Slowly, her body felt like her own again, instead of Flare's.
The problem was, she couldn't see it.
She was in a sea of light. Not pure light, just golden light particles, cluttered together in a thick, misty nebula.
She couldn't see her hands when she looked down. Even as she started waving her arms around frantically, her body seemed to pass right through these particles. She didn't even seem to be standing on solid ground.
She quickly found out how difficult it was to move her entire body in one direction. It was like swimming in cough syrup, and every stroke of her arms and legs was met with immense resistance. There was no exhaustion, but neither was there any signs of progress. The veil of golden particles was as thick and endless as ever, no matter how far she...moved.
"Hello?" She yelled. Less out of a belief that someone could hear her, and more out of the need to make sure her senses were still there.
Silence greeted her, as she kept moving. She was about to stop in her tracks, when she felt a light jolt in her arm. Frowning, she swung her arm towards the same direction again, and was met with a similar sensation. Like static electricity.
How strange. Was there some kind of energy field in this...plane? This dimensional rift?
Then the memories came flooding back, along with crippling panic and dread. The dark blue energy, Clancy, everything coming apart at the seams. Brøø.
"No," she whispered. "No, no, no, no."
If this was anything like a Resonance event, she would never get back to her world again. Nothing ever escaped from a dimensional rift and landed where they were before.
Or maybe it wasn't. Maybe she just didn't have a body to go back to anymore.
She thought she would burst into hysterical sobbing, or start shrieking, or at least utter a few curses at that realization. Instead, she released her conscious control over her body and fell backwards, floating limply in this sea of light.
She was so tired. Tired of screwing up, tired of being screwed over by assholes and desperate good people alike in such a short timespan, tired of making small progresses without getting to use them in any meaningful ways, tired of being saved by people whom she soon dragged down together with herself. And now they were probably all dead.
For what? For a grand total of nothing?
If she was in some kind of afterlife, please give her one of these "your life flashes before your eyes" sessions soon. Even if it was a compilation of her failings. Make her feel something other than this crushing exhaustion and emptiness. Which, if it lasted any longer, might very well be the only thing she was capable of feeling from now onwards.
Predictably, it didn't come.
And she couldn't even close her eyes and let the darkness take over. The light from the particles was as bright as before, shining straight through her eyelids—if she still had eyelids, that was.
"Interesting. Very interesting."
A whisper made its way into her ears, after what seemed like an eternity of torturous light particle bath. It was feminine, but saturated with a slow, deliberate coldness that made it sound synthetic and not quite human.
Yeah, definitely the same voice that had muttered gibberish prophecies over and over again in her dreams, and led her to that crystal.
"Great. The sanity loss is setting in now," she muttered.
Honestly, she was starting to look forward to all the other bizarre hallucinations her mind could cook up, after she'd thoroughly gone off the deep end. That would at least break up the silence and monotony.
"Mmm?" The voice fell silent for a long interval, then cleared its throat. "Testing. Testing. Can you hear me?"
"Uh-huh? Yes? " She replied, not wanting to get her hopes up too much.
"Mmm. A most unusual and peculiar phenomenon. Even if high concentration of—" A cough, "—allows for a visual manifestation, my presence is not perceptible through the other senses."
"Perhaps I can make an attempt." The voice mused to itself. "Even though your location should be too far for me to reach. That specter of delusion did try—and failed—coming in from the other direction, but her manifestation does not depend on Gold Energy, nor is she connected..."
"I have no idea what you are talking about," she said, before a realization struck her. "Wait, are you dead too?"
"That will depend on your definition of death. Philosophical? Social? Biological? Clinical? Legal—"
"As in, cold and stiff! Are you like, that kind of dead right now?"
"Patience clearly is not your greatest virtue," The voice stated. "Indeed, I have no vital signs or body temperature, and a degree of mobility so limited as to be non-existent. You, however, do not fit that definition of death. Not everyone who hears the voice of the dead are deceased themselves."
"How do you know?"
"If you were dead, I would be the first to know."
"You didn't answer my question—" She gritted her teeth, and choked back the rest of her sentence. This voice wasn't the mystical automated broadcast she assumed it was, when she first heard it several years ago. No, it said something about being connected to the Gold Energy, and, combined with that statement it just made...
"Are you my crystal?!"
The voice responded with a sigh. "Admirable efforts, with the amount of information that is available to you. I am afraid that is not the case. Merely a case of borrowed voice, nothing more."
"So they are, uh, alive enough to ask you nicely for a voiceover?"
"No," The voice replied. "Which reminds me. You will be seeing me soon enough, if the environment around you is, indeed, suitable."
The tone was just the right mixture of ominous and cryptic that, for a second, she didn't know if she should be scared or excited. What followed was a long silence, long enough for her to start wondering if the voice wouldn't be coming back, or had failed in its attempt to cross over.
"Hello? Can you still hear me?" Finally, she asked. "Yeah, it's kind of a pointless question—if you can't, you won't be answering me, but if you can, a progress update would be nice?"
There was no response, but the golden particles in front of her started moving. She reeled back when the particles were sucked into a void, and disappeared without a trace. No, not a formless void, she could see a clearly defined outline, a silhouette now. Before long, distinctive colors filled up this empty space, coalescing into a solid form.
Brown hair tied up in a high ponytail, neatly-ironed blue suit, red tie. The woman's digital watch, with its shining golden casing and leather strap, looked really expensive, but she wouldn't stand out in a room full of business executives...if not for the red valve that was sticking out of her empty left eye socket.
"We meet at last, face to face. I can assure you, however, that I have not been avoiding any of you on purpose." The woman smiled—no, her lips twitched in a way that could have been mistaken for a smile.
"...What are you."
"That is a rather personal question. Too personal, I am afraid, for our first meeting." The woman's single eye narrowed slightly, as she straightened her tie. In bemusement or disapproval, she couldn't tell. "You may call me...Ms. X."
As that fairy shoved a flaming mass of dark energy into her mouth, and she slumped to the ground, Rei still couldn't believe it was happening to her.
When weird voices started calling out to them in some remote alleyways, most sensible people would've just quickened their steps and walked away. But she didn't. Even though she'd been mugged in the exact same kind of spots before.
Like always, she only had herself to blame—
Blame? Blame? She had done nothing wrong! No, she had done something right for once! With a single thought of hers, she had made that obnoxious, rude, condescending idiot who didn't deserve her title of divinity DISAPPEAR! That fake smile and all those insincere apologies just vanished without a trace, fake smiles and apologies she had heard so many times before.
No! We didn't push her in there! She just tripped on her own again. You know how clumsy she is, ma'am, and we're trying to help! Right, Rei?
C'mon. I know these kids are mean, but since all you do is cry and make a fuss, every time they so much as cough in your direction...you are practically asking for it.
Here, let's shake hands, apologize, and be good friends and classmates again (and pretend that no one would double down on the mockery and snip her hair off with scissors and dump water over her books, the moment she walked out of the principal's office)—
She thought the CPUs were too busy. That there was only one of them in each nation, and they couldn't possibly know, nor do anything to help. That maybe, if everything didn't depend on them, if people like her had a say in how things should be run, the future would be a little brighter for someone, somewhere.
Oh, who was she kidding.
CPUs were the biggest bullies ever.
No wonder they didn't do anything. As long as these scumbags still gave them the faith they needed to survive, they wouldn't lift a finger in the name of some crazy, foolish woman who dared to question if everything was indeed all sunshine and rainbows, a disbeliever who didn't live in their little fantasy worlds.
She had been living in the real world for decades. Long enough to know that it was rotten to the core, that the strong preyed on the weak with glee, leaving them a ruined mess, devoid of any hope for a better future.
It was WRONG.
And now she could finally make it RIGHT. Give them a taste of their own medicine, speak to them in their own language, the language of force and fear and humiliation—
Rei laughed and laughed and couldn't stop laughing. That fairy wasn't laughing together with her, and just rolled her eyes. Stupid mosquito. Croire had not changed a bit, ever since she popped out of that CPU Memory (what is a CPU Memory?).
Lastation's Candidate asked her why she was here. Like she didn't have the right to be inside her own nation, just because she wouldn't love and worship her spineless friend with all of her heart.
Citizen's Group questions. Really. Why should she answer their questions, if they already knew the answers? That anyone who spoke against the CPUs were idiots at best, and villains at worst?
Anger swelled up in her chest when her arm was grabbed. Piddling little silver spoon babies, thinking they were entitled to everything she ever owned, from her attention to her time to her belongings—
She slapped Lastation's Candidate away. Shock was written all over the young girl's face, as she fell on her butt. How great it felt, to be the one throwing the first blow.
Had this brat ever gotten used to being on the receiving end? Had she ever had her backpack snatched out of her hands and used as a bait to lure her into some secluded corner where no one could hear her cries? Where she was held down by several kids and kicked in the shins and got her head dunked into a cleaning bucket and screamed and screamed until her throat was raw?
That power was right at her fingertips. With one thought, she could let it out. Give this spoiled little princess a taste of real pain and despair.
But Rei stopped herself at the last second, just as the Candidate stood back up, scowling.
No. These Candidates weren't bullies. They were audiences, brainwashed by and blindly devoted to the real bullies. To their so-called "sisters". And she wouldn't stoop to their level.
Rei called upon her power, and when the dark blue mist faded away, she was no longer on the same street as the Candidates.
She was grabbing some redhead teen by the head and burning her face off, smelling the burnt hair and charred skin, wondering why this traitor wouldn't just scream and beg for mercy like the filthy coward she was—
The next second, she was floating beneath a dark sky, above a giant hoard of CPU clones. The very fabric of space-time bent at her fingertips, and she warped the escaping crowd right back into the midst of the hoard. She didn't order any of them to strike, just to prolong the terror a little longer.
Last time, they never had the chance to run. In a split second, they were ashes, spread all over the ruins of Tari.
She was cackling again. How they eyed the faces of their Goddesses with such fear and hatred now! Only now did they see CPUs as the monsters they really were, a perversion of natural order, parasitic beings leeching off the people's good will, spewing out sweet little lies for their own survival—
"Tornado Sword!"
On the far horizon, a streak of light cut through the hoard, reducing them to a bunch of pixels. Followed by another. And another.
Rei shrieked.
Even as she clutched her forehead and curled up, shielding herself from the sight of the dark blue void above, the memories kept coming. Her stomach churned with a familiar burning sensation; had she eaten anything today, she was definitely going to be sick.
Until she caught a glimpse of a light in the darkness.
Slowly, Rei put her palm down, still trembling and panting. The ground below her was shaking, along with her vision. But she could still see what appeared to be one half of a glowing crystal.
Under its faint glow, the jagged edge of the platform she was on was barely visible. Just when she stood up from the ground, the platform shook again, causing her to lose balance and fall on her knees. Seconds later, a small fragment of light flew out of the dark energy swirling around the platform, and attached itself onto the crystal.
More debris were floating above her. Columns, barred gates torn off their hinges, broken walls and tiles, entire chunks of buildings. All spinning in circles, like little paper boats caught in a giant whirlpool.
Then she looked down and finally saw that small body, lying below the crystal.
Rei bolted towards Lynka, and nearly fell onto her when another tremor hit the platform. As Rei flipped her over, Lynka's eyes remained shut. Her fingers had gone as limp as the rest of her body, however, allowing the stone in her palm to drop onto the ground and promptly shatter into a dozen pieces.
"Hello? C-Can you hear me?" Rei grabbed her shoulders, and started shaking her. She froze up when she saw a tiny dark blue flame, pulsing inside Lynka's chest, writhing and spreading.
Oh. Oh no.
Lynka must've found a way to call upon her "Lady Cyan Heart" again, and now that power was going to do horrible things to her, just like it had twisted Rei into that...thing!
"Wake up, p-please! WAKE UP! WAKE! UP!"
Her progressively louder shrieking fell on deaf ears. Rei reached for the flame, trying to swipe it away from Lynka's body. Her hand passed right through it, followed by a stab of searing pain that made her cry out and let go of Lynka. It didn't stop there. The dark blue energy was sticking to her skin, as if she had actually set her fingers on fire.
Only after several rounds of frantic shaking did it fizzle out. Just as she wiped the cold sweat off her forehead with her other hand, a pair of glowing scarlet eyes suddenly appeared above Lynka's body, blinking.
So she was still in there, thank goodness, and now she was outside her body—
Before Rei could feel any relief, however, Lynka's real eyes opened.
"A-Ahhhh!"
Lynka's expression shifted into a disdainful frown, as she picked herself up from the ground, with an alien coldness and rigidity that Rei had never seen on the girl before. She didn't spare a single glance in Rei's direction and turned straight towards the floating eyes phantom, which was backing away from her with the desperation of a fleeing prey.
"Quit hiding from me." A sneer, "You aren't fooling anyone other than yourself. Show your face."
The phantom stopped in its tracks. There was a flash of light, and when it faded away, Lynka's translucent form was standing there, her lips opening and closing in a rapid rhythm. Rei could not hear a single word she said, however.
"Just listen to yourself." The...thing in Lynka's body jabbed a finger towards the phantom. After a violent flinch, Lynka's lips stopped moving. "Listen to this shameful display. 'No, Maria, no, please don't.' What do you think I'm going to do to you?"
Another violent flinch.
"I only lay my hands on those who have the potential to be a threat. You have to earn a beating from me." That thing—Maria—scowled, "And you haven't been worthy of that honor, ever since you lost to that brat of Lowee."