"I'm getting restless." Throne tensely tapped his foot on the ground.
"Gods, just wait a minute!" Vastoria shot back, "In any case, weren't you the one who said we absolutely can't give up no matter what!?"
"Did I?" He shrugged, "Well, even if I did, just admit that we have nothing else to do to get past this. We've exhausted all our options, and my hand's bent over backwards in the worst way possible."
They've thrown everything they had at this impenetrable ice wall, and yet have come out broken-handed. To review, they tried hitting it through the sky, as well as from the ground, yet the wall showed no signs of letting anyone enter. Throne is objectively correct in this situation, their best bet is to give up for now and return to the residential area to think of a better solution. But Vastoria was adamant.
"I got it!" She approached the wall, sticking her tongue out to lick it, "Just like before, if we slowly but surely thaw it out...!"
"Nope. You'll rip your tongue eventually out if you try that." He pulled her back before she could start.
"My tongue isn't golden like yours!" She argued.
"But it can still get damaged." He refuted, "Golden or not, rip a tongue out and you won't ever utter a comprehensible word again. Remember, we still don't know what happens to our damaged parts after the reset..."
"Hm."
Sitting down on the cloudy floor to think up another solution, Vastoria was beginning to feel her heart rate increase. The pressure was on, Throne was now mere moments away from flying off, with pretty high chances that he was gonna steal her away with him. If she didn't think of something soon, anything even, then they'd have to go through this whole process all over again...
"Got anything?" He asked calmly.
"S-Shut up! I'll think of something!" She angrily patted the ground next to her, "In the meantime, help me think!"
"...You're pretty childish yourself." He chuckled, humoring her as he sat himself next to her, both staring directly into the towering wall in front of them, "Did Migu perhaps rub off on you during your past encounters, or were you just like this from the start?"
"Don't bring her up now." She sighed, "My poor heart already has enough to deal with as is."
"Vastoria..." He inquired, "Sigh, okay. You're free to go."
"Hm?" She raised her brows in astonishment, "Free?"
"I only dragged you here because I thought you would be immune to the barrier's force field." He admitted shamefully, "And well, now that I know you're just as useless as me..."
"I'm not useless!" She pouted, "And I'm not giving up either!"
Her defiant tone suggested she was tired of his constantly changing opinions. At first he asked her for help in this case, then he forced her to partake in it until she obliged, and now that things are looking thin, he suddenly tells her to go about her days free of the burden? It made no sense, it was complete 180 after complete 180, and all those half circles made her dizzy! Now that she gave him her word that they would figure out the secrets of the Shrine together, there was absolutely no way that she would just choose to give up.
"I'm not Migu..." She frowned.
"Oho, first negative comment about your little crush I heard since we've met!" He teased her, "Now I know a miracle's incoming."
"I'll bend your finger." She threatened.
"Sure, if it makes you feel better about yourself, by all means." He handed her his hand, "Go wild. I don't feel any pain in it anyways."
"Ew, get it away from me!" She backed away, "Come on, stop!"
"Heheh, eh? Vastoria." He called out to her, "Wait, stop!"
"No, get away-!" She kept moving backwards until she finally opened her Eyes to look at him, "E-Eh?"
The world in front of her was a cyan Blue. Throne was staring at her completely bewildered, and as she stood up, she noticed he was getting more and more translucent. As if vanishing into thin air, he was nowhere to be seen from her point of view, but his voice was still as clear as ever.
"Vastoria! Can you hear me!?" He hollered.
"Yeah!" She ducked back down to see him again, "Am I inside the-"
"Vastoria!" He shouted, "If you can hear me, get out of there!"
"I can hear-"
"Vastoria!" He shouted, "Tch, dammit!"
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Kicking the barrier, not even caring for the toe he broke off out of sheer anger, he stomped around in a circle with an increasingly hot temper. As it turned out, Vastoria had somehow managed to phase through the icy wall, despite having golden parts on her. Without even realizing it, she was right in front of the Shrine, but what really worried her was that Throne apparently can't see nor hear her while she's there.
"What do I do?" She pondered, "If I step out now, I can inform him that I'm fine, but I might not get this chance again. What to do..."
Eventually, she resolved to push onwards without him. In her mind, it was the sensible thing to do. Throne's one and only goal was to find out what was inside the Shrines, and possibly find a way to return to the Living World. Regardless, he wasn't the type to worry about his friends all that much, it seemed. If Vastoria stepped outside, he would be furious with her, so though it was cruel to him, she knew that it would be for the best in the long run. Now, separated for the nth time, she walked down the stairs of the Shrine, leading to the darkness below....
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***
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"Vastoria!" Throne kept shouting from the outside, "Dammit, how'd she do that!?"
Attempting to hastily mimic her trick, he applied his rump bottom to the clouds below before sliding backwards, like a dog wiping his behind but backwards. This comedically ironic display was cut short, however, by him slamming his back into the wall. The surprise made him bite his tongue, resulting in a rather loud and painful scream of agony. He might not admit this to anyone openly, but in that moment, he was terrified.
"She made it in and left me outside!" He slammed his fist on the wall, "What the hell makes her more qualified than me!?"
There was no guarantee that she was even alive by this point. Through his Eyes, all he saw was her phasing into the wall, seemingly disappearing like a magic trick. That's when an idea struck him like a metal bat, and he stood up before flapping his wings with a newfound vigor. In a flash, he was back above the Shrine, looking down to reveal his hunch was right.
"The doors are open. She must have done that on purpose to tell me she's safe and sound." He caught himself sighing in relief, "Dammit, so if she's fine, why didn't she take me with her!? Did she... Did she use me just to stab me in the back and revive all by herself!?"
The misunderstanding was tragic, however all too reasonable to assume. He risked a lot to get her to this step, and yet the moment she found some miraculous way to bypass this impenetrable defense, she left him in the wayside. He was beyond livid, and yet she was happily traversing the Shrine by herself. The very thought of her just up and reviving down there and living a new and happy life in the World of the Living made him feel sick to his stomach.
"Did I just get fucking cucked out of life?" He asked himself, "By a motherfucking woman!?"
Opting to self-destruct in a fit of passionate rage, he stalled his wings for a bit before flapping them crazily through the air. Utilizing the speedier way of flying he had previously showcased to catch up to Vastoria's flight, with the only exception being that he didn't pull back on purpose, he had crashed into the barrier at full force. But if it was just that, then we couldn't exactly classify it as a self-destruct now, could we?
"Nah, if I did it like that, the force field would just send me back home!" He shouted, pulling back in the very last moment before he hit the ground to suddenly move towards the wall from a horizontal angle, "There! If I maintain this altitude, grazing the clouds as I ram myself towards it, I'll be hitting the ice version of the barrier, and not the force field!"
It was a moronically stupid idea to even think up, much less attempt. The ice wall harms those who hurt themselves on it, while the force field merely flings them back. By all accounts, this could well and truly be the only way to commit suicide in Heaven 2.0, and yet he was so furious that he didn't care anyways. This was, in a way, just another attempt at reviving in the Living World for him.
"Screw Heaven! Screw Vastoria, and screw the Shrine!" He yelled until his voice gave out, "I'll die here and then we'll see where the Gods place me! Heaven 3? Hell!? I don't care, just so long as it's not here, goddammit!"
Alas, his time was coming to a close. The countdown had reached 1 second, and yet that was all it took for reason to repossess him. He pulled back as hard as he could, just barely managing to turn the ice wall back into the force field, as he flew at such tremendous speeds that he almost touched the Shrine just from the sheer speed alone. As he sat there in suspended motion, he couldn't help but laugh at himself over this.
"So if I had just flown a bit faster..." He smirked, "I might've even been able to join her... Shit."
At the very next moment, the elastic bubble slung him back hundreds of millions of kilometers back to the residential area. Going so fast he turned into a flaming ball of fire, a meteor that refused to burn up due to the laws of Heaven 2.0, he eventually made it to a street near enough to his abode. The ground trembled nastily once he made contact, and every angel within a 5 kilometer radius was alerted of his appearance. The first to greet him, however, happened to be the one girl he least wanted to see now of all times.
"Are you alright, sir!?" Migu and another male angel ran up to check on him.
"You..." He snapped his fingers in front of Migu, "What's your name?"
"O-Oh, I don't really..." She hesitated to answer.
"Yeah no shit, none of us don't really have names!" He got fussy, "What's the name you chose to go by, dammit."
His previously broken hand had completely healed up back to normal. In other words, there is a high possibility that the reset just happened. If Migu still knew her name, however, then he was actually considering asking her to rejoin the investigation. However, that was sadly not the case.
"...I'm not telling you!" Migu shooed him off, "Weirdo, what the hell are you gonna do with that information?"
"I see... Well, you'll be happy to hear I've already figured out what I needed to know just from your stupidly ignorant answer." Throne sighed, "It didn't work."
"Huh?" The man accompanying Migu wondered, "What didn't work?"
"She-" Throne stopped himself mid sentence, "Never mind, Vastoria told me not to get her involved."
Once everything had settled in his mind, and the rage had tempered, he realized just how stupidly he was acting just now. A man like him, throwing a tantrum after not being let inside the Shrine... It was more than just a pitiful display, so to speak. Vastoria may have betrayed him for her personal gain, but he was better than this. If nothing else, he was to respect her prior wishes of not getting the girl whom she was closest to, Migu, involved anymore. This was his way of returning his lost pride, and before he knew it, he was back to his usual calm demeanor.
"Who's Vastoria?" Migu furrowed her brows, "Wait, are you sure you don't have the wrong person?"
"Yes, I'm sure." He made fun of her voice, "Well then, you two carry on chatting like the random nobodies you are. I'll be getting out of your hair."
Flapping his wings once more, he returned to his run-down shack in the blink of an Eye. More planning was in order. The day would come where he sees that stone wall interior of the Shrine yet, but that day was not today.