"Yon?"
"Hm?" With a weary sigh, Yon pushed himself upright for the fourth time in a row.
"Uh… I was thinking about what you said–the whole close‑combat thing. You're probably right. I could end up damaging my body with that kind of sudden strain. Especially since I'm a caster type. So… I think I'll stick to enhancing my blades, just like you suggested."
"Right… that's good then." He rubbed his eyes. "Is that all?"
"Yep. Sorry for bothering you."
It seemed that would finally be it for the night, so he shut his eyes once more.
However, not even half an hour passed before–
"Hey, Yon…"
"..."
"Are you awake?"
"...I am." His eyes were open, but his body refused to move.
They had all collapsed right by the shore, falling asleep without even attempting to set up a proper campsite. Exhaustion clung to each of them, yet for some reason, Blue insisted on keeping Yon's heavy eyelids from staying shut.
"Well, it's about… sorry, I might've forgotten–"
Yon abruptly sat up, and Blue's hands flailed in a panic as she tried to excuse herself.
"Listen, I'm sorry… this isn't–"
"I get it," Yon replied quietly. "You can't fall asleep, right? And you needed some company."
Her face flushed all the way to her ears as she stared down at her hands.
"But still… Why call me?"
She twiddled her thumbs, thinking over the question. Even she couldn't fully explain it.
"For some reason… it feels like you'd be the least angry with me."
"..."
Realizing how strange what she'd just admitted was, she lowered her head even further.
Thousands of words could've described what went through Yon's mind, but in simple terms, he wanted to bury his head under the soil. He could complain, but there wasn't much to blame except how sharp she was, and how terrible he'd been at hiding his bias.
"Captain!"
"Ugh!"
Their silver‑haired leader sat up like a disgruntled zombie, his grumble carrying as much complaint as it could.
"What?"
Yon pointed his thumb toward the issue at hand: the girl beside him, wide awake and anxious.
Cosmo sighed, then roused the others.
CLAP!
"Ah!"
"What's going on?!"
"It's too late for all this. What are you up to now?"
Even Cosmo, who had woken them, let out a loud yawn.
"Alright, alright," he soothed, "I just remembered something I find relevant at the moment. Especially after our recent affair."
"And this couldn't wait until tomorrow because…?"
"I'd probably forget."
Red, who had asked, and the rest of them couldn't argue with that. They all knew communication wasn't exactly Cosmo's forte.
Blue didn't understand what the two were plotting, but she didn't want to be presumptuous enough to cause a scene by asking what his sudden decision had to do with her inability to sleep.
Yet as he lectured and everyone listened, she was pulled back to those first six months in Hortusole.
"...in other words, through the battle with Artoria in addition to our ordeal with the Spire, if I thought of myself as a simple battery, I would have used about five hundred and fifty times my full reserves…"
It wasn't fair that they were all drowsy, and even he let out a yawn every so often, but she wasn't bothered by that nearly as much as the strange relief settling in her chest.
"...however, I only ended up spending forty‑two percent of my entire capacity…"
They moved and spoke in ways she didn't expect beforehand.
They were here with her, and she was here with them, yet she didn't feel like an anomaly. They were alive and real, not vessels she had to protect with every breath. It made her wonder what she had been so afraid of.
Maybe she was allowed to breathe. If only for a moment.
Just maybe.
"...physical boundaries are simply that. As a free thinker, you're afforded the luxury of what humans have deemed common sense. Why water is shapeless, how gravity pulls relative to mass, how objects wish to move or stay, even how to preserve disorder without active interference–"
SHH!
Cosmo paused at the soft brushing sound, glancing over to see Blue leaning back against Yon's grasp. He had caught her relaxed body the moment she dozed off, then gently laid her onto one of the lumps they'd been using as makeshift cushions.
She drifted into dreams, peaceful and still.
That was enough for the two of them to wrap things up.
"Actually, I think that covers it for tonight. If I remember anything else later, I'll bring it up then."
With the same groans they'd woken with, everyone fell limp and asleep in an instant.
Yon was about to follow suit when he noticed Cosmo staring at him with a suspicious expression.
"What?"
"..."
"Look, whatever you're thinking, it's not like that."
"..."
"Ugh! Good night, Captain." Giving up, Yon lay down and closed his eyes.
Cosmo chuckled silently before doing the same, though only half his mind drifted toward sleep. The other half acknowledged the girl lying to his right, turned away toward the pond's edge where no one could see her face.
The air around her was so drastically different it felt like crossing a border, one that happened to be him, quite literally.
Cosmo could sense the tiniest observable particles in his surroundings. It was a passive side effect he maintained even while asleep. So even if she hadn't looked at anyone throughout the night, from the moment Blue began pacing without rest, he alone could feel Rita's endless tears.
Still, he felt no need to console her, nor to ever bring it up again.
Guilty as she felt, he knew this wasn't entirely negative. If she believed she could never forgive herself, then this time, it fell to the one she had wronged to help her determine an end to her penance.
Though that idea was only the lesser truth.
Red had admitted his cowardice.
Tyson had revealed his accursed birth.
Oliver had expressed his hatred for him.
Clarisse had confessed her ignorance.
Blue had conceded to personifying the dead.
And Yon had declared himself a murderer.
All of this had been granted to him at their accord, yet when he received their truths, he had nothing to return.
There was a reason the Captain who spoke to them was always so inconsistent. The real Cosmo could never claim, with his own words, that he was as human as any of them without feeling sick.
To call him the worst among them would still be an understatement.
'I'm sorry.'
So, for better or worse, he had no choice but to leave Rita on her own, at least for the night.
***
"Ready?!"
""Ready!""
Cosmo and Argenta answered in unison as Oliver called from afar.
They stood before the empty portal frame, Cosmo's hand hovering over Argenta's head. The metal ring encircling her crown was once again linked to the portal, prepared to supply enough power to force open a path back to Earth.
"You once said each portal uses enough power to supply an entire city at every moment. How would something so small produce that much?"
Red asked while Oliver secured Earth's approximate coordinate he had calculated earlier.
"It's not the ring itself we're relying on, but Argenta's… issue." Oliver hesitated.
He was struggling to choose the right term with which to refer to Argenta's curse.
Cosmo often called it a gift, despite both of them agreeing it was a cruel fate she had been born with.
Oliver, however, never bothered with pretenses.
But since this was the first time he had ever spoken about it to anyone besides those two, he finally understood, if only faintly, why Cosmo never called such a thing.
"Will she be okay?" Blue asked, concern threading through her voice.
"We can't risk reducing the ring's effects just to draw more power. But if we want to tap into it at all, Argenta has to increase the amount of work by experiencing stressful emotions. Enough to overload it."
"What?"
"Relax, that's why he's there." Oliver gestured toward Cosmo. "He just has to temporarily stimulate her brain and replicate the reaction that heightens the effect. We only need enough to maintain a rip for a few seconds. Whichever portal we connect to back at headquarters will handle the rest."
He quickly quelled Blue's misunderstanding, one he admittedly caused with poor phrasing.
"And then?" she asked.
"The most that'll happen is she'll be a bit tired. I promise there are no long‑term effects."
With that, he prepared to remotely activate the frame through a miniature monitor.
"Long‑term effects…" Blue murmured, unable to shake her unease.
The scene looked far from appropriate, and even Cosmo seemed to harbor reservations about the method.
"Will you be alright?" he asked Argenta, glancing over her small stature.
Blaming his own shortcomings for forcing them into this approach, he couldn't stop the weight settling in his chest.
"Hey, shouldn't I be asking you that?" Argenta laughed lightly.
"Right…" He scratched his cheek, realizing she was right. "Sorry, I wish we didn't have to take this route."
"It's okay. When you think about it, you guys are lucky you had to bring me along this time. Otherwise, you'd be stuck here forever. So all you have to do is shower me with praises and gifts until I'm satisfied." She declared proudly.
"That goes without saying." He ruffled her hair until she protested.
It wasn't entirely true, but she was right. Bringing her along had been a fortunate circumstance.
As a Badger from Bane, Oliver could have built an original reactor with Cosmo's help, one capable of the same output. But that required time they didn't have. For countless urgent reasons, they needed to return to Earth immediately, so Cosmo had to use whatever they had at hand.
"I don't like hearing you say sorry so much. It doesn't suit you," she told him. "You know what I like way better, don't you?"
"Right." He smiled. "Thank you so much, Argenta. I don't think I can do without you."
"That's right, hmph!" Folding her arms with a smug expression, she turned toward the frame and closed her eyes.
"Okay," Cosmo called over his shoulder, "Oliver, start it up."
Oliver nodded and pressed down a key.
The air grew heavy at once.
Several holographic, unrecognizable silhouettes flickered into existence near Cosmo and Argenta, only to vanish just as quickly.
The space within the circular frame darkened until it became pitch black.
Then the blackness condensed, shrinking until it was smaller than the tip of a needle.
"Hmmgh…" Argenta groaned.
"You alright? Hold out a bit longer for me, okay? It'll be over soon."
She nodded.
The adrenaline coursing through her while she had to hold as still as possible clearly caused her discomfort, but it wasn't yet the time to stop.
BANG!
A thunderous crack split the air, followed by a ripple that forced them to shield themselves. The tiny hole expanded violently into a violet expanse, the unmistakable face of a portal.
Cosmo bent down just in time for Argenta to fall into his arms, then stood up straight.
"Let's go home," Cosmo ordered the others behind him. "We're done here."