A fierce battle raged on the back of the gliding Nightingale.
The beast-transformed Fudou Hayabusa was like a golden lightning bolt, his sharp claws tearing through the air, each pounce carrying a deadly ferocity. Nyamu gritted her teeth, dodging with visibly sluggish movements, the wounds on her body burning with pain.
"Because I also turned into a cat, I understand... how terrifying his sharp claws are!"
"My current state can't take any more injuries... I have to do something!"
"Freely Tomorrow!"
A stream of azure data instantly surged from behind the girl, not as an attack, but like a spiritual snake, coiling around the fragmented metal skin peeling from the aircraft's body.
The sharp fragments were precisely enveloped and pulled by the data stream, instantly forming a crude yet effective patchwork armor over her vital areas like her arms, shoulders, and back.
Rip!
Fudou Hayabusa's sharp claws viciously raked across the armor, sending sparks flying.
The keen claw tips tore through part of the data stream, leaving deep indentations in the armor but failing to completely penetrate. However, Nyamu was also left dizzy by the immense impact.
Nevertheless, the armor's successful block created a momentary opportunity for her.
Nyamu quickly retreated, enduring the dizziness, and her will moved again!
The data stream surrounding her suddenly shifted, like a high-pressure water gun, spraying a large amount of aviation fuel, previously drawn from inside the fighter jet, towards the pouncing Fudou Hayabusa.
The Serval youth's amber vertical pupils contracted, and he instinctively leaped back to dodge. But the fuel, like a viscous rain curtain, splattered onto his golden fur.
"Ignite!" Nyamu shrieked.
Whoosh!
The parts stained with fuel instantly burst into an eerie blue flame!
"Meow ah—!"
The stench of burning fur mixed with Fudou Hayabusa's painful roar. The scorching flames caused intense pain, though not fatal, successfully hindering his offensive and forcing him to divert his attention to swatting away the flames on his body.
In that instant, a fierce glint flashed in Nyamu's eyes! She suddenly broke off a triangular metal piece with a sharp edge from the patchwork armor on her arm.
The data stream coiled around it, instantly reinforcing it into a gleaming short blade.
"Hah!" Disregarding the disintegration of her arm armor, she lunged forward, pouring all her strength into this crude weapon, and fiercely stabbed towards Fudou Hayabusa's exposed waist and abdomen, revealed as he swatted at the flames.
Fudou Hayabusa, with the Serval's superb hearing, instantly detected Nyamu's surprise attack. He turned to face her again, only to find his vision filled with a dense network of blue data streams, completely obscuring the girl's figure.
"Is this the full extent of her Stand, 'Freely Tomorrow'?!"
Fudou Hayabusa had already realized that the opponent was a Stand User, possessing special abilities just like him.
Although he could clearly feel that her mastery of her Stand was not complete, the girl had clearly grown immensely during their fight.
Fudou Hayabusa quickly clawed wildly at the blue net rushing towards him, attempting to harm the girl hiding behind it.
His sharp claws easily severed the net-like data streams. But perhaps there was some special advantage that "yarn-like" objects had against felines, as the severed streams scattered and loosely covered his body, tangling him endlessly!
Pfft!
The short blade pierced flesh; Nyamu, attacking from a low position, successfully stabbed him again!
But Fudou Hayabusa's reaction was equally astonishingly fast. The moment the intense pain struck, his fur-covered arms coiled around her like giant pythons, crushing her!
Crack!
The sickening sound of bones breaking clearly echoed. The girl's arms were brutally snapped by Fudou Hayabusa's terrifying beast-transformed strength!
The intense pain made her vision go black, and her scream was torn apart by the strong wind generated by the Nightingale's accelerating glide.
However, her short blade, using the force of that self-sacrificing stab, plunged even deeper into Fudou Hayabusa's chest.
"It's futile! Do you... want to die that badly?!"
Fudou Hayabusa staggered back, looking down at the metal shard embedded in his chest, blood gushing out. But a sinister smile appeared on his face.
The muscles in his chest writhed, and his terrifying regenerative ability activated once more. The wound began to close at a visible rate, seemingly about to expel the foreign object and heal!
"It's over... this farce."
"You will fall from this Nightingale, heading to Japari Park!"
"Fall! Shatter into pieces!"
"Become withered bones, deep beneath the earth, in the deepest layers, lonely like ancient fossils! Regret!"
"Regret personally abandoning true happiness!"
Fudou Hayabusa roared, raising his sharp claws, preparing to deliver the final blow to the collapsed, dying Nyamu.
However—
"Pfft—!"
His body suddenly stiffened, and a mouthful of dark gray, tar-like foul blood unexpectedly gushed from his mouth.
Immediately after, from the almost healed chest wound, no longer red blood, but the same dark gray, thick liquid with a pungent chemical smell, poured out.
"Wh-what?!" Fudou Hayabusa stared down in horror.
He felt a cold and insidious erosion spreading wildly from within the wound.
The powerful regeneration of his beast-transformed body was activated, desperately trying to repair the tissues being eroded and dissolved by these strange liquids. And each repair was accompanied by a sense of weakness as his life force was rapidly drained!
"It wasn't just metal fragments that pierced my body..."
"Her Stand... is injecting something into my body!"
The data stream of Freely Tomorrow contained not only fuel, but also high-purity acetone, semi-gloss paint, adhesive, fiberglass wool... industrial toxins that it had "packaged" from the aircraft mechanic's toolbox. These were deeply injected into his circulatory system as he healed.
Repair, then constantly get poisoned!
The poisoning, in turn, forced his body to repair even more frantically—creating a death cycle that devoured his life!
"No... impossible!"
Fudou Hayabusa let out a desperate roar. He could clearly feel his beast-transformed body collapsing from within, his strength disappearing like a receding tide.
Similarly, the energy cycle he had formed with the Nightingale was also broken by this death cycle.
As his life force continuously depleted, the Nightingale's setup could no longer support his supply.
The only solution was to stop the Nightingale, which was about to soar high, gather all energy, and perform a complete, radical repair on his entire body, like a total blood transfusion, breaking the old and establishing the new!
But, he couldn't stop!
If he stopped, it would mean the destruction of the 'Paradise' plan. He, who was determined to break his predetermined fate, absolutely could not make that choice!
He couldn't make a choice! Even if he died, he couldn't stop!
In the future predicted by the meteorite fragment, he miraculously survived a fall from a great height. Japari Park ultimately saved his life, but it could not open up a new future for him.
His spirit would never recover, and the rest of his life would forever be plunged into a withered, gray bleakness.
"Never..."
"I will never accept such a future!"
Extreme unwillingness and rage instantly consumed him!
"You will fall with me!!!"
He squeezed out the last shred of his strength, ignoring the toxins raging within him, his eyes fixed only on the girl who had ruined everything for him!
His claws, stained with foul blood, carried the madness of mutual destruction, tearing through the air, reaching for Nyamu's head!
Just as the claws were about to descend—
Buzz!
A solid, deep blue light curtain appeared in front of Nyamu without warning.
Fudou Hayabusa's sharp claws slammed hard against the light curtain, like hitting a thick wall, emitting a dull thud, unable to advance an inch further.
It was a light curtain formed by countless data streams, an embodiment of Yuutenji Nyamu's soul form.
Immediately after, the scattered azure data streams surrounding the girl, like a hundred rivers flowing into the sea, frantically converged towards the light curtain.
The light grew brighter and more solid!
A blue and purple mechanical humanoid, composed of pure data streams, majestically formed in front of Nyamu.
Its lines were hard and smooth, energy halos flowed at its joints, and its face was a smooth visor structure, flashing with calm blue light.
This was the true form of Freely Tomorrow, and its appearance signified the successful growth of the girl's spirit.
"Mission complete, congratulations."
The mechanical humanoid emitted an emotionless electronic synthetic voice, yet it carried a strange sense of relief. It nodded slightly, as if "looking" at the semi-conscious Nyamu on the ground.
Then, it looked at Fudou Hayabusa, who was frozen in horror beside it, and tilted its head slightly in confusion.
"Defeat Fudou Hayabusa, completed?"
"..."
"Completed!"
The next second, the mechanical humanoid's arms instantly turned into a blur of blue and purple afterimages.
"Muda muda muda muda muda!!!"
Like a storm, like an overclocked industrial press!
Hundreds of heavy punches, condensed with pure energy, slammed into Fudou Hayabusa's already collapsing body in a matter of seconds, without pause, without mercy!
Each punch carried the anger accumulated in its owner's heart, and each punch accelerated the spread of toxins within the opponent's body!
The explosive sound of bones shattering blended into one continuous roar. Fudou Hayabusa couldn't even scream, his body violently twitching and deforming in mid-air like a rag doll repeatedly beaten by a giant hammer.
The final uppercut, carrying the resolve to end it, slammed fiercely into his jaw!
"Guaaah—!"
Fudou Hayabusa's shattered body was sent flying by this immense force, tumbling and falling from the back of the still accelerating Nightingale, crashing towards the rapidly receding concrete runway below.
Along his falling trajectory, his fur, claws, tail... peeled away and dissipated like fading paint, finally revealing the pale, cracked, broken human shell beneath.
"Japari..."
"Ah..."
His final delirium was scattered by the wind, the light in his eyes completely extinguished, leaving only empty, dead silence.
Freely Tomorrow slowly retracted its fists, its blue-purple light significantly dimmed.
It quietly sat down in front of the unconscious Nyamu, its body once again transforming into countless flowing data streams, surging into the girl's body.
The gliding Nightingale still roared forward, carrying a painful victory, heading towards the end of the runway.
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