The world around her seemed to slow, like syrup sliding down glass.

That delicate, ice-cold grenade traced a pretty arc, a silver swallow diving straight for Yekase’s forehead.

If she kept upping the blast yield and smearing it on her own face, maybe that ironclad cheek of hers could grow a temporary blast resistance. But time, like sand through fingers, was gone.

She’d die.

She’d be blown to pieces.

She’d be pineapple-chunked, a grotesque still frame no one wanted to see.

Her one-of-a-kind Flash Energy–fused body, her one-of-a-kind genius engineer brain—against modern firepower, they were sandbags in a storm.

Despair prickled through Yekase’s chest like frost. She didn’t even have time to juke. Yet a faint spark of Mind Energy woke a feral will to live, dragging her hands—

Those hands still clutching the SG550 stolen off a trooper—into a move she hadn’t dared to imagine.

She copied the pudgy trooper’s grip, swung like a ballplayer, and used the skeletonized steel stock to slap the grenade away.

It sailed clean into the one-meter-square hole behind her, a dark mouth waiting in the stacked metal earth.

…

—BOOM!!

After what felt like an age, the blast finally roared by with a hot wave, a dragon’s breath skimming over Yekase’s head.

“Whoa… whoa—oh, hell…”

Yekase sagged against the container wall, lungs pumping like bellows in winter air.

“—Doctor?! You okay?!”

“N-not hurt… this time. Next time, the coin won’t flip my way…”

The trooper who’d almost pulled a cheap trick dropped his head and died right after the throw, never knowing his last toss wiped an Emerald Pool squad off the board.

“…Also, this is enemy turf. Use callsigns.”

“Oh, oh! Got it, Mechbreaker.”

“…”

Maybe just call me Doctor.

Yekase wanted to snark, but the genius who approved that dumb callsign was her, and the one who told Ling Yi to use it… was also her. The mirror offered no mercy.

She dumped her lifesaving SG550 with the cracked buttstock onto the floor like shedding a husk, then stood.

She stole a glance through the window cutout, saw a rainbow smear of “mosaic” on the floor like broken stained glass, then headed back to Ling Yi.

From the seams of Kagari’s breastplate, the little iron beast-bird wriggled out and chirped in a tin-bright trill.

“Chit! Chit-chit! Chit!”

“Huh? It can chirp too? What’s it saying—”

“—You two still have time to chat.”

At that voice, Yekase and Ling Yi turned as one, like reeds bending to the same wind, and looked back the way they came.

Lu Yao strode in between the containers, her gleaming big bolt-action slung over her shoulder, her pace as steady as a drill-ground metronome.

“You’re here.”

“Don’t get chummy with me.”

Behind the mask, Yekase stuck out her tongue, quick as a cat.

She’d thought Lu Yao’s goodwill had climbed to a respectable number. Turns out she’d just been living among easygoing people too long, and the warmth had tricked her skin.

“…Then I’ll leave Flashblade Red in your care. I’m heading deeper to pull someone out.”

“Huh? We can’t go together?” Ling Yi’s gaze skittered from Lu Yao like a skittish bird.

Yekase shook her head. “Too conspicuous together. The returned coordinates say her cell is deep.”

“How deep?”

“About a hundred meters. Basement level thirty.”

“Oh… uh?”

Ling Yi had braced for “five floors,” or if fate bit hard, “ten.” That number hit her like ice water.

Wait. That’s not the same scale at all.

Thirty floors down?

Do people even live that deep?

She looked at the seam between containers under her boots, a dark river.

These things… stacked a hundred meters like a metal canyon?

“They say Emerald Pool has a giant shield machine. Judging by this underground cavern, looks like that rumor holds water.”

Lu Yao scanned the shadows with a hunter’s calm, then turned for the “main road,” a strip of flat ground laid with turned container side panels like makeshift stepping stones.

It was only panels laid end to end, no welds, a brittle ribbon trailing deeper into the iron hive.

Yekase tapped herself with a Levitation Spell, waved at Ling Yi, and slipped through a gap like a fish into reeds.

“Uh…”

Ling Yi had no choice but to stiffen her spine and follow Lu Yao, a red leaf in a cold stream.

“PeaceWarrior, ma’am?”

…

“Hi? I can go point, right?”

…

“This gun looks sick. I’ve got a railgun too, but it’s locked to another form.”

…

She won’t talk!

Ling Yi hunched her shoulders like a turtle and flailed for a script she didn’t have.

They followed the main strip down, dropping the height of three or four stories. Then Lu Yao suddenly veered into a side alley, an eddy off the current, pulling Ling Yi along.

Inside the shadow, Lu Yao pitched the bolt-action aside. The meter-long Mosin–Nagant dissolved into motes before it kissed the ground, fireflies snuffed out. She palmed a Glock from the small of her back, matte black as midnight stone.

That fighting rhythm…!

Just like Doctor’s.

That was as far as Ling Yi’s brain got before the engine noise drowned it.

Lu Yao checked the magazine by habit, the click a metronome click, and finally spoke. “Ika asked me to protect you.”

Even saying that, she didn’t meet Ling Yi’s eyes, her gaze a blade pointed past her shoulder.

“Oh, um… thanks?”

“It’s my job.”

Ling Yi didn’t know what debt Lu Yao owed the Doctor, and didn’t dare ask. She gave Lu Yao a once-over, then asked, worry flickering like a candle.

“Hey, you’ve got no armor at all. Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt? Not even covering your face—what if someone recognizes you…”

…Lu Yao’s hands paused on the mag, the rhythm snagged like thread on a nail.

No one had ever asked her that.

Not once, since she became the PeaceWarrior.

She used to wear a Beast-King Silver helmet, a moon-white shell over her head. After her teammates left, anger burned like dry grass, and she threw away disguise and plates, keeping only a memorial-tier energy barrier like a ghostly cloak.

If they recognized her, if they caught her—then she’d go down and find her team. That thought was a stone in her pocket. Yet habit carved into bone made her erase every trace; most who saw her face got a mouthful of lead the next heartbeat. Somehow, barefaced, she’d fought all the way to now.

And then she met Yekase.

Lu Yao admitted she’d been wrong, and just as she wished, she got roped—half tricked—into a bond. No, call it a link at best, thin as red thread.

Then that thread tugged a teenage girl, skittish as a hare, right in front of her.

The girl asked why she didn’t protect herself.

…So naive it almost made you laugh.

Normally, the “PeaceWarrior” would’ve cut back with cold sarcasm, a shard of ice to end the talk.

She couldn’t. Lu Yao couldn’t.

…

“…Stay with me.”

“Doc said you’re best at range, so I’ll run a melee form to cover it, yeah? You want me on breach or on guard?” Ling Yi tilted her head, a sparrow asking the wind.

The voice channel had been open. Yekase’s voice crackled in her ear like a dry match: [Her close-quarters is trash. She’ll get ambushed in clutter. Use Gauntlet to babysit.]

“Got it! Gauntlet!”

“Code-03! KAINA!”

—CLANG!

“Uh…”

She jammed.

The savage mechanical arms from both shoulder plates, plus the additive armor bulking her frame like a musclebound Ultraman suit, ballooned her size to twice over.

The containers on both sides groaned and bent like reeds in too-strong wind. Ling Yi herself was wedged like a cork.

“…” Lu Yao stared, silence like a drawn bow.

“…Kagari.”

She switched back to the real power form without all that cartoon muscle, Kagari’s lines like a red fox blade.

Behind the visor, Ling Yi’s face flamed the same shade as her armor, heat rising like steam.

Luckily, Lu Yao’s practiced indifference bled the awkwardness away like fog. She checked both containers—no stir within—then pressed on with Ling Yi in tow.

They cut through two, three alleys, a maze of rust and echoes. At a corner, Lu Yao snapped back and threw an arm out, a gate bar in the dark.

“Small squad ahead. Pushing in.”

“Do we hit them?”

Lu Yao didn’t answer. She pulled a PKM into her hands, the belt drum a moon-round belly.

Even a gun-zero like Ling Yi could read that big drum: a machine gun, thunder in a box.

…Wait, what?

In Ling Yi’s eyes, for a split second, Lu Yao overlapped with Yekase like twin ghosts.

The woman pushing thirty, terrible at hand-to-hand, shouldered the PKM and ripped sideways into the lane, a red banner cutting wind.

“She’s rushing, of course she’s rushing—aaah!”

Ling Yi yelled, fired her Sky Striker’s thrusters to full burn, and leapt from the alley like a spark.

The commotion dragged the squad’s eyes. Five troopers turned, and saw a red-armored figure barreling in, blade aflame, a war-cry ripping like a comet tail.

Behind her, a gaunt woman radiating three-days-no-sleep energy planted her feet, machine gun cradled like a hungry beast.

“Blazing Rekindle!”

Whoom—kraak—

Rat-tat-tat-tat—

When the smoke thinned like torn gauze, only Ling Yi and Lu Yao were still standing.

“Wow, hitting like this is kinda… fun…”

Ling Yi looked at her hands, flexed twice, and couldn’t quite believe the strength thrumming like a river under ice.

Yekase’s calls always played it safe, like she feared Ling Yi would take a scratch. This kick-the-door tactic—close your eyes and go—was sunrise-new to her.

It also stunned her how reckless Lu Yao could be, a blade thrown from the hand.

She glanced back. Lu Yao tossed the PKM behind her like a shed skin, and drew her mascot Glock, a trusty black pebble in hand.

Weapon swap, huh?

Truth was, Lu Yao didn’t like dry, no-smoke rushes. She gambled here to test Ling Yi’s reaction… and because five vanilla troopers were hardly worth a breath.

“We keep moving.”

Lu Yao didn’t even pant. She stepped over the bodies like stones in a stream and walked on.

Way more stamina than the old Doctor… Ling Yi noted to herself, thoughts fluttering like paper.

“…Huh? Did you just say ‘we’?”

“Cut the chatter.”

“You did, right? You did. So we’re kind of teammates now, yeah?”

Lu Yao ignored her and slipped into another side path, a shadow folding into deeper shadow.