The roof of the train was not made to be walked on.
Yuma understood that immediately — the smooth metal surface, the wind hitting at that speed with a force that was anything but figurative, the constant vibrations of the rails rising through the soles of his shoes and making every step slightly unpredictable.
He walked anyway.
Tetsuya's sneakers helped — the stabilization artifacts that adapted to the surface, the propulsion systems that compensated for imbalances. Without them it would have been a different conversation.
Archer was mapping continuously.
Car eleven. Eight mana signatures inside. Five concentrated near the entrance — the guards. One isolated at the back — probably Mireille. Two others, distinct, moving slowly from the opposite end.
Not the guards.
Something else.
"...Archer," said Yuma very quietly. "The two moving signatures."
Mana level superior to the guards. Coordinated movement. Recommendation: do not engage alone.
"...Noted."
He reached the side window of car eleven. Thick glass, locked from the inside — but train locks were not designed to withstand a concentrated Thunderstrike aimed at the mechanism.
He placed two fingers on the lock.
Minimal discharge. Precise.
The mechanism gave way without a sound.
He entered.
The five guards turned at the same time.
Yuma didn't wait.
Thunder Dance.
Electric propulsions chained from the gauntlets — he crossed the distance between himself and the first guard in a fraction of a second, changed angle at the last moment, Lightning Chain on the second before the first had hit the floor. The third raised his hands in a guard — Thunder Wave released into the floor beneath his feet, balance disappearing, body following. The fourth and fifth simultaneously — Double Blast, both fists, enough to neutralize without killing.
Five seconds.
Five guards on the floor.
Yuma straightened. Looked at the car around him.
And stopped.
"...Archer. Full scan."
Scanning.
One second.
Two.
Yuma. Problem detected.
"...What."
Unstable compounds detected. Multiple concentration points. Classification: mana-detonator explosives. Distributed across the entire length of the car. Power estimate: sufficient to destroy three consecutive cars.
Silence inside Yuma's head.
He looked around him. The crates along the walls. The floor panels. The structures that should have been empty.
Not empty.
"...Enji."
He activated the connection through Archer.
"...I'm listening," said Enji's voice through the glasses.
"...The car is full of explosives."
A silence.
"...Say that again."
"...The car is full of explosives. Tell Smith. Now."
He heard Enji relay to Nathan. Then Nathan's voice — lower, more focused than usual.
"...Those bastards. The documents aren't the target."
"...No," said Yuma.
"...They want to kill Mireille. Make it look like an accident. And recover the documents from the wreckage."
"...That's what I think too."
"...We move in. Now."
Sounds from the far end of the car.
Then something that was not a sound — a presence. Dense, massive, recognizable.
Yuma had felt it before in the dining car.
Phantom 8.
He appeared in the doorway of the connecting door. As tall as Yuma remembered. More threatening in this enclosed space. His eyes went immediately to the guards on the floor, then to Yuma standing in the middle of them.
A long moment.
Then something changed in Phantom 8's right arm.
Not gradually. All at once. The skin transforming — darker, denser, the joints swelling, the fingers elongating into something that no longer had anything human about it. A mass of monstrous tissue extending down to the elbow with that particular texture of something that should not have existed on a human body.
Combat Mage.
Partial transformation.
And that arm was enough.
Phantom 8 did not move toward Yuma.
He moved toward the car's entrance door — and posted himself there.
Nathan's agents arrived thirty seconds later from both ends. Enji with them on the rear side, glasses active, reading the situation in two seconds.
Phantom 8 in the middle.
The agents on one side. Yuma on the other.
Nathan at the head of the forward group.
Phantom 8 raised his transformed arm.
And struck.
The shockwave crossed the car like something geological. Two agents were thrown against the wall. A third raised a mana shield — Phantom 8 went through it without slowing down. Nathan sidestepped with the economy of movement of a man who had dodged far worse things, but the pressure of the impact still forced him back two steps.
Harmonic Strike.
Nathan struck back — resonance concentrated in his fist, the vibration penetrating Phantom 8's transformed arm and disrupting the local mana for one second.
Phantom 8 stopped.
Looked at his arm.
Looked at Nathan.
And struck again — twice as hard.
Nathan was thrown against the partition.
He got up.
Enji was moving from the side — Frost Coffin beneath Phantom 8's feet, the columns surging to block his footing, Absolute Blade targeting the transformed arm. Phantom 8 absorbed both with the indifference of a body that did not share the same pain threshold as ordinary people.
Yuma understood.
They weren't going to hold.
He turned toward the back of the car.
Mireille was there.
Huddled against the rear partition, arms wrapped around his knees, eyes wide on the scene before him with the expression of someone who had never been directly involved in this kind of thing and was discovering that his theoretical understanding of violence differed considerably from reality.
"...What are you doing here?" he said to Yuma in a voice that was not entirely steady.
"...I came to warn you," said Yuma. "Stay behind me."
He felt the attack before he saw it.
A line of mana projected from his blind spot on the left — fast, precise, targeting not him but Mireille directly behind him.
Yuma stepped sideways and intercepted it with his left forearm.
The impact crossed through the gauntlet and pushed his shoulder back.
Phantom 7 was there.
More discreet than his partner. Standing near the side window, with that permanent attentiveness in his eyes that read everything in real time. He looked at Yuma without surprise.
"...Since I saw you in that car," he said, "I knew you'd be a problem."
"...Shut up," said Yuma.
And he charged.
Thunder Dance — direct propulsion, right arm charged. Phantom 7 sidestepped half a pace and countered with something Yuma couldn't read correctly — a mana technique that belonged to no category he knew, something dark and viscous that clung to his forearm at the moment of contact and slowed his movements in that area for two seconds.
Yuma shook his arm. Went again.
Lightning Chain — five rapid strikes from different angles. Phantom 7 parried four with surgical precision and the fifth caught him in the shoulder — he stepped back half a pace.
That was all.
Yuma tried again.
Blazing Fist. Parried. Blazing Burst. Evaded. Blazing Lightning. Absorbed.
Each time Phantom 7 responded with something different — no repeated pattern, no predictable angle. The mana he used had that unhealthy quality Yuma didn't know how to name, something that stuck to defenses and wore them from the inside rather than breaking them from the outside.
The gap in level was too wide.
Yuma knew it. He felt it in his arms, in the way every exchange cost him twice what it cost Phantom 7.
Behind him he heard the fight continuing — Phantom 8 holding Nathan and the agents at bay, Enji searching for angles and finding none good enough.
They were losing.
All of them.
Phantom 7 struck one last time.
The technique hit him square in the chest and threw him against the car floor. He landed hard, rolled, tried to get up — his legs took a second too long to respond.
He stayed on his knees.
Phantom 7 looked down at him.
Then looked at Mireille against the rear partition.
"...That's going to make a beautiful fireworks display," he said.
He laughed. Lightly. With the manner of someone who finds the situation satisfying and doesn't need to show it further.
Then he turned and walked out of the car.
The door closed behind him with a sound that was not the ordinary sound of a train door.
Something else. A lock. Several.
Sealed.
Phantom 7's voice from the corridor — loud enough to be heard.
"...Number 8. We're leaving."
"...I want to kill them."
"...That's not our target. There'll already be collateral damage."
A silence.
"...Fine."
Sounds of combat stopping. Phantom 8 retreating. Nathan getting up with difficulty, one hand on his ribs, launching something in their direction — a reply, a provocation, something to scrape one more piece of information from them.
Phantom 7 stopped.
"...If you want to stay alive," he said, "get out of here."
An impact from the roof — Phantom 8 punching a hole in the structure above them with his transformed arm. Morning light pouring in. The wind from the train's speed.
And both of them jumping.
Gone.
The car returned to a relative silence — the groaning of the injured agents, the sound of the rails, the light coming through the hole in the roof.
"...Yuma."
Enji's voice from the other side of the locked door.
Yuma got up slowly.
"...I've got it."
"...Yuma, the door is rigged. We can't —"
"...I've got it," Yuma repeated.
He looked around him. The guards he'd put down at the start. Mireille against the partition, eyes wide, breathing too fast.
Mireille opened his mouth.
Yuma looked at him.
"...Sorry," he said.
He put a hand on his shoulder and released a minimal electric pulse — just enough. Mireille slumped gently into unconsciousness without understanding what had happened.
Yuma laid him down carefully.
Then began dragging the guards and Mireille toward the center of the car — the point farthest from the walls where the explosives were concentrated.
"...Yuma." Nathan's voice from the corridor. Lower than all the other times. "Tell me you have a plan."
"...I have something."
"...Tell me."
Yuma looked at the bombs. Looked at them properly — their placement, their density, the way unstable mana radiated from them in micro-pulses that only Archer could read correctly.
He thought about Arasaka. About the pact. About what darkness mana had done in the spiritual dimension — that way of absorbing, of engulfing, of taking things inside.
"...Darkness mana absorbs mana," he said.
Silence.
"...Yuma." Enji's voice. Tense, controlled, with something beneath it that was not. "That's insane."
"...Maybe."
"...It's impossible. The amount of energy in those bombs — your body can't —"
"...Trust me."
"...Yuma —"
"...I won't die before I've achieved my dream." His voice was calm. Not to convince them. Because it was true. "Trust me."
A long silence from the other side of the door.
Then Enji.
"...Alright."
Yuma settled at the center of the group. The guards around him. Mireille unconscious. Him in the middle.
He activated Archer.
"...Archer. Activate darkness mana. Full output."
Analysis in progress. Warning: current stabilization rate insufficient for absorption at this scale. Probability of success: twenty percent.
"...There's a chance."
Probability of success: twenty percent.
"...That's enough."
He closed his eyes.
The bombs began their countdown — a low, steady sound that was not mechanical, something deeper, the unstable mana activating in sequence.
"...Yuma." Nathan's voice. Lower than any of the other times. "You're reckless but you're not a coward. That's already something."
Yuma let a small smile begin.
"...Thanks, old man."
And he dove inward.
The darkness mana responded — more easily than usual, as if all the training of the past three weeks, as if Archer's seventy-two percent stabilization, as if the pact with Arasaka itself had been building something that was waiting for this moment to show itself.
Black smoke unfurled from his body — not uncontrolled, not in an explosion, in a progressive sheet, a covering, a shield that extended in all directions around him and the bodies lying around him.
The bombs detonated.
All at once.
What happened inside the car was difficult to describe from outside — a white light that crossed the walls and windows and the hole in the roof, a heat wave that crossed the rigged door and forced the people on the other side to step back, a sound that was not an ordinary explosion but something more total, more absolute.
Then white.
Then silence.
"...Yuma!"
Enji.
"...Yuma, answer me!"
Nathan.
"...Yuma!"
The agents.
Nothing.
The corridor waited. The locked and rigged door between them and that bottomless silence.
Enji pressed both hands against the door. Scarlet Nova. Wall of Embers. Absolute Blade. Everything he had — nothing gave, Phantom 7's traps holding better than any ordinary construction.
Nathan got up. Looked at the door. Looked at his agents.
"...Stop shouting."
The voice came from inside.
Tired. Broken. With something warm in it despite everything.
"...You're killing my ears."
Enji closed his eyes for a second.
Opened them.
"...Everything alright?"
"...Definition of everything alright to be specified."
On the other side of the Phantoms, at the far end of the train, Phantom 7 and Phantom 8 were reading data on a portable device.
The target — Mireille — still alive.
The operation — partially successful.
"...The target isn't dead," said Phantom 8.
"...No," said Phantom 7.
A silence.
"...But we still managed to take this."
He looked at what they had recovered during the confusion of the fight — not the primary files, but enough. Enough for the mission not to be a total failure.
He put the device away.
"...Those two kids," he said quietly. Not with anger. With something else — that quality of attention he had when something was worth remembering. "We'll remember them."
Phantom 8 said nothing.
They disappeared.
In car eleven, Archer was speaking.
Critical warning. Mana overload in Yuma's body. Dangerous level. Extraction required immediately.
"...I know," said Yuma.
He got up.
Slowly. In the manner of a man whose every joint had a different opinion about the idea of standing and who had to negotiate with each one individually.
He looked at the bodies around him — the unconscious guards, Mireille unconscious, all intact. The structure of the car around him — damaged, burned in places, but standing. The explosives — neutralized, the unstable mana absorbed, the casings inert.
He moved toward the door.
"...Everyone stand back."
He felt the awareness from the other side — Enji and Nathan and the agents stepping away without asking why, trusting that particular tone of someone who knows what he's doing even when what he's doing is extremely dangerous.
He placed his right fist against the door.
All the absorbed mana — the energy from the explosives, the heat, the force of the detonations, everything the darkness had swallowed — concentrated in that right fist with Archer guiding the flow, preventing the overload from turning inward.
He struck.
The door exploded outward.
Not just the locks. Not just the traps. The entire door — torn from its frame, thrown into the corridor where it landed six meters away with a sound of metal on metal that rang through the whole car.
Yuma stayed standing for two more seconds.
Raised a thumb in Nathan's direction.
And collapsed.
Enji was there before he hit the floor. Both hands catching him by the shoulders, guiding him down, lowering him against the corridor wall.
"...Good work," said Enji.
Yuma tried to respond. What came out resembled roughly a sound of agreement.
Everyone arrived at once — Nathan, the agents, some injured, some limping, all leaning toward Yuma with expressions ranging from relief to disbelief and passing through something that hadn't found its name yet.
Sounds from the other end of the corridor.
Train employees arriving at a run — the conductor first, two attendants behind him, in their uniforms with the expressions of people who heard something unusual and are hoping it will have a reasonable explanation.
They stopped.
Looked at the corridor.
The door torn off six meters away. The World Authority agents, some of them bleeding. Two teenagers, one unconscious and the other halfway there. The hole in the roof of car eleven through which the morning wind entered freely.
Nathan straightened.
Took out a cigarette. Lit it with that worn lighter. Took a long drag.
Turned toward the train employees with the look of someone who has seen far more complicated things before breakfast and has no intention of spending the next hour explaining anything to civilians.
"...Plumbing issue," he said.
He exhaled the smoke.
"...We're handling it."
End of Chapter 26