"Ye Lan, since you're not here to help Angela, you must be here to help us, right?" Malkuth was surprisingly confident. With Ye Lan's help, even if Angela had Binah on her side, their faction could easily win.
However, she seemed to have completely forgotten one thing: Ye Lan had arrived on the elevator with Binah.
Ye Lan shrugged and said to her, "Regrettably, I must also refuse your request, Malkuku."
"What did you call me, Malkuku..." His nickname threw her off for a second, but Malkuth eventually cleared her head and asked the question on everyone's mind. "No, you don't intend to help Angela, and you don't intend to help us. What exactly are you here for?"
"I'm here to take pictures."
Ye Lan paused with a mischievous grin. When no one took the bait, he continued, "Alright, no more jokes. You all seem to have forgotten something. As the facility's power wanes, the Abnormalities in the containment units could escape at any moment."
In reality, Ye Lan was just spouting nonsense. Ayin's plan would never have such a major flaw. The power outage was a fabrication; the real key to opening the containment units was the super-user authority in Angela's hands. By saying this, he hoped to reduce the intensity of their infighting.
But to Malkuth, Ye Lan's explanation was complete bullshit. In fact, it infuriated her. "Is this really the time to be talking about that?! Angela is about to steal the Seed of Light!"
"Oh."
Ye Lan nodded and then glanced over at Angela. With Binah's support, she showed no change on the surface, but Ye Lan could easily see that she was so moved she was on the verge of tears.
As he expected, the moment he looked at Angela, she keenly noticed his gaze and asked the question he anticipated: "Hmph. You don't intend to help me, nor do you intend to help them? Ye Lan, what on earth are you thinking?"
Ye Lan took the instant photos from his camera and began distributing the picture of Angela's smile to both opposing sides.
After everyone present, except for Angela herself, had received a photo, he walked over to her and said, "What am I thinking... Perhaps I just wanted to capture this moment of you, right now."
Before Angela could react, he took two steps back and addressed the room. "Well then, I won't disturb your fight for the Seed of Light any longer. I'm off to keep the Abnormalities company, now that they're free from their long work of generating power."
With that, Ye Lan nonchalantly left the office and walked into the elevator bay alone.
"Alright, the troublemaker is gone. Now, I need you all to go into slumber immediately."
Even the current Angela almost lost her composure because of Ye Lan's actions, to say nothing of the other Sephiroth. The youngest, Tiphereth, was still holding Angela's photo, completely frozen, her will to fight utterly gone.
It was only when Angela brought up the topic of slumber again that the Sephiroth snapped out of their bewildered, tense state and prepared for a final battle.
However, neither Angela nor the Sephiroth felt quite right about fighting now. Only Binah, who was there purely for the entertainment, could still nonchalantly toss a few degraded "Keys"—a consequence of being a box-head—at Geburah.
The battle continued for three days in an indescribably bizarre atmosphere. During these three days, Ye Lan, true to his word, did not participate in their fight at all.
But... no one had anticipated one thing. Ye Lan had gathered every single Abnormality in the facility, and they were all sitting around the battlefield like spectators at the Roman Colosseum, watching them fight.
"Tch. I feel like a clown right now, putting on a slapstick show for the audience," Geburah clicked her tongue, swatting away a few more of Binah's degraded keys with her prototype E.G.O. Their so-called battle had been going on for a full day. But surrounded by over a hundred Abnormalities, none of them dared to fight at full strength.
Ye Lan produced a bag of sunflower seeds from somewhere, cracking them open as he shouted down to Malkuth and the others, "Hey, put some effort into it! Don't worry, they're all pretty stable for now. It's not like they'll go berserk and rush you while you're fighting."
A unified wave of anger rose from the employees, the Sephiroth, and Angela below. However, for the sake of the Seed of Light, neither side dared to attack Ye Lan first.
"Tch, I can't take this anymore. Hey, Angela, let's make a deal," Malkuth was the first to propose a truce, a departure from the canon of the game. But with Ye Lan and the Abnormalities watching over them, and with him subtly protecting Angela, their chances of fully releasing the Seed of Light were almost zero.
Under these circumstances, it made more sense to make a deal with Angela first and join forces to take care of that bastard Ye Lan.
"Fine. I have only one demand. I just want to live. I don't care if you all are determined to die; I just want to live my own life. I want to see this City, to understand the world I live in. Once the full Light is retrieved... you can judge me as you please. Of course, I won't just sit back and let it happen."
Angela spoke calmly. Although she also wanted to give Ye Lan—her fellow traveler through countless loops—a good beating, what she wanted more right now was the Seed of Light.
"Hey, hey, you're not really going to team up to beat me up over this, are you?"
Malkuth snorted indignantly and said to Ye Lan, "Hmph. Even if we don't cooperate, you'd just hand the Seed of Light over to Angela when the time is right, wouldn't you?"
This made Ye Lan even more amused. While he hadn't exactly hidden his intentions, he truly hadn't expected them to team up because of it.
"Well, our dear Malkuku isn't wrong. I do intend to give the Seed of Light to Angela. Now is not the time for it to bloom completely."
Ye Lan rubbed his face and jumped down from the spectator stand he had set up around the office.
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