Greenlit Trouble

by HistyIsPissty

Oh look, Vert ended up with a younger brother. I wonder how many girls this one will add to his harem. Wait... what is he doing with that Philosopher's Stone? And is that a Gravity Gun he's holding? Why is he constructing additional Pylons? No! Stop! Stay away from those Fusion Cannons! It seems life in Leanbox is about get a whole lot more troublesome.

10. Yandere of the Swarm

Ch 10: Yandere of the Swarm

I am the Swarm...

Armies will be shattered...

Nations will burn...

"My Queen. All preparations are complete. We await your command."

K-Sha roused herself from her thoughts, her vision of standing atop the corpses of her fallen enemies slowly fading away as she found herself back on the rooftop of an abandoned office building.

Opening her glowing, golden eyes, she impassively glanced down from her vantage point to inspect her gathered forces. Arrayed throughout the ruins of the once lively border city, an innumerable legion of fans stood at attention before her. Thousands upon thousands of troops - nearly a third of Lastation's entire population in total - stared up at her with golden eyes of their own; each fan tightly bound to her overriding will of making Noire her own.

Staring out at her swarm, K-Sha could not help but give a chill-inducing laugh. Noire and the Waifu Thief might have managed to wipe out her expeditionary brood, but their futile struggle was soon coming to an end. Against the full might of the swarm, they would be powerless to stop her from obtaining her goal. The damnable boy would die and then she and her beloved would be together forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and-

"My Queen?" her attendant asked hesitantly. "Is everything alright?"

K-Sha immediately shot a glare at the young man in the butler outfit, causing him to shrink back in fear under his master's piercing gaze. After sufficiently terrifying the poor attendant for interrupting her thoughts, she turned back around to face her army. The golden light in her eyes momentarily intensified as she telepathically addressed her minions with a crazed smile.

The time of our victory is at hand! Unleash the full fury of the Swarm!

The mass of fans answered with a collective war-cry that shook the very skies themselves. After receiving their respective mental orders from K-Sha, the fans quickly sectioned themselves into multiple battalions and boarded the fleet of stolen transport helicopters at the edge of the city. Once all of the troops had been loaded, the mind-controlled pilots activated their aircraft's automatic navigation system and inputted their target location.

As the sea of black helicopters rose up around her, K-Sha gave a satisfied smile as she closed her eyes and slipped back into her thoughts once more.

And now...

on this day at last...

Noire shall be mine.

---

Out of all the airship flights she had taken, Vert could confidently say that the one she had just been on had been the absolute worst.

Locking herself inside the cargo hold to escape Ram had seemed like a good idea at the time but she had forgotten to take into account just how long the ride would be. Having to sit on the cold metal floor for nearly an hour would have been bad enough but there had also been a large amount of turbulence which had only served to make her life more miserable. In fact, she had almost regretted not following the boy after one of the armored equipment cases was shaken off an overhanging shelf and landed right on her head.

However, even with her concussed head and stiff body, Vert concluded that staying aboard the airship had been the right decision after all after seeing the field of unconscious bodies upon landing. While everyone had been too busy sorting out the fainted crowd to tell her what exactly had happened, the ragged shape of Noire and the advance party had made it obvious that the battle had not been an easy one.

Once everyone had been properly identified and sorted, the Hunters and the Resistance reserve squad members busied themselves with reviving and healing their allies with the supplies brought aboard the airship. As for the defeated fans, they had all been locked up in the factory's lower level and magically frozen in a gigantic block of ice, courtesy of the twins.

With all that taken care of, the main characters - Noire, Sync, Ram, Rom, C-Sha, and Vert to be exact – gathered inside the Resistance's command center (AKA the disused factory's meeting room) and filled each other in on their respective details.

"So let me get this straight," C-Sha said, interrupting Noire's retelling of what had happened before the rescue team had arrived. "Are you saying that K-Sha's found some way to mind-control every single one of those crazy fans?"

The twin-tailed CPU gave a curt nod as she crossed her arms. "That's what it looked like. You saw how coordinated those fans were while attacking us. Not to mention their obvious golden eyes. I think it's pretty clear that K-Sha's found some way to use her Gold Third powers to take over their brains. Or whatever singular nerve cell those idiots operate on." She paused as she shot a glare at the opposite end of the rectangular conference table that everyone was seated around. "Actually, I was rather hoping someone would be able to give us some more details about all of this."

Vert, along with everyone else in the room, turned as well to stare at the target of Noire's ire.

Despite all the attention he was getting, Sync barely seemed to notice anything as he instead chugged down the third can of Nep Bull he had opened up since the meeting had started. Strangely enough, he had been entirely silent for most of the meeting; something which had immediately caught Vert's attention.

She had initially thought that he was simply plotting some kind of prank, but his tired demeanor and large consumption of healing items quickly wiped away that thought. Whatever had happened before she and the airship had arrived, it had clearly exhausted the boy quite a bit. And while he had done his best to maintain his usual carefree demeanor up to this point, his fatigue was clearly starting to show itself now.

Seeing him in this state, Vert could not help but feel a slight pang of guilt in her conscience. As annoying as the boy was, she still felt bad seeing him completely worn out from a battle that she herself had shied away from. While she was not sure if going with him instead of C-Sha would have made much of a difference, it would have at least made her feel less guilty about the whole situation. Of course, that was not to say she was actually worried about him (that would have been ridiculous) but rather she was more disappointed in herself for not fulfilling her duties as a CPU to protect Gamindustri from whatever threats it faced. Or at least, that was what most of her personas agreed to believe in.

While Vert shook her head in an attempt to prevent another mental argument between her Light and Dark sides, the boy in question finished his drink and spoke up before anyone else could take note of his strange bout of inactivity.

"What makes you think I have any idea how Yandere powers work?" he asked Noire with a smile, his energy obviously returning thanks to all the sugary drinks he just had. "I mean, I know I like to express my love for you dear but I-"

Whatever else he was trying to say was cut off when Ram, who was sitting next to him, suddenly punched him on the arm.

"Stop acting like she's your wife!" the younger twin shouted indignantly. "I thought we agreed that you're our property!" On the other side of Sync, Rom nodded fervently in agreement.

The boy simply gave a sheepish grin to this while rubbing his sore arm. Meanwhile, Vert gave a frustrated growl at the twin's continued attachment towards him while C-Sha tried her best to stifle her laughter at the kids' antics. As for Noire, she just seemed thoroughly confused as to why Ram of all people was saving her from being teased again.

Deciding that he should get back to the topic at hand before the twin-tailed CPU could throw even more questions at him, Sync quickly resumed talking.

"Ahem. While I can't say that I've ever created a hive-mind of my own before, I think I might have a plausible theory as to how K-Sha did it."

"Well, spit it out then," Noire demanded, reverting back to her previously annoyed mood. "We don't exactly have all day, you know."

Sync casually dragged out the silence with a smile as if begging to differ. Just when it seemed that Noire would lunge across the table to strangle him, he finally offered up his explanation.

"As you've guessed, this is more than likely a result of K-Sha's Gold Third power. From what I've read, it's a modified version of our own share energy and we all know just how nonsensical that can be. I mean, it's practically our Deus-ex-Machina that allows us to acquire new transformations and perform scripted plot attacks to achieve an otherwise improbable happy ending. Given that, I think it's safe to assume that our Yandere Queen's powers reacted to her... obsession with you and allowed her to enslave the feral fans in order to help her achieve her own 'happy ending'."

The Lastation CPU silently took in this meta explanation before covering her face with her hand and letting out a sigh.

"You've been spending way too much time with Neptune..."

"Ms. Neptune," Sync corrected with a smile. "You have to make it clear whether you're referring to my tutor or your crush."

Noire really did lunge for his throat this time as steam began to rise from her head. Thankfully, C-Sha managed to react in time and grabbed the red-faced CPU by the back of her dress.

"I have a question about your theory," the Gold Third leader commented, seemingly unfazed by the murderous goddess she was holding back. "If K-Sha really did turn her obsession into a plot device, then why didn't she simply brainwash everyone in Gamindustri with it?"

Sync gave a slight shrug. "I'm guessing it only works on those with the same amount of fanaticism for Noire as she does. It's just our misfortune that so many weirdos share the same stalker-like tendencies for our Tsun-Tsun here."

"Don't call me Tsun-Tsun!" Noire raged, still trying to claw her way forward in a manner very reminiscent of a certain green-haired Oracle.

After waiting several long minutes for the steaming CPU to calm down to her usual level of irritability, the group went back to discussing their current predicament.

"So what exactly is your plan now?" Noire eventually grumbled out, still glaring daggers at the smiling boy. "You might have saved us from that attack but K-Sha still has a nation's worth of fans under her direct control. And unless you've brought along some kind of magical super weapon that can defeat them all, we're just waiting to be overrun by the rest of her forces."

Much to her confusion, Sync answered her with an amused laugh.

"Funny you should say magical super weapon. Because luckily for you, I actually have one. Or rather, two."

For the first time since the meeting started, Noire looked at the boy with something other than anger and annoyance.

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her expression caught between suspicion and curiosity.

Sync gave another small laugh while Vert just sighed in preparation for what was to come.

"It's a relatively straightforward solution but an extremely effective one," he continued embellishing. "With it, all of the fans will be completely neutralized in one hit. In fact, I'd say there's a strong likelihood that even K-Sha can be taken down by it."

Curiosity finally won over her doubts as Noire leaned forward expectantly. "Well, what is it?"

Sync put on an amused expression as he casually put his arms around the two smiling Lowee sisters sitting next to him.

"We utilize Ram and Rom's cuteness."

Silence enveloped the room as everyone waited for Noire to react to this reveal. Even Vert managed to hold back her rising jealousy at the boy's contact with the twins as she stared at the other flummoxed goddess instead.

"Utilize... cuteness?" Noire eventually repeated. As Sync and the twins gave a cheerful nod, her usual annoyance slowly returned as she spoke up again in a steadily rising voice. "You... You... I thought you were being serious!"

"I am being serious," Sync casually countered. "All we have to do is broadcast Ram and Rom's puppy-dog eyes to the fans and this uprising is as good as over."

Even knowing about the plan in advance, Vert could not help but give an exasperated sigh while Noire just about exploded.

"You're an idiot!" she screamed out, her composure completely falling away as her frustration with the boy reached its peak. "Are you seriously that stupid?! These fans are obsessed with me, not the twins! Just how the hell is cuteness going to solve our problems?!"

Sync gave a rather theatrical sigh before moving his chair back and gesturing for Ram and Rom to join him in an emergency team huddle.

"Guess we have no choice, team," he said in a barely concealed conspiratorial whisper. "It look like we're going to need to show her just how strong your ultra secret technique is."

"Heh heh. What should we make her do?" Ram asked, instantly on board with the idea.

A mischievous smile appeared on Sync's face as he leaned in closer and told the two his plan in an actual whisper.

After sharing in a fit of small giggles, the twins nodded their heads before disengaging from the huddle. Before she could react, a very confused Noire found herself facing off against both of the smiling sisters.

"What are you two-?"

That was as far as she got before a warm, fuzzy feeling suddenly enveloped her entire mind. The next thing she knew, Noire was skipping along on a bunch of fluffy clouds in her mental landscape while a group of puppies, kittens, bunnies, and all other manner of cute creatures frolicked alongside her. For an unknown amount of time, the CPU happily danced about in this sunlit paradise as all of her worries and stress seemed to magically disappear.

The euphoric feeling eventually faded away though as Noire once again found herself inside the meeting room. For some odd reason though, she realized that she was standing near the doorway rather than sitting in her office chair like before. To make things even stranger, Ram, Rom, and Sync were busy laughing like a group of maniacs while C-Sha and Vert simply stared at her with open mouths.

"What-? What's going on?" Noire asked in utter confusion.

After continuing to stare at her amidst the kids' loud laughter, C-Sha eventually managed to motion downwards with her hand.

With a perplexed expression, Noire looked down at herself before immediately coming to a dead halt.

There, in all it's pink and frilly glory, was her prized magical girl costume that she had spent countless nights working on. And, for some goddess-forsaken reason, she was currently wearing it.

"Wha-? I-? How-?"

Noire's face seemed to turn redder and redder with each of her failed attempts at speaking. Before she could figure out how to actually form words again though, Ram interrupted her.

"I'm MagiGirl Idol Noirina!" she imitated, twirling about in what was no doubt a perfect copy of what she had just seen. "No evildoers will escape from my singing voice of love!"

"Share Prism Powers activate!" Rom followed along, trying to stifle her laughter as she performed a silly-looking dance routine.

Noire continued to remain frozen in place as Rom finished her dance and the three kids began laughing again. After what seemed like hours to the mortified magical idol, Sync faced her with a wide grin.

"You know, I'm pretty sure I saw your partner in another dimension. Want me to go get her so that the two of you can team up and defeat your so-called nemesis, Dark Death Evil Man?"

This finally managed to get a proper reaction out of her as the Tsun-bomb exploded.

---

All the way in Ultra-Planeptune, a newly recruited Basilicom guard was going about his designated patrol route when he noticed one of his seniors stationed in front of the CPU's room. For some odd reason, the older guard looked about as nervous as a sentient pudding staring up at a starving Neptune as he visibly quaked in fear. Curiosity getting the better of him, the younger guard decided to see what was going on.

"Is there something the matter here?" he asked, trying his best to sound as professional as possible.

The older guard barely stifled a startled yelp as he jumped up in surprise. After realizing that it was just the new recruit, he quickly calmed down and stared down at his purple-robed counterpart with an angry look.

"Keep it down unless you want to get us both killed!" he hissed, shooting another nervous glance at the CPU's door as he did so.

"Why? What's wrong?" the newcomer asked, thankfully having enough sense to lower his voice as told.

The older guard let out a small sigh as he tried to compose himself. "Lady Plutia was forced to wake up an hour ago to deal with some important paperwork. She managed to finish her work and went back to sleep just now but it's clear that she's in an extremely bad mood from being woken up so early."

"Um... it's half past noon right now," the younger guard pointed out, confusion clear in his voice. "How is that considered early?"

His senior just gave him a deadpan look. "You're joking, right? Where the hell did you even come from to not know about any of this?"

"Ah, I'm from Leanbox," the newcomer answered rather sheepishly. "Hyperdimension Leanbox to be exact. I used to be a guard at the Basilicom there but I decided to leave due to its... hazardous working environment. Anyways, I tried to take up a position in my dimension's Planeptune but my interview got canceled due to a giant robot terrorizing the city for a couple of days. Seeing as how I didn't have any real reason to stay in the Hyperdimension, I figured I might as well take my chances here and-"

"Alright, alright. I didn't ask for your whole life story." After making sure that their boss had not been awakened by their conversation, the older guard gave another sigh and faced his junior with a serious expression. "Look, I'm going to make things real simple for you here. The number one rule of this place is to never, ever piss off Lady Plutia. In fact, just try to avoid her entirely if you can. It's a lot safer that way."

"Oh, come on. She can't be that bad," the younger guard said with optimistic naivete. "I mean, my old boss tried to kill me with an automated Gatling turret. I highly doubt anything can be worse than that."

"Buddy, you're going to begging to be shot with a dozen Gatling turrets if Lady Plutia ever decides to-"

The rest of his words were cut off when an ominous rumbling suddenly shook the building. Before the two guards could figure out what was going on, an unearthly scream echoed across the entire sky.

"KYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Despite the ear-piercing sound, the older guard managed to hear something else that made his blood run cold: an irritated growl coming from inside his boss's room.

"Shit. Shit! SHIT! We need to get out of here! Fly you fool!"

"Huh? What?!" the new guard yelled out in confusion, still covering his ears in an effort to block out the strangely embarrassed-sounding screech that was continuing to deafen all of Ultra-Dimension.

Things quickly reached maximum danger status when the sound of an HDD being activated was heard from behind the CPU's door. Deciding it was every man for himself at this point, the older guard ran ahead and readily threw himself down a nearby trash chute.

"H... Hey! What's going on? Why did you- Oh, greetings Lady Plutia! Did this weird screaming wake you up from your-"

That was as far as the poor guard got before the sleep-deprived, sadistic goddess pounced on him.

---

"You know, I'm rather surprised you actually had a magical girl outfit with you," Sync said, still trying to stifle his laughter. "Ram and Rom just told you to act like a magical girl for a couple of minutes but we never expected you to head out and dress for the part as well."

Noire just did her best to tune his voice out as she focused on breathing in and out deeply.

After her outburst, the pseudo magical idol had fled into the nearby bathroom and changed back into her normal black dress. By the time she returned, the trouble-making trio had calmed down somewhat, though they still continued to snicker at her from time to time.

"You three are dead," Noire ground out, her meditative attempts to soothe her emotions obviously failing. "Once this is over, I'm going to kill you all. Slowly."

"Good luck passing that request through Blanc and Chika," Sync replied with a smile. "They're the ones who currently hold the rights to kill us and I don't think they're going to hand it over anytime soon."

Noire just let out a murderous growl to this as she ground her teeth in rage.

After sharing a high-five with the twins for the successful prank, Sync turned to the smoldering goddess with a slightly more serious expression.

"I think you can see why I'm confident that Ram and Rom can end this fan threat," he said. "And in case you're still not convinced, consider this: What they just used on you was less than ten percent of their maximum cuteness potential. If they wanted to, I'm sure they could even puppy-dog eyes you into handing over all of Lastation to Neptune."

"What?! There's no way I'd ever fall for something like that!" Noire refuted loudly. Mentally however, she could not help but doubt herself especially considering what she had just been forced to do. As she thought about this, a rather disturbing question suddenly popped into her mind. "Wait. If their brainwashing technique is so powerful, why haven't they taken over all of Gamindustri yet?"

"Because Histoire won't let us," Ram huffed in annoyance. "We tried to get Neptune to make us the new CPUs of Planeptune once but she was too dumb for our cuteness to work. And then she blabbed about it to Histoire like a big, stupid tattletale."

"She told us to never to use our puppy-dog eyes like that again or she'd put us in an infinite time-out," Rom added with a slight shiver. "Miss Histoire can be really scary when she wants to be..."

Everyone in the room could not help but silently nod their heads in agreement to this. Once the ominous silence had passed, Sync cheerfully clapped his hands together as he brought the conversation back on track.

"Luckily for us though, Histoire has agreed to let our two heroes here use their ultimate technique against the fans. Now all we need to do is broadcast their puppy-dog eyes across all of Lastation."

"And just how do you plan on doing that?" Noire growled out, even though she knew full-well that the kid already had an answer.

As expected, Sync did not disappoint.

"We'll just use the broadcast station in the nearby city. It's not quite as powerful as the one back in the capital but if we can access the nation's satellite array from there, we should still be able to cover all of Lastation."

The Tsundere CPU pinched the bridge of her nose as she let out an annoyed sigh. "Why do you know the locations of my nation's broadcast centers? I swear, if you've hacked into my nation's security network, I'm going to stab you with my sword right now."

Sync quirked an amused eyebrow at this. "Oh? Are you worried that I might have uncovered something scandalous in your private database? Maybe something like a bunch of secret photos of yourself in various cosplay outfits?" He gave a brief laugh at Noire's flustered reaction before quickly continuing on. "Relax. I haven't hacked anything... yet. I might get to it later when I get bored but I think we've got more important things to deal with right now. Anyways, the reason I knew about the nearby broadcast station is because I scouted the place while looking for survivors with Ms. Neptune. It's only a few miles from here so if we head out now, we should be able to occupy it within the hour."

Seeing that Noire was still too busy glowering at the boy, C-Sha gave a sigh as she once again took charge of the little group of misfits.

"Let's go get ourselves a broadcast station then."

---

For all the trouble that went into explaining the plan, capturing the station itself had been a breeze. Asides from a few golden-eyed scouting parties that they easily dispatched, the heroes encountered no problems at all in completing the first stage of their plan. However, Noire still harbored some doubts about Sync's idea and had prepared accordingly.

To that end, she had brought along all the recovered members of her main army to support the core team. While their numbers were only a fraction of what they used to be, they were still a force to be reckoned with as they were all armed to the teeth with the anti-riot equipment that C-Sha had brought aboard the airship. Meanwhile, the mass majority of her soldiers that had been too injured to fight had been sent with the civilians to hide in a secret military bunker near the mountains. Seeing as how their base was now known to the enemy, the CPU had decided to evacuate her non-combatants to a new, secure location just in case. As an extra safety precaution, Noire had even sent the reserve team to safeguard the group from any monsters that were liable to attack them on their journey.

Thankfully, the refugees seemed to reach their destination without incident as Noire received a call confirming their safe arrival soon after a basic perimeter had been set around the broadcast station. With nothing else to do now but to wait for their technicians to prepare for the nation-wide broadcast, the main characters reconvened once again inside the building's main lobby.

"You know, capturing this place was a lot easier than I thought it would be," Sync commented with a thoughtful look. "I know most of the fans in this city got sent to their frozen doom during the previous battle, but where did all their tanks disappear to? I mean, I distinctly remember there being quite a few of them in this city when I last came here to warp out for reinforcements."

Vert promptly realized that the boy was talking about the time he had ended up in front of her in Lowee after getting hit by a tank shell. If she was remembering correctly, he had complained about the fans having a bunch of aim-assisted tanks deployed throughout the city. Luckily for the group though, they had not run into any of these hacked armored units along the way.

Surprisingly, Noire answered his question with a rather proud grin. "You can thank my technicians for that. All of our tanks were remote-controlled so we were able to regain control of them by hacking back into our control servers and using my security override code. Once that was done I had the tanks moved back to our military compounds and properly sealed off so that they wouldn't block our progress when we set out to recapture the Basilicom."

"And we all know how that turned out, don't we?" Sync added with a sly smile.

The Lastation CPU immediately began scowling again as she turned away from the blond annoyance with a large huff.

"Oh, shut up! At least my plan was a lot more sensible than this ridiculousness," she argued. "Seriously, even Neptune wouldn't have come up with a crazy idea like this."

"Why thank you," Sync replied with a smile. "I'm sure Ms. Neptune would be quite proud to hear about my progress."

"That wasn't a compliment, you moron! And I was talking about the other Neptune!"

After crossing her arms and giving an annoyed sigh, Noire turned towards Vert with a piercing look.

"I never got the chance to ask you this properly, but is this brat seriously your brother?"

Vert felt her eye involuntarily twitch as the entire group turned to stare at her. While everyone had already guessed the pair's relationship thanks to the boy's constant reference to her as 'sis', it was clear that they still wanted to hear her officially confirm the claim. Of course, she had absolutely no intention of doing anything of the sort as she immediately opened her mouth to refute it.

"He's not my-"

Her automatic response faltered, however, when she spared a glance towards the boy. Contrary to all expectations, he did not look the least bit sad or even disappointed by her denial. In fact, he actually wore a strange, satisfied smile as if he was somehow pleased with her answer.

Time seemed to momentarily pause for Vert as she tried to make sense of this bizarre reaction. While she was fairly certain that the boy had responded similarly to her denials in the past, this was the first time that she had ever bothered to pay any attention to it. And now that she did, she found herself completely baffled by his response.

Considering his penchant for calling her 'sis' at nearly every opportunity, it made no sense to her as to why he would be okay with her denying their sibling status. Of course, there was always the chance that he had simply called her that just to annoy her but she got the feeling that this was not the case. Unlike with how he referred to Noire as his wife, there was no joking undercurrent in his voice whenever he called her by that accursed title. Sure, he liked to rub it in her face and bug her with it every chance he got, but he still seemed genuinely sincere about the fact that the two of them were related.

For a while, she continued to struggle to come up with a possible explanation for his odd behavior. As she focused on his smiling face once again though, a tiny voice in her conscience suddenly spoke up.

What if the boy actually was hurt by her constant refusal to acknowledge him? What if his ever-present smile around her was simply a mask for him to hide his true feelings behind?

The CPU quickly shook her head to dispel this ridiculous thought but could not hide from the guilt that accompanied it. As unlikely as this potential scenario was, it opened Vert's eyes to the fact that she had not been exactly... pleasant towards the boy. She had rarely, if ever, treated him with anything other than annoyance and animosity (even if most of it had been deserved) and it was very likely that she had inadvertently upset him. While his constant smiles seemed to indicate otherwise, there was no way of knowing if they were actually real or just a mere facade. After all, Vert had played enough RPGs to know that the constantly smiling characters were always the ones with the darkest emotional baggage.

Suddenly feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt at her actions, Vert retreated inwards to see if the rest of her personas could help straighten her thoughts out. Unfortunately, the only thing that awaited her in her mental landscape was complete and utter madness.

As it turned out, her current train of thought had apparently started a massive riot in her mind as the multitude of Verts took this opportunity to shout out their own opinions about the boy in a massive frenzy. At the center of the mental meeting hall, the more sentimental aspects of the goddess were busy crying their eyes out as they proposed that they give the poor kid a hug for all the potential hardships they had caused him. Logical Vert stood next to them looking decidedly annoyed as she desperately tried to calm the bawling group by explaining that this was all just a theory and that there was no proof that the kid was suffering at all. Off to the side, Jedi Vert and Darth Vert resumed their light-spear duel as they continued yelling about loving the boy and hating him respectively. Meanwhile, the PerVert ran around trying to convince everyone that they should use this chance to get closer to the kid so that they could marry him off to some handsome butler later. And as if this was not enough, Cultist Vert decided to show up to the party as well and began preaching about how the boy was the harbinger of the end times and that the great Flying Spaghetti Monster would soon descend upon the world to devour them all.

With a mental facepalm, Vert quickly left the madhouse that was her own mind and reluctantly returned back to reality. What greeted her there was not much better, however, as she found that her audience members were still waiting for her to give them a proper answer regarding the boy.

Not wanting to confirm their relationship but also not wanting to potentially deject the boy any further, Vert decided to take the easy road out and gave the most neutral answer possible.

"That's what Histoire believes anyways," she announced, trying to hide the mental turmoil she was currently feeling behind a large sigh.

As expected, no one in the group seemed particularly satisfied by this half-answer as they all shot her a multitude of unimpressed looks. However, one look in particular differed from the rest which caused her to raise her head and focus her attention towards the person giving it.

As if he had not confused her enough already, Vert found the boy staring directly at her with a serious yet otherwise unreadable expression in response to her answer. His usual carefree demeanor was nowhere to be found as he continued to silently gaze at her as if deep in thought. It wasn't until she locked eyes with him that he finally seemed to realize that he was being watched and quickly turned away. However, in that fleeting moment that they made eye-contact, she managed to identify a single, mind-boggling emotion hidden underneath his poker face.

The boy was worried.

Vert once again found herself at a total loss as she tried desperately to figure out what exactly was going on in the kid's head. Out of all the emotions he could have shown, why was worry the one he chose to respond with? If it had been sadness or disappointment, then she could have simply chalked it up to her previous theory of him hiding his inner misery. This, however, made completely no sense given the circumstance. Why did her simple response make him worried? What could she have possibly said to elicit such a response from him?

Trying to approach this problem from a different angle, Vert guessed that it was possible he had actually been responding to her troubled look instead, but that didn't seem to be the case either. It was simply based off a strange feeling she got, but Vert was fairly certain that the worry she detected had not been directed at her specifically but rather something else.

Before she could continue to ponder about this any further though, one of Noire's soldiers came running up to them with an urgent look.

"Important message for you, ma'am," the soldier reported, giving a professional salute towards his patron goddess. "The head technician wishes to speak with you. It seems they're facing some form of trouble connecting with the satellite array."

Noire quickly got over her surprise at the news as she gave a grim-faced nod. "I'll speak with them immediately. Return to your post, soldier."

With a sharp "Yes, ma'am!" the messenger did as he was told and left the group. Meanwhile, the Lastation CPU gave a loud sigh and motioned for everyone to follow her.

"We might as well see what kind of problem we've run into this time," she stated in a tired tone.

Realizing that they were still in the middle of a war against the Swarm, Vert decided to put her baffled thoughts on hold for the time being and joined the departing crowd. However, this did not stop her from continuing to glance at the once-again-smiling boy as she resolved to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding him.

---

"Ah, Lady Black Heart. I'm glad you came here so quickly."

As soon as the main characters arrived at the station's control room, they were greeted by a middle-aged NPC dressed in a standard Lastation soldier outfit. The only thing that identified him as a special character was the large badge on his chest proclaiming him to be the Head Military Technician.

With a short nod, Noire assumed her usual business face and calmly addressed her subject.

"What appears to be the problem here?"

The head technician gave a sigh as he indicated towards his staff members who were currently busy clearing out the debris in the room or fixing up some of the important-looking machinery. "It seems that the fans damaged parts of this facility during their initial rampage. While most of the equipment are still functional, it appears that the central relay system was heavily damaged."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ram interrupted loudly.

"It means we can't connect to the satellite array like we planned," C-Sha explained, frowning at the bad news.

The head technician gave a short nod. "Without the central relay system, we won't be able to get the nation-wide coverage that we hoped for. We've tried fixing it already but the damage appears to be far too extensive."

A brooding silence fell over the group as they all went over this unexpected problem.

"Isn't there any other way to connect with our satellites?" Noire eventually asked.

The head technician seemed to think about this intensely for a few seconds before answering. "Well... I suppose we can try activating all of the auxiliary relays and using them as a substitute. It'll take some time to set everything up but I believe it's feasible. The only downside is that the make-shift relays will take quite a while longer to link up with the satellites compared to the original."

Noire gave another large sigh as she massaged her temples. "Great. Now I have to organize a proper defensive set-up in order for us to hold out until then. Ugh. Why am I always the one who has to deal with these annoying tactics stuff? I don't even like strategy games!"

"Um... I could help you out if you want."

Much to everyone's surprise, it turned out to be Rom who had spoken up. Blushing a bit at the attention she was getting, the older twin took a deep breath before repeating her offer.

"I... I can help set up our forces. I'm pretty good when it comes to strategy and tactics."

When Noire raised a disbelieving eyebrow at this, Ram immediately stepped forward to support her sister as she piped up energetically. "You should totally accept Rom's help! She actually beat all of the new Water Emblem games without using a guide!"

"That's what you're basing your skill off of?" Noire flatly replied, resisting the urge to roll her eyes at the two. "Look, I hate to burst your bubble, but just about anyone can beat those game when playing on Casual Mode."

Ram's cheeks puffed up adorably as she pouted at the older goddess. "She didn't beat them on Casual Mode, you dummy!" she loudly argued. "Rom finished them all on Lunatic Plus!"

There was a collective gasp of shock at this as everyone turned to stare at Rom with wide eyes.

"Lu... Lunatic... Plus?" Vert whispered out, disbelief and fear evident in her voice. "The legendary difficulty that only those blessed by RNGesus can survive?"

"I've heard stories of that mode," the head technician muttered. "People actually died from foolishly attempting it without proper preparation. As for the few who managed to survive the first few maps, they ended up going completely insane afterwards from the experience."

Rom only blushed more heavily as everyone stared at her with an increased amount of awe.

"Well... looks like we have ourselves a new tactician then," Sync proudly declared after a brief moment. While he too had seemed surprised by the older twin's hidden tactical aptitude, he quickly recovered and put on his usual carefree smile once again. "Alright, Rom. I'm leaving the rest in your capable hands."

"Um... are you going somewhere, big bro?" the older twin asked, confusion replacing her embarrassment as the other party members turned to stare at the boy as well.

Sync gave Rom a reassuring smile as he casually headed towards the door. "Don't worry. I'm just stepping out for some fresh air. All this standing around is starting to cramp up my legs so I'm gonna go walk it off for a bit. I'll meet up with all of you later so don't wait up for me."

With that hurried excuse, he quickly exited the room before anyone could voice their objections.

"Huh. Well, that was weird," C-Sha eventually said into the ensuing silence. "Any ideas what that was all about?"

Noire just rolled her eyes at this. "Hmph. He probably just left to go set up another stupid prank or something. Either that or he just realized how stupid his plan was and decided to run away."

"Sync wouldn't do that!" Ram vehemently countered. "Don't talk about my servant like that, you big stupid Tsun-Tsun!"

"Who're you calling a Tsun-Tsun?!"

As Rom, C-Sha, and the head technician tried to prevent the start of another Console War between Lowee and Lastation, Vert gave a tired sigh as she reluctantly made up her mind on what to do. While she would have liked nothing more than to simply dismiss the boy's strange actions as well, her questions from before still continued to nag at her mind. Figuring she might be able get some answers out of this, she decided to secretly follow and observe the source of her query.

Ignoring the ultimate showdown between the Tsun-Tsun Waifu and the Ram-bunctious Rascal, Vert quietly slipped away from the ensuing chaos and took off after the boy.

---

"Why... are there... so many... stairs?!"

As was usually the case in matters relating to the boy, Vert soon found herself deeply regretting her chosen course of action.

After spotting the retreating kid, the CPU had enlisted the help of Mr. Box once again from her inventory to stealthily follow after her target. Unfortunately for her, the boy had apparently not been joking about needing a walk as he had entered the stairwell and proceeded to head up the building. A building which just so happened to be thirty stories tall.

"Was it really necessary for Noire to turn every building in her nation into a skyscraper?" Vert grumbled, continuing her waddle up the stairs from inside her cardboard box. "I know she's obsessed with beating Neptune at everything but that doesn't mean she has to make every building taller than the Neptower for crying out loud!"

Luckily, the boy was not around to overhear her architectural complaints. Due to her being forced to travel like some sort of odd box-shaped duck, Vert had ended up lagging behind him quite a bit. As a result, she had been left alone in the stairwell while he had exited through the door leading to the twenty-ninth floor some time ago. Why he had chosen to climb so high was anybody's guess, but Vert could not shake the strange feeling that she was somehow being pranked once again.

Regardless, she chose to continue her pursuit of him while maintaining her cover. While it would have made her life much easier to simply take off Mr. Box and climb the stairs like a normal person, she was afraid of the boy popping back into the stairwell again and spotting her. Seeing as how her prime objective at the moment was to spy on him, she decided it was much safer to just take it slow and chase after him in her cutting-edge stealth device.

Several long and painful minutes later, Vert finally managed to duck-walk her way up to her destination. Breathing heavily from her arduous trek, she stopped to take a quick breather as she gave her jellified legs some much needed rest.

"Never... again," she gasped out while still inside her box. "I don't care... what the situation is... I'm never... taking the stairs... ever again. "

After spending several more minutes recovering and complaining about the evils of stairs, Vert eventually shuffled her way out of the stairway and into the main hall. Taking a cursory glance around, she saw that the boy was nowhere to be found in what appeared to be some kind of unused office department. Figuring he was hiding out in one of the empty rooms, the CPU decided to check on each of them to see if he was inside.

After going through nearly a dozen unused offices, she eventually managed to pick up her target's voice coming from an empty storage room near the back end of the hall. Quietly approaching the half-open door, Vert managed to overhear the boy talking as if he was in a conversation with someone.

"-sure you don't need this anymore? I don't want you to inconvenience yourself because of me."

"I told you, it's fine," a chirpy voice answered him through some kind of communicator. "Besides, Histy told us that all of the fans retreated back to Lastation. If that's the case, then that stone's going to be a lot more useful with you right now."

It took Vert a second before she recognized the person speaking as the older Neptune. Before she could ponder about the conversation she had just overheard though, Sync spoke up once again.

"By the way, how are mini-Nep, Nepgear, and Uzume doing?"

"Oh, they're fine," Big Nep replied cheerfully. "Mini-me and Nepgear are busy helping me clean up the mess around here. As for Uzume, she chased after the doomsday dragon after it activated its Final Boss Immunity Status and ran off to its End-game battle site."

Sync hardly seemed fazed at all by this meta explanation. "I'm guessing her shouts were effective then?"

"Yup! You really should have seen it! She screamed off the overgrown lizard's plot protection like it was made out of paper!"

"Huh. Sounds like I missed quite the show. Maybe I'll tag along on her epic, dragon-slaying adventure later to see it for myself. Well, after I deal with this current fan crisis of course."

"Heh heh. And here I was thinking that I led an interesting life."

The two shared a small laugh at this before descending into a comfortable silence. After a moment, Big Nep spoke up again in a rather apologetic tone.

"Sorry about not being able to teleport over to help you though. Crostie used up too much energy warping me around during the battle with the dragon and I don't think she'll be recovered enough to teleport me again for a few hours at the least."

"Tch. The least you can do is give me some proper thanks for carrying your sorry ass through that fight," the ill-tempered tome muttered from within her notebook prison.

Sync gave an amused snort at this before replying to his tutor in a cheerful voice. "Don't worry. I'm sure we can handle ourselves just fine here. And besides, I've still got that emergency back-up plan ready to go if things go horribly wrong."

Her curiosity instantly piqued by this, Vert moved her box closer towards the door as she leaned forward expectantly. To her dismay, however, the older Neptune failed to disclose any further information about this mysterious back-up plan.

"I really hope it doesn't come to that," she said instead. "But if it does happen, just know that I'll be fully prepped and ready to help!"

Though she could not see it, Vert could easily imagine the boy with a wide grin on his face.

"Thanks, Ms. Neptune. I'm glad I can depend on you."

After making some inconsequential small talk regarding their future lesson plans, the two eventually exchanged farewells with each other (as well as getting a rather sarcastic-sounding "good luck" from Croire) before ending their call.

The storage room fell into complete silence following this as Vert tried to figure out what to do next. Before she could do anything, however, Sync suddenly spoke up again in an amused voice.

"You can come out now, sis" he called out, causing Vert to involuntarily let out a startled yelp in surprise. "I highly doubt your cardboard box is very comfortable to be crouched inside."

After a momentary debate, Vert reluctantly pulled Mr. Box off of her and got back up. After carefully putting away her associate into her inventory, she walked into the large yet relatively empty storage room with a rather sheepish expression.

"How did you know?" she asked, unable to hide her curiosity as she faced the boy.

Now that she could see him, she saw that he had been communicating with the older Neptune using a rather dilapidated N-Gear that he was currently holding in his hand. Apparently, Nepgear had allowed him to keep the communication device that he had refurbished during their dimension-tripping adventure a while back.

"Spatial awareness," he casually answered, putting away his N-Gear into his inventory as he did so. At the same time, Vert also noticed him discretely putting away a blood-red stone that he held in his other hand into his coat pocket but chose not to speak out about it. Having witnessed the stone's headache-inducing creation process firsthand, she knew all too well just what it was and what the boy was most likely going to do with it. If her assumptions were correct, then K-Sha was probably going to find herself controlling a bunch of llamas instead of her fans very soon.

"Heh. Don't get your hopes up too much," the boy said with a smile, obviously realizing that Vert had caught sight of his Philosopher's Stone. "I already used up most of it's energy to change the Ran Pigs into the Ran Rans. Not to mention, Ms. Neptune also had to use a fair amount to deal with the collateral damage that the doomsday dragon caused before sending it back to me. The most I could do with it at this point is send out one small-range transmutation wave against the fans before it runs completely dry."

He stopped to stretch his arms for a bit before facing her again with a knowing grin.

"But that's not what you're here for now, is it sis?"

Vert had to make a conscious effort to stop herself from automatically telling the boy not to call her that. Even so, she could not help but feel the slightest bit annoyed by it.

"And just how do you know what I'm thinking?" she challenged instead, crossing her arms with a huff in a very Noire-like fashion.

To her surprise, the boy let out a loud laugh to this as he shook his head.

"You're just way too easy to read sis," he eventually pointed out, obviously ignoring Vert's annoyance towards that title. "Honestly, I just really hope you never enter a serious poker game or you might end up losing all of Leanbox in the process."

Almost as if to confirm his assessment, Vert put on an easy-to-decipher embarrassed look at his words. While she had not exactly lost her nation, she did end up losing several billion Credits to Blanc during a high-stakes poker game between the CPUs. In fact, the only one who had come out worse than herself that terrible night had been Noire, who had consistently drawn nothing higher than a pair of twos thanks to her abysmal luck.

The boy clearly saw right through her once again as he let out another laugh. After allowing her to stew in her own embarrassment for a couple more seconds, he finally turned back to her with an amused smile.

"Alright, I can tell you have some question for me but I'd rather not spend the entire day answering them. So how about this? You can ask me any one question that you like and I'll answer it as honestly as I can."

As he said this, he suddenly tapped the toe of his right boot against the ground for some odd reason. As a result, Vert's attention was immediately drawn towards the green-and-white mechanized footwear. While she had never paid much attention to them since his initial appearance, she now found herself staring at the odd Processor Unit look-alike once again.

"What exactly are those?" she asked before she could stop herself.

Silence filled the room for a brief second before Vert slapped herself in the face as she realized she had just fallen for the boy's obvious trick.

"Oh these?" he answered with a wide smirk. "They're my Long Fall Boots. They can absorb just about any impact I take when I land on them. They're pretty handy for when I accidentally warp myself into the middle of the sky and such. As for how they work, I don't really know myself seeing as how I was simply born with them. All I can say is that the shares that created me must have anticipated that I would be falling out of the sky a lot."

He stopped to give a small laugh at Vert as she lowered her hand with a groan.

"Well, I answered your question just like I promised," he continued brightly. "Now if you don't mind, I'm gonna go prepare for the inevitable Yandere assault." Saying this, he casually began to make his way towards the open door.

As he walked past her, Vert finally managed to snap out of her stupor and quickly tried to pick out the most important question from within her jumbled mind.

"Wait!" she called out, desperately trying not to let this opportunity go to waste. "At least answer me this! Are... Are you... upset at me?"

To her surprise, the boy actually stopped at her question. As she watched with growing confusion, his carefree demeanor once again fell away as he seemed to seriously debate something within his mind. After an oddly tense silence that seemed to stretch on forever, he finally answered her in a completely neutral tone.

"It's not my feelings you should be so concerned about but rather your own."

Before Vert could ask him to clarify, he turned around to face her with a strangely forced-looking smile.

"After all, this is your story... sis."

Saying the last word almost as an afterthought, he casually strolled out of the room, leaving behind an extremely confused Vert in his wake.

---

Outside the broadcast station, there was a enormous bustle of activity as Ram and the Resistance soldiers rushed about to carry out the various orders that Rom set out for them. As it turned out, the older Lowee twin had not been joking about her tactical aptitude as she expertly coordinated her forces to turn their simple base of operations into an impenetrable fortress. Side roads were blocked off, chokepoints were established on the main streets, high ground positions were judiciously taken advantage of, and troop deployments were set about in such a way that the soldiers could easily move about and reinforce each other if necessary. All in all, Rom was quickly living up to her new class of Tactician.

Meanwhile, Noire was busy resting on a bench in the lobby while C-Sha looked after her with a barely concealed smile.

"Let it go already, C-Sha," the Lastation CPU growled out as she continued to massage the giant bump on her head.

Much to her annoyance, the Gold Third leader let out yet another stifled laugh to this.

"I... I'm sorry," C-Sha choked out, actually shaking a bit from her suppressed mirth. "It's just... I keep remembering what Ram did to you and... pffft... Ha ha ha ha ha ha!"

Noire just let out another angry growl as the buxom fighter finally began laughing at her in earnest. After putting up with this for a full minute, the CPU angrily crossed her arms and gave her signature Tsundere huff.

"You wouldn't be laughing so hard if you were the one who just got suplexed by Ram," she muttered bitterly.

C-Sha only laughed harder at that causing Noire to redden in embarrassment.

"Sheesh, it's not that funny! That little brat just got me by surprise, that's all!"

Several more minutes went by before C-Sha finally managed to calm herself down. With a large smile still on her face, she attempted to cheer up the sullen goddess.

"Oh, don't be so upset. You're not the only one who got suplexed by a little kid, you know. I remember poor Blanny being out for an entire day after Ram did it to her." She gave a small chuckle as she recalled that memory. "I have to say, the look on her face was almost worth all the hammers she threw at me later for teaching Ram that technique."

"You're the one who taught her that?!" Noire shot out indignantly. "Why on Gamindustri would you teach that little monster a professional wrestling move?!"

The Gold Third leader gave a casual shrug. "She wanted to learn some martial arts from me so I decided to give her a beginner's course in self-defense."

"How is suplexing people a basic defense skill?!"

C-Sha actually looked a bit sheepish at that as she readjusted her beret. "Okay, I admit that wasn't actually part of the original lesson plan. I had just finished sparring with S-Sha, Dogoo Man, and Dogoo Lady that day and some of their moves were still fresh in my mind. I thought it'd be rather cute to see Ram trying to perform some of their moves so I ended up teaching them to her offhand." She gave a nervous laugh as Noire rubbed the giant bruise on her head again while shooting her a murderous glare. "In hindsight though, I suppose that wasn't exactly one of my brightest ideas."

"No. No it was not."

After a rather awkward bout of silence between the two, the Lastation CPU faced her associate again with a raised eyebrow.

"Speaking of S-Sha, where exactly is she? I'm not that well acquainted with her but we could definitely use her help in this ridiculous situation we're in right now."

C-Sha gave an exasperated sigh at the mention of her missing teammate. "She's off on a road trip in another dimension."

"A road trip?" Noire repeated in confusion.

The Gold Third leader nodded while crossing her arms. "She bought a new car a few weeks ago and went off to tour the multiverse with Dogoo Man and Dogoo Lady. She hasn't answered any of my or B-Sha's calls since then."

"Huh. Maybe there's just no signal where she's at?"

"I doubt it," C-Sha said with an amused snort. "If I know her, she's probably just having too much fun at some inter-dimensional casino or something."

---

"I knew we should have listened to E-Sha and stopped for gas at that last exit!"

Grunting this out, Dogoo Lady continued to push the black convertible in front of her with the help of her male counterpart.

Ironically enough, the road trip crew found themselves stranded in the middle of an empty desert highway after their vehicle ran out of fuel halfway to the casino they were planning to visit. With no sign of help arriving anytime soon, the two body-builder Dogoos had opted to go out and move the car forward manually. However, even the two buff goo people found themselves nearing their limits as they realized they were no closer to reaching civilization after nearly two hours of pushing.

"Oof! I never thought I'd say this but I think this workout is too much for me," Dogoo Lady said, stopping briefly to catch her breath.

Next to her, Dogoo Man gladly stopped to take a break as well as he wiped away the sweat from his gelatin-like head. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he looked over towards the front of the car.

"Um, S-Sha?" he called out. "As much as I enjoy physical exercises such as this, perhaps you could... help us out here a little?"

Sitting comfortably in the driver's seat, the stoic Gold Third member simply adjusted her black sunglasses before leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed behind her head.

"...Not interested."

With a pair of tired sighs, Dogoo Man and Dogoo Lady resumed pushing the car forward once again.

---

By the time Sync finally regrouped with the other main characters near the entrance of the broadcast station, the base's defenses were all fully set up and deployed. At the moment, Ram, Rom, and C-Sha were busy chatting together while Noire looked over the area's map one more time as she snacked on a box of Pocky she had bought from one of the vending machines. As for Vert, she was still strangely missing from the party.

Catching sight of the approaching boy first, Noire quickly lowered her map as she got up to confront him.

"And just where the hell have you been?" she asked accusingly.

Sync gave a nonchalant shrug as he stopped in front of her. "I told you. I was out for a walk." Seeing the disbelieving eyebrow that Noire raised at him, he suddenly put on a wide grin. "Okay, okay. I might have also made a few calls, sent a few postcards, replaced all of Lastation's computers with cheese wheels, and stopped to chat with some of your officers. Nothing too diabolical, really."

"Wait, what? Cheese wheels? What are you-?"

"Anyways, is sis not back yet?" he interrupted, much to Noire's irritation.

Deciding to pass off his earlier comment as just a joke (at least, she hoped it was a joke), the CPU angrily munched on one of her chocolate-covered biscuit sticks before answering the boy.

"I haven't seen her since she ditched us in the control room. Why?"

Sync just gave her another shrug. "Just wondering. From what I've seen, sis has a bad habit of wandering about if left unattended."

Noire was about to point out that Vert was probably just running away from him at the time when the twins finally caught sight of their favorite playmate.

"About time you showed up!" Ram shouted as she and Rom ran up to greet him, C-Sha casually following behind them with a wave. "I've been wanting to show you all the ice walls I made to block off the smaller streets!"

"Sounds like someone's been rather busy," Sync replied with a cheerful laugh. After giving the rambunctious girl a quick high-five as a greeting, he turned to address the older twin standing next to her with a bright smile. "I'm guessing your preparations are complete then, master tactician?"

Rom blushed a bit at the title before nodding her head. "Y...Yes. I set everything up as best as I can. Even Miss Noire said that it all looks good."

Sync beamed like a proud parent as he gave the young girl a pat on the head. "I knew I could count on you. If even our emotionally suppressed commander praised you, then I'm sure you've done an excellent job."

"Who're you calling emotionally suppressed?!" Noire shot out.

Her outburst was all but ignored as Rom giggled happily at Sync's words while Ram began tugging on his arm.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" the younger twin shouted impatiently. "You need to see all the awesome ice walls I made!"

"Alright, I'm coming," Sync laughed. "Let me just-"

His words were cut short however when one of the sentries suddenly shouted out.

"Ma'am! Radar's picked up an incoming aircraft from the north!"

The lighthearted atmosphere immediately disappeared as Noire turned to the guard with a serious expression.

"Is it ours? Or is K-Sha finally making her move?"

There was a brief pause as the sentry conferred with one of the other soldiers before answering his boss.

"The scanners show that it's definitely our airship but they're not responding to any of our calls. Judging from their flight pattern though, I think they might have sustained a hit and lost their radio."

"Continue monitoring the radar to see if they're being pursued!" Noire quickly ordered.

With a quick affirmative and salute, the soldier went back to keeping watch over the portable radar he was holding while the main heroes prepared themselves for the worst.

Luckily though, no other aircraft ended up being spotted as the Lowee airship soon entered their field of vision. It quickly became apparent that the sentry had been right about the ship being hit as a thick plume of smoke could be seen coming from its rear.

"This can't be good," C-Sha muttered worriedly. "The Hunters were flying recon only a few miles out from here. If they were attacked, then that means K-Sha's forces can't be too far behind."

"Huh, so that's where those Hunter guys went," Sync casually commented, completely disregarding the last part of the Gold Third leader's statement. "I was wondering where they disappeared to after we got here."

No one had a chance to reply to him as the airship entered the perimeter of their base and descended onto a cleared out section of the main road. Now that the group had a closer look at it, the damage seemed to be a lot less serious than they had originally thought. Apparently, one of the rear thrusters had been damaged in some kind of explosion as it continued to let out the black smoke that they had seen before. Thankfully though, the ship's automatic fire-suppression system had already put out the flames by the time the airship finished landing.

Curious as to what exactly had happened, Noire and the other heroes quickly approached the damaged vessel as its door opened to release yet another cloud of smoke from the inside. After a moment, the four Hunters all walked out wearing a set of emergency gas masks on their faces.

"That's the last time I let you drive!" one of the identical looking Hunters yelled as he took off his mask. "We totally could have avoided that missile if I was in charge of the wheel!"

"Shut it you," the pilot Hunter countered, taking off his mask as well. "If I had let you drive, we probably would have ended up in Zero Dimension before crashing directly into a mountain."

"That was one time! How the hell was I supposed to know that the training vehicle had an emergency dimensional jump system?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe the fact that the big, red button you pushed had the words 'EMERGENCY DIMENSIONAL JUMP' written on it in all caps?"

The Hunters' argument was cut short when C-Sha suddenly cleared her throat.

"Oh, hey there boss," the pilot answered with a sheepish look. "I didn't realize you were there."

"Yes, well, could you maybe tell us what exactly happened out there?" C-Sha said with a touch of impatience.

The pilot Hunter gave a large sigh in response while the other two unmentioned Hunters struggled to take off their gas masks in the background.

"I really don't know where to begin," the pilot answered, completely ignoring the cartoonish antics taking place behind him. "The best way I can put it is-"

"We're fucked," the Hunter who had been arguing with him cut in. "At least, that's probably how Lady Blanc would put it."

The pilot seemed to roll his eyes at this but no one could really tell thanks to his goggles. "Gee, that sure explains a lot," he muttered with a level of sarcasm that could have made Croire proud. After shaking his head, he faced his boss again with a serious look. "He's right about us being in trouble though. They're probably outside of our radar's range right now but this entire city is completely surrounded by the fans."

"How many are there?" Noire asked worriedly.

The pilot gave a slight grimace as he seemed to visibly suppress his own fear. "Thousands? Ten thousands? Honestly, it looked liked almost all of Lastation was there."

A wave of nervous looks passed over the group at the news. While they had all been expecting the Swarm to be large, it was still rather shocking to hear just how massive their opposition really was.

"Ah, that doesn't matter!" Ram suddenly shouted, her usual bravado quickly returning. "We're still going to kick their butts anyways! In fact, me and Rom can just fly over and freeze them all right now!"

The pilot shook his head at this. "I advise against that Lady Ram. K-Sha's obviously learned her lesson from last time and spread out her forces. The two of you wouldn't be able to freeze all of those nutjobs before they shot you down."

"Quick question," Sync interrupted while raising his hand. "You said a missile hit the airship, right? Are you saying the fans are armed with actual weapons now?"

"Even better," the pilot replied with a sigh. "Those maniacs have somehow gotten their hands on a bunch of Alloy Gears."

"What?!" Noire exclaimed with undisguised shock. "How is that possible? All of Lastation's Alloy Gears are locked away on Shadow Moses Island! Even K-Sha wouldn't have been able to hack into the security system there!"

"Maybe she got them from somewhere else then?" C-Sha suggested.

The CPU shook her head at this. "Impossible. As far as I know, the Lastation military is the only one with an operational force of Alloy Gears. Unless..."

"Let me guess," Sync said with a knowing grin. "There's actually a mercenary organization that had their own stockpile of bipedal tanks?"

Noire shot him a glare before reluctantly nodding her head. "The Order. The same mercenary group that K-Sha used to be a part of. From what I know, they were developing their own line of Alloy Gears before my Basilicom shut them down. I thought I confiscated all of their assets after the Kurome incident but it looks like I missed a few. K-Sha must have remembered where one of their hidden armories were though and reactivated all of the Alloy Gears inside."

"Great," C-Sha intoned. "Now we have to deal with a bunch of giant death robots as well as the mass of fans."

In stark contrast to their caretaker's exasperated attitude however, the twins were practically jumping up and down in excitement.

"Whoooo! We get to fight an actual Alloy Gear!" Ram shouted out gleefully.

"This is going to be so cool!" Rom agreed next to her.

Sync quickly joined in on their cheering with an amused laugh while Noire just gave a facepalm at their childish antics.

"How many Alloy Gears were there and which direction are they coming from?" the CPU eventually asked, hoping to bring some level of seriousness back into the matter.

"At least three skyscraper-sized ones along with several dozen smaller ones accompanying each of them," the pilot answered. "The last we saw before they fired at us, they were all grouped up in the northern forest and heading towards us from there."

"I'm guessing that's the direction where their hidden armory was," Noire muttered before questioning the pilot again. "What about the other areas? Were there any Alloy Gears there as well?"

"None. The passes to the south and west were just filled with fans. We did see a bunch of landed transport helicopters with them though."

Noire hardly seemed surprised by this news as she gave a short nod. "Those are probably the ones that K-Sha stole from our military bases for her invasion into Planeptune. Unfortunately, they didn't have a security override feature like our tanks so we couldn't remotely shut them down."

"Wait, why hasn't she just doom-dropped our location with all of her transports then?" C-Sha asked. "Wouldn't that have been much easier for her than marching her swarm here on foot?"

"They're probably out of fuel," the CPU explained, a small smile appearing on her face. "The helicopters run on a specialized fuel cell that can only be found at my military supply depots. After I heard K-Sha hijacked my fleet, I ordered my technicians to seal off all access to these depots in response."

"Nice," the Gold Third leader said with a smile of her own.

Noire quickly put on her serious expression again though as she crossed her arms.

"We still need to figure out how to deal with these Alloy Gears though. I can't tell if K-Sha's trying to tire me out by making me fight them or if she just wants to kill everybody at this point but it's pretty clear we need to stop them before they reach the broadcast station. If they end up destroying the building, then this entire operation is doomed."

"You're worrying too much," Sync commented, his tone as carefree as ever. "I mean, we have two CPUs, three CPU Candidates, the leader of Gold Third, and a team of expert Hunters with us. All we have to do is engage those robots at the outskirts of the city and they'll be scrap metal in no time."

"Are you stupid?" Noire shot back with a scowl. "We can't just all leave the base. Even with our defenses, our forces would be quickly overwhelmed by the sheer number of fans if we're not there to help them."

"I never said we had to send over everyone, dear." The triggered look he got from Noire seemed to make up for the painful smack on the arm he got from Ram. "Heh heh. Worth it," he muttered before clearing his throat and turning somewhat serious again. "We can simply divide ourselves up into three separate squads and rotate between fending off the fans, fighting the Alloy Gears, and resting. That way, we can conserve our energy and stall for enough time for the broadcast to be sent out."

There was a bout of silence as everyone thought over this plan.

"It's a pretty solid idea," C-Sha eventually said with a nod. "This way, we won't all be exhausted at the end like during our last battle."

"There's one big flaw though," Noire pointed out, still glaring daggers at the boy. "The edge of the city has to be at least twenty miles from here. Even with the airship and our ability to fly, it'd take way too long to properly rotate between the two battlefields. Not to mention, it'd be a gigantic waste of energy for us to constantly go back and forth like that."

Sync just continued to smile as he suddenly teleported one of Noire's Pocky sticks to his hand and waved it in front of her face.

"Two words: Spatial. Powers." Saying that, he took a bite out of his stolen snack while the CPU slapped herself in the face for forgetting about his ability once again.

"I think I made it pretty clear that I'm not much of a fighter compared to the rest of you so I'll be filling out the support role for this match," Sync continued after finishing off the rest of the biscuit stick. "I'll handle teleporting everyone across the battlefields so just focus on taking down our enemies. I'll fight as well if needed though so don't be afraid to ask for help if something unexpected happens."

"Are you sure you can do this?" C-Sha asked skeptically. "You're not going to accidentally send us off into another dimension again, are you?"

"That was for a long-range teleportation," he answered with a dismissive wave. "I've always had trouble with those. A few miles like this though should be a cakewalk for me. In fact, I was able to consistently warp about within a forty mile radius when I was training with Ms. Neptune. Of course, I was traveling alone at the time and only performed a few dozen warps so the results might be a bit subjective."

"You're really filling us with confidence here," Noire deadpanned, lowering her hand to glare at him once more.

Sync simply smiled at her again in response. "Hey, at least one of us has to be honest about our flaws."

The CPU was just about to let loose an angry retort when the mk2 Lastation theme song began to play from her inventory. Casting one more dirty look at the boy, she pulled out her phone and answered the call.

"What?" she practically spat out.

"Um... this is the head technician, ma'am," the voice on the phone answered timidly, clearly taken aback by his boss's hostile tone. "You told me to contact you directly regarding our progress."

Noire quickly took a couple of deep breaths to calm herself before replying in her usual dignified voice.

"Sorry. I was just dealing with an... annoying problem. Anyways, what exactly did you want to notify me of?"

"Ah, yes. We just finished setting up the auxiliary relays. According to our computers, we have roughly thirty minutes until we're fully connected to our satellite array."

"About time," Noire replied, sounding more relieved than annoyed despite her words. "Continue keeping watch over its progress and send me updates as needed."

"Yes, ma'am!"

With their main objective finally online, Noire pushed aside her eternal conflict with the blond shota as she put away her phone and quickly took charge once more.

"You four," she ordered, facing the group of Hunters, "Go speak to one of my mechanics and get the airship fixed up. You'll be the resting squad until you get that ship back up and running."

The four Hunters looked at C-Sha first to confirm their orders with her before heading off to do as they were told.

"Oh, oh, oh! Me and Rom call first dibs on the Alloy Gears!" Ram shouted before Noire could speak up again.

The twin-tailed CPU rolled her eyes at this before replying. "Fine. C-Sha, you're the only one who can reliably keep these two in check. Go with them and make sure they don't cause too much unnecessary collateral damage."

"You didn't even have to ask," the buxom fighter responded with a smile.

Noire gave a sigh as she continued. "I suppose that leaves me to find Vert and fend off the-"

"Lady Black Heart!" the sentry from before suddenly interrupted. "We have fan attack waves incoming!"

"Already?" C-Sha exclaimed in surprise.

Sync casually snatched another Pocky stick from Noire with his power before speaking up. "I guess some of their transports had a little extra fuel left,"he surmised.

"We're ready for them," Rom spoke up, a surprising note of confidence in her voice. "We'll beat these meanies for sure."

Sync nodded his head in agreement to this while Noire glared at him for stealing another one of her snacks.

"Alright! The end war has come!" he declared dramatically, holding his biscuit stick in the air like a sword. "This is the day we defeat the Swarm and bring back peace to our world! For Gamindustri!"

"For Gamindustri!" the twins echoed alongside him.

Noire just shook her head at their antics before mentally preparing herself for the oncoming battle. While she was not as excited as the three kids, she was definitely looking forward to ending this madness as well. Putting the last remaining Pocky stick in her mouth, she looked out at the soon-to-be battlefield with a determined look of her own.

"Hell, it's about time."

---

Meanwhile...

Down in the deep underground storage basement of Lowee's convention center, a certain forgotten CPU Candidate angrily shouted out into the surrounding darkness.

"Gah! How long are we going to be trapped in here for?!" Uni ranted.

As expected, the mini-Tsun was not exactly too happy about her current predicament.

As soon as the prank marriage video had gone out (and Uni knew it had to be a prank seeing as how the only thing her sister would ever marry was her work), K-Sha had gone into full Yandere mode and disappeared into the crowd of rioting fans. Uni had no time to go after her though as she had to help Uzume, B-Sha, and Steamax escort the remaining sane attendees to a safe location. After beating back a countless number of crazed fans, the group finally managed to retreat into the convention center's lower halls. Since then, the survivors had been trapped in the dark basement with nothing to do other than fending off the feral fans that wandered their way. In fact, the only thing of note that had really happened since then was the older Neptune suddenly showing up and warping away Uzume with some vague explanation about a doomsday dragon. On the plus side though, Big Nep had been thoughtful enough to leave them some of the pudding that she had apparently bought along the way.

As Uni tried to open up one of the last remaining cups of the aforementioned snack, a sad sniffling noise suddenly came from next to her.

"Oh, geez. Get over it already, B-Sha!" the CPU Candidate said irritably. "They were just a few figures for crying out loud!"

"They... They were ultra-rare Amiibos," the young Gold Third member corrected, her tone filled with utter misery. "I... I could have sold them for *hic* ten times their original prices online."

Uni just rolled her eyes at the young scalper. Ever since she had lost her cart-load of figures during the initial fan frenzy, B-Sha had been continuously crying about it like she had just lost one of her closest friends (which, considering her love for money, probably wasn't that far away from the truth).

With an annoyed growl, Uni turned away from her depressed company as she felt her head painfully throb once more. Ever since a few days ago, she had been suffering from a strange bout of sporadic headaches. For some odd reason, she thought she could almost hear a faint voice in her head telling her to 'submit to the will of the Queen'; whatever the hell that meant. Of course, her natural stubbornness allowed her to simply dismiss the voice as nothing more than a figment of her imagination caused by her mounting stress.

As Uni shook her head yet again, a tall metallic figure suddenly crawled out of a nearby air vent and approached her.

"Lady Uni!" Steamax happily called out to his favorite goddess. "I just finished scouting the area like you asked and have great news!"

"Unless you brought me some aspirin, I kind of doubt it," Uni grumbled, putting down the pudding cup she was holding as she tried to force back her headache through sheer force of will.

"Ha ha ha ha! You always did have such a great sense of humor!" Steamax laughed off. "No, but in all seriousness, I do have good news! All of the fans have cleared out of the building!"

Uni quickly forgot all about her head pains as she faced the robot ninja with a shocked look.

"Seriously? Where did they all go?"

"That I'm not sure," Steamax replied. "However, we should definitely use this opportunity to make our escape."

Uni quickly got over her surprise as she happily nodded her head. She was so elated at the prospect of finally getting out of their underground hideout that she even gave Steamax a rare smile.

"Excellent scouting work, Jiro," she said, affectionately calling him by his former nickname.

Steamax practically squealed with joy upon hearing the praise. In fact, his mechanical body actually lit up with multiple hidden LED lights from his happiness as he illuminated the formerly dark room like a shining disco ball.

"Huh? What's that you're holding?" B-Sha suddenly asked, taking notice of the books in Steamax's hand thanks to the sudden lighting.

"Oh, these?" he answered, still shining brightly from pure happiness. "I found them at one of the abandoned booths in the exhibition hall. I thought we could use these against the fans if we happen to run across any while we escape."

"What exactly are... they..."

Uni's question trailed off as she got a good look at the covers of the 'books' that Steamax was carrying. Displayed proudly on each and every one of them was a wide variety of nude pictures of Noire doing some very... questionable things with the other CPUs. Not surprisingly, Uni did not take too well to seeing these erotic images.

"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! YOU PERVERT!"

With all of her previous happiness instantly replaced by unbridled Tsundere rage and embarrassment, Uni charged Steamax with the full intention of dismantling him.

"Awaugh! Lady Uni! Please be gentle with me!"

As the poor robot was taken down by the twin-tailed hurricane, B-Sha quietly approached the pile of Noire doujinshi that Steamax had ended up dropping. Shooting a furtive glance around her to make sure no one was looking, she picked up the erotic books and quickly pocketed them into her inventory.

"Well... they might not be Amiibos but at least I know there's a high demand for these," the money-obsessed girl said, a greedy smile appearing on her face. "Heh heh. Time to see how much I can scalp these baddies for on Nep-bay!"

Behind her, Steamax simply continued to scream as one of his legs went flying into the air.