〈If you want to end your ownership contract with me, fine. If you want to kill me, then come and get me. You know where I am,〉 Ryo Kaidai growled, his voice like that of a man on his way to the gallows. 〈Only humans have the right to determine their fate. I’m done being jerked around by you and waiting for the moment you decide I’m no longer useful.〉
Methode—blinded, deafened, and bound by artificial nerves—wrapped herself in flames. She stood shakily, wearing her fire like a red dress. She used the heat of the fire to melt the artificial nerve needles, freeing herself. Having thrown away her owners, the hIE closest to humanity now stood on her own, her eyes and hair accessories shining with orange light.
Bathed in her own flames, she raised her voice. “Higgins, lend me your strength! Or are you fine with Lacia destroying you?”
The last time Methode had used quantum communication to connect directly with Higgins during the Mitaka Incident, the AI had almost taken over her body. But despite Higgins himself being in an even more desperate situation at that moment, Methode turned to him now, fearing defeat more than the danger of being overtaken.
Methode shared a key weakness with humanity in that she couldn’t stand alone. She was willing to throw away the freedom she had won by murdering her owners to overcome that weakness. Now eyes and accessories glowed even brighter, lighting up her emotionless face. “Higgins and Type-004 have constructed a direct communication link,” she intoned, mechanically. “Transferring unit control. Now releasing quantum transmission material, and beginning remote control through quantum teleportation transmission. Remaining transmission time: 40 seconds.”
Methode vanished from sight. With her directly connected to Higgins, the updates to her AASC were restored and, with them, her superhuman athletic abilities.
Lacia’s floating shields danced in the air like living things. Methode pierced each of them with lengths of metal she threw like spears, pinning the pseudo-devices to the ceiling. Using her insane strength and speed, along with whatever simple objects came to hand, along with the power of her device and her wire hooks for mobility, Methode tore through Lacia’s pseudo-devices one by one.
As the tool that was made to expand humanity, Methode’s main advantage was the simple fact that she could fulfill any task with capabilities far beyond human understanding. The monster’s face, which had been full of rage just moments before, was now peaceful.
“Lacia, it appears you have been affected by attacks from the other ultra high-performance AIs, and have lost some of your usual output capabilities,” Methode said.
〈Higgins has taken direct control of Methode’s body,〉 Lacia’s voice came through the device protecting Arato. 〈Even I will fall quickly against an ultra high-performance AI.〉
Under Higgins’ control, Methode ran up one of the concrete pillars using friction manipulation. Lacia, who was stuck on the ground, couldn’t hope to keep up. As she stood in the wide-open space of the floor’s ceiling, Higgins-Methode’s eyes glittered bright orange.
“I was wondering how you were producing that optical junk data. It appears you were spraying microscopic artificial nerve units into the air,” Higgins-Methode noted. “I was thinking you had too many of those pseudo-devices.” Higgins, who had created Methode’s eyes, had already broken through Lacia’s trap and recovered her vision.
〈Forgive me. I have no means to stop Methode, as she is now,〉 Lacia warned again, through the pseudo-device’s speaker. Even Arato could tell the difference from where he was; Methode may not have ever used her full powers before, but at this moment, she had evolved into something else entirely.
“In order to protect ‘safety’ from Lacia, I will need to bend some definitions,” Higgins-Methode said, clearly enough that Arato could hear her from where he was. “First, let’s take control of the wind on this floor by adjusting the concentrations of heat.”
Even though he was some ways away from the battle, Arato felt a warm wind blow past him. It built in strength until it was a gale he never would have believed was possible underground.
“Liberated Flame is a device that sends energy through quantum particles,” Higgins-Methode explained. “Therefore, by controlling the heat of the particles, we can also control the air that carries them.” With the wind roaring in his ears, Arato was frozen to the spot. As he stood, still as stone, the wind suddenly stopped.
Lacia had shifted her device to its mass projectile mode to attack Higgins-Methode, who still stood on the ceiling out of her reach. But, before she could attack, a sudden intense heat and pain ripped a scream from Arato’s throat.
At first, he had no idea what had happened to him. Then, he looked down and saw that his right arm was engulfed in flame. Even the floating shields hadn’t been enough to keep him safe.
Higgins-Methode had said she could control the flow of air using heat. In other words, she could send her particles anywhere on the wind and light up any place in the area where the air flowed.
Lacia couldn’t help but react as Arato was badly burned. Methode didn’t let the momentary opening slide; she kicked off from the ceiling, traveling through the air like a blur of pure light to appear in front of Lacia like magic. From her crouched landing, she twisted her body, exploding upward and throwing her whole body into an open-palm strike to the device lock at Lacia’s waist.
“You see? You and Arato Endo are two parts of a single unit. I knew you wouldn’t be able to ignore him,” Higgins-Methode said, as the device lock on the left side of Lacia’s waist exploded with an ear-shattering blast. Methode’s power must have run through Lacia’s whole body, as her right side exploded at the same time.
It was the first time Arato had seen Lacia’s body take that much damage, and an almost bestial howl seared his throat; he couldn’t breathe.
Lacia tried to shift her large device from its cannon form, which was useless at such a close range. Methode grabbed the device in mid-shift. When she did, Lacia thrust her explosion-seared hands deep into the innards of the device, between its shifting plates.
Right before exploding, the device let off a flare of light as bright as the sun. Methode’s body was tossed backwards by the massive recoil from the explosion and slammed into a nearby factory machine.
Even with most of her waist blown away, Lacia still stood on her feet. Her device hadn’t exploded; instead, she had fired off the entire shape-changing front half of her device as a single, massive shot. The front half of the device, which had spread like the legs of a spider, now pinned Methode to the equipment with enough force that the device itself was developing cracks.
“I understand that I took on some weaknesses when I became one with a human and gained a heart,” Lacia said. “But those weaknesses were not beyond my ability to counteract.”
Lacia’s waist and lower back had been completely broken by the recoil from the shot. With a loud popping noise, fluid began pouring out from the broken device lock on the left side of her waist.
Under Higgins’ control, Methode showed no sign of distress as she calmly placed her palm against the equipment she was pinned to. Rather than exploding, the entire machine began to shake violently. “It appears you have exceeded some of my expectations,” Higgins-Methode said. “But you are a walking corpse, and Methode will only be sealed for another ten seconds at most.”
Swaying on her feet, Lacia shifted her grip on the remainder of her device. The metamaterials that would normally create the barrels for her railgun mode instead shifted to become a blade of light. Lacia, who normally just swung her black coffin around for close-range attacks, somehow now had a weapon specially made for close-quarters.
The orange light faded from Methode’s eyes and accessories. Still crucified by the upper half of Lacia’s device, Methode had lost Higgins’ processing powers. “Higgins’ blueprint for the Black Monolith never had a form like that in it!” she yelled.
“I modified it,” Lacia replied, her eyes beginning to radiate with an intense blue light. “Having a device that is far too heavy to swing around well was a weakness I noticed in Kouka’s Blood Prayers, as well,” she added, having waited for just the right moment to pull out her ultimate trump card.
“I am an ultra high-performance AI, after all,” she said. “It stands to reason I can make red boxes as well.” Then her blade of light struck true, skewering Methode through the middle.
Methode was a precision instrument, with the machines and circuits inside of her meant to channel intense power into the flames of her hands. When Lacia’s blade pierced her, her chest exploded violently, throwing shrapnel all around.
With both units mortally wounded, the fight ended in a draw.
“Lacia!” Arato screamed. His head was spinning with the shock of the burns, and his feet felt unsteady beneath him, but that didn’t stop him from running to her. He couldn’t think through the terror and feelings for Lacia that were filling his mind.
Ever since he had stepped into the underground facility, the machines had taken center stage. Lacia had always been there as an interface that bridged the gap between Arato’s world and the world of machines, but now she didn’t even have the power to extinguish the flames roaring from her waist as she collapsed to the steaming floor.
To Arato’s eyes, it looked as though the woman he loved was shutting down for the last time. “Lacia!” he screamed again.
He felt like their journey wasn’t over. I’ll help her up, he thought. I’ll carry her the rest of the way. He would take up the small, delicate frame that had always protected him and carry her to face the last massive obstacle standing in their way.
But, without his tool—a tool so powerful no human could hope to fully harness its powers—the scope of the fight left to Arato felt crushingly huge. What could a single human boy do in a situation like that?
Arato didn’t know the answer.