Ling Yi kept thinking, like a moth circling the same lantern.
Through the first two fights, the thought clung like damp fog.
Even at halftime, it dripped in her chest like slow rain.
On the walk from the lounge to the arena, it paced beside her like a shadow.
What stance should she take toward Flame Lady?
If she asked Yekase, the answer would be a mirror: decide for yourself.
If she asked Lu Yao, the words would harden like ice: I don’t care.
So she asked herself, and the question burned like a coal.
That night, Flame Lady had mouthed off at Lu Yao.
She’d thrown out lines so childish that the rookie Ling Yi from months ago would’ve winced.
She wouldn’t listen either, like wind ignoring a reed.
Ling Yi rarely got this angry.
The feeling hammered at her, urging her to grind Flame Lady into the floor, and maybe even—
But is that what a hero does?
A hero reins in the fire and tries to guide the stray back onto the road, like a lantern leading a wayfarer.
That should be the right path, shouldn’t it?
…Being a hero is walking a tightrope in a storm.
[Ling Yi.]
Yekase didn’t come today.
Lu Yao’s voice flowed through her earpiece like cool water instead.
“A-Ping, you get your rest?”
“……”
Maybe her face gave too much away when she left the room.
She hadn’t expected Lu Yao to be the one to break the silence and steady her.
[Yekase trusts your judgment.]
“And you?”
[What’s it to me—]
“I want to ask a favor.”
[What?]
“Please—back me up.”
Lu Yao glanced at Jiang Bailu, still sprawled asleep on the sofa like a cat in a sunpatch.
She looked at the empty arena feeds, and sighed like a willow in wind.
It was still someone else pushing her forward.
Beast King Silver, PeaceWarrior, Lu Yao—none of that seemed to change, like a current that never turns.
[—I’ll trust your judgment too.]
[Do what you think is right.]
“Pfft—hahaha! Is that some classic line? What are the odds?”
Ling Yi snorted, laughed it out like a burst of spring rain, then gripped her Flashblade Key.
“All right, then… Flashblade Activation.”
“StarrySky Striker ACE!”
“ZEROS!”
The mask sheltered her identity, the armor caged her flesh.
But the heart had no shield.
In the end, she had to answer her own riddles.
White knight greaves with boosters kissed the ground like falling snow.
Flame Lady entered from the other end, heat shimmering around her like a mirage.
“Flashblade Red! We meet again—fate, right? We didn’t finish last time, did you go back and—”
“Apologize to PeaceWarrior,” Ling Yi said.
“—”
“My mic is still live. She can hear you. I want you to apologize to her here.”
“Why would I—”
“And because you shielded combatants, it will let more truly innocent lives be squeezed dry.
I want you to apologize to them here.”
Facing a Ling Yi so calm she looked miswired, Flame Lady blinked, palms up, baffled like a bird in glass.
“What are you monologuing about? I like you, I really do. Keep this up and I won’t!”
“I’m saying—if you want to play saint in the spotlight, then bring the resolve and the skill to settle everything.
I am—furious.”
In the lounge, Lu Yao watched and flashed back to the water-park battle.
Back then, facing the Heavenly Prison King, Ling Yi had snapped and gone razor-tongued, like a sudden lightning strike.
She must be the kind with a tiny minefield—hit it, and it always detonates.
Ling Yi lifted the Sky Striker, blade vertical.
Her right hand braced the middle of the spine like a prayer.
Flash Energy and Mind Energy flared around her like a crown of twin flames.
This time they didn’t tangle in chaos.
They drew into crisp slanted lines, red and blue layering like silk, seeping into ZEROS’s pure white plates.
Ling Yi was hand-weaving every thread of the mixed Infinite Power, relooming her own armor with bare will.
The precision and force for something this big would snap a normal mind like a dry twig—
No, she was using the Hindrance Ripples—Propulsion from the fight with MAYA.
The harder-to-steer Flash Energy flowed to fill the gaps Mind Energy left, laying down red-blue stripes like a carp’s scales.
Lu Yao caught something else.
Behind Ling Yi, white script flickered in and out like frost writing.
Auxiliary circuits Yekase had left her.
Hindrance Ripples belonged to Dew.
After ZEROS, the highest-precision form, Dew had seemed like an extra limb.
So it hid this possibility—
Was this pure coincidence, or had Yekase, when fusing the keys, trusted that Ling Yi would reach this one day, and left her a mind-forged backdoor to upgrade?
“What what?! Is this an evolution?!”
Flame Lady didn’t catch the danger; relief loosened her shoulders because Ling Yi had stopped demanding apologies.
[Code-01!]
[Code-04!]
On Ling Yi’s right, a vivid red 01 rose like a seal.
On her left, a crystalline blue 04 surfaced with a splash like springwater.
“Flashblade Activation—”
[KAGARI–SHIZUKU!]
[R U Ready?]
“Cross-Flash!”
Light and fire spiraled into a vortex, kicking up a storm inside the small arena.
When the whirl peeled back, ZEROS’s armor had taken on red-blue cross-dyed hues.
Plates belonging to Kagari and Dew grew from Flash Energy like blooming metal, slotting into the new frame and giving the knightly silhouette austere majesty.
Even the Sky Striker changed.
The whole blade ran hot red with a metallic sheen, while the old patterns turned to white lines, like snow-veins in steel.
Flame Lady finally felt the cliff-edge under her toes.
Instinct screamed—if she didn’t answer with everything, not just sparks, she wouldn’t even leave ash.
She had one trump beyond her usual unarmored mode, the one that only set her hair and clothes ablaze.
She’d saved it for a truly vile supervillain in some far-off, darker night.
She’d never thought she’d have to use it here—just to survive the hands of the hero she admired most.
Sister Gu Xiangshi had told her this tournament was to make friends through crossing fists.
They even had a mixer planned for tonight—
“Damn it… Masked Change!!”
As if to meet that vortex head-on, her whole body flared in earnest, a bonfire in the wind—
Ling Yi cut once.
After the fireball blew apart, Flame Lady stood amid embers in weekend tokusatsu armor.
The red paint job was so barebones it was clearly hand-brushed; you could see every stroke like rake-marks in sand.
“WoooOOOH—”
She clenched both fists and roared, raw power rolling like thunder—
And Ling Yi’s blade-light reached her face.
“Uh.”
—Boom!
When the smoke thinned, Flame Lady was half-kneeling, braced on a snapped staff like a storm-tossed mast.
The armor she’d worn for mere seconds now bore a savage crack across the chest, deep enough to show the true body beneath, spitting sparks like angry bees.
“Uu… so strong, how are you this strong! Don’t tell me—you’ve grasped the Sorrowful Cut?!”
Her answer was a scalding column of water coiled in Mind Energy flame, a river braided with fire.
The chest plate shorted, popped black smoke, and her ultimate trump was half-ruined before her first attack ever left the scabbard.
“Wait, wait! This is a spar! Are you trying to kill me?! I really admire you, I swear! I saw you fight and decided to become a hero—”
Ling Yi lowered the Sky Striker.
Her voice came back to its usual clear stream.
“I’ve been lost too.
Lost about why the world has so many villains.
Lost about how to beat them.
Lost about how to find comrades I can trust.”
“……”
“But there’s one thing I’ve never been lost about—who we should call our enemy.”
“Who… we should call our enemy…”
Flame Lady repeated it on her knees, like tasting a bitter herb again and again.
Ling Yi turned for the edge of the field.
She left a feather-light line behind her.
“Light up, O Fire That Never Dies for a Hundred Nights.”
Whoosh—
Like a mountain wind waking fallen embers, flames kindled on Flame Lady again.
That blue fire, the color of Mind Energy, wasn’t hers.
It was residue from Ling Yi’s strike—yet it didn’t burn her.
It wrapped her like a quilt of light.
“Heat… and warmth…”
She watched the flames burning quietly along her forearms.
They seeped into her like tea into clay, and her strength didn’t gutter.
It surged, like a hearth fed fresh pine.
“Flashblade Red—!”
Ling Yi didn’t stop.
“I’m sorry! I’m really, really sorry!”
She walked into the tunnel without a backward glance.
Red and blue modules flaked off her exterior like fireflies of Flash Energy, revealing ZEROS beneath.
She raised her right hand and threw a V behind her.
[Flashblade Red has left the arena.]
[Winner, Flame Lady!]
…
…
“I really didn’t mean to throw the match, seriously…”
There was supposed to be a mixer after, a banquet that felt more like an ambush than a dinner.
The three of them dodged it with excuses and piled into a taxi.
Because some passengers had attacked drivers before, cabs now had sealed, soundproof driver pods like glass fishbowls.
They weren’t worried about the driver overhearing.
“Two to one, we still won overall. No biggie.”
Jiang Bailu found Ling Yi’s puffed cheeks hilarious and ruffled her hair like petting a sulking fox.
“Go ego-search. Everyone’s saying Flashblade Red couldn’t possibly lose to Flame Lady, so you must’ve thrown it.
It’s already tipping into a pile-on.
If you’ve got a big heart, make a statement and pull her out.”
“Sigh… forget it. A little scolding will do her good.”
Didn’t expect your heart to be this dark, Jiang Bailu thought, amused.
She looked away from Ling Yi and met the gaze of the woman in the front seat pretending to be scenery.
“So how did a self-styled lone wolf just tag along like nothing happened?”
Jiang Bailu watched the night slide by the window and poked.
“Better than an organization cadre hiding among heroes,” Lu Yao said, unmoved as a stone.
“Bailu-jie, you still haven’t quit?” Ling Yi asked.
“You paying my bills if I do?”
“Let the Doctor pay you. You both make gadgets.
Just join her, scale up production.”
“Hold up. ‘Join’ and ‘production’ mean what here?”
“…An organization cadre telling dirty jokes to a junior…”
Lu Yao drew a long breath, held it like a tide, and suppressed the urge to pull a Glock and end Jiang Bailu right there.
Unite all forces that can be united…
She repeated it in her head like a sutra, then slid the pistol back into her inner pocket without a sound.
