“Ah, you’re here.” Off in the distance, the girl in red greeted Ichika.
“What are you really after?” he asked, not with the rage of before but with a controlled enmity.
“...My dream.”
“Your... dream?”
“No. Our dream. IS are machines built to fulfill their pilots’ dreams.”
Memories drifted, unbidden, to the surface of Ichika’s mind. The pale girl in his own dream. The more he recalled, the more she and the girl in red looked alike.
And—fulfilling dreams. Who was this girl, that she would believe so firmly?
“You already know the answer, don’t you? Somewhere deep down inside.” She smiled faintly. “I am a dream. The power she dreamed of. The future she never stopped dreaming of.”
“That can’t be the answer Houki chose!”
The girl slipped the visor from her face. Behind it were eyes just like Houki’s when she was young. No, not ‘just like.’ She was the younger Houki.
“I am the first IS, Akatsuki. The power she first touched. The power to surpass all within this world. And—”
As if to finish her sentence, her twin blades slashed downward. Metal clashed on metal, sparks flew as Yukihira Nigata rose to parry.
“The alternative. the replacement that can finally make you hers!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Ichika saw Akatsubaki’s IFF identifier change to Akatsuki. Not as a transformation. But as an awakening. The IS Akatsuki, finally reunited with its master, awoke from its long slumber.
“I exist to make you hers, to eliminate all who would interfere!”
Ichika had known, or at least could recite the fact, that IS had some sort of AI installed. But something able to take on a life of its own like this was more than just a machine. So just what was an IS, anyway? He didn’t have time to wonder now. Slash after slash rained down on him from Akatsuki as he was pressed back.
“Ugh...!” A swift parry left Ichika disarmed, Yukihira Nigata spinning from his hand. And then, Akatsuki struck again.
“Become hers, Orimura Ichika.”
She was smiling. There was a smile on the girl’s face. A dispassionate smile. Neither cold nor warm as she gazed down at him.
“So...” Something inside him welled up in anger. “So what if that’s true?!”
Ichika raised his hand to block the incoming blow. He could hear his armor split. Feel his flesh rip apart. The point of her katana had stopped just in front of his eyes. No. His hand had stopped it.
“Aaaargh!” Sheer millimeters of respite, bought with his own left hand. Before he lost even that, he wrapped his right arm around the girl.
“Let me go!” Caught in his grasp, she began to panic, firing off bursts from the Ugachi cannon mounted on her shoulders.
“Let’s see who can hold out longer!”
“Wh—?!”
With his arm still around her, he soared higher and higher into the skies, his wings of light tearing at her as the Ugachi shots slammed into him.
“Stop! Stop! STOP! ...Stop it!”
“No, Houki!”
At the point where the heavens’ blue faded into black, the two IS exploded.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ugh...
Groggily, Houki opened her eyes. The blinding white sand of her memories, her soul... Blue sea and sky, white land. She wandered the shore aimlessly.
“I...”
Then she remembered. Remembered what she’d done.
I... It’s all because I wanted to be strong... Akatsuki. The IS she’d been given. The ‘ruler’ of all IS. With the power to dominate any other. With it, she had challenged Chifuyu’s IS, Kurezakura. In the end, Chifuyu was left too beaten to even move, Kurezakura fatally damaged. And when Houki had realized what she had done, her memories had been sealed away. By Tabane.
“What have I done...”
Chifuyu disappeared from the history of IS. And it was her fault. She tried to run away from the responsibility. Tried to twist it. Tried to deny it. Her own weakness made her want to throw up. There was no way to pay for what she’d done. No way to redeem herself.
“I... I don’t...”
She didn’t deserve to be saved. Not by Ichika. Not by her friends. Not even by Akatsuki.
“I can’t...”
She wanted to disappear. To vanish. For the world to never have to see her puny, scheming self again. For herself to never have to see her puny, scheming self again.
“Don’t run away.” She heard a voice. Ichika’s voice. “Don’t run away, Houki.”
Ichika, beaten and battered, his IS Byakushiki pounded into scrap, settled to the ground, Akatsuki still in his arms.
“I’m here for you, Houki.” He forced a smile to his face even as blood gushed from his wounded hand. Not just his hand. His entire body was a mess of cuts and wounds. Yet still, he smiled. “There you go.”
Laying the unconscious Akatsuki on the sand, he closed Byakushiki.
“I-Ichika...” Houki’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of him. “Why... Why would you go so far for me?”
She turned away, unable to watch him like that any longer.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He stepped forward. “Because you’re you, Houki. Not because you’re someone strong, or someone important. Because you’re you.”
Again, he stepped forward, and slowly held out his hand. As she felt it brush her cheek, she finally turned back to him.
“Ichi... ka...”
“What’re you crying for?”
“Shut up...”