Hyperdimension Neptunia Third Sister: Darkness

by Somedudeonline

WARNING: This a direct sequel to 'Light', read that first if you don't want to be confused. After having died, Bios is reborn with the energy of Despair running through her, now the opposite of a Goddess. In spite of what fate demands of her, she gathers a group of vigilantes to save Lowee from a sinister group of organisations known as, SCJP

21. Chapter 18: Continental Adventure

Hyperdimension Neptunia

Third Sister; Darkness

Chapter 18

Continental Adventure

I reached the snowscape road that leads to the capital. Along the way, a few adventurers challenged me. Magic is a little trickier to dodge, but real mages aren't very fit physically, so I just knock them over and they admit defeat. Now I am challenged to a competition of nonviolence. For the first time! I am quite interested in how this works but…

"I challenge you to a duel!", this guy shouts in excitement with a duel wheel on his arm.
"…I don't play Monster Dueling though….", I awkwardly say.
After brief silence, he straightens his back and says, "I see…Let's do something else then."
"When trainers' eyes meet, they have to battle, it is the law! I challenge you to a Monstrosity ba-"
I cut him off, I say, "I don't play Pocketed Monstrosities either." He petrifies.

He revives from his statue state and suggests, "Um…Urban Battlers?"
"How exactly do we play that game in real life? That's just a street fight.", I reply.
"…Poker?" "Gambling Bad." "…Ario Party?" "We're too far away from an interesting map."
"The game of life?" "I don't see any board games on you?"
"THAT'S IT!", he loudly declares, he swings his arm into pointing his finger at me saying, "We're just playing UNO!"

"…I don't have UNO.", I reply.
"Everyone has UNO, stupid, it came free with your freaking Lowee Switch.", he said.
"I don't own a Lowee Switch.", I inform him. Now that has his mouth agape.
He shakes his head, calms down, and speak like he figured out the truth of the universe as he says, "Ah, you must be from a foreign nation then. Of course, you're on a different console then."

"No I'm from Lowee.", I assure him.
"What?! How can one be from Lowee and not have the Lowee Switch?!", he shouts.
"I don't really play games.", I tell him.
He smiles, but crosses his arms and says, "Oh I get it. Still weird though. I bet White Heart would look down on that."
"That's not tr-", I wanted to deny him, but mid-sentence, I gained an epiphany.
No wait. Rom and Ram often drag me in to play games. And while I have fun, they do look at me like some caveman for not playing as much. Big Sister doesn't mind me preferring to read books, but she does look at me funny and question why I don't play games as much. Could it be? Am I really that weird?!

"I understand…I'll get the Lowee Switch like my friends have…". I say, feeling defeated.
"Huray for conformity!", he shouts obnoxiously, thinking he's funny.
"Anyway. I have the Lowee Switch here, let's just play Ario Kart or something.", he says, pulling it out in handheld mode.
He made a mistake, that is the one game I could easily beat him in. With my vision, I see everything coming and race past him. Our match took about half an hour.

"Well, I lost fair and square. For someone that doesn't game, you aren't so bad. Even if this is a casual one.", he says. He gives me some pocket money and a few healing items.
"Well, that's the best I got. Good luck in the hunt!", with those words, he summoned a bike and rode off…What an odd fellow. Either way, I walk forward. Many along the path where people fight with monsters summoned out of balls, though their matches seem pretty friendly and lively. I eventually reach the city. Everything is pretty normal here, though there are more officers around, as are hunters.

I see C-Sha commanding the hunters. I rather stay clear of her. Don't want anyone to remember me…
Then again, she might have a better idea of where the monster is. I try to move close to her without being noticed. I sit on a balcony listening in on her.
"Blanny has been gone for a while now. Do any of you have any idea where she might be?", she asks her hunter friends.
"I doubt the monster in Lowee is even here anymore. According to the news, all of them are where the golden towers used to be, surrounded by a fog wall. But the previously unexplored northern fields had no such fog wall.", he tells C-Sha.

"Hm…I remember there being one though.", she says leaning against a wall, she thinks about something. Now she mentions, "Lowee's monster might've been killed. These fog walls were up a year before as well…Maybe they have been there for a long time. Someone must've taken it down before the event."
"We did see many marks of fighting, even torn clothes of uniforms that usually belong to ninja.", one hunter said.
"Ninja? Uh…Did Blanny have a ninja friend?", C-sha asks.

Someone ran over to C-Sha, he kneels as he takes his breath.
"Hey, what's up? You alright?", she asks him.
"We're reporting on Planeptune's monster. The thing is barely findable. Last time we encountered it, we have taken liberties in photographing it's locations and putting out a map of its movements.", he said.
"None of the monsters have been reported to be aggressive unless approaching their territory. But this bird is annoying at the very least. If only it didn't ran last time…", C-Sha says.
She gets up and talks with a stretch, "Aaaaanyway. Let's get going. Standing still won't get us anywhere."

Aside from doing as she says, she's going around to make sure the hunters are okay and nothing illegal is being done in the chaos of this event. Unfortunately, I can only assume finding this bird is next to impossible. They have this map to pinpoint its most likely location, but in the end, I'd have to hope the bird flees from them again and I am fast enough to catch it without transforming. I need to be alone with it to be uninterrupted, transformation brings to much attention to me otherwise.

I wonder aimlessly. I hoped to hear more, but in the end, I think I just need to frantically search for this monster instead.
"Nyu…? Is that someone I recognize, Nyu?", I hear a high pitched soft cute voice speak to me.
I turn to my left and see Broccoli.
"If it isn't Broccoli? You finally returned from your home in the north?", I asked her.
"A bunch of adventurers run around now, so it's a pain to live there, nyu.", she says.
Well, that must be true.

"Actually, shouldn't they have run off by now?", I ask her.
"Correct, nyu. I already knew you got the treasure, nyu. The same monster of Lowee had been killed by the Samurai long ago, nyu.", Broccoli tells me.
"Yes. It is Planeptune's monster that is roaming here now. Kind of a drag.", I told her.
"You've become more casual, nyu. I kinda like it, nyu.", Broccoli says.
"What are your plans now, if you don't mind me asking.", I ask her.
"Broccoli was bored, nyu. Cyberconnect2 asked me to join Marvelous and Falcom on the hunt, I thought it would seem interesting so I joined, nyu.", she tells me.

"Oh. I met up with Falcom back in Planeptune. I'm part of your party, I suppose.", I tell her.
"Falcom, nyu? She said she was coming here, nyu.", Broccoli replies.
"I kind of told her to stay in Planeptune in case the bird flew back…I kind of regret that now to be honest.", I told her.
"Hm…It's okay, nyu. You can transform, so I think we can kill it easier, nyu.", Broccoli says.
"Okay…So, where do we go?", I ask her.
"I was on my way to Marvelous. She told me to come to the northern exit of Lowee, nyu. She told me we're heading for the northern shore, nyu.", Broccoli explains to me.

"So, should I follow you, then?", I ask her.
"Nhn, I think we can just go, nyu.", she answers.
As we walk forward, I suddenly see two familiar figures and stiffen.
Two girls are running my way with delight.
"Oh, It's Suno!"
"It's been so long…. Did you not read our messages?"
After saying that, the two start hugging me. They don't remember me as their younger sister, only knowing me as their friend, Suno.

"Rom and Ram, nyu? You know each other, nyu? …Maybe that should be obvious, nyu?", Broccoli says sounding as surprised she could get, which is not really, but then she squints her eyes remembering my Goddess transformation.
"Hm? Obvious?", Rom repeated her looking confused at her. After Ram eyes her up, she shouts, "Whoa, it's Broccoli! It's been so long, where did you go?"
"Broccoli was living up north, stupid adventurers went to Broccoli's home being annoying, Broccoli left, nyu. Now Broccoli takes vengeance upon monsters who caused the event, nyu.", Broccoli says, her monotone voice kind of makes her trying to sound comedic even funnier.

"So you're part of the event too?!", Ram asks excitingly.
They let go of me, whilst Rom asks, "Do you know Suno?"
I quickly get behind Broccoli before anyone could notice, Rom and Ram look flabbergasted, standing on their toes with their mouth agape.
I whisper to Broccoli, "Out of anyone, these two are the least allowed to know anything about me. That includes the fact that I can transform."
"Sounds like a pain in the ass to hide, nyu. But I understand, nyu.", Broccoli whispers back.

"Hey, what are you whispering about?! It's not fair, let us hear!", Ram shouts, though she looks no less happy than before.
Rom is looking at us with her usual neutral expression and asks, "Secret?"
"Super-secret, nyu. Highly classified, nyu. You will never know our secret recipe, nyu.", Broccoli says, lying in the most unfunny funny voice to the point it goes full circle and is funny. …To me anyway.
"Heeee?! It's a food recipe?! Do you make food for her orphanage or something?!", Ram asks.
"Is it tasty? Hm…Me and Ram don't cook often…But maybe I'd like to try making something for Suno too…?", As Rom was talking, her face turns into a questioning one, her sentence somehow turning into a question.

"Have I…Ever felt like doing that? For Big sis…We baked cookies but…", Rom is questioning herself.
Even Ram looks confused at her. She's visibly thinking, saying out loud, "Now I feel like I wanted to make something with you too…For someone…Who?"
This is bad already. There may be a hole in their memory. At some point, they might've wanted to act like older sisters towards me and make me something, but they can't remember.
"Do Rom and Ram also want to join the event?", I ask them.

"Oh! Right! I was gonna ask!", Ram shouts.
"Broccoli is joining the event as well…?", Rom asks, softly smiling.
"It would be super awesome! We'd have some friends to hunt with!", Ram shouts.
"You two are attending too, nyu? What about Blanc, nyu? Is she not joining, nyu?", Broccoli asks.
"The last we heard from big sis was her helping Neptune with some monster that appeared out of nowhere.", Ram says.
"Uh huh. We want to join, but I think big sis wants an adult accompany us…Maybe Broccoli is fine…?", Rom says.
"Hmph! We can totally go by ourselves, we're not kids anymore!", Ram shouts.

"I was about to head to Marvelous and Cyberconnect2, nyu. Want to join, nyu?", Broccoli asks them.
"Marvy and Cyberconnect are there too?! Count us in!", Ram shouts jumping happily.
"I want to see them again…", Rom says.
Rom stops for a second, then looks at me and asks, "Wait, but what about Suno? She's just a child, right? She's also part of the event?", Ram asks.
"Is she going to be okay…?", Rom asks.

"Suno wants to be an adventurer, nyu. I told her I can show her how we do things, nyu. I'll keep her safe, Nyu,", Broccoli says.
"Oh…So you bought her a sword too, right? It looks so cool!", Ram replies. The two eye my sword that I usually don't carry around here.
"It looks like a katana…Like that one game we played…So cool…", Rom says.
"Shall we depart, nyu? That monster should be found by us first, nyu.", Broccoli says.
The two sound their agreement and raise their fists. We go on our merry way.

Towards she shore we go. Along the way, Rom and Ram talk to me as much as possible. Asking me many questions. Sometimes they'd play tag with me as we move forward, Broccoli looked too unenergetic to care, she's floating on her large ball thing.
Now they are feeding me snacks. I was merely enjoying them, but the last one they gave me was this sweet chocolate donut and I was in heaven.
"Ooh! She smiled!", Ram shouts. I get taken out of it and look around like I just woke up.
"So rare…You love sweets so much?", Rom asks me.
I sigh and say, "Hm…It's a bit embarrassing though…"

Monsters come along our way. Broccoli slapped a bunch into the sky with her ball thing called Gema.
"Ice Coffin!", Rom shouts, launching many monsters into the skies with her spell that shoots ice spikes out of the ground in a row.
"Eternal Force Blizzard!", Ram shouts, freezing a dragon in a large block of ice. Rom and Ram smash their wand and rod into the ice cube, shattering it with the dragon inside. They cheer by jumping and high fifing each other.
"They are terrifyingly strong, nyu.", Broccoli says with her eyes closed and the corners of her lips raised.
From the damage they do, they must be at least level 90… But lower than Falcom…How is that possible?

"Hey hey…Rom…and Ram… How high are your levels?", I ask them.
"Hm?", they both look confused at me.
"We are level 91 now…", Rom says.
"We were level 99, even 999 at some point! But you know, nothing happens sometimes. And Big sis tells us not to do hard quests on our own.", they say.
Wait! So if I don't do anything, we level down?! That's dumb!
"Broccoli is level 73, Nyu…It's only stayed high enough because of those crystal golems, nyu.", Broccoli says.
The twins asked her what she meant, Broccoli told an alternative story of that episode.

It doesn't take too long to arrive to the shore itself. We stand there, our toes almost hitting the waves.
"So, where is Marvelous?", I ask Broccoli.
"She will appear like a ninja, nyu.", Broccoli says.
From a cloud of smoke exploding behind us, we turn to see Marvelous appear with Cyberconnect2 behind her.
Cyberconnect2 just steps away from Marvelous' back and raises her hand saying, "Yo ho!"
Rom and Ram called out their names and ran up to them.

"Huh? Rom and Ram are joining us too?", Marvelous says, looking surprised.
"So we have two goddesses on our side. That will make this hunt a bit easier.", Cyberconnect2 says while Marvelous tries to talk to Rom and Ram. She looks at me, holding her hand above her eyes.
"Hey, who is that with you, Broccoli?", Cyberconnect2 asks.
Marvelous looks over to me and says, "Ah, that must be Suno. Falcom called us about her, remember?"
Rom and Ram stop for a second and both ask, "Falcom?"

"Hm? Why did Falcom call you about-?", before Rom could finish her sentence, Marvelous looks at Cyberconnect2 with troubled eyes, prompting Cyberconnect2 to run at the two girls, distracting them. Marvelous uses Stealth Speed to get to me quickly without being noticed.
She whispers in my ear, "Don't worry. I still remember you wanting to hide your identity. But we didn't know Rom and Ram would be following you."
"It was by surprise for us too. But I can't really fight with them around. They should only see me as some child who happened to befriend them.", I whisper back to her.
"I see, I'll make that work.", Marvelous replies to me.

She looks at Brocoli and asks, "I'm sorry if this sounds rude, Broccoli, but couldn't you have prevented this?"
"Suno may not be able to fight, but Rom and Ram are two Goddesses, which would make this hunt easier. It makes too much mathematical sense, nyu.", Brocoli says.
"I can't argue with that logic.", I add to that.
In the end, I am just one person, and now we have two Goddesses in return. I may as well be a backup.

After some pleasantries, Marvelous guides us to a little hut she made on the quick with Cyberconnect2. When asked what the idea was, Cyberconnect2 told us Marvelous has a plan.
"So, I have been trying to track this monster from Planeptune after Falcom warned us it was coming over here. I have seen it for myself. It is a bald-headed eagle-like monster with owl features and cybernetic enhancements. It discharges purple lightning. It's speed is already a problem, but it can charge up to flee at a moment's notice. With that said, it can only fly a straight line with that burst of speed. Following movements from the Hunting Guild, I think I found a spot it will certainly be located at next.", she tells us.

She unfolds a map, showcasing us all the potential locations we could find it in.
"I've been following tracks, but it was never to be found again. But the trails it leaves behind are unique. Broccoli, did you bring the emission device?", After talking some more, Marvelous requested Broccoli hand over some tool.
"Of course, nyu. Here it is, nyu.", saying that, she gave some device with a bunch of gaps to Marvelous.
"Hm. With this we can trace emissions from machinery. It's electricity heats up its cybernetic enhancements, which means it emits gasses. I may not be the smartest, but thanks to some tips from my friends, we should be able to follow it's trail.", Marvelous elaborates on the device.

"One final thing, it always hides in places where ionization is the easiest. So uh…That means…", Marvelous gets usurped by Broccoli as she explains for her, "It absorbs elements like specific gasses to shoot them back out for perfect lightning control. That's also how it moves at quick speed, nyu."
"Yes! That is how we can pinpoint its location!", Marvelous says raising her finger excitingly.
"So, basically. While everyone is trying to find spots that it has appeared to nearby, I actually think it last moved away at a further distance, probably near a cave or something.", Marvelous says.

"Um…I believe caves and some lakes often have gasses so perhaps it could go that way.", Cyberconnect2.
"I really wish someone smarter than us was here, nyu. They'd know, nyu.", Broccoli says, already feeling like we are wrong.
I had my arms crossed deep in thought the entire time.
"Hmmmm…Can't we just fly around until we find it?!", Ram sounded annoyed.
It would just hide. It is using the weather to camouflage. If one gets too close to it, and it will jump out to attack.", Marvelous says.
I point to the map, "West of Lowee, I notice the map detailing a flat surface that goes closer to the mountain side, most likely having a cave there."

"Wow…So smart, Suno.", Rom praises me.
"Is it really there, though?", Ram asks.
"Oh! This is perfect! There must be a reason it flew away so far from Planeptune! Maybe it travels a larger distance after a few short distance flights.", Marvelous says.
"That reminds me! Watching the news closely, before going to Planeptune, it was seen flying different distances each time, but there was a clear pattern.", Cyberconnect2 says.
And with that, we had an idea of its location. So we head out west, going around the mountain.
We did think of going up the mountain, but since that would take more time, we took the surface route first.

With our powerful party, the random monsters are no threat. Rom and Ram are practically playing with them as they hop around and blast them with magical combos.
Marvelous joins them, cutting monsters down left and right. In the meantime, Cyberconnect2 talks to me.
"It really is weird how I can't truly see you other than a random girl. Can a mask really do that?", she asks me.
"The first one was from a Fire Festival…After that, I have Shadow Create to replicate them…I don't even really know how. They stop working at 100% after transforming.", I say.

Cyberconnect2 does a nervous laugh and says, "Is that so?"
After a brief silence, she says, "Hey. I am sorry for fighting you back there. I wanted to help Marvelous, but I was never really sure you were a bad person. I want to say I was trying to test you. But I just can't help but feel that is a lame excuse."
She really looks like she cares. Maybe she is someone that deeply feels for her friends.
"It is okay. I was never expecting so many friends during this fight against SCJP.", I say. I kind of can't help but smile thinking about it, but I don't want to show it.

"I was really surprised. To hear that you can transform. But Marvy told me you don't consider yourself a Goddess. I don't think I should pry. But I really like your story, heroes fighting against evil hidden organizations, that's just like the manga I've read recently.", she says, holding her hands behind her head.
"Do you read Manga?", I ask her.
"A lot! I really like collecting them too. If you ever want to read any, I could recommend something.", she says.
"Hm…I think I know someone who should read a few. Do you have a few for a nine year old and uh…", as I say that, I wonder, How old was Sili-san again.

"You want some for your party members? I'll just give you some of the best for each genre and age-group, no worries.", Cyberconeect2 says.
"Much obliged.", I say giving her a short bow.
"Ah… Looks like I should jump in.", she says, her hands reaching for her daggers. She runs forward at high speed. Broccoli stays besides me, she's meant to be my body guard now.
"Twin Void Strike!", cyberconnect2 says with an aura surrounding her before blasting off at high speed, stopping a Fenrir from hitting Rom and Ram by knocking it down, then she proceeds to do a back flip uppercut of her two blades.

Cyberconnect2's back jump got her high into the air, after a front-flip, she kills another monster with a dual strike of her daggers. With our frontlines this strong, we basically had no issues moving forward. It may have been different if we were inside one of those areas where the Gold Towers broke down. But here? Normal low level monsters.
We finally reached the valley.
"Hm…Is it really in here? I don't see anything!", Ram speaks loudly as she and Rom move around.
…I can sense something hiding.

I look over to Marvelous. After our eye contact, she nods like she understands me.
"It's definitely here.", Marvelous tells the twins as she moves forward.
Suddenly, a spark of purple lightning travels around the ground. One thunderbolt strikes from the air, despite the lack of clouds. Around the air, lightning sparks all over the place, until rays of thunder are absorbed into one location. A purple energy bird is formed, before we know it. Our monster flaps its wings and roars.
"Get ready! We've got a fight on our hands!", Cyberconect2 says.
"We didn't even find it. Is it agitated about something?", Marvelous asks.

This bird looks half-machine half-bird. Indeed, it has an owl-like face but the overall shape of its head are like an eagle's. Its collarbones are pure metal, its feet are organic except for its steel claws. Its wings are a combination of cold steel and black feathers that sometimes light up purple. Its size is not be sneezed at, it was almost the size of a one-person two-story house. It's eyes shift between regular organic eyes and red eyes enhanced by its cyborg-like head that is half machine, half bird. around its body were purple crystals sticking out.
"All right! Let's get ready, Rom!", Ram shouts with adrenaline.
Rom replies with a nod, "Nhn! Let's beat him up…"

"Transform!", they both shout. Two pillars of light shoot out of them, before I knew it, the two had changed into their HDD forms, two skin-tight one pieces, their hair light blue and pink. Floating in the air, they hold their transformed wand and rod.
"Be prepared…I'll show you our Goddess power.", Ram says.
"We won't lose…", Rom declares.
The battle begins The thunderbird charging electricity into the tip feathers on the sides of its wings, then it clasps them together to shoot lightning at the twins.

Rom and Ram separate to let it elude them, then they fire off icicle storms at the bird, but its speed is indeed commendable. It flies away from the icy winds with the elegance of a feather despite its size. More combo attacks are dodged by this monster, then Ram decides to use, "Ice Coffin!", and a concentrated version at that, only one spiking pillar of ice is shot from under the bird, but it couldn't reach him, for it had suddenly amassed a large quantity of purple lightning and zooms away at the blink of an eye. I see, it's regular speed is simply fast, but its short burst movements are what people will find hard to follow.

It had only moved a few meters away from the ice pillar, but it seems the two had thought of a plan together from the start, because Rom casts Ice Coffin right after, only for that to miss the same way. It zoomed up high above it, then it starts glowing purple before vanishing, leaving a shockwave of purple lightning over the air. Within the next second, it appears from a gathering of lightning behind Rom and Ram, staring them down. I bet Rom and Ram could feel its presence behind them, they turn around in cold sweat.

Must be the lightning, they could feel the heat. It creates an electric vortex below its feet, thrusting both claws forward, one for each twin. They used a barrier to block most of the damage, but they are sent to the ground. Though, their flight made the landing mostly soft. The bird flies after them, but they both cast, "Twin Green Tornado!", their tornadoes getting absorbed into twin larger tornadoes that the bird barely dodges by stopping itself and flying over them. It makes more sudden movements as it avoids the many combo moves Rom and Ram throw at it whilst floating back up into the air.

From its mouth, back, and wings it shoots lightning bolts at the twins, but they were no less agile enough to avoid them whilst attempting to blast it with wind, fire, ice, light and occasionally dark magic. Their comet showers and multi-casting spells hitting it at least once for minimal damage. These kinds of attacks are done to increase the EXE drive gauge to begin with…Or regain SP? Does that work with magic? I believe so, as long as they are combo moves. Maybe.

"Ice Cube!", Rom shouts as she uses an SP skill that summons a few Ice cubes, but uh…I didn't know they were so good at tracking. No matter how many times the bird tries to avoid them, it get hits by one of them, then again, until it can't avoid them anymore and is stunned.
"Now! Rom! Let's beat it up!", Ram says.
"Yeah, let's do it…Ram…", Rom replies before they raise their staff as they shout, "Behold our special technique. Eternal Force Blizzard, Shatter!", and they summon this giant iceberg behind them that separates into thousands of pieces.

Thousands of icicles fly alongside Rom and Ram. As they wave their wand and rod down, the thunderbird gets barraged by ice it has no way of dodging no matter how fast it is. It may avoid a few with a dash of lightning that is more like it disappearing and reappearing into existence, but it still gets hit more than enough times. After the attack is over, it roars before summoning a bunch of lightning onto itself. Then it instantly zooms next to Rom's right, then it zooms away the next instant elsewhere. It basically teleports with lightning flashes multiple times.

The twins can't follow its speed anymore, a few seconds later, is appears straight above them as it left trails of sparks where it last teleported. Facing the ground, the bird clasps its wings together once more, the sparks it left behind shoot towards the center where Rom and Ram are. Realizing they are in danger, they fly with their backs down as the lightning explodes where they were positioned. Only the residue slightly grazes them. But it wasn't done, from up there, it summons lightning strikes from the sky onto itself, it turns itself into an amplifier, raining intense lightning down onto the twins. The two combined their magic to create a tough barrier, but even then, some of the lightning goes through and hurts them.

"Mekara Beam!", Broccoli shoots two beams from her eyes, hitting the bird directly. It recovered in mid-air as it does a curve with its back, staring us down after wards.
"Oh. It was a success, nyu?", Broccoli says genuinely surprised.
You were expecting it to fail?
The bird moves our way like lightning, Marvelous and Cyberconnect2 walk forward to stop its attacks. Each block a thrust of its claws. They are both putting in all of their strength not to get pushed away, the thunderbird does not let up, it electrocutes them from its feet before pushing them on the ground.

It flies straight towards me and Broccoli, she just throws Gema at her saying, "Good luck, Gema!"
The ball thing blows up into the bird, slightly knocking it back.
"Aquarian Age.", Broccoli says as she hits it with a cold geyser from under the bird, a rare water magic.
"Ice Hold!", I hear as Ram freezes part of the bird, ice sticking it to the ground, all the while being healed by Rom.
Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous came back to jump towards the head of the bird to slash it before landing on the ground.

The bird generates enough electricity to increase its heat, melting the ice. It quickly shoots itself like a lightning bolt at Rom and Ram, its feet being still visible as the rest of its body look like dense lightning. Rom and Ram manage to fly away whilst Broccoli, still standing next to me, uses support magic to increase all of our intelligence and mental stats. Rom and Ram should do more damage and be able to take its lightning, provided it is all magic and not physical lightning.

As Rom and Ram flew up, they casted explosions and extensions below, the bird still able to fly past most of them before zapping back into the air. It teleports once again, right in front of Rom and Ram.
"Hero's Banquet, nyu.", Broccoli says as she casts another support magic to increase our strength and agility. The thunderbird cast a spell using its body as a conduit, lightning strikes from the sky consecutively, meaning we had to step away from the multiple lightning bolts hitting the ground. Rom and Ram are in a beam struggle as they fire off a large beam of light with it shooting a purple lightning beam at them from the mouth. In the meantime, Marvelous uses Stealth Speed to circumvent the lightning strikes whilst running around the Thunderbird.

Now she jumps at its back, cleaving it twice before slashing it with some power shouting, "Batto Ranbo!", weakening the bird enough for its beam to be overtaken by the light attack, taking more minor damage. However, it teleports and what Marvelous doesn't see coming is its spin kick in beautiful form, like it had studied martial arts for decades. The kick of lightning sends Marvelous crashing into the side of the mountain.

Rom wanted to head over to heal, but Ram shouts, "Rom, wait! If we move out now, it will pick us apart."
"But…Marvy…", Rom looks sad, but after reassuring they can heal her later, they both focus on attacking the bird, giving it no chance to chase after Marvelous.
In the meantime Broccoli knocks Cyberconnect2 up into the air to reach the bird.
"Twin Void Strike!", she knocks the bird down with her twin blades, which is followed up by rom and ram summoning a bunch of large icicles above the bird, allowing them to fall on it to deal more damage.

In retaliation, the bird weaves many lightning bolts their way, it looks like a constant stream of lightning. While they were occupied, the bird flies over to Cyberconnect2. Cyberconnect2 is forced to backpaddle whilst deflecting an onslaught of straight kicks from the bird at high speeds. Just when it looked like she was getting the hang of it, it suddenly charges lightning and extends its leg beyond what looked possible, sending Cyberconnect2 flying over the snow. Cyberconnect2 struggles, but she manages to do a backflip onto her feet, only for the bird to teleport next to her and performing another spin kick.

With her face on the ground, Cyberconnect2 gets fried by a thunderstorm that the bird summons from the sky. Rom and Ram cross their weapons and shout, "Great Explosion!", combining their magic to hit the bird with an explosion. Unfortunately, Cyberconnect2 is knocked out. As the bird turns around to fight Rom and Ram, they eventually separate to let Marvelous through, doing a surprise attack. It would seem Marvelous was only hurt, but not down for the count yet. She stabs her blade into the bird and sets it aflame as the two went down to the ground.

Just before making contact, the bird kicks Marvelous off of it. Immediately, with Stealth Speed, Marvelous runs forwards shouting, "Ranbo!", going on the offensive with her dual blades, but the bird is no less an expert on close-quarter combat, perfectly deflecting her blades with its claws, even managing to stop her finisher as wind gushes off the two. Then it zooms to her side, she dodges its spin kick, but then it flapped its wings once to move past her and hit her with a backwards heel spin-kick, blowing her close to Cyberconnect2.

Before she could even get proper footing, Marvelous is hit by a beam of lightning that came from the bird's mouth. She falls unconscious next to Cyberconnect2.
Both of them are high leveled and powerful. Their bodies should be a lot tougher. This bird's attacks just do that much damage. Rom and Ram's higher mental stat lets them take the lightning a bit harder, but one direct kick and it's over. This thing is crazy strong.
"EXE Drive Skill!", Broccoli shouts, to stop the bird from moving…No, it is so strong, even her EXE Drive is not enough, but Ram stops its movements with her magic.

"MEKARA BEAM!", she shouts, the exclamation marks powering up her attack, I think. The beam indeed is a lot bigger and pierces through the bird doing the most damage any of us has done so far.
"It's not over yet, Nyu.", she says while riding Gema. After floating away for a bit, she teleports above. Below her is a giant green magical circle as she says with shadows covering her face and stars in her eyes, "Prepare yourself, nyu.", then she crashes into the monster like a meteor, leaving behind a giant pillar of golden light. Concluding her EXE Drive skill, she went back to me.

"I'll make all of you better…", Rom says that as she finishes reviving Marvelous and Cybberconnect2, they immediately get back up seeming pretty good. Rays of lightning pass by them as they moved out, knowing the bird is not going to wait for them. It is back in the air, teleporting or zooming around. I've seen Rom and Ram trying to hit it for about five minutes now, with the other two running around trying to catch it off guard.

"Man! This stupid thing is so annoying! I'm freezing it forever!", Ram shouts, being done with it all.
"EXE Drive Skill!", as with Broccoli, even her EXE Drive Skill isn't enough to completely stop it, but her actual technique is designed to hit everything no matter what.
"Absolute Zero!", she shouts, encasing the monster in ice after summoning many ice magical circles around her body, almost like exploding with magic. The ice grew even bigger damaging it more.
"EXE Drive Skill! Northen Cross!", Rom shouts afterwards.

She skates over the surface like its ice, then she stops to raise her wand, a huge snowflake symbol appears below her, turning into a huge magical circle. Four blue orbs drop around the bird, they concentrate a beam into the middle of the four, damaging it over time. Just as I thought it was done, Rom taps her right foot against her left and says, "Southern Cross is coming too!", summoning four red orbs on top of the blue ones, letting them both explode onto the monster.
Breaking free of the ice, the thunderbird flies back up to screech.

It took all of those attacks it only has a few scratches to show for it. It only looks slightly angry. Did we even deplete a quarter of its HP?
The thunderbird lights up with electricity. Before we knew it, it's completely enveloped by purple energy, the shape growing bigger into a giant purple bird of pure lightning, its shoots this shape at us. Rom and Ram combined their magic to blast it when it was about to hit them, but the shape disparages into a hundred tiny birds of lightning, all flying past them and heading for us instead.

Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous are capable of dodging them with side hops whilst deflecting many with their blades. The few that came for me and Broccoli get stopped by Broccoli guarding me using Gema whilst she makes the "Nyuuuuuuuu….", noise.
With one flap of its wing, it ascends, speeding up whilst slowly turning into bolt of lightning for a few seconds until it gained a high altitude. Suddenly it teleports around until it finishes creating this circle above us of purple lightning birds, with it itself being the only one material.

All of them shoot beams of lightning down at the twins, which they barely manage to block combining their magic for barriers. I can imagine the weariness on their faces, their arms are struggling to hold on. As their breaths get heavy, it clasped its wings, shooting the ring of birds down towards them. The twins are fast enough to lower themselves so the birds collide into each other above them, but right after, the thunderbird zooms above their heads, ready to stomp them.

I prepared a knife for this situation. They won't even notice it was me. At light speed, I pierce the bird to stun it for a second. It was enough time for Ram to launch a counter.
"Ice Hammer!", Ram shouts, creating a hammer onto her rod made of ice, she slams the bird down on the ground with it, a pillar of cold magic hurting it even further as it spouts out of a crater created by the smackdown. It will get up, so Marvelous runs forward with Stealth Speed. Rom and Ram make room for her as she has her two blades out, emitting flame when she shouts, "EXE Drive Skill!"

Slashes, stabs, spin slashes, the bird gets hit repeatedly until Marvelous cuts past it with a circular slash shouting, "Midaresaki!" In her final attack, she has four of the Red Flame merge with her blade, she flies towards the bird turning into somewhat of a bird of flame herself, or it meant to be a sword? She knocks the bird over with her next flaming slash. Over time, the bird looks more hurt. After it flies up, he goes into the middle. Now he folds its wings and legs around itself as purple sparks repeatedly shoot out of it. The winds are being absorbed into it, otherwise, the wind currents around us are warping. Lightning cracks the skies…

It's going to burst!
It is too late for everyone else, but Broccoli is right besides me. I grab her and grab the lightning absorbing blade from my inventory. The bird unfolds, creating this giant discharge that is close to an explosion covering the whole flat area surrounded by the mountain. Everyone got hit, me and Broccoli got off rather easy being near the sword that took the attack for us. Even Rom and Ram got knocked out, losing their Goddess forms.

"Broccoli, can you heal Rom? As long as she doesn't see me, I can hold off that bird thing.", I ask.
"I understand, nyu.", Broccoli replies quickly. The sword brimming with lightning, I throw at the bird to let it explode. That sword is actually not legendary or unique, so I made multiple copies. The electricity doesn't damage the bird, though it seems to not be zero damage either.
Angry at me, the bird flies towards us, I throw Broccoli towards Rom whilst backstepping myself to avoid getting rammed by the lightning enveloped charge of the thunderbird. He quickly teleports to me side, but able to predict its movements through the winds, I easily defend against his thrust kicks, its claws unable to reach me. Even with lightning added to its thrust, it could only make me slide back a little.

I try to cut him back, but he teleports away again, I immediately turn to my right where it does the full body shot again. He shoots the shape of a large purple bird at me, which I half using Mirror Blade. The perfect halves turn into two slightly smaller birds instead. This may intimidate the average individual, but their size means nothing to me as they close up on me. I jump high into the sky as they collide into lightning. Now they disparage into hundreds of lightning bird following me. Seeing as Broccoli just gave Rom a Life Fragment and is busy healing her with….Goop from her eyes? She won't see this.

"CombinationStar Light Slash!", I say to shoot the multitude of birds down with a blade of light.
Landing back, the bird flaps its wings as it goes after me, then it gets hit by flames as Broccoli uses another spell, "Red Lotus!"
Broccoli jumps at its back, hitting it with Gema, she falls right after into a roll. She rolls underneath he bird, surprisingly beating it up with a rush of blows as she hits it six times with Gema in quick succession. Slightly irritated, the bird unleashes a discharge that Broccoli could barely defend against, eventually letting go of Gema, that is when the bird zooms next to her and blows her over with a sweep of its leg charged with lightning.

I catch Broccoli, almost falling over.
"Broccoli, are you alright?!", I ask her. She looks at me weakly.
"That bird sucks, nyu.", she says. I guess she is fine enough.
The bird appears before us, but I can't do much with Rom now up. But she wasn't alone. Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous jump onto its back, stabbing it. As their blades are stuck into the bird, it flies up with them holding onto their weapons. The bird shoots lightning from its back and rain lighting down on it, connecting the rain to its discharge, damaging the two enough to almost knock them out, they fall off it and onto the ground.

They try to move, but it is clear they can't get back up.
"Geez! Don't go down now, we just healed you! Rom! Take care of them, I'll handle that dumb bird!". Ram shouts displeased.
Transforming into HDD, Ram flies towards the bird, hitting it with icicles. The bird turns around and flies straight at her. "Ice Hammer!", Ram's attack competes with the birds's lightning strike kick. The two attacks are equal in power, but Ram just lacks the physical strength and gets pushed back.

As she recovers the bird zoomed past her, then it stopped its flight with its wings before turning around, about to kick her with its legs.
"Explosion!", Rom stops the bird with an explosion spell. Now Ram is brimming with magic as she shouts, "EXE Drive Skill!", using two of the EXE Drive bar.
"Let me show you my ultimate magic.", Ram states with a cocky smile.
Aiming her rod at it, she summons four huge icicles around the bird, raising her rod, the icicles crash into it turning into a star of ice.

Twirling the rod above her head with magic creates a cold tornado that creates a mirroring tornado around the bird but at a much larger size, it causes the ice star to compress into nothingness, causing it to explode with ice magic. Frozen, the bird has not way to dodge Ram's final ultimate attack as magic gathers around her, turning her rod into a giant blade of ice a she shouts, "Ice Sword, Icecalibur!", knocking it onto the ground with a powerful slash. Even this tough enemy has trouble shaking it off, barely able to make it off the ground.

It only has itself to blame, the amount of damage it has done had dramatically raised the EXE Drive bar.
Rom transforms so she can attack it next.
"EXE Drive Skill! Endless Cocytus!", Rom says before raising her wand and using magic to lift up the bird in a tornado of ice. "I'll put you into an eternal hell.", she says. Wait what?
"I'll freeze your soul", she says before stabbing her wand into the ground that creates this zigzagging shockwave attack, upon hitting the enemy, it creates this beautiful tree of ice that freezes the bird.
Was she always so scary? She says it casually too?

"You thought it was over?", Rom asks as her wand is charging elemental energy. She shoots out an orb into the sky that turns into a blade no smaller than Ram's Icecalibur. It drops onto the bird exploding it, leaving V-shaped snow hanging in the air for a few seconds. Looking at the bird flying back up, I'd say it has less than half of its health left. It floats back up, discharging a bit of lightning. After one screech, it creates these stormy black lightning tornadoes from its wings, they were rather tall and wide.

The twins tried to counter it with their own large enough ice tornadoes, but theirs weren't as strong and they will soon be overtaken. Taking this as an opportunity, Cybberconnect2 and Marvelous run into Rom and Ram's tornadoes. In a risky move, they spin alongside it, one enchanting her blades with flame and the other with winds. The two tornadoes collapse and the two girls are cannoned out of them, directly slashing the bird before landing on the ground doing okay damage. The two retreat back to the back row of our party.

Just as we thought nothing crazy could happen, rockets fly our way. I can sense an army of mecha approaching from the sky behind us. The rockets are stopped by a wave of thunder from the bird clapping its wings. As the rockets fell down, Rom and Ram stop any missiles directed at us with ice whilst the Mecha army approaches with one guy sitting inside a larger one.
"Alright, that was a good job, heroes. But we picked up its signal and see it weakened enough. We'll take over-", before he gets to finish his sentence, a large quantity of droids get destroyed and he himself gets damaged by ice from Rom and Ram's magic. The two turn to him and look displeased.
"Hey! What's the big deal, we were here first!", Ram shouts.
"Not fair…", Rom says.
I whisper to Broccoli, "Those are SCJP mecha I believe. They want to steal the treasures for something evil."

Broccoli tells the twins, "You can beat him up, nyu. He is bad guy, nyu!"
The man himself changes attitude really quickly, spouting, "W-wait?! Those are the Lowee CPU Candidates? Oh no! We're leaving! What the hell are they doing here?!"
The man quickly leaves with his army. Why would he leave because of Goddesses being here? Do they really care?
Broccoli tells Rom and Ram, "Chase after them, nyu. The bird is weakened, nyu! You can't let them escape, nyu!"

Ram looked like she was hesitating, but now she's made up her mind and says, "We'll show them! Right, Rom?"
"Nhn. We won't let them get away…", Rom says. Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous each give an SP charger to the twins. After an exchange of thanks and you're welcomes, the two heal up and fly off to the fleeing machine army.
The bird tries to pursue, but its stopped by Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous, blocking its talons with their blades. The bird has them stumble as it teleports away.

I follow it's teleporting and predict it's next location with Wind Sense. With my blade revved up with light magic, I shoot myself at it with a burst of Light Step, putting on my mask in full as I shout, "UnionStar, Light Slash", the direct hit of my attack at point blank had it flying pretty far back.
Snow is starting to fall as I fight this bird, its's teleporting or zooming unable to catch me off-guard as I dodge his attacks by a huge margin using Light Step.

At the same time, it dodges my flash step strike as it zooms away from me, I try to follow it and shoot a small burst of light after it from a swing of my sword, but it avoids that too. Now it tries to do a lightning drop kick at me, but I create a shockwave through the snow to hit the side of its leg, changing it's trajectory, then I move past him with a slash to its side. In the blink of an eye, I pass it, then Broccoli knocks it over me with Gema. It flies back with the others gathering near me.
"Did you just send them away to give me some action?", I ask Broccoli.
"Nyu. I thought you were bored, nyu.", she tells me.

Marvelous puts a phone back in her pocket saying, "I called some friends to inform Lowee enforcers to back up Rom and Ram."
Let's hope C-sha hears about the situation and helps them, she's definitely the next strongest person in Lowee.
"Let's put all our focus on this thing!", Cyberconnect2 says.
"I'll heal, nyu.", Broccoli says.
"We have some buffs and slight healing magic of our own before round 2.", Cyberconnect2 says.
Broccoli ups our physical attacks, agility, mental and intelligence. I feel lighter and my head clearer. The three of us skirt around as rays of lightning pass by chaotically fired from the bird. With snowfall, I can easily do some pot shots gathering the snow on the floor with the snow in the air to create sturdy moving snow that slams into the bird a few times.

"Snow Sky Cutter!", I shout as I keep thinking of a better name for this attack. But the bird teleports away. It was right next to me, raining lightning down on me summoned from the sky, I jump to avoid it, but it was a clever trick to get me whilst airborne. Or so it may have thought, for when it tried to drop kick me, I cast explosion to shove myself out of its range, and I immediately fire a medium sized light slash with snow turned into light absorbed into the sword. From behind the thunderbird, Marvelous shouts, "Red Flame!", igniting her special flame skill that uses one of the four flames, her hair turning perfectly red and becoming slightly longer and messier.

With some increases speed and jumping height from the flame, she comes after the bird, knocking it down. Not understanding Marvelous' power boost, it tries to dig its claws with electricity into her, but the indirect lightning doesn't penetrate her flaming barrier as she pushes the two talons away with her ninja blades. After a struggle of arms, Marvelous lets her aura flare up, bursting into flame to knock the bird back a little. In the meantime, Cyberconnect2 has changed slightly. Her eyes turning red as she's growling. He skin looks like she gained hairs that stand up like a cat, though it is still skin. She looks mad as she runs at a higher speed towards the bird, who was just recovering.

Unable to dodge, the bird thinks to just kick her like before, but her strength increased enough to blow the bird towards Broccoli. Broccoli knocks the bird towards me, I then use my blade of light to knock it back at Cyberconnect2, who then blows it over to Marvelous, who then knocks it towards Broccoli, who then lets me end this game of pinball as I attempt to knock it in the sky with my blade fully charged with light, but I miss the bird as it manages to get above me with one strong flap of its wing.

Finally having shook off our assault, it flies up high, attacking me with every lightning attack it knows all at once.
"I who collect thousands of fallen stars, their time to shine thought lost, they gather together to become a force of brilliant light. UnionStar Helios Slash!", I shout, overtaking its attack and creating a large explosion in the air as it collides with the thunderbird.
We all cheered, but as the smoke clears, it is pretty obvious this fight just started for us. Like a vortex, it was absorbing lightning. Chains of lightning shoot over the ground before rising at the bird.

From the lightning, the bird forms two large purple floating hands. It uses them as fists. I can sense it s about to punch all of us from far away, I shout, "Watch out!" In a moment's notice, it is like hundreds of fists rain down upon us from the sky. The only one I am really worried about is Broccoli.
I can easily predict where they would strike and dodge them casually, but Broccoli isn't nearly as agile, all she could do is block and hide behind Gema. Marvelous is able to dig underground and Cyberconnect2's new found strength has her zigzagging around most of them, still getting hit a few times. The bird flies straight at me ready to punch me, I meet his fist with my own of light, we clash, it backs off in response. Marvelous has gone back to Broccoli to give her a healing Futomaki roll using her SP…However that works.

Broccoli, in turn, heals us as we fight the thunderbird who uses even more martial arts alongside new lightning vortex blasts it shoots from its hands. After two minutes, it uses its electricity to gather metal out of the ground below us, at first it was to counter my snow attacks. I am forced to create a shield of snow as the metal and dust storm around us. Now I see it was reforming itself, its lightning hands gained a metal frame around them, then suddenly, it's spine straightened slightly as did its legs. It became a man-bird cyborg instead with metal arms and its legs slightly altered with metal.

It takes a martial artist stance. The three of us gather, Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous standing next to me.
"Let's go all out…", I say as I grab a second sword and light them both up, letting them continuously absorb snow turned into light.
"Nothing held back.", Marvelous says.
"I'll kill that thing.", Cyberconnect2 growls. A fire is lit in all of us.
Light bursting from my feet, I shoot myself forward whilst Marvelous and Cyberconnect2 create shockwaves from the sheer force of their running start, the ground is cracking from their running as they run past each other in curves towards the thunderbird.

I strike it with both blades, it struggling to block my attack with its arms, I notice it is using compressed lightning as a layer of protection, its wings curl around me, ready to electrocute me. I senses something was off and cast explosion to escape, although, he still reaches me with a thrust kick, knocking me back with a blast of lightning. Marvelous and Cyberconnect2 attack it from its flanks right after, it uses its wings to somewhat protect itself from their blades.

With one electrical discharge, it shoves them away immediately. It creates another two thunder tornadoes. Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous escape their pulling power and ran in opposite direction away from the bird. The two tornadoes combine and head straight to me. Instead of running, I rev up my blades and blast it apart with two slashes of light right next to each other.
The thunderbird zooms towards me with a thunder dropkick, which I dodge with Light Step. Then it teleports behind me again, I turn around to block its fist with my own punch, having thrown my blades in the air beforehand.

Exchanging a rush of blows with my fists engulfed with light, we clash and clash, until it threw one heavy punch, I jumped high above it to grab my two swords, I shot an X shaped blade of light at it, of course, it teleports away from my attack and right behind my left shoulder, but I can just as easily block its spin kick and let myself be flung onto the ground. Our fight would continue on like this for about ten minutes. Thanks to the snow, I was able to mitigate its attacks whenever he was going for Marvelous or Cyberconnect2, and I am able to damage it more. I can't quite use the snow to stop its movements, however.

Marvelous runs in, her flames bursting with every clash of her blades against its fists. She does jumping spin slashes as she tries to force the bird back, but it is simply too strong. After one struggle of strength, Marvelous digs underground, the bird slightly tilting over as its fists suddenly lost the obstacle it was pushing against, despite that, it sill flies back to dodge a rocky spiked pillar that shot out of the ground. That too, was a distraction, Marvelous appears behind the thunderbird from underground and knocks it over to Cyberconnect2.

As the bird stumbles over the ground with one foot three times, Cyberconnect2 dashes past it, slicing it a few times, fleeing right after from its lightning attacks. It gathers lightning in its hands, creating an orb vortex that constantly sucks up electricity, or so it looks like. It shoots them at the two, though they were already about to flee, the orb eluding them by a large distance. Lightning strikes it from all directions, and upon collision, it implodes…Then it explodes in a discharge of lightning.

While it was distracted, I launch myself from behind it, slamming my lit up swords into its back, slightly forcing him to hop over. I block a turn kick to my left by crossing my blade, then I jump over its slide kick, it blocks my double strike with its arms before standing up straight. Now I constantly parry his fists and kicks at fast speed whilst I am unable to damage its arms that block my swords. It's made of something even tougher than Nintendium, or so it feels like.

It does a dual chop attack, its hands reaching me from opposing sides, but I block it with my swords. Then it shoots this lightning beam from its mouth, I jump back with Light Step before getting hit by it. My two lit up swords block all damage, but it pushes me quite far away. With Yukishihai, I do an snow air cut, but despite its speed, the bird teleports away, it cutting a rift through the mountain instead. The bird appears next to me as it often does, so I block its punch that sends me in the air, however, this time it immediately opened its fist, an orb of lightning floating off the palm of its hand aimed at me.

It was a smaller vortex orb that shoots me quite a distance away.
While I am recovering, Marvelous and Cyberconnect2 are heading towards the bird. It summons two tornadoes again, but this time, it absorbs them into its hands. The tornadoes compressed and increased in speed, turning into windy lightning drills. The bird took a stance before shooting itself off the ground with a trail of lightning, Marvelous could barely react when the drill fist was shoved into her gut. The flames protected her from any scratch, but the blunt force and lightning shoots her past Broccoli, flipping backwards overt the ground after coming into contact with it once.

The tornado on its right arm disappeared upon hit. So, they don't last. Cyberconnect2 ducks under its backhand arm swing, then she jumps over a low sweep of its legs, she manages to push the bird back a little with a twin slash of her blades, the bird elevating itself slightly before thrusting its fist in the air, emitting the tornado off of its fist. Cyberconnect2 barely dodges it by getting high up in the air, but that is when the bird flies strait up to her, kicking her gut in with its claws. Immobile, Cyberconnect2 looks helpless as the bird gently flies over her before spin kicking her down next to broccoli, creating a crater that was discharging lightning from the bird's magic.

With the three close to each other, the bird was preparing another vortex orbs, but I can stop it. I shoot my secondary blade through its arms at light speed. Now I have its attention. No matter how much lightning he shoots, he can't catch me for my spamming of Light Step increases my speed each time. Even now that he is chasing me, he is too late. Close to the ground, he observes me as I move past him any times.
"Red Lotus, nyu!", Broccoli creates an explosion to disturb the bird's focus.

That is when I stop moving, saving the kinetic energy within my feet as my heels shoots a giant blazing trail of white light behind me. "Maximum Power…", I say as I shoot myself forward.
"Reflection Punch!", I shout, punching the bird a few meters away from me. Not seeing the sword behind my back, it tries to counter me with lightning, that is when I reveal the blade powered up with snow and light. "UnionStar Helios Slash!", I shout as my blade goes through the lightning and explodes into the bird.

Broccoli had finished healing Marvelous and Cyberconnect2, they now run right past me. The bird tries punching both at the same time with each fist, but we were hoping for that. As the two have its arms stretched straight forward to push them back, I leap into the sky with Light Step.
"Snow Air Cut!", I shout, cutting its arms clean off with a sharp blade created through snowflakes.
With its arms disabled, Cyberconnect2 shouts, "EXE Drive Skill!"

A few slashes and kicks lead up into an uppercut, Cyberconnect2 sends the bird flying before wailing in on it with spin slashes and kicks at high speed. Then she finally knocks it down and shouts, "Black Fang Soul!" She turns into this blue orb that then explodes and blue and green lights. The bird gets seemingly cut up by giant green blades slashing it at high speed, in the end getting cut by Cyberconnect2 dashing past it at a speed that makes her invisible, she lands on her knee below it afterwards.

It's cringing in pain as it falls on its feet, its movement wobbly now that it lost its arms and damaged its legs.
"Now!", I shout. Broccoli strengthens us with support magic, then we get in formation and shout, "Formation EXE Drive Skill!", me, Cyberconnect2 and Marvelous shout.
I sheath my sword and grab two special knives, they enhance light magic. My stabbers are glowing with light, Marvelous sets her swords aflame channeling her whole Red Flame into them, and Cyberconnect2 enhances her daggers with wind magic.

The three of us dash into it with twin thrusts before rushing our blades into it over and over again until all three of us lift the bird up with an uppercut that sends ourselves sky high. The three of us are close to each other in the air before we start spinning around with our blades shouting, "Thief, Ninja, Rouge Trifecta!", we shout as we turn into buzzsaws of white, green and red respectively cutting through the monster as we plunge ourselves onto the ground. The attack ends with our elements combining into the monster's cuts, causing an explosion of magic.

We reposition ourselves somewhat close to Broccoli as the monster drops to the ground. It flew up, its metal pieces it made for itself crumbling and littering the ground. It does one discharge that electrocute its surroundings, it has returned to its original form after.
"It's alive…? How long have we been fighting?". Marvelous says.
Cyberconnect2 is panting as well, saying, "It can't be that healthy…It's damaged all over…"
"I sense it has a quarter of HP left, nyu.", Broccoli says.
All that fighting for a quarter of health? Everyone here is too exhausted.

"I'll take the rest. Once I transform, I should be able to reduce its last HP myself.", I boast.
I move forward while the thunderbird screeches at me.
"Don't overdo it.", Cyberconnect2 warns me.
I can sense them holding their breaths. I can't let them down.
I stop close enough to the monster. Then I shout, Transform! My eyes glowing with power symbols. I can sense inside my head, none of the other personalities stop me.

A pillar of light shoots out of me, but something is different, I am suddenly in a white void filled with stars and orbs of light. This feeling…I've been here before.
All these light orbs. Share energy? Yes, I sense an explosion of share energy coming towards me. Not just from Lowee, but from the other three nations as well. What is going on? Is it something we've done there? I know we did a lot of helping people in the past 2 months and made more friends, but this? A disk manifests in front of me.

I grab it. A new form, I suppose. Well. Let's see what power I am granted.
"White Frozen Sweetch Processor Unit, set.", my words cause the white void, stars and lights to converge into me, creating an explosion of white that transforms me. I grow by about ten centimeters. I wear a white body suit with sky-blue highlights and meshes. My hips get two floating pieces that are large, round and bulky with pipe-like designs stuck together turned into some kind of round shield each, the insides glow with RGB, the rainbow light shooting off between slits in the shield. The boots are large and spikey, having an aurora around them. My wings are overly large and curl around me, similar in design to my hip parts, they get connected in front of me by an immaterial rainbow coat. The back of my wings emit some kind of rainbow cape that is like the coat. My shoulder parts float next to me, they almost look like white cannons.

On the top of my head, a halo-crown floats above emitting auroras, and I gain a see-through deep blue vizor, my white eyes with blue power symbols easily visible. Aside my bangs, my hair had grown slightly longer and became a deep blue color.
"Cold Heart. Combat ready.". I say. I can sense my power being close to original. The Share energy to negative energy ratio is 99/1 percent.
I can sense Cyberconnect2 observing me quite attentively. I get the feeling she didn't believe I could actually transform. Broccoli doesn't look like it, but she's definitely watching with awe.

The thunderbird on the other hand, immediately flew high up. It was charging some kind of energy.
"Suno! Get him! He's going to flee!", Marvelous shouts. She had seen this before, I believe. Though by the time she said that, it was too late. Even with Light Step, I barely missed it as the bird shoots off with lightning going beyond hyper speed.
I look over to Marvelous and ask, "He's going to slow down slightly and fly in a straight line, right?!"

She nods.
I tell them, "You guys. Help Rom and Ram and head to Planeptune, just in case. I am chasing after it."
Before they could get the words out, I fly straight to the west, following the bird. My velocity slowly increasing to Mach 5. My speed with Light Step would be faster, but even doing that consecutively, the constant pauses between movements would slow me down. Below me, grass fields and forests pass by. Finally, near the end of Gamindustri's land, I see the bird. It has slowed down to around Mach 3. I can catch up to it quick enough.

"UnionStar Light Slash!", I shout, dealing a massive blow with a shooting blade of light. It screeches and turns its heads back to look at me. It's speed marginally decreases, as does my own. It still flies over the ocean. I use Light Step in mid-air to get closer to it. Now it shoots waves of lightning back at me, I fit between the gaps as I get near it. Finally, my sword can reach it, but it turns around to block my slash, holding my blade between its claws.

Despite loading me with electricity, I barely feel the pain and push the bird away. I dash right after it with mid-air Light Step, but it teleports at I try to strike it, hitting nothing instead. I fly closer to the ocean, the sun setting next to me. The light of the huge sun lowering in the waters gets blocked by the bird floating down to my right, despite its wings flapping straight down, it manages to stay by my side as I am flying to the west.

I lean my body to different directions to avoid lightning fall, then it lights itself up, making a huge figure of a purple bird made up of lightning. I ascend into the sky as the purple lightning bird flies onto the water, creating a forcefield of lightning that shoots off a dozen average sized birds and a hundred smaller ones. The smaller ones quickly try to ram me, but I easily avoid them, the larger ones approach me slower so they can shoot beams out of their mouths. I narrowly get between the multiple beams and blocked a few, continuing from there, I destroyed the purple birds with weaker Light Slashes.

The last purple bird flew past me, trying to get me from above, after I cut it, the real thunder bird teleports above me in an attempt to kick me, but I easily block it with my sword, holding my arm against the swords' side to reinforce my strength. The two of us moved away and got lower to the ocean. Just above the sea, water rises behind us as we fly next to each other, the sunlight beaming off of it. Then we get closer and struggle with sword and claw, not changing our flight. For a minute, we appeared and reappeared at high speed leaving many shockwaves over the air behind, sometimes making large splashes in the water or tearing the clouds apart.

But wounded, it couldn't handle my new form, it got more minor hits in in the end. Now I block one more kick with my blade in one hand, and as it tries to push its claws into me, I use my left fist to punch it under its mouth, hurting it enough to make it flinch and fly away from me. Now it suddenly shifts direction to South. I stop for a second.
Where is it going…Planeptune is south of here…No, the island next to it! It's returning home!
I follow it right after. I thought it would take a while to get to the island, but now I see the bird transforming.

Metal flies into the air as it absorbs both lightning and metal. Some feathers are visible and I can see wings underneath the armor, but it turned into a high-speed advanced futuristic looking jet. This isn't even an animal anymore
It's flying speed had doubled, the two jet engines leaving purple sparkly trails behind. From the top, it launches many missiles at me. I thought I could dodge them, but they stop and open up when I got between them. As I see pieces dislodge themselves, I can see sparkling antenna.

I get zapped by an immense amount of electricity. It stops to turn around to me, using its jet engines to instantly shift positions. It shoots a purple laser of lightning at me. I cast Mirror Blade and split the beam in two. Then it flies back South again. I chase after it, this time the missiles it fires in the air come raining down at me, they were normal explosive ones, but just to be save, I make my movement more sporadic. Regardless, my flying speed isn't as fast, especially when I have to dodge lightning bolts and missiles flying from the sky. Now it even shoots a beam from its jet engines. It catches me off guard, so I get hit by it directly. This form I have is slower, but its defenses are amazing, I barely get damaged by this attack.

My breath ragged, I spent a good amount of time trying to catch up to this thing. I notice another short-coming of this form. The share energy used to power it is reduced way faster. Not only do I lose SP, I cannot maintain this form for long, especially if I have to move so fast for such a long time. The bird is barely in my sight whereas I have reached my limit. I descend to the land ahead. It is a desert as is stated. I revert back to normal and fall on the sands.

The skies are getting redder as the sun is setting, in the meantime, I cover my eyes so sand doesn't blow into them. This is it. The new desert. I did prepare to go here later, just to be safe.
But the heat of the sun is obvious to me. I am not used to this kind of climate. I'm a bit anxious to go at it alone, however, I know my friends will show up here at some point. I grab a poncho from my inventory and start my quest. I will kill that bird no matter what. Shaking off my weariness, I march on.

To Be Continued…