Chapter 154 - Bridge to Neil

I tilted my head upward, and my breath hitched. Hanging in the endless dark, a colossal sphere loomed, Planet Xyraxis, its jagged cyberpunk surface glowing with neon scars and fractured steel continents. From where I stood, it looked as though the entire world was plummeting straight toward us. But Feena’s earlier transmission echoed in my mind: “Xyraxis isn’t falling. We are.” That truth warped my perception, making the horizon itself feel like it was collapsing.

“W-What should we do?” Fei’s voice cracked like glass. Her hands clutched her chest, knuckles pale, trembling against the gleam of her emerald morpher. Fear dripped from her every syllable.

“Zaft!” She whipped toward me, her long lime-green hair snapping behind her like a whip of silk. Her bluish glare burned cold fire into my soul. “Zaft, can you still use your WMD Series?”

I inhaled sharply and slammed my palm against my wrist console. A digital ripple surged from the device, and holographic glyphs spiraled into the air like arcane circuits. My HUD flared alive with the familiar sequence:

[Weaponry Enhancement Engineering Bios]

[Weapon of Mass Destruction Series Unlocked]

[Level 0 - Cosmic Tree]

[Level 1 - Particle Cannon]

[Level 2 - Uranium Blade]

[Level 3 - Shadow Curtain]

[Level 4 - Lightning Storm]

[Level 5 - Particle Accelerator]

[Level 6 - Proton Slicer]

[Level 7 - Ion Cannon]

[Level 8 - Timesphere]

[Level 9 - Rift Generator]

[Level 10 - Fusion Link]

“Yes.” My voice rang like steel drawn from its sheath. “I can still use it.”

“Is nuking this planet possible?” Myrrh’s tone sliced the air, sharp and urgent.

“A-Are you serious!?” Fei stumbled forward, eyes wide, pupils quivering like broken glass. “Even if we could, everyone will be caught in the blast!”

“The debris will still rain down on Xyraxis,” I said grimly, every word weighted like lead. “Even if we vaporize it here.”

“Then think of another way!” Myrrh barked, her aura flaring with raw defiance as she gave Neil's old morpher back to me.

She stormed past me, boots striking sparks from the steel floor, and seized Fei’s morpher with a forceful yank. Spinning on her heel, she raised the device high, emerald light igniting across her arm like wildfire. Her voice thundered into the void:

“Frame Unit, Awaken!”

Myrrh’s body erupted in a cyclone of emerald light, her silhouette stretching, twisting, fusing with the gleaming armor of her Frame Unit. Plates of metallic green folded over her limbs like blooming petals, and in seconds, a towering war machine stood where she once was—a colossus of chrome and light, eyes glowing like twin suns, awaiting only one thing.

My command.

Gritting my teeth, I weighed our dwindling options. The planet’s monstrous shadow was already swallowing half the horizon, its jagged cybernetic crust glowing like a neon apocalypse.

“Fine… if I can’t stop it, I’ll at least buy us time!” I slammed my palm against the console glyph on my forearm, circuits blazing a furious gold. “Timesphere, Activate!”

A pulse of code rippled through the ether as I thrust my glowing hand toward Myrrh. Reality screamed.

From the Frame Unit’s core, a black-and-white orb bloomed like a miniature black hole, spinning faster and faster until it became a gravitational heart. Then it expanded—swallowing color, freezing the very air into brittle shards of halted time. Mountains groaned as sound itself fractured, and for a moment, it felt like eternity bent at our fingertips.

But the sphere only swelled so far. Even as it grew into a titanic dome, it couldn’t even wrap a fraction of the Cosmic Goddess’ planet.

“Damn it!” Myrrh’s synthetic voice reverberated through the cockpit speakers, harsh with static and fury. “Anything else!?”

Think. THINK!

I pressed my fingers hard against my chin, mind racing like a quantum processor about to burn out. What can I do? What can stop a planet? Then the answer came, a dangerous, desperate one. If I can’t slow it… maybe I can move it.

I jerked my left arm up, circuits shifting into a crimson spiral. “Rift Generator, Activate!”

Light surged, and Myrrh responded instantly. From her gargantuan gauntlet, a sleek white portal pistol materialized, humming with transdimensional power. She raised it skyward and fired.

Reality tore open with a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering. A vast, swirling rift bloomed above, kilometers wide, its edge crackling with violet lightning. Beyond the tear, the glittering sprawl of the Andromeda Galaxy shone like a cosmic promise.

But my hope shattered just as fast.

The portal dwarfed cities, but the planet? The planet laughed at our efforts. Its sheer mass mocked us as it loomed ever closer, blotting out stars.

And then… the rift collapsed. Space zipped shut like a cruel smile, leaving us staring back at the inevitable doom.

We were back to square one. Only now, the ticking clock was louder.

“Ten minutes before impact!” Agent Feena’s voice cracked through the comms, sharp and electric like a blade tearing the silence.

The universe itself seemed to groan in protest. Gravity was no longer a law—it was a war. Both planets clawed at each other, tides of force colliding in an invisible battlefield. Above, the sprawling cybernetic metropolis of Xyraxis convulsed; its skyscrapers shattered like brittle glass, shards glittering as they spiraled into the void.

Below, on the "sacred" soil of the Cosmic Goddess’ world, gray boulders wrenched free from the ground, rising like sacrificial offerings to the sky. Dust coiled upward in ghostly ribbons, choking the horizon.

“Is… there something else we can do?” Myrrh’s voice, usually steel-clad and unyielding, quivered with a fragile edge. Her towering Frame Unit loomed over me like a guardian angel on the brink of despair, emerald light flickering like a candle in a storm.

I clenched my fist so hard my nails dug crescents into my palm. My teeth sank into my lip, copper tang filling my mouth. Think, damn it! There has to be a way, anything!

Then my gaze drifted down to the console.

The list of weapons pulsed faintly in neon glyphs, each name like a prayer of destruction.

[Level 0 – Cosmic Tree]

My throat tightened.

“Zaft.” The whisper was so soft, so fragile, I almost thought it was the wind.

I turned.

Fei stood there, her hands trembling against her chest, as if she were holding her own heart from breaking free. Her golden puppy-like eyes shimmered, not with fear, but with something far heavier. Something that crushed me from the inside out. She smiled, faint and sorrowful, the kind of smile that only blooms before a goodbye.

“I think… this is my destiny.” Her voice was warm, yet it cut like frost against my bones.

My breath shattered. I shook my head, frantic, desperate, a man drowning in denial. “No. Not you too.”

The memory of Neil—the way he vanished when he summoned the Cosmic Tree—flashed like a knife in my mind. That power didn’t just take energy; it devoured the soul. I never spoke of it to Myrrh because I couldn’t bear to imagine losing her.

And now… Fei.

I can’t let it happen. I won’t. Not her. Not anyone.

I stared at the antique morpher resting in my palm, its once-proud surface scarred and weathered by battles long past. Neil’s morpher. The last fragment of his existence. My fingers trembled as I gripped it tighter, until my knuckles turned white. Heat welled in my eyes, blurring the screen of reality around me, but I forced my lids shut, choking back the tears clawing to escape.

“Zaft…” Her voice broke me.

When I opened my eyes, Fei stood there like a fragile star on the verge of collapse. One hand pressed over her chest, the other extended toward me, trembling, pleading.

“Can you… please give that to me?”

Her words pierced deeper than any blade. My throat closed up. “I… I can’t.” My voice cracked, raw and jagged. I staggered back, clutching the morpher like it was my own beating heart. “If I did… you’d be obliterated.”

“Please!” Her cry splintered the silence.

“I will not!” The roar tore from my lungs before I could stop it, echoing like a thunderclap. I thrust the morpher high, away from her reach, as if distance alone could protect her from this cruel fate.

But she stepped closer.

And then I saw them—those golden eyes, wide and glistening like molten glass. Not the soft, playful sparkle I knew so well, but something heavier… something that stripped me bare. They weren’t begging for mercy—they were asking me to destroy her. To choose her death.

Fei didn’t look away.

“You’re so kind, Zaft.” Her voice was gentle, a quiet storm unraveling everything I was. “Even when you knew I betrayed you… you trusted me. You never hated me for who I am. You even became the bridge that brought me to Neil.” She smiled then—a broken, hollow smile that made my chest cave in. “I’m just asking you… to be my bridge to Neil once more.”

Slowly, she lifted both hands, palms open, empty, vulnerable—waiting for the morpher that would end her life.

And I stood there, frozen, my soul screaming.

“Zaft… please…” Her whisper was a dying ember in the freezing void.

My jaw quivered. My heart convulsed in agony, beating against my ribs like a prisoner desperate to break free. I’ve already lost Neil. I’ve already lost Dianca. And now… now I’m about to lose Fei.

But…

If I cling to my selfishness—if I chain her here with my fear—then I won’t just lose Fei.

I’ll lose everyone.

I’ll lose everything.

My strength bled out of me like water through broken glass. My fingers, once clenched in defiance, slackened in defeat. And then—like cutting off a piece of my own soul—I placed the morpher in her trembling hands.

Fei grasped it without hesitation. Her golden eyes softened into something so serene it tore me apart. She pressed the relic against her chest, holding it close as if it were the heartbeat of her late beloved. Her lips curved into a tender smile—beautiful, heartbreaking, final. She closed her eyes, as though sinking into the warmth of an embrace she could no longer touch.

“Thank you, Zaft.” Her voice was a fragile melody, carrying her last breath of joy. “Thank you… for reuniting me with my love.”

And then… it happened.

The console flared. The morpher pulsed like a newborn star. [Level 0 – COSMIC TREE] bloomed across my HUD in radiant glyphs, mocking me with the weight of inevitability.

I bit down hard, tasting iron as blood filled my mouth. My fists trembled against the void, and every cell in my body screamed to stop this. To rip the morpher back. To defy fate itself.

But I didn’t.

Because this was her choice.

Her destiny.

And my curse.

With a voice that shattered what was left of me, I spoke the words I never wanted to utter:

“COSMIC TREE, ACTIVATE!”