“She’s an elf!” Yu gasped.
“Her ears look just like Professor Chloe’s. What is this? It’s like some sci-fi cryosleep pod.”
There was another interface terminal on her container. Ijuin touched it and closed his eyes.
“Code name...” He furrowed his brow. “Replicant. Argh, that’s all I can get without the right credentials.”
“Replicant?” inquired Yu.
“Oh, I heard some rumors online a while back, actually. Stuff about people sealing migrant elves in capsules and using them like slaves for their knowledge and magic. I read that militaries around the world were in on the research.”
“If this girl is a slave, then this is wrong!”
“Let’s ask the professor about it the next chance we get. We can’t stick around here.”
The break of dawn was approaching. The sun was beginning to peek above the Tamba Highlands to the east, and it would soon be well and truly morning. The elf girl continued to sleep, even as the sun’s rays fell over her. She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, and she wore not a single thread or object to hide her limp body from view. Yu looked away, blushing. Ijuin was right. It was time to leave.
Just as Yu turned to follow his partner out, he felt a shock run down his spine like lightning. He whipped back around to look at the girl. Behind her closed, elegant eyes, he could have sworn he felt something. A message.
“Long have I waited for you.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Yu and Ijuin met the morning after their long, sleepless night with punishment.
Leading Private Takeda beheld the pristine row of rifles, and all he had to say was, “You call that clean?”
The boys weren’t surprised. Frankly, they’d expected worse.
And so, they found themselves spending the early hours of their day cutting grass around the camp. When their battle against the rampant weeds was decided, however, the real battle began.
“I thought you played ball, boy. Where’s your muscles?”
Yu felt the impact against his headgear. Private Takeda stood opposite him, wearing the same sparring gloves and headpiece. Several others watched from the sidelines, everyone but Ijuin grinning sadistically every time Yu took a blow.
“T-Tag me in, Ichinose!” he shouted.
“Quiet, fatty!” Takeda shot back, throwing a few more jabs. “You switch when I say you switch!”
“Y-Yes, sir!”
Yu threw up his hands and endured the endless strikes to his head. The fight was laughably one-sided. He didn’t have a chance of landing a hit himself, so the best he could do was try to minimize the damage he was receiving. Takeda was an ace at hand-to-hand combat and a demon on the offensive, and if that weren’t bad enough, he was built like a truck at one-eighty centimeters tall and seventy kilos heavy. A little too far outside the weight class of a middle schooler.
“Look at you. All skin and bone. Careful, or the wind might blow ya away!” Takeda sneered and launched Yu away with a swift, spinning mid kick. “What’d I tell you?”
I’m doing it on purpose, Yu quietly argued. He’d learned something from all the constant beatings recently. Idiot.
Really, as far as Yu was concerned, actually taking hits was optional. The trick was to loosen up, relax at the moment of impact, and bend with it. Never take it head on. All the better if the shock blew him away. Anything to weaken the blow. That was Yu’s strategy. To him, weak didn’t mean helpless. Truth be told, he’d explained all this to Ijuin before, but according to his friend, he was nuts for even being able to think about that sort of thing while getting his brains knocked around.
Yu was prepared to stand his ground for however long it would take until his opponent tired himself out, but this time, he didn’t have to wait that long.
“What’s going on here?” a woman’s stern voice interrupted the ruckus. “I believe those two are on my research staff. There may not be enough hands to go around, but I don’t recall anyone giving you the authority to obstruct the work of my associates.”
Pointed ears jutted through her blonde hair that rested just above the shoulders of her white lab coat. Her handsome, yet delicate features appeared somehow both human and decidedly inhuman at the same time. The migrant sage’s Japanese name was Chloe Todo, on account of elvish names being notoriously long and difficult to remember.
She was a migrant from the other side, one of the many elves to have fled their world all those years ago. An architect of the advancements brought about by the harmonious fusion between elvish wisdom and human science, and an authority on state-of-the-art nanotechnology.
Finally freed from their own personal hell, Yu and Ijuin tailed behind Chloe through the freshly tended-to grass. Her skin was smooth as clay and pale white; however, her striking features weren’t quite as defined as a typical Caucasian’s. She kept her light gold hair tied up neatly in a bun. She always reminded Yu of a statue he’d seen of a bodhisattva on a school trip to a temple in Nara. Especially its sharp eyes and that mysterious “archaic smile.”
“Thank you for coming to find us,” Yu said, remembering they hadn’t expressed their gratitude yet.
“Don’t mention it. The colonel’s always worrying his hair off over ‘morale,’ but I’m more concerned with the state of order around here.” Professor Chloe spoke in flawlessly fluent Japanese. “I just wish I could do more to protect you.”
“Hey, it’s nice knowing there’s someone reasonable around here,” Ijuin said.
The colonel was the highest rank among the surviving officers, making him the camp’s de facto leader.
“So, what are the chances of help coming?” Yu asked flat out. “Realistically speaking.”
Chloe didn’t mince words. “Realistically? I’d say zero. We have no means of wireless communication as long as the portal-keeps are around.”
“Figures.”
“Yeah, they knew what they were doing, goin’ straight for Tokyo,” Ijuin grumbled. “Turned Nagatacho and Ichigaya into debris, and the government’s gone quiet ever since they ran to Kyushu. It’s not looking good for us, huh?”
“That’s certainly a part of the problem, but not entirely. Remember I said wireless communication. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t send a messenger or two.” Chloe hesitated for a moment. “I suppose there’s no point in keeping it a secret anymore. The truth is, the colonel’s isolating the camp from the outside on purpose.”
“Why?!” Ijuin cried.
“He doesn’t want to lose our last hope. What’s left of Japan’s government doesn’t have the resources to send out rescue teams, so if help ever does come, it would be from a foreign power. And if that happened, they’d almost certainly seize the Mark III.”
“Devicer Three’s suit?” Yu put the pieces together. “The thing we’ve been doing all these experiments to wake up?!”
The future the professor predicted was not a bright one.
“You’re late.”
The ivory-haired girl was waiting in the underground hangar beneath Lab Four with a subtle pout on her face. She wore the female counterpart to Yu and Ijuin’s black button-up—a white sailor uniform with a blue collar and ribbon, black knee-high socks, and a white, striped beret that completed the outfit.
“I hope the dynamic duo over there isn’t rubbing off on you, mom.”
Aliya Todo, thirteen, was the only daughter of the elf nanotechnologist Chloe Todo, as evidenced by her slightly longer than average ears.
✦ ✦ ✦
In front of the huffy girl hung a full-body supersuit, but it wasn’t your average muscle-enhancing exoskeleton. It was an A-Type Exo-Frame. The Asura-Type.
Better known as the Asura Frame.
The jet-black ADAMAS-armored plating combined unrivaled strength with impossible, rubber-like flexibility and ease of use. Streaks of gold along the matte finish kept it looking rather stylish as well.
It was the ultimate weapon. The brainchild of twenty-first century science and otherworldly insight. An artificial titan of destruction.