Please. Don't Go.

The cycle spins to its end and its beginning. Its long awaited conclusion. Watatsuki no Toyohime—this world has no place for people like you. No world does. Evil child, wretched abomination, born of suffering and forged into the loneliest, brightest star. Return to where you belong—a place far from anywhere. Oh, Toyohime. You poor soul. You pitiful creature. Not even you could have hoped to stop it. No one can.

Daybreak in the city shrouded in an endless night.

The Sun rose above the horizon and further into the sky, setting the firmament aflame with its light. And there, right next to it, was Koishi—growing larger and larger, consuming the territory of the gods with all the conscious effort of a wandering storm. But even she could not block it—the Sun and its rays, illuminating everything that was once obscure—exhuming and presenting terror and horror in that harsh daylight. No one could avert their eyes now.

"Yukari Yakumo…" Toyohime turned her face up to the heavens, as an actor on a grand stage of violence. Her smile radiated pure sadistic intent, and her eyes arched in cruel malice. For a brief moment, her true nature became revealed. Beneath it all, she just hated Yukari for everything she was. For everything she had, but Toyohime did not. A family, friends, love, the genuine affection of the father of her memories… Toyohime despised it all. She let out a guttural hiss. "I am an honorable woman. I will let you have the first strike. I will let you set the tempo of our fatal engagement. If for no other reason than to show you how pathetic you really are."

"You've made a huge mistake," Yukari muttered. She flexed her fingers. Never before did things come into such clarity for Yukari. Here, in this moment, she felt firmly rooted in the present. And everything felt so much more real than it did before—like she had finally woken up from a dream. Or rather, a long, horrible, nightmare. "I'm ending this. Now."

"... There she is," Toyohime growled, a toothy smile slowly curling on her lips. "That's the woman who led an army of monsters onto my doorstep. That's the woman who killed a child to save her home. So, so evil and selfish and awful. The absolute scum of the Earth—and the most beautiful person I've ever met. That's the ruthless monster I can't help but fall in love with every time I see her."

"I'm afraid the feeling is not mutual," Yukari said, flexing her fingers. Behind and above her, the air violently displaced and sliced open. Inside, so many disembodied eyes all snapped their focus to Toyohime at once with rapt attention. In the distance, there was the rumbling and pounding of a distant engine, the clattering and metallic screeching of a wheel upon tracks—the distant memory of a railway crossing's bells playing in rhythmic dissonance.

Toyohime, for her part, knew what was coming. And in response, she couldn't help but smile just a little wider and spread her arms a little further with a debauched expectation for what was to come.

"... It doesn't have to be," Toyohime whispered.

A rush of air, a sudden change in pressure. A passenger train, all of its sections linked together into one long projectile shot out of the gap cut into reality smashed into Toyohime. There was a thud of a body impacting a hard wall of force—and the torturous screaming of steel bending far beyond its limits. But the train did not stop. It flew, forward and true, straight off of the very tip of the Tokyo Skytree, taking Toyohime with it into a fatal freefall. As it fell, Yukari could've sworn she heard the deranged cackling of Toyohime, who was now presented with the fated encounter of her dreams.

Yukari sliced another gap and reached into it, withdrawing a couple of enchanted ribbons of hers. She wrapped both around each palm of her hands and, with a lash of a ribbon, latched onto a handle between two of the train cars. She leapt forward, partially pulled by the momentum of the falling train. Anchored by a knot tied to the train itself, Yukari fell in an arc—above the top of the train and into the open air—before she pulled herself back in, landing hard against the roof of a car.

Without missing a beat, Yukari threw her other ribbon around the opposite side of the train, letting it tighten to whatever hold it could find, just out of sight. As these ribbons were specifically enchanted to respond to Yukari, they tightened, loosened, and moved as necessary—providing the illusion of Earth's gravity and continuous free movement, even as she stands against the side of the free falling train.

It wasn't much longer until Toyohime clawed her way over the edge of the top of the frontmost train, a wicked grin on her face. She looked no worse for wear—in fact, she looked more alive and animated than she ever had before. Like she had spent her whole life dead—and was only now, through killing her enemies with her bare hands, discovering her purpose in life. As golden tendrils shot out of her chest to plant themselves into the train itself, rooting her to its roof in much the same way Yukari did, the two of them came to a mutual, unspoken understanding.

Here and there, Yukari and Toyohime, in a final encounter at the edges of an unknown world—here, they were both at their strongest. Purposes clear and hearts set on a future that did not include the other. Immortal and immortal—here, on a stage of violence, only one of them would be able to prevail. And with no far flung tricks and traps set decades in the past, they greeted each other as equals upon a battlefield of wills.

A dark thunderclap rang out at some indeterminate point in the sky. Clouds were gathering, now. Behind Yukari, and in front of Toyohime, Koishi drew near. Trapped by love and lured into horrible inaction, Koishi couldn't help but cry. But she didn't dare look away.

"Yukari…" Toyohime called in a strained, forlorn voice. It quickly gave way to that true form that festered just under the surface—those gnashing, pointed teeth, that wild, wicked glare. Before Yukari stood not a man or Lunarian. Not a Youkai, or a God, or even a divine spirit. Before her stood a monster, transformed by countless decades of bottled frustrations and concealed madness. "Yukari… YUKARI!"

This was a Kaiju. The very first, and the very last. Before, she was held together by nothing but goodwill and patience—both of which she had long since exhausted. Now, her true form has bubbled to the surface—not much stronger, but infinitely more dangerous. Now, there was no pretense holding her back. No desire for a miracle, no desperate wish of a mother. She was a monster that had traveled far beyond the absolute limits of sanity for a love long forgotten. Now, she was an empty shell—a loaded gun, a sword with a taste for blood, a doll built for violence. After coming so far, she just… couldn't go any further. She wasn't strong enough.

Before Yukari stood the Messiah Type Kaiju. The chosen one—written in an untold prophecy of probabilities. Destined to shatter her bonds and seize a future far beyond the horizon. Destined to die here as a shadow of her former self. Destined—for nothing.

That made Yukari all the evil in the world. The fated opposition to God. A false idol and the end of the world. The incarnation of the evils of humanity. As the cycle spun to its inevitable conclusion, Yukari wondered what sort of person she would be. What sort of person she wanted to be. As she stared down Toyohime's heaving, rabid form, time seemed to slow around her. The ground was fast approaching and yet simultaneously quickly falling away, as if the space they occupied stretched and contracted to prevent the inevitable. Then, it halted. Yukari ran through a series of calculations in her head—thirty seconds to do it. Thirty seconds to kill Toyohime.

Toyohime, on the other hand, was beyond planning or sense. With a desperate cry, she lunged forward—all of her weight and pure brute strength concentrated in that claw strike. As her golden tendrils left the front most train car, it tore bits of jagged metal from its roof in torturous shrieks that had cut through the air as an attack of their own. Those massive sheets of crooked metal gleamed in a harsh red and orange light from above, as if the sky behind Yukari had been set aflame—presenting this fateful encounter as horror in broad daylight.

One of Toyohime's tendrils coiled inward like a predator in its own right before exploding forward, bringing that improvised blade down and into where Yukari stood, slicing a gash into the metal and imbedding itself as an anchor. Yukari weaved out of the way, pure instinct guiding her way as she came mere millimeters from becoming two halves. She gritted her teeth as her eyes shot upwards, toward Toyohime's vicious form.

Toyohime, using the momentum from contracting the tendril that held her to that anchor point, brought down another tendril that was wrapped around a bit of peeled train chassis along with one of her own claws for a second strike—seeking to powderize all of Yukari's flesh and bone and being into mere constituent atoms.

But Yukari was just a little quicker. A split second quicker. She flipped backwards, her ribbons contracting and extending as they needed to keep Yukari anchored to the train's roof. Toyohime struck nothing but air and drove her claw clean through the roof, without so much as a sign of metal warping and collapsing to absorb the impact. She had impacted with so much force and velocity that her claw drove through like a rifle round penetrating drywall. She started to cackle, but then stopped abruptly. Her eyes widened as she struggled to withdraw her claw from the hole she punched.

Yukari leapt into action, not knowing when another chance like this would present itself. She planted one foot in front of the other, her entire body set aflame—every fiber of her musculature coiling and twisting and contracting—winding up and heaving. Then, as with a string cut loose or a spring let go, she curled her fingers into a fist and let it fly.

She was never the strongest youkai. But for a fleeting moment in time, she was strong enough. Eight years of being weak. Of being protected. She wouldn't stand it anymore. Here, she was at her strongest—and she would fight until she could no longer wring anything more from this body of hers. For what was she, if she could not stand on her two feet and face the future with purpose?

Yukari drove her fist into Toyohime's abdomen, directly at the soft patch of flesh directly below where her rib cage ended, and twisted upwards—driving all of the air from Toyohime's lungs and twisting her expression into one of pain and surprise. In an explosion of violence, Toyohime was hit with so much force that she was sent flying upwards in a decisive motion. The ground drew closer. Fifteen seconds to kill. Fifteen seconds.

A gap opened along Toyohime's trajectory, and its companion gap opened below the train. She tumbled and clawed at the wind in a wild fit of anger and desperation, but none of her strikes would reach Yukari, or change what was to happen. Ten.

Toyohime was not so much as screaming, but wheezing, now. After tumbling through Yukari's gap and, once again, being slammed against the front of the train, all she could do was clutch her abdomen and grit her teeth. Five seconds. There simply was not enough time. Yukari, in this exchange, had won so thoroughly that it defied belief. A human, beating a God at anything? Toyohime hated losing. She hated losing more than anything.

The ribbons wrapped around Yukari's wrists snapped back to her person as she pushed off from the falling train. She sliced a gap directly in front of her and tumbled through, from one end to the other. Her shoulder hit the ground first, and then the rest of her body—tumbling and rolling across a meter or more of cold, wet asphalt. In the mere moments it took for the interaction to play out, it had started to pour rain. The sky was devoid of clouds and sheets of gray—in its place was the grieving form of Koishi Komeiji.

Yukari, propping herself up by one shaky arm, raised her head to see in front of her—just in time for the train, her first gambit, to smash into the ground in a brilliant display of violence.

Time slowed. As the chassis of the front-most train car crumpled under the stress of its sudden introduction to the ground, windows cracked and bent, shearing off the body in large sheets—so damaged and beyond their limits that, instead of being clear as windows should, they took on the white and blue of light reflecting off shattered glass. The train cars that followed pivoted on connective stakes that bound each car to one another, causing the train—like a massive serpentine beast slain before her—to coil lifelessly along the ground.

The ground shook. The air around Yukari was split by the thunderous applause of a sort of grandiose violence that only someone like her could manage. And when everything settled, a small pool of blood started to expand from the point where Toyohime should have been. Yukari's breath caught in her throat. As the rain came down even harder, causing her hair to be weighed down into a ratty curtain that obscured her vision, she didn't dare look away. Not for a second.

No. Toyohime. She was still alive.

And as if rising again, the great metal screeching of a tortured beast of Man heralded her return. The front most carriage lifted in fits and starts as the strength of that Kaiju—the weakest and strongest of her kind—struggled, against all odds, to cast that metallic corpse off her. Toyohime had been run through with a large metal beam, twisted from the body of the train, and her body was riddled with shattered glass—wedged in the spaces between her scales. Her entire body bled at an alarming rate. And yet, she still stood. Somewhere in that frame was a near infinite reservoir of energy that would not stop until Yukari was dead. No—until everyone and everything counted itself among the dead.

Yukari could do nothing but look on in stunned silence as Toyohime, who should have been pushed past what her body was capable of, broke into a haunting cackle.

"Yukari… Do you recognize this? Could someone like you recognize something like this...?" Toyohime called over the din of the pouring rain. As she lifted the train car far above her head, it crumpled around the point where its body met Toyohime's claws. "It's the single element that drives all things. It brings entire countries to ruin and creates entire realities unto itself… It moves worlds and galaxies into their fated positions and creates whole new avenues of beautiful suffering. Love… it's the power of love! You just can't kill someone who's in love!"

A thunderclap broke through the air. Toyohime gasped. When she looked down, there was a fresh hole in her chest where her heart ought to have been, blown clean through with a man-made projectile. A dry, shaky voice followed.

"Of course, you can kill someone in love. It involves a gun in my hands." When Toyohime looked up, Yukari had a 20mm rifle nestled under her right arm and a desperate, crazed look in her eye. There was no doubt that Yukari was terrified. Now, more than ever. But there was also no doubt that Yukari was also more determined than she had ever been before. Maybe Toyohime didn't quite realize—but Love had placed a gun into Yukari's hands. Love had pulled the trigger, put a bullet into her enemy, and urged her to fight—even when met with an unstoppable force. She loved Mima. She loved Koishi. She loved Orin. And to that end, Toyohime had done something unforgivable.

"I don't know what the Hell you are, but there's no way I'm letting you get away with everything you've done," Yukari said. She shook, in equal parts from fear and cold, down to her bones—it made her voice come out meek and scattered. But even then, she did not turn away from Toyohime. Even that small act of defiance annoyed Toyohime to no end.

"A gun in her hands, a gun in her hands… Who put it there?" Toyohime's eye twitched. The beast stared down the barrel of the gun. Her mind, so far gone now, couldn't comprehend its purpose—just as a wild beast couldn't understand the hunter. Toyohime started to shout. "I can't see the answer… Why can't I see the answer!?"

She curled her claws, puncturing and anchoring into metal. With a swift, unconscious swipe of one of her golden tendrils, the carriage she held onto was cut from its companions. Then, with a heave, she hurled the twisted monument of metal and glass, stained with her own blood, at Yukari. With every articulation of her muscles, her wounds deepened and tore apart—turning leaks into floods.

Yukari rolled out of the way and planted an outstretched foot to the side with a splash, rooting her in place and steadying her aim. As she exhaled, her heart slowed, and her vision clarified. She squeezed the trigger.

A series of deafening bangs rang out, shattering the air, consuming the whole world, and dealing reeling blows in and of themselves. With each new percussive gunshot, another round smashed through Toyohime's body, boring holes through God-flesh, tearing limb from body, butchering her love. When the rifle ran empty and the action went click, all that was left was the lingering smell of gunpowder, and the clattering of blackened brass shells rolling across the pavement. Then, even after that, the shuddering breath of Yukari's own body, heaving as the initial hit of adrenaline wore off.

Toyohime stood, like a grisly monument of suffering. In that barrage, her left arm had been torn clean off and her face had been sheared in half, exposing the bloody contents of her brain that was hidden behind her skull just a moment ago. Her entire body looked twisted and ravaged, filled with holes and shattered bones. But even then, she stood tall and statuesque, a gentle smile etched into the half of her face that remained. It was as if the suffering and the pain was the point—like she was accepting all the evil in the world as the most grandiose savior and scapegoat of all.

Her heart crawled out of her chest; its golden countenance stained with layers of slick red liquid. Its eyes pried open for the first time in thousands of years. All the evil that Koishi's heart could not take it took in her place, poisoning itself and twisting its desires into something monstrous and pure. Thousands of years of curses and madness were suddenly released upon the willing heart and, just like Koishi, it began to change.

Behold the grand metamorphosis of the messiah. The horror. The terror. The sheer overwhelming beauty of something beyond reason. Like a discarded cocoon, Toyohime's body began to peel away and dissolve—in its place were biological growths that sprouted from her heart. Spines and fibers and eyes and hairs and tissues pulsing with abominable life, bursting from the unseen seems that held her together and defined her as mortal.

The weapons of man would have no effect on this thing, for it was a greater Kaiju—an embryonic God—and that classification was terror itself. There existed no weapons in this reality that could oppose her—for she had sent them all to their deaths. Behold—Toyohime's final gambit, the fifth ace, the revealed attack, the absolute trump card that could not be surmounted by any traditional means—and despair in the shadow of its twisted glory.

An empty magazine clattered to the ground and a fresh one clicked into place. Useless or not, Yukari brought her rifle to bear. She fired round after round into that shifting mass of flesh and scales to no effect. Occasionally, she would chip a bone, or cause an eye to explode, or blast off a chunk of writhing flesh, but it was all a useless endeavor. It ate bullet after bullet, perhaps taking even that meager resistance as food for its grotesque growth.

But Yukari never stopped. She screamed and cursed into the rain, not as a woman with all the world on her shoulders, but as a woman who was once loved.

…

A great lizard stood upon its hind legs and stretched into the sky. This was a Wani of legend, a twisted icon of something that Toyohime used to be. Being about as long as the Tokyo Skytree was tall, the crocodilian monster was an oppressive force that towered over the city. The air itself seemed to thicken and constrict, squeezing the life out of the scant few who still found themselves on the ground. Such was the authority of a God, of the savior, who forced lesser beings to kneel and submit wherever she went by mere virtue of her continued existence. She bared her fangs in a cold sneer—filled to bursting with a toxicity that threatened to spill from the gaps in her scales.

Surrounded by the impurity of Man, she finally casted final judgment. She did not approve. She did not approve one bit. She would not stop until it was shaped into the image of the homeland of her heart—a barren wasteland filled with acre upon acre of blasted terrain, where she could go anywhere and do anything. A pure land cleansed by fire, filled with infinite possibility and freedom, in which she could do anything—anything that she pleased—free from consequences and chains and schemes and all of it. All of it. All of it. All of it.

Come, and be saved, you worthless insects that crawl in the filth of my world. Grovel at my feet and beg for my forgiveness you filthy beings who do not deserve to exist. Praise my name and pray at the altar of my divine form. Live and die under the skies of my perfect world, yet to be realized. This story is, was, and will always be about me—rejoice over every second I allow you to remain in it.

This was a Kaiju. The very last. Before, she was held together by nothing but goodwill and patience—both of which she had long since exhausted. Now, her true form has bubbled to the surface. Now, there was no pretense holding her back. No desire for a miracle, no desperate wish of a mother. She was a monster that had traveled far beyond the absolute limits of sanity for a love long forgotten. She was an empty shell—a loaded gun, a sword with a taste for blood, a doll built for violence. After coming so far, she just… couldn't go any further. She wasn't strong enough.

Before Yukari stood the Messiah Type Kaiju. The chosen one—written in an untold prophecy of probabilities. Destined to shatter her bonds and seize a future far beyond the horizon. All of reality was her birthright—the one and only person who existed in a wasteland of consciousness.

That made Yukari the fated opposition to God. A false idol and the end of the world. The incarnation of all the evils of humanity. The other, the adversary, and the representative of Man. As the cycle spun to its inevitable conclusion, Yukari wondered what sort of person she would be. What sort of person she wanted to be.

The Kaiju grinned, showing a row of jagged teeth grown with nothing but violence in mind. With a low growl that seemed, in and of itself, a concussive weapon—that shook the ground and shattered windows—Toyohime turned her attention toward the Tokyo Skytree and lunged. Her jaws unhinged and, once the body of the tower was lodged firmly in her mouth, they snapped shut—flattening the entire midsection of the building in a dizzying instant. She then pulled upward, causing the entire structure to groan in protest under the massive force, until the tower itself gave in, snapping in twain.

The Wani then collapsed into a more comfortable position, its two front legs landing on the concrete below and smashing massive crocodilian claw prints into the point of impact. Under the sheer colossal weight of her mass, concrete and asphalt couldn't help but give way and shatter, causing her to sink into the foundation below. Now on her four claws as a crocodile ought to have been, Toyohime was driven mad with pure animalistic instinct and, as if led by her predatory nature, began to thrash the section of tower around with a blind, pure hatred.

As she did, the tower collided with the other buildings around her, caving facades inward and reducing lesser buildings to powder. Debris from the rampage was flung about—shards of glass, entire sections of brick and concrete, steel beams and loose furniture. A deadly projectile rain of half-remembered things poured down upon Yukari, driving her low to the ground in search of shelter. It was mostly instinct on her part, to duck her head and fall to her hands and knees. If anything hit her now, no amount of covering her head would prevent her journey from ending with a red puddle.

She ducked into a convenience store, crawling, and scrambling with a vaguely panicked urgency, and vaulted over the counter just in time for Toyohime's tail to smash through the storefront, scattering broken glass and flattening everything inside against the wall. Yukari looked up at the massive impression of a reptilian tail printed into the wall, store shelves embedded and pressed into the wall like embroidery. Had she been a second slower, she imagined she might've been crushed into paint—her very body added to an incidental art piece born from an overwhelming hatred for all things.

She steadied her pounding heart and peaked over the counter. It seemed that attack was purely by accident; already, Toyhime was some distance away, lumbering toward her next inanimate target. It was as if Toyohime didn't even know Yukari was there, and that vicious attack was born from the mere act of turning around. Something so unconscious and natural, such that all living beings treated it as an almost invisible act, had almost killed Yukari. Like a man stepping on an ant, not even knowing it was there.

As the Kaiju stood on its legs and lunged at another building, causing it to crumble under the sheer weight of its monstrous form, Yukari couldn't help but wonder. She had to contend with that? That… wasn't an opponent she could kill. The Kaiju wasn't an enemy that could be eliminated or a threat that could be neutralized. It was a pure force of nature—perhaps sent here from God just to toy with Yukari's heart. It was a final gambit meant to destroy the soul.

A hurricane or a tornado is a terrible thing. It has to be stopped, of course—it's a massive danger to life and property. But could it be stopped? If you took out a stick or pulled out a gun and started shouting into the storm, would it even register in its amorphous mind that you existed at all?

Yukari clambered over the counter and collapsed onto the ground. Groaning, she picked herself up and shambled out of the store. In the distance, she heard the clicking and hissing of a great Kaiju, whose voice alone was loud enough to shake Yukari to her bones and travel further still—reverberating off of the buildings and traveling to the stars. Behind the veil of rain and soot and dust created by the havoc, Yukari could make out her silhouette, plunging its jaws into another building before snapping it clean in half.

No. It couldn't. Do whatever you want—throw your stick into the rain, fire your weapon into the storm, stomp and shout and curse and beg for it to stop—and it wouldn't care. It's a force of nature, sent here by nothing and for not much reason at all for the pure sadistic pleasure of ruining you. When Man gets too proud of the accomplishments they have achieved and too confident in the power they have created, something beyond them will always strike them down.

Yukari collapsed onto her knees. For a moment, all she could feel was the rain pouring down her back, like a steady flow of static seeping into her flesh. Her mouth hung ever-so-slightly ajar and her expression twisted into one of pure stupefaction. What? But she was winning. Just a second ago, she was winning. If Toyohime didn't have another form like this, she would have won; Toyohime would be butchered at her feet, and she could finally go home and forget any of this had happened. What… just happened? Why was this happening to her?

Turn your eyes to the Tower of Babel. To Sodom and Gomorrah. To the Flood. To Ulysses' journey to the World Beyond the Sun.

Be punished for your hubris, wayward child of Man. To approach a God is impossible. To destroy a storm is impossible. Yukari: to be happy is impossible.

Man will always be with the animals. They will always be destroyed by the storm. Yukari: you will always suffer like this.

For anything else to occur would be unnatural—like a Man killing a God, or a storm being broken by a gun, or you being loved.

When the city breaks, when the perfect wasteland is created, when your spirit is laid low and buried where the corpses lie—I shall come to you again. And I shall kill you—Yukari, who I loved as an equal. You will be the last creature to die in paradise. In the World Beyond the Sun. In the World of No People. In the pure reflection of the Wasteland of Consciousness—the distant homeland of my heart.

Rejoice. Your entry into paradise is guaranteed. But you can not bring anyone with you. You alone will be able to witness a paradise not meant for the eyes of Man.

Yukari's head began to pound. Thoughts that weren't her own began to bore into her mind faster than she could cut them out. And, for a brief moment, she almost wondered if she even wanted to. Toyohime was right. After coming this far and completing so much, was it simply impossible for a woman like her to approach God?

That was the cruel violence of the Messiah-type. It was absolute subjugation—where even laying eyes upon the enemy was enough to open yourself to attack. This creature could not be approached by mortals. It could not be approached by anything of flesh and blood or steel. Its power and dominion were absolute facts that could not be challenged under any circumstances. Once you saw her true form, it was already over—for the violence she inflicted was not purely physical. It was an assault on the spirit, on the mind, on the eternal soul itself. This was the antithesis of Toyohime's dominion over probabilities—it was dominion over the concept of certainty. Of inevitability. Of the Promised End that awaits us all.

For a moment, she was back there. Just a child, living in a rotting home, curled up in bed and under the sheets. They were heavy and warm. It was cold outside. It was always cold outside—it fogged up the windows and nipped at the edges of her blanket. Really, if Yukari was being honest with herself, she wasn't planning her revenge for seven years. She was waiting to die.

Night after night, that little girl wondered to herself if anyone would mind if she went to sleep that night—and never woke up again. The answer was always the same, and yet she found herself waking up regardless. Why? By God, why did she wake up? If she knew that it was all going to come to this, with everything in her life destroyed on her approach to God, then she would have never woken up. She would have never made her trip to the Lunar Capital, killed Koakuma, organized this operation, any of it. She would have just slipped back in her bed and slept forever; And when she woke up, she would squeeze her eyes shut and hope that something inside her didn't wish for a future any different from yesterday.

That's right, Yukari. None of this meant anything. At the end of the day, we're all right back where we started—only except, I imagine, everyone is suffering a whole lot more than they were before.

A cackle rattled around in Yukari's head. It was difficult to tell where it came from, if from anywhere at all. The Kaiju in the distance did not even turn to look at the collapsed form of Yukari in the rain. It simply did not care.

Isn't that the human condition? Wasn't it written? Wasn't it fate? That you would end up here again? Yukaaaari? Tell me, Yukari—how does it feel? How does it feel to know that no matter what you do, you will never be able to even approach me?

How does it feel to have outside circumstances contrive a reality that bends just to make you suffer? As if God or the world itself generated a plan purpose-built to end you? Doesn't it seem unfair? Doesn't it drain all the life out of you? Doesn't it make you wish it was all a bad dream, so you could wake up and walk away?

It feels awful, doesn't it? It feels pointless. It feels like you've been sucked into a deep, dark abyss from which you could never climb out. It's enough to drive a woman beyond insanity.

In a world that resolves to kill you, what can you do? What can you do but destroy things? Break toys, break people, break the world itself in retaliation—it doesn't matter. Suck them in and make them understand and make them suffer. That's what Love is all about.

"What a load of bull." Behind Yukari, she could hear the swishing of wind, the parting of rain—punctuated by a metal staff planting itself into the concrete. That voice scoffed in utter indignation. She never did have much love for Gods. "Go ahead and tell her, Yukari. That we're going to kick her ass, that is."

A miracle. Or, maybe not. Who is to say for sure?

Go ahead, Yukari. Take a look. But don't get too excited. Who's to say if she's even real?

"Oh, yeah. I'm as real as it gets." Yukari turned around to see… A green-haired woman, the ghost of someone she used to know. There was an intense expression on her face, with her eyes all narrow and her lips curled into a slight frown. Her form—glowing and radiating light like she was on the cusp of a runaway chain reaction—carried with it that same blind, self-assured confidence in her victory that she always held in her heart. Six massive bat-like wings unfurled from her back like the sails of a great ship setting upon the sea. She fixed her hat with a spare hand and set a resolute gaze upon that Kaiju who was unquestionably her enemy.

Could not be approached? Nobody could tell Mima what could and could not be approached. No one had the right to tell her what she should and shouldn't do. That's just the sort of person she was. If all the children of Man would die trying to reach that point, then she would become something greater than Man. "Yeah. Better believe I'm real—and pissed the hell off. Nobody gets me like that and then picks on my girl."

Ha. Yukari—we'll meet again in paradise. Just remember that you may not bring anyone with you. That world will be for our eyes only. A place just for us—you, me, and Koishi. Even if you will die in the end, isn't getting there enough?

Another low hiss broke through the air—halting and rhythmic, like a low chuckle catching in someone's throat. Through the low visibility of the storm, Yukari could only spot a pair of glowing eyes, somewhere far in the distance, staring at her.

Once I'm finished cleaning up this nonsense, we can all go back to our destined homeland. That's when the real work will begin. Billions of years of pain will finally be paid for in full by blood—and we will truly live in paradise.

The eyes disappeared into the mist, leaving nothing but the distant pounding of monstrous footfalls as evidence it was not an illusion.

"... What a freak," Mima said. An outstretched hand entered Yukari's peripheral. "Catch any of that? Seemed like a whole bunch of nonsense to me. Guess it's no secret that these Kaiju guys are a little on the crazy side."

Yukari didn't say anything. All she did was grab onto that hand. Warm. It was warm to the touch. No—it ran hot. And more importantly than anything else—it was really there.

"Upsy-daisy!" Mima exclaimed as she pulled Yukari back onto her feet. A wide smile broke on her face. Even now, she seemed untouched and unbothered by the rain—almost as if the water droplets evaporated the second they touched her. "Phew—you are heavier than you look."

"... How?"

"Hm? Well—you know, it's kind of like… you've got a slim figure, you know? Just caught me off guard is all."

"Not that, you idiot," Yukari muttered with a heavy sigh. Mima didn't realize it, but even as she tried to gently pull her hand away, Yukari hadn't let go. "I mean, how are you… here?"

"Oh, that?" Mima's expression fell, just a little bit. "Let's just call it a bit of magic. All you need to know is that I'm definitely here, and I'm definitely going to help you kick this overgrown lizard's ass. Got it?"

"... Fine. Got it."

"Great!" Mima slapped Yukari on the back, making her lurch forward a little bit. "... Now—please tell me you've got a plan, because I've actually got no clue how to fight this thing."

"I don't either. But I know what to try."

When Ulysses sailed with his crew, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, beyond the known world of Man, and even further still in search of Earthly Paradise, he was set upon God Himself. His ship, his crew, his body turned over three times—and on the fourth, never again. As their corpses bloat upon the ocean, a rotting testament to the supposedly indomitable spirit of Man, let them all know. That a Man may not approach a God; or a monster, paradise.

Yukari opened her eyes. The storm, since it started, had only gotten worse. The wind howled in her ears and whipped at her clothes with a beastly fervor. The rain only intensified, stabbing away at her skin with an almost constant pressure. She was waterlogged and tired and chilled to her core, but still she stood tall upon the roof of an apartment complex with nothing but a handful of pitiful hours of preparation—and a tentative hope—for company.

That was the story Toyohime wished to tell. Whether or not it was true, now and forever, was for them to decide.

As the Kaiju approached, still on its mindless spree of destruction, Yukari took a deep breath. She felt the invisible strings wrap around her fingers, each one bearing the mechanical weight of a trigger somewhere beyond the gaps they terminated into. In front of her was a weapon of Man—a large tube fixed to a tripod accompanied by a myriad of scopes and dials and switches mounted on a targeting computer. She had many such tubes lined up against the ground, each loaded with another wire guided missile.

Once upon a time, stealing items like this was a hobby, really. During lazy, peaceful days in Gensokyo, Yukari would often sneak into the outside world to take back little curios with her—a train here, an expensive piece of military equipment there. Never before did she think she was preparing for a far-flung war that lay dormant in her future. Maybe it was something like that—if she wanted peace to return, then she would have to prepare for war. All she would have to do is take one life. Just one, miserable, evil life.

Yukari crouched down low before the beast of Man, in an almost gentle pious reverence. She placed her hands on the trigger and her eyes to the thermal optic. Cold and wet. But the machine thrummed with a sort of latent, quiet power—as if all it took was the twitch of a finger to blow away the world itself. She's killing today so she won't have to kill tomorrow. That's the sort of thing she was thinking about as the Messiah lumbered into view, a mouth filled with devastated remains and eyes filled with unquenchable violence.

"Be ready, Mima," Yukari whispered.

"Hey, don't worry about me," a voice crackled in Yukari's ear. A commercial earpiece—really, the best Yukari could manage on short notice. "You're the one putting yourself in danger right now. Stay safe, alright?"

Her fingers, numbed and hardened by the cold, twitched to life before squeezing down upon the trigger.

"... Okay."

A massive rush of air and the sight of a missile lingering in the air for one millisecond, for two milliseconds, for three—before its thrusters engaged in a flash of light. Yukari did not flinch and she did not blink. As the missile flew through the air and disappeared into the rain, dragging a wire behind it as it flew, she did not dare take her eye off of the optic—trained squarely at Toyohime's head.

A deep clicking strangled the air around Yukari. The Kaiju stopped and looked in the direction of the oncoming missile—before standing up straight on its hind legs. It presented its soft underbelly and increased its profile as if to beckon her destined death. It was a taunt of pure malice. As the missile impacted its target, exploding into a violent fireball and dissipating into smoke within the second, the effect on the target could be seen in all its horror.

Struggle. Oh, how they struggled. How they cursed their fate. Was there nothing they could do? Had they finally pushed against the limit of the human spirit?

A little blast mark imprinted itself on the soft scales of the Kaiju's belly. No penetration. Nothing, but lingering soot and ash. Perhaps scorched skin and a shallow cut scattered here and there, as if someone had been assaulting her with a ream of paper blackened with ash. Yukari punched the locking mechanism open and pushed the tube off of the tripod with a hollow, heavy clatter. Then, she reached for another.

As the Kaiju fell back onto its feet, a wicked, wicked grin upon its monstrous face, Yukari loaded another missile tube and locked it in place. Her left hand wandered from the weapon in search of a detonator she left on the ground. When her hand found that thin metallic tube on the ground, she brought it into her left hand and flipped the safety open. Her thumb lingered over the trigger. Not yet… not yet.

They raised a fist into the air. No, for there was nothing humanity couldn't reach. I only lived because I believed, too.

The Kaiju began to stomp toward Yukari, now thoroughly engrossed by her presence. Don't be mistaken. She didn't approach Yukari with much killing intent about her. Rather, in her eyes was a ravenous, wicked love. Her entire form slithered back and forth along the main street, her claws crushing vehicles and lamp posts underfoot as if they had never been there at all. Her tail collided with either side of the corridor of concrete and glass, smashing storefronts and causing weaker buildings to keel in her presence.

Love meant violence. It meant seeing the broken bodies of those closest to you, wheezing and crackling on the floor—their limbs all bent out of shape and their chests concave. It meant taking care of them and saving them and staying by their side no matter how much they hated you. It meant bludgeoning them to death and tearing their heart out and feeling it jump in your claws. It meant holding them close and embracing them and licking their bitter tears.

It was a sickening, dysfunctional love—and it was beautiful. It was my answer and my salvation. It was the only thing I had. It was the star in my hands.

Another violent burst of flame erupted from the tube as another missile flew into the stormy night, like a shooting star tracing a disappearing trail through the inky blackness of the night sky. It collided with Toyohime's forehead, exploding in a violent flash of light and noise—but still the Kaiju continued to stomp on. Yukari loaded another missile tube and readied it to fire. In her head, she counted the seconds before Toyohime came close enough. She had to be closer. And closer. And closer still.

All the gears in Yukari's body slowed down to the individual ticks, every process in her body syncing up to discrete units of time counting down to her middle game gambit. Even as another missile left its tube, it could not reach Yukari—for she was far away in a realm of pure focus. It might not work. The gambit might fail and the day may be lost. It could be that she lost too much material to recover. But even so, she had to try.

Toyohime hissed as the missile blew up midair just in front of her right eye. In a slight rearing motion, the beast halted and clawed at its face. The damage itself had not been so severe—the Kaiju had shut its eye reflexively, preventing the worst of it. But not nearly quick enough to prevent the light from temporarily blinding her a mere stone's toss away from Yukari's position.

One final tick. Yukari took a deep breath and pressed down on the detonator.

The streets beneath Toyohime then erupted into a storm of lead and fire, collapsing as countless explosive charges detonated at once. As the flames rose even higher, licking at the monster's skin and casting volatile, ominous light upon her, she let out a shriek. The ground at her feet gave way, causing her to sink into the sewer system below street level. The tunnels collapsed, trapping her front claws in a tomb of concrete. Her head slammed into the asphalt, snapping her jaws shut.

… Yes. I was evil. I was sentenced to death for being a wicked creature. But my love was pure and true. And how could love like that be wrong?

"Mima." Yukari stood up and took a couple of light hops backwards. Her fingers curled around her wires. "Are they ready?"

"C'mon, Yukari. I'm a genius—of course they are," Mima said in her ear.

No less than thirty kilometers away, outside of the city limits and back in the desert, whose sands began to shift and displace from all the commotion, a six-winged magician was adjusting the angle of an old artillery piece—probably better suited for a museum than a last-minute fire mission. It was rusted and oxidized, and when Mima stooped down to spin the mechanism that raised the gun's firing angle, the entire machine seemed to groan and hiss in protest.

A firing line of eclectic machines—a whirlwind tour of everything from this ill-tempered gun to the absolute cutting edge of self propelled artillery—was dug into the sand, their guns raised to the heavens and pointed at Tokyo. Around all manner of mechanical triggers and safety mechanisms were razor thin wires, wrapped around and pulled taught through gaps. All it would take is a swift pull to fill the skies with lead rain.

"You owe me, though," Mima said with a sigh, wiping some sweat off her brow. Or, at the very least, giving that sort of impression. It was mostly instinctual. "Owe me big time. Once we get out of here, you're treating me to dinner, alright? At a fancy restaurant—one of those super posh multi-course ones that cost five hundred dollars per person. One that requires a reservation months in advance. We'll order an overpriced bottle of wine that neither of us likes—but we'll drink the whole thing anyway because we're super cheap—and we'll go out to a karaoke bar afterwards. We'll spend the whole night getting drunk on cheap beer and singing our hearts out—'cause why not? We saved the whole damn world. We deserve it."

"... Standby."

Mima plugged her ears and smiled. "... I can't wait."

"... Firing!" Yukari brought both her hands down simultaneously in a sharp downwards jabbing motion, causing the wires wrapped around her fingers to dig into her flesh in a criss-crossing web pattern.

A grand chorus of cannonfire sang—their voices echoing off the faraway dunes of the shifting sands, off the concrete maze of the false Tokyo, and traveling even further still, until even Koishi could hear their voices. It was the song of Mankind who, even knowing they could not win, continued to fight. They were the descendants of Humanity who, even after seeing Ulysses consumed by the sea, ventured forth into the infinitely expanding frontier. They were instruments of humanity—and so they sang for humanity.

All the strings around Yukari's fingers unraveled, whipped around and pulled through the gaps in which they presumably terminated. As the sound of distant cannonfire echoed across the concrete towers of Tokyo, Yukari picked a direction and ran. She leapt from one rooftop to another, sparing only the briefest of looks at Toyohime, who snarled and snapped at the empty air in frustration.

That prophecy was a personal apocalypse. Did you think I would just let it happen? That I would sit still as I was turned into a cosmic plaything? If you call yourself a sentient being, with hopes and dreams of your own, then when you're forced to choose between yourself and the world, choose yourself every time.

This world that never gave me anything… This world that gave birth to a person like me, just so it could kill her—the chosen one—doesn't deserve to exist. How dare you defend something like that?

An explosion—so loud and so violent it felt as if the world itself had been set ablaze—broke the intrusive thought off. Slowly, like a rolling tide, the entire outside world was washed away by a ringing in Yukari's ears. She turned her head, plugged her ears, and beheld the effect.

Behold—a river of fire and smoke. Each explosion, a dying star in its own right—kicking up all manner of flame and loose shrapnel in a coruscating, thrumming whirlwind of ash and light. An errant shell here and there collided into the buildings and infrastructure surrounding Toyohime, causing structures—including the one Yukari was standing on not a minute ago—to collapse under the absolute subjugating violence of cannonfire.

As the sound and fury dissipated, all that was left was a thick cloud of dust and gunpowder lingering over what was once a city block, all reduced to rubble and powder. A pair of eyes, glowing an ominous golden color, cut through the dust and stared at Yukari. No growling, no hissing, just pure silence. For a beat or two, they couldn't help themselves but stare.

They must be punished. You must be punished. I'll make you regret protecting this world just because it was nice to you. Sitting back and relaxing and smiling while people like me suffer! I hate you! I love you! I hate you! I love you! I hate, hate, hate, hate you!

Hear the sobbing. Hear the laughter. And then avert your eyes. As the breakdown rattled around in Yukari's head, she knew Toyohime had passed the final threshold to become something twisted beyond reason.

The artillery barrage must have shaken her loose, or caused more of the street to give way because, in a blur of motion, those eyes shook themselves loose and plunged through the veil of smoke. Out came the Kaiju, flying out of the smoke like a predator leaping from hiding place. Sections of her scales were beaten up and shattered by the rare penetration, revealing open gashes that oozed an unnatural black. But still, she stomped on with not a single sign to suggest she had been slowed by her wounds.

The Kaiju lunged forward, sinking her monstrous teeth into the rooftop that Yukari stood upon. Yukari stumbled backward as, in fits and starts, a network of jagged cracks started to form in the concrete facade. Toyohime's eyes were wide and wild, her slitted pupils shaking and jittering as she looked down the side of her snout at Yukari. Her breath, ragged and uneven, reeked of iron, death, and rot.

Yukari stood her ground. She dug the heels of her boots in and raised a hand toward the Kaiju. With a flourish from her fingers, a thunderclap split the atmosphere. There was a subtle displacement of air as another hole in reality was opened to accommodate Yukari's next summon.

Out came an old warship—perhaps about as long as Toyohime's tail was and no less than twice its weight in steel and munitions—flying out of the gap and colliding with Toyohime's back legs as if riding off the momentum of a great wave. The ship put the Kaiju off its balance and tore it away from its grip on the building, bringing it low to the ground with a concussive slam that shattered asphalt. She raised her head and hissed before turning her head to look.

An old destroyer from a worldwide conflict deep in the past. Painted upon the hull of this ancient ship in crisp white lettering: '173.' The USS Eldridge.

Crew members of the ship, severely out of place and time, scrambled on the deck of the ship, readying weapons and guns with a resigned, tired panic. Shouting and scrambling bodies abound on the top deck as they manned their stations. The main guns of the ship turned toward Toyohime and fired to minimal effect, most of the shells simply bouncing off her scales. But that little bit of resistance—that vague inconvenience, initiated by the little blobs of flesh she hated more than anything else in the world—was enough to send Toyohime flying into another blind range.

She raised her tail and brought it down with a swift, decisive fury directly into the ship's forward guns, causing the entire structure to crumple under the force. Loose sparks flew as the steel hull shattered. The steel beast shrieked with a haunting, empty pain—and its munitions combusted not a moment afterwards, engulfing the forward end of the ship and Toyohime's tail in flame. She turned her head to face the pitiful vessels of meat that had forced her hand—and sneered.

Jaws snapping, she went in with all the grace of a starving predator, plucking sailors by their limbs, by their heads, and eating them whole. The Kaiju found no pleasure in laying hands on anything as disgusting as a human—much less eating them. But she did so anyways—not as a method with which to sate her hunger, but as the administration of punishment. A green mist started to gather around the cursed warship as she continued her punishment, but Toyohime didn't care. Or maybe, so inundated with madness, she didn't even have the mental faculties to notice anything outside of her justice.

Yukari might have felt a slight pang of guilt, but what could she have done? Those poor sailors who had long since been separated from concepts such as life and death and time. No one could really save them, not even Yukari. So she averted her eyes.

"Mima. Where are you?" Yukari whispered into her earpiece. She was crouched down low, her vision only just barely peeking the violence Toyohime wrought.

"I'm you-know-where. Don't hold up too long—you shouldn't keep a girl waiting for her big moment."

"... Yeah," Yukari said, a weak smile on her face. "Stay safe."

"Took the words from my mouth. After all, you're the crazy girl who's always putting herself in danger. See you soon."

Beyond the edge of the building, the blind that prevented Yukari from seeing most of the carnage, the green mist collected. It collected and congregated in the air, obscuring everything on the inside. Even then, blinded and enveloped in an otherworldly power, Toyohime hardly paused to breathe. Yukari, on the other hand, counted the moments.

At the fog's thickest point, an arc of electricity manifested, leaping from the particles in the air to the scales of the Kaiju. Her scales, under the unaccountable heat generated by those arcs of electricity, began to bubble and evaporate. She flinched backwards and roared in pain, but it was far too late. The next moment, a blinding sphere of green energy exploded from somewhere within the ship. It expanded outward unimpeded, chewing through concrete, steel, and Kaiju flesh.

Toyohime let out an uncharacteristic scream of anguish, and the projection of her consciousness, where it once was a semi-coherent string of words, became violent stabs of color and light.

Flesh peeling away from bone, like the petals of a blooming flower greeting the dawn—only to be blown away by the wind and never return. Boiling and bursting from the surface—blood and tears—escaping their mortal binds piecewise, as the forgotten child breaks through their shell to find themselves in a wasteland known not to love. She is born into an empty world—a birdcage with nought but a singing perch—patiently awaiting the day of her destined death. When asked if she had any regrets, she smiled.

"Only that I did not die sooner."

When the thrumming ball of energy reached critical mass, it suddenly collapsed in an overwhelming whipcrack. In its place, nothing but the white-hot outlines of where it ceased growth. Half of Toyohime's tail, along with her left hind leg and a sizable portion of her snout, was sheared clean off, presumably atomized on the spot. Though she closed her eyes to the light, it didn't prevent her left eye from being scorched beyond recognition and her right to be boiled and burst from the intense heat. But even this wasn't the end of her.

The eye that lived in her heart, bloodshot and wide, could see where her outside eyes could no longer. Two, three kilometers down the street, framed against a portrait of crumbling concrete, slick with tears. Yukari, a pitch black silhouette of a woman with her back against a wall of sand that stretched far into the sky. Yukari saw this vision too, through her mind's eye. And in a world that lacked color and life, Yukari by far was the coldest void.

Trailing blood, Toyohime clawed her away across the ground at frightening speed, dragging useless stump limbs with a ravenous madness that dulled all her senses. Little did she know—that in her blind hatred, she was caught in all manner of strings and ribbons weaved across what seemed like an empty corridor. Through raw brute strength, she was able to tear through a layer or two, snapping them under the sheer weight of her form—but as she continued, her movements grew more labored and sluggish as the layers of snares grew increasingly dense.

The Kaiju made one final lunge toward Yukari, leaping into the air and snapping her jaws—but was held back by mere inches. Then, the bind was complete. All of its connecting tissue pulled taut at that final bit of resistance, drawing Toyohime back and suspending her in the air with her soft underbelly presented to Yukari. But even then— even then. The strings crackled and snapped under the intense pressure, as if even all of this could give away at any moment.

"Mima! Now!" Yukari's eyes went wide. Her heart started to pound. Was this it? Was she witnessing the end of the cycle? With the death of a single wicked woman, would it finally end for her? Every evil, horrible thing, every specter that haunted humanity, every rotten horror passed from one generation to another—upon the altar of violence, even something like that could be blown away and scattered, like so many specks of ash carried by the wind. Even something like that could be killed.

A six-winged creature, bearing a crescent scepter bursted out of the sand and raced to Yukari's side.

"Yeah! Let's do this!" Mima exclaimed, a wicked smile on her face. She leveled her staff, crackling with golden sparks of electricity, at the bounded Kaiju. She glowed even brighter than before and her entire being was wrapped in a burning white light, like a sustained flash of magnesium, searing retinas upon even the briefest of glances. She was a dying star—concentrated at a single point, and aimed at a single target.

But even then, Yukari placed a hand on Mima's staff—as if that person was this close to disappearing forever.

"I'm making this one out to all of Humanity! And not just them—Lunarians, and Youkai, and whoever else dares to dream for a better future!" Mima shouted, taking off her hat and tossing it to an invisible crowd. She glanced over to Yukari, who was half crouched, shivering from the biting cold of the rain, and who looked to be on the verge of tears for reasons they both understood. "Ahem. I call it…"

"Love-Colored Fantasy Spark: The Supernova that Burns Away History!"

And then, the reaction snapped.

Mima's wings became enveloped in a burning rainbow light that extended outwards and upwards, burning away everything it touched, evaporating rain drops into mist as they touched. Her lowest set of wings burrowed into the ground, traveling deeper and deeper until it penetrated the facade of Koishi's dream world itself and leaked into the real world, thousands of miles from Earth. To an outside observer, they might have imagined that an angel really had descended from the firmament in a true act of God. Her top wings reached up to the descending Koishi, who could not look away—but instead burned this image into her eyes. Everyone who was locked away, who had died to never return—was watching.

Circular runes etched into the air with light projected outwards from Mima's staff—creating a concentric pattern of amplifying magic that extended all the way to the Kaiju. No—it ran even further still, drawing circular magical signs that extended far, far beyond Toyohime. Far beyond this city, this desert, this entire world. This was a weapon designed to blow away planets, stars, entire systems—an impossible power that was, is, and will forever be lost outside of this one miraculous point in time.

Mima ran incredibly hot as she continued to store even more energy than that—and at a certain point, the ground itself around her began to melt into viscous puddles of asphalt and concrete. Even that slurry began to bubble and evaporate under the impossibly high temperature.

Mima had casted some protective spells for Yukari's benefit, but even then, it was unbearably hot—like how one might imagine being thrown into a planet's core. But even then, Yukari would not let go. Not for anything. Tears started to stream down her face.

"That's all, folks," Mima breathed. "Next performance: never."

An overwhelming wall of light that swallowed absolutely everything in Yukari's field of vision, blowing away all the oppressive grays and browns of the world she lived in—a spinning, technicolor, beam of pure energy—fired upon the Kaiju. Upon contact, the Kaiju's entire being was completely annihilated. Reduced—in a time span that must have been even less than an instant—into constituent atoms. Just as Toyohime went, so did everything around her: the buildings, the dream, the sand and the sky—all simultaneously burnt away by a supernova.

It drew a path, out of the city, out of the desert, and further still into the void.

A Human and a Lunarian on Earth, bobbing on the sea of blood in a life vessel discarded by the weapons station they reentered the atmosphere in, looked to the night sky to see a rainbow shooting star, carving a path through the darkness. And as they did, they both shared the same dream—that surely, there would be a future for them to live in. Not an easy one, and not one filled with peace, but one that they could build together.

And then, as quickly as that brief little spot of blinding light had drawn a path, it disappeared.

Gone, somewhere among the stars.

…

Yukari stumbled forwards before collapsing on her knees. Before her was a massive path where the world itself parted for her to see… empty space. Toyohime had been completely annihilated. In her place was nothing but the smoldering remains of what was caught at the very edge of the beam's bounds. Far in the distance, towers of jagged glass hold back a torrent of sand from filling the wound drawn into the land.

"... Finally. It's satisfying when you get that last annoying piece of work done. Right, Yukari?"

Yukari turned around. Her expression was empty and vacant. At the height of the action, she already managed to do all of her crying—now she was just… tired. Before her eyes, flecks of golden light were starting to peel away from Mima's form—as if she were being taken away, one piece at a time.

"You shouldn't have done that," Yukari said. "Even if it was the right thing. Even if it was the only thing, you shouldn't have done that."

"... Yeah. Because now it's happening all over again, right?" Even though she was disappearing—dying slowly on the spot, even though she saved the world—Mima still managed a gentle smile. "I'm leaving you again. And this time, I'm not coming back."

Yukari didn't say anything. But Mima didn't need her to say the answer to know.

"But this time is different. We saved the goddamned world. Toyohime—I don't know all the details, but it sounds like she was a one-woman apocalypse. And we just single-handedly sent her ass to the afterlife." Arms akimbo, Mima stuck out her chest in a prideful sort of stance. She smiled like she wasn't about to go away. Forever. "... It's over. You can rest easy now. Everyone can."

"... Is it?" Yukari looked up at Mima. "Is that possible?"

The question struck Mima as a little odd, with the two of them here at what was ostensibly the end of their story. Or, at the very least, the end of her own story.

"Of course it is," Mima said, frowning. "Who is there left to fight? We've beaten everyone that needed to be beaten. You can go home now, Yukari. Live a peaceful life without having to think about stuff like this. Shouldn't you… shouldn't you be excited?"

"I don't know if I can," Yukari whispered.

Mima's expression softened. She floated over toward Yukari and gave her a hand to take. "... Would you like to try?"

As Yukari took Mima's hand, Mima couldn't help but smile. She pulled Yukari back onto her feet.

"Let's make this goodbye a happy one." Even as more and more of Mima's form started to fade away in little specks of gold, that girl could not help her nature. "If you don't have enough in you to hope for a better future, then I'll do enough hoping for the two of us. A peaceful future—you at least deserve that much."

Yukari wanted to believe Mima. But something rotten inside of her heart just couldn't. At some point on the road here, she had become a broken human being. Standing before a woman who was an absolute wall of overwhelming hope—who would never, ever give up on Yukari, no matter how bad she got—just made it sting so much more.

'I don't have a future. After this, no one possibly could,' Yukari wanted to say. 'The Earth is dead. Everyone else will follow. How could you leave me alone in a world like that? Why can't you just let me die?'

But no. She couldn't. For the love of God, for once in her miserable life, she could not mess up. So she took a deep breath, swallowed all the despair in her heart, and smiled. For the first time in over a decade, she really, genuinely smiled.

"Okay," Yukari said. Her voice quivered. She clasped both of her hands around Mima's and squeezed. With every passing moment, as Mima's form continued to evaporate before her eyes, her hands grew closer together. "I'll try. I swear I'll try."

"That's the most anyone can hope to do." Mima nodded. Her smile was broad and proud, like the first band of light peeking over the horizon. "As long as you can promise me that you'll try to live a life away from all this—I think I can disappear with no regrets. It doesn't have to be today, or tomorrow, or the day after, but if you keep going, surely that day will come."

'It won't. That day won't come. It's a fallacious argument dripping with soft hatred—that one day things will get better is not a guarantee. It isn't even necessarily a likely possibility. It's just something someone says to another,' Yukari thought. 'It's the privilege of the dead and dying—to deliver advice that means nothing. To offer empty platitudes to an issue they fundamentally could never hope to understand. They say these things not to make you feel better, Yukari. They say it to make themselves feel better about your suffering. Why?'

Yukari met Mima's and they shared an eternity within that moment. Mima's eyes were green. This whole time, she didn't even notice. Yukari nodded—shaky and uncertain. But if there was one thing Yukari was resolute about, it was that she was here, and they were real. That they were here, the creatures that they were, was a mathematical impossibility. In the face of those odds, what was one more miracle?

"I promise," she said. An oath made with nothing but an ephemeral hope. As quickly and as brightly as it showed, it was swallowed in a smothering maelstrom of Yukari's own design.

"Here," Mima said. She pressed her staff into Yukari's hands. Not a moment later, Mima's hands became distant and immaterial—like the edges of condensation printed onto a window, chewed up and blown away by the wind. "I'm not going to need it anymore. Consider it a souvenir for the road. Don't try to attune to it, or anything—it doesn't have any power of its own. I just thought it looked cute."

'Why? It's because…' Yukari paused. For a moment, she was stunned into silence. All she could do was stare at the staff in her hands. It was warm—still thrumming from some residual energy that Mima had channeled into its body. 'It's because she cared about you. She still does. Even after she dies, she still might. That's the sort of creature she always will be. What sort of creature were you?'

"By the way—go a little easier on Koishi, okay?"

"... Koishi?"

"Yeah. You can consider this ass-kicking to be courtesy of her," Mima said, nodding to the massive ball of writhing flesh above them. "... I talked to her. She's a sweet girl at heart. Smart, too. She just… needs someone to be there for her. Maybe, a super amazing, super intelligent woman with blond hair and a purple dress, who's an expert at nap taking and barrier making? You know where I can find a girl like that?"

'If only we knew where this person was. Where was she? Where was she when Gensokyo fell?'

"Don't worry. I'll take care of her. After everything… it's the least I can do." Yukari's grip on Mima's staff tightened. "I don't know if I'm strong enough, but I'll fight to end it—the cycle of hatred."

"Hehe… That's the Yukari I know. Always the responsible one. Well, at least when it counted, right?" Mima went in to punch Yukari's shoulder with a playful snicker, but perhaps predictably, it phased right through her. Mima frowned. "... Well, it's been fun. Sometimes my memory is bad, you see. But you know—no matter what, I don't think I ever really forgot…"

There, framed against collapsing pillars of glass and sand—surrounded by an aurora of light and the empty void of the destruction she wrought for the world itself, Mima smiled one last time. Through her, you could see a path to the stars. And it seemed like, for just a moment, the lights leaving her found their place in the void. Millions of light years apart, and yet here in this moment.

"... I love you."

The fog in Yukari's mind cleared. The mists upon the sky cleared, and in this fleeting perfect darkness, she could see the same stars.

"I love you, too."

…..

….

…

..

.

Somewhere, lost in all the destruction, was a vile soul who still clung to life.

She was reduced to the upper half of her body—all charred and burned beyond recognition. This was the final fate of a Kaiju who thought she could oppose her destiny. Driven low and into the dirt, where she belonged.

But that was okay. She had said it before—that so long as she drew breath, she would come back again. No matter how impossible it was, she would surely reach the paradise she saw that day. She consumed her own mother's flesh and, upon doing so, had become truly immortal. A weapon. She needed a weapon. She had to find a weapon.

There, pinned underneath a bit of concrete rubble, was a golden ring. To most, an ornament she wore on her dress. To her, a weapon that would grant her final wish.

She crawled towards it, leaving not a trail of blood, but a trail of ash. She placed her hand on the cold orichalcum surface, and opened her mouth to speak. No sound came out, but the weapon understood her intention. It clicked and whirred and, with one final snap, turned into a small dagger. Inscribed across every square inch of the blade were runes and curses. The words, written in some language long since lost to time, were microscopic and completely illegible. Each symbol seemed to compound upon itself, as if someone wrote and rewrote curses upon curses until the message became more static than intention.

Her hand curled around the handle. She crawled forward until she eventually came to rest against a wall.

"... Why?"

The wretched soul looked up to see… her. Her light. Her miracle. Her second chance—manifested in flesh and blood. Koishi Komeiji—her child. Once again, she opened her mouth to speak, but this time, she found her voice.

"I did it for you."

"Please… Just—stop. Stop fighting. Stop killing," her daughter said, her fists trembling. Though this was the incarnation of a being that could destroy and remake reality into whatever image she wanted, she stood there like a flower quivering and wilting at the first sign of winter frost. One had to wonder if she loved the suffering. Or perhaps, she just didn't know what she wanted.

"If you love me, then please don't kill anyone else. I'm begging you." Koishi collapsed on her knees and turned her eyes to the ground. "We could be happy. All of us. Together."

"Koishi, darling…" Toyohime turned the blade in her hands. Her thoughts drifted. She could kill. Anyone. With this. She could kill Yukari, she could kill Kaguya, she could kill Eirin. She could kill herself. She could kill Koishi. It could all end here. A rotten end to a rotten story. One last wish from an abandoned child. "... We will be happy together."

She grinned. Underneath the horrific burn injuries was a cold smile from a broken soul. And yet, who could deny that simple fact? That her heart was filled with Love.

"Trust your mother."

Miracles.

Upon miracles.

Turn to curses.

Next:

The End of Sorrow.