By late afternoon she’d made a month’s rent, and Yekase felt light as a kite on a spring wind. She even eyed the night market, picturing charcoal smoke unfurling like alleyway dragons. She went home, shed one outfit like a cicada shell, and reached for the door.

Her phone chirped, a startled sparrow in the still air.

She didn’t need to look; the caller’s shadow rose like thunderheads. This number existed only to join the mobile net, a ghost line that never rang. Only one person could punch through.

“Hello?” Her voice stayed flat as still water.

“Doctor, Doctor! It’s bad!” The panic boiled like a kettle.

Yekase held the phone a foot away, as if it spat steam. “Wh—what happened… don’t rush it. Slow down.” Her heart pinched like a cold wire.

Was it the Flashblade System? Stolen? And she’d just made her switch to names yesterday—why “Doctor” again? The old title slid smooth as habit. Fine. Let it slide like rain off tiles.

“There’s a bad guy on the street attacking people!”

“Uh… then run?” The word popped like a thrown pebble.

“If we wait for police and heroes, it’ll be too late! I want to beat him here…!”

“Calm down. Can you even fight? Hey—”

Beep—beep.

Hung up.

So you called just to drop a bomb and vanish, like a firecracker in fog?!

She stood at the entryway, frozen like a scarecrow. Then she sighed long, mist on a winter pane, opened the bottom shelf of the shoe cabinet, pulled another key, and bolted out the door like a gust.

At the rental’s shared parking bay, she slapped the key onto the dash of her grocery-run e-scooter. The motion was a seal on still water.

[Credentials recognized. Welcome aboard, my lord!]

The unremarkable scooter growled with gearwork, panels folding like blooming steel petals. In a breath, it stood there as a red‑and‑black custom motorcycle, a wolf in new paint.

She plucked the key from the dash and slid it into the old slot, a ritual like lighting incense. The engine began to resonate, two rows of pipes coughed black smoke, and the seat popped open as a wild‑shaped helmet rose like a moon from a hatch.

“Long time no see, Stalker.”

She set the helmet on like a second skull and swung a leg—

—and failed. She hung there like a crane on one leg, neither up nor down.

Was it her whole body scaled down like a doll, or just a high kick that stopped at her waist like a stalled pendulum? Either way, she froze in that ridiculous pose, heat prickling like summer grit.

Had she really never adjusted the seat height?

She thought for a heartbeat. No. She hadn’t. The truth dropped like a pebble in a well.

She ran upstairs, fetched a small stool like a stepping stone, and finally climbed onto the once‑idle mod bike.

B‑150 Stalker. As the name promised, the whole frame carried optical camouflage, scattering particles that could melt rider and machine into the night like ink in water.

But it could cause pileups at intersections like phantom traps, so for safety and decency she rarely cloaked. Back before retirement, she’d loop the ring road with a helmet on, carving wind to salve the pain of 9‑9‑6. She’d only flicker invisible when traffic cops appeared like stormclouds.

Not tonight. Even with a helmet hiding her face, her petite frame would shout “underage” like a red flag. Any cop would wave her down like a fisherman with a net.

“Invisibility mode… good. Still alive.” Her breath steadied like a lantern’s flame.

Rider and bike vanished without a ripple, leaving only a tuned, low engine note hanging in the air like a bass line.

Twist the bars. Kick the throttle.

[Awning! Showing! Rolling! Going!]

Sadly, neither the noise nor the cheesy chant she’d installed for cool points could be cloaked. The song clung like gum.

Fix it later. Now, make time bend like bamboo.

It wasn’t far. Night thinned the traffic to scattered beads, and she reached the scene with nothing worse than a few sharp turns.

The speed after so long was a river loosening her chest. Too giddy to park, she coasted in invisible and slipped to a street corner, peeking at Ling Yi like a cat behind a screen.

“You ruined my fun… who are you?!” The voice came from a man floating midair, wrapped head to toe in spiked armor, darkness pooled on him like tar.

Ling Yi had transformed. She stood shorter, but her presence rose like a blade drawn at dawn.

“I— I’m— uh— the—”

She was trying to come up with a hero name. She was actually brainstorming a codename in front of the enemy, like a student caught without homework!

“Heh. A nobody, then… You aren’t my target. Overreaching little thing, I’ll send you off on your way!”

The dark‑deep man raised both hands. Between cupped palms, a blood‑red energy sphere blinked alive like a newborn sun, swelling with every breath of charge.

“That’s—”

In the empty corner, Yekase’s eyes blew wide like cracked ice.

No one knew that energy better than her. No one.

It was the very feedstock for the Flashblade System she’d built—no, not the current wreck with only the Kagari form left, but the full‑bloom, single‑soldier war machine she’d once loved like a child.

She called it Flash Energy, lazy with names, a force from another dimension that burned like foxfire.

Had someone dug up the other armor keys she hid when she bolted? She’d packed them in black trash bags and buried them in the flowerbed by the Consortium’s door, hiding in plain sight like a hare in snow!

Those sets were wind “Gale,” water “Dew,” earth “Gauntlet,” and…

Dark “Zec.”

They’d built a weakened version off Zec, a power anyone could use without equipping the Sky Striker? Did the Consortium still have someone who could read the Flashblade System? Did they hire after she ran, like mushrooms after rain?!

“I’ve got it! No— I remember it!” Ling Yi snapped her right hand up—well, her right hand holding the blade—and split the fake Zec’s energy ball like a melon. She shouted, voice ringing like bronze.

“My codename is— Flashblade Red!”

…

……

“What’s with that name…” “A new sentai team…?” “Where’re the others…?” “She said it herself…?” “But that armor and that blade look legit…”

Whispers rippled through the crowd like wind through reeds.

Most people would think “Sky Striker Knight,” or “ZerOne,” or—if you go full otaku—“Sky Striker Princess.” You know, the usual festival masks.

“Flashblade Red… hah. You think you’re Super Sentai? And Red, going for team leader? Have you no shame? A dream should end before dawn—”

“It’s not a dream!” She cut him off like a snapping banner.

Ling Yi raised the Sky Striker blade toward fake Zec, but her gaze slid past the street, arrow‑straight to Yekase’s shadowed corner.

Crap. She forgot the Kagari visor packs thermal imaging; invisibility was a paper screen in the sun!

“Me and the Doctor—and probably four or five partners in the future! As long as we’re together— it’s not a dream!”

“Hee. Then survive me first.” The fake Zec grinned, teeth cold as ice. He charged again, this time serious; the swell of power and the speed of it spiked like a stormfront.

“Get down here!” Ling Yi yelled, hopping below him like a spark off flint, her blade slicing only air.

Get up there!

Yekase’s gut twisted like a wet towel. To hell with noise and cover. She linked to the suit’s earpiece and barked orders, words firing like arrows. “See those mechanical arms on your waist! Each one’s got a jet port. The thrust is enough to fly!”

[Doctor! Why didn’t you say so earlier!]

“You didn’t ask! And how was I to know you’d go straight into live combat on day two!”

[How do I start it?! Hurry, hurry, he’s almost done charging!]

“Push the arms outward! Like popping a folding umbrella!”

[Manual?! So crude!]

Ling Yi fumbled, grabbed the two arms on one side, and yanked. With two harsh clacks, the “decorative” limbs extended to their limit, glowed faint red, and spat flame like dragon tongues.

[Got it!]

She mirrored it on the other side. Flames bloomed in a cross.

Arms spread for balance, she wobbled skyward like a lantern on a string, finally matching fake Zec’s height.

“Ohh, I’m flying, I’m flying! Okay, I’m coming! Flashblade Red, on stage!”

Above the street, red and black slammed together, then parted like swallows, then struck again. A sci‑fi blade met raw energy, sparks and flares weaving like fireflies. They were evenly matched for the moment, a tide held in balance.

Yekase didn’t idle. Since Zec had been found and cracked, the other three form keys were likely gone too. Rather than stare at a fight she couldn’t tip, better to dive into the enemy hive and see what poison brewed.

Target—Unrecognized Consortium X’s base.

She swung the Stalker around and threaded into the dark like a needle.

[Doctor?]

“Focus on the fight. He’s not your equal… Not with some mass‑produced knockoff, whoever built it. He won’t beat my proudest work.” Her pride rang like tempered steel.

[Understood! But where are you going, really?]

“To settle accounts with the past.” The words fell dramatic as a stage line.

…Uh. That sounded weird even to her, a line that made people shiver like a draft. She’d lived nameless so long, yet these lines still slipped out. Was she catching Ling Yi’s idiot air like a cold?

[Then fair winds and good fortune in battle!] The blessing flew bright as a red ribbon.

Thank the heavens she is an idiot.

Yekase cut the comm, drew a long breath that felt like winter pine, and pushed faster. Half an hour later, as high‑rises thinned like trees at the edge of a forest, she reached that place.

The boss’s squeeze like a grinding millstone, the camaraderie of the bottom rung like shared bread, the pure joy of building gadgets like spring water—good and bad, all six years of it—lived in that place like pressed flowers.

Cheap rent had put it in Twin Towers City’s suburban High‑Tech Zone, Building K, 19th floor. It was the Unrecognized Consortium X’s hive.

It was past seven, maybe eight. From the street, the 19th floor still burned with light like a sleepless lighthouse.

Some poor souls were still on OT. She didn’t say who, but the night knew.

She kept the cloak up like a veil and pushed the Stalker toward the flowerbed below, the very patch where she’d buried the four remaining Flashblade System form keys.

…Gone.

The soil wore finger marks like scars.

She’d guessed this ending, but months of not daring to come fetch the plastic bags had let today bloom like a bitter seed.

“Finally willing to come back?”

—!

Yekase locked in place, a deer in a hunter’s gaze.

Run now. The Stalker carried an emergency teleport, a once‑a‑week thunderclap. She wasn’t caught yet.

But some feeling held her finger, soft as a hand on a sleeve.

“Bailu…”

She dropped the cloak, the night skin peeling away. She turned, drawing breath like a blade drawn slow.

The girl standing there with hands in pockets was Jiang Bailu.

Ponytail high like a horsewhip. Shirt and jeans under a white lab coat, same bloodline as Yekase’s style, sleeves rolled up in messy ridges like little waves.

Unrecognized Consortium X. Weapons Development Assistant.

Yekase’s apprentice.

“You… can break my code lock now?” The question tasted like iron.

“I grow too.” Jiang Bailu’s smile tilted like a crescent. “But you, Doctor, seem to have grown… in the opposite direction.”

“Why develop that mass‑produced unit?” The words fell heavy as stones.

“For the Consortium, of course.” Her answer was smooth as lacquer.

“…How did you know I’d come back?” The doubt fluttered like a moth.

Jiang Bailu’s face showed honest surprise, bright as a dropped pearl.

“You can really ask that?”

“…”

“Because I knew, when you saw how trashy my work was, you’d come back to scold me!” Her grin flashed like a knife in sunlight.

"I didn't come to lecture..." Her voice trailed off like smoke.

Yekase didn’t know how to face her apprentice, her heart fluttering like a moth in a jar.

Back when she was still a he, when Jiang Bailu joined, he dove into a giant transforming robot like a moth to flame. It was the one that later stomped the fields and got blown to scrap, like thunder over ripe grain. So he barely asked about that assistant, leaving her to range free like a young colt.

Jiang Bailu was only sent to R&D as a stopgap, yet she burned stubbornly like a lone star. She took Yekase’s discarded test rigs and cracked them open, reverse‑studied them, scribbling notes under a lamp small as a winter moon.

During that so‑called mentorship, Yekase only stole a few minutes to toy with the pieces she brought, like a cat with string. He pointed out a few flaws, chalk-thin on a slate. Beyond that, their words sank without ripples, and Jiang voiced no complaint, like stone under snow.

To put it harshly, after so long on the run, Yekase let that name gather dust on the shelf.

And now she stood before her, quiet as a pine in moonlight.

She’d waited alone in ink‑black night, and in a still‑water voice said she’d cracked Yekase’s proudest work. She’d even turned it toward mass production, like seeds cast to the wind.

If she’d flashed a triumphant smile and declared she’d surpassed her mentor, Yekase wouldn’t have blamed her, like sun breaking cloud. She’d earned it with hard work, calluses like rings on a tree. But like this—like rain swallowing fire.

“I’m sorry—” Jiang said, the words falling like ash.

“Since you’ve found the life you truly want, Doctor, I won’t disturb you, like wind passing reeds. I won’t expose you, either; let this meeting sink like a stone and leave no ripple. Next time we meet, it’ll be across the line—one as a member of the Sinister Organization, the other as a superhero’s ally. Then, farewell.”

She turned and walked into the building, the hallway swallowing her like a receding tide.

“Bailu!” she called, the cry cracking the night like a whip.

Her steps cut off like a snapped string.

“Do you have anything else to say?” Jiang asked, her tone cool as frost.

Silence fell, soft as snow on stone.

“What is that supposed to be! You left me out to dry like laundry, tossed me aside like a pebble, and now you call my name in that tone! And you still won’t say what you want, like rice stuck at the bottom of the pot!”

“Uh,” Yekase choked, the syllable a pebble skittering on tile.

Why did she blow up so suddenly, like summer thunder from a clear sky?

Yekase tucked her neck in fright, like a turtle into its shell.

She’d only felt that if she watched Jiang walk away, something would be lost forever, like a cut thread. But with her meager EQ, she couldn’t name it, groping through fog. So she just called a name and went mute, her words drying up like a well. And somehow Jiang picked it up herself, like catching a dropped stitch.

“Ah…” She breathed, the sound rising like a bubble.

Even this was the same as back then, a river bend looping to the same shore.

Then, as her resolve hardened like iron and she lifted her head to beg Jiang Bailu to run with her,

there was no one there anymore, only an empty pier in fog.