The floor underfoot lost its balance, listing like a ship caught in a slow whirl.

It twisted clockwise as if clenched by an invisible giant hand, all torque anchored to a point at the center.

Hard limits meant nothing; bricks, timber, and rebar shrieked as they cracked, like a forest of metal crying in a storm. Dust and pebbles pattered from the ceiling like dry rain, splashing Ling Ya and Fang Tang and drowning the battlefield in a beige blizzard.

Ling Yi hugged the ground, stomach knotted, feeling herself twist into a steel pretzel.

And a pretzel wrapped in armor, iron on iron.

“Ugh...”

Emotion first—panic pricked like needles—then action. She braced her body with Mind Energy, and braced her armor with Flash Energy. It held, flimsy as a paper fan in wind, but it held.

The torque didn’t ebb. One blink, one slip, and that tide would roll back over her, grinding her flat like surf on sand.

This couldn’t go on. Surviving the pull was hard enough; fighting MAYA was a distant mountain. Is this her ability? She’s a Magical Girl, so it should be magic—

No.

She’s bad at magic, sure, but she knows its scent from a mile off. Yekase flies around her all day, tossing little discs like fireflies. She knows what Sorcery should look like.

First, MAYA didn’t chant Celestial Speech.

…Fine. Assume she started before they arrived, and the duration hadn’t ended.

Second, there was no Sorcery ripple. No shimmer in the stream.

That felt decisive, though Ling Yi wavered. She was sensing Sorcery with the same touch she used for Mind Energy and Flash Energy, tuned to Yekase’s cadence. On someone else, maybe it wouldn’t bite.

But—she chose to trust herself once.

If it isn’t magic or any known Infinite Power… then what is it?

Her Mind Energy flowed through her like a quiet river at dusk, sweeping for the slightest eddy. Through bones, flesh, and blood under torque; through channels once called meridians, thin as moonlit vines—

She found a “trace.”

Not the trace of something present, but the shadow of something missing.

It was formless and colorless, like the pull of muscle from within. Under Mind Energy’s dye, it finally left a faint mark against her inner azure.

Spiral-shaped, transparent, like glass threads coiling in air.

She painted Mind Energy into those traces, filling the blank like a careful brush, pixel by pixel, no gap left pale.

“This is the final blow! ‘Ms. Rabbit’s Star Crash’!”

Another star spun into being in MAYA’s hands, whirling like a drill-bit comet. It lunged toward Ling Yi, who lay seemingly still, her armor bleached to white like frost.

“Wait—”

Ling Ya abandoned the hunt for the sniper outside, pivoted, and sprinted back. That white armor looked like a base form, light as paper. If that hit, with power that drilled clean through floorboards… even the Blade Armor might—

Ling Yi lifted a hand, palm steadiest point in a storm.

The spinning star slammed into her palm. Friction screeched against her gauntlet like knives on stone; the frontal shock bowed her arm with a hot jolt—

But it stopped there.

Like snagging a baseball thrown from a far field, she raised the now-still pentagram high, its points glinting like a trapped starfish.

“Wha—?!”

“I injected equal Mind Energy from the exact opposite direction… and canceled your torque!”

She stood, crushed the pentagram in her fist, and scattered its gold motes with a sweep, fireflies flung aside.

“Once there’s a way through, there’s nothing to fear! We were wrong to suspect you so rashly— but please, calm down and hear my apology!”

She scooped up her Sky Striker, braced it along her left forearm, and aimed at MAYA, who wavered like grass in a breeze.

“Dew!”

“Code-04! SHIZUKU!”

Her armor flashed and flowed into blue, a river caught in steel.

The technique-focused form Ling Yi never mastered. Even with ZEROS in her core, she almost never called it. The blank-form Infinite Power correction became an excuse, a quiet drawer to hide “Dew.”

But that knot never left her chest. It stayed, like a fishbone under the tongue.

If she couldn’t blend the basic four forms, could she really reach the limit the Doctor designed?

“Blade Spell—”

Even if skill touched theory’s ceiling—if she kept dodging the hard parts, could she still pass her own shadow, still stand beside the Doctor and carve a future for Flash Energy?

“—Hindrance Ripples!”

If Flash Energy wouldn’t obey, then squeeze it, press it, lace it with Mind Energy until it flowed like a trained river.

From the Sky Striker’s tip, hair-thin blue lines lit up, bright as frost cracks. They spiraled forward and mapped a cylindrical path in a single breath.

Rifling.

Rotation harnessed to lock the round true, the crystal wisdom of hot weapons.

Then she poured Flash Energy into the barrel, a quicksilver stream into bronze.

Ammo.

“Forward— push!”

The shell whooshed out and reached MAYA in a blink, a hawk stooping from the sky. She tried to unwind it with her power, but the counter-torque shredded the energy into loose grain. It burst across her face and chest like a handful of sparks in wind.

In a lightning flick, Ling Yi cut back to Gale, copying Yekase’s low, gliding steps. She skimmed the floor like a swallow and slid into MAYA’s close range.

A rising cut!

—Snap!

MAYA’s short staff was flicked free and sailed like a thrown baton. Fang Tang, already transformed, snagged it midair and tucked it behind her like a stolen flute.

Ling Yi pressed the advantage, but she didn’t swing the Sky Striker down. A cut wouldn’t kill, but her transformation would drop in front of civilians like a mask falling.

Instead she drove a shoulder straight into MAYA’s chest, riding inertia like a wave. They tangled and rolled together, spinning four or five times before coming to rest, breath fogging like winter.

Ling Yi pinned MAYA, palms planted by her head. She popped her visor half-open and called out, voice steady like cool water:

“Ms. MAYA! Flashing a weapon right away was my fault. I’m apologizing, here and now!”

“…………”

“It’s fine if you don’t forgive me. As long as we’re both heroes, walking the same road, one day we’ll fight as one. That’s my belief.”

“Y-you… get off me… first…”

She looked closer. MAYA’s left hand covered her mouth; her face turned aside, cheeks lit with ember-red.

“Ah— sorry!”

Reason seemed to return like dawn. Not exactly calm, but words could meet in the middle now.

Ling Yi popped off her like a startled cat and sat properly on the floor in front of her, neat as a student.

“My friend’s a squad member. We assumed regular grunts couldn’t catch her. We doubted you, though we’re fellow heroes. I’m very sorry.”

…Still, her mental armor felt thin as wet paper. Two people meet at a crime scene, everything looks suspicious, and she tips straight into meltdown and villain mode. That fragility? On par with Xiaoyuan.

She didn’t say it aloud. She let the thought drift like smoke.

Fang Tang came over and sat beside them. “So, here’s what happened… I was waiting at the bar when a masked person came in… She called herself ‘Mechbreaker’…”

[Hmm??]

Yekase’s nasal uptick scratched in the earpiece like a raised eyebrow.

Ling Yi got it at once and nodded. “I know Mechbreaker. The one you saw should be fake—a grunt in disguise.”

“How could that be…”

From behind, MAYA said, “I use a civic hotline to gather incident info. Today I got a call. It said grunts were coming and going in this derelict building. So I came to check.”

A civic hotline… even that exists?

On the line, Yekase fell into a deep silence, like a mic cut. She realized their own assumptions might be the crooked mirror.

We know heroes keep moving because the organization above looks the other way; we also know that same organization could find a hero’s body in a heartbeat.

So… hero work could slack on secrecy and go half-public, bold as daylight?

Like, say, virtual streamers…

Yekase was rocked to the core, a bell struck under water.

VTubers have a person inside; heroes have a body.

VTubers have IDs; heroes have callsigns.

VTubers come in many flavors; heroes too.

[Unbelievable…]

“Doctor, what are you so surprised about? I know that impostor stings like smoke in the eyes…”

[Nothing. Don’t mind me. Has the building stopped twisting?]

“Stopped, yeah…”

Ling Yi scanned the space. The floor wasn’t bucking anymore, but the roof and crossbeams still trembled like taut strings.

“MAYA, can’t you cancel this skill?”

MAYA shook her head, calm as slate. “Once my Spiral Force is driven into matter, it won’t stop until it burns out.”

Saying something terrifying like it was tea talk.

If Ling Yi hadn’t caught the trick of canceling, she’d be canned meat already. The thought crawled like ants, and she scooted her butt farther from MAYA.

“I-I’ll go check the rooftop. See if I can bleed off the torque!”

She scrambled up and bolted out, a sparrow startled from a branch.

“Doctor, about MAYA…”

[Yeah. Don’t relax. She’s a scary one in every sense…]

Ling Yi hated leaving Ling Ya and Fang Tang with MAYA, but she was already moving. She headed for the roof, breath steady like a runner’s.

MAYA had used three skills in that fight: “Ms. Rabbit’s Star Crash,” “Ms. Cat’s Coy Roll,” and “Ms. Dragon’s Head-and-Tail.” They looked like a spiral projectile, a close-range torque injection, and a wide-area torque injection, broad as rain over fields.

Those three alone were a full spread. Maybe too full, a net thrown over everything.

That “Spiral Force”… could it be a kind of Infinite Power?

[Her Spiral Force is probably a niche Real-type Infinite Power.]

“That counts as Real-type?!”

[Mostly, she showed no strong emotions while fighting. A Super-type has stronger recoil, and usually gets more hyped the longer they fight.]

“More hyped… yeah, fair.”

[Isn’t it strange? She fought because you suspected her. She should be aggrieved or mad. Instead she went straight for lethal, and stayed eerily calm.]

[Her ‘same as everyone else’ might touch a lot. Whether you step in—your call.]

“Isn’t that obvious.”

She smiled under her visor, a crescent in the dark.

“I don’t know if she’s a villain now. But if we leave her like this, she’ll become one.”

…

When Ling Yi reached the rooftop, she saw Mobile Warrior ZX and PeaceWarrior. Two mechs, four steel hands, pressed hard on the roof deck, holding it down like a pot lid against a rising boil.