===CH 12===

Battle at the Graveyard

AN: AN turned out longer than usual, can be found at the end of the chapter.

Arfoire vs Nepgear

Nepgear raved up her chainsaw like blade and charged towards Arfoire with a battle cry, red energy trailing after her.

Arfoire managed to block the attack with her spear but the chain of Nepgear's weapon was rapidly digging into the metal pole of her spear, forcing her to distance herself.

Arfoire used her skills and attempted to hide inside the dense black fog to come up with the best possible way of escape. "This isn't good..."

"I won't let you get away!" shouted Nepgear a few meters away and began glowing red together with her weapon. "Saw slash wave!"

The dark fog concealing Arfoire was pierced by a saw blade shaped energy blast that only barely missed her. The attack burned away some of the energy based fog and forced her to change her hiding spot.

"I've got you now!" shouted Nepgear already mid swing above Arfoire.

Arfoire brought up her spear to defend against Nepgear's blade from above. The energy chain on Nepgear's weapon quickly tore large fragments out of her spear's shaft. Her weapon snapped and only the nature of Gamindustri saved Arfoire from a potentially fatal wound as Nepgear's beam chainsaw tore across her torso from her right shoulder to her left hip.

The two parted again, or rather Arfoire fled as far as she could while Nepgear freed her weapon from the ground. The hit Nepgear had landed on her took away almost all of her HP and left behind a glowing pixilated line across her torso, whatever hit her next would either knock her out or outright kill her.

A huge wall of pitch black energy suddenly erupted behind her, just barely far enough away to not take her with it as collateral damage of either the blast or the earthquake that followed in its wake.

Her counterpart had fallen. She didn't need any further proof of that, the energy cutting the graveyard in half was confirmation enough.

The distraction of looking where the attack had ended however cost her dearly when she looked back to where her opponent stood a few seconds ago.

"Corrupted Blast!" Shouted Nepgear, her weapon glowing with red energy and only millimeters away from Arfoire.

Their weapons connected and both got enveloped in a bright explosion of negative energy that ignited all of the energy mist around them.

When the explosion and fire died down, only Nepgear was left in the epicenter. Unconscious, but fine otherwise.

Alpha Arfoire vs Alex

Arfoire was about to make contact with Alex when his mad grin spread to inhuman lengths and he muttered silently "Enter, Shadow Realm" and everything around her turned pitch black in a second. She could still see her opponent and herself almost as if they were glowing.

Alex slowly rose his scythe above his head, giving Arfoire and opening to strike. Which she used to its fullest, but her spear simply bounced off of his skin with dents in the plasma reinforced metal of it.

"Game over. Black Death." his scythe was embedded in the ground between her legs before she could do as much as blink. Her body split cleanly in two and fell to the ground just as a giant trench opened up in front of Alex's scythe, stretching far into the horizon and breaking his Shadow Realm skill in the process.

Black anti-share energy erupted from the trench, widening it even further and causing a strong earthquake when he pulled his scythe back out.

He sighted in disappointment and spoke. "I was hoping you'd dodge that one... what a letdown..."

He let his scythe fade away and made his way over to the unconscious form of Nepgear. Casting a healing spell beneath her in the meantime.

A pillar of black light shot towards the sky from his body and later revealed him in his normal form again.

"Damn.." he muttered, still feeling the remaining energy fading away from his body. "I could have found good use for this two centuries ago." He let his gaze wander around the graveyard until he found the other CPUs.

Raising his arm towards them he calmly commanded. "Heal"

A large green magic circle appeared beneath the unconscious CPUs, slowly purging the Anti-Share energy from their bodies. ' This is gonna take a while... but I think they'll make it.'

IF and Compa took the silence and green glow in the distance as a sign that the battle was over and walked over to Alex.

"What happened to you two just now!?" demanded IF the moment she was within Alex's hearing distance.

"Nepgear somehow accessed her SD form... And I guess I unlocked the next level of my SD form, Super Shadow Drive." Explained Alex

"What's wrong with Nep-Nep and the others?" asks Compa carefully.

"They were exposed to a large amount of anti-Share energy. I'm sure that the ones from my dimension will make a quick recovery, probably by tomorrow. However I'm not that sure about the ones from this dimension, they are a lot more sensitive towards this kind of energy. My personal optimistic guess would be that they'll have a 75% chance to make it without lasting damage." Explained Alex, taking notice of Alpha Histoire's approaching form not far away.

Histoire was a little worse for wear but aside for her somewhat torn clothes no further damage was visible on her. She appeared to be talking to someone telepathically.

Alex, IF and Compa remained silent and waited for Histoire to finish her conversation.

"Who were you talking to?" asked Alex eventually

"Kurome" answered Histoire after a moment

"Where's she?" asked Alex

"She's being held here at the graveyard as well, just somewhere underground. The one that captured her is apparently about to leave, she said that she'll try to break free as soon as she can." Explained Histoire.

"Alright, I'll wait for her here. Art of Transportation: Space Jump" A large purple magic circle slowly formed beneath everyone with the exception of Alex, who now stood in a hole within the magic construct.

The circle emitted a bright light before anyone could complain, leaving him alone on the graveyard.

A few more minutes passed mostly in silence until the ground suddenly began to shake violently beneath Alex, causing him to summon his HDD's wings and hover some distance in the air. "What's going on now?"

As if to answer his question a giant clawed arm broke through the ground and began to expand the hole until the form of dark purple became visible, breaking down into pixels a few seconds later.

The dust thrown up by the titan's digging eventually settled and revealed Kurome standing at the edge of the crater.

"It's been a while, Alex." Greeted Kurome upon spotting Alex. "I didn't expect you to wait here."

"Someone's got to make sure that you actually manage to break out of whatever prison you were trapped in." he said while landing near her and letting his wings vanish again. "Now, what exactly happened down there?"

"I got captured by a man in some odd black and white robes with a sword that allowed him to cast illusions. He was talking about using me to break into some kings palace. It sounded like he wanted to gain access to Celestia the way he described it." Explained Kurome.

"Was he strong? Anything else about his skills?" asked Alex

"Without question. I'd say he's at least as strong as you are at the moment, and I think he was still hiding some of his power."

An insane grin formed on Alex's face while Kurome described their new enemy. "I can hardly wait for him to show up again!" he laughed out, scaring away the last of the few remaining monsters in the graveyard.

"We should head back to Planeptune. I'm sure the others are already waiting for our return." Stated Kurome, stopping Alex.

"Probably. Art of Transportation: Space Jump!" Alex casted the spell and both of them vanished in a flash of purple light.

Edit 29.04.2021: Fixed some minor errors.
Removed the unnecessarily long A/N at the end of this Chapter.