Chapter 240: AIEEEEEEEE! Sparkle?! Why is Sparkle here?
"Alright, that covers the division of labor. Everyone understands their roles, right?"
Rekka clapped his hands together, wrapping up the impromptu strategy meeting in his room. He had carefully assigned everyone their respective tasks. Aside from the Conductor, Pom-Pom, who was busy maintaining the Express, every single person present had a specific job to do.
"No problem, no problem!" March 7th chirped, throwing up a confident peace sign.
"Leave it to me!" Rozaliya pumped her fist in the air.
"...I just hope nothing goes terribly wrong," Dan Heng muttered, crossing his arms with a quiet sigh.
"Of course it'll be fine! When do we start?" A new, highly enthusiastic voice chimed in. "When we catch Aha, we'll string Him up and whip Him like a spinning top!"
The crew blinked. Total silence descended upon the room as everyone looked around blankly, trying to pinpoint the source of the unfamiliar voice.
"Who's talking?" March 7th tilted her head, glancing toward the doorway. "Conductor, is that you?"
"It probably isn't the Conductor," Dan Heng pointed out reasonably. "Pom-Pom usually adds a '-pom' at the end of every sentence."
Stelle, completely unfazed by the phantom voice, simply shrugged. She casually backed up and plopped herself down onto a rather unique-looking bar stool in the corner of Rekka's room. Honestly, the cushioning on this stool was surprisingly comfortable. It even had a bit of a bounce to it.
"Stelle! You're sitting on my head!"
Suddenly, the 'stool' beneath the Trailblazer violently bucked upward. Sparkle hoisted Stelle straight into the air, her slender arms trembling slightly under the dead weight of the tall, trash-loving girl.
Impressive arm strength, Rekka noted dryly.
"AIEEEEEEEE! Sparkle?!" Stelle yelped, scrambling backward as she finally looked down and registered the furious Masked Fool. Her golden eyes went wide with shock. "Rekka, how did the stool in your room turn into Sparkle?! Don't tell me you've been masquerading as furniture and eavesdropping on us this whole time?!"
Sparkle's eye twitched. She stared at Stelle in utter disbelief.
"Of course I've been here the whole time!" she shrieked, stomping her foot. "Did you all seriously fail to notice such a living, breathing, fresh, and charming top beauty of the galaxy standing right in the middle of the room?!"
The sheer lack of presence she apparently possessed had just dealt her a massive critical hit to the ego.
"Sorry. Maybe it's because you're too short. I really didn't notice you before," Stelle apologized with a perfectly deadpan, sincere expression that somehow made it worse. "You were just curled up like a small ball sitting there. When I came in, I thought the design was quite unique and assumed Rekka had just bought some weird new furniture."
After delivering that devastatingly blunt explanation, Stelle tilted her head, genuine confusion washing over her features. "But wait, when did you become the galaxy's number one beauty? Isn't the top beauty of the galaxy the Aeon of Beauty, Idrila?"
"Pfft—" March 7th finally broke. She slapped both hands over her mouth, her shoulders shaking violently as she desperately tried to hold back her laughter.
"She probably just gave herself that title," Rozaliya concluded, tapping her chin thoughtfully.
"Seconded," Liliya agreed with a slow nod.
Rekka merely raised a finger to his lips, signaling for quiet. With his free hand, he slipped his phone terminal from his pocket, tapped the screen, and played a highly specific audio recording—acting exactly like someone activating a sketchy hypnosis app.
"Your beauty is ethereal and refined, your personality as gentle as water..."
It was an absolute, hard crowd-control skill derived from the Path of Beauty.
Because Rekka's current abilities on the Path of Beauty were wildly incomplete, the powers he manifested tended to be incredibly abstract. Abstract, but undeniably effective.
Naturally, Rekka himself was completely immune, having preemptively shoved earplugs into his ears. Dan Heng, ever the cautious survivor of the Express's daily chaos, was already wearing heavy-duty noise-canceling headphones.
Everyone else in the room instantly fell for it.
Their eyes glazed over. Strange, deeply euphoric expressions melted across their faces, as if they were witnessing the most wondrous, extraordinary sight in the universe. It was the exact expression of someone peacefully passing on to the afterlife.
"Cosmic Joker, open your eyes. I am Zoffy."
Rekka leaned down, getting right into Sparkle's personal space. He forced her to stare directly into his large, looming face, the sudden proximity instantly snapping the Masked Fool out of her hypnotic trance.
"Here. Take this magical key," Rekka said, shoving a massive object toward her. "With it, you can defeat any Solar Monster."
Sparkle blinked, her instincts taking over as she reached out to catch the item. She immediately buckled under the weight of a giant, metallic key that was literally taller than she was.
"What kind of key is this big?!" she demanded, struggling to keep it upright.
"I made it when I was bored," Rekka replied smoothly. "It can be used to open most locks in this world."
"How does a key this massive open a small lock?" Sparkle stared at the oversized teeth of the metal construct, utterly dazed.
"It's probably meant for smashing the lock to pieces," Stelle deduced, rubbing her chin as she arrived at the most logical Trailblazer conclusion.
"Why are you giving me this thing?" Sparkle grumbled, dragging the heavy metal across the floor. "You can't possibly expect me to smash Aha's head in with it."
"Oh, no. Its primary function is to blow up a star in a single hit," Rekka corrected casually.
Sparkle froze.
The entire room froze.
"You're giving something that dangerous to Sparkle?!" March 7th screamed, her eyes bugging out of her head.
"Rekka..." Welt pinched the bridge of his nose, his grip on his cane twitching violently.
While the makeshift Star Destroyer Cannon Rekka had just casually handed to a Masked Fool was indeed terrifying, Welt couldn't exactly claim the moral high ground. The two pseudo-Stars of Eden currently resting in his own hands—personally modified by Rekka to possess enough gravitational force to whip half a star system into absolute oblivion—certainly weren't just for show either.
"Hehe? You actually trust me that much?" Sparkle's lips curled into a wicked, chaotic grin. She hoisted the massive key onto her shoulder. "Then... sorry to break it to you, but I'm actually an undercover agent! Goodbye, losers!"
She dramatically raised the doomsday weapon, preparing to bolt.
A beat of silence passed.
"Just kidding. Here you go."
Having successfully spiked everyone's blood pressure, a giggling Sparkle casually handed the world-ending key over to Himeko. What genuine ill intentions could the great Sparkle possibly have? At most, she just wanted to tease a room full of gullible idiots.
Himeko accepted the weapon, carefully storing the giant key away in her subspace inventory before looking back up at the diminutive girl. It was a genuine surprise; the navigator had fully expected Sparkle to drag the terrifying prank out much longer. Handing over a weapon of mass destruction so readily actually improved Himeko's opinion of the Masked Fool by a slight, albeit cautious, margin.
"See? I'm beautiful and kind-hearted," Sparkle boasted, flipping her twin-tails. "Anyway, stop worrying about all these little details. Hurry up and bring it on! Whatever this 'Catch Aha' plan of yours is, I'm joining in too."
With the chaotic interruption handled, the strategy meeting finally steered back on track.
"Do you guys recognize what this is?" Rekka asked, pulling out a suspicious-looking can filled with a glowing, neon-green liquid. He gave it a light shake, making the viscous contents slosh against the aluminum.
"No idea," Stelle shook her head.
"Don't know," Rozaliya and Liliya replied in perfect unison.
"This is another one of my personal inventions," Rekka declared proudly. "I call it the [Brain Development Potion]. Its primary function is to temporarily increase my IQ by at least a hundred times."
"What the hell kind of sketchy science is that?!" Sparkle squawked.
"After drinking it, his processing speed gets so high that he can basically predict the near future in real-time," March 7th explained, carefully taking the glowing can from his hand. She looked at him with deep concern. "But are you absolutely sure you want to drink this again? The last time you chugged this stuff, your brain overloaded and you straight-up died."
"This time, the focus is specifically on Aha. I'll actively restrain my divergent thoughts so I don't fry my synapses," Rekka reassured her, shaking his head. "Besides, I only need to drink a tiny sip. I don't need a long duration; just one minute of the effect will be more than enough."
Once the potion's terrifying cognitive boost kicked in, his thought processes would become so erratic and infinitely layered that even an Aeon of Elation wouldn't be able to predict his next move.
Well, perhaps the Aeon of Erudition could. Under very specific constraints, the calculation speed of Nous and a heavily-drugged Rekka were roughly equivalent. But realistically, no one could expect Rekka to sustain a computing war against Nous using a squishy, ordinary human body without his head violently exploding.
"Potion," Rekka commanded, holding his hand out. March 7th nodded, passing the can back.
"Sugar."
Our resident Miss Rafflesia had originally leaned in, fully intending to feed him the sweet nectar directly from her mouth. However, after receiving a sharp, warning glare from Rekka, she clicked her tongue and resentfully poured the high-energy sugar supplement into a small paper cup instead.
"Cooling."
"Got it. Leave it to me," March 7th said, stepping up behind him and raising her hands.
Rekka downed the shot of neon-green liquid. Almost instantly, the veins on his temples bulged, and his head physically swelled, growing several sizes larger as his cranium struggled to contain the explosive surge in neural activity.
"Hmm... stabilized. Wait a moment," Rekka muttered, his voice dropping an octave as his eyes glowed with terrifying clarity. He forcefully narrowed his infinite processing power down to a single, razor-sharp thought: Deal with the Aha who will arrive tonight. Think of absolutely nothing else.
The agonizing one-minute duration of the [Brain Development Potion] passed in a flash.
Rekka slumped forward, completely drenched in a cold sweat. His enlarged head was radiating intense, burning heat from the sheer biological overload. Fortunately, March 7th had been standing right behind him the entire time, expertly applying layers of her signature Six-Phased Ice to continuously draw the lethal heat away from his skull.
With his plan fully calculated, Rekka didn't waste another second. He reached out, his fingers digging into the very fabric of reality, and violently pried open a dimensional rift leading straight from the Sea of Quanta back into the material universe.
He stepped through the tear, his presence erupting into the cosmic void.
"I'm right here!" Rekka shouted.
A booming, chaotic voice echoed through the space, vibrating with manic amusement. "Aha!... I truly didn't expect you to use such a ridiculous method to deceive me! Throwing every last drop of your divine power and cosmic authority onto a mere body pillow?!"
In the distance, the Aeon of Elation casually drained the lingering divine energy and authority that had been carefully attached to the decoy pillow.
But this time was fundamentally different. This time, Rekka had voluntarily surrendered his divine power and authority, setting the ultimate trap for the universe's greatest jester.
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