Ch 13: Legacy of the Tsun (Pt 2)
It had not taken long before K-Sha apparently got over her shock of the Alloy Gears' spectacular defeat. Though she had yet to directly show her face, her fury was all too clear to see as the fans refocused their assault on the final stronghold with a burning rage gleaming from their golden eyes.
Luckily, the defenders had a far superior position in the engagement. Seeing as how the broadcast tower was one of the city's major buildings, it was protected by an enormous metal wall that surrounded its entire courtyard. The only entrances leading inside were a trio of gated checkpoints connected to the city's main roads. This heavily limited the fans' approach as they either had to go through the heavily-defended chokepoint or attempt to climb up the smooth metal wall. Though several of them did manage to get over by climbing on top of each other, the defenders were always quick to shoot them down before they could establish a foothold. And as for the rest that tried to squeeze in through the battered metal fences at the gate, a rather colorful array of super-powered beings waited to give them a cold welcome.
"Ice Coffin!"
The latest batch of fans that had slipped past the western barricade made it no further than ten steps before finding themselves frozen inside a giant icicle. Lowering her glowing staff, Rom gave a satisfied nod at her handiwork.
"Watch your left!" a nearby soldier with a taser gun shouted. "They're trying to climb over the walls again!"
"I got this!"
With an enthusiastic battle cry, Ram ran towards the invading fans with her own staff held high.
"Ice Hammer!"
A giant mass of ice formed at the end of her weapon as she jumped to the top of the wall in a single impressive leap. Ignoring the stunned looks that the fans gave her, Ram swung about her weapon with a ferocity that would have made Blanc proud. In a matter of seconds, all of the wall-climbing fans were either sent hurtling back down or simply smacked unconscious by the rampaging girl.
"Ram! Behind you!"
Ram quickly turned around at her sister's warning to find a mass of poster tubes flying straight towards her. Acting quickly, she swung her staff-turned-hammer down towards the surface of the wall she was standing on. A blast of potent ice magic fired from her weapon as a large ice barrier formed before her. As the projectiles bounced harmlessly off the ice wall, Ram took the opportunity to jump back down to her allies.
"Heh heh. Piece of cake," the younger twin bragged, straightening out her hat as she joined back up with her sister.
Rom gave her a quick smile before turning to the nearby soldier in charge of the radio.
"How are the rest of our defenses?"
The soldier spent a couple of seconds checking in with the other outpost leaders before turning to the young tactician with an answer.
"All entrances are still secure," he reported with obvious relief. "The southern entrance is facing a larger number of fans than before but C-Sha says she's got it covered. As for the northern sector, the Hunters report that the area is still barely occupied. It seems K-Sha has yet to properly redeploy her main forces there after moving them away in preparation for the Alloy Gears."
Rom took in all of this information with a short nod. "That's good to hear," she replied, her voice sounding much more confident than usual. "Tell the squad leader at the north-western wall to send a few of her people over to reinforce our position. Make sure they keep enough forces on standby though in case of a surprise attack. I think K-Sha's too angry right now to come up with anything other than a direct frontal attack but I want us to be prepared just in case."
The soldier responded with a sharp salute. "Yes, ma'am!"
As he busied himself with relaying the order, Ram turned to her sister with a rather impressed look.
"Wow, Rom! You sounded really cool there! You were just like that awesome tactician girl from the last Advance Battles game!"
Rom immediately returned to her shy demeanor as she gave a deep blush at the compliment. "It... It's nothing that impressive. I just find it easy to deal with all this strategy stuff, that's all."
Ram seemed to think otherwise as she continued to praise her older twin with a proud smile. This continued on for a few more minutes (in-between them freezing a couple more fans) before the energetic young girl suddenly paused to give a worried frown.
"What's taking Sync so long? Do you think the Tsu- I mean, Noire did something to him?"
Rom and Ram both gave a slight shiver as they remembered how the Lastation CPU had obviously snapped. It was clear Sync had shared their fear of the violent goddess as well but he had still left to bring her and Vert back to base anyways.
"I hope not," Rom said, her expression quickly changing into worry as well. "I don't think even big bro could survive if Miss Noire decided to blow him up like that poor Alloy Gear."
"No kidding," Ram agreed. "I never thought I'd see someone with bigger anger problems than Blanc."
"...What did you just say?"
Ram gave a terrified 'Meep!' as a familiar, irritated voice suddenly spoke up from behind her. Turning around, the twins found a green portal that was floating perpendicular to the ground for once rather than facing downwards. Their attention, however, was mostly focused on the scowling twin-tailed goddess who had apparently just stepped out of said portal with her arms crossed.
"Ah... N... N... Nothing!" Ram squeaked out. "W... We were just talking about... umm... how cool twin-tails are! Yeah! T... Twin-tails are the coolest hairstyle ever! R...Right, Rom?"
Noire ignored the nervous nod that the older twin gave as she instead raised a threatening eyebrow at the pink-hatted girl. Before Ram could flee in terror, two familiar blonds suddenly stepped through the portal before it promptly closed shut behind them.
"I must admit, this is a rather pleasant surprise," Vert remarked, obviously referring to the fact they had not ended up glomping the ground again. "Didn't you state that you couldn't properly control your teleportation powers from this far away?"
Sync did not immediately answer as he suddenly stumbled forward a bit before managing to steady himself.
"I'm alright," he said, waving off Rom and Ram as they ran forward to help. Vert also put on a strangely concerned expression though she did not make any outward moves to aid him. Noire just gave him a glare. "I simply had to use a lot more energy than normal to make sure our Tsu- er... Noire didn't end up becoming a landing cushion again."
Ram was pretty sure she saw smoke starting to come out of Sync's coat as Noire intensified her glare. Deciding to distract the angry goddess before she incinerated her manservant, Ram repeated the question that she had voiced earlier.
"So what took you so long to get here anyways?"
Sync turned to her with a smile back on his face while Rom was busy preparing some kind of healing spell next to him.
"Noire was out of it for quite a bit even after we used a Life Fragment on her," he explained. "Sis wanted to just carry her with us but I didn't want to risk having her wake up mid-transport and moving about in surprise. Knowing her luck, Noire would have probably ended up jolting out of the warp field right as we teleported and trapped herself in some kind of spatial limbo for all of eternity. I kind of figured she wouldn't like having that happen to her so we waited around for her to get back up."
The anger seemed to momentarily drain out of the Lastation CPU's face as she stared at the boy with a rather shocked look.
"You can do that? Drop people into some perpetual limbo, I mean?"
Sync replied with a small shrug. "Normally? No. With your reality-bending powers of having terrible things happen to you? Yes." Remembering the CPU's current mental state and what she had just done to the Alloy Gears though, he quickly tried to amend his statement. "Ahem. N... Not that I'm trying to insult you or anything. It's just that... it's rather kind of impressive that someone's luck stat could be that low. In fact, I think you might have one of the lowest luck stat of anyone in recorded... yeah, I think I'm just going to stop talking now."
"Good," Noire growled, her sword suddenly inches away from his face.
Thankfully, the tense situation was quickly resolved as Rom used her Refreshments spell on the party. The warm, fuzzy feeling of having their energy restored managed to calm even the angry Tsundere as she put away her sword with a huff.
"Thanks," Sync said to Rom, giving her a grateful smile for both restoring his energy as well as most likely saving his life.
Rom just gave a bashful smile in return while Vert seethed with jealousy in the back as per usual.
"So..." Sync eventually let out, trying his best to avoid Noire's death glare. "Anything interesting happen here while we were gone?"
Rom quickly began to fill in the new arrivals on the situation. Meanwhile, the soldiers behind them had been dutiful enough to not be distracted by the sudden appearance of their (terrifying) goddess as they continued to keep the fans at bay. Ram also lent them a hand by occasionally freezing a few fans that wandered too close.
"Heh. Looks like our tactician's really pulling us through," Sync commented once Rom's recap had come to a end. After giving the blushing girl another smile, he turned (rather reluctantly) to face Noire.
"By the way, shouldn't we be connected to those satellites by now? Because I'm pretty sure it's been way past thirty minutes."
Luckily, the twin-tailed goddess did not maul Sync for daring to speak to her as she instead brought out her phone and activated its holographic communications display.
"Status report," Noire curtly said as soon as the line connected.
The head technician from before appeared on the screen as he looked back at his boss with a stressed look.
"Ah. Apologies for the lack of updates, Lady Black Heart," he quickly replied. "We were rather busy dealing with an... odd delay."
"Go on," Noire said, arching an eyebrow at the man.
The technician definitely heard the dangerous edge in the CPU's voice as he began to sweat nervously.
"Erm... T... There was a sudden obstruction between our relays' signal and the satellites," he stuttered out. "W... When we used our scanners to identify the supposed space debris, we found that the object was actually a... um... well, a giant Nepgeardam."
"Huh," Sync suddenly remarked, causing everyone to turn to him. "So that's where the rogue Nepgeardam ended up running off to." Seeing everyone's confused looks, he clarified himself. "Nepgear created a giant Nepgeardam on the day that I first arrived at sis's Basilicom. It apparently had a faulty AI program and wound up rampaging across Planeptune for a couple of days. Nepgear told me she and Neptune blew it up but never found the remains. Apparently, it must have used the explosion to hide its escape into space and was simply repairing itself up there the whole time."
There was a brief silence before the technician broke it with a cough. "Ahem. Right. Anyways... we were busy trying to figure out a way to circumvent our signal around the giant robot. Luckily, the problem ended up solving itself a couple minutes ago when the Nepgeardam seemed to realize it was being watched and flew off deeper into space."
"Any ideas where it was headed off to?" Sync asked.
The technician gave a shrug. "Can't be sure. Though based on its trajectory it might have been headed towards the Maryo Galaxy."
"Fascinating," Noire interrupted with a scowl. "Now if you don't mind, just how much longer is it going to take to get that link fully established?"
"Oh, right," the technician said, fumbling about with the computer on his side for a bit. "I would say... roughly fifteen minutes at most. I suggest sending up Ms. Ram and Rom right now to prepare for the emergency broadcast."
"Hey! That's Lady Ram and Rom to you, buster!" the younger twin shouted.
Noire ended the call before the technician could say anything as she turned her annoyed gaze towards the twins.
"Shut up and get moving," she told the suddenly terrified-looking girls. "I want this entire idiotic mess dealt with as soon as possible so that I can go home and get some proper sleep."
The two gave a quick nod to the angry goddess as they moved towards the tower's entrance. Before they got more than a couple steps though, Noire stopped them in their tracks by speaking up again.
"And if either of you try to use your brainwashing powers to get the fans to do anything stupid..."
She left the unspoken threat hanging in the air as the twins found themselves fearfully gazing up to where the last Alloy Gear had violently exploded. Nodding so hard that it looked like their heads were going to fall off, the two quickly high-tailed it out of there.
"Oh, make sure you refer to me as the Waifu Thief if you need to talk about me!" Sync called out to their retreating forms. "I'm pretty sure that's the only name the fans have to identify me!"
Rom turned to give him a quick nod before she and Ram disappeared around the corner of the building.
There was a brief silence following the twin's departure before Sync turned to Noire with a wary gaze.
"So... are you still feeling all murderous and psychopathic or are you finally back to your usual Tsu- er... normal self?"
Noire did not get the chance to pull her sword on him again as the radio operator from before ran up to them with an urgent look.
"Lady Black Heart! Both the Hunters and C-Sha just reported a change in enemy movement! Both the northern and southern fan forces have suddenly pulled away from the main gates!"
"What?" Noire asked, her business-like demeanor quickly returning as she turned to her soldier. "Are the fans retreating?"
The operator shook his head. "It doesn't seem like it. They've simply moved outside the range of our gunners and are holding position for the time being."
Both Noire and Sync looked over to the nearby western gate only to find that the fans there were still continuing their attack.
"K-Sha's probably preparing for her final move," Sync noted, actually sounding a bit serious for once. "I can sense a massive amount of movement out there but it's kind of hard to figure out what exactly is... wait. There's definitely a large number of fans converging into this area. I think she's planning to brute-force her way through this checkpoint and then hit the southern entrance during the confusion."
"What about the northern side?" Noire asked him, her feud with the boy momentarily forgotten.
"Hm... Based on their movements, it looks like K-Sha's given up on that area. The remaining fans are probably just there to keep watch and ensure that we don't try to escape."
Noire contemplated this with a deep scowl before turning to the radio operator.
"Tell C-Sha to prepare for an imminent attack on her position! As for the Hunters, tell them to bring their airship over here immediately! We'll need their air support to hold our position against this attack!"
As her soldier moved away to convey her order, Noire pulled out her stun baton from her inventory once more.
"Ugh. I just can't catch a break, can I?" she muttered irritably.
"Are you sure you're fit to fight?" Vert asked, looking at her friend in concern.
"What are you talking about? Of course I'm-"
The twin-tailed goddess immediately fell flat on her face again as her legs buckled beneath her as she tried to move forward. Even with her energy restored by Rom's spell, her body was clearly still worn out from her previous battle.
"Ow..."
With a sigh, Vert moved over and helped her fellow CPU up. Stifling a laugh, Sync also walked over while procuring a can of Nep Bull from his inventory.
"Here," he told Noire, handing the flustered-looking goddess the energy drink.
The twin-tailed CPU hesitated a bit before eventually accepting the item with a suspicious glare. Not taking her eyes off him the whole time, she opened the can and downed the whole thing in one go. To her surprise, there was nothing strange laced with the drink as she immediately felt some of her stamina return.
"Um.. . by the way," the boy suddenly said, rubbing the back of his head in an oddly embarrassed manner, "there's something I need to tell you before we get into this next fight." Noire continued to glare at him with clear distrust as he continued on in a slightly more serious tone than normal. "I know I never told you this outright but... I'm sorry. I really am sorry about causing you so much trouble. I never actually planned for my prank to get this out of control but I guess that's kind of a moot point now. I know it's not enough to make up for it all but just know that I'm prepared to play my part in cleaning up this entire mess."
It was a good thing Noire had finished her drink or she might have spit it back up in surprise. Her astonishment did not last for very long, however, as her suspicion quickly returned.
"Okay, what are you up to?" she asked, tossing away the empty can into a nearby bin. "There's no way you're not planning something stupid again. And what the hell was up with that last part? You sounded like someone who was about to head off into their final battle or something."
Though Noire did not notice it, Vert's face suddenly drained of color at the remark as she looked at the boy with wide eyes.
Before Sync could respond, the Lowee airship came into view as it flew around the tower and approached the western gate. The boy paused to give the ship's crew a small wave before turning back to Noire with his carefree demeanor already settled back into place.
"What? Isn't a guy allowed to be serious for once? Even I-"
Sync suddenly stopped mid-sentence as he turned back to the airship with a sharp look. Before either goddess could inquire about this, he teleported away in a literal flash.
"What-"
Noire never got the chance to finish her question as the airship suddenly exploded. Both the goddesses and the soldiers looked up in shock as another Stinger missile flew up from the fan crowd outside and reduced the flaming wreckage into complete dust.
At the same moment, a sudden flash of green lighted up the space next to the two stunned CPUs. Immediately turning their heads around, Noire and Vert managed to see Sync and the four Hunters tumbling forward onto the ground. Though they all looked understandably shaken, none of them seemed to be seriously injured from the blast.
"She's here earlier than I thought," Sync panted out, quickly picking himself back up as he looked towards the gate.
Before anyone could react, a massive salvo of missiles suddenly slammed into the checkpoint as the gate met the same fate as the airship. A large portion of the wall was also annihilated in the blast as a large hole opened up in the defenses. While the nearby soldiers were sent flying back from the sudden explosion, the fans seemed completely unaffected by it all as the one who launched the missiles obviously had their friendly fire turned off.
With an echoing battle cry, the fans spilled into the courtyard while brutally beating down all of the guards that were still standing. In the blink of an eye, Noire, Vert, Sync and the Hunters found themselves trapped between the horde of fans and the side of the broadcast tower. The heroes quickly dropped into their respective combat stances when the Swarm suddenly stopped their menacing advance towards them. As the group watched warily, the fans directly in front of them shifted to the sides to create a perfect walkway between them.
"Hmhm.. It looks like the main guests are already here. How thoughtful. You've saved me the trouble of having to hunt you down one by one."
All of the heroes tensed as the Queen of the Swarm finally made her appearance. Dressed in her standard red school uniform, the golden-eyed girl casually walked down the rows of fans with a large missile launcher in her hand.
"K-Sha," Noire growled out, tightening her grip on her stun baton.
The Yandere leader regarded her 'lover' with a cold look as she finally came to a stop in front of her minions. As the fans moved to close the gap between them, K-Sha replaced her missile launcher with her usual Uzi before aiming the gun at her enemies.
"Noire," she acknowledged in a falsely sweet tone. "I have to say, I'm really, really disappointed in you. Not only have you been ignoring all of my great ideas to improve Lastation lately, you also had the gall to go behind my back and get married without my permission."
Noire made a slight choking noise to this before quickly recovering.
"Okay, first of all," she angrily countered, "putting up pachinko parlors all over my nation is -not- a great idea! Seriously, what's with you're sudden obsession with those gambling machines? And secondly, I did NOT get married to anyone!"
"Stop lying," K-Sha snarled, pointing her gun directly at Noire's head. "We've all seen the broadcast. Why would you agree to personally go all the way to a news station if your engagement story wasn't real?"
Noire's left eye began twitching again as she turned her gaze towards a sheepishly smiling Sync.
"Heh heh," he let out as everyone else turned to look at him. "That... was actually my fault. I kinda dragged her to-."
K-Sha did not let him finish as she turned her gun towards him and opened fire without warning. Rather than teleporting away as expected however, he simply stayed in place with a growing frown as the thankfully weak spray of bullets bounced off his aura of share energy.
"This is troublesome," he whispered out, obviously intending for only his allies to hear. "All of her projectiles are covered in her Gold Third energy. It's interfering with my spatial powers and is preventing me from redirecting them like I normally do."
"Then those missiles from earlier...?" the Hunter next to him asked.
Sync gave a small nod. "I thought I simply messed up my control there but this attack proves that I can't affect her or any of her projectiles with my powers." A rather dry grin appeared on his face. "Tch. There goes my plan to continuously teleport her to the edge of the city to annoy her."
"Are you done?" K-Sha asked, her coldness from before replaced with a look of pure hatred. "Because I want your full attention when I tear you limb from limb for stealing my darling Noire!"
Sync just gave a laugh at the threat. "Sheesh, what is it with you Yanderes and tearing off other people's limbs?" he asked jokingly. "I mean, Chika threatens to do the same thing to me every other day as well."
As he said this, he took a step forward causing the rest of his group to look at him in confusion.
"I'll keep K-Sha busy," he quietly told his surprised allies. "The rest of you should focus on keeping the fans off of Noire. I would teleport all of you to somewhere safe but I don't want to risk K-Sha sending the Swarm into the tower. We only need to hold out for a few more minutes before the broadcast and this is the best way to keep the main force occupied." Hearing Noire about to loudly protest, he turned around and gave her a confident smile. "Trust me. I'll make sure that we all make it out of this alive. Besides, I already told you. It's time I played my part in this as well."
Seeing the CPU at a loss for words, he gave a satisfied smile before beginning to turn away. However, he was suddenly stopped when an unexpected voice spoke up.
"Sync..."
The boy turned to his sister with a confused look as she looked at him with a conflicted expression. After a drawn-out second, she gave a large sigh and spoke up in a barely audible whisper.
"...don't die."
Sync responded to this with a full-blown laugh causing Vert to flush red with embarrassment.
"W...What?" she cried out, her indignant tone coming across as more of a whine. "I'm being serious! I don't want you to get yourself killed!"
It took a few seconds before Sync managed to recover from his laughing fit.
"Heh. Ah, sis. I know I said this is your story and not mine but I'm not planning to exit the stage just yet." Still chuckling a bit, he turned around to fully face the murderous Yandere in front of him. "After all, there's a lot more people that I still need to annoy."
"Cute," K-Sha sarcastically remarked. "I'll write that on your epitaph."
Not giving her enemy a chance to waste anymore time, the Yandere Queen gave a loud yell as she activated her latent powers. A military commander's hat immediately appeared over her head as a black eye-patch appeared to cover her left eye as well. At the same time, a large weapons module resembling an older Alloy Gear unit appeared out of thin air before affixing itself to her back. With a grim smile, K-Sha completed her transformation by sweeping both her arms to her sides with theatrical flourish as two golden Uzis appeared in her hands.
"K-Sha, Gold Third transformation complete," she mechanically intoned, her body continuing to glow with a massive amount of excess energy.
All eyes fell on Sync as they waited for his response. To their surprise, however, he simply gave the crowd a casual shrug.
"Sorry to break it to everyone but I don't exactly have a cool transformation," he explained, much to the disappointment of Vert and Noire who had been expecting to see his HDD form.
"On the other hand," he went on, "I guess this is as good a time as any to show off my main weapon."
Without any further fanfare, he reached over to roll up his coat's right sleeve.
After having it completely leave her mind after their first meeting, Vert suddenly realized that she was finally finding out what the cylindrical bulge underneath his sleeve actually was. Peering forward with curiosity, she and everyone else watching soon found their expressions changing into confusion as they simply found some kind of high-tech metal armguard covering his forearm.
"Is that supposed to be some pathetic excuse for an arm-cannon?" K-Sha mocked. Having sparred plenty of times against C-Sha and her Mega Buster, she was hardly impressed by the puny weapon.
Sync just gave a small laugh as he finished rolling up his sleeve and got into a loose combat stance.
"Nah," he replied. "It's actually more of a... Psi-Blade."
A blazing green streak of energy suddenly ignited from the end of his arm unit as he said this. Extending out over his wrist and hand, the energy quickly stabilized into a half-meter long laser blade as he leveled it against his opponent.
"Though considering what it's made of," he continued, "I'd say its more fitting to call it a Share Blade."
K-Sha just raised her eyebrow at this as she slowly shifted into a combat stance herself.
The entire area became deathly silent as every single person present got ready for what was most likely the final battle of the entire war. The tension was practically tangible as both sides glared at each other, daring the other to make the first move.
Fittingly enough, Sync was the one to break the stillness as he widened his smile.
"Heh. Let's dance."
And with that, all hell broke loose.
"Kinestra Slash!"
A large swath of fans were blown away by Vert's charge as even more were sent flying from the following burst of magical wind energy. She did not stop to admire her handiwork though, as she continued to keep the fans off of her vulnerable teammate.
It was hard to tell how long the fight had been going on as all Vert could remember was beating back an endless sea of fans that rushed towards her. Next to her, the Hunters were actually holding their own fairly well as they effectively took down the fans with their stun batons, tranquilizer grenades, and smoke bombs. As it was, the massive smokescreens were actually what was keeping the battle somewhat even as it effectively blinded the distant fans and prevented them from simply rushing in at once and overwhelming their defenses.
As for Noire, she was doing her best to prevent herself from being surrounded. Thanks to her teammates' efforts, she only had to deal with a small handful of fans at a time as she easily managed to dispatch them even in her exhausted state.
"JUST DIE ALREADY!"
Not for the first time during the fight, K-Sha's frustrated yell echoed across the night sky.
Clearing the fans around her with a massive cyclone, Vert spared a quick glance at the duel above. Of course, considering the nature of the fight, calling it a duel might have been overstating it just a tad bit.
Keeping in line with his usual behavior, the boy's primary fighting style was clearly based around doing one thing: driving his opponent completely insane. Time and time again, he would pretend to be hit by a missile or a hailstorm of bullets only to reappear next to the berserk Yandere and slash her with his Share Blade. While the weapon was not strong enough to pierce through the Gold Third's energy shield, it did seem to at least sting her a bit as she gave a slight wince every time the blade connected. To make matters even more infuriating for her, all of her attempts to fly out of his range ended up in failure as he simply chained together his teleportations to climb through the air and make up for his lack of flight.
"ENOUGH!"
After being struck in her sides once again, K-Sha flew even higher into the sky before activating her weapon module's rail gun. With an enraged snarl, she unleashed a massive beam of plasma in the hopes of utterly vaporizing the source of her irritation.
Vert was fairly certain she saw Sync roll his eyes at this before simply teleporting himself away once again. Just like with every other attack during the fight, the laser flew in the opposite direction of the broadcast tower as it blew a gigantic crater in the city instead. While this earned another indignant cry from Noire, Vert simply gave a small sigh of relief. Thankfully, it seemed that K-Sha was far too angry to notice that the kid was deliberately keeping her faced away from the tower. And considering how the fight was going, it was highly unlikely she would calm down enough to ever figure it out.
"DAMN YOU!"
K-Sha's screech of frustration was cut short when a mass of brick-filled body pillows suddenly rained down on top of her. Seeing as how the boy could not redirect any of the Yandere Queen's projectiles, he opted to snatch away her minions' weapons as he used them against her instead.
Sadly for Vert, she was not able to watch what happened next as she had to focus back on the approaching fans. The feral scream that rent the sky, however, made it pretty clear that K-Sha had been either hit by the pillows or the boy's Share Blade once again.
"I can't believe I'm saying this but that brat's actually doing a good job for once," Noire begrudgingly admitted.
Though she did not notice it, Vert actually gave a small smile upon hearing this. She never got the chance to consider the disturbing fact that she was feeling something akin to pride for the boy however as another wave of fans mindlessly ran towards her.
As the fighting dragged on, it became increasingly clear that the boy's annoyance tactic was turning the tide of the battle in their favor. With K-Sha rapidly losing her sanity and control, the Swarm began to lose their cohesiveness as a result. More and more of the fans started to revert back into their feral state as they began to attack anything within their sights with reckless abandon. Soon enough, Vert and the Hunters only had to deal with the nearby fans that happened to catch sight of Noire as the rest of the Swarm began to slowly tear itself apart.
"I don't believe it!" the former pilot Hunter exclaimed, taking in the incredible sight of the enemy army destroying itself. "We might actually make it out of this alive!"
All of the other Hunters responded to this with a loud groan. When their unofficial leader gave them a confused look, the Hunter closest to him spoke up.
"You just had to go and set off that flag, didn't you?"
"What flag?"
His question was answered when K-Sha let out her loudest scream yet.
"TO HELL WITH YOU! ALL I NEED IS MY DARLING NOIRE!"
The unhinged Gold Third member suddenly turned away from her opponent as she began to dive straight towards Noire instead.
"Watch out!"
Without really thinking, Vert threw herself in front of her friend to protect her from the dive-bombing Yandere. Time seemed to temporarily halt in that moment as K-Sha flew down with a crazed look, Vert braced herself for the incoming impact, and Noire simply watched with growing horror.
Then the moment shattered as a blue-colored blur smashed into K-Sha's side and sent her crashing into one of the distant skyscrapers.
"Sorry I'm late," C-Sha announced as she landed, her own Gold Third form activated and glowing with energy. "I tried to get here as soon as I saw the explosions but the locals weren't being very cooperative."
Gravity reasserted itself over Vert as well as she fell into a heap from her unneeded body block. After quickly picking herself up and dusting off her dress, she looked towards their new arrival with a rather peeved look.
"Couldn't you have appeared a bit sooner?" she grumbled.
C-Sha gave a small laugh. "Careful there Vert. You're beginning to sound like Noire."
Before either goddess could shout an angry reply, K-Sha flew back to the battlefield as she looked down at her former leader with madness in her visible eye.
"C-Sha," she spat out. "I should have listened to B-Sha and eliminated you when I had the chance."
The buxom fighter looked up at her with a confused expression. "I don't remember B-Sha ever saying something like that." There was a brief pause before a figurative light bulb seemed to appear over her head. "Oh, wait! You're talking about the time we were playing Maryo Party, right? Man, you and B-Sha were really out for my blood then. It's too bad S-Sha sneaked a win while we were all busy fighting each other."
K-Sha responded by activating her weapon module's missile launcher.
"Die."
C-Sha just gave a small sigh to this before jumping into the air and kicking the warheads away from the tower with expert ease.
"It looks like I'll need to put you on some antipsychotics again," the Gold Third leader muttered as she landed gracefully, the missiles spiraling away before harmlessly exploding in the night sky.
K-Sha visibly shook with rage as she looked down at her scattered army. Her right eye glowed even brighter than before as she reasserted her will over her minions.
"Bring Noire to me at once!" she commanded. "Slaughter the rest!"
The fans immediately fell into ordered ranks again as they advanced upon the group as one.
"Where did that brat disappear to?" Noire complained, backing up with the rest of her team as the terrifying mob closed in on them.
A bright flash of green answered her as Sync appeared in front of them. Oddly enough, he was holding onto his N-Gear in his left hand. Looking closer, Vert also noticed that he was holding a strange swirling vortex of blue energy in his other hand. Unlike a certain famous ninja technique however, the blue orb looked more like some kind of miniature portal than an attack.
"Move!" he suddenly yelled, turning around to toss the vortex of energy in the direction of his group. Not surprisingly, Noire ended up being in the direct path of the throw as she gave a startled yelp and barely ducked under it in time.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?!" she cried out indignantly.
Sync did not bother to answer her as he instead kept his eyes on the blue vortex as it stopped to hover in the air just behind his allies.
"Keep it protected!" he said urgently, putting away his N-Gear before teleporting away towards K-Sha again without any further explanation.
Vert, Noire, C-Sha, and the Hunters all looked back at the slowly growing orb of blue energy with completely baffled looks. They did not get a chance to voice their confusion however as the first row of fans suddenly charged in.
"Take out the fans first, ask questions later!" Noire yelled out, turning back around towards her enemies. The rest of her teammates quickly faced the fans as well as they raised their respective weapons. With a shared battle cry, the group of heroes met the group of fans' head-on.
"Lacy Dance!"
"Rainy Ratnapura!"
"C-Buster!"
As the first wave broke like water before the onslaught of SP skills, Vert turned to Noire with a small grin.
"Seven hundred forty three," she said with a smug look.
Noire glanced back at her with an exasperated look.
"Are you seriously still keeping track of that?!"
"Of course," Vert replied. "You know as well as I do that I always play to win."
Noire offhandedly jabbed an approaching fan with her weapon while still glowering at Vert. "Oh, yeah? Well, too bad for you, I've already won that stupid contest seeing as how I'm the one who stopped those Alloy Gears!"
"That still only counts as three," Vert said with a smile.
Noire was just about to open her mouth to continue the banter when a loud psychotic laugh suddenly rang out across the courtyard. Looking towards the source, Vert saw something that nearly made her heart stop.
Hovering several hundred meters above the fan crowd, K-Sha triumphantly held the boy up by his neck with her right hand. Judging from his exhausted form, he had most likely closed in on the Yandere Queen to deliver another strike with his weapon before running out of energy to make his retreat. Whatever the case was, it was clear he was not going to last for much longer as K-Sha began to increase her grip on his throat.
"AHAHAHAHAHA! YES!" K-Sha crowed in twisted delight. "DIE! DIE YOU LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT! THIS IS YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR TRYING TO STEAL NOIRE AWAY FROM ME!"
Even with the air being squeezed out of him, Sync continued to struggle desperately against his captor. However, his lack of strength coupled with the interference of having K-Sha's Gold Third energy so close to him made it impossible for him to teleport away. Before long, his Share Blade fizzled out completely as his movement became weaker and weaker.
With another psychotic laugh, K-Sha looked her victim directly in the eye with a sadistic grin.
"I'm going to enjoy feeling your pathetic neck finally snap. Hmhmhm... With you gone, nothing will stop me from being with my dear Noire forever and ever and-"
Her eyes suddenly widened in surprise as something impacted against her body. Unconsciously dropping the boy, she slowly looked down to find a green spear piercing just enough through her energy shield to draw blood from her side. Before she could process anything else, the spear suddenly exploded into a massive gale as she found herself being flung into the sky by the hurricane-force winds. With a final enraged scream, the crazed Yandere disappeared completely into the darkness above.
Meanwhile, Sync found himself falling through the sky with no one left holding him. His fall was short-lived however as a firm hand grabbed onto his left arm. Slowly looking up with bleary eyes, he was surprised to find Vert in her HDD form holding onto him. More surprising, however, was the fact that her normally serene expression was replaced with a fearsome look as she glared up to where K-Sha had been just moments before.
"I am -not- going to let you force me into a bad ending this early on," she growled out, much to the confusion of Sync.
After a long moment, her expression slowly softened as she looked down at the stunned boy with a concerned look.
"Are you okay?"
Sync just gave a short nod, obviously still shocked that she had been the one to save him. After a rather awkward moment between the two, he spoke up again in hoarse whisper.
"She's not going to be held up there for very long," he croaked, still managing to inject a bit of levity into his voice despite his current state. "We should probably group back up before she gets back."
With a nod, Vert lowered her other hand for him to grab onto. Carrying him below her with both arms, the CPU began her descent towards their understandably stunned group down below.
Luckily, none of the fans were in any state to stop them as they flew over the crowd. The sudden shock of losing their hive leader seemed to have completely shut down the fans for the moment as they simply stared forward in a blank daze. Of course, Vert was not so optimistic as to think they were in the clear just yet as the fans were sure to be reawakened as soon as K-Sha got back. With that in mind, she cast a barrage of wind spells as she flew by to knock down as many of the currently defenseless fans as she could.
When the two eventually landed onto the ground again, Noire was surprisingly the first one to walk up to the boy while the others just watched with their mouths still open. Before anyone could react though, the twin-tailed goddess raised her hand and brought a fist down onto his head.
"Stop trying to get yourself killed, you little brat!" she yelled out. "I already told you that I'm the one who's going to be the one to kill you!"
Sync just rubbed his head with a sheepish smile while Noire turned away with a classic Tsundere huff. Knowing that this was simply her friend's way of expressing her relief, Vert passed off the violent greeting with a small laugh as she turned off her HDD.
"Now what?" one of the Hunters asked. "We've defeated the fan leader, right? Does that mean we've won?"
C-Sha shook her head. "I highly doubt K-Sha's out of this yet. If anything, I'd say all we did was to make her more angry."
"You're kidding!" the lead Hunter exclaimed. "Lady Vert's attack just now looked like the perfect climactic finisher!"
Noire gave a large sigh before speaking up.
"K-Sha's Gold Third energy is linked to Lastation's shares like mine," she explained. "That means that whatever powers I have, she has it as well. And all of you saw what I was capable of against those Alloy Gears earlier. As much as I hate to admit this, K-Sha's more or less invincible right now."
An ominous silence fell over the group for a brief moment before another Hunter spoke up.
"So you're saying she hasn't even used her full power yet?"
The Lastation CPU nodded. "More than likely she just doesn't know how to. But knowing her, she'll probably figure it all out through pure instinct."
"Also we're at the final stretch of our mission," Sync finally spoke up, his voice slowly starting to recover a bit. "It'd make sense for the final boss to unleash her final form now."
Noire rolled her eyes at the fourth-wall breaking but otherwise said nothing.
"Any chance you could use your Next-Form again?" Vert asked hopefully.
Her friend shook her head. "I used everything I had during the Alloy Gear fight. I don't think I can even activate my regular HDD right now."
Before the group could say anything else, a massive clap of thunder suddenly echoed from above. Looking up in surprise, the heroes saw a huge swell of storm clouds gathering around the city as lightning began to flash across the sky as well.
"...Gotta give her props for knowing how to make a dramatic re-entrance," Sync muttered.
K-Sha took this moment to slowly descend from the dark clouds gathered around her. As her glowing form came into view, Vert saw that the small wound she had inflicted was already gone as the only trace of her attack was a tiny tear in the red jacket. Her attention was quickly drawn elsewhere though as she saw the full visage of the Yandere Queen's ultimate form.
Fitting with Noire's explanation of their linked share energy and her general obsession with the CPU, K-Sha was wearing what was undeniably Noire's base processor units over her already existing armaments. The only thing she lacked was the black plug suit but other than that, she looked like a remarkable copy of the Lastation CPU in her HDD form.
"Heh," Sync suddenly let out, taking in the boss's final form with an amused smile. "A Yandere Queen cosplaying as a cosplay-obsessed CPU. How... appropriate."
Noire did not bother to yell at the kid as she was too busy watching K-Sha as she summoned an energy sword to her right hand. The weapon looked nearly identical to the one Noire used in her HDD form but its edge glowed with a golden light rather than its usual blue sheen. With her golden Uzi still in her left hand, the Yandere Queen swept both her weapons in a dramatic flourish.
The mass of fans below her suddenly came to life again as their eyes glowed brighter than ever before. Even the ones who had been knocked unconscious rose back up as K-Sha's newfound power roused them all back into her service. In a matter of seconds, the group once again found themselves completely surrounded as the entirety of the Swarm rose up against them.
"Well... we're fucked," the lead Hunter said, summing up their situation quite nicely.
Vert, Noire, C-Sha, and the Hunters all looked around with nervous gazes as the mass of fans and a super-powered Yandere closed in on them. However, their fearful reverie was quickly broken when Sync gave a soft laugh. As everyone around him gave him a baffled look, he shakily brought himself into a combat stance as he reactivated the Share Blade on his arm.
"Come on guys," he called out, still managing to sound cheerful despite his exhaustion. "We can take them."
Noire gave him an incredulous look. "Have you lost your mind?! There's no way we can take on these numbers in our current state! Especially not with K-Sha all powered up like that!"
Sync widened his smile as he gave her a backwards glance.
"That's why I called for back-up," he said, pointing behind them with his thumb.
The rest of the group turned around just in time to see a bright flash of light coming from the swirling blue vortex they had completely forgotten about until now. As they watched, the mass of energy seemed to collapse in on itself before a giant blue crystal suddenly warped in to take its place. Levitating in the air with a golden ring encircling the middle of its diamond-shaped structure, Vert immediately recognized the object as something she had once seen before in Nepgear's laboratory.
"Is that...?"
Sync gave a cheery nod. "Yup. A pylon."
Before anyone could even blink, three bright streaks of light appeared before the alien crystal as they quickly began to take form. In a few seconds, the warp-in reached its conclusion as a trio of very familiar figures slowly came into view of the stunned group.
"Hm. It seems we've arrived just in time," a cool, mature voice spoke out.
"Goodness," the person next to her exclaimed. "This is a lot more fans than I expected. Do you really think we can defeat them all, sis?"
"Don't worry!" an energetic third voice responded. "This is nothing compared to all the monsters we had to fight during our battle with Kurome! This will be a cup of pudding compared to that!"
"It's piece of cake, Ms. Neptune," Sync corrected, greeting the surprise reinforcements with a cheerful wave. "Though I guess a cup of pudding would be easier for you to finish."
With a loud laugh, Big Neptune walked into full view as the light around her completely vanished. Next to her, Neptune and Nepgear followed suit with both their HDD activated and all of their processors fully equipped for battle.
There was a long silence as K-Sha, the heroes, and the fans all stared at the new arrivals in surprise. Not surprisingly, Neptune was the one to break the calm. The adult-looking Neptune that was. Er... the adult-looking Neptune that wasn't Purple Heart to be more exact. Good goddesses, that's a lot of Nep-
"Alrighty then!" Big Nep shouted, cutting completely across the narrator's complaints (rawr). With a large, confident smirk, she pointed out dramatically towards the crowd of fans before her. "I hope all of you are prepared cause the Planeptune cavalry has finally arrived!"
Unfortunately for her, the narrator was still sore about being interrupted and decided to end the scene right there.
"Wait, wha-"