There was a rainbow flowing past Tooka.
It felt like tumbling into a valley or climbing a sheer cliff face, like both and neither at the same time. The wall was covered in a pattern of light in all colors of the rainbow, and it flowed past her like a river or a waterfall. Each part of the flow was a “time” and a “world”, and in the cockpit of her giant cracked egg, Tooka Nürburg was certain of one thing.
She was crossing over multiple axes in time, across multiple lines between worlds, on her way to the Jave world.
She was inside the Gate. The door on the other side was open, and she was on her way through. In a sense, that was home—where her current body was born. Akigase Tooka had been eaten, and the mother that had caused her to be reborn as Tooka Nürburg was on that side.
Maybe…
Maybe that side was a world of beauty. There were no humans. Perhaps it was filled with primordial forests. Then the rainbow abruptly ended, and she was through the Gate.
At least, she should have been. But this didn’t make sense.
The landscape before her was exactly like the capital.
The images shown on her cockpit’s screens showed the ruins of a city, as if people had been living there until quite recently. There were reddish-black conical shapes like Jave eggs around, but this world didn’t seem like their nest. However, Tooka’s memories said otherwise. She knew this was another Earth, a parallel world to the one Kuon and his friends lived on.
The area around the Capital was unnaturally dark, but she could see sunlight in the distance. She looked up to find the reason. The sky was covered by a massive disc-shaped Jave floating overhead with a terrifying number of mouths and eyes staring at Tooka and the Nürburg.
I have to do this.
Before the enemy attacked her, while it was still just watching, she needed to activate the magic black hole and destroy this solar system.
She booted the program. Heavy Magic Engines were at full power. The field was active, disseminating the energy from the Crystal II. She would open two Gates inside it, and they’d expand until a black hole large enough to swallow—
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssccccccccrreeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
It shook her entire body. It took ages for her to realize the shock wave her sensors picked up was a sound.
It required even more processing before she knew this was the voice of the Jave covering the sky. It was a war cry, the brutal scream of a carnivore who’d spotted prey and was summoning its pack.
Like a swarm of locusts, black shadows closed in on the Nürburg from all directions. Every one of those was a manta-type Jave, and with this machine using its Heavy Magic Field to generate a black hole Gate, it would never stand a chance.
She was about to die.
Somehow, she found herself crying. She was supposed to be half-Jave, yet she was afraid to die. But her hands never stopped advancing the program. She’d removed the last safety device, and all she had left to do was pull the trigger. If she did, the Nürburg would become multiple Gates, swallow the Jave nest, and vanish. And she would be the first to die.
She hesitated for a tiny moment. She closed her eyes.
The face she pictured was the master who’d essentially raised her. The mother who’d taken in a total stranger, a fraud pretending to be the heir to her precious Fencing school, and raised her like her own daughter. Nanahoshi Kaede was strong, kind, and cool. Tooka loved her.
Mother, thank you for everything. And goodbye.
She pulled the trigger.
The next moment felt endless. She forgot to breathe. A single second seemed to take hours. She felt faint. A tear fell from Tooka’s face, falling slowly like a feather. The tear hit the floor of the cockpit, and smaller droplets splattered around it, and she felt like she’d been watching it fall for a full day.
But nothing happened.
“Huh…?”
She pulled the trigger again. No change. Her eyes swept across the monitors around her. Engine good, field out, oil and electric gauges normal, subsystems all clear…except one.
Magic Pressure was at 99.98%.
So close. The magic pressure required to generate the first Gate wasn’t functioning because of the damage it took when the Queen attacked her back on Earth.
No!
The mantas were almost here. She hurriedly expanded her Heavy Magic Field. She had to buy herself enough time to repair the machine. The high capacity field barely withstood the enemy assault. The mantas stopped, as if stabbed into the Nürburg’s field. She had approximately eight seconds before they broke through. That much time to repair the—
A massive hand reached down from the sky, a tentacle from the disc Jave. Its tip touched the field around the Nürburg and pulsed, sending ripples across the surface of the field.
Vorp.
“Unghhh….?!”
It felt like something stirring her brain. A scream tore out of her. Electricity ran from her brain down to her tailbone, and her back arched itself. She was inside the cockpit, but the disc Jave had created a magical link to her.
“Augh…ghhh, ah, no, st-stoppp, eek, ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
It was kneading the inside of her head. Her vision warped, twisted, flipped. Waves of pain ran across her body as though her skin were being peeled. Her body convulsed like every fluid in it was flowing backwards, and she was not even allowed to pass out, only scream and cry. Forgive me. Save me. Kill me. Those three wishes came out as screams, and even as they did, she knew what it was they were after.
Okegawa Kuon floated across the back of her mind.
The Jave contact was pulling up his memories.
Onii…cha—
Tooka was just happy she’d remembered him before she died. She was even grateful to the Jave for it. It saved her. Now she could die in peace. She closed her eyes.
Shichisei Kenbu.
Just then, she heard a familiar voice and was released from all pain. On the screens, she saw the manta around the Nürburg and the disc Jave’s tentacle sliced to pieces by a blue Blade. Before she could process what that meant, Tooka passed out.
Wrapped in a black cloak, a single Cavalleria swept out of the Gate behind the Nürburg just before it vanished. Running sideways across the sky, he fired the boosters that lined his cloak and jumped. “Jumped” was definitely more accurate than “flew.” He might not be able to move freely through the air, but he could launch himself. He landed on one knee on empty space a few centimeters above the Nürburg’s Heavy Magic Field and rose to his feet.
“The Black Hole Gate hasn’t been activated. She failed?”
It was Okegawa Kuon, wearing Soukyu (Pleiades Wind) and sporting a new extra weapon Tooka had made specifically for him. One he hadn’t had a chance to use while serving as the Kiryu’s backup.
Tooka’s not responding. She’s alive, but…
He wanted to get inside the Nürburg and slap her awake, but he didn’t have time. He’d used Ryuenbu to slash away all the enemies around them, but reinforcements would be coming quickly. Most of all…
“Don’t you look down at me, monster,” Kuon muttered, glaring at the massive disc-shaped Jave floating above him. He’d never seen this type before, and it seemed likely this one even outranked the Queens. If he couldn’t kill it, they’d never get a black hole Gate open, even if Tooka did wake up. The soul of Suzuka Hachishiki that had awakened within Kuon forced his face into a grin. The fury of a hero whose parents and family and friends and sister had all been murdered was tainting Kuon’s own heart. Kuon had seen his friends and school and the people he’d tried to save in Europe slaughtered in the same way, and found it intensely satisfying to let himself bathe in the flames of that fury.
“Perfect. You’ll be the ideal test for my new form.”