If Hoax had prematurely called his capture of Nomine a checkmate, then Neon was more than happy to call his rebuttal a damned board flip.
Actually, that was an understatement. From his perch by the throne, wrapped around the king’s neck like a noose in the gallows, Neon watched the whole table get thrown into the maws of an industrial shredder.
The soldiers broke formation, mechanical rigidity fracturing into a primordial confusion that promised only chaos. Levia’s cigarette had tumbled away from his lips, pupils widening as his hands shot out. Dark Waters lashed desperately towards Nomine, trying to recapture the prisoner who had broken free.
All of them —Too slow.
Only violent outburst of lightning remained where his partner had been subdued just mere seconds ago, decimating every single tendril on contact. It was blink and miss it, electric afterimages being the sole proof that Nomine hadn’t teleported.
Neon felt the displacement of air against his cheek before fully registering the veteran’s impending descent. Black Metal’s trajectory was so precise it was difficult to believe a human commanded it.
The blade pierced through Hoax’s exposed throat, surgically exact, threading effortlessly down the sponsor’s jugular until it was buried all the way to the hilt. Neon’s brain stuttered on the wrongness of that proximity —on how close that edge had passed him, on how easily Nomine could’ve carved him too.
Yet it didn’t. Black Metal drove itself across Hoax’s larynx, sternum, diaphragm, and who knew how many more organs, continuing until its tip erupted from the throne’s steel seat.
Such speed and sheer control were terrifying enough to make Neon release his grip, stumbling backwards as Hoax spasmed on the blade. Could’ve been called even careful in its destruction, if not for the veteran’s expression.
Nomine’s face was a rictus of fury barely contained by flesh, eyes ablaze with something that transcended mere hatred. He twisted Black Metal, just to torture the old man further.
Hoax’s mouth worked soundlessly around the steel. Blood welled —thick, syrupy, and in a wrong hue of darkness. Stagnant, like it had been sitting in those withered veins for far too long, waiting for the right excuse to turn to dust. It bubbled up through his ruptured windpipe, spilling from his lips, nose, and even the corners of his milky eyes.
“D… Di…” Uttering more wet wheezes than any actual speech, Hoax’s trembling hand extended towards the swamp’s edge. Towards where his dismissed son stood in disbelief. For all the aristocratic posture, in this moment he was only a pathetic old man asking for help.
But he was still his father.
Levia’s expression hardened, making Neon the sole target of his wrath. The young heir commanded his hands in sharp, decisive gestures, and Dark Waters responded with equal, purposeful viciousness.
Even in his light-headedness, Neon vividly felt them colliding all around his frame. This time they weren’t here to restrain. The liquid substance had thickened and sharpened, lined with razorwire teeth and hypodermic needles that reduced fabric to ribbons before flaying skin and flesh.
Huh. He could still experience pain, even after mutilating his own fingers. Good to know, though it wasn’t like he could do this particular trick multiple times.
It was an explosion of agony. All across his shoulders, his sides, his lower back and legs. Water carved into him like a hundred spiteful wire saws.
Maybe Levia thought he could still fix things. That by eliminating the demolisher of his father’s sand castles, this wreckage would be undone too.
Far too late for that. Though Neon’s world tilted sideways, swimming sight blurring moonlight and fog and his own blood into one nauseating smear, he clung stubbornly to his diminishing consciousness. Just enough to witness the roar from reality itself that came next.
Ground and air shrieked as voltage erupted around Black Metal like the blade had become a lightning capturing an entire storm. Deconsecrate —but unleashed to such apotheosic intensity that the discharge that had brought down Soreisan and Neon now looked like playtime in comparison.
Neon’s eyes were seared by the azure brilliance flooding the marsh, its rumble resonating through his teeth, bones, and the marrow inside them. To call this mere electricity felt insufficient. Space seemed to warp, distorting like it was about to collapse inwards and swallow them all.
Hoax convulsed against the blade, his flesh rippling in waves that had nothing to do with regular wounds or anything physical. This wasn’t death.
He was being… Disintegrated.
And Nomine stood above him, pouring every amp of Deconsecrate’s unbridled fury into this excruciating torture, trembling from the effort of keeping such devastating destruction focused. Making sure it lasted.
Making sure Hoax felt every single second of his annihilation.
Likely thanks to this eye-searing execution, Dark Waters grew even fiercer in its ravaging of Neon —dividing into thinner, deeper strands; shredding every inch of the rookie they could reach.
Neon refused to look down. Probably couldn’t, even if he were to try. Some base instinct of self-preservation locked his neck in place, kept his gaze fixed on Nomine’s spectacle. If he were to see what Levia had done to him… Well, hard to put it past his brain to just give out entirely.
Fuck… Was he dying?
The fingers that remained had already gone numb. Not with the sensation of a limb fallen asleep, but under the hollow absence of a connection severed. That same coldness colonized him further and further, sapping strength with every dimming heartbeat.
Abstract as everything had become, Neon continued watching Nomine through the cotton stuffing his ears, through the static eating his vision away.
Enraptured, he saw the veteran tensing, a new frequency humming to drown the atmospheric pressure around him. The blue lightning exploding from his frame shifted. Bled into something darker. Deeper.
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And from that coalescing epicenter, another overwhelming force lashed out.
Purple spectral wind extended everywhere at once, spiraling in a ravenous helix and howling like the death cry of a sacrilegious god. Deconsecrate parted at the middle, just like the fog did immediately after —as if the whole world had gotten suddenly split into two.
[Skill: Paragon Slash Lvl 5]
The winds of Belial storm forth.
Haha… Yet another one. Another hidden blade in Nomine’s arsenal. They would all die with this one. Everyone except this embodiment of apocalypse pretending to be human.
Hoax was the first to vanish. His upper half separated from his lower with no more resistance, and zero fanfare. There, and then not. The sole mercy was that the old man was more than likely already dead by that point.
Levia didn’t get the time to process what happened. His casting hand was still extended when the dicing gust reached him, cleaving through his torso at the same millimetric angle. Unlike back when Black Metal had pierced him, no weird unspecified augment managed to protect him this time.
The ex-soldiers weren’t spared. Their bodies tumbled in opposite directions, separated diagonally with no more consideration than the dead trees also toppling in the distance.
Everything and everyone in Paragon Slash’s reach —in Nomine’s path— submitted to the same immutable law. Upper and lower.
Neon alone remained unsliced by it. A bleeding dreg reduced to the ground, he existed in a pocket safety he didn’t feel he had earnt. The kamaitachi whirled overhead, close enough for him to feel its passing.
Did it matter? It was but a matter of time before he followed the same fate. Only Nomine would remain standing. Alone and infallible. A true survivor.
Perhaps…. Perhaps that was for the better.
No matter how much his idealistic nature made others assume otherwise… Neon wasn’t blind. The truth calcifying now, through shock and blood loss and the loud silence that came after genocide, was a lesson he’d been learning since the start of this encounter. Maybe even before.
Hoax, in all his disgusting glory, was no outlier.
He was the standard for all of those with the resources, authority and infrastructure to enact their whims in this nightmare. They were the ones playing with him like some wind-up toy. Playing with all of them. With life itself. Measuring death with credits as the currency.
And to oppose them, to actually register on their radar as something other than more meat for the grindhouse… An equal measure of power and ruthlessness was mandatory.
Qualities Neon knew he’d never possess. He could never carve his way through like Nomine did. Could never reduce human beings to obstacles in need of removal. Even now, as his blood mixed with mud, as his vision tunneled towards permanent darkness, Neon was… Mourning.
Mourning the teams that had been dragged into this senseless blood feud by no fault of their own. He never even got to learn all their names, and now they were collateral damage for someone else’s deranged revenge fantasies.
Mourning Levia, whose crime had been existing in his father’s shadow. Who’d tried to object, to question, to preserve some shred of humanity before being shunned away and ultimately killed for the sins of his bloodline.
But none of those considerations —Hesitations? Doubts? Compassions?— ever affected Nomine. The veteran stood atop this wasteland of hewn corpses. Last man standing, as was his curse to be.
Bitter as it was, if Neon’s legacy ended here… If his second chance concluded by becoming a stepping stone for someone actually capable of making a difference in this playground of the damned, then…
Then…
… He was at peace.
Marsh water lapped at his sides, almost soothing in its newfound stillness. His body began feeling distant. Sensations fled in waves, leaving only the essentials to remind Neon he still drew breath.
Nomine’s silhouette wavered in his failing sight —purple embers burning down undersuit and skin, revealing deeply scarred muscles locked in a posture that suggested he was seconds away from collapse himself. And yet… The bastard managed to look beautiful even now. Perhaps especially now.
Ah well. It had been a fun little adventure acquired through borrowed time.
Mighty time for it to end.
Better this way. Before his humanity got lost along the way, too. Before he learned how to take lives without batting an eye, too. Had Teitai nurtured similar thoughts? Did his expression now look similar to the one she held during her last seconds?
Did it matter?
Neon’s eyelids grew heavy, so he closed them. The Chiaroscuro he’d been outrunning since twenty-one floors ago waited patiently, and he was too tired to resist any further. This was his rightful retribution. His karmic balance.
For toying with people's hearts the same way sponsors did with lives.
The primal void that should’ve claimed him back then reached out, enveloping his being into its comforting arms.
Neon allowed it to come.
And yet…
<>
Dang. So anticlimactic. Here he was, trying to bid some profound farewell to his miserable existence, and the system found nothing better to do than to crash his funeral with some useless victory fanfare.
Was this Kyth’s twisted sense of humor at play again, pinging the nearly-deceased? Bah. Whatever. It got a smile out of him, at least.
Before he realized… Neon began to cry. It was so scary. He didn’t want to die. Not yet. Not like this. There were so many things left undone. So many words unspoken. He wished to argue with Nomine about something stupid again. Wished to have an honest conversation with him for once…
Or at the very least pester him some more. Needle him until his composure fractured to reveal more of the human underneath. And well, even if breaking down those defenses turned out to be impossible in the end, just trying would still be very funny.
Sure, he was Naive. Stubborn. Conceited. Untalented. Unfunny. Unworthy.
But he wasn’t boring… Right?
Had he mattered? Had something he’d done in his lifetime of failures made at least one tiny ripple in this stagnant, uncaring world? Would someone remember him, even if only as an annoyance?
It’d be nice to voice those questions. Have a final word before the curtain fell. Maybe crack a joke or two about it, too. Maybe admit that despite everything, he was glad to have met Nomine.
There wouldn’t be anything of that in the place he was going. Every sensation shut down at once, and his consciousness prepared to follow.
Or so he thought.
<>
A jolt of electricity ran through his nerves like a defibrillator to the soul.
His eyes snapped open, and shock led him to slam the back of his head against something hard enough to drag a pained yelp from his mouth. Familiar, like the black box where he stood once again in its uncomfortable confinement.
<>
And projected before him was another repeat sight. Antikythera.
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