This is it. The biggest plot twist of part one is here. If you have any intention of playing Nikke and haven’t started already, this will spoil the defining moment of Chapter 7 of the in game story. Oh, and pseudo spoilers for some Rapi stuff.

  You have been warned.

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  She was going to die. She should have died, years ago, before her betrayal was complete. Before she attacked the Goddesses. Before she killed her friends.

  She should welcome death. She wasn't beautiful. She was a waste. Hadn't it been something she hoped for, as the voice screamed at her? Hadn't she wanted to pass on? To leave the suffering behind?

  And yet.

  The young woman that hanged above her had clenched fists. So outmatched, yet definite.

  What would happen to Cinderella if she died? Would Cinderella herself pass?

  Or would the voices return? Return to torment her as she rightfully deserved?

  She loathed the loneliness. She hated that there was nothing she could do.

  But.

  Even if she deserved to die. Even if she deserved to be tormented.

  She was connected to someone who did not deserve such a fate. Cinderella did not know how, or why, or even what the nature of the connection was. All she knew is that there was a connection.

  But she was fighting against something powerful. Cinderella could feel it, as trapped as she was. Part of her whispered that it could have been stronger than her. Victory, much less survival, was a distant star.

  Unless.

  Cinderella stood up, placing her hands against the barrier. It didn't move. It didn't budge. She couldn't move outwards from this little corner, surrounded by a barrier she couldn't see.

  She had to do something.

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  I brought my rifle up with a quick snap, pulling the trigger, sliding down the snowy slope. The target? Chatterbox.

  Could I kill him? Odds weren't high. He looked beat up as hell, multiple holes punched into his body. One way or another, he was probably out of this fight.

  But there was an old rpg maximum that rang at the back of my head.

  The side with the most turns wins.

  If he could resist at any point, contribute anything, even for a moment? Then it would shift the balance of any fight.

  Instead of hitting Chatterbox square in the head, the bullets punched into the snow. Chatterbox had moved.

  But not of his own volition. He was floating, carried by the massive suit of armor without even touching him.

  “I'm disappointed, Chatterbox,” despite being encased in armor, a woman's voice came through clearly. “You are capable of more.”

  “My Queen,” Chatterbox rasped, voice full of pain.

  “The traitor has revealed herself,” hearing Snow White's voice for the first time was strange. It was so flat, but despite how emotionless her voice felt, it was full of hate.

  “Are you guys okay?” Commander Johnson looked okay, waving at us. He had a slight smile on his face, but underneath it, there was a tenseness to it.

  Understandably.

  “Commander, please stay behind us,” Rapi’s voice was tense. “We are in a bad situation right now.”

  That was an understatement. I'd heard of Heretics myself. Not much beyond rumor and speculation, but nothing about it could be considered good.

  The strength of a Nikke, following the directives of the Raptures at minimum. At worst? Augmented by Rapture technology.

  “My name is Modernia,” her voice made my nerves stand on end. Part of the chest opened, letting us see a head.

  Normally, I would describe her as pretty, even with the visor over her eyes. But even with the visor, nothing but contempt rolled off her in waves.

  “The odds of you being able to injure Chatterbox if I evacuate him are too great,” she continued to speak, moving Chatterbox into the distance. “For the Queen, I will execute all of you now.”

  Snow White fired first, the massive rifle that could punch through Chatterbox roaring to life. It exploded, covering Modernia in a cloud of fire and smoke.

  Deep in my heart, I knew it wasn't going to be enough. I wanted it too, but every part of my brain screamed that it wasn't enough. But it should have done some degree of damage.

  The smoke cleared, parting around the expression on Modernia's face between boredom and contempt.

  “Back up Snow White,” Commander Johnson said, even as Modernia began to move. She rocketed forward, blasting through the snow.

  Despite the warnings my body released, I activated my power. Each step caused my right leg to rattle. And the worst part was?

  Modernia was still moving.

  Things still did move when I activated my abilities. Just slowly. Sometimes it was hard to notice. A few shots went toward Modernia's head, before I shifted into a slide, trying to compensate for the flaying coolant lines with the snow.

  Hopefully, her forward momentum would help the bullets penetrate.

  Sparks flared up as time resumed it's normal. Snow White moved out of the way as it seemed like Modernia froze for a fraction of a second.

  That did nothing! I didn’t even see the bullets hit!

  Wait? Did they hit? I mean, what else would they do? The only way I could have gotten more of a headshot was by putting my gun to her temple! She was fast, but nowhere fast enough to dodge!

  Rolling over onto my stomach, I fired another burst as the rest of Counters was opening fire. But the shots were doing nothing. Even another shot from Snow White's gun did nothing.

  We weren't doing any damage at all! We weren't even scratching the armor! We weren’t.

  Sparks were flying, but not when bullet or pellet connected with Modernia’s armor. The spark happened before any impact happened at all. At least, before it could impact anything visible.

  Fuck. That was a force field at least. Fuck us. If Rapture’s weren’t bad enough, not only were we fighting a Rapture that was effectively running on human hardware, she also had a damned force field!

  Modernia didn’t slow down, boosting up, firing a swarm of rockets before speeding back down. Another explosion bounced off Modernia’s defenses, bull rushing through without a care in the world. I scowled, blasting a handful of the missiles sent toward me before taking off in a run. Modernia was trying to drop Snow White.

  Despite the screaming protests of my leg, I had a smirk on my face. One that I didn’t deserve. If this worked? Maybe it’d do some damage. Maybe. If it didn’t work, then I was not going to have a great time. Ignoring another blast of warnings, I augmented my nerves again, staying ahead of the missiles. Just needed to get on the other side of Modernia. Just need to get on the other side of Modernia.

  Skirting around her, I let the normal flow of time resume, even firing a few shots into her face. There would be no flinch this time, just Modernia smashing through the bullets, scattering them as if they were dust on the wind. Snow White got another shot in, but however Modernia was blocking anything sent her way, the resulting explosion did nothing.

  Which left me in close quarters with a Heretic as Snow White muttered something under her breath. If it was what it sounded like, it was?

  I was going to ignore it. Better for my long-term health and sanity than dealing with this.

  Modernia’s blows came in like blurs, and my spine was wailing in pain. Even a glancing blow, breaking through the skin of my upper shoulder, was enough to send me rocketing backwards. Still, even as I tumbled, clutching my gun and hoping it wasn’t wrecked, I heard the explosions. So my plan worked. Maybe.

  By the time I managed to clear my head, it wasn’t looking good. I don’t think that did any damage, either. And there was no doubt in my mind. The damage was adding up on us. I could see bleeding wounds, and Neon looked as if something was bent at an ungodly angle.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  CRACK!

  Next thing I knew, Snow White landed nearby, her leg twisted, and her gun coming down a distance away.

  With a groan, I tried to push myself up. Modernia was focusing Snow White like a bat out of hell. Snow White probably had the best damn chance of hurting her, even if the odds certainly weren’t good. Aiming my rifle at Modernia, I hoped to draw Modernia’s attention away from Snow White. We’d been hitting the shield with damn near everything we had. It had to be wearing thin by this point! If we could just breach the shield, dropping Modernia would be easy. We just needed to get the one shot in to matter!

  There were just two problems with my plan. The first was the clicking sound my gun made. It was not the sound of an empty magazine. It was the sound of something being broken. Something must have been damaged after the hit to my shoulder! The second?

  I couldn’t actually stand up. My leg was busted up. Again.

  Everything below the knee was just gone. Nothing remained of it but scrap. Even above the knee, my leg looked as if it were about to fall apart. I could hear Counters continuing to put round after round into Modernia, continuing our desperate struggle. With a reluctant groan, I threw my useless gun Modernia’s direction, hoping to distract her for yet another moment.

  Then I began to crawl.

  Every warning light told me that this was a bad idea. This was a very, very bad idea. Still, I pulled myself through the snow with my arms and remaining leg, heading towards Snow White’s weapon.

  “A four-Nikke squad. A Pilgrim. A human. I am your superior in every possible way.”

  Shit, she was monologuing. With every shierk of protest, I drew myself closer, wrapping my hand around the weapon. Getting a close look at it? It looked more like a rail gun than anything else. Modernia was rising higher into the sky as I aimed the behemoth of a weapon at her. My arms whined in protest, but they obeyed, dragging the weapon into position as I tried to find the trigger.

  “All of you must die.”

  Energy was building up along the entire armor, channeling towards the top.

  “If we don’t do something, everyone will die.”

  I had no idea where the voice came from. The only possible source was Snow White, and that didn’t sound like her. But I grit my teeth all the same, fingers digging into the weapon as I finally found the trigger.

  “Who's this we? Why are you speaking French?” I ground my teeth. I wasn’t going to die here. I refused to die here. I refused to let anyone die here! The weapon in my hands began to build up energy, but Modernia was going to be faster than me. She was going to get her shot off first. She started first, and her systems had more power.

  But I could bend time over and spank it.

  Despite the screaming warnings and pain flaring in my spine, I enhanced my reflexes, time slowing to a crawl. Everything but me. Everything but what I was holding onto. And I pushed. Every ounce of energy I had. Anything I could spare. All of it went outwards, holding on to each second, clawing at my pain and fragility to buy even a minor nanosecond. The gun screamed in my hands as it charged and charged. I couldn’t tell if it was ready, if it was at a full charge, or if I was overloading it. All I knew, all I cared about, was ending this in one shot.

  With each passing second, the pain grew worse and worse. Until I couldn’t hold out anymore, I dropped out, letting time move normally once again.

  “Modernia!” I bellowed, letting my pain serve as fuel for my voice. She turned her suit to face me, and for a moment, I’d like to think that her eyes widened behind that visor, even though I was likely just coping. “Would you kindly fuck off!”

  I released the trigger, sending the shot down range faster than Modernia could even attempt to judge. All the recoil slammed directly into my body, pain flaring up everywhere as if something in my chest exploded.

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  Chatterbox’s teeth ground together. The damned Pilgrim. If it weren’t for her, this would have all been avoided. He was confident that his queen would win. Even with the small part of herself holding back, she was still enough to slaughter them all where they stood. He would be able to use that to kill what little spark of defiance remained. As well as remove the troublesome man. And find out why the toy had been able to defy him.

  She would suffer the most if she survived. If not? Her remains would remain intact. Enough for him to experiment on.

  That was what he planned. It was what he wanted. To understand why she defied him. To understand why something about her seemed so wrong, now. There had been a change. He didn’t know what, or even how. Well.

  He knew what now. And again, he damned the Pilgrim for injuring him like this. Instead, his vision was locked on the was produced unit, seething in fury. Seething at the image that involved her body. An all too familiar image. One he never thought he’d see.

  “What did they do to you?” He rumbled, unable to be heard between the distance and the battle. “What did they do to you, Anachiro?”

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  **Damage Report**

  --Unable to Contact 3 of 4 extremities--

  --Right Arm Crippled--

  --Coolant System Offline--

  --60% of Primary Core Destroyed--

  --100% of Secondary Core Destroyed--

  --Spine Broken in Three Places--

  --Internal Damage: Extreme--

  *Rebooting*

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  Ow. Yes, shut up please, my body is fucked, that’s situation normal around here. I saw lights dancing as I opened my eyes, looking up to see my face full of, Snow White? I couldn’t tell what the expression on her face was. I figured she was a pretty stoic person, based on what little I saw of her.

  So I didn’t like the expression on her face.

  “Are you okay?” I groaned out, not wanting her to ask me the same question. As if the answer wasn’t obvious as is.

  “The injuries I have sustained are minor,” her voice remained flat, but there was still something that didn’t seem right. “Yours, on the other hand, are not.”

  No shit, Sherlock.

  “Did that get her?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

  Then the snow began to rumble.

  “You,” nope, I did not get her, I did not get her at all. “I should have killed you first.”

  BANG! BANG! BANG!

  I saw it all. Modernia’s battered armor emerging from the snow bank, the armor looked scuffed and damaged, even rent and sparking in a few places, rising like an angry god. Then I watched as not one, not two, but three of Rapi’s bullet’s slam into the visor. There was a look of pain on Rapi’s face as she shot, but Modernia seemed to be taken by surprise, for such an attack to get through. She was stunned enough that the visor began to crumble and.

  “Marian?” The pain. The shock. I didn’t know a person could sound like that. I didn’t know Commander Johnson could sound like that. It sounded like someone had just stuck a knife into his heart. Why did he sound like that? And why did Marian sound so?

  Oh. Oh God.

  Please tell me that what’s happening isn’t what’s happening right now! I read that report! I read the report of his first mission! A Nikke could only become a Heretic through corruption. Willing or otherwise.

  But she was shot! Marian was shot in the head! She had retained enough of herself to tell him, to put her out of her misery! This is impossible! Marian should be dead! If Marian is dead, then she couldn’t be a Heretic! It had to be a look alike, intentional or coincidental!

  “Why are you calling my Marian? My name is Modernia,” Modernia spoke, but for the first time, there wasn’t contempt, disgust, or rage in her voice. Just, confusion. “But it sounds so, right.”

  Shit. Shit. Shit on a stick. Everything we knew about how to prevent Raptures from making new Heretics just got thrown out a window. If Modernia was Marian? Oh, God. Commander Johnson’s heart had to being ripped in half. It was clear that he never wanted to kill her in the first place, and now, where she was. Killing her was supposed to prevent this. And yet, now, here she was. That act had been for nothing.

  She was muttering to herself, as Johnson, Anis, and Rapi stood there, stunned. The ground was beginning to shake, dark light coming off Marian’s body. The shaking and quaking filled my ears, cutting me off from what she was saying, as everyone was freaking out. Then for a moment, it all stopped.

  “Commander?”

  That was the last thing I heard before the world went white.

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  By the time my eyes opened back up? It was to the sound of gasping and giggling. Already not a promising start.

  “Cinderella? You didn’t get involved?” Why was the Alice’s voice? And get involved with what?

  Slowly, my head turned around. The return time was a lot faster with a whole lot more red in my face.

  “What were you doing!” I shouted, easily enough to draw a bunch of hurried explanations as to what they had been doing. There was no why I needed any of that mental image in my brain. Bleach, I needed brain bleach. Or a blow to the head.

  Actually? Why did I have a headache right now.

  “We needed to stop you from doing what you were planning to do!” I think it was Neon who spoke that little line, almost causing my head to whip back around.

  “Oh my. How bold of you,” Ludmilla teased as heat rose in my checks.

  “I demand an explanation, now!” I shouted. I was going to find the biggest, hairiest possible spider in the Outpost I possibly could, and I was going to put it in their beds while they were sleeping!

  “You were going to damage yourself more trying to keep the Commander warm,” Rapi explained, even though she was still keeping it vague.

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  As it turned out, the reason Rapi was vague was because I about near burned out my spine and they had to knock me unconscious. So yeah, addressing my apparently close to negative self-worth was going to be a thing now.

  But to say things were a mess was putting it kindly. My body may have won the award for, how the fuck are you still alive? But everyone else was some manner of fucked. Rapi’s core got punctured, and lost a lot of stability as a result. Anis’s lower body was in terrible shape, with large chunks of it just gone and her being unable to move. Neon’s spine had twisted somehow, and it wasn’t pretty to look at. Snow White, who’d gotten Unlimited to our position in the first place, had a broken leg.

  The Pilgrim had since fucked off, though I had to wonder how long that would last for. But the fight with, fuck it, on paper, it was Modernia. Purely on the grounds of I was going to follow Johnson’s lead on just how close to the chest he wanted to play this. There was no doubt in my mind Anderson would find out, but beyond that?

  Christ. Johnson was going to be recovering from a near-death experience on top of that. This was a mess. I’d give him a hug, but I was down to an arm at the minute, and I didn’t know how long it would be until I had a proper set. On top of everything else. Even moving hurt, because my core was so fucked up right now, I barely had the energy to move.

  But Johnson needed a hug. He started on this path because he wanted to find out what happened to her. Who corrupted her. I wonder if he had gotten anything out of Chatterbox. I hope he did. Still, for Marian to still be around? He was going to want to save her. Was saving Marian even possible? Part of me wanted to say no.

  But, she called him Commander.

  She sounded like she was in pain when she did so.

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  Commander Johnson was being called in for a meeting with Anderson. I already had the cliff’s notes. He was getting a promotion. A special commander class, for surviving multiple encounters with Chatterbox. For finding a Pilgrim and a Heretic. For surviving a fight with a Heretic, even though I suspect Anderson may have talked things up just a bit.

  So why exactly was I not there? Well, my body was so badly damaged that I might as well get a new one. It sucked, but the damage I did to myself was, kinda crazy. It’d take a lot more to repair than it would to replace. So I was getting a new body.

  Syuen had finally, for whatever reason, finally stopped fucking around, and allegedly had a new body for me.

  But I was not at Missilis. I was at Elysion. Why?

  Well, apparently, while we were fighting for our lives in a frozen hellscape, a legal battle had been raging between Missilis and Elysion. And with the news that we had fought a Heretic, and successfully ‘drove it away’, Ingrid was able convince enough people that Missilis’s delays showed that they were incompetent and willing to sabotage the work of an important squad out of spite.

  Ignoring that we hadn’t been an important squad and that there was no way in hell Missilis would know anything about the operation in the first damn place, it seem to convince enough people that Missilis shouldn’t be in charge of my body. It sounded like corruption to me, at the end of the day, and I had to wonder how many palms Ingrid had to grease to get the thumbs up for that legal tomfoolery to go through.

  Now was I going to take advantage of that legal tomfoolery?

  Yes, yes I was. If I had to rely on Syuen for anything before the heat death of the universe, it would still be too soon.

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  “She’s holding steady. Her core is completely reconstructed. No sign of anomalous activity.”

  Ingrid bit back a sigh of relief. It was unbecoming. The damage report sealed the deal. She could not let Missilis get their hands on Elen. Period. She didn’t know why Missilis suddenly rushed everything through. It was suspicious, but they rushed it out not long after Elen had left. It wasn’t related to the second Core.

  Why Elen manifested something like that, she didn’t know. Only one other Nikke had something like that happen before. Rapi. But it seemed to be staying away. For the time being. She prayed it would hold. She had no idea what could have caused her to develop such a feature. Rapi was the only case she had to go off of.

  She was going to need to ask Elen questions.

  “Begin the wake-up process,” she ordered, keeping her face emotionless. If her case was like Rapi, there were only a handful of options that it could possibly be.

  Slowly, Elen came too, stepping carefully, timidly. Her balance was off, unsteady on her feet. Her NIMPH wasn’t doing everything it was supposed to do to help her, but that wasn’t a surprise.

  “Uh,” her voice was different now, surprisingly soft, though it was in part her nervousness seeping through. “Can I have a mirror, please?”

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  “You don’t need to have your eyes closed, you know,” Ingrid’s voice wasn’t condescending, or anything. But.

  “I just,” I, really didn’t know why I had my eyes closed. Was I nervous? Or had I never just, never considered what I would be like? Maybe, I just didn’t want too. That by doing so, I was saying goodbye to my old body, without any hope of ever seeing it again. Or maybe I was just scared. Scared of myself. Scared of admitting. Well, a lot of things. “Want to see all of me. For the first time.”

  I heard the mirror, likely some type of heirloom, be placed in front of me. And slowly, I opened my eyes.

  The eyes that looked back were. My eyes. The same blue-green color in my iris’s gazed back at me as I felt them begin to water. Yes, the shape of everything around them wasn’t the same, but they were my eyes! My eyes!

  I blinked away the tears, taking in the rest of, me. My nose was small, hard to describe it as anything but cute, with my mouth thin. Hair, blonder like it was when I was young, covered my head, mostly short, but there was enough to make a short pair of twintails. I wonder why they were there. If I had to put my height anywhere, I’d guess around five foot, five inches. My figure was, probably average? I didn’t have a good judgment on what that was.

  But my clothes were strange. I felt them, surprisingly enough, when I came too. I figured the body wouldn’t come with clothes! And it was certainly an outfit. An extremely modest one. It looked like one of those army uniforms. With the green camo and all that? Expect instead of green, or brown, it was blue, various dark blue and light blue splotches covering the outfit.

  I expected something causal. T-shirt of some kind. Jeans if I could get them. But this was a military uniform. I, don’t know how I feel about that.

  As for everything else?

  “Thank you!” I look up at Ingrid, teary-eyed, trying to stop myself from bursting into tears. “I love it!”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Ingrid nodded her head, pausing for a moment. “However, I do have a few questions I would like you to answer.”

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  And this one makes five. With Stranger Tides on a Hiatus, I will start work on a new project shortly, so keep an eye out for Of Myths and Mysteries.

  Also, in the initial drafts, Elen wasn’t going to get as beat up as she did here. Instead she was going to damage herself trying to keep the Commander warm in this scene. But given how Elen’s body is about as heavily damaged as it’s ever been? I figured someone would actually stop her before she burned out her spinal cord.