“Ivaris.”

“I’m here.”

“I need to confirm something with you.”

In a tiny bar with only two patrons, Yekase watched the crimson eyes that mirrored her own—red like embers under glass—and let a rare hesitation color her voice.

“Did I… forget something?”

…

Ivaris smiled, a moonlit curve in the dim.

“What makes you think so? I want to hear your reasoning—like that brilliant one from ZEROS.”

“First, there’s an empty safety carabiner on my belt.”

Yekase lifted the cold metal clip. Climbers use it to thread a thick safety rope and hook to a fixed anchor—or another climber.

“I remember someone warned me before entering Soville City, so I went back to buy it. But it was never used—no rope tied, nothing scuffed. If I came alone, I wouldn’t have bought it.”

“Mmh?”

It was a clean opening move, but not enough. Yekase did buy quirky gear that turned useless later, more than once.

“Second, you just mentioned ‘those two I’m tangled up with,’ and you kept calling them ‘she.’”

Ivaris sighed.

Yekase braced for mockery, ready to argue, when Ivaris said, “Calling that ‘evidence’? Your skin really is thick.”

“You don’t know that by now?”

“I do. I’m just impressed.”

“All right, that’s two. From the feel I’ve honed across many incidents, this level of dissonance screams Reverse Meme. My memory got altered, hidden. But—cautiously—”

Ivaris watched her with bright interest, waiting for the final word-bullet that would nail it.

Yekase obliged.

“Cautiously, I noticed the biggest gap: after the public declaration and the sentence, I was cleared of my knot and acknowledged by Flash Energy—”

“Then why am I not wearing my proudest work, my [B-001] Blade Armor 2.0?”

“So I think someone’s here. Someone I trust with the Flashblade System, someone who feels a kind of admiration for me, and knows both me and Jiang Bailu. She left the City of Ivalice with me and came to Soville City.”

…

Relief loosened Ivaris’s shoulders; her smile was a soft lantern in fog.

“A perfect anti–Reverse Meme profile run. If I’m ever gone, you’ll still deduce me from the void and bring me back into observation.”

“That… won’t happen twice. The realm of nothingness may be a law of the cosmos, but from our sky-splitting ancestors to the Infinite Power project that births from emptiness—human history is the art of making something from nothing.”

“Exactly. That’s why life is ‘beautiful.’”

Yekase shook her head, a ripple breaking the thought. “Since we know she exists, should we go find her now?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because the fog’s conceptual interference hasn’t lifted. You and she are ‘absolutely’ unable to meet. I’ll go to her instead and explain everything.”

Ivaris pressed Yekase back into the booth. Her smile felt like warm tea in winter. She touched their foreheads together, a quiet seal.

“As for you, rest here a while. Consolidate the logic chain, right?”

“…Yeah.”

“Good girl. I’ll be right back.”

She scooped up the Polaris Staff and headed for the door.

“Ivaris—wait!”

“What? A goodbye kiss before I go?”

“Hardly!” Yekase flapped her hands. “What’s that girl’s name? I need a label for this logic chain for indexing.”

“You don’t have to use her name. It might be tainted by Reverse Memes and invite a wolf to tear the chain apart.”

“My suggestion? Since you called that person ZEROS (00)—”

“Then let’s keep counting. The girl worthy of the Sky Striker—call her ‘01.’”

…

…

Ivaris strolled the streets of Soville City.

At the Causal Horizon, she’d stayed inside Azus’s cabin that didn’t even have a pilot seat, watching the starfield of concepts and matter through a small viewport.

The feeling wasn’t like “sitting at a gatehouse watching security cams.” It was more like dreaming—knowing things the dream never showed, omniscient and lost, drifting in abstruse currents until the self thins like mist.

She had followed Soville through Yekase’s lens. The city felt like an old friend she’d never seen with her own eyes.

…Though with this heavy fog, there wasn’t much beauty to see—like scrolling pictures of capital landmarks, then arriving to tour in a sandstorm where everything turns yellow.

Even so, her hazed observations left an intuitive map of alleys in her bones. Not even a “labyrinth” could slow her. She found the small plaza at the center in short order.

A tent—of course—stood there.

Milk-white ambient lights…

Yekase hadn’t bought a tent; she thought this incident wouldn’t take more than a day or two.

So Ling Yi teamed up with other outsiders?

Good news. She was assembling her own toolkit against the event.

She didn’t have Yekase’s skill of observing “something” from “nothing.” But if she played the social card that a research hermit lacked, she’d do fine.

Maybe that’s what Yekase wanted—a team that keeps moving even when someone’s missing. No “leader,” just a regular member.

But Ivaris had another reason to find her today.

In Cloudlong City, she’d watched Jiang Bailu awaken her powers in battle—hiding nearby while Li Dapao chased him down. Ling Yi’s strength she’d only glimpsed from the horizon’s blur.

She reached the tent.

“Is Miss Ling Yi here?”

…

Ling Yi crawled out of the tent.

She saw Ivaris’s silhouette and jolted, rolling hard to the side. A sakura laser swept her former spot with a sizzle, scoring the ground.

“Ivaris…!”

“Mmh. Call me sis, let’s hear it?”

Ivaris smiled warm as spring, arched back to slip under Ling Yi’s draw-cut. The Polaris Staff tapped the Sky Striker’s path aside, and she ghosted to Ling Yi’s flank.

“I guessed it already,” Ling Yi shouted. “The Doctor’s ‘object sought’ would be you… You’re made by the mist, aren’t you!”

She’d guessed it, yes—but—

Why did her eyes sting like rain?

Why did a dull ache press from her chest like a storm bell?

Can these things solve the event? Can they bring the Doctor back?

Ivaris knew the misunderstanding, but the way Ling Yi bristled was adorable—and it was a good excuse to fight full tilt. She decided not to clarify yet.

“Code-01!”

The slanting sweep of her staff tail met two digits that flashed into being midair. Sparks flew like meteors skimming a pond.

As the last Magical Girl (and as we all know, “the last” usually means two or three), Ivaris topped the Twenty Second Squad in stats and experience. Yet Ling Yi had learned new tricks.

—Using “effects.”

The Blade Armor’s effects vent heat and gas; but what’s vented is still Infinite Power. Weaponizing effects is an easy-to-miss tactic.

“Code-04!”

“Flashblade Activation—”

Ling Yi accelerated her armor’s manifest and load sequence. Flickering plates spun into a steel whirlwind, forcing Ivaris back two steps.

“KAGARI-SHIZUKU!”

“R U Ready?”

“Cross-Flash!”

Ling Yi dropped low, skating in close along the ground.

But Ivaris seemed to read her like a poem. She leapt lightly, drifting aside.

“Notice how many of your moves mirror Yekase?”

“Haven’t noticed!”

Sakura beams and deep-blue shield ripples traded a dozen silent blows in heartbeats, sealing the air into a no-fly zone where even a mosquito couldn’t slip through.

“By the way—I’m a long-range Magical Girl specialized in floating cannons.”

Ivaris said it like a breeze.

“Think old carriers in Warship World, a late-stage anchor who reenters the story, the lead mecha in that robot anime airing now—”

“That’s too many metaphors!”

“Y’know, that kind of thing.”

Ling Yi finally closed into Ivaris’s arms. In the stretched beat before her Sky Striker swung, time seemed to slow, the world thick as syrup.

At the tips of those palm-sized headlights on Ivaris’s chest—

Two lasers bloomed.

“Chest Flame—!”

Her playful call shot straight into Ling Yi’s visor.

—?!

Why does a laser have knockback?

She flew backward. Then every corner of her armor got washed and rewashed by laser, a scalding rain. The thought flickered even as she tumbled.

“Don’t sulk. Times have changed. You’re a solid Tier 1 now. You can strut under HQ without trouble. If you want thrills at HQ, you’ll even walk out alive.”

…

Ling Yi stared up at the fog-smeared sky.

No clouds. No sun. No inverted Arcadia. She only knew it was sky because the ground was behind her.

Ivaris stepped into her view.

“You…”

“I’m obviously the real thing.”

She reached out a hand, pulled Ling Yi up, brushed dust from her like a sister.

“The thing Yekase seeks is ‘the way to bring us back,’ not ‘us’—because she’ll do it with her own hands. So the mist opened a door for me. I crossed it and came here.”

“I’m sorry…”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Losing to me isn’t shameful.”