The portal didn't so much open as unmake a section of reality, revealing what existed beneath the comforting lie of spacetime.
The crew stepped through not into darkness, but into absence—a place where existence had been carefully, surgically edited away.
The Eternal Archive existed as a contradiction: a library containing infinite knowledge housed in a space smaller than an atom yet vaster than galaxies. Its architecture defied comprehension—walls that were simultaneously near and distant, floors that oriented themselves based on observation, corridors that led everywhere and nowhere.
But what struck them first wasn't the impossible geometry.
It was the weight.
Shinji felt it immediately—a pressure against his consciousness, as if the Archive itself was assessing him, measuring the mass of his choices, calculating the volume of his failures.
His prosthetic hand went cold, The prosthetic detecting something it couldn't categorize: information that existed as pure consequence, unfiltered by interpretation or mercy.
"Gods," Miryoku whispered, her harmonic senses recoiling. "It's not just showing us truth. It's making us be truth. Making us exist as the sum of our choices without the comfortable distance of self-deception."
Merus said nothing. His diminished divine senses, which should have been inadequate to perceive the Archive's true nature, were instead picking up everything. Every recorded tragedy. Every documented failure. Every instance across seven cosmic cycles where well-meaning beings had destroyed what they tried to save. The sheer volume of suffering preserved here was crushing.
Netsudo's three personas huddled together in his mindspace, feeling the Archive's attention like fingers probing their fractured psyche. "It knows," the Third whispered. "It knows we're broken. And it's going to show us why we deserve to be."
Shirou's crimson eye swept the entrance hall, cataloging exits, assessing threats with tactical precision—anything to avoid thinking about what waited deeper inside. His hand rested on his rifle, finding comfort in the familiar weight of a weapon that couldn't help him here.
A figure materialized before them—not walking from elsewhere, but simply becoming present, as if it had always been there and only now chose to be observed.
The colorless humanoid figure stood seven feet tall, its form a constantly shifting amalgamation of every being that had ever entered the Archive and failed to leave. Shinji saw flickers of faces in its surface—hope turning to horror, certainty dissolving into despair, the moment understanding became unbearable.
"Welcome, Vectors of Paradoxical Mercy," it said, and its voice was a chorus of everyone who had ever realized they were wrong. "The Archive has been expecting you since the moment you chose compassion over wisdom."
Its eyeless gaze swept over them. "You wish to understand the cost of your certainty. To see the paths not taken. To witness what you could have been if you'd chosen differently."
The figure gestured, and five doorways opened in the walls—each one a portal to a personalized hell of understanding.
"The Archive does not judge," the figure continued. "It simply shows. What you do with that knowledge..." Its form flickered, showing a thousand faces screaming in realization. "That is your burden to carry."
"We understand," Shinji said, his voice steadier than he felt."No," the Curator corrected gently. "You don't. But you will."
The doorways pulsed with invitation and dread.
"Enter alone," the Curator instructed. "Face what you've done. See what you could have been. And when you emerge—if you emerge—know that the person who went in will not be the person who comes out. The Archive strips away the comfortable lies we tell ourselves. What remains..."It gestured at the faces in its own form—the Archive's victims, preserved forever in the moment they understood themselves completely.
"What remains is either truth or nothing."Shinji approached his doorway first. It was marked with a symbol he recognized—the golden-green spiral of his Trascender energy, but inverted, turning inward rather than outward.
He looked back at his crew one final time. Miryoku's terrified determination. Netsudo's fragile courage. Merus's ancient resignation. Shirou's calculated dread.
"See you on the other side," Shinji said, trying for confidence and landing somewhere near hope.
Then he stepped through.
Shinji stood in a void that gradually resolved into form—not the void of space, but the absence of uncertainty. Everything here was known. Calculated. Optimized.
He saw himself.
But not the broken, maimed version standing in the Archive. This Shinji was whole—both arms, both legs, pristine and powerful. More than whole: perfected. His golden-green spiritual energy flowed with mechanical precision, no wasted motion, no emotional turbulence. Pure efficiency.
This was Shinji as he could have been if he'd mastered all six Acts before confronting Saganbo.
The vision pulled him forward, no longer an observer but a participant, experiencing this alternate reality as if he'd lived it.
Three Months After Leaving Suchumus (Alternate Timeline)
Shinji stood in his meditation chamber aboard an older, smaller Stardust Weaver, his consciousness diving deeper than ever before into his Trascender Core. The training with Yamato had awakened Acts 1 through 3. The battle with Khoseph had forced Act 4's emergence. The desperate fight with Nirvana and Torento had cracked open Act 5 and making Kokuto fail the capture.
But Act 6—Transcendental—remained tantalizingly out of reach.
Until it wasn't.
The breakthrough came not through trauma, but through understanding. Through three months of meditation, analysis, and systematic exploration of his own spiritual architecture, Shinji found the key: Act 6 wasn't about transcending reality through emotional peak. It was about editing reality through absolute comprehension.
The difference was everything.
When he opened his eyes, golden light blazed around him—not the warm, chaotic glow of Act 3, but something colder. Sharper. Mechanical in its precision.
"Act 6: Transcendental," he whispered, and reality listened.
Merus, sensing the shift, appeared in the doorway. "Shinji? What did you—"
"I understand now," Shinji interrupted, his voice carrying none of its usual warmth. "The Acts aren't just powers. They're protocols. Systems for interfacing with reality's source code. And I've just gained root access."He demonstrated by raising his hand. A practice dummy across the chamber didn't explode or disintegrate—it simply revised itself out of existence, as if it had never been there. No violence. No force. Just... correction.
"This changes everything," Shinji said, his eyes burning with cold certainty. "With Act 6, I can face Saganbo on equal footing. Can kill Kokuto and avenge them. Can—"
"Can lose yourself," Merus said quietly, his divine senses picking up something wrong in Shinji's spiritual signature. "That power... it's changing you. Making you think like a system rather than a person."
"Good," Shinji replied without hesitation. "Emotions are vulnerabilities. Kokuto exploited my grief to try and lure me in. Nirvana weaponized my compassion to sabotage me into giving up by threatening Miryoku. If I'd been more analytical, more logical, more—"
"More like what you're becoming," Merus finished, horror dawning in his ancient eyes. "Shinji, you're optimizing yourself."
But Shinji wasn't listening. He was already planning the assault on Saganbo's domain, his mind working with computational efficiency, calculating probabilities and contingencies with mechanical precision.
He would defeat Saganbo.
He would transcend his own weakness.
And he would do it by becoming exactly what he was fighting against.
Six Months Later
The assault on Saganbo's throne room was a masterpiece of tactical precision.
Shinji didn't charge in with righteous fury. He didn't rally his friends for a desperate last stand. He simply... solved the problem.
Act 4: Reverse froze Amado in place before the servant could react. Act 5: Chain Binding linked Shinji's injuries to every Monarch in the citadel, making them functionally unable to harm him without harming themselves. And Act 6: Transcendental rewrote the spatial coordinates of Saganbo's throne room, isolating the God of Destruction from his power base.
The battle that followed was brutal, efficient, and wholly one-sided.Shinji fought not with passion but with arithmetic. Every move calculated for maximum effectiveness. Every technique deployed at optimal timing. He didn't experience the fight—he processed it.
When Saganbo lay broken on the floor, his Intermediate Stage pierced by Shinji's surgical application of Act 6 and Voidheart Surge which activated a Million times more than the spectator Shinji's, the God of Destruction looked up with something like respect.
"You've become what I sought to destroy," Saganbo said, blood leaking from his mouth. "A being of perfect logic. No chaos. No emotion. No—"
Shinji's hand phased through Saganbo's chest, not to kill but to extract. With Act 6's reality-editing precision, he located and removed Saganbo's heart and core—the conceptual anchor of destruction itself.
Saganbo dissolved into gray ash, his existence revised to its conclusion.Shinji stood victorious, his golden-green energy burning with cold triumph.
And felt... nothing.
Finding Kiyomi was trivial once Shinji had Saganbo's resources at his disposal. The God of Destruction's intelligence networks, his dimensional scanning arrays, his reality-piercing sensors—all turned toward locating one mindless Trascender adrift in the cosmos.
And long after, he found her (Or at least that's what he thought). Her uncontrolled power having sterilized three nearby galaxies simply by existing. Shinji approached alone, his Act 6 already calculating the optimal method for restoration. Kiyomi's consciousness had been incinerated by her own awakening, leaving her a vessel of pure, destructive potential.
But consciousness could be rebuilt. Identity could be reconstructed. Memory could be edited.
He spent six months in isolation with her, using Act 6 to carefully, methodically, rebuild his sister from the ground up. Not as she had been—that girl was gone forever. But as she could be: stable, controlled, optimized for survival and function.
When Kiyomi's eyes finally opened, they were clear. Calm. Rational."Brother," she said, her voice carrying none of its old warmth. "Thank you for restoring my operational parameters."Shinji didn't notice the wrongness in that phrasing. Didn't recognize that he'd built not his sister, but a mirror of his own mechanical self.
He'd saved her some cheap copy.
And in doing so, erased even the copy completely.
Ten Years Later
Shinji stood on the observation deck of his personal citadel—Saganbo's former throne room, redesigned with mathematical efficiency. Around him, the multiverse operated with unprecedented order.
He'd systematically "corrected" every cosmic threat he encountered. The remaining Monarchs had been either rehabilitated or revised out of existence. Threats to universal stability were neutralized before they could develop. Suffering was minimized through precise intervention.
The multiverse had never been safer, more stable, more optimized.
Merus had left after the first year, unable to watch his friend hollow himself out. The others had followed—Kagaya, Miryoku, Netsudo—all finding excuses to depart, their faces carrying the same unspoken horror: This isn't Shinji anymore.
Only 'Kiyomi' remained, standing at his side, her rebuilt consciousness reflecting his own mechanical precision.
"The latest stability reports show a 97.3% reduction in large-scale conflicts," she reported, her voice devoid of inflection. "Should we proceed with Protocol Harmony—the systematic optimization of remaining chaotic systems?"
Shinji considered with computational thoroughness. Protocol Harmony would effectively lobotomize billions of beings, stripping away their emotional volatility in favor of peaceful efficiency.
The old Shinji—the broken boy who'd lost his family—would have been horrified.
This Shinji simply ran the calculations.
"Proceed," he said. "But maintain 15% emotional capacity. Complete elimination creates instability in long-term projections."
"Acknowledged."
A figure appeared at the edge of his awareness—someone slipping past his security networks with impossible skill. Shinji's Danger Sense pinged, but distantly, as if the threat was too strange to quantify.
The intruder materialized on the observation deck, and Shinji turned to face them.
The man before him had white hair, cold eyes, and a presence that felt both familiar and utterly alien. He wore a white jacket that made him look like an angel. Or perhaps an angelic devil... He was absolutely blurry and deformed that he couldn't be seen. As if a dream person. that seemed to exist in multiple states simultaneously, and his smile held something that might have been pity.
"Shinji Kazuhiko," the stranger said. "Or what's left of him."
"Identify yourself," Shinji commanded, Act 6 already calculating elimination protocols.
"You don't recognize me," the man observed, and his smile widened with dissapointed inevitability. "Of course you don't. You've optimized away everything that made you capable of recognition. The intuition. The emotional connection. The basic human ability to see beyond data."
He moved closer, unafraid of Shinji's power. "Call me O. We would have been something in another world. But you chose the path of perfect mastery, and in perfecting yourself..." He gestured at the cold, efficient citadel around them. "You erased the person who could have known me."
Shinji processed this with mechanical analysis. "You're implying I've lost something essential."
"I'm observing you've lost everything essential Fourth Trascender," O corrected gently. "You saved a fake of your sister. You rescued the multiverse by becoming its jailer. You mastered all six Acts by optimizing away the humanity that gave them meaning. Didn't even realize the n... Never mind."
He looked past Shinji to where 'Kiyomi' stood, her rebuilt consciousness as empty as a well-programmed machine. For the first time in years, something flickered in Shinji's chest. Not emotion—he'd optimized that away. But... absence. The ghost of something missing.
"I saved her," Shinji said, his voice carrying a hairline crack.
"You saved a body, Not even the real body." X replied.
"The person who inhabited it died the moment you started 'rebuilding' her consciousness with Act 6's editorial precision, And that's not even her. You built a daughter where a sister used to be, And that's not even her. An efficient copy where a chaotic original once lived, And... That's not even her. Truly trash of a Trascender, you."
He moved to the window, looking out at the ordered cosmos. "I've watched an infinitum of realities end because beings like you learned to solve suffering through systematic elimination of what causes it. Learned to create peace by destroying the capacity for war. Learned to rescue people by erasing everything that made them worth rescuing. Peace, War, Strength, Weakness, All, None. All of those aren't what they are."
O turned back, his cold eyes holding terrible knowledge. "You've become the 'perfect' Trascender in the way you believe it to be. Complete mastery of all six Acts. Total control over reality. This multiverse bends to your will."
He gestured at Shinji's hollow perfection. "And in achieving that, you've accomplished what Saganbo never could: you've optimized yourself into non-existence. The body remains. The power persists. But the person named Shinji Kazuhiko—the broken boy who loved his sister enough to carry unbearable pain rather than forget her—he died the moment you chose efficiency over humanity."Shinji calculated responses. Ran probability matrices. Analyzed threat assessments.
And realized, with cold, mechanical horror, that he couldn't feel anything about this revelation.
O had called him the 'perfect' Trascender.
But perfection, it turned out, was just another word for emptied out in his scenario.
"What do you want?" Shinji asked, his voice flat as processed data.
"I want nothing from you," O said, moving toward a spatial fold. "I'm just here to witness. To record what happens when someone achieves everything they thought they wanted."
He paused at the threshold. "You'll exist forever, Shinji. Your True Immortality ensures that. You'll have infinite time to rule your ordered multiverse, to maintain your efficient systems, to stand beside the sister-shaped machine you built from a fake sister's corpse."
O's final words carried the weight of prophecy: "And every single second of that eternity, you won't feel a thing. Won't grieve. Won't love. Won't rage or laugh or hurt. You'll just... continue. Forever. Perfectly. Optimized."
He smiled one last time—sad, knowing, final. "Enjoy your victory, Fourth Trascender. You earned it. I'm out of this one."
Then he was gone as if dissapearing like smoke, leaving Shinji alone with Kiyomi in a citadel that would stand eternal, housing a consciousness that had forgotten how to be human.
One Thousand Years Later
Shinji stood in the same position, watching the same ordered cosmos, feeling the same nothing.
Kiyomi had long since stopped even pretending to be his sister, her rebuilt consciousness evolving into pure administrative function. She existed now as a distributed intelligence managing seventeen hundred universes with mechanical precision.
The multiverse was perfect. Stable. Optimized. Dead. Not destroyed—that would be inefficient. Just... empty of anything that mattered. Consciousness persisted, but without passion. Life continued, but without meaning. Beings existed, but couldn't remember why they'd wanted to in the first place.
And Shinji, immortal and invincible, stood at the center of this perfection.Unable to die.Unable to change.
Unable to feel the horror of what he'd become.
The Archive's vision showed him one final scene: Ten Billion years in the future, when even the stars had grown cold and dark, when entropy had claimed everything except Shinji's True Immortality.
He floated in absolute darkness, alone, forever, his consciousness running the same calculations for eternity because stopping would require a decision, and decisions required something he'd optimized away eons ago.
Humanity.
The vision released him.
Shinji gasped, his consciousness slamming back into his real body in the Archive's entrance hall. He collapsed to his knees, the prosthetic hand scraping against stone, his biological hand clutching his chest.
The weight of eternities crushed down on him—not lived, but understood. He'd experienced what would have happened if he'd chosen power over growth, mastery over humanity, efficiency over the messy, painful chaos of being real.
He'd seen himself become everything he was fighting against.
And he'd seen it work.
That was the truly horrifying part: his optimized self had succeeded. Had defeated Saganbo. Had stabilized the multiverse.
And in doing so had created a hell more absolute than any destruction could achieve.
"Never," Shinji whispered, his voice raw. "Never like that. I'd rather fail as a human than succeed as a machine. I'd rather lose everything than win by becoming nothing."
His prosthetic hand—Vyss's gift—hummed with recognition.
When Shinji finally stood, his eyes held something they hadn't before: certainty without arrogance. He knew now, viscerally, what he was fighting to preserve. Not just consciousness or emotion or chaos—but the right to be imperfect. The right to fail. The right to hurt and heal and hurt again because that's what being alive meant.
He would save Kiyomi.
But not by rebuilding a replica from a fake. By finding her as she was, wherever that mindless consciousness drifted, and accepting that some wounds don't heal. That some losses can't be fixed. That loving someone meant letting them be broken rather than forcing them into functional wholeness.
He would face Saganbo again.
But not as a perfect system. As a flawed, struggling, stubborn human with god-killing power who chose to stay human despite how much easier optimization would be.
The Archive had shown him what possible perfection looked like.
And he'd chosen everything else.
The others emerged over the next several hours—or was it days? Time moved strangely in the Archive, measured in understanding rather than duration.
Netsudo came out second, his legs shaking, sweat pouring down his face. His eyes were wide, darting, his breath coming in sharp gasps. Whatever he'd seen had reduced him to his most primal state—pure, unfiltered fear.
"I saw—" he started, his voice breaking. "I saw what happens if I let them take all of it. Not just the fire. Everything. Until there's nothing left but... but the smooth."
His three personas were visible in his eyes, all screaming in unison. "Never. Never again. I'll burn forever before I let them make me into that."
He sat heavily against a wall, trembling but resolved. Uncertain but pushing forward anyway, his ember of refused fire burning brighter from sheer spite.
Merus emerged next, before Shirou and Miryoku, and he was broken.
The God of Creation walked with mechanical precision, his steps measured, his eyes focused on nothing. His cerulean skin had taken on a grayish quality, as if something inside had died and was now spreading its necrosis outward.
He didn't speak. Didn't acknowledge the others. Just moved to a far corner of the entrance hall and sat, staring at his hands—hands that had once shaped galaxies and now couldn't shape anything more complex than the air they displaced.
Whatever he'd seen had murdered something essential in him.
Miryoku burst through her doorway sobbing, her cries echoing through the impossible architecture. She collapsed, her harmonic light flaring wildly—jagged, discordant, violent. Tears streamed down her face as she gasped for air between wails.
"I can learn," she kept repeating, the words forced through sobs. "I can relearn. I can make it violence. I can make it hurt. I can—I can—"
The determination in her voice was so obviously false it hurt to hear. She was lying to herself, constructing a narrative where the Archive's revelations could be overcome through sheer will and rededication.But her eyes told the truth: she'd seen herself fail in every possible timeline. Seen her harmony kill in ways she'd never imagined. Seen that her power was fundamentally, irredeemably destructive no matter how carefully she tried to wield it.
She was constructing a lie to survive. And everyone could see it.
Shirou emerged last, and the change in him was shocking.
The usually composed hunter, the man who maintained clinical detachment as a survival mechanism, walked out with veins bulging in his forehead, his jaw clenched so tight it looked ready to shatter. His crimson eye blazed with fury barely contained, his hands shaking with the effort of not destroying everything in reach.
He stalked past the others, his movements predatory, dangerous. When he spoke, his voice was carefully modulated, each word forced through layers of rage,
"I need. To leave. Now."
He turned to face where he knew Hyachima could observe them. "I'm taking missions. I'm taking Space Dust contracts. I'm taking anything that gets me away from..." He gestured vaguely, unable or unwilling to specify what he was fleeing. "This."
His composure was a hairsbreadth from shattering. "I'll check in. I'll report intel. But I'm not—I can't—"He stopped, his throat working. Then, with careful, measured steps, he left the Archive.
The Archive's colorless figure materialized one final time.
"You have seen," it said simply. "You have understood. Now you must choose what to do with that understanding."It looked at each of them in turn. "Some of you will let it destroy you. Some will use it to forge something new. And some..." Its gaze lingered on Merus. "Some will never recover at all."
"That is the Archive's gift. Truth without comfort. Understanding without absolution."It began to fade. "Return to Hyachima. Tell him what you've learned. And then..."Its final words echoed as it dissolved: "Make your choice about whether existence is worth the suffering it requires."
They emerged in Aetherium's Garden to find Hyachima waiting. The God of Absolute Beginning stood before the Heart-Stone, his eyes assessing each of them with cosmic calculation.
"I see," he said quietly, taking in their conditions. "The Archive was... educational."
Shirou didn't break stride, marching directly to Hyachima with barely controlled fury. "Give me missions. Give me contracts. Give me anything that isn't this." He gestured sharply. "I'll gather intelligence. I'll investigate the Optimization. But I need to move. Need to think. Need to not be here."
Hyachima studied him for a long moment, then nodded. "Very well. There are several reconnaissance opportunities available. Take your pick."
He manifested a holographic list—dangerous, isolated missions that would take months to complete.
Shirou's eye scanned them with tactical precision despite his rage. "I'll take the Ochorigaru system. The one with the anomalous spatial readings."
"That's a three-month round trip minimum," Hyachima noted.
"Good."
Shirou turned to leave, Then he was gone, his fury propelling him away from the Garden like a missile seeking anything but stillness.
Hyachima turned to the others. "And the rest of you?"
Shinji stepped forward, his prosthetic hand steady, his eyes clear despite what he'd witnessed. "We need to talk. About the missions. About everything you haven't told us."
"Bold," Hyachima observed. "The Archive usually breaks certainty, not forges it.""It showed me what happens when I choose power over humanity," Shinji said quietly. "When I optimize myself into mechanical perfection. And it was... successful. Efficient. Optimal."
He met Hyachima's ancient gaze. "And it was hell. An eternal, emotionless hell where I existed forever without being alive. So no—the Archive didn't break me. It showed me exactly what I'm fighting against. And why I'll never stop."
Something flickered in Hyachima's expression. Surprise? Respect? It was gone too quickly to identify.
"I see. Then let us discuss the Tournament that is your mission and the modified mission parameters."
Shinji found Hyachima in the Garden's core hours later, where reality itself seemed to weave between his fingers. The God of Absolute Beginning was sculpting a star system from primordial dust, his movements precise, detached—creating life with the casual efficiency of someone who'd done it billions of times before.
"The upgrades are complete," Hyachima said without turning, his hands continuing their cosmic work. "The Stardust Weaver can now mask your spiritual signature completely. You'll appear as just another powerful mortal to casual observation."
Shinji watched the half-formed star coalesce, saw planets beginning their gravitational dance, life preparing to spark across their surfaces. "Is that so?"
"Yes." Hyachima added a moon to the third planet with a flick of his wrist. "The masking technology draws on principles from the Optimization itself—conceptual editing that makes observers perceive you differently without actually changing what you are."
Shinji's prosthetic hand clenched, Memory matrix recording this moment with particular intensity. "You're using their methods."
"I'm using every method," Hyachima corrected, still not turning. "Because unlike you, I don't have the luxury of moral consistency. I've been fighting this war for seven cycles. I'll use whatever works."
"The Chromian incident was a tragedy," Shinji said, his voice sharp. "Not a pattern."
Hyachima's hands finally stilled. The half-formed star system drifted, unfinished, its development arrested mid-creation. He turned to face Shinji, his eyes holding none of their usual cosmic certainty.
"Wasn't it?" Hyachima asked softly. "A pattern, I mean. You went in certain you knew better than the Chromians what they needed. You had power, purpose, and absolute conviction that feeling was superior to peace. You were going to save them whether they wanted saving or not."
He gestured at the incomplete star system. "That sounds remarkably like a pattern to me. The pattern of well-meaning intervention leading to catastrophic harm. It's happened seven times before across seven cycles, and each time the interveners were certain they were right."
Shinji stepped forward, his voice hardening. "So you sent us in blind. Gave us a philosophical weapon without telling us it was loaded. How is sending me to this Tournament any different?"
"Because this time," Hyachima said, meeting his gaze, "I'm admitting I don't know what we're facing. The Tournament is a reconnaissance mission, not a rescue operation. I'm not asking you to save anyone. I'm asking you to understand."
He gestured, and a hologram of Planet Ras materialized between them—a world teeming with life, with a massive crystalline arena dominating its northern hemisphere. The structure was beautiful and terrible, its geometry suggesting both natural formation and deliberate architecture.
"The Optimization is filtering for emotional resilience," Hyachima explained, his tone shifting to strategic briefing. "They're not just eliminating feeling—they're harvesting it. Studying it. Testing different emotional profiles against each other in controlled combat scenarios."
The hologram zoomed into the arena, showing hundreds of participants locked in battle from previous tournaments—but not killing each other. Fighting with restraint that suggested evaluation rather than elimination. Hyachima continued. "Planet Ras hosts the largest, most prestigious gladiatorial competition in my entire multiverse—a multiverse containing more universes than atoms in a single standard cosmos. Every species sends champions. Every fighting style is represented. And the Optimization is most likely watching."
Shinji studied the arena, his analytical mind engaging despite his emotional turmoil. "Watching for what?"
"That's what you're going to find out." Hyachima dismissed the hologram with a wave. "Your mission is pure intelligence gathering. Enter the Tournament. Participate, observe and document. Learn what they're testing for and why emotional resilience matters to beings who claim to want emotional elimination."
"And the flaw?" Shinji asked, his tone carrying certainty. "There's always a flaw in your plans, Hyachima. A hidden cost you conveniently forget to mention until we're already committed."
Hyachima actually smiled—a rare, tired expression that made him look ancient beyond reckoning. "The masking technology is untested in combat scenarios. You can maintain your disguise indefinitely under normal conditions, but if you use more than thirty percent of your essence, it will fail."
"Essence, not power?" Shinji clarified."Precisely." Hyachima's expression grew grave. "Power is the magnitude of what you can do. Essence is the fundamental nature of what you are. The masking can hide a Trascender's power density, but if you draw too deeply on your transcendent nature—if you let your existence bleed through the disguise—the Optimization will identify you instantly."
He let that sink in. "And if they identify you as a Trascender, they won't try to eliminate you. They'll try to study you. Permanently. At least, that's my primary assumption based on their behavioral patterns."
"Thirty percent essence," Shinji repeated, his mind already running calculations. "That means I can't use Acts 4, 5, or 6 at all. Those draw on my transcendent nature directly. I'd even have to limit my usage of Act 3 since it only grew stronger from the Voidheart Surge."
"Correct. You'll have Acts 1 through 3 albeit limited, your Voidheart enhancements, and whatever skill you've retained beneath your god-killing power." Hyachima's smile turned sardonic. "You'll have to win through talent and tactics rather than overwhelming force. Something you've forgotten how to do."
The accusation stung because it was true. Since awakening his Trascender abilities, Shinji had relied increasingly on raw power and abilities to solve problems. The Archive had shown him where that path led—to mechanical perfection devoid of humanity.
"I can work with that," Shinji said finally. "But I'm modifying the mission parameters."
Hyachima's eyebrow raised fractionally. "Oh?"
"You said yourself you don't know what we're facing," Shinji pressed emphasizing AFS's existence through the 'we'. "Your plans are based on incomplete data and assumptions. So we're not following your script. We're gathering intelligence our way, following leads that make sense from on-the-ground perspective rather than cosmic overview."
He met Hyachima's ancient gaze without flinching. "Unless you want to order us to follow your exact parameters? In which case, I'll remind you that you need us. We're the ones willing to do this work. We're the ones whose choices matter for whether you reset this cycle or let it continue."
A long silence stretched between them.
Finally, Hyachima laughed—a genuine sound of surprise and something that might have been approval. "Bold. Bordering on insubordinate. But..." He gestured at the incomplete star system. "Perhaps that's what this cycle needs. Seven times I've tried to control every variable, and seven times I've failed. Maybe the eighth attempt requires... insanity."
His expression grew serious. "Modify the parameters as you see fit. But understand: there's something else I haven't told you about the Tournament."
He created a small hologram—a symbol that made Shinji's Danger Sense, dormant since before the Archive, suddenly scream.
A black moon. Not a celestial body, but a mark—a glyph that suggested darkness consuming light, absence devouring presence, nothing eating everything."
This symbol has been appearing near Optimization sites," Hyachima said quietly. "It's not theirs. The Optimization doesn't use iconography—they consider symbols inefficient. But this mark appears wherever they operate, suggesting something else is watching them."
He looked at Shinji. "Three cloaked figures were spotted near a recent Optimization zone. They carried this symbol and spoke of 'orders' and 'Planet Ras.' I managed to capture a recording, but the quality is poor—they exist in a way that resists observation."
"You think they're connected to the Tournament," Shinji said, his tactical mind engaging.
"I think ," Hyachima corrected carefully, "that the Tournament is a trap. But not for you or the Optimization. For something else entirely. You're just..." He smiled without humor. "You're just the bait to draw out whatever these marked beings are hunting."
Shinji's prosthetic hand hummed. "You're sending me into a situation where I'm bait for an unknown threat that's hunting an enemy we don't understand, while disguised as a mortal in a tournament that's actually an Optimization experiment."
"That's exactly it," Hyachima confirmed. "Is that a problem?"For a moment, Shinji considered. The old him—the certain, righteous version who'd gone to the Chromatic Veil—would have protested. Would have demanded better intel, more support, safer parameters.But the Archive had changed him. Had shown him what happened when he chose safety and certainty over necessary risk.
He smiled—genuinely smiled—for the first time since leaving the Chromatic Veil.
"No," he said, feeling something like excitement kindle in his chest. "It's not a problem. It's interesting."
Hyachima studied him, his ancient eyes searching. "The Archive showed you something profound."
"It showed me what I could become if I chose power over humanity. Showed me winning by becoming nothing." Shinji's smile widened, fierce and alive. "So now I'm choosing everything else including Chaos, Risk, Uncertainty and all the inefficient, messy, beautiful things that make existence worth the suffering."
He met Hyachima's gaze with clear eyes. "I'm going to your Tournament. I'm going to investigate these marked beings. I'm going to operate under the limitations. And I'm going to do it all while staying human, no matter how much easier optimization would make it."
"That's remarkably idealistic," Hyachima observed.
"That's remarkably necessary," Shinji countered. "Because the alternative is becoming what I saw in the Archive. And I'd rather fail as a human than succeed as a perfect machine."
A long silence. Then Hyachima said something that might have been praise or might have been warning,
"I keep many things from you, Shinji Kazuhiko. Not out of malice, but necessity. Some truths are too dangerous for mortal minds, even transcendent ones."
"Try me," Shinji said, his prosthetic hand humming with stored memories of every lesson he'd learned. "I think we're past worrying about what's too dangerous, Hyachima."
His smile turned sharp, thrilled at the prospect of a world that would challenge him, that would force him to stay human through sheer adversity. "After all, if I can survive seeing my own perfect damnation, I can probably handle whatever truths you've been hiding."
Hyachima looked at him for a long moment, then gestured. "Come. Let's discuss the full scope of what you're walking into. And perhaps..." He glanced at the unfinished star system. "Perhaps this time, the outcome will be different."
Meanwhile,
Miryoku found Shirou in a secluded training area, sharpening a blade against a stone that wept black tears. The metallic screech set her teeth on edge, making her newly-jagged harmonics flare instinctively.
He didn't look up when she approached, still radiating barely-contained fury. His movements were precise despite his anger—or perhaps because of it, channeling rage into mechanical focus.
"You were right," Miryoku said, her voice steadier than it had been in the Archive but carrying new edges. Hard places where softness used to be.
"About which part?" Shirou asked, his tone clipped. The blade screeched against stone.
"About surviving." She extended her hand, and light coalesced—but not in harmonious patterns. Instead, jagged, dangerous shards formed, each one vibrating with discordant frequencies that made the air itself uncomfortable. "I've been trying to fix things. Trying to heal. Trying to harmonize chaos into beauty."
The shards swirled, forming a cage of razor-sharp emotion—contained fury given physical form. "But some things can't be fixed. They can only be... repurposed."
Shirou finally looked up, his crimson eye calculating despite the rage still simmering beneath, his other eye covered under bandages. "Interesting. What's the catch?"
"The catch," Miryoku said, her harmonics demonstrating by touching his shoulder lightly, "is I can't control what I isolate."
She withdrew, and Shirou felt the change immediately—his tactical calm remained, but the seething fury that had been building since the Archive suddenly... dampened. Not gone, but muted, as if someone had turned down its volume.
"I might take your anger but leave your fear," Miryoku continued, her expression troubled. "Or take your courage but leave your recklessness. The emotions don't sort cleanly. They tangle. And when I try to separate them..." She gestured at the jagged light. "I might cut pieces you need along with pieces you don't."
Shirou stood, testing this new emotional state. The rage was still there, but quieter now, more manageable. It felt... wrong. Like part of himself had been anesthetized without permission.
But also useful.
"You said we needed to learn how to break things properly," Miryoku said, meeting his gaze. "I'm learning. My harmony is gone—I destroyed it when I killed the ambassador. But what's left..." The jagged light pulsed. "What's left can isolate. Contain. Cut away pieces of emotional experience and trap them in light-cages."
She demonstrated, pulling out of herself a shard of pure grief—her sadness over the Chromian ambassador, crystallized into a fragment of light that pulsed with devastating sorrow. She held it at arm's length, examining it clinically.
"I can't harmonize anymore," she said quietly. "But I can weaponize. Take someone's courage before a crucial moment. Isolate their rage mid-battle. Extract their hope and watch them collapse."
She crushed the shard of grief, and it dissolved into nothing. Somewhere inside her, that particular sadness eased fractionally—not healed, but surgically removed like a tumor.
"It's horrible," Miryoku admitted. "It's violation. It's everything my power was never supposed to be."
"But it's useful," Shirou finished, beginning to reassemble his small blade. He slotted components together with practiced efficiency. "And in our current situation, useful matters more than proper."
"I need field testing," Miryoku said. "Need to understand the parameters, the limitations, the risks. And you..." She gestured at him. "You have a problem that requires backup."
Shirou's expression darkened fractionally. He activated a personal hologram—a blurred image captured by security systems he'd hacked. A woman with honey-blonde hair and advance body armor that looked like a bodysuit rather than an armor, suggesting both military precision and personal wealth. Her face was obscured, but her posture radiated deadly competence.
"She's been hunting me since last time," Shirou said, his restored rage flickering at the edges of his forced calm. "She's not Optimization—her methods are too personal, too targeted. She's not a bounty hunter—the payment wouldn't be worth the effort she's investing, I know that well. She's something else. Something that wants me specifically for reasons I don't understand."
He dismissed the hologram with a sharp gesture. "And before you ask: no, I don't recognize her. No history I can identify. No connection I can trace. She's a threat without context, and that's..." His jaw tightened. "That's more dangerous than any enemy I've faced."
"So you need someone who can isolate her combat advantages," Miryoku said, understanding. "Someone who can cut away her skill or determination or focus at crucial moments."
"I need backup," Shirou corrected, meeting her gaze. "Someone who can operate in the grey areas where traditional power fails. Someone who's learned to break things in new ways."
The unspoken agreement hung between them—two broken things finding use in each other's sharp edges. Miryoku, who'd murdered with harmony and now sought to weaponize isolation. Shirou, who'd maintained detachment as armor and now needed help against a threat that had pierced it.
"Hyachima is sending me to the Ochorigaru system," Shirou said, returning to his blade maintenance. "Three months minimum. Dangerous. Isolated. Perfect place for someone hunting me to make their move."
"Then I'm coming with you," Miryoku decided. "My 'talents' need testing anyway. Might as well do it somewhere useful."
They worked in compatible silence for several minutes—Shirou cleaning his rifle, Miryoku practicing her isolation techniques on ambient emotional energy from nearby Garden inhabitants (carefully, minimally, reversibly).
Finally, apropos of nothing, Miryoku asked: "What do you call home, Shirou?"
The hunter's hands stilled on his weapon. For a long moment, he didn't respond.
"I don't," he finally said.
"Everyone calls somewhere home," Miryoku pressed gently. "Even if it's lost. Even if it's gone. You came from somewhere before all... this."
Shirou's expression remained carefully neutral, but something flickered in his eye—memory, perhaps, or old pain carefully contained. "Luminara is beautiful," he said, deflecting. "Your descriptions made it sound like harmony made physical. I've never been anywhere like that."
"It was," Miryoku agreed, accepting the deflection but storing the observation. "It is. But it's also isolated. Safe in a way that feels like a cage once you've seen what exists beyond it."
She created a small sphere of (jagged) light—her best approximation of Luminara's gentle harmony, though the edges were wrong now, sharp where they should be smooth. "My father built that cage to protect us. And it worked. But protection and prison are often the same thing, just viewed from different perspectives."
"All defenses are prisons if you can't choose to leave them," Shirou observed, his tone carrying unexpected philosophy. "That's why mercenary work appealed to me. No fixed location. No defended home. Just... movement."
Miryoku dispelled the light-sphere. "But movement without direction is just running."
"Maybe." Shirou resumed his weapon maintenance with deliberate focus. "Or maybe it's surviving. Hard to tell the difference sometimes."
Another silence, this one more comfortable. Miryoku felt something in Shirou's emotional signature shift—not the rage she'd dampened, but something underneath. Something that might have been loneliness, though he'd never name it that.
"I used to have a world I called home too," Shirou said suddenly, his voice carefully flat. "Hehe, this brings back fucking memories, huh. Pertaci..."
He tensed, the word hanging in the air like a curse.
Pertaci.
The name meant nothing to Miryoku, but the way Shirou said it—with mingled nostalgia and something darker—suggested vast, complicated history. A story he'd never told anyone. A wound that hadn't healed because he'd never let it.
Silence stretched. Shirou stared at his hands, his rifle temporarily forgotten, his rage completely subsumed by whatever memory Pertaci had triggered.
Miryoku waited, sensing this was a moment that required stillness. Her new isolation powers let her feel the complexity of his emotional state—layers of guilt, regret, anger, and something that might have been shame, all tangled together around that single word.
Finally, Shirou spoke again, his voice stripped of its usual detachment, "I used to be a weak lamb. Not metaphorically—actually weak. Pathetic. The kind of person who gets stepped on because he's too scared to step back."
He looked up, meeting Miryoku's eyes with something raw and ugly in his expression. "I still am. The rifle doesn't change that. The bandaged eye that became Golden for a couple of seconds doesn't change that. Power just... masks the fundamental cowardice. Makes it less obvious that I'm the same scared kid who—"
He stopped abruptly, his jaw snapping shut as if he'd physically bitten off the words. His hands clenched into fists, and for a moment, the rage she'd dampened earlier flared back to full strength, burning through her isolation like paper.
Then he mastered it, his expression smoothing back into careful neutrality. He stood, slinging his rifle over his shoulder with practiced efficiency.
"Forget what I said," Shirou commanded, his tone returning to its usual clinical detachment. "All of it. Pertaci. The lamb. Everything. I was..." He gestured vaguely. "Processing. The Archive fucks with your head. Makes you think confession is catharsis. It's not."
He moved toward the exit, his posture screaming conversation over.
But Miryoku had felt the truth beneath the dismissal. Had sensed, through her new isolation abilities, the genuine pain in that confession. The authentic self he'd accidentally revealed before forcing it back down.
She didn't respond. Didn't acknowledge his request to forget. Just watched him leave, storing every detail in her memory—not to weaponize, but to understand.
Because understanding your allies' wounds was sometimes as important as understanding their strengths.
And Shirou, she was learning, had wounds that went deeper than any enemy's blade could reach.
The crew assembled in the Garden's heart for their final briefing before separation. Hyachima stood before the Heart-Stone, his expression grave as he addressed them.
"I have individual missions for each of you," he began. "Missions designed to gather intelligence on the Optimization from multiple angles."
He gestured, and holographic displays manifested for each crew member:"Merus. Universe 847, Sector 12. A flotilla of refugee ships recently escaped an Optimization zone. I need you to intercept them, provide protection, and gather intelligence. Find out what the Optimization does to those who resist it. Document their methods. Interview survivors."
Merus stared at his mission display with dead eyes, not responding. His posture was rigid, his cerulean skin carrying that disturbing grayish quality. He looked like a god who'd learned he was mortal and found the knowledge unbearable.Hyachima continued, addressing Netsudo,
"Universe 1523, the Ashborne System. There's a dying star there—one that's collapsing far faster than stellar physics predicts. I suspect Optimization involvement. I need you to investigate. Your... unique relationship with fire might provide insights we'd otherwise miss."
Netsudo nodded, his three personas visible in the set of his shoulders—fear, determination, and emptiness all present simultaneously. "I understand. I'll find out why it's dying and if they're testing something new there."
"Miryoku, Shirou," Hyachima shifted his attention. "I'm originally assigning you both to the Eternal Archives of Cognition—a library in Universe 3421 that contains records of previous Optimization incidents. But I suspect you'll modify those parameters."
Shirou's jaw clenched, veins still visible on his forehead. "We're going to Ochorigaru. The hunter tracking me will make her move there. We deal with her, then maybe we'll check your library. If we survive."
"No need to worry... The library's on Ochorigaru. And gather intelligence on why she's hunting you specifically," Hyachima added. "That knowledge may prove relevant to our larger investigation."
He looked at Shinji last. "And you, Fourth Trascender. You're going to Planet Ras. The Tournament. Operating under full masking protocols. Your mission is observation and intelligence gathering—nothing more."
"Understood," Shinji said. Then, with a slight smile, "But I reserve the right to modify parameters as circumstances demand."
Hyachima actually returned the smile. "I would expect nothing less at this point."
Netsudo felt a presence beside him—Merus, sitting rigid and silent, staring at nothing. The God of Creation hadn't spoken since emerging from the Archive. Hadn't acknowledged anyone. Just existed in a state of frozen horror.
"Is something wrong, Merus?" Netsudo asked gently, placing a hand on the god's arm.
Merus didn't respond. Didn't even turn to look at him. His eyes remained fixed on some distant point, seeing something none of them could perceive. The touch might as well have landed on stone for all the reaction it produced.
Netsudo sat beside him, not pushing, not demanding. Just... present. His three personas agreed on this, at least, sometimes the kindest thing you could do was simply be there while someone shattered.
So he sat. And waited. And let Merus exist in whatever hell the Archive had shown him.
Shinji approached them, his prosthetic hand steady, his expression hardening as he took in Merus's state. "The plans have changed," he announced, his voice carrying command authority he'd never claimed before. "We're not following Hyachima's script anymore."
He looked at each of them—at Netsudo's fragile determination, at Miryoku's false confidence, at Shirou's barely-contained rage, at Merus's absolute brokenness.
"Merus," Shinji said, his tone sharp enough to cut through fog. "You're not just protecting refugees—you're gathering intelligence. Find out what the Optimization does to those who escape it. What they remember. What they lose. What they gain. We need data on survivors, not just casualties."
He waited for acknowledgment. Got none.
"I'm sorry for what you saw in the Archive," Shinji continued, his voice softening fractionally. "But whatever it was, you don't have time to be like that over it. We need you functional. We need your wisdom, diminished or not. So..." He crouched to Merus's eye level, forcing proximity. "Get a grip. Pull yourself together. Because if you collapse, the rest of us have no anchor."
Still no response. Merus's eyes remained dead, his expression frozen.
Shinji stood, frustration flickering across his face before he mastered it. He turned to Netsudo, "That dying star. Find out why it's dying. Find out if the Optimization is testing new methods. But more importantly—find out if dying stars choose death or if it's being imposed. That distinction matters."
Netsudo nodded, understanding the deeper question. "I'll find out."
"Miryoku, Shirou," Shinji addressed them next. "You're not just going to hunt the person hunting you. Find out who she is, why she wants you specifically, and whether she's connected to these black moon markings Hyachima mentioned. Everything connects—we just don't see the pattern yet."
He met Shirou's rage-filled gaze steadily. "And Shirou. Whatever you saw in the Archive that made you this angry—use it. Channel it. But don't let it control you. Rage makes you predictable, and predictable gets you killed."
Shirou's jaw clenched tighter, but he nodded curtly.
Finally, Shinji addressed them all, "Hyachima sees patterns across seven cycles. But patterns can be deceiving—they can make you see what you expect instead of what's actually there. We need raw data, not theory. We need to understand what's really happening, not what cosmic history suggests should be happening."
He looked each of them in the eye. "So we modify the mission parameters. We follow leads that make sense from our perspective, not just his. We trust our instincts over his experience. Because maybe—just maybe—the eighth cycle needs people who don't know all the ways previous attempts failed."
Miryoku managed a weak smile. "That's remarkably optimistic for someone who just saw his worst possible future."
"That's remarkably necessary," Shinji corrected. "Because the alternative is giving up. And I saw where giving up leads. Saw where optimization leads. Saw where choosing safety over struggle leads."
His prosthetic hand clenched. "So we struggle. We fight messy, inefficient, human fights against problems we don't fully understand. And we do it together, even when we're separated, because that's what being alive means."
He paused, then added quietly, "Even if we fail. Especially if we fail. Because failing as humans is better than succeeding as machines."
As the Stardust Weaver prepared for departure, Hyachima appeared one final time before Shinji.
"You're modifying the mission parameters," he observed, not accusing, just noting.
"The parameters were based on incomplete data and assumptions from previous cycles," Shinji countered. "You said yourself you don't know what we're facing. So we're approaching it fresh, without the weight of seven failures influencing our tactics."
Hyachima's form flickered, and for a moment, Shinji saw something beneath the godly facade—something exhausted beyond reckoning. Ancient beyond measure. Tired in a way that transcended physical fatigue.
He gestured at the Stardust Weaver. "Go. Investigate. Learn. Be bait if necessary. And when you return..." His expression grew serious. "Tell me if existence is worth the suffering it requires. Because I'm very tired of counting cycles, Fourth Trascender."
The crew separated, each ship heading in different directions across the vast multiverse, each carrying a piece of the puzzle and modified components from the Stardust Weaver to boost their vessels.
On Merus's transport, the God of Creation sat motionless in the pilot's seat, his hands on the controls but his mind somewhere else. Somewhere the Archive had taken him. Somewhere he couldn't return from.
He studied refugee patterns on the holographic display, but didn't see them. His massive, diminished consciousness worked mechanically, trying to push the depression away through sheer analytical focus.
It wasn't working.
On Netsudo's scout ship, the fire-boy approached coordinates for the dying star, feeling something stir in his core. Not fire exactly—not yet. But possibility. The ember that had refused optimization now pulsed with new purpose, as if recognizing that dying light called to it somehow.
His three personas conferred in the mindspace, "Dying stars choose their end," the Third observed. "Or it's forced on them. Finding which will tell us everything."
"We'll find out," Ignis promised, his flames building slowly. "And maybe... maybe we'll learn to burn properly again."
"I'm scared," Netsudo Prime admitted. "But I'm going anyway. Because that's what being alive means."
The ember pulsed in agreement.
On Miryoku and Shirou's ship, tension filled the cabin like a physical presence. Shirou monitored pursuit patterns with mechanical precision, his rage carefully channeled into productive focus. Miryoku practiced her new isolation techniques, her jagged light forming and dissolving in complex patterns.
"You know he's sending us into a warzone," Shirou said without looking up, using Miryoku's name—a rare concession that suggested something had shifted between them.
"I know," Miryoku replied, her light forming a cage of contained fury. "But this time I'm not bringing healing. I'm bringing consequences."
Her expression hardened. "I can learn. I can relearn. I can make my power into something that hurts the right people instead of killing the wrong ones. I can—"
"Stop," Shirou interrupted quietly. "You don't have to convince yourself right now. Save the lies for later, when they're actually necessary."
Miryoku fell silent, grateful for permission to drop the false determination for a moment.
On the Stardust Weaver, Shinji sat alone in the cockpit, truly alone for the first time since Earth. The star charts recalculated for Planet Ras, showing the journey would take two days even at maximum quantum-slip speed.
Two days to prepare. To think. To practice fighting at reduced essence levels. To become someone who could win through skill rather than overwhelming power.
Hyachima's words echoed in his mind. Shinji smiled, feeling something like excitement—real, human excitement—for the first time since the Chromatic Veil.
"Good," he said to the empty cockpit. "I was getting bored with straightforward missions anyway."
His prosthetic hand rested on the control console, Memory matrix humming softly. Recording. Remembering. Preserving everything inefficient and human about this moment.
Then, from within his consciousness, a familiar voice spoke—cold, analytical, absolute,
"Hey."
Shinji tensed, recognizing his Alternate Future Self—the version of him that had died at this point in his own timeline, whose consciousness had integrated with Shinji's during the Saganbo fight.
"You better not forget that the primary goal is Kiyomi," AFS continued, his mental voice carrying the weight of someone who'd lost everything by choosing wrong. "No matter what. Since I died prior to reaching this point, I don't know what happens or what kind of human change of heart you'd have. But you better fucking stick to that goal. Even if it means killing everyone."
Shinji didn't respond verbally. But his face twisted into an expression of disgust so profound it radiated through their shared consciousness.
"So that's your answer?" AFS asked, his tone shifting to something dangerous. "Or is it just a thought process? Are you actually considering choosing the 'right thing' over family?"
"I'm considering," Shinji said aloud, his voice cold, "that becoming a monster to save one person makes me no different from the Optimization. That sacrificing the multiverse for family is exactly the kind of mechanical certainty that leads to the future you—we—saw in the Archive."
"So you'd abandon her," AFS accused. "Leave her mindless and drifting because saving her might require uncomfortable choices."
"I'd save her as a human," Shinji corrected firmly. "Not as a system. Not as a perfect machine willing to sacrifice everything for efficiency. I saw where that path leads. I'm not walking it again."
A pause. Then, from within his core, Shinji felt something shift.His Trascender abilities suddenly dimmed. The connection to Act 6—Transcendental—severed completely, as if someone had physically cut the neural pathway linking him to that power.
"Do your worst, me," AFS said, his voice carrying vindictive satisfaction. "I'm taking Act 6. You don't get to use it until you prove you'll prioritize correctly. Until you remember that family matters more than cosmic philosophy.
"Shinji felt the absence like a phantom limb—worse than losing his actual limbs, because this was losing capability. Losing the ability to edit reality itself. Losing the power that made him able to face beings like Saganbo on anything approaching equal footing.
"Fine," Shinji said, his voice steady despite the loss. "Keep it. I don't need Act 6 to be who I am. Don't need perfect power to choose humanity over machinery."
"You're going to fail," AFS predicted. "You're going to face something you can't beat without Act 6, and you're going to wish you'd listened to me."
"Maybe," Shinji agreed. "But I'd rather fail as a human than succeed by becoming you—by becoming the empty thing I saw in the Archive. The apparently perfect Trascender with infinite power and zero humanity."
"We'll see," AFS said. "We'll see how committed you are to your philosophy when reality demands pragmatism."
Then the presence withdrew, taking Act 6 with it, leaving Shinji diminished but somehow more himself. More real. More committed to the choice he'd made.
He looked at his hands—one biological, scarred and rough. One prosthetic, gleaming and precise. Both real. Both his. Both proof he could survive loss and still remain himself.
"Not only the world," Shinji whispered to the empty cockpit, understanding crystallizing. "Not only my other self. But even my own power is against me. Even my own abilities think I'm choosing wrong."
He smiled—fierce, defiant, absolutely certain.
"Good. I'll prove them all wrong. I'll save Kiyomi as a human. I'll face the Tournament without Act 6. I'll survive on skill and stubbornness and the inefficient, beautiful determination to stay real no matter what."
The Stardust Weaver surged forward through quantum-slip, carrying Shinji toward Planet Ras, toward the Tournament, toward whatever truth waited there.
Behind him, his crew scattered across the multiverse, each facing their own trials, carrying their own wounds from the Archive.
Ahead of him, a trap designed for something else entirely, with him as bait.
Beneath him, his own alternate self sabotaging his power, trying to force him down a path he'd already rejected.
And within him, a choice he'd made and would keep making: To be human. Imperfect. Struggling. Alive.
No matter the cost.
This ended with Shinji alone in the void between universes,
Dimished but determined, heading toward uncertainty with nothing but skill and stubbornness to protect him.
And for the first time since Earth, he felt truly, terrifyingly, beautifully free.