"Time and Space..."

After coming to this initial conclusion, Alain and Crazy Mita realized that standing still was not an option. And so, they began to walk down the corridor toward the giant Black Ball, having tacitly formed a "strategic alliance."

As they talked, Alain couldn't help but speak up as he watched the eager Crazy Mita. "You seem a little too excited to fight."

"Well, what can I do?" she said, shrugging nonchalantly. "You're the one who promised me we'd continue the chase, darling. I never thought we'd be allies the second time we met. Fine, I'll try to control myself. But we should probably pick up the pace." The girl looked up at the Black Ball in the center of the sky. "I just have a feeling that it sending you to me has some kind of ulterior motive."

"I agree." Alain looked at the baseball bat she was holding, hesitated for a moment, then sighed and opened his Safety Guard panel. From it, he took out a chainsaw.

Crazy Mita looked at the object in his hand with surprise, momentarily confused. "What's this?"

"It's a gift for you," Alain said, explaining simply when he saw his bad woman was in a daze. "Isn't your chainsaw broken?"

"Oh... oh..." She dazedly accepted his gift, observing the gleaming, sharp saw teeth, and for a moment, she didn't know how to react. Wait until the crisis is over, she thought. But she couldn't help herself. She threw her arms around him and gave him a big, loud muah.

"Thank you, darling, I love it! I'll treasure it for a lifetime! But... you're always the one giving me gifts. I still haven't given you my return gift." She took out a bag of candy she had been hiding in her pocket and showed it to him. It was the same imported candy he had bought with Misa. The packaging was still full, sealed with a little rabbit sticker. The bag wasn't even wrinkled; it had been perfectly preserved.

"Don't worry about the return gift. First, let's think about how to kill that big guy." Alain looked up at the giant Black Ball flickering with black light. If the Modified Entity he had faced was a "billiard ball," then this big guy was a "yoga ball." And he had a nagging feeling that something was off.

"Alrighty~" She put the candy away, her tone turning serious. "Actually, I think the two Modified Entities we're facing might be related."

"I think so too. After all... the concepts of Time and Space are inseparable," Alain mused.

"Exactly. As human knowledge developed, Time and Space evolved from being 'absolutely separate' to the 'unification of spacetime,' and then developed into a 'continuous relationship,'" Crazy Mita said. "When the two are combined, people like to call it 'spacetime.' And spacetime is inseparable from matter—that is, 'us.'" She came to a conclusion: "It's not just that the concepts of Time and Space are inseparable; spacetime and matter (us) are also inseparable."

Alain thought he had been listening very carefully, but his ears were still going numb. He looked at her in disbelief. The the pretty girl's profile was still in the middle of a non-stop lecture.

"Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve. Which is to say—"

"I don't understand," he admitted.

"Oh... after all, I'm not that talented, so I have to dabble in a bit more knowledge so I'm not looked down on by those puppets," she said, shaking her head nonchalantly, her pretty low ponytails swaying with the movement. "Darling can't understand? Don't tell me you're a dummy?" Crazy Mita teased him for a rare change. "That's great~ In the future, I can be your personal encyclopedia!"

"Fine by me. I love copying from books."

"So you say... In that case, I will, of course, protect you~"

"I won't let you die."

Even so, Alain felt there was still something he was missing. At that moment, the two of them arrived at the side of the giant Black Ball, about ten meters away.

"Well then, let's smash this thing to pieces." Alain raised his greatsword, observing the Black Ball. The feeling of wrongness grew in his heart like a downpour. But it had come to this; there was no time to think too much.

On the other side, Crazy Mita also revved her chainsaw, its teeth spinning with a deafening roar. The Modified Entity in the sky remained unmoved, still rotating on its own like a planet.

"Here we go!"

"Yeah!"

The Modified Entity was in the air, with no footholds around it. This meant they would have to leap across the gap and then unleash their attacks. They vaulted over the corridor's railing, like goldfish longing to leap over the dragon's gate, and brandishing their respective weapons, they flew toward the entity.

But just then, the door Alain had come from—the one containing the small Black Ball—opened.

The pitch-black sphere shot out from it with extreme speed, flying like a teleporting blur to the surface of the giant Black Ball, directly in front of the two of them.

Seeing this "coincidental" scene, Alain instantly understood what the strange feeling in his heart was.

["The big ball is always just spacing out."]

Spacing out... rather than spacing out, it was waiting for something.

Alain thought of the commonality between him and Crazy Mita: both were a huge threat to the viruses. And now, the two of them were grouped together in the Modified Entity's "territory." And to top it off, the small Black Ball had emerged from its door at the worst possible time, flying towards the big one with the clear intent to merge... Was it planning to take them both out in one fell swoop?

At the same time, their weapons both struck the surface of the Black Ball. Both the greatsword and the chainsaw cut deep into it. But the Black Ball's gelatinous, viscous texture momentarily trapped their weapons, preventing them from pulling free.

And Alain noticed that the two Black Balls... had fused.

The next second, a flash of black light suddenly engulfed him and Crazy Mita.

"Tch!" he cursed, quickly grabbing Crazy Mita's hand.

Then, a familiar sense of weightlessness spread throughout his body, enveloping the two of them and carrying them off to an unknown destination.

In the last moment before his vision faded, Alain saw the two fused Black Balls... forming the shape of a woman.

"By the way, darling, my Black Ball (Time) and your Black Ball (Space)... these two guys are related to a high degree. Don't you think... they could even 'combine'?"

As his bad woman's words echoed in his mind, the feeling of wrongness grew ever stronger. He felt like he had overlooked something.

["Time and Space are unified."]

Crazy Mita's phrase gave him a spark of inspiration. Perhaps the two Black Balls were one entity to begin with. The complete entity split itself into two separate beings of Time and Space so it could corrupt two versions at the same time...

He had just shared this idea with Crazy Mita.

"It's possible. It seems darling isn't a dummy after all. What a killjoy. I was hoping you'd have to rely on me more," she had sighed, though not because of the crisis at hand.

"Can't you have a little sense of crisis?" Alain had asked, exasperated.

"Well, what can I do? If it's with you, darling, I wouldn't mind dying together."

____

Unfortunately, two of our stories were removed... so I created a new account to post them: MikuDayo.

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