When it landed, the meteor had been reduced in size by over three hundred meters in diameter. Shaved down by friction with the atmosphere and, more substantially, by MUV Avatar: Vritra. This was the one saving grace.
The explosion at Island City was massive and created powerful, devastating shock waves that extended all the way out to Kasuga and Koga on the outskirts of Fukuoka. Earth was swept up, buildings were shaken, and windows were shattered all throughout the blast zone. You’d have been lucky to find a single structure that hadn’t been damaged—granted, the vast majority of them were abandoned, so most civilians were unaffected.
The impact site was unrecognizable. The entire island on the eastern edge of Hakata Bay was gone, slightly changing the shoreline, but other than that, much of the geography had gone unaltered. Largely thanks to the fact that the meteor had been greatly reduced in size.
But the island itself was gone. And so was everything on it.
The Replicant princess closed her eyes upon hearing the news. Her memories of Param were vague and indistinct, but she knew who she had been. A warrior and queen. Her past self had been born into a martial way of life, and she had stood at the vanguard of many a battlefield. So death was not new to her.
With her eyelids shut, she paid her respects to the fallen and wished them well on their journey into the next life. Remembering that witnessing a life taken too soon always hurt just a little bit more than she was prepared for...
Speaker Nadal heard the report with her, but there was little more he could say other than, “I see.”
The sage looked upwards. That day, he would utter not a single word more, utter not a single quip or complaint, until the sun rose on the next morning.
Takamaru Ijuin. Jurota Shiba. Kiriko Kaji. All three were missing. But all three had been on the island.
All three could only be dead.
When Leo woke up, he was slowly falling from the sky. Agni’s Photon-Frame was somehow still active, despite him having lost consciousness. The force field glistened around him as the antigravity lifters carried him to the ground.
“What...happened?” he murmured.
He’d been up in the stratosphere just moments before. But something had broken his self-control, and he’d turned against Nayuta’s Asura Frames. It could have only been the meddling of the archmage. The one he’d lost to. That was the most Leo could remember. And that was when he noticed the bay below him, tinted red by the setting sun. The island on its eastern end was gone. The rest of the scenery, too, looked somehow different from normal. Worn and buffeted.
“Kiriko, what happened? Kiriko?” He tried to raise his team member via commlink. Nothing. He couldn’t even trace her location. “Agni, what were Kiriko’s last known coordinates?”
A map appeared before him with the requested data. The marker was on Island City. Or what used to be Island City, that is.
“What the hell happened while I was out, Agni?!”
A video played. Leo watched every second of it. And then he sped off.
The impact site was just part of the bay now, a dark splotch of water and sediment from the reclaimed island. Any sort of crater must have been left on the ocean floor.
A new map with new markers appeared. Agni had picked up the signals of other Asuras. The Mark III and the Mark VI. Leo immediately raced towards them. He had to know what he’d done. The damage he had caused.
He found them in a soccer field not far from the missing island. Devicer Three and the red-haired girl with the guandao stood among the wild and unkempt weeds, together with one other man. The archmage dressed in blue.
“You!” Leo snarled. He landed on the turf and pointed his finger at the man—Quldald of the Whirlwind, he had called himself on their first meeting. A photon laser pierced the mage’s chest.
But he merely smiled at the menacing boy. “Greetings. My apologies for today.”
Leo glanced at the spell detection alert and gritted his teeth. “Illusion magic.”
“Forgive me my mischief,” Quldald said jovially. “I simply thought it fitting for the heroes of vajra to be matched with another of equal...radiance, shall we say. But alas, I do always find it difficult to play the spectator and thought to deliver the final blow myself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leo growled.
Devicer Three was as stoic as the suit of armor adorning them. Any expression they may have been making was obscured by their mask. The red-haired girl, however, had her gaze fixed on the archmage, her eyes filled with powerful tranquility, her emotions unreadable. But Leo knew that look. The coldness. The intensity. She wanted blood. It was more than hatred. More than rage. She looked at the man with a calm fury and the calculated desire to wipe him from existence, then and there.
And the otherworldly sorcerer took it in stride. “The battle this day was born of a whim, you see. To send my forces along with the stars would have been utterly distasteful, don’t you agree? No, it had to be from the heavens. So I bid the last of the storm myself to crush the seat of command you heroes had created.” Quldald spoke of the disaster as if it were all a game. He looked satisfied with what he had done. “Ah, it is a fulfilling thing to see a plan come to fruition, at least at the very end. Though I was on tenterhooks for a moment there!”
“‘Seat of command’?” Leo repeated. He quickly realized what the mage had meant. It was where Kiriko had been. Where the others from Nayuta had likely been. The island that was no more. Leo shook with a strange, new kind of anger. “You...”
A curse almost left his lips, but he stopped. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t been under the archmage’s spell, they would have easily taken care of the meteors. He was in no place to pretend to be righteous.
Leo clenched his hands into fists until his nails drew blood. But it wasn’t enough.
For so long, the only things he hated had been the things around him. The world. Bootlickers. All his negativity had been directed outwards. But now Leo only hated himself.
“Now then.” The mage held up the small, wand-like staff in his hand. “I believe this marks the end of my special tool.”
Kiriko had written about it in her battle strategy earlier. It could have only been the Starcaller.
Quldald tossed it forward, and as if transported by some kind of magic, it fell on the grass directly in front of them. It was gray like ash, and a moment later, it disintegrated into ash itself.
“How strange that I feel so chipper, despite the shameful waste of such a priceless artifact. Oh, how I live for our battles!” And then Quldald’s image vanished with the wind. “When next we meet, it shall be in the flesh! You have my word!”
The field fell silent. Only the Devicers remained—Three, Six, and Seven. No one said a word. Many seconds passed before someone finally broke the quiet.
“Someone hit me, dammit!” Leo screamed. “I’ll never forgive myself. Hit me, beat me, kill me! I know you want to! Your friends are dead because of me!”
“No!” Three shouted back. They swung their arm to the side, slamming it against a nearby light pole. It cut right through, the vibroblade switching on in the Devicer’s rage, and it crashed down like a tree. “We don’t...fight...each other!” Three’s voice shook. “I fight for everyone. Even the man who killed my best friend. So watch for me. I’ll be there if you’re ever in trouble.”
Devicer Three wasn’t speaking in theatrics right now. Their words weren’t fake. They trudged across the soccer field, and they didn’t look back.
Someone was waiting for them just on the edge of the turf. The Replicant girl. Clothed again. She ran to the Devicer and held them in her arms. Leo recalled that her name was Ein. On any other day, the sight of the two of them would have filled him with disgust. He would have called Devicer Three weak for showing such vulnerability. He would have considered the elf girl patronizing, insincere.
But on this day, Leo found himself filled with nothing but self-loathing.
“Hey. Tough Guy.” The red-haired girl—Natsuki Hatano, Leo vaguely remembered—spoke up. There was no more fury in her eyes. They were gentle. At peace. “Kaji talked about you, you know. She told me she saw good in you at times. Little things, I guess... I really don’t care how you plan to live with yourself from now on, but I hope you’ll think of her every now and then.”
And then she left.
Leo stood on the field alone. Fists clenched. Bleeding.