It Doesn't Matter

SELF LIFE

A large wall, gray and overgrown with climbing plants, was burst open by an explosion. The chimera leapt out of the dust and landed on graveled soil, reaching a location of the Custody's facility that was unknown to them. They had reached the bottom floor, but they were nowhere near the exit. An army of custodians had shown up to the med bay and forced them to flee.
Standing between a field of metallic rods planted in the ground, Menide had entered the Custody's private graveyard.

Tightly held in their human arms, Rhea's body laid motionless.

"Where is the exit of this place?!"

They ran to a wall and readied their spiked arm to punch it down. As they approached the wall, they noticed a couple of names float up from one of the ornate slabs sitting in the ground.

Menide froze before they could reach the wall. Retracting their punch, they decided to look for the exit on foot. All sorts of names showed up left and right in their AR as they ran down the gravel path. All of them were custodians.

A couple of minutes had passed when they found the graveyard's exit. They sprinted towards it but stopped after a couple of steps. They recognized one of the names.

Tawa Toaris, Tonpura family grave. Three rods erected in the ground.

Two of the rods were made of dark grey metal. One was engraved with stylized human figures engaged in different athletic activities, the other was embellished with numerous depictions of flowers. The third rod stood in the front, shorter than the other two, and lacking any engravings. Golden in color.
Menide kneeled next to it. They looked at the small golden rod, then to Rhea.

"I'm sorry..." A faint voice fought through the tears.

A metallic sound caught their attention and brought them out of their mourning. A ladder was being lowered from the gap Menide had created in the wall, and an army of custodians began descending it. Menide ran out of the exit before they could find them.

The place was becoming more and more decrepit. Their run had brought them into a dark area, a destroyed part of the facility, abandoned and somber.
They kept on running, until a piece of cement detached from the ceiling and fell towards them. Menide jumped around it with ease.

"It hasn't been that long since I was here. Seeing how unstable the place is, and how much I've been bothering the Custody, it's not a surprise that it's still devastated." They were inside the rotting corpse of the residential wing.

Walking through the rubble, they stepped on a metal beam. Normally, it wouldn't receive much thought, but this beam was very familiar. It was bent, but one end had been cut sharp and looked pointy enough to stab someone. This couldn't have been far from what was Minoto's room. They started moving around the debris, curious to see if anything of his had survived. Broken chairs, a torn painting, pieces of a vase surrounded in dirt, a dumbbell, a seagull plushie, a broken crib toy. The search was disheartening. Menide had decided to stop and threw the toy on the ground. But upon getting up, the broken toy's light suddenly lit up.

Its blue light shone dimly on some black cloth. Menide's eyes widened.

***

"Hikari!" A shout echoed in the narrow room.

He sprung forward and tried to get off the hard bed he found himself in, but his legs couldn't support him, and he fell.

"Hikari... Hikari..."

Menide rushed to pick him up. He kept struggling even as they made him sit on the bed.

"Calm down! You are fine, we won't hurt you!"

"Where is my child?!" Minoto screamed.

His voice traveled around the room, becoming weaker and weaker until silence replaced it.

Menide looked down.

"Most of the residential wing was destroyed. The people who didn't evacuate didn't make it... We were lucky enough to find your body mostly intact."

Minoto's head fell down to his knees. His hands grasped his wet face.

"Why am I still here?"

His wails found no answers.

"We brought you back to life with our technology." Gedis hovered towards them. She pushed Menide's back and signed at them with her head.

"I-I... I'm a necrobomancer. I used a special technology to make you into an advanced phizo." Menide didn't have the courage to look at him. "You are my best creation yet, congratulations." They said with a cold tone.

"Please," Minoto didn't lift his head, "let me stay with my family."

His request was met with silence.

"Menide, are you sure about this?" Gedis whispered in their ear, "Shouldn't you tell him you're the chimera?"

"He's suffered enough."

"But this could be your chance to apologize, tell him you'll try to make things right."

"What does it even matter? I can't bring back his family."

The room suddenly shook.

"Where are we?" Minoto asked, slightly lifting his head.

"Inside a truck." Gedis answered. She had already managed to find a place for the new hideout, inside a long container truck. Different kinds of machinery and tools surrounded Minoto’s bed, while the floor was a small jungle of cables. They had left the main road and were currently wandering aimlessly on the outskirts of the city.

"You're lucky you found me, actually, I was about to leave the city." She turned to Menide, "So, do you have a plan?"

Menide looked at her for a second without answering. "I... I don't know. A lot has happened, and now I'm a bit... Aimless..." They looked at Minoto, who was just staring at his hands. His eyes wavered.

"Come here for a sec." Gedis grabbed Menide and brought them to the other end of the truck "Before," she whispered, "when I healed you and checked your, or I guess, his heart, I found something."

"Is there a problem with it?"

"No, no, the heart is fine... I couldn't find any femtobots in it, it really is human. It's about the container that surrounds it. Extremely advanced technology, I don't even know what most of its cables do. But I did notice that one of them is made for a sort of receiver."

"Gedis, get to the point."

"It's picking up a signal. And it's not a random one either. It's a very weird signal, at a frequency so low that none of our current technology could ever pick it up. And it comes from somewhere in the sea south of Koita."

"Are you serious? What is it? What's making the signal?"

"There is only one way to know."

Menide looked at her. They turned around and walked up to Minoto.

"Listen here Minoto. I know that this is a shock for you, I can't imagine what it's like losing your family, but..." Tears suddenly stopped their words, but they fought through their sobs and kept talking.

"But that doesn't mean that we can just give up! We have suffered so that we can stop others from suffering like we did. We are both alive, we cannot waste this opportunity that the cruel fate has given us. If we let it go, then their deaths would truly be meaningless."

Minoto looked Menide in the eyes.

"I... can't..." He lowered his head. "I understand what you mean, but I can't. Hikari was the last thing that gave me a reason. How can I possibly find the strength to go on?"

"Then I'll force you!" Menide shouted. "I have brought you back to life to be my phizo! You are my minion, and you will answer to my orders! And right now, my order is... to live." Menide emptied their lungs.

Minoto stared without saying anything.

"There is a place we need to reach. Come with me, I'm sure it'll be important for you as well."

***

Menide and Minoto were cramped together on a motorbike. A strong wind roughed the sea and heavy rain fell in the water, but they challenged the tide, and let the bike’s blades cut through the waves. Gedis had worked on Menide’s eyedeas so that it could connect to Rhea’s heart receiver and give them the coordinates. They were already multiple kilometers off the coast and the dark sky didn’t help their search in the black ocean. Getting close to the source of the signal, the headlights of the bike shone on a barbed rock that pierced the waters and rose a few meters in the air. Beached on its side, stuck on the rock like a grey meteor after crash landing, the source of the signal waited for them.

“That’s it!” Menide screamed.

“What is that?” Minoto matched their voice to make himself heard over the sound of the storm.

“I don’t know, but whatever it is,” Menide reached the rock and parked the bike on a flat perch, “It’s human technology.”

A clump of what looked like metal sat on the rock. The surface was smooth and polished, it had an opaque sheen to it, and remained dry even under the rain and the splashes of the sea. A particularly pointy ledge of the rock had stabbed the curious craft, but the unknown material it was made of seemed to seal itself around it, leaving no gaps in its body.

“Impossible.” said Minoto, getting off the bike.

“I could tell you that I have a human heart inside of me, but I know you won’t believe me. You’ll see for yourself.”

“These kinds of delusions are more or less what I expect from a necrobomancer.”

“Don’t fret too much over it. For now, can you understand what this is?”

“It looks like one of the toys I bought for Hikari. It was some sort of spaceship…” Minoto walked up to it and put his hand on the shiny material of the exterior. Half a second before his fingers reached the ship-looking craft, a clear layer of energy appeared in front of them, shining magenta. An invisible wave erupted from it, pushing Minoto off the rock and into the water.

“Minoto!” Menide was about to jump in and grab him, but he leapt out of the water with small air boosts and got back on the rock.

“I can see you’ve still got your physical strength, at least. Are you ok?”

“I’m fine. Rather, tell me what just happened.”

“I told you, it’s human technology! I don’t know how it works. Although…” Menide turned back to the mysterious craft and extended their arm to it. “I might recognize what it is.” At first, the smooth surface reacted to their fingers like it did to Minoto, but then the magenta lights of the craft expanded to Menide and surrounded their arm. The rest of their body suddenly started to grow a shield, until it completely covered them. Both Menide and the craft started glowing brighter and brighter, until the light died down entirely. A singular black line appeared on the spaceship.

“You can’t be serious...” Minoto's eyes became more and more incredulous.

Menide placed their hand inside the black line and a side of the craft split open and lifted. The inside was empty, with the only exception being part of the rock that had stabbed it. Bright walls, plain and lacking any sort of detail, lit by secret lights hidden somewhere in the ship.

“Well?” Menide complained, “This can’t be it!” They hopped inside the craft. Their head touched the top and forced them to stoop.

“Are you sure about getting in?” Minoto told Menide, but he didn’t seem worried. “If it is unknown techn–”

The ship suddenly came to life. Menide’s hair was raised from their head as they began floating. The bright walls darkened and became transparent, the interior now looked like a soap bubble showing all that was around it. But the view was rapidly obstructed by several warnings that popped up in front of the walls, bright red windows with exclamation marks, together with a few other dark blue windows.

“Batteries overcharged, autopilot unengaged, distress signal active, external damage…” Minoto read from some of the windows, peeking his head inside the craft. “It really is a spaceship…”

“Is this Rhea’s? But… wouldn’t that mean…”

“Look,” Minoto pointed at one of the few dark windows, “That one says ship log.”

Menide turned their eyes to the window and, as if to answer their gaze, said window expanded into a detailed image of a soundwave. A second later, the graph moved up and down and began reproducing a voice message.
It was Rhea’s voice.

“To Rhea!

It’ll take two months and ten days to reach it, a very long, very boring time. I couldn't even bring any games because mom and dad said it would be too dangerous if they recognized them as foreign objects. So, to fight off the boredom, I have decided to make a logbook! I’ve never recorded a logbook before, so I’ll just make it how I want. There isn’t much else to do here, after all.

First of all: My main objective is to save humanity! A big task, I know, but I want to stay positive and think that I have a chance! I don’t know how it’ll be there. The group of scientists that was in contact with the robots died a long time ago, and since then the whole place has been surrounded in an aura of mystery. I hope that they look human at least. Though, I can’t lie, I think it would be kinda cool if they looked like weird alien creatures. Sadly, I don’t think they could change so much so quickly. But what if they start treating me like a deity that has come to save them? Hmm, I wouldn’t really like all that attention, and I’ve heard that there are a lot of them too. I probably shouldn't tell them that I'm not a robot, I shouldn't even be allowed to go there after all, since I'm going to be an external influence. Oh, right! I forgot about the context! Dad always said that context is fundamental in any situation. So.

My mom taught that the human race began to change when it managed to invent an AI with the ability to invent AIs. One was all that was needed to start a small society of them that spread through mitosis like bacteria. From there, things escalated very quickly. After that there's many years of progress that I honestly couldn’t bother paying attention to, so let’s just go to the end.

People needed a way to power all the AIs, and all fuels had already long been depleted. Self-generated electricity wasn’t enough, so they decided to create the Spica Batter. Thankfully, this one has an easy name to remember: A battery that uses Spica, a star, as the source of energy. They went and set it up, and things went back to the standard maximum efficiency. But apparently, not even the AIs could predict the speed at which the star lost stability. Turns out that stealing energy from a star speeds up its life cycle incredibly fast. Spica collapsed on itself, and before people could notice it became a nova. A catastrophic event, but what brought humanity to the beginning of the end were the consequences of the nova. An explosion of radiation that hit the entire Milky Way and its inhabited planets. It’s a spectacular sight, too bad for all the death it brings. The scientists call it “Cosmic Ray Burst”, CRB for short, and it essentially corrupts DNA over the course of time. Everyone has been "infected", and it's passed down from generation to generation. You can't run away from this one. The human race has almost gone extinct, and the AIs are now the only ones that can survive in this climate we created. It’s been a big deal. Space travel is impossible because of it (This flight is very dangerous and isn't allowed, but I’m on a mission to save humanity after all. Hehe). Anyway, life has changed a lot because of the CRB. For example, They came to us and gave us this shield that we constantly have to use to repel the radiation…

But that's sad stuff, so let's talk about the robo-planet instead! A project started a looong time ago to study human history. Over time, we lost too much information about the past, so a group of scientists decided to use fam... fem... fermibots? Somethingbots to make an artificial planet and recreate Earth from the first human civilizations, making them retrace the entirety of human history using all the information we have about it. Like a big play where the actors don’t know they’re acting. It takes a lot of work to make sure they don't stray from the right path, but this way we can know everything that has ever happened, since it’s happening again! But this also means that now the robo-humans are the only ones that can survive the CRB, since they don't have DNA. Surely this means that they can find a way to save the human race! Or at least that’s what I believe. Mom and dad just told me to go smell the “flowers”, whatever they are. I don’t understand why they can’t see the potential that the robots have, it feels like they don’t care about the problem as much as me. This isn't just a pleasure trip! I’ll show them! I’ll return home with a way to save everyone and make them happy! Maybe I’ll bring them back some of these flower thingies too.

Narpide Moubaru, signing off!”

The voice stopped.

A long silence wrapped around Menide and Minoto. The wind raged above them. Drops of rain flew uncontrollably around them. They mixed with the dark water of the sea clashing on the rock as if trying to bring it down with its foam. A flash of light thundered in the distance, scaring away a small flock of seagulls that had been searching for shelter and forcing them to fight the storm. Salt clashed against their skin.

"...What is the meaning of this?" Minoto hesitated to ask.

"I know the person that made this message. ...Narpide." Menide rushed out of the spacecraft and started walking in circles to digest what they had just heard. "...He only remembered the planet's name, he had all of his hopes in it."

"Do you really expect me to believe all of this!?" Minoto screamed.

"Does it not make sense!? Do you think that I would go to all of this trouble to, what, prank you?"

“You're trying to tell me that the entire planet is… fake? That we are all just a side project that has been abandoned and left to its demise? Tools for their research?” Minoto lamented the impact that this discovery had on his ideals.

“It’s not fake. The planet, just like us, was made by humans and has been dependent on them for the longest time. They gave us a place to be and kept us alive. Then they left. But this doesn’t make the planet fake, it simply makes it…” Menide paused. They stared at Minoto, but their eyes were looking at a concept much beyond pictures. “Ours.”

“But…” Minoto tried to find the right words, but he couldn’t find them. He tried to put his mind in order, then spoke.

“When I was told that everyone was a creation of the humans, I felt like someone had launched me into a bottomless abyss, but I was reassured when I learned that we had a reason to be like this, their plan. Even if I didn't want to give it importance, even when I said that I didn't believe in it... It was something to grasp at as I fell. But if the humans are dead, if we’ve been abandoned… Then there is nothing to do, nowhere to go. We’re alone!” His voice was getting more and more desperate. The words he spoke tormented his brain as if spoken by someone else.

Menide laughed.

Menide laughed, and Minoto stared at them, convinced they had gone mad.

“I guess you are right! That’s life!”

“How can you be happy about that?”

“Because it’s an amazing feeling! Don’t you understand? You said it yourself, there’s nothing to do! Nothing that we have to do; I’ve never felt more liberated! I kept on thinking that we were part of this grandiose project, and that we all had to fulfill our role in life or else we would waste it. And I kept on working, and struggling, suffering for some greater cause I wasn’t even fully aware of, all because I believed that I had to discover what my role in life was. But this enormous ball that was chained to my leg was self-imposed. It always was! There is nothing that we have to do, so we can do whatever we want!" Menide kept on smiling as tears ran down their eyes.

"He had it all figured out, it was just natural for him. We are free. Even when we succeed, life keeps on going on regardless; when we reach our goal or fail, life goes on anyway. When we’re happy, when we’re sad, we are still free. Free to make mistakes and free to try again.”

“How can you say that in front of this information? Is this not a problem for you?”

“I have a human heart inside of me! Does that make me human? Does that make me alive? Narpide has already told me the answer: Who cares! Life can be whatever weird thing it wants to be, it won’t matter. I’m just going to do my own thing. I want this world to be better.” Menide walked back to the bike.

“But there is one thing that you got wrong,” They turned to him and put a hand on their beating chest, “We’re not alone.”

“You might not, but I am truly alone.”

“Isn’t the pain that you feel proof that the ones you lost are still with you? They must have left you so many other things. I know for certain that somewhere inside of you, they are still there.”

“It’s easy for you to talk!” Minoto clenched his fists. “You cannot imagine how I feel! To be forever falling into this endless void without even a reason to be there. I have nothing and no one to hold on to.”

“I wouldn’t dare say I understand you, but I’ve also lost someone important. I just want to help you.”

"What for?"

A sudden gust of wind clashed with Menide and Minoto. Clouds sped over their heads, shapeless giants fighting themselves over the limitless space of the sky. The storm had grown more violent. Rain pelted the bike parked on the rock and punched it into the ravenous sea, who swallowed it down its bottomless currents. Amidst the waves, the water took shape. It turned, and spun, and sprouted in the sky. The whirlpool opened its mouth, and from its murky waters came a beast.

The water split down its two-faced head as it emerged from the sea. Free of the water’s weight, a long clamp of feathers, bright in their colors and horn-like in shape, slowly rose on the left side of its head and spiked above it. The feathers only covered the left side of its head, while the right one gleamed under large scarlet scales, just like the skeletal horn erected on the right side of the forehead. The right eye shone bright amongst the scales, almost tinging them in its green hue, while the left one was dark and opaque, with a faint azure glow hidden behind it. A dark beak adorned the mouth, serrated at its sides and sharp at its tip.

Wings burst out of the water, clawed and ridged, covered in a pattern of bright feathers that spiraled in the center like the eyespots of a butterfly. But the wings weren’t on their own. The barbed legs on the monster's back doubled and came out the front as well. The wings spiked from the front legs, connecting them to the long tail with their feathers. The monster hung in the air before them.
The scarlet wyvern had turned into a feathered dragon.

“I cannot believe it’s back!” Menide screamed.

A whirlpool of azure energy erupted from its beak, together with the booming roar of the beast. Menide’s jump brought both them and Minoto to safety, behind the rock, burnt by the attack.

“What is this?!” Minoto asked as he let go of them.

“Shouldn’t you know? This is Custody stuff.”

“Custody? I’ve never heard of a dragon!” He screamed, but an image flashed in his mind. “Unless… Pukiba...”

“Look, right now I don’t care where this thing came from. We’ve got to kill it! Can you fight?”

“I…”

“Then hide somewhere and wait.” Menide ran to face the dragon and took out their pin from the coat, before stopping and looking back at Minoto. They closed their eyes, turned around and pierced the chip under their neck. Morphed into the chimera, they flew at the dragon.

Flames were shot from their draconic hands while in the air, but the feathered dragon spun around them with ease and opened its serrated beak wide, displaying a thorned tongue ready to gulp the prey.
Menide spun and kicked the beak over before it could chomp them down, sending the monster’s head skywards, but the vicious creature reacted with lightning speed, and swung its large claws with the intention to maul them.

A boom was heard behind them, and in an instant two metal pillars rammed into the dragon’s stomach, they pushed themselves into its flesh and shot it away. At the base of the pillars, Minoto’s arms were extended at the beast, jets still coming out from his feet. Menide couldn’t even open their mouth before one of the pillars swung at them and sent them crashing into the sea.
He plunged into the water to follow them. He kept throwing punches, kicks, swings of all sorts of weapons as his body constantly morphed, thrusting his attacks with blasts of air to compensate for the water’s resistance. Menide struggled to defend themselves from the onslaught, their flames heavily weakened by the water. Behind the bubbles and the foam, they could see Minoto’s bloodshot eyes staring at them.

Menide managed to place their winged arms on his chest and detonate the nozzles, blowing him out of the water in an explosion of vapor. They re-ignited their wings and flew out of the sea, but the dragon was waiting for them with its claws ready. The large nails clenched down on the chimera. They had managed just in time to grab them with their draconic arms, but they couldn't move. They let out all the fire they could to not get crushed. The feathered dragon tilted its head and was ready to shoot. The chaotic beam left its beak and clashed with a sudden jet of water that surpassed it in size. Minoto flew over to Menide and kicked away the dragon's claws, freeing them.

"H-How?"

"I've learned that everything is made of femtobots." Minoto answered before punching them in the stomach with a fist of iron.

Menide was pushed away, but they managed to stop themselves mid-air. "I understand how you feel but try to reason with me!"

Minoto didn't listen. He propelled himself at them, followed by the dragon.

"Man, this is unfair."

Golden flames fired from their hands, missing Minoto but hitting the dragon behind him, who flinched and answered with its own, but before it could attack the ex-custodian appeared from the fire with his arms turned into a missile launcher. A missile of light fired from him, exploding as it hit the target. But the dragon's wings were much bigger and much sturdier, and it used them to shield its body from the blast.

Feathers singed, the monster began flying around and spewing projectiles of blue energy at them. The rain evaporated as it touched them and surrounded them in trails of smoke. Menide was pushed around by the wind as the blue meteors whizzed past them. They kept flying away, using their flamethrowers to push the dragon's attack away, but their hands had started to overheat. They had to stop the fire before it damaged their body, putting themselves in front of an unavoidable ball of energy.

Minoto flew in and kicked Menide with the jets of his feet, hurting them, but pushing them away from the attack. He began chasing the dragon, who was flying above them with great speed. Seeing how he could not approach it, he decided to change both his arms into grenade launchers and began to bombard it with small bombs of electricity. However, the hits did nothing more than annoying the dragon, who answered by spinning in the air and clawing him with its wings. Minoto was pushed around and saw the monster’s tail was about to reach him as well, when Menide came speeding in, a spiked arm clenched into a fist to crack its beak with a punch. The monster spun around until it reached Minoto's hand, which blew up in its face and sent it back to Menide. With another kick, the dragon reached the custodian a second time, but this time it was met with an enormous wave of water raised from the sea. Minoto moved his hands, and the water came crashing down on the feathered dragon, pushing it into the jaws of the ocean.

"That was amazing!" Menide congratulated him, but Minoto answered by turning his arm into a sledgehammer and swinging it at them.

Menide managed to block it with their arm but was pushed away by the attack.

"Stop attacking me, I'm trying to help you!" Menide fired their golden flames at him.

Minoto extended his arms and the fire stopped before him. All the air was being pushed out of the way, slowly extinguishing the flames. But when the fire died down, no one was left behind it. He understood too late and turned around to find Menide's talons kicking him.

"Listen to me! I know I've done something irredeemable, but I want to do everything I can to help you. I want you to be happy!"

"How dare you!" Minoto finally screamed.

“How dare you tell me to be happy after all the dread you’ve caused me!” Minoto’s voice boomed out of his lungs. “You just want to feel better about yourself!

He threw himself at Menide as flames boosted his flight. His fist crashed into their face, shattering their visor into a million pieces, and sending their body many meters back. All of Menide's arms were spread open. They did not dodge the attack.

“I do!” Menide’s scream pushed drops of tears and blood off their face. “I know! I know that the guilt is eating away at my soul, and that I’d do anything to get rid of it! What else can I do? I can’t fight that! And it makes me feel even more guilty! But I promise, I swear it on the heart beating in my chest, that I genuinely want to help you. If this is what you need, then hit me as much as you want.” Menide’s arms stayed open.

Minoto stopped for a second, before his feelings overtook him and sent numerous punches Menide’s way. But they took them all, without answering, without saying a word.
He kept on swinging his arms and, as time went on, his punches became weaker, and his eyes became wetter. He slowly fell onto them, crying as hard as he could. Menide hugged him.

Suddenly, Minoto was thrown into the water.

A cloud of gas had erupted from the sea, and the dragon came with it to attack them. All of its feathers had been turned into dancing pyres. Set ablaze, its body had gained a coat of fire. Menide saw the incoming burst of flames but had no time to dodge. They had pushed Minoto to safety and were eaten by the flames.

Minoto swam to the surface and began looking for Menide, but the dragon attacked him, throwing its entire body at him like a flaming arrow and forcing him to get back into the fight.

Menide’s body floated on the rough sea. They were conscious, but could no longer move, broken and stripped of their strength. In their mind, they apologized to the one person who had told them to live, the boy they had known as Rhea. Tears welled in their eyes and overflowed down their cheeks.
But Menide wasn’t aware of the power those tears held. As they streamed down their face, they left behind lines of shiny, coppery dust. The tears solidified on their face, and the rust began to build up.

They could feel their heart beating faster and faster, their body getting warmer, and their flames, getting bigger.

Minoto threw a stream of water at the dragon, hoping to extinguish its flames, but the monster’s inferno was too big. The fire was so high the dragon’s body was barely visible inside of it. The tail hit Minoto, leaving a red mark on his body and pushing him away. The dragon then fired a ball of blue energy, contrasting its red body, surrounded by a burning tornado.

Faster than Minoto could see, a red line flew into the fire and burst the energy apart. Almost unrecognizable, Menide stood in its place. Their wings were twice the size as before, but a brownish smoke surrounded them, dying their fire the darkest shade of red. They turned towards the dragon and flew at them with their fearsome arms. Their nozzles were overflowing with never-ending fire, overheating them as they glowed redder and redder from the heat to the point where even the metal that made up their scales seemed to melt. But the rust constantly formed then back into their original shape and let them continue the assault.

Their claws burned like the sun and pierced through the seething scales of the dragon. Punch after punch, kick after kick. The dragon fired its attacks on them, yet Menide could not cease their onslaught. The dragon’s energy was puny in comparison to their flames. It slammed its tail at them, but Menide let themselves get hit, as if unable to perceive any pain, and grabbed the tail. Moved by their fire, they began spinning the dragon around themselves and launched it into the water. The monster came back screaming, but Menide had put all four of their arms together, mixing the scorching flamethrowers with the crackling energy of their cannon. The beam of energy that resulted from it lit the skies and blew away the monster.

“Menide… you’ve glitched. Are you ok?” Minoto asked, incredulous.

“It doesn’t matter.” The chimera answered, lines of rust growing from their eyes.

The flaming dragon jumped out of the water, missing most of its limbs and part of its body, but none of its viciousness. Its horned head clashed with Menide, struggling to bring them down.
Minoto jumped in to help, turning his hands into a hammer and spinning it over its head.

The dragon flinched away and flew towards the sky. Its fire began spinning around its body and merging at what remained of its beak. A blue star formed under the clouds. The feathered monster bit down on it and began pushing it towards them.

"Use my fire!" Menide suddenly grabbed Minoto and fired their wings at top speed.

The dragon plunged towards them. The chimera and the custodian flew at it, dressed in dark wings of fire. Minoto extended his arms, and the flames began surrounding his body. He wasn't hurt, on the contrary, the fire gathered where he wanted and gained back its shiny color. Like a golden comet, they shot towards the falling star. Scorching blue energy cascaded into them, but they spun inside it, scattering it away and reaching the monster's beak.

The white lights of a firework lit up the obsidian sky.

Shinty flakes slowly fell down into the sea, together with the corpse of the slayed dragon. The rain had stopped, and the sea was calm.

On the nearby shore, Minoto dragged Menide’s body onto the sand. Their fire had died down, but the dark smoke still surrounded them. Their arm slowly jerked towards their neck and pushed out the pin. With a puff of smoke, their body turned back into a human and their cape flew to the ground.

“Menide…” Minoto kneeled down on the cold sand. “I have seen that you genuinely regret your actions, that you’ve changed. Our ideals are the same… but I still can't forgive you, I cannot accept that. Even so, I don’t want you to die!” A few tears fell on Menide’s body.

“I don’t know how to stop the rust!” Minoto cried. “There have been exceptions and weird cases but… I lack the knowledge. All I know is that you might lose your own self and go berserk. Maybe I could call your friend, or bring you to Pukiba, or…”

Menide suddenly tried to scratch him. He grabbed their arm, and their body began to struggle, as if trying to force themselves on the ground.

“Please…” Menide said, in a voice that wasn’t theirs. Their face was screaming at Minoto, wet with sea water and tears.

"I promise that your wishes won't be forgotten..." Minoto picked up Menide's cape and put it on. "I'm going to make the world that you want. A world where people will feel alive, even when they're not. I promise..."

Minoto closed his eyes. He brought his hand to Menide and placed it on their head.

“Don’t worry, I know for a fact that it’s going to be ok!” A voice suddenly reached them.

“Rhea? What are you doing here?” Menide answered, shocked.

“What kind of sidekick would I be if I left you alone?” Rhea grabbed Menide’s hand and helped them get up.

“Here!” He handed them their dykher. “C’mon, the people are waiting for you!” His hands pushed them towards the stage.

“What’s the point of being a star if you can’t be late?” Menide chuckled and walked in front of the curtains. They were about to open them when Rhea tugged on their shirt.

“Hey, do you think you could take a break after this concert? There is a cool theme park not too far from here, and I was thinking we could go have fun there.” Rhea smiled.

“Yeah, that would make me happy.” Menide answered, before entering the stage.