Chapter 11: Game Over
While the noise of mechanical combat continued to sound from Cayman and BB, Shiron was using his terminal to trace Teseo's and Merak's position, flipping through security feeds as he did so. In the monitor, he glimpsed the reflection of a long-armed, one-eyed Eden mech reaching out to grab him. Shiron, however, remained focused on his work as BB sliced off the clawed arm, and Cayman suplexed the mech from behind.
"Come on, Apollo," Shiron thought. "We can't go anywhere without you two."
"Any luck, little man?" Cayman asked in passing.
"I think I've almost–"
One of the security feeds caught Shiron's eye. He brought it to full size.
"No way," Shiron said. "Is that Copen Kamizono? As a sprite?"
"Uh, run that by me again," BB said.
"That's the other intruder!" Shiron said. "No wonder Teseo and Merak haven't been able to focus on us. That guy's responsible for more ghost stories than BB."
"You could use a worthy rival, BB," Cayman said. "He might whip you into shape."
"Oh, heck nah," BB said. "I'm the real deal, but that nutso can keep his title."
"There's someone else with him," Shiron said. "Looks like… a QUILL operative? They must be desperate if they aren't trying to kill each other."
Before Shiron could make any further speculation, a beep came through his communicator.
"Shiron, do you read?" Apollo said.
"Apollo!" Shiron said. "Thank goodness. Is Kirin with you?"
"I have her, but she's injured," Apollo answered. "We need transport."
"I'm on it," Shiron said.
Immediately, Shiron warped them back, and the silhouettes of the two team leaders emerged from a flash of light. Cayman and BB, who had just cleared the area once more, swiveled their heads toward them. Kirin's arm, by which Apollo was carrying her, was slung over his unarmored shoulders as she hobbled feebly alongside him. Color had drained from her skin, leaving her concerningly pale, and her reddened eyes, downcast beneath her disheveled hair, appeared equally drained of vigor.
Everyone rushed over and exposed their concerned faces as Apollo set her down against the tower.
"Apollo," BB said, "what in the name of Mike happened?"
"Dragon radiation poisoning," Apollo answered. "They had her trapped in a chamber flooded with it."
"I thought she was immune," Shiron said.
"It came from inside," Kirin said weakly. "I couldn't hold it together. I'm sorry."
Kirin saw that BB's eyes were a bit wider than the others'. Doubtless, he could see the residual flickers of the primal dragon lingering in her system. She looked away.
"We have to finish the mission," Apollo said, "and get her out of here."
"R-right," Shiron said and shook himself back to focus. "I have the location, but they're not alone. It's Copen Kamizono of all people."
"Quite the wildcard," Apollo said, "but if we play our hand right, we may be able to stack the deck against our targets."
Shiron made another input on the terminal, and the center of the tower opened into a warp gate.
"Uh-oh," Shiron said. "We've got another problem."
"Is it the kind of problem I can punch?" Cayman said.
"Fraid' not, sensei," Shiron said. "Bringing down the locks gave me access, but I've only got authorization for one admin code. Meaning, only one of us can go through the gate."
"Well, crud muffins," BB said. "So, who's taking the leap?"
Everyone looked to Apollo and Kirin for a decision. Kirin eyes met Apollo's.
"Your call," she whispered.
Apollo nodded solemnly. Just as he opened his mouth to answer, however, Merak's voice interrupted him.
"That's as far as you go!" he said.
A large wormhole opened overhead and dropped a robotic tank onto the digital tiles. The heavy impact of the metallic mecha's loud landing sent a tremor throughout the floating island, staggering the Dragon Saviors into their combat stances. A hydraulic whine filled the air as the machine raised up on its quad legs and flashed on its targeting sensors.
"You? How did you–" Merak, eyeing Kirin, stammered. "Can no one else do anything right? I'm done with you tryhards!"
Several more gaping portals opened above the platform. From each of them dropped the gargantuan shadows of additional mechs shaking the floor with aftershock after aftershock. Nearly every model of walker tank Summeragi had manufactured over the last half century: the eight-legged Spider, the rocket-propelled Fazent, even the heavily armed Plasma Legion, surrounded the group. One by one, they raised up and flashed on their sensors.
"Shiron," Apollo, who had reglaived, said, "it has to be you. You're the only one with the expertise to recover the system."
"But, what about you guys?" Shiron said.
Apollo hesitated just long enough for Shiron to notice.
"We'll find another way to you," Apollo said.
Shiron glanced at the towering robots and at Kirin who was struggling to stand. Even if the team were at full strength, they were unlikely to all survive such overwhelmingly powerful opponents. He clenched his fists.
"I've taught you everything you need," Cayman said. "I've got nothin' but trust in you. Today, you complete the circle. You're your own master, now!"
"And, Shiron," Apollo said, "no mercy."
Shiron looked between the gate and his comrades. The tanks were taking aim. He made an input on his gauntlet, preparing to execute an emergency escape command.
"I'll make you guys proud," he said. "Take care of yourselves."
Shiron flipped down his mask and pressed his gauntlet. The others disappeared in a flash of light. He heard the charge of the tank's energy cannons. They fired. Shiron, alone, dove into the warp gate as the explosions vaporized the island.
Kirin, Cayman, BB, and Apollo all fell out of the warp gate at the entrance to the satellite base. As soon as they looked back, the gate closed off completely.
"Shiron!" BB said. "What's he thinking going solo like that?"
"This is the moment he decides," Cayman said, "to take his fate in his own hands. The moment a boy becomes a man."
"Oh, give it a rest," BB said. "This isn't the time for that melodramatic masculine malarkey!"
"It is for him," Cayman said resolutely.
BB glared at Cayman's stony face. Behind him, Apollo was tending to Kirin. BB sighed.
"Good luck, little buddy," he said.
. . . . . . . . . .
Copen and Zeno, exhausted from prolonged combat, struggled to train the quivering sights of their weapons on the most pressing threats of the automated assault. Lola, though she continued to defend Copen with EX weapons, had tired out her voice and fallen out of overdrive. Zeno fired a shot from the Border, sending the bullet through two robots at once.
"That was my last round for this thing," he said. "Got any other tricks up your sleeve?"
Copen was silent. It had been years since he had last pushed himself so hard. He could feel the extra weight of his Leon armor dragging him down. Thoughts of his father and Mytyl flashed through his mind. He shook his head.
"Keep fighting," he said.
"What's wrong, guys?" Teseo taunted. "You should have seen all the 'too angry to die' memes about you. Guess it's finally game–"
"Game over, Teseo!" a new voice called.
In a flash of blue, a figure like an oriental dragon burst into the pixelated arena. Copen immediately recognized him as Shiron of the Dragon Saviors.
"You've gotta be kidding me," Teseo said.
Shiron cloaked and reappeared next to Copen and Zeno.
"Come with me if you want to live!" he said.
"I like living!" Lola said. "I'm programmed to!"
"Bet," Zeno said.
"Out of other options," Copen said.
They all assembled around Shiron who began to charge an energy pulse between his hands. The machines rushed forward as a wave. One threw itself onto Copen's shield. Another got a hand on Zeno's neck. The robots were threatening to crush them. Shiron stretched out his hands and released the pulse. The energy cascaded out from him as a wave, deleting the robots and erasing the digital illusion in its path. When the last pixels fell, the group was left in a green grid with Teseo.
"Uh, pay no attention to the man behind the Vtuber model," Teseo said.
Merak, seated on top of his floating mech, emerged from a portal next to Teseo.
"Of course that didn't kill him," Merak sighed.
"You had one job, Merak," Teseo said.
"So did you," Merak shot back. "Kirin freaking lived!"
While Teseo and Merak argued, Shiron was devising his strategy. His Overclock septima granted him the ability to literally think fast, but he wasn't immune to hesitation. Whether mid-combat or mid-conversation, he often found himself thinking through tens of scenarios branching into hundreds of possibilities, few of which he liked. He knew he would have to be decisive.
"I've got them stuck in here," Shiron said, "but Teseo still controls the system. If we disable him, I can fix that."
"Sounds like the perfect job for those special bullets," Zeno said. "I could really use a resupply."
"Too bad," Copen said.
"Uh, Boss," Lola said. "I know you call them the Greed Snatchers, but is now really the best time?"
Copen growled and handed Zeno a single speed loader.
"You're lucky I have a deep seated hatred for these two," Copen said. "You get six shots. Make them count."
"Now we're getting somewhere," Zeno said.
As Zeno loaded the bullets, Teseo and Merak turned toward the group. Teseo's twitching fingers hovered over his two portable servers, which resembled spindles wrapped in thorned cords, while Merak's mech (a literal armchair with large metal hands and a mouth below his footrest) raised its arms.
"Have you started the countdown, or what?" Merak said.
"Just hold on to your but," Teseo said. "#Teseotime is about to begin!"
[Battle with Infinite (Second Bout)- Sonic Forces ost]
Teseo immediately digitized and warped himself while Merak whooshed toward the trio. As the three dove away, Merak raised his altitude and Teseo reappeared opposite him. Pincering the group between himself and Merak, Teseo spawned two circles of rotating attack bits on either side. A set of thin, tiered floors appeared as well.
"Code Matrix, fire!" Teseo said.
Each circle of spinning bits, one higher than him and one lower, fired a stream of spiked missiles. Shiron flew above the danger zone, Zeno grappled to a platform between the missile streams, and Copen held his ground with Lola's barrier.
Climbing onto his platform, Zeno dropped prone to avoid the missiles and took aim with his revolver. Teseo, however, combined his servers in front of him, blocking Zeno's line of sight, and launched them, spinning, towards him. As the pointed pins sliced closer to him, Zeno squeezed the trigger and fired a precisely placed shot into the servers, knocking them just off course from him.
At the same time, Copen blocked the last of the missiles and fired the Broad Circuit. The bits which had been firing the missiles rushed forward in their wake and collided with the beams of Copen's lasers. The two attacks negated one another in a flash of green.
Above, Shiron turned his attack drones toward Merak and fired several shots. Merak, however, shielded himself with a portal. As the flashing projectiles passed into the wormhole, Shiron heard two more spatial tears opening to his sides. Immediately, he aligned his refraction orbs to his sides and deflected the blasts back towards Merak once more. The energy rounds passed by Merak's wormhole just as it closed and pounded his mech's armor with a barrage of energy detonations.
Clinging to his armrest, Merak glared at Shiron and threw the mech's heavy hands towards him. As the fists, connected by energy lines, zoomed well past the reach of the arms, Shiron twisted his serpentine form to slip just by the iron strikes. As the fists returned to Merak, he rushed the mech forward with its mouth open. Blinking in and out of sight, Shiron flipped over the attack and, as he did so, decloaked the miniature, dragonfly-shaped explosive drones he had been saving. With a thrust of his hand, Shiron sent the dragonflies straight at the booster on the back of Merak's mech. The drones detonated and sent Merak's mech spinning to the floor.
As Merak crashed down, Zeno nailed Teseo in the chest with a Greed Snatcher round. The moment the purple bullet impacted Teseo, a burst of green blasted out from him and surrounded him in a glitching aura. Copen, in turn, shot Merak with a Greed Snatcher of his own and paced toward him while firing a stream of photons.
Teseo's servers, boomeranging back to him, whooshed just past Shiron. Shiron chased after them and reached out his hand with a holographic interface. Just before the spindles made it back to Teseo, Shiron's interference tore them apart and snatched one to himself. As soon as the server reached Shiron, he aligned his hands on a transparent keyboard over it. Teseo, seeing what Shiron was about to do, mirrored the action.
They both began typing furiously, and a glitched distortion bubble formed around them. A salvo of energy beams, blue for Shiron and green for Teseo, erupted from the needle points of the servers and clashed all around the bubble as the two hackers wrestled for control of the cyberspace network.
"You really think you can 1v1 me, kid?" Teseo taunted.
"You two call yourselves gamers?" Shiron said. "I bet you've never done a DP motion in your life!"
"Bruh, easy controls are best controls," Teseo said. "Why would I make it harder on myself, right Merak?"
Merak was too busy shielding his face from Copen's photons to answer. Shiron, however, took notice of a particular line in the files flying across his display. It was titled, "Immortality Project" and had a running countdown of under five minutes. At just that moment, the lights of Merak's mech flashed back on.
"Wake-up super!" Merak said.
Merak immediately portalled himself away from Copen and reappeared near Shiron. He shoved his mech's hand through a portal, causing it to reappear at three times its size on the opposite side of Shiron. Shiron's head swiveled just in time for the metal knuckles of the humongous hand to slam into his mask and send him flying back. His unconscious body flopped across the floor, his arms and tail floundering until they crumpled around him.
Teseo pointed and laughed but, seeing Copen and Zeno both firing another Greed Snatcher at him, quickly warped away. He reappeared in the center of the room with both of his servers conjoined beside him, the twin needle points each preparing to fire a beam. Additionally, he aligned dozens of firing bits above him and rained down circuit lasers to Copen's and Zeno's left and right, trapping them in a corridor aligned with the needles' aim.
Shiron's eyes flicked open. He rolled onto his stomach and struggled to push himself off the floor, but a sharp ache in his bruised arm protested, and his disoriented balance had him on a turntable. The knockout punch had almost certainly concussed him. As he struggled to align his blurred double vision, he discerned a piece of his mask by his hand on the floor. He touched his face to confirm. Surely enough, a fragment of his mask had broken from over his eye, and blood from his stinging brow wet his finger. He dropped back onto his forearm.
"Let's see you dodge this!" Teseo said.
Wide beams of glitching, green energy blasted from each of Teseo's server pins, searing the floor and blasting to the ceiling. The pins rotated, turning the lower beam toward Copen and Zeno, leaving a trail of corruption in its wake.
"What would sensei do?" Shiron thought.
As he continued to struggle, the obvious answer shouted from the back of his shaken brain.
"Just punch something!"
Shiron raised his fist and slammed it as hard as he could onto the floor. The painful blow, stinging his knuckles and reverberating up his arm, balanced out the pain in his other arm and snapped his double vision back into focus. With a burst of adrenal strength, he pushed up and thrusted his palm toward Copen and Zeno. A refraction orb blasted from his hand and sped through the wall of lasers, halting just in front of the duo. The deadly beam bounced through the blue orb and passed over Copen and Zeno.
Seeing his chance, Copen leapt in the rotating beam's wake and took aim at Teseo from above. Merak, however, stuck his mech's hands through two more portals and prepared to fire missiles through them. One hand appeared just behind Copen while the other had Zeno staring down the barrel in the mech's palm. Zeno, however, beat Merak to pulling the trigger and punched a Greed Snatcher right into the metal palm, disabling the firing mechanism. At the same time, Copen bullit dashed away from the missiles behind him and skimmed just over Teseo's laser. Copen slammed against Merak, crushing him against the back of his chair, and pistol whipped him between his antennae.
From beyond the laser wall, Shiron attached the barrel to one of his drones and locked onto Teseo. He fired a piercing beam through the grid; it weaved through the lasers and nailed Teseo in his side, blowing several of the spikes off his armor and briefly wiping the smirk off his face.
"Merak," he said, "I'm getting third-partied, here!"
"Then get this guy off me!" Merak, his voice muffled by Copen's shield against his face, shouted back.
Copen shanked Merak's leg with his bayonet, prompting a cry of pain, as Teseo's beam circled behind Copen to shave him off the mech. Copen sprung back and fired a photon burst at Merak before stomping to the floor and diving on his back, shooting all the while. The photons pummeled the armor on the mech's arms, which Merak had crossed to protect himself, while the beam trailed just behind Copen. Copen concluded his backslide just in front of Zeno and raised his shield muzzle to meet the laser's approach.
"Bug-out Beam!"
An identical, glitching, green laser erupted from the EX Gear and clashed with Teseo's attack, barely defending the pair from the deadly laser. While Copen and Teseo struggled against each other, Shiron readied another shot. Merak, however, reached through a portal, grabbed Shiron in his iron grip, and snatched him back through the portal. The moment the clashing beams dissipated, Teseo warped himself behind Merak and peeked cheekily over his shoulder while Merak held Shiron hostage.
"You know what I can't stand about you?" Merak said. "None of you know when to quit. QUILL couldn't bring down Summeragi, the Kamizonos didn't stand a chance at stopping the adept explosion, and you Dragon Saviors won't even save yourselves. Surely this little 'genius' saw it coming."
"I did," Shiron said, "and I saw a thousand other ways it could've ended before now, but that's the difference between us. Even if I don't amount to anything, I can't give up. I'll be everything I can be for as long as I live to be it!"
"It was a nice try, Merak," Teseo said, "but I think these guys are a little too stubborn for talk-no-justu. Let's just kill em."
"Fine by me," Merak said.
Zeno watched as Merak tightened his grip, causing Shiron to throw his head back and scream as the metal fingers crushed his armor. At the same time, Teseo spawned a cluster of ticking bombs, arranged such that their cross detonations would cover the whole arena except right where Merak and Teseo were. Copen took aim as the bombs ticked down. A good hit from a Greed Snatcher might have been able to disable both their opponents and the bombs, but Copen would almost certainly be shooting straight through Shiron to do so. As the bombs ticked down, the look in Copen's eyes told Zeno that he was willing to make that sacrifice. Zeno took matters into his own hands.
"My turn," he said.
Holstering his revolver, Zeno grabbed his remaining EMP grenade from his belt and primed it. He gripped the pistol at his side, threw the grenade toward Merak, and drew his sidearm. As the grenade flew through the air, Zeno glanced through his dot sight, pulled the trigger, and sent a bullet flying straight into the EMP. The shot launched the grenade right between Teseo's and Merak's heads where it detonated. The pulse blasted over them, disarming the bombs and forcing Merak to release Shiron as his mech dropped to the floor with a heavy clang. Copen, however, dropped to one knee as well.
"S-system reb-booting," Lola said.
With the momentary loss of power to his systems, Copen's equipment pinned him like an avalanche. Static crackled in the edges of his vision as Zeno latched his grapple onto Merak and zipped past.
Zeno drew a knife from his thigh and held it tightly as he flew toward Merak. Pinning his forearm against Merak's throat, Zeno plunged the knife just beneath Merak's chestplate, drawing a sharp gasp from him. Zeno immediately snatched the blade back out and furiously slashed back and forth across Merak, scaring his hands and face, before stabbing it back between his ribs.
The moment he released the knife, Zeno drew the Border and thrust its muzzle toward Merak's temples to execute him, but Merak made a small portal in front of his face and caused Zeno to press the barrel against the side of his own head. Zeno, having no intention of shooting himself, drew back, but in the moment that Zeno was disoriented, Merak slugged him on the jaw and kicked him off the mech which had just regained power.
Everyone climbed back to their feet as the mech lifted into the air. With a pained grunt, Merak yanked the knife out of his side, covered the wound, and snarled through his clenched teeth.
"Y'all really 'bout to make me start tryin'!" he said.
Merak planted his feet against his footrest, put his hand on his knee, and leaned forward. Everyone else recognized the change in his posturing; it was the only thing that could indicate an output of real effort from him: the gamer lean. The mech thrust its arms to its sides and opened its mouth. A yellow light flared from within as Merak tore open a portal in front of him.
"Lazy Laser!" he shouted.
A massive energy beam blasted from the mech's mouth into the portal. The torrent emerged from another portal above the trio's heads, and the moment they dodged away, it fell into another portal and reemerged from their side. The beam blasted in and out of portal after portal, criss-crossing into tighter and tighter patterns, squeezing the group closer together. As the beam came screaming back towards them, Teseo also fired the Broad Circuit from the opposite side. Shiron immediately sent out both his refraction orbs to deflect the twin attacks. One shielded Zeno from the circuit, but to Shiron's surprise, Copen preemptively raised the Crystal Ball and deflected the other attack himself.
Shiron and Copen glanced at the remaining refraction orb, then at each other. They were on the same wavelength. As Shiron shifted the orb, Zeno launched a Greed Snatcher round into Teseo's shoulder, taking him out of the equation. Shiron moved the orb into the perfect position along the deflected beam's flight path, redirecting it once more right back into Merak's mech. Merak gasped from the impact and stopped his firing sequence, but the remainder of the beam still crashed into him.
As soon as the beam ceased to strike Merak's sparking, smoking mech, Copen's Crystal Ball shattered against Merak's face, snapping him back against his chair. As soon as Merak recovered from the blow, he looked up to see that Shiron had repositioned his orbs to Merak's flanks. Light was radiating from both Shirons hands and the barrels of his attack drones as Copen rotated his shield in preparation for another shot. Shiron waved his hands, leaving light trails that traced his DP motion, and clenched his fists.
"Gamer Laser!" he said.
The blue lights blasted into Shiron's orbs and refracted at greater strength toward Merak. Merak raised the mech's arms to defend, but in his weakened state, it was all he could do to hold back the attack. Copen made his move.
"Lazy Laser!"
Copen blasted a yellow beam of his own through a portal that opened above Merak's head. Merak raised his hands, made a defensive portal of his own, and strained to hold it open. After using his ultimate attack and taking as much of a beating as he had, Merak was at his limit. The edges of the portal quivered as it slowly shrunk.
"Man," Merak sighed, "what a… drag!"
The portal collapsed, and the three beams converged straight on Merak. In a blinding flash of light, Merak and his mech exploded and vaporized. When the dust settled, no trace remained of him.
"KO," Shiron said with a fist pump.
The group turned their attention to Teseo who looked mildly concerned for once.
"So," Lola, who was already spinning up a Prism Break, said, "what was that you said about 'trash taste' again?"
"And 'simp?'" Zeno said.
"And Kirin," Shiron said.
"About that," Teseo said, "I may owe you an…. Actually, this is fine. You know why?"
"Don't care," Copen said.
Lola immediately launched the fully enlarged crystal at Teseo's mouth. Teseo swiped a hologram as if he were unlocking his phone just before the missile could pierce him. A digitized explosion erupted from him, erasing the crystal and scattering pixels like smoke and dust.
As everyone watched, the points of computerized light began to swirl as a typhoon and gather to its center. Piece by piece, Teseo's body reformed into a green-glowing, sly-sneering, fully-digitized version of himself.
"Behold!" he shouted shrilly, "I have become memes: the DNA of the soul!"
"If you ever had a soul," Copen, unphased, said, "it's long gone, now."
"You unevolved boomers and human lovers still don't get it," Teseo said. "The future is now! Your old world religion, the society we live in, human nature, life and death themselves are all being redefined. All that matters now is the power to define them: influence, followers, views, likes, and upvotes. My memes will shape the fabric of reality itself! You can't kill an idea!"
"We can sure as hell try," Zeno said. "Your legacy wouldn't be worth leaving. Let's lay this dead meme to rest!"
Teseo made the first move. Spawning two more pins like his servers, he launched four lasers at the group, creating a glitched explosion at the point of impact. The trio, each dodging in different directions, scattered and closed in. Teseo targeted Shiron first with a barrage of vertical Broad Circuits. Shiron weaved between the deadly lasers and rolled out of their path. As Shiron executed his barrel roll, his drones spiraled around him and fired a barrage of energy shots at Teseo. The projectiles, however, phased straight through his digitized form.
"I'm friggin invincible!" Teseo taunted.
Witnessing Teseo's newfound immunity, Copen recognized the similarity between it and the recovery systems the robots had been using. He nodded to Lola who fired the Broad Circuit. Teseo, however, glanced back and, recognizing the danger of his own attack, warped out of the circuit's path.
Teseo reappeared behind Copen with tensed fingers raised. As Copen swiveled his head, Teseo swiped at Copen, and his fingers tore a gash through the fabric of the cyberspace itself. Copen leaned back from the strike, but long thorns of digital corruption burst from the spatial tear. One of the thorns stabbed right for his face.
"Boss!" Lola said.
Lola, still in pod form, swerved between Copen and the needle. She butted Copen's head aside just quickly enough to substitute herself, and the thorn ripped a gash up her faceplate. She hit the floor just after Copen.
Copen immediately snatched her up in the crook of his arm to cover her with his shield and fired a Greed Snatcher at Teseo. The round made contact with Teseo's form and distorted his appearance but fell short of disabling his subsequent teleport.
"Lola, damage assessment," Copen said.
"Just a scratch, boss," she said. "Wait. Anomaly detected!"
While Copen was checking on Lola, Teseo went after Zeno.
"Honestly, bro," Teseo said as he appeared near Zeno, "why are you even here?"
The moment Zeno turned his gun toward Teseo, he was already warping again.
"Like, you're not that guy. Lmao."
Teseo was on the move again before Zeno could react, but before he disappeared, Teseo spawned in a pair of monowheels to pincer Zeno. To avoid wasting his final Greed Snatcher, Zeno drew his sidearm and a knife simultaneously. He flicked the knife into the monowheel's tire to his left, causing the machine to wobble and swerve. While it was off-balance, Zeno kicked the machine onto its side and double-tapped its drive system.
"That's a virus reading, alright," Lola said. "I gotta shut down."
"Take a rest, Lola," Copen said. "I'll finish up here."
Dodging away from the other charging monowheel, Zeno planted his mag boots firmly and grappled the machine from behind. As the wheel spun out, Zeno fired a single shot up its exhaust vent straight into its battery, blowing the top off the robot. Zeno retracted his grapple line and regrouped with Copen while Teseo was toying with Shiron.
"I'm on my last shot," Zeno said. "Can't deal with any more surprises."
"I've already loaded the last rounds," Copen said. "We have to finish this now."
Just as the words left Copen's mouth, Shiron, recoiling from Teseo's attack, crashed down in front of them.
"It's no good," Shiron said with a grunt. "I can't take his control on my own."
Teseo sneered at the trio, tensed his fingers, and swung wildly.
"Muda! Muda! Muda!" he shouted.
In the wake of Teseo's frenetic slashes, digital thorns erupted in waves and tore toward the three. After they dodged, Copen and Zeno ended up separated by the digital briar patch while Shiron hovered above.
"Hate to tell you guys this," Teseo said, "but you've kinda outlived your entertainment value, which, let's face it, is about the only reason you exist. But don't you worry."
Teseo's hologram form pulsated as he charged his septimal energy.
"With the power of the internet," he said, "your dying screams will be immortalized!"
"Special weapons are our last chance," Shiron said. "Zeno, are you as good of a shot as I think you are?"
"Better," Zeno said.
"And, Copen," Shiron said, "can I trust you?"
"To burn this troll's bridge?" Copen said. "Any day of the week."
"Alright then," Shiron said as he crossed his arms in front of him. "I'll make you an opening. Time to show this cheat a real pro gamer move!"
Teseo made a dramatic keystroke as his septimal energy spiked.
"Impregnable Fortress Plus Ratio!"
Teseo spread his hands and summoned duplicates of his server spindles to spiral around each of the trio individually. The spindles created afterimages in their path which digitized into even more spindles in circular firing formations around the three. Teseo cackled as they prepared to fire.
"Magician's Gate!" Shiron shouted.
Shiron waved his hands in a circle and joined his palms in front of him. Drawing them apart, he revealed a set of miniature refraction orbs and laser drones forming a diamond shaped circuit of energy. Teseo's weapons fired a seemingly endless barrage of small explosives. Shiron thrusted his hands to his sides, expanding the energy diamond into a defensive grid around himself, blocking the barrage. He immediately did the same for Zeno just before the blasts could blow him away.
Copen, being left without Lola's or Shiron's barrier for a moment longer, reactivated his armor's prevasion protocol. The swarm of spherical projectiles closed on him, but Copen, at the cost of his boost pack's energy, leaned and swayed between them at such unfathomable speeds that his movements left a collage of afterimages. When Shiron's barrier finally reached him, Copen wiped the sweat from his brow and panted heavily while his armor ejected the spent bullits.
"We've got one shot at this!" Shiron said. "There'll only be a second between firing cycles. When my barriers go down, Zeno has to hit him with two Greed Snatchers back-to-back. Then, Copen can beam him with his own septima."
"I've only got one round!" Zeno said.
"Copen," Shiron said, "give him your gun!"
Copen could barely process the words that had just assaulted his ears; an adept had just ordered him, the Adept Slayer, to give his specific adept-slaying gun to an adept. Copen had, by necessity and to his own service, allowed Zeno to wield the stolen Border in his septima-tainted hands for a time, but to willingly give him the Border II as well? That was a border he dared not cross. Copen knew, however, that he was in no position to express those thoughts directly.
"That– that's a one in a million shot!" he said.
"C'mon man!" Zeno said. "You gotta trust me!"
Copen stared intensely at the revolver. His fingers clenched tightly around it, and in the moment they did, a flood of memories surged through him. He remembered his fingers clasped, white-knuckled, tear soaked, in prayer when he had come home from his father's funeral. He remembered Nori's warm hand on his back. Her hand was still there when he had first tightened his grip around the Border and taken aim at a photo of Nova.
He had held the same grip on the Border II when, in the wake of the battle with Eden, he had raised his gun to execute Gunvolt. Mytyl had put herself right before the barrel to stop him. If he had installed the hair trigger he was considering, he would have shot his little sister right then. He remembered walking away from the hospital where he had left her, the knowledge that she was born an adept tearing him apart. In the end, he was left with the image of Mytyl's face and the essence of the question he had posed the priest that morning: "Can I change?"
Copen gritted his teeth. Even if it were his father's legacy, he knew that he couldn't keep holding the gun between himself and his family.
"Don't you dare miss!" he said.
Copen slung the revolver past the barrier and the pins to Zeno's side of the briars where it clattered against the floor and spun as it slid. Zeno picked it up with a twirl, flicked off the safety, and cocked back the hammers of both white revolvers. The circle of pins was rotating such that the only gap was nearly in line.
"One in a million, huh?" Zeno remarked.
Teseo's spindles, which had been firing in an alternating sequence, ceased fire for the briefest moment to line up their combined salvo.
"The end!" Teseo shouted.
"Now!" Shiron called.
The instant the spindles stopped firing, Shiron let down his barrier and shifted his refraction orbs into position, one into the circle's gap. With Copen watching in suspense, Zeno aligned the revolvers in front of him. In the shade of his tinted glasses, Zeno saw the bullseye.
"Jackpot," he said.
Zeno pulled both triggers, and the hammers slammed forward, blasting the twin rounds directly into their spherical target. The bullets refracted into Shiron's other precisely positioned orb which sent them through the gap of Teseo's seemingly impregnable defenses where they pierced straight into his hologram stomach.
Teseo lurched forward with a gasp as his form destabilized. The circles of deadly pins also collapsed just short of completing their firing sequence.
"N-n-nani?" Teseo sputtered.
Copen, seeing his chance, aimed the Bug-out Beam and blasted Teseo with a torrent of his own septimal energy. The current of corrupted data stripped off Teseo's digital defenses and ripped him like a ghost from his machine. With a thrust of his hands, Shiron sent the laser drones that had been forming his barrier into a spiral like an electron storm around Teseo.
"G-friggin-g," Shiron said.
Shiron closed his hands and detonated the drones, triggering a massive chain reaction that eviscerated Teseo's armor and eclipsed him in blinding, blue light.
In the aftermath of the blast, Teseo, just clinging to life, sat up from the floor to see Copen's and Zeno's shadows looming over him. In a panic, he swiped at his hologram interface several times to try and restore his immortality, but it denied him access.
Lifting his fearful gaze further, he saw Shiron hovering above with both of the servers floating next to him. His arms were crossed, and his expression was just as menacing as the others. Without taking his eyes off Teseo, Copen opened his hand to Zeno who, with just as cold of a stare, set the Border II in Copen's hand. Teseo responded the only way he knew how.
"So, I may have said some things I now regret," Teseo said. "I can make an apology video. Like, right now if you want."
Zeno glanced over his glasses at Copen. Copen returned an exasperated look. Both Teseo's own pins and Shiron's drones appeared with their lasers trained on Teseo's shattered crown and chest.
"From the Dragon Saviors," Shiron said, "this one's for Kirin."
Copen and Zeno both pointed their handguns execution-style at Teseo.
"Wait-wait-wait!" Teseo said. "Think about the memes! The content!"
The entire trio opened fire simultaneously and didn't stop shooting until the triggers clicked. Teseo was reduced to atoms.
When the last of his septimal energy dissipated like a departing ghost, the cyberspace grid, starting from the spot of blackened floor where Teseo had just been, began to give way to reality until the group found themselves in the control room of the satellite base. Zeno threw his head back and exhaled hotly.
"Finally!" he said.
"Amen to that," Copen said. "Now, back to business. Hand over the Border."
"About that," Zeno said, "I wouldn't exactly say we're out of this yet."
Shiron's attack drones trained their sights on the duo.
"Yeah," Shiron said. "I appreciate the help and all, but I'm gonna have to arrest you now. Y'know, for unlawfully killing a lot of people a while back."
Copen glanced between the both of them. He pointed his gun at Zeno.
"Dude," Zeno said, "he's the one threatening us."
"You're easier to kill," Copen said, "and I'm sure Summeragi would rather have you prisoner than dead. Hand over the gun, or I'll take you both down here and now."
"Well," Zeno sighed, "it's as good a day for a Mexican standoff as any."
Though Copen observed nothing more than a twitch of Zeno's left hand, the Border II suddenly went flying from his and rattled on the floor. Zeno immediately pushed his handgun's barrel into Copen's hood.
"How did you–" Copen said.
"What, you didn't know?" Zeno said. "My septima exerts control over the last thing that touched my hand, bullets included."
"Another Pendulum septima?" Shiron said.
"I call it Screwball, actually," Zeno said. "Not that it matters. What matters is that I'm walking out that door, and no one's gonna stop me."
"You mean this door?" a gruff voice said.
Apprehensively, Zeno turned to see Cayman's bulging muscles taking up the entire doorway. As he scanned back around the room, he found Apollo and BB blocking off the other exits. Kirin, resting her hands on her staff, stood authoritatively in front of Shiron.
"Crap," Zeno said.
Zeno tossed aside the gun and raised his hands to his head. Reluctantly, Copen did the same. A smirk climbed Kirin's face.
"Nice work, Shiron," she said.