Right after they returned home, Luna, Hinata, and Viper appear in the living room. Luna slumps onto the couch looking still incredibly confused and also maybe. Unsure. Hinata sits next to her though gives her some space to breathe. They're both in their combat dresses. Luna's darkened mood matches her dress. Viper huffs as she takes off her plate carrier and sits down on the floor facing the couch as she shakes her head "I'm sorry, I wish there was more that I could do but I doubt you want me fighting against Spark"
Luna is silent for a little bit while taking time to breathe and contemplate how she should respond. After what seems like an eternity, she softens her gaze and finally responds, "It is what it is. You're-- You're immune to the dust, aren't you? D-Do you want to fight with us?"
Hinata watches quietly.
Viper nods as she thinks about it for a moment, "I would gladly fight beside you two, if I ever say no to that question, take me to the hospital because someone is wrong" she smiles at Luna
Luna still looks incredibly unsure of herself. "Just. Look, my biggest fear is someone from my home world is going to end up killing one or all of my friends. We're dealing with power levels even I, a creature of legend alongside my girlfriend, cannot fathom. It's something I've had nightmares of for years, the biggest reason why I tend to. Go solo. Cuz then if I'm the only one to be hurt then no one else--." Realizing what she’s about to say is incredibly mean, she stops dead in her tracks and rephrases, "M-My point is, I'm realizing that. If I do get hurt, I'm not only hurting myself."
Hinata puts a hand on her shoulder showing solidarity in everything, "And that's why I've been getting stronger. I've been showing you that ever since we dueled the first tme. I want to help. My soul may be fucked as well, our weaknesses incredibly easy to hit, but I want to push through it and fucking.. We want this for the world. It's like the old days again! We're fighting to save this world. Together. Together isn't just YOU. It's all of us as a team. Do you.." She then goes quiet, realizing yapping a storm and a speech that everyone's heard already.
Viper continues smiling at the two of them "I'm already elbow deep in all of this, I will gladly fight right beside both of you, getting hurt is only my responsibility unless I get critically injured, I'm pretty sure I can handle myself in a fight especially with you two by my side"
For the first time this evening, even including post-duel, Luna manages to smile though a tired quality remains within it, "If you're certain then.." She exhales, "Then we would love it if you fought alongside us. Just.. we won't let you down."
Hinata nods intently and cheers, her fists raising to the sky or at least the ceiling, "Hell yeah! Viper's joined the party!"
Luna giggles, "you're such an RPG nerd Hina. So what the hell is happening out there? I know there was something with the Stardust that caused Tina to come to Fairview, but what the fuck does Chandra have to do with all of this? I thought he was with Spark to attempt to end me??? I'm so confused."
Viper giggles and shakes her head at Hinata's comment then nods as she explains, "Chandra was the person I called to see if anyone had shipped out any of the Stardust and had told me that Spark was using it for his" she uses air quotes, "plan" then stops, "Which his entire plan was to have the citizens of Capital city under his control, there were bells and chimes and shit audible through most of the city and the air was just horribly saturated with Stardust which obviously knocked out anyone not immune to it and anyone that is immune to it was overwhelmed with that horribly sweet scent"
"b-bells??? Waaaaaaaaaaaaait wait wait wait hang the fuck on. Did he really use that on them???" Luna snaps her laptop into the living room, attaches a wire between the back of her neck and a ethernet port on the laptop, and hurriedly types some stuff into it. "There's no fucking way he got them with The Rhythm."
"You mean our trigger??? What the fuck do you mean, that's so lame! You're just rehashing the shit you did to us!" Hinata seems offended by this.
Viper thinks for a moment then responds "I think I heard something about rhythm but I'm not sure..." she looks at the two's reactions as she asks "He's done this before?"
"No, not exactly him, but it's what happened to us. It's our assassin mode trigger, basically an activation phrase. If we hear the bells in a very specific rhythm, we--" Luna goes silent, seemingly terrified of the implications.
"Yeah what she said it's uh. Not good. We lose our will. It's uh caused some--" Even Hinata seems unsure of herself and scared to speak further. Both of them look on the verge of tears.
Viper nods as she opens her arms slightly to offer a possible hug and shakes her head, "I'm sorry that happened to you two, I can't imagine what that must have been like" she continues "You don't need to tell me anything else, you're clearly uncomfortable with it"
The two of them hug Viper and cry into her shoulder. Viper rubs their backs to let them let it all out. It takes them a few minutes to recover, but eventually they return to the couch looking and feeling awful.
Viper looks at the two of them and asks, "Do you want some washcloths? Maybe we should get some rest before deciding to tackle this problem, after all it looked like you two were really going at it in the cube..." then mutters "Why the fuck is it called the cube if it's a rectangle...."
Taking the topic change as an excuse to not talk further about The Rhythm, Luna explains to the best of her ability, "that's the thing, they're not even called Cubes. They're actually called 'Practically Riskless Infinite and Self-sustaining Magical Combat Arenas. But no one wants to call it that, so we call them Cubes despite them being rectangular prisms. And uh, I think I'm gonna go shower and get some rest. I need to get out of these clothes. Be right back." Luna trots off to the bathroom.
"You'd think we'd call em Prism Arenas, but Cubes flow better I guess." Hinata shrugs
Viper blinks several times then waves as Luna walks away, "Yeah, I guess it does, If I had magic i'd probably be having a blast in those things but I don't so I'd probably get my ass handed to me on a silver platter" she snickers quickly
Hinata gulps and meekly responds, "Uhm, technically you uh. Might have some magic you can use...?"
Viper raises an eyebrow slightly, "I have magic? I'm just a regular human though. I've got a gun to my name but that's about it."
Continuing to stutter nervously, Hinata continues, "We-well, not if a Creature of Legend bestows a Soul Shard to someone they trust. And uhhhhh.. w-well... we might have given you one for Christmas..... The dagger. And considering that Luna and I are technically CoL's ourselves, you uh.. have a piece of us in it. With benefi-- no no no, that's the worst way to put it."
Luna giggles while walking back into the living room in her PJs, a much too large anime-themed t-shirt that stretches to her knees and plaid lounge pants, “Oh my gods, did you just make that joke??”
Hinata blushes profusely and excuses herself to the bathroom, “Uuuuhh be right back! I’ll uh… yeah.”
Viper snickers as she shakes her head "Go shower, I think I got the point, the dagger can be used as a wand or something? Cause it has a piece of you two in it....god that sounds weird when you say it outloud."
Luna nods, "basically yeah. It's kinda limited and probably won't work outside of Fairview or Capital City, something about how mana interacts with different planes of existence - I barely understand it myself. But you do got some ice, lightning, wind, and fire magic you can cast now. Spider's got something similar with Error, except hers can morph into different weapons and identify magicks. It’s also got some other stuff to it too, but I’m not sure what."
Viper nods as she snickers remarks "So not only is it a cool ass knife, it's a cool ass knife that gives me magical abilities, that's fucking....awesome in every way possible"
Luna tries to calm her down, "Again, kinda limited in how much you can generate at one time, but it does regen... or it should, pretty sure we did the soul shard transferral ritual right.”
Viper thinks for a moment then looks over at Luna with a bright smile, "This day turned from terrible to fucking incredible in mere moments, you're telling me that there's rituals and shit?? she then mutters "Coolest fucking girlfriends ever...."
Luna then goes full nerd while reading from her laptop, "Yeah, there are rituals, but it's not like a super common thing. It's like hmm, there are two different eras of magic. One is like fucking millenia ago, ancient Lunarian and Solaris times, and back then shit was super indepth with rituals and sacrifice to induct mana into people. It went away for… a really long time, but now there’s just Autogenous Abilities of Augmentation, you know Magical Abilities that some asshole gave everyone that connects mana to your lifeforce, unless you’re like… one of the rare people who have a different mana source, or you’re me, Hina, or Elara. I genuinely don’t understand Magical Hi-- whaaaaaaaaa?” It took her minutes of yapping about things she barely understands to recognize what Viper said. Luna shows Viper an extremely bright smile as Hinata walks back in wearing her yukata and short shorts.
Viper nods as she listens to Luna then looks over at Hinata and does a quiet whistle as she remarks "Nice outfit, lookin good"
"O-oh this? It's nothing special. Got this at the last con we went to in Australis District. They had a vendor from the Asiatic region there selling these. When I saw it had sunflowers, I knew I had to get it." It's got white and pink fabric adorned with yellow sunflowers.
Viper smiles at Hinata as she responds "Still looks nice on you, and I get the big picture now....so the knife lets me cast stuff from a limited pool of mana that regenerates and there used to be a form of magic where you could sacrifice to induct mana into people but now people have magical abilities that an asshole gave to everyone that connects mana to your health unless you're apart of a special bunch of people"
Luna sighs, "You got it basically. The special group of people part is an innate regeneration trait that only comes from genetics, or you're specially created to be a Vessel, like Hinata and I. Vessels have their own issues with psychological shit though, so I wouldn't wish it on anyone else. There are other traits you can get, but those are also incredibly rare. The stuff about ritual magic is basically that yeah. It's supposedly more complicated than that, but you got the basic gist. As for the Dagger of the Avatars, I'll have to show you how to use later. Since it's got our shards in it, it has a lot of same issues we do. Meaning if you're unable to speak or struck with Silent status, you can’t use spells. It’s not like Cole where he can do funky hand gestures and cast spells. Oh and the part about the Magical Explosion is correct."
Viper nods and listens to Luna talk as if the fate of the universe depends on it then asks, "Magical Explosion? I can blow people up with magic??" Her eyes light up slightly though it's unclear if it’s from getting to learn and spend more time with Luna and Hinata or part about Magical Explosions.
"Not exactly." Luna puts the ethernet cable back into her neck and laptop to work through some old history things. "The Spark was an event that happened way back in like the early 1970s. Basically all around the city, a lot of people heard what sounded like a lighter sparking something, like a zippo, and this lead to a massive fire that overtook Nova City, what the city was called back then. A wizard was said to appear in the city and use Magic, something mind you that was completely foreign at this point aside from the aforementioned ritual spells from the ancient times, to calm the flames. With this spell cast, he then gave certain others the ability to cast magic themselves, but it was extremely limited to like super wealthy people or government."
Hinata groans, "right, because wealth disparity was the smartest thing to introduce from frame one. Great job Troy. Some thought that this Troy person came from some other world entirely, like a space alien, but we know those don't exist right?" She says while they live in a completely foreign world to Capital City.
Viper nods as she listens and comments, "So this Troy person started the new age of magic? Just like that?" then looks over at Hinata with a playfully raised eyebrow, "Do we? Who knows what could be out in the universe if you two exist
Luna then notices something on her laptop that makes her feel ill. A revelation, if you will, "Troy Estelle to be specific. Father of our favorite blond haired scarred NOVA Leader Spark Estelle. Because of course he is."
Hinata chuckles, "I mean..."
Viper mentally notes that information as she nods, "Awfully convenient, surely they don't have the same facial features or anything and end up being the same person and they used an aging spell or something crazy like that..." she between looks at the two, hoping that her off the wall guess isn't right
"Considering Troy's dead and buried in Capital Cemetary right now, I heavily doubt it. Aaaaaaaaaanyway, this leads us to The Magical Explosion, the part where everyone gets Magical Abilities and not just the wealthy people. Because it's an explosion of magical abilities, all done by Spark. Because that makes sense, gods damn it. Unfortunately, knowledge on it is kinda limited due to a Mental Lock I have on it. Long story short from what I can gather, Spark did something which caused everyone to get Magical Abilities and this led to chaos in the city. Since like everyone has magic, everyone fucking uses it and there wasn't enough research before this point to tell people, 'ayo, don't do that, you'll die if you overdo it."
"Spark's motive behind is what's behind the lock?" Hinata asks Luna
"Yeah. I don't get Spark's motive." she sighs "All I know is that like a few thousand or so people died in a single day. And mind you Capital City has like... a massive population, over a million, but a few thousand still stings."
Viper sighs and shakes her head, "Of course that happened, people get way too excited when they find out that they can do something and start going crazy with it without realizing that it might have consequences." She isn't willing to say it, but she would've been part of the few thousand people that died that day. When she gets excited, nothing can stop her.
"Yeah definitely. Uhh mind if we continue the history lesson in the morning? Feeling a bit exhausted after our battle. You're welcome to stay the night if you want... you know, with us. But don't feel like you have to." Luna offers and Hinata nods.
She takes her cord off from the back of her neck and closes her laptop up.
Viper nods as she smiles, "Sorry about that but....I wouldn't mind staying the night with you two" she then smiles a little wider as she continues "That's an offer I can't refuse"
"Okay lets." The trio heads to the bedroom and the curtain closes from there.