Leon leaped to the side as smoothly as silk, and the blade missed by the width of a single thread.
“Haha! I bet you’re glad I cut them off now, partner!”
Rheinhardt gave no quarter, even as his strike fell on thin air. All of a sudden, each of the clods of earth he had kicked up with his earlier lunge turned into blades. The strategy had been set out from the very beginning.
“Now, what happens if I aim for the spot where you’ll land, partner?”
Rheinhardt roared with exertion, and the hundreds of little blades shot toward Leon in great enough numbers that there seemed to be no end to them. They all aimed for the precise instant that Leon’s feet touched the ground, in the millisecond before he could take any further action. Any ordinary person would be turned into a pincushion, but Leon was far from ordinary.
“Activate Boosters.”
Though certain death awaited him only a few short moments down the line, Leon did not falter. He spoke, and his whole body responded. Part of his leg machinery unfolded, and metal cylinders burst out of the back of his coat. Then, just when the knives were mere moments from his skin, he spoke again.
“Accelerate.”
Superheated jet fuel spewed from the cylinders, launching Leon sideways without a moment’s delay. The knives stuck into the ground, where they turned back into earth and reunited with the ground.
“…Haha! Wow, partner, I didn’t think you’d go that far,” Rheinhardt laughed, a little astonishment mixed with a far greater amount of joy. “I can’t believe you remodeled your insides just for me!”
His violet eyes narrowed, as if he were able to see right through Leon’s skin and bones to perceive what lay within.
“Hmm, I see, I see,” he said. “Only your heart and a tiny bit of your skeleton is still natural. The rest has all been replaced. And even the bones that remain have been treated in some way. The weird pipe things sticking out of your back are proof of that.”
The angel smiled as he pointed out what the ghoul had done.
“What else? Oh, you’ve swapped out your intestines for a Source generator, I see. Every time you expend Source energy, that device infuses your body with more of the stuff. Or, more specifically…with a concoction made from human meat and blood, isn’t that right, partner?”
There was no reason to hide it. Leon gave a firm nod.
“Well, that stuff packs a real punch, I’ll not deny that. But I never thought you’d inject yourself with it! I thought you hated the stuff.”
He was right. Leon despised the thought of using a substance made from humans to enhance his performance. He always thought that if he stooped to such means, he would lose what little humanity he still possessed.
However, such fears meant nothing to Leon now.
“This is the end of the line,” he said. “It all ends here. I’m going to send you off to heaven, and then…”
Bearing both his own sin and that of his old friend, Leon would sink into hell.
That was why Leon had given it all up. Both living as a human and living as a fiend. He was nothing now but a man-shaped fighting machine.
“It’s time to end this. Time to end it all.”
Leon’s countenance was grim as he spoke those cold words…and this time, he was the one to take the initiative. He sped like a bolt toward his foe, who cast him a welcoming smile and said, “I don’t dislike the direct approach myself…but, well. It just makes me want to tease you a little, that’s all.”
Suddenly, pillars of ice appeared before Leon. Rheinhardt must have created them by freezing the moisture in the air. The next moment, they all shot forward to flatten him. Their speed was incredible, and given that Leon was hurtling toward them on rocket boosters, it seemed even faster from his perspective. And yet…
“…Too slow.”
Through Leon’s eyes, the whole world seemed sluggish. That was because his eyes had been biomechanically enhanced. Not a single part of him was untouched. Leon was now able to artificially stimulate his nervous system, speeding up his visual perception and consequently making it seem as though all moving objects had slowed to a crawl.
When paired with the rocket boosters sticking out of every part of his body, Leon could leave the whole world behind.
“…Seriously?”
For the first time, Rheinhardt sounded worried. He had missed. He launched everything he could think of, from every angle, but to no avail.
Then, finally, Leon was here. Right underneath his nose.
“Got you.”
“Haha!”
Was that a triumphant laugh or a nervous one? Leon clenched his right fist, and Rheinhardt leaped backward, trying to avoid a decisive blow. However…
“Accelerate.”
As Rheinhardt widened the distance, Leon closed it. This was easily achievable with his jet boosters. In payback for Rheinhardt’s earlier trick, Leon aimed for the precise moment his foe was to land, and…
Shwf!
It was only a single punch, but given the power behind Leon’s mechanized arm, very few things in the world could stand up to it. Rheinhardt’s body was not one of those things. The blow landed in his torso, ripping skin and flesh and tearing the man in two.
No ordinary fiend could survive such an attack, but Rheinhardt was an Archfiend. From each segment of his body came strange tendrils that weaved together, attempting to restore his original form.
However, this was all within Leon’s predictions.
“Arts of Steel, Deploy: Full Duplex.”
Leon’s brain was now little more than a computing core designed solely to execute his techniques. That meant he didn’t even need to provide a full chant this time.
Abominable Arms, Number Four: All For One. Leon’s ultimate move, now in stereo.
His arms and legs shifted, transformed, recombined, taking the shape of two enormous cannons. Then…
“Hey, c’mon. Gimme a break!”
Leon unleashed his most powerful shot yet. Rheinhardt’s attention was caught up in trying to regenerate, and so he didn’t have time to move out of the way. A radiant golden light engulfed everything, and when it dissipated, not a single trace of the angel remained.
“…”
It was over. For one, brief, moment, that was how it seemed.
“Man, talk about a close call!”
From right behind him, Leon heard the voice. He cracked a smile as he turned to see his old friend in perfect condition. Rheinhardt’s immortality was such that he could regenerate his entire body from nothing. Yet Leon did not waver even for a moment.
“You’ll need to do better than that to kill me.”
“Only too happy to try.”