Chapter Text
“Noelle”
CRASH
“Darling”
CRASH
“Honey”
CRASH
“Sweetie”
CRASH
“Gravy”
Queen rose to the top floor of her castle, crushing the Heroes of Legend in her giant hand. Susie and Ralsei tried and failed to squirm free, while Kris remained motionless.
“Take The Pin I Gave You… And… Stab The Earth... Creating Our New… Supreme Empire”
Noelle’s hands shivered. “I…” was the only word she could manage to get out.
“What’s… Wrong… Noelle? I Know It Would… Make You Happy…”, Queen asked, as if she had a clue what “happiness” even meant. “Or… Should I, With The Last 1% Of My Battery… Crush Susie Into 8… Bits?”
“Leave…” Noelle’s expression changed from horrified to furious. She stood up with a newfound confidence and pointed at Queen. “Leave Susie ALONE!!!” Without holding back, or pausing to breathe, she continued: “You think listening to YOU makes me happy!? No! I’ll never be happy! Not if I’m controlled by you! Why can’t you understand that!?”
“Noelle… Perhaps My Computations Were… Miscalibrated,”
“Did I go too far?”, is what Noelle might have thought.
“Noelle,” Queen began. “Disregard Me… And With Your Own Power… Choose The World… That Makes You Happy.”
BOOM
Queen’s battery died, and as she powered down, her robot face turned to static.
“Queen…? Q-Queen!”, Noelle exclaimed. “Queen, are you okay…?”
“Seems she ran out of battery power,” Ralsei chimed in, strangely content with the situation. “Guess we can seal the fountain now, right everybody?
“Everybody?”
Noelle’s eyes closed while she disregarded Ralsei’s input. “Queen… she said… ‘Choose the world that makes you happy’. I… I don’t want to live in a world ruled by her! But, if that wasn’t the case, I wonder if this world… wouldn’t be so bad?”
Ralsei began to worry. “Huh?”
“Susie, don’t you think so too…?”, Noelle asked.
“I, uh, now that you mention it… Kris, isn’t this world just BETTER? We make so many… friends here, y’know?”
“I’ve never had an adventure like this before,” Noelle added.
Susie was smiling. “With axes… and battles… and magic…”
“Where everything can be healed with a little spell,” she thought about her dad for just a second.
“And no matter what happens… No one tells us what to do!”
Noelle giggled softly. “Gosh, yeah! S-so, even if things were really scary just now… I mean…”
Berdy appeared out of nowhere, and started talking even though no one asked his opinion. “So is there any reason not to..?”
“Not that I can think of!”
“Me neither.”
“Then, Noelle… let THIS be my real apology!” With his halberd levitating above his palm, Berdly focused all his power into it. “Concentrating my will into this blade, I will make a new Fountain… And unleash a bright future! A future that shines for US! A future whose brightness… is born from DARKNESS!”
Ralsei wanted to scream, or cry, or curse, or kill someone, but he couldn’t do any of that in the tight grasp of GIGA Queen’s hand. And when he finally had an opportunity to say something—
Everything went dark.