Slave Walker
Bang…!
Another unmanned craft went down. A laser fired from precisely the maximum effective range at which the drone could no longer identify the Walker cleanly punched the surveillance unit out of the sky.
Once again the machine did not explode midair; it took just enough damage to plummet and shatter against the ground.
One. Two. And three.
Peko's assessment had been right — that the drones had flocked elsewhere, or that most of the civilians in this sector had already evacuated, dropping the area's rescue priority. The swarm Sonia had once toppled like bowling pins in a chain of explosions was nowhere to be found. Now only one or two drifted here and there, true to their purpose of local reconnaissance.
Peko's seasoned, precise control paired with Sonia's still-unfamiliar but superior reaction speed — faster than any regular Slave Walker Unit — made for a slightly uncanny combination. Yet the Slave Walker the two of them formed advanced without taking a single hit, picking off the drones that barred their path one by one.
"Fire. …Kill confirmed. You hit it clean again, Sonia."
"Thank you. Ma— ha! Miss Peko…!"
Sonia kept her eyes fixed forward. As the red circle in her field of view shrank bit by bit, she had to pour on even greater concentration while the Slave Walker locked perfectly onto each drone.
Watching them burst one after another, she felt a strange sense of accomplishment — as if her piloting skill and experience were climbing. Every time a target was destroyed, the Slave Walker Unit core inside her body twitched and pulsed, sending soft waves of pleasure through her, and for reasons she could not name, her mood kept lifting.
Of course Peko's praise was part of that good feeling — but the more instinctive reason was the lewd vibration of the trembling control-core rod… no, that wasn't it!
…It tickles… but… it feels weirdly good… I like it…♡
Sonia had begun to register that quivering sensation not as an unpleasant foreign intrusion but as a pleasant vibration. And the more she did, the synchronization rate of the "Slave Unit" linked to the Slave Walker called Sonia began to climb exponentially.
As proof, the transparent film-like calming sticker affixed to Sonia's forehead glowed with a faint light, glittering a little more with each pulse. The tiny nano-needles studding its adhesive surface pushed drugs through her skin, gently numbing her reason.
"…♥"
The person wearing that glossy transparent film, however, was lost in happy fantasies of submitting a report to the Hero Association that was not quite a lie but carefully rephrased — and of raking in a fat living allowance for the month.
Like a patch slowly melting against Sonia's heat-flushed skin, the active compounds in the transparent film sticker seeped into her body. It was a consumable designed, barring any special rejection response, to dissolve into the skin, maximize its calming effect, and then leave the system through sweat or urine. So long as there was no sudden itch or stinging abnormal reaction, that was all the sticker was meant to do.
What connects to a Slave Walker is… a Slave Walker Unit…
And right now, the one connected inside is… me…
So then… the me who's connected to the Slave Walker… right now… is a Slave Walker Unit… isn't she…?
"Uh… huh…?"
"Hm? What's wrong, Sonia? Something the matter?"
Sonia had not managed to put it into words, but Peko did not miss the slight falter in the Slave Walker's previously steady stride. At once her voice rang from the Walker's built-in speakers.
Sonia had no intention of hedging. For reasons she could not explain, the thought that had risen in her mind simply came out of her mouth as it was.
"Th-the only things that go into a Slave Walker are… Slave Walker Units… but I… I'm inside right now, so… it really feels like I've become a Slave Walker Unit… like Miss Milli… e-even though I don't have a glossy bodysuit… i-is that weird?"
"That's not a bad way to think about it. I'd actually be grateful if you thought of it that way. …Truly… I'm sorry for putting you in this situation, Sonia. But if you think of it even more like that, wouldn't it make piloting a lot easier?"
Peko's voice was gentle. She soothed Sonia's confusion while deftly steering the thought toward something perfectly normal — even desirable.
"I-is that so…?"
"Even if this is hero work for the record, it's all for Sky City, isn't it? Don't worry, Sonia. There's nothing wrong with your body."
Of course, Sonia had no reason to lie to Peko, who would already know the answers about any abnormal reactions in her condition. More than that, she simply… felt a kind of duty to report her status obediently to the Peko who was "managing" her after she had boarded this Walker without thinking.
"A-and… Miss Peko. My eyes are a little itchy…."
"Bear with that much, Sonia. You're just not used to it yet. It'll settle with time. Understood? …Now look straight ahead! I've got drone signals dead in front of us!"
"Ah… understood, Miss Peko… …Yes! Yesss…!"
The moment Peko confirmed the two red blips on her terminal, Sonia moved the Walker almost on reflex.
The noise of the remote-controlled drones mid-terror attack, the sound of shattering windows, the screams of civilians who had not yet managed to evacuate — all of it reached her faintly. To Sonia in that moment, none of those outside noises mattered. She moved only on reflex to the sticky, lewd, and pleasant stimulus of the slave-control core.
Recognizing her immediate response, the Slave Walker surged forward without hesitation.
Pushing ahead, they soon arrived at a plaza where a considerably wide stretch of ground opened up at a glance. Peko naturally ordered, "Look at the drones, Sonia!" — but this time the situation was different.
Until now it had been enough to shoot down the drones as they appeared one at a time. On the visual feed delivered through the yellow lenses overlaid on Sonia's golden eyes, two floating drones were locked: one at the far right edge of her vision, the other at the far left, each flying in a different direction.
Uh… uh…? Which one… do I look at… which one do I look at first…? Uh… uh? Which one do I attack…?
Faced with multiple enemies instead of a single one, Sonia panicked. Still, she retained enough composure to hesitate for a moment.
Fweee… crash! Pop…!
In that very instant, a barricade hastily set up in front of a building the civilians had evacuated into took a drone laser and exploded with a tremendous noise. At that blast, Sonia — an ordinary D-class hero, nothing like the thoroughly "reprocessed" regular unit Milli — reflexively turned her head toward the sound.
The Slave Walker's field of view swung with her gaze.
Sonia was looking not at the drones, but at the wreckage of the barricade that had just been blown apart. Peko, who had firmly believed Sonia was aiming at a drone, pressed the fire button without delay. The Walker's laser filled Sonia's vision with a flash of light.
"Ah… no…!"
At the scream that reached her without warning, Sonia was staring not at the drones but at the people bursting out from behind the shattered barricade and fleeing. The laser began firing wildly — without even the simple act of aiming in the direction the Slave Unit inside the combat Walker, the Slave Walker, was looking.
When the four-legged war machine painted in the colors of Sky City's symbol — the one they had thought was coming to help them — instead sprayed lasers indiscriminately in their direction, desperate screams tore from the civilians' mouths.
"Eek… eeeek! Why is the Walker attacking us?! E-everyone run! Runnnn!!!"
"Kyaaaaaaah…!!!"
One mercy: because no aiming time had been taken at all, the lasers' accuracy was abysmal. The red beams skimmed past the screaming, scattering civilians by the narrowest of margins.
"Uh… uuh… aaah… ah… thank goodness…."
At the realization that she had nearly harmed the very citizens of Sky City she had meant to protect, Sonia let out a sigh of relief, tension draining from her.
In that moment, Peko's sharp voice — a mix of fluster and disappointment — cut into her with a reprimand.
"What are you doing, Sonia?! I told you to keep your eyes on the drones! Do you have any idea what almost just happened?!"
"Eek…! I-I'm sorry, Miss Peko. I couldn't help it…! Th-that is… this is… this is…!"
At Peko's furious voice, Sonia's body shrank like a small animal. Taking the flustered, trembling, cowed tone for excuses, Peko's scolding only grew harsher.
"I don't need excuses right now, Sonia! No excuses! You know this isn't how it should be, don't you?!"
As if recalling how she had once handled rebellious criminal-origin Slave Walker Units, Peko began to press hard — determined to crush even Sonia's faint will to resist completely.