As Ex-Machina In No Game No Life: Zero

Wind, violent and absolute, spiraled inward, converging on the two girls. 

Within the centre of the gale, a new form took shape. A colossal, strangely beautiful bow appeared between them, held jointly in their hands.

This was Raphael El Nahash, the Chariot of the Sky. The true, original form of the Wind Spirit's Angel, born from the fusion of their two halves. El Re'em, the Binder, became its string. El Kanaph, the Piercer, became its arrow. Their twin wings became its body.

Its destructive potential was exponentially greater than its component parts.

Together, they aimed their new weapon at me, waiting patiently in the sky. They drew back the chain-like bowstring, and the winds of the island itself gathered at the tip of the massive lance-arrow. 

The energy readings spiked, dwarfing anything I had recorded from them before. This was, without a doubt, the strongest attack they could muster.

A strange sensation coursed through me. My processors registered it as an electrical surge, but the ghost of my humanity knew what it was: excitement. A thrill. I felt my non-existent blood boil.

And so, I made my choice.

To the utter astonishment of the Yamai sisters, I dismissed Sandalphon.

I wasn't dodging. I wasn't preparing a counter. I was going to face their ultimate attack head-on.

"She's... looking down on us," Kaguya growled, her pride wounded. Yuzuru remained silent, but her grip on the bow tightened.

"Then let us show you," Kaguya roared, "the true power of our burning combination!"

The howling wind suddenly ceased. For a single, silent moment, the world held its breath.

Then, they released the string.

The arrow did not fly. It erased the space between us. A piercing shriek tore through the air as El Kanaph shot forward, wrapped in a vortex of devastating wind. The trees on the island bent and snapped from the sheer force of its passage.

Faced with this overwhelming torrent of power, I made a single adjustment.

"Vector Redirection"

I pushed the output of my defensive armament to its absolute maximum.

The moment the lance-arrow reached me, the expected explosion did not occur. There was no impact. Instead, the Yamai sisters witnessed something that would be seared into their memories forever.

Their ultimate attack, the pinnacle of their combined power, simply... turned around.

It reversed its course, now aimed directly back at them.

BOOM!

The vortex-wrapped lance shot between them, missing by inches, and slammed into the ocean behind them. The impact created a massive, churning whirlpool that scarred the surface of the sea.

The attack hadn't hit them directly, but the concussive force of its passage was enough to knock the wind out of them. Their spiritual power completely depleted, they drifted back to the ground, their astral dresses tattered and torn.

"She said... 'defeat her'..." Kaguya wheezed, slumping onto the sand. "That wasn't a fight. That was a cheat code. There's no way to win against that..."

"Agreed," Yuzuru murmured, collapsing next to her sister. They sat back-to-back, staring out at the sea with identical expressions of bewildered defeat.

I descended, landing softly beside them, taking in their ragged state.

[Analysis Complete.]

I now had the data for all three of their Angels. But my brief sense of victory was overshadowed by a new concern. A diagnostic warning flashed in my internal display. My Vector Redirection armament was reporting a critical error.

After a brief, formal farewell to the defeated sisters, I gated us all back to the city, then immediately found a cheap hotel and sealed myself inside the room. I initiated a full system self-check.

The problem wasn't the attack. The Yamai's final gambit, powerful as it was, hadn't even scratched my armament's integrity. The issue was internal. By pushing the output to its maximum, I had overloaded the armament itself.

The Dimensional Engine had upgraded my core systems, my body, but my native Ex-Machina weaponry was still running on its original specifications. 

The sheer purity and density of the dimensional energy was too much for the old hardware to handle at full power. It was like trying to run a fusion reactor through a toaster. 

The armament had nearly torn itself apart from the inside.

"It seems an upgrade is in order," I concluded.

This would be a time-consuming process. My original database had no information on this new energy source. I was in uncharted territory, forced to experiment and rebuild my own core functions from the ground up, one line of code at a time.

And so, as I began the long, arduous process of self-improvement, the "Spirit Hunter" vanished from the world once more.

….

A week passed in silence.

While I was undergoing my self-imposed system overhaul, Shido Itsuka's journey continued. After successfully sealing the powers of "Princess" Tohka, he'd had barely a moment's peace before Kotori issued his next directive:

Go on a date with "Hermit."

A part of Shido rebelled at the thought. He had asked, begged even, for another way to help the Spirits. The answer was always the same. This was the only way.

Watching the footage of the small, terrified girl being hunted by the AST, his conscience screamed. He wanted to save them, he truly did, but why did it have to be this way? It felt... wrong. He could only vent his frustrations internally, putting on a brave face for the so-called "experts" on the Fraxinus, whose advice had nearly gotten him killed last time.

But in the end, if this was truly the only path, he would walk it. For their sake.

….

Meanwhile, Isaac Westcott had fortified his London headquarters to an almost comical degree. He even had Ellen on standby, ready for battle at a moment's notice. His paranoia was not entirely unfounded. He feared the "Spirit Hunter" would simply level the building to get to its prize.

Worse, what if it did so while he was inside? To be taken out as mere collateral damage was an ignoble end he refused to consider.

Moving "The Nun" was also out of the question. He was certain that the moment a transport vehicle left the premises, the Spirit Hunter, with its uncanny intelligence network, would intercept it. That would save his own skin, but it would mean losing the cornerstone of his life's work. The plan he had spent decades preparing would be ruined.

The only news had been a mysterious cyclone that appeared over the ocean, which most agencies had dismissed as another duel between the Berserker twins.

Westcott knew better. It found them, he thought, a cold sweat on his brow. It hunted them down and took their power!

Ellen, sorting through a pile of documents nearby, watched her boss's descent into frantic anxiety with a weary sigh. She suspected she would be handling the rest of his workload for the foreseeable future. That was, after all, part of her job description though it didn't give him the right to dump his responsibilities on her so cavalierly.

Unseen by either of them, a small, red light on a ceiling-mounted security camera blinked once, then returned to normal.

….

From the comfort of my hotel room, I watched them.

I had already infiltrated the entirety of DEM's corporate network. Every security camera, every computer terminal, every microphone was a node in my sensory web. I saw everything.

My objective was the Spirit imprisoned within those walls: "The Nun," Nia Honjou. The second Spirit to ever appear, captured by Ellen years ago and subjected to Westcott's horrific experiments ever since.

A simple, building-wide sweep of my digital consciousness was all it took. I found her. Her condition, even through the grainy camera feed, was appalling.

This time, a direct assault was not the answer. This would be an infiltration.

I pinpointed the coordinates of her cell. With a precise application of my Vector Gate, I opened a portal directly inside, simultaneously looping the room's security feed to show an empty, undisturbed cell.

I stepped through the shimmering gold. The first thing I saw was a girl. Battered, broken, her clothes in tatters, her body a canvas of scars. A tragic, miserable Angel, caged and alone.

….

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