Chapter 151 - Fusion Link

“Zaft!”

I stretched my trembling hand forward, desperate to grasp Neil’s. But instead of the familiar grip I longed for, another hand clasped mine—a touch warm and soft, pulling me back from the edge of darkness and into reality.

It wasn’t Neil.

Blinking through the haze, my gaze locked onto Myrrh. Her sapphire eyes shimmered with tears, swollen and red from relentless crying, yet she managed a fragile smile the moment she saw life flicker back in mine.

“M-Myrrh…” My voice cracked, barely a whisper. Then something caught my attention, a faint luminescence radiating from my chest. The glow pulsed gently, like the heartbeat I thought I had lost, before fading away.

I looked down. The gaping wound that had claimed me was gone, erased as if death itself had been undone. Only the shredded remnants of my spacesuit bore witness to what had been—a jagged, yawning hole revealing my bare chest and abs beneath, a haunting reminder of how close I had come to oblivion.

“Thank God… you’re okay!” Myrrh sobbed, her voice trembling as she guided my hand to her cheek. Her skin was soft, damp with tears. “I don’t know how you made it back… but I’m so glad you did!”

“Myrrh…” I whispered again, weaker this time, but my heart stirred at the tenderness in her touch. She held me as if I were the most precious thing in the universe, and for a fleeting second, I let myself sink into that warmth.

But reality crashed back. Neil.

“Wait… where’s Neil?!” Panic surged through me as I forced my head up, the world spinning wildly around me.

Myrrh and I lifted our eyes to the heavens, where the great Cosmic Tree was beginning to unravel. Its golden and crimson leaves broke free, scattering like dying embers in a silent wind. Twigs splintered and crumbled into shimmering dust, rising toward the void as if returning to the stars that birthed them.

High above, the Cosmic Goddess trembled, her porcelain-like visage betraying cracks of despair as she watched her beloved creation fade into nothingness.

“NO! NOOOO! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?!”

Her voice thundered across the cosmos, an anguished wail that shook the very fabric of reality.

A bitter laugh escaped my lips as I steadied myself with Myrrh’s trembling arms. My body screamed in protest, yet defiance burned hotter than the pain. I turned my gaze upon the divine tyrant and roared back:

“Don’t you see now, goddess?! This is no accident. This is rebellion! Neil’s final act, his defiance against the cruel, unjust world you chained him to!”

The goddess swiveled her head toward me. Her mannequin-like face remained cold, expressionless… except for her eyes. They bled black tears, inky rivulets staining her flawless cheeks like cracks in marble.

“HOW DARE YOU, MACHINE GOD’S APOSTLE!”

Her voice fractured into pure wrath, reverberating through space like a death knell.

“YOU WILL PAY FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO MY TREE!”

With a motion swift as a meteor, she rose from her kneeling despair and raised her colossal hand. The air rippled, reality itself groaning as her palm descended—a living guillotine poised to crush Myrrh and me in one merciless strike.

There was no escape. The SHOTA unit I’d used lay smoldering in the distance, its frame torn apart by the earlier laser barrage.

Myrrh whipped out her morpher, gripping it with trembling hands as she prepared to transform into her Frame Unit. But the moment she activated it, the device sputtered violently, sparks of blue electricity arcing across its cracked surface. The once-reliable gadget was nothing more than a broken husk.

Hopelessness loomed over us like the shadow of a goddess. I had barely been alive for two minutes after clawing my way back from death, and now it seemed I would lose it all again. Yet, as the Cosmic Goddess’s colossal hand plummeted toward us, blotting out the stars, I felt an inexplicable calm settle over me.

Just as her palm was about to obliterate us into cosmic dust, a blinding flash erupted between us and doom.

“WHAT THE—?!” the Cosmic Goddess snarled, her voice cracking the heavens.

Standing firm against that divine fury was a white-and-orange Frame Unit, its gleaming armor catching the starlight like shards of dawn. Metal groaned and servos screamed as it pushed back with everything it had, both arms straining to hold up the goddess’s monumental hand.

Recognition slammed into me like a surge of lightning. That Frame Unit… I knew it.

“Fei!” Myrrh’s voice cracked, a sob of relief spilling from her lips. “You’re alive!”

The Frame Unit’s visor gleamed as her voice came through the comms, vibrant and unwavering:

“Neil brought me back,” Fei declared, her tone burning with hope and fire. “He said… he’ll keep fighting... until the Cosmic Goddess falls!”

A sudden warmth pulsed through my right hand. I looked down and saw an antique morpher resting in my grip, its surface etched with battle scars and glowing faintly with golden light. My breath caught. This was Neil’s morpher, the one he had carried as a HUSBANDO. Somehow, even in death, he was still here… still guiding us.

“Myrrh!” I shouted, thrusting the morpher toward her, my voice brimming with urgency and resolve. “Take it! This is the key, our last chance to end this fight once and for all!”

“Got it!” Myrrh snatched the morpher from my grasp, her eyes blazing with renewed determination. Raising it high toward the fractured heavens, she roared:

“Frame Unit, Awaken!”

Light burst forth like a miniature sun, swallowing her entire form in a cascade of white and gold radiance. Armor plates materialized from streams of energy, interlocking over her body with a sound like ringing steel. In an instant, Myrrh stood reborn inside her Frame Unit, a celestial knight of gleaming white and gold. Her visor flared with piercing neon-blue eyes, pulsing with the fury of vengeance.

Without hesitation, she launched forward, joining Fei in a synchronized assault. The two WAIFUs braced themselves beneath the titanic hand of the Cosmic Goddess, their servos straining, boosters screaming as blue and orange exhaust plumed from their backs and legs.

“YAAAAAAH!” Both warriors unleashed primal cries as they ignited every thruster, their frames vibrating from the sheer force. Sparks and dust stormed around them as they heaved with inhuman strength. And then, with a thunderous crack, the goddess’s hand lurched backward!

The sudden momentum sent the Cosmic Goddess staggering. Her towering form crashed against the shattered trunk of the Cosmic Tree, splintering what little remained of its celestial roots. Fragments of divine bark exploded outward like meteor shrapnel.

“GAAAH!” The goddess’s voice split the heavens in agony.

“This is for NEIL!” Fei’s cry echoed through the battlefield like a war hymn.

“That’s what you deserve, you BITCH!” Myrrh snarled, her voice burning with raw hatred.

The Cosmic Goddess convulsed with rage. Her scream became an ear-shattering wail that fractured the very ground beneath us, tearing fissures into the cosmic soil. Reality itself trembled.

Then… something changed. Her silhouette lifted into the air, darkness bleeding from her porcelain skin. From her back sprouted monstrous fingers—long, skeletal, and slick with divine ichor. They writhed like living serpents before twisting and interlocking, forming an unholy pair of colossal hands… which unfurled into wings.

Wings made of hands.

Her silhouette loomed larger than ever, a grotesque seraph of despair. The sight alone made my blood run cold.

The Cosmic Goddess ascended, her porcelain form radiating an unholy brilliance as she hovered above the battlefield. Her golden eyes burned like twin suns locked on us with murderous intent. Then, with a sickening click, a third eye split open on her forehead, gleaming with an ominous golden light that threatened to unmake existence itself.

“IF I CANNOT DELETE THIS REALITY… THEN I WILL DELETE YOU FILTH INSTEAD!”

Her roar was cataclysmic, a symphony of rage that made the air itself quake.

From her grotesque hand-wings, the fingertips began to ignite, each one birthing a miniature sun, searing with unbearable heat and divine wrath. Her three eyes flared in unison, pouring power into those stellar fragments as they spun and fused together, collapsing into a single titanic mass of incandescent death.

Before us now churned a galaxy-shaped sphere of golden annihilation, swirling with collapsing stars and screaming solar flares. It pulsed like a living god’s heartbeat, then unleashed its fury.

The beam erupted, a cosmic dragon of molten gold, tearing the void as it surged toward us with impossible speed. The heat alone scorched the air, melting the fractured earth into rivers of molten glass.

“Shit!” Myrrh’s voice cracked with raw terror, her eyes wide beneath her visor. She knew—we both knew—what that meant. To block it was suicide. To take the hit was erasure from reality. And escape? Impossible.

We were about to be erased. Again.

And then… salvation bloomed.

Without warning, the ground convulsed, and from the fissures burst a crimson tree, its roots twisting like serpents, its bark glowing with pulsing veins of scarlet light. It rose like a living monument of defiance, its branches stretching to the heavens. It was… familiar. Too familiar.

Those roots, those veins, were the same that once crawled across Neil’s neck.

The branches drank in the oncoming apocalypse, absorbing the golden energy with a sound like thunder devouring fire. Sparks cascaded in molten showers as the impossible happened—the crimson tree was consuming the goddess’s wrath.

Then, like a whisper carried on the cosmic wind, a voice surged inside my mind: clear, commanding, achingly familiar.

“Zaft! Take this!”

It was Neil's voice.

At that instant, a sharp beep echoed through my Weaponry Enhancement Engineering Bios interface, its voice cold yet full of promise.

[Myrrh Alicent – Detected]

[Fei Xian – Detected]

[Neil Orbeus – Detected]

[Fusion Link – Available]

My pulse spiked. This was it—the one trump card we hadn’t dared to dream of. Without hesitation, I slammed my palm against the glowing option:

[Level 10 - Fusion Link]

My left arm erupted with searing sky-blue circuits, lines of raw energy crawling across my skin like veins of lightning. The air quaked with a low hum as reality itself seemed to tense in anticipation.

I raised my voice, pouring every ounce of strength into the command:

“FUSION LINK, ACTIVATE!”

The battlefield became a sunburst. Pillars of blinding light roared into existence, swallowing Myrrh’s and Fei’s Frame Units along with the crimson tree still pulsing with Neil’s power. The pillars twisted, merging into a colossal vortex of energy that tore through the clouds.

Within that storm, armors shattered into fragments—not in destruction, but rebirth. Plates of white and orange steel whirled like meteors, slamming together with the sound of war drums as a new titan began to take shape.

“W-What is this…?” Fei’s voice wavered, awestruck, echoing through the neural link.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Myrrh smirked, her tone sharp and electric. “We… COMBINE!”

The final burst of light detonated like a supernova.

When the brilliance faded, the battlefield trembled beneath the arrival of something monumental—a Frame Unit standing over forty meters tall, its silhouette a god among machines. Gleaming white and orange armor wrapped its colossal frame, the plates edged in emerald light that burned like molten steel.

Its arms crossed with effortless supremacy as green flames ignited across its entire body, cascading upward in roaring waves. And then, like the mantle of a fallen god, a cape of living emerald fire unfurled behind it, snapping violently in the cosmic winds.

The Fusion Unit had descended.