His eyes were guarded behind a veil of caution. It was obvious at a glance that the Devicer before him wasn’t nearly as tall or built as their predecessor. Yu was a scrawny fourteen-year-old, and the Mark III had formed itself to fit his body. And that was to say nothing of the Holy Shroud, an entirely new addition to the Frame’s silhouette.
A mechanical beep sounded, drawing Yu’s eyes to the word “target” that had appeared before him. Beneath it was Sakuma. Drawing his gun had marked the young captain as a threat.
All of a sudden, his death was a single order away.
These people are so caught up in violence and overthrowing the city that they’re willing to completely ignore the real enemy, Yu thought. If I let them go, they might do it again.
It would be so easy to end it all here, now. How much safer the settlement would be without them. That was, after all, why Aliya’s uncle had concocted this entire scheme. These people were dangerous. Sakuma could squeeze the trigger at any moment.
Yu lifted his hand and pointed his finger at him.
Pop!
A superhardened calcium bullet fired from the Mark III’s hyper-compressed air gun. The armed officer was right there. He couldn’t miss.
And yet, Sakuma still stood there. Stupefied.
“Who...are you?” he asked. “No one else can use the Mark III. Only Mizuki can!”
The bullet Yu shot hadn’t been aimed at the man’s head, but at his weapon. Yu had offset the targeting calibrations just enough to disarm him.
Sakuma and his men were criminals. Attempted insurrection, attempted magnicide, assault, kidnapping—their crimes warranted their lives. They were a danger to society and needed to be neutralized. Nadal would have agreed.
It would be so easy.
But Yu thought of their faces. The prideful military men. The angry, barbarous adults. The racists who lived in their bubbles. The people who would have done it to Ein, or Aliya, or any of the elves just because they were different.
There are a lot of bad people in the world, Yu thought. People I’ll never agree with.
But Devicer Three would protect them anyway.
Yu turned on the voice changer. “Who am I?” he replied. His voice carried a theatrical confidence that sounded nothing like his usual self. “You said it yourself. I’m Devicer Three.”
The haughty bravado wasn’t the only thing tinting his identity, though. His voice came out shifted, distorted to sound completely androgynous.
“Y-You’re a woman?!” Sakuma shouted.
“Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. What does it matter to you what my gender is?” Sakuma had no words. “There’s something I want to say. To everyone.”
Yu looked around the lounge, at the trembling soldiers who had pulled themselves up and their terrified faces. Everyone else was on their knees in reverent awe of the masked Devicer of black and gold. The elves had laid themselves before their king.
“I...am a defender,” he said. “Yours. Everyone’s. I am strong, so I protect the weak. When there is suffering before me, I will not be a bystander. When I see someone in need, I will do everything within my power to save them. Humans, elves, rich, poor, no matter who they are or where they come from.”
It was almost impossible to believe that this was Yu. He thought of Ein as he spoke, drew on her confidence, and it gave him more strength than he could have possibly imagined. The words simply came to him, flowing like water.
“You will never know my face, and you will never know my name. But you will know me when I arrive to fight for those with no one to stand for them. Against my own kin if I must. You will know me as the one in the mask, the one who protects all they can.”
Against friend. For the scum of society. For murderers and criminals. Yu would fight. Because it was just as Ein said. Good and evil are just two sides of the same coin.
The last thing Takeda did was save me back in Maizuru, he recalled. The private had not been good to Yu or Ijuin, but with his dying breath, he had done something right.
It was not Yu’s place to be the judge of morality. His place was with Devicer Three, the one greater than he. The one who would protect all, wherever they were, however they could.
“I exist,” he said, “for both of you.”
Sakuma blinked. “Both?”
Yu nodded. “I will protect the elves, and I will protect the humans. Whatever your differences are, they don’t matter to me, and you will put them aside in my presence. Speaker, anything you have to say to the Defense Force can wait.”
Nadal sluggishly and robotically collected himself off the floor with a simple grunt in reply, still fighting off the effects of the noise. Yu didn’t entertain him this time.
“I’m going to need them for the time being,” Device Three said firmly. “Until then, try to keep your meddling to a minimum.”
Indirectly, this was an order to spare their lives.
Nadal bowed respectfully, much like he often would to Ein, and with all the decorum expected of a man who had once served in a royal court. “As you wish, my King of the Storm.”
“‘King of the Storm,’” Yu repeated. “Are you referring to me?”
“None other,” he replied. “You rule the droids of the sky. And, if I may be so bold to say, your manner and aspect do evoke the stately image of a liege within me. Indeed, I can hear my queen’s parting words to me as clear as day, even now.”
“So this is how the elvish royalty were like, huh?”
“Earth has a similar concept, my liege. They call it ‘noblesse oblige.’ In other words, with great power comes great responsibility.”
“No, I’m pretty sure you got that from a movie,” the Devicer pointed out plainly. It was a nerve born out of the simple fact that, right now, he wasn’t Yu Ichinose.
He used that momentum to address the Defense Force. “Well? Don’t you have positions to be taking?” Yu pointed dramatically to the sky beyond the glass wall, where the amber aurora still hung, blanketing the world above in pillars of bewitching light. “The enemy is here. If you really do want to protect your fellow man, then stand and fight with me!”
The new Devicer Three was not as brawny nor as masculine as the last. On the contrary, their gender was a mystery to most. And yet, no one in that room came even close to the sheer presence they commanded.
There could be no individual more appropriate to be the savior of the world.