i was writing a chapter when i decided to make this chapter and it ended up being twice as long as normal
new cover image is by citrus_love_i at twitter, very cute
enjoy
It's a dark but clear night in Lowee. Neptune, Nepgear, and Vert took their leave after their extended dinner, and Blanc had gone to bed shortly after, saying that she felt sleepy after such a large meal. After saying "good night" to Rom and Ram and getting into bed, that drowsiness is immediately replaced by another feeling. It wasn't exactly anxiousness for her role because her sisters' and friends' endless reassurance alleviated some of that, but what is it? Blanc looks around her dark room from her bed for upwards to an hour.
Oh wait, it actually is anxiousness, but not at anything that should be important: the last words Neptune said to them before they left. "It's gonna be a secret! You won't have to prepare for anything, though, 'cause I'll get everything all ready!" She didn't give much thought to what her new friend said back then, but despite her good intentions, Blanc can't help but feel uneasy at not knowing what lies ahead tomorrow. It definitely isn't because she still doesn't trust her, right? Everyone would be really disappointed if she didn't…
While preoccupying herself about this, her continuous turning generates enough heat in the bed to make it uncomfortable to the point where it ejects her from itself. Looking at her bedside alarm clock, she very softly mutters, "It's a bit past midnight...but I really want to sleep." She can only stand there and try to figure out how to make herself fall asleep.
From her dark-adapted vision, the first thing she spots is the nearest work desk and carefully tiptoes to it. While she can't read any of the papers on it and feels that turning on the desk lamp might be a bad idea, Blanc is more interested in the colorful photo frame. Its wood border painted with seemingly random colors, as expected, has a photo of the Lowee CPUs. In the middle of Rom and Ram's happy and dynamic poses stands herself with a less-than-stellar look. It's clear that she was tired when the photo was taken with those drowsy eyes, but is that supposed to be a smile? If so, that's a pretty lousy smile; it looks like she was about to shout out something… unpleasant, though that's also a speculation. For the most part, the investigative CPU is left confused on what this expression is supposed to convey about her previous relationship with her sisters, something that she's definitely in knowing.
Still not feeling like sleeping, Blanc then leaves her room into the slightly brighter hallway. The full moon over Gamindustri shines into the Basilicom's windows, imprinting the window's pattern onto the floor. As Blanc aimlessly walks around, still amazed by how grand her home is, she refrains from ruining the serene silence around her with her footsteps. While moving slowly, it just gives her time to again admire how wondrous Lowee can be. So wondrous, in fact, that she stops and sits down on the floor like one would for a summer fireworks show. Perhaps this serene scene is the perfect way to convince her body to fall asleep.
(-)
A few minutes later, this prolonged silence is broken by a door at what seems to be the other side of the Basilicom open. Who could that be? Could it be Rom and Ram? Blanc wants to call out to them, but what if it isn't either of them and she wakes them up? She gets up and makes her way towards where the sound came from. Walking through the corridors and not knowing its layout makes her quickly forget its general direction, and there aren't any subsequent sounds, not even footsteps. The lost CPU even makes a couple of loops trying to find anything out of place and gets a small headache. After that poor job of navigation, Blanc finds herself in front of the front door. Perhaps whoever was here already left? Maybe so, but shouldn't that still be concerning?
Either way, she believes it wouldn't hurt to take a super quick stroll outside. Her boots and coat are right next to the door, so why not? She still feels excitedly uneasy over tomorrow's activities, which will probably involve a tour around Lowee, so might as well as take a sneak peek before heading to bed. Putting on her boots and coat and opening the door…
"Oh hey, Blanny. What're you doing up so late?"
"Eeek!" Not expecting anyone, C-sha just standing there ends up startling Blanc. "What are you doing here?!"
"Oh, you know…" she says with a shrug while holding a plastic container with food before adding after a few seconds, "...just forgot something…"
"Oh, okay." You know, she never saw C-sha leave with the goddesses, so that makes enough sense to Blanc.
"So, what about you? Not gonna get a good sleep before doing whatever Neptune cooked up? Err, did I wake you up…?"
"No, it wasn't you! I just, um…" after another awkward silence, she finishes sheepishly with "couldn't go to sleep. I'm worried about what's coming about tomorrow."
"Aww, is that so?" C-sha can't help but chuckle at Blanc's response. "It'll be alright, Blanny. It's probably just gonna be lots of walking around with occasional fighting."
"But...how do I fight?"
"We'll get to it tomorrow. I trust her to not do anything too wild...probably." Blanc doesn't look any more assured. "You know what? Scratch that. It looks like you're prepared to go out, anyway. Why not take a preview battle?" C-sha confidently points behind her into Lowee's snowy plains with her thumb.
"Wha- right now?"
"Well, weren't you going to do something like that? What were you going to do, take a walk through the middle of below-freezing weather? At least fighting will keep you warm."
"Um…" This is probably the best way to quell her worries and finally let herself get ready to sleep: with the help of a friend. "Okay!"
"Alright! I've been itching for a little late-night session. It'll be a quick and fun twenty-minute trip, so c'mon, Blanny!" C-sha starts jogging away before Blanc can respond.
"Er, wait!" The CPU tries to close the door quietly, before stumbling across the sidewalk, unable to catch up to C-sha.
(-)
Where the pathway from the Basilicom meets with the main road stands C-sha, watching and waiting for Blanc to move rather slowly towards her. Once she eventually catches up, the Gold Third leader takes it more slowly as she leads Blanc off of the path. Behind her, C-sha notices how Blanc always looks down when she's walking, who seems afraid of accidentally tripping on...snow, or something. Perhaps that's why she's slower than usual. With a wry grin, she decides to stop without warning and turn around.
As she had expected, Blanc doesn't notice and walks into C-sha's chest. "…Huh?" When she looks up, all C-sha responds with is a silently smug grin. The shorter of the two immediately jumps and falls backwards in embarrassment. "C-sha! I-I-I'm sorry, I didn't see you stop!"
C-sha stifles a considerably loud and drawn-out laugh at Blanc's reaction. "Man, you're really like Rom, huh? Or maybe that Citizens' Group woman, though I forgot her name..." She holds her hand out and pulls her back up. "But yeah, it's probably better that you watch where you're going."
"But I was!"
"No, err, what's ahead of you and not the ground, or where you think something important is gonna happen. Just, anywhere but the ground."
Blanc gives a quick nod. "Oh...okay!"
C-sha resumes walking and mutters inaudibly "Now I can see why she's unsure of fighting…" At least Blanc is now actually matching C-sha's pace.
(-)
"So, Blanc, already taking a liking to Lowee's scenery? You've been eyeing it whenever you can."
Blanc snaps her head from to her far left to in front of her at C-sha, who's looking back at her. "Oh! Um, should I not be…?"
"It's fine! I'm also a big fan of just walking through Lowee every so often. Like right now, heh! Though..." She finds Blanc attaching herself to her country's landscape being one of the first few things she does after losing her memory somewhat peculiar. "...never mind. Hey, I see some monsters over there! Let's get started!" She declares, palming her fist with her other hand.
Indeed, Blanc could see small vague seemingly docile shapes in the distance wandering around. "Um, right!" Blanc notices the brawler's hand gesture and unconfidently copies it.
"Oh yeah, you have a hammer you can summon, you know. That's super important."
"Huh? Summon? I don't remember bringing one..." She looks on her body to see if she accidentally brought a hammer. "Don't you use hammers for building?"
"No, Blanny! Just imagine having this, um," C-sha shows with her hands the size of Blanc's weapon. "super-sized hammer, capable of smashing anything that stands in your way into pieces!"
"Just...imagine it?" She copies this gesture too. To her complete surprise, a flash of light spontaneously bursts in her hands. When she tries to shield her eyes from the light, which is especially blinding considering that her eyes have been adjusted to darkness for a long time, she finds that the light is stuck to her hands with its own physical shape, blinding her even further when she brings them to her face! She has to look away from it initially, but when she's able to look back, she notices how more light from her hands coalesces into the shape of her signature hammer. Finally, the light fades away, revealing her well-known weapon of choice. "Whoa…" she spends a good minute marvelling at it as she slowly swings it around.
"Glad to see that you're getting used to it faster than I expected," C-sha adds with a chuckle. After giving her a moment to look it over, she pulls on her towards the monsters. "But let's get to it!"
"Uwa-!"
(-)
From afar, the monsters weren't so menacing, but now that C-sha brought her closer, their random and erratic movement is unnerving to Blanc, even if they don't seem at all interested in the two.
"I'll give you a good 'ol quick demonstration. Here!" With that, C-sha rushes at the nearest enemy: a Rabbit Balancer. Before it can even react, the brawler is already at its front and making a hard first strike with a straight punch. From there, her relentless combo work never gives the monster a chance to dodge or counter. Any hopes of an upcoming respite is dashed as C-sha sends the Rabbit sky high with a fiery uppercut!
"So, what'd you think?" She makes sure to show off her confidence in her fighting style through her victory pose, even if the fight was just against a small fry. Perhaps there's a more self-interested motivation in doing so…
"Uhh…" Even from afar, C-sha can tell that Blanc barely picked up anything from that encounter. It almost looks like she was trying to track C-sha's precise movements with her eyes, leading to them spin out. "So quick…"
C-sha is left scratching her head with a better way to get Blanc back into fighting when she notices something in the dark field. "Hey, Blanny! Behind you!"
Indeed, there's another Rabbit Balancer rolling up to Blanc while she's distracted. The CPU turns around at an inappropriately slow pace before finally jumping back, coincidentally dodging a scratch attack. "Eeek!" The Rabbit goes for another attack, to which Blanc clumsily dodges again. A basic cycle then forms of the monster attacking and Blanc stepping out of the way, with neither participant being unable to break out of it.
"C'mon, Blanny, you have to attack!" shouts C-sha from the sidelines.
"B-but, what if…" Every time she thinks she has enough time to swing, the Rabbit doesn't grant her her much-needed ten seconds to do so, and Blanc ends up moving out of the way instead.
"You gotta take an attack some time, even if it means you'll get hit, too! You have to realize that your hits are way stronger than theirs!" The brawler is not completely convinced that she should intervene yet.
"O-okay!" Even with C-sha's advice, the cycle of slow attacks and dodging continues a bit more before, finally, Blanc takes a comically long windup, holding her hammer way above then behind her. This time, she's going to make an attack! At the same time, she braces herself for the devastating amount of damage she is about to endure while preparing herself for her own attack. Even when she should be ready, she continues to hold her hammer back, thinking that she's charging more power by doing so.
Once she feels the slightest touch from the Rabbit's scratch, she lets it all out and smashes the poor monster in one quick overhead swing. The Rabbit Balancer evaporates into data shortly after, unceremoniously declaring Blanc's victory. Not like she noticed, though, as immediately after, she is more concerned with checking and massaging the part of her arm that the Rabbit scratched.
Watching Blanc from behind, unaware of the complete situation, C-sha runs over to her. "Blanny, are you alright?! Damn, I didn't think the monsters would be this strong…" Once she actually gets a glimpse of the goddess's arm and its sleeve's untouched condition, though, she is left confused by what happened. "Come on, Blanny, it's not that bad."
"But...it hurts…" She responds with genuine concern and worrying.
"You didn't even take any damage! Here, look at this." She helps the CPU take off her jacket, revealing her bare arms. "Literally no marks. Just…"
Before C-sha can express more of her annoyance, she notices Blanc's confused expression. "I'm sorry, C-sha, but...it really did feel like it hurt." Despite not completely agreeing, she still feels guilty for making her friend worry like this.
Not being the best teacher, the taller woman can't help but just let it go. Perhaps it's the placebo effect or that she also forgot how painful things are in general, but for now, it's best to just move on to something more productive. Expelling her irritation at the situation with a long sigh, she responds, "It's...okay, Blanny. No one, me included, needs to throw any flack around to others or themselves." Putting Blanc's coat back on her and stepping back, she looks around and spots a larger monster. "But hey, there's still one more important aspect of fighting, you know." Blanc looks up from her "wound" in curiosity. "It's the most fun part, too: working together to beat up baddies!"
"Wait, really?"
"Yeah, duh? No point in fighting alone if you got friends!" She eagerly grabs Blanc's arm and pulls her around, looking for the next big hunt.
(-)
"There!" In the distance the two heroes spot a floating purple whale in the distance. "Looks tough...let's get to it!"
"Okay, but...what should we do?"
Fortunately for Blanc, her friend does take a moment to silently plan out an attack strategy. "Alright. It's probably best to get you used to it before we do anything more important, so let me tell ya something: your job in battles is to be the main focus of the enemies."
"What? Why?!" On top of her usual shyness, for the first time she seems more annoyed than unsure of herself.
C-sha raises an eyebrow to her tone. "It's what you're known for, Blanny: being the toughest girl out there! I can tell you right now that you won't be the most useful standing in the back."
"That can't be right. I can still feel that bunny monster's attack on my arm…" She's still rubbing where it "hurt" her.
Before she can let her frustration grow, C-sha realizes that perhaps this whole amnesia deal is much more than just amnesia. "...Never mind. I can try being in the front. Does that sound alright?"
Blanc deeply sighs in relief. "Yes, thank you." In a way, this compromise ends up somewhat motivating her to fight as she holds up her hammer.
"That's the spirit, Blanny. Now let's get to it!"
(-)
While the Child Whale is turned around, C-sha expertly times an ambush combo. Unlike before, she is more concerned with doing as much damage as possible before the Whale turns around, delivering quick and aggressive punches with no concerns about defending.
Blanc notices her opening strategy and joins in the opening with a couple of slow but surely strong swings. She doesn't get as many hits as she had wanted as she jumps backwards at speeds even her past self would be jealous of the moment the Whale starts turning around.
Now fully aware of its attackers, the purple Whale summons lightning at C-sha as its first attack. Even with almost no time to react, the fighter barely sidesteps the bolt. "Heh, kinda got lucky there, I admit."
To Blanc, though, the game-changing concept of ranged attacks unnerves her more than it should. She's now more skeptical that she can get away with letting her friend take all the hits, as awful as that sounds.
Now that the battle has properly started, C-sha knows to be more cautious of their enemy. The immense size of the Whale means that if she's not careful, just moving forward is a valid counter to any of her physical attacks. When she inevitably does take a couple of bolts to the face, she can't help but recoil from its raw power, but she knows that she can take much more and makes an effort to recover quickly. After all, if she makes it look like it isn't a big deal, she can possibly convince Blanc to get back to the front line.
Speaking of Blanc, she employs a similar tactic as her previous battle and continues staying in the back as if C-sha didn't say anything about teamwork. It doesn't take long for her to notice the difference between this battle and the last and makes a shocking breakthrough: if the Whale is looking at C-sha, she can attack it from behind! She "stealthily" and silently walks around the enemy, who probably is ignoring her because it thinks she's not actually fighting, and takes her much-needed time to slam her hammer under its tail fin.
The critical strike causes the behemoth to bellow a loud and low wail. Not noticing Blanc's plan, C-sha instinctively jumps back at the noise before spotting the CPU in the middle of her sluggish drawback. "Alright, Blanny, good work! Let's keep it up!"
"Yeah!" Without having to worry about drawing aggro, she's starting to see how this sort of activity can be fun, even if all she's doing is taking very slow swings.
That sentiment is short-lived, though, as the Whale uncannily spins around with its eyes locked on Blanc. It's almost as if it moved that quickly just to mock her! As expected, she instantly jumps back several meters and falls backwards on the landing. Thankfully, such a cowardly maneuver is enough for it to turn back to C-sha.
"Guess we're back to square one, huh." The brawler doesn't have much else to do but just resume her business in unleashing combos to chip away at the enemy's health. "By the way, Blanny, did you bring healing items in your inventory?"
"Um...inventory?" At least she tries to check her pockets to see if there's anything there.
"Figures. Never mind," she shouts back, leaving Blanc to feel just a bit more useless.
(-)
Thanks to the Child Whale's regenerative abilities, progress for the two has been slow, and every turn C-sha takes to heal herself with items is an even greater setback. Blanc keeps trying to flank it, but the Whale is wiser and learns that just turning slightly towards her both is enough to keep her at bay and doesn't give C-sha too much of an opening.
"Damn, this is starting to get a bit out of hand," the main attacker mutters to herself while holding her hand against one of the many bolt marks on her. "Are you sure you don't wanna try taking a few hits, Blanny?"
She doesn't take more than a second to answer that question. "Yes, I'm sure!"
"Thought so." She can be as patient as needed for her friends, but when it comes to fighting and battles, maybe not so much. "Looks like I'm busting that out. And I thought I could get by without it…" The Gold Third leader takes a knee and creates a summoning circle beneath her. Soon after, flying in from the horizon are a pair of mechanical wings and a wrist cannon that promptly attach themselves to C-sha. Her resolve re-strengthens, and her eyes glow gold as she finishes her Gold Form transformation. "Let's do this."
"Whoa…" Blanc has the urge to stop everything she's doing (which is not much) and applaud the spectacle.
Breaking her awe, C-sha commands, "Your turn, Blanny. Try transforming, or thinking about accessing a new form." She doesn't have that much time to think and describe something that feels like a natural process.
"Uh...um…" She pieces together that what C-sha did is of the same nature of her summoning her hammer. Her first attempt is to copy the same kneeling gesture and thinking of transforming into something. When that doesn't work, she tries other poses like raising her arms or standing on one leg, all involving thinking about transforming, but she quickly runs out of ideas when she doesn't even remember what a "good" pose is. Or any pose, for that matter.
"Um, never mind." Now is probably the worst time to discover she forgot to access HDD. "Maybe this will work…" She then shouts to her ally, "Hey, Blanny, do you remember doing any ranged attacks? Stuff like this?" The brawler backs off to explore using one of her other weapons. Though she has limited uses on it, now would be a great time to use her C Buster. Not only does her arm cannon pack a punch with its bright high-energy beam, but perhaps this range will get the Whale to look at the now closer Blanc.
"Huh…?" The mentee of the two wonders why she didn't notice the cannon on C-sha earlier. "But, can I really do something like that? How would I do it?" Her first try is to just point her hammer at her target and think of something like what C-sha made.
Her intuition is once again correct as an ice shard flashes into existence in front of her! Yes, it was just one singular ice chard, but it excited her enough to try generating a myriad of them. With them floating in the air, motionless, she tries whacking all of them at the Whale. With her strength, they all fly at nearly undetectable speeds and crash into her target's purple skin, where they shatter into smaller shards that inflict even more damage.
Unlike her last attack, the aquatic creature isn't too bothered this time due to its ice resistance, but C-sha isn't going to let that discourage her. "Alright, Blanny! Good to see you still got, um…" What did Blanc used to shout when she did that? Gefahrlichtern? "...Jafar's Lake Tan! Keep it up!"
Blanc stops everything when she hears C-sha. "'Jafar's...Lake Tan'? What does that mean?"
"That's what you called that attack, y'know? It's good to give your special attacks a name because…you know, you should get back to doing that; I can explain later. Now's not the time for talking!" Trying to coach Blanc has been a rollercoaster of surprises and disappointments, draining her mental stamina more than the actual enemy. She definitely wants to finish this skirmish as soon as possible.
"Oh, um sorry!" She continues casting "Jafar's Lake Tan" at a rapid pace. So rapid, that she starts making continuous swings while spawning bullets in between each one.
"At least she's doing something…"
(-)
After what feels like hours, the Child Whale looks like it's finally breaking down. Unfortunately, the same could be said for C-sha, and she's running out of healing items and SP. Blanc is in a similar state while also becoming more demotivated when she looks at C-sha's appearance and compares it to how energetic she seemed before this battle.
Even when tired, C-sha has the strength to suddenly shout, "Now is the perfect time to end it with this! Super Combo!" After a deep breath, she launches herself at the Whale, unleashes a quick punch, a charged kick, then a jump high into the air as she strikes her target from above. The kinetic energy in that last attack gives her an opening to unleash a myriad of rapid kicks before she jumps backwards.
When she's about to finish her Combo, she spontaneously comes up with an idea; one that could finally convince Blanc to be more eager to fight. With the loudest and most intimidating shout she can make, she commands Blanc one more time, "Blanny, hit me up!"
Such an unfamiliar phrase can only confuse her, and the sudden directness and confronting tone can only astound her. "Um…w-what?" is all she can say while she raises her hammer in defense.
"Use your hammer and send me flying!" Regardless of what Blanc thinks, C-sha starts running at her, betting it all on if her friend will understand her intent in the next two seconds.
"Ahh!" The only part she understands is "use your hammer," so she very reluctantly starts winding up for a swing.
"Just do it!" Once she's close enough she makes a short jump.
That hop finally gives a clue on what C-sha is planning, which is enough to convince Blanc to complete that crucial swing.
With one strong move, C-sha blasts off into the starry sky like a rocket, immensely thankful that the plan worked.
Meanwhile, while Blanc is on the ground staring at her teammate as she gets smaller in her vision, wondering how this is going to unfold, she hears another loud bellow. Without words, the sound uncovers an unnerving revelation: The Whale is now focusing her. It's also charging what seems like a particularly nasty lightning attack as a last resort pinch attack. Normally, she would run away, just like the last times it looked at her, but she remembers how C-sha said the fight was almost over. Maybe, just perhaps, she can stay around and her friend can land the finishing blow before the enemy attacks. But then again, there's no difference if she ran away now if that's the case, so why not do it just in case C-sha doesn't finish her attack early enough? Though, what if she still needs her? Blanc would feel really bad if she just betrayed her like that.
While she's busy double- and triple-guessing herself, the monster makes the decision for her as it unleashes its attack on Blanc. It doesn't take a genius to realize that such an attack is tens or hundreds times more powerful than what that measly Rabbit did earlier. Its pain is even more compounded with Blanc's already-low elemental defense.
All she can do is scream at how much it hurts. The electricity is continuously contracting her muscles, preventing any sort of movement. For every passing second, her regret of joining C-sha grows, up to the point where it irrationally surpasses any perceived thoughts of goodwill from her friend. In fact, how much of a "friend" is C-sha supposed to be? She says they've gone through a lot, but for all she knows that could be a lie. Maybe it would better if she just ran away from all of this "CPU" stuff thrusted to her…
After the worst fifteen seconds that she can remember passes and the lightning and its bright light fades away, the very first thing she does after regaining control of her body is what she should've done: get as far away as possible and never look back. Tears of pain cloud her vision and the path marked by her footsteps in the snow is less of a line and more of a lightning bolt, but all of that doesn't matter as long as she escapes. "Wh...why? Why would she do this?!" She shouts out to no one.
(-)
Back at the fight, after a sixteen-second ascent, C-sha is high into the atmosphere, ready to freefall down for the coup de grace. Her focus on her attack is so unbreakable that not even that high-pitched scream from an unknown source below can break it. Thanks to the cloudless skies, her aim of the large purple dot is steady and sharp. She rapid-fires from her wrist cannon, where each energy bullet is faster than the last when compounded with C-sha's accelerating velocity. After a certain point she intuits when to fire the last bullet, which ends up being a large wide laser parallel to her previous shots while still being on target. As the details on the back of the Whale become more clear, she pulls out a large hunting sword, reminiscent of a certain kind of monster hunter. She simply holds it in front of her and lets gravity do the work on the boss. By the time she reaches terminal velocity, C-sha and her sword together resemble a meteor, and the air around the blade is burning up.
Although it was partially luck, all of the elements of her masterpiece attack line up near-perfectly: the rapid-fire bullets buffet the Whale's back, the laser strikes and pierces the same spot when it's most sore, and, at the end of it all, C-sha's impact both slams the Whale six feet into the ground and slices it cleanly. No question that the boss finally disintegrates into data, leaving the warrior to bask in her victorious silence that is only interrupted by her heavy breathing.
Disengaging her transformation and standing back up, she hollers, "Woo! Now that was a dream combo! Did you see that, Blanny? That is the power of teamwork! Couldn't have done it without ya!" After getting no response, she asks again, "...Blanny?" Looking around for her, she spots an uneven trail of footsteps. All of her elation pours out of her.
"...Blanc…"
