A/N: Been a bit, my friends. Well, here is a new chapter, which I hope raises a lot of... well, just read and find out. I do not own To Love-Ru, nor is this based on a true story. Please enjoy, and let me know how you like it.

Somewhere

"Ooohhh...what hit me?" Rito asks, woozily sitting up as he tries to stop the ringing in his ears, "Lala- Lala, where are you?" He hears a groan from nearby, and he focuses long enough to see a figure nearby laying on the ground.

"Tt-tt-tch..." Lala winces, as she slowly sits up and rubs her own head, "Where are we?" Rito looks around, trying to figure that out as well, when he starts to remember how they had gotten there.

"That teleporter, it is centuries old, maybe this is a side effect of it transporting us to that... station...ugh," he complains, as he stands up on wobbly legs, "Air smells fine, ground is stable too..."

"If this station is suspended above a black hole, and time is essentially moving at a crawl around us, maybe the teleporter counted for time dilation and waited to materialize us," Lala suggested, her head clearing up a bit faster than Rito's, but still hurting, "It must have compressed us in a data loop; we could have been stored for days, even weeks, inside a pattern buffer until our full pattern was accounted for..." She stretches her body, her tail whipping around behind her as stiff joints and muscles are heard popping. "Think of it like a spring: it could have put us back together as soon as we got here while the spring was till stretched out, but the rest of us would have still been spaghettified outside the station because of the time difference, so it waited for the spring to fully compress before letting us be re-materialized in our whole bodies," Lala says with a smile, as she stands near Rito as he tries to shake the effects off, "That's also probably why the lights and heat are on, why we can breathe the air too; if this station has been inactive for centuries everything would have been stale, but the delay in our arrival probably allowed the station to analyze our data and adjust for our convenience."

Rito walked around the transmitter, realizing it was almost a double for the one that took them. "So if this was made centuries ago, why does it look so... modern?" Rito asks, looking around the room, the circuits, the walls, the lighting, "I mean, I guess technology eventually starts all looking the same, but shouldn't a society based on nature like the Taoists have built something more, I don't know, nature inspired, or something?" Lala grabs onto Rito's hand, as they both prepare to step out of the small room and past a pair of closed doors that were the only exit.

"The Taoist Pearl of Power was used to give the Taoists the powers, but it was their natures, that individual connection to certain elements that gave them their powers, if the legends surrounding them are to be believed," Lala states as they walk into a black abyss only for it to slowly light up the area around them, lights going down each side of the hallway matching their pace, "Perhaps before they had that spiritual connection to the planets they visited, perhaps they were just scientists; beings like you or I, people who while advanced, were more than curious about the nature of the universe in trying to solve their own problems."

"So creating a giant, timeless space station above a black hole was, what, a gift to their future descendants?" Rito asked a bit callously, as they walked into a large looking room that was different from the last, "They left treasures and technology behind, so the people they met in their journeys...that they affected, would look for them and inherit all of this?" Rito looked around the now fully lit room and saw every few feet of room, there were plain looking black lines in a circle on the floor, each forming a segment around a pedestal in the middle of the room. Counting them all up, he decided to move to the middle of the room and observe the pedestal at the center. Each segmented area below each pedestal led up to a separated segment of the floor that was enough for one person to comfortable walk around the middle section. On the center pedestal was a simple gray box that looked fractured, like it was filled with a hundred tiny, individual hexagons that formed the inside of the box.

"Twelve lines, one pedestal at the center, and a pinscreen-like box in the middle..." Rito starts, as he looks at the glaringly simple box sitting in the middle of the room, before turning to Lala, "Now, while I'd normally be against pushing buttons and triggering ancient traps; if you wanted someone to inherit all the secrets you left behind and an uncountable amount of time would have passed before you could witness it, would you really make it this simple?" Putting his hand on the base and pressing into it so it would make an indent with his hand, Rito felt something almost immediately.

"Ouch!" he cursed under his breath, pulling his hand away to notice blood drawn from a couple of pinpricks in the palm of his hand, "Guess that makes a bit more sense..." Rito grabs onto the edge of the box as the ground beneath them shook for a moment, Lala hopping over to the divided section of area where Rito was standing, as the floor drew away like a mechanical iris, opening to reveal a black gulf below them. "Okay," Rito states as he looks over to Lala, "Well, ancient trap it is..." Lala merely holds onto his arm, as the rumbling continues and shadowed forms begin to appear in the pit below.

Watching as the ground rises up to reveal another set of twelve separate pedestals that overshadowed the previous by literally covering them over as the new ground unfolded below them like a blooming flower. Grand entrance over with, eventually the aperture closed once more to allow freedom of movement again. "Twelve pedestals, twelve lines, and a circle...just like a clock face," Lala states, as she wanders over to look at an item contained on one of the pedals, a simple looking gauntlet with a letter engraved on it, "This must be Chronos' vault, the legendary lair that the original twelve heroes used as their headquarters during the age of the gods!" She turns to Rito, a smile lighting up her face as she giddily grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him.

"This is why they didn't want you here, and this is what the Chelidane were given to protect; why they didn't want us to come here..." she lifts up the gauntlet, observing the number engraved upon it, before gently setting it back down upon its pedestal and turning to Rito, "These weapons were the original ones Mau, his predecessor, and their predecessor, created for the twelve heroes when the age of gods were ending, and the age of heroes began!" Rito was confused at what this place meant to Lala, or how she even knew about it, and his thoughts must have been evident on his face, when Lala turned sheepish.

"I've been studying up on old legends, the fragmented histories most of the universe collectively forgot is still hidden, immortalized in their myths and legends; this vault was supposedly an ancient temple erected by multiple civilizations of the time of so-called gods, before it became Chronos' headquarters," she states, turning around the room to look at glyphs on each of the pedestals, "Ancient Taoist legend states that there were once twelve immortal beings ,whose beginnings preceded the birth of our own universe; we theorize that these 'gods' had hyper-advanced technology, and an in-depth understanding of the fundamental physics of the universe, that was used by these sublime beings to create a pathway between their universe and ours, using so called 'primal' black holes." She walks over to the center dial and turns back to Rito. "Everyone thought the weapons were commissioned for war, to combat ancient evils and unjust tyrants in this universe," she states, taking her hand and pointing a finger down, "But what if the weapons were made, not just to bring order to the universe, but restore the natural order these gods disrupted when they entered our reality?" Even one who didn't understand much about what she was babbling about, Rito could get a grasp on it because of his knowledge of Earth horror and sci-fi culture.

"You mean they were monsters, abominations whose very presence endangers the fabric of our reality?" Rito responds, thinking of all the stories he read because of his fathers work, "Nothing good happens when gods go to war...if that is why the twelve weapons were lost...were they locked away because of their own danger?" He lifts up his own hand, feeling a pulse of energy through his hand as he turns back to Lala with a look of concern. "If these weapons... if Bladix was made to kill a god, undoing their damage by causing [more] damage..." he trails off, wondering how to find the words, "The galaxy went to war over something equivocal to weapons of mass destruction..." He lets his hand drop and turns to look at Lala in exasperation and frustration. "For gods sake, your mother's people died by the hands of one who misused its power..." Rito stares down, imagining the blood shed by the weapons stored in this room. Lala walks over to hug him, the comforting presence as her arms drape over his shoulders, she soothes his confused and aching heart.

"What if I could become like them," he questions, shifting a bit as he tensed up in agitation, "If I become King I have to chose either to leave my people behind, or unleash a divided planet upon the Milky Way and beyond; whose to say my choice won't lead to that terrible future you saw..." An itch, just the slightest in the back of his head began to dig its way into his thinking. Squeezing him tightly, but not too uncomfortably, Lala removes her head from his shoulders and turns him around to face her.

"The Ninth Blade, Bladix, they weren't complete; and whatever weapons are left have been either collected here, or lost to the ravages of time," she pleads to him, trying to soothe his troubled heart, "They weren't made to last forever, and even Kuro's weapon could be destroyed... for all we know there never were any 'gods', at all and they were simply people who misused their advanced technologies to their detriment..." She lays her head against his broad shoulders, letting her hair tickle his neck as it drapes over his form. "They aren't here now, Rito, and if there was anything left of them that even held a trace of their power, it wouldn't- couldn't, fix the mistakes of the past," she smiles into his shoulder, her tail moving to wrap around his forearm and letting it rest in his hand, "I trust you; you didn't let this power you have change you, not even the removal of Adam or the destruction of the Taoist Pearls affected you so much..."

"I- you're right, I know you are, but if there's even a chance I could mess this up..." his self confidence was showing, though that itch that was slowly growing in intensity was starting to distract him a bit from his current troubles, "Sometimes I wish I could see the future, you know, fix the mistakes before I ever made them!" Lala smiles rueful at that ironic jab, and moves to take his free hand and squeeze it tightly.

"But then you couldn't learn from them, you'd be dejected, certain that you couldn't change the future anymore than you could alter your past," she states, as he meets her eyes and sees the pain in them, "I know that, firsthand; I was supposed to die, remember that I already saw that future, but already you've changed it to something else I never could have dreamed of..." That screaming ache in his head was suddenly dulled by that knowledge, and Rito's brain began to clear just as they both heard the sudden movement of a door opening somewhere behind them. Lighting up the hallway beyond the door, Rito and Lala realized that whatever it was controlling the station, it was guiding them somewhere further beyond this trophy room of lost artifacts.

"Should we follow it?" Lala asked Rito, as he nods, confirming he had composed himself.

"If we are going to figure out what else is on this station, we need to follow this to a control room, or somewhere we can access something, anything, to learn about the Taoists, the heroes, or who even built this station," Rito says as Lala follows him out into the hallway and down to a crossways, where the light stretches out on either side.

"Which way?" Lala asks, as it isn't apparent whether it splits off, or loops around. Rito looks down the left hallway and hears what sounds like machinery and engine noises, though as he goes to check the right hallway, he swear he sees the glimpse of movement, though he doesn't even see a shadow cast off by anyone but them. He turns back to Lala, to make his decision.

"If the engine room, or a control center is down the left hallway, I say we go there first, but..." He doesn't know whether to suggest the option of chasing after ghosts, but Lala makes a suggestion for herself.

"How about I visit the engine, find a computer or something I can get into, and come find you when I do," she states as she points down the right hallway, "You looked spooked when you gazed this way, so I figured your gut must be telling you something, or you saw something."

"It could be nothing, but yeah, I swear I saw something," he confesses, crossing his arms and sighing, "I mean, I know where you are going, and you know where I am going, so we can find each other fairly fast... I think splitting up is for the best, don't you?" He sees nothing but a relieved smile from Lala, and takes that as a yes. "Alright, first sign of trouble, we find the other, shout, yell, whatever it takes," Rito suggests, "You're the genius, so get to taking this station apart, alright?" He gives her a kiss on the cheek, which startles her so much she blushes, before watching him travel down the right path, the worries on his mind already forgotten as she watches him smiling confidently.

As he walked down the hallways, he felt the sterile air was harsh in his lungs, as if the system had fully activated across the station as a whole, but in parts as they explored each new section of the station. Wherever, or whatever, the station was leading them towards, he knew that it may hold some answers to why the station was abandoned over a black hole, and why the Chelidane were put in charge of guarding it, yet they themselves couldn't access it. "That is quite strange," Rito ponders, as he sees the area ahead of him is plunged in darkness, flickering as if damaged, but it became apparent as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light that the shadows held scars.

Deciding to utilize his latent power for something other than a weapon, he decides to try and use it to emit a light so that he could see better. It was cold, unnatural as his hands began to grow numb, he was worried too, since he hadn't tried to do anything with this strange power since Adam had left him, so he hoped e could control it, even if all he could manage was a simple flicker of light. What resulted was really an un-light, of sorts; the flow of energy that went from invisible waves slowly creeping like ice through his veins, to a flare of purple light that lit the shadows with an eerie tint, that grew with his attention and concentration. Blackened scorch marks lined the walls, like energy weapons had been fired off, all pointed in towards the way he was going.

"Great, walk into the creepy area, of course," he sarcastically retorts to himself, "Yeah, chasing ghosts does seem to be an apt metaphor... simile?" Ignoring his choice of wording, he decides to steel himself as he walks to the end of the hall, where it plunges into total darkness, with no light whatsoever coming from the lights in the ceiling. Pointing his hand out towards the black abyss, he tries his hardest to grow the flickering flame into a blaze strong enough to cast away the darkness.

He almost half expects to find decaying corpses, or mummified remains, down the blacked out area, but only more directed weapons fire scorch marks and a sealed door is all he finds a bit down the shorter hallway. Walking over to the door, he finds that a keypad next to it is broken, the faceplate removed and wires hanging loosely from it, like it was spliced into to make it open sometime in the past. Putting a hand to the smooth doorway he couldn't tell even with his light if it split down the middle, or slid away in one piece, but he attempted to find anything he could to get a grip on the door so he could pry it open.

Finally after five minutes of fruitless search, he managed to pry a bit of the door away by melting it away and getting his hand jammed into the resulting hole, until he could get enough of a perch to pry the sealed door and slide it open. Having sacrificed light for heat to melt the metal, he switched back to casting off an eerie glow into the room, just as his eyes landed on something resembling a light switch that still had some power in it. Instead of lighting up the room, as he had hoped, he instead found monitors around coming to life and shining their light in the room enough to make it mostly visible. Turning to the interior of the room, he sees a chair with wisps of pink hair poking out from it, and he realizes that he had seen someone.

"So, there was someone else," he says, alighted, before stepping forward to see who was crazy enough to have stuck around, "I was a bit worried, with all the lights and what not, I figure you must have been scared when you saw us, that you turned off the lights just to..." Sitting in the chair, as he walks around it while talking to the room, is a skeletal corpse of a young female with pink hair. "Eh..AHHHH!" he screams out, as he stumbles back and trips over his feet, as his leg catches her long dress and causes the body to sag forward as the head just pops off and rolls just off to the side of him.

Trying not to puke, as he see scrambles away from the headless corpse and mummified remains, he puts a hand over his mouth and nose to keep from breathing the air. He notices the girl is clutching something in her hand, holding onto it tightly, but he ignores trying to figure out what it is in favor of running to find Lala, without puking and losing his lunch.

Lala, meanwhile, had gone down the well lit hallway, and found it odd that the technology seemed to stop reacting to her, though it was well maintained by all evidence. She had tried every means possible to hack the doorway she had found herself at, except it would reroute itself after a few seconds and cause her frustration as she had to start the process all over again. Perhaps what she required was something more of a refined touch...

Tasking a spot, she put the palm of her hand against it and then began to force her fingers through the metal door and rip into it like it was thick, cold plastic. Eventually she just pried it open, and the door mostly slid away, as the room beyond it lit up to reveal a control room, and a majestic window opening into space, which showed nothing but blackness, making it obvious the light was being eaten away by the all consuming black hole.

"Huh, this doesn't look right," Lala states, as she begins to observe the various readings the many monitors and such had scrolling across their screens, as she turned them on one by one as they began to access the station's data, "It almost seems like the orbit is..." Before she could continue her thoughts, Lala's ears perked at the barest hint of a scream resonating in the station's large and vast hallway. "Rito?" Lala asked questioningly, as she steps out of the room to see Rito coming down the hallway after a little bit of time had passed between the scream and his appearance, "What- what's wrong?"

Rito had ran into her arms, looking extremely pale and sick, as his scared expression met her concerned gaze. "Calm down," Lala ordered, as he began to hyperventilate, while gasping at air trying to form sentences, "Take a deep breath- there, doesn't that feel better?" Rito had nodded calmly, letting a little bit of color to return to him, as he nervously clawed at his hair and tried to explain what had caused his outburst.

"-body, corpse, mummy," he managed to spit up in a jumble, as speech escaped his reason, "Pink hair, just sitting there in the dark- hallway has scorch marks, broken door and no lighting, and I scared myself stumbling upon a body of a woman, no- a girl." The worry in her expression only increased as she got the gist of his words straight in her head. A battle had taken place here, sometime in the past, the girl had either likely died in it, or locked the door because of it, and ended up dying in a dark room when power had either failed, or had been shut it off by her attackers to quicken her death. Likely their appearance had caused a systems wide reboot, which had all but restored power in that section, likely restoring air and other functionality, too late for the girl who was little more than mummified corpse left behind by this stations former masters.

"If this was a heroes base, why would you leave a corpse behind..." Lala questions out loud, as Rito shakes his head trying to get the image out of his brain, "Well, I found this room, but nothing seems to work either..." As they walk into the room, which was the total opposite of Rito's, a sudden click is heard in the room and it's, as if the room truly came to life at his presence. The shuttering of and shifting is heard, as if the walls and ceiling, or the mechanisms behind and within, began to return to functionality, and a tone is heard as some kind of speaker systems flares to life in a screech.

"W-w-w-w-welcome," a robotic voice stutters out from around them, "Are-are-Ark station-one-one-one-one, online." As they waited for more responses from the mysterious computer voice, the ceiling whirs to life as a mechanical device is lowered down from the top, it twirls around on its stand and beams of various colors of light are emitted and are scattered across the entirety of the room. Finally a small scattering of spheres made up of light are released by the machine and drift through the room, until they collect into thirteen singular points of light set up in an unknown pattern. Two rows of three spheres stood a head apart, above them on one side to the left and right another row of three spheres a handbreadth from the bottom six, the middle of each set just enough to form a triangle of sorts, with the final one perfectly centered above the twelve.

It then became clear why this strange pattern of spheres emerged, as pure white feet began to form, followed by knees, a waist, hands began to take shape, arms gained form and met at the shoulders, as the waist became an androgynous chest and continued up to the final point that morphed into a featureless face. The oblong body began to morph, from androgynous to feminine, remaining stark white and featureless still, as bodily proportions began to regulate and settle to something human like. Features began to appear on the face of the projection: a mouth, nose, and almond shaped eyes, colored gray, with a distinct 'I' tattoo on her forehead, that was then crowned with long hair of silver-blonde.

"In-in-inheritor of my will, welcome to Arc P-palace, my name is Sephira Arc; as my final gift to you, my children who have journeyed far to come here, I give you an idea, an organization, a place of safety for you to g-gather and plan," the voice of the ethereal beauty states, "We came to this universe originally, not to become gods, but as men and women desiring to survive the end of everything by creating a new beginning." A frown crosses the woman's face as she continues speaking. "My friends, my family... we lost everything trying to avoid our enemies view; we stole their technology, gained friends who helped us master immortality, and managed to find a universe so very close to our own!" She states happily, before losing her joy yet again, "That was because our enemies had infiltrated this reality at its very beginning, losing their physical shells to alien physics, yet I could see that one day they would rise from within this reality as mortals... weak, fragile beings that could once again restart the cycle they had begun."

The frame of the First Sword was the shown in her hand, appearing from thin air. "The way they travel through reality, one to another, rips their forms asunder and poisons the realities they enter with a foreign matter that brings nothing but pain and suffering; an unnatural strain of dark matter that is incomplete, that decays, without its opposite," she states, as the sword is replaced with another, greater sword as black as obsidian, with a moon embroidered on it, "I know what to do, of course; I must use what adamantine I can extract from this sword, and utilize it in the defense of this reality." The first is show again, though the jewel in its hilt is removed. "Eleven weapons, the first of which were made with a fraction of my adamantine reserves, have since been created using the enemies own power against them, no small compromise on my part," the woman says, "Even now a twelfth weapon is being perfected; Ark Palace has been situated over a black hole to allow almost no time to pass beyond our own, or at least very little, until my scientists can finalize its design and allow us to gather an army to face our enemies in the final battle to co-" Rito and Lala watch as the figure morphs, the image distorts into a scream as the recording cuts out and is replaced with a simple white blank slate. The figure blurs and shortens until another person replaces the previous, though the face is not too unfamiliar to either of them.

Rito almost feels the bile rising in his throat, as he realizes whom the girl is standing before him now, but the eerie resemblance to Lala is uncanny, and even recognized by Lala, who is staring at the mirror image, dressed in a ridiculously out of style dress.

"Hi...hello? Is this thing on?" a womanly voice states, as the features of the person begin to crystallize, "Ah, there it goes, the light's on..." She moves as if to adjust her position, and stands with a smile of triumph on her face. "Ok, whoever is watching this, I need to start by telling you everything: who I am, what I've done, and that everything will /not/ be alright," a woman with the face of Lala states, a few years older than the Devilukean Princess, and seemingly lacking her tail, "My name is Lala, Lala Lilia, and I am hacking this recording from the auxiliary control room to leave a message for you to find, if and when you manage to find it." The woman looks beaten, bruised and bleeding, blood from a cut going down her face. "Sephira Arc, Arc Palace, it's a trap, for you, for your people, and he was counting on you falling into this galactic pitcher plant," the woman states, as her picture cuts out, before stabilizing, "He allowed Sephira to believe she had free will, that she had escaped his notice, but she didn't, and the only reason I am is because of my secret invention, and my own feelings, that keeps me defying the voices crowding out my head..." Lala and Rito look at each other, as the figure smiles sadly at them. "He wanted her to create the weapons, so one day his own people could have an unlimited arsenal that spanned infinite timelines," the woman continues, as she grips her left arm at the elbow with her right, "Sh-k~i's horde, they attacked us hours ago, began converting the people aboard to turn them; Sephira couldn't defend us without the sword, but I could use my creation to hide myself away just long enough for them to overlook it, because my Secret Weapon wasn't something he was expecting to have been completed in such a short time..."

"What is it?" Rito asks the recorded projection, "Who is this 'he', she's referring to?" Lala shushes Him, so as to listen to this older doppelgänger.

"I managed to save a portion of the adamantine used in the creation of the First Sword; not enough to draw attention to anything being amiss, but enough I could create an item that will prove to be more useful than any sword," the girl smiles wickedly at that, the satisfaction of knowing she pulled one over on her pursuers showed clearly in her face, "It's..." The projection froze as the power shut off and the station under them began to rumble beneath them, as metal began to tear in some area of the massive space station. "...find it there, on my person," the woman states, "He'll never expect it when you use it, and that overconfidence will be his undoing; so, Hero, you have the potential to become a Hero, but will you trust me?" With that, the signal ends, the transmission cut short, either by the loss of power, or interference, everything was lost between those words.

"What was that?" Rito asked, as Lala moved over to a computer to begin trying to figure out its interface, "She said something about a trap..." Lala looked up from the computer's interface, her face grim, as she turns to let Rito get a look at what it showed.

"Our orbit is decaying ever since we arrived, one system has been failing after another right under our noses; it was probably an isolated program kept inside the transporter's systems until the transmat had to interface with the station and infected it," Lala informs him, as the station's projected route is straight into the black hole, within twenty minutes, "You need to go and save the weapons they left behind in the vault; I counted four or five, I think, while I try and figure out where her 'secret weapon' is located...". Rito put his foot down at that.

"No, the thirteenth item was entrusted to me, Lala, not you; even if you found it, there's something about me that makes me worthy, so it may not even recognize you as it's owner in that case," Rito tries to be diplomatic and sound reasonable, and it works. Lala sighs, stopping and turning to put her arms around him and give him a big kiss, pulling away to stare him down with a serious expression.

"I'm going to be waiting on the transmat, for you, and won't leave until you get there," she states, as she turns to leave, Rito watches her leave. He puts his hands to his head, and begins to walk out of the room and back towards the darkened hallway.

'Damn it, this isn't what I wanted to do,' Rito thinks to himself, as he alights the hallway once again, 'She locked herself away, died to keep her secrets; this miss Lilia didn't deserve to die alone like that.' Walking through the dark hallway, the illumination of the monitors in the room spilled out to bring some light he could see as he walked into the room. Taking a deep breath, Rito goes to stand in front of the mummified corpse, and looks her over to see where she could have put the item. His eyes turned to her left hand, where he sees her closed fist was tightly closed and half hidden between her knee and the chair. "I'm sorry," he states, as he grabs the cloth around her arm to free her hand from the folds of her dress, "Forgive me for this, miss." He notices something shift and fall free from her hand after trying to dislodge the corpse, so to be safe he decided to try and remove whatever it was in her hand without breaking it. Eying a shiny red bauble dangling from her withered hand, he reaches for it and feels a bit of a sparking jolt of energy between his touch and the item she held onto.

As if igniting a flame from some smoldering ember, the purplish haze signifying Rito's power in use, turns into a brilliant and hellish purple that seems to consume the decayed figure of the former creator. As he releases the bauble from his grip out of surprise, the mummified corpse is quickly engulfed and obscured by the purple blaze, as it covers and spreads to every inch, forcing him to watch in twisted fascination as if he expects it to consume the room.

Instead the cold blaze begins to sputter out and die, as the figure engulfed suddenly reverses its flames and strips them away, starting from the same hand it reveals a healthy complexion where once was simply dead flesh. Eyes closed, face contorted as if simply asleep, and a crown of long pink hair is restored; a doll dressed like a living girl sits in place of the corpse.

To Rito the girl seemed to be asleep, though she quickly betrayed his expectations as she opened her closed eyelids with a flutter, to reveal to shining pink orbs that cause his heart to skip a beat, as he was met with the image of what he imagined a younger Sephie Deviluke looked like. She suddenly smiles as she gazes up at him, before stepping up from her chair and ghosting a hand over his cheek, yet refraining from touching him. "So similar..." she croaks out, before covering her mouth at the sound of her own voice and laughing into her hand. Rito is a little freaked out, but the girl merely walks past him and towards the machines and computers behind him.

"Who are you?" Rito asks, "How are you alive?" The girl ignores him as she begins to type into the monitors and the machines, before looking up at the darkness that surrounded them. She turned back to him with a smile that grew ever more eerie in his poisonous light.

"I apologize for the lights, I isolated everything to accept only my vocal commands; once I realized everything was unfolding faster than I had anticipated, it became necessary," the woman says, as she stares at monitors and influxes of data on the screens, "System command: turn light's on, display current trajectory of station, and estimate remaining time before entering point of no return." In favor of ignoring his question, she waits for a response from the machines around her.

"Ark Palace- situation: critical," a monotone voice rings out of the auxiliary computer banks, "Descent into point of no return estimated to be six minutes, thirty-two seconds, estimated time from auxiliary control room to transporter estimated at under two minutes; though safe transporter activation requires an estimated four minutes and thirty-five seconds." Lilia looks from the computer to Rito and frowns, as she realizes that the time would be impossible to safely return back to the other side.

"I'm sorry, Rito, I don't have time to explain how I'm here," this other Lala states, "I'm a scientist, this bracelet was my magnum opus , and you will use it to change the world, I just know it..." She walks over to him, removing the bracelet from her hand, she places it in the palm of his hand without a protest. "You can't do it here, not now at least, so go and become the hero he couldn't," she states, as she turns around and slowly begins to disintegrate before his eyes, from the hem of her dress upwards, she slowly began to break apart like a crystallized illusion.

"What about my Lala, she is supposed to be on the transmat pad, can we... can we activate it from here?" Rito asks, turning to Miss Lilia, "If I can't make it back, she has to!" Lilia purses her lips at that, and sighs, walking over to him and putting her hands on either side of his head and kiss his forehead.

"You need to have more self-interest, little hero," she says, as she pulls away and lifts her left hand up to reveal it breaking apart into crystal dust, "I thank you for giving me a chance to redeem myself, but you are correct; I can't let her feel the pain I felt losing my beloved Sorato, so in exchange I ask that you promise me you'll try and make it back home." He goes to take her other hand, to stop her, but she glides her hand over his and gently touches the shining bracelet in his palm. "You have the power of Dark Energy inside you, enough to alter a fundamental force like time; use it and promise me you'll get back home, ok?

She says it with a smile, as the breakage reaches just below her waist, and begins to speak to her computer system even as she falls to pieces before him. "Initialize remote override of the transmat system, one to beam to Quadrant Sigma Five Alpha, authorize passenger to have clearance level digamma-omega, and initialize mass transport!" Lala Lilia states, as she turns to Rito with the damage reaching the area of her breasts, "Go, Rito, go and never look back... stop the darkness from consuming this universe in its foolish desire-" Rito is already running down the hall, stumbling in the dark, before reaching the end of the hallway and the trophy room where all the weapons had been kept.

He had just under a minute to get to the transporter room and safely leave with Lala. Unfortunately it appeared like something had caused the station to go haywire, the iris floor having been warped in pockets and utterly impossible to safely cross. "Damn it," Rito cried out, as he looks for some way to cross, the gravity well having already begun to warp the lower levels of the station, resulting in this impassable crevice. He could try and cross it, but the terrain was going to slow him down. "I- I'm not going to make it, am I?" he says to no one in particular, "Lala... Lala, I'm sorry..." Falling to the floor, he laughs humorously at the situation

Transmat

Lala feels something is wrong when the room around begins to whir to life just after a massive shake following a large rumbling of creaking metal from below her feet. She can't help but imagine the lower levels of the station colliding with the edge of the black holes accretion disk, which would mean that the time it was taking for the station to get sucked in would be quickly decreasing with every passing moment they were sucked through the buffering zone. "Rito, where are you?" she asks herself, while the sounds inside the room was steadily growing, as if it was preparing itself to activate, "Come on Rito..." The weapons were scattered about her, each of the five items were shaking a bit with the station, but the amount they were doing that was noticeable enough to worry her greatly. Before she could even understand what was happening, the transport device turned on, and Lala realized a discrimination field had activated around the transporter pad and the station.

It was a wall of energy, as Lala found out, trying to break through it with all of her strength, but the stations designs must have included kinetic absorbers, for the shaking around her had stopped. It was likely due to temporal discriminators isolating her from the local space time field to prepare her for a return to normal space time. She was too late, and so was Rito, if the presence of the field was any indication. Rito was too late to return home...

She would never see him again.

Before she could even begin processing that, something large and indescribable slammed into the force field as she stood there, causing her to fall back in shock. "What the heck?" she stated, as she focused on a blurry, shadowy figure that stood at the edge of the transmat.

No.

Rito stops crying, rubbing the tears from his eyes and standing on his own two feet to walk back over to the doorway. He promised Lala he would get back to her, that he would be there before she was sent home. Time may not be on his side, but he would be a damned fool if he didn't try.

"Besides," he said to himself, as he formulated a plan, "...might as well see what I can do too."

Gathering the energy in his hands, to do something, anything at all, he concentrated and brought the shadowy substance into his grasp. Putting his hands together as more and more of the shadowy energy coalesced into something firmer, as he imagined and stretched his concentration beyond human limit and understanding, he felt as if he could stitch together the shadows into something useable. So he did.

First, covering the soles of his feet, he covered himself up to his torso with shadows, until his very form became engulfed in the darkness he once feared. So cold, yet so very comforting, he felt the familiarity of the energy that Nemesis produced, that Golden Darkness exuded in adult form, and the power was more easily handled as if he were still benefiting from Adam's control over the elusive and slippery substance.

And so with a little bit of faith, and a lot of hope, Rito Yuuki took one step out into the dark, and found a foothold in the shadows no mortal man could have. He was walking on air, the shadows themselves becoming his footholds as power slowly drained from the station, his chances of getting through to see Lala, in what was to be their final moments, had suddenly grown exponentially. And so Rito ran, he ran over air like it was turf in a football field, down a pitch black corridor that seemed brighter than when it was lit, into a blinding room where he tripped over his own two feet.

WHAM

He felt the spark of energy where none had been before, and when he opened his eyes in the light, only to be blinded by what he assumed was her heavenly radiance, Rito looked up at Lala with rings of light behind her head, as the adrenaline finally left his system, and his control over the shadowy energy dispersed just like that.

"RITO!" Lala cried out with joy, as she realized as the shadows faded from view that the figure of her fiance was made visible, "You made it." He felt his words for her hitch in his throat at that utterance, but a fleeting moment of happiness broke them free.

"Of course, I'll always be here for you..." he states with an uneasy smile, knowing his tie left was reduced, as he put a hand to the energy field, "But this... is new." Lala smiles, and laughs at his silliness.

"It's a temporal discriminator field, it's alright, it's just to make sure we don't get temporal aphasia from improper adjustments," Lala states, as she had deduced its functions like that, "I mean, falling into a black hole's gravity well means time slows down to nothing, so it would be dangerous if all of your atoms suddenly went from three dimensions to one on a trip back..." She smiles, and puts a hand over his own. "So..." she says, as she looks at him, "Come on, get inside before the transporter fires up, so we can go home together, Rito."

She said it as if it were the simplest thing in the world, and yet he wouldn't have expected anything less as she was still that naive, innocent girl he had met in his bathroom all those years ago.

Closing his fist tightly, as he grimly smiles and looks up at her to meet her smile with his hidden, confused emotions. Yet that terrified look of finality in those eyes, was exposed to her like he was when he was sitting naked in that same tub years before.

"No." she said, as her perfect smile dropped. "No, no, I can't..." She slammed her fist into the force field as she saw his mask drop with that first tear. "Rito get inside, please, before it's too late," she tries to bargain with him, "Drop the field, we still have time, we can both..." He punches the field with a fist crackling, alight with dark matter, burning as fierce as the sudden fire in his eyes, she notices.

"No, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I'm letting you suffer here, with me," he states, as he steps back and faces her with his own raw emotions, "You can't be selfish, I can't be selfish; I won't risk it, when you should know it takes more time than we have to both get back home safely..." He smiles, truly this time, as he slides to his knees, followed by Lala. "I'm sorry, Lala, I can't make it home right away," he states, as he looks up and puts his hand back on the invisible wall, "Tell Celine I love her, Mom, Dad, that I won't be graduating, and make sure my sister knows she doesn't have to grow up too fast..." Her tears are starting to flow now, as she lets her arms flop uselessly to her sides. "Tell Nana I wasn't such a beast after all, tell your father and mother I can't keep my promise to become the greatest man worthy of you, and make sure your sister knows I forgive her," Rito continues, as the weighty words on his hearts just burst forth, "Make sure Saruyama knows he needs to straighten up for that girlfriend of his, and tell Haruna, Run, Ren, and all the others not to mourn me, and to finish their graduation ceremonies for me with the biggest damn smiles on their faces too."

The metal creaks again, and Rito knows time is running out, as he feels the largest shadow he's ever felt, the greatest terror and emptiness, looming just out of reach, an icy pit in his stomach the only feeling as he says his final words. "And you, Lala, I don't expect you to move on right away, or even find a perfect guy, you know?" he states, with a bit of a chuckle, "But don't wait for me, don't ruin your life, if it just means your unhappy; be happy, for me, please, and know I didn't want any of this-"

WHAM

This time it was her that scared him, as he looked up to see her fists, both on the wall as she cried, tears streaming down her face as she pounded away at the wall without letup, even as he watched the light, the energy begin to grow in the machine above her while she remained unaware, solely focused on his figure in the dark. "Please, Rito, don't go," she states, "Don't leave me too..." He put his ringed hand up to the wall, one last time, as she overlapped her own ringed hand.

"Never," he states in response, "As long as that stone shines my color, know I'll always be there for you, alive in your memory; alive in your heart..." He says that with a genuine smile, and she can't help but laugh at his cheesiness. "Lala, don't forget how we are bound," he states, as he looks at the pink and orange jeweled ring, that bound their unmarried future, "I will always carry a piece of you inside me, bound forever with this ring; a red string led me back to you, bound our lives together, a symbol of our mutual love..."

He felt the burning in his chest as he spoke, a nest of bees hammering away at his heart as he spoke, the heat of his ring on his hand growing with each drumbeat. "Together from our first moment-" he chokes out, as the light washes over her and takes her away from him, "-from our first moment, to our last..." He felt as the wall of invisible light gave way, falling forward while crying, onto his hands and knees, feel as if a piece of his heart was ripped right out of his chest. As the light dims all around him, as the stations last gasp of power was taken along with Lala's escape, Rito is left stranded, alone, in the dark.

His heart and head both hurt, a pounding rush in his ears, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Putting his ringed hand to his chest, he lays down on the empty platform to await the inevitable, as the station slowly collapsed below him. A small glimmer of light escaped his hand, as he forced the power into his ring, bringing some measure of comfort in the dark as a sparkling display of pink and orange stretched out into the dark to shine on the ceiling above him like twin stars in the dark.

It was almost comforting, seeing the symbol of his love shining out like that. Almost.

Transmat Room
Sometime after Lala and Rito's sudden disappearance

"Tell me where they went," a sheep like woman stated, as she stood impatiently grilling a large turtle like alien, "The transmat, where did it place them, Acan?" The Chelidane smiled, one of its eyes are black and blue from being roughed up in the initial assault.

"I would never tell you, or any of the council for that matter, we've all lived far too long to not know exactly where it was I sent them," the Chelidane coughed out, a wheezing breath that was forced with the crack in his shell making it hard on his lungs, "The council locked away the heroes items for their dark master for far too long, and now the universe is losing all of its hope..." He smiled, as he watched the impatient woman who managed the bank turn bright red underneath her woolly exterior. "No more, they both will learn of their legacies, of the false gods and the heroes that slew them..." he stops, as a fist from one of the security guards cracks into his ribcage, making the impact widen it with each hit, "...b-ut, they'll make it... and may the universe have mercy on us all..."

As they talked, the manager sheep woman, Clover, grew more and more impatient at the lack of answers from an uncooperative man such as this. It was time for her to switch tactics. "Guard," she called out, turning to the one by the door, who approached to hear her out, "Retrieve Brightwool and our other intruder from deep containment, bring them here so we can show the former minister of security we mean business- and don't even think about touching my subordinate, you brutish swine." The guard nodded, leaving to retrieve the two women from where Clover had incarcerated them, while Clover smirked in satisfaction at the change in Acan's pained expressions at the mention of his precious 'daughter', and she relished in it greatly.

"Now, where were we..." Clover states, as she stands to face Acan and crosses her hands over her chest, to lean over and face the Chelidane head on, "How can we access the transmat's controls and force a return?" At that, Acan laughed, before being seized by a forceful, bloody cough from no doubt a punctured lung.

"I- wheeze - I can't tell you, because- because there is no secret way," the Chelidane wheezes out painfully, "Only they can return-" The Chelidane stops, as does the Ariesan, whom both look to the transmat as a sudden burst of sound and light alerted both to something new.

As smoke cleared from the explosion, the form of someone standing on their hands and knees was seen on the platform, her red tail draping down around her feet which was surrounded by a couple of strange pieces and odd items.

"Princess Lala?" Clover stated in surprise, before her smile turned malicious and her voice sickly sweet, "Princess, we were looking for you..." She clasps her hands together, and slowly walks over to where the princess lay on the transmat, and she noticed the Devilukean had tears streaming down her face. "Where did you go your majesty, and where is that human, your fiance?" she asks carefully, trying to see what was going on, "What did you find, and, most importantly, are you... okay?" Her eyes danced over the baubles ad odds and ends, and finally notices what they really were. "You... you brought back the heroes weapons?" she says with astonishment, as her grin grows bigger, "If your fiance doesn't come back, well, at least we can recoup some of our losses if the princess 'suddenly disappears' as well, and even if Deviluke cuts ties with us; it's a pity it is too dangerous to let you and your friends live now."

Lala's Pov

Lala doesn't even react, but she feels her hand graze over one of the items that had fallen to the wayside. She grasps it as Clover was talking, and brings it in front of her face, as the woman's words ring empty in her ears. "...it's a pity it is too dangerous to let you and your friends live now." It was those words that break Lala free of her grief induced stupor, and for the first time in a while, Lala feels something bubble up in her heart that she had locked away long ago after witnessing her Father's power at a young and impressionable age, before her sisters were even a thought. Putting it on her right hand, the item bearing the numeric letters 'VII', she looks up at the woman who just proclaimed her a dead woman, just after she had lost the only one she had ever truly loved.

"Why?"

Outside the Security Minister's Room
Later

Ryouko Mikado and Brightwool were handcuffed and led by one of the security officers to just outside the room. Just before the security guard could knock the door opened to reveal the banks manager, Clover, standing there with a frown on her face and arms crossed. Ryouko feared the worse, and the cow-eyed ewe that stood next to her, was shivering on her cloven hooves. It was then that the Ariesan manager's faced changed as she fell to the floor unconscious, shocking the three standing at the doorway as the woman was left sprawled out on the floor.

"Manager!" the officer states as he goes to check on the unconscious woman, though he feels a shadow of dread be cast over him, as he looks up just in time to see someone else fill the spot where his boss had stood. A sharp punch from a bloodied gauntlet, speckled by the bodily fluids of others already, the fist returns to the side of its owner and Ryouko looks up in shock from both unconscious victims to see the shadowed form of a grief stricken, red eyed Lala Satalin Deviluke.

With bodies of unconcious security officers piled in the room just behind her, and the tears running down her face, Ryouko knows better than to ask what happened as Brightwool passes her to go for the elder Chelidane, whom was laying untouched but wounded inside among the others. Mikado quickly passes a stunned Lala to help look over the Chelidane man bleeding out onto the floor, as he gasps out in pain, with his loved one nearby.

"It's alright, my dear, I'll be fine," Acan laughs, before putting a three fingered hand up to Brightwool's face, "Take the folder from my bottom desk drawer, go with- cough -with the princess, live, and bring it all to King Gid..." He closes his eyes for the final time, and the Ariesan girl is left sobbing into his frame, while Ryouko feels a wet tapping on her shoulder. She turns to look over her shoulder, to thr emotionally shocked Lala, whose joy has visibly left her face to leave a blank slate drained of any hope.

"Mikado Sensei," she says, as she holds a couple other items she picked up in the meanwhile, all in her non gloved hand, "Let's go home, please."

A/N: Well, been a bit, but I finally have a true endgame for this story. Expect to get answers soon. Farewell for now, my friends, don't forget to review, favorite, and follow! Edit: tried to clean it up a bit. Also, adding a disclaimer that I do not own TRANS Boy, nor Black Cat.