The Hololive EN building hummed with the ambient noise of creative chaos—the kind that happened when dozens of talented streamers occupied the same space, each pursuing their own unique brand of content. The residential floors had been carefully designed with soundproofing between rooms, though that soundproofing was tested daily and often found wanting.
On the Myth floor, the original five members of Hololive English were deep in their respective streams, each room glowing with the characteristic light of active broadcasts.
In Amelia Watson's room, the detective was hunched over her gaming setup, controller in hand, her voice a rapid-fire commentary of excitement and mild frustration. "Okay, okay, Gura, watch the left flank—LEFT FLANK! No, your other left! How do you not know which way is left?!"
Gura's voice crackled through the discord call, accompanied by the sound of furious button mashing. "I'm a shark! We don't have left and right, we have 'toward food' and 'away from food'!"
"That explains so much about you," Ame muttered, but she was grinning.
Down the hall, Mori Calliope's room vibrated with bass as she performed a live singing stream, her reaper scythe propped against the wall like a particularly ominous guitar stand. She was mid-verse in one of her original rap tracks, her voice fierce and controlled, each word hitting with the precision of someone who'd spent centuries perfecting her craft—which, technically, she had.
In the kitchen-studio hybrid that Kiara had somehow convinced management to install, Takanashi Kiara was in the middle of a cooking stream, flames literally dancing from her fingertips as she sautéed vegetables with the casual ease of someone who was, quite literally, a phoenix and therefore had no fear of kitchen fires. "Chat, I promise you, this is perfectly safe. I'm a fire elemental! Well, mostly. The sprinklers are just for show. Mostly."
The chat scrolled by with a mixture of recipe requests and mild concern about fire safety regulations.
And in Ninomae Ina'nis's room, the priestess of the Ancient Ones was running a just chatting and art stream, her multiple tentacles extending from her back to hold different brushes while her hands managed the tablet pen and tea cup simultaneously. She was creating something that looked beautiful and vaguely unsettling—which was very on-brand.
"What am I drawing? Well, chat, I'm glad you asked. This is a reinterpretation of cosmic horror through the lens of cute culture. I call it 'C'thuwu.'"
The peace—such as it was—was shattered by a high-pitched shout echoing through the Justice floor's hallway.
"GIVE IT BACK! THOSE ARE MY JUSTICE WEAPONS!!"
Gigi Murin, the green-haired gremlin of Hololive Justice, was sprinting down the corridor at full speed, her arms stretched forward in desperate reaching motions. Her oversized gauntlets—her signature gear—were being carried away by an unlikely duo of thieves.
Bijou, the tiny powerhouse of Holo Advent, was running with one gauntlet held above her head like a trophy, her gem-like eyes sparkling with mischief. Beside her, Hakos Baelz from Council was carrying the other gauntlet, which was almost as big as she was, her rat tail swishing behind her as she cackled.
"You'll have to catch us first, green bean!" Bae shouted over her shoulder.
"Consider this a test of justice!" Bijou added with entirely too much glee.
"JUSTICE DOESN'T RUN AWAY FROM ITS WEAPONS!" Gigi screamed, putting on an extra burst of speed that sent her sliding around a corner, leaving skid marks on the freshly polished floor.
The sound of their footsteps and shouts faded down the hallway, gradually diminishing but never quite disappearing entirely.
On the Council floor, the atmosphere was decidedly more varied.
At the end of the hall, Tsukumo Sana's door bore a hand-written sign that read "SPACE IS SLEEPING" with little stars drawn around the letters. From within came the sound of snoring so loud and resonant it seemed to create its own gravitational field. The eye patch over one eye didn't prevent her from achieving truly legendary levels of sleep-induced noise pollution. Every few seconds, the door would rattle slightly from the sheer force of her breathing.
Next door, Nanashi Mumei sat at her desk, tongue poking out slightly in concentration as she worked on her latest drawing. To an outside observer, the art might have looked cute—until they looked closer and realized that every "adorable" element had some subtly cursed quality to it. She was humming tunelessly, occasionally pausing to giggle at her own creation. The drawing appeared to be some kind of civilization-themed mascot that had too many eyes and a smile that was just slightly wrong.
In the building's restored garden—restored for the sixteenth time this year, a fact that Fauna kept meticulous track of—Ceres Fauna was on her hands and knees, carefully replanting herbs and flowers that had been casualties of the latest kitchen explosion. Her long green hair swayed as she worked, and small plants seemed to grow healthier just from her presence. She was muttering to herself, a running commentary of gentle encouragement to the vegetation and mild frustration at whoever kept destroying her hard work.
"There you go, little rosemary. Yes, I know the kitchen exploded again. No, I don't know why they keep putting volatile ingredients near the stove. Just focus on growing, okay?"
And in Ouro Kronii's room, the Warden of Time stood before her full-length mirror, examining herself with the critical eye of someone who had literal eternity to get her appearance perfect. She adjusted a strand of her blue hair, tilted her head, adjusted it back, then tilted her head the other way. She'd been at this for forty-six minutes and showed no signs of stopping. After all, when you controlled time itself, forty-six minutes was barely a blip.
"Perfection," she murmured to her reflection. Then, after a pause: "Almost perfection. Maybe if I just..." She adjusted the same strand of hair again.
On the Advent floor, chaos reigned in its own unique flavors.
Nerissa Ravencroft's room had been converted into what could only be described as a shrine. Posters, photos, printed tweets, and various merchandise covered every available surface. She was currently lying on her bed, phone held above her face, refreshing social media with the desperate intensity of someone whose parasocial relationships were both numerous and deeply felt.
"She liked my tweet," Nerissa whispered to herself, clutching her phone to her chest. "She actually liked it. This is the best day of my life. Again."
In the twins' room, Fuwawa and Mococo were in the middle of a Phasmophobia stream, their dual setup allowing them to broadcast their synchronized terror to thousands of viewers. Currently, they were both screaming in perfect harmony as something spooky happened on-screen.
"FUWAWAAAA!"
"MOCOCOOO!"
"IT'S BEHIND YOU!"
"NO, IT'S BEHIND YOU!"
"BAU BAU!" they both shouted, which somehow translated to a ghost-hunting technique that actually worked in-game.
And in Shiori Novella's room, the bookworm of Advent was hunched over her laptop, typing with the fervor of someone possessed. Her latest literary creation was spread across multiple documents, and from the fragments visible on screen, it appeared to be titled something like "Forbidden Echoes: A Tale of [Fictional Character] x Depressed OP Reader." The prose was purple enough to make actual purple prose feel inadequate, with phrases like "his crystalline tears fell like shattered dimensions" and "their love was a tragedy written in the margins of existence itself."
She paused, read back what she'd written, then nodded in satisfaction. "This is going to be either my masterpiece or my most unhinged work yet. Possibly both."
Down in the Justice floor lobby, a more domestic scene was unfolding.
Elizabeth Rose Bloodflame swept through the entrance, grocery bags hanging from her arms, humming the tune to "Agadoo" with the unselfconscious enthusiasm of someone who genuinely enjoyed the song. Her red hair bounced with each step, and she was already mentally planning where everything would go in the kitchen.
"🎵 Agadoo doo doo, push pineapple, shake the tree~ 🎵" she sang quietly, setting the bags down on the counter. "Right, got everything. Vegetables, pasta, eggs, milk, and—" She held up a separate bag with reverence. "—five bagels. Beautiful, perfect bagels."
From the kitchen came the rapid-fire sound of Italian, spoken with the passion of someone who took cooking very seriously. Raora Panthera was in the middle of her own cooking stream, gesticulating wildly at the camera while something sizzled on the stove behind her.
"E poi, e poi! You add the garlic, but you don't BURN the garlic! Capisce? The garlic is your friend, not your enemy! You treat it with respect!" She kissed her fingers in the chef's kiss gesture, then spun around to check on whatever was cooking, her tail swishing dramatically.
In the lobby proper, Cecilia Immergreen sat in an elegant chair that seemed to have been specifically chosen to complement her aesthetic. The automaton held a delicate teacup in her mechanical fingers, the porcelain looking almost fragile against her metallic construction. She took small, precise sips, her emerald eyes observing the activity around her with calm interest. Despite being an automaton, she somehow managed to make drinking tea look like a refined art form.
Time passed in its usual way—which in a building full of streamers and immortal beings meant somewhat unpredictably. Approximately ten minutes later, by conventional measurements, the dynamic began to shift.
Mumei emerged from her room first, her latest cursed drawing tucked under one arm, her expression that particular brand of innocent that usually preceded something weird. She wandered toward the lobby with the aimless purpose of someone who was definitely planning something but hadn't quite decided what yet.
Following her came the rest of Council. Kronii finally tore herself away from the mirror, having achieved what she deemed acceptable perfection. Fauna brushed dirt from her hands and knees, her gardening complete for now. Bae skidded to a stop after her chase with Gigi and Bijou had finally concluded in some form of truce or exhaustion. And Sana, eye patch slightly askew and hair magnificently disheveled, emerged from her room with a massive yawn that seemed to bend space around her.
"Space has awakened," Sana announced to no one in particular, stretching her arms above her head until something in her back popped with an audible crack. "And space is hungry."
They naturally gravitated toward the lobby, drawn by the general principle that lobbies were where things happened.
Shortly after, the Myth floor began to empty as well. Streams had ended, recordings had been saved, and the call of social interaction (and food) was too strong to ignore. Ame shut down her setup with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done it a thousand times. Gura practically teleported out of her room with the speed of someone who'd heard the word "food" from three floors away. Calli emerged looking slightly exhausted but satisfied with her performance. Kiara bounded out of her kitchen-studio, still faintly glowing with residual heat. And Ina closed her art program, her tentacles retracting as she stood and stretched.
They found Council already in the lobby, and immediately the two groups merged with the easy camaraderie of people who'd worked together through various apocalypses and shenanigans.
"Hey, hey!" Gura waved enthusiastically. "What's up, nerds?"
"Rich, coming from you," Kronii replied, but she was smiling.
Just as they were settling into conversation, IRyS emerged from the recording room, headphones around her neck and a slightly dazed expression that came from spending hours perfecting vocal takes. She ran her fingers through her hair and blinked at the assembled group.
"Oh, hey everyone. Just finished recording. Need a break before I start editing and inevitably hate the sound of my own voice for a few hours."
"That's the spirit," Calli said with a sympathetic nod. "Welcome to the post-recording existential crisis club."
They all migrated toward the lobby proper, where the Justice members were already established. The space began to fill with the pleasant chaos of multiple conversations happening simultaneously, laughter echoing off the walls, and the general sense of community that came from shared experiences.
Kiara suddenly perked up, remembering something important. "Oh! By the way, I made a bunch of food during my stream. It's still warm in the kitchen if anyone wants some. Made enough for an army because, well—" She gestured at the assembled crowd. "—I apparently have precognitive cooking abilities."
As if summoned by the magic words "I made food," Raora emerged from the kitchen, her own stream apparently concluded. She was wiping her hands on a towel and looked pleased with herself.
"I also just finished cooking! Perfect timing, no? I made pasta—proper pasta, not the sad stuff that comes from a box."
Elizabeth lifted her bag of bagels triumphantly. "And I've got bagels! Five beautiful bagels, fresh from the bakery!"
Cecilia looked up from her tea, interest flickering across her features. "Bagels?"
"Yep!"
"Ooh, don't mind if I do," Cecilia said, setting down her teacup and standing with mechanical grace.
What followed was a pleasant descent into casual dining chaos. Plates were distributed, food was shared, and the lobby-kitchen area became a impromptu feast zone. They arranged themselves in various clusters—some sitting on counters, others taking chairs, a few brave souls sitting cross-legged on the floor. The conversation flowed as freely as the food.
"Remember that time Gura and Bijou tried to out-cool each other with that whole Devil May Cry bit?" Ame said through a mouthful of pasta.
Groans echoed around the room.
"The crater," multiple people said in unison.
"Bijou pulled out a perfect Yamato stance as Vergil," Fauna recalled, shaking her head. "And Gura immediately went full Dante with dual pistols. The amount of property damage from their 'combo training' was astronomical."
"The Devil Trigger activation is what really got us," Kronii added, her voice carrying the weight of someone who'd had to help with cleanup. "They both transformed simultaneously. The energy output literally ripped a hole in the floor."
"Hey, it was sick though," Gura protested weakly. "You gotta admit, the choreography was on point."
"The choreography cost us half the lobby," Ina pointed out calmly, but her small smile suggested she'd found it at least a little impressive.
Ame laughed, then launched into another story. "Okay, but what about that time I got lost in time? Like, properly lost, not just 'took a wrong turn at the temporal intersection' lost."
Kronii winced. "That was a nightmare to fix. You somehow ended up in a recursive time loop where every second branched into seventeen alternate timelines. I had to manually collapse each branch and guide you back to the primary timeline. Took me three hours, and time doesn't usually take me three hours to fix."
"In my defense," Ame said, "the time machine's GPS was on the fritz."
"Your time machine doesn't have GPS."
"That explains so much."
Sana suddenly started laughing, nearly choking on her bagel. "Oh! Oh! Tell them about the floating incident!"
Nerissa, who'd been quietly eating in the corner, suddenly looked mortified. "No. Nope. We're not telling that story."
"We're absolutely telling that story," Bae said with glee. "So there we were, normal Tuesday night, when Nerissa starts screaming in the hallway—"
"I wasn't screaming, I was vocally expressing concern—"
"—SCREAMING in the hallway," Bae continued mercilessly, "because she looks out her window and sees Sana, still completely asleep, floating horizontally through the air outside the building."
"I was drift-sleeping!" Sana explained, grinning. "My spatial powers sometimes activate when I'm deeply asleep. I was having a really good dream about nebulas."
"You floated through the entire ID construction zone," Fauna added. "Zeta nearly had a heart attack when she looked up and saw a sleeping EN member hovering past her scaffolding."
"The entire EN roster had to be mobilized," Nerissa said, her embarrassment fading into reluctant amusement. "Bae flew up to grab her, but every time she got close, Sana would drift away like she was caught in a current."
"It took Kronii stopping time, Ame using her time manipulation to sync with the stopped time, and Ina opening a portal underneath me to finally get me back inside," Sana concluded. "I woke up in the lobby with everyone staring at me. Best nap I've ever had."
The conversation continued in this vein, stories flowing one into another, laughter punctuating the tales of chaos and camaraderie. Outside, they could hear the sounds of construction—the ID members putting the finishing touches on the building repairs.
Elizabeth glanced toward the window. "Should we call them in so they can join to eat? They've been working hard all morning."
"Yeah, why not?" Kiara agreed. "There's plenty of food."
IRyS, being closest to the door, volunteered. She stepped outside into the afternoon sun, cupping her hands around her mouth to project her voice.
"Hey! Girls! We got food over here! Wanna eat with us?"
Down at the construction site, Kaela and Moona paused in their work, looking up at the building. They exchanged a glance—the kind of wordless communication that came from years of partnership.
"You know what?" Moona said, setting down her tablet. "It's been a long day."
Kaela didn't even hesitate. "I'm hungry. What kind of question is that?"
The other ID members made various sounds of agreement—Zeta's clipboard was immediately set aside, Risu and Iofi abandoned their paint supplies, Kobo hopped up from her gardening, and Ollie shut down the crane with a whoop of excitement. They filed after IRyS into the EN building, a tired but satisfied construction crew ready for a well-earned meal.
As they entered the lobby, Fauna immediately stood up, approaching Kaela with a grateful smile. "Thanks for the reconstruction again, Kaela! You guys are lifesavers."
Kaela waved it off, though she looked pleased. "No worries. We've gotten pretty good at it."
"Been doing it for a while now," Moona added, accepting a plate of food from Kiara.
Zeta, however, fixed the assembled EN members with a stern look, her clipboard nowhere in sight but her presence no less authoritative. "But please, don't destroy your own building just because of a short joke argument. Or any argument."
"That one time with Bijou and Gura doing the whole Devil May Cry thing," Moona continued, shaking her head. "Using the Yamato and the pistols and everything... that was a nightmare. Especially when they both activated Devil Trigger. The energy readings were off the charts. We had to rebuild the entire east wing from scratch."
"We'll try to keep the destructive content to a minimum," Ame promised, though her crossed fingers behind her back didn't go unnoticed by several people.
The ID members integrated seamlessly into the group, finding spaces to sit and eat, swapping their own construction stories for EN's tales of chaos. The lobby became even more lively, a mixture of English, Indonesian, Japanese, and various other languages blending into a harmonious cacophony of friendship and shared meals.
Eventually, the food began to dwindle, and the conversation turned to the inevitable topic of cleanup. Gura, Kiara, Fauna, and Shiori volunteered—or were volunteered, depending on who you asked—to handle the dishes.
In the kitchen, they formed an assembly line that could only be described as supernatural efficiency meeting practical necessity.
Gura stood at the sink, her hands moving in flowing gestures like a conductor directing an orchestra. Water responded to her will, gushing from the faucet in controlled streams that perfectly rinsed each dish. "Water bending for dish duty! Finally, a practical use for my powers!"
Fauna stood beside her, holding plates out with both hands while her nature powers manifested as gentle vines that carefully grasped additional dishes, creating a rotating carousel of dinnerware that moved through the water streams with precision timing. "This is honestly kind of relaxing. Very meditative."
Shiori had opened her book and was writing rapidly with her quill, her cursive creating words that materialized as reality-bending effects. Multiple shadowy hands formed from ink, each one wielding a sponge or scrub brush, attacking every dish with focused intensity. "I wrote 'And lo, the dishes became clean through the power of narrative convenience,'" she explained to no one in particular.
Kiara stood at the end of the assembly line, her body temperature elevated to exactly the right level to dry dishes through radiant heat without burning them. Each plate that reached her was instantly dried, and she stacked them with quick, efficient movements. "Phoenix powers: 70% resurrection, 30% practical applications like not needing towels!"
In less than five minutes, the entire kitchen was spotless, every dish cleaned, dried, and put away. They high-fived in sequence and returned to the lobby, where everyone else was still digesting and chatting.
As things settled into a comfortable post-meal lull, Ina found herself yawning, the kind of deep, satisfying yawn that came from a good day's work. She stretched her arms above her head, her tentacles unfurling slightly before retracting again.
That's when she noticed Mumei.
The owl girl was standing in the hallway, facing the wall with an intensity that seemed out of place given that it was just a wall. She had a marker in her hand and was drawing something—a target, Ina realized, complete with concentric circles and a bullseye in the center.
Before Ina could ask what she was doing, Mumei took several steps back, raised her hand, and her eyes began to glow with an eerie golden light.
"Tax Collection," Mumei intoned, her voice carrying an otherworldly echo.
A beam of pure civilization energy, tinged with the concept of inevitable bureaucratic consequence, shot from her hand. It hit the target dead center—and kept going. The wall didn't just break; it withered, aged, and crumbled, matter itself seeming to give up on existence. A perfect hole appeared, straight through to the outside where the freshly reconstructed building stood.
"WAH!?" Ina yelped, scrambling to her feet. "Mumei, what are you doing!?"
Mumei turned, marker still in hand, looking completely innocent. "Oh! Sorry, I thought no one would notice."
"How would no one notice a hole in the wall?!" Ina gestured frantically at the damage.
But Mumei was already addressing the problem. "Ah, I'd just like to, you know, let off some steam—release all this stress and tension by doing some exercise with my powers, you know?"
Her eyes glowed again, but this time with a different quality—the golden light of civilization in its constructive aspect. She raised both hands, and the hole began to knit itself closed. Bricks reformed, paint reapplied itself, and within seconds, the wall looked exactly as it had before, as if civilization itself had decided that walls were important to society and therefore this one should exist.
Ina stared, then let out a long breath. "Okay, fixed, but... huh, you're right though. I mean, I did some exercising too."
Mumei tilted her head curiously. "How about you though?"
"Hmm?" Ina blinked, processing the question. "Oh, you mean working out? I guess I do it sometimes. Tentacle maintenance, that sort of thing."
"I don't know if I've actually done proper exercise," Mumei mused, tapping the marker against her chin. "Probably years now. Maybe never? Time is weird for me."
Ina's expression became thoughtful. "Then what about every time you're firing your tax beams or created that domain expansion that one time? Remember, when you literally manifested the concept of civilization as a physical space?"
"Oh right, I did!" Mumei's face lit up with recognition. "I forgot, but I guess it's a bit less much. I'm thinking I should do more than just that."
"Ah, you mean going raging out?" Ina said, and there was something knowing in her tone.
Mumei paused. "Yeah, kinda like that." Another pause. "Wait, what do you mean 'Raging out'?"
Ina's expression shifted to something between embarrassed and defiant. She glanced around to make sure no one else was in immediate earshot, then started speaking in a lower voice.
"So, there was this one night..."
Flashback
The scene: Ina's room, sometime past midnight. The priestess sat at her desk, tablet pen in hand, but her usual calm demeanor had been replaced by visible frustration. Chat logs from an earlier stream scrolled on one monitor—nothing serious, just the usual internet nonsense, but it had been accumulating for days and she was, quite simply, tired of it.
With a grunt of annoyance, Ina stood up from her chair, her tentacles emerging from her back with more force than usual. She raised one hand, and reality rippled.
A portal opened in the middle of her room—not just a portal, but a tear in dimensional fabric, opening to a space that existed outside conventional reality. Through the opening was visible only blank whiteness, an empty dimension waiting to be filled.
Ina stepped through.
The moment she crossed the threshold, something in her relaxed—or perhaps unleashed. Her eyes, usually kind and slightly tired, began to glow with eldritch light. The markings on her body, normally subtle, blazed with purple and gold energy.
"Finally," she muttered, her voice carrying harmonics that human vocal cords shouldn't produce. "No one to see. No one to judge. Just me and the void."
She let go.
The Ancient Ones' possession—usually carefully controlled, carefully moderated, a power she wielded rather than was wielded by—surged through her completely. She went primal in a way she never allowed herself to in front of others.
Energy blasts erupted from her hands, each one carrying the weight of cosmic horror and mathematical impossibility. They streaked across the blank dimension, detonating in cascades of purple fire. Where they hit, reality itself screamed and reformed.
Ina roared—an inhuman sound that was part Eldritch horror, part frustrated artist, part exhausted entertainer who just needed to let it all out. The sound created visible ripples in space.
She created miniature big bangs with gestures, entire universes blooming into existence just so she could watch them collapse. She fired lasers from her eyes, tentacles, and hands simultaneously, each beam intersecting with others to create geometric patterns of destruction.
And then she shifted.
Her form expanded, grew, transformed. Tentacles multiplied and thickened. Her body became something more mature, more commanding, a towering figure of feminine power and cosmic horror combined. Her proportions became exaggerated, almost impossibly so—where before she had been petite, she now embodied a mature, voluptuous form that nevertheless retained something ineffably "Ina" about it.
Her eyes blazed pure white, all pupil and iris consumed by eldritch light.
The destruction intensified. She was creating and destroying galaxies as stress relief, her new form moving with terrifying grace as beams of pure unreality shot from every limb. The blank dimension filled with the debris of temporarily existing cosmos.
For exactly seventeen minutes, she was not "Ninomae Ina'nis, wholesome priestess and EN member." She was something far older, far more powerful, far less constrained by mortal concerns like "structural integrity" or "the fabric of spacetime."
And then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended.
She shrank back to her normal form, the white light fading from her eyes, the excess tentacles retracting. She stood in the center of a dimension that now looked like a cosmic battlefield, breathing heavily but with a small, satisfied smile on her face.
"Ahh..." she sighed, rolling her shoulders and feeling tension she hadn't even realized she was carrying simply evaporate. "Much better."
She casually opened a portal back to her room, stepped through, and closed it behind her. The destroyed dimension would either collapse or regenerate on its own—not her problem.
She sat back down at her desk, picked up her tablet pen, and resumed drawing as if nothing had happened.
"And that's what I did," Ina concluded, her tone matter-of-fact.
Silence fell over the hallway. Mumei stared at her. Several other EN members had apparently gathered during the story, drawn by Ina's increasingly detailed description of cosmic destruction.
"Huh," Mumei finally said.
"Yeah," Ina confirmed.
"Huh... That's, wow, really?" Mumei's eyes were wide.
"Yep."
"Hmm, maybe I should try that."
"INA DID WHAT!?"
Bae's voice cut through the moment like a knife. The chaos rat appeared seemingly from nowhere, eyes wide, already summoning a bag of popcorn from whatever hammerspace dimension she kept snacks in. She shoved a handful into her mouth, chewing rapidly.
"Hold up! Hold up!" She gestured frantically. "Run that by me again?"
The rest of Council began emerging from various locations—Sana from the lobby, Kronii from the bathroom, Fauna from the garden entrance. They clustered around Ina and Mumei, curiosity written across every face.
Ina, with a small sigh of resignation, reiterated her story. This time she gave the summarized version, hitting the key points: stressed, opened portal to empty dimension, went full Ancient Ones possession mode, destroyed several temporarily existing universes, felt much better, came back, normal Ina again.
The Council members processed this information with various reactions.
"You know," Kronii said slowly, touching her chin thoughtfully, "I do feel a bit stiff..."
"Same," Sana agreed, her usual cheerfulness taking on a slightly dangerous edge. "Maybe because I'm used to my usual large size back in space. Being human-sized for extended periods is kind of constraining."
Fauna looked uncertain but intrigued. "But going all out? Hmm... I don't usually let go like that. Nature is supposed to be balanced and controlled."
"I just simply told what I did," Ina said with a slight shrug. "No one's saying you have to."
But Mumei's eyes had lit up with an idea—the kind of idea that was either brilliant or catastrophic, with little room in between. "Hey, why don't we all duke it out?"
Everyone looked at her.
And then, slowly, like a wave building momentum, agreements started being voiced around the circle.
"Yeah, you're right, it's been a while since we really cut loose," Bae said, her tail swishing with excitement.
"It's Tuesday, right?" Sana checked her phone. "Yeah, Tuesday. That's a good day for cosmic violence."
"I knew it was too peaceful today," Kronii muttered. "We need to go rage. It's been building up."
"Civilization does need to blow off steam periodically," Mumei added with the air of someone stating a fundamental truth. "Otherwise it stagnates and collapses. Same principle applies to us, I think."
"A symphony of chaos and creation!" Sana declared, throwing her arms wide. "Dancing at the edge of reality itself!"
"YATTA! GROUP THERAPY BLAST-O-RAMA!" Bae shouted, throwing popcorn into the air like confetti.
The energy in the hallway was building, excitement and anticipation mixing with the barely restrained power that each Council member carried. Reality was beginning to feel thin, as if their collective desire to unleash was already affecting the local dimensional stability.
Then came three sharp knocks on the window.
Everyone turned to see Kaela Kovalskia's face pressed against the glass pane, her expression flat but her eyes conveying infinite weariness and barely suppressed rage. She'd somehow climbed up to the second floor—or perhaps teleported, or simply decided that gravity was optional—and was now staring directly at the assembled Council members.
"Do. NOT. Do it here," Kaela said, her voice muffled by the glass but carrying perfect clarity nonetheless.
Moona's face appeared beside hers, equally unamused. "We just finished reconstructing your freaking building for the EIGHTH TIME THIS YEAR! If you so much as sneeze a reality-warping beam in this building, I will personally use your skulls as decorative gravel for the new koi pond!" She jabbed a finger at them for emphasis. "DO IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!"
Ina and the Council members looked at each other.
There was a beat of silence.
Ina shrugged. "Well, I guess we're going to another dimension."
Bae pumped her fist in the air. "DIMENSION ROAD TRIP! I call shotgun on the rift!" She paused, then her expression became even more excited. "Oh! OH! It's gonna be GOLD content if we stream it! Chat would lose their MINDS!"
"Did someone say content?"
The door at the end of the hallway flew open—not opened, not unlocked, but flew open as if kicked by someone with significantly more leg strength than necessary.
Amelia Watson stood in the doorway, her time-piece glowing faintly, her detective instincts clearly having alerted her to the possibility of something interesting happening. Her eyes gleamed with the particular brand of chaos-seeking enthusiasm that had made her legendary in EN.
"Did someone say CONTENT?" she repeated, stepping into the hallway. "Because I heard 'dimension' and 'streaming' and my content senses are tingling."
And just like that, what had been a Council therapy session was about to become something much, much larger.
Outside the window, Kaela and Moona exchanged a long-suffering look.
"Should we warn the other branches?" Moona asked.
"Probably should," Kaela replied. "But let's eat first. We deserve that much."
They disappeared from the window, presumably to return to the lobby and their interrupted meal, leaving the EN members to their dimension-hopping plans.
Inside, the energy was electric. This was going to be interesting.