Starborn Renegades: Anthem of the Flawed

Frost crystallized on the cryopod's glass, etching the Sea of Paradox's salt patterns. Hayate's breath left stardust trails as twelve floating dǔjú tables materialized, their surfaces mosaicked with frozen eel spines forming genetic chain models. Vela's Lie-Coins spun on his fingertip, refracting seven futures—three flickering with his mother burning contracts.

"Place your bet, stormcrow." Vela's voice hissed from vents above. Her mechanical eye projected overhead, pupils split into intertwined Church Ω and Corsair Ψ sigils. "Wager whether your mother burned contracts…or your childhood."

Blood seeped from Hayate's Stardust Eye. Precognition triggered:

5s until memory gel eruption | 3s until gene-chain mind-control | 1s until Lie-Coins rewrite fingerprints

He flicked a coin, splitting it into twelve suits midair. On contact, the walls lit with the Sea's thermodynamic laws:

Pain Memory = Stardust Yield × Contract Binding Force

"I bet she burned hope." His wrench shattered three eel spines. The collapsing gene-chain unleashed memories—his mother torching lab papers, each contract rebirth harsher than the last.

Vela's laughter shook the cryopod. Four mechanized dealers descended, transparent skulls housing Hayate's cloned brain matter. "Raise the stakes—" they droned, "—trade 'mother's grip' muscle memory for ten seconds of true history."

Hayate's thumb brushed the spray canister. Residual fingerprint heat seared his skin—hallucinations of seaweed broth clashing with burning plastic. He saw his eleven-year-old self hiding in a lab cabinet, his mother shoving the last Stardust pigment canister into his arms before Church batons pierced her chest.

"That pigment—" Vela's projection materialized, metallic finger stabbing his temple, "—was refined from eel-spines in her vertebrae, yes?"

The dǔjú tables mutated. Gene-chains became live traps snapping his right arm. Blood droplets revealed the Sea's second law:

Free Will = Σ(Rebellions) - (Contracts × Regret)

Hayate pried the jaws open with his wrench. Shattered teeth spat his mother's memory shards—she never signed willingly. The First Sakabane had implanted false childhoods; her "warm broth memories" were Church code. Her true origin: a gene-decoding table, left arm branded V-Ω0.

"Cheating's ugly." Hayate shoved a Lie-Coin into the table's crack. Blood-activated, it projected Vela's nightmare: eight-year-old her strapped to the Ark prototype, spine tubed to distill childhood screams into Lie-Fuel.

The cryopod lost gravity. Tables disintegrated into memory gel, revealing the Paradox Corsair flag's truth—the First Sakabane wasn't a traitor but a Church memory vessel. His flag, pressed from 700 contract layers, each tearable to free Sakabane consciousnesses.

"You're a vessel too." Hayate hurled the canister, paint solidifying into daggers in zero-G. "The Ark needs dual cores—your lies, Rin's pain."

Vela's projection glitched. Her mechanical eye cracked, leaking not oil but Hayate's mother's memories. The fragments formed the Sea's third law:

Love = Uncomputable Error

The cryopod ruptured. Hayate grabbed a falling flag fragment mid-plummet, its forbidden script glowing:

When Ψ Replaces Ω, the Memory Furnace Inverts

Sulfur and Stardust flooded his lungs. Above the crash site, Rin stood atop ruins, her Ψ-branded arm reassembling clone debris into a bridge toward the Ark's core—a massive mechanical eye whose iris damage mirrored Vela's.

"Time to end this." Hayate gripped the canister, its residue crystallized into his mother's fingerprints.

Hayate's fingertips brushed the etchings on the frozen eel spine. Stardust particles sparked blue electricity under his wrench's strike. The bone patterns levitated and rotated, assembling into a three-dimensional trajectory formula—the same bizarre artillery path that had pierced the Church warship last night.

"Ballistic coefficient deviation 37.6%." Hayate painted burning star trails with spray pigment. "Cheating with the First Sakabane's genetic algorithm?"

Overhead pipes convulsed. Dr. Shu slid inverted from a vent, his hunched back nearly folding double, steam hissing from spinal exoskeleton. "Cheating? This is artistic variance!" He hurled test tubes, their fluorescent liquid solidifying into seven battlefield models with differing timeflows. "Observe—when shells simultaneously hit and miss—"

The eel-spine formula shattered. Needle-like pain stabbed Hayate's right eye, forcing three-second precognition:

Shell remnants materializing in 1.2s｜Cryopod gravity axis shifting 23°｜Dr. Shu's mechanical glove melting—

"You're insane! This is a paradox storm!" Hayate's wrench smashed toward the formula's core, only to be deflected. Numeric symbols morphed into barbed chains binding his wrists, Church contract clauses tunneling through his veins toward the heart.

Dr. Shu ripped his shirt open, revealing a stardust reactor. Micro-shells collided inside glass tubes, each impact spawning emerald spacetime ripples. "Your mother stood here," he tapped his temple, cracked goggles reflecting Hayate's distorted face. "She called variance 'destiny's trigger'."

Hayate's pupils contracted. Stardust pigment boiled inside his spray canister, materializing tactile memory—his mother's chemically scarred hands guiding his childhood grip, altering trajectory formulas on contract parchment.

Black ooze seeped through cryopod walls. Twelve paradox shells manifested simultaneously, their contrails weaving death grids across fractured timelines. Hayate dodged the first salvo, boots crushing ooze that solidified into the First Sakabane's handwritten note:

"Formulas lie. Variance saves."

"Found you, old bastard." Hayate jammed his wrench into the ooze. Stardust resonance shattered three shells, their fragments hovering as new equation variables. Dr. Shu's exoskeleton spasmed, gears biting his jugular toward the reactor.

"Calculation error... No! This is the true solution!" He activated his pocket watch mid-bloody cough, temporal differentials forcing Hayate's eye to witness seven parallel realities:

Shells piercing his shoulder, contract chains turning Dr. Shu into Church puppet

Cryopod shredded by paradox storms, 700 eels carrying ancestral memories escaping to starlight

Mother's pigment canister reforming in temporal chaos, spraying contract-reversing dawn...

Hayate chose the seventh reality.

He smashed the spray canister against his chest. Stardust pigment synchronized with contract chains. Mother's fingerprint patterns glowed on the canister's base, overwriting Dr. Shu's equations. The paradox shells U-turned, blasting annular spacetime faults through the cryopod.

"You weaponized... my own variance?" Dr. Shu laughed maniacally amidst melting gears. The First Sakabane's scrawled writing resurfaced in ooze, now with blood-addendum:

"Tell that hunchbacked lunatic—I'd bomb the lab again."

Absolute silence engulfed the cryopod. Hayate's right eye lost focus. Mother's voice whispered: "Perfect trajectory—" Her phantom guided his trembling hand to spray through the final formula, "—is riddling fate with enough errors."

Seven hundred eel spines detonated. Stardust maelstrom devoured the chamber. When Hayate reopened his eyes, Dr. Shu's pocket watch lay in his palm—its cracked face clutching half a Church contract fragment edged with his mother's youthful signature.

Outside, a steam leviathan wailed. The countdown resumed.

The steam leviathan's cry cracked the cryopod glass. Vela slid along inverted pipelines, her mechanical iris fracturing into roulette patterns, twelve Lie-Coins melting into crimson vapor between her fingers.

"Bidding time, stormcrow." She blew dispersing molecules that reformed into Church gene-lock models. "Trade your mother's lullaby for three precognitive flashes?"

Hayate's wrench remained lodged in Dr. Shu's shattered pocket watch. The pine-and-rust stench of Lie-Fuel triggered black ooze seeping from his Stardust Eye—last night's lullaby peeled from his neurons, replaced by Church hymns' digital static.

"Don't you dare—" His fist phased through Vela's mistified left half, sparking Stardust against cryopod walls. Ignited vapor flooded the chamber with shimmering contract clauses.

Rin's blade struck then.

Oborogenkū's glacial edge froze 0.3mm from Hayate's throat, steel reflecting 700 overlapping lab scenes—each showing Hayate in Church white, driving eel-spines into different "Rin" clones.

"Traitor..." Blood-veined data streams crawled up Rin's crystalline arm—Lie-Fuel's memory toxins at work. "Even pain samples get replicated?"

Hayate's retinas burned. Five-year-old self huddled in mother's hazmat suit overlapped with Rin's blade splitting his collarbone skin. Bloodscent triggered deeper memory rewrite—mother's face dissolving into Church Hierophant's metal visage.

"Which betrayal is this?" Vela's voice crushed from all angles. Her right-side mechanics disassembled into nanite swarms devouring Stardust residue. "Sign the contract, and you'd feast in Church labs—"

Hayate's spray canister shattered the fire sprinkler. Stardust-Lie-Fuel cocktail rained down, evaporating into prismatic smog under paradox storms. He saw twelve-year-old self watching mother spray reversal formulas on Church walls, now overlapping with Rin's silhouette.

"Wake up! It's Lie-Fuel illusion!" He gripped Oborogenkū's spine, letting bladeslice his palm. Blood-prism interaction sparked static across 700 lab screens.

Rin's pupils contracted. Unfamiliar vibrations pulsed through her blade—Hayate's blood resonating with First Sakabane's gene-locks, quantum-entangling with her arm's paradox engine. Fabricated memories crumbled, revealing buried truth:

(Cryopod footage: Twelve years ago, Hayate's mother fled inferno with infant Rin, hiding her in leviathan fuel lines. As Church hunters' laser blades pierced mother's back, child Hayate bit off his pinky, blood-carving stellar coordinates into leviathan's hull.)

"Impossible..." Rin's trembling blade parted smog. Her crystalline arm stabbed toward her own temple, attempting to dig out implanted memory chips. "Dataflow... reversing?"

Vela's laughter died. Her mechanical eye flickered with never-before-seen footage—child self cowering in leviathan core, clutching Hayate's mother's wooden doll marked "V-Ω7".

"Cheaters get penalized." She hurled Lie-Fuel canisters, liquid pain-memories detonating into twenty-three time-sliced Rins attacking from all angles.

Hayate's eye hypercharged. He saw through illusions—Vela's erased childhood fragments. Grasping real Rin's wrist, prism-smog corroded cryopod vents, leviathan's tentacle-pipes flooding inward.

"Hold tight!" He shoved the spray canister into Rin's grip. Mother's residual fingerprints synced with her paradox engine, Stardust pigment burning escape routes into pipes.

Vela's mechanical arm impaled Hayate's shoulder. Her smile cracked: "Think you'll steal my toy?" Nanites invaded his bloodstream, rewriting gene-locks.

Rin severed Vela's elbow joint. Flaking crystals revealed her arm's core—Hayate's mother's pocket watch embedded there, reversing all Lie-Fuel dataflows.

"He's not your toy." Rin snapped Vela's spinal contract chains, molten hooks reshaping into First Sakabane's equations. "We're Stardust embers."

The leviathan's wail shook the sky. As countdown's red terminus swallowed vision, Hayate's final sight was childhood self and Vela huddled in leviathan belly, mother's dying Stardust pigment tracing anti-contract sigils on their foreheads.

The cryopod disintegrated in paradox detonation. Seven hundred truth-bearing eels fled to starfields. Rin's blade suspended shards of Vela's mechanical eye—iris patterns revealing next coordinates: the Church's most forbidden "Cradle of the Flawed".

Rin's fingers grazed the mechanical eye fragment. Seven hundred memory pulses surged through her crystalline left arm into the brainstem. She witnessed Vela's childhood - not the Church's documented "V-Ω7 specimen", but a gaunt girl curled in steam leviathan fuel pipes, carving the character "隼" on walls with rusted gears.

"Is this... your memory?" She recoiled, spiderweb cracks already spreading across crystalline surfaces. Hayate's Stardust-blood flowed backward from her blade tip, solidifying into double-helix luminescent bands within the fissures - each genetic segment embedded with Church-erased contract codes.

The leviathan shuddered violently. Hayate gripped star-navigation reliefs on the bulkhead, quantum resonance oozing silver-blue mucus from his right eye: "Drop it! That's a memory detonator--"

Too late. Rin's crystalline arm auto-locked onto the eye fragment, activating Church-designed absorption protocols. Residual paradox storms flooded into cracks, detonating as data torrents across her synapses.

(Memory Layer 1: Hayate's mother kneels before the Church's gene-forge, placing infant Rin inside the leviathan's core. Her fingers char black from Stardust pigment as she carves inverse contract algorithms into the hull. "Survive," she submerges Rin's crystalline arm in her own blood, "Become the antithesis of all lies.")

"Impossible..." Rin stabbed Oborogenkū into the deck for balance. The memories overwrote her bioelectric currents - Church-implanted "E-Ω777" codes entangled with Hayate's DNA, forming new Ψ-pattern mutations.

Hayate's spray canister slipped from his belt. Within Rin's arm fractures, he saw his five-year-old self - mother painting anti-contract sigils on his forehead with identical Stardust pigment. A white-haired girl crouched in shadows, snatching his dropped gear toy.

"Vela?" His wrench smashed against crystalline armor. Sparks revealed more fragments: Twelve-year-old Vela strapped to surgery tables, Hayate's mother replacing her frozen eel spine with a Paradox Engine prototype.

"You knew all along!" Rin's blade swerved toward Hayate. Cracks reached her collarbones, quantum entanglement syncing their pain receptors. "Why hide our shared tainted blood?"

The leviathan's roar materialized into sonic bombardment. Church mecha-eels swarmed through breached bulkheads, their spinal contract sigils resonating with Rin's Ψ-mutation. Dodging, Hayate glimpsed deeper memory strata--

(Memory Layer 2: The First Sakabane was no traitor. His rotating lab logs revealed the Church as gene-thieves. Seven centuries ago, he hid true freedom's spark within Stardust maelstroms using steam leviathans, awaiting dual-gene resonance.)

"Look at me!" Hayate seized Rin's trembling hand, pressing the spray canister into her palm. Mother's residual fingerprints merged with Ψ-patterns. Stardust pigment detonated annular shockwaves, melting mecha-eels into gene-chain models exposing the Church's ultimate fear--

The Ark of the Flawed's holographic blueprint rose from their joined hands. Not a salvation vessel, but a gargantuan gene-forge with Vela's mechanical eye as ignition core. The edges scrolled with First Sakabane's bloodscript:

"When dual tainted bloods merge, the Sea of Paradox boils. All contracts become stardust ash."

Rin's crystalline arm speared Hayate's chest - not attack, but conduit. She channeled his rampaging Stardust energy into her core. Fractures now spewed crystallized memory entities - seven hundred Hayate-Rin pairs across timelines fighting the Church, each frozen outcome embedding into the Ark's power matrix.

"You...were always part of the plan." Hayate coughed fluorescent blood, seeing mother's final smile in Rin's pupils. Her last words weren't a lullaby, but the Ark's vocal ignition key.

The leviathan reached critical mass. Vela's mechanical remnants converged, forming the Church's original gene-lock prototype around Rin. Hayate's wrench disintegrated under overload, revealing hidden First Sakabane parchment:

"Kill the vessel. Activate Ark."

The hologram materialized. Rin saw herself in the Ark's core chamber, spine linked to Vela's mechanical hub. Hayate's Stardust-blood reprogrammed protocols, redefining "vessel" as their gene-amalgam.

"No!" Rin severed data conduits, but her crystalline arm executed ancestral commands. Flesh sloughed away, revealing a quantum heart pumping bichrome blood - silver Stardust left, Paradox-blue right.

Church mecha-forces breached final defenses. Hayate embraced Rin's quantumized form through artillery fire, pressing his mother's spray canister into her chest. Its contents weren't pigment, but the "Error" essence harvested from Stardust maelstroms.

"Survive." Blood-frothed words flooded her auditory sensors. "Become perfection's loophole."

The Ark of the Flawed manifested with supernova radiance. Rin's Ψ-sigils overwrote star systems, reconstituting Church contracts into inverted gene-chains. As the last Stardust flickered, Hayate found mother's final hologram in the Ark's depths:

"Remember, child--"

"We need no ark."

"We are the storm."

The leviathan's remains dissolved into cosmic dust. Seven hundred truth-bearing eels swam to the Sea's every corner. Rin's blade-tip condensed a micro-Ark model, core pulsating with twin quantum hearts - her and Hayate's genes now irrevocably fused, blooming the first flaw-flower upon Church ruins.