Chapter 48: You Can't Deploy a Shield at This Distance, Can You!
Stelle's entire demeanor shifted. The usual deadpan slackness vanished from her face, replaced by a sharp, almost predatory focus—as if her very art style had suddenly switched to a high-octane battle manga.
"You're actually quite a fighter," she noted, her voice steady.
March 7th lowered her crystalline bow, the icy tension finally leaving her shoulders. "It's not safe here," the pink-haired girl urged, glancing nervously at the chaotic corridors. "Let's go, quickly."
Once they retreated to a relatively secure control room, the immediate danger faded. Stelle, however, couldn't sit still. She paced the metallic floor, her golden eyes wandering aimlessly before inevitably drifting back to the massive, blue-carapaced insect that had escorted her to safety.
She approached the towering creature, tilting her head. "Is there anything I can do to help you?"
The giant bug shifted, its terrifying mandibles clicking softly. "You want to help?"
"Yes."
A brief silence hung in the air. "...Well, there is something," Rekka's voice echoed, carrying a distinct hint of mischief. "Fight with me."
Stelle glanced toward the reinforced observation windows, taking in the apocalyptic cosmic battlefield outside. Without a single ounce of hesitation, she hoisted her trusty baseball bat over her shoulder and marched straight toward the airlock doors.
"Wait, wait, wait! What do you think you're doing going out there?" Rekka hastily scrambled forward, using his massive bulk to block her path.
Stelle blinked, lowering the bat slightly. "Huh? Didn't you just say you wanted me to fight with you?"
"I did say that, but that's not how you fight!" Rekka sighed, his long antennae drooping in exasperation. "If you march out there right now, you'll be flattened into a pancake in a single slap."
Shaking his massive head, Rekka's form began to shimmer. His colossal body rapidly compressed, shrinking down until he was small enough to leap onto Stelle's back. He settled comfortably between her shoulder blades.
"I'll connect your consciousness directly to my main body," Rekka explained, his voice now sounding right beside her ear. "I'm going to split off a secondary form, and you're going to help me pilot it."
"Oh~" Stelle dragged out the syllable, sounding mildly intrigued but mostly clueless. "But I don't really know how to drive a bug."
"You don't need a license for this. Just knowing how to fire the mouth cannon is enough."
"Mouth cannon?"
As if on cue, the colossal version of Rekka currently floating in the vacuum of space outside the window reared back. Its terrifying jaws unhinged, and a blinding, localized beam of pure blue quantum energy erupted from its maw, obliterating a cluster of Antimatter Legion stragglers in an instant.
"Exactly that," Rekka confirmed.
Stelle's eyes sparkled with genuine awe. "Oh~! Cool." She turned her head, trying to peer at the miniature Rekka clinging to her jacket. "Then how do I get inside your body?"
"...That phrasing sounds incredibly weird," Rekka muttered, using his tiny forelimbs to scratch the top of his carapace. "Never mind. Just don't resist. I'm linking your will directly into the Swarm's neural network."
"That sounds exactly like the kind of sci-fi setup that fries the protagonist's brain," Stelle pointed out flatly.
"It won't, it won't! Trust me. Now, empty your mind."
Stelle hesitated for exactly two seconds. Then, she gave a slow nod. "Fine. My brain is already pretty empty anyway. A little emptier won't hurt."
The transition was instantaneous. At first, her vision plunged into absolute, suffocating darkness. Then, like stars igniting in the void, countless tiny specks of light flared to life. Those specks expanded violently, morphing into razor-sharp, complex images. Hundreds of alien perspectives flooded her visual cortex all at once—a chaotic kaleidoscope of the battlefield that sent a wave of intense vertigo crashing through her skull.
"Don't look through the eyes of the lesser drones! It's too chaotic," Rekka's voice anchored her, echoing directly within her thoughts. "Focus your attention. Feel for the largest node in the network."
Stelle drew in a sharp breath, forcing her scattered consciousness to centralize, locking onto the massive, pulsing core of energy in the void.
In a flash, her reality shifted.
Out in the vacuum of space, Rekka's gargantuan True Sting form violently tore itself away from the grappling claws of a Doomsday Beast. With a sickening, wet tear of quantum energy, the colossal insect underwent rapid mitosis, splitting perfectly into two identical leviathans.
Stelle's consciousness slammed into the newly formed clone.
The sheer sensory overload of near 360-degree compound vision hit her instantly, making her phantom stomach churn. She could see the stars, the space station, and her own massive wings all at the same time.
"How does it feel?" Rekka's voice crackled through her neural pathways, broadcasting straight into her synapses.
"Super good," Stelle replied, though her giant insect body was currently doing a clumsy barrel roll in zero gravity.
"Don't just spin around like a loose hubcap! Look ahead!" Rekka barked.
Wrestling control of her new compound eyes, Stelle forced her gaze forward.
Two terrifying Doomsday Beasts hovered in the void, their dark, twisted forms glaring menacingly. The sheer absurdity of Rekka's cellular division had clearly caused them a moment of hesitation, but the cosmic leviathans quickly recovered, unleashing silent, furious roars that vibrated through the energy field.
"Mouth cannon, huh?" Stelle's mental voice carried a dangerous grin. "Let me try it."
She focused inward. An ocean of volatile energy churned within the abdomen of her insectoid vessel. She willed it upward, feeling the searing heat rush up her newly acquired spine, pooling densely in her throat. The terrifying, jagged mandibles framing her face unhinged, snapping open to their absolute maximum limit.
A blinding blue beam of pyrolytic death light erupted from her maw. The violent shockwave of pure Imaginary energy blasted outward like a cosmic tsunami, tearing through the vacuum and slamming directly into the nearest Doomsday Beast.
Inside the master control room of the Herta Space Station, Lead Researcher Asta and her surviving security staff were glued to the main tactical monitors.
"Is... is this us fighting the Antimatter Legion?" a security officer stammered, pointing a trembling finger at the screen. "Or is the Swarm helping us fight the Antimatter Legion?!"
"I don't know..." Asta murmured, raising a hand to wipe a bead of cold sweat from her brow. "But as long as those giant bugs don't turn around and start eating the space station, let's just classify them as friendly forces for now."
"Station Master Asta!"
Asta flinched, spinning around to see a familiar, elegant figure approaching. "Ah... Ms. Himeko. It's you."
Himeko offered a reassuring, albeit slightly strained, smile. "Please don't be nervous. That True Sting out there is actually one of our passengers... well, it's Rekka. He is currently outside, entangled in combat with the Doomsday Beasts. Please, instruct your defense systems not to fire on him."
Asta's eyes widened to comical proportions. She slowly turned her head back to the monitor, watching the two colossal, blue-purple insects ruthlessly tag-teaming a Doomsday Beast, tearing at its armor with savage mandibles.
"Ms. Himeko, you... that is a passenger on the Astral Express?"
"Yes. You should remember him from his previous visits," Himeko replied smoothly, maintaining her perfect composure despite the absurdity of the situation. "Since we have established that he is friendly, could your security department provide some covering fire? Although he appears to have the upper hand, finishing this battle quickly would be ideal."
"He wasn't... quite this large before," Asta noted, her lips twitching uncontrollably.
Still, having a Swarm monstrosity on their side was undeniably good news. Asta quickly relayed the orders. Moments later, the space station's perimeter defense cannons hummed to life. Several scorching, high-intensity laser beams lanced through the void, striking the exact Doomsday Beast that Stelle was currently pinning down.
"Hot, hot, hot!" Stelle yelped in her mental link.
The stray heat from the lasers singed her carapace, causing her giant insect body to jump in surprise. She hastily released her grip on the struggling beast and flapped her wings, dodging clumsily to the side.
"The space station's support fire is here! Hurry up and finish it off!" Rekka ordered.
His own massive body stretched to its absolute limit against the backdrop of the cosmos. Gathering a terrifying amount of quantum energy into his forelimbs, he swung them in a devastating arc. Two colossal, blue light blades manifested in the vacuum, slashing downward in a brutal cross-shaped execution that cleaved the injured Doomsday Beast into fading cosmic dust.
"Yay! Took one out!" Stelle cheered, her antennae wiggling in victory.
"Don't celebrate just yet, there's still one left!"
"Leave this one to me!" Stelle declared.
Beating her translucent wings, she propelled her massive bulk toward the final Doomsday Beast. She slammed into it with the force of a meteor, her serrated forelimbs locking around the monster in a death grip. The beast thrashed wildly, its dark energy flaring, but Stelle refused to let go.
"Take this!"
Volatile blue quantum polymer gathered frantically deep within her throat, the sheer intensity of the light blindingly bright even in the vacuum of space. She shoved her mandibles directly against the beast's armored face.
You can't deploy a shield at this distance, can you!
BOOM—
The battle finally reached its explosive conclusion.
Stelle gasped, her golden eyes snapping open. The dizzying 360-degree vision vanished, replaced by the sterile, familiar ceiling of the space station's control room. She was still sitting in the exact same chair, but she was now surrounded by a tight circle of concerned faces.
"...Are you okay?" March 7th asked, leaning in close.
"I'm fine," Stelle groaned, raising a hand to rub her throbbing temples. "Just a bit of a headache from headbutting a Doomsday Beast..."
"That's a relief..." March 7th sighed, scratching her pink hair. "We saw the tiny Rekka lying on your back earlier, and we had no idea what he was doing. When we checked the monitors, we realized you were somehow piloting his clone outside..." She leaned in, her curiosity getting the better of her. "So? How did it feel?"
"It was amazing," Stelle answered, her tone deadpan but her eyes shining with absolute sincerity.
"How should I put it..." She stared at her hands, flexing her fingers as if missing the giant scythe-like claws. "It's exactly like piloting a super-sized organic mech, complete with omnidirectional viewing. If I didn't like the look of someone, I just opened my mouth and sprayed a giant beam of death light at them. It was incredibly stress-relieving."
March 7th giggled, then reached out a finger to gently poke the miniature Rekka still resting on the back of Stelle's chair. "Hey Rekka, is your main body doing okay out there?"
Bang!
The tiny Rekka exploded.
Not a metaphorical explosion. A literal, messy, popping explosion of blue quantum dust.
March 7th shrieked, jumping back as if she'd been burned. "I—I—I didn't do anything! I swear! I just poked him!"
Outside the window, a chain reaction began.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!
Every single remaining drone of the Swarm out in the void detonated into harmless blue sparks, popping like a string of cosmic firecrackers.
A moment later, the airlock doors hissed open. Rekka's original, massive main body dragged itself into the corridor. He looked utterly listless, his legs trembling before giving out entirely. With a heavy, metallic thud, the giant insect collapsed onto the floor, completely drained.
He was in a miserable state. His six bladed legs splayed out limply against the cold tiles. His terrifying mouthparts weakly hissed, opening and closing as he struggled to draw in air. The thick carapace on his back—which had previously shimmered with a beautiful, intimidating blue-purple fluorescence—was now heavily pitted, scorched black by lasers, and covered in jagged scars.
The most pitiful detail, however, was his long left antenna. A massive chunk of it had been completely snapped off, and glowing blue blood slowly oozed from the jagged break.
March 7th winced, kneeling a safe distance away. "You're in such a sorry state... Can that antenna grow back?"
"I'm so tired," Rekka groaned, his voice echoing weakly. He didn't even twitch a leg.
Himeko walked over, her heels clicking softly against the floor. She half-crouched beside the fallen leviathan, reaching out a gloved hand to gently stroke the edge of an uninjured section of his carapace.
"You've worked incredibly hard, Rekka," she said softly, her voice carrying a warm, maternal pride. "If you hadn't held back those Doomsday Beasts, the casualties and structural losses to the space station would have been catastrophic."
"Huff... huff..."
Rekka's massive chest heaved. The glowing light within his complex compound eyes slowly flickered, then dimmed completely, as if the life had finally left him.
Silence fell over the room. March 7th covered her mouth, her eyes widening in horror.
Crack.
A sharp splitting sound echoed from the top of the giant bug's head. The battered, scorched shell suddenly pried open from the inside. A much smaller, perfectly pristine, human-sized version of Rekka squeezed his way out of the dead husk, shivering violently as he flopped onto the floor.
"It's freezing out here," he chattered, wrapping his arms around himself. "Can someone please get me a blanket?"
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