Lewis was there before she hit the ground, catching her in an instant. He carefully set her down, checking her over with cold, calculating eyes. The dark haired man frowned as he tried to wake her up, but it was evident that she was far too drained. It was easy enough to portal them back home, where he carefully laid her in their bed.

The ex-assassin looked up, and took a breath. “Xeik. I need your help…” He sounded too unenthusiastic about the whole thing, but it got the point across and the Divine Mender walked into the room through a direct portal.

“”Let me guess,” Xeik said as he took one look at the situation. “A hyperactive version of you went off and Simone panicked.”

“Yes,” Lewis responded. “Fix her. Now.” Despite his disinterested voice, there was a deadly edge to the undertone of the statement.

Xeik went to work, doing the best temporary solution he knew how to do. Pump her full of raw mana…

Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Xeik commanded Lewis to take her hand, and used him as a conduit to filter the mana into her. After all, raw mana from a Champion of the Goddess could very well make the situation worse. At least with Lewis, it was mixed with their own source…

It didn’t take long for Simone to stabilize, but there was still one problem.

“I need to kill my other half,” Lewis said, turning his attention to Xeik.

“Funny thing,” Xeik replied with a half smirk. “That’s…more or less what you have to do. Well…less kill and more ‘absorb’. Basically, Angela and I worked out that your mana split itself into two halves, which cause the initial drain on Simone, so when they split you dre-”

“Shut up.”

“…You need his mana to become whole again,” Xeik said with a sigh. “No one likes the science behind it…”

“Where is he, then?”

“Well…about that…”

—

Simone had woken up, but her panic was quickly sated by Xeik explaining the situation. Tracking the other Lewis was surprisingly easy; Simone’s part of the resonance was cut, but the dark haired Lewis’ wasn’t. In fact, it was impossible to cut since they were the same person. With that information, the trio tracked the white haired Lewis to a rather large estate off the coast of Nisshoki. From what the dark haired Lewis said, it was one of the rival factions of a notorious drug syndicate that he had been keeping tabs on for their…organization work.

Of course, that was all out of the question now. Sure, Lewis had secretly decided that they needed to be eliminated, but he hadn’t quite decided how to go about it. The white haired Lewis had taken the idea and ran with it. A fun night to paint the town red with blood, so to speak.

“He’s in there,” the dark haired Lewis said. “And he knows we’re on the way. Impossible to prevent that. Idiot probably wasted a lot of energy, though, so he’s likely tired out…”

Simone woke up with a startle but she was easily calmed down with the black-haired Lewis and Xeik talking to her. “We have to get him back.”

Mone wasn’t mad at Lewis for hurting her. It was entirely possible that he didn’t realize he was hurting her. That was her hope anyways. She wasn’t entirely sure what this Lewis was thinking but his emotions overwhelmed her to the point of turning the valve halfway down on him and turning it all the way up on the one who wasn’t feeling anything. She was attempting to rebalance the drain on her own but she had just enough mana to remain awake.

“Simone, you can’t participate at all,” Xeik looked over at her. “Do not cut or try and reconnect the resonance.”

She pursed her lips and thought about it. Would Lewis… be hurt by that? He had no idea what was going on with her and she lingered back behind the two men while staring at the white-haired Lewis. She looked tired but she was still trying to keep up with them.

When she tried to go beyond them to the other half of Lewis the black-haired one stopped her and stared at her. She gave a frown and looked towards the lively one. She had to reject the resonance attempts made on her. She had never done that before with Lewis and it was objectively breaking her heart to do so.

“Lewis, we need to go home…” Simone said with an exhausted tone.

The white haired Lewis could feel his other half approaching. He immediately had thoughts that the other half had come to stop him, the buzzkill that he was. Much to his surprise, though, Xeik and Simone were with him, which meant…

“Simone!” He smiled at her. His hands were covered in blood, but his smile was genuine. “I’m so happy to see you. I was starting to get tired…and there’s so much to [i[do here! You, me, and even killjoy over there can have hours of fun with these people…” He smirked and wiped the blood off of his hands onto his shirt. “It can be a bonding experience…” He looked to Simone, and tried to force a connection.

Only, it never came.

He tried a few more times, and each time his smile faded a little more. “Simone…” He started to look hurt. That pain slowly evolved, and with each attempt, he started to panic. “Simone…why won’t you…” He looked at Xeik, and then to the other Lewis. “No…no no….you said you loved us both equally…you said,…” His voice cracked as he pleaded with her.

The dark haired Lewis stepped forward. “This is for the best.”

“No…I don’t think so,” the silver haired Lewis responded. “I can just…I can take it. I can take it from you…”

The dark haired Lewis started to walk towards the silver haired one. “You’re exhausted. You spent all of your energy. What makes you think an imperfect, half of a soul can do anything here…”

The light haired Lewis started to shake. “No…you turned her against me. You and that bastard over there…you just want to kill my mood. You want me to-”

“We want what’s best for her,” Lewis said, his eyes shimmering blue for a moment. “We always have…right?”

“What’s…what’s best…” The other Lewis looked at Simone, who was in tears. Rejecting him so had hurt her… “What…what’s best…”

The dark haired Lewis produced the blood dagger, the symbolic bond between a whole Lewis and Simone. “Apart we are nothing but a drain…but together…”

“But together we…”

Lewis stabbed his other half, and a blinding light exploded. At once, Simone could feel a full force resonance appear as mana flooded her body.

“I swear to the gods,” Lewis’ voice rang out as the light faded. “That Angela needs to stop messing with that damned mushroom…”

Simone watched on and couldn’t say much as the Lewis’s fought for her. She would have never thought the emotionless one would have ever defended her but he was doing what was best for her. It broke her heart to hear even a part of Lewis doubting her love for him but they were right this was for the best. If they kept this going any longer it was going to have drastically bad effects on her body. Her body was artificial in comparison to Lewis’s revived one.

There was a sense of relief as she sighed and looked onward to her Lewis, “I feel a lot better…”

Angela appeared and looked between them as she took her glasses off. “The experiment was a raging success. I didn’t expect Lewis to split and drain her though. That was an expected result of the Taura extract. Even diluted it did something, however, it is because of the Taura that Simone’s cultivation of mana is better than it was before now that Lewis is whole. Lewis cultivated mana in two bodies and those two bodies gave the excess back to Simone.”

“You were trying to get Lewis to overproduce mana…”

“Yes, since your body is incapable of fast production and his is… Well, it would make sense that his excess would go into your body. We won’t be doing this experiment again though because it was clearly dangerous. We are on the right path to getting you better though.” Angela held a smile. “And you’ll be able to play with the children full force again here soon.”

Simone let a sigh of relief escape her lips and she smiled up at Lewis, “You reminded me a lot of Xeik… He must have rubbed off on you somewhere.” She teased her husband and put her hand to his face. “You would go so far as to kill yourself for me… Makes me feel very loved.”