As Rosa arrived once again on Aluna, she took flight in a prowl for her assigned prey. Of course, her biggest reason for such a high altitude had nothing to do with getting a good perspective, and everything to do with her own wellbeing.

Kori in the meanwhile had arrived on this moon with far less information, remaining ignorant to the terms of everything going on. Velvet had warned Rosa about her actions, that the lens pieces were projecting a powerful UV radiation that would cause some problems for Rosa if she were to be exposed to them. More than that though, it just so happened that this solar intensity was of a magnitude designed to absolutely decimate the temporal. In so many ways, Kori had just gone from the frying pan to only fall into the fire itself. The massive UV rays were even making holo communication impossible, preventing Kori from requesting aid. Rosa herself took into consideration her circumstances too, they were on this side now. Without the citadel’s strangeness, Rosa could no longer create a spell domain anymore. She did have friends here she could reach out too.. but she had to be careful about that. None of them knew the state Kori was in, that could present an added danger.

Actually, considering the science behind everything, the worst of anyone to have suddenly involved would be Holi.. Kori’s own creation. The fiend would have all the authority over the nanite cluster, Holi had to be kept uninvolved. Fortunately, even her own equipment was reporting that communication channels were unavailable, so this would not be a place under Holi’s current purview. It was then that Rosa noticed a small familiar ship floating by, towing a small piece of lens that outright glowed with solar radiation. That was Velvet again, fluttering around. However, Holi was set to keep Velvet under watch, she could thus assume that at least a few nanites were taking shelter inside with Velvet. There was little recourse, she simply caught the whole thing by surprise with a sudden elemental shift, making her way inside as Velvet scrambled to get her instrumentation alternatives up and working so suddenly.

“Sorry to drop in so unexpectedly, but I’m going to need a hand.” “Obviously there were some unexpected complications. Nothing serious, right?” “Uh, about that..” Rosa brought Velvet up to speed with what was currently going on. “So, yeah, I’m going to need some help.” “Shit… I’m really sorry mom, I didn’t know us coming back like that would cause something this bad. Shit, to think how badly everything would have gone had we actually succeeded then.” “Hey, don’t blame yourself for the stupid decisions of other people.” “Maybe, but I’m certainly going to help you fix this mess.” “Good, because while I know our Kori is still somewhere, I don’t have a clue where to look. I don’t even know where to find the fiend Kori either, and I need to make sure she doesn’t escape. Your genius of a trap is probably the only thing stopping this from going really wrong, so that’s great, by the way. Now, how do we find her?” “You might have forgotten, but hunting DMAs has been my life. If she’s a DMA herself now, full and full through, I’ll find her.” Rosa had a feeling she had come to the right person here, while Velvet worked to prepare for the hunt. The solar saturated environment was going to make this far more challenging than it had been before, but by this point Velvet understood that Rosa had endured far worse.

Even so, Velvet understood that Holi would need to be excluded from this little trip. Fortunately, she had gotten used to OSIDF field distorters that would get in the nanite’s way. Actually, it would probably be for the best to outright EMP her entire transport, Rosa would be more dependable there. This way, by the time Holi recovered, they would be gone already. Sure, Holi could just go after them, but that’s why she needed to leave a careful letter, one explaining how Velvet needed a bit of time to herself for a while. Certainly, this late in her mission, Holi would be willing to allow her that. The complication however would be the object of her current voyage, the lens fragment she was dragging around. That was still something that needed to be dropped carefully, especially if there were concerns about potentially crushing a person.

“Don’t worry, I’ll look after it then.” “Uh, you do know how dangerous it is, right?” “You do know who created that thing in the first place, right? Well, Axln and I, it would be both of our responsibilities, even long after you’re gone. Leaving the stuff on the moon really won’t work for a long-term solution either, someone is going to have to break it all down again. Don’t forget too, UV light just translates elementally to fire and light, which might be at least a bit more bearable.” “Really? I would have figured that the elemental reaction would have its raw composite elements react too, leaving it projecting an intensity of stone and frost too. Wouldn’t such start to react with dark elements then as well, considering elemental movement? The wood and water pair are completely absent here at least, though I’m not so sure about the wind stuff.” “My, you have been taking your studies seriously. There would be no composite for wind at all, don’t worry. I expect with the lack of atmosphere, you were more worrying about stuff like lightning, but it hasn’t been as if electric currents have been involved. Your EMP idea would be the only time it would have come up at all, far too miniscule to matter here. Ionics and thermite both correspond much closer to light and fire elements, the core reason why those two elements are so powerful right now. Meanwhile, considering the environment I just came from, a cold dark chamber blossoming with elementals, having those particular ones handy might help to stabilize my own elemental composition. It was really really wet too, but I guess I can’t expect to have everything so easily.” Rosa did feel slightly guilty at partially bluffing her way past Velvet, but she didn’t want to keep wasting time. Her spell shift had actually rendered a lot of the known elemental laws and influence generally mute, but the entire experience had thus left her own chaos rather unchecked. Having something on hand with which to burn away the excess would leave her much more refreshed, especially since it could give her the opportunity to outright drain Kori completely.

Rosa thus turned her attention to the shard, detaching it simply by her proximity as the shift disabled all the technical restraints attached to it. Setting a frost platform to suspend it proved challenging too, such a load was far more than she had ever needed to endure before. Okay, maybe this process wasn’t going to leave her as refreshed as she might have hoped, but she still had to see this done. Rosa was determined to see this through, no matter what might try to slow her down. Kori’s future was at stake here, Rosa would accept no sacrifices. Such conviction was certainly tested though, Velvet having completed her preparations and thus being in need of new transport as well. Of course, compared to her first load, Velvet’s addition was almost nothing at all, even with all the equipment the girl had opted to bring along for the ride. Gadgets, clearly the trend of the future was to have far too many gadgets, it was common to both Velvet and Mheridz. Then again, so was always coming prepared, so this really wasn’t that bad of a thing at all. Rosa was pretty impressed at how dependable both girls were proving to be to that end, both being so resourceful. Velvet even had a line handy with which to dangle one of her tracking devices down below Rosa’s shift, so that the thing could still function properly.

“It’s a thermal scanner, checking a heatmap of the surroundings. However, I tinkered with it so that it’s goal was to focus only on a narrow range of temperatures, the same range DMAs have been observed to occupy. Typically, with this configuration, the sub-optimal temperature of space would have made it actually harder to do this.. but with things here outright baking in the solar heat, that’s not quite so true anymore. The hard part is reading a screen that small this far away, so I hope you can keep us reasonably steady in flight. Patrol around carefully, I’ll let you know when anything stands out. Just, could you get me a moment or two to get everything organized first before we set out?” “A moment or two? Why so long?” “Right, I forgot that moments are actually a finite measure of time for some people. I was using the words abstractly, the same way our world uses the phrase. Please don’t get the two mixed up.” Yup, Velvet was surprisingly very prepared for this sort of sudden occurrence, a clear expert in the field. Rosa could see a touch of the girl’s father in how Velvet handled responsibility as well. Sure, Rosa could also tell the girl was pretty nervous right now, barely holding on in the tension of circumstances, but all while clearly trusting Rosa to accomplish anything Velvet could not. Such was yet another strand of confidence Rosa was determined to not let down either.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

「Detecting a sudden chaotic alteration of probability at play, with you as the target. However.. this alteration is appearing to have absolutely no impact at all.」 Well, was Kori really so weak that she couldn’t even make use of even a slight margin of her chaos right now? 「The chaotics applied to such an alteration are very weak, but that should have left an equally weak impact. Instead, it is as if something is directly overwhelming the entirety of such influence, your overall probability remaining in a sizable net positive.」 Something.. so then something principled. Rosa knew of nothing in scientific principle that actually governed matters of chance and statistics. However, maybe then it wasn’t quite so scientific.. more of a common principle.. one she hadn’t otherwise grown familiar with. Fate, the ability to steer one's course simply by arranging the terms of conditions towards a given path, making the outcome more predictable and less random. With absolutely everything Rosa had going for her, she would then have the terms of her own fate completely under her control, having moved everything towards a single outcome. Her resolve had forged her path towards a single destiny, and all others were far beyond her.

“There, I found something. It has to be her, hiding in a space between the lenses, inside a lunar crater, probably chosen because it would be one of the coolest, darkest spots she could find.” “Yeah, that sounds like her. Let’s go say hello.” Velvet scrambled to gather her supplies together as Rosa brought them down for a smooth landing. Kori at this point wasn’t feeling very good at all, not in all of these unbearable principles. Just how many traps did Rosa have set for her, just how screwed up was this timeline? There wasn’t even anyone she could reach out here, she was completely isolated. She had been spending her efforts clawing at the sealed gates to the temporal, trying to force her way through, but she simply didn’t have access to enough strength. The worst part was how it was starting to feel like her very arm was starting to betray her, the principles of her cybernetic arm drawing even her last vestiges of chaos away from her as her weakness grew. Even at that, she didn’t have the strength to fight that problem off either, like another trap of Rosa’s which had been set for her in this timeline. Kori was starting to feel decidedly lied to, chaos didn’t seem nearly as great as she had originally believed, the people of this timeline had clearly found something which was somehow even greater than that.

Without any warning at all, Kori was thus blown forward from an ensuant blast behind her, a giant fragment of the strange things scattered around her crashing down into that nearby space, the area around her maxing out on the oppressive principles that were being so taxing for her. Quickly though, she felt the principles at play shift to a more elemental form, her own presence opting from one of cold to one of void. Rosa was here, Rosa had found her. Rosa had probably thrown that stupid thing at her, possibly even missing on purpose. The girl was clearly toying with what little life remained to her. It didn’t take long for the prey to spot the hunter either, nor the hunter’s companion. So Velvet was in on all of this too, huh? Velvet had probably been working on all of this in their absence, during the battle, the two daughters being key support in ensuring an absolute victory. Kori didn’t even have the resolve anymore to resist, her fate was entirely in the hands of the victors once again.. just like they were so recently before.

“Okay, I surrender, I’ll do whatever you want.” “Surrender? Don’t make me laugh, that’s not how things work in this timeline. There is no surrender, there is no mercy. Any temporal who takes any presence in either world’s domain will find itself obliterated without remorse. In that, your fate is no different.” “I’d go back, really, honestly I would. I’ve been trying, but I can’t seem to be able to.” “That would be because the temporal is under lockdown after our most recent assault upon them. When the temporal came, they fell upon our wrath. When the temporal fled, we simply sent our wrath after them. It appears even the temporal can fall to the wrath of the abyssal unleashed by an opened black hole in their own domain.” “You.. you devastated the temporal plane?” “Like I said, no mercy, no remorse, only oblivion. Now your turn has come too.” Kori had never known such chilling terror before, the Rosa before her was absolutely unfamiliar to her. Certainly, the girl was a demon, no mortal at all. Kori started to back away carefully, leaving the area of the shift and pressing herself against one of the searing shards in an effort to escape a bigger threat. However, as before, her arm was proving highly unstable, a surge of ions flooding along it and into her. Kori thus collapsed to the ground, hardly even able to stand up at all.

Rosa took a moment to pause, a subtle concern passing over her. She needed to deal with the temporal threat, but having cybernetics go haywire could also endanger the Kori she wanted to save. However, why was such a thing suddenly going haywire, what might have compelled it to break down like this? Was it the proximity to temporal for too long? No, that didn’t make sense either, they had endured worse. Instead, it was less seeming like the thing was malfunctioning.. and more somehow working by design. 「Principles of true chaos identified. The arm in question has been forcefully.. hacked? Is that the correct term? An infusion of true chaos is in play to have principles deliver a variety of random impairments as a result.」 True chaos!? Rosa knew that such had to be Kori’s work, the expert hacker at it once again. So Kori was hiding here in the cover of true chaos, holding a part of her that wasn’t quite a part of her. But what part of her would that be? Wait, even this scene made such clear, their own cybernetics had become an integral part of them, but not organically. Kori knew the ways of such artificial life though, much like the nanites she had raised herself. If she could spindel true chaos into withdrawing to her most familiar sanctuary, one decidedly unfamiliar beyond principles which couldn’t even translate through the temporal…

Why was she questioning Kori’s potential anyway, the girl had wrought far more paradox than that already. No, instead, Rosa was firmly convinced of such truths. Kori had been left in the confines of her cybernetic cage, a desperation of self-preservation, and it was time that Rosa provided such conviction with the keys for her escape. Rosa unfurled her wings once again, making a rapid dash squarely at Kori, her chaotic arm pinning Kori to the ground as it began its feast once again. However, she did not direct the flow into herself, she had something far more appropriate in mind. All of the chaos pulled from Kori was instead directed towards Kori’s cybernetic arm, all in a more familiar form of their style of chaos. Kori herself collapsed completely, no longer of enough integrity to establish any sort of influence of presence at all. Kori’s white arm even started to fade in the process, becoming less of a thing at all. This itself started to worry Rosa for a while.. until suddenly the gaps started to fill in with blanket shadows.

「The link with Kori has been successfully restored, although the process has left the overall link slightly distorted. Such may simply need more opportunity to recover too.」 Rosa was outright crying with joy at the good news, Velvet even cautiously approached a scene where it seemed like everything was accomplished. She hadn’t actually done anything to deal with the problem, but she really didn’t know what she could have done. Bringing Rosa to such a scene was as much as she could accomplish, but it seemed that was all Rosa had really needed. Velvet’s part was finally played out in full, she was free to enjoy the pride of her own accomplishments. Kori too.. Kori felt more than just a little accomplished. She still had no actual awareness of what had transpired, but whatever invasion had attempted to deny her very existence had found itself instead the one thus denied. Even so, she really didn’t feel that good right now, probably for more reasons than she would understand at this point. For now, she needed a chance to rest.. a chance the others were very willing to provide her.

Rosa ensured that both of her two companions were brought safely away from their current hazardous environment, the role of such a place having been played out in full. As the final champion of the temporal had fallen at long last, there would be no more battlefields they would need to contest dominion of.