C-Sha was the first person to see Vert landing in front of Lowee's Basilicom. Most of the Basilicom staff were busy cleaning away the debris, and when half of the guards were currently assisting Lowee's military in maintaining the city-wide lockdown, her Guild crews had taken over most of the regular security duty.
A few short greetings were exchanged, before C-Sha led her upstairs, towards Blanc's office. A slight grimness crawled onto the face of Leanbox's Goddess, as she glanced over the dirty footprints and fallen objects inside the corridor.
Blanc was talking on the phone when they pushed open the door. The way she slammed the speaker back into its original position was enough to make C-Sha wince.
"There you are," Blanc said, her brows still furrowed. "Where's Noire? She's not answering my calls."
"Oh, I know why." Vert's face scrunched up. "From what I've seen on my way here, Lastation is having a...bug problem right now. Huge, acid-spewing, exploding bugs."
"...What? How did these things get into the city?"
"I have no idea. But since Noire was yelling at B-Sha, and her...friend in a yellow tornado hat, I assume they must have something to do with it." Vert sighed and sat down on a nearby chair. "As much as I'd like to let the culprits who dared to lay their hands on two precious little Candidates have a taste of my fury, I've already promised Noire to help her deal with that mess first. Sorry."
"Fantastic," Blanc put a hand to her forehead, "Why do shitty things always happen at the same time?"
"Well, if you don't mind, I'll go soothe the hearts of the twins with some cuddles, before I leave—"
Blanc stood up from her chair and leaned forward. "Vert, if you are trying to use this as another opportunity to steal a sister for yourself, I'll fucking end you."
"My, that's just rude." Vert huffed. "Do you really think so lowly of me? Can't I just show my concerns like a regular friend? You said they were okay now, but you didn't even tell me what happened to them last night. Of course I'm worried!"
"The same goddamn thing that happened to the rest of my Basilicom," Blanc grumbled. "They were caught in a blinding illusory attack from that chain-wielding CPU. The effect faded away on its own after a while, but that dirty trick still bought these two bastards enough time to grab what they want and bail out."
"What do they want?"
"The Sharecites Mina created before her departure, and a...guest scholar." Blanc clenched her fists together. "Rei said one of them was trying to resurrect her sister. Well, if they were willing to steal Lowee's faith, harm Lowee's citizens, and hurt MY sisters for that, you bet your ass I'm not gonna hold back against them!"
"I suppose I'll leave you to your work, then," Vert said. "Oh, by the way, are you still after that tourist person?"
"Not right now." Blanc frowned. "Why are you asking that?"
"Well, one of the SMD agents volunteered to track her down, immediately after her return from a mission. 'Red Storm', I think that's her call name." Vert put a hand to her chin. "Cave didn't say much, but she approved the request, and you know how Leanbox's military wing always keeps to themselves. She's probably on her way now—"
The sounds of roaring engines suddenly tore through the morning air. C-Sha rushed to the office window and pulled it open. The two CPUs' weapons were out in an instant when they saw the hulking silhouette on the horizon, flying closer and closer towards the Basilicom.
After staring at the bandaged girl on the bed for several minutes, Rom slowly reached out and grabbed her hand. Now that the poor guard who sprained his ankle falling down the stairs had hobbled back home on a crutch, Miss Tendo was the only other person inside the medical quarter, apart from them. She still hadn't woken up yet, and with how still and cold her fingers felt, maybe she...wouldn't be waking up any time soon.
Loud creaking noises suddenly came from behind her, getting louder and louder with each frustrated grunt. She turned towards her twin and pressed a finger against her lips.
"Sheesh!"
"Okay, okay, Rom." Ram reluctantly released her hold on the door handle. "When is she gonna let us out? She knows we are fine now!"
"She's just really worried. I-I don't think we should try to sneak out again."
"Yeah, you are right," Ram mumbled, before lowering her head. "Big sis had already made me apologize once, but...sorry for dragging you out there last night. I was being a real dummy. If we stayed here, maybe we could catch—"
"If we stayed here, we'd all get caught in that first light explosion." Rom shook her head. "Big sis told Miss C-Sha that she shouldn't blame herself, right? None of us...could've done much."
"Well, she sure is blaming herself for not catching that beetle CPU in time!" Ram frowned. "We've fought off much scarier villains, only to get knocked out in one hit—Ugh! You bet she'd never let us go after her again."
"...Do you want to face her again?"
"Not really." Ram sighed, before sitting down on an empty bed. "But you see how upset big sis got when we were hurt. Didn't she know we'd feel the same, if she was hurt while chasing down that CPU, and we weren't there to help?"
Rom walked towards her and put a hand on her shoulder. "She's much stronger than us. I'm sure she'll win."
"She didn't win in the Graveyard." Ram paused. "Or against Kurome."
"That's only a one-time thing. We still beat them in the end."
"Well, if we keep sitting on the sidelines after losing, maybe we won't!" Ram raised her voice. "Maybe we can't protect her or anyone else, because we get coddled like little kids all the time—"
"Ram." Rom grabbed her by the shoulder, imagining Mina's most serious face and trying her best to imitate it. "Miss Tendo is still sleeping. You can get angry and yell as loudly as you like, once we go back to our rooms. B-But, if we don't wanna get treated like little kids...we shouldn't throw tantrums like little kids!"
A wave of regret hit her when she saw Ram's wounded look. Before she could start apologizing, however, Ram pulled her into a tight hug.
"Geez, You're talking like Financier." She said. "But you aren't wrong. I dunno, I just wanna...get mad at something."
Because I'm scared, Rom heard her words, even if she wasn't saying it out loud. Because back there, I could only hear voices and my head hurt and I didn't even know if you were okay or not, and even if I was shouting and moving and not crying, I felt just as helpless and dumb as you.
So she kept patting Ram on the back, until the uncomfortable tension in her body drained away, and Ram was no longer holding her breath. For a moment, they just leaned onto each other, until the sounds of footsteps came from outside. Ram jumped out of her arms and bolted towards the door. Rom hesitated for a few seconds, before taking off after her.
The door remained shut, however, and no clicks came out of the lock. It sounded like they were just...talking. Rom pressed her ear against the door surface, almost in perfect unison with her twin.
"Asa?" The person outside sounded like an old man. Not super old, but old enough to be called "uncle" or something like that. "Is this 'Rubis' girl your friend? I don't remember meeting someone with that name."
"You are one of the two contacts I found in her phone. Little girl. White robe and red dress. Giant red and gold ribbon." A grumpy female voice answered. "Ring any bells?"
"W-What? Tendo girl?!" He gasped. "How did she—are you saying 'Tendo' isn't even her real name?!"
"You sent her to help me find that brat, and you didn't know?"
"Know what?" He asked. "Wait, so you realized she was the helper I got for ya'?"
"Her shrine was two streets away from the fucking arcade! The unchanging appearance? The traditional dress?" The woman groaned. "Really, you've known her for years. If anyone's gonna recognize a retired CPU, it should be you."
"Retired...CPU? Oh." There was a long stunned silence, before the man started speaking again. "So that's why you'd come across her, right after the attack last night? Is she okay?"
"No." The woman said. "Door's locked, so I can't tell you how she's doing now. That's why I called you here."
"...To break down the door?"
"Fuck no. Look, this name here? It's her other contact. I need you to dial this number, and break the news to her.
"Why?"
"Because you won't rub salt into the open wound by accident. Unlike me." A pause. "Please."
She kept drifting in and out of sleep, wrapped up in some dirty dance pad accessory she dragged out of the giant pile of toys. That must be the reason why the Living Books Dimension wasn't coming to her—just when getting possessed by some book ghosts could be helpful. Though, since she just rolled off the bed last time, maybe it wouldn't allow her to break bulletproof glass any time soon.
It could be morning outside, for all she knew. Or noon. Or evening. The mere thought of that made her want to curl up in a ball and start screaming.
As she clutched the fabric even tighter, trying to empty her mind and get some rest, faint footsteps came from outside, and her eyes snapped open. Tossing the dance pad aside, she jumped up, almost slamming head-first into the glass in her mad dash.
"Hey! Are you there?"
After a long silence, the footstep sounds were back—moving further and further away from her. A wave of dread washed over her, but soon, it circled back, and the tiny bit of hope started gnawing at her again.
"Kid! I need you to listen to me, just for a—"
"I can't take you to Lowee's Basilicom now." Dameko's voice was strangely flat and unemotional, devoid of all her usual enthusiasm and cheerfulness.
"Does that mean I can leave?"
Her inquiry was met with another long, suffocating silence.
"You can't be planning to shut me in here forever, right?"
"Say something!" She pounded on the glass with her uninjured hand, when the footsteps began fading into the distance again. "Don't just walk away!"
"Okay, I know there's no way I can win that custody lawsuit! I-I don't even deserve it! I'm just this...human train wreck who can knock out the power of an entire city while chasing down two petty pirates, who thought that 'Doodly Doodly Doop' was still funny to a twelve-year-old kid! But this is my last chance to go home, and..."
"Even if I'm every bit the irresponsible moron and bad role model they said I was, even if Loft herself finds me annoying, I don't want to get to a point where it's too late to make up for all of my failures." She closed her eyes, her forehead still pressing against the glass as she knelt over. "Please. Let me go. I'm begging you."
"...Let me guess," Dameko said, her tone as flat as before. "You aren't involved in her life at all. You just wanna have fun and goof off together and make her laugh, without doing all the hard work of raising a kid. Isn't that right?"
"I do care about her! It's not like she's a...pet!"
"Caring about her, and doing what's good for her? Not the same thing. Nope. I bet there's someone who's the best at doing what's good for her. For you. A more mature big sibling, perhaps. She can deliver the bitter pills and take care of all the boring stuff and be the smart role model, but she's never her favorite. You are."
"So you just keep slacking off and being the nice, chill, carefree buddy you are, thinking everything will turn out fine, 'cause she always knows better! What could she possibly do wrong?" Dameko suddenly raised her voice. "Well, A LOT! Turns out she's as big a dummy as you, only in a different way, and when you realized that? It's too late. Nothing's ever the same again."
"Okay, the 'done a lot of things wrong' part? You lost me there. That's not Clancy." She frowned. "It sounds like...you are projecting a little."
"I don't hate her." Dameko took a deep breath. "Yeah, I wanna blame everything on her, but that'd be me cheating myself about just how awful and lazy I'd been, and how I went along with her because it's easy! But really...she's all I have, despite her faults."
Her voice was cracking, fading into a bare whisper. "And now she's gonna die, thinking that I still hate her. That I want her to suffer."
"...Are you really twelve years old?"
Dameko responded with a sad chuckle. "Secrets. Remember that?"
A loud clanking sound rippled through the indoor space, followed by a tremor that shook the entire structure. She almost fell onto the floor at the sudden noise.
"What's going on now?!"
"I've left your stuff on the floor. You can get outta' here from the way we came." A pause. "Sorry for shutting you in there. Please, go back and do something, before it's too late. Bye-bye."
She heard the sound of a hatch slamming shut and covered her ears at the deafening vroom, just as the glass pane slid open again.
The first thing she saw, as she rushed out of the narrow passage, was the giant hole on the bunker ceiling, slowly closing itself as the mechanical panels slid back to their original position. Then, the white glove and pink phone lying on the ground.
The giant robot was gone, leaving only whiffs of smoke and the lingering heat in the air.
The wind was howling when she rushed out of the cave. As she shoved her way through the barren woods, heading towards the lighthouse on the horizon, the drizzle became a roaring downpour. When she finally reached the building and started pounding on the door, she was drenched from head to toe. Before long, the door slid open, revealing Primo's worried face.
"There you are, mi amiga!" He pulled her into the building, before grabbing a towel from the laundry basket, and tossing it into her hands. "Where did you disappear to last night? There's a storm alert in the morning. I was planning to call Hubert. H and organize a search party, if you didn't come back in an hour!"
"Sorry. I was..." She paused, "Kidnapped by the Self-appointed Photographic Genius Guy."
Gosh darn it. That had to be the worst possible excuse she could ever use in her lifetime.
"Yeah. I know. Didn't believe it either, when that Dameko kid first told me. Fortunately, he just wanted to take some photos for his...postmodern art project."
"Santo cielo!" Primo threw his hands up in the air. "What's with these weirdos and villains popping up all over Lowee? If I hadn't heard the radio, I'd think you were messing with me for fun, L'Ubiquité."
"Radio? What happened?"
"There was an attack on Lowee's Basilicom last night." Primo walked to the old television in the living room and switched it on. There was only white noise on the screen, however. "Signal's pretty bad in this weather, though. It'll take a while before the news comes through. How 'bout you go change your wet clothes first, while I get this old relic working?"
"Sure." She said, before stopping in front of the staircase and turning back. "Wait, Is your sister okay? Can she still fly the ship home safely in a storm?"
"Stai tranquillo. They had already docked the ship on Sunshine Isle," Primo pointed to the largest and nearest offshore island on the map, "And were heading towards the cabin, last time they sent a radio message. Probably gonna spend the night there, until the storm was over."
Nodding, she headed upstairs and went into the bathroom. After she had changed into a new set of clothes, she could already hear the sound coming out of the television as she walked downstairs, the towel still wrapped around her wet hair.
"After the recent arrival of Leanbox's CPU, the lockdown on the Basilicom and surrounding area had finally been lifted, and your on-scene reporter, Famitsu, has run all the way from Lastation to Lowee's city center, which is an incredible feat, considering the whole bug fiasco over there!" The blonde girl on the screen took a deep breath.
"I never expected that I'd be writing another article about a certain knight of Lastation, after so many years...oh, what a grave misjudgment I've made back then! But, before we could begin our interviews, here comes the mandatory National Security Broadcast about last night's attack!"
The first thing she saw on the screen was the portrait of a young teenage girl in a black suit, with red streaks in her white hair, before the giant "Wanted" letters popped up, and a synthetic female voice began speaking.
"Apart from this suspect, Lynka, who is also involved in the recent break-in at Lowee's National Archive, we urge all citizens to be on the lookout for her accomplice and the main culprit behind last night's attack—an unidentified chain-wielding CPU, capable of creating blinding illusions. She had assaulted Lowee's Candidates during her escape, and severely injured a single person before that."
Her hands twitched at the last sentence. Chains. The incident at the Archive. That...couldn't be a coincidence, right?
"Witness accounts mentioned the 'beetle-like' wings of her HDD Form and her cyan hair, but no further information is available at the moment. As such, we encourage all citizens to report sightings of suspicious figures to local Guild branches, police forces, or military personnel. Thank you for your cooperation." With a beep, the broadcast cut off, and the camera switched back to the blonde journalist.
"Now that the broadcast is over, let's—" A loud engine roar cut through the air, "Ohmigosh! It's a bird? It's a plane? No! It's a giant robot!"
Together with Primo, she leaned forward and squinted at the grainy footage on the television screen. Before long, the hulking red and white robot landed on the Basilicom lawn with a loud thud. Most nearby guards immediately readied their weapons, and even the journalist whipped out a...giant lobster when she saw the bazooka on the robot's shoulder.
"Stop right there!"
Two blurs of white and green shot through the air and came to a halt in front of the robot. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the axe and spear in their hands, aiming straight at the robot's cockpit hatch. The crushing weight in her chest only got heavier when the hatch opened up, revealing Dameko's messy grey hair and cumbersome headgear.
"State your purpose for coming here." Leanbox's Goddess commanded, in a soft, yet authoritative voice.
"Where is my sister?" Dameko said. "You called me here."
"What?" Lowee's Goddess frowned. "I've never—wait, who the hell are you? And who the hell is your sister?!"
Dameko climbed out of the cockpit, without a word, and raised her hands.
"Answer my question!"
"I am Lowee's third CPU, Mauve Heart," The camera zoomed in on Dameko's face, as she stared at the two Goddesses, "And I'm here for my sister, Rubis!"
Right at this moment, a loud thunder shook the entire building. With a shrill electrical whine, the display on the television screen fizzled out, leaving only a flurry of black and white pixels behind.