As Osiris reached out, Kleine would have perhaps had only the briefest of moments to realize the enormity of her mistake.
There was a screeching
hiss, as soon as Osiris hand touched its sibling unit - as Jehuty whirled and grasped it. Doubtlessly to his horror, the former Idolo's hand began to
melt into its sibling unit. Every possible alarm that could go off would be screeching in Kleine's ear as the Metatron within her own unit heeded the hynotic call of the one before it.
Its
face!
Melted and burning, yet flush with the glorious radiance of Metatron, more beast than machine! Eyes, eyes like blazing pits stared at Kleine - calling her, willing her to join it, to revel in it, to
lie with it and
surrender to it.
ꋰꈼꀯꂦꂵꈼ ꂦꋊꈼ ꅏꂑꋖꍩ ꐇꌚ
A voice - an echo- a noise, a laugh, a scream, all at once echoed at deafening volume throughout the cockpit as Jefuty tightened its grip, and threatened to devour its sister unit whole.
Abigail surged forward into the light. Adrenaline, fatigue, misplaced heroism all blending together. Barely more than a gnat gripping a twig before the monster before them, a final desperate attempt at survival.
But he was not alone.
Against the searing light, was the white armor. Traveling alongside him. Its body a mirror of his own. The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl. He could feel his own heart beating in his ears. His own breath, filling the helmet. The eyes of the Evoluder, looking into his own.
There was... a moment.
A
connection.
Emotions once thought long lost rushed between them like a river.
Anguish. Loneliness. A deep sorrow that could not be filled by conquest after conquest. Like a scar that would never heal. Uncountable years, all blurring into one another. A hundred lifetimes, all of them empty.
Until this moment.
Until that long-lost piece of the self had been rekindled, just long enough to realize what had been missing all along.
All from the empathy of a simple, fragile human being.
I understand, now.
It - Orgun, rather - seemed to say.
Abigail. Earth.
This is not the salvation we were promised.
Light crested the horizon. The morning sun, piercing the gloom, illuminating the two.
Orgun's body shifted - arms spread wide, skirt armor snapping up behind it, cracked and beaten plates of armor fusing together about the face. With a terrible
crack, the Evoluder's chest armor fell away.
Roiling and hissing beneath, a core of brilliant azure. A pure, antimatter heart beyond the imagining of anyone or anything in the Earth Sphere.
His final weapon.
"
Perish, abomination."
The surge of blue rasped out - and punched through the Getter Beam. Even the Dragon seemed taken aback momentarily, even as its whole body flashed as it reached the climax of its meltdown. Cobalt light, piercing the green, enveloping those near it in a curious warmth.
Getter Dragon's body gave a final, unearthly lurch - before it too, disappeared from view.
To the distant Tekkaman, it would have been like baptismal flame. Washing over them, the very antithesis of the Radam scourge that tainted them, searing light that ripped and tore at the contagion within. A whirlwind of pain and fury unlike anything they had experienced since their "rebirth".
Had Dagger known? Had this been a suicide mission from the beginning?
When the light finally cleared... there was no sign of the Shin Dragon.
Nor Jehuty.
Nor Luce's Aestivalis.
As the choking cloud began to clear, the distant, sunflower-like structure of the Saotome Laboratory loomed in the distance.
