The deck plating vibrated under Shinji's boots, slick with his own blood. Crimson rivulets traced paths down his arms, pooled around his feet, each drop a hammer blow against the silence that followed Torento's chilling declaration. The Hypnorest Monarch stood pristine, untouched, his manic grin wide and confident, a stark, impossible contrast to Shinji's sudden, brutal injuries.
"Pathetic," Torento sneered, his voice echoing with cruel amusement. "The legendary Trascender? Reduced to this bleeding, broken weakling? Where's your vaunted power now, Shinji-boy?"
Shinji pushed himself upright, agony flaring through his ribs, his vision swimming. He focused, reaching inward for the familiar surge of Act 1: Instant Regeneration. The golden-green energy flickered... and sputtered. The gashes remained, the blood flow unabated. Panic, cold and sharp, pricked at his resolve.
"Regen?" Torento chuckled, a dry, grating sound. "Useless. My Hypnosis isn't just in your mind, Trascender. It binds every part of your being; flesh, bone, energy, spirit. Every single cell believes the lie I weave. Your precious regeneration? It believes it never existed. So bleed." His grin widened. "Bleed out on your own deck."
Shinji gasped. A sudden, terrifying void opened in his chest. His heart... stopped. Not figuratively. Literally. The vital thudding ceased. His lungs seized. The world greyed at the edges. Confusion, profound and absolute, washed over him. *How? How does hypnosis stop a heart?*
Instinct screamed. Denial roared. Shinji lunged, a surge of Voidheart-powered speed propelling him forward despite the agony, fist aimed at Torento's smirking face. "Shut up!"
Torento dissolved. Not vanished; dissolved into swirling, insubstantial grey mist that flowed around Shinji's desperate punch. From the mist, ten identical Torentos coalesced, forming a perfect circle around him, all wearing the same mocking grin.
"Fight the inevitable?" ten voices chorused, a dissonant symphony of mockery.
Then, Shinji's own body betrayed him. His limbs wrenched, his torso twisted with sickening, impossible contortions. He felt no physical force, only the terrifying, invasive will of the hypnosis rewriting his reality. His body wasn't broken; it was reconfigured. His form stretched, distorted, pulling apart into five distinct, hovering rings of flesh, bone, and shimmering spiritual energy, orbiting the space where his core should be. He was fragmented, disassembled, a grotesque orrery of his own being. Agony, beyond physical, tore through his fragmented consciousness; the agony of existential violation.
He hung there, suspended in five pieces, awareness fractured. Confusion reigned. *Is this death? Is this... me?*
Then, from the depths of the disorientation and the searing pain... laughter bubbled up. Low at first, a choked gasp, then rising, raw, and tinged with hysteria. It echoed weirdly from his five separated rings.
Torento's clones blinked, the grins faltering. "Oh? Is this funny?" one spat, stepping closer to a hovering ring that contained Shinji's head and torso. "Finding humor in dying the most humiliating way possible? The great Trascender finally cracked?"
The laughter solidified, losing its hysterical edge, gaining a core of cold, razor-sharp realization. "Funny?" Shinji's voice emanated from the central ring, clear and focused despite the impossible form. "It's hilarious. You... you're easily the weakest link. Your ability? A child's fantasy! A trick!"
He closed his eyes within the ring, shutting out the impossible sight of his own fragmented body. He focused inward, past the imposed reality, past the hypnotic static screaming in his cells. He found the anchor Yamato had drilled into him: the Trascender Core, the wellspring of his being, untouched by lies. He found the Voidheart, burning with the accumulated trauma and defiance of countless deaths. And he found his own unyielding will.
"Act 3: SPIRITUAL ANNIHILATION!"
Not outward. Inward.
He didn't unleash the energy; he detonated it within the confines of his own fractured form. A supernova of pure, unadulterated golden-green spiritual energy erupted from the five rings simultaneously. Not to destroy, but to cleanse. To overwhelm. It was raw, unrefined cosmic fury, the sheer, blinding force of creation refusing to be bound by delusion.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
The psychic blast wave tore through the hypnosis like tissue paper. The swirling mist vanished. The ten Torentos flickered and dissolved like smoke. The agonizing pull on Shinji's form ceased. The five rings snapped back together with a sickening, wet crunch, reforming Shinji whole, kneeling on the deck, gasping. His wounds were still there, bleeding, his heart pounding erratically back to life, but he was whole. The imposed reality shattered.
Torento stumbled back, materializing ten meters away, his face pale, his eyes wide with genuine terror. He clutched his head, blood trickling from his nose. "N-No... How?!"
Shinji pushed himself up, swaying but standing. Blood dripped from his chin, but his eyes burned with fierce, clear light. "Dumb move, Torento. Dividing me? If you'd just kept me whole, bleeding and confused, it might have taken me longer. But this?" He gestured at his reformed body. "It exposed the flaw. Your Hypnosis isn't reality warping. It's a fake world, layered over the real one, where you dictate outcomes. You feed it through that energy signature you emit; took me a second to isolate it after the rings. But if someone understands the concept, sees the strings..." He raised a glowing fist. "...you can burn through the illusion with raw power. You just need enough of it."
Torento's face contorted in rage and humiliation. "SHUT UP!" He raised his hands, dark energy swirling, the telltale pulse of his hypnosis building again. "AGAIN! I'LL SHATTER YOU FOR REAL THIS—"
Shinji moved faster. A bolt of Act 3 energy, not an annihilating wave but a precise, concussive lance, slammed into Torento's chest before the hypnosis could fully manifest. THOOM! Torento was hurled backwards, crashing into the dented bulkhead.
"You don't get it!" Shinji yelled, already closing the distance. "That five-second charge-up? That's your window! You want to hypnotize? You need focus, time, energy emission! But you'll get no time!" Another blast, point-blank. CRACK! Ribs snapped audibly. "No focus!" A Voidheart-enhanced kick to the gut. WHUMP! Torento doubled over, retching blood. "NO HYPNOSIS!"
Shinji was relentless. Blast after blast, kick after kick, a storm of golden-green fury. He wasn't just fighting; he was preventing, disrupting the Monarch's rhythm, denying him the seconds needed to weave his insidious reality. Torento became a ragdoll under the assault, armor cracking, blood spraying, his manic energy replaced by desperate, pained gasps. He tried to block, tried to phase into mist, but Shinji's Danger Sense and speed anticipated him, the concussive force disrupting his attempts.
Finally, Torento broke. Fear, raw and primal, flashed in his hazel eyes. He turned, scrambling towards the gaping breach in the hull, seeking the void. Escape.
"Not happening!" Shinji snarled. He blurred, intercepting Torento, his hand clamping down like a vice on the Monarch's forearm. "You don't get to run."
Torento writhed, panic surging. "LET GO!" In desperation, he poured his remaining will into one final, frantic pulse of hypnosis, aiming it point-blank at Shinji's face.
Shinji saw it coming. He didn't flinch. Instead, as the hypnotic wave washed over him, he channeled the energy he'd been subtly gathering through his grip. Act 3: Spiritual Manipulation: Internal Detonation. A focused surge of Voidheart-infused spiritual energy, not destructive, but invasive, poured into Torento's arm, flooding his meridians, seeking his core.
Torento's eyes widened in horror, not from the hypnosis, but from the foreign, volatile power erupting inside him. "Wha—?!"
KABOOM!
The explosion wasn't external. It bloomed within Torento. A muffled, sickening detonation of light erupted from his chest, mouth, and eyes. He convulsed violently, a strangled scream tearing from him before it was cut off. Smoke poured from his orifices. His eyes rolled back. The hypnosis clinging to Shinji shattered like cheap glass as Torento's consciousness imploded. He slumped, a broken, smoldering husk, in Shinji's grip.
Shinji released him, letting the Monarch crumple bonelessly to the deck. He stood over him, breathing heavily, his own wounds protesting. "As weak as you are," Shinji stated, his voice cold but devoid of mockery, "you fought well. Your illusion was... impressive. Until it wasn't."
Torento managed a weak, bloody gurgle. "Sh-shut... up..."
A groan cut through the momentary quiet. Shinji whirled. Merus lay slumped against a shattered console, blood staining his pearlescent suit, his luminous eyes dim, struggling to focus. "Shi...n-ji..." he rasped, each word a struggle. "S-sorry... I... dropped... my guard... d-down..." Shame and profound exhaustion radiated from the fallen god.
Before Shinji could respond, a voice colder than the void, dripping with contemptuous power, echoed through the ruined bridge.
"Puny. Mortal."
Shinji turned, pure terror icing his veins.
Alpha Monster Nirvana stood amidst the wreckage near the main breach, the terrifying pink radiance of her form casting grotesque shadows. She hadn't been idle. Her burning pink eyes fixed on Shinji, radiating pure malice.
She didn't gesture. She didn't wind up. She simply flicked a clawed finger.
ZORRRK-KRAKOOM!
A beam of condensed pink annihilation, thicker than Shinji was tall, screamed across the space. It didn't hit him; it folded the space he occupied. Shinji had a microsecond to throw up an Act 3 barrier. It vaporized on contact. The beam struck him full-on, lifting him off his feet and blasting him through the breached hull like a cannonball.
He tumbled through the void, pain beyond comprehension shredding his senses. He slammed through the atmosphere of a barren moon; CRUNCH! cratered the surface of a gas giant's rocky core; BOOM! punched through a frozen asteroid field; SHATTER! and finally skidded to a halt, embedded in the molten crust of a volcanic planet, seven celestial bodies later. HISS!
Agony was his entire universe. He pushed himself up from the glowing rock, blood mixing with magma. His regeneration was finally working, knitting shattered bone and vaporized flesh, but slowly, laboriously. He looked up, dreading what he'd see.
Alpha Monster Nirvana hovered in the void above the volcanic planet, immense, terrifying, radiating power that bent the light around her. "Weaklings!" her multi-voiced shriek echoed across the system. "Absolute garbage!"
"Dammit," Shinji spat, magma dripping from his hair. "What... what happened to the others? Kuro? Miryoku?"
Nirvana's burning gaze swept downwards, a cruel parody of consideration. "Oh? The little science rat and the broken lightbulb?" She gestured contemptuously towards the distant Stardust Weaver, now a speck. "See for yourself. I've done them in right before the Creation God."
Shinji's Danger Sense screamed a warning a fraction before a surge of energy. Kuro materialized nearby, hurled through space like discarded trash. He slammed into the volcanic rock beside Shinji, bouncing once before lying still. He was barely recognizable. His lab coat was shredded, his tech-gauntlet sparking and broken. Dark blood, almost black, flowed freely from multiple deep wounds, pooling beneath him. His breathing was shallow, ragged, his eyes closed. He was moments from the brink.
Before Shinji could react, another blur. Miryoku. She crashed down a few meters away, impacting with bone-jarring force. Her light was utterly extinguished. Her clothes were charred and torn, her vibrant white hair matted with blood and ash. A deep, ugly gash ran across her torso, luminous blood seeping sluggishly. She didn't move.
"They are paying a visit to the other side very soon," Nirvana declared, her voice thick with sadistic satisfaction. "Say goodbye."
Rage. Cold, incandescent, universe-shattering rage exploded within Shinji, burning away the pain, the fatigue, the fear. It wasn't just vengeance for his family anymore. It was for Yamato, for Tamago, for the relentless pursuit, for the broken god bleeding on his ship, for the brilliant scientist dying at his feet, for the kind-hearted light weaver shattered beside him. It was for everything Saganbo and his monsters had taken.
"ACT 3: SPIRITUAL BOMB!"
He didn't aim. He unleashed. A sphere of compressed golden-green annihilation, radiating Voidheart fury, erupted from his hands. It screamed through the void, not at Nirvana, but past her, forcing her to twist aside with surprising agility for her size. The bomb detonated harmlessly in the distance, but the shockwave and blinding light served their purpose; distraction and space.
Shinji was already moving. Voidheart Surge screamed through his veins, amplifying his speed beyond anything he'd shown Torento. He blurred, a streak of vengeful light, closing the gap towards the monstrous Monarch. *She's strong. Tanky. Faster than she looks. But I'm faster. If I can stay mobile, hammer her with waves, wear her down...*
"WAVE MOTION!" Shinji roared. He didn't stop moving. As he zig-zagged through the void, he unleashed blast after blast of Act 3 spiritual energy. Not massive bombs, but rapid-fire, focused beams and concussive pulses, hammering Nirvana from multiple angles. FZZZT! BOOM! CRACK! Each strike impacted her pink, crystalline hide, cracking the surface, sending shards flying, drawing hisses of pain and rage. He was a wasp, stinging a dragon, but each sting left a mark.
Nirvana roared, a sound that shook the planets. "ENOUGH GNAT!" She retaliated, not with beams, but with sweeping claws and bursts of pink energy shockwaves designed to catch the elusive pest. Shinji danced through the onslaught, Danger Sense painting trajectories milliseconds before they hit. He weaved, ducked, rolled in mid-void, the volcanic planet's gravity well his temporary stage.
*Tchk!* Nirvana's furious thought echoed psychically. *He dodges everything! Too fast! My hits won't land cleanly! And even if they do... his regeneration! He's like a cockroach! Undefeatable like this!*
Her burning pink eyes, filled with cunning malice, snapped away from Shinji. They locked onto the prone, broken form of Miryoku, lying vulnerable on the volcanic rock.
"NO!" Shinji screamed, realizing her intent a fraction too late. He abandoned his attack, lunging towards Miryoku.
A blast of weak, but unexpected, kinetic energy slammed into Shinji's back. THUD! He stumbled, knocked off course. Torento, somehow conscious, barely standing on the ridge above Miryoku, grinned through bloody teeth, smoke still rising from his chest. "N-not... d-done... yet... boss..." he wheezed, raising a trembling, sparking hand.
Shinji's response was instant and brutal. A backhanded wave of pure spiritual force. CRUNCH! It caught Torento full in the chest, hurling him over the ridge and into the molten lava below with a final, short scream. HISS-SCREAM!
But the delay was fatal. Nirvana was already there. A massive, clawed hand closed around Miryoku's limp form, lifting her off the ground like a broken doll. The other hand, one claw extended like a razor-sharp stiletto, pressed against Miryoku's pale throat. A thin trickle of luminous blood welled instantly where the point touched skin.
"STOP!" Nirvana commanded, her voice a guttural roar that brooked no argument. "One more twitch, Trascender, and I pierce her sorry neck. She fades in seconds." She tightened her grip on Miryoku. "You come with us. Now. No tricks. No resistance. Or her stupid light dies before your eyes."
Shinji froze mid-lunge, skidding to a halt on the volcanic rock. Sweat mixed with blood and ash on his brow. His mind raced, options vanishing. He saw Kuro, bleeding out nearby. He saw the claw at Miryoku's throat. "Do you think," he forced out, his voice tight, trying to project defiance, "I'll sacrifice the whole damn multiverse for a girl I just met? She's not my—"
"LIE!" Nirvana shrieked. The claw pressed deeper. SSSKKKRT! A deeper cut opened on Miryoku's neck. More luminous blood flowed. Miryoku moaned weakly, unconsciously, in agony. "I SEE YOUR COLOR, LIAR! YOU CARE! NOW CHOOSE!"
The sight of Miryoku's blood, the sound of her pain, shattered Shinji's facade. Terror, raw and absolute, for her, flooded him. "ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!" he yelled, hands raised in surrender, voice cracking. "Stop it! Just STOP!"
Nirvana eased the pressure slightly, but the claw remained poised. "Good boy," she rumbled, the sound dripping with vile satisfaction. "Now, behave. Stop being a smartass. Surrender."
Torento clawed his way out of the lava flow nearby, a smoldering, horrifying ruin, somehow still clinging to life and consciousness. "Y-yeah..." he gurgled, magma dripping from his form, "...y-you'll... p-pay..."
Shinji's eyes, wide with fear for Miryoku, flickered with a sudden, desperate spark. *The energy! The bit I put in Nirvana during the chaos!* When he'd blasted her earlier to save Miryoku, he'd implanted a microscopic seed of Voidheart energy, hoping for a later advantage. It was faint, almost dissipated, but there.
He focused. Not to detonate it powerfully, but to disrupt. To create a shockwave inside her, right where she held Miryoku.
FUMP!
A localized, internal concussive burst, like a miniaturized version of what felled Torento, erupted within Nirvana's forearm. It wasn't powerful, but it was unexpected, inside her defenses. She roared in surprise and pain, her grip involuntarily loosening. The claw jerked away from Miryoku's throat. Nirvana stumbled half a step.
"MERUS! NOW!" Shinji screamed with every ounce of his being, not through the air, but through the psychic link forged by shared peril.
A streak of cerulean light, weak and flickering but impossibly fast, shot from the direction of the Stardust Weaver. Merus, battered, bleeding heavily from a gash on his temple, his divine aura dimmed, moved with the last vestiges of his godly speed. He blurred past the stunned Nirvana, snatching Miryoku from her momentarily slackened grasp.
Nirvana recovered instantly, rage exploding anew. "NO!" She lunged, a clawed fist aimed to pulp Merus and Miryoku together.
Merus, holding Miryoku protectively, twisted in mid-air. A desperate, perfectly timed kick, fueled by Creation energy, lashed out. THUD! It connected with Nirvana's jaw, snapping her head back slightly. Not damaging her, but buying the crucial micro-second. He didn't stop. He dove towards the unconscious Kuro, scooping him up with his free arm in a single, fluid motion fueled by desperation.
"Go!" Shinji yelled, already turning, placing himself squarely between Merus and the enraged Monarch. "Get them safe! I'll hold them!"
Merus hovered for a split second, his ancient eyes meeting Shinji's. They held a universe of pain, exhaustion, and profound shame. He, a God of Creation, reduced to fleeing, leaving his charge to face two Monarchs alone. "I... I am sorry, Shinji," he whispered, the words heavy with failure. "For... for not being... more..." Before Shinji could respond, Merus shot away, a fading blue streak carrying the broken forms of Kuro and Miryoku towards the distant stars, leaving Shinji alone on the volcanic hellscape.
The shame in Merus's eyes ignited a new fire in Shinji. He wasn't just fighting for survival now. He was fighting for redemption; his own, and Merus's.
Torento, a smoldering ghoul of his former self, hauled himself onto a rock shelf behind Shinji. With a guttural snarl, he began gathering the dregs of his power, a weak, sputtering dark aura flickering around him.
Before Shinji, Alpha Monster Nirvana rose to her full, terrifying height, pink energy crackling like a malevolent storm. She raised her clawed hands, gathering an immense sphere of annihilating pink force.
Shinji planted his feet on the molten rock. He drew a deep, burning breath of sulfurous air. He reached deep, past the pain, past the fatigue, past the fear. He touched the Voidheart, the Trascender Core, the accumulated power of countless deaths and rebirths. He summoned every ounce of spiritual energy he possessed, drawing it not just from within, but from the tortured planet beneath him, from the void around him, from the sheer, desperate will to protect.
Golden-green light, brighter than a star, erupted from Shinji Kazuhiko. It wasn't just an aura; it was a declaration. A challenge. A supernova of defiance.
Behind him, Torento unleashed his pathetic, dark pulse.
Before him, Nirvana fired her cataclysmic pink annihilation.
Shinji thrust his hands forward, palms out, and unleashed his own torrential wave of pure, unadulterated spiritual power. "RAAAAAAAAAGH!"
KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Three titanic forces collided not on the volcanic plain, but in the space between. Shinji's golden-green tsunami met Nirvana's pink apocalypse and Torento's dark sputter. The impact wasn't sound; it was the universe itself screaming. Space tore. Light bent into impossible fractals. Time stuttered. Shockwaves, visible as rippling distortions of reality, exploded outwards in every direction.
BOOM! The volcanic planet beneath them shattered, not exploding, but fragmenting into a billion molten pieces.
BOOM! A nearby gas giant imploded, its atmosphere sucked into the maelstrom.
BOOM! Stars in nearby systems flickered violently and started exploding.
The entire sector of Universe 6 convulsed under the weight of the clashing energies. Shinji stood at the epicenter, a lone figure of golden light, teeth gritted, muscles screaming, blood streaming from reopened wounds, holding back the tide of oblivion with nothing but his indomitable will and the power of Transcendence burning within him. The clash wasn't over. It was the climax. And the fate of his friends, his mentor, and perhaps the multiverse itself, hung in the violent, unstable balance.