"No, I was just talking to myself."
"..."
Gai Tsutsugami studied her for a moment, then gave a slow nod—apparently not suspicious.
He let out a quiet sigh and walked forward until he stood before the girl, his gaze drifting toward the river in the distance. He had no idea that the person sitting behind him had already become the woman he had spent a lifetime desperately wishing he could hold once more.
"Is something the matter?"
Mana wasn't entirely comfortable calling him by the name "Gai," but if she called out the name "Triton" here, little Inori would definitely explode.
"Honestly… I'm not feeling very confident about this operation."
"Waiting for reinforcements would certainly be safer—but we've already run out of time to delay. Inori, the moment you stepped in to help me, Diavolo must have taken notice. I'm afraid of what he might do to you in retaliation, so I've been forced to move up the timeline."
Gai lowered his head, his expression carrying a quiet, unguarded sorrow.
It was the kind of weakness he could never let his subordinates see. In their eyes, Gai Tsutsugami was the commander who delivered victories. Everyone had a softer side, but Gai's could only be swallowed in silence, bitter and alone.
"I'm sorry, Inori."
"I'm just… too weak. I can't carry Funeral Parlor's mission on my own. Without you, we'd probably still be a ragtag little group scraping by underground. But even knowing Diavolo won't allow this—I still needed your help. And I have no idea how to protect you in return."
"..."
Had the real Inori been here, she would have put on a brave face and offered him reassurance. But Mana said nothing—she only watched him in silence, this young man who had once trailed behind her like a little brother, and who had now grown into a true soldier.
"I came here with my eyes open. I knew what I was walking into."
Mana stepped to his side with an easy, unhurried motion, stretching her arms out in a lazy arc.
"You don't need to worry about me. I'm not some helpless ornament who can only live under someone else's protection."
She glanced back at him, hands clasped behind her back, eyes narrowed in a warm smile—two little dimples surfacing on her cheeks.
"...You look more and more like her these days."
Watching this sudden, girlish warmth wash over "Inori," Gai felt a quiet rush of old memories stir without warning.
"Hm?"
Mana blinked, feigning perfect innocence.
"Nothing."
Gai gave a small, quiet laugh and shook his head.
"The assault begins in roughly an hour. I need to run a final check—make sure you're ready."
"Understood."
Mana nodded and kept her eyes on Gai's back as he walked away. Only when he disappeared around the corner of the camp did she finally let out a long, slow breath.
"Little Inori… was that okay? Saying all that to him?"
"Perfect. That's my adorable Mana for you."
Inori expressed her approval warmly from within.
The truth was, she hadn't known how to answer him either—she still hadn't figured out what kind of "punishment" from "Diavolo" would sound convincing enough to Gai, something that held together without any obvious cracks. She hadn't expected Mana's light, breezy deflection to work so well. Sometimes the best answer is no answer at all.
"You calling me that feels strange—like I'm some pet you're keeping."
"More or less? You're locked inside my body with nowhere to go, and I have to come up with ways to humor you—you're my very special little pet, Mana~"
Inori reclaimed control of the body, rolled her shoulders, and flashed a small, wicked grin.
"...Hmph. Fine, whatever."
She couldn't find an argument worth making.
"Next up—we take down that base ahead of us."
"Triton's plan feels dangerous… The gap in strength is just too wide. You're going to slip inside, aren't you, little Inori? Please be careful."
Mana had listened to Gai's plan just now, and without any battlefield experience, she could only analyze it the way an ordinary girl would.
"Do you have any idea how many places like this I've walked through?"
Inori laughed and ran a hand through her hair.
"King Crimson is invincible—that's not a boast, it's a fact."
— As long as Gold Experience Requiem is nowhere in the picture.
Because that thing was the one true hard counter. King Crimson erases the process and leaves only the result—but Gold Experience Requiem deletes the result, then loops the process endlessly, without end.
This world had no Stand users, though. So Inori could afford to sleep soundly.
...
...
The last smear of red sunset bled out at the horizon, and in the brief, suspended moment between day and night—when the sky still held a few pale fragments of fading light—a line of missiles burst from the forest in rapid succession, detonating along the outer perimeter of the reservoir base. The signal flares for the operation had been fired.
GHQ soldiers erupted into chaos. Blaring alarms tore through the air. Those explosions were also the signal to begin the operation. Oogumo and Argo—two of Funeral Parlor's most reliable field commanders—immediately led their assault squads into the fray. Simultaneously, from another direction, a truck came roaring out of the tree line at full speed, crashing clean through the towering chain-link fence and plowing ahead.
The truck surged forward with unstoppable momentum. The guards had no time to react—but then a blue Endlave lunged into the battlefield out of nowhere, launching a kick that sent the vehicle flying. A barrage of large-caliber rounds swept across the tumbling wreck in the same breath, and the truck erupted in a fireball. Flames swallowed the forest in an instant.
"Yes—this—this is it!"
An ecstatic voice crackled from within the mech's cockpit.
"This is me—Daryl Yan!"
He barely had time to savor it. Moments later, a dozen rounds came screaming in from behind, trailing blue afterglow—the silver Endlave "Steiner" had blasted onto the field. That was the very unit Daryl had lost when Inori extracted his Void and left him unconscious; his prized personal machine, now piloted by someone else entirely—Ayase Shinomiya.
The strongest pilot in the finest machine: that single unit alone was enough to tear GHQ's defensive line to pieces. And she had already set her sights squarely on Daryl.
"Your machine handles pretty well, actually."
Her crisp, confident voice rang out from inside the silver Steiner.
"Give me back my Steiner!"
The sight of his beloved mech in someone else's hands sent Daryl into a frenzy. He charged recklessly, all restraint gone.
While that battle raged, Inori, Gai, and Kenji Kido had already slipped quietly into the interior of the base facility.
Inori took down another armed soldier with her bare hands—catching him, slamming him to the ground, and driving her knee into his neck in one fluid motion. The whole thing took under a second. The man never even saw how many intruders there were before he stopped breathing.
"Hard to believe—you're a girl, but you kill people pretty well."
Kenji had been knocked out cold the moment Inori extracted his Void back at the detention facility, so this was his first time watching her fight. He couldn't help staring with wide eyes.
"Does someone who blew up Tokyo Skytree at age twelve really get to say that?" Inori dusted off her hands and gave him a flat look.
"Heh—guess I'd better get used to the pace." Kenji scratched his nose with a grin, flashing two rows of very sharp teeth.
"It's here."
Gai raised a hand and pointed to a wall not far ahead.
"The control core is right behind that."
"Stand back."
Inori dug a prepared grenade from her pocket, pulled the pin, and lobbed it forward—adding a cheerful little sound effect for good measure.
"Soymilk~"
The blast rattled her eardrums. A thick plume of smoke billowed up and then cleared—the grenade had blown a jagged, irregular hole clean through the wall, and through the gap, pale blue-white light pulsed in steady, quiet waves.
That was the control core for the Leukocyte satellite network.