Final Flight

The wings were ready, or as ready as they could be. Unfinished fragments of corrupted code and impossible hope, pieced together by desperate hands as their world collapsed around them. Two imperfect pairs scavenged from the ruins. They were stitched from broken memories and decaying data. Each set held one good and one bad wing. A gamble with no second chances.

Eito's fingers trembled as the mismatched wings instinctively hugged his back. The material buzzed faintly beneath his touch, unstable and fragile, rippling with static like it could fall apart at any moment. Across from him, Hina secured her own set with quiet precision. Eito did find it a bit amusing that she now sported four wings. Her expression was unreadable, eyes distant as she gazed over the world as they once knew it. She took in the fractured sky, the dissolving structures, and the collapsing simulation. They understood this was the last time they would ever see it, whether they made it or not.

The two stood on the rooftop of Eito's crumbling high school. Cracked tiles beneath their feet, rusted rails twisted and broken, and the building beneath them was already ebbing away into fragments of data and flickering code.

The girl's fingers lingered along the edge of her wing, her knuckles pale with tension. Her gaze drifted to him, uncertain and hesitant. "We can swap," she said quietly, almost too quietly to hear. "If you take mine... you can make it. I can stay behind."

Eito's heart clenched, but he firmly shook his head. ""No," Eito said, his fingers tightening around hers. "We do this together. Or we don't do it at all."

Hina's eyes searched his, a full range of emotions tangled behind them: fear, hope, guilt, regret, and conflicted relief.

After a long pause, she nodded.

Above them, the sky fractured like glass. The simulation's scaffolding peeked through, skeletal black grids tangled with glowing lines of raw code. The end was accelerating. Time had run out.

Eito's thoughts spiraled, gathering like pieces of broken code trying to stitch themselves whole. He thought of everything that had brought them here - the quiet static of his room, the glitching skies, the rooftop where Hina first appeared, her frayed wings, and the junk zone buried in forgotten remnants. The failed loops. The grayscale girl with her fierce, hopeful eyes who had soared into the clouds while he remained shackled to this world.

Fear clawed at his chest. The chance of failure pressed heavy, tangible as the collapsing ground beneath them. Being dragged back into the system's endless loops, erased, rewritten? He would rather die trying than let the world strip them apart.

The ground lurched violently as another section of the world dissolved into nothingness. The sky above cracked wider, exposing the system's raw framework. It was now or never.

They jumped, hand in hand.

The wings caught the air with a jolt of unstable momentum. Static bled from their edges as they ascended in jerky, halting bursts, but they kept rising. The corrupted winds howled around them. Fragments of false stars and broken memories tore past like shrapnel.

Eito's body burned with exertion. His vision blurred as the system's failsafe pressed into his mind, tugging him toward the loops and resets, toward the programmed fate he had fought so hard to escape.

"Don't let go!" he shouted over the wind.

Hina replied, her voice sharp with defiance. "I won't!"

They climbed higher, cutting through the unraveling layers of false reality. The world peeled away beneath them. Hallways looped endlessly and rooftops warped in and out of existence. Forgotten lives dissolved into static and fractured code.

Ahead, the final barrier loomed, a fractured shell veiling whatever lay beyond. The final barrier that stood between them and either freedom or oblivion.

Eito's heart pounded as they approached. Beside him, Hina's eyes remained locked on the sky, determined and unreadable. The two's grip on each other's hand tightened.

The barrier shattered.

For a brief, blinding moment, everything dissolved. The world below unraveled completely. The static was silent.

They soared into open space.

Weightlessness engulfed them. An endless sky stretched beyond, painted in raw, vivid colors too wild to belong to the simulation. It was overwhelming. Terrifying. Beautiful.

Eito turned, squinting through the brilliance. He could barely see Hina.

Hina's ethereal wings shimmered briefly before dissolving into nothingness, vanishing as if they were never there.

Both their fake wings flare brightly, flames licking at the fragile constructs as they begin to falter. Heat and light consumed the devices, their brilliance fading into embers as gravity reclaims them, pulling them back down towards the unknown. Amidst the fiery descent, only the faint outline of a feather drifts upward, whole and unbroken, carried beyond the world's shattered shell.

Did they both escape, or had they traded one illusion for another?

Eito didn't know. He closed his eyes.

And in that moment, everything finally felt real.