“Impossible.”

11 follows Gier 5’s gaze down to her hand. There, cloaked in a veil of blue fire, is her nanoblade. All forty inches of pressurized carbon-laced steel, the weapon blazes so bright 11 almost cannot look at it. She flexes her fingers, feeling the familiarity of the sword, the weight of it, the vibration within the metal as millions of nanoparticles course along its edge.

She looks at Gier 5, his eyes so big they eclipse the rest of his boyish face. “Impossible,” he breathes again. "This isn't possible."

"I'd explain it to you," 11 says. "But I don't think you'll get it. You're only what, Number 5?" With a twirl of her hand, she severs through the arms holding her. The drone releases its grip and she crashes to the ground, almost losing her sword again.

Connecting to auxiliary power source.

Standby for field repairs...

Gier 5 staggers back on top his drone. “Absurdity!” he cries as 11’s broken leg starts to twist itself back into shape. “A stupid, inconceivable impossibility! Where did you get that!”

11 doesn’t answer because she isn't sure herself. She supposes the blade must've been launched into the nearby mountains after being blasted along with the giant Gargoloth demon. Then, when she was brought above the clouds, her sensors must’ve been able to reach it through the thin atmosphere, and activated the sword’s homing mechanism.

But none of that matters now. Standing back up straight, 11 points the blade at the Gier on the drone. Blue streaks of electricity jump off the blade’s edge, crackling along the ground like a nest of snakes. The sword begins to hum.

“Good to have you back, old friend.”

The air grows thick, charged with energy. Overhead, the thunderclouds begin to roar.

Mother’s voice comes clearly into 11’s ears.

Located deserter unit.

Activating Orbital ARC rifle.

Taking aim.

Gier 5 opens his mouth to say something but a deep rumbling above makes him look up, a deep scowl on his face. “What’s going-”

Firing OARC rifle.

All units stand back.

A pillar of blue light descends from the sky, encasing God Gier 5 in a torrent of brilliant fire. He screams but his voice is lost in the explosion. One by one, the propellers on his drone burst like balloons, trailing smoke as the machine crashes to the ground in a fireball so bright 11 has to turn away, shielding her eyes.

When she looks back, Gier is stumbling out from the wreckage. His coat has burned to ash and his hair is all gone, but he isn’t dead. He claws the smoldering bandages from his face and reaches for 11 as he staggers towards her, as if wanting to strangle her or embrace her.

“Stop trying to resist, Aiyano!” he screams. “Why do you always have to make everything so god damn difficult! It’s futile! Get it through your head! Everything we do on this forsaken planet is useless!” Chunks of his bandages slough off him like melted fat. Underneath them, Gier 5 has the body of a man. But it is Frankenstein’s body. His skin is a messy patchwork of different colors and glowing steel rivets. Pulsing black veins bulge below the surface as if lightning struck through him and left behind a scorched path.

“I thought you said no names,” 11 says, readying herself with her blade out front. She remembers him now. Not everything, but enough to know she hates him.

Gier 5 spits out red saliva. “Go die in a fire.” He waves his hands through the air and all of the drones floating in the sky start to descend, gathering around him in a silvery swarm. “I never understood what Mia saw in you.”

The name drops into 11’s mind like a grenade with its pin pulled. Before it can explode, she goes first. Dashing towards Gier 5, she swings through the drones surrounding him. Explosions blind her and the noise is deafening, but 11 focuses everything on her instincts to cut a path into the buzzing swarm. It seems to work. Gier 5 is starting to scream profanities, his voice hitched with fear. Bullets rain and arms reach out to grab 11. She dances through them, the nanoblade in her hands serenading her slashes and strikes. It feels right. She feels right.

“It’s over!” she shouts, leaping over a falling drone and bringing her blade over her head in a fiery blue arc. “Daichi!”

She brings down the blade, feels it shudder to a stop. And then all at once, the noise stops. The buzzing, the fire, lightning, all of it dies away.

In the silence, she hears God Gier 5’s gargled gasp. She opens her eyes to see the Gier staring at her, his eyes blue and wet, his hands on her throat. Her sword has cleaved into his left shoulder and is halfway stuck in his chest, cutting right through the walls of his Master Core.

Through her hands, 11 feels the steady whomp-whomp of a Gier’s Core as it struggles to keep spinning. She’s never thought a God Gier may be just as fragile as any other life possessing a beating, fleshy heart. But at that moment, seeing the undiluted terror etched deep on Gier 5’s face, 11 does not feel strong anymore.

“A-aiyano.”

Her gaze flickers up to meet 5’s. His hands around her throat weaken. He’s crying, she realizes. Tears run down his cheeks, hissing as they drop onto 11’s blade.

He drops to his knees, but he’s still looking at her.

“P-please, Aiya-” The rest of 11’s name is lost in a series of gurgling noises as blood gushes out from Gier 5’s mouth. He slumps forward, hands grasping loosely around 11’s blade, fingers blistering as they touch the white-hot steel. His eyes never leave hers. “Please… destroy them.”

11 is transfixed on those dying eyes. She cannot move, the vibrations from 5’s core going thwomp... thwomp... through her sword and into her.

“Who?” she asks. “Who are you talking about?”

God Gier 5’s lips are moving but no other words are coming out. He coughs, spluttering through more blood, blood laced with countless nanobots all perishing as they leave the body they serve. “All of them,” he says, wheezing through shuddery breath. “The Gier program was a mistake. We… never should have let Oswald do that to us. We should have been enjoying the last days on Earth in the sun. Not... in that cold... laboratory."

God Gier 5's eyes turn hard, feverish, then glassy. His head rolls forward onto his chin. His mouth opens and a final trickle of air slips out. Then he falls sideways, taking 11’s sword with him.

11 stands over the still body of Gier 5 for a long time. She doesn’t realize she’s waiting for him to get up, dust the dirt off his knees and come at her again. It isn’t until the drones start falling out of the sky that the certainty hits her.

He’s dead.

11 takes a step back.

He’s really dead. I killed him. I killed…

She doesn’t let the thought finish. She can’t allow it to. She starts to go, to run away from all this, but her nanoblade is stuck in Gier 5’s body. She needs it. She turns back. Rain is starting to fall now. Fat droplets of cold splatter onto her head, onto the noiseless body by her feet, the boy she murdered.

No. I didn’t. It was him or me.

11 presses her palms against her ears to try to quell the thunder. The hills roll with them, echoing the deafening drumbeats until it is a single, drawn-out note. She can feel it rumbling through her chest, shaking free what little control she has over her emotions.

Demonic Entity identified. Damage output level 43.

“Stop it!” 11 cries out. “Stop it! Just shut up!” She falls to her knees, hands still pressed to her ears. Pockets of heat and light burst around her as Gier 5's drones spiral down in plumes of fire. One lands close to her. 11 feels shrapnel glance off her shoulder. But the pain is in her head, pounding like her own thunderstorm. “I don’t want to do this anymore!”

Identified humans in peril. You must intervene, Gier 11.

“Just shut me down already,” 11 says. “Kill me and end this insanity!”

Is this your wish?

“Yes,” 11 sobs to the clouds. The orbital rifle has torn a hole through them. Crackles of lightning run around the dark gap. Rain is coming. And lots of it. “I don’t want any more lives to be lost in this senseless-”

“Oh my god. What the hell have you done!”

Through a break in the noise, 11 hears a girl’s horrified gasp. She thinks it’s coming from herself but she’s gritting her teeth too hard to make any such noise. She opens her eyes and looks behind her.

The girl dressed in a blue and silver cloak stands in the center of the road. Her hood is pulled back to reveal a face almost identical to 11’s, only her hair is longer and tied in twintails with cute pink ribbons.

God Gier 8. Princess Hastarine.

11 did not make the connection during their first meeting in that alleyway, but now she has no doubt this girl is another of the missing God Giers.

“Oh, god no,” Gier 8 breathes again, her voice quiet but loud at the same time. The drones have stopped falling, but there is no lack of explosions from the sky.

11 stands up slowly. Her head feels like it’s going to split open. She doesn’t know what to do but stand there and watch as the shock spreads across Gier 8’s face.

“What did you do?”

11 follows 8’s gaze to the dead God Gier. “I…” her words lose themselves in the sound of clouds tearing open. Wind howls as rain collapse onto the world like a sheet of ice, drenching everything in freezing cold.

“You killed him.”

Gier 8 does not raise her voice to be heard about the pounding rain, as if she isn’t even speaking to 11. Her twintails hang to her sides like wet towels, and when she shakes her head, they barely move. “You killed Ned. You killed Daichi. You… you murdered him.”

11 takes a step back from the girl, which means stepping closer to the dead God Gier. “I didn’t mean to,” she says but then 8 starts to scream.

“I’ll make you pay for this!” Her blue eyes are crazed and red as they lock onto 11.

Before 11 can take another step, the earth beneath Gier 8 explodes as she launches across the road like a missile. The two Giers crash to the ground in a deafening boom, the shock wave created from their bodies repelling even the rain. 11 finds herself on her back with her arms up, trying to block the multitude of blows raining down on her.

“I loved him!” With each punch, Gier 8 screams in so much pain it’s as if she’s the one on the ground. “I loved him and you killed him! You killed him you killed him!”

“I never meant to!” 11 cries out, jerking her knees up and pushing the crazy God Gier off. She scrambles for her sword, yanking it from Gier 5’s body. She feels the rain parting over her head as something looms. She whips around and raises her sword.

A giant shadow drops from the sky. It’s a hammer the size of a building, propelled by roaring jet engines. Gier 8 is swinging it with both hands, her tiny form comical in comparison. 11 forgets all about blocking. She dives for the hills, using her own wings to push out from under the massive shadow. But the machinery in her back is still too damaged to listen.

Waves churn across the ground as the hammer crashes down.

11 is flung high into the air, tumbling through the sky as she tries desperately to right herself. She catches flashes of Gier 8 but the girl seems to be everywhere, on the ground and in the air. And then the rogue God Gier is above, her oversized hammer pulverizing the clouds on its way down. 11 cannot dodge this one. Her momentum is bringing her towards the oncoming train. She claws helplessly at her back, wanting to pull the wings out from under her skin but it is useless. At the last second, she turns so her feet are pointed to the face of the hammer, and readies herself to spring off it.

She’s brought into the ground at the force of a meteorite.

11 comes to her senses a few moments later. Gier 8 has pulled her out and is sitting on her chest. Rain pounds on her face but 11 can tell which drops belong to the God Gier’s tears.

They are the warm ones.

“Is this payback?” Gier 8 demands in a choked voice, her pretty face scrunched up in rage and heartbreak. “Are you doing this because of Mia?”

11’s ears are ringing, and it isn’t because she’s just been flattened. One of her eyes has been shattered but she doesn’t know which. All she can see is a blurry world of grey, lost even more in the blanketing rain.

“I don’t even know who you people are,” she says gruffly, and shoves her palm against 8’s chest. She sees the expression on 8’s face turn from grief to shock, but then it’s all gone as a blast of lightning from her cannon snaps the Gier's head backward.

But 8 remains sitting on 11’s chest. As the smoke dissipates, 11 sees that the rogue Gier’s chin and neck are coated with a layer of sparkling black material. She watches in amazement as the black material seeps back into Gier 8, revealing the pale undamaged skin underneath.

8 turns her head down to look at 11, and her expression this time is one of pure hate. Alarmed, 11 swings her cannon around for another shot but 8 snatches the barrel and holds it over her shoulder where it will be useless.

“Do you know why you never could get into the Top Ten?” she asks casually, her fingers digging so hard into the cannon that 11 feels the metal begin to crack. "Do you know why Mia could?"

“Wait, Hastarine,” 11 gasps as tendrils of agony shock through her arm, “or Samantha or whatever you’re called-”

With a violent twist that makes 11 scream, Gier 8 yanks at the cannon until it snaps free.

Pain explodes inside 11. Her thoughts become a red hot mess and she isn’t aware of anything else other than agony and rain and the sound of her own screams.

Gier 8 tosses the torn limb into the mud. “You never could figure out how to get along with anyone,” she says, her words so soft they're nearly lost to the rain. “I’m not supposed to kill you, but you deserve this much, at least.”

11 tries to speak through the fire burrowing into her torn nerves. Through effort, she manages a grunt of, “Go to hell.”

Gier 8 gets off 11 and stands with one foot still on her chest. “No, Aiyano,” she says. “If it wasn’t for your existence, none of this would have happened. The protocol would not have been ruined by your psychotic sister, humanity would not be in such a sorry state, and Mia wouldn’t have killed herself. So, no. You are the one who should go to hell.”

The information in her words is so astounding that for an instant, 11 forgets about dying.

“What,” she says, “What did you say about Mia?”

She killed herself. Because of me?

A roar fills 11's ears. The ground starts to shake.

Gier 8 lifts her foot off 11, her blue eyes never breaking contact. “Mia said something to me the night she died. Do you know what it was?”

11 cannot move. The roar grows louder but she can’t tell if it’s coming from the world or inside her mind. The fingers of her left hand twitch, feeling for her nanoblade. She thinks she gets a ping.

“It was, 'I wish I never met Aiyano'.”

Those words. Those simple few words.

Orbital ARC rifle recharged.

Taking aim.

From a bend further down the road, a great wall of water crashes through like a charging bull, heading straight for them. Gier 8 turns to look at the flash flood and 11 takes this opportunity to reach out and grab one of her feet. She twists with her whole body, forcing the rogue Gier to kneel. Then with her remaining hand, 11 reaches for her nanoblade. It comes spinning. She grabs the sword by the blade and plunges it through 8’s thigh, pinning the God Gier's leg to the ground.

8 lets out a blood-chilling howl. She turns to 11, her face screaming murder.

“Now, Mother!”

Fire lights up the sky. 11 hears a deep drowning boom followed by heat so intense it feels cold. And then she’s flying back, crashing into murky, dark waters.