"Upupupu! Rise and shine, princess! There's still a lot more in store!"

I jolted awake to the sound of the sinister laugh, my eyes flickering open. For some reason, I thought that I was in a warm bed, maybe next to a fireplace. Instead, I was laying on some white tile in a bright room. Slightly disappointed, I was startled by a familiar figure looking over me.

"Are you ready to keep going, 973?" Kiibo asked, a frown on his face. He extended an arm out to me in one swift motion, which I took to wobble up to my feet. After stretching a little bit, we were off again.

When we approached the next area, it was different from the standard white rooms we were accustomed too. Instead, it was made of brown, rotting wood with large gaps between the floorboards- some of them even caving in.

"This... could be a problem.." kiibo murmured, a sad look on his face.

"Huh? What about it?" I asked brazenly.

He sighed sadly. "You see, I'm made of metal, so I'm rather, how you say," he paused momentarily. "Heavy..."

"Hm..." I tapped on my chin, unsure of how to respond to him. Suddenly, it dawned on me. "I'll go first, and I'll tell you if there are any particular weak spots. As long as we stay around the perimeter, we should be fine."

"Ah, sounds good," the robot nodded. "As expected of the Ultimate Lo-uh, never mind."

"The Ultimate what?"

"I'm not allowed to say," the boy murmured sadly. I merely shook it off, diving headfirst into the new area. The boards creaked under my weight slightly (and under Kiibo's even more), but we eventually made it to an area with a few doors in front of us.

"Let's try the left one," I offered, gingerly approaching it. My fingers grazed the cool metal of the doorknob as I swung the door open, causing a cloud of dust to blow up in my face. I began to cough furiously, covering my mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle the noise.

"(Y/n)! Are you alright?" Kiibo cried, rushing to my side. He forcefully grabbed my arms from my face, holding them with inhuman grip as he looked at me in concern.

"Let go of me!" I protested, as he quickly unhanded me from his grip. After a few moments, the coughing subsided. "Kiibo... you can't grab humans like that. Especially when they're coughing..."

"Oh, my apologies," the robot frowned, as if he were a puppy who had just received a scolding.

I returned my attention to the door, which opened into an even darker area. I felt around on the nearby wall, but there was no light switch. As such, I turned back to the robot. "Hey, Kiibo... do you have a function or something that could help us see in here?"

"Oh, of course!" He exclaimed in determination. He tapped on a button positioned on his torso, which caused his eyes to gleam bright white. He stood next to me, revealing the contents of the room more clearly.

"Ack, is that a person?!" I yelled in shock, noticing a large figure slumped over what appeared to be a cluster of desks. Disregarding the decrepit flooring, I sprinted towards the strange anomaly.

"hey, can you hear me?!" I shouted, reaching my hand out to touch the figure. I froze as soon as I saw it more, slowly sitting up in front of me. Before I knew it, the strange person had its hands around my neck, wringing it tightly.

"Gh... ah... ki... bo..." I choked, unable to form anything more than that. My vision grew fuzzy as I tried to claw at my captor, who unfortunately had an ironlike grip. Kiibo suddenly stormed towards us, slapping the hands of my attacker. I collapsed onto the floor, erupting into another coughing fit.

"who are you, human? How dare you choke 973!"he cried, suddenly able to see the figure. I rolled onto my back, able to see the person more clearly. She had long brown hair secured into two low pigtails using blood red scrunchies. Her blood red eyes remained unblinking, staring at the robot coldly. They then focused on me, at which they widened suddenly.

"That's... (y/n)," the girl murmured in a calm, icy voice. Suddenly, she extended a hand out to me, her pale face turning a tinge pinker in embarrassment. "I'm sorry."

"It's alright," I reassured her, giving her a small thumbs up in response. "Who are you?"

"I'm Maki. Your classmate. Remember?" She asked coolly.

I shook my head in response. "I don't. I barely remember my name. All of my memories were wiped..."

"Well, you're (y/n) (l/n), the Ultimate... wait a second," her face turned slightly blue. "I can't remember what your talent is."

"What? Why can't anyone remember much about me?" I asked in shock. Afterwards, I merely shook my head. "Anyways, we can worry about that later. For now, we have to find our way out of this 'trial' or whatever. Are you gonna tag along?"

She nodded. "I don't have any other choice."

"Great!" I exclaimed, a grin on my face. "This is Kiibo, by the way."

"Greetings."

"Hello," she muttered calmly. The three of us trudged out of the dark room, back to the hallway of copious doors. We tried the next one, which only proved to be fruitless. And the next, and the next. Eventually, we were presented with only one door yet.

Kiibo flung it open, the interior being brighter than all of the others. However, this was unlike anything we had seen on the trial before. It was much, much worse.

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I'm baaaacccck