Flowers on an Iron Grave Marker: Gerbera Knows No Tears
In the forbidden zone of a fallen military nation, where the earth itself gained sentience through the 'Battlefield Lifeform Project' and became a man-eating wasteland, expedition teams from various countries search for the legendary 'God-Machine Core'—only to vanish without a trace.
In this realm of death, Iris Cromwell has survived alone, accompanied only by her crimson assault mobile suit, the Gerbera Tetra. She is an experiment born from that very forbidden project. Torn by the contradictio
Flowers on an Iron Grave Marker: Gerbera Knows No Tears - To the Future Beyond
The smell of blood was thick.
Like rusted iron — the lukewarm scent of metal. It hung even more heavily in the stagnant air of the *Titan's Womb*.
Iris Cromwell knelt upon the rubble.
In her arms lay Cain Rathford, motionless. His uniform was so drenched in blood from the massive wound torn through his chest that its original color was no longer discernible — dyed a deep, ugly black. Through the gaps between shattered armor and scorched fabric, something that should never be seen was visible. Iris's hands, stained from dragging him here, were wet and crimson with his blood.
*This is wrong*, she thought.
*This isn't right.*
Just minutes ago, he had been alive. Gravely wounded, he had watched his own machine be pierced through its core. And yet, he had smiled. He had reached his trembling fingers toward her cheek, trying to wipe away her tears.
"...You're such a fool."
He had said it with a smile.
"You... wouldn't let me go alone. So I... I'm not about to let you... leave me by myself, either."
*You're joking*, Iris had thought. *You're just saying that to reassure me, in that quiet voice of yours, like you always do.* But the strength was draining from his hand. The focus in his deep green eyes slowly faded, until they reflected nothing at all.
"...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."
His voice was as faint as an exhaled breath.
"Take your past with you... and move forward. Beyond that... lies your future."
A trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth. Somewhere in her mind, Iris understood with cold clarity that a part of him had been fatally broken.
"I have... never once regretted... believing that you were human."
Those were his final words.
His green eyes slowly closed.
Iris gripped his hand in return. As if to hold him here. As if to share her own warmth with his cooling fingers.
"...Wake up."
The voice caught in her throat and barely came out.
"Wake up, Cain. ...Please."
No answer. The eyes that had gazed at her so gently just moments ago would never open again.
Her breathing grew ragged. Deep in her chest, a pain tore through her as if she were being ripped apart from the inside.
*(Stop it.)*
*(Don't leave me alone.)*
Her vision blurred, distorting.
For eighteen years, she had never shed a single tear. She had only learned what tears meant after meeting him. And now, those tears fell — one by one, onto his motionless body.
"Ah... aah..."
Her throat spasmed, and a sound that wasn't quite a word escaped her. As if a dam had broken, her emotions came flooding out.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!"
Iris clung to his body and wailed. The weapon who had known nothing but fighting like a machine was, for the first time, grieving the loss of a loved one — as a human being.
She transformed her sorrow, her rage, her despair — into nothing but a scream.
Her lamentation echoed endlessly through the ruins of the forbidden zone.
Behind her stood Gerbera Tetra — her other half — in silence. The organic patterns running across the surface of its crimson armor began to pulse ominously, as if responding to her violent emotions. Their glow shifted from red to a blazing, burning gold.
---
How much time had passed?
When Iris raised her tear-dried face, she noticed that the tremor in the atmosphere had changed.
The core of the Machine God was still there. After the attack that had killed Cain, it was amplifying its pale light, as if selecting its next prey. Writhing its massive, fleshy tentacles, the Will of the Earth resounded its voice of victory directly into her mind.
*"Daughter. Relinquish your pain. Return to me, together with that man, and you will never have to lose anything again."*
"...Shut up."
Gently, Iris laid Cain's body down beneath a crumbling wall. As if he were merely sleeping.
She stood. Her knees did not tremble.
Her violet-gray eyes pierced through the core. There was no more sorrow in them. Only the quiet, searing flame of vengeance burned there.
With hands still wet with Cain's blood, she crawled back into Gerbera Tetra's cockpit. She sank into the linear seat and gripped the hard, cold control sticks. The slickness of the blood felt familiar in her hands.
"Listen, Earth."
The link harness connected her nerves to the machine. A violent pain shot through her. But even that, now, was strength.
"If you say I am your other half, then I'll give you exactly what you want."
Gerbera Tetra let out a drive sound like a roar. The golden patterns on its armor surface blazed explosively, and the entire machine radiated a halo of light.
"But the heart that stole my future — I will absolutely — stop it with my own hands!!"
The crimson reaper leaped.
The core unleashed countless intercepting tentacles. Their tips transformed into sharpened bone, closing in like supersonic whips to tear the machine apart. But Gerbera Tetra was faster. Directly reflecting Iris's rage, the machine evaded them all by a hair's breadth, with no preparatory motion.
A single flash.
The heat blade on its right arm bisected the first cluster of tentacles at the root. In the same motion, the left manipulator fired the beam gun in rapid succession. Pale flashes erupted across the core's armored surface.
*DOOM!*
The surface cracked slightly. But the core was still intact. From the wound, a vast swarm of tiny, gnat-like mines spewed forth. They all rushed toward Iris at once.
"Annoying...!"
Iris pulled the trigger. Gerbera Tetra's shoulder armor opened, revealing the internal micro-missile pods.
Lock-on.
Full fire.
*SHOOOOOOM—!*
Countless trails of white smoke enveloped the machine as the missiles rained down like a storm.
Annihilation — every last one. A curtain of explosive flame was drawn.
"I'm going, Gerbera."
Gerbera Tetra plunged straight through that curtain of fire. Right before the core. The closest point to its center.
*"You cannot wound me. I am immortal."*
The core concentrated a massive amount of bio-energy. The same light that had erased Cain's machine moments ago. Evasion was impossible.
Iris did not evade.
"You're wrong."
She spoke coldly, performing an operation with her left hand.
"My objective isn't to destroy you. It's to make you destroy me."
She forcibly opened her bio-link beyond its limits. Gerbera Tetra let out a drive sound like a scream. A searing pain, as if her nerves were being burned away. But that very pain generated a torrent of data.
Her memories, her suffering, her sorrow, and her love for Cain. All of that information was amplified, becoming a raging flood of noise that began to flow backward into the core's center.
"You wanted it, didn't you?! My heart! Then taste it!"
For the first time, the core trembled.
*"S-stop...! This is... overload...!"*
The voice of the Will of the Earth distorted with agitation.
Iris's "human emotions" were a lethal poison to the single life-form system known as Grauzarm. Love, loss, grief, rage — information too advanced and irrational for the system to process flooded its circuits.
"Those were Cain's words. 'Your future lies beyond that.'"
A single tear traced down Iris's cheek.
"Beyond what you blocked! So get out of my wayyyyyy!!!"
Every armor plate on Gerbera Tetra's body shone gold, to its very limit.
In that instant, the core of the Machine God began an uncontrollable rampage. Countless cracks ran across its surface, and the light leaking from within shifted from white to red.
—*It's over.*
Summoning the last of her strength, Iris pushed the control stick straight toward the core's center.
The heat blade pierced the heart of the core.
*GAGOOOOOON!!!*
A roar. Then, a flash.
The world was painted white.
---
Silence fell upon the forbidden zone.
The land of Grauzarm had ceased its activity. The walls of flesh that had pulsed organically crumbled to ash, and the eerie tentacles collapsed like dried clay.
It was the moment the curse that had covered this land for eighteen years was broken.
The center of the *Titan's Womb* had been gouged out by a massive explosion, transformed into a bowl-shaped, scorched wasteland.
At its center, Gerbera Tetra was down on one knee. Its entire body was scorched, armor plates peeling away everywhere, its golden radiance extinguished. Its left arm was missing, and the visor on its head had lost its light. It was a battered form, looking as if it might cease functioning at any moment.
The cockpit barely managed to open.
Iris stepped outside. Alone.
There was nothing before her. Not the giant core, not the Will of the Earth — not even a shadow or a shape remained. Only a cold wind swept through, stirring up the ashes.
Without looking back, with the lone Gerbera Tetra at her back, she gazed out over the vast, scorched wasteland.
She looked at her hands. Cain's blood had dried, hardened into black. She could no longer feel his final warmth.
*(I am alone.)*
Even so.
Slowly, Iris looked up at the sky. For eighteen years, a ceiling of gray clouds had always hung over this forbidden zone. But now, for the first time, a gap opened in those clouds, and a single ray of sunlight shone down upon her.
It was the first blue sky she had ever seen.
---
Several days later.
Iris stood atop a small, slightly elevated hill in the deepest part of the scorched wasteland. Before a crude grave, made of nothing more than piled rubble.
In place of a gravestone, a fragment of his wrecked machine's cockpit hatch had been erected, and a plate engraved with his identification number hung from it.
She crouched down and offered a single white flower at its base. A small flower she had gently plucked with Gerbera Tetra's large hand.
"...Cain."
Her voice no longer trembled.
"I'm going now."
She quietly stood. The wind, beneath the first blue sky she had ever seen, stroked her near-silver, platinum blonde hair. The dark circles under her eyes had not yet faded. But her violet-gray eyes gazed only forward.
"That story about the future I told you once... I want you to watch and see what kind of human I become."
She placed a hand on the chest of her tattered uniform. His final words were engraved there.
*"Take your past with you and move forward. Beyond that lies your future."*
*I will move forward.*
*I won't leave you in the past.*
*I'll take all the time I lived with you and make it my strength.*
Iris turned on her heel and began walking toward where Gerbera Tetra waited.
That was when it happened.
"—!"
A small scream came from the shadow of a scorched ruin.
Iris broke into a run on reflex. Toward the source of the voice. She leaped over mountains of rubble, unarmed.
There was a girl there. A small frame, not even ten years old. Tattered work clothes and a pair of oversized goggles. From her appearance, Iris knew she was an unregistered salvager — an orphan field diver who scavenged for supplies in the forbidden zone. Her leg was caught in a fissure created by the core's explosion, and she couldn't pull it free.
And right behind her, a remnant of the earth that had not yet completely died — a small, carnivorous tentacle — was about to attack her in its final death throes.
Before she could think, Iris had thrown herself forward. She scooped up the girl and rolled across the ground.
*CRASH!*
The tentacle slammed down onto the spot where the girl had been a moment before.
Rising to one knee, Iris silently drew the pistol from her hip holster. With cold, mechanical motions, she released the safety and took aim.
The eyes that had once belonged to a weapon caught the remnant in their sights.
—*Bang. Bang.*
Two efficient gunshots. The core of the tentacle was precisely pierced, and it crumbled into ash.
Iris returned the pistol to its holster and turned to face the girl. The girl was staring up at her, eyes wide with terror and shock.
"A-are you okay...?"
The girl asked, frightened
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