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The Greeed had really been smart this time. Gamel and Dr. Maki had worked together, creating a Yummy with both Gamel's signature toughness and Maki's deadliness.
Eiji's having trouble fighting it. He'd started off with TaToBa, but as the fight progressed he'd shifted into PuToTyra. Hina can only watch from the sidelines as the Yummy struck devasting blow after blow on PuToTyra's armor.
And then, a claw of horror rakes her heart as she sees the Yummy's talons insert themselves all the way into Eiji, piercing through the white outer covering. One moment is all it takes for the transformation to cancel and for Eiji to fall.
A mixture between a choked gasp of pain and a strangled cry of shock escapes the brunette's lips as his knees buckle and he crashes to the pavement, rapping his head smartly on the ground.
Hina screams and runs to Eiji's fallen body, kneeling on the ground beside him as blood pours out like an unending river. The wound is grotesque, nothing like she'd ever seen before. Blood is still coming out. It's not stopping why is it not stopping? Her hands are stained with Eiji's blood, so fresh and red and stinging that it makes Hina want to throw up and never look at it again.
But she can't. Because it's Eiji.
Date is beside him, desperately checking for vital signs of life from the young Rider. It doesn't help that practically a lake of blood is pooling out of Eiji, drying on the ground. The traveling doctor grasps Eiji's hands, so cold he nearly recoils. The pulse isn't there.
Date doesn't look at Hina as he says in defeat that Eiji isn't coming back.
*
No. He can't be gone.
Eiji, so cheerful and bright, like a ray of sunshine, brightening her life when her brother wasn't here. Gone?
Masaka.
Is this his fate? To die, before he could see Ankh free from the dirty clutches of his imposter? So unfair, so tragic, that Hina could have sworn that her heart had been wringed to shreds?
She stares down at Eiji's broken body. Coated with so much red it stings her eyes, making them water. She doesn't know if she's crying anymore.
Stop, she begs. Stop flowing. Stop flowing out of him and making him die further, if he wasn't dead enough. The face that once danced with the bright smile of cheerfulness and the eyes that once swum with the beams of warmth are both cold and dead.
Even the purple Medals couldn't save him this time.
She grabs Eiji's hand with newfound desperation "Don't go." she says, she pleads, she begs. Eiji doesn't move an inch. Did he not hear her?
"You can't go." She's surprised that her voice hasn't broken yet, like the heart thumping wildly inside her.
Eiji didn't or couldn't or wouldn't get up.
Hina lets go. If Eiji was dead then she wanted to give him the rest he's earned so much.
She wondered what Eiji was thinking. Did he feel a phantom wind, born of Ankh's wings ruffling his hair gently? Did he finally taste the sweet, sugary flavour of aisu against his lips, something he'd been denied from so long ago by the forces of purple? Did he hear the cries of his friends, his family calling and begging him to come back?
Maybe he did. But Hina had no way of finding out now.
Because Eiji's gone.