Artoria held Excalibur horizontally, flat side skyward.
Golden radiance burst across its length.
Medea rose above her. No ground beneath her feet—only circles, interconnected, stretching horizon to horizon in an enormous wall of violet.
A saddle materialized beneath Medusa.
I pushed my magic circuits to their absolute limit.
Black markings blazed across my body, crimson flecks intertwined between them like fire through darkness.
Gold bled from the cracks on Artoria's gauntlets. Excalibur's pommel blazed with pure brightness. Royal blue lines along its cross-guard yielded to brilliance. Fae runes along its spine buried themselves under the light of victory.
"EX—"
Concrete shattered and floated upward. Iron railings disintegrated into flakes. Tremors shook Hope's Peak behind us.
"CALIBUR!"
A horizontal pillar erupted from Excalibur, racing toward Enuma Elish and warping reality in its wake.
Pegasus surged forward. Wings beating. Hooves leaving concrete.
Contact.
Its hooves met Excalibur's pillar and held. A mythical horse rode on light that should not have been solid, each hoof-fall finding balance on victory itself, each wing-beat carrying us faster.
Medea's construct detonated behind us. Shafts of tremendous mana erupted outward—left, right, above—shielding us from every angle, moving with us.
We rode.
On a Pegasus.
On a road of victory.
Enuma Elish answered.
Black shockwaves spiraled outward from it, lashing across our path in erratic bursts that tore through existence itself.
A black-red streak tore past my ear. The air where it passed simply ceased to be. Nothing left where atmosphere had existed a heartbeat ago.
Medea's shafts kept firing. One met a streak head-on and held for half a breath before unraveling from its tip—violet dissolving into primordial nothing.
Another. Another.
Each one bought us another moment.
A streak clipped Pegasus's wing.
Feathers unmade themselves, their edges absent, as if they had never existed at all.
My hand found Medusa's shoulder. Pushed.
She leaned. Pegasus banked hard. A blast erased the space where her head had been.
Another. From above.
I put a hand on Pegasus's wing. Pulled.
Its wing folded back. A streak passed where it had been and cut into Excalibur's pillar. A chunk of golden road dissolved beneath us.
Quakes shuddered through Excalibur's light.
Artoria's arms shook. Her teeth bled from how hard her jaw was clenched.
She held.
Medea's shafts were thinner now. Firing faster. Enduring less against what preceded creation.
Pegasus's mane flared. White climbed from its neck, across its wings, down to its legs—turning it into a silhouette of pure radiance, like a comet pretending to be a horse.
"Bellerophon."
Our surroundings collapsed into a cluster of speeding lines. White. Gold. Violet. Black-red streaks whipping past in snapshots.
My fingers traced through empty air. A slash of wind adjusted a violet shaft's trajectory by millimeters. It crashed into an incoming streak, protecting Medusa's arm.
One more gesture. Another shaft curved into a black-red line's path. Dissolved. Bought us another fraction of a second.
Two more horizontal black lines reached us—one aimed at Pegasus's legs, one at its head.
Artoria heaved Excalibur sideways, edge up now. Pegasus did not stop, tilting with her, surging along the now-vertical road as those two lines passed on either side.
All ten of my fingers continued to trace, deflecting hundreds of beams, turning them into shields.
A streak opened a gash of vacuum across my arm. Cloth. Blood. Muscle. One moment they were there, the next—nothing.
I had no time to register it before more lines closed in, targeting all three of us.
That was also the moment Excalibur ahead finally met Enuma Elish.
Gold crashed against void. Light against what came before light. Two contradictions occupied the same space and reality screamed—grey consuming everything, all our sense shutting down for a single instant.
Artoria pushed. Every fibre of her being poured into Excalibur with a king's last stand. Medea's remaining shafts converged on that single point, violet folding into gold. Sky-blue flakes joined them, my domain pushing back alongside.
For one heartbeat, that spiral of primordial nothingness wavered.
A gap. Barely there. Barely wide enough.
[Deca Accel] activated.
A boundary field stretched across my body. The Ouroboros tattoo on my back pulsed, and I let go fully.
A second domain of accelerated time unfurled from me, expanding a meter around us—covering Medusa, Pegasus, and everything in between.
The world did not oppose me. Because this was my world.
Time twisted.
Black-red lines still moved at their own pace. Time couldn't touch what came before time.
But their pace—which had been overwhelming—now crawled.
Because everything else was moving ten times faster.
Pegasus screamed.
And we surged through.
Violet. Black. White. Gold.
Gilgamesh. Ahead of us. Stump already healed into a working arm. That rotating weapon in one hand. Hundreds of gates open behind him, weapons locked on us.
Time snapped back as golden weapons screeched toward us.
Medusa's eyes flew open.
Mystic Eyes of Petrification awoke in full force.
Those weapons petrified from their tips, freezing momentarily mid-air.
Gilgamesh stiffened with them for a fraction of a second.
We reached him.
He let Enuma Elish go and clamped his hands onto Pegasus's front a second before we crashed into him. The sound of bones shattering resounded from his arms.
Blood cascaded from his golden hair and down his forehead as he held on—refusing to yield his ground even as his body failed him.
He looked up at us and opened his mouth.
"Mongrel—"
I moved, tracing a line along his neck.
Hundreds of cuts overlapped across his bare neck in the same instant.
His breath choked. Blood flooded down his throat. But his eyes—those crimson eyes—found mine.
And he smiled.
"You... would have made a fine subject."
His grip loosened.
The white of our charge swallowed him whole.
Silence.
Enuma Elish ceased rotating, starting to vanish into particles.
Excalibur's light died down. Medea's magic circles cracked and gave out, falling from above like shards of glass.
Our own charge gave out mid-way, Pegasus vanishing from beneath us because even my mana reserves were running low.
Further behind us, the yellow sky of Unlimited Blade Works crumbled from the horizon inward. My own sky followed, splintering apart—two realities finally collapsing from their clash.
Both Medusa and I fell onto soil as concrete receded from around us.
I glanced at her once and forced myself to stand, dragging my legs toward a certain direction.
My drag turned into a sprint without realising.
I passed by shattered trees. Trenches running across soil. A devastated forest.
My heartrate accelerated.
After two minutes, my steps came to a stop exactly where my domain had collided with Archer's.
Hajime lay there, side by side with Archer, who was vanishing into particles.
Both were looking at the sky, like it owed them something.
Two swords protruded out of Hajime's thighs. A deep gash ran across his chest, sky blue particles floated up from the wound. A lattice of wounds crisscrossed over his left arm, rendering it useless.
Archer was no better, a sword had pierced straight through his heart. His right arm was just bone down the elbow. Pieces of a shattered locker clung to his hair. His left ankle was severed, heel lying a meter away.
"You're good."
Hajime spoke, eyes still locked above.
Archer's lips tugged upward.
"You too."
Those were Archer's last words as he vanished.
My steps carried me to Hajime.
He looked up at me.
His own face looked back.
"Hey."
Still the same. Casual. Like friends.
I looked down at him. At his wounds. At the particles still drifting from his body like he was bleeding sky.
"You're disappearing." I said.
"Yes." He exhaled, choking on something that might have been a laugh. "Figured that out myself. Pretty smart, right?"
I crouched beside him. My fingers found one of the fading swords in his thigh. His body tensed.
"Wait—" He grabbed my wrist with his ruined arm. His grip was weak. Pathetic. It couldn't have stopped a child.
It stopped me.
"Can you get me a protein bar, Izuru?" He tried to divert my attention.
"I'll get one for you." I started to rise.
"Stop." His voice was quieter now. "You'll waste time."
"You asked for a protein bar."
"After. Not now." His eyes stayed on the sky. Particles drifted up from his leg.
He continued. "... There isn't an after, is there?"
I didn't answer.
He already knew.
"That's fine." Hajime let go of my wrist. His arm fell back against soil.
I remained beside him.
"I was scared, you know." He said it like a confession.
"Before the project. Scared I'd never matter. Scared I'd spend my whole life on that bench, watching everyone else be something."
A pause.
"Then they took that fear and ripped it out. Ripped everything out too. Left you instead."
"I am not a replacement."
"No. You're not." His gaze finally left the sky, settling on me. "You're what I could have become if I'd stopped being afraid earlier. If I'd believed I was already enough."
The sword in my grip came free. The flesh that held it was gone.
"You were always enough, Hajime."
His expression shifted. Raw emotions flickered across his face—surprise, then disbelief, then something softer than both.
"You're terrible at lying." He said.
"I don't lie."
"First time for everything." He was smiling now. Really smiling. Not tired, rueful or ironic. Just... happy.
"Thanks, Izuru. For letting me help. For needing me."
"I still need—"
"You don't." He interrupted. Gentle. Firm. "That's the point. You never did. You just had to realize it."
His torso was half-gone now. Particles rising like inverse rain.
"Hey." His voice was thinner now. Distant. "Do me a favor?"
"What?"
"When you see them again—our Servants. The ones we've been fighting alongside." He struggled to speak, each word costing him. "Don't just observe. Participate. Get angry. Get happy. Get sad."
A breath. "Be tired. Be amazed. Be... human."
His right arm started to flake.
"That's the one thing I had that you never learned. Being human isn't about talent or hope or despair. It's about feeling things even when they don't make sense."
His neck was dissolving now. His jaw. His cheeks.
I reached out.
My hand passed through his shoulder.
He was already gone there.
Only his face remained—floating against the dark forest. Eyes bright. Smile intact.
"One more thing."
His voice was barely a whisper. I had to lean in to hear it.
"That protein bar. It was melon flavored."
A pause.
"Disgusting, right?"
I felt my lips tug upward on their own.
"Yes."
His eyes closed.
"Good."
Those last particles drifted upward.
Gone.
Every blue particle that made Hajime had gathered above me. They fell down after a moment, like rain. Fusing back into my being. Where they always belonged.
I remained crouched there, hand still extended toward nothing.
My fingers slowly curled inward, closing around empty air.
Something wet touched my cheek.
I raised my other hand and touched it.
Water.
I looked up. The sky was clear. No rain. Only those last blue flakes drifting downward, merging into me.
Then where—
Another drop. My other cheek.
I felt it. Water. Salt.
And stayed like that for a long time.
...
Then I stood.
My legs were unsteady. My arm was still bleeding where Enuma Elish had carved through it. My circuits had been pushed to their brink. Every muscle fiber screamed.
I turned around anyway.
Artoria was walking toward me. Excalibur hung at her side, its light dim. She was limping—her left leg dragging slightly with each step.
Behind her, Medea supported a barely-conscious Medusa, whose head lolled forward with exhaustion.
Artoria stopped in front of me.
Her eyes moved past me—to the patch of empty ground where Hajime had been.
She looked back at me.
"Master, what happened?"
I walked forward, passing her by.
My voice reached her from ahead.
"I lost my only friend today—"
A pause.
"No. Welcomed him back."
She followed behind me.
Medea turned, guiding Medusa alongside us.
We moved.
Four figures cutting through a ruined forest at dawn.
I reached into my coat pocket as we walked.
My fingers found something there. Something that shouldn't be.
A crumpled wrapper.
Melon flavored.
Disgusting.
I kept walking.
...
..
.
***
[200 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter]
[5 chapters ahead on P@tr3on = [email protected]/Not_Aaryan]
...
[Authors Thoughts]
From now on, there will be no Hajime. Because Izuru IS Hajime now.
This brings back memories. In the original Izuru cried like this when the Ultimate Gamer Chiaki Nanami died in front of him. This time, he cries for his only friend, however brief their meeting.
In Danganronpa, when both Izuru and Hajime merged. They became Hajime with Izuru's talents. This time, when they merged. It's Izuru with Hajime's humanity.
This just shows, how every decision and experience shapes and takes you to different endings in life.
I would only say that you do whatever you feel is right. Not what someone else says or what someone else wants. Even if you choose wrong, you'll still end up learning something from it.
Have a wonderful day... everyone.
...
One more thing before going... some people might think, how did Hajime sent Archer packing? I'll clarify here, Izuru and Hajime are same, meaning both have the same Ultimates, especially inside their Reality Marble.