The ToQgers are shocked when they come upon him in the wreckage. The magnitude of the battle and the state of the Darkliner after… They hardly expect to find anything at all. The shattered pieces are spread for miles after the explosion, though here, at the heart of it, they are concentrated. Twisted spires of metal and sublimating darkness stand from the earth they've been driven into like an unholy forest.
Zett lies on the side of a crater, a tangle of metal and wires preventing him from sliding deeper. When they spot him, they immediately back into fighting formation. If he sees them though, he makes no sign. Shadows have rarely been so resilient as to survive a fight like this, but he is the Emperor of Darkness after all. They advance cautiously and see that he seems to be half-tangled, the wires not so much cradling, as binding him in place on the side. Still nearer, and they cannot contain gasps of horror.
One of the spires of metal has pierced through Zett's torso, protruding grotesquely, several inches from his stomach. Dark blood is spreading across his white coat. The ToQgers are less than a dozen yards away now, but Zett appears oblivious to their presence. He is moving though - doing something they can't quite make out as side from the movement of his arm across his chest, and the slight turning of his dark head.
Right tells the others to wait and continues on, letting his boots skid down over the lip of the crater, until he stands upon the slanting wall. The other ToQgers say nothing, and keep following him, though they hang back a little, letting him forge ahead. He has to be careful as he navigates the unstable ground. With each step the earth is as likely to give way under his feet as to hold, even as he leans his weight into the slope. He navigates around more debris as he goes. Finally, with his goal just beneath him, Right allows himself to slide down the last few feet and grabs hold of a large, piece of debris to stop himself from going further. Mindful of the jagged edges, he maneuvers himself down into a crouching position beside the fallen Emperor.
What he sees will be with him as long as he lives, and when his brain fully registers the scene before him, he nearly draws back from sheer horror.
Zett is mostly on his back, legs trailing slightly down the slope from where he's skewered on the wreckage. His upper body is half twisted into a position that is morealess level. His left arm is caught up in the cables some ho and pulled underneath him by tension working against gravity. His upper right arm is looped through a complex tangle of wires, and is probably all that's keeping his upper body from rolling downwards over his pinned left side. Zett is at least partly conscious, and his head rocks restlessly from side to side. His eyes are unfocused, glassy and still in their sockets, despite the shifting of his head. At first Right isn't sure why, but suddenly he realizes what he's watching. Rather than letting his head tip naturally downhill, Zett is trying to turn his head uphill, turning would hide his his face partly against the slope rather than facing the afternoon sun. But it is an endless struggle against gravity, and Zett is clearly fighting a losing battle. Moisture gathers along unblinking lids, and a single tear trail running across and into his dark hair shows that at least one drop has already overflowed.
Zett's right arm is free below the elbow, and reaches across his chest where it scrabbles uselessly at the cables tangling his left shoulder. His hands grasp blindly and his fingers close convulsively around the wires, only for them to slip free when he pulls at them. His purchase is too poor and his grip too weak to maintain a hold on the slippery cabling. Even if he were working the cable in the right direction to free himself, the best that can happen is that his upper body will slide further downwards. At worst, he might somehow dislodge himself completely and tumble the rest of the way down the jagged wall of the crater.
Faced with the piteous sight before him, Right's natural compassion spurs him into action. He reaches out, taking Zett's cheek in his palm and turning the emperor's face towards him. Zett doesn't fight him, allowing Right to hold his head stationary. Otherwise though, he gives no sign that he's aware of another's presence. His eyes do not seek or focus, and his hand keeps scrabbling across his chest. Right grabs hold of it and forces it to still with firm pressure until the Zett's arm relaxes across his chest. His fingers still clench and unclench spasmodically, and with the fretting stopped, Right becomes aware that Zett is trembling. His hand, his cheek, his whole body is shivering faintly. His skin is unnaturally cool, and everything about his features is pale and shocky.
"Zett…. Zett!" Right calls, patting his cheek as well as he can without fully letting go. Zett jerks a little, and his eyes, that have been fixed sightlessly open, blink once slowly, then flutter rapidly. His brow furrows, and it seems to take him a tremendous effort to focus on Right, but focus he does. Right is struck by how utterly black Zett's eyes are. Zett has always had a habit of getting in his face, and Right has often thought that his eyes were simply so dark as to be indistinguishable from his pupils. Now though, in the full light of day, he see's those same eyes anew, and wonders idly if perhaps it isn't that Zett's irises are indiscernible, but rather that he just doesn't have any. The absolute void of his unringed pupils is perhaps fitting for the Emperor of all darkness, meant to live all their days in the deep shadows. But without irises, it's impossible of Zett's pupils to contract against the daylight. This coupled with eyes stretched wide with shock, explains the watering eyes, Right supposes.
Zett's lipps work, dry and soundless for a minute, but they fail utterly to form words. He is seized abruptly by a fit of painful coughing that wracks his body. When the fit passes, it leaves Zett shuddering and weaker than before. His eyes have unfocused again but now, aside from the shivering, he is still. His lips are spotted with deep purple-red, and peering closer, Right realizes that where the sun touches Zett's blood it begins to sizzle slightly against his skin, letting off thin trails of steam.
Spurred into action by this terrible realization, Right immediately de-henshins. He yanks off his red and white jacket with more haste than efficiency and drapes it over Zett. It isn't nearly big enough to conceal all of his prone form, but it serves to shield his head and upper torso, shading his exposed face, neck, and visible hand from direct sunlight.
He's dying. Zett is dying. It's all Right can think as he scrambles to undo the damage he has wrought. Just minutes ago he was in pitched battle with the Emperor of the Shadow Line, fighting for his friends, their homes and families. Now, all he can see is the blood and the destruction their battle has caused.
Zett has always frightened Right in ways he can't put words too - doesn't much care to think about. The day he first met him at the amusement park... Zett had seemed so harmless then, filled with the ecstasy of the sparkling, shining world around him, Right apparently the single "shiniest" thing he'd ever laid eyes on. Right had seen the darkness in his eyes then, but had been willing to look past it, to embrace his new friend, strange though he was. No one filled with that much simple joy could be too bad, could they?
What had changed that? Certainly Zett has done terrible things since then, testing and threatening Right and his friends. But long before Zett declared his desire to consume Right and take his light, Right and the rest of the ToQgers had turned their backs on him. Why? All because the Shadow Line had arrived and revealed who Zett was to them. What might have happened if they hadn't been so rudely interrupted? Right had promised that he would protect everyone from the Shadow Line. Maybe Zett had needed protecting too.
But this is so much, maybe too much. Right isn't sure that he can save Zett. The emperor is bleeding, fading, his very blood boiling away in the unforgiving light.
"Akira!" Right shouts, and the the former shadow comes to his side so quickly he seems almost to materialize there. Akira releases his transformation as he kneels beside Right, sensing that the danger, at least to the ToQgers, is past. There isn't really any more room for another body between the wreckage and the steep drop off, so Right doesn't call for the others and doesn't mind that they still keep their distance. Between the two of them, and the tools Akira carries on his belt, they are eventually able to cut Zett free from the cables. They carry Zett between them up the treacherous crater side.
Right tries to forget the sound that escapes Zett's lips when they lift him off the wreckage.
Although the other ToQgers still seem hesitant, Right is grateful that none of them argue when he asks for their help to lift Zett over the edge and onto flat ground. Mio and Kagura even help arrange his body while Akira and Right lower him to the ground. Right's coat has remained in place over his head and shoulders, but his bare hands and forearms have dropped into the open. A spidery web of vein-like marks is developing across the backs of his hands. Kagura hesitates to touch the angry looking marks for a moment, but then grabs the hand closest to her and covers it with her own. When she takes her hands away a few seconds later, the marks have faded slightly, but the ToQgers watch in dismay as the reform almost immediately.
"I- I think we need to get him out of the sun," Tokatti puts in hesitantly from one side. Various signs of agreement echo from the group.
"We'll take him back to the Rainbow Line for now, we can cover the windows in one of the sleeping cars," says Right.
The girls busy themselves freeing Zett's cloak and wrapping it around his body as best they can. Kagura thinks that she has never felt anything quite so soft before, but she discovers that the edges of the velvet are disintegrating beneath her fingers, as if the fabric is centuries old. It becomes more ragged by the moment as they adjust it, and by the time Akira lifts the emperor's listless form fully into his arms, patches of fragile velvet are falling away from the hem like autumn leaves.
As the Rainbow Line pulls up just a few yards away, Right is thinking of the dark place under his grandfather's cellar stars. Was that good enough for the former Emperor of Darkness? Maybe Zett would like it better in his bedroom closet, or under his bed. He has glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of his room at Grandpa's. They don't shine quite like the real ones, but he thinks that Zett might like them.