I think it's time for a little field test...
-Doctor Nykannis
Comfortably ensconced within the deepest depths of her interdimensional Lab, Doctor Nykannis, Queen of the Mad Scientists, was meticulously working on the continued expansion of her already inconceivably vast knowledge base, her attention intently focused on the lagomorphic Puchuu she was methodically dissecting. The creature’s vital statistics and other important information were noted on a glowing, holographic screen just above her workstation, while detailed schematics of a Snowbun, an Incubator, a Hoojib, a Killer Rabbit, and a certain eldritch, leporine-eared “Supreme Being” were depicted on an arc of several ancillary holodisplays.
“Hmmm… Yes, yes, I see… Very interesting…” the Monarch of Mad Science murmured as she went about her work, before the blaring of an intruder alert interrupted her musings and brought her progress to a screeching halt.
Bringing up yet another holodisplay, the mad scientist was greeted with the sight of her Lab’s manufacturing center, a seemingly endless maze of hyper factories, nano forges, and quantum fabricators, adjacent to her power accumulator pocket dimension. And there, on a vast, gear-like platform, surrounded by the convoluted inner workings of some colossal cosmic engine, stood a crack strike team of The Beacon Ascendancy. There was the masked and mysterious Hudie, the intensely focused Tsuki, the snide, sycophantic Violette, and finally, their bold and fearless leader, the indomitable Inquisitor Rachel herself.
“The time has come, abomination!” the inquisitor declared. “For too long, we have allowed your wicked perversions to fester unchallenged, but no longer! By the holy light of The Beacon, your wretched taint shall be forever purged!”
“Hmmm… I suppose I could use a small break,” Nykannis noted with a smirk as she put down her techno-mystic tools, rose from her work station, and teleported to the intruders’ location. Arriving in her massively monstrous combat form amidst crackling arcs of yellowy-green actinic lightning, the Mad Scientist Supreme gave her guests a toothy grin.
“Well, well, well… Isn’t this a surprise. I gotta say, I knew you sanctimonious shitheads were sorely lacking in the I.Q. department, but attacking me in the one place where I’m basically omnipotent, while simultaneously being too spineless to stand up to those Wonderland rejects and their Queen of Farts? That’s taking things to a whole new level…”“Enough of your prattle!” Rachel snapped. “We have no need to explain ourselves to the likes of you! Now perish!”
With that, the inquisitor darted forward, with Hudie following close behind. A golden glow forming around her as she further augmented her already staggering physical abilities with her exceptionally gifted Reinforcement magic, Rachel leapt into the air, even as a glowing, golden spike of pure mystic energy formed in front of her. “Pricket of Punishment!” she cried, swinging Ukonvasa, her giant, double-handed hammer, with all her formidable strength and smashing it into the recently-conjured spike, sending the projectile hurtling towards Nykannis’s towering form. For her part, Hudie employed her gifted Time specialization to dart past Rachel and engage Nykannis in melee. Although several of the Lab’s various defensive systems sought to impede her, the masked mistress of minutes used her butterfly wing-esque bladed fan, Lepidoptera, to swiftly slice the hammer, buzzsaw, and energy blade-tipped techno tendrils apart in a blur of motion, while her preternatural agility allowed her to avoid the grinder pits, nano acid vats, and energy beam blasters with effortless ease. Meanwhile, Tsuki and Violette had not been idle. As the former advanced, she focused the energies of her gifted Arcane specialization through Merlin’s Oak to erect an array of sigil-etched mystical barriers with which to deflect the security system’s barrage of beams and blades, before employing the enchanted stave to fire her own shimmering beam of destructive force at the deranged doctor. Violette, on the other hand, proceeded at a more cautious pace as she opened her mystic grimoire, Sidhetale, and called forth an ever-growing whirlwind of spirits in preparation for an exceptionally powerful attack.
In a demonstration of the impeccable teamwork and coordination for which the Ascendancy was renowned, the attacks were perfectly timed to strike the same precise location in rapid succession. Thus, although Rachel’s energy spike was absorbed by the fluctuating folds of a Hyperdimensional Hyperion Veil, Tsuki’s beam arced around the just-revealed obstruction at the last possible microsecond to smash through several multi-layered Neo-Neutrino Shields, before ultimately being halted by the inconceivable properties of an Nth-Space Negation Shell. Yet, even this barrier was no match for Hudie, who, moving between ticks of the clock, slipped past each of the slowly reforming protective screens in turn, before slicing through the Negation Shell with a flurry of strikes that transcended time itself, negating its very existence, and managing to make the barest scratch upon the nanofluidic hyperalloy armor beyond.
A scratch that was soon restored to its original, unmarred, state, even as Hudie was hurled backwards by a concentrated gravitic repulsion pulse.
“Okay,” Nykannis declared with a malicious grin.
“Now it’s my turn…”An instant later, the Monarch of Mad Science opened up with the full cataclysmic fury of her super-scientific ultramagitech arsenal, sending torrents of starkly inconceivable destructive energies crashing against the three closest Ascendancy girls’ woefully deficient defenses. Hudie bore the brunt of this assault, her mastery of time proving itself as nothing in the face of ravening Hyper-Quantum Giga-Cyclonic Chrono Cannon beams, Polymorphic Possibility Particle Paradox Pulse Projector rays, and Superdimensional Schrödinger Warps. In mere moments, she had felt herself turn to dust and be reformed over a thousand times, until, after her final “death”, she lurched back to life with a violent spasm as she vomited up the multi-colored yarn her internal organs had been transmuted into. Tsuki, meanwhile, had to contend with a fusillade of hard light energy bolts spewed forth from a quad-barreled rotary infinite poly-cyclic repeater cannon at a rate of ten thousand rounds per second. After shattering her arcane barriers like mundane panes of glass, this horrifying, hyper-tech hailstorm shredded the mage into bloody stew, a shuddering heap of tattered clothes and flayed flesh that coughed up fresh gouts blood with each tortured breath. Even mighty Rachel could not escape Nykannis’s hellish bombardment unscathed, the indomitable inquisitor’s mystic armor braking apart under the fury of Omniphasic Ultra-Atomic Supernova Lances, Omniaetheric Zero-Point Hypertachyonic Wave Motion Cannons, and Turbo-Charged Polyphasic Quantum Singularity Giga Blasters.
“Awww… Was that too much for you?” Nykannis sneered at her foes’ writhing forms.
“Here, maybe these are closer to your level,” she added, before a quintet of hovering, weapon-covered drones detached from her towering ultratechnomagimechanical form and descended upon the Ascendancy team…
Groaning with a mixture of pain and outrage, Rachel staggered to her feet.
“Unacceptable…” she hissed. “Let the penance for my failure be my strength! Purgatory!” the inquisitor shouted, punching the ground, at which point a blinding pillar of light erupted around her, infusing her battered body with restorative energies. The agony was immense, as if her wounds were being cauterized by holy fire, but they were healed nonetheless, the pain sharpening her focus, making her stronger. When the glow faded, she fixed her steely gaze upon three of the approaching drones. “I have not the time for such trifles!” she declared, her voice filled with contempt, before gesturing towards the drones and shouting “Gibbet!” With that, a glowing cage of golden energy formed around the sinister machines even as they opened fire, their beams, bolts, and missiles unable to penetrate the mystic barrier.
Meanwhile, using Merlin’s Oak for support, Tsuki’s trembling form rose to her knees, before crying out, “Call of the Radiant Phoenix!” Particles of glowing light rapidly gathered about the tip of her stave, before a brilliant avian form burst forth, its flaming wings spread wide. From out of this span shot a beam of healing light, one which fell upon the nearly dead Hudie and swiftly mended all her myriad afflictions. In mere moments, she had been fully restored. At the same time, healing energies flooded into Tsuki herself, removing her own injuries and filling her with renewed strength and vitality.
“My thanks,” Hudie told her comrade with a nod of acknowledgment. “Please accept this as a token of my gratitude,” she added, sending a swarm of shimmering butterflies shooting towards the two drones nearest the mage with a sweep of her bladed fan. “Echo of Ages!” the masked maiden called out as her mystical insects swirled around the drones in the shape of an hourglass, locking them in a temporal stasis field. Then, turning her hate-filled gaze towards Nykannis, she pointed her weapon at the technomantic titan and shouted, “Curse of Years!” Instantly, the Monarch of Mad Science’s massive technomagimechanical form began to rapidly dissolve and decay, yet, just as soon as an aspect withered to dust, it was immediately restored, the Mad Scientist Supreme’s powerful regenerative capabilities holding the forces of hyper-accelerated entropy in a state of equilibrium.
However, that equilibrium was shattered a moment later, as Violette unleashed her now quite sizable vortex of spirits in a mighty torrent. “Phantasmal Procession!” she declared, pointing towards Nykannis with a gesture of command as the cavalcade of ghostly knights surged past her. Slamming into their foe’s monstrous form, they breached each of the demented doctor’s defenses in turn, and, despite losing a substantial amount of their number in the process, still proved strong enough to wear away at her ultratech armor faster than it could be regenerated. “Ha! How do you like
that, you filthy heathen?!” she taunted with a cruel smirk.
“Wow, that was almost impressive!” Nykannis replied with equal derision.
“You actually managed to inflict some completely negligible damage with that little trick! Plus, you didn’t blindly rush to your doom like the rest of these idiots,” she added, gesturing a wickedly clawed appendage to the crypt commissar’s three teammates.
“Did nearly getting your brain popped like a zit back at the rave make you a bit more cautious than your fellow mindless zealots? Well, whatever the case, I think you deserve a reward,” she added with a malevolent grin as she deployed a truly horrific weapon. Its amorphous, midnight black form seemed to shift into spines, tendrils, and wickedly sharp
teeth, while its barrel was set in the mouth of a face whose chalk-white skin was slit by inky black cuts and pulsating veins. The mouth itself was frozen in an anguished scream, most likely in response to the spikes of darkest obsidian, which protruded from its forehead. Streams of black blood poured from eyes that were opened impossibly wide, and filled with mind-numbing terror. Indeed, those horrific orbs shuddered and bulged with such intensity, it seemed as though they would burst apart in a shower of gore at any moment.
“Wanna see something that’s REALLY impressive?! Then feast your eyes on my Negaphasic Numinospheric Nightmare Cannon! Nyahahahaha!” As the deranged doctor continued her maniacal cackling, she fired a violently twisting, pitch black beam of condensed nightmare energy at the Ascendancy girl. Utterly unprepared for such an attack, Violette could only cry out in horror as she was completely engulfed by the baleful beam…
As is happened, Nykannis had actually been rather prescient when mentioning the infamous rave, since it was to that very night that Violette’s tortured mind brought her. Blood gushing from every orifice, her mind ablaze with agonizing pain as she fought to keep it from being rent asunder, the Ascendancy commander felt her violently spasming form being slowly dragged up the stairs leading to the surface by several spectral hands, the door at their summit, viewed through a crimson haze, promising both safety and precious relief from the nearly unbearable pain coursing through every fiber of her being. However, no matter how far along she was dragged, Violette never seemed to get even the smallest distance closer to that place of refuge, the doorway remaining forever out of reach. Seconds stretched to minutes, and minutes to hours, yet there was still no escape from her torment. Indeed, not even death came to bring an end to her misery. Instead, she would simply repeat this agonizing ascent over and over, forever. “N-Nuh-N-No…” she whimpered as blood gurgled out of her mouth. “N-No… N-NOOOOOO!!!”
Beyond the confines of her nightmare, Violette’s anguished screech reached the ears of Rachel, although there was no sympathy to be found in the inquisitor’s icy gaze, only contempt.
“Utterly disgraceful, Violette!” Rachel snapped. “You are a warrior of the Ascendancy! A champion of The Beacon! Throw
off the shackles of those wretched illusions and
stand true!” As the inquisitor spoke, a golden pillar of flame engulfed Violette, and while the flames were agonizing in their own right, they burned away the nightmare, returning the crypt commissar to the waking world.
“F-Forgive me, Inquisitor…” Violette hissed through gritted teeth, her agony replaced by blazing fury and bitter shame. “I’ll not falter again!” Rising to her feet, she pointed to Nykannis and cried, “Don Quixote!”
Swirling into being amidst wisps of spectral energy, a single ghostly knight charged towards the Monarch of Mad Science at full tilt. His armor was far more elaborate than any warrior Violette had yet conjured, while his lance glowed with mystic power. He rode forward with inexorable purpose, his weapon piercing each of his monstrous foe’s multilayered defenses in turn as it prepared to deliver a Killing Blow. Yet, just before the gallant ghost could reach his target, he was smashed into spectral paste by an enormous ectoplasmic omni-oscillating quantum hammer.
Simultaneously, Tsuki had fired off another brilliant beam of arcane energy, while Rachel and Hudie charged Nykannis from opposite sides. However, the Mad Scientist Supreme was more than prepared for this, with Tsuki’s beam being reflected right back at her. Its amplified power proving more than a match for the mage’s hastily erected energy barrier, the force of its impact sending her grievously wounded form flying backwards, even as Rachel and Hudie disappeared into twin poly-harmonic protective portals, only to reemerge moments later directly in one another’s paths. It was only thanks to the pair’s superlative agility that they were able to barely avoid striking each other with their charged up attacks.
“Yeah, I heard the Grand Magistrate liked to see ‘cross ups’,” Nykannis noted.
“It’s too bad you guys are so super ultra gifted at avoiding them.”“B-By the guiding light…” Hudie breathed. “H-How can she even possess such multifaceted abilities?”
“Well, I’d explain it, but you dogmatic dumbasses couldn’t possibly understand such advanced concepts, and I hate having to simplify things for the feeble minded,” Nykannis replied with a mocking smirk.
“If only Leena were fit enough to join us in this battle…” Rachel hissed through gritted teeth. “She would easily be able to silence your blasphemous perversions of magic!”
“Oh, please…” Nykannis sneered.
“I’d just deploy a focused numinospheric null field to nullify her nullification abilities! And speaking of…” At that, the weapon cluster atop one of the mad scientist’s myriad tentacular mechadendrites morphed into a single oversized cannon, its glowing, coned barrel ringed with concentric conducer hoops, spinning orbs, and an octet of sphere-tipped prongs, which crackled with pent up power. An instant later, that power was released in a shaft of desaturated energy, which fell upon Violette, draining the girl of her magic and forcing the crypt commissar back into her mundane form.
“Your stupid ghosts are really starting to annoy me,” Nykannis told her.
“And so are you!” she added, unceremoniously vaporizing the defenseless young woman with a Trans-Etheric Ultra-Antimatter Turbo Disintegrator ray.
“Nyahahaha!”“Violette!” Rachel cried, before turning to face Nykannis with a visage of righteous rage. “You’ll pay dearly for that, you monster!”
“Oh, I’m just getting started!” Nykannis informed her with a maniacal grin, while opening up an energy clawed appendage to reveal a palm-mounted possibility particle projector.
From it promptly issued forth a beam of yellowy-green luminosity, which struck Hudie directly in the chest. At first, nothing seemed to happen, but after a few seconds, the horrifying nature of the attack was revealed in all its gruesome splendor… At first, dozens of boils seemed to sprout across the masked maiden’s skin, growing larger with each passing second, until they burst apart in a bloody spray to reveal a swarm of trans-phasic omni-temporal biotechnomantic butterflies. The insidious insects swirled around her, creating an exponentially enhanced entropic field, one which first decayed her skin, then her organs, and, finally her bones, until there was nothing left of the mistress of minutes, save scant wisps of dust. Meanwhile, Tsuki had been subjected to an even more horrific fate, the baleful energies of an Omniphasic Polytransmagorphic Xzylohgifphonic Chaodoxx Cannon rapidly and violently polymorphing her body, shifting it into innumerable shapes, and even turning it inside out, until all that remained of her was a pulsating lump of fused matter. A trap door promptly yawned open bellow it, causing the nauseating mass to fall into a vat of sickly green nano acid with a loud splash.
“Now, then…” Nykannis taunted with a wicked smirk as she loomed over Rachel.
“It looks like it’s just you and me…”“Think again, abomination!” a voice called from above.
From out of a shimmering portal descended
a squad of magical women, their oversized weapons shining with holy light.
“Fear not, Inquisitor! Reinforcements have arrived!”
They were The Shining Sentinels, cross-dimensional crusaders who could each cleanse an entire world of corruption single-handedly. They were the very embodiment of The Beacon, the very apex of the Ascendancy. They were… utterly erased from existence…? Yes, with the simple sound of tearing paper, the titanic trio were completely unmade, as if they had never been created in the first place.
“As I was saying…” Nykannis quipped, a maniacal grin spreading from ear to ear.
“Check it out, you four-eyed fanatic!” the Monarch of Mad Science added as she gestured to an enormous weapon that took nearly half her various appendages to support. Its twisted, technomantic form a bizarre amalgam of techno organic components, a plethora of wires, tubes, and glimmering crystalline cores, while a profusion of glowing, spheroid power accumulators, concentric coils, crackling forked prongs, and quantum quintessence quills protruded from various points, all culminating in a gapping, diamond-shaped barrel, rimmed by a slowly spinning ring of several pitch black blades, each etched with an excessive abundance of intricate techno-runes.
“My latest creation, The Neo-Metaphasic Polyplenumic Omnioblitorational Super-Scientific Storyslayer Cannon! Nyahahahaha! I developed it after researching the energies of the Queen of Tarts’s signature sword, which she was kind enough to provide me a sample of to study,” Nykannis explained.
“It’s kinda anti-climactic when it does its whole ‘storyslaying thing’, what with just the page ripping sound, but I’ll be adding some extra features that should enhance the visuals quite a bit. After all, I’ll need this thing to look as epic as possible when I use it on queenie herself! Nyahahaha! Still, I think it’ll suffice for dealing with you.”With that, Nykannis pointed the weapon at Rachel, the swords ringing its barrel beginning to spin up once more.
“It will take more than that to lay me low!” the inquisitor declared, before raising her hammer high. “Fortress of Faith!”
No sooner had the words been spoken, then the glowing ramparts of a mighty stronghold rose up around Rachel, its gleaming bulwarks of mystic energy standing in firm defiance of the impending attack. There was the sound of a page being torn from a book, yet, while the fortress fell, Rachel herself was left completely unscathed.
“Nice trick,” Nykannis commended.
“Clearly I’ll need to work on this thing’s penetration abilities. Y’know, I think it’ll be more fun to finish you off the old fashioned way,” the deranged doctor added with a smirk, retracting the Storyslayer Cannon into a sub-etheric storage space.
“So come on, Inquisitor,” she taunted, her myriad glowing eyes narrowing into slits.
“Show me what you’ve got.”“For the sake of my fallen sisters, I shall not falter, I shall not fall, not until I’ve smote you and this abhorrent realm from existence!” Rachel snarled. “Power of the Shinespark, lend me your aid! Consecration of divine judgment!” she cried, lifting her hammer high once more, both she and her weapon glowing with blinding light as unfathomable power surged into them. “DEUS VULT!!!”
With that, the inquisitor charged forward, her abilities enhanced to their highest possible extent, her furious form encased in shining, golden armor, auric lightning crackling about her like a divine halo, while her hammer grew to triple its already gargantuan size. This was her full Templar Mode, employed against only the most powerful of foes. Indeed, she had last used it when facing off against a literal monster queen, yet, at her current power level, Nykannis was akin to an
eldritch horror, her defensive abilities far surpassing those of any mere monster girl...
“Now, gaze upon the visage of your vanquishment!” Rachel roared as she slammed her hammer down upon Nykannis with cataclysmic force.
However, the Killing Blow was fully absorbed by a swiftly erected Numinospheric Nth-Space Negation Shell, augmented by a multilayered Polyphasic Neo-Neutrino Hypershield, and supplemented by Refractive Nanofluidic Nythoninum Metaphysical Monomolecular Omnifoliated Power-Plating, the unstoppable force crashing against the utterly immovable object in a colossal expulsion of unfathomable energies.
“Wow, finally goin’ all out, huh?” Nykannis observed.
“Well, I hate to break it to ya, but even though every single one of your stats may be over nine thousand, all of mine are over nine thousand times that! Nyahahahaha!” the Mad Scientist Supreme informed her adversary with a wickedly gleeful cackle, before striking back with a monstrous, eldritch energy-bladed biphasic buzzsaw.
The strike split the inquisitor in twain at the waist, both halves spinning away at considerable speed due to the force of the blow. Not wasting a moment, the Monarch of Mad Science fired a withering volley of Multi-Phasic Maelstrom Missiles, Omnispectrumatic Giga Cyclonic Quantum Annihilator Rockets, Omniaetheric Zero-Point Hypertachyonic Wave Motion Cannons, and Polycyclic Transwarp Infinity Beams at Rachel’s still-airborne torso. When it finally landed with an unceremonious thud, it was little more than a charred lump of flesh, its armor having been completely stripped away by the starkly inconceivable energies unleashed upon it. Indeed, it was a testament to the inquisitor’s sheer force of will that she was still clinging to life by the most tenuous of threads.
“F-Finish it…” Rachel croaked, her single remaining eye glaring at Nykannis’s looming form with unrelenting hatred.
“Now, now,” Nykannis chided.
“I’d never hit a girl with glasses.”From out of the forearm of one of her appendages, a thin mechadendrite emerged. It immediately employed the spindly digits at its tip to delicately remove the mangled remains of Rachel’s glasses from her face, before carelessly tossing them aside.
“There. That’s better,” Nykannis noted with approval as she raised an enormous, energy spine-covered power fist that cracked with arcs of yellowy-green actinic lighting. A moment later, the fist slammed into Rachel’s head with a sickeningly wet crunch, the inquisitor’s cranium bursting apart in an explosion of gore.
“Well, I suppose that served as an adequate field test,” Nykannis reflected as the simulation concluded, the messy remains of her final opponent disappearing in wisps of fading energy particles. There were probably a few minor variables that could have been adjusted, but for the most part, the mad scientist was fairly pleased with how things had turned out.
“Now then, what to do next…” she wondered as she reverted to her normal form and stepped through a glowing portal to another part of her vast Lab.
“I could always invite Jen over for an Esper World viewing session, see how my little Ashley and the miniature version of everyone’s favorite failure are doing…” she mused.
“Oh, and don’t worry,” she added, patting the exposed brain of the partially dissected Puchuu laying atop the operating table at her workstation as she passed it by.
“I haven’t forgotten about you, Chiichuu. I’ll put you back together after I finish entertaining my soon-to-be arriving guest. Then we can talk about making that new magical girl team of yours…”
Shinny
FaithfulMuse
CitrusArms
Lime
Villamvihar
Shadow Dragon
twave
BrokenPromise
Noctis
