[What?! You filthy—how dare you—]

MAYA slipped off the headset, and Spiral Force poured in like a black tide coiling through roots.

The plastic shell, a cheap shell of a beetle, couldn’t take a force born for ruin, and it crumbled to chaff like sun-brittled leaves.

Silence fell for a heartbeat, a lake surface smoothed by wind dying.

MAYA showed the three of them a smile like a cracked porcelain mask, uglier than tears that actually fall.

“Haha… like this, I’ve got nothing left,” she said, voice like a string about to snap.

Yekase hadn’t expected MAYA to stand firm at the crucial step, a pine against storm, cutting off a pointless fight, and her impression shifted like light through bamboo; she soothed her softly, a hand to steady a shaking lantern.

“No, you’re not empty. At least, you still have the family in the countryside waiting like lamps at dusk, your life, your Spiral Force… and you have us.”

—We.

MAYA tasted the word like snow on the tongue.

Then the restraint broke; she folded to the floor like a puppet whose strings were cut, and she cried loud, rain finally finding the earth.

“…But I… I really want to do something, for everyone… someone like me… (snif) I’m slow… I don’t know… I don’t know… can I still be a hero?” Her voice was a sparrow beating at a window.

“Wanting to help doesn’t mean you must be a hero,” Yekase said, voice a warm coat in cold wind. “Heroes don’t need licenses stamped like passports.”

She flicked her eyes, a lantern signal, and Ling Yi went to hold her up, steady as a tree trunk in flood.

Even if you break, please break after the incident, she thought, a steel wire under silk; the final boss was a thunderhead on the horizon, and every fighter was rain you pray for.

“Ahem. We’re heading deeper to fight Emerald Pool’s leader… if you can, lend us your Spiral Force, one arm to push the wheel.”

“…Okay…” The word came out like a shy leaf.

“I won’t give you afternoon tea, or hire a crowd to chant your code name like a drumline,” Yekase said as she crouched before MAYA, bringing herself down like a gull to water.

“I’ll only say, ‘Thank you for fighting for the people.’ Then let’s shake hands, simple as meeting under a village tree.”

The offered hand was caught by two small hands that clung like ivy.

They were cared-for hands, yet the fingertips held a trace of roughness, like grains of soil that never wash out.

“We’re both farmer’s kids. Some luck, huh,” she said, a field sharing wind.

“Uh… u-uh…” MAYA sobbed on, a stream thinning to rivulets.

Only a thin, hiccuping weep echoed in the room, a reed flute in a cave.

Ling Yi stroked MAYA’s back, a palm smoothing ruffled feathers; Lu Yao folded her arms, impatience like a cat’s tail flicking, while her eyes kept watch like a hawk on the wind.

After many descents stacked like layers of shale, the four were now far underground, deeper than any line of Twin Towers City’s subway, a whale’s belly of earth; thankfully the environmental system still breathed, keeping temperature and oxygen as even as a winter pond.

When MAYA’s emotions settled, a pond after rain, Yekase called the march forward with the clap of a drum.

But this room seemed to hold no second door, a cul-de-sac of stone.

—Boom.

Rumble-rumble-rumble!

“What’s that sound?!” The question flew like a startled crow.

“The floor! The whole room’s tilting down!” The claim tipped like a boat in a sudden gust.

“Huh?!” The syllable jumped like a fish breaking surface.

The layout—halls and rooms—had run in a simple chain since they’d entered from the admin gate, each pair of rooms linked by a corridor pitched about forty-five degrees downward, stair-steps into the dark, and it had ended at this room like a path swallowed by fog.

Now the world lurched as if a giant hand tried to straighten that tilted chain, snapping it into a plumb line that fell like rain.

Yekase scooped MAYA up like a child from floodwater, spun, and set her onto the little plane Lu Yao had summoned, a swallow of metal.

She cranked her Infinite Power vision to full blaze, and loosed a new-won range-sense that spread like ripples on ink.

Unseen, Neptune in her red dress, settled now like an obedient tide, slipped out two fine tendrils like spider silk and kissed both sides of Yekase’s neck.

—?!

“Doctor, what do you see?” The question cut like a bell through fog.

Yekase’s eyes flew wide, twin coals catching draft; with Catalysis and a strange support current like moonlight on black water, the feedback sharpened to a blade, and she “saw” the underground city like a lantern map unfurling.

No—she saw its skin, the outer shell that wrapped the whole like a seed pod against soil.

It was one colossal vertical shaft, a well to the world’s marrow.

She gazed further down, a fox peering into a ravine.

Data, signals, intelligence—waves of it crashed in together like a tide under a storm moon.

She saw again that false starry sky from that night, spun by returning exoforms like moths making constellations.

Ten million parts, gears, circuits—huge up close, dust in the whole—meshed below their feet, layers of ant trails weaving a hive.

Those red eyes that once watched the Causal Horizon tightened like a lens, and her mind compressed the tsunami into a single shape, a mountain on a map.

Even so, her brain went white as snow for a beat, limbs frozen like a deer in a beam.

Scenes like this—beyond a self’s reach—never get kinder, no matter how many times you drink the sea.

A machine both exquisite and vast, a dragon skeleton of steel, built by an organization whipping thousands of laborers day and night, hid under Twin Towers City like a second root.

And them? They were only a few grains of sand in the gears, blown in by chance.

Ants before humankind; Earth afloat in universe; so slight it was almost laughable, a candle under noon sun.

Yekase’s mouth fell open by reflex, a shell gaping at tide.

Breath turned hard, as if something was swallowing her like a whale taking a single gulp—

“Doctor!” Ling Yi’s hands clamped her shoulders like anchors and hauled her from that quiet abyss.

“What did you see? Are you okay?!” Her voice was a rope thrown across a chasm.

“…A tunnel-boring machine…” The words came slow, like stones rolling.

“What?” The question snapped like flint.

Yekase didn’t know why she shouted so loud, like thunder chasing itself: “The bottom of Emerald Pool’s undercity is a gigantic tunnel-boring machine, digging down without end!”

“The so-called residential zone is just a warehouse for essential materials, labels swapped like masks! You fought in there—think hard—how many dorms and shops compared to the sea of containers?!”

Fuel, machinery, parts—their containers hid inside the living area’s ocean of containers, minnows among minnows.

Even if found mid-battle, an intruder would call them ordinary warehouses, never string the red thread.

Ling Yi looked down beneath their feet, an abyss peered back, and asked, disbelief sharp as frost: “Digging down?! For what—”

“To touch the source of Catalysis,” Yekase said, words rolling with a distant thunder, a train in the deep.

And the tunnel-boring machine—like an iron earthworm—began to move, unstoppable as a river in flood.

Yekase didn’t bother with secret identities scattering like paper masks; she drew out her Alchemy keyboard, and her fingers flew so fast they left afterimages like fireflies.

“Catalysis isn’t from Emerald Pool’s devices. It’s from the Earth under our feet—the planet’s unfathomed heart where no boot ever trod—where something closer to the essence of Infinite Power breathes like magma!”

“—Re-Genesis Bomb!” The name rang like a bell dropped down a well.

Flash Energy smoke spread invisible and colorless, a ghost fog filling the vast hollow.

“MAYA! I need a favor!” The call cracked like a whip.

“W-what?!” She jolted on the little plane’s wing, a cat startled from a nap.

“Use your Spiral Force on this room. Wrench the whole corridor off—sever us from the undercity above!” Her command pointed like a spear.

“I can’t! Not at this scale!” Panic fluttered like a trapped moth.

“This Alchemy amplifies raw Infinite Power handling!” Yekase’s promise struck like flint to tinder.

Alchemy…

MAYA reeled, eyes wide like moons; she hadn’t thought this Magical Girl only wore cute clothes, rode a staff, and flung bright beams—she even wielded Alchemy, a second script carved into stone.

This was a real Magical Girl’s height; she, who’d borrowed an IP’s heat, felt like a paper kite in a storm.

“I’ll try my best…!—‘Miss Dragon’s Now You See, Now You Don’t!’” Her shout leapt like a fox over a wall.

As Spiral Force punched in, the surroundings shrieked with the groan of collapsing frame, woodwind becoming metal, briefly drowning the TBM’s awakening like waves burying drums.

“…Feels like it might work!” she gasped, hope lighting like dawn on frost.

The entire corridor twisted as if clenched by a giant hand wringing a wet towel, steel groaning like pines in gale.

“Good, keep that torque! And I’ve got another favor for you two,” Yekase said, and when she said you two, her eyes rested on Lu Yao like a lantern settling.

“Lu Yao, take her above the break. Once we separate from the city proper, I want you to guard the residents like a wall. Emerald Pool’s fighters and admin—handle them as you please; I won’t object.”

“What about you?” Lu Yao asked, her voice a knife without sheen.

“Thanks for the concern.” Yekase smiled, a crescent against night.

“Wasn’t for you.” Lu Yao’s look was a pebble skipping twice.

“Ling Yi and I head down to wreck the TBM,” Yekase said, words an arrow finding wind.

“Got it!” Ling Yi answered, a drumbeat. “…How do we get back after?”

“Eh, we dig out with KAINA,” Yekase said, casual as flicking a fan.

“Dig out?!” The repeat jumped like a spark.

If it were just Yekase, letting Emerald Pool keep drilling to brush more secrets of Infinite Power would be best; she could fish in that river like a heron.

But with rival groups circling like wolves, even if something was found, it’d never end up on her desk; better to bury the plan while it’s still a whisper, a seed under stone.

“Go!” she cried, a thunderclap.

At her urging, Lu Yao pulled the little plane straight up on the spot, a kite in sudden lift, ferrying MAYA into the corridor now gone vertical like a well.

Yekase watched them leave the room and vanish into the twisting passage, silhouettes swallowed like minnows by kelp.

“But Doctor, the TBM’s deeper. How do we get there?” Ling Yi asked, the problem a nail in the beam.

“Easy—we tear our way there!” Yekase’s grin flashed like a blade.

Black particles gathered around her hands like storm gnats, red lightning flickering through them like veins.

Ling Yi hadn’t seen this trick—was this Neptune’s new gift, night ink in daylight?

“‘Lamp to the Underworld River’—dark magic, lend me your hand!” she called, the invocation a bell toll in a crypt.

Yekase clamped the Polaris Staff between her thighs, tipped her whole body sideways like a swallow rolling, and, upside down, let go, dropping like a black meteor into a shaft of night.

“So cool! Then me too—Blade Spell: Storm Deflection!” Ling Yi refused to be the second drum; she raised the railgun and sent a torrent of emerald light through the room, a spear of aurora that nailed the far wall.

The wall stood under the railgun’s baptism like a cliff under surf; look close, and at the contact point a clear discontinuity yawned, as if something siphoned the energy away like water into karst.

Then came Yekase’s strike.

No flashy effect, only two finished black claws, gleaming like real metal knives, drove deep into the wall like talons into ice.

They carved six shocking gashes, canyon lines; a dull black flame licked their edges like oil fire, halting the wall’s self-repair the way frost stops sap.

Yekase kicked the wall—now the floor—and sprang off like a cat, then shouted up, voice a flare: “Aim here! Max output!”

“Got it! ZEROS!”

“Code-00! ZEROS!”

She hadn’t even savored the dark power from Shanon, a wine on the tongue, when her vision went blinding white, snow at noon.

“Luminous Infinity!”