“Hypnosis. The answer’s hypnosis, a switch flipped in a midnight room.”

It wasn’t the same as the sleep-pillow she made for Shen Shanshan—just a blanket of sleep. This was Flash Energy braided into sound, a shimmering current turned into notes.

Energy that resonates with feeling can echo back into the listener, the tide pushing the heart to sway. Flash Energy takes on a different frequency for each emotion; play that frequency, and the matching feeling blooms like a sudden flower.

But the trick has sharp edges.

Only four frequencies hit hard: joy, anger, sorrow, fear—four winds through one gate. And a single emotion works once per person, like a match that won’t relight.

Joy isn’t much of a debuff anyway.

So a person can only take three bites, three thorns in the same rose.

Duration wobbles, like a candle in a draft. The stubborn-hearted might not feel it at all.

For grunts we’ll never see again, one wave is enough, a dark tide and done.

Yekase scrolled down her MP3 playlist, little fishbones of tracks on a dim screen.

“To deal with them, let’s use this BGM,” she said, voice cool as steel under silk.

She tuned the walkie to Triple Calamity’s internal band, jammed the MP3 against it, and hit play, like pressing a blade to a lock.

The processed audio melted into the room’s hum, a fog folded into static, and seeped into every fighter’s headset like mist through reeds.

Then something shifted, a change like wind turning.

“Man… there’s nobody at all…”

“We’re stuck here late just so the boss can claim another sub-base?”

“I’m done. I’m going home!”

“Settle the overtime! Settle the overtime, now!”

With zero countermeasures against hypnosis, the fighters cracked fast. Guard stances fell like brittle branches; complaints spilled out like nails from a rusted box, and people drifted around the room, aimless as dust motes.

Hearing them, Yekase felt a pinch of pity, a shared exile’s chill running like rain along a tin roof. She’d planned to wait for them to cluster, then lob grenades—clean storm, quick night. Maybe she didn’t have the heart to go for the kill after all…

Hold up.

She remembered the traps she’d set for Jiang Bailu. Those were all drawn toward death, blades arranged like constellations with sharp names.

She could dodge the blame with “those were made in the Ika era”—yeah right. I’m cooked anyway—whatever.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

The explosions yanked her back like iron hooks, tossing her thoughts into a rolling sea.

Smoke boiled out; the room below frothed into chaos, furniture and bodies scattered like tiles after an overturned board.

Yekase turned. Shen Shanshan gave her a big thumbs-up, bright as a match in a cellar.

“Hits hard. That wraps it,” Shen said, voice dry as salt.

“Uh…”

“Why the blank stare? Don’t tell me you hypnotized yourself.”

“No…”

Yekase had a weird resistance to Flash Energy hypnosis—not some protagonist halo. She’d just listened to all the tracks back in testing, soaking in them like dye. Only Jiang Bailu knew how bad she got when an episode hit.

“…Forget it. Let’s move.”

When the smoke thinned, no one in the room could still fight; they lay scattered like fallen scarecrows.

Pity tugged like a frayed rope, but wages taken as fighters mean you brace for this—whether that thin pay’s worth it is whatever the heart decides.

Shen Shanshan sliced the vent fan casing, dropped through like a cat, and dusted off her clothes, ash flurrying like winter birds.

A fighter on the ground saw her, eyes widening like shutters, and reached up with a trembling hand.

“…Why… you…”

“She paid too much,” Shen said, a coin tossed into a dark well.

“Ugh…”

His arm fell, and he blacked out, going under like a stone.

Yekase slipped out of the vent behind her and scanned the underground room, gaze a lantern sweeping damp walls.

Same as before—a mid-point defense node, a sandbar in the river. The real enemy waited beyond the door.

“Need a break?” Shen asked, voice even.

“No drain,” Yekase said, breath steady as a line.

“Then forward,” Shen replied, feet set like stakes.

The trap array could stall ordinary fighters for a breath, but numbers fill pits like rain fills ditches. On the front against Corporate X they even had a Suishen; no idea how long the mass-production units would hold. Time was a wick burning down.

Shen shared what she knew of that Suishen: a machine gun specialist, firepower like a hailstorm, but tunnel-visioned on offense, letting the rest go hollow. Triple Calamity had planned for Shen—tool-rich, trick-wide—to support him.

Now she was a turncoat, and the machine-gun Suishen was alone, a lone tower in wind, likely unable to show true strength.

Let’s hope, Yekase thought, a brief wish flickering like a moth.

They reached the sealed gate and exchanged a look through their masks, mirror-dark panes.

“Your mask doesn’t even have eyeholes. How do you see?” Yekase asked, eyebrow a small shadow.

“Micro camera,” Shen said, calm as a pond.

“Is that necessary… camera and a voice changer…” Yekase muttered, like counting knives at dusk.

“Or Mechbreaker disappears from public sight for good. I’m not you—merc work, real name online, leaving yourself no road back,” Shen said, words like pebbles skipping.

“You assume my name’s real,” Shen added, mouth wry.

Yekase checked her gear, fingers quick as sparrows. She drew a long breath, felt her pity-sized stamina bar crawl full, then took out her dagger and reverse-gripped it, blade a slender moon. She slid it into the seam of the iron door, a needle finding skin.

“This blade got a name? You love naming toys,” Shen teased, voice half smoke.

“Nayuta,” Yekase said, simple as a stamp.

“Sounds grand,” Shen said, grin sideways.

“Haha,” Yekase replied, voice a soft clink.

Truth was, she’d just named it now. It had lived as a normal little knife, its gimmick meh, never once triggered. Saying that out loud would scuff the Dual Kings Arsenal brand; better to keep her silence like a locked drawer.

The blade bit down, clean as frost on glass, and even the heavy latch couldn’t hold; it split in two, neat as cut paper.

Yekase and Shen each raised a boot, and both door panels flew open with a thunder-crack, light spilling out like a flood.

Inside, bright and bare, two men sat facing each other.

Between them stood a square table, a xiangqi board laid with thinned pieces. From Yekase’s angle she couldn’t read the fight; the surviving pieces were few, endgame close like dusk.

“Check,” one said, voice cool as slate.

“I lose,” the other replied, tone like a drop of ink.

Both men looked toward the doorway, eyes flicking like knives.

“Good timing,” the younger-faced one on the left said, folding his hands and standing, the calm before a storm.

He spoke, words dry as sand.

“Your two-faced blade doesn’t surprise me… Shen Shanshan.”

Shen shrugged it off, eyes sweeping the soon-to-be battlefield, empty as a hall at night. “Room’s pretty bare. No spare troops for an ambush?”

“We two are enough,” he said, confidence like a tight drum.

The man on the right, mid-thirties by the look, gathered the pieces and board, pushed the table aside, and stood, steps firm as columns.

“I am Triple Calamity’s First Suishen—Prismatic War Chariot, Ma Wei! Who goes there? Name yourselves!”

He aimed it at Yekase; Shen’s name, he already knew.

Yekase hadn’t expected to introduce herself while stealing a house. She couldn’t summon a decent alias, so she grudgingly gave the odd title a net-friend had slapped on her.

“Unaffiliated. Singing Wrecking Lady. Heard there were mechs here, came with this miss to lend a hand and take a look.”

“Enough chit-chat! You stand here, so you’ve chosen to be Triple Calamity’s enemy!” Ma Wei barked, voice ringing like a bell struck.

He slammed his fists together—clang, iron-bright.

Empty-looking hands, yet metal—he was a cyborg, flesh under steel sky.

“Interesting…” Yekase murmured, a spark catching dry bark.

Even through the voice changer, Shen heard her tone drop, a husky shade, like she flipped her devil switch and stepped into shadow.

Shen had heard of, even seen, people turn into someone else mid-fight. Looks like Yekase had a streak of that. Good—one less worry.

“…Moving,” Yekase said, breath a taut wire.

Black lightning crossed half the room in an instant, a crack through daylight, announcing the battle like a storm’s first drum.

Ma Wei raised both arms, blocking the opening strike with casual ease, stance a wall.

The slash had no flourish, no school—rough as practice with a stick, just a straight-down, honest chop.

Ma Wei started to speak, then felt the force vanish, a tide pulled back. The blade slid along his mechanical forearm under synthetic skin, drawing a straight line from wrist to elbow. She snapped away, retreating clean, and his counter cut nothing but air.

…A single drop of blood slid down his outer elbow, bright as a seed.

“So it ends there,” Yekase said, eyes narrow as blades.

Flesh and machine—the fault line.

“You made me bleed…” Ma Wei said, wiping the stain off with two fingers, face like granite.

He stopped testing and called his mech, voice a flare.

Countless small parts rose behind him like a flock of iron sparrows, snapping onto his body, rib by rib, plate by plate.

Attacking now would be smart, a knife into the chorus, but Yekase chose to watch the transformation, like staying for the sunrise of steel.

Bits grew to panels and hugged him whole; outer armor plates clicked into place, a classic powered suit knitting around him like a carapace.

“Prismatic War Chariot—Cavalry Mode!” he roared, color flashing yellow, frame thick as a brawler’s trunk.

Power type, all shoulders and torque—made her think of Gauntlet, the one she’d built, a cousin in iron.

“Same class as mine,” she said, mind a whetstone.

Weaknesses would rhyme. And she’d watched the donning order start to finish—she already knew where to cut, threads laid bare.

Show your assembly order, and you might as well explain your power right to my face.

Yekase lowered her body, a panther at the grass line.

Then she ran again, feet drum-quick, blade a thin moon.

“I ran with a knife.”