From the golden triangular array behind Yekase—nothing fired.

She didn’t flinch. She whispered the trigger, shed sparks, and slipped into her Magical Girl form. The staff rose like a crescent, then fell like rain.

At the tip of the Polaris Staff, a red light-blade snapped out, thin as a comet-tail.

With the goggles masking her face, she could transform in public like mist behind glass. A perfect prop for showing off. The real job here—robbery—was done; no need to keep the mask on.

“…Icarus?”

PeaceWarrior cut her a sideways glance. Ice on her face cracked by a hairline of surprise.

“More aliases, more exits. Rear fire support’s yours.”

She tossed the line like a pebble into a pond, then lunged in a bounding step that burned stamina like kindling. White lightning tore open the enemy line.

“Don’t order me!”

PeaceWarrior snapped back, and four gun-barrels hovered at her sides like hawks, then opened up.

She threw her rifle behind her like shedding a shell. It burst midair into a handful of silver-blue cubes, like fish-scales scattering.

She lifted her right hand. A shoulder-fired RPG bloomed above her like a storm cloud, then settled onto her shoulder.

Boom.

She fired the only round, then rode the same loop again—drop the used steel, catch a fresh thunder.

The shaken fighters gathered like reeds in wind, thickening into a counterattack. PeaceWarrior stood still like a target-post; a forest of barrels converged.

The first volley cracked in seconds. A pale blue veil rose like a lake-skin, swallowing bullets, leaving rings of ripples.

An energy shield. High-grade, like glacier glass.

Yekase had ducked to the foremost flank. She stole a glance back, a single heartbeat to place PeaceWarrior’s path.

Omega Ray. And Soul Power.

In her sight, PeaceWarrior was a river in flood—no flame-wreath like normal Mind Energy or Soul Power. The current screamed Omega Ray.

So unlike Professor F’s method. Would Flash Energy wear another face too?

The thought flowed; her body never slowed. She weaved like wind between stones. The Polaris blade traced three-dimensional arcs in the crowd, a hawk’s curve drawn in red.

A blade formed of Flash Energy spared flesh like a breeze, yet weapons and rigs snapped like dry twigs.

Worse still, the fighters forced by evolved Gauntlets to squeeze out Mind Energy found their inner tide whipped into a whirlpool. Bodies stayed whole; their Mind Energy bucked like wild horses.

The result—

Yekase lifted her head. Her eyes tipped to the sky over the battle line like a needle pointing north.

The Alchemy that seemed to fizzle now bloomed like fog at dawn.

“Deep Ecological Bomb.”

Above their heads. Under their feet. Before and behind each of them. In every nook the naked eye forgets,

Flash Energy had already spread like mist, steeping the air.

Then, into Yekase’s hand, dropped—an mp3. A small black pebble in her palm.

“Listen—”

She raised the little box high like a lantern. Her thumb pressed Play like a seal stamping wax.

“This is the roar of magi-science!”

Soundless soundwaves raced along Flash Energy like thunder along wire. In an instant, they flooded every corner of the field.

…

…The gunfire stopped.

The drop in decibels hit their ears like needles of ice. A sharp phantom pain rang like a struck bowl.

Every fighter froze mid-motion, statues with heaving chests.

A trance opened like a door. Breath and blink grew loud as drums. Why am I here? Why this weapon? Why am I me and not someone else? A swarm of clear, chaotic voices spun in their skulls like a starling murmur.

“…?”

Far off, PeaceWarrior stood outside the tide, dry in the rain. She watched the enemy go still as if someone hit pause, and didn’t know what storm had changed the sky.

She didn’t care much for other heroes, but she knew the basics. The girl who called herself [Pauli the Incompatible] was the rising [Magical Girl Icarus]. That much was written.

But does Icarus have crowd control like this?

The net said her power sat in magic and that unknown red energy, and the mech called Luciferin.

If it’s magic… she didn’t chant Celestial Speech, did she?

That red mystery glowed like a blood-moon. Its output nipped at Infinite Power. Now it meddled with minds like a wind in wheat?

PeaceWarrior watched Yekase carve through the dazed like a dancer in rain. A narrow-eyed gleam of caution cut across her gaze like a knife-edge.

Vicious and uncanny. No hero’s restraint. Danger level… high. Like a child with a warhead playing at heroes. Leave that loose, and she’s a storm cloud over Twin Towers City.

Settle this first. Then investigate to the root.

Thanks to that eerie skill, the rank-and-file wandered fog-drunk. A few began to act drunk for real, waving and babbling. The rest were straw men in a field.

A perfect hour to open every gunport.

“Full load, deploy!”

PeaceWarrior’s voice cracked like a whip.

Behind her, a silver light-screen speared the sky like a column. Its wingspan spread wider than a factory floor.

Ka-ka-ka! Clang-clang-clang!

Titanic machinery shifted with mountain-deep noise, a presence like a cliff-face pushing through the veil.

In the crowd, Yekase felt the pressure like a hand on her chest. She stopped and looked back as if the wind turned cold.

“Peace Walker—Full Armored!”

———

A silver giant hand reached through the light like a god’s palm parting clouds.

Each finger as thick as a century-old tree trunk. Each knuckle taller than a house. The skin was flayed to circuits and rails, veins of light blinking in unreadable codes.

Full-Armored Peace Walker.

“…Ugh?!”

Like staring into the sun, pain seared Yekase’s eyes. Omega Ray’s flood of data rinsed her optic nerves and brain like a river in spate. Her body’s adaptation drowned in a heartbeat.

She clutched her eyes and bowed her head. The after-burn made her suck in a hiss, cold as iron.

Good thing she’d gone to the Causal Horizon half-conscious, senses wrapped in wool. Otherwise it’d have been a SAN check plus a damage roll, right on the spot.

The machine behind the light—

Its mass and output shattered her old map like a wave against sand.

If she had to compare, it was like Azous stripped of its will-forging power. That ideal force is its ace, sure—but even without it, this Peace Walker overhead could stand shoulder to shoulder. Maybe taller.

A hero who works the Yangtze Delta—why does she have a machine of this scale?

“When this is over… I’m getting answers…”

Her eyes wouldn’t clear soon. Standing inside the enemy thicket meant getting netted by PeaceWarrior’s sweep. No cards to keep.

She switched the staff to broom-star form, swung a leg over like mounting a skiff, and wobbled away on a crooked flight-path.

PeaceWarrior saw it, of course.

She didn’t know her skill hard-countered Yekase’s perpetual Infinite Power sight. She thought Yekase meant to run. Her judgment sank another degree, like frost thickening on glass.

“—This is the end of the line.”

PeaceWarrior lifted her right hand, pointing to the giant hand above like a judge to the gallows.

“Protocol: Grand Cross Alpha!”

At that clear call of an ultimate, half-blind Yekase almost ate dirt. If she could see the ground.

So she’ll nuke the map, friendlies be damned?

In that blink, Yekase felt she’d glimpsed the reason PeaceWarrior worked alone, like seeing the root of a pine in a flash of lightning. But the blind debuff clung like smoke. She couldn’t even pick a direction to dodge.

She gritted her teeth. Her right hand left the staff and dove into her pocket, fingers closing around the Phase Shifter like a life buoy.

Bet it on a read by timing—no, on a read by heart.

But if—just if—PeaceWarrior ordered Peace Walker to slap the earth and hold, then in that narrow crack between palm and ground, once the brief invincibility burned out and her body solidified—where would she bounce? Where could she bounce?

She didn’t dare follow that thought down the well.

Cing—!

A laser swept the ground like a scythe of light.

In a blur-bright world, time cooled, stilled, like snow resting on a branch. Yekase felt her body begin to “see.”

She saw the earth below and the machine above brim with Infinite Power, like stars packed in stone and steel. She saw panicked clusters wrapped in Infinite Power scatter like flocking birds.

“…Ah.”

Infinite Power sight—at heart, a sensing spell.

Sight is a compromise for the hand and mind, like choosing to ignore the floating lines and color blocks until they fade like mist after dawn.

Modern magic is compromise made flesh.

Potency bows to efficiency, complexity bows to simplicity. You lose a garden to gain a blade, and evolution still claps.

She caught the instant the energy pinched tight, and in that breath she hit the Phase Shift like a diver knifing into water—

“—Yeah. This is the end of the line.”

Another voice rang in the information flood like a bell in fog.

Yekase found it familiar like a scent on wind, yet the name slipped. The epiphany steadied her. She snapped a quick Levitation Spell, trimmed her posture under inertia, and began the landing steps she’d just sketched in her mind.

“Caesar Coliseum.”

…

The surging energy collapsed in an instant, like a wave sucked back by the moon.

Omega Ray, which had begun to flow outward, couldn’t prop the light-screen anymore. It kept only the lowest compute, and Peace Walker jammed with a single hand stuck through like a whale beached in a doorway.

Right. That voice was—

“Yu… Yu Yunxiu?!”

Yekase touched down thirty or forty meters away, steady as a leaf on still water, and blurted the name in disbelief.

“—Hold on. You swore that skill triggers for Luzhixing alone! So it was a lie? Just yuri-bait? My disciple even ships you two!”