Several years ago
Vivian
sat idly on a velvet chair, watching her father stare ceaselessly into the distance. Surrounding them were walls of glass, and the dark view of the night sky, all the while,
Takahashi
was transfixed on the city gleaming below.
“What are you staring at?”
Vivian
asked.
“It’s not like that.”
Vivian
insisted.
“It’s not like what?”
Takahashi
asked.
“It’s not like … what you’re really asking. I don’t want you sending him away, like you do everyone else.”
“What I’m doing is taking hold of the world - making it mine. Making it ours.”
“It doesn’t feel like mine.”
she
said. “It feels cold and empty.” she paused, “I don’t want it.”
“What do you want?”
Takahashi
asked.
“I want a choice.”
she
insisted. “I want the chance to make my own destiny.”
Takahashi
stared at her with a mix of pride and curiosity. “The key” he said, “is trust.”
“What?”
“Who you place your trust in determines everything. That’s the key to all of this, if that’s what you want. It’s trust.”
Vivian
stared at him perplexed. There was always a purpose to everything
he
said. There was a softness to his voice that she couldn’t help but notice, and a deliberateness that she knew she had to remember.
Now
Vault
looked up at
Takahashi
, with the Machin army standing before them, with a helpless look in her eyes. How had it come to this? Her father had set up a rigged game, and of course, he’d managed to win. The irony was that she thought she knew how to beat him. The passphrase that controlled
Bridge
. She thought she knew what it was. But with
Witch
and
Noir
around her, she couldn’t use it. And no one knew but her. “Was that part of his game?” she thought. “Did he want her to feel this way?” She couldn’t help but feel defeated. As she glared towards the back of his metal screen, she wondered how he could think this was a world that she could want. No one else could stop all of this… well, almost no one.
Key
stared at the machinery that
Coder
and
Inicio
were working on. It was complicated and far beyond anything he understood. Still, he felt obligated to stand by in case there was anything they needed.
“You need me for anything?”
Gang
asked.
“No, I’m sure they’re fine.”
Hero
answered dismissively.
Gang
scoffed back. He took a second to think about the world after all this. Would he be sent to the jail? Would they keep watching him, just waiting for him to act out? He didn’t like the way they looked at him - even when he told them his intentions. He glanced towards the shifting ball of metal that
Inicio
had by his side. “What’s that?”
Gang
asked.
“It’s not really anything”
Inicio
answered earnestly. “It looks cool though, right?”
“Yeah”
Gang
nodded. “I guess it does.”
The Machin began marching forward, and with the sound of their footsteps booming across the grass,
Kitsune
readied her sword. “This is it!” she shouted. “We’ll hold them off,”
Long
and
Senshi
nodded to her. “But we don’t have forever. How long do you need?” she asked.
“We’re assuming a lot.”
Coder
said. “If it’s an insecure password, we might have a shot.” he looked up gravely. “Just give us all the time that you can.”
Kitsune
nodded back. “Understood.” she said, shifting her stance and focusing forward.
The Machin flexed their fists, aimed their heads forwards, and began running into a sprint. The dirt collapsed beneath their feet, as the sound roared across the hill.
Kitsune
sprinted forwards as well, with
Long
on her left, and
Senshi
on her right.
Hero
,
Order
,
Fear
and some others followed closely behind.
The moment passed, and the two sides collided together.
Hero
and
Vine
stood side by side with several Enforcers surrounding them.
“Are you sure that you’re ready for this?”
Hero
asked.
“This new form of mine came with a lot of pain. I want to make sure they regret it.”
Vine
threw her fist forward, and collapsed the screen of a large Enforcer.
Hero
responded in kind, and boxed forward at the Machin surrounding them. They formed a solid perimeter, and while several curious Enforcers surrounded them, none seemed able to push through.
Then suddenly a Prime collapsed behind him, and
Order
turned around, surprised.
Chaos
stood unfazed before him.
“I thought you were escorted out?”
Order
asked.
“You of all people should know how hard it is to escort me anywhere.”
Chaos
answered.
Order
couldn’t help but smile. As much as he hated
Chaos
, he was happy to have his help here. And in this rare moment, he trusted his intent enough to stand back to back.
“We improvise?”
Order
asked.
“We improvise!”
Chaos
smiled, hitting a Prime with the head of another.
In the first moments of the battle, the Tamashi fought well and bravely, but as the fight raged on, it became clear that while the group fought with spirit, they were quickly running out of energy. And the Machin, a looming, unending wave of harsh metal, were not running out of stamina, nor numbers of soldiers.
Kistune struck back any Enforcers that got close, but as her breath grew heavier, the Primes could pick up on her weakness, and started to surround her as well.
Long
and
Senshi
also grew tired. They tripped and fell on the ground. They took a moment to rise, but in that second were surrounded by Enforcers, glaring at them from cold unfeeling screens.
She closed her eyes.
And then a warm breeze began to take hold. It whipped across the battlefield at an unnatural speed.
She
opened her eyes to the familiar sound of slashing metal, saw waves of Machin collapsing around her, smashing and crashing into fractal pieces. Then she saw a familiar sword appear before her, followed by blue fabric and a familiar face.
Superior
cut through an Enforcer and stood in front of her.
“I’m sorry it took me this long,”
he
stated. “I’m ready to fight by your side.”
“Like the temple then.”
Kitsune
said fondly,
“Yes.”
Superior
nodded. “Just like that.”
The pair stood back to back, their blades wound back to opposite sides.
“EVERYONE!”
Superior
shouted.
Kitsune
and
Superior
readied their blades. “GET DOWN!”
The Tamashi around them, crouched down.
Long
smiled to himself.
Superior
and
Kitsune
started moving in a spiral, then dashing in opposite directions. They darted back and forth, slicing along the wirings of surrounding Machin. They wove back and forth in interweaving patterns, always catching each other’s blind spots. They moved in a flurry of sound and fury. Waves upon waves of Enforcers collapsed around them.
Superior
cut along the neck of an Enforcer, and he flashed back to his childhood, cutting bits of rope with
Kitsune
by his side. This was everything they trained for, and together, they were unstoppable.
Long
and
Senshi
stood up as the Enforcers collapsed around them. The flurry of their blades had done much to stop the Machin. Mounds of collapsed Machin formed walls on the battlefield that the Tamashi maneuvered around. It appeared as though the Machin were unmatched.
But unfortunately, that wasn’t the end. As successful as
Superior
and
Kitsune
were, they could only cover so much of the battlefield.
Hero
and
Vine
,
Chaos
and
Order
, and others were at opposite sides and in danger of being overwhelmed.
Gang
watched everything unfold from the sidelines. “Are you almost done?” he asked
Coder
, concerned.
“We’re doing everything we can,”
Coder
answered. “This tech doesn’t go through combinations that quickly.”
Chem
glanced towards
Gang
with a judgemental look in his eye. Gang knew what he was thinking. Why wasn’t he on the battlefield fighting with everyone who could fight? It was a good question, and Gang wasn’t fond of the answer.
He
glanced towards
Inicio
’s device, and felt a cold wind pass through him. He thought about his mother, and what she would think about all of this. He knew she wouldn’t believe it, and even if she did, he didn’t know what he would say to her.
“Well”,
he
thought to himself. “Maybe I’ll find out.”
Gang
grabbed
Inicio
’s device, a glowing orb of shifting metal, and sprinted towards the far edge of the battlefield. He remembered what
Coder
had said to him.
It wasn’t a great strategy. He was sure that someone would have tried to talk him out of it. But he didn’t want their permission. What we wanted was to win this fight for them.
He smiled as over a hundred giant Machin barreled towards him at a full sprint. It was beyond anything he’d seen. It was beyond anything he knew he could survive. He looked back fondly towards the base, where
Chem
stared soberly towards him, and for once, for a single crystallized moment, he understood exactly what he was doing.
The Machin grew closer with each passing second. After a moment, twenty Enforcers were lunging towards him, with their fists drawn back.
He closed his eyes, as sixteen Enforcer Machin collapsed onto his chest, and beat him with every inch of their fury. He flashed back to the night he met
Chaos
, and he knelt beaten in the rain. He remembered when he tried to lead Nozomi, failed, then laid on the grass watching the stars with Kasumi. He remembered those moments fondly as his world grew dark, because for the first time in his life, he knew that it had been a life worth living. And as his screen broke, and his body collapsed into death, the battle shifted around him.
Key
stood paralyzed as he watched
Gang
’s sacrifice. His breathing grew heavy, and he broke into a cold sweat. He’d never seen someone die before. It made the stakes feel more real. He had no doubt that
Gang
knew what he was doing, and forced himself to hope that his sacrifice was worth it.
He
knew
Coder
wasn’t confident in his plan, but with the Machin growing close, he knew that this was the only hope they had. He thought about
Vault
, who was still with
Takahashi
. It gave him comfort to know that she was safe.
He
thought back to their moments together. Before they were plugged in, when
she
gave him a chance. And after, when she chose to be with him, despite all of his faults and mistakes. He remembered the moment they had together, when they sat behind the hotel together, when she told him that riddle.
“The treasure of unlocking me, requires a five letter key. In order to receive this just - convince me to give you my-”
And it stopped there.
He
wondered what she could have meant, why she had been so cryptic yet poetic, and then the gravity of the moment hit him like a ton of bricks. That could have been it! Could that have been the passphrase they were searching for? He tried to see her through the tides of battle. He thought he saw
Takahashi
, but was that her by his side? He wasn’t sure. But he thought he saw
her
. And she was staring, unwavering, right back at him.
The cold sweat felt more real then.
“I know the passphrase.”
Key
told
Coder
.
“What?”
Coder
asked.
“It’s ‘trust’”
Key
insisted. “The passphrase is ‘trust’”
“How do you know that?”
Coder
asked.
“Just try it!”
Key
ordered.
“Alright, fine.”
Coder
answered. Punching a few keys in the keyboard,
Coder
hit a button and waited for something to happen.
Finally, after a moment that seemed like forever, the Machin stopped throwing punches, then they stopped moving at all. A few began to look around confused, or stare at their hands. Only the sound of the light breeze could be heard across the grassy hill, and everyone became silent. It took a minute to fully register. The Tamashi didn’t drop their guard right away.
“What happened?”
Vault
asked
Takahashi
. “Is it over?”
“Did you know this would happen?”
Vault
asked.
“What about the mission?”
Noir
asked.
“What mission?”
Takahashi
asked.
“Plugging everyone in to save them from hardship, and suffering? What happens now?”
Noir
asked.
“I don’t care.”
Takahashi
answered, “I only care about my daughter.”
“I devoted my life to helping you!”
Noir
insisted. “And you’re telling me that it was for nothing?!”
“Your ‘devoted life’,”
Takahashi
stated, “was to be a human meat-shield and to open doors for me and my family. You had the privilege of serving someone far better than you. Some people don’t even manage that much.”
Noir
angrily grabbed
Takahashi
’s arm, forced it behind his back and marched him forwards towards the Tamashi.
Noir
marched
Takahashi
forwards as the Machin aimlessly parted ways.
Kitsune
and
Superior
reached them first. “I have half a mind to kill him.”
Kitsune
said to
Superior
.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
Superior
asked
Takahashi
.
“Why would I?”
Takahashi
answered. “I won’t debase myself by appealing to you.”
Superior
glanced downwards at
Takahashi
. When he faced the
Kitsune
-Enforcer, it reminded him of how ridiculous it was to hate his sister. The dark caricature forced him to confront his own image of her. Now, facing Takahashi, he was reminded of himself - of a twisted path he could have just as easily gone down.
“Who taught you that?”
Takahashi
responded sarcastically.
“Your Dad did.”
Superior
walked away, turning to
Kitsune
. “And he’d want him alive.”
Key
jogged briskly past
Superior
and ran towards the entrance of the facility.
Vault
saw him coming and slowly walked up to meet him.
Key
ran up to Vault and embraced her in a deep hug. They held each other for a moment, with Vault holding him close, both unsure of what to say.
“Thanks for trusting me.”
Key
finally said.
“Of course.”
Vault
kindly answered.
As the fighting subsided, several things became clear. After breaking free of
Takahashi
’s commands, the Machin were sentient and directionless. They had no wish to fight, and for now, made their home in abandoned parts of the city. They had human wants and desires, but no certainty for what the world had in store for them.
The Tamashi were similarly uncertain. After
Chem
and
Coder
moved
Bridge
to a safe location, it felt appropriate to give
Gang
a proper funeral. As controversial as he was, the first death in Nozomi had sent a chill across the Tamashi. And even without defined traditions, they knew that his memory needed to be honored.
A Tamashi called Stargazer volunteered to lead the ceremony. He prepared floating lanterns to fly overhead. And as he stood in front of a podium before all the Tamashi, he had this to say.
After the ceremony,
Chaos
and
Takahashi
were formally locked in jail. A
police officer
stood watch and kept a very keen eye on both of them. Everyone went to bed for the night, anxiously awaiting what new order would take hold.
That night,
Chem
,
Coder
, and Bridge stood on top of a building looking down on the city. To their left, was the Nozomi they knew, faintly lit, with only three square blocks of electricity. To their right, was a large city sprawled before them, perfectly black against the night sky.
“Are you sure about this?”
Coder
asked. “It’ll change everything.”
“We can’t have the Machin in a dark city for long. We need enough space for all of us. And now that we can make things whole again” he paused, “I made the serum that made this all possible, that took away life as we knew it. We have to bring it back.”
“I’m hardly blameless, but you’re right.”
Coder
stated. “It’ll be a bustling city. With full power, things will look almost normal again.”
“A city of ten thousand robots and a hundred of us.”
Chem
whispered. “Does anyone else have the password?”
“Just the two of us and
Key
”
Chem
stated.
“Good.”
Chem
answered. “
Bridge
,” he started, “Time to turn the power on.”
“As you command.”
Bridge
answered. And with a wave of his hand, the entire city beamed with full electric power.