As Chimera's sanity crumbles, more and more rifts tear through the Fog.
Lost vagabonds rampage through the Fog, lashing out blindly at anything and everything, as if venting rage pent up from enduring corruption for far too long.
Lucia props herself up with her blade and stands, struggling to keep the Omega Core feeding energy to her frame.
The human kneels in the corner, fingers trembling weakly around the gun, drained of strength.
The F.O.S. starship drifts in silence through the Fog; for half an hour now, not a single shot has been fired.
Concerned for the little ship, the human steals a glance back, only to find its lights faint and faltering, about to die.
This is a long, grinding battle of endurance, one that might well have no end.
All eyes can see it now: the vagabonds within the Fog are massing, pressing close to one another as the Chimera guides their alignment, gathering force for one strike meant to kill.
Damn it... Have to move away.
Alpha's grip on her own body is slipping too. The vessel Luna shaped for her cannot withstand the anguish seeping in from multiple worlds.
And yet, even then, when the horde of vagabonds launches forward like a hail of arrows, descending upon the solitary figure trapped in a corner of the Fog...
It is Alpha who cries out first.
Lucia, move!
The doom, long in the making, locks onto Lucia and comes driving straight for her.
!
Alpha's frame, shattered nearly to the point of dismemberment, suddenly surges with power. She charges forward, crimson katana raised high. The human lunges ahead as well.
Lucia senses two lightning-fast figures plant themselves in front of her: one gray, one red and white.
Cough!
...
Alpha shoves the human aside, but the shockwave of the vagabonds' still strikes. A gash tears open, blood streaming freely, and it's clear the human is now dragged to the brink of death.
And through the gaping hole torn through Alpha's abdomen, Lucia finds herself face to face with the massive swarm of vagabonds on the other side.
...AAAAAHHHH—!
Golden-red flames blaze to life along her katana as Lucia swings, cleaving through the vagabonds' limbs.
Why won't they stop?! I cut them down and they just keep coming! Why?!
You knew my frame could outlast yours... You knew the Fog would make your wounds worse! And Commandant...!
The human's face is ghostly pale, the blood draining from the body far faster than anyone could have imagined.
Why does it have to be this way...? Why won't it ever stop?!
With bitter rage, Lucia slashes through the enemies, guarding the human and Alpha as they retreat onto a drifting platform that appears steady enough.
Ngh!
Doom shows no sign of pausing. Within moments, the relentless flurry carves fresh gashes across Lucia's frame as well.
This is a total collapse, not something that can be stopped by one person standing at the front to shield the others.
It's fine. I'm fine... I can still keep going.
I'm... fine too...
Blood no longer pours from the human's mouth and nose. There's likely none left to spill.
From the great wound in Alpha's abdomen, crimson liquid still drips in a steady rhythm. Her frame is moments from breaking apart, yet she forces herself onto her knees, brushing aside all efforts to restrain her.
By now, she's probably holding herself upright on nothing but a spine of sheer will.
Too many "vagabonds"... If we don't clear them out... we can't reach the Chimera...
We have to... take the [Crown] from inside its body...
Lucia throws a stunned glance over her shoulder, as though trying to determine if Alpha has also succumbed to the Fog's corrupting madness.
After all, from the moment Alpha tore herself from the Chimera's embrace, she has been consumed by an obsessive need to extract something from it, whispering words over and over that Lucia cannot grasp.
CLANG!
Tsk!
But even a split second of distraction costs her several more wounds, ones that refuse to heal.
Such wounds would typically mean little to her, but from the speed at which energy seeps out of them, she senses that under some influence, the Chimera has quickened the decay of all things.
...[Crown]? Decay?
She suddenly realizes she can no longer remember how many wounds cover her body. Her sense of her own frame is being stripped away.
The data in her M.I.N.D. is indeed slipping away without restraint. She can feel her grip on her body and her memories weakening with terrifying speed.
She is vanishing. The Chimera is erasing them all.
A kind of erasure far more dreadful than being killed in battle.
...
Suddenly, Lucia darts back to where the human and Alpha are, sinking to one knee. There, she meets Alpha, still fighting on her knees, face to face, their gazes holding.
That dream you had when the Chimera was holding you... Tell me, how terrifying was it, really?
So terrifying you can't bear to lose anything more? So much that you'd throw your life away for something I can't even understand?
...I don't know how to put that into words.
This isn't just some simple investigation anymore, the kind Babylonia dispatches Task Force squads to handle. I'm not completely in the dark here. I can feel something in my M.I.N.D.—Alpha!
Mid-sentence, Lucia bats away a lunging vagabond, but not before it carves another wound into her frame.
As of this moment, Lucia bears 195 wounds across her frame.
Alpha closes her eyes for a moment.
...Just losing people who mattered most in my life. Over and over.
Not just in this world.
...
I've had those dreams too.
...
Watching the people who matter die right in front of you, again and again. If you're lucky, there's half a limb left. More often, it's just a pool of blood, nothing left to hold onto—
Can't even recover their things, just clinging to scraps of their last words, turning them into something you have to live by no matter what—
Trapped in the fog, can't even cry out, fighting and fighting with no end in sight—
Lucia's voice rises. She can't help but recall that frantic, desperate flight she relives over and over in her dreams.
A space just like this one, empty in every direction, her visual modules flickering between black and white until her perception spirals into chaos, leaving only the sense of moving through fog.
...All that time... I failed to protect you...
I can't watch you die again.
This is the future I've always longed for—a peaceful world, and a world where you're there.
...
Alpha gazes at Lucia, and in those desperate eyes, she sees a reflection identical to her own.
Alpha lifts a broken arm, as if to brush away the tangled strands of hair covering one of Lucia's eyes.
Why even you...
I need you to understand: we're the same! What terrifies you terrifies me. What drives you drives me!
Ever since we first "reunited," you've been like this, keeping to yourself, refusing to let anyone in, carrying everything alone without a word—Agh!
The vagabonds' onslaught grows ever more frenzied, and at last a claw finds its mark, piercing through Lucia's shoulder.
Her 196th wound.
...So you tell me, Alpha.
Tell me, if I get this [Crown] Sefirah you talked about, if I bring it to you, will that fix everything?
Slowly, Lucia draws the broken limb-piece lodged in her shoulder out from the wound.
Will that... take everyone back home?
Her voice is thick with pleading.
......
Yes.
Alpha nods. With the motion, crimson droplets scatter from the ends of her hair, splashing onto the human's forehead.
I have to get the [Crown] Sefirah's power, even if it means death.
I see. I'll keep fighting. You watch over... Commandant.
Lucia lifts the dying human and gently settles the broken body beside Alpha, leaving the two battered figures propped against each other.
This is my fight too. Lucia, how much longer can you last?
Forever. I can last forever.
Lucia answers through the gray dimness.
I have the Omega Core. I will never fall.
Lucia's auditory module is failing as well. She can barely make out the sound of her own voice now.
But she knows exactly what she's been turning over in her mind ever since she landed beside the other two: the Omega Core.
Using the data from Project Winter, the Hyperreal frame's records, the Phantom Tracer, and our enhanced Omega weapon...
...we combined everything to use that "egg" as the carrier for creating an "Omega Core".
Beyond granting immunity to the Punishing Virus, the "Omega Core" lets the body harness Punishing as an energy source—like an Ascendant—so it no longer needs stasis pod recharges and can operate continuously.
She rises and walks toward the Chimera, shrouded in the Fog. As she moves, it strikes her once more: the energy driving her frame was built on the efforts of countless people.
Vera, Liv, Nanami, Bianca... even Lamia, Luna...
A shriek. Another vagabond shoots out of a rift, skimming past her left arm and leaving behind a new gash.
Her 197th wound.
Right...
We clawed our way out of hopeless desperation too, fighting tooth and nail just for a chance...
A vagabond charges with a howl. Lucia is quicker; she impales it in one thrust and casts the corpse away.
By now, her composure has turned chillingly steady. Yet the assault still carves new wounds into her frame.
Her 198th.
...We have to end this now. No more dragging. Neither of us can outlast the Fog.
Battered and broken, Alpha charges forward with the human's equally shattered body in her arms, sprinting toward a sparser patch of vagabonds to buy a moment's reprieve.
Lucia's gaze locks onto Alpha's silver hair. At some point, the tips have taken on a crimson-black hue, the exact same shade as her own.
We're the same. You'd do the same thing in my place.
Alpha doesn't look back. She just leaves her with a single line.
Remember this: the one left behind suffers more than the one who falls.
Alpha has clearly seen through her thought.
Then let me be selfish this once.
Lucia tightens her grip on the blade. Her gaze finds the human's hand, and for a fleeting moment, it's as if she's holding it gently in hers.
It's my call now. Everything humanity built during the Reconquista Age... it's been handed to me.
Time to use it.
Lucia breaks into a sprint, charging straight toward the Chimera, cutting down every vagabond that stands in her way.
Then, the thrusters mounted on her frame erupt with fire.
She soars alone into the vast void.
...
Alpha doesn't stop. She can feel the life ebbing from the body in her arms, yet she keeps running, searching for somewhere safe.
She won't stop. Because she knows she has become the guardian now, the one left behind to carry on.
The Chimera, too, seems to grasp the unspoken understanding shared by the two Lucias. It sweeps a hand forward, and a wave of vagabonds surges toward Lucia, clawing and tearing in a frenzy to stop her.
Her 199th wound. Her 200th wound...
Lucia raises her blade—again, and for the last time.
The Fog is where the vagabonds roam free. We might never be able to defeat them here.
In that... "dream" of mine, this frame's Omega Core kept me going for many, many years.
But this time is different.
I'm not fighting this alone. And none of you can last forever the way I can. The Fog's eating away at everyone... bit by bit.
She, too, once had a dream much like Alpha's. The loneliness from it still haunts her.
It's alright, it's alright. I can get through this. This frame is gonna get me through this.
...Commandant, I miss you... I miss you so much...
She fears becoming that Lucia wandering in the Fog, the one who kept whispering "it's alright" to herself. She fears becoming that Lucia who repeated endlessly how much she missed Commandant, how desperately she wanted to see Commandant again.
In every minute she's stood guard at Commandant's side, she's been silently turning over that Lucia's anguish, reliving the terror that consumed her.
If everyone's gone and I'm the only one left standing, then what was any of it for?
She can't go through that again.
...I'll buy everyone the time they need, while I still can.
She meets Chimera's attack head-on, racing along its arm, drawing closer and closer to its face.
...?
She reaches the Chimera's forehead.
I have to
At last, she raises her gaze and looks back.
She never dared voice this before, afraid of worrying everyone. But now, as if truly submerged in that dream, she finally speaks the heavy burden she's carried all along:
I'm so afraid of how much I will miss you.
......
Alpha lowers her gaze to the human in her arms. That breath is so faint she cannot bring herself to check if it still comes.
So it seems her wish has been granted. She is the last one left alive.
She watches as the flames sweep across everything in the Fog, finally enveloping the Chimera itself.
The agonized behemoth writhes in the fire. Lucia's flames sear into its body, burning one blackened hollow after another.
Arghhh!
Both Leora and Joanne have lost all control over this body. They are nothing more than puppets now, dancing on despair's strings.
But another will, or more precisely, another "data," forces its way into the fused creature through the scorched wounds, locking it in place.
After a few seconds, the Chimera's shell stirs. The [Crown] seems locked in a fierce tug-of-war with Lucia's consciousness, and the creature begins thrashing violently.
Until a hand rips the skin from its face, and from the hollow cavity beneath comes a voice, gentle and achingly familiar.
...Now...
...
...I'll finish this. Last one standing takes it all.
Alpha lunges forward at breakneck speed. With a shrieking roar, her katana shears through two of the Chimera's arms.
!!!!!
Heh... A few years back, we were at each other's throats. Just like this.
Alpha's mind drifts to her first encounter with Lucia among the ruins. From that very day, the two of them have always chosen this path.
I look forward to your choice after learning about the truth.
The truth...
Again and again—
The Chimera stops tearing open rifts. The vagabonds dwindle, cut down one by one.
Alpha hacks and slashes at the Chimera. When it lifts an arm to fend her off, she hacks it free. When its tail comes thrashing, she drives it through and nails it still.
We make different choices. We walk different paths... but still wind up in the same place.
Finally, as the Chimera lets out a piercing shriek, Alpha drives her blade clean through, pinning the creature to the cold, lifeless hull of the F.O.S. starship.
Hah... hah...
Is it over?
Is this the end... or the starting point I always circle back to?
Can you... can all of you... still give me an answer?
Alpha staggers to her feet and raises her blade once more.
The Chimera trembles as it extends its last two remaining arms.
...The... Crown...
Take it.
A crown... carrying every happiness... for you.
But Alpha has no time to dwell on such questions. She watches as the Chimera's two arms arc through the air, then plunge viciously into its own colossal frame.
...
It churns through flesh and sinew, rips free a formless mass, and lifts it toward Alpha like an offering.
Go to... that world of happiness.
Happiness... Lu... ci... a...
Lucia, wait for us at the base, alright? I promise you, we'll succeed this time.
We'll put an end to this crisis. We'll be there for you as you grow up. We'll make sure you have a happy life.
I hope you live a life filled with happiness, Lucia.
Ahem! I-I had no idea about tonight. It's j-just alumni catching up over dinner, right?
Lucia, [player name], I wish you...
Joanne doesn't finish.
I held on as long as I could. But the moment I found you, the Fog and the Crown devoured my mind.
All I wanted was to pass the Crown's power to you, because you're the only one who can "wear" it... But I lost myself and only hurt you more.
I'm sorry. I know I probably don't have the right to say this anymore... but...
This is the only chance I could give you. Don't waste it.
Don't let everything be lost.
The "fog" before Alpha begins to shift and flow, painting scenes from the past across her vision.
It's as if countless figures stand before her, hands stained with blood, bodies broken, and gently place the [Crown] upon her head.
Thus is born a queen, broken and utterly spent.
Go. Lead everyone home, back to a world of happiness.
