"Hm?"
Through the empathy link, Stelle was crouched on the ground, small hands clamped over a forehead that kept throbbing with pain and vertigo, golden eyes swimming with tears. Above her brow, three pocket-sized trash cans with angel wings were busy flexing their muscles.
Then, all at once, the three trash cans stopped moving. In eerie unison, radiating a kind of bro-code solidarity, they gave her a thumbs-up loaded with pure masculine approval.
After which they flapped their little wings and drifted lazily away.
Stelle shook her head clear, whipped it around, and her gaze, sharp as a hawk's, fixed with pinpoint precision on the Caelus-cub lying on the floor.
More precisely, on a spot directly beneath the exquisitely pert rear of the Herta puppet, who was duck-sitting astride Caelus-cub's waist.
The pained crumple in the grey-haired girl's face smoothed away in an instant, restoring her usual cool, aloof big-sister composure.
Only, deep in those golden eyes, there was no trace of the usual sleepy sweetness. What glittered there instead was a profound and dangerous intelligence.
No hesitation.
Like a clockwork doll wound past its limit, Stelle sprang to her feet, long pale legs carrying her forward in quick, decisive strides.
Tap-tap-tap-tap!
Like footsteps keeping time with a war drum, she was behind Herta in a heartbeat.
A slim jade-white hand settled firmly on the puppet girl's rounded shoulder.
Then Stelle drew a deep breath and pressed down. Hard.
"Hssss!"
The expressions on Stelle and Caelus shifted with astonishing synchronization; both of them sucked in a cold breath at the same instant, faces registering the peculiar impact of being squeezed by something narrow and unbelievably, wonderfully soft.
This very scene has a precedent recorded in "The Peach Blossom Spring."
At first it was extremely narrow, barely wide enough to admit a person.
Herta, little hammer still raised, had been lost in the unexpected discovery that Caelus had set foot on the Path of Propagation, and never saw the backstab coming from behind.
Her face went blank and slack, and for once it genuinely matched the innocent, uncomprehending age her puppet body wore. The amethyst eyes blinked in a daze, as though she had crashed.
She stayed exactly like that, pressed down and rigid, for a good ten-odd seconds, before Herta wobbled upright on thin little legs with sharply defined joints.
"So you want Diamonds too?"
"Then! Take! Them!"
With an exceedingly kind smile, she hauled the enormous hammer high above her head, a weapon in absurd contrast to her tiny frame, spun a full 720 degrees through the air, and brought it down on the Stellaron spirit's skull.
This one's head was hard enough.
No need to pull the swing the way she had for Caelus!
Just smash and be done with it!!!
Die!
"Dummy! Dummy! Dummy!"
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Stelle sank into a crouch, both hands clutching her head, golden eyes brimming over with tears.
The sudden farce left Asta, Ruan Mei, and Screwllum staring in silence.
Three different faces, all wearing the same speechlessness.
Caelus, for his part, wasn't especially bothered about the impaled Herta puppet over there, or the Stellaron spirit getting hammered until she saw stars.
It was a puppet, after all.
Herta didn't even mind him using one for personal recreation in bed.
This time it was only his consciousness sampling the experience from inside a puppet body, and there were still trousers and panties in the way.
Caelus spared a glance at his little brother, which, having set foot on the Path of Propagation, had evolved from an Ultimate Emperor Armament into a full Immortal Artifact.
From now on, the physical superiority the Stellaron spirit was so proud of would never be able to hold him down again!
Later on... heh heh, he'd make sure she learned firsthand who the real daddy was!
As for right now...
Caelus's attention was locked firmly on the System interface.
Reward Two: Limit-Break Transformation Card Set - Tom and Jerry.
A flick of his thoughts, and the item details unfolded.
What he read made his pulse jump.
It really was that "Tom and Jerry"!
[Limit-Break Transformation Card - Tom and Jerry:
Upon use, the host may transform into Tom or Jerry within any non-real dimension (including but not limited to dream worlds, illusory spaces, data domains, mental realms, etc.), inheriting in full every trait, ability, and rule-exemption privilege the character displays in the cartoon.
Note: To bring out the corresponding abilities, please return your mind to a childlike state of purity. The world cannot cage a heart full of curiosity and fearlessness.
Solar repairs available, moons replaced on request, non-twinkling stars refunded or exchanged~
Of course, if you truly can't manage a return to innocence... then just turn it on.
Not FLiNG Trainer!
I mean Auto-Battle.
PS: "He's back! Our commander/leader is back!"
- from deep inside a cardboard box stuffed with old newspapers: one plastic toy soldier so excited his paint is flaking off, and, beside him, a toy tyrannosaurus missing a tooth.]
"Holy shit!"
Caelus stared at the two cards shimmering on the System interface, so radiant they practically came with their own background music. One showed a blue-grey cat grinning like an idiot, the other a brown mouse with hands on hips and a wicked smirk.
The corners of his mouth stretched wider and wider, nearly reaching his ears.
"Hachi-Sys! You sly thing... hiding your depths all this time! Sitting on goods like these."
Tom and Jerry.
If you know, you know.
If you don't, go watch Tom and Jerry immediately.
[Oh, you flatter me~]
The System's dopey voice carried a note of modesty.
[The host wiping out an entire universe's worth of bugs was something I never saw coming either.]
That was literal. An entire universe!
"Just got lucky," Caelus said, uncharacteristically humble.
If the Honkai Girl's familiar hadn't happened to be Kagura Hikari, whose strength ran on multiplicative-tier scaling, then with any other familiar he could never have rolled the numbers high enough to detonate a universe, ten minutes of Aeon-grade combat power or not.
"So, Sys."
Caelus pivoted, probing with the greed of a man given an inch: "I already wiped out an entire universe's Swarm. Why does this transformation card still come with a restriction against using it in the real world?"
[Because it's a Simulated Universe mission reward, obviously.]
The System's voice sounded distracted, and behind it came a familiar, extremely rhythmic clanging and banging, plus some exaggerated shrieking.
Caelus raised an eyebrow. "Sys, what are you doing over there? Why does that sound so familiar?"
The System's voice seemed a little absent-minded, accompanied by those familiar yowls, and Caelus's brows twitched.
"Sys, what are you doing? That sound is really familiar."
[Oh, I'm rewatching Tom and Jerry.]
"...Acceptable."
Caelus gave the System screen a thumbs-up. "Good taste."
[Also, that restriction doesn't really count as a restriction, if we're being honest.]
"You mean..."
Caelus had already noticed the blind spot buried in the card's wording, and with the System saying that, he laid it straight out on the table.
[Gugu gaga, exactly what the host is thinking.]
Comedy characters aren't the sort of thing a worldview or a set of rules can bind. The card looked usable only in non-real dimensions, but that flimsy little fence between the real and the unreal was, to Tom and Jerry, no different from paper.
Look away for one second and they'd come bouncing out of the virtual world right into reality!
Chasing each other straight through a wall with a hole painted on it, for instance.
"That works, then."
Caelus believed that with Auto-Battle switched on, letting the genuine consciousnesses of Tom and Jerry take the wheel, there was a solid chance of breaking through into the real dimension.
As for piloting it himself... that was far harder.
After all, for Tom and Jerry, so long as they didn't notice they were in midair, they could stroll through the vacuum of space like it was level pavement.
No normal mind could manage that.
Caelus could use a mask to shape a virtual persona, or steer his own subconscious, which ought to help somewhat.
"Wait, there's a compatibility rating too?"
Mid-thought, he discovered that the transformation cards also demanded a character-profile match.
A well-adjusted normie with a cute white cat tucked in his arms could never become the perpetually miserable Tom. That wasn't the System's restriction. That was Tom's own.
Caelus ran the profile check at once, and a line of cold System text popped up without mercy:
[Tom character card: analyzing profile compatibility...]
[Current compatibility: 43%]
[Warning: below the 60% threshold! Character card cannot be loaded!]
"(╬ ಠ_ಠ)"
Caelus's face cracked apart on the spot.
All Aha's fault!
They were the one who made him a Masked Fool!
This damned Elation Path, leaving him astrologically incompatible with one big dopey simp of a cat, dammit!
Heart lodged in his throat, clinging to one last hope, Caelus shakily switched his focus to the Jerry card.
[Jerry character card: analyzing profile compatibility...]
[Current compatibility: 83%]
[Status: high affinity, usable!]
"Huh? My compatibility with Jerry is that high?"
Caelus was startled.
He rubbed his chin, dredging up his image of Jerry. Clever, quick-witted, full of schemes, forever running Tom in circles. Fine, a touch mischievous now and then, sure...
Wait.
His expression froze. He went quiet, face settling into a flawless replica of The Thinker.
Come to think of it, he pranked Stelle constantly. For example:
Swapping her milk tea for Himeko's coffee.
Staining March 7th's limited-edition skirt, then pointing at the bewildered Stelle beside him with a face of pure innocence.
Leveraging his multi-body advantage and Seele's sweet, guileless persona to play rock-paper-scissors with her, roping the dumb Stellaron spirit into all kinds of bizarre wagers, spinning her in circles and playing her like a toy in his palm.
Wasn't that textbook Jerry-brand mischief?!
And yet, the moment the Stellaron spirit's muscle-occupied neural pathways finally caught up...
Suppression!
Absolute, violent suppression!
The chasm in physical ability rendered every scheme instantly void. Usually one plain, unadorned Shoryuken from Stelle was enough to leave Caelus flat on the floor clutching his stomach, contemplating the meaning of life.
And also.
One second the two of them would be fighting to the death over the last limited-edition cake, and the next, spotting a pretty girl walking past, they'd be arm in arm, united front, eyes shining.
It went the other way too.
One second they'd be inseparable bros, cuddled close like lovers in the throes of romance, sharing a single milk tea through a Y-shaped straw, and the next it'd escalate into an all-out brawl because Stelle took a hundred million extra sips.
This pattern of loving each other, sabotaging each other, a relationship that changed by the second yet never came apart...
With a strange premonition rising in him, Caelus silently worked the System with his thoughts and aimed the Tom card's compatibility scan at the sulking Stelle beside him.
[Scan target: Stelle]
[Loading character template: Tom the cat]
[Analyzing profile compatibility...]
[Current compatibility: 84%]
[Status: high affinity, usable!]
Okay. Got it.
Got it completely, damn it!
Tom and Jerry, recast as Stelle and Caelus-cub, was it?
Caelus felt an itch to test the cards.
Except there was nowhere to test them.
The Simulated Universe... Herta was probably going to be doing repairs for a while.
Other non-real dimensions, then. Hold on.
Wasn't the Express headed next to Penacony, the sweet-dream world built out of Memoria!
Perfect timing!
Speaking of which, he dug through what he remembered from fan works.
Caelus recalled that Penacony seemed to have a comparable cartoon character called Clockie, and he'd also scrolled past videos of the protagonist turning into a cartoon character who could only grunt in order to run a quest.
What was it called again?
The Ham Brothers?
Or the Hanu Brothers?
Whatever.
This time he'd show Penacony what a real classic cartoon looked like!
____
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