After hearing Yekase’s breakdown, Ling Yi felt as if she’d swallowed a steadying pill; her dodges ran smooth as water slipping around stones.

She turned and shouted at Mobile Warrior ZX.

“Thanks for the assist. Fall back! Keep this up and your frame’s toast! Don’t worry about me!”

“…Got it.”

His voice tasted bitter as iron. From the visible dents and smoke, his cockpit had to be howling with alarms. Retreat wasn’t choice, it was gravity.

He scattered a last wave of drone-missiles like chaff on the wind, then blasted away like a shooting star.

Mira didn’t bother to chase. In her eyes, swatting a big mech was less fun than cracking a suit of armor with her own hands.

Bored of empty swings, she willed the black greatsword to fold and nest, until it was a plain old tachi again, simple as a river stone.

“Mosquito season’s over for the cannon. I’ll give you a chance. Come down from the sky and face me. Entertain me, and maybe I spare you.”

“What if I refuse?” Ling Yi asked, breath tight as a drawn bowstring.

“Mmhmm…”

Mira slid the tachi into its sheath and dipped her shoulders like a stalking panther.

Yekase, hunting a vantage point, went cold from scalp to spine; every hair stood like needles in frost.

Ling Yi! Hear her out first!

“First Stance—”

The air tasted wrong. Ling Yi dropped as fast as a falcon stooping, boots kissing the earth.

“—‘There Is Light.’”

No draw. No flash. Only the sky blinked—night for a heartbeat, day the next—like a cloud crossing the sun.

…

She looked up. Every building around them wore a horizontal seam, top and bottom cleanly parted, as if a tide had sliced stone like tofu.

“—?!”

What… was that?

“Oh, you’re finally being good.”

Mira grinned, loosened her right hand from the hilt, and walked in without a guard, casual as a summer breeze.

Ling Yi felt the storm gathering. In theory, close combat meant switching back to Kagari. But Kagari was shredded, feathers torn; compared to the almost untouched Gale, which had more wind left? She couldn’t tell.

Switch to Kagari!

“Huh? But just now—”

Inactive armor auto-recovers durability!

That bit of sun broke the clouds. Awed again by the doctor’s tech, she whipped out the key and flipped to the power type.

She raised Sky Striker, steel like a shard of dawn, for Mira to see.

“Mm, mm. That’s more like it.”

Mira’s left hand twitched, and the tachi shot like a bullet, the pommel streaking for Ling Yi’s brow like a meteor.

Clang!

Ling Yi barely caught it on the blade, teeth rattling like pebbles in a jar.

Mira plucked the rebounding tachi out of the air like it was a falling leaf and, in the same breath, cut. Ling Yi held the same guard and blocked again, but the impact was a landslide; her feet carved two short furrows in the tiles.

“What’s wrong? Hit back. No counter, no fun.”

“I’m not… fighting to amuse you!”

“Oh? You’re not?”

“You are! Didn’t you say you’re here to protect this park you like? Look at what you’ve protected!”

“That was just talk.”

Mira shrugged, a cat knocking over a vase just to hear it break.

“Go out for a stroll, and if I don’t kill a few and wreck a few, something’s missing. So I wrecked.”

Unthinkable.

No—thinking like this is the sickness.

Ling Yi narrowed her world to Mira’s breathing and the knife-edge of her smile. The doctor only needed her to stall until the Beast King Squadron arrived. Yet if she ran now, then next time she met a foe like this, would her courage crumble like old ash?

There had to be a path. Even just one wound—

“Mind… Energy…!”

Hope gathered to a point. Only this remained.

They said you could forge it from nothing, if your will was iron. The same kind of power Mira wore like a storm.

You want to use Mind Energy?

“Yes! Doctor, tell me how to focus it!”

I can’t.

“…”

I told you. My Mind Energy affinity is so low I can’t squeeze out a drop.

He had said that. Of course the doctor clashed with the faith-driven super-type Infinite Power like oil with fire. Wait—Flash Energy is super-type too…

It should be like Flash Energy… but you’re really learning a new power mid-fight?

“It’s now—”

Mira’s blade came from a crooked angle, a serpent flicking from brush.

Ling Yi drove Sky Striker into the ground like a stake and dropped to one knee, bracing her whole body like a dam. The arm and leg near the blade went numb, thunder buzzing through bone.

Then another cut, and another—

Not just the armor. Her body felt like it was coming apart, plank by plank. She ground her teeth and snapped her head up.

Mira’s gaze fell like winter. Eyes without mercy. Even wrapped in manic heat, a hollow yawned underneath, a well without a bottom.

Eyes the doctor had never worn, and never would.

Unrecognized Consortium X.

Ling Yi knew the name. The Sinister Organization that once caged the doctor. This woman had carved those dark memories into him like ice into flesh.

“I’ll break my limit here and now!”

…

Fire.

Cyan-blue fire.

The weak Flash Energy coiling Sky Striker, a candle in wind, flared when that blue flame rose from nothing and snapped it awake. They twined and wrestled like twin dragons, neither yielding.

“Oh! Finally, a new trick.”

Mira sounded delighted, but her eyes were a dry lake. No ripple. No joy.

“Awakening Mind Energy at the knife’s edge—nice. So you’re my kind. That’s great.”

“I’m not… your kind!”

Ling Yi hewed down. Mira caught it like chopping reeds.

But that wasn’t Ling Yi’s aim. Sky Striker rode the tachi, then slipped off and stabbed for Mira’s throat, a swallow darting for a soft spot.

“But…”

Mira bit the lunging tip between her teeth. She smiled around steel, perfect and predatory.

It wouldn’t come free.

Two-colored flame licked her lips and cheek, and she half-closed her eyes like a cat in sunshine.

“That spark makes you think you can win. Still green. Take one last cut from me, and let’s part, okay?”

She’s… stopping on her own?

Ling Yi hadn’t expected her moods to churn like a summer tornado. While Mira spoke, she yanked Sky Striker back and sprang away, boots skimming the ground like skates.

Ling Yi, don’t trust her!

“I wasn’t going to…”

Even if she doubled back and tangled again, the Beast King Squadron would hit the scene any second. One way or another, this side already felt like victory.

Mira rolled her neck, then slid the tachi home with a whisper.

The same technique that split buildings…

Dodge it or take it?

Dodge, and maybe still get cut. Take it, and definitely be cut.

Dodge, then…

“Second Stance—”

That marrow-deep chill poured over her again, a river under ice.

Not “maybe.” That First Stance hadn’t even aimed at me.

“—‘Twilight and Dawn!’”

…

…

She didn’t know how long drifted by. Ling Yi opened her eyes.

Darkness.

“Uh… did I cross the River?”

The black loosened. Light leaked in like dawn through shutters. She was cupped inside something.

The palm of Dragon God Pioneer.

If she dies here, we’d all be heartbroken!

Crimson Field—Dragon God Eagle’s voice rolled down from above like thunder over hills.

“So there is a fourth. I’m bored. Thoroughly bored.” Mira held the sheathed tachi in her left hand, frowned, and shrugged, her mood bristling like thorns.

You don’t get to be that willful!

Dragon God Pioneer fired without a blink. Unlike the real-type Mobile Warrior ZX, Dragon God Pioneer fought like a sentai miracle machine and opened with lasers, bright as spears of noon.

They still didn’t mark Mira, but something changed.

She raised an arm to block, reflexive as a flinch.

Ling Yi caught it, a moth flicker in a storm, and shock rippled through her. That meant the Beast King Squadron could hurt her—maybe even beat—

Thump-thump-WHUMPF!

Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup!

“What’s that sound?”

Protected by a greater evil… how ironic.

Yekase’s sigh of relief rustled over the comms like wind through leaves.

Ling Yi looked up. Dozens of helicopters blotted the sun and dropped fast around the site, rotor wash kicking up dust like surf. Hundreds of soldiers in pitch-black armor poured out, rifles shouldered. They ringed Mira and Dragon God Pioneer in a dark tide. One taller than the rest, clearly the leader, raised his voice.

“This battle exceeds the main-district limit. Both sides, lay down your weapons at once and submit to arbitration.”

“Wh-what is this?!” Ling Yi stared, stunned by the iron pageantry.

“The Enforcers of the Arbitration Court. Any dispute the organizations can’t settle by fighting… they settle on the spot, by force.”

“Do we have to cancel our transformations? They’ll see our faces…”

“No. Just put your weapon down. They know the deal. No one defies them.”

“Not even the Heavenly Prison King…”

Ling Yi looked at Mira. Mira pouted, then obediently handed her tachi to an Enforcer.

Even the Heavenly Prison King obeyed.

Was it because she couldn’t win? Not likely.

So what leash held her?

Ling Yi almost knew. She placed Sky Striker into the hands of the Enforcer who stepped up to her, the blade cooling like a quenched ember.

“We’ve already reviewed the scene via the SkyNet feed. Now announcing arbitration.”

Arms folded, the leader’s voice rang like a bronze bell. Oddly, though they stood above everyone like a mountain, there was no scorn in it.

It was simply the order of things.

“Original defenders, Unrecognized Consortium X—fifty-eight percent reverse battle result. Ordered to reimburse Emerald Pool Industries for full site repairs.”

“Aaahhh—?”

No mystery who screamed. Credit where due—without her, this fight wouldn’t have stood at all.

“Attackers—the Malicious Wage Claim Group, Flashblade Red, Mobile Warrior ZX, Beast King Squadron Dragon Rangers. Total, forty-two percent battle results.”

The Beast King Squadron had barely arrived… and still got counted. Fine. Whatever.

“Defenders—Emerald Pool Industries, zero percent battle results.”

Zero. Played dead from first bell to last. Champions of thick skin.

“Victors, the attackers. Emerald Pool Industries is hereby ordered to meet the Malicious Wage Claim Group’s demands within one calendar month. Any objections?”

Silence fell like snow.

…Haa.

Ling Yi’s strength poured out of her like water from a cracked jar. She almost dropped, but with Enforcers all around, she locked her knees and stood.

It was over.

At last… it was over.