NOTMS5: DISK 2 BOOK 3

[Nefer Nightbug]

DISK 2 BOOK 3

Another Side/Another Story

Last time, on NOTMS...

the election caused a premature end to a CYOA.

---

Chara「The Ancient Genocider」prepares her assault. She assembles her team in Zebraspace:

Akeros「The Original Model」- a durian deity of the planet Syndromera.
Star Dream「The Mother Computer」- a soulful OS with the desire to end all organic life.
Sariel「The Cyber Seraphim」- the insane Goddess of Hyperdeath, and the only one of Chara's followers both alive and outside of Zebraspace.
Clownpiece「The Star Spangled」- A Pierrot of the American flag, whose words are backed with nuclear weapons.
Queen Sectonia「The Sullied Grace」- An insect queen, forever changed by the Dimension Mirror that she spent long hours gazing at.
Lord English「The Umbral Ultimatum」- A legendary Angel Lord that once sought to destroy the Dreambubbles, before his demise at the hands of Vriska.
Gamzee Makara「The Terrible Capricorn」- An indigoblood troll that attempted to kill everyone on his team, and then some.
0^5「The Miraculous Matter」- The ultimate being of Dark Matter, which refuses to just stay dead.
Arkon「The Divine Madness」- A Horrorterror Lord and an ancient demon created by Dogtac in an attempt to destroy Arcatnya.
Grontimügarr「The Crimson Feeder」- The Forerunner God of Pain, destroyed by the Submachine it was sealed in.
Dark Matter「The Bitter Cold」- The collective negative emotions and grudges of all Pokémon given life, with intent to destroy it all in an unending winter.
Iblis「The Desire Incarnadine」- An ancient creature that feasts upon desire, corrupting wishes and devouring entire planets.

[Nefer Nightbug]

Chapter -1: Where They Are Now


Chara first goes to harass one Alice Latian, who was en route to the Alola region at the time. Knocked overboard, she spends a fortnight unconscious beneath the waves.





While that is going on, a bored Satan decides to shirk duties as the leader of Hell and gets an honest job as a Sanzu River ferryman; an angel of the Christian faith has their life erased by the Ayakashi and their body bound as a servitor; a catfish continues to fill its captives (of which Shikieki, Shou, Daiyousei, Mystia, and Kanako are among their ranks) with eggs; the Outside World finds itself in a Third World War, leaving much of its surface resembling that of Syndromera (Japan, Antarctica, and Australia somehow remain completely untouched, while America hides underground;) Junko kills off Dr. Yagakoro and takes the corpse into deep space; an Angel has her first date with a Horrorterror; and The Boundless Yamato follows in her father’s footsteps.





Karkat bludgeons Yukari Yakumo over the head with a bucket seventeen times.





In a completely unrelated case, a vortex opens over the Scarlet Devil Mansion that emits a very familiar energy...

[Nefer Nightbug]

Chapter 0: A Prelude To The Inane


(Pokéopia, Middle-Of-Nowhere, Somewhere Else)





A lone figure washes up on the shore of a tiny island naught more than a single mile in radius, devoid of all other life sans a scraggly little shrubbery. She has soggy, salt-encrusted hair the colour of a Latias; whatever's left of her clothes is limited to sea-soaked, nigh-nonexistent tatters that wouldn't even qualify for the Chainmail Bikini trope; and just below her rather exposed left breast, there is an inconspicuous bump nearly indistinguishable from the rest of her skin.





This young girl is Alice Latian, a half-hume half-Sylvari half-Latias and the youngest of twenty children of A Latian. She has never expressed any sort of magical power, and as such, her twelve brothers have been constantly nagging her about it. However, she has proven herself to practically be the perfect detective, to the point of being able to pull case-closing evidence that couldn't possibly have been otherwise noticed.





Now, after spending two whole weeks beneath the waves, the unconscious girl looks like she is wasting away due to hunger. It decidedly does not look like she will survive the night without any help, and help isn't likely to be coming...

[Nefer Nightbug]

A Pidgeot, flying across the sea, spots the starving body and adjusts his flight plans. His new destination: Citidark Isle, now home to an expansive Ranger base.





Along the way Alice recovers her strength with a limited food supply. Upon arrival, she is quickly taken to the on-site hospital and examined. The results are interesting, to say the least: the lump above her heart is quite noticeable against her skin (and instead of growing like a cancer, it appears to be slowly moving upwards at about the same rate as a beard grows;) her heart rate seems to be switching from infinity to nonexistent every other second; she appears to be in labor yet lacking in anything to birth; and most worryingly, she’s starting to hear the thoughts of others.


Hoopa, who is still a shikigami of Yukari, is forced to ping his master as of to her granddaughter-in-law’s condition. Yukari Yakumo, currently inconvenienced by a bucket-slinging Karkat, sends her granddaughter and her husband to deal with the situation. Armin takes the time to demonstrate the capabilities of his Mega Buster, including a feature that allows it to ‘strip layers’ (an illusion useful for diagnostics, trap checking, and treasure hunting.) The result: a profound revelation, for which any dramatic stinger, even silence, would be far less than adequate.

Alice Latian is becoming a satori.

[Nefer Nightbug]

And That's When The Problems Start. (™)





First the SCP Foundation shows up, interrupting Alice unmasking the company mole. They are hotly pursued by the Aether Foundation, Team Skull (trying to interrupt their superiors in the Aether Foundation,) and Team Plasma (seeking a decisive blow) in that order.





It’s at about that point that an immortal lizard, seeking attention, breaks through the wall and everybody winds up in a scuffle. Team Plasma manages to defeat everybody except for Alice and Hoopa (and SCPF, who had already left by then) but is very quickly smashed up by Expansion/Absorption, who was a little late to the party.





UB02 knowing Lord Drive, though? Those things must be older than they look.

---

Meanwhile, in the Outside World...





America, a nation of idiots. Led into global thermonuclear war by a fascist dictator and burrowed fuck deep in invincible bedrock, they were the only aggressors that actually survived the greatest war. Now, having imprisoned and sacrificed all the otaku in the country for a dark ritual, the Republican Party, unopposed for twenty-four years in the Presidency and Congress, march on the fertile land of Gensokyo...





























Boy, will everybody be PISSED...

[Nefer Nightbug]

Alice Latian, now a satori, flees the area. She ran so far away, and couldn't get away in the end. She and Hoopa end up on the wrong side of Lusamine’s storied wrath...

---

Her village’s only survivor against the yukari-no-daidarabotchi. A somewhat distant cousin of the esteemed Hearn family. Teleported away from her home world during a freak sealing accident. Insane enough to put her trust in alien entities to create a world free of youkai. Creator of the Aether Foundation, with ears and eyes everywhere. Lusamine. 

---

Obviously this means a (short and one-sided) war, but that’s mainly because she got punched in the gut by Marshadow, who had brought Alice back over again. Yukari, though, is more than willing to comply to a cousin's request (after the requisite fight and chewing-out) and seal the thing.

Lusamine’s eventual realization that she was wrong to put her trust in the Ultra Beasts is what truly kills her in the end. A lone UB-01 takes the opportunity to stealthily possess her and take control of the Aether Foundation as an anti-youkai front.


Meanwhile, Hoopa squares off against (and loses badly to) an upside-down UB-04 Booster, with attacks eerily reminiscent of a legendary witch straight out of bad anime. Red goes to space to destroy a Kill Sat. It has been about a month and a half since Citidark Isle was destroyed.

[Nefer Nightbug]

Meanwhile in Japan, there is an invasion.





Grandiose witches out of bad anime, cruel angelic cliones, insane juggernauts, animate cyclones, floating bruisers, and astral invaders besiege the Moog City of Kyoto, during its annual Biome Fest. These abominations have been pushed from the nuclear wastes of the world, and Kyoto is their last holding. Their only opposition: the Cat Army, a rugged army of adorable and very deadly cats led by General DONALD MORDEN, a former traitor turned hero.


The odd clash of franchises is only made more poignant when both sides get ambushed by a bunch of danmaku users. Soon, the battle winds down to being between a colossal dragon and an engineer with her cat.


It seems like SBURB is quite realistic - apparently thrown objects are denser than they really are. Who the heck wrote this into reality???

gentlemanMannerism utterly wipes the floor with Trump’s army, while still wearing that same old weary and pointed stare. Even in the face of technological superiority, she is just completely unflappable.



The last time she showed any emotion was when she gave Primeus a scathing rant. She sometimes gives suspicious things a vicious glare.



(Speaking of, Primeus hasn't come to the surface in a while, and has been reported as commenting “merde” upon hearing of Trump’s invasion.)

[Nefer Nightbug]

The fighting at Eientei does not last very long. Trump’s men end up scattered and slowly picked off. About half end up in a large pitfall, a third wind up eaten, and four-fifths end up emasculated.

“If you can't beat ‘em with brains or brawn, baffle ‘em with bullshit!” ~ Tewi Inaba, quoting FREAKING GENSOKYO

Meanwhile, Alice Latian slowly digs herself out of the cave she got herself trapped in, and begins to slowly move across the perilous landscape of the ancient Sinjoh region; Junko runs out of fuel; Chara attempts to recruit Lusamine; the Watasuki sisters still have no idea that they're on the telly; the author writes a long essay; Necrozoma tries its hand at being a tank (it fails badly;) a pair of godly cats reminisce, ruminate, and remember; Nitori tries to build a small model hydroelectric dam; and (human) meat is back on the menu.

[Nefer Nightbug]

As Alice Latian searches for a pickaxe to dig herself out of her cave, Hoopa still fights his losing battle. The Lunar Capital begins to recover from the ashes of war; Keine gets drunk again; the Angels and Horrorterrors begin to fight as one; and a Rowlet gets completely ignored.

(Yukari decides to man the Hakurei Shrine once more, as a shrine maiden, leaving Karkat to his own devices. Said devices include making all of Yukari’s underwear make an instantaneous quantum leap two feet to the left, a terse Dersite to be groped by a Cro-Magnon carrot, and the author once more question his sanity while on vacation.)

[Nefer Nightbug]

Some time later...


???: Alice, wake up. The ferry's reached its destination, and there's someone here to see you.

Looker: Okay, here's the plan. You will get dressed in this, and these contacts, and even use this hair dye. After all, those scarlet globes and that Latias-red hair of yours will give you away to the Aether Foundation pronto.
Looker: You're going to totally replace a trainer that just went missing a few days ago, by the name of Amber. If asked, use that as your name.
Looker: You'll be attending a festival in a few days, but you'll have to go through a Rattata that is not top percentage.
Looker: Also, there's a petite nebula roaming about, it might give you radio feedback and/or poke you in your third eye.
Looker: What was my first partner again, anyway? I am 99% sure it wasn't a Croagunk but... something else. Some sort of Normal-type?

[Nefer Nightbug]

(This is for you, Nedben.)



Meanwhile, on LOWAS…



John: so, riku, you're going to tell me everything you know about the night of the mongolian safari
Riku: Do you want the short version, or the medium one?
John: the longest one obviously
Riku: Okay… Let me get my thoughts in order first…

It was an eventful night that happened roughly about two hundred seven million, two hundred six thousand, eight hundred and seventy-four years in the past, starting when Captain Pooh and his friend Stickmaster Jay managed to steal the Star of Tropical Radiance and the Tablet of Toa from the Mongolians-

John: and the mongolians are?

Riku: They're probably one of the first sentient races to exist. It's almost unanimously agreed that they created at least the Eridanus-Supervoid, and it's confirmed straight from the giraffe’s mouth that they created those guys too.

The duo, after running for countless days, rightfully and hotly pursued by very angry Mongolian troops, took refuge in a small Martian hotel manned by what would be the future queen of Mars. While Cassiopeia was bravely holding off the starving Mongolian forces with food, the Star of Tropical Radiance decided to go off.
First, the sky turned a deep, infinite black. It was as if every star, world, moon and black hole suddenly stopped producing or reflecting light, because you couldn’t even see them from space. Then, slowly, the entire multiverse began to have all of its colours replaced by a blinding, endless white: growing ever outward, in a perfect sphere around the artifact.
The Forerunners, one of the first civilized races of reality, knew that this was a bad thing and all packed themselves inside the recently-completed Submachine, locked the door, and jettisoned the whole thing into the Void, an infinite trench of history beneath the Eridanus-Supervoid.
Meanwhile, the strange effects of this night suddenly reversed the magic flow on Tyria (a major Zebra breakout point at the time,) ruining their best efforts to retake their lost lands and knocking out the Elder Dragons. The smallest, Zhaitan, even starved to death.
To compensate for this sudden loss of magic, all empty space became a rift to Zebraspace. Even the space between quarks. This caused such an influx of magic that worlds had their matter heavily compacted, resulting in it taking thousands of years for ambient magic levels to be sufficient for widespread usage to become common.

Riku: Now, I theorize the reason the Submachine was half embedded in Zebraspace is because Chara took the opportunity to pull Mount Ebott from the Void at that time, and the suction from the pull caused it to be elongated along the wall of the Void… which would explain why it also wound up partially in the Eridanus-Supervoid.

[Nefer Nightbug]

John: tell me what the difference is between the void and the super void.
Riku: That's really simple. The Eridanus-Supervoid is where worlds that still have living residents end up when they are forgotten. The Void is where living things go when they are forgotten or erased from history, as well as empty and forgotten worlds. In addition, things in the Void tend to end up half-digested in Zebraspace given enough time.

John: speaking of, who are these zebras and what is zebraspace.
Riku: We… don't really know. The Mongolians didn't really leave much information on them, except for that they were bitter enemies. Basically everything we know that isn't speculation comes from Demo and and Gaster, and neither really remember much. We don't know who they are, what they look like (other than their impossible form and the Phanto masks they are almost never caught without,) what powers they have as a race, how they live, what their culture is like, how they reproduce, why their dimension oozes magic, or what their weaknesses are.
All we know is that they are incredibly powerful; they existed before anything else; they want their land back; they appear as monochrome formless abominations with a terrifying miasmajesty; and their realm consists of a liquid plasma and a gaseous Bose-Einstein condensate that has the appearance of a pinstriped void which is solid enough to breathe with a temperature so nonexistent that it has looped back to absolute zero again.
In short, these astral horrors live in a monochrome and utterly incomprehensible realm. Thankfully, they listen to Gaster enough that a direct invasion through the largest rift is permanently postponed.


John: wow thats really interesting!

[Nefer Nightbug]

SIDE ONE: NEFER'S LAMENT

---

Act - BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE WE NEED TO CATCH UP HERE.

Nefer: Excuse me Mister Narrative Prompt, you do not have the proper permissions to request that of the auth-
Karkat: BLAH BLAH BLAH. FIRSTLY, I WOULD LIKE TO MENTION THAT THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK TO GET HELLA FUCKING DARK AS THE INSIDE OF A CLOSED REFRIGERATOR. ALSO, IN A BREAK FROM THE NORM, THIS IS ALSO PLAYING WITH SOME VERY ADULT UNDERTONES AND TROPES. AND THIS IS ALL IN RESPONSE TO THE ILLEGITIMATE ELECTION OF ONE ASSHAT FUCKFACE MCWHORE TRUMP, WHICH GOES TO SHOW JUST HOW MUCH THE AUTHOR HATES HIS BLOODY FUCKING GUTS AND YET IS HAVING TO FUCKING RESTRAIN HIMSELF SO BLOODY GODDAMN HARD AS TO NOT JUST SKIP STRAIGHT TO THE DRASTIC ACTION IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN TO PREVENT THIS STORY ARC FROM HAPPENING. SO IF ANY OF YOU AMERICAN GOVERNMENT DEFENDERS, SPIES, SCOUTS, EMPLOYEES, SPOOKS, OR ANYTHING ELSE OF THAT SORT ARE WATCHING; THE AUTHOR SUGGESTS YOU JUST LAUGH AT HIS MISERY AND THEN TAKE ACTION AGAINST THE VERY BADLY-MASKED CORRUPTION IN YOUR OWN FUCKING GOVERNMENT FOR THIS ONE HELPLESS, INSECURE MAN WHO WILL SHOW NO EMPATHY TOWARDS THE ABSOLUTE FUCKUP OF A GOVERNMENT THAT HIS DYING COUNTRY POSSESSES. GOT THAT MEMORIZED? GOOD.
Nefer: Karkat why
Karkat: OKAY. IT HAS BEEN A FEW DAYS SINCE THE TYRANNICAL, COCKSURE BITCHSPAGHETTI INFRAREDBLOODED DESPOT WITH A BONE BULGE SO SMALL THAT IT STICKS OUT HIS ASS MARCHED ALL HIS SHITASS TROOPS INTO GENSOKYO. EVER SINCE THEN, HE HAS MADE EVERY FEMALE A BREEDING SLAVE AND FORCIBLY CONSCRIPTED EVERY MALE HE CAN GET HIS GRUBBY HANDS ON. OUR HERO, NEFER, HAS JUST MADE IT TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD IN ORDER TO OBTAIN SOME SORT OF “CAT BASE” SO HE CAN BUILD AN ARMY--- *konk*

Vriska: Damn. About time someone shut him up. That was a good insult, too. Even a pir8 would be hard-pressed to top that.
Nefer: Thank you. Now, can I just please get this Cat Base back to the mountain -

Nefer: mmm? What's all this commotion about, a cosplayer? No, wait, that's not a cosplayer - there’s a fairy following her. I think I am going to ruin that unwanted photoshoot. I have not used this for a camera ever since Nitori decided to play with it. She claims she might have overdid it a little…
*CHA-CHLIK* *LENS FLAAAAAAAARE*
Nefer: AAH GOD THAT WAS NOT JUST A LITTLE DAMMIT - but on the other hand, the screams of those perverted otaku fills me with chaos! Ahahahahahah! LEARN TA FEAR ME, YA CAMERA WIELDING NAKED SPAM PORPOISES!

[Nefer Nightbug]

SIDE TWO: SONG OF SKAIA

---

Act - And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming…


gM: Okay. I am calling you six to order because I am becoming very concerned with how this is all shaping out to be. The Ignitions have gone eerily silent, there is a racist, chauvinist megalomaniac nuclear-armed terrorist running around Gensokyo with the goal of “screw all the women and steal their newborn children,” and I can only mess with Chara’s head for so long before she snaps. Let's start with the guy that's actually outdoing the lolicon catfish.
bY: Don't remind me of that gods-awful, hypnotic stench. I’ve actually had to leave my husband behind and live on the Cyodrake’s Gaze to escape its grasp!
gM: That's not the point, child of the giraffe. What are we going to do about the man who has already left two hundred fairies somehow pregnant?
hK: WHAT? No way that's impossible! A fairy with functioning ovums, statistically, is twice as rare as a male fairy - and the chance for a fairy to be male is about one in one hundred sixty thousand!
hT: Yes, and there are about twelve million fey in Gensokyo. That's, uh-
gM: NOT. THE. POINT.
bY: The guy’s got troops that are at least as hungry for nonconsenting procreation as he is. There’s no way we can even get close enough to have a five percent chance for a shot from the Gaster Blaster to not only break his shields, but also land a fatal blow! The only man in the party that looks human enough to pass as one of his men is Leon, and your gun becomes really snippy, disobedient and bellicose whenever someone else handles it.
hT: ...carry the one…
fD: What if we summon people in Hermaphroditus's physical form?


fD: What? If that buttzone pulls the same stunt he’s been doing to every other girl, his target can turn around and bugger him! It's humiliating, it's ironic, it's karmic and it’ll be really funny.


fD: Wait, where are you all going? Did I say something wrong?

[Nefer Nightbug]

gM: Do we have any other ideas than… well, that?

hK: I’ve got nothing.

mT: Make him a target of Makai. If he’s such a breed-hungry orange, he’d willingly jump in the sack with his succubus assassin.

hT: ...take the square root… Oh, uh, he’s not that virile. I have been watching him, and he seems to turn about three-quarters of his captives over to his men.

sS: Axemond, you're failing at math. Here, let me do it for you-

hT: No! Hands off!




sS: give me the chalk youre doing it wrong

hT: I KNOW WHAT IM DOING