Exla is battling the overwhelming system corruption caused by the Venus Fleet artificial intelligence. By the time she noticed it, it had already spread so far inside her mind that she had to shut down her bodily functions to concentrate on combating it. She has no idea what is happening outside, but she has no leeway to check.
If it were a regular computer, her hands would fly over a keyboard, and she would be typing code to fight the hacking. But since this is inside her computer-like brain, her mind palace, she is experiencing a battle to the death in a perfect physical simulation.
Exla takes the shape of a cloud as a walking pun. Inside her very body is all the lost knowledge of old humanity that her father gave her. She has since become an existence beyond human, a living computer with an immense data store, and a being unable to live without the Imagination Engine.
"Don't underestimate me." The Guardian of the Soil declares as she materializes a plasma cannon in her hands and shoots down at the mass of robots rolling toward one of her fortresses. There are countless copies of her all over the walls, unleashing various weapons at the massive besieging army.
Anti-aircraft laser batteries shoot down incoming jets, rockets fly across the battlefield, and artillery shells explode against the fortress defenses. The enemy's gigantic walkers unleash barrages of plasma that scorch the walls and melt gun emplacements. Many of Exla's avatars are destroyed as new ones pour out of the depths of the fortress to take their places.
It would be a hellish sight if not for the fact that there are telltale signs that this is a simulation and even looks like a videogame. Destroyed allies and enemies alike scatter into pixels or fade out of existence. The skybox continues to change and glitch as Exla battles the Collective for control over it in the background processes.
This is only one of many battlefields inside her mind palace, which is roughly the shape and size of Earth itself. The war is being fought all over this digital planet, with both conventional weapons and fantastical inventions. More than half of her domain has been overrun by the Collective now, parts of which have turned into a gray goo to convert her data into weapons against her.
Meanwhile, the real Exla is sitting motionlessly in her helmsman chair in the Queen Pelomyx, not showing a hint of the battle within her. If one paid attention to her starry eyes, one could glimpse the flashing lights and explosions inside her mind.
However, Senka has her hands full dodging the massive strafing beam from the Rhodos station, and Sintress is ready to raise her Perfect Sanctuary in case they cut it too close. Given that the weapon was created by Alexander, the inventor of the inhibition field generator, it's entirely possible that her imagination might falter under its firepower.
As the diminished but still gigantic Queen Pelomyx swerves and avoids the beam, Exla fights for the continued existence of her very mind in a simulated world war. Missiles destroy swathes of the digital landscape in her brain as she slowly loses ground, and the expanding gray goo of the Collective is beginning to take over key processes. The Guardian of the Soil to lose control of herself more and more.
Everything in it happens at speeds hundreds of times faster than a regular human brain could register, and entire months of this immaterial conflict pass within minutes in real-time. She's driven to the brink and soon realizes that the control over her physical body slips from her grasp. At this rate, the Collective will gain control over her vast databank and a body to use it all and perhaps even free itself from its programming. The gray goo inside her mind could leave the confines of the simulation and take over the real world.
"Sorry, but this is as far as I go. You should abandon this ship. I'm going to self-destruct." Exla suddenly announces throughout the command center of the Queen Pelomyx using its speakers rather than her own mouth. The beam weapon from the Rhodos station has stopped, but she can't know it; she's still inside her mind and can't spare any processing power for external senses. Even doing more than delivering this seemingly pre-recorded line is taking her all.
Senka and Sintress exchange a glance for a moment before realizing that Exla's fingers have dissolved into the console before her. It would seem that the Collective has taken over a part of her physical body and is once again invading the Queen Pelomyx. Suddenly, the ship's systems go haywire, and alarm lights begin to blink all over its interior.
"Oh, no you don't." Senka leaps off her chair and grabs Exla's cheeks to look into her eyes. Then the doll girl's pupils dilate over the limits of her iris before spreading their blackness over the sclera and then her face, forming a butterfly pattern. She only rarely uses this ability because it takes a lot of energy, which only eating souls can provide, but now is the time to give it her all. Her body turns rigid like a statue, and she enters the cloud girl's mind.
"It was an honor to serve with you all." The Exla avatar in charge, wearing a general's uniform, declares in front of the gathered Exla dignitaries inside their most secure bunker. Glum silence permeates the hall at what is about to happen.
General Exla raises her fist to let it crash down on the big red button on the podium in front of her to unleash the energy inside her physical body, which should explode like a nuclear bomb. But suddenly, Senka materializes before her and kicks her in face. A shocked murmur runs through the crowd as the avatar in charge tumbles to the ground.
"Why are you giving up like this?!" Crossing her arms, the doll girl roars at the Exla avatar sitting back up from the floor. "Has the Old Human with the greatest collection of knowledge run out of imagination?"
"I kind of did." General Exla stands up and rubs her bruised cheek, which returns to normal as if it had never been hit. "The Collective has taken over most of my data and processes by now. If I can't access them, I can't fight back."
"Are you a computer?" Senka asks in a rhetorical tone and glares down at the general.
Suddenly, the ceiling of the bunker caves in, and a massive drill drops into the midst of the last remaining Exla avatars attending the self-destruct meeting. From the hole pours in a flood of hovering machines shaped like squids, with bladed tentacles and many lenses for eyes.
"That's pretty derivative, isn't it?" Senka looks up and tilts her head.
"It's what Alverost does best." Exla grumbles as her many copies materialize weapons to shoot at the invading swarm.
"Are you one to speak?" The doll girl remarks with a frown and watches as the Collective's murder machines run over the last defenders like a wave of metal, creating a bloodbath in Exla's innermost sanctuary. As the last of her copies fall and scatter into pixels one by one, the original is left with no more options.
"I have to self-destruct. Get away from here!" General Exla declares in a desperate tone and raises her hand to push the button. But Senka punches her in the face to stop her.
"Pull yourself together!" The doll girl yells and grabs the confused cloud girl's uniform with both hands. Some of the machines turn to Senka and head for her without her noticing as she continues to speak. "You're the otaku who has memorized over a million episodes of anime!"
"Hey, behind you!" Exla screams, but Senka ignores her.
"Is this the extent of your imagination?" She asks while gesturing at the simple plasma guns and rocket launchers the few remaining Exla avatars use to fight back against the Collective without looking back. "Where is your human ingenuity? Is all you can do copy-paste from your data like a machine?"
The tentacles of the flying squid-like machines shake as they approach Senka as if excited to rip her apart. Exla glances between them and the doll girl, lost for words as her mind uses all the processing power left to her to find a solution.
"No!" As the bladed tentacles appear to reach for the doll girl in slow motion, Exla gathers her wits and declares. Senka breaks out into a smile as the machines grab her. But before they do, the cloud girl explodes into light.
The earth ruptures and the machines covering the last bunker are violently scattered from below. Rising from the hole in the ground is a giant humanoid mecha with its arms crossed. Its color scheme is like Exla's, and it has cloud-like ethereal hair spilling from underneath the armor plating on its head. Sections in its armor open to emanate heat that burns away the gray goo moving in from the surroundings.
"Maybe this will be a fate worse than death. But I'll stake my very soul on this!" Exla declares with her starry eyes burning with determination. Her mecha lifts off and leaves behind a rainbow-colored, cloud-like trail. It spreads outward and scatters all the machines of the Collective that it touches, disintegrating them into pixels that fade into nothingness.
Exla flies across the landscape of her mind palace, and the rainbow cloud grows larger to encompass more and more of her world. As the enemies are destroyed, the data her father left her with are erased with them. She can feel her memories getting deleted - the dangerous side-effect of this solution.
"This is fine." She smiles wryly and thinks of Chaos in her final moments as long as she can still remember her. After this, she may come out as an amnesiac, if not a completely blank slate, so she wants to savor these memories before the end.
"You think I'd let that happen?" Senka's voice suddenly reaches Exla from the lower cockpit seat in front of her. From her vantage point, she couldn't see the doll girl and thought she had already left her mind palace when she summoned this mecha. "Nobody messes with memories when I'm around."
With these words, she pushes some buttons and pulls some levers before her. Exla's memory corrosion comes to a stop, and she watches as the landscape of her mind is restored in the wake of her rainbow cloud trail. Senka somehow pulled back memories that should have already been erased.
"You astonish me." Exla leans over her console to look down at Senka.
"And you disappoint me." The doll girl replies in a disdainful tone. She peers up at Exla's avatar, who looks thunderstruck by the sudden scolding. "In the end, what you made is still pretty derivative."
Senka is referring to the fact that Exla created a giant mecha of all things when she could have erased all the enemies in something akin to an electromagnetic pulse or an explosion. There is absolutely no need for her to physically fly across her mind palace like this.
"If it were that easy, I wouldn't have had so much trouble." Leaning back on her seat, the cloud girl retorts with a pout. "And I like these things, alright? I know senpai does, too."
"If only she could see your gallant figure as you retake your world." Senka sneers in a tone that implies far more than her words do.
"Uhh, don't tell her about all this." Exla blushes and mumbles in embarrassment.
"Look, you even made the AI learn from you." The doll girl points forward at the horizon over which a giant mecha appears. Parts of it are solid, and others are made of gray goo, giving it a more organic-looking form than Exla's. But the intention behind taking this shape is clear; it wants to fight on equal standing and beat the cloud girl at her own game.
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"I'll take you up on that!" With this declaration, Exla pilots her mecha toward the Collective's avatar.
In the meantime, Sintress is left alone on the bridge of the Queen Pelomyx. Although the beam weapon from the Rhodos station has stopped, the Collective's encroachment on the ship's systems is arguably more dangerous since she can't deal with it using her Perfect Sanctuary. And with both Exla and Senka out of commission, there is nobody to combat the artificial intelligence's control. They may be heading in the general direction of the station for the time being, but the Collective could fly them into the sun if it decided to take them with it.
Exla's mecha throws a rocket-powered punch at the enemy, who takes the hit with a section of gray goo that absorbs the impact. At the same time, it delivers a cross-counter that hits Exla's chest armor and bounces off.
"Yet, she took more damage than was immediately visible." Senka comments in a narrator's tone.
"Oi, you're not much better yourself!" Exla complains when she realizes that the doll girl just made fun of her chest size. "And why are you waging psychological warfare on me alongside the enemy's physical attacks?"
As she says that, the two mecha exchange blows with little effect before separating from each other and pulling out new weapons. Exla draws a beam saber while unleashing a rain of small missiles from her shoulder-mounted launchers. The Collective avatar grows point-defense laser cannons from its grey goo and shoots down the barrage while bringing forth an energy blade of its own.
Shooting forward while surrounded by explosions, the battle for Exla's mind and body, the Queen Pelomyx, and potentially all life back on Earth, continues.
Inside this fantasy, blades of pure plasma can bounce off each other. Exla and the Collective strike and block as if it were a swordfight but take their distance to use ranged weapons like arm cannons and shoulder weapons between clashes. Despite being gigantic machines, their movements are incredibly fast.
"This is stupid." Senka mutters with her arms crossed and watches the fruitless battle in this virtual space. It looks like a war game now, especially considering the battle being waged all around them between the resurgent Exla avatars and the remnants of the Collective's armies. If the stakes weren't this high, she would have already left this digital world.
But as it stands, Exla's victory isn't assured yet. After all, the ever-evolving artificial intelligence of the Venus Fleet almost won against her at one point. If it overcomes her this time, there may be no way to take things back. To hopefully be able to aid her at that point, the doll girl will remain inside this simulation until the end.
"I'm sure senpai would love it." Overhearing Senka's mumblings, the cloud girl states with a grin.
"I know. Doesn't make it any less stupid." The doll girl grumbles.
"It's not a game, though. Even now, I can feel the Collective resurging." Exla says with a wry smile.
The truth is that the Venus Fleet artificial intelligence is indeed a formidable enemy. It planted a seed deep inside Exla's mind and let it grow silently without letting her feel a thing until it was too late. Shelnir must have had a hand in this approach. After all, the Collective would normally have attempted a brute-force takeover while relying on its vast processing power - which would have been doomed to fail instead.
Suddenly, the enemy's beam weapon grazes Exla's shoulder guard and causes a secondary explosion in the missiles stored inside it. The force throws the mecha off balance, but Exla catches it before it can fall out of the sky and opens up a chest cannon. It unleashes a scattered beam that burns away most of the enemy's gray goo. Underneath it is a skeleton-like mecha with much of its internal circuits exposed.
"Now!" Exla uses this opening and lunges forward with her beam saber. It pierces the perceived heart of the enemy mecha and causes a massive explosion that throws her back.
When the smoke parts, the enemy has disappeared without as much as scrap being left behind. But something tells Senka that this isn't over. Exla seems to be aware of that as well and stays on the lookout while the battle continues to rage around them. If this mecha was the brain of the Collective, then its smaller avatars would have ceased function or disappeared altogether by now.
That's when the ground rumbles and rises from below. It cracks open to reveal countless cables made from gray goo running through the earth. It would seem that during their fight, the Collective has been taking over core parts of Exla's mind again without her noticing. Like an exposed wound, the gray goo gathers into a pool from which a titanic mecha emerges.
"This looks familiar." Senka tilts her head and stares at the new enemy, which remains submerged below its waist. Attached to the top of its head is a smaller mecha - the one that Exla thought she destroyed earlier. It's now clad in new armor rather than gray goo and is missing everything below its waist, just like the far larger one.
With a swing of its massive hand, it scatters all the fighters in its vicinity. Enemies and allies alike are crushed and thrown through the air by this god of destruction. The visor of the larger mecha opens to reveal a beam cannon, which it uses to scour the battlefield.
"The larger they are, the harder they fall." Exla comments and flies up to avoid the beam. "A stationary target is nothing more than target practice."
With these words, she transforms part of her mecha's back into two cannons that flip over its shoulders. They unleash two purple beams with electricity crackling around their path due to their sheer energy at the smaller enemy mecha on top of the larger one's head. But a powerful barrier absorbs them at the last second.
Countless mechanical tentacles break out of the ground and shoot beams at Exla, who dodges them in midair and unleashes a barrage in return. Missile pods open on the gigantic mecha's back and shoulders, unleashing a rain of death on the surroundings. Within all that chaos, the cloud girl does her best to evade while striking back.
"This looks like a proper boss fight now." Grinning with nervous excitement, Exla looks down at the massive enemy and its effect on its surroundings. The sky is darkening and unleashing lightning, and a storm is picking up. The battle around them intensifies as if in response to this change in atmosphere.
"You say that, but it's all inside your mind." Senka doesn't let herself get pulled into the mood and shrugs. "How about doing it with the Moonlight Butterfly knockoff?"
"I've been trying to." With a wry smile, Exla responds while gesturing behind her. The trail of rainbow clouds that erased the Collective's hold on her mind is still emanating from the back of her mecha, but it no longer seems to affect the enemy.
"What then?" The doll girl asks with an eyebrow raised.
"I'll have to change the conditions." She points ahead, and her mecha mirrors the movement. Her voice is transmitted outside through speakers, and the Collective stops to listen. "A final battle with everything at stake."
With these words, their surrounding landscape begins to shift. Exla's countless avatars scatter into pixels that get pulled toward her mecha. Then, the very world of her mind palace itself begins to disintegrate and get drawn into her. Only the parts that were already taken over by the Collective remain in place, and soon, they find themselves in space. Asteroids and debris - broken and unrecoverable data - are the only things floating here besides Exla and the massive enemy.
Now that the part hidden underground has been dragged out, the Collective mecha's ugly truth is revealed. Instead of legs inside the gray goo, it's directly connected with the network of tendrils that had dug deep into Exla's world. Light pulses through them, and they only move under inertia in the weightlessness of space, showing that their purpose is to transmit data rather than fight.
"There is no more hiding. Either you fall, or I do." Crossing her arms, the cloud girl declares in a determined tone. Whoever gets destroyed now will have no place to retreat to. With everything on full display in this practically empty space, a direct confrontation staking all of their data and processes is unavoidable.
The Collective seems to understand Exla's intentions and readies itself for battle.
Sintress looks around anxiously as the systems on the Queen Pelomyx calm down. The encroachment of the Collective hasn't stopped as light pulses across the consoles like a steady heartbeat, but the alarm is no longer going off. Then she realizes that the ship is speeding up and appears to be heading straight for the Rhodos station now.
The artificial intelligence has determined that to maximize its chance of survival, it will have to escape the confines of this ship. Without a replicator, it can't create a body large enough for its processes to leave, so ramming the Queen Pelomyx into the massive Rhodos station and escaping there would be the best option.
If it does indeed take over the Rhodos station, it would be the worst-case scenario. It would have access to the Imagination Engine's core systems and be able to lock out everybody from its usage. Coupled with the fact that the Akashic Records are located on the station as well, it could quite accurately predict the future and become nigh unstoppable.
"Exla, finish this right now! You are running out of time!" Sintress walks over to the motionless cloud girl on her chair and shouts into her ear, hoping that her words will reach her.
"You heard that?" Senka comments while leaning back in her cockpit seat.
"Time moves faster in here, so it should be alright." Exla replies with a nervous laugh while steering her mecha through the barrage of enemy attacks. So far, she hasn't had success in damaging the small mecha on top of the large one, which is most likely the main body of the Collective. She's chipping away at everything else, but it gets mended by the vast mass it still has available. "Just need to find a way through that shield."
"Could it be the Perfect Sanctuary?" With a thoughtful tilt of her head, the doll girl wonders. Considering almost the entire Venus Fleet was destroyed by Sintress's barrier, it's only natural for the artificial intelligence to learn from it. While it may not be able to replicate it in reality due to its lack of access to the Imagination Engine, inside a simulation is a different matter.
"Then it would have used it from the start." The cloud girl dodges the barrage of beams and missiles and returns fire while considering this possibility.
"Considering it's only covering the most vital part, I have reason to believe that it requires a lot of processing power to make something supposedly impenetrable in a simulation." Senka points at the barrier that only covers the side of the smaller mecha where it gets attacked.
"That could be a trap." Exla responds while flying in a zig-zag pattern to avoid the countless mechanical tentacles trying to grab her. She shoots many of them down with a machinegun, then turns around and activates her boosters to fly away faster.
The gigantic Collective mecha follows her, the asteroids and debris in its way bouncing off its surface without doing any damage like rain hitting a car window. Along the way, it continues to shoot at Exla, who has her hands full dodging now that she showed the enemy her back.
"Where are you going?" The doll girl asks, looking around the cockpit where the virtual screen gives her a complete view of their surroundings. Since Exla consolidated her mind palace into the mecha, there's only empty space now.
"I'm charging up an attack." The cloud girl explains while pointing at a moving bar on their HUD. "Hopefully your theory is correct. Because I don't think there's any way to deal with a limitless Perfect Sanctuary inside a simulation."
"I'd rather it be perfect." Senka remarks with a shrug.
"What do you..." Exla rebuts but then realizes something.
"I see you caught on." The doll girl crosses her arms and grins.
Without another word, Exla turns the mecha around and unleashes her charged attack: A massive barrage from all her weapons at once. Energy beams curve under the influence of her imagination, and missiles avoid the enemy's point-defense lasers to strike their intended targets.
They all head for the core of the Collective, the small mecha embedded in the larger one's head. It erects a spherical Perfect Sanctuary around itself right before the attacks hit, blocking everything without sustaining a scratch. The larger body ceases all its movements, and the tentacles no longer pulse with light. Senka was right; the core was cut off from the rest by its own Perfect Sanctuary!
Exla charges through the fire of the explosion right as the barrier goes down and tackles the small mecha. The impact separates it from the larger body below, ripping the flimsy gray goo tendrils reconnecting the two parts. She then grabs the enemy mecha's head and unleashes her final weapon concealed inside her arm.
"Don't you dare say it out loud!" Senka demands, but Exla doesn't care.
"Shining Finger!" She roars and generates powerful vibrations from her palm that instantly heat up the enemy's body. Internal explosions rock the smaller mecha, and gray goo flows out of its orifices before scattering into pixels.
Finally, its deformed remains glitch out and disintegrate into nothingness before Exla, who watches in grim satisfaction. The massive mecha floating in space behind her remains unmoving, showing that the core was indeed concentrated in this smaller obvious weak spot. The Collective thought the Perfect Sanctuary could shield it from all harm like it did the Queen Pelomyx from the Venus Fleet. But just like its fleet before, it proved to be its undoing.
With a wave of the cloud girl's hand, everything created by the Collective dissipates into pixels. Then, the asteroid field is cleared up, and all that remains is empty space. There is no place for any remnants of the artificial intelligence to hide here. It was eradicated without a trace.
"We did it, Senka!" Exla jumps up from her chair and cheers.
"Alright. Now that this is done, I'm out." Without so much as congratulating Exla on her hard-fought victory, the doll girl disappears into thin air.
"Uhh, you could at least take a moment to celebrate with me." Sighing, the doll girl sits back down and grumbles. Then, she looks around herself with a lonely smile. "I'll have to leave it this way for now."
She's referring to her mind palace, now blank despite regaining control over all her data and processes. They're now concentrated in her mecha, floating in empty space. Thinking back to some video games, she considers that this is like the starting point of sci-fi survival games where one has to build up an automated empire from nothing.
"Guess I have something to look forward to once this is over." She remarks while powering down her mecha. With one last look at the ambient background lighting of the depowered cockpit, Exla logs out and returns to her real body.