Flowers on an Iron Grave Marker: Gerbera Knows No Tears - Final battle. In the deepest part, Iris confronts the core of a giant pseudo-lifeform, with Cain supporting her despite being battered and bruised. After a desperate struggle, he takes an attack from the core right in front of her and is mortally wounded.

The earth pulsed. It was no longer soil or rock. At the deepest part of old Zervia, the colossal sinkhole spanning five kilometers in diameter—the "Womb of Titan"—at its very center, the world itself beat slowly but steadily, like a single heart. Thump. Inside the cockpit of the crimson assault mobile shell, Gerbera Tetra, Iris Cromwell felt that vibration through her entire body. A low, visceral pulse that resonated to the marrow of her bones, stirring a physiological revulsion. The air grew viscous, and a sickly-sweet stench of decay seeped even into the cockpit. Every breath felt like it was fouling her lungs. *(This is where it all began.)* She fixed her gaze forward with her violet-gray eyes. There it was. At the center of the earth's fissure. A colossal structure, formed by the skeletal remains of old Zervia's research facility, entwined with countless cables and thick, fleshy tentacles. Its diameter easily exceeded a hundred meters. It was organism, it was machine, and it was—a shrine. *The Core of the Machine God.* Organic armor plates opened and closed as if breathing, and from the gaps, a pulsing pale blue light seeped out. On its surface, countless things resembling human faces surfaced and vanished, gnawing at the void with expressions of agony. The heart of the earth, born from Project Titan. Unconsciously, Iris gripped her left arm. The identification code beneath her uniform—ZVN-07-IRIS—burned searing hot. The organic black scar running from her neck to her collarbone throbbed dully, as if resonating with the core's pulse. *My other half.* A voice. She heard it. No—this was not a voice. It bypassed the cockpit's comms, bypassed any vibration in the outside air. Words poured directly into her consciousness. *Daughter. My other half. Return.* "...No." Iris's voice was so faint and trembling, it surprised even herself. *I am you. You are I. You are the mother, and my daughter. Release the pain of being a weapon.* Along with the words, images flooded in. A single ray of light streaming through a ventilation duct. Within it, a single white flower, blooming valiantly. For eighteen years, on a lonely battlefield, the one thing that had supported her heart. *(That flower is... mine...!)* The next moment, the images encroached upon another memory. The sensation of Cain's gentle fingertips, wiping her tears for the first time in that ruin. *"You are human."*—A voice filled with a stillness like a deep forest, being painted over by noise. "S...stop..." Iris tightened her grip on the control sticks. Her fingers turned white. Her shoulders trembled. The images pressed on relentlessly. The quiet peace she felt standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Cain. The certainty she had learned for the first time—that she was "not alone." One by one, as if being peeled away, they were contaminated and rewritten. *Your memories are mine. Your pain is my sustenance. A weapon has no need for memories. The warmth of humans is an illusion.* "Shut up...!" She screamed, and tried to pull the trigger. But her fingers would not move. The sensation of having her memories of a loved one unilaterally overwritten and desecrated. It was a violence far more cruel than mere physical injury. Each time a memory was stolen, the outline of who she was, her very existence, grew fainter. *(Who am I?)* *(What is it... that I want to protect?)* Her teeth chattered uncontrollably. Her vision blurred with tears. The core's encroachment was trying to dissolve the boundary of her ego, root and stem. *You are I. I am you. Come now, to the depths of an eternal dream—* —BOOOOOOM!!! A roar. The countless tentacles the core had extended to devour Iris were pulverized in an instant. A jet-black machine wedged itself between the core and Iris like a shield. Schwarzfalke. The azure mobile shell piloted by Cain Rathford, battered and broken. "Iris!!" His voice over the comms forcibly dragged her muddled consciousness back to reality. "...Cain... why..." Her voice was wet with tears. Why are you here? You should have been mortally wounded. Unable to move, back at the shelter. Schwarzfalke's frame was a shadow of its former self. Its left arm was gone, armor gouged out everywhere, exposing the internal structure. The armored frame around the cockpit was heavily warped, sparks scattering from the gaps. The armor meant to ensure the pilot's safety was no longer functional. "Yeah, you're right. It hurts, and I've got a few broken bones. My left arm won't move anymore either." Cain's voice carried a strained smile. His breathing was ragged, and with every word he spoke, a hint of suppressed pain mixed in. "Even so—I came. I told you, didn't I? Don't make me let you fight alone." A jolt of electricity ran through Iris's entire body. *(This man... is burning his own life away... for me.)* "No! You stay back, Cain! This is... my—" "Can't hear you." Cain cut her off and pushed the control sticks forward. Schwarzfalke fired its remaining right arm's assault rifle wildly, drawing the core's attention. "Listen, Iris! I've already gone way past insubordination and treason. Punched out about three of Leon's men. I'm completely done for. So let me do what I want from here on out." The core trembled with rage. Countless high-density bio-energy cannons aimed at him all at once. Cain flipped his machine, dodging by a hair's breadth with evasive maneuvers. But the damage to his frame was severe, and his movements clearly lacked their usual brilliance. "Cain... why go this far?! I'm just a weapon! I'm not worth you risking your life—" "Wrong!!" Cain raised his voice for the first time. "Iris. I didn't come here out of duty, or atonement. Not as a soldier, not as an ace pilot. It's a much, much simpler reason." He dodged a particularly fierce attack from the core by a paper-thin margin, and turned his deep green eyes toward Iris's violet-gray ones. "I... I like you. As a single human being." Time stopped. The core's attacks, the earth's pulse, everything receded into the distance. His voice was trembling. Not from fear or pain. He was simply nervous, laying bare his true, unadorned feelings for the first time—feelings he had kept hidden for so long. "Whether you're a weapon or a test subject... in front of me, you were just an awkward, single woman. You'd forgotten how to cry, how to laugh... but you were the one person who thought the flower in the vent was simply beautiful, desperately protecting your own world. That's the you... that I love." Tears streamed down Iris's cheeks. They weren't from sadness, or pain. For the first time, it was something warm, overflowing from the very bottom of her heart. *(Me too.)* *(I... you too—)* Just as she tried to answer. *"GUOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!"* The core roared. It was less a physical destructive sound and more a violent wave of psychic intent that tore at the spirit itself. Cain's "love"—the purest emotion, the most incongruous thing in this place—had enraged the will of the earth. The core momentarily loosened its encroachment on Iris and poured all its resources into annihilating Cain alone. "Ngh... bring it...!" Gritting his teeth, Cain moved his broken left arm and maneuvered Schwarzfalke. He had become the decoy. By concentrating the attacks on himself, he was weakening the mental contamination on Iris. *(Now.)* Iris forcibly suppressed the love swirling within her and the terror of loss, switching her consciousness to combat mode. *No. No,* her heart screamed. But right now, there was no way to protect him other than to merge with Gerbera Tetra and search for the core's weak point. She burned the attack patterns the core was using against Cain into her retinas, analyzing for a weakness in less than a second. If her own biometric data was directly linked to the core's control center... *(I'll reverse the flow of my consciousness.)* Iris placed both the despair that had defined her as a weapon and her love for Cain at the forefront of her consciousness simultaneously. She deliberately accepted the core's encroaching waves. But what she let flow in was not the "memories" the core desired. *—This is my pain.* *—The number of people I've killed in these eighteen years.* *—The single, precious life of mine... that you tried to steal.* "Guh, aaaaaaaaahhh!!!" Agony beyond imagination seared her brain. The core flew into a rage. The function built into its control center to hijack Iris's consciousness instead suffered feedback from the torrent of negative emotions—"trauma and rage"—flowing in from her. In that instant, the encroaching waves being emitted from the core toward Iris completely ceased, just for a split second. "Cain, now—" The very moment she tried to shout. Its own systems driven mad, the core, in a desperate, dying struggle, formed countless gunports on its surface. Its target—Gerbera Tetra, directly linked to the core and frozen in place. All its energy converged at once. There was no time to evade. The core fired its high-density bio-energy cannon at Iris—and that was when it happened. "UOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!" KABOOOOOOM!!! The wrecked Schwarzfalke slid in front of Iris as a shield. A flash. An explosion. The jet-black armor, having diverted all energy to defense, was easily melted and pierced by the savage torrent of light. The machine exploded from within, and the cockpit's armored frame scattered into the air like scraps of paper. "—CAIN!!!" Iris's scream echoed across the battlefield. What was flung out of the explosive smoke was not a lump of flesh. His body, its life-light nearly extinguished, lay thrown upon the rubble. His left arm was completely crushed, his uniform dyed crimson with blood. Countless shards pierced his entire body, leaving him a pitiful sight. Even so, only his deep green eyes still gazed at Iris. "No... no... Cain, Cain!!" Iris opened Gerbera Tetra's hatch and leaped down onto the rubble without a lifeline. The impact sprained her ankle, but she felt no pain. She scrambled, almost crawling, to his side. She fell to her knees in a lukewarm pool of blood. "Stop it... don't die... don't leave me behind...!!" She clutched his blood-soaked hand and wailed. "...You're... an idiot." Cain's hoarse voice came. He was smiling. "You... wouldn't let me... go alone. So I... refuse... to be left alone... either." His trembling hand lifted weakly and touched Iris's tear-drenched cheek. The hard calluses from battle conveyed the proof of his life. "No... I... it was because of you that I became human. You gave me... a reason to live. Without you, I have nothing—" "...Move forward." Cain's voice grew even fainter. "Move forward... past everything. Beyond that... your future... is waiting." A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. "I... have never once... regretted... believing that you... are human." Those were his final words. His deep green eyes slowly closed. Those eyes, until the very end, were serene. "—Ah." A soundless sound leaked from Iris's throat. Sound vanished from the world. The earth's pulse, the core's roar, everything. Only the sensation of warmth fading from Cain's body in her arms settled within her over a span of time that felt like an eternity. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!" All of Iris's emotions, frozen solid for eighteen years—the despair of being born a weapon, the loneliness, her love for Cain, and a pure "rage" against a world that unjustly stole everything—burst forth. As if responding to that roar, the countless organic patterns running across the armor surface of Gerbera Tetra, standing silently behind her, began to pulse. Their glow shifted from red to a blazing gold. "—I'll kill it." Her tears had stopped. With hands wet with Cain's blood, Iris crawled back into Gerbera Tetra's cockpit. There was no longer any hesitation in her eyes. Not a tool, not a weapon, not a test subject. There was only the vengeance of

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Episode 6

Name: Flowers on an Iron Grave Marker: Gerbera Knows No Tears
Author: Novelia

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