Ai moved the controls to approach the enemy mechs. Although the simulator also covered the Getter's weight. Feeling all the raw tons of the combined mecha filled her with astonishment. Each step was a small earthquake that resonated in the cabin. It was a building that walked, a building that flew, a building that punched.

From the database, they enemy models were the equivalent of "standard infantry". Their designations reflected what they looked like to human eyes: mechanical creatures that resembled loosely certain Earth animals and myths. From a tactical point of view, only the Dragon posed a bigger threat because of its firebreathe. Given they were in the way between Jellyfish, that meant they were the support and the Jellyfish was the highest-ranking officer among them. She needed to get through them to get to their boss.

A port opened at Ultimate Getter's back, right behind its head. Ai moved the Getter's hands to grab the Battleax. It was Getter's melee weapon and the one that consume less energy. When charged, it could make deep cuts. Piloting the combined form alone consumed more energy, so she needed to conserve it.

She knew that, with one pilot, the efficiency of the Getter engine could reach 50%. As trained and enhanced she was, she couldn't manage all aspects of the mecha alone. So, the efficiency dropped exponentially if the Getter was piloted with just one pilot. She needed to make quick work of the enemies.

And yet, the engine's efficiency barely reached 10%

"Sapphire, why is the engine only at 10%?" the voice from the command center called her. Again, it's from that girl whose name she's always forgetting.

"I am conserving energy. I believe I can defeat them at 10%."

She lied.

"Be careful, the Beetle is approaching."

Swinging what was essentially a three-store pole, Getter slammed the ax at the incoming mecha. It stopped and crouched, letting it hit its carapace. Ai tried again, but it only made a loud thud sound.

It gave enough time for the Dragon to charge its firebreathe. A hot orange beam fired from its mouth. Ai noticed in time to dodge it, almost hitting Getter's right arm. The beam hit a building behind. Ai thought the Getter would be quite damaged if it received a direct hit, but not enough to destroy and kill her.

Bummer.

But the shots didn't end. The Centaur picked a mecha handgun of its own, that resembled more like a hot glue gun. It activated a frill around itself. The frill glowed purple and shot at the Getter.

Ai felt the cabin trembling. Grunting, she twisted the hand controls. The Getter covered its face with its arm. Pressing a button, a port on its right shoulder. It fired a volley of missiles. The Beetle's carapace glowed and all missiles were attracted to it. The missiles exploded and, from the dust, the Beetle got up almost unscathed.

Ai grunted.

"Sapphire, what's wrong with you?" The voice from the command room returned, "In the simulator you'd already taken care of at least two of them!"

Her audience seemed unpleased.

She didn't care.

Glancing at the nearby destroyed buildings, she wondered if she already killed someone. Or let them die in the crossfire.

She didn't care.

The Centaur grabbed the Getter by the arm and slammed it against the floor, shooting it twice. Then it kicked the Getter.

The Getter stood on its fours, while the Centaur slammed its fists on the Getter's head. It slammed the ground, making a massive hole in the asphalt. Slowly, it crawled, trying to leave them.

She knew exactly what to do in this situation. She saw the Centaur was letting its guard open and she could take advantage by charging its gravity center with a well-placed tackle.

But she really had no motivation to do so.

Not even her survival instinct seemed to work.

The Centaur tossed the Getter at Dragon, who slammed at it like a baseball with its tail.

The Getter hit a bunch of nearby colonial-era houses and rolled in the ground.

A litany of words came from the communication channels. Words of encouragement, words of condemnations, pleas of despair, warnings about how much damage she was allowing to the city, begging her to think of the children, cussing in at least eight different languages…

All of that was just background noise.

She removed her helmet, undoing the bun in her hair. She sighed deeply.

The three enemy mecha gathered around Ultimate Getter and started to stomp it.

It felt somewhat funny. Getter's armor, as resistant as it was, would give up soon and she would die. And yet, she couldn't hate them. All she could think was what kind of lies those aliens would love to hear.

Assuming that the shapes of their mechs resembled the pilots, she imagined what kind of songs they would love. The Beetle people would love violin recitals, maybe high-pitched operas, where the singer vied to reach high notes, like an orchestra of cicadas; they'd love operas. The Dragon people would love flutes and other similar instruments, listening to summer-related slice-of-life songs. The Centaur people would love drums, taikos, singing about making strong and loud noises; she could even think of a couple hagane idols who'd love to sing for them. With a bit of adaptation, the lies she sang about would be loved by people of the entire universe.

The trembling became louder, and does the sound of metal folding mixed with the noise from the command room. Ai just stared at the outside, like a fish dying in the beach. Her stars were black as the void. She hoped the void would accept her again soon, because she couldn't stand it anymore. If not…

Time for my exciting next life as a tapeworm.

As she glanced into nothing in the screen, she could see something happening in front of her. A group of people were running for shelter. Among them were a Japanese mother and her two children. They seemed to be twins. They had to be that family she saw that night.

They stood out in the crowd so much, but it wasn't just because they were refugees. No, she could see a couple more with them. She could feel herself attracted to them, like a moth to the fly. Not once her eyes blinked. The noises from the beating became dull, almost mute.

Armored enemy foot soldiers ambushed that crowd. They were mostly bug and lizard people, probably from the same species as the Beetle and the Dragon mechs. The people there threw themselves to the ground or ran away, after the enemy soldiers pointed their guns and let them go.

They were really looking for that Japanese mother and her two kids. She couldn't understand the reason, but that wasn't important. The Jellyfish mecha approached and the soldiers seemed to pay attention to its actions. Yeah, it definitely was behind the operation

Ai had picked the habit of lipreading back then. It helped her a lot when reading the audience's thoughts, since they could provide feedback for quick improvements in her showed. For a moment, all that noise muted as she concentrated on reading their lips.

"Mom," the girl cried, "I'm scared!"

The mother hugged her children. She tried to make a brave face in front of the enemies.

"Go to hell, you alien monsters! Leave my children alone!"

There was a lizard soldier closer to them, pointing a rifle at them. It placed a finger at red spot on the sight of his head. He, then, stared directly at the Japanese woman. She couldn't read the aliens' reply, since their body armor didn't show their lips – assuming they had lips. Either way, they probably weren't communicating in any Earth language.

"Sorry? You come to our planet, threaten our child and then say you're sorry?!" The woman said. Huh? So, the aliens were communicating in a human language, somehow.

The alien said something in return. The woman's eyes widened. Her reply, however, wasn't something that Ai could've ever expected.

"Is your priestess following the right calculations? Numbers are insidious liars."

What did that mean?

The alien lizard seemed to reply something.

"I care about my children more than anything. If you want them, you'll have to go through me. You are so advanced and yet couldn't come up with a solution to your problem that doesn't involve violence. How pitiful."

She loved her children, didn't she?

Ai's eyes widened when she realized she used the word "love". Her star shaped pupils turned white. Did that mean she…understood that others could also love just like her?

She felt an electric current running through her body. Her left hand held the controls tightly and she started typing commands with the right one.

Using Ultimate Getter's left hand, it stood on the ground, doing a spinning kick, in a 360 degrees direction. The enemy mechs were caught off guard and barely had time to react, falling to the ground. With one jump, Ultimate Getter stood up. Its efficiency jumped to 45%.

If I'm going to die again today, I can at least protect that family!

Ai typed another command; targets marked the enemy soldiers. From a small port at Ultimate Getter's right forearm, a flurry of small missiles flew away. They were experimental anti-infantry micro-missiles, AIMMs. They were designed for the Ultimate Getter to deal with enemy infantry; they were like a swarm of wasps that would find their targets and kill them with extreme precisions. They all hit their targets, lodging themselves in the joints of their armor and exploded. They all fell dead, leaving the family intact.

She wasn't done yet. Opening a port on Getter's right leg, a handgun popped up. It was modeled after a Magnum handgun, but proportional to Getter's massive hands, firing getter-infused bullets. The enemy mechs were still processing what happened, so she didn't have much time. She aimed at the Jellyfish and fired the entire magazine at it. The enemy mecha shuddered and was pinned against the building.

Ai smiled. Even if she was going to die that day…at least she protected a single family. She could see them running away, the kids running faster than the mother.

Her smile, however, was short-lived.

A piece of concrete, the size of a door flew up after the Jellyfish crashed. It fell over and smashed the mother's body. Blood flowed from under the concrete. The children stopped and looked back and gave such a guttural scream that even Ai could hear from the distance.

"You need to run." The mother begged, while extending her free left hand.

The children started to walk in her direction, but the mother closed her eyes and screamed with all the remaining strength she had, "I love you, but you need to run!"

The children gave one last regretful look at her and, looking down, they ran.

Ai watched the scene unfold. She realized tears flowed from her eyes. She couldn't remember the last time she cried or even if she ever cried at all in her previous life. Because she realized one thing: that mother had the same star-shaped pupils as her.

She was her.

She was as much as Ai Hoshino as her.

Reading her lips, she could understand her saying, "I did it…I told them…that I loved them…"

With a smile, the life from That Ai Hoshino left her body.

The Ai in the Getter couldn't stop crying. That Ai also loved her children. She didn't live a lie and she had more time to live this not-lie with the Aqua and the Ruby of that world. And yet, it was cut short by something she could never predict. The Ultimate Getter, supposed to save humanity, couldn't save even a single mother who loved her kids. Was she responsible for her death? Or was she able to avoid more two more corpses in that street?

The panel glowed green. If she was outside, she would be able to see Ultimate Getter with her same six-pointed star shaped pupils, crying tears of getter energy.

Lumi held her head inside her mecha. She was this close from completing the mission, but something shot at her. She restarted the system and saw that the shots cut down an energy cable. She activated the repair droids and opened the cabin.

She saw the twins entering in a building. Where was the mother?

Oh, there she was, crushed by a piece of debris. How unfortunate. She sighed. The mission had more casualties than anticipated. How disgusting.

She looked at her teammates and saw Beliobod charging its beam at the Getter. The enemy had its eyes glowing green.

Lumi blanched. Slamming her fist on the panel, she screamed, "Beliobod, fire now!"

The world around her turned into something like an ocean of stars. She felt her body covered in green energy. It did confuse her, but she felt she had no reason to be afraid.

She allowed herself to smile. After all, it was indeed beautiful. The star ocean above glowed with so much life. It moved in a mysterious journey through the cosmos.

A single star descended down to her. She opened her palm. The star glowed a bit less at each time it became closer. She could see it was shaped like a firefly, landing on her hand. She could feel it weighting hundreds and hundreds of tons, pressuring her hand downward. She couldn't move her hand or anything in her body. The weight was so overwhelming.

And yet, it didn't crush her.

The light finally dimmed. The little bug lost its light. A breeze coming from somewhere turned the bug into dust, scattering it through the star ocean.

"Take care of them."

She could hear a gentle whisper coming from somewhere in that realm.

Ai could only learn that she was capable of love in the final moments of her life. Other emotions were still a mystery to her. Empathy was one of them.

Seeing the Ai of this world also learning the same thing, in the same circumstances made her realize that the things she felt weren't something that only she could feel. Other people also had so much to live for, people to live, smiles to happen. All those stars that turned into fireflies and then to dust were in the same journey as her.

Life was valuable. The weight of a single human life outweighed that of the world.

Even in her state, she shed tears.

If life was valuable, it was worth fighting for.

A massive quake happened, followed by an outflow of green energy. Her fists curled. She grinned.

Her tears were gasoline. And she was on fire!