Yekase felt the coming wake-up would be a coop of squawking chickens and running dogs, so she tossed the explaining to the chaotic loli Crimson Field, greased her heels, and fled to the Sky Island.

Only then did she learn the home-reno crew had come last night, set all the furniture like chess pieces, but with no mattresses the three who landed slept on sofas.

“Why didn’t you go home to sleep?” Yekase asked Liu RuoYuan, voice light as mist before dawn.

“Guess whether we know how to open a portal,” Liu replied, dry as autumn leaves.

“Don’t you have the airplane head?” Yekase asked Lu Yao, the joke tossed like a paper plane.

“Thirty thousand meters, body-only freefall—what are we, you?” Lu Yao shot back, like a stone skipping once and sinking.

...All right.

This really was Yekase’s oversight, a pebble she’d kicked and watched ripple.

She steadied herself, then returned to the topic like a compass needle finding north. “After everyone fell asleep, something happened. Valhalla’s a mess. The Beast King Squadron members... their bodies changed.”

“What kind of change?” Lu Yao asked without hurry, calm as a still lake, so the question drifted slow.

“Down there it’s livelier than New Year’s fireworks. When they cool down, we’ll go listen to their own summary.”

What in the world happened?

From her half-smile, it wasn’t an enemy raid; it felt like some prank the moon would laugh at.

Jiang Bailu, sprawled on the sofa like a cast net, suddenly yelped and woke from an ancient hangover, clutching her splitting skull like a cracked bell.

“Ugh... what’s going on? Urrgh...”

“You’re up. Bathroom on the left—don’t puke on the new floors,” Yekase said, voice as crisp as a broom’s sweep.

“...Urk—”

She clamped a hand over her mouth and crab-scurried away like a wave retreating.

Yekase eyed the living room, now warm with life like a lantern-lit alley, and reached into the teleport box to grab some decor, but her hand caught nothing—no hum, no light.

“...?”

Glitching now of all times, like rain on a just-painted wall... after so many years, she couldn’t complain to the wind.

She went upstairs, checked rooms with satisfied nods like a gardener counting buds, then slid down the banister into the basement and pulled open the hangar door.

She hadn’t sent Luciferin over, yet a massive silhouette already waited inside, still as a mountain at dusk.

Silver-black livery, sleek lines, a known pinnacle among squad robots, like a falcon forged from night.

“Lu Yao—” she started, voice a spark to tinder.

“I know what you’re gonna say. Zip it,” said Lu Yao, ghost-silent behind her, hand over her mouth, dragging her back like a shadow tugging a sleeve.

Jiang Bailu returned after dry heaving, cheeks pale as ash, and sank onto the sofa, while Liu RuoYuan’s questions pecked at Lu Yao until she nearly bolted like a startled deer.

When the time felt ripe like a fig about to drop, Yekase led them out the door and back to Valhalla.

The dim bar held only silence, a pond with no wind.

...

Loli Crimson Field slumped in a booth lifted her head, saw the four walk in, then melted back down like a tape rewinding, frame by frame.

“Who’s gonna summarize?” Yekase asked, hands on hips like a captain on a quiet deck.

Professor F stood from the far corner. “I will. Let’s talk in the back,” she said, voice steady as a metronome.

That tone, like iron under velvet—was this something weighty as a stormfront?

Yekase narrowed her eyes and followed into the kitchen, shutting the door with a soft click like a lid on a simmering pot.

Professor F stopped, then explained with the calm of a surgeon. “Crimson Field and Wang Zhewei turned into girls. Fang Tang grew into about a twenty-five-year-old build. Lin Yuqing got smaller, says it’s her middle-school level.”

“All physical changes...” Yekase murmured, thoughts fluttering like startled sparrows.

“Among those in Valhalla last night, only the two of us weren’t affected,” Professor F said, expression heavy as slate, mind clearly turning like a millwheel.

“I’m a Flash Energy body. I probably have baseline resistance to physical changes,” Yekase said, the words clipped like a chill breeze. “What about you?”

“I’m actually a bionic,” she answered, simple as a blade’s edge.

“Huh?”

“I’m one of two androids sent by Supreme Omega to observe human civilization. The other is Omega M,” she said, each name dropping like cold rain.

“Uh, wait?” Yekase’s thoughts stumbled, stones rolling down a hill.

Professor F pressed on, resolve bright as a torch. “The Mainframe sent us to judge if humanity was worth invading, and set our bodies to ordinary human specs. We landed in barren hills, nearly killed by beasts, but a kind old man saved us. From then on, we chose to stand with humans and fight for the Great Harmony that old man hoped for.”

“Hold up—so sudden—and that’s... kind of heavyweight, isn’t it? What about Omega M?” Yekase said, words tripping like feet on wet steps.

“He fell with the first Beast King Squadron,” she answered, the sentence a bell toll.

“Ah...”

So that’s why the two generations mirrored each other, and why Professor F’s past had always felt like a closed book—now the spine cracked open like dawn. But how did that tie to now?

“The one-time protection device the Mainframe embedded in me triggered last night. It activated inside Valhalla. Under it, I stayed untouched,” she said, calm as frost.

“So someone slipped in while we slept and cast a large-scale physical alteration on us...” Yekase’s voice thinned like mist.

“That’s the guess,” Professor F said, steady as an anchor.

“But why? What’s the point?” Yekase asked, a question like a pebble breaking a mirrored lake.

“Maybe to throw us into chaos and cost us combat power. Crimson Field and Wang Zhewei clearly can’t fight,” Professor F said, grim as stormclouds.

“Right!”

“Crimson Field jumps at everything now. Wang Zhewei’s lying there and won’t respond when called,” she added, each example a nail.

“Useless. What about the girls’ group?” Yekase asked, voice like a knuckle on wood.

“Their minds are okay. But with such big size changes, forcing a suit summon could be dangerous. For safety, we can’t let them fight,” Professor F said, caution like a raised hand.

“Mm... The only one who can transform normally is Ling Ya, who went home last night. But one member alone can’t carry a full storm. Until we solve this, it’s on Ling Yi and Lu Yao to hold the line,” Yekase said, rubbing her chin like a flint for sparks.

She wanted to laugh, but the air was tight as a drum; if the mastermind meant to wipe them now, those just-hit teammates would be anchors in a flood.

“...Fine.”

She set her jaw, pushed the door open like a shield, and strode out.

Facing loli Crimson Field and maiden Wang Zhewei, she crossed her arms and called out like a bell over fog:

“You two planning to stay slumped like that?”

Crimson Field gave her a sidelong glance, a leaf caught in eddy. Wang Zhewei didn’t move, a stone in silt.

“So you turned into girls. Big deal! You’re not missing limbs. Someone turned you into this. The enemy hides while we stand in sunlight. That means rally, not wilt—find a way to fight!”

“Easy for you to say,” Wang Zhewei murmured, voice thin as a mosquito and fragile as spun sugar.

“I’m an only son. My parents are super old-school... they might not even accept me,” she said, fear rising like night tide.

“‘Easy for me to say’?” Yekase snorted, a spark in dry grass, then grinned wide like a crescent moon.

“You’re the type who collapses after a gender flip—a classic TS archetype, one of the earliest. In taxonomy terms: Kingdom TS, Phylum Want-To-Change-Back, Class Refusal, Order Wallowing, Family Family-Pressure. For the record, Crimson Field is Order Panic, Family First-Taste-of-Forbidden-Fruit.”

“What kind of idiot taxonomy is that?” Liu RuoYuan snapped, her fists clamping Yekase’s head like a vise, twisting till she yelped like a kettle.

When Liu let go, Yekase rubbed the sore spot, then tried to put her mask back on like a magician palming a card. “You think I’m just talking tough because it doesn’t hurt me.”

“Then what if I told you... I used to be a boy too?”

...

Everyone, including Professor F just out of the kitchen, stared wide-eyed, eyes like plates under moonlight.

Silence stretched long as winter. Yekase’s folded-arms “well?” began to crack like a drying riverbed. “...A little reaction, please?”

“Uh, actually, about half the people here already know,” Jiang Bailu said, awkward as a tangled kite string.

Jiang Bailu and Liu RuoYuan knew for sure. Professor F and Lu Yao had basically confirmed it, just waiting for the words—four to four, half and half like a coin split.

The other four now knew, their faces caught between storms, hard to name.

“Anyway, instead of slumping and sighing, we should talk while memories are bright. Did anyone hear anything, see anything odd last night? You’re heroes. This little hit shouldn’t break you, right?” Yekase said, words steady as a drumbeat.

“Yekase is right. Looks don’t decide everything. It’s my heart that wasn’t strong enough!” Loli Crimson Field barked, popping up on the sofa like a spring, only for her clothes to slip again like a loose ribbon.

Lin Yuqing and Fang Tang lifted them, left and right, neat as bookends.

“As for odd things... I woke up at night to find the bathroom. I think I saw a figure moving near the bar. But I wasn’t clear-headed, and I was bursting, so I didn’t look,” Lin Yuqing said, voice soft as rain on tiles.

The now-younger-looking Lin Yuqing, just a few years older than loli Crimson Field in appearance, offered the sighting like a lantern in fog.

“It wasn’t one of us, right?” Yekase asked, and everyone present last night shook their heads in unison, reeds in wind.

Liu RuoYuan picked up the thread. “Then a stranger definitely came in. The bar door stayed open all night, so entry was easy. But finding the exact window when we were all drunk means they know our movements—maybe they’re watching us even now,” she said, each word a bead on a string.

Rice Rice woke, lifted his head from between sofa cushions, eyes round as moons, and mewed twice like pebbles tapping glass.

“Right, Rice Rice?” Yekase scooped him up and stroked him, and Rice Rice gave a very human hint of surprise, like a cat seeing snow.

“You scared him,” Liu RuoYuan scolded, snatching him back, her tone a flicked fan.

Yekase had been thinking of a possibility, a shadow behind the curtain: aside from memory, the changed ones had no way to prove they were themselves; the mastermind could have swapped one in secret.

Sure, memory and personality would expose a fake, like cracks in glaze—but what if he swapped Rice Rice?

A cat’s personality and memory, even if they shifted, were hard to catch, like wind in grass.

So she’d wanted to test Rice Rice’s reaction, but Liu RuoYuan cut her off before she began, a hand over the candle.

And she couldn’t spell out the reason here, not yet, not aloud.

Woman and cat shared a look, brief as a shooting star, and Rice Rice turned away like an ordinary pet, head tilting from the moon.