C-Rank Ranked Match — One-Hit Wonder

We cross the bridge into Gunman City.

“Any enemy units?”

“None.”

“Understood. This area will definitely fall outside the next zone shrink, so we press on ahead.”

“Right!”

Shiina and I tear through Gunman City on the bike, race out across the wasteland, and make for the next town over, Resort City. It’s a sprawling place, packed wall to wall with buildings: souvenir shops, cafes, rental-car outlets, hotels, entertainment venues, casinos, on and on, nearly all of it laid on for the tourists. The ground is concrete, and here too the sea is in view. Closest thing I can picture is Hawaii (never been, so I’m only guessing).

The second zone shrink wraps up, and when the boundary for the third goes up, our town turns out to sit safely inside it. Shiina eases the bike over to the shoulder.

“Shiki, how much EN have you got left?”

“Already under thirty percent…”

“Then let us restock EN Bottles here.”

One EN Bottle restores thirty percent of your EN, so two is plenty and three is more than enough. Better to find them fast and move somewhere easy to snipe from.

Ugh.

No such luck, apparently. An enemy contact blips onto the map.

“Five hundred meters out, enemy unit!”

And it’s on the same road as us. I put my eye to the scope. A Space Girl on a bike, barreling straight at us. And that Space Girl is…!

“It’s Tsubasa!”

“Making their move already, are they.”

Shiina guns the engine and peels away from Tsubasa. Good call.

“Shiki.”

“I know!”

Tsubasa has no range. Even that shield-cannon of hers reaches sixty meters at best. Current distance, two hundred meters, and our speeds are already matched. All we have to do is keep running and chip her down with sniper fire.

I line up my assault rifle on Tsubasa. She blocks the shots with Aegis.

No problem. I’ll grind it down.

Even an assault rifle’s Power shouldn’t leave her completely untouched. Aegis’s durability has to be wearing down, shot by shot. I keep unloading. Tsubasa cycles deftly between her Aegis shields, spreading the damage around, but that can’t hold forever. Sooner or later she hits her limit.

“I’ve got this.”

We tear on through the town. We’re horribly conspicuous, but if I keep this up, I can take Tsubasa down.

…Hold on. Surely Tsubasa knows all of that too. She’s sharp; Shiina said as much. Would a player like that really squander herself on a chase this pointless? No. She wouldn’t. I’d bet anything on it.

“Shiina!”

It happens the instant Shiina cuts right at the crossroads. A wire bites into her chest.

““Wha…?!””

A wire had been strung between the buildings on either side, linking them.

One step too late!!

The wire hooks Shiina, and the two of us spill off the bike in a tangled heap, rolling across the hot concrete. As we lie sprawled there, Tsubasa closes in on her bike.

“Shiina! The railgun!!”

“Yes, that is the plan.”

Shiina equips the electromagnetic cannon and starts gathering energy. In that same instant, light scatters at the edge of my vision. Far behind her, above a dome-shaped building, a laser flashes.

A sniper shot?!

I read the enemy’s aim in a thousandth of a second. The obvious target is Shiina’s vital point, or mine. …No.

Wrong!!

Play it right, and there’s a third option that deals fatal damage to both of us at once!!

I fire my Thrusters to tear away from Shiina, and in the same motion throw up a Shield Piece between her and the railgun.

The distant sniper round punches into the railgun just as its energy is racing through it. The charge runs wild, and the whole thing detonates.

“?!”

A plasma explosion. A blast wave crackling with electromagnetism erupts outward.

Because I’d already pulled clear, the blast only flings me backward. But Shiina loses the railgun, and with it the right arm that was holding it. And on top of that, half my Shield Pieces are spent.

That shot just now was Ren, no question! She aimed for the exact moment the railgun finished charging and made it blow. Enemy or not, that’s good…!

That wire was probably Ren’s work too. Every last thing, from the moment Tsubasa came racing in on her bike right up to now, has played out exactly as Crimson Wings drew it up!

“Just like always… there’s nothing Tsubasa can’t bend to her will.”

Tsubasa bears down on the two of us where we lie broken.

Don’t. Look. Down. On. Meeeee!!!!

I close my right hand around the Saber terminal tucked in my belt.

“Ahahaa! Shiki, what on earth do you think you’re going to do with a plain old saber like that?!”

“Cut you down, obviously.”

I kick the saber into High-Output Mode and sweep it across.

“—?!”

— Zan!!

My saber shoots out to fifteen meters, carrying firepower no ordinary blade could touch, and I burn clean through the bike, buildings and all.

“Shiki, what was that just now…?”

“It’s the ‘One-Hit Wonder,’ with everything poured into Expandability.”

The SCH-100, a saber you can Custom. I dumped its entire Custom Capacity into Expandability.

Push Expandability up and High-Output Mode gains both Power and Range. But every other stat sits at 1 across the board, so the mode’s startup runs a mere 0.5 seconds (startup time scales with the saber’s EN Reserve). As an ordinary blade it’s uselessly weak, and the moment High-Output Mode ends, it drops into a two-minute reload.

A saber that pours every last resource into half a second, into a single slash: a one-off, good for exactly one strike.

“I won’t let things go your way, Tsubasa.”

Tsubasa alights right in front of us.

“…Honestly, you are fascinating — utterly fascinating!!”