[A/N]: I swear some of these readers are just half-retarded? [Image Here]
Meanwhile, on the other side of the evacuated street, a very different fight was taking place.
Darkwing II landed a heavy punch, sending Nakime's mech suit flying backwards into a brick wall.
"How...?" Nakime groaned, her robotic suit whirring as she struggled to stand.
"My predecessor made this exoskeleton specifically to deal with super-freaks like you!" Darkwing II gloated, dropping into a martial arts stance. "Darkwing fought monsters for twenty years. You think I came unprepared?"
A massive mechanical fist suddenly swung through the air, completely missing the vigilante.
"I meant, how do I move this blasted thing, child?!" Nakime yelled in frustration, her voice echoing inside the helmet.
Darkwing II didn't answer.
He phased through the solid brick wall behind him, his body dissolving into shadow as he entered the Shadowverse, escaping physical reality entirely.
He reappeared right beside her, grabbing the mech suit and dragging Nakime violently into the Shadowverse with him.
The world shifted into a pitch-black dimension of endless, suffocating darkness. Darkwing II stood on a floating rock, beginning a grand monologue about how she was a monster in human skin. Which, to give credit where credit is due, was spot on.
But Nakime wasn't listening. She was looking at the Eldritch horrors lurking in the void.
A chorus of guttural roars echoed as massive, shadowy tentacles slithered out of the darkness, each one covered in dozens upon dozens of unblinking eyes.
Inside the suit, Nakime's single eye narrowed. Ship beeped frantically, his circuitry illuminating the pitch-black void in a harsh green light.
"Child. You are truly naive," Nakime's modulated voice echoed, dripping with cold, demonic authority. Using Ship's nanotechnology, she mentally willed her weapon to form in her metallic hands.
"You are attempting to lock a spatial manipulator inside a lesser pocket dimension? You dare use darkness against a creature of the night?"
Using Ship's Galvanic nanotechnology, Nakime mentally willed Ship's circuitry to integrate with her blood art.
The nanites rapidly shifted, forming a massive, wicked-looking electric guitar that crackled with green energy.
"But more importantly," Nakime growled, her murderous intent freezing the very air in the Shadowverse. "YOU DISTURBED MY DATE WITH MY MASTER!"
Darkwing II was about to make a run for it, sensing the murderous intent radiating from the suit.
Nakime struck the heavy, neon-green energy strings.
KERRR-TWANGGG!
Instead of a spatial shift, the guitar unleashed a devastatingly amped sonic scream.
The force of the soundwave rippled through the Shadowverse as a physical thing short-circuiting Darkwing II's suit entirely, causing Darkwing II to collapse to his knees, clutching his bleeding ears in agony.
A black-and-green tatami gate materialized in the void.
Nakime quietly marched over, picked the groaning vigilante up by his cape with one hand, and walked casually through the door.
As Nakime stepped out of the portal and back onto the streets of Midnight City, she was just in time to see War Woman II's unconscious body skidding across the asphalt and coming to a stop at her feet.
I walked over, my cat tail swishing lazily behind me as I scratched behind one of my fuzzy ears.
"Tch, tch, tch. What a shame," I sighed, looking down at the beaten legacy heroes sprawled on the pavement. "Dragging the formidable names of your predecessors through the dirt like this."
I turned to Nakime, my feline features fading as I dropped the ability. "Oh, hey honey! Did you and Ship have fun?"
The sleek mech suit retracted, folding back down into the revealing black dress. Nakime adjusted her collar, looking slightly breathless.
"Well... it was quite weird sharing a body with Ship at first. But the power felt exhilarating and … Intoxicating. I felt as though I could shatter Muzan's skull with a single pluck of my strings."
"You really need to get over your ex-boss girl," I quipped, pulling my phone from my pocket and dialling a familiar number.
The line clicked.
"Hey, Cecil?" I asked cheerfully. "I was just wondering, when exactly will I be seeing those billion bucks we talked about?"
Cecil's deeply irritated voice filtered through the speaker.
"Kaisen, it is not that easy to produce a billion dollars' worth of tangible assets overnight. Even with my clearance, I need months to deal with Senators, bureaucrats, and the treasury. You know how the red tape works."
"Ahh, that is a real bummer," I sighed dramatically, looking down at the two groaning legacy heroes. "Well, times are tough, especially with this economy, Cecil. Looks like I'm going to have to sell off Darkwing's apprentice and War Woman's girlfriend on the black market to make ends meet. I bet The Order would pay top dollar for two prime-condition, super-powered sidekicks to use as living punching bags. Or maybe the European Mafia? Chinese Triads? I'm sure they can scrounge up a billion dollars between them."
There was a horrifying silence on the other end of the line.
"...You'll do WHAT?!" Cecil roared, followed immediately by the sound of him choking on his own spit, followed by the frantic crashing of a coffee mug shattering against the floor.
"I accept bearer bonds and unmarked gold bullion!" I chirped happily, and hung up the phone.
I turned back to Nakime, ready to suggest a late-night dinner, when the entire sky above Midnight City suddenly lit up.
The perpetual darkness of the cursed clouds was torn apart by a streak of blinding, fiery orange light.
It descended from the upper atmosphere like a falling star, growing larger and brighter by the second.
"Master!" Nakime warned, her hand reaching for her biwa as the object hurtled toward the city outskirts.
BOOOOOOM!
The impact sounded like a localized earthquake. The shockwave rattled the streetlamps and shattered the windows of the nearby buildings as a massive plume of smoke and dirt rose into the air a few miles away, illuminated by the fires spreading from the impact zone.
"A meteor?" I muttered, my brow furrowing behind my aviators.
"Shall I open a gate to investigate, Master?" Nakime asked, already plucking a string.
"Yeah, let's check it out. Could be another villain wanting a piece of the Butcher."
We stepped through the wooden doors, appearing instantly at the edge of a massive, smoking crater in an empty industrial lot. The heat radiating from the impact zone was intense, washing over my skin like standing in front of an open furnace.
I peered through the smoke, expecting to see a chunk of space rock or perhaps a crashed alien pod.
Instead, I saw a body.
It was a massive, incredibly muscular humanoid with bright orange skin, lying face-down in the dirt, completely naked, his body covered in horrific, deep purple bruises and severe friction burns from atmospheric reentry.
But what truly made my stomach drop was the state of his head.
He only had one eye. Or rather, he was supposed to.
His orbital bone was completely shattered, caved inward like someone had taken a sledgehammer to his skull. The single, massive eye had been brutally caved into his skull, leaving a gruesome, bloody crater filled with pulped tissue. Worse yet was the first-sized hole in his abdomen.
I recognized him instantly.
"Allen..." I breathed, all the humor and cocky bravado draining from my body in a fraction of a second.
The Champion of the Coalition of Planets.
The guy who was supposed to be testing Earth's defenses.
And he had just been beaten half to death and thrown from orbit.
"Oh, shit," I whispered, the terrifying reality of the timeline crashing down on my shoulders.
'Nolan. He must've…'
I jumped into the crater, pressing two fingers to Allen's thick, burned neck.
I felt a faint, struggling pulse.
"Nakime!" I barked, my voice completely devoid of any playfulness. "Open a gate straight to the Mauler Lab. Now!"
[A/N]: And with this, Canon is fucked forever. If you're enjoying the fic, DROP THEM STONES!!
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