A brief, heavy silence settled between Kiligaku and Toshiro, broken only by the distant groan of the ravaged planet. Ash drifted on superheated winds.
"Soooo… what now?" Kiligaku finally asked, hands on his hips as he surveyed their handiwork a world cracked and burning.
Toshiro settled onto a jagged rock nearby, the crystalline surface still warm. "I guess we wait until that Hayate fellow comes to teleport us back."
Kiligaku tilted his head back, squinting at the fierce, white-hot blaze dominating the sky. "Hey, I just realized something. How come the sun is all over the planet? It's like high noon everywhere. Back at your place, there was also a sun, right? Is it the same one?"
Toshiro didn't look up, instead using a finger to trace a diagram in the dark dust at his feet. "Oh, you didn't notice?" he said, his tone matter-of-fact. "Apparently, this planet has two suns. It's tidally locked between their gravitational forces, so it never actually rotates. A weird little world, caught in a permanent tug-of-war. It's surprising they're close enough to bathe the entire surface yet don't have enough combined tidal force to tear this rock apart. Or perhaps the planet is just that tough."
Kiligaku stared at him, then rolled his eyes skyward. He didn't have to nerd it out, genius. Now I'm even more bored. He sighed dramatically. "Sir Hayate, please come fast."
---
Meanwhile, on their own fractured battlefield, Pathro and Kobayashi faced the evolving Variant. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood. Pathro grimaced, focusing his energy until his fingertips glowed a fierce cherry-red. He pressed them to the deep gashes on his arms and side.
A hiss of steam and the acrid smell of cauterized flesh filled the air as he sealed his worst wounds. He gritted his teeth against the pain. "Should I burn yours?" he asked Kobayashi, whose uniform was dark and slick in patches. "Would be bad if we fainted from blood loss mid-fight."
"Yeah, sure. Make it quick," Kobayashi grunted, turning to present a gash across his shoulder blade.
Pathro applied the searing heat with clinical speed, his mind racing. This Variant still seems new to its powers. If it had mastered its shapeshifting, it would be almost impossible to beat. It has no martial arts prowess either, just pure, brutal speed and strength. But thanks to that… we were able to actually land hits. We can win this!
As if hearing his thoughts, the Zunan began to change. Its form shuddered, bones audibly cracking and reforming. Its arms elongated, transforming into thick, black chains, each link studded with sharp spikes. At the ends, massive spiked balls of condensed matter solidified. More spikes erupted across its entire body like a grotesque metal porcupine. A violent surge of dark energy crackled around it, kicking up a whirlwind of debris.
Kobayashi's eyes widened. "What the heck? I think it's starting to get the hang of its shapeshifting!"
"Crap," Pathro hissed. "With spikes all over, we can't punch or kick it anymore. It's forcing us to use only long-range attacks or weapons."
The Variant didn't wait. It swung its new arms. The spiked wrecking balls became blurs of destruction, whistling through the air as they carved random, relentless arcs through the terrain, smashing boulders, gouging trenches in the earth. The attack was less precise but overwhelmingly chaotic.
Pathro and Kobayashi dove and weaved, the shockwaves from near-misses buffeting them. Kobayashi rolled, came up firing. Energy arrows shot from his bow in a rapid THWIP-THWIP-THWIP! But each one was intercepted and pulverized mid-air by the swinging, impenetrable balls.
In a long-range fight like this, only Kobayashi can actually attack, Pathro thought desperately, ducking as a spike grazed his temple. And he's not landing anything. What do we do?
His eyes scanned the broken landscape, landing on a scattering of fist-sized rocks. An idea, desperate and brilliant, crossed his mind.
"Hey!!" he shouted over the din of destruction. "Let's fall back!"
Kobayashi, seeing Pathro already sprinting away, was baffled. Fall back? Does he have a plan? The Zunan noticed their retreat. With a grinding sound, it retracted its chain-arms and gave chase, its heavy footfalls shaking the ground.
Kobayashi caught up to Pathro. "What are you planning?!"
Pathro kept running, his breath short. "Your arrows, why didn't they explode when they hit its weapons?"
"Huh? Why?" Kobayashi asked, confused by the question mid-retreat.
"Just answer!"
"I have to manually will them to detonate! It was destroying them before I could give the command!"
"I see," Pathro said, a grim smile touching his lips. "That helps."
He skidded to a halt, spun, and hurled one of the rocks he'd scooped up. It was a weak, unassuming throw.
The Zunan, closing in, simply swatted it out of the air with a contemptuous swing of its spiked arm.
The moment the spike made contact BOOM!
A violent detonation erupted, not from the rock's surface, but from within. The shockwave was colossal, hurling both boys backwards and engulfing the Variant in a fireball of concussive force. Dust and smoke bloomed like a gray flower.
Kobayashi pushed himself up, ears ringing. "How did you do that?!"
Pathro coughed, waving smoke away. "I stored my explosive energy inside the rock. I can transfer energy into anything I touch. When that stored energy exceeds the object's durability… it detonates. The rock was weak. I just used it as a grenade."
Indeed, in that moment of crisis, Pathro had applied his power in a new way, bypassing his range limit by turning the environment itself into a weapon. The stored explosion was triggered on violent contact, requiring no conscious command from him.
As the smoke cleared, the Zunan stood revealed. It had tanked the blast, but not unscathed. Several spikes on the arm that struck the rock were cracked and chipped, oozing a dark fluid. It was still very much alive.
I can still sense it, Pathro thought, his meta-sense locking onto the enraged presence thousands of meters away, now hidden by the dust plume.
"Hey," Pathro said urgently, turning to Kobayashi. "Can you create a long-range weapon for me to throw? Something sturdy. A spear."
Kobayashi looked annoyed but didn't argue. He concentrated, and a sleek, shimmering energy spear solidified in his hands. He tossed it to Pathro. "What for?"
"Buy me some time," Pathro said, his voice low and serious. He hefted the spear, his focus turning inward, beginning to channel his energy into it.
The Zunan was already charging through the dissipating cloud, a roaring juggernaut of spikes and malice. Kobayashi cursed, created a massive tower shield from pale light, and planted himself in its path. "Fine! Just hurry up!"
The Zunan, seeing close combat resume, shifted again. Its arms morphed into brutal, cleaver-like axes. Kobayashi met its downward chop with his shield CLANG! the impact driving him back a foot.
"I guess it's a battle of weapon-shifting, huh?" Kobayashi muttered. His shield dissolved, reforming instantly into a longsword which he thrust forward. SHING!
What followed was a dazzling, deadly dance. Kobayashi shifted forms with practiced speed sword to flail to warhammer to axe to spear each weapon appearing in a flash of light to parry, slash, or thrust. The Zunan was less fluent, its transformations slightly slower, more deliberate. But it was learning. It began to mimic him, shifting its own limbs to counter Kobayashi's chosen weapon forming a spiked club to meet his hammer, a hooked blade to catch his spear.
Kobayashi felt a chill. This thing is learning to use its powers as it fights. What a monster.
He was pushed back, step by step. A missed parley resulted in a shallow cut across his cheek. A morphing spike nicked his thigh. Then, the Zunan unleashed a new trick. Spiked chains shot from its feet, wrapping around Kobayashi's legs and torso before he could react. The spikes dug deep, piercing muscle. He cried out in pain, blood staining his clothes.
He struggled, forcing his own weapon to shift into a saw-edged blade to sever the chains. But the distraction cost him. As the chains fell away, the Zunan's arm, now a gigantic spiked maul, was already descending.
CRUNCH-THUD!
The blow connected with Kobayashi's chest. The sound of breaking ribs was horrifically clear. He was launched like a ragdoll, tumbling through the air before crashing into a rocky outcrop a few kilometers away. He slumped, coughing up splatters of blood, his vision swimming. Darn it, that Pathro bastard… what's taking him so long?
Far away, Pathro's eyes snapped open. He sensed Kobayashi's energy plummet and the Zunan's triumphant focus. The spear in his hands was now throbbing with a dangerous, unstable light, vibrating with the energy he had poured into it for five long, uninterrupted minutes.
"Thanks for buying me time, Kobayashi," he whispered, voice strained. "This should end it."
He took aim, muscles coiling. With a guttural shout, he threw the spear.
It didn't fly; it vanished in a line of incandescent light, moving at a significant fraction of lightspeed. It crossed the vast distance in an eyeblink.
The Zunan, turning from Kobayashi's broken form, had only a microsecond to see the streak of death. It tried to raise an arm, to shift into a shield.
Too late.
The spear struck its center of mass and pierced through.
Pathro was already moving. He exploded into motion, reaching Kobayashi's side in seconds. Without breaking stride, he scooped the injured boy into his arms. "Hang on!"
With the last of his strength, Pathro made the most powerful leap of his life. He launched himself not just upward, but outward, a human projectile rocketing through the planet's atmosphere. The crater he left behind was cataclysmic. The air screamed past them, then fell silent as they breached into the cold, airless void of space.
Below, inside the Zunan, the five-minute charge of Pathro's entire reservoir of explosive energy reached its critical point.
BOOOOOOM!!!!
It was not merely an explosion. It was an apotheosis of force. A light brighter than the system's twin suns blossomed silently in the vacuum, swallowing the Variant, then the continent, then the planet itself. The shockwave shattered the world's crust, split its mantle, and reached the core in an instant. The entire planet disintegrated in a spectacular, silent burst of fire and rock, its surrounding moons pulverized into glittering dust.
Afloat in the dark silence, Pathro held onto Kobayashi, both of them turning slowly in the zero gravity. They watched the beautiful, terrifying funeral pyre of a world expand before them.
"We did it, Kobayashi," Pathro breathed, his voice weak with exhaustion. "That thing is no more."
Kobayashi, clinging to consciousness, managed a weak, blood-flecked smile. "I guess… so."
Then, the last of his adrenaline spent, Pathro's eyes rolled back. He went completely limp, floating unconscious in the void.
Kobayashi grunted, shifting to hold him. "He must have drained himself completely… to amass that much firepower."
Now, just two wounded soldiers adrift in the infinite cold, they waited in the ringing quiet for the pull that would take them home.