Ramirez fell, pulled inexorably downward into the gravity well, and towards the event horizon. His stomach plunged into his pelvis, leaving his chest cavity hollow as he screamed. Ramirez had never been afraid of dying.... But he WAS afraid of this.

He didn't want not to exist.

But Apollyon raised its many tendrils to embrace him, and oblivion is what it promised. Light flashed and churned below him, rolling in a great spiral toward its end. Could he escape?

Maybe if he ripped off his helmet, let his body die, and released his Anima before he crossed the point of no return. Maybe his Anima could escape.

It was his only option.

No time to think further.

He reached up and grabbed onto his helmet, curling his fingers under the latch as Apollyon rose up to consume him.

But just before he could pull the latch, something grabbed him around the chest. His body jerked, his arms flailed, the wind was knocked out of him, and his sudden feeling of weightlessness was replaced by the sensation of being crushed as his fall was halted.

The gravity was incredible, and he felt as if his eyes were about to be squeezed from his skull.

He groaned.

And so did his armor.

A warning light began to blink behind his visor.

Suit integrity failing 17%

Golden light rose around him.... Golden light muddied orange. Ramirez couldn't turn his head, the weight was too much, but slowly, he began to shift against the will of gravity, and his head lolled forward to find a pair of arms gripped tightly around his chest.

The architect?

But no, that didn't look like the architect, and on further inspection, he found a pair of spidery void appendages grappled around his upper legs. A part of him fell into shock while another part of him fell into confusion. Why would a void creature save his life?

If only he could see!

But couldn't he?

Ignoring the warning from his suit, he pulled up the screen monitor for his helmet cam, which still worked, though the increased gravity was causing it to fail and flicker, giving him only a grainy image as it struggled to swivel. At first, its shutter was not adjusted to take in the light that was shed from the golden silhouette, but after a moment the image resolved.

And it wasn't just the gravity that crushed the breath from his lungs.

Above him, arms gripping around his chest, face contorted into an expression of immense pain, was his savior.

Angel Ramirez had his own Angel.

Maverick

****

She was made whole.

Awoken on the battlefield, Maverick had found herself resolved. Renegade/Rebel was no more, Technically Maverick was no more, but instead, they were one and together like they should have been. She was maverick because that was the sum of her most important parts, the part of her that had grown from this jealous thing that she had harbored, but she wasn't free.

She was still weighed down by incredible guilt, burdened by a pride she had lost on earth. She was everything now. She was a warrior of time immemorial, once a loyal soldier to the architect grown jaded and bitter. She was a turncoat, and a traitor to her people, the same Anima who had been banished to earth to learn her lesson.

But she was also the sum of what came after, what the past few years had turned her into.

Maverick, not Renegade.

Oh, and a hanger-on.

The creature that had once tormented her, turned her, whispered in her ear, and now gripped onto Ramirez just as tightly as she did.

They were here to save their friends, or she was here to try.

She had seen him go over the edge; had arrived just in time to dive after him, and now with her arms wrapped around his chest, she wasn't sure she could do it. The gravity was terrible. Though they had not crossed the event horizon, past the point of no return, the intensity of the pull was no small thing, and she could feel it trying to pull them both down, to end them permanently.

She couldn't allow it.

They were suspended, her pull equal to the gravity that pulled them downward.

Her limbs shook.

She was starting to give.

They were going to fall.

Ramirez couldn't speak to her...

But somehow he must have known she could hear him, one of the powers of being a Maker.

So he spoke to her in silence, forced to have faith that she could hear.

"I love you."

The sentiment wasn't a romantic one, at least not at that moment. Sure he harbored those feelings for her, she knew, but this was neither the time nor the place.

This meant something different, something beyond. This was about everything, this was for the years they had fought together, for the slow friendship, for the hard things, and the frightening things.

This was his forgiveness.

It didn't carry with it any special power, it did not solve their problems

It was a single phrase spoken by a very powerless human man at just the right moment.

Because it made her angry.

Angry at that bitch Kazna for taking away the kind of person who could say it: the right thing at the right moment. She roared, digging down deep to find the place buried inside her, where the energy flowed.

They began to move.

Inches.

She screamed.

Feet.

She was a comet, a ball of burning golden fire as Anima energy shed from her.

She howled like an animal, her voice lost in the silence of the vacuum, nothing to vibrate over her vocal cords, but still, it felt good to scream. Ramirez hung limp in her arms.

Maverick was nothing more than light now, shedding energy, she could feel it sloughing off of her, shredding from her body in a way that should NOT happen. She was losing power, losing strength, but she could not stop.

Her very being was flaking away, but their speed was increasing, and the pull was lessening as they shot through the sky.

She screamed.

And they shot up over the edge, hurtling into the catwalk and bouncing. For a horrible moment, she thought they would pitch over the other side, break through the railing and start falling again, but as they careened into the metal, it held, denting and warping but not breaking as they came to rest.

And she faded.

***

Adam lay in a pool of his own blood, slowly spreading beneath him and trickling towards the edge of the catwalk as if a part of him were eager to flow after Ramirez and die himself.

From the corner of his vision, going hazy, he watched as lanus threw himself over the edge of the railing, rolling once before coming to his feet, and charging back toward Kazna, sweeping up a discarded spear. He was a blur of motion, spinning through the air as she came at him from all directions.

Gold light flared over his body, and that moment became one of the most beautiful pieces of combat Adam had ever seen. For those few seconds, Lanus was a god of war.

Kazna had her attention turned away.

Adam reached out his one remaining hand, and clawed his way across the deck, toward Sunny's prone body. His nerves screamed in protest, as the Steel eye Exoskeleton, spattered in gore, was dragged along the deck behind him.

He reached her, Resting a hand on her chest.

"Sunny, Sunny come on." He said, hot tears filling his vision, "Please come on."

A bright streak of orange light appeared in the distance.

It was coming.

He shook her, "Come on."

And then she groaned and shifted, but she did not wake.

Still, a wave of relief washed through him. The armor was crushing her but maybe he could help. He reached out and pulled the emergency tab. The suit did its best to fall apart, but it was still jammed. Orange blood leaked out, but it wasn't a lot, and she was breathing.

Feet away, krill lay prone, and though blood speckled the place around him.

Adam shifted using only his arm and dragged himself the foot or so across the deck to Krill's suit. The body didn't move.

Behind them kazna had grappled lanus, but a sharp burst of anima energy seared away the dark tendrils that gripped him around the chest. He threw her off.

Adam peered in through the open holes in Krill's suit, and was surprised to find.

Nothing there.

There was no body.

What!

And then, he remembered.

He fumbled at the back of Krill's suit fingers going numb and tingly as his blood continued to seep onto the deck.

He was growing cold.

Please, just a little more.

But Finally, his clumsy fingers found the latch and pulled.

Warm clear fluid spilled onto the deck, and with it came Krill's real body, sloshing out of the artificial womb like a calf during birthing season. It wasn't pretty, but it was much less bloody.

His body settled onto the metal just as a comet of bright golden light came searing out of the darkness, throwing itself over the railing, and rolling across the desk before coming to a warped stop against the far railing with the shriek of metal.

The light faded rapidly leaving Maverick Spent on the deck, one arm hanging over the edge, and Ramirez lying next to her