Standoff…

On a pedestrian path dead silent as a winter lake, two identical Magical Girls faced off.

Like a TV hero marked by a red scarf only the audience can see, the twin figures squared up.

“You go.”

Yekase kept her arms folded, voice flat, urging Ling Nuo Si, who was basically idling.

“Huh? Your aura’s so sharp it looks like you can solo. If I can skip fighting, I’m skipping.”

“What are you thinking? She’s got a hostage.”

Yekase’s tone soured, like iron scraping stone. “You’re a combat captain. Try observing. If she were human, our momentum’s gone.”

“Ugh, fine.”

Ling Nuo Si lifted her fists to blitz, then halted mid-step, as if a wire tugged her ankle.

“Before you forget me, can you at least tell me who you are?”

“Creator, refiner, and observer of Magical Girls.”

Ling Nuo Si’s smile went stiff. “Uh, don’t tell me you’re—”

“Icarus, known as Dr Ika. Real name is ‘—’. Oh, and that real name? In Twin Towers City, only you and my sister know it. Lucky you.”

Ling Nuo Si remembered bathing with this person a few days ago and feeling weirdly like she’d scored a prize.

Now she felt like a fool with sand in her mouth—being forgotten might be easier.

“So ‘Yekase’ is your real name reversed?”

“It’s from the Japanese hakase—‘doctor’.”

They didn’t speak again.

Yekase pinned Aridaus’s drone cannons from afar; Ling Nuo Si pressed close under that cover.

Aridaus was nasty because she could dissolve into black smoke anytime, while her drone cannons hit like comets.

But the cannons were locked down, and Ling Nuo Si’s bodywork pushed her hard.

Aridaus could only streak as smoke along the ground, a shadow fleeing wildfire. The tide finally turned.

“But we still don’t have a way to stop her escape…”

Yekase’s brow stayed knotted, like twine soaked in rain.

If she had a barrier skill—no, if any Magical Girl had it…

They didn’t.

Ivaris worked Infinite Power. Dongyue used ice and snow sorcery.

Aura was two-in-one. Rainbow wielded light, specialized in cannons. Shanon handled dark and shapeshifting.

Of those confirmed alive, Xi and Lalabel: one could rewind time, one shaped stone.

Aside from the dedicated healer Zhang Wendao, they were all pure DPS—Outer Source entities are hive-minded and don’t run.

The green lane from the Void to living bodies seemed closed now, but by recalling them, Yekase could borrow their strength.

Like a certain anniversary Rider who restores a predecessors’ legend to inherit power, by re-observing the proper 2012, Yekase became a vessel for the Magical Girls’ powers.

Limited, sure, but real.

Maybe… try frozen slow?

No. Anything meltable dies in a laser-crossfire. Dropping ice behind a Torchwood stump is just wasting Sorcery.

So only one road remained:

Kill her before she bolts. Flood her with output, right here.

“I’m ramping up. Watch yourself!”

“You’re gonna nuke me too?!”

Yekase pointed skyward. “Here we begin, weaving radiance! Light magic, lend me your hand!”

Emerald light flared.

An alley lit by a few sickly lamps turned to noon in a breath.

Ten meters up, a circular array etched in spinning runes took shape.

As the sigils turned, energy pooled at the heart like dew in a cupped leaf.

“Starting with an orbital cannon, huh!”

Yekase ignored Ling Nuo Si’s jab. She whispered a few spells and ran low, like a reed slipping under wind.

Her right hand wore a teleporter cuff. She snatched at air; a cord seemed to catch on her fingers.

She tossed the weighted pendant into a thick hedge. It vanished into leaves, then surged on its own momentum.

A hair-thin silver line traced the pendant’s path, stitching the battlefield with glitter like frost on webbing.

Ling Nuo Si drove another punch in. Aridaus couldn’t parry; she vaporized, trying to slip back.

But the orbital cannon’s wind-up made her smoke glow like ink under moonlight; her trail was clear.

She readied to reappear at her planned landing point—only to find Ling Nuo Si waiting there.

She kept retreating, black smoke fleeing like a startled crow.

Backward… and over the silver boundary.

The threads were only faintly reflective, the kind that recalls detective stories where fishing line severs heads.

Under Yekase’s hand, they blazed red, like veins under lightning.

Aridaus’s smoke hit those glowing filaments and instantly lost cohesion.

She slammed back into human form and fell.

It was Flash Energy. Yekase had sent it racing along the wire!

“A hand-made Flash Energy barrier. Ten-meter radius. My own tools fit like a glove.”

“On it!”

Ling Nuo Si didn’t waste a collapsed stance.

She drew a card from her changer and slammed it back in. “Fantasy Turnstar, Five-C—”

Then she ran headfirst into the high-voltage red lines.

“…Ah.”

The energy she’d already burned got rattled by Flash Energy. Her transform shattered.

He stumbled, somersaulted, and crashed into a tree.

“Seriously? Friendly fire?!”

“Ling—”

The shout cut off.

Ling Nuo Si climbed, rubbing her tailbone, ready to re-transform—then froze.

He looked at Yekase, eyes wary, like a deer hearing snow crack.

“…?”

Yekase’s assured look fractured under the intrusion. She squinted at him, suspicious.

She blinked hard, then realized she couldn’t recall when this person had arrived.

A reinforcement for Aridaus?

The Outer Source didn’t just make a counterfeit. They even pulled in a man as their dark Magical Girl?

That’s… starving for recruits.

“No problem. I’ll take you too.”

“Method’s the same now, huh?!”

He threw out a line like a buddy trying to bond, then scrambled into the hedges instead of charging without her trigger phrase.

“Don’t make me re-transform. I’m tapped out—have mercy!”

He was begging.

Yekase never showed mercy to pleadings.

Before an official victor is named, any dirty trick can crush an organization—including the trendily revived fake surrenders.

“The road is open!”

The array shattered. The light fell.

A five-meter-wide column of clear emerald plunged from the sky, swallowing Aridaus whole.

As for the unknown runner who slipped the radius—if he tried anything, Yekase had the bandwidth to watch him.

First priority remained: beat Aridaus and rescue Lalabel.

But…

Something felt off.

In that emerald beam, something pulsed wrong, like a bruise under skin.

“Command: Hundred-Type Wave Cannon.”

Aridaus’s voice rose from the light like a boat horn in fog.

At the contact between beam and ground, unstable energy bled out, crackling like ice on a river.

She was counterattacking. A matching high-density barrage, from below, to punch through Yekase’s strike.

While Yekase parsed her intent, the explosions grew from whispers to a drumline.

The blast effect widened, climbing from ground level. A hail of micro-shocks shoved the column up by more than a meter.

“Makes sense. Her shell borrows my and Ivaris’s elements, but her core’s the King’s shadow.”

If the King of the Outer Source had died from Rainbow’s single orbital shot, that would’ve been absurd.

Yekase was already ready to push on.

“Down to the lamps of the underworld! Dark magic, lend me your hand!”

The sky-piercing light vanished.

Dark red lightning crawled over Yekase’s skin, like wildfire in dry thorns.

In its glare, her hands draped in shadow, shaping into slim, vicious talons.

“Going in!”

The seeds she planted earlier all sprouted at once.

One Flame Burst Spell. Four floating pads.

In her Infinite Power sight, transparent discs lined a path as clean as stepping stones over a stream.

“Light it, Nightlight Torch.”

From the fire and smoke of the Hundred-Type Wave Cannon, a vortex of twin-colored laser shot out.

“You’re twenty thousand years too early to copy her finisher!”

Even the laser couldn’t catch Yekase, riding Shanon’s borrowed strength.

A massive Flame Burst Spell blasted open a lane. Her figure turned into red-black lightning.

The laser chased, always a step behind. She plunged into rolling smoke.

Clang!

Talons met a metal staff, shrieking like needles on glass.

Yekase didn’t love claw-forms. She preferred shaping a long spear with equal dark sorcery.

But Shanon’s passion for ancient beasts flooded in with the power, steering her hands.

Before the smoke fully cleared, they kept trading blows within arm’s reach, a storm under a veil.

Why wasn’t she running now? Just moments ago she—

…

—moments ago?

Moments ago, wasn’t it always Yekase herself fighting Aridaus?

From her first intervention, to Lalabel being snatched by a birdcage, to prying out the codename that unlocked the trigger, to stringing red wire to block escape—

No.

Something was wrong.

After the wire went up, before Yekase charged, “something” had helped her.

That “something” cornered Aridaus into panicked flight.

She couldn’t have done it alone. She knew herself that well.

There had been a “someone”…

Thinking like this at close quarters is lethal.

Yekase broke off, back-jumping hard, opening space like cutting cloth.

She knew the opponent was the King’s afterimage, grafted to the Outer Source’s observations of Ivaris and herself.

She knew the King could sever causality. That lingering spite could leave a curse like the one on Zhang Wendao:

Existence erasure, wiping a person from every mind.

Then—

With the year-long war behind them—

Who could swear the memory in Yekase’s head was whole and true?

“My memory… is wrong. Existence erasure already fired just now…!”