His words took a moment to digest into their minds before each of them gave their reaction in their own way.

“Huh?!” Vikram asked looking shocked.

“What?!” Gram asked with a distasteful look on his face.

“Fusion?!” Maxwell exclaimed, looking alarmed.

“Fusion?” Martin asked, looking puzzled.

“Fusion, huh?” Natsu asked, nodding as if understanding the reasoning without being told about it.

“What the hell?” William asked, raising an eyebrow in

“F-Fusion?!” Fred asked in a shrill voice, and blushing brightly. “You mean, sharing bodies?!”

Fred’s reaction caused the others to become surprised and turn to look at her in confusion. After all, other than William, the rest of them had no idea that he was actually a girl.

“What’s with your reaction, Fred? You sounded like a girl there,” commented Vikram in bemusement.

“Uh? Oh! Um…!” She said hesitantly, realising her mistake and becoming nervous.

“Also, you’re red in the face. Are you feeling okay?” Maxwell asked, looking concerned.

Fred squirmed while fidgeting with her hands as she could not think of a way out of it.’

It was then that William spoke up and said, “Aren’t you guys imagining it? I mean, ha—his reaction sounded pretty normal to me.”

“Normal to you?” Vikram asked, raising an eyebrow with a strange look on his face. “But… he sounded like a girl though.”

“Ah. You’re thinking too much into it,” said William calmly with a smile. “In fact, there are even men in our army that sound a little girlish when they become startled by something unexpected.”

There was a moment of stunned silence among them before Maxwell Vikram replied with a pitiful look on his face.

“That’s just… strange…”

“I guess that’s how it is for some men back in the old days,” said Maxwell, accepting the statement without any doubt.

William nodded with a smile and said, “Yeah! So, forget about that and see what this fusion think is about.”

Nodding in agreement, they turned away from Fred and turned back to Lakshman. Fred looked up at William in amazement, and he simply winked at her with a smile as if to state that he would support her disguise to be a man. They did not know that Natsu had been observing their reactions in complete silence.

The Zeklock Hero had first focused on watching Fred’s strange behaviour, and then to shifted his focus on seeing William trying to defend the Bulwark Hero by giving a rather strange reason. Going by the current reactions they were giving off as they seemed to exchange wordlessly with each other via eye contact. Then he noticed the jacket that Fred was wearing, which he remembered that it belonged to William.

“I see,” he thought to himself, understanding what was happening and smiled before turning back to face Lakshman.

“What do you mean Fusion? Explain yourself!” Gram demanded in a serious voice.

“You’ve seen how strong he is,” said Lakshman wearily, “and the fact that I basically got beaten to a pulp. I can barely stand on my own feet anymore. At least, the rest of you aren’t as badly injured as me comparatively.”

“So, you’re stating that we’re no match for him and should work together to fight him off,” said Maxwell thoughtfully. “I understand, but why fusion? Shouldn’t we just work together like earlier?”

“For starters, I can barely stand without feeling pain from various areas around my body,” replied Lakshman with a wry smile, “and because we’ve never fought together up until now. So, suddenly trying to have a teamwork now when we barely understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses isn’t a good experiment to test out right now. It’s a do or die situation, and we must be prepared to place all our cards on the table.”

“It is the only thing we can do right now to save this planet and ourselves from certain end,” said Ward telepathically, agreeing with Lakshman’s reasoning and method of retaliation. “I approve of this plan.”

“That’s true,” agreed Maxwell with a nod of his head.

“Makes sense to me,” said Vikram in agreement as well.

“It certainly is the right choice to make,” Natsu also said in agreement.

“Uh… There’s no other choice, I guess,” said Martin with a sigh of resignation.

“Yeah!” William said firmly while Fred fidgeted nervously.

While all of them agreed, Gram looked unhappy as he snapped, “Like hell I’m going to share my body with you!”

“Stop complaining, Gram. It’s only temporary,” stated Lakshman wearily.

“So what?! I refuse to share my body with a demon!” Gram retaliated angrily.

“Hey!” Vikram exclaimed, looking irritably at him. “Stop being so mean to him! At least, he fought hard for all of us and is reduced to this state compared to you, who was hiding this whole time!”

Gram gritted his teeth angrily and clenched his fists tightly while staring at him. He wanted to say something back at him, but he felt he could not because what Vikram had said was the truth. Up until now, he had been hiding behind a rubble of rock while protecting himself while the Solaris Hero was out in the battlefield, fighting for their sake and taking a harsh beating that would have certainly knocked any other person senseless.

“Drop it, Vikram,” said Lakshman tiredly. “Fighting amongst ourselves isn’t what we should be doing right now.”

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“I know that,” replied Vikram, continuing to look angrily at Gram. “Because of this selfish idiot’s ego, he’ll drag the rest of us down with him.”

“What did you say?!” Gram exclaimed angrily.

“Just look at what’s been happening and you’d realise the problem at hand, your highness!” Vikram said, waving his hand around and looking fiercely at him.

“D-Don’t mock me…!” The Tempest Hero replied, losing his confidence and becoming very saddened. He finally started to lose his temperament and slowly asked, “E-Even if we do agree with this plan… just how do we go about doing this? Do we, like, fuse our weapons and give it to him, or do we combine our bodies together by an ancient method that we don’t know about?”

“Lucky wouldn’t have brought up this topic if he didn’t know about it. Right?” Vikram asked, and turned to look curiously at the king from another world.

Lakshman smiled and nodded before saying, “Yes, but the original idea belonged to someone else.”

“Someone else?” Martin asked, looking curiously while others look at him with interest.

“Yes. Let’s speak with that person and find out the proper details,” he said and clapped his hands together before muttering, “Mind Space.”

In an instant, everyone felt as if the ground beneath them crumbled away, and they felt like they were falling down a long hole of complete darkness. A moment later, they gently came to a stop and landed on firm ground before the scenery around them completely shifted from total darkness to a lovely garden spreading out all around them.

“What the?” Vikram asked, blinking in surprise. “Where are we?”

“Yeah. I wonder where we are?” Maxwell asked curiously.

“Man. This place looks so peaceful,” commented William with a wry smile.

“Everything looks so lush and beautiful,” muttered Fred as she glanced around at the surroundings.

Natsu knelt down and picked up a flower off the grass and examined it before saying, “This feels… unreal.”

“It is,” said a familiar voice from behind them, and they turned to see three people standing there, one being Lakshman, another who looked similar to him, and a tiny figure floating next to Lakshman.

“Welcome to my Unconscious World,” Lakshman greeted them with a smile.

Vikram, Maxwell, Martin, Fred, and William stared at him in surprise and asked simultaneously, “Unconscious… World?”

“Ah. The world within our bodies and beneath the consciousness,” said Natsu, quickly understanding and nodding in understanding with a smile.

“Fascinating,” commented Ward lightly in a telepathic voice while looking impressed.

“Say hello to the fairy the resides in my Hero Weapon,” said Lakshman with a smile, and he indicated at the fairy hovering next to him with his hand.

“Greetings, heroes,” said the fairy politely and bowed to them.

“Huh?”

“Fairy?”

“That resides in our Hero Weapons?”

“Seriously?”

There were mixed reactions from them when they heard about the fairy and became very confused.

“Um… fairy?” Vikram asked, looking puzzled. “I thought they’d be a bigger?”

“Yes,” said William, nodding in agreement. “In fairy tales I heard about, fairies are some magical creatures that are big, strong, and very wise. But this… this looks like a pixie.”

That instantly made the fairy become very irritated as she glared at them and exclaimed, “I’m not a pixie! Watch!”

In the next moment, there was a flash of light before she transformed into her original form, startling them all in the process.

“See? I am a fairy!” She snapped at them with an irritated look on her face.

While they looked at her in surprise, Vikram had a strange expression on his face, and he muttered, “I’m in love.”

“Hmph! As expected of a fairy’s beauty, right?” The fairy asked, looking very smug about herself.

As they looked at her in awe, there was a sudden puff of smoke before she turned back into her small form. This made both her and Vikram groan at almost the exact same time but for different reasons.

“I hate how my time limit to stay in my original form is so short,” she complained in great sadness.

“I can’t love something so small,” said Vikram, looking depressed.

Gram watched them in silence before catching sight of Asura, who had chuckled with a smug look on his face.

“Who’re that? Why are there two of you in here?” He asked Lakshman while pointing at Asura.

The one to reply to him was Asura, who pointed at Lakshman and said, “This is whom you call Lucky,” and then jabbed a thumb at himself while saying, “and I’m the one called Asura.”

There was a moment of stunned silence before Vikram exclaimed, “Wait?! You’re telling me that you’re twins?!”

Lucky blinked at him in surprise while Asura burst into a hilarious laughter. Once he calmed down, he looked at the Sonic Hero as if he was enjoying the humour.

“Ah, Vikram. That is so dumb but funny at the same time! Do more things like that, and I’ll be entertained for life!”

“Huh? You’re not?” Vikram asked, looking bewildered.

“It’s… complicated to explain,” said Lakshman with a wry smile.

Gram looked at him and then at Asura, who noticed him looking and smirked in his direction. He became irritated at Asura, but he decided to ignore him and focus his attention on the matter at hand.

“Let’s get on with this fusion thing,” he said in a firm voice, and they suddenly became very serious.

“Is it possible to fuse at all?” Maxwell asked curiously.

“It is,” replied the fairy, who soared up and landed gently to sit down on top of Lakshman’s head. “It’s a simple matter of following a proclamation of stating your hero status and performing three step procedure to do the fusion.”

“Don’t tell me we have to do some kind of ridiculous fusion dance or something?” Vikram asked suddenly, looking worried.

“You’re worried about that?” William asked, looking confused.

“Well, you know, it’ll be embarrassing to do strange ballerina dance sequence, right?” Vikram replied in embarrassment.

“Stupid,” said Ward simply telepathically, and the teenager sighed wearily.

“What’s the duration of the fusion, and is it temporary?” Gram asked in a serious voice.

“It lasts for ten minutes, and yes, it’s temporary,” the fairy replied with a small smile.

Gram continued to look at her for a few seconds in silence as if wanting to verify that she was not lying to him. Then he closed his eyes and nodded in agreement.

“That’s good at least, but ten minutes isn’t that long,” he commented with a doubtful look on his face.

“It is, but the amount of power makes you pretty powerful,” she replied with a smile. “This fusion that I speak of is an ancient method that was performed by the previous heroes only twice, and it allowed them to form into a single entity while retaining their individuality in that single body. As for the body, it contains each of your strongest points and amplifies it greatly to maximum the best speed, strength, and power output to defeat your enemies as quickly as possible.”

“I see,” said Natsu, seeming to understand what she was saying while the others appeared to be lost. “This fusion maximises our powers to the very limit so that we can finish things quickly instead of engaging in a drawn-out battle. Makes sense.”

“That explains the ten minutes time limit,” agreed Maxwell, after having caught up with the same level of understanding.

“So, we just have to not get into a drawn-out battle. Is that it?” Vikram asked for confirmation.

“That’s pretty much what we must avoid at all costs,” said Natsu while nodding in agreement.

“I see. So, it’s going to be a relentless beating without any pauses. Sounds fun,” remarked Vikram with a smile, looking excited.

“Okay. That’s great and all, but how do we do the fusion? Is it some kind of dance like you do for a ritual?” William asked curiously.

Vikram suddenly groaned and said, “Please…! Let it be something simple…!”

“You worry too much,” said the fairy and laughed. Then she answered with, “It’s pretty simple,” and explained about what they need to do. As they looked surprised, she finished her explanation and asked with a wink, “Easy, right?”

“Yes. It’s very simple actually,” said Vikram, sounding relieved.

“Yeah! We can do this!” Maxwell said firmly.

“I agree,” said Natsu in agreement.

As they came to an agreement, they suddenly felt like some kind of vibrations had around their surroundings. This surprised them, and alarmed Lakshman as he looked up at the sky.

“Something’s wrong. We better return,” he said, and clicked his fingers.

In an instant, they left the peaceful garden and returned to the destroyed battlefield. Everything appeared to be normal, but when they turned around, they saw that the stranger from before, who Engraut, was looking injured for some reason. Lakshman, however, understood what had happened with a shocked expression on his face.

“It’s about time I put an end to this,” said the God of Calamity, Climax, glaring menacingly at them all with a deadly stare while deadly aura emitted from him.