One and a half seconds away from weapon completion. Yet, it seemed like a bridge too far to be reached. Like a road without end, and a moment that lasted an eternity.

  Altair hovered and moved with ease across the console; Vigil, on the other hand, had redirected the autocannons on the Giant Stygian mid-jump. While Altair maneuvered the Ironside to rotate the assembly of blades into a sword-like structure.

  To be able to move the sword into a better position, he pulled back the pneumatic driver and momentarily reconfigured the sword into a modular structure so that its movements would be free and flexible.

  He slightly angled the blade sideward to the right, ready to slash the Giant Stygian in half. When the moment came, Altair drove down the controls, and the sword responded with ease. However, the sword staggered and trembled midway, which gave the Giant Stygian an open path toward the Ironside.

  His eyes dilated as he saw on his peripheral vision what stopped the sword midway. Just below the assembly of blades, at precisely one of the modular joints that make everything work in the right arm, was a hand with flowing silver and black lines along its muscles.

  "Vigi—" He screamed at the top of his lungs, before he was cut off, and drifted in and out of reality, until he fully lost consciousness, to the image of the incapacitated Giant Stygian removing its cocoon of dark and silver lines and smiling brilliantly at the Ironside's cameras. As if they knew that there was someone inside the Ironside.

  The Giant Stygian that was in the air arrived and plunged its morphed blade-like structure deep within the Ironside's center of mass, barely missing critical components that would otherwise trigger a reactive meltdown of its power source.

  The Ironside, despite being attached deep within the bedrock, trembled hard as if it stumbled down a cliff. The belt that was keeping Altair in his seat snapped into multiple pieces, and he was thrown out of his seat.

  He stumbled and struck his head near the edge of the console, to which he then proceeded to lose consciousness, despite resisting with all his might.

  "No…" he whispered weakly, his face now covered in blood but now also illuminated by the emergency glow of crimson lights in every nook and cranny of his cockpit.

  Mira and her party heard a loud crash. They looked over their shoulders and found a Nightmare standing triumphantly over the Ironside, with the Ironside unmoving. Not only that, they saw that the glow of the red lights all over its body was rapidly losing life.

  Lyria brought both of her hands to her mouth in a state of shock. "T-This can't be!" she bellowed in pain, as if she no longer cared what happened to any of them.

  Brennan retained his cool despite what was happening everywhere, calming, calculating and making mental decisions on what to do in their current situation. While Mira merely bit her lips in frustration, as she knew that she should have trusted her guts and followed through despite the disagreements between her party mates.

  "Tsk!" Mira clicked her tongue.

  "Now, now!" Brennan used the power of the red energy circulating around him to amplify his voice. "Mira, Lyria, keep yourselves calm!" His voice thundered under the pitter-patter of the black rain. "Breaking down now would mean certain death!" He continued.

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  Mira, initially shocked by it, had no choice but to agree with Brennan, and Lyria having regained her mental clarity also agreed.

  With the party now regaining a slight foothold from the shock, Vigil was managing over the autocannons. When he noticed that the weapons were now finished, but Altair had not yet deployed them.

  Therefore, he switched from cameras to cameras until he arrived back into the cockpit.

  "Lieutena—" Despite the severity of the situation, he paused for a moment when he saw that Altair was not in his seat.

  Almost immediately he darted his eyes around, trying to find Altair. When he finally found him, he felt dread, his feelings exploding into a thousand pieces, with each one pulsing like a heart rapidly.

  "Lie-Lieutenant?!" He zoomed in further with available controls he had, and there he saw Altair, with a wounded head and a bloodied face. He could not check for life as he was not on his seat.

  He diverted what little processing power he had to maneuver the different apparatuses within the cockpit to reach Altair. Slowly but surely it all came out, trying to reach him, to see if he was alive.

  "N-No it can't be?!" He couldn't reach him, not even close.

  However, the Ironside rocked once again, and Altair slid across the cockpit as if he were a used mop or cloth. In his vision, Altair was like a corpse, dead? Has he been abandoned? What happens to him now? What's going to happen now?

  The Giant Stygian on the ground now arrived and took a leap, and with the force of thunder punched the frontmost hull of the Ironside, which barely held, but would soon be pierced.

  Those were the thoughts running within him, and for some reason, he felt like something was about to explode within him; he didn't know what it was, nor did he understand it. The person and only friend he had since gaining sentience was now gone. He didn't even see how he died; he just went off.

  Once again, the body of Altair slid across the room, and this time it struck the wall with a definite cracking sound.

  "I-I don't know what to do?!" Vigil muttered to himself. Then he suddenly remembered that the weapons they created had long been completed, and their remaining energy source was trickling down.

  Twenty-eight seconds. That was the remaining time until the energy storage ran out, unless they offset it with enough Stygian kills or let it recover through passive regeneration.

  Yet he felt something restricting him, some code that had been left behind. He wanted to take command, but he couldn't as if he can't? Perhaps because it was his command, and not Altair's command?

  "What if I made a mistake, and Altair continued to loop, but I did not retain the memories?" He voiced out frantically. "What if he went back further in time with me in a non-sentient phase?" He began to pant as if he could breathe. "Then wouldn't that mean I would cease to exist?" His voice cracking, and going in and out of volume and intensity.

  Right at that moment something cracked that would change Vigil for all time to come. A barrier that had long held him back had now been broken, and across his newly formed consciousness many pathways and data nodes were being formed in rapid succession. As if he was transcending into a higher limit than what he originally had been.

  The limiter had been broken, and the path of a true sentient had been opened.

  The path of independence.

  "No! I must live, we must live!" Vigil decreed to himself. "Bypassing authorizations… taking control of the Ironside…"

  Then just as he was making a stand for himself, he saw a slight hope that revived even his already downtrodden heart. In his peripheral vision, Altair's chest slightly rose, which indicated that he was breathing.

  "He's alive!" Vigil said in a gleeful voice. "Don't worry, Lieutenant, we will survive this. Together!" Vigil vowed with unrelenting persistence in his voice.

  "Deploying both resonance disruptor and dissonance projector!" He took control of the Ironside.