✧ Chapter 63 ✧

Stooping low towards the ground, Styra put her hand on the floor to try and sense Niantom’s core. If her theory was correct, when Flight told her that a world’s core was formed using the elements of a star, The Star Sense could have been interconnected to why she was able to communicate with a multitude of planets.

Perenorbius’s fusion with Styra’s body gave her enough preon stars specifically to bend reality and heal the nearly dying worlds. If she could muster up enough power again without exactly fusing with a planet this time, Amethion could be spawned out of The Oddzones using one of the designated rooms inside the Temple.

The indigo glow surrounding Styra’s body brightened as she screamed with every ounce of her voice in order to push through and accomplish such a daunting task.

Smoke erratically erupted as she started to develop into a burning purple sun.

As the group watched, Styra began to float up and suddenly almost transform into a small girl who only Cherry could recognize.

“Star?!” she yelled out of shock until realizing that the transformation wasn’t done yet as Styra started to stretch into multiple different versions of herself. When it did finally simmer down, Styra’s suit had received some sort of noticeable upgrade and the bangs over her right eye were gone.

Seeing this stunned everyone, but what she was about to say would heighten their interest further.

“I saw it… I finally got to see through my memories before the bright light happened. Ah wait, who am I kidding? Did it work? Is Amethion back?!”

Emeraldion, who had already been looking over at the spawner, nodded a silent no.

A sinking feeling began to drag Styra’s mind into a fit of unpacked emotions. With no other way to describe how she felt about herself being unable to save one of the only other guardians that depended on her, it seemed as if Amethion really could have disappeared into nothingness for an eternity.

Running outside to recollect herself by sitting on the edge of a grassy cliffside, Cherry followed and sat right next to her. Scooting closer and closer, she could see Styra’s tears dripping down a lot more frequently than before.

“Did you see another girl talking with you when you saw your memories?” she asked softly.

Styra’s eyes slowly peeked out from having huddled up while she stared at the gorgeous skyline ahead.

“That was me Styra. Your first and forever friend ever since we met at the Pearl Planetarium. You and I had a lot in common back then. I remember when you were there for me. We were sitting inside of that cold metal vent together. You told me that UVOCA trained you to be quiet and not say much. I said, the world would be better if everyone stopped trying to control others around them, that we could learn a lot more about ourselves and everything around us,” said Cherry.

It was then that Styra could feel a gentle pat on her back.

She looked over at her long lost friend who was crying and sniffling to herself. The nostalgia flooded in and created this air of awareness that played out exactly what she recalled experiencing during that time. Tranquility began to settle through the breeze as the two shared a moment of peaceful reflections.

Eternika, who was watching from afar with Emeraldion, felt this calmness deep within itself after seeing the two build their friendship.

Folding her hands into her lap, Cherry gazed down at their pairs of feet dangling beside one another.

“Cherry, can I be honest about something with you? When I… Well… When we were little and you told me that an open door was like the vacuum of outer space, dark and scary, I didn’t realize that that’s what my life would turn out to be after I left you. I didn’t get to see my memories past entering through the door, but what I saw was horrifying. The moment I turned back around, I saw someone that pretended to be like you. Deep down though, I knew it wasn’t you. Not after what we went through,” said Styra.

Upon wrapping her hand around Cherry’s shoulder, she leaned in, smothering their squishy cheeks together as rosy red blushes started to generate this sensational matching of beating hearts. The duo smiled as the sun started to shine brighter than usual.

“I think I know the next place we should go to now,” she said, hinting at a suggestion.

Accepting her idea with a small smirk, Cherry walked back with Styra towards the Iternua Temple. While Eternika was ready to join them on the adventure coming forward, they noticed that Emeraldion did not look like he wanted to come along.

“Are you sure you’ll be alright here Emeraldion? We could really have someone who is trained to help us find out how we can bring back the other guardians. Plus, we don’t want to see you getting caught again by Voltaze,” warned Styra.

“I will be fine. Amethion told me to guard this place if a Surreality Shard was restored back inside of his Iternua Temple regardless. I must fulfill his promise as my brother sacrificed everything for this moment.”

Sympathy grew in Styra as she took it seriously that their intrinsic brotherhood would certainly matter later down the line. She didn’t want to mess up anything they had going on and Amethion did help them get far into possibly getting the other guardians back.

“Alright, we’ll try our best to get your Eternal Light back to you Emeraldion. Take care and we hope to hear from you again soon,” she replied while Eternika teleported Styra and itself back to the start of where they came from when arriving at Sparkleshine Valley.

Signals came off in Cherry’s head, surprising her about what she had left to complete before heading onto the next world on their list. Getting ready to run back the way she came, her eyes glared over at the peachy pink-colored clouds and sparkling stars in the evening sky.

Swooping through the course with a stronger proficiency than before, Cherry began to fly more often than she did the last time. The sensational atmosphere of experiencing every bewildering sight brought a sense of peace to all of the trauma that had been tormenting her inside previously.

Obstacles became opportunities in each path she took. The full control of her abilities increased until she reached a huge rising hill which looked almost similar to the one she had to face in Tartropolatté. She felt like taking that route, but remembered full well which way was the right path. It included a series of lush tunnels that were flowing with waterfalls as well.

Bypassing up to the end where her friends were, Cherry glowed with a special minty green essence of light energy surrounding her body for a short amount of time.

“Woah, you did pretty good. What is that though?” asked Styra.

Eternika began to analyze the situation until it realized what was going on.

“According to Compass and I studying the code within Cherry’s glasses, hidden fractal energy got activated, allowing her to harness its unlocked abilities across the suit. If used to its fullest potential, we may have a fighting chance at stopping Voltaze. The only problem is, in order to sustain this state, she needs to pass through or create a space-time singularity. That way, she will be able to control that force of momentum and mass on her behalf.”

Hearing this incredible information, Styra already figured that the place they were going to would delve even further into how Cherry could obtain her newfound powers.

“Well then, off to the space show we go,” said Styra happily as they all began to teleport to the next world.

∗ ∗ ∗

Simultaneously during the events on Niantom that occurred, Voltaze had been searching through the files for hours uninterrupted. Reading on the reports and results regarding Test Subject 45 gave him mixed feelings.

These were the documents that furthermore indicated how he gained these new powers from being locked in that chamber:

LIQUATICS LABORATORY INC.

03/15/2004

UVOCA EXPERIMENTS DIVISION REPORT - TEST SUBJECT 45 (ODDITY 45)

Displays physical characteristics of aggression against human prisoners. All statistics show that compliance with being exposed to The Eternal Light Of Fractality results in heavier periods of sleep when being sedated, increased elasticity, enhanced strength, and improvement on intelligence-based exams. Side effects include increased aggressive tendencies, uncontrollable cognitive fractures, psychedelic music causing approximately 25% of all erratic cloning episodes, and severe PTSD. Consult with professional assistance immediately if it displays the following side effects as mentioned above.

Looking over these symptoms concerned Voltaze to a certain extent. However, his circumstances on the whole changed after reading on another topic:

FRACTAL CONSCIOUSNESS PHENOMENA

(CLASSIFIED INSTRUCTED NAME):

VOLTAZE

Test Subject 45 (ODD45) has been diagnosed with the phenomena where it is theorized that all organisms have brains that are designed in fractal patterns. Often these neural network structures in theory define feedback loops that are the essence of chaos itself. Reoccurring tests have shown that exposure to The Eternal Light Of Fractality breaks down an organism’s entire body structure similar to how black holes break down matter in space. The heat gives cells the ability to morph reactively into any form on either the tiniest or largest of scales. By fusing this organism’s genes with high voltage currents and a rare sentient element called Fractagen that can operate on omniversal levels of energy, they have become an evolutionary breakthrough for our studies.

Fractagen has been used in the sophisticated creation of omniversal-level weapons and armor that can be sustained through our conductive technologies.

RESEARCH WAS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL BEING, SPESSARION, GUARDIAN OF SURREALITY AND A MEMBER OF THE HEPTARION FORCE.

He could not believe what he was seeing at first, but the information proved to be true to how he was able to obtain all of these Eternal Lights to begin with.

This was a pretty big deal for himself essentially. That meant UVOCA were the ones that somehow brainwashed him into believing that his name was Voltaze. The truth made things worse when he considered the fact that The Lucid Light didn’t tell him everything. That included his real name given to him by his parents. Even if it was hard to grasp the idea of it happening, they had to have named him something for sure.

Voltaze’s sanity began to collapse as he viciously swiped away all of the holographic information floating around him.

“Hahaha! You sick bastards! You left me to die alone in that Zethyrian cell, all because you thought you would be saving yourselves?! Your rituals to Prism did nothing! Now, here I am, further being reminded that I cannot trust anyone all because they see me as a means to an end. Those damn scientists lied to me and made me suffer for years only to try and turn me into their secret weapon. I am done with kneeling on your prison floors UVOCA. Soon, I will destroy every ounce of what you stood for!”

During his grievance session, another alert from Ambit caught Voltaze’s attention.

“Alerting all UVOCA agents! Three unidentified foreign objects have landed within the underground coral reef caves of Abyssal Apocalypse! Releasing all emergency VCD units to sedate intruding oddities!”

While it did make Voltaze curious to learn that something else was about to arrive inside UVOCA’s abandoned laboratory, he had a hunch that The Judgment Warriors were yet again the culprits behind this alarm being set off.

Whether UVOCA’s drones and agents would actually come out of hiding was a mystery to him, but after walking around alone throughout the entire building, he could safely say he was the only threat awaiting to destroy them.

“I may not be some dumb UVOCA agent or machine, but I’ll definitely get the job done this time,” he said while cracking his knuckles against each other.

After logging out of Cat’s account, he created a fractal portal that led him outside of where he had previously entered Testing Room 5750. Upon finally closing the door, he looked up and started to break every camera in sight that was facing his direction out of spite.

Now, in order to figure out where the three intruders were approaching from, he was going to have to gamble on taking a more stealthy route which would be through the vents.

Slipping through the closest one he could find, he made sure to crawl carefully through and inspect his surroundings so that he wouldn’t get caught so easily. Tension built up over the course of travelling above multiple hallways. Fortunately, he didn’t make any sort of noise that could possibly cause someone to suspect that he was watching. Even the cells and chambers containing the alien oddities inside couldn’t detect his presence.

His observant eyes kept a steady distance away from open duct holes though. He knew the best way to keep himself from being spotted was to spy on anything below him from an angle.

Eventually, he would end up reaching the broken chamber that held him originally. He remembered his escape being more violent than he anticipated. Still, it was his only form of enacted revenge against the scientists that caught him at the time.

In the final stretch of vents he was crossing, Voltaze found himself located above an empty planetarium which seemed to have an abandoned dome projector. Visually studying the design of this place, a certain idea began to entertain these thoughts, causing him to come out of hiding.

He knew full well what he would be capable of doing now.