A burning city.
Flames kept engulfing everything inside them as they were fueled to rise even higher. And earthquake, much like this world deserved, had torn off, cracked and ransacked the housing spaces, offices, stores and playgrounds, differentiating them from each other as some caved in and bellow, while others violently shook and raised along with the ground. Pitfalls, cliffs and massive flashes of red mixed together in this hell, ever accompanied by the screams of those scared and running away, with the screeching of those who were soon to meet their end. The yelping of those wounded and struggling to move away, only moment later became the squelching of their skulls, once housing an individual that thought of hopes, dreams and remembering those gone by, now being the very same thing to erase them from existence. A merciless evil roamed the streets as it's shadow darkened them, marking anything living in it's quake as a dead only shortly enjoying the luxury of keeping on living. And so, with yet another man's skull in her hands, Enemy hesitated not on slaughtering him like an animal.
"Haah!", she crushed his feeble skull with her bare hands, pushing the bone further in as his eyes popped out, before eventually crushing and mushing it all up into one.
Another woman standing next to her, screaming as her weakness of doing anything only showed her mortality and humanity, soon faced her end as her head was separated from her shoulders soon after. Pure rage and fury fueled this animal's...this monster's moves. A frantic frenzy that did not at all resemble anything her character, once calm and methodical, morally sound and logical, stood for. She screamed as loud as she could, her anger mixed with, pain that of the soul but not the body, as she gazed at the woman's head. The earthquakes continuing, the dead eyes of the woman's severed head connected with hers, momentarily allowing her to see herself in the mirror that was the tears she couldn't finish dropping.
All before that head slowly drifted and tumbled onto a lonely child. Among the adults around it comprehending what was going on...or rather, instinctually knowing the end approached, with belief mattering not whether they were to sink in eternal bliss or suffer the eternal flames, the child did not scream. Whereas even a baby would cry for it's mother, the only thing that child, a young boy with nothing but it's clothes, burned as they were, on him, could only stare. Stare without tears, stare with nothing but fear. She grunted as she approached the boy, disconnecting her eyes with that of the dead.
Like the grim reaper holding it's scythe, she instead dragged her massive blade across the floor. Man, woman or child...all but a statistic, replaceable by the endless amount and flow of it's people's kind...that's all that miniature sized creature compared to her was, in her eyes, and that of many others.
"Mercy. This is-MERCY!", she slowly placed the blade above her shoulders, her shoulder starting to cover her mouth as she grabbed onto the handle with both hands, preparing to violently swing.
Her words loudly spoken as she wished for the heavens to bare witness. Both the highest of highs she was held a standard to, and the lowest of lows she was forced to exist on. Martyrs of the stars and that of soil, she wanted them all to see a part of herself that was sealed for no other reason other than to protect a lie.
And yet, as she stood there, the rage in her eyes faded as she looked at the child. People come and go, they live and die. Their importance relied on the mere fact of their influence upon the world, to be remembered as an important mark of history, that still relying upon the many who held it to it's standard, or the lack thereof, instead dying a meaningless death to serve a goal that didn't serve them back, a statistic who's memory would fade with the few connections they made throughout their life. And for her to be reminded of this, a boy looking up to her with fear as no longer the hope giving goddess, but a punisher who's followers finally proven mere brainwashed sheep...how upon that boy was that she placed her anger to get it rid off of herself...was it her remaining shambles of renowned, mortal given divinity, or her always existing but buried humanity?
The blade clashed with the floor as she herself kneeled right before the point of collapsing. The skies turned gray as she failed to continue her meaningless, animalistic rage induced slaughter, and the fires quelled along with it. The buildings were shined on and withered away with ceiling lights, and the man, woman and boy all faded along with it. She remained there, motionless on her kneeling stance, letting loose of the massive sword as it crumbled away, leaving her alone in the empty room as she no longer had use for it. Silence, though all she wanted, was briefly broken by an automatic message that echoed.
"Threat: Eliminated. Collateral Damage: Severe. Bystander Casualties: Severe. Objective Results: Failure."
The automated system then faded. A punch, hard as her powerful hand delivered, echoed throughout the room next, as the metal floor that once housed the projection of her lust for violence, absorbed the hit. Moments after, through a vengeful tone in her voice, she spoke silently to herself.
"All I believed in...all I did over the years. Ever since I was forced into the body of a child after you gave me a second chance, to relive this hell of a purgatory we call life, I always believed you. And every day after I lived with Dante in Dirunon...it all kept confusing me."
Hikari, long recovered since the fight, but unable to take control of Enemies' body and go back, through reasons starting from fear to her own masked feelings, she chose all but silence.
"You were...doubting me, right?"
"And how couldn't I? I always kept believing that slaughtering Dante would free me from this cycle of confusion, both self doubt and doubt about your stories. All the memories I blocked when sharing the same body to protect you, in favor of finishing the job before you got to reconnect with him, unaware of Mellistar's existence. And then, when you started talking again, remembering everything but forgetting to block any of those memories for me to do the same. All you started saying was so drastically different, contradicting what up to that point was fully correlated your memories with those of the Church's and historical teachings. It was a side of a story I never heard, and though I always had doubts when they took me in, back in Dirunon, for some reason...it felt real. But it shouldn't have. Because that feeling of knowing the truth amidst hearing a constant slew of lies was not produced by me. It was you. When you died and the second chance was given to me, until you recovered, you were unable to conceal at least your feelings on certain subjects. This attraction I felt towards Dante then too...it didn't belong to me. Deep down I knew that he never once did something of value for me to consider him as a subject of love, my romance interest."
"Which is why both me and Mellistar regret doing this to both you and Dante...you were both undeserving of this. What I and Mellistar have for each other should have never set off both of you to such crossroads."
"And yet you kept it hidden. After I was completely depleted fighting Helash, I had to flee and leave Dante behind, with the time of me separating from everyone only served to fester this illogical feeling of hatred. You shutting your mouth about it all, though excusable as I forced it, only further knocked me off the clouds after you opened that mouth in Kaci. Had you told me everything, allowed me to see beyond this false vision you created, another truth lied...but you didn't. I was silent up until now. I still can't process this...that after all I've done for you, you betrayed me the same way you did with Dante, holding back the truth for both of us until we reached breaking point, where you'd find the excuse to actually speak."
"What I told Dante is true. That was the raw truth. And the things Mellistar said are also true...they all tie in to the story of it all. The reason Dante Elise, Mellistar, knows such, is because through dealing the fatal blow on Cecilia, with all his Obsulyte behind his dying move, it infected the Dante of today. That same move was also what saved Cecilia, knocking her away from the Abnormal Space as Mellistar flew off of it too, essentially preventing her from engaging further with Makaro and Kikaro. The memories you know are the ones I do. But your memories...those, about our birthplace and world, that only lies with you."
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"So you were nitpicking memories to feed me, as I did to protect you?", Enemy angrily said.
"It's not like that!"
"You said time and time again that you weren't a god, but you sure as hell just molded everything as you mashed abominations together, that of humans and whatever else you deemed fit to stride perfection out of. When I grabbed Dante after his little barge in the office, I forced him to tell me everything. Accidentally, your D.N.A. and molecular structure forced wild Obsulyte, matter, to conform in the same way after it copied yours. But you didn't just mold the world, did you? You molded the creatures in it. Humans with added features, beings either pure or else, that like Cecilia, if born here, they were just overfed Obsulyte."
"No. Guiding is not like creating from scratch. Evolution moved faster here, yes, but it still took many years for the beings of today to be created, through multiple worlds latched onto Zero. But...all this, what does it have to do with your anger, that thing that still festers in you?"
"All this time I believed that alongside me lied the all powerful and uncontested god of the world, who's modesty only concealed the power she held.", Enemy shut herself off in her head, failing to listen to Hikari's reasoning.
"I wasted no time explaining the opposite, which still stands. No one being is able to control raw power of such massive scale...and I have been depleting my power since."
"And all this time, where I saw nothing of the very worse, I still looked up to you, with your formal glory and without it. And you lied to me. You lied to yourself. You, through Obsulyte manipulation, created a world that was meant to be a utopia, on the bodies of how many?"
"You...you believe I...it's my fault?", Hikari's voice was heard cracking through the echo.
"No. You are not at fault for that. You are at fault for saving the world you mixed and mashed out of opportunity. For fooling around and starting the machine that was evolution into an already dead amalgamation of a bunch of other world's bodies. You did not create this world indeed. Because dead creations don't mean anything to anyone. We...I fought every day, for a dream I thought was mine, for the sake of making the world a better place, when all I really did, was forcing a dependency on everyone. A dependency of my actions and on my powers."
"You mean to say that-", Hikari was interrupted.
Enemy burst into tears, "I can't do this anymore! I can't keep just fighting and fighting all the time for nothing! I can't try to imitate actions you did then, that only make others so hopeless! I saved and I saved and I saved, for what?! No one does anything but take the shit and waits for me to be saved again! All I believed in, ever since Dante Elysia was a thing from back then, all crumbling down up until this point!", she momentarily forced out her anger instead, wiping away her face as she held her tears back, "How much longer do you have to lie to me for?! You too?! Have I not done enough, have I shed not enough blood?! Every fucking day is just a chore to survive until the next, for what?! I don't want to be strong anymore, I don't want to bare your burden of carrying all this nasty shit! You're delusional! You lied to yourself, as you did to others! You saved the world from ruin as you watched it make it's own version of that ruin! You want to atone based on the same fairytales the Church spread around! You have no brothers, you have no servants, you had nothing and you don't now! And I did the same, only to better match you, which I know I never should have! No one was to be trusted, and all I had left after that, was you. Now I only see that the same morons who placed their faith upon you are exactly like me, because like my trust, the one time I gave it, was full of nothing."
"I...think-"
"I don't know what the fuck you think! Look back to all that we said, and how right Dante is to be the way he is! Every single word you said makes no sense, and every single sentence more severely so. Dante always hated his powers, on the same level as mine, but I leaned into it only to watch everything crack and burn! All these tournaments I fought to stay alive, almost naked in front of a crowd to just barely make it the next day, all the god awful torture before Cecilia left us because of me, being sold off and having that creepy fuck almost...he chained me to the wall and almost-!"
In a never before seen state of confusion and fear, Enemy began hyperventilating as she could hold her bravado up no longer, instead grabbing her head and tightly squeezing her legs together as she contracted, trying to creating a tiny little box where she could feel safe. Hikari herself, hurt as if knives were driven through her heart and mind could not help but stay silent as she kept hearing Enemy's mouth speak incoherent bad memories, one after the other.
"God dammit!", Enemy stuttered, "The way I was dressed in those clothes, everything showing, the torture! The fucking lashing and the flaying of my ribs, the heads I piled up to get away! The bloodbath every day to slaughter the Chaos Sect dickheads from killing me...the cell...god...the fucking cell I ate my own...drinking my-!"
The slew of horrors in words from her mouth, the horrid images from her head, it was all too much for even Hikari to bare as she faded away. No one could make sure that the once horrifying, hardened warrior that endured wars and struggles, would snap out of all she so haphazardly faced, turning from one bad to the other. She who upon thinking herself to be invincible, made it look so, was now brought to the point of facing a harsh reality, where life had taken her to the lowest of lows. But had everyone felt invincible as such, were they about to break along with the world they lived in? And if upon the bodies of others they were to just happily trample to live their lives, were their lives worth living? All questions based on a 'why', of which she couldn't answer. She basked in the ignorance that Hikari once had a few months prior, where the world truly seemed savable and life truly looked as if it cleared itself off any troubles as they were to be saved along the way.
But that was never the truth.
This was never to be a story where they would ride the sunset happily ever after. Their bodies and minds, in the harsh reality of life and the world itself, were to be broken again and again, for the unluckiness they had to be brought up in such a chaos. To even begin thinking of the future, they would be forced into facing whatever past they had, along with whatever lead to this point. She knew that, and the constant amount of ever piling responsibilities, not out of wanting, but moral obligation, one which the world itself enforced on them either intentionally or by accident, was getting too much even for her to bare. To realize that, despite experience in much, her youth prevailed to where she would have to get rid of it herself, was one of the many responsibilities that broke her at the moment.
Hours passed as the sun started to set. She picked herself up with nothing but silence in her head, as she had done many times before. She went up the elevator and out of the arena, exiting the room as if nothing had ever happened. At least, nothing that hadn't happened before. All but one person was calmly waiting for her to be back. Was it out of lack of care by the others, or rather their fear? Maybe hatred...how many thoughts penetrated her now vulnerable mind. It was something that, although she faced before, hadn't happened to such an extend. Building only on the foundation of her own, deep seated fear of now being alone.
"So...got it out of your system?", Dante asked.
"Yeah...I did."
"Look. I know we have our own problems to be divided over with, but that back there? That's something I'm all too familiar with. You've got something in you, right? Something you can't or haven't been dealing with?"
Enemy scoffed, "Look, it's been a really shitty day. And hearing you hypocritically say that on top of everything else, that only makes things worse."
"I am simply, out of common interest for all of us, trying to offer help, if you want me to put it like that. And yes, I obviously have my own things to deal with, but I started the process way earlier than you."
"Last thing I want is advice from a nihilistic, depressing and deprived asshole like you, honestly. Feels like listening to whatever you have to say, given the lack of your mastery in words, will only make me end up looking at the pretty night all romantically, with a loaded gun to my head and a trigger on my finger."
Dante got fed up, "You know what? Screw you. I'm done trying to make any bridges with you. I'm trying to apologize and it doesn't work, I'm trying to be nice and it doesn't work, so I'm fed up with your shit. Can't be liked and loved by everyone, but you don't want to like or love anyone, so keep being you or whatever. Tiki took a shower and is waiting for you outside your room. Deal with her next."
For some reason, this time, an unexplainable feeling of loneliness ran across her body. Like many times before, where she would confidently shut Dante, or anyone else down, this time was different. Her regret and self doubt festered deeper inside her as she felt true remorse for all she did, unable to communicate that feeling outwards. It was a pain she felt just now for the first time, where she inexplicably divided herself between the person she was in the past and in the present, where it felt like she never had that second chance used to lead how she herself deemed best.