The rooftop air crackled with the sound of laser fire and the hiss of alien propulsion systems.
Rito threw himself to the left, his sneakers skidding on the gravel. A bolt of green energy scorched the concrete right where his head had been a second ago.
"Whoa!" Rito yelped, rolling ungracefully but effectively behind a ventilation unit. "That was close! Too close!"
Above him, Lacospo's drone hovered like a mechanical vulture, its red eye scanning for movement.
"Stop running, Earthling!" Lacospo's voice boomed from the speaker, sounding gleeful. "Make this easy on yourself! Just stand still and let me vaporize you!"
"No thanks!" Rito shouted back, his voice shaking.
He wasn't a hero. He wasn't a warrior. Despite his training, despite his knowledge, he was still just Yuuki Rito, a high school student who was terrified of dying. His hands were scraped, his shirt was torn at the shoulder, and his heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
But he didn't run away.
He looked over his shoulder. Yami was standing near the stairwell door, her golden hair swirling around her in a chaotic, defensive cloud. She looked frozen. Her red eyes were wide, tracking Rito's movements with a mixture of confusion and horror.
She was the strongest assassin in the galaxy. She could have sliced the drone in half with a thought. But she wasn't moving.
Seeing the target, the boy she was supposed to kill, throwing himself into the line of fire to protect her had shattered something fundamental in her worldview. Her Trans-Ability, usually responsive to her will, was fluctuating wildly, forming blades that dissolved into hair before they could strike.
"Yami-chan!" Rito yelled, ducking as another laser blast chipped the concrete near his ear. "Stay back! Don't come out!"
"Why?" Yami whispered, her voice barely audible over the drone's hum. "Why are you not running away? I am the weapon. You are the target. This is... illogical. I don't get any of it."
"Because you're my friend!" Rito screamed back, his voice cracking with honest desperation. "And I don't let my friends get hurt! Even if they're assassins!"
He scrambled to his feet, grabbing a loose piece of pipe from the roof maintenance pile. It was pathetic against a laser drone, but it was all he had.
"Hey! Frog-face!" Rito shouted, waving the pipe. "Over here! Leave her alone!"
Lacospo cackled. "Pathetic! You think you can stop me with a stick? Minions! Attack!"
From the shadows of the roof access, three Lizardmen, Lacospo's hired thugs, scuttled out. They were tall, green, and armed with stun batons that crackled with electricity.
Rito swallowed hard. "Okay. Three against one. I can do this. Maybe."
He remembered his training. 'Dodge. Use their momentum. Don't get hit.'
The first lizard lunged. Rito dropped low, sweeping his leg. The lizard tripped, crashing into the ventilation unit.
"Ha!" Rito gasped, surprised it worked.
But the second one was faster. A baton slammed into Rito's side.
"Gah!"
Pain exploded in his ribs. Rito crumbled, dropping the pipe. The third lizard kicked him in the stomach, sending him rolling across the roof.
"Rito!" Yami cried out, taking a step forward. Her hair lashed out, forming a spike, but it wavered and collapsed into soft strands before it could reach the enemy. "My power... I can't focus..."
Rito coughed, pushing himself up on shaking arms. He wiped blood from his lip.
"I'm... I'm okay." he wheezed, glaring at the lizards. "Get away from her. She's not... she's not a tool you can just order around! She has a name!"
Just as the lizards raised their batons for a finishing blow, a high-pitched whine cut through the night air.
ZOOOOOOM.
A pink streak descended from the clouds.
"RITOOOOOO!"
Lala Satalin Deviluke slammed onto the rooftop in a three-point landing that cracked the concrete. She was wearing her battle costume, the one Peke transformed into, and her face was uncharacteristically serious.
"Lala!" Rito gasped, relief flooding his system.
"Get away from Rito!" Lala shouted, pointing her finger. A beam of energy shot out, blasting the lizardmen backward and sending them tumbling off the roof, alive but unconscious, into a dumpster below, because Lala wasn't a killer.
She ran to Rito, helping him sit up. "Are you okay? I tracked your signal! Peke said your heart rate was super high!"
"I'm fine." Rito said, wincing as he touched his ribs. "But Yami... something's wrong with her."
They looked at Yami.
The assassin was trembling. Dark, chaotic energy was leaking from her body like black smoke. Her Trans-Ability was malfunctioning due to her emotional turmoil, the "Darkness" inside her reacting violently to her confusion. The air around her was warping, heavy and suffocating.
"She's losing control." Lala realized, her eyes widening. "Her power... it's reacting to her stress! If she doesn't calm down, she might hurt herself!"
Lacospo's drone hovered closer. "Oh? The defective doll is breaking? Perfect! If she explodes, she takes you all with her!"
"Shut up!" Lala snapped. She reached into her pocket for the D-dial.
"I have just the thing!" Lala declared, pulling out a device that looked like a complex, floating gyroscope with glowing blue rings.
"This is the Peace-Keeper-kun!" Lala explained rapidly. "I made it to help stabilize energy fields! If I use it, it can absorb the excess Darkness leaking out of Yami-chan and help her calm down!"
"Is it safe?" Rito asked, eyeing the spinning rings nervously.
"Of course! I tested it... mostly!" Lala said. "Yami-chan! Hold still! I'm going to help you!"
She threw the device.
It hovered in the air above Yami, spinning up to speed. A soft blue light bathed the assassin.
"It's stabilizing Lala-sama..." Peke chirped from Lala's outfit.
Yami looked up, the black smoke around her slowing. She felt the soothing energy. Her trembling lessened.
"Lala..." Yami whispered. "Rito..."
It was working, and the crisis was de-escalating.
…
High above, monitoring the situation through his drone, Lacospo sneered.
"Stabilizing? I don't think so." he hissed. "If she calms down, she will join them. I can't have that."
He typed a command into his console.
"Target the device." he ordered the drone. "Overload its frequency."
…
The drone's eye flashed red. It fired a concentrated beam, not at Rito, not at Yami, but directly at the Peace-Keeper-kun.
ZAP.
The laser hit the spinning gyroscope.
The blue light flickered. The smooth hum turned into a jagged, grinding screech.
"Warning!" Peke shouted. "External interference! Energy feedback loop detected!"
"What?!" Lala gasped. "No! Stop it!"
The device didn't stop, rather, it spun even faster. The blue light turned an angry, violent purple. Instead of calming the energy, the damaged machine began to vacuum it.
It created a vortex.
The black smoke leaking from Yami was ripped from her body. But it didn't stop there. The machine began to pull at her life force, at the very core of her Trans-Ability.
"AAAAAHHH!" Yami screamed, her back arching.
She was lifted off her feet, suspended in the air by the suction of the malfunctioning device. Her hair whipped around her, drawn into the vortex.
"Yami-chan!" Rito yelled, trying to run to her, but the wind pressure knocked him back.
"It's overloading!" Lala cried, checking her wrist display. "It's sucking out all her Darkness energy at once! It's going to create a singularity!"
The gyroscope was vibrating violently, cracking under the strain of the energy it was consuming. It was a bomb, ticking down, fueled by the raw power of the universe's deadliest weapon.
"I can't... move..." Yami choked out, her eyes rolling back. "Rito... Princess… run..."
Lala was typing frantically on a holographic keyboard. "I can't shut it down! The remote link is severed! Rito, you have to get back! It's going to explode!"
Rito looked at Lala and at the exit.
Then he looked at Yami.
She was floating in the center of the storm, small and helpless, being consumed by the very power that was supposed to protect her. She looked at him with sad, resigned eyes.
'She's going to die.' Rito realized. 'Such a thing never happened in the canon, that means it's a butterfly effect I brought.'
Thinking of this Rito looked at Yami, 'She thinks this is her fate because she's a weapon.'
Rito knew that in the original timeline, something like this might have been solved with a gag or a lucky break. But this was real. This felt both real and final.
He remembered his vow. 'I'll protect them all.'
He didn't think. He didn't calculate.
Rito dug his feet into the roof tiles. He lowered his head against the wind.
And he ran straight into the storm.
*****
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