Chapter Text
Many joked that Zeta was a cat. Jokes about her hair buns, her demeanor, her general appearance… Zeta didn’t appreciate it. But at the moment, she could add ‘speed’ to that list as she sprinted as fast as her legs could carry her up the stairs, gun in hand with proper trigger discipline as she had been shown and taught to make sure she didn’t misfire in her haste.
Having the vault’s room at the top of a flight of stairs with no elevator was, in of itself, a security measure. It was much harder to sneak in and gave much more time to catch any intruders with how long the stairwell was, and she was seriously regretting it right about now. Fate of the world could hang in the balance, and she’s limited by how fast she can run up stairs without dying from a lack of oxygen or falling and breaking her neck. Typical…
She immediately threw open the door, pistol drawn and finger off the trigger so she wouldn’t fire it impulsively. Immediately she was greeted by… Well. A strange sight. Namely an odd figure that looked as if they didn’t belong in this dimension, a figure armed with a massive sword and an oversized hoodie that obscured most of their body from this angle, covered in strange golden accents that almost looked like runes. The strangest thing was the whispers of face she could see were wisps of snow white hair, strange markings on their face, and their sclera black, but iris’s glowing white, said irises so large that they almost obscured the black of the sclera completely.
Zeta stood there, silent. Waited. Assessed. Then slowly lowered her gun, keeping a firm grip on it in case she needed to use it.
“...I’m guessing you’re a ways away from home, huh?” Zeta attempted to joke. The figure turned fully to her, expression neutral, and she got a better look at their face. Some of the markings almost seemed to imitate whiskers, but were far larger than one would expect and a bright red. There was a strange blue symbol on their forehead, bangs held up by two hair clips that resembled slices of some sort of fruit.
“....Um. Who are you? F-Friend or foe?” Zeta asked shakily. She was not a fan of how utterly emotionlessly this figure was looking at her, as if they were in some sort of trance, it looked a lot like when she had been trained for if she ever was captured and interrogated in a… Less than legal way. Find a place to stuff your emotions and just disassociate and you’ll probably be fine. She’d seen that expression on herself in the mirror of one way glass before, familiar, but concerning.
“...Melony. Friend, I think. Your world is in danger. He is coming. I can’t turn this off.” The figure spoke, but when they did, it was… Strange. Almost seeming to be two voices. One was a fairly high pitched voice, very feminine, while the other was a lot deeper, foreboding, commanding…
“...Who is ‘he?’ What do you mean?” Zeta asked, slowly putting her gun in her holster. She’d rather keep this ‘Melony’ person from thinking she was going to attack, she’d rather keep things civil with a being from another universe…
However, the second she put the gun away, Melony shuddered, and the neutrality dropped from their expression, as did the odd coloring. It sapped away from them, the hoodie now… Watermelon themed of all things, hair a neutral yellow-y green, the marks on their face much smaller and more like whispers but also in the shape of seeds, and eyes a pinkish-red.
“Sorry if I scared you, I, um… Anyways, what I mean is that a big jerk named Zero threw me through a portal that showed up when I was fighting him and I ended up here.” Melony shrugged, voice staying as that first one. It sounded vaguely familiar, like the same voice as… Ugh, who was that independent VTuber with the high voice that did art and stuff? Wolfy-something? Whatever, this was bad.
“...Zero. And this… This ‘Zero’ guy is coming?” Zeta asked slowly, eying the portal anxiously.
“Yeah. He wants me dead. He wants to destroy my universe and he knows I can stop him. If he figures out this leads to a new universe… He’s gonna try and destroy it too. That’s why I’m not heading back right away, that’ll make it clear to him that it’s a portal and not, I dunno, some sort of black hole…” Melony informed her gravely, seeming equally anxious.
“...If I try to turn it off, and you go back to your dimension, do you think that’d w-”
Zeta didn’t get to finish her sentence.
A massive hand burst through the portal, punching a hole through the wall and knocking Zeta off her feet from the sheer force shaking the tower. And from that arm emerged a huge figure that didn’t seem as though it should have fit through the portal, skin a dark blue, entire lower body missing with the broken fractals of what once must have been its ribcage poking out, a maw of crooked missing teeth, horns growing from its head that curled so far inwards they almost seemed to make a circle, and one, bright red eye with no iris, the pupil white and shaped like the number zero.
Zeta screamed.
Kaela’s head snapped up and her eyes left the group chat at the sound of familiar screaming and the sound of wanton destruction. She made a hasty ‘goodbye’ in the chat and stuffed her phone back in her pocket, grabbing her trusty hammer as she raced up the stairs. However, before she could get particularly far, the wall of the stairwell burst, crumbling to nothing and exposing her to the cold-ish air outside. She saw two figures falling from the vault, one of them being her friend.
“ZETA!” Kaela shouted, quickly moving to make a running jump towards the agent hurtling through the air. Thankfully the penguin- uh, blacksmith, managed to catch the screaming cat- er, agent, quickly throwing her hammer towards the building whilst gripping onto the fabric at the end of it with all her might. The hammer was a great deal heavier than her, so, thankfully, it did as she had hoped and sent them swinging back towards the building from the weight, breaking open another wall and sending them tumbling back into the building.
The two hit the floor and rolled, tangled together from the impact as they eventually settled into a banged up and bruised heap. Zeta let out a loud groan of pain, not even moving from her place on top of her companion. Kaela let out a much softer, more subdued groan at that, pushing Zeta off before her attention got pulled out the window again. Her eyes went wide.
…Well. That isn’t good.
When Amelia emerged over the ridge surrounding the valley, it wasn’t a pretty sight. The giant monster that had emerged was floating in the air, fighting the other, smaller visitor from a different dimension. The monster almost seemed to dwarf the tower with how big it was, roaring and cackling in a distorted, broken voice. Her eyes darted towards the tower itself and to the two holes in the walls, spotting a blob of yellow and silver in the distance that she hoped and prayed were her Kohai’s all safe and sound.
It didn’t take a detective to deduce that the giant monster was a threat, with how mindlessly it was taking swings, nearly hitting the tower multiple times and leaving craters in the earth when it tried to take a swing at the figure it was fighting. Considering how badly the wall was torn up at the portal, extending further down a few stories and exposing the floors from how large the hole was, she assumed it was that things doing from how closely the sheer size of it matched said massive hole ripped through the building.
Well, first things first, she needed to make sure that her Kohai’s were okay, she couldn’t really do much against that thing and they needed to come up with a game plan if they had any hope of fighting it.
With that, Amelia rushed to the lift down and got to running.
Moona didn’t really know what to expect when Kobo and Ollie had come over and crashed at her place. It was a headache and a half, to be sure, between Ollie’s usual antics and Kobo being her kusogaki self.
However, suddenly hearing a well of voices in her head screaming at her get Kobo’s phone away from her sure as hell wasn’t anywhere near what she could have possibly expected. Frantically she did as she was requested, then promptly nearly died when she saw what Kobo had been looking up on urban dictionary. Yeah, the eldritch voices made sense now. Granted she still wasn’t thrilled about it considering if she were mortal there was a high chance that even hearing the Ancient Ones would drive her mad instantly. At least it had been her and not directly to Kobo, for that matter…
“Uh, any reason why you snatched her phone away- Wait. Was she- WERE YOU LOOKING UP COC-” Moona promptly slapped her hand over Ollie’s mouth, shutting the zombie up. Granted her muffled giggles were very much still discernible and the second she hesitantly moved her hand Ollie started wheezing with laughter as she cackled like a maniac. Moona just sighed heavily and went to open the EN group chat Kobo mentioned being invited to. Considering that was definitely Ina’s doing, she assumed there’d be some explanation there.
But then her eyes landed on the concerning comments about the state of Holo H3roes HQ. Her eyes went wide, darting up to Kobo in concern.
“...Is this right? Is… Is there something bad happening at HQ?” Moona asked the shaman softly.
“Ummmm… I don know… You can check the cameras on my phone.” Kobo sauntered over, pointing out said app. Moona tapped it, and immediately was accosted by a very screwy, banged up camera footage from the ground, seemingly ripped off the building outright. There was a vague silhouette of two figures fighting in the air, one massive and one much smaller, she could vaguely make out Amelia rushing into the building, holes torn into the walls…
“...Oh. Oh no. …I need to make an all call before I tell Ina I heard her.” Moona muttered, quickly going to the more general group chat for all of Hololive, sending out screenshots of the footage and an SOS for all who could to go to the HQ to help. Immediately she got replies, mostly from some of her stronger JP senpai’s, a few from some of the managers…
Help was on its way. Thank gods…
All their strength combined would be more than enough, they could take that thing on.
…Right?
Amelia's phone rang.
No answer.
Amelia's phone rang.
No answer.
Ringing. Ringing. Ringing.
Silence.
Nothing but the sounds of screams and fire.