Author's Note: Okay so second last chapter here, This is your last chance people, if you have any questions now is the time to ask them! Read, Review, Favourite, and Enjoy!

Chapter 116: The Worlds They See In Their Nightmares

A group of programmers were making a sour face as they looked down at their screens.

"Who the hell stuffed all this code in here! We deleted emotions for a reason!" The man leading the team of programmers had dark brown hair and black piercing eyes.

Many would say that he was the spitting image of the machine whose coding he was looking through right now. Of course this only makes sense, as the machine in question, Shiba, was the end result of a collaboration between him and his long deceased wife. It was a loveless affair, done purely for business, he provided only a small amount of raw material but she was the one to build this abominable thing, and she was the one to program it as well. That was now where his problem lay. Unlike his wife he was not able to reprogram this thing to go back to doing what he wanted it to do.

"What has that useless child been doing that someone was able to tamper with all of this equipment!" The head programmer snapped as he was becoming increasingly frustrated. What was his name again? Whatever, he probably wasn't important.

"What do we do?" One of the other programmers asked looking at the Quote Unquote father of the contraption that someone had managed to break. "Don't people realise that this thing is dangerous if we lose control of it?"

"We can't even reset it at this point. We'll have to destroy both of them imme-" The last thing that the 'father' of Shiba saw was a silver gun-like weapon aimed directly at his head.

No bodies were left behind to be found. But then again why would there be, as Shiba was the God of Creation and Destruction annihilating something to the point that it left no existence behind was as simple as snapping his fingers. Now that the pests at the office had been dealt with Shiba could return home, the smell of curry greeted his olfactory sensor as his sister was hard at work inside of the kitchen.

"Good evening Onii-sama! Would you like supper, the Bath, or me?" Miyuki came out to see him but, as soon as she locked her eyes on him obvious fear creep onto her features. "Onii-sama? Is there something wrong?"

'Self System check engaged. #### No error detected' Miyuki began backing away in panic. 'Error Error.' She quickly pulled out her C.A.D. and aimed it at him.

"Who are you! You aren't my Onii-sama."

'####'

Shiba had prepared for every eventuality.

'####'

If someone attacked his sister then he would kill them first.

'####'

If someone killed or hurt her then he would simply cast Regrowth on her.

'Error Error.'

Even if her body was completely destroyed, every morning he collected a single inch of her otherwise immaculate hair and using that, though it would push the very limits of his power and may even kill him, he could in theory still use regrowth to revive her.

'Not able to Compute. Rebooting... Rebooting...'

However the one scenario he wasn't able to comprehend, the one thing that he would never be able to devise a counter measure for, would be if she had rejected him outright.

'Rebooting...'

A mushroom cloud stretched into the sky.

'Rebooting...'

Chunks of the planet were scattered into space from the force of the explosions.

'Rebooting...'

Dust clouds covered the sky as a permanent winter set in.

'Error. Error. Error.'

When Shiba looked up and saw what he had done, he saw that everything, everything, had been destroyed. And he was the one who had destroyed it.

"I really hate losing."

Shadow looked out to the field at his opponent, a Slither red, and worst a slacker who showed up late to the entrance exam and then humiliated his dorm supervisor. And he lost, again, one of the countless elemental hero fusions that he had stashed away in his deck that came out at the last moment with some bull move. It felt like the story of his life. Everyone around Shadow seemed to shine so brightly whether it be the girl of his dreams, his senior in the Obelisk blue dorm, his brothers. Shadow was blinded by that brilliance, hoped to reach it one day, and realised that he never would be able to. That was his very nature, oh sure he stood out too, not as a shining brilliant light, but because he was crawling around the ground, a thick impenetrable wall between him and the light that he would never get to touch everywhere he went. More than he loves winning he really hates losing, and that was unfortunate because it felt like he did far more of the Latter and not nearly enough of the first. Just once, he would give anything if only just once, he could touch upon that brilliant light and seize it for himself.

Shadow was suddenly plunged into a world of darkness, no sun, no stars, not even the artificial lighting of the academy was working. Quickly Shadow looked around for any signs of the others, or of the signs of who was responsible for this, if some apocalyptic magic had befallen the academy again then at the very least he could find it and stall it long enough for the others to rally against it.

"Ah..." His search led him back down the steps of the duel academy where he first started his search, and to the people lying on the ground, the people who always shone so brilliantly, were now dimmer than the darkest shadows. A bone hand rested on his shoulders as Shadow looked up.

"Well done my apprentice." The bony dog-like face of the one who had answered Shadow's call stated in a congratulatory tone of voice. "We have been victorious!" And then Shadow's Master ate him.

"Being at the top, is really kind of annoying."

Uriel stepped over the twisted, broken, writhing bodies of the latest bunch to ambush him on his way back to the grocery store. Once he would even bother to call an ambulance to pick the poor bastards up and cart them away, now he couldn't even be bothered he was so annoyed. Right now he was on his way home to his crappy defiled apartment with his crappy microwavable supper to have another crappy evening alone, however someone approached him from the front. Not a young and reckless punk with something to prove, but a gold toothed piece of slime with an offer to make. Thus Uriel lowered his redirection barrier to speak to him.

"Get lost!" And in the split instant before he raised the barrier again...

"Even if I told you I had a way of making those punks on the ground over there stop harassing you?"

Before Uriel realised it the conversation had already moved into a facility.

"We'll skip the complicated details." The Scientist the snake oil peddler brought him to had opted to cut to the chase. "We believe that in order to raise a 'Level Six' we should take you, the strongest Level Five in Academy City, and place you in a scenario in which we push your ability to the absolute limits. Towards this end we have devised twenty thousand experiments that we believe will push you into the unknown territory of 'Level Six.'"

The scenery moved into the testing chamber where a familiar face had been released. The third strongest of the Level Five's, the Rail gun is what people called her. She fired off a couple of bullets at him, they bounced off of his reflection barrier.

"The test seems to be over now." Uriel stated with a shrug of his shoulders, he even adjusted the barrier so that the bullets would not be fatal, after all they expected another nineteen thousand nine hundred and ninety nine of these so called experiments. Then one final gun shot was let off and the bullet went into Rail-gun's head.

"Now the test is over."

From the chamber to the back seat of a car.

"What the hell was that about!?"

"You're upset that girl has died, understandable but you don't need to be concerned because that girl wasn't the real one." The Snake Oil Salesman's smile gleamed, even if it was for the wrong reasons. "Look out the window."

"What the hell is-" Uriel paused as he did as he was told. Railgun was not only alive but also laughing with a group of other girls.

"What you fought was a clone." The Salesman stated in no uncertain terms. "That girl was barely a day old before she got herself killed. There's already hundreds more just like her, by the end of the week there will be thousands. That wasn't a person, that was a barely self aware killing machine mass produced and disposed of for your convenience. And until you either complete the tests or want them to stop another is going to come after you each and every day."

And they did. Snipers. Machine guns. Shot guns. Bombs. On the street. At the Grocery store. Inside an office Building. In his apartment. Crazy as it sounded he did feel like he was slowly becoming stronger and stronger every few tests, exploring his abilities, pushing them to his limits, and the 'sisters' were getting stronger too, something about their electrokinesis forming a hive mind in which they shared their experiences. Test ten thousand and thirty four was at the dockyard for Academy City, where a little girl came to interrupt his work, the original Rail Gun, killed in a single move by Uriel. Then he killed her clone. The scientists disregarded Rail Gun's suicide, on the contrary now they had a near unlimited supply of her genetic material.

Suddenly Uriel looked around and saw that the area had begun to rain with an unlimited number of cloned bodies each of them hitting the ash-fault and leaving a bloody smear behind. Most notable of all was both the youngest and youngest looking, a little girl in a seafoam green sundress with triangle patterns.

"RRRAAAGGGHHH!"

They wanted a bloody Level Six so badly? He'll give them one!

"Let's have some fun."

Ruyi Jingu Bang lived his life care-freely. He ate what he wanted, did what he wanted, took what he wanted, hung out with whom he wanted where he wanted to. This unruly creature has no family, for his mother was stone and his father the wind, or so he would claim to his fellow monkeys and other animal friends, and he was their king for with his natural martial talent he was the strongest of them all. And yet tragedy struck one day, for while his fellow monkey's were slowly growing old and dying, he was remaining young and he didn't know why, so he set out to find answers, and eventually found a sage living in the forest.

"You are a Yokai." The sage explained in no uncertain terms.

"A Yokai?" Ruyi asked looking confused.

"You were born of the deaths of thousands of humans from the war." The Sage flew his opium out of his mouth as he explained to Wukong what he was. "You do not age as your fellow monkeys do because your life span is all the years of all those humans did not get to live. Your natural martial talents come from all those years that all of those humans did live."

"Then how do I make it so that my friends will live as long as I do?" Ruyi asked looking at the old man suspiciously, prompting another laugh and burst of Opium.

"That's not something you want boy, and not something they want either. You are a twisted broken thing made to suffer, and you will suffer for all those years those dead men did not get to live. But if you wish to foolishly pursue immortality anyway." The Monk stood to his feet, a long staff with rings hanging off of the end appearing in his hands. "Come. I will teach you of your foolishness and you can start suffering now!"

Through the sage Ruyi learned to manifest his power of the soul, his taking the form of a massive pillar that reached the heavens. That was too unwieldy of a weapon though, so instead he learned how to shrink it down to a more manageable size by controlling his power, it still weighed the same though. He also learned of Ki, and of magic, he learned his own innate powers of shape shifting, soon he learned all the ways that he could manipulate Ki until he eventually left of his own volition. He was still deprived of the answers he was looking for though so he sought the dragons, and in the process picked a fight beating them up and mugging them of their closets and armoury's in search of clues, forming a army from the animals in the forest in the process. When the Immortals learned of this they were enraged and war broke out. One day a Buddha came and put a end to the fighting, with his power he buried Ruyi under a mountain and sealed him inside of a pair of stocks, sentencing him in that state for five hundred years, eating only balls of iron and drinking only molten copper. And he recognised the Buddha, as the same one who had taught him the path to immortality.

"Is this the eternal life you asked me to show you monkey?"

No!

"This is what it means to live a life with no limits, with nothing to hold you back!"

No! No! Please take it back!

"When you do as you like you will bring harm onto others! And they will find a means by which to punish you! Be Grateful you learned this lesson before it is too late!"

Take it back! Take it Back! TAKE IT BACK!

"Shall we have some fun sisters?"

The Apex looked down at the battlefield together with her sisters, yet another war fought by the humans over the most pitiful of things, yet more abominations born of their malice that needed to be hunted, as was their lot in life. It twas but a pitiful chore, but not without benefits. Among the humans there were the Einherjar, those who prove themselves to be a match for such abominations in pure combat, such men prove themselves worthy of a place in the Hanged lord's army, and as stock for their own. The Valkyries call themselves the daughters of Odin, born of his divine seed in the wombs of the worthy, and many of them are, alas though they too have needs, and sadly they cannot pick stock out from their father and brothers because that line of thought leads to madness, a loss of immunity to disease, physical deformities and finally sterility. So they take their husbands among the Einherjar instead, and their alliance is a powerful one at that, for she and her sisters can turn themselves into weapons worthy of such warriors to combat against the deformed.

And she was the Apex, a position she earned by defeating all of her sisters in single combat consecutively! She has first pick among both mates and prey, a right she uses to full benefit. And yet the years wear on, and on, the Apex continues her duty to hunt the deformed and bond with Einherjars, collecting the souls of the damned until she finally met her match. An enemy that in her arrogance she took all of her sisters out to fight in a foreign land, and in doing so watched as they were wiped out one by one, until only she remained. Releasing a blood curdling cry of rage and pain she formed the pack with the abomination, ripping it's soul out and binding it in place. A group of warriors she had never seen before built a shrine around her weapon, many of them worthy of becoming Einherjars. But none dared pull her out, to try and slay this 'yokai' they spoke of, until it was too late, until she had gone mad from the isolation. Until someone had pulled her out of the stone, and was overwhelmed by both her madness and the demons, and so more brave warriors died.

"HHHYYYAAAHHH!"

"AAAHHH!"

"KKKYYYAAAHHH!"

"GGGAAAHHH!"

"HHHAAA!"

Some one had bound the five former heroes while they had been unconscious, and good thing too for many of their first instincts upon waking up had led to self mutilation. They only calmed down when they passed out, a round of healing magic was followed by a round of cold water and the five of them woke up strapped to chairs someone had managed to procure some place.

"Oi you guys still have a screw loose?" Ikki asked leaning over the five. Brunhildr spat water in his face in response.

"You... are the last person who has the right to ask a question like that." Tatsuya stated in a scathing tone of voice.

"He's back!" Shouting that Ikki cut Tatsuya loose first.

"Cut the rest of us free first you jerk!" Chazz snapped glaring at Ikki.

"No Claws? No Shadows? No weird static-y wing things? Anyone? Anyone at all?" Ikki asked his tone of voice as much trolling as it was questioning. Just to prove a point Brunhildr busted out a wing to hit Ikki with, sadly though he was still not only fast enough to move out of her way but also doodle all over her face.

"Let them go." There was still one Desperado that they had to deal with though, a giant of a man dressed in leather and bone. Instinctively the three free heroes pulled out their devices to defend themselves, and just as quickly the giant of a man shrunk down as the armour disappeared around him.

"How'd you do that?" Setsuna asked keeping her spear trained on Naofumi.

"Soul Searching. Evidently I've had practice." Naofumi reached his arm out and it disappeared into something, only to then pull it out opening a familiar portal in the process. A Wave portal. "You guys coming or what?" Naofumi led the Seven them through, explanations as to what he is doing soon to follow, but for now there was one last piece of business that needed tending to, and so before he left he sent a message to the five most powerful animals of this world.

Miles away the group from Glass's world were fending off entire hoards of monsters and reincarnated, the Musical Instrument Hero, a little princess of this world named Melty, had deigned to join them in there last stand. And then, the Demon Dragon started laughing.

"Oh that is brilliant!" Demon grabbed hold of Melty as she shook her. "You know him right? The shielder? Please tell me that he had this planned all along!"

"What are you talking about you crazy woman!?" L'Arc snapped as he cut a swath through more of the reincarnated. "Shut up and fight or we'll all going to die!"

Demon seemed to think about it for but a moment.

"I think I choose 'die!'" Suddenly Demon transformed, not into the draconic form that they were familiar with, but one far more sinister. Scales that shimmered with every colour of the rainbow, Fangs of a snake, tusks of a boar, Horns of a Goat, Mane of a Lion, body of a dragon, arms of a bear, legs and tail of a fox, a demonic monster combining together each of the seven deadly sins.

This monstrosity roared, and a across the world three more monsters just like her roared as well, the Spirit Tortoise, the Phoenixes, and the Tiger all let out a huge shock wave of energy into the sky as a multi layered barrier formed, and then just like that the four directional beasts dropped dead.

Naofumi had brought Raphtalia here earlier, and was only now waiting for her to wake up, at either of her sides were Atla and Sadeena.

"Naofumi?" Raphtalia asked still on a bender from the cursed series. "She's awake now, are you going to explained what the hell is going on now?"

Raphtalia looked around, aside from the now eight legendary heroes, now not remotely heroic at all as made evident by the lack of weapons, there was Atla, Sadeena, S'yne and-Raphtalia immediately whipped out her Katana as she prepared to take Roach's head off.

"Easy now." Ikki however had smoothly stepped in to block her. "Apparently she works for Naofumi."

"She 'works' for him?" Raphtalia turned to Naofumi, eyes demanding an explanation, as they all were, and he let out a sigh. "Then the time has finally come for my confession." Naofumi stood up and led the group over to the view of a fortress city below them, evidently they were in the top floor of some kind of tower in what looked a lot like a futuristic city of some kind. "Forgive me for I have sinned. A lot." A mild understatement if he had ever let one out, but now it was time he came clean.

Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: True. No, I don't think I'm qualified.

Dakota Bruder: Tony Stark would make a pretty good Armour hero too, as would Ernesti of Knights and magic, as for ring hero it would probably be some one who uses a lot of magic based attacks. Chronos, S'yne's tampers with Space and Roach's tampers with Time, S'yne grows horns and spider legs like Juro Gumo, while Roach's body turns into sand like that which is inside of a clock. You're running out of opportunities to ask them, one more Chapter and then I'm done with this story. Scorpion handle and guard, Dragon Head pommel, snake shaped wavy blade. Chazz is Shadow, Wukong is Ruyi Jingu Bang, Accelerator is Uriel and Brunhilder is Apex. Giant Dog form with hands and stands up right, it also causes her veins and arteries to rupture and spray poisonous blood so she doesn't like using it. He's starting to see the people around him as less than human, instead as whatever is lying beneath the surface. That helmet is his face now, just like how Tatsuya's LED screen is his face, the fact that he can change back doesn't change that it's a transformation.

Dcraus: Take time off until they calm down and then return to their worlds at the moment they left, why don't you try saving the Epilogue for the Epilogue?

Galeon82: Little bit of both, present Naofumi is still Present Naofumi but he's starting to get a little bit of his future self's memory and abilities.

Nightshadegirl: Fifth Stage of Grief, Acceptance, and the point where you can start to heal and move on.