"This way! It's dangerous over there—hurry!"
Clockie kept hopping up and down, waving both hands.
He was trying to get the attention of the people standing there like idiots.
Beside Clockie, another timid-looking figure was calling out to Sora with him.
As for who it was, Sora knew him all too well.
It was the conductor of the Compass, the train he had ridden before in Penacony—Misha.
And right now, Misha was calling to Sora and the others too, telling them to get away from that dangerous place as fast as possible.
Sora was utterly stunned to see Misha.
Unless he was remembering wrong, March 7th had said she had not seen Misha anywhere aboard the Compass.
He had never expected to see him here.
"What are you doing—"
Before Sora could finish, an inexplicable voice cut him off.
[OH? WHAT A TOUCHING REUNION.]
The black fog before them began to churn again, and the white bones resembling Sunday vanished amid the spreading haze.
[SINCE FRIENDS HAVE MET AGAIN, HOW COMFORTING THIS MUST BE.]
[THEN LET US PROPERLY SAVOR THE JOY OF REUNION, AND EMBRACE TRANQUILITY TOGETHER.]
The black fog spiraled and spread. Then, a strange melody began to play.
The instant Clockie and Misha heard the music ringing in their ears, their faces changed.
"Oh no, oh no! The big bad guy's starting again!"
The big bad guy was about to play that bewitching music again.
Anyone bewitched by it would lose their usual emotions and become violent, irritable, and full of aggression.
He and Misha had been trying to get Sora and the others to run before the other side started playing, but they had not expected such a fast reaction.
Clockie could see the black fog gathering in the sky, surging back and forth.
Then came an eerie chant, shattering Penacony's peaceful atmosphere.
No matter how one looked at it, the scene was strange—especially because the sound was coming from the black fog spreading across the sky.
It gave the whole scene an even more sinister edge.
At that moment, Misha suddenly reminded him, "Don't worry, Clockie. We still have Clockwork!"
"That's right, Misha! We still have Clockwork!"
Clockie gave himself a thumbs-up.
Clockwork could briefly control another person's emotions.
Sora and the others had only just heard the bewitching movement, so they should not have been drawn in too deeply yet.
But just as the two of them were about to use Clockwork on Sora's group, they realized something seemed off about these people.
The movement played by the black fog echoed in everyone's ears.
Yet Sora and the others stood where they were, seemingly unaffected.
A thin wisp of black fog tried to invade Sora's body, only to discover it could not get close to him at all.
And it was not just him. Those oddly shaped fellows were much the same.
"What the heck is this guy trying to do?"
Momotaros sounded puzzled. Was it trying to play them a song the moment they met?
Was Penacony really that hospitable?
"Mm… snore…"
Kintaros had actually fallen asleep under this music.
Urataros merely held up his hand and examined it while observing their surroundings.
Looking at Sunday and Mikhail behind him, they could not remain immune to the influence like Sora and the Imagin.
At that moment, only one emotion remained in their hearts.
Brutal release.
They wanted to vent the violent impulses in their hearts with their own hands. They wanted to knock down everything they saw before them.
Under the pull of that emotion, Mikhail clenched his teeth and raised his fist.
If he struck the other person in the temple, the sight would probably be quite splendid.
A thought surfaced in his mind, and his body moved in accordance with it.
Just as Urataros was about to reach out and stop him, Clockie suddenly leapt out from the side.
"Clockwork!"
With that shout, a force acted directly upon Mikhail, instantly dispelling the violent emotions in his heart.
Mikhail shuddered, and his whole body recovered from the state it had just been in.
When he recalled what he had just done, lingering fear rose in him.
"What was I just…"
"I used Clockwork to drive out THEIR influence on you. Let's get out of here first!"
Clockie's explanation made Urataros understand one thing.
"The song this fellow is playing seems to ignite the negative emotions in people's hearts."
Once those negative emotions were ignited, people would become aggressive toward everything around them.
That was why Mikhail had acted like that.
"So that means this guy's an enemy, right?"
The moment Ryutaros heard that, his tone changed at once.
Looking at the black fog surging in midair, impossible to reach easily, he leapt straight into Sora's body.
Sora's clothes instantly changed into a casual style, and a cap appeared on his head.
Then Sora tugged down the brim, revealing the purple eyes beneath, filled with anger…
Being friendly to friends did not mean he was friendly to enemies.
"Henshin!"
"[HENSHIN]!"
'[GUN FORM]!'
Purple armor split apart, then finally loaded itself onto Sora's body.
He spun around, and with the movement of his body, the DenGasher assembled in Gun Mode at the same time.
Then he aimed it at the black fog still churning in the sky.
"Can I beat you down?"
It was a question.
But his actions had already given the answer.
He pulled the trigger, and a purple energy shot burst directly from the muzzle.
"Your answer doesn't matter!"
If you want to hurt my friends, then I'll see whether you're even qualified!
Sunday suddenly noticed that the music echoing in his ears seemed to have faded somewhat.
Because compared to the music, the even louder gunfire had replaced it.
As the trigger was pulled again and again, one purple energy shot after another rushed straight toward the mass of black fog.
The black fog neither dodged nor evaded. It met the fired energy shots head-on.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
With the sound of air being torn apart, those energy shots left hole after hole in the black fog.
At the same time, they made the performance skip a beat.
But that was all.
In the next instant, the black fog gathered and merged once more.
The interrupted music rang out again in that place.
"You're so annoying! Shut up!"
With Ryutaros's impatient shout, he pulled the trigger even faster.
Purple energy nearly condensed into an unbroken line, firing continuously into the sky.
At times, through the pierced passage left behind by the shots, one could even see the stars above…
But in the next instant, the black fog surged in and filled the gap again.
And at that moment, Sora heard something strange.
"Ryutaros, something feels wrong!"
"What's wrong about it? This guy's the one causing trouble. I just have to take this guy and—"
With Ryutaros's childish personality, once he decided on something, he absolutely would not give up easily.
He wanted to use the DenGasher in his hand to completely disperse this inexplicable black fog.
Unfortunately, at that very moment, something tore through the black fog and attacked Sora's side!
And when they focused on the thing that had pierced through the mist, it was actually…
"A missile?!"
Sunday froze. No matter what, he had never expected to see something like that in this place.
That was right. What had pierced through the cluster of black fog was a missile.
If he remembered correctly, what had just been wrapped inside the black fog had been the former Great Septimus, had it not?
How had it suddenly turned into a missile?
Could it have been an illusion?
"No. The Great Septimus just now was absolutely not an illusion."
Sunday refuted the thought that had just surfaced in his own mind.
Because when the Great Septimus had appeared, he had felt the resonance of the Path of ORDER.
In other words, the Great Septimus engulfed by the black fog had indeed been real.
Then came the question. Where had this missile come from?
Based on how familiar he was with the Great Septimus, there should have been absolutely no space in that enormous body to store missiles.
And that was not even getting into why the Great Septimus would store missiles in the first place. They were things that did not belong together at all.
After all, the Great Septimus was something he had created by usurping Dominicus, the Wisher of the Harmonious Choir.
It was equivalent to an incarnation of the AEON of HARMONY, the egg of the newborn ORDER.
Its power had long since surpassed missiles, so it had no need for acquired mortal objects like these.
Then did that mean this missile was fake?
Just as doubt surfaced in Sunday's mind, reality slapped him hard across the face.
BOOOM!
Brilliant flames bloomed in the sky, illuminating everyone's faces.
A scorching wave of air brushed past their cheeks, letting them witness technology in full bloom.
The missile was not fake.
Sunday's speculation was utterly trampled underfoot.
And now, even Sunday could no longer guess where this thing had come from.
"What is that thing…?"
As Sunday murmured, the missile's brilliant explosion slowly faded.
However, after the missile exploded, the black fog in the sky no longer churned. Instead, it stilled.
Could that missile just now have been the full extent of the other side's methods?
No!
Under Sunday and Mikhail's widening eyes, they witnessed an unbelievable sight.
The clouds above slowly split open, as if they were some kind of mechanical device.
And the things inside the mechanism were raised up.
They were all missiles. Judging from their appearance, they were almost the same model as the one that had just exploded in the sky.
"H-how is that possible?!"
Sunday spoke in disbelief.
He had no memory of anything like this existing in Penacony.
Rather, Penacony was protected by an Emanation of HARMONY. There was no need to use something like this to defend its own safety.
Then came the question.
How had these things appeared in Penacony, and how had they been brought into the dreamscape?
Or perhaps…
"Is the Penacony I returned to even the one from before?!"
As he began to doubt, the missiles inside the mechanical device launched a simultaneous volley at everyone below.
Flames sprayed from behind the missiles, their powerful thrust causing their speed to rise rapidly.
Missile after missile surged toward them at once.
The explosion just now had already proven their power.
With so many missiles firing in one volley, this place would probably be blown completely flat.
At that moment, Sunday suddenly felt himself being hauled up.
"Now's not the time to stand there daydreaming!"
Kintaros dragged him with one hand and Misha with the other, running into the train.
Only then did Sunday realize that the train had already changed its appearance.
Sora was at the very front, on top of the dragon-shaped DenLiner Ikazuchi.
He placed the Rider Pass in front of his belt, waited until it announced "FULL CHARGE," then threw it away.
"Everyone sit tight! This is no time to fool around!"
The two round beads above his shoulders were now resonating with the DenGasher in his hand.
The mouth of the DenLiner Ikazuchi below had already gathered a vast surge of energy.
As Sora pulled the trigger, a thick, blazing beam of light sprayed from it!
The incoming missiles exploded the instant they came into contact with the light.
As Sora turned, a dazzling band of light appeared across the entire sky in an instant.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The unending explosions completely filled their ears.
Amid the firelight of those explosions, Sora twisted the throttle and drove the train away from the place in an instant.
After the brilliant light in the sky faded, silence like the turning of the seasons once again covered the piercing roar.
[DID THEY RUN?]
The dense black fog rolled and leapt through the sky again. THEY seemed surprised by Sora's disappearance.
But it did not matter…
[TRANQUILITY WILL SOON SPREAD ACROSS THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.]
This was something that could not be stopped.
The voice drifted farther and farther away until it vanished completely.
And Penacony stood there silently, like a city in a dream.
Compared to Penacony's silence, however, the train was practically in chaos.
...
"Is this still Penacony? Sora, where the hell did you bring me?!"
Sunday went straight to Sora and pressed him. "Tell me, have you ever seen anything like that in Penacony?"
"Forget Penacony. Even when I was traveling the universe, I barely saw missiles more than a few times…"
Sora spent most of his time in space, and the weapons he usually saw were mostly beams that could be used in outer space.
Because of the vacuum environment, missiles came with more limitations.
Of course, he had seen missiles before, but truly not many times.
He just had not expected to face a missile bombardment head-on in a place like this.
Where exactly had he run off to just now?
At that moment, Mikhail, who had been silent at the side, showed a faint change in expression.
Sora and Sunday had never seen these missiles before.
But he had.
During the IPC's suppression of rebellions, he had once seen the casualties caused by missiles.
Weapons used to suppress riots like those showed not the slightest mercy. In an instant, they could devour countless lives.
At first, he had thought he had seen wrong. But after comparing them to the models in his memory, he discovered they were practically the same.
"Could it be because I got on the train, which caused…"
Mikhail stopped there.
Could it be because he had needed to see the future once that Penacony had changed like this?
At that moment, however, someone temporarily dispelled the guilt in his heart.
"I just checked the train's operation. From beginning to end, we were on this route."
Urataros's words proved that they had indeed taken this route back into the past.
Following this route to the future could not have been wrong.
Then came the question…
"Did something happen while we weren't in Penacony?"
That seemed to be the only possibility.
After thinking for a while, a name appeared in Sunday's mind.
"Gopher Wood!"
He had not forgotten that bastard, nor had he forgotten what he had said.
Gopher Wood wanted to use the remaining divine power of ORDER in his body and the Stellaron to recreate some inexplicable god.
Looking at it that way, could that man's plan have succeeded?
"Then why didn't you say that sooner?!"
Sora grabbed Sunday at once and demanded, "Do you have any idea who's still in Penacony?"
Robin, Firefly, Mitsutake, the Iron Cavalry…
The people who had come here with Sora were all in Penacony right now.
"I… I thought the ritual had been interrupted. I didn't expect…"
Sunday lowered his head.
He had thought he had been saved, thought someone had already broken the ritual.
He had never expected something like this would still happen.
Once he said that, the entire inside of the train fell into a kind of silence.
Everyone needed time to digest what had just happened.
At that moment, a timid figure suddenly raised his hand to speak.
"Um, um…"
It was Misha. Kintaros had brought him aboard just now.
And the tiny Clockie was standing on top of his head.
"It's okay, Misha. Be brave and tell them who the big bad guy really is!"
Clockie encouraged Misha.
Misha's gaze firmed as well, and he told them what he knew.
According to him, after he and Robin defeated Sunday that day, he had been very happy.
However, just as he was driving the Compass and preparing to bring all the instruments above back with him…
He suddenly felt dizzy. When he woke again, he saw something shocking enough to leave him stunned.
"I saw that the person who should have been defeated was still there, completely unharmed…"
Misha pointed timidly at Sunday as he spoke.
He still remembered the figure he had seen the instant the other party transformed into "Embryo of Philosophy" Sunday.
It was absolutely this person. There was no mistake.
Smack!
Sunday slapped the table, making Misha flinch.
"Impossible! Are you trying to insult me?"
The moment he heard that, Sunday refuted it directly. He felt Misha was humiliating him by saying he refused to accept defeat.
A loss was a loss.
It was not a big deal.
And right now, more than his past failure, he wanted to know what he had remained alive in this world to do.
"Shut up, you wobbly-legged little bird. Let him finish."
Momotaros came over and covered Sunday's mouth directly.
Once Sunday, the one interrupting, stopped speaking, Misha continued telling them what he knew.
Everything that happened next was different from what Sora knew.
Because here, there seemed to be nothing obstructing ORDER, and the dreamscape had been completed extremely smoothly.
All living beings sank into ORDER's sweet dream, experiencing satisfaction and beauty, unable to free themselves.
But to Misha, this place felt extremely unfamiliar.
Because there was no one he knew here. No Robin, and no Compass…
"Even my clock turned into him."
That clock was what he used to adjust the Compass's course, but Misha could only point at the Clockie on his head.
In that constant fear and anxiety, Misha hid all over the place.
However, he soon realized that it seemed no one could discover him. That made his already timid nature feel a little better.
Mikhail, who had been listening from the side all along, looked at the Misha before him, contemplation in his eyes.
"But very soon, I discovered that the people who had originally been living happily suddenly changed!"
Misha described what had suddenly happened after some time had passed.
At that time, everyone in all of Penacony was immersed in ORDER's sweet dream, smiling happily every day.
But one day, after Misha woke up, he suddenly discovered that everyone in Penacony had completely changed.
They were not living happily at all. They were fighting one another!
Limbs collided with limbs. Riots and destruction spread.
The moment Sunday heard this, he immediately began struggling.
How was that possible? How could ORDER's dreamscape allow such a thing to happen?
After everyone had been allocated by the Great Septimus, such a thing should have been impossible.
Misha seemed to sense what he wanted to say from his movements, but he only shrank his neck and still insisted,
"I couldn't believe the world I saw at the time either, but that's what happened!"
He was only repeating what he had seen back then!
And that turmoil did not last long before an accident befell the "Embryo of Philosophy" who presided over the grand theater and commanded countless living beings.
Because of the Stellaron and ORDER, the people in Penacony's sweet dream could not die at all.
And because the material world had already been permeated by Memoria, once people woke, they would be dragged back into the dreamscape again.
Under this endless cycle, a terrifying big bad guy was born from ORDER's sweet dream.
Every living being, whether silicon-based or carbon-based, possessed a certain impulse.
That impulse was the urge to return to tranquility, to be free of pain, to return to the inorganic state before birth.
To put it simply, deep in their hearts, there was an inclination to end everything and be done with it all.
At times, this impulse made people display powerful self-destruction, aggressive desire, and destructive behavior.
Such as self-harm, alcoholism, domestic violence…
When living beings unconsciously approached death through such destructive acts, they would inexplicably experience unprecedented pleasure.
And this thing was precisely the opposite of the survival instinct that pursued joy and happiness: an unavoidable longing for tranquility and destruction, lodged in the subconscious.
When that longing was fulfilled by ending life, one could obtain ultimate tranquility and release.
It was another instinct—one that opposed and entangled with the instinct to pursue happiness, yet coexisted with it.
The death instinct.
Clockie said with immense solemnity, "Misha and I call THEM…"
[AEON OF ORDER — DESTRUDOS.]
The sound of stillness born from happiness.
---
T/N: WHATTTTTTT A NEW AEON OF ORDER??????????? SORA HAS TO BEAT AN AEON NOW?? A FULL ON AEON???????????????????????
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