Chapter 93: March 7th: What Do You Mean "If We're Framed, We Might As Well Just Make It Real"?
Welt stared at the glowing screen of his phone. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, blinked twice, and read the text messages again.
...Could you say that again?
What was this kid saying?
Why was the universal language suddenly failing to process in his brain? Did the Link Beacons across the galaxy suddenly cease to exist?
Rekka: [Thirty minutes ago, someone handed us a package. She said it was a highly valuable item and asked us to keep it safe until she came back. Turns out, the package had an Antimatter bomb inside. I kicked the thing away, but it still blew up half the starport.]
Himeko: [Is everyone okay?]
Rekka: [The bomb didn't hit anyone. But now we're all wanted. The "dead or alive" kind.]
Welt: [?]
Rekka: [Image]
Rekka: [This is the wanted poster for March 7th.]
Rekka: [Image]
Rekka: [This is mine.]
Rekka: [Image]
Rekka: [This is Stelle's.]
Rekka: [Image: A meme of the Ultraman brothers pointing at their own execution crosses.]
Welt stared at the chat interface in absolute silence. The quiet hum of the Astral Express parlor car felt exceptionally loud.
"Pfft."
The sound escaped before he could stop it.
The photo of Rekka on the digital bounty poster was a masterpiece of pure abstract art. The camera had caught him mid-motion, distorting his face into a surrealist nightmare. One eye was blown up to massive proportions while the other was a tiny squint. His mouth was dragged entirely to the side of his chin, and his overall expression looked like a man enduring the agonizing torment of a thousand suns—or perhaps letting out a silent, existential scream.
How fast of a shutter speed did the Cloud Knights use to capture an effect that cursed?
Dan Heng leaned over, caught a single glimpse of the screen, and immediately turned his head away. His shoulders shook slightly. He was fighting for his life to keep a straight face.
Welt cleared his throat, forcing his composure back into place.
Welt: [Alright, let's put the photo aside for now. Where exactly are you guys located? Is the area secure? Do you need immediate support from the Astral Express?]
Rekka: [We're hiding in a place filled with shipping containers. I'm not sure of the exact coordinates, but Silver Wolf hacked the local surveillance network, so we're off the grid for now. I just set a respawn point in my sleeping bag.]
Rekka closed the holographic group chat interface, rolled over inside his heavy sleeping bag, and let out a massive yawn.
The container yard was pitch black and desolate. The only sound was the haunting wail of the artificial wind whistling through the narrow gaps between the towering metal crates.
March 7th sat cross-legged on top of a blue shipping container, resting her chin in her hands. She stared down at the sleeping bag wriggling across the dirt like an oversized caterpillar.
"Save your energy," she sighed, her pink hair fluttering in the draft. "Let's just take a break first. We'll figure out how to clear our names after we get some rest."
Since things had already spiraled into a catastrophic disaster, sleeping on it seemed like the only logical choice.
Never panic when encountering difficulties. A good nap could solve ninety percent of life's problems.
Of course, if you ran into an idiot neighbor upstairs flushing entire articles of clothing down the toilet and causing the plumbing of the entire building to overflow into your living room, a nap definitely wouldn't fix it. But right now, a nap was all they had.
Midnight arrived. Rekka's eyes snapped open inside the dark sleeping bag. Right on time.
A strange, resonant warmth flooded his veins. The daily reset had triggered.
"What Path is it today? Harmony?"
He flexed his fingers, feeling an invisible, interconnected web of energy linking him to the environment.
"...Yeah, seems to be Harmony."
Rekka closed his eyes, letting his newfound perception expand outward. The Path of Harmony granted an acute awareness of the emotional and physical frequencies of everything around him.
"Stelle," he murmured into the dark. "There is something beating inside your body. A scorching..."
"It's a Stellaron," Stelle replied flatly from the adjacent container.
"Are you serious? You can still sense the Stellaron after shifting to the Harmony Path?"
"Yeah. And right now... I can perceive that there is indeed another Stellaron active on the Xianzhou Luofu."
Rekka pushed his perception further, casting his mental net across the massive fleet ship.
"It's too blurry," he muttered, his brow furrowing. "I can only sense a general direction. And..."
"And what?" Stelle asked, sitting up.
"And there's something else out there."
"Can you not speak in that tone?" March 7th shivered, rubbing her arms. "It's creepy."
"Sorry, my perception is just way too acute under the Harmony Path." Rekka rubbed his temples, trying to filter out the overwhelming sensory data. "That existence... it doesn't feel like a Stellaron. It doesn't even feel like a normal life form. It's just... there. Like a void."
Ah. That had to be Phantylia.
"So, what do we do now?" Stelle hopped down from the container, casually hoisting her baseball bat onto her shoulder. The metal gleamed in the dim light. "Keep hiding, or take the initiative and bust some heads?"
Rekka sat up in his sleeping bag. He stared at the metal wall in front of him for a few seconds. A slow, dangerous grin spread across his face.
"I have a way."
"What... way?" March 7th asked, already regretting the question.
"Someone went out of their way to frame us, right? So let's just openly declare war." Rekka shrugged off the sleeping bag and stood up. "We'll announce to the entire ship that the Destruction looks down on their precious Xianzhou Luofu, so they specifically sent us to blow up their port as a formal challenge. We'll tell them that if they kneel and beg right now, we might give them a quick death. Otherwise, we'll turn the entire Luofu into a playground for the Antimatter Legion."
He delivered the apocalyptic threat with the casual tone of someone ordering takeout.
The Path of Harmony was supposed to be about peace and unity, but Rekka's devious, chaotic nature hadn't diminished in the slightest.
"Oh!" Stelle's golden eyes lit up with absolute trash-raccoon delight. "Then the Cloud Knights' attention will completely shift from hunting us down as random criminals to defending against a full-scale Destruction invasion!"
"Exactly." Rekka snapped his fingers. "The more arrogant and unhinged we act, the more they'll believe it was actually done by the Destruction. After all, most of Nanook's subordinates operate exactly like that."
"But what if the person who framed us isn't actually from the Destruction?" March 7th pointed out.
"March, what kind of normal person casually carries around a live Antimatter bomb?"
Rekka gave her a deadpan look.
Stelle nodded repeatedly beside him, mischief practically radiating from her posture.
"Makes sense, makes sense. So how exactly do we openly declare war? We can't just walk out and hang a banner on the street, right?"
"Silver Wolf." Rekka turned his head toward the shadows. The genius hacker was leaning against a crate, casually blowing a massive pink bubblegum bubble. "Can you hack into the Xianzhou Luofu's public broadcast system?"
Pop.
"Such an interesting task," Silver Wolf smirked, her fingers already dancing across her holographic keyboard. "I can definitely do it."
"No, wait," March 7th interrupted, looking back and forth between them. "Why do I feel like every single word coming out of your mouth is deliberately stepping on the Xianzhou Luofu's sore spots?"
"Isn't that the entire point of a minefield?" Rekka crossed his arms, looking incredibly proud of himself. "I'm not just going to step on their minefield. I'm going to tap dance on it."
He turned back to the group, his expression turning serious—or at least, his version of serious.
"Listen up. As of right now, we are no longer Trailblazers of the Astral Express. We are a ruthless Destruction cell suspected of intending to subvert the Xianzhou Alliance. As for the real Destruction forces hiding on this ship? We'll just make enough noise to lure the Luofu's military right to their doorstep. That way, we get our revenge, the real Destruction forces get caught in the crossfire, and the Xianzhou Alliance catches their culprit. Everyone has a bright, beautiful future."
Silver Wolf stopped chewing her gum for a full second. She looked up from her screens, a genuine smile tugging at her lips.
"I'm really starting to appreciate you now."
"Get to work."
"Fine, fine. Muddying the waters is my specialty anyway." Her fingers blurred over the hard-light keys. "Give me five minutes. I'll give the Xianzhou Luofu's broadcast system a full-channel override."
"Are we really playing with fire here?" March 7th wrung her hands, her anxiety spiking. "We were just innocent scapegoats! And now we're going out of our way to claim responsibility for a terrorist attack..."
"I'll arrange a super cool role as an evil villain for you later," Rekka offered without missing a beat.
"Oh! Why didn't you say so earlier?" March 7th beamed, her anxiety instantly vanishing. But then she caught herself and shook her head violently. "Wait, wait, wait! We aren't really going to attack ordinary people, are we?"
"Why would we attack ordinary people? We're acting. It's a performance. It doesn't matter if we don't actually follow through with the threats. Think about it, March—guess who's going to be more anxious after this broadcast goes live: us, or the people who originally framed us?"
"March 7th, listen to him. We're fugitives now!" Stelle grabbed March by the shoulders, lecturing her with intense earnestness. "Fugitives need to have the bearing of a fugitive! Instead of hiding in the dirt like rats and being hunted down through the streets, it's better to just flip the entire table! What did you call this move, Rekka? Oh right—'seek death to find life'!"
"Done."
Silver Wolf let out a soft breath and hit the final key.
"Right now, the entire Xianzhou Luofu's public broadcast system, every holographic billboard in the commercial districts, and even a few of the internal communication channels used by the Cloud Knights are under my direct control. The stage is yours. Say whatever you want."
Hacking the Xianzhou Luofu's military-grade firewall had been a bit of a hassle, but for a Stellaron Hunter, it was just another Tuesday.
Rekka stepped forward. He closed his eyes, tapping deep into the Path of Harmony. But instead of drawing on unity, he isolated the raw, volatile frequencies of the human emotional spectrum. Anger. Fear. Sadness.
He forced those frequencies outward, letting them warp his physical form.
His voice shifted, dropping into a distorted, echoing timbre that sounded completely alien. His appearance grew ferocious as the sheer density of the manipulated emotions crystallized around him, forming jagged, iridescent armor plates that pulsed with an ominous, multicolored light. He looked like a nightmare born from the darkest corners of the cosmos.
The holographic cameras locked onto him.
"People of the Xianzhou Luofu," Rekka's distorted voice boomed across a million screens simultaneously. "Hello."
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