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The world stopped for a moment. Only one moment… but it was enough.
It was enough.
Ren panted clutching the body of his beloved goddess, the one bearing the name of Tasogare, the one he lovingly called Marie . All around him laid the strewn bodies - oh god, so many bodies of his friends, so much blood, Ren wanted to faint, howl, scream, who allowed this to happen, why, whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy-
Suddenly realizing how quickly the new Law was expanding, he cursed and snapped his fingers. He was not a Hadou - a fucking Hegemony, Hegemony he earned through blood and curses and fight no one thought he’d win - God for nothing, and living with those two fuckers Mercurius and Heydrich for so long taught him couple of tricks how to impose his own Law while still managing to not clash directly with the other Hegemonies like Marie.
Marie…
Ren bowed over her body and sobbed, liquid time falling out of his eyes, as if that would bring her back. The reality was, it wasn’t ever going to be enough . For a moment, he wished he’d died like Mercurius, the snake bastard - jumping in Hajun’s way as he took a swipe at already weakened Marie, the second one who’d fallen as he desperately fought to loop time again and again to trap the asshole, but it wasn’t enough, it hadn’t been enough. He wished he’d died like Heydrich - the Golden Beast to the very end, he’d gone down first, snarling and biting, nearly clawing Hajun’s eyes out as his Law Du sollt - Dies Irae granted him enough power to attack from all sides (and Ren wasn’t going to think about Kei, and Beatrice, and Anna Maria, and Rea, and Lisa, and Kai, andand andand- ).
Nothing could bring the two of them back. Nothing could bring Marie back. But… but there was something he could preserve.
Ren stood up, determinedly glaring at the distance. He was still in Japan, and Japanese - he’ll protect his only home as best as he could. Under no circumstances would he allow that fucker Hajun to touch his home again - it was too precious to Ren.
“ Setsuna... ”
Ren flinched, and gasped as he saw the fallen monstrous lion, the terrifying Golden Beast Mephistopheles, open his mouth and move his tongue. Reinhard Heydrich - Ougon - was far too gone to actually be able to speak, but Hadou Gods could still use telepathy, and the guy was apparently hellbent on not dying completely before saying his final words.
“ Take… them… him… her… Setsuna… take us... ”
“Asshole, like I wouldn’t,” Ren gritted out, reaching out towards the other Hadou God’s Atziluh manifestation - all of humanity he could muster, trapped in the gorgeous golden prison that was made to both awe and terrify the onlooker. Ren was far past that point, having seen it far too often to care - and most importantly, he could fuse all of those fallen there and preserve them. “All of those that belong to us - all of ours - I’ll protect us all.”
“ Karl... ”
“Yeah, dickwad Father too,” Ren choked out a bitter laughter, seeing the torn remains of the two snakes, the only thing remaining of the Fourth Heaven’s ruler. Despite Reinhard going down first, Mercurius had been in a far worse state, due to the sheer rage Hajun had unleashed upon the man as he looped him again and again through the attacks while searching for the new Ruler’s soft spot.
There was little love lost between Mercurius and Ren, despite Ren literally owing his whole existence to the man: first as his Ahnernbe, and then as his substitute, born out of Lotus Reichhart’s soul and Mercurius’ blood. He could not - would not - leave the asshole behind, though: he and his heart, the twin snakes of the Caduceus, will help him protect that tiny corner of the world he could call his home.
With shaky hands, he took Marie’s dress, tattered and torn as it was, and gently looped it around his own practically naked body as he watched the body of the woman he loved slowly disintegrate - she could not exist anymore, not with the way the new Ruler Hajun had taken her out. Next came the twin snakes - they easily answered his demand for obedience, sensing their previous master’s blood in Ren, and slithered up through the dress’ holes and edges to coil themselves all over Ren’s back before finally laying to rest their heads on his shoulders in a eldritch-like version of a scarf. Mercurius’ body was already gone, and Reinhard was also fading out, the strength completely spent, so Ren scrambled to get everyone in Gladsheimr out and preserved.
The tears of aquamarine time kept raining as he painstakingly pulled out Kai, Michael, Lisa, Anna Maria, and Kristoff out of the golden cradle they’d all been fused into - all so close to death, it seemed almost unreal to be able to save their final breaths until Ren could get them to live again. But at least they were whole - Kei, Beatrice, Isaak, Rea, Shirou and Eri were literally half-disintegrated , and the only option Ren had was to quickly fuse them together in pairs that would be least volatile (Eri with Shirou, Kei with Beatrice, and Isaak with Rea) to keep his friends together. Schreiber, Spinne and Bey were far beyond anything he could do though - there wasn't enough of them left to even assemble anything; their bodies completely pulverized and souls annihilated.
“Stop crying, you dumbass,” a raspy female voice chided him, and Ren startled. “They do not need your tears anymore, Zarathustra.”
“For a second I thought Reinhard came back to haunt me,” Ren chuckled as he turned to the only person who looked to be in any solid living condition - the Rubido, Samiel Zentaur, Seat Nine of Longinus Dreizehn Orden, Eleonore von Wittenburg, in all her wounded glory. “Don’t do it again, Samiel, for fuck’s sake.”
“I won’t do it if you don’t behave like an utter dumbass,” Eleonore countered with a wry smirk on her half-burned face. She was bleeding all over the place, the blood more gold than red, but Ren could easily see none of the wounds were immediately fatal - it would be the death by exsanguination. “Now hurry and reincarnate us.”
“You sure you want me to meddle with your reincarnation?” Ren raised a questioning eyebrow, coughing out droplets of his own blood. “Me, the Mercurius substitute?”
“Shut your trap,” Eleonore huffed with no real anger behind her words. “You and Tasogare won against Lord Heydrich fair and square, and don’t think I haven’t seen you freezing time enough to give him and your bastard of a creator enough time to counter-attack. You may be a bastard's son, but you do have your sense of honor. Just hurry up - I wanna burn that brat Hajun so bad, and I’m in no state to do it right now.”
“ Hai, hai ,” Ren sloppily saluted her and went to it.
Summoning Bois de Justice , his and Marie’s Ahnernbe, he quickly and efficiently severed Eleonore’s soul from her body, which instantly evaporated, and grabbed it into the protective hold of his own Atziluh, Res novae - Also sprach Zarathustra . The reddish-gold soul squirmed slightly - despite his best efforts, Bois de Justice was still a nasty weapon, and always injured the psyche to a certain level - but Ren quickly sent it on its way, breathing the body of a gorgeous woman into existence and placing the soul into it.
With the others, he dared not do such a thing - their souls were already too close to deterioration to completely reincarnate them like he did with Eleonore. Therefore, he killed them in a mundane fashion by chopping off their heads - and boy didn’t that bring back memories of the Swastika openings - and constructing the bodies for them, turning them all into pseudo-deities.
Is it a good idea, though? Ren asked himself, fingers hovering over Shirou’s new face. It was as close to the original as he could make it while still allowing Eri to shine through. More Gudous - Transcendences - will not change much. In fact they may even tax me more -
“FUCK!”
An equivalent of an A-bomb slammed into his side, sending him straight to the ground, nearly completely destroying Kristoff’s new body.
“ Metsujin Messo! ”
Oh, so was this how Hajun would play? Ren could feel the world changing as the Throne rewrote Amantes Amentes: Omnia Vincit Amor , and struggled to hold out with his own Law as the enormous energy slammed against his walls of frozen time -
- and dissipated.
“Huh?”
Was… had Hajun… what was going on?
Prodding out with his senses, Ren’s jaw fell to ground as the realization hit him.
Hajun’s Law failed to take completely, and he didn’t notice.
“That fucker , I can’t believe,” Ren breathed out in disbelief, recalling the conversation he had with Mercurius in Paris a small eternity and another universe ago. They’d spoken briefly of the Samsara cult and their desire to destroy the Throne system, and Mercurius implied Marie’s potential successors had absolutely no idea how the Throne system worked… but this was just outrageous!
How in the universe do you not notice the fact you Law is not behaving like it should? Was the guy that self-centred and narcissistic?
“Hey, Setsuna.”
Ren turned his head to look at Eleonore - or the woman with Eleonore’s soul and memories. She wasn’t a perfect copy of the original Eleonore, but that glare in her eyes was more than enough to reassure Ren it was still her in the new body.
“What do you plan on doing?”
“Hold out,” Ren shrugged, waving his hand over the bodies and finally, finally connecting his friends’ souls to the new bodies. “Look for Hajun’s weakness. Figure out how to defeat him. My power is not offensive in nature, so I need to know everything before I go to bash his skull in.”
“You’ll need his Apoptosis for that,” Eleonore raised an eyebrow, and Ren huffed out a cynical laughter.
“I’m not going to be moving around to find them, you know. My first priority is protecting what’s left of Marie’s world.” Here he made a pause as the new idea popped up in his head. “Want to help me?”
“No,” was the swift, if disappointing answer from the stern woman. “I only take orders from Lord Heydrich.”
Ren could not contain the sigh of disappointment, and Eleonore smirked at him.
“I never said I wouldn’t help, just that I won’t be taking orders from you. Besides, I’d die being stuck here,” she made a vague hand-wave at the last corner of the utopia that was the Suwahara City’s suburbs. “I can’t stand places like this. I’ll be on the lookout for Apoptosis, and when I find them, I’ll send them over to you.”
“Deal,” Ren instantly accepted, relieved. He could not afford to move around too much - it would draw Hajun’s attention, and that was the last thing he needed. “The rest of us will be holding the fort here - time for me to put that title of Guardian of Eternal Moment to a good use.”
He had never imagined using his Atziluh in this way, but as long as it kept what he cherished safe and away from Hajun’s poisonous touch…
“You better,” Eleonore snorted, turned around, started walking away, and then stopped. “Speaking of names, what’s your new name?”
Ren blinked, a little confused, until he realized - of course, the old names would not work, because they were of the previous world. What name would be suitable…
His gaze fell on the twin snakes resting peacefully on his shoulders.
“Tenma. Tenma Yato.”
The demon of sixth heaven, the snake deity of the night.
“Not bad,” he could not see her face, but Ren could hear the broad grin in her voice. “Mikado. Mikado Ryuumei for me.”
Gate-guardian, bright dragon.
“Little on the nose there, Samiel?”
“Like you’re any better, Zarathustra. Till next time.”
“Till next time,” Ren bowed his head to the rapidly disappearing woman and, after taking a deep breath, turned around to see what else he needed to do to reawaken his friends.
He had a feeling this whole ‘taking down Hajun’ would take a while.
Oh well. He certainly had collected enough patience to wait it out.
Besides, if the choice rested between defeating that demon and laying waste on everything, Ren knew what he’d choose. He was a naive child no more - he knew when to give, and when to take and hold with all his strength.
“Just you wait, Hajun,” Ren muttered. “I will defeat you, one way or another.”
“ Even if I have to sacrifice every atom of myself. ”