'Holy fuck, what now?'
Staring at the area where the Biolizard had once been, Lec instantly knew what it had done. The damn thing had performed chaos control! If it kept this up, he may have to stop feeling sorry for it. It wasn't helping its case with how much it was making the Ark shake; he was trying to rest here!
Well, there's not much he can do right now; his body was pretty much broken, and he had expended most of his energy performing what he thought would be the finishing blow.
"D-doctor, what's happening?" Gerald looked unsure himself, running out of the room to observe the Ark from the window, leaving Maria to stay with Lec.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Maria asked for what felt like the millionth time, and each time he responded with a simple, "Yeah." It was...nice to have someone caring about him.
It didn't take too long for the good doctor to come back, and Lec really didn't like the look on his face. 'Great, looks like I've got more shit to do.' Pushing himself up into a seated position, much to Maria's chagrin, Lec called out to the Professor, his voice strained.
"S-so, what's sitch Doc?" Confused by the strange way of speaking, Gerald raised an eyebrow only to shake his head. His grim expression returned full force. "It seems that in an attempt to protect itself, the Biolizard has attached itself to the Ark's hull...and unknowingly it has set the entire colony on a collision course for the world below."
Silence filled the room, as the only audible sound was the occasional tremor that shook through the colony. "That's possible?" Lec's strained voice responded, his expression equally as grim as the good doctors.
Gerald simply nodded, moving back toward the chaos emerald altar. "For a being with an innate connection to chaos energy, yes. Though I doubt it understands what it's done." He paused, his hands hovering over the remaining six emeralds. "It's acting on instinct. Survival. Nothing more."
Lec looked down at the floor, once again reminded of himself in the past. Someone who lived merely for the sole purpose of survival. That was a person whom he refused to go back to. Through his time here, he found out that there was more to life than just surviving.
"Surviving isn't enough..."
Maria stared at him inquisitively as he muttered that statement, to which he simply waved her off, too embarrassed to say anything. Returning his attention to the doctor, he'd ask, "Is there a way to stop it?"
Gerald turned to face him, and the look of determination in his eyes was enough to make Lec shiver. "There is one way." Gathering all six remaining emeralds carefully into his arms, the old man crossed the room and knelt beside his creation, placing them one by one around Lec until all seven glowed together, casting the room in shifting colors.
Gerald, noticing Lec was staring at him with confusion, decided that an explanation would be needed. "I had hoped it would never come to this," Gerald murmured. "But perhaps this was always where it was leading."
He looked at Lec steadily. "You are a being with the ability to perfectly manipulate chaos energy, maybe even more than I thought you capable of doing if that display from earlier held any merit."
"With just a single chaos emerald, you were capable of perfectly executing chaos control and enhancing yourself further than you could do alone. With all seven in your possession and the right words, you could transcend your current limitations entirely. What you become will be something this world has never seen."
Lec just tilted his head, staring at the seven gems pulsing around him. "The right words?"
"An ancient prayer of sorts. A declaration of intent. At your current level, you couldn't hope to achieve the transformation without it. As your base control over chaos increases, your power in this form should as well." Gerald straightened slightly, his voice taking on a different quality; it was... excitement?
"Repeat after me."
"The server is the seven chaos. Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart. The controller is the one who unifies the chaos."
He paused, meeting Lec's eyes.
"CHAOS CONTROL."
Lec stared at him for a long moment. Then, at the seven emeralds pulsing around him in shifting colors. Then at Maria, who was watching with something between terror and hope in her blue eyes.
Taking a breath, Lec thought to himself, thinking back to the words he had just said. 'Surviving isn't enough...' If this was the way to living a life that meant more than just survival, then he'd gladly do it. And with that, he steeled his resolve.
"The servers are the seven chaos." The emeralds flickered. "Chaos is power, power enriched by the heart." The light intensified, bleeding into the walls. "The controller is the one who unifies the chaos."
He felt it building. Something enormous. Something that had always been there waiting, like a tidal wave, the energy washed over him, and suddenly all of his pain disappeared, replaced by power. Raw power.
"CHAOS CONTROL!"
A golden light washed throughout the entire room, so blinding, so immense. Even to those unable to sense chaos energy, the strength of this power was unquestionable. Soon enough, the light began to settle and condense into a single floating form.
What Lec felt couldn't be described; no word in any lexicon could be used to describe how he was currently feeling. Well, perhaps one could. Godly. His hair was suddenly spiked up, flowing in a non-existent wind. That wasn't the strange thing, though; his hair was golden, like full-on golden.
Floating above them, Lec looked on as Gerald and Maria stared up at him with awe. He felt as if he could do anything, and maybe he actually could. The Doctor did say that the power of chaos was capable of miracles, after all.
Shaking his head, he focused his attention back on the two below him, before flashing them a sharp grin. "Well then, I've got a lizard to exterminate." Showing them a thumbs up, Lec closed his eyes to focus on exactly where he wanted to go and snapped his fingers. "CHAOS CONTROL!"
In a flash, Lec was gone, off to fight an overgrown lizard.
Maria could only stare at where he was floating, a sad yet determined look on her face. "Good luck, Lec..."
***
Lec was currently floating in an abyss, his arms crossed and an overly cocky smirk plastered on his face. "Space, the final frontier," He was a bit confused about how he was speaking in a vacuum, but he chalked it up to chaos bullshit or dream realm bullshit.
Continuing his speech, he'd say, "It's too bad that you've desecrated such a beautiful sight with your ugly mug, huh." A roar echoed back at him, causing his smirk to widen into a devilish grin.
At the tip point of where Lec assumed the Eclipse Cannon had been, the Biolizard's organic body could be found. Although it seemed like only half of his body remained, the rest, including its tail, had been completely abandoned during the fusion process.
Cracking his neck, Lec prepared himself for round two. 'For some reason, I'm completely confident in my ability to take it down. Why shouldn't I? I've become super...super, huh.'
Bursting out into laughter, Lec suddenly propelled himself forward through space. He was unsure when he had gotten so well versed in the ability of flight, but he definitely wasn't complaining. Meeting the Ark head-on, Lec threw a right hook at the lizard's head, causing it to be flung back. Screaming in pain, the Biolizard fired a chaos sphere at where Lec was, only for the small human to deflect the attack with ease.
"So this is the power of all seven chaos emeralds, it's a shame I won't be keeping them after this!" Rushing in once more, Lec delivered blow after blow to the creature's organic mass, each strike sending ripples of golden light across the ARK's hull.
The Biolizard thrashed, firing chaos spheres in rapid succession, but Lec wove between them like they were standing still. 'Is this what it feels like to be truly strong?'
He'd never know the answer to that, not really. The only person he had ever found strong before coming into this nightmare was Lyra. Was he truly as strong as her now?
The Biolizard let out a sound that wasn't quite a roar, something deeper, something that resonated through the hull of the ARK itself. Lec felt it in his chest. Through his emotion sensing, even now, even in super form, he could feel what the creature felt.
Despair.
Just despair. Nothing else. No rage, no malice, no desire for destruction. Just the endless, crushing despair of a creature that had never known anything but pain and darkness.
Lec's fist slowed for just a moment.
'You never asked for any of this, did you?'
It wasn't a question. He already knew the answer.
Pulling his fist back one final time, Lec poured everything remaining into it, probably more than he needed to, but he found himself wanting to give the creature a quick death. A life of pain was a horrible fate for anyone; letting it suffer any longer would be pointless.
"You tortured soul... I will end your suffering!"
BOOM!
The Biolizard went still.
[You have slain a corrupted devil, Biolizard.]
Ignoring the spell's voice, he focused all of his attention on the Ark.
Then ARK shuddered one final time and began to slow. But it wasn't over yet.
Lec stared as the Ark continued descending, albeit at a slowed pace. 'Damn it, it's already been dragged too far into whatever screwed-up orbit the dream realm has.' Lec gulped as he realized what he had to do.
Looking towards the Arks many windows, he could almost feel Maria and Gerald's eyes on him as he readied himself. "I'm sorry, you guys." Muttering, he'd suddenly throw both of his hands up, a golden aura blazing around him.
He'd once again think back, not too long ago, he had heard Maria's wish, right? 'Well, my second wish would be for everyone in the mortal realm to have self-fulfilling lives!'
If this thing crashed into the world below, her dream would never be fulfilled, in this reality at least. He just couldn't let that happen!
'What happened to not getting attached, you damn idiot?'
Straining himself, he'd prepare to perform his biggest act of chaos control yet. He needed to teleport the Ark back into its correct orbit.
The golden aura around him expanded, enveloping the entirety of the space colony and turning into a shade of green. "CHAOS CONTROL!"
And in a flash, the Ark had disappeared, appearing right back at its original location.
Lec was dead tired as he watched the space colony disappear right before his eyes, his arms dropping to his side as a wide smile spread across his face. He wished that he could do more, oh, how he wished he could do more. If he could, he'd fly down to the dream realm and give G.U.N a piece of his mind for causing all of this.
But he just couldn't; he could tell that this state of being was fading fast. Too fast. So he decided that he could do just one thing. "The old man said that the power of chaos was capable of performing miracles. I'm not too sure how the spell really works, but please keep both of them safe."
His hair soon flickered from golden to his usual Onyx black as even his flight began failing as he fell deeper and deeper towards the dream realm. The golden aura remained as the sole remnant of his super form. Soon enough, the emeralds ejected out of his body, going off to god knows where.
He could only think of a single thing as unconsciousness overtook him.
"Thank you, both of you. Thank you for showing me how to live."
[Wake up, Lec! Your nightmare is over.]
[Prepare for appraisal...]