RUN
"Fire!"
At someone's shout, gunshots erupted like thunder. Dozens of rounds came surging toward Ifrit all at once.
It was exactly what everyone expected.
She had made her entrance in the dead center of an ambush, all flash and fanfare — wasn't this kind of hospitality only natural?
Ifrit responded with a feral grin, weaving acrobatically through the hail of bullets as though she were dancing.
Of course, she couldn't dodge them all.
Dodging rounds that crossed the sound barrier through sheer movement alone was the stuff of imagination.
But that was no problem at all.
After all, Ifrit was a high-grade Pathfinder whose entire body was cyberware. She was not the kind of person who dropped dead from a bullet or two.
The rounds tearing through the air hammered into her from every angle — yet not a single one pierced or broke through. They simply crumpled against her chrome or ricocheted away.
"The head! Aim for the head!"
Not bad leadership.
Even for Ifrit, a destroyed head would render that steel body of hers useless.
The Restmen took careful aim in response — but not one of them could hit Ifrit's head.
How were you supposed to shoot a target that launched off walls, spun through somersaults, and ricocheted around like something out of a circus?
And even when a round happened to trace a similar arc, she'd simply raise both arms and block it.
"Oh, you son of a—"
Then —
BOOM!
Mid-somersault, soaring through the air, Ifrit fired her own weapon: the Bloody Heart Mk.7.
An explosive round in a league apart from the Restmen's ammunition obliterated the cover and blew the head off the Restman hiding behind it.
"GYAHAHAHA! Aim for the head, you say? Okay!"
Letting loose a maddened laugh, Ifrit grabbed one of the drones circling around her and let out a cheerful shriek.
"Kyaa! Thank you, OuterLover, for the 50,000-credit donation! Oh my, you really didn't have to!"
It was a horrifying sight.
Killing people and turning it into entertainment, collecting money while she did it. The Restmen felt goosebumps crawl over them at the spectacle.
"Shit! Where the hell is Hansen—"
One of the men turned, shouting the name of their heavy-weapons guy. He never finished the sentence.
Because his eyes met those of an unidentified humanoid standing beside Hansen's decapitated body.
The humanoid — Ash — swung his blade in a wide arc to shake off the blood, then murmured softly.
"Good day to you."
"Heeek! Behind! There's more behind us!"
At their comrade's cry, the Restmen whirled around.
And every one of them was struck speechless.
"What the hell is THAT?"
"Fire! Fire at it!"
As the wall of gunfire converged on him, Ash's feet moved fast. Attacks dense enough to fill the entire corridor came pouring in, yet not one of them managed to touch him.
Where necessary, he even raised his blade to deflect rounds, sending up intermittent sparks with every strike.
"Hey, everyone! Eyes over here! Look at ME!"
There was no spare attention for the rear.
Perhaps she hated losing the spotlight? Ifrit's counterattack grew even more ferocious. Every time her large-caliber hand cannon roared, a horrible tearing boom echoed through the corridor.
In front. And behind.
In an instant, their battle line collapsed into chaos.
A deranged idol blasting away at them from the front, an unknown humanoid hunting their lives from behind.
The Restmen sprayed bullets wildly, one way or the other, forward or back.
The confusion spread like wildfire.
And two drones flitted here and there, capturing the carnage in vivid detail — each time a cute little notification chime announcing another donation.
The Restmen, who had judged this the perfect terrain and prepared their ambush, were swept away just as fast.
Where the hell did it all go wrong?
There had been seven Restmen in total, and armed well enough for an Outer deployment.
They'd even set up an ambush — and the enemy numbered only two.
But the results spoke for themselves.
Even at this very moment, the Restmen were dying. At a loss for where to point their muzzles, they floundered, and one by one they crumpled onto the cold floor.
When at last the gunfire and blade-dance fell silent.
Only one survivor remained.
The leader of the Restmen, his right arm replaced with machinery. Clutching his broken leg where he sat slumped against the wall, he looked up at Ifrit as she approached.
"What are you gawking at? Got something to say?"
Ifrit swapped out her magazine and sneered. Her heart-shaped glowing eyes glittered for a moment, and the drones that had been hovering in the air drifted in around her.
"If you're about to say 'please spare me,' don't bother. Doesn't exactly suit a Restman, now does it?"
The man stared blankly at the jeering Ifrit — then suddenly burst out laughing.
"Kkk… KHAHAHAHA!"
"What's so funny?"
The man, cackling like a madman, stopped laughing all at once. And in his eyes, a strange heat kindled.
Madness — laced with terror and despair, with futility and emptiness.
"You're broadcasting, aren't you?"
"That's right. Why do you ask?"
"Good. That's perfect."
"What is?"
"Because I'm about to provide the viewing audience some entertainment."
The man raised both his arms.
"Ha! Now, of all times, you want to surrend—"
He didn't.
-CLACK! Clack! Click-click-click!
His right arm began transforming with a grotesque series of sounds. The forearm split and unfolded, and from within it thrust out a heavy metal cannon barrel.
A portable anti-tank recoilless rifle.
That was what the man's steel arm had been hiding all along.
"You insane bastard!"
Ifrit's hand cannon roared.
His torso burst apart; half his head went flying.
But the man kept moving.
"DIE WITH ME, YOU CRAZY BITCH!!"
Even as his body shattered under the large-caliber rounds, he aimed at Ifrit and fired the recoilless rifle. A flash of blinding light erupted alongside a detonation beyond any comparison to everything that had come before.
Ifrit scrambled into evasive maneuvers — but the distance was far too close to dodge it completely.
Against a Pathfinder, carelessness was absolutely forbidden, and yet the sight of a man already dying had loosened her guard for just a moment, and that lapse proved fatal. For the briefest instant, Ifrit sensed her own death.
And that was exactly when it happened.
Ash shot in like a flash of lightning and threw himself in front of her.
His optical sensors calculated the trajectory and velocity of the warhead streaking toward them like a ray of light, and in perfect alignment with that computation, he raised his steel blade at a slant.
KAGAGAGANG!
And then — with a shriek of metal on metal — the warhead's trajectory, which had been flying dead-straight, curved.
The warhead, meant for Ifrit, was bent by the twisted path toward some point on the ceiling above — and a massive explosion followed.
The entire corridor shuddered under a colossal roar. Dust that had blanketed everything everywhere lifted all at once, forming a thick, choking cloud.
"Cough, cough!"
Even as she coughed again and again, Ifrit swept her surroundings quickly. Her topmost priority was the Restman.
"You—!"
The man who'd been thrashing in his death throes moments ago had ended his life without ever confirming what had become of his own anti-tank round.
But judging by the faint smile that lingered on his lips, he presumably believed he'd smashed Ifrit to pieces.
"You son of a bitch!"
Not caring for that smile one bit, Ifrit smashed the man's half-remaining head with her chrome fist.
"This lunatic fires an anti-tank shell inside a ruin's basement? Why! Were you trying to bury us alive?"
That was true.
That had clearly been his purpose in firing it.
It had simply failed, thanks to Ash leaping in without warning.
"That's enough, my lady. He's already dead, is he not?"
Ifrit, still venting on the corpse, lifted her head at Ash's words. Then she gazed at him for a long moment, standing tall and silent amid the hazy dust cloud.
"…How did you do that?"
"Do what, exactly?"
"No — what was that just now?! How did you bend the trajectory of an anti-tank round with that one lousy blade?"
Her voice carried shock and admiration, and even a trace of awe.
Bending the path of a shell with a sword?
She could hardly be blamed for calling it delusional nonsense — told to stop spouting drivel and dismissed out of hand.
Ash regarded her for a moment, then activated his voice module.
"Would not a word of thanks come first?"
"Thank you! You saved my life! You're the best!"
While Ash found himself awkward in the face of such a breezy, effusive thank-you —
-Grrrrrrrr…!
-Kyeeeeee!
Strange yet somehow familiar shrieks echoed out.
The sounds were coming from beyond the ceiling — the massive, gaping hole where the anti-tank round had struck.
Ash and Ifrit raised their heads in unison.
As the dense dust cloud slowly settled, the scene beyond the breached ceiling came into view.
"…Those would appear to be Grotesques."
"Yeah. They are."
"But… do they not seem rather numerous?"
"Rather?"
There, countless crimson eyes glinted brightly out of the darkness.
"…They look fucking numerous."
It looked like hundreds — thousands, even.
-KYEEEEEEEEE!!
The creatures let out a chorus of shrieks, glancing around — and the moment they spotted Ash and Ifrit standing below the gaping hole, they began to pour down.
Ash and Ifrit stared at each other for a heartbeat — then, without a word of who-goes-first, they both bolted at the same time.
Akina was hiding in the darkness.
More precisely, inside a round duct that resembled a ventilation shaft.
The distant crackle of gunfire told her the battle had only just begun.
She was far away from it, so she should have been relatively safe — but the tension was unavoidable all the same.
Her pistol-gripping palms were slick with sweat.
-Rrrrrrumble…!
Then, at some point, a faint tremor reached her — accompanied by a detonation incomparable to anything that had come before.
No — what on earth was that sound?
She wanted desperately to peek outside, but the more she wanted to, the more keenly she understood that showing herself was not an option, and Akina barely managed to smother her curiosity.
"…What on earth is going on?"
Perhaps it began right after that sound.
A strange vibration traveled along the floor — strange enough that even the girl, with her undeveloped senses, could feel it.
Her anxiety grew worse and worse.
What if something had happened to the two of them? Like — what if the Restmen actually numbered in the hundreds!
Akina chewed anxiously at her pretty lips. With darkness pressing in on all sides, the dread only magnified.
And then —
She heard urgent footsteps racing through the corridor. Not the footsteps of many people.
Two, probably?
Akina cautiously poked out just her head and surveyed the situation.
Through the pitch-black corridor, two figures came sprinting toward her. She stretched her neck and squinted — and yes, they were unmistakably Ash and Ifrit.
Relieved, Akina popped out with a bounce and waved both hands, shouting.
"Mister! Miss! Did you kill them all? Is it all over now—"
She never got to finish.
Because Ash and Ifrit, in almost perfect unison, screamed at her with hearts frozen in sheer terror.
"RUN!"
"Run, Miss Akina! Now!"
Run?
Where?
What on earth was happening?
The instant Akina opened her mouth with a bewildered expression, she happened to glance past them — behind them.
The girl doubted her own eyes.
It was a reasonably wide corridor.
And at its far end, the things revealed themselves.
Twisted bodies crushed and clambered over one another, packing the passage wall to wall, and between them flickered wavering red eyes.
A wave of Grotesques numbering in the thousands. And that wave was, right now, surging this way.
"AAAAAAAHHH!! WHAT IS THAT!"
Akina screamed without meaning to and began to run on pure instinct. It was the greatest speed her small body could possibly produce.