Chapter Text
The battle of Day 57 was over. Aotsuki had made the wise decision to duck out of the main battlefield once the team had located him among Zen’ta’s clones, though why he’d decided to join her here was beyond Takumi. Now, Zen’ta herself was kneeling on the ground, bloodied and defeated. Though the rest of the team had stepped forwards to make sure she didn’t try to run away or anything like that, Takumi’s attention was elsewhere—he was looking for wherever Aotsuki had escaped to. He’d never miss a chance to monologue about how sick and fucked up he was.
…Or so Takumi had thought, but he wasn’t seeing him anywhere. Apparently his sense of self-preservation was actually functioning this time around and he’d gotten out while everyone else was focused on not dying. So Takumi finally stepped forward to the head of their group to speak to Zen’ta.
She looked up at him, or at least tilted her head up to give the same effect. Couldn’t exactly see her eyes behind her now-crumbling mask. Takumi opened his mouth to say something, ask her about her purpose, maybe, but she got to it first.
“I am…Zen’ta, the Paragon of Harmony… Even if my flesh is destroyed here…” She grabbed her left pinkie finger with her right hand. “My soul…shall return…to destroy you vile invaders…”
The realization that she was about to do something hit the same moment Takumi saw a flash of grey at the edge of his vision, but he could only react to one thing at a time—and one of these was obviously more of an immediate threat. If Aotsuki was going to start acting suicidal, he would try to goad Takumi into killing him. A commander who had enough clarity of purpose to start laying down a dying curse instead of trying to escape? Easy prioritization.
Takumi spun to the rest of his team and barked out an order as commandingly as he could— “Get down!” —and in the same moment, Zen’ta finished her curse. “God will…never forgive you… Prepare to meet your reckoning…”
And then, she exploded.
It took Takumi a few moments for his head to stop ringing, and another few moments for his vision to clear up. “Exploded” had actually been a pretty generous description—there were no leftover scraps of clothing or chunks of flesh, not even a smear of blood on the dirt. She had been, very literally, vaporized.
Aotsuki hadn’t been so lucky. He had to have been even closer to her when the bomb went off than Takumi had been, considering Takumi wasn’t lying in a pool of his own blood right now. The only reason he could tell Aotsuki was still alive was the way his chest was heaving up and down, trying to breathe, trying to survive, regardless of the parts of his body that were just gone now. Wasn’t the problem with abdominal wounds that even if you could stop the bleeding, if it ruptured any of the organs down there, the sepsis would get you?
Takumi stared at his body, and then looked back at the school. A drone wasn’t coming out to get him. Of course it wasn’t, Sirei had wiped Aotsuki’s data from the system back on Day 2. He looked back at Aotsuki again, at the beautiful red flower that had blossomed out of him, and all he could feel was numbness. Aotsuki’s head had fallen to one side now, and if Takumi didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Aotsuki was looking up at him, wordlessly begging to be saved.
Scratch that. He didn’t know better. He hadn’t come this far to let Aotsuki die like this.
Takumi scrambled over to Aotsuki and started futilely trying to shove Aotsuki’s organs back into his body. He was faintly aware that someone was saying something to him—maybe one of the others trying to tell him Aotsuki was too far gone to be saved, or maybe Sirei over the comm link telling him to just let the traitor die—but all Takumi could process was a mental list of options available to him. Sirei wasn’t going to let Aotsuki use the Revive-O-Matic even if Takumi got on his knees and begged, and he’d probably lost too much of his cryptoglobin to use it, anyways. The only commander on the scene had just gone up in smoke, and Takumi couldn’t sacrifice anyone else, not for this. This was his selfish action. His selfish wish. His selfish choice.
Inspiration struck.
Takumi lifted his Infuser and put the blade to the side of his neck. He wasn’t going to cut too deep. Just enough. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and opened himself up.
His Infuser fell to the ground, and Takumi gathered Aotsuki into his arms. This had to work. This needed to work. It had worked before, hadn’t it? They’d done something like this for Kirifuji, hadn’t they? He couldn’t quite remember. Had Kirifuji had her rejection symptoms yet? Takumi tucked Aotsuki’s head into the crook of his neck, pressing what was probably his mouth against the cut. Against his blood. His other hand was still trying to keep Aotsuki’s guts inside his body, so all he could do now was whisper to him, voice hoarse, less a statement than a solemn promise, “I’m going to save you.”
It took a moment for Aotsuki to figure out what Takumi was offering, but that was all. Takumi felt Aotsuki’s lips press against his neck and Aotsuki’s tongue press into the incision. It stung, but he’d just have to grit his teeth and bear it. This was hardly the most painful thing that he’d gone through.
Aotsuki’s arms had wormed their way around Takumi at some point, embracing him tightly as he kept hungrily lapping at Takumi’s blood, and when he looked down to confirm this was actually working, he saw organs returning to the place they were meant to be, flesh regrowing sinew by sinew, and burnt skin returning to its natural color. Even the parts of Aotsuki’s Class Armor that had peeled away because of the blast were going back to normal. Takumi’s stupid, self-sacrificial plan that could’ve ended with both of them dead had worked.
He felt himself relax, and then everything faded to grey.