Looking around he saw Daiya, who was also sick that day. The usually mirthful look in his blue eyes was now cold and hard. The Processors’s postings in each sector were roughly six months long to prevent them from conspiring together and stoking rebellions. After six months, squadrons were dissolved, and their troops were scattered and reorganized into other squadrons. This squadron was entering its fifth month, so getting their next posting wasn’t unusual, but…

Raiden looked down at Shin, who gazed back at him and said with his usual unyielding, indifferent tone, “All platoon leaders, me included, are to be sent to the first defensive ward’s first defensive unit.”

Rito gasped. Raiden squinted his eyes suspiciously. The first ward’s first defensive unit.

“…Spearhead, huh?”

The eastern front was the most contested and fierce battlefield, and Spearhead was the squadron charged with manning its first line of defense.

It was the front that claimed the most lives in this battlefield with no casualties.

It was brief and ever so faint, but Raiden certainly saw it—their captain, bearer of the title of “Reaper,” flashing a dreadful, cold smile.

Daiya + Anju

“I heard it meowing in a house that got blasted by a Löwe shell, and my eyes met his. It was through the sensor, but we talked, heart-to-heart.”

With an expression fitting the cheapest, most pulpy tragedy known to man, Daiya held a black kitten with white legs up to his chest. Its triangular ears and silvery whiskers twitched as it meowed in what was indeed a very distinctive voice.

“I looked around and found another cat, probably its mother or something, crushed under the rubble. And look at how tiny it is! There’s no way this little guy can make it on its own.”

Forced to play along with these theatrics while filling out a supply order form, Shin moved his emotionless crimson eyes to Daiya. Shin had been wondering why Daiya had opened his canopy and exposed himself to danger before the battle was over, even if there were no Legion in the vicinity. And this kitten was the reason.

What’s more, Shin could see where this was going. He was already scanning the desk for the heaviest object he could reach for.

“I promise I’ll take good care of it…so please let me keep it, Mom!”

As soon as he heard that last word, Shin picked up a sheathed bayonet knife sitting on the table and tossed it at Daiya. Expecting this, Daiya jerked his neck to dodge…only to take a direct hit in the forehead from the paperweight Shin tossed next. Daiya’s head wobbled back.

The kitten hopped out of his arms, and Anju caught it in the heat of the moment, hugging it to her chest.

“Good read on his joke, Shin,” she said.

“Anju… I’m begging you: worry about me in this situation, not it…”

The cat meowed in Anju’s arms, as if to say No one cares about that.

“I’ll go wash the kitten, then. Remember those rags we got when we asked for towels, Shin? I’ll be taking one of those.”

“Sure.”

Anju walked out, the kitten in her arms, and Daiya got back to his feet, quick to recover in more ways than one. Seeing Shin reach for an old, leather-bound book with a metallic fixture on its spine, he knew better than to repeat the bad joke.

“So, can we keep it?”

“I don’t mind,” Shin replied with indifference, but Daiya brought a hand to his forehead, shaking his head in a show of sorrow.

“Aaah, no, Shin, that’s not how it goes! You’re supposed to tell us to put it back where we found it! Right?!”

“…”

“And then I try really hard to persuade you with tears in my eyes, and promise I’ll look after it, and then you’ll go, Oh fine, have it your way! Got it? Let’s try it one more time from the top…”

“We can start over and I can tell you that, but if I do, you really will have to go put it back where you found it. Without your Juggernaut.”

Today’s combat area was quite far from here on foot, and there were still Ameise and self-propelled mines prowling about, but Shin wasn’t about to care about that.

Sensing from Shin’s indifferent tone that he was being serious, Daiya fell silent, his hands still spread. Shin let out a deep sigh.

Seriously, this guy.

Theo + Kaie + Haruto + Fido

“And when I looked really carefully, I saw it. Lots of green lights floating above the river…”

“Whoaaaaaa, stop iiiit…!”

“…!”

As Shin came back from pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee, he spotted Kaie screaming and clinging to Haruto like he was some kind of stuffed toy, with Theo right behind her, whispering something in an amused manner. Apparently, the Handler girl on the other side of the Resonance reacted much the same way as Kaie.

Thunder rumbled outside. It was a rainy night, making it the perfect time for scary stories. Shin wasn’t sure if this weather extended to the First Sector, where the Handler was, though.

“That river’s been the site of many a battle over the years, so the ghosts of ancient soldiers sensed our battle and awoke from their eternal slumber…”

“I said stop it, Theo, you moroooon!”

If anything, those were probably fireflies.

As Kaie screamed, the Handler was apparently petrified into silence. Shin let that thought cross his mind and decided against saying it. Cutting into Theo’s prank felt like it was more trouble than it was worth.

It certainly wasn’t because the way the Handler girl curled up and trembled like a scared rabbit was funny. Certainly not. As Kaie hugged Haruto tightly until he went slightly pale—from asphyxiation—Haruto smirked.

“Oh, I saw one like this, too,” he said. “This black shadow standing in the woods. I looked away from it this one time, and when I looked back, it was closer. Then I looked away again, and when I looked back it was even closer…”

“Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Ugh!”

Why do you have to say things that literally tighten the noose on you?

Shin let that thought cross his mind and decided against saying it. He noticed Theo, his hands placed on the chair’s backrest and his chin resting on them, glance at him.

“Good timing, Undertaker. You have any ghost stories to share?”

“No… Not really.”

“Bummer.”

Theo scoffed in disappointment at Shin’s immediate denial, but then Shin remembered and looked back at the stairs he just walked up. It wasn’t a ghost story per se, but…

“By the way, who was that outside the landing’s window? They can’t be cleaning the windows in this rain.”

“Hold up!” Kaie, Haruto, and Theo all shouted at once.

Shin raised an eyebrow. “…What’s gotten into you three?”

“Don’t act all incredulous on us! What you said is weird! Like, all sorts of weird!”

“Like you said, nobody’s crazy enough to go outside in this rain, and if they’re outside the window of the landing between the first and second floor, where would they be standing?! What are they, flying?!”

“I mean, you just came from the dining hall! There wasn’t anyone there, was there?!”

Come to think of it, that was true.

“So maybe it’s someone who isn’t alive.”

“Cut it out!”

They all shouted at Shin as loud as they could, which forced him to go quiet. Theo, Haruto, and Kaie all started rubbing their forearms excitedly.

“Oh, come on, Undertaker. So you do have a horror story!”

“I guess he’s just too used to it and horror doesn’t register as scary for him! Wait, so how many horror stories have you gone through?!”

“I’m scared! I guess Undertaker really did end up being the scariest person here!”

Over the background of their squealing, Shin thought he could hear the Handler girl fall over, apparently having reached the limits of what she could put up with.

On his way back from picking up reusable parts, Fido stopped in its tracks upon hearing all the noise from the second floor. Its container was filled with large metallic statues it found lying inside a building that collapsed during battle a few days ago. The polished silver statues were quite beautiful, apparently fashioned after great men and heroes, but a few of them were a bit tilted from when Fido accidentally hit the barracks building.

It blinked its optical sensor once and then continued on its way back to the automatic factory’s recycling furnace. It threw the statues along with the other reusable parts into the furnace and, after praising itself for a day of work well done, the diligent Scavenger returned to its designated standby space.

Raiden + Kurena

“…This is both cruel and unusual, if you ask me…”

Since Eighty-Six didn’t count as human, they wouldn’t be given proper food, shelter, or clothing, and so the Processors’ field uniforms and the storehouses that housed them were covered in dust from years of neglect. Worse yet, the uniforms themselves were worn out from overuse and effectively useless.

This meant the Processors needed to pick up certain skills to get by, and some people were naturally more proficient at them than others.

“Wait, I never knew you were good at mending clothes,” Raiden said, seated by the table with his cheek resting on his hand.

“I dunno. Am I?” Shin asked while mending the frayed sleeve of a uniform.

Given how haphazard and bad he was with cooking, it only seemed reasonable to assume he’d be bad with work as precise as sewing. Raiden was always a bit baffled by the fact that he defied this logic, but Shin didn’t seem to mind.

Kurena sat next to them, dangling her legs like a little girl as she waited for Shin to finish working on the uniform, and Raiden was honestly fed up with her, too. Yes, Shin wasn’t fixing his own uniform here.

“I mean, come on. You’re not a kid anymore. Fix your own clothes, Kurena.”

“I’m bad at patching clothes.” Kurena looked away from Raiden in a huff.

What she said wasn’t quite precise. She wasn’t just bad at sewing—she was catastrophically inept. To illustrate why her lack of ability had to be described as catastrophic, back when they were first assigned to the same unit, she was so terrible at it that when Shin saw her try, he snatched up her entire uniform set and said he’d do it instead.

He didn’t do it out of some gentlemanly impulse to keep a girl from hurting her hands trying to sew the rough fabric of the field uniform. It was because her hands were completely bloodied, and he didn’t want her to waste any more string.

So ever since, whenever her clothes got torn, she’d come to Shin for help—though she never brought any underwear. This could be seen as her fawning on him, he supposed. Or some moving attempt on her behalf to talk to him. But from Raiden’s perspective as an onlooker, this was why Shin would never see Kurena as a girl, but only as a troublesome little sister.

“…Major, what do you think about what Kurena just said?”

Shin turned the conversation to Lena, who was Resonating with him but kept silent out of consideration while he worked. For some reason, she didn’t answer, which made Raiden open one eye.

“What’s wrong?”