After several days of travel and a quick stop to resupply Black Trike with some much needed repair materials, the group stood at the edge of the Iron Ocean. A vast sea of liquid metal that stood between them and their goal, it sparkled and shone as the sun blazed down from above through the patchy cloud cover. Yuu coughed slightly as she experimentally prodded the liquid with the end of a broken road sign, taking a cautious step back when she saw it rapidly dissolve.
"How the fuck are we supposed to get over this?" Yuu coughed, pulling up her hood. Mato shrugged then beckoned her to follow as she noticed the rest of the group was leaving.
An hour later, the group were sat in a bar which had been hollowed out of a cliff-face. The two fully human members, the Colonel and Monica sat without their masks with Empress, Strength sat a few tables away with Yuu while Dead Master and Mato were at the bar.
"So your arms are a part of you?" Strength asked abruptly, mid-conversation.
Yuu nodded as she took a long drink of some unidentified alcohol, her cheeks flushed slightly. "Technically they're not part of me, not yet, they're part of my Otherself."
"She's the one I fought?" Strength asked.
"Yeah, I was surprised about how strong you were, I think you're stronger than my Strength." Yuu smiled.
"So I could beat her, y'reckon?" Strength asked, leaning forwards.
Yuu laughed. "Not a chance, Otherselves are merciless killers from the moment they appear." She giggled. "Compared to that, you'd just be an annoyance."
"Bullshit." Strength snarled, angrily standing up and knocking her chair over. "We were created to be the ultimate warriors!"
"You wanna take this outside?" Yuu smirked, downing her drink.
"Lets do it!" Strength growled.
Mato spared Yuu a glance as she left the bar, closely followed by Strength and shook her head.
"Are you not worried about your friend?" Dead Master asked, swirling a glass of wine.
"No, at least one Strength is going to have some humility beaten into them." Mato said, taking a sip of the strong liquor she had ordered.
"But she's your friend, shouldn't you help her?" Dead Master asked.
"Strength is also your friend, why are you not intervening?" Mato retorted.
"It's amazing." Dead Master said, taking a sip of red wine. "You look so much like my angel, but you are so different."
"How so?" Mato asked curiously.
"Empress is very caring towards her friends, she would never let us fight." Dead Master replied.
"If there was a chance of harm towards Strength or Yuu I would not hesitate to kill every single person here, my lack of concern comes from the fact that she can take care of herself. We have survived superpowered humans, alien invaders, dark wizards and creatures born of madness. An engineered warrior is of no worry to us." Mato stated bluntly.
"You really value us so little?" Dead Master asked, slightly hurt.
"I value you a great deal." Mato said, looking into the grass green eyes of the Hemiteos Unit. "We have faced many horrors and threats, we have experience. You are formidable warriors but have only experienced one reality. You are not less than us, we have just been around for much longer than you."
"That doesn't make me feel any better." Dead Master said.
"I am sorry, I am still getting used to our merging, it is unusual to be talking so much. Normally it is Mato who deals with speaking to humans." Mato told the pretty teen.
"You're not Mato?" Dead Master asked.
"I am an amalgamation of our individual personalities and identities, it can get a little confusing." Mato admitted. "Yuu calls me Mato out of familiarity, but I am Black Rock Shooter Beast."
A few minutes passed before a group of people entered, lead by a woman wearing a thick wetsuit with a heavy red coat draped over her shoulders, a long scar stretched from her forehead, over her eye and ended just below her cheekbone.
"That must be the captain." Mato said quietly. "Maybe we will be leaving soon."
"What's the matter? Getting bored?" Dead Master asked.
"Something like that, there is a constant urge to fight, ever since the merging." Mato replied.
"As long as you don't harm Empress." Dead Master warned.
"I would not do that, she is an ally." Mato said.
"We better go." She added, noticing the Colonel and Monica following the newcomers.
Outside, Mato took a brief detour to drag the two Strength's from their brawl. She pushed her way between them and held out her arms.
"Enough, we are leaving." She stated.
"Like hell!" The Hemiteos unit spat. "We're just getting started!"
The Otherself nodded with a grin. "Nah, it's pretty obvious you were gonna lose." She laughed.
"Say what?" Strength growled.
"Stop!" Mato demanded, drawing her broadsword and looking at the pair. "This leads nowhere, we have transport and they are waiting on us."
"Fine." The Hemiteos unit said with an angry growl.
"Damn, girl's got some anger issues." Strength chuckled as she watched the other Strength stomp off.
"Would you not want to fight your superiors if you had the chance?" Mato asked.
"I mean yeah, but what makes you think we're better than them?" Strength asked as they walked towards the dock behind the Hemiteos unit.
"We are natural born predators, not created in a lab, with decades more experience over several universes." Mato stated. "Or do you think they could have taken down the Justice League, or adapted to the UNSC or DWMA?"
"Sounds like you're the one who wants to prove herself better than them." Strength said, eyeing her friend cautiously. "Or is it just Empress? I've seen how you look at Dead Master."
"Fine." Mato snarled. "You can sense this already, but Mato, human Mato." Mato clarified. "Had feelings for Yomi, not quite romantic, but more than friendship. It is those feelings that emerge anytime the Hemiteos units are mentioned."
"That's… A relatively straightforward answer I was not expecting." Strength admitted, swapping bodies with Yuu.
"Things have changed." Mato said. "I am done with this world. We should finish this fight or find something that would create a portal as quickly as possible."
"Ahh yes." Yuu said as they boarded the ship. "Your low attention span when it comes to something uncomfortable.
"Fuck you." Mato smiled.
"Seriously, we could make a difference in this world, don't you want that?" Yuu asked.
"What I want is to leave, we have travelled for weeks with the humans, waiting for their errands and sleeping schedules." Mato spat sending a scowl at the people ahead of her.
"They are only human, like me." Yuu reminded her. "Calm Mato, that's your other side talking, the Otherselves."
"They are a part of me, and I am getting restless. Need something to do." Mato moaned.
Yuu sighed.
"Look, once we cross the sea we shouldn't be too far out from the space elevator. We cripple that thing then we're done. Another week, two at most." She said.
"Fine, but after that we are done, we leave." Mato stated, boarding the ship.
"Seriously, you had to merge with that insane bitch as well." Yuu muttered, guessing where her friend's growing lack of patience was coming from.
"This is going to take us across the Iron Ocean?" Yuu asked incredulously. "It's a floating scrap-pile! It looks like you stuck an engine in a coral reef."
"That's not to far from the truth." Said the captain, sweeping a strand of long hair out of her face. "We allow the creatures of the ocean to infest the hull, it provides us resistance to the water and camouflages us against the Gigantes."
"What's a Gigantes?" Yuu asked.
"That." The captain replied, pointing to the horizon. A vast, mottled cube stood out of the ocean on thin insect-like legs, it slowly plodded along occasionally probing the silver liquid with a long tentacle.
"What the fuck?" Yuu breathed, taking in the bizarreness of the creature.
"It's some sort of machine, it collects people, living or dead and stores them in these sacs beneath it's body." The captain stated.
"What for?" Yuu asked.
The captain shook her head. "Nobody knows, and nobody wants to find out. We're just trying to survive and earn a living." She said walking away.
As the teen watched the captain leave the deck she spotted Mato sat on the roof next to a cluster of antennas, without thinking she crouched and leapt up the side of the superstructure, at the top she blinked and looked down at the deck below her.
"The fuck did I just do?" She asked herself.
"Your merging is accelerating, just like mine did." Mato said, staring into the distance.
"What's going to happen to me?" Yuu asked, sitting down next to the Otherself and dangling her legs over the side.
"I do not know, maybe more physical changes or maybe you will be able to use the Ogre Arms." Mato suggested. "Your skin is already slightly darker than when we arrived and your hair is turning whiter."
"Is it?" Yuu asked, pulling out several strands of hair to inspect.
"You and Strength are very similar with your personalities, when you awaken I would not worry about losing your humanity." Mato said.
"I hadn't thought about that." Yuu admitted.
"We have, we discussed it the first night we entered the reality with the DWMA. I am thankful it was unnecessary." Mato told her.
"I'm honestly a little scared at the thought of not being me any more, what's it like?" Yuu asked.
"It is, different, but I do wonder why I ever feared it. Black Rock Shooter's love for Mato fills me even now, as does Insane's rage and Mato's temperance and caring. It is as though I am complete now." Mato explained. "It is difficult to put into words, like describing colours to someone blind."
"Blind? Are you calling me disabled?" Yuu huffed in mock anger.
"No, however you are vertically challenged." Mato said with a small smile.
"Was, was that a joke?" Yuu asked, slightly surprised.
"I told you I am not Mato but I do contain her personality and memories." Mato shrugged, leaning back on her elbows and looking up at the grey sky. "For instance, do you remember shortly after first year in university when we went back home?"
"Which one? We caused a lot of chaos over the summer break." Yuu asked, wondering where this was going.
"It was the first night back, all of us had returned back from that bar and we were going to sleep over at Yomi's house?" Mato clarified.
"Oh that night!" Yuu chuckled. "Yeah I remember that, can't believe after all those years Kagari still had her wheelchair at Yomi's place. What happened to it? Never saw it again after that."
"It was confiscated by the police." Mato told her.
"Why? I don't really remember, I was so drunk." Yuu said.
"We took turns riding it down the big hill, Kagari's attempt broke the speed limit and she got caught by speed cameras in town." Mato said grinning at the memory. "There was even a small police chase."
Yuu burst out with laughter.
"Bullshit! No way that really happened!" She cried.
Mato nodded her head.
"They confiscated the wheelchair, then you argued with the policeman and vomited over his trousers."
"Fuck off! I've never puked when drunk!" Yuu laughed.
"You are a terrible drunk, you have vomited over me seventy eight times." Mato said without hesitation.
"Bullshit!" Yuu argued light-heartedly. "Besides, Mato was wasted just as many times, how does she remember this?"
"She did not, it was only after I awakened that I was able to recall these memories." Mato said.
The human/Otherself girl stayed silent for several minutes
"I'm not sure I'm ready to remember everything in my life, there's a reason I ran off to the Otherworld." Yuu said quietly, her face dropping.
"When you merge with Strength, you will have the courage and toughness to bear the pain of them. You will become stronger." Mato stated, she finally looked over at Yuu. "And I will be there to help you as well."
"Will you?" Yuu asked.
Mato nodded.
After several hours and a close run-in with a Gigantes, the coral encrusted ship had docked at a small island that contained a powerful energy signature, according to Monica.
"Okay, does nobody else find it suspicious that something that's gonna help Empress get stronger just happened to be lying directly in our path?" Yuu asked after the captain, Empress and Strength had left the ship. "Anyone?"
"There are various fragments of pre-war technology scattered all over the globe." The Colonel said, looking disinterested. "We just happened to come across one."
"In the middle of the fucking ocean?" Yuu cried.
"It happens." The Colonel shrugged, walking away with Charlotte following.
"Fucking idiots." Yuu sighed, walking over to Mato who was trying to comfort Dead Master and show her the bizarre insect creatures scuttling over the ship weren't dangerous or scary.
"Look, it is harmless." Mato said as she allowed a bug to crawl over her hand. Dead Master raised her head from her arms, took one look at the creature and squealed, huddling up even tighter.
"Mato! Stop terrorising Dead Master." Yuu groaned. Mato stopped stroking the large fist-sized insect and stood up.
"I've got a bad feeling about this, Yuu stated.
Mato tilted her head.
"I'm not being paranoid, so shut up." Yuu huffed. "Don't think this is a little to convenient? Something that could help us being so easy to get? When has that ever worked out for us?"
Mato thought for a moment then shook her head.
"No?" Yuu asked. "You don't believe me, do you?"
"I do, but I have a different idea." Mato said, carefully holding Yuu's hand and guiding her into the large area their vehicles were stored. She lead the hybrid human to Charlotte's jet, now rebuilt, sitting on top of a large truck.
"What we doing? We ain't gonna steal it are we?" Yuu asked suspiciously.
Mato shook her head.
"I need to speak to Strength." She stated.
"Why?" Yuu asked.
"Please, it will help our situation." Mato requested.
Alright Yuu, let's see what she wants. Strength muttered.
Yuu nodded and allowed Strength to swap.
"Alright, what do you want?" Strength wondered.
"I want to teach you, I have been contemplating my ability to alter my cannon into different forms." Mato told her.
"Alright, but what's that got to do with me? Ain't like I need to change my hands into a pistol or a sword." Strength said.
"No but I believe you could use your extra arms for another purpose." Mato said.
"Stop being cryptic." Strength sighed, hiding her excitement.
Mato softly took one of Strength's hands and laid it on the large wing of Charlotte's jet, sitting upright in it's restraints.
"Push your life energy into the aircraft." Mato said. "Like this. She added, slowly pouring some of her own Otherself energy into the machine.
"Okay." Strength said, closing her eyes. She felt her willpower and life conjoin with Mato's as it crept and burrowed into the jet, an odd sensation of closeness filled her, an intimacy that she had never encountered before not even after feeling Yuu's emotions when she was with her past lovers.
"Feel the path it takes through the machine, how it interacts with all the components and how they link together." Mato said softly.
As though they could read each others minds, they both pushed their energy deeper into the machine, hungrily seeking new areas to explore, guiding each other into the most fragile and sensitive areas of the jet's control mechanisms. Desire, excitement and sensation swept through them, quickly gaining intensity until they reached a crescendo. After a few moments, their energies withdrew back into their respective bodies. The pair looked at each others flushed faces, centimetres apart, as they panted in unison.
"What was that?" Strength breathed gently, not wanting to break the moment.
Mato hesitantly, slowly, removed her hand from Strength's.
"Did... Did we just, have sex?" Strength questioned.
Mato shook her head blankly.
"I do not know what just happened, I was trying to teach you how to gain knowledge of other devices for you to use yourself." She said, blushing.
"Does it always feel like that?" Strength whispered.
Mato slowly shook her head, keeping eye contact with her friend.
"Is this what you did when you copied that marines rifle, after we met Master Chief?" Strength asked.
Mato nodded.
"Shall, we continue?" She asked.
"What?" Strength asked, confused. "Oh yeah, the jet. What's next?"
"Open your extra arms and feel how to adapt them to the new design." Mato said.
"Couldn't I have just done this by reading a book about aeronautical engineering?" Strength said while concentrating.
Mato shook her head.
"It is not enough to know, your energy must feel it. Like how your hands can transform into rotary cannons, you never knew the design but it was instinct." She explained.
A loud clanking came from Strength's additional Ogre Arms and they packed and repacked into different shapes.
"So what about your wand? As far as I know, you didn't copy that from anyone." The tanned teen pointed out.
"It is just a scaled down cannon, it fires my energy directly instead of fusing it to a projectile." Mato said.
"Huh." Strength muttered. Mato stepped back as Strength's Vulcan cannons finally clicked into place, changing into two massive jet engines, swivelling on their own accord. Black metal plating stretched out between delicate struts which merged with her tail to form a giant glider. The teen looked back at the huge wings sprouting from her back and the enormous engines, gently purring on idle.
"Holy fuck!" Strength exclaimed excitedly. "This is amazing!"
She looked back at Mato.
"You're amazing, I can't believe you even thought of how to do this shit!" Strength sent her friend a cocky smile. "Y'know, most people's first time is a let-down, but fuck me, it's gonna be hard to beat the power of flight!"
"Yuu? What do you think?" Strength asked her companion.
I'm in love. Yuu slurred. Please ask her to marry us.
"I think we broke Yuu." Strength giggled. "She wants to marry you."
Mato allowed herself a small smile.
"I think my human self would have had the same response." She said.
"So, I can now fly, apparently. What's next?" Strength asked.
"We no longer need to wait for the others, we can head to the orbital elevator and end this." Mato stated.
"Well now I just feel used." Strength pouted. "You give me an amazing first time and it was all about yourself."
Mato cocked her head blankly.
"Do you not realise I could use the Cannon Lance to fly? I did it before when fighting Yuu and again before fighting the Clown army?" The pale Otherself pointed out. "Also, I did not know that sharing our energy would lead to, intimacy, of that kind. It did not do that on the Didact's ship."
"I know, I'm just teasing you." Strength grinned. Mato raised her clawed, metal fist and extended her middle finger, making Strength's grin even wider.
Mato and Strength strode outside, pausing to allow the jet to collapse in on itself so the tanned Otherself could pass through the vehicle bay doors. They walked up to the Colonel who was watching for the return of Empress and Hemiteos Unit Strength.
"We're leaving." Strength stated. "We're going ahead to try and take down the space elevator."
"What?" The Colonel said, turning around in confusion. "You're going A.W.O.L? Empress is the only one who can stop Artemis and the elevator, what do you plan to do?"
"First." Strength said, slightly offended. "You were against us joining you, we didn't give you a choice then and we're not giving you a choice now either. So shut up, I'm only informing you out of courtesy."
"Second." Mato added. "Even if we cannot destroy the tower or the artificial intelligence, together we have lain waste to entire armies. We can soften their forces before you arrive. Or did you expect it to be undefended?" Mato asked.
"I-I hadn't…" The Colonel stammered.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Strength said hurrying the conversation along. "You hadn't thought about that yet, we guessed. Look, you need us more than we need you, so we'll go ahead and either do your job for you or provide a much safer staging ground for the final assault."
"What makes you think you can do that?" The Colonel asked, annoyed at being treated so dismissively.
"Because we're not human, nor have we ever been." Strength said, unfurling her new glider and watching as her Ogre Arms noisily transformed into jets.
She scooped Mato up in her main hands as the engines roared into life, the intense heat of the flame quickly melted the deck below her. Within seconds the two Otherselves where spiralling into the air, Strength rapidly adapting to making subtle changes to alter her speed and direction.
They hovered in the air for a moment as they took in the view.
"Wow." Strength whispered. "Thank you for this, Black Rock Shooter Beast, it is amazing."
"You used my real name, why?" Mato asked curiously.
"To show my thanks, this is incredible, being amongst the clouds, blue sky above us and pure silver below. It's so pretty.
"We have a problem." Mato said, looking below her.
"Huh?" The winged teen said.
Below them, dozens of vast, hundred sided polyhedral spheres disgorged thousands of tiny drones which were swarming around the ship.
"Fuck!" Strength cried as she dove down towards the sea. "The noise must've woken them.
"You will need both hands, place me upon your back." Mato demanded.
"Kay, but hold on tight." Strength replied, reaching above herself and planting her friend along her spine. Only removing her hand after the pigtailed girl had banged her fist on the vast black wing. The tanned Otherself transformed her main hands into Vulcan cannons and streaked through the drones, sawing through the swarm with ease. Tilting her body and using her tail as a rudder, she banked around and came in for another pass.
"Mato!" Strength screamed over the howling wind. "Use your cannon and target the hives! I'm gonna try and get the swarm to follow us.
"Understood." Mato confirmed, her voice speaking directly into Strength's mind.
Sure enough, once the Otherselves had attacked the huge nests, the drones quickly targetted them and moved as one towards them, rearing up like a wave and partially blotting out the sun.
"I think we have their attention." Mato said calmly, looking back.
Strength grinned as she turned around in the direction of their final destination and steadily increased their speed. Mato slid down a little and flattened herself along the wings, digging her claws in around the tanned girl's tail spines.
"Burn them all." Mato said eagerly. As Strength pushed her speed as much as she could, a huge trail of fire burst from the rear of the engines, incinerating many of the drones behind them and rocketing them forwards. Mato was barely able to keep hold with the sudden velocity increase, instead she jammed her hand deeper into Strength's metal spine, tearing through muscle as her own skin began to redden and blister from the speed of the air passing around her. Once they had passed over the ocean, Strength eased off the speed a little as Mato settled in for the rest of the trip.
Many hours later, the pair had stopped at the edge of a forest. Ahead of them lay a vast barren wasteland, utterly featureless in it's drab greyness. Far in the distance stood the orbital elevator, a huge cylinder stretching above the clouds.
"Fuck me." Strength exclaimed. "How fucking big is that thing? We've gotta be at least five kilometres away but that thing's clear as day!"
"What were you expecting?" Mato asked. "It needs to be strong enough to hold its own weight."
"I know, I know. But still, fuck." Strength said. She shook her head. "We ain't got anything that could take that thing down, not quickly anyway."
"I doubt Lunatic or the robot army would allow us to take our time." Mato agreed.
"Have you managed to alter your cannon to be like Empress's?" Strength asked.
Mato shook her head.
"No, whatever technology Dead Master's bike uses, it is something I cannot replicate."
"What about scaling up your cannon, like the rainbow cannon Mato used?" Strength suggested.
Mato shook her head again.
"That required the love and power of three Otherselves in addition to my own, as powerful as I now am, the pair of us could not generate enough power to destroy that tower."
"Well we're fucked then." Strength spat.
"We did say if we could not succeed in their mission, we could at least eliminate their army." Mato pointed out eagerly.
"Still need to worry about Lunatic, if her shield operates the same as the Infinity's then the best way to penetrate it would be energy or plasma weaponry." Strength sighed, sitting down against a tree.
"Are you okay?" Mato asked.
"Yeah, it's just that jet. It's amazing but it uses a fuckton of concentration and energy." Strength said.
"I am aware, Mato struggled to keep our rifle manifested for long periods of time to begin with." Mato told her.
"Wait." Strength said, after a few minutes of silence passed between them. "Have you ever tried to alter your sword in the same way as your cannon?"
Mato shook her head.
"It's just an idea but if you could create your energy sword, that, combined with the Cannon Lance might be enough to punch a hole." Strength thought. The pale teen nodded and drew her sword from her back, her brow furrowed in concentration as she forced her life into the large, translucent black blade. The razor edge started to glow, starting off red then quickly brightening to yellow, then white followed by the rest of the large sword.
"Fuck Mato, I can feel that heat from here!" Strength said as she watched the edge start glowing a pale blue. The hilt of the sword started to shift slowly, becoming more hourglass shaped and shorter, a blunt spike started growing between her middle and ring finger as the tiny text on the blade started flickering. Large cracks appeared throughout the weapon and pale blue plasma began to wildly thrash around the edge, a longer tendril lashed out and effortlessly sliced through a small section of her jawbone. Mato ignored the injury and stood motionless, her full concentration being taken up by her task. Without warning, the blade exploded in a shower of white hot shards, burning through the Otherself's skin. Mato gritted her teeth as she attempted to forge the wild plasma into some form of shape, feeling tiny devices used to control the strong magnetic field that contained the deionised gas form in the hilt of her weapon. Slowly the familiar shape of her old energy sword appeared, slightly narrower and less curved, it still kept the double pronged appearance and formed at either end of the hilt, pointing straight out above her knuckles. She let out a giddy laugh then sagged to the floor, the sword deactivating as it left her hand.
"Fuck!" Strength cried as she rushed over, catching Mato as she fell.
"I, I am okay. It just. Took. Effort. Will. Be. Good. Soon." The skinny, pigtailed teen said quietly.
"You sure? I've never seen you look this fucked before." Strength said worriedly.
"Will need to. Rest. Drained. A lot of energy. To. Create sword." Mato replied.
"You're telling me, your clothes were smouldering!" Strength gently laughed.
"They will be fine. Need sleep." Mato stated drowsily.
"Go ahead, Yuu and I will keep watch." Strength said, softly stroking the pale girl's hair.
Fuck, that was something! Yuu said in disbelief.
You're telling me, looks like she converted most of her sword into plasma rather than just using her own energy. She's on another level of power. Strength replied.
At least for now, it probably won't be long before we join her. Yuu pointed out.
Nervous? Or excited? Strength asked.
Both I guess, I'm happy to be human but at the same time I remember what it was like to have your power and I kinda miss it. Yuu admitted. But also, as much as I love you, I'm not sure I want to change who I am even if it's just slightly.
She looked down at Mato through Strength's eyes.
We never had a chance, did we? This was always going to happen. She sighed sadly.
Unfortunately. Strength said. But there is something different about us, we're not fighting ourselves. If the merge happens slowly enough, then perhaps we can just somehow limit it to just the physical changes.
Is that possible? And wouldn't that mean one of us needs to be trapped inside forever? Yuu asked.
That would be me. Strength replied with no hesitation.
For all eternity? You'd lose your mind. Yuu stated.
I think after an eternity, we'd all go insane. Strength countered. Then she noticed that Mato's flames had gone out.
Do you want to take over? It's kinda awkward to do this with my hands. She asked.
Yeah sure. Yuu replied, swapping bodies.
She delicately pulled Mato's head onto her lap as she shifted into a more comfortable position. Yuu smiled gently and leant down to softly kiss the Otherself on the forehead.
"You're a dickhead, you know that right?" She whispered. "Always having to look after you, ever since high school."
Should I leave you two alone? Strength quipped.
Piss off. Yuu laughed. It's a rare moment that she's peaceful.