At the moment robots came howling in, Yekase ran into a different kind of crisis.

Ling Yi. Ling Ya. Pu Lu.

The three formed a ring around her, eyes like torches, all burning hot, waiting for Yekase to choose.

To anyone watching, the plastic round table had turned into a love-triangle warzone. It looked like a dating sim route split, the kind that forks a whole story. But the essence wasn’t that at all.

Ling Yi, of course, waited for Yekase’s support and orders, as steady as a lighthouse.

Ling Ya, sweet-talked yesterday, now blazed to fight shoulder to shoulder with Yekase, like a kid hero chasing fireworks.

As for Pu Lu, she clearly hated the idea of Yekase alone with Ling Yi; she wasn’t waiting for “who you pick,” she was pressing for “who you don’t.”

But there was never a real choice here.

“Uh… friends teaming up to hit the restroom, that’s normal… right?”

The stares hit like arrows. Ignore them.

Yekase wasn’t putting on Gale to dive into a fight; Ling Ya’s dream would stay a paper kite.

As for Pu Lu’s side—

“My conscience is clear!”

“It better be.”

The four split into three paths and plunged into the churning crowd like oars into whitewater.

Up above, the worker-collectors’ robot dropped to the open plaza of the water park, a steel bird landing hard.

By Yekase’s standards, it was a beautiful mech, ugly the way a scar is beautiful—crane, bulldozer, rebar, the bones of a worksite, welded together like a junkyard hymn, somehow holding its whole iron body. If she wasn’t mistaken, it ran on the most ordinary internal combustion engine, a smoky heart.

Like the Prismatic War Chariot, it radiated the builders’ heat.

Love? Nothing so soft.

Just anger, raw as forge-fire.

Maybe that’s why this mech looked more feral than the six-story Prismatic War Chariot, a wolf next to a show horse.

[Emerald Pool Water Park, bastard boss won’t pay our wages. Give back our blood and sweat! Give it back!]

For all its fangs, the mech didn’t swing at fleeing tourists; it only revved like thunder and looped the accusation, rooted to the plaza like a stubborn rock.

Ling Yi and Yekase, running against the tide, slowed at that sight, like boats hitting fog.

“Doctor…”

“You can’t strike, can you?”

Ling Yi bit her lip and nodded, a plum blossom in frost.

Yekase tugged her through gaps in the flow and ducked behind a naked concrete pillar, a small harbor.

“Yeah… Ling Yi, listen.”

Ling Yi braced for a push to act—but even Yekase, with her frayed morals, couldn’t swing at angry workers.

On unpaid wages and bosses grinding people down, her sympathy was iron and old.

“Bringing out a mech makes this an E-rank organization. On paper it’s an organizational dispute. If they lose to the park, they’ll be dismissed as losers. As long as casualties stay low, no punishment, but no pay either. If they win—”

“W-what happens?”

To protect them, do we have to beat them here? If so—

“They get everything they demanded. Then, if they dissolve on the spot and scrap their weapons, there’s no backlash.”

Ling Yi’s eyes widened, lanterns catching fire.

“In that case—”

“Exactly!”

Yekase smiled, a clean wind through a stuffy room.

She said it one word at a time:

“Go do what you believe is right.”

…

“…Yes!”

Ling Yi clenched the Flashblade Key, knuckles white as chalk.

“Flashblade Activation!!”

“Sky Striker ACE! Code-01!”

“KAGARI!”

Smoke hadn’t thinned, and she was already airborne, a spark up a draft.

“Wait, there’s one more thing I didn’t—”

Yekase’s hand froze in midair.

Forget it. It’s just a wage claim. She shouldn’t need it.

Ling Yi streaked to the mech and hovered, a red kite over iron.

“Dog of Emerald Pool, are you here to stop us?!”

A pilot finally spoke, a middle-aged voice like gravel.

“I’m Flashblade Red! I’m here to back you up!”

Ling Yi slid the Sky Striker back to her hip and circled the mech twice, drawing a figure-eight of trust.

“Flashblade Red? Saw you on TV! Good person!” another voice said, thick with a regional burr.

Multi-pilot? That sealed cockpit didn’t look roomy… seats ripped out, bodies jammed in, hands on levers, sharing breath?

The first pilot must’ve taken the second’s word. He didn’t fire. Big mech and small stood side by side, two statues in a square.

They stood… five long minutes.

The crowd thinned to nothing. Nothing else happened.

“…Looks like the park’s playing dead. What’s your move?”

“Dunno…”

“No one’s around. Want to tear down a few buildings?”

“You’re a good person. Don’t say that.”

“Then—”

“But we’re thugs in a mech! We built this park. What’s wrong with tearing our own house!”

The mech’s roar deepened, a furnace stoked. The crane-arm, serving as an arm, shot out and punched through the nearest wall like a nail through paper.

The park stayed silent, a turtle in its shell. If they let the workers wreck the place, then as Flashblade Red, a “hero,” Ling Yi couldn’t join in mindless destruction; she could only hover and watch, like rain that wouldn’t fall.

“I see…!”

Yekase found the stone in the river.

She’d mapped both victory paths, but forgot the park’s open, shameless play: act dead.

Debtors are kings, as the saying goes. Let the workers smash the water park to rubble. Later, at arbitration, the losses cancel the arrears like beads on an abacus.

It looks fair. It forces the workers to trade vented anger for unpaid wages, and their mech gets scrapped. It’s a lose-lose ledger written in soot.

And an open scheme is called open because it’s too brazen to crack.

So why don’t most clients pull this stunt?

Because it poisons their name.

Once exposed, no crew will work for you again—except Emerald Pool is different. It is the construction company. It only needs this one dirty haul.

“Holy hell, that’s shameless…”

Yekase stamped her foot, sparks in her chest, but had no water to throw.

What now? Tell the workers to retreat? Rationally, save strength—best move on the board. They’d never agree.

“Ling Yi! Talk them down. Keep this up, and they won’t see a single coin!”

[Eh?! I’m terrible with words. Doctor, you tell them—]

—?!

A shiver of dread ran through both voices and cut the thread.

Ling Yi glanced down and saw a silhouette, a blade of shadow crossing light.

[That’s…]

Yekase patched into the camera and saw her too—walking out of a building toward the mech, a storm in boots.

She sucked in a breath, cold as glass.

“That’s… why is she…?!”

Twisted armor, a torn mantle, a tachi at the hip—the lines of a familiar ghost.

Shing!

A cold flash carved the air.

She drew the tachi and leveled it at the workers’ mech, a line straight as judgment.

“This lady will be your opponent!”

Mira.

No—Heavenly Prison King.

[Who is that? Doctor, you know her?]

“She leads an organization. You can’t beat her. They can’t ei—”

“So you finally crawled out, Emerald Pool!”

“Open your eyes. This lady isn’t some Emerald Pool lackey!”

Mira stuck the blade into the tile. The tip sank ten centimeters, neat as a chisel.

She flung her arms wide and proclaimed, voice like a bell:

“Know my name!”

“Praise my bearing!”

“Witness my victory!”

Why stand on Emerald Pool’s side? Now it wasn’t just back pay on the line—now it was lives, hung like lanterns in the wind.

“Brand this thunderous name into your skulls!”

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

No need to look. You could feel the sky’s billboards flare to life with her title, hammers on an anvil.

With things spiraling, Yekase felt helpless for the first time, hands empty in a storm.

Mira finished the flourish, yanked the blade free. She didn’t sheath it or take a kendo guard. She swung a wide arc—

And planted it on her shoulder.

In one breath, the bland iron grew like a tide—longer, broader—until it became a twin-edged greatsword twice Mira’s height, a mountain strapped to a reed.

It rested on her single shoulder, weightless as a crow’s feather.

“I’m rather fond of this park. I won’t let you wreck it. Here—have a taste!”

She lifted her empty left hand and pointed at the mech’s head, a judge naming a sinner.

The blade rose.

Swung.

Fell.

A streak of black light split the air.

The rough, nameless mech didn’t even twitch before it was cleaved in two, then crashed like a felled tree.

“W—”

The pilots got one syllable out. Then shattered speakers drowned them in static like hail.

She hadn’t cut dead center; the cockpit was intact—had she spared them on purpose? No, not her. Mercy isn’t a coin she carries. She just didn’t bother to take them seriously.

[Doctor, a leader… what is she really…]

Watching Mira bisect a mech with one stroke, even Ling Yi felt fear creep like frost.

“…When the Heavenly Prison King started from nothing—few hands, thin funds…”

Yekase murmured, a confession under rain.

Shameful truth: she joined the Consortium not for strength or bright futures, but because the base was close to home, a short commute.

“She swallowed an entire organization, alone with one sword. Their old base? It’s our base now.”

Triple Calamity (dead at three) charged in without checking Unrecognized Consortium X’s history—didn’t know the small, shabby group they targeted had devoured others older than Triple Calamity’s whole life.

If Mira wished, the Consortium could reach the Twin Spires just by conquest. But she can’t herd people, and going respectable would cramp too many shadows. So she keeps it gloriously half-ruined.

“Retreat… She’s not someone you can handle.”

[…Doctor, you said it yourself.]

“…”

Her voice shook like a leaf.

But she still said it.

[Now, I’m going to do what I believe is right.]