The air was so thin and cold it felt like glass breaking in Kenji's lungs. He was deep beneath the Siberian ice, navigating a narrow, twisting tunnel created by the burrowing Kyojin. The only light came from the headlamp on his thermal helmet and the faint, menacing purple glow of the Structural Bomb fused to his right gauntlet.
He was alone. General Volkov had kept his word, sending no support. This was Kenji's test, and failure meant losing Hikari.
His target, the Stone Heart, finally appeared at the end of the tunnel. It wasn't a monster; it was a fortress. It was a massive dome of compressed, multi-layered Null-Stone and steel, throbbing with an internal, terrifying energy. The surrounding Kyojin guards—smaller, densely plated Shikō-tai—immediately recognized Kenji as an intruder and charged.
"Right, welcoming committee," Kenji muttered, his voice cold and steady. He forced his mind into the perfect, terrifying clarity of Sensory Lockdown. The pain, the cold, the fear—it all dissolved into irrelevant background noise. He was pure focus.
He didn't waste time on the guards. He knew they were designed to stall.
"Stay focused on the target," he commanded himself.
He dashed forward, using his Kesshō Insight to predict the guards' slow, synchronized movements. He activated his left leg, fusing it with a piece of titanium rebar from the tunnel ceiling. The sudden blast of speed allowed him to slip past the first line of defense.
The guards shifted their focus, their weapons charging with kinetic energy—the kind of force that would normally flatten a Sentinel. Kenji let them charge.
He ran directly at the Stone Heart—the seemingly invincible dome.
The dome pulsed, sensing the approaching kinetic energy, and prepared to redirect the force back at him. This was the flaw: it was designed to counter attack, not to defend against failure.
Kenji slammed his Structural Bomb gauntlet against the Null-Stone dome.
The guards fired.
The Beautiful Collapse
For one terrifying second, everything was perfectly aligned.
The Stone Heart absorbed the kinetic energy from the guard's weapons, storing the deadly force inside its shell, ready to unleash it back at Kenji. Simultaneously, Kenji initiated the Gattai sequence for the Structural Bomb.
The bomb was never meant to explode outward. It was a controlled suicide. The volatile Kesshō amplifiers within the device violently neutralized each other while the dense, pressurized components buckled inward. The Yami-ishi core that held it all together was momentarily overwhelmed, releasing a pulse of pure, unrefined corruption into the Stone Heart.
The Stone Heart, already primed with massive amounts of redirected kinetic energy, tried to process the new, chaotic Null-Stone corruption. It couldn't. It had absorbed energy, but Kenji had delivered structural instability.
The dome began to shake violently. It couldn't release the absorbed energy without shattering itself.
"Enjoy your breakfast," Kenji snarled, tearing his arm free and leaping away.
The Stone Heart detonated, but not outwardly. It imploded, collapsing into a violent, churning singularity of contained pressure and corrosive energy. The entire tunnel system shook as the collapse reached the main Null-Stone vein, causing a chain reaction that destabilized the earth for miles.
Kenji shielded himself behind a pile of earth, the shockwave washing over him. He was bruised, bleeding, and almost completely drained, but alive.
He had destroyed the impenetrable fortress using its own defensive perfection against it.
The Price of Freedom
Kenji stumbled back to the surface hours later, covered in ice and Null-Stone dust. He found General Volkov waiting near his Polar Hammer suit, observing the distant seismic reports with an unreadable expression.
"You destroyed Sector 7," Volkov stated, his voice flat. "The tunnel collapse is complete. We lost seismic tracking on the Tundra-Eater's movements."
"Design flaw, General," Kenji gasped, leaning heavily on a piece of equipment. "The Stone Heart was too greedy. It couldn't process chaos and order at the same time."
Volkov walked over to Kenji, his massive frame intimidating. He didn't praise or threaten. He simply lifted Kenji's hand and looked at the raw, dark scars of the recent fusion.
"You risked everything for this 'civilian obligation,' Ikeda," Volkov said. "You used more Null-Stone in that single operation than is allowed in all of Europe. You are a dangerous man. You are now a proven asset."
Volkov let go of Kenji's hand. "Your leave is granted. You have forty-eight hours to return, or I will use your military ID to petition the court and transfer Hikari to a secured facility under my care."
Volkov was giving him the exact time he needed, but adding a crippling counter-threat. He hadn't just secured Kenji's loyalty; he'd secured Hikari as collateral.
"Understood, General," Kenji said, forcing a weary nod. "I'll be back."
The Custody Hearing
Two days later, Kenji arrived in Tokyo, looking tired, but immaculately clean in a borrowed suit. He reported briefly to Akari Hoshina, who simply handed him a file: "Your temporary B-Rank status is active. Do not cause an international incident."
Kenji walked into the sterile courtroom, utterly out of place.
His ex-partner, Sanae Kinoshita, sat across the table, composed and severe in her tailored civilian clothes. She looked every bit the responsible, stable parent. Her lawyer smiled coldly.
But the most immediate threat was the man sitting next to Sanae: S-Rank Kaito Jin. He was dressed sharply and wore a smug expression of contained victory.
The judge called the case.
Sanae's lawyer began, painting a picture of Kenji as a reckless, unemployed liability who risked his life in a scrap yard. Then, Kaito Jin was called to the stand.
Kaito's testimony was devastating. "Kenji Ikeda is pathologically arrogant and unstable. He is a D-Rank civilian who constantly flouted authority. During the last attack, I personally found him hiding and injured, having caused a massive, unauthorized energy detonation that destroyed military property. He is volatile. His presence endangers all Sentinels, and his civilian life is nonexistent. He is unfit."
The weight of the lies—backed by the authority of an S-Rank Hōjū—crushed the room.
Kenji's public defense lawyer was floundering. Kenji realized he had to speak.
He stood, ignoring the lawyer's frantic gesture to sit down. He didn't look at the judge; he looked directly at Sanae and then at Kaito.
"Your Honor," Kenji said, his voice quiet but commanding, devoid of any arrogance. "Kaito Jin is absolutely correct. I am arrogant, I did cause an unauthorized explosion, and I am not a hero. But every single time I caused an 'explosion' or defied a direct order, it was to keep people alive that his 'perfect' technology failed."
Kenji paused, letting the silence hang. "Jin-san is judging me by the standards of a Sentinel. But I am not a Sentinel. I am a father. And a father's duty is not to be clean or perfect; it's to be necessary. While Jin-san was busy polishing his resume, I was buried under scrap, killing a monster with junk to save my life. I am B-Rank now not because I'm a hero, but because I am the only one who is desperate enough to use failure as a weapon. I am the only one who will always put my daughter before the mission. Always."
He looked back at the judge. "I may be unstable, Your Honor. But I am stable enough to keep my daughter alive. And I have the transfer papers from General Volkov himself to prove my new assignment is sanctioned and crucial to global defense."
The mention of Volkov's name—a foreign S-Rank whose influence even outweighed Aoi's—changed the atmosphere instantly.
The judge, weighing the military political pressure against the testimony, made the ruling: Joint Custody Maintained. Kenji's temporary B-Rank status was accepted as proof of a stable environment.
Kenji had won the battle, but he had lost the war. He now had the terrifying patronage of Volkov, the burning hatred of Aoi and Kaito, and a deeply unstable power in his chest.
As Kenji left the courtroom, Kaito Jin cornered him, his face contorted with cold fury. "You used that Russian dog's name! You won't win next time, Ikeda. You are going to burn."
"Next time, Jin-san," Kenji replied, the arrogance back, darker than ever. "You won't be watching me from a courtroom. You'll be watching me from behind a wall I built from your junk."