Shiki's attacks were quick and precise. Even using his persona Ike could barely keep up.
"Why are you so fast...?!"
Shiki laughed mockingly. "Don't you hate it when you get to the very end, and the final boss practically beats himself? I promise I won't make you go through that!"
"That's quite courteous and all, but-- gah!"
Ike was knocked vertically by a knife-enhanced uppercut. He felt a freezing pain rush up his spine.
Saber had been destroyed completely, all in one strike.
"Not good...!" Ike took a moment to catch his breath. "Pikachu! Cover me!"
"On my way!" The rat dashed forward, but was dismissed by a single kick to the face.
"Pikachu!!" Soren lost the focus on the spell he had been conjuring. He looked back to Shiki and began firing short blasts of wind.
Shiki laughed, and vanished. No, he was moving that quickly forward. Shunpo?
Pikachu launched a vicious thunderbolt along the ground in a path Shiki had to cross wherever he was, but he appeared deflecting it... destroying it, by slashing through it with his knife.
A sinister laugh hummed from his chest. "Are you at all familiar with the concept of a party wipe?" Pikachu backed away slowly, but Shiki continued, slashing through even attacks Soren launched from behind. "It's when a bunch of under-leveled noobs take on an enemy far stronger than them and get completely trashed. Annihilated. Vaporized. Crushed. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"
"Too bad for you the good guys always win..." Pikachu snapped wryly.
Shiki continued to laugh, lunging forward. "Victory is impossible against a foe such as myself!!"
Soren gasped. If he had blinked he would have missed the attack entirely. In that same second, Pikachu lay on the ground, in pieces, completely shattered.
Ike cursed beneath his breath, clenching his teeth and holding Ragnell as tightly as he could. No... tighter. He could reshape it in his hands if he wanted to. "I won't let anyone else die. For whatever reason. I will end it all myself if I have to."
"Ike, don't...! I think I might be..." Soren's voice continued in his mind. What was he supposed to say exactly?
"I couldn't save Dad. I turned my back on Mist. I held Prince Marth in my arms as he died. And I didn't even get to thank Pikachu for everything he's done. You think I'll just let that happen again?!" Ike's anger was through the roof. His vision faded in and out, but he pushed himself forward. He had to. What other choice was there?
"Finally, you're going to put up a decent fight?" Shiki's smug expression became grim. He crouched low and held his knife outwards. "Good, good, That's good, Ike! Now come! Show me your moves!"
"Eyaaaaaaaaaaagh!!" Ike charged forward German wartank like a tank on steroids. His first swing missed Shiki completely.
The second was deflected with a bright flash by the side of Shiki's knife.
And the third.
The fourth slash came out as as a flaming attack that Shiki couldn't evade. Ragnell knocked him high into the air, still spinning. Ike flew up after it and took hold. "GREAT...!"
Ike wound the blade back behind his head. It was true that nothing he'd ever faced could survive a Great Aether, but what about now? And that single thought caused him to pause for just a bit too long.
Plop.
Plop plop plop.
Plop plop.
Soren couldn't take his eyes off of the morbid sight. Ike was still there, on the ground.
There before him was his forearm. And there, his left foot. A finger. A leg. A single hand, still clutching Ragnell.
Ike was still there, to be sure. But it was difficult to find any joy in the fact when he was in so many segments.
"..."
"... ..."
Shiki fell back to the ground quickly and precisely, as he did everything. It was clear he had the fight under his control from the very beginning. He brushed his fingers thoughtfully across a bleeding gash on his cheek that stretched from his mouth to his right ear, and smiled. "He's not bad. To have been able to strike me... he must have been quite the fighter indeed."
Looking at everything around his feet, Soren felt something well up deep inside. Seeing Pikachu. Ike. Even MechaJesus. All of them, in tiny, barely recognizable pieces of their former selves.
"Will you continue this little battle with me? Or do you feel like turning tail?" Shiki taunted. "Because I hate to stab a man in the back."
Soren didn't know if he had the power to stop the person who stood in front of him... rather, he knew he didn't have the power. He always felt like the strength he had wasn't enough, and now was no different. And if Ike, the most confident and powerful person he had ever met, could be taken out so easily...
If that was the case, then...
But his body was acting on its own. Soren was thinking those thoughts, but in another mind he knew that running was not an option. That winning was all he could do, or Ike's death would have been in vain.
"I see... this is how he felt..."
Soren was tossing Shiki around like a rag doll, but he didn't even see it. At least, not in the mind he was currently conscious of. "So this is the source of his power. I see now. How could anyone like him lose?"
Shiki lay battered and beaten. He picked himself up weakly, but some invisible hand forced him back into the ground. He cursed at the creature looming over him. Soren couldn't see it, but it was there, rising from him. A power that had lain dormant within his soul for many years. It had finally awakened.
Shiki made no further attempts to rise. He could only choke out: "How could such power be...?"
Soren looked down as something beneath him pleaded for its life. He watched it with a blank expression as the figure stopped moving. He had no reason to smile, to cry, to shout. As far as he was believed, he was only doing his job. Realizing that nothing was left, he took his heel to the knife by Shiki's corpse and crushed it. Suddenly, a feeling of euphoria took him over. Looking upon his own handiwork with pride, he smiled. He knew what he had been wanting to say for so long, and the words just began to flow, over and over.
"I fight for my friends."