With Naoto's paralyzed hands and legs indefinitely secured to chains on a crooked wooden chair, his heart's pulse amplified intensely as Melody's mercenaries entered with a tin bucket of mixed urine, grime, muck, and water prepared to discharge over his head. The acidic and pungent scent, along with the existence of such a horrid creation triggered a mild anxiety attack within Naoto's heart as his skin trembled and flushed through the absolute terror of his mysophobia. His breathing swiftly increased as his bruised face quivered in fear.
"Look at his pathetic little face!" One of the three mercenaries gathered around him in the interrogation room cackled in glee at the sight of Naoto's tortured condition. "What a fucking pussy! If you won't tell us where you and your friend are and who you work for, then I'll have to pour this on your greasy head. Maybe have you drink it too if you want."
"Please, no," Naoto refused as he envisioned Sumire's alluring figure and face. The next person he thought about who would be in danger was Jinni, who expressed the truth of her feelings recently. Putting them in danger by disclosing their location would indefinitely be his entire fault. Envisioning Sumire and Jinni's tortured faces only made him even worse. "I... I can't want to tell you. Please, I can't."
"So you're saying that you do?" A mercenary in front of the door's entrance continued goading Naoto's attitude. "You'd do that for a bunch of fucking nobodies? You must not get paid enough then, boy! You want this tub of shit, don't you? No? Then tell us where they are!"
Naoto refused once more, leaning his head down to his lap in silence. The mercenaries caught onto his final refusal and decided not to pursue interrogation any further. The mercenary who held the tin bucket of vile mixtures leaned forward near Naoto's left hand, pushing his hand inside to antagonize his mysophobia. Naoto's heart pounded as his mind was endangered by the terrifying mixture.
But he was just as disgusting, he thought. He knew he deserved this punishment for what he had done to Sophie. Please give me the worst of the worst, he continued as his ears began uncontrollably ringing. Please cut her out of my heart.
Sumire's grief-stricken sudden roar broke Naoto out of his traumatizing trance. She, along with Ryo, broke into the interrogation room's cage with their ignition boosters and slammed against two other mercenaries instigating the interrogation. Sumire and Ryo launched themselves into the two mercenaries with their bodies, leaving the one holding the bucket startled. Sumire recovered closely and approached the mercenary with tears shedding from her previous murder.
"Get back, you bitch!" The mercenary cried as Sumire and Ryo huddled around him. Naoto watched as Ryo rammed his leg into the man's testicles to knock him down. Sumire caught the tin bucket, flipped it around, and shoved the mercenary's entire head inside. The force of Sumire's attack knocked the mercenary unconscious as well, leaving him to soak in the unsanitary concoction he had created.
"Sumire! Ryo!" Naoto said, struggling to remove the cuffs attached to his wrists. "Get these off of me, quick."
"Right," Sumire said, removing her helmet visor and brandishing her energy blade. She swept her blade across the cuffs precisely to free him. Naoto took sudden notice of her overly reddened eyes as evidence of her recently crying. Sumire even wiped her eyes once more to pretend to hide her recent pain from Naoto. "Are you okay?" She asked him.
"Yeah... but you're not, are you?" Naoto asked after he was freed. "Were you crying earlier? Did something happen before you came here?"
"I... I don't want to talk about it." Sumire rejected, heading for the exit to the interrogation room. Sudden voices abruptly arose from the entrance from where they arrived. "I'm just glad you're okay."
"To you too," Naoto said, smiling in joy to see his crush safe from harm. He then turned to Ryo and pointed at the fallen mercenary with his head stuck in the bucket. "He's got an important machine part on him. He was going to give it to Lucia for something."
"Her particle accelerator blueprint?" Ryo quickly mentioned what Aubrie informed him as he grabbed a metal superconductor filled to the brim with stagnated energies surrounding it. The metallic core in the center of the superconductor vibrated with radiant power emitting onto Ryo's hands. "She's going to use it to power up something that'll take out all of Aries. It has to be a weapon of some kind."
"Damn it," Naoto said, looking at Sumire. "Did she mention any of that to you, Sumire?"
Sumire couldn't concentrate on the mission details, as she was still fazed from her first murder combined with Lucia's fable on Planet Vicious. However, the sound of roaring footsteps broke her concentration. "Naoto, look out!" She cried after noticing a large group of Melody's mercenaries entering the vicinity with their rifles. With Naoto unshielded by the nanosuit, bullets hailed from across the hallway aimed directly at him.
Ryo snatched Naoto's arm and pulled him close to his chest. The bullets deflected off of Ryo's back as a shield, leaving Sumire to counterattack. Naoto shouted in terror as Sumire shredded through the mercenary's huddled barricade to the hallway by knocking them down with multiple blows. Their bullets were rendered useless against their nanosuits.
"We have to go," Ryo suggested, pulling Naoto aside with his hand. "There has to be a way out of here from underground."
"Ryo," Naoto muttered in embarrassment. "You saved me, and I couldn't save myself..." His voice trailed off in utter disappointment from an unknown perspective. "And I wasn't there when Rose Accel hurt you. I really am useless..."
"Don't think about it," Ryo stated as he examined the surroundings of the interrogation room. More voices arose from the third floor of the art gallery, and Sumire responded by sprinting towards Ryo and Naoto to search for a way out. He was genuinely concerned for Naoto's mental health after nearly being tortured by his kidnappers, but he wasn't sure why he believed himself to be useless. If anyone was useless, it would have been Ryo himself when he was a child.
A rusty manhole pried open near several shredded paintings and galleries was the only escape route. "Let's move," Ryo ordered, leading the way down. He paved the way and slid down a narrow rusty pipe while Naoto followed him second in line. Sumire, just before she followed them, used her energy blade to weld the manhole back into place to prevent their pursuers from chasing them immediately after they landed.
Ryo tumbled out into an unknown expansive metal hangar spanning across four different sections. Naoto rolled outward and clumsily collapsed on the ground as Sumire followed with ease. Ryo examined the surroundings and sensed the ambient air circulating his ears with mild pressure preventing him from hearing clearly. Unlike any usual secret hangar, this one, in particular, had no machinery or weaponry stowed away for protection. There were no signs of any presence lurking in the distant shadows.
"How do we get out of here?" Naoto asked as Sumire lifted him up.
Ryo double-checked a small minimap that pinpointed his exact location along with his adjacent surroundings. The underground hangar was attached to the Meister's Art Gallery and the closest exit was near the docking station several feet away. There were no enemy readings on his map either, making it safe to escape; yet it could not have been a coincidence that no one had expected them to escape here, considering enemy mercenaries preemptively established their ranks in the underground.
The echoing rumble of the manhole entrance blasted open after lethal grenades were tossed near its entrance. Ryo, Sumire, and Naoto immediately sped through the hangar and cautiously closed the distance between their assailants.
As multiple mercenaries exited through the manhole with their rifles steady to fire upon the trio, a scarlet-colored energy orb unexpectedly collided with all but one mercenary from the shadows from where they came. Ryo, Sumire, and Naoto stopped their movement as the final mercenary spared was stabbed through his back with a sleek silver gunblade. Blood poured out from his stomach as his guts discharged from underneath, prompting Sumire and Ryo to look away in extreme disgust.
"You are all so useless..." A lightly bitter voice feebly spoke through the panged cries of the dying mercenary.
The superconductor that Ryo held onto mystically pulled back into the shadows from where the final mercenary laid in his scarlet pool of blood. Someone had caught it in the midst of the shadows where the end of the hangar remained. The silver gunblade had unknown scarlet energies permeating from around its edge with a plague-like aura enhancing it. Sumire gasped after the individual holding the gunblade stepped out from the shadows, dragging it across the metal ground to generate sparks in a circle.
"Lucia Melody..." Sumire whispered, witnessing the figure introducing herself amidst the dimly lit hangar.
A slender woman no taller than Sumire entered the fray with a custom ivory-golden armored nanosuit of her own, resembling much like the V2 nanosuit that Natia longed for. Her crimson long tuft hair parted into two elongated sections of softness dangling into two ponytails. After deactivating her helmet visor, her crimson hair retracted into the back of her helmet and opened up, revealing a woman with a pale, lifeless, and corpselike expression painted across her rose-gemmed eyes. Her tender hands and slender feet were complimented by the exquisite craftsmanship of her custom nanosuit. With the superconductor in her left hand, an unknown force latched onto it from the shadows and sent it away.
The beautiful and noble young girl who delighted the masses with her melodic voice had grown up with no remnant or sign of her previous identity. Sumire could sense hostility enveloping remorse after staring directly into her gleaming rose-colored eyes. All sense of hope had been lost, and no signs of precious memories from her past remained. Her gentle lips were filled to the brim with hatred. Her throat was no longer melodic but surged in pain.
"I'm impressed..." Lucia's light voice still appeared childlike from her previous time on Planet Vicious; without a doubt, her melodic voice still remained, but it was corrupted to the point of monotonousness. "Not only were you able to escape one of my hideouts, but you defeated Zack. Surely he'd be feeling quite humiliated right now."
"Zack?" Ryo asked, believing that she identified the invisible suited man at the Virgo Factory for him. In addition to his unknown presence, Ryo wanted to mention Aubrie's distress over Lucia's alteration. "Your pirate friend isn't with you anymore. She gave up her act and wanted you to change back to who you were."
"She's a fool for wanting this," Lucia calmly spoke as she placed her gunblade in a sheath behind her armored nanosuit. She concentrated on Sumire in particular, as she was drawn to her more than Ryo or Naoto's presence. "Here I am, Sumire Nakai. In the flesh, so you may witness my presence for the first time. Terrified now, are you? Are you part of the poor masses that will subject their lives to my future demands? Or are you among the ones that will be spared from my destruction?"
"I'm not going to submit to anything," Sumire stepped in, intervening between Ryo and Naoto. "Why are you here? Why even show yourself? Why break that secrecy behind your identity?"
Lucia chuckled like a perky little doll whose voice was clear and soothing. She gestured out her arms with her palms facing upward to express her undivided enthusiasm. "Why, to meet you, of course," She said. "Your lineage interests me so much to the point where I sacrificed vice and secrecy for enjoyment. Besides... this is the first and last time we shall meet. You know all about my connections have been too risky for my plans, and I have no time for you any longer."
"Wait, stop!" Sumire interrupted, hoping to change her heart after standing in her wake. She gently lifted her hand towards Lucia, catching both Ryo and Naoto off-guard unknown to her intentions of peace and friendship. "Just stop this right now, Lucia. You can walk away from this, and we can-"
"I'm not walking away from anything," Lucia corrected, smiling impishly as she stood to the side. "Allow me to demonstrate..." She began. A churning mechanical roar resembling the combination of a fierce tiger and a mythical dragon shattered the trio's expectations of having no dangerous entity. "The true nature of what I have created...!"
A humming linear sound began echoing in the shadows as a titanium and metallic small dragon head exited from within. The shining alloy reflected the hangar's lights among the trio as it revealed itself to be a four-legged metal abdomen attached to the upper half of a terrifying mythological dragon. The superconductor, which powered the core of the machine, surged through the machine's veins with scarlet and cerulean energies mixed together. Extended dragon wings emitted from the machine's back as its metallic stout arms and legs moved in unison with Lucia by its side. Compared to a colossal three-storied building, its towering height and its metallic bulky tail only added to its overarching height and diameter.
Sumire's nightmare had come true when she had witnessed something underneath the upper half of the dragon's abdomen. She caught sight of the corpse of the mysterious fabled man who turned his wake into ice attached to wires stemming from the machine's core superconductor. His lifeless corpse created a glacial bitter aura to its existence as it revealed its terror to the brim. The fabled man disappeared once as the machine's doors latched shut to shroud him from sight.
Sumire couldn't believe Lucia defiled his corpse for her personal gain to destroy Aries. "What are you doing, Lucia?!" She cried in despair. "Now you're no better than the people that destroyed your home planet! They took his body too, didn't they? And here you are, using it for your own advantage!"
"You think that matters any longer?" Lucia clarified. "This ancient machine lay dormant underneath my planet's wastelands for eons, waiting to be dug up and secured. Witness the Melody Dragon and its awe-inspiring strength! You should be honored to be standing underneath its golden aura! Its beauty, so divine and transcendental! It holds power beyond your wildest dreams!"
Ryo, Sumire, and Naoto were speechless underneath the ancient dragon's sudden arrival. No man or woman ever dreamed of witnessing such a colossal mechanical monster before, and its terrifying aura lingered through their veins. Sumire wanted to appear fearless however and attempted to convince Lucia once more. "This thing won't stop me, Lucia! Not yet!" She ensured.
"No? Then perhaps this will." Lucia chuckled, waving her hand forward.
An instantaneous force latched onto Ryo and Sumire's chests as the Melody Dragon's left clawed paw revealed a cerulean mag booster. However, unlike the nanosuit's counterpart, what occurred next completely shattered Ryo, Sumire, Naoto, and Lucia's expectations. Ryo and Sumire's powered nanosuits latched off of them, shutting off their neural uplink, and launched towards the ancient dragon's cerulean mag booster to absorb its power.
They struggled to keep on the individual nanomachines permeating across their body, but every microscopic inch was forced off. The absorbing dragon roared in delight after gaining power from their nanosuits. Its dragon-head suddenly morphed and shifted into a metallic tiger's vicious head, referencing the tale from her home planet. Its single-colored red eyes gleamed in absolute madness from its devastating power.
Now that the trio was completely defenseless, their situation had transformed into something much worse.
"Such grandeur!" Lucia cheered in absolution. "The Melody Dragon is the ultimate power that will destroy all those who dare stand against me. Its presence pales in comparison to no other machine or monster! Not even the greatest inventions that those thieves stole from me could compare to its power!" Lucia gestured outwards with her palms out once more to express her transformed ecstatic nature. "This is the true power of Melody!"
"Shit..." Naoto whispered after realizing that Ryo and Sumire's nanosuits were gone. "That thing absorbs nanosuits? How is that possible?"
Ryo and Sumire began stepping backward after the Melody Dragon sluggishly approached them priming its cerulean twin cannons on its shoulders. Lucia smiled in absolution after following her creation. "What's the matter, Sumire? Are you scared? Are you running away?"
"I'm not the one running away!" Sumire yelled. "You're the one doing that by wanting to destroy everything. You've completely lost it, Lucia. The people who weren't responsible don't deserve to suffer!"
"Such is the fate of those who expose themselves to such corporate vulgarity," Lucia clarified. "Along with you all who have subjected yourself to these lands hoping for peace. My hopes and dreams have ascended beyond those who created this miserable landscape. I shall bury you and everyone's beliefs in this world, and rend those who dare try to stand up to my rule!" She majestically spoke as the Melody Dragon roared alongside her.
Ryo, Sumire, and Naoto's lives were at the brink of loss with no hope of escape left for them. To topple a majestic colossus with the power to absorb their constructed powers with ease indicated that they had no means of approaching any forms of combat. They stumbled backward in the metallic hangar as the Melody Dragon continued to endlessly approach them.
With a machine so godly, the submission of the human and alien race seemed to glimmer in light overshadowed by darkness...