So I finished the three most interesting endings of Devil Survivor 2 and all the bonus bosses, but then Devil Survivor 2 made me think of Evangelion (there are a lot of references), and I watched the two Rebuild movies and that reminded me of an old concept I had for a story...

But the vacation from regular updates is now officially over.


Leviathan practically dumped Harpuia at Lark's feet. "See what you can do. Not you," she told Ciel, putting her arm in front of her when she started moving towards the Guardian. "I need you to do whatever it takes to wake Zero up."

Ciel only looked at her for a moment, long enough to see that the Guardian was indeed serious. "Okay," she said, because what else could she say, in the face of Omega? She only had one duffel bag with her, filled with more papers than tools, but if it had to be done, it had to be done.

A teleport beam had both Leviathan and Copy-X whirling around to face the newcomer, who had the sense to place them between his arrival point and Omega.

"Good timing, Dr. Cerveau. Go over there and Dr. Ciel with Zero," Leviathan ordered, hefting her spear again and starting to resume direct control of the nanites in her water and ice supply.

"What?" What in Light's name?

"Are your audio receptors malfunctioning or are you questioning my orders?" she barked, because it had damn well better not be the second, not when Phantom and Fefnir were out there.

"'Over there?' Stay here? Keep Dr. Ciel, an unarmored human, on a battlefield? Absolutely not!" Cerveau's eyes flashed behind his orange protective visor. That was reploid for 'I am really pissed, pissed enough to risk a Zan'ei knocking me out before I can start a fight in a crowded area.'

"Are you flaring your optics at me? You have your damn orders!"

"Cerveau, she's right, if we go back to Neo Arcadia there'll be all those walls in the way," Ciel tried to say reasonably, "We can't afford paper and gold isn't very different from yellow." Copy-X winced at that, but even Ciel's guardian was too upset to notice such an obvious sign that something was wrong with her.

"I do not take orders from you!" Cerveau said, the part of him that wasn't enraged amazed by what was coming out of his mouth and whose face he was saying it too. "I take orders from Guardian Harpuia and Master X himself! Dr. Ciel is vital to the future of Neo Arcadia, and yes, I can see that the city's immediate survival is in danger," from one glance at that battle, "But I have my orders! Repairing Master Zero can only go faster in a proper lab, with proper equipment!"

"Ignorant newbuilts should…"

Clang.

Lieutenant Elpis had caught Cerveau's hand. She only gave him a narrow glare before his arm was pinned behind his back and she'd caught the other one. "How dare you!" Trying to strike one of the Guardians!

Leviathan took a deep breath, and another, as though her processor needed to be air-cooled. "Let him go, Lieutenant, I was also out of line. Dr. Cerveau, there is nothing in Neo Arcadia that will help wake Zero up. No equipment that will work any better than portable hand-scanners, elves and a trained eye. And I do not have time to explain things like that to you. Do you see that?" She pointed at mud-streaked armor. "That is my brother, my twin, who I have known several times longer than you have been alive, that I am leaving here and ordering both of you to ignore him and work on Zero, when for all I know he was hit with something corrosive that is already halfway done eating his processor from the inside. That is how serious this is. Do you understand me? If we fall here, there is nowhere you can run to where Dr. Ciel will be safe. If you want her to live, then damn well do what you're told. Do you copy?" That last question was asked with false cheer, through a false smile that was more teeth than anything else beneath diamond-hard eyes.

"Yes, Guardian," he said, suddenly ashamed. He should have known, should have trusted that the Guardians wouldn't just throw away Dr. Ciel's life, that there had to be some danger great enough to justify an order that sounded so insane.

She didn't even bother to acknowledge his acknowledgement before she spun back around and leapt onto ice that rose to meet her feet, running towards the battlefield without letting her heels touch the ice, allowing only the minimum of friction necessary for traction to slow her pace.

It was only then that Copy-X registered that someone from the Zan'ei had accompanied Cerveau: he'd hung back during the argument, as shocked as the rest of them but he hadn't dared try to restrain Dr. Cerveau the way Elpis had, not when Dr. Cerveau was acting on Master X's orders.

Copy-X's orders, the young reploid realized. His own orders: that was why this scene had just happened. Someone had almost hit General Leviathan instead of listening to her when it was so important because they thought the orders of a fake were the real thing, trumped those of someone who was real, who understood the situation… No, he shouldn't blame himself for all of it, he knew. It was clear that Dr. Cerveau cared a lot about Ciel, which made him happy except he couldn't take the time to speak with him now, not when they needed to get to work.

"There's no response," Lieutenant Lark reported: to him, since Guardian Leviathan had left. "I don't think General Harpuia is wounded: if I can't fix it, it isn't something that an elf that heals physical damage could help, either."

"Thank you for trying," he told her semi-automatically, trying to calm her down a little and reassure her that it certainly wasn't her fault. "See if you can help Dr. Ciel." So she had something to do.

"Yessir," she said with a quick salute that was closer to the Zan'ei's than the Rekku's as Copy-X turned around halfway, so he could look at either Zero or the battlefield by turning his head.

X's sensors showed him where Judge Cubit was, and he hoped she knew that Master Zero's systems likely did the same – but why would they? Zero had never fought Judge Cubit, so he might not have decoded her stealth system, and there was no reason for Weil to give Omega the counter to it when he might need to recapture Omega. A stealth unit had the best chance of getting close enough to a berserk giant. Copy-X hoped that Cubit remembered when Master X had started seeing through her illusions, so she was ready for Omega to start doing the same.

Omega leapt into the air after recovering from the crash, and his target was clearly Guardian Phantom, or that was what Copy-X thought. Fefnir could fire into the air all he wanted, Leviathan and Cubit doing the same with their weaker shots, but if Omega took out their air support, held the high ground?

Copy-X still had wings, but after seeing Schilt hit casually to the ground like that, how Cubit had to put herself in danger and spend those elves to recover him? For all his training, Copy-X still felt like such an amateur compared to the others out there. Phantom barely used his armed phenomenon form, but he was still holding his own with a combination of anti-air fire and the Cross Star, four blades joined at the hilt that hummed through the air when deployed from his body and were clearly remote-controlled, since their trajectories didn't make any sense otherwise. That was a good idea, it meant Omega had three things in the air to keep track of, and one of them was smaller than the others.

Even though Copy-X's seraph armor was very ornamental and so the design was far from strictly practical, it was still clear that the oversized wings of Omega's armor didn't have the maneuverability of either Schilt's combat-tested design or Phantom's armed phenomenon mode, which had almost entirely sacrificed humanoid appearance for a strange sort of maneuverability, sometimes spinning like the Cross Star or helicopter blades to hover and sometimes using the jets on either side of each of the wings to either move like a more conventional plane or abruptly change the angle or direction of the spin, sending it back the way it had come as Omega sped past it and had to spend precious fractions of a second stopping and turning around while everyone else hit him with whatever they could.

Copy-X wanted to smile, because it looked like they were doing very well, and he'd like to think that, but he'd learned a little too much history. In a drawn out fight or a stalemate, wouldn't Omega win eventually, by virtue of that system, the one Copy-X himself supposedly had? And Omega had placed himself out of reach of the heavy hitters. Harpuia was the master of air combat and he was already down. Omega hadn't taken to the skies until he was.

That was smart, which wasn't very reassuring. If Harpuia was up there while Omega was maneuvering like a lame duck, Copy-X was sure that those wings would already be scrap metal, pieces pared away by Harpuia's sabers until Harpuia kicked him to the ground, into the waiting arms (meaning weapons) of Fefnir and Leviathan.

Phantom had to know this too-And as soon as Copy-X thought that was when Phantom moved in, teleporting away his armed phenomenon mode to return to his normal body. None of the momentum of his other form carried over, and dash boots let him easily make the jump to Omega's back, kunai plunging into the front of where the right wing met the body armor, using the angle there to guide his blow as his other arm wrapped around Omega's throat for purchase.

Audio receptors turned up to max, Copy-X thought that despite the distance, the noise of the wind and the noise of the battle he heard a laugh that seemed familiar somehow.

Phantom fell. At first it seemed almost deliberate, since his arm had removed itself from where it was braced under Omega's jaw, but it was clear as his fall continued and he didn't do anything to change his trajectory or try to survive the fall that if he'd tried to get away from Omega to avoid whatever knocked Harpuia out, he hadn't made it in time.

Schilt dived forward to catch him: Copy-X couldn't see what happened, but after he did both of them went tumbling to the ground. Leviathan had an arc of ice over their heads a moment after the two of them hit: she must want to give them an instant's protection, a bit of breathing room to see if either of them could catch their breath and recover, move away to present a less tempting target before anyone else got close to them. Cubit was already running under it, though, and…

The air suddenly got colder, and Copy-X saw Leviathan physically shove at the air with her hands, which she never did to control her ice since that would be telegraphing her moves, to sweep away the barrier which hid Phantom.

Just in time to see Phantom withdraw a kunai from between Cubit's eyes, to watch her body slide down off the other buried in her stomach, the blade slitting her torso open all the way to her throat as she did.

Behind Copy-X, the hum of a beam saber's activation, the whine as it carved its way through alloy with an energy-disruption surface and Lieutenant Elpis' indeterminate noise of surprise, somewhere between a gasp and a scream cut off too quickly to be a scream were almost simultaneous.

Trained reflex made Copy-X brace his feet on the ground and fire his thrusters behind him: that was all that saved Lieutenant Lark from meeting Harpuia's other beam saber.

The Guardian had raised his arm up to protect his optics, and Copy-X saw the burn on his gauntlet quickly heal over, burnt black returning to sage green.

But the black was now more appropriate, because the Guardian's optics were red, Copy-X saw with horrified eyes as Lieutenant Lark screamed.

Maverick. But the Guardians… This shouldn't happen! Not to Master X's children! Or that was what Copy-X wanted to think, what his emotions were screaming at him, but he knew. Master X had lost plenty of children to the virus, hadn't he, before the creation of the Mother Elf.

All of them, in fact.

But they had cyber-elves here, and some of them were even coming in response to Lark's scream. They could fix this, they could cure this now…

Harpuia, instead of taking advantage of one of the many openings Copy-X was sure he was offering spread his wings and jetted towards the battlefield, towards where Leviathan was trying to hold off an Omega who had dismissed the not-entirely-useless armor while Phantom ducked and weaved his way through the fire Fefnir was laying down to force him to keep his distance.

Both of them. He'd, he'd taken both of them. And Fefnir, and Leviathan, how could they fight their family? How could they fight Omega with two who knew their styles so well waiting, ready to make a move the instant either of them committed themselves to a more effective attack?

Ignoring Lark, who knelt by the side of the fallen Elpis and healed her without using an elf to cure any virus that might be there (did the young Lark know what to do?), Copy-X followed Harpuia's example and spread his own wings, engaged his own thrusters.

Even if he should stay out of this, even if there was a risk one Leviathan or Fefnir might get distracted trying to keep him from getting killed, he couldn't stand by and watch any of them die, or even worse watch them kill their own family, under the influence of the Maverick Virus or not.

He couldn't.