"So, where did you say abelzarc was headed, chaos?" Jr. asked. 'Michtam? Right! Then there we go."

They were all gathered on the bridge of the Durandal.

According to U-DO, that was their final destination, everything would be decided and finalized in that place. Shion felt anxious. She still wanted to have more time, for chaos if nothing else, because it was hard to predict how things would turn out in the long run. Hers and U-DO's plan might horribly fail, and then Wilhelm's plan would fail, too, for some important ingredients for it would be gone. So chaos might even have to sacrifice himself in the end. Either way, there was precious little time they had before all hell would break loose.

Shion signed. It was her own fault. She'd wasted so much time avoiding chaos after she found out about his suicidal plan. She still felt hurt by his decision, still felt betrayed, but right now she'd rather spend more time with him feeling hurt than no time at all.

"Hey Shion," Jr. said, walking up to her. "I just wanted to say… Just in case, that I understand why you did that. It's ok. If you didn't, I'd have to do it myself anyway, so it's fine."

He turned his back and walked away as fast as possible. Jr. wasn't one for personal topics. Shion knew well what he meant to say, though: he was no doubt speaking about Albedo's death by her hand. Apparently Jr. felt the end was near, too, and didn't want to leave any bad blood between them. Shion felt good. It felt incredibly good to be forgiven.

"What's happening with the planetary disappearances?" Jin asked loudly, so that everybody on the bridge could hear him.

"Approximately half of all Galaxy Federation planets have disappeared at this point."

"So…" Ziggy addressed chaos. "Your assumption is that Abel's Ark is causing this phenomenon? Where is it now?"

"It appears to be landing on Michtam," Shelley informed them. "And oh joy, Merkabah is landing along with it!"

"What?! My father's…" Jr. exclaimed. "What do you guys think my old man is up to?"

He aims to defeat me, U-DO said. That unfortunate, misguided creature.

Naturally, Shion didn't repeat U-DO's words out loud. So, Dmitri Yuriev was going to fight U-DO, or rather try to. He was doomed to fail. She wished that instead of having to deal with him, she'd spend some time with chaos. And Jin. She wanted some time with her brother, as well.

They'd be landing on Michtam in mere minutes, so there was little time. Gesturing for chaos and Jin to follow her, Shion left the bridge and quickly walked to the lounge nearby. It was empty.

"Now, you two," she said. "It's not much, but I want to convey my feelings to you."

First, she gave chaos a hug. Jin raised his eyebrows but remained silent. He didn't want to steal the little time they had by asking what chaos did and whether it was worth it to make up with him. He felt a brotherly urge to do that, but managed to suppress it for the first time in his life.

Then Shion gave a hug to Jin, whose face showed so much shock that chaos smiled.

"Shion…" Jin mumbled, trying to find correct words.

"Shut up. Are you going to hug me back or what?"

And he complied with a joyful heart. The wall between them as sister and brother was completely taken down. Shion hoped that it wasn't their last moment together, that they'd have time together in future to behave like a normal family, like a real family that she foolishly thought she didn't have for such a long time.

"So, here we all are," she said, taking a few steps back. "Only one member of the family is missing. What she did was noble beyond words, but so painfully meaningless…"

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to call out to KOS-MOS.

My condolences, U-DO replied. It was the only thing that heard her call.

"Allow me to explain myself, too," chaos said. "We've talked about kindness a lot, what it means and how it should be practiced. But apart from kindness, there is responsibility. Sometimes, when you need to take responsibility, you have to inevitably hurt someone you love."

Shion heard the confession in it. She'd be happy to hear it at any other moment, but right now it was so bitter.

"It's not like I believe myself to be perfectly right," chaos continued. "I feel like a piece of shit for having to hurt you. If I continued to live, I'd probably regret this to the end of my days. But that's my decision."

Shion faced him.

"And I think that our conversations about kindness were meaningless," she shrugged. "What you want is kind from the point of view of the Gnosis, but it's plain evil from my point of view, because it hurts me. Kindness is relative. It's neither true, nor false. There's no good and evil in this world, everything has too many sides. You think what I want is wrong and evil, too, but I believe it to be the best way."

"I suppose that's a personal topic I wasn't privy to?" Jin inquired.

"Yes."

It was too late to inform him about everything. They had no time. Shion regretted this. She realized now that chaos was right when he told her that sharing things meaningful to oneself drew people closer. Too bad she hadn't shared anything like that with Jin.

"I have a confession to make, as well," she said. "KOS-MOS taught me how oblivious I was. I failed to see my own family, to recognize its importance. And focusing on romance didn't ultimately make me feel any better. But I have to thank chaos, he fulfilled my dream about perfect love and then shattered it. Which forced me to accept the truth that a real romance could never match a dream. Not a dream about an eternal perfect love. It could always be shattered, after all. I realize now that all bonds, even romantic ones, are unsteady and unrealiable. And that's good, in its own way. If you want love, the least you can do is collect more people to love than less."

She smiled, turning to face Jin.

"But on top of that, I realized that perhaps there's something more to life than love."

"Like what?" Jin asked.

"I haven't discovered it yet. But I have a feeling that by the end of this day I might."

After landing on Michtam, the group didn't know where to go at first. The Ark and Dmitri Yuriev's Merkabah were supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity, but it wasn't entirely clear where.

"Where's my father?!" Jr. said, addressing no one in particular.

"You should be able to tell," chaos said patiently. "Just search. URTVs are connected to each other, right?"

"Gaignun…" Jr. said with a sense of great longing.

He turned around a few times, then stopped and pointed his finger in a particular direction.

Dmitri Yuriev was waiting for them. He stood in a comfortable manner in front of a mecha that looked familiar to Shion. The mecha was holding the Zohar in its grasp. And this is why she had to go to Yuriev: she needed the Zohar.

Shion knew perfectly well where she'd seen that mecha before. It was fighting KOS-MOS back at the Fifth Jerusalem, during that demonstration test. It was the mecha with the U-DO waves, piloted by Abel, the mecha that went out of control.

"Finally you made it here," Yuriev said calmly.

"I'll kill you!" Jr. declared, not calmly at all. "Hey Gaignun, can you hear me?!"

"Why are you doing such a stupid thing?" Shion asked.

"I imagine you've heard from my son," Yuriev said. "I'd made a contact with U-DO and was implanted with inescapable fear…"

Why was I not? Shion wondered.

"I trembled before that fear. I struggled against it and ran. But eventually, I realized that this fear was in fact what shackles people to the human realm. To overcome it requires the power of God."

Shion shook her head. She could see where Albedo's penchant for drama came from. Albedo had more flair, but the way Yuriev talked sounded almost like a copy of Albedo. Or rather like a prototype, in this case.

The fear was the result of him seeing the vision of the future, U-DO explained helpfully. Back then I could only see the end of the world…

Shion sighed. But of course! Only now that Shion could communicate with U-DO in an unprecedentally 'full' way it could see something else instead of the end of the world ahead of them. Because of Shion and their incredibly powerful connection, U-DO had hope. But Yuriev was unlucky and communicated with it earlier when all it was anticipating was death for this world.

"I sought divine power and this is why I came to Michtam," Yuriev continued explaining. "I will obtain Zarathustra that sleeps on Michtam and ascend to a higher plane, to the realm of God!"

"What makes you think," Shion asked skeptically. "That U-DO is going to allow you to ascend to its realm? Do you really think you can use its power without its agreement?"

Yuriev frowned. His body became suddenly clouded by pink fog.

"You're infected!" Jr. said with disgust.

"Nonsense! This is power!"

Shion felt sorry for Yuriev. He was ultimately just driven to the wall by the fear of death. U-DO had implanted him with its knowledge about the end of the world during their contact, most likely subconsciously, and all he's been doing from then on was just trying to find a way to survive.

His plan made sense to Shion. If he'd become like U-DO, an immortal god, he'd never have to fear death again.

The fight broke out, and Yuriev proved to be extremely resilient. Shion was standing back, she didn't really want to fight him, she was observing the mecha behind him instead and waiting.

"You're just wasting your time," Yuriev said in about twenty minutes of fighting. "My power is infinite. As long as I have the Zohar, this power will never fade!"

It was time. Shion concentrated on the mecha that was holding the Zohar and Abel within. She closed her eyes for better focus and inhaled deeply.

"You're way in over your head!" a familiar voice announced dramatically. "That power is not yours."

Shion opened her eyes for a fraction of a second. Albedo, right on time, very punctual. They were allies now, at least for as long as she was pretending to be Wilhelm's ally. She focused on the mecha again to fulfill her part of the bargain. Go out of control once again! Release the Zohar!

"Albedo?!" Jr. exclaimed. "You're alive? But you… I thought that you…"

The mecha flinched, and the Zohar fell out of its grasp. That was Shion's doing. The Zohar flew upwards into the sky and disappeared into thin air. That was Albedo's doing. He has sent it to Wilhelm and now Yuriev's source of power was gone. The two made a good team.

Yuriev was furious. Shion shook her head. She knew that the URTV brothers were going to kill him, and she didn't like it, but who was she to change his destiny and oppose her friends' will? Yuriev was possessing Gaignun's body, after all.

She glanced at chaos, wondering if she really was right and there was something more to life than love. He looked back. She would never be able to forgive him while what she was searching for was 'perfect love', for their relationship was far from perfect, like any real relationship in this world. And he was far from perfect, like any other being in this world.

She glanced at Jin, who was staring intensely at Yuriev. Her brother wasn't perfect, and he didn't need to be. Not any longer. Real beings had flaws, that was what Shion has learned, but those flaws shouldn't be the end of the world. Acceptance of these flaws and forgiveness, however, rested on the premise that the dream of a perfect relationship was not as important as to eclipse the reality of it.

What was it that made the idea of eternal flawless love so wrongly, twistedly important? Shion knew in her heart that the explanation was simple. Chaos had explained it long ago, when he talked about infants who didn't receive enough love. There was a time when she didn't receive proper love, for whatever reasons. And now she was overcompensating for it, looking for love that would be eternal. But she didn't want to be one of those miserable people caught in a cycle of looking for something that didn't exist.

"Everyone, let's go!" Shion said, waving her thoughts away. It was time. "Jr. and Albedo can deal with Yuriev on their own."

Ziggy nodded authoritatively, and they moved on. Shion knew that in this iteration of the world they were close to Wilhelm already, and T-elos would meet them in the next room.