Trailblazer END.3
I jumped back as Leet scrambled around behind his suit. The big red titan shoved its weight forward, pushing Eirene back as it pulled a rifle from its back. A dozen cone-shaped pods shot out into the air and spun their tips toward me. With a thought I released all of Eirene's swords and floating weapons began firing and dodging one another.
Pulling my saber back, I ducked under the rifle as it swung over my head and rolled. Eirene dashed back, the swords covering me as they dueled their cone counterparts. The ground was peppered in small explosions of dust and light but Leet's suit shielded his equipment with its own bulk. I directed a few beams to fire past it, but the energy dissipated against a spherical field of force around his suit.
The head of his suit slid forward and the chest popped down as Leet pulled himself over the back and dropped inside.
There was a lull in weapon fire and I took it to jump back into Eirene. We both closed our suits up at the same time, and he fired his rifle. Three swords crossed and blocked the beam. Three more peaked over my shoulder and fired.
I lifted off the ground, flying back on a wave of light as Leet's shield protected him from my attack. There was purple light spilling from the joints in his armor, different from mine. More of a soft glow than a brilliant shine. It was brighter than the last time I saw it.
"Nice upgrade," I complimented.
"I didn't have it installed fully last time. Wasn't expecting to be attacked."
"Fair, but I'm not sure you're one to talk."
"You're not going to change my mind by talking."
Another one trying to convince himself as much as me? Not sure. He was back in his suit with that annoying blocker of his.
"Of course not," I agreed. My swords zipped up, flanking and guarding me as I looked down at him and his gun-line of autonomous cones. "This is all that's left between us."
He braced.
"Trans-Am."
I burst into motion as the light around me shifted to gold. Leet fired, streams of red beams cutting into the air. I rolled and spun my suit end over end. My swords met the beams that nearly hit me and others fired. Leet let them slide off his protective field and his gunline zipped back and forth to dodge attacks and return fire.
I dropped as his rifle fired, slipping under the beam and gathering a trio of swords ahead of me.
Discs launched from Leet's shield, sliding into the air and projecting an even stronger energy shield in my direction. My swords fired, their beams colliding and blasting outward in one big blast. It struck his enhanced shield and bent around him, striking the ground and building behind him in a shotgun blast of energy.
I blinked, noticing the way that nothing important exploded.
I checked my HUD as I dodged another shot and returned fire.
The GN Field was fluctuating, and the particle density was dropping.
Huh. "Finally got that defense screen working, huh?"
He answered by charging me, blasting off the ground and firing all of his weapons at me. A series of missiles launched from the pods on his back. My swords rolled in a line, firing and shooting down the missiles. The air between Leet and I exploded, and I pointed my hand at the dish.
Five swords circled the one in my hand and a massive beam erupted.
The pink light seared through the explosion, blowing it back and forcing Leet to dodge rather than block.
A series of rods shot from the edges of the dish and lights pulsed through the rim.
My beam slammed into a dome of force that seemed awfully familiar.
"That's dirty," I commented.
Leet flew through the fading explosions and swung the beam at the end of his sword. "Too bad!"
"Using my own GN Particles against me." I blocked and deflected the blow and countered. He dropped his suit with a blast from his thrusters. "Kind of surprised no one else has thought of that. It's not like I don't flood them into the air."
"It's what you get for polluting."
Leet fired and as I dodged his drones swung around to my rear. They fired and I dodged out of the way. Leet fired at the exact moment I moved, his rifle projecting a shot into my path.
I quantized Eirene, teleporting my suit to his rear. He kicked me in the chest with a back kick and his drones fired as the kick propelled him forward. I spun away from the shots, firing in return as he flipped his suit around to fire his rifle again.
He dodged, avoiding a shot I aimed at his rifle.
Then another sword stabbed into it from below, and Leet cast it aside before it exploded.
I teleported again, swinging my swords as I did. Leet raised his shield and blocked the blow but the force threw him back toward the ground. Our floating weapons fired back and forth, putting on a light show that drew attention for miles.
Chasing him toward the ground, I bobbed, weaved, and teleported.
His weapons and mine kept firing, each of us shooting two or three dodges ahead to try and catch the other. Him with Zero, me with my backdoor into his head. Even with his blocker, I could read him a bit. Like a lie detector, picking up the highs and lows.
From there, my reflexes were simply fast enough.
Leet got his suit's legs under him as he crashed into a hillside and barreled through a tree. The trunk snapped and shattered, falling as he retreated from a line of fire I directed at him. I slammed my shoulder into the trunk, blowing it apart mid-fall and sending a chunk of it toward Leet.
His suit's eye flashed, and he sliced the trunk up with the thin beams of his drones.
I teleported directly in front of him.
"So, which parts of this did Zero see coming?"
He blocked my sword with his shield and pulled an ax from his waist.
I shot two swords up from the ground, piercing his shield from behind.
"And which parts did it not?"
Leet kicked me back and ejected his shield with a focused snarl. I batted it away with two more swords, letting it explode behind me and sending a cloud of dirt and splinters over the both of us.
"You're not going to win that easily," he growled, only the mono-eye of his suit visible in the blast.
I imagined he saw Eirene's eyes staring right back. "Not an ounce of this was easy."
I teleported, finding his ax already blocking my blow. A second ax was pulled from his back and I dodged the blow before teleporting away from the barrage of lasers he shot at me. My swords fired back, starting another aerial dance between our weapons as we fired, dodged, and blocked.
In it all, one of his axes exploded as a beam saber projected from Eirene's foot.
He'd dodged the kick and readied to strike, but, "Didn't see that coming, did it?"
To be fair, who puts a lightsaber on the foot of their suit unless they're trying to prove a point?
Leet shot back on the repulsors of his own feet and I teleported again. He turned the wrong way, looking to attack me as I appeared behind him even though I only moved an inch forward from where I started.
He realized too late, barely dodging the beam I fired and spun around to face me.
"I'm dirty?" he asked.
"Are you fighting me, or some imaginary thing Zero has conjured that you've convinced yourself is me?"
His drones flew forward and I jumped into the air. Another volley of missiles launched from his suit's missile pods. I shot half down and simply flew past the others. They'd been aimed at where he expected me to be. Not where I was.
I flew right up to Leet as he scrambled to block.
I didn't strike. I stopped abruptly in front of him and stared into his eye.
"Is Zero still convinced I'm trying to kill you?"
His ax swung from my side. I blocked it and deflected the blow downward. Two swords spun through the air and cut the head from the haft, leaving the edge to clatter to the ground.
"Or, are you convinced I'm trying to kill you, and is that convincing Zero?"
"Shut up."
"I like to talk. Sue me."
I kicked his suit, knocking him back as I threw both my arms back. A second sword flew into my free hand and others swung in front of me to block the attacks from Leet's drones. He pulled a knife from the knee of his suit with one hand and his own beam saber from the opposing shoulder.
As soon as his drones lulled in their fire, my swords flashed and began firing in a wild flurry. Leet and his weapons began to dodge as the hillside was torn apart in explosions, fire, and shattering trees.
I stepped forward. Four blades shot down to rotate around my arms, and the golden light around my swords surged.
"Or did Zero tell you I'd try to kill you in quiet contemplation like a stoic doing what she has to do?"
Leet began to dodge.
I swung my arms forward, projecting massive swords from both of my arms. To the left and right the mountainsides detonated, exploding outward as they were cut through. Leet threw himself upward as the two blades connected and blasted the forest upward.
In the distance, the field around his death machine flared.
It absorbed the particles from my swords, charging itself and powering itself up in an electrifying surge.
Clever.
I had to give Leet credit. Zero was one hell of a prediction engine. It even guessed I'd try something like that and that he could maneuver himself to make me power his own weapon.
"Fool," he charged.
"Zero see that coming?" I asked.
"Yes."
"And this?"
I teleported, my massive sword shifting with me as the mountainsides began to collapse downward into the valley.
Leet jumped himself back into the air as I brought the sword down from his flank, blowing the hill apart into a crater of rock and ruin. The debris struck his suit, battering him aside and sending him spiraling out of control.
He caught himself as he hit the ground, sliding back and crashing into a large boulder seared red by heat.
Leet recovered quickly and stepped forward, locking his eye on me and reading his weapons.
As my light sword faded, I released the blades from Eirene's arms and grinned.
"So"—I swung my swords out and quantized the blades themselves—"is Zero still always right?"
Leet froze for a moment because he didn't know what to do.
Because as many times as I'd surprised him, this hadn't happened yet.
Zero didn't know what to do.
I zipped back, guiding the quantized blades around until they slashed through Leet's suit from every angle. He froze up, caught completely off-guard as Zero gave him nothing and his outer layers of armor were peeled away. My blender of blades cut shallow, not deep enough to really damage anything.
Save one that I drove straight through his knee.
The joint exploded, sending him crashing to the hillside. The drone guns fired one more time, but I met them with fire of my own.
My swords teleported, quantizing one after the other and stabbing into the cones. Each of the autonomous weapons detonated and their beams struck the ground as I teleported myself and Eirene away.
I dropped from above, forging a sword from the particles around me and swinging it into Leet's suit's back.
There was an explosion, followed by a hiss of air. His suit went limp for a second as the reactor locked itself down to avoid a catastrophic explosion.
That was it.
"Fight over," I declared.
Not that Leet just rolled over and accepted it.
He was struggling hard enough to rattle the suit from the inside. It started to power back up, but it was sluggish. Backup batteries. Smart idea, but clearly not working right.
"You are brilliant," I admitted. "I'm pretty sure your power's testiness and your own timidity were the only things that ever held you back."
His suit shifted, trying to pull itself up. The stone face he was using to brace the weight gave way and the machine came crashing down. His voice cursed, and I could feel the tired frustration and the determination behind it.
"Hang on to that," I suggested. "It's a good thing, I think."
I dropped my sword and looked in the direction of the dish.
"Too late," he said, voice raw. "The charge is already—"
"I know."
The lights pulsed one final time, and the dish exploded.
The eye of Leet's suit snapped over, focusing and refocusing as the blast tore through the large structure, shearing pieces off and sending them spinning into the storage units containing the bones of the machine. Further explosions followed, a series of blasts and bombs that shook the ground and air as his work went up in fire and smoke.
Prototype screamed in pain and sorrow.
It wanted to end. It was one of the only Shards that just wouldn't listen to me. Administrator reached out anyway, offering a hand even though we both knew Prototype wasn't ready to take it.
Leet held perfectly still, watching as his work went up in smoke.
"Ho—"
"Another thing Zero didn't see coming?" I inquired. "Do you know how tinker powers actually work?"
"What?!"
"How they actually work," I replied calmly. "It plays into why scientists can't just stare at a tinker-tech device and build a replica. Our powers modify the materials at a level too small for most instruments to detect, but that fundamentally alters their properties. That's why tinker-tech can seem so miraculous and can't be easily replicated."
The dish collapsed completely, its remains coming crashing down into the ground and blowing a huge cloud into the air before one final explosion sent a gust of wind rushing against us. Trees bent and bowed, then cracked and shattered into splinters.
I checked. Still there?
Confirmation.
I nodded. Good.
Along the road leading away from the now destroyed storage facility, Squealer was braced behind her car. Veda had caught the vehicle with Stargazer and held it down as the blast rolled through. Her own avatar was nearby, waiting inside a golden shield with Administrator's avatar.
"How," he snarled. "How did you—"
"I had Green swap some of the components you were stealing before you stole them. Like that stuff you appropriated down in Venezuela. I'd already made changes of my own to it before you ever got your hands on it."
Lisa was correct.
"Same thing I did to your backup batteries, by the way."
I was that far ahead of everyone else. When it came to sabotaging their best-laid plans, anyway. Future was kind of bullshit when she wasn't limited and could tell me anything I needed to know. So long as I got her in the right mood.
"Of course," I admitted, "Future can't predict the future perfectly. No one can. There's always an unknown somewhere or a complete wildcard that can't fully be accounted for. Scion and the Simurgh wouldn't be dead if prediction were so simple. I came close to dying more than once too."
Leet gawked at me, his brain spinning for a moment before he asked, "You sabotaged everything?"
"Well, not everything." I glanced back. "Just all the tinkers you were likely to buy or steal from. The hard part was making changes your power wouldn't notice and fix. Took about five months to work that out. Green's been working non-stop swapping parts and tech out with my sabotaged copies."
"That's—"
"Bullshit," I agreed. "And Zero didn't see it coming, did it?"
Something hit something inside his suit. His forehead against the inside of his helmet I think.
"It's time to start considering what Zero doesn't know," I told him, "and to really think about how blindly you should follow the blind."
In that regard, Leet was no different than anyone else.
"Though, I suppose we're all blind at the end of the day. Don't beat yourself up too much. Anyone who says they know the future is more likely to be lucky than right."
"I—"
"I'm talking to Zero." I turned my head and looked at the suit, aware of something inside it that I couldn't communicate with in any other way. "Tell him what you think now, after all of this. What you really think. Not just what you think he wants or needs to hear… Don't make that mistake."
"You can't—"
Leet stopped, eyes twitching as he started reading something. He had Zero's outputs built into his display and used them constantly. He'd used them more and more, relying on them to affirm his path and conviction. I couldn't read Zero. I wasn't sure what, if any, personality it possessed.
But…
If it was anything like Dragon or Veda, then it was like a child.
A child that began in a dark place with only one voice to bring it out into the world. And that voice—because of how it began—was everything to it.
Love is love.
I watched as the dust settled and the smoke started to thin out.
The machine was completely destroyed, but I did have to be sure. "Veda."
"Here," she replied.
"Fire."
A second later, a hundred stakes crashed through the sky, piercing and shattering the earth and shredding apart anything that remained of Leet's weapons. The sound was deafening, even from inside my suit. The Tierens firing the Gungnirs were in low orbit, pre-positioned to destroy Leet's machine even if my overly complicated plan didn't pan out. No point taking chances with the Shards' lives.
I was glad it worked though.
"You know, Jerry, I watched some of your earliest videos." I didn't look back at him as I spoke. "They're actually pretty good. Real even. They were honest. Just two guys who loved games and wanted to share it with the world. A bit stupidly yeah, and recklessly too. Not always in the best taste… But you weren't real villains."
"Stop."
"I think the world could use more of that, honestly. Maybe it wouldn't be perfect but…" I glanced up, looking at the stars through the sky cleared by the weapons fire. "If more people were content to just follow their passions and be less dickish about things no one can control, the world would be a bit better. Though, maybe drop the sexist humor. Giving gamers everywhere a bad name with that one."
"Shut up already," he snarled. "You've won. Stop gloating."
"And why is it that I of all people managed to get a relationship going before the rest of you? Seriously. How have you not noticed Sherrel? She almost puts Lafter to shame and she actually likes you. What are you doing not spending more time with her?"
I glanced in her direction. She was watching us, aware of my position because of Eirene's light. She was conflicted, but of course she was. She knew plenty about toxic relationships and her appreciation of the person Jerry could be only went so far. No one was that patient, not if they wanted to stay sober and healthy.
"I'll just build another," he tried.
"I suppose you could try." My attention shifted to the figure beside Sherrel. "Veda will stop you though. She's not going to be as nice as I've been about it either. But yeah. You can try."
"You—"
"Don't give up on living just yet," I implored. "You've still got a lot of life left if you just nut up and live it. Could be pretty good too. Mitch doesn't want you to die. Not the piece of him I met, anyway."
The eye turned back to me.
"He said 'shit's too short to always be looking back.'" I glanced over my shoulder, not with the rearview cameras. "Stop looking back, Jerry."
He didn't cry, thankfully. I wasn't sure I could handle that at the moment. I was… Not doing so great myself.
My eyes were fixed on Veda, Administrator's apologies in my mind again. It wasn't her fault. This wasn't anyone's fault. Life just… It's not something you can control like that. You live the life you have, and it's the only one you get. You spend half of it just trying to figure out how to live and the other half trying to figure out how to be happy. So much wasted time, but that's what it is.
"Have a good life." And as for you, Prototype... Maybe just do the same.
I lifted off the ground and floated into the air. Absently, I took a few last quick looks around with Future.
The world wasn't perfect. Sure as hell wasn't going to be close after all of this. Keeping everyone alive and showing the world how terrifying an army of mobile suits was… It left a mess in my wake. Kinue and Javier's report would come out soon enough and utterly ruin David's reputation. Only the most diehard would believe in him after that. That he lost his powers for real this time would give him pity though, and all the remorse from the Titans members who weren't assholes would push the amnesty through.
That would make new problems, but there were people to deal with it. Veda and Trevor. Dinah and Lafter. Orga… Those still stung a bit. Okay, not a bit. A lot. They stung a lot.
With a deep breath, I just accepted it and my limits. I wasn't Jesus Christ. There was, in the end, only so much I could do.
They'd figure it out. I knew they would.
Looking down toward the ground and watching Veda's face, it was a struggle to keep a straight face. I didn't want to go out crying or anything like that. Alice would never let me live it down.
I'd said my goodbyes, and there was only one real choice left to make.
With a thought, I pushed the GN Drives further. They spun into a storm, flooding a new wave of golden light into the night air. They pulsed as the GN Field began to reshape and expand, spreading down into the ground and over the valley.
My mind went back to an old question.
What was a hero?
It felt stupid now. The world was so much messier than the stories that were convenient. Villains were sometimes decent people, or at least, not monsters. Heroes were sometimes assholes with power complexes. People were messy. We fucked up. Sometimes we fucked up real bad, and others paid the price for it. Sometimes we did the best we could and found it still wasn't good enough.
Everyone was the same in that regard.
Everyone was weak. We were all a small piece of something far larger.
What right did any one piece have to make a choice that impacted everyone?
...
I didn't have that right. No one did.
Do it.
Certainty?
Make the choice anyway. Do what you think is right. Accept the consequences.
It's all that's left.
Administrator sailed off the ground, flying into the air at the same time I pulled all my swords to me. They spun, a number stabbing into each other in the air overhead and pushing their tips together. The rest pulsed, absorbing the particles in the air and condensing them together.
I looked at Veda again.
What do you say when there's nothing left to say?
Suggestion.
Hm? Oh. Oh, that's sappy.
Query?
… Alright, good point.
I connected one last time.
"Veda."
She raised her head, lifting her eyes from the ground. "Yes?"
I smiled and activated the burst.
"See you tomorrow."
The light exploded, blowing my swords apart and shredding most of the armor from Eirene's frame. A wave of light rolled through the sky, carrying a promise of a better world along with it.
Over my head, a hole tore, opening a path Administrator immediately flew into.
Quantizing Eirene, I closed my eyes and sent myself through on a stream of light. I followed her, passing through layers of thought that I couldn't describe with words until we got to the far side.
Setting feet on the surface, I watched the ground shift in color to a smooth reflective surface.
Behind me, Eirene collapsed forward, knees slamming hard into the mirror surface. One hand fell forward and caught the bulk of the suit while it tore open. Smoke exploded from the other shoulder, the arm falling free while shards of my swords scattered and sent ripples over the world around me.
We started instantly, erasing Scion's corpse one bit at a time and clearing the black and red from the world.
In its place the mirrors became bright, and flowering.
"Really?" I asked.
"Sufficient?" Administrator asked back.
I laughed and reached out to take her hand. "You really are such a sap."
She glanced away as the other Shards began to look toward us. "Over?"
"Don't get lazy on me now." I grinned and looked down into the mirrors.
Together, we reached for the moon.
"We're just getting started. Let's give them a show."