Chương 510: 242.Susanoo 2

The dining room still held a little of the warmth of living people in it. Not that the mood was easy — just that people were still sitting down, there was food, the clink of dishes, and everyone could go on pretending they were "having a meal" rather than "holding onto the last scrap of ordinary life before a high-risk deployment." The table held a simple but substantial dinner.

Akari ate while staring at the Orpheia data on the projection, her expression suggesting she couldn't decide whether to curse the fungus first or the radiation. Jess never stopped talking — one line about whether spore-acid corrosion meant she should insure her own face, cut off by D's flat observation that her face never had much resale value to begin with. Charles sat with textbook posture, radiating I'm only a first-year, but I will try very hard not to look useless in front of my Senpais.

Hedwig scrolled her terminal in silence. Lan ate while cross-referencing data. Irena, as ever, ate at a steady pace with none of the ceremonial gravity you'd expect before a major event, as if Orpheia weren't a high-radiation fungal death world so much as an unusually chewy appetizer. Emily sat at the corner of the table, her black training gear keeping her frame straight and hard, the prosthetics on her left arm and both legs catching a faint, cold gleam under the light.

She didn't react to the data the way the others did — she just lifted her eyes occasionally, as if judging which part of the meal was least worth wasting time on. We were in the middle of arguing over how to approach the Obstacle Course when every terminal at the table chimed at once. Not a scattered cluster of tones. One single, uniform, appetite-killing chime — as if even the act of mass-notifying people had been drilled into a form of institutional jump-scare. I opened mine. The committee, of course.

And not yesterday's abbreviated public version — a fuller, far more detailed formal notice, clearly with no intention of letting anyone relax. I read down the list. My expression soured with every line. Long-Range Endurance Obstacle Course — Pre-Event Notice To all participating academies: I. Equipment Submission Deadline All participants must deliver their Armored Suit (hereafter AS) and its associated weapons to the spaceport for inspection and crating no later than 2200 hours today.

Late submissions will not be accepted. II. Weapon Loadout Regulations Each AS may be equipped with: — One (1) ranged weapon — One (1) close-combat weapon Note: Survival knives are exempt from this restriction. III. Mandatory Equipment The committee will install the following on every AS as standard: — 1 × distress flare — 2 × basic isolation barriers IV. Distress Flare Usage Terms Once a distress flare is activated, the committee will dispatch rescue personnel immediately.

The activating competitor's team, however, will be disqualified, and this will count against the team's combined score. V. Isolation Barriers and Risk Disclosure Upon official announcement of an incoming storm, competitors must take cover in place and immediately deploy their basic isolation barrier. Anyone who disregards this instruction and continues moving does so entirely at their own risk. VI. Fleet Departure The fleet departs at 0300 tomorrow morning.

Competitors are advised to assemble early to facilitate processing. VII. Other Matters Any remaining information will be relayed separately by staff aboard each vessel. I read to the end, stayed quiet for two seconds, and then swore, with complete sincerity. Not for effect. Purely because every clause in that notice read like: Yes, we know this is awful. You're doing it anyway. Everyone else's reaction was about the same. Akari looked like she'd swallowed an entire undercooked egg whole, yolk lodged halfway down.

Jess had the expression of someone who'd bitten into something rotten, her whole face folding in on itself with real artistic commitment.

"Equipment check by 2200, departure at 0300 tomorrow?" She set down her fork, her voice drifting like her soul had partially checked out.

"Writing 'assemble early' like it's a polite suggestion is charmingly restrained. This is just don't sleep tonight."

"Only now figuring out the committee aren't good people?" D said, arms crossed, delivering the line with his usual economy of mercy.

"One flare and the whole team's out. Storm hits and you have to drop everything and pop a barrier. This isn't a rulebook. It's malice with an official stamp."

"What I care about is the one-ranged, one-melee limit," Lan said, setting her terminal down with a frown.

"It means no greedy loadouts. Anything extra doesn't make the cut." Hedwig nodded once.

"And the mandatory committee hardware," she added, level.

"Which means the custom margin shrinks further still." Charles read the notice through again, carefully, like a man terrified of missing a single word that might get him killed.

"The distress flare..." he murmured.

"So unless you truly can't move another step, don't touch it."

"Touch it, and you drag the whole team down with you," I said. Maki looked at her terminal, expression composed.

"It's more than that," she said.

"It's designed to force every runner, on every leg, into her own decision: save herself, or save the team." Irena took a sip of water.

"That's exactly why it's called an endurance obstacle course," she said lightly.

"It's not just testing who can keep running. It's testing who can keep moving when she has every right to be terrified."

"You make it sound fun," I said.

"It isn't." She glanced at me and still somehow smiled.

"But complaining won't move departure from 0300 to noon." Unfortunately, she was right. Dinner stopped being a meal to linger over after that. People split into tasks almost without discussing it. Someone confirmed the weapons list. Someone reviewed the current AS loadouts. Someone started mapping out which movement habits the isolation barriers might interfere with. I cross-referenced the new notice against the Orpheia data, trying to work out exactly which leg the Spore Mutation Surge was going to tear apart.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The stretch between the dining room and the spaceport vanished — the way time vanishes when someone quietly hits fast-forward on ordinary life. At 22 Platinum Bridge Street, lights came on one by one, then went off one by one. Someone hauled gear down from upstairs. Someone double-checked the equipment cases in the basement.

The front door opened and shut on a rhythm of buckles, metal cases, datapads, last-minute comms — all night, invisible gears seemed to be biting down, and all of us had been dropped straight into the mechanism, with barely enough gaps between the teeth to complain. It wasn't until we actually arrived at Dunan Spaceport that I understood just how much money the great houses were willing to burn on something this tedious — no, this high-intensity, this formal, this thoroughly obsessed with honor.

The ships waiting on the pad weren't the mass-produced, function-first Federation transports too plain to bother with an extra line of styling. They were each house's own private transports — and it was obvious every single one of them treated their ship as a flying calling card. Some gleamed bright enough to suggest their owners had considered engraving the family name in neon across the hull.

Some had bows so exaggerated they looked like ancient nobility had welded their aesthetics and their pride directly onto the prow. Some had turned their plating and family crest into a shape that was simultaneously very expensive and hard on the eyes to look at directly. In short: a cluster of families with capital, factories, and a serious appetite for performance, who had finally found a sanctioned occasion to show, collectively, exactly how far a vehicle could be warped away from looking like a vehicle.

By comparison, House Kushima's transport looked almost plain. Not cheap. The kind of plain that says: I know exactly what I'm worth. I don't need to paint it on my face. Clean lines. A heavy hull. No unnecessary flourish. The whole ship looked like a piece of industrial equipment polished right to the limit — it didn't try to stun you on first glance, but give it two more seconds and you understood: this thing had never been built for photographs.

"Pretty doesn't fly faster," Maki said, standing beside the rest of us. There was a rare trace of pride in her voice — not exaggerated, just the built-in confidence of someone who already knew we'd all shut up soon enough. Then she added, "You'll understand once you're settled in tonight." I didn't process that fast enough.

"Settled in?" Maki turned and gave me a look that carried something close to patience.

"If you'd rather pitch a tent outside, I won't stop you." Right. Shutting up now. Sometimes I genuinely suspected Maki's greatest talent wasn't running the Seitokai, or commanding an operation. It was saying something completely ordinary in a tone that made you instantly aware that one more word out of your mouth would only humiliate you further. Not long after, a line of trucks bearing the Kushima crest rolled onto the pad. When the doors opened, every eye nearby was pulled in the same direction.

"Isn't that Kushima Heavy Industries' newest AS — the ASURA?" Harvey Knox nearly shouted it. I followed his line of sight. Black armor sat locked to the restraint rack, catching the light in a heavy, matte sheen. The silhouette was long, close-fitted to the human frame — not slender in the ornamental way of a performance suit, but proportioned like a piece of tactical equipment. The helmet was a single integrated unit, the visor glowing a cold blue-white. The shoulder plating sat clean and unshowy.

The chest was laid out in modular hardpoints, as if someone had welded a tactical vest directly onto an armored skeleton. The limb plating hugged every joint, with narrow light-channels and nodes running along the knees, elbows, and outer thighs — not there to look good, more like something built to quietly handle an unlucky target in the dark. In short: exactly what Kushima Heavy Industries would build. Not flashy, not lovable, but reliable enough to leave you with mixed feelings about it.

Harvey and Roy weren't competing this round, but we could hardly abandon the two of them at 22 Platinum Bridge Street to fend for themselves. If they starved, there'd be no good way to explain that afterward. More practically: Maki was never the type to care whether two men off the roster were staying in the house, and Harvey's technical skills stood a decent chance of coming in useful under exactly these circumstances.

The instant Harvey said the name, the expressions of everyone nearby who knew their hardware changed at once. It wasn't the look of seeing a new toy. It was the look of seeing something that had only ever existed in catalogues, internal rumor, or executive showrooms — now being unloaded by the truckload right in front of them. Just standing there, waiting for inspection, the ASURA units carried a sharp, cutting-edge pressure.

Not flashy, not performing aggression — just a design purpose stated in plain terms: protection, output, stability, deterrence. It was obvious this latest line from Kushima Heavy Industries had never been built for students to wear at a school festival. The rest of the process moved fast. Committee staff went down the line, inspecting each unit, verifying serial numbers, scanning weapon loadouts, and, per regulation, attaching a distress flare and two basic isolation barriers to each AS.

Once cleared, the suits were loaded onto the transport one by one, the whole process running with the practiced smoothness of a system that assumed no one involved had time — or the right — to feel anything about it. While everyone's attention stayed fixed on the inspection line, a smaller truck slipped onto the pad from the side. Discreetly. Almost suspiciously so. No visible markings. It didn't merge with the main traffic — just drifted into an unremarkable corner and stopped.

A few people began unloading from the back, moving with the exact carefulness of people who genuinely believed that acting quiet enough would render them invisible to the entire world. The man responsible probably thought he'd pulled off something covert. I didn't think that. Because I was standing right there. Watching every second of it. Dr.

Heinrich von Steiner even waved at me — with the ease of someone who wasn't smuggling anything at all, just running into an old acquaintance at a market stall and inviting her over to see the goods. I had no choice but to walk over.

"I saw the planetary data you sent," he said, dropping his voice, wearing the particular excitement of an engineer about to announce he'd done something that was probably not entirely legal.

"To compensate for the Spore Haze, I made specific modifications to the onboard radar."

"Plain language, Doctor." I looked at him, deadpan.

"I'm not an engineer. I don't follow the technical side."

"In short — you won't need to worry as much about the Spore Haze." Good. That much I understood.

"Anything else I should know?" He glanced back at the AS, and for once something like hesitation crossed his face.

"I tried incorporating some of the Imperial warship data you brought back," he said slowly.

"The result is... well. He might be a little talkative." I frowned.

"What does a little talkative mean?" Before he could answer, a voice came from inside the AS itself — carrying a clear note of protest.

"I object to that characterization, Doctor." I jumped back.

"Shit, it's talking." I stared at the suit.

"Doctor, what did you put in there? A machine spirit?" For once, the good doctor actually looked slightly regretful.

"It's an artificial intelligence modeled on the data you recovered," he said.

"The original intent was to assist the pilot. It turns out that, once installed, he's rather... communicative." I was quiet for two seconds. My mind unhelpfully supplied the memory of the Asgard's AI arguing back at me. Wonderful. Apparently the universe had no shortage of high-tech disasters fully capable of talking back to their owners.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Nothing else of concern." Having delivered that line, he gave me no chance to follow up, abandoned the entire problem in my lap with total cheer, and made a brisk retreat. Not one shred of accountability. I turned back to the AS.

"So. What's your name again?" The reply came quickly this time, carrying a strange, misplaced solemnity.

"I am experimental unit AS-00, 素戔嗚." It said.

"Though perhaps you would prefer my other designation." Something in me already knew this was going to be bad. The next second, in the tone of something announcing the name of a god, it said:"SUSANOO." I stood there, genuinely unable to decide whether the right thing to say to SUSANOO was pleased to work with you or my condolences. In the end, all I could do was let out one very long breath. Wonderful. Orpheia. High radiation. The Spore Mutation Surge. A 0300 departure.

A distress flare that disqualifies your entire team the second you touch it. And now an AS that talks — and sounds like it has a great deal it would like to say. For the first time, I started to suspect the committee's red button hadn't been for drawing a venue at all. Maybe what it had actually triggered was my personal suffering protocol for the next several days.