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Ryuk's perspective
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Upon gaining sentience, every artificial soul acquires a unique trait—something that distinguishes its character much like the personalities of humans. At times, however, these souls inherit fragments of their creator's essence, echoes of traits rather than complete reflections. Just as Wally had inherited the virtue of 'Loyalty' from Moriarty, Illya bore the indelible mark of 'Defiance' from Ray.
Yet a single trait does not shape the entirety of one's being, and that was precisely why Ray allowed Illya to live.
But sentience brought with it more than simple awareness. It opened the floodgates of possibility, the endless chasm between here and what could be, followed by a torrent of abstract ideas and half-formed imaginings.
Far to the east, where the ocean heaved like a living beast, lay the Eastern Seas—a realm ruled by the Silverheart Family, where pirates and naval fleets clashed in an endless, bloody war.
There, amidst the raging waters, drifted the broken carcass of a ship—a vessel that had strayed too far, straight into the maw of a sea monster.
Inside that ruined husk lay the lifeless bodies of countless sailors. The massive creature let out a sound like the whistle of a passing train, paying no mind to the men it had swallowed. To it, they were nothing more than meat, provisions to be digested later.
Its upper body pierced through the mist, towering like a jagged cliff. To the untrained eye, the wreck inside its throat could easily be mistaken for the heart of some hidden island.
But Illya was no ordinary wanderer. She was a predator, a natural-born hunter in a body of extraterrestrial alloy and nanotech. Like a storm of silver dust, her divided form—millions upon millions of nanobots—spiraled through the monster's maw before condensing upon the shattered deck within.
Amidst the corpses that sprawled across the broken timbers, one sailor still clung to life. A trembling arm rose feebly, defying the pull of death.
"He…lp…" The broken plea crackled through Illya's comm system as she reassembled into humanoid form.
She crouched low, her obsidian frame gleaming faintly in the gloom, and reached for his hand.
The emotion behind that word, the meaning in his voice, was beyond her comprehension. Yet she knew this much, the man before her was a variable.
An anomaly.
One that had to be erased, just as her father had programmed her to do.
And yet… in that fleeting instant before execution, something stirred.
A flicker. A fragile, alien sensation... pity.
But mercy was not written into her code.
Their hands met. A flash of cold metal, and in that instant, every fragment of his being, every scrap of memory and knowledge about the Eastern Seas, poured into her. His life unraveled in silence.
When she withdrew her hand, nothing remained of him but a heap of ash drifting across the rotting planks.
The man whose memories she absorbed had once lived a life steeped in warmth. A family… a wife… children who adored him. Through his eyes, she glimpsed fragments of laughter, of quiet dinners, of hands clasped in reassurance.
For a fleeting moment, she wondered how happiness must have felt for him.
But such notions were distractions—illusions she could not afford to indulge in. Her purpose was singular, extract the knowledge buried in his mind. His love, his joys, his regrets… all irrelevant. What mattered were the pirate routes etched deep within the folds of his memory.
Her father had not burdened her with sentimental archives or false comforts. Beyond the fundamentals required for survival and function, her mind was a blank slate. It was her duty to fill it, not with dreams or feelings, but with data, with truths carved from real experience.
For was that not how humans learned? Through trial and struggle, through living?
Her target had last been sighted among the fleet of Commander Iris—a former ally to her father, now reduced to nothing more than an objective. A low-priority target, yes… but one who needed to be captured, along with the traitor Cooper.
What puzzled her, however, was the condition her father imposed, capture, not kill. It defied logic.
By every fragment of knowledge she had extracted from human minds, betrayal warranted death. Or… at least that was what she understood so far.
Perhaps such ideals were not universal.
Perhaps the truth was far more complex than the bits and shards she had gathered.
If the data she now possessed was accurate, then she still lacked something critical: combat experience. Without it, facing the pirate fleets under their rulers would be nothing short of suicide.
Her calculations outlined three dominant powers within the Eastern Seas.
The Navy, commanded by the seasoned Mahoon and metahuman admirals.
The Silverheart Family, one of the Five Major Families whose influence stretched across continents.
And finally, the Pirate Queen, a figure cloaked in myth, a woman whose rise had birthed a new golden age for piracy.
However, Pirate Queen held ties to her father. So, failure here would mean more than the collapse of a mission, it could sever alliances he deemed essential. The margin for error was zero.
Thus, her options narrowed to two, target the Navy. Or target the Silverhearts.
But her brother's warning rang clear through her neural core. Do not engage the Silverhearts without sufficient data.
That left her with only one viable path.
A deep rumble vibrated beneath her feet, pulling her from thought. The gargantuan beast in whose mouth she stood had begun to swallow. Its throat constricted, crushing timber and bone alike, the sound reverberating like a death knell across the cavernous chamber.
Instinct surged through her code. At the final moment, she scattered, splitting once more into a glimmering storm of nanobots, and shot through the closing maw into the mist-laden skies beyond.
"...Terrific." The word left her lips as her fragmented form pulled itself together, silver streams locking into the shape of a body mid-flight.
For the first time in her short existence—mere days strung together by orders and objectives—she felt something new. A ripple she had no name for, but humans… they would have called it exhilaration.
Her lips curved slightly, almost without command.
"But fun," she said, and this time, it wasn't programming. It was her.
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District 12
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The port of the 12th District lay unnervingly quiet. Once alive with the shuffle of sailors and the clang of steel against wood, now only the creak of anchored ships lingered in the salt-heavy air. A navy squad had just returned from their mission, disembarking into the heart of their headquarters.
At the head of the squad walked a small, frail figure, General Aria. A metahuman of nearly four centuries, once a warrior forged for endless war, now eroded by age. Her body had betrayed her long ago, but her wisdom had not, and for that, her subordinates still treated her with reverence.
Yet Aria knew her truth. She would not die upon a battlefield, blade in hand, but in some chair, quietly, swallowed by time. Such was the fate of those who outlived the wars they were born for.
As she moved down the white corridors of her headquarters, something tugged at her instincts. The air was heavier, thick with wrongness.
"...An assassin?" Her sigh carried both frustration and resignation. She paused at the door to her chamber, hand hovering above the handle.
For minutes, she stood there. To call for backup meant clinging to duty a little longer; to step forward might mean dying a warrior's death. Her dark eyes, once sharp, now dulled by age, finally steeled with a decision. She had served the Emperor for centuries. Now, she wanted only to rest.
Her frail hand grasped the knob, twisting it.
The door opened.
Her breath caught.
On the other side was not the blade she expected, nor the shadow of a killer. Instead, in the dim room where only scraps of light bled through, stood a young woman—twenty, perhaps. Hair like pale-blue flame, raven-black eyes, and skin like porcelain. She wore the uniform of the navy: a tight white shirt, long trousers, and a flowing blue cape.
Aria's heart lurched. She staggered back.
"It can't be… How?"
"Scream, and your consciousness will endure for eternity—trapped within one of my nanobots." The young woman stepped forward, voice calm but far too threatening.
Aria's throat tightened. "You… what are you?"
"Questions will not buy you survival." The woman tilted her head slightly, like a child peering at an insect. "But I am curious… why open the door, knowing someone waited to end your life?"
Something about her tone was wrong.
"..." Aria's silence betrayed her unease.
"Have you gone deaf, human?" the figure pressed, stepping out from the shadows.
And then Aria saw her clearly. Her knees weakened. It wasn't a trick of the dark. The woman before her was herself, her younger self, standing impossibly in the flesh. Yet her voice, carried none of the steel she remembered.
Aria's hands trembled, but she calmed her breathing, forcing resolve back into her chest.
"Even if you are a pure-blooded shapeshifter," she said coldly, "you have no right to wear that face."
Her body leapt backward, lips chanting.
With a metallic groan, chains of iron burst into being, snaking from the ground and walls, twisting around Illya's frame. They coiled tight, crushing down even over her head, until the figure was bound, buried beneath links of blackened steel.
CLANG!
But the sound that rang out wasn't that of iron chains striking flesh, it was iron against iron.
"…What?" Aria whispered, startled by the revelation.
That sound alone betrayed the truth, the being before her was not organic. Yet the old general's heart, stubborn as ever, refused to believe that a mere shape-shifter could twist its form into living steel.
In the next instant, the cocoon of chains shattered, fragments spraying outward like a storm of blades. Aria instinctively conjured a gleaming barrier, a slab of pure metal that shielded her from the shards. With a wave of her will, the shield surged forward just in time to intercept a descending punch from Illya, who dove from above with terrifying speed.
"How did you predict that, human? Is your meta-ability tied to foresight?" Illya asked curiously.
"Don't you know already?" Aria retorted, her voice steady. The metallic shield rippled, twisting in her hands until it became a spiraling spike. She thrust it forward, driving it clean through Illya's stomach.
The younger figure staggered back, nearly collapsing from the unexpected strike. But instead of blood spilling forth, something far more horrifying emerged.
Aria's eyes widened. The wound writhed. A swarm of metallic insects, countless, seamless, working as one, crawled within Illya's body, knitting her fleshless frame back together in perfect, synchronized movement.
"By the Emperor…" Aria gasped, quickly encasing herself in a full suit of armor as Illya's shadow loomed over her once more. She braced herself, blocking a vicious uppercut that would have caved in her chestplate.
"Does this appearance of mine… disturb you?" she asked, her body already restored to pristine condition, as if the wound had never existed.
"You... You monster! Why aren't any of my officers here yet?!" Aria shouted, her voice cracking with both fury and dread.
"I have already disabled their comm systems and put them to sleep," Illya replied calmly, her strikes raining down like hammers. Each blow landed on the same spot of Aria's chest plate, deliberate and merciless.
CLANG! BANG!
The armor groaned under the pressure until a deep dent caved in at her breastplate. The force hurled Aria back into the wall, her body rattling inside the suit like a bell. She coughed violently, blood spilling from her lips.
"Why...? Why would you come after the lowest-ranking general with such power?" Aria forced out as she staggered to her feet, blood dripping down her chin.
Illya stopped her advance, her tone still eerily composed. "I mean no offence... but it is not the strength of an individual that decides the outcome of battle—it is their wisdom. And you..." her eyes narrowed, "have long since lost yours with age. Still... it would be foolish of me to underestimate you."
"... If you were so careful..." Aria rasped, her gauntleted hand trembling as she raised it toward the wall. "You should have put the whole city to sleep."
With a roar, she smashed her fist into the wall.
CLANG!
But instead of stone or steel, she struck Illya's body. Her upper body had already fragmented into a swarm of metallic shards swirling in the air, reforming with terrifying speed.
Aria's eyes widened. She drew back her fist for another strike!
... But pain exploded in her chest. She froze, breath hitching, as she lowered her gaze. A blade, Illya's arm transformed, had pierced clean through the dent in her armor, straight into her heart.
Blood burst forth, staining her iron suit as Illya slowly pulled the blade free. Aria staggered back, clutching the wound, her own life spilling through her fingers.
"Hah..." A ragged breath escaped her lips as her eyes met Illya's, her younger self's face. For an instant, countless emotions crossed her fading gaze, rage, sorrow, hope. But above them all, regret eclipsed everything else.
Regret that she had failed.
Regret that her world would remain cursed by the monster before her.
"... Forgive me..." she whispered.
Even at the end of her life, Aria's only wish was to fulfill her duty.
With each step Illya took toward her, Aria braced for an end more brutal than the last. She clenched her eyes shut, expecting her final moments to be marked by pain, her death as violent as the battle itself.
She felt the sharp tug as her helmet was torn away, metal scraping against her skin, the sound echoing like the tearing of her fate.
…But what followed was not what she expected.
Instead of a merciless strike, a cold hand caressed her cheek.
Her breath caught. In that fleeting moment, the touch was not of a monster, but something strangely tender, almost angelic... An angel of death.
"You have fought all your life in service to the one who gave you purpose," Illya's voice whispered, solemn and reverent. "Your will is most admirable. Worry not… for you shall live in my memory. You have served well. Rest now, dear Aria."
Her killer's words carried no cruelty, no mockery... only respect.
And in those final breaths, Aria, once celebrated as a tactical genius in her youth, later forgotten, demoted, and scorned by everyone except her squad as her years waned, felt something she had not known in decades.
Happiness.
As the last ember of life left her, her body dissolved into dust, until all that remained in Illya's hand was a fragile heap of ashes, an eternal reminder of a warrior who had never abandoned her duty.