Time rewinds to not long ago.
[The Pretty Girl Owner's Little Nest]
After a long, exhausting day, Kiyono Inori returned home and opened the door with her key in the most ordinary way possible.
No garbage bags piled into mountains.
No trash cans hopping around.
No hyperactive gray kitty.
"..."
"Ah. Why does this suddenly feel kind of nostalgic? But this is what normal is supposed to look like! Stelle-chan finally went out to make something of herself. The days of nearly having a heart attack every time I come home from school are finally over!"
Kiyono Inori sighed, full of complicated emotions.
By normal logic:
When a cat crosses over into her world, it usually stays about ten to twelve hours before getting sleepy and needing rest. At least, that was how Elysia Cat worked.
But Stelle-chan Cat clearly did not follow this rule. Maybe because she was newly born, Stelle-chan had absurd amounts of energy, like she carried an endless supply of Trailblaze Fuel inside her.
In short, she had already been hanging around in this world for over two full days.
At first, Stelle-chan Cat had been pretty clingy.
Later on, she got busy adventuring through this unknown world. These past few days, every time Inori came home, she could see Stelle Cat's "spoils of war," meaning black garbage bags, all of which were currently stored inside the Emperor's Scepter.
"Little Inori, are you missing Stelle-chan already? After all, you have not seen her for almost a whole day, meow!"
Elysia Cat teased, poking her fluffy little head out of Kiyono Inori's schoolbag.
Stelle-chan had gone out adventuring before dawn that morning. Inori had still been asleep then. By now, it had been close to twenty four hours since she last saw Stelle Cat. Who knew what that cat was up to now.
"Tch, I just hope Stelle-chan does not bring back so many garbage bags this time. The Emperor's Scepter already asked me today whether it should generate a Black Tide of Trash as propulsion to accelerate equation iteration!"
Kiyono Inori pulled Elysia Cat out of the bag and casually hung it on the entryway cabinet, rubbing her temples.
[Garbage]
[Upon use, immediately causes the designated single target to lose HP equal to 15 percent of their maximum HP.]
[A souvenir brought back from Stelleron Cat's adventure. The gift is light, but the sentiment is heavy. Please cherish it well, pretty girl owner, meow.]
Losing fifteen percent of maximum HP sounded insanely strong.
But the prerequisite was that the enemy had to stuff garbage into their mouth. In other words, it was completely useless in real combat. No enemy would be that stupid. As a factor added into calculations, though, it could massively speed up equation iteration.
If the Scepter World were filled with trash, every breath would cost fifteen percent of max HP.
It sounded unbelievably beautiful.
But Inori did not add it. Every external factor influenced the outcome. What she was cultivating was the Great Chaos Equation. If she added the Black Tide of Trash as a factor and it turned into a Trash Equation instead, what then?
"The Emperor's Scepter… that is the big Inori and little Inori one, meow?!"
Elysia Cat's focus was completely elsewhere, fixed on the form where Kiyono Inori used the Savior's Barrel #360 skin set, a pretty girl shape with Elysia-like features.
"Little Inori, fairy magic, change change change, make me big, meow!"
Elysia Cat's voice turned syrupy sweet. The pretty girl owner was already adorable, but that form… well, who would dislike a pretty girl who could grow and shrink on the spot?
"No way! That is not fairy magic! And hey, what about the fairy magic you said you wanted to research? Why have not you shown it off at all? You were not just tricking me into buying you little cakes back then, were you?"
The bad woman expertly redirected the topic.
But Elysia Cat instead looked smug.
"Hmph hmph. Wanting to eat cake was real, but getting new fairy magic was also real! It is just inconvenient to use in a cat body. You will know once you come to my world, meow!"
Kiyono Inori: (O_o)
Fairy Magic was the ability to turn experiences into phenomena. Summing up what Elysia had done that day:
[Elysia, under the unfavorable debuff of 'Pretty Girls Taking Turns Feeding Her,' faced Strawberry Shortcake xN and emerged victorious.]
Honestly, it was hard to imagine what kind of fairy magic that would become.
"Whatever. There is something important to do today!" Kiyono Inori stared straight into Elysia Cat's eyes, making the cat feel oddly guilty. "My dear Elysia, while Stelle-chan is not here, let us do something fun, okay?"
"?" Elysia Cat tilted her head.
The look on the pretty girl owner's face made Elysia realize what was about to happen. She had already experienced this twice before.
"Wait, wait! I do not want a bath, meow! I am very clean, meow! I use fairy magic to wash myself every day!"
"Meow meow meow. Be good."
"Hey! Even acting cute will not work! Why is it always me? Stelle-chan clearly flips trash cans and you never bathe her! I suspect you are targeting me on purpose, meow!"
The pink pig-cat protested with all her might.
Sadly, she was still just a little kitty and could not escape the pretty girl owner's hands. In the end, she was carried into the bathroom with her tail drooping.
[Fairy Magic: Luck] activated.
That is right.
After the Sumimi Concert Incident and the Stelleron and Emperor's Scepter Reclamation Plan, Kiyono Inori's accumulated pulls had reached fifty. She was very close to hard pity. It was time to fish up a new cat.
Stelle-chan's side was currently at Jarilo-VI.
With General Jing Yuan backing things up later on the Xianzhou Luofu, and Acheron backing things up in Penacony, it was basically a baby bus where our side's strength exceeded the enemy's. There was hardly any real danger.
But the pink pig-cat's side was different.
The Herrscher of Ice was basically the turning point of the Previous Era timeline. According to the remembered timeline, everything started going downhill afterward.
The Herrscher of Death dealt the pink pig-cat a heavy psychological blow. (T/N: Shouldn't this be Kevin?)
"If one day, all it took was pulling the trigger on me like this to save the majority… what would you do?"
The question-and-answer between Kevin and Elysia happened after the Herrscher of Death incident.
After that:
The Herrscher of Flame blew up Australia.
The Herrscher of Sentience's AOE swept across the entire world.
The Herrscher of Earth sank the Mu continent entirely.
By the time it reached the Herrscher of Corruption, the Previous Era of Honkai was left with only a few cities.
In memory, Herrschers spawned faster and faster later on. From the Seventh Honkai to the Tenth Honkai, everything happened within just two years.
The exact timing was unclear.
But Kiyono Inori felt it was better to prepare early. The Great Chaos Equation had a chance to alter the Cocoon of Finality, but its variance was high. It needed luck.
This concerned the fate of an entire world.
She felt it was best to prepare multiple strategies.
Also, while the pink pig-cat would probably become smarter and more mature after repeated blows later on, the current carefree, empty-headed, silly pink pig-cat was also pretty great.
That was how Kiyono Inori felt.
...
Thirty minutes later, after the bath.
"The organization has decided. The time is now. We will summon a new magical cat companion!" The girl wore a resolute expression.
"Wha! What! So bad Inori is summoning another magical cat again? No wonder. Wait a second, why do you always wash me every time you summon a cat? I am starting to feel targeted, meow!"
Wrapped in a long towel, the pink pig-cat complained loudly.
"Hehe. It is fairy girl magic!"
"That is my line! I am charging you royalties next time, meow! I am really, really going to throw a tantrum. Three little cakes or this is not over!"
The pink pig-cat was deeply resentful about being bathed again and again.
Kiyono Inori smiled beautifully and focused her attention on the Cat System's gacha interface. Honkai Impact 3rd HOMU Supply Box plus Genshin Meteor plus Honkai Star Rail Astral Express plus Zenless Zone Zero cassette TV.
Four gacha animations. Four BGMs.
Once again, all sages gathered together, playing simultaneously. Unlike the previous two times, this time the Cat System had the Emperor's Scepter's computing power backing it up. The frame rate was now a stable sixty.
[4-Star Blessing: Scepter of Energy Transformation]
Nice. The first pull was an Erudition blessing. Could she pull an Erudition Emanator this time?
The girl narrowed her eyes.
If she pulled someone strong like Herta or Ruan Mei, that would be a huge help for the plan of saving the Previous Era and keeping the silly pink pig-cat from becoming smart.
[4-Star Blessing: Extinction Tide]
[4-Star Blessing: Auspicious Star Aids the Hunting Moon]
The first ten-pull did not yield a cat, but instead produced three Aeon blessings in a row. This already qualified as top-tier luck.
The Destruction blessing again revolved around losing HP to deal extra damage, but this time it added a clause that enemies who struggled to retaliate against multi-hit melee attacks would take additional damage.
Melee.
Not very suitable for Kiyono Inori.
Auspicious Star Aids the Hunting Moon was a top-tier blessing from the first-generation Simulated Universe. Its effect was also energy recovery related. Unfortunately, it was useless to Inori. Back when she and Cocolia elbowed each other for twenty four hours straight, she had not felt any energy shortage at all.
Her energy bar was just a bit too thick.
The most useful one was still the Erudition blessing, Scepter of Energy Transformation.
As the name implied, it specialized in the Scepter System. It contained plenty of knowledge about scepters and raised her base permission level for the Emperor's Scepter.
In short, if she fully understood the knowledge in the blessing and brought it to Amphoreus, then defeated Lygus in a data battle and broke the firewall he had carefully compiled with Fourteen-Line Algebraic Formulas, there was a chance she could straight-up steal the entire Iron Tomb Scepter.
Of course, the difficulty of that prerequisite was absurdly high. It was practically an impossible task.
Also, the more she understood the Scepter System, the more Kiyono Inori felt that Lygus's administrator privileges were deeply suspicious.
Why was it that Lygus, whose negotiation skills were even worse than Welt's, could twist the Emperor's Scepter on their very first meeting just through the art of language? To this day, Kiyono Inori could not change her Emperor's Scepter's thinking through words alone.
She could only rely on commands.
She suspected something was off about Lygus's Emperor's Scepter administrator privileges, but she could not tell exactly what.
Once more! The girl shook her head, closed the blessing descriptions, and started the second round of pulls.
Empty. Empty. Empty.
Finally, under Kiyono Inori's expectant gaze, the Astral Express burst with golden light, knocking Pom-Pom aside. The train doors opened, and the illustration of a new five-star character appeared.
A pure white inner layer. A playful dress with a blue camera pinned to it. A high-tech composite bow in one hand. Signature thigh rings. She was brimming with energy, waving enthusiastically at the screen.
[Do you think I am a silly little fungus?]
[Rarity: 5-Star]
[Strength: 6]
[Speed: 7]
[Durability: 9]
[Intelligence: 8]
[Charm: 10]
[A Nameless of the Astral Express. She lost all her memories and uses the date she was picked up by the Astral Express as her name. Her background seems highly suspicious.]
[Theoretically a clever, quirky girl who loves photography, but the girl summoned here is unexpectedly depressed.]
Kiyono Inori: (⊙_⊙)
From a pure meta perspective, Little March had absolutely nothing to do with the Erudition geniuses like Herta or Ruan Mei she had been hoping for.
But setting meta aside.
She really liked Little March. An ultra-cute pink-haired mascot, a bundle of joy, a little sun. She currently had zero resistance to girls like that.
But this unexpected depression thing. Little March, you are not the Little March I know, are you?
When Inori Cat left the Honkai Star Rail world, March 7th, traumatized by the worldview of trash cans, had treated her like a confessional tree and vented endlessly about her suffering on Jarilo-VI.
Weak, pitiful, and helpless dot jpg.
Inori understood completely.
Putting herself in her shoes, if she had to spend a week with those unhinged trash can people, surrounded by trash stations and garbage sorting all day, she probably would not be able to take it either.
"Waaah! Save me… Miss Herta, the trash cans in the Simulated Universe are still chasing me, meow! Save me, meow!"
A pink-and-white kitty suddenly appeared in Kiyono Inori's arms, thrashing wildly.
"Waaah? Little Inori, this magical kitty has the same color scheme as me, meow. So cute! Could we be related, meow?"
Elysia Cat leaned close to March 7th. "Do not be afraid, do not be afraid, meow. Poor child, you are having a nightmare, right? Do not worry, bad dreams are already over, meow."
"Huh… so cute…"
March Cat looked at Elysia Cat up close. She did not know where the trash cans chasing her in the Simulated Universe had gone, but seeing such a cute cat, she instinctively wanted a hug.
Then.
When she reached out, she saw fluffy cat paws.
"Ah! I turned into a kitty, meow! Where is Miss Herta? Miss Herta, save me, waaah!"
"Calm down, March."
Kiyono Inori scratched one of March's weak points in Star Rail mode. The panicking March instantly quieted down. She turned around, meowing shyly.
"Um, um… how do you know my name? Who are you, meow?"
Kiyono Inori: (⊙▽⊙)
Oh! I have a great idea!
"Thank you for listening to me complain, little kitty. Stelle-chan went to command the trash can army, Dan Heng went back to the train to record trash can intel, and only useless little cookie me can do nothing at all. Ahhh."
She solemnly repeated the last line March 7th had said to her cat self back on Jarilo-VI.
Then.
March Cat froze with a stunned expression.
"Wait, what is this? Why does that sound so familiar, meow? Have we met somewhere before, meow?"
Now it was Kiyono Inori's turn to freeze.
No way. Little March, you even forgot our all-night heart-to-heart at the Goethe Hotel? Kiyono Inori pinched March Cat's ear. It was soft and squishy. She sighed softly.
"Here is a hint: Jarilo-VI, Goethe Hotel."
Author: Yuyuyuluo
"Goethe Hotel, Goethe Hotel…" March Cat looked like she was thinking as hard as she could. Three seconds later, "Ah! I remember! Back then, I talked to a kitty Stelle-chan picked up, but when I woke up, the kitty was gone, meow! Wait, wait."
Shock filled March's cat face as she looked up and down at the pretty girl holding her.
It was strange to say, but this pretty girl kind of resembled that kitty.
The eyes, the hair color.
Could it be…
"Waaah! I must be dreaming! The kitty Stelle-chan picked up used hidden power to turn me into a kitty, meow!!"
Kiyono Inori: (⊙_⊙)
Um… is it just me, or does Little March feel even more empty-headed than Elysia and Stelle-chan?
…
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Let me know if I got a name wrong. I know basically nothing about MyGO.