After dropping Daryl, Inori Yuzuriha didn't pause. She drove her fists through the Endlave's leg joints in quick succession until it was thoroughly incapacitated, then turned back to deal with the soldiers who'd been moving Kenji Kido. But they had used that window. They were already in the elevator.
From there it was a straight shot to the parking level. Stopping them now would be difficult.
Inori didn't deliberate. She stepped up onto the railing and crouched, let the momentum carry her body like a round from a barrel, and hurled herself toward the elevator — propelled by sheer speed and the force of King Crimson behind the launch.
The elevator doors sealed shut while she was still in midair.
The soldiers inside finally let themselves breathe. Whatever that small figure was — dismantling an Endlave bare-handed — was it some kind of anti-mech individual weapon? A single-operator system?
"No use."
A flat, matter-of-fact voice broke the silence inside the sealed elevator.
Every soldier went rigid with cold sweat. Standing in the car that had been empty a moment ago was a girl in a black hooded jacket printed with abstract punk graphics, pale pink hair, a mask — the same one who had just taken apart the Endlave with her fists.
"I don't like pointless things."
— King Crimson.
In that instant, something resonated — a deep, low sound the soldiers couldn't quite name. A moment of disorientation. When they came back to themselves, every one of them was already down, sprawled across the elevator floor in spreading red.
"Muda, muda~"
Inori said it lightly, almost conversationally.
"Mmph! Mmph — !!"
The bundled figure in the wheelchair had no idea what had happened outside. He'd only sensed, on some basic level, that someone was here to help, and he was thrashing against his restraints as hard as he could, trying to be heard.
"Kenji Kido?"
The noise was getting on Inori's nerves. She pulled the hood off his head. A pale, wiry teenager stared up at her, gray-haired and wide-eyed, panic flickering behind his expression. He was also wearing some kind of specialized mask. He stared at Inori and nodded furiously, clearly asking her to take it off.
"Quiet down."
Inori dropped the hood, raised her right hand. The metallic shimmer of her Void's light filled the elevator. She pressed her hand through his chest — that familiar warm luminescence wrapped around her fingers — and after a moment of searching she found something solid. She drew it out.
Kenji Kido convulsed, overwhelmed by the pain of extraction, and went limp in the wheelchair.
Inori ignored him and turned the object over in her hands. At first glance it looked like something out of a science fiction game — a compact, rounded shape, edges smooth. This was the Void that could control gravity.
"Inori!"
The elevator doors were forced open. Gai and Shu had come around the long way.
Gai had known Kenji's Void extraction was part of the plan and took it in stride. Shu, on the other hand, was visibly unprepared for this level of carnage. Bodies everywhere. And the way they'd died — one face caved in entirely, another neck twisted at an angle that shouldn't exist. These hadn't been shot. They'd been beaten to death.
— Did… Inori do this?
Shu covered his mouth and grabbed the railing, fighting down the urge to be sick.
"What's the next step, Gai?"
"Shu." Gai's brow furrowed. He turned. "Carry this man on your back. We move out now."
"R-right! On it!"
Shu understood there was no going back from this point. However ill-suited to a battlefield he was, there was no room left to be picky about adapting. He pressed his teeth together, walked in, and hoisted Kenji Kido onto his back. Fortunately the boy was severely underweight — years in a windowless underground cell without sunlight had taken their toll — and light enough that Shu could manage him without too much difficulty.
The situation, however, had become genuinely grim.
Because Shu had used the tracker, Segai and the others had moved early — Funeral Parlor's outer assault forces couldn't punch through, and additional Endlave units had converged on the building's interior. They stepped out of the elevator into the main hall — an open, high-ceilinged atrium, ground level — and the Endlaves had them completely surrounded.
"We're surrounded — what do we do, Gai?!"
Just looking at those machines turned Shu's breathing ragged. This was his first real battle in any meaningful sense. In films, war looked like this — but those cameras had always been somewhere else. A stray shell would end all three of them right here.
"Stay calm, Shu."
The one who answered wasn't Gai. It was Inori.
Her voice came through the mask as clearly as a plucked string. Shu felt the noise in his chest settle almost immediately.
"Leave this part to me."
"Inori — you're planning to break through head-on?" Gai's concern was plain. "I'm not questioning your ability, but… everyone here except you is at their limit. If this turns into a direct fight, Shu, Kenji, and I have no way out."
Inori stopped walking. She said nothing.
At that moment, Segai himself appeared on the second-floor overlook. Purple hair in disarray, that prosthetic eye, and that expression of unhurried amusement — Segai.
"Shu, I'm very disappointed. Why are you running off with these people?"
"…Our deal is done! I found Gai Tsutsugami for you! Where I go and what I do after that is my business!"
Shu put his voice behind it this time, despite the fear. Inori was here. He didn't need to fold again. He wasn't going to.
"The young lady in the hood — are you Inori?"
"Nope. Not me."
Inori answered with a mild smile in her voice.
"You're lying. You used Void Genome, didn't you?" Segai leaned forward on the railing above, looking down at them with a pleasant expression. "That power of yours genuinely surprised me."
The Endlaves were closing in, slowly tightening the ring.
"Would you be willing to show me a little more?"
Inori had no patience for this person and no interest in drawing King Crimson's abilities out here. She studied the space around them — the layout, the ceiling, the distances — and assembled her plan in a few quiet seconds.
"Sure. Watch closely."
She pulled Kenji Kido's Void from behind her jacket and aimed it directly at the cluster of Endlaves in front of them. A circular bubble launched from the muzzle, drifted forward — and on contact with the lead unit, expanded violently. The Endlave lifted off the ground, caught in a gravity-free field, drifting upward out of control.
And gravity interference disrupted the computational systems that operated the machines — the targeting, the movement controls, everything went offline.
But one wasn't enough. More Endlaves were already coming. The weapon's effective range was limited — two at a time at most — and the cycle time between shots was significant.
One shot. Another. But the sheer volume of enemy units was relentless.
"It's not enough — too many of them. Is there something else? Your Void, Inori?"
Gai had backed himself against the wall.
"Mm. There is."
Inori fired one more shot — this time calculating the arc precisely so the ascending Endlave would collide with several of the units behind it, buying them a few seconds of blocked path.
"One last option."
"What option? What is it?" Gai pressed.
"Running, obviously~~!!"
— Nigerundayo!
Inori had reloaded. But this time she aimed straight down — at the floor directly beneath them. The bubble fired. A sweeping, roller-coaster lurch of weightlessness rolled through all of them, and Inori and the others began to rise slowly, drifting upward toward the vaulted ceiling far above.
Author's Note: Everything Inori has done here — running both original leads through the wringer — is only possible because of the position she's in. But she won't need to keep up the pretense much longer.