Ranks of mechanical soldiers marched out of the mist like iron tides breaking through fog.

They looked like stone giants shrunken to human size, each with a long spear and a gear-shaped round shield glinting like a moon.

From the edge of sight to the gray where only sound breathed, the fog was theirs, a field swallowed by steel and vapor.

Ling Yi dove in like a swallow cutting rain, her blade singing as she tangled with them in a storm of limbs and sparks.

Jiang Bailu flared the Mark of Crimson; blood-forged arrows poured like a scarlet shower across the far flank.

“Grab me one if you can—I’m tearing it apart to see the guts!” Yekase’s voice rolled from the other side of the fog like a bell under water.

“On it!” Ling Yi answered, bright as a torch in wind.

“No need for them to grab. I’ll carve you the whole lot myself.” Ivaris, twice humbled in Arcadia and reduced to a mere massage artist, saw these ant-sized bots and laughed like a fox under sun.

She swung the Polaris Staff hard; scarf and skirt rose without wind, whirling like flames dancing in a night gust.

The scarf’s dark-crimson trims, once decorative, lit up to cherry-pink, blooming like blossom at dawn.

The same Flash Energy split in their hands—rose-pink in Ling Yi’s grip, cherry-pink in Ivaris’s—two hues poured through different hearts.

Ling Yi’s shade carried Mind Energy; Ivaris’s shone with Omega Ray; Yekase’s true Flash Energy was a metallic bright red, the color first seen and judged as pure.

The first discoverer of the Super-series Infinite Power holds authority like a god with a quill; everything but Infinite Power’s Will can be set, then sealed like a vow in stone.

Yekase only grabbed that “first seat” by riding her father’s coattails, like a cat stealing sunlight through a window.

Boom!!

Ivaris lit the circuits sewn into her Magical Girl dress; she stepped forward like thunder cracking ice.

The stone bricks underfoot fractured with a spiderweb blast, dust rising like breath from old earth.

“Behemoth Advance!”

Her scarf, already flame-like, turned into true Flash Energy, a roaring blaze channeled into a single hungry fire.

Ivaris raised her right hand to the sky. “Grant me strength. I am Ivaris,” she called, like a prayer flung into cloud.

A low-orbit satellite caught her authorized ID; a lightning bolt tore down through the fog-thick heavens like a sword from storm.

“—Huh?! You’re popping a Limit Break here?” Yekase had just wrenched off a soldier’s arm; she shouted back like a crow startled from a wire.

Ivaris ignored her; she grabbed the lightning bare-handed, and the glare peeled away like rain from stone.

What remained was a pink rod-like device, neat as candy glass; she strapped it to her left forearm and leveled it at Yekase like a finger of dawn.

The device fired a tether; Yekase had no choice but to catch it, the rope humming like a live vein in her grip.

A “Limit Break,” per project notes, means a final art fueled by at least four Magical Girls—a crescendo like four voices merging into a single bell.

They had only two, but Yekase’s output towered above standard, and Ivaris amplified on-site with Behemoth Advance; together they barely made the bridge.

“She loves riding the high…” Yekase muttered, sour as wind over steel.

She fell back to Ivaris’s side, guarding her cast like a shield held against hail.

She felt her Flash Energy spill like a floodgate opening, streaming through the tether like river into ocean.

Her transformation failed like a candle snuffed by rain; her eye level sank, and her body shrank to match the draining tide.

Ivaris’s scarf burned hotter, a hearth stoked, embers fanned into a blaze.

“Okay. Feels like it’ll work!”

“Only feels?”

“Limit Break—”

The wind stopped, like a choir cut to silence.

Mechanical soldiers sensed something and fell back, feet ticking like beetles retreating under shadow.

Ling Yi looked up and raised a max-power shield, a dome like clear ice braced against storm.

Jiang Bailu turned herself into blood-mist with a derivative of the Mark of Crimson, a scarlet vapor slipping between blades like smoke.

Yekase dropped, spent and limp, lying on the stone like a fish left by tide.

Everything slowed, like time thickened to honey.

In a near-frozen world, Ivaris lifted the Polaris Staff like a lighthouse in still surf and spoke the second half of the command phrase.

“—Laser Sword Rain.”

The world brightened like dawn splitting cloud.

Countless red and silver rays crisscrossed the air like weaving looms of light, threading the field while sparing every ally like a storm that parts around a shrine.

They only singed Jiang Bailu’s collar on one side, a wordless warning written like a thin scorch line.

The fog boiled away in sheets; near sight widened like curtains thrown open.

Sound rushed back like surf; Yekase sat up and scanned the field, eyes skimming a hundred meters of ground littered with limbs.

Every mechanical soldier within that circle had been dismembered—arms and legs scattered like autumn branches on stone.

She sighed, breath like steam. “Great. A Limit Break worth remembering after ten years. Now we’re both emptied. If a final boss shows up, how do you plan to swing?”

“Let it come; you do the thinking,” Ivaris said, arms folded, kicking her lightly, pride bright as steel. “Tell me if that culling was perfect.”

If she’d known the staffers would get drained too… Yekase should’ve asked for more budget, like seeds stuffed into pockets before a long winter.

She already issued herself a prototype transformer under ‘experimental model’; designing one more Limit Break wouldn’t have cost much ink.

“Perfect, perfect. You’re the badass. Happy?”

“Mind your tone, ammo pack.”

“Pick a kinder word, will you?”

“Ms. Tonic—rich in nutrients, delicious to taste?” Ivaris teased, voice like silk warming over coals.

Ivaris chuckled, bent, and hooked a finger under Yekase’s chin, now in seven-year-old mode, their eyes meeting like mirrors catching morning.

“Keep that little-gremlin body. It matches your loud mouth, and the roleplay of pinning you under has better bite.”

“...Can I call the cops?” Yekase kicked her back, a tap like a pebble flicked from toe.

Ling Yi stared, stunned like a deer under lantern light; she could never flirt so brazenly with a crowd for witness.

Jiang Bailu was wicked in private, but in public she wore shyness and grace like plum blossoms in snow.

That’s Ivaris’s strength.

What we can’t do, she does with ease, like stepping stones appearing over water—admirable and bright as a star you want to follow.

Yekase shrugged off Ivaris’s hand, grabbed a limbless mechanical soldier, and began disassembly like a surgeon peeling metal ribs.

She pried off the thickest plate; the core lay exposed like a heart in glass.

No crystal. No Silver Star engine—only a triangular magic array drawn like ink lines on slate.

“Belkan style. ‘Mist,’ ‘Nourish,’ ‘Blood’s Elation’… it’s a blood-sacrifice array, a thing that smells of night,” she said, voice dry as paper.

The circuitry looked fresh, new-cut like sapwood—something off, a whisper she kept behind her teeth.

“What’s the effect?” Ling Yi asked, focus sharp as a blade held just so.

“Simple terms? It siphons someone’s soul to power the soldier,” Yekase said, lifting her eyes to Jiang Bailu like a lantern turned to face. “Your vampire teacher—Tiago, right? I bet she didn’t teach you this.”

“No!” Jiang Bailu shook her head like a bell rung fast.

Ivaris tightened her grip on the Polaris Staff, knuckles white as frost. “Where are the victims’ bodies? Any way to save them?”

“In theory, they’re in an ‘battery bay’ style device, flesh archived like jars on a shelf,” Yekase said, gaze scanning the mist like a hunter in reeds. “But we found nothing that scale in Arcadia—no wetware base to match. Where would they stash it?”

The ‘Mist’ in the array sets the range like a boundary drawn by fog; where can you hide hundreds of crystals sealed with breathing people?

“Doc, want to look at this?”

Ling Yi handed over a paper like a leaf blown in by chance.

Yekase glanced down. “Joseph…?”

Who’s this—some Soville City native lost in fog, a name caught like a fish in net?

No surname on the flyer—just a first name hanging like a single star—and Yekase looked to Ling Yi, asking for a thread to pull.

“Like, lots of folks got grabbed, but the city posted only his notice,” Ling Yi said, hands tracing shapes like birds in air. “So he probably has family in the city, right? We find his people, tell them we’re here to fix it, and ask about his disappearance.”

That had bones and breath; it rang true like a path worn by feet.

Yekase tended to investigate alone, head down, like a mole tunneling through earth; even knowing Ling Yi and Harrison had spoken to locals, she forgot that door.

She felt a small warmth—Ling Yi was offering plans now, a child walking taller, a sapling reaching sun.

The four followed the address on the flyer, hunting the home that posted it like hounds on a scent.

Harrison had warmed relations in the south of the city; this house sat in the west, a corner colder, needing a new pitch like fire carried under cloak.

Yekase’s pitch leaned on intimidation and trickery, a wolf grin under silk; Ivaris worked first and spoke later; Jiang Bailu shrank with strangers, anxious as a dove under hands.

So the weight fell on Ling Yi again, a bridge built by a freshly graduated high-schooler’s easy warmth.

Ling Yi walked alone in front, and the other three followed in a shy crescent, shadows bending like a half moon behind her.

Mechanical soldiers patrolled the streets like brooms sweeping ash, clearing and herding as they marched.

The closer they got, the denser the ranks grew, numbers rising like tide, almost back to the scale that greeted them at landing.

Investigation ended; combat’s round flipped back on—like hearing a cold decree etched in iron.

Ling Yi moved to charge like lightning breaking cloud, but Ivaris blocked her with a palm, telling her to rest and prep the lines for Joseph’s family.

“Do these soldiers… burden the people who power them?” Jiang Bailu asked, worry pooling like ink.

“Who knows,” Yekase said, voice casual as rain over tin. “If the puppeteer’s heart is cruel enough, tearing soldiers apart might turn their batteries into vegetables. Maybe we leave them be?”

Her mouth spoke grim, but her hands didn’t pause; her Gunblade danced like a duelist’s rapier, and by the time the words fell, another bot lay opened like a tin can.

“Hostage trolley problems are the dullest villain trick,” she added, slicing a wire like a reed. “Classic Japanese baddies love to ‘expose hypocrisy’—they scold the hero for resisting, and the hero actually hesitates and self-blames. I pass out just watching.”

“That’s how 2D handles it,” Jiang Bailu murmured, dry as snow on straw.

“And whether a hostage can be saved? Compare the gap in ability; the answer sits like a stone,” Yekase said, shrugging like a kite in light breeze. “If you can’t save them, let go. The grudge sticks to the villain anyway.”

Jiang Bailu pinched her arm, sharp as a thorn. “Easy to say. What if the hostage is your family? What if it’s me?”

“If I can save you, of course I save you,” Yekase said, and a memory rose like smoke, warm and old.

If I can’t—

She remembered a promise to Liu RuoYuan, and she smiled soft as a knife hidden in silk, pulling out the same boast like a coin kept warm in pocket.

“I’ve got at least thirty-three tools, twenty-seven methods, to make that person regret coming into the world.”