Legacy

Sumire initiated the battle as the laser-eyed machines fired cerulean bullets towards Sumire's standing position. She activated her ignition booster and began charging at the machines to slice through them. Lucine launched her scarlet arm cannon towards Sumire, but her speed was completely outmatched by her determination to win the battle.

Sumire sped through the laser-eyed machines, but there simply was too much if she focused on defeating them. As she kicked one back away, Sumire propelled and ricocheted her body off of it to clash with Lucine's gunblade. The two soared through the chamber, chasing one another while striking each other with their blades.

"Aries shall perish!" Lucine cried, delivering a powerful and instantaneous slash with her scarlet-infused gunblade. Sumire was struck by the blade and sensed the tingling poisonous flames entering her skin after remembering what her blade's composition was. After struggling to combat the pain, Lucine rotated like a vortex and slammed Sumire down below to the metallic ground.

Yet that didn't stop the hunt. Lucine dove down with her blade attempting to plunge through Sumire's chest. Using quick thinking, Sumire inhaled a deep breath and rolled over to recover as Lucine collided with the ground. A virulent red flaming shockwave plagued through the area as she created inferno tendrils to seize and snare Sumire's legs. Luckily, Sumire dove back in time to escape the trap. However, one of the laser-eyed robots fired its beam at her back, sending her towards the colossal doors in pain.

"Your beliefs mean nothing," Lucine stated as she trapped Sumire against the wall with her blade hovering towards her neck. "You're weak, Sumire! Too weak! No wonder you couldn't stop your father! You're useless!"

"I don't care!" Sumire's voice trailed off as she headbutted Lucine's armored helmet and kicked her back, actively rejecting her fatherly comment. Sumire flipped backward and launched herself off of the door to strike Lucine through her armored plating with Vayah's claymore.

"Rrragh!" Lucine yelled as she repelled Sumire off of her chest. She ordered her laser-eyed machines to unleash their round on her to take the time to recover from her slight injury with a sharp hand gesture. Her self-healing nanosuit began to inject agents into her body to calm down her nerves.

After Sumire dealt with her machines, Lucine embraced a divine fighting stance once more that symbolized her charm on Vicious; the stance resembled a skilled fencer that prioritized defense to offense, letting the blade sway back in forth like waves in an ocean. "Impressive move, Sumire! But can you handle this?!"

As Sumire rushed towards Lucine, her divine fighting style's rampart began to show itself by blocking all of Sumire's swings. Her claymore's collision with Lucine's scarlet gunblade created sparks of raw energy that created miniature shockwaves every time they struck. Lucine danced across Sumire on the battlefield with her elegant blows, jabbing her in the chest before slicing twice with the flick of her wrist.

Sumire kneeled down as Lucine anticipated her next move to fight back. However, Sumire dodged entirely after realizing one of Lucine's laser-eyed machines pointed directly at Lucine hoping to pierce through her to strike Sumire. With a swift dodge, the laser-eyed machine miscalculated its timing and fired its beams towards Lucine's back to unexpectedly stun her.

"How dare you...!" Lucine grunted as she lost her balance. "How dare you use my creations against me? Haven't you done that enough already, you swine!?"

Sumire disregarded her taunts and forced her to deactivate her laser-eyed machines. Before doing so, Sumire expended her energy to increase her movement speed. She penetrated the back of Lucine's armor with a swift slash and kicked herself back to recover. It's working, Sumire thought.

"Surely you can do better than this!" Lucine cried, regaining her elegant fighting style. She rampaged towards Sumire opening with an elbow jab to knock her off balance. Yet Sumire was one step ahead after studying her movement with ease using her neural interface. In a matter of seconds, Sumire and Lucine were back on the same level of fighting prowess as Sumire worked against her movements with ease.

The two of them rapidly clashed blades with one another until Sumire lashed her blade outwards to perform a powerful guard-breaking attack. With a swift kick, Sumire launched Lucine backward and warped behind her using her ignition booster's power. Sumire launched another kick and closed with another slash of her blade against Lucine's pale white helmet to shatter a fragment off of its beauty.

Sumire touched down as Lucine covered her head in agony. She yelled in bitter hatred against the thought of Lucine's unfathomable corrupted mind and charged at her with more rapidly placed slashes against her armor. Lucine could not successfully block them after Sumire's lethal blow rattled her brain back and forth. She was losing control of her neural interface the more Sumire continued striking her.

"That's enough!" Lucine shouted, infusing her entire body in scarlet energy from her magical fuser.

The aura began empowering her movements with a scorching scarlet flame to make all of her attacks poisonous and lethal. Her presence detonated in a virulent shockwave as Sumire brushed herself back to defend herself from overbearing pain. She reared her scarlet gunblade backward and launched multiple blade beams composed of raw energy towards Sumire. Her attacks, however, missed as Sumire recovered extremely quickly and counterattacked with a piercing stab of her own towards Lucine's chest.

Both of them kneeled down as the overbearing power was too much for them to handle at once. Sumire was not losing her focus with the Glacial Crystal remaining in her chest giving her stamina and strength. She hadn't used it to her advantage yet for battle, for its power was too mighty for her to handle all at once.

"Need some help?" Corlean's voice surprised Sumire after appearing behind her. Armed with her rapier and powered up with the nanomachines, she was ready. "Seems like you're in a rough state."

"Yeah, I guess you could say that," Sumire chuckled, standing up with Corlean as they examined Lucine's exhuding virulent aura. "She's tough."

"I know," Corlean said, extending her rapier. "She trained me."

Lucine glared horrendously at Corlean from a distance. Flames erupted beneath her feet. "You... Corlean... traitor...!" She yelled.

"Don't be stupid, Lucine," Corlean retorted. "We both know that's not true. Just shut up and admit it already."

"Never!" Lucine cried. She caused her aura to rupture in explosions of scarlet energy once more. She fired her cerulean cannon at Sumire and Corlean, but they were too quick; the two of them separated speedily and assaulted Lucine, slashing the cannon directly off of her wrist and rendered it useless. With each strike Sumire and Corlean used against Lucine, the scarlet poison seeped into their skin to make her attacks much weaker than usual. However, Sumire's hatred for Lucine's jaded mindset was much too great. Using her Glacial Crystal, she imbued her claymore and gauntlet with frost to brush back Lucine's virulent flames, making it useless against her efforts.

"Impossible...!" Lucine cried, unaware of the Glacial Crystal's power. Corlean sliced off a part of her thick nanosuited armor, while Sumire used her gauntlet to ram it against her cheek to send her flying back.

Lucine's virulent aura ceased and vanished. The scarlet poison on her infused gunblade shattered her weapon apart and melted it after further exposure. The poison began harming her nanosuit instead, forcing her to remove her helmet visor to breathe normally. Abnormally large amounts of sweat dripped from her forehead in pure stress after losing the battle against someone who didn't understand her point of view among the people of the world. She hacked and coughed her through to fight the poison in torment as she kneeled to the ground in disappointment from her lacking abilities.

"Damn it all!" Lucine cried as she slammed the ground. "How?! How do you both still stand? I gave up everything to stop you! Everything!" She glanced up from her kneeling position to see Corlean by Sumire's side, which made her long for Zack's arrival to support her. "Zack? Where's my Zack! Come to me! Please!"

"Zack...?" Sumire recalled hearing his name from Senna back when the fifth batallion was being formed. He was the individual who had brought Sumire her nanosuit and set her up for success.

"He's not coming," Charlotte interrupted, entering the fray. "His mind doesn't resonate with yours. You've taken too much from his life to let him accept you anymore. Right now, he has inner demons of his own. You took away his opportunity to let him live it out for himself, and now you expect him to race towards you?"

"Captain Charlotte!" Corlean cried. "You're here!"

"N-No!" Lucine whined like an infant after realizing she had no one by her side any longer. Sumire turned her head to face Corlean and Charlotte and realized that Lucine lacked both brotherly and sisterly figures to provide her comfort after losing something dear to her; pride. Charlotte's appearance was the nail of the coffin, seeing both her and Corlean supporting Sumire, the outsider. "Charlotte, you traitor! Corlean... all of you siding with that monster Sumire! Zack, please! I'm sorry! Come back to me!" She continued crying.

"Free yourself from your past, Lucine!" Sumire stepped in to substitute for her brother. "What do you think the Fon wants!? What do you think he wanted? The ones who listened to you sing, praised you, loved you?! Do you think after having their homes taken away, they'd want more bloodshed? Just think! If you fight back, it'll be never-ending! You won't be able to live with this. Not like this! Charlotte told me to save you because she couldn't handle seeing you in pain. Even Corlean doesn't want to be with you! Ziko! Senna, Bame... Vayah! They all hoped you to change!"

Lucine's voice began trailing off into a ghostly tone as she held her voice longer than usual. "Liar! No! No, no, no!" She screeched in terror as her eyes fell to insanity. "What… What do you know about my people!? What would you know?!"

"You told me!" Sumire stated after remembering the origin story of Planet Vicious. "You told me everything about them! How they loved each other so much that it brought life to your planet! The inseparable bonds… your voice and cries… everything you and your people brought to your planet hope! But you only wanted revenge. You wanted it so badly that you forgot what it meant to live in harmony. You forgot what it meant to be a person! You've been so thirsty for revenge that even the people who listened to your melody would want nothing to do with you! No one wants what you want any longer!"

"No! Shut up! You don't get it! You never will!" Lucine rejected, covering her head and shaking it in an upsetting manner.

"Sumire!" Ryo's voice shouted from behind, entering the battlefield with his nanosuit. His eyes trailed off towards Lucine, recognizing her as the insanity filling the room. "That's her, huh?"

"She's gone insane," Ziko said, having Ryo support him as he stood up weakly. "She's calling us the traitors when it reality..."

"She was the one this entire time," Corlean said. "And she is still trying to justify it all."

"You've turned into the people that you wanted to kill!" Sumire continued. "Those murderous scumbags that took everything away from you! You're nothing different from them now! What happened to Lucine Vicio Melodia, the girl who cheered everyone up and brought love to te Fon in Vicious when no one else could?! You defiled the noble man's body to power your weapon... you defiled the tiger's honesty by designing his head into a weapon... and you think you're the one in the right!?"

"That's right..." Lucine began maniacally cackling as her voice cracked repetitively. Her hands and legs lost all sense of balance as she flailed her body like a scarecrow in the wind. "I'm not like you. I am right! I always will be right! If I can't stop all of you myself, then I know one thing that will. Because I'm not like any of you pathetic fools. I am the savior of this forsaken universe!"

As Sumire, Ryo, Charlotte, Corlean, and Ziko attempted to step in to stop her, Lucine activated a button on her nanosuit's wrist. The entire foundation of the accelerator's chamber began trembling and quivering as if they were witnessing a live earthquake. The growling robotic sounds of a tiger and a dragon melding together began voicing out behind the two mechanical colossal doors. A hole formed on the surface of the door as its machinery moved it aside. Multiple wires collided with Lucine's nanosuit on her back, connecting her to the Melody Dragon's neural interface. The wires lifted her into the air and pulled her back towards the entrance of the door, connecting herself into the piloting chassis of the mechanism.

As she ascended the Melody Dragon, Sumire and Ryo both watched as the two doors shuffled to the side revealing the absconded terror of the machine's ultimate might. Its power to absorb nanosuits had been deactivated without the core's power, leaving it to be a test of strength, speed, and pure will. The dragon's head morphed into a tiger's head to represent the noble tiger in Lucine's tale, and the nobleman remained underneath Lucine's main piloting chassis to power the ancient machine.

"No..." Charlotte whispered. "What is that...?"

"Nothing matters anymore!" Lucine sobbed as the Melody Dragon shouted along with her in unison to reflect her inner pain. The dragon's wings expanded to reflect its holographic scarlet surface against its shimmering metallic abdomen. The dragon's four legs that resembled a tiger's hind and frontal sides steadily paced itself forward while its upper half expanded its draconic chassis to power itself in energy.

"Ryo-boy! Sumire!" Claude called as he entered the fray along with Jinni, Naoto, Natia, Chiaki, and Star supporting them as cover. All of them were prepared to battle in a nanosuit of their own. "Is that the ancient machine you were talking about? Is that Lucine?" Claude asked.

"That's one dirty piece of shit," Natia stated as she assembled her twin daggers. She approached Ryo and nodded at him for endorsement to begin the fight. She recognized Ryo's increasing courage and battle-ready heart for facing his fears with Sophie. "Hope you're ready!"

Naoto and Jinni approached Ryo's side with weapons of their own. "We can fight too!" Naoto declared, maintaining Ryo by his side after he rescued his sister from an attempted depressive suicide. "I have to! For Sophie's sake!" He said.

"Yes!" Jinni graciously agreed, rearing her fists with Nana by her side. "This girl can fight too! Insieme! Together!"

Lucine recognized Ryo, Sumire, the rest of Sunlight, and the Fon assembled together ready for combat. With each increasing person arriving to support Sumire, Lucine became increasingly upset that she had no bonds of her own, including her forced false bond with Zack. She witnessed Ryo and Sumire stepping forward as the chamber's ground began to gravitate upwards like an elevator rushing towards the peak of Vicious Castle. Her heart began to falter as she lost control of her emotions. Her lack of bonds was her weakness, which is what she was known for back in Planet Vicious. Realizing that her voice and power had dissipated, Lucine wanted to know the truth. "How!? Why do you continue to fight!?" She shouted through the Melody Dragon's intercom. "Why!?"

"Because we will stop you, and we'll restore your hope!" Sumire declared as she pointed her energy blade towards the Melody Dragon's head. "You may be right when you say that only the strong can hunt the weak..."

Charlotte readied her weapons, advancing with a smile on her face. Seeking to avenge and protect the Fon, she held nothing back.

"But we are more than just weak." Sumire continued.

Corlean pointed her rapier from a distance as she stood sturdily and ready for battle to support her allies. Along with the rest of Sunlight and the Fon, she solidified her position as Sumire's friend.

"We can grow."

Claude clenched his fists together to support his daughter figure and the rest of Sunlight.

"Because we want to live!"

Natia twirled her daggers through the holed hilts connecting to its grip. She caught them as she stood next to Ryo with a new solidified mindset to grow in emotional strength for him and the others. To become accepted was one thing, but to become independent and resilient was another.

"We can fight back!"

Jinni cheered with her playful personality, revitalized after accepting her flaws and weaknesses from the past regarding her brother. Her smile was genuine, and no longer fake.

"Just as we've always wanted!"

Naoto nodded his head and faced his fear of losing himself to his phobia. After fighting for more than just himself, he remembered the increasing value of his sister and firmly stood his ground beside his allies with a new purpose.

"Because nothing can stop us!"

Ryo's heart could take the amount of resolve he had gained over the past few weeks with his newly acquired allies. He was honored to have been accepted by Sumire into Sunlight to find his new purpose; to grow and to move past his heart-encapsulating traumatic struggles. Together, combined with the effort and power of his company, he stood next to Sumire and pointed his newly crafted shortsword edge towards Lucine with her.

For April, for Sumire, for his friends, and for himself.

As the ongoing elevator mechanism continued to propel them upwards to the peak of Vicious Castle. Lucine utilized her neural interface to activate the Melody Dragon's weaponry systems. The ancient machine stomped forward and growled in absolute feral might.

"That is why we fight!" Ryo and Sumire shouted in unison as they readied for battle. They stood with their backs against each other and their blades pointed at the dragon, ready to slay the terror.

"Then you shall all take that to your graves!" Lucine threatened as the Melody Dragon reared up to the battle by stomping against the ground. "Give me the Glacial Crystal, or bear witness to my ultimate power!"