#[[with your halo slipping down : snowgrave verse]]

[number1salesman1997]

✨ Noelle

Angry. He is so angry. Angry, and desperate.

Why, when he finally has gotten the chance to have real power, is this God damned kid getting in his way? His fans whirr at top speed to vent the heat building at his core and in the energy blaster in his right arm as he just. Keeps. Shooting. To defend his one and ONLY chance at finally grabbing his life by the strings. 

Phantom warning messages flash in front of his eyes. Overheat imminent. Damn it, not now! He can power through it.

A silver sword reflecting pink and blue light slashes through the strings feeding power into his robot body. Power level dangerously low. Switching over to internal power. 

Pilot compatibility 25%. Battery life remaining: 2 hours.

He allows himself, despite the pain of his damaged body ripping straight through to the puppet (or is he the puppeteer now?) inside, to bark out his ragged crazed laugh.

Two hours?? This won’t take two minutes!! He aims a shot for the ground beneath Kris’ feet, sending them off-balance as they have to leap to avoid the large blast.

For his next shot, Kris allows themself to take most of the blast to their back, propelling themself forward, to slash at more of the cables tethering Spamton NEO to the ceiling.

If they would only. Hold. Still.

It hurts, but he bets it doesn't hurt nearly as bad as that risky maneuver the kid just pulled.

Power level dangerously low. Overheating. Weapons overload imminent. Shut up! Shut up!! Not when he's so close!

It burns. He's overloading every circuit in his mechanical body just to keep up with the lightner. But from the way they sway back and forth on their feet, the light of their soul glowing a bright yellow as they fire magic shots back at him haphazardly enough for even the wobbly mech to dodge all but one bullet, it's clear they can't take much more either.

Who would even miss this sorry brat anyway, he wonders? Spamton might have known what they were up to and taken advantage of the opportunity to take out Queen, but he didn’t expect them to be such a bloodthirsty little beast. A few casualties here and there fell into the margin of acceptable losses, but as Spamton’s glorious new robotic neural net had informed him the moment he inserted himself into it, the population of the city had practically been halved from the lightners’ little game.

That was a lot more than he bargained for, and he intends to make them pay for it. The remaining citizens would hail him as a hero for smiting the killer, wouldn't they?

Damage level critical. Emergency defenses activated.

A magic aura surrounds him, shielding him from any further damage. Kris leans heavily on their sword, their eyes searching the shields around Spamton's body for any point of weakness. Finding none, their head droops.

"...Ralsei....Susie...."

Spamton cocks his head sharply to listen to what they're muttering. Could those be their friends' names? He laughs, jerking wildly back and forth on his strings as his body is wracked with vicious laughter. He mocks them for their naivety, and spits on their fear. Having come all the way here, dragging such a bloody trail behind them, they have no business quivering now.

"...Noelle...."

"HER? YOU'RE STILL TRYING TO USE HER??" Spamton whoops with laughter, snapping a few of his own cables from the force of his heavy body swinging about. That's just too rich! "YOU THINK SHE CAN HEAR YOU NOW, MUTTERING HER NAME? WHAT'S SHE GONNA DO? MAKE ME AN ICE CREAM?"

As he laughs, he charges his blaster, letting the charge build until energy arcs dangerously from between the plates of his arm.

It's over now.

...

It's cold.

Behind Kris floats the snow angel herself, her eyes as white as the snow that whips around her, blind to the chaos she has wrought, and likely not even seeing Spamton in front of her either. Just some nameless other, an enemy to be defeated in the quest to get stronger. With her hands outstretched, she summons the snowstorm again, making it fall too hard and fast for the bot to have any hope of evading or countering.

It's cold. So cold.

The last string snaps.

He falls.

The ice coating his chasis shatters into shards as he hits the ground, the newfound chill freeing up some of his overheating systems.

Power level dangerously low.

Better make this one count, Spamton.

As he hits the cold hard ground, he looses that powerful blast, and aims it directly toward her.

In the midst of the rapidly swirling snowstorm, the swordsman sees that oversized ball of energy shoot out and tear a path through the airborne snow, watching as their friend takes the blast.

The snow stops falling, and then there are two bodies lying in front of the fountain.

Kris struggles to their feet, using their sword as leverage. Their face is stony, and their actions jerky, like that of a puppet on a string. Kind of like himself, Spamton thinks.

Only his strings were cut. And so were hers now, come to think of it.

Now, more than ever, he can feel in this moment that his fate is in his hands.

Snow starts falling again.

Kris approaches Noelle on unsteady feet, their voice sounding out louder and clearer than it has any right to for how battered and bruised the kid is. "Are you still alive? Shall we proceed?", they speak in a voice distinct from their own.

Again, he thinks to himself how alike they are. Perhaps in another time, they could have bonded over their shared lack of agency. But it's too cold for any warm feelings now.

Thorns bite into the steely finger that pilfered it, sending pain signals straight the way through the robot exterior of the darkner and into his true body inside. Into his soul.

The pain is all consuming and inescapable, and so too is the cold.

The cold consumes them all.

And when he is done, the fountain stands tall.

The robot with the ring kneels on the ground before the fountain. In one hand is the ring, and in the other a softly glowing soul, still dyed in yellow from the fight preceding its appropriation.

He chains the heart inside his chest, doubling over in pain, and again as he makes a fist of the hand wearing the ring. It hurts. He screams, but it doesn't stop hurting.

He doesn't know how long he stays there before the fountain, letting his body gather the dwindling snow like so much dust, but when the powerful throb of his new soul subsides, he is greeted with another set of notifications from his diagnostic systems.

Power restored. Pilot compatibility 100%. Weapons systems offline. Emergency defenses deactivating. Self restore initiated.

It hurts no less, even as he is healing and he still has bodies to clean up, but finally he is whole.

Finally, he will claw his way up into heaven. And he will lead them all there. He is the hero of justice, the new God of this world that will save them all from the darkness.

He will show them. He will show them all...just as soon as he can lift his shaking knees and drooping head.

#[[you’ve got mail : ask]] #(( spachiel doesn't have any real interactions with any noelle on a personal level so have more fucking PAIN )) #(( noelle is featured in it at least lol )) #(( i wrote this over the course of days and kind of wanted it done because i make everything too ambitiously long #so i hope this is like. not choppy and awful )) #[[with your halo slipping down : snowgrave verse]]