Chương 528: 252.Struggle with No Winners 1

I followed the committee's last-minute nav update, and the further I went, the more convinced I became that if lightning ever did strike those people, it wouldn't be divine justice — it would just mean karma had finally worked its way through the queue.

"Not hard to find the flag" — translated into plain speech, that meant as long as you're still alive when you get there, you'll see it. Very on-brand for the committee. Like a hospital taping a sign to the ER doors reading please wait your turn, as if there weren't blood on the floor and crying in the waiting room and everyone here weren't just in for their annual checkup. I crossed the last stretch of tilted rock ridge and the view opened wide. Then I saw her. Exactly as Maki's intel had described.

House Shinomiya's new-model unit stood silent at the edge of the cliff ahead, black enough to swallow light whole. Not cheap black, and not simply a deep enough paint job — the specific color that only grows when metallic black and midnight charcoal get bitten into each other, layer over layer. The outer armor looked like night itself had polished it by hand. The shoulder plating sat heavy, but the lines ran clean to the point of inhumanity.

An amber core, faintly hexagonal, was set into the chest, glowing against the dark frame like a fragment of a dead star someone had forced inside. Cold cyan light ran through the sensor lines and joint seams like veins — fine, quiet, steadily lit — making the whole machine look less like a weapon and more like a predator raised strictly on the house rules of old money. And behind her: the rift. A whole stretch of crust had been pried apart by main force.

Nothing below but a churning pool of concentrated acid mud, the surface heaving like overcooked molten iron — bubbling, swelling, bursting — the rising mist staining the entire basin an ominous, murky yellow. Just looking at it gave you a much more concrete understanding of the committee's moral character. Very classic. Fight with your back to the wall — or drop straight through to your own chemical funeral rites. I raised the Type-99 Charged Particle Rifle, muzzle steady on her, and didn't pull the trigger.

The reason was simple. I wasn't confident I could put her down in one shot. And if I didn't finish her on the spot, whatever this thing was running under that QPRC would just vanish again. Then I'd be managing her, the rift, and whatever fourth layer of committee malice that damned flag might still be hiding — all at once. Too expensive. I didn't have the budget right now to spend on a miss. She didn't move. Then she raised her left hand and gave me a stop gesture. I frowned.

"SUSANOO."

"Enemy unit holding position. No pre-fire indicators detected."

"What is she doing."

"If the Lieutenant permits, this unit could log that exact phrasing in the official tactical report."

"Shut up."

"Understood." While I was still puzzling over it, the pitch-black frame reached up and unlatched its helmet. The armored collar retracted slightly on both sides, the visor flipped back, and underneath was a face I would absolutely never have expected to find here. Hair of violet seamlessly fading into cold lavender, bound back with such severe precision that it looked like someone had made a deliberate point of never letting a single stray strand appear in public. Features too even. Eyes too cold.

The whole face carried the specific restraint of someone trained from childhood never to lose composure in front of others. Not emotionless — just emotion locked somewhere very deep, with only the edges ever permitted to show. My pupils contracted.

"Shinomiya Hyouka..." I'd calculated every angle I could think of. I had not calculated her coming down here in person. Her external comms opened, and her voice came through calm enough to make me want to hit her once before letting her finish.

"Hoshino Shimo." She even said it at leisure.

"What exactly has House Kushima offered you, to make you throw your life away for them like this?"

"You've got it wrong," I said.

"I haven't taken a single credit from House Kushima." I raised the muzzle a fraction, locking it firmly on the amber core in her chest.

"What exactly are you here for, Shinomiya?" She looked at me, and somehow still had the leisure to sweep her eyes once over SUSANOO's frame.

"Simple," she said.

"Come to House Shinomiya, Hoshino Shimo. I'll pay double whatever Kushima's offering you." For a second I genuinely thought I'd misheard. Final duel. Rift. Acid mud. A hidden flag. A stealth-capable prototype. The heir of House Shinomiya herself. And this woman was standing in front of me, headhunting. Genuinely deranged. And deranged with money to spare.

"Don't make me laugh, Shinomiya." I steadied the rifle again, my voice dropping cold.

"I'm not a commodity up for transfer." She looked like she'd already expected exactly that answer. The instant the visor snapped back down, the whole frame dropped into a lower stance.

"A pity." I pulled the trigger. The Type-99 spat a short, violent burst of blue-violet high-energy particles, light flaring at the muzzle like someone had forced a small thunderstorm into a narrow barrel and kicked it out. The beam skimmed the ground, melting a glowing scar into the rock; gravel scattered along the line, and the acid haze flashed instantly into white smoke. Shinomiya shifted in almost the same breath. Too fast to look like movement. More like she'd simply never been standing where I'd fired.

The high-heat plasma rifle in her hands answered with a beam of red particles — hotter and meaner than my blue-violet, cutting across my vision like a length of iron heated white, sweeping straight for my head sensor. I tilted my head. The beam grazed SUSANOO's right shoulder plating, burning a charred groove into the outer armor, the edges still glowing red.

"Very passionate," I said through my teeth.

"This unit recommends the Lieutenant refrain from classifying this behavior as an expression of affection."

"You're very talkative today."

"The opposing party offered double your rate. This concerns this unit's career stability." I didn't have time to litigate workplace ethics with an AI. I brought the rifle up and fired again. Blue-violet particle beams tore out one after another, fast enough to look like someone hammering a row of lightning bolts into the air. Shinomiya didn't dodge or retreat — red beams answered mine, the two colors crossing wildly in front of the rift. Blue-violet carved glowing cracks into the rock.

Red burned whole sections of ground into collapsing craters. Char and acid haze were thrown skyward together, the entire cliff edge sounding like two colors scraping something down to the bone. I fired and moved. Cut left. Slide-step. Kick off the rock. Short thruster burst. Almost every time, Shinomiya was half a beat early into exactly the worst position. Her fire wasn't suppression — it was closer to skinning, shaving away my usable angles one at a time. She wasn't rushing to punch through me.

She was trying to force me into her rhythm. Very Shinomiya. Also very irritating. On the third burst, I deliberately dropped my aim — one beam for her flank, one for the rift edge behind her. She deflected the first with the rifle body; the second blew the ground out from under her. In the instant her balance shifted, I threw the thrusters to full and closed the distance.

Once the range collapsed past where rifles mattered, Shinomiya abandoned the long-range rhythm without hesitation and swung the stock at me like a hammer. I caught it crosswise on my own rifle — the impact ran up my arm into my shoulder like a battering ram testing a joint. We let the rifles go almost at the same moment. The next second: energy blades out. Mine lit pale, cold blue. Hers burned a hotter red-orange.

The first clash threw sparks and arcs almost flush against my vision — not a simple clang, but a high, shrill shriek, like two vengeful lightning bolts ground together edge to edge. Then a second exchange. A third. A fourth. Close combat swallowed the distance whole. She pressed forward; I cut diagonal. I went for her neck sensor; she rolled her wrist and came back at my flank. I blocked with my left arm; her elbow slammed into SUSANOO's chest plate hard enough to make the amber core flicker.

I swept low for her knee joint; she caught the blade on her leg plating and used the angle to drive me toward the cliff's edge. Neither of us gained ground. She was fast; I was vicious. She calculated; I refused to yield. Two frames trading position along the rift's edge, blades scraping armor again and again — black plating opening into glowing wounds, char peeling back at the edges, cold cyan sensor lines flickering like blood running through wire.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Dead even. Textbook enough to be infuriating. I kicked her side. She staggered half a step and nearly took my left forearm plating off on the way back. I drove my shoulder in; my blade skimmed her visor and caught nothing but sparks. Her knee slammed into SUSANOO next, hard enough to send the whole balance readout into a screaming string of alerts.

"Lieutenant," SUSANOO said.

"If you intend to block with your face, this unit suggests pre-authorizing the repair budget."

"Put it on the tab."

"Received. The estimate will worsen your mood considerably." I breathed out and pulled back half a step. Shinomiya retreated too. Her blade was still lit, but she didn't press back in right away. It showed in the small things — breathing rate, the faint rise and fall of the shoulder plating, the corrected angle on her guard. Even a high-spec frame couldn't keep pretending this cost nothing. This fight wasn't her performance alone. She slid back another half step. The next instant, the black silhouette wavered.

Here it came again. QPRC online. Like someone had peeled her straight off the surface of the world — metallic black, amber core, cold cyan light, all of it swallowed by the air in an instant. Only the churning acid haze at the rift's edge remained, and the memory that someone had just been standing there. I ground my teeth.

"SUSANOO."

"Enemy AS has entered non-visible state. Infrared: negative. Radar lock: unresolved. Thermal and electromagnetic signatures: fully masked."

"Great," I said.

"So I can't see a damn thing."

"If you'd like this unit to positively affirm your summarizing ability—""I wouldn't." I dropped my stance, blade angled out, eyes raking every inch of terrain. Rift edge. Broken rock. The heat shimmer over the acid haze. Fine gravel underfoot. Any wrongness could be her. I was just about to start the slowest, dumbest, most reliable method — forcing the ghost to expose herself, one inch at a time — when SUSANOO's voice cut in again. This time, unusually, with no preamble at all.

"Lieutenant. Warning from the committee."

"What."

"Spore Mutation Surge incoming." I nearly thought I was hallucinating.

"Fuck. Now?"

"Affirmative. As far as timing goes, the committee's taste remains consistent." I didn't even bother correcting the AI's editorial on the committee, because the ground had already started swearing on my behalf. The wall of fungal haze on the horizon began to churn. The low, drifting grey-yellow layer suddenly rolled upward as if an invisible hand had shoved it into a boiling pot, loaded with activated spores and acid-heavy, superheated moisture.

The sound arrived before the wind: a fine, dense hiss, like a thousand sheets of sandpaper grinding glass at once.

"Lieutenant," SUSANOO said.

"Per spec, this unit can operate in the storm for approximately five minutes."

"That sentence is not comforting."

"Comfort is not this unit's primary function."

"I'd already worked that out." The first wave hit and every muscle in my body locked. Not ordinary wind — wind that bit. Activated spores slammed against the armor in a dense, continuous hiss, like the whole frame had been dropped into a vat of freshly boiling solvent. Warnings stacked across my HUD — outer-armor corrosion, sensor contamination, joint friction — all climbing at once. And in the middle of that hell, the storm did what no scanner could: it slapped Shinomiya's stealth weakness wide open.

About a hundred meters ahead, in a stretch of acid haze that had been empty a second earlier, half a warped optical outline surfaced — like a pane of semi-transparent glass jammed into the wind, its surface flickering under the assault of frenzied spores. The next instant, the entire black silhouette distorted, broke apart, and reappeared in full.

"Lieutenant." SUSANOO tagged the coordinates cleanly.

"Ahead. One hundred meters." I didn't waste a word. I went straight in. Shinomiya clearly hadn't planned for the system to fail right now. Her frame lurched sideways — a reflex attempt to recalibrate the cloak — but the QPRC was currently being scoured by spores like a wire brush, and before it could reset, she'd already taken a step back onto nothing at all. I only saw the rock under her heel give way completely. The next second, she tipped backward and dropped into the rift.

There was no heroism in my head in that instant. No noble sportsmanship. The words save her hadn't even had time to form. I just knew one thing with total clarity. If the heir of House Shinomiya died here. Right in front of me. I would never have a single quiet day for the rest of my life. So I threw myself forward almost purely on instinct. SUSANOO's upper body lunged over the edge; my left hand locked onto her forearm plating.

The impact nearly tore my shoulder out of its socket, a whole row of warnings flaring red at once. Below us, the churning acid mud bubbled and burst in sequence, fumes rolling upward, the whole rift open like a mouth waiting for something to fall in.

"Got you!" I shouted. Shinomiya hung in midair, her other hand scrambling for a grip near my wrist. The storm hammered her; the black plating was bleaching pale in patches wherever the corrosion caught. She looked up at me through a visor already cracked from the fight, cold grey eyes showing through the gap. Her first words weren't thank you. They were:"Let go." I thought I'd misheard.

"Say that again?"

"Let go." Her voice stayed perfectly clear in the wind — clear enough to deserve a hit.

"Turn back now and take the flag. You still have time." I nearly dropped her three centimeters just to clear her head.

"Are you out of your mind?"

"It's the most efficient choice."

"You're hanging off my arm and you want to talk about efficiency."

"Hoshino Shimo." She looked at me, somehow calmer now than she'd been mid-firefight.

"This race was always about winning and losing. You have no obligation to—""Shut up." I locked down on her forearm and held. Every servo in SUSANOO's left arm had crossed into overload, the joint whining at a pitch that meant nothing good. The warning column kept climbing — armor damage, arm overload, anchor bolts slipping, storm corrosion accelerating — every line arguing that letting go might genuinely be the smart move. But smart isn't always worth listening to.

Especially when smart means dropping a living person into acid. Shinomiya opened her mouth to say something else. I got there first, teeth clenched.

"Shinomiya Hyouka, if you drop out of my hands today—" The storm shrieked between us. Activated spores rained down like the sky had gone insane; acid haze churned below. My arm felt like it was about to tear free, and my head held exactly one sentence — direct, unreasonable, and completely unedited.

"—I will never be done with you for the rest of my life." The moment it left my mouth, I froze for half a second. Not from regret. From the realization that this line — which should have come out as don't you dare die on me, or don't wreck my life, or if you die right now I'm finished — had somehow, whether from the wind or the acid fumes cooking my brain, arrived instead sounding like something out of a prime-time melodrama. Extremely bad. Extremely unprofessional. And of course, Shinomiya Hyouka heard every word.

She looked up at me, and that face, usually calibrated to the millimeter, showed something it almost never did: a brief, genuine blank.

"... What is that supposed to mean?"

"Exactly what it sounds like."

"Hoshino Shimo." Her voice dropped; her expression turned strange.

"Even now, is this how you try to keep someone around?" It took me a full half-second to catch exactly which channel she was tuned to.

"What frequency are you receiving on right now?"

"Isn't that what this is?"

"Obviously not."

"Then what you just—""What I meant is that if you die here, I will never have another peaceful day in my life." I held her gaze.

"House Shinomiya will never let it go. House Kushima will never let it go. The committee will probably hold a press conference about it. This is a very practical concern." Shinomiya went quiet. A short silence, suspiciously loaded. Finally, very low: "Your methods of comfort and your methods of rescue are both terrible."

"Thanks." I hauled her up another notch.

"I have no intention of improving in either category."

"That much is obvious." Good. If she still had the energy to snipe back while dangling in midair, her mind was fine. Not about to shut down on me. Reality had no interest in giving us credit for keeping up the banter. The surge kept intensifying. The rock under my knees started fine-cracking. SUSANOO's left-arm servo alert flipped from orange to red; the rear thrusters were destabilizing under the combined load of acid and overwork, the entire frame shaking in ways I did not appreciate.

"Lieutenant," SUSANOO said.

"If you insist on bringing the target up with you, this unit projects total damage to both frames will exceed safe operating thresholds."

"That is the last thing I needed to hear right now."

"Understood. Switching to the bad-news phrasing instead—""Don't." I hauled Shinomiya up another length. She finally got her other hand up onto the cliff edge, her midsection scraping onto the ledge enough to bear some of her own weight. Just as I braced for the final pull, the rock beneath us — already fractured by the particle fire earlier — let out one clean, perfectly timed, thoroughly hopeless crack. Then it gave. Both frames dropped together.

Not all the way — the entire outer shelf and its extension sheared off, slid, and slammed hard onto another broken ledge below. The impact hit my spine like someone using it for a bell. SUSANOO lost balance completely, dragging Shinomiya's frame down with it, both of us skidding onto a narrow mid-rift platform, armor scraping the wall the whole way, sparks and acid-mud flying, before finally grinding to a stop in an ugly shriek of friction. My vision blacked out for a beat.

When it came back, the first thing I saw wasn't Shinomiya. It was the damage panel on my HUD, most of it red. Left-arm output: destroyed. Rear thrusters: half offline. Right knee servo: lagging. Primary weapon ammunition: zero. Good. Very thorough. It had the distinct feel of that's all for today. I forced myself upright and looked over.

Shinomiya's frame wasn't in much better shape — her right shoulder joint had blown out, the cloak module was completely dead, and the ring lights around her amber core were flickering erratically. She tried to stand, made it halfway, and the whole frame dropped back to its knees.

"Don't move," I said.

"That's an unpleasant thing to hear from the winner."

"Do I look like a winner to you?" She didn't answer. She didn't need to. Less than ten meters away stood the flag. The committee had planted it at the far end of this ledge, beside a tilted marker post. White field, black pattern, metal pole — quiet almost to the point of mockery. As if to say: Congratulations, you two. You've spent all this time arguing. I've been right here the whole time. I stared at it. For a few seconds, I genuinely considered crawling. Just a little further. Push a little more.

Maybe reachable. SUSANOO put an efficient end to that thought.

"Lieutenant. This unit's remaining mobility is below fourteen percent. Forced movement carries a high probability of complete shutdown."

"That's just as unpleasant as your last line."

"Pleasantness has never been this unit's specialty." On her side, Shinomiya seemed to have received a similar diagnosis. She looked at the flag, then at me. Through the cracked visor, for the first time all day, her eyes held no calculation at all — just something exhausted, and very clear.

"It seems," she said, "neither of us is taking it."

"Likewise." The surge still roared above us. Acid haze rolled up from below, staining the whole ledge a thin yellow. I could feel SUSANOO's systems shutting down one after another, like lights going out down a corridor. Shinomiya's frame was going the same way — that beautiful, cold black shell now nothing but cracks, scorch marks, and the pale rot where the spores had eaten through. A decisive battle, ending as two extremely expensive piles of scrap and a flag neither of us could touch.

Very much in keeping with this tournament's whole character. Always staged on a grand scale. Always insisting on an absurd ending. The public channel let out a sharp tone. Not an alarm. The referee ship's mandatory broadcast.

"Anchor-leg status confirming."

"House Kushima unit: mobility lost."

"House Shinomiya unit: mobility lost." A half-second pause. Then that voice I very much wanted to walk to the edge of the rift and personally explain the concept of humanity to, delivering the result in the same polite tone you'd use to hand out a report card.

"Per this tournament's final clause: neither party is capable of securing the flag, nor of completing final suppression."

"This tournament's champion—""House Kushima and House Shinomiya: joint champions." I closed my eyes and let my frame sag back against the rock. For a moment I genuinely wanted to laugh. Not from happiness — from the specific exhaustion where absurdity is the only thing left standing.

I'd spent this entire leg trying to take Shinomiya Hyouka apart, nearly reduced both of us to spare parts, hauled her back from the acid out of pure self-preservation — and the committee had wrapped the whole thing up with a breezy joint champions, the same tone you'd use to announce a school-fair raffle had accidentally pulled two grand prizes. If you don't laugh at a moment like that, it'll probably take years off your life. A quiet exhale sounded beside me. I turned my head.

Shinomiya was looking up too, at the sky the surge had stained yellow.

"Hoshino Shimo."

"What."

"Congratulations." I looked at her, half-convinced the acid haze had gotten into her brain.

"What's there to congratulate about a joint championship?"

"At least you kept House Kushima's honor intact."

"You kept House Shinomiya's succession intact too."

"True." I snorted.

"So you owe me a life." She was quiet for a moment, then turned to look at me.

"You really do like keeping accounts."

"I just don't like people surviving for free."

"How do you plan to collect?" I thought about it, then answered honestly.

"Haven't decided yet."

"That sounds dangerous."

"Relax," I said.

"If I actually meant to do something to you, I wouldn't warn you first." Shinomiya actually laughed. Shallow. Short. Like a hairline crack opening across the surface of thin ice — small, but real. That face, usually too cold, too composed, too precisely calibrated for any joke to survive contact with it, only looked more infuriating for that small trace of amusement. Because it meant she wasn't cold by nature. Just very well-practiced at keeping herself frozen. That observation had zero tactical value right now.

It only added to the general administrative burden of my life. Terrible. I looked away, unwilling to admit I'd just spent half a second on something entirely unnecessary. SUSANOO's voice had dropped a register, as if backup power had put him into word-conservation mode.

"Lieutenant. Recovery signal approaching."

"Finally."

"Additionally, this unit recommends filing your earlier statement to Ms. Shinomiya as private record only, to prevent leaks." I blinked, then nearly laughed again.

"Shut up."

"Understood." Shinomiya had clearly heard him anyway. She looked at me, tone even, content entirely unwise.

"So you do realize that line wasn't fit for public consumption."

"Shinomiya Hyouka."

"Yes?"

"Bring it up one more time and I will seriously reconsider dropping the life I just saved."

"A pity," she said.

"I'd thought that was a rare moment of honesty from you."

"Your enthusiasm for misreading the situation today is genuinely impressive."

"Likewise." I gave up on her and looked up instead. The storm was passing. The churning acid haze, the hissing spore rain, the corroded cliff edge, the flag standing in front of us that neither of us could reach — all of it still there, but noticeably quieter now, as if the world had finally agreed this thoroughly absurd final round was over. I hadn't won. She hadn't won. But neither of us was dead. By this tournament's standards, that counted as remarkably good manners.