Interlude
Liane & Sora & Mika & Medrod
'Promise II'
Her body was being battered, but even so, she refused to send her friends back to hell.
Having fought through the majority of her hesitation, Koizumi Sora continues to fight without a means of achieving the goal she has suddenly found for herself; she has no means of breaking the curse over her friends, even if the spiritual network she has been linked to has informed her of the "Starlight" the other groups have begun to wield over the course of their battles in order to free others from the grip of the curse, that sort of power was seemingly only possible for groups of Persona users, or ESPers, to manifest through use of Eclipse.
In spite of bearing direct power that is arguably greater than one, she is still no such thing; as a result, that particular method of breaking the chains on her former comrades is sealed off to her.
For that reason, she can only swing her blade for the purposes of delay.
The power these versions of her old comrades hold has been confirmed to be beyond that of their original selves; while fighting skill was similar, the amount of spiritual power they held was absurd; it was akin to use of a Bane Stone, an infinite fountain from which crimson force poured out endlessly.
In comparison, she is running off a simple tank of power, and the rest of her allies have begun to fall and be captured by the darkness at a rapid pace. Even if the tank is the size of an ocean, infinity will still outlast something that holds an end, however, the amount they can output at once remains similar, and so she is able to keep up with the worst of their strikes.
Individually they would have never been able to overcome her when she's fighting seriously, even with that boost to strength, but working together, the sheer synchronization of the strikes has created a situation in which she is almost never allowed to strike back; where Miwa comes at her with blades in hand, Aya descends with lances and spears; space itself collapses from the machinations of an alchemist, and her whole self is forced onto the defensive as a deluge of blows rains down upon her.
Even so she endures; holding back enough to avoid killing them, she plays entirely on the defensive and does not even consider attacking unless it is necessary to maintain the integrity of her body; there is no use towards wasting stamina, waiting to endure until a miracle appears, the woman certainly stalls for time and-
-Eventually, the ally that she had known would stand back up, makes her presence known with an explosion of spiritual force.
---For Liane Cross, this night has been a hell of a marathon; from start to finish she has been taking attacks that would scatter others head on and come out swinging, but this time around, it was only through a transfer of life force from Kagura to herself that she was able to force her body to get back up on it's feet.
---She had not asked for such a thing, and the collapsed form of her old underclassmen atop her body had raised a number of warning flags, but in the end she had understood the nature of the situation when that girl had smiled through fatigue before being forced to fall back as a titan of shadow separated them from each other.
The war against darkness continued; and she needed to help everyone.
The sight of resurrected allies does not surprise her; from the start she had been amongst the first to see the reborn Aya active in the city, and thus the possibility that both Miwa and Yuuki had been brought back through similarly mysterious means is something she can accept at a glance, and...
---It is cruel.
---This entire scenario is meant to be cruel; the network of souls informs her of the situation, of the 'true enemy' that has appeared, and from their description, her own investigations of the past through her psychometry, and her instincts, she can tell that it is absolutely meant to be a cruel scenario.
"Liane, stop us, please-!"
An assault on their psyches.
"I was waiting for you Cross. Now that you're back on your feet, we can really get this reunion going, right?"
The moment she awakens, a change comes over Tsukino Aya as the Faceless God uses her as it's mouthpiece; the tone becomes cold and gender-less, and the flashes of insight she continues to gain over the network of souls identify it as a case of possession long before her experience with the subject does.
"Let them go."
But that experience promotes understanding; coming to same conclusion as Sora, she realizes the moment she sees it that doing as her friends ask and striking them down to save the world will only result in them sharing the Kyuubi's fate and falling back into hell.
...That was the point.
Eight years ago this same scenario had happened, and-
"No no, we're going to participate in a bit of an experiment, and I need them for it."
-It was, amongst many other things.
...A source of darkness for the two of them.
"I'm sure you understand what I mean, correct? Stalling like Sora will not solve anything, so I will put a time limit on it. Destroy these three within the next two minutes and the curse will recede -I will let the others go-, run out of time or refuse, and I will destroy the both of you, and then everyone else here, with all of my power."
---The dilemma that had appeared at the end of the last war, the necessity to kill a friend to ensure that the world is saved; as a group that had sworn to get through everything without losing any amongst their number, it is a reminder of hypocrisy and failure, a mark that they had failed not just at the end, but from the very beginning of their journey.
To represent their failure, and to put a physical sign on their time limit, the three who have been taken over by Nyarlthotep begin to cast a magic in sync that they cannot cast of their own accord; one that would be obvious to any spell-caster with knowledge of the demonic system.
Armageddon.
Their time is up when the energy necessary for that spell is gathered; a spell of sure-kill on a wide radius, it brings only Death to those near it, and depending on the caster could have consequences ranging from a power capable of nuking a city to outright destroying the world.
Instinctive use of her ESP "Chain of Memory," does not reveal the answer to which it will be; while she feels like this scenario must have happened before at least to her, the many repetitions are full of information that is irrelevant in this moment, and even with the help of her Eclipse Spirits it is difficult to judge exactly how powerful Nyarlthotep is... What is obvious however, revealed by both intuition and the sense of deja bu...
Is that it's poking fun at them.
Giving them an option where it will legitimately stop the spread of the curse if they agree to sacrifice some of their own; as if saying that this was what they should have done eight years ago.
---It would be a lie to say there was no regret about the outcome.
The refusal to use the Kyuubi had led to a lot of lost life, while the use of the Kyuubi right from the beginning might have diverted the damage the demons would have caused it could have also been worse off in the end, but not knowing...
Not knowing was what made it haunting.
Was what made it a question of 'did we make a mistake?'
The point was to save everyone. There shouldn't be something wrong with that sort of dream, and yet it had seemingly led to so much more pain that what a single sacrifice would have done, even if that sacrifice would have been the girl she loved; by that same token however...
Even thinking that felt disgusting.
"...It's alright."
Speaking up for the first time, allowed to do so purely because a god believes it will torment them more, Mikagura Yuuki again states what the others are thinking.
"Put an end to it. Save the others."
Just like back then, the sacrifices were even alright with the idea; accepting of the fact that they must fall in order to protect their friends. It is arguably the more mature outlook; an acceptance of reality, a noble self-sacrificing nature that shone through even in their selves possessed by the curse, but...
Originally Posted by
Suzume
"Just thinking of hypotheticals. Of what you could have done, huh? With no reality to compare it to all that you see when looking back on a mistake is the utopia that could have been. Where nothing bad happened. After all it was just like a simple forking of paths, right? Just one thing you had to do differently and everything would have turned out for the better. But...reality isn't like that."
---It's wrong.
---She has had eight years to think of the mistake that was ultimately made, a sacrifice for the 'greater good' and all she can think of is that the idea of sacrificing others is a mistake, even if for a noble purpose.
It is not right to sacrifice anyone.
It is a childish ideal to believe so, but it is one that she clings to in spite of everything; things had not gone as they should back then, she had failed in a number of ways, people had died and despair had come to replace hope, but...
---Even still, she does not want to sacrifice anyone.
The Faceless God has created this scenario for this purpose, for her to examine herself and come to the realization that she should take the easier path of sacrifice, that trying to save everything was a mistake.
Pure Greed.
And yet it is Greed she can't help but pursue.
Just because she failed back then, does not mean she will automatically fail to save everyone now; the whole point of training all those years was to ensure that such a thing would never happen again, to learn from her mistakes and use them to protect the future.
For that reason...
Even the idea of purposefully falling here in an attempt to prompt the reset of the world, to be able to go back one more time and try to undo her mistakes is a thought she can shake off after but a moment.
While she is aware of the repeating nature of this timeline, even that subtle suggestion is one that she can't help but reject, because...
She had sworn to accept what was still here; she would not be able to revive her friends, their appearance here was a spectral miracle, but she also refused to resign them to the karmic cycle of the Kyuubi; they did not deserve that pitch-black hell, the warmth of the Soul Sea should have been what awaited them, and thus, even though many would think the deaths of a few to save the many is alright, that woman, no, those women...
"Screw off, Faceless God. I don't care how much stronger you think you are! I promised to protect my friends, to protect Aya... I might have failed all those years ago, but I'm not throwing away anyone's souls that easily-!"
Reject it outright.
But that's not all they reject.
Just because a God only offers you two choices, that doesn't mean you're limited to simply those two; the feeling of being boxed in lights a spark of rebellion in humanity, and the silver-flames of those that would reject fate immediately light up the body of Liane Cross.
Passed from group to group on this night, a silver fire that continues to increase in strength as people call upon it, the torrent of wishes and hope lights up the crimson night as she begins to pour it into her fist.
'Magic Gunner.'
Because she is on a time limit, or rather, because it is the nature of this fire itself that will set the others free, she focuses merely on the flow of Reiki throughout her body; the title of "Golden Witch," as much as many might think, is not one that she does not deserve. She is capable of multiple systems of magic, not just the human systems that relied on self-hypnosis, but the demonic system of magic as well due to a bond with her sister that she herself has yet to discover the true nature of; so she understands right off of the bat that she will not be able to overpower Armageddon with just any average spell, no, she might be able to block it with "Will's Cage," but-
Seemingly skipping dealing with that incoming threat at all, the mass of energy she is focusing into her right arm is seemingly being gathered for the purposes of setting her friends free before they can finish the spell; the Kyuubi is not something that will consciously chain others, so the guilty party must be the more intelligent manifestation of humanity's sins. If they are able to disrupt that control, than the three will be able to stop of their own accord, yet-
"Hahaha, too late-! Throwing everyone's lives away for friendship and love?! It seems you haven't learned anything!"
Because that shadow holds her own darkness as well; the sight of her other self standing protectively before the enemy is one that does not surprise her.
As if to mock hope, the idea of following a path that defied the choices they had been presented with, humanity's shadow protects the source of the end with the ironic power of one of it's heroes.
A shield whose strength is dependent on the willpower of those making it up. With enough will behind it is unbreakable; different from the power to 'stand up no matter what' which she could emulate with her own natural abilities to an extent, it is a representation of her desire to shield those important to her from harm, a crystallized wish given form through a shared hope-!
Now something that she herself must surpass, or die along with everyone else for trying, no, not just that-!
==Armageddon==
Mocking the idea they the shield was even necessary from the start, the God accelerates on his casting of the spell through possessed souls, laughing at the girl who thought she could out-speed him, and a flash of crimson light promises the end of everything within Aoyama-!
Death.
That spell is death, surpassing subatomic destruction; the crimson light pours forth to keep the Dark God's promise.
To kill them, and then everyone after them; punishment for the sin of trying to protect everything even after understanding that it is impossible.
It consumes them both, or rather...
That is what should have happened, instead-
"Sora-!"
==Armageddon ==
A forbidden spell counters a forbidden spell.
It is a spell with only a single purpose, developed as a counter to a spell that could only destroy, one that only the Kuzunoha have ever mastered; it is not a true counter, but rather, a means of taking the force generated by the opponent and directing it into another direction, normally back into the caster and killing them with their own call to destruction, however, as the whole point behind this is to spare their friends from the pain of returning to hell with the kyuubi, the only thing Sora can do is desperately divert it towards space. Taking supreme focus as well as greater spiritual power than that of your opponent if you wish to succeed, while the existence called Kuzunoha Geirin/Koizumi Sora has the first in spades...
She will run out of strength long before her opponent does; her body is not adjusted to the network like that of the ESPers, and continuing to use it at full force will mean her self-destruction, for that reason, while the manifestation of collective unconsciousness is surprised-
"No matter what you try, it's useless, Sora!"
-It is not worried.
Even if they delay it for a handful of seconds, in the end, that spell will claim them and everyone else as well; yet-
-In hopeless defiance of that, a silver light bursts forth from within the clashing energies.
In the end, her Spirit Armament was a simple magi-cannon with the power of "Amplification," loading Spiritual Energy into it and pulling the trigger, the silver-fire to which humanity has given birth becomes a stream of positive plasma, a brute-force magical strike of many wills that emerges to crash against the stolen wall of hope-!
However, Will's Cage is a shield designed specifically to defend against those sorts of strikes; enabling attacks to emerge from behind it while serving as an absolute shield to those same people, the brute force nature of her spiritual armament finally proves to be her downfall; no, even if Hakkero had been a traditional trick weapon, something that could perhaps rend space or hop dimensions to reach it's opponent, Will's Cage -while powered by that darkness- would have continued to be an effective barrier.
Yes.
While the crash of silver-fire might crack the golden wall of distorted hope, that is all it would do, that is all it could have ever possibly done from the start; even though it refuses to give up and continues to pound on the barrier, it will fade away the moment Liane dies, and with Sora unable to block Armageddon completely, that is only a matter of a few seconds now.
---But she had known that.
---After all, it was her own power; if Nyarlthotep would use the reverse side of her heart against her, then it was only natural for the original to know all the weak-points that could exist.
For this, it was two simple things; namely...
That it can only be manifest as a barrier in one distinct place.
Having placed it where it is; the Faceless God has committed itself towards defending from this angle.
And the other...
"It's over, humans!"
---The Faceless God keeps laughing as the resolve they show in the blast betrays absolutely no desperation; overjoyed that they would cling to a meaningless hope even though their own death is staring them right in the face. However, it also refuses to even consider the possibility of it's own loss, which is why it takes it a heartbeat too long to understand something strange about the strike, namely-
---Hadn't she been gathering power into her fist?
Magic Gunner was a style that used one's body as a gun through which to fire out magic in a manner similar to plasma blasts, or the exhaust of jet engines; in comparison to Hakkero it was weaker simply because it lacked Hakkero's power of amplification, and as a result Liane had come to rely more on it than on her basic abilities as a magus, her old-style of fighting, and yet-
She had certainly been gathering magic into her fist.
She had allowed Sora to block Armageddon in her place, and even now wasn't using her own variation of Will's Cage in an attempt to defend her and her allies from death...?
She doesn't because she can't, but the reason she can't is because of another flaw of Will's Cage.
The User must focus on that barrier to the exclusion of most others things; while she could fight with her fists or a weapon while using it, her spiritual power must flow a certain way to maintain the barrier, and thus something like Magic Gunner was impossible; Hakkero could manage it's own flow of Spirit Power in her place, indeed, because it is sentient it could link itself to the network of souls and fire that silver flame on it's own...
With that support, she should be able to use Will's Cage.
However, she continues not to do so, and the reason why-
"THE ONE WHO'S FINISHED IS YOU, NYARLTHOTEP!"
"?!"
-Is because a second strike of that silver fire exists.
With Hakkero forcing the enemy barrier to remain where it is or risk being struck by it, a second strike has been fired in a different manner in the same moment.
There is no way to directly overpower Will's Cage, at least not without having more souls on her side, but-
There were certain things that barrier did not stop.
Namely, the bonds formed by Nami's Chain of Hearts.
Those supernatural links, made manifest through the Sea of Souls, are unbreakable in a way that that barrier is not designed to defy; or rather...
It is not capable of interfering with the flow of the Sea of Souls.
While all physical means of reaching her opponent are lost, she possesses a tie to two of the people on the other side of that barrier, because of that...
If the attack is fired through the Soul Sea itself with the power of Eclipse, following the line of those bonds, there is a destination on the other side of the barrier that it can reach-!
Of course even if a physical variation of it exists, the distance inside the Soul Sea is close to infinite; both space and time within it are distorted; even a magical strike that was loaded to the max with energy would still lose it's power and dissipate long before reaching the other side of it, even if it knew which way it must go in order to reemerge and strike it's target, however-
---It's helped along by many people.
Souls watching a distant battle, the living observing it all around the world, the wishes and hopes, the desire to see this cruel god struck down where it stands rather than continue to torture others...
Every wish drives it forward just a little bit more.
Hands grab it and pull it across eternity.
And in a flash-!
Finds it's way to impossibility.
---
Warmth fills you as the sphere detonate.
It's a blow that surpasses weapon specs, a storm of light and ice that consumes the interior of this closed off space and threatens to tear everyone inside of it to shreds. There's no time for particularly accurate aiming, no, from the start, fighting your own self was best done with attacks that consumed an area of space; attacking points would just have her dancing past them, and yet-
--More than anyone else, you know that she would survive this; it was your own tenacity being reflected back at you after all, even so, she was a shade, a shadow, and the manner in which the light yanks her into it's own self is akin to that of a black hole.
---In that moment, when Beacon is occupied.
A silver fire lights up in you.
It's a warning of a mass of energy coming your way from outside, a 'bullet' of sorts that had been prepared by someone else and passed along to you for the sake of guiding it into your opponent.
---Because it has taken manual control over your shadow, it must be a 'link' to Nyarlthotep, following that logic...
Attacking it would disrupt the Dark God as well, even so...
---You are not able to channel it into Beacon; for a moment the weapon overheats as it's power is drained close to zero to put up with the burst nature of your final plan, and a hand bursts forth from the sphere of light as the clone does the impossible and grips your wrist as if to drag you inside of that detonation of magic alongside itself.
---It's primal, and it's not graceful at all; even so...
There's only one thing you can do, you lack Liane's magic gunner skills, but-!
Focusing strength into one limb, that much you can do no problem.
Silver fire lights up your form. It's a power that's passed from many hands to get here and is continuing to set the Soul Sea itself ablaze with a sense of hope; a light that contains darkness, a pure flame that would give others the chance to shatter their own bonds to the overwhelming dark-!
You were given a 'bullet' however, what flies towards your own self...
Is your clenched fist.
In that same moment.
Will's Cage breaks and ushers through another burst of purifying light.
---
Everyone sees the fox fall as it's body detonates from the inside.
Not just those who have been fighting it up until now, but those that arrive on the scene shortly afterwards; a silver giant whose limbs automatically rise to help a Goddess hold back a falling moon, and two swordsmen of fire and lightning who stand tall and proud, ready to defend the city that had become their home, moving far ahead of their group in order to give the others time to recover.
Sora falls to one knee, as does Liane, breathing heavily as an impossibility becomes reality, a certain shrine maiden resting her head on her shoulder.
The spirits of two parents rise to catch their daughter; gliding downwards together, supporting her rather than carrying her, their first instinct in spite of their current state is to protect, and...
"Are you alright Mika?"
For a girl who has not seen them for over a decade... It is an impossible reunion of sorts.
An absolute victory for the Good Guys, punctuated with reunions that are just as miraculous as they are temporary-
"...Worthless."
-Or at least that is how it should be, that is how it would be inside the confines of a fairy tale.
Yes...
"Worthless, worthless, WORTHLESS-!"
A shadow without a face berates the fallen darkness that no longer seems able to rise. It is the same as berating it's own self but it does not care; the power that had seemingly obliterated it had not quite been powerful enough to finish the job, and thus the appearance of a shadow that all recognize instinctively as Nyarlthotep...
Crushes the atmosphere of a fairy tale completely.
...Because it's not over.
Not by a long shot.
Indeed, the "Final Battle" against the darkness...
Starts right here.
"You think you've won... You all think you've won...?"
It consumes the beast.
In a heartbeat it swallows something the size of a city whole, pulling it into itself.
It grows no larger, but it's voice distorts with what could only be called rage.
No interference...?
To hell with those rules...
It's chosen games of torture had been turned against it, and human potential was shining through where it should not, it's only natural that the God cannot accept it, and indeed it can't...
The ESPers gaining the power of these silver flames right at the end...?
What a joke...
It can't accept it could possibly lose again, and so it challenges the world.
"I am the shadow of all humans. As long as humans have dark hearts, I will live!!!"
---The killing intent surpasses any enemy that has appeared to you before; knowing that the world is listening, shaking the planet itself with it's screams and roars, the culmination of despair comes up against those that would embody hope.
The world's fate will be decided here.
If the heroes fall to the darkness, the world will fall with them, if they persevere...
The world itself may just carry on too.
The shadow turns.
It is not a giant.
But everyone sees it all the same.
"Why did you all come here? Heh... to spout gibberish? Friendship and bonds? Overcoming everything together? TO SPREAD FALSE HOPE?!"
"Don't make me laugh...You're all DEAD!"
A wave of black flames starts off the final struggle for the world's fate. These flames will not go out, different from those produced by the Kyuubi, they are eternal flames linked to it's own existence here, so long as it lives, so too shall these flames of agony.
Simple Starlight will merely delay it at best; even so-!
A God spreads it's arms wide to accept those that venture forth.
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