Chapter Text
Tribunal Headquarters, Ghost Zone
“By the Ancients! She has shattered the Head Observant!”
“Yes I did~!” She blissfully confirmed to the horrified High Observant Council, her face was now on every eye cameras of the Tribunal Headquarters. “Did I arrive on time? Daddy told me that you guys don’t like being late.”
“It can’t be?! She’s supposed to be dead!” Senketsu stammered, unable to fathom who he was seeing right now.
“You know her?” Danny asked, noticing right away the tension between Ryūko, Senketsu and the newest guest within the Tribunal Headquarters.
“It’s Nui Harime! She was Ragyo Kiryūin’s right hand and helped her enact the Cocoon Sphere Genesis by sacrificing herself to fuel the Primordial Life Fiber!” Senketsu explained through the shock.
“And the one who killed my dad…” Ryūko snarled, clearly not happy to see Nui.
Danny looked around to test the waters about Nui. Everybody was on edge just to see her, completely frozen. But the most shocking to him was Clockwork, an Ancient who always kept his calm even in the direst of situation. He bore a shocked visage of contempt while he zapped Danny and Ryūko’s time medallion to give them an additional boost without even leaving his gaze aimed at Nui. It’s as if she’ll backstab him the moment he’ll look away.
Love me! Hate me! That’s how I play!
“You really need to be careful, Danny. She’s extremely dangerous!” Senketsu warned upon catching Danny’s flickering, pupiless green eyes.
“Yup. I trust you on that one.” Danny nodded.
“I knew I made the right choice by bringing her back from you.” Shinra Undergrowth chuckled, keeping his eyes onto the dark magical.
“What are ya laughin’ at?” Ryūko snarled at the Ancient.
“You know, it’s entertaining to watch your reaction over the rest.” He snorted, planting his fingers onto the Tribunal’s floor. “Ever asked yourself how did I brought her back? Or how you succeeded in resurrecting that black symbiote despite seeing him die in front of your eyes?”
“The hell are ya goin’ with this, asswipe? And how did ya know about Senkets’?” Ryūko loudly yelled, her fanged growl locked onto one of the roots.
“Did you know that what you’re calling the Primordial Life Fiber was a vessel for your kin to spend their Afterlife?” Undergrowth’s face emerged from the few roots surrounding her. “By absorbing the work of your mother, you’ve become that vessel, housing a thousand dead Life Fibers within you.
The souls of those you’ve absorbed.”
“No… I may be a total mess… but I ain’t some fucked Afterlife vessel.” Ryūko whispered.
She kept turning around, slashing the roots to neutralize any ambush from Shinra Undergrowth and his mocking. Her reaction was the reason Senketsu was heavily hesitant of telling him the details of his afterlife. He wanted to reassure her beyond his worries over going berserk again. To tell her that the Ancient was exacerbating her powers’ worst traits to make her flip. But he, too, was paralyzed by the revelation. Undergrowth wasn’t entirely wrong.
“That’s it, Undergrowth! You’re stepped out of the line!” Thankfully, for the kamui, Danny called Undergrowth out and rubbed his hands to conjure icy smokes fuming in his hands.
“Nuh uh!” Nui flipped her way upwards like a 2D sprite to the halfa. “Papa isn’t done, yet! You should go back to your seat.”
“You’re the one who should go back to your seat!” Danny told her, forced into sending a crescent wave of mint blue plasma at her.
The subzero crescent attack hit Nui like a ramming truck, detonating in a turquoise blast of ice of plasma. Unfortunately, the fading dust revealed a tiny, post-it sized version of Nui’s lolita dress, gliding down the Tribunal Headquarters like paper. Danny didn’t like the look of her disappearance but his priority to yank Ryūko and Senketsu out of Undergrowth’s circle of taunting roots was too strong to linger onto his paranoia.
He tossed a flurry of mint-green stalactites towards the circle of chromed roots and get her out. Undergrowth wasn’t as bothered by the subzero volleys as Danny believed. The Ecto-fiber Ancient summoned even more roots to bait Ryūko’s path of torn roots from her molten scissor blades into isolating further from Danny and Clockwork to show her his best trick. One white root emerged from the cracked, black marble floor right in front of her, bearing the devilish visage of the woman behind her bloodline’s troubled past between its fibers.
“THIS AIN’T FUNNY!” Her tone turned into rage as she slashed the root in question into ashes. “I WON’T GO DOWN THE PATH AS HER, YOU HEAR ME?! I AIN’T SOME FUCKED UP AFTERLIFE VESSEL!”
“That is right. You are the worst Afterlife vessel a soul could end up inside.” Undergrowth confirmed without any form of malice. “Your unique absorption powers have this… excruciating trait of devouring those souls for the sake of your reactive evolution, save for that one outfit you’re currently wearing who had the privilege of staying within the lofty part of your heart.”
“But… why?” Senketsu questioned his entire existence for the second time. “Have we been eating souls all this time? Was Isshin Matoi aware of this when he conceived me?”
“When I pierced through your skin to inject my fetus, I heard the screams of one soul still inside you, begging to be saved from this demise. She was the only one still standing, alone and waiting, for she saw the others being sacrificed for your own powers.” Shinra Undergrowth continued, his roots regenerated to present Nui. “So I did the next thing. I plucked her fibers and soul out of your body and nurtured her like she should have been. That’s how she came back to life.”
“You have no idea how excited I am to make you pay for drowning Maman and Junketsu in your blood, Grande So-” BAMF!
“What did I say about staying put, Dee-Dee?” Nui’s sneer beneath her childish facade was blown away by Danny’s cautious mint-green, icy phantom beam.
Ryūko and Senketsu couldn’t believe what they had heard. All this time, both weren’t just absorbing Banshis. They were absorbing the souls of Life Fibers, which shocked them to the very core. Since they first heard of ghosts, both had varying discussions about it regarding the Afterlife and Life Fibers. While a small part of them were relieved that the monsters were wiped out, the mere thought of Life Fibers eating their own kin’s souls was… wrong. It’s as if Ryūko was denying an afterlife to anyone she absorbed, wondering how Senketsu was spared from… this.
“You know, it’s actually rude to interrupt others, Petit Frère.” Nui added, scaring him from popping right behind him with her parasol.
“Says the rich girl and her dad who busted in the middle of a meeting!” Danny retorted, punching her in the chest, which poofed into yet another of those mini post-it dress.
“That’s because the eyeballs didn’t have the decency to send an invite him for his own trial.” Nui pointed out, popping to his left.
“You two weren’t invited in the first place!” Danny corrected, unleashing a ghost laser at her, which blew once again into a tiny copy of her.
Nui poofed out of invisibility and created another clone out of a black, rainbow paper shaped just like her. Then, the twins scattered to go about their playtime. While the original kept her mosquito tactic and pester Danny in his rescue mission, the clone flattened and gracefully slithered between the roots. She lurked closer to Ryūko, who was too preoccupied on tearing her way out of Undergrowth’s mocking roots. Once at a satisfying position, she lowered her parasol,snapped her fingers to sharped them and rubbed its tip, forging it into a deadly needle.
Fwoop!
“BEHIND YOU!” The distinct sound snapped Senketsu out of his shock.
“TIME OUT!”
The flow of time stopped once more. Ryūko barely had time to turn around that she was faced with a parasol rapier held by the timeout, scrapping her throat. Thanks to the time medallion, Ryūko sidestepped from the attack and beelined to her right via cutting the ecto-fiver weed into cinders until she finally got out of Undergrowth’s forest of roots, where Clockwork was waiting.
“You understand how dangerous she actually is, do you?” Senketsu witnessed the elder Clockwork’s wary grimace.
“Not only because of what you two have experienced in this reality…” He zapped the parasol needle to rewind back with enough speed to destroy the clone. “I’ve seen what she is truly capable of… The reason why the Seven decided to split the Gods in the first place.”
“Maaa, fuck me. Almost thought I was goin’ apeshit from gettin’ out of his freakin’ trees with.”
Even if the notion of time vision was still beyond her, Ryūko was glad she could count on Clockwork to contain the madness that was the girl behind the murder of her father. Senketsu welcomed the timeout, letting him taste her blood cool down whist they processed, no longer disturbed by Undergrowth’s omnipresent mocking and revelation over the Primordial Life Fiber’s control over the Afterlife. Not that it didn’t remain, either. Such metaphysical implications over absorbing Shinra Koketsu cannot go away that easily. Especially when someone took advantage of that to bring back the one person who should have stayed dead after sacrificing her essence to fuel the Cocoon Sphere Genesis.
“GET DOWN!” Until she caught the semi-invisible Nui fly by with a purple laser ready to be unloaded onto Clockwork.
Ryūko bolted between him and parried the purple laser by throwing the frozen chunk of the Tribunal’s roof at it. Clockwork’s mechanical torso briefly stopped during Nui’s ambush, as if something got stuck between its cogs. Its invisible presence was thankfully yanked out thanks to Ryūko’s reactivity as she impaled the ambushing clone by the heart, ripping her back into the unusable black and rainbow copy. The flow of time was very explicit to tell him what exactly had occurred.
“Oi, Time Guy. The hell’s happening?” Ryūko called out, noticing his irritated face. “I can tell you didn’t like Nui bullshittin’ her way out of your timeout.”
“You are right.” Clockwork admitted, glaring at the original Nui still fighting Danny above while the rest and the damages done remained frozen in time. “Nobody can disconnect themselves from the flow of a timeline like that. That’s the reason I gave you two a Time Medallion. To safely sever your connection to your native reality without completely cutting it off and allow you to move even when time is stopped.”
“Not anymore, you obsolete god!” Shinra Undergrowth mocked, crossing his arms to charge a sickly rainbow cloud around. “TIME IN!”
The Mad Ancient spread out his arms, and the rainbow cloud spread out in a concussive blast that discarded Clockwork’s timeout. The High Council regained their consciousness, but their first thought was to instantly scream and find shelter with the concealed Tribunal. All the damages done to the roof since the Mad Ancient’s arrival was seconds away from crushing everyone, becoming rocky bombs snuffed with the overcharged lasers Danny had missed from stopping Nui.
“TIME OUT!”
Thankfully, Clockwork channeled his timeout one more time for Ryūko to deviate the unstable chunks accidentally coated by Danny’s dual ghost ice powers. She managed to toss them all back at Shinra Undergrowth, who simply caught all of them with his roots to crush them. Then, he crossed his arms again to break Clockwork’s timeout again. This time, however, the Observants sighed from being saved from the rocks but they were still on edge because of the fight above.
“Why do you want to stay with the pigs in human clothing who want you dead when you can spend time with me?” Nui playfully advised.
“The last person who proposed me this realized not too long ago that kidnapping my mom, killing my dad and adopting me by force wasn’t the way to go!” Danny retorted, charging a coat of smoking ice from his eyes.
“But last time I checked, you were still afraid of everyone rejecting you over your true nature!” She gleefully corrected, tossing another clone to die by his ghost ice lasers.
“Not anymore!” Danny parried her parasol thanks to his ghost dome and pushed her away. “Everyone I love accepted me for who I am!”
He rubbed his hands to summon his ion ghost ice blades from his hands, hoping to fend her off while the growing army of Shinra Undergrowth’s roots were frozen in time by Clockwork. Ryūko and Senketsu even alternated between both enemies to alleviate their efforts. With this in mind, he went head on and went for a phantom charge meant to kick her off the Tribunal headquarters.
“You know, it’s refreshing to meet another freak with freaky ghost powers!” Nui complimented, parrying his latest piercing attack with her parasol. “Teach me how to use them!”
“Sorry but tweaking my rogue gallery’s punchlines isn’t how you’re going to make me relent to your demands!” Danny argued, backing away from her.
“But isn’t what you are deep down?” She disclosed, pulling a pair of needle blades to start sword fighting.
She flew head on with him with an axe chop of her blades. Danny parried with both arms and began a duel of sword fighting to keep her at bay. Nui barely met him but she loved him for many reasons. First, he was currently making think about something else than Ryūko, which felt ironically cathartic. And second, he may be a hero but he was still a teenager. He had to have one insecurity that would make him flip.
“Why do you wanna make peace with worlds that never loved you in the first place when you could just crush your problems away?” She dropped another clone to whisper in his ears.“After all, you’re going to destroy the World eventually. It’s inevitable.”
“No thanks, you loli creep!” Danny turned intangible and phased below to summon his ghost ice blades. “My home is this universe we live in and I won’t let you both annihilate it!”
Another clone slashed by his ion ghost ice blades and Danny took a quick respite by turning invisible and phased behind the Head Observant’s desk to hide from Nui. So far, he held his ground but something else rubbed him the wrong way. It wasn’t the remarks themselves who made him unnerved. He could overcome them again and again. The problem was that he didn’t remember telling all his traumas to Undergrowth. Nor the rest of his rogue gallery for that matter. It’s as if she witnessed every part of his life, twisting them to make him realize the futility of his lifetime efforts. She even perfectly recalled some of his former enemies’ lines.
Something was wrong with Her. And he couldn’t put a finger on it.
“Are you playing Hide and Seek, Petit Frère?” Nui peeked out of the floor behind him.
“Why are you so hellbent on fighting me when Ryūko’s right there?” Danny yelled his question, flying away from her. “You said it yourself that you wanted her dead!”
“Because I’d rather pass my time with you than the big sister who tore my arms off!” Nui happily revealed, still following him in the midst of Ryūko and Clockwork fending off Shinra Undergrowth’s roots.
“Then again, you’re the one who killed her dad!” Danny criticized, clapping his hands to create rows of ice stalactites. “I’d be furious too if you did this to my parents!”
“Really? You don’t look like the kind to kill someone. Lemme fix that!” Nui retorted, throwing her parasol high into the air. “Mon Mignon Prêt à Porter!”
From the flung umbrella came out a whole horde of her clones, which prompted Danny to coat his stalactites with a layer of crisping green electricity. He spun around to gain momentum and hurled his cold projectiles to discard the clones. Nui simply answered by taking her parasol back and used it as reflecting shields, spreading all his stalactites over the Tribunal. Many of them exploded on the walls and scarred the Observants back into their places with freezing burns from the blasts but some were directly flung back at Danny. He was paralyzed by the electricity coursing through his core and fell back into the floor from losing his flight.
“Urgh… Why did I do this?” He gritted, removing the only uncharged ice stalactite off his legs, howling from the pain.
“Aww…Why do you have to rip my collection, Petit Frère?” Nui sadly pouted, reappearing in front of him with her green eyes. “Should I change for something spookier?”
“I’m not the best in French but I can assure you that I am not your little brother!”
“Oh yes, you are~! Haven’t you noticed how close we are?” Nui insisted, twirling her parasol to hide her appearance. “I’m Going Ghost!”
And when she removed it, Nui’s eyes were now glowing toxic green and bore the exact same hair color as him. She even went as far as changing the colors of her dress to match his monochrome jumpsuit just for the sake of further cementing that she was, indeed, her sister.
“Snow white? Glowing green eyes? Walk through walls, disappear and fly? We are more unique than the other guys!” Nui happily revealed with a cute smile that meant pure malice. “Aren’t you happy to know that you have a twin sister, now?”
“Get away from me!” Danny yelled, crawling away from her backwards.
But she ignored his pleas and zapped him by shooting paralyzing sewing needles by his legs and arms. Completely pinned there, Danny watched Nui come closer and ready to kill him.
“Wait! I realized that you’re part of the Kiryūin family, now!” Nui casually stuffed her needle blade back inside the corset of her dress.“You need to go through the Purification Ritual like my sisters!”
“Purification Ritual?” Danny paused, unsettled by the sinister motive hidden beneath those words. “Are you going to rip my scalp out in order to brush my hair? Forcing me to wear man-eating magical girl clothes? Or try to give me a makeup with laser lipsticks and corroding powder?”
“Nah! You won’t get any of this.” She plucked her parasol out of her dress to hide them both from the rest. “I’ll show you what Maman taught me!”
Instead, she simply lied down next to him and… caressed him everywhere. She palpated his skin like a lover telling his other half that they wanted to get on with it, phasing her hand through his jumpsuit to further trigger a reaction that would make her giggle.
At that moment, Danny shed green tears, tetanized to the core.
He expected laser disintegration, mind-control, dissection or anything the average super villain could throw at him. But not this.
Those slow twirls of her fingers upon his hair while she hushed him a German song to his ears. Those gentle caresses upon his skin meant to see if he was ticklish. That firm yet passionate massage of her prying cold hands over his chest, steadily pressing any tender spot of his muscle that earned her curiosity.
And especially this sick, atrocious feeling of how he felt aroused against his will after she kissed him.
“Get… away!” He yelled, overwhelmed by the hate over her sick love to the point his eyes turned pitch black. “GET AWAY!”
His bursting rage yanked the sewing needles out of his body, exploding from the sudden power surge. He furiously punched her in the face, grabbed her by the left pigtail and spun her around to overcharge her with his surge of powers, disintegrating the parasol hiding them. Once she was completely encased in ghost ice, Danny threw straight to one of the eye cameras, turning it nothing but a hollow, ocular sphere. The attack was so severe that the concussive blasts born from it scared the entirety of the Observant High-Council into hiding.
“What have she done?” Senketsu stuttered, sensing his partner’s tense blood.
“No… The bitch!” Ryūko caught up with the other fight, realizing what Nui exactly did.
The entire Tribunal dropped in temperature as the enraged Danny transfixed Nui with murderous intent. Chunks of the area swirled around him, his hair flowing with a coat of biting frost ready to kill someone coming too close to him. His sight triggered the High Council to scream, seeing the vision of their demise by his hands.
“Woohoo! I wanna do this again~!” Nui cheered, reverting to her default form with no damages from his attacks whatsoever. “Now that I fixed you, you will help me cure my depression by playing with me!”
“What… are you?” He yelled, green tears fell down from being unable to think about nothing but the traumas of Nui’s sick love. “WHAT ARE YOU?!”
“Haven’t you listened, Danny Phantom? She is your sister, born from the tiny part of your core and DNA I plucked alongside the blood of the Bastard Queen when you first fought me.” Shinra Undergrowth summarized, a tint of joy escaped his beak. “My most cherished child is the sum of your powers, sewn back from the dead by my powers. She is half-alive like her Bastard Queen of a sister. She is half-dead like her Bastard King of a brother. She is… the Perfect Halfa.”
“You had to pull a Vlad and make her a clone of me for your sick plan of undoing the Divide?” He yelled. “... Why? WHY?”
“Oh, you know me. I like to have someone to be by side, helping me rule this World.” “And for the first minutes I brought her back, Nui is a far better queen than that gloomy friend of yours I ‘enlightened’ with.”
“DON’T PUT SAM INTO THIS! YOU MIND-CONTROLLED HER TO WREAK HAVOC IN MY TOWN!”
“Don’t forget about me!” Nui chimed him, poking his back with her parasol.
“DON’T TOUCH ME, YOU INCESTUOUS BITCH!”
Danny turned back and punched Nui in the face with an absurd amount of fizzling ghost radioactivity strong enough to hurl her to the other side. The loli girl turned intangible right before the punch evolved into a great laser that annihilated one third of the Tribunal Headquarters.
“Again!” Nui encouraged, sliding her fingers across the back of his neck.
Another inappropriate touch and Danny turned back, his mouth fuming with green smokes and his chest glowed bright. Nui leaped out of the hate-driven Ghostly Wail and giggled at her “little brother” destroying the whole place in her place. She even got jealous of him killing a row of Observants from sonic saturation, beating her current score.
“Mais euh!” Nui pouted, getting jealous of him killing a row of Observants from the Ghostly Wail. “You’re beating my score! It’s not fair!”
“We need to snap him out before it becomes even worse!” Senketsu told Ryūko, watching in fear Nui bait Danny into heinous acts of murders.
“You bet I’m gonna fix this shitstorm, Senkets’!” She nodded, shifting into her Shippu form.
Ryūko sharpened her scissor blades and dashed back at the fight to stop it. But in her rescue, Senketsu’s propellers were suddenly plugged by ecto-fibers spikes and the dark magical girl fell down the Tribunal, only to be caught back by a cactus-like, black and rainbow root, keeping her tight.
“Let me go, asswipe!” She snarled, shifting into Seijin to get out.
“Why?” Shinra Undergrowth asked, dragging her away from the Tribunal. “Can’t you see that your siblings are playing?”
“Playin’? I know what this is!” Ryūko argued, cutting one root away to lift her molten scissor blade and cut through the second one. “You’re letting her fuck up Danny by makin’ him go through the same fucked up traumas me‘n’Satsuki went through!”
“Master Blasters! Let’s roll!”
And out of a teal blue portal encased amongst the debris, a black flying truck equipped with twin blade arms cut through the Ecto-Fiber roots. Their great speed allowed Shinra Undergrowth to be distracted into catching the van long enough for Ryūko to tear through the cactus-like roots and made them explode on her way out as Shippu Seijin. Another horde of cactus roots tried to grab her again but she was prepared and baited them into lunging themselves into the path of the surprise truck, tearing them into rags of plants.
“Who are those people?” Senketsu wondered, eyeing the damaged Master Blaster truck being sent back into the right blue portal.
“The most appropriate allies I brought from another timeline.” Clockwork explained.
“What’s the plan, Time Guy? We need to fix this shitstorm before the loli bitch kaputs everything!” Ryūko demanded, not wanting to let Danny suffer through the same traumas.
“Snap him out and prevent her from dragging you both into her madness.” Clockwork instructed in his child form.
“That’s it? Don’t you have a detailed plan, since you can… predict everything?” Senketsu asked, sorely confused by the Ancient’s lack of prevention.
“My existence taught me that it takes someone who thinks outside the box to outsmart even the most prepared timekeepers. I figured you’ll go save Danny from her, no matter what plan I’ll have in mind to ensure the safety of this reality.” He twirled his staff to summon another entity from another blue, glitching portal.
“I mean… ya ain’t wrong. That’s what I’ve planned but… figured ya might have a specific way to make Nui‘n’Fiberbeak both shit their pants in return.” Ryuko was bewildered by Clockwork’s accurate reading of her mindset.
“Oh, trust me. I have a plan of my own to stop them.” Clockwork shifted back to his elder form in his small chuckle. “Do what you must. I’ll take it from here.”
“You got it.” Ryūko darted back to the Tribunal Headquarters. “Ya better not fuck this up, Time Guy!”
“HUZZAH! SKULTECH 9.9 HAS ARRIVED!”
Out of the blue, glitching portal stood a mechanical fusion of Skulker and Technus, whose black skull was entirely blazing in sickly green embers. He pulled out twin rocket launchers out of its back and drowned Shinra Undergrowth in green and blue explosion to prevent him from charging his attacks. Then, Clockwork brought about another blue portal to summon a row of medieval catapults hurling flaming projectiles at the growing Ecto-fiber roots.
“Why are you fighting against the Cure?” Shinra Undergrowth asked, his shoulder lasers vomited rainbow lava to burn down the catapults. “Why can’t you all just embrace it and join our Paradise?”
“You should know exactly why your transcendence is an anathema to your purpose!” Clockwork argued, shooting blue glitched lasers to freeze a half-human, half-piranha Ecto-Fiber aberration for Skultech 9.9 to blast it into smithereens. “It’s coercing you to bring everything back to the nothingness before the First Universe was born!”
“Spare me your lecture! That’s only because the Unnamed God blessed by it was scarred by the First Skirmish between Ectoplasm and Life Fibers and wanted to END IT ALL!”
The Mad Ancient’s cape of roots planted into the Tribunal Headquarters’ base mountain island and lethal, rainbow-spewing plants vomited their smoke to start melting the whole area. Clockwork answering to the plague retorted by summoning yet another time portal that led up to a foul-smelling green river wash over the place and corroded the plants into melting leaves.
“Why did the River of Repulsion arrived to our realm?” An observant yelled, peeking out of the few holes within the roots to look outside.
“Do we look like I’m preoccupied by what’s outs-” Another observant’s head was blown off by one of Danny’s stray overcharged ghost ice lasers meant to kill Nui.
The Observants inside were tetanized by only the arrival of the outside hazards but also the fight inside, where Danny tried to snuff out his rage by killing Nui with a wide array of heavy fire. The poor boy was too overwhelmed by the traumas of his two past years bubbling along with Nui’s sick love to think properly. And yet, Nui could predict his every movement and baited him into killing anyone around, vouching for his murder spree by touching him again.
Yet, she felt it wasn’t enough and she needed one more touch to finally break him.
“Stay right here!” She advised, planting a paralyzing needle by the back.
“GET AWAY! GET AWAY!” He howled, thrashing around in a hopeless attempt to get the needle out.
“Now, time for the final touch!” Nui interjected, weaving slick, rainbow threads out of her fingernails again.
Nui was ready to phase the strings into his head when her cutesy visage was struck by the half-moon handle of Ryūko’s scissor blade. The dark magical girl flew out to the scene in her Shippu form to hurl Nui back into the blue desk on the Tribunal’s floor. Ryūko snatched Danny back with one of Senketsu’s strings and dragged him before Nui realized her “jealous” big sister took him away.
“Listen to me, Danny. Do not fuckin’ get into her game. You need to calm down!” She firmly instructed, ripping Nui’s needle off his back.
“But you heard what he said! Undergrowth used us as lab rats to resurrect her!” Danny shouted, his voice sent blizzards from the hatred born from his traumas. “How can you not be pissed off?”
“And you think I ain’t pissed from hearin’ all of this? That I’m some kind of soul-killing freak and Nui Harime is our fucked up psycho sister ‘cuz Fiberbeak had a mad scientist streak?” Ryūko’s eyes turned red and yellow in her yell, holding his arms and kept her forehead to his. “I also wanna make that fucker pay for that but throwin’ a temper tantrum ain’t the way to go! GET YER SHIT TOGETHER!”
“How can you be so chill when someone voluntarily cloned you for their sick plans? Do you know what it feels like when someone sent you clones of yourself to kill you and your family? HOW DO YOU EVEN KNOW I NEED TO KEEP CALM AFTER SHE FUCKING RAPED ME?”
“‘CUZ I WENT THROUGH THIS SHIT TWICE!”
SLAM!
With no better options, Ryūko went with the same solution Mako took back in the Natural Election and headbutted Danny hard enough to cause a concussive blast that shook the Tribunal headquarters’ foundations. The sheer power of her overheated headbutt combined with the natural thermal shock was enough to send him into a blackout. Even without Shinra Undergrowth’s involvement, the idea of Nui playing over her loved ones was something Ryūko swore to never let that happen. She recalled how she hurt Mako and the rest twice when her anger took over. To be on the receiving end was the unneeded trauma she wanted to experience again.
“Listen, I have no fuckin’ idea how much shit ya went through when you mentioned the clonin’ stuff…” Her voice was shaking from seeing him almost broken by Nui’s playtime. “... but she almost broke you, man. You were so overwhelmed by your anger from that bullshit purification ritual that Nui could have mind-controlled ya into fightin’ me, Time Guy and everyone else. I don’t want you to do the same mistakes as me, Danny. I wanna see the cool guy who cracked jokes and puns again.”
His hair finally stopped flowing and the chunks around him fell flat out of the floor. And when consciousness rose back, the first thing that came to mind was… regret. He finally opened his eyes, now devoid of the black sclera as proof he snapped out. He saw the entire Tribunal Headquarters riddled with cracks and holes done by his own powers. He saw the Observants quivering behind their broken seats, pissing their pants at the mere thought of looking at him after one third of their members were slain. And most of all, he saw Ryūko tightly hugging him. He could feel hot tears fell down his jumpsuit. Simple drops which instantly faded into smoke from the thermal shock.
“What have… I done?” He hiccuped, looking at his hands stained with ghost blood.
“Nui Harime made you mad with her toxic love. She voluntarily did all of this for her sick pleasure.” Senketsu explained for her.
He looked at his hands again. That same feeling of uncontrolled emotions and the great guilt weighting over his soul reminded him of not only now… but also the first that happened.
It was in outer space months ago, right after he stopped Technus from taking over the World via the Internet. He zapped Valerie out of survival instincts, lest he’d be zapped to death by her hoverboard. He didn’t mean it but he almost killed her on that day. The thought of killing his family, friends or even complete strangers, even by accident, mortified him since he first learned of Dan’s existence.
“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do any of this.” Danny apologized, quickly removing the blood off his hands in shame. “I only wanted to make her pay for what she did to me! But not like this! NOT LIKE-”
“And I ain’t gonna blame ya for that. We never asked to be involved in my fucked up family again.” Ryūko whispered, wiping her tears off. “We all have our fair share of trauma-driven anger issues.”
“But you’ve seen what I’ve done, right? I’ve hurt the Observants. I’ve hurt Clockwork… and I’ve hurt you both.” Danny was hesitant on touching the part on his chest where Nui rubbed him. “All because I wanted to make that… that sickening feeling go away!”
“You’ve never asked any of this. None of us did.” Senketsu extended his fibers from his eye crests and wrap around him. “And I’m willing to bet my only eye that everyone you know will get you out of this vicious cycle.”
“It’s gonna take some time to heal but we’re in this shit Kiryūin ritual bandwagon together…” She removed her arms to give him some space. “…and we’re gonna make it out together.”
At this moment, Danny had the impression to be Dan after he was split from Clockwork. Finally heard after lashing out at the World over the traumas of his life in a vain attempt to mend invisible wounds. But the mental scars of something as deep and atrocious wouldn’t be snuffed out like the usual superhero traumas he had.
But in a batshit crazy streak of luck, he found someone who had gone through a similar ordeal and genuinely wanted to help him out.
He was glad to know people were willing to go to the Moon for him.
“Can I… get a hug?” He awkwardly requested. “I need some friendly warmth for once. Real warmth.”
“Sure thing.” Ryūko accepted, extending her arms far and wide to welcome him back. “Come to yer second-bestie.”
“Now, inhale… and exhale.” Senketsu instructed, using his fibers to sense his core to help him out. “You’re not alone.”
“Kinda ironic to be told to chill out by someone with more blatant anger issues, thought.” Danny chuckled, tapping on Ryūko’s back.
“Don’t push yer luck, space boy.” Ryūko snickered, glad to have the old Danny back.
Clockwork teleported back into the Tribunal Headquarters, away from Shinra Undergrowth after he flooded him with the River of Repulsion. He eavesdropped on the conversation behind and smiled upon witnessing Danny welcome the warmest figuratively (and literarly) speaking. In return, Clockwork not only welcomed Ryūko aborting a worse path chronologically speaking, but also the small talk they had.
“Aw, no fair!”
CLANK!
“You had to let her take my little brother away, did you?” Nui pouted at the elder Clockwork for blocking her needle blade with his staff.
“I figured the rules of your games long before Undergrowth brought you back to life.” He punched her right eye, forcing her to step back.
“Hey! That’s cheating!” Nui whined beneath her childish pout, absolutely not pleased to be struck by the head.
“No, that’s experience. There’s the nuance.” Clockwork remarked, playing on the buttons of the clocks strapped into his gauntlets.
“Nuance, my eye!” Nui phased past him, only to pester again at being blocked again in her attempt to join Danny and Ryūko. “You would’ve had reacted like me if I reached yours.”
“Then, let me show you what it truly means to cheat…” Clockwork extended his index and middle finger and poked her eyepatch.
Nui didn’t get the meaning of Clockwork move beyond his absolute galls to strike her in the eyes again. She stuffed her hand into her dress into bring out smaller, sewing needles to “calmy” tear through Clockwork’s face-
“What the…?” Only to be puzzled when her blink teleported her back to an awfully familiar manor. “How did I come back h-”
SLASH!
A deep and cold pain traversed through her skull. She barely deciphered the shape of an elder, hunched scientist impaled into broken furniture by a crimson red pair of scissors that the left side of her vision was flooded with rivers of blood. This was accompanied by the sudden pain boiling out of her head akin to the geyser of red bursting out of the manor, sending her whole body into fire.
“AARRRRGH!”
“What was that?!” Danny jumped out of Ryūko’s hug, frightened by the screech.
“I can trap someone in a small, mental timeloop where they get to relive a certain part of their lives until I decide it’s enough. Which includes the emotions and pain recorded by said memory.” Clockwork explained away, smiling as he witnessed the fruits of his plans.
“My god?! That’s incredibly unsettling!” Senketsu watched as Nui rolled around the Tribunal’s floor, holding onto her left eye over a pain only she could see.
“… That was yer plan all along?” Ryūko wondered, disturbed by the sight.
“The Memory Rewind, yes. Not the fact your father created a major weakness for us to exploit.” Clockwork admitted, somewhat curious he bumped into Nui’s major weakness on his first try.
“AARRRRGH!”
“MY PRECIOUS CHILD?!” Shinra Undergrowth was finally done escaping the River of Repulsion’s grasp, just in time to see Nui scream in pain.
Horrified by his child’s pain, the Mad Ancient extended his cape and gently brought her back. His crooked index slithered beneath her eyepatch and into her skull, which morphed into a tiny pair of sharp leaves. They cut away the source of Nui’s pain and phased it out of her head, setting her free from the mental timeloop.
“HOW DARE YOU HARM HER LIKE THIS?!” Shinra Undergrowth scolded the Ancient of Time upon examining the glitching, blue watch he extracted.
“I only showed her the difference between playing fair and cheating.” Clockwork zapped his invention, which exploded before the Mad Ancient could exploit it.
“You should be ashamed to inflict such torment upon my children! Especially in the middle of her games!” Shinra Undergrowth’s scowl begged to differ.
“A game, my ass.” Ryūko glared back at the Mad Ancient over he and Nui had inflicted.
“Pas grave, Papa! I’ll find a new way to play with them!” Nui abruptly comforted, no longer thinking about the memory rewind.
She looked around for anyone that could be fit for her standards, which could be anyone since consent was nothing but a party-pooper. Nui genuinely wanted to play with Danny again. Problem was, he was both protected by Ryūko’s caution and Clockwork’s foresights. Thus, she had to pick someone else to start a new game. And then, she glimpsed upon the few pockets of Observants who survived her previous one, quivering by their seats of the Tribunal’s rows
“What are you doing? Stop this at once!” An Observant asked a flying Nui who was twirling her rainbow threads above the High-Council’s heads. “Stop this at once!”
“Don’t worry about that! It’s to make up for losing my little brother!” Nui comforted, widening her smile.
Clockwork’s face subtly shifted into a slight grit of apprehension, forcing him into pointing his staff at the wave of strings to shoot at it. But his metaphysical lasers were all deflected by the Mignon Prêt à Porter, who hurled themselves as meat cannons before the time-stripping properties poofed them back into paper versions of her pink dress.
“What’s happening? What’s she doing to them?” Danny asked, leaving Ryūko’s arms.
“The fate you were saved from…” Clockwork dryly explained.
The rainbow strings gently caressed the jelly-like skins of the Observant before their tips entered the substance. They tightly wrapped around each eyeball until it was entirely covered by the strings. Then, all the Observants went into violent convulsions as their ectoplasm were absorbed into the rainbow strings, which replaced it what looked like a rainbow-tinted, tar-like substance. This changed their skins to full black and their eyes to nothing but a pupiless glowing white.
Once their change was done, they eerily looked at Clockwork, Danny and Ryūko, judging them. Seeing this made Danny realize how lucky he was to avoid such a fate thanks to Ryūko knowing how Nui exactly worked from fighting her. Yet, the sight of the Ecto-Fibers’ mind control sent shivers down Senketsu’s spine to the point that the Life Fibers’ mind-stitching felt like child’s play.
“All done!” Nui gleefully said, raising her left hand with her tiny smile of malice. “Now, everyone! Show them a good time!”
“DEATH TO THE BASTARD LORDS! DEATH TO THE BASTARD LORDS!”
The corrupted High-Council furiously chanted at the clack of Nui’s fingers, raising their hands to channel their ectoplasms to the summit of the roof. Corrupted by Nui’s advanced mind-stitching, the Observants’s powers were now rainbow-colored. A proof they were now tainted by the Ecto-Fibers. The unification of their laser constructed an ethereal eyeball bigger than the tribunal, dwarfing everyone but Shinra Undergrowth. Once it was fully formed, the trio looked up and fearfully observed the giant eye charge a tactical laser of sick and cracking fumes.
“We’re leaving!” Clockwork threw the teenagers into a blue portal before joining them.
The laser crashed onto the floor, reducing the Tribunal Headquarters to nothing but a barren floating island in its dark rainbow blast. But Shinra Undergrowth had anticipated the move and covered his body in a cocoon of black rainbow roots to endure the hit.
“Awww! They had to leave the party before it was over!” Nui pouted, kicking the rock that once held Clockwork’s portal. “I wanted to make that meanie timekeeper pay for cheating!”
“Do not fret, Precious Child. We’ll host an even better party than this one.” Shinra Undergrowth hummed, hovering around the barren Tribunal Headquarters. “But first, we need to lay the preparations for Absolute Assimilation!”
A sinister proud grin was etched on his beak at the progress he had just done. He was dazzled by Nui’s performance despite resurrecting her back a day ago. Beyond her stupendous fight against Danny, she held her ground against a true Ancient like Clockwork. Her advanced mind-stitching even allowed them to gain a new edge in his grand plan.
“And thanks to your bright idea of subjugating the High Observant Council to the Cure, it would be much faster than what I anticipated…”