We pressed forward, cycling the bulkheads—raising them to pass, then sealing them shut behind us. I wasn't about to let anything sneak up on our rear.
“I did it!!!” the Fairy suddenly shrieked.
“What now? You need a therapy session or something?”
“Bzzzt! Wrong! I hacked the facility’s shaping printer and whipped up some thermite bombs!”
“You what!?”
In short, she’d manufactured incendiary explosives.
“And self-destruct drones, too! We send the drones into the ventilation ducts, and when they find an enemy—boom!”
Wait... the Fairy was actually being useful? This idiot girl, who usually did nothing but sabotage people’s games, was actually contributing?
“Are you thinking something rude right now?”
“Uugh... You’ve grown so much... sniffle! Waaaaah!”
“Don’t cry! You’re annoying.”
After she finished scolding me, we moved one section deeper and entered a room housing a shaping printer. Ballistic ammunition was stacked nearby; they had likely manufactured it but lacked the means to transport it. The boys deployed floatboards and began loading the crates.
We waited a moment longer, and soon, a line of assembled drones rolled out. The printer still had jobs in its queue, so we lingered until a batch of thermite grenades emerged.
“The drones are rigged with thermite rounds,” the Fairy explained.
“Yeah... right. I get that, but...” I paused, staring at the machines. “Why are they teddy bears?”
“Because I like them. Is there a problem?”
“They’re literally made to explode!”
“Shut up!”
“O-Oh. Okay.”
I climbed out of my Humanoid Fighter, popped a ventilation duct cover, and began deploying the drones. They scurried into the vents one after another.
“Sonar active. Mapping the ventilation system now.”
Fairy... I thought. When she wasn't being a brat, she really was competent, wasn't she? Even for an older model.
“Image analysis complete. Foreign object detected! Fairy, check it!”
“On it! Drone approaching. Contact in three... two... one... It’s an enemy! Detonating!!!”
A heavy thud shook the room, followed by the sound of air whistling as it was sucked into the vents.
“Target lost. Did we get it?”
“No sonar hit. Switching to visual via backup drone... The vent was ruptured by the blast. It looks like the enemy was using a pipe running above the room. It escaped that way.”
“Any survivors in the area?”
“No biological signatures! The room is empty!”
“Where did the enemy go?”
“Likely the lower vents. I’m tracking with another drone.”
The sonar map appeared on my display. The enemy was a red dot; our drones were blue. We had twenty units gradually cornering the target.
“Get theeeeeem!” the Fairy screamed. “Hell yeah! Blowing them up now!!!”
The blue dots blinked out one by one, but the red dot remained.
“They pushed through the thermite fire! Leo-kun, they’re coming!”
I felt it too—a surge of bloodlust so thick it made my skin crawl. It was a raw, primal murderous intent, like that of a cornered wild animal. I braced my shield and waited.
A sound echoed from above. The next instant, something burst out of the ventilation duct.
It was flesh. A massive, pulsing tide of meat cascaded into the corridor.
“Wh—it’s huge!”
“No way! It didn't show up on the sonar!” the Fairy shrieked.
The mass of meat surged forward, swallowing my machine and Claire’s. I threw a punch instinctively. No good. The surface just rippled, the impact completely absorbed by the flab. I dug my heels in and shoved back with my shield.
“Ro— Roller dash!”
My rollers spun, kicking up a storm of sparks. I sluggishly ground forward, pinning the surging lump of meat against the wall.
“Captain! I’m throwing thermite! Move away!” Melissa yelled.
I tried to disengage, but the meat wouldn't let go. It clung to my machine like a parasite.
“Firing!” Claire shouted.
She unleashed a volley, but the rounds only charred the surface before being swallowed by the folds of flesh.
What now? What the hell do I do?
Piggett moved in with his shield, helping me pin the meat against the wall. He thrust his sword into the mass, but the blade was immediately submerged.
“Nuoo! What is this thing!?”
The boys were desperately pushing with their shields as well, but the ever-expanding wall of meat was starting to shove them back. At this rate, we were going to be smothered.
Think, Leo. Think!
In that moment, a ridiculous idea flashed through my mind. We were in an ultra-close-combat state. An elbow? No. A headbutt? No. A body slam... too difficult. I was already pinning it.
That’s the only thing left.
I knew I was an idiot. But I decided to bet everything on that idiotic idea.
I let my body go limp, shedding all tension. Then, with a localized burst of momentum, I struck with my shield using the smallest possible movement.
Sun-kei. Sun-ken. One-inch Punch.
It has a dozen different names. Whether or not it’s actually practical in real combat, nearly every martial arts school on Earth has some version of it. It’s the classic demonstration move everyone knows.
With the massive weight and momentum of my custom machine—its joints specifically modified for such force—the meat sandwiched between my shield and the wall simply collapsed.
“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”
It had a vocal apparatus somewhere. The meat actually screamed.
I didn't stop. I slammed the shield in again and immediately followed up with a weighted elbow strike. The section of meat that took the brunt of the area attack was pulverized.
“It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!!!”
“The damn thing... it’s sentient!”
The meat suddenly began retracting, sucked back into the ventilation duct. The bastard was trying to run!
“Captain!”
Melissa hurled a thermite grenade. Damn it—chasing it was impossible. I leaped backward just as the grenade went off, engulfing the area in flames.
“Hot! Hot! It’s hot!!!”
Screams echoed from the vents. It sounded like the thing still had plenty of fight left in it.
“Captain! We’re falling back to the previous section!”
As Melissa spoke, my machine was suddenly hoisted into the air. The boys had picked me up, carrying me over their heads like I was stage-diving at a concert.
“Ah! Damn it! It got away!”
“Captain!” Melissa asked as we retreated. “Where did you learn a move like that!?”
“Sure-kill Kung Fu One-hit Fist! You know, that movie they always play in reruns! All the guys at the Junior Academy used to obsessively practice the moves! I just tried it, and it actually worked!”
It was a stupid B-movie about saving a planet from space pirates using kung fu. But kids are destined to imitate that kind of stuff. I wasn't about to tell them I’d repelled it with some mysterious Qigong power; it was pure physics. I’d just executed a body slam through my fist with minimal travel.
“You used a movie move in a life-or-death situation!?”
“Hey, it worked, didn't it?”
“Major Piggett, say something!”
“Darn it, Melissa! Just trust the Lord Groom’s intuition! It’s a waste of time to try and make sense of him!”
“Wait, isn't that just plain mean!?”
They were officially treating me like a total weirdo.