Episode 12: The Metallic Bride
* * *
The massive machine once called a Guardian was burning the last flames of its life.
The Mother Case has been destroyed.
This world will soon begin to collapse!
But we will not give up until the very end!
It had to struggle on. For the sake of those horribly beautiful creatures called humans. To that end, it had dragged out its battered body, long past its operational lifespan, and tried to finish off the dying boy and girl.
What is this light—
Those two should have been crumbling. They should have been lying there, unable to resist death and despair.
And yet—what was this golden light?
Something's coming.
With the instincts of a battle-hardened veteran, the Guardian sensed that this was no ordinary entity.
That's... a golden... lion?
A predator that had once existed in the Guardian's world. Theirs had six legs, though.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
The golden lion's roar shook the crumbling world.
It was a terribly battered thing.
Its steel body, woven from thread, was chipped and broken everywhere, its insides exposed.
Relentlessly aggressive, razor-sharp form. Joints as supple as a feline's.
And terribly massive arms, and fangs. It was—a lion made of steel.
"You..."
A string of words where a boy's and girl's voices mixed together.
"We won't—let you—take—anything more—from us!!"
The lion vanished from the Guardians' field of vision.
Where did it—
Before they could even scan for it, their signals caught it.
Unit 4 destroyed! Reboot impossible!
Fast. No, that wasn't it. The raw speed wasn't that impressive. But the golden light dazzled their vision, and it kept moving with organic, unpredictable motions to stay out of sight.
—As if it could read their minds.
* * *
[No. 8288 "Golden Lion"]
Properties: Parallel Law
Origin: An Apocalypse created when the "Metallic Bride" (Luna) recognized her User as her Master, releasing 100% of her original Directionality. Utilizes Kotoyorozu Kotoha's Ectoplasmic Fluid at an abnormally high conversion rate. A minuscule world born from an insane degree of selflessness and yearning—a miracle itself.
Details: Possesses the fundamental Anti-Reality property of rewriting the foundational laws within an extremely narrow range. Currently, the vast majority of this power is being used to sustain their faltering lives.
* * *
Taken from you, you say!?
What nerve. Who the hell do you think you are, spouting that crap.
We're the ones who had things taken from us.
We're the ones who lost everything.
We're the ones standing against despair!
This small creature called a Guardian thought every day about the times it had once been happy.
Surrounded by the family it loved, played with so much, given meals and snacks aplenty.
It loved being told "how cute" while having its head stroked.
It loved exploring the outside world together, running until they were both exhausted.
All of that was gone.
We will reclaim those days.
The golden lion destroyed Unit 5 and Unit 3 with the elegant precision of a seasoned assassin. But in that split second of opening, the small, broken, faithful monsters did not miss their chance.
Get crushed—!
Unit 7 had been winding up its massive arm to strike the golden lion. Perfect timing. No escape. A tremendous crash. The lake erupted in a towering column of water, crushing down on the golden lion.
"OOOOOOOO—!"
What caught the massive arm was tens of thousands of thin golden threads. But in a pure contest of strength, the Guardians had the advantage. Slowly being driven into the ground, the golden lion raised its fists.
"Shhh—"
A textbook upright stance. After measuring the distance with jabs—
"ORAAAH!"
—A picture-perfect right straight.
Unit 7's arm destroyed!
Doesn't matter! Press the attack!
The instant the lion exploded forward, iron needles from Unit 6 struck it dead-on, slamming hard against its head. Not fatal, but enough to send it flying. Skidding across the ground, the lion righted itself and charged again.
Pick up the speed, Master! We can't keep moving for long!
Yeah. Let's go. Let's burn every last ember of our life—
The boy and girl didn't even need to synchronize their breathing. The two of them were now one steel monster.
All units, begin merging. We'll meet them head-on!
The Guardians connected their crumbling bodies with wire, taking the form of a massive humanoid. There was no rationality in it. Just a creature making itself look bigger, a display of intimidation—
"OOOOOOOOOOOOO—!!"
Blue flames engulfed the golden lion's fists. The steel boy and girl raced across the shallow lake like a beam of light, facing the massive, crumbling mechanical monster head-on.
—Come!
"Here we go—!"
The massive Guardian fired thousands of iron needles from its entire body.
They pierced the golden lion again and again, but could not stop its charge.
Tattered, drenched in blood, the lion ran like light.
"—With even greater, even more enormous power!"
The golden lion wound back its fist. At that exact instant—the fist swelled to enormous size.
I will—
I will—
"protect you!"
The enormous fist punched a terribly massive hole clean through the enormous Guardian's chest.
Huh?
The pitiful puppy-monster that couldn't even properly comprehend the concept of death didn't even realize why its body was gradually ceasing to function.
Is this... the end?
Blue flames consumed the Guardian's body. Thoroughly. Completely.
I don't want that.
The golden lion collapsed, spent, onto the ground.
* * *
That I—Mehleeza Janebekova—was still alive could only be called a miracle.
"...Sleipnir... Sleipnir...?"
No answer from my beloved mount. Gazing up at the broken night sky, I checked my own condition.
(So. That child protected me.)
Sleipnir had tended to me at the brink of death. To the point where it could no longer maintain its own consciousness.
"...Ngh."
But aside from the fatal injuries, nothing else had been repaired, and I couldn't even stand.
Without warning, the ground began to pulse.
"Is this—the world starting to collapse?"
The world was growing hazy. The world couldn't hold its shape anymore. This was the tremor of that collapse.
"...If that's the case, then those two—they won."
I was so happy I nearly cried. But before the tears could gather, I saw it.
"...You're kidding me."
Clinging to the dark sky above. Chewing. On the countless people bound up there. Something was there.
"That's—that Guardian...? Why. It's completely. Different. The shape is all wrong."
The massive Guardian was devouring the dark canopy with a desperate expression, crushing and grinding at terrifying speed. Every time the Old Humanity was crushed between its misshapen teeth, green blood dripped down.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
The massive machine was weeping as it chewed.
The ones it had loved the most. The ones that had once been human. Tens of millions of broken lives.
"This world is finished! We are finished! I'm sorry! I'm sorry we were weak! I'm sorry we were foolish! So—"
The machine converted the dark canopy into energy, swelling enormously.
"I will end everything."
The massive machine devoured the remains of Old Humanity and transformed into something even more terrifyingly huge.
* * *
[No. 228-B "Deus Ex Cadaveire"]
Properties: Parallel Law, Ritual Disaster
Details: A form obtained when the mechanical life-form "Guardian," created by Old Humanity, consumed its own deployed Otherworld and the remains of those it wished to protect. Specialized solely in loss. Destruction. Ending. Its purpose is to bring Apocalypse to the world. The commonplace terminus reached by the many wishes that were never granted.
* * *
"I will never forgive them. Those ugly, filthy creatures—I will never, ever forgive them—"
The monster that had finished devouring hundreds of thousands of human corpses was so enormous it didn't even fit in my field of vision.
"—I am the end."
The Deus Ex Cadaveire dove into the black ground with the speed of a loosed arrow. A tremendous vibration shook everything, but there was no spray. It must have plunged past the deep sea, heading for the surface world.
"..."
With the enormous monster gone, this world was terribly quiet. Like an empty toy box. I sat there in stunned silence—and noticed a faint presence.
"...Mef... cha...n..."
—Luna-san's voice. She was battered beyond recognition, like a used rag, and she was carrying Kotoha-kun—who looked even worse—on her shoulder, crawling out from between the rubble.
"Luna-san! Are you alright...?"
I tried to run to her, but... unfortunately I wasn't in great shape myself. I approached slowly, with halting movements, and took the battered Kotoyorozu-kun from her. She collapsed on the spot.
"Ahh... that was awful. Truly, the worst. ...Thought I was gonna die."
As she murmured that, there was something clear about her, as if a weight had been lifted. I wondered if something good had happened to her. That couldn't be, and yet I found myself smiling a little at the thought.
"Hey... Mef-chan. Did anything come this way? Those Guardians we were fighting—after we beat them up enough, they ran off, and I thought they'd be around here."
I explained what I'd just witnessed.
"Most likely—it went to destroy the surface world."
"...The surface?"
"Entities with low reality can't exist for long in the real world. So I believe it consumed the humans it had been preserving here, along with the other Guardians, to secure enough energy."
Luna-san's face twisted in anguish, and she clenched her teeth.
"Then we have to go after it."
"What?"
"If everyone... haah... is gone... then this kid... won't have anywhere to belong anymore..."
Luna-san glanced at Kotoyorozu-kun. A little bit of a liar, I thought. You kept saying you couldn't protect him.
"...So how come you're so calm about this, Mef-chan?"
A fair question. A terrifying, massive monster had absorbed the Otherworld and grown even more absurdly huge, and it was heading for the very real world we were supposed to protect. Normally there'd be no time to stay calm.
"It's alright. That person is invincible."
—Right, Captain? That's what you always said.
I believed it with all my heart, like a child.
* * *
"OOOOOOOOOOOOO—!"
The creature that had once been as adorable as a puppy was now mountain-sized, a gelatinous monster draped in pitch-black rags.
"I won't forgive them, I won't forgive them, I won't forgive them—!"
Unfazed by the water pressure of tens of thousands of meters, it drove relentlessly toward the sky. As it approached reality, the Deus Ex Cadaveire's flesh slowly dissolved in the deep sea. It wouldn't last much longer.
"Before that! I'll ruin everything—!"
A single ray of light pierced the pitch-black deep. That was the real world! The world where those filthy vermin lived!
The beast of madness, having lost everything it loved, cleaved through the beautiful sea and bathed in the radiance of the sun.
(...What a beautiful place.)
The monster, breathing outside air for the first time in hundreds of millions of years, honestly felt that way.
(It's nothing like when we were here. But... it's beautiful.)
For just a moment, it was moved. But the rage far, far outweighed that.
"All of you, shatter—"
The beast of madness flew up to an altitude of a thousand meters and aimed its hundreds of enormous turrets at the nearest landmass. The firepower was enough to incinerate an entire nation in a single blast.
"—My, my. What a rude little country bumpkin we have here."
A voice. Didn't matter. Didn't care.
The beast of madness charged its turrets with white, deathly energy. And fired with devastating force.
GYANG! A sound rang out. It was not the sound of the world exploding.
"Let's go. My guitar. —Cherry Red Pistol."
* * *
[Cherry Red Pistol] [Gunscar]
A Gunscar that "[REDACTED]." Details unknown. Possesses overwhelming power unmatched anywhere in Fructus, but no one knows why. Koito Hikari adamantly refuses all investigation, and no organization exists with the authority to compel her. Due to its entirely different causal wavelength compared to normal Gunscars, some speculate it was not received from the Angel of Gunscar at all.
* * *
"—Lights! Camera! Action!!"
There was an absurd girl. Against the deep blue sky, she stood atop a flying guitar, pulling skateboard-trick moves to obliterate beams of death—a nightmarish existence.
"What are you?"
It was only natural for the Deus Ex Cadaveire to voice that question.
"—Me? I'm Koito Hikari. Neither free nor found just anywhere—a super beautiful girl."
A human? This thing? Human? A human!? A human just blocked that attack with her bare body? That was impossible.
(I see. This world has the technology to neutralize the power of death.)
The Deus Ex Cadaveire decided as much, then formed turrets like a porcupine across its impossibly huge body and fired tens of thousands of iron needles.
"Whew! Nice. I actually love bullet-hell games! I'm a pretty hardcore shooter, you know."
Koito Hikari acrobatically maneuvered her flying guitar, dodging every single needle with graceful spins, and closed the distance to the Deus Ex Cadaveire.
"—Batting cleanup—Koito Hikari! Here I go!"
"Wha—"
The girl wound back her guitar and slugged a god hundreds of times her size. The impact thundered all the way to the ocean surface a thousand meters below, pulverizing a full half of the Deus Ex Cadaveire's body.
"Wh... at..."
Koito Hikari smiled like a top idol.
"Hey, you. You haven't seen my cute little juniors around, have you?"
"What... are you?"
"They're late coming home and I'm getting worried."
"Impossible. Power like this shouldn't exist."
"Here's the thing, though."
"You haven't been... bullying those kids of mine, have you?"
"You—you are the Apocalypse! An anomaly of the universe!"
The cherry-blossom girl snorted dismissively, as if she'd heard a tired joke one too many times.
"I don't really have time to chat. There's a rerun of my favorite anime coming on after this."
She strummed her guitar. The instant she did, what appeared before her was a cherry-blossom radiance. A mass of energy of terrifying density. The kind that made you think, add just a little more, and you'd have a Big Bang on your hands.
"Stop! Stop! What's the point of any of this!? What meaning is there in protecting the humans alive today, in protecting this world!? Those meaningless, wretched, foolish, filthy, ugly creatures—the world would be better off without them! Their very existence is a sin! Human civilization should just hurry up and perish!"
The Deus Ex Cadaveire screamed, and Koito listened quietly.
"Ha ha. You sound like a villain from a '90s anime. Pure idiocy."
The cherry-blossom radiance enveloping her blazed even brighter.
"This world has beautiful me in it. Case closed."
With the bright, clean grin of a summer ballplayer, Koito smiled.
"Sto—"
"—Shatter. Like stardust."
GYANG! The guitar let out an especially high scream. The sheer amount of energy warped gravity for an instant. She cried out in a beautiful voice and brought the guitar crashing down.
"—"
The last thing the pitiful, enormous puppy-monster saw was a cherry blossom light more beautiful than any jewel.
It was so impossibly unreal—like fireworks seen as a small child.
