A humanoid figure took off from the summit of Mount Gorogatake. The Asura Frame flew through the night sky, cutting through the air like a knife through butter. Even as it twisted and turned, there was never even the slightest change in speed. Silently, effortlessly, the Mark III soared to the old coast of the sunken city in no time flat. The only sound it made came from the supersonic jet streams that burst from the suit’s full-body thrusters whenever it accelerated.
The ultimate weapon—equipped with a fifty caliber anti-materiel rifle from the hangar—had no wearer this time, and yet it danced as if a Devicer were piloting it. But behind the controls were only two young boys and a girl, operating it remotely.
“Now this is what I’m talking about!” Ijuin cheered. “Anti-gravity lifters are the way of the future! You could make an actual UFO with technology like that! Man, eat your heart out, NASA! The age of rockets is over!”
“Among the many treasures the migrant elves brought with them, those lifters are some of the most priceless!” Aliya boasted. “Elves lose their powers on Earth, but vaunted magical artifacts are a different story. Mom says gravity modifiers and microscale superconductive turbines, like the Prayer Wheel, are impossible to replicate in this world!”
“I’m convinced. It controls almost like a video game,” Yu marveled.
“Like a shooter,” Ijuin agreed.
“It has to be intentional, right?” Yu’s HMD captured the Asura Frame’s field of view in real time. “You can even switch into third-person mode.” A screen to the side displayed the Frame’s back and surroundings, allowing them to easily survey the environment.
The three of them held controllers that became the connection between their will and the Asura Frame’s movements. Their right palms glowed as their respective nanomachines communicated directions to the Frame instantaneously. The controllers technically had touchscreen interfaces, but no one ever used them. It just felt weird not to have something physical to fiddle with.
“You needed a whole control room to do this just half a year ago,” Ijuin reminisced.
“Technology’s come a long way,” Yu remarked next to him.
The trio couldn’t see each other with the goggles on, but they could still feel the hard floor of the hangar beneath them. They all sat in a circle, like an after-school video game club.
“It’s not technology that’s advanced,” Aliya corrected smartly. “It’s the personnel. We’ve had these devices for ages, but no one had the right aptitude for nanomachines to make use of them. It’s a good thing your fitness levels have increased lately.”
“Dude, we’re like, full-on control room operators now!” Ijuin exclaimed.
“Mom never liked that place. Too much machinery.”
“I can’t speak for Ijuin, but I don’t think I’m anything special,” Yu said.
“You’re doing a great job with the controls,” Aliya reassured him. “Way better than Ijuin or I could manage. Keep doing what you’re doing.”
Yu wondered for a moment if that might have had something to do with the amount of exercise the other two got, or lack thereof, then refocused on the job at hand.
With the homes, stores, and street lamps of Maizuru now extinguished, the only light came from the humble stars and crescent moon above. However, the darkness was no obstacle for the Frame’s night vision. Yu blasted streams of air from the posterior thrusters and soared to his heart’s content.
But this could only entertain him for so long. Eventually Yu spotted a patch of land that had escaped the flooding and went in for a landing. There, he identified a pack of over twenty wild dogs. They seemed to have turned a portion of the old, overgrown park into their territory. The pack growled and barked at the invader from the sky.
Yu lowered into a combat stance.
“W-We’re shooting them?” Ijuin stammered.
“No. I have a different idea.”
This wasn’t like last night. He wasn’t afraid. He primed all of the thrusters across the Mark III’s body and activated them at full force. The cyclonic jet streams whipped the surrounding area into a maelstrom, the sudden change in pressure creating a massive shock wave. Any animals that couldn’t hold their ground were blown away and never got back up. The blast of wind had shattered their bones. What remained of the pack fled with their tails between their legs.
“I really don’t like having to do that to dogs,” Yu sighed.
“If you didn’t, someone else would’ve,” Ijuin said. “We have to. They’re too dangerous.”
“That just reminded me,” Aliya interjected. “Let’s go to the mall in the east part of the city. Where the monkeys have moved into.”
She transmitted the location data to Yu and a small map appeared in his vision. A single thought later, Go, and the Mark III sped off. The Frame zipped across ten kilometers of city, landing in the parking lot of a shopping mall in the eastern heart of Maizuru in just under ten seconds. It was barely even the equivalent of a stroll around the block for a unit capable of supersonic flight.
A few Japanese macaques with soft, baby-like faces quickly dispersed. Although they never showed trepidation around humans, the strange intruder from the sky was alien enough to frighten the wild monkeys.
“Too dangerous to scavenge the place by foot,” Ijuin muttered. “As if there’d be anything left, considering there are over two hundred of those little guys all over the place. You can’t really hunt that many with a few guns. Might be some canned food or other tools still lying around, though.”
“Normally, we’d simply have to wait for the animals to run out of food and move on.” Aliya’s grin was practically audible as she spoke. “But with the Mark III, we can dethrone these animal despots! It’s the biggest mall on this side of the city, just imagine how much we could— Wait.”
“What’s wrong?” Yu asked.
“Be on alert. I’m sensing a heat signature much larger than a regular monkey coming from inside the mall. No, two...”
“Ijuin, launch a star shell. The suit has some stocked, right?” asked Yu.
“Um, does it? Oh, there it is. Here.” Ijuin fired an illumination round from the Mark III’s left shoulder. It burst in the air, flooding the vast parking lot in light. “W-What the heck are those things?!”
The five-story mall lit up as if the sun had risen several hours early, and Yu watched in shock as over a dozen colossal figures crashed through the windows. They appeared humanoid, but were much larger than any Japanese macaque—more like gorillas than monkeys. Some had four arms extending from their torsos, others had six, like a band of asuras.
“Since when are there gorillas in Japan?!” Ijuin yelped.
“I’m detecting enchantment!” Aliya swiftly reported. “They’re probably macaques that have been altered by magic!”
Upon further inspection, they did indeed have the very same baby face.
“Magic?!” Ijuin parroted. “For real?”
“It’s likely that somewhere in the city, there’s an Anomaly that can alter a being’s shape, making them its thralls!”
“So what, it gave some monkeys a makeover and turned them into gorillas?!” Yu remembered the dog from yesterday, and it suddenly made sense. The eight-legged beast had most likely been transformed by the same sort of spell.
Without warning, one of the gorillafied macaques took a hard swing at the Mark III. Its fist slammed against the helmet with enough magically-enhanced force to dent solid metal. No doubt, this was no ordinary gorilla. But this was no ordinary metal either.
“Dang, that’s some hard stuff!” Ijuin hollered. “The Mark III doesn’t have a scratch!”
“It didn’t even budge,” Yu said, amazed. “It’s sturdy, that’s for sure.”
The gorilla seemed to have taken more damage than the Frame. It gripped its broken hand, bent a full ninety degrees in the wrong direction, while wailing and shrieking on the ground in pain. Yu visualized a kick in his mind, and the Mark III prepared to put the writhing beast out of its misery. Exactly as Yu had willed, the Mark III relaxed, then snapped its right leg like a whip, delivering a lightning fast instep kick without even a running start. The top of its armored foot collided with the massive creature and flung it towards the exterior wall of the mall faster than a speeding car. The gorilla crashed and fell to the ground, where it remained, unmoving.
“The Mark III’s power is insane,” Yu muttered in awe.
“I think we can take that warm welcome to mean they consider us intruders. Ijuin,” Aliya called, “let’s clean up this mess.”
“You got it!” he replied.
They were practically playing a co-op video game at this point. The trio’s HMD goggles listed seven “Gorilla Macaques.” After the Mark III’s surprising display of strength, though, the creatures weren’t so eager to attack anymore. According to the computer there were nine more on the way, but before long, they and all the other “Gorilla Macaques” were nothing more than targets.
“Targeting calibrations complete. Fire!” Aliya cried.
“Hell yeah!” yelled Ijuin.