The Steel Colossus raised both arms. Every gun port opened, all weapon restrictions were fully released, and the V-Rex Robot's maximum firepower was unleashed at full force!
The revolver missiles on its right arm, the twin rapid-fire beam cannons revealed by the upper-arm armor of its left iron fist, the two laser cannons raised from its back, the Gatling Vulcan cannons on either side of its head, the concealed cluster missiles exposed by the armor on both legs, the built-in flamethrower revealed as the dragon head on its chest rose and opened its jaws, the beam rays from its glowing eyes—
The energy reactor ran at supercharged maximum output, and every weapon fired at once!
Burning flames, billowing smoke, deafening explosions—the barrage of weapons became surging radiance and frenzied lightning.
"Fire! Keep firing! Don't stop until the barrels melt!"
If he truly wanted to save her, then he had to show effort equal to those feelings!
Every attack, whether physical rounds or beams, flew straight at the gigantic Doomsday Monster.
After an instant of silence, explosive lightning burned away the pitch-black sky. Through the searing heat, he could see the battered tentacles below swaying unsteadily, as though they were about to tear apart this dreary false world.
"Did I do it...?"
Just as Ash was secretly delighted, he saw even more dark light swallow those explosive flashes. The gray shadow of "Venus" stood there, completely unharmed.
In other words, scientific weapons were useless.
Though that sorrowful mask on her face remained expressionless, Ash could somehow feel that she was mocking him. Yet she did not seem angry in the slightest.
Ash did not answer. He simply pulled the trigger.
A second wave of attacks.
A third wave.
A fourth wave...
There was no ammunition left. The rotary mechanism in the machine's right hand let out a clattering idle spin.
The darkness that had become a barrier was continuously shattered, then reassembled.
But darkness was endless.
It was nothing but wasted effort.
This time, it was Hana's turn to strike.
Between the Doomsday Monster's raised, extended, open palms aimed at Ash, fangs of black gun barrels emerged. Layers upon layers of Rampage Energy formed a textual prelude that filled those muzzles. The "words" shattered, spread, contracted, then spread again, finally becoming cold "rejection" as they shot toward the V-Rex Robot before them.
The continuously pouring Rampage Energy completely engulfed the machine's position. Weak light was shredded and swallowed, further compressing the Steel Colossus's room to survive.
Ash and the machine god gritted their teeth together, desperately evading with the thrusters on its back at full power.
The skyscraper beneath its feet was crushed. Having shifted to another foothold, it could no longer avoid the remaining attacks.
The special armor on its thigh and right foot was swallowed and vanished without a trace, leaving the twisted framework beneath brutally exposed to the air.
With its ammunition already spent, the rotary mechanism Ash deliberately sent forward with his right hand was directly struck, continuously twisted and devoured until it completely vanished.
But the assault was not over. Finally came those spread wings. The continuously crumbling feathers became physical mass weapons, dancing toward the machine god in a strangling storm. Completely wrapped in the tornado formed by those feathers, the giant was relentlessly forced back as miserable electrical sparks scattered everywhere.
"Ugh!"
He tightly gripped the handhold to keep from being thrown out. As though deliberately arranged, every attack was pushing him farther and farther away from Hana.
The massive machine crashed to the ground. Its ruined armor creaked continuously, and cracks had appeared in the knee that supported its upper body after drawing back its thigh. Crackling currents surged across it without end.
So strong!
Such incredible power. Nono Hana, now completely despairing, had lost Tomorrow Energy and instead gained all the accumulated, unpurifiable Rampage Energy in the world. Before such overwhelming strength, Ash could see no path to victory.
How was he supposed to win? How was he supposed to save Hana, who knew only despair and death? He had to admit it—he had already lost.
But Ash, was he really going to give up?
The broken half of his right arm jammed its sparking fracture into a nearby skyscraper. Amid the metallic wail of trembling machinery, it stood once more.
"Do you really not want me to get close to you that badly?"
The closer he came, the fiercer her resistance became. She said she was fighting back, but wasn't she really rejecting him and trying to avoid him?
At some point, the shattered visor had revealed his right eye, blood streaming from it as it curved into an ugly smile.
"Making yourself this huge again, and crying too... Hana."
Wasn't she crying out to him, begging him to save her?
"Don't be so impatient, Hana. I suppose, regrettably... I'll have to grant your wish!"
Facing the several tentacles rushing toward him, the damaged giant raised its laser cannons again, though their energy had long been exhausted.
"You things blocking someone else's path to love, get kicked into hell by a horse and get out of my way!!!"
The light and darkness that had originally been balanced within Ash tipped to one side at that moment.
Incalculable radiance erupted before Ash. All the tentacles and darkness, like lingering snow before the blazing sun, screamed and twisted as they shriveled back.
He could even see that beneath this light, the darkness that had frozen the world was receding. Did this mean the world was being saved?
"What—what is this?"
Even Ash had no idea what was happening. Lowering the hand shielding his eyes, he saw a piece of "obsidian" floating at the center, reflecting every shade of light. It felt strangely familiar.
This feeling was... a Mirai Crystal?! The source of the Tomorrow Energy used by Pretty Cure. Why was it here? Could it be... it had acknowledged him?
You had to be kidding.
Though that was what he thought, the instant he took the Mirai Crystal, radiant Tomorrow Energy flooded Ash's entire body. Even the irreversible damage to the V-Rex Robot beneath his feet began to halt, and bit by bit, from head to toe, it was dyed in golden light brimming with power.
After a moment of confusion, he understood.
After Nono Hana fell completely into despair, Tomorrow Energy had stopped responding to her. But Tomorrow Energy, which corresponded to Rampage Energy, would not disappear. And his desire to save Hana, that heart directed toward and longing for the future, that hope—had that caused the Tomorrow Energy to choose him?
The enormous Doomsday Monster stirred uneasily, as if it had seen something terrible, and launched another attack at Ash.
"Max Blizzard!"
He immediately activated the machine's strongest finishing move! Compressed freezing beams fired from the energy units on both shoulders, and with Tomorrow Energy's seemingly endless support, instantly froze everything below the Doomsday Monster's neck solid, leaving only its head and wings still writhing.
The Omni-Adapter allowed him to accept this power without obstruction. Fine—now that their conditions were equal, he had the power to defeat the Doomsday Monster... but.
Tomorrow Energy, you who symbolized "light," had appeared now because you wanted him to defeat Hana, who embodied "darkness"?
Facing the enormous Doomsday Monster as it roared madly at him, under the illumination of Tomorrow Energy, he finally saw the Nono Hana he had longed for.
At the forehead of the Doomsday Monster's female face, something slowly opened from the center. Like a cat's eye, like the core of an utterly rotten flower, he saw Hana, who had been tormented all this time.
The girl's beautiful pink hair was stuck to the glossy surface behind her, and her untrimmed bangs clung to her face as well. Only her lifeless eyes were visible as she slightly raised her head to look at Ash, no trace remaining of the radiance that had once cheered others on.
"Hana... you look awful staying in a place like that. Doesn't this make you completely unlike the big sister you wanted to become?"
"Is that so? You can't come out on your own now, can you? It's okay, I'm coming to save you!"
Proving his resolve through action, Ash, now entirely covered in Tomorrow Energy, soared into the air. His longsword slashed across the immobilized giant's chest, but just as he was about to advance and pull Hana out, he heard her scream as scarlet blood burst from its chest.
"Hana!"
Had she already become one with it?!
"Hana!" He opened his mouth to apologize, though it was already far too late. "I was wrong... Can you forgive me? Do you hate me?"
"No, no, no, no, no!" Nono Hana screamed miserably, as though her soul were gone. "Don't come any closer!"
The hard-won ice was torn apart. The Doomsday Monster resumed its assault, covering Ash's surroundings, yet somehow unable to hit the machine's position.
The rejection in her heart prevented Ash from approaching her.
She was rejecting Ash—the one who had tried to save her and hurt her, the one she had saved and who had harmed her.
"Wasn't I supposed to be the villain, and you the hero who defeated me...?"
"What is going on...?"
Frustration nearly made Ash slump onto the machine's shoulder. As the darkness dispersed and the sun reappeared in the sky, human helicopters, seemingly eager to learn what had happened, flew over. They noticed the lone gigantic Doomsday Monster, the V-Rex Robot facing it, and the human standing atop it.
Having obtained this Mirai Crystal that belonged to him, even if he had not transformed immediately, the bizarrely abundant power within it was enough to give Ash a chance to defeat her.
But a single question echoed in Ash's chest.
Was there no other way besides defeating her?
If it had been before, when he did not know she was her, he could have done anything without caring.
But now, he could no longer deceive his own true feelings.
Just thinking of such an outcome made his heart ache unbearably.
"Hana, tell me. What should I do?"
If this had to be the ending, then wasn't it far too tragic for both of them?
Case File 78: Love Echoes Throughout the World
After the darkness faded, the sun reappeared in the sky.
Everyone who still retained hope gathered anxiously before their televisions. Through the helicopter broadcast, the final battle between the Steel Colossus standing amid the city's ruins and the goddess-shaped Doomsday Monster would, barring surprises, determine the future fate of humanity.
But Ash, standing atop the protruding chest of the V-Rex Robot with its mask shattered, had no mood to think about grand questions like the world and humanity's fate.
He knew her, so he could imagine that Nono Hana must have been feeling both anger toward him and guilt.
The hope she had believed could save her, the love in the girl's heart that had died before it could ever blossom, had all awakened once more because of one person. Just as she began to hope for her own future, a single rejection mercilessly plunged her into despair.
But that was not the true reason. The real cause was their mutual misunderstanding. The fact that Time Fire's true identity was the person she loved and admired—everything he had done had hurt her even more, while she felt guilty for overlooking him and "dealing him a fatal blow."
In the end, all of that became the final straw that crushed her after eight years.
"I fought my way here, only for my final enemy to be you—"
And now, it was her turn to reject him.
So, was this how she tormented herself?
"You've got to be kidding me!"
"Boom—" No longer needing the support of weak long-range weapons, the V-Rex Robot, covered head to toe in golden light formed from Tomorrow Energy as though it had entered some state where will shaped reality, slammed its fist again and again into the dark barrier before the Doomsday Monster. More visible cracks spread across it.
It grabbed the mechanical tentacle shooting toward it, yanked hard enough to drag even that enormous body to the ground, then its iron foot came crashing down and ground the darkness into shrieking dust!
He kept approaching her, yet he still did not understand the answer.
"Cure Yell—you were a hero who protected this world so well, weren't you? Why did it have to end like this...?"
Ash suddenly stopped his resentful muttering. His gaze beneath the shattered visor turned toward the girl fixed within the "rotten flower core" on its forehead, reflecting those eyes that held nothing but hollow despair and sorrow in his own.
He understood something.
"I get it."
Cure Yell, you must have said "keep going" for others too many times. You had walked this far alone, and you were tired. What someone like you needed was surely someone else telling you, "Keep going."
But you needed to know that you were no longer "alone."
He removed the helmet that had become useless and let it fall with gravity into the earth's embrace. Revealing his true face, Ash met her gaze with his most honest eyes, before the eyes of everyone in the world.
Before their televisions, several people covered their mouths in shock as they watched that short black hair scatter in the wind.
I know what I need to say to you.
These were words that I, who had always been so unwilling to be honest, should have said long ago.
(BGM: Over the Rainbow)
"Yell—Hana—!"
The V-Rex Robot drove a fist into the center of the goddess-shaped Doomsday Monster's chest, and its embedded hand shattered the dark barrier with a crisp crack!
All attacks stopped.
Against the backdrop of flames that had consumed an entire empty street, atop the majestic golden super robot and the towering goddess-shaped Doomsday Monster.
The red warrior standing upon the Steel Colossus and looking up at the sky faced the girl bound within the "rotten flower core" and looking down at the earth.
Before you continue