Back at the Index System, Lisa and Lily worked together to slowly sneak their way towards the database, hiding behind or under whatever they could whenever they came across workers of the system. Not much really happened as they moved around, with some small bits of chit chat among the crew being the only thing besides the eerie quiet of the system.
"So, did you hear? The Head of Development, Lisa Loud, apparently was forced to become part of the Index System to remove records of her previous rampage!"
"That's just a bunch of gossipy nonsense. Think about it! Why would the Index System hire a psychopath under their board? Their job is to run society, not destroy it!"
"But she has the "Mad Scientist" Cliche!"
"Doesn't mean she ever went "Mad" before. And even if she did, she wouldn't be alive to tell the tale: any "Mad Scientist" who goes "Mad" is terminated at once, Maverick or not."
"Don't pay attention to their words," Lily whispered to her older sister. "We got a mission to do, so let's keep moving."
"R... Right."
And so the sisters kept going, heading deeper and deeper across several rooms filled with laboratories until, eventually, they reached the one they were looking for. A giant metallic door with several locks connected to it, and a number pad next to it.
"You entered the database before, have you not," Lily blurted before facing the Mad Scientist. "Sister?"
Lisa lowered her eyelids... then walked to the pad and input a specific code in it.
This caused a red light in the door to turn green shortly before the locks opened on their own, slowly but surely causing the metallic door to open itself, allowing entrance into the database to the sisters.
The database itself resembled a large, mostly grey room filled with computers, cables, computers connected to cables, and a gargantuan monitor connected to all of it, the tubes on it showing some sort of energy entering and leaving it as it streamed all over the room. Some of the cables were even found right on the floor, some of which the sisters had to travel through carefully so as to not destroy.
"This is the Index System Database. The single largest collection of all the information related to those living in Royal Woods. Those who leave have their information erased, and those who enter have all their data assembled here," Lisa explained as she walked closer towards the giant monitor. "Many things can be done from this room. From adding information about a brand new Cliche, or updating the information of a certain citizen of Royal Woods, or even..."
Lisa paused and lowered her head.
"Casually changing someone's designation with the push of a button."
Hearing her sister's troubled tone, Lily faced her. "It's not your fault that you changed Lincoln's designation, sister. You simply wanted him to be freed of the Index System's injustice, like everybody wishes for their families at least once. Right now, we can't waste time pondering about what has already happened. Only what we need to do now."
Lisa took a deep breath, narrowed her eyes, and pushed some buttons, summoning a screen that showed something called "Project Training Arc" with several Trainerbots on the bottom of the screen. But what caught Lisa's attention was something on the corner: a timer that revealed something very interesting about this project.
Days since activation: 14.
"As I expected, the data about the Trainerbots was never erased after Project Training Arc resulted in a robot war, it was simply frozen in stasis while the Trainerbots were left out of commission and Mrs. Shrinivas reactivated it!" Lisa stated as she began pushing some more buttons. "This is the data that all Trainerbots are connected to, so if we deal with this conglomerate of data, all the Trainerbots should deactivate immediately."
A small bar appeared in the middle of the screen, saying:
"Are you sure you wish to erase all the data of this project?"
Lisa immediately pressed "yes", and this brought up another screen:
"The erasure of the data of this project will subsequently shut down all Trainerbots for good. Are you sure you want to erase the data?"
"For crying out loud, of course I do!" Lisa yelled as she pressed yes again. "They never should've been reactivated in the first place!"
"That's a matter of opinion."
Lisa winced before jumping back, narrowly dodging an energy scythe that clung to the ground and sent shockwaves across the room, somehow not damaging the large monitor as it shook, then levitated.
"Sorry to interrupt your little sabotage attempt, Head of Sabotage."
The scythe returned to the hand of its own, who was none other than the Head of Termination, who flew down before pulling down her hood... revealing she looked just like Nurse Sue.
"But I promised Shrinivas that I wouldn't let anybody ruin her little scheme."
Back at Sue Industries, Mrs. Shrinivas sat down the ground as she waited for the countdown on the erasure of all the data on the Mary Sue project. She felt a bit of melancholy as this happened, but she knew that if her plan was to succeed, her connection to Nurse Sue had to be erased.
"Well, Nurse Sue, it's been a long, crazy ride, but it's time to put an end to all of it," she told to herself. "You sure were a good pawn when you were still alive, but I can't allow anybody to know I was anywhere near you for your crazy look into the history of Cliches. So, farewell, Nurse Sue."
*BOOM!*
Mrs. Shrinivas stood up and dusted herself, placing her index and middle finger on her forehead, causing her eyes to glow light blue as one of the Trainerbots chasing Carlota and crew spoke with her voice:
"Attention, children, you appear to have misunderstood my intention with you. I didn't say you won't get far away from here."
Suddenly, some Trainerbots appeared at the entrance, forcing Carlota to stop and take the kids out before transforming back into her humanoid form.
"I said you weren't going to get out of here in general."
The other Trainerbots arrived as well, surrounding the group in a circle and bringing them all together as the robots got closer and closer. The robots came closer and closer, prompting the group to back away into a corner... until suddenly, the entire building changed colors, followed by walls developing between the groups, separating Clyde and Carlota from Ronnie Anne and Cristina.
"What happened?!" Clyde exclaimed.
"I separated them."
From the ground emerged a familiar figure, who then trapped the Trainerbots with a snap of her fingers, summoning structures that clung to the robots and paralyzed them. After that, she floated up, and turned to the duo, who recognized her as...
"Darcy?!"
Lisa and Lily kept dodging the swings from the Head of Termination to the best of their ability, the genius baby making her robotic crib shoot rockets at the woman to try distract her, but alas, she just sliced them in half, unflinching as they exploded near her.
"You know, I don't think you appreciate what I have to do in order to keep this place running," the Head of Termination smirked. "So many people have to die just because they refuse to stick to what they already know. No, instead they have to adapt, to change, to innovate. And that leads them into trouble."
Lisa gritted her teeth. "Maybe if they knew about Mary Sue-"
"Chaos would unfold! Anarchy would become the new norm!" the Head of Termination yelled. "Or what, can you seriously tell me that the idiotic sheep who form all of society can fathom the idea of a being as powerful and as horrible as Mary Sue!?"
The woman slammed her scythe against the ground, once again sending shockwaves that this time struck Lily's crib, causing it to lose power and collapse. The genius baby tried her hardest to reactivate her machine, but unfortunately, the Head of Termination got to her first.
"D'aw, look at this cute little thing! Trying to avoid the inevitable!"
Lisa immediately lunged at the woman. "Leave her alone!"
*CRUNCH!*
Lily watched in horror as the woman's scythe ran cleanly through Lisa's chest, impaling the Mad Scientist and keeping her in the air as the Head of Termination gave a mocking smirk. She then spun the scythe around before swinging it, causing Lisa to slide off and roll away, splattering blood until she stopped.
"Lisa!" was all Lily could cry before the woman grabbed her and lifted her.
"Don't worry, her death was totally coming," the Head of Termination stated. "Given everything she did, both prior and after becoming one of the Heads of the Index System, death was the only possible end for her."
Then, the Head of Termination walked to the bleeding scientist and stomped on her back, keeping her on the ground as she listed:
"Messing with the Designation system, restarting the Trainerbot project without question, developing the Cliche Erasing Weaponry without regret, even killing the previous Head of Designation in one of your Mad episodes. You never had a right to be here with the other Heads, but you had to take responsibility for killing someone so innocent."
The woman took a deep breath and shook her head. "And to think, he was your own grandfather. I can see why your family hates you now."
Then, she prepared to punt.
"Why they'd be more than happy to see you die!"
The woman kicked Lisa straight into a column, causing the scientist to slump down and spit out blood, all the while Lily shed tears and cried like an actual baby.
"Don't worry, Shrinivas already had plans to help you recover from this ordeal," the Head of Termination hissed. "Mostly by ensuring you never remember this wretched child."
Lily gasped and Lisa raised her head, eyes wide with shock.
"The Head of Remembrance is very good at erasing someone's history from the records. Someone had to erase my history, after all. And once your sister's history has been erased, your memories of her will go too. So, no need to worry about that."
And as the woman kept talking and talking, Lily tried desperately to get her to release her, causing Lisa to slowly stand up, gritting her teeth as blood emerged from the edges of her mouth...
And her eyes began to turn bloodshot...
Back with Ronnie Anne and Cristina, the girls looked at the walls that suddenly enveloped between them, staring at them as they tried to find a way out, but found none... unfortunately too, since things got weird afterwards: the walls gained faces on them, each resembling Darcy's face
"What the hell is going on?!" Ronnie Anne snapped, standing in front of Cristina. "Is this another one of Shrinivas' tricks!?"
"Relax, I'm on your side," Darcy's faces spoke in unison. "I'm here to tell you that alone, you won't be able to beat Shrinivas. In order to do that, you'll have the dig out a technique long lost to time."
"Long lost to time?" Cristina asked.
"Back when the world was still getting used to Cliches, one ability shared by all was developed in order to try and make the most out of the powers everyone got," the Darcy faces narrowed their eyes. "However, knowledge about it was soon outlawed due to the high risk it possessed, and the great damage it was capable of doing. However, at this point, I don't think there's any other way to put a stop to Shrinivas' insane schemes."
Ronnie Anne and Cristina exchanged looks, and after nodding in agreement, the former asked:
"What is this technique you're talking about?"
The Darcy faces smiled in relief, and outside, Clyde and Carlota watched as the walls surrounding Cristina and Ronnie Anne glowed, then exploded, allowing a brand new entity to emerge from the rubble.
She resembled an even mix of the girls; sporting black hair with red highlights tied in a pair of puffy ponytails, tanned skin, a purple dress with a blue long-sleeved jacket and matching shorts, blue stockings and white shoes. As if that wasn't enough, she also had Ronnie Anne's buckteeth and was floating just like Cristina.
The entity winked at the shocked duo, then summoned an electric version of Cristina's bow and arrow, right before shooting a pair of arrows at the duo... causing them to feel refreshed.
She promptly followed by shooting arrows at the paralyzed robots, except instead of being refreshed, they exploded into bits.
"What happened?" Carlota blurted before facing the girl. "Who are you?"
The girl chuckled. "I'm a mix of Ronnie Anne and Cristina. You can call me Cristalda, or just Cristal for short."
As for Shrinivas, the woman stomped the ground, trying and failing to regain visual with the Trainerbots.
"Come on, pick up the signal you buckets of bolts!" she yelled. "What's the point of bringing you back from the brink of the scrapyard if you won't do what I say!?"
But suddenly, she felt the robots explode, causing her to develop a headache and make her step back.
"Gahk! They destroyed the Trainerbots?! But none of their Cliches should've been strong enough to handle the lot I sent after them!" she yelled. "Unless..."
Shrinivas' eyes widened in shock, and she wasted no time taking out her phone and making a call:
"Nurse Sue, answer me! I get the feeling a Wild Card has entered the struggle, tell me you managed to do your part and get rid of the insiders!"
Garbled gibberish came out the other end, gibberish that did nothing but enrage the woman.
"What do you mean they're still alive!?"
The monitor of the Index System stood broken, sparks coming out of it as the final screen before turning off showed the Trainerbot project having been shutdown. As if that wasn't enough, Nurse Sue had her phone stolen by Lisa, who also snatched Lily and placed her on a door to allow her to escape as the little scientist soon jumped back to the scene, just in time to see the Head of Termination watch the wreckage in horror.
"The database... all the information about the people of Royal Woods... gone in an instant!"
The woman summoned her scythe and faced Lisa, who had her head hanging low.
"Do you have any idea what you've done you little shit!? Are you mad!?"
Lisa laughed, her giggles soon turning into demented cackle as she gripped the phone tightly.
"Why yes... I am..."
*CRACK!*
"I am so mad..."
The broken phone hit the ground, and Lisa adjusted her glasses with her injured hand as Nurse Sue noticed, to her horror, the sheer expression of madness that her face sported right now.
"In more ways than one!"
