“…Would’ve done it anyway.” Hamazura carefully descended the ramp from the semitrailer’s bed on the Dragon Riger until it hit the tunnel road. Everything after that happened very fast. By the time they heard the whooooooom!!!!!! the Dragon Rider was already starting to weave between all the vehicles in the traffic jam. As Jousawa watched the flames spurting from the jet engine grow smaller, he laughed out loud. He’d wanted that machine to help someone, just once. And he didn’t care how. “…Oh, honey,” he said jokingly, pretending to be an old person. “Our baby has finally left the nest to rescue someone.” “The results are everything. That kid’ll need to do more than just ride away.” 13 If Shiage Hamazura had to be honest… …he wasn’t actually controlling the Dragon Rider as easily as he’d expected to. Far from it, in fact. The moment he accelerated, his vision twisted and warped. “Ghh…ahhh…?!” He lost track of what was in front of him and what was behind him. He was going so fast that his sense of sight was lagging—and by the time he’d figured out where he was, he found himself right in front of a gently curving tunnel wall. “This… Damn it… How the hell am I supposed to control this aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!” His vision blurred. He stopped hearing noise. He felt the back of his throat dry up. But… “Wha… Huh…?” …as he panicked, he realized he hadn’t collided with the wall. His body—his arms, his fingers—they were all moving automatically. This monster bike was smoothly and precisely following the curve of the road, all the while slicing through the air at its insane speed. …What is…this…? Instead of relief at not being dead, he felt an indescribable sense of unease. …This is going way too smoothly. I’m not even that experienced with bikes to begin with. Are my movements being externally adjusted automatically…?! The powered suit he wore was just a means of boosting human motion with motors and hydraulic springs. They were supposed to follow the user’s movements, but naturally, they could do the opposite. It was guiding him—supporting his movements. And by doing so, it allowed Hamazura’s body to function at peak form. Which seemed handy. At first anyway. Ahhhhhh?! I-it’s like someone else is grabbing me and moving me around!! I can’t stay calm like this!! A separation of body and mind. And a fear of the clash born when the results of his actions were so much better than how he thought he was moving. The brilliant moves were starting to distract him from the fact that he felt like he was locked in a humanoid coffin. “Shit, I feel so sick!! First, those weapons in Russia, and now this!! Why do the freakiest machines always end up falling into my lap?!” Jousawa had taught him how to ride this monster of a machine with words. Now the monster was teaching him by artificially forcing itself into his brain. The Dragon Rider didn’t have very complicated controls. They felt more akin to a scooter than a big motorcycle. All he had to do was move his fingers on the fully armor-enclosed handlebars. There were no gears to switch or clutches to release. There was only the throttle and the brakes—acceleration and deceleration. In fact, you could control the whole thing from either one of the handlebars, so you could even take off a hand if you wanted. He didn’t have to touch any of the propulsion mechanisms—the jet engine, the support boosters, the linear motors. They all automatically adjusted themselves based on his current speed level. But you also couldn’t master it just by grabbing the handlebars for the first time. The monster couldn’t be that simple. The central jet engine and the tapered point at the front that reduced air resistance both allowed the Dragon Rider to move quickly, but the machine was both enormous and weighed a ton. Normally, you’d struggle to even get it moving without falling, to say nothing of having to weave between cars in a gridlocked tunnel like this. Even a riding instructor would have trouble getting a vehicle this big around them all. And yet… …the Dragon Rider still managed to slip between the stopped cars. Hamazura glanced at the speed display and gasped. He was already going over four hundred kph. Regular cars didn’t even have speedometers that went that high. It wasn’t that he was a skilled driver, of course. In fact, he wondered if pro stunt-car drivers could manage this. Was it even possible? …Now that I think about it, powered suits are tools for boosting human functions. But they didn’t just use a few little machines to make your arms and legs stronger. Because this was Academy City. The motors and hydraulic springs externally assisting were one thing, but it probably went even further. In any other situation, this kind of speed would have driven him to hysterics. The fear would blank out his mind, and he’d have no idea what to do next. But that wasn’t happening. It was eerie. Hamazura would send commands to the powered suit, and the bike would calculate the ideal motions to accomplish what the rider wanted. He was awfully calm as he continuously fed it his intent, and the machine adjusted its calculations in response. Something else was helping him. Something internal. The suit had a mechanism of some sort—one that linked man and machine using electrical stimulation, brain heat distribution, and all sorts of other stuff. His five senses swam through a whirlpool of information. His vision was especially blurred. Almost everything around him had stretched out to a bunch of laser beams, like something straight out of a shoot-’em-up game. Despite how overwhelming the display was, though, he was able to draw from it what he needed. He wasn’t seeing things in slow motion; he was just receiving information from the flow of scenery. The objects hadn’t stopped dead. They simply flowed along. The whole thing started to feel natural—overwriting his consciousness until eventually he’d be a person who really did feel like it was natural. It had altered his perception. Maybe it was like language. Someone who didn’t know the alphabet would just see letters as a bunch of random squiggles. But once you had them memorized, the information they contained would automatically blossom in your mind whenever you saw them. His senses were being revised and adjusted—both from within and without. His thoughts moved at a fevered pitch, maybe even faster than they had when he’d gripped his desk and studied madly. And his frenzied thoughts were letting him pull off crazy stunts, the kind where he would have wiped out if he’d miscalculated by even a centimeter. The Dragon Rider exited the tunnel. Hamazura let loose on the throttle. The impact was immediate. The previously folded support booster arms, protruding from the front area and fanning out behind him to either side, instantly opened up. The sounds of several bursting noises overlaid on top of one another as shock waves scattered, and the machine dedicated every possible joule of energy from the internal combustion engine to propel him forward. He saw the speedometer hit the nine-hundred-kph line. This was the Dragon Rider’s true form. Such speeds made it difficult to breathe or keep your eyes open unassisted. The heat of friction would probably burn you, too. In this state, you could crash into an obstacle a quarter of a kilometer away in a single second. Hamazura knew the cars around him were going pretty fast, too, but it was like they were stopped dead—no, like they were charging straight at him. But the suit’s corrections were brute-forcing his way through. Hamazura still didn’t feel that terror—not enough to prevent his body and mind from working. His thoughts kept on moving forward, just like the machine. He could see the entire road, down to the empty cans and pebbles lying on it, and he dodged around all of them with the simplest movements possible. He ignored several traffic lights in a row, bursting through the intersections. He and the Dragon Rider moved only forward. However… …while he could sense the external interference from the motors and hydraulic springs, he was also keenly aware that something messing was with him internally. Though it was working in tandem with him at the moment, he suspected that the longer he used it, the more he’d lose sight of himself. …My phone. He’d brought several things along for the ride in the pockets of the military vest he wore over the powered suit. His cell phone was one of them. Puzzling over whether taking one hand away would be okay, he thought, I have to look at the data from Hanzou’s MAV. Otherwise, I won’t be able to find— Before he could finish that thought, though, something changed. A little window popped up in his field of view, provided to him through a video feed. And to nobody’s surprise, it showed stuff from his cell phone. How the hell does that even work?! I haven’t pressed a single button!! Academy City–made military hardware never failed to impress. The idea that these machines could somehow peek inside the user’s brain was delusional, but at this rate, people might just have to stop laughing at the idea and start accepting it as the new reality soon. Unfortunately, the data from his cell phone showed an empty bird’s-eye view—Hanzou had lost the target. Something moved slightly in the corner of the screen, but Hamazura couldn’t make out what it was. It would probably be easier to look for nearby buildings or signboards. Some kind of landmark. Looks like his MAV won’t help much anymore… That went to show how far away the kidnapper had gotten. If he let them get any farther, he really wouldn’t have any guarantee of Fremea’s safety. No, he thought. “Hold on,” Hamazura muttered, looking up slightly from his joyride. The sky filled his vision. It was hard to find something two hundred meters away on the streets like this, but not necessarily from the air. Up there, he wouldn’t have any obstacles, nothing blocking the horizon. He’d be able to see pretty far. Even if he couldn’t spot the four-legged powered suit that had kidnapped Fremea, he could try looking for the thing chasing them to guide the way. That said, the MAV was a few kilometers away—maybe even more than ten. He’d never be able to find it. Sure, the powered suit was boosting all his senses, but locating that paper plane would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. Instead, he went after something else. After all, Academy City’s strongest Level Five had said he could catch up to a jet if he wanted to. 14 Silvercross Alpha was on the run. The mission was supposed to be over already. They’d linked their targets, Accelerator and Shiage Hamazura, through Fremea Seivelun; they both wanted to protect her. Now that the higher-ups had determined the risk their faction posed had grown to a point they couldn’t ignore, the Freshmen’s goal was essentially accomplished. All they had to do now was take Fremea and dress her up with a fitting death. The city wouldn’t be able to ignore this new faction once it turned on their higher-ups and its underworld. It would give them a motive for revenge. But it didn’t actually matter if they decided to rebel. This was more like bringing a fuse to a heap of gunpowder they’d finished piling up. Whether or not it exploded, they just had to set the bomb. As a result, the Alumni—Hamazura and Accelerator—would be destroyed. That was the plan. Was being the operative word. So why was he still unable to get to a safe zone? The four-legged powered suit’s design ignored the humanoid form. Eyes didn’t need to be in front—not only in front. This model was covered in lenses, and one of them had spotted what was following him. Number One. The strongest person in all Academy City. A white shadow—the one they called Accelerator. This is outrageous. Silvercross sucked in a breath as he glanced at the speedometer. He was going seven hundred fifty kph. That was about as fast as any land-based vehicle could achieve. But this monster was tailing him. He’s as fast as a plane. “That demon!!” he cried. “I knew he could keep up with my Highway Cheetah, but this is absurd!!” He looked high into the sky—about twenty meters up. His pursuer had attached four tornadoes to his back and was literally slicing through the air as he shot toward him. “Silvercross?” “I can’t. The Highway Cheetah isn’t fast enough to shake him. I can think of a few spy vehicles, but we’d need to get out of sight before loading it in!!” This powered suit was no car. It could fold or unfold its legs based on the terrain and plow through the narrowest of paths on the roughest stretches of ground. But none of that would help shaking his pursuer off his tail. After all, Accelerator was only human-sized. Sure, the four-legged suit could work its way through all kinds of little gaps, but there was almost nothing he’d be able to get through that a person couldn’t. “If he takes her back, we’ll lose everything. Should I kill her now?” “Don’t assume you’ll fail. Why doubt yourself now of all times?” Kuroyoru’s voice was calm, as though none of this had anything to do with her. And that was probably true. “If Accelerator had that kind of power, why didn’t he use it right away? He climbed into a stolen car with Hamazura after he attacked that dump truck earlier. Think about why, Silvercross. He wouldn’t waste time. Not in this situation. There must be a reason.” “…I see.” Cradled in a thick powered suit, and nestled within a smaller, armadillo-like one, Silvercross grinned a little. “Radio interference… The tunnel!!” Now that he was aware, the rest would be easy. Silvercross launched the four-legged powered suit off the road and down onto a subway line running parallel to it. It was dug into the ground like a river, surrounded by concrete to cut down on the noise. Obviously, it went underground, beneath the road…into a crisscrossing web of lines and tunnels. The lenses of his mech caught Accelerator mouthing a curse. A moment later, thick concrete covered the sky. He’d gotten into the tunnel. Naturally, this tunnel wouldn’t cut Accelerator off entirely. Otherwise, someone would have killed the kid a long time ago. There was only a possibility of radio interference. And Silvercross didn’t know how much it would weaken Accelerator’s ability anyway. But now they were in a seven hundred kph-plus chase through tunnels surrounded by concrete. If Accelerator lost control of his ability even for a couple seconds, it would spell his doom. He’d scrape against the wall and turn into mincemeat. He wouldn’t follow Silvercross now. If he wanted to chase from above, destroying the sections of the city on the surface and tearing the ground up, he probably could. But Silvercross doubted he would. Perhaps it would be in the cards if the kid was a complete villain. Right now, though, he couldn’t bring himself to do it—as disappointing as that was to think about. Simply speaking, he wouldn’t be able to sacrifice others for his own ends—even if that half-assed mindset put the girl he was trying to protect in mortal danger. “Kuroyoru, I got away. This tunnel is shared by a few different subway lines to cut down on the construction process. This should be enough of a blinder to prevent anyone from tracing us from above.” “Number One relies on the electrode battery on his neck to use his ability. I don’t know exactly how long it lasts, but he probably won’t run it at full power without a clear goal in mind. He’ll stop to think. While he’s doing that, you can put more distance between him and finally throw him off.” Kuroyoru paused. “And we have them to worry about, too. We can’t waste time at this stage.” “Got it. The mission should go smoo—” Silvercross broke off midsentence. Something wasn’t right. He could feel something overpowering behind him. It was dark in here. Unlike tunnels made for cars, subway tunnels didn’t need to be lit very well, save for sections that curved sharply. The little fluorescent lights hanging at regular intervals didn’t help much, either. Impenetrable darkness stretched in front of him and behind him. But his four-legged suit didn’t care about that. The lenses on it squeaked and turned, gathering information even in near-total darkness. And then after Silvercross looked at the video feed in the window—adjusted so he could see—his face stiffened. “What…is that…?” That wasn’t Accelerator. Something massive—a strange motorcycle he’d never seen before—was coming after him. Several boosters on it lit up all at once, as though it had detected Silvercross. It pushed away the darkness, the sound of bursting explosions continuing all the while. This wasn’t the city’s number one esper. But there was only one other person who could possibly be trying to chase him and protect Fremea Seivelun. “But how…?!” 15 The roar of the engine cloaked Hamazura like a blanket. The subway tunnel had only been maintained so that construction workers could barely manage to walk on it. The ground was the same—they’d simply thought about how to lay down the tracks most efficiently and just filled the rest in with dented and bumpy concrete tiling. Normally, riding several hundred kilometers over that would be tantamount to suicide. But that didn’t matter. Hamazura twisted the throttle with no hesitation, unleashing every means of propulsion the bike had available: its jet engine, its support boosters, and its linear motors. I can do this… The Dragon Rider is fast enough to leave that guy in the dust! The issue was how he’d pin down the very thickly armored powered suit and rescue Fremea from it. If only he could break those propeller wings. “If you want firepower, you can use the support boosters,” came the mechanic’s voice as if he’d heard Hamazura’s thoughts. “It will jettison fuel to reduce damage when something goes wrong. Use it to your advantage, and you can generate a huge thirty-five hundred Celsius explosion—though you’ve only got the two tries.” “Hang on,” said Hamazura. “That sounds really tricky. I—” “I’m sure you’ve realized it by now. You’re jacked into the powered suit’s information-control mechanism—so you can take whatever knowledge or techniques you need from it.” Hamazura shivered, suddenly realizing that he knew how to eject the rocket fuel in an emergency. It didn’t feel like he’d just memorized a huge book—it felt more like how you ride a unicycle. Essentially, the “experience” he would have otherwise accumulated little by little by trying again and again was being intensively overwritten. If everyone could study for school or learn road-service tricks like this, life would be so much easier. At the same time, though, this phenomenon terrified him. You’d never know what could be added in there while you weren’t looking. Learning the old-fashioned way was still the best option. But I don’t have time to think about it, he realized, jettisoning the doubts from his mind and focusing on the goal in front of him. I have my ticket to saving Fremea. That’s all I need!! The support boosters could act like arms, greatly changing their angles based on the situation. Nevertheless, they were basically made for producing thrust, so they could only go from directly back up to perpendicular with the bike. They weren’t made to face forward. Which means that I have to at least get right next to him. Otherwise, the booster explosion won’t catch him! And then something happened—the four-legged powered suit ahead of him began to move differently. The rear right leg suddenly kicked off the ground. Like a horse. A horse that had just kicked a broken piece of lighting on the ground straight at him. “…!!” More precisely, it was an approximately thirty-kilogram hunk of metal. He didn’t know how durable the Dragon Rider was, but he couldn’t risk the extra load throwing off his balance. With some tight control over the handlebars, Hamazura dodged the impromptu projectile, then weaved behind a row of pillars lining the subway so he could get over to the side. In pure speed, the Dragon Rider won. Without any obstacles, it would be easy to get right up alongside the other mech. That’s what he’d thought anyway, until he realized something was wrong. Something right in front of him. In the darkness right ahead of him, on the subway line opposite to the one he’d just jumped to, he saw a bright light. The subway…?! A chill ran down his spine. A moment later, the enormous object shot straight for the Dragon Rider. A torrent of wind. A thundering eruption. The vibrations of impact. All the things that happened whenever a massive object raced through the tunnel happened now. The train driver had probably noticed the two of them; the brakes screeched in a discordant chorus of metal wheel on rail, but it was too late. With a flood of sparks, the train barreled forward another three hundred meters. Silvercross’s four-legged powered suit passed by it with ease. The mech wasn’t a normal vehicle, and he imagined anyone watching could have seen his joy at throwing off his pursuer emanating from it. And then… …a moment after that long passenger-filled wall passed, a giant bike appeared on the other side of it. The HsSSV-01 Dragon Rider. Hamazura had squeezed the thing into the little gap between the subway cars and the wall. In fact, the bike might not have even been touching the wall at all. And he’d accomplished that at top speed. As already mentioned, the Dragon Rider had his four-legged suit beat in terms of pure speed. Especially after Silvercross had mistakenly thought he’d thrown him off. But now there was nothing stopping it. “Damn…!” Silvercross made a choice. He was going to ram into the approaching Dragon Rider. Taking advantage of their weight difference, he attempted to knock his pursuer to the side. But Hamazura was faster. It was the difference between someone who’d acted on the spur of the moment and someone already prepared to act. One of the booster-supporting arms swung way up, directly to the bike’s side, and a ton of rocket fuel spurted from the booster’s side. It twisted into the raging winds and dissipated before reacting to the minor orange sparks flying from the booster’s tip. Less than 0.1 second elapsed from ejection to ignition. And then it blew. The impact was like an invisible wall made of every possible sound compressed down into a thin plane. The left support booster, caught in its own explosion, tore free of the Dragon Rider. The monster bike, its electronically controlled balance always perfect, then performed an unnatural side skid. The four-legged powered suit didn’t make it through unscathed. It had taken the brunt of the fuel explosion. While the blast hadn’t knocked out its rear propeller fans, it did send the entire mech bouncing a few meters to the side, where it crashed into the tunnel wall. Bright-orange sparks flew everywhere as he tried to keep pushing forward. But something was wrong. The super-high temperature, the shock wave… The damage wasn’t something Silvercross could afford to ignore. He could tell that the suit’s two right legs were behaving strangely. While he could still slide them over the ground, they could no longer move with the terrain to soften impacts. If he kept on going like this, the utter lack of suspension would steadily destroy one internal function after another. “I see.” Suddenly, Hamazura heard an unfamiliar male voice in his ears. It was coming from the radio. “I was wondering how you were pressing me this hard. Seems the answer was simple. That’s not a motorcycle for riding in a powered suit—they’re part of a single package. The powered suit is actually there to enhance the bike. It’s a specific design idea that exceeds any humanoid model’s joints… I never thought I’d run into a model in the same series as this one.” Was that why they could talk to each other like this? Still in control of the bike, Hamazura said softly but clearly, “Give Fremea back.” “And if I say no?” “I’ll blow you up a second time.” He’d lost a support booster, and the Dragon Rider was starting to lose its balance. But the four-legged powered suit was worse off and losing speed. There was no chance he could escape like this. Meanwhile, Silvercross smiled a little. “I’m the one with the all-important hostage. You do understand I have my win condition right here, don’t you?” But Hamazura responded clearly. “You can’t touch her,” he declared. “Because that’s a powered suit, not some car or tank. I don’t know what the distribution is like, but you’re directly linked to it. The slightest effort will move it. If someone does something unexpected inside, the rest of the suit will have to deal with the feedback. If you really wanted to harm her, you’d have to stop the powered suit and get out first. You’re probably racking your brain right now, trying to find a way to prevent her movements from affecting the rest of your setup. Am I wrong?” The logic was Hamazura’s, but the basis underpinning of it wasn’t. It was the machine’s. He hadn’t consciously thought, Okay, let’s do this. The machine had scanned a deeper part of his mind, run a search on an offline database, and jammed the necessary data straight into his awareness. The feeling of it all coming into him and the absolute confidence he had that he was correct made him shudder, but now wasn’t the time to worry about that “Perhaps,” answered Silvercross shortly. Still, he doubted the man would simply hand Fremea over. He’d have something else up his sleeve. Hamazura sharpened his senses, taking note of his surroundings. He didn’t know what mechanism was doing that for him, but he imagined the machine was correcting and amplifying his senses even further. “This certainly isn’t the ideal situation. It’s inconvenient. In which case, I should prioritize my own safety—even if it means changing the plan a bit.” He paused. “We have them to deal with, too. We can’t afford to exhaust ourselves here.” However… “Anyway, here it is in simple terms. I will run away—no matter what I have to do. Luckily, this Life Armor has the endurance to make that happen.” A moment later. The front hatch of the four-legged mech opened, and a smaller, armadillo-like powered suit burst out into the tunnel—leaving Fremea behind while maintaining a blazing clip of over five hundred kph. “You… You bastard…!!” Hamazura shouted. But by then, the armadillo had curled itself up and zoomed behind him, absorbing the impacts as it went. And then the still-moving four-legged mech’s thick front hatch closed again. Without a pilot, it could get into a fatal accident at any moment. “Are you sure you have time to worry about me? Out of respect for her wishes, I disconnected our improvised chip. But that’s not a two-armed, two-legged suit. She won’t be able to control it properly.” Essentially, the man had woken Fremea up to strike terror into her heart. The radio transmission continued with a chuckle. “I’m worried about letting go of the link between you and Accelerator, but if the girl meets a decisive end here, it will all become certain. We may have had to rearrange the steps, but now you Alumni will be targets of the city.” “Damn it!!” Worrying about that armadillo wouldn’t get him anywhere. Hamazura had to open the mech’s front hatch and rescue Fremea. Now. Then the mechanic’s voice came in through the radio. Was he being monitored somehow? “Your model’s arms are meant for riding control. They won’t be strong enough to force-open the hatch.” “Then what the hell do I do?! Sit here and see her off?!” “You whittle it down.” The mechanic’s words were short and to the point. They were even clearer than the computer amplifying his knowledge and experience. “That suit is up against the tunnel wall, right? Push it so it’s at an angle, then touch the edge of the front hatch to it instead and keep it there. If it looks like it’ll come away from the wall, don’t let it—kick it if you have to. Even if the hatch’s bolts are made of tungsten alloy, you’ll be able to whittle them away in about seven kilometers.” “…!!” Hamazura adjusted the Dragon Rider’s throttle again, matching his speed per the instructions. The powered suit that Silvercross had abandoned was designed to slide, so without its pilot, it was easy to tip the thing over and keep it that way as they went forward. The suit stayed up against the tunnel wall. There was an awful metallic screeching, with ribbonlike sparks flying away from it. But something was wrong with the four legs giving it balance. They’d started to jostle up and down unnaturally. They can’t deal with the uneven terrain anymore? he thought. Grr-kkk!! The powered suit leaned way over. Without a pilot, it didn’t take much of a push for it to start heading away from the wall. Still straddling the Dragon Rider, Hamazura slammed his foot into the thing’s chassis as hard as he could, pushing it with his sole to get the thing back up against the concrete. Grrk, gggraaa, greeegrkkkkkkk!!!!!! The terrible screeching continued all the while. This would work. Without any real basis—well, aside from the knowledge being externally fed to him—Hamazura was sure that the front hatch’s bolts would be whittled down enough very soon. Then he could rescue Fremea from inside it. But something strange happened. One of the quadruped’s legs that had been caught in the earlier support-booster explosion suddenly went limp, like a shoulder popping out of its socket. It was a combination of that explosion and the fact that it had been shaking around so much during its journey across the wall; its internal components must have taken a lot of damage. It quickly lost its balance until Hamazura couldn’t hold it up alone. To avoid them both going down, he pulled the Dragon Rider a very short distance away for just a moment—which was when the joints in both the right-side legs broke and began to drag along the ground. Still not letting the tips of its legs touch anything, the quadruped nevertheless continued to barrel forward, showering sparks all over the road. Its decrease in speed was a good thing—in a vacuum. Now that the ends of its legs were off the ground, it would start to slow down. While that might not bring the quadruped to a full stop, as long as it got to a point where hitting a wall wouldn’t damage it much, Fremea would be safe. Unfortunately… You’ve gotta be kidding me!! Hamazura watched as that oh-so-sturdy front hatch suddenly wobbled unnaturally. All the shaking that was wearing down the armor told him, quite unambiguously, that the thick bolts were about to break. The hatch was about to open. Fremea would be launched out. Though mech had finally started to decelerate, it was still going a few hundred kph. At those speeds, someone coming out of the mech would be flattened like a daikon radish. “That…isn’t…gonna happen!!” Hamazura screamed, pushing the Dragon Rider to full throttle again. To save Fremea, he’d need to get on the quadruped. He brought the bike up to the shaking front right leg. Reaching out and grabbing its armor plating, he slowly rose from his seat. If he jumped over, he’d lose the Dragon Rider. A moment’s hesitation. But then he made up his mind. Grasping the quadruped’s leg with both hands, he flung both of his feet off the bike and clung to the fast-moving powered suit. Without a rider, the bike toppled over, then got caught between the quadruped’s busted rear right leg and the ground. A dizzying array of sparks erupted from the point of contact. Hamazura moved along the armor from his position at the front right leg—and to the front of the quadruped, the only place connecting it to the inside. Please let there be enough time… He grabbed the handle on the hatch. In ordinary circumstances, it would have never opened. But now the thick bolts holding it in place were on the verge of falling apart. “Open up, goddamn it!!” Pouring every ounce of his strength into his suit, he eventually heard something break inside the quadruped. The hatch swung wide-open. Fremea was about to shoot out from inside and fall to the ground. But Hamazura had positioned himself in front of the hatch, so he caught her small body with one hand. They’d only been apart for about half an hour. But Hamazura felt such relief at their reunion that his whole body relaxed. “Huh…?! Wh-what?! Actually, what…?!” Of course, the girl couldn’t see his face. She was treating him like a criminal or something. …But I stopped Fremea from falling. Now I just have to stick to the quadruped until it stops… And then yet another new problem reared its ugly head. Dark smoke began to spurt from the engine turning the propellers, which gave the quadruped its thrust. Had the explosion gotten to it? Or had the subsequent vibrations done that to it? Or did it have a self-destruct mechanism? Whatever the case, the pair couldn’t stand around and wait for it to slow down now that there was a chance they could both get blown up. “Damn it…” But the quadruped was still going three or four hundred kph. Hamazura might be able to survive a jump with the Dragon Rider’s special suit, but Fremea wouldn’t. She’d be flattened as soon as they hit the ground. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?!” 16 Accelerator landed at the entrance to the subway tunnel. Until just a few minutes ago, his feet had been far from the ground. He’d been flying—using four tornadoes from his back to propel him at insane speeds. But he couldn’t use his ability inside a tunnel where radio waves couldn’t easily enter. He’d lost a few minutes. A very long time, considering how fast that powered suit was going. If he’s in a tunnel, he’ll have to come out eventually. But there’s too many exits. So many lines use this tunnel. He could go to the other end of the city if he wanted. Accelerator could ignore the usual routes and plot the shortest course to his target thanks to his ability to fly at high speeds, so he could theoretically fly to every single one of the subway exits. But that would drain his battery. And given the situation Frenda was in, his ability was the strongest card in their hand. If he played it just to solve the problem he was facing now, there was a real chance she could end up on the wrong side of life and death at the very end. After thinking for a moment, he took out his cell phone and called Misaka Worst. “How’s the kid?” “That’s your first question, Pops? Misaka got her back to the apartment. The owner—Yomikawa or whatever her name was—is really grilling her with questions right now.” Yomikawa was part of Anti-Skill, the city’s peacekeeping force, and was known for acting outside regulations. Maybe she’d found out about a part of the problem on her own, despite the darkness’s information control. “Find the Freshmen anywhere?” “Yeah. Two groups of four. But they didn’t seem like the main force—they’re probably just lookouts. Misaka would guess they were waiting around to kidnap the kid and wage a psychological battle with you if you tried too hard to mess up their plans. Misaka sent ’em packing, though.” “Set up some cameras and sensors nearby and plan a few escape routes, then stand by. If we’re careless about moving to a hideout, they might catch us on the way, and if Yomikawa figures it out, she’ll cause issues. If those two groups are still alive, threaten ’em with a knife. Make them regularly report back that nothing’s wrong.” “That all you wanted? Already handled it. Got them tied up in the shadows with a radio and remote trap right next to their mouths. Say what you want about Misaka, but she’s the type who likes getting her summer homework done early.” Ignoring the quip, Accelerator continued, “…Do a search on every last piece of info you can get on the Shared Subway Tunnel 3. And don’t let the others find out. The powered suit that kidnapped Fremea should still be in there. I want to know what exit it’ll come out of.” “That’s a tall order. How far can Misaka go? Like, can she knock ’em unconscious if she needs?” “……” “Whoa, don’t let your silence do all the talking, Pops. All right, Misaka understands. She’ll be a good little girl and pull the wool over their eyes without using violence,” Misaka Worst continued, her voice clearly betraying the smirk she had on her face. “Still, you sure you want to just wait around at the exit for them to come out? You know how brutal the darkness we live in can be, don’t you? Isn’t it possible they might have a bloody finale inside the tunnel?” “Nobody can respond to every single possible situation perfectly. Anyway, if I dive in there without any leads, I’ll probably fail,” he said. “And another powered suit and motorcycle flew into the tunnel, too. If that’s who I think it is, he’ll make sure that shithead doesn’t have time to lay a hand on her.” “Oh? It’s not like you to rely on someone else,” said Misaka Worst sardonically. “But in that case, it might be better to just ask him about what’s going on in there.” “Do you really think I’d trade numbers with him?” “Maybe not, but that just means Misaka has to get his number another way.” “Don’t get too distracted. He’s in a tunnel—we might not get through anyway. Always have more than one source of information.” “You’re free to bark out orders, but you’re gonna try and get information, too, of course. Right?” Reserved until the end, Accelerator hung up. Combat wasn’t all about letting loose with your weapons. It started by getting an accurate read on the fight. 17 Wrapped up in the powered suit that resembled an armadillo, Silvercross Alpha confirmed the sound of an explosion far off in the darkness of the tunnel. He chuckled, then left the tunnel through a maintenance workers’ exit rather than a station. His suit was a military secret, so it had countermeasures against the enemy capturing it when badly damaged. Not only could it use a powerful acid to melt all its crucial features and circuitry, but it could also ignite its fuel supply and self-destruct. On top of that, the armadillo could monitor the quadruped’s damage levels. While it wasn’t as insane as that motorcycle, with its jet engine and rocket boosters, his quadruped didn’t run on simple gasoline, either. The armadillo’s display alerted him that all the fuel had caught fire. The quadruped would likely be damaged beyond repair. A scant few circuits were still functioning, and he already saw icons that indicated they were destroying themselves ahead of capture. It’s over, thought Silvercross frankly. The only thing that bothers me is whether Shiage Hamazura died with the girl. If they both bite the dust, that might lower Accelerator’s threat level. They might not see the need to deal with him immediately… Safest to instigate Mugino and Kinuhata in that case and link them to Accelerator instead. Silvercross reached over to open a channel to Umidori Kuroyoru and report his results. But then he stopped. He’d just noticed something. That quadruped, which had exploded into a useless pile of scrap, had caught something in its camera lens. That made Silvercross a witness, distant though he was. He saw a figure standing amid the flames. One holding a small girl in its arms. “Shiage…Hamazura…!!” Silvercross had failed to realize something. Hamazura had gotten one of his feet onto the Dragon Rider, which was busy spraying sparks from its spot between the ground and the quadruped’s busted rear right leg. Then he’d lifted the quadruped’s leg a few centimeters into the air, putting himself into almost a surf as he carried Fremea away from it. The whole thing defied belief. How? How did he survive…? And is that Fremea with him? She didn’t have any armor protecting her, did she?! To get more information on the figures in the flames, Silvercross didn’t go through the damaged, useless quadruped—instead, he used a cable to hook his armadillo into the subway’s security network and tried to deduce what had happened from the surveillance cameras. That, however, was the wrong choice. “There you are.” The voice seemed to stab into him. Eyes were pointed straight at him. The image on the monitor, the sound over the speaker—they pierced Silvercross straight through. …Did he find me from the shared powered suit comms gear? No, that’s not it—he… He…!! There was a cable coming out of a spot near Hamazura’s arm—as the boy looked straight at the surveillance camera Silvercross had just jacked into. He’d dramatically stood in front of the camera, laying his trap and waiting to see what Silvercross would do. Naturally, this was far beyond what some delinquent off the streets should be able to manage. But Silvercross knew something else. He was aware of a certain mechanism that could mold the boy’s lacking knowledge and skills to a point where they became concrete experience. Silvercross placed a hand near the armadillo’s spine. …Mental support from the powered suit. The same as mine!! It was only a temporary thing. Once you got out of the suit, you’d lose it. But as long as you had it on, all that knowledge and skill it supplied became free for the wearer to use. The flame-wreathed figure moved. Had he gone through the tunnel via a station, or had he used a maintenance exit like Silvercross had…? He saw another person. It wasn’t Accelerator. It was the other delinquent—the one they’d used to track down Hamazura and Fremea when they’d been hiding in the private salon. Hamazura handed Fremea to him. She was alive. And now that someone else had her, their mission was a failure. But he didn’t have time to care at the moment—because Silvercross had to consider his top priority above all else. Survival. The positions had been reversed right under his nose; now Silvercross had to devote his every thought to making it out alive. “…You know what my next move is, don’t you?” With those words, Hamazura destroyed the maintenance camera, leaving only static noise. The audio feed ended right then and there as well. And in that moment, the hunter became the hunted. 18 Rikou Takitsubo, wearing her pink tracksuit like always, stood in front of a vending machine on the side of the road in a daze. In her hands was not just any old can of juice, but an iced tea endorsed by a famous café…apparently. But by default, it came with a metric ton of milk, sugar, and honey in it, so it had been sapped of distinct flavor. It was as sweet as strawberry milk. …My feet hurt. I’m tired of walking… Takitsubo was here for a very simple reason. The three members of Item were still searching for Hamazura, none of them wanting to risk humiliation by bunny suit for losing. But unlike Mugino and Kinuhata, Takitsubo didn’t have any particular way of searching for him. And given her disposition—she could sense other people’s AIM diffusion fields—she actually relied on her gut instinct more than she realized. Using this power fully required a powder called Crystals, which came with severe side effects. But even without them, she could vaguely sense the weak forces espers unconsciously emitted. Still, they were just that—hunches. Since she couldn’t discern who each of the powers belonged to, it wasn’t really useful for her. So even if some invisible power was leading her on, it only amounted to a hazy, uncertain gut feeling in her mind. …Takitsubo had made it through the darkness of the city with all her limbs intact, though, so maybe it was something worth researching, but still… “Hmm…” She lazily looked up. I’m getting a signal from the northeast… I think that’s him. And then she heard her cellphone ring. As she trudged down the road, she fished it out from her pocket. The caller was Saiai Kinuhata. “Heya! Did you, like, find Hamazura yet?” “Mm-mm.” “Mugino’s apparently having a super-hard time getting video data because of stuff related to security-company jurisdictions or something. That means I’m definitely in first place.” “Did you figure out where he is?” “I may have.” Then she lowered her voice. “…It’s just that I found some really bad stuff right near him.” 19 Elsewhere… Silvercross Alpha had once gotten his face burned as a punishment. That was when he fully realized how little the rambling about what was inside being most important actually mattered in your everyday life. After that, he’d spent all his time trying to get his old face back. For every batch of jobs he completed, he’d be implanted with one weird Academy City technology after another. Little by little, his scrambled mess of a face began to be repaired, like a round clay ball steadily gaining new features. But only after recovering his attractive facial features in their entirety did he realize something. No matter how much technology or money went into getting a face entirely remade, that initial humiliation of having his face burned had still warped his personality into something ugly. Something horrid. Something twisted. And so Silvercross didn’t have a very good body image. No matter how much he dressed himself up, it wouldn’t change how ugly he was on the inside, so he had no attachment to his physical form. That mindset was reflected in how he switched powered suits so often. He had zero attachment to his own appearance, features, or the impression any of that made on others. The only way to operate a four-legged powered suit was to become a four-legged creature. The only way to operate an eight-legged powered suit was to become an eight-legged creature. While wedging a program between you and the suit could simplify the controls, this attitude was what it meant to truly operate such a thing. In fact, getting too used to a program to smooth things out only created more problems. Obviously, bipedal movement wouldn’t help in the slightest when you had to operate an eight-legged suit with only two human legs. And when someone truly got used to that eight-legged way of moving, it was all too easy to forget how to walk with your real two legs; signals from your brain to your muscles would be messed up. And that was just the legs. Expand that issue to the entire body, and there was no telling how severe it could get. What shape was his body? How was he supposed to move it? Everyone knew these things. They were set in stone. But Silvercross could figure it all out in his head. He could force his own mind to bend to nonhumanoid powered suits—to overcome the reasons they were never mass-produced. However… Having abandoned his physical body to such an extent, he now realized something. The man standing there amid the roaring flames, carrying Fremea Seivelun. The sight of him. The way he stood there. Silvercross doubted he could ever stand like the man was doing now—no matter what sort of powered suit he climbed into. Chasing Silvercross was easy. He’d lost the motorcycle part of the Dragon Rider, but Hamazura could still move around much more easily inside the powered suit than otherwise. He ran down the tunnels. While moving his limbs nonetheless drained his stamina, having the ability to run at speeds exceeding that of a car was a plus. Searching for Silvercross was easy. Borrowing the data from the powered suit, he’d strung out an electronic network and caught Silvercross in it. The man wasn’t far. Hamazura could catch up in a matter of moments on his mechanically enhanced legs. Predicting Silvercross’s movements was easy. At this point, Silvercross had two options. One was to flee back to his friends as fast as he could, then get into a stronger powered suit. But that wouldn’t work. The biggest weakness when it came to powered suits was that window of vulnerability while embarking or disembarking. If he didn’t know when Hamazura would catch up, he probably wouldn’t try to get to his mobile base. So he really only had one option: give up on the idea of switching suits, stay in his armadillo, and secure Fremea as soon as possible. It spoke for itself—the idea of toying with Fremea’s life to get Hamazura and Accelerator to back off. And he’d seen the moment Hamazura, clad in his powered suit, had given Fremea to Hanzou, who was totally unarmed. Silvercross also knew that Hamazura had parted ways with the two of them so that he could chase him down. Silvercross would definitely think this was his last chance. If he could manage to slip by Hamazura, attack the defenseless Hanzou, and kidnap Fremea, he’d turn the tables yet again. Therefore… Setting up an ambush for Silvercross was easy. Silvercross would have to use the tunnel again if he wanted to get to Fremea as quickly as he could. But since he wanted to evade Hamazura, he wouldn’t take the shortest route there. He’d take a detour but still plot the shortest course from there. Which put him on the back foot. All Hamazura needed to do was trace that route, then wait around for the man in the armadillo suit to arrive. Ga-baaammm!!!!!! Hamazura leaped out of the shadows with his leg out, delivering a veritable cannonball of a flying kick to the armadillo’s back. It split. As the roar echoed, the armadillo’s body slammed into the ground, then bounced five or six times after that. After collding with the slow curve in the wall, it finally stopped before slowly getting up. The ambush had worked. But Hamazura wasn’t calm. …My timing was perfect. I put all my weight behind my kick, and Silvercross was completely unguarded. So how is he still moving?! There’s sturdy, and then there’s this guy! Without hesitation, the armadillo sprang off the wall using its four legs, which could travel at over five hundred kph—keeping its normal capabilities intact. It seemed like it had been specifically designed to keep the pilot safe. And its armor hadn’t felt entirely solid, either. Maybe it had some kind of mechanism that had electronically absorbed a lot of the impact. The Dragon Rider’s riding suit was derived from the large-model Anti-Skill patrol bikes that featured all the best tech from the overworld. But this member of Silvercross’s collection had all the best tech from the underworld. One of them had to fall. Each of them stared down the other. The riding suit and the armadillo exchanged no words. They’d both already stepped forward before that could happen. Their fists crossed with a kreeeeeeshhhhhh!! It wasn’t like human bodies colliding—and not just because they were a pair of armored powered suits. Hamazura had used his right hand to parry Silvercross’s punch, forcing it off course by hitting it with the exterior of his lower arm, right between the wrist and elbow. Then he countered with a left uppercut, which the armadillo took on the shoulder to minimize the damage. Of course, Shiage Hamazura wasn’t capable of any of this. And neither was Silvercross, if he had to guess. The computers embedded in their suits were constantly searching for knowledge and skills to bolster their pilot. And take advantage of it they did—they were delivering punches with more force than an average shotgun blast, predicting the opponent’s next move, calculating trajectories, parrying, and immediately proceeding to their next tricks. It was all so fast that they were taking three actions or more in a single second. Hamazura’s fists had the force of a rifle, thanks to the motors and hydraulic springs amplifying the kinetic force and aim of his moves. Silvercross was piloting something more than a simple movement enhancer, too—he was being used by the human-shaped weapon. It could provide optimal destructive force at any given moment. Whck-whck-whck-whck-whck-whaaack-whck-whaaack!! Sparks flew as the chorus of hard metal continued. …I won’t get anywhere in an armored slugfest. His suit’s designed to stay operational no matter what happens. Trying to brute-force my way in is just a waste of time, thought the delinquent piloting a powered suit that made his fists strong enough to punch holes in car doors. But that thing isn’t a tank or an armored vehicle. It’s just going along with his body’s movements, adding kinetic energy to them. So there must be a weakness I can exploit in order to stop him. And Hamazura knew what that weakness was. Not the hard, outer powered suit—but the soft human inside it. Intentionally taking a punch from the armadillo, which seemed to be focused on trying to hit his face to break his sensors, Hamazura wrapped his arms around it, holding it in place. A powered suit’s arms weren’t like regular mechanical arms. There was an actual human arm inside it. Which meant one thing. If he used his body weight to bend the arm at its shoulder and elbow simultaneously, it would destroy the human within. Hamazura didn’t know much about grappling techniques, of course. He had no idea how to break a wary opponent’s joints without pinning them first—especially not while they were still standing. All that knowledge it came from the machine. It felt like pushing a trolley while looking farther down the rails. His limbs moved with blinding speed, and with the calmness of a complete stranger, he crushed his opponent’s arm. “Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!” “Shit, judo guys and pro wrestlers are terrifying. Definitely not the type of punk I want to go head-to-head with in a street fight!! Not like they have referees for those!!” Since it was mechanical, the powered suit could adjust the articulation for any joint however it wanted. Maybe it could even prevent itself from breaking when bent inward from the other side. But the person inside wouldn’t bend quite so easily. And since the powered suit moved in tandem with the pilot’s motions, its range of movement would be restricted if its pilot was injured. I don’t need to break all his limbs, Hamazura thought. One leg, and he won’t be able to move…! That was when he heard a strange creaking. The armadillo’s right arm, which should have been broken, began to shake in an unnatural way—almost as if switching to a different mode. “It’s not oveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer!!” “?!” Silvercross put his left hand on his broken right arm, which Hamazura was still holding on to, and tore it off. Then with Hamazura off-balance, he delivered a powerful kick right to his gut. Hamazura slammed back-first into the concrete wall, sending thin cracks through it. “Gahah?!” And then came another blow. And a third. “Urgh…!!!!!!” It knocked the wind out of Hamazura, despite his powered suit. Gasping for breath, he released the armadillo’s right arm. This was insane. Yes, those attacks were strong enough to harm Hamazura. But the pilot had to be in far more pain after tearing off his own broken arm. It was a wonder the guy hadn’t bitten his tongue off in shock. Flinging his blurry gaze in front of him again, he noticed something strange about the armadillo. Its armor was starting to fall apart—slowly, as if sloughing off thick mud. “…You assumed that destroying the inside would shut down the suit. But you couldn’t have been more wrong.” With the viscosity of black oil and the elasticity of a rubber band, the suit reached out and coiled around the arm on the ground. And then it took the severed arm and shoved it back into the socket, reconnecting it. The arm itself didn’t even look like armor anymore. It was more like a glossy, dented, black appendage now. It’s just like the shell of a crab, Hamazura thought. It used the outer shell to reattach its torn-off arm! The man’s voice became calmer and clearer—an attractive voice with a tone like a little ringing bell. “Any powered suit that exceeds a certain level necessarily takes on cyborg characteristics. The difference is simple. Either it supports a human from the outside or from the inside.” With watery squelching noises, Silvercross’s “outer shell” began to morph. Inside it was a long-haired young man with a handsome face. And the shell began to rearrange itself around him into a dirty mantle that rested on his shoulders. The powered suit had morphed into something that was completely different from its original robotic form, which had been covered in thick armor. Now it was more like something external, bolstering only the artificial muscles as it covered half of Silvercross’s body. Hamazura could see the fibers of hydraulic springs squirming. And across its almost seductive bumps and dents was a word emblazoned in red—its model name: EMERGENCY. “Destroying the body within the suit is futile. It will be reinforced by the outer shell in whatever state it’s in. Naturally, this includes the bones in my limbs as well as my muscles—but it will even bypass blood stoppages from arterial injury and damage or loss internal-organ function, letting me continue the fight. And…” There was a creaking noise like cogs grinding together; several long, slender, and strangely shaped arms, each ending in a sharp point, extended from the man’s mantle-covered right half. “…it affects my brain, too.” Hamazura felt a chill run down his spine. The computer was compensating for the pilot’s knowledge and technique. “…This was originally something we were keeping in reserve to fight them. So obviously, it needs to go outside the bounds of sanity.” Hamazura didn’t know how much the bypass system was compensating for Silvercross’s injuries, but there was little doubt the machine was unmatched when it came to unarmed battles to the death. Even a lead bullet to the forehead wouldn’t end things at this point. “So there you have it. Why not have some fun, then? …I’ll show you how terrifying it is to be more than human.” Silvercross’s tactical approach had already begun a long time ago—before changing his powered suit’s form, before the armadillo’s right arm was broken, before the hand-to-hand shotgun-force combat. It had begun the moment he’d been ambushed with that flying kick. It came down to a difference in experience. Silvercross Alpha had piloted a very wide variety of powered suits over many years. He had gained an intuitive sense of what was needed in powered suit battles and what he had to do to crush his enemies. The necessary components. The most crucial point. It didn’t have anything to do with external features like armor or joints. Nor did it involve power sources, like batteries or motors. There was something more fundamental that needed to be grasped first before connecting all those puzzle pieces on the surface. And that was… The computer reinforces and corrects your knowledge and skills. Even the strongest punches meant nothing if they didn’t hit. Even the sturdiest armor meant nothing if attacks could get in through its gaps. Neither of us are professionals at combat or martial arts. The computer picks the optimal attack patterns while adjusting to our experience level…which means if you can reverse engineer the reinforcement programming, you can counter every move with one-hundred-percent accuracy. That was why Silvercross had turned his cameras to high-speed mode and begun analyzing right when the battle had started. He was having the computer run simulations while he’d clashed with Hamazura. And now he had results. Infinite possibilities, narrowed down to just a few options. Naturally, Shiage Hamazura possessed a countless number of free attack patterns. But that initial movement, that starting motion—there were only five of them. He could stamp out the possibilities before the tenth of a second it took for them to explode in number. If he could set up an environment in which he could immediately counter all five starting patterns, his victory would be assured. That was why he’d changed his powered suit’s form. Those seven deformed arms, each with a sharpened end, were primed to deliver precision strikes through the armor to reach Hamazura’s lungs and heart in response to whatever move he made while destroying the computer in his powered suit’s back at the same time. Hamazura didn’t realize any of this. And that was why Silvercross took that last forward—to deliver the finishing blow. The boy had no idea his actions would only end with him being impaled by those razor sharp arms. …The evils of pursuing of power, he thought. The coffin called possibility. A dead-end future. Your death is guaranteed. Now face it, Level Zero!! A dull noise rumbled through the air. The sound of something digging through the gaps in a powered suit’s joints and obliterating the human within it. In that moment. The seven sharpened arms were accurately aware of all five of the possible starting motions. They would parry any action Hamazura could take and ram through his heart while destroying the computer behind him, delivering a death so absolute that even a mechanical bypass couldn’t stop it. And despite all that. They’d missed. The seven arms had missed their target. Those five starting motions Hamazura had a choice between—this wasn’t one of them. Hamazura was performing a totally unknown attack. And suddenly, his fist was flying at Silvercross Alpha at a terrible speed. Wha…? Silvercross gasped—then realized it a moment later. Hamazura cut off his computer at the last moment to prevent me from predicting his attack. “…?!” Silvercross immediately swung his seven arms back around, but he was too late. His weapon’s configuration meant it could only demonstrate its full power within the scope he personally specified. But this attack had come from outside that scope—so it couldn’t effectively intercept. Several of his sharpened arms scored light grazes on Hamazura’s powered suit. But that was all it could do. It couldn’t stop him—and so next came a punch powerful enough to bore into a car door. His arm hooked around from the side, then landed a blow squarely in his abdomen. And completely busted through his bundle of weaknesses: the battery and computer. There was a screeching noise. Then Silvercross came to a complete stop. In that moment, his cutting-edge weapon had become a set of very expensive shackles. “…Y-you…,” he managed, stuck in a forward-leaning position, unable to move his arms or legs. “You mean to say you foresaw how I would predict your patterns…?” “What the hell are you talking about?” spat Hamazura in response, clueless about what Silvercross was referring to. “I just realized something, that’s all. That I had to finish things with you personally.” 20 Silvercross Alpha was defeated. Despite still being conscious, his control computer had been destroyed, so his joints were all locked in place—meaning he couldn’t even take off his own powered suit. He was motionless, covered by a half-wrecked model. Once Hamazura confirmed this, he finally leaned back against the tunnel wall and let out a sigh of relief. It had only been ten, twenty minutes. But it had felt like years. Belatedly, he realized he’d broken out into a full-body sweat, which was meant to warn him of the threat to his life. “Hamazura!!” Hanzou came running up to him through the dark tunnel. “You all right?” “Somehow,” he replied, lightly clenching a fist, then releasing his fingers. “But he really screwed up the suit. Can’t get any extra kinetic energy now. Anyway, that was based on having neural assistance in the first place. It’d probably smash up my whole skeleton if I tried to use it now that the model’s mostly destroyed…so now this thing really is just a riding suit.” He was still able to move, though, unlike Silvercross. Maybe he should count his blessings. And even without the kinetic-energy boost, the suit still gave him an increase in durability over his normal clothes. For now, he took off his helmet to get a direct breath of fresh air. “Where’s Fremea?” “Nearby. She seems to think you’re one of those transforming heroes or something.” “Hey, if hiding my face means I can do anything I want, maybe I should become one.” Scrrrrtch. Hamazura and Hanzou turned to face the darkness. They’d heard something faint from deeper in the subway tunnel—and not something out of the natural world. It almost sounded like a thick spring creaking. Putting his helmet back on, Hamazura switched to night vision mode. Then he caught his breath. “Those bastards…” “What? Hamazura, what do you see?” Metal. Squirming legs. Inorganic lenses. “Powered suits,” he replied. “But you just beat him!” “They’ve got more. Way more. Over ten more… Silvercross wasn’t the only one!!” Then he heard someone mutter, “I see how it is.” It was Silvercross, still sealed within his broken powered suit. He sounded self-deprecating. “Looks like that brat took it upon herself to mobilize my whole collection from my hangar.” Hamazura was the first to take a step away, since he was actually able to see the threats. Hanzou couldn’t, but the terror was more than he could imagine, so he backed way up. Then as if they were a pair of springs, they both started running. All those feelings of relief and liberation, gone like the wind. “Let’s meet up with Fremea!” Hamazura shouted. “You said she’s nearby, right?!” “Left her with Kuruwa. She’s got a hideout nearby—let’s head that way! But we can’t take on all those powered suits. What now?!” “What now?” he repeated. His powered suit was useless at this point. The enemy seemed to have unlimited combat strength, fielding one threat after another. He couldn’t see the end of it. How far did they have to run? Could they run that far? Was getting out of here even the right choice? He was on the run again now. But this time, he had his eyes set firmly forward. “We’ll have to be smarter than them,” he said. “It’s the only way to save her!!”
Chapter 11
56 min read