Hyperdimension Neptunia: Third Sister; Light Volume 2: Growth

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The first quest!

I woke up with a rather warm feeling all over my body. The opening of my eyelids felt like iron gates being pushed open. After my blurry vision sharpened, and the muffled voices I was hearing got clearer, I watched as everyone was partying in Neptune's room. I was back here again, with everyone who was here before, and Uzume and B-Sha had gotten here too.
"Ah! She's finally awake!", I heard someone shout.
"Oh! Wakey wakey! The sun is going down! Wait, that would make you want to sleep, huh? It's rising up for some reason!!", Neptune tried to put me in the right spirit.

"You must've fought quite hard if you can sleep through our noise for hours.", I heard from my right. I switched my gaze over my right shoulder and saw Uzume sit on the couch with one leg onto it whilst her knee was being held by her hand. She was smiling at me.
"She always sleeps like that...Though...", Rom corrected her.
"She won't be sleeping when Big sis starts scolding her, I'm sure!", Ram said.
I looked at big sis who seemed a little cranky as she told me with, both a quiet tone, and throughout her line, an angry tone ,"You bet. I am still angry at you, Bios! How many times do we have to tell you to rely on us? If you ever go at it alone again, I'll...", she stopped to sigh and then continued quietly, "But...If it weren't for you...We might've lost...So...Good job on that...", she looked the other way right after.

"Ahl, so you did take my advice to be kind and praise her...You're all grown up now, blanny.", Vert walked next to me.
"Just because I'm not a big freaking cow doesn't mean I am not grown up, damn bitch!", big sis angrily responded.
Vert ignored her and handed me some hot cocoa. It was quite good!
As I looked at it excitingly, she told me, "Here you go, Compa was making that for you."
I am amazed at her speed. She even walked right past Vert to tell me, "Please, enjoy it. I made with love, desu. I tried my best to make it as good as possible for saving me and Iffy, desu."
So it was homemade? I didn't pick it up at first. I realize it now.

"You did pretty well out there. I don't agree with you putting yourself in danger. But I can tell you are ready for normal quests. Here, take this!", IF sat on a chair saying those things to me before throwing a gun my way. As I grabbed it, she told me, "My reward for you."
"I appreciate it...But sorry.", I said looking at the gun before throwing it back at IF.
"You don't like it? I thought you were interested in weapons. Because you used so many.", IF asked me with a curious face.
"I don't understand modern weapons much. I prefer something more...Classic.", I answered.
Uni looked pretty smug as she leaned on the wall and added, "Why do you think she uses a bow and arrow instead? If you ask me, she's better that way anyway. I don't think you can do some of her moves with a gun."

"Hm...Oh well. I'll figure out how to make it up to you, okay?", IF said.
When I nodded to her, Uzume had walked past me. I focused on her as she headed over to Nepgear, for she appeared to be tinkering with something.
"Hey, Gearsy, are you able to fix it?", Uzume asked.
"Your visual radio wasn't hit that hard... What I am struggling with is the new function I wanted to add. I though of a wide radar that can detect abnormalities and monsters.", was her answer.
Uzume put her hands to her sides and said, "Hm...Oh well. As long as you can fix it, I don't mind waiting."

"Say, say, Uzume! How come you've gotten here so late anyway?", Neptune asked her.
"You're asking me now? Neptune and me were busy handling weird stuff in the Zero Dimension. Croire "Screwed up" the coordinates and left me on a mountain trail.", she explained.
"Okay...And where is other me right now?", Neptune continued scrutinizing her.
"To be honest, we really weren't done there. But Ultra Nepsy basically told me that, "One Neptune is more than enough, so you just go have some fun! Tee Hee!!" Something like that.", Uzume told her with a strained look as if she were to let out a thousand sighs.

"Well that does sound like Neptune, doesn't it?", Noire standing alone in front of a wall said so with a bit of a confident smile.
"Hm...", Neptune was whining back at Noire, I didn't bother listening to what she was saying.
I noticed Noire ignored her and looked at me with a stern face before saying, "Putting that aside... Hey, Bios was it? Did you seriously defeat that huge thing we saw in the distance?"
"We fought his true body inside the mountain.", I answered.
"That's too bad. By the time we came, it was crumbling already. I would've been interested in taking a closer look.", Vert commented.

"No thanks. I'm good with it being gone forever.", Noire replied to her before turning her head to me and talking to me again, "Anyway, while I must commend you for this victory. Don't you think you should've told us about your little plan first?"
I looked down and said, "I'm sorry..."
I could hear Big sis sighing before just saying, "Let's drop this thing for now. We've been fighting all day. We can worry about lecturing tomorrow."
"Before we drop it, let me say that I think part of Bios' plan was for no one to notice. You should give her some credit. Even if all of you, like myself, don't agree with her actions.", IF commented seriously.

After a lasting silence. Everyone started to talk about different topics among themselves. As night came, we all ate a lot and played many games. When the time came, we all went home and took a long rest, except for the cleaning crew. They probably would've wanted us to help clean up the mess caused by this fight...I'm sorry, Planeptune's cleaning crew.

For the second month of summer, we still had this, "Summer vacation", thing going...AS IF GODDESSES TAKE BREAKS!! Can I point out? That they either still work on a lot of things, including official stuff, or they are like my twin sisters and barely work at all, even if there was no such vacation. Oh well, I suppose Big sis wanted herself and us to relax a bit after the...Is it fair to call it a war? If you know me by now, you would know I spent my month quite differently. Albeit, I did a relax a bit. And there was also this dancing performance on ice thingy that they made me be a big part of. Of which I don't want to talk about, besides that, I was training. Specifically, I was trying to make it feel like axes and hammers weigh next to nothing to me.

When that nonexistent vacation was over, I have been given an assignment by Big sis. I was allowed to do my first quest! Upon succeeding it, I would have a guild rank of E, meaning I can pick quests with that difficulty level. E was easiest, A was hardest, and S was super hard. Basic, really.
I went to the guild, I was supposed to do that by myself. But upon entering the guild building not too far from the basilicom, big sisters Rom and Ram were waiting for me...

"BIOS! Here here!", Ram was calling out to me, so I walked over to her, mildly cautiously.
"Me and Ram wanted...To see you off...", Rom told me.
"Yeah! It's your first quest. And you get to do it alone too! It took a long time before we were allowed on our first quest. You're growing up already, huh.", she said all of that and used such a typical line at the end, judging from her expression, she used that on purpose. But I had a question after she said, "I bet you'll be able to transform soon!"
"Okay...When did you learn how to transform, though?", I asked with a tone of suspicion.

I noticed something was off when they looked at each other with a face that seemed a little bitter.
"Sorry...Bios...", Rom apologized to me, with a bow even! Raising my anxiety.
"We weren't allowed on a quest, despite being able to transform. Bis sis was overprotective like that.", Ram explained.
"I don't know when...But transforming kind of happened...In no time...?", Rom tried to tell me.
"That's right. I know we're awesome, that's why we can transform fighting dogoos for the first time... Oh! But you're awesome too, Bios! You're already strong. Don't worry about it!", Ram told me.
Rom nodded and said, "Don't worry...You can do it..."

They smiled at me, but I still felt uneasy, thinking, "Was it because I spent most of my time away from other people? Do I not have enough share Energy? I can use some that are given to Lowee as a whole but... Maybe it is because I'm worried?"
"Hey, aren't you Blanny's little sister?", I heard from the receptionist behind the counter.
Rom and Ram wakled out of the way. This let us make contact easier but...It kind of embarrassed me! Being in full view and stuff... I shyly replied, "You...Know...B-big sister...?"
"Of course, everyone does! Did you know she and C-Sha were called the golden pair together. She got angry at those names, but we kept using them anyway.", after she said that to me, she appeared as if she tried not to giggle, but couldn't help doing so anyway.

"Anyway.", she changed the subject, "I've been told you're here to do your first quest, is that correct?"
I nodded and walked over to the counter.
"Well then. Let me give you an easy one. Dogoo extermination. You get an extra prize if you also beat the Snow ra-", her suggestion sounded worse and worse to me, so I interrupted her and said, "Rejected."
"...Eh?", after a bit of silence, she opened her eyes and gazed at me with a confused smile.
"I'm sorry. But it's too easy, so, rejected.", me saying this caused Rom and Ram behind me to shout in unison, the receptionist followed their lead.

"B-but it's your first quest, you know?! Shouldn't you start easy and gain levels?", she asked me.
"I'm at level 21 right now and my equipment is quite good. I'll be fine.", I informed her.
"...Just as bold as your sister, I see!", she shouted with a nervous smile before asking me, "Well then. I'll let you pick any of these E ranked quests that are nearby!"
I read through the list and saw one listed as emergency. I asked her what it was about. Apparently, some quests take priority. Either people are in immediate danger, or the items they want are carried by monsters that only appear for a limited time.

Since it said emergency, I thought to pick that one.
To that, she said, "You're going to take the hardest one?!"
I nodded and replied, "It needs to be done quickly right? I am pretty fast."
"We don't know all of the monsters there! We were considering even raising it to D!", she warned me.
"Sounds scary...But what if no one does it...? Shouldn't I put helping those who need it first?", I asked her the moral question.
She sighed and said, "Spoken like a true CPU, huh? Well, if that is the case, I suppose it's fine."

As I walked away with a blank face, the twins followed behind me, asking me things like, "Bios. Is this really okay?"
"Isn't it dangerous...?"
"Bis sis will get angry again, you know?!"
I stopped to reply to them, "Don't worry. I'm...", it took me some effort to say this without becoming too embarrassed, "Awesome. You said so, right? It'll be fine. I practiced for this."
They took a step back. After a bit of staring, Ram said, "It's okay then.", she held her fists on her sides and smiled confidently at me.

"We'll see you...When you return...Okay?", Rom told me with a smile.
"We'll be waiting. So you better come back safe, or else I'm going to call you the biggest dummy ever!", Ram added.
"I sure don't want to be called that.", I replied with a faint smile.
"You got that right!", Ram replied.
After out goodbyes, I headed off to my destination. A small village to the west near the city was in trouble. Through a path way, I walked between trees from a small forest surrounding me.

The village was apparently a, "Snow farmland" They somehow grow candies from the ground like vegetables. With magic, they can create other sweet things. Amongst that were also your regular food products that they kept warm using magic. Lowee never ceases to amaze me, but that's for the better, my nation should be the best after all.
As I got close, I could feel a ton of monsters flying and jumping through the wind. After I saw the back of a building, I knew I was close. I ran around it from its left.

There certainly was a group of monsters around, some of them were still hiding. An egg shaped lizard thing that I had seen way too many times dashed over to some of the people there. With one powerful jump, I had leapt just in between the lizard monster and the group of civilians. I did a spin before flying my kick into its neck, from that attack, I shot him into the forest at least a few hundred meters away.
I made sure to made a stylish twirling landing. I heard surprised noises from the locals. I aimed my face at their puzzled faces and said, "I apologize for being late! I am here to do the quest! Just relax and sit back, okay?"

"Huh...? You're the CPU candidate, aren't you?", I heard someone say, I had no time to reply, though.
"Watch out!!", is what one of them screamed, but it was unneeded, I could already feel one monster jumping at me from behind, All I had to do was throw my fist next to my head, that alone smashed it away and made it disappear. I turned around to see a group of dogoos, albeit, they were red this time.
"They come in all shapes and sizes, huh?", I quietly said to myself. The crowd behind me had turned silent, the only thing I could hear from them were some grunts and faint noises. Fine then.

Excited to test my skills, I materialized my blade and had at them. After a high jump I struck one of them down as I landed. Right when the snow grazed my blade, one of the two dogoos nearby jumped at my from my left, I jumped backwards to let them get in front of me, As soon as I could move, I set a big step forward and sliced the dogoo in half horizontally. The other Dogoo shot beams out of its eyes at me, whilst spinning the blade in my right hand, I turned to my right, the blade touched its beam, since they were magical and weak, it had no effect.
After moving away from the beam, I slashed the monster whilst doing a little hop over to it.

The surrounding Dogoos attacked me aggressively, so I had to jump around a bit to avoid them. After rapidly trying to tackle me, they all kind of grouped up around me, so after a slight spin using my feet, I did a spin slash that cut through all of the dogoos. But those were just the weaker monsters. There were three other monsters a bit further away. Their lower body was that of a frozen flower that hovered over the ground, their upper body looked very pixi-like. They were snow fairies...I think.
They shot icicles and flower shaped Ice shurikens my way. I used Hot Edge to melt the projectiles to H2O, the water splashed my face a bit.'

From that point, I launched myself forward. I closed the gap between me and the monsters within less than a second. They appear to not have expected this leap, I was freely able to swing my sword at one of them whilst using "Hot Edge". The same monster to the right of me tried to stun me with its spores, so I jumped high into the air out of its reach. I did a flip while I was above the monster so that I could strike it down with Hot Edge as I landed behind its back. The flames made them disappear one by one. There was another ice flower in the back, I could feel the air get colder, so I side stepped out of that area, the cold air turned into an icy breeze that had made bursting icicled that could hurt me.

Before it was able to do anything else, I charged at it and impaled it with my sword.
"Burst Pierce!", I proudly proclaimed my original skill as I made my sword burst in flames burning it from inside. It was a combo skill, a level 2 magic enchant, but it does its job, for it could pierce through one's mental stat. Of course, that lizard thing of which I refuse to name at this point dashed right behind me. He even did this corner cutting maneuver to look cool as he went my way.
With a stern face I turned around and swung my blade with one hand. I blocked its axe, then, with a push, deflected it back. I did another spin swinging my blade over the ground before trying to hit him with an upper slash. he dodged. He continued to dodge and block more of my offenses.

After materializing a spear, I did a feint attack, after dodging a right to left slash with one arm, I stabbed him with my spear in the other. As he flinched with the spear stuck inside him, I dashed past him as I cut him in half. Annoyed, I expressed, "I hope to never waste time with another one of those things again."

Those were just the weaker monsters, I wouldn't be warned if this was it. The trees were rustled and pushed, I could sense it, after staring through the trees a big bear bunny thing jumped out of the woods. Its white furry body was pretty fat. Despite that, it was pretty quick. Its paws had icicles for claws, his shoulders had big frozen spikes, some bits of ice covered its ears, nose, its small round feet and other such areas. On his back were ice patters and spikes as well. The ice had an odd shade of dark blue. Through the thick snow it shot up in the air after landing in front of me, it swiped its claw through the falling snowflakes. With one arm, I hit my blade against it and guided it away from me before shoving his arm in the other direction.

Quickly following that event, I jumped in front and pulled myself forward as I tried to vertically cut his face. He blocked my sword by holding both arms back against it. My attack still seemed to inflict a bit of pain on it, but his arms alone were pretty tough. With my sword, I pushed myself over its arms. As I was directly above its head, I could feel a freezing wind pushing onto me. My eye spied that it came out of its mouth, so to propel myself further, I rotated around with much speed. I just got away from its breath turning the wind into a frozen beam of air that even turned the snowflakes into thick ice. I was certain there was more to this attack, and that I would've noticed it if I were hit.

After I landed on the ground, I took a second to turn around before jumping at its back. After the jump, I proceeded to swing my sword against him, I even managed to knock him back a little.
He clearly didn't liked it as he turned around with a gnarl before thrusting its fist forward. I had held my blade up to strike him down, but underestimated his punching speed, so it knocked my blade away from me. After I looked behind myself to see my sword, he was already going to beat me with his other fist. I looked back, stood firm, and then, I threw my fist right back at it, knocking it high up into the air. It looked at its fist with wide open eyes.

In time of his confusion, I put one foot forward before punching him into the gut, it bend its upper body forward from the pain. It was surprisingly effective! But it pissed him off more than it did damage. It tried to smash me into the ground with both arms. I kicked both of my legs forward before his arms hit the ground. I placed my hand on the snow below to hold myself up right between the gap of his arms and himself. With my hand, I launched myself with my feet towards its jaw. My feet pushed the jaw out of the way as I went just a little above the monster. It flinched and couldn't immediately counter me.

I pulled my feet backwards to have my head aimed at the clouds, when my feet were about to point at the surface, I did a spin to throw my foot against the monster's head for extra damage. I finished my air combo off with a flip whilst sticking out my right leg to hit my heel against its head. Its impact created a vibe all over its body. With a raging roar, it countered me with a powerful punch. I could only block it. It only hurt mildly, although, it did send me flying, on the other hand, I found that after my rough landing that my sword was closer to me.

I didn't head over to it right away, however, for that thing made a mad dash my way. The icicles on its back created some kind of super gust of snow that let him blast his way over to me with a jump.
It tried to fist me with its fast advancement whilst crashing into me, but I jumped to my right, in reaction to that, it used its claws to stop himself from moving and used its momentum to quickly turn himself ninety degrees my way. He swung his left fist at me to the right, With a slight turn from one leg, I jumped out of its way. It swiftly thrusted its other arm straight at me, my right foot had already touched the ground, So I could just hop immediately to my left, I could feel its fur as its fist went by my head, it was that close.

I noticed its arm being pulled away for me, even if it was just a tad. Instinctively, I jumped back before was able to fling it onto me. With swift feet, I also had to rotate around it, its fist barely went past my back.
He nudged himself a bit forward to swing both arms at me from my left, I ducked under it as if I were doing the tango. It did a rush of crooked thrusts at me, I evaded his punches quite easily. Mostly with some repeated movement of hopping whilst slightly turning my body right or left, depending on where its fists went.

At some point he tried to make a large swipe of its claw over my head, I ducked under it, which was just to get me to stop moving. Clever, even if that attempt failed, it tried to low sweep me with its next swipe, I simply jumped into the air to avoid it. That was also part of its plan, it wanted to crush me between its hands whilst I was in the air. I figured as much, so I did a back flip to get myself back onto the ground. Considering I could feel the wind of its hands clapping together, it would've actually hurt a bit.

He wasn't done yet, He did a small hop over to me with its arms clasped together, trying to squash me once more, I stopped him by giving him a quick kick right under its jaw. His body leaned backwards from that kick. In frustration, He looked at me with contempt before quickly crashing his left arm onto me, albeit, he tried, I just leapt over to my right and let the snow that came from its fist fall onto me. In the next instant, he thrusted its right arm towards me. This time, I felt I was in the right position, especially with him frustrated. As the fist was about to pass me after a small jump, I put my fingers between a slit of its frozen part and furry body, and I pushed him forward using his own strength. As it couldn't help but jump to keep its balance, I jumped on its back so that I could hover myself towards my sword.

That I did, and beyond that, I grabbed it in mid-air. The moment I pulled the blade from the ground, I did an air roll before landing onto the ground. I didn't spare any time before turning around and shouting "Hot Edge!", that monster had come to me trying to swipe me with enlarged claws and frozen armor. My flames melted its claws to the point that they became too weak to even make me budge. And the unexpected fire made it screech. Unfortunately, it's howl made some unwanted pests appear out of its body. They were so fast, I couldn't see them well at first when one of them moved over to me and jabbed me into the air.

Me feet went over the ground before I could land, I even had to land with a slide. I could sense three of them, but one of them had stopped moving in front of me. They were slender and a bit on the tall side. They had more frozen area's on their hands, head, chest, and legs. They also had the body of a rabbit, but they looked a bit more human. I jumped for one of them, but my sword ended up only cutting an after-image, for it had moved away at sonic speed. In my moment of surprise, one of them quickly moved to stab me in the back with its claw. It hurt, but it was definitely not meant to be a power move.

I was able to see the three move around me. They gathered together to rush at me. So I decided to throw my sword into the air and fire a barrage of arrows at them. They seemed to take joy in dodging my arrows, as they kept jumping next to them and standing still to give me a chance of hitting them, all the while grinning at me with malice. After I was done, they had jumped right in front of me, only stopping their super speed to, what I would think, either to use a stronger move, or to make me feel afraid of what they were about to do. Well, for their mockery, one died. With the snap of a finger, my arrows did a U-turn back onto them. Whilst two of them moved right out of the way, the one right in front of me got a bunch of arrows stuck inside its back.

With one sturdy stamp onto the ground, I held my fist near my hip before hitting its chin with enough power to shoot it into the sky. It disappeared. They seemed weary of me now, they kept moving around. I know I do that to give me time to think. My sword fell back onto me, so I grabbed it, and tried out something...Well, not really new.
"Let's see if I can use your techniques...", I thought, hoping the prayer would let me succeed.
"Critical Edge!!", I suddenly moved at their speed as I went towards one of them. The last I saw of it was its shocked face as it stopped before my left to right upper slash of my right arm. I cut it in two.
After that kill, I looked back at the last rabbit. He looked intimidated, so I jumped at him.

I exchanged my sword with a spear. It easily dodged my first thrust, but I kept moving forward whilst doing a rush of spear thrusts. It smirked thinking I wasn't as good with the spear. I went forward less and less and focused more on my foot work, with small movements of my feet, after images were created and I got closer to its speed. Its face also had gotten a lot more pale.
Whilst my spear rained onto it, I said, "Rainy Ratnapura!!"
Eventually, as I matched it speed, I thrusted my spear right between its head and shoulder, scraping the neck. This was to stun him, making him unable to move out of fear.

I did a spin before cutting him horizontally in half with the spear.
Of course, that bear rabbit was still here. It tried to drop onto me, but I sped out of its way. After my feet hovered right over the ground, it released cold wind onto me out of its mouth. A thin snow tornado was shot at me, not only was I frozen little by a tornado, but its back glowed and generated ice spears that crashed into me. That hurt a lot, but its most dangerous element was something I could handle.
"Flame!", I casted a weak flame combo skill that warmed me up, although, it also meant I took damage from my own flame, not that it mattered with my intelligence stat.

I materialized an axe and said, "How about we finish this? I can't help but think you're tired too."
We ran towards each other. As it thrusted another fist at me, I moved out of the way while spinning around. With heavy weight, I put my foot down before doing one heavy 270 swing of my axe at its stomach whilst yelling, "Zerstorung!! The impact of my axe shot it over the ground. I left the axe stuck inside its belly, as it was all I needed it for. It was just a generic steel one, so I didn't lose much.
While it was writhing in pain, I ran over to it before jumping high into the air. At the same time, I materialized a hammer three times my size. With this hammer, I did a frontal flip before squashing that thing by smashing it into its head.

With another flip, I moved behind its back and did a rotating swing to smash him through the air again. I think my axe was pushed further into its body as he landed on its stomach. When he landed, he growled even more. He stood up and looked at me in utter rage. He took the axe out of its body. Meanwhile, I had put my hammer back into my inventory. He threw the axe right at me, despite that, I felt relaxed. When its edge was about to carve my face, I stopped the axe between my hands, I was only pushed over the ground by two meters. I looked at him with a kind smile and said, "I apologize! An axe doesn't weigh much to me anymore!" He looked at me as if he watched the world turn upside down.

He unleashed one heavy roar whilst more of its body got covered in armor and spikes. He launched himself high enough to the point where he looked smaller than me. I saw data fly its way, more monsters were hiding, but I suppose him absorbing them for one final attack worked for me anyway. A voice echoed, "Frozen Apocalyptic Crush!!", such a pompous name was spouted as it turned into a ball shape and rolled around as its just become one ball of frozen armor and spikes. He grew in a size big enough to block the sun. It would surely wipe out this entire area. Considering the attack name, I assumed its shockwave would actually freeze anything at absolute zero.

I looked back at my clients. They were definitely scared. Some holding their shaking hands near their mouths. Then they looked at me, and in response, I smiled. I looked back at the rolling ball that was going to crash into us whilst I materialized my blade.
"I wasn't going to use Light Reflection...But I guess I have no choice now.", I thought to myself as I cast light onto my sword.
"Mirror Blade!!", I yelled as it was within my range, in that time, I jumped forward, and with one horizontal cut, He split in half so violently, You could see two snow trails spread out, its halves having stopped next to the buildings.

The crowd behind me had achieved a silence that could be heard like white noise.
I turned around to see their faces in disbelief. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing I saw. A shadowy figure appeared from behind them. He grabbed on if the villager's head and pulled a gun next to her.
"Hey! I don't know what kind of freak you are! But even you can't move at speed of Light! Make one move and I blow her head off!!", so he said, trying to sound confident, but I could tell from his shaky voice that he was terrified.

"Are you from a rejected punk band? Or perhaps from a rejected evil gang? Aren't you cold wearing that open leather suit as if you were in a biker gang?", I didn't mean to sound insulting, but that was what he looked like. The rainbow mohawk was even more telling. I even think I could hear someone sing "I AM SHOCK", far away from here.
"Shut the hell up!", he shouted back at me angrily, I didn't even get why he was angry.
I pretended to look worried and asked him with one arm behind my back, "What does some outsider looking person even want here? They don't sell spray paint here, I assure you."

"That's not what this is about!! I am not a biker gang dude god damn it!!", he screamed before pointing at me and shouting, "Listen here, goddess! I know you bitches don't understand our problems, but these stupid farmers are constantly in our way! We need a factory build here, and we want more people to be able to work here. But these assholes refuse to move from here and insist on staying here with their families. Some of us have nowhere to go without the building of a factory here!", or so he told me.
I tried to be polite to him saying, "I understand you need a place to work. And if your friends come into trouble because they have nowhere to work for money, I would want to help with that too. But when you attack people with monsters because they refuse to change their lives for you...Well. I need to stop you first."

I had no idea what else to say besides, "How did you even get these monsters here?"
It was odd, now that I thought about it. Never heard of summoners here, besides that witch.
"It was a witch, I tellz ya! She asked me if I wanted to change our lives. The others told me I was crazy for doing all of this! But with the monster discs I've been given, I can make those in the way disappear forever!!", or so he told me. It seemed that within our conversation, he was too fixated at me and didn't notice the long chain coming from behind me.

He finally looked at and followed its trail. It moved from my left arm and into the trees. He finally looked to his right.
A morning star flew his way. The rather big spiked ball hit his head just a few milliseconds after he saw it. Upon impact, he was flung over the villagers. And within that time, before he could shoot one of them, I casted Light upon my feet. The casting itself would've taken two seconds, which would've been too long. At the speed of light I shot myself at him. With my speed weighing in on it, I threw a punch into his stomach that nearly bend him in two pieces. My movement stopped, all of my momentum went into the fist, in turn, it gained enough power to blast this guy through the forest and into the city.

I could feel and hear villagers walking out of line, spreading out to look at me who had just landed, my arm was hiding my face as it faced the ground with my knees bend a little, I was standing in an odd position that made me feel like I stiffened up after that punch, never to move afterwards.
But I lifted myself up, leaning my head back before standing straight. I then watched as the gaping faces of the villagers turned into clapping and cheering. Honestly, it made me blush. I didn't even know how to respond to that. I felt like I didn't even comprehend what happened. I know I had been given some nice sweet things. Despite telling them I did this for the quest and don't need extra gifts, they forced their nice rewards onto me. Still...This is too much sweets for one person...

Well, it's a good thing food doesn't spoil in this world of Gamindustri (Between you and me, I just don't know if they don't because of inventory things, or rather that they do spoil and that I should be more careful when taking food with me). I went to the guild. The Lowee officers handled that guy. I got other rewards, most importantly, money, from doing the quest. The receptionist looked at me exhausted for some reason when I asked if I could accept all the non-urgent quests without actually doing them. Apparently, you can, you'd just get notified if someone else did it already.

I took all of them. Despite enjoying my first victory, I felt quite lonely. I was wondering where my sisters were, apparently, they were waiting for me outside.
After being congratulated by them, we started walking home together. I gave them two of the three cotton candies that I had been given by those farmers.
As we were about to finish eating, Ram started talking, "Hey, hey. Bios? How did you get so awesome, anyway? Secret training? Are you actually a ninja? Because that would be totally radical."
"Who still uses radical anymore?", Whilst I was thinking that, I replied with a confused, "Huh?"

"You don't know...We've been reading Twetter... You are being talked about...", Rom told me.
"...What? How? W-why? What did I do?", I asked them whilst acting like a stuttering mess.
"Well. According to some people. You are a ninja that can teleport and use some blue energy ball to blast villains into town.", she told me.
"Hm. Some of the farmers started rumors...Don't take them too seriously...Is what big sister always says.", Rom told me, was she trying to say I shouldn't let them get to me? As if they were slanderous?
"I can believe you being a ninja. That would be super cool. Seeing you move is always a spectacle, just like watching a ninja move!", Ram said, pointing her index finger up, as if to lecture me.

"The point of a ninja is not to be seen, though...", I thought to myself, wondering where she gets her ninja lore from. On the other hand, saying that is rude, so I just told her, "What do you mean?"
"Eh? Remember the Ice dance performance you did two weeks ago! It was amazing, to move like that, you have to be some kind of super ninja.", Ram told me.
"Ninjas aren't known for their dancing and ice skating though?!", it had gotten to the point where I had to retort her out loud, more so out of sheer bafflement.
"But you were amazing...I know big sis secretly took all pictures made for herself...You weren't allowed to take pictures, so...I loved watching you too...", the other one tried to sweet talk me.

"Can we drop that already...?". I said before hiding myself in my coat before speaking with a muffled voice, "That was embarrassing. I slept for two days straight after all of the energy it took me to... do all of that without breaking down into a nervous wreck...", I don't think she heard me after, "Embarrassing"
I was having fun with them. The cotton candy made me feel great too...And then some disturbed individuals had to ruin it...

"Hey you!", the worst thing to hear when you're outside. As I turned around, with the other two following my movement, we saw a bunch of...Unhygienic men and women behind us.
They looked angry at us. Ram had to childish look of, "Disgusting.", whilst Rom looked concerned and asked them, "Um...Is there something...Wrong?"
"Yeah! You damn goddesses are what is wrong. You out here having fun, huh?! We can't do that now, so why can you, huh?! Aren't you supposed to help people?!! But no, you punch the guy through a forest!!", he was spouting with spit flying out of his mouth.
"He was that guy's friend? What a pain...Everything he says sounds like nonsense, to make things even worse.", I was thinking, looking at him with my eyes squeezed.

"Eh... Not again?!", I heard in the back
"No more...scary people...Please."
I heard them talk in the back, wondering what happened before this.
"Capture them!", the shout of one idiot inspired all the other idiots to do as he said.
"Nigerun dayo!!", I heard Ram say before fleeing. Rom grabbed my hand, I suppose she thought I was spacing out, which I was.

With a pull, she told me, who was confused, "Bios...We must run..."
So I turned around and ran with a face of indifference.
In my confusion, I was thinking, "But why are we running? Because these guys are after us? They are bad, right? They are willing to capture us. That's against the law. We are stronger than them too, right? So...Basically..." At the end of my thoughts, I turned with the slide of my feet. I think the other two turned around as they said with panicked voices, "What are you doing!", among other things.

"I can just beat them up, right?!", I was certain that was the right answer.
After putting pressure on my right foot, I launched myself towards the chasing crowd.
I blasted through the wind with snow blowing my way and from me violently before doing a spin kick. One guy's neck was pushed by my instep, he was shot away with such force, that he left a thick trail in the snow without his body even touching it.

Two nearby enemies were stunned for a second, but seemed to be too angry to be afraid of such a powerful kick. Briefly after getting down, they tried to jump on me. I headed up into the air again before doing a jump kick with my legs being thrusted at opposite sides, I kicked both of them against walls of buildings simultaneously. I got back onto the ground, one of them had tried to sneak behind me in the meantime. From a little further away, he jumped at me and opened his arm in an attempt to grab me. I jumped above him, and when his back was below my feet, I pressed my feet into him and squashed him into the ground.

Another one ran towards me with his arms ready to grapple me. How such a slow fat person thought he could grab me was beyond me, I simple jumped over him with a front flip, left leg I pushed him forward, almost making him stumble over whilst I did a roll before making my landing onto the ground. My feet were soon lifted from said ground, for I quickly followed my dodge up with a backwards roundhouse kick against the guy who almost stumbled. A witch-like woman ran towards me and swept her hand towards me, I ducked under it. When I sprung up, I shoved my hand into her chin and tilted her high enough for her feet to reach my head.

I grabbed her foot and smashed her against three men and women who were coming at me at five o'clock. Another person tried to kick me from behind, I jumped with my back facing the ground as I did a horizontal spin with my legs. I grabbed his neck with my feet before rotating around to the back of his neck, at that point, I had his neck caught between my legs. As I did heavy pull of my back, his feet lifted from the ground before I did a back flip that threw him against two more people. Some person that tried to punch me from my side was probably reprised when I quickly grabbed his wrists before using its strength to take him for a swing. After one spin I threw him against more men and women from my right.

Another dude came straight at me and thrusted his fist towards my face, just by setting a few steps next to his fist without haste, I managed to dodge and grab it. I pulled his fist down, sending his body above me. Still holding his arm, I smashed him onto the ground. Some other thick guy jumped onto him, not even caring about the guy below him doing a spit take as a leg was thrust into his gut. He probably thought his size would put him at an advantage, that he would have more range. As if that were the problem. He looked confident as he was about to strangle me between his big arms, then, I crouched as I did a quick, but weighty punch against his gut. He held onto it as he was blown into the sky.

A huge round bald guy ran towards after getting up. He clasped his hands together and tried to smash me. They must be really angry to try and harm a goddess like that, but it didn't matter to me. All I had to do was jump back a little. With another leap, I soared over the ground before kicking his side really quickly. Distracted by the pain in his side from my right leg, I used my right hand on the ground to rotate sideways clockwise to sweep him over the ground with my left leg. Before he could fall down, though, I pulled myself back and retracted my legs before pushing myself off the ground with both arms, I shot him away using both of my feet.

The last guy that stood further away, nervously ran my way. I felt like he didn't need to go to the trouble of coming to me. I dashed over to him at max speed, freaking him out before I made him spin in the air with a diagonal upper punch from my right fist.
There I stood, between a bunch of unconscious people. With a bland face, I looked back at my sisters.
I was hoping to be praised for saving them, but they just looked at me. Scared? A little. Shocked? Perhaps. Thinking about how to react? That was more-or-less what they looked like as their mouths were open, their eyes shaking.

"Hey, Bios. What do you think you're doing?!", Ram shouted at me as the two ran my way with the face of someone that was about to jump in a river to safe a drowning kitten.
When they stopped in front of me catching their breath, Rom told me, "You can't...Do that."
"Huh?", I was utterly confused, I didn't do anything wrong, though? So I asked, afraid that they will stop liking me, "But...They were going to hurt us...Hurt you, weren't they? Aren't we supposed to fight people like that?"

"Not like this! Big sis always tells us not to fight civilians!", Ram told me.
"But they were chasing after us! We are much stronger than them, why should we run?! They were being bad, right?!", I told them with a loud voice, I could feel my heart raising.
"They were bad...But we don't know what the right thing to do is...Big sis understands...But we don't...So we shouldn't fight people...", Rom tried to explain it to me.
"Listen! We exist to protect and help the people here. Even if they are dummies, we can't just attack them! The Lowee police force has that as their job.", Ram told me.

I was certain big sis would've done more than just punching them in this situation. But whatever, I asked with a hint of anger, "Why?!"
"We need share energy to live and become strong...If people think we're hurting people here...", Rom started the sentence, and Ram finished it, "We will lose share energy, and then, everything will turn bad! That's why we let police do this work!"
"I understand you were angry...And that you wanted to help...", Rom said to me with a concerned face, whereas Ram told me with a strong pose filled with determination, "We can't just beat them 'cuz we're better than them! We need responsblity.", Ram said.
With a mellowed out, but cranky demeanor, I corrected her, "You mean responsibility."

"Yeah! That thing!", Ram pointed at me as she shouted that.
"We won't be mad anymore...But please, don't do this again...Okay?", Rom said with a sad face and weak voice as if I was about to explode on her.
I looked distant, a gloomy aura was around me as my eyes felt weak, I replied with a voice that felt made up of a hundred sighs, "Yeah...I understand..."
With heavy feelings, we went back to the basilicom...As for me. I felt odd. This was the first time, I really disagreed with my sisters...

The next day, I went back to my secret training ground. At light speed, I moved through the forest. I have certainly mastered this skill. Long distances weren't too much of a problem anymore. On the other hand, I realized that you can't fully control this movement no matter what. You would instantly be moved elsewhere, like a light off a mirror. You can't stop easily, and you can't change directions once you've jumped. It was a skill that can't get any better. I would need to make a whole different skill similar to it. Putting that aside, I used my sword to put a bunch of cuts in trees. After my after images were gone, I did one big jump through the middle of all the cut trees, and with the swing of a sword, they were blasted into the air, sliced off of their trunk.

After that, I did some more leaps at Light Speed before blasting myself into the sky. It was very difficult to stop. I was at least higher than the tallest building of Lowee before I could stop. But I planned for this. I took my bow and arrow. I shot an arrow further into the air behind my feet, With explosion magic combined with an actual bomb, I used its residue to blow myself towards the ground. I materialized a whip and with a swing of it, its rope entangled a tree, allowing me to swing forward keeping up my momentum.

I used my bow to fire off hundreds of arrows from all directions. As if dozens of my shadows fired at each other. The arrows bounced off of one another and created a field of flying arrows. It was then that I grabbed a spear, and step by step, I used to break each arrow in two. I broke my record, five-hundred arrows in seven seconds. After I was done, I dashed forward and threw the spear at my maximum strength. It flew like it was shot out of a powerful rifle. Yet, I was able to move towards it within a second. I did a quick flip before kicking the spear with my Reflection Foot, shooting it through a bunch of trees...That spear was to never be found again.

I grabbed an oversized axe next. I didn't use light step for this, as it would beat the purpose of this exercise. I leapt and ran as I did some wide swings with the axe, not stopping for a moment as the trees behind me fell. I didn't need to let the weight of the axe carry the swing, I was now able to swing it around like a sword. I could jump great heights with it, I did a bunch of flips and jumps before throwing it at a tree as if it were a hand axe. Right after, I grabbed a huge hammer instead. The weight felt the same as the Axe's. Feeling there was no point in doing the same movements as the axe.

I only needed to jump and smash it as hard as I can with the quickest strike I could manage. After a loud crash blew the snow on the ground away, I used my hammer for one more thing. I made a sphere of fire and threw it into the air. Before it fell back down, I enchanted the hammer with lighting. The second the fire ball was in front of my face, I swung with all my might. It was like shooting a giant gun, at high speed, the sphere of fire flew straight ahead. With Light Speed, I moved past it. I did it so I could make myself the target. I materialized a shield to stop it. The ball blew up in fire, guided by electrical sparks.
"Thanks to the quest, I was able to buy another shield. To think she had another one made. How did she know I was going to break mine, so she made a second one for me to buy? Because I am young and clumsy? What a shrewd woman.", I was thinking to myself.

I put the shield back and materialized another weapon, "Now for my newly mastered weapons. This one proved quite useful.", I thought to myself. The flail I used was a rare find. The store owner had it more as a joke weapon, not many could really use it. This flail had a small handle and was one giant chain that reached over a hundred meters, no, that was its usual length. This one was also able to kind of, elongate itself by adding more chains, it could get as long as a kilometer. On the end, of course, was a giant spiked ball. This ball was bigger than a four year old child.

With its weight and its long chains, its uses were rather thin. I, however, have a training regimen that allows me to use it however I wish. As it laid on the ground, with one strong upwards swing, I launched the ball into the air. I did a counter clockwise movement of my left arm before swinging it straight to the left. The ball of chain lowered to my altitude before being flung to my left with a heavy wind blowing from it. With one heavy pull, I could get the giant spiked ball to fly past me, without the chain yanking me. I was in full control as I kept moving it nearby me.

My strength having increased was one thing, but I also used wind magic. Obviously, it wasn't as simple as with my arrows. For the wind to push through its weight, I had wind magic enchant the chains themselves alongside with the ball. And with weak level 2 wind magic enchantment, I could blast the ball into the direction I was swinging it, heck, If I don't mind losing power, I can just have it flung without even swinging the chain. Like a mad lass, I yanked the chain in every single direction. After images of the ball of chain was seen as it soared through the sky, destroying nearby trees. As I held the chain in my right arm, I did a backwards rotation with my arm before swinging it up into the air.

The chain followed, to be more specific, I pushed the chain as the rotation was finished, and then swung it up into the air, the ball would be pulled from behind me before going into the air. The force was strong enough to shoot the destroyed airborne trees into the sky. I had to increase the length of the chains for my ball to reach the trees. I then made the ball circle around the area.
"Chain storm!!", I shouted as I spun the chain, it was like I made a tornado with one giant spiked ball destroying everything inside it. After the trees crumbled into the smallest particles you could imagine, I took one big step before swinging the chain over my head. As far from me as possible, I made the ball crash into the ground, creating a green tornado in the process.

I had more new weapons, but we would be here forever if I kept talking about it.
After I was done, I walked to the nearest tree whilst thinking, "I have really mastered all weapons now. But there is one more thing I need to learn...", I thought to myself, feeling half satisfied.
I had to try something out again. I pulled my fists backwards to my right side. I imagined it as a glowing white fist, filled with energy and strength. I thrust my fist forward in rotation, only for some light sparks to come out. I stood back straight before sighing. I went to the tree with my sword. I cut the tree down, my sword went through it like butter.

There I sat, on the tree I cut down. I was using this training to blow off steam. When I thought about it, I couldn't help but look back at the day before. I watched my hand. I concentrated. Thinking of a sword. The most basic form of a blade was made in my hand. It cost me a lot of energy.
After concentrating so hard on it, I was nearly out of breath. The sword was nothing more than a metal hilt with white rope around it, on top of that was a stick-like iron blade.
"Weapon Create. Spiraling Dream. The ancient power of the CPU of Tari. What are these abilities? Why do we have them, but others don't have any such special abilities?", I wondered.
I looked at my newly made blade, "We are so much stronger... So why do we have to let people get on our cases? They were bad right? What did I do wrong? If they didn't want to get hurt, they shouldn't have picked a fight."

My eyes were strained as I continued my thought, "I heard Uzume talk about it. She can manipulate people's dreams, she can also make her dreams become reality. The power to bend reality, what do you have to fear with that? And then, there's Tari's CPU. I had read about her. She can manipulate dimensions. What the heck is that? I only have this incomplete ability. I am worried, that I won't be able to save anyone if I am weak. That's why I train to become stronger. Don't people believe in the strongest person? I trained all this time, So I would never lose. People would forever find me useful. I can always save my sisters. Why shouldn't I use the strength I worked so hard to get? Because it will hurt weaklings looking for a fight?"

I knew some of the things I said was wrong too. On the other hand, I couldn't help ranting stupidly out of frustration.
"If you have absolute strength. An overpowered ability. Toughness that never lets you die. Intelligence that lets you outthink any situation. And a sense of style and elegance that makes people think positively of you...What do you have to fear, then? What is wrong with using every skill you have for yourself, and your friends?", these thoughts were depressing me more and more. I felt something was actually wrong, despite thinking I was right.

I stared at my self-made sword before I heard a loud "BOOM!!" I could faintly hear screaming following that. I stood up and paid attention. Gun shots were nearby. I could feel nearby presences in the air. They were too far away to really make out what they were. I figured that I needed to help them, so I went underway. Through the darkened trees, light being reflected off the snow, making the area feel foggy, I saw flares coming from a figure menacingly marching downhill from the woods.

"Save me!!", I heard something scream over and over again. Through the wind, I felt a small creature jump over tree roots whilst it was shot at. I could tell it was tired out and couldn't avoid the bullets flying its way. With Light Speed, I grabbed it and moved out of the way. The shooting stopped. I saw a glimmer of her eyes as her head turned my way, a gap of light revealed a little of her grey-blackish long hair.
"Target: Changed. Bigger threat, found. Main objective: found. Unit will proceed killing the final Key, BIOS.", is what I heard her say. She spoke in a cold tone. It wasn't completely emotionless, it felt a little, angry. It's when you hear someone so disgusted and disappointed at you that they are almost lost for words.

When my ears picked up the clicking of a gun, I sped away. The bullets tore through the trees. They were specially made to be more destructive with the person's strength stat...I think. Guns weren't me specialty, so I wouldn't know. Either way, after dodging those bullets, I headed off down the tree filled hill. I thought her aim would worsen doing so, but she just jumped above me, she moved from tree to tree just to hunt me down. Her aim was so accurate, bullets grazed me, even when I was at Light Speed.

I stopped going forward to move more sporadically, But I could feel bullets heading towards the area I was going to stop at. Just like other opponents, she had guessed where I was going. The bullets went right past me. Knowing she could predict my movements, I decided that it would be best to get out of this forest. I moved behind a tree and cut it from its trunk with my sword. I kicked it so that its top would face the assailant. With my Light enchanted foot, I kicked it towards her. She easily jumped over it, but didn't see my arrow that I shot right behind the tree until later. She tried to shoot it, but it blew up with explosion magic anyway. This was so that I could make a getaway.

I grabbed my hammer, and with a strike below me, explosion magic shot me further back out of the forest. Once I touched the ground, I ran even further away from the forest. Now I was nearby my training spot. Broken trees were quite visible, as I cut them quite recently. that creature was still in my hand. It was tearing up and seemed to stumble with its voice. Upon closer look, it looked like a shrimp. I know monsters like that, but they couldn't talk.

"Are you okay?", I asked it whilst still looking curious.
"T-t-thank you...!", It was crying a thank you.
"It's not over yet. Get away from here, okay?", I asked it before throwing it on the ground behind me.
It looked at me and asked, "But, what about you?!"
"She's here for me so...She won't chase you. I'll fight her!", I told it, quite nonchalantly too.
"You can't beat her. Please...Run too!", it sounded worried for me.
"If you are worried about me, then run. I can't protect you and beat her too.", I told it.

It looked at me. It kind of had the face of admiration before saying, "I understand! I'll go!"
I watched her run into the trees behind me. From the forest of the other side, I saw the figure walking towards me.
"It knows I'm a "Key". And the "last one."? Does that mean the other ones are already dead? And is she an assailant? I can't help but think not. She might be Blue Screen. She seemed to fight similar to him.", is what I thought. I held my blade with both arms as I saw her leave the forest behind her. Now that she was out in the light, I could see what she really was.

Dark hair, blue eyes, a red and white school uniform with a grey skirt. She was human.
She looked like a school girl. However. Her blue eyes felt like they were shooting at me.
Within the visible darkness in her eyes, I couldn't help but imagine a lock on symbol.
"She's human?!", I thought she would look like a doll, with many mechanical elements. But, no matter how much I observed her, she was just a human. Maybe more powerful than normal...

I didn't have too much time to think about it, she was relentless with her attacks.
reloading her sub-machine guns real quick, she spoke to herself, rather unclearly, Thi... s... -ha... Moving to wipe out the enemy.", right after, she dashed a bit forward before doing a jump whilst firing her bullet at me. I dodged them and circled around her with Light Step. As she moved down, she aimed her bullets at where she thought I would move, but I stopped myself just before said bullets could hit me. I kept moving around her to give myself time to think of a plan... It wasn't going to help, though.

She put her guns together and fired a full burst of bullets, just a few scraping my legs stopped my shifting of locations. I tried to guard myself with my arms, but the bullets were strong enough to push me into the trees. Not that I felt happy, but now I realized how lucky I am that they didn't just pierce through me and kill me. How do these guns even work? Even if it didn't kill me, they felt like they shoved my bones out of my body. Standing up felt like a pain, I heavily pushed my upper jaw against my lower jaw.

Something was odd to me, though, "Why didn't she just continue attacking?"
She was spinning the guns around with her fingers in the trigger guard. I grabbed my sword and moved away. It wasn't a surprise that her bullets were close to reaching me. At some point, I had to deflect some of them with my blade. I came to the idea that deflecting them would be easier, because I stood still after the first few bullets came my way, and right after, I was able to deflect a full burst from her. Not only has the speed of my swings increased, but I was able to see the bullets move like normal, thanks to being used to the speed of light.

With that in mind, I had to do something risky. I was moving at her, only using light step in short bursts at certain moments. Whilst running, I kept deflecting bullets, a few of them grazed me, but I was hurt in worse ways. When I got close enough, I tried to cut through her, dashing past her with Light Step, but she just hopped to the side. I was expecting that, so I used a heavy swing to turn to her. With the momentum I've gained, I thrusted a spear at her. She stepped to the side and grabbed it. My eyes widened for a second. My mind began asking me questions, but I was left with no moment to answer, for she had already aimed a sub-machine gun at my face.

As soon as the trigger was pulled, I did a jump whilst using my hand on the spear to rotate myself so that my head was facing the ground. At that point, I pushed myself up from the spear's staff.
"Flame!", I used a weak fire magic that she didn't even try to dodge, she knew she could take it. But it slowed her down for a second. Within that time, I was holding my sword above my head whilst going down at her. She already aimed her guns at my blade. I knew she wouldn't fire at me, even if she did manage to kill me, my sword would still go down on her and hurt her.

I let go of my blade and did a spin to move myself to the left, her bullets only hit my sword, or the sky. As for me, I was to her left, about to hit her face at the speed of light, only for even that to be dodged. She just took a step backwards. She looked at me, without a single hint of surprise, neither did I hear her heart beat. She was absolutely calm. I figured something was off. I realized my strategy won't work, before I could think about it, she did a roundhouse kick and launched me into the air.

"I knew it. That machine's calculations was dangerous indeed. But because it relied on predicting every move, I could trick it. She however...She seems to be calculating at the same level. But because she's human, she also has a basic fighting instinct. She won't think about what went wrong. She doesn't need to think before she acts. She has fighting instinct. Something the machine doesn't have. Even if I try to trick her, she will just figure it was a failure and move on, only thinking about it afterwards.", I finally had a moment to think, it didn't last for long, however.

More bullets flew my way. After doing one roll, I summoned an axe and threw it at her. It went through the bullets, of course, it didn't quite hit her, she casually jumped away from it. But when the axe hit the ground between us, the explosion magic In cast on it went off. Because of that distracting her and blocking her vision, I could land safely.
While the cloud of smoke was still up, I jumped right through it at light speed. As I thought, she moved out of the way and avoided my punch, that was fine, I was actually aiming for the sword. She did try to shoot me when I grabbed the hilt of my blade, but by waving it as I turned around, I could deflect some of them before moving out of the way.

"Her kick was strong. Her battle instinct is far better than some of the villains we faced this past few months too. She must have actual experience. She doesn't simply calculate to predict me, she also knows what I intent to do, because she has already known tactics like mine.", I was thinking to myself as my brain was razing for answers. She managed to catch me again with a full burst. This time, I just used my shield.

The bullets bounced right off. I felt like I finally had my answer. I ran towards her, only to stop, not having even run more than twenty meters. I realized she stopped firing bullets. I was fearing she had planned something. I looked at the side of my shield, she was wielding a Rocket launcher on her shoulder. Her strength was unnatural, she carried that thing like it didn't weigh anything. Her rocket hit my shield directly. The explosion was powerful enough to send me soaring over the ground and through a tree. I entered the woods behind my with my back on the ground. A bit of the explosion gave my legs a few burn wounds.

I looked through the gaps between the trees, as my eyes peaked from the dark woods, I saw her just standing there...Menacingly!!
I don't necessarily know why she didn't pursue me, but I took it as her thinking I was going to come at her regardless. She was correct, albeit, I fired a few arrows with tiny bombs at her first. It was a distraction, whilst she fired straight forward, I used Light Step to get high into the air,

She caught on in no time. The arrows that flew her way from my bow were shredded by bullet rain as a full burst was aimed at me.
"Arrows have no effect either, huh?", I was hoping that my light arrows could hit her at least, but she was able to shoot every individual arrow, no matter how spread out or fast. I shielded myself from the bullets, so she fired another rocket at me. That was part of my plan, however. With Reflection feet, I jumped from my shield her way. As the rocked was about to pass me by, I used a weak "Ice!", magic to stop its jet engine. Now, I could safely take it with me.

As I was headed down at her, I chucked rocket so it would blow up nearby. She had difficulty dodging its wide range, and I was certain she at least felt a bit hurt from its heat. It was the perfect distraction to jump at her with my spear. Of course, she dodged that too, with style even. However, it wasn't meant to hit her, I let, "Explosion!", go off once again. Yes, my arm was burned slightly, and I think I heard a cracking noise, but it made her flinch. She had no time to avoid my fist that was jabbed against her stomach as I shot myself at her at light speed.

She was knocked away by at least fifty meters. I could tell it hurt, but she quickly went calm again. She stood straight and said in a monotone voice, "Target deemed too dangerous for base form. Requesting permission to transform."
"...Transform?!", that caught me off guard. Was there another goddess I didn't know about? I was soon to find out what she meant. I noticed a antenna blinking red on her shoulder.

Right after it blinked red, she said, "K-Sha, transforming."
My eyes widened as she was inside a golden pillaring light. In the light, she gained a black tough leather eye-patch over her left eye. She wore a black officer cap with golden outlines. She had two wing emblem pieces on the sides of her cap. From the light came what looked like a metal backpack that was black in color using army camouflage. It had golden outlines as well. heavy artillery was attached on the sides of that thing, on the right side was a big round silver piece with the initial, K, carved into it. As she waved her fingers over her right eye, it turned to gold. Out of a golden beam from the sky, she grabbed a golden sub-machine gun. She even had two of them.

There was no mistaking it. That transformation was exactly like all the other Gold Third members.
"This was the one I haven't seen yet. From Lastation. K-sha. What is she doing here? Why is she attacking me?! Damn. If she really is near the strength of a goddess, I can't beat her without my own transformation.", I nearly bit my lower lip. But I couldn't stay anxious, I had to move

She wat quick with her guns. Even with me moving at the speed of Light, she hit me with a bullet from time to time. She didn't even bother trying to predict where I was and shoot, she was slowly dwindling me down with this method anyway.
But then, she stopped to say, "Killer Soft..." A few cards came before her. She grabbed one and summoned two flying capsules that fired blue and pink projectiles at me, a ton of small ones, but also some that looked like a flying slash. I deflected some of them with my blade, but there were way too many of them. The projectiles hit my sword into the air, leaving me wide open.

K-Sha jumped between the two capsules, and all three of them began to charge up light. They then discharged three beams at me, colored pink, red and blue respectively. They felt so powerful that it gave me the idea that even my sword wouldn't have been able to deflect them. Either way, it was a direct hit, the sword repelled a portion of the middle beam, but the two beams next to me were hurting me with their heat. I felt near the tress after being blasted. It gave me the pain of a burning house blowing up in my face. Despite that, I still stood up. With a bitter face, I looked at her. Honestly, despite continuing to fight, I was thinking that I couldn't beat her.

She stood ready to finish me off. But then, I felt something entering the range of my wind sensor, or whatever. I still can't think of a good name for my sensing things through wind skill.
I guess K-sha noticed her, for she immediately switched her eye to her, she fell down onto K-Sha screaming, "Tornado Sword!" A glowing rainbow sword, despite some push back from three big beams, blew through whatever counter move K-Sha had and pushed her back.

The lady that saved me jumped backwards and got closer to me. Yes. It was the CPU of Lastation, Noire.
I was already shocked to see the Gold Third of Lastation here but, "Aren't you Lastation's goddess? What are you doing here?!", I couldn't help but blurt that out.
She turned around, her eyes widened as she slightly gasped, she then returned to her stern look when asked, "And why is Blanc's little sister here?", she didn't know it was me until now, huh?
"A quest.", I lied as naturally as the blowing of the wind

"Ah, so you have gotten permission to go on quests. Well, fine. Anyway. K-sha had been missing for a while. As her friend, naturally, I've been looking for her ever since. I asked Vert to help me too, since she might pick up something on the internet. She told me rumors about some huntress that looked like a school girl in Lowee. They felt fake to me but... Well. I told Uni to take care of things and quickly flew over here.", she explained to me.
Her eyes was on K-Sha as she screamed, "K-Sha?! What's wrong?! Why are you all the way out here? What do you think you're doing?! Shooting at Bios and all that?"

"Goddess detected. Lastation's CPU, Black Heart, also known as, Noire. Danger far exceeds main objective. Proposal, kill goddess first. Target switch.", K-Sha said, ignoring any word spoken by someone else.
"K-sha...What happened...?", Noire looked distraught, but her saying that got me thinking, "She switched over to Noire, just like that? Because she was so dangerous?"
I walked a bit behind Noire before saying, "Um...I think she's being controlled. Probably by Blue Screen. She doesn't act human, and she also has that weird look in her eyes..."

"K-Sha always looks like that when she's in combat... But I can believe this is not her doing. K-Sha can be a bit crazy, but if she gets to that point, it's easily noticeable. Still. I have made a promise to her. Bios. For your own safety, get back. I will fight her alone!", Noire stated.
I just backed off without saying anything, because I know I wouldn't do as she said later.
"K-Sha... I'll bring you back to your senses, just like I said I would do!", she said as she held her finger up in the air. Then, before a pillar of light shot down at her, she said, "Access!!"

Light sparkled in her finger before her hand was covered by a black gauntlet with silver accenting before the light covered her arm and created a black sleeve with silver accenting. Whilst her other arm was getting a gauntlet sleeve, she took out the blue ribbons in her hair, at the same time, metallic shoulder pieces materialized out of blue swirling lights of energy. they were bulky and round, kind of looked like game consoles. With a turn, she let her hair flow freely, before black and silver head pieces materialized on her head from a blue light, when that happened, A bright light turned her hair pure white.

With the light in her hand, she ripped off the clothes of her upper body, no skin was visible, just black darkness. Said darkness had some small rays of lights shone upon them, creating an outfit similar to other goddesses colored black with silver detailing. Of course, part of her cleavage was visible, this seemed to be standard among goddesses. As she danced around, two black rather big metal pieces were materialized next to her hips, they were like, half oval shapes, it included a white socket, and on the bottom where two metal magnets that had two small light blue pins floating above them.

With one elegant step, a blue light swirled around her ankles before her feet was incased by black metal, with a light blue crystal like heel. From a thick black ring with blue accenting, black knee thigh highs. After that, she did one turn before stamping her other foot onto the ground. She band over whilst the pillaring light gathered on her back and burst out. The bursting light from her back changed color to blue, she then opened her blue eyes with power symbols. With that, she launched forward, flying at a speed that made it look like everything around her was moving in a blur.

While in flight, the bursting light was divided into six before materializing into six slightly thin wings, the blade of the wing was blue whilst its axillary was black. She reached her hand out to the side and grabbed a black blade from the floating data next to her. The blade she picked up was twice as big and bulky as her arm, the handle was on the side, the handle itself looked as big as a gauntlet twice the size of her hand. The thing was black, but the actual edge was light blue. It almost looked like, what was once black railgun, was turned into a sword. She stopped her flight with one heavy thrust of her sword. Right after, she did a spin slash that creates a gust. A blue light emitted from her when she swung her arm right behind her hip and said, "Transformation complete"

"Barret and Launcher.", was heard before K-Sha did her trick shots, followed up by a full burst.
Noire deflected the first two waves of bullets with sword swings. She shielded herself from the full burst with the flat end of her big sword, it seemed the bullets were strong enough to make her budge. K-sha ended up using her RPG, but even that was easily handled by Noire. She moved past it and swung her sword the millisecond it went past her. She used thunder edge because of the delay, the thunder struck and blew it up at the moment she was out of range.

I assume K-Sha thought about doing it again, aiming the rocket below Noire would increase her own hit rate, but no, Noire just launched herself in the air and rolled backwards whilst the place she was just flying over was ripped to shreds by a rocket. After rolling backwards three times, Noire fell down onto K-Sha like a rock, K-Sha jumped far back before Noire blade hit the ground as the words, "Volcano Dive!", was shouted. It was like the ground under her blade erupted like a volcano, the lava nearly touched K-sha. Through the smoke made by the artificial volcano of magic, K-Sha's bullets came at Noire. Noire decided to swing her sword along whilst flying at her. K-Sha stopped shooting when she got in the range of Noire's blade.

The tip of Noire's blade nearly touched K-Sha's nose as she dodged Noire's horizontal swing by jumping to her left. She tried to fire back at Noire but Noire kind of slid over the air to K-sha's right, avoiding the bullets. She swiftly thrusted forward to stab her sword at K-Sha the instant after. "Flaming Fencer!!", her sword made small explosions of fire as it was thrust forward, only for K-Sha to do a short side jump, letting the fiery sword pass her. From then on, Noire would continuously make small movements of her body to avoid gun shots whilst standing close to K-Sha to mostly do fencing techniques, coupled with a few short swings and maybe a heavy strike.

K-Sha moved a tad elegantly, she made sure to not waste a single movement, just letting the blade quickly pass her so she could shoot Noire. Sometimes, she would move a good ninety degrees around Noire to give herself more time to shoot. In the meantime, I figured to move far to their right, near the trees. I grabbed my bow and arrow and took aim, just in case.
Once I was in position, Noire missed another thrust, abd this time, K-Sha managed to kick her in the air, moving her back to the rear to strengthen the kick.

Of course, it didn't hurt Noire too much. K-Sha fired at Noire while she was still not in control of her movements. It didn't take too long for her to recover, she could block the bullets at the right time. And a second later, she decided to fly around the place whilst K-Sha tried to track her down and pump her with lead...Or whatever these bullets were made out of. Of course, she predicted where Noire would be, but that barely helped, because she could easily deflect a few bullets that came straight her way, and even then, it wouldn't hurt her to the point of stopping her.

Once Noire got close to the ground, she made a mad dash towards K-Sha whilst avoiding more bullets. Then, the weird thing happened, she did one swing of her sword, right to left, but for some reason, it was like two sword swipes few through the air, the second one was from below, the two cuts hit K-Sha's guns away. Noire back flipped into the air before kicking K-Sha, letting her slide over the snow. When Noire landed, she snapped her fingers saying, "Tornado Chain!" All I could see were these ring like lights, I assumed they were all small slashes that Noire did that I couldn't see. Whatever they were, they stopped K-Sha from doing anything. it clearly hurt her.

While stunned, Noire turned around to dash at her and jab her with her sword saying, "Thunder Fencer!", with electricity flowing out of her sword, she send K-Sha with her feet over the ground.
It hurt her, but K-Sha was able to shrug it off and grab her guns.
I thought this was the perfect moment for my sniping. I shot an arrow at that antenna. As if K-Sha had red eyes that could target threats at light speed, she turned to me and unleashed a full clip that shredded through my arrow. Despite blocking it, I was pushed through a tree.

I could hear my name being shouted from far away. Through my sensing of the wind, Noire was too distracted to avoid a rocket coming her way. She blocked it. I stood up as fast as possible to watch. Noire took little damage, it clearly hurt a lot though. She was blown back slightly, and smoke trails came from her body. Goddesses are powerful indeed, they can withstand rockets like its nothing. She only hasn't won yet because she has to hold back, as to not kill her friend.

I looked at K-Sha and thought, "I can confirm one thing though. That little antenna on her...If I destroy it, she shouldn't be getting any orders from whoever controls her. Once she knew I was aiming for it, she defended it immediately, even though Noire was still more threatening."
With Noire pushed further back, K-Sha let had two companions shoot their projectiles at Noire.
With a rather dire look on her face, Noire flew forward. Taking a bit of the damage as she sliced the projectiles in her way. There were enough hits on her that gave her clearly visible scratches and bruises.

K-Sha, of course, finished her attack off by launching three beams together with her companions, it was right at the moment that Noire had jumped at her. The beam hit Noire, but it was slightly disparaging by her sword. Slowly, Noire pushed forwards through the beam, which must've hurt a lot. Pain notwithstanding, she swung her blade through it with her right arm, her right to left swing cut the companions down, reduced the beam to pink-redish sparkles and knocked K-Sha on her face and send her flying.

"All right, time to move away.", I thought to myself, moving away with as much speed as I could muster, mainly to make sure she doesn't follow where I am. However, the moment I moved away, she turned her head over to where I was going to be.
She switched targets, just like that, bullets flew near me. Her aim was slightly off thanks to the quick change of mind. The rockets she fired at me almost hit me, albeit the explosion knocked me over. I looked at her as she aimed her pistols at me.

I wasn't even bothered by her about to turn me into swiss cheese, the mystery of her switching targets like that was far more intriguing to me. Luckily, Noire was more interested in making sure I don't get countless holes through my body. Her blade charged up in a rainbow color, suddenly gaining K-Sha's attention. She instantly had her aim on Noire and shot her in the head, not killing her or anything, but it knocked her back. Now left open, Noire couldn't guard against her onslaught of bullets. The air felt tight, as if an EXE drive skill was being used. Noire was being tilted over the air as bullets flew against her.

But it wouldn't kill her. To make sure she wouldn't dodge a big attack, K-Sha launched Missiles out of the thing on her back. In just a split second that no bullets were fired, Noire escaped and went into the air as she dodged the missiles. In the meantime, I had to try something out. Her target switching had to be for a reason, and I was dying to figure it out. I had an idea.

I swung my blade and casted Flash Drive. Suddenly, K-Sha's attention returned to me. What looked like a cannon to me was aimed at me. From her backpack, she was charging something. Although, it looked I was in trouble, I was certain Noire would jump in right away. She threw her blade down onto K-Sha, causing her to step back away from the blade. She looked up to see Noire dive down onto her. After doing a back jump, a Pillar of snow was shot up into the sky by Noire's fist shoved into the ground.

From the snow pillar, Noire dashed over to K-Sha, as she got close, she did a backwards spin kick, with K-Sha mirroring her by doing a spin jump before kicking her. The two legs collided, causing a heavy wind to blow. They pulled back, however, Noire didn't give her momentum up, she grabbed her sword and spun the other way as she shouted, "Tornado Sword!" With her spin, she did one heavy horizontal slash, even if K-Sha avoided it by jumping into the air, she was still within its range.

Noire pulled the sword to her side before doing an overhead swing. K-Sha rotated to the right, barely letting the sword pass her. As Noire's blade it the ground, K-Sha shot at her. Despite the rainbow sword taking much effort to swing, Noire, leapt away from the few bullets that flew at her.
She took this opportunity of K-Sha being in the air, by moving close to her dropping point and kicking her back up in the air with a backflip. While K-sha cringed in pain, Noire flew above her at high speed.

Her eyes followed Noire into the air above her. She managed to block the strike of her sword with her submachine guns, it saved her a concussion, on the other hand, she was still thrown onto the ground, probably cracking the bones of her legs. "Drop Crush", was shouted when Noire slammed her onto the ground, so it was probably a special skill that hurt a lot. Noire spend no time after landing, she quickly flew over to the damaged K-Sha and thrust her sword towards her shouting, "Flaming Fencer!"

K-Sha let go of her broken guns and grabbed the sword's flat sides with both her hand, stopping the sword. Despite the flames burning her hand and scorching her shoulders, she held it sternly. Whilst Noire's sword was stuck, the cannon on her back was moved and aimed at Noire. Energy was charging in it, and a panicked face befell on Noire as she tried to get her blade out of K-Sha's grip.
"EXE Drive Skill...Full Weapon Attack!!", K-Sha said before letting go of Noire's blade. I'm not sure of Noire had herself shielded with her sword, but a giant yellow beam was shot out and blew her just above the trees behind me.

After I heard a loud BOOM, I turned around to see a golden orb of energy made from the explosion, or rather, that was what the explosion looked like. With a nervous face and a few sweat drops, I looked back at K-Sha. I thought with my sword out, "I think she switches targets depending on the threat level. Focusing on either speed or strength. When I moved at Light Speed, she switched to me because I went faster than Noire. When she switched to Noire, it was because she attacked with a much more damaging or dangerous move. In other words, highest threat is determined by the moment so..."

I figured with Noire not in sight, she was going to attack me. She even grabbed two new guns.
Bullets were flying at me, again, however, Noire moved like a blur in front of me and guarded us from the bullets. She turned her gaze to me and asked me, "What is with you?! Why are you still here?"
"You're not going to beat her alone.", I told her.
"Huh?! So what?! I can totally beat her, okay? You need to run. Someone as young as you needs to get out of battle! This is my problem.", she tried convincing me to leave.

But as K-Sha fired another rocket without her noticing, I used Light Step to move in front of Noire, then, as the rocket came close, I yelled, "Mirror Blade!", and split the thing, at the speed of Light, its halves were shot kilometers away from us, even splitting the explosion apart.
"What was that?!", she said confused, she seemingly thought about it and said disapprovingly, "Well, it does seem like you have some bite with your bark. But what can you do right now? I prefer not getting Blanc's wrath."
"Listen. She switches targets depending on who is faster or stronger at the moment. That gets changed with every move we do. We might be able to manipul-", before I could finish my sentence, the two of us looked to our sides as a bright light shone on us.

She was charging another beam. In fact, between our bickering, she completed the charge. She fired another beam while Noire said, "She aimed at you now, right? Get out of the way!"
I ran back whilst Noire stood still with the beam only being a few milliseconds away.
"Tornado Sword!", Noire yelled as she attempted to tank the beam again, this time, using her rainbow blade. The beam was being spliced, I was protected between its two halves, albeit, temporarily. Noire was being flung back by its strength. She ended up colliding against me with the beam following, so the two of us were being blown into the forest. My sword reflected most of the beam into the sky.

As nice as the firework was, the beam still hurt as a lot, it almost felt like I died. I opened my eyes to the explosion, while appearing beautiful, its aftereffects kind of. hurt too much.
"You are full of tricks, aren't you? Why didn't you tell me your sword can reflect lasers?", Noire asked with a sour tone of voice.
Tiredly, I replied, "Right now, we need to focus...She will take her time with us being out of her view. We need to work together to win."
"I can agree with that. So. What is your plan? You must have one, right?", she asked me.
"I do. I think I know exactly how to beat her.", was my reply.

Going outside the forest, K-Sha's eyes lit up for a few milliseconds before looking at us as if she were locked on to us.
"Are you sure about this? This is incredibly risky. Don't you want me to do it?", Noire behind me asked. As she stopped, I Kept walking and told her, "It will be a test for me. Don't worry."
I walked over to K-Sha, casually. She aimed her guns my way whilst I kept walking. My walking was a bit on the slow side, but it was calm, no odd movement, just a simple placement of my legs as I proceeded forward.

She fired off her sub machine guns, breaking the sound barrier, her bullets split the air as they came close to me...But all of them passed me by. I could hear Noire, "GA?!!", scream weirdly in surprise, even the emotionless soldier in front of me raised her eyebrows for a bit. She kept shooting, shooting, and shooting, but no matter what, every single bullet went over me, next to me, between my legs, not a single one even so much as scratched me.
"I knew it.", I snickered to myself as I thought, "She has to switch targets when a target is more threatening. Now, even if she became a calculating monster thanks to blue screen, she also has that annoying battle instinct to make sure she can respond to tricks. However, despite that, she still had no mind of her own, she couldn't simply react beyond the commands given."

Whilst bullets were endlessly flying at me, I was recollecting what I told Noire, "She had to switch targets to me when I moved at Light Speed despite not attacking. This means that the command of, prioritizing strength at all costs, could not be overwritten by battle instinct or logic. Now, as for why she won't be able to hit me...I am not going to attack or evade her. She will make endless calculations on how I will dodge her or attack her. And if I try to do a trick attack, her battle instinct kicks in. But that's also it. It's BATTLE INSTINCT!! If I don't fight, she can't hit me!"

"That's right.", I thought as I got close to K-Sha, and continued with that thought, "Your instinct is for combat and hunting alone. Continuously calculating every move, or constantly trying to predict how I will evade or attack, without a human mind, you can't just simply think to shoot me. Such thoughts have been sealed away when he started controlling you. As long as I don't fight, you can't possibly predict what I will do and will never simply shoot me, assuming I will fight back or run."
As I got nearly in front of her, I snapped my finger thinking, "Now! Miss Noire!!"

With my shout, Noire flew forward with an altitude that was only slightly above us, and as she flew, her sword turned into a big rainbow blades as the words, "Tornado Sword!", was said.
Obviously, K-Sha immediately started shooting at Noire. Noire let her sword sway the bullets away as she got close to K-Sha. K-Sha jumped back whilst Noire swung her blade down at her at full strength. It could kill her. Of course, we don't want that, the real meat of the plan was me destroying the antenna. I materialized a spear before she jumped back. I thrust it forward at K-Sha.

She aimed her guns at me, but there was clearly some pushback, as she would die from Noire's hit if she were to focus on shooting me rather than defending herself. With that, it gave me one more second of time, enough to thrust the spear through the antenna. She did fire a shot afterwards, but with Light Step, I moved away. She fell down right after, Noire barely managed to stop her blade before it hit K-Sha. I noticed Noire's arms were trembling, clearly, she was anxious she couldn't stop herself in time.

It didn't take long at all for K-Sha to wake up. In fact, I think only five seconds had passed. Noire reverted back to her normal form, and upon opening her eyes, K-Sha jumped to her feet.
"K-Sha! Are you alri-HNMK", before Noire could finish her question, K-Sha glomped her screaming, "NOWARU!!!" As she was rubbing her face against Noire's and continued, "I'm Sorry!! I've hurt you, haven't it?! Haven't it?! I've committed the worst crime in existance!!"

Noire pushed her face away a bit saying, "Too close!", she then awkwardly told her, "It's okay...K-Sha. I'm not really hurt, see? It wasn't your fault either, so calm down..."
"Thank Goddess... I wouldn't be able to live knowing I have hurt you...", K-Sha told her after backing off. As nice as that sounded, I definitely hear Noire whisper to herself, "You already have two times now..."
"If you want to apologize, you should be saying sorry to Bios here. She was the one that was hurt.", Noire told her as she moved away and pointed her hand my way.

"Hm? Bios? This girl? Who is she...?", K-Sha asked.
"Huh? I thought you remembered what you did? How did you know you attacked me and not her?", Noire asked her, bewildered.
"Oh, I don't remember much of what I did. But I could sense having fought you, that's how I know.", K-Sha told her with the most oblivious face in existence.
"Oi oi oi oi....", As Noire said that, her tone of voice got lower and lower.
"And here I thought she had no friends...Or does K-Sha not count, for she is at a higher level?", I was thinking to myself whilst K-Sha giggled and talked to Noire as if she were in a nice dream, whilst Noire retorted her embarrassingly.

After their talk, K-Sha set a few steps before me, looking at me with a regretful face. She held her hands below her belly before doing a bow and saying, "Sorry!! Please, forgive me for hurting you."
I was thinking that Noire told her everything whilst I was lost in thought.
"It's fine. You were controlled. Nothing you can do about it. Besides telling us everything you know.", I replied.
"That's pretty mature of you.", K-sha said as she revealed an impressed face whilst raising her head.

Her face got serious and grim as she told us. "Everything is pretty fuzzy to me. I had been helping Noire with investigating something strange happening in Lastation lately. I felt like I was getting close, but as I started to find a leader of a possible treasonous organization, a ton of machines started to attack me. One of them took hold of me and said, "Your mental condition is quite poor. Perfect for use." At first, some kind of laser hurt my eyes and before I knew it, something was thrusted into my shoulder. I know I lost control then. What I did exactly once I was controlled, is something I'm not aware of. I know I fought, and I remember hurting my dearest, Noire. That's everything I have to report."

"That was certainly Blue Screen.", I said.
"That robot guy, right? Is he connected to that group after all...?", Noire mumbled in herself.
"Blue Screen can be anywhere. It's hard to say he is part of anything outside the Assailants of Death. Who is this group you're talking about, anyway?", I had forgone my typical "I'll stay out of this" personality, this was too interesting.
"Hm? Oh, did I blurt that out? It's nothing you need to be concerned about. In Lastation, there have been recent changes to the policy of our entertainment. Except, I had never agreed to this change. I don't know who did it, but somehow, my authority is not enough to change it back. I'm getting angry messages too. This group seemed to be connected.", is what Noire explained to me.

"Must be rough...", I silently said.
"Well. It's just another thing I have to deal with. I got K-Sha with me, and I am not considered a dangerous criminal this time.", Noire said, I choice to ignore that last bit.
"Noire. We might need to return soon. Who knows what they do while we are away.", K-Sha said.
Noire looked back at her and said, "You're right. I have to do some investigation of my own. When we're back, I'll have you tell me everything. I will do the search myself now. You should stay home, just in case Blue Screen comes after you again."
"But I-", K-Sha probably wanted to offer her help too, but she just silently looked at the ground in the end.

"I understand.", she replied.
"Good. Well then...", they turned around, Noire looked back at me and said, "It was nice seeing you, Bios. Thank you for your help"
"Wait.", they stopped at my call, I then asked K-Sha, "How did you get like that, anyway? What do I need to do to get the same instincts as you?"
K-Sha looked at me with a baffled face before asking, "Why do you want to be like me?"
"I want to become stronger! So I can help everyone!", I declared my ambition.

"I was made to be the ultimate soldier.", A somber feeling came off of K-Sha as she kept talking, "I was genetically engineered to be stronger than normal people. Even as a child, I had been trained in Virtual Reality Simulations to kill people and fight wars. You won't learn much from me."
I looked down and said, "Sorry...C-Sha said something like that, but I didn't really think..."
"It's alright. I have my best 'friend' here right now. That time is over. And you shouldn't worry about getting stronger, Bios. Just help people as much as possible, and you will get better over time naturally.", is what she said.

My eyes went down a little, not knowing if I should be happy at that. I looked back at K-Sha, she gave me a smile before saying, "I'm sure you'll be fine. Goodbye."
After both said goodbye to me, Noire walked away with her, probably waiting to get enough energy to transform again.
I loosened my shoulders a bit as I let out a sigh. This was very stressful. However, there was one other thing that happened here. I looked back as I heard the sound of something bouncing.

It was that little creature that was chased by K-Sha.
"You saved me, didn't you! Thank you!", it happily greeted and thanked me.
"Um...You're welcome? It's my job to help...People? Don't worry about it.", I replied with an awkward look on my face.
"Oh! Are you a goddess?! Like Uzume?!", she asked me.
"Well, I am. I'm kind of new at it, though. But you know Uzume?", She had my curiosity, now she has my attention.

"Of course! She saved me and all the others from the giants in Zero Dimension. That place used to be our home.", she told me.
I crouched down to her and asked with a blank face, "So you're from a different dimension. And Uzume used to live there too?"
"You catch on quick! Are you not suspicious of me?", she replied.

"You don't need to be experienced to get used to the crazy stuff happening around goddesses. I got used to this in no time.", I said, kind of making it sound like I was joking.
"If that's your answer, then I know for sure you're Uzume's friend!", she said.
She looked at me in the eyes and asked, "So...What is your name?"
"CPU Candidate of Lowee, Bios.", I replied.

"I'll make sure to keep your name in mind!", she told me.
I stood back up and was about to leave whilst saying, "Well then. With that said. I do have to go. I need to take a breather before going on quests.", but she stopped me after a few steps.
"Wait! I need your help!", is what she shouted.
I looked back at her with my usual blank face and asked, "How so?"
"My friends have been captured. A monster is roaming around the place they are trapped in. There's also a witch!", she told me, she looked scared to even talk about it.

I suddenly felt a little anxious and asked, "And where exactly are they trapped?"
"It's pretty far away from here. There's a dungeon in-between.", she told me.
You could see me recollecting what a dungeon exactly was. Because in this world, any area with many monsters roaming around is considered one.
"Have you reported any quests about it?", I asked her.
"I know for a fact that there is one to eliminate that monster! It's rank D.", she told me.

"I'm not at that level yet.", I frankly gave her that information.
"NO WAY!!", she screamed before sobbing, "And I thought I finally met someone who could help me..."
"Big sis can help you, you know? Anyway, how did you escape? It sounded like you were there.", I asked her, as I looked at her with the eyes that gave an aura of, "What a weirdo" off.
"They had that girl come over, and some deep voice said, "Would you like a demonstration?" And the old lady was like, "Yeah sure. I've got many targets for her to hunt." She seemed to take joy in throwing me out of the cage and into the world to let that girl hunt me down!", she told me.

"I see...", I replied as if I didn't care.
I then walked away. As I heard whining noises, I said, "Guess I'll have to get rank D earlier than intended."
I looked back to see her sprung up and looking at me with an excited, "Huh?!"
"You thought I was just going to abandon you? Sure, big sis could do it too. But this is perfect training for me. Of course, I would like to know the name of the one I have to help.", I told her.

Gleefully, she told me, "My name is Rankiko. But everyone is calling me Fried Shrimp now."
"Well then, Fried Shrimp, you sit tight, I will take the quest and force them to give it to me.", I said.
As I was heading out, I heard her say, "Wait! I don't actually like being called that!"
She couldn't see my smug face, either way, I replied, "I will save your friends. Fried Shrimp!!"
"NOOOOO!!!!", was the last I heard of her at that time before getting back to the city.

It didn't take me too long to get to the guild.
"I want a D Rank quest."
"No way."
My initial offer was rejected faster than that a blue hedgehog can run.
"I need to do it, though!", I insisted.
"You have just gotten your first quest! Even if I gave you the rank up one, It's not what you want!"

"I need to save this guy! And I am going there no matter what! So you might as well just let that be my rank up quest!", I told her.
She looked at me as if a thousand year worth of stress hit her at once, but she ended up calming down and saying, "As long as you don't tell your sister...I'll give it to you. But you better come back!"
"I promise. I will fulfill this. I will return!", I gave her a determined look.
"...With that spirit, it's fine. You need to slay the Oboma. It's nest is beyond the Cerulean Crystal Woods. East from Lowee.", she told me.
"Got it.", After a nod, I was on my way.

I was a bit excited. I'm sure my smile was visible as I skipped a little over the street.
I calmed down a bit when I saw a man shrouded in a dark black cloak. I could only tell that he looked hundreds of years old. Things got more and more tense as we started to pass each other.
Time felt slower, as he passed me and whispered close to my ears. I stopped, it felt like I froze.
My eyes opened wide in shock. It felt like snowflakes had stopped falling, as if they were set still in the air.

The thing is...I don't even know what he said. The only thing I knew was, I didn't understand them when he spoke them to me. It only gave me a high sense of dread. After hearing him walk behind me, I turned around, only to see that he was gone. It shocked me so much, it almost felt traumatizing. What was that? In my memory, it only sounded like, "DSKJDIJDB", gibberish, in other words.

Since I didn't understand what he said, I just went on with the day. There was enough to do. I went back to where the fight against K-Sha was. There was Fried Shrimp, she greeted me.
"Hello, Bios!", she said.
"What are you doing here?", I asked her.
"I...I am not going to let you go alone. They are my friends too! And I can guide you! I want to save them together!", she argued.

I looked at her for a bit. Things like, "It's too dangerous", or, "You can't do that yet", weren't much of a thing in my head. If you wanted to save and help someone, you better try to do it in a way you can. So I told her, with a smile, "Good. I wouldn't want you to come with me if you felt owe someone or something like that. You genuinely want to help? Then go ahead. Just do what you can, don't go overboard."
She looked upon me with glee and said, "You won't regret it!"
And thus, we headed into the Cerulean Crystal Woods together.