"I've... always been pretty useless."
Purple crystal had consumed the better part of Shu Ouma's face. Sensation was leaving his body, limb by limb. He knew that if he held on just a little longer, he could separate Eve from Inori completely. So no matter how much it hurt, no matter how terrified he was, his resolve held like stone.
He looked up at Inori, stunned and frozen before him, and forced out a smile.
"It's because I met you, Inori, that I finally found who I really am."
"Shu, don't do this! Your sister will be heartbroken!"
You self-righteous idiot!
Inori screamed at him, grief and rage tangled together, trying to make him stop. But her body still wouldn't obey. Eve's hold hadn't fully broken.
"Inori, I'll take her with me to the edge of the Apocalypse's world. That way Eve can be sealed forever." Shu's smile was gentle. In his mind, dying for the person he admired most and the sister he loved most, even giving his life for the sake of the whole world, was the most beautiful death imaginable.
"Shu! Stop it! Stop, please! No..."
Inori's expression shattered. Tears spilled from her eyes. She threw everything she had into wrenching free of the Void hand locked onto her, but it clung like a shackle, immovable.
Mana Ouma erupted with a force of will beyond anything she had ever shown. For her beloved brother, her courage blazed bright enough to break through Eve's restraints. The ode to humanity is the ode to courage; the greatness of humanity is the greatness of courage. In that moment, Mana's noble spirit conquered the nightmare that had haunted her for so long.
"Sis...ter?"
They looked exactly alike, but Shu still knew. The person standing there now was his sister, Mana Ouma.
"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, sis..."
Shu's tears came too. He cried out until his voice broke, years of buried emotion finally pouring free. He wanted to apologize to Mana. He wanted to tell her so many things. You're not a monster. You're the kindest, gentlest sister I've ever had.
"Back then... what I said to you... I'm sorry. I've always wanted to tell you in person, Mana. I'm sorry."
"Do you think I care about that? Shu, let go!"
Mana's grip was weakening.
She could feel it. Eve was almost separated from her body and Inori's.
"It's alright, sis. This is my sin. Let me carry it."
Shu stopped crying. The strength and clarity in his expression made it hard for Mana to reconcile this young man with the boy who used to trail behind her like a lost puppy. Not long ago he had still been a cowardly kid whose only ambition was chasing after his idol. His growth was unmistakable. Having someone as forceful as Inori driving him relentlessly forward had reshaped him, and now that his memories had returned, he was finally able to say these words. In that moment, Mana's heart melted. She had always believed that one day her brother would become someone she could be proud of.
Let it end here, Inori.
I know you had other ideas... but this is Shu's resolve. Let him go.
...Alright.
Inori was silent for a long moment. She chose to honor their bond, and besides, she didn't want to die here either. Eve's presence in her body had grown faint. Once the crystals on her skin vanished entirely, Eve would have fully migrated into Shu.
This ending wasn't perfect, but it left no regrets.
Except that her enemy would not let Inori have her way so easily.
Someone struck Shu from behind, knocking him aside and forcibly breaking the Void's hold.
"That's not your role to play, Shu."
The voice was low and empty of feeling. Silver hair drifted upward, revealing half a face of mechanical grotesquerie. No warmth. No inflection.
Gai Tsutsugami. The real Gai Tsutsugami, not a manufactured illusion. He had been waiting here all along. This, too, was part of their plan: once Inori became Eve, Gai would become Adam and then destroy himself. He believed that was the way to liberate Mana, the way to be with her forever.
"Gai? You... you're alive?"
"It seems you've recovered your memories." Gai regarded him with a cold, complicated look. "But even so, I won't back down."
"What are you doing, Gai!"
Shu struggled up from the floor and roared at him, furious. His resolve had been defiled in this moment by a former friend, a dead man who should have stayed dead. How was he supposed to accept that?
"You're the person Mana loves most. I won't let you die."
Gai said it matter-of-factly.
"The Apocalypse must be completed. Let me be the one to take Eve away."
"Then what about Inori? What about Mana? Are you going to drag them into the grave with you!" Shu bellowed and launched himself at Gai, fists first, like some juvenile correction punch could knock sense into the man.
But no matter how much he had grown inside, a regular high school student's fighting skills were no match for a former mercenary. One exchange, and Shu was flat on the ground again.
"Mana has been dead a long time. Rather than let her live on being consumed by that woman, I'd rather set her free myself."
"That's not true! Inori... Inori and Mana are both important to me!" Shu understood at once that Gai still carried his grudge over Inori's deception.
"You've been deceived too, Shu. She's rotten to the core. Wake up."
So that's what this is. Reaping what I sowed, I suppose.
Inori laughed bitterly. Was she finally paying the price for every lie she'd ever told? The secret weapon she had planted turned out to be the one pointing back at her.
"Damn you, Gai! I won't let you kill Inori!"
Shu's chest ached. He had a thousand things he wanted to say, half-wishing he could pour his memories directly into Gai's mind. But there was no time. It didn't matter how much crystallized virus he absorbed if he couldn't separate Eve from Inori, none of it meant anything.
Inori's body was crystallizing again. She collapsed, head bowed, looking for all the world as though she had given up.
"Don't... Gai, Inori isn't the kind of person you think she is. She's been fighting for Mana too..."
"Shut up."
Gai kicked him hard across the face. The blow nearly knocked Shu unconscious.
"Now you have nowhere to run, Inori. Your existence itself was a mistake. But this, too, is the hand that fate has dealt. Take your time-controlling devil's power and disappear."
He stood over Inori like a judge delivering a sentence, looking down from on high.
Back on Oshima, Inori had loomed over him in exactly this pose. Now the roles were reversed. But Gai felt no satisfaction in it, no sense of revenge fulfilled. He simply found the girl before him pitiable. Perhaps this was what it meant to be born a villain.
His gaze drifted forward into empty space, waiting for the crystals to finish their work. After that would come the emergence, the chrysalis cracking open, and Eve would appear wearing Mana's face. So he didn't notice that the moment he arrived, Inori had already slipped the last of her trump cards into her body: Void Genome No. 003.
Shu lay on the ground and wept. The massive amount of crystal he'd absorbed for Inori had paralyzed half his body, and Gai's kick on top of that meant staying conscious at all was the most he could manage.
He thought it was over. He had failed to protect Inori and Mana. The virus would be taken away by Gai, yes, but living alone in a world without them, what was the point?
Crack.
The crystal cocoon around Inori shattered. Shu forced his trembling eyes open, needing to see the result for himself.
And froze.
Because what emerged from that dark chrysalis was a pink-haired girl in a daring gold-and-red outfit with flowing, fin-like edges, provocative and unapologetically bold. It was Inori, and yet something about her was different.
"So this is what it feels like to stop being human?"
She rubbed her drowsy eyes as if she'd just woken from a nap, then looked herself over. The outfit seemed to catch her off guard. She frowned, pursed her lips, and muttered to herself in mild exasperation:
"I didn't expect you to be that kind of King Crimson."