Chapter Text
“Tachibana, stop!” Tsubasa yelled as she tried to hold onto the berserk Hibiki. “That’s enough!”
Chris swiftly joined her in holding back Hibiki from mauling the escaping Dr. Ver. “Black doesn’t suit you!”
Hibiki kept uncontrollably struggling for a few more seconds, before emitting a huge burst of heat and energy as her berserk state faded, leaving the three Symphogear Adaptors in the huge crater left by Hibiki’s final devastating attack on the Nephilim. As the energy dispersed into the air, Chris and Tsubasa held an unconscious Hibiki, the youngest team member having lost her transformation and now back in her school uniform.
The two conscious girls were silent for a moment, processing the events that had just unfolded. Until Tsubasa noticed that her left arm seemed to be holding onto practically nothing. She looked down, only to see the sleeve of Hibiki’s Lydian uniform. A sleeve that was distinctly missing half of the arm meant to be inside it. Tsubasa choked back an angry sob at the fate that had befallen Hibiki, instead screaming as a rain of swords fell all around the group of three while Tsubasa and Chris lowered Hibiki to the ground.
“Hey, what the hell was that for!?” Chris yelled once they’d put down the injured girl. “You could have hit us! Just what were you-” she continued, stopping once she looked down to see Hibiki. Her previous anger replaced by a horrified realisation that everything they just witnessed was real, Chris was shocked into silence.
Hibiki had just lost her left arm.
The first thing Hibiki felt as she awoke was a dull ache. Not the kind that would normally make someone cry out, but just enough to be uncomfortable. As her mind continued to wake, she was gradually able to pinpoint where the pain was coming from, around her left arm. Gathering her energy, she slowly tried to sit up and support herself to look at what the problem was.
Only to lose her balance and lurch to the side as she tried to hold herself on a limb that wasn’t there.
The shock jolted her into complete wakefulness, and her first instinct was to see what just went wrong. And she was met with the stump of her left arm. Hibiki screamed and began hyperventilating, the memory of it being bitten off and the sheer terror and pain that she had felt coming right back to her. She instinctively tried to hold her hands against her head and hide, and whilst her right arm obeyed as usual, all that the other one accomplished was the amputated limb hovering next to her face.
After a few seconds that felt like hours, Hibiki vaguely heard the room’s door open with yells of her name. As much as she wanted to answer them, to latch onto them as a source of stability and assure them she was alright, the words never seemed to form over her uncontrolled breathing. An instant later, Hibiki felt a warm embrace, one that helped to ground her back in reality.
The process was slow, but she eventually evened out her breathing and looked up at the one that held her tenderly, supporting her all the way. Hibiki saw Miku, her Sunshine, with a worried look hidden behind a smile, tears in her eyes as she tried to comfort the wounded girl.
“Mi… ku…”
“Hibiki!”
Miku gripped Hibiki even tighter, bringing her into a proper hug and silently letting out her tears. Hibiki looked over Miku’s shoulder at everyone else that had barged into the room as well. Tsubasa, Chris, Genjuro and even Tomosato and Fujitaka had shown up to support her when her screaming had alerted them.
The Kazanari uncle and niece looked on in the classic stoic worry of theirs, the mirrored expressions almost enough to get a chuckle out of Hibiki, despite her position. While Chris had a level of panic that she was clearly trying to hide, her face a grimace and small tears welling up in her eyes but refusing to fall. Fujitaka and Tomosato looked like they didn’t know what to do with themselves, like they had followed their instinct and had no plan for what to do next.
Hibiki didn’t want to be the source of their unhappiness, so she put on her most convincing smile and spoke to them all. “Hey, everyone,” she started, before throwing them a weak thumbs up with her right arm. “How you all doing?” Hibiki asked.
Everyone’s face dropped at that, and Hibiki almost immediately regretted her words as Chris’s panic was replaced with concerned anger. “How are we!? We should be the ones asking you that, dumbass!” Chris yelled, Hibiki wincing and going to cover her ears as Miku pulled away from her.
The lack of contact on her left ear drew her back to the situation right away, her attention once more focused on her condition as she stared at the remains of her arm. Her awareness of the others in the room faded away as she looked at it with an almost clinical detachment, further worrying everyone else at the change in demeanour from before.
Thanks to the advanced healing that came as a silver lining of her berserk form’s activation, what should have been a gruesome injury site was instead as clean as could be. The skin had healed over any damaged tissue, so much so that not even a single bandage was needed on it. She poked at it, curious to see if it would hurt on contact or if the dull ache she was still experiencing was just a result of the missing nerve endings. Breathing a sigh of relief at the lack of pain on contact, she once more turned towards everyone else, all of them giving her waiting looks.
“Err, it’s fine, everything’s fine?” Hibiki tried. Seeing that everyone, including Miku, looked unimpressed at her, she sighed and just waited for the incoming lectures from Tsubasa, Chris and the Commander. Except the lectures never came.
Genjuro silently put a hand on Hibiki’s shoulder as Tsubasa spoke to her, her voice wavering as she did so. “Tachibana,” she started. “Are you okay?” Tsubasa asked, refusing to dance around the obvious much to Hibiki’s disappointment.
“It hurts,” Hibiki plainly answered. Judging from the shocked reactions, no-one was actually expecting her to be honest, thinking that instead she’d keep deflecting until they got annoyed and left her alone. But she knew that, now that she’d already tried to deflect things twice, it wasn’t going to work this time. “Not at any specific point, and not that much, to be honest. But… It's been aching ever since I woke up.”
“Is it like a phantom pain?” Genjuro asked, wanting to keep Hibiki’s honesty going. She appreciated that, while his tone was gentle, he didn’t seem to be treating her like she was fragile.
“No, nothing like that. It’s, well…” Hibiki started. “It's the end that hurts. Where… where the missing part is,” she said, a hesitation in her words as she finished. Suddenly overcome by a wave of tiredness, she started wobbling while still sitting up. Once again trying and failing to stop herself on her left side, Miku held her up instead, as everyone began to panic again. “Sorry, everyone. I’m just really tired. Would you all mind coming back a bit later? I promise I’ll talk to you all properly then.”
Everyone reluctantly nodded and began to slowly file out of the room, Genjuro patting Hibiki’s head and Miku giving her another hug before they left. “Sleep well, Hibiki, my shining sun.”
“I will, Miku. I promise.”
As the door closed behind everyone, just before going to sleep like she promised, Hibiki felt an itch below her neck. A small piece of black material had formed over the forte-shaped scar on her chest, which she quickly picked off, revealing everything looking normal underneath it. “A scab?” she thought to herself as she lay down and shut her eyes, the tiredness helping her gradually ignore the still aching pain in her arm.
Having found no immediate health issues beyond the obvious, Hibiki was discharged from the medical room not long after she next woke up, but was ordered by the doctors to take it easy for at least a few days before doing anything strenuous at all. Including eating too much, which put a dampener on the girl’s plan to gorge herself with food as a distraction.
Not that she would have had the time to do so, anyway. Hibiki was called to the command room almost immediately, although thankfully it appeared that it wasn’t for a briefing, just a check-in. Hibiki walked down the numerous hallways of the Section 2 submarine once more dressed in her Lydian uniform due to the lack of any other clothes onboard the base.
Feeling the swaying of the half empty sleeve as she walked, Hibiki decided to tie it off as best as she could to prevent it brushing against her side. Never stopping her walk towards the command room as she did so, Hibiki finished tightening the impromptu knot just as she walked through the automatic doors, all eyes turning to her as they opened. Their gazes all dropped to the empty portion of the jumper, some faint but audible sighs being released at yet another reminder of Hibiki’s fate.
Chris was the first to address Hibiki, piping up with, “Heya, dumbass. How you feeling?”
“Better than I was earlier, I guess,” Hibiki replied, rubbing the back of her head as she did. “My arm still hurts a little bit, but it's not as bad as earlier. So I think it’ll go away on its own!”
“Anything else?” Tsubasa asked, her voice laced with concern.
“Not a scratch on me!” Hibiki triumphantly claimed with a grin, accompanied by a fist pump as she attempted to lighten the heavy mood that she could feel in the room. While the attempt wasn’t entirely fruitful, she could see the ghost of a smile tracing over Miku and Chris’s faces, and considered it mission successful.
Miku wordlessly walked over to Hibiki and held her hand, now down at her side, as Genjuro chimed in and took over the conversation. “Now that you’re here, Hibiki, we can begin. I know you were told this wasn’t a briefing, and while that is technically true, there are still important things we need to go over,” he explained. “That is, if you’re feeling up to it. I would understand if you wanted to wait.”
“It’s okay, let’s get this done now. I wouldn’t want to be the reason we all have to wait up. Anymore than I already am, at least!” she laughed, still trying to keep the mood light despite everything.
Genjuro made no verbal acknowledgement of Hibiki’s forced cheer and continued on regardless. “Since the events at the site of Kadingir, the F.I.S. have gone into hiding and have yet to reappear. Despite this, we now have a clearer idea of their goals, and can react accordingly. We’ve been contacting multiple observatories both in Japan and around the world, and can confirm just one thing. The Moon is going to fall.”
“But just because they’re right about that, it doesn’t mean that we will just allow them to continue unhindered, correct?” Tsubasa said.
“Yes, that’s correct,” Genjuro confirmed. “We will continue our attempts to track and apprehend the F.I.S. until we are given enough reason to stop doing so. Regardless of how noble their goals may seem, it doesn’t change the fact that the acts they have already committed cannot be ignored,” he finished, as he and everyone else took a subtle but noticeable glance at Hibiki.
Hibiki began to feel uncomfortable under all of the gazes focused on her and slightly withdrew into herself. Getting the hint, everyone but Miku stopped, the Gungnir girl’s Sunshine instead just holding her hand tighter than before.
“Which, unfortunately, brings me to our next matter. You, Hibiki.”
“Me?” she blankly responded.
Genjuro nodded at her, before gesturing to Aoi and prompting her to activate the bridge’s main screen. Various medical scans and reports filled the screen, the largest and most prominent one being an X-ray. An X-ray of a female body that was distinctly missing a portion of its left arm and had multiple vine-like growths snaking around the bones, all protruding from where the person’s heart would be. A large number of ‘vines’ ended at the point of the missing limb.
All four Lydian students gasped, immediately connecting the dots. Tsubasa and Chris’s worried anger returned, Miku began to tear up once more and HIbiki herself looked on, as if not comprehending what she was looking at despite instinctively knowing.
“These are…?” Tsubasa started, but couldn’t dare to finish the question.
“Hibiki’s scans, yes,” Genjuro answered. “Gungnir’s fragments are creating a new organ within her body, spreading out over time. However, while we have no solution to this problem, we have determined the cause…”
“Old man, you can’t be saying that , can you?” Chris said, an expression that Hibiki couldn’t read covering her face
“I am. Every time Hibiki transforms, the fragments spread further. Ordinarily, this likely wouldn’t have affected her for months or even years, even if you kept fighting at the pace you have been,” explained Hibiki’s Master. “In fact, before now it’s even been the source of the insane power she’s shown us on occasion.”
“But last night changed things. Hibiki going berserk caused the spread to increase dramatically, and an especially focused bundle formed at the site of the… damage she took.”
Hibiki noticed the faces of everyone else continue to drop, while she herself was barely registering what she was hearing. She glanced down at her tied, empty sleeve before looking back up to Genjuro as he continued after a moment of silence.
“In short,” he said before letting out a deep sigh and putting on what Hibiki thought was the most forced neutral expression he could muster,”...Hibiki is dying.”
It was as if time had frozen for a moment, the quartet of teenagers all processing the last sentence. Then they all burst into various reactions.
Chris yelled angrily and kicked the nearest desk to her, while Tsubasa just clenched a fist and looked sombre. But Hibiki didn’t take much notice of either of those things, her attention instead focused on Miku dropping to the floor with surprise, shock written all over her face as if she refused to accept the reality of what she just heard.
Hibiki caught her on the way down as best she could, propping Miku up in a one-armed hug as she raised her head up to her combat instructor and nervously laughed out a question. “If it's only spreading when I transform, then I’ll be fine if I just transform as little as possible, right?”
“Tachibana, no!” Tsubasa yelled, bursting into upset anger. “This means you can’t transform at all, you understand!?”
“She’s right, you idiot!” Chris added. “Even if you don’t care about yourself, think about Miku here. I mean, just look at her now!”
Genjuro nodded. “As of this moment, Hibiki, you are off the active combat roster. If a situation arises that requires the evacuation of civilians then you are permitted to assist in that effort in a similar capacity to Miku. And you will be kept informed of the active state of the F.I.S. conflict due to your involvement in it so far,” he explained. “But you are to never, and I mean never, transform if your life is not in immediate lethal danger. Have I made myself clear?” Genjuro finished, fully going into what Hibiki had dubbed ‘Commander Mode’.
Hibiki wanted to argue back and to ask why she even had her power if she wasn’t allowed to to save people with it. Then she took a look at everyone else and thought better of just before opening her mouth to protest. The one that ultimately made her decide not to was the look on Miku’s face, the girl just barely holding back tears. Hibiki nodded at her master and simply said, “Okay.”
The tension drained out of the room at HIbiki’s agreement. While things were clearly still not at their best, Hibiki’s agreement to stop using her Gear had at least calmed the others’ fears of her dying for the time being.
“One last thing, girls, and then I’ll let you go. While it’s still about you, Hibiki, it has less to do with your physical condition, and it's important for the others to hear this too,” Genjuro began one last time. At their confused looks, he elaborated. “Well, assuming Hibiki plans to return to school at any point in the near future, we need a cover story for what happened to your arm.”
Despite the still-serious nature of the topic, Chris and Hibiki both choked out a single stressed laugh at the change from life-or-death circumstances to something as simple as a cover story.
“I’d definitely miss Lydian if I didn’t go back…” Hibiki thought out loud.
“But wouldn’t Tachibana immediately attending after an injury of this calibre be suspicious in its own ways?” Tsubasa asked.
“Under normal circumstances, yes. But keep in mind the close connection that we as a group have with the school,” Genjuro countered. “And the involvement you four have with us is somewhat of an open secret there, even if the NDAs keep anyone from speaking out about it. Our medical technology is far better than any average hospital, remember.”
“So you believe that those facts in combination are enough to make it worth the risk?”
“I do.”
Miku, having calmed herself somewhat, joined the exchange. “But what about her mum and grandma? They hardly even know about what she even does with her Symphogear. How are you going to tell them what happened to her!?”
“It’s okay, Miku,” Hibiki said. “I’ll figure out what to tell them later. For now, let’s not worry them any more than we have to. Please?”
Miku frowned, which Hibiki wasn’t happy with, but she relented. Hibiki could sense an uncomfortable conversation about that in the near future, especially after what her secrets had led to before, but for the moment she tried to push it to the back of her mind.
“Alright, you’ve kept us in suspense for long enough, what exactly is this story that you’ve come up with, then?” Chris said, having clearly had enough of getting side-tracked, which Hibiki just found funny.
“Alright then. Feel free to suggest any changes that you think would make reciting the story easier, but here is what we have created so far…”
“TACHIBANA!?”
The sound of the school bell also signalled Hibiki’s doom, as the instant the ringing faded her desk was assaulted by concerned classmates crowding around her, all asking questions one after another. Hibiki looked over towards Miku, standing to the side with Yumi, Itaba and Shiori, in a desperate plea for help. Miku just gave a small smile and gestured to the three of them, before joining their conversation and waiting until the buzz around Hibiki had either died down or gone on for too long so that she had to step in.
“Are you okay?”
“Does it hurt?”
“How come you’re already out of hospital!?”
“Is it true you were caught in a car crash!?”
The questions kept coming hard and fast, Hibiki hardly able to answer them all. She waved her arms about, but all that succeeded in doing was bringing more attention to the tied-up empty sleeve. One particularly brave soul asked, “Can we see it!?”
Unfortunately for them, Hibiki noticed that Chris and Tsubasa had also happened to walk through the classroom door at that moment. Hibiki wasn’t sure why they were there, but she was grateful for their presence anyway, and much like she did before with Miku, Hibiki gave the two of them a pleading look. Tsubasa just sighed and Hibiki was about to deflate for a second before she saw Chris storming over and giving a swift chop to the head of the one that asked to see her arm.
“Have some tact, would you!” Chris yelled. “Think about how the dumbass feels for just a second!”
“But didn’t you just call her a-” Hibiki heard a second brave soul speak up in the face of Chris’s protective anger. She only hoped that the soon-to-be victim of the shorter girl wasn’t treated too harshly.
“Well I’m not crowding her and asking her questions, am I?” Chris retorted. “If you’re gonna ask her things, at least give her some time to answer. Come on now!”
Hibiki noticed Tsubasa now approaching too, putting a hand on Chris’s shoulder. “Yukine. I think you’ve made your point.”
“But-”
“Let's leave it for now. That said, I would appreciate it if the rest of you could give Tachibana some space, lest you incur the wrath of Yukine again. Or worse, Kohinata,” Tsubasa finished, the idol glancing towards the corner of the classroom. Hibiki and the girls around her desk followed Tsubasa’s gaze to see it land on Miku, who was now sporting a particularly dangerous smile towards the group after hearing the lack of restraint in how they were acting towards Hibiki.
Even the girl in question felt slightly intimidated, and Miku was only acting like that to help her in the first place. She wasn’t one to miss an opportunity though, and instead pushed herself up with all the enthusiasm she could muster, and if she happened to wobble a bit from being off balance, well, she didn’t think anyone would be willing to point it out right then and there.
“Why don’t the five of us go to Flower?” Hibiki asked, ready to leave the situation for another, hopefully calmer, time.
“Sounds good to me, Bikki,” Kuriyo answered. “What about the rest of you?”
“The injured heroine is accosted by classmates, only to retreat for food with her trusted friends. Your life really is an anime, Hibiki!” Yumi claimed.
“Now, now, Itaba. I think that’s enough,” Shiori said, trying to calm down the hyperactive anime addict. “But it does sound like a lovely idea. Kohinata?”
Finally ending her dangerous smile as the group’s classmates began to disperse, Miku turned towards the group with a much more friendly and gentle expression. “That sounds like a nice idea. Shall we go then?”
“Time for the best okonomiyaki ever!” Hibiki shouted as the group walked out the door, much to the annoyance of Miku and the amusement of the other three.
Hibiki and her friends were walking at a relatively relaxed pace through a park on the way home from Flower, tired from eating far more than most of them were used to in a single sitting. Except for Hibiki herself.
“Seriously, Bikki, are you okay?” Kuriyo asked. “You didn’t eat nearly as much as you normally do. I could tell you were struggling to eat one-handed, but that’s not all, is it?”
Lost in thought, Hibiki didn’t acknowledge Kuriyo’s question. Deciding to try and get a response herself, Yumi followed on. “Yeah. Normally you’d just get Miku to feed you or something. But you didn’t even acknowledge her offer today!”
“And if you hadn’t suggested going to Flower on your own, we were planning to ask anyway,” Shiori said.
That finally got Hibiki’s attention. “Wait, you were? Why?”
“Because a certain someone here,” Kuriyo said, taking a pointed glance at Miku, who had been silent up until now, “Thought you could do with some cheering up. Not to mention how she seemed a bit down herself. I won’t pry if you don’t want me to, but you two are going through something big right now, aren’t you? And I mean outside of the obvious that everyone can see,” she finished, gesturing to Hibiki’s tied sleeve.
Hibiki looked at Miku, the two of them sharing a silent conversation for a few moments. Miku looked hesitant, but after Hibiki gave her a soft smile and a nod, the raven-haired girl’s expression changed to a subtle tired smile. Hibiki turned to the other three, all waiting in anticipation.
“So, it's kind of a long story,” Hibiki started. “But the main thing is that… I might be-” was all she could say before being interrupted.
Three black cars drove at high speed past the girls as they reached the bottom of the stairs out of the park. All three vehicles were filled with the black suit uniform that Hibiki and Miku remembered being common with 2nd Division agents. Moments after the cars rounded the corner and vanished from sight, the group could see, hear and feel explosions.
Hibiki rushed towards their source to find out just what had happened, and in a surge of possibly foolish bravery, she noticed that the other four were following her too. Rounding the corner, the sole Symphogear user of the group immediately saw the wreckage of all three cars. And there wasn’t a body in sight, instead the air filled with faint wisps of carbon dust. Looking up, she saw noise surrounding the former vehicles. Then, behind them, she saw Dr Ver. The man holding the Nephilim’s heart.
Hibiki’s breathing began to increase in both speed and intensity, and she felt phantom pains where her arm used to be, as she tried to clench a fist that wasn’t there. Miku, Shiori, Yumi and Kuriyo all caught up and noticed both the noise in front of them and Hibiki’s increasingly panicking state.
“Dr Ver…” Hibiki muttered under her breath as the mad scientist rambled to himself about being untouchable.
It wasn’t long before he noticed Hibiki’s presence though. If it were even possible, Hibiki thought his ranting became even more deranged than before. “What!? How are you… here…” he started, but trailing off at the end as he noticed her condition. “Well, well, well! It seems that the regeneration from your berserk state wasn’t all that it seems! Your relic-filled left arm is right here, inside my Nephilim’s heart!”
Hibiki’s unnatural fear and pain began to grow as the doctor taunted her, but reassurance from Miku helped relax her breathing, even if she still felt the pain in her arm.
“But you’ve served your purpose now that the Nephilim is complete, and as interesting of a subject as you would be, you’re far too dangerous for me to consider that avenue. Go, my Noise!” he shouted, as one of the blob-like Noise leaped towards the girls.
Hibiki felt Miku pull on her sleeve as the other four started to turn and run, but Hibiki just shook off her jacket and ran towards the Noise instead.
“Hibiki, no! You could die!” Miku shouted, the faces of the other three widening in fear and surprise unseen by Hibiki as they realised just what had been bothering the duo.
Hibiki gave no response, instead continuing her reckless and brave charge.
“Balwisyall Nescell Gungnir Tron!”
She screamed out her transformation chant, her right fist making contact with the Noise before her transformation took effect, yet she suffered no damage at all for it. Everyone else was frozen and states of panic and fear at the sight, before bright lights and orange sparks heralded the creation of the Symphogear armour around Hibiki. When the transformation was complete, Hibiki carried her punch through, instantly destroying the Noise that her fist had made contact with.
Hibiki’s body began to flare with energy, and she felt a sharp pain from the stump of her left arm, as if something was trying to escape from it. She allowed the feeling to flow through her on instinct, and was shocked when she felt something inside her shift . Mechanical whirs echoed as armour components and metal emerged from her body, before shrinking down and forming into an off-yellow metal colour arm, complete with Hibiki’s usual gauntlet on top.
Opening and closing the mechanical hand a few times with ease, as if it had been there all along, Hibiki gained a determined look on her face and stood protectively in front of her friends, all of whom had stopped running to watch the events unfolding in front of them in a horrified awe.
All as a single dead leaf floated down next to Hibiki and burnt away from the heat the girl emitted before it could even touch her.
“My fist! My life! They are both my Symphogear!”