After the pale-cyan whirlpool and fire peeled away, the figure there wasn’t that forgettable young man anymore, but—
“...Uh?”
—a girl in a water-blue dress.
The cut felt familiar—close to whatever Ling Yi shifts into, like a sister series. The face and hair were worlds apart, though, and white stockings wrapped her legs like frost on willow.
“You are...”
She unhooked a rectangular module from her waist and gripped it. The black metal unfolded, stretching into a slender staff. A voice, cool and clear and older than her face, slid off her lips like ice water on glass.
“I haven’t asked your name.”
“Yekase... a craftsman.”
“Yekase, have you heard the name ZEROS?”
...
“Huh?!”
Yekase stared, stunned—no, stared at her. How did she know ZEROS? So it really was a name? Could it be she herself—
“I was one of her followers back then. Now I only feel steady in battle if I wear her shape.”
“That person, what—”
“When this fight ends, I’ll tell you a story.”
She tapped her right foot, a swan’s light step, and vanished. A heartbeat later, she was already an arrow streaking into far sky.
“Feels like a deep inside story...”
So she chased me not for the Gundam, but after seeing Ling Yi transform. I thought I’d found a fellow mecha nerd—pity.
Yekase’s aversion to trouble beat her curiosity for a moment. But ZEROS’s secret likely knotted with Dragon God Shark’s heart. For her sake, Yekase had to know.
She bit down on imaginary teeth and followed.
Those two mechs had dogfought for ages. By now one should be gutted, maybe downed. Best case, no more fighting—get the story and go.
“Zhang Wendao?”
“In this form, call me Xi. Magical Girl Xi.”
Hear the Way at dawn, die by dusk? Using that as a hero alias felt doom-soaked. And she just planted a “I’ll tell you later” flag... she’s not about to die, right? Should I talk her into going back—
Boom!
Zhang Wendao took a stray round head-on, swallowed by fire like a moth in a torch-flare.
“Huh?!”
Already?! Yekase’s mind went blank on the spot—
Then, right before her eyes, the flames rewound like a film played backward, back to a pinprick. The missile that had detonated was suddenly cradled in Zhang Wendao’s arms. She pitched it toward the sea below.
Boom!
A water pillar shot up ten-plus meters, a geyser in moonless ink.
“Sorry for the scare. My ability is time reversal, limited to myself.”
Third bomb, huh.
Shaken but intact, they flew toward the stretch of sea where the mystery mech had fallen. The water was dark as spilled ink, waves clawing and howling, not a single ship in sight. The mainland behind was only pinpricks of distant light.
They circled like a real rescue team, combing patches of water for any ember or thread of smoke.
Who knew how long passed before Yekase finally spotted it.
A mech’s arm reaching out of the sea.
From afar she’d thought it a reef. Up close, it was a textbook mech hand, like the Statue of Liberty’s torch hand on The Day After Tomorrow’s poster—straight up, unmoving, pleading to the sky.
What a Terminator.
Call Zhang Wendao over—wait, no comms. No earpiece, no call.
Yekase had never learned to pilot a mech, much less transform into one. She tweaked thrusters bit by bit, wobbling down to land on the open palm.
No one here.
Is the pilot still in the cockpit? Out cold?
Over the sea’s drowning roar, her ear caught a faint rumble rising through the metal below. The engine lights were dead, the hum almost guttering, but the core hadn’t fully stopped.
The Omega Ray circuit was this damaged—forget it. If the pilot’s unconscious, Mind Energy is unreliable too. Of the three mainstream sources, two fell away. That left only—
Neptune Energy.
High radiation, high pollution, middling efficiency, not recyclable, no mind-linked failsafes... a bouquet of flaws in one. The MVP of junk tech. People still argue if it deserves to sit with other Infinite Power systems.
Its only virtue? It takes a beating.
On that alone, Neptune Energy became every broke outfit’s pick for their first get-rich rig.
But how would a dime-a-dozen broke outfit field a mech of this class?
Yekase froze, the thought knifing through.
“Yekase! You found—”
Zhang Wendao cut across waves, saw Yekase standing stunned in a metal palm, and hugged one finger of the mech. She braked hard in a posture that screamed dislocation.
She hopped down in front of Yekase, her right arm drooping at an eerie angle.
Real dislocation.
“This is fine.”
Her arm twisted back the other way on the spot, joints crackling as they snapped home. Do all undead-types love this trick?
“Next, we find the cockpit and pull the pilot out... Did you see the mech that fought it?”
“No.”
“They didn’t confirm the kill and just left? Strange.”
“Let’s leave too.”
“Eh?”
Yekase shook her head. “A twenty-meter mech on Neptune Energy. A fight staged to hide itself. A hurried cleanup. You don’t see it? This is a big organization’s internal rebellion. Whether this guy or the one who shot him down, neither’s clean.”
“We can ask him ourselves when we drag him out. All I know is—someone dies here if we don’t.”
“And I know if we pull him out and bring him back to the city, you might be the one to die.”
“We’ve got disguises!”
“Unless you never show up in this form again.”
...
Girl and mech, locked in a silent stare.
“Then don’t block me.”
“No. You’re a hero. I won’t let them catch you.”
“Then I’ll go back. You save him, right? After midnight, no one will know this Gundam was you.”
“Why should I risk a high-level power struggle to save a Sinister Organization’s hired blade? He took their dirty money. He should accept dying here.”
“...”
Zhang Wendao wore the face of someone forced to drink bitter snake-grass tea.
“Then how—”
Yekase blurred forward, her fist snapping up into Zhang Wendao’s chin.
“Guh?!”
“We’ll do it this way.”
Power like a one-man combat suit launched Zhang Wendao’s slim frame off metal. The crack of jawbone stung her mind dark—but—
“I even told you my ability!”
She steadied midair. Time ticked backward again for a heartbeat. Her wounds zipped closed—
Thud!
Yekase surged up, drove another fist into her gut.
“It’s useless! Even if you erase me, I snap back pristine! How do you think I got this far!”
Her answer was a rain of blows.
Yekase didn’t explain. Didn’t want to explain. This makeshift mech-body had her stamina bar locked at full. Thanks to it, even a straight-punch flurry she’d never dare try was now easy.
Every punch dealt real damage. Every damage was truly undone. Infinite strikes versus infinite recovery. It looked like a stalemate—
“Wait—your goal... is?!”
“What else would it be.”
Each injury rewound. But their positions kept shifting.
Zhang Wendao glanced past Yekase at the rice-cooker head’s far side. The arm that had stuck out of the sea, that desperate hand, had almost slid out of sight.
“Reminder. Twelve minutes till today ends. I’ll keep hitting you till then.”
“What?!”
She tried to juke out of Yekase’s range. But after their tandem flight earlier, Yekase had her speed and posture down cold. Left or right, feint or dive, Yekase clung tight, corrected course, and kept pushing her straight back.
“You not saving him—”
Thud!
“Fine!”
Thud!
“But why—”
Thud!
“stop me from saving him?!”
Thud!
Ah. So that’s it. The same old move—
Inside the loop of blows and reversals,
Zhang Wendao stopped resisting.
...
A long twelve minutes later.
As the energy coiled around Yekase melted into a warm stream and vanished, she turned back—herself again, masked and steady.
And Zhang Wendao, limp and unmoving like a heavy bag, became...
a little girl who looked no more than ten.
“So the rumors were true!”
A ten-year-old uses a transformation to become a young man, then triggers the device again and turns into a thirteen-year-old Magical Girl?
So the “name doesn’t match the face” line—that’s what she meant...
Whatever the details, since she couldn’t fight now, there was no need to torment her. Yekase scooped up her soft weight, and swiftly chanted Celestial Speech with Oz Floating Disc. Over the empty, night-black sea, a transparent platform one square meter wide shimmered into being.
It was clear as glass—spooky—but it held.
“...Uu?”
“It’s over. First, I owe you an apology for earlier.”
“Uu... you...”
Her voice was a mosquito’s thread. Yekase had to lean in—and got her ear grabbed.
“Ow ow ow ow ow—”
“Where did you... drag me... to?”
“This your real way of talking? Oh—this is about a hundred kilometers from the scene. I stopped here to show you something.”
“Show... what?”
“Dancing Light. This makes it clearer. You’re pretty cute, you know. Not worse than your Magical Girl look.”
“...!”
“Ear! My ear’s coming off!”
Yekase pried Zhang Wendao off her face and set her at her side. The transparent disk spooked the girl. Not knowing where the edge lay, she sat stiff and trembling, afraid to move.
And then, in both their eyes,
far off on the sea,
a mushroom cloud blossomed.
“I figured it’d blow. Big org, big bosses—that’s how they erase evidence.”
“That pilot... is dead?”
“Dead beyond doubt. Him and his ride.”
“...!”
Zhang Wendao lowered her head and bit her lip. Her right hand clamped Yekase’s thigh, nails digging like claws through fabric toward flesh.
Yekase only bore it in silence.
