August 14th, 19:27. Dusk slid down like a dark curtain.

City lights popped on one by one, little stars strung along concrete rivers. Post–rush hour streets still breathed, a few pedestrians drifting like fallen leaves.

Downtown, a building bloomed into an explosion. A flower of fire, ugly and bright.

Everyone who heard it tilted their heads in the same ripple, like reeds in wind.

They saw the city’s landmark, the Brother Towers—the taller, the Older Brother—coughing a black dragon of smoke. Once they were sure the blast wouldn’t wash over them, their eyes settled back like pebbles dropping into a pond.

Ten kilometers away, at an apartment entrance, an old granny tossed a garbage bag like a puff of cloud into a bin. She smiled at the girl beside her, creases like river channels. “These old arms are useless now. Thank you, little miss.”

The girl in a white lab coat had her hair tied into a sloppy low ponytail, eyelids heavy like rain-soaked awnings. She answered as if tossing a pebble into still water. “It’s fine. It’s what you do.”

She turned and drifted toward the street, a white petal on wind.

“Right, you just moved in, didn’t you? Settling in okay? What’s your name? Do you live alone? Living alone, is that safe? This city isn’t peaceful…”

“Yeah. Just moved in a few days ago.”

She counted on her fingers like stepping on stones. “Five nights. My surname’s Ye. Yekase. As for safety, I don’t go out much. Don’t worry.”

The granny wanted to fuss on, but Yekase was already a receding silhouette. Under the lab coat hem, her legs wore baggy denim, cuffs rolled like lazy waves. On her feet, a pair of plastic slippers, blunt as pebbles.

“What a pretty girl,” the granny muttered as she went inside, “if only she’d bother to tidy herself up.” Her words drifted like smoke, unheard.

Yekase didn’t hear a thing. Her goal was a nail on a map: right turn at the next corner, five meters.

A 24-hour community convenience store, a lone lighthouse in the maze.

Thunk.

A six-pack of beer hit the counter like a small meteor.

“Yekase, I’m just saying—if your dad keeps drinking like this, his body’s going to crash,” the cashier said, eyebrows knotted like rope as he scanned the barcode. “Talk to him.”

“That shelf’s got the lowest ABV… I mean, uh, I’ll figure something…”

The air thickened like old syrup.

A lie about a drunk father had run to the end of its thread. Her chest tightened first, then thought came. A new backstory would patch it, but more lies breed more leaks. She weighed them like stones in a palm, and then—

“Nobody move!”

…Uh.

She looked toward the door. A man in black sunglasses and a knit cap swung a machete like a cold crescent moon.

A convenience-store robber. Common weeds in this city’s cracks. Their habitat had shrunk these years, squeezed by harder predators.

By hazard level… he was at best a two. Not even a superpower case. The kind of dirty job a freshly registered group would take.

Sinister Organizations had spent decades growing pillars and fences, with strict ranks and turf. What a group could do, what it couldn’t—Shadow Curtain International, a monopoly-level behemoth, wrote the rules. Cross the line, get eaten in the dark.

Meanwhile, old-movie superheroes fought like scattered sparks. No team big enough to blaze. Shadow Curtain International kept their heads underwater, so they could only punch crime in pockets, barely holding little circles of calm.

Beyond that, in countless alleys across the wide land, cities like Twin Towers City lived under a forest of claws: Sinister Organizations, alien visitors, monsters and ghosts. A fragile yet stubborn balance, like a cracked bowl that still holds water.

It sounded scary, sure, but for ordinary folks it meant the occasional mugging. Like now. Ordinary folks wouldn’t be anywhere near the tower that just blew up, right?

“Nobody move! Cashier, empty the register!”

While Yekase sighed at fate’s bad humor, the masked man pinned his demand to the air. The cashier, a veteran of too many nights, didn’t bite. His face stayed flat as a pond.

“Are you deaf?! The money!”

Other customers kept their heads down, acting like stones. His shouting washed over them and broke like surf. The scene made pity feel like a draft.

“I—I’ll take a hostage!”

He was frantic now, breath like a broken bellows.

He grabbed the closest body—Yekase—by the shoulder and yanked her in. The world tilted.

Hey?!

Cold light kissed her throat. The blade lay there like a strip of winter.

You’re actually serious?

Her dead-still heart finally rippled. Standard Sinister Organizations used hostages for leverage; dead hostages kill leverage, so blades stayed theatrical. But this man felt… wrong.

She lifted her gaze, slow as a tide, to the face ten centimeters above.

Stubble like steel wool. Nostrils flaring, breath snagged like a snared animal. Behind the sunglasses, red-veined eyes burned like overdrawn coals.

…

Panic bloomed like a cut flower in her chest.

She realized she had it wrong from the start.

He wasn’t muscle from a small crew.

He was just a man driven to a cliff’s edge.

“Help…”

The others in the store still hadn’t caught the shape of this truth. They wore their indifference like raincoats, even the cashier who’d worried about Yekase a minute ago.

“Boxed tiramisu. That’s twenty.”

The checkout line shuffled forward again, ants following a trail.

“So I’m invisible, huh?! All of you, you’re all the same! That damned boss, that slick accountant… If I don’t get paid, my daughter’s getting kicked out of the hospital! Hey! Believe I’ll really kill her?!”

He meant it.

Yekase felt the edge scrape her skin, a winter leaf across silk.

Just an occasional mugging—so why catch the one man who’d thrown away tomorrow?

She bit her lip. Her hand slid into her lab coat, slow as a shadow. At this point, that thing…

“I’ll take her place as the hostage!”

Everything froze, then eyes drifted toward center like iron to a magnet.

A short-haired girl in a school uniform, backpack snug, lifted a box of tiramisu like a tiny banner and stepped forward.

Yekase blinked, lost for a beat. What’s the difference if you swap hostages? Will a noble sacrifice make everyone grow a conscience and open their wallets? He hadn’t even said how much he needed! Hospital fees—emptying every pocket here wouldn’t cover it!

The masked man looked thrown, too. He hesitated, gears grinding. But a blade lends its own confidence, and he nodded.

The girl crept closer, courage trembling like a candle.

He yanked her in and shoved Yekase away.

Yekase didn’t waste that heartbeat. In the blind angle where eyes don’t go, she slipped a small thing into the girl’s pants pocket.

No one noticed that pebble dropped in the stream.

Except the girl, whose fingertips found the ripple.

She shot Yekase a startled glance, but their eyes didn’t meet. From this angle, hunched at the counter, Yekase looked like a frail reed in a storm.

“Don’t think I went soft! If I don’t get the cash today, someone dies in this store!”

His blade drew circles in the air, a cold comet brushing her hair.

Trust her.

There was nothing else left to grab.

The girl slid a hand into her pocket. Her fingertips touched the foreign thing.

Hard and cold, like a winter pebble.

Then, as if answering her thought, a stab of pain pricked her finger without warning. Heat followed, quick as a match.

“Ow—what?!”

“Flashblade Activation. Shout it!” Yekase spun and tackled his knife hand, arms clamping like a trap.

“You?!”

The girl fished out the thing. A finger-sized charm shaped like a blade—its black body now veined with glowing red lines, lit by the blood on her fingertip.

“It’s hot—so hot—uh, me, shout?”

“Quit stalling. Shout!”

“Flashblade Activation!”

Clang—

A clear sword-cry rang like glass.

Fire roared up in the cramped store, a red tide. With heat licking their faces, customers finally cracked. Panic scattered them like birds—some collapsed, some dove behind shelves, some bolted for the door.

The man hadn’t processed any of it. Flame licked him; he yelped, releasing the girl and stumbling back two steps.

“Sky Striker ACE! Code-01!”

“KAGARI!”

A suspect audio stinger blared, then the fire peeled away like a cape.

The girl’s silhouette… shifted.

Armor wrapped her head to toe, a red like live coal, metal like molten sunrise. In her hand, a black longsword etched with the same crimson lines—the charm, grown to a hungry blade.

The suit screamed near-future. A single one-way curved glass visor masked her face, and four folded auxiliary claws hugged her waist like sleeping scorpions.

Steam hissed from her joints. She lifted her eyes beneath the visor, slow as a dawn.

“Uh… what? What is this? What happened to me?”

“So it really only works for someone born a hero…” Yekase muttered, voice small as dust, trying to melt into the crowd’s chaos. Villain and hero were on stage now; her role was to vanish between curtains…

“Doctor!”

“Uh?!”

The visor was opaque, but Yekase could feel the girl’s eyes shining like stars. “You’re the Doctor, right? You have to be! I saw it on Sunday morning TV. Doctors wear white coats and build transformation gear for heroes—just like you!”

Sunday morning…

That’s a kids’ tokusatsu block!

“You’re mistaken! I just, uh, found that thing on the street. Nothing to do with me! I’m gonna head out…”

She shook her head fast enough to make air hiss, forgot the beer, and aimed for the exit like a fleeing sparrow.

“What’s it called?”

“Flashblade System 2.0.”

…

“Uh.”