Ch 9: Wings of Insanity
Outskirts of Abandoned Factory
North Lastation
1300 hours
In all honesty, it was just like Noire's terrible luck to have a large detachment of fans stumble across her resistance force right when they were setting out to retake the Basilicom. While she and her soldiers had managed to hold back the initial swarm of fans, the unexpected skirmish had left Noire's army heavily battered while also leaving most of their major riot-suppression weapons destroyed. To make matters worse, additional fan reinforcements had been called in by the first group as the resistance members slowly found themselves being pushed back until they were pinned down near their base. Not wanting to endanger the civilians hiding inside, Noire had ordered her forces to draw the fight away from the old factory to the much more exposed hilly wastelands that surrounded the area. It was in this location that the last remaining members of the main resistance army found themselves staging what could only be described as their final stand.
"T...There's too many of them! We're not going to make it!"
"Tell my wife and kids that I love them!"
"It's game over, man! Game over!"
"My cabbages!"
Noire could not help but roll her eyes as she continued to listen to the melodramatic yells of her soldiers - as well as the one random cabbage merchant that had the misfortune of getting caught in the crossfire. Sure the situation was pretty bad, what with the unending horde of fans swarming against them and all, but it was still rather embarrassing listening to her fully-trained elites screaming in fear like a bunch of fresh guild recruits going up against a Grand Dogoo. Witnessing this, she could not help but wonder if Neptune had a point about Lastation attracting all of the weirdos in Gamindustri. Considering that she was currently being assaulted by a bunch of her 'devoted fans', Noire had to grudgingly concede that maybe her 'friend' might have been right for once.
"Cut the chatter and reform the line!"
With that sharp command, Noire leaped back into the fray with a stun baton in hand. Landing gracefully in the center of the approaching fans, she quickly lashed out with her weapon and dispatched the three closest enemies around her. The rest of the swarm quickly recovered from this sudden attack though as they all turned as one to focus on their prime target. However, Noire was a CPU for a reason as she used her superhuman speed to avoid the countless hands that reached out to grab/grope her. With practiced ease, she ducked, weaved, and sidestepped around her opponents, all the while zapping them down as she did so. It helped that most of the fans were still wearing their normal civilian outfits which gave her plenty of exposed areas to stun them in. Even the few armored fans in the crowd (mostly her own soldiers who had defected to the fans) fell quickly as she managed to find minor gaps in their protective gear.
In a matter of minutes, she managed to successfully dispatch the majority of of her enemies. After making sure that her soldiers had taken care of the few remaining stragglers, Noire finally lowered her weapon and stooped down to catch her breath.
Her momentary respite did not last for long though as she suddenly felt a large number of eyes staring directly at her. Fearing the worst, she quickly rose back up only to find that it was just her own soldiers staring at her with various awe-struck looks on their faces.
Normally, Noire would have been ecstatic about gaining this much positive attention but she was far too tired and agitated at the moment to properly enjoy her time in the spotlight.
"Stop gawking like a bunch of idiots and get moving!" she shouted out irritably. "We need to set up a proper defensive line before the next group of fans arrive! And for crying out loud, someone get that screaming cabbage merchant off of the battlefield!"
The resistance group barely had time to direct said merchant towards the safety of their base before another wave of fans suddenly appeared from the city proper and barreled straight towards them with a crazed yell. Seeing this, Noire dropped all pretense of keeping a calm and level head and let out a frustrated scream.
"Tranquilizer squadron, cover our flanks!" she yelled out once she calmed down a bit. "Taser guns, provide covering fire from behind the shields! Anyone left with a stun baton, converge around me!"
After receiving a confirmation from her remaining field officers, Noire turned back to the approaching hostiles with her own stun baton in hand. As she tightened her grip on the unfamiliar weapon, Noire could not help but once again wish that she could just activate her HDD, summon her sword, and go full Revengeance on the fan mobs.
As tempting as the idea was though, she knew better than to actually follow through with it. For one, she could already handle the fans just fine in her current form so wasting energy by utilizing her HDD was simply a foolhardy move. More importantly, however, there was the simple yet all-important fact that she could not afford to use lethal force against her fans. Embarrassingly enough, these fans happened to be the main source of her shares thanks to their (excessive) devotion and faith towards her. Even with all the trouble they were causing, she still needed them alive to continue providing power for her.
At this thought, a mental image of Neptune appeared in Noire's head and began to laugh her ass off at the friendless CPU for that sad realization. With another irritated growl, Noire shook her head to dispel the annoying image as she instead focused her attention back to the battle at hand.
By now, the fans had already gotten close enough that Noire's superior vision could make out each individual member within their ranks. Much to her surprise and confusion, however, she saw that these new fans were all wearing a matching set of the standard Lastation guard armor. Since she knew for a fact that only a handful of her main military force had defected, she was sure that these were just basic civilian fans who had been given sets of stolen armor to wear. Just as she began to wonder why these particular fans would be given extra protection, she suddenly realized an extremely disturbing fact: these fans were organized.
While the previous hordes had simply thrown themselves at the resistance like a mindless mob, this new group was charging at them with a very clear formation. While the hilly terrain made it hard to notice at first, three distinct divisions of fans were slowly beginning to take form as they neared them; the first group leading the center charge while the other two fanned out to the sides in a classic flanking maneuver. What was even more frightening though was the absolute coordination of their movements. All of the fans moved forward without breaking their perfectly ordered ranks, almost as if they were an actual group of trained soldiers rather than a rag-tag group of deranged fans.
However, all of these oddities were quickly forgotten about as Noire managed to get a good look at their eyes.
What in the world? she thought, instinctively getting into a combat stance as her men formed up around her. Why are their eyes... golden?
Almost as if to answer her question, the horde of golden-eyed fans suddenly shouted out as one in disturbing unison.
"Kill the Waifu Thief! Take back Noire! The Queen wills it!"
Everything seemed to finally click together in Noire's mind as a single, headache-inducing name entered her thoughts.
K-Sha.
Even though she had read the reports about how her... admirer... had terrified most of the fans into accepting her as their leader, it still came as a surprise to see the extent to which the Gold Third member had taken control of the swarm. Judging from the looks of it, K-Sha had apparently managed to create some form of twisted hive mind with her Gold Third powers and was now testing out her newest brood of mind-controlled minions out on the battlefield. While the specifics of it were still lost on Noire, she knew that nothing good could come from this disturbing new development.
"This day just keeps getting better and better," Noire muttered, bracing herself for the oncoming charge.
With another terrifying battle-cry, the swarm took out a wide variety of fan merchandise weapons from their inventories (ranging from poster tubes to wooden versions of Noire's various swords) and surged forward from three different directions at once. Even as her tranquilizer and taser squads shot down dozens of the oncoming fans, the swarm relentlessly charged forward until they smashed directly into the resistance's defensive line.
While most armies would have devolved into a chaotic mess after smashing into the enemy, the swarm managed to maintain their order and pushed forward; practically crushing the resistance's front line underneath their sheer numbers. With tactical coordination that even the most well-trained army could not hope to emulate, the swarm exploited the rebel's disarray and began to systematically pick them apart piece by piece. Even with Noire backing them up, it soon became obvious that the resistance was being overwhelmed.
"Fall back! We're cut off!" one of her soldiers carrying a stun baton yelled out in panic as the tranquilizer squad was overrun several meters away.
Knowing that the fans would not give them enough time to regroup even if they retreated, Noire quickly turned around to face her men.
"Belay that order! Stand your ground!"
The words had barely left her mouth when the fans in the back row suddenly launched a salvo of body pillows against her remaining forces. The sudden onslaught of half-naked - and in some cases, fully nude - pictures of the goddess were enough to momentarily distract even Noire as the entire resistance turned to stare at the lewd missiles. Unfortunately for them, all of the body pillows turned out to be stuffed with a ton of bricks as nearly all of the resistance soldiers were knocked off their feet and rendered unconscious by the unorthodox barrage.
Noire was still blushing a furious red (both from physical exertion as well as witnessing the large collection of deadly body pillows) when a large, hulking fan with ash-white skin and red war paint suddenly rushed forward and used the CPU's brief lapse in awareness to successfully tackle her to the ground.
"For the Swarm!" the fan yelled out, a blank expression on his scarred face as tried to wrap his enormous arms around the struggling goddess.
Unfortunately for Noire, she had dropped her stun baton when she had fallen and was currently pinned down in a position where she could do little more than wriggle about violently in response. The last few members of her resistance tried their best to reach her but were quickly cut off and mercilessly beaten down by the other fans.
Just when Noire thought she would have to headbutt the mind-controlled fan and possibly break open his skull in the process, her attacker suddenly went limp like a Nepgeardam with its power supply cut off. Noire barely had time to process this though before she suddenly found herself being crushed underneath the unconscious giant of a man as he fell directly on top of her.
"Kyaaa! Get off me you pervert!"
The fan made no response to her shrill shout as he continued to enjoy his sudden and mysterious snooze without a care in the world.
As Noire eventually gathered her wits and pushed the fan off of her, she noticed the tranquilizer dart sticking out from the man's butt. Making a face at the sight, she turned her head around to see where exactly the dart had come from.
As her eyes made its way up towards a distant hill, she saw something – or more specifically, someone - who only served to increase her already dangerously high blood-pressure.
"You!"
With his large coat billowing heroically behind him on some nonexistent breeze and an over-sized tranquilizer gun in his hands, her 'savior' turned out to be none other than Sync himself.
"Thought you might need some help," the Second Most Annoying Person in All of Gamindustri (based on the official Noire Scale of Annoyance) called out with a cheeky grin as he reloaded his weapon. "We came as fast as we could."
Before Noire could say anything, C-Sha suddenly appeared from behind him and immediately leaped forward to beat down the rest of the fans that had tried to sneak up on Noire during the brief interlude.
"This isn't the time to be lying down on the job, Noire," the Gold Third leader said, punching out the last nearby fan as she turned around to pull the dumbstruck CPU back to her feet.
Noire accepted the help while keeping her piercing gaze on the blond boy the whole time. Before she could start yelling at him though, the fans quickly regrouped and began to head directly towards the isolated trio.
"We'll talk later," Noire growled out, reaching down to pick up her fallen stun baton. "For now, just help me deal with these idiots."
Whatever witty line Sync was about to say to her was interrupted by the fans as they finally identified the boy and let out a ground-shaking yell.
"KILL THE WAIFU THIEF!"
With bloodlust practically gleaming off their golden eyes, the swarm immediately made a mad dash towards their hated target. However, C-Sha was not about to let that happen as she moved protectively in front of Sync's position. After a moment of brief hesitation, Noire reluctantly followed suit as well. While she certainly sympathized with the swarm's sentiments, the CPU decided that tolerating the blond pest was a tiny bit more preferable to being captured by her certifiably insane Yandere stalker.
As C-Sha and Noire took up their combat stances, Sync casually raised his rifle again and aimed it towards the oncoming swarm with a smile.
"Guess it's time to kick this battle into overdrive."
With that, he fired off his weapon as C-Sha and Noire made their move.
As the first fan fell to Sync's dart, C-Sha pulled out a pair of stun grenades from her inventory and hurled them towards her foes. As planned, the swarm was caught completely off-guard by the buxom fighter's unconventional weapon as the first few rows were immediately dropped by the blast of intense light and sound. Having been far enough away to avoid the debilitating explosions themselves, C-Sha and Noire quickly took advantage of their enemy's momentary disarray to charge in and devastate the remainder of the front line.
While C-Sha began to rack up her combo-count by knocking down all of the nearby fans with a flurry of lightning fast kicks, Noire decided to see if she could improvise one of her main SP skills to work with her new weapon. After focusing her share energy into her stun baton for a second, the CPU swung her weapon in a horizontal sweep towards the group of fans approaching her.
"Tornado Shock!"
Just as she had hoped, a crescent wave of electrical energy shot out from the swing as it effortlessly zapped down every single one of the charging fans before finally dissipating into the air.
"Ha! That's what you get for messing with the CPU of Lastation!" Noire triumphantly declared, flicking one of her twin-tails in a taunting manner for good measure.
Unfortunately for her, the rest of the swarm regrouped much faster than she had anticipated as they surged forward once again towards the momentarily distracted CPU. Before they could reach her though, a hailstorm of tranquilizer darts suddenly descended upon them and dropped them all like flies. Turning around in surprise, Noire found herself looking at the bizarre sight of Sync telekinetically holding up a large cluster of darts in the air.
Seeing as how his rifle had been designed to only snipe a single target at a time, Sync had apparently decided to launch his ammo directly at the mob with his spatial powers instead. While he had obviously come up with the idea as a spur-of-the-moment act to save Noire, the mass of unconscious fans lying below him clearly spoke volumes as to its effectiveness.
"I got your back, honey!" Sync cheerfully called out, already taking out even more darts from his inventory to test out the full extent of his new technique.
As much as Noire wanted to run up the hill and jab the brat with her stun baton a few times, she knew that her priority right now was to deal with the swarm heading towards her. With a frustrated growl, she turned away from the annoying pest and instead rushed back to the battle at hand.
Several long minutes of fighting later, K-Sha (or whatever proxy was controlling the current brood) finally decided a change of tactic was needed. The overwhelming power of Noire and C-Sha made it virtually impossible to fight them head on while any attempts to surround them were effectively neutralized by Sync's continuous rain of tranquilizer darts. Trying to split off multiple divisions to make a beeline towards the boy had failed as well as he had simply shot them all down with his strange floating darts while the fans struggled to climb up the steep hill he was on.
Deciding that taking out the long-range support was their first priority, the fans in back row simultaneously took out a bunch of brick-filled body pillows again (these ones showing Noire in a variety of revealing swimsuits) and hurled them towards the boy.
Sync, however, only looked mildly amused by all of this as he casually lifted up a hand towards the oncoming missiles.
"Sorry, but I don't think any of those bikinis suit my wife," he declared with a smile, pointedly ignoring Noire's indignant screams coming from down below. "Here, you can have these back."
With that, all of the body pillows were swallowed up by a multitude of shimmering green ripples that suddenly appeared throughout the air. Before the fans could process what was happening, the strange portal-like distortions shot the brick-filled pillows back towards their original owners. With multiple resounding thuds, the swarm's artillery squad was utterly decimated by their own projectiles.
"Guess all that practice of redirecting Chika's spears finally paid off," Sync remarked, the battlefield momentarily silent as everyone looked up at him in surprise and disbelief.
The silence did not last long, however, as the one controlling the fans finally seemed to mentally snap at this. With a synchronized scream of rage and frustration, all of the remaining fans grouped up as one and charged forward with reckless abandon.
Sync's smile quickly faltered as he took in this terrifying sight from atop his vantage point. Even with all of the work the three of them had done, there were still well over a hundred fans gathered in the oncoming charge. While Noire and C-Sha could have easily taken on such odds at full strength, they were currently far too exhausted from the prolonged fight to hold back a mob of this size. To make matters worse, he was starting to run out of tranquilizer darts to support his two teammates. With the two front line fighters out of energy and supplies running low, the situation was looking extremely dire.
After a momentary silence, Sync suddenly let out a sigh as he seemed to come to a decision.
"Well... guess I have no choice then."
Uttering those words, Sync quickly deposited his rifle into his inventory before aiming his hands towards his allies. Much to their surprise, C-Sha and Noire suddenly found themselves covered in a glowing green light before they were teleported off of the battlefield.
However, it quickly became apparent that things had not gone exactly as Sync had planned as his teammates ended up reappearing about a thousand Neps (or approximately fifteen hundred meters for anyone not using the Ultra-Planeptune unit of measurement) above the hill rather than on the ground next to him.
"UWAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"
Even as she fell from the sky, Noire dutifully carried out her role as Gamindustri's number one landing cushion by crashing into the ground first, allowing C-Sha to break her own fall on top of her. While her share energy absorbed most of the impact like it always did, Noire still looked very much worse for the wear as she continued to lay face-down in the middle of the gigantic crater she had made. C-Sha did not seem to be doing too well either as she lay on top of her twin-tailed cushion with a dazed look of her own.
After looking back and seeing that his allies were (mostly) alright, Sync put his smile back on before returning his attention to the swarm.
"Let's see how you deal with this," he called out, swinging his arms around to point towards the oncoming fans. Share energy immediately began to coalesce within his hands as his entire body seemed to glow bright green from the gathered energy. With a final smirk towards his oblivious targets, Sync unleashed his attack.
"Share Storm!"
The entire wasteland seemed to light up for a brief moment as an enormous concentration of green share lightning suddenly descended upon the landscape. With a terrifying roar of thunder, the entire area below the hill was drowned in a sea of electrical devastation. The grouped-up fans had no chance of evading this as they were immediately caught in the center of it all and were struck down like a bunch of insects in an over-sized bug zapper.
The awe-inspiring spectacle only lasted for a few seconds though before the storm came to an abrupt end. As quickly as it had appeared, the raging mass of electrical energy dispersed into the winds as if it had never existed at all. The only evidence as to its devastating existence was the large mass of unmoving fans that were now lying at the bottom of the hill.
C-Sha and Noire – both of whom had recovered in time to witness the attack – simply stared at the boy with open mouths as they tried to process what had just happened. While such flashy attacks were extremely commonplace in Gamindustri, it was still surprising to see it coming from the carefree boy who's biggest skill up till now had been his incessant trolling.
Before either of them could speak up though, Sync slowly lowered his arms and let out a shaky breath.
"Guess I... overdid it a bit..."
With that, he collapsed face-first onto the ground.
"Sync!"
"Brat!"
Finally getting over their shock, C-Sha and Noire disentangled themselves from each other (a scene that could have sparked several volumes of Yuri doujinshi if someone had been around to witness it), and got to their feet before racing over to the boy.
Much to their relief, they found that Sync was still breathing when they turned him over to check on his status. Seeing that he was simply knocked out, C-Sha quickly pulled out a Life Fragment from her inventory and used it on him.
As the glow from the item faded away, Sync blearily opened his eyes again and slowly tried to focus on the two concerned faces looking down at him. After finally seeming to recognize who his saviors were, he gave a tired grin up at them.
"Heh... what's with the worried look dear?" he asked Noire in a weak yet teasing voice. "It's not like you to be so emotionally expressive."
The CPU immediately smacked him on the head for this, though the blow was a lot softer than expected. "Idiot! Don't scare me like that! I can't kill you if you kill yourself first, you moron!"
Sync gave an amused chuckle to this as he allowed C-Sha to help him sit up. "Thanks," he told the older woman with a small smile before turning back to Noire. "Don't worry dear. It'll take a lot more than that to separate me from my beloved little Tsun-Tsun."
Noire immediately went into a classic Tsundere frenzy at this as she spluttered about incoherently while making various threatening motions towards Sync with her hands.
C-Sha on the other hand, simply looked out at the devastated battlefield before turning to face the boy with an inquisitive look.
"What exactly was that attack you just used right now?"
Noire finally stopped her raging as she quieted down to hear the answer as well.
"It's just one of my EXE Drives," Sync casually dismissed with a shrug. "Nothing really worth bragging about. Just... don't expect me to pull it off again for a while."
Both C-Sha and Noire shared a frown at this. While it was obvious that Sync was deliberately deflecting the issue, neither of them wanted to press the matter on the exhausted boy. Plus, he had just saved them all from being overrun by the fans and they felt they owed it to him to at least not pester him about the details if he was unwilling to talk.
With a tired sigh, Noire instead chose to cross her arms and faced him with a mildly annoyed look. "If you had an effective AoE skill like that, why didn't you simply lead with it? It definitely would've saved us all a lot of time, you know."
Sync gave a sheepish laugh as he scratched the back of his head. "Well... I thought we could handle the fans the old-fashioned way at first. Guess I severely underestimated just how much of a fight the swarm would put up. Besides, the fans were too spread out when C-Sha and I first got here for me to effectively neutralize all of them. The only reason I was able to perform a field wipe just now was because we managed to cut down their numbers and forced them to group up into an easy-to-hit target."
After fully processing this, C-Sha and Noire both gave a small nod as they accepted his reasoning.
"Also, the twins would have killed me for ending the battle before they got here," Sync quickly added under his breath. He gave a slight wince as he imagined the earful he would no doubt receive from Ram and Rom for doing just that.
"What was that?" Noire asked, fixing him with a suspicious glare.
"Ah, nothing..."
Noire kept her glare on him for a moment longer before glancing down at the mass of unmoving fans below her.
"You didn't kill any of those idiots, did you?" she asked sharply.
Sync gave another weak chuckle before answering. "I don't think I had enough energy left in me to make the attack anywhere near lethal. The worst they're probably suffering from is some minor burns and loss of bowel control."
Noire made a disgusted face at this but otherwise said nothing.
After a few minutes, Sync managed to get back up to his feet again, albeit a bit shakily.
"So... what now?"
Noire gave another sigh as she looked back down at the field of bodies from atop the hill. "My reserve team should still be inside the base guarding the civilians we rescued. We'll call them out to help us revive the knocked out resistance members. As for the fans, I'm sure there's an unused part of the factory that we can lock them up in for the time being."
C-Sha gave a nod to this as she decided to take point. Sync, meanwhile, simply gave a wide smile as he slowly walked up next to Noire.
"You know, I don't I can walk that far on my own just yet. I really don't want to burden you with this, but could you perhaps carry me the rest of the way, dear? I'll make sure to give you that full body massage you love so much in return once this is all over."
Noire's face immediately turned the color of an overripe tomato as she reached forward with the full intent of strangling the boy. However, C-Sha suddenly spoke up before the red-faced goddess could end up adding 'child-strangler' to her already less-than-stellar list of social descriptions.
"I hate to interrupt you two lovebirds but... the natives are getting restless."
Noire did not get a chance to express her outrage at C-Sha's choice of words as the ground itself suddenly began to quake. With a shared nervous glance, both Sync and Noire turned towards the direction of their third party member and looked off into the far distance. Much to their horror, they found that the source of the ominous shaking was none other than a massive fan army at least twice the size of the previous one. Apparently, K-Sha had just recovered from the loss of her mind-controlled brood and was now sending every last fan in the nearby area to finish the job.
"Note to self," Sync suddenly said, "Always keep up spatial senses to detect oncoming dangers."
Deciding to put her anger on hold until her own life was not in immediate danger, Noire turned to face the trouble-making kid with a pointed glare.
"I really hope you have another magical solution for this..."
Sync stayed silent for a few seconds before he suddenly perked up as if noticing something. After giving a small laugh, he turned to face the confused CPU with a confident smile.
"Noire, you know I've always got a card to play."
As if on cue, a heavily-armed Lowee airship along with Ram and Rom in their HDD forms flew past their heads and headed directly towards the fans.
"Pick a goddess and pray!" the pilot Hunter yelled out, a cut-in of his face briefly flashing through the air as he did so.
"Um, wouldn't they all just pick Lady Noire since they're her fans?'" the Hunter next to him pointed out. "Also, since when could you make cut-ins of yourself appear like that?"
"Stop ruining my moment and just fire the turrets!"
With that interesting conversation out of the way, the Hunters activated all of the ship's weapons. Thankfully, they had remembered Sync's orders not to kill the fans as they had reloaded the turrets with miniature stun grenades rather than actual bullets. The overall effect was still just as devastating though as the torrential rain of debilitating explosives effectively immobilized the entire oncoming swarm.
This only turned out to be the opening act, however, as Ram and Rom flew in to play their part once the airship had cleared the bombing site.
"E-Force Blizzard!"
"Ice Coffin!"
The few fans that were starting to recover from the grenade blasts had just enough time to look up in surprise before a miniature ice age descended upon them. For several seconds, nothing could be seen except an endless onslaught of snow and ice as the twins gleefully unleashed a magical barrage that could have frozen the entirety of the Underworld over... twice. By the time the attack finally came to an end, the entire swarm had been transformed into the world's largest collection of human-shaped ice-sculptures as Ram and Rom proudly looked down at their handiwork.
"Ha! Looks like we were just too cool for these dummies to handle!" Ram said with a wide smirk.
"Uh huh! We sure snowed on their parade!" Rom giggled in response.
Laughing to themselves over their puns, the two heroes flew off to make sure there were no other fans remaining in the nearby area.
Back down on ground level, Sync gave off a salute towards the direction of the twins before turning back around to face his dumbfounded 'wife'.
"Well... that takes care of that," he declared, a mischievous smile suddenly appearing on his face as he leaned in close to her. "Now then, why don't we end things properly by sharing a romantic kiss over the battlefield?"
A fist made contact with the back of his head in way of an answer.
While Noire began to unleash all of her pent up rage by screaming at Sync, C-Sha gave an amused smile before deciding to give the two lovebirds some room. Knowing that the couple's spat would likely last for a while longer, the Gold Third leader decided she might as well contact the resistance's reserve squad and get started on the massive clean-up detail. After everything that had happened, there had to be at least several hundred unconscious and frozen bodies littered across the wasteland; all of which needed to be identified and dealt with accordingly. Preparing herself for the tedious work ahead, she slid down the hill and headed off towards the base in the distance.
Meanwhile, Noire spent the next several minutes ranting and raving at Sync before finally stopping to catch her breath.
"Feeling better now?" Sync asked, casually munching on some potato chips he had brought out half-way through the incoherent screaming.
Noire probably would have continued to shout at him if she had not been too busy trying get some air back into her system. Instead, she simply opted to glare at the boy while he continued to regard her with the same tired yet amused look he had worn throughout the entire rant.
After finally managing to recover both physically and mentally, Noire silently looked down at the former battlefield once more before giving a large sigh.
"This doesn't change anything between us," she declared, glaring back at Sync as he tied up his unfinished bag of chips and put it back into his inventory. "Once this is all over, I'm still going to make you pay for causing all of this trouble in the first place." There was an awkward pause as she suddenly looked away from him with an irritated huff. "Still, I guess you and your team did just save me here today so... thanks."
The last part came out as a barely audible grumble but Sync seemed to understand it all the same. As he gave Noire a smug look that made her want to punch his head in again, the airship finally finished its scanning sweep of the area and circled back down towards their position. After acknowledging the ship with a small wave, the Second Most Annoying Person in All of Gamindustri (who was quickly rising up to the position of First) turned back to the irritated goddess with a smile.
"All in a day's work... dear."
The cinematic scene of Sync standing over the war-torn battlefield with an airship landing dramatically behind him was somewhat marred by Noire throwing her shoe at his face.