"Jobs, who always wins."
Probably nobody remembered this title now.
But if someone had said it decades ago, it would have amazed everyone.
He had been the undefeated general of the Interastral Peace Corporation.
Every contract he negotiated succeeded; every deal he touched turned into profit.
Whether barren fringe planets or stubborn, ancient interstellar civilizations, under his persuasion, they all became profitable territories for the IPC.
Someone once calculated something terrifying:
During his time at the IPC, Jobs alone generated wealth equivalent to several hundred-thousandths of the total economy of an entire Amber Era.
This was no small feat.
The Interastral Peace Corporation spanned countless worlds, and the wealth it created each Amber Era was beyond the imagination of ordinary beings.
Yet Jobs, by himself, managed to generate such staggering wealth.
Had this become widely known, it would shock and amaze everyone.
That was the legacy he built within just a few decades.
In those decades, Jobs's life sailed smoothly. Whatever he pursued, he achieved.
During this time, in both career and love, he was the undisputed winner.
Yet the two greatest turning points of his life both began with the same phrase:
"…It's a girl."
That was the first time Jobs had heard those words.
After declining countless assignments, Jobs finally squeezed out some leisure time—and heard the sweetest words he could imagine.
Outside the maternity ward, he saw the child who had just entered the world.
The first glance created a resonance deep within his blood, instantly making him willing to give everything for her sake.
This was his child, a life crystallized from the countless light-years he and his wife had traveled together.
He vowed to give her everything. He wanted his daughter's life to match his nickname—invincible, always victorious.
Even now, Jobs vividly recalled that scene…
Seated in the white room, the pale glow made him feel as if he had traveled back to that exact moment.
He remembered extending his hand, and his newborn daughter instinctively grasped his finger with her tiny hand.
The attending doctor scolded him afterward, "Newborns are fragile, Jobs-san! You must disinfect yourself fully before touching her."
But the joy he felt that day remained unforgettable.
Even now, Jobs could still feel that small touch lingering on his aged finger, weathered by countless hardships.
Memories surged vividly in his mind, stirring deep emotions.
Such beautiful memories. A faint glimmer appeared in his eyes. So beautiful, I dare not think about them too much.
He preferred immersing himself in pleasant memories, trying desperately to forget the cruel present that had utterly stopped his world…
After the birth of his daughter came slow yet vividly clear years of growth.
During that time, Jobs turned down many opportunities, determined to watch his daughter slowly grow.
From a little girl who could barely walk, to one who would dash joyfully into his arms. He could never forget her happy cries.
One heartfelt "Papa!" became a lifetime's worth of memories.
Jobs gifted her a wondrous music box, a Curio capable of playing perfect music, once elevated by an accomplished composer's passion. Jobs hoped his daughter would similarly walk perfectly through the symphony of life.
His daughter inherited his intelligence and her mother's kindness.
She embodied the best of both her parents.
At this rate, perhaps one day the galaxy would replace Jobs's name with another—
His daughter's.
And Jobs anticipated that day eagerly.
Yet unfortunately, the same phrase echoed once again before she reached adulthood, changing his world once more.
"…It's a girl."
Jobs stared blankly at the accident report in front of him, his mind a blur.
Ignoring the words "three casualties," his gaze locked onto images of the ship's wreckage, reduced practically to fragments.
Blood covered the wreckage, and limbs were scattered amidst twisted metal.
Anyone seeing that could easily imagine the brutality suffered by the victims.
"This is fake! It's a lie!"
Jobs refused to believe it. Like a madman, he insisted the report was false.
He was prepared to wield every ounce of power he possessed to prove it was fake.
If he could achieve that, his daughter would surely come home!
Surely…
But reality didn't care how desperately he wished it were false.
Curios were not easily destroyed—and thus, when the bloodstained music box appeared before Jobs, he finally went silent.
The music box, once capable of playing perfect melodies, now emitted discordant, unbearable noises, corrupted by something intangible.
With its perfect music gone, only painful cacophony remained.
"Your daughter was a hero. If she hadn't piloted the ship away and distracted that space pirate, an entire planet would have been devastated."
Who cares about that?! Who even asked?!
"Who was it?" Jobs growled through clenched teeth, a vengeful ghost manifesting in that moment. "Who did this?"
His coworker hesitated briefly before finally answering:
"The one who did it…was a notorious space pirate previously pursued by the company. Codename: Spider."
"This time, he targeted a planet. Your daughter sacrificed herself to lure him away."
"Unfortunately, your daughter's ship drifted into Spider's web region, losing control in the magnetic distortions. Otherwise, with the ship's capabilities, she would've escaped."
Spider's web distorted cosmic magnetic fields, tearing ships apart.
That had cost her the last chance at survival.
No matter how sturdy the ship, relentless distortion eventually reduced it to fragments—
Not to mention the people onboard.
Blood and steel became a tragic metallic flower, symbolizing the loss of a precious life.
"Mr. Jobs, rest assured. The company's security forces will absolutely avenge your daughter!"
Empty words, meaningless assurances.
If you had actually done something, how could Spider have targeted a planet again?
He was exhausted. Drained. He didn't want to do anything anymore.
So, Jobs abandoned his work and chose to focus on living with his wife.
Yet tragedy struck again—his wife changed completely after losing their daughter.
Her vibrant smile faded into silence. The house, once warm, became unbearably quiet…
And unfamiliar.
As if his life's pause button had frozen both his career and his family simultaneously.
Still, Jobs held onto one hope—that he could turn things around.
He didn't possess Diamond-level power; what had brought him success was his extraordinary action and resolve.
Eventually, after endless effort, he managed to acquire the same cake he and his wife had shared when they first met, countless light-years away.
Back then, one had been a regular IPC clerk, the other a student from the Intelligentsia Guild.
That day, they'd met and quarreled over the very last piece of cake.
After countless challenges, they'd eventually become a family.
Now, he carried this same cake home, filled with desperate hope, returning to the familiar silence.
But he wasn't worried. He believed his wife would smile again, and their family would move forward.
Then he saw the bathtub, stained completely crimson with blood.
Her wrist wounds had quietly drained her life away. His companion of decades lay silently submerged—
As though…
Playing happily with their daughter in the bath once more.
"You both abandoned me!"
"You both left me completely alone in this world!!!"
That day, Jobs, who always won, finally met defeat.
This devastating loss broke him utterly, pushing him to extreme measures.
He would resurrect them both—bring them back no matter what it took.
Even if it meant stepping into the domain of gods.
"I am Jobs, who always wins! Victory will forever be with me!"
...
"Mr. Jobs? Mr. Jobs?"
The researcher's voice jolted Jobs awake.
He rubbed his face gently, finding obvious wetness on his fingers.
Even here on Tartaro, his emotions ran painfully deep.
But now wasn't the time for that. Pushing everything aside, Jobs turned to the researcher.
"What happened? Any problems with the plan?"
"No, sir. Everything is proceeding perfectly. The technology from Penacony was a great success; your wife achieved excellent resonance with the cloned body."
The researcher spoke enthusiastically, describing the reverse-engineering of Penacony's dream-implantation technology, successfully transferring Memoria into a physical body as consciousness.
"Now we must extract your daughter's Memoria."
Jobs blinked, suddenly realizing just how close success had come.
He stood now at the very threshold of reunion with his family.
"Let's proceed immediately."
Jobs took out the music box, dried blood clearly visible on its surface.
He followed the researcher into the lab, where an enormous body lay—Spider, previously defeated by Sora, murderer of his daughter.
Spider consumed energy by crushing beings. Jobs now had to extract his daughter's Memoria remnants from its body.
Combining this with new technology would allow her resurrection.
Yet Jobs still harbored a nagging doubt.
"Can it really succeed?"
After so many years, could his daughter's Memoria truly remain?
"It will! This planet itself is proof!" the researcher insisted feverishly. "Memoria never vanishes easily; it can even form an entire planet. Director Jobs, please relax!"
Machinery whirred. Memoria quickly enveloped Spider's remains, gradually glowing with distinct colors.
The researcher began extraction, and Jobs gently wound the music box's key.
Clumsy notes echoed as the Memoria shaped itself into a young woman's form.
Her short golden hair revealed youthful energy, eyes peacefully closed.
Jobs felt overwhelming joy—
This was unmistakably his daughter!
"Welcome home, my precious Fenille."
The next step began immediately:
Infusing the Memoria into a cloned body, fully resurrecting Fenille.
Jobs watched anxiously, hopeful.
Yet at that moment, Titania suddenly sensed something familiar—someone was Propagating?!
The planet's core trembled violently…
Five Swarm Kings approached, compelled by cosmic laws, preparing for a decisive clash.
The planet's Memoria overflowed with sorrow, pain, despair, cascading outward.
Titania instinctively rejected it.
"This feels horrible!"
Facing this discomfort, Titania remembered something Sora once did:
With intense willpower like an iron fist, she shouted,
"Get lost already!"
Crash!
An ear-splitting screech echoed through the Memoria, jolting countless residents across the planet awake.
No one understood what was happening, but under the influence of the planet, they quickly fell back into a peaceful sleep.
But Hoshigaki Sora keenly sensed the unusual power within that wave.
Titania!
Far from subsiding, this sensation had intensified dramatically, as if something was about to be born!
"Hotaru! I'll go see what's happening—you wake the others!"
Sora quickly decided, sliding a [Fullbottle] into his phone. Immediately, a motorcycle appeared before him. Revving the throttle, he rushed headlong toward the disturbance.
"Hey!" Hotaru tried to stop him, but Sora had already vanished into the night.
"That idiot! Always rushing off on his own!" Gritting her teeth, Hotaru began rousing the other Iron Cavalry members.
The epicenter of Titania's surging power was Jobs's research facility.
At this moment, red warning lights flashed violently inside the laboratory, alarms blaring as the researchers scrambled in panic.
"Parameters abnormal! Memoria entering uncontrolled mutation!"
Everyone's gaze locked onto the containment chamber.
The stable figure within suddenly blurred grotesquely. Countless distorted human heads protruded from every inch of her body.
"What's happening? What's going on?!" Jobs shouted anxiously.
"It seems Spider had devoured far too many people. Their consciousnesses weren't fully separated—now they're all waking at once!"
The researcher stared in horror at the violently multiplying Memoria inside the chamber.
A huge, monstrous form emerged, twisted faces of agony overlapping endlessly across its body. They belonged to Spider's past victims—and now, they had awakened.
"You bastards! Didn't you say there'd be no problems? Didn't you say you had control?!"
Jobs, losing all composure, grabbed the researcher's collar in rage.
"Director Jobs! Calm down, calm down!" others desperately pleaded, trying to restrain him.
But how could Jobs possibly calm down now?
Suddenly, an idea struck him. Throwing the researcher aside, he snatched up the music box and rushed to the containment device.
Twisting the key, the stuttering melody began again.
"Fenille! Fenille!" Jobs's expression filled with desperate hope. "Can you hear it? Papa is right here!"
One researcher, witnessing this act, shook his head in despair. "It's useless. With so many consciousnesses, how could you possibly isolate…"
Yet, halfway through his words, he froze.
The countless tormented faces within the chamber had suddenly paused.
Jobs, noticing this reaction, continued frantically calling his daughter's name.
He longed for his daughter, his family, to return.
As the broken melody continued, among those twisted faces, one suddenly emerged clearly—Fenille!
Her voice softly murmured, "Papa…"
"Fenille! Papa's here! Papa is—"
"It hurts... it hurts so much!"
In an instant, her delicate features distorted horribly, twisted as if suffering unbearable torture.
"Kill me! Please, Papa! Kill me! I don't want to hurt anymore!"
Clatter.
The music box fell silent, hitting the floor.
Jobs stood there dumbfounded, staring helplessly into the containment chamber.
Fenille's face warped once more, no longer gentle but filled with violence and cruelty as negative emotions overtook her.
"I told you to kill me—are you deaf?!"
The Memoria formed into razor-sharp blades, piercing straight through the chamber's glass.
Yet Jobs remained motionless, numb to the chaos.
Contact with external Memoria caused the monstrous entity to swell rapidly, growing several times larger as it burst from confinement. It shattered equipment effortlessly, setting the laboratory ablaze.
Yet upon breaking free, it screamed in relentless anguish.
Countless consciousnesses, desperate to separate yet forcibly bound together, writhed in unbearable agony. The creature thrashed madly, yet no movement eased its torment.
Jobs, slammed aside by the creature's emergence, lay crumpled against the wall, several ribs fractured. Yet his gaze never wavered.
Amidst the monstrous screams, he heard his daughter's voice, her shrill cries piercing his heart.
"I only wanted to bring you back. I just wanted you to live again…"
Yet he had only brought her agony.
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Fenille.
"Papa will fix this mistake!"
Grabbing a twisted metal shard, Jobs charged forward to end his daughter's suffering.
But this attack, filled with determination, struck only emptiness, passing harmlessly through the writhing mass as if through smoke.
Jobs stared blankly.
In the next instant, the writhing body solidified again, slamming into him violently.
Puh!
Blood gushed from his mouth. Like a torn paper doll, Jobs crashed into the wall and collapsed.
Blood streamed relentlessly from his lips. In a daze, he saw his wife leaving him once more.
"I couldn't even grant your final wish, could I?"
And worse, I caused you even more pain. What have I… what have I done?
Only the relentless alarms answered his desperate questions.
In the end, I've lost everything…
At that moment, a faint, weak whisper filled Jobs's ears.
"He's coming. Tell your wish to that fool… He'll definitely help you."
The whisper faded, replaced by the roar of an engine as a figure burst through the wall and appeared before him.
"Jobs! Are you alright?!" Sora rushed toward the bloodied man on the ground.
Jobs reached out weakly, grabbing Sora's hand with all his remaining strength. A single phrase lingered on his lips.
Please… let her rest in peace. Don't let my daughter suffer anymore.
"I'm counting on you… Kamen Rider… Help me… just this once…"
This is all I can do now, as a father who failed.