One day, massive portals appeared all over the world. Later to be known as Gates, these were passages linking our world to another—a world filled with mankind’s natural predators, the Jave. Ever since these Gates opened a few decades ago, Jave had been spilling through.
The Jave were fleshy beasts, purplish-black and shaped like cones or mantas. They had countless tentacles, each one several meters long. Humans caught by these tentacles were eaten whole.
The Jave made nests around the Gates, laid eggs, and multiplied on our world. The Imperial mainland was long since overrun with them; only a few survivors remained.
These survivors had settled on islands to the south, waging a desperate resistance against the Jave. These were the Jogen Islands, a crescent-shaped island chain stretching from the mainland of Japan across the ocean.
There were three major military encampments under Imperial Army control: one on Jogen, one floating on the waters near the Imperial Capital (which mankind had recovered only a month before), and one on a small island known as Aohime.
A new Gate had appeared above this last location, code-named Mid-Blue. This Gate obstructed the sea lane connecting the Capital and Jogen. If nothing was done, lines of supply and communication to the freshly recovered capital would remain unsecured, so the Imperial Army launched an operation to eliminate Mid-Blue.
In Mid-Blue airspace, sandwiched between the blue of the sky and the blue of the ocean, the horizon melted away, nearly impossible to make out. Far in the distance was the volcanic island of Aohime. Just above that was the Gate, like a pitch-black moon surrounded by a red mist and a terrifying number of black specks.
The black specks were Jave, and the red mist was the blood they sprayed.
They were joined by white beams of light, outnumbering the black specks. These beams caused explosions, and the volume of red mist increased, but the number of black specks increased even more.
The war between the Imperial Air Force Mobile Unit and the Mid-Blue Jave swarm had begun.
The Air Force was deployed in a fan shape above Aohime Island. There were some aircraft and flying motherships, but the bulk of their forces were soldiers known as Maneuver Cavalleria. At a glance, they looked like skydivers, but that was not the case.
Each Cavalleria wore a frame of external armor. These frames were powered by the innate magical power all humans possessed, allowing them to fly. Known as Division Maneuvers, or DMs for short, the invention of these armored magic weapons had instantly made all weapons from the old world obsolete.
Cavalleria wearing sniper DMs began laying down cover fire from a distance. This was the storm of white beams seen a moment before. They carved through the Jave front lines, firing until their magic was almost tapped out. Nearly ten percent of the assembled black specks were eliminated.
“Attacker Squads, charge!”
At the commander’s word, the snipers retreated, replaced by a crowd of Attacker units in two-man cells.
The Jave fought back. They fired bullets of light so fast they looked like twinkling stars. DMs were equipped with barriers known as Witch Bubbles that allowed them to move in the deep sea or outer space, but the monsters’ shelling easily tore through these. Luck and reflexes allowed ninety percent of the attackers to make it through intact. That might sound like most, but it still meant dozens had perished.
The bulk of the DMs that the Air Force Cavalleria employed were ordinary Nichirin frames. Leaving the comm channels partially open, each frame was playing pre-selected combat music. Since this was proven to boost morale, the Air Force allowed DM units to play music as long as the volume was low enough that they wouldn’t miss orders. The songs could be rock, punk, jazz, theme songs from mecha anime, or whatever the Cavalleria preferred, but they were almost all fast-paced and intense. The 2nd Mobile Unit’s front attacker fired bullets in time to the rhythm of a double-bass drum set, the 10th Mobile Unit’s attack gunner was shot down wrapped in the song of electronic fairies, and the 5th Mobile Unit’s front attacker cut through an enemy Jave, screaming along with the chorus.
The odds were three to one in favor of the enemy.
Five seconds after the battle began, a tenth of the military’s forces were gone, and the enemy numbers were only increasing.
How? Because a Queen had emerged from inside the Gate.
The Jave Queen was a massive cone-shaped monster three hundred meters in diameter. Made of red flesh, like internal organs, it had a horrifying number of mouths, and each of these spewed children—ordinary Jave. Their only shot at winning was to kill this Queen.
Six seconds had passed since the battle began.
The front lines had been disrupted, but the Jave swarm still held the skies over Aohime Island, and there were no signs of penetrating their inner stronghold.
But at the seven-second mark, a new frame fell from the skies above.
“Stay with me. Don’t leave me alone. I will come back. Back to you.”
Everyone heard these lyrics blasting over their comms. Whether through sheer nerve, or carelessness keeping her from noticing the volume was left cranked up, she was convinced no one else could hear—but if they listened close, they could hear her humming along. They pretended not to notice the barely suppressed note of fear.
A sweet song of love—not at all what you’d think the Warrior Princess would listen to.
Yet every one of them thought the same thing: She’s here. At last she’s here. Right on time. Take it from here, Your Highness.
An instant later, a blinding beam of light pierced the Queen Jave.
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Shot by the Division Maneuver as it fell from 20,000 meters above, a third of the Queen’s bulk was vaporized, and she screamed in pain and fury.
As if linked to her will, every Jave looked up just as a second shot fired. The horde of Jave were swallowed by the massive light bullet, vaporized one after another.
This beam was clearly far, far more powerful than anything the other Cavalleria had fired. The diameter alone was on a different scale. While an ordinary rifle fired fist-sized bursts of light, her bullets were so large that ten people could line up head to toe and still be swallowed up by them.
Her red DM fell, plunging through the hole she had made in the Jave swarm. The Jave all fired at her as she passed, but her DM danced across the surface of the ocean, dodging all their bullets. Several bullets appeared to score a direct hit, but a light like a black membrane appeared, catching and diverting them.
The shape of this DM was strange, not at all like a human’s form. The head was too long, the wings too large, and the tail stretching from the back was too elongated. And the sheer size of it! It was at least twenty meters long.
Was it a bird? A crane? A dragon?
No…it was a Kiryu.
As the massive DM flew along the water’s surface, several hexagon-shaped objects shot out ahead of it. They turned in the air, flying directly towards and into the Jave swarm where they exploded. The covers broke free, and countless guided light beams fired from within.
Numerous explosions followed. The Jave caught up in them were turned to dust.
Without checking the results, the giant DM was already committed to its next action. As if kicking off the surface of the ocean, it suddenly rose upwards, hurling itself into the swarm. The Kiryu’s head turned. Its mouth opened, and a beam of light shot out. Dozens of monsters died instantly.
This was the massive beam of light from earlier. The Kiryu’s head turned left and right, mercilessly exterminating its foes. At the same time, the hexagons deployed from its tail—the guided light bullet containers—were fired into the thickest parts of the swarm, erupting and turning the walls of enemies into polka dots.
“Mother Servant Pod, fire.”
At her whispered command, two dragons flew from her feet, splitting away from the main body. Those two dragons further split into dozens of birds, each flying like they had minds of their own, spewing light bullets from their tips. They were Type-2 Artillery Servants, sent into the midst of the enemy.
A storm of hundreds of light beams erupted, and the monsters from another world were incinerated one after another. The giant red DM passed through the enemy swarm again, climbing higher. Just before she was hidden by the sun, for a second, the other Cavalleria caught a glimpse of the pilot.
She was one of the Twin Star Heroes, a Division 5 named Suzuka Hanabi. She was from Jogen Maneuver Academy, High School Division, Class 3-A, Seat Number 12. Hanabi was an Attack Gunner from the Lunatic Order’s Fuji Squad, wearing the frame called Reimei (Drag Ride).
She was also part of a giant dragon.