Chapter 47: Stelle Thinks It's Cool
Inside the parlor car of the Astral Express, Welt Yang adjusted his glasses and slowly rose from the plush sofa.
"Conductor," he spoke, his voice carrying a calm, grounding weight. "I need to step out for a moment."
Pom-Pom, the train's furry, long-eared conductor, looked up from the floor. "Mm, go ahead, Welt! Little Blue Light will keep the Conductor company, right?"
Pom-Pom gently patted the glowing, somewhat restless blue insectoid clone resting beside them. The creature let out a low, vibrating hum in response.
Welt stepped out of the Express and onto the station platform. The void of space beyond the energy shields was a canvas of pure, unadulterated chaos—a cataclysmic meat-grinder of a battle between an endless tide of the Swarm and the Antimatter Legion's Voidrangers.
Adjusting his grip on his cane, the former Herrscher looked up at the sprawling battlefield. He raised the cane and struck the metallic floor with a heavy, resonant thud.
Gravity warped instantly.
"Star of Eden. Zero-Rate Output. Pseudo-Black Hole!"
A terrifying sphere of crushing gravity bloomed in the void, catching the Doomsday Beast on the left flank. The sheer gravitational shear tore one of its massive, crystalline wings clean off. Yet, with a violent, agonizing roar, the leviathan broke free from the singularity's pull. It was, after all, only a pseudo-black hole. The original Star of Eden—the one Rekka had so painstakingly modified for him—had shattered into pieces back when Welt dared to unleash a singularity directly against Nanook.
Out in the vacuum of space, Rekka was not about to let Welt's perfectly timed assist go to waste.
The suffocating pressure of being pincered by two colossal Doomsday Beasts shattered the moment the gravity well distorted their formation.
In his towering, terrifying Swarm form, Rekka lunged. Two pairs of massive, razor-sharp forelimbs—gleaming with an eerie, bio-luminescent blue—slashed downward like an executioner's guillotine, clamping brutally around the wounded Doomsday Beast's central engine.
With a sickening crunch that defied the silence of space, Rekka abruptly retracted his scythes, applying an absurd amount of pure, unadulterated physical force. The cosmic leviathan was violently strangled and snapped in two. At the jagged break, volatile blue quantum energy and pitch-black antimatter collided in a blinding, catastrophic shower of sparks.
His mandibles parted, the space around him warping as energy gathered in his maw.
A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the void.
Then, a blinding blue quantum torrent erupted outward—a concentrated death ray capable of atomizing celestial bodies. It washed over the bisected, thrashing Doomsday Beast, slowly and agonizingly disintegrating its remains into cosmic dust.
But the remaining two Doomsday Beasts weren't about to wait their turn. With a soundless, furious roar, their colossal, shadowy hands slammed down toward the giant bug.
Deep within the Herta Space Station, a girl woke up with a splitting headache.
Her golden eyes fluttered open, struggling to focus in the dim light of the Storage Zone. The very first thing her blurry vision registered was a massive, glowing blue insect looming directly over her face. It was easily the size of a grown human.
"Awake?" the terrifying alien monstrosity asked casually.
"...The bug talked," the girl muttered, her voice deadpan despite the throbbing in her skull.
She blinked slowly, the dizziness making the room spin. "...What... are you?"
"I am Rekka," the insect replied, politely pointing a sharp, scythe-like forelimb at its own thorax. "A Trailblazer of the Astral Express. Do you remember anything else?"
"...My name is Stelle," she answered slowly.
"Anything else?" the bug prompted.
"I don't know."
Stelle sat up on the cold metal floor, pressing her fingers against her temples. The phantom sensation of Kafka's soft, velvet whispers still lingered at the edges of her consciousness, but the reality sitting right in front of her was just bizarre. A giant, six-legged coleoptera, entirely encased in glowing blue bio-armor, was tilting its head and examining her.
At least, she assumed it was examining her. It was hard to read the facial expressions of a giant bug.
A violent tremor suddenly rocked the station. The ceiling of the Storage Zone groaned, emitting the teeth-grinding screech of twisting metal. A shower of dust and tiny debris rained down, settling into Stelle's messy gray hair.
"It's not safe here," Rekka stated. "Follow me."
"Oh. Okay...?"
Rather than standing up and walking, Stelle simply grabbed onto the insect's carapace and hoisted herself directly onto Rekka's back.
The bug paused. "Why are you sitting on me?"
"My legs are weak," Stelle replied, her tone entirely flat. "I can't walk."
Rekka let out a sound that suspiciously resembled a sigh. "Fine. Grab that baseball bat over there. Consider it self-defense."
"Oh." Stelle leaned over, snatched the metal bat off the floor, and settled back onto Rekka's armored thorax. She gripped the handle tightly with both hands, letting her long legs dangle casually in the air.
"So..." Stelle mused aloud as the giant insect began to scurry down the corridor. "Why am I here right now, sitting on a bug?"
"That's a fantastic question," Rekka's clone replied, his multiple legs clicking rhythmically against the floor panels. "But I don't think now is the best time to discuss the philosophical implications of your current mount."
"Fair enough," Stelle agreed. She patted the hard shell beneath her. "It feels pretty good, actually. Really cool." To secure her balance, she reached forward and grabbed his two glowing antennae like the handlebars of a motorcycle.
"Hey, don't pull too hard. That actually hurts."
"By the way, what is the Astral Express?" Stelle asked, leaning forward over the bug's head.
"It's a train that runs on the Star Rail," Rekka explained patiently as they handled the debris-littered halls. "A very big, very long train. The passengers are a group of people called Trailblazers. They travel across the universe, go to places they've never been, meet people they've never seen, and help those in need."
"Sounds pretty interesting," Stelle noted, her golden eyes gleaming slightly.
As they rounded a sharp corner, the passageway ahead was completely blocked by a squad of Voidrangers from the Antimatter Legion. Hearing the clicking of insect legs, the monstrous invaders snapped their heads toward the duo in eerie unison.
"What are those?" Stelle asked, tightening her grip on the baseball bat. "They look incredibly ugly."
"Minions of the Antimatter Legion," Rekka scoffed. "Just a bunch of cosmic troublemakers."
His bio-armor began to hum with quantum energy. "Hold on tight! Grab my antennae and don't fall off!"
"You got it!" Stelle locked one arm around the long antenna on the left side of Rekka's head. With her free hand, she raised the baseball bat high into the air, her face lighting up with chaotic excitement. "Charge! Big bug!"
The giant insect surged forward like a biological battering ram. Between Rekka's razor-sharp scythes and Stelle taking wild, enthusiastic swings at any Voidranger that got too close, they quickly cleared the corridor. Stepping casually over the disintegrating ashes of their enemies, the bizarre cavalry unit continued toward the central elevator shaft.
"The elevator to the Master Control Zone is just ahead," Rekka informed his passenger. "Once we get there, we'll be relatively safe. It's a complete mess outside right now, so we need to hurry and rendezvous with the rest of the Astral Express crew."
"Your friends are fighting outside?" Stelle asked, resting the bat on her shoulder.
"I'm fighting outside too," Rekka corrected. "This is just one of my bodies. The consciousness is shared."
"Oh. So you're controlling a bunch of bodies at once?"
"Bingo."
Suddenly, a streak of freezing air parted the space between them. An ice-blue arrow whistled mere inches past Rekka's right antenna, burying itself into the chest of a Voidranger that had been lurking in the shadows to ambush them. The monster was instantly frozen into a solid block of ice. A split second later, a cyan spear struck out like a lunging dragon, piercing the frozen statue and shattering it into a thousand glittering pieces.
Rekka skidded to a halt. "Dan Heng! March! I found someone with amnesia!"
"Found someone with amnesia?" March 7th lowered her bow, her bright pink hair bouncing as she jogged over. She paused, her wide eyes sweeping up and down between the deadpan girl and the giant blue bug she was riding. "Wait, where did you even pick her up from?"
"The Storage Zone." Rekka wiggled his antennae casually. "She was just lying on the floor, so I scooped her up."
"You..." Dan Heng sighed, lowering his spear. The stoic guard's gaze lingered on Stelle for a brief, calculating moment before shifting down to the insect. "How is the situation outside?"
"Not great," Rekka admitted. "I'm currently being pinned down by two Doomsday Beasts. It actually really hurts."
The truth was, Rekka didn't dare unleash the true, terrifying power of his current Path. If he allowed himself to split and multiply with full force, losing control wouldn't just endanger the space station—it would threaten the entire galaxy. If he could freely use his splitting ability, his Swarm would have drowned those pathetic Doomsday Beasts in an ocean of mandibles long ago. But since the Path of Propagation couldn't safely propagate right now, his main body was naturally getting spun around like a helpless top.
"They can't actually do any real damage to me," Rekka added, waving a forelimb dismissively. "They just bite, which is annoying. But I can't do much to them in the short term either without blowing up the station."
"Do you need us to go out there and assist?" Dan Heng asked, his grip tightening on his polearm.
"No, no, no, absolutely not." Rekka waved his forelimbs in a frantic crossing motion. "It's a total meat-grinder out there right now. If you go out, you'll just be adding to my workload. My shell is thick enough to take a beating, so they won't be able to kill me anytime soon. You two hurry up and escort her to the Master Control Zone. It's much safer there."
Taking the cue, Stelle slid off Rekka's armored back. The moment her boots hit the metal floor, her knees buckled slightly. March 7th was quick to react, darting forward to catch the taller girl by the arm.
"Whoa, careful there!" March chirped, looking the gray-haired, golden-eyed girl up and down with intense curiosity. "What's your name? How did you end up fainting in the middle of the Storage Zone?"
"I... my name is Stelle," she replied, rubbing her temples as her brows furrowed in frustration. "As for the rest... I really don't remember."
The moment the words left her mouth, the heavy, rhythmic thud of armored footsteps echoed from the far end of the corridor.
"Trouble's here again," Dan Heng muttered, his sharp eyes locking onto the approaching shadows. "March, prepare for battle."
"I'm in too!" Stelle declared without a second of hesitation. Stepping up beside Dan Heng and March 7th, the amnesiac girl raised her baseball bat, a dangerous, chaotic glint returning to her golden eyes.
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