Chapter 144 - Mercurial Sea

The LOLICON spaceship surged forward at a fraction of lightspeed, plunging into the shimmering portal birthed by Agent Feena’s Rift Generator. For the briefest instant, we were swallowed by the swirling throat of a wormhole, where reality bent and folded in dizzying patterns, as though we were riding on the pulse of the cosmos itself.

When we burst from the other side, a sprawling gray mountain range loomed ahead, jagged peaks stabbing upward into the void. The sight would have been awe-inspiring if not for the fact that we were hurtling toward it at a blistering velocity, the spaceship’s nose angled steeply toward the ground.

“Oh shit! Brace yourseeeelves!” our pilot roared, his voice cracking with panic.

“Uwaaaah!” Most of the WAIFUs shrieked in unison.

“Fuuuuck!” I yelled, though the howl of the burning wind outside, the guttural roar of the jet engines, and the chaotic cries of the crew smothered my voice entirely.

“Crap!” Agent Feena barked as her Frame Unit’s right arm snapped outward, the Rift Generator’s barrel locking toward the oncoming earth. Her finger squeezed the trigger, and a fresh portal yawned open in the void ahead.

Once again, we were consumed by a wormhole, our bodies pressed against the seats by the crushing acceleration. Moments later, we emerged above an alien expanse of mercury-like sea. The waters shimmered in shades of gray and black, thick and metallic, as our ship slammed into the surface and began skipping violently across it like a stone cast across glassy water, still hurtling forward with merciless speed.

“Waaah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!” The chorus of WAIFU cries rattled the cabin, each jolt of the ship tossing them about. I hate to admit it, but the collective squeals carried a strangely suggestive edge, though the relentless pounding of the ride was doing my spine no favors.

“Brace for impact!” Pilot Steve’s voice cut through the chaos as his eyes locked on the jagged shoreline rushing up to meet us.

“Oh hell nooooooOoooOOoo!” one WAIFU wailed in an exaggerated falsetto, as if she were auditioning for an opera at the world’s worst moment.

In that heartbeat, Agent Feena’s Frame Unit hurtled forward, her mechanical limbs clanging against the deck. She slammed into the ship’s bow, planting her armored palms against it in a desperate bid to soften the crash. But the LOLICON was a hulking beast, four times larger than her frame, and the force of its momentum pushed her back like a boulder rolling against a single human.

“Raaaaaah!” Agent Feena roared, servos whining under the strain. Inch by inch, the ship began to lose speed. Her metallic feet scraped deep grooves into the gray shoreline, each step spitting sparks as friction finally bit into the earth.

The grinding of metal on stone shrieked through the cabin, a sound that made my teeth ache. Then, with a final jarring thud, the LOLICON lurched to a halt. The sudden stop pitched our heads forward before the seat belts yanked us back, preventing what could have been a full-blown concussion.

“A-are we still alive?” Fei’s voice wavered as she turned to me. “Myrrh, pinch me to see if I’m still alive!”

“You don’t need someone to pinch your cheeks just to confirm you’re alive,” Myrrh replied flatly, though the faint twitch at the corner of her mouth suggested she was resisting a smirk.

“Oh, right. Haha.” Fei scratched the back of her head, still looking a little dazed from the landing.

“You guys okay?” Agent Feena’s voice crackled in from outside the ship, her synthetic tone carrying a faint echo through the metal hull. “I’m sorry about that portal earlier. It was Zaft’s fault!”

“Are you drunk!?” I finally exploded, my voice bouncing off the cabin walls. “You’re the one in full control of the Rift Generator, not me!”

“Oh, hahaha. Whoops.” Agent Feena’s massive Frame Unit loomed past the viewing window, raising a metallic fist to tap its own head in an exaggerated teehee pose. The clang rang out like a hammer hitting an anvil. “A-anyway, how far are we from the Cosmic Tree?”

“I don’t know!?” My sarcasm burned hotter than the ship’s engines. “You’re the one who opened the portal, not me!”

“You don’t have to repeat yourself! I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to Steve, you dipshit!” Agent Feena’s voice boomed, rattling the panel above me.

“Oh.” My tone shrank to a mumble as I slouched in my seat.

From the cockpit, Steve flicked his fingers across the controls, and a shimmering holographic map flared to life in the air above him. “We’re about five kilometers away.”

“Phew. At least it’s not that far,” Agent Feena said, her massive silhouette easing away from the bow.

“You’re calling that not far?” I muttered under my breath. “You old drunk hag.”

“I hear you mumbling from here, Zaft. What did you say?” Her voice carried the weight of someone who might just throw the ship back into a wormhole out of spite.

“Nothing.” I shook my head quickly, fastening my seatbelt again just in case.

“Good.” Agent Feena’s towering Frame Unit straightened to its full height, casting a long shadow across the battered hull of the LOLICON. “We will go on foot from here. WAIFUs and Support Units, move out and prepare for our march.”

The cabin filled with a collective groan as crew members unbuckled their seatbelts. The hiss of releasing straps was followed by the shuffle of boots as WAIFUs and Support Units, including myself, filed out of the ship and into the alien world beyond.

The first breath I took was met with the strange stillness of this place. The gravity felt identical to Xyraxis, yet there was something subtly different in the air. I bent down, picked up a smooth gray stone, and tossed it skyward. It floated unnaturally for a few seconds, as if reluctant to obey the rules of physics, before drifting back into my palm. The sensation made my skin prickle.

“Oxygen levels are twice as high as those on Xyraxis,” one WAIFU reported, holding up a sleek device shaped like an oversized smartphone. “We can have our helmets off. But be cautious of the mercurial sea.”

That was all it took for the group to unseal their helmets. Fresh, cool air rushed into my lungs, metallic in taste yet oddly invigorating. I scanned our surroundings—jagged, razor-like rocks framed the shoreline, and beyond them, the sea stretched out in shimmering sheets of molten silver. The liquid moved sluggishly, reflecting light in fractured patterns like shattered glass.

On the horizon, a pale sun was rising, painting faint gold streaks across the otherwise colorless terrain. Above us, suspended in the sky like an ornament, hung the neon-lit silhouette of the cyberpunk planet Xyraxis. Its surface glittered with threads of circuitry and sprawling megacities, the details faint yet distinct from here.

“It’s kind of weird to see Xyraxis from this angle, huh?” Myrrh said, her gaze drifting upward. She pointed past it toward a smaller, distant sphere: a blue jewel floating in the darkness. “Oh, that’s Earth.”

“Wow, this is kind of a beautiful view,” Fei murmured. She fished out her phone, framed the scene in her camera, and snapped a picture, the shutter’s click sounding almost too small for a sight so vast.

Without warning, the pilot’s voice crackled through our radios, laced with tension.

“All units, be advised. I’m detecting a single lifeform approaching our position,” Steve announced.

“Is it the Cosmic Goddess?” Agent Feena asked, her metallic voice echoing through the comms.

“There’s a separate signal coming from the Cosmic Tree,” Steve replied. “This one’s different. Smaller. Please confirm visually.”

A sudden, hollow echo rolled down from above, reverberating through the jagged cliffs that loomed over the shoreline. The sky began to darken, not from clouds, but from a creeping shroud of black mist that slithered in like an advancing tide.

“Look!” one of the WAIFUs shouted, pointing toward a spire of rock. Instantly, the group braced for combat. WAIFUs tightened their grips around their morphers, and support units like me activated our WEEB systems with a hum of power.

At the cliff’s peak, a lone figure appeared. He was human... or at least looked it. An old white man, hair long and black with streaks of silver, a thick mustache merging into a tangled beard. His clothes were relics of a forgotten time: a tattered coat draped over a stained, wrinkled tuxedo. He leaned on a silver cane as he walked, but what froze my attention were the roots—crimson, pulsing, and alive—crawling up his neck like veins of molten glass. They reminded me of the strange glow I had seen on Neil… only more pronounced, more invasive.

“Identify yourself!” Agent Feena called up to him, her voice amplified. 

The old man stood still, the wind stirring the edges of his coat. He gave no reply.

“What is a human like you doing here, on this alien planet?” she pressed again.

The man’s eyes swept slowly across our group, meeting each gaze in turn as though measuring our worth, or our threat. His lips moved at last, his voice deep and deliberate as he slowly shook his head.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

Before anyone could speak, a jagged bolt of crimson lightning split the sky and struck him dead center. The world erupted in a blinding red flare that burned against my retinas.

When the light cleared, the man was gone. In his place, an abomination loomed over the cliff. A gargantuan monster, three hundred meters at least, stood silhouetted against the shrouded sky. Its form was a nightmare collage: the towering torso of a man, colossal dragon-like wings and clawed limbs, and an octopus head crowned with writhing tentacles that curled and twisted like a living storm. The ground seemed to tremble beneath its weight, and the air tasted like copper and ozone.