Time passes and not much happens. We wait with our nerves on edge for the time to come. When it has come, I feel a pressure as if someone was flexing their power to show their presence. Histoire and Sen felt it as well as Histoire prepares several protective spells and Sen transforms and summons her weapon. I soon follow by transforming myself and summoning my weapon as well.
"What is happening?" C-Sha looks at the device in her hand as it's reading is going crazy and eventually just breaks. "That's not a good sign."
Six pulls out a gun and loads it with what looks like tubes of paper, "I don't like what's going on."
"A massive wave of energy just washed over the building," Histoire says trying to not break her focus on her spells. "It felt like corrupted Share energy."
I feel the crystal inside of me pulsing, Kyo is nearby. My senses are heightened and I feel like the world is moving in slow motion. I close my eyes and try to focus on where she is, when I find her I hear "Player 1, it's your turn." Soon after I hear a low hissing noise coming from a window nearby.
"HISTOIRE PLACE THEM ON THE WINDOW!" I shout to Histoire and she jumps a little before she quickly moves the spells from around the room to focus on the window. Soon after, an explosion happened on the window, breaking through several layers of protection spells that Histoire had put up, leaving up only one layer that Histoire dropped after she falls a bit from exhaustion. Some of the shockwave still ran across the room, knocking over most things in the room.
"Sorry, Nepgear, the rest is up to you and Sen," Histoire seems worn out more than usual from a simple spell like a protection spell.
"Alright, let's go!" Sen runs out and jumps out the window and I follow her as we both fly to above the Basilicom.
Above the Basilicom, we see Kyo and a figure beside her. The figure seems robotic, yet at the same time they seemed organic.
"My my, Player 3 and Player 4 decided to finally join the game. That was a longer reaction time since they knew we were here for a few hours now," the figure speaks.
"Oh it's the boring adult, but this time she brought someone who looks stronger than her. Is that one my opponent?" Kyo looks at the figure while pointing at Sen.
"No, I'm your opponent," I tell her.
"That would mean the weird robot guy is my opponent," Sen is ready to rocket at them as soon as she can.
"Aw, fine, but I want you to leave the strong boring lady for me. She might be more fun in a fight than she is in out of it," Kyo seems to be regressing mentally to that of a child more and more.
"Alright Player 1, if you get done with Player 3 before I deal with Player 4 then you can take her from me," the figure says, the way they talk makes it seem like they only see this as a game and nothing else.
"Hey, we have names you know," Sen shouts to them
"I don't care, until you prove yourself to me, then you are worth as much as pixels on a screen, not even the pixels of a protagonist. Now, Player 4," they summon a staff and point it towards Sen. "Follow me so Player 1 and Player 3 can fight without us getting in the way. Besides, I don't want you to hold Player 3's seed back," they say as they fly off.
Sen looks to me, "Take care of things here before I get back." She follows after them.
Kyo now looks at me, summoning what looks like a staff weapon. She points the bottom of the staff at me, within seconds I realize that there's a hole at the bottom. The staff is hollow, but quickly filling with magic. "Now, dance for me," She says, firing a blast of magic out of her staff as if she was firing a shot out of a gun.
I manage to dodge it, but she's quickly readying another attack with it. She fires multiple smaller shots this time, which is harder to dodge, but I start charging my own shot. I go to aim, but as soon as I look down the barrel, I see her already within melee range. I quickly adjust, hitting her with the lesser edge of the blade and pulling the trigger point blank, sending her flying due to her small size and sending myself back with the recoil with how I moved. As I readjust myself, I see her trying to correct herself, unable to easily readjust herself compared to me. She ends up using her staff to correct herself with a blast.
"That's no fair," she complains. "I'm supposed to be the one beating you up!" She charges me with her staff and speed, but she seems slower than last time. Actually is she slower or am I faster? Either way I barely manage to stop her attack by catching her staff between the blade and the barrel. I pull the trigger and it shatters her staff. This causes her to recoil in shock, in this time I charge at her, my blade pierces her torso. While I'm this close, I charge power into my weapon.
"M.P.B.L., FIRE!" I pull the trigger at this range and a laser comes out the barrel, creating a hole in Kyo's torso as she goes flying. She just floats there, almost in shock that she's been hurt. The hole just closes like I thought it would, CPUs possess regenerative properties as long as they possess Shares so an injury like this would close in almost an instant. She feels where I attacked her then looks at her hand, a crystal now there.
"You... you... WHY YOU... HOW DARE YOU HURT ME!" She screams, an ominous aura surrounds her. The crystal inside me pounds in response to this aura. "Yes... that's right... I knew that you were holding back... hahaha... this just means I need to stop holding back as well..." She holds her hand out and I hear a scream. I sense something approaching me from behind and I move out of the way. As I do, I see what I assume was both the source of the scream and what was approaching me, it was Kokono in her goddess form but she seemed in pain.
"M-make it s-stop..." Kokono cries out, now being choked by her sister.
"No... I need you, we need the power," Kyo's eyes glow red while Kokono's glow blue. They're both enveloped by a bright light and when the light subsides, neither of them is there. In their place is a third figure possessing traits of both: fiery red hair that fades into icy blue hair, one red eye and one blue eye both possessing the symbol of a CPU now, but they possess a more mature figure and their outfit seems to glitch between a normal CPU's outfit and a more revealing outfit that reveals an eye mark where I had stabbed them.
"Now," the figure speaks, sounding like both Kyo and Kokono speaking at once. "Would you die for me?" She rushes me without a weapon and I barely managed to realize what she was doing before I was already reeling from the hit.
"What is this power?"
"This is my power... our power!" They shout at me before summoning two identical weapons to what Kyo used except two different colors. She points them both at me, charging a large amount of energy between them. I try to charge her but there's some kind of barrier around her and she just laughs as I try to break through it. She points both staves at me and I try to retreat as I realize I need to use the crystal's power to match her, and then she fires.
She laughs as a large explosion surrounds me, however I managed to transform right before I was hit and the large mouth-like weapons blocked the attack, protecting me from the brunt of the damage.
"Now that the boring lady is gone, now I get to fight the st- wait... what is this feeling?"
I send one of the mouth like weapons towards her and it almost grabs her, but she backs into the other one I sent and goes flying towards the ground. She manages to correct herself a lot easier this time, "You were holding back more than I thought you were. Now time to fight for real!" She yells as she flies at me at great speeds.
She tries to attack me with both staves, but I block it with one of the mouth-like weapons. She managed to crack the side of it from the force of her attack. I flew back and repaired it with magic and quickly went on the offense. She replies by going on the offense as well. Unlike when I fought Sen when she had this power, she was nearly mindless and just attacking blindly, however this fusion of Kyo and Kokono is fully aware of what they're doing. We trade blows, almost in a dance. Actually that gives me an idea, her style of fighting is very unrefined, she relies on her speed and power to overwhelm me as opposed to trying to land a decisive blow, which means if I...
"PANZER WALTZ!" I shout, spinning the mouth-like weapons as if they were independent from my own movements. She gets hit by them multiple times as she attempts to get in to attack me.
"Stop that! That's cheating!" She shouts as she can't break through the simple attack barrier I've created due to how unpredictably they're moving around.
She tries to attack one but the speed they're traveling only causes her attack to get knocked back. She backs off and attempts to charge her large blast again, however I charge her. This time I break through her barrier, knocking her out of it and grabbing her in the mouth-like claws.
"Let me go you meanie! This isn't fair! Th-" She tries to squirm out, but I fly up to her and crush her crystal. I feel a wave run over me and within the claw the merged goddess splits apart back into Kyo and Kokono. I grab them both in my arms and I return to my normal CPU form. I start to fly back to the Basilicom, but the exhaustion was starting to kick in but I manage to make it back.
While this was going on, on the outskirts of Lowee was the fight of Sen and the robotic figure.
"This should be a good place, hey Player 4 is this a good enough place for a 1v1?"
"Could you stop calling me Player 4? My name is Sen. And anywhere is fine as long as we aren't too close to where our fight could cause damage," I reply. "Hey, before we fight, since I gave you my name do you have a name? Feels fair that way."
"A name? Hmmm... your tongue doesn't really have one for my true name, so you may call me 'Joueur'," they say.
"Alright, Joueur, let's fight!" I say as I charge them.
They block my attack, but they didn't block their sides so I kick them and sent them reeling. They hold their side in pain and heal it with magic of some form that seems different than what I was used to seeing.
"How primitive," they say before firing a spell at me.
I cut through the spell and through the cut I see them charging me with their staff. I manage to block before they arrive, but they seem to vanish from in front of my eyes. I look around with my guard up for them, then I feel a strike to my back followed by what felt like an explosion at my back. I try to bring back my stability and when I do I see them floating there with a smug expression on their face. They have no right to to be smug for landing a dirty hit like that. Something I realized from how they hit me is that they were holding back as if they were playing around.
"You should stop holding back, because from here on I'm going all out!" I warn them.
"Oh that was just a fraction of your power? Then I underestimated you Player 4 if you could tell I was holding back from that when you went flying from it. Then show me your true power and I shall show you mine!" The leave themself open for an attack.
"Alright then, let's go. Armor, release the restraints," I command as the bulky armor I had on vanishes, leaving behind a modified CPU outfit made for speed. I dash towards them, creating a boom as I do. I hear the sound of metal crushing and then the sound of what sounded like bone cracking as I hit them with my sword in their side. I may have broken some of their ribs with that hit.
They stagger back, trying, and failing, to heal the injury they received. "How did you... why can't I heal? You-"
I charge them once again, this time striking at their arms. Once again I hear the sound of metal and bone being crushed as my sword connect with their arm. They strike me with their staff in a vain attempt to get me off of them. I grab their staff with my off hand and snap it, then I grab the arm my sword didn't hit.
"Alright, you aren't going to do much now," I say, holding their arm behind them, threatening to break it if they do anything.
"Fine fine, I give up, but you won't be joining Player 1 and Player 3, you'll be staying here with me until they finish their 1v1," they say, creating a field around us. I try to attack it but it just causes my attacks to bounce off.
"Well then, that gives me time to question you. Now tell me, what did you do to Kyo?"
"I merely gave her a seed, she was the one who sprouted it. It let her have the power to live out her desire of having fun. If anything, you are more to blame for her turning out like this because you provided the fertile soil for her to become like that."
"What?"
"The power I gave her was merely a seed, it was nothing until the person with it sprouted it into something. Player 3 uses it to fufill her delusions of justice and atonement. She wants to be forgiven for a crime that people will never forget because of how much it scarred the world, yet here she is, giving the people more reason to fear her because of her power being the same as two of you false gods now destroyed the nations they were summoned in as objects of worship."
"So were you involved in K-Sha getting that weird power too?"
"No, I don't even know who you are talking about. Even if I did, I wouldn't tell you," they turn their head childishly.
"What can you tell me about those weird crystals you have been giving people then?"
"They are seeds that respond to desire, that is all you need to know."
"Tell me more."
"No," they shake their head childishly again.
I twist their arm, causing them to wince in pain, "I said, 'tell me more'."
"Ow ow... fine I'll tell you, I'll tell you," they say, I loosen my grip on their arm somewhat. Them breaking with this little pain despite how much pain I've already caused them makes them seem like even more of a child than I thought. "They give their users the power to fufill their desires as well as shaping the user in a way that lets them best fufill this desire."
"Anything else?" I threaten by gripping their arm.
"N-no! No more please..." They seem to be tearing up a bit. "That's all I know about them. I-I swear it!"
"Fine," I loosen my grip. Their reaction seems genuine enough to me, almost like they're actually a child.
Time passes and then the barrier suddenly goes down.
"Oh," they say sadly. "It seems Player 1 lost, very well, time for my exit." They easily break out of my grip. I try to grab them again but they back into a portal and escape, closing it as they go through.
"Agh, they got away," I curse a bit under my breath before I dismiss my weapon. "No use crying over it, I got information out of them at least." I resummon my armor and fly back to the Basilicom.
A few minutes pass and Sen arrives at the Basilicom after me, a somewhat disappointed look on her face. I carry the twins into their room when Mina comes in.
"Nepgear, are they ok?" Her voice shakes with the fear of a mother.
"They will eventually wake up, when I'm not sure," I try to reassure her. "They were similar to Sen, however something was different about them, they were aware of their actions, yet Kyo was becoming more and more like a child. She was immature, but she wasn't acting like a child when she was acting normal."
"I do wonder what caused her to become like this, it is worrying if this is going to be a theme with new CPUs. Especially since Leanbox has yet to get a new CPU," Mina expresses her worries for the future.
Sen walks in, "Speaking of themes, I have some new information that might shed some light on any future attacks like this. We should probably go back to the meeting room if it's still in one piece."
"Besides the window, the room is still mostly fine," Mina says as she checks on the twins.
"Alright we should meet up with Histoire, C-Sha, and Six if they're still around."
"Histoire has been resting to regain her energy in my chambers, it seems that age is catching up with her faster than the rest of us. Six, on the other hand, was taken to a protected room in the Basilicom to try to prevent her from being harmed further," Mina explains once she finishes up covering up Kyo and Kokono in their beds. "And C-Sha is doing damage control in the streets."
"Alright, I'll go to get Histoire, Nepgear you can go on ahead since it seems you had the rougher fight," Sen says, she seems to be trying to hide her pain and doing it pretty well.
"I'll get Six then, she probably trusts me more than you two. C-Sha should be coming back on her own now that the fighting has stopped if we just call her," Mina says, looking back on the twins one last time before leaving.
I go to the meeting room and see it empty. When I take a seat, a projection comes up and Affimojas appears on it.
"It seems the fighting is over. Hmm, why are you the only one here now?" He asks, seemingly aware of the situation in Lowee already.
"The others are being brought here because Sen learnt some new information," I explain to him.
"Some new information? Information is power, and normally I would be suspicious when someone just gives away information, however this is a time where any information brings us closer to being equal with our invisible foe."
"Yeah..."
"You seem to be out of it, was your battle tough?"
"It was, this 'invisible foe' seems to be using already powerful people as weapons and making them more powerful and out of control."
"The power to make the strong stronger, yet to get this strength they lose themself? This is a power to not be toyed with lightly, the kind of weapon that even I don't want to get involved with."
"It's something that I'm barely able to keep up with, it feels like luck that I managed to win this time. Next time could be different, next time I might not win."
"Do not devalue yourself, the moment you doubt yourself in battle, that's when you have lost beyond recovery."
A knock sounds on the door, "Hey, we're coming in," it was Sen's voice.
Sen, Histoire, Mina, and Six come into the room. Histoire is sitting on her book and the book is being held up by Mina.
"It seems that everyone but C-Sha is here then, so what is this new information," Affimojas chuckles.
Everyone sits down and C-Sha comes into the room, "I apologize for being late, I designated tasks so others could cover my job and it took longer than I was expecting." She takes a seat.
Sen stands up to speak, "Well, to start, I managed to get information out of the person who caused this situation. They told me some information after a bit of... persuasion. This information may prove useful in dealing with future incidents. Said information is as follows: they give people 'seeds of desire', these 'seeds', as I will call them from here on, grant the user the power and form best suited to fulfilling their desires. While not something I confirmed, it can be assumed that they can give these willingly or force them upon people. This gives us some idea of what we're dealing with, however they managed to escape after we were let out of a trap they had put both of us in."
"So these seed things, do we know what they look like?" Six seems skeptical about all this.
"They take the form of a purple crystal, K-Sha possessed one during the incident in Lastation," I speak up. I could show my own, but I was afraid of what would happen if I did, so I had just spoke from experience of seeing them. "Destroying said crystal is enough to stop them, however it seems to have side effects on those who do not possess some form of protection from the energy it has."
"Another property of them that... I unfortunately have experience with is that they can transform those related in some way to the user's desire to act as an extension of their power and can continue to exist in this transformed state after the crystal that transformed them was destroyed, as the energy is still within the second vessel, so in this case both need to be dealt with in order to fully destroy the crystal and it's energy."
"So far, I have been the only one to fight those in possession of these crystals, and each time I barely manage to win," I say while trying to hide the fact I needed to rely on my own crystal to win.
"We need a way to deal with them that doesn't rely on her, as if there's ever a case where there's two powerful entities that possess crystals each then she'd become over taxed from fighting. If possible, we could find a way of either disabling these crystals or a way of getting the user to stop having the desire they have by attempting to reason with them if they still possess that capability."
"So either cancel their power or use words to talk them down," Affimojas says, thinking. "I assume we could possibly create something like the Anti-Crystal but instead of running opposite to share energy, it runs opposite to this desire energy. Simple in concept, but we'd need someone with this energy already in order to create an energy that runs opposite to it."
"Wait, how does someone like you know about what Anti-Crystals are?" Histoire seems shocked.
"I have my sources all over, but that aside I have some ideas of how to know how their energy flows without capturing one of them or them coming with us willingly," he stands up, putting his head out of frame. "One idea is modifying the Share detector the Gold Third use to detect the 'wave' of energy that it scans as opposed to just detecting how much of a specific energy is concentrated in an area."
"So you propose we work with what we have instead of trying to create something new," C-Sha pulls out the device. "Creating this 'energy detector' with similar technology to the share detector and then creating a means of countering this desire energy. It sounds like a good idea, but we can only use the countermeasure on the one after next if we manage to get it ready for the next one."
"She has a point," Six speaks up. "If we were to create this device, we'd still have to deal with the next one while also trying to find their energy while they're likely fighting a CPU, which will cause interference."
The discussion continues for a while. Their words become white noise to me and just blend together. After a few hours, the meeting ends and I snap back to reality when Sen shakes me.
"Hey Nepgear, you feeling ok? The meeting ended and you just kind of sat there."
"Huh? Oh, sorry, I kind of zoned out a bit into the meeting. I've been feeling a bit out of it since the fight ended."
"Well, I think you should probably head home and get some rest, it is pretty late after all," Sen helps me up.
"Thanks, I think I will head back. Where's Histoire?" I look around, not seeing her anywhere in the room.
"She gained enough energy to float on her own, but she's with Mina right now, I'll go get her so you two can head to Planeptune."
"Alright, I'll get ready to head out then."
After a bit, Histoire hops into my arms so we could fly to back to Planeptune. When we arrived, I headed off to my room to lay down.
After all of what happened, even though I was exhausted I couldn't get to sleep and just began to wander around the Basilicom that night, something that I feel I have started to do all too often to try to tire myself out. Before I realized it, I had ended up at the sealed door, the door leading to Gehaburn.
"Do you..."
"Who's there?" I look around, nobody but Histoire and myself should even know the door is here.
"...the power to shape..."
The voice rings loud to me, almost as if I'm surrounded by it.
"...Inheritor."
That word somehow caused something to click with me, I transformed to open the door and I went inside.
"It seems the Inheritor can still hear my voice, but will they listen to it?" The voice seems to come from the sword, but when I go to look, there is someone by the sword. It was... me.
"Who are you?" I ask the look-a-like.
"Have you truly forgotten who I am Inheritor? I am Gehaburn."
My head begins to pound and my ears begin to ring, yet their voice still seems clear.
"Now sleep, my master. What comes next is up to you to decide..."
[TMK: So a lot happened, but for now you'll have to live with a cliff hanger *evil laughter*. More seriously, Lowee arc has been a rollercoaster of me writing it off and on, so don't expect me to upload two chapters this close together. I work on this story when I have free time, it's not something I'm dedicated to, I have other projects I work on. I'm just saying now in case I just end up seemingly dropping this story and going silent for a long time.]