Wind and blinding rain whipped at the pursuer’s faces, the whir and groan of the Tallneck’s actuators setting up a rhythm that the unpredictable terrain underfoot did its best to shatter. The further down the ruined city’s main avenue they went the worse the destruction got, its streets and entire blocks cracked and rift apart by massive upheavals. The overgrowth grew thicker as well, but all this scenery merely flashed by–Tora’s eyes lay only on the road ahead. A light in the distance held his attention, its shade and intensity familiar. It was the flare of Poppi QT Pi’s back-mounted afterburners. Together he, Pit, and Roxas closed on her, and after a couple dozen seconds she seemed to stop, her telltale signal vanished into the rainy haze. Tora would not be dissuaded, however; the less vibrant orange highlights all across Poppi’s form were enough for him to zero the Tallneck in on her position. Just when he finally seemed to have her in his grasp, however, Poppi noticed the incoming posse and took to the air again.
“Go away!” she cried out, her voice strained. Sparks were flying from her servos, and not the good kind. “I don’t want to hurt you! Please!”
Tora’s reply was lost in the dull roar as she turned and soared away, down toward the lower, half-sunken deltas of the flooded district.. Gritting his teeth, the Nopon gave chase. When it became apparent to Poppi that her Masterpon would not be dissuaded, the artificial blade had to make the most difficult choice. Switching to her Wind core, she pivoted in the air while fleeing and with her Variable Saber in gun mode, began to fire. Her air-infused shots whizzed by the Tallneck, their currents strong enough to risk knocking it over -or Seekers off it- even if they weren’t aimed right at it. “Bad Poppi!” Tora cried, nearly thrown from his very tall perch by the opening salvo. Glancing between his allies, he said, “We need bring her down so Tora can fix. Just don’t hurt poor Poppi too much!”
”...I promise.” Roxas responded. Of course that left the question of what he should actually do. He had enough juice for maybe one more spell before his magic would be out and need to recharge. Beyond that, what could he do against someone flying overhead firing off blasts of wind at them? Well, he had to do
something, so Roxas decided to act,
”Fire!” he shot a Firaga spell at Poppi, confident that a single one wouldn’t harm Poppi much, if at all. And that was his last spell, so now he had to wait for his magic to recharge before he could use it again. Not letting himself be deterred, he decided to throw his Keyblades at the flying robot girl. He wasn’t sure how accurate he would be on a giant galloping robot throwing them at a flying robot, but it was better than nothing.
Poppi dodged the fireball with grace, unhappy but unsurprised that her pursuers were going to risk their lives coming after her. She let loose another multiblast of rippling light-green air bullets, the distance and spread too much for them to do any real damage, but they could still cause blowdown. Though keen even in circumstances like these, her optics weren’t perfect, and as she glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t about to fly directly into something she failed to notice the uncanny keyblades hooking around from the side. They clipped her before returning to sender, demanding that she focus forward with gritted teeth and up the ante with more spread shots. That top-heavy Tallneck wasn’t built for this, and she knew it.
"Let me!" Pit said, already aiming his bow at Poppi. He could battle her at long range just as long as her gusts of wind didn't knock him from the Tallneck's back, though hopefully an ally would catch him if it did. He fired at Poppi, using his arrows' unique properties to put strain on her defensively. Not only did they twist through the air to make the angle of their attack less predictable, but their speed and power varied. Some packed more of a punch, and though they arrived more slowly than the others, all the arrows gained speed over the distance they had to travel to reach her. Still, Poppi boasted uncommon speed, and after dodging a remarkable number of the arrows at the last moment she gave as good as she got.
"Tora! Does she have a weak spot?" He asked, dodging the gust from one of her wind-attuned shots and returning fire with a dash shot of his own. All robots had one, right? Since they didn't want to hurt Poppi too badly if they could help it, they should try to wrap up her recovery as fast as possible.
"Tell me where to aim so we can take her down quick!"“Not to speak of,” the Nopon told him, his voice quavering. “Ether Furnace too well protected, and it vital for Poppi functioning! Only weakness is opposite element of current core, which right now is Ice, but…”
"Perfect, I can do fire!"But before Tora could correct the misconception his words died on his lips as he saw Poppi switch the Variable Saber to blade mode, then slash through the air to send wide arcs of wind toward her pursuers. With these all but guaranteed to hit, Tora took drastic action, forcing the Tallneck’s neck to lower. This tilted the machine’s center of balance much too far forward, however, and it threatened to fall on its head. He pulled the head back up and veered the Tallneck to the side as it ran to avoid another batch of wind blades, only to careen too close to a cliff. “Meh-meh-meh!” Tora shrieked, peering down in terror at the rubble-strewn river in the ravine’s depths and sure that that Tallneck was going over.
"Hold on, I can fix this!" Pit had ducked to hold onto the robot's body while Tora harshly maneuvered it around Poppi's attacks, but now he ran toward the edge of the Tallneck's back and threw himself off the side. He twisted in the air, propelling himself back toward the machine by summoning the Upperdash Arm and letting it drag him forward. The weapon collided with the Tallneck's side, the heavy impact forcing it back the way it came. It couldn't be called stable, but at the very least it wasn't in immediate danger of toppling over for now. Pit extended his wings to push against the air, flapping until he'd grabbed hold of the robot and scrambled to pull himself back up.
Up ahead, Poppi began to draw in ether in vast quantities from the atmosphere, her frame aglow with gathered motes of light. Holding aloft her weapon, she switched cores from Wind to Water, her accent lines turning from green to blue. Then she let loose her Noponic Axiom blade art, and a torrential beam of water surged across the cluttered roadway, power-washing the dust of ages clean in a line as it swept toward the Tallneck’s legs.
Roxas felt useless right now. What could he do from a distance without spells? And seeing what was happening with Poppi was also beginning to dredge up some painful memories of his own. He too was once forced to fight against someone he cared deeply about. And seeing Poppi made Roxas start to think about that heartbreaking fight.
"No, not like this. I won't stand by and watch someone lose their friend like this!" his weapons vanished and he used the long sleeve of his black coat to wipe tears that were forming in his eyes. Then he broke into a run and did something… incredibly stupid.
Using Flowmotion, Roxas ran up the length of the giant machine's neck. In the distance he saw Poppi charging up some kind of attack and then picked up his pace. When he reached the end of the line, he instinctively did the unthinkable and jumped. He launched himself forward, hoping and praying that the momentum from flowmotion would be enough for him to get close. Poppi was already firing her water attack, and so all Roxas could do was try to grab onto her. He had no idea if she was capable of carrying the extra weight, but maybe he could disrupt her flight somehow, maybe even find a way to pull her down closer to where Pit and Tora were.
“Urk!” Poppi’s beam was knocked askew as Roxas threw himself at and then barged into her. Despite his best efforts, though, she didn’t go down; if her thrusters were strong enough for her to carry around a dense Nopon like Tora, they could support the added weight of a gangly teenager no problem. That didn’t mean he couldn’t wreck her flight pattern, however. Pulling her off-kilter sent Poppi into an out-of-control spiral. Gritting her teeth, she grappled with Roxas in the air. “This won’t end well!” she snapped at him. “Let me go, don’t do this to my Masterpon! He doesn’t deserve it!” With mechanical strength and precision she slammed her knee into the keyblade wielder’s stomach, making him see stars then launched him away with a flip kick to continue her flight.
He flew back toward the Tallneck, still upright despite the water beam delivered to its legs. Its already-overworked servos were sparking, and its gait much less steady, but it could still run, at least for now. As Roxas hurtled right for it, Pit hopped up the robot's neck and leapt out to catch him. The angel's wings slowed their fall enough that when the two boys tumbled back onto the metal it wasn't anywhere near as painful as it could have been. Still hoping to escape, Poppi sped away once again, descending through the cratered, tree-littered city landscape down toward the basin. Behind her, the Tallneck’s path grew even more treacherous, the downward slope of broken roads jagged and often flanked on both sides by either building walls or rivers. After emerging through the spray of a waterfall, Tora could see her condition deteriorating, and not just from the boys’ attacks. The virus must be damaging her, too. Poppi was running out of real estate; if she was going to spare her creator the pain of watching her die, her next shot needed to count.
Poppi pirouetted as she flew, stowing her Variable Saber as she drew a revolver. She switched to her Dark Core, turning her accent lines as well as the ether surrounding her to deep purple, and took aim at the Tallneck’s chest.
It was obvious their machine mount couldn't take much more of this. After fighting the robot army and going right to their rescue mission, even Pit was beginning to tire. Poppi herself seemed to be losing steam as well. Even if it was for her own well being, fighting her didn't feel good. Even if they hadn't known her for more than a few days, she was their friend. But it would be so much worse if they let her succumb to whatever virus was infecting her.
"I'll reflect her attack," Pit said after catching his breath. He glanced at the other two boys.
"Hopefully that'll give you an opening."As Poppi aimed, she kept an eye on Pit. Leveraging her prior experience meant that she knew just what he planned to do when he interposed himself between her revolver’s barrel and the Tallneck’s core. At the last moment, she quickly jerked her aim, and then fired. With his quick reaction time, Pit activated his Guardian Orbitars, creating a life-saving barrier as planned. The gravity-infused shot hurled toward him, but…not exactly. It flew wide, so far off the mark that its trajectory couldn’t be an accident. With all eyes on the deep purple projectile as it missed, Pit scarcely had time to refocus on Poppi -let alone process what was happening- before a green-and-orange blur shot toward him. The artificial blade streaked straight for him in
Nano Orange mode, her Variable Saber in hand. He held firm behind his barrier, only for Nano Orange’s guard-annulling impact to completely annihilate his defense. As Pit reeled, and the others looked on in shock, Poppi whirled around to trade out her Saber for both revolvers, pointed to either side of the angel.
“I’m sorry.”
She pulled the triggers, and her shots whizzed within inches of Pit’s torso to smash into and through the Tallneck’s body. After a brief moment they ruptured in a terrifying expulsion of gravitational force, destroying the machine lifeform from within. Its legs flew off to the sides in chunks, scattered to the winds, and the pieces of its body became little more than metal confetti. Only the top half of its neck and its head survived, hurtling through the rain with Roxas and Tora attached with Pit not far behind, all three propelled by the shockwave into the air. They’d have plenty of hangtime to figure a way out of this, but by the time they landed safely Poppi would be gone. With Nano Orange depleted, she looked worse for wear than ever, but still she descended forth toward the water’s edge, where highrises lay partially submerged within the crater lake.
"Ugh, she read me like a book!" Pit shouted, frustrated about being predicted so easily. Was Poppi really so desperate to let herself be destroyed like this? He knew she was worried about hurting them, and Tora most of all, but she wasn't even giving them a chance to try and help. How could they convince her, especially when she was so good at escaping them? She'd find that Pit was a stubborn one, and he definitely wasn't about to give up on her even if she'd already given up on herself. But currently he was hurtling through the air.
"Roxas! Tora!" He flapped his wings and sailed toward them, snagging both of them under each arm. With his feathers spread as wide as possible he tried to catch the wind and slow their descent. If it worked, it was only just barely - his wings weren't strong enough for all three of them. Usually in a situation like this he'd crash into the ground and then just get back up afterward, but that wasn't something he wanted Tora or Roxas to suffer. They might not even survive. He'd have to stop their fall closer to the ground.
"Hold on!"He kept his wings acting as a parachute the entire way down, but once they were getting dangerously close to smashing into the ruined highway below the Orbitars made their reappearance. A shield formed between the boys and the ground, identical to the one Poppi had ripped through but wholly new. They jolted to a stop and fell only a couple of feet once the shield dissipated, shaken up but alive - and still just as determined to go after their friend.
Click for musicBefore long, Poppi couldn’t fly any more. Her thrusters were compromised. She resorted to hopping across the last few sunken skyscrapers that jutted from the crater lake like islands until she came to the last one in the chain, a section of raised highway with the long-abandoned husk of a bus. There were many more of those bug drones around here, but they seemed to ignore her. As she slowed down a power surge rocked her, eliciting a cry of pain as she fought to stay standing. Her left arm had stopped responding, and her vision had grown patchy with glitches. Gasping like someone with real breath and real lungs, she moved toward the edge of the cliff that overlooked the water, jogging for a moment until another breakdown reduced her to a limp. Holding her face where one of Pit’s arrows had struck her, she looked down from the precipice at the water. Then she changed gears, switching to her Fire core. Even that simple act damaged her body further, causing rivulets of flame to spill from the cracks, drip down, and vanish with a hiss of smoke in the rain.
But there Poppi stopped. She knew what she needed to do, but she found her servos terribly hard to move. The virus was in her head. Gnawing at her memories. She wouldn’t let them go. She
couldn’t. Gritting her teeth, she fought to keep hold of them. Vistas of far-off places burned in her mind. Uraya. Mor Ardain. The Leftherian Archipelago. Gormott, and Torigoth. Her home. Faces flashed before her. Pyra and Mythra, her heroes, and Rex, his. Nia and Dromarch. Zeke and Pandoria. Morag, Brigid, and all the rest. And his face most of all. It hurt very badly. Everything hurt, but her heart more than anything. Nothing was unforgettable. After all that…was this really it?
Why?“Poppiiiii!”
She wanted to turn to face him right away. She could hear his little feet, and those of his companions. They must have saved him from the fall, as she knew they would, and here they were, though she’d hoped they wouldn’t be. “Why… did you have to come?” she asked, her voice scratchy. When she turned around to look, her eyes were glowing red. “Now this is going to hurt… even more.”
"No, it doesn't have to be that way!" Pit argued, balling his hands into fists at his sides.
"Let us help you!"Roxas couldn’t do much of anything, but he pulled the hood of his coat up and did his best to hide the expression on his face underneath it. All of this was bringing back feelings and memories to the surface that he hadn’t thought about in a long time.
Tears were streaming down Tora’s face. “Meh-meh, Poppi not say such thing! Hold still and let Tora fix!” He took a step forward, his toolkit in his hands, and the machine took a step back, closer to the cliff. “P-Poppi?” Tora wept, raising his voice. “Don’t move! That Masterpon direct order!”
Poppi winced, her expression pleading. “I tried to remove it. It’s changing and evolving its own code too quickly. There’s not enough time…”
“That no reason not to try!” Tora exclaimed, waddling her way.
“No!” Flame blazed in the rain as the Variable Saber’s blade extended, wrathed in a curtain of steam. The Nopon shied away, his jaw slack. “I can’t bear to hurt you. But any moment now, it won’t be me any more. Masterpon…Tora. You need to get away!” Another surge coursed through her and she nearly fell, her eyes narrowing as her flames flickered. “Just…let me go. It’s not the end. You can just…make me again. Take my furnace…and my spirit, when I’m gone.”
Tora shook his head. “Even if Tora do that, it not you! You not just schematic to Tora!” He flapped his wings wildly. “You
my Poppi!”
Roxas couldn’t stop thinking about it. That horrible day when everything he cared about was ripped away from him. His mind filled with images and memories of a battle he was forced to fight. One he ultimately won, even if at the time it felt like anything but a victory. The look on her face as she tried to give him a pained smile even as she vanished from existence and from everyone’s memory. The memory of feeling like his heart had been broken but unable to figure out why.
Try as she might, Poppi had no tears to cry. She tried to respond, but at that moment her core finally broke down. A burst of sparks flew from her chest as she staggered backward, her legs locked up, and her head and arms slumped down. Tora charged forward and jumped up to throw his wings around her in a hug, but without her limp arms supporting him he couldn’t hold on, and plopped down to the ground on his rear. “Don’t leave me!” he wept. “Poppi!”
Light blazed, and Poppi’s right arm moved. Tora looked up, unaffected by the rain on his face, as she raised the Variable Saber over her head. Massive amounts of ether coursed through it, and its burning blade swelled in size, roaring with molten fury. It blazed high into the sky, and as it did Poppi’s body burned out, on the verge of self destruction.
And then, all at once, a strong splash of water crashed into Poppi’s burning body. It was Roxas, having cast a Waterga spell with one of his Keyblades. His hood was still up, but an eagle-eyed person would be able to spot the tears streaming from his currently hidden eyes. Then he cast Waterga again. And Again. And again. If Poppi was trying to heat herself up to explode, then Roxas would simply use Waterga to stop that from happening. He also wasn’t blind to their current location, and Poppi’s current position over an edge that led down into a lake below.
”Don’t you do this! Don’t you do this to your friend!” Roxas called out, sounding like he was about to start sobbing,
”I’ve been through this before, and I’m not gonna let it happen to anyone else! Do you hear me?” His gloved hand tightened its grip on the Keyblade it held. And then with a voice that almost sounded like it was going hoarse from the shouting, Roxas cried out and flung one last Waterga at Poppi to try and knock her into the lake. As long as she couldn’t move, and as long as the lake’s water could keep the fires quenched, she wouldn’t explode. Then maybe they could search for a way to save her.
With each blast of Waterga, Poppi wavered, driven back toward the edge step by step as steam coiled around her overheating chassis and the flames of her saber flickered. Whether she’d already succumbed to the virus, lost her capacity to speak, or simply couldn’t find the words, she said nothing. Roxas shouted at her like she wanted or chose this, and that would have hurt terribly were she still in her right mind, but nothing could reach her now. Not his imperatives, nor Tora’s pleading, nor even the imploring wing that grabbed hold of her limp left arm. Only the water that crashed against her broken body–and then, moments later, the water that rushed up to meet her from below. Her column of flame dispersed, and the embers that fed it were drowned. The waves rushed in to fill the gap, gentle rain fell upon the land of eternity, and the rest was silence.
Tora stared at the water for a long time. In his arms he held tight a mechanical limb, inadvertently pulled from its compromised elbow joint as Poppi tipped over the edge and began to fall. More
drones buzzed around the area, circling like vultures as they slowly but steadily closed in. Only when distant rumbles and crashes echoed across the lake did Tora turn his gaze up, peering through the storm. On the opposite side of the crater, a giant shape emerged from between the buildings, circular in form and fearfully spider-like, yet not quite the same as the huge robot the team took on earlier. It looked like nothing more than a
gigantic clock on long, spindly legs. Blue light, just like the substance within the drones’ abdomens, blazed in a ring around the clock’s face, roughly three-quarters full. With the mobile fortress came a profound ticking noise, low, piercing, and unerringly regular, and it seemed to excite the bug drones. This place, so deep in the territory of the Machines, wasn’t safe. But Tora couldn’t bring himself to move.
At first Pit had been rooted to his spot. His heart was beating hard while Tora tried and failed to talk Poppi down, and while Roxas cast his magic to counteract her overheating. When Poppi tipped over the edge it practically stopped. He'd started toward the ledge on pure instinct, only getting as far as a couple steps before the sight of Poppi's arm in Tora's grasp halted him. Right, Poppi was a robot. She should be okay even after a fall like that. He had no idea how computer viruses were different from human viruses, but wouldn't it be possible to reconstruct her body and reboot her... or something?
After a few moments Pit swallowed the lump in his throat, the first to speak. His eyes flickered to Tora.
"She's still alive, I know she is," he said, and though there was no evidence to support his words his tone was one of pure confidence in his statement.
"We'll fish her out of the water and you can fix whatever broke! But it looks like we're gonna have to do it fast."Because this new machine probably wasn't friendly. Even so, he'd fend it and the drones off while they recovered Poppi and found a way back if he had to.
He made it sound simple, but Tora knew they couldn’t ‘fish her out’ of this deep, dark lake. Not in this state, with no gear or tools, surrounded by hostile machines. Tora gulped, squeezing the arm tight. “Y-yeah,” he said after a moment. “Arm not turn to ash, yes? So Poppi have to be alive! Is just emergency shutdown!” Though as exhausted as the others after all that fighting, he nodded vigorously. An idea had formed his mind, and he clung to it like it was the only thing keeping him afloat in a sea of despair. “Tora take arm back. Find workshop. Research virus, make cure. Come back with salvage team! Bring Poppi up, cure virus, and wakey wakey! After little tuneup, Poppi good as new!” Shaky of breath, he yelled down at the water. “Hear that, Poppi!? Sleep just for little while, your masterpon come back very soon!”
Pit was surprised to hear Tora's practical response. Ultimately Poppi was Tora's partner and dear friend, so if Tora was alright with leaving for now and coming back for her later, then Pit was alright with it too.
"That's the spirit!" It would be just as Tora said, so for now it was time to regroup. He offered the nopon a quick, reassuring grin and then brandished his bow.
"Okay then. The sooner we get out of here the sooner we can come back!"Tora nodded. With the Machines closing in, he took one last look at the water. “That right,” he told himself. “Poppi is hero. And heroes never die!” Then, with fleet-footed Roxas and Pit to help him along, he bid a hasty retreat. But his breathing never evened out, and his cheeks stayed wet with tears.
For a good while longer the rain continued to fall. The drones left the crater lake not long after the Seekers did; their services were needed elsewhere. While the clock remained a few minutes more, drawn by the pillar of fire that lit up the murky, stormy-shadowed day like a signal flare, it soon left as well. Its blade-tipped spider-legs hauled it across the ruined landscape until the rattle of its clockwork, the crash of its plunging footfalls, and even the ticking of its clock face faded away. Peace returned to the lake that had lain undisturbed by the living for so long, but an ominous and foreboding peace, like the calm before an even greater storm. Eventually, as noon approached, the downpour began to subside.
It was about that time that the waves deposited a body on the lakeside shore. Though very human in appearance, it was broken in ways that a human couldn’t be, and it had survived circumstances a human couldn’t, either. A Fire core might have been drowned down there in the deep, but not a Water core. Before the waves could tease the body back out into the depths, the broken machine began to haul itself up from the water’s edge, less a crawl and more a drag using its right arm and the shattered parts protruding from what remained of its left elbow. After just a few feet it stopped, rolled onto its back, and stared up into the sky. It rolled and churned as the light of day began to emerge through the clouds, an exquisite monochrome mosaic pierced by sublime rays of gold. It was beautiful, but what good was beauty, without someone to share it with?
The sound of footsteps prompted Poppi to turn her head. A lone figure stood not so far away, clothes in a long black coat. Her hood was down, and a beautiful face stared down at Poppi with blue eyes, a stern frown on her lips and a single mole right beside them. Long white hair reached down past her back. Poppi didn’t recognize this woman, but she did know that coat. “...Organization?” she rasped, her voice muffled and weak. “Help…”
“You’re infected,” the woman said matter-of-factly. “Almost completely. I’m surprised you held on so long.”
Though the virus had Poppi almost totally in its grip, she felt no hostility toward this stranger. Was she a Machine, too? Her eyes lowered to the
sword that hung at the stranger’s waist. “Kill…me…” she begged. “Before I’m…completely…gone.” She held out her Variable Saber’s hilt, and dropped it at the stranger’s feet. “These are…my memories. Take care of them…of him. The future…!”
After a moment, the stranger stepped forward. She knelt, and clasped the Saber in her hand.
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