Yekase hung up, pushed off the floor, and shot Shen Shanshan a look like a struck match—time to go.

Shen Shanshan got it, gave Xiaoyuan a nod. “We’ll take our leave.”

“Mm.” Xiaoyuan slapped dust off his pants and stood. “I’m heading back too.”

“Emerald Pool hired you to guard the base?”

“No. Back to the lab.”

Back to the lab… Cold crept up her spine like damp fog. Were Emerald Pool’s human experiments still running even now?

Yekase saw her grimace and tugged her out of the bar, slipping through the doorway like wind through beads.

“Alright, don’t spiral,” Shen said, breath steady like a metronome. “I saw the garrison’s main gate while we ran. Lots of combatants, but not impossible. Want to try?”

“We have to try.” The memory of that man in black raked her ribs like a trapped bird. Lucky he didn’t chase—either ordered to hold the entrance, or he rushed to the front.

She pulled on her goggles, swung astride the staff, and flew toward the garrison gate under Shen’s guiding hand like a needle following a compass.

“Once we’re out, the fight’s probably pushing into the lower living blocks. Emerald Pool will throw whatever officers remain. I’ll need to ditch the mask and jacket—they drag my combat power.”

When a Magical Girl transforms, her clothes get data-stored in a near‑Earth satellite like starlight in a jar. The white sailor suit is an Infinite Power construct, an extension of her body—basically nothing at all.

Layering a jacket over that, like Yekase did, was like pulling thigh‑highs over bare skin and calling it dressed. Awkward and weird as a twisted vine.

“Then take it off. Why warn me?” Shen snorted.

“What do you say?”

“Say what?”

“Magical Girl Icarus has a good rep. I can’t let her appear alongside someone like you,” Yekase said, never missing a beat.

“Someone like me?! Like me?!”

Shen clamped her hands on Yekase’s shoulders and shook hard, waves slapping a skiff, almost shaking her off the staff.

“Don’t shake! I’m gonna fall!”

“The garrison gate’s right ahead!”

“You could’ve led with that!”

Before them rose a steel door like a cliff, dozens of meters high, a meter thick. Squads had just marched out. The gate groaned like grinding thunder and began to close.

“Hold tight. We’re breaching!”

Fear pinched Shen’s breath, but she wrapped her legs around the foot pegs like coiled rope and locked her arms around Yekase’s waist, squeezing the air from her like a bellows.

Yekase didn’t know if the roar was acceleration or pain, but something feral clawed free. She let out a high, kettle‑scream she hadn’t made even half‑dead.

“Parallel‑Passion Continuous Flight Technique—AOOO—”

Emerald Pool’s combatants heard a manic shriek rip the sky. They glanced up and saw two figures riding a stick, speed trailing a ghostly afterimage as they RUSHED out of the garrison.

They tried to focus, but it was flowers in fog, a moon on water—only a blur, then gone.

They burst out, then dove into the intern living block and vanished like fish into reeds.

“…?”

In the alleys, Yekase cut Flight, let inertia carry them like a leaf on a current, and slid far. Control slipped; they tumbled and thumped a shipping container, then stopped.

Luckily, the speed had dropped. Yekase felt nothing but a jolt; only Shen yelped like a paw on a thorn.

Wind‑stiff jaw aching, Yekase stretched, then hauled the curled‑up Shen to her feet. She stripped off the mask and jacket, and in a blink became the glittering, cute‑as‑a‑shell Magical Girl.

She eyed the mask, then eyed Shen. A spark leaped.

“Hey. How about this—put this set on. You be Mechbreaker.”

“???”

“Magical Girl Icarus, fast and fierce, breaks into the garrison and rescues Mechbreaker trapped behind enemy lines. Flawless narrative.”

“????”

“And it kills the rumor that Icarus and Mechbreaker are the same person.”

“But they actually are, right?!”

“Turn something into nothing, and nothing into something. That’s the art of lying.”

“You’re proud of that? You’re impossible!”

No wonder, Shen thought, that a mechanic who’ll do any dirty job short of a righteous megaproject lies like water runs.

She took the mask and jacket, put them on slow, and adjusted the fit like tightening armor straps.

“Hm… hunch more, or the height won’t match.”

“Your demands are insane!”

Her grumble ran through the mask’s voice modulator and came out as Mechbreaker’s classic genderless electronic rasp.

Yekase stroked her chin, checked Shen up and down like a tailor at dawn, then nodded and walked out of the alley.

Outside was a tiny plaza, maybe ten square meters, clutter piled like driftwood. For some reason, a crowd had gathered.

No weapons in sight. Not combatants—just people, eyes like weary lanterns.

“Yay! A Magical Girl! She fought her way out!” a little boy shouted, joy popping like firecrackers.

…

“Huh?”

“Magical Girl! You came back safe!”

“Thank you for protecting us!”

Huh??

Wait. What did I do? “Fought her way out” of where? Do they know I went to the garrison? Doubt fluttered in her chest like moth wings, but her face wore the practiced smile of customer service.

Kids swarmed her like sparrows, shepherding her to the center of the plaza.

Shen, delighted, flashed Yekase a thumbs‑up behind her back and drifted along, a shadow with a grin.

“So… safe return means…?” Yekase asked, careful as walking on wet stone.

“Big‑sister Magical Girl, after you went bam! clang! and knocked down Captain Shao, you said you were going into the garrison to see an old friend. Is that mask sister?”

“Uh…”

Who the hell is Captain Shao?

Her mind tangled like fishing line. She tried to infer, to make sense, but their words felt imported from a parallel world—nonsense spoken like sunrise, impossible to grab.

As she, for the first time, wondered if her memory had slipped a gear, a middle‑aged woman stepped from the crowd and faced her.

The woman trembled like a leaf in rain, head down, afraid to meet Yekase’s eyes—as if before a beast with fangs—voice thin with frost.

“Thank you, great hero, for saving my daughter… thank you… Your kindness, we…”

Her knees buckled; she started to kneel.

Yekase reached to catch her—when something slid in and blocked the drop, jamming the motion like a wedge.

A chair from the plaza’s edge.

“Don’t kneel. Stand up straight,” Shen barked, one boot on the chair, posture a street‑thug’s swagger and a storm’s line.

You trying to scare them? Yekase asked with her eyes.

Shen didn’t look her way.

“We work to live, and living means selling our time,” she said, voice like steel under soot. “You can sell blood. Sell spirit. Hell, sell a kidney. But don’t you sell your spine.”

…

Faces turned to one another, a hush like snow.

Then a few claps fell like first drops. More followed, spreading like rain. Yekase even saw tears glint and get wiped with a wrist, and the fear in their eyes drained away like tide.

“Thank you too, Mechbreaker!”

“So that’s Mechbreaker? Not half as vicious as the papers say…”

“I’m quitting. I’ll find a different road.” “Me too!”

…The mood, somehow, turned bright as a trimmed wick.

Shen blended in with the interns in an instant, laughing and talking, and shot a sly V behind her back toward Yekase.

Yekase read it and nodded. “I’m heading to the front.”

Shen waved her off. “Go, go.”

The kids didn’t care about speeches. They still ringed Yekase, eyes shining like dew. She patted their heads to say she had to go. They whooped and asked her to show a takeoff.

“Celestial Speech—Flight.”

No prefixes this time. She rose slow, like a balloon slipping a child’s hand. She hovered a few seconds, then drifted upward toward the higher blocks in a trail of cheers.

Shen would be safe here. The place was full of little tools to restock her kit; no need to worry. Yekase angled toward the front line and opened Ling Yi’s comm channel.

Ling Yi described the situation in knots and tangles; Yekase caught almost nothing. Thankfully, Lu Yao grabbed the mic, laid it out clean, and the picture finally clicked.

Twin Towers, factoring in other groups and heroes joining, had deployed over seventy percent of their standing force. Old‑guard heroes—led by the Steel Seven and the Rescue‑Exorcist Sisters—pinned them at the top level, a dam holding a flood.

Emerald Pool had already been mauled by those heroes and Twin Towers’ vanguard. What remains had shrunk behind walls in the high‑level administrative district, same height as the combatant garrison, abandoning the living blocks and their workers.

To end this before other factions muddy the water, breaking the administrative district is necessary.

“Perfect. I’m in the intern block closest to the garrison. Which way to admin?”

[Can you see the ‘Eight‑Ancestors Loans’ ad on the wall?]

Yekase scanned the distance and spotted the giant banner where Lu Yao said, bright as a wound.

“I see it.”

[Head that way. We’re in post‑battle recovery. Come whenever.]

“Got it. I’m on my—”

She paused, then blinked. “A‑Ping? You’re chatty today. You hanging with Ling Yi got you all sunny—”

Beep, beep.

Lu Yao cut the line.