All over the map, heroes were starting to cluster like scattered stars drawing into a constellation, and the Sinister Organizations stirred like a lake ruffled by wind—trouble was brewing.

That’s how Professor F warned Yekase, and that’s how Yekase warned Ling Yi, voice calm like a stone under rain.

Then she turned and asked Shen Shanshan when they were starting “that plan,” eyes glinting like a match in the dark.

“If we don’t pull a job now and pin it on the heroes, once the Sinister side wises up, the money dries up,” Yekase said, rubbing her hairless chin like a gambler palming a coin.

They were sitting in Valhalla, neon pooling like spilled wine, while Professor F counted liquor stock in the back, so the two of them could talk shamelessly about very un-heroic things.

“Fair,” Shen Shanshan nodded, words clipped like a blade on bone. “What’s your side piece in the org say?”

“…Side piece in which org?”

“The one who sang karaoke with us last time…”

“Oh, that’s my disciple.”

“What’s your disciple up to lately?”

“Overtime, probably.”

This was Flashblade Red and the Beast King Squadron, holding up the sky like iron pillars;

this was Yekase and Sandryon, tinkering with magic like owls over a candle;

this was Jiang Bailu, grinding overtime like a millstone at midnight.

She even took personal leave to run to the school and deliver a message, breath puffing like white fog.

Yekase couldn’t help it; a laugh slipped out like a pebble skipping across water.

She felt a flicker of guilt, like a cloud crossing the sun; next time she visited the org, she’d bring Jiang Bailu a gift.

After the One-Year War incident ended, they got nothing, but miraculously the air between Yekase and Mira thawed a little, like frost receding at dawn—Mira didn’t care if you were a hero or an organization wonk, as long as Yekase kept making new toys, she’d one day be useful, a stubborn confidence that, somehow, saved Yekase.

There was another layer of insurance: Yekase had stayed in Magical Girl form the whole time, so in Mira’s eyes her new look was only and exactly “the Ivaris 2P colorway—white sailor uniform, white streaks, a single red ahoge—painted like snow with a drop of cinnabar.”

Mira hadn’t seen the real her; maybe she still thought Yekase was a guy, fogged in memory like an old photo, certainly not a girl at Heavenly Heart High School.

As for the bond with the Twenty Second Squad?

To that woman, “bond” meant she could command Yekase to do 996—nine to nine, six days—for six full years, like a metronome with no mercy.

Proof? She never forgot, not once, a nail driven straight and cold.

The madwoman was still the same madwoman, her madness oddly reassuring, like a storm that follows its own weather.

“Next we find where they’re hiding the factories for those new evolution Gauntlets,” Yekase said, voice steady as a plumb line. “Could take time; a city-tier org seals info like a vault.”

“Leaving it to you?”

“To my mercenary friends.” Shen Shanshan downed her beer in one pour, head tilted like a hawk, and stood to go.

Yekase caught her hem like a cat snagging a thread. “Hey, go to the counter and scan to pay.”

“Huh? Not treating me?”

“German craft. Forty-five yuan.”

Shen Shanshan’s face twisted like wet paper; she checked her balance, then shifted to a tone both aggrieved and pleading. “Can I put it on a tab?”

Yekase’s heart softened like ice in spring.

“Forget it, my treat.”

“Thanks, Bro Ye!”

…In a flash, she was gone, a shadow darting behind a curtain.

Why did it feel like everyone around her worshiped money like a household god?

Oh right, Yekase did too. Then no problem, the mirror smiled back.

After seeing Shen Shanshan off, Yekase ducked into the back to say a quick goodbye to Professor F, then slipped out of the bar like a leaf on the night breeze.

It was the weekend.

A month of high-school life had shifted her sense of time, and after a week of dull classes droning like cicadas, the weekend felt like a rare blossom after rain—she’d already set a plan with Ling Yi: bathhouse, soak and massage.

When Liu RuoYuan heard the plan, her eyes went wide with a mix of shock and disdain, like oil and water refusing to blend.

Yekase ignored her, a reed bending but unbroken.

A healthy, sunny seventeen-year-old girl, going to a bathhouse with a friend—nothing wrong with that, like sun on clean sheets.

She checked the location Ling Yi sent—a short hop from Heavenly Heart district, about thirty minutes by road, perfect for an e-scooter humming like a dragonfly.

Mira pinged her too—their truce included a promise to stop spamming a thousand messages a day like a hailstorm, and to show good faith, Yekase had given her the new number.

[Heavenly Prison King: Wanna rush B tonight? I know a spot in Xuanwu with your favorite bio-spliced girls.]

…

Do you even have the gear to rush? The thought flashed like a knife of light.

Yekase hesitated, thumb hovering like a moth over glass; she wanted to lock the phone and pretend nothing happened, but this might be one of Mira’s rare olive branches, a woman with no time for friendship inviting an old subordinate to rush B—maybe that took more courage than punching a building in half.

So it wouldn’t fall back to “punching a building” level, Yekase started composing a reply, words lined up like dominoes, and shelved the e-scooter to take the bus instead, rocking like a slow river.

[Beast of Possibility: I like to watch, not to, uh, run live ops.]

Could she get the point across gently? After a beat, Mira’s reply landed like a pebble in a pond.

[Heavenly Prison King: I hate your handle. Change it.]

[Beast of Possibility: ???]

Nerves, much?

Why fuss about someone’s handle? What about the last topic, the branch like a bridge?

[Heavenly Prison King: I grant you the honor of “King of Breakworld.” Equal rank with me. You’re welcome.]

???

…Wait… Could it be?

“Breakworld” and “Mechbreaker” both read as hakai in Japanese—a TCG’s favorite wordplay, two mirrors facing each other.

Coincidence, or was Mira hinting?

“I know you’re Mechbreaker”—like that?!

Yekase felt her scalp prickle, a cat brushing against a live wire.

That cursed Mechbreaker identity had never once fooled a familiar face; every time she showed up, people knew before she spoke, like a mask painted on glass, and still, she wanted to at least pretend.

[Beast of Possibility: I’m just a regular researcher, not fit to be a king. That handle’s too much, right?]

She had to dodge; if she switched to a Mira-style handle, shame would kill her like a falling piano.

[Heavenly Prison King: You qualify.]

…A period.

She used a period, heavy as a gavel.

Yekase knew the topic had hit a wall like a closed gate.

[King of Breakworld: ………… ]

…So embarrassing, heat rising like steam.

She needed to nuke the account and swap to an alt. Immediately. Right now.

[Heavenly Prison King: Good. This year’s Sovell Conference—you’ll represent Unrecognized Consortium X.]

[King of Breakworld: ????????????]

The Sovell Conference was the Sinister world’s annual tech forum, a winter fair of knives, always on December 17th for a week, flowing right into Christmas like a thaw.

The venue honored Konstantin, the first in human history to put Infinite Power to industrial use, the inaugural research head of Shadow Curtain International; they held it in his hometown, a little European city named Sovell, quiet as a chapel.

As an Infinite Power researcher, Yekase had longed for that high table, stars like frost above—yet Flash Energy wasn’t internationally recognized, so she had no ticket and watched from the fence.

And now Mira said the Consortium had a slot?

An E-rank nobody tucked in a corner of a second-tier city in Huaxia, led by someone barely worth a color, with a particle collider in the warehouse like a dragon hoard—and now an international pass?

Faced with bait that screamed trap like a red lure in clear water,

Yekase, naturally,

couldn’t refuse at all, heart beating like a snare.

[King of Breakworld: What do I prep?]

[Heavenly Prison King: You’ll represent Unrecognized Consortium X. Show them your Flash Energy creations. Tell them a new age has come, crowned by a crimson-as-blood Infinite Power.]

Uh.

So, marketing, like a trumpet on a tower.

And how do you end it? When clients chase the scent all the way to Twin Towers City, step into your brand-new base built on deposits, and you tell them Dr Ika has resigned and vanished into fog?

Yekase couldn’t help wondering how many Europeans Mira could take, one charge like thunder.

In Asia and North America, they called all levels of fighters “combatants,” no official “Four Heavenly Kings” or “Seven Warlords” or “Nine Stars”—the rankings were gossip, like stickers on a suitcase.

Europeans loved titles and ranks from top to root, polishing names like brass; they lived by declarations and law, and they had multiple class ladders by combat strength, all the way from civilians to nation-grade human weapons, with rights and duties lettered like scripture.

Sandryon told her all that over tea, words coiling like incense.

She herself was an Italian state-recognized Grand Magus, lifetime tenure like a ring of iron, though she insisted on changing it to “Grand Alchemist.” There were four or five at that level, all old monsters, mountain-deep.

Europe and Huaxia both bred old monsters like ancient pines. Obviously, Mira wasn’t one of them, more lightning than mountain.

[King of Breakworld: I need to keep a few trump cards.]

Mira agreed in a snap, clean as a blade, and Yekase pocketed her phone; it all felt too smooth, like ice with no cracks. Mira usually ran the org as a side hobby between punching people—why lower herself now to ask Yekase to come out and build, like planting a garden?

“…Whatever,” she said, letting the thought float away like a paper boat.

A Sovell ticket smoothed every wrinkle.

She got off the bus, wind like cool silk, and met Ling Yi at the bathhouse door.

Today Ling Yi wore a knit sweater, a black pleated velvet skirt, and sheer-effect thermal tights, with mismatched-graffiti sneakers kicking like gulls.

Weird combo—but Yekase had no right to talk, wrapped in a jacket like a tortoise in its shell.

“Two hours of full-body massage!” Ling Yi flashed her phone like a lantern. “Twin room, plus a big screen.”

“How much do I transfer?”

“Eighty-nine.”

“Mmm…”

Maybe it was time to hit the black market and fence some goods, like a fox selling stolen chickens; she felt the same pinch Shen Shanshan did.

A staffer led them in, steps soft as rain.

The place was big, the decor carefully done, luxury wrapped in quiet like velvet; it felt upscale without the stink of nouveau riche, gold without glare.

They walked a green corridor trimmed with ornamental plants, leaves casting shadows like fish scales; through the branches, they glimpsed a hot-spring-style bath area where guests soaked like dumplings in clear broth.

Yekase loved public bathhouses, steam like rolling clouds, but after becoming a girl, she went less for the sake of her sanity, a line drawn in sand.

“Here’s your room. The technicians will be right in. Feel free to use anything,” the attendant said, pushing the door open like a curtain on a stage.

Two massage beds, a big screen, a drink machine humming like a hive.

Incense drifted in the air like a pale ribbon.

Very petit-bourgeois, she thought, a little caviar on plain rice.

“This is too decadent. I can’t accept it. I’m putting on a movie to balance the mood,” she said, half-grin like a cat.

“What movie?”

Yekase answered by moving; she grabbed the remote and tapped away, fingers like drumsticks. The big screen bloomed to life like dawn.

[…]

[Landlady, why’s there no water?]

“Now that’s more like it,” she said, the line landing like a wink.