This is a Beta Test?! - A Literally Broken System

Before I could even question what he was doing, the glow surrounding Shade's rose dissipated, and along with it, the floating rose petals seemingly keeping Guidance from completely blowing a gasket.

"W-What's happening to her?"

I could only shake my head as I addressed Shen's worried tone. "I don't know, but I could only assume that she's going to be just as confused as we are going forward."

Sure enough, Shade's obvious [Manifest] finally released its hold on the dev, Guidance barely managing to catch herself on the console as she looked around as if she was lost.

"W-What happened to me?" Guidance whispered out, her hand gingerly damping on the tears still trailing down her cheeks. "I... I was crying?"

"You were, err... You kind of had a nervous breakdown earlier," I awkwardly explained. "And you spilled the beans on us being otherworlders."

"O-Oh..."

Once again, the awkward silence reared its ugly head on us. For some reason, I could only hope that Maruki wasn't bursting at the seams to shout out whatever it was that was assuredly running through his head. For all we know, he was going to go full religious nut on us in the same way Shizu did.

"G-Goddess?!"

Or maybe I just spoke too soon. "Absolutely not! We're just as human as you all are. In fact...." I trailed off, remembering something about this world's setting that could somehow prove our lack of divinity. "Guidance, those [Stars] above us are all different worlds, right?"

"Wha.... O-Oh right!" the dev suddenly agreed, having seemingly recovered from her earlier charming with an argument of her own. "We're not gods. We're more travelers from another [Star]. It just so happens that in our world, you were all a part of my life's work."

"That.... doesn't exactly help either," Shade hesitantly replied, his hand still hovering over his rose as if he was expecting something. "The mere fact that you, as you say it, created the entirety of [Talck] and the Deep means that you are comparable to those so-called [Eld]... Which also means that the gods are real... Add in your [Manifest]..."

I sighed, "We're really going to go through this again, huh."

Looking around, even Shen was starting to look at us like we were descended from the heavens. It also didn't help that Shizu was back to her worshipping ways no matter how much she tried to hide the glee in her eyes.

You're not helping, Shizu!

"I suppose that comes with the territory," Guidance sighed alongside me, her own expression showing that she still hasn't truly gotten over her earlier breakdown. "At least we won't have this talk all the time with this many people in the know."

"Fair enough," I chuckled. "In fact, why don't we start with the local perception of us?"

Catching on my drift, Guidance took on a smirk of her own as we both turned our eyes on our resident princess. "I agree, Moriya. Let's have our leader explain the situation."

Almost immediately, the light in Shizu's eyes turned into panic as her shoulders shook ever so slightly. The stilted way she turned to face has was both hilarious and pitiful to look at.

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"It's only proper that the leader does the explaining~" Guidance playfully added, her voice lilting as she gave me a smirk. "Don't you agree, Moriya?~"

"Indeed~" I sagely nodded, crossing my arms for emphasis. "It would be more legitimate if it came from Shizu's own words anyway."

The poor princess raised her arms in protest, wackily waving them around as if it would stop us from shunting off the responsibility to her. "W-Wait! If I'm the leader, then I order you two to explain yourselves!"

Guidance and I only shared a knowing look at one another before I retorted. "Ah, but we're already planning on doing that later. Besides, we're going to be using the time you're talking to make this thing finally set sail."

"Exactly~" the dev followed up. "We've already spent enough time arguing about all this and that. The least we can do is at least be moving while we do so."

Shizu visibly deflated as she was faced with valid reasoning. Of course, she could always just assert her authority and guilt us into doing the explaining ourselves, but I had a feeling she won't do that anymore.

"O-Okay. I'll do my best!"

"We'll shore up any gaps in your story once we've actually managed to make this thing move, Shizu," I quickly added. "So don't be afraid to make any mistakes, seeing as we'll clear them up right after anyway."

"Right!"

And just like that, the princess was once again smiling her usual radiant smile. And somehow, I just felt like I swindled an innocent kid out of her own lunch money.

Oh well... I'm sure it wasn't that bad.

Turning to Guidance, I gave her a serious look as I addressed her. "Okay, while Shizu's doing that, let's actually get to work ourselves, no?"

"Agreed," the dev sighed, her prior glee receding as her earlier glum outlook returned. "And yeah, I'm sorry for my earlier breakdown..."

"It's fine. We all have our days," I assuaged her. "In the meantime, let's just hope that we can get this thing moving so we can finally get on with our lives."

"Yep."

And with that, Guidance took to my side as we stared at the console in front of us like it was the gigantic puzzle that it was. I'm sure Guidance would come up with something soon enough though. And with Shizu talking to the rest in the background, it was only a matter of time before we could finally... Finally... Actually do some work.

Besides, I haven't even clocked in my available points and quirks yet. Hopefully, we'd get enough down time that I could experiment with the menus and systems again, but that was kind of wishful thinking.

"You know what? Why can't we just go with my earlier suggestion?"

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