Next week is my birthday, so why not do something nice and update one of the stories I almost never update here in ffnet?
Back at the Index System, the Head of Termination wobbled away from the database, blood limping down her body as she leaned against the wall, gritting her teeth as she managed to reach a closed room before falling down to her knee.
"Nurse Sue."
The woman stopped and turned around to see a certain girl emerge from the ground, staring at her with an unimpressed look.
"Shrinivas' little hellspawn, huh?" the woman scoffed. "How did you get in here? How did you get past the security system?"
"For someone who had little faith in the Index System, you sure overestimate how powerful its defense system really is," Darcy smirked. "All I needed to do was find someone with a Cyberspace Cliche, use my own Cliche to haunt the place and boom, free estate for all this place."
Nurse Sue chuckled. "And what are you gonna do?"
"Mom told me to come here to ensure that your existence would not jeopardize her plans once your utility officially expired," Darcy folded her arms. "And being beaten by Lisa going mad, as well as the erasure of the Trainerbot program, it means Mom has no more use for you."
"And what about the little shit Lisa?" Nurse Sue pointed out. "Why don't you go out to get her? Get rid of her once and for all!?"
"Mom still has use for her, which unfortunately doesn't apply to you either," Darcy leaned forward. "Former Head of Termination."
Before the woman could reply to this remark, Darcy summoned a spiked tentacle and impaled Nurse Sue across the chest, all the while she held a calm, neutral expression on her face. Once impaled, Nurse Sue slumped to the floor once she was released, and she put a hand on her stomach as she spat out blood.
"What... are you doing?! Trying to... kill me!?"
"I'm ensuring two things: the first is that I remove the loose thread known as your existence to mother's plan," Darcy raised her hand. "And the second..."
Darcy snapped her fingers, and Harbinger emerged from the ground, its eyes glowing as it scanned the downed woman.
"I'm helping Mom's plan by adding another Index Head to her masterpiece." then she smiled. "Don't worry, you won't feel hurt for long; once you're part of the hive mind, your consciousness will quickly be overpowered by the dozens, if not hundreds, of beings that Harbinger has absorbed, eventually you to stop thinking in order to survive the constant assault of verbal and visual stimulation."
Nurse Sue gasped, and the last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was Harbinger preparing to absorb her into its hive mind...
And meanwhile, Mrs. Shrinivas groaned and rubbed her forehead as the screen in front of her revealed that the info on the Trainerbot Program had been deleted, repeatedly showing a "DATA NOT FOUND" symbol before she pressed a button and turned off the monitor.
"It's pretty frustrating, isn't it?"
The woman turned around and saw Carlota, Clyde, and Cristalda approach her, the last one brandishing her bow and arrows as Clyde added:
"To have your plans foiled after you thought you had it worked out?"
Mrs. Shrinivas, however, wasn't all that bothered. In fact, she even flashed a bemused smile. "You really think this is the end? That I don't have a backup plan just in case things go wrong?"
"I mean, yeah, isn't that how things usually go in these situations?" Clyde raised an eyebrow. "Haha! I have this ultimate weapon that could never potentially backfire on me! Let's focus on maximizing its output and not creating a backup or anything that could help me regain momentum in my investigation in case the protagonists destroy it!"
"I don't know what's more insulting; the fact you have the gall to mock archetypal scientist ideals like that, or the fact your mockery is spot on."
Carlota and Clyde exchanged a high five, and then Mrs. Shrinivas quickly noticed Cristalda looking at her.
"Is that... a fusion?"
"Indeed I am!" Cristalda boasted. "I'm the perfect combination of Ronnie Anne and Cristina, Cristalda!"
"So someone other than Darcy and I know about the fusion technique," Shrinivas looked elsewhere. "I will have to look into it to see if there's somebody else spoiling the technique behind my back."
"Ha! Don't make us laugh!" Cristalda stated. "You really think we're going to let you go after trying to kill us?!"
"You're definitely going to try to stop me, but that's not going to happen," Shrinivas folded her arms behind her back. "I have many things left to do in order to ensure that the Index System is taken down, and I'm afraid I can't waste any more time talking with you."
Suddenly, a portal opened underneath Mrs. Shrinivas.
"Ciao."
The woman entered the portal just as Cristalda shot an arrow at her, destroying the monitor instead as the portal closed.
"Damn it! We missed!" Cristalda snapped. "Well, at least we're still alive and know about the Mary Sue thing."
"Yeah, but we can't just casually leak this information to anybody," Clyde argued. "We should go tell this to Lincoln at least for a start, and then see what Mrs. Shrinivas does next after that."
"Good idea! Let me call Lincoln-!"
*RIIIING!*
"Or let Lincoln call me instead," Cristalda chuckled before taking out and answering her phone. "Hello, Lincoln? Yeah, I fused with Ronnie Anne, but that's a long story. Anyway, what's up?"
Cristalda heard Lincoln from the other end of the call... and she began to crack as she grew more and more worried, eventually splitting back into Ronnie Anne and Cristina shortly afterwards.
"Whoa, what happened?!" Carlota asked as she ran to the duo's side.
"Let's just say Lincoln had to reveal about something he and Cristina would rather not reveal by themselves," Ronnie Anne answered. "And before you ask, the information Cristalda got came to both me and Cristina. Anyway, we should better go back home, right now."
"I can turn into a truck and drive away, but that's going to take me a while," Carlota explained. "I can't get any faster than I already am."
Ronnie Anne hummed... then snapped her fingers. "Fuse with Cristina, then!"
Carlota and Cristina's eyes widened
"Excuse me," Clyde blurted. "Fuse with her?"
"While we were trapped in those columns, they gained faces and teached us a technique that allowed us to converge together and create a stronger person, hence how Cristalda was created," Ronnie Anne explained. "Look, it's a long story, but the point is that if we can use that technique with Carlota and Cristina, the latter's ability to fly might be able to carry over to her vehicle form."
"That makes no sense," Carlota pointed out. "My truck form is pretty heavy, you'd need me to turn into a plane or something, which isn't the branch of Vehicleshifter I'm part of."
Suddenly, Cristina flew to Carlota and grabbed her hands. "Carlota, please! What Lincoln is trying to explain isn't something he nor I can mentally explain by ourselves! We need to be with each other, or else we might break down!"
Carlota frowned. "Is it really that bad?"
Cristina nodded, tears forming in the corner of her eyes. Seeing that, alongside Clyde and Ronnie Anne's worried looks, caused the older girl to sigh:
"Fine, let's do it."
Meanwhile, with Mrs. Shrinivas, the woman sat down on her chair, rubbing her forehead as Darcy emerged from a wall nearby her.
"I take it that the visit to Sue Industries didn't go well?"
"No, it went just about what I expected; I managed to take some steps forward, but the ones working against us did so too," Mrs. Shrinivas sighed. "In fact, they somehow managed to discover the ability of fusion, an ability long lost to time that the Index System buried deep underground to avoid its innovation from threatening their control. Nobody but us should know anything about it..."
The woman faced her daughter. "Do you have anything to do with that?"
Darcy stared wordlessly at her mother, until she eventually continued:
"No matter, the information at the industry was at least mostly deleted, but so was the Trainerbot Program, meaning one of our plans has taken a big hit," Mrs. Shrinivas folded her arms. "The "Trainerbot Future" can no longer become canon, meaning we'll have to find another way to ensure the Index System ceases to exist."
"Geez, that's sad," Darcy shrugged and floated away. "Well, call me when you get an idea, though who knows how long that will take-"
"I already have one."
Darcy stopped and turned around to meet her mother's confident smile. "The heroes are going to grow stronger and stronger no matter what we do, correct? Well, that simply means we need to keep an eye on them. In other words, we need a spy."
Mrs. Shrinivas narrowed her eyes. "And I know just who to call."
The woman snapped her fingers, and from the shadows emerged a cartain paper-using redheaded boy.
"Chandler?!" Darcy exclaimed.
"I figured it was about time to give him some plot relevance," Mrs. Shrinivas quipped as Chandler stepped forward. "Now, my dear Chandler, I apologize for not giving you more things to do, but you know, I'm a busy woman."
"Yeah, I know, Mom," Chandler rolled his eyes. "Just tell me what you want me to do."
"A bunch of jerks associated with "the main character" have been acting as thorns on my side for a while now," Mrs. Shrinivas tented her fingers. "I believe they go to... what was that place called again? Cliche Academy? Cliche High? No matter, go there, find the main character, and report to me what you find. Understood?"
The redheaded boy folded his arms behind his back and stated:
"Leave it to me."
