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A figure flies at him, the moment he exits the portal. Ace catches them by the arm with ease, and it takes him a moment to process what he’s seeing.
Her hair is gold and straight, and her eyes are a deep red, and her face is aged but just as beautiful.
And utterly undeniable.
“Nago?” He asks. Neon dangles from his grip, and he hastily drops her. She hands with ease.
“Hey, Ace,” she says. “Welcome home.”
“How… are you here,” Ace asks, his voice cracking on the edges.
“We knew we couldn’t leave you alone.”
Ace turns. Michinaga is utterly unchanged by the years save for green veins twisting through too-thin skin. He looks unbothered but he’s always been easy yet impossible to read. Ace reaches out a hand, then lowers it hastily.
“I…”
Hands wrap around him from behind. They’re warm and by now Ace can predict the voice that whispers against his neck.
“You aren’t alone, Ace,” Keiwa says.
Ace’s body gives out on him, and for the first time in a very long time, he sobs. But there is warmth all around him.
The world is saved, and he is not alone.
When the Jyamato rose, things began to splinter. Many humans fled to the digital realm, but others stayed. Where those old Jyamato that rose up were broken, Daichi’s were whole, and the tide began to turn.
Nature covers a beautiful future earth. Ace’s temple has only grown.
It’s hard to believe.
“Things aren’t perfect,” Neon says. “The Metaverse people are exactly as we expected, but some of them are starting to visit. To live.”
“Do you visit often?”
“Well,” Neon says. “We are technically one of them.”
Ace nods. His bed is physical. He has a place to stay instead of wandering and empty reality.
He thinks at some point he’ll remember, but the times are so very different that he’s struggling.
Keiwa kisses his neck.
Ace remembers watching him die, helping people evacuate. There was very little resembling a body to burn and put to rest. Ace remembers sitting there, holding onto his beliefs even as they failed and fell apart. Sara screamed at him, to bring Keiwa back. Sobbing in Neon’s arms.
It was Neon who said he couldn’t.
“But mostly they see us as gods, these days,” he says. “We found ways to live with you, I guess it fits.”
“The both of us are more like demons,” Michinaga says.
“Is there a difference?” Neon asks.
“It’s literally true, in my case,” Keiwa says.
“It’s not true, in Buffa’s.”
“They call me the god of death,” Michinaga says.
“So, not a demon,” Ace says. He’s got Michinaga’s hand in his, and it’s warm despite the way he now looks more like a corpse.
“I guess not,” Michinaga mumbles. He’s still so cute.
Ace remembers when his immortality finally broke him. He’d admitted, eventually. That the plants were back. That they were hurting him.
That he didn’t want to become a monster, so they better kill him if it happened. Keiwa promised that he would. That he’d protect him in the way Michinaga asked, a look between them of utter understanding.
Keiwa was dead by the time it happened. Neon was the one to do it. She was never the same, after.
Ace closes his eyes.
“I think I need to rest,” he says. “Before I explore this world you made for me.”
“Then rest,” Keiwa says. “We’re right here.”
Ace nods.
When he wakes, he will remember making this world with them. He will remember how many people lived, and lived well. How much later the rise of the end of the world hit.
He will remember never turning into a shadow of himself from exhaustion.
When he dreams, he says goodbye. To the phantoms of his loved ones in a time where they all, his chosen Riders, and Punkjack, and Nadge-Sparrow, and Tsumuri, faded to dust and greens and blood to the backdrop of tragedy.
(By some twist of fate, Tsumuri lasted the longest. They watched the world fall together and one day, she disappeared entirely.
it wasn’t long after that color left him.)
“We did it, in the end,” he says. “It only took one more chance. A world where everyone can be happy.”
And when he wakes, they’re still there.