“Akano Souu’s coordinates sit inside this building, unmoving like a pinned star. I can’t disclose her status; please confirm with your own eyes.” The drone’s voice buzzed like tin rain, then it lifted like a dragonfly and vanished.

“Unmoving?” The word felt cold as frost on glass. Yekase tilted her head at the two‑story tin factory, a rusted whale with blind, sealed windows that swallowed light.

Big floor, few windows, all welded shut like scabbed wounds. No safety, no cover, no function; a hollow shell in an empty sea. Why pick this carcass as a base? Even the side guard room looked warmer than a lantern.

Think of Akano Souu’s temperament… Damn it, a blank page flapped in her chest. Yekase didn’t know what temperament she had, just wind and guesses.

Should’ve asked one more question… Damn it, Souu sailed for Huaxia years ago; even she might not know her own reflection now. The past felt like fog on the bay.

So we might face a fully fallen, pitch‑black, cold‑blooded, combat‑tuned Akano Souu? Then she’d stand opposite the “sister” who once ran, and the stage would flood with tragic blades.

No, not that script. Her heart beat hard like fists on a door.

Yekase tested the weight of her own circle of sisters, counting them like lanterns in dusk.

She and Liu RuoYuan, easy as spring rain. Ling Yi and Ling Ya, steady as twin pines. Ain and Dorothy, warm as bread from an oven. Luzhixing and Lu Yao… in their way, also smooth as a quiet stream.

So she believed the Akano sisters could open their doors and let light in again. Worst case, she’d smack Souu around like a blacksmith tapping a warped blade, fix the bend, then bring her to her sister.

“Ah. Forgot to ask if a certain someone changed her name.” The thought flicked by like a bird.

“Souu” rings like a boy’s name, a bass note in a girl’s song. If she wants a new face, she’ll want a new name; she can’t go full Phoenix, right? One Ivaris using her real name online is enough of a comet.

First things first—handle Souu.

Two crossing lasers scribed red silk through the air, carving the iron gate into six plates. The lowest pair lost their spine and dropped with two clangs like gongs, revealing the belly of the plant.

A faded green plastic floor stretched out like moss after drought, screw holes lined up neat as ant burrows. The machines were long gone, like bones picked clean; even if ruin came sudden, the scavengers came like crows later. The space felt wide as a dry lake.

It was the dullest terrain: no seep for the attackers, no shadow for the defenders, a chessboard under noon sun. No—if you think like an engineer, you can still seed a few thorns under the moss.

Yekase had once sketched traps for clients to pay for rice, a carpenter of teeth behind smiles. She stepped in first, eyes like chisels.

For example, spring‑loaded spikes hidden in screw holes, like vipers sleeping in wells.

Look closely—there they were, cold as needles. Just skirt the holes and walk the yellow warning lines like riverbanks, and you’ll be fine.

For example, a mechanism buried under the plastic skin, a crab under sand.

Look closely—there it was, lines faint as hair. Just spot the odd cuts, measure the range like a surveyor, and it won’t bite.

For example, a staircase that’s a transforming robot in disguise, a crocodile dressed as a log.

Look closely—there it crouched. Just slap it with a wad of Flash Energy like hot pitch, then pinch its joints shut by hand like sealing jars, and it goes quiet.

…

How many damned traps did you lay, like thorns under a silk rug?

So it’s a high‑ranked lobby after all, a banquet with hidden bones.

To keep her current ojou persona polished like lacquer, Yekase planned to play low‑key and not call the trickster out. She’d dodge clean by “accident,” like a cat stepping between raindrops. But after one lap, her mask almost cracked; Ivaris saw her constipated look and understood in a heartbeat, like a mirror catching sun.

“Speaking of which, I wrote a tiny poem about Japan in middle school.” Yekase tossed the topic like a pebble into a pond.

“You write poems?” Ivaris played along, her voice a soft shrug.

“I wrote one line. The teacher caught me and had me read it out loud on the spot. I never continued. It’s a scar from junior skies.”

A poem about Japan, cut short by public reading—probably something mortifying, like incense smoke of past lives. Didn’t expect little Yekase to be that chuuni; kind of cute, like a cat with oversized boots.

“I’ll recite the surviving fragment.”

Yekase paused, then spoke like tapping a bell:

“Yesterday I gazed at mountains; today I gaze at sea—”

A landscape tone, gentle as evening tea. The second half should be wistful, or lovesick rain—

“—and watched a black ship sail in.”

“So it was a hell joke all along!” Ivaris barked, a laugh like a snapped twig.

By the time Yekase offered her teenage scar as tribute, they’d reached the real stairs, a wooden bridge over awkward water.

Ivaris led up to the second floor like a blade at dawn.

Across the empty plant, a single glance caught living ripple—

Two girls, close in age, but the air between them crackled like dry leaves. One pressed a pistol to the other’s forehead like a thorn to a flower. The other… slept. Her cheek rested on a floral pillow, soft as a small cloud.

“Hello. Which of you is Akano Souu?” Ivaris’s voice dropped like a pebble into a still well.

Her sudden tone snapped the tense silence like thin ice. Both girls looked up at the uninvited guest, eyes bright as alarmed deer.

“Check their crest—no, their family badge. It should be on their coats.” Yekase’s lazy voice drifted from the stairwell like incense. She seemed reluctant to come up, content to sit and let Ivaris sweep the board.

“Got it.” Ivaris called the Polaris Staff, slinging it to her shoulder like a storm branch. The head bared serrated fangs, a beast waking in iron.

The pistol girl flinched head to heel, fear shivering like wind through reeds. She forgot her captive, lifted the muzzle and aimed at Ivaris as if aiming at thunder.

“Don’t come closer!” Her words rattled like dry beans in a tin.

Is this in the script? Ivaris didn’t know; a small frown was a cloud over still water.

Her battle experience was rich, a forest of scars, but it was all PVE—go in, say nothing, end it like night. She had never solved a human‑made mess like a “hero” in stage light.

But she had her way to walk.

“That’s not up to you.” Her tone was flat as stone; her feet moved like slow tide.

A gun pointed at her, and yet her pulse stayed calm, a lake in moonlight. She walked in with empty hands, a garden path that didn’t bend.

“Another step and I’ll shoot!” Panic pecked at the girl’s throat like a sparrow.

“Then shoot.” The words were flint, small and bright.

It was the usual taunt, a dare tossed like a coin. Usually, the speaker knows the other won’t fire. Ivaris, though, had the quiet confidence to melt the bullet mid‑flight like wax in a kiln.

The space between them thinned like paper—

The girl couldn’t pull the trigger; her finger trembled like a moth.

“Don’t…” Her voice shook. “Don’t make me a killer…” The plea fluttered like a torn flag.

“Think straight,” Ivaris said, cool wind on fever. “You’re the one aiming a gun at me. Why paint me the villain? And a killer, so what? You’re a fighter, right? Fighters kill. Even non‑fighters kill, when storms blow wrong.”

“???” Confusion flickered like static.

“Pull that trigger—and you can’t turn back.” Her words fell like stones on a path.

“????” The girl’s mind skidded; sense scattered like leaves.

You’re speaking like gods and demons; you twisted her tongue into knots. Yekase almost stood to swap roles, but the silver hair in her sight pulled her back like a hand. The board wasn’t read yet. To keep her trump quiet, the ojou mask must stay tied.

“If you don’t want to kill, quit being a fighter. You’ll even stack a little virtue, like candles by a shrine.” Ivaris’s tone was simple as rain.

“I can’t. It’s the only road I’ve got.” The words thudded like stones in a sack.

“What do you mean?” Ivaris asked, a lantern tilted toward a dark corner.

“I… I’m only sixteen. I’m not old enough to register as a fighter.” Her face was pale as paper. “My only family is gravely ill. We’ll never raise the treatment money. I lied about my age because fighter pay is high. I just want my mom to live.”

Ivaris froze a breath, a sail caught by a stray wind.

She had cut ties and braved the world alone, a boat burned at launch, so empathy didn’t come easy like water. But if she swapped that family into Yekase’s face, something inside loosened like thaw.

A minor—no proper job allowed, side gigs pay like crumbs, no skill to steal or rob without drowning. So she steps into the gray light of a fighter, a trade with iron in its teeth.

And she had no proper armor, only cloth like thin bark. Her wrists and calves were slim with hunger; on a real front, she’d be first smoke in the wind.

All she wanted was a life to keep breathing, a candle protected by shaking hands.

In a world where six‑slotted gods sweep three lanes in a blink, where the skilled vanish into the jungle for their own hush, where ordinary folk sip thin soup and still pay tax—such a thought can lift a sixteen‑year‑old’s trembling hands and point her barrel at someone else’s dawn.

Ivaris felt this moral ravine wasn’t her road to bridge; she tossed the knot to Yekase like a hot coal. “Milady, what do we do?”

“You decide, my little maid,” Yekase said, her tone a fan hiding a smile.

“You—”

“Whatever you do, I understand, and I’ve got your back.” Her voice was shade under noon. “Pick the path you won’t regret. What was that line again—”

Yekase pressed her straw hat brim low, shadowing her eyes like dusk, and stepped up from the stairs.

“Right—‘Do what you believe is right.’ That’s enough.”

…

“You can go,” Ivaris said, a gate opening in a wall.

“But we have our own task. Leave Akano Souu. I won’t kill you.” She dismissed the Polaris Staff, honesty shown like open palms.

“But I am Akano Souu.” The reply fell like a stone into quiet.

“…Huh?” The word blinked like a startled owl.

“You didn’t see the armband on her arm…?” Yekase’s laugh churned under her breath. “Double triangles, the Akano crest. It’s right there, like a stamp.”

“Huh?” Ivaris’s thoughts tangled like strings.

Then who was the sleeping one?

Yekase looked at the girl hugging the floral pillow, motionless as a cat in sun. Ivaris didn’t know her, but the face echoed like a bell half‑remembered. If she stood and faced them, the name would drop like ripe fruit; but from this angle, with hair masking her eyes, the syllables stuck on the tongue like honey.

Who… who was it?

Among the people Yekase knew, who would show up on Tokyo Bay’s steel water? Who joined Japan’s proxy war? Whose age sat in the late teens like autumn fruit—

Gaa—!

Sunlight knifed across Ivaris’s face, bright as a blade. All three looked up. The plant’s roof tore open under two giant steel hands like paper ripped by thunder, and a huge face loomed behind the wound like a moon.

“‘Evening Star Godframe’?! You’re—Chubu Risa!” The name rang like a bell over brass.

“You only remembered when you saw the mech?!” Yekase’s stare was thunderstruck; exasperation crackled like dry lightning. Ivaris whipped out the Polaris Staff and set her stance, a spear before a storm—but the Evening Star moved with speed that mocked its bulk, a hawk behind a mountain, and thrust a hand into the plant—

It scooped “Chubu” into its palm as if lifting a sparrow, then pulled back into the sky like a tide.

Remote control. At this distance, at that size, with that precision—each word clicked like gears.

Yekase dropped to her knees with a thud, a pilgrim before a shrine. “What a fluid automated tactics suite! A craftsman’s waterfall! As expected of a world‑class mechanist. I… have lost!”

“That’s what you care about?!” Ivaris barked, the absurdity hitting like rain on a cat.