Chapter Text
Aesthetic cried out as his body hit the ground, sparks flying off him as he pushed himself to his feet and blurred backwards with a dash, just in time for a purple saber to slam into the ground where he had been, debris flying everywhere. A mistake, a tiny one. He dashed forwards. Foot flying into the ‘God of Destruction’ wearing his friend’s face.
His foot slammed into the side of the glowing saber. He had to push the advantage. Spinning in the air and unleashing a barrage of kicks strong enough to keep him suspended as ‘Omega’ blocked every single one of them before blasting him in the chest with a buster shot. Sending him sprawling backwards once more.
It took him longer to get up this time, Omega’s delighted laughter ringing in his audials. The infected soldiers all around continued their march onwards towards another foe as Omega toyed with his food.
It didn’t make any sense. The Force Metal in his body. Full Specs Plus. Life Up. Shield Up. He was a tough fight even for Zero and X (His core clenched when he thought of poor X and how he was taking the new war. They had fought for so long to cure the Sigma virus and now it was all starting again so soon after they thought it was over.)
Giga City had him fighting against power from the stars. Redips had declared himself the ruler of the universe, and had fallen to their power. Zero himself had this exact body during that moment, yet somehow Omega was putting out even more power than Zero had back when he was actually using Force Metal. Before all but some scraps were destroyed.
Sure, he was never as strong a frontline fighter, but he was still an SA ranked Maverick Hunter. He had been around since before Sigma had even been a concept! Was he outdated, yes. But raw experience should have let him close the gap. Yet…
He dodged out of the way of another saber swipe. His custom buster firing into Omega’s chest, only for his eyes to widen as his opponent didn’t flinch, powering through the charged shot and slicing at him. The saber would have cleaved him in two if it wasn’t for the shields he was still powered by. Not that it didn’t burn painfully at him.
“Dang it!” He cursed, ducking under another buster shot and blurring backwards once again, only to gasp as Omega grabbed his lingering hair and slammed a fist into his face. He was sent flying back, a backflip, two backflips. He was like a windmill, spinning over and over until his face slammed into the ground at high speeds.
“...” He was silent for a moment before groaning. He couldn’t win. Once more, a foe had appeared and he couldn’t win. He couldn’t even play support like normal. Omega was completely beyond his ability to hack remotely. He’d need direct access to his systems and that wasn’t possible in the heat of battle.
He was prey. A doomed fighter desperately buying time for the designated heroes to arrive. X had always been here, but Zero had been forcibly awakened to fight once more. His old body was stolen and that’s how this entire situation started. The Mother Elf was under the control of whoever was controlling this ‘Omega’. Empowering the body.
Right, the Mother Elf. This impossible strength made sense. Omega was being strengthened by a program that essentially controlled an entire alternate dimension. Cyberspace bent to her will.
Could he…Hack the Mother Elf back to the side of the hunters? He had always been a good hacker. He could hack Sigma. He could hack Redips. He could hack anything. Except X or Zero. For reasons he still could never comprehend. His knowledge of code was as close to ‘absolute’ as one could get.
Maybe he could-
He was forced to abandon the thought as Omega got tired of him laying on the ground and kicked his head.
“Up. Bowing before your messiah as you should is one thing, but I demand you stand. We were having so much fun! Where’s that enthusiasm from before?”
“...It left the moment I realized I couldn’t win, you freak.” He ground out, forcing himself back to his feet. The heavy metal boots that held his thrusters clanking against the stone ground. He briefly considered taking out his own backup saber, only to realize that was an awful idea. He had never practiced with it. In the face of Omega? Any attempt to swing would likely get him bisected due to the lack of technique.
“...Heh. Hehehehehahahahaha! Of course you can’t win! Your messiah would not bend the knee to a mortal like yourself. Not even those heroes of you hunters dare stand against me. Cowards, the lot of them. You though…you have some grit to you! A navigator. Standing up against the messiah all alone. Why, it’s fit for a story! Of course, not a story with a happy ending, but a story nonetheless, you should be proud! You get to die at the hands of your savior!”
He didn’t want to die though. Not like this. He wanted to die in a bed next to X, content that the world was at peace and they could finally rest without needing to fight any longer. He wanted to slowly fade away as he shut himself off for the last time.
He didn’t want to die on the field of battle. He wanted that world of peace. The world he’d been running towards with all his heart with his husband. He didn’t want to die like this. He wanted to see that world of peace! Where conflict was solved with words or even sport, rather than bloodshed and soldiers! Anything was better than this!
His soul thrummed as he picked himself up, feeling it in his core. His DNA Soul, the core of his being. Something was resonating with it. Was it Cyberspace? He’d already used his hyper mode, so his connection to it was limited.
…He could wonder about it later.
“You…You’re just like all the others. You know that? A bit more full of yourself, a bit stronger, stronger than I am that’s for sure…But you know what makes you the same as every other maverick I’ve ever seen? You’re gonna die someday, Omega. You’re gonna die, and when you do, people will cheer.”
He ducked, feeling his hair separate from his head as the saber cut where his neck had been. He slid to the side away from a vertical slash, and then it was over.
A rising slash clipped him with enough force to send him upwards, he had no control over his body, and couldn’t initiate his dash after Omega’s fourth slash sliced through both his shields and his feet.
The fifth slash took off his arm.
Aesthetic looked to the side as pain filled his vision. He was going to die. Ranbu, a combination of saber slashes that were so fast and chained together in such a way that it didn’t overheat the blade.
He never stood a chance to begin with. He didn’t have to stand a chance.
“AES!”
X had arrived. His husband, his love, the one person that he held in higher regard than anyone. His pillar, his motivation to keep doing good. He was here.
“X…Sorry…” He managed to send out as a message as the sixth slash of Omega’s combination bisected him.
The seventh slash, the Ryuuenjin. He didn’t even feel it.
But he knew it happened as his core malfunctioned due to being cut in half. His eyes began to slide in different directions. A bright light erupting from his now exposed chest, as an explosion consumed him. Disintegrating every piece of physical matter.
When it faded, all that was left was a glowing light. His very essence. He was too advanced to die from something as trivial as a physical body dying. The soul remained, his DNA soul. His very being, a Cyber Elf.
“I can’t fight anymore X…it’s all up to you.”
His voice echoed through the air as his spirit floated upwards, eying the Mother Elf in the distance keeping the army controlled. X and Zero could handle Omega. They were too powerful to go down. Too skilled. The Mother Elf…that was his domain. The domain of code.
He floated forwards, feeling something tug at his essence. Towards the darkened mother of conventional Cyber Elves. Crashing into the leader of the army, and using the lingering power of his Hyper Mode, opened a portal to Cyberspace, dragging the elf inside.
“You…submit…” The Mother Elf’s voice was distorted and wrong. Controlled, there was no sapience there anymore. It was just a tool.
“Can’t. I still have a job to do. I’m a hunter, you know what those are…I need to take you down. You were created, you can be unmade in the same way.”
He was confident, he knew he had the capability.
He shouldn’t have spoken though. Shouldn’t have given the courtesy. His Cyberspace body flickered as he gasped. A wave of pain erupting inside him as his innate resistance to alteration that allowed him to survive even the Sigma Virus faltered. “T-That’s…I-Impossible…So fast?!” He gasped out feeling his body change. The code that now made up his existence, entirely powered by this alternate realm was being altered against his will. Trying to mutate him into a stronger form, take over his mind.
The body could go. The mind…he had to keep his mind. He couldn’t allow it to be altered. X was still out there, he refused to go down until X was safe!
Aesthetic stepped forwards, shoving his hand into the Mother Elf. If she was going to hack him, he was going to hack her! He had the advantage. As long as he removed the control code, the Mother Elf could be restored, and this war would end! He was the only one who could! He had to push through the pain. Push through his body changing.
“You’re…different…” The corrupted, corroded voice in his head said. The Mother Elf noted. Analysing the Reploid that was trying to alter her.
“...Shut up. I’m trying to free- Agh!” Pain simulation shot up. He was feeling every injury ten fold. No, it was rising fast. Twelve. Fifteen. Twenty. He couldn’t even shut off his sensors, he had to focus.
“Not yet…” He couldn’t rely on his ability to change his settings to block this out. He had to focus and block it out with pure will. “Not yet! I’ve gotta…Gotta…!”
His arm reached deeper. Deeper still, into the bowels of the Mother Elf’s existence, grabbing onto something that Did. Not. Belong. An affront to whatever deities existed in the world, the power, the code, to control a sentient being. He tugged on it, loosening it. He tugged again. It came out an inch.
His arm disappeared.
His.
His arm disappeared.
“What…?” His body was fading away. The Mother Elf, no. The Dark Elf. Something that was erasing him didn’t deserve to be called a mother. “Y-You can’t. This is my-my soul! You can’t delete it!” What would happen to him?! Cyberspace was the afterlife! All dead reploids went there! If she deleted his Cyber Elf, the manifestation of his DNA soul…Would he even get an afterlife?! He couldn’t let that happen! X was still out there! X! He had to focus on X or he’d never be able to resist!
The digital reality around him warped as his mind fought back against his very concept being erased.
“X…! I won’t…Leave him alone! Not until…Not until that peace we fought so hard for is achieved!” It burned so much. The pain of being slowly erased was agonizing, he could barely even think about anything other than X. X. X. Focus. Resist. X needed you.
His therapist had always said his focus on his husband was unhealthy. Who’s laughing now?! It was him, he was laughing, maniacally. Trying to mentally rip the Dark Elf apart. To tear out that control. To stop this war, to bring back peace.
He controlled cyberspace. It was his right, his power. He forged it in Giga City. The same power that let him hack and control a physical god, the same power that let him stick with X during the first Maverick War. The same power that was tearing apart cyberspace at the seams. Cracks in reality forming. This alternate realm that could alter reality itself was crumbling around the two. A man who refused to die until his husband was safe, and a reality warping computer program that was being controlled by a madman.
Aesthetic ripped his other arm out. Pulling out the raw code that dared control the Dark Elf. “X…X I did it…You’ll be…so…proud of me…” He murmured. His digital form flickering, lowering slowly as his power ran out. The deletion was too far, even his soul couldn’t keep going.
“Aesthetic…Thank…You…” The Dark- The Mother Elf thanked. In reality, the army of Mavericks all ceased at once as the being controlling them forced them to stop. Aesthetic heard a voice, somewhere, trying to yell and control the Mother Elf. He couldn’t fathom it anymore. He was deteriorating.
“...Rest…You’ve done…enough.”
Enough? X was still out there. X was…The mavericks were stopped. He trusted X to deal with Omega. Then that means…It was over. The Elf Wars were over. He had done it. He had done it…He brought back peace.
“X…X! Live…!”
The world faded away from him. His digital form slipping out of this reality, and into another as Cyberspace closed around him. Healing itself.
—---------------------------------------------------
“...Hmm?”
A goddess had to watch over the world, it was her duty. It was the duty of the goddesses to watch over the planet, over Umamusume, their children. The souls from another world were a recurring intrusion in this world, and they were given physical forms, turned into Umamusume, ready to run and try to reach their dreams.
Behind Darley Arabian, a flickering light had appeared out of seemingly nowhere, faintly fluttering down until she reached out her hand. Catching the tiny light. A soul, a bizarre soul that she had never seen anything like. Almost like looking at one of those ‘televisions’ that the humans had created. Flickering and unstable, incomplete. No, rather, it was damaged. A damaged soul, from a place unknown, different from the normal souls that were reincarnated.
Yet life still lurked within the flickering soul. A defiant determination to not die, to see something. Even when the world itself seemed to reject it, the soul clung to life, flickering in and out of existence.
X. X. the thought of a being named ‘X’ continued to repeat from the limited consciousness.
“My…what a brave little soul you are. Clinging to life even in such an unfortunate state. Calm, you will live.” Her hand gently rose and covered the flickering light for a moment. A flash emitting as she did her best to stabilize the life.
She removed her hand and stared down. The tiny light expanded, and expanded some more, until it formed an incomplete image of a person. The soul was…partially restored, but it wasn’t like any soul she had ever seen. This wasn’t a human. But it wasn’t from that world either. It couldn’t be turned into something new.
But with the life restored to the boy, she could finally properly read him. Her hand gently raised to the still flickering form, its eyes not seeming to track her. Too focused on the thought of ‘X’.
Thoughts raced, history passed through her mind in the time it took an Umamusume to blink. Incomplete knowledge, but knowledge enough. A different world, and a brave soul that fought to keep the peace over and over, even seeming to have changed the course of the world itself.
This soul wasn’t meant to exist in that world. It was an anomaly. Changing ‘fate’ with its existence. Unknowingly perhaps, but it didn’t belong there. This soul didn’t belong here either. But…Seeing a life like that, centuries spent in an endless fight. Always wanting to stop, to give up, but never doing so because the world needed people willing to fight.
Darley Arabian couldn’t help but respect the bravery of the girl. She might not have ever had the time to look within, but she did. She would be happier like this. A reward for an endless fight.
“Go, my daughter. Live, live among your new sisters. Live not as you were ‘meant’ to, but as I have gifted you. May you find the everlasting peace you fought so long for.”
She reached out, gently compressing the soul back into its tiny light form, and released it towards the planet. An Umamusume would be born unlike any other. The dream of peace fueling her…and the love for her husband keeping her memories intact, it seemed.
“How curious…I’ll have to keep an eye out for that world. Perhaps there are others that deserve this treatment?”