1All it takes is one sentence spoken, one sentence to vastly change everything. This is one such example.
"So, you worms have finally arrived." Egil saw all eight of them approaching him. The successor of Zanza, Shulk, his loud and boisterous friend, Reyn, the Face Unit Fiora, the Homs hero Dunban, Riki, the worthless Nopon accompanying them, Sharla, the medic from Colony Six, Melia, the High Entia princess, and his sister, Vanea. He had his mind set. Nobody would convince him otherwise.
"Egil! Stop the Mechonis! There has to be a way for us to live in peace! There's no reason to fight! You must stop this now!" Shulk was determined, Egil had to admit.
"My reasons are clear, and truer than yours." He never expected that Shulk would have ever managed to destroy the Apocrypha, but it didn't matter. The Mechonis had awakened. He would finally get his revenge.
"But what will you do after?" A voice within him seemed to call out, appeal to him? What would he do after? The Mechon weren't much help, and his fellow Machina on the Fallen Arm hated him. Pushing the thought away, he switched the Mechonis' eye to view mode, offering a panoramic view of the dormant Bionis and the awakened Mechonis.
Reyn and Sharla's marveling at the transformation was cut off by Egil's proclamation, "May the roar of the Mechonis be the wrath of my people!" He stabbed forward with Yaldabaoth's sword, and the Mechonis mirrored Yaldabaoth, driving its sword into the dormant Bionis' left shoulder.
"How many? How many do you think died in that attack? Hundreds? Maybe thousands?" Egil taunted the eight of them, hoping to enrage them and make them fight sloppily. However, Reyn saying "Egil! You'll regret this!" made him question that judgement. They didn't seem to be as blindly enraged by his taunting as he thought they would. Perhaps...no, they were still not powerful enough. He knew he had it in him to finally defeat Shulk.
"Brother! Stop this! You'll destroy the Bionis! Let us put an end to our torment!" Her pleas fell on deaf ears. He would destroy the Bionis, and no one would stop him. He would finally get his revenge.
"It ends when I say it ends! I will end our curse by destroying the world!" He boldly proclaimed this to the eight standing before him.
"You must realize that is not Lady Meyneth's wish. That's why she left us her legacy - our whole world!" Vanea pleaded with him once more. It wouldn't change a thing. He had his mind set, and he would not stop until he had his revenge. Besides, her mentioning Lady Meyneth infuriated him. She had abandoned them in their most desperate hour, and now she returned, after all this time? He pointed Yaldabaoth's sword at Fiora. "Pure nonsense. That thing lurking within the Homs girl is no longer our god. This world no longer has a need for gods."
Shulk had had enough of this, evidently, and stepped forward. Activating the Monado, he spoke. "Egil! Stop this!" This last declaration left no impact on Egil. He knew it was coming to it. A true battle to the death. There was nowhere for him to retreat to now. No traitorous gods to save Shulk. He finally said, "Face me, Shulk! Successor of Zanza! I'll crush the Bionis and spread its ashes across the world! Then I'll turn the Monado into dust. ONLY THEN WILL THERE BE PEACE!"
The battle continued on, until something happened for Egil. He saw an opportunity, and began charging his ultimate attack. He called this attack Bionis Slash X. After going through nine iterations of increasing power, Egil had finally created an attack powerful enough to destroy a titan. It was an extremely powerful downward swing, and he calculated that it would cut right through the Bionis. He began preparations, summoning three energy transfer devices to give him the power he needed. 2:00, 1:59, 1:58... 0:57, 0:56, 0:55... Yaldabaoth shorted out. Shulk had destroyed the energy devices, having received a vision, because of course he would have. Did Egil really think Zanza would simply stand by and watch as he destroyed Bionis? Egil resolved to defeat them. Then, he would summon more devices and use the Art without anyone to stand in his way.
Shulk ran towards Egil, expertly dodging every energy shot Yaldabaoth took at him, glowing with the blue aura of Zanza. Egil finally had enough of Shulk's agility, and swung Yaldabaoth's sword at him from the side, putting all the power he could muster into the swing. And Shulk blocked it. Their powers fought for a second, before Shulk, brimming with immense power, sent the sword back from whence it came. When Egil swung the sword again, Shulk leaped into the air with a battle cry, directly at Yaldabaoth. Fiora screamed at him to stop, but it didn't faze him. Landing on Yaldabaoth's chest, he cut off its head, exposing its pilot. Incredulous, Egil simply asked, "How is this possible?" Enveloped in blue fire, Shulk simply stood there, holding the activated Monado above his head, before speaking, but not to Egil. He spoke to someone else, not even anyone else visible in the Mechonis' Core. "Yes, I will. I'll kill him. A thousand times." Egil realized with a chill running down his mechanical spine that he was speaking to Zanza.
"Yes. I want to. I'll kill him. For Fiora, for the Emperor. FOR MY HOME!" He stood there, looking at Egil, clearly being spoken to by Zanza. He stood there, and after a while, he readied the sword. "No. This isn't what I want!" He swung it down. Egil closed his eyes, ready. It never came. He opened his eyes, to see the Monado, right above him, Shulk's expression that of relief. Shulk deactivated the Monado and sat down next to Egil. Egil asked him, "Why didn't you do it? Killing me would have saved your world." Shulk's answer was shocking. He said, "I've forgotten all about that." Incredulous, Egil simply repeated him. "Forgotten about it?" Shulk's reply was even more surprising to Egil. "I realized that we both share the same pain. Egil, I don't have any reason to kill you." Egil responded with a threat. "Even if you do not, I still do." Shulk cut him off with "I know. But I won't do it."
Remembering why Shulk had come to Mechonis in the first place, Egil's response was stubborn, as stubborn as Egil had been for the thousands of years he had spent preparing for Zanza's return. "If you do not kill me now, my blade will annihilate every last one of your people. Even then?" Shulk's reply came with determination, the same determination he had used to reach this location in the first place. "I can't kill you, but I can stop your blade. And I'll do it, over and over again, until...we understand each other. Okay?" Egil was stunned. Shulk was simply that determined, that courageous, to come to Mechonis and force its leader to stop attacking beings of Bionis, promising to keep blocking Egil's, no, the entire Mechonis' attacks, until Egil stopped and there was peace between the two titans for the first time in millennia. Then his mind drifted to the last obstacle between them and peace - Zanza. He had tried to get Shulk to kill Egil. Zanza clearly had some sort of influence on Shulk, even though he wasn't possessing him. Deep in thought, he said, "You have used the Monado well. But do you honestly believe you are its master?"
Egil began to explain what happened that drove him to this state. "Mechonis and Bionis once lived in harmony. They coexisted in peace, without hatred or strife." As he spoke, he remembered spending time with his dear friend, the giant Arglas, on the Bionis' right shoulder, looking off towards its horn. The giant had asked him, "Egil, why do you think we were born?" He had responded with, "Ah, philosophy! Alas, I am not very good at answering such questions." That was true. He had never been good at philosophy. He still wasn't, to this day. Arglas had posed the question to him, "Have you never thought about it? Never contemplated what lies beyond this world?" He had been surprised, repeating Arglas' question. "Beyond this world? Lady Meyneth said that aside from the Bionis and the Mechonis, this world is filled with nothing but boundless ocean." Arglas simply asked the next logical question in a philosophical conversation such as theirs. "But what lies beyond that?" Egil had looked at him funny, and he said, "We are still young, and unable to leave the Bionis or the Mechonis. Say goodbye to our creators, our world. But one day, our descendants will. They will leave this place and depart for new worlds, worlds we have never imagined, by strength of their will alone." Egil had been silently pondering what Arglas had been saying, and he replied with, "Leave this place? That is something I have never considered. However, it would be a truly amazing sight." Before leaving the view, Arglas had said, "Egil, I wish to see that the people of Bionis and the people of Mechonis live in peace and harmony and take care of one another. I wish this for the future of our descendants." Egil had agreed with Arglas, and then they had returned from the view.
Returning to the present, he continued. "Everyone shared the belief that the prosperity of our two worlds would continue for all eternity. It would have done, were it not for the Monado. The Monado refused to permit the existence of the Mechonis, or rather, the existence of anything but itself. And one day, it took control of my friend Arglas, and he became Zanza. It was Arglas, possessed by Zanza, who directed his sword at Mechonis." Shulk was silent throughout the story, but after Egil was done, he said, "I don't understand. Does being controlled by the Monado mean you will eventually become Zanza?" "The Monado is Zanza," Egil clarified. "Zanza is the Monado. The two are one and the same. In order to perpetuate the existence of his soul, Zanza inhabits beings of Bionis. But you appear to be different." It appeared to dawn on Shulk what Egil was saying. He asked, "What do you mean?" "I can see it," Egil replied. "How well you retained a sense of self. Perhaps you can break the curse of Zanza. And was that not precisely our wish, Lady Meyneth? Finally understanding, Shulk said, "I don't know much about any curse. For now, all I can do is this, Egil." He extended his arm, offering Egil his hand to shake. "We can live in peace again." It took Egil a moment to process what Shulk was saying. Why would he so easily forgive Egil for all the crimes he had committed against the beings of Bionis? Then he remembered. Shulk had said that they both shared the same pain. Egil finally replied with, "Again? I see. Yes, you're right." He sat up, ready to shake Shulk's hand and call off all attacking Mechon. Then, a gunshot rang out in the core.
The ether bullet exploded into pink ether when it hit Shulk's chest. Egil was vaguely aware of Fiora and Dunban screaming out his name. Shulk gasped, clutched at his chest, and looked behind him, at his stealthy attacker. Egil followed Shulk's eyes. When he saw that same man in the low-cut blue shirt, red bandanna, and white pants, with the same dual-purpose gun-sword, and the same cunning smirk he always wore, he felt his heart sink as he recognized who it was. The giant, turned into a Homs by Zanza.
Disciple Dickson.
A/N: The divergence will occur in Chapter 2. I'm laying the groundwork in this chapter.
