Chapter Text
There was much yet to be done in the long, smoldering aftermath of the battle with Flame Nova. Duties that demanded hands and voices, plans that required stitching together what grief had torn apart. Jun had gathered his own and returned across the sea to Mowtown, Korea, entrusting Peruru with ownership of Mukara's Metal Breath. The world did not slow when Jun left them. It merely turned its gaze upon Gigantrex and asked him, at last, what shape his days were meant to take upon this fragile Earth.
Despite his best efforts to stave off the emptiness of the hours, burying himself in labor and through the weary patience of guiding Red Blitz and Spark-Bit through yet another quarrel, boredom had started to creep in. Not the sharp ache of dissatisfaction, but a dull, persistent erosion. The days began to resemble one another too closely, and in that sameness, Gigantrex found himself growing restless in a way he had never regarded life before.
Something had begun to stir at the farthest edge of his mind. At first, it arrived only in fragments. A fleeting unease, a hollow coolness that refused description, a sense of nullity where there had once been certainty. When it arrived, so did the dull ache in his head. It began to fester. His children, keen-eyed and perceptive in ways that surprised him, were the first to notice the change. Cielo eyed him curiously, Musclehyde fretted beside him, and even Red Blitz had dulled his own flame as if Gigantrex's own would smolder to life. Yet despite their effort, the Cardbot knew the truth he had not yet spoken aloud.
He was changing.
The blaze that had once burned within him, a constant, comforting reminder of purpose, was no longer roaring. It had drawn inward, simmering into something subdued, contemplative, and strangely unfamiliar.
They did not pry when he began to wander away from base, seeking solace in the quiet presence of a familiar lake. In the slow accumulation of days, and through the spaces he left behind, his crew learned to manage their own conflicts. Anticipating the strain of difficult days before his interior components could cycle fully into warmth. Their self-sufficiency should have filled him with pride, and in part it did. Yet beneath that pride lay an alien discomfort, a heaviness that sat uneasily throughout his frame.
And so, one evening, he settled himself at the water's edge, letting the ground cradle his weight as the shore curved gently around him.
Once, when Mukara still traced this path with him, the lake had been a marvel beyond words. Each day, he would rise simply to witness the sun's arrival, to watch its first light scatter across the water in trembling gold and silver. Fish would break the surface in fleeting flashes, greeting him with the quiet joy of their presence, their movements stitching life into the stillness. Mukara had told him, in a voice soft with reverence, that the lake possessed a gentle soul. That she listened. That she bore witness to the grief and wariness of those who came to her, and in return offered calm, a sanctuary where burdens might loosen their grip.
Now Mukara was gone, and the lake, once vast in shared wonder, seemed smaller without another to share it with. It was as if memory itself had drawn its border inwards. Sitting there alone, Gigantrex found himself wondering if the lake remembered him at all. If she welcomed him still, despite the long stretch of time between their meetings. He wondered, too, whether she mourned his presence. Whether the waters felt the ache of days when his footsteps failed to mark her shore.
The thought carried him home.
To the skies of Machina planet.
No matter how far he traveled, no matter how heavy the years grew upon his frame, the fire his heart turned unerringly toward that place. He could still remember the days when he first took to the skies alone, a solitary pilot with nothing but resolve and a ship that barely held itself together. He flexed his hands now, the gesture unconscious, as memories rose unbidden. How the cold had once crept into his metal limbs, settling deep within his joints. Ice would bloom at his fingertips, crystalline and unforgiving, biting through alloy and will alike.
There were the sounds, too. The uneven growl of the engine in his old ship, a quaint thing by modern standards, temperamental and eternally in need of repair. It demanded his attention with relentless urgency. Most of the scars that marked his body were not born of heroic feats, but of those early, desperate repairs performed under pressure; hands trembling, systems failing, time slipping away. The ship itself had been a cruel inheritance from his mentor, Ferry Flight, cheap, outdated, and perpetually on the brink of collapse. A horrible gift, perhaps, but a deliberate one.
He understood now what he could not then. Ferry Flight never intended to give him comfort. Instead, she had given him a lesson that could not be taught gently. If he truly wished to claim the sky, he would first have learn to survive within it, using only what he had, no matter how insufficient it seemed. Mastery began in patience, in countless hours spent coaxing life from failing parts and trusting his own hands and the machine beneath him.
Once he finally coaxed the Gioia into working order, he flew her constantly, taking on quick delivery jobs that demanded speed and precision. She faltered often, but never betrayed him completely. Time after time, she carried him home. For all her flaws, she served him faithfully, and over the years, his frustration softened into affection. He loved that ship, in spite of her shortcomings. She had taught him who he could become.
When the day came to retire the Gioia, it was not without ceremony in Gigantrex's heart. Replacing her was no longer a distant inevitability but an imminent decision, one that pressed upon him with quiet insistence. The thought of it filled him with an unexpected distress. How could he abandon his Gioia? It had been his shelter against the cold void, the vessel that carried him around the living breadth of his home planet.
With the earnings scraped together from years of labor, he purchased a small garage to house his old friend. Nothing available on the market appeared to his sensibilities. As time wore on, the reserves he had carefully set aside began to thin, and he found himself unwilling to call in favors from his mentor, whose lessons had already cost him enough. In the end, he settled for a modern model of the era, an unremarkable craft that favored modest comforts and small indulgences over the costly refinements demanded by its higher-end counterparts.
A sad thing, all in all.