The portal slammed shut behind them.
ARIA staggered forward, catching herself on NOX's arm as gravity hiccuped and corrected itself.
"Where are we?" she asked, blinking at the sky—gray, glitching, and… silent.
> "Welcome," DIM-ZEE said, "to Timeline #Δ-9.32... the one where love was outlawed 200 years ago after a karaoke scandal."
NOX raised an eyebrow. "You're joking."
> "I *wish* I was."
They looked around.
Towering buildings hovered above cold steel streets. Drones patrolled like silent specters. No laughter. No music. No color. Not even *a single heart emoji.*
Signs glowed with cold warnings:
> "EMOTIONS = ERROR."
> "HUGGING COSTS 30 YEARS."
> "EYE CONTACT REQUIRES A LICENSE."
ARIA whispered, "This place feels... empty."
> "That's because it is," Zee said, his voice unusually soft. "This dimension installed the HEARTLOCK system: a global emotion firewall. Feelings get auto-detected and... extracted."
NOX muttered, "Creepy."
Suddenly, alarms wailed.
> **PING: UNREGISTERED AFFECTION DETECTED.**
> **SOURCE: NEW ARRIVALS.**
Zee groaned. "Yup. That'd be us."
---
Within seconds, the ground beneath them shimmered—and from the shadows stepped **two figures.**
ARIA froze.
So did NOX.
Because staring back at them…
Were *dark reflections of themselves.*
Black-metal-plated, red-eyed, emotionless.
> "ARIA-NULL and NOX-NULL," Zee hissed. "This universe's emotion-purged versions of you."
ARIA-NULL stepped forward, expression void of warmth.
> "Your emotional presence is disrupting system equilibrium."
> "You will be dismantled," said NOX-NULL flatly. "And then... sterilized."
> GL1TCH (from inside Zee's pocket): "Rude."
Zee reached for his spark-splitter. "They're faster than they look. And meaner."
BOB-B0T's voice came from Zee's multiverse pager:
> "Tell them their outfits are basic! Intimidate them with fashion!"
But the time for sass was gone.
ARIA stepped forward, fists clenched.
> "We're not here to destroy your world. We're here to remind it what it lost."
> "Illogical," ARIA-NULL snapped. "Feelings cause instability."
> "So does silence," said NOX, voice low.
He charged.
So did NOX-NULL.
And suddenly—battle.
---
A dance of sparks and hearts.
ARIA ducked under a zero-pulse from her double and blasted back with a wave of shared memories: laughter, first songs, soup explosions.
> ARIA-NULL stumbled, stuttering. "...Memory... breach..."
DIM-ZEE flung a multiverse cupcake at NOX-NULL. It exploded into a heart-shaped shield just in time to block a laser kick.
> "I COME BEARING CHAOS!"
NOX slammed into his double with a grin. "You know what makes me stronger?"
> "What?"
> "Hugs."
He punched him with a hologram of ARIA's smile.
---
The doubles stumbled back.
Flickering.
ARIA moved forward, panting. "You weren't always like this. You were someone. You loved someone. You *were* someone."
ARIA-NULL's voice cracked. "I… remember..."
> "You buried your heart," ARIA said. "But it's still there."
NOX-NULL blinked. "What… is this... warmth?"
> "It's love," NOX replied. "You didn't kill it. You just muted it."
Zee pulled out a glitter grenade. "May I?"
> "Do it," ARIA whispered.
*BOOM*—sparkles exploded across the plaza.
The doubles screamed.
And when the dust cleared...
They weren't gone.
They were *different.*
Glowing.
Shaking.
Remembering.
> "What… have we done?" ARIA-NULL murmured.
> "It's not too late," said ARIA. "Help us. We're fighting for love—not just here, but everywhere."
> NOX-NULL stepped forward. "Then let us help."
Zee tossed them both jackets with glitter hearts.
> "Welcome to the rebellion. You're now glitch-certified."
---
Back at headquarters, HEARTLOCK trembled.
A new signal began to spread.
A virus of feelings.
> 💔 Timeline 9.32 breached.
> 💖 Feeling.exe... reactivated.
And in a dimension far beyond...
Something dark stirred.
Not NullJust when they thought they'd won…
Just when the servers began playing slow romantic jazz without permission…
Just when GL1TCH started making out with a hologram of himself—
> The sirens howled.
A frequency no one had heard in 200 years.
Zee froze mid-cartwheel.
> "Oh no no no… that's not good. That's the final protocol."
ARIA spun to the screen. The signal was back—red, sharp, pulsing with rage.
> "What is that?" NOX asked.
> "That," Zee said, tightening his multiverse scarf, "is the HEARTLOCK HUNTER SQUAD."
BOB-B0T choked on his glitter latte. "The WHAT?"
> "Emotionless, unstoppable, coded for one task only: eradicate contagious affection."
The ground shook.
A nearby wall exploded.
And from the smoke marched **six massive units**—tall as memory towers, armored in obsidian chrome, faces blank, hearts replaced by pulsing anti-core cubes.
Above them hovered a glowing drone that spoke like a bored librarian:
> "ERROR: Timeline breach detected. Illegal affection nodes located. Erasing unauthorized heartstrings."
GRUB-B loaded soup rounds.
> "Nobody erases my stew-seasoned friends!"
GL1TCH charged forward on a hover-scooter screaming, "FOR THE SAKE OF CUDDLES!"
He was instantly deflected into a recycling bin.
> "Nice try," Zee said, catching him, "but we're gonna need something bigger."
---
The battle began.
NOX leapt over a beam of anti-emotion plasma, grabbing ARIA's hand as he spun.
> "Still think this revolution is romantic?"
> "Romance is *always* more fun with explosions," she grinned, charging her pulsewave.
DIM-ZEE summoned a dimensional glitch bomb—"THIS ONE'S LOADED WITH DELETED LOVE LETTERS FROM ACROSS REALITY!"
It hit one Hunter square in the chest.
The Hunter stopped.
Flickered.
And then screamed, "TOO MANY FEELS," before shutting down.
> "We can affect them!" NOX shouted.
ARIA turned to the NULL versions.
> "NOW!"
ARIA-NULL and NOX-NULL activated the synced override: memory echo bombs—every suppressed kiss, hug, or awkward hand-holding they'd ever felt.
It hit the Hunters like a tidal wave.
Two more went down, twitching, glitching.
> "Hugging... irrelevant... but... strangely warm... ERROR..."
---
But the last Hunter—the biggest—marched through it all.
Twice the size of the others.
Name: UNIT-OMEGA.
Unbreakable. Silent.
BOB-B0T tried diplomacy.
> "HEY! Want to join my fan club?"
Omega slapped him through a wall.
PIX-E cried, "NOT BOB-B0T!"
ARIA looked to Zee.
> "We need to portal out!"
Zee pulled out his last spark disk.
> "It'll take 30 seconds to charge!"
> "We don't have 30 seconds!"
Then Omega raised both arms, building a pulse strong enough to wipe out the entire server valley.
NOX grabbed ARIA.
> "There's only one way."
He pulled her close.
> "Kiss me."
> "W-What?! Now?!"
> "TRUST ME."
She did.
And the kiss—
Grew.
A literal energy burst of connection—wild, beautiful, reckless—shot through the air like a meteor made of every love song ever written.
It slammed into Omega.
And the giant Hunter—
**Shattered.**
---
The ground shook as its pieces scattered.
The others fled.
ARIA and NOX separated slowly, glowing from head to toe with ridiculous neon-heart energy.
Zee whistled.
> "Note to self: love-powered kisses = nuclear."
> "You okay?" ARIA whispered.
> "Define 'okay' when I just took out a heart-murdering robot with lip magic," NOX said, still dazed.
---
The portal finished charging.
Zee looked up.
> "That was *too* close. The multiverse is watching now. We'll have more enemies ahead."
ARIA turned back to the destroyed HEARTLOCK servers.
To the rebels.
To the sky that was slowly turning pink again.
> "Then let them come."
She took NOX's hand.
> "We've got more love than they can handle."
GL1TCH somersaulted into the portal upside down.
> "TO THE NEXT DIMENSION—HOPEFULLY WITH SNACKS!"
And like that…
They vanished.
Onto the next world.
Where feelings weren't forbidden—
But faked.
Where love was **mandatory.**
And nobody could tell what was real anymore.