The battle on the bridge was brutal.
Ayase Shinomiya, the ace pilot of Funeral Parlor, had plunged in alone and, supported by the suppressing fire of several aging armored vehicles behind her, was pushing toward the midpoint of the bridge. GHQ answered in force — a steady stream of blue mass-production Endlaves poured onto the battlefield, and her advance grew harder with every passing moment.
But this was exactly what she wanted to see.
Another shell found its mark from a blind angle, slamming into the mech's flank. Inside the cockpit, the chestnut-haired girl lying in her full-body sensory suit absorbed the violent feedback of pain directly — she could only clench her jaw and endure it, then seize the moment to send the shoulder-mounted mechanical claw screaming outward, launching the ambushing Endlave into the sea below.
"Daigumo, cover me — two new units coming in from the flank!"
Her voice crackled through the comms to the teammates behind her.
"Copy."
The taciturn man answered with steady calm, then swung the armored vehicle's cannon and opened fire three times in succession. Cascading clouds of shrapnel and dust temporarily halted the enemy's advance.
"That's it — come to us."
Faced with enemies multiplying by the minute, Ayase only grew more energized.
She wasn't a battle-maniac. But holding the enemy's fire and drawing as much of it toward her as possible was precisely the reason she was fighting here — the order Gai Tsutsugami had given her: hold for twenty minutes, until he successfully infiltrates, steals the "key," and gets clear.
The more she thought of it, the more fiercely her will to fight blazed. Without quite realizing it, she rode the momentum from destroying the last ambusher straight into the enemy formation, physically forcing the gun barrels of two Endlaves that had been targeting her teammates skyward. Both shells detonated in midair, blooming like fireworks.
"Hey! Ayase, you're pushing too hard — we can't keep up!"
Argo, another capable operative of Funeral Parlor, reprimanded her over the comms.
"It's fine."
"The harder we fight here, the safer Gai and the others are!"
Gai Tsutsugami was a young man the same age as the rest of them — just seventeen.
And yet the leadership he carried, the sharp intelligence behind his eyes, the battlefield instincts forged from years of mercenary work in war-torn countries — all of it was something that inspired unwavering admiration, especially in a girl like Ayase Shinomiya, who had been ordinary before all this. To her, he was something close to a god. The moment she thought of Gai's safety depending on her performance here, she felt power surge from somewhere she hadn't known she possessed.
It was, frankly, absurd — a bunch of teenagers who probably only did shooting drills and conditioning after school, somehow beating the elite multinational forces of GHQ into the ground. If it weren't for sheer numbers and superior hardware, Funeral Parlor would've kicked in their front door by now.
Ah well. This was Okouchi's writing — high schoolers with enough motivation could apparently overturn nations. The setting demanded it.
"Here I come!!"
Ayase let out a rallying cry, then maneuvered the mech to leap upward, preparing to drop a crushing overhead punch directly onto an enemy cockpit — she was certain that hit would knock it out of the fight on the spot—
"Huh?"
What met her eyes brought Ayase to a standstill.
She had just been bracing for the jump. Yet somehow, when she came back to her senses, the enemy unit was already crumpled beneath her fist.
"What's wrong? Ayase-nee, is the unit damaged?"
Tsugumi, the hacker girl providing technical support from the rear, caught the bewilderment in Ayase's voice and asked urgently.
"No — no, it's nothing."
It made no sense. Had she zoned out? This had been happening to her occasionally these past few days — moments where her mind wandered, and then something was simply already done without her remembering doing it. But this was the first time it had happened mid-combat.
——Am I getting sick? Or just not sleeping well?
Ayase shook her head and pushed the thought aside, steering the Endlave back toward the incoming enemies.
"Ayase."
At that moment, a low, magnetic male voice broke into her comms channel.
"Gai? How is it going? Did you get what you came for?"
"No. Their security is tighter than I anticipated. I need you to hold for another five minutes."
"No problem — leave it to me!"
She agreed without hesitation.
Whatever the order, however unreasonable, however much it asked of her — when it came from Gai, Ayase Shinomiya accepted it without a second thought.
"Thank you."
A simple thank-you with no extra warmth behind it. Yet somehow it was enough to flood Ayase's face with color. She sorted herself out quickly and made him her steadfast promise.
"Don't worry, Gai — I'll hold until you're back!"
"I… keep asking too much of you."
At the same time, in a corridor on the second floor of the White Bone Christmas Tree, the shoulder-length blond man ended the call and pressed a hand to his forehead. Jaw tight, a flash of something like frustration crossed his face. The maze-like sprawl of corridors ahead was thick with security checkpoints, and it had rendered useless every measure he'd prepared — optical camouflage included. His intelligence had never mentioned anything like this level of lockdown inside the Tree.
He and Kyo — a fellow Funeral Parlor special operative, the boy who died in episode five of the original anime, perpetually mistaken for a girl despite his pretty features — had infiltrated together, only to trip an alarm within two steps of entering. They'd had to fight through nearly every meter of ground to reach this point.
"It's all right, Gai. Everyone who fights does so because they trust you."
The delicate-featured boy spoke with genuine concern.
"An incompetent commander is his organization's greatest tragedy." The reassurance did nothing to untangle the complicated knot in Gai's chest — frustration, anger, and regret wound together, plunging this usually self-assured young man into a rare moment of doubt. "Perhaps my decision really was wrong."
——He had operated on the assumption that in such a short time, the GHQ units dispatched to dismantle a drug trafficking ring were at most ordinary soldiers and low-ranking officers. They might have seen the message, he reasoned, but they wouldn't know what this "Genome" actually was. He'd wanted to move before GHQ could react. And yet — their opponent had prepared as though they'd known he was coming all along.
"There's no turning back now, Gai!" Kyo grabbed his sleeve with urgent fingers. "All we can do is find the key as fast as possible. I'll protect you — don't worry!"
"I apologize. That was unbecoming of me."
Gai recovered his composure quickly, raised his weapon, and pushed forward along the pre-planned route toward the laboratory floor above. But barely two steps in, a squad of soldiers in white tactical gear came charging around the corner. The two groups collided head-on — yet Gai moved first, faster than thought, already closing in to disable both of them in a single motion.
His close-quarters technique was flawless. Striking two men's vital points at this distance, in an instant — trivial.
"Wh — what?"
Something impossible happened.
He had the distinct sensation of watching himself — a phantom version of himself — drop both soldiers in the space of a lightning strike. Then he came back to reality, and found he was already standing two paces beyond where he'd been.
His gloves were warm and wet with blood. At his feet, two enemy soldiers lay dead, throats crushed.
"That's what I'd expect from Gai! You moved so fast I couldn't even see what you did — you dropped two grown men in the blink of an eye. That wasn't human."
Kyo couldn't help but voice his amazement as a bystander.
"No, I didn't actually—"
There was no pleasure on Gai's face — only a deepening shadow.
He understood exactly what had just happened. He had no memory of striking. Again. This same sensation had hit him earlier during their infiltration — one moment he was five meters from a security door, and in the next breath he was standing on the other side.
This was no coincidence. More than one person was experiencing it. Could this bizarre time-skip phenomenon be connected to Da'ath? Or was it a sign that Mana was awakening?
"Come on, Gai — stop standing there!"
"…Yeah."
There was no time to examine it now. Securing the Void Genome came first. He forced the anomaly from his mind and ran on — the elevator to the laboratory floor was almost in reach.