Editing BlazBlue:Phase Shift 4 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 6===
In the world of endless darkness, the silver-haired girl crumbled to her knees. Celica reflexively tried to run to her side, but Ragna held his arm out to stop her.

Unable to stand back up, the girl turned her pitiful, resentful eye up at Ragna.

"How could you... Ragnaaa... why? Why are you being mean to Nu?"

The girl kept on repeating the words, 'how could you, how could you’ as she sobbed.

Ragna walked to her side... and raised his arm. He wasn't going to console her: he was lifting his sword above his head.

"I'm not trying to be mean."

Ragna whispered quietly to her one more time before he ran his sword through the blue-and-silver girl, looking like he was shaking something off of himself as he did it.

That was the end.

Her dainty body quivered and started to crumble, from her fingertips to her toes. Her body broke apart like a clay doll returning to the earth... and only her face with its one red eye wide open remained by the end. Eventually, that too disappeared. She melted into the surrounding darkness, vanishing without a trace.

"...The Black Beast's heart is done for. The rest is up to the masked bastard."

Turning his back on the girl who disappeared, Ragna walked back to Celica as he returned his sword to his hip. His face looked relieved, but it also seemed to be hiding remorse.

"Ragna..."

Celica didn't know how best to say what she was thinking. She hesitated a little, but she only had one thing in mind, so in the end she just went with it.

"Thank you. You always, always come to my rescue."

"I wasn't really trying to save you just now. Our goals just happened to line up perfectly this time."

Ragna gave a little scornful laugh as he told her that he didn't know why she was thanking him.

A smile broke out on Celica's face when she saw that mannerism of his.

"Aw, no need to get embarrassed."

"Huh? Come again?"

"It's alright, I get it. You act like a big brother, but you're really just shy."

She clasped both hands behind her back and peaked up at him mischievously as Ragna shrank away and darted his eye around, his face uncomfortable.

He scratched his white-haired head with his left hand, which was a bit of a bad habit of his. Suddenly remembering something, he wheeled back around to face Celica.

"I... really gotta leave now."

His words came out as a deep sigh.

Celica was about to cock her head to one side in confusion... but she had a hunch about what he meant, so instead she put on a smile.

"I don't know the details, but you mean you have to go back to where you came from, right?"

She had gotten a vague sense about that the last time they had reunited inside the Black Beast. She had thought that she and Ragna were probably not going to be returning to the same place. Just like Celica had to go home to Nine, Ragna had somewhere he needed to return to as well, somewhere different.

Ragna gave her a firm nod in response. Celica forced herself to smile wider, but she couldn't stop her eyebrows from drooping, revealing her true feelings.

"That makes me feel kinda lonely, since I waited so long for this."

"Yeah. Looks like... I'm really making you wait for me."

"Huh? Do you want me to keep on waiting?"

"I'm not telling you to. In fact... I can't tell you to."

Celica sensed a hidden meaning behind Ragna's words and his all-knowing face, but she had no idea what it was.

Whatever Ragna wasn't saying wasn't important to Celica right now.

"Will we meet again?"

Her voice lit up.

For a moment, Ragna was taken aback, but then he broke out into a laugh.

"Yeah, we will. I came here to fulfill my promise to you, after all."

Celica's eyes shone with vitality. Her cheeks turned a bright peach color and the genuine, full-faced smile that she couldn't manage before bloomed on her lips.

"Oh, jeez. Hearing that makes me so happy."

She folded both hands over her chest and squeezed tight, like she was trying to keep the words she had just heard safe.

"Wow. We're gonna see each other again, huh? How about that. I really thought this was gonna be the last time."

"H- hey, just so we're clear, I don't know how far down the line that's gonna be for you. At the very least, it ain't gonna be tomorrow or the next day."

Ragna stuck his arm out as he rushed to stop her from getting her hopes up. He couldn't guarantee it was going to happen on some specific date. It might be years, even decades.

Celica understood what Ragna was trying to say well, but she shook her head, her ponytail swaying.

"That's alright. I don't mind waiting for you, Ragna. I found you a lot faster than I expected this time too, although I was sure I'd see you sooner or later."

She was thinking that the time when she would get to see him again would come faster than she anticipated this next time too. Instead of worrying about how things would turn out, she was just happy with that thought.

Where had the lonely, miserable girl who had been on the verge of crying as she laughed from just moments ago gone? With equal parts exasperation and admiration, Ragna shook his head.

"You're incredible. I really respect you."

Ragna put his hand on Celica's head with a little thud.

"Welp... guess I gotta head back before the Black Beast's body completely disintegrates... but..."

Ragna swiveled his head around, scanning the area before scratching his cheek. No matter how hard he looked, they were surrounded by nothing but blackness.

With a hint of shame, Ragna finished his sentence.

"...how do I get out of here?"

"Huh? Wait, you... don't know how to get back home!?"

As Celica burst out in shock, Ragna's expression grew increasingly more sullen.

"Gimme a break, I was in a hurry."

He mumbled an excuse before ruffling his hair, trying to think of a solution.

Suddenly, they smelled an aroma that they couldn't believe would be in a place like this.

It was the smell of roses.

They knew exactly who had just arrived from that scent alone, and Celica looked around for the scent's owner. Just as Celica turned her back, a small silhouette appeared behind her.

It was a girl with two long, golden twintails and a big ribbon. The current master of the castle of eternal night, the Alucard Manor: Rachel Alucard.

Ragna's temper flared the moment he saw her.

"Dammit, rabbit!"

"I don't have the time to waste on disciplining you for your every uncouth outburst. Do you not want to return to where you came from? I will connect the dimensions for you, so make haste and leave."

Rachel waved her small white hands like she was shooing him away.

While Ragna was getting all bent out of shape by her haughty attitude, Celica asked her an honest question.

"Rachel-san, you can connect dimensions?"

"...Of course I can. Although more precisely, it's less so that I am able to do it and more so that it can be done from here."

Rachel looked at Celica through the corner of her eye, seeming to take in everything about her from her head to her toes as she replied. Celica thought that she had sounded a little reluctant to tell her.

Rachel twined her lovely, silky golden hair around her fingertip, then let it go, her red eyes taking in her surroundings all the while.

"The interior of the Black Beast has a very close relationship with the cauldrons, you know."

She turned to face Ragna, her palm pointed out at him, and a rose-red magic circle appeared beneath his feet.

"I'm going out of my way to perform such an advanced technique as interdimensional teleportation for you, so you ought to show some gratitude... Mr. Manservant-from-the-future."

"Who's the manservant!? Screw you!"

Ragna looked so mad he might bite her, but he stayed on the magic circle. Celica remembered that they were pressed for time, so she stood next to Nirvana and gave Ragna a smile tinged with sorrow.

"...Hey, Celica. When we meet again, don't be a stranger."

Ragna raised his hand in a casual wave as he disappeared from the world of monochrome blackness.

The moment he was gone, the ground started shaking beneath Celica's feet. Nirvana supported Celica's body just before she lost her footing, but now they were surrounded by an unpleasant noise, almost like a sandbag being turned inside-out and spilling its contents all at once.

The sound grew louder and louder.

"Wha- what's happening!?"

"Isn't it obvious? ...The Black Beast has been defeated."

The sand-like noise she was hearing was in fact the sound of the Black Beast losing all of its seithr and crumbling to bits.

"You people are really such a handful."

With a single dignified sigh, Rachel waved her palm through the empty air. A sudden wind blew from who-knows-where, reinforcing Nirvana's shaky footing.

From within the wind, Rachel summoned a faintly glowing magic circle with herself at the center. The sound of the collapse was coming from so close now that it was practically in Celica's ear, but Rachel teleported them all outside of the seithr before they could sustain any damage to their minds.
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The moon was watching over them when they arrived.

The previously verdant plain had been completely trampled in the furious battle and turned into a wasteland. The wind raged across the jagged earth, and all that remained was a small, black clump of shadow.

It was about as big as an adult man, so perhaps calling it 'small' wasn't quite accurate. The black clump looked so transient and insubstantial that it seemed like it would disappear if you shined a light on it. Compared to its previous insurmountable size and hopelessly intimidating presence, it now looked so feeble that it actually inspired pity.

It was the only fragment of the Black Beast remaining.

It was the final, sputtering breath of the monster made of pure seithr.

It rolled into the shadows of the plain, looking like it might disintegrate at any moment, and stared out in confusion with one deep red eye.

Standing right in front of that eye was a shadow in white, Hakumen. Jubei and Valkenhayn stood right behind him, Trinity and Nine were a few paces away, and Terumi was way in the back.

Looking at that scene from behind the fragment of the Black Beast, it seemed to Celica like it was something happening on some distant, foreign world. Nirvana stood right behind her, silent as ever, and Rachel quietly watched for what was about to happen.

The air was heavy with all the scattered seithr, but the weight Celica felt pressing down on her chest was certainly not just because of pollution.

Hakumen whispered something imperceptible as he slowly raised his nodachi high. The white blade flashed brilliantly as it caught a white ray of sunlight.

Without a sound... the blade fell.

It severed the head of the vaguely humanoid clump, the final piece of the Black Beast.

The moment its head hit the ground, tears ran down Celica's cheeks.

It was dead. That fact made her so sad.

So, so very sad.

She couldn't hold back the pain in her chest. She crouched down where she stood, shoulders shaking as she quietly wept.

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