Chương 529: 252.Struggle with No Winners 2

Back on the transport ship, the first thing I saw wasn't the medical team, or ground crew. It was Maki Kushima. She stood at the front of the recovery deck, her expression so flat I half wondered if the recovery shuttle had accidentally towed a glacier home along with me. The warning lights were still cycling slowly; the crane arm overhead hadn't fully settled; the whole bay was a mess of hydraulics, coolant, metal, and overlapping voices.

And she just stood there, somehow managing to be the first thing my eyes caught in the whole frame. My knees were still a little numb coming down off the recovery lift. Most of SUSANOO's outer armor had already been emergency-stripped, what remained hanging on the recovery rack looking like exhibits from a major industrial accident.

The harness marks still burned across my back through my suit, and my left shoulder ached from the overload, like someone had quietly moved in overnight and spent the whole time with a hammer. Maki looked at me and skipped the greeting entirely.

"Why didn't you use the official basic isolation barrier?" Her tone was hard. Hard enough to sound like an interrogation. But I'd known her long enough to know that half of that tone was always covering something else. Especially with her brow pressed that low, and her eyes not glaring at me but scanning for missing parts. People like her expressed concern the way other people file formal complaints. I pulled my gloves off and flexed my fingers.

"It broke," I said.

"I'd have loved to open it. It wasn't interested. Not sure if Shinomiya's blade got it or the cliff wall did — either way, I pressed it, and nothing happened." Maki's mouth tightened.

"You're describing this like a jammed water cooler."

"If a jammed water cooler dropped a person straight into concentrated acid mud, I would show every household appliance the utmost respect from now on." She looked like she wanted to argue and couldn't find the angle fast enough. In that narrow gap, the terminal on my hip lit up on its own. Then SUSANOO's voice came through the speaker, perfectly level.

"This unit can testify." Maki and I both jumped. She snapped her head toward my hip. I looked down at the terminal, genuinely wondering for a second whether my own AI had secretly installed a ghost-story function.

"Why are you suddenly talking?" I said.

"In response to the current questioning of the Lieutenant's decision-making, this unit considers a formal clarification necessary." Maki went quiet for half a second. Then — crucially — she didn't cut him off. Good. Which meant she wanted to hear it too. SUSANOO, apparently granted the legal right to give a briefing, dropped straight into his most temperature-free, face-saving-free, put-you-to-sleep-in-four-sentences mechanical register.

"The following is a summary of relevant facts."

"First: during close-quarters combat in the final phase, the basic isolation barrier deployment unit located beneath this frame's left waist guard was struck by the enemy's energy blade. The damaged components were the folding guide rail and secondary ejection hinge. Deflection angle: 12. 6 degrees."

"Second: during the emergency rescue at the rift's edge, this unit's rear stabilization thrusters, left-arm overload output module, and barrier storage capacitor entered simultaneous high-drain states. Residual power at that time was insufficient to support full barrier deployment."

"Third: during the Spore Mutation Surge, highly acidic active particulates penetrated the deployment seam, causing simultaneous failure of the barrier's sensor strip and locking pin. Following the incident, the system ran three startup self-checks. Results, respectively: jammed, jammed, and still jammed."

"Fourth: based on the above, this unit assessed that had the Lieutenant forced activation of the official barrier prior to recovery, the device carried a 93. 4 percent probability of partial deployment and inversion, and a 71. 9 percent probability of subsequently entangling this unit's right-side thruster nozzle, with an associated increase in risk of falling, tumbling, or secondary impact."

"Conclusion."

"The Lieutenant did not engage in subjective showmanship."

"The Lieutenant's decision constituted passive acceptance of equipment failure. No performative intent was detected, nor any meaningless heroic posturing."

"Supplementary clarification complete." The hangar held two seconds of silence after that. The specific kind that comes not from failing to understand, but from understanding perfectly, and not knowing whether to feel sorry for me, for the barrier, or for Maki, who'd just been formally handed this certification whether she wanted it or not. I pressed two fingers to my temple.

"... Those last two lines were completely unnecessary."

"This unit considers them essential." Maki turned her head aside, clearly trying to hold something back. She failed. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. She laughed — low, brief. But when that sound landed, the tension I'd been carrying in my shoulders since the rift actually loosened, a fraction.

"Fine." She cleared her throat, working to reassemble her expression.

"Given the official report, I'll provisionally accept that you weren't showing off on purpose." I looked at her.

"That 'provisionally' has zero sincerity in it."

"You came back alive. Don't push it."

"Noted. I'll pre-file for a more generous trust allocation next time."

"Denied." Fast. Automatic. And the corner of her mouth was, marginally, curving up. Good. Once someone walks back on her own legs, everything else tends to snap back to normal too. Including this deeply unhealthy habit we have of sniping at each other the second we're not dying anymore.

The medical team finally found their opening and descended all at once — someone waving a scanner over my shoulder, someone frowning hard at the acid-burn marks on my suit cuff, someone giving me the are you treating yourself as a consumable again look. Honestly, I was touched. It confirmed my everyday image management was bad enough that everyone distrusted me on sight, no explanation required. Once the checks and handover paperwork finally staggered to a stop, I made my way toward the briefing room.

All I actually wanted was a chair — ideally one that came with quiet, hot water, and no obligation to answer anyone. What I got when the door opened wasn't quiet. It was applause. Loud applause. Loud enough that I briefly wondered if I'd wandered into somebody else's award ceremony by mistake. Nearly everyone in the room was on their feet. The tactical analysts, whose faces usually conserved more energy than a screensaver, were clapping. The deck crew was clapping.

Even the maintenance chief who'd just made me sign three separate damage reports with a face like a thundercloud was clapping. Someone was tapping a cup against the table for rhythm. Someone whistled. Someone shouted welcome back loud enough that the last syllable cracked. I stood in the doorway and genuinely froze for a second. Not because I'd never heard applause. Because this didn't have the stiff, formulaic feel of congratulations on the title.

It was something else — the sound of people who'd been holding their breath a long time, finally getting to confirm that someone who might not have come back had, in fact, walked in on her own two legs, and needing to make some noise about it. Loud. Somehow not annoying. I even spotted the short-haired deck tech who never stopped complaining that we brought machines back looking like scrap — clapping with one hand and flipping me an extremely rude thumbs-up with the other. Very her.

Roughly translated: glad you're alive, but wreck the armor like this again and I'm still yelling at you. Perfect. That's the correct emotional order for a functioning society. Maki came in two steps behind me. She'd clearly intended to keep her I'm just here in an official capacity composure, and the wall of noise knocked it sideways for a moment.

Then she settled slightly behind my shoulder — not stepping forward, not stepping back, the posture of someone who theoretically shouldn't stand this close but had, in practice, been standing on the same side for a while now. Someone shoved a dry towel into my hands from behind. Someone else pressed a hot drink into them. Several voices started at once.

"Joint champions! You two were completely out of your minds down there."

"Out of our minds nothing, I nearly flatlined at the monitoring station."

"That black Shinomiya frame was genuinely cursed. Don't anyone try to stop me later, I'm going to go yell at the committee first."

"Let her sit, can't you see her face is nearly the same color as the wall?"

"The wall isn't this mean."

"Thanks. I'll remember that one." I finally found my voice, slung the towel over my shoulder, and took the cup. It was hot. Hot in exactly the right way — the specific temperature that says this isn't ceremony, someone actually wants you warm again. I looked down at it, and something behind my nose went tight. Annoying. This is exactly why you shouldn't get this tired. Too tired, and a hot drink plus a room full of applause is enough to make your emotional system look like it's malfunctioning.

I took a sip and shoved the whole unnecessary feeling back down. Right on cue, the main screen on the briefing-room wall lit up. The committee's closing announcement appeared, dressed in that gentle, positive, society-is-somehow-better-for-this blue-and-white color scheme they seemed to save for maximum self-congratulation. The headline was written with total, upright sincerity:"Ten-House Exchange Competition Program — Concluded with Great Success." I stared at that for three seconds.

Then I laughed, entirely genuinely.

"Concluded my ass." I set the cup down, my voice not loud, but exactly loud enough to reach every corner of the room.

"Wasn't this whole thing supposed to promote mutual understanding among the ten houses, build trust, and achieve reconciliation for the next generation?" Nobody interrupted. Because everyone already sensed something unpolished, but honest, was coming. I tipped my chin at the screen.

"And what do we have now? We started out simply not liking each other. Now every single house has upgraded to memorizing everyone else's weak points, vulnerabilities, chassis habits, and exactly what their heir's face looks like right before they lose it. That's not reconciliation. That's a premium-grade mutual-hatred cultivation program." Someone snorted. I kept going.

"The committee calls it friendly exchange. What I saw was a bunch of already-not-entirely-stable noble heirs dropped into a meat grinder, lid on, run at high speed, and then — very politely — announced: wonderful, everyone now shares a formative memory." More laughter this time. Louder. Even Maki turned her head aside, shoulders shaking once, clearly holding it in. I leaned back, took a second sip, and delivered the summary this grand initiative deserved.

"Very touching," I said.

"So touching that every house going home tonight is probably filing three separate budget requests: chassis repair, trauma counseling, and re-educating the next generation on what 'friendly competition' actually means." The tactical section erupted into a mix of clapping and laughing. Someone slapped the table. Someone laughed while swearing under their breath. Someone else nodded along, dead serious, clearly already drafting a compensation claim against the committee in their head.

Watching this room finally come back to life, I felt the knot I'd carried up out of the rift loosen, just a little. Maki spoke beside me, low.

"If that mouth of yours ever gets you blacklisted by the committee, I'm not saving you." I glanced at her sideways.

"Relax. If that day comes, I'll make sure to drag all of you down with me first." She let out a short, dismissive sound.

"Very you."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

"I know." We looked at each other for a second. Then she pushed her own untouched cup across the table toward me.

"Drink this one," she said.

"Yours is going cold." I looked at it. Then at her.

"You were interrogating me a minute ago."

"This is the supplementary filing."

"House Kushima's care procedures are exhausting."

"You're free to decline." I took the second cup and added, almost as an afterthought:"I won't. I happen to feel like cooperating with administrative procedure exactly once today." She didn't argue that. She just stood beside me, expression still a little tight, her eyes much softer than before. A small shift — small enough that if my head hadn't still been relatively clear, I might not have caught it. I caught it anyway. Which was inconvenient. Because some things, once seen, are very hard to pretend you haven't.

I drank the second cup, telling myself I was just thirsty. The noise in the room carried on. Someone was arguing over how to split credit for a joint championship. Someone was taking bets on exactly how cold the atmosphere in Shinomiya's briefing room was right now. Someone else had already, unilaterally, decided we were getting real hot food tonight and no one was surviving on energy gel any longer. Good. That's the right sound for a room full of people who came back alive.

As for the ten houses reconciling — I looked up at the screen, that lovely Concluded with Great Success still hanging there, and couldn't resist adding one more line, silently, to myself. If the committee genuinely wants the ten houses to reconcile, the most efficient method next time probably isn't running another tournament. It's tying up everyone who planned this one and delivering them to all ten houses, and letting everyone decide together what to do with them.

That might actually produce some real team spirit.