"Ai...?"
"It's okay now, Ash." Though the flames around him were indeed scorching hot, when she clasped his hand like this, they felt warmer than anything. "You said so many embarrassing things, so let me be with you now too."
"You sharp-tongued little pauper..."
If looks could kill, Ai would have died hundreds of times over beneath Catherine's glare.
"It's enough already, isn't it?"
"Mom, who brought all these cannon fodder here to interfere at the critical moment, and Mom, who was revived by Kalle and appeared before me again—you didn't come here just to talk about trivial family matters with us, did you?"
With the click of his helmet locking back into place, Ash raised his fist at her without the slightest hesitation this time.
"Whether you came to oppose us under his orders, or simply because you wanted to repeat what happened before for your own sake..."
People always said that parents were a child's first example, their first teachers. There were countless things a child could learn from their elders, and I really had learned so, so much from you in some ways...
But today, I wanted to teach you something in return.
"You should learn to let go of your child already."
"..."
A terrifying dark field spread from Catherine's seemingly dejected, silent form, filling the space with another layer of dread. Aida Ai instinctively tightened her grip on Ash's hand and raised her guard to its highest level.
"Those words are unfair, my little Ash."
You wanted someone who had only ever thought about herself to consider the feelings of people other than herself, and even learn to let go?
Kalle, the Sentai-power vessel whose control over the power of infinite parallel worlds surpassed even Bokwars, had performed a complicated series of manipulations involving timelines,