(③)
No one on the scene—Daryl included—had expected a gatecrash like this. In the standard military mindset, terrorists were unlawful actors, criminals who launched violent strikes from the shadows; faced with official GHQ soldiers, they were supposed to scatter, or at most coordinate an ambush from cover.
A terrorist who strolled right up to them, unarmed, and opened with a flying kick—their momentary paralysis was entirely understandable.
She looked like a girl. The fitted jacket and black leather pants she wore traced every curve of her figure; the deep hood did excellent work concealing her face, and the mask covered everything below the nose. Only through the narrow gap of the hood's shadow could you catch a glint of sharp, crimson eyes.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Inori Yuzuriha had kicked Daryl from behind and sent him face-first into the ground, stopping his assault on the woman. Then, as though shocked by what she'd seen, she called out over the mask in a voice full of exaggerated distress.
"You bastard!! How dare you do that to me—I'm telling Dad!"
Daryl scrambled back to his feet. He had an almost pathological aversion to dirt—he could barely stand shaking hands with adults—and now he'd just rolled face-down across filthy mud. He was incandescent. He tore at his own hair and screamed at the black-clad girl, lunging toward her.
"Coming all the way out here… this is too much~"
Inori acted as though she hadn't heard a word. As though she hadn't even seen Daryl. A light push of her hand sent him toppling again.
Then she crouched down, unhurried, her half-finger-gloved hands reaching into the dirt—and lifted out a dark-red rhinoceros beetle. She watched it tremble against her palm, and her brows and eyes softened. She looked, gently, like she was smiling.
"Lucky you weren't stepped on. It's really not safe to be here."
This time it was face-first into the ground. Daryl's nose took the impact; a thin stream of blood burst from his nostrils and he clutched at his face with a yelp. The girl had looked so slight—but that casual push had landed like a professional boxer's full swing. Daryl's eyes watered from the pain, and his fury climbed past anything he could contain.
"Hey! Woman! I'm talking to you!"
But more than being knocked down twice without explanation, what was actually pushing Daryl over the edge was her attitude—the complete, unapologetic way she was ignoring him while paying attention to a beetle. Wasn't that the same as telling him he was worth less than a bug?
—Damn it… I'm Daryl Yan! The GHQ's Butcher! The sharpest, most savage fang in the field!
Meanwhile, the woman Daryl had been beating had stopped noticing her own head wound entirely. She was crawling toward her child in a daze, half-falling with every step—instinct, perhaps, the only thing driving her now. In the original course of events, she and her husband would both have been shot dead by Daryl on the spot. Inori's arrival had rewritten that.
"Alright—go on, get out of here. And stay away from this area~"
Inori said it warmly, opening both hands. The rhinoceros beetle spread its wings cooperatively and drifted upward, away.
"Hands up! You—woman over there!"
"Me?"
Inori tilted her head, affecting the expression of someone who had only just noticed.
However strange Inori's appearance had been, the soldiers had had long enough to recover their senses. Weapons came up, trained on her. The black lieutenant colonel Guin in the tactical command vehicle had caught sight of the masked girl—recognized her immediately as the same figure who had spoken with Rowan on the bridge last night—and without the slightest hesitation, gave the order to shoot her down on the spot.
The soldiers snapped off their safeties in unison. But at that moment, Inori suddenly raised one hand, as though she had something to say.
"Wait!"
She held the gesture—asking the soldiers for just a moment—then pressed the comm device at her ear.
"What on earth are you doing?! Inori!"
Gai had finally run out of patience.
Inori had gone off-script and exposed herself early, throwing their entire plan into chaos. The scene itself had been enough to stir righteous outrage, yes—but Inori, who had cut people down without hesitation, wasn't the type to be a bleeding-heart for strangers. So what was she doing?
"Drawing their attention."
Inori answered in the most innocent tone possible, though the playfulness underneath it was completely transparent.
"That is not your job!"
"It's fine. As long as I get that idiot's Void, the mission's done."
She glanced at Daryl and answered without particular interest, with the ease of someone who had agreed to pick up groceries and was now noting they might as well grab a cabbage while they're at it.
"Fire the missiles—cover Inori! Operation commences now!"
There was nothing else to be done. Gai chose to trust her—trust her confidence and her mysterious Void. On his order, Funeral Parlor's full force moved at once. Rocket launchers mounted atop the surrounding buildings opened fire first, sending dozens of guided warheads streaking toward the Anti-Bodies' position.
But Commander Guin was considerably more seasoned than that. He had anticipated exactly this scenario; anti-missile interceptors were already deployed. Funeral Parlor's rounds were cut apart by laser fire before they reached the ground.
"Open fire! Put her down!"
The sudden barrage had rattled his soldiers—but Daryl's own rage had long since overridden everything else. He grabbed an automatic rifle from the nearest man and emptied it at Inori in a sustained sweep.
The rounds that should have torn through her body without question left only a dense cluster of bullet holes in the broken shipping containers nearby. Like a candle snuffed between two fingers. Like a pen dropped without noticing. The girl was simply gone.
"Where—where did she go?!"
Missiles were detonating overhead like fireworks, and every other soldier was scrambling for cover—but Daryl's eyes registered none of it. He spun and sprinted for his Steiner-type unit.
Only one thought occupied him now: make her let out a death scream that would please him. Make her pay for treating him like nothing.
"Don't you run from me!!!"
The silver-trim, slender-framed Endlave tore free of its transport carrier and launched down the road at well above standard acceleration. It found her almost immediately—Inori, apparently fleeing in a frantic run. Daryl threw everything into the pursuit, his howl blaring out of the mech's external speakers and echoing off the buildings.
Daryl Yan was seventeen years old. His temper had been warped by the environment he'd grown up in—explosive at the best of times, catastrophic whenever he felt disrespected, or caught his father with that shameless woman again.
"I'll stomp you to death! Stomp you stomp you stomp you stomp you stomp you!"
He wanted her to suffer the worst way possible—he'd decided a missile barrage was far too merciful.
—Why… can't I catch her?
But Daryl hadn't completely lost his head. He noticed something that made no sense: his Steiner—the brand-new model his father had arranged specifically for him, not yet even officially fielded by the military—could not keep up with a girl running on two legs. By the time he registered that something was wrong, he had already chased her into a dead end.
"Ha! Did you think I'd fall for your trap? You idiot!"
He braked the charging mech to a halt and let the insult fly.
Inori stopped. Turned around slowly.
A breeze moved through the alley mouth just then, catching the hood and pulling it back. Pink-white hair spilled down like a waterfall, settling over the Funeral Parlor uniform, the front strands drifting across her eyes.
"I'll stomp you to death!"
The distance was perfect.
Daryl Yan might have been a major general's son, but political maneuvering held no interest for him—he had always lived for the fight. The moment Inori stepped within reach, he moved without hesitation, vaulting the Endlave forward in a strike at the pink-haired girl.
"?"
That feeling again.
Like waking from a nightmare in a cold sweat—and not knowing when it began. By the time Daryl came back to himself, a thick-soled boot was already planted on the Steiner's visor. The neural sync fed the sensation directly to the pilot: Daryl felt, unmistakably, that he had her under her sole.
Then her willow-leaf brows eased, and the lips beneath the mask moved slightly.
Unhurried. Casual. Completely at ease.
"King Crimson."