Nine \\ Evolution - 進化 - At the End of Days

Disclaimer: I don't own Kill la Kill.


Evolution at the End of Days

CLANG!

His speed was terrifying.

Ryuuko had parried the slash of claws with the now fully-sized scissor blade in her left hand, while the separate blade seized in her right swung to attack. He blocked with the narrow scythe protruding from his elbow.

The young woman snarled as they remained locked, trying to hide her fear as he glowered through glasses lenses that had cracked under the pressure of his own aura. "So the Life Fibers think they're hot shit now, huh? I don't know about their omnipotence; what I do know is that I've been cutting down their like for years!"

She shoved and swung, but faltered unexpectedly in the move. The strike went shallowly across Yoriyoshi's front; flesh, and the Life Fiber suit bonded tightly to it, mended themselves inches behind the passing of the blade.

He raised a brow, and spun to glance her blocking blades with the scythe, sending her skidding back as earth crackled beneath her feet. A second blade lanced from his other elbow, and he rushed nearer in a pair of powerful strides. Before she could guard he was sliding past, and her side had been hacked open.

"Damn it," Ryuuko grunted, swinging as the menace dashed again. He spun beneath the lateral strike, and engaged her up close as she struggled to fend off a blurring string of attacks. "What've you even done with Yoriyoshi?!"

"Huh?!" In a fluid move he dodged and swept a kick through her ankles. Falling forward, she'd only begun to swear before he bludgeoned a kick up against her midriff; her body hit the ceiling, smacked flat into the ground, and bounced a good few meters up again before she lurched to a halt on her side, wheezing.

"Shin'yuu Yoriyoshi is right here," he said, a clawed hand on his chest. "Life Fiber Override: Fusion. Not a mere Humanform Battery, but a Humanform Weapon. This body's compatibility is extraordinary; it is serving quite nicely as an instrument to concentrate this wealth of energy…"

"B-bastard… That's his family and friends–!"

He was fast. Ryuuko had no sooner begun to lunge at his figure a good few strides away, and drawn back to strike, than a hand locked onto her arm and a spiked knee smashed into her unguarded stomach. She bent and hacked, one eye shut, blood streaking from her lips in the shocked moment before an impact between her shoulders laid her flat with a crash.

Th-the Scissor blades – I dropped them…? Shoot! She turned her head, keeping an eye on the Fusion as she fought to rise.

"If it's any condolence," he said, "you could not have altered this human's fate. His own will, though it first resisted desperately, has been ours to control since the time he spent teetering on the brink of starvation. We let his 'self' emerge, and interact freely with you, merely to examine you." He shook his head. "The Kiryuuin traitor's intuition was accurate; when a Life Fiber-infused human's basic needs go unmet, his will dwindles as he is forced to rely on–,"

"'Traitor'?" Ryuuko scoffed, rising to a crouch. "You mean Satsuki? I'd call that a compliment, for an heir to the Kiryuuin legacy–!"

WHAM!

That was her jaw, being shattered by a kick.

She glanced off the wall and lay stunned where she fell, choking on a scream.

"When homo sapiens had grown adequately sophisticated, and the band destined to become the Kiryuuin Clan was shown the truth, it submitted wholeheartedly to the inevitability of Life Fiber dominance. And it became the first, silent priesthood of all those who would call for embracing humanity's Purpose. They traded their own species for the continued power and favor of what you would call its oppressor. Now, on that sin of betrayal, the sole creator and oppressor looks to collect. Yet you seek to defy your creator? You still think to deny us our harvest of humankind?"

"Of c-course I do!" she said. "Who wouldn't?! If I can fight my idiot ancestors' mistakes, why wouldn't I try?!"

"Mistakes?" he hissed, eyes narrowing. "…Tell me this, Matoi Ryuuko. Of what worth are cattle, turned loose from the farm? What would their freedom be to you, but the meandering of dumb beasts with laughably diminished powers of survival – a waste in every way? Wasted resources, wasted effort, wasted life. Wasted potential to fill human plates."

"Ain't you a chatterbox?" Ryuuko winced as her mending jaw crunched fully back into place. Shakily, she rose. "So? The hell's that got to do with us?!"

She lunged, but the Fusion vanished in a blur of speed. Bastard's always one step ahead!

"Well, for example," said a voice at her back, "why would you suppose that I am able to punch you–,"

She whirled, only to receive a fist that sent her so swiftly across the room that the ground, more than a foot beneath her, tore and threw itself violently outward in her wake. She met the wall with a wail, over the crack of her own bursting ribs, and crumpled to her knees as a good length of the wall came down.

"–with so many times more strength than this human's muscles could ever have mustered? If I summed his independent strength with that of all the humans whose energies were harvested here, as well as the energy that would be contained in the boy's own weight in raw Life Fibers – a gross overestimation of the amount lacing this body – even such a great deal of energy would not be enough, or focused enough, to send you flying as I just did. But the whole is greater than the sum of the parts."

Ryuuko stood, murder in her eyes. Her bones were mending themselves faster than they had been able to in quite some time, but endurance would not win her the battle; even that would not last forever. If I h-had… Senketsu…!

"Humans breed their livestock and crops to grow large, and rich in the nutrients humans require – their efforts clumsily but surely optimizing their food sources to meet the demands of the human populace. So it is that, in ways humans alone cannot understand or use, the human form is a reflection of the Life Fibers' needs. Humans exist for our utilization!"

"That can't…"

"Your Kiryuuin woman grew quite formidable through training, as many before her, but ultimately she is merely human. And humans cannot manifest their own great, dormant powers as effectively as we. Left alone, they squander and waste their energy, energy that WE can make infinitely more valuable and precious! Do you fail to see the logic of this, Matoi Ryuuko?!"

"Logic doesn't mean jack shit sometimes!" she spat, flinging back her arms.

Threads glinted subtly in the air, and at her fingertips – and two scissor blades went careening toward the Fusion's back.

He quirked a scornful brow as the blades' trajectories crossed behind his back; they passed each other, sailing forward and down points-first at his sides. The blades were missing him.

He straightened in surprise as the looped scissor handles hooked his long elbow spikes before the blades planted themselves in the earth. And he was immobilized as Ryuuko, leaping with the pull of retracting threads between her hands and the handles of the fixed blades, closed rapidly to plow both feet into his face.

She felt a sick twinge, briefly, as his neck snapped. Monstrous or not, his form was still like a human's.

And Ryuuko welcomed the sick feeling, for fear of the part of her that would far too readily relish in the sound of human bones breaking under her power. However strong any logic at play in the background, she knew what she felt. That parasitic malice, that would have her slaughter her own, was not a thing to be indulged.

She landed on her feet before a body that began to slump – and his head righted itself with a shudder, a squelch. Ryuuko was ready to tear on the attack when he retracted the elbow blades, freeing himself, and leapt a good distance away.

Not even pausing in her motion, Ryuuko drew the Scissors from the earth, spinning once as she leapt forward to swing one blade, then the other, through the air with a roar.

Energy cracked and sparked through the sundered, distorting air, shooting toward the Fusion like an explosive wave.

He crossed his arms in defense. His feet were driven back one short meter, heels digging sharply into crunching stone – and the wall a ways behind him was denting back in a massive cross pattern the moment before a whole length of it was blown out, like a tire rupturing with absurd pressure.

Ryuuko panted, blades still outstretched in her hands as the wind settled, and the Fusion lowered his defending arms. The room was filled with a rumble as bits of the ceiling crumbled and dropped.

The monster made Yoriyoshi's face frown. "Of course, you are inherently capable of tapping into more of your body's latent power than can a natural human. Yet even the blessing of your symbiosis is wasted. The potential you'd begun to awaken now withers in constraint."

"What are you saying?"

"You constrain yourself, as if to make your broken life with that woman as humanlike as possible. It's unsightly. You feel a human's pain and suffer wounds, as if only to let her bandage and tend you. You respond meekly when she berates you for letting your powers evolve. All this worthless sentimentality, to keep your worlds from drifting irreparably far apart…"

"So what if I want to live with Satsuki? What's it to you, anyways?! I want to live as a human, and protect humans, and that's the reason I can keep fighting! So my humanity is not weakness!"

"Is it not?"

His form blurred. She began to recoil, anticipating an uppercut, but only found his fist abruptly resting at the space beneath her breastbone, with no more impact than a tap.

Splikt.

Her lips twitched. A bewildered sound, almost taking the form of a laugh, grated shortly, wetly, from her throat.

Then true pain pierced her in the moment blood began to spray from about a scarlet-black blade protruding far from her upper back, having projected from his fist to neatly skewer her heart.

She sputtered dumbly, spasming eyes stretched wide. He retracted the dripping blade, and withdrew his hand. Blood erupted in a pair of bursts from her pierced front and back before more was thrown from her lips, and she slumped to her knees, then flat to the dirt.

And she knew that if she were human, she would already be quite dead.

"Well? How is the pain of surviving your heart being destroyed?"

D-damn… it… Her fingers twitched.

"Perhaps you think now – 'if only I had my kamui.' But you need not even rely on such tools. If you were not so unfortunately 'human,' you could brush off this much damage easily."

"Y-yeah?" she croaked through a gurgle of blood. "I've only kn-known one other Life Fiber-infused human wh-who used her Life Fibers freely… She was a fucking monster, too. Th-that's why… I can't… I'll n-never…urk!"

He frowned as she coughed and hacked. "You, whilst groveling in the dirt, would mock a perfect Kiryuuin, after praising a defect. Yet look at yourself: too human to heal, yet unable to die. No matter how human you try to be, your Life Fibers will do this much for you – and still you spurn them. Yours is a pitiful, backwards state. Never mistake yourself for a human being, Matoi Ryuuko. You have made yourself the only creature in this world capable of suffering the pain you're now in, in its entirety. This tragic byproduct of empathy is not evolution; it makes a joke of it. Unawakened, you are merely an abomination."

He had grasped a handful of her hair, lifting her strengthless form from the ground. He studied her with an appraising glare, her shut eyes, her gushing wound, her bruises and breaks, so sluggish to heal. "You creatures are illogical. Such sentiments simply cannot be protected… with a form forced to rely on something as fragile as a heart pumping blood."

He dropped her, and a blade from his free hand projected to stab her again. Two dozen more calmly wicked strikes to her torso, in the space of a moment, before he let her fall with a heavy, splattering thud. For a moment, she was still. All that stirred was a rapid patter of thoughts, like raindrops, on her scattered mind.

My heart. It's nothing. It doesn't exist right now.

So I'd be flatlining. For good.

Then I'm 'dead'? No, not dead.

But my guts are in tatters. My blood ain't where it should be.

This much of it shouldn't be on the ground.

What, then? This state. What is it?

Alive? Dead? Undefined?

Her body shuddered.

What am I? R-right now

Something that doesn't die like a human.

Can I be human, if

If in human terms, I can't be defined…?

A low voice, dripping with disdain.

"Even your Life Fibers might not preserve you much longer this way, repressed as they are. Foolish… You, of Kiryuuin blood – if you could only bring yourself to submit to your Life Fibers, you would overwhelm this boy easily…"

Ryuuko shivered again where she lay, cold fingers scraping through the dirt as she suddenly convulsed. Her teeth clenched. The Fibers were there – they wanted to wear her, and save her. Make her better than she was. Make her more. She had no power to do anything anymore…

"Instead, you let that fine blood simply spill away. But the Kiryuuin, with their distinct evolutionary advantage…"

Before he finished the thought, something behind him registered in Ryuuko's dazed, wild eyes.

One bloodied Kiryuuin, leaping silently at his back, both obsidian blades in hand.

The sounds of two collisions rang in quick succession: his hand with Satsuki's face, and the back of Satsuki's head with the wall that had been fifteen meters from her back, making the cavern roar at the punishment. He pressed her head against the radially cracked wall while her feet dangled, but this wall did not collapse out to other tunnels or rooms; it was solid stone.

Satsuki's arms had been splayed wide, flat to the wall, at the moment of impact; now they dropped with slumping shoulders, as her head remained pinned by the Fusion's hand on her face.

"A decent attempt," he growled, pushing until Satsuki tensed again, her fingertips spasming, and a choked sound of pain escaped her. "For a human."

"No!" Ryuuko croaked. She flailed in a sudden, mad endeavor to stand, to even move, but her limbs were leaden, and her torso a mess of pain. Her fingers dug down numbly, fighting desperately to drag her forward as sweat burned in her eyes.

"A human is still a human," he crooned, cold, "Kiryuuin or not. And if this one were not holding you back, then perhaps…"

More stone cracked as he sharply redoubled his force, and Satsuki's visible eye widened.

"Stop!" Ryuuko pleaded, utterly helpless. Her heart, in attempting to race, only sent still more pain coursing through her chest. "Stop it!"

"If you are by your own choice unable to protect her, why should I?" he boomed in condescension. "This world has a system – a system all things are subject to. A system you cannot overturn, cannot even contest. You live. You march in your place. And for the master, you die. You. Are. ANTS!"

Satsuki wailed as he punctuated his words with a shove that further lengthened the cracks on the wall.

"Well? If you can only lie there in powerlessness, shall I crush this errant creature's skull?"

"Stop!" Ryuuko choked again, half-mad in panic and her own pain. "If you wanna kill someone, kill ME! Kill me, kill me, kill me–!"

Satsuki's scream burst free, an earsplitting shriek of pain that rang aloud, long and terrible. It was the sound of a person in dire peril, a being pushed to within one inch of certain death.

And it made something

in Ryuuko

snap.

"STOP IIIIIIIITTTTTT!"

The cry was bestial, deafening, as Ryuuko's outstretched hand unraveled from the fingertips, into a web of threads that splayed rapidly forward, and wound about the Fusion's torso and neck with a snap of speed.

He grunted as the binding constricted, and he lurched backwards under a tremendous force – yanked cleanly off his feet, away from the wall, away from Satsuki – and sailing on a course for a Ryuuko who was flying toward him from a leap, like a humanoid missile guided by taut, retracting fibers.

Her eyes were vehement, her face masked in shadow, as a curved Life Fiber blade jutted sharply from near her elbow toward her wrist, resting above her forearm and locking in place with a sickening crunch as she drew and poised the arm before herself.

The bloody blade's violently glowing edge impacted the Fusion's back with a momentous crunch.

"KIKEN DANZETSU!"

危険断絶

(きけんだんぜつ)

[HAZARD BREAKER]

And the Fusion was hewn in two, the pieces glanced aside, as Ryuuko burst through with a savage outward thrust of her bladed arm.

Her momentum carried her forward well beyond the decisive strike, so she landed on her feet and slowed herself before stumbling into a light collision with Satsuki. She caught her older sister's toppling form, her leaning weight pinning her again to the wall, though neither of them would have remained upright without support.

"R-Ryuuko," Satsuki rasped.

The younger woman's face was buried in her shoulder as Ryuuko's hand rose. She looked up, shaking steadily as she found Satsuki's eyes. Shivering fingers neared the older sister's bruised face. "N-Nee-san…"

A shudder within. Ryuuko's teeth snapped shut in a grimace as a pained sound caught in her throat, and tired eyes grew sharp, intensely unfocused, as her hand fell to latch onto Satsuki's shoulder. She turned her head away, roughly vomiting blood; crimson drizzled from her wounds.

"Ryuuko!"

"She's taken too much damage already," a gloating voice explained. Satsuki lifted her head with a dangerous look as Ryuuko writhed against her. The bloody halves of the Fusion, sprawled on the cavern floor, were joined by a slender thread; he pulled himself together on the ground, and stitching leapt to span the space between his halves before a last pull righted them with a squelch. Blood gurgled from his lips as he rose with a deranged grin. "Her own power's run dry. But she knows she must fight. As a human, she cannot lie unmoving forever; to remain in flux in this world is her driving impulse. Yet as a monster, she has forgotten how to submit. To survive, she must fight. To fight, she can only Awaken. And in the eyes of Life Fiber instinct, how much will she care for her dear, pitiful Onee-san when she does?"

"Tch!" Satsuki grasped her sister's arms, but the hand on her shoulder didn't budge. "Ryuuko! Listen to me!"

"GYAAAAAH!" Ryuuko howled, in pain or fury, eyes white as she thrashed her head. She was fighting; it was all she knew how to do.

But crimson veins were rising, spreading, crackling with energy over her paling skin. Their crawling advance surged, and was halted just before reaching her upturned face, as she croaked in effort.

Ryuuko couldn't think; she couldn't breathe past the suffocating force.

Fight. Fight. Fight fight fight fight FIGHT…!

There was a human – the Kiryuuin – her sister – Satsuki – right in front of her. She couldn't lose control; she didn't know what would happen if she did.

But everything hurt. It hurt.

And she felt the weight of her constraint. She thought she'd gotten used to it, accepted it. But now it was so heavy.

But, Satsuki.

The human.

Clashing impulses of primality – human and Life Fiber – were all that remained of her for one moment, cresting and rolling and crashing through her soul. They warred, pounding through her with the useless beating of her shredded heart.

Protect.

Destroy.

Protect.

Destroy.

Protec–

Ryuuko met Satsuki's eyes blankly, and began to push away from her.

The veins patterned her face, and she froze, standing straight, an iron grip still pinning Satsuki's shoulder to the wall.

Adapt.

"Sis… Sorry."

Satsuki's look of confusion, of bated breath, turned to shock as Ryuuko's whitened eyes snapped to a searing red.

Then the hand on Satsuki's shoulder took the texture of thread, and those threads pierced her.

They drew on her blood, in the way a kamui might. They also drew her energy – the thing Kiryuuin honed in themselves, to wield as enhanced strength or exude as overpowering charisma – an intangible power most humans lived out their lives unaware of and unable to touch. Ryuuko was tapping into the power of her spirit itself.

Satsuki's face paled.

"R-Ryuuko… stop… s-stop…!"

But these tense pleas went ignored. Her voice faded along with the initial flash of terror, and a wash of mind-numbing sensation overtook her; her resistance gave out, as if succumbing to a programmed shutdown. A tear rolled down her cheek, from an unblinking eye. She could only submit.

That was more terrifying than anything.

Ryuuko's head tilted slightly back, in a sublime, mesmerized calm. Her hair stirred weightlessly, rising in a light wind as it grew brightly streaked with blue. She gave a breath, and detached her hand from Satsuki's shoulder. The long-haired woman's face remained taut even as her eyelids drooped; she slid down along the wall until she sat, and her head hung, but her breath remained fitful through parted lips.

Ryuuko flexed a red-patterned hand before her as her wounds began to steam, and knitted, threadlike, before melding again into smooth flesh. Then her head turned to abruptly drill an imperious glare dead into the eyes of the one who observed her.

He flinched. "You… That's not possible!" the Fusion snarled, denting the earth as he leaped toward her with terrific speed.

WHAM!

His skull compacted, his neck twisting under the weight of Ryuuko's backhand across his face. He went corkscrewing at an angle into the quailing cavern roof, glancing off toward the ground again; his broken body convulsively untwisted itself as it fell, and he landed heavily on his feet, back hunched.

"You're still a FOOL!" he spat. "You engage aimlessly in petty battles on a handful of islands off the eastern coast of the Eurasian continent. WE engineered entire worlds to function to our advantage! We have done so for thousands of your world's millennia, and will continue for thousands more! Our existence is eternal! You are finite and small! To us, you are NOTHING–!"

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Ryuuko's tyrannical roar as she faced him, as electrically intense blue-on-red eyes swept around toward him, bade everything in her line of sight to explode backward from a blast of force. The Fusion was buffeted, blown back onto one foot. The remaining walls and ceiling, for a large radius behind him, compacted, stone shrinking back impossibly.

Then the cavern, and everything beyond in the direction Ryuuko faced, was blasted out. Tons upon tons of shattered, vaporizing stone went hurtling away, scattering off into open air – into the blazing sunlight that filtered into the hole in the cliff.

The Fusion winced, enhanced human eyes dazzled. Those two had unlocked something formidable; this should not have happened this way. He needed to escape.

With this in mind, he blinked in astonishment as he found a scissor blade piercing his gut, exiting his back. He and Ryuuko, who'd stabbed him, were drifting through space together, amid newly falling debris.

"Th-the power of the Kiryuuin… and the Life Fibers… together, th-they'll…"

The other scissor gleamed, flickering brightly in the sunlight as it neared. It plunged beside its companion into his splitting flesh, before Ryuuko wrenched both blades outward in a shower of blood.


"The m-moment I… first saw you… every L-Life Fiber in my body shuddered, in fear. That's how I knew… something good would come of s-sticking with you, Ryuuko-san…"

Her face was bleak as the bloodsoaked figure on the ground wheezed. His appearance was reverting, even if stray, torn Life Fibers twitched frantically, ineffectually about his wounds.

"Yoshi-chan…" Ryuuko whispered, as tears ran quietly from his cracked eyes. "Your own, human life force… the last bit of what makes ya' human… it was still down there, the whole time? Still fighting, when you said you wouldn't…"

"There was a l-lot to fight through, to t-talk to you againHehe… All along, I was w-willing to die with these p-parasites, if I had to… but I'm glad… the time I spent with you…"

His face twisted in pain as Life Fibers stretched away from his body; his skin began to shrivel and pale where they left. "These i-infernal threads… th-they're eating me, Ryuuko-san! I-I'm… disgusting!"

Ryuuko's teeth ground as he laughed unevenly, wept with a broken smile, bitterly triumphant. Discarding him, and absorbing what's left of him… now that he's no use to you?

"I'm s-so glad… th-that this body failed the p-purpose chosen for i-it…!"

Rocks were falling periodically; the overhanging cliff left towering above was gradually beginning to crumble.

But do you plan to make him suffer until you've gorged yourself on everything he was?!

Ryuuko's hand extended. She fought to show him a tender face. "Yoriyoshi… you're fine now."

The Life Fibers shot from her reddening fingertips under her command, piercing his body in five narrow beams of living, red-black thread.

He looked on with amazement in his cloudy eyes as the Life Fibers that had been escaping him stilled and began to blacken and grow brittle, weak.

"What's left of you… those bastards ain't getting it," Ryuuko seethed. But she could not kill the Life Fibers alone; draining the power that sustained them necessitated stealing the condensed power of all those who had died here – and Yoriyoshi's own life energy, still bound so loosely to his flesh. So she found the flow of it all, and pulled it.

She gasped. You and Dad had it wrong, Mikisugi. It's not just electricity they feed on… it's life.

Sh-sheer… life? That's

I see it now… There's… something tender here, that I can feel… It's flowing in…

Her breath shook past her watery smile. I get it now. I know, as long as this is here We're human! We're both human.

I'm… so glad

The pain had left Yoriyoshi's face. His consciousness was departing. "N-now you're consuming me, Ryuuko-san…" He smiled calmly, content in his musing. "If you c-can use me, does this make you my true god, and this my purpose…?"

Through his scholarly air, Ryuuko saw the hope shining so brightly in his eyes. "…If you like it better that way… I'd say so."

"Ah… then, how does my l-life taste, Ryuuko-sama?"

Water fell from her chin as she gave a cocky smile. "You taste like shit. I can feel every drop of your bitterness and hate coursing like poison into my veins, and as your god, it appalls and sickens me."

His eyes shut with a chuckle. His voice was soft. "Yokatta… This is a m-much better way to go… as a sacrifice to you, goddess who strikes fear in our Oppressor… May my hatred sustain you on your path of carnage. May my b-bitterness become as the weapon you bare before fate's design…"

"Tch… Stop screwin' with me, Shin'yuu."

"Hmph…"

He looked up at her with blurring sight, at the destroyed cavern and the cliff angled out into the glowing clouds and sun behind her. The last of his power, and the power that had been stored away in him, was trickling into her fingers.

"Shin'yuu Yoriyoshi… were you here?" she asked softly, her voice distant to his ears. But she knew he heard it. "Were you different?"

"I-I was… here… I was… different. I… had a purpose…"

The hoarse words were passed through lips upturned at the corners. When they had gone, his chest did not rise again.

Ryuuko's teeth clenched, and she turned. I'll stay alive…

We'll both stay alive… for sure!

The ground was rumbling as she took off running; she leapt a large rock that tumbled across her path.

"Satsuki!" she cried. Though Satsuki had been watching her from where she sat, she remained somewhat dazed. When Ryuuko came to her side, and reached toward her, Satsuki flinched away.

Ryuuko felt a pang. Face flushed, she averted her gaze from the look in Satsuki's eyes.

"I'm sorry," Ryuuko said. "But this whole place is about to come down. We need to be gone before it does."

"I know that," Satsuki said, standing shakily on her own strength before Ryuuko cautioned to look at her again. Hard-eyed, chin high, Satsuki nodded.

Ryuuko scooped her quickly but gently into her arms, and leapt across what had been the cavern and the tunnels beyond. She was barreling straight for what looked like the edge of the Earth when a roar shook the world, and an enormous chunk of the overhanging cliff gave out, followed by more.

"It's a rockslide!" Satsuki shouted over the noise of falling, breaking stone. She turned her head forward again, fierce eyes calculating. "How long is the drop?"

"No clue!" Ryuuko answered.

"What?!"

"I won't die! Just trust me on it!"

Sailing momentarily after shoving off a bump in the ground, Ryuuko looked back. A tsunami of dust and stone was surging on in thunderous pursuit.

It swallowed up a fresh corpse.

Turning forward, Ryuuko took three more steps and leapt onto a slope.

"Hang on!"

Her feet skidded down, tearing through forty meters of sparse grass and coarse soil. Then she leapt forward, still shy of the edge, so that by the time they sailed over it they were dropping almost straight down.

Above their heads, waves of stone and dust were jettisoned out over the edge, beginning to blanket the sky in debris.

Their eyes stayed downward, on the first of their concerns.


Ryuuko was right: the landing didn't kill her.

She screamed. With masterful timing, momentum safely (enough) expended, Satsuki slipped from Ryuuko's weakening arms, grabbed her fainting sister, and lunged with her to the ground at the cliff wall.

A moment later, a torrential sum of stone began crashing into a lake a good way before them. Soon there was more; trees, pieces of buildings and their contents. Church benches. Though a few stray rocks fell closer, and the air grew thick with dust and mist, they were safe here.

Satsuki sighed, pulling away the arm that had cradled Ryuuko's head, and turning from her instinctive position of lying protectively over the girl. SafeShe willed tensely locked teeth to unclench. Leaning back against the wall, she stared lethargically at the endless rain of earth and debris and felt her heart rate gradually begin to normalize. She looked to Ryuuko beside her, who lay sprawled and motionless with nothing but whites to her eyes.

We're a mess… Satsuki thought, crawling over to start straightening broken legs.

But thanks to you…

It looks like we're alive.


In a minute Ryuuko twitched; her blank eyes shut, and she coughed on the dust, and she loosed a high-pitched whimper of pain. When she opened her eyes, they were clear. "Satsuki…?"

"I'm here," she answered the groan. "You busted both of your ankles and both your knees, but you pulled it off."

"Worth," Ryuuko said with a cringe, gingerly sitting up. She looked her sister up and down. "You alright? Was the landing too sharp?"

Satsuki's eyes flashed. "I'm fine. I'm not so fragile simply because I'm…"

Ryuuko looked down as she trailed off. "S-Satsuki… I'm sorry."

"For what? It's not your fault the power I worked for is so much more effective in your hands than it is in mine, but you saved us–,"

"I made you f-feel vulnerable!" Ryuuko blurted out, "I'm sorry–!"

Satsuki slapped her, leveling her onto her back again.

"I was not vulnerable!" she hissed.

"Okay!" Ryuuko gasped through the pain, trying not to focus on her jarred legs. Now wasn't the time to point out that the violent reaction, the renewed aversion to acknowledging weakness, told her exactly how shaken the long-haired woman was. "You weren't. It's alright now, sis."

Satsuki's anger deflated; she knew it was sorely misdirected. She shook her head. Why was she being comforted by the one who had just suffered so intensely – who was in a pitiful state herself? "…I'm sorry," she said, sober. "About your frien– about Shin'yuu-san, as well."

Ryuuko's expression fell. "I-I've… killed a human now, huh? Not a cluster core – a 'Humanform Battery' – either. In the end, he was a thinking, breathing human again. I wouldn't have batted an eye at killing Ragyou, and I helped you kill 'er, but n-now I've killed a good human…!"

Satsuki frowned, but her eyes offered a rare bit of tenderness. "And what would he think, if he saw you regretting that now?"

"Huh?"

"He died with his god standing right in front of him, in flesh and blood – his own god, crying and snotting and despairing just for him." She stroked Ryuuko's cheek, brushing a tear streak away. Ryuuko was listening attentively, looking up at her – this ridiculously powerful creature, that had blown a hole in the mountainside and sent half of the village above piling itself into a heap in the lake in front of them – so battered and broken up inside that she was hanging on her sister's words. Satsuki swallowed at a knot in her throat. "And while the part of you that's nonhuman is what allowed you to take him… I would think it's the human part – the beautiful heart you usually try to keep tucked away – that made it a not-so-bad way to go…"

She shushed as the line of Ryuuko's lips wrinkled. Long fingers pushed the red lock of hair out of her face. She hesitated a moment, meeting the watery eyes that shut above the strained grit to Ryuuko's teeth; then she leaned down, pressing her lips to Ryuuko's brow until she felt the furrow of it go smooth. Eyes shut, she lowered her head, resting her forehead against Ryuuko's for a quiet moment.

"Be worthy of his faith. We'll keep fighting; we'll find a purpose." Her eyes opened, finding Ryuuko to be looking tranquilly up at her. "You'll keep fighting, won't you, Ryuuko? And as long as you are, I will fight alongside you. You know that."

"Fighting… but what can we really do, in the end? The Life Fibers… they're strong. He said it while he was a monster…"

"We can do something, Ryuuko," Satsuki insisted, urgent. "With our power together, we have to be able to do something!"

Ryuuko blinked at the confidence in her tone; she saw the wheels turning in sharp blue eyes. "What're you thinking?"

"They created a Humanform Weapon to observe and attack us. They tried to sway you, but were fearful when you used my power…"

"Yoriyoshi said it – his Life Fibers were scared when he first met me!"

"And the Kiryuuin have some evolutionary advantage. These are the things we know. We might not know what exactly that advantage is, or what the Life Fibers want from you, but we do know that they also consider us dangerous! Do you see it? If they're adapting specifically to stop us, and turning weapons against us, we must pose a threat to them!"

"And that threat… is probably hidden in something they want to keep us from learning, at all costs. But it's there…" She brightened, hesitantly. "So you're saying we are doing something? Not just hacking up Life Fibers while we watch the days go by?"

Satsuki nodded grimly, baring her teeth in a stern smile. "Yes – We are not ants! We do not march to their tune, or exist at their mercy in this world. You and I have the power to break this game, and their rules!"


世界の果てに

-Evolution-

End

END OF PART I

A/N: Yay! If we were to split the story into two parts, I'd say this is the midpoint; otherwise, in terms of story arcs we'd have the sort of reflective/daily existence arc we started on, then this… Shin'yuu arc? Evolution arc? Well, now that one's wrapped up as well.

No one guessed, but here's the namesake answer:

親友 (shin'yuu) = dear friend; 自由 (Yoriyoshi) = freedom. Etymologically, Darwin=dear friend; Charles=free man. Bit of a stretch on the given name meanings matching, but I thought it was a cute idea.

Expect a bit of a hiatus (in terms of the weekly update schedule) here. I have a couple more chapters typed up, and more written, and the rest outlined... but I want to at least finish writing out the story before I continue posting, to make sure I've got everything tied together the way I want it. Once I resume posting, though, I'll probably plan for it to be on a weekly schedule from the start of Part II to the conlcusion.

Thanks for reading this far! See you next time, and don't forget to review!

-Kurouga