The air of Shin'o Academy always seemed to carry a perennial chill — a mingling of cherry blossom and spiritual particles that never quite dissipated.
Nikaido Hiro snapped her practice wooden sword shut and absently smoothed back her long hair, dark and lustrous as black silk.
The day's training in the otherworldly realm had come to a satisfying close.
"Hiro-chan, good work today!"
Bounding over with a lively laugh was a silver-haired little girl dressed in a bright Japanese elementary school uniform — Illya.
As the Servant who walked at Hiro's side, this girl who called herself a "Magical Girl" always managed — even in the dreary training grounds of the Soul Reapers — to remind Hiro of the little pink dog she kept back home.
Honestly, the two of them were rather similar in personality.
"Illya, I've told you many times."
Hiro lowered her head and unclipped the wooden sword from her waist.
"In public, address me formally. As a Servant, you should also maintain the dignity of the Nikaido family."
"Hehe, but there's no one else around~"
Illya stuck out her tongue without a care, reaching out to tug playfully at the fluttering hem of Hiro's skirt as it danced beside her long, black-stockinged legs.
Hiro let out a helpless sigh.
She looked down at her hands. The fine, dense calluses in her palms were proof of the relentless strain she had been pushing herself through these past weeks.
She'd gotten stronger.
That surging force dwelling inside her — the energy known as reiatsu — coursed like a mighty river in full torrent, asserting her existence with every pulse.
It felt good.
Because only with power could she pursue the absolute "correctness" she held in her heart.
Stepping through the cross-realm gate the Farmer had set up here, the damp air of Tokyo rushed to meet her.
This was Nikaido Hiro's homeland — the place that the Great Witch and the Farmer had called a world now teetering on the edge of crisis: the Land of Return.
Crisis or not, it still blazed beneath neon light, prosperous and indifferent as ever.
Hiro strolled through the streets of Shibuya. Around her, schoolgirls younger than she was and hurrying office drones who had long since crossed that threshold moved in every direction, all too wrapped up in their own lives to notice anything else.
But who would ever guess? The girl with a Zanpakuto strapped to her back — already unsealed to Shikai — walking by in a plain high school uniform was, in truth, this world's invisible guardian.
The Nikaido Hiro of old, armed with nothing but Death Rewind, had never been able to save many lives. She'd always needed to be rescued, to rely on others. But that was then.
Now, Hiro felt a terrifying kind of strength in herself — she finally had the power to correct what was wrong.
That was the "correctness" she demanded of herself. Even if it brought her no benefit, no reward — it didn't matter.
"This world is still so murky."
Hiro surveyed the cigarette butts littering the roadside, and the cluster of delinquents lurking in the shadows, leering at a stumbling drunk girl with unmistakably foul intent. Without thinking, her brow furrowed.
The spiritual energy inside her surged.
All it would take now was the faintest lift of her fingertip, and she could wipe every last one of these societal dregs — these "incorrectnesses" — from existence entirely.
"Hiro-chan, your expression is getting scary again~"
Illya, looking for all the world like an ordinary schoolgirl, walked along beside her, cradling a freshly purchased strawberry cola and sipping at it with small, satisfied sounds.
"You're thinking about that whole 'correcting all the world's wrongs' thing again, aren't you? Honestly, you really don't need to, Hiro-chan. Just doing your own part is more than enough."
"You don't understand what I've been through, Illya. Things that are wrong should be set right."
Hiro stopped walking. She turned around. Her dark, bright eyes caught the glow of a streetlamp.
"If everyone could just live the way they're supposed to — on the right track — the world wouldn't have so many terrible things in it."
"But... I think everyone is already doing their best?" Illya's voice was gentle. "Like with earthquakes and typhoons — just surviving is already an incredible effort."
"So, Hiro-chan — you don't need to carry all of that. The premise of protecting others is protecting yourself first. You have to trust in everyone's strength, okay?"
"...Maybe."
Illya smiled warmly. Despite looking much younger than Hiro on the surface, she carried herself like a wise elder in that moment.
Nikaido Hiro had no rebuttal.
This "Servant" at her side always managed — at precisely the right moment — to leave even her, with her sharp mind and talent for constructing ironclad "false arguments," completely speechless.
"...Let's go home. We can have hot pot tonight — Emma said she prepared a bunch of ingredients at home. Either way, let's rest properly first."
"Sure~ Though Hiro-chan's supply of reiatsu is plenty generous, Illya does occasionally want to indulge her appetite too~"
Shhhhk——!
The words had barely left Illya's lips. Just as the two of them were preparing to happily make their way back to the apartment Hiro and Emma shared, a dissonant, tearing sound split the air far above them.
"Hm?" Both, their instincts honed to razor sharpness, looked up in the same instant.
And in that same moment, the previously clamorous Tokyo fell bizarrely silent for exactly one second.
It wasn't that the sounds disappeared. It was that something of a higher order — something heavier — was falling. And as it descended, it warped and fractured the very structure of the space around it.
Hiro's movements froze.
Her Soul Reaper's spiritual senses screamed a furious alarm. The feeling was exactly as if an icy hand had clamped itself around her heart and simply refused to let go.
"Illya, fall back!"
Hiro snapped her hand back, right hand forming a loose grip on the air.
A Western sword — its blade wreathed in spiraling red spider lilies — her Zanpakuto, materialized in her palm in an instant.
"Hiro-chan, look — the sky is tearing open!"
Illya blinked, her expression growing solemn. A staff crowned with a red ruby solidified into her hand.
At that moment, the Tokyo night sky — ordinarily a murky grey wash of light pollution — looked like a scrap of cloth being torn apart by sheer brute force.
A dark crimson fissure cut across the sky directly above Shibuya.
BOOM——!
From within that dark red tear in the heavens, an invisible giant hand thrust outward and seized the very edge of reality in an iron grip.
And then —
Every last neon light in Shibuya went dark at once.
The ordinary people didn't even have time to cry out. They collapsed in waves beneath that crushing divine pressure, losing consciousness one after another.
"This is bad——!"
Nikaido Hiro stared up at the fissure. Zanpakuto already drawn, she had settled into a full combat stance.
Facing that blinding, sinister presence bearing down on her, she suddenly recalled certain records she had stumbled upon during a leisurely browse through the Stardew Valley library — notes written in the Farmer's own hand.
They described what was born when gods no longer protected the history of humanity — when they rebelled against the order of mythology and tore themselves free.
They were called "Defiant Gods." — And yet, drawn and gathered here by the pull of the Land of Return, it was not only They who had come.
Hiro could even dimly make out another "Tokyo" she had never seen before — descending from the sky, seemingly on a collision course with this world, as if to merge with it and become one.
...
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