Raise Your Hell

by TheLandMaster45

What exactly a Diver is to do when a force with a sick sense of humor decides to toss her off to a world where half of humanity is worth less than the dirt they die on, and the only hope for a red planet is a reckless band of orphans who fight with the help of demons from the past? Why... Raise hell, of course!

1. Chapter 1

Hey everyone, the rewrite is FINALLY finished!

There's some closing words on the author's notes below, so do have a gander at them.

Anywho, let's go!

~O~

"There you go, all the parts and resources you requested."

"T-Thank you so much! Now our Force can finally get started!"

"Hah, no worries, kid, happy to help the noobies!"

Serena's amusement was infinite as she stared down at the young man whose avatar was only about a third the height of her own. Granted, he was a humanoid turtle, but it still made him downright adorable with how nervous he was, especially with how he was avoiding to look up at her so as to not stare at her chest from below.

Still, even her own sense of humor had limits, so the solo Diver promptly crouched down into a squat so she could look at her fellow player at a level closer to "eye-to-eye", giving the demi-turtle a friendly smile and a pat on the shoulder. "Alright, you guys stay safe out there, and lemme know if anyone gives you shit, 'kay?" she asked warmly.

"Y-Yeah, sure!"

"Bueno. Off you go, then!"

"Goodbye, Miss Durandal!"

And with that, the group of players dashed back to their transport, a Gallop-class colored as, what else, a turtle. Serena meanwhile, stood there and watched the land battleship slowly speed away from her Nest, until it finally disappeared over the horizon, following the setting sun that was also dipping beneath the line. Her task done, the oni Diver turned right around and walked back into her base, being mindful to power down her turrets and order her M-Doll Soldiers back inside with a quick command input as she waltzed through the camouflaged entrance of her base. A short walk later, and the rocky ground and walls of the cave gave way to polished metal surfaces and artificial lighting, which soon opened up to the inside of her Force Nest, her own little "home away from home".

Considering she was a one-woman Force, Serena had bought out a large Nest, meant for multi-members and with plenty of expansion room. It ate up a significant portion of her Build Coins reserves, both to furnish the damn thing and to get the necessary room and hangar upgrades to store all her "stuff" inside, but by the end of the year, she had done it: a fully functional, fully operational base for her to deploy from, away from all the hubbub of the main gathering areas.

Aka, the best place for an information broker to stay.

Not to say she had splurged a lot in terms of visual presentation. The interior was comfortable, yes, especially with all the couches and cushions she had spread all over the place, plus the bar and kitchen she still felt confused about having in a game world, but that's about all there was in terms of accommodations. The rest of the interior was instead filled with a mish-mash of machinery, metal platforms and stairways, computers… overall, it looked more like a giant workshop than a proper Nest.

The inner rooms were no better, either, being mostly used as storage space for all the stuff Serena had built, purchased or traded throughout her entire time inside GBN, mostly Gunpla parts.

A lot of Gunpla parts. That TR-6 [Inle] unit sure took up a lot of room…

Her most treasured possession, however, was front and center inside the Nest. Sure, it took up space that could have been used in making the base more liveable, and was creepy as all hell, what with it just laying there, kneeling on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut… but it was also her creepy as hell baby, so if someone had trouble with him, they had to bring it up to her first.

And it wasn't just her Gunpla that was intimidating.

Idly, as she passed by the bar and leaned over to grab a bottle of soda (God forbid alcohol be allowed in the game), Serena stared at the reflection of her own avatar, a smile gracing her face as she drank in the details she had spent so long designing with GBN's character creator: tall and muscular, easily crossing the two-meter mark and with a physique she couldn't dream of achieving in real life, but easily made in a virtual game. Her choice of attire of a black tank top, green cargo pants, large boots and a black-and-gold coat thrown over her shoulders like a cape matched perfectly with her hazel-colored skin, and alongside the X-shaped scar across her face, gave Serena that hard-boiled, tough-as-nails look she loved, plus served as a small dash of "realism" for the avatar.

This of course contrasted with the fact that said avatar also had elf-like ears, blood-red-colored eyes, a pair of black horns jutting out from her forehead and white hair with black highlights that no person could possibly have without some very expensive plastic surgery.

And of course, her final touches to the avatar's looks, the Permet patterns that flared to life across her body with a stray thought about them, her Innovator-themed nebula-like eyes that likewise came to life with the same process, AND the three Alaya-Vijnana implants set in her back to more properly roleplay as a Post Disaster era pilot.

Sure, maybe she went a bit crazy with the cosmetics, but nothing quite said "I'm about to send your ass to heaven same-day-shipping" like an oni with burning markings and golden eyes laughing her ass off while beating you up with her crazy-ass Gunpla.

That may be the reason why Tigerwolf never returned her messages…

Taking a sip from her newly-acquired soda to keep her throat wet (and still ignoring how the hell this even worked), Serena walked away from the bar and instead threw herself onto one of the many bean bags she had littering the Nest's main room, the seat sinking into itself from the sheer weight of her body, leaving her free to stare at her virtual home with contentment.

And why shouldn't she? After all, this place was a culmination of all her time and effort put into GBN, proof of everything she had managed to accomplish in the game. Five years ago, she had been nothing but a newbie, barely keeping up with things and doing her best to eke out a place in the community.

Five years later, she not only had become a premier information broker and odd job runner for many players and Forces alike, she also gained the dubious honor of being a technical war veteran and savior of two different races.

The thought process regarding that shitshow was enough to quickly dampen Serena's mood, the Diver's brow creasing as memories from both events started to come back unbidden to her mind. It had been an… interesting time in GBN, to say the least. The fight against that weirdo Tsukasa had already been a hell of a thing to end up in, considering the whole Break Decal trouble and everything that came down from that, but it had still been a cut-and-dry deal: that weirdo Tsukasa wanted to ruin the game, people banded together to stop him, no big problem. By the time everything was over, nothing much had changed, bar the disappearance of Break Decals from the game.

What came after, however, hadn't been as easy… or fun. When news broke out through the administration that some girl named Sarah was an actual virtual lifeform born in GBN, Serena had been… Well, flabbergasted was a mild way of putting it. But being told that said girl was also causing the entirety of the game's servers to break down completely, and that the administration's only solution was to simply erase her, suffice to say, Serena hadn't been happy. At all.

Sure, GBN was important to her, she had made plenty of friends and acquaintances over the four years prior she had spent in the game. She even heard and understood some of the arguments given by the Second Coalition for their logic that led to their decision: GBN gave freedom to people who had lost some of it in their lives. Hell, she even knew someone like that, a boy named Patrick who had come to her asking for help with gathering some special materials in a high-danger zone. It instead turned out he had wanted to get to a Sky Area, so he could fly in a more open area with his Gunpla.

All because he couldn't do that anymore in real life. Because he had lost the use of his legs.

So yeah, she could understand it. But she wasn't willing to put actual lives aside in favor of a game they could possibly recreate later on. Hell, she later would come to learn she had already met one of the so-called "EL-Divers", a girl named Eve who she more than once crossed paths with in the game. So when some kid named Riku Mikami decided to fight the Coalition for the right to keep Sarah alive, she physically couldn't have jumped to the call faster.

Granted, she couldn't join them for their big and showy orbital entry landing, but she still knew… other ways in…

-O-

WARNING! WARNING!

"W-What the hell is that?!"

"Who the hell is piloting that Gunpla?!"

"Where did it even come from?!"

BOOM!

CRASH!

THOOM!

Though the 2nd Coalition forces tried to rally, even numbers didn't seem to halt the Gunpla tearing through their back line, its massive clawed arms and the massive blade held in one hand tearing anything they reached into so much scrap. The return fire from the Coalition forces, in the meantime, was panicked and uncoordinated, and what few attacks found purchase on the Gunpla were batted away by its arm-mounted I-Field generators, and the massive blade itself.

And throughout it all, the unknown Gunpla's pilot cackled and hollered like a maniac.

"OUT OF THE WAY, YOU FUCKING MOOKS! YOU'RE NOT STOPPING ME!"

"C-Call for backup! We need reinforcements at– GAHH!"

-O-

That particular memory helped to bring a smile to Serena's lips. For all their thoroughness in reinforcing Avalon's private server, they never expected someone to co-opt an admin-level gate straight to their home base. Not that it had been easy, granted, but a call to a certain pair of friendly parties had netted Serena the tools needed for the job.

All that she had needed to do was run roughshod like an animal against the Second Coalition forces, and draw attention away from those Build Diver kids and their own mission. And considering her Gunpla's build, that had been mighty easy to do. She even took pride in the fact her kill count had reached triple digits before the dog-pilling started wearing her down.

Well, that, and that it had taken Kyoya Kisugi himself stepping in to tear her partner apart to finally stop her "little" rampage. In the end, getting blasted by the world champion after tearing an unholy warpath through his forces wasn't a bad way to go.

And plus, that Riku kid succeeded: they found a way to fix GBN's degradation AND save that Sarah girl from death. Hell, Serena even got to meet her later.

She was shockingly adorable. The kind of adorable that made you want to pinch her constantly. It only made Serena prouder of what she did.

There had also been that freak event with the crazed Raid Boss, but honestly, it had been peanuts compared to the whole thing that came before. Sure, it had been yet another threat to GBN's existence, but at least this time it involved a much simpler solution: shoot the damn Raid Boss dead. And it had been an absolute blast to fight the thing, too.

So that had been that: problems showed up, problems were solved, life kept going. It had been an eventful chapter in GBN's history, but at least things had been moving back towards normality.

… That is… until the Eldora Incident.

Again, Serena was an information broker. It was her job and duty to gather data about whatever people wanted, or be proactive by grabbing said data first in case someone ever came to her regarding it. So when rumors started cropping up about some kind of "secret mission" in GBN, naturally, she took to searching for intel on it immediately, helped by a new acquisition she had gotten thanks to the rewards from fighting the glitched Raid Boss: a Veda-type interface computer, complete with the superior data analysis and absorption you'd expect Veda to have… somewhat.

They couldn't exactly replicate a gigantic quantum superintelligence inside of the game, after all.

Still, it had allowed Serena to parse through all the needed data until she came across said "secret mission". What she found, however, took her down a rabbit hole that spiraled into an event beyond anything Serena had ever dreamed possible of happening in GBN.

It had all started simple enough: a stray line of unknown data led Serena to a sequestered little corner of GBN's social area, and coincidentally, to a quest marker leading to another corner of GBN, this time in the middle of absolute butt-fuck nowhere, in one of the desert biomes.

Not being stupid, Serena took off to the coordinates aboard her Gunpla, loaded up with plenty of weapons in case this was either a trap set by some exceedingly try-hard grifter, or some lunatic with a penchant for convoluted traps. In GBN, you could never know, so better forearmed than flatfooted.

To her surprise, however, no such ambush had been waiting for Serena. Instead, things had been exactly as advertised: a mission marker, along with a confirmation tab asking if the Diver would like to enter the mission featured in the campaign. Bar the lack of a link to any previous mission in GBN, and the equally-suspicious lack of other players, everything seemed on the up and up, so naturally, Serena took the mission.

That's when she suddenly found herself transported to a zone only very loosely connected to the main GBN servers by a strange data flow she couldn't quite understand, meeting with an entire village of NPCs she'd never seen before, and facing a new subset of Death Army machines that had no matches in all of GBN's database. And not in the sense of still being an NPC enemy that hadn't been encountered prior, either. It literally didn't exist, at all.

It was enough to get the alarms in Serena's head ringing.

And for the next few weeks, it was all she could focus on. Every free waking moment she had, Serena poured into exploring the mysterious "Eldora" zone, cataloging every bit of data and taking it apart back on her Force Nest in search for clues. She even brought over some equipment aboard her Gunpla to get some scans out of the destroyed machines, but still, nothing came from it. Even her character-affiliated Neos ability failed to parse anything from the so-called "One-Eyes", regardless of if she interfaced with the Mobile Suit, or its control unit, the "Guard Eye", as the locals called it.

And speaking of said locals… they, too, made Serena highly suspicious of the whole thing.

Granted, NPCs created by GBN were very high-quality, no doubt about it. Advancements in AI technology made the production of computer-controlled characters who could mostly improvise on the fly when talking with actual players made the entire thing smoother when it came to dialoguing with said NPCs.

But the "inhabitants" of Eldora were too life-like. The way they acted and talked, their responses to questions, inquiries and events surrounding them, even their general (or at least what Serena once thought to be) idle scripts felt too perfect, too natural for a band of computer-generated characters. Even if GBN was capable of something like this, it would require a lot more processing power than what the unnatural connection to Eldora would allow. Something was amiss with this entire thing, and Serena wanted to get to the bottom of the whole thing. So driven she had been to finding out answers, she purposefully avoided contacting the four other GBN signals she had picked up in Eldora, the Diver even going the extra mile of cloaking her own signature from them.

All of this digging and searching came to a screeching halt, however, the day the village Serena had been using as a staging ground got attacked. And not by regular Eldora Army units, no… but by what Serena at the time suspected, and later to her horror confirmed to be, a Gunpla. And a powerful one, too, considering how hard the thing pushed her.

Serena was not shy about her skills as a Diver, she had clawed her way through the leaderboards through digital sweat and tears (but not blood, because again, GBN was supposed to be a family-friendly game), and she had beaten down her fair share of strong opponents with the help of her Gunpla partner. But when she had been forced to fight against what the villagers had called the "Seltsam", Serena found herself matched point-to-point in terms of sheer strength and firepower. By the end of the duel, the best she had managed to eke out was a tie, and even then, it had been in the Seltsam's favor, considering the amount of damage her Gunpla had taken to even force said tie.

It was also the day her world-view on the entire Eldora situation came crashing down.

Because it was the day she found out that it was all real.

-O-

Serena's breath roared against her ears like a hurricane as she stared down at the wrecked village from within her Gundam's cockpit, her hands strangling the control levers with such strength, they began to creak.

Below, buildings burned and strewn-about rubble littered the once lively streets, along with the wreckage from all the One-Eyes machines she had shot down.

And all around, people.

Desperate people, panicked people, dead people.

Shouting and screaming and crying aND HURT AND DYING–

Serena screamed.

And then she ran.

-O-

The bottle in her grasp slipped from Serena's hand as she shut out that nightmare, and clattered to the floor, thankfully emptied of its contents, avoiding a mess she would have been forced to clean up. With a grumble, the Diver rose from the beanbag and picked the bottle back up, before trudging her way over to one of the trash cans inside the room and throwing the thing away. As soon as the bottle hit the can, it disappeared from view, deleted by the system just as Serena turned around and began walking back to the bar. However, halfway there, the Diver's gaze fell upon her oldest partner, still kneeling upon the ground in rest.

Almost unconsciously, Serena turned and walked towards the Gunpla, her steps echoing softly amidst the Nest's empty room, until she finally found herself right in front of its knee, staring up at the Gundam's four-eyed visage with a mix of pride and sorrow, and once more, the memories came unbidden.

She did not feel shame in admitting that she ran, after the Seltsam's attack. The shock and sickening realization of the reality had been too much for her to bear at the time, and she had to get away from it all. However, rather than running away, she ran forward, chasing down every single One-Eye machine she could find and tearing them apart, even as her Gunpla continued to strain from the damage. Still, it was a testament to her building skills that it lasted long enough in such conditions, but even her dear partner had his limits, and in the end, the Gunpla broke down after what the chronometer had marked as an hour and a half of brutal combat, leaving Serena stranded in the middle of the desert, alone with her thoughts.

By the time she managed to crawl her way out of the cockpit, and land on the ground, Serena had barely a moment to brace before she found herself forcefully disconnected from the game, leaving the woman to fall out of her Battle Nexus access console's seat and down to the floor of her room, and puke her guts out right then and there.

Thank fuck she lived by herself…

She also ended up taking her vacation month from work early. Her boss had gotten curious, but when he saw how haggard and panicked she had looked, he asked no further questions. Hell, he even offered to call up a friend of his who worked as a therapist, but Serena had refused.

She didn't need therapy, she needed to work.

And work she did. Day in and out, the Diver bought, built and readied as much equipment as she could for her return trip to Eldora. Knowing the stakes the way she did now, there was no way Serena was going to half-ass this thing. People, actual people, were in danger, and she had to help.

She had to help them. They needed it.

And so, Serena toiled, tirelessly and borderline obsessively, until she had built up enough of an arsenal to put to shame even most Forces in GBN, including upgrading her Gunpla to the absolute limit.

VN Armed Armors, n_i_t_r_o System, "Phantom Light" Minovsky Drive system, hand-mounted I-Field generators from the Crossbone X-3, Rare Metal Omega-reinforced joints… everything that could feasibly fit in her Gunpla, she mounted in. And after a grueling week of work… it had been completed.

Her partner, ASW-G-06 Gundam Valefor, had been reborn stronger than ever.

And not just her Gunpla, either: Serena stacked every character buff she feasibly could into her avatar as well: GUND Format, Alaya-Vijnana, her own Neos abilities, everything to make her piloting ability better beyond her own skills.

When Serena returned to Eldora, she had done so with her Gunpla loaded aboard a customized TR-6 [Inle] Mobile Armor, ready for war.

Imagine her shock, then, when she found out from the natives that the other team of Divers on the planet was making preparations to utilize a newly-discovered orbital elevator to head into space, in order to find answers for the One-Eye forces.

It had made her deploy the Inle's Atmospheric Escape Booster in a complete panic in order to meet up with them.

By the time she had broken out of Eldora's atmosphere, however, chaos had already erupted. And it started with the moon blasting itself apart to reveal a cannon large enough to put Keilas Guilie to shame, and an armada of One-Eye machines so large, even her upgraded OS couldn't register them all.

And, of course, the Seltsam had been there as well, leading the horde.

The battle after that had been… frenetic. Panicked, chaotic, desperate… whatever adjective you wanted to use, it applied. Even her modified TR-6 [Inle], with all [Kehaar II] units replaced with a mass number of fin funnel-type remote weapons, had been hard-pressed to keep up with the amount of firepower being put out. The return of the other Diver team, apparently from the inside of the cannon, helped only marginally, especially with how lost they seemed to be.

Proof that they didn't know the risk, the truth of things.

And in the end…

-O-

"T-There's so many of them!"

BOOOOOOOOOM!

A horde of her surviving funnels sliced through the One-Eye machines with beam fire, tearing a hole into their formation and saving the small custom SD Gundam they had been aiming for from destruction. Around her, she could see the other Gunpla struggling against the One-Eye army, doing their best to stay intact against the onslaught of fire directed their way, while the one with the modular armor tried to duel the Seltsam, though even it was being pushed back by the ferocious machine. The last machine was gone, having entered the gigantic cannon for some reason, leaving Serena and her Valefor alone to try and thin the horde's numbers.

Sweat cascaded down her body as she pushed the [Inle] harder and harder, its I-Field almost overheating as it tanked every beam shot the gigantic Mobile Armor couldn't dodge. However impossible, she felt the heat from her GUND-Format beneath her skin, and blood ran freely from her eyes as the Alaya-Vijnana pushed the Valefor's limiter way past the safety zone.

But she couldn't stop. She had to keep going, had to fight harder, fiercer… for Eldora's sake, for its people's sake–

WARNING! WARNING!

"Tch!"

With a violent jerk to the side, Serena forced the [Inle] to dodge a barrage of missiles headed her way, though even still, several of them found purchase against the MA's hull, and with a chain of explosions, sheared off one of its wings. The blast rocked the [Inle] violently, jerking Serena forward so strongly she struck her head against the control panel.

"FUCK!"

Blinking away the stars in her vision, and ignoring the extra streak of blood now running down her face, Serena readjusted her Mobile Armor's pathing as best as possible, but even then, she knew there was little time left for it. The cannon was already readjusting to fire down at Eldora towards one of the Eldoran's main cities, and unless they somehow managed to stop it…

"You goddamn assholes… KNOW YOUR PLACE, YOU TRASH!"

With that roar of defiance, and her Permet implants flaring ever-brighter, Serena forced the damaged [Inle] to transform from cruise form to mobile form, the Valefor's quadruple eyes flaring with light and its mouth opening to reveal the glowing heat vents beneath as the Mobile Suit was exposed to the outside once more. With a heave that strained its servos, the [Inle] brought its Bigwig II Cannon to bear, the weapon already glowing brightly with violet plasma as energy built inside the elongated barrel, while all over the Mobile Armor, its many remaining weapons also began to power up.

WARNING! WARNING!

Yet again, the sensors blared inside the cockpit, though this time Serena couldn't dodge. With a growl of anger, she maxed out the I-field generators' powers, ignoring the multiple warnings of overloads. Not only that, she recalled every single surviving fin funnel back to the [Inle], and had them form a massive beam barrier around her Mobile Armor, the shimmering pink field growing quickly to cover every angle around her.

The One-Eyes' fire was relentless. Beam fire, missiles and solid rounds slammed against the barrier, straining the beam field to the point it began to bend and sink at several points. Soon, sections of it broke, taking with them the funnels forming said pieces, leaving the I-field below to tank the beam fire, and the [Inle]'s hull to brace against solid rounds and missiles.

DAMAGE CRITICAL! EMERGENCY PURGE–

"OVERRIDE, DAMMIT!" roared Serena as she slammed her fist against the control panel, her eyes still glued on the target ahead of her. One missile struck the plating right above the Valefor's head, blasting it apart and shoving a piece of metal through half of the Gundam's face, but still she kept the target lock steady and trained unerringly forward, even as enemy fire rained around her.

And when the lock was finally marked ready…

"DIE ALREADY, YOU GODDAMN BASTARDS!"

The [Inle] let hell loose.

The Bigwig Cannon roared as it fired, the massive lance of violet energy cutting through both space and any One-Eye machine that had the misfortune of being in its path. Smaller beams, fired from the diffuse beam cannons and surviving fin funnels, flew alongside the medium-sized ones from the Queenly Psycho Arms and Hrududu II guns, equally gouging out limbs or destroying enemy units they struck, even if said beams were thus blocked.

And alongside the violet-and-pink barrage, missiles large and small flew in both random, unpredictable arcs, and straightforward lines, all aiming for the gigantic cannon.

The One-Eyes did not remain idle, of course. Their aim shifted from the damaged mobile armor to the warheads fired by it, and though they were not deadly accurate, they were accurate enough. Plenty of missiles were shot down mid-flight, but mercifully, they had mostly all been the normal warheads Serena had hoped were sacrificed as bait.

The true warheads, in the meantime, made it through mostly unscathed, and struck the cannon alongside the massed beam fire.

And when the nuclear warheads detonated, the resulting fireball was strong enough to blind both Serena and the other Divers still present.

They also, however, made the nukes that had been struck mid-flight by enemy fire detonate in a chain reaction that, in the end, consumed both the [Inle] and the other Divers in a ball of light before tossing them like ragdolls back towards the planet, though not before Serena watched in horror as the battered, damaged, but still operational cannon fired a colossal beam lance down at Eldora…

-O-

Serena's hand slammed against the Valefor's leg as she recalled the battle, her other hand drifting up to the scar criss-crossing her face.

Even with all that preparation, she still had suffered a defeat in the orbital battle. Sure, the greatest reason had been the unpredictability of the situation due to her rushing to try and meet up with the other Diver team, the so-called Build Divers, but it still stung that she had lost regardless, with her TR-6 [Inle] being critically damaged in the assault, and the Valefor only avoiding further damage by sheer luck.

Plus, not only was she forcefully disconnected from GBN due to damage to its servers caused by the moon cannon firing and hitting Eldora, she was forced to stay disconnected for several days, also due to the same damage. And not just GBN, as it turned out. Rather, the unnatural event that irradiated from Eldora (or, as the news were calling it, 1G1202C) had dealt damage to ALL of Earth's communications and satellites, grinding the world to a crawl for days on end, meaning Serena had no way to contact anyone, not even the Divers she had found in Eldora.

Not that such a thing would have helped, sadly, because Serena had unfortunately been hit with a bad case of comatose unconsciousness.

She had only gotten things properly explained to her much later, by a Diver named Masaki Shido, who had undergone an almost similar experience: while Serena had thought there was no connection between her real self and her avatar in Eldora, it turned out instead that the connection was even stronger when on the other planet. So strong, in fact, that anything that affected her avatar planetside would rebound into her real self. Like if, for an example, she stacked so many augmentations into her body that the psychological backlash from being forcefully disconnected while still plugged into GBN risked causing neurological damage to her actual brain.

It had been the miracle to end all miracles that the only thing that happened to her had been a three-week coma, and even then, the doctors were unwilling to release her from the hospital before they could make absolutely sure she would have no life-long complications.

The only upside of that entire shitshow, and one Serena only found out days after she woke up in the hospital, was that the mission had been partially successful: the beam had struck planetside, yes, but it had missed its intended target, that being the city of Seguri.

The damage to the planet had still been heavy, however, and as a result… people had died regardless. Not as many as it could have been, yes… but still too many in Serena's eyes. And now, she was stuck on a hospital bed, unable to do anything but let her anger seethe and boil over the situation.

… Well. Except for building, and preparing.

Against the doctors' insistence and orders, Serena called one of her co-workers to fetch her Gunpla building tools and parts from her home, along with running emergency purchases from the nearby hobby store. Even if she couldn't head to Eldora, she could still prepare for a future fight, cover her bases, get repairs done… the works. If she wasn't eating or running tests, Serena would be found sitting on her bed, working on the mass of parts that had been dropped off to her room, or listing up everything she needed to be 3D-printed back at the hobby store so she could keep working tirelessly.

By the time the three weeks she was kept in the hospital had passed, Serena had rebuilt her arsenal and more, including a little "surprise" she had prepared in order to deal with the moon-based cannon. But before she could even think of readying up her plan of battle for Eldora, the Diver was instead met with something she had never expected at her doorstep: a person.

Said person being, of all people, Kyoya motherfucking Kisugi himself.

How he found her house, when she was getting out of the hospital or how long she'd take to return home were questions she kept to herself to this day. No use in sullying her image of the champion by putting a "stalker" tag on him.

Still, regardless of the "how", the "why" for GBN's Champion to be visiting her house meant a lot more to Serena. And when he explained said "why", she was willing to forget any grievances about the "hows".

Because now, Serena had a target for her anger.

And his name was Alus.

According to what the Force she had haphazardly met in Eldora had discovered, the entire conflict had been started by some kind of rogue AI developed by the race that inhabited Eldora prior to the current natives, some thousands of years ago. And now, with its processes corrupted and memory flawed by degradation, the AI had decided that the new Eldorans were to be considered "invaders", and thus, marked for extermination.

It also had, until it was recently undone, captured the mind of another Diver, one Masaki Shido, and enslaved him into becoming the pilot of the Seltsam, leaving the Diver's body on Earth comatose while his mind was shackled to his GBN avatar and was forced to follow Alus' cruel orders. This had also been how Alus had gained access to machine data from GBN, and thus, the information on the Gundam metaverse and related, to create his army of One-Eye machines. However, Build DiVERS had been successful in rescuing Masaki from his peril (thank fuck), so now they were preparing for one final battle against Alus, in order to finally free Eldora from his threat.

However, Kiyoya also knew it was possible that Alus could attempt to either escape, or attack GBN directly by transferring over to their servers. After all, if Divers could make the trip to Eldora, what stopped Alus from making the trip in reverse himself?

In preparation for that, Avalon and GBN's administration had prepared an ambush for Alus' arrival: first, they'd force his connection to land next to Avalon's Nest, where gathered Force plus all their allies would be waiting to intercept the Eldoran AI. At the same time, Build DiVERS and their allies would destroy Alus' server in Eldora's moon, trapping the AI in GBN and thus making sure it'd have nowhere to run.

Thus, the reason Kyoya was here: to recruit Serena for the mission.

She accepted it in a heartbeat. And so, days later, she set up alongside all of Avalon and several other elite Divers to strike against Alus.

Granted, she didn't set up among them, however. While Serena would have loved to be in the thick of it, tearing apart every single one of Alus' machines and exacting righteous AND therapeutic revenge against the AI, she also knew they had to play things mostly smart against him. After all, who knew what kind of tricks Alus would pull out of his non-existent ass to screw them over? So instead, she set up a trick of her own, right at the edge of the Avalon server, just waiting for the opportunity to use it.

And when Alus finally arrived, bringing with him an outright fleet of warships and a massive horde of One-Eye machines, plus a few unique machines copied from the Turn X, Arche and Nu Gundams, Serena couldn't have felt more giddy to use her newest toy.

One she still had hanging inside her Nest from the ceiling, and which she looked up at with a sly grin.

-O-

Far away from the massive moshpit of a fight occurring between GBN's players and Alus' myriad of forces, a lone gunner set up her weapon to strike the enemy. She was concealed by both her Mobile Suit's jamming fog deployer and by a GN Particle cloak unit borrowed to her by another Diver from Avalon, meaning that Alus would require getting through two different and layered forms of cloak, something quite difficult even were one to be aware of the specific methods. This, of course, meant the gunner had free reign to pick her targets of choice and fire off a preemptive shot without fear of retaliation.

However, to call the gunner's weapon a "gun" would be a gross, almost comical understatement of hilarious proportions. Even "cannon" would be too small of a descriptor for said weapon. In truth, it was so absolutely gargantuan in size compared to the disposable GM Shooter currently manning its firing equipment, the only proper hiding place for it was inside one of the mountains lining the edges of Avalon's server, resting in a gigantic cavern dug by GBN's administration in an instant through emergency protocols, and even then, the hiding place would most likely not survive the weapon's firing, so powerful was its… well, "projectile" was also not quite the right term for it. "Beam" perhaps could work, but again, the sheer scale of it dwarfed the descriptor at such a level that one could easily treat it as a joke.

And at that moment, Serena had this weapon aimed squarely at Alus' fleet, with a grin so wide and bloodthirsty it would have brought a tear to old Ali al-Saachez's eye, a foreboding blue-white glow building inside the weapon's barrel.

"Turnabout's fair play, you rotten fucker," she snarled happily, as her GM Shooter's sniping sensor slid down over its visor, and the weapon beside her continued to raise its energy levels, to the point warnings began to blare all around her. "Let's see how you like it being on the other side of the gun."

WARNING. ENERGY BUILD-UP CRITICAL, RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE FIRING.

"Here we go!"

With a flick of her hand, Serena locked the weapon's targeting right at the middle of Alus' fleet. It wouldn't kill all of his ships, but it'd down enough of them to help the Coalition.

Plus… it was gonna be real fucking fun.

"GRYPS-SAN, FIRING!"

-O-

Pros of firing a miniaturized Colony Laser: it killed literally everything it hit, it covered literal miles with every shot, and it made such a light show that Serena was quite sure people five servers away would have gotten a tan.

Cons of firing a miniaturized Colony Laser: it turned her Gunpla into a pile of molten plastic, turned itself into a pile of wreckage from firing, destroyed the mountain used to hiding it, required said mountain for hiding in the first place, and was so cumbersome to set up that if the enemy found it, the one manning it would be a sitting duck.

Still, like she had expected, it had been real fucking fun shooting it. Plus, it helped beat Alus, so the positives out-weighed the negatives in this case.

Sadly, the only part of Gryps-San left had been, funnily enough, the plating section where its name had been inscribed, along with the modified Titans Test Team emblem depicting a bunny wielding a gun, which was now hanging from the ceiling by a set of chains and clamps.

Pity the bunny belonged to the Titans, it was adorable…

Regardless of the ways, the deed had been done: Alus had been destroyed, Eldora and GBN were safe at last… a happy ending for everyone. Plus, the connection to Eldora still remained open, meaning any Diver would be free to visit the planet and meet its people, and they'd be able to help with reconstruction, which was exactly what Serena did in her free time: go back to Eldora and help them resettle back into all the places Alus had destroyed… including the village she had abandoned after her first fight with the Seltsam.

They hadn't blamed her, she knew that already after meeting with them, but still… the bitterness always lingered. She did find one way to try and atone for her failure, at least, even if it was somewhat of a selfish solution, so things were mostly solved.

Which led to the moment that was "now". A year had passed since that eventful moment of her (and likely several other people's) life, and as expected, life had gone on as usual: Serena got back to her everyday routine, bar the addition of a visit to a therapist every two weeks.

Regardless of any personal feelings, she knew what she had gone through during the Eldora Incident had left scars on her psyche, and the only way to deal with them was through therapy. Thankfully, her boss had been nice enough to put forward a suggestion of his own, a doctor who was apparently accustomed to "cases like hers", as he had carefully put it.

In her heart, Serena knew he most likely meant PTSD, but at least both her boss and the therapist had been gentle when mentioning said possibilities, and it definitely helped, considering how jumpy she had been over half of that year. Hell, even in recent times, she'd still wake up during the middle of the night after a nightmare of being back on that village… surrounded by debris, and the mounting number of dead people she–

Slapping her cheeks once more to stop THAT building flashback, Serena made her way back to the bar, picked up yet another bottle of soda (seriously, why couldn't actual booze be in the game…), and then paced towards her Veda terminal. As soon as she reached it, the Diver threw herself onto her chair and let her body sink into the rich Corinthian leather seat, before taking a swig from her beverage of choice.

"What a crazy-ass ride it's been…" muttered Serena with a sigh as she stared at Veda's deactivated terminal, her free hand tapping away at the chair's armrest. "Hopefully I'll never go through shit like that again…"

"Never say never, kid!"

If this had been the real world, then Serena certainly would have had a heart attack from the sudden chorus of voices echoing just next to her. Instead, she settled for yelping and almost leaping out of her seat, with the end result of that sequence of events being that both she and her chair were thrown to the floor in a heap.

With a groan of pain, Serena pushed the chair off of her body and rolled herself onto all fours, the Diver slowly blinking away the stars in her vision until she managed to lay eyes on the one who had almost given her a heart attack.

It was… well, she expected a few things, yes, but the situation still was a bit surprising.

Because rolling from side to side on the floor, acting as if it simply belonged here, was a Psycho Haro the size of a beach ball, with glowing rainbow eyes, and staring directly at Serena with what she could swear was an infinite amount of amusement.

"… Who are you?" she asked dumbfoundedly, watching the Haro roll around the ground until it finally stopped, its small arms and legs popping out from beneath its ear and bottom flaps. "How did you get in here?"

"Eh, it wasn't really that hard honestly," continued the Haro as it stared at the Diver, even placing its hands on its inexistent hips for that extra touch. "Granted, it's me we're talking about here, so there's not much comparison!"

"... Okay, sure, whatever…" With a sigh, Serena finally rose to her feet, rubbing her forehead before she righted her chair, then turned to stare down at the oversized Haro. "Look, little guy, I dunno what you want with me, but I'm pretty tuckered out, and you came out of goddamn nowhere, so could you please uhh… go away?"

Maybe Serena was being a bit more brusque than usual, but a whole day of scavenging resources, plus a session of reminiscing over the virtual (both literal and figurative) war she had fought for the sake of an entire race and planet had left her a bit cranky. Plus, there was something about the Haro's tone of voice that rubbed Serena wrong, in the worst way possible…

Something that was proven when, in response to her question, the Haro looked Serena dead in the eyes… and laughed. Loud, obnoxious, amused, but most of all, it laughed in the most wrong tone of voice possible, one that sent shivers down Serena's spine.

"Hoo boy, that was great. Hilarious! But see… There's one little problem with that."

"What are you—"

That's when the power inside the cave hideout fluctuated violently. Her Mobile Doll Soldiers and Automatons shut down, the monitors flickered on and off, hell, even the furniture began shaking like the Nest had been turned into the set of a horror B-movie. But most pressing, and most terrifying of all, was that Serena suddenly realized she couldn't move. Or speak. She was just a statue, desperately trying to struggle her way out of the sudden paralysis.

And standing there, with a finger pointed at Serena, the black Haro seemed to glare at her in a way that made cold sweat cascade down her body.

"You're talking like if I played by your rules," drawled the… thing in front of her with a dangerous tone to its voice, a sudden echo reverberating with every word. "But as you can see… I'm way, way above them." With an almost flippant wave of the "Haro's" hand, Serena found herself shoved back onto her chair and dragged to in front of the small being, still unable to move her body. "Now, we're gonna talk like two civilized beings, without any empty threats you couldn't follow through on in this aeon, hm?"

If she could have replied, Serena would have, but her voice was still leashed by whatever it was the "Haro" had done. Still, the little robot did not seem to want a reply, instead simply clapping its hands together, something that caused a sound way too loud for something so tiny. "Now, let's get to the point of this little visit, shall we? See, I'm someone who loves a little chaos, an itty bit of mischief, sometimes even the slight dash of mayhem. It helps to keep things interesting most of the time, especially when you get the domino effect going. But it gets pretty boring to see your own plans doing results, you know. The surprise is supposed to be half the fun of it!"

As the tiny robot continued speaking, it raised one hand into the air, and to Serena's surprise a small black radio-like box appeared from nowhere and dropped onto the "Haro's" palm, which it then began bouncing up and down. "Then one day I thought 'Wait a minute, I can have WAY more fun if I make the chaos come from somebody else!' So I went up this scrawny blondie, tossed him over in the middle of nowhere and watched him try and survive every day. And wouldn't you know it, it was amazing! Even when I started screwing around with him a bit more, he still managed to wriggle out of it, even made it entertaining to watch!" As the "Haro" continued talking, it put the radio thing onto the floor and gave it a few gentle pats, staring at it with a seemingly affectionate longing before it turned back to Serena, waddling up to her until it jumped up on the control panel for her Veda computer. "So in the end, I decided to be nice and give him a reward for actually surviving, as a little incentive to cause more chaos. And let me tell you, the things he's been doing… Hoo boy, I haven't had a laugh this good in quite some time, it's been great."

"That's where you enter, girl. See, the kid's on a break for now, and while it's fun to see him squirm for survival every day, it's not the same… Oomph as having him tell the world to go take a flying leap into chaos. Thus, the reason I'm here talking with you, hun… Oh right, your voice. Here, have it back."

And indeed, when the little robot snapped its fingers, Serena felt whatever grip had kept her vocal cords paralyzed ebb away, something that brought a modicum of relief to the Diver, even if she still couldn't move her body itself, nor did it bring her panic down. "That… still doesn't explain anything. Who are you, why are you here? And what does any of that have to do with me?"

Also where was GBN's administration to save her from this psycho?! And why was Aria still offline?!

"Oh look, you're just as impatient as him. Well kid, if you wanna know the 'why'… Well, I'm here to do a repeat of what I did with blondie. Aka… I'm sending you on a trip."

"… What?"

"Yup! It should be familiar territory to ya, lady, you've done this once already! Except this time, you're gonna get to put that head of yours to some use!" piped up the "Haro" happily as it dismissed the black radio and gave her what she imagined was supposed to be an affectionate pat on the cheek. "Now granted, I'm being a lot more generous with your baggage for the trip than with blondie's. Because unlike with him… I'm giving you the resources upfront! Everything inside this cave here, I'm letting you bring along! Because trust me, you're gonna neeeeEEEEEEEEEED them where you're going!~"

As she kept her eyes locked on the mystery invader, Serena's mind raced with thoughts. "Something she was familiar with?" The only thing it could possibly be referencing with that line was her time in Eldora, so perhaps it was related to some other planet with a messed-up situation she had to solve. Still, something was still nagging Serena's gut feeling: all the information the tiny thing had offered her so far was disjointed, empty platitudes meant to sound like explanations while withholding the whole truth. It was a common tactic when Forces battled one another, making sure that you held far more intel than your opponent, misdirect them and lead to their defeat. She should know, she played this trick more than once against other players.

With that in mind, Serena decided to risk things, and pry a bit more. "Then what would the catch be?" she asked as calmly as she could, blowing some stray hair locks away from her face.

The chuckle that came from the Haro did not fill her with confidence.

"Hehe, you catch on quick huh?" replied the bot before jumping off from Veda and walking away from her, even going as far as folding its hands behind its back. "The 'catch' is that like the first kid… you're not getting the easy escape~ See, if you die… well, let's just say you better be careful with your steps out there!"

And the chill of fear that dragged itself across her body after hearing that comment only made things worse, and dredged up uncomfortable memories from her time in Eldora. "… W-Wait… Are you saying that if I… If I die in the middle of this… I'll—"

"Be on the ground for good, no continues and no resets!" laughed aloud the intruder, the "Haro" body rolling and spinning around in eternal glee. "Like I said, I knew you'd get the gist of it, you went through this song and dance already! And sure, it might SOUND generous that I'm giving you all this stuff… but once you actually get started with your adventure, I expect a few shouts of praise aimed my way!"

If Serena had been wary or scared before… then now she was terrified. Here she was, stuck inside her own Nest, with no apparent help coming and some fucked-up thing offering to send her to Eldora 2: Electric Boogaloo, except this time she'd have plenty more resources from the get-go. It still didn't answer where she was going, how she would get there, and more importantly, what would be waiting for her in said place.

Plus, what guarantee was there that this… entity would be true to its word? For all she knew, this could be some insane wackjob trying to delete her account, or heaven forbid, something like Alus, about to enslave her mind into being an unwilling pawn used to commit war crimes. Serena had talked to Masaki Shido, he shared with her the kind of situation he had gone through under Alus' thrall, the absolute hell he had been put through. She wouldn't wish that on her worst enemy.

… And yet… the offer still tugged at something deep within Serena's heart. Something she would sometimes bury as best as she could, only for it to resurface time and again: The wish to try again. To do better.

How would things have played out in Eldora, if she had known from the start? If she had taken the fight straight to Alus, helped to save Masaki earlier than even BUILD DiVERS did, stopped the lunar cannon from ever firing… on and on, Serena would ponder these things, sometimes during the middle of the night until she finally fell asleep, or during the middle of her job, whenever she had free time to think.

Maybe then… she could have saved more lives.

And now, here it was: a chance delivered on a silver platter, a chance to perhaps do better. Sure, the risks were somewhat… high, and incredibly dangerous to her ability to continue existing… but hadn't the same been the case in Eldora as well? And she had survived that, even if she finished the ordeal with plenty of scars… so why not?

It was the clicking of metal on metal that drew Serena's attention back to the unknown intruder inside her base, and who was now tapping its foot impatiently against the floor. "Well, what's it gonna be kid? Time's ticking, I got places to be!"

"… I'll do it."

If only by a bit, Serena surprised herself with how calmly she accepted the messed-up offer.

Then again, more than once some of her co-workers said she was, quote, "built stupid", so maybe that was the reason.

Thankfully, the Haro seemed satisfied with her answer, judging by the way it nodded its body towards her. "Took you long enough, huh?" it asked sarcastically, before waving its hand dismissively. "Well, no skin off my back. No take-backsies, you hear!"

"Alright then… So how am I getting there?"

And for what was to be the last time for a long time, Serena heard the "Haro" laugh aloud.

"Oh, you silly girl… You're already there~"

The lights of her hideout died immediately afterward, at the same time she regained control of her body.

With her survival instincts blaring in her head, Serena shot upright and scanned her surroundings, just as the emergency lighting kicked in and bathed the entire cave in red, her Mobile Doll Soldiers coming alive and quickly grabbing rifles from the weapons rack—

… Wait a second… Those were simply cosmetic. How could they…

…

With sweaty palms and the echoing of her heartbeat in her ears, both of which she quickly realized sounded way too real for GBN to simulate, Serena dashed towards the exit of her cave, her steps echoing through the darkened tunnel as she approached the mouth of the cavern… which she realized was no longer hidden by the holographic camouflage, and from which heated air was wafting into.

And when Serena crossed the threshold, she found herself blinded by the glare of sunlight beaming down from on high and buffeted by surprisingly hot and arid winds, which made no sense considering GBN's night cycle was about to start. But as her vision cleared, Serena was finally granted sight of what her Nest's surroundings had become: red deserts and mountains as far as the eye could see, with blue and yellow skies above, and the faint image of twin deformed moons hovering above.

The sight of which drove Serena to drop to her knees, even as the now-armed M-Doll Soldiers thundered towards her with rifles at the ready and surrounded her in a tight perimeter.

"… M-Mars? I'm on Mars?"

-O-

Two hours later, Serena was sitting inside her cave once again, head resting on her hands and staring down at her bar's countertop. The emergency lights were still on, leaving the insides of the base still bathed in red while the Haro-piloted Karels worked diligently to connect power cables and coupling to the only power source available inside the base: her Gunpla… though in hindsight, it would be more appropriate to now call it her Gundam.

Those two hours following the Mobile Doll Soldiers ushering Serena back into the cave for her safety had been spent as productively as possible, considering the entire thing regarding finding herself in Mars: activating the automaton units for extra security, deploying the Karels to run a check on the hideout's current state and perform necessary maintenance, try and establish some kind of connection with the wider world, run inventory to make sure all of her Nest's underground sections had been brought along…

Granted, the lack of power proved to be quite an obstacle to most things. Thankfully, a message brought forth by a Haro presented a solution to that problem quite quickly: use Valefor's twin reactors to power the base.

Hence, her current situation: waiting for the Karels to finish setting down the cabling from the mobile suit onto the base's electrical system, and finally get it operational again.

Still, that left time to think… Primarily, on the rest of her situation.

First was that while Serena was sure she had landed on Mars, and the fact the Ahab Reactors were still running perfectly (not to mention the "Haro's" comments about surviving being good pointers) was a fairly good clue that she had been thrown into the Post-Disaster Era, but she still didn't know when she had arrived. For all Serena knew, the thing had sent her off to the middle of the Calamity War, or past the show's timeline and into the post-revolution period. The latter was manageable, provided Ride didn't start some kind of self-righteous terrorist war against Gjallarhorn or the governments, like all those fanfics she had found seemed obsessed with writing about. The former… well, she didn't look forward to trying to survive an event that erased a quarter of humanity in all of Sol, even if she still had plenty of toys to use against the Mobile Armors.

Then again, her base hadn't been attacked by a horde of Plumas or a giant sentient machine of death, so at least there was that as a good indicator that maybe the first option was not it.

With another weary sigh, Serena turned to stare at the ceiling. "God dammit, how long until it's all ready…"

FLASH!

"FUCK!"

"All done, all done! Lights on, lights on!"

"I NOTICED!"

Taking a moment to rub away the violent attack on her retinas, Serena growled before opening her eyes again, blinking a few times to get rid of the black spots in her vision, until finally the sight of her once more fully illuminated base came to focus, something that brought a faint smile to her face. In the back, the Karels climbed down from atop Valefor, now sporting dozens of cables linked to its torso, skirt armor and back, which then flowed onto the ground and around the base to power boxes and breakers.

"Home sweet home again," muttered the Diver as she walked around the countertop and moved towards the bar's fridge, once more powered and working, pulling from within it a sandwich and bottle of juice. With food and drink now in hand, Serena moved next to her immediate goal: the Veda terminal. It was time to get some answers.

The terminal was surprisingly simplistic to utilize, provided your Diver avatar either had been given ELS enhancements or Innovation buffs, or had been made as an Innovade. Otherwise, you'd have to be a computer whiz-kid, or supplant it with something else, lest the data flow overwhelm those unprepared or unaccustomed with it.

Or, you could cheat like a fucker and show up with some other ability, like say… if you were a Neos whose special power was machine interfacing, thus allowing you to directly plug your brain into Veda, without the need for Innovation. Which was exactly what she had done.

The thought of that always made Serena snicker. Suck it, assholes, guess Despair Memory Gundam was good for something after all! the Diver thought as she sat down in front of the Veda terminal, and placed her hands next to the blue orb. Immediately, blood seeped from her palms and coalesced into thin strands, which promptly flowed into the Veda terminal and connected Serena to the machine. The resulting jolt of electricity made Serena wince, but thankfully her regenerative healing dulled the pain in moments.

"Probably ain't pulling any Kaoris-tier tricks though," muttered the Diver as she "felt" around the machine's inner workings, the computer in turn slowly powering up to its full state. "Probably hurts like a motherfucker to keep a sawed-off between my intestines…"

"Alright, Aria, wake up! I got a job for you!"

-O-

Three weeks later…

It was a day like any other on Mars. Yet again protestors had gathered upon the streets of the capital, carrying placards and megaphones as they shouted their wishes to the impassive wall of police officers and Gjallarhorn troops standing guard all around them, Mobile Workers parked in their midst with their guns menacingly at stand-by, alongside news vans with their crew covering the entire event. Even giant monitors and TVs had been set up to allow the leaders of the protest to speak to all corners of the mob at once, while in homes both in Mars and Earth, civilians and military alike watched as yet another demonstration rose, one of many ever since the Noachis July Assembly.

That is, until across Sol, monitors and TVs began flickering, the image they displayed distorting and breaking… Before being replaced with a lone figure sitting in front of a metal table.

A figure draped in a black cloak with runes embroidered in gold around its edges, heavy black leather gloves, a featureless ebony mask with two long horns rising from its forehead and two eye holes… That allowed all to see the golden, swirling nebula-like eyes of the figure.

"Greetings, to all of Sol," spoke the figure, their voice distorted and garbled into a deep electronical bass. "Apologies for this interference. Let it be known that I stand in solidarity with the wishes of those who fight for freedom to Mars, but to use the coverage would be the best way to have my words reach all of the people. But alas, let us proceed to introductions."

"My name is Solomon… And I come bearing wisdom to all."

~O~

Hey everybody! Happy New Year!

Goddamn, this rewrite ended up being a chapter of its own, huh? Still, as promised, here it is: the start of my rewrite of Raise your Hell, into something I consider better!

As you can see, we got a LOT more of Serena's backstory in this chapter, plus it ended up less broody than the first one.

I did promise it'd be less grimdark, but I never promised it wouldn't be messed up! c:

So, with this done, now I have work to do on the other chapters (fuck me), but hopefully the edits needed will be less extensive. Once those are finished, I'll start with Chapter 6 for this fic, and then we'll get back on track for everything.

In news related to the fic, I got two more pieces of art coming soon! One is almost ready, the other has been commissioned to the artist, and I'm waiting for them to start it. And while the first is another drawing of Serena, the second one will be a drawing of her MS, Gundam Valefor. Once they're finished, they'll be posted up on SpaceBattles and Sufficient Velocity, so have a gander there if you wanna see the art done up!

For the folks on AO3, the second drawing will be posted alongside the profile for Valefor, so it'll be always visible there.

Now, as for other news… this is related to the Pa-tre-on. Starting this year, I'll finally include three different tiers to it, in order to better accommodate people: there will be a 1, 3, and 5 dollar tiers, each one with one additional perk over the other. 1 will be the base option, giving access to the WIPs people have been getting until now. 3 will be a step up, allowing people to participate on a set of polls regarding some decisions for the fic. Some will be a bit more plot-critical, but otherwise, there'll be for smaller stuff.

5, however, will be the one with what I consider the most critical benefit: every month, I will pick the names from that tier, and set up a roulette, which I will spin. The selected name will get to ask one question regarding any of the fics I'm working on, whether it be world-building, characters, or future plans. Bar for extremely critical spoilers, everything will be free game. Next month, the winner's name will be removed from the roulette, and will be added back the month after that, to keep the spirit of fairness.

Also, in order to not make it a useless tier, I'll save the roulette until we have at least three or four pledges, that way it also keeps fairness alive.

Come later, this arrangement might change, but for now, I think this is the healthiest choice for it: everyone that was supporting until now gets to keep their benefit, while also enjoying further things.

Well, that's all for now, I'm kinda pooped. I'll take a day or two for a break, then double back to rewriting chapter 2.

For now, a happy 2024 to everyone, and here's to another year of writing and shenanigans from our wonderful protags!