Yekase finally set her floating island’s login ID to one name: Ambition Divine Ship.

After bidding Labyrinth City farewell, the entire island opened its throttle like a hunting falcon and arrowed straight for Huaxia.

She sat outside the railings, mood bright as lanterns at a festival, short legs dangling and swaying like two windchimes. From this height the city looked like a chip etched with circuits, and the glowing nodes were Infinite Power flowing through the traces. Clouds streamed beneath her toes, and a glance upward found the night unfurling into a boundless, star-salted ocean.

Between the MOON and the STARS——

Starships, the International Space Station, closed-loop frontier bases—on the back of Infinite Power, humanity had a chance to sail deeper into the dark sea.

But decades passed, and our stride stalled at the lunar “front line,” like soldiers camping at the shore. Every spark of creation, every new blade of innovation, was turned against rival organizations. Off-world exploration was thankless sand, and colleagues lurked like jackals ready to steal your camp—who’d choose that trek?

“Souls shackled by gravity, huh…” Her voice drifted like a sigh into the night.

She’d already picked a room on the second floor, the outermost by the stairs, so a hand on the spiral railing could slide her down to the lab door in ten seconds, like a scene spliced straight from a sci-fi flick thirty years old.

After she carved out the study, four rooms still stood empty, like lantern alcoves awaiting light. Once her sister and mom moved in, two spares would remain. Around her, folks mostly had warm households; only Lu Yao and Shen Shanshan lived like lone cranes in winter.

Shen Shanshan had money now, so that’s fine—once Lu Yao truly joins, invite her to move in too. She acts so grim and storm-laden, like an iceberg wired to blow; who knows what her private life looks like behind that frost.

But Yekase still faced one big, serious knot:

Ling Yi, Shen Shanshan, Lu Yao, Jiang Bailu…

This bunch of barely-allies, aside from Jiang Bailu, were all brawlers, all thunder and fists!

Even if she could rope Carol in, even if Mira scrubbed clean and started anew, that’d be brawler +2, more iron to the pile!

Why call them allies and not a team? Because a team needs roles, like instruments in an orchestra. Brawlers are the backbone, sure, but if everyone’s a hammer, you’re just a storming gang.

At minimum you need five posts: captain, strategist, executor, equipment support, rescue support. With those, a team finally has its bones.

Take recent examples in Twin Towers City. Steel Seven and Lily Sword are proper teams, positions neat as a well-laid chessboard. The Rescue Nuns skew healer-heavy, but not enough to tilt the boat.

And her side?

A captain needs nerve for decisions and a voice to win trust, someone who shoulders the sky when it cracks. Yekase could just about wear that helm.

A strategist—the vice—sets direction and cadence, decides which fights to take and which to play dead, keeps the team alive like a careful gardener. Yekase had been doing that grind.

An executor sweeps shadows clean, digs up intel, watches organizational tides, the team’s hidden silhouette under moonlight. She wanted to say Shen Shanshan, but remembered how Shen blew her cover at Emerald Pool in one heartbeat—fine, Yekase would do it herself.

Equipment support and rescue support: one mends steel, one mends flesh. Yekase could patch gear, but her first aid was a blank page.

So the conclusion is “just find a doctor,” right?

No, something in that equation squeaked wrong…

“——You’re dumping the whole job on me!” The frustration hit first, like a wave slapping the pier.

Her strength drained like water through fingers, and she flopped backward, half-buried in the lawn stabilized by magic, green as a silk carpet.

No good. Keep this up and it’s 9-9-6 again, a treadmill of neon nights—then burn out and bolt, the same old script replayed like a tired drama.

While those thoughts eddied, Ambition Divine Ship finally drifted over Twin Towers City, and her gloom lifted a notch like a cloud parting for sun. She straightened and sat up.

From this height the brother towers looked like cute little capacitors stuck in a circuit board, small parts with big ambition.

She checked the time. The island was so vast it disguised speed like a calm river with a fast undercurrent; in reality it beat her personal flight by miles, crossing the continent in roughly three hours. No other craft along the lane—traffic smooth as a polished road.

She peered down between her knees and saw the old town shrunk to a fingernail, a tiny relic on a palm. Her eyes narrowed, a glint like a hawk’s.

Maybe… after so long… a free fall?

By the time she thought it, she’d already stepped off the ledge.

…………

…………

Liu RuoYuan was tidying the rental.

Yekase had only lived here a few months, yet the piles had grown like coral, one piece at a time, nothing discarded. Broken things she couldn’t fix on the spot stayed like sleeping stones. Liu picked up a small machine whose seams had collected a fat coat of dust, ash-gray as winter.

How did she spend those six years…

“Not that I can’t—just that I don’t want to,” Yekase had told her once, words light as a leaf but heavy as iron.

Liu remembered her own careless “Don’t get too deep, okay,” then eyed the room again. This slum-level life was Yekase’s choice; taking gigs was Yekase’s choice. If not for wanting her and Mom to live better, that genius craftswoman would probably rent forever, a lighthouse in a shabby alley.

Her phone rang, crisp as a bell. She checked the screen—speak of the devil—Yekase calling.

“Hey? You land yet?”

[Yeah, I landed. Step outside and look up.]

There was wind caught in the earpiece, a roar like surf—yet tonight was still, a clear night with quiet air.

“…Huh?”

Liu set down the plastic bin, stepped out the door like crossing a threshold into a stage.

“You aren’t doing cordless bungee again—”

She lifted her gaze to the ad-plastered sky, neon like floating banners.

She saw it at once—

A meteor.

A fire-lit stone, burning like a comet-tail, punching through the ad projections and swelling in her vision like a rising moon.

…Okay, time for a wish?

“Like hell! You trying to blow up the whole street?”

[Nope, because a Magical Girl is a hero who guards the peace of the block.]

“So you do remember you’re a Magical Girl!”

Before the words finished, the meteor blinked out like a snuffed lantern, and Yekase’s figure snapped into view, still in the posture of standing on that falling star. Her sailor skirt had been slammed by wind pressure so hard it hung inverted—

—and yet it didn’t fly up!

Even that gale couldn’t flip her skirt, a stubborn flag in a storm!

She dropped till her face was clear as a portrait, then shouted, “Continuous Levitation Spell,” and slid into an invisible force field, decelerating fast yet steady, like a feather finding ground. She touched down light as a cat in front of Liu RuoYuan.

She grinned, eyes bright. “Supersonic greetings to you!”

“I’m past caring…” Liu sighed, winded like a long-distance runner. “I’m cleaning your mountain of junk. You eaten?”

“No.”

“I have. Go feed yourself somewhere.”

“Huh? So cruel.” Her mouth said cruel, but her smile stayed sunny as spring. She canceled her transformation, headed to the shed, and rolled out her e-scooter like a faithful steed. “Once you finish, move to the new home.”

“Oh, sure—”

Liu stepped back inside, tossed the words off casually, then froze and blinked as if a firefly flicked her nose.

New home.

New home?

New home!

She ran outside, but Yekase had already ridden off, leaving only a pale-blue circular portal blooming beside the door like a water lily.

“What is…?!”

Liu gingerly slid one foot through, then stepped onto stone paving on the other side, cool as river-washed rock.

It was real. It wasn’t a dream.

She crossed the portal and looked past the fence, and the view from thirty thousand meters slapped her with dizziness, a spinning sky—she was really on the floating island!

The courtyard alone was bigger than their entire rental, and the little villa at the end of the stone path had two floors like a stacked bento. Yekase had said it came with a lab and a hangar, so there had to be a basement too, a hidden root.

“Bread will come, and the big house will come…” The old promise rippled through her like warm tea.

That person promised, and she did it. That person always did it.

Liu pushed open the unlocked door and stepped into the house. No furniture yet, just bare rooms like blank canvases, but that’s a shopping trip later. She circled the first floor, noting the living room, the kitchen glow, the bathroom tiles… then climbed to the second floor and, inside the upstairs bathroom, found an en-suite with a bath.

The bath was custom, requested by Yekase from the air-island artisans of Silver City. Especially that white porcelain tub: two meters long, one and a half wide, one deep, big enough for two to soak without bumping knees; squeeze a bit and three could sit like lotus buds. Jets were built flush into the tub wall, neat as pearls—looked like a massage rig.

In short, she wanted to soak. And she wanted group soaks. Thinking of the cramped rental shower where two people felt like sardines, Liu got the message and chuckled.

She wasn’t worried Yekase would take advantage of any naïve girls either. Big bro’s character was solid as wood grain, and with her personality, odds were she’d get taken advantage of instead.

Liu drifted out of the bath like a satisfied cat, saw the wooden plaque on the outermost room—“Yekase’s Room”—and promptly claimed the room opposite like planting a flag.

After one full tour, she walked back through the portal and started moving things. The furniture belonged to the rental, so it stayed; the heaviest boxes of machines and tools were Yekase’s problem; the rest went up easy as stacking blocks. Their floor cushions got laid in the middle of the living room like a pair of soft islands—done!

She stood at the doorway, hands on hips, admired the scene like a painter, then pulled out her phone and snapped a photo.

She sent it to Mom.

[Homebound Flow: Mom, look at the house bro bought.]

…………

[Countryside Drifter: So big!]

[Countryside Drifter: Which organization did he swindle it from?]

[Homebound Flow: Mom, why “swindle”? Bro bought it legit, business and all.]

…Hold up. Yekase hadn’t said a word about the deal’s details. The chance of “swindled” wasn’t exactly zero. Liu didn’t dare chase that thought, so she changed the subject fast, like tossing a pebble into another pond:

[Homebound Flow: Over a hundred square meters! We’ll go buy furniture in a day or two.]

[Countryside Drifter: The brat finally made good.]

He wasn’t really a “brat” anymore. Should she say that part…? Liu taught language for a living, yet facing something this hard to wrap words around, her tongue felt clumsy as mittens. If she blurted it out now, Mom probably wouldn’t believe it; if she did, she might blow a gasket. Better leave it to Yekase and her silver tongue to sail that storm on her own.