'm almost certain that the Ankh can't be destroyed," said Daisy. "Given all that it has survived up to this point, it'd probably have to take something extreme to destroy it. Like, sending it shooting into a star. But then, Gabriel Soul had transformed part of itself into a star, and the Ankh survived that..."
"Remember, that's no common Alkemei," said Bowser. "That's the Master Pendant. There's a reason they only made one of those; and given the original intent it once had, I'm sure they wanted it as indestructible as possible."
"Alright, then let's go after it and secure it," said Athelstan.
"Yeah...so we can get out of here already," said Neva.
"Finally!" said Marut. "We just wrecked a whole organization and saved elemental wielding across the world! And we got rid of some super-dangerous, wacko ultra computer! We are gonna get so much clout for this! We getting toy deals, we getting clothing lines, we getting TV shows, video games, movies; we'll have stories and fan fiction overloading our fan sites, we'll have-"
"Why fan fiction?" asked Athelstan.
"You know you've made it big when you've got other people writing fan fiction about you!" Marut exclaimed. "That's where you get the real hardcore fans!"
"People doing that just sounds creepy, if you ask me," said Daisy.
"Whoa, let's slow down there," said Bowser. "We gotta expose all of this to the public first to make sure we regain a positive reputation. MAE's propaganda has put us in question."
"I'm not worried about that," said Daisy. "MAE failed. I doubt their extremist ideology will have any staying power with anyone."
"I hope so..." said Bowser. "Daisy, how about searching that dark hole for the Ankh?"
"Hold on, guys," said Ramona. "I don't feel like we actually won anything..."
"Neither do I," murmured Warra.
"Whatcha mean?" asked Daisy. She suddenly perked up the instant after saying that. "No, wait...you're right, something feels off."
"You mean this isn't over after all?!" Neva cried. "I'm so DONE with tonight!"
None of the others said anything extra. All focus drifted solely onto the impressive cave Neva's ice had carved out, its depth unknown and its contents in question. Within was either a dismembered and destroyed Gabriel Soul with an equally demolished Ankh, a defeated Gabriel Soul but a fully functioning and whole Ankh, or both Gabriel Soul and the Ankh in decent condition. Waiting for something to come out of the gash in the wall seemed about as risky as searching through it themselves.
"Here's what I say," stated Daisy, bringing forth some Nova-enhanced earth energy. "If you have a bad feeling about something, then something is probably wrong."
Bowser grimaced. "If it survived that, then what can any of us do that it won't survive?"
Staring with brooding eyes into the dark void now housing the eerie uncertainty over the fate of the Kruna Yura's night, Daisy maintained a steady flow of seismic power around her and straightened her posture. Now standing completely upright, she raised her left arm. Her hand went to the straps of her wrist weight; and soon after, the weight slid across the left side of the room with an audible crashing ding and a dragging crunch. The same noise echoed again as the weight once on her right wrist went on an identical path to the right of the room, then twice more when the weights around her ankles followed suit. Up to this point, no one had ever seen her strip those four weights off mid-battle.
"Wait, you're really abandoning those?" asked Athelstan.
Daisy nodded. "They brought me closer to earth and grounded me, making elemental wielding easier for me without actually being a tool when I couldn't use a tool. But now that I can use a proper elemental tool, and Nova Form too, there's no need for them anymore. They're only holding me back."
Unnoticed to the others, Daisy had also been trying to access her Alkemei Vranzer. But as has been the case with every prior attempt, she failed to activate it or elicit any effect. Doubt crept further into her mind over the Vranzer's efficacy, but memory of what Arka Knight had told her about it potentially being the answer to offsetting Osiris and the Ankh restored her faith. Whatever was going on with the Vranzer, either she could not use it on command or could not use it in the current situation. That rang true from the moment she had acquired the item.
If there was ever a time for this pendant to do something, now would be it, thought Daisy.
The deafening noise of ambient silence could drive a person mad, but it soon ended. A low, fuming hum replaced it. Then a dark, rippling pink-purple glow floated out from within the darkness of the tunnel ahead of the Kruna. Their battle had not concluded.
"Here it comes..." Warra mumbled.
Ramona and Bowser in turn both brought forth the remainder of their individual power and waited as the iced, gored mass of meat, metal, and cybernetics floated out of the tunnel and rejoined them in Heavenly Hall. Still draped around Gabriel Soul's disfigured neck, the Ankh churned out more of its power. Judging by the erratic, rapid beating of the Ankh's glow and Gabriel Soul's twitching spasms, the Kruna had made Osiris more than unhappy.
Now, the Ankh flooded its power outward in earnest and catalyzed another transformation. Gabriel Soul's massive, masculine, fiendish nightmare form broke apart and dissolved in cracks and hisses. The power flowing out from the Ankh seemed to morph the matter it interacted with on an intricate, potentially molecular level. Bonds shifted and gained strength, but also lost much of the stability they had. Solids turned into liquids, and vice versa. As electricity flickered and intertwined with the Ankh's energies, the huge, undead, rapidly convulsing mass hovering in front of the Kruna let out cry after moaning cry in multiple simultaneous tones.
After the mass catabolism of its body, pieces reformed and reassembled into a new Gabriel Soul. It was a wonder just how long the Ankh could keep manipulating a now clearly failing and unstable body into capable, battle-ready vessels, but that did not stop it from trying. The new silhouette for Gabriel Soul resembled a shadowed, winged, legless woman of a deep, warm midnight purple hue. A faint, clouded semblance of a crown formed out of metal chunks and computer components. As the silhouette gained a definite shape, the Mother Computer Core took up residence within a sizable cavity in Gabriel Soul's torso once again.
The entity's hands warped into claws, and ribbons of darkness unraveled in waves from its crowned head; but the biggest and most unsettling change came from behind the Mother Computer Core. The Kruna could see a muddied, barely-recognizable image of Dr. Ezhno's mangled corpse within Gabriel Soul's new, tremor-filled body. With each passing moment, more of Dr. Ezhno fractured and melted away inside of Gabriel Soul. Tormented shrieks from beyond this realm haunted the room as Dr. Ezhno's corpse dissolved into liquid and dispersed within Gabriel Soul's form. By the time the Ankh rested its powers and completed Gabriel Soul's transformation, no trace of Dr. Ezhno remained, and all cries silenced forever.
The shadowy body of Gabriel Soul brightened, as if enriched with nourishment. At the same time, the number and rate of tremors and convulsions throughout Gabriel Soul's body increased. The whole undead creature looked liable to collapse at any moment. In fact, it almost appeared as if the Ankh was expending power trying to maintain what little stability was left throughout Gabriel Soul.
"You know what the weird thing is?" said Athelstan. "I can't tell if that thing shaking like that is good or bad."
"Maybe it just needs to shake some MORE!" Daisy yelled. She sprinted at Gabriel Soul, her already impressive speed now with a touch of extra acceleration and velocity. At the instant she broke inside of arms-length of Gabriel Soul, she punched out her Shotgun and rocked the creature with a fierce seismic wash of rumbling quakes. That chained into the Drill Dash Marut zoomed across the room to land on the undead creature. The more Gabriel Soul's body seemed compromised, the more power leaked from its form and circulated around it.
Bowser smashed his hands together and pulled them across his body to his right, spiraling flames whipping around his joined palms. "It can't hold together forever! Attack it with everything!"
As Bowser's power exploded in intensity in preparation for his Dual Phoenix Flame, Warra appeared out of thin air through his Alkemei Inpei's concealment power behind Gabriel Soul and stabbed his electrically-charged trident into its back. The gushing, zapping water that then flooded out of his trident pushed Gabriel Soul across Heavenly Hall at Bowser, who then ripped loose his Dual Phoenix Flame when Gabriel Soul barreled into point-blank range. Smothered in electrified water and searing fires, Gabriel Soul screeched and howled as its body continued its uncontrollable spasms.
"How about some of this?!" boomed Athelstan. He leapt at the flaming, violently twitching Gabriel Soul with his hammer up and encased in stone and his Odina active. The noise of contact alone when his behemoth hammer swing struck shook Heavenly Hall. Gabriel Soul's body bounced and ricocheted off of the floors and walls several times, each instance of contact worsening the undead body's condition. With Daisy, Marut, Warra, Bowser, and Athelstan having attacked, and Neva too fatigued, that left Ramona, whom everyone had overlooked during their own attacks. Ramona now stood crouched and in a bright, beaming veil of golden light shining out and upward, her expression devoid of fear or apprehension.
"This time, STAY DOWN!" Ramona screamed. She thrust her crossed, empty-handed wrists ahead of her, birthing a powerful Hyperbeam. Her attack incinerated the air it flew through, crashed and burned through Gabriel Soul's upper body, and bore another hole into Heavenly Hall's walls. The brightness of her blast alone made all the other Kruna shield their eyes. Bowser even had to momentarily stop all of the power flow through his Alkemei Kracielle, for Ramona's Hyperbeam blinded his all-range vision too much for him to tolerate. More of Heavenly Hall caved in when Ramona's Hyperbeam dug into the far-left wall, but the concern remained primarily on Gabriel Soul. As Ramona's burst waned and faded, Gabriel Soul drifted through the air as a horribly disfigured, impaled, perpetually-shaking mass whose body bled power at an astonishing rate.
Daisy took a deep breath, her face and vision hazy as pain still throbbed within her. "Almost there... Just look at it..."
Bowser glanced at Daisy, then extended and ignited his Blazer Claws. "Daisy, let me finish it off!"
When Bowser's Blazer Claws grazed one another, sparks sizzled outward in an overhead arc. The Kruna Yura of Fire entered a dash straight at Gabriel Soul and slashed a left swipe into its body. Out of a spin, Bowser tore his right Blazer Claw through the creature. Gabriel Soul further suffered under the force of the fiery double kick that then came after, as well as the flaming drop kick that finished the chain. However, the undead monster refused to submit. It ricocheted off a wall and almost seemed to drift along the ceiling in zero gravity. All the tremors, spasms, and convulsions within Gabriel Soul reached an apex, which made many of the Kruna believe they only needed one more destructive hit on Gabriel Soul to finally destroy it.
But Warra noticed something alarming as Bowser prepared his Fireball Flame Breath. "Bowser, wait! Stop!"
Bowser largely suppressed his mounting attack, confused. "For what?"
"That," Warra said, pointing at Gabriel Soul. "Don't you notice something? The shaking, the power leakage, the lack of offensive?"
The power emanating from Gabriel Soul continued growing in speed and scope. Gabriel Soul had no stability to its form whatsoever. Despite the rapid seizures contorting its body, Gabriel Soul now looked as if it had started transforming again.
"Wait, were we actually doing anything to it?" asked Marut.
"Yeah, but I guess not as much as we thought we were," said Daisy. "It's been preparing something this whole time; or maybe it wanted us to attack it. I don't know, but maybe its instability isn't entirely from us. It could be its own doing too..."
The whole of Heavenly Hall trembled with Gabriel Soul's amassing power. Gabriel Soul's body chipped away and broke down into something of simpler structure. The Mother Computer Core anchored itself within a black and purple mass suspended on the inside of a cage of winding, spiraling shadow ribbons. As the Ankh hovered above the dark cage, the mouth of the mass creaked open to grant a red and orange eye clear sight of the world around it. All other portions of Gabriel Soul dissolved into the expanding power circulating around it.
"That doesn't look good," said Marut.
"As a matter of fact, no – it looks like it'll explode," said Athelstan.
More of Heavenly Hall broke apart, portions of the floor, ceiling, and walls included. All seven Kruna huddled together and backed away, but they soon ran out of space to move. In addition to several other sections of Heavenly Hall, the great hidden corridor's exit caved in. And with the increasing quakes and the rainbow-strobing, expansive energies threatening to overtake all of Heavenly Hall, the Kruna found themselves with nowhere to go.
"Anybody got a plan for this?" asked Neva.
"Yeah – finish with this!" Bowser yelled. With a deep inhale and heaving exhale, Bowser expelled the Fireball Flame Breath he still had on standby. Unfortunately for them, Bowser's move only stalled the progression of Gabriel Soul's power. The moment Bowser's stream of flames eroded and his fireball faded, Gabriel Soul's energies picked up where they left off and continued expanding. Within the translucent cloud of power, the Kruna could see Gabriel Soul's body in a chaotic, jittery midair dance of turmoil.
"Anyone here got a different plan?" asked Neva. "One that'll work?!"
Daisy scowled at and clutched at her Vranzer. "Come on! Do something!"
The more surface area Gabriel Soul's power took up, the more speed it ballooned with. Athelstan attempted erecting new walls of stone as barriers between them and Gabriel Soul's power, but the walls did not hold up for long. Each barrier crumbled before Athelstan could bring forth a stronger defense of stone infused with metal, and even that did not last much longer. The furious flashing coming from within the enlarging energy signaled an imminent, devastating explosion.
"I think we've got about twenty seconds, max," said Athelstan.
"That's no time to do anything," Warra grimly remarked.
To Daisy's delight and relief, she saw her Vranzer now glowing with a bright black light. "Finally!"
Bowser watched Daisy step forward towards the incoming energy. "Whatcha have in mind?"
"I don't know!" Daisy replied with an uneasy smile. "I've got no idea how this pendant works! I'm just gonna try a Crystal Smash and hope for the best!"
Neva groaned. "We're screwed."
As Daisy concentrated her Nova Form abilities into her right fist, Ramona darted in front of her with her Solar Greatsword raised in a reverse-grip. Light power blitzed out from Ramona's blade, in tandem with a stark increase in the Alkemei Vranzer's shine. They had but only seconds before Gabriel Soul's power would consume them, and no one expected any defense Ramona brought out to hold up for long.
"Ramona, get back!" Daisy demanded.
"I can do this!" Ramona screamed.
A divine shine erupted from the Vranzer when Ramona stabbed her sword into the ground. The barrier of light power that flooded out from Ramona's sword curled up around her and Daisy, then reached over to the other Kruna and surrounded them as well before swinging back down under and up to its origin. Floating inside a sphere of golden light, the Kruna Yura watched Gabriel Soul's explosion decimate the remainder of Heavenly Hall and continue spreading outward. Ramona's defense resisted the entirety of the explosion, keeping the Kruna safe for the time being.
Aside from the hue of the light shield Ramona had produced around them, all they could see was white. They heard nothing but destruction. And soon, all they could do was listen to the chaos and feel their sense of gravity fade. All seven of the Kruna Yura soon felt a lifting sensation, as if they had all been propelled upwards. Before long, the reality around the Kruna shifted from loud, blinding brightness to silent darkness.
Through the rubble that fell and settled, a voice of elegance murmured across the dark outside world, an aged voice of wisdom spreading its knowledge and omen to reality and anyone who could hear the sealed being capable of twisting heavens and heralding an age of eternal slumber...
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In the beginning, there was nothing.
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Then, there was chaos.
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Chaos precedes order.
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Order...falls back into chaos.