I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong.

It's hard to look at this as anything other than the end of the world. For sure, Kat isn't up to meeting this moment with the calmness and grace you'd hope for in a savior. Cyanis is just full-on panic ranting about shellfish allergies and sensitivity training, and Actia isn't even [i]looking[/i] at the problem. She just keeps peering down out the window of the Space Elevator Castle to the world below and checking her (very tasteful and refined) watch. 

So no, the answer won't come from those three. And there's nobody else left to carry the torch. And even though it's slow (unhurried, more like), that giant claw is ripping through the doors on the Vault with the inevitability of the apocalypse. There's nothing clever to say about it. Which is why I know you're thinking there's no good reason to hope. It's why you're thinking that brave and beautiful sacrifice amounted to nothing in the end. Or maybe you think a miracle will happen one more time, but even that would make this whole prior sequence completely pointless.

And it's just not. Look a little closer and you'll see it. If it hadn't been for that brave, beautiful dragongirl, Adam would have succeeded. That monster would be free, and those foxes would be food, and that really would be the end of everything. See, heroes don't always go out with victory clutched in their beautiful, shining hands. Sometimes what they buy is a bit of time for a friend to take a deep breath. But other times? They open the door to an even brighter miracle.

And that's why this is not a waste. That's why I won't let you call any of it pointless. Because if she hadn't given this her everything, we would've been too late. That is...

"Avenger?!"

The word tumbles out of Kat's mouth without thought. Because that's exactly who she's looking at. No special new costume for space travel; she doesn't need anything like that. Her glowing composite armor and blade-wings were already space suit enough. A Valkyrie goes to war wherever you can find it, isn't that right? And despite several people's best efforts, she has worked very hard to hold onto that label. So that's how she arrives. Even now, still bleeding out of a single wound in her abdomen. Little droplets of the stuff float freely among the debris, but she carries her towering frame so effortlessly you'd be forgiven for thinking it was something else, like little flecks of magic just pouring off of her instead.

"You have done well, little fox. Thank you for so steadfastly refusing to call on me until the end. If I had needed to fight even a single extra battle, I might not have made it to this point at all."

"Wh-wh-wh-what the Ffffff--"

"CY!!!!"

"Well no, seriously! How?! What? You don't seriously expect us to believe you've been hiding here the whole time? What, is there a second elevator nobody knew about? Were you just hanging out in the back sipping cocktails while we did all the hard work?! What the f--"

"Calm your tits, little trickster."

"ExCUSE?"

"There's a simple explanation," that was Actia this time, "If you've been paying attention."

Even under these circumstances, Avenger can't acknowledge Actia as an ally. Or even someone vaguely friend shaped. The five-tail is the key that holds this spirit core together. And like I just got finished explaining, she's held onto the shape and the name and the titles and the grudges as if her life depended on every single one of them. And maybe it does. That's why she only scowls and gestures out the window.

"You took the elevator to reach this place, correct?"

Avenger's terrible chorus on unvoices echoes across even the near vacuum of upper orbit. Three foxes look out the window this time, and in the gleam they see the explanation just as clear as sunrise. Floating in space, gathered in rising spirals like birds in an updraft and glittering in the reflected light of nine shattered suns, they give their answer. A seemingly endless chain of shattered robot pieces, chunks of factory and stonework, and the scrap of what was once an orbital weapons satellite. In short, the sum total of all of their efforts just to reach this point. The battle always meant something. You can't call it pointless.

Avenger's face breaks into one of her incredible shark-toothed grins.

"I took the stairs."