Long-term salvation

Saikawa Ayane shrank back and looked at Toyokawa Shoko who was curled up in a ball. The latter's amber eyes met her gaze slightly, and her body began to tremble.

Tsk... this little blue-haired octopus is so soft and sticky... I really want to see her crying.

Shaking her head, Saikawa Ayane threw away these messy thoughts, then signaled Shiraishi Mizuki to drag Xiangzi over, and then said seriously to the girl who was still a little frightened:

"I know you're resisting, but now's not the time for those words. About half an hour ago, when we were trying to activate the Nether Migration Barrier to seal off the disaster site in the other world, we rushed directly into the overpass, and you were the only one there... Now, please explain in the simplest terms why you were there."

"On a rainy night, I didn't have an umbrella and wanted to take a shortcut home, but I saw a strange figure in a black robe and ran into this world of violent witches full of monsters."

"I understand, but you can remove the last description."

Saikawa Ayane nodded. After a moment of thought, a firm look appeared on her face.

"Given the current situation, we need your help, new recruit Toyokawa Shoko. Please use your identity as a powerful psychic and your strong connection to this ritual to lead us out of this dark area. Oh, don't even think about it. You don't have any superpowers that can kill your way through hell. Only that man in this world has that."

That man?

Before Xiangzi could figure out what was going on, she was dragged by the hips by Shiraishi Mizuki and thrown into the arms of Saikawa Ayane.

The first time... After his mother's death, Xiangzi was held in someone's arms for the first time, even in the storm, even when he had to face the twisted and deformed overpass ahead.

Subconsciously, Xiangzi shrank into Saikawa Ayane's arms and whispered softly:

"What do you want me to do?"

"...Find the way out," Saikawa Ayane breathed deeply. She reached out and tugged at Xiangzi's cheek, causing him to cry out in pain. Then she said unhappily, "You've mastered this almost like an instinct. Are you a succubus? You must be surrounded by a lot of little girls on a daily basis."

Xiangzi: "...We just formed a band."

And they were disbanded. Xiangzi swallowed the second half of the sentence as if he was swallowing sharp shards of glass.

"I know you guys in bands are all messy, that's understandable."

Shiraishi Mizuki took over from below, she seemed to be assembling something.

"No!"

Xiangzi, filled with shame and anger, responded angrily. She exhaled slowly and then turned her gaze forward:

At this moment, the road ahead was being torn apart by some force beyond the laws of physics. The rain suddenly changed its falling trajectory at a height of two stories above the bridge deck, forming a counterclockwise vortex with a diameter of tens of meters. Nearly a thousand tons of rain hung in the air, reflecting distorted light spots projected from under the viaduct.

The girl tried not to think about where the abnormal lights came from.

"Where are we going?"

Saikawa Ayane said as she took the rocket launcher handed to her from below. She turned around with difficulty and pressed the trigger amid Xiangzi's screams, letting the rocket hit the relentless centipede ball with a whistling sound - the wrinkled skull was blown open, revealing the flesh and blood structure behind it that looked like the membrane of an organ - after being enraged, the skull of the centipede ball once again entangled and condensed, turning into the limbs of a beast made of bones, and the old man's face on the front of the body turned into a hideous and angry face.

"The attack is confirmed to be effective. This thing runs so fast—Xiangzi!"

"I'm watching!"

Xiangzi responded loudly, holding her breath and concentrating, trying to use abilities she completely didn't understand and couldn't perceive to fight for a way out for herself and others... The other world? Psychics? Monsters? What on earth are these?!

"There's no use running away, Xiangzi... You can't run away, you can't run away, you can't run away..."

Thinking about his dead mother, his decadent father, and those friends who gathered around him because of their dreams... Xiangzi fixed his eyes on the front.

The fear in her amber eyes gradually faded, and perhaps false, perhaps real courage poured into the girl's body, allowing her to focus more on the twisting roads.

distortion?

At this moment, as if an electric arc flashed through her brain, Xiangzi suddenly felt something. She turned her head sharply to the right front, pointed there and shouted:

"From there... there might be an exit, no, there must be an exit!"

The armored vehicle turned and rushed towards the strange twisted place, while turning the turret and firing the machine gun at the monster continuously, while Saikawa Ayane took out a revolver grenade launcher and kept pulling the trigger.

The gunfire was brilliant, and the flickering orange-red flames cast a strange shadow over everything around.

Just as the armored vehicle collided with the distorted air, the accumulated rainwater suspended above the bridge crashed to the ground with a thunderous sound, and in the next second, it swallowed up both the armored vehicle and the skull centipede monster.

The armored vehicle rolled back and forth in the tsunami transformed from rain. If Ayane Saikawa had not pushed Xiangzi back into the car and closed the hatch before the rain poured down, they would probably have been thrown out of the car... By then, even a prophet would have found it difficult to know the girls' final fate.

“Ouch, it hurts…”

Xiangzi forced her eyes open and saw a mess - the armored vehicle that had stopped had overturned on the ground. Although there was a faint sound of rain outside, the extreme cold that penetrated into her bones had disappeared - some intuition told the girl that she had returned to the normal world.

Maybe it's not just them.

Xiangzi heard rustling sounds coming from outside, crawling slowly along the wall of the armored vehicle. It sounded like thousands of fingers knocking, again and again. Such dense knocking sounds gathered together, like raindrops hitting a plastic film in a rainstorm.

Just as Xiangzi was about to say something, his mouth was covered.

In fear, Xiangzi saw Shiraishi Ruixi raising her finger, signaling her not to make a sound - the armed priestess was not in a good condition, blood was slowly dripping from her head, and she looked particularly weak in the increasingly dim light.

Next to them, Ayane Saikawa bumped into the girl named Tiancang Kan and seemed to have fainted.

"Hush," Shiraishi whispered. She gripped a pistol, her arm trembling from the cold and pain. "I'll go get the monster's attention, and you run towards the light... Run as far as you can. Don't worry about us—don't cry. No matter how tough we are, we're still warriors protecting humanity. We sacrificed our lives for you, and it was a worthy death."

Xiangzi wiped away his tears, pursed his lips tightly, and nodded in agreement.

But the girl's eyes sparkled with a light she had never seen before.

"Very good, I'll open the side door, and you escape through the commander's hatch. Go ahead."

"it is good."

Xiangzi carefully opened the hatch, and the rain outside fell on the girl again. She looked up and found that the centipede monster was still wandering on the armored vehicle, but it had become thinner. There were some painful murmurs on the old man's face - the moment of returning to the normal world had obviously caused damage to it.

In the light reflected from the distant city, Xiangzi could see a small path that led to a road where car lights seemed to be flashing.

The distance is short, and with her strength, she can definitely run over it, it just takes some time.

"time……"

Xiangzi turned his head to look inside the armored vehicle and saw that Shiraishi Mizuki's usual indifferent face was frowning, as if she was scolding Xiangzi for not leaving yet - but the armed witch's palm, which had already pulled out the pull ring of a grenade and was gripping the grip, was trembling slightly. This trembling seemed to be contagious, causing her slender body to begin to tremble as well.

Ah, they are no different from me, we are all people who are afraid of death and pain.

Death... If I died here, would I be able to see my mother? Most likely not, but, but—I had already run away from the CRYCHIC people who cared about me, from the oath to "share joy and share pain together," and I couldn't run away now—at that moment, Xiangzi made a decision.

"Give me some luck, mother."

The blue-haired girl climbed out of the armored vehicle and ran away, shouting:

"Monster! I'm here!"

Hearing the sudden rustling sound behind her, Xiangzi, who was wrapped in a chill, felt her scalp tingle. She didn't dare to look back, but forced her legs to run forward... But unfortunately, the girl overestimated her physical strength:

After running only a few dozen meters, Xiangzi's legs went weak and he fell forward to the ground.

The centipede monster's foul-smelling warm breath came through the air, almost piercing the girl!

almost.

The wind is howling!

Xiangzi looked up and saw the steel giant falling from the sky and swinging a heavy punch - his legs landed on the ground with a bang, splashing mud and impact, making the girl's blue hair sway in the wind.

The rotor helicopter cast a light like the sun in the rainy night, and in this light, the giant stepped forward, breaking through the rain curtain, the monster's roar, and the girl's leaping eyes.

When Xiangzi stood up, she saw that the monster had been completely killed by the spikes of the flamethrower and the metal pile driver, leaving only a charred body emitting a little heat and a foul smell.

In the slowly dissipating ashes of the monster, a page of a book was spinning.

Perhaps noticing Xiangzi's gaze, the metal giant slowly turned around. Its body bore obvious traces of experiments, like a weapon hastily taken out of a laboratory.

Looking at the existence before him, Xiangzi whispered the name engraved on the edge of his chest:

"Armoredmobile master-slave system." (AS, from "Full Metal Panic," a bipedal humanoid mecha)

The rain was still falling, but Toyokawa Shoko no longer felt the cold:

She closed her eyes, fell backward, and fell into sleep.

Armed Shrine Maiden Toyokawa Shoko (Part 3): Future Gadget Research Institute

Cold, shaking...

Warmth and comfort...

Shoko Toyokawa opened her eyes, but saw only a grayish-white color.

"Unrecognized ceiling."

Then he turned his head to look to the side and saw the witch sitting next to him.

"Someone I don't know."

"It's too late to say you don't recognize me now," Saikawa Ayane said with a smile, "You've recovered well, Ms. Toyokawa Shoko, and your spirit hasn't been contaminated. This is very lucky for someone who is encountering the other world for the first time."

"I have amnesia. I don't remember anything."

"That's perfect—ahem, your name is Toyokawa Shoko. You've been a GOC combatant since birth, and you refused a higher salary and are willing to do voluntary labor..."

"Hey!" Xiangzi suddenly stood up and glared at her. "You don't even pay me, are you devils?!"

"If you're willing to stay, there'll be more money available... You need the money badly, right? You need to repay the 160 billion yen owed to the head of the Toyokawa Group," Saikawa Ayane said, clasping her hands together at her cheeks. She tilted her head slightly, a gentle expression on her face. "However, we do admire your willingness to follow your father, who was kicked out of the house—regardless of the outcome, regardless of whether you regret it now or not."

"...You guys know?"

"The GOC, and even the forces supporting it, are far more powerful than you can imagine. It won't be difficult to investigate your background in just one night."

Saikawa Ayane stood up with a gentle smile on her face. She reached out to help Xiangzi, who was wearing a hospital gown, get off the bed and handed her a shrine maiden's costume.

"Why is it an armpit-baring shrine maiden costume?!"

“Because it’s a summer style.”

“But no one else is wearing this!”

Xiangzi's face flushed crimson, and her fingers subconsciously rubbed the miko costume. But she soon noticed that the flexibility and strength of this thing far exceeded that of ordinary clothing. It was more like some kind of bulletproof thing that only rich people with too much time to spare would customize.

"Ahem... If you've accomplished enough and your rank is high enough, you can apply to the Army Without Borders headquarters to directly destroy the Toyokawa Group, or even take it back into your own hands. Mitsubishi or Mitsui are harder to deal with, since they have the support of the Japanese government, but yours is still possible."

Old man Fengchuan who is processing documents:?

"Actually, there's no conflict between me and Grandpa. I'm just being angry."

Xiangzi, who was wearing the armpit-baring witch costume, whispered. In fact, her first reaction was that the other party was joking - but after being taken through the long underground passage and passed through two heavy airlock doors, the girl no longer scoffed at this possibility:

In the giant underground hangar brightly lit by lights, several bipedal humanoid mechas stood on both sides. Dozens of technicians in overalls were debugging them. From time to time, fully armed witches or priests passed by, and they all had solemn expressions on their faces.

A little further away, there was a row of armored vehicles and tanks parked, and even an armed helicopter on a lifting platform... Is this some kind of military base?!

By the way, why are there Atlas and Aperture Technologies flags hanging there? Besides their respective company logos, the technicians' armbands also feature a strangely creepy yet cool "Laurel Crowned Skull" logo.

Even though she was a young lady in seclusion before, Xiangzi knew very well what kind of monsters Atlas Corporation and Aperture Technology were. Needless to say, the former was in trouble, and the latter had already recovered from its difficulties and even dared to compete with Atlas in multiple high-tech projects and markets. When behemoths of this level fought each other, Fengchuan Group had better stay back to avoid being accidentally injured by the aftermath.

Then, a more important question arises:

Now these two behemoths are joining forces.

From what Saikawa Ayane said nearby, they're all under the control of the same organization... What's their plan? Are they planning to rule the world, or use some genetic virus weapon to eliminate humans who don't meet their expectations?

Xiangzi helplessly covered her eyes with her hands, she could only feel her temples throbbing.

"The collapse of the Soviet Union, the bursting of the bubble economy, and other factors have combined to increase activity in the Otherworld in Japan," Saikawa Ayane explained softly to Xiangzi as she led the girl through the suspended corridor above the hangar. "Plus, we also need to monitor locations where there may be cracks in the Otherworld, so we're always short on manpower."

"That sounds...very bad."

"It's terrible. Something's happening in Africa. I'm afraid the GOC's Japanese branch won't get much support."

"The Japanese government didn't respond?" Xiangzi blinked. "They will surely help a little, right?"

"We've cut off all information and intelligence, and blocked relevant news channels. It's not easy for them to learn, and headquarters currently has no intention of directly contacting governments... Some things are better left to rot among the permanent members of the UN Security Council—who knows what will happen in the future."

Saikawa Ayane said, smiled at Xiangzi, and reached out to push Xiangzi behind her:

Several Aperture Technology sentry turrets were marching past with small steps, pausing for a few seconds as they passed Xiangzi, emitting some regular ticking sounds. The scarlet sensor light made the girl's scalp tingle, but she quickly shifted her gaze away.

Xiangzi followed Saikawa Ayane into a door with a crooked sign hanging on it. The sign was covered with all kinds of weird and immature remarks, but the few large characters in the center were eye-catching and formal enough:

"Future Props Research Institute?"

"Yes, the Future Props Research Institute," Saikawa Ayane nodded slightly. She opened the last door for Xiangzi and introduced with a smile:

"This is Ms. Kurisu Makise, Director of the Future Gadget Research Institute, a subsidiary of the Global Occult Alliance, and her assistant, Mr. Rintaro Okabe."