Ivaris and the Flash Blade Princess nuzzled like swallows in spring, then she halted, stepped back two paces, and tossed out, “Oh, I forgot Ling Yi’s here.”

You did that on purpose, right?

Yekase and Ling Yi thought it together, the thought pricking like a thorn in mist.

A flag-planting, then… fine. Given her first reappearance in nine years started with “darling,” Yekase smelled possessiveness like incense. Yet she let Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu trail her like moonlit shadows. Was that possessiveness iron or silk?

“Ahem, let’s deal with the problem in front of us first.”

You do know, huh!

Yekase and Ling Yi had the same thought, like two ripples crossing a pond.

Ivaris lifted her face to the spears of lightning, frozen mid-motion yet forever moving like trapped rivers, and giggled.

“Didn’t you stop halfway on your new form in Arcadia? Do it again, do it again.”

“New form?… Oh, ancestors above.”

The memory hit Yekase like a bell in winter air. Everything—energy, emotion—had aligned. Harrison voted. She herself canceled the upgrade.

Time scabbed over it like frost. She’d even forgotten.

The Flash Blade Princess’s left faceplate flickered like a firefly. “We’re in Consul mode. The ability trees are different. I can’t transform directly.”

“Then do it together.”

“Huh?” The right faceplate flashed like lightning. “But I’m not a Magical Girl—”

Ivaris reached behind her waist and drew the Polaris Staff from empty air like a star from dark water. She tapped the Princess’s right shoulder. “Done. Field promotion. Welcome to the non-existent Twenty Second Squad.”

“Eh—?! Th-thanks?!”

“What a nostalgic rite,” Yekase breathed, a tide of old banners stirring in her chest. “Ten years later, a new comrade at last…”

“Enough nostalgia. Transform. Then evolve.”

Ivaris kicked her like a sudden gust.

“Ow!” they yelped in chorus, two pebbles skipping on a stream.

She stepped aside, leaving Yekase space to teach Ling Yi in mind-to-mind whispers, like lanterns lit in fog. First transformation during a fusion like this—too informal, a petal plucked before bloom—but there was no helping it.

Yekase and Ling Yi closed their eyes and slipped inward like sinking snow.

Their awareness arrived in endless white, a blank field of fresh paper, unlike any fabled mindscape. They floated shoulder to shoulder, as they were before fusing into the Flash Blade Princess.

“First, pick your identifier code,” Yekase said, voice steady as a metronome.

“What’s that?”

“The word you shout when you transform.”

“Can’t I just shout ‘henshin’?”

“No. The first trio did that. The Magical Girl satellite couldn’t tell who was shouting, so one word transformed all three at once.”

“Pfft.”

“Pick a song you love. Take a line of lyrics. Let it be your comet-tail.”

…

Ling Yi fell silent, a lake under stars.

Far off, the blank turned to a seam of black and white, then to boundless currents of magenta and azure data, rolling like two oceans that never met.

She saw the Siberian castle again, and the ice-crystal staircase underground, and the question that had echoed on its steps like wind.

[Flashblade Red, do you think heroes truly exist?]

They do. They must.

But now, saying “illusion” felt like a screen of reeds over a tiger. Wasn’t the questioner her own heart?

…

“Keep questioning, so you won’t abandon yourself.”

Ling Yi’s voice dipped low, like rain on slate. “I didn’t know the right answer. So I stayed silent, and drifted in your wake… thinking, ‘The Doctor will tell me what justice is someday.’”

…

But that’s off, isn’t it?

The Doctor is brilliant, a lighthouse after long fog, finding her answer by her own light.

Sister Bailu and Sister Lu Yao are very different, but once they fix on something, that star becomes their north.

What about Ling Yi?

She knew she was slow, a stone warmed by daylight. She couldn’t name what a hero should fight for. She moved by a blurry feeling, walking in the footprints of those with mountain-iron resolve.

Kagari, Gale, Dew, Gauntlet, ZEROS, the chain-blade, the cross-flash—forms changed like seasons, foes fell like wheat. Power grew like oaks. Did her heart grow with it?

She’d just been dodging the answer, a swallow skirting the storm.

But—but—

Even Dorothy, three years younger, had fallen like a star.

Her brave last smile, her spine held straight like a spear, made Ling Yi’s body and soul quake like thunder over a lake.

Without the Flashblade System, facing that same cliff-edge, could she do the same?

“What am I crying for? What did I trade away my ordinary, bright youth for?”

Ling Yi looked at Yekase, voice trembling like a taut string.

But Yekase knew this wasn’t another question. The words rang like a bell that had finally found its note.

She’d reached her answer.

“Seeing Dorothy and Alice, I finally understand.”

“From our reason comes compassion, and from reason and compassion comes dignity. From dignity, ‘justice’ and ‘freedom’ are born.”

“I will fight—until everyone can live like a human being.”

…

“Want to rephrase that?” Yekase half-laughed, a tear glinting like dew. “Forget it. That’s your style.”

They bumped fists, two sparks in night.

Yekase stepped back two paces, opening space like a stage, to welcome the Twenty Second Squad’s first new member in ten years.

Ling Yi shouted her trigger, voice like a drawn blade.

“The one who gives the final answer—should be me!”

A whirl of light wrapped her like a cyclone. Black hair turned to moon-silver, gathered into twin high ponytails like two banners in wind.

No frilly Magical Girl dress bloomed, but a black, high-collared coat with a military cut, straps and pockets like stitched constellations across her chest. A belt cinched her waist, setting the hem to flutter like a raven’s wing.

Last came a black officer’s cap. Ling Yi caught it as it fell like a falling star and set it on her head.

“Magical Girl Lushi—reporting!”

Clap clap clap… Yekase applauded, palms ringing like rain on tiles.

“Congratulations!”

Clap clap clap… Ivaris’s figure popped in like a fox through fog, and she clapped too.

“Congratulations!”

Ling Yi smiled shyly, a blossom peeking after rain. “Thanks…”

The celebration snapped, and Yekase flipped her face like a banner in wind. “But why’d you go with Gundam? You’re insulting forty-three years of Gundam history. Change it now!”

“Says the one who used Unicorn lyrics!”

“What, Unicorn isn’t UC?!”

“I refuse to acknowledge it!”

As they squared up over that nonsense, Ivaris stepped in with a gentle smile and decked them both, one punch each, like thunderheads parting.

“You think cheat codes pause time?”

“Sorry…” they chorused, two reeds in the same breeze.

The world shifted like a curtain drop. They returned to the French royal palace courtyard.

With the Magical Girl tag added, the Flash Blade Princess felt a clear blessing, a sunrise warmth across steel. It felt like—

Like when they fought outside-source beings, a current running with the grain of the world.

Right. The Magical Girl System was built to fight humanity’s enemies and shield the planet, a sky-spun loom for guardians. Now, Alice counted as a “bane” target in their ledger.

The Horizon lay so near it felt like comrades at their shoulders, a long shore within arm’s reach.

The Flash Blade Princess raised her gaze to the black hole’s rim, eyes like stars on water.

The lightning giant still stood like a storm-struck mountain. Yet the sight no longer crushed the heart. They weren’t three spears alone—an army of friends stood behind them like a forest.

“Connecting to the far side of the Horizon—”

The black hole peeled open like an eyelid. The Flash Blade Princess appeared unchanged to Alice’s eyes, blade held high like a sunrise.

“Surpassing even ‘transcendence’—the final Flashblade System!”

A silver key spun into being before her like a falling snowflake. She caught it, and poured Flash Energy and will into it like fire into a kiln.

“—Access!”

[Access Sky Striker!]

[Mark-05!]

[—Code Talker!]

[Engage!]

Hummmm—!

Rainbow light rippled out from the Flash Blade Princess like rings on a cosmic pond. Alice tried to cut in, a hand of lightning stabbing forward, but an unseen field bent it aside like wind veering smoke, and a lance of laser clipped it down.

“Can’t you read the room?!” Jiang Bailu shouted, voice like a whipcrack.

“When someone hits their final form, you stand and watch!” Ivaris yelled, grin bright as a crescent moon.

What are these clowns—

Alice felt the reins slip from her fingers like sand.

The Golden Apple… She had already reclaimed it with the World Tree’s authority when she became a Transcendent, a pearl in her palm. She’d planned to use it to ignite the Inevitable Universe after finishing the Flash Blade Princess.

But now… was she losing without even spending that Sorcery? Alice loved the feeling of a world like a diagram. This chaos crawled under her skin like ants.

Know position and distance, and you can compute past and future. Only then can humanity escape fear and sail to the sea of stars!

We don’t need the unknown… the known is everything!

“You’re wrong!”

The denial hit like twin hammers.

Under Jiang Bailu and Ivaris’s cover fire, the Flash Blade Princess lifted her blade and accelerated, a comet arrowing through night.

The Sky Striker in her hands blazed, reshaping into a lance, trailing six-color afterimages like Balafaruth’s Infinite Power expansion—

No. Only five colors.

They still hadn’t grasped Spiral Force.

The lance carried an Infinite Power storm, a typhoon of light, and tore open the lightning giant’s body like a river through ice.

Alice felt a dark thrill, a hawk stooping. So many moves, and you’re still one step short.

She threw aside her cracking body like a shedding shell, raised the Golden Apple, and forced the last magic to bloom—

…

Then she saw the Flash Blade Princess take her left hand off the haft, reach behind the chest armor like pulling a seal.

Click.

The armor unlocked, and two figures stood there like twin stars revealed.

Magical Girl Icarus, holding a Gunblade.

And Magical Girl Lushi, holding the Sky Striker.

[You—]

What they meant to do was plain as sunrise.

Destroy Alice. The Golden Apple with her.

“Heavenly Divide—!”

“Luminous Infinity—!”

Two finishers, both return-to-essence, pure energy, like twin rivers cutting stone. Stacked, they became a force even a Transcendent couldn’t weather.

A crimson magic cannon punched through Alice straight down the center like a dawn spear. Luminous Infinity swept in after, and cleaved the lightning giant and the Golden Apple cleanly in two.

…?

As the Golden Apple split, an existence within showed itself like a pearl in a shell.

A sleeping infant.

“The Golden Apple… was nurturing life?”

The World Tree had gathered Europe’s Sorcery and sacrifices for centuries, a long rain on old roots. Did a new soul sprout in that loam?

“That’s…”

The baby’s eyes opened, dark as wells.

“Waa… waaaah!”

She cried, clear and bell-like, a skylark’s note over the battlefield’s Infinite Power storm, so wildly out of place it hurt.

“Where did she come from?”

"Inside the Golden Apple...?"

Yekase froze, shock prickling; then, like a lightning strike, a small, languid figure rose in her mind, cat-soft under a sunlit window.

"...Master?"