"Ha… Ahahahaha! What an incredible power! I've never felt anything like this in my entire life! No wonder people get addicted to it."
Laughing, the woman's voice echoes across the misty battlefield, cutting straight into Rin's ears — for she's the one those words are aimed at. Yet as close as her opponent seems, Rin's body refuses to move. She stands frozen, watching the wolf-masked figure slowly circle her silent blade, fingers brushing over its flat edge.
"What's wrong? Where's that big conviction of yours now? Where's your little act as the shining role model? The amazing Rinni who explains the world to those dumb kids?" her opponent taunts, completing the circle and letting her turquoise eyes flare.
A heartbeat later, the same color flickers beneath her feet. The particles surge upward, wrapping around her like a roaring flame — fierce, blinding and warm at the same time.
"So? Isn't it beautiful? Are you trembling yet?" the wolf mask laughs, throwing her arms open as if to embrace someone, while getting the flames to dance fiercely around her.
"Ha! I can see it in your face — that twitching, that trembling. You're terrified, aren't you?"
Rin remains still.
Too still, one might say, though that really isn't her fault.
"Ohh? Now I get it!" the masked woman exclaims, smacking her right fist into her left palm as if struck by revelation.
"You're just mad because a stupid kid beat you! Ahahaha!"
She mocks her endlessly, bending over in laughter, but still Rin doesn't lose her cool.
"Fenja!" Ryuu's shout suddenly cuts through the laughter, shattering the moment.
"Just kill her already! We don't have all day!"
He approaches slowly from the left, head held high despite the gash across his forehead.
"Huh?" Fenja turns toward him, tilting her head back with mocking disdain.
"Heh… So you're trying to ruin my fun?" she sneers.
"No, I—".
"AHAHAH, RYUU! I think you're forgetting your place!"
Turquoise fins detach from the burning energy swirling around her and shoot toward him like projectiles, halting only a few millimeters from his face.
"Nothing's stopping me from killing you too. And you know what? You're really starting to piss me off. So sit tight in your little spectator seat and wait for your turn, yeah?"
Her arrogant words draw only a hiss from Ryuu, his eyes sharp with rage — though it hardly seems to matter to her.
After all, someone else is still waiting for her.
"Greate, back to you. Shall we?" she asks, turning back to Rin.
"On your knees."
Again the command echoes in Rin's ears and her body obeys without question. She drops to the ground, kneeling, completely stripped of will.
"Ahahaha, ha… I could do this all damn day!" Fenja cheers, strolling past Rin's weapon and lifting her chin with a single finger.
"So? How does it feel to be a lapdog?" she mocks, then drives her foot hard into Rin's stomach.
Rin folds, rolls back several meters, then rises again — only to kneel once more, exactly as ordered.
"Hehe… and now what? Ah, I know!"
"Come here."
The command rings again, louder this time, and Rin obeys. She rises, takes slow steps toward the wolf-masked woman.
"Crawling."
It hits even harder. Rin drops down, onto all fours, now crawling toward Fenja — and the moment she reaches her, Fenja kicks her in the face, pressing her mask into the dirt like a doormat.
"Hihi! What's wrong? Does the little lapdog want to lick my feet? Ew, disgusting!" Fenja bursts into laughter, before she starts stomping down.
Again and again she raises her foot and slams it into Rin's defenseless face, delighting in the shattering of the mask and their every crack and splatter of blood.
But then she stops. Abruptly. As if bored, lowering her foot in one last sigh.
"Ugh. Now I've got stray blood on my boot. Whatever… you're boring anyway," she says, shaking her foot to fling off the blood.
"Kill yourself."
The words echo through Rin's head. She stands, takes the golden blade, turns it around — the tip now aimed at her own throat.
But then, silence.
She doesn't move.
She stands still, trembling, the weapon frozen in her grasp.
"Tch… What's wrong? Was that too hard to understand? Does the little mutt not speak human?" Fenja snaps, irritation sharpening her tone — yet Rin still doesn't move.
"Ugh… Fine, I'll just do it myself," Fenja sighs, stepping closer and seizing the cracked mask with her left hand.
"Any last words?" she sneers, half-laughing, ready to finish it.
Turquoise energy gathers in her hand, crackling at her fingertips. A faint breeze stirs — like a signal. Then she tightens her grip around Rin's skull.
And stops, just as suddenly.
"May I do that for my incompetent comrade?"
The voice cuts through the air out of nowhere.
A deep, calm voice.
Undeniably male.
And to half the people present, unmistakably familiar.
Even I would recognize that voice through the thickest fog.
"And who are you supposed to be?" Fenja snaps, loosening her grip and turning toward the newcomer.
"Shato. That's the name," he replies calmly. "And I'm here to call the retreat. Though I assume it goes without saying that I won't be leaving without my student."
His voice cuts through the thick fog as he walks forward — unhurried, composed — passing Ryuu without even glancing at him.
"Annnd you took to long … Great," Ryuu hisses, still frozen in place, forced to watch as the calm figure steps onto the battlefield.
A perfectly balanced figure.
His right arm shines with a white glow, up to the shoulder; the left, with a deep black, just as far.
His hood has fallen back, revealing hair that floats as if underwater, while shining in a similar fashion, split just perfectly into a light side and a dark side, just perfectly reversed in comparison to his arms.
"Haha… Ahaha… AHAHAHA! And you seriously think I'm just gonna let you walk out of here?!" Fenja laughs, her voice cracking into a shout but Shato doesn't flinch. Not even slightly.
"Sadly, no. Though it would be in your best interest," he answers, still moving straight toward her — toward the turquoise blaze flaring wildly around her.
"Hehe, then let's see what a walking corpse's got!" Fenja roars, her energy flaring even higher, the turquoise flame swelling, roaring, burning brighter than before.
"Stop."
The word rolls through the air — heavy, resonant — visible even as waves of force.
But Shato doesn't stop.
He just keeps walking. Calm. Unshaken. Glowing.
"Huh?"
Fenja stumbles a step back.
"Stop!"
Again the command echoes — again, nothing happens.
"H-hey, wh-what… what is this? Why aren't you stopping?! Why won't you obey?!"
Her voice cracks. She stumbles backward, her panic rises.
"Stop!" she screams again.
"Stop!"
Her body trembles.
"ON YOUR KNEES!"
She throws up her hands defensively.
"STOP! STAY BACK!"
She's screaming at the top of her lungs now.
By then, several meters lie between her and Rin — and Shato has reached his motionless student, where he stops right beside her.
"H-ha… hahaha… N-now," Fenja stammers, swallowing hard, shaking uncontrollably, "a-and where's… where's your—"
She never finishes the sentence.
In a single flash, Shato leaps — crossing the distance in an instant — and drives his glowing white arm straight through the turquoise flame.
"GET LOST!"
Fenja's voice roars through the fog.
Her energy flares outward as her arms shoot forward. Instinctively, the flame tightens, and both colors collide. Then, cracks.
Cracks in the turquoise.
And Fenja is sent flying, soaring across the grassy field, far beyond the cracked concrete road. She crashes, rolls, forces herself back up, and dismisses the flame. In its place, two enormous turquoise fins burst to life, towering over her, while being massive enough to crush a tank. And maybe even enough to stop that monster.
But before she can even try, a white beam — pure energy, concentrated and bright — cuts through the air toward her. Defensively Fenja raises her fins, but the beam detonates on impact, wrapping her in a blinding flash of white.
"Wha—" she manages to gasp, while the light fades away, though Shato is already there. In front of her. Again. With his white hand lashing out.
This time she dodges, barely, swinging back with the giant fins. But her attack misses — he's already gone. The concrete shatters under her strike while Shato calmly walks past her, as if he had predicted every move.
Then he's behind her. His white hand wraps around her head.
Fenja freezes. Her body locks up.
A second later, she's flying again — slammed back across the ground to where the fight began.
To where she crashes, rolls, gasps, forces herself upright again, her breath ragged.
Her eyes dart across the field. There — Shato, standing still, untouched.
"I GOT YOU!" she screams, planting her fins in front of her, forcing them together. The turquoise energy gathers, merging, swelling into a single enormous sphere.
"DIE!" she howls, hurling it forward.
The blast tears through everything — the grass, the concrete, even the air itself. But the destruction halts the moment Shato raises his other hand.
The one, tinted in pure darkness. It overtook the white mostly, which has already shrunken to a glimpse, of what it once was, as if drained from overuse. The darkness, however, has grown — spreading up his chest, consuming half of it — and now it faces the raging turquoise head-on.
Hand and energy collide.
And in the blink of an eye, the sphere stops, then fractures and finally collapses completely.
Swallowed by the blackness as if it had never existed in the first place.
Like Fenja's confidence, fading in her frozen appearance.
With her breath trembling, her flame now just a faint shimmer clinging to her body and her fighting spirit seemingly gone.
She stumbles back, eyes fixed on Shato, who's unharmed, and suddenly appears in front of her again, driving his white hand into her stomach.
The pain explodes through her body.
She drops to her knees, gasping for air, still alive somehow and more alive than she wants to be.
And yet, Shato walks past her, without a glance, heading toward his student, who had fallen at the same time as Fenja.
"W-why…" Fenja instantly whispers, her voice thin and shaking, as she turns her head, forcing her eyes toward him.
"Hm?" he answers, pausing for a heartbeat, but not looking back.
"W-why didn't you… " she stammers, every word trembling as she clings desperately to life.
"Kill you?" Shato finishes her sentence, then lets out a short laugh — a little mocking, yet not without a trace of understanding.
"You want to know why I'm not killing you? Well, there are plenty of reasons. None that come to mind right away. Although… I suppose one would be that you sicced the APH on us, and I'd rather not waste more of my power. Besides…" he says calmly, slipping Rin's arm over his shoulder to help her stand.
"Let me put it this way. Just because there's a war doesn't mean we have to butcher each other. I already carry enough weight on my shoulders. Enough sins and actions I'll probably never be forgiven for. There's already more than enough blood on these hands," he continues.
"And what difference would one more dead person make? Or are you just trying to make fun of me? You want to see me suffer even more? That can't seriously be your reason!" Fenja snaps, her anger flaring — even though deep down, she's grateful to still be alive.
"Yeah, you're probably right," Shato admits quietly. "I can't do that anymore. But there's someone in my life — a boy I swore myself to. And he would do the same. Maybe out of pure naivete, but still. He'd probably ask you why you're so eager to die. Why you're throwing everything away. Why you're giving up. You're fighting to protect something, aren't you? Just like the rest of us. And that's exactly why you should want to live. That's why I'm not going to kill you here. Even if someday, you're the one who kills me. I just want to believe that you do what you do for a reason — a good reason. And if that faith ends up costing me my life… I wouldn't even regret it. That's probably how he'd put it. Though, I may have added a few words of my own," he says with a faint, almost tired smile.
Shato breathes in deeply, pauses for a moment, and then turns his gaze to the trembling girl crouched in the dirt — Fenja, completely lost, unable to understand what just happened.
"Kid, don't waste time thinking about how it's supposed to end. Think about how it could go on. Someone out there will be thankful you did."
His words leave her speechless. She doesn't know what to say — so she doesn't say anything. She just watches as he walks away with Rin at his side, slowly disappearing into the fog.
"Ohhh, did the charming hero's words put you under his spell?" Ryuu mocks a little later, once he's regained movement and finally manages to speak again.
"Shut up," Fenja snaps back, flustered and annoyed.
"But yeah… he's right. That's exactly the kind of thing he'd say. All that concentrated naivety. That damn hero complex, that's going to ruin his life."
Ryuu sounds almost wistful despite everything — despite the chaos, despite their strange situation.
Then his expression hardens. His right hand clenches into a fist as the quiet wind plays with his hair and drowns out the sound of his weary sigh.
"I just don't get it," he mutters under his breath.
"What the hell happened to you? What changed you so much? Why did you forget everything? Shouldn't you know the desperation of this world more than any of us?"