4: Lovers’ Dilemma

The Tuatha de Danaan was critically wounded, having already taken hits twice on its starboard side and one on its port. One of those on its starboard had been a direct hit from a mini-torpedo—the fore starboard compartment, just by the hangar deck. They couldn’t stop the flooding, and no matter how they flushed water from the ballast tanks, they couldn’t maintain their pitch. There was also a fire raging in the machinery room. The automatic fire extinguishers couldn’t keep up, and they didn’t have the manpower necessary to do it manually.

Thankfully, the submarine’s size and structure kept it from dropping to the bottom of the sea, but they were fast reaching their limits.

“Activating ADSLMM. Mike-18, hit!”

The last Leviathan had fallen for their trap. It had been closing in, hoping to finish off the slowed and depth-limited de Danaan. But in doing so, it had come into range of one of the autonomous mines that its prey had secretly launched earlier in the battle.

The senior sonar technician’s announcement of the Leviathan’s destruction came after a distant explosion, but nobody was about to breathe a sigh of relief. By then they were already on their next attack course, targeting the submerged gate that would take them into Merida Island’s first waterway. This would give them a direct line to the base’s underground dock, but they first had to break through the sturdy alloy steel fence that guarded it.

Holding a wad of bloodstained gauze to her head, Tessa gave her order. “Fire all!”

“Aye, fire all!”

One of their tubes had taken too much damage, but the other five simultaneously fired out torpedoes. Two of them took the lead as they were programmed to do, detonating in a staggered fashion to take out the enemy’s floating mines. The remaining three torpedoes then plowed through the curtain of bubbles they produced, the de Danaan fast on their heels.

The enemy tried a counterattack from the shoreline. Projected mini-torpedoes rained down on them, but they sped up to try to outrun them. There were explosions all around them. One hit and the floor bucked, casting Tessa out of her seat as one of the control room screens blacked out.

A damage report came in: the machinery room, the living quarters—everything was either on fire or flooded. They’d lost their second starboard rudder, but they were still mobile. They ignored the damage and accelerated.

Their torpedoes hit the fencing first. There was a series of explosions as the boat plowed into the crumpled fence, jolting them hard. A panel fell from the ceiling and hit Mardukas; someone screamed, and the lights flickered. Then their 44,000-ton mass broke through the gate and proceeded into the tunnel.

“Is the next round loaded?!” Tessa screamed.

“Loading now. Two...one...ready!” The torpedo launch tubes displayed on the still-working screen switched from yellow to green one after the other. The word ‘ARM’ flashed over each.

“Fire!” They fired their remaining five torpedoes at the second gate blocking their way into the tunnel. One was a dud, but the other four accelerated, rocketing towards their target.

All of them hit.

The shockwave was transmitted through the water in the tunnel, hitting the de Danaan’s prow head-on. This sent it veering off course, their starboard side scraping hard along the tunnel wall. It let out the scream of a giant beast and the floor of the control room shook wildly.

“Reactors one and two have surpassed maximum heat levels! We can’t keep going!” Mardukas yelled.

“Maintain maximum speed!” Tessa cried back. “Let them explode if they’re going to!”

“Aye aye, ma’am!”

The second gate was fast approaching: three hundred meters, two hundred meters...

“We’re plowing through! Prepare for impact!” Tessa shouted over the ship’s intercom, but the message didn’t go through. Are the channels down due to flooding and fire, or are the speakers broken? Tessa wondered. I don’t know.

“Don’t worry! Everyone’s perfectly braced!” bellowed Mardukas, who had blood on his face.

A second later they slammed into the gate with a tremble and a roar. Tessa couldn’t tell what else had happened. She knew she’d been thrown out of her seat and hit the pilot’s chair ahead of her, but after that, her vision was spinning and her ears were ringing and she wasn’t fully sure whether she was even still alive.

“Ugh...” she groaned. Emergency lamps were blinking, and a terrible headache and tinnitus consumed her thoughts. Mardukas was looking into her face, shouting something. Beyond him, she could see the pilot cradling the fire control officer on the floor.

At last, sound broke through. “...tain. Captain!”

“Did I lose consciousness?” Tessa asked. “For how long?”

“Just thirty seconds.”

“Status?”

One of the starboard screens was still working. As Mardukas helped her up, Tessa staggered to her console panel. She tried to work it and found the screen to be responsive.

They’d broken through the second gate and arrived in a dry area, skidded for two hundred meters, and then come to a stop. Seawater was flooding in through the broken sluice gate, and now the tunnel was filled up about one-third of the way.

The damage done on this last run would prove fatal to the submarine. The palladium reactor had undergone an emergency shutdown. The machinery room fire was still raging and had spread to the area near the fore torpedo tubes, giving a chance that it might light into their ammunition stores. The flooding in the hangar had stopped, but now there was a poison gas leak. They’d lost most of their rudder, and the outer hull was peppered with too many holes to count.

Tessa tried the bridge periscope. It was still working, so she zoomed in using the optical sensors’ night vision mode. There was more tunnel ahead of them. About three hundred meters out from their current position lay the final gate. This one was sealed off with concrete, and the service tunnels for people to pass through were all welded shut. Beyond that barrier, they’d find the drydock that had once been used for de Danaan’s maintenance, and which now housed their target: the TAROS device.

Tessa prepared a shipwide broadcast on the still-working backup line, and spoke into the microphone. “All hands, abandon ship. Prepare for hand-to-hand combat.”

They had no time to waste. The nearby members of her crew all responded in the affirmative and ran off from the control room to the next block over, which contained the weapons lockers.

After watching her subordinates leave, Mardukas stopped in the exit. “Captain!” he called to Tessa, who had remained behind.

“Go on. I’ll catch up soon,” she responded in a voice that seemed almost inappropriately calm. Mardukas, who seemed to catch onto the meaning behind her words, nodded once and then disappeared through the exit.

Tessa looked around the control room with its blaring alarms and blinking emergency lights. She wanted to sear it into her memory. Then she used the console to punch in the words ‘THANK YOU.’ But perhaps the interface had been taken by the fire, because the ship’s AI, Dana, did not respond.

Tessa crouched down, put her hands on the dust-covered floor, and gave it a kiss. A long, long kiss, which was the least that a mother could do for her dying daughter. About five seconds passed, and then she stood up, wiping the tears from her eyes as she swiftly left the control room behind.

Arrows of destruction came streaking towards the Laevatein. One after another, the shockwaves they produced blasted through boulders on the hill and houses on the urban combat practice field.

He couldn’t block Leonard’s attacks. He couldn’t even begin to imagine a shield capable of stopping the longbow’s invisible projectiles. Sousuke’s Laevatein was just barely managing to dodge the rain of arrows through careful evasive maneuvers, but soon he’d reach the limit of what he could do. Sooner or later, one would spear through his cockpit.

In that case, he thought reluctantly, there’s no reason to keep pitting strength against strength. It was time to use the equipment designed for just this sort of occasion. “We’re using the wing!” he announced.

《Ready,》 Al told him.

He couldn’t use it for long. Leonard knew that, too. Sousuke had wanted to time its usage for just the right moment, but that man wasn’t going to let him have the choice. Any hesitance to use it would be the death of him.

Use it, he told himself. All of it. Focus and imagine. As he did so, the Laevatein’s remaining wing—the right-side lambda driver canceler—activated, and the heat sink trailing from its head began to emit a light like molten steel.

It was active. The enemy’s lambda driver was nullified, and Leonard’s Belial, having lost its flight capability, plummeted to earth... But then suddenly righted itself in midair to land effortlessly.

“I thought you’d use that,” Leonard remarked. “However...” Upon landing, he folded up his bow and leaped to the side to enter standard combat maneuvers. “—How can you attack with it active?”

The Laevatein had already lost its shotcannon and rifle. It still had the demolition gun on its back, but the recoil was too great to use without his own lambda driver for support. He’d used up his anti-tank daggers and grenades in the fight against the Codarls.

The heat output of the fairy wing was increasing, and Sousuke knew he could only keep it active for a minute longer. Meanwhile, Leonard fired at him with his arm-mounted 40mm machine cannons, shot after shot, precisely herding the Laevatein along.

“And your machine has a weak point,” Leonard observed. As he spoke, the Belial disappeared into midair. The rain had stopped, and he’d activated his ECS.

Sousuke couldn’t pick up Leonard’s position. They were on rocky ground, and he seemed to be carefully sticking to the rocks. There was no trampling on grass or cutting through smoke to give his position away. He was keeping his machine hidden, quietly and cautiously.

He must have realized it after all... The Laevatein, with its specs heightened through sheer brute force, didn’t have an ECS counter-sensor.

“Your lack of electronic combat readiness... Did you think I wouldn’t realize?” Leonard asked from some unseen point. Sousuke could pick up electromagnetic waves from here and there, but he couldn’t trace them back to their source.

“Wouldn’t realize...” While carefully reading his optical sensor information to search for his invisible enemy, Sousuke turned on his external speakers. “But there’s something you certainly haven’t realized.” He remembered the words Tessa had told him earlier. He still didn’t know what they meant, but if he was going to use them, now had to be the time.

“Oh?”

“Tessa told me... She knows what her mother did. You hear me? She knows.”

A long silence followed. He couldn’t afford to wait to verify his enemy’s reaction, but they seemed to have indeed been magical words.

“What...” It was the first sign of uncertainty his opponent had shown. “That’s nonsense. You’re lying.”

Where is he?

The wing was reaching its limit. Fifteen seconds...

“You think I’m lying?” Sousuke asked, while wondering again, Where is he?

“But... if Teletha knew, then why did she try to stop me? She must be mad. Completely mad. She knows she’s the daughter of a whore?” Leonard demanded to know. “That’s... Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never heard anything so absurd!”

A few clumsy steps clinched it: the broad-leafed trees shook unnaturally, the grass below bent in an impossible pattern, and falling leaves hit an unknown something and changed their course. Sousuke couldn’t see the Belial. It wasn’t on radar either, but it was definitely there.

There... Sousuke chose his weapon: the demolition gun, in its short-range mode, rotated into place from behind. He grabbed it with his right hand and quickly took aim. With the wing still active, and without the aid of the lambda driver...he fired.

His right arm flew off at the elbow as recoil sufficient to shake a fifty-ton tank went racing through his intricate humanoid machine. The Laevatein corkscrewed through the air, slamming into the ground, while the demolition gun flew farther; it tumbled end-over-end with his right arm still attached.

The 165mm shot hit its target in a massive explosion. Smoke burst outward, and sent dust showering down upon the Laevatein. Sousuke shook his head, which was swimming, and stood his machine up.

“Ngh...” He groaned, before checking the amount of damage done: he’d lost his demolition gun and his right arm. The fairy wing had burned itself out; he couldn’t use the lambda driver canceler again.

When the smoke cleared, he saw the Belial was still standing. Its left arm had been blown off, it had shed armor in places, and it had lost its longbow, but that was all.

Sousuke shook his head. “Dammit...” He’d put all he had into that attack, but the hit had been just off-center. The Laevatein’s last chance had fallen just short of a finishing blow.

The cracked sensors of the Belial’s asymmetrical head glared at Sousuke. “I didn’t know you were that kind of man,” Leonard said accusingly, with deep anger in his voice. With his lambda driver working again, the air around the Belial warped.

“You’re still on that chivalry crap?” Sousuke asked.

“Shut up,” snarled Leonard. “This ends now.” And with that, the injured Belial charged him with the speed of a gale.

Night on Bald Mountain continued to echo through the peaks as the fiery clash continued between Mao’s M9 and the white Eligore.

Keeping their distance, they traded shots and jamming signals. Super high-speed transmissions sought each other out in a battle to seize the upper hand. Electronic decoy clashed with electronic decoy, each with hundreds of codes to decipher.

Mao fired, knowing it was unlikely to hit at her current distance and relative velocity. Indeed, the white Eligore dodged the 40mm shot easily enough. It went leaping up the treacherous slope in short hops, and then opened its armor to reveal its ECS lenses.

Is it going to disappear again? she wondered. But no...it didn’t turn invisible. Instead, its white form trembled and split in two. No, not in two... A second double of the Eligore appeared, then a third. When it emerged from behind the rock, there were five duplicate images in total.

Projections?! Mao understood the principle in play. Instead of using laser holograms to hide your machine, use them to project duplicate images of it into the surrounding environment. Mao had experimented with the concept herself, but had found it to be an inefficient use of the M9’s output.

Besides, it was all a bluff. Laser holograms lost visual integrity exponentially with distance, which made it hard to project over any kind of range. Thus, the central machine would always be the real one. You just had to fire at that.

Mao knelt down to get a stable footing. This time, she wouldn’t miss. Make her use the lambda driver, she told herself. Then the real fight will start. She steadied her aim with both hands and fired.

The 40mm shot pierced through the enemy machine, but that was all. There was no sign of damage. Meanwhile, the five enemy machines moved in unison, returning their carbines to their backs and drawing an anti-tank dagger in each hand.

“Hey...” Mao muttered. Then she thought, The center is a projection? But how? Wait... what if the enemy’s hologram unit output is just that incredible? Could her machine be the one on the far left, projecting the remaining four all to the right? But there’s no way to confirm while locked in electronic combat—

The enemy’s movements seemed to play out in slow motion, like a penalty kick in a soccer game, as Mao’s reaction speed stretched itself to the limit. The five Eligores spread their arms wide, arched their backs, and whipped around. Ten anti-tank daggers in total... and she couldn’t jam them. You couldn’t jam thrown weapons.

Dodge, then... To the right? To the left? Or above?

She made her decision—above. Then the throw came, and ten of the daggers came flying at her. No... eight immediately disappeared. Only the two on the far left continued flying towards her.

She anticipated my next move, Mao realized. It’s no use, I can’t dodge. “Hng...” All she could do was cross her arms over her chest to try and protect the cockpit. The anti-tank daggers hit her arms, which were sent flying, shattered, along with her rifle as the tandem-charge shaped explosives unleashed their force.

The world around her went white from the impact.

You’re falling, Mao told herself. You have to take a landing position. Swing your arms and right yourself! But she had no arms. She’d lost a humanoid weapon’s most important feature.

She hit the ground back-first, let out a weak moan, and then looked at the time display in the corner of her screen: fifteen minutes until the estimated launch time. Only fifteen minutes left, yet here she was...

Ahead of her, the white Eligore dropped its projections, pulled its rifle from its back, and pointed it straight at her. It fired.

Now! Mao told herself, using the jackknife maneuver to snap her machine’s back, leaping it up and evading the attack. Nevertheless, she still took hits to her back, her right thigh, and her right shoulder.

Her machine continued to move valiantly despite its loss of balance, even as alarms blared and her output began to drop. Something was on fire. She had no arms. What about communications? Yes, electronic warfare is still active. At least I can warn everyone...

“Uruz-2 here!” she called. “I’ve taken major damage! I’m having trouble taking out the enemy machine! I think I might bite it here... sorry!”

“Uruz-1 here. Don’t give up!” Clouseau responded, sounding short of breath. Data about his machine flowed into hers... Damage to the chest. Major damage to the cockpit block.

“Ben!” she cried out.

“You have to... hold out somehow! I’m not doing well either, but if I can clear this up, I can come—” there was a wave of static, which was accompanied by the sound of tearing metal. Then there was silence.

That was it. She’d lost contact with Clouseau.

“Ben?!” she tried a second time, but didn’t have time for a third now that the white Eligore was in hot pursuit, kicking up dirt and snow. Her enemy—the lambda driver-mounted enemy machine—was completely unharmed. What should I do? What should I...

Fowler’s black Eligore was approaching Clouseau. With its back to the moonlit sky and a single sword in its hand, it resembled an evil spirit stalking after the Falke.

The sword it carried wasn’t even a monomolecular cutter, just a chunk of metal styled after a katana, carved out of alloy steel; nevertheless, its blade had torn a diagonal slice clean through the Falke’s chest. Clouseau’s quick reflexes had kept him from sustaining a fatal injury, but the tip of the blade had still cut clean through his armor and into his cockpit shell.

Smoke was filling his machine with the smell of scorched steel. The screen was just barely hanging on to life, but the smoke was so thick that Clouseau couldn’t see it properly. Follow-up attacks had destroyed his head radar and blade antenna, causing him to lose contact with Mao in the middle of their conversation.

“Uruz-2! Do you read me, Mao?!” The backup antenna in his machine’s torso wasn’t working, either. Restoring communications in this terrain was impossible. He had to focus on the enemy in front of him first—

Clouseau braced himself as another slice came at him. This one bisected his rifle, which he threw away just before the ammunition inside detonated. He ran through the smoke to gain some distance before drawing his monomolecular cutter, the kukri-shaped Crimson Edge. This he held in a backhanded grip, hunched over in a blocking stance.

Of course, it would do him no good against Fowler’s blade. The Fairy Eye, a system for detecting lambda driver activity, remained intact in his machine’s head and lit up in response to each of the enemy’s slashes. In other words, it was Fowler’s lambda driver that gave his katana its cutting power. Clouseau’s monomolecular cutter, bound by conventional laws of physics, couldn’t possibly block it.

Relying on his machine’s superiority to the end. That dirty cheating bastard. It would have been reassuring if he could tell himself that, but it wasn’t the truth. Assume, for instance, that the enemy was in a normal machine. Assume that the weapon he’s carrying was a monomolecular cutter with otherwise identical weight and balance. Would I still be taking damage like this? Clouseau had to accept it—he would.

Fowler’s attacks were so precise and varied as to leave Clouseau agog. The lambda driver felt almost irrelevant. For the man to overpower Clouseau—one of the best AS martial artists in the world—to this degree...

Who is he? Clouseau wondered. He’d never heard of such a man, not even in rumor. He’d even checked up on him when they were stalking him in San Francisco, but all he’d found was that his name was Lee Fowler, and that he was American, with some East Asian lineage. His history was almost entirely unknown, and Clouseau couldn’t even find out where he’d been trained. There was no sign of him in the annals of the major worldwide terror organizations, either.

A martial artist? he wondered. The Eligore’s footwork, the way the blade strikes flowed into each other... It wasn’t like any military martial art he’d ever seen. Clouseau turned on his external speakers. “If you have skills like that,” he asked, “why do you resort to this foolishness?” His reason for asking this wasn’t just to give himself time to formulate a countermeasure. He genuinely wanted to know.

“It’s a common story, Mr. Clouseau,” Fowler responded through his own external speakers. “A man, seeking strength, acquires skill through exhaustive training. He hones that skill into an art, but is quickly taught how powerless he really is.”

“Did someone beat you?” Clouseau wondered.

“Yes... you could say that, I suppose. A man not much older than thirty. Drug-addicted trash,” Fowler clarified. “The kind you’d meet in any city.”

Clouseau listened on and was stunned. “What?”

“But since I don’t think telling you my life story will bring you over to my side...let’s resume.” Fowler’s Eligore took just a few steps, then, as lightly as if hitting a golf ball, sent a rock at its feet flying with its blade. The boulder turned into a bullet flying at the Falke’s head.

Clouseau gritted his teeth at the distraction. He used minimal movements to dodge the rock to allow his machine to keep its balance, but in that same moment, he saw the Eligore approaching, its sword held low.

It’s coming, he told himself. Lower left. Rather than choosing to block, he twisted to dodge the blade. Fowler changed his machine’s trajectory instantly into a horizontal slash. Clouseau dropped his machine down, rolling it while stabbing with the monomolecular cutter and performing a leg sweep at the same time. Fowler jumped over this attack and blocked the monomolecular cutter with his right elbow. The Fairy Eye picked it up. A force field generated at the enemy’s elbow—

Clouseau grunted. He didn’t make it in time. The force field hit the blade of his monomolecular cutter and crushed it into powder. He tossed it away, rolled to the side, and leaped to take some distance. As he did this, he threw his anti-tank dagger, which Fowler deflected with his own blade. The ATD then stopped in midair and flew back at Clouseau, hitting him in the right shoulder, where it exploded.

His right shoulder armor went flying. Because his cockpit wasn’t sealed, the residual shockwaves from the explosion washed over him unmitigated.

“Urgh...!” Clouseau choked out. He’d never been through anything like this before. His chest sank in and his ribs broke, driving the air out of his lungs. He also felt the shockwave crack his skull and crush his eye.

But he was still alive... He could still see, too, but the view around him was red; a blood vessel in his eye must have burst. A clearing of his throat sprayed blood onto the screen in front of him. Damage to my lungs? he wondered. What about my machine? It could still move... But its right arm was severed at the shoulder.

Clouseau finally realized he was lying face down. He immediately righted himself and turned to face Fowler... but the other machine wasn’t there. No, he was right behind him—

“You made it back up!” Fowler congratulated him.

Clouseau felt an impact. He rolled himself forward with the momentum, but part of his back armor had been lost, sending shock absorbing fluid leaking out of the exposed spinal frame.

He didn’t have time to worry about how long the battle had run on. He zigzagged with all the power he had and took advantage of the terrain to close in. His only remaining weapons were one anti-tank dagger and one grenade. The Fairy Eye—the lambda driver detector that served as his one lifeline—was gone, having been destroyed in the explosion.

He felt pain shoot through his chest with every breath he took. His vision was growing hazy. His fingers were turning numb. Yet still, Clouseau felt a quiet respect for his enemy. Fowler, he thought, you’re very impressive. After having fought him this long, he could tell that he was serious, that he was showing no mercy.

Fowler had dropped all of his pretensions and was just trying to finish Clouseau off with every trick he knew. Clouseau didn’t know anything about this man, but it was clear that he was engaging him in an honest duel. And that strength... He could acknowledge it. It would let him go with no regrets.

I’m glad he was my final opponent, Clouseau told himself. But it wasn’t over yet. I still have to stop him. If I can just stop him, my remaining allies can work something out...

“Release GPL limiters...”

《Warning. Releasing GPL limiters will cause massive trauma to all systems—》

“Just do it!”

《Roger. Final confirmation: Really release GPL limiters?》

“I said yes!”

《Roger. Executing.》

He’d removed the safeties that kept the Falke’s palladium reactor in the safe zone. This generated a massive flood of power that the machine wasn’t designed to take, skyrocketing the reactor’s temperature at the same time. An excess of electricity flowed through the muscle packages, tearing them apart in exchange for achieving massive instantaneous power.

“Let’s go!” Belfangan Clouseau cried as he ran across the ground.

That was the biggest explosion yet, she thought with a scowl as she stopped in the middle of the final boot-up sequence. She was in the TARTAROS’s central control room, and the explosion had come from just beyond the wall that separated her from the underwater passage. She swiftly checked to see how much it might have warped the TARTAROS’s foundation and judged it to still be within tolerable range.

One of the security officers gave her a report from outside: The enemy submarine has entered the underground waterway. We sent some men up to the surface, so our forces here are light, but we can hold them off for more than long enough. We are still looking forward to the world you will create, and the salvation of all. God’s protection to the Whispering! they said, then began their counterattack.

“‘God’s protection’...” she snorted. Such empty words. If God protected anyone, I wouldn’t have to be doing all this. There is no God. There is no salvation. This is real life.

But perhaps human technology can give birth to the three goddesses of fate? If so, then that’s what I am: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos in one.

They need me. An unacceptable world, events that deserve rejection... I will take them all on, denounce them, and transform them. Now and forever, until everyone is satisfied. Again and again, thousands of times, millions of times, billions of times... I’ll do it over. This moment is just one step on that never-ending journey. Even the battle on this tiny island will soon be drowned out and vanish...

Like tears in rain.

There were no more distant explosions. She plugged in the final activation code, pressed enter, and stepped into the TARTAROS.

The corridor was narrow. The floor was cold. She passed through several doors before reaching the core, which was surrounded by amplifiers. Then she lay down on the bed they were hooked up to and began to connect. There would be no need to give commands with buttons or keys anymore. She just had to think.

Let’s go, she told herself.

The key was in the lock. All of the devices that had previously been on standby now welcomed her in, and the process of unification began. Substance and thought came together in the universe’s most complicated system. Her senses expanded. Her view broadened, as if her narrowed eyes had flown wide open. No, what she could see now was thousands, millions of times broader than that...

She didn’t need primitive sensors. She could perceive everything happening around her through the omni-sphere. She could see a vague image of the future, as well: the enemy would soon be thwarted. Those in the underground waterway and those on land would soon be exhausted and defanged, and eventually neutralized.

They won’t make it in time, she saw. They can’t stop me. The world is already changing.

Right after Tessa and her crew used shaped charges to blast through the sealed service door, they launched into fierce shooting in the underground dock.

“Ah!” A stray bullet raised a spark next to Tessa.

“Captain, get back!” Mardukas shouted while returning fire with his submachine gun. The officer of the deck, Goddard, threw a grenade into the door they’d just blown open. An explosion followed. He threw in another grenade, and as this one detonated, four of her subordinates rushed in.

Just then, Tessa felt it. Dizziness and tinnitus... The area around her became blurry. Linearity lost its hold on the flow of time. The omni-sphere had begun to affect their past, casting the world before her in countless, truly innumerate forms... Yet she could tell them all apart. Am I the only one feeling this? she wondered. She could hear Mardukas and her other subordinates barking orders at each other as they just kept firing, as if they didn’t notice anything.

It had begun. The TAROS had activated, and the changes—

“—Captain. They’re coming around from the right!” Mardukas said.

“I’ll hold off the enemy. You keep moving forward!”

“No! It’s dangerous!”

“They’ll surround us if we stay! Now, go!”

The enemies, having come around to flank them, were pouring in from the right. Sonar technician Dejirani yanked Tessa by the arm and raced past the wall. Mardukas gave her a light salute before resuming his trade of fire with the enemy. Soon, the smoke had blocked him entirely from her sight.

“Hurry, Captain!”

The sense of wrongness was growing stronger. Her memories of the past began to blur together as a complicated—an overwhelmingly complicated—branching of choices flowed over her.

Some unknown force was expanding out all over the world.

While evading the Belial’s pursuit, the Laevatein dove into the shaft for Elevator No. 9, which was located in the third practice grounds. Sousuke went into free fall, streaking towards the base’s underground blocks. He landed, kicked open the cage, and flew into the wide Corridor No. 0 that would take him to the underground dock containing the TAROS.

Kaname would be there. He’d almost found her—just a few hundred meters more.

Sousuke felt a strange feeling overtake him. He’d been feeling it for a while. It was as though his depth perception had gone haywire, like he’d suddenly put on glasses with a strong prescription—a feeling of floating, akin to vertigo.

At first, he’d thought it was damage to his optical sensors. Then the deja vu had started, the same feeling he’d felt at Yamsk-11. He’d run down Corridor No. 0 with the Laevatein before, battered and broken, with Leonard hot on his heels...

No, that’s not true, he told himself. This is the first time.

Then why am I dropping down the elevator shaft right now? he thought next. Didn’t I fall down it already?

Temporal relationships—his sense of past and present—were turning hazy; the flow of time was growing more malleable. Sousuke was simultaneously on the surface fighting the Codarls, and taunting the enemy on the radio. He was destroying a Behemoth with the demolition gun, flying through the air on his booster, being shot out of the catapult. He was giving a salute to Sachs’s corpse and tending desperately to him as the life drained from his eyes.

And it wasn’t just the past. He could also see the future, in which he’d just arrived but was seconds too late. The Belial blocked his way to the TAROS. The damaged Laevatein charged, but the Belial’s hand pierced his cockpit. There was no doubt that this was all going to happen; it was a future set in stone.

Sousuke’s consciousness was thrown into disorder. No...the disorder was spreading out from the TAROS to envelop him. He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t know when he was. All he had were the words “Keep going” rattling around in his skull.

But keep going? he wondered. Where to?

《Sergeant Sagara!》 An alarm rang out. Al’s voice seemed louder than he’d ever heard it before.

“Al?” he spoke hesitantly.

《Report status! Where are you? Look at the clock, at the current time! Then state your mission goals!》　Al demanded.

“Status... Ngh!” Sousuke shook his head once, then banged it against his headrest. Get a grip! he told himself. I’m in Corridor No. 0. The time is 0556 hours. My mission objective is to stop the activation of the TAROS. The Laevatein was racing through the hall towards certain death. “What is... happening?” he finally asked, with some difficulty.

《This machine’s TAROS caused your mind to react to a newly occurring phenomenon, 》 Al told him. 《Your psychological state was becoming dangerous, so I severed your connection. The giant TAROS has activated. I’m afraid the effective radius of the omni-sphere already encompasses the entirety of Earth.》

“It’s not over yet,” Sousuke insisted. There were one hundred meters to go. He just had to keep charging, let loose with his head-mounted machine guns, and fire off the cable in his remaining left arm. He had to do this, no matter what. Even if he’d just seen a future telling him it wasn’t possible.

He was doing this to bring her back. His will mattered.

In the past, he’d been just like his AS: a killing machine, feeling nothing, doing just as he was told. But that wasn’t the case any longer. Now Sousuke worried, wondered, and made decisions of his own. That was what it meant to be human.

I’m doing this because I want to, he reminded himself. He was sure of that. So, Kaname, please...

Ahead of him was the shutter that marked the end of Corridor No. 0. He couldn’t use the lambda driver now, and instead used sheer momentum to kick through his final obstacle. The Laevatein stumbled as the shutter bent and twisted off, taking a series of cables and pipes with it, but successfully leaped forward into the massive underground cave—the former maintenance dock for the de Danaan.

Beyond a mess of tangled girders and dangling wires sat a massive dome: the TAROS. It looked similar in structure to the one he’d seen at Yamsk-11, but this version was far more technologically advanced.

Regardless, he had to destroy it.

Please, he prayed, let me be in time...

Just as he was turning his head-mounted machine guns to their fully automatic setting, there was a collapse of material from the roof above. The Belial was descending, breaking through the cave ceiling with a roar. Its force fields stopped his machine gun fire. No... a single .50-caliber bullet made it through and hit the TAROS, Sousuke realized. Just one. That device was as big as the de Danaan itself, so that certainly wouldn’t have been enough to sabotage it.

Placing himself between the Laevatein and the TAROS, Leonard asked, “Did you think you’d escaped me?”

Sousuke didn’t respond. He just breathed hard, his shoulders heaving.

“It’s too late, anyway,” Leonard remarked. “The changes have begun; I can feel it. I see our world overlapping with countless others as we speak. So many possibilities, both here in the present and spreading backwards towards the past... The world is beginning to change. People like you won’t be able to perceive it, but don’t despair... Everything will be better soon. Do you understand? She’s going to make everything better!”

“Get out of my way,” Sousuke said with a growl. The Laevatein took a step forward.

“Soon, there will be nothing left of this world,” Leonard continued. “It will be gone. Perfectly silent. You’re in a lambda driver-mounted machine, so I imagine you caught a glimpse of it too—of a world with no past or future. Soon, it will all be over. The change will be completed even as I kill you, and everything will stop.”

Sousuke took another step. “Al...”

《Yes, Sarge.》

“I’m sorry.”

《Not at all.》

Sousuke had a mere ten rounds left in his head-mounted machine guns.

The enemy’s unsightly struggles had allowed one bullet to hit the TARTAROS. It created a little static in her thoughts, but that was all right; Kaname knew that it wouldn’t change anything, and that the static would go away soon.

She’d kicked off the changes and now she could see everything. She no longer heard whispering voices. She was the one doing the whispering— No, what she was doing was far stronger and clearer than whispering. She was shouting loud enough for everyone to hear, no matter how far away they were; enunciating clearly enough to be heard by herself, by the version of her about to be born.

Listen to me carefully, she thought. Listen, remember, and do what you must, because what you’re going to do is the best thing for everyone.

A voice is a thread. I’m spinning and weaving these threads from the past to the present. Our existence is a machine that went off-track, broke down, and flamed out. I’m restoring it to its proper form. No, not only that... I could even make it even more wonderful: a peaceful world; a world without pain. People may think it’s impossible, but it’s not. It is possible.

I, with my perception of countless worlds, can see how cause and effect interact in all of them; can reach out and change even how people think and feel.

I’ll start my preparations on December 24th, the day of my birth eighteen years ago. I’ll start to make significant corrections eight years after that, so that everything will be perfect in the eight years to follow. That’s all I have to do. Then the peace and quiet will go on forever.

For instance... How about this?

I’m eighteen years old, and I wake up one winter morning. I’m not a morning person. My mom and little sister come to wake me up. Mom was hospitalized four years ago for a serious illness, but they caught it early, and they were able to save her. Now she’s completely healthy again.

My mother and sister yank off the covers, so I pull myself grudgingly out of bed and head to the dining room. My father is reading a newspaper there. He used to be married to his work, but Mom’s illness led him to take an office job where he’d have more time to spare. Mom works part-time at a nearby pharmacy.

I make small talk with Dad, then take a seat at the breakfast table.

I thought you were a stronger woman than this.

The TV is on, and the news is playing. The second president of the Federation of Nations is saying something about Egypt; I guess it’s a ceremony to celebrate the first stage of the Sahara Desert greenification project. There are other things, too: the war in Afghanistan has been over for ten years, and their tourism industry is starting to rev up. The suicide rate in Japan is the lowest it’s ever been. The world’s nuclear arsenal will be completely eliminated within the next five years.

What kind of spoiled princess are you?

I’ll eat breakfast at home, get myself ready and go to school. I attend Komaoka Academy High School. The uniforms aren’t as nice as those of Jindai High—my second choice—but after wearing them for three years, I’ve come to like them well enough. I’ll start college in the spring. I already have a referral.

You’re a liar and a whore!

The world is becoming more and more peaceful. Nobody knows that I’m the one doing it, but that’s just fine. After all, this is what I want—

If I’m wrong, come and hit me!

Shut up, Kaname thought irritably. The static wasn’t going away. The reverberations from that one single bullet should have been possible to ignore, yet they kept sounding in her head, creating a static in her thoughts that interrupted her eternal melody.

It’s that unpleasant man’s voice, she realized. It just keeps rattling around in my head, refusing to go away...

The feeling of wrongness she’d felt washing over her from time to time seemed to be seeking out the unpleasant man’s voice, clinging to it. This is important, it seemed to cry.

Disappear, she told that voice. Disappear. Disappear! No, it doesn’t have to disappear. I just need to keep on ignoring it. I need to get my voice through, now. I need to send it farther, farther...

...lli............

There’s another voice. It’s so very faint, unlike the man’s. It belongs to someone else...

...lli.........ore...

The voice is growing louder, she thought. It’s a woman’s voice. Is this my voice? No... I’m not saying anything...

...lli...ng...ore...

It’s taking shape and forming words, Kaname realized. A girl’s voice... What exactly is it saying?

...who are you ca...ore...

It just keeps getting louder. I can’t ignore it any longer, she thought. Then, abruptly, panic set in. Stop it, stop it, stop it! Part of me is going away... I’m splitting in two, and another me is forming... Stop it! Then that voice—which had continued to reverberate in her mind—finally took form. And it said...

Who are you calling a whore?! shouted the enraged Chidori Kaname, bursting through the surface of the still lake in her mind.

Like someone on the verge of asphyxiating, she filled her lungs with air. Then, heaving for breath, she screamed out everything she’d been wanting to say for so long:

“You shut up and listen, you selfish asshole! Yeah, yeah! It’s all my fault! If only I’d hung in there better, this wouldn’t have happened! Yeah, yeah, so sorry! I bet it’s my fault the post boxes are red and the telephone poles are tall, too!” she ranted venomously.

“Well FYI, I could go back eighteen years and make the post boxes white if I wanted to, but don’t you dare call me a damned whore! Do you even know what I’ve been through?! Most people wouldn’t even be able to whisper after something like that, let alone shout like I’m doing! Did you manage to forget I’m just a normal high school girl?! Maybe you can show me a little gratitude!” she demanded.

“And besides, how dare you talk to me that way!” she continued. “You’re disappointed, huh? I’m a liar, huh? As if you’re some kind of saint! Where does a war-obsessed perpetual downer like you get off saying that crap to me?! I’m the one disappointed here, if anyone is! You had all the time in the world to cook up something nice to say, and that was the best you could do?! Why are you always like this?! Couldn’t you shout, ‘I love you, Kaname!’ with just a little snot trailing from your nose?! No, you couldn’t, could you? That’s just who you are!” she scoffed.

“You’re sick of me after a year away, is that it? You don’t really want me anymore, so you’re putting all the blame on me? You’re with Tessa now, is that the big punchline here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, fine. I’m too nice to be bothered. But if you’re gonna call me a weak, stupid, lying whore... then screw you! I don’t need you anymore! Do a one-eighty and walk, asshole!” she said bitterly. “Nobody gives a shit what you do!”

Ahh... She came out just to vent all that? Such a silly, childish rant... Yet now that she’s broken free, I understand: she is Chidori Kaname, and I am Sofia. I’ve been lying to myself. I’ve been lying to both of us.

But that’s all right. I’m truly going to crush her this time. I’ll make her suffer, bow, and serve me. Then the changes will become reality. I will make it happen without a single lie.

The final battle will begin now, inside this tiny skull.

All she’d managed to get out was the hysterical rantings of a foolish girl. There was no logic behind it, no moral high ground. She was just screaming out her feelings; a child throwing herself to the ground in a tantrum. But she had managed to scream. That was important, because she hadn’t been able to scream before now.

I did it... thanks to him, Kaname suddenly realized. Out loud, she said, “Sousuke...”

After her consciousness had awakened and she could really think again, she understood why he’d said what he had. Ah, this is what he wanted, she thought. To pull me out of wandering passively through the nothingness, helpless and alone. He just did it in his way, in the way of a soldier.

Kaname was standing in a daydream, a place without scenery or sound. She was floating in blank space. The floating made her uneasy, so she picked a ceiling and put her feet down on an imaginary floor. Then she clothed herself in the same manner. She didn’t care what she wore, so she chose a sleeveless black dress.

“Let’s see...” she mused. This was a space for her mind alone, with nobody else’s presence. No, that isn’t true, she realized. There’s someone else here. “What are you doing?” she said to Sofia, turning around to face her.

Kaname was only passingly familiar with Sofia’s face, so the other girl looked just like Kaname here, wearing a matching dress in white. Despite having the same face, though, she was clearly a different person.

“What am I doing?” Sofia smiled. “What’s already begun. Why not see it through together with me?”

“I don’t think so,” said Kaname.

“Why not?”

“You started it. It has nothing to do with me, and I can’t help you.”

“I knew you’d say that,” Sofia said with a sigh. “I’ve always known. You’ve been rebellious and combative ever since I first started whispering to you.”

The whispers she’d first begun to hear in the mountains of North Korea... they had come from Sofia. In thoughts beyond words, she had always been telling her, “Swap places with me.” Kaname knew that clearly now.

“You’re asking for something pretty crazy, you know that?”

“Surely I don’t have to tell you why, do I? Until just now, you were me.”

Sofia was right; Kaname didn’t need an explanation. She’d managed to restore her own consciousness, but she hadn’t lost the memories from the time she had spent blended with Sofia due to resonance. She knew exactly who Sofia was and why she was doing this.

“Sofia. I know you’ve had a really hard life,” said Kaname. “But that doesn’t mean you can just steal someone’s else’s and pretend it’s your own.”

Sofia was dead, if only in the physical sense. Eighteen years ago, in a Yamsk-11 experimental facility, she’d been used as a guinea pig for the TAROS experiment and died in the subsequent chain reaction. The amplified mental waves she’d sent out just before her death had infected the nearby humans and led to their deaths, and then gone on to affect newborn children all over the world. They had even reached into the future, from which the Sofia (or Kaname) present there had relayed back all kinds of information. That information was then circulated through to the Whispered, and some of it became what was known as ‘black technology.’

And thus, their world came to be.

Black technology didn’t come from people fifty years, a hundred years into the future; it had been sent eighteen years into the past from this very moment. And after who-knew-how-many repeated tries of that eighteen-year loop, things had escalated to their current form.

At least, so it seemed to be; this was pure speculation on Kaname and Sofia’s part, because neither of them could know the truth for sure. Nobody knew what their world had originally looked like, so any theorizing they could do was akin to speculations about the nature of the end of the universe. There was only so much they could guess at.

In life, Sofia had been the daughter of Yamsk-11’s head scientist, Dr. Valov. She’d been just eighteen years old at the time—the same age as Kaname—when she’d been sacrificed on the altar of her father’s experiments. The time leading up to her death had been torturously awful: she’d been administered all kinds of dangerous drugs; her weight had fallen to thirty-five kilograms; her skin had become like sandpaper; her hair had been falling out—

No, don’t think about that anymore. It hurts too much.

After an agonizing existence at the hands of her father, Sofia had died, releasing one final burst of hatred and resentment. The echoes of those mental waves had continued to carry out her will, doing their work on the world. And so they popped up again and again, here and there, unfettered by the boundaries of time or space.

One could call her an onryo—a vengeful spirit—but that wasn’t what Sofia was. She wasn’t trying to hurt people. She just wanted to create a new world, to live her life as someone new. She truly felt it was the right thing to do.

“I died in a wretched, pitiful state,” Sofia complained bitterly. “Yet you act like I’m the spoiled one?”

“I...”

“Do you know how much I suffered in those last three minutes of life?” Sofia demanded. “Did I deserve to die that way? Before they took me off to Yamsk-11, I had a life! I loved a boy! I tended a garden and played the piano! I had dreams for my future... But he took it all away from me, and then everything else...”

“I do think that’s awful,” Kaname told her. “I really do.” True sorrow rose up inside of her, blended with anger towards Sofia’s father for what he’d done.

Sofia must have known she wasn’t faking it. “That’s very kind of you. I can tell you really feel for me.”

“Even so...!” Kaname said, after gritting her teeth. “Even so, my mind and life belong to me! I can’t just give them to you. And I can’t let you take a do-over on the world!”

“Oh?” Sofia questioned.

“Because you’re causing nuclear war to do it,” Kaname insisted, “and that’s not okay.”

Sofia wouldn’t need this world once the transformation was finished, but she couldn’t just leave it be, either. If enough Whispered—and the technology they were capable of promoting—remained in this world, then someone here might build another TAROS someday. An omni-sphere with the backing of billions of minds could have a serious influence on any reality.

That was why Sofia, as a precaution, had to destroy this world first. In order to ensure the security and stability of the new world that she was about to build, she’d have to reduce this one’s population to about one percent of its current total.

But Kaname and Sofia were the only ones who were aware of this, along with Leonard and a handful of his subordinates. Everyone else was being conned.

“But that’s necessary,” Sofia insisted. “Everyone will be happy and alive in that new world, see? Killing this world off will be like severing a malignant tumor. What’s wrong with that?”

“‘Malignant tumor’?” scoffed Kaname. “Oh, please!”

“Then what metaphor would make you accept it? Replacing a broken-down machine part? Swapping out a troublesome band member? Or...”

“Stop it,” Kaname said firmly. “I’m not helping you, and that’s that. I’m going to wake up right now and end all of this. There’s nothing left to say.”

Sofia smiled upon hearing this declaration. It wasn’t the serene smile she’d been wearing up until now, but rather the smile of someone bubbling up with amusement.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, really... You still haven’t noticed? You should be able to see it if you wanted to,” Sofia told her. “Stopping now is what would really put it all to waste, you see. After all...”

“What...?” Kaname began to ask in confusion.

“Look,” Sofia told her.

And then Kaname saw the people fighting outside the walls of her consciousness. Because the conversation between Kaname and Sofia was taking place entirely within a daydream, it had actually only been a few seconds since Sousuke had shot his round into the TARTAROS, but things were still slowly proceeding in the world outside.

Kaname could see the battle in the underground waterway. “Tessa...” she groaned. The crew of the Tuatha de Danaan were fighting, and several familiar members of the crew had collapsed with serious wounds. Tessa was awkwardly firing back with a submachine gun, but she was only slowing down the enemy’s relentless advance, and Kalinin’s forces would soon have her cornered.

I don’t see Mardukas, she realized. Is he already dead?

Tessa also hadn’t noticed the three soldiers sneaking around from the other direction. She’d be surrounded soon, and that tiny body of hers would be shredded by bullets. Just a few seconds from now...

Run, she wanted to tell her, but was unable to do so. Tessa had severed her own connection to the omni-sphere in order to avoid being affected by the spreading changes.

“She made it impressively far,” Sofia remarked, “but her destiny ends here.”

“I...” Kaname said uncertainly.

“Look farther,” Sofia urged her. “Yes... much farther. You can see Fowler, can’t you?”

In the distant mountains of Afghanistan, seven thousand kilometers away, Kaname could see Mao and Clouseau fighting to the death.

“Clouseau-san?” she said. She’d only spoken to him a few times, but Kaname remembered him. His black M9, its head and right arm in tatters, had removed its limiters and was charging through the mountains at top speed towards Fowler’s Eligore.

Clouseau threw a grenade, but Fowler deflected it. The next instant, a sharp strike pierced through the M9’s stomach. It was a fatal wound, yet somehow, Clouseau’s machine continued to move. Or maybe he’d meant to get speared like that in order to grapple with Fowler’s machine and stick an anti-tank dagger into its defenseless back.

There was an explosion. Both machines went flying, clinging to each other in mid-air as Clouseau’s machine split into two and went tumbling down the slope.

“A murder-suicide,” Sofia said admiringly. “He’s an impressive operator.”

“Nnh...”

“Things are reaching their end three kilometers to the west as well, it seems,” she said next, pointing to where Mao’s M9 was reaching the end of its rope in the ongoing battle with Sabina’s Eligore. Mao’s machine was battered, broken, and missing both of its arms, much like a tank that had lost its main gun: there was nothing left for Mao to do except buy herself a little time.

But Sabina’s rifle managed to land a hit here and there on the M9, each one slowing Mao’s reaction time a little more. She had managed to reach the entrance of the nuclear missile base, but there was nowhere left to go. Mao was caught dead to rights. The Eligore smashed her machine up against the rocks and then stomped on it, the muzzle of her rifle pressed to the M9’s chest. There was no escape now. Mao was finished.

“Sabina was a bad match-up for her,” Sofia observed. “It’s too bad; she was a good person.”

“You...” Kaname glared back at Sofia, but the other girl wasn’t smiling anymore. Her eyes—cold, cruel, and piercing—now gazed back at Kaname with open scorn.

“‘It’s all an illusion you created’...” Sofia said mockingly. “That’s what you’re telling yourself, right?”

Kaname said nothing. She had never known her own face could look like that.

“Too bad, though. I fell for your little trick in Yamsk-11... the one about shooting Sousuke and Tessa?” Sofia reminded her. “But this is different; this is really happening. I haven’t influenced this course of events.”

In other words, the only way to undo what had happened would be to give Sofia what she was asking for. Even if Kaname cut herself off from the TARTAROS, ran to the communicator, and shouted for them all to stop, it would be too late. She wouldn’t make it in time. The past events had already taken place.

“And then there’s him,” Sofia reminded her. “Right there, just outside—look.”

Kaname gasped. Just in front of the TARTAROS where she lay sleeping, Sousuke’s AS, the Laevatein, was charging at the Belial with its head-mounted machine guns on full blast. The bullets tore through cooling pipes, flooding the area with white mist. It was a desperate move, meant to provide just a moment’s distraction...

But Leonard wasn’t shaken by Sousuke’s maneuver; he simply waited for the Laevatein to appear from out of the fog, force fields from the lambda driver focused in his right hand. The battle had already been won.

“He fought hard against Leonard,” Sofia said mournfully. “But...”

“Stop it,” Kaname hissed.

“...He’s gone now.”

Even as Sousuke’s white AS came breaking through the fog, the Belial drew its hand back to lash out at the Laevatein.

“Stop it!” Kaname cried out, but Leonard wasn’t listening.

The Belial’s right hand pierced through the Laevatein’s chest and came thrusting out the back. The cockpit in the chest had been completely skewered.

Kaname didn’t want to see the tragedy that had occurred inside. She didn’t want to imagine it, either, and despair gripped her heart. There was no question that it had already happened; she could see that the Belial’s arm had pierced the Laevatein right through the cockpit.

It wasn’t an illusion. It was fact. Some kind of fluid—Kaname didn’t know whether it was oil or blood—dripped down the Belial’s arm and onto the shredded white armor.

He’d killed Sousuke. Sousuke was dead.

No... no, no, no, no. Kaname denied frantically.

“You see now, don’t you?!” Sofia screamed at her. “‘I can’t accept it. It’s not fair.’ You feel the same way I do, but you still want to act like you’re in a position to lecture me?! As if you’re some pinnacle of emotional control... Can you see how arrogant you’ve been? Can you start to imagine how I feel?”

“Stop it,” Kaname begged.

“No! I have a right to keep doing this! Now, say it again, if you still can... Say ‘you’re wrong, Sofia!’”

“Stop it!!”

“Tell me again why I shouldn’t do things over!” Sofia demanded. “Can you explain it to me? You can’t, can you?!” Kaname covered her ears and hunched over, but Sofia seized her shoulders and continued to scream. “You remember, don’t you? You’ve felt the same way before... Four years ago, in that hospital in Tokyo...”

Kaname clenched her eyes tighter.

“Your mother,” Sofia continued ruthlessly. “The mother you loved so, so much, hooked up to all those tubes, growing thinner and weaker, her hair falling out. The woman who’d once been so beautiful...”

Kaname could picture the hospital room. Her father had just made it out of Haneda Airport, but he wouldn’t make it in time. Her little sister was a mess from crying. Kaname herself just stood there in a daze, unable to even parse the attending physician’s explanation.

“I’m sorry, but your mother is—”

No, no, no, no! She hadn’t forgotten it. How could she? The memory haunted her constantly. Kaname had told herself she’d gotten over it, but she hadn’t gotten over anything; all she’d done was swallow down her screams and tears. The only thing she’d forgotten was the repression she’d inflicted on herself.

“Ahh...” she moaned at the recollected form of her mother, lying on that bed, hooked up to so many tubes. At the form of the Laevatein, on its knees and speared through the cockpit. “Ah...”

Feelings swirled around Kaname in a maelstrom as the two memories came together and swelled to a monstrous size inside of her. There was no way to hold it all back; there was no way for her to stop now. Kaname wailed and cried and howled like a beast, her mouth wide open and her face twisted. Her breathing grew hoarse as tears streamed from her eyes to pool on the white floor below.

Still unable to stanch her sudden wellspring of emotions, Kaname curled herself up into a ball, crying and screaming. She tore at her hair and clothing, feeling all of her mental energy swept away in waves of grief and despair. Her mind was blank now. She’d had enough of feeling, enough of thinking...

I can’t take it anymore, she told herself. I want to go back to the void. I want to disappear.

“You can’t accept it?” Sofia suggested.

“Yeah...”

“It’s not fair?”

“Yeah...” Kaname said faintly. She thought to herself, I can’t let this happen to me a second time. It doesn’t make sense. It’s some kind of mistake. It’s not fair.

Then she thought, I can’t keep going like this.

“Poor Kaname.” said Sofia, gently stroking her hair. “But you don’t have to feel any more sadness. We can make it stop.”

Kaname said nothing, but nodded slightly.

“Let’s see it through together,” Sofia went on. “You don’t have to worry. Take a moment now to picture what you want, and I’ll make it reality.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You know I’m not lying.”

Kaname hung her head silently.

“Now imagine it,” Sofia ordered her.

Kaname remained crumpled where she was and, as she’d been told to do, began to imagine. What do I want? She asked herself. She didn’t want much, just a normal life: peaceful, quiet, and unremarkable.

“That’s right,” Sofia said encouragingly. “You can see it, right?”

The next thing she knew, Kaname was sitting at her dinner table at home, where it was breakfast time. Before her sat a bowl of steaming miso soup and white rice, accompanied by fillet of horse mackerel and grated daikon radish. There was raw egg, seaweed in vinegar, and rice seasoning available, too, along with the leftovers of yesterday’s pork soup. These were all very nostalgic smells.

“What’s wrong, Big Sis?” asked Ayame, her little sister.

“Huh?” Kaname replied blankly.

“I asked you to pass the rice seasoning,” Ayame reminded her. “Can you, please?”

“Ah... right.” Kaname agreed, quickly handing Ayame the requested item. Her father was sitting in front of her, slurping at his miso soup with one hand and holding a newspaper in the other.

“Dad, have some manners!” Ayame said with a pout.

“Mm... ah, sorry,” he said absently. “This article about robots is so interesting.”

“What robots?”

“From Honda... Oh here, have a look. It’s some kind of robot,” her father said again. “Really amazing stuff... It can walk on two legs and stay upright if you push it. Impressive tech, huh? Not that I know much about it...”

“Hmm...” said Ayame.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t care about that.”

“Nope.”

“What about you, Kaname? Look, they say they might eventually have some for household chores.” Her father showed her the picture in the newspaper. It was an awkward-looking robot that resembled a space suit. Despite being cutting edge technology, walking was about all it could do. There was nothing to pique Kaname’s interest. The robot’s apparent companion stood beside it, grinning. Kaname thought her lipstick was a rather severe color, and wondered if she was also trying to look futuristic.

“Who cares? We couldn’t afford those things even if they sold them. You’re already sweating to pay off the car,” Kaname said teasingly.

Her father winced. “Don’t remind me.”

“Kaname’s right. Go on, eat up. You’ll be late.”

“Ah...”

The one who’d snatched the newspaper from behind him was Kaname’s mother, who now plopped the lunch she’d just made for her on the corner of the table—Ayame usually ate lunch at school—before taking a seat of her own at the table.

“Kaname,” she said, beginning their typical food quiz. “Did you finish your miso soup? Which do you think it is?” Today’s test was obviously about soup.

“I got it,” said Kaname. “It’s Sendai miso and... some kind of dashi I don’t recognize?”

“Correct,” said her mother. “And I got some Rishiri kombu dashi from Omiya-san yesterday.”

“Hah! You can’t fool my palate,” Kaname boasted, and her mother laughed gaily in response. Her father looked at the time and began to quickly polish off his meal.

“That reminds me, Big Sis,” said Ayame. “How’d yesterday go?”

“Huh?”

“Oh, I want to hear that too,” said her mother. “The big date?”

“Huh? Huh? Um, well...” the question took her so much by surprise that Kaname hadn’t been sure what they were talking about at first, but now she remembered. Yesterday was Sunday, and she’d gone to see a movie with a boy in her grade. You couldn’t quite call it a date... They’d seen a movie in Shinjuku, gotten a bite to eat, done some shopping, and then said goodbye at Chofu Station. Kaname had been home by her eight o’clock curfew.

Well... okay, maybe that was technically a date.

“Um... we just hung out some and then I came home,” she hedged. “Totally normal stuff.”

“Oh. That’s boring.” Her mother and Ayame both slumped over dejectedly. Her father, who had stopped eating to listen, looked relieved to hear this and began slurping down his vinegar seaweed with renewed vigor.

“But you like him, right?” her mother suggested. “What’s his name? Ayame, do you know?”

“I do,” her sister declared. “It’s Sagara-san.”

“Hey! How’d you know that, Ayame?!” Kaname asked, her cheeks heating up.

“I heard you talking on the phone with Kyoko-san,” Ayame told her plainly. “You said, ‘I’m going to a movie with Sagara-kun.’”

“Oh, did I say that?”

“Yep.”

“I...I see,” said Kaname. “But you actually listened in and remembered it?! Who even are you?!” She’d thought of her sister as being ‘just a kid’ until recently, but now that Ayame was in middle school and growing up, Kaname would have to watch her own mouth more carefully.

“I see... so Kaname’s boyfriend’s name is Sagara-kun,” her mother whispered intently.

“I told you, he’s not my boyfriend,” Kaname insisted. “He helped me fix my laptop when it was acting up, so I just... wanted to thank him, is all.” Still, a corner of her mind was grinning at the memories she had of yesterday’s date. It was true that they weren’t really close yet, but she didn’t hate the thought of the label; that’s how much she liked him.

“H-He asked for a d-d-date as a thank-you?!” her startled father asked.

“No!” Kaname cried in denial. “I just happened to have tickets, so...”

“I don’t think I can approve of this,” he barreled on. “A boy who does a favor for a woman to get her on a date?!”

“I’m telling you, I’m the one who invited him!”

“Y-You invited him, Kaname?!”

“It’s not that serious!” she insisted. “Look, whatever, I gotta go! I’m gonna miss my train!”

Her father still seemed disoriented, but her mother and Ayame were both smiling. Kaname snatched up her lunch box and ran for the door as her beloved family watched her go; she shoved the box into her bag next to her notebooks and textbooks. Then she slipped on her shoes and headed for the local train station, which was just five minutes away. Once there, she squeezed onto a packed train and quickly arrived at Sengawa Station. It was there, on her way to the ticket gate, that she ran into him.

“Oh, Sagara-kun,” said Kaname.

“Ah... good morning, Chidori-san.” Sagara Sousuke greeted her.

“Thanks for yesterday. I had a lot of fun,” she said with a grin.

Sousuke turned a little red and nodded. “Ah... right,” he said. “I, um... I had fun, too.”

“Glad to hear it!” she said brightly. “You fixing my laptop was such a huge help.”

“Sure. If you have any more trouble with it... c-call me anytime. I’ll fix it right up.”

“Thanks! You’re a lifesaver.”

“Ah, really, it was easy. So... d-don’t sweat it.” Sousuke scratched the back of his head and spoke hesitantly. He’d been like this on their date—on their date-like activity—yesterday also.

Unlike the other boys, he was very shy... always nervous around her. He was handsome enough in a plain sort of way, athletic, and completely oblivious to the number of secret admirers he had. He was a nerd about computers and engineering and such, and mostly hung out with other guys who had similar interests.

For no particular reason, they came out of the ticket gate together and walked side by side to Jindai High School.

“Um, so... Chidori-san,” Sousuke began awkwardly.

“What is it?”

“Sorry if this sounds awkward, but... I had fun with you at the movie... yesterday.”

“Right,” she agreed.

“I mean, um, not in a weird way. I just... I don’t go out with girls very often,” he explained. “I was nervous, so...”

“Yeah, I could tell.” Kaname said, resisting the urge to laugh.

“Oh... Okay. When I thought about it later, I realized I might have come off as sour,” Sousuke admitted. “Did I?”

“Nah, you were fine,” she told him. “You were just being who you are.”

“I see. I’m glad,” he whispered back, and smiled a little, looking relieved.

“Um, the truth is... Usually I just go to movies and stuff with Kyoko or Shiori,” Kaname admitted. “I was a little nervous, too. So...”

“Huh?”

“So... um, nothing. Sorry,” she said, laughing it off. She couldn’t figure out what to say after the ‘so,’ either.

Tokiwa Kyoko, her best friend, called to Kaname from behind, bringing their alone time to an abrupt end. They arrived at school, made it through classes, and started packing up for the end of the day.

Once Kaname was all ready to go, Sousuke called to her from the classroom entrance. “Chidori-san. Um... d-do you have a minute?”

“Huh? Ah... yeah.”

“I need to talk to you,” he said quickly. “Um, it’s nothing serious.”

“S-Sure,” she agreed. “No problem.” A strange sense of anticipation came over her then, and she stiffened up a little.

Kyoko, who was watching from beside her friend, knew the whole story. She just struck a little fighting pose and encouraged her to go for it.

They headed together to the roof, which was abandoned after classes ended. Sousuke was stiff from nerves, even worse than yesterday. He pressed his forehead to the fence, looking down for a while, and then slapped his own cheeks to encourage himself before turning back to Kaname.

“I...!” They both said simultaneously.

“Ah... g-go ahead,” he offered.

“Sorry, Sagara-kun, you first...” Kaname was nervous as well, and she could hear her heart racing. It wasn’t just fluttering, but pounding like an earthquake. She could feel the tendons in her neck twitching all the way up to the back of her head, giving her a tension headache so bad that she could barely think.

“Ah... right,” he said. “Someone told me... Onodera or Kazama or... s-someone. Um... you’re not dating anyone, huh? Um, I mean, right? Sorry, that was rude. Um, what am I even saying...”

“I-It’s okay,” she said encouragingly. “Keep going...” Kaname’s face felt hot, and she wasn’t quite sure what was going on herself.

“So... um, are you?” he tried again.

“Um, am I what?”

“Not dating... you know, anyone?”

“Huh? Ah, right... I’m not! I’m not dating anyone at all,” she insisted, waving her hands quickly. Then she wondered, why was I so quick to protest?

“I-In that case... Um, as an experiment... No, that seems weird, too...” Sousuke clenched his hands. Mustering up the greatest courage of his life, he looked straight into her eyes to ask, “Would you maybe... date me?”

The question seemed to have taken everything he had. “I’ve liked you for a long time,” he continued in a rush. “But you were so popular, I kept my distance, because I thought I might be a bother... But we talked a lot when I was fixing your laptop, and we walked around yesterday, and I thought you seemed really serious and not flighty at all... And I like that about you.”

Kaname said nothing.

“Am I wrong?” he asked weakly.

“I-I think I get what you mean,” she told him. “I’m not a fan of superficial guys, either...”

“I’m definitely not superficial.”

“I know that.” Suddenly it all felt very amusing.

“I’ll make sure you’re never sad, Chidori-san,” he promised.

“Right,” she said, all while thinking, I wonder about that... but I’m choosing to trust you.

“So... can I get your answer?”

I know exactly what the answer is, Kaname thought. I’ve been waiting for you for eighteen years. I’ve been waiting for you to take me in your arms, to take me awkwardly in your arms...

I’m so happy, she told herself. This is what I wanted. What I’ve wanted for so long... “My answer is... I love you, Sousuke,” she declared, feeling as though tears would soon be spilling from her eyes. She walked up to him slowly with a smile on her face, reaching out gently for his cheek. Her slender fingers traced the left side of his face, and...

Oh, stupid me. I shouldn’t have touched it, she realized.

There was no scar on his left cheek. That cross-shaped scar. The understated scar, whose origin I never asked about—that irreplaceable scar, burned into him through the fields of battle...

Into him. Sousuke, Sagara Sousuke, a man who hadn’t been shaped by a gentle world like this one. He was raised by combat and chaos; by a world of cruelty that no one would ever voluntarily create. A world of merciless fighting.

Years of strife, destruction, and killing made him who he is, she remembered. A blade forged in the flames of hell, forged through the strike of the hammer, again and again—that’s who he is.

It’s impossible to forge exactly the same blade twice. That world is the only place where the Sousuke I know can be found. It may mean losing him forever, but no matter how much I lie to myself, how many peaceful, easy days I spend with this version of him... a version without the scars...

Those days I spent with Sousuke—tumultuous and frustrating, but always exciting—I can’t make them never have happened. I just can’t. If there’s one thing I can’t accept, one thing I absolutely can’t accept...

It’s the idea of never having met him.

“I’m sorry,” she said regretfully, pulling her hand away from his cheek as she took a step back.

In the end, I just couldn’t imagine living in another world. After thinking about all the different ways I might want things to be, all I truly realized was that I don’t want anything else.

The “Sousuke” in front of her began to fade away, and the roof and the school building disappeared as well. The sky, the city—everything was gone, and Kaname found herself back in that world of pristine white. Sofia stood in front of her, staring blankly as the dream of a moment continued to play out.

Outside, taking place over one thousandths of a second, the Laevatein was beginning to fall.

“Are you serious?” Sofia asked incredulously.

Kaname nodded.

“Do you realize what you’re choosing? That you’re choosing to let him die? And his allies, and your mother?! You’re going to abandon them all when you could save them? That’s murder!”

“But... that’s the only thing I can do,” Kaname told her slowly.

“No, it’s not! You can play a song of rebirth!” Sofia insisted. “You can refuse to give up! All you’re doing is running away! Throwing everything away!”

“I’m not throwing anything away,” Kaname insisted. “And I’m not giving up.” To herself, she thought, I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep living. I’m going to keep walking this barren wasteland, in a world where he was, but no longer is. I’ll sustain myself on memories and continue to move on, to keep going through endless darkness. Even if the world is to end one minute from now, I’ll spend that minute moving forward. That’s the only way it means anything.

The person I am now, who he—who they—had forged together... The will of that person, in this moment, has worth.

I don’t need this machine to let me fight a destiny gone off the rails, Kaname told herself. I just need to dig deep; to rest when I’m tired, then stand up again. The way my cells tell me. The way the fire in my blood guides me.

“That’s pure denialism, and self-centered to boot!” Sofia declared scornfully. “What kind of person has the power to bring back the dead and refuses to use it?!”

“But this wouldn’t be bringing them back from the dead,” Kaname argued back. “They’re living their lives with all they have, every instant! Even now! Even if they’re about to be smashed into pieces, they’re facing it!”

“And what about Sousuke?! Look!” Sofia revived the image of the Laevatein, speared through its chest cavity and falling.

“Oh, give it up already! I’m not listening!” Kaname shouted with all her strength. She looked up to the sky, not bothering to wipe at her flowing tears.

“You’re just getting cold feet,” Sofia hissed. “You’ll regret it. Don’t do this!”

“He’d accept this. Because...” said Kaname, working hard to keep her voice from cracking. “Because... he’d never fall in love with the kind of person who would try to do things over because she was feeling sentimental. He’d never risk his life for a woman like that. So... So I...”

“Please, stop!” begged Sofia.

But Kaname gave the final order, which was: End this, and fissures appeared in the white space that surrounded the two of them.

“I’m going to keep going,” Kaname told her. “I’m... I’m going to show him just how strong a woman I am.”

Tremors shook the space around them, and the fissures expanded until the shell of white space broke away. Following Kaname’s will, Kaname’s commands, the changes that had begun to take place across the world now began to recede. The massive mental waves flowing through the omni-sphere vanished, and the innumerate invisible gears of time let out a roar as they once again moved into motion.

“Stop it... stop it... stop it...” said Sofia.

Sousuke, thought Kaname. Even if you’re gone, I can keep on living. Someday I’ll stop thinking about you all the time. I’ll find myself another, better man. Then I’ll be super happy, and live a good life forever!

Hah, okay... So, that’s pretty unlikely, she admitted to herself.

“Stop...” Sofia whispered one more time as the white space around them disappeared completely, and the walls of the TARTAROS reappeared once more.

Just as she awakened, Kaname whispered, “Sousuke...”

The changes stopped. The flow of time stabilized.

The drawn-out time returned to normal, and the harsh sounds of battle could be heard resonating through the dome once more.