JAL350, flying from the City of Ivalice to Japan’s Second Neo Tokyo, had its crown torn open—a gaping wound along the spine—like a crest snapped after a self‑destruct trance, white surge breaking into a storm of shards.

Yekase’s Oz Floating Disc plugged the bleeding air for a heartbeat, but the plane’s bones were fatally cracked; collapse into breakup was a tide already rolling.

Ivaris, her waking fury spent, blinked back reason. One glance up—her face went iron-gray, legs nearly folding on the spot.

“Don’t freeze—help me!”

Urgency bit like winter knives. Yekase flung the metal bin blocking her view; a face Crimson Field had never seen slid into the light.

“…Huh?! You’re not—” She stalled mid-breath, mind skidding.

“Phoenix, get to the landing-bay interface. I’ll open a slot. Drop under the fuselage and brace it. When you hear my sound-cast, clear out and keep safe. Ivaris, once she clears, fire down your particle beams—no need to max out power, but open as many nozzles as you can. How many tops?”

“Te… eleven!”

“That’s enough. Forget the wings. Two per row, head to tail. Put one extra up front.”

Yekase’s glance sliced between them. “Well? Move!”

“Got it!—What do I call you?”

“A…”

She started to offer “Akano Aruko,” the fake name on her tongue. Then it hit her—the woman in front was the very creditor whose surname she’d borrowed. Claiming “Akano” to Akano felt rude; she lopped off the front, let it become a nickname:

“Aruko—just call me Aruko.”

No time for more. Crimson Field nodded once, hefted her braised-red greatsword—her staff, by the look—into position. Yekase peeled away one Floating Disc, let her crawl out through curled steel like a storm-bent leaf.

Crimson Field didn’t know the silver-haired girl’s origin. Why she ran the overlooked Oz Floating Disc with a veteran’s grace, why she took command as if born to it, why she spoke Akano’s surname then slid to a codename. All three pointed to an old friend, yet their faces were worlds apart; she’d never heard of a two-form transformation.

It didn’t matter. However baffling the girl who had left with a sink in one hand and a toilet in the other, wrapped in a curtain like a shamed ghost—Crimson Field’s task didn’t change.

Work together. Force a landing. Shield every innocent soul aboard.

Outside, wind hammered her like black surf. She could barely keep from being blown off like those shedding panels. To circle from the crown down to the belly, she’d probably have to stab through the skin with that greatsword—

A small half-transparent pink disc shimmered up at her boots.

…!

It hung steady relative to the fuselage—Yekase had conjured her a foothold, a flower petal in the gale.

She’d learned this trick from a student on a magi-rail, improvisation turned craft; only now the caster was inside, and the climber outside had changed.

Ivaris, on standby, still found time to snipe:

“More discs. You really love these things?”

“Love ’em. They were my second spell—fast, handy, versatile.” Yekase answered while birthing step two. Then she added, a soft echo under the roar:

“My students loved them most.”

“Yeah, yeah. You can’t let go.”

Yekase didn’t bite.

Leaving Huaxia, she lost a guide and a successor. Leaving Europe, she lost another guide and another successor.

Sometimes it felt like she walked a long, lightless road, lifting her head to find only vast, empty sky and her own shadow—no footsteps ahead, none behind.

Thank the stars Ivaris, Ling Yi, Jiang Bailu, and Lu Yao walk beside me. Without them, this road would be a solitary winter.

Would I turn into a second Xiaoyuan, or even Jixia?

If one day I recalled these old names and my heart didn’t ripple—then better to go down with them.

“Crimson Field has reached the fuselage side…”

In Yekase’s Infinite Force Perception, her presence blazed like an unquenchable flame. Since that wordless farewell, Crimson Field’s power had shifted.

Stronger now than her Beast‑King‑Eagle days.

She and two teammates had been detained, dosed with Mind Energy desensitizers… so she turned to Europe for Sorcery? Took this flight home to Japan with that in her veins.

And not the systematic path Yekase walked—she touched a more unstable, dangerous presence and fused it into herself.

In Alicia Alicia’s sigil‑speak, the fire held…

“…an Undying aspect?”

As long as a single ember glowed, life wouldn’t fall—an everburning flame. Binding an extra concept to pure Sorcery was the habit of monsters.

What do you call a monster braided from “Undying” and “Flame”?

“Phoenix…?!”

This was Crimson Field, after losing her Mind Energy affinity and Soul Power resonance, dying and reborn with a new power.

So she took the most dangerous out‑of‑hatch job without blinking—

Even then, it screamed her courage and trust. Consecutive blows couldn’t kill her, couldn’t bend that honest heart, only tempered it harder.

Yekase and Ivaris couldn’t fall short.

“Iva, the nose has parts about to peel. They’ll smash the fairing. Weld it shut!”

“On it!”

“This side’s nearly…”

—Evolution stacks were climbing.

Supporting the airframe gnawed at her reserves, yet a sliver of ease slid in. After the tenth disc locked, she pulled focus to Flash Energy, raised both hands, and clenched at the air.

Like a heavy iron door stood open before her, and she had both handles. She’d haul them together with raw will, and the door would slam shut on the storm.

Her fists trembled, sweat beading fine as mist. She kept pulling.

Closer, closer…

Clang!

The two torn halves of the crown twisted into each other, wild and serrated, teeth interlocked. Whatever they shook, they wouldn’t part again.

She softened the seam into itself, metal flowing to fill the gap. Airtightness was gone, cabin cold bit like knives, but at least no more bodies would fly out into the night.

Showing metal reduced to clay under her hands, Yekase wiped her brow, dove out through Crimson Field’s crawl‑hole, and slid along the fuselage to back her up.

So much for playing the pampered lady; what kind of lady wrestles a plane? Ivaris could only grimace. Then she remembered this crash was eighty percent her fault; even grimacing felt heavy.

The plane cleared the central mountains of Honshu and fell toward the Kanto plain. Altitude—won’t be enough.

Wind howled through the comm, carrying Yekase’s voice to Ivaris:

“We’ll lift it from below!”

They counted down. Three. Two. One. Both pressed up against the belly like pillars under a temple.

“It’s just a plane… watch me shove it back!”

On the left, Crimson Field’s fire wings surged, pushing against gravity like red monsoon. On the right, Yekase tried to mimic her—then remembered pure Flash Energy radiation had zero impulse. Even Heavenly Divide against the sea didn’t kick.

[What’s happening?! The plane’s rolling left!]

“Hold! Don’t panic—”

Flight Spell lacked torque. The Levitation Spell could spike push for a breath, but one body doing vector control was the ceiling. Trying to push a plane meant imbalance, roll, maybe punching straight through the shell.

Can’t I just sprout wings on the fly? Grow gills in water, why not feathers in air… She pleaded to Flash Energy, but like a fair, strict Dragonfly Captain, it refused to add a passive when it wasn’t in the tree. No extra button. No mercy.

Humans can’t lean too hard on Infinite Power. She could almost hear her father lecturing from the far side of the cosmos.

“Goddamn it—!”

Yekase yanked out Dawn of Eden, fired a spray-burst backward into the night like a comet’s tail.

[Now it’s rolling right! Deathwing much? Can you two sync your thrusts?]

“Quit whining! If you think we’re sloppy, jump in and help build this thing!”

[Give me your bearing!]

“Use your Perception! Perception!”

Yekase shifted, back pressed to the fuselage, eyes scanning downward through rushing dark.

…

Tokyo Bay came into view—a black mirror under cloud.

At this angle… no. Straight into the water would be a stone’s death. Need a trick—

“Iva, set the thrusters!”

[—Set!]

Crimson Field cleared away, but Yekase held, steering by eye. Ivaris’s eleven floating units fired aft under the fuselage, stretching fall-time and easing impact angle, knitting a glide path like silk on glass.

Still not enough. Surface tension would turn the sea into ground—unless—

Yekase flung her arms wide, body flattened by wind against steel like a leaf on stone.

Flash Energy soaked the belly plates, seeping into the wings like frost in roots.

Two thousand meters to splash.

“Fuel tanks vented? Brace for impact!”

Screech—grind—!

Both wings snapped, twisted ninety degrees, fused back, their tips stabbing straight down like spears.

Eight hundred meters left.

Yekase hugged Dawn of Eden tight, rolled off the belly into freefall.

Crimson Field caught her midair, both watching the no-longer‑plane skim at murder-speed. The wings hit first, tearing like tofu under a hammer, but the rupture carved open the water. Under Ivaris’s particle beam push, the hull slid along the bay like a skater on a midnight lake.

…Speed bled. Silence rose. The wreck settled.

“Aruko, we did it!” Crimson Field shouted, voice bright as flame.

“My vacation…” Yekase muttered, misery drizzling like cold rain.

What else can you do? Saving people beats a beach day.

Yet there’s a way to salvage the story.

“How about this—cameras won’t catch us out here. We’ll sync our statements. I’ll say I got flung out through a broken window. You, a passing hero, hauled me back.”

“Eh?! That’s… not right?”

“You’re a ronin, aren’t you? Don’t sweat the fame.”

Ronin…

She’d thrown that title away long ago, when she rooted in Fuyuki City. So Aruko was her after all, wasn’t she?

“—Doctor, why do you look like this?”

“Body upgrades. On demand.”

“Mind Energy ascension?!”

“I can only refine along my evolution line, not free-mod a body.”

This was the post‑upgrade form. Back then she could only extrapolate biological age. Flash Energy’s ceiling, it seemed, was the organism’s own.

“Why’d you come back to Japan?” Yekase cut the topic clean.

Crimson Field’s expression dimmed like an ember under ash, then steadied.

“…Family business.”

“What kind? I might be able to help.”

“My clan, the Crimson Field family, is a regional Sinister Organization in Japan. When I was young, I couldn’t stand their dealings, so I ran—became a ronin. Their pursuit sent me across the sea to Huaxia.”

“Mm.”

Not a shock. When she chose to stay a woman, never changing back, Yekase had guessed as much.

“After we were captured, they held us two months, then released us. Then I received a call for help from Japan.”

“A plea for help?”

“It was my mother.”

"She told me my sister, Shuangyu, had been made a pawn in their proxy war with other groups. Our family flung her like a stone into the hell-on-earth called the Old Tokyo Combat Zone."

Old Tokyo... the name hung in the air like smoke.

Wait—that’s the city sprawled right before the two of them, isn’t it?