A heavy truck had been converted into something like a war chariot, its entire body sheathed in metal.
The metal beast roared down the expressway toward Shinra Company.
Clang, clang, clang!
At first, the noise had sounded grating. Now, it almost felt like music with a rhythm of its own.
That sound came from bullets fired from every direction, striking the metal armor plating of the war chariot.
Boom!
A slightly louder impact made the vehicle shudder and veer off course, but it immediately corrected itself and charged straight ahead again.
That huge crash had not come from Shinra heavy fire. It came from one of Shinra's vehicles blocking the road being smashed aside by the sharp ram welded to the front. One truck was even struck so hard it folded in half at the waist.
This war chariot had been made last night, when a single person brought out a massive amount of metal armor and temporarily modified a truck with it.
Most of the work had simply been welding. A sturdy metal shell had been welded over the vehicle.
So it did not have any elegant curves or refined styling, but it radiated violence. There was a brutal beauty to it.
Suddenly, the metal beast drifted, throwing several people inside off balance and sending them crashing to the other side.
"Thank you."
Aerith thanked the person who steadied her. When she looked at him, a faint shyness entered her gaze.
Without meaning to, she thought of the request she had made last night, and her face gradually reddened.
Although Mr. Kain had not seen anything—his back had been turned to her—she had still been using the restroom barely half a meter away from him. It had been unbearably embarrassing.
Then a slightly childish upside-down face suddenly appeared in front of her, startling her.
"What is it, Yuffie?"
Why was she suddenly staring at her?
"Big Sis Aerith, why is your face red?"
Unlike the others, Yuffie was not standing. She was hanging upside down from the ceiling rack, wearing a teasing smile as she looked at Aerith.
"I-is it?"
"It is."
Yuffie continued in that amused tone, deliberately letting her gaze drift back and forth between Aerith and the man who had done something so awful to her.
Under that teasing look, Aerith, who was a few years older than her, grew visibly guilty.
"Don't tell me you like this block—Mr. Kain?"
Yuffie changed her wording instantly. She had originally been about to call him a blockhead, and her tone had carried a bit of disdain, but when she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, the look he swept her way made her sense a great crisis.
A crisis aimed at her butt.
So she changed her words on the spot. Her tone became respectful at once, and she instinctively clenched her rear.
After saying that, she stopped hanging upside down. When she had been inverted just now, she had also been deliberately pointing her butt in his direction.
She had done it on purpose.
Damn it. It seemed she had been frightened into developing some kind of instinctive reaction.
This was definitely psychological trauma.
She really did not want to experience that again. People always said the most painful thing a girl could experience was childbirth, but she felt that what happened to her last night had to hurt even more than giving birth.
Still, after being injured like that, they had given her that thing called panacea, and she had healed in only half an hour. It really was good stuff.
"Waaah!"
Yuffie screamed. She had only just landed when the war chariot seemed to lose control again for a split second. She failed to steady herself, and her forehead had an intimate collision with metal.
"Yuffie, watch what you say. Don't joke around like that!"
Normally, Aerith would have been concerned, but this time Yuffie had brought it on herself. She scolded her in a slightly angry tone.
At the same time, Aerith blinked a little too quickly, while also stealing a glance at Mr. Kain's reaction.
He did not react at all.
That made her breathe a small sigh of relief, yet also left her feeling a little disappointed.
"Okay, no jokes."
Yuffie had originally wanted to tease her a little more, but once she noticed that blockhead's flat gaze falling on her, she was immediately scared into behaving.
She looked forward toward the driver's seat. Tifa was driving.
As for the others, they were holding weapons near various firing ports, ready to attack anything the war chariot could not handle on its own.
Come to think of it, the vehicle had suddenly seemed to lose control right when she said that line.
Could this beautiful big sister have feelings for that blockhead too?
"Jessie!"
"Okay!"
Jessie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, responded to Tifa. She immediately opened the metal window beside her, threw something out, and operated the remote control in her hand.
It was a miniature aircraft called an FPV drone. Its propellers spun so fast they almost seemed to be smoking, and it slammed into one of the barricades Shinra had dropped ahead of them at gale-like speed.
The instant it hit, orange light flashed. A large hole was melted through the obstacle, and even the expressway beneath it was scorched into a shallow pit.
Two seconds later, the metal war chariot rammed straight through.
The opening seemed a little too small, so the metal armor around the vehicle scraped violently against the edges, producing a piercing metallic shriek.
After the obstacle was cleared, Jessie stole a glance at Tifa.
Tifa's earlier steering mistake had looked like a sudden failure to control the war chariot, but in reality, she had probably been distracted by what that child, Yuffie, had said.
How interesting.
"W-what is that?!"
"What is it, Yuffie?"
The girl had suddenly leaned over, eyes wide as she stared straight ahead, as if she had seen something unbelievable.
The problem was that Jessie, who was also looking forward, saw nothing.
"There are a lot of flying things. Black, shadow-like things. No, black mist. Like ghosts."
As Yuffie described them, she noticed that Jessie could not see them at all and looked completely bewildered.
The others could not see them either.
But that girl could.
"It's the Whispers!"
Tifa, who could see them, spoke in a low voice.
Around the Shinra Building, more and more Whispers were gathering.
The closer their group got to Shinra Company, the more Whispers appeared.
That meant this operation would cause a tremendous change to fate. That was why so many Whispers had shown up.
At the same time, inside Shinra Company—
On one of the floors, two men stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking outside toward the expressway.
"Tseng, what is that?"
Tseng, the leader of Shinra Company's General Affairs Department Investigation Division—the Turks—looked toward the man questioning him.
Rufus Shinra.
The president's son, and the company's vice president.
The vice president seemed to have seen something abnormal. His usually calm expression was shaken now.
"That's what you saw yesterday, isn't it?"
The vice president continued.
"Yes. I investigated all night, but found no related information."
More and more of those bizarre things were appearing.
It seemed that the war chariot racing straight toward Shinra had something special about it, something that drew them in.
Then they suddenly swarmed it.
They seemed to be attacking the war chariot, or perhaps trying to stop it.
However, there also seemed to be something inside the vehicle that they could do nothing against. In the end, they could only stay close and interfere.
They were even assisting Shinra's forces.
But the effect was limited. The other side ultimately broke through the blockade and entered the plaza of the Shinra Building.
When the people on board got out, Tseng's frown deepened.
He had suspected Aerith might be inside that vehicle, but he had not expected her to actively attack Shinra.
Was it because of that mysterious man?
Was that what gave her such confidence?
Aerith did not understand Shinra Company's terror at all. She was walking straight to her death.
Now, no one would be able to save her.
(End of Chapter)
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