Word of warning: LOTS OF BGM! GET THOSE TABS READY!

Chapter Fourteen Part Two: Dawn of the NEXT Era

Uzume Tennouboshi

BGM

Chara floated in the air a few dozen meters in front of the agonized Romsy, at least until Chara threw his right arm backward, and in a moment the rainbow barrier that had slowly been disintegrating Romsy became surrounded by red bordered nine’s before exploding in red light, revealing a perfectly intact Soul CPU. Yomisy gritted her teeth.

Uzume narrowed her eyes, wings flaring with energy as she began to hover just above the ground. “We won’t let you get away with this!”

Chara started laughing. “What could you possibly do to stop me? Katsuo and Zero are both dead, the candidates are under my control, and I have an entire dimension in the palm of my hand!”

“You shouldn’t underestimate Hyper Dimension.” A flat, echoed voice warned before a Dark Orange unit appeared in a flash of dark purple light, a massive war axe and longsword slammed into the chest of the Soul CPU, sending it staggering backwards with another painful howl. Chara whipped around.

“You think you can change the course of destiny with an attack I saw coming a mile away!?” From how far away Uzume was it was rather hard to tell, but the second the man flicked his wrist Uzume shot forward, attempting to intercept whatever attack was about to me made.

Sadly for as fast as Uzume was, Chara had his back to Kurome, so all he had to do was spin around and slash his knife through the fin-like centerpiece of the Dark Orange wing processor, causing the entire thing to split in two. Kurome howled in rage, but was too focused on blocking a downward strike from Romsy’s axe to block.

Yet Chara’s focus left Uzume with an opportunity to strike. Pushing herself to go even faster, Uzume shot herself forward and charged up a drill in her right hand, thrusting it forward when she was in range of Chara.

Instantly as her fist thrust forward, Chara spun himself to the left and smashed her hand away with the top of the crossbow, discharging it at the same time with an explosive arrow that send Uzume crashing back to her starting point with just twice the momentum. Uzume felt pain over her entire body, and felt her HDD form start to break apart, but held it together through sheer willpower. Uzume couldn’t let herself be defeated here!

“Hey! What the nep do you think you’re doing?” Nepsy shouted. The smoke cleared just enough for Uzume to see Chara smirk.

“I’m taking over your pathetic little dimension. I’ve decided it’d be more fun to make you all my puppets then destroy you! Having so many goddesses serve me… and lead my armies upon that cursed world!” Chara was nothing short of mentally insane, just like the stories Katsuo had told her.

“But why? Why are you coming after us!? What did we ever do to you!?” Nepsy asked desperately.

“You allied yourself with that monster.” Chara answered darkly. “That cat-eared freak who dared to interfere with my carefully crafted plan.”

“Katsuo!?” Nepsy realized instantly.

“Don’t you dare say his fucking name!” Chara pointed his crossbow at Nepsy, the arrow now glowing with a dark energy that was more powerful than Kurome’s by at least a hundredfold. Both Uzume’s and Nepsy’s eyes went wide and tried to react, but the arrow shot like a speeding bullet, closing the distance in a fraction of a second.

BGM

Yet in that instant a glowing hand in the middle of a transformation grabbed the arrow dead center a centimeter from Nepsy’s face. Uzume dared to turn her gaze further to the right, only to see that the ground around Ramsy’s feet was frozen solid - and actually melting from the heat produced by her anger.

“You dare treat us like we’re your toys? Nothing more than objects to satisfy your lust for power and revenge!? WELL I’VE GOT A NEWS FLASH FOR YOU FUCKFACE! WE ARE NOT YOUR GODDAMN TOYS! Ramsy exploded upward, her HDD form turning into a black and pink blur as her staff clashed against Chara’s knife.

Chara managed to throw back Ramsy and follow up with a horizontal strike to the waist, but Romsy flipped up and over, slamming Chara in the back of the head with a massive ice hammer created from her staff. The blow didn’t send Chara far, nor did it seem to cause a lot of damage. Even with Ramsy’s boiled-over rage that made her more like Blansy than an alternate Ramsy, Chara was more than a match for her.

“Yomisy, Nepsy, let’s give Ramsy a hand!” Uzume declared shooting herself towards the pair as their weapons clashed once again, this time Ram had turned her staff into a long blade of ice.

A purple light surrounded Nepsy briefly as she activated her own HDD form, shooting upward with Yomisy riding one of her skulls right behind her. The trio quickly managed to catch up to Ramsy, Uzume once again attempting to slam a drill into the side of Chara’s head.

Like before, Chara spots Uzume’s approach. Pushing off of Ramsy, Chara brings around his crossbow in an attempt to deflect Uzume’s attack. Quickly dropping downward, Uzume feints her attack for the real blow, three chains thrust out from Yomisy’s sleeve that quickly wrap themselves around Chara’s body and spin him into the cliffside. Ramsy quickly summons a massive spear of ice that explodes into the spot where Chara landed, attempting to end him in a single blow.

A few moments passed, and it briefly looked like they really had managed to defeat Chara. Yet a few moments later four arrows came screaming out of the smoke, the only one who had been able to react in time was Yomisy, who blocked her explosive arrow with a slash. However Uzume and the other CPU’s were all hit dead center and blasted into the water.

Uzume’s head was in a daze, and it took a second for her to figure out exactly which way was up. Her lungs burned from a lack of air. Kicking her feet hard as well as flaring power back into her wings, Uzume shot toward the surface, exploding above the water in time to spot Chara smash a giant blade into Yomisy, sending her crashing into the top of the cliff.

With a scream of fury, Uzume charged forward again, flying roughly forty centimeters from Chara before letting out an earsplitting shriek into her megaphone and blasting the man with a harsh wave of sound. Crossing his arms to block most of the attack, Chara suddenly dropped in altitude, and Uzume came face to face with a hammer made out of ice, the blow knocking her back several meters and stunning her once again.

In the same moment Chara spun around and slashed in all directions, his massive blade - what Uzume guessed was formally his knife - colliding with Nepsy’s blade. And sending her crashing into Romsy’s axe, sending her flying back towards Chara like a spinning torpedo.

Shooting forward, Uzume slammed her whole body into Chara, only to find that she had impaled herself in the side by ramming directly into Chara’s crossbow. Still, even with Uzume injured her plan had succeeded. Instead of Nepsy slamming headfirst into Chara’s massive sword, she instead flew over the top of the cliff and crashed deep into the forest.

Now up close and personal with Chara, Uzume raised her megaphone and let out another roar, hoping to use the force of the attack to push herself backward enough to spin around and give Chara several powerful kicks. However not only did Chara ignore the attack, Uzume remained stuck on Chara’s crossbow. The man turned his head and gave Uzume the most disturbingly scary look she had ever laid eyes on. Chara’s face was as dark as the void, his eyes glowing a blood red. And in the most innocent voice, Chara spoke three words.

“Time to die.”

The click of a trigger was followed by a massive explosion as Uzume felt her body nearly rip in two, crashing into the top of the cliffside next to Yomisy - a massive hole in her side quickly staining the ground. Uzume’s mind was now filled with nothing but pain, her body unable to hold HDD form as she transformed back - the hole still in her side. Yomisy crawled over to Uzume, bleeding badly from a head wound of her own.

Uzume, too injured to move, look up at the battle still unfolding between Ramsy and Chara. Ramsy was throwing spell after spell at her opponent. Entombing him in ice, blasting him with blizzard's, sending massive chunks of ice at him, and even smashing him with a giant ice hammer that shattered the second it touched Chara - none of it had any effect. Through her haze of pain Uzume realized that Chara was simply toying with Ramsy.

But eventually the playtime had to end. Firing an arrow that quickly imploded in front of Ramsy, she was forced forward until her midsection was skewered on Chara’s massive blade, Ramsy coughing up blood. With a single flick of his blade Ramsy was thrown to Uzume’s right, sending another cloud of dirt up in another explosion.

Uzume glanced past Chara to Kurome, hoping that she was having better luck against Romsy, and much to her despair Kurome was losing. Missing an arm and over of her extra weapons, her other self was fighting a desperate battle to not be torn to pieces by beams of white light and deadly swings from her axe. Yet with Chara’s victory over Uzume and the others, his focus returned to Dark Orange. In a single slash Kurome’s construct was covered in the same red nines that had ripped apart the Crystal Barrier, ripping the Dark CPU apart like wet tissue paper. A bloodcurdling scream filled the air before something came flying into the ground in front of Uzume.

It was Kurome, bleeding from multiple deep gashes all over her body.

“Now do you see how useless it is for you to fight me?” Chara smirked.

BGM

Blanc

The moment the crystal barrier had gone down Blanc knew they were in trouble. If Uzume had failed to stop Rom then that meant the small army they had was going to have to fight off a Soulbot legion that numbered three times that of what had taken down Lastation. Defeat was all but inevitable if the Crystal Barrier failed. Still, she couldn’t show weakness in front of her troops. Raising her axe high in the air, Blanc let out a battle cry as she charged forward, slamming her weapon through the center of the first Hunter, not bothering to deal with the small-fry Mutts that ran head-first into a line of Novalight defense turrets that mowed them down.

For roughly a half hour the battle was a stalemate, the improved weapons developed by Yomi that had been used by the Black Legion giving the soldiers of Hyper Dimension the best chance they’d ever had at pushing back their aggressors. Blanc grinned and tightened her fight, a rush of hope flooding through her. Yet in a moment that hope was stomped flat.

A new type of Soulbot, one Blanc had never seen before, rolled into the their defense line and killed all of their heavy weaponry in a single blast. This enemy was about the size of a Hunter, but looked more human than any Soulbot she had ever seen. The figure was wielding two massive beam cannons that resembled the weapon Nepgear used in HDD form.

Not bothering to waste time with why, how, or the state of their troops, Blanc rushed to stop the rampaging new enemy who was tearing their chances of winning to shreds. Spinning around in a circle to build momentum, Blanc smashed her axe against the figure - who blocked it by using both of the weapons the person was carrying. Now up close, Blanc recognized her opponent. The truth was so shocking that Blanc lost her focus, and as a result the figure slammed his knee into Blanc’s stomach, knocking the air from her lungs. In one swift motion the figure elbowed Blanc in the face, stunning her long enough for the man to spin around and kick her weapon out of her hands, sending it skidding along the dirt. Before Blanc had a chance to recover twin beams of energy slammed into the Loweean CPU, sending her flying backwards into a circle of Soulbots. Blanc scowled at her attacker, the one who was going to destroy Leanbox.

Zer0.

Uzume Tennouboshi

After a few more moments Yomisy had reached Uzume, and suddenly Uzume felt her wounds closing, despite the fact that she had been blasted by Chara’s Soul Energy.

“It’s only temporary.” Yomisy whispered. “In fifteen minutes your body will start to break apart. Please, end this.” Yomisy quickly passed out after that, the head wound continuing to bleed out. Feeling her strength return, Uzume slowly clawed her way to her feet. Chara started laughing.

“How I enjoy watching the pitiful struggle of beings who have no power! I’ll take great pleasure in this.” Chara pointed his crossbow down at Uzume. “Before I kill you, I have a message to the people in that underground bunker watching this.” Uzume’s eyes widened. How were the people who were supposed to be hidden watching this!? Had they seen everything go wrong from the start? No wonder my wounds weren’t healing… Uzume realized that her shares were near nothing, and she realized what Yomisy had meant. Yomisy had manipulated what few shares she had left to heal her wounds, but it had left Uzume with only fifteen minutes worth of energy. After that time she would have no more shares, and regardless the result she would die.

“Submit to me, your lord, your god!” Chara continued his rant, almost ignoring Uzume altogether, giving her time to grab her megaphone. She was only going to get one shot at this. “Submit to me and I promise to give you the greatest joy you’ve ever known! But defy me, and know the pain of a thousand suns burning the flesh from your bodies.”

Serenity

Her first thought was that she and her siblings should have stayed the fuck in Lastation. They had been safe in that academy, aware of the Soulbot patrols and had forged a way of life that was - while full of risk - stable and livable. Why the hell did she believe this shitty goddess had the power to defeat someone stronger than a demon lord?

Then Serenity remembered the joy on the faces of her two youngest siblings, Alex and Chelsea, when they had seen the bright orange spinning top. The light of a CPU, the light of hope. Even though she never wanted to trust Uzume, she couldn’t tell her siblings that the beings they had placed their trust in for their whole lives that their heroes couldn’t defeat the villains.

Serenity looked around after watching Uzume slowly get up after being blasted and nearly bleed out from Chara’s ruthless attacks. The demons offer was tempting, they’d get to live on, guaranteed a life of happiness as a slave. But what did that mean? Forced labor for kids so young they’d die in a week? Performing servitude meant for a lover rather than forced onto a king? If there was one thing Serenity was sure of, it was that there was no trusting Chara’s offer.

Yet the whispers that surrounded her wanted to submit. Already several people were beginning to mutter ‘All Hail Chara’ while on their knees, like they were begging for forgiveness for committing an inexcusable crime. Even some of Uzume’s most trusted supporters looked doubtful.

Narrowing her eyes, Serenity glanced up at the screen, and in the corner of the projection spotted Uzume gripping her megaphone with a tight determination, her fingers also twisted into a peace sign. Serenity doubted that Uzume was sure anyone would see it, but Serenity knew that the former CPU of Planeptune hadn’t given up.

BGM

These idiots are more spineless than that stupid fuck of a goddess!

“You shits!? Are you really going to quit that easily?” Serenity shouted, rising to her feet. “Are you all so pathetic that you’re willing to betray your nations just because your lives are on the line?”

“Why don’t you sit down and shut up girly, before you get us all killed!” A man several meters away from her spat. Serenity’s eyes narrowed further. Grabbing a metal baseball bat that she had purchased a day ago, the funds a gift from Neptune herself. With bad tight in her right hand, she marched up to the man and swung as hard as she could, aiming for his midsection. With a satisfying crack of snapping ribs the man toppled over, grabbing his side.

“You bitch!” The man spat.

“You shut the fuck up! That girl is fighting for our lives and all we’re doing is sitting here turning our backs on her! I might be from Lastation but all of my faith is in Uzume right now!” Serenity was addressing the entire warehouse now, shouting as loud as she could to make sure she was heard by the whole room. “So are you going to fight for your nations or are you going to die a coward!?”

“I’m going to stand with Miss Uzume!” A small voice from beside Serenity declared with pride. Looking down, she spotted a Baby Bug standing as tall as it could.

“Miss Uzume will make a comeback for sure!” Another call came from across the room, also coming from one of the monsters originally from the Zero Dimension. One by one each of the monsters slowly started agreeing with Serenity’s declaration. As for everyone else, they looked rather skeptical at first, but eventually they started agreeing as well. A loud chant of ‘Uzume!’ started ringing out until it shook the room. The few individuals who had placed their faith in Chara were quickly tied up and placed in a corner of the room.

The atmosphere in the room had changed, from total despair to the brightest hope since the start of the war. Glancing down at her younger siblings, they were now watching the projection with excitement in their eyes, like this was the moment where the heroes would make their comeback win.

It’s all up to you now. If you disappoint my siblings I’ll kill you myself!

Uzume Tennouboshi

Uzume closed her eyes, the chants of everyone in the bunker washing over her, filling her with energy - all thanks to the last person she had expected to stand up for her. With a scream of fury Chara slashed the projection into oblivion.

“You fools! You’ll all die with this dimension!” Chara re-pointed his weapon at Uzume.

“Yo asshole, you’re forgetting one very important thing!”

“Shut your mouth and just die!” Chara let loose an arrow, Uzume instantly letting loose a scream that caused the arrow to detonate well before reaching Uzume and her fallen comrades.

“We’ll keep fighting, even if the flash is falling off our bones!” Uzume sucked in a deep breath, preparing to summon four speakers in a last minute effort to blow Chara away, but that’s when something unexpected happened, a scream from high above Romsy.

“Life Fiber Synchronize, Kamui Senketsu!”

BGM

In a rapid glowing red series of flashes, a figure came rocketing downward. Chara whipped around and attempted to block with his giant sword, the new arrival smashed into him and kept going, the pair slamming into the cliffside. The back of Romsy’s head was suddenly struck by several explosions, and Uzume spotted five figures rapidly fly directly past Romsy, flying both over and under the axe that attempted to slam into them as it was swung in a wide arc. Uzume’s grin went from ear to ear, the last people she had expected to see arriving.

BGM

“Yo, you guys are late!” Uzume called. Slivsy and Evesy touched down next to Uzume, both going right for Yomisy and Ramsy, inspecting their wounds with Gearsy and Unisy in their normal HDD forms following right behind them. Gearsy looked around desperately.

“Where’s Neptune?” Gearsy asked, the worry in her voice rising. Uzume pointed in the general direction Nepsy had been thrown.

“She’s probably looking just like these two, if not worse. They need medical attention ASAP.” An explosion rang out from the cliffside and the figure who had collided with Chara was sent backflipping through the air with Chara hot on her heels. Now that Uzume got a better look at her she realized that the girl was hardly wearing any clothing at all, her breasts essentially presented for the world. Raising an eyebrow, Uzume wondered how anyone could fight like that.

“I’m not sure Ryuko can hold out long enough for us to heal everyone!” The fifth figure, a girl with aqua colored twintails said with a worried tone. Her voice was semi-robotic, but at the same time Uzume could feel the majesty of her voice.

“Yeah, Chara being here makes this bad.” Slivsy agreed. “If everyone were in the same place I could heal everyone at the same time, but from the looks of things we’re going to have to hunt down Neptune.”

“Not to mention that even if we can stop Rom none of us are strong enough to take down Chara!” Unisy added.

“Then please, leave Neptune to me.” Gearsy insisted. “I know enough about how Biohelix works to heal her wounds.”

“Hang on a sec Gearsy, Nepsy was hit by a weapon created by Soul Energy. No way Biohelix is gonna patch her up.” Uzume explained.

Nepgear let out a small giggle. “Not anymore! Thanks to the time I spent working on Rom’s Soul CPU I learned a great deal about the type of Soul Energy he uses. On our way back Sliver and I created a workaround that will let us use Biohelix to cure wounds!”

Uzume’s eyes went wide. “Wait, seriously!?”

Slivsy nodded. “The drawback is that anyone who needs to be healed won’t be joining a fight for a good twenty-four hours. So even if we did heal them I doubt we’ve got the strength to take down Chara.”

Evesy turned to Slivsy with the most serious look she had seen out of her while still being calm. “Sliver, we have to give it to her.”

“Are you crazy!?” Slivsy protested, get gaze shooting over to Evesy “It could kill Uzume! We still don’t have enough data!”

“If there’s a way for us to defeat Chara then I’ll take it, no matter the cost.” Uzume declared stepping forward.

“Please! I know we haven’t really met yet but you can’t throw your life away!” The fifth person begged, grabbing Uzume’s arm. Turning around Uzume gave the girl a wide grin and a thumbs-up with her free hand.

“It’s okay, I don’t exactly have a lot of shares left. Either way in about ten minutes I’m going to disappear.

Evesy folded her arms at Slivsy. “Well then we’re for sure giving it to Uzume. No way we’re letting anyone die today.”

“Whatever you’re planning on giving Uzume, you mind giving me some of that as well?” Ramsy gasped, slowly bringing herself to her feel while clutching her stomach wound. Uzume quickly ran over and tried to get Ramsy to lay down.

“Ramsy you can’t! Look at yourself, you’re not fighting anyone in your condition.” Ramsy shoved Uzume away, no doubt using nearly all the strength she could muster.

“LIke you let that stop you. That’s my sister up there, no way am I going to stand back and sit around. It’s like you said… even if the flesh is falling… from our bones…”

Slivsy walked over and patted Ramsy on the shoulder. “Okay I get it. Each of you take one of these.” From her pocket Slivsy pulled out two rainbow colored share crystals, handing one to both Uzume and Ramsy. Uzume stared at the Share Crystal in awe, never before had she seen such beautiful crystalized share energy before.

“Slivsy, what is this?”

“We found them in the Golden Summit that we modified not long after the battle against Eden. Apparently the tower tried to use the crystal Eve had installed to fulfill its original purpose, and created these. It’s like a Hyper Share Crystal, only with Crystal energy instead.”

“So wait are you saying…?” Uzume was quickly cut off by Slivsy.

“Just get up there and try it for yourself. We’re calling it a Harmony Share Crystal.” The way Slivsy was grinning filled Uzume with hope. At that moment Ryuko slammed into the ground at the edge of the cliffside, her outfit now nothing more than a black sailor uniform, and Ryuko appeared to be passed out.

Gripping the Harmony Share Crystal, Uzume quickly activated her HDD form and shot upwards, fusing herself with the new crystal.

Uzume felt share energy coursing through her whole body, and soon her white bodysuit was replaced with a black one, two black shoulder pads with bright orange trim equipped themselves onto Uzume, followed by a pair of cape-like extensions from her skirt, her roller blades quickly transforming into hover boots with long pointed guard pieces on top and on either side of Uzume’s feet.

Two pointed headpieces appeared above Uzume’s double set of twintails while a set of four long, sharp-edged wings appeared on her backside. Last but not least was her radio, no longer a massive disc-like object, the radio had been upgraded to a thin touch-screen pad, which seemed to give Uzume the ability to modify her sharing fields and summon different objects using her daydream abilities.

NEXT ORANGE

BGM

But Uzume wasn’t the only one to change. Despite her injuries, Ramsy transformed as well, the upgrade to her own NEXT form healing her wounds thanks to the effects of the Harmony Share Crystal, and her transformation was also a lot more drastic than Uzume’s.

Her staff quickly changed to that of a wide, double edged sword with the Loweean symbol imprinted on the hilt, her arms now massive black gauntlet hands similar to that of Blansy’s NEXT form. Her enlarged chest was covered by a single piece of opaque, white cloth that stretched around her, but most the rest of the processor remained the same as Blansy’s save for two details. The hat she wore was a tall, white witches hat with blue stripes that ran up the point and around the top. Her wings also stood out. Instead of the angelic wings that Blansy had, Ramsy had two sets of three petal-like wings, one larger than the other and rotating clockwise with the smaller set rotating counter-clockwise.

Both Uzume and Ramsy shot upwards toward Chara, who was once again pointing his crossbow down. Pulling out her megaphone - which was now a bright red in color with orange trim and an even brighter red crystal embedded in the top - Uzume let out a scream. Instantly a beam of energy like the ones from her speaker cannons blasted outward at Chara, the arrow exploding in his face. Bringing up her sword, Ramsy slashed horizontally, an arc of energy shooting outward and slamming into Chara’s chest for a quick follow-up. This seemed to have an effect, as a bleeding cut had appeared where Ramsy’s attack had landed.

“Chara!” Romsy cried, swinging her axe downward, both CPU’s dodging to either side of the attack, the bladed weapon crashing into the ocean below.

Using her new radio, Uzume spotted Gearsy disappearing into the forest while Evesy and Slivsy worked on the now fallen Ryuko as well as Yomisy and Kurome.

“You actually think you have a chance? How cute.” Uzume turned back to Chara just in time to dodge a swing from his massive blade, the very edge catching Uzume on the arm, ever so slightly cutting into her skin. Uzume spotted Ramsy, who had decided to ignore Chara and go after her sister slam her blade against the massive axe, the two now locked in a power struggle which seemed evenly matched.

Uzume charged forward again, ducking under a shot from the crossbow and slamming her right leg into Chara’s gut. Almost instantly the massive sword turned back into a knife and attempted to jab into the same leg that had smashed into him. Spinning forward Uzume managed to pull her leg out of the way before flipping all the way around and slamming both of her feet into the top of Chara’s head, sending him falling downward.

Managing to control his fall, Chara pointed his crossbow upward and shot an arrow in front of Uzume, detonating in her face and sending her flying backwards several meters. By the time Uzume recovered she spotted Chara in her face, another maniacal grin on his face as he thrust a knife upward towards her chin.

In that moment a blast of blue and white energy slammed into Chara, sending him crashing into Romsy’s head. Uzume’s gaze shot over to the cliffside, where an all too familiar twintailed figure stood with a curved, ice sniper rifle.

“Try not to give Chara a chance to take you by surprise, he recovers from blows really quickly!” Katsy warned in her head.

A loud roar of fury erupted from Chara, turning Uzume’s gaze back to the man, eyes alight with fury. “KATSUO!”

“Err, on second thought, you might want to help Ram with her sister. It seems I’m going to have my habds full.” Chara took off like a rocket in Katsy’s direction. Uzume wondered how the Zerostar leader was here, since Uzume had watched him die in the battle of Lastation all those months ago. Yet there wasn’t time to think on this, for now she had to help Ramsy stop her sister and bring her to her senses.

Kevin Tanner

Guardians were a bunch of assholes.

Having doubted the mission from minute one, Kevin decided to have a chat with his old friend Jordan - the newest Guardian to date and one that he himself had witness become one - to get the truth about their current situation.

As it turns out Katsuo and his merry band of nitwits were trying to revive Eden, but to take down something even more terrifying, Chara himself. Considering the only face-to-face encounter he had with Chara nearly resulted in his death as well as the death of everyone around him he was more than willing to turn his back on his mission and hike it over to Hyper Dimension with his team, where he had come face to face with Sliver Aina and Eve Everqueen.

A short conversation later and his entire team was now in the middle of a massive battle to determine the fate of a world… again.

As his team arrived at the island nation the first thing he had noticed was a rather maniacal looking figure standing over a white-haired, flat-chested girl in a white bodysuit with twin grenade launchers pointed at   her face.

Using his power of electromagnetism, Kevin quickly turned over the two long spikes on his back and equipped them to his harness sticking outward like a pair of wings, and in a moment he shot forward like a rocket, pulling out ten thin swords and putting them in a circular formation, spinning them like a saw as he whizzed by the figure, cutting off his head before he had a moment to react. As Kevin spun back around to the figure, he cut off the heads of several humanoid figures, causing them to drop instantly. Skidding along the ground until he was in front of the girl, he leaned down and held out his hand.

“You alright?” The girl swatted his hand away.

“I didn’t need your help, I had that perfectly under control!”

Kevin sighed. “Yeah I’d call about to get your face blown off by some maniac would qualify as having the situation ‘under control.’” The girl rounded on Kevin, pointing her axe right as his face.

“You shut the hell up! Who the hell are you anyway!?”

“The name’s Kevin Tanner, Jumper extraordinaire!” Kevin introduced with a bow. “And I’m here to sure you of your Chara problem!”

“Well it’s about damn time we got some reinforcements. Any longer and these bots would have started pouring into the city! I hope it’s not just you!”

Kevin grinned. “No, it’s just us. But don’t worry we’ve got it covered. Kimimaro, Mashyu, Scorched Earth time! Roast their backline!” Kevin called, and a girl with long red horns flying above the battlefield and a boy in a teal jacket instantly responded, firing a massive wave of rockets as well as a massive wave of fire over his head and roasting everything past the front line of the Hyper Dimension troops. The girl simply stared in awe.

“Sylva, Miyoko, find the other two goddesses and make sure their okay!” Kevin called.

“Already done you ass.” Miyoko snapped back. “The green-haired one is doing just fine.”

“Noire’s got a few cuts and bruises but she’s good here too!” Sylva called.

“Then it’s cleanup time.” Kevin grinned, the two spikes that he had been using as wings a moment earlier flying into his hands, and he charged into the chaotic battle between soldier and bot.

Uzume Tennouboshi

Despite their power-up, Romsy had proved to be a very difficult opponent, her armor still able to resist most of what she and Ramsy could throw at her. Even after twenty minutes of non-stop fighting they hadn’t made any kind of progress.

Dodging a beam of energy that erupted from Romsy’s head, Uzume returned the attack with four speaker cannon blasts aimed at the spot where the beam had originated, exploding in a violent burst of energy but leaving nothing more than a few scratches.

“This is getting us nowhere!” Ramsy screamed in frustration. “We need another plan!”

Uzume looked down at her radio, glanced at the crystal in the top of her megaphone and got an idea.

“Ramsy, I have an idea! Hold off Romsy for thirty seconds!” Uzume called, starting to scroll through the options on her radio.

“What!? What the hell are you planning!?” Ramsy called before charging forward to block another beam of energy from slamming into Uzume. Please, please let it be here… yes! Uzume tapped on the option for Yomisy’s modified Sharing Field. While it had failed to break Romsy free of Chara, Uzume realized that maybe their thinking had been backwards. If Romsy wanted to be with Chara, then they needed to separate Romsy’s energy from the SOul CPU’s, not her masters. Changing a few settings in the radio, Uzume quickly raised her arm into the air.

“Sharing Field, activate!” A bright light erupted from the screen of her Radio in the direction of the Soul CPU, quickly engulfing the entire thing in a sphere of light. Moments later the sounds of screaming could be heard, and Ramsy tried to shoot forward to help her sister, Uzume only just barely able to stop her by grabbing ahold of her arm.

“Let go of me!” Ramsy tried and failed to free herself from Uzume’s grip.

“Romsy’s fine Ramsy! Promise!” Uzume assured, and after another moment Ramsy slowly started to relax. The screaming continued for several moments, the sound even drawing the attention of both Chara and Katsy.

Without warning the sphere burst, leaving behind nothing more than an unconscious Romsy. Uzume shot forward in an attempt to catch the falling CPU, however Chara was that much faster. Moving with speed that seemed like it was closer to teleportation, Chara caught Romsy and scowled at Katsy.

“This isn’t over. I know what you’re planning.” With those final words, Chara disappeared, and everything fell silent. It took a moment for the realization to settle in - they has just driven back Chara.

“You get back here you bastard! Give me back my sister!” Ramsy motioned like she was going to shoot off after Chara, Uzume quickly grabbing ahold of her arm once again.

“Ramsy please stop! You can’t go after them right now!”

“And why the fuck not!?” Ramsy snarled at Uzume.

“We’re not strong enough to take down Chara! That’s why we’re going after Eden remember?” Ramsy snarled in disgust and ripped herself from Uzume’s grip but started flying towards the cliffside, Uzume following close behind, undoing their transformations once they reached land.

BGM

The first thing Uzume noticed was both Slivsy and Evesy hugging Katsy as tightly as they could, with Yomisy smiling close by, a white bandage wrapped around her head.

Kurome and Nepsy were bandaged up as well, though both of them were fine, and it took even Uzume a moment to realize that the Harmony Share Crystal had restored her Share Energy to stable levels. With a glance over at the girl who had distracted Chara and Romsy for long enough to give them a fighting chance, Uzume found Ryuko sleeping soundly nearly the cliff’s edge. Everyone had made it out alive.

“Yo Katsy, thanks for the save back there and everything, but seriously! How the hell are you even here right now!?” Uzume asked in bewilderment.

“The Leanbox barrier was designed to tear a person apart and send them directly to the overworld.” Katsy explained. “When Rom managed to resist and shatter the barrier Zero and I managed to use the broken pieces to forge a new gate going in the other direction, sadly there was only enough energy for one of us. I won the coin toss.”

“I’ll bet the Guardians are pissed.” Slivsy laughed. Katsy let out a loud laugh of his own.

“You know it, but they can go eat dirt.”

“How is everyone doing up there?” Evesy asked, her eyes filled with worry.

“Everyone is fine.” Katsy assured with a glance at Evesy. “And Umio had a message for you Uzume.”

“Wait seriously? Umio did?” Uzume couldn’t believe her ears. Katsy nodded.

“He said he was proud of you for standing up even when everything seemed lost. If it wasn’t for you Gamindustri wouldn’t be around right now.” Uzume could feel her eyes start to water. She tried to fight back the tears, after all she had to try and stay cool through all of this, but she was failing miserably. At the very least she wasn’t bawling her eyes out. Tears of joy are okay, aren’t they?

“Oh yeah, congrats on your successful tour Miku!” Katsy grinned, turning to the aqua haired diva. “And even bigger props for tracking down Ryuko and finding that camp of Black Legion soldiers! I’ll make sure to go pick them up after we’re all settled here.” Miku nodded, her own eyes tearing up but the girl didn’t say a word.

“By the way, I think you should know that Kevin came back with us.” Slivsy started hesitantly.

“I already know, and if I know him he’s already done saving the other goddesses too. Speaking of which Uni-” Katsy turned to find the Lastation candidate only to find that she, along with Gearsy and Nepsy, were already gone. Katsy let out a sigh. “Never mind.” Turning to the west, Uzume looked at the rising sun appearing over the horizon, They all still had a long way to go if they were going to end Chara, but at least they had proved that a victory against the Soulbots was possible. Now all that was left was to find Eden.

PERFECT ENDING THEME - BATTLE SCARS

Epilogue Next week, Authors notes in the comments.