The innermost sector of Vicious Castle, located underneath the surface, was home to many of Sagittarius's connected powerhouses that fed energy to and from the continent of Aries. Direct power transfer from the collapsed relic utilized energy from the underground. The complicated and intricate system of passages and energy houses required a miniature fortress to fortify its defenses, preventing intruders from sapping power much like the Fon's intruders of the past.
"It's done," A brittle yet unpleasing voice spoke through one intruder underneath the underground sector. An automatic sliding door revealed Lucine, the vengeful crimson warrior holding a radio communicator in her left hand. "We'll meet you upside."
"Take your forces and pressure ground level," Lucine ordered. "Do not disappoint me."
"Yes, ma'am." The voice replied before cutting off communication.
Lucine stepped forward with her leather boots clacking against the metal floor. Her sheathed gunblade remained nestled on her back, bobbing and swaying side to side each time she strided forward. Her feathery metallic-plated armor was reminiscent of the days where she trained the future warriors of Planet Vicious. Each individual feather on her shortened cape swayed as she continued forward with her keen and observant expression. Her eyebrows slanted downward.
The amount of silence in the underground was almost painful; one could potentially hear their own thoughts or the constant ringing in their ears the more one remained underground, which was perfect for simple torture. Bright luminescent lights on the ceiling shined down on the spacious metal platform that she stepped through.
She eyed a control panel located in front of her, still several meters away from activating it by hand. After taking another step forward, a improbable gust of wind brushed against the tips of Lucine's red long hair. The automatic sliding door closed behind her. She stopped and slowly creaked her head to the left, believing something suspicious had occurred. She ignored it and approached the control panel once more, pressing her finger against a giant blue button.
Ziko, who attached himself on the corner of the room with a hooked claw, used both of his feet to push off against the wall with his serrated blade unsheathed. He rushed towards Lucine's head in the stealthiest way possible to incapacitate her without more bloodshed.
But Lucine's movements tore Ziko's plan apart. He miscalculated Lucine's ability to react to his attack. Without turning around, Lucine snatched the handle of her blade and lifted it slightly to reveal its sharp edge. Ziko's blade clashed against hers. Lucine's eyes rolled to her right as she exerted enough force to shove him off. Ziko flipped backwards and slid back to gain some distance from his target.
Lucine extended her blade towards the right, holding her position for several seconds. Feathers from her battle attire floated around her proximity and landed beside her feet. The shadows of her feathery cape and the position that she held made it clear that her heavenly nature had been replaced with a vengeful hellish nature. She slowly creaked her head to the left and turned around, grazing her blade against the ground.
"There you are..." Lucine's cold and blunt voice struck Ziko off guard, believing that a minuscule remnant of her beautiful and melodic personality remained. "Look how much you've grown. Yet you still fight for the ones that wished we hide from the embarrassment of our loss."
"That's what I thought at first," Ziko stated, remembering how he harbored a loss of faith after thinking of Lucine's position as impossible to rescue. "But someone gave me hope to carry on and continuing saving you. I didn't care anymore, but I changed. I know that deep down inside you, there's still that beautiful spirit who saved our planet when no one else would."
"Killing everything that's left inside me from who I was... is what is deep down inside me," Lucine insisted, slashing her blade downward. "Let me ask you something, boy. Do you believe in that despicable home whose false sense of justice steers nothing towards the path of progression? Do you believe in the people who raised you up and only brought you alive just to slug around without a purpose?"
"One of those people were you!" Ziko yelled. "And I'm tired of your bullshit! All you've done is cut us out of your life without knowing how much it would hurt us!" Ziko swept the back of his hand against air. "Are you truly that heartless, Lucine? Do you not care about the people that you once saved?!"
"Lucine... is dead," Lucine said, jabbing her blade against the ground. "My name is Lucia. And your question is unique. I think it's time to find out whether or not I truly care about you and the others."
"The others are dead!" Ziko shouted. "Everyone who raised you, all dead!"
Lucine's face remained straight and emotionless. Yet she expressed concerned by speaking their names. "You mean... Vayah, Senna, Bame-"
"All of them!" Ziko said, holding back tears. "Do you see what you've done?"
"What I've done?" Lucine slightly raised her voice. "What I have done? All of this nonsense began when the invaders came to our planet and burned it to the ground! I fight for our stead. I fight for all those who have lost. And not even your righteous leaders could take the time to make something from that destruction, let alone, become worthy champions of who we were?!"
"Those invaders that you're talking about... are in this war," Ziko said. "And right now, you are no better than them."
"Is that so..." Lucine whispered, shaking her head in disappointment. "Then so be it. If that is what you think, then I emplore you to defend your position with your pathetic life!" She brought her gunblade forward and created a combat stance that completely removed the elegance from her previous fighting style.
Ziko roared at the top of his lungs, firing a single crossbow bolt towards the middle of Lucine's forehead. Without any effort, Lucine deflected it with a simple rotation of her wrist, slicing through it before it could even touch her. As a mere distraction, Ziko rushed forward and attempted to cut low underneath Lucine's feet. However, Lucine effortlessly stopped Ziko's attack, sending a swift punishing kick towards Ziko's chin, sending him flipping back.
Lucine flipped her crimson hair back and exhaled a breath of disappointment. Ziko shouted once again and spat two poisonous darts towards Lucine's position. She effortlessly creaked her head to the side and deflected another. Ziko leaped into the air and somersaulted around Lucine. Her attempted to slice down on her shoulder. Lucine held her blade back and snatched Ziko's shin. She brought it down against the metal ground and slammed him to shut him down.
Ziko watched Lucine lightly grinning at him. "Is that truly the best that you can do?" Lucine said. "It seems I didn't teach you well enough."
"Don't... underestimate me, Lucine!" Ziko shouted, clamping his teeth down on a pin attached to his glove. An entire hail of sleeping darts laced with searing chemicals descended down the skies toward Lucine and Ziko's position. Ziko dodged back to avoid fire, and Lucine lifted her left hand up in the air. She fired a scorching blast from her arm cannon that incinerated the darts above her head. The other darts whizzed past her and landed on the ground.
"Interesting traps," Lucine complimented. "Who taught you that?"
"No more games, Lucine!" Ziko roared, heart nearly splitting at every single attack he dealt to her. "What happened to you? You... you saved me by being my beacon of hope... and now you're willing to throw it all away! Your music changed me! It made me actually feel something when no one else could!"
"It is an art..." Lucine quoted herself the day when he visited her in the middle of the night.
"Why toss it all away?! Who you were!?" Ziko asked.
"Because... everything that I was... is nothing but an anomaly!" Lucine shouted, dashing forward with her left hand in front. She snatched Ziko's forehead and rammed him down on the ground. She lifted the dazed Ziko above and rammed him down once more. "I am Lucia Melody, not some mewling coward who would rather defend the ones who raised you up and called you down to no avail! Everything that you knew from me... is gone."
"I know..." Ziko muttered with his speech patterns becoming fazed.
"You know?" Lucine asked.
"I know... that's not true," Ziko finished. "That beauty that enveloped me... still lies within you."
"You are such a fool." Lucine rejected.
"And if that's not true anymore... then do it," Ziko said. "Cut me down, cut me out of your life like you promised yourself. Plunge your blade into my chest and end it. Because frankly, a life full of lies... is a life not worth living. The power of your lie is enough to ruin me. To live a life full of this sorrow... is not my responsibility anymore. It is yours."
"Don't be a fool, boy!" Lucine shouted. "You still have a chance to-"
"No," Ziko rejected. "End it. Be the last of who my mentor, my lover, and my hopes were... and cut me down."
Lucine could fathom Ziko's abhorrent behavior; he laid his arms and legs out, seeking heaven by staring directly at the ceiling to embrace it. His hopeless face was unlike him. Lucine stared into his eyes and eventually his soul, searching for what little hope he had within him. But there was none, and this frustrated her. This was unlike who he was. The little boy that sought beauty as a means to escape, running towards every ray of light to find it... had completely vanished.
Lucine's face shriveled up in pain. "Don't give me that face..." She stammered. "Don't give me any of that... or I will kill you."
Ziko remained the same. His expression, his heart, his soul; lifeless. The futility of his ability to change his mindset and face continued to deeply meld Lucine's heart into an unforgettable twist. It just was not who he was, and it terrified her.
"That's enough." She forced out.
Ziko did not change.
"Change your face. Now!" She forced again.
He did not.
"Ziko, change it! Why are you not happy?!"
Nothing made him happy.
"Then die!" Lucine cried, lifting her gunblade near Ziko to execute him.
"Stop!" A voice cried, interrupting Lucine from killing Ziko. A chilling gust of air blew through Lucine's body, numbing her veins and brushing her feathers back. Her eyes tracked the voice, and she was beyond words and belief of who she had saw. Sumire entered the chamber armed with Vayah's sword and gauntlet infused with the power of the Glacial Crystal. Lucine remembered Ziko's opening words, how he met someone who changed how he had felt about Lucine's future. She was unfathomably disarrayed on how problematic she was against her plans.
"You..." Lucine's voice was low and filled with spite. "You're the one... that Ziko spoke of?"
Sumire stayed silent, minding her surroundings. She saw Ziko sprawled on the ground next to Lucine, defeated.
"Why..." Lucine lowered her blade to the ground and clenched her left fist. Her face shriveled up like a raisin filled with rage. "Why does it have to be you? Why are you so adamant about changing me? Why is it always you!?"
Sumire continued to remain quiet, extending Vayah's claymore out. She already knew Lucine knew the answer.
Lucine placed her left hand on her face, shrouding it from Sumire and Ziko. She began lightly chuckling. "How..." She began in a low tone. "How dare you? How dare you take the name of the Fon and taint it with your very own lies!? How dare you employ your own dilemma and turn my family against me!?"
"Oh, so now you care about them," Sumire spoke. "After this entire time, I've been telling you that I have been fighting with you and your family, and you never believed me. Now look where we are."
Lucine extended her gunblade towards her. "Since the start, you have been nothing but trouble. And you took time out of your pathetic life to help them?" She cackled. "You really think you're one of them? One of us?"
"I could ask you the same thing," Sumire said. "Fighting and nearly killing the one who believed in you? Does that make any sense to you?"
"I believe in my own agenda!" Lucine cried. "Now, if you truly want to defend these fools from the path that they should have taken, then so be it. I should have killed you the moment I saw you for the first time. Now I'll-" She froze, eyeing Sumire's figure and everything she had equipped on her. Her beady eyes opened widely in pure astonishment, aghast at what she witnessed. "What...? Where did you get those weapons? And the... the Glacial Crystal... inside you...?"
Sumire cocked her wrist back as she clenched Vayah's claymore firmly. She lifted Vayah's gauntlet and moved it near her face. "I think you know the answer to that already." She said.
"How can this be possible?" Lucine asked herself. "That is my crystal. That is what I'll use to take this entire pathetic world and plunge it toward the skies so they may all suffer! And I'll rip it out of your chest if that's the last thing I must do. I will-"
"Shut up, Lucine!" Sumire shouted at the top of her lungs. Lucine's startled face echoed annoyance. "You don't get it. You just don't get it! Your family, your friends, and all the people who believed in you have sacrificed their lives fighting for the same cause you have been. And you have the balls to stand there and tell me that I'm the problem? We have been through hell and back just for you... and this is how you repay us?"
"You don't know how I feel!" Lucine shouted. "You don't know what pain is, having a home taken away from you!"
"I do understand," Sumire whispered, tracing her hand below her stomach and pressed them extremely close to her private areas. Her dull eyes became lifeless as she purposefully remembered the violation of her body. "I do." Her voice trailed off in absolute dread.
Lucine, who had caught onto her gesture and what she had meant, froze from her pacing. Her irises expanded into pure insanity as she placed her hands on her temples. "No… what…? That can't be right," She muttered as she looked down at her legs. "You... you were..." She mumbled, refusing to accept the pain that Sumire went through.
"I know how it feels," Sumire repeated with a stern face. "I told you."
"It… it doesn't matter anymore! It is too late!" Lucine cried. "This is what I mean. The menace in your life deserves to be purged from existence. Every menace deserves this! Why can't you understand? Don't you live to see him die and pay for his actions in the cruelest way possible?"
"That isn't how I live by," Sumire explained, thinking about her father in her dreams. "I don't live to see him die. I live to prove to him that I can be a better person without him. I live to show him that no matter how much pain he inflicted on me, I can rise and become stronger. He can suffer knowing that nothing he did changed who I am now. I'm not running away. I'm accepting what he's done and carving a path of my own to survive."
"Survive...?" Lucine asked.
"This is what people live for!" Sumire shouted. "We live to become better people! Better than the ones who try to destroy our homes and tear our bonds away! We only fight because we have to! I fight now to prove to you that this is what it means to be human! And I guarantee you that this is what your people would have done if they hadn't died!"
Lucine swung her arm aside to gesture Sumire's worthless speech. "That's enough!" She shouted back. With her right hand, Lucine unsheathed her royal gunblade exclusively crafted for her. She brandished it and jabbed it against the metallic floor, denting it and keeping it in place as the edge penetrated the metal. She tossed aside Ziko with her foot sending him flying back towards the side of the arena.
"For this world to learn from its cruel mistakes, one must show the cruel oppressors the gates to true power. And I am that power! Everything in this world shall function under my forbearance. I am its chosen one destined to free the oppressed from the cruelty of the people!" She gestured with her left hand, flapping it with her eyes fixated on the Glacial Crystal within Sumire's chest needed to power her particle accelerator "Hand it over."
"No," Sumire said. "Not unless you stop."
"Your words are useless now," Lucine explained. "Nothing you say can change anything, Sumire. It's over."
With the overbearing negativity from Lucine's lifeless words endlessly piercing through her heart, Sumire's spirit began to drastically wane into corruption. Lucine's words were striking her with such force to make her ridicule her life choices. She began chuckling at Lucine's constant denial of logic, as she found her words unable to touch even a stranger. Nothing she said could cure anyone. The same applied to Ryo for nine years, and the same applied to her father. The same applied to Maven, and now, the same applied to Lucine. Her efforts were truly futile, and Sumire's insanity over that fact began to engulf her in rage. She dropped the core of the particle accelerator to the ground and shrouded her head in spite.
"So that's it then?" Sumire mumbled. "You won't even give me a chance? Haha. I've spent countless years holding in these emotions. My words never meant anything. My mind was always at the wrong place and time. I tried to reason with you. And now, you and your mind refuse no matter what?"
Sumire and Lucine stood against each other in the treacherous final conflict. Sumire's heart knew that if her words did not impact, then she needed to find an alternative solution. "Fine," Sumire stated. "Fuck it. If words are useless to change you, then I'll just have to beat you so badly that you'll change. Then you'll probably listen to me in that stubborn little head of yours."
Without a single second to relinquish in Sumire's doubt, Lucine cackled at the mere sight of Sumire's encroaching words. "You truly are interesting... Sumire. If that is what you want, then so be it," Lucine finished, lifting her gunblade into a combat stance that involved pointing her edge directly at Sumire. "But don't be mistaken. You shouldn't compare our powers as equal! I created the suits that you wear! I created everything that you've used! Do you really think you can stop me?"
"I never wanted to fight you," Sumire said, activating her nanosuit and brandishing Vayah's claymore. "But you leave me no choice."
"Fair enough," Lucine said, activating her battle attire. In retrospective, it was a personalized nanosuit's skull-like helmet visor. The pale-white goddess's mask for her visor shrouded the insanity of her true intentions, contrasting with her primary goals. Feathers fell down her shoulders as she held her gunblade up. "Perhaps I'll spare you instead. I'll gladly give you a front-row seat to view the destruction I'll ensnare this pathetic world into."
Sumire remained silent, knowing that this would be the final battle to settle the score with Lucine. This was life or death, and everything past this would either result in planetary destruction or solemn peace. She swept her right leg back and edged her shoulder to ready her next move. Ryo... don't worry, she thought. I'll protect you. I'll end this, right here, and right now.
Lucine snatched her gunblade and infused it in scarlet energies with her magical fuser. She raised her blade into the air like a noble paladin would, calling upon myriads other miniature one-eyed robots that fired laser beams and missiles of their own. With the robots circulating the arena, Lucia swung her blade to the side to commence the battle.
"You'll get to witness every single insignificant human and alien perish. I'll start by defeating you, and then you'll bear witness to my great legacy! Death to Aries and its people!" Lucia cried.