Her shoulders were trembling.
Su Yuzu lifted her gaze toward the familiar yet utterly alien Aberrant girl.
The restraining device around the frail girl's neck had completed its injection.
And now —
The one standing before her was no longer that little cat who would go Nya— Nya— so adorably in her presence. No longer Zero.
What stood before her was a slaughter machine, fashioned ten years ago using Su Yuzu's own Factors as its blueprint — "Forest," of [Wind · Fire · Mountain · Forest].
"Since you have come to rule."
"Why not ascend the Throne."
The voice Su Yuzu knew so well echoed through the underground space, resonant as a tolling bell, thunderous and deafening.
Those dark golden vertical pupils blazed open like lanterns lit in the dark, cold and mechanical as they swept over everything in the underground chamber. Beneath those vertical pupils — something like a blade was quietly condensing.
Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud.
More oppressive than even that bell-like voice was the girl's heartbeat.
The heartbeat that had already shaken the earth like a tremor before — now that her eyes were open, it rang out all the more clearly. All the more unmistakably.
Countless specks of black-violet radiance slowly gathered together, flowing through the pipes along the outer walls of the incubation pod and pouring inside.
The glowing green liquid that filled the cylindrical pod was gradually, steadily dyed black-violet.
Su Yuzu crushed the lethal switch in her hand.
Her eyes turned cold in a way they had never been before.
The killing intent erupting from the girl swept silently across the entire underground space.
Along the edges of the dark crimson erosion domain — as if cinders of black-grey ash were catching fire, one flicker at a time. Spreading. As though determined to paint the entire erosion domain into a world of black and white.
It had to be said —
The Eye of Insight had succeeded.
An unprecedented success.
They had failed to strike at the girls by Su Yuzu's side — but they had succeeded in creating "Zero." Placing her beside Su Yuzu. And then, right before Su Yuzu's eyes, intending to destroy her.
Perhaps... this was the true nature of the plan called "Fate" that Zero had been carrying all along.
The history of the world would pivot at this very moment.
An enraged girl would bare her savage fangs before the world, ascending the Throne of Evil Karma under every watching eye.
The Seat of Karma, unfolded in Tsukimisato.
It would be the greatest catastrophe in human history, save only for the first Seventh Sequence Catastrophe Beast's assault.
Tokyo — annihilated.
Even Kujou Iruka at her height could not compare to what this would be.
If everything proceeded along the path of fate that the Eye of Insight had foreseen.
However —
A pair of soft arms reached around from behind and embraced Su Yuzu.
Soga Yura rested her chin gently against Su Yuzu's neck.
A terrifying mental storm erupted in an instant.
Sakura Mai, who had collapsed on the ground and had only just barely begun to recover, was hit by friendly fire for the third time.
"Yuzu —"
Soga Yura's voice, soft and unhurried, stilled the unceasing trembling in Su Yuzu's shoulders.
The girl's voice was so calm.
And yet — if anyone down in that underground space had been able to see Soga Yura's eyes just then, they would have found the fury blazing in them. Fury like a lioness roused to wrath.
"Don't let them steal your reason away from you."
Soga Yura murmured softly at Su Yuzu's ear. "They're nothing but vermin — rats hiding in the sewers."
"Getting involved with them would only dirty Yuzu's hands."
[Dominator's Aegis (44.9%)]→[Dominator's Aegis (41.9%)].
Soga Yura calmly surveyed the underground space.
Was someone watching this place? Was someone broadcasting everything happening here to the world?
Soga Yura was not unaware of it... Someone had already planned it online — planned a grand, spectacular livestream.
What were they being so arrogant about?
What were they being so brazen about?
Did they believe they had everything in their grasp? Did they believe they controlled fate — was that it?
Soga Yura cast her mind back... to the information she had drawn from the mental worlds of the Eye of Insight cultists she had hunted down.
Those fools probably never imagined it... that there could exist a mental-type Esper mad enough to dare plunge into the mental realms of people already corrupted by the Abyss and Catastrophe.
Soga Yura dared.
For Yuzu — she dared anything. She was willing to do anything.
She had already walked alone through the deepest, darkest depths of the Abyss. She had long since shed the capacity for fear.
The Eye of Insight — peering into fate?
Laughable.
Never mind what those fanatics called fate and truth. And what of it, even if it were the prophecy left by that witch of the Holy Royal Court, who had clawed her way up from starvation and ruin? Even if it were genuine fate?
For Yuzu — she would tear every last scrap of it apart, right before their eyes.
Soga Yura tightened her embrace around Su Yuzu.
Her own body trembling, she clung to the reality of the soft girl in her arms, inch by inch — as if desperate to hold Yuzu locked against herself forever.
In the howling mental storm, Soga Yura pressed close as though pouring back, all at once, every year of longing, every year of being torn apart inside — all of it, returned in full.
Straining with everything she had to wrap Yuzu in her arms and never let go.
[Dominator's Aegis (41.9%)]→[Dominator's Aegis (35.9%)].
Along the edges of the dark crimson erosion domain... those black-grey cinders that had just begun to smolder — they suddenly guttered out, one by one.
And then —
Just when everyone would have assumed the crisis was over.
BOOM!!!
The black-grey ash ignited in an instant, spreading like wildfire in the span of a single heartbeat, swallowing the entire erosion domain in a conflagration.
The dark crimson erosion domain was consumed entirely — reduced in an instant to a world of black, white, and ash.
The only thing that shone — was within the incubation pod. The Aberrant girl's dark golden vertical pupils.
She was the sovereign of this black domain.
CRACK!!!
The glass of the incubation pod shattered in an instant.
The heavy restraining locks across the frail girl's body were torn apart one by one, snapped, broken free.
As though thorns were growing savagely up through the earth itself.
Black thorns pierced through the soil. Heaved up the rock. Spread and piled behind the frail girl, until at last they converged into an enormous, pitch-black Throne.
The moment they laid eyes on that Throne — both Su Yuzu and Soga Yura went still.
Because... they had seen it before. Both of them had.
The frail girl — stripped of everything save for the scraps of cloth left behind by the restraining devices that barely covered the vital parts of her body, utterly bare — descended slowly onto the pitch-black Throne.
A terrible, crushing pressure fell upon the entire underground space in an instant.
In that moment — the moon fell, flowers broke, stars scattered, and rain came apart.
The black domain stripped away nearly every trace of color within its reach.
Su Yuzu suddenly understood the whole of the "Mountain" plan, and what exactly had been done to Zero.
Zero was an Aberrant crafted from Su Yuzu's own Factors.
Her very existence.
Was meant to simulate Su Yuzu ascending the Throne.
Or rather — to reconstruct the Su Yuzu who had once awakened.
They had never hoped —
That Su Yuzu's rage alone could drive her to ascend the Throne. They needed to place even greater pressure upon her.
And that pressure — Su Yuzu and Soga Yura looked at the girl seated upon the false Throne amid the black thorns.
The Throne beneath her was not real.
Only a counterfeit.
And yet even as a counterfeit, its terrible majesty demanded the submission of the world.
The only thing that could overpower a counterfeit... was a true and sovereign king.
They were forcing Su Yuzu to ascend the Seat of Karma.
Su Yuzu and Zero regarded each other.
Behind Zero's cold, mechanical dark golden vertical pupils — it was as though the dead were laughing wildly.
"Su Yuzu —"
"What are you going to do now?"
At this very moment, every network across the entire world could see what was unfolding in the underground depths of Tsukimisato.
They didn't know what cards Su Yuzu was holding.
But through their screens — with just a single sweep of that dark golden vertical gaze from the frail girl seated upon the Throne — they could all feel it. Despair.
Su Yuzu held her breath...
[Dominator's Aegis (35.9%)]→[Dominator's Aegis (32.1%)]
Because the two of them were still holding each other, the mental storm continued to rage, and the Dominator's Aegis kept falling.
But something like that — in a moment of life and death like this — seemed not to matter anymore.
Su Yuzu seemed to have no choice but to decide.
Ascend the Throne, and make an enemy of the world.
Or — face the false king as she was, a human being, with nine deaths waiting for every one chance at survival.
And then —
She suddenly felt the girl behind her gently stroking her face.
"I already said..."
"They're nothing but vermin — rats hiding in the sewers."
"Getting involved with them would only dirty Yuzu's hands."
Soga Yura took a slow, deep breath, and looked at the girl seated upon the false Throne.
"Sister, you know..."
"Sometimes."
"I want to be able to protect Yuzu too..."
"I want to..."
"I want Yuzu to look up at Sister for once."
"Could Yuzu help Sister take off this ring?" Soga Yura gave a playful little smile, and held up her hand to show Su Yuzu the ring on her finger.
That ring — Su Yuzu had in her own hand a nearly identical one.
Only, the ring in Su Yuzu's hand was wound with thorned briars.
While the ring on Soga Yura's hand was wound with flowering branches.
[Holy Relic - Evil. Taboo of the Fate Twins].
[Holy Relic - Live. Guardian of the Fate Twins].
____
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