“Please, listen!” Ichika cried.
“Mmhm?” The girls leaned in to listen.
“Sure, Alice stayed in my room last night,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Sure, she slept there.”
“That’s the problem!”
Ichika’s seeming inability to understand the situation had them at wit’s end.
“Why was she even in your room, never mind sleeping there?!”
“I have no idea!” he pleaded.
“You should die for this, Ichika!”
“That’s right!”
“I’ll finish you off myself. Feel grateful. Ahahah.”
“Orimura Ichika. It’s time to pay for your sins...”
“Ichika... Tonight you’re going to sleep a lot less comfortably.”
Just as they’d finished saying their pieces, the guillotine’s rope finally snapped. Its merciless blade swung down toward his neck. And suddenly, just as they realized what they’d done.
“......?!”
Suddenly, a hail of lasers rained down on the dining hall. As most girls ran for cover and the cadets readied their IS, a squad of crimson IS like they’d never seen before descended.
“What the—”
There were at least ten of them. That many IS was remarkable on its own. More so, that they were all the same mass-produced type. And even more so, that instead of pilots, strange mechanical mannequins sat in their cockpits.
“What the heck is going on?!” Tumbling to safety, Ichika opened his own IS, getting ready to fight.
The squadron of enemy IS soon spotted their target—Houki.
[TARGET CONFIRMED. BEGINNING EXTRACTION.] Cold, mechanical voices echoed in unison. All dozen or so of the drones grabbed Houki at once, and immediately attempted to withdraw.
“What are you doing?! Let me go!” Houki struggled, but their grip on her was too strong. Ropes of an energy she’d never seen before wrapped around her even as she tried to open her own IS.
“ICHIKAAAA!” Houki reached out to him, straining for his hand, but found only air.
Ichika took flight as fast as he could to follow her.
“You’re not getting away!” He chased after the drones, with the other cadets not far behind. “Charl! Suppressive fire! Laura! Blast them! Cecilia! Start sniping!”
“Got it!”
Taking advantage of the disarray caused by their combined attack, Ichika and Ling charged forward.
“Wait, no! You can’t! Get back!” Kanzashi yelled out as she completed her analysis. No sooner did the words leave her lips than the drones self-destructed.
“......?!” Tatenashi’s nanomachines were barely enough to protect the cadets from the blast, but they weren’t enough to stop the drones from carrying Houki away.
“HOUKI!”
Ichika’s cries fell on deaf ears.
✦ ✦ ✦
“We’re tracking the mass-produced IS that took Shinonono.” In the underground complex beneath IS Academy, Chifuyu and the other instructors were briefing the cadets. “Oh, and there’s a gag order about this incident. Be careful not to leak any information.”
While Chifuyu was the picture of calm, Ichika was anything but, “Who cares about that?! Is Houki okay?!”
“Calm down, you idiot. We can track her vital signs, remember? Plus, they took her alive. It’s obvious that they obviously want her for something.”
“How can you be so sure about that?!”
“Just calm down! We should leave them alone until they make it to where they’re going.”
“Eh...?” Whispers began to spread. “Have you gone crazy?!”
Laura was the first to speak up, “If we know where they went, we know where they’ve taken Houki.”
“And we have some more important info about that.” Chifuyu nodded to Maya, who led another woman into the room.
“Haha... Hey there.” Kagaribi Hikaruno. Her usual goofy attitude was gone, replaced with a bundle of bandages which left it less than clear whether she still had all her limbs.
“Those mass-produced IS are from Dr. Kagaribi’s lab, Kuramochi Engineering.”
“Wha—”
Kuramochi Engineering. The original developers of not just the Byakushiki and Akatsubaki, but also the O.V.E.R.S. packs used during the Excalibur incident. The revelation that those had all just been steps in the development of the mass-produced Akebachi (‘Vermilion Hornet’) model shocked not just the cadets, but their teachers.
“A mass-produced version of the Akatsubaki?”
“O.V.E.R.S. packs need a source of energy to amplify. How are they even working without that?”
“Never mind that, how are they being controlled?”
A one-word answer was enough for the teachers. “...Tabane.”
They shuddered. However much of a technical stretch that seemed, it wasn’t beyond what could be expected from the inventor of the IS and only builder of IS cores. So she’d captured Kuramochi Engineering’s prototypes, turned them into unmanned drones, was feeding them energy from somewhere, and had kidnapped Houki. That meant...
“She needs the original Akatsubaki and its pilot for some reason?” Tatenashi connected the dots, and Chifuyu nodded.
It was then when Ichika’s anger finally broke through to the surface.
“I’m going to go save Houki!” he shouted.
“But you don’t even know where she is.”
“Yes I do!” Ichika opened an info display on Akatsubaki. “Here. Over the Pacific.”
The crowd gasped at Byakushiki’s ability to pick up signals from Akatsubaki even when it was in stealth mode.
“That has to be a trap. What even makes you think they’re keeping her with her IS?”
“I... I just know. Houki’s there. She’s waiting for me.”
“Doesn’t look like there’s any stopping you...” Chifuyu sighed in resignation.
“So I’m going to go save her. Even if I have to do it alone.” Ichika’s eyes gleamed with determination. And, for just a moment, glowed gold unnoticed.
“Understood... It’s decided, then. We’re rescuing Shinonono! Cadets, go over your preflights! Instructors, get ready to back them up! We deploy in forty minutes!”
The cry of ‘yes, ma’am!’ in unison echoed through the briefing room. And thus the operation to rescue Shinonono—the string of battles known later as the Akatsubaki Incident—began.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How many are there?” As the cadets rushed through their checklists, Chifuyu ran down the intel with Maya.
“They’d completed six before Tabane took over, but it’s a safe bet that she’s produced more.”
“So no reliable data on enemy strength...” Chifuyu grimaced at how hard an opponent Tabane was to read.
“Are you sure this is something IS Academy can handle on its own? We worked with the British government before, maybe we should ask the Japanese if—”
“They’re not going to lift a finger. Remember?” Chifuyu barely even had to remind her of what had happened with Shirokishi. “If whatever the problem is isn’t actively stomping Tokyo Tower, they’re too chickenshit to get involved. We’ve got to do this our way.”
“But do we really have to make the students fight?!”
“Is that a problem? No... that’s too harsh. Are you worried about them?”
“Yes...”
Chifuyu paused, then let out a deep breath. Then she smiled tenderly and said, “Never change, Ms. Yamada.”
“That’s not what I meant!”
“I know, I know. But here’s how I look at it. These kids are gonna change the world someday. And this may as well be the day.”
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they must decide. And Chifuyu understood that the time had come for her students. It had for her, once. Now it was their turn. Would they choose the world, or—
“Engines are dialed in!”
“Weapons check, OK!”
“Ready to go anytime!”
“Assault package installation complete.”
“Let’s go over these tactics quickly...”
“Let’s get this done!”
As the other cadets wrapped their prep up, Ichika sat alone meditating. His hands folded, his legs crossed, his mind emptied. Making sure that his heart was in the right place.
“I’m coming, Houki...” he muttered.
With that, the signal to launch appeared.
“All units, scramble!”
From the arena runways set up for use as catapults in emergencies, first Ichika, then Cecilia and Ling, Charlotte and Laura, Tatenashi and Kanzashi flew forth. Each with their own worries, their own hopes, as they soared toward the decisive battle.
✦ ✦ ✦
Where...
The breeze on her cheeks and the waves lapping at her body brought Houki back to consciousness. A horizon which seemed to stretch off forever. Blinding white sand. And not a single living soul.
Where am I?
Alone, she walked on a patch of sand too small to be a proper desert island. Then, she stopped. “Who’s there?!” she called out.
Feeling eyes on her, she turned around—and paused in shock.
“Who are you?!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Another her. The darkness in her heart. The strength she always imagined having. Standing right there before her, staring at her with red eyes.
“I...” The other Houki’s smile twisted into a smirk of contempt. “I will replace you.”
Houki shuddered at the menace in the other her’s eyes.
“You have no strength. So I’ll replace you.” Languidly, the other Houki held out her hand. Houki spun around to flee, only to see herself mirrored once again.
“You can’t escape,” the doppelganger’s voice seemingly echoed through the air.
She couldn’t.
“You can’t escape from yourself.” The girl before her eyes was just like her. Was her. “Let yourself slip away. Beneath the waves of consciousness...”
Slowly, the other Houki reached out and stroked her cheek, wiping her tears away.
That’s right. I’m... Ahh, it felt so good. Such bliss.
“Giving in feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” Houki felt her body begin to sink slowly into the sand. The voice of her twin sounded so soothing. “Sleep, now...”
“I...”
It drifted further and further away until she could hear it no longer. Except for the last few words.
“I’ll take care of it all for you.” The red-eyed Houki smiled, as a crimson IS wrapped around her. “Leave it to Akatsuki.”