The fragile peace aboard the Stardust Weaver shattered like glass under a sonic hammer. Shinji's eyes snapped open mid-kata, the imaginary blade dissolving into shimmering motes as his Danger Sense erupted; not a warning, but a primal scream tearing through his mind. Two colossal signatures, radiating predatory malice colder than the void itself, ripped through the fabric of Universe 6, converging on their position with terrifying, impossible speed. It felt like twin black holes hurtling towards them, one screaming kinetic fury, the other radiating a silent, soul-sucking chill.
"Merus!" Shinji barked, already a blur streaking towards the bridge, Voidheart energy instinctively flaring gold-green around his fists before he ruthlessly clamped it down, compressing the cosmic storm within his core. "Two signatures! Off the scale! Closing fast! Feels like... Monarchs!"
Merus was already a statue of focused cerulean at the main viewer. Crimson warning lights painted his skin, absorbed into its luminous depth. His ancient eyes, usually pools of calm, were narrowed slits of intense concentration, scanning the chaotic sensor readouts. "Confirmed," his voice was a low rumble, steady but devoid of its usual serenity. "Dual signatures. Monarch-class power output confirmed. Distinct profiles..." His fingers danced over holographic controls, refining the chaotic data. "One reads as pure hyper-kinetic potential; chaotic, unstable, like a collapsing star core. The other..." He paused, a flicker of profound unease crossing his features. "...is an anomaly. A localized entropy field. A void. Consuming sensor returns. Unknown entities. Extreme threat level."
Shinji skidded to a halt beside him, the deck plating vibrating faintly under his boots. The display confirmed it: one blip was a frenetic storm of energy, pulsing erratically; the other pulsed with dark, rhythmic certainty, a blotch that seemed to actively suck light and data from the screen itself. His Danger Sense vibrated violently, a discordant note shrieking louder for the void signature. "The void one... feels worse," Shinji hissed, his knuckles white. "Not just power... like... cold decay. Rot. It makes my skin crawl." He gritted his teeth, the embers of rage and grief flaring hotter. "They found us."
Outside the Weaver, The Void:
The obsidian shard of Nirvana and Torento's vessel hung suspended, a silent predator against the tapestry of stars. Inside the dimly lit bridge, bathed in the crimson glow of threat displays, Torento vibrated with barely contained energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a caged star. "It's SHOWTIME!" he roared, slamming a fist into his open palm with a crack that echoed like fracturing bedrock. His hazel eyes darted maniacally across the display showing the Stardust Weaver. "C'mon, gloom-girl! Enough lurking! Let's paint the void red! Or blue! Or whatever messy color that Trascender bleeds when I crack him open!"
Nirvana stood utterly still beside him, a silhouette sculpted from living, shifting shadow. Her voice, when it came, wasn't loud; it was a chilling whisper that seemed to bypass the air entirely, resonating directly in the bones. "I'm... intrigued. To finally witness him. The source of such... dissonant vibrancy." A subtle shift in the shadows around her cowl hinted at a predator focusing its gaze. "His heart... I wonder... what symphony of color does it conduct?"
Torento snorted, a harsh, grating sound that scraped the air. "Color? Who gives a cosmic damn about colors? I care about the crunch! The satisfying snap! Bet mine's more impressive anyway." He puffed out his chest, radiating kinetic arrogance.
Nirvana's shadowy form rippled faintly, a dismissive wave in the dark. "Yours, Torento? It's the frantic, muddy brown of a stagnant swamp churned by a petulant child. Predictable chaos." Her tone held no malice, only clinical, icy disdain.
Torento's manic grin faltered for a split second, replaced by a flicker of genuine, affronted anger. He leaned closer, invading her space, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl that vibrated with suppressed violence. "Says the walking void. At least mine has a color, shadow-bitch. You're just... nothing. Hungry nothing."
Nirvana didn't visibly react. The temperature in the chamber plummeted sharply, frosting forming briefly on nearby consoles. "Irrelevant. His resonance calls. A discordant note in the silence. Let us... illuminate him." With a thought that resonated through the ship's structure, the obsidian vessel dissolved around them like smoke, leaving them standing on the absolute nothingness of the void. Torento shot forward instantly, a comet trail of pure destructive intent tearing through space. Nirvana flowed after him, not moving quickly, but spreading, a deepening stain of absolute darkness against the starfield, swallowing the light around her.
Aboard the Stardust Weaver:
"They're coming!" Shinji hissed, the words tight in his throat. He could feel Torento's approach now; a screaming pressure wave of pure speed compressing the space ahead, a physical force pushing against the ship's hull. "The fast one... he's coming straight through! Brace!"
Merus placed a steadying hand on Shinji's shoulder, the touch cool and grounding despite the tension coiling in his own frame. His luminous eyes remained locked on the void signature rapidly approaching. "Steady, Shinji," his voice was bedrock, a counterpoint to the rising panic. "Containment is paramount. Reveal nothing until the moment demands it." He turned his head slightly, addressing the others without taking his eyes off the screen. "Kuro, Miryoku; Monarchs approach. Brace yourselves. This is beyond anything we've faced together."
Kuro, jolted from his intense analysis of Custodian alloy stress-fractures displayed on his datapad, snapped it shut with a sharp click. His dark eyes widened fractionally, not with fear, but with the shock of raw data overload as Nirvana's signature washed over him. It wasn't just power; it was a cold, sucking dread that bypassed logic and seized his primal hindbrain; the instinctive terror of prey sensing an apex predator. "Signature..." his voice was tight, strained, "...defies standard energy classification. Nullification potential... catastrophic. Reads like localized reality decay."
Miryoku gasped, stumbling back a step as if physically struck. Her harmonic senses, usually attuned to the universe's subtle music, screamed in agonizing dissonance. Nirvana's aura felt like anti-music, a silence so profound it actively devoured her innate light. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering despite the ship's regulated temperature. "It's... cold," she whispered, her voice thin with horror. "Not just empty... hungry. Like all the stars just... winked out forever." The sheer, casual scale of the threat radiating from these beings was paralyzing. This wasn't the Null-Entity; this was a force of cosmic entropy made sentient and malicious.
Merus projected a mantle of calm authority, a shield for his younger companions. "We are four against two. We hold the advantage of preparation, unity, and," his gaze flickered to Shinji, the contained storm within him, "...unique capabilities. Focus. Coordinate. Watch each other's backs."
KRA-BOOOOOM!
The command was swallowed by the shriek of tortured metal. The hull of the Stardust Weaver groaned in protest, then screamed as a localized gravitational shear tore through it. Torento materialized directly in front of the main viewport, hanging in the void like a malevolent statue. He grinned, a feral slash of white teeth visible even through the transparisteel, raised a fist crackling with barely contained kinetic energy that warped the light around it, and punched.
The reinforced viewport didn't shatter; it imploded under the impossible force. Atmosphere roared outwards in a hurricane scream. Merus moved faster than thought; a concept made action. A shimmering cerulean barrier, woven from the fundamental force of binding, snapped into existence across the gaping breach, instantly halting the explosive decompression. Simultaneously, he flowed sideways with impossible grace, not merely dodging, but repositioning himself in the space-time around him. Torento's follow-through punch, aimed with vicious speed at where Merus's head had been a nanosecond earlier, met only empty space and the cold void.
Merus's counter was a study in divine economy. Not a wild swing, but a single, precise palm strike imbued with the primordial force of stasis. It connected squarely with Torento's chest.
THOOM-WHUMP!
The sound wasn't loud; it was a profound thud that vibrated through the deck plates. Torento wasn't thrown; he was erased from his position. One moment he filled the shattered viewport, grinning savagely; the next, he was a tumbling, uncontrolled streak hurtling backwards through space, impacting a distant, rocky asteroid with a silent plume of dust and debris.
Torento's voice crackled over the comms, thick with surprise, annoyance, and a grudging respect. "Hey! That was... slick! Unexpected! Cheap shot, Blue! Using fancy space-bending tricks!"
Nirvana materialized silently inside the breached bridge, stepping through Merus's shimmering cerulean barrier as if it were insubstantial mist. Her shadowy form solidified slightly, revealing glimpses of dark, elegantly articulated armor beneath the shifting gloom. Her head tilted towards Merus, the movement unnervingly smooth. "Impressive spatial manipulation," her whisper held a chilling note of appraisal. "A reminder that brute force rarely triumphs over true finesse." Her unseen gaze then slid away from the God of Creation, locking onto Shinji with the intensity of a singularity. "Wasn't expecting such... elegant efficiency from a deity known for building things, however."
Merus held his position, the cerulean barrier flickering faintly but holding firm against the void. Sweat, luminous and cool, beaded on his temple. Holding the breach and facing a Monarch simultaneously was a tangible drain, even for him. "Adaptation," he stated calmly, his voice carrying an edge of steel, "is the cornerstone of survival against oblivion."
Nirvana dismissed him entirely. Her focus was a physical weight pressing down on Shinji. A low, almost purring sound vibrated from her shadowed form, setting Shinji's teeth on edge. She seemed to lean forward, though her feet remained planted, the shadows around her intensifying and her ample chest raising. "Mmm... there it is," she breathed, the sound dripping with perverse fascination. "The resonance... the dissonant harmony... the color. So vibrant... so complex... so... deliciously potent. So delicious."
Shinji felt an invasive chill crawl up his spine, deeper than the void outside. His Danger Sense wasn't just screaming about Nirvana's immense power; it was shrieking about the intensity of her focus solely on him and her creepiness. It felt profoundly violating, like she was peeling back layers of his being, peering into the core of his soul, his grief, his rage. "Seems," Shinji growled, stepping forward deliberately, placing himself as a physical shield between Nirvana and the others, Voidheart energy flickering like contained lightning around his fists, "you're the real poison here. What do you want?"
Torento's indignant yell echoed faintly over the comms, distorted by static. "Who you callin' not poison, punk?! I'll poison your face!"
Nirvana chuckled, a dry, rasping sound like stones grinding together. "Ignore the background noise. It's irrelevant. The color..." her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, "...it excites me! It turns me on! Truly magnificent. A palette unseen before."
Shinji stared, bafflement warring with deep-seated revulsion. "What color? What cosmic nonsense are you spouting? You're creepy!"
"The color of your heart, Trascender," Nirvana breathed, her tone thick with grotesque fascination. "The spectrum of your very essence. Your soul's signature."
Shinji's confusion solidified into wary disgust. "You're insane."
"Perhaps," Nirvana conceded, the shadows around her deepening, her cheeks red, swirling with palpable malevolent intent. A suffocating aura of deadliness began to radiate from her, thickening the air, making it hard to breathe, leaching warmth from the room. "But madness often perceives truths hidden from the sane."
Shinji's muscles coiled like springs, Voidheart energy surging, ready to unleash the storm within.
Before he could move, a streak of pure, defiant light shot past him. Miryoku, her face pale but set with fierce determination, launched herself at Nirvana. "Leave him alone!" Her voice rang with harmonic force. A kick infused with disruptive starlight energy aimed to shatter concentration slammed towards the shadowy Monarch's core.
Nirvana flowed aside with liquid, impossible grace, Miryoku's foot passing through empty space where her torso had been. Simultaneously, Miryoku lashed out with her hands, fingers weaving intricate patterns. Threads of solidified starlight, humming with paralysis frequencies, snapped towards Nirvana's limbs like ethereal whips.
Nirvana merely raised a hand, draped in impenetrable shadow. The brilliant light-ropes struck her darkness and sank into it, dissolving instantly like sugar in water, their harmonic hum silenced. "Tch. An irritating gnat." With a gesture of utter contempt, she backhanded Miryoku. The physical impact wasn't crushing, but it carried a wave of psychic cold, a jolt of pure despair that slammed into Miryoku's spirit. She cried out, a sound of shock and pain, stumbling back several steps, thin trails of luminous, pearlescent blood trickling from her nose.
Shinji was instantly at her side, catching her arm. "Miryoku!" His voice was raw with concern. He glared at Nirvana, fury igniting the Voidheart energy into a visible corona. "Stay back! She's a Monarch! This isn't a fight you're ready for!"
Miryoku pushed herself upright, wiping the luminous blood away with the back of her hand, her violet eyes blazing with defiance despite the tremor in her limbs. "Don't underestimate me just because I'm a girl, Shinji!" she insisted, her voice gaining strength. "I can handle it! This darkness... it needs light! It craves it, and I won't let it take you!"
Shinji opened his mouth, the argument about scale and power on his lips, but Kuro stepped forward, intercepting his protest. His expression was grimly analytical, devoid of Miryoku's fire but radiating cold focus. His tech-gauntlet whined softly, gathering ambient energy, sensors whirring as they locked onto Nirvana. "Then I assist," he stated flatly. "Two targets present significantly more complex variables than one. Statistically improves survival odds... marginally." He met Miryoku's determined gaze. "Coordinate?"
Miryoku managed a shaky but resolute smile, drawing herself up, light flickering back around her hands. "Thanks, Kuro! Together! We can do this!"
Kuro adjusted his goggles, his dark eyes never leaving Nirvana's shifting shadow. "Probability of success remains highly volatile. Insufficient combat data on target capabilities." His voice was clinical, a counterpoint to Miryoku's fervor.
Nirvana tilted her head, observing the pair like specimens under glass. "Uglier hearts, temporarily. How... quaintly pathetic." With a fluid, almost dismissive motion, she drew her weapon. Not a blade, not an energy projector, but a simple, unadorned steel rod, roughly a meter long. It looked utterly mundane, scrap metal salvaged from a derelict freighter. Yet, it radiated a palpable, chilling wrongness, a sense of profound negation that made the air hum unpleasantly.
Outside the Breach:
CLANG-SCREEEECH! Torento slammed back onto the Weaver's hull with the sound of rending metal, denting the durasteel near the initial breach point. "Alright! Playtime just got interesting!" he roared, his voice vibrating the hull. He gripped the torn edges of the hole Merus's barrier covered and wrenched, tearing the durasteel open wider with a shriek of protesting metal. He lunged through the new gap like a starving beast, a whirlwind of kinetic fury aimed straight at Shinji. "Let's see how immortal you really are, freak!"
Shinji met the charge head-on, a roar tearing from his throat, meeting raw kinetic annihilation with the contained fury of the Voidheart. "Bring everything you've got!" Their fists collided in a cataclysmic blast of gold-green light and concussive force that rattled the entire ship to its frame. The secondary battle erupted in a storm of violence.
On the Bridge :
Nirvana ignored the titanic struggle unfolding beside her. Her entire presence was focused on Kuro and Miryoku. She raised the mundane steel rod, pointing it towards them like a conductor's baton. "Bear with me, little sparks," she whispered, the sound slithering through the chaos. "This illumination won't take long."
Miryoku didn't hesitate. Fear warred with determination, but the latter won. She threw her hands forward, pouring her resolve and the protective fury she felt for Shinji into her power. "Harmonic Resonance: Aurora Wave!" A cascading torrent of multicolored light erupted from her; shimmering turquoise, vibrant emerald, deep amethyst; a wave of pure harmonic force meant to overwhelm and purify darkness, surging towards Nirvana.
Simultaneously, Kuro didn't flare spiritual energy; his own was a faint, almost negligible spark compared to Miryoku's radiant nova. Instead, his tech-gauntlet emitted a high-pitched whine, gathering ambient cosmic radiation and ship power. He fired a tightly focused concussive pulse, not at Nirvana directly, but timed to strike the space just in front of her the moment Miryoku's wave hit, aiming to create a destabilizing shockwave at the precise harmonic frequency his sensors indicated resonated negatively with the Monarch's shadow-field.
Nirvana simply pointed the steel rod forward, holding it steady. Miryoku's brilliant aurora wave struck the tip of the rod and... dimmed. Not deflected, not absorbed in a flash, but leached. The vibrant colors drained away like watercolors in rain, fading to dull grey before evaporating into nothingness. The beautiful harmonic resonance collapsed into a brief, discordant shriek of static, then utter silence. Kuro's concussive pulse hit the rod a millisecond later. There was a sharp, metallic CRACK!, but the energy seemed to simply... vanish. Nirvana didn't flinch, didn't move. The rod hummed faintly, pulsing with a dark sheen.
"Coordination noted," Nirvana murmured, her voice devoid of praise, only clinical observation. "Fundamentally... weak. Like children throwing pebbles at a mountain." She vanished.
Kuro's sophisticated proximity sensors screamed a warning a microsecond too late. Nirvana materialized directly behind him, the movement instantaneous, silent. The steel rod lashed out in a blur of mundane metal.
THWACK!
The sound was horribly ordinary, like a pipe hitting wet sand. The rod connected solidly with Kuro's lower back. It wasn't a blow meant to shatter his spine; it carried no visible kinetic force that should send him flying. Instead, it delivered a jolt of something insidious, wrong; a cold electric shock that burrowed deep into his nerves, followed immediately by a profound sense of draining weakness. Kuro gasped, a raw sound of shock and sudden pain, staggering forward. Thin rivulets of dark red blood seeped from the corner of his lips, dripping onto the deck plating.
THWACK!
Before Miryoku could fully process Kuro's injury, Nirvana was beside her, the same mundane rod striking her shoulder with identical, casual force. Miryoku cried out, not just from the physical impact, but from a wave of soul-deep cold and sudden, inexplicable fatigue that washed over her. She stumbled back, catching herself on a console, a thin trickle of luminous, pearlescent blood appearing at the corner of her mouth. Her inner light felt... dimmed. Drained.
"See?" Nirvana said, her voice chillingly calm, almost conversational amidst the violence. "The same force. Applied equally. Precise."
Kuro straightened with visible effort, wiping the blood from his lips with the back of his hand. His mind, despite the sharp, localized pain and the unnerving sense of drain, raced. Pain disproportionate to impact. Sudden fatigue. Miryoku similarly affected but visibly less blood... Miryoku also pushed herself up, wincing, confusion and defiance warring on her face. She felt weakened too, her harmonic glow noticeably fainter.
Then, the impossible change manifested.
Starting from the roots, a wave of deep, dark crimson; the color of oxygen-starved blood; flooded through Kuro's jet-black hair, dyeing it a uniform, unnatural blood-red from scalp to ends in less than a second. Simultaneously, Miryoku's luminous cascade of white hair shimmered and shifted, the strands transforming into a vibrant, healthy light green, like new spring leaves.
Both froze, staring at each other in utter bewilderment. Miryoku reached up, touching her now-green locks, her eyes wide with shock. "What...?" she breathed, the word barely audible.
Kuro touched his own crimson hair, his analytical mind accelerating into overdrive despite the persistent pain and draining sensation. *Physical alteration. Non-damaging. Immediate correlation with the strike... and the immediate onset of weakness and pain. Primary variable established.* His gaze snapped back to Nirvana, sharp and calculating.
Nirvana watched their confusion with detached amusement, like a scientist observing an experiment. "The unveiling," she stated simply. "Your Heart Colors. Manifested. External aesthetics are irrelevant distractions. How the mechanism functions... that is paramount."
Kuro's eyes narrowed behind his goggles, the crimson hair stark against his suddenly pale face. "Heart Colors? Explain the function." His voice was tight, demanding data.
Nirvana gave a small, dismissive shrug, the shadows around her deepening, swirling with renewed purpose. "Simple cause and effect. Every subsequent strike with the Rod diminishes your physical resilience. How much it diminishes you?" She pointed the tip of the Rod directly at Kuro's blood-red hair. "Depends on how dark your manifested Color is." She shifted the Rod slightly, pointing towards Miryoku's vibrant green hair. "Hers is brighter. A higher 'Grade'. Purer resonance, perhaps. Foolishly optimistic." Her voice dropped to a bone-chilling whisper. "And that Grade... it means the Rod's touch strikes her mind harder with each hit. Fear. Confusion. Disorientation. It will creep in... like frost on glass."
She lunged without warning, the Rod becoming a blur aimed squarely at Kuro's temple. No more testing. This was execution.
CRUNCH!
Kuro didn't try to dodge the blow this time. Instead, he pivoted into her attack, his tech-gauntlet flaring with stored energy not for a ranged blast, but for maximum kinetic amplification at point-blank range. He deliberately took the glancing Rod strike on the side of his head (agony exploded, white-hot and nauseating; disorientation spiked, threatening to swamp his thoughts), and at the exact moment of impact, unleashed the entirety of the gauntlet's stored energy as a focused kinetic shockwave directly from the palm emitter, point-blank against Nirvana's torso.
WHUMPH-BOOM!
The force wasn't cosmic, but it was devastatingly precise and amplified by Kuro's technology; a focused hammer blow of pure concussive energy. Nirvana gasped; a raw, shocked, utterly human sound ripped from her shadowed form; as she was physically hurled backwards off her feet. She slammed into the far bulkhead with brutal force, the durasteel screeching and buckling inwards under the impact. She crumpled to the deck, then slowly pushed herself up on one arm. A thin trickle of dark, viscous fluid, blood but also thicker and colder, seeped from beneath her shadowed cowl where it met the dark armor plating her neck.
For a moment, stunned silence reigned on the bridge, broken only by the savage symphony of Shinji and Torento's struggle nearby and the faint hum of Merus's barrier. Nirvana slowly raised her head. Her unseen gaze fixed on Kuro, who stood panting, crimson hair a violent splash of color against his ashen face, blood trickling from his temple where the Rod had struck. The disorientation from the blow warred with his razor-sharp intellect, but the analytical engine was winning, fueled by adrenaline and triumph. He pushed his goggles up onto his forehead, his dark eyes, sharp and devoid of fear, boring into the depths of Nirvana's shadowed form.
"I see," Kuro stated, his voice tight with pain but vibrating with cold, analytical triumph. "The Rod. It's a key. A focus. It links to your weird 'sight'. You see some... 'Color' in us. Call it a soul, a spirit, whatever metaphysical junk you believe in. Hitting us forces that Color out." He touched his blood-red hair. "Darker Color means your hits weaken the body more. Way more." He gestured towards Miryoku, still clutching her shoulder, her green hair vivid. "Brighter Color? Your 'Higher Grade'? That means your hits wreck the mind more. Fear. Confusion. Messes you up inside. Breaks you faster." He took a step forward, his gaze locked onto the void where her eyes should be. "Two hits. Two Colors shown. Two different kinds of damage. Simple cause and effect. Basic observation."
Nirvana froze. The swirling shadows around her momentarily stilled, frozen in place. The dark fluid dripping from her cowl seemed forgotten. "You..." The single word was a venomous hiss, laced with profound disbelief warring against a chilling, dawning respect. "No mortal... pieces it together that fast. Not possible."
Kuro reached up and deliberately ran a hand through his unnatural blood-red hair, a grim, almost feral smirk touching his lips despite the blood on his face. "Sadly for you, Monarch, I am mortal." He tapped his temple with a blood-smeared finger. "I just pay very close attention."
Nirvana's shock crystallized into pure, unadulterated fury. The shadows around her didn't just swirl; they erupted, boiling violently, expanding outwards like a dark nebula, plunging the immediate area around her into deeper gloom. The temperature plummeted drastically, frost instantly blooming on nearby consoles and bulkheads. The mundane steel Rod in her hand began to hum, vibrating with amplified malice, drinking in the surrounding light until it seemed like a shaft of solidified void. "PERISH!" she shrieked, her voice losing all semblance of calm, becoming a raw, ragged scrape of cosmic hatred. "KNOWING CHANGES NOTHING! EVERY HIT MAKES YOU WEAKER! YOUR MIND UNRAVELS! I, NIRVANA, HEARTDEATH MONARCH, WILL SHATTER YOUR COLORS AND FEAST ON THE FADING LIGHT!"
She raised the humming Rod, no longer dismissive, but focused with absolute, lethal intent, the weapon pointed unerringly at Kuro. The fragile understanding had ignited a cataclysm. The true horror of the Heartdeath Monarch was now fully awakened and directed at the mortal who dared comprehend it. Survival depended on enduring the devastating storm Kuro's deduction had unleashed.