Disclaimer : Ah! My goddess does not belong to me.
Ceroxon asked me if I could do a fusion version of my winter special.
-oOoOoOo-
In the living room, Urd was currently trying to convince Keiichi to buy her some VHS cassettes from her favorite period drama series, while Skuld could be heard cajoling the middle sister out in the hallway, "Big Sis! I have something to show you!"
A little bit later, an explosion from Skuld's room made Keiichi and Urd stop and look towards to the youngest Norn's room.
"Should we do something?" Keiichi asked.
"They're fine. Belldandy's defensive spells are second to none. I'll bet anything that right about now, she's trying to comfort Skuld because her new special invention blew up in her precious Big Sis's face," Urd answered. "Now, let's get back to business. I need some cash because I want to read the interviews in the journal that comes with the special limited edition release of Winter Storm…"
-o-
In Skuld's room, a woman was sprawled out on the floor. She had long, dark brown hair with four hair antenna. The marks on her face were distorted blobby diamonds. She was clothed in a blue vest with a gold sawtooth pattern at its edges over a white blouse, with a bright red skirt over black leggings.
"That wasn't supposed to explode,' Skuld thought 'Big Sis, where are you?"
'"I'm right here, Skuld… where are you?' Belldandy thought.
'I'm lying in the middle of my room and… Wait, I can't actually hear you. Are those your thoughts?' Skuld thought.
'That would seem to be the case… also, I believe I am exactly where you think you are, and for some reason, I can not move,' Belldandy thought back.
In a sudden moment of insight, Skuld thought '... I… I think my invention fused our bodies, but not our minds!' Then, with her mind racing for a possible solution, something hit her, 'Maybe we can't move unless we agree on an action?!' Skuld thought, in a panic that was only growing worse as she continued to think of all of the ways this could go horribly, irrevocably wrong.
'Skuld,' Belldandy tried to get Skuld's attention, but her panic was growing worse, 'Skuld!' The jumble of images that were building up in Skuld's corner of their combined consciousness quieted down a bit, 'Let's give your theory a try,' Belldandy said. 'You raise up your left arm and I'll do the same with my right arm.'
No movement, save for breathing and blinking. Belldandy could feel Skuld try to move the left arm. 'Keep at it, Skuld. Now I'll try moving my left arm.'
Slowly, the woman raised her left arm up.
'Oh dear. You were right, Skuld. Perhaps our angels could move our body somewhere else or let the others know our predicament, but we would need to speak their names to summon them first,' Belldandy thought with some worry. 'Let's take a chance and try to call for help instead. That should be easier, as Urd and Keiichi should still be nearby.'
-o-
Outside the room was Keiichi, with Urd trying to drag him back to the Living room.
"I'm telling you, Keiichi, A sullen Skuld equals several rounds of playing dodgebomb followed by a severely one-sided game of chainsaw tag!" Urd cried out. "Let Belldandy cheer her up!"
"What if there's an emergency and-" Keiichi began.
An unknown voice from Skuld's room cried out, "help..." It sounded weak, like a person who was trying to escape from a sleep paralysis nightmare.
Shoving Keiichi aside, Urd said, "Alright, who entered my sister's room and… Who are you?"
Urd was puzzled at who she saw. The woman had weird goddess marks that held no meaning to Urd, not even a proper indication of rank. The clothing was a weird mishmash of the outfit Skuld had been wearing and Belldandy's official Goddess Attire.
"They kinda look like Belldandy and Skuld. You got another sister or cousin?" Keiichi asked.
"Cousins? Sure, but this isn't any of 'em," Urd answered as she looked at the mortal.
"Yes... Sisters," The woman uttered in an oddly robotic monotone.
"Sisters? What's that supposed to mean?" Urd muttered, rubbing her chin as she pondered the situation 'and what's up with that voice?' "What are you-"
Urd's eyes widened as a possibility came to her mind.
"Keiichi, I'm going to check her mental state. If I don't get moving in ten minutes, Call this number," Urd said, producing a note.
Keiichi took it and saw that it was a rather long sequence of digits. "Whose number is it?"
"Lind's. We know she'll pick up, if you call. Plus, she won't go off on her own tangent like Peorth would. Oh, yeah, tell her to bring in her unit's mentalist, too," Urd said before putting her hand on the prone woman's head.
-o-
Urd appeared in front of what seemed to be the temple, save for some trees and flowers that only appeared in Heaven. She walked inside and saw her sisters.
"Urd! What are you-" Skuld said out of instinct before Belldandy stood between the two.
"Urd, as you may have guessed, Skuld's invention somehow fused us in body, but not fully of mind. From a few tests, we learned we could only move a part of our body if we worked together," Belldandy quickly said. "Do you know a way to unfuse us?"
"Yeah, I know several potions that'll either unfuse you two, or complete the fusion, so it'll undo itself naturally," Urd answered, frowning a little bit as several memories flittered past her mind. Mostly memories of herself trying to discover which unfusing potion, if any, could split her into two people: one Goddess and one Demon.
Skuld, rather than hanging on to the conversation, started to explore her surroundings.
"Oh, good. How soon can you make one that will unfuse us?" Belldandy asked. She wanted to ask what seemed to bother Urd, but decided against it.
"Just a few hours, why?" Urd asked back as she saw Skuld peer into a room. When Skuld looked horrified and closed the door, Urd asked, "Wait a moment. What's in that room, Skuld? Your Belldandy-worshipping shrine?"
Skuld looked like a deer in the headlights. Nearly a minute of silence passed before Urd said, "Oh my... It really is! This I gotta-"
"Urd, this is neither the time nor the place to tease Skuld!" The middle Norn admonished, "Especially when we're in such a vulnerable state. Hild and Mara could easily try something while we are effectively immobilized!" Belldandy said in a stern tone.
"Tch, fine," Urd muttered. "I'll go make the potion. I'll have Keiichi watch your body."
"What if he-" Skuld began, still guarding her doorway before Urd had a chance to vanish, "-fondles Big Sis and my body?"
"He won't, Skuld. He's not the type to take advantage of someone who can't defend themselves, let alone move of their own free will," Belldandy answered.
Skuld looked away with a pout. For the briefest of moments, Belldandy thought she felt a pang of disappointment from Skuld. Even with this level of connection, it was impossible to say exactly what expectation the child held that had been shattered by that thought.
Belldandy felt like she had been also reminded of something, as well. While that something felt like it should have been unpleasant, those memories were strangely and frustratingly outside of her reach.
Instead of allowing such stray thoughts to consume her attention so completely, Belldandy decided to keep her focus on more immediate problems, like the familiar presence that had once again concealed itself outside of the temple.
-o-
After Urd took her hand away from the fused woman, The Norn of the past said, "Alright, she's a fusion of Skuld and Belldandy in body, but not in mind."
"So what do we call her?" Keiichi asked.
"Skul… dandy? ...I guess?" Urd asked back as she shrugged. "Anyways, you watch her and I'll be off to make the unfusing potion," The she turned quickly to do just that.
"Wait, Urd! I think I need help!" Keiichi said, grabbing onto Urd's arm.
"Oh, come on! What could you need help with? Skuld can't blow you up while she's fused with Belldandy!" Urd spat out. She wanted to hurry up and make the potion.
Right now the eldest Norn was more focused on getting things done quickly, since making the potion was the only thing that couldn't be rushed and there could be serious consequences for any delays.
"What if they need to go to the bathroom?"
"Is that really going to happen so soon? I'm mixing a potion! Let me at least get things started!" came the reply in a tone that practically screamed 'just let me do this already!'
"What about the daily purification ritual?" Keiichi asked.
Urd paused. "Huh… Good point," she said with a more neutral demeanor, 'Can't leave things alone THAT long once the synthesis is started,' then, in a more cheerful voice, she added, "Ya know what? Call Lind anyway. Explain what happened, and ask for her help. I'm sure she'd welcome an excuse to drop in again."
"Okay," Keiichi replied with a smile. He wasn't nearly as tense as he was a moment ago.
-o-
Back at the abandoned Arcade, Mara was in the manager's office, where she had repurposed the security monitors to display the incoming signals from the great variety of surveillance critters she had created over the last several months.
She was cackling loud and hard, almost uncontrollably, as the first real opportunity in weeks had finally presented itself. Skuld had knocked both herself and that wretched Belldandy out of commission for her! It was just Mara vs Urd, whose weaknesses she knew inside and out, and a Mortal that couldn't do anything about her if he'd tried.
She instantly stopped laughing and, rolling her eyes just a bit at that last thought, she pulled something out of her pocket. Opening the package revealed a new set of earplugs, which she jammed into her ears immediately before gathering up some key pieces of gear.
With her chosen equipment in hand, she took off out the window, flying under the cover of a curse. That curse altered the memory of anyone who saw her to recall only the image of a crow.
Off in a corner of the same Arcade, the diminutive avatar of the Daimakaicho peeked out from behind one of the arcade games and grinned wickedly, before her own image snapped away into her own, clandestine version of the dimensional slide.
-o-
As she touched down on the wooded hillside just outside of the vast grounds behind the temple, Mara set down her gear and started to unpack its contents.
The first thing she pulled out looked like a ski pole. Holding it out with both hands, like a dowsing rod, she turned slowly in place for about a minute. Then, finding a direction that seemed just right, she slowly walked forward with the same intent before feeling out a good spot and jamming it into the ground.
Holding her hands out, with palms facing towards the newly erected antenna, she started mumbling code speech. A dark red glow emanated from her hands and spread to the entirety of the device, which was jammed into a local ley line that passed directly under the residence.
The deeply red glow stuck to the surface of the antenna, resonating. It remained that way as she took her hands away from the device. With her highly specialized forced sleep program successfully set up, the red glow began to spread across the ground, making its way down towards the intended target.
The first task done, Mara smirked, thinking 'Nighty-night, ninjas'.
Walking back towards her pile of gear, the next thing she pulled out was a suit of lamellar armor similar to the gear of the local Samurai ancestry. However, this set was of demonic origin, based on Mara's own specifications. As she donned it, she gleefully imagined the looks on those idiot Goddess' faces as their good luck charm-based weapons would prove to have no effect.
As she was arrayed now, such paltry items couldn't physically touch her, nor would their good luck fields pass through the composition of overlapping panels, cut from a forgotten number of old, cursed Ouija boards.
As she put on the sculpted mask, itself made from a particle board composed of finely ground Ouija boards, she instantly achieved the look of the local Oni spirits. She chuckled evilly at a joke which popped up in her malicious mind, one that only she could have understood.
The next thing she pulled out were several different variations of traps, diorama cages and seals. These she hung from a belt and then strapped it around her waist. The "armor" she had on was supremely articulated, and she was particularly impressed that she didn't have to use an overt act of kinetic magic to reach it around herself. Such an act would have telegraphed her location for sure.
She then pulled out three two-foot length poles and fitted them together. Then, as the final piece snapped together, the resulting rod glowed with an unearthly light, which then faded away. This device was effectively a lightning rod, ensorcelled to enhance its function. It was there in case Urd had some way of avoiding her initial gambit of the night, which would be the last thing she had yet to unpack.
The final item she brought along with her was a boombox. Having two tape decks and a continuous play function, each deck was loaded with a 90-minute long Enka album, giving her around three hours to complete her mission Urd-free.
-o-
At the edge of the treeline, Mara held a standard issue viewscreen up to her face. The viewscreen was set to the dimmest usable display setting in order to reduce the glow that could potentially telegraph her position. She was cycling between different signal feeds from the assortment of camera critters she had permanently stationed around the periphery of the temple complex.
When she was satisfied that there was nothing new or out of place, she began her approach. Slowly and cautiously at first, she started out. As her progress continued uninterrupted, she increased her pace with ever increasing confidence. With her primary defenses in place, however, she was blissfully unaware of the various whirring and whooshing noises all around her.
A good number of those noises were clearly audible to the girl who was playing in the front of the house next door, which was a few hundred feet away when traveling from entrance to entrance by sidewalk alone.
Then Mara felt it. Something pelting down on her armor. 'It wasn't supposed to rain tonight,' she thought. Looking up, she saw them. There were several dozens of strange machines orbiting up above. Most of what she saw was up between two to five thousand feet above ground level, well beyond the focal length of any of the cameras with which her creations were outfitted. At least an eighth of their total numbers had closed in on her and were already a few yards over her head, "facing" her. Staying true to the standards of noise discipline, Mara could only think 'When the hell did they put THOSE there?'
The unwanted attention she was getting included one of the several beach ball-sized machines that seemed to be coordinating all of the smaller ones around it. Like the smaller ones, this one resembled the face of that lame soldier robot Skuld had made, with an even stranger shape of hat than the original. It was held aloft by maneuvering thrusters intermittently spraying jets of air downward.
Surrounding it were hordes of similar-looking, smaller tennis ball-sized mini-Banpeis, each with "arms" consisting of hexagonal disks that stuck out the way that an umbrella sticks up. Those appendages redirected the flow of their own maneuvering thrusters as well. Anytime one of the small ones changed direction, it looked like the "arms" shifted their position in concert with those movements.
Every one of the smaller Banpeis were dropping trinket-sized good luck charms over Mara's position, and then racing back to the strange hat on top of the beach ball-sized one to pick up another. The First Class Demoness instantly felt a sense of relief, given the nature of her armor, until the smaller robots ran out of good luck charms and swarmed her. Something didn't seem quite right about that, so instead of holding still to find out what was next, she high-tailed it towards the residence. Big mistake.
The moment she realized that mistake, however, was well after she had stepped onto a spell mandala disguised as a stepping stone on the path down to the residence. The program it was loaded with was a physical impulse type, and had sent her flying off into other traps of the same kind. She started to understand how the pinballs in the pinball machine felt when Lady Hild played with it back at the lair.
Trying to remain quiet with each hard landing she took was a feat in itself. With each new impulse type spell mandala she set off, another one of the orbiting task forces up above took notice of her encroachment upon their area of operations. When the chain-reaction of spell mandalas were done having their way with her, all of the tennis-ball sized flying Banpeis from the airspace above the temple grounds were swarming tightly around her like a plague of locusts.
Standing still and bracing for what she was expecting to be a massive explosion, Mara finally began to notice the feeling of some kind of rhythmic vibration in the air. 'These little shits aren't just good luck charm bombers! They're networked speakers, too! Heh, lucky I had earplugs after all… Wha?!'
The little ones started shining lasers at her. None of them seemed the least bit threatening, but Mara knew lasers that don't hurt you, are helping something else that's about to. She recognised that they were, indeed, target designators. Mara searched frantically around her for anything that could possibly be the next weapon she'd have to face. Nothing.
Then a flash of light came from all of the beach ball-sized Banpeis over her head, and her surroundings were unfamiliar all over again. 'What the hell is this?! First I'm getting juggled, and now teleportation rays?' With a quick reminder to herself that this was nothing compared to even the easiest elements of Jotunn basic training, her confidence once again returned to her 'I might just be able to do this after all!'
As she stepped forward, Mara's surroundings changed again, then again, and again, and again. With every attempt to step away from each destination point, The self-proclaimed greatest First Class Demoness started to sink ever so deeply into frustration and rage, and then, to despair.
It was soon becoming apparent that, even though she hadn't been sealed, she might as well have been. When she finally calmed down enough to try to think her way out of her predicament, she looked around and saw that she was now on the quad of the Nekomi Institute of Technology's main campus.
Popping up out of the ground before her, was something that just looked like a mechanical eyeball on a cranelike stalk, all in a chrome finish. It got close. Uncomfortably close, then it looked her up and down. 'Well, that's creepy. What's that little brat been reading lately, anyways?' In a crisp, robotic monotone, the eyeball device clearly announced "Analysis complete," and popped back into the ground from where it came.
Mara thought 'Oh, shit. What now?' before two large pillbox-shaped turrets popped up out of the ground, one on each side of her and started to rotate into firing position.
Even though she had her anti-luck gear on, she could feel every hair follicle on her body raising in response to the buildup of an intense energy field. With a sickening feeling settling into the pit of her stomach, Mara instantly knew the artillery batteries that sandwiched her in for what they were.
Standard issue, good luck field-emitting turbolasers.
Mara then uttered the one and only only thing she'd managed to vocalize throughout her attempted raid before she blacked out: "Mother-"
The resulting explosion caused by pure, coherent good luck energy slamming against a bad luck barrier and the hapless Demoness within, illuminated the late afternoon sky as if it were high noon. It could also be heard as far away as the train station three stops down the line from the closest terminal.
When the childlike avatar of Hild showed up to survey the damage, she couldn't help commenting, even though her subordinate was clearly going to be out of it for a good month and a half. "I told you to use some of your Demonite stash for that armor, Mara," After a heavy sigh, she continued "but you just had to insist on saving every little scrap you own for that compact cruiser you're never going to build. Tch. At this rate, even the Mortals will have personal spaceships before you do."
At that moment, the Celestial's gate system was activating, and a heavy presence could be felt materializing. Hild picked up Mara, with whatever pieces of her top Demoness' dignity that might have remained intact after this recent onslaught, and instantly teleported away.
With Skuld in no position to monitor her newest creations, the residents of the temple would remain blissfully unaware of the attempted incursion until well after the two Goddesses had been successfully separated.
-o-
Later that night, while Lind was scrubbing Skuldandy's back, Keiichi was waiting just outside the bathroom, just in case they needed him to retrieve something for them.
"I must admit, this is an unusual situation, but not one I'm unfamiliar with," Lind said. "You know how things can go wrong with training incidents and all," she explained, then asked, "But what invention could have caused this particular failed fusion?"
"Power… booster. Touched... at the same time," Skuldandy answered, a little less robotic than before.
"Oh. That's the first time I've ever heard of a power booster doing such a thing," Lind replied.
"Accidentally… crossed some wires with magic energy," Skuldandy answered.
"...I'll admit, I would have thought Hild would be behind such a incident... In preparation for an attack, perhaps?" Lind said, mostly to herself.
-o-
Outside the temple, a miniaturized-Chibi-Hild muttered with annoyance in her voice, "It was going to go down tonight, if it wasn't for those meddling kids..."
She was still holding onto one of the new temple defense automatons. It was a chibi doll of Urd.
As she thought about how an entire horde of these things had been programmed to home in on her location, only saying "Mommy!" over and over again, the little Daimakaicho wistfully thought to herself, 'I still can't decide if they were just being mean...' as she smiled and gently hugged the little doll.
"Mommy!"
-oOoOoOo-
Notes from HotelKatz :
Credits for this chapter belong to Ceroxon for thinking up the fusion and Worldbringer of Joseun for thinking up a way to make it different from the rest.
-oOoOoOo-
Tonight's raid was brought to you in near silence - Xindran
Worldbringer of Joseun also suggested the new series of airborne Banpei units and the turrets that make up the additional temple defenses, which were mostly built offsite to begin with.
Demonite, "Jotunn" as the name of one of the dark realm's military branches, and spaceships are from ZeroIQ's corner of the A!MG Multiverse.
And, yeah, that was me being mean to Hild… I am so gonna get it.
As far as the additional temple defenses goes, a special thank you goes out to Keiichi, who worked his ass off like he did for Belldandy's ring, to Urd, who kept him going with recovery potions, to Skuld, who used those earnings to purchase parts and tirelessly built like there was no future, and to the local Japanese economy, that still allows anyone to squeak by a living or even get ahead of the game on random part-time work, even overnight… I think we can all be jealous about that last part if it's still true.