"Why?" Alex repeated ad naseum in his head.

"Why?" It was a simple question with no simple answers.

"Why?" His breaths were long and pained. His heart was cold, like the thimble steel that had failed to touch it. He almost wished it had now...

"Why?" His body had become a boquet of rose petals, each one being painfully plucked from the stem until only something hollow remained.

"Why...?!" She should say something else instead of grinning like a hunter who wounded their first gazelle. That's all he wanted.

"Why? Why?! WHY?!" After everything...EVERYTHING Yukari had put him through...He still had her to lean upon for support. Or so he presumed...

"No..." He quietly growled in denial. This wasn't real. The blood that leaked from his body. The satisfactory smile she proudly wore. The tearing of his heart into little pieces...It all had to be an illusion crafted maliciously in detail by that damned witch.

Take away that last bit of hope he had, crushed it down to atoms, and then carry it away on the winds of despair. Then there'd be nothing left worth living for. And that...that is why she had kept him alive.

But...While Yukari is cruel, she was not stupid. Someone who had planned things out meticuously to the point of knowing when her planet would be perfectly positioned to intercept him...Wouldn't resort to such a simple deduced facade.

"No...!" It was an accursed thought fully leading to just one conclusion: This wasn't a lie. The wound inflicted upon him was a sincere one.

"NO!" He wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that this wasn't true.

"What's wrong Elemental Overlord?" Shina taunted him with a taut smile while gently gliding a finger along her blood-soaked rapier, "Are you scared by the sight of your own blood?"

It was the same chipper voice he'd grown to love using those rather villainous words so casually before him. Was it done deliberately to soften the cruelty of her act? Or was it just his brain being unable to separate the facts in his head from the reality before him?

Shina was in a slump with her eyes now dried of tears. Alex's silence was hard to swallow, especially as he showed zero emotion. She had been trying to get through to him, and desperately explain how what she did was not her fault.

"Alex, please! I know you can hear me! Say something!" She didn't know why she had to resort to such soured pleas. He should know that any apology from her would be the sincerest of all.

Unless...his mind had become too broken by Yukari to respond to any stimulii.

"Was it all a lie..." His voice's sudden return scared her half to death.

"A-Alex?" She felt a pulse. A dangerous one, brimming with heat, exuding from the boy's body.

"Was everything you said to me a lie?!" His roar of flames scorched the grass and pushed her back, leaving her knees wobbling.

Shina closed her eyes and her smile, once a beacon of purity, now served only to wedge a cold knife deeper into Alex's heart with every word spoken through it, "I wasn't lying when I said I love my sister. She is the most important person in my whole life, and I'd do anything to save her."

She looked down at her rapier without a single hint of remorse as she bluntly explained, "Not was I lying when I said I was seeking the Cosmos Drive to stop Gravitus...But my reasons aren't what you were led to believe. See, Gravitus has held my sister hostage..."

"I can't believe this! There's no way this is real!" Alex howled internally in a mind broken beyond description.

Shina peered up with only a glimmer of sorrow in her eyes, "He told me that if I could get him the Cosmos Drive...and eliminate you, then he'd return my sister to me safe and sound."

"Don't say it! Don't you DARE say it!" He dreaded the words coming next.

"So I pretended to get on your good side so you'd help get me here. And now that we've arrived..." Shina thrust the rapier's tip straight towards the space between Alex's eyes, "Your services are no longer required."

Every word she said was cursed with pain and lies. It was undoubtedly her voice that spoke, but was it actually her that spoke them? Alex trembled weakly as his memories flooded his mind in an infinite spiral. Could every honeyed word truly been a fabrication? Was her childishness little more than a mask for this stage play she'd been forced to take part in? Had even their one night of intimacy truly been a part of this cruel, abominable plan?

"I told you not to trust her..." His darkest thoughts surfaced with incredible vigor, "No one can be trusted but ourselves..."

"Shut up!" He yelled back, scrambling to pin the blame on the obvious culprit, Yukari. But the deeper he clung to that desperate answer, the more his paranoia turned against him, and twisted any logic into the most deplorable extreme.

Yukari was a genius, and her power unparalleled. But the cost of that power was her humanity. This'd make it easy to perform such cruelty without blinking an eye...But to depict Shina's plight of betrayal with such realism just wouldn't be possible.

And if this truly was the real Shina, then he couldn't trust his own memories to tell him what to believe. And if he wasn't able to trust them, then what could he trust?

All he had was this big, two year sized void filled with nothing...Nothing...But his rage. And that rage, unrestrained by happiness, became an inferno whose flames were fed by the whispers of his darkest thoughts.

"Can't have smiles without memories, can't have memories without smiles! That's the Shina Aurora motto for life!"

Memories started to burn away, becoming little more than echoes and ashes in his wake. His head throbbed in response, pounding like it had been set in between a jackhammer and a plate of steel. Then, a deranged scowl began to cross his face...

Shina kept her rapier pointed towards Alex and trembled as she watched him suffer a mental breakdown. The only thing she felt would fix this was if he paid her back and punctured her cleanly through the chest with her own rapier. It was a crazy idea, but it almost felt like nothing else would reach him.

"Please Alex...!" The last tears her eyes could muster dried on her cheeks as she begged profusely, "Take my rapier..."

"And impale yourself on it! Do the universe a favor and go away already!" Shina said with a straight-laced grin.

Alex's eyes widened. A part of his mind snapped like an eggshell, and with a body consumed with the flames of grief and rage he lunged straight at Shina and...

Extra Stage Chapter 2: Bleeding Salvation

There was no time to defend herself. Alex was right in her face, and her expression of fright reflected off his amber irises and hollow pupils. He punched her clean in the chest, cratering the ground beneath her feet and sending her hurtling back through the dirt. Her heels trudged up everything in its path until her shoes were torn completely, creating two evenly sized ten feet long, two feet deep trenches. Her heart raced, making her feel like she was no longer alive.

Alex cobbled his landing on the ground and swung his left hand up before his face, wrenching up the ground dividing the trenches. He broke it apart with a thrust and twisted the chunks into spears, shooting them all at once at Shina.

She crossed her arms and created a thick shield of aura, but the lightning fast barrage led to a couple spears impaling their way through and missing her stomach by inches. She sucked her gut in on instinct and gasped, her skin falling into chills.

"H-He's not holding back...!" Her worst fears had come to be as she looked up past the crumbling dirt, seeing Alex with his arm swung down and his glare scorching holes into her body.

She bit her teeth down and shook her head as her skin slowly turned pale, "He...He's actually trying to kill me..."

Her feet failed her in her retreat, freezing in place like ice constrained them. Shivers rocked her spine as she tried to grasp what was happening before her own two eyes.

The Alex she knows would never end up like this on his own. It didn't matter if Yukari...

"...Yukari!" Her eyes flared open with a quiet rage and a terrible growl, "She did this! Her and that Justek guy have Alex under their control!"

Her legs stiffened and let her stand upright. Alex flung his whole body at her again and slashed his hands towards her chest, cleaving hot scars through the air. She responded by blocking with her rapier laced thick with aura and bracing her feet on the ground so the power of his blows wouldn't shove her away.

She then hopped back and thrust her rapier gracefully through the air repeatedly, assailing his whole body with flickering blows. They'd do no more damage than pins would, but each strike helped repel her a little further back.

"Ghhh…No, I wouldn't. But we can't make a habit out of this, otherwise we're just burning our time away."

Shina did not know why she remembered that earlier memory she shared with Alex, but it reminded her of the kind of person she thought Alex to be.

"You were always so focused. Ya tried to keep me in line whenever I got distracted...And now...you're the one who has lost their focus." She landed on the tips of her toes and swung her arms together to reach for her Drive Bracelet.

"I won't let them have their way with you! Alex, I will..."

"...Kill you myself!" As Shina swung down for the bracelet, Alex tore straight at her, throwing all the ground in his wake skyward before grabbing Shina's left wrist and slamming her to the ground.

He pinned her down and squeezed her wrist tight so it wouldn't budge. The pressure he applied was ruthless and cracked the planetoid's surface, spreading the destruction for a hundred feet around. All the while he looked into her eyes, and saw only stoicism.

"Do you feel nothing?!" He screamed, spraying her with his hot spit.

As her right hand twitched away from notice, Shina chuckled and remarked, "I..."

"...I-I'm sorry." Shina squeezed her eyes shut and summoned her rapier back into her right hand. Swiftly she plunged it into his left shoulder, the blood splattering down upon her cheek.

He grimaced and lost just the tiniest bit of strength, but that was more than enough for her hand to break free and plant itself firmly on his chest. She opened her eyes and poured as much aura as she could into a single pulse to repel him off.

He went flying back three feet but landed on the tumultuous ground swinging away wildly with his arms. Each swipe hurled a stronger gust of wind into Shina's body, throwing her around in a mad shapeless tornado.

She clutched her bracelet under her chest and fought against the turbulence to press the Valkyrie Drive. Everything was spinning. The world and her head most of all. But she had to remain focused. Not for herself. Not for her family. Not for him. But for everyone.

But the tough winds caused her hand to slip and made her touch the Gunslinger Drive instead. The burst of radiance exuding from the power's release DID manage to break the tornado, at the least. She then clutched her two pistols and twirled in place for a bit with a look of surprise.

Looking down to see Alex winding up for a punch, Shina realized there was no time to correct this mistake and would have to make do with the hand she was dealt. She swung her left pistol down and hit Alex with a few shots before he lunged straight forward with a twisted punch that contorted the air around his body and made him strike harder.

Shina got some aura around her hip at the last second, but he smashed through it and dug his knuckles in deep. She spat some saliva but refused to be sent flying. She bit her teeth down and dangled one weapon over Alex's back, turning it into a shotgun. She pulled the trigger with a couple fingers and sent him colliding with the ground with a blast of burning magnum.

Her weapon recoiled into the air, but could be recalled with just a thought. His punch left her spinning around for a bit, but she managed to straighten herself up with her weapons' barrels aligned perfectly with his body. She turned them into missile launchers and fired a full salvo of twelve missiles into his back.

"I'm sorry Alex...! But I know I can't hold back against you!" She could only apologize profusely as she could barely fathom the amount of pain he had to be enduring.

Her bombardment was merciless. His body felt like it was melting with every explosion that consumed him whole. He was stuck to the ground, pounding his fists down and pushing with all his might to try and get back up. His hands were hot with magma, burning holes right through the entire planetoid without so much as a conscious effort to do so.

His back cracked and hunched upright, his spine blistering with a heat unlike that of the sun. Fire raged from his skin like sweat, and fended off the explosions that plagued him. He pushed an inch off the ground, then two, then three, then a whole foot. He could see nothing around him but fire, and the embers of dying memories.

"I-I wish I could judge you better Alex. I don't want to think the worst of people unless there's absolutely no other choice. Maybe that makes me a hopeful fool, but that's the person I've chosen to be."

"Don't want to think the worst of people..." He despised this rotten memory with every fiber of his being. His mind ached with agony as he destroyed that memory whole and concentrated only on what lied before him.

He threw his right arm out and cast away the fire surrounding him, coercing it all into the palm of his hand to summon his sword. He then stood upright all at once and with a furious, one-handed slash cleaved through the three missiles that flew his way using pure power.

Shina looked down at her right arm and watched as the rocket launcher broke apart, the pieces shattering to dust in the wind. She then glanced down at him with a smug smirk, which Alex defied by laying the blade before his face with dark red flames churning around it.

"He's pulled out his sword..." Shina swallowed a very thick and nervous gulp of saliva as her heart palpitated slowly, "...I got to prevent him from transforming!"

"So now you're going to answer ME Shina! Why is it that I care more about saving your sister than you do?!"

Alex used to hold nothing back around her. If something bothered him, he'd say it. If she did something wrong, he'd scold her. His rough and tumble attitude was hard to get used to, but she eventually came to find it an endearing part of the whole package.

That's why it was impossible to believe that the one she was fighting was doing so of their own volition. Whatever spell Yukari or Justek had mesmerized him with, she'd do everything in her power to break it. Because he never gave up on her, so she'll NEVER give up on him.

Alex raised his sword up high and channeled the mighty thunderstorm down into the blade. He then brought it down like a giant would an axe, cleaving into the planetoid. Millions of volts of lightning surged through each of the dozens of titanic lightning bolts he sent down in an arc shaped spread.

Shina couldn't escape, so just braced the front of her body with aura and hoped for the best. But while her reaction speed was great, it was not faster than the fall of lightning, and thus the electricity scorched down the sides of her legs before she got to cover them.

Her body was forced to the ground, her hearing temporarily deafened by this high-pitched ringing the lightning brought down with it from the heavens. But as quickly as it was summoned, it all vanished just as fast. And through the sparks that flickered out of sight Alex leapt through and dove down with his blade, set to impale her through the chest.

Shina laid one hand on her ear and rolled aside. Even then, Alex's impaling strike upheaved the ground around him and sent her rising atop the debris. She rolled off and tumbled around, maintaining a lick of balance in order to engage in a firefight with Alex.

Alex sliced his blade wildly, sending waves of fire soaring after her. She took out her sniper rifles and used their piercing rounds to cut through the fire before they could reach her.

Alex retaliated by taking the broken bits of dirt and flinging them into Shina's eyes, where they lodged into her eyeducts worse than the roughest grains of sand. She squeezed her eyes to try and expel them, all the while Alex was dead set on cutting her down.

But just because she couldn't see didn't make her blind. Her aura senses became heightened and allowed her to feel and avoid the rising slash Alex attempted on her gut with a roll back. Then she pointed her shotgun at his stomach and peppered it with a few shots that continually hit higher.

As she neared the neck she stopped and twisted the shotgun around so the barrels were aimed at his chin. Alex grit his teeth and slammed his head down to shatter the shotgun, biting the tip of his tongue simultaneously.

He then slashed directly in front of him with resounding force to repel her, then sliced around some more to cut into her body with barely visible, condensed wind. The blood that spilled forth was grouped with a painfully high amount of stinging, like she was dipping her wounds in pure alcohol.

Shina tucked her legs in and propelled forward with rocket boots, slipping past Alex's wild slashes with only a cut to her shoulder to show for it. After ramming him in the chest she forced him towards the ground. He resisted a lot, and his strength was definitely greater than hers.

So Shina retreated from the losing fight, only for Alex to dig his right hand into her ankles and throw her straight down behind him. She pounded her rocket boots against the air at full throttle, hurting her knees in the process. Surprising Alex by colliding with his back, she quickly spun above him and replaced the rockets on her feet with jets, setting them both to full power.

She slammed Alex's stomach with a pinwheel of high octane kicks, hurtling him rapidly towards the crack in the planetoid's surface. Once she had pounded him into it, she winced from a painful tremor rippling up her leg, and noticed that Alex's body had hardened.

He clawed at the ground on all fours and had spikes of onyx erupt from his back with a single spasm. The sharp protrusions could rip through cars, and much more easily rend Shina's feet had she not flipped away at the last second.

Upon landing she slid away and peppered him with hundreds of SMG shots. The thing that she worried about the most, beyond being forced to fight to begin with, was just how much Alex could take before he'd be knocked out.

It hit her just then that she didn't actually know his limits. The only person who'd ever beaten him cleanly...was Yukari. The other time she had to fight him, he had turned into something else entirely.

That's not the case now. This was a pure, unrestrained Alex fighting all-out from the start. And this wasn't even taking into consideration his Phoenix Form, which she wasn't even certain she'd be able to overcome with her Valkyrie Drive.

The loss of focus born of worry gave Alex the chance he needed to get up and charge at her. He threw a punch but whiffed it purposely at the last second before vanishing from sight. Shina looked around, finally having removed the dirt from her eyes. Her sight was a little blurred, and her heart pounded like a drum.

She felt a punch come from behind, but it missed again. She turned around and fired some shots, only for another punch to ambush her. This one connected, knocking her down. She landed with a roll and got back to her feet, staring around for any sign of movements.

Then she grabbed her guns and transformed them into laser cannon, firing them around in half-circle motions to create a perimeter of explosions. When Alex charged into this minefield, he was sent flying away onto his back.

Shina quickly flew over him and fired many, many chains from her guns to bind Alex to the ground. Then for good measure, she fired a couple shots into his arms. She knew that once she broke the hypnotism, he'd be able to heal up quickly.

He heathed and huff with breaths of hot air, while his body sweated like he'd just got done bathing in the sun. His condition was terrible and pitiful and Shina almost couldn't keep her eyes open as she stood over him with the gun aimed down at his body.

"Alex, can you hear me?! I know you're in there somewhere! You have to fight back! Don't let Yukari win!"

"win" "win" "win"

"You're not going to win Alex. I've studied all your moves. I know aaaaaaall your weaknesses." Shina taunted with a deliberate playfulness to her tone.

Alex squirmed with his sword in hand, but with a single bullet bigger than his thumb Shina knocked it out of reach. The skin of his palm burned bright red, which he pressed down as he clenched his hand into a fist. He lashed his snarling teeth towards Shina with a growl while trying to break free. The chains budged, then pulled him down harder.

"And you're nothing without your sword." The barrel was loaded and aimed down his face. One shot might be enough to put him down, and what a disgraceful end that would be. Chained to the ground, struggling like a rabid dog.

Alex hated what he had been reduced to. And after all the time he had spent helping this woman try and become something greater than the sum of her parts...The next memories to burn were those relating to when Shina had started to admit her weakness. She had been so honest to him, so forward...And yet it was all just an act.

"I thought it was pointless to try the Valkyrie Drive out when you could handle everything on your own. But I can't think that way anymore…I'm going to try and do my part as well."

How could one person's life revolve so thoroughly around a concept as ugly as a lie? His birth? A lie. His prophecy? A lie. His sanity? A lie. Love? The biggest lie of all.

What did this leave him? A shitty, deplorable title, and all this rage with nothing to focus it on but something not even worth the effort to kill.

So should he just die like a dog?

"You still have me. We...Will always be one in the same."

The darkest voices in his head gathered together and whispered what he wanted to hear. His body went still and silent, with only his fingers twitching slightly. The planet trembled, and before Shina could put her fingers around the trigger the trees she had fondly examined were torn from the ground and thrown at her.

A couple of them stayed planted, using their roots to coerced Alex's sword back into his hand, which he grabbed tightly around the seven triggers and stabbed deep into the ground.

Being hit by that tree sent Shina hurtling off the surface, where the low gravity suspended her fifty feet off the ground. She recovered only to be met with something frightening. A pulse of fire, releasing a sound more subdued than a giants' heartbeat, rippled through time and space.

Alex's body erupted into golden flames and unshackled his chains. The trees behind him disintegrated to ash, and then something even lesser. He hoisted himself off the ground and dispersed the flames with the spread of his wings. His eyes lost most of their color, leaving just the faintest tint of red in his irises. Even the black of his pupils seemed dull.

He held his sword in a backhanded manner and looked up at Shina. She trembled from his slightest movement, which threw his raw power in all directions like solar flares. Shuffling his feet along the ground like he was hauling ten-ton anchors, he scorched the surface hollow and black, leaving nothing in his wake but a wasteland of misery.

His rage had been replaced with something far, far worse: Quietness.

"Let us embrace..." The hollow voice inside his head guided his right arm up like a marionette, and with his fist set aflame he positioned it at the chasm growing in the planet's surface and widened his eyes as far as possible.

"Destruction!"

He plunged his fist in deep and cracks burning bright yellow and red spread rampantly across the planetoid. Geysers of fire erupted, as all plant life burned charcoal black...

Shina couldn't move, even as she would soon be caught up in the planetoid's destruction. For the first time, Alex's phenomenal power didn't inspire awe, but fear.

The planetoid was splitting open, like a balloon filled to the brim. She couldn't ignore this. Her mind was racing, but she couldn't ignore THIS. She cradled her arms against her gut and enveloped herself in a dozen, two dozen, five dozen layers of aura, creating a gigantic chrysallis to hopefully endure most of the ensuing blast.

When destruction arrived, it was swift and mostly silent. The deafening blast ricocheted through the four corners of the universe, drawing the attention of the most keenly aware cosmic beings that hid away.

The chrysallis shattered easily, leaving Shina adrift in a field of burning stone and dirt. She awakened to the sight of golden fire emanating from Alex's body as he floated in the center of the destruction, aloof without a care in his eyes.

He casually flung his sword away and tightened his fist, causing the rocks around him to disintegrate. He didn't breath or blink, his focus was iron clad on her alone. By the time she'd get the chance to twitch, he'd already be on the move, and his attack would hurt.

A lot

Shina readied her guns and braced herself for impact by mustering all the strength she had into her chest. But Alex punched through such a paltry, pathetic line of defense and nearly tore a hole into her gut. Blood spewed from her mouth, and her body felt faint.

How she survived was a miracle, but not one that would repeated. Her body went hurtling through the rocks, tumbling so wildly that she couldn't get a lock on Alex's location.

But that was fine. He'd find him for her.

Through a series of punches too quick for her to see, Alex battered her through multiple rocks.

"T-There's only one chance I've got...to break free!" Shina crafted a single gun and held it close to her chest. When the trigger was pulled, a bright flash went off, seering deep into Alex's retinas.

"GRAAAAGH!" He pulled his head back and laid his hands on the front of his eyes. The blinding pain didn't last long, but Shina escaped in the interim.

"Where ARE you...?!" He scanned the depths of space for the slightest hint of life, hounding every square inch to ensure nothing escaped his sight.

There was a slight seismic tremor coming from a rock floating two hundred feet to the right. He jerked his head that way, finding that she had planted herself on a rock and was attempting to go for the Valkyrie Drive with a slight hint of panic in her eyes.

"Not happening!" He roared before darting at her. She leapt away as he smashed his way through, where a cache of aura mines had been planted in its place.

The explosions triggered his first Soul Shield and clouded his vision. These tactless tactics didn't even humor him, as he brushed the smoke away with a gesture of his arm and locked his sights on Shina fleeing. She fired dozens of bullets his way, but their pace was sluggish.

He stood there and watched them pentrate their surroundings, leaving gelatinous trails in their wake. He could swivel his body around each and every one, with none of them even scraping his fading shield.

He took one step forward, then charged full force into her gut within a second. Her body was sent hurtling away, the trickles of blood she spit burning up into a red mist before his eyes. And for a moment, his heart felt empty, while his eyes twitched with the formings of a single tear.

Shina hurtled through space, on a one way trip to god knows where. Blood trickled from her mouth like a steady river, and her vision was going fast. Space trembled violently as Alex gathered the pieces of the fractured planetoid into giant flaming meteors that would certainly spell her end.

"Al...ex..." She hoped her voice would carry through the cosmos to reach him one last time. She reached her arm out as her guns slowly whittled away to dust, and saw the meteors being flung her way.

"You have to follow those words Shina. If you have any chance of keeping that precious world of yours alive, then you need a bravery as strong as true as those heroes you admire."

"H...Huh?" He spoke to her again, an echo of the past.

Then you can fight with all your heart, and nobody will be able to stop you from saving your family not Justice, not Gravitus not even me."

Another planetoid was fast approaching behind her. Sandwiched between these obstacles, she'd die instantaneously.

"But that requires you to grow up, Shina Aurora. That world of yours isn't going to wait patiently anymore for that."

She painfully swallowed and opened her eyes, whispering to herself one more time, "...You're right, Alex."

Mere seconds before all forces at play collided together, she slammed down hard on the Valkyrie Drive.

Alex folded his wings in and slowly closed his eyes, only to have them forced shut as a powerful fountain of light erupted from far away. It shone brighter than a dwarf star, and spread a pair of feathered wings out that were three times bigger than the planetoid.

They cushioned the meteors from advancing further, and their gentle parting pushed them aside. In the center of it all floated Shina garbed in the Valkyrie Drive's armor, wielding the sword aloft the left side of her body with her eyes shut and her body unharmed.

He trembled at the sight he saw. The flourishing light shone over his body and left his body feeling as light as a feather. Something was...wrong.

"I will save my family. All of them! Cause..." Shina's eyes opened wide with determination as she yelled with all her might, "You're a part of it too!"

"part of it" "part of it" "part of it"

"What...are these voices...I'm hearing...?!" His heart was grasped in a steel vice, viciously tormenting him further beyond what any mortal should be able to withstand.

Shina cracked a terrible...

...wonderful smile...

And roared so loudly that even Alex'd be able to hear it from afar, "Here I come Alex!"

"I am going to kill...SAVE YOU!"

Next Time: Kill the Illusion