Fragments

Ch.28 - What Drives Me?

"Mom… You saved me back then. Back when I lived near Ecclesia… And we were attacked."

Distant, disembodied voices haunted Tariru's head during the onslaught he was being dragged through, the Guardians, armed with knowledge of the Empress's presence and a ticking clock, fighting harder than ever before, their resources and strength quickly diminishing.

7 minutes until the bombardment…

"Tell me, mom, what'd you think when you took me in?"

The shield before him didn't fall no matter his efforts. Regardless of the innumerable attacks he threw at the accursed green barriers blocking his way, they and their creator only faltered, but never dropped in defeat.
A person he wished to spare had become the greatest obstacle… What an irony.

"I had no other parents, so I started calling you that… But you never called me your son."

Before he realized his circumstances, the tides had turned… And during a desperate beatdown, it was the Reaper that took innumerable attacks from every angle.
Strikes, stabs, slashes, once from Min-jun, then Ku and his transformed greatsword necklace, Yin's irritatingly effective swarms of needles…
Tiny explosions from a small girl's pistol pelted his body alongside crushing impacts by a pair of flying spheres.
Tariru had his body broken down and reformed countless times by now, as both sides firmly refused to be the losing one.

"You're alone almost all the time, constantly working… As I grew, I changed my appearance until I forgot what I looked like… I trained from sunrise to sundown until I grew indifferent to injury… All to suit your likings, to make you see me. When I failed, you excoriated me endlessly– and when I succeeded, no matter how overwhelmingly, you never acknowledged it. Why? When will you finally notice me? I just want you to see I'm grateful that you saved my life– and that I'm not dead weight…"

Questions that incessantly plagued Tariru for years repeatedly emerged in his psychotic mind.
He never spoke to the Empress about them, fearful of the answer, and in the battle's fleeting moments, the dreadful sensation he'll never get a chance to inquire about his mother's intentions grew beyond comprehension.

"I fight for ideals that aren't my own… Risk my life for them… And now you're here, mom. You must think I failed again."

Like a manifestation of his pitiful denial, the Reaper slowly gained the edge on Min-jun once more, and quickly landed a middle kick while spikes riddling his shin tore up the man's skin, his armor having broken mere moments ago for the dozenth time.
However, the attack failed – suffering through the torment, the Guardian parried it and knocked Tariru off-balance, following up with a weighty sideways swing of a thin, long blade he gripped in his bloody right.

"Why do I care about what happens? Why am I conserving my stamina? Do I really think that, by now, there'll be anything else for me to fight outside?"

The slash was an admirable attempt, but an unsuccessful one. Tariru had raised himself into the air on the tentacles protruding from his back, having stabbed them into the floor, and quickly fired the cannon on his head into Min-jun's shoulder while eluding the sword…
But in doing so, he gave everyone else a clean line of sight, and the favor once again turned to humanity, more torrents of attacks being delivered.
The Reaper was immediately grounded as Yin slashed the tentacles apart, and he rolled away from another sword that descended down onto him – Ku's necklace, transformed into a deadly weapon ironically similar to Impera's.
Tariru was quick to jump back on his feet, but his preparation to counter whatever they threw at him was pulverized with a harsh shoulder bash from Min-jun, whose actions were filled with mixed embers of determination and despondency that pushed him far past any regular human's limits…
Being rammed into the nearest wall, the concrete cracking around the Reaper's momentarily immobile body, Ku used the opening to flip his greatsword into the air and extend the blade into Tariru's head, splitting it in two.