Yekase was a brilliant girl inventor, daughter to a world-class Flash Energy engineer, a firefly born under stadium lights. She built piles of delightful, useless contraptions, clockwork toys spinning like pinwheels in a storm. One day, teamed with Flashblade Red, she caught the head of Emerald Pool Industries mid-atrocity—inhuman as rust in a spring.

She hit too hard and blew him apart, thunder in a narrow cave. Radiation washed over her like a toxic rain; she scraped by with life, but her body shrank into a child’s shell. The mind stayed razor-bright, a lantern under winter snow. In any outfit, there’s only one leader.

“Surpass humanity, and you turn into a slime… that’s a perverse joke.” Her sleeves hung long like drowned ribbons; her damp collar slipped from her shoulder like a sliding petal.

She stared at the dark jade, surreal “sculpture,” a ruin shaped like a prayer. Thought spiraled like smoke.

No fixed form meant Neptune could become anything, a river that would mimic any vessel. A too-simple, unstable gene chain meant it adapted at comet-speed, a weed in vacuum that never withered. Those boons turned into the species’ fatal knot, a silk rope around its own throat.

They walked too far down the road of pure survivability and had nothing left but the talent to cling on, a turtle shell with no blade. Chao Liangqun, fused to it, went off the deep end—did he ever have a brain? If he’d just dragged the fight out, he could’ve stalled Yekase and Ling Yi till their strength ebbed like a tide. Instead, he flexed his absorption shield and tried swimming through an ultimate, peacocking till he drowned in his own wave.

“So, Doctor, you’re… what now?”

“Ah, apparently, smaller.”

“I can tell!”

Yekase scratched her gluey hair—seaweed clinging to fingers—disgusted and helpless without a shower. Her voice, now young and soft, still sliced clean as paper: “I burned too much Flash Energy detonating it. In the middle of high-intensity evolution, Neptune bathed me in radiation. It exploited the gap and forced an unexpected fusion.”

“C-can’t follow…”

“Simple version: my native Flash Energy ran dry to a flicker. Neptune seeped in. My evolution got steered by Neptune’s morphing, and to adapt to energy shortage—my body condensed.”

“Once you recover, you’ll revert?”

“I’d hope…”

Then it hit her—there is no “pre-seventeen-year-old Yekase.” Who sculpted this face after the shrink?

As if answering, the gelatinous eggshell around her rippled like tide-pulled jelly, slid back onto her, and reshaped into a dress and cloak, moonlight stitched to fabric.

“Are you protecting me?” Her voice fell like a pebble into a still pond.

No reply.

Yekase stood in Eden Zero-Type’s open palm, a sparrow on bronze.

Her view changed—no landmarks here, but she was shorter, horizon lowered like a curtained stage.

Her abilities—Flash Energy was a dry well, but the foundations held, bedrock under sand. It would refill, sooner or later. Sorcery flow was steady. The teleport chest hummed. All the gears clicked.

“I feel you by my side?”

She transformed. The words lit like sparks in oil.

It worked, though her form had shrunk another size, a candle cut in half.

“Alright. Smaller impact than I feared—”

“—Doctor, is that something you can say out loud?”

“What?”

“You look like seven or eight, soaked like rain, and you’re standing there all serious, analyzing and checking. It’s kind of killing me.”

“???”

Yekase wanted to object, but everything Ling Yi said was true. No foothold for a retort; the rock crumbled beneath her feet.

“…So what do you want? Roleplay an eight-year-old?”

“I’d absolutely watch baby Doctor.”

“Sorry. I’ve been mature since kindergarten.”

She hopped down from Eden Zero-Type’s hand and kicked Chao Liangqun twice, quick as an irritated sparrow. She pried the Polaris Staff free from cracked, hardened slime.

She almost flung it away; her stance wobbled like a reed in wind. She couldn’t lift it.

When she designed it, she wanted full iron for the heft, and a last-resort club if things got ugly. Swordforging Manor forged it thick, a steel pillar.

Nine years later she’d shrunk a notch; Flash Energy could just barely boost her enough to carry it.

Now she’d shrunk again.

Checkmate.

While she fretted, the cloak sprouted seven or eight thin tendrils, pale vines uncoiling. They wrapped her forearms, coiling down below the wrist.

“Eh. I can lift it now… What are you, exactly?”

She weighed the staff once. Then she stashed it back into the teleport chest, a magician pocketing a wand.

With Chao dead, this was likely the only Neptune that had regained active life—a lone ember after a wildfire. It glued itself to her, shielded her in the blast, and now boosted her strength like a plug-in welded to the spine. It was so good it made suspicion bloom like thorns.

Did just touching it mid-assault earn all this?

Yekase never believed in pies falling from the sky, nor in love at first glance. Even Professor F, who helped her tons—well, fine, she’d barged in offering to build Ling Yi a robot. That put her halfway in Neptune’s camp.

But Professor F was earnest and blazing; it showed at first look. Neptune didn’t speak; its responses were tiny ripples. So far it only offered unasked favors. Bring it home and it might attack at midnight—who knew?

No. She had to get out of this dress.

If it truly meant well, then—too bad.

As if feeling her decision, the Neptune-dress began to writhe, a tide pulling away from shore.

“Mm? Dropping the act now—”

It sloughed off her like liquid silk and pooled at her feet, gathering into a basketball-sized blob. It looked like it had when that bit-part old man held it, a prop in a cheap play.

Yekase stepped back, a knife drawn in her chest.

No, could she even fight like this? Close combat was gone, a sword with no grip—

The blob rippled. It tucked and unfurled.

It became a cat.

“Meow.”

“I’m warning you—don’t use a cat to lower my guard.”

The Neptune cat wore cream fur like cloud-milk. Its limbs, tail, ears, and face were seal-brown, dusk on snow. Its round eyes were lake-blue, a glacier thawed.

It had become a Siamese.

“…”

Yekase and the Neptune cat stared at each other, two moons across a black river.

“…………”

The Neptune cat clung to her right leg, a soft anchor. It circled her ankles, a ribbon chasing its own wind. It flopped sideways and presented its belly, a velvet crescent. It purred like a small engine, a low river.

“Grrr-rrr-rrr…”

“………………”

Ling Yi laughed herself breathless in the cockpit. “Doctor, if you want to pet it, pet it. Don’t mind me.”

Yekase crouched, slow as setting down a lantern, and reached out.

The Neptune cat placed its head in her palm, eyes half-closed like dusk.

“…………”

Yekase felt a dizzy surge, a wheel spin in her skull.

Two figures rose in her mind like twin constellations: Magical Girl Icarus and the past Dr Ika.

Icarus said: Take it home!

Dr Ika said: I want to take it home, but the risk is a cliff!

Icarus said: Because it’s risky, we bring it home and watch it at arm’s length! If not me, who goes to hell?

Dr Ika said… Dr Ika said…

Dr Ika was gone, a candle snuffed.

“—Alright. I have a cat!”

Yekase scooped up the Neptune cat, a cradle of spring.

Its little ears twitched twice. Its head settled on her shoulder blade, obedient as a folded wing.

“You need a name… How about nep?”

“Awroo.”

The Neptune cat nipped her lightly, a warning like a breeze.

Not fond of it? Yeah, fair. It helped take down the Hive Lord; it was probably sick of its old boss already. Calling it that stale name would be salt on the tongue.

“Doctor, we still need to get topside. Think while we fly.”

“…Oh. I forgot we’re underground.”

Ling Yi returned Eden Zero-Type to the hangar. The Blade Armor slid back to its original shell, a moon shedding shadow. She meant to carry Yekase on her back. She glanced at the cat. Then she moved behind Yekase and lifted her in a princess carry, arms curved like a safe harbor.

Yekase’s body was small, soft, a curled seed; she naturally tucked herself to match Ling Yi’s arm arc. The cat sat on her chest like a warm stone.

“I carry the doctor; the doctor carries the cat. My vassal’s vassal isn’t my vassal; my cat’s cat isn’t my cat.”

No camera, no snapshot, no way to print this unfair level of cute—what a tragedy. Ling Yi shook her head, smiling like sun on snow.

“Who’s your cat… Eh, whatever.”

Yekase had turned into this, anger a spark that wouldn’t catch. She pulled her legs into Ling Yi’s arm, fully surrendering to the hold, a leaf on a stream.

“Then, welcome aboard the return line.”

Kagari’s thrusters spat tongues of flame, a dragon exhaling. They slid through the ceiling’s shredded hole and climbed the tunnel they’d carved, slow as smoke.

The ride was quiet.

The cat didn’t meow, a soft engine idling.

Yekase couldn’t figure Neptune out—how it mimicked body heat and fur so well, how a lab-bound thing gathered these human details. Her trust wasn’t full; her guard sat upright like a watchman.

But the warmth and heartbeat at her chest, even if false, sent a feeling she couldn’t name, a new tide filling an old bay. As if she’d walked the true hell and crawled back, only to meet a new life, the weight of living pressing back into her palms.

Soon the room where they’d parted from Lu Yao appeared at the tunnel’s end, a familiar stage behind a warped curtain. The walls, twisted tight by MAYA’s final spin, still snarled, fangs of concrete. No seam for an exit.

“Doctor, can you break the wall?”

“I never learned offensive spells.”

That was a lie. She’d learned one Flame Burst Spell, but its power was… comedic. Modern magic should be standardized, outputs equal as coins. Maybe the system flagged her heart as half-hearted.

“You played with Alchemy. You even dropped a meteor. Why keep refusing offense magic? I don’t get you,” Ling Yi said, head shaking like a willow.

“That’s the dignity of a desk worker!” Yekase paused, then sighed. “The meteor was me getting carried away. I wanted to leave Lu Yao a badass impression.”

“Now look at you. Close combat is out. Be my fragile backline mage.”

“It won’t last long!”

Yekase protested, then realized she had no idea how long the kid-form would stick. Bad luck might freeze her like this forever. That bleak future wasn’t impossible. The thought hit like a blackout. Her vision went dark.