Not having anymore hesitation to fight, Hibiki reminds Yamato of their promise of defeating him and having an audience with Polaris. As their battle begins, Yamato notes that Hibiki is driven by his anger towards him and his warped reasoning behind sacrificing the lives of everyone. Although, Hibiki defends by stating that as a human, he cannot allow such injustice to prevail, causing Yamato to question his own humanity. As Hibiki defends an attack using Shakko's power, Yamato acknowledges him as an equal and reveals that their current situation had all been part of a grand scheme put into motion by Polaris since the moment of their births. However since Polaris itself is flawed by its own nature, it had left it up to humanity to decide amongst themselves who should survive until the end, whilst citing the anomaly of Alcor's nature as proof of this. This truth shocks Hibiki, but Yamato simply brushes it off as semantics in his goal to reshape the world into a meritocracy.