The “Bailu” whose mask had been yanked off, face almost meeting a fist, spat a thick barrage like a stormfront and drove Luo Jie back, then streaked off to the horizon like a falling star.

Silence rolled back over the sky above the Ambition Divine Ship like tide over sand, and Luo Jie fluttered down on stiff wings like a tired sparrow, grinding the fallen sky-curtain shards into powder like brittle ice, then let the glow fall away and became a girl again like dawn shedding mist.

She ran to Yekase with eyes bright as wet apricots, the hope for praise beating like a small drum, and chirped, “Mom, I did great, right?”

“—Fourth question: ‘That dragon-form fighting style—did Ling Yi teach you?’” Yekase’s reply came cool as winter glass, each word neat as falling snow.

…

Luo Jie’s body stilled like a paused clock, and her smile set on her face like frost.

She nodded slowly, like a reed in a wind that had just died.

Yekase’s ice melted like spring sun on a windowsill; her face bloomed warm and she gathered Luo Jie into her arms like a quilt.

“Fifth question: ‘Is the war with aliens exhausting?’” Her voice rippled soft as a river over stones.

Luo Jie buried her face in Yekase’s “headlights” like a shy kitten burrowing into pillows and mumbled, “About like just now.”

The alien war wasn’t hard to infer, like footprints across fresh snow that point one way.

A year’s memories returning began with the cruiser-destroyer and Lalabel waking, like thunder that announces rain, so if that didn’t happen on that line, then the off-world forces still had embers left—another invasion was as natural as a tide turning.

Yekase patted Luo Jie’s back with a rhythm like rain on leaves—mother and daughter, a picture warm as a lamp in dusk—and murmured, “I think I get it. If that enemy really was her, she’ll come back like a storm that circles the bay… Before then, I’ll let you taste the life a fifteen-year-old should’ve had, like sunlight on a schoolyard.”

“Eh…” The sudden turn shorted Luo Jie’s thoughts like a tripped breaker, and she froze like a statue.

“I’m in,” Liu RuoYuan said, her voice steady as a plumb line.

“—Objection!” Ivaris raised a hand like a student, face sharp as a drawn blade. “What do you even know about being a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Hell, how do you know I don’t?” Liu RuoYuan shot back, lightning to thunder.

“Then where would you take her?”

“...A dessert shop?” The answer landed like a pebble in a pond.

“And then?”

“A mall? Then maybe a movie...” Her list trailed like smoke.

“That’s literally just a date!” Ivaris’s words snapped like a twig.

—Literally just a date?

Yekase, twenty-eight, honeymoon done and only the ceremony left, realized she’d never had a proper date, like finding an empty page where a chapter should be.

That youth of eating together, wandering streets, and holding hands—nothing, a blank snowfield.

The sense of a fatal absence pressed on her chest like a night with no moon, and she felt another-line self stirring like a mirror in dark water.

That Yekase, gnawed by “what was lost” like mice in the walls, must’ve thrown herself into self-destructive, ceaseless battle… like early Lu Yao, a PeaceWarrior burning both ends.

But there was a fork in the path, a split like two rivers.

Was that Yekase a corporate-drone version, or a Lalabel-supplied high-school-girl version?

It mattered, like a key that either fits or doesn’t—because it decided whether Yekase remembered Jiang Bailu.

And whether she remembered Jiang Bailu tied directly to who that masked enemy really was, like a thread leading into a maze.

It couldn’t actually be Jiang Bailu… right?

…Uh. Maybe not impossible, like lightning on a cloudless day.

In the Lalabel-supplied history, Jiang Bailu was just R&D, ordinary as a lab coat, not even slated as a “friend.” Yekase felt forgetting her might be mercy, but Jiang clearly didn’t agree, like a seed refusing to stay buried.

If on that line she broke the Reverse Meme, and then found the doctor who had propped her up in her deepest core had become a bright, seamless, seventeen-year-old high-school girl… going mad wouldn’t be strange, like glass shattering under song.

“You see? She’s off in her own calculations again,” Ivaris said, tugging Luo Jie free from Yekase, like pulling a kite from a tree. “How can you shop right with a slick old fox like that?”

She ruffled Luo Jie’s hair like a breeze in grass. “We’ll have your Aunt Ling Yi take you around her hometown—Twin Towers City.”

“Aunt Ling Yi! How old is she now?” Luo Jie’s curiosity flared like a match.

“Nineteen, a college freshman,” Ivaris replied, crisp as a bell.

“Wow…” Luo Jie breathed, mind painting pictures like clouds changing shapes.

Deal struck, Ivaris had Liu RuoYuan watch Yekase and phoned Ling Yi—Ling Yi had energy to burn like a coiled spring in college, and agreed in a heartbeat like a snapped finger.

Five minutes later, Ling Yi refreshed out of a portal like a card flipped onto a table.

“These curved shards on the ground—some artwork about new life breaking shell?” she asked, eyes bright as a shoreline at noon.

Yekase clicked her tongue, heat under ice. “They’re the blood-and-sweat money from port-mapping and stripping circuits on a fifty-meter-class mech,” she said, each term clanking like tools on steel.

Since starting college, Ling Yi had dyed her hair a deeper blonde like wheat at dusk, wore no curls, just let it fall over her shoulders like a waterfall. Today she had a cropped knit with a slip dress, a wool belt knotted loose as a lazy snake, and Doc Martens heavy as hoofbeats.

Ivaris nudged Luo Jie forward like launching a small boat. “This kid wants the city, a modern girl’s life. If school’s not busy, take her out?”

“Not busy, not busy,” Ling Yi sang, light as a skylark. “Big lectures are done, I’ve been in the dorm twiddling thumbs.”

She looked Luo Jie up and down, gaze gliding like a skater—lingering a beat on that NS-style hairdo, sleek and sharp as a blade—then landing on eyes identical to Yekase’s, twin pools like mirrored lakes.

Luo Jie went stiff for no reason, nerves fluttering like moth wings.

Ling Yi flashed a sunrise smile and offered her hand like a branch. “Surname Ling, single given name Yi. Nineteen. Freshman at Ivalice State University. Four core finals total 333, class rank third. Height 171 cm, weight 50 kg, shoes size 39 EU. Parents both alive, one sister in her senior year of high school.”

“...???” The numbers whirled past Luo Jie like leaves in wind.

“Anywhere you’re dying to go? I recommend a mall in Tianxin District,” Ling Yi said, voice bubbling like a spring. “I can also tell you Flashblade Red’s highlight runs—”

Yekase snorted a laugh on the side, the sound popping like a soap bubble.

…

…

Once Ling Yi took Luo Jie through the Twin Towers City portal like divers slipping into a blue gate, Liu RuoYuan also headed back to campus, and the sky island held only Yekase, Ivaris, and XiaoLei like three lanterns on a quiet pier.

Yekase stared at the sea of sky-curtain shards, not knowing where to start, like a farmer before a field of stones, but Mom said to call the scrap guys and be done. She forced a smile like a paper fan and swore she’d clear it fast, then finally talked Mom into heading home like a tide pulling back.

So two Magical Girls began picking up trash with portal crates like cranes gulping fish.

Ivaris started from the left like dawn from the east, Yekase from the right like dusk from the west, planning to sweep the edges where pieces could fall, then solve the middle with magic like rain washing streets.

“—Do you think she’s your child?” Ivaris asked when they were farthest apart, her voice drifting like a gull.

Yekase pulled metal into her palm with Flash Energy like a hawk calling a knife home, never bending her waist, glanced over, and said, “All my inventions are my children; of course she is,” her words set like stones in a stream.

“Fair, but… you know I mean a more objective inference,” Ivaris said, tone fine as a needle. “Like… Infinite Power parameters?”

Yekase paused, palm on her belly like a hand over a small hearth, and said, “I know. This kid—her eyes might take after you or me, nose, hair, mouth… and yes, Infinite Power too. No precedent says if two Infinite Power Ascenders have a child, she’s born an Ascender. Can I wipe out the Sinister Organization before Ascenders ossify into a new superhuman class? Let’s leave that. But Luo Jie’s Flash Energy signature is clear as a seal.”

“What’s it look like?” Ivaris asked, curiosity thin as smoke.

“No rose-magenta base like Ling Yi’s, no vampiric Sorcery like Jiang Bailu’s…” Yekase said, brow pinched like a drawn bow. “She’s mixed in Omega Ray.”

“...Huh?” The word fell like a dropped cup.

Yekase waved both hands fast, fluster bright as flapping flags. “Don’t give me that look. I can be war buddies with Lu Yao, but dating? No way! She likes her sister!”

—Whoosh-clack!

A corner window on the second floor swung open with a clatter like a windchime, and Lu Yao’s dead-fish eyes poked out from the dim like a cat in a loft.

“What’re you talking about?” she asked, voice flat as a lake.

“You’re here?!” Yekase and Ivaris blurted, hearts jumping like fish.

“Don’t think I’m not,” Lu Yao said, retreating like a shadow. “I’ve always been here…”

She slid the window shut with a soft thud like a book closing.

Ivaris and Yekase stared at each other, spooked like villagers under a shrine—felt like a god hovered inches overhead—then after a long breath like wind through pines, they returned to the topic.

“So you had Ling Yi take Luo Jie out to test how much she knows about present-day Twin Towers City,” Ivaris said, knitting the line like thread. “To judge if the Yekase on that line ever came back to Twin Towers—because in a space-war era, it’s hard to say the city kept this look.”

“Can’t fool you,” Yekase said, a small smile like a knife’s shine.

“But I still don’t get it,” Ivaris said, eyes narrow as crescents. “Why? Are you really scared of that so-called ‘doom,’ trying a different route?”

“I am scared,” Yekase said, the words soft as ash.

She looked past the sky-curtain wreckage to the wide earth like a green ocean. “Because I’m not alone anymore, I’m scared. I fear something happens to me, to you all, to this child… I know it’s wrong and impossible, but I still dream of locking her on this sky island and watching her every moment, keeping every thorn from touching her.”

“…” The quiet sat between them like snow.

Even if this child’s likely born an Ascender, hard to hurt by ordinary means? The thought flickered in Ivaris’s eyes like heat lightning—she felt it too.

“Then you’re not going to the Moon?” Ivaris asked, voice low as dusk.

“I am,” Yekase said, steady as a metronome. “After she’s born.”

“…Can’t you settle till she’s weaned?” Ivaris’s plea hung like mist.

Yekase shook her head in silence, motion small as a leaf falling.

Everything about the lunar front is sealed like a locked vault; she has to see it with her own eyes like a scout in the dark. If it’s tangled and two years won’t be enough…

Her five-year pact with Gu Xiangshi doesn’t force a Spring Festival 2028 return to Huaxia, but Shadow Curtain International holds resources, routes, and the megaphone like a dragon clutching pearls. The longer it drags, the worse it gets for “heroes” like them, and the scattered local forces will cool like embers in rain. She must rendezvous with Luzhixing early and go back to rally the team like a drum calling soldiers.

Pat, pat.

Ivaris had already crouched by Yekase, tapping her belly lightly like rain on a drum, and nuzzled it with her nose like a cat seeking sun.

“Let’s say it’s so that ‘Sinister Organization’ never appears in her common sense,” she murmured, voice warm as tea, “so she grows healthy and becomes a person equal to anyone, no throne, no kneeling.”

“She can choose to fight, not be pushed into it,” she went on, words lighting like lanterns. “Help international friends, open the star sea, do righteous deeds with Ling Yi, or do research with you and Jiang Bailu—it’s her freedom. Her future will hold more paths than ours like a river delta.”

“As the ones before, as mothers, to pave her road we have to clear the remnants of the past in our time—this isn’t a battle squad’s demand, it’s my own wish,” she said, vow firm as bedrock.

“We… will be her heroes.”