Chapter 128: The Aftershock and the Awakening Fanboy

The hallway rings with the echo of LUNA's devastating pronouncement: "You will always be beneath me." Rina and Haruka stand frozen, looking utterly poleaxed, like they have just been verbally slapped by a velvet glove lined with steel. Kenji remains blissfully unconscious on the floor, having wisely chosen temporary non-existence over witnessing this level of social carnage. Miki and Hana hover nearby, their faces pale with shock, looking like traumatized bystanders at a kaiju battle.

LUNA- or Aiwa, currently channeling an arctic level of LUNA- gave me that brief, almost soft look before gliding away. A look that said, 'I handled it.' And she did. She handled it like a nuclear bomb handles a minor disagreement.

The silence stretches, thick and heavy.

"Did… did she just…?" Rina whispers, her voice hoarse with disbelief. Her usual fiery anger seems to have fizzled out, replaced by a stunned, almost fearful respect.

"Declare herself the undisputed alpha predator of this entire high school ecosystem?" Haruka finishes, her usual cool composure completely gone. She looks genuinely shaken, running a hand through her perfect hair. "I believe she did. The sheer audacity… the control…"

"Someone should probably… wake up Kenji," Hana suggests timidly, pointing at our still-comatose friend, who is starting to drool slightly on the linoleum. "He looks uncomfortable."

Miki, ever the pragmatist, walks over and nudges Kenji none-too-gently with her foot. "Get up, you idiot. The excitement is over. Your goddess just verbally incinerated her competition."

Kenji groans, his eyes fluttering open. He sits up, clutching his head, his expression bleary. "Wha…? Did I miss it? Did LUNA-sama vanquish her foes with a single, devastating verbal strike?" He looks around at Rina's and Haruka's stunned, slightly terrified faces. "Oh. I guess I did." He scrambles to his feet, dusting himself off, his eyes shining with a renewed, fervent, and frankly terrifying light. "MAGNIFICENT! GLORIOUS! A true queen asserting her dominance! I have never witnessed such raw, charismatic power! That delivery! That icy disdain! She did not even raise her voice!" He looks ready to start composing epic poetry on the spot.

"She called us 'beneath her'," Rina grits out, the insult clearly stinging more than any physical blow could. It cuts right to the core of her Ectiqa pride.

"Well, objectively speaking…" Kenji begins cheerfully, but stops abruptly when Rina and Haruka both turn their murderous glares on him simultaneously. "Objectively speaking," he amends quickly, "she was perhaps a tad harsh! But undeniably cool!"

"Look," I say, trying to regain control of the situation before Kenji spontaneously combusts from sheer fanboy energy or Rina decides to test the structural integrity of his skull. "That was… intense. Unexpected. Maybe we should all just… go home? Decompress? Pretend this never happened?"

"Pretend?" Rina repeats, whirling on me. The shock is fading, replaced by a familiar, simmering fury. "She insulted us! She threatened us! And you just stood there! You seemed almost… impressed!"

Okay, maybe I was a little impressed. The shift from terrified Aiwa to ice-cold LUNA was whiplash-inducing, but undeniably powerful. Seeing her take control, even in such a brutal way, sparked a strange, unfamiliar flicker of something in my chest. Respect? Admiration? Fear? Probably all three. It is confusing and frankly, quite annoying.

"She was impressive," Haruka admits grudgingly, pushing a stray strand of hair back into place with a trembling hand. "Her control over her persona, her delivery… it was flawless. Annoying, condescending, but flawless."

"Are you siding with her?!" Rina demands, aghast at this betrayal.

"I am merely acknowledging a tactical victory when I see one," Haruka retorts coolly, though her voice is a little shaky. "We underestimated her. We focused on the shy Aiwa persona and failed to anticipate the full strength of the LUNA defense mechanism. We were amateurs."

While they are busy dissecting Aiwa's personality like a particularly complex boss battle strategy, my mind is stuck on that last look LUNA gave me. That brief softening of her eyes. It felt… personal. Like she was not just defending herself, but maybe, just maybe, defending me too? The thought is ridiculous, but it sends a strange warmth spreading through my chest, quickly followed by a cold wave of panic. No. Do not go there. Your life is complicated enough.

"We need a new strategy," Miki says, ever the pragmatist, already making notes on her phone like a battlefield commander planning the next campaign. "Direct confrontation is clearly ineffective against the LUNA persona. We need to find a different angle. Perhaps focusing on exploiting the Aiwa persona's weaknesses?"

"Or," Kenji suggests brightly, his eyes gleaming with mad inspiration, "we could all just become LUNA-sama's loyal subjects! Imagine the peace! The harmony! We could form a fan club! The 'Knights of the Lunar Empress'! I volunteer to be the first Grand Commander!"

"Kenji," Rina says, her voice dangerously sweet, a terrifying counterpoint to her furious expression. "How attached are you to your kneecaps?"

"Very attached!" he squeaks, immediately hiding behind Hana, who looks like she desperately wishes she was anywhere else on Earth.

We finally manage to disperse, the air thick with unresolved tension and Kenji's enthusiastic humming of what sounds like a LUNA-themed battle anthem he is composing on the spot. As I walk home, Rina flanking me on one side like a particularly grumpy bodyguard, Haruka somehow "coincidentally" walking just behind us like a suspicious shadow, I cannot shake the image of Aiwa's transformation. Who is she, really? The shy girl, the confident queen, or something else entirely? And why does the thought of figuring it out suddenly feel less like a chore and more like… an adventure? My brain is clearly broken.