My X Mind

## Episode

It was a hot summer day.

The sun beat down harshly on the tarmac as students left their last day of school until fall. Next to one particular high school was a pathway winding alongside a large ditch carved by a muddy creek that flowed through the middle of town. This path provided a convenient route for many teenagers heading home from school each day, and at the moment, it was naturally very busy.

Despite the large number of people walking through, none of them decided to do anything when a pair of teens grabbed one of the other students from behind and shoved her into the ditch, resulting in an eventual splash as she hit the water. Whether they simply didn't care or knew better than to say anything about it varied from person to person, but either way, the incident was ignored as if it was perfectly normal.

"Do everyone a favor and just drown yourself down there." One of the instigators spat. "The last thing we need around here is more people like you."

The students responsible for the assault walked off as the girl who had been thrown in the creek slowly pushed herself to her knees. Blood was dripping from several cuts she had gotten on the way down, and the fall had emptied the backpack she was carrying of its contents, which were now floating aimlessly in the water.

"...Why did I let them do that?"

Teresa gave up on getting to her feet, instead flipping over onto her back and letting herself float in the water as she stared up blankly into the early summer sky. Her irises were a bright red as opposed to their usual blue.

"I should've fought back."

Her eyes returned to being blue, albeit with a bit of a deeper shade to them than normal.

"But that wouldn't have fixed anything."

"They deserved it."

"Now I just sound like my mom."

"Like hell I do! Fighting back against a bully isn't the same as abusing a child! Am I stupid?!"

"Mom always said I was, so... probably."

"If I'm trying *not* to be like Mom, why am I taking what she says as gospel?!"

The environment around her began to fade way, leaving her floating in a stream of water with no beginning and no end, surrounded by nothing but a black void.

"...Why am I doing *anything?*"

Dana and Emilia waited anxiously inside the hospital room an unconscious Teresa had been brought to. Dana wasn't an especially stable individual under the best of circumstances, and seeing her daughter lying comatose in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV was rather vividly reminding her of seeing her husband in a nearly identical state shortly before his death.

She wasn't handling the situation very well.

"*This is your fault!*" Dana yelled in Emilia's face, pulling her in closer by the collar of her shirt. "If you hadn't made that damn watch, none of this would have happened!"

"If I hadn't made the CrossTrix, your daughter would be *dead!*" Emilia pushed her away. "It only started malfunctioning because of Oberon OS, and the entire reason Oberon OS targeted Teresa in the first place was because *your* abusive parenting made her vulnerable, so if we're gonna play the blame game, why don't *you* start by looking in a *goddamn mirror?!*"

Their argument was interrupted by a doctor opening the door to the room and knocking on it to get their attention.

"Please keep your voices down." The doctor said. "This is a hospital, we have patients trying to rest."

"Right, sorry about that." Emilia took a deep breath to calm herself down.

"Did you come in here just to tell us to shut up?" Dana huffed.

"No, actually, I was coming in here to update you on the results of the MEG scan." The doctor stated. "Your daughter seems to be experiencing a significant amount of abnormal neural activity in her frontal lobe."

"So she's having seizures?" Emilia asked.

"Yes, but there's more to it than that." The doctor replied. "To be perfectly frank, we've never seen this type of neural activity before."

"What do you mean?"

"An MEG works by recording the magnetic fields produced by the electrical activity of brainwaves." The doctor explained. "From what these fields indicate, large groups of the neurons in her frontal lobe are generating abnormally strong electrical signals and attempting to transmit them in two different directions at once, which ultimately leads to them malfunctioning and firing off uncontrollably."

"That would explain the seizures." Emilia sighed. "And unfortunately that just makes me even more certain this is happening because of Oberon OS."

"Is she going to be okay?" Dana asked.

"We don't know." The doctor answered her bluntly. "We've administered anticonvulsants, which seem to have helped somewhat, but the fact that she hasn't woken up yet is concerning. All we can do for now is monitor her condition and provide additional medication as necessary."

"Given how severe this is, is surgery an option?" Emilia asked.

"We'd like to avoid it if possible." The doctor said. "Isolating or removing the problem area would essentially require removing the entire frontal lobe, and given the unique nature of her condition, it's difficult to determine which- if any- implants would be effective."

There was a moment of silence in the room. Emilia wracked her brain for any useful information, trying to use her knowledge of bioengineering and anatomy to come up with a solution, but frankly, this was not her field, and she was completely lost on how to help. Dana, meanwhile, had a millions things running through her head, but only one of them stood out as something that needed to be addressed out loud.

"How long is she going to be here?"

"Until she either enters a stable condition or needs to be transferred to another hospital." The doctor said.

"And *how long is that going to be?*"

"I wish I could tell you." The doctor told her. "There are just too many unknowns. She could wake up in a few hours, a few days, a few weeks... or she might not wake up at all."

"Are you serious?!" Dana snapped. "Days? Weeks?! There's no way I can afford that, even *with* insurance!"

"You won't need to." An understated, almost monotone voice came from the doorway.

The three adults present in the room turned around to see Lucius Raivent standing in the doorway, hands behind his back in a very formal manner, and accompanied by a somehow even more formal-looking Svelte standing behind him.

"Wha- who are you?" Dana demanded. "How long have you been standing there?"

"I just arrived." Lucius stepped forward into the room and allowed his hands to fall to his sides. "I am Lucius Raivent, CEO of Raivent Enterprises."

"The company that rents out those EvoLocks?" Dana squinted.

"That's hardly our only venture, but yes, one of our branches is indeed responsible for distribution of the EvoLock system." Lucius said. "Getting to the point, your daughter is a key witness in a case being filed against one of our competitors. Keeping her alive and mentally sound is in our best interest, so we've decided to fund her medical treatment for as long as necessary."

"So... what?" Dana's eyes narrowed. "You just see my daughter as an asset?"

"Does it matter? She's receiving treatment either way." Lucius said. "Besides... don't you?"

"I-"

Lucius, not waiting for a response, simply turned around and walked out of the room. Svelte gave them all a short bow before following him as he walked away. After a few moments, Emilia elected to walk out of the room after them.

"Lucius, hold on." Emilia had to jog a bit to catch up to Lucius as he strode down the hallway. "What was that about?"

"What was *what* about?" Lucius tsked, continuing to walk forward. "I believe I was fairly clear."

"I mean, yeah, but you made it sound like you only care about what happens to Teresa because it affects you." Emilia settled into a walking speed that placed her roughly next to Svelte, close behind Lucius.

"And?" Lucius questioned. "Would you rather I lie and say we have some sort of deep personal connection?"

"No, but there were better ways to tell the truth." Emilia said. "Dana might be rather... well, okay, she's just straight-up an awful person, but right now it seems like she's genuinely worried about her daughter for once. Objectively speaking, you were giving her good news, but sometimes you need a more emotionally intelligent approach."

"You're saying I should have been more delicate with the child abuser?"

"That's not the point here and you know it." Emilia scowled. "Between this and what happened with Anne, I *really* think you need to start thinking about what you say before you say it."

Lucius stopped dead in his tracks. Svelte stopped moving on the spot, while Emilia sort of stumbled into an awkward standing position.

"I don't know if you've somehow forgotten this, but *I am the devil*." Lucius turned around, wearing a stern glare. "In what world would I *ever* care about catering to the niceties of man?"

"Oh, come off it, Lucius, you're too smart to play dumb." Emilia gave him an equally firm glare in return. "If being the king of evil was really the whole basis of your personality, you'd be working *with* Messias, not trying to put him away for good."

"That's hardly-"

"Heck, just yesterday you told me pulling the Evolvyrns would be a bad idea because of how much they're improving society!" Emilia jabbed an accusatory finger at him. "What kind of devil intentionally facilitates new technology specifically designed to make the world a better place?!"

"What do *you* know about the devil?" Lucius hissed.

"I was raised by hardcore traditionalist Christians who sent me to a "troubled teens" camp for conversion therapy and kicked me out of the house when they found out it didn't work, so gee, I don't know Lucius, *I might've heard a thing or two about the guy!*" Emilia shot back, gesticulating with pinched fingers to try and emphasize her point without being too loud. "How many of those things were true, who the hell knows, but they were definitely enough to get across that the devil is a *bad guy!*"

"And what?" Lucius scoffed. "You think I'm a "good guy"?"

"I think you're a *human*, Lucius!" Emilia said. "You try to do good things, but sometimes you screw up and do bad things instead! That's what *humans* do! I don't know if bringing up the devil thing is just you trying to deflect or if you genuinely believe it makes you incorrigible, but either way, all you're doing is making it harder for yourself to improve!"

"I-" Lucius wanted to spit out a retort, but his mind came up blank. Any of his stock responses would currently come across more like denial or a flimsy attempt to skirt around the issue than a genuine rebuttal. He clearly needed more time to sort everything out in his head. "...We'll continue this discussion later."

Lucius and Svelte abruptly began walking again and disappeared around a nearby corner. Emilia tried to follow them, but by the time she turned the corner, the two of them had vanished entirely.

"Oh, for pete's sake." Emilia grumbled. "I hate it when he does that."

Christine's return to Global Police HQ was rather unceremonious, as the coworkers she greeted on the way to her office all acknowledged her prolonged absence in one way or another but had too much work to do to discuss it any further. Waiting for her inside her office was her field commissioner and general assistant Lukas Burns, holding a large stack of paperwork in one hand and an armored briefcase in the other.

"Well, look who's back to the rat race." Burns handed her the stack of papers as she sat down behind her desk. "Congrats and condolences."

"Good lord, how many incidents piled up while I was gone?" Christine winced a bit as she took the pile of paper from him.

"Not many, actually." Burns said. "Most of that's an instruction manual."

"For what?"

Burns hoisted the briefcase he had been carrying onto Christine's desk and opened it up, revealing a set of folded and compressed body armor.

"New suit." Burns said. "Prototype was pretty good at keeping you alive, so the lab guys crunched to get the final design up and running after Future Crow wrecked it."

""Future Crow"?" Christine raised an eyebrow.

""Temporally Displaced Anomalous Instance of Suspect Malincious W. Crow" if you want me to be professional about it, but, eh..." Burns shrugged. "I'm not doin' that."

"Fair enough."

"Speaking of Crow, he got here early, so you could probably start that meeting a bit ahead of schedule if you want."

"Crow is *here?!*" Christine bolted up from her desk and began power-walking her way to the conference room, with Burns shrugging and putting his hands in his pockets before following her at a leisurely pace.

Christine burst into the conference room with such force that she almost ripped the metal door off its hinges. On the other side of the long, rectangular white table taking up most of the room were three CIA agents in identical suits; two men and a woman. It took a second to recognize him without his typical ragged clothes and unkempt hair, but the man sitting in the middle of the three was undoubtedly Malincious Crow, who currently seemed to be in the middle of a rather heated discussion on his smartphone.

"No, you should *not* just let him "do a little murder as a treat", he could screw up your entire operation!" Crow was practically screaming into the phone, clearly at the end of his rope with whoever he was talking to. "You tell that *crab-legged fuck*-" He paused as he noticed Christine enter the room. "Look, I'm gonna have to call you back, just *don't let him run around doing whatever he wants*. You give him an inch, he's gonna take the entire goddamn freeway."

With that, Crow ended the call, took a moment to breathe, and finally turned his attention to Christine.

"You just got a peek of what I've been having to deal with for the past *decade*." He grunted out in an exasperated tone. "You're late."

"*You're* early." Christine replied, sitting down across from him with an irritated look. "What are you doing here in the first place? Yesterday you said the CIA would have "the office boys" get in contact with us. You *specifically said* you hoped that was the last time you and I would ever have to interact."

"Yeah, well, sometimes people at *our* rank don't get told things until the last second." Crow grumbled. "I only found out I was gonna be their main rep at one o'clock this morning. *Guess how much sleep I've had*."

"Dumb idea on their part." Burns, who had finally sauntered into the room, commented as he sat down next to Christine. "Not sending in an actual diplomat is one thing, but sending in the one guy in the organization that's ever run afoul of the GP is like sending a lighter to stop a gas leak; you'd only do it if you were terminally stupid or an arsonist," He leaned forward in his chair a bit. "And the CIA's been found next to a lot of torched buildings."

"Right." Crow gave him a flat look before turning his attention back to Christine. "Look, I don't wanna be here and you don't want me to be here, so let's keep this brief." He pulled a thin folder out of a briefcase sitting on the floor next to him and tossed it over to Christine, who opened it to find several pages full of legalese inside. "The CIA wants the GP to pull out of the Triumvirate investigation and erase all their documentation on both it and me."

Christine froze, her muscles tensing up as her eyes kept moving, flicking around the pages she held at high speed and unfortunately confirming what Crow was saying.

"You can't be serious." Burns scoffed.

"He's serious." Christine muttered as she reached the bottom of the final page, which contained a filled signature line on the left confirming the document's authenticity and an empty signature line on the right meant to be signed by the chief of the Global Police. "They're out of their minds if they think that's going to happen, but he's serious."

"Well, I'll be damned." Burns whistled. "They at least give us a reason?"

"Apparently we're getting in the way of their own investigation into Sephtis Raivent." Christine looked up from the papers wearing a fierce glare. "You've been on the inside of his organization for *well over a decade* now, and you're telling me you haven't been able to nail this guy yet? This is the same man that took thirteen women's bodies and-" She paused to choke down bile that had started rising in her throat as soon as she recalled what she had seen in his mansion. "-My point is, he's not exactly *subtle*."

"Oh Jesus, do you mean the..." Crow drew out something in the air that looked entirely incomprehensible to everyone except for himself and Christine, who nodded in response. "...Y'know, even as someone who hates you and everything you stand for, I am *genuinely* sorry you had to see that shit."

"What are you two talking about?" Burns raised an eyebrow.

"Don't ask." Christine said. "And I mean seriously, *don't ask*, I do *not* want to think about it any more than I already have. If you're really that curious, check the unredacted version of the Raivent Mansion report."

"Don't think I will."

"Back on topic, yeah, no shit, we could book Sephtis at any moment on charges I didn't even know *existed* until I met the guy," Crow stated. "Thing is, he's got his hands in a *lot* of pots, and if we want those to go down with him, we need to play the long game. In other words, we need patience and subtlety, something *your* organization doesn't have."

"You-" Christine grit her teeth.

"I can see that necessitating the GP backing out of the investigation," Burns interjected. "But asking us to scrub our own records seems like a severe overreach."

"We just want to make sure your chief over there can't botch this like she botched the Oberon OS case." Crow said. "We don't need any more mutilated teenagers on our hands."

"*You were the one who-*" Christine shot out of her chair, practically frothing at the mouth, but paused as Burns tapped her on the wrist to get her attention and flashed her a quick hand signal Crow didn't recognize. Christine took a deep breath and sat back down, taking a moment to calm herself before addressing Crow again. "You know what, fine, let's say that logic checks out. What is the CIA going to do if we refuse anyway?"

"The US entered the agreement placing themselves under the Global Police's jurisdiction by choice." Crow said. "They can just as easily choose to pull out of that agreement."

"Either we stop working on this one case or we stop working on every case in the US permanently." Burns grunted. "Hell of a position you've put us in."

"Well, not me personally, the higher-ups." Crow tsked. "Regardless, agreeing to our terms means you won't be able to prosecute me for anything that happened during the incident involving Teresa Challice..."

He made a point of looking Christine directly in the eyes as he said this.

"...And you wouldn't be able to stop me if it happens again."

Christine paused, sighed, closed her eyes, reached towards the holster on her right hip...

...And pulled a pen out of her pants pocket.

"Fine."

Crow's firm stare suddenly turned into a look of blank confusion.

"...What?"

"We'll cooperate." Christine calmly signed the document, put the papers back in order, and slid the whole folder back over to Crow. "We're short on manpower for our investigations as-is."

"You can't be serious." Crow said. "That's it?"

"That's it." Christine replied. "I have a lot of work to catch up on, so unless there's anything else you wanted to discuss, I'm going to end this meeting here."

As they did not, in fact, have anything else they wanted to discuss, Crow stood up, placed the document back in his briefcase, and motioned for the other two agents to follow him out of the room. After waiting a bit to make sure they were gone, Christine let out a deep half-groan, half-sigh and slumped over in her chair.

"I don't think getting cut in half was as unpleasant as that." She groaned. "At least with my brain stem bisected I couldn't feel the pain of holding back all that *unyielding rage*."

"You did an impressive job of it, all things considered." Burns commended her while standing up from his chair.

"Well, it's not like they were particularly clever about it." Christine stood up and cracked her neck. "I'm not sure how they thought sending Crow here *wouldn't* tip us off to what they were doing."

"To be fair to them, it *did* almost work." Burns pointed out. "It was pretty obvious you were winding up to throttle Crow before I gave you the 'Caution' signal."

"True." Christine hung her head and sighed. "Thanks for that, by the way."

"Honestly, I'm surprised it actually worked." Burns tsked. "In the past you'd've probably just blown me off and beaten the hell out of him anyway."

"Let's just say that these last few weeks have been humbling for me and leave it at that."

"Noted."

"At any rate, I need to start on the paperwork for this ASAP." Christine stated as she and Burns exited the conference room. "Between that and all the paperwork *you* brought me, I'm probably gonna be stuck in my office all day, so I'm gonna need you to fill the Plumbers in on this for me."

"On it." Burns said. "Want me to come tell you when it's lunch break or are you planning on working through it again?"

"Oh, Emilia packed me a lunch." Christine said. "I can just eat in my office."

"You two are at the 'packing a meal for your significant other to eat at work' stage of the relationship, but given the lack of a ring on your finger, I take it you *still* haven't tried popping the question?" Burns raised an eyebrow.

"I... look, it's complicated, alright?" Christine scowled. "Since when do you care about my personal life anyway?"

"Since I started a betting pool that you'd be engaged by the time your suspension was over." Burns grunted. "Your commitment issues mean I'm out fifty bucks."

Teresa sat alone in the dark, clutching at her head. It felt like her skull was about to split open, like there were somehow two brains physically trying to occupy the same space. Her eyes turned red again, followed by her screaming and punching at the ground, only for them to turn back to blue a few moments later, upon which she began crying and rocking herself back and forth in the fetal position.

"I don't know what's going on anymore! What am I supposed to do?!"

"I just need to power through this!

"Power through to what?! There's no way I can stop this!"

"There has to be a way! I have to figure something out!"

"Well, if you're looking for advice, I believe I might be of some assistance." A completely unrelated voice suddenly rang out through her head.

Teresa looked around wildly for the source of the voice and spotted what looked like Isaac in an orange pinstripe suit twirling around a cane with a comically-large crystal ball on the end of it standing just a few meters away.

"I-Isaac?"

"Not exactly." The newcomer wagged a finger at her. "I've got his face, but not his him."

"Who are you, then?"

"Just your friendly neighborhood insanity demon dropping in for a visit."

File:Jester Card.png

"Heard you might need some help in here, and by the looks of this place, I'd say he was dead on." The Jester knocked on what appeared to be nothing but caused a dull drumming sound anyway. "You've got enough demons up here to make an exorcist blush, and trust me, I know a thing or two about demons."

"Just answer the question." Teresa's eyes narrowed. "How do I know you're not a threat? I-I-I mean, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude, I'm sure you're lovely, I'm just a little nervous about-"

"Seems like you're of two minds about things right now." The Jester interjected. "Let's have the two of the one of you talk it out."

He leaned towards her, his arms seeming to cross a much larger distance than they should've been able to, and ripped her in half like a sheet of paper. Each half immediately grew back its missing half, creating two full Teresas; one with red eyes and clothing, and the other with blue.

"Wha- what the hell did you just do?" The red Teresa demanded.

"I-if y-you're okay with explaining it." The blue Teresa added meekly.

"I just made your own inner monologue a bit easier for you to visualize and engage with." The Jester said. "You've got a history of empathizing with other people better than yourself, so I figured this might be a good exercise in self-reflection."

"What are you, a demon therapist?" Red Teresa scoffed.

"Yesn't, mayhaps, though I'm certainly not a licensed one." The Jester tipped his hat. "I'm the Jester, "physical" manifestation of The Void I slapped together so I could interact with you mortals on your level, so to speak. Isaac just so happened to be the first guy to visit me in a while before I put this little ditty together, so I decided to use him as a reference."

"Th-The Void?" Blue Teresa asked. "L-like, V-Void Energy?"

"Bingo!" The Jester snapped his fingers, creating a small cluster of fireworks that exploded in the shape of finger guns pointing towards her. "I'm the source of it! You got a bit of it in ya from fusing with Nova, so now I can visit you in your head! Neat, right?"

"No." Red Teresa scowled. "I still don't know you or trust you. How is someone I don't know having free access to my head a good thing?"

"If you wanna get technical, "something" might be a better term here than "someone", but that's neither here nor there." The Jester said. "I'm more of a skrunkly than a snooper, so if you want me to scram, I will; I'm just here because Napoleon thought you needed help, and I think he just might be right in thinking that thought."

"Wait, *Napoleon* sent you?"

"Not exactly; I simply picked up on his thoughts and decided to do a little intervening from on high." The Jester corrected her. "I don't actually get to do much around here- rules and regulations, you see- so when I spot a situation where I *can* help out with a bit of my tomfoolery, I'm all over it."

"What, are my problems *entertaining* for you?" Red Teresa snarled.

"The problems themselves, not so much; seeing you overcome them, yes." The Jester grinned. "I don't get to go on hair-raising adventures of my own- immortal fundamental force of the universe and all that- so I live vicariously through watching the exploits of those in the mortal realm, and *your* exploits seem to be leading into something *big* that I don't want to miss."

"...Right." Red Teresa rolled her eyes and turned around, grabbing Blue Teresa by the wrist. "Come on, let's-"

Red Teresa was interrupted by her blue counterpart abruptly screaming and jerking her arm away as soon as she grabbed it. The blue Teresa froze for a moment as she regained her senses, and proceeded to shrink back with an embarrassed look.

"What was that about?" Red Teresa scowled.

"I-I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Blue Teresa stammered out with tears starting to form in the corners of her eyes. "I-I just- it was just- that's just-"

"It's just what would happen when someone touched me unexpectedly, I know that." Red Teresa interjected frustratedly. "I thought I was past that."

"Did you actually work through it, or did you just suppress it for the sake of being more functional in day-to-day life?" The Jester pondered aloud from off to the side. "Suppressing a trauma response and resolving the underlying issues behind it are two different things, you know."

"No one asked you!"

"But perhaps you should've." The Jester hopped into the air and began floating on his back. "Where were you even planning on taking yourself just now?" He gestured lazily at them with his cane. "Do you even know where you are?"

"I-" Red Teresa thought about it for a moment, but ultimately came up blank. "Well, no, but-"

"But what?" The Jester rolled onto his side to look at her. "If you don't know where you are, you're not going to know where you're going either, and if you don't know *that*, I'm afraid you won't be waking up again."

"Waking up?" Red Teresa questioned. "Does that mean I'm in some sort of dream world?"

"Well, it started out that way, but now that I'm here, it's more of a mindscape, though there's certainly some overlap."

"Okay, so how do I get out?"

"You don't." The Jester shrugged. "Not alone, at least. The two yous have to become one you again before you can wake up."

"Then why did you split me apart in the first place?!"

"Because if you continued as you were, you would simply continue having seizures until you died." The Jester stated bluntly. "Not the most satisfying way for a protagonist to go out in my opinion."

"And how does *this* help?!" Red Teresa gestured between herself and her blue counterpart.

"It gives you a chance to resolve your mind's physical issues mentally." The Jester tapped on his head. "Oberon OS's modifications to the CrossTrix added a safeguard that automatically activates the Nightmare transformation when the user's adrenaline spikes, and when that happens, it trips a protocol that attempts to load a secondary consciousness into the primary use position. When Oberon OS possessed your body, that secondary consciousness was the OS itself, but without it, the protocol is only able to load "unused" portions of the main consciousness; repressed traits, in practice. That right there is where *you* come from." He pointed his cane at Red Teresa.

"If I'm made of repressed traits, shouldn't I be the one who has that touch response?" Red Teresa pointed at Blue Teresa.

"That was *suppressed*, not *repressed*; it still happens, it just gets handled in the moment as opposed to being shoved down semi-permanently." The Jester cleared his throat. "Look, there's a lot of nuance I'm skipping over here for the sake of avoiding turning this into a full university lecture, and I've already had to lay out a significant amount of blatantly expository dialogue as it is, so just go along with me on this."

"Okay..." Red Teresa's brow furrowed.

"At any rate, if your outward consciousness and repressed consciousness remained separate, there likely wouldn't be any issues, but since you've been undergoing character development and allowing yourself to express your emotions more- which has been excellent to watch by the way, very proud of you- that artificial second consciousness has been mixing with the original and firing off an excessive amount of neurons at once, which is essentially Epilepsy 101. This keeps happening for long enough, and..."

The Jester whirled his index finger in a circle, summoning a floating brain in front of him. He proceeded to pull two jumper cables out of thin air and clipped them onto opposite sides of the brain, making it convulse with electricity for a few moments before it abruptly charred and turned to ash, dissolving away with the wind of a mysterious breeze that swept through.

"Well, you get the idea."

"So how do we- I- *whatever*- stop it?" Red Teresa questioned.

"By making up with yourself and merging back together as one!" The Jester crossed his fingers together to accentuate his point. "Each of you represents one of the conflicting consciousnesses created by the CrossTrix- wonderful alliteration if I do say so myself-, so if you two can merge together, the two consciousnesses will merge together too, restoring the single full consciousness your brain can actually handle."

"I-is that o-our only option?" Blue Teresa asked shakily. "I-I mean, I-I u-usually mess things up, s-so I-I m-might not be able to d-do this."

"Well, you're the only person in history to have ever experienced this specific set of medical circumstances, so your treatment options here are... we'll say "limited"." The Jester coughed.

"So basically it's either this or death?" Red Teresa asked flatly.

"Pretty much."

"Fine, then. This shouldn't be a problem anyway." Red Teresa turned to look at Blue Teresa and extended a hand. "Come on, let's get back to being one person already. After that, we can put this whole thing behind us."

Blue Teresa stared at her hand for a moment before hesitantly extending her own. The two of them locked hands, and...

Nothing happened.

"...Do we need to do like a fusion dance, or...?"

"I *just* said you have to make up with yourself." The Jester sighed. "Just holding hands isn't going to do anything."

"What is that even supposed to mean?!" Red Teresa snapped. "Make up with myself? Make up for what?!"

"Well, I can't speak for you, but if you don't have any problems with her..." The Jester gestured between Red Teresa and Blue Teresa. "I'd wager that she's probably the one who has problems with *you*." He performed the gesture in reverse.

"*What?!*" Red Teresa turned to face Blue Teresa, who refused to make eye contact with her and stared at the ground in shame.

"I've noticed you have a tendency to treat yourself as if you're lower than scum." The Jester slowly began fading from view, his final words echoing through the empty space they stood in as he disappeared. "Perhaps it's time to take a good, long look at what you really are."

After returning to Teresa's hospital room and speaking to the doctor about a few last things before they left, Emilia pulled out her phone and a USB cable and moved one of the chairs in the room closer to the CrossTrix. She flipped down a panel on the outside of its chassis to access its ports and plugged her phone in.

"Are you seriously charging your phone off that thing right now?!" Dana snapped.

"I'm accessing the CPU." Emilia replied in an annoyed tone. "Napoleon got the programming Oberon OS injected into the CrossTrix decoded, but I haven't had a chance to actually go in and change it yet. This isn't exactly the ideal programming environment, but it's the only thing I can really do for Teresa right now."

"Who's Napoleon?" Dana raised an eyebrow.

"Napoleon Eldridge." Emilia gave her an odd look. "Kid from Arizona? Uses nanomachines? One of Teresa's friends?"

"She has friends now?" Dana blinked.

"...Have you two talked *at all* about what happened over the summer?"

"Some things, but she doesn't talk to me much."

"Gee, wonder why." Emilia turned her focus back to her phone.

"I don't appreciate you taking that tone with me." Dana scowled.

"And I don't appreciate you being a horrible human being, but here we both are anyway."

"You don't even know me!"

"I know enough." Emilia looked up at her again, this time with a thoroughly annoyed expression. "Even beyond you being awful in every interaction I've had with you so far, I've heard enough from Teresa to know you're a piece of crap."

"Wha- she was talking shit about me?!" Dana hissed. "That little bitch!"

Emilia's muscles tensed up violently as she tried to resist the overwhelming urge to pick up her chair and beat Dana with it WWE-style.

"She wasn't "talking shit", she was making excuses for you!" Emilia snapped at her. "Every time her past came up and she described something you did that *obviously* constituted child abuse, she tried to come up with reasons that "it wasn't really that bad"! *She loves you*, even if she *really shouldn't*, and you being here tells me you at least care a little bit about *her*, so why do you keep treating her like the enemy? She's your *daughter!*"

"She might be my daughter, but she's nothing like me." Dana grunted. "She took entirely after her father."

"So what?!" Emilia said. "Did you hate her father or something?!"

"Don't you *dare* even *suggest* that!" Dana growled while jabbing an aggressive finger at her. "My husband was the most incredible human being that I have ever met!"

Emilia's anger had reached a boiling point, and in a moment of weakness, something slipped out of her mouth that she never would have even considered saying otherwise.

"If he was really that great, then maybe *you* should have died instead of *him!*" Emilia snapped.

"*YOU THINK I DON'T KNOW THAT?!*"

The room fell into a dead silence, only broken up by a nurse briefly peeking her head into the room to shush them.

"...Every single day, I wish that I was the one who died instead." Dana eventually spoke up. "You don't need to tell me that Teresa would've been better off with him. I know that."

"Then...why?" Emilia seemed bewildered by this response. "Just...just *why?*"

"Because when he died, I wanted to go with him." Dana muttered. "But I couldn't."

She looked over at Teresa.

"Something was still tying me here."

"You..." Emilia took a deep breath to try and calm herself. "Look, I can sympathize with having suicidal thoughts, and I'm sorry you had to go through what you did, but..." As much as she tried to, she couldn't conceal her disgust as she kept talking. "...You're pathetic."

"Shut up." Dana growled. "You don't know a damn thing about what I've been through."

"Yeah, and I don't *care*." Emilia scowled. "I know you've suffered, which *sucks*, but instead of learning anything from it, you just turned around and used it as an excuse to inflict suffering on others. On *your own daughter*. Being ignorant of pain is one thing, but experiencing it for yourself and then deciding to inflict it on someone else anyway is a level of selfishness I can't sympathize with."

"I didn't 'decide' to do it," Dana said using finger quotes, "It just... happened."

"And you chose to let it happen." Emilia pointed out.

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?!" Dana snapped. "Just go back in time and undo everything?!"

"There are a *lot* of things I want to tell you to go do right now, but if you're looking for something constructive, try *supporting* your daughter for once." Emilia said. "If she were to wake up right this second, what would be the first thing you'd say to her?"

"I'd probably yell at her for scaring me like this."

"I-" A vein began to bulge on Emilia's forehead, and she had to take a moment to calm herself down before replying. "Okay, *why* would you do that?"

"What do *you* think?! I'm worried she might *die!*"

"And how is verbally attacking her going to help anything?!"

"I'm not 'attacking' her, I just-" Dana twirled her hand around as she tried to think. "It's just how I express my emotions! It's how my parents expressed themselves to me, so-"

"*Then your parents were in the wrong too.*" Emilia interrupted her. "You said your husband was the most wonderful person you ever met. How did *he* express his emotions when he was concerned about you?"

Anne sat alone in the hospital's waiting room, nervously tapping her fingers together as she stared down blankly at the floor. Only a certain number of people were currently allowed to visit Teresa at a time, so all she could do was wait. She had gotten so used to physically brawling with tangible threats that an issue she couldn't resolve with a fight just felt... *wrong* somehow.

Another issue worrying her that she tried not to think about but kept nagging at her mind was the fact that if Teresa died now... she'd never be able to forgive herself. Not because she hadn't been able to do anything about it- if even Dr. Krauze, a walking encyclopedia of alien abilities that could potentially help- was stumped, feeling guilty about not being able to help wouldn't make any sense.

No, she was worried because of how she had treated Teresa.

They had only been on decent terms for a few months, friendly terms for a couple, and officially girlfriends for about two weeks. Before that, she had spent an entire school year helping Claire harass and bully her. She had never liked doing it, and Teresa had already fully forgiven her for her role in it, but the fact remains that for the vast majority of the time they had known each other, she had spent it making Teresa's life a living hell. If Teresa died now, and most of Anne's memories of the girl she loved were left composed of relentlessly psychologically torturing her... she couldn't even begin to describe the feeling of the dark pit in her stomach that appeared every time she thought about it.

The feeling of bile rising in her throat made her snap out of her trance as she began looking around the room for something, anything else she could focus on right now. This was when she finally spotted Lucius sitting in the chair next to her, making her jump a bit.

"Oh, geez, when did you-"

"A few minutes ago." Lucius stated dryly. "You seemed to be in deep contemplation, so I deemed it best not to interrupt you."

"Honestly, I think this was one of the few times interrupting someone's train of thought would've been helpful." Anne said. "Can't you read minds or something?"

"I can easily enter a sinful mind, but a mind occupied with thoughts of regret regarding one's sins is... not exactly part of my domain."

"Hang on, if you can't read my thoughts, then how did you know what I was thinking about?" Anne questioned.

"Call it an educated guess." Lucius said. "Your exact thoughts may be obscured, but your current emotional state would be readily apparent even without my abilities."

"Oh."

The two sat in awkward silence for a moment.

"Is... there any particular reason you're here?" Anne asked.

"Yes; I'm simply less confident about discussing it than I believed I would be."

"That's a first." Anne said. "Didn't know you *could* feel unconfident."

"In most situations, my course of action tends to be unequivocally correct, so there is rarely an occasion where second-guessing myself would be warranted." Lucius replied. "However, during our last conversation, at Dr. Krauze's abode, I failed to restrain my temper, and therefore may have handled certain parts of the discussion... poorly."

"Is this you trying to apologize?" Anne raised an eyebrow.

"Not exactly." Lucius said. "It's more so... an acknowledgement of wrongdoing."

"So... an apology."

"Apologies traditionally require an element of regret from the offending party in order to qualify as such." Lucius stated. "I do not feel regret in the same manner humans do, so presenting this as a genuine apology would simply be incorrect."

"You sure you *actually* don't feel regret and aren't just bottling it up like the rest of us?" Anne asked wearily.

Lucius didn't really have an answer for that.

"Look, you've obviously got your own issues going on, and I doubt you've ever really been in a position to relate to other people, so I can't really hold what you said against you." Anne paused for a moment, clenching her fists tight as she thought of Teresa. "Not like I haven't said worse."

"I see."

Anne lowered her head, resting it in her hands.

"...Do you make deals?"

"Excuse me?" Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"You're the devil, right?" Anne turned her head sideways to look at him. "I've heard about this whole "making a deal with the devil" thing from pop culture, but is that something you personally do?"

"It's something I *could* do in theory, but I have no personal interest in harvesting souls, so as of yet, I have not." Lucius's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"What if I made a deal with you to heal Teresa?" Anne asked. "I know it's a bit of a long shot, but-"

"Absolutely not." Lucius scowled. "I already told you that I have no interest in harvesting souls. Do you have any idea of the gravity of signing away the immortal essence of your very being?"

"I do, but..." Anne sighed. "I just... I've done so much harm to Teresa. I've put her through so much pain, and... I have no idea how to make up for it. Maybe if I make a sacrifice like this-"

"You'll make yourself feel better?" Lucius interjected dryly.

This time, it was Anne who didn't have a response.

"Whatever transpired between the two of you in the past, Challice clearly seems to have forgiven you for it already, so any drastic attempts to redeem yourself at this stage are going to serve no purpose other than assuaging your own guilt." Lucius tsked. "Losing her romantic partner would do nothing to help her mental state, and given her typical pattern of thinking, she'd likely blame herself for the whole affair."

"True." Anne mumbled. "I guess I'm just trying to come up with *something* I can do in this situation."

"Humans have been searching for ways to regain control amidst events they cannot truly affect the outcome of since they gained sentience." Lucius said. "It's hardly anything new, but I would recommend finding more productive ways to-"

Lucius abruptly stopped talking. Anne followed his line of sight to a tall man that had just entered the building whose features were obscured underneath a black cloak.

"Do you have your transformation lock on you?" Lucius muttered.

"Yeah, why?"

"Be ready to use it."

Lucius stood up and walked in front of the cloaked man before abruptly grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing him outdoors. Much about Lucius's personality was still an enigma to Anne at this point, but she had picked up on enough to know that physically accosting someone out of the blue wasn't exactly normal behavior for him, so she pulled out her transformation gear and quickly followed him outside.

Having made it several meters away from the doors, Lucius gave the man one last shove, sending him stumbling backwards a few more feet. The man looked at him and pulled down the hood of his cloak, revealing a white, skull-like mask covering the entirety of his face.

"Is something the matter here?" The man asked in a low, vaguely threatening tone.

"Lucius, what's going on?" Anne asked as she exited the building behind them. "Who is this guy?"

"I don't know." Lucius replied, pulling the EvoGun out of his coat and aiming it squarely at the stranger. "I've never seen him before."

"It would be strange if you had," The cloaked man said. "But if you're not aware of who I am, then what exactly is the meaning of this?"

"I have the ability to sense sinful intent." Lucius stated flatly. "To be perfectly blunt, I don't care *who* you are; entering a hospital with such overwhelming intent to kill tells me that letting you pass unimpeded would be a poor choice."

"Hang on, *what?*" Anne glanced between Lucius and the cloaked man in disbelief. "Who tries to commit murder in a hospital?!"

"Not murder." The cloaked man said. "Deicide."

"*That's even more confusing!*"

"If there were any deities in that hospital, I would know about them." Lucius said. "And even if there were, one of the patients in that hospital is a rather crucial witness for a case my company is involved in, so I have no intention of allowing you to endanger them by picking a fight with a god."

"I can't say I care." The cloaked man raised his arms out in front of him, allowing his sleeves to drop and reveal a pair of golden gauntlets on his wrists. "I have never faltered before, and I will not falter now."

The man crossed his gauntlets together, creating a golden flash of light that congealed around him into a thick, blocky suit of blackened armor that significantly increased his apparent bulk. Anne responded to this by promptly transforming into Silver Breaking Point, while Lucius carefully grabbed a key from his pocket and loaded it into the EvoGun.

"Burning..." Lucius slowly raised the EvoGun into the air as his left eye turned black and flames began to seep out of cracks in his skin. "...Evolutionize."

Lucius fired, sending a flaming bullet ricocheting off the cloaked man's armor and right back towards him, allowing him to intercept it with a spinning kick. As soon as the bullet made contact, he became engulfed in a pillar of fire surrounding by burning chains, which quickly faded to reveal his transformation into a hellfire-empowered version of Detonation.

File:Detonation Inferno Card.png
"Wha- since when can you do *that?!*" Silver Breaking Point exclaimed.

"Imbuing my transformations with the powers of hell has always been an option for me." Detonation responded. "It's simply not something I'm comfortable with."

"Then why do it now? You didn't even do it when we were fighting Nightmare OS!"

"Nightmare OS was using Challice's body; attacking it with hellfire would have destroyed her soul and left the AI unaffected." Detonation explained impatiently. "As for my use of it now, we're facing a man who claims he came here prepared to kill a god..."

He stopped talking for a moment as he intently studied the cloaked man's armored form.

"...And he was not lying to us."

"If you're perceptive enough to discern whether or not I'm lying, then allow me to tell you this:" The armored man held up an arm to accentuate what he was about to say. "If the being I seek to destroy is not slain, you and everything you know and love may very well end up erased."

"Um..." Silver Breaking Point looked over at Detonation.

"Once again, he isn't lying." Detonation stated. "But it's hardly uncommon for people to sincerely believe things that contradict reality." He turned his attention back to the man. "Do you have any proof of your claims?"

"I'm afraid I do not." The armored man replied. "All I can provide you is the knowledge that the entity I seek to destroy is a being called the Anti-Life Entity."

An awkward silence fell over them for a few moments, with the only sounds of note being the half-interested grunts of the pedestrians that caught sight of these three odd-looking characters as they walked past the hospital.

"...I don't know how to tell you this, but..." Silver Breaking Point started. "The Anti-Life Entity got destroyed a while ago. I mean, it *almost* got resurrected a few weeks ago, but we were able to stop it. What do you think is left to do?"

"You two already know of the Entity?" The man seemed taken aback, pausing to think for a moment before continuing. "...In that case, allow me to be more specific: within that building is a machine that houses the Entity's digitized soul." He pointed at the hospital. "If that soul were ever to be reunited with its memories, the Anti-Life Entity would live again, and all it would require is a body in order to resume its campaign of death."

"Its "digitized soul"?" Silver Breaking Point blinked underneath her visor. "Are you talking about CROSS?"

"I believe that is what it calls itself now, yes."

"What *he* calls *him*self." Silver Breaking Point corrected him. "CROSS is his own person- AI- *thing*. He might have started out as a backup of the Anti-Life Entity, but he's way more than that now."

"Irrelevant." The man said. "Whether it's developed into a unique individual or not, the fact remains that its continued existence prevents the threat posed by the Entity from being fully neutralized. It should be destroyed as soon as possible."

"I can't speak as to the AI's personhood, but I will point out that as the CrossTrix's operating system, CROSS is necessary to keep it functioning." Detonation stated. "The person wielding the CrossTrix is in a rather precarious state at the moment due to an issue involving the device. Destroying the intelligence responsible for keeping the device functional right now would be reckless endangerment at best."

"That is unfortunate, but I am more than willing to sacrifice one life if it means saving all other life that has ever existed."

"*Like hell!*" Silver Breaking Point slammed her sword into the ground, burying the end of it in the pavement. "All of us fought tooth and nail to stop the Anti-Life Entity from coming back, *including CROSS!* There is *no way* I'm letting some *random jerk* get my girlfriend killed because he's paranoid about something *that's never gonna happen!*"

"You may be willing to take that risk, but you have no right to make the rest of the universe take it alongside you." The man began to enter a combat stance. "I am truly sorry, but significant other or not, they must become a sacrifice for the greater good."

Silver Breaking Point growled and lunged forward, grabbing her sword out of the ground as she went and swinging it in a wide arc the armored man was able to dodge.

"If you're gonna sacrifice anyone, sacrifice *yourself!*" She snapped, throwing her sword around in erratic, unfocused slashing motions.

"I already have." Even in his bulky armor, the man was able to dodge her swings with ease, moving with the skill of an experienced warrior.

"He clearly outranks you in terms of armored melee combat." Detonation pointed out. "If you're going to fight him, you should be using your abilities."

"I *just* got this upgrade a couple days ago, Lucius, I'm working on it!" Silver Breaking Point yelled at him. "Why aren't *you* doing anything?!"

"Because Detonation's abilities revolve around explosions and you're currently engaging our opponent in close-quarters combat." Detonation said dryly.

"This form's armor is a lot tougher than it looks!" Silver Breaking Point responded. "Just go for it!"

"Alright, then." Detonation removed one of the grenades from his arms and looked it over for a moment. "I suppose we'll hope for the best."

With that, Detonation threw the grenade, hitting the armored man dead-on. Time seemed to slow down as it bounced off his armor with a metallic clink and began falling to the ground, at the same time starting to glow with an explosive energy. It made contact with the ground-

-And everything went white.

The two Teresas suddenly appeared inside a long school hallway lined with lockers. Classes were in session, and the hallway was empty save for three people. Red Teresa clenched her fists and Blue Teresa felt a pit form in her stomach as they both recognized the memory they were in.

Two of the people in question were Claire and Anne, who were blocking the third person, Teresa herself, from leaving her locker. The past Teresa shrank back in fear, pressing her back into the cold metal of the locker door.

"Y'know, Teresa, after meeting you, I was starting to think "hey, maybe not all queers are degenerate pervs"," Claire said. "Didn't take you long to prove me wrong, huh?"

"Wh-what are you talking about?" The past Teresa squeaked.

"You went into the girls locker room with the rest of us after PE." Anne muttered. "If you're into women, isn't that basically the same as a guy sneaking in to look at us?"

"Ew, it totally is!" Claire remarked with a snide laugh. "I bet she was getting off on seeing us in the showers, too! Gross!"

"N-no, I wasn't!" Teresa protested. "I-I'm not a creep!"

"Sure you aren't, babygirl." Claire said mockingly. "Hey, how about next time, you go into the boys locker room so *you* can feel what it's like to get gawked at."

"I-I r-really don't th-think the teachers w-would allow that..." Teresa mumbled.

"Wait, were you *actually* considering it?" Claire laughed. "You really *are* a little freak, aren't you?"

"N-no, I-I just-" Teresa started to tear up. "I- wh-what do y-you want me t-to do?"

"Well, let's see..." Claire hmmed. "Oh, I got it! Listen up!"

She leaned in closer to Teresa, placing their faces just inches apart.

"I... want you to..." She spoke slowly and methodically, condescendingly stretching out every syllable. "...And this is coming from a place of love... *kill yourself*."

She stared intently into Teresa's wide, terrified eyes for a good few seconds that for Teresa felt like hours.

"...Kidding!" She suddenly leaned back and laughed, switching into a faux-cheerful voice. "Seriously, though, *you're* the freak here, *you* figure out what to do about it. Come on, Anne, let's get out of here before she starts picturing us naked or something."

As Claire turned to leave, Anne suddenly grabbed Teresa by the collar and pressed her even harder against her locker, making it difficult for her to breathe.

"I don't care what you end up doing, but if I *ever* see you trying *anything* weird on *anyone* in that locker room, I'm going to make you *wish* you were dead." Anne hissed.

"Wow, way to bring down the mood, Anne." Claire rolled her eyes as Anne let go of Teresa and turned to follow her. "Just spell it out, why don't ya?"

The memory faded, leaving the Red and Blue Teresas alone in the void again.

"Do you get it now?" Red Teresa asked. "Why I still have some resentment?"

"K-kind of, b-but Anne was b-barely involved in that!" Blue Teresa pointed out. "A-and besides, n-now know why she was s-so defensive about th-that kind of thing!"

"Alright, fine." Red Teresa scowled. "How about *this*, then?"

Their environment changed back to that of the school, this time in the cafeteria. Teresa had just gotten her lunch and was looking for an open seat, when all of a sudden, Anne knocked into her from behind, sending her sprawling onto the floor and knocking the contents of her lunch tray all over the ground.

"Woops, sorry about that." Anne said in a flat tone. "You were next to a trash can, so I guess you just kind of blended in."

Having hit the floor hard, Teresa's ears were still ringing as she reached out to try and pick up the tray, only for Claire to show up and stomp down on her hand, pinning it to the floor and making her yelp in pain. The commotion had attracted the attention of several students, if only for a moment, but none of them did anything to intervene.

"Dang, you're pretty clumsy, huh?" Claire began grinding her heel into Teresa's hand. "Y'know, the perv thing would be pretty bad on its own, but clumsy *and* a perv? C'mon, pick a struggle."

"I-... I'm n-not..." Teresa stammered out, trying to speak through the pain. "I-I swear, I-I'm not a per-"

Claire lifted up her foot and stomped down on Teresa's fingers this time, drawing out a more intense yelp from her. Anne noticeably winced and looked away when this happened, but she said nothing.

"Sorry, foot slipped." Claire said casually. "Gotta get going now, but hey, always nice seeing you~!"

The memory faded out as Anne and Claire walked away, with Red Teresa glaring at Blue Teresa as their environment returned to black.

"*Every day*, they did that. *Every. Single. Day.*"

"O-okay, but a-all Anne did w-was knock us over, a-and she obviously wasn't c-comfortable with Claire g-going so far." Blue Teresa shrank back a little.

"*And yet she kept knocking us over so Claire could do it anyway.*" Red Teresa pointed out. "Remember the day she wore *cleats?* I couldn't write with that hand for a *week!* Are you *seriously* going to tell me that isn't worth being at least a *little* upset about?!"

"I-I mean... I-I don't know, she's o-obviously changed, s-so I don't see the point in still-"

"Oh, come on!" Red Teresa interrupted her, sounding immensely frustrated. "Alright, look, I *really* didn't want to bring this up, but I honestly don't know what else I can do to convince you."

Their surroundings changed again, this time showing the outside of their high school sometime in spring, well after most of the students had left for the day. They were in an isolated area back behind the school, completely hidden from the street and difficult to see from most other angles.

"...Oh no." Blue Teresa's heart sank as the memory continued and they saw Anne dragging the past Teresa by the arm. She knew what was about to come next, but that wasn't going to make it any less painful to relive.

Anne eventually threw Teresa against the brick wall of the school, wearing a look of barely-contained rage.

"P-please, I-I don't know what I did, j-just tell me-"

"I warned you." Anne spoke in a quiet, venomous tone.

"Wh-what?"

"*I warned you.*" Anne stomped over and used her arm to pin Teresa against the wall by her throat. "I warned you what would happen if you did anything to the girls in our class, *and you didn't listen*."

She pulled back her arm, allowing Teresa to slump to her knees and catch her breath.

"I-I don't know what you're t-talking about," Teresa wheezed. "I-I d-didn't do anythi-"

Anne kicked her in the side of the head, knocking her onto her side.

"*Don't lie to me!*" Anne snapped. "I know *exactly* what happened!"

She kicked Teresa in the gut, knocking the wind out of her, then dragged her to her feet and leaned her up against the wall before hitting her with a brutal punch that sent her back to the ground. She started kicking Teresa repeatedly, who feebly attempted to defend herself by crossing her arms in front of her face to block incoming kicks even as blood started to stream from her nose.

"P-please, I'm sorry!" She had no idea what she was even apologizing for; she just hoped that accepting responsibility for whatever she had been accused of would get Anne to stop. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"

Even so, the assault continued for what felt like an eternity, until all of a sudden, Claire walked into the picture.

"Oh my gosh, Anne, I've been looking for you *literally everywhere*." She groaned. "Seriously, I almost thought something-"

She froze as she caught sight of Anne breathing heavily, standing above the beaten and bruised Teresa, whose cries of pain had turned into a silent sobbing.

"...You, uh..." Claire blinked rapidly as she tried to think of an appropriate response. "...Wanna tell me what happened here, or did you just kinda feel like going psycho today?"

"She went after Kimberly." Anne clenched her fists, speaking through gritted teeth. "She followed her into the showers after PE, and she-"

Anne paused, clearly too disgusted to even finish the rest of the sentence.

"...Kimberly told me herself." Her voice had become more subdued, but she was still shaking with rage. "I can't forgive *anyone* who would do something like that."

Claire just stood there, looking at her with a blank stare for a few seconds... then suddenly burst out laughing.

"Oh my gosh, you actually believed her?!" She continued laughing. "I *told* her to say that!"

The color abruptly drained from Anne's face.

"...*What?*"

"Yeah, I got her to go around telling people that by threatening to leak her DMs." Claire chuckled. "I just thought it'd be good for a laugh; I didn't think *you* of all people would fall for it."

"You..." Anne muttered, still reeling from what she had just heard. "How could something like that *possibly* be funny?"

"Well, you kinda either get it or ya don't." Claire shrugged. "Come on, let's go grab a shake or something."

"But... if the whole thing was a lie... then..." Anne shakily looked down at her bloodied fists and then over to Teresa, who was curled up and crying in the fetal position.

"Aw, lighten up a little, it's not like you beat up anyone important." Claire walked over and patted her on the back. "Besides, she's a queer, she probably would've done it at some point anyway."

Anne was led away by Claire, still looking shell-shocked, while Teresa was left bloody and crying on the pavement. The memory faded, and neither the Red or Blue Teresas looked unshaken after what they had just seen.

"You..." Blue Teresa muttered in a quiet voice. "...I spent so long repressing that memory. Why...why would you pull it back to the surface again?"

"To make a point!" Red Teresa said. "I love Anne too, but she's done so much to us that you've swept under the rug! How are we supposed to have an honest relationship with her if we can't even be honest with ourselves?!"

"...You want me to be honest?" Blue Teresa slowly began walking towards her suppressed counterpart.

"*Yes!*" Red Teresa exclaimed. "Repressing things is what got us here in the first place! If we want to have any chance of recovering-"

Blue Teresa suddenly slapped her across the face, sending her stumbling backwards.

"Hey, what the hell?!" Red Teresa groaned, rubbing the newly-tenderized spot on her cheek. "What are you doi-"

She was cut off as Blue Teresa hit her with a punch to the gut that knocked the wind out of her.

"If I'm being honest..." Blue Teresa clenched her fists tighter. "*I wish you were dead.*"

Red Teresa's attempt to wheeze out a response was preemptively interrupted by Blue Teresa throwing her to the ground.

"All you care about is us." Blue Teresa hissed. "Keeping *us* safe, keeping *us* healthy, even if it causes problems for other people."

"That's what I'm *supposed* to do!" Red Teresa replied. "We're a human being! An animal! There's *supposed* to be a part of us that wants to keep us alive!"

"*We're not human*." Blue Teresa clenched her teeth. "We're less than human! We're *trash!* Garbage! We're not a person, we're just a- a walking pile of traumatic memories and mental illnesses!" She threw her arms out to the side in frustration. "We're useless! We're a parasite! *Everyone else would be better off if we didn't exist!*"

"...Yeah." Red Teresa slowly pulled herself to her feet, dusting herself off along the way. "Yeah, okay. Sure. You're right. You're 100% right."

The environment around them suddenly changed into a memory of Liberty Park, a moment frozen in time in which Dupligato was rescuing a child playing in the street from an oncoming car.

"That kid definitely would've been better off as road paste." Red Teresa said. "And his mom? Oh, *infinitely* better off after seeing her child turn into a red splatter on someone's windshield."

"That isn't-"

"Speaking of windshields, all those people we rescued from their cars when the Psikick Evolvyrn ran through them?" The scenery changed again to show Dupligato's shadow clones pulling people away from the burning wreckage of their vehicles. "Screw 'em, am I right? Heck, screw *everyone* we rescued that day. Especially these two."

The memory switched to show the moment earlier on that day when Teresa had shoved Anne and Claire out of the way of some falling rubble.

"Oh, yeah, Anne especially." Red Teresa nodded her head sardonically. "She would've been *way* better off without us."

The crumbling mall around them faded away into their memory of the dark road where they had fought Messias for the first time.

"Shame we were there to help back then, huh?" Red Teresa's expression grew dark as her sarcastic tone cracked. "She'd obviously be doing *so much better* if Messias was able to-"

"*SHUT UP!*" Blue Teresa screamed, lunging forward and grabbing her counterpart by the collar. "You- you-"

"I *what?!*" Red Teresa demanded. "Tell me! If you're so sure everyone else would be better off without us, *tell me why!*"

"THEY JUST WOULD BE!"

"*WHY?!*"

"I DON'T KNOW! It's just- it's what Mom always said! It's how she's always treated us!"

"*If you're so afraid of turning into Mom, then why are you just repeating everything she did to us?!*"

Blue Teresa froze.

"I..." She let go of her counterpart's collar and began to back away slowly. "I'm not..."

Her furious look melted into a blank stare as she eventually stopped moving and fell to her knees.

"No..." She tilted forward, placing her hands out in front of her for support. "No, no, no, *you're* the part of us that's like her. *You!* That-that's why I pushed you away!"

Her red counterpart said nothing.

"*You're* the one who gets violent! *You're* the one that hurts people! *You're* the one who-"

She looked up at Red Teresa and immediately stopped talking. An obvious welt had formed on her red counterpart's cheek where her slap had made contact. A loud ringing in her ears slowly began to mute the world around her.

"...You..." All the color slowly drained from her face. "I... No..."

She stopped holding her head up, allowing her gaze to fall blankly onto the ground.

"If... we're already like her..." Tears began welling up in her eyes. "...Then it's already too late."

"Okay, I'm confused." Anne said. "Shouldn't your powers work *better* on non-believers?"

The two of them were currently running up the stairs of the hospital, chasing after the armored man that had just wiped the floor with them. They had initially tried riding the elevator to get to Teresa's floor before him, but with high foot traffic resulting in each elevator stopping on practically every floor, it quickly became clear that doing this was just slowing them down.

"Under most circumstances, yes." Lucius replied. "Either this man is carrying a holy artifact on his person or he doesn't have a mortal soul."

"And which one is more likely?"

"Given that he seemed unfamiliar with the concept of hellfire, I doubt he's knowledgeable enough about Christian tradition to have sought out blessed items." Lucius said. "It's possible he may have encountered one and decided to keep it on his person by sheer coincidence, but that seems unlikely."

"Non-mortal soul, then." Anne was starting to slow down a bit, having to take a moment to catch her breath between sentences. "Something like you?"

"There are as many different kinds of spiritual beings as there are cultures responsible for their creation." Lucius said. "I have my suspicions, but I need more information before I can confirm any of them."

They continued running up the stairs until Lucius noticed Anne's increasingly slow running speed putting her further and further behind him.

"Stop trying to ascend these stairs at full speed!" He yelled back at her. "You'll run out of stamina well before reaching the 16th floor!"

"I *need* to go full speed just to keep up with you!" Anne wheezed. "Why can't you just teleport us up there anyway?!"

"We are currently inside one of the largest medical centers in the Mormon culture region!" Lucius pointed out. "Do you have any idea how many prayers are either inside or being directed towards this building right now?! They may be ineffective for medical treatment, but they are obnoxiously effective at stifling my abilities! I could teleport us if our destination were *outside* the building, but given that it very much is not, I would only be able to teleport myself!"

"Then go!" Anne snapped. "The faster you can reach Teresa, the better!"

"You do realize that if we're wrong about this man's destination and he comes across you alone, you may very well be killed?!" Lucius pointed out.

"Obviously!" Anne yelled. "But *I* can defend myself! Teresa can't! *Go!*"

Lucius hesitated for a moment before nodding and abruptly vanishing as soon as she blinked. She slid down into a sitting position on the floor, wheezing as she tried to catch her breath.

"Never thought... I'd agree... with my school's... PE teacher." She muttered to herself between breaths. "I really *do* need more exercise."

"We're *not* like her."

Red Teresa squatted down to speak to her counterpart at eye level.

"She hurt us. We internalized that and hurt ourselves. That's not okay, but it doesn't make us a copy of her."

"Then what..." Blue Teresa looked up at her. "What *does* it make us?"

"Well, a traumatized human being, of course." The Jester's voice chimed in from nowhere.

What looked like a black hole suddenly appeared in the center of the mindscape and began turning itself inside out, warping in shape until it eventually coalesced into the form of the Jester himself.

"Trust me, you're a dime a dozen." He absentmindedly waved his staff around. "Your species as a whole has a ways to go when it comes to comprehending your own minds."

"You're still here?" Red Teresa scowled. "Are you just here to mock our 'underdeveloped species', or are you actually going to do something useful?"

"Hm?" The Jester paused for a moment before he suddenly appeared to have realized something. "Ah, apologies." His striped hat tipped itself at them apologetically. "I meant that in more of a 'you're not alone in your struggles' way, but in hindsight, I can see how it could have been misinterpreted."

"What are you doing *now?*"

Emilia was currently hunched over Teresa's left arm and furiously typing away on her phone, which had been connected to the CrossTrix via USB cable. Dana's demand to know what she was doing seemingly took a few seconds to register, and the scientist abruptly popping her head up a few moments later than expected startled the already on-edge mother.

"Looked at the CrossTrix's onboard user diagnostics, seizures are burning out her neurons way faster than expected," Emilia hurriedly explained. "Had to come up with a matrix feedback look program that keeps "transforming" her into a human to replace the damaged cells but I threw it together from scratch and it's untested and unoptimized and it's draining power like crazy and the internal wiring was never meant to handle something like this and it keeps burning out so I have to redirect it through another part of the CrossTrix but then that burns out so I have to redirect it again and then that part burns out so I have to redirect it again and *I am freaking out!*"

"I'm doing my best to keep things running from in here, but I'm not going to sugarcoat it, we're in trouble." CROSS stated. "Unless someone barges in here in the next few minutes who can fix the CrossTrix-"

The door to Teresa's hospital room was suddenly slammed open, revealing the man in black armor.

"I am here to destroy the CrossTrix."

"Oh, like *hell* you are-" Dana marched over and threw a punch at the man, only for him to effortlessly knock her aside and send her tumbling to the ground.

"That was ill-advised." The man took a step into the room and looked down at Dana. "If I had allowed your blow to make contact, you would have broken your hand."

"Did you seriously just see that armor and decide to swing on it bare-handed?" Emilia questioned in disbelief. "I know this is probably a question with a lot of answers, but *what is wrong with you?*"

"Would both of you *SHUT UP?!*" Dana growled as she pulled herself to her feet before turning her focus entirely to the man in the armor. "I don't know what you want to destroy that thing for, *and I don't care!* Right now, it is the *only* thing keeping my daughter alive, so leave it alone *and get the hell out of here!*"

"I had heard that was a possibility, but I didn't expect the wielder's mother to be here." The man seemed to hesitate a bit. "I... know what it is like to lose a child. I would not wish that grief on anyone. However..." He began raising his hand into the air, facing his palm towards the CrossTrix. "...I have a duty to fulfill."

Right as he was about to fire, he suddenly paused and whirled around just in time to block a kick from Lucius, whose approach had gone entirely unnoticed by anyone else in the area.

"You actually heard me coming." Lucius's eyes narrowed. "I suppose that confirms you're no ordinary mortal."

"And what exactly are *you*, then?" The man demanded.

"If my assumptions regarding you are correct, it's something I doubt you're familiar with." Lucius grabbed the man's arm and threw him across his shoulder, reversing their positions.

"Wha- *you again?!*" Dana shouted. "What the hell is going on?!"

"What's Challice's status?" Lucius asked Emilia, ignoring Dana's outburst.

"Not good." Emilia's expression went from shock back to concern. "Her neurons are burning out so fast I had to rig the CrossTrix to keep genetically refreshing her on loop, but doing that is burning out the wiring. CROSS is doing his best to optimize the workload across the remaining hardware, but there's only so much of a device that can fail before it stops working."

"If you had access to replacement parts, would you be able to repair it?" Lucius fired several bullets that curved around to hit the armored man in the back of the knees as he was trying to stand up, doing little damage but hitting with enough force to buckle his legs out from under him.

"Replacement parts and a toolkit, sure, but there's no way I'd be able to get to my lab and back in time!"

"I see." Lucius snapped his fingers as if to gain someone's attention. "Svelte, assist Dr. Krauze. I have other business to attend to."

"Understood, sir." Svelte replied with a small bow, having suddenly appeared next to Emilia. "Best of luck."

Lucius nodded and grabbed the armored man, dragging him into the shadows where they both disappeared without a trace. Svelte turned to Emilia and gave her a slight bow as well.

"Replacement parts and a toolkit, correct?" He asked. "If you could be a bit more specific as to what you need, I'd be happy to retrieve them for you."

"Well, I keep all the tools I need to work on the CrossTrix in my home lab." Emilia glanced down at the CrossTrix worriedly. "But it's such a mess in there, I don't know if you'd even be able to find-"

"Here you are, ma'am." Svelte interjected, handing her a blue toolbox.

"How did you-" Emilia looked over at Dana. "What just happened?"

"*I don't know!*" Dana yelled with a frantic look in her eyes. "One second he's here, the next second he's not, and the next one after that he's back in the exact same spot except now he's holding a toolbox!"

"Y'know, randomly appearing and disappearing isn't too weird given who you work for, but I've got no idea how you were able to find this so quickly." Emilia noted as she opened up the toolbox. "You must be one hell of a butler."

"How?!" Dana demanded, her left eye starting to twitch. "How did you do that?!"

"Come now, ma'am, we live in an age where the existence of things such as aliens and magic are very much public knowledge." Svelte stated. "Surely what I've done just now can't be *that* shocking."

"*I'm not dealing with things very well right now, okay?!*"

The explosion of light faded to reveal the large body of Bombadier, whose blast-resistant shell had fully absorbed the beam's kinetic impact. She reverted to Teresa in a teal flash of light, revealing that the CrossTrix's chassis had changed significantly due to the amount of parts that had been replaced.

"Teresa!" Anne ran up to her and pulled her into a tight hug before pulling away to look at her with a worried expression. "Please tell me you're okay!"

"I'm alright." Teresa gave her a soft, reassuring grin. "But... after this, do you think we could talk?"

"I-" Anne blinked, caught a bit off-guard by the question. "I mean, yeah, of course."

"Thank you."

"So, you've reawakened." The man in the armor interjected, looking toward Teresa. "Can I take this to mean your life no longer depends on the continued operation of your Omnitrix?"

"I'm not going to die without it, but I'm not going to let you destroy it, either." Teresa turned to face him. "CROSS is my friend."

"Your "friend"'s continued existence may very well doom us all."

"Mine could've too, but... everyone kept fighting to save me anyway." Teresa said. "I'm not going to abandon him because of that."

"This is not a debate."

The man fired a beam of light at the CrossTrix, only for Teresa to swing up and block it by activating the device's hard-light chainsaw. Anne's eyes widened for a moment as she assumed this meant the CrossTrix was malfunctioning again, but she paused as she caught sight of Teresa's eyes still retaining their rich blue hue.

"If you insist on making this difficult, I will not refrain from killing you as well."

"I know." Teresa said. "That's why I'm not holding back either."

She quickly flicked the wheels on the back of the CrossTrix into a different combination and selected Lunaqua on the main dial, transforming into Lunaqua Titania. Lucius's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he said nothing.

"Whoa, you're going Titania right off the bat?" CROSS asked. "Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

"I'm pretty nervous about it, actually, but if this guy was able to beat Anne *and* Lucius, taking our chances with a normal alien is too risky." Lunaqua Titania replied.

"I mean, I agree, it's just a bit out-of-character for you."

"I know." Lunaqua Titania said. "I just... want to try believing in myself for once."

"Well, I'm all on-board for that!" The CrossTrix dial displayed a thumbs-up symbol. "Let's do this!"

Lunaqua Titania raised her arms in preparation to attack, but the armored man fired first, sending a beam of light towards her that ended up refracting throughout the water comprising her body and into the moon-like bubble on her back. She seemed unharmed at first glance, but a cloud of steam rising from her chest where the beam had hit indicated that the attack hadn't been entirely ineffective.

"That's... concerning." The CrossTrix beeped. "Good call going Titania; if that light's got enough energy behind it to boil off part of your body as-is, base Lunaqua probably would've taken enough damage to cancel the transformation."

"More importantly, if he can damage a Titania form with a single hit, he might have enough power to level the city." Lunaqua Titania's visor-like crescent eyes narrowed with concern.

"I have disintegrated cities like this with singular blows, that much is true," The man said. "But I can assure you that I am not foolish nor unskilled enough to cause unnecessary collateral damage."

"Wait, you've actually leveled cities?" CROSS asked. "For someone so worried about the Anti-Life Entity, that seems like a pretty anti-life thing to do."

"That is how the Entity works." The man said. "It corrupts the minds of those who discover the forbidden knowledge of its existence and turns them into unknowing servants of its cause."

He began walking towards Lunaqua Titania, who set up a wall of densely-packed water behind her to protect Anne and Lucius.

"Do you have any comprehension of what its resurrection would mean for this world?" The man's voice was quiet but firm. "Even if by some miracle it decided to not to destroy our universe itself, every sentient being aware of its existence, *including you*, would eventually become its unknowing thralls, slaughtering millions in the name of stopping it without even realizing that you have been doing *exactly* what it desires."

The man raised his arms as he approached Lunaqua Titania, but instead of launching another attack, he grabbed the swooping sides of her uniform's collar and pulled her head down to look at her face-to-face.

"I can never return the lives that I took when it turned me into a murderer," The man said. "But I will do everything in my power to ensure that it can never do so again."

"...I understand why you're worried," Lunaqua Titania responded. "And to be honest, fighting someone who just wants to protect the universe doesn't feel right. On any other day, I'd probably be hesitating."

All light suddenly disappeared from around them, as if the sun had somehow vanished. The armored man felt himself being pushed away and fired a beam of light in the direction he had been shoved from, only for it to immediately disappear into the darkness.

"But today, I'm trying to be better."

"And endangering the universe is your idea of being "better"?" The man said.

"No." Lunaqua Titania's voice echoed through the darkness. "Protecting the people close to me is."

"You're naïve."

The armored man placed his arms out in front of himself and crossed his gauntlets once more, creating an explosion of light too intense for even Lunaqua Titania's field of darkness to absorb, causing it to fade away as the bulk of his armor fell away to reveal a much slimmer golden suit of armor lying underneath. Two large wings on the back of the armor activated and flared open, adding to the underlying armor's grander appearance.

Dethrogue Card

"I will not allow our reality to be threatened by one child's inability to let go."

He raised one of his index fingers towards her, firing a thin beam of light from its tip powerful enough to instantaneously boil away most of her body, knocking her out of the transformation and creating a cloud of black smoke as it burned the asphalt around her. She quickly covered her mouth and nose and stumbled away from the smoke before allowing herself to take a breath.

"Okay, that cinches it." The CrossTrix suddenly detached from Teresa's arm and hovered in front of her, displaying a flashing exclamation mark on the dial. "Teresa, you need to run."

"Wh-what?" Teresa's eyes widened. "CROSS, what are you-"

"That man just evaporated Lunaqua Titania in a single shot." CROSS interrupted her. "We don't have time to get into the calculations here, I am not exaggerating when I say you would need the power of the sun itself to pull something like that off."

"An astute observation." Dethrogue noted, beginning to walk towards them. "The Great Sun armor, as the name suggests, channels energy directly from the sun. You would be wise to heed his advice."

"N-no!" Teresa shook her head in disbelief. "CROSS, there has to be something else we can do!"

"Teresa, our most powerful weapons are the Titania transformations." CROSS said. "We got those from the leftover power of Nightmare OS. We defeated Nightmare OS by throwing him into the sun. This man is wielding *the power of the sun*. Is there a chance we could beat him? Maybe. Is it a good enough chance that I'm willing to risk you getting disintegrated for it? Absolutely not. You just came back from the brink of death, Teresa; there's no way in hell I'm putting you back there again."

Dethrogue paused ever so briefly, seemingly hesitating for a moment, but quickly shook it off and continued walking forward.

"...So that's how that feels." Teresa hung her head.

"What?" The CrossTrix dial displayed a question mark. "How what feels?"

"Having someone try to sacrifice themselves for you." She looked back up at him. "It really sucks."

"What are you talking about? You try to sacrifice yourself all the time!"

"Yeah, I-I know." Teresa shifted uncomfortably. "I'm sorry." She looked over her shoulder at Anne, who was watching her with a concerned expression. "To you, especially."

"I've been gracious enough to grant you some time to say your goodbyes, but you're stretching my patience." Dethrogue interjected, now standing just a few meters away. "I would prefer to finish this sooner rather than later."

"You heard him, CROSS." Teresa stuck her arm out towards the CrossTrix. "Let's finish this. *Together*."

"But I-" CROSS stopped to think for a moment. "Teresa...are you absolutely sure about this?"

Teresa nodded.

"...Alright." The CrossTrix began hovering back to her arm. "Together."

"Absolutely not!" Dethrogue snapped.

He fired a beam of light at them, only for it to be blocked by a body of pitch-black smoke that apparated in front of Teresa. The smoke congealed into Lucius Raivent, whose sclera had gone pitch-black, his irises burning with the glow of hellfire.

"You seem a bit different, Challice." He turned his head to look at her, revealing glowing cracks forming in the skin around his eyes. "When you reawakened, was it truly you that returned?"

"It's me." Teresa nodded affirmatively. "*All* of me."

Dethrogue attempted to strike them with another beam of light, but a ring of hellfire abruptly sprang up beneath their feet, creating a wall of black smoke that consumed his attacks with ease.

"Are you not frightened?" Lucius asked.

"I'm terrified." Teresa looked at her hands, which were shaking uncontrollably. "My heart is pounding in my ears, a-and I can't stop shaking."

"Yet you're willing to fight?"

"Yeah." Teresa took a deep breath and clenched her fists. "I'm...I'm always scared, but...I'm angry too. I'm angry someone is trying to kill my friend and is willing to hurt anyone who gets in his way. I'm angry that he's attacking *here* of all places. I'm angry that I can sympathize with him but can't get him to listen to reason. I'm angry that this fight is even happening at all."

"And you're allowing yourself to give in to that anger?" Lucius raised an eyebrow.

"N-not give in to it." Teresa shook her head with a determined expression. "*Feel* it."

Lucius silently looked her over for a moment, his eyes flashing brighter for a brief second as he peered into her soul.

"It *is* you..." He muttered. "What exactly happened to you in that comatose state?"

"W-well, there was, like, one of me, th-then two of me, a-and then I punched myself, a-and- a-actually, wait, before there were two of me, th-there was this insanity demon who looked like Isaac in a top hat, a-and he had this crystal ball staff thing that he used to-"

"If the events are difficult to summarize, we can discuss them another time." Lucius interrupted her. "This barrier is proving difficult to maintain, and in the event that simply glancing at me does not make this obvious," the cracks in his skin had spread out significantly, covering most of his face and currently encroaching on his neck, "using these powers takes a toll on my body, so if you have a plan, I'd recommend deploying it at your earliest convenience."

Teresa nodded and raised up the CrossTrix, transforming in a purple flash. Dethrogue stopped shooting for a moment and Lucius's barrier fell, revealing Thermosnap Titania standing next to him.

Thermosnap Titania Card

"While I can admire your dedication to protecting your allies, staying to fight was a *very* poor decision." Dethrogue glowered at her.

"That..." Thermosnap Titania threw her arms forward, deploying her retractable blades. "Remains to be seen."

"Hollow words from an empty mind." Dethrogue took aim at her again. "Die a fool's death."

Thermosnap Titania raised her left arm in front of herself right before he fired, blocking the CrossTrix symbol on her chest with the shielded part of her forearm. The same solar radiation that had destroyed Lunaqua's Titania form so easily now dissipated harmlessly against the surface of her armor. Dethrogue's eyes narrowed and he fired again, hitting her with a more powerful beam this time, but once again, nothing seemed to happen. Frustrated, he shot a small beam of light towards the ground, easily evaporating a portion of the tarmac, but when he raised the same beam towards Thermosnap, it didn't seem to have any effect.

"What is this?" Dethrogue scowled. "Don't tell me you just so *happen* to have a transformation immune to the power of the sun."

"Nope, but I *do* have a transformation that can raise and lower temperatures." Thermosnap Titania snapped her fingers as she explained. "Take the heat out of the sunlight and suddenly it's harmless."

That wasn't really true, of course; thermal radiation may be the most obvious source of danger from the sun, but non-thermal radiation can still damage tissue and cause cells to self-destruct. Thanks to Earth's magnetic field, this is rarely a life-threatening issue with standard exposure to sunlight, but being on the receiving end of radioactive particles channeled directly from the sun itself was...more problematic, to say the least. Underneath her body's metallic plating, Thermosnap Titania was actually in a significant amount of pain as chunks of her organic tissue died off, but given everything else that had happened to her over the summer, this wasn't nearly enough to make her break her bluff.

"I see." Dethrogue tsked. "That is...unfortunate."

He suddenly lunged towards her, winding up for a punch. She put her arm blades up to block the blow, but the heavy radiation exposure had turned the metal hard and brittle, causing them to shatter immediately upon impact.

"Now I have no choice but to beat you to death."

As he went in for another punch, Thermosnap Titania flash-froze the air between them, creating a barrier of ice that slowed Dethrogue down long enough for her to slide out of the way.

"Teresa, if he was able to shatter your blades, he can probably make good on that threat." CROSS pointed out. "Did you have a backup plan for this?"

"K-kind of, but I need more time to figure out the details." Thermosnap Titania stammered a bit as even her alien mind was starting to panic. "I need to-"

She was interrupted as Dethrogue suddenly shot towards her faster than the eye could see and punched her directly below the chest. This didn't knock the wind out of her, seeing as the biology of Thermosnap's species simply didn't allow for that, but it did have the unfortunate effect of carving a hole directly through her torso that his forearm became stuck in.

Acting more on instinct than anything, she grabbed onto Dethrogue's upper arm and flash-froze his armor to absolute zero, buying her a moment to slide off his arm and revert to human as every molecule in his armor stopped moving.

"Teresa, are you okay?!" Anne called out worriedly.

"I-I was able to detransform before I could really process h-how much that hurt." Teresa shuddered a bit.

"If you're going to continue this fight, you should move it to an unpopulated area." Lucius advised. "If you're truly serious about not holding back, being surrounded by vulnerable civilians is not going to help you overcome that mental block."

Teresa and Anne sat together on a bench in Liberty Park, holding hands as they watched the sun slowly set beyond the mountains.

"Teresa..." Anne looked at her. "Is everything alright? You said you wanted to talk, but you haven't said a word since we got here."

"I-I'm fine, I just... I have a hard time talking about stuff like this." Teresa took a deep breath to try and calm her nerves. "The thing is, when I was unconscious, I-I saw a lot of memories that I... try not to think about too often. Things I ignored, things I repressed. Some of them were things that happened between us when we were in school, and after remembering them, I... I think I understand why you were so surprised I was willing to forgive you."

Anne froze.

"You mean... you..." She started shaking. "You didn't know everything that happened?"

"I-I knew it, I just... repressed it." Teresa said. "The things that were too hard for me to handle. Like... like what happened behind the school."

The hand Anne had intertwined with Teresa's went limp. Her mind raced with the implications of this. If Teresa hadn't been able to remember the worst things Anne had done when she had forgiven her... when they became friends... when they started dating... was their relationship even valid? Had she been taking advantage of her this whole time?

"I... I'm sorry." Anne put her head into her hands as a massive pit formed in her stomach. "I'm so sorry. I should've known better. Of course all of this was too good to be true."

"Wh-what?"

"You wouldn't have forgiven me if you had remembered everything I did, right?" Anne turned to look at her wearing an expression of utter despair. "Is our entire relationship just built on the fact that you didn't know better?"

Teresa hadn't quite been prepared for this response, so it took her a minute to think of what to say before she responded.

"...I don't know if I would have forgiven you at the time." She admitted. "But after everything we've been through together... I don't think it changes anything between us now."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean... I've changed. *You've* changed." Teresa pointed out. "You went from trying to hurt me to putting your life on the line to protect me. I'm not bringing up what I remembered because I think it ruins our relationship, I'm bringing it up because I want to deal with those feelings directly. I want to heal from what happened so I can pour my entire heart into loving you."

"Are... are you sure?" Anne's face began changing from despair to a mix of relief, surprise, and confusion.

Teresa suddenly grabbed Anne and pulled her close, burying her head in her chest to try and hide the intense blush spreading across her face as she did so.

"I-I've never been sure of anything in my entire life," She tried speaking in the most confident tone she could muster (which didn't work particularly well because of how flustered she was from being forward like this, but it was a valiant effort). "But for once, I'm sure about this!"

"T-Teresa?!" Anne exclaimed, starting to blush equally heavily.

"All that stuff I told you when I was NeOhm didn't just come out of nowhere!" Teresa continued. "It's what I really feel! It's what I'd tell you all the time if I wasn't so scared of just... being myself! I-I want to be better than that! I want to be brave! And when- when I'm with you, *I feel like I can be brave!*"

Any verbal response Anne could have given to this was cut off by her choking up, so she settled for wordlessly returning Teresa's embrace. The two sat together in peaceful silence, simply holding each other close as the last rays of sunlight disappeared and street lamps buzzed to life to illuminate the city in their stead.

After some time of simply enjoying each other's company, the two of them perked up as they heard someone approaching. They turned towards the source of the noise, finding a plain-looking man in a plain-looking business suit with a rather plain expression on his face walking towards them at at a rather plain pace.

"Dad?" Anne blinked in surprise.

"*Dad?*" CROSS beeped.

"Oh, right, I guess I've never introduced you. Teresa, this is my dad, Steve. Well, stepdad, technically, but he's the only person I *knew* was married to my mom growing up, so...y'know." Anne turned her attention to Steve, who had stopped a few feet away from the bench. "What are you doing here?"

"Maria asked me to look for you." Steve replied in a rather plain voice. "You usually say you went to Liberty Park when she asks you about your day, so I thought you might be here."

"If mom wanted to know where I was so bad, she could've looked for me herself." Anne's expression turned a bit sour.

"She said you might not want to see her right now, so she sent me." Steve shrugged. "Don't know what's going on between you two, so don't shoot the messenger."

"Well, she's right about that, but..." Anne sighed. "I think I *need* to see her."

"A-are you sure?" Teresa asked. "Yesterday, you mentioned..."

"Yeah. I'm sure." Anne took a deep breath. "Don't know how it's going to turn out, but it has to happen eventually, and I'd rather it be on my own terms."

"...Okay." Teresa nodded. "Did you want a ride home on the Cross Bullet, or...?"

"Thanks for offering, but I'll head back with Steve." Anne gave her a small, reassuring grin. "All things considered, I think you've had to deal with enough of my family drama already."

"She has a point." CROSS noted. "Besides, Dana and Emilia got into a pretty heated argument while you were asleep, so there's a good chance you're gonna have your *own* drama to deal with when you get home."

"Is your friend's watch talking to her?" Steve asked Anne.

"It's not really a watch, it's...well, it's complicated." Anne shook her head. "And Teresa isn't just my friend. She's...well, she's my girlfriend."

It still made Teresa's heart skip a beat whenever she heard Anne say that.

"Oh." Steve didn't seem to have much of a reaction to this news. "Did I miss that conversation?"

"No, I haven't told mom yet." Anne said. "I was worried about how she'd react, but...at this point, there are bigger fish to fry."

## Continuity Notes

### *Tech Cross* Continuity

* Teresa's flashback at the beginning of the episode reshows the first scene from episode 1.
* Christine references the unknown object Sephtis Raivent crafted from the remains of women he used for demonic summoning rituals, which she came across in episode 8.

### Franchise Continuity

* The Jester makes his first appearance in a series since 2019's *Project Deca* and first reappearance in a Tech 10 project since 2016's *Tech 10: Star Spirit*. He is the physical avatar of The Void, a sentient pocket dimension that serves as the source of Void Energy, and only appears to people who have been exposed to Void Energy, which Teresa gained after fusing with Nova Eldridge in *Star X Lovers*.
	+ The confusion between The Jester and Isaac stems from The Void using Isaac's appearance as a reference while crafting its physical avatar after their first meeting in *Tech 10: Rebooted*.
	+ The Jester introducing himself as an insanity demon is his most common method of explaining what he is to humans, despite it being a drastic and not particularly accurate oversimplification of The Void's actual role in the universe of converting Kunenga Energy (which is largely responsible for the existence of sapient life) into Void Energy, which can cause mental instability and psychosis in sentient lifeforms if too much Kunenga Energy is taken from them at once.
	+ The non-interference policy mentioned by The Jester has been explained in previous series as coming from "the big man upstairs". Whether this statement refers to the Abrahamic God specifically or just a higher power in general is left unclear.

## General Notes

* "Mormon culture region" is a commonly-used academic term referring to the Mormon corridor, which is an area in the western US that was settled by Mormons during the latter half of the 19th century and remains highly Mormon to this day.