Robin waited in the rainbow-colored room.
She was surprised by the decor herself. It did not feel like something her brother would have arranged.
But since this room existed, that meant it had at least been permitted by him.
So she did not dwell on it. Instead, her gaze fell on the magazines laid out around the room.
They looked brand new. Some were even still sealed.
Robin gave them a quick look and realized they were all about things she was deeply interested in.
Fashion and styling, celebrity entertainment, events from all across the galaxy...
And it was not just one or two. At a glance, every single magazine there made her want to read it.
So while she waited for Sora to come in, she simply picked one up and began flipping through it quietly.
What she did not know was that these magazines had all been bought today.
Every last one of them had been prepared to keep her occupied here for as long as possible.
At first, Robin really was interested in the magazines.
But most of her attention was not on them. Every so often, her eyes drifted back to the door.
"Why is he taking so long?"
Even if entering the Family estate involved a lot of procedures, it should not have taken this long.
Had something happened outside that was delaying her brother and Sora?
And in fact, something had.
Because no matter how one looked at the place where Sunday and Sora currently stood, it was hard to believe it was the residence of Penacony's ruler.
Soil flew through the air. Rubble lay scattered everywhere. The puppets' bodies had been smashed apart and strewn across the ground...
Everything—everything—spoke of how fierce the battle here had been.
Of course, that fierceness was entirely one-sided.
The thing being attacked had not suffered so much as a scratch, which meant the only ones taking damage were the puppets of ORDER Sunday had summoned.
Faced with this scene, Sunday's expression was dark to the extreme.
That was not an expression that belonged on Sunday's face.
As the Family's spokesman, he was supposed to remain polished and immaculate at all times.
And yet now, his face was so overcast, his furious eyes looking as though they wanted to tear the man in front of him to pieces.
"You bastard..."
And the reason for his fury was very simple.
"...What did you just say you were going to do with Robin?!"
The root of all this lay in what Sora had just said.
For an older brother who cherished his little sister, Sunday could accept that male friends might appear around her.
But he would never allow some frivolous drifter to linger by her side.
His sister was so pure, so adorable. If she got deceived by a few sweet words, would that not be the end of it?
So as her brother, it was his duty to shoulder that responsibility and properly control the standard of the people allowed near her.
And in Sunday's eyes, Sora was the textbook example of a sketchy punk.
Just think about what Sora had done.
He had taken his sister off to dye parts of her strange colors. Her wings, no less. He had shown off by racing a ship right in front of him. The Silver Radiance, at that.
One thing after another—after all that, Sunday had naturally concluded that Sora was exactly that kind of guy.
For someone like him, Sunday's willingness to let the two of them stay in the same hotel was already magnanimous enough.
After all, there were guard rooms between their rooms. If Sora tried to go to Robin's, Sunday could always use back-end controls to lock the door.
That was the only reason he had tolerated them staying there.
But what Sora had just said was the equivalent of dancing on his reverse scale.
"Hand her over to you?! Don't make me laugh!"
To Sunday, those words sounded no different from Sora shouting in his face that he should hurry up and hand over the ID papers so he could go register his marriage with Robin.
How was an older brother supposed to tolerate that?
So enough was enough. There was no need to endure it any longer.
With a mere wave of his hand, Sunday summoned a crowd of puppets of ORDER and surrounded Sora.
It looked exactly like some rich older brother calling in a legion of thugs to teach the brat trying to steal his sister a lesson.
Unfortunately, this so-called "punk" was absurdly strong.
Before Sora, the puppets of ORDER could not last even a single exchange.
One punch was enough to turn the puppets rushing at him into heaps of broken parts.
One puppet carrying a steel pipe did manage to seize an opening and smash him across the back.
But Sora reacted as if nothing had happened at all.
Using his right leg as a pivot, he twisted at the waist and hips and unleashed a whirlwind kick in midair, smashing it straight into the puppet's face.
CRACK!
With a sharp burst of shattering noise, the puppet's head exploded into fragments across the floor.
Even in the middle of his anger, Sunday had to admit that Sora really was strong.
"Then I'll crush you myself!"
Sunday forced down his fury and began personally controlling the puppets of ORDER.
At once, the pressure on Sora soared.
The puppets no longer charged mindlessly. Instead, they attacked in orderly waves.
The musicians of the Orchestra of ORDER played harmonious strains that dragged the listener's consciousness into an even deeper dream.
Those musicians stood in a line before Sunday, continuously piling mental pressure onto Sora.
The wine stewards of the Orchestra of ORDER overturned the goblets in their hands, spreading the crimson liquid everywhere around him.
The moment it touched him, it felt as though the wine could wash away every sin from his body.
But the truth was the opposite.
That wine was an inducement to fall.
It constantly transmitted the promise of a dream-feast to whoever touched it.
And on the front line, puppets dressed like prisoners closed in around Sora with steel pipes in hand.
"The messenger bears chains, the caged preach gospel, the lash scourges evil clean, the blows sink into the heart..."
"Purge all wicked thoughts, and welcome the rebirth of ORDER with us."
Chains shot in from every direction and wrapped around Sora's hands, feet, and head. For a moment, it looked as though they meant to tear him limb from limb.
Intoxicating devil-music, wine that supposedly cleansed all sin, and prison-bound executioners who erased the sins of the flesh...
The entire scene looked like a purification rite, one meant to scour a person clean from body to heart to spirit.
One prisoner after another approached Sora's joints with steel pipes in hand. Those were among the strongest parts of the human body—but against something harder still, they would break all the same.
Sunday still found it difficult to bring himself to kill Sora outright.
So he chose instead to rob this man of the power to move.
"As long as you lose your mobility, then you, this variable, won't be able to affect anyone else..."
Sunday lowered his eyes, as though unable to bear the bloody scene about to unfold, and closed them. "Don't blame me."
For ORDER's beautiful dream to proceed to completion, he could only ask this man to endure a few days of pain and immobility.
Gopher Wood was right. If one wanted to accomplish anything, sacrifice was unavoidable.
Sora was one such sacrifice. For the beautiful dream that was about to be forged, he would lose a few days of freedom.
And Sunday was another. For the sake of giving eternal happiness to countless living beings, he had to remain awake alone and face this world...
The awakened are forever blessed.
At this moment, Sunday had already steeled his resolve.
For the ideal he had promised his little sister in childhood, he would not stop the steps carrying him forward.
But rest assured—when the day the beautiful dream is completed comes, you will understand that these few days of suffering were worth it.
You too will remain in happiness forever.
As he finished speaking, the hand that seemed to be delivering judgment slammed down.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
A rapid series of clashes rang out at once—steel pipes striking something, perhaps flesh.
It was enough to make Sunday unable to open his eyes.
He had once seen how, on the puppet production line, arms and legs could be removed like parts at will.
But puppets could not feel pain. Sora was flesh and blood. Surely, in the next instant, he would cry out in agony.
The reason Sunday remained here without leaving was because he wanted to remember those cries of pain—to know exactly what burden he had chosen to bear.
But what he did not expect was that the sound reaching his ears was not a scream of pain at all.
Instead—
SHING!
The sound of a blade cutting through something?!
What?!
Realizing something was wrong, Sunday opened his eyes.
And the scene before him had already become something he could not understand.
The yellow on Sora's body had vanished, replaced by deep blue.
KAMEN RIDER AGITO STORM.
And in his hands, the thick twin-bladed halberd spun with ferocious force.
The battlefield had already been split cleanly into two zones by him.
The binding chains tried to approach Sora, only to be cut to pieces before they could even touch him.
As for the steel pipes, they fared even worse. They were sliced into section after section before they could get close, clattering to the floor.
Seeing this, Sunday frowned.
"So you still had power like this?"
To be honest, he was genuinely surprised. Under his personal control, the strength of the Orchestra of ORDER had risen by far more than a single level.
Most ordinary Pathstriders would not even have made it past the music before being subdued.
And yet Sora had not only resisted that lullaby that dragged people deeper into dream—he had also managed it while under the influence of the wine of absolution.
In the entire universe, there were probably only a handful of people who could do such a thing.
"To be honest, I've revised my opinion of you a little."
Sunday had confirmed that Sora did indeed have some merits.
But that was all.
"I had wanted to spare you some pain. It seems I was overthinking things."
Sunday's fingers moved in rhythm. The wine covering the ground answered his summons at once, gathering into a giant crimson serpent.
Your weapon may be able to block those physical attacks.
But how will you deal with this one?
"Heh. I've seen a hell of a lot more than some guy like you, who spends all day basking in sweet dreams!"
As he spoke, a faint glow began to shine from Sora's body.
Facing the drunken serpent about to strike him, he spun his twin blades faster and faster.
Wind rose within the dream, drawn by that motion and gathering in his hands.
Inside the room, Robin suddenly saw the world outside change.
Sheets of paper wrapped in violent wind whipped past her eyes.
She hurried closer to look and found that everything around her seemed to be pulled by some force, rushing nonstop in one direction.
A storm had torn through the clouds and sky, linking heaven and earth as it appeared within the dreamscape.
A scene like this should have made countless people stop and stare.
But in reality, hardly anyone paused what they were doing.
Some even had the magazines in their hands sucked away by the gale, yet still sat there calmly, reading the empty air with perfect focus.
The sight was enough to send a chill straight up from the depths of one's heart.
It was as if they had all been wound up like clockwork and knew only how to keep doing one single thing.
This enormous disturbance had torn away the veil from things once carefully hidden and exposed their true nature.
"This is what you call a beautiful dream?"
Faced with Sora's challenge, Sunday showed no intention of denying it. "If not for a variable like you, they would have spent this day exactly as perfectly as they always do."
And the more cycles there were, the stronger his power would become, until these past few days could be woven by his hands into an orderly dream in which everyone spent every moment perfectly.
Was that not a beautiful dream too?
But the moment Sora heard that, endless fury surged from his body.
"What kind of bullshit beautiful dream is that?!"
Soon, a vivid red appeared atop the blue of Sora's body.
A crimson sword appeared in his hand and slashed out. Dense flames instantly dyed the dark storm scarlet.
And as Sora brought his weapon down, that blazing red storm connecting heaven and earth instantly vaporized the drunken serpent.
Ssshhh!
A sharp, grating hiss rang out between the two of them.
Faced with the firestorm closing in on him, Sunday's face remained calm.
Sora's rebuttal would not shake him in the slightest.
And when confronted with Sora's confusion, his answer was simple.
"You do not understand."
Sunday reached out a hand and met the blazing firestorm head-on.
The wind howled. The heat surged. Wherever the firestorm passed, a blackened ring spread in its wake.
If a natural disaster like this appeared on an ordinary planet, it would be enough to destroy the homes of countless living beings.
But before Sunday, the violent firestorm actually halted its advance.
It stopped in place beneath the hand he had extended.
Scorching heat lashed across Sunday's face, yet his palm suffered no damage at all. It remained just as flawless as before.
Until, slowly, that outstretched hand curled into a fist.
In the next instant, the still-spinning, still-burning firestorm was compressed by an overwhelming force.
Moments later, it had become something small enough to fit in Sunday's palm.
He looked at the little sphere in his hand—the thing the firestorm had been compressed into.
That move had been something Sora never expected.
He had thought Sunday could only summon those puppets of ORDER.
Who would have guessed he had something like this too?
"So I underestimated you..."
Sora tightened his grip on both weapons.
"No. I underestimated you."
Sunday shook his head.
He truly had underestimated Sora. He had underestimated the extent of this man's power.
That firestorm just now had been enough to shake ORDER to a certain degree.
Everything around them aside from the buildings had already mostly been burned away.
And if Sora created several more storms like that, then this beautiful dream would inevitably be shaken.
If something so utterly beyond imagination could happen here, then could it still be called a beautiful dream?
So yes—Sunday admitted it. He had underestimated Sora.
"Gopher Wood was right. A variable like you should be completely erased."
Sunday's figure slowly rose into the air.
And as he ascended, the remaining puppets all dropped to both knees and gazed up at him in pious devotion.
It was as though they were looking upon a god descended into the world, begging for grace and forgiveness.
And the absolution meant for these puppets arrived very quickly.
A burst of intense light flashed, and before Sora, a massive puppet over ten meters tall appeared.
At once, an indescribable force spread outward from it in all directions.
In that moment, Sora seemed to see countless rainbow-colored threads linking everything together.
[ONCE, NOW, FOREVERMORE—BECOME ONE WITHIN ORDER'S HARMONY.]
The three puppets of ORDER represented the three stages of accepting baptism.
To bid farewell to the sins of the past through bodily scourging, to wash away the thoughts of the present by drinking the wine of absolution, to welcome eternal joy by listening to ORDER's music...
When all of that was complete, the divine grace within ORDER's melody would unite the three stages into one body.
And that was the form Sunday could currently display, before the Work of Creation had yet been completed.
KAMEN RIDER AGITO TRINITY vs SUNDAY'S ORDER.
"Then let me send you off with my own hands. Your sins—I will bear them for you."
Sunday crushed the compressed firestorm in his hand.
Dense flames spread across the giant puppet's body.
Yet those flames burning over the puppet did not destroy everything. Instead, the charred ashes Sora had left behind slowly began to disappear.
Sunday was using fire to forge ORDER's foundations anew.
Of course, Sora was not about to stand there and watch.
He hurled his twin halberds straight forward.
Guided by his will, the twin blades spun rapidly ahead, stirring up a storm.
The fierce wind became countless sharp edges, turning them into spinning projectiles that shot toward the puppet's joints.
At the same time, Sora gripped the Flame Saber and charged the puppet's upper body.
The attacks from above and below reached their targets at the same moment.
And yet, faced with Sora's pincer attack, the puppet under Sunday's control showed no reaction at all.
Not until Sora had already closed in did he hear a soft sigh by his ear.
Ahh...
"THE FIRST CYCLE: LET THERE BE REALITY."
With Sunday's words, Sora suddenly felt that everything around him had changed.
As though some force had rewritten something in that instant.
And in the very next moment, both he and the spinning storm-projectiles passed straight through the puppet before him.
That was right—Sora simply passed through it, without striking any solid substance at all.
Even the saber in his hand met no resistance, slicing through the enormous puppet as though nothing tangible existed there.
A bad feeling hit Sora, and he immediately prepared to land and regain his footing.
But the moment he touched the ground, his entire body sank into it uncontrollably.
This is...
There was no resistance. No sensation.
Sora passed into the earth as if it were air.
It was as though reality and illusion had been completely rewritten in that moment.
This was the first ability Sunday could currently use.
To distort reality and illusion, nullifying every attack directed against him.
And it was not over yet. When he saw Sora lose control and sink into the earth, Sunday used that power again.
Reality and illusion inverted. The formerly unreal ground suddenly bulged upward in a great mound.
It was the excess earth forced up when an object abruptly appeared underground.
"Your strength may be impressive, but before me, it is still useless."
The flames burning on the puppet's body changed under Sunday's will into a red-hot iron rod.
He seized it and drove it straight into the raised earth.
Pinned down by the ground itself, Sora would have no room to dodge. Sunday could pierce straight through him with ease and leave him dead beneath the earth.
The mound rising above the surface and the iron rod plunged beneath it together looked exactly like a grave.
And the one buried below, once the next cycle came, would be completely absorbed into ORDER. No one would ever know.
Only Sunday alone would know whose grave this was.
And he had already made peace with carrying that sin.
Unfortunately, that resolve lasted only a moment before the attack from behind shattered it.
The Flame Saber slashed into the joint of the puppet's right arm and cut it clean in two.
BOOM!
The severed arm hit the ground with a thunderous crash.
Ignoring the broken limb, Sunday stared at the suddenly reappeared Sora in surprise. "How did you escape?"
Just now, reality and illusion had already been fully inverted. Without any foothold, Sora should have fallen without end into the deepest part of the dream.
So how had he suddenly appeared here?
And how had he escaped the crushing pressure of the earth?
"Heh? You think I'll tell you just because you asked?"
The Storm Halberd came spinning back from behind and hacked into the puppet's leg joint.
BOOM!
With one leg gone, the ORDER's Three Stages could no longer hold its balance. Its enormous body crashed down, bracing itself against the ground with one arm.
Taking advantage of the opening, Sora launched another attack at the ORDER's Three Stages's head.
There was a saying: don't hit someone in the face.
But at a time like this, who cared?
The face was exactly what Sora was aiming for.
Faced with Sora charging again, Sunday inside the ORDER's Three Stages did not panic in the slightest.
He spoke lightly.
"THE SECOND CYCLE: LET THERE BE RECKONING!."
CLANG!
When the Flame Saber struck its face, an extraordinarily crisp sound rang out.
The attack that had broken through everything until now did not even leave a white mark on the ORDER's Three Stages face.
Was its face simply that hard?
No.
Sora immediately realized that some mysterious force was preventing him from harming the ORDER's Three Stages.
The backlash numbed his entire hand.
"What kind of crap is this now?"
You didn't have all these creepy abilities back when you were the Dreammaster!
But just as Sora had no interest in answering Sunday's questions, Sunday had no interest in answering his.
He ran his hand across the joints Sora had severed.
In the next instant, those broken joints crumbled to powder and regenerated on the ORDER's Three Stages body.
Sora sensed danger and leaped away, narrowly evading the puppet's grasp.
And after that, he did not land on the ground. Instead, he stood atop the glider floating in midair.
"Oh? So this is what you used to escape from beneath the earth?"
The moment Sunday saw the glider, he understood how Sora had broken free of the ground's confinement.
The glider carried a power extremely similar to Sora's own.
That power placed it beyond Sunday's control.
However, though that thing had helped Sora just now—at this moment, it would be useless.
With that, Sunday flicked a finger through the ORDER's Three Stages.
Sora immediately felt a violent gust slam toward him.
Under such force, the glider could not steady itself at all. It rocked left and right in midair, barely managing to hover.
But forcing it to hold on had its limits.
After Sunday flicked his finger again, the glider finally lost control and dropped from the sky with Sora on it.
Ever since earlier, Sora had been carefully observing Sunday's movements, trying to figure out what the hell this new ability was.
Had this guy somehow turned on invincibility while boosting his own power hundreds of times over?
That was the only explanation he could think of for why Sunday had become immune to blades and bullets, yet could create such violent wind with nothing more than a finger flick.
And even as Sora fell from the sky, Sunday did not stop moving.
He extended his hand toward Sora.
It looked as though he merely meant to catch him.
But a warning of death suddenly exploded through Sora's mind.
Every inch of his body was wrapped in a premonition of doom. His survival instinct drove his focus to a level it had never reached before.
And because of that, he could finally see Sunday's movement clearly.
The gesture reaching for him was slow and gentle, as though Sunday feared hurting him.
And yet Sora sensed death within that gentleness.
Which meant that Sunday's tenderness was hiding killing intent.
Linking that to everything that had happened just before, a thought suddenly flashed through Sora's mind.
Could it be...
To test that suspicion, Sora made no move to defend himself against Sunday's reaching hand.
He simply inhaled with all his might—then exhaled toward him.
Just an ordinary breath.
But the effect it produced was a monstrous gale.
WHOOOOO—!
Trees were uprooted. Bricks, tiles, and glass from the nearby manor shattered and went spinning toward the end of the dream.
Even the body of the ORDER's Three Stages could not maintain its reaching posture beneath that gust.
It staggered backward several steps before finally stopping only after crashing into the building behind it.
Just as I thought.
Sora twisted in midair and landed steadily on the ground.
"You reversed the concept of weight."
The heavier the attack, the less effect it had on you.
The lighter the touch, the more destructive it became.
That also explained why his full-powered strike earlier had only numbed his own hand, while a simple puff of air had nearly blown Sunday off his feet.
No wonder Sunday's move to grab him had felt like death itself.
Because the concept of light and heavy had been completely inverted. It looked as though he only meant to take hold of Sora gently—but the moment he made contact, Sora would probably disintegrate into powder, just like the ORDER's Three Stages's severed limbs earlier.
That bastard Sunday was sneakier than he looked.
"Your battle instincts are astonishing."
Sunday controlled the ORDER's Three Stages and made it stand once more.
This time, he truly had revised his opinion of Sora beyond recognition.
To grasp these hidden mechanisms and come up with countermeasures in so short a span of time—that level of combat intuition was far beyond anything an ordinary person could possess.
A shame that someone like this had to be buried by his own hand.
"Enough talk. I don't have time to waste grinding away with you!"
Now that Sora had figured out how to deal with it, of course he wanted to use the chance to crush Sunday completely.
Unfortunately, Sunday had no intention of leaving him that chance.
The instant Sora prepared to blow out another breath and force an opening, Sunday had already withdrawn that power.
So when Sora blew, it was just that—a breath of air.
The ORDER's Three Stages rose to its feet. Sunday's voice emerged from within, carrying the faintest trace of emotion.
"The first two times, you were able to find a way to answer my power. But this cycle, the only way to break it is through brute force."
"Whether or not you can do it... let me feel it for myself."
The red-hot iron rod in the ORDER's Three Stages's hand was gripped tightly.
Under Sunday's control, the iron rod moved like a stick of chalk, writing a single character into the void.
"THE THIRD CYCLE: LET THERE BE SPEECH."
A mysterious force rippled outward in every direction from the character Sunday had inscribed.
Under its influence, everything stopped moving.
The noisy flow of traffic. The bouncing balls rebounding through the dream. Even the drifting dust and smoke stirred up by their battle...
With a single [FREEZE], absolutely everything froze.
And within that motionless world, only one puppet remained free.
The ORDER's Three Stages walked toward Sora one step at a time.
But Sora made no move at all. He remained in his defensive stance, perfectly still.
He too had been fixed in place by that power.
When Sunday reached Sora, he stopped.
He looked down at the three-colored figure below him and fell silent for a moment.
He had once seen a saying:
A man's fists are the best tool for communication.
In the past, he had sneered at it, thinking it the crudest kind of logic.
But now, to his surprise, he found himself agreeing.
This man might be a punk. He might be an unserious drifter. He might be trying to steal his little sister—but after this exchange, Sunday had no choice but to admit that he really had felt a strange sort of charisma radiating from Sora.
"What a pity. This is as far as you go."
Sunday lifted the red-hot iron rod in the ORDER's Three Stages's hand.
Once that blow fell, everything would return to its proper track.
This variable called Sora—for the sake of ORDER's beautiful dream, Sunday himself would remove him.
"Farewell, you bastard."
"Who the hell are you calling that...?"
The instant Sunday heard that familiar voice, his heart sank.
He brought the iron rod crashing down at Sora.
And yet, within that frozen world—a single tiny spark of light flickered.
"Who the hell are you calling a bastard?!"
Faced with the descending rod, the one who should have been frozen threw a rebellious punch!
Dooong—!
The ringing, resonant sound made the character in the distance tremble violently before it exploded with a boom.
Everything around them resumed moving.
Except now, a few drops of blood fell from the fingertips of that outstretched right hand...
---
T/N: LETS GOOOOOOOOOO SORAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! might change orders three stages... idkch
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