Amid the smoldering ruins, Yamero stood motionless.
His pants were ripped, covered in dust and dried blood.
At his feet lay Delta's lifeless body, broken, drained of all rage.
The silence was heavy.
Maki finally appeared behind him, his calm footsteps contrasting with the surrounding chaos.
"You did well. Well done." Yamero replied without turning around, his tone detached:
"Oh... I was going to win from the start. Nothing new."
He paused, then turned his head slightly.
"And you?"
"I sensed an enormous amount of aura from your enemies. How did you manage?" Maki crossed his arms, his expression neutral.
"Hm... they were impressive, yes."
"Monstrous power, without a doubt." He sighed softly.
"But no real control." "Monsters. Beasts that acted purely on instinct." Yamero frowned slightly.
"Like the ones we faced in the hangar at Kabukichō?" Maki nodded.
"Yes."
"But much more powerful." His gaze hardened.
"They had enormous potential."
"Unfortunately, the Shadow Heart relic corrupted them completely."
He concluded calmly:
"They no longer thought."
"They attacked, again and again."
A brief silence.
"I had no trouble crushing them."
"Without even trying." The wind blew through the ruins. Yamero finally looked down at Delta's body.
"So it's all over here…" Maki nodded slowly.
"Here, yes."
"But it's clearly not the end."
Maki paused before speaking, his gaze lost in the devastated horizon.
"In other cities across Japan... and all over the world, the attacks are multiplying." Yamero stretched slowly, as if the situation only half affected him, then asked,
"Have you heard any news about Daru and Aika's findings, by any chance?" Maki nodded.
"Aika and Daru left a while ago now."
"They must have already reached the Sahara Desert." Yamero let out a short, ironic laugh.
"How stupid they are..."
"How do they plan to take on a floating island armed to the teeth?"
"With soldiers far stronger than Momoshi, Delta, Aldrod... or even those you've faced." "Add to that an army equipped with ultra-sophisticated weapons, monsters, and the three masterminds of the organization responsible for the global deluge."
"Seriously… they've gone mad." Maki pointed sharply at Yamero.
"We didn't have time to waste."
"You and I, our mission was to rid Tokyo of the undesirables."
"Daru and Aika, on the other hand, had to come up with a plan… and execute it immediately." She clenched her fists.
"The extremist organization will launch its final assault sooner or later."
"And this time, we can't afford to hesitate." Yamero replied mockingly, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Calm down, hothead."
"Now tell me… how do we get to them, more than ten thousand kilometers away?" Maki took a deep breath before answering.
"We agreed with Aika that she would send me the exact coordinates of their location." Yamero sighed, visibly annoyed.
"Yes, yes..."
"But even with the most precise coordinates in the world..." He looked her straight in the eyes.
"How do we get there?"
Maki let out a sigh, her voice lower, almost weary.
"I really have no idea."
"And Aika's HQ was surely destroyed by the impact of your opponent's attack."
"Judging by the damage... Tokyo ravaged, a neighboring city annihilated, not to mention the cracks in the ground that stretch for kilometers..." Yamero plunged his spear into the ground with a sharp movement.
"That's what I thought." He gritted his teeth before snapping, annoyed,
"You have no plan, damn it."
Then he sat heavily on a collapsed concrete block.
Three minutes passed.
A heavy silence settled, broken only by the wind blowing through the ruins, as Maki and Yamero desperately searched for a way to reach Daru and Aika without wasting another second. Suddenly—
A roar ripped through the sky.
Fighter jets swooped overhead, followed by armed helicopters, then gigantic combat robots slowly advancing through the rubble, shaking the ground with every step.
Maki smirked.
"Speak of the devil." Yamero stood up, cracked his knuckles, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
"Well..." He gripped his spear.
"Looks like we've just found our ticket."
"And it's free, too."
The giant robot, as tall as a skyscraper, tilted its head slightly. Its mechanical eyes glowed a cold red.
"You have caused too much harm to the people of Tokyo."
"The damage is irreversible."
"You deserve to die."
"Surrender... for a more merciful end." Yamero turned his head slightly toward Maki, a smirk playing on his lips.
"Which branch of the military do you think they're from?" Maki observed the aircraft, the robots, the formations too precise to be improvised.
"I'd say the Japanese military."
"But unofficially... they work for the extremist organization." Yamero chuckled.
"Wanna make a bet?" Maki raised an eyebrow.
"How much?" Yamero replied without hesitation:
"Let's say 20,000 yen." "I say they belong directly to the military wing of the extremist organization."
"You say they're officially from Japan but corrupt enough to work for them in the shadows."
"Whoever's right gets all the money."
Then Yamero raised his head toward the steel giant and shouted,
"Hey!"
"Out of sheer politeness, could you at least tell us which branch you belong to before you execute us?" A short silence followed.
Then the mechanical voice rang out again, cold and devoid of all humanity.
"We work for the benefactors."
"Those who will offer a fresh start to this world filled with vice." A wide smile split Yamero's face.
He turned to Maki, mocking, clearly delighted.
"Heh."
"I've never lost a bet." He cracked his neck.
"You owe me twenty thousand yen, my pretty." Maki sighed, a faint smile forcing itself.
"You're really unbearable..." Over the sky, the engines of the airplanes roared.
The robots raised their weapons.
Yamero glanced quickly at Maki.
"Try to reserve one of those planes for us."
"Don't destroy them all." Maki nodded silently. She slowly raised her hand, her fingers closing in mid-air as if grasping something invisible. A fighter jet was instantly enveloped in a translucent force field. The engines roared as she forced it down, guiding it abruptly toward the ground on a controlled trajectory.
At that moment, the giant robots and infantry units opened fire.
Bursts of plasma lasers streaked across the sky, converging directly on Maki.
Yamero stepped in without hesitation.
He planted his spear in front of him, swinging it with a precise motion. The shots crashed against the shaft and blade in a shower of burning sparks, the energy dissipating as if it had struck an invisible wall.
"Nah."
"Not toward her." He raised his head, a savage grin on his lips.
"Come and have some fun with me first." Yamero pointed his spear straight at the enemy forces.
A brief silence followed.
Nothing happened.
He blinked, then burst out laughing.
"Ah... look at that."
"I messed up."
He shrugged, still laughing.
"I haven't mastered this weapon yet."
"But it doesn't matter." He planted the spear sideways and took a step forward.
Then, with a simple flap of his palm against the air, he unleashed a colossal shockwave. Space itself seemed to bend.
The explosion swept across the battlefield like an invisible storm. Infantry soldiers were thrown backward, their armor shattered, their bodies torn from the ground and hurled into the air before crashing violently some distance away.
Silence fell for a moment.
Amidst the smoking ruins, Yamero slowly rose to his feet.
Yamero slowly closed his eyes.
A heavy silence descended upon the area, as if the very air itself were holding its breath. Then, an invisible pressure spread around him.
"Flow Territory… expansion." The ground vibrated dully.
Its power suddenly extended 150 meters in every direction. Within this perimeter, the space became heavy, oppressive, crushing. The giant robots were the first to react: their metallic structures groaned, twisting under colossal force. Steel plates crumpled like paper, limbs folded in on themselves with a sinister crack.
The military vehicles suffered the same fate. Tanks, armored personnel carriers, ground drones… everything was slammed to the ground, compressed, reduced to a formless mass. The systems exploded from within, not in a spectacular detonation, but in a silent and terrifying implosion.
In a few seconds, nothing remained. No debris.
No wreckage.
No smoke.
Everything within 150 meters was crushed, then erased, as if it had never existed.
Maki watched the scene, motionless, as the force field around the plane slowly dissipated. She glanced at Yamero, half exasperated, half impressed.
"...You know that was excessive, right?" Yamero opened his eyes and stretched his neck slightly.
"Maybe."
Nothing remained.
No robots.
No tanks.
No infantry.
The ground was bare, smooth, devoid of any trace of existence, as if the battle had never taken place. A field of nothingness shaped by Yamero's will alone.
However—
A roar split the sky.
Several missiles were fired simultaneously from the fighter jets that still circled the area. The trails of fire tore through the atmosphere at breakneck speed, converging directly on Yamero and Maki.
Explosion should have been inevitable.
But nothing happened.
The missiles disintegrated before even reaching them, some deflected, others simply annihilated, as if repelled by an invisible force. Yamero and Maki remained motionless, unharmed, their silhouettes intact amidst the dissipated shockwave.
In the cockpits, the pilots were frozen.
Mouths agape.
Hands clenched on the controls.
Their screens confirmed the unthinkable: no damage.
"It's... impossible..." one of them murmured, his voice trembling.
At that moment, Maki slowly raised his hand.
"[Balistic]"
Behind each fighter jet, a pentagram circle appeared, etched with luminous lines and symbols pulsing with unstable energy. No matter the maneuver, no matter the sudden acceleration or desperate turns, the circles remained.
Clinging to them.
Inseparable.
Inevitable.
Panic gripped the pilots.
"We can't shake them!"
"The circles are following us!"
"Eject—!"
Too late.
In a single instant, lightning erupted from the circles.
A white flash, pure, absolute.
The planes disintegrated on the spot, pulverized without a prolonged explosion, without debris falling to the ground. Just a clean, brutal disappearance, as if the sky itself had erased them.
Maki slowly released the pressure from his force field.
The fighter jet vibrated for a moment, then finally stabilized. The cockpit opened with a mechanical whir. The two servicemen inside, still in shock, didn't wait another second: they unbuckled their harnesses, rushed out of the aircraft, and ran away, glancing back in terror.
Neither of them tried to turn around.
Maki and Yamero climbed aboard.
The cockpit was cramped, saturated with flashing screens and indicator lights. The engine was still purring, ready to start up again.
Maki crossed his arms and said, in a mock-nonchalant tone,
"I hope you know how to fly this kind of thing." Yamero settled into the cockpit, placed his hands on the controls, and briefly examined the instrument panel. A confident smile stretched across his lips.
"Don't worry. I've already had training on this kind of aircraft." He paused, then added,
"I can get us to the Sahara Desert in one piece, no problem." Maki sighed, half resigned, half amused.
"Obviously… why would I be surprised?" The engines suddenly roared to life.
The plane sped down the makeshift runway, sliced through the air at breakneck speed, and left the ground with a deafening roar. In a few seconds, Tokyo was nothing more than a distant pile of ruins under a blanket of clouds.
The sky opened before them.
Course due west.
Destination: the Sahara Desert.