"Master, over here!" Hermione called out to him as the shipboy rounded the corner.
Emperor rushed toward them and jumped atop the building where the maid, Helena, and Admiral Graf Spee were waiting. When he landed on the roof, she noticed the trickle of dried blood running down the side of his head and his disheveled appearance.
"Master, are you okay?" She asked him in concern, and then a chill went down her spine as she noticed the two motionless bodies he was carrying, one per arm. "T-they are…"
"Queen Elizabeth and Sheffield META," Emperor said. "Don't worry, they are just unconscious," he added, much to Hermione's relief. She really didn't want to lay eyes on her queen's dead body, META counterpart or not.
"Hermione, where's Cinder?" He asked her, putting down the two Royal METAs.
His urgent tone brought her back to reality.
"She's... right over here." Hermione gestured to the side, her expression darkening as she stepped aside to let him through.
Emperor noticed the sudden gloom on her face right as his eyes settled on a white bundle of cloth lying on the ground. When he put two and two together, his heart sank. He approached it and bent down next to it, lifting the hem of the blanket to see for himself.
Hermione had told him how bad the situation with Cinder was. Despite that, he had thought that maybe if he was quick enough, he could still save her; he ought to at least try. So, he had made a beeline for their position; the sooner he got there, the sooner he could ascertain how dire her condition actually was.
It only took him a look to realize there was nothing he could do. He didn't need to be a repair ship to understand that her vitals were damaged beyond repair, if the hole in her chest was any indication. Her heart had stopped beating for too long, and her brain had already shut down, along with every trace of life in her Cube. Sure, his Morphing Polyhedron allowed him to heal light injuries and prevent the more serious ones from worsening by keeping the wounded Kansen in stasis, but he certainly couldn't resurrect the dead.
"Master?"
Hermione's tentative quip shook him out of his musings. He shook his head in resignation, covering Cinder's face with the white veil. The three shipgirls didn't say anything as he took off his hat, bringing it to his chest in a moment of silence. A few seconds passed before he stood up and turned toward them, their heads hanging low in grief.
"Where's Zuikaku?" Helena asked him in concern.
"Engaging their carrier. We separated when we met those two," he said, nodding toward the two Royal METAs' unconscious forms resting at their feet. "What about the others?"
"Le Malin and Lenin are on their way. They said they engaged two more of the Ashes and won; they are okay, but Lenin is injured," Spee told him, then a concerned expression appeared on her face. "About Leviathan and Enterprise… they still aren't answering."
Mirroring her concern, Emperor sucked in a sharp breath. "What about Liebe?"
"She just took off for the city; I've been keeping track of her," Helena informed him, bringing a hand up to her earpiece for emphasis.
"Excellent, let's go after her. She'll take us to Leviathan."
"Master, what do we do with them?" Hermione asked aloud, glancing at her compatriots' counterparts.
"Shouldn't some of us stay here in case they wake up?" Spee wondered aloud.
Emperor brought his hand to his chin, thinking about it for a second.
"I think I have an idea..."
"This woman... is unrelenting," Ash mused from atop her Hellcat.
Enterprise's squadron was hot on her tails, with the other carrier herself leading the group from atop her own fighter.
Ash turned toward her, raising her bow from her kneeling position atop the fuselage. She tried to stabilize her plane to take better aim. Even with the wind blowing her scarf into her face from behind, she lined up a shot and fired.
Her energy arrow traveled the distance straight to the target, but Enterprise willed her plane to dodge the shot by moving to the side.
Ash clicked her tongue as the arrow went to embed itself into the fighter right behind her opponent, engulfing it in a fireball.
All the while, Enterprise hadn't looked away from her; her yellow-glowing eyes were always on her, never missing a single one of her every move.
"Is she even blinking?" Ash wondered aloud. If she squinted, she could almost see the glow from that distance; her eyes looked like searchlights, staring holes into her very soul.
This was very much like that one time—her first encounter with Enterprise.
Ash remembered it vividly. It was the first time she had crossed paths with her counterpart. She had created a portal to cross, just like she had always done, but she could have never predicted that the shipgirls of Azur Lane would come through it, mistaking it for a Mirror Sea of Siren origin.
She cursed when that happened; opening a portal for the most recent timeline always was Cinder's idea, and yet, in a cruel twist of fate, it happened to her first. Of course, it was all a fluke, but it was already done, and she couldn't do anything about it; to make things worse, Enterprise herself was there.
The moment the two had first locked eyes, the memory-sharing happened, and Ash received her counterpart's memories. From what she could see, this Enterprise was doing pretty well, as much if not better than herself in her old timeline. At that moment, a weird feeling of longing came over her, mixed with nostalgia and even a bit of envy for her counterpart, who had everything she had lost and was trying to regain.
Despite that, she didn't let that envy get the better of her and turn into anger. She left as soon as she could, taking advantage of Enterprise going berserk after witnessing flashes of her past. She reunited with Ember and the others, still scouting that timeline, explained the situation, and rushed away with them through another portal.
And now there she was, on the receiving end of her counterpart's rage-filled onslaught.
Ash had killed Cinder, Enterprise had lost control, their Cubes had resonated, and they had gotten transferred into this place. From her experience, Ash could tell that this was some kind of transient space existing between both their Cubes' domains. It had taken the form of the same ruined city they were in earlier, except everything had this dark, gloomy aura around it; the only light available was the sunset, which sank the place into an eerie atmosphere.
Why that had happened, she didn't know. What she felt, though, was that only one of them would get out of there with her mind intact, and she was determined that it would be her.
But Enterprise wasn't making it easy. In her state, all kinds of inhibitions were gone. Fear, hesitation—everything that could impede a warrior had disappeared from her mind; there was only the instinct of relentlessly pursuing the enemy in front of her. Her decision-making ability and her skill were left untouched, which, paired with everything else, made her a formidable opponent.
"I should have taken her up on that offer…" Ash mused, a flash of regret passing through her mind. Maybe if she had agreed to talk when she had been asked to, it wouldn't have come to this. They could have reached a compromise, and Cinder would still be-
She shook her head vehemently, dispelling those thoughts. Just thinking about Cinder made her heart clench. She wrapped her scarf tighter around her neck, hiding her mouth and nose behind the fabric as she prepared herself. She needed to focus on the battle if she didn't want to be found lacking by her counterpart.
As if on cue, Enterprise pushed forward with her aircraft, almost catching up to her. She aimed her bow at the META carrier, shooting an arrow that embedded itself into her plane's fuselage.
Before it blew up, Ash jumped off the plane, releasing a scattershot of energy darts from her bow toward the enemy flock. With the distraction in place, she landed atop another one of her own fighters before she willed her squadron to split into two.
Forcing all her planes into an impossibly narrow U-turn, the two smaller airwings engaged Enterprise's fleet from both sides. Dogfights broke out as Ash's fighters took the enemy in a pincer; Hellcats began shooting each other down in a cloud of fire and steel above the roofs of the dead city.
Ash wanted to join the fray, but Enterprise was still dead set to get her.
The Grey Ghost guided her ride through the line of opposing aircraft, pushing it to its limits as she ignored mortal danger to get to the META.
Ash saw her coming at her, and both the META carrier and her own fighter began shooting at Enterprise in tandem. That forced the Grey Ghost to do a barrel roll, her Hellcat narrowly evading their fire as it approached the other plane's position from up front.
They crossed each other; Enterprise was upside-down and above Ash's head. The two locked eyes for an instant as they aimed full draw, the former downward, the latter upward; they shot their arrows at the same time, both projectiles nailing the other's ride.
Before the explosions engulfed them, they both jumped into a freefall.
Enterprise drew and shot another arrow at Ash from above as they fell, the energy dart turning into a fighter that dove straight down to her, trying to skewer her with her propeller.
But the META carrier had already called upon an airwing from her rigging. The miniaturized fighters lined up atop her flight deck before turning into globes of light and fusing themselves into a single, long energy staff. Ash took it in her hand and placed its nock onto her bowstring, pulling it back as much as it could until her bow begged for release.
She waited until the last second to shoot. The projectile pierced through the incoming fighter, traveling toward the sky, above the line of the dogfights, before it exploded in a myriad of small, shining, shooting stars.
The energy bolides came down from the sky in a thick rain, hitting aircraft from both sides in their wake. Again, Enterprise was completely unfazed by the turn of events and simply kept staring Ash down as they both fell.
Ash realized it was time to take another ride when she noticed they were reaching the buildings' height. She summoned another fighter and scurried away, prompting Enterprise to mimic and follow her.
The two began weaving through the high-rises as the shooting stars landed on the city. Chunks of concrete, roofs, and balconies began coming down on them as they passed through falling rubble and energy blasts with their fighters, shooting each other all the while, Enterprise always hot on Ash's tail.
The META carrier was starting to get frustrated. They had been playing that stupid game of tag for a while now, flying all over the city, but whatever she did, she couldn't shake her off or take her down. She even tried to throw her off by deliberately passing through narrower paths and taking impossible turns, but every time she turned, Enterprise was still there.
She decided to change her approach. She would shoot another scatter shot as a decoy to regain altitude and get out of the city; in the sky, she'd have another chance to overwhelm her with her aircraft, and this time, it would be the last.
She turned on her plane to face her opponent and carry out her plan, only to realize that Enterprise wasn't hot on her heels anymore. She paused in surprise; the Grey Ghost seemed to have slowed down her pace, the distance between them getting larger with each passing second.
A bad feeling crept over Ash. She looked around, realizing that this wasn't the first time they passed through that avenue. She noticed the various high-rises and skyscrapers dotted with small, glowing lights contrasting with the dark gray of the concrete; they were pulsing intermittently, like fireflies hanging from leaf blades as they performed their mating dance.
Time seemed to slow down as realization hit her; those were Enterprise's energy arrows embedded into the walls. She must have shot them the first time they passed through that avenue, holding off their detonation until the right moment.
Ash looked back and locked eyes with Enterprise. The Grey Ghost was standing straight on her Hellcat at a safe distance, holding her free hand high. With a snap of her fingers, she triggered her trap.
The arrows blew up altogether, releasing the energy they had been holding off in a series of explosions that put to shame the shore bombardment of a fleet of warships. The shockwaves were so strong that Ash's Hellcat buckled under her feet. She tried to regain control of it as she held onto it for dear life, but the cacophony was deafening. The buildings surrounding her began falling one after the other like cut-down trees, ensnaring her in a trap with no way out, until her ride eventually stalled, and she crashed into a falling roof she couldn't avoid.
She didn't register the impact as everything around her went dark and she fell unconscious.
"What's wrong, male Kansen? Is that all you've got?" Ember jeered at Leviathan. "I was expecting a bit more after all that brave talk."
"Give me a break. Without my rigging, it's like I'm fighting with a handicap," the shipboy grimaced as he ducked under another volley directed at him; the shells landed harmlessly behind him, raising a spray of water with a loud explosion.
"Hmpf. The weak always have a clever way to justify themselves," Ember scoffed.
The moment Ember realized his rigging wasn't coming back any time soon, she had decided to forego the close-range combat and began attacking him from a safe distance with her own rigging. Of course, without Liebe by his side, he was having trouble fighting back. The worst part was that there wasn't a single building for him to take cover behind in the middle of the town square. He tried to move the fight back into the city, where he could attempt to take her by surprise with his chains, but she was making sure of cutting him off any escape route with well-placed shots.
They had been going at it for a while now, but scampering around the place, desperately trying to dodge attacks, wasn't his forte; he had too many close calls to count, and some of her hits even managed to reach him, although he was able to use his chain to deflect or soften the blow. Sure, him being a battleship meant that he could take some more punishment than most other Kansen, but that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt, and he certainly wasn't looking forward to finding out how much firepower a META Kansen was packing directly on his skin. Besides, what's the point of being able to tank hits when you can't even respond in kind because your rigging is missing?
The only thing he could do was buy time for anyone to come to his aid… Or was it?
"What about you, then?" Leviathan said, trying to catch his breath. "You are so strong... Are you really okay with winning like this?"
"What, trying to guilt-trip me about my advantage now?" Ember frowned. "You must really be at your wit's end."
"I wouldn't dream of it. I was just expecting a warrior of the Sakura to be more… honorable, if you get what I mean," he said.
Ember narrowed her eyes at him.
"Don't patronize me, male Kansen," she warned him, adjusting the aim of her guns on him. "I'm way past the point of fighting honorably. It hasn't done me any good, as you can see."
"That's good to know," Leviathan said. "Because I'm too..."
Before Ember could shoot another volley, a loud explosion caught their attention. Far away from them, atop one of the tallest buildings in the city, where the majority of the aerial battles were taking place, a bright orange light lit up, the glow contrasting with the gray of the clouds covering the sky.
The two of them paused, observing what was unfolding in alarm and confusion. The fire condensed into the form of a big, flaming, bird-like figure, which took off from the roof, soaring high into the sky and literally running over the aircraft it met on its path before disappearing into thin air with another burst of flame.
For a second, Leviathan was reminded of Kurama, when the male Kitsune would light up the horizon with his pillars of fire and flames. But since he knew this wasn't his brother's doing, there was only another person who could be responsible—Zuikaku.
He fought back his concern for the Sakura carrier and focused on his opponent. Unlike him, Ember was still trying to figure out what was happening. That one second delay in her reaction was enough for him.
He rushed forward, charging at her headfirst. When she noticed, Ember readjusted her aim to intercept him with a shot. Before she could do that, Leviathan took off his black and red cape with a flourish, throwing it in front of him.
Time seemed to slow down as the cape fluttered right in front of her like a small curtain, blocking Ember's view of the shipboy and hiding his moves from her.
She couldn't just shoot at random; if she missed, the time it took her to reload would allow him to attack her, and she was completely inside his chain's range at that distance. She couldn't wait too much either; otherwise, he'd be on her in a heartbeat, and she'd lose the initiative.
Before she could act, Leviathan had already thrown one of his chains forward; the short blade at its extremity appeared on the left side of the cloth, aiming straight at the shipgirl's right side.
Without losing her cool, Ember quickly brought her hand to the hilt of her sword, unsheathing it with a quick draw and deflecting the blade right before it could reach her.
She smirked. Without his only blade at the ready, he had no other way of hurting her. Also, based on the position of the cape between them, he was too close for her to shoot him now if she didn't want to get caught in her own blast, but he was perfectly within range of her blade.
She switched to a double-handed grip, preparing a downward slash to hit him with. Her swing tore through the fabric, but when she peeked over the pieces of cloth to resume her assault… he was gone.
Ember heard the sound of chains rattling by her left side; a quick glance revealed Leviathan with his other blade at the ready and the corresponding chain tightly wrapped around his wrist.
Realization hit her. Up until that moment, he had been fighting with a single chain to lull her into a false sense of security, so that when he'd throw his cape and his blade at her, she'd expose herself, thinking him inoffensive, while he'd have all the time to summon his second chain blade and attack her.
He thrust the short blade at her exposed flank, which she protected with her left-side rigging. Instead of interrupting his attack, Leviathan shifted his blade into a reverse grip, stabbing it with all his strength into one of her turrets' bucklers like a scalpel. Then, he jumped backward as he willed the chain to unravel and wrap around said turret and superstructure, blocking their movements and effectively rendering them useless like dead weight.
Feeling irritation rising, Ember aimed her rigging's right turrets at him, but the shipboy yanked with all his strength, making her stumble forward and messing up her aim. Her rounds missed by a long shot, and before she could recover her balance, he had already recalled and thrown his other blade at her, aiming straight at her chest.
She managed to stand up and deflect it with her own blade, but the shipboy began rotating the chain violently before slamming the shortsword onto her from above. She shielded herself with her rigging, the blade scratching the superstructure with the impact. After repelling it, she aimed her right turrets at him once again.
This time, she didn't let herself lose balance; her aim was true, and the volley traveled toward the target, but the shipboy recalled his chain around his left wrist, using it to swat away the round that would have hit him square in the chest.
They kept going like that for a while, trying to one-up each other. He'd swing his left chain blade at her, and she'd deflect it with her sword or her rigging's right side before shooting him. He would dodge or brush off those hits before taking advantage of her reloading to retaliate. Meanwhile, her left-side rigging was completely useless because of his other chain, which he was holding firmly in his right hand, to prevent her from putting distance between them.
She tried to dismiss her rigging to escape his hold, but something was preventing her. The only explanation was that cursed chain of his. She even gave up on an opening to quickly attempt to break it with her katana, but to no avail; it seemed indestructible.
He had worked so hard to get on even ground with her, and he certainly wasn't going to let her go so easily. So, if he wanted the close quarters, she'd give it to him.
She took advantage of a moment of respite between exchanges to sheathe her weapon. Then she grabbed the chain that was keeping her rigging on lock and yanked on it with all her strength, only to let go immediately after and charge at him head-on. The sudden shift in weight on his hold made him stumble for a second, which was enough for the shipgirl to reach him and attack him with the quickest draw she was capable of.
With her blade aimed dangerously at his neck and his right hand occupied, his only way to defend himself was to recall his left chain blade. He did it right on time to deflect her swing, but that left him open to her follow-up. Instead of bringing her blade down again, she aimed all her barrels available at him, taking a quick step back before shooting him with a focused assault.
Leviathan could only bring his chain-covered arms up to protect himself as the enemy volley engulfed him in a cacophony of explosions. The spread of the rounds reduced to its minimum allowed her to reach him with every single one of them, leaving more than just a bruise. His eardrums were shattered, his clothes were reduced to tatters, his skin was burned, and his bones were crushed by the weight of the explosion.
He fell unceremoniously into the water without uttering a sound. He barely even felt pain as he looked up, his vision blurred and his ears ringing.
"I'll admit you almost got me a few times there…" Ember said, catching her breath as she approached his bobbing, battered figure.
She looked down at him. He was barely conscious; she didn't even know if he could hear her, but it didn't matter.
"Let's get this over with," she said, pointing her sword at his neck before preparing one final blow.
But before she could deliver it, a sudden glow, coming from behind her, caught her attention. The light resembled too much the one that had enveloped Ash and Enterprise right before they disappeared.
She didn't know what to expect, but she turned to face it, her sword held tightly in her hands as a bad feeling crept over her.
Then a familiar, white-haired figure walked out of the fissure of light; it was so blinding that Ember couldn't make it out until the glow subsided. When it did, her eyes went wide and her jaw slack.
That wasn't Ash… right? That was Enterprise.
The person had Enterprise's gentle features and her long hair but wasn't wearing the same outfit... It was similar to the previous one, or was her mind playing tricks on her? Ember could swear it looked somewhat different. She was wearing her coat properly; she even had a gray scarf around her neck and a pair of white gloves on her hands.
Though the most noticeable part wasn't her attire, it was her rigging... because it was Ash's. Only the flight deck, though; the bow was different. Ash's was bigger, bulkier, and designed for power; Enterprise's was smaller, thinner, and designed for speed and maneuverability. This one resembled Ash's, but it was slicker and sharper; it was as if it had been readapted to better fit Enterprise's tastes.
"It's you! Where's Ash?! What have you done to her?!" Ember roared, realization slowly getting to her.
As if waking up from a trance, Enterprise looked around in confusion before her eyes settled on Ember. An expression of grief appeared on her face as she replied, "She's… gone."
Her words left Ember speechless for a second.
"You… Curse you! You'll pay for this!"
"Not so fast!"
An unidentified male voice, followed by the sound of artillery going off, forced her to take a quick step back just in time as the water around her erupted in a cacophony of explosions and geysers, making her back up to a safe distance.
When the chaos subsided, she looked up at the assailants. Spread atop the various buildings at the edge of the city square were the Kansen of Azur Lane, including the two other shipboys; all of them had their riggings out and were all glaring at her.
Gritting her teeth in anger at the sudden turn of events, an idea came to her mind. If she could get to Leviathan, she'd have a hostage to negotiate with.
She switched her gaze back to the downed shipboy, only to notice that he wasn't there anymore. In his place, Liebe had appeared. Her body was half-submerged, with only her dorsal fin, her back, and her upper jaw above the water, glaring at her with her glowing eyes; did she just swallow him like she had done with Cinder? Is that why his friends were so keen to shoot her down despite him being so close to her?
"You there, stand down!" Emperor shouted again. "We've captured two of your comrades, and we aren't afraid of- uh?"
The shipboy paused in confusion. He was expecting to find both Enterprise and Leviathan locked in battle against Ash and maybe one of her underlings. He figured it was the reason why they both weren't answering their calls, so he had decided to bring the still unconscious Queen Elizabeth and Sheffield and use them as leverage to put an end to the fight without risking anyone getting hurt.
He certainly wasn't expecting to see his brother beaten to an inch of his life and Enterprise looking like she had just returned from a shopping trip. The carrier had her rigging out, but she didn't look like she had been locked in a battle, in contrast to Ember. Also, something felt different about her, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it...
"Someone else is coming!" Helena warned them.
Everyone turned their heads to the side, following her gaze.
From one of the narrow alleys leading to the town square emerged Hiryuu META's figure, carrying Zuikaku's wounded and unconscious form on her back.
The lapin carrier perked up at the scene before her—a bunch of Kansen from Azur Lane keeping Ember at gun point with their rigging but looking as confused as her.
"Um… I'm here to yield?"
The following minutes passed like a blur.
Ember gave up on her resistance. Outnumbered, outgunned, and most importantly, without Ash, there was no more reason to keep fighting.
Everyone rushed over to apprehend her and to check on Zuikaku as Hiryuu recalled their duel. She didn't say anything about what she almost forced Zuikaku to do, but she made a point about how the Red Crane had fought with the goal of helping her and that she had no intention of disrespecting her by acting hostile.
After that, Emperor began attending to the wounded.
Seeing that Zuikaku wasn't heavily injured and that she wasn't waking up only because she had overexerted herself with her Wisdom Crafting, he switched his focus to his brothers.
Leviathan and Lenin were a lot worse off than everyone else. The former was still alive only because of his constitution as a battleship and because he had protected his vitals with his chains; otherwise, he'd already be dead. The latter's wounds weren't as serious, but he wasn't unconscious only thanks to his nuclear reactors, which gave him off-scale natural resilience.
As always, Emperor morphed his polyhedron into its coffin form. He ensured Leviathan was out of danger before allowing Lenin to take his turn in the stasis chamber. The next in line was Hiryuu; although Emperor couldn't do much for a severed limb, so he just closed her wounds as best as he could.
Meanwhile, Le Malin brought the others to where she and Lenin had left Algérie and La Gallissonnière, so that they could recover them, and Emperor could treat them as well.
Everyone else was either unscathed or only had a few scrapes and bumps on them—nothing that required the shipboy to exert himself even more to heal them. Thanks to that, he was free to focus the rest of his energy on his brother.
"What are you doing?" Ember asked him. Emperor had just encased Leviathan in the transparent coffin, but only after having removed his brother's chains from his arms. and was now approaching her comrades' unconscious forms with the bundle in hand.
"Taking precautions," he informed her, sucking a deep breath, refusing to look her in the eyes. "Lizzie and Sheffy weren't exactly happy with me when I sent them to sleep; I'm worried they might do something rash when they wake up."
Ember stood up on her feet, outraged. "If you think I'll allow you to put my comrades in chains-"
"Calm down, Ember," Hiryuu intervened to assuage her friend's anger. "We lost; we don't get a say in the matter."
"Um, there's no need to worry; we aren't going to hurt them... Those chains will prevent them from deploying their rigging, nothing else, I promise," Spee said, trying to reassure the two only METAs awake while the others kept an eye on them. The way she flexed her claw-gauntlets made it seem like a veiled threat, if it weren't for her sheepish attitude and her gentle tone of voice.
Reluctantly, the META battlecruiser was forced to relent, sitting herself back on the parapet of the roof they were all gathered.
"Hey, brother; I think these two are also going to be a pain to deal with," Lenin told Emperor, nodding to the two unconscious Vichya METAs. "You should spare some chain for them as well."
With that said, the four sleeping beauties were neatly tied up, and everyone's more serious wounds had been healed.
It was finally time to address the elephant in the room.
"Enterprise, can you tell us what happened?" Helena was the one who asked her as everyone turned their eyes on her.
The Grey Ghost had been standing aside, kneeling beside Cinder's covered body, with a thousand-yard stare in her eyes and a frown on her face.
Ember had already explained her perspective earlier; now it was her turn. She had been dreading that moment ever since she had come out of the light, and now she couldn't back down.
She stood up on her feet and turned to face them.
After taking a deep breath, she began talking.
Earlier…
Enterprise was flying around the place, scouting the surroundings from atop her fighter.
After Ash's plane had crashed and the META carrier had disappeared into the chaos, Enterprise had come to her senses. Although saying that wouldn't be correct. This wasn't like her first meeting with Ash, when she had almost let her anger get the better of her after witnessing her counterpart's traumatizing memories; this time, her mind wasn't entirely far gone. She had been perfectly aware of everything that was happening while she was in that state; she had just lost all inhibitions.
Maybe it was because she wasn't trying to fight it, or maybe it was because she was letting her anger out without holding it back. She didn't know, but losing sight of Ash had simply assuaged her fury, and now she could think and see with more clarity.
The entire district had been reduced to rubble; the fallen buildings blocked the streets, resting above the water level as their eviscerated lower parts jutted out like tree stumps.
Enterprise bit her lips. The view of the devastation was harrowing; knowing that it was her fault didn't make it any easier. Even worse, knowing that she had reveled in the thrill of battle and the chaos and destruction she was causing, even if for a brief moment, made her feel disgusted with herself.
She shook her head, banishing those thoughts from her mind. She had to find a way out of that space, but she had no idea where to start. She needed to find Ash and ask her, in the hope that she was still alive.
After a few more minutes of searching, there she was. Ash was lying with her back atop a big slate of concrete inclined diagonally into the water, which was probably supposed to be the side of a building before Enterprise had torn it down.
She flew as low as she could before jumping off her plane and landing on the water a few feet away from her. Ash felt the disturbance and moved her head to watch as Enterprise approached her.
When she came to a stop before her, they locked eyes, and a pregnant silence filled the air.
"Don't you have anything to say?" Ash questioned her with a tired tone of voice.
Enterprise looked her up and down. Her body was covered in bruises and filth, bleeding profusely from multiple wounds; her clothes were torn and burned in multiple places where the explosion and the impact had reached her. Her rigging and bow were still there, marred by multiple cracks, completely unusable.
"Do you know how to get out of here?" Enterprise asked her. "What even is this place? Are we inside your Cube? Mine? What's going on?"
Ash let out a weak chuckle.
"Of all the things you could have asked me... I was expecting to be on the receiving end of your wrath," she said, pushing herself to sit up on the concrete slate with difficulty.
Enterprise clenched her fists, swallowing the lump forming in her throat.
"York- Cinder said she didn't want us to fight each other, and yet I let my anger get the better of me again… I have no right to berate you while you are like this," she declared. "What about you? Cinder died to protect me; aren't you going to scream at me that it's all my fault? Aren't you going to say that if I'd never been here, none of this would have happened?"
Another self-deprecating laugh escaped Ash's lips.
"Dammit, Cinder was right; we are both blaming ourselves for what happened to her... If we can't forgive ourselves, how are we supposed to forgive each other?" Ash pondered for a second, then realization dawned on her. If she couldn't forgive herself, then she'll let Enterprise do it. But for that to happen, the META had to be the one to take the first step.
"Then I'll start…" Ash trailed off as Enterprise braced herself, ready for the verbal assault.
"I'm sorry," she said, much to the other carrier's surprise. "Don't look at me like that. We can play the game of blame as much as we want; it won't change anything. Cinder is dead, and soon I'll be too."
Enterprise didn't know what to say. The META asking for forgiveness was enough to leave her stunned, but what got her attention was her last statement.
"What are you saying?" She questioned Ash. "Your wounds are serious, but if we get out of here, I have a friend that can-"
"That's not it, Enterprise. I lost. I know it, you know it, and our Cubes know it," Ash interjected. "This place is some kind of other plane of existence, only accessible to Kansen, or anything drawing power from a Wisdom Cube. The moment we resonated, they dragged us into this place because they felt the hostility that we harbored for each other. This wasn't a peaceful exchange like the memory sharing we had last time; this was a fight for dominance, and I've been found lacking…"
Enterprise's eyes widened in understanding. At that moment, she remembered the conversation she'd had with Freedom a long time ago.
…when two Kansen from different timelines but with the same identity meet, their Cubes forcefully resonate with each other, causing the phenomenon of memory sharing. The theory is that the Cubes, being just alien clusters of data, have this natural tendency to gather as much information as they can from their counterpart, and this exchange takes place in the form of a mutual memory transfer. The other theory is that each Cube is just trying to absorb the other in a more "survival of the fittest" kind of manner…
"What does it mean? What's going to happen to you?" Enterprise asked her, dreading the answer.
"Don't fret for me. At least one of us is going to be able to fulfill Cinder's last wish..." Ash's voice trailed off as a thought emerged from her mind. She figured there was nothing wrong with voicing it aloud; those were her final moments, after all.
"Ash?"
"Enterprise, I have a request," she said. "Will you agree to listen?"
Still trying to wrap her head around her words, Enterprise agreed to hear her out.
"All right, let's hear it."
Ash took a deep breath and let out, "I want you to find a cure for the Metamorphosis."
Enterprise gawked in surprise and confusion. "What?! But I thought... Cinder said-"
"That the process is irreversible, sure… according to the Sirens," Ash cut her off. "None of us ever had any reason to believe otherwise. But I've always held a wish in my heart, a flimsy hope that maybe the Sirens were wrong, and that the Creator knows how to cure our affliction. I planned on finding out when… if we ever reached the Original Timeline. But as things turned out, even that won't be possible anymore…"
Silence filled the air once more as the META expressed her wish.
"Are you asking me... to do it in your stead?" Enterprise tentatively asked her.
Ash averted her gaze, looking down between her legs. The shame of leaving her last wish to the person who had defeated her was insignificant compared to her desire to cure her comrades, but it was still a hard hit to her pride.
Enterprise clenched her fists as she sucked in a sharp breath.
"I never wanted it to end this way. It should be you or Cinder to save them, not me…"
"Crying over spilled milk won't be of any use at this point. Will you do it, or not?" Ash asked her bluntly.
"I will… Of course I will," Enterprise answered back. "Rest assured that I'll at least try."
A small smile of relief graced Ash's lips. "Then I'll gladly become part of you."
As if those last words acted as a trigger, Ash's gray eyes slowly lit up; the light reflected into Enterprise's violet ones as they also began glowing.
As the light increased in intensity, it enveloped everything, from the shipgirls to the rubble, to the water to the sky, until nothing could be seen of the space around them.
Then they both lost consciousness, one of them forever.
AN: Arc 4 is a wrap! Next chapter will be the epilogue, and then chapter 55 will officially start arc 5.
This entire last part of arc 4 was like a huge gamble/experiment for me. There are things I'd like to have explored more, but with the risk of dragging this entire thing on for too long, and things I'd have done in an entirely different way but couldn't actually make happen, be it because they didn't fit in the plot or simply because I didn't have the balls to put them into words.
I blame myself for that, and my inexperience as a writer, of course, but overall? I'm more than satisfied with the result. I had a blast writing this, and I hope you also liked it. Of course, criticism is always appreciated.
Also, Enterprise's new outfit is essentially the Soaring Wings of Freedom skin (insert $60 skin meme here), but with Ash's rigging. And yes, in the canon of this story, that counts essentially as a retrofit, even though she got it with "unorthodox" means.
Next Chapter: Maid in Heaven