Starborn Renegades: Anthem of the Flawed

Sulfur fog vaporized into violet crystal dust under plasma artillery heat, the phantom echo of Hayate's mother's lullaby lingering in his eardrums. His grip on the spray canister mimicked her taught method, but only dry Stardust pigment sputtered out—muscle memory siphoned away by Church contracts, along with the broth's briny warmth.

Rin's crystalline arm glowed. Not its usual ice-blue, but a murky orange-red, like rust burning in her veins. Seven clones blocked her path.

Each replicated her perfectly, down to the lightning scar from brow to ear. Only their left arms differed: mechanical prosthetics, flesh limbs, even one with a high priest's metallic tentacles. Their blades ranged from rusted scrap to photon vibro-edges.

"Flawed batch #7 retrieval: commence." The mechanized voice triggered a slimy shift in Rin's sword grip—not sweat, but the leather dissolving to reveal squirming eel neurons beneath.

The first clone struck. Identical iaijutsu arc, yet when steel clashed, Rin saw the hollow crystal arm—a fetal-sized clone curled inside, smiling through translucent quartz.

"Upgrades get prettier." Hayate's wrench crushed the second clone's skull, spilling fluorescent memory gel that writhed into Church logs: Gene stability test: Clone E-Ω777-γ exhibits 97.3% maternal combat efficiency.

Rin's breath hitched. The third clone severed two strands of her hair, the strands morphing into miniature contract stelae mid-fall. Her father's face materialized, driving her own blade into a girl matching Rin's likeness—the victim's arm branded "V-Ω7."

"This blade…weeps?" Rin's palm grew damp. Oborogenkū's hilt leaked cerulean tears that corroded concrete with laughter—the same mocking echoes from her fifth birthday, when her father implanted the first eel-spine: "Scream. Screams prime Pillar Contracts."

The fourth clone's strike grazed Rin's jugular. Its attack pattern mirrored Vela's gambling flair, the blade splitting into three Lie-Coin cards midair. "Can't even protect your own moves?" The clone licked its lips—Vela's telltale lie.

Hayate's Stardust Eye hypercharged. Each clone's chest bore Paradox Corsair flag fragments transmitting combat data into the fog. "Living beacons!" He slung paint to ignite a Church data-channel map. "Destroy the flags—or the Ark's coordinates burn!"

Rin's arm screeched with grinding gears. Impaling the fourth clone, she seized a flag fragment—flooded by foreign memories: Vela's childhood sobs, lab explosions, a man driving an eel-spine into his own eye socket.

"Gah!" She collapsed, crystalline layers sloughing to expose biomechanical innards. Church Omega sigils pulsed between gears, each rotation unleashing clone combat data. The fifth clone severed her hair tie—as black strands fanned out, glowing Ark coordinates surfaced on her nape.

"You're absorbing them?" Hayate rammed aside the sixth clone. Rin's arm devoured memory gel like a black hole, her skin bulging with screaming faces—all younger versions of herself.

Rin didn't answer. She stabbed Oborogenkū into concrete, scabbard-umbilicals ensnaring clones. When the cords tightened, seven bodies dissolved into bioluminescent sludge, swirling into a gene-chain maelstrom. At its heart glowed the Church's classified files—the Ark blueprint etched with Vela's childhood ID: V-Ω7.

"So you're the Ark's core…" Hayate froze mid-swing. The schematics revealed Vela's mechanical eye as the reactor's keyhole—Rin's genome the activation code.

Rin's hand clawed her throat. Ingested clone memories rebelled, gears beneath her skin spinning wildly. "Delete…must delete—" She aimed the blade at her temple, but Hayate's wrench blocked it.

Stardust Resonance detonated, shattering sulfur pillars. In the crystal hail, Rin's arm cracked—not blood, but Vela's Lie-Fuel oozed out. Where it dripped, rust dissolved to reveal hidden text: Memory: supreme energy. Pain: purest fuel.

The seventh clone awakened. It held a Paradox Corsair-shaped lamp, its wick aflame with five-year-old Rin's screams. "Come home, sister." The clone's voice blended Vela and her father's tones. "The Ark's nursery needs a living engine."

Rin's arm erupted. Crystal shards arrowed toward the clone, only to be absorbed as lamp oil. As flames surged, Hayate's precognition fractured—three futures overlapped: Rin consumed, himself intercepting the kill, Vela emerging to snuff the fire.

He chose a fourth path.

The spray canister struck the lamp. Hayate ignited Stardust Resonance with his mother's fading fingerprints. The Ark schematics reconfigured, exposing the truth—the "Ark" wasn't salvation, but a Church memory furnace. Vela's eye rotated in its core, her iris patterns syncing with Rin's Omega brand.

"V-Ω7…" Rin tore off her last crystal shard, exposing a palm-sized metal tag—Vela's "birthday gift" at age four, now pulsing with Church brainwashing frequencies.

The fog bled crimson. Distant Ark engines roared in resonance with Vela's unknown wavelength. When the eighth clone wave emerged, each bore Rin's face fused with Vela's mechanical arm.

Hayate's canister ran dry. He sprayed Rin's arm—a severed umbilical coiled around the Paradox flag, its surface scrawled in Church contract script: Born of lies, we devour truth.

Oborogenkū hummed clear for the first time. As Rin slashed at the eighth wave, Hayate saw it—her Omega sigil had quietly morphed into Ψ.