Author's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
"I want to join." Lucy repeated without hesitation as she gazed up at the stars.
"Are you really joining?" Rebecca asked excitedly, and Lucy sighed slightly.
"Yes... I... this... this is all I want." Lucy said, gazing into space and raising her hand. "I know we won't be able to in the short term, but one day I want to be up here in space." Lucy said without hesitation, her voice filled with wonder.
"You know you can still return to your world, right? I'll leave you on the Moon and pay for your permanent residency so you can live there as long as you want. I'll just put a curse on you so you never speak of this again, or I'll erase your memory. You won't remember any of this. You'll simply... go on with your life, peacefully, on the Moon." I said gently. Lucy snorted.
"The first option sounds terrible, living so... restricted only on the Moon after knowing all this is possible?" Lucy asked, stretching her hands out into space. "Impossible, you really spoiled me," Lucy teased, looking at me mockingly.
"I'm not sorry." I said with a small smile.
"Me neither." Lucy sighed. "Besides, I'd really start having nightmares and hallucinations about things coming out of the moon if... I think you ruined the moon for me, too." Lucy said dryly.
"I mean... I can't guarantee that nothing from the Moon will come out of your world." I said playfully, Lucy just rolled her eyes.
"And the second option, even if you erased my memory and sent me to the Moon of our world, I would simply be escaping from one prison to another. As much as I want to believe that the Corps wouldn't reach the Moon, I know it's not true. I could live peacefully and quietly with my head down, but I'm sure I would eventually get bored," Lucy added.
"You know I'm under the orders of The Company, it's literally a multiversal slavery corporation worse than Arasaka, and you'd be trapped with me." I pointed, Lucy snorted.
"Your sales pitch is terrible, even I'm annoyed when it's described that way." Rebecca sighed suddenly.
"I don't like that description either," Riveria said dryly. Lucy snorted amusedly while I rolled my eyes.
"Despite that very bad vision, as you yourself said, The Company won't bother us in our piece of the multiverse, which, by the way, is infinite, as long as we don't mess with them in some way. We're practically free agents as long as we don't do anything weird, and that's saying a lot. We'd need to do something horrible because even destroying universes wouldn't get their attention. There's nothing to worry about."
"Also, I don't hate the Corpo as such, I mean, I totally distrust them and would refuse to deal with any Corpo as much as possible; on the other hand, I HATE what Night City represents, a system that devours people and dreams end badly, it's a trap, a cage."
"It just so happens that the Corpos I know are all part of the same system, and Arasaka is the worst. I had resigned myself to not doing anything against Arasaka because I definitely didn't have the ability to do substantial damage to her."
"That's why I joined you in the first place; you could hurt Arasaka in ways I didn't, and now I know you're far more capable than I ever imagined. I could eradicate Arasaka with your help."
"So no, I don't mind being tied to you, to everything in The Company, especially when the benefits are even greater than I imagined," Lucy said with a sigh. "A ship, space to explore, and peaceful planets throughout the galaxy—that's all I want in the future," Lucy said dreamily.
"That sounds wonderful," Riveria said with a gentle smile.
"Admit it, what you'll really miss is your invisibility, your Silkstrike, and definitely your Couldstrike," Rebecca mocked. Lucy clutched the sniper rifle 'Couldstrike', adorned with The Old Ways, tightly in her arms.
"Several things can be true at the same time," Lucy said defensively, making us laugh. "By the way, I'm claiming it from your arsenal when you get the template," Lucy said without hesitation.
"Take it, I have no patience for snipers," Rebecca said, shrugging. Lucy smiled happily.
"I'm glad you're already handing out the weapons you don't even have yet." I mocked her; Rebecca rolled her eyes.
"They'll be mine, that's already decided," Rebecca said mockingly.
"I want to study them all, so I'll borrow them too," said GLaDOS.
"Of course, as long as they keep working afterward, I need someone to maintain them or teach me how to do it. I doubt they'll stay in perfect condition after killing thousands of killer aliens. And I don't think they can be maintained like normal weapons, with all the paracausality involved," Rebecca said, looking at her weapon.
"Excellent." GLaDOS said, smiling slightly.
"Okay, then, Lucy... welcome to the family." I said with a smile to Lucy, who blinked a couple of times before smiling broadly.
"Thank you," Lucy said cheerfully. I nodded.
"Once we leave the game, I'll place the seal, or if you want a contract, do you want to... become a devil, or do you want some specific power?" I asked curiously, and Lucy just nodded.
"Becoming a devil, yes, I have nothing against becoming one, and powers, besides Light and Darkness, I…" Lucy bit her lip shyly as she looked at GLaDOS. "I may have become interested in GLaDOS's Silver Wolf template and the whole Aether Editing thing."
"I really missed my Netrunning during fights, so using something where I can 'hack' reality and implant Daemons without the opponent needing implants? Sounds amazing." Lucy said shyly.
"Do you want it? There's nothing wrong with you having the same templates, or you could wait and get an Aether Editing and start from scratch." I told Lucy without hesitation; she seemed surprised.
"Oh, I thought you'd mind if we used the same template; it sounds like a waste of credits." Lucy admitted, and I snorted.
"The credits are the least of it, really. You can get them easily if you want a lot of them. My only need for them is simply to use them to give you whatever you want to make you happy, as simple as that," I said with a small smile. Lucy looked at me with wide eyes before snorting.
"You're dangerous," Lucy mocked.
"Yes, she is." Rebecca said, looking away. I turned to look at Riveria, who looked away too. I blinked in confusion, wrinkled my nose slightly, and shrugged.
"As I said, just choose whatever you want," I repeated to myself once more, and Lucy nodded.
"I'm 43.65% through the Aether Editing analysis," GLaDOS said, nodding before sighing. "If only I had a Machine World as a massive information processing node..." GLaDOS sighed ruefully, and I rolled my eyes.
"Subtle, GLaDOS, subtle," I said dryly. "I'll get you a damn machine world someday, an uninhabited one." I said reluctantly. GLaDOS smiled broadly.
"Perfect! If possible, in the next 5-10 years, that's a rough estimate of when the processing units in my Prüfer unit would become obsolete for certain experiments," GLaDOS said cheerfully. I massaged my temple.
"As long as you don't create a damn Vex network and try to alter all of space-time," I said wearily.
"Don't worry, although the Infinite Forest and its prediction engine that simulates trillions of past, present, and future simulated realities is very appealing, I prefer to be more personally involved in my experiments," GLaDOS said cheerfully.
"Fine," I said dryly. "And you, Riveria? I know we didn't talk much about powers while we were here, but did you come up with anything? Any direction you want to go in? Do you want to become a devil?" I asked Riveria. Riveria just hummed softly.
"After seeing the level of enemies we might have to fight, I'm not against becoming a devil. It would be foolish to dismiss that power boost," Riveria said meekly. I nodded. "And about powers... I mean, I'm a mage, so definitely something to help me with that," Riveria said, thinking lightly.
"Honestly, there are like thousands of options." I said with an awkward smile. Riveria laughed slightly.
"For the moment, I don't need any power boost. My Falna and becoming a Devil would give me more than enough raw power for now, and combined with Light and Darkness, I'd be even stronger. So I don't need any boost in brute strength; I was thinking more about… control."
"I won't have The Guardian template, so I'll have to start from scratch if I want to master Light and Darkness, and although both are strong, most of their uses are focused on releasing as much paracausal energy as possible until the enemy is dead; if they're not, you didn't use enough paracausal energy," Riveria said with amusement.
"Hey, we literally just defeated a super god that way; it works." Rebecca replied playfully. Riveria smiled slightly.
"And while it works, I was thinking of trying to use it in other ways, some with more... control. We won't have the Ghosts or the connection with the Traveler or Veil to continue drawing paracausal energy without problems," Riveria explained.
"Oh, that's more specific, perfect, let me think for a minute." I said with a light hum. "The first one that comes to mind is Rimuru or Ciel? They're more or less the same person, I'm almost certain they had perfect control over their magic, as well as being ridiculously strong, although I might be remembering wrong." I said while wrinkling my nose.
To my surprise, a screen appeared before us, displaying an image of Rimuru. I blinked slightly and glanced at GLaDOS, who seemed to be manipulating a virtual keyboard in front of her. I shrugged and let her show a few more images and videos of Rimuru.
"Or is there Accelerator too? He's capable of controlling all vectors with astonishing precision, so much so that he can operate and hack a person's brain simply by touching it. But... I don't know how well he'd work with magic. I mean, he makes it work, but that's the magic of his world, ours... I have no idea," I said honestly.
Just like before, Accelerator appeared before us, demonstrating exactly when he manipulated the bioelectrical vectors in Last Order's brain. Accelerator's calculation and precision were truly ridiculous. Only one other person came to mind capable of such fine control, and that was—
My eyes opened slightly.
"Satoru Gojo," I said immediately. "Satoru Gojo possesses the Six Eyes, a trait that manifests as a pair of blue eyes granting the wielder extrasensory perception, including truly extraordinary vision to an absurd degree, the ability to see the flow of energy they use, and ultra-precise control over that energy, down to the atomic level, making the efficiency of their spells extraordinary."
"The amount of energy wasted would be infinitesimally close to zero, preventing you from running out of energy in the normal way," I blurted out. I almost wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it as my first thought. Gojo was the definition of energy control.
GLaDOS quickly laid everything about Gojo before us. And everyone watched intently.
"He's handsome," Rebecca said, surprised. "I can really see how those eyes are magical," she added, gazing into Gojo's bright blue eyes.
"A pair of eyes? How... how would that work?" Riveria asked, confused.
"Like any template. Once you assimilate the template, your eyes will become Six Eyes, although... I have no idea if they'll retain the same color." I said with a hum.
"Oh, do I need the whole template? I mean, that Six Eyes sounds exactly what I was thinking, but everything else... it doesn't really grab my attention? Limitless, despite being strong, seems too... limited?" Riveria said with a crooked smile. I shrugged.
"I mean, you could order a template just for ordering Six Eyes," I said easily.
"Wouldn't that be a waste?" Riveria asked, frowning.
"Once again, credits don't matter, but if it bothers you, we could always modify Six Eyes to make it worthwhile. I mean, I know it works with that world's energy, which is Cursed Energy, and I trusted it would work for the other types of energy within your body, but we could always clarify that it works for all energies in any universe." I pointed it out quickly.
"Oh, that would work," Riveria said easily.
"Couldn't she just buy the eyes and have them implanted?" Lucy asked. I looked at her and opened my mouth. "Speaking out of ignorance, obviously," Lucy said quickly, flustered.
"Don't worry, it's a valid question, and in fact, there are some eyes that work that way." I said playfully, thinking of Naruto; the eyes there were as easy to implant as changing light bulbs. "But no, the Six Eyes is an innate trait, fused with his body and soul, so it wouldn't work. In fact, I think Six Eyes would completely disappear if you ripped them out of the user," I said, pondering.
"And you can't just look them up and ask them to be that way? I mean, you said some eyes work that way, I'm sure someone's already figured that out." Rebecca said, shrugging. I opened my mouth before closing it.
I… I really wanted to say yes, I mean… I saw several fanfics where the Six Eyes appeared in Naruto, so… something similar would probably happen. I wrinkled my nose, reached for GLaDOS, grabbed her virtual keyboard, and quickly started manipulating it.
"Who would have thought... they do exist." I muttered incredulously, What a damn convenient store.
"50 credits?" Riveria asked, surprised. "Wouldn't it be better just to buy the template in that case? It would cost 20 credits," Riveria said immediately.
"Once again, stop worrying about the cost," I said distractedly. "In the long run, 50 credits is better; the templates will accumulate quickly and end up being much more expensive," I said easily.
50 credits was half the value of buying Gojo directly, not to mention the template; even other eyes were cheaper than Six Eyes, like the Sharingan, even a Mangekyō was cheaper.
I quickly read through all the information about the Six Eyes plug-and-play and found the reason: the eyes were quite extraordinary. Not only did they work with all types of existing energies, but they also had to fully unite with the receiver's body, especially their soul.
The eyes would do all the work, but once placed, they would fuse in such a way that they would change at a biological level, so that if they were to be damaged and had some kind of regeneration, the Six Eyes would regenerate and not the normal eyes, and they would even be able to be inherited by offspring.
Fifty credits really did seem like a bargain now. And I was terribly tempted to buy a pair for myself. I'm annoyed I didn't think of it sooner, but Six Eyes were just too valuable, especially for a mage.
Look at the credits we had; we had almost 400 credits. Bella hadn't accepted her mission rewards yet. She got above the 49th floor, so she could accept the rewards from the secondary objectives, which would be a little over 200 credits.
It's more than enough to buy everything the others wanted and get myself a pair of Six Eyes, I smiled broadly. Yes, perfect.
"Alright, let's log out of the game. We have a lot to do, a lot to test, and more! GLaDOS, prepare the operating table. You'll need to implant the new eyes." I said immediately. GLaDOS nodded before logging out of the game. "Let's go," I said simply before leaving Destiny. It was time to return to the real world.
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