I think the most painful thing is that Dunstan really did love Docult. Like truly. But his curiosity overwhelmed it. He doesn't catch the irony that so many of his creations upheave the world in the name of love, but he doesn't ever even look back after how he hurt Docult. He does feel guilty, grief, even. But it pales in comparison to his curiosity, to the need he has for that curiosity to be satiated. He knows where he sends Shear next will hurt Drill as a result. And he may give a little sigh and a brief thought to it, but he will do it anyways.
And therein lies his apathy. He knows about it. There is no amount of learning about it, there is no moment of realization that would make him turn back on his ways. He knows.
Literally fucking ANYONE: “True love”, you heard them! You could not ask for a more noble cause than that!
Dunstan: True love is the greatest thing in the universe.
Dunstan: Except for a nice MLT. Mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich; when the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato’s ripe. They’re so perky, I love that.
Going off on the whole tangent of love being one of the strongest forces in the universe, Dunstan cannot do what they do.
He is practically a god in every way, the birth of his creation having literally ripped apart realities and given life to new ones. They becomes monsters and deities and gods in the name of something they never should have been able to do, and yet they do.
But…he can’t. He loved Docult once, just as he had loved Makoto’s mother. Loved more than anything, he really did. But they were only human, and death is an inevitability amongst all living things. He’s already tossed aside concepts of aging and decay, he’s already been alive for literal centuries now.
It’s so fascinating to him, watching how his ultimate evil, practically perfect in every sinister way possible, become a horrific eldritch god that fiercely guarded a timeline. Not for food nor for entertainment, but to protect and keep something so precious to him safe. He knows that Vice cares about the girl but doesn’t understand that he loves her; so much that he’d risk undoing himself in order to keep doing so. He’s not even the first. Time and again Dunstan bears witness to such anomalies, watches as his Douji accomplish things he never thought them possible of.
Dunstan can make and remake realities as he wishes, manipulate them to reorder certain traits and habits and people. Menial, trivial things, things that matter little the in grand scheme of it all. What does he care for the little man when there’s something far more grander just ahead?
But he cannot manipulate them like the Douji can. He cannot remake an entire timeline for the sake of a loved one because he can’t even fathom the idea of desiring to do so. The entire pursuit of ever expanding and ever exchanging knowledge has made it next to impossible to even imagine such a thing. What is a mortal’s life in comparison to the secrets of the universe, to the knowledge of what lies beyond the boundaries of what the average man could understand?
He doesn’t entirely recognize that, in his constant pursuit to learn more about humanity and the things that linger beyond it, he’s lost the one thing that made him human to begin with.
The rippling effects that shatter the darkened sky begin to disappear as a Douji is ripped through a portal, and with it goes the only remaining light. Dunstan only regards it momentarily, doesn’t bother to ponder on which one it was. All he knows is which ones it isn’t, and the remains of one of them lay at his feet. The body of the crimson Douji lies scattered, ripped asunder by the one driven to madness. Empty green eyes stare into the nothingness that encroached this world, fragments of his soul sphere strewn about. The blood on his gauntlet is not his own, but it was his own undoing nonetheless.
Milieu is doing his damndest to keep what he can of this reality together for now, until he finishes what he needs to do. Stars don’t shine on this night, plucked out of the sky one by one as this reality begins to crumble. Dunstan cannot stay for long, and the perpetrators of this disaster have already long gone. All that remains in their wake is the beast they’ve unleashed, one of his own making. The Douji were capable of many things, but never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined this.
Still he walks on, taking note of those that surround the once ultimate good. Many of the Virtues suffer the same fates as well as a few Sins, flesh and plate and organs and wires strewn about in a horrific display, as if mimicking the once-natural world about them. He won’t need to go far. He knows this because he’s seen it, knows that the beast will return to where it had begun, the moment that gave birth to such a monster it became capable of eviscerating realities.
He finds the two of them in a pit, in the fractured remains of a hollowed out building destroyed by the ICON form. The mangled Douji, appearing neither human nor machine but some mangled monstrosity in between. The body of the young girl curled safely within his grasp, gaping hole in her chest and blood streaming down fractured gauntlets. The flickering of a shattered soul sphere still residing within his chest, like the flame of a poorly lit candle ready to go out at the slightest breeze.
It’s a sight he’s seen before, back in time when he had first introduced his own creation into this world. It had been Vice who planted the seed within the Good Douji’s mind then. He didn’t need to wonder who did it now.
Ultimo may have struck her, but it was Vice that had been her downfall. The wound had been severe, but Pardonner’s Noh might have been able to save her. Arrogance and anger was his own undoing, the same kindling that fed the inferno of his sorrow and self-hatred. Now all that remains is the empty husk of a Douji who was left waiting for the end.
Flickers of that same rage are alight in his eyes, the old man feeling the hair on the back of his neck stand as he nears. It’s nothing but the empty threat of a dying beast who would drag everything down with it. It does not match the echoing roar of the world around them at the sky shatters, nothingness taking them all.
***
It takes a moment for the emptiness to take them as well. He cannot save this reality. But he can give them one last reprieve.
Dunstan merely watches, two forms encroached together underneath a gold and emerald shroud. Gone is death and destruction. Where once had been blood and machine and viscera were nothing more than two children, cradled in the arms of each other. Even in death he will not let her go.
Kia and Vice’s eyes open, staring at him. There’s a pensive sort of peace within the pools of hazel and gold, even if it appears lost within the sadness. We didn’t deserve this. Vice’s voice reverberates in an echoing tone, though his mouth does not move. None of us did.
Dunstan knows of what he speaks. The final destruction of their reality allows them the briefest glimpses into the ones that came before it. A thousand deaths and a thousands sorrows of the thousands of timelines.
Why do they do it? is the voice that follows. It sounds like Kia’s, but the tones that trail after indicate otherwise. It sounds like Mizho. Like Fussa. Like Kei. Like the Sins and the Virtues, the Masters and those that associated with them.
“I do not know,” is his honest answer.
Can you stop them?
“I will.”
That too is an honest answer, and one that satisfies an unresting soul. With quiet resignation their eyes close, curling close to one another as they fade into the darkness.
When Dunstan next blinks he’ll be back in Tokyo. It’ll be in the middle of the day, the sun shining high in the sky as the denizens of the world go about their day. Those three will already be hard at work on this new timeline, furthering their journey to an unknown end, for an unknown purpose. But he has long since known who they were. Unruly children often did things against the wishes of their elders. It was only appropriate they should be punished for them.
