Beet J. Stag had lost his best friend three times.
One could argue that the first time time J lost him didn't really count. It was a chance encounter with a deity of some sort that led to it happening. The world had been led to destruction, but thanks to divine intervention and a bit of jumping back and forth between alternate dimensions, the world remained at peace. Humanity was none the wiser and life would go on.
Yes, it was certainly very sad that the dimension Nick had created through his wish didn't exist anymore, but the Go-Busters from that world had gone out the way they wanted to, so all was well that ended well, right?
J silently disagreed.
He had lived with that world's Jin for an entire year. He had gotten to see his friend live a life beyond the life he had had then, a life that amounted to being little more than a physical projection in the world. He had fought alongside that Jin for a year. For a year, both gone in an instant yet seemingly unending while it lasted, he had been able to experience the kind of peaceful daily life that his fellow Buddyroids lived every day and took for granted. The kind of life Jin — his Jin, the real Jin — fought to reclaim with everything he had.
True enough, he had known that this was the likely result from the moment the bike guy had made his wish for the two teams of Go-Busters to fight together, yet he could do nothing about it.
Now the Jin that he had lived with for that year now no longer existed.
Even if it "didn't count," it still left an impact on J. It was a sobering wake up call. It was a cruel reminder of what was on the line. He knew all too well how fragile his partner's life was, how easily Jin could disappear in a moment's notice. The other Go-Busters had no idea. A simple misstep in transferring Jin from one world to the other, an attack from the Vagras in the right place at the right time... any kind of mistake and J would be the one to irreversibly destroy the man who he now fought all the harder for. They had faced death before. J couldn't afford to slip up now. The fact was, he himself had died twice now.
J was resolute. He knew it for certain now.
He would not let Jin die on his watch ever again.
In hindsight, J wondered if the second time — the first "real" time now — was inevitable. Given Jin's unique condition, one might consider it having been such all along, and that it had simply been luck he had managed to make it so long. J was not one for such thoughts at all. Masato Jin did not rely on luck, and his demise had not been inevitable.
As he looked back, however... From the moment Enter had revealed where that last card was located... No, perhaps even before then, J wondered if he should have known what Jin would think of to defeat such a plan. He was the only one who had understood Jin well enough to know what kinds of plans the man would come up with, yet even then, he hadn't realize in time...
He wondered if he should have known.
Perhaps the reason was simple enough. Things were escalating far beyond what they had expected. It was understandable, of course. No one had ever expected Enter to try to become the new Messiah himself. Had anyone told them that beforehand, would they have believed it? Would they have even been able to do anything to change the events that would follow Enter's insurrection? Would it have even mattered in the long run?
J was not the kind of Buddyroid for pondering long on questions like these, and in the end, he could not find answers to them. Maybe it was better that he couldn't. Who was to say he would like the ones he found, should he continue to seek them until the bitter end? He would have been better off spending his time amassing more Enetron to consume, surely.
After all, when all was said and done, there was one thing that he did know for sure.
He was not even granted the chance to say goodbye.
Just like that, Jin was gone. One moment they had been fighting, the next everything that made him who he was had disappeared. Deleted. Forever lost.
Perhaps that was how Jin had wanted it. He had used everything he had had to accomplish his mission and he could go with no regrets. Or so J hoped.
He doubted it.
Now, in the end, there was but one truth remaining.
J had failed Jin not once, but twice now.
At least he could take some respite in the reality that he wouldn't have to fail a third time...
... even if that meant he had to live with the reality that he had still failed twice.
When it came to the third and final time J lost Jin, there had been no question about what the result would be. From the very onset of things, J knew how it would end. Whether they succeeded in their mission or failed, as far as the fate of the life of one Masato Jin was concerned, there was absolutely no question.
There was no hope of Jin being revived this time. His body was gone. Most of the data that made up his mind was gone. All that was left was the precious bit of data in a hidden anti-Vagras program that had been hiding under their noses all along. A program that, without a doubt, would only have revealed itself in a time of emergency such as the one they found themselves facing then. It was certainly Jin's work without a doubt, and what's more, it was certainly Jin himself... but it was a Jin that there was no hope of saving.
From the very beginning of this, J understood that fact. This time, it wasn't a matter of failing or not failing. He had failed already. That failure was why he was not fighting alongside a flesh and blood Jin, but rather, a specter born from computer data. J understood and accepted these things as he fought against his enemies. Even as he fought alongside Jin, granted this absurd miracle of battling with him one last time thanks to time traveling dinosaurs and aliens of all things, he understood this fact. There was nothing that could be done now.
Jin was dead.
This was a fact that could not be changed. There was nothing that could be done about it. Once the last fragments of the Vagras were defeated here, Jin would go with them. This had never been meant as a way to revive Jin, but rather, a way for the Go-Busters to have all the help they could have should they need it. One final ace in the hole. Nothing more, nothing less.
No matter what happened in this battle, even if their enemies were defeated thoroughly and perfectly, Jin was still as gone as he was before it had even started.
Indeed, from the moment the battle began, J understood all of these things. It should have been enlightening. Empowering, even. Jin had even told him he was a "free man" now.
And yet when the time came to watch Jin dissolve into bits of data once more, when he found himself wracked with sobs he hadn't known a machine such as he was capable of, as he tried to drown it down with Enetron, he understood one more thing.
Knowing all of that changed absolutely nothing. In fact, nothing he knew mattered.
Because in the end, he was still losing his buddy all over again.