[-] Who cared what that stupid voice said? Now that the lights were on, she could look around and try to find a way out!

Wriggle knew better than to try to mess around looking for the terminal thingy. After all, didn't authorize have something to do with writing? She hated writing. Writers were dumb. No, better to stay as far away as possible, no matter how many buttons there were.

Besides, people with fancy metal things got really upset when she just hit random buttons. It was like they didn't understand what buttons were for! Or maybe it was just kappa being rude and touchy. Though... there didn't seem to be anyone aside from the annoying voice. Maybe she could get away with just one button? They were all lined up nicely, and they looked like the kind that made that satisfying clicking noise (almost bug-like, that!)

No, no, focus! Escape first, buttons later.

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

"Shut up already!" she yelled at it, flying up in the air for a good look around. With a bug's eye view (Mysty would argue it was a bird's eye view, but there were more bugs than birds, so there!), she had a much better look at the layout.

The spot she'd woken up in was pretty much all shelving and parts. She tried sounding out the signs for each row as she passed - “feet”, “exo-skeleton”, “sircewits”, “hydrawliks”, “main cannon” (with a smiley on it) and a bunch more. (No row marked "Exit", though.) As she watched, a bunch of stuff stored in the bins emptied out onto each row’s rolling belts, feeding them into huge machines. And what came out the other end onto even MORE belts looked completely different to what came in, then got carried off into those tight, dark tunnels anyway! Wriggle couldn't make sense of it, and didn't see the point in trying. Each machine made something different, but none of them looked useful (unless she needed new clothes after a REALLY BIG growth spurt) and-

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

So help her, Wriggle was gonna blast that voice the moment they showed themselves. Anyway, this place was real big on machines, and real short on doors and windows. She didn't see a single window, not one, and there were only two doors near her. A normal person-sized door in the shelves area, and a big hatch (like, the size of Cirno's igloo big) hatch in the ceiling.

[X] CHECK OTHER END OF ROOM

Wriggle paused, considering the idea... nah. She had a perfectly good door right there! Two of them, even! She buzzed over to the person-sized door, yanked on the handle, and the stupid thing was stuck! Even with her fearsome youkai strength, it didn't do anything but rattle! A little panel by the door lit up, and started blathering its own "Authorization required" at her!

“Reauthorization required. Proceed to the terminal and identify yourself.”

Giving the panel a kick (ow) before deciding to just try tuning out the noise, she flew up to the ceiling where the big hatch was. It didn't even have a handle, just two big slabs of metal that met in the center! There was no opening that by hand unless you were an oni. Folding her arms, she glanced at the metal rail that went through the one end of the door. It was pretty thick, maybe if she took that out she could squeeze through? Though, the other end of it connected to a big square platform only a little smaller than the door. With some buttons!

Wriggle brightened up immediately. Surely one of those buttons had to open the door! Dropping down, she hit the green upwards arrow, and-

"Elevator locked until reauthorization."

Bah. Maybe the down arrow?

"Elevator locked until reauthorization."

Why'd this all have to be so annoying? Hopefully the red bell behind the glass case would do something. She flipped it open and prepared to give the button a good press-

[X] CHECK TERMINAL FOR AUTHORIZATION

Wriggle's finger halted midair as a thought struck her. She itched to press it, but it'd probably just yell at her about reauthorizing again. Maybe she needed to press buttons on the terminal until she'd reauthorized it, and then these buttons would work? Ugh, but that meant the yelling terminal would be right next to her and really loud. Unless reauthorizing shut it up, but if she couldn't reauthorize with the buttons, it'd yell at her over and over and over again!

[-] Buttons solve everything, even reauthorizing!
[-] There was the other end of the room. Maybe there'd be something over there?
[-] She should try the red bell button, just in case. Being behind glass made it special, right?
[-] On second thought, the small door didn't look that sturdy. A fierce youkai like her could totally kick it down!

[-] On second thought, the small door didn't look that sturdy. A fierce youkai like her could totally kick it down!

There were a lot of buttons here. And while normally she could happily press away, there was something stopping her, and not just that annoying voice! No, somehow she had a gut feeling (totally not because some kappa had yelled at her before) that not all of the buttons were good buttons. That meant pressing the right ones would take a lot of slow, careful thinking. But Wriggle didn’t get where she was today by thinking!

[X] A SURPRISINGLY ACCURATE SENTIMENT.

The bug youkai flew up to the ceiling, preparing her strongest attack. The one so swift and so deadly, it had even hit Reimu once, and that’s before she made a spellcard from it! She’d even hit the black-white magician, too! Didn’t matter if she’d been laughing really hard for some reason, it still counted!

[Super Ultimate Coolest Really Special Reimu-Defeating Move!!! - Wriggle Kick]

A ton of green energy gathered around her foot, and she flew down in the fastest, coolest kick that any martial artist ever would be jealous of! And there were also a bunch of bullets that followed her when she did that, like a super hero leaving a cool energy trail! (Plus a few random ones off to the side, it was a spellcard thing.) But anyway, Wriggle herself was going to slam into the door with the force of a thousand… what’s a really strong kicking thing? She’d heard rabbits had strong legs, but “thousand rabbits” didn’t sound right. Thousand miko, maybe?

She was still thinking about this when she hit the door. Like everything else in this stupid building, the door was metal too, and while she definitely dented it, it didn’t go flying off the hinges like it was supposed to! Which meant her leg bent awkwardly under her as the rest of her body continued trying to move forwards… right up until she faceplanted into the door and came to a painful stop.

This also meant she was still pressed right up against the door when all those bullets from her “energy trail” hit. Wriggle had put just enough thought into her spellcard for all those bullets to connect at once, without considering exactly what they might be connecting with.

The resulting blast blew her and the door out into the hallway. Along with bathing the entire factory in red light as she set off every alarm the place had.

“Intruder Alert! Kappa spy detected in Assembly Line TY-182!”

“Ow.” She picked herself up off the door, shooting her fallen foe a disgruntled look. “I knew I should have just pushed the buttons.”

In addition to ear piercing sirens, blinding red glare, and a somehow even more annoying voice repeating itself - though at least the reauthorizing one shut up - there was one other effect of Wriggle’s dynamic entry. Namely, panels on the ceiling, walls, and floor opened up and these metal boxes started coming out! A trio of smaller metal tubes came out of each of them as they all swerved to point at Wriggle.

Something about those machines reminded her of a human slowly moving closer with a can of that awful “bug spray”. A whole lot of them, in fact. She swallowed.

“The kappa spy is over there?” Wriggle tried to smile. “They knocked over a bucket of metal thingies and everything!”

Of course it didn’t work. She’d been caught red-handled. Stupid door. Stupid building. Stupid danmaku-shooting metal boxes! Each of them shot a whole bunch of bullets and there was no way Wriggle was forcing her way through all that mess, so started backing up while she shot back. Even an idiot knew that letting the danmaku open up always made it easier, so if she just went way, way back, all the bullets would crash into walls and she’d be fine! Then she could pick the turrets off one by one, no problem!

Her brilliant plan lasted about three seconds before the first bullets crashed into her backside. Which wasn’t fair! Bullets from behind were super advanced stuff, what kind of psycho puts turrets on both sides of a hallway?!

Now she was in real trouble! Well, she’d already been in trouble from the moment she woke up in a strange, evil building without any idea how she got there, but now she was in even more trouble! She could dodge the bullets from behind a little bit, but once the bullets in front caught up, she’d be squished like a bug!

[X] USE A BOMB.

Oh, right!

[Wriggle Sign - Little Bug Storm]

As the swarm of her bullets spun out into a circle and canceled out all the turret bullets, the bug youkai breathed a sigh of relief. That bought her… maybe ten seconds? She wasn’t close enough to hit the turrets with it, and they were just firing more rounds. She was still looking really doomed.

[X] RUN! USE THE DOOR!

Oh, of course! Wriggle dove for the door, snatching the evil kick-resisting object and using it as a shield! With this nigh-impervious protection, she flew straight into the flood of bullets, full speed. She flinched as the first wave of bullets hit, and… it actually kinda worked? Like, it smacked into her face (ow again), rattled her hands half to death and scared her the other half, but she didn’t get blown up or anything! Sure, it probably couldn’t survive another bajillion bullets, but she was breaking through! Another wave or two and she’d reach the end of the hallway and be in the clear!

She rushed through the waves of danmaku. The shield held. And Wriggle triumphantly reached the end of the hallway, rounded the corner, and discovered the worst possible thing.

There was another hallway! With more turrets! And the moment she saw them, they started firing at her too!

It wasn’t fair. If she wanted to make it through all that, her shield would need to survive like… three bajillion more bullets. And that’s if there wasn’t another evil hallway lying in wait at the end of this one!

She looked down at the door. It looked like that scary schoolteacher had been headbutting it for an hour, while she had horns. Sooooo many dents, and the thing was almost bent in half from the pounding she’d already given it! But there wasn’t time for a new plan! She was right in the thick of the turrets now, and turning back just meant she’d have to go through the first hallway again!

No time, more bullets!

Wriggle backed towards the corner, gripping the door as firmly as she could as she tried to dodge her way through the pattern. It was too much. Lines of green bullets and circles of yellow ones coming from dozens of places making stupid thick walls not even a shrine maiden could cheat her way through! Her shield groaned and shrieked with each new hit, and in less than a minute the freaking handle came off the door!

Wriggle yelped, diving for her only cover and taking a few painful hits before catching up to it, but there was still nowhere to go! Clutching it as tightly as she could, she backed all the way into the corner, trying to block as many angles as she could as she cowered behind what was left of the door.

The bug youkai looked desperately for any possibility that vaguely resembled hope. Maybe that alert voice was a spellcard and it’d run out at some point! They had to stop shooting after they knocked her out, right? Gensokyo had been weird lately, but danmaku still worked like that, it had to, even if these were just metal boxes and might not be that smart. Could they even tell? She was barely moving now and they were still shooting at her - at this rate she’d probably find out if Larva was right about it being always summer in bug-heaven!

Hiding behind a mangled piece of metal that no longer resembled a door, backed literally into a corner, each bullet literally smushing her into the wall that little bit more, Wriggle would need a miracle to escape. And when the latest danmaku assault hit, her shield literally snapped in half, one arm smacking herself in the face while the other bounced into the floor.

At which point the floor promptly ceased to exist.

Wriggle could still see where it should have been, outlined in these translucent green lines - but the floor itself was gone. There was no floor, it was an ex floor, and she could see some kinda dark basement beneath her - except it wasn’t so dark because her arm was burning, shining brightly and hurting just as terribly as when she first woke up.

And it was also getting nearer, because she’d just fallen through the floor. She yelped as she crashed down onto a wooden desk, having just enough time to cover her head before those metal boxes rained down around her in an absolutely horrifying storm. Between the crashing of the actual impacts and half the turrets literally exploding, the bug youkai was absolutely frozen from fear. She didn’t dare so much as look up until the last echoing boom had died down, and it was another couple of minutes before she was willing to actually move.

The floor - or ceiling now, she guessed - was back, looking completely normal again. As for the room she’d fallen into… well, whatever it was before, it was a total wreck now. Broken furniture, with bits of wood, metal, and a buncha stuff Wriggle couldn’t even guess at everywhere. It looked like that big red mansion after something big went boom and that maid cleaning it all up. (That better not be where she was. Wriggle didn’t wanna explode!)

Her best actual clue was the desk she’d landed on, what with how it and the chair next to it were the only things that hadn’t gotten totally exploderated. And she did kinda recognize them! These were the sorta desks humans spent a ton of time sitting at! Sometimes literally half the day! (She’d tried it once and given up after a few minutes. It had been really boring, she didn’t know how the humans did it.) There’d been a lot of paper on that hadn’t really cushioned her fall, it just kinda scattered everywhere.

Wriggle rubbed her sore bum grumpily - seriously, falling right on her bottom hurt! It was like this place was trying to hurt her glowy organ worse! She’d been worried that had already happened from all those bullets, what with her arm glowing even more and how it’d felt like it was burning up. But no, both of those had stopped, and a quick glance confirmed that her arm… her arm was… gone? From the elbow down, all she had was the outline of an arm in green lines, just like the floor when it vanished.

It took a second for that to sink in, and the moment it did, Wriggle started screaming. She’d lost an arm. She’d lost an arm! She only had two of those! And with a human form she only had four limbs to begin with, so that put her down to three, and that meant she was only half a bug! She couldn’t be half a bug! What if she lost half of everything else too - the evil floor consuming more and more of her until it was satisfied?! For all she knew there was another evil hallway outside looking to kill her too - the whole building was just evil!

She flew back up towards the ceiling, flailing ineffectually at it as she screamed at the building, the kappa spy, and the world in general to give her arm back!

[X] CALM DOWN. IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY.

It wasn’t helping. No matter what she threw, be it insults, danmaku, or bits of broken metal, nothing changed. The ceiling was still there, her arm wasn’t, and within a few minutes, she was down to brokenly pleading.

“G-give it back… I need that. It’s my arm, you’re a floor, what do you need with an arm? What do you need with my arm?! It’d make a terrible rock, or metal sheet, or whatever, so just give it back! It’s mine! It’s mine…”

[X] DON’T WORRY. YOUR ARM WILL RECOVER IN TIME.

Really? But the floor came back immediately and it had been ages and her arm was still gone! How much longer would it take?

[X] UNCERTAIN. PROBABLY HOURS, DAYS AT WORST. REST WILL HELP.

Days?! Wriggle’s heart sank. That was practically forever, a lot of bugs didn’t even live that long! Even a few hours was like 20% of forever! A-and what if the evil floor attacked her again, would she lose another arm? Would it start on her legs next?!

It was then that the door opened (another evil door, part of her noted dully), revealing a blonde fox. She wore a full body white suit decorated with green viney bits that could have been cool if they didn’t remind Wriggle of evil arm-stealing floor magic. Speaking of which, the fox also had two full arms. Not that there was any reason for her not to have them, it would be really unusual and terrible not to have both your arms! But no, hers were right there, one on the door handle, the other holding a glass tube, ready to throw.

Wriggle didn’t feel like talking, so she just kinda flopped back to the ground, huddling in the lone surviving chair. The fox took a moment to stare at her, then at the wreckage of the room itself. Gradually she lowered the test tube, raising her other hand to her ear.

“Sanae, I think I’ve found our intruder.”

Wriggle ignored her, and after a short pause the fox continued talking to herself.

“That’s just it. It’s not Reimu, it’s that minor bug youkai. Wiggle, I think?”

“Wriggle,” the bug youkai said sullenly.

“That’s not the only weird thing.” The dumb fox ignored her again. “She’s dressed like a youkai straight out of a different realm, but I don’t recognize which one. Some vaguely futuristic hexagon motif. Not to mention she’s got a green wireframe mesh for an arm. I’m pretty sure she’s upset about it; you might have heard the screaming.”

There was another pause, after which the fox rolled her eyes. “Tell you what, why don’t you come down and investigate the unknown weapon and I’ll keep an eye out for trouble? Shouldn’t you be trying to win her faith or something?”

Now that she was closer, Wriggle could barely hear someone else’s voice, small and tinny in the fox’s ear, though she couldn’t make it out. The fox, who clearly could, sighed in annoyance as the voice reached its conclusion. “Fine, I’ll take the risk. But if you’re wrong, I’m going to haunt you for all eternity. I’ll steal half your socks and eat all of those little chocolates before you can sneak them. And then I’ll turn off the hot water while you’re in the shower.”

The tiny voice gave a distinct tone of indignation as the nearby half of the conversation chuckled. “It’s adorable that you think that. Now be quiet, I’m about to talk to her.” The fox tapped her ear again. “Hey. Wriggle, was it? I’m Kudamaki Tsukasa.”

[X] BE CAREFUL. THIS ONE CAN BE TROUBLE.

The bug youkai folded her arm and weird glowy not-arm around her knees. “What.”

Tsukasa gave her a smile, hiding her hands behind her back as she leaned in. “Look, I can see you’ve had a hard time of it, but this whole factory is a restricted area. The yamawaro take security pretty seriously, and they contract out to some real heavy hitters. Why, between the Moriya Shrine and Lady Iizunamaru-”

“Who?”

The smile slipped for a second and she shook her head. “A really wise and powerful tengu. Also my usual boss, but we’re getting away from the point. See, you’re not supposed to be here, and normally I’m supposed to bring you in. And with the amount of damage you’ve caused… well, they probably won’t be happy.”

Tsukasa gestured to all the destroyed stuff in the room, but Wriggle barely cared. What were they gonna do, take away her arm again?

“But let’s put a pin in that for now. I can see this isn’t your fault; if you tell me what happened, I can help smooth things over for you.” She paused meaningfully. “Maybe even get the shrine to fix up your arm?”

Her arm could be fixed now?! The fox had Wriggle’s full attention with that, she’d do anything to have her arm back… but she had to not get blamed for this mess first!

[-] Explain how it was totally a kappa spy with evil floor magic that did all the damage.
[-] Admit she’s got no idea what’s going on. She woke up here, and then it’s been one crazy thing after another.
[-] There was a better explanation! She just had to figure out what it was! (Write-in)

[-] Explain how it was totally a kappa spy with evil floor magic that did all the damage.

Wriggle needed to be really careful, because bad things happened when she got caught at stuff! Basically every time she got caught at anything she’d get lectured, or headbutted, or exterminated, or all three! (Seriously, teachers and shrine maidens were mean.) But this fox sounded like she’d believe her, so maybe this was her chance to get un-caught!

“I didn’t do anything! It was that mean kappa spy!” Wriggle clasped her hands together and got on her knees. “They kidnapped me and then tricked the reauthorizing voice into firing at me instead of them so they could use their evil floor magic to make the floor vanish and my arm vanish AND exploderate all the turrets! And the room, too.”

Tsukasa hummed in non-committal fashion. “And what did this kappa spy look like?”

Uh oh. She was asking the tricky questions. “Like a kappa!” Wriggle said, thinking furiously. “You know, the blue clothes and the big green backpack?”

“As in, a normal dress, made out of cloth? Like you’d see in the human village?”

Was there another type? The obvious answer was yes, but the fox was saying it like it wasn’t obvious, so maybe it wasn’t? Wriggle scratched her head, trying to puzzle it out. “Is this a trick question?”

“Oh, just checking.” Tsukasa smiled again. “But speaking of tricks, how exactly did the kappa do their ‘evil floor magic’?”

Wriggle perked up. “Oh, I learned about this one!”

That seemed to surprise her. “Did you now?”

“Yeah! Kappa can do water magic, right?”

“They call it water manipulation, but yes.”

“Well, that scary teacher said that the human floor is 70% water! So that’s gotta be close enough!”

Tsukasa was absolutely speechless at her genius, so Wriggle launched into the rest of her evidence. “You can tell there was a kappa too, because of all the buttons around! Only kappa have so many buttons!”

The fox dragged a hand across her face, muttering something under her breath before addressing Wriggle again. “In that case, what can you tell me about your arm getting hurt? It’ll be hard to fix it if we don’t know what the kappa spy did.”

“I don’t know!” the bug youkai complained. “I was just hiding in a corner trying not to get shot to death, and when the floor disappeared my arm disappeared too!”

“But was there anything unusual when your arm vanished?”

Wriggle hesitated. Her arm did glow a whole lot first, but that might make Tsukasa think she did something, and it was probably from her glowy organ getting hurt anyway. “I don’t think so? Except it hurting a whole bunch, but that’s prob’ly usual if you lose your arm.”

Tsukasa sighed. “Fine, let’s try this from a different angle.” She tapped her ear. “Sanae, can you pull up the factory layout? Where’s that diagnostics lab?”

“Let me see,” came the tinny voice from the fox’s ear. “Hm, it’s another floor down on the west side of the building. If you retrace your steps to the firing range and follow your steps down, you should be right there.”

“Roger that. I’m going to take Wriggle there and see if we can figure anything out about this arm of hers. Maybe you should come and take a look too, in case it’s something on the godly end of things.”

Wriggle’s eyes widened. “You’re going to fix my arm?”

Tsukasa gave her a smile. “I said we would, didn’t I? Don’t worry, this sort of miracle is right up Sanae’s alley.”

“Oh sure, put all the pressure on me,” the voice (Sanae?) grumbled.

“Thanks, Tsukasa!” Wriggle gave the fox a one-and-a-half armed hug. “That’s really nice of you!”

The fox went all stiff, before pushing Wriggle’s arms away. “It’s nothing, really.”

“Aw, you have a fan,” the voice said cheerfully. “Maybe she’ll even ask for your autograph!”

“Just get your ass over here already,” Tsukasa grumbled.

The trip through the factory was weird. They went through a bunch of different hallways, but everything they passed by just seemed like more work stuff. Desks, whiteboards, guns, metal parts, more glowy screens and buttons… just one room after another!

“Hey Tsukasa?”

“Yeah, bug?”

“Nightbug,” Wriggle corrected her. “But why aren’t there any windows down here? Where’s the sun, where’s the exits?”

“You really don’t have any idea how you got here, huh?” Tsukasa sounded amused. “The yamawaro hid their facility underground. There wouldn’t be anything to see.”

“So are they like metal-building ants or something?” Wriggle asked. “I guess this is kinda like a hive…”

This time Tsukasa chuckled outright. “Nah, they just wanted to hide this place. An arms factory on the surface would have gotten flattened pretty much immediately.”

Oh, like that red mansion! Though, now that she was looking, maybe it had happened anyway? The longer they flew, the more damage there was. The first hallway or two had looked almost new, if you ignored the wreckage from the evil floor magic. But after that, there started being holes and dents and scorch marks, like someone had used the place for an incident!

“Did someone attack them?” Wriggle wondered aloud as they flew around one hallway that had half caved-in.

“Oh, you could call it that,” Tsukasa answered, spinning around in midair to face the bug as she flew backwards. “You see, the yamawaro used to have two production lines here. One for mechs, one for drones. They were hoping the drones would be a selling point, something that could give them an edge over the crazy mechs Nitori’s been putting together.”

She nodded to show she was listening. “Did they blow up?”

“Right train of thought, but the attacker came up with something better. Their leader, Takane, put together this big demonstration to show Kanako. A whole exhibition about what you could do with drones, controlling areas remotely, so on and so forth. Every last one of them went haywire. Not just the ones in the exhibition, either - it was the whole factory!” She spread her arms wide, before making fingers pistols and pointing around. “Started shooting up the assembly line, the workers, each other, and all the potential customers to boot.”

“But if some attacker did it, wasn’t it their fault?”

“Oh, it was obviously sabotage.” The fox placed her hand at the side of her mouth, like she was whispering a big secret. “Probably Nitori, given how the kappa are the obvious benefactors from the whole scandal. Nobody could prove it though, which means she planned the whole thing out well. But forget who did it, the bigger problem is that the drones being hackable in the first place is a huge weakness. If they can be made to do this,” Tsukasa gestured to the wreckage around them, “to their own factory, why on earth would you deploy them to protect your home? You might as well blow it up yourself at that point!”

“But couldn’t she fix the hack and make a better drone?”

Tsukasa laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “Youkai mountain’s not big on second chances, bug. After a big failure like that, the yamawaro’s reputation was sunk, and they knew it. Takane shut what was left of the factory down and left for Chimata’s domain within the week.”

Wriggle wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Even with the evil floor magic, the factory had a lot of effort put into it. Having it thrown away just like that seemed kind of sad. “Is she doing well there?”

“Oh, no need to worry,” Tsukasa assured her. “After those losses, Takane accepted a position working under Lady Megumu. It’s been a very profitable arrangement.”

Well that was nice, at least. “What about the kappa?”

“Oh, you know the saying. Crime doesn’t pay, it just opens highly lucrative business opportunities. With no competition, Nitori’s been selling arms to both sides and making a fortune.”

Wriggle’s eyes widened. “Is that where my arm went? Did she steal my arm to sell it?!”

The fox gave an odd cough, glancing back at her. “I’d say it makes just as much sense as the kappa spy theory.”

Tsukasa had believed her about the kappa spy, so that was basically a yes! The bug scowled - it wasn’t enough for kappa to be mean and greedy and keep Wriggle away from a bunch of perfectly good buttons, now they were stealing arms?! They’d gone way too far! They needed to be exterminated, no, double exterminated!

“Aaaand here we are,” Tsukasa announced, pulling Wriggle out of her thoughts.

The… what was it? Diag-nose-ticks Lab? The lab had this giant heavy door with one of those screens with all the buttons. Wriggle could practically hear the reauthorizing voice complaining again, but thankfully there was also a hole blown in the side of the wall! Scrambling through the hole, the inside was another one of those huge rooms, like the assembly line she’d woken up in!

The far wall was completely covered in screens, though they were all turned off at the moment. In the corner was a huge circular space walled off, kinda like a shower for giant people! But inside wasn’t a shower, but a bunch of tools on the end of metal arms! The rest of the room reminded her a bit of the area she’d woken up in - there were a bunch of parts and tools in bins, along with a few of those kappa-style workbenches. Tsukasa led her over to one of those first.

“I figure we might as well start with the basics. Lay your ‘missing’ arm on the table, please.”

Wriggle did as the fox asked, scowling at the glowy green lines. Tsukasa grabbed Wriggle’s hand, gently feeling it with her thumbs and fingers. The bug tried not to squirm, even though it felt really weird, especially when Tsukasa pushed her fingers through the holes in the wires.

“Stop, that tickles!”

“Sorry, this will do a bit more than just tickle.” The fox replied. “Do your best to stay still, alright?”

Tsukasa did all sorts of other stuff after that. She seemed really fascinated by the idea that Wriggle’s arm was hollow! She shined a light on it, poured water on it and watched it drip through, and even pushed a tissue in! It kept brushing the inside of her arm and tickled so bad until the fox managed to get it back out! And then there were a bunch more tests Wriggle didn’t understand - the fox pulled out a small hammer and tapped Wriggle’s arm near the elbow with it, making it bend. She had the bug hold a glass bulb in her hand until the red liquid inside went up. She took this weird gun-looking thing with a screen on it, and pointed it at Wriggle’s arm. (Nothing happened, but apparently it was supposed to beep? Tsukasa seemed surprised about it.)

Then there were the painful tests too. Tsukasa took what looked like a pencil with a small knife on the end and dragged it across Wriggle’s palm, which felt weird and scratchy. The fox shot her arm with a danmaku bullet, which stung just as much as she knew it would! And then she took this weird tool she called tweezers, put the end of it into Wriggle’s arm and squeezed the handles - that pinched real bad and Wriggle yelped, yanking her arm away and shaking it off.

“There you two are!” A new person flew through the hole in the wall; a shrine maiden with green hair! She had a full bodysuit like Tsukasa did, all shiny in whites and blues, with green snake and frog designs on it. But Wriggle shivered at the look of her gohei - those things hurt enough when they were just wood and paper, but this one was metal, and the papery bit was glowing! Sure, the tool had all the shrine maiden’s godly, youkai exterminating power (which was really even more reason to be nervous), but shouldn’t it only do that when she was using it?

Tsukasa didn’t seem bothered, though. “Yep, exactly where I said we’d be. Did you get lost again, Sanae?”

“I wasn’t lost, it’s just the direct passageway’s collapsed.” Sanae grumbled. Her eyes then went straight to Wriggle’s missing arm. “Oh, wow! It really is a wire frame.”

“Acts like one too,” The fox said casually. “Look, poke your finger in here-”

“That’s so cool!” Sanae poked her pinky right through Wriggle’s hand and started wiggling it around. “Can you actually feel that, or-”

“Please stop!” Wriggle pleaded, yanking her arm away and glaring at the stupid shrine maiden.

Sanae held up her hands, “Ah, sorry. I just love the cyberpunk-ness of it, you know?”

“No! I don’t love it, I want my arm back!” The bug yelled back.

There was an awkward pause at that before Tsukasa coughed. “Anyway, aside from being hollow, it acts just like a normal arm would,” the fox explained. “It seems roughly on track for low level youkai durability, and Wriggle can still feel her sense of touch and pain through it.”

“Yeah, and it still stings!” she complained, rubbing the spot those dumb pliers pinched. “Can you fix my arm now?”

“Just one final test, and we’ll see if Sanae can work some magic,” the fox promised.

“And what test is that?” Wriggle asked suspiciously.

Tsukasa gestured over to that big shower-like space with all those tools inside, and Wriggle paled. Those looked like they’d hurt a lot to get poked with!

“The mech scanner?!” Sanae blurted out. “For crying out loud, does she look like a giant robot to you?”

“Relax, it can scale down to human size, and it’s not like I’m going to run her through the durability tests. But if that arm of hers is anything mech-related, the scanner should identify it. And if not, that at least confirms that it’s some other youkai’s domain at play.”

The fox’s argument seemed like it was swaying Sanae, and that made Wriggle worried. “Do I have to?”

The fox smirked. “If you want your arm fixed-”

“Tsukasa!” the shrine maiden snapped at her.

“What? I was going to say it’d help to know what was wrong with it.” Her face was a picture of innocence. “By all means, try your best to help her, but aren’t miracles easier if you know exactly what they are?”

Sanae sighed, dragging her hand across her face before turning back to Wriggle. “No, you don’t have to. I’ll admit I’m really curious, and that it might help. But you don’t have to.”

The bug youkai considered that. “Will it hurt?”

“You’ll be fine,” The fox said. “A little brief discomfort at worst.”

“It’ll hurt you less than it hurts Tsukasa.” Sanae smacked her gohei into her hand. “I promise.”

[X] Nuh-uh, no way! Wriggle wanted no part of that torture chamber, and they’d done more than enough testing now anyway!
[X] Well, she did really want her arm back, and they promised it wouldn’t hurt…

[X] Well, she did really want her arm back, and they promised it wouldn’t hurt…

Wriggle was having second thoughts about this. The scanning chamber was huge, and though they were glass, even the doors looked real thick and sturdy! The walls were thick metal with all sorts of painful-looking gadgets, the ceiling looked like one of those giant spotlights (turned off for now), and even the floor had these different sized circles around the middle that made it look like a big target!

“Alright, bug, just go right ahead and stand in the center,” Tsukasa said cheerfully. “The machine will take care of the rest.”

“It’s Nightbug,” Wriggle grumbled, before swallowing her nervousness and getting right in the bullseye.

Tsukasa moseyed over to one of the screens and after a bunch of button clicking, the smallest circle in the floor started lifting Wriggle up, The bug stumbled, looking around wide-eyed at the metal arms surrounding her as the light overhead turned on. Reflexively, she looked up, and for a moment went utterly still.

The lamp was beautiful.

[X] WHAT? DON’T- OH COME ON, STOP.

It glowed a pure bright white, but Wriggle could swear there were colors in it, little flickers of gold and green and colors without name dancing in and out around the edges. It blazed with the intensity of the sun, yet bathed her in the comfort of gentle moonlight. Hard to look at, yet impossible to look away from, the bug squinted through the glow, barely even noticing the criss-crossing grid of lights scanning her.

"That's odd," Sanae muttered from outside. "Why's the image so garbled?"

"The distortion is centered on the bug's arm," Tsukasa said, gesturing at the screen. "Which you'll note isn't showing up at all aside from static."

The shrine maiden sighed, dragging a hand across her face. "At least that confirms it's nothing Nitori's made. Is there anything it can tell us?"

"We've got some scanning patterns for other domains," the fox tapped away. "Let me try lining those up."

Wriggle was only half paying attention, entranced as she was by the beautiful light show, but after the fox said that, the pattern changed! Suddenly it turned a deep red, the flickering of colors becoming a thrumming, vibrating, living crimson that pulsed in time with Wriggle's heartbeat. She could feel hers speeding up to match it, and just as she felt ready to charge, the light changed again!

This one was a light blue, caressed by fingers of pink. It felt steady, always watching, always patient, but with the true life taking place around the edges. Red and black danced around the edges - now snuggling up to the central light, now playfully fleeing. The bug felt seen - both drawn in by a gentle hand, and stared down by an all-seeing eye. She rubbed her eyes, blinking owlishly as a brilliant flash of green and gold streaked by before the calmness returned.

“Still nothing,” Tsukasa frowned. “Maybe one of these?”

“Are the scans supposed to look like that?” Sanae asked.

Each scan brought a new pattern, steadily growing more brilliant, more frantic. A war of greens, reds, and purples, clashing constantly in a true assault upon the senses. A rainbow deluge that teased and excited, its colors manifesting out of nowhere in a rush of new surprises. There was even a point where it went dark - not just off, but dark, seemingly swallowing the chamber in a hollow, terrifying void. Through it all, the colors became more and more frantic, skipping and starting in unpredictable fashion as the light itself was bent, drawn towards the bug youkai. Unaware of this, Wriggle watched, completely transfixed by a desire deeper than words could express.

[X] CONTROL YOURSELF. IT’S JUST A LIGHT.

“Her arm’s reacting somehow,” Sanae said. “The static’s getting worse.”

“Well, hopefully we get a detectable reaction, because this is the last scan,” Tsukasa grumbled.

As it turned out, the best had been saved for last. It was like humming compared to a symphony, mere crusts compared to a feast. This was no mere light show, it was an entire world made manifest.

It was the moon.

The silvery glow was brilliant, and for a moment the world outside the scanning chamber faded entirely. She was back in the meadow, laughing beneath the endless night as she and her fireflies lit the way, hopelessly outmatched, yet dancing amongst danmaku because this was what life was for! Bathed in silver light, the mooned insect flew, drawn upwards by a force as irresistible as gravity, as joyful as life itself. Except instead of being miles upon miles out of reach, it was here, within her grasp!

[X] STOP! DON’T TOUCH IT!

Entranced by that shining display, Wriggle flew closer and closer, dimly realizing that someone had said something, but not caring. That thirty feet vanished in an instant as the bug accelerated towards her goal, reaching out for the moon…

Tsukasa stared in disbelief as Wriggle smacked into the ceiling. In fact, smacked was too light a word - she flew into it full speed, forehead first, with her own momentum clotheslining her as the rest of her body followed suit. For not the first time (had it reached double digits yet?), she wondered what on earth was up with the damned bug.

The girl was an idiot. Oh, the tube fox had been frustrated by her attempts at playing dumb at first, right up until she realized nobody was that good of an actor. No, the bug had two brain cells, and they weren’t on speaking terms. (She’d need to see if she couldn’t work “exploderated” into her report, just because.)

But at the same time, something was up with that arm. Somehow it had taken out several hallways of turrets in one go, and was defying every form of scanning they had. And it wasn’t even from this world! If it could do that on foreign territory, it had to be absurdly powerful in its own domain - a weapon on par with Reimu’s Yin Yang orbs, or Marisa’s mini-hakkero. So why give it to Wriggle?

The girl wasn’t mentally capable of being a conspirator. She didn’t even make a good pawn - the whole point of pawns was being able to move them predictably, and Bugsy here was literally getting distracted by a few shining lights! She could be a Trojan horse, some sort of ticking time bomb set to go off on them… but then why make it so obvious? Was the arm meant to be bait somehow, to tempt them to use it in a way that would backfire? But again, if that was the case, why attach it to Wriggle?

It just didn’t make sense. There had to be a scheme of some sort in play, but Tsukasa couldn’t see the angle, and it was frustrating her more than the thrice-damned scanner. Which was no small irritant in its own right. Sure, the yamawaro didn’t have a complete list of all the domains around, but you’d think one of them would have turned up something!

The kuda-gitsune was jerked out of her musings when Wriggle’s arm activated, the ceiling above her turning into a green mesh like her arm - except this one wasn’t solid, revealing the wires and machinery underneath.

Tsukasa’s eyes widened as she realized what was about to happen, but it was too late. Before she could so much as call out, Wriggle’s outstretched hand grabbed one of the live wires.

In an instant, the connection formed. The facility's lights flickered and died as every ounce of power was redirected into the scanning chamber, and from there, into Wriggle's arm. Lines of fire tore into her chest like a shrine maiden's needles, piercing and burning both at once. The bug screamed, muscles spasming uncontrollably from the thousands of volts rushing through her body - but the ceiling itself had returned to normal, meaning her arm was well and truly stuck in there.

Tsukasa’s fingers rushed across the keyboard, trying various commands - Escape, Alt-F4, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, all to no effect. The scanner had locked up.

"What are you waiting for?" Sanae demanded. "Stop it!"

"Does that look intentional to you?" Tsukasa shot back. "The controls are dead!"

"Then cut the power!"

"How? The cables are inside the ceiling, so unless you want to carve a hole in the building-" Tsukasa blanched. "That wasn't a suggestion!"

Sanae had whipped out her gohei, the glowing tip drawing a star in front of her. "What did I say about common sense?"

Five beams of light shot out from the star's points, passing into the scanning chamber and making a ninety degree turn upwards. They punched into the ceiling around Wriggle, before the star twisted, and the beams spun around in a circle.

Tsukasa cursed, rushing towards the scanning chamber herself. She had to jump and roll over one of the damned beams, but she got there in time. With a tortured shriek of metal, the ceiling gave, and Wriggle fell, her arm still embedded in the light. She caught the moron and the chunk of ceiling still attached, before calling on the spellcard that might save them both from this “help”.

[Kuda-Gitsune - Vial Sanctuary]
A thin, cylindrical dome of energy formed around her and the bug, shaped like an inverted test tube. Barely big enough to fit them both, and hopefully strong enough to stop what was coming. A shower of metal and stone deflected off the tube, debris dropped from higher floors, but that wasn’t the real danger.

Because as everyone knew, whenever you break a giant machine, it explodes.

[-] To be continued.

((Well, at least one voter is getting their wish.))

[X] Deal with predictable consequences

As the explosions battered both her tube-shield and the ceiling above, Tsukasa gave a quick laugh, double checking her timing. She was starting to get used to it, but there was still something thrilling about being safely dead center in the middle of an explosion. Something that would normally be suicidal of course, but explosions in this world were special.

Like many things, it was Sanae’s fault. When the plans for this world had been drafted, the shrine maiden had insisted, insisted that all the machinery explode. Oh, she gave a bunch of reasons as to why - the benefits of clear victories, preventing scavenging of defeated mechs, and (of course) how they couldn’t be held back by common sense - but everyone knew she just wanted the dramatic effect.

Sure, it was a staggeringly silly thing to want, let alone to spend political capital on, but Tsukasa hadn’t really minded; it wasn’t like she was the one spending it! As such, she’d supported it in her usual way (protesting just enough to make everyone think the sneaky tube fox didn’t like it), and let Lady Megumu know to push for concessions elsewhere.

Regardless, at least some common sense had prevailed. Nitori had pointed out that explosions that size would leave the landscape a set of smoldering craters, the gods had agreed, and somehow they’d used those crowns of theirs to redefine how the mechs blew up. Still a flashy, spectacular boom, but somehow they’d redefined it as being technically danmaku.

There was one other useful trick to it. Every last machine detonated in exactly the same way. A series of gradually ramping explosions as the smaller components went boom, followed by a slight pause as the entire thing glowed white hot, and finally the big detonation. The whole thing was consistent enough that she’d made a spellcard precisely tuned to shield against one of these blasts. In defiance of common sense (or at least that’s how she’d pitched it to a certain shrine maiden) Vial Sanctuary was a shield that started weak and got stronger, reaching maximum strength at exactly the same time as that massive detonation. It was a little indulgent of her, but walking unscathed out of the middle of an explosion was the kind of rush worth a little waste.

It was like pulling off a good scheme. There was always an exhilaration to that - to facing down a god or youkai that she’d sabotaged in six different ways, burning with anger at the latest in a string of (technically coincidental) setbacks. Groveling before their wrath, knowing that a single misstep could lead to their foot coming down on her neck… and knowing that it would never land there, as she whispered the words that would guide them into her trap. Armed with nothing more than her wit, she would throw them into desperate battle against another piece she’d maneuvered, the clash of titans being just as spectacular - and just as harmless to her - as the explosions now rattling her shield.

Speaking of which, the explosions were dying down now; she’d reached that calm before the storm. Not as calm as usual; the debris still raining from above added a little spice to it, but-

Wait. The debris - Tsukasa’s eyes widened as she realised the magnitude of her mistake. They were five stories underground! And in a space like this, the scanner wouldn’t be the end of it; it would bring the mountain itself down on their heads! Vial Sanctuary would safely carry her through the last explosion, only to get her crushed under a thousand tons of rock and concrete!

“Sanae, get us out of here!” She yelled, banging on the side of the tube before remembering the military-ish terms Sanae was using. “Evac! Evac right now!”

The shrine maiden startled, having been watching from behind a barrier of her own. “I thought you had it!”

“The cave-in, you dolt! We’re going to be buried under the mountain!”

Sanae’s eyes widened, and she immediately lashed out with her gohei in a classic spellcard declaration.

[Yasaka’s Divine Wind]

Lines of blue bullets came from the far side of the room, the “gusts” striking the tube with considerable force before wrapping around it just enough to push. Tsukasa staggered, trying to keep her feet as the giant tube was pushed along - Vial Sanctuary had been designed for stability, but there was a limit to it, and as another trio of gusts wrapped around the bottom, that limit was reached. The fox yelped, trying her best to shove herself and Wriggle up into the top of the tube as the wind literally blew them and the tube both away.

The tube toppled over, but Tsukasa got a glimpse of Sanae slashing her gohei again, and the winds realigned to keep pushing them towards the door. Which admittedly helped, though with the same feeling of luxury as being stuck in a barrel and rolled down a hill. Just with another person bouncing against you and the added threat of falling out, in case that sounded too comfortable.

Once Sanae got it going, there really wasn’t much to do but hold on and hope for the best. The idiot bug kept knocking into her and the tube both, more and more as the wind blew them along faster and faster. Tsukasa’s world became a blur - Ceiling, floor, ceiling, ominous glow, floor, ceiling - and then the explosion hit.

A blinding flash, a deafening boom, and there was that always nerve-wracking instant where the flames and shockwave crashed into the glass. Having made it just outside the center, those forces were all in one direction instead of canceling out, and the shockwave flung them away at high speed.

This was half bug (hah) and half feature - they did need to get away from the explosion, but it was designed for those outdoor mech fights where she had hundreds of feet of open air to play with! Instead, they got a split second of hang time before sailing into the hallway and crashing into the wall on the other side.

The spellcard took the initial impact, but Tsukasa took the rest of it, and then got squished by the damned bug landing on her! Blinking through her daze, she was coherent enough to see a brief moment of calm inside the scanning room, right before everything inside was crushed by an avalanche of rock and metal.

A line of those laser-like stars she favored flew out to attach to the lab’s walls, supporting them like a particularly tacky cross-brace. Another became the foundation of a barrier by the door, giving a decent view of the mountain of debris it was holding back. And after stopping a literal landslide with a casual wave of her gohei, the shrine maiden ran over to check on them.

Her heart beating like it wanted to burst out of her chest, the fox suppressed a giggle. That was the other reason she followed Sanae around - it wasn’t just that she was a naive, ditzy teen and correspondingly simple to manipulate. It wasn’t even the sheer power wielded by such a fool, of having a rival to the Hakurei Shrine Maiden who loved getting into interesting situations almost as much as Tsukasa herself. It was that Sanae still had an outsider’s scruples. The thought of exterminating youkai by actually killing them would horrify her. Even sealing one away would make her deeply uncomfortable - the kind of thing that would take a lot of persuasion from someone she trusted deeply.

And she somehow kept that streak of kindness (some would say weakness) while being the type of monster who considered the Hakurei Shrine Maiden a reasonable rival to have.

That right there made her an incredible piece and safety net for just about any of Tsukasa’s schemes. Unless the tube fox went way over the line, Sanae’s kindness would protect her from anything worse than danmaku, and her power was more than enough for it to be actual protection. (Not quite from everything, but if you piss off one of the Yakumo, you deserve whatever happens to you.) Combine that with how fun she was in the incidents themselves, and Tsukasa had every reason to want her around for a long time.

“Are you two alright?” The worried girl asked, kneeling down next to them.

Tsukasa pushed the bug off of her and gave Sanae a weak smile. “I’ve been better, though I suppose that’s par for the course with heroic rescues.”

The girl gave a sigh of relief, sitting Wriggle up against the wall. “Did you really charge in there without an exit plan?” She asked curiously.

Tsukasa was not about to admit she’d forgotten about the cave-in, and it was much better to let her minder think she did the heroic thing. “Like you said, someone had to do something. And besides,” she turned her smile up a notch, “I knew you’d have my back.”

The girl seemed taken aback, and the fox suppressed a more predatory grin. Little bits of seeming earnestness, that was the key. Even if she suspected it was faked, she’d feel bad about not returning the gesture.

Sanae was saved from finding a response by the resounding thud of Wriggle flopping to the floor. “Mysty, this eel is bad. ‘S all fuzzy.” the bug mumbled.

“No rest for the wicked, youkai or otherwise,” the fox said drily. “You’d better take a look at her.”

Sanae at least knew when it was time to be serious, and the shrine maiden knelt down to examine the bug youkai. While she did her usual lay-on-hands miraculous healing thing, Tsukasa used the time to gingerly extract herself from the crater. Holding her hand to her chest, the fox took a few experimental stretches and stock of her own condition. Nothing felt worse than bruised, at least. Which, annoyingly, meant the correct idea was to play it down, not up. The rugged adventurer toughing it out just fit Sanae’s heroic fantasies better, even if a twisted ankle would be simple enough to fake.

“Do you have any idea why her arm is back?” Sanae asked.

That caught her attention, and Tsukasa limped over to look for herself. Sure enough, Wriggle’s arms were both present, without a green wire in sight. “I take it that wasn’t your doing?”

“No,” Sanae shook her head. “There’s something else weird. Look at the hand she grabbed the light with,” she lifted it up, showing the palm to Tsukasa. Aside from a light down the inside of her arm, it looked completely ordinary to the kuda-gitsune, and it took her a second to realize that was the point.

“There’s no burn marks below the elbow.” And that wasn’t just Sanae’s healing at play - the part above had some scarring, even if the damage was fixed.

“Yeah. Her arm up to the elbow is as good as new, but everything past that point had heavy electrical burns.”

“Maybe the wireframe arm replaced her normal one while it was active?” Tsukasa speculated. “If her arm was stored in some kind of gap or back door space, it might have just been out of the way when she got shocked. The zap might have shorted out the wire arm the same way it did the lights.”

“Maybe,” Sanae said doubtfully. “But, that light in her chest is glowing bright green. If something was wrong, I’d expect it to be yellow or red, or shorted out entirely.”

Tsukasa shrugged in response - it was speculation, but in all fairness, so was her opinion. She ran a finger down the crease of Wriggle’s elbow, but she couldn’t so much as find a seam. If not for the glowing line, she’d swear this was the arm the bug was born with.

“Stoppit, that tickles!” the bug shifted in her… sleep? She wasn’t acting like someone violently shocked unconscious.

An experimental arm-pinch made Wriggle flinch, but her eyes didn’t open, and she didn’t move beyond that. Tsukasa frowned. “Can you wake her?”

“I tried,” The shrine maiden admitted. “She looks alright, but she’s out cold.”

Tsukasa used her fingers to open one of Wriggle’s eyes, but the sightless stare was uncanny and she let it drop shut. “You think something might still be wrong with her?” She asked, injecting a touch of worry. “That zap might have fried her worse than we thought.”

Sanae shook her head. “She should be healthy now, she’s just not waking up. Something in the dream world, maybe?”

Great, more mysteries. But any further speculation was cut off by a buzzing noise coming from Sanae’s forearm. An alert. The shrine maiden tapped the panel on her armored bodysuit, opening it up to display the screen. (One of those nifty little conveniences the tube fox was perfectly fine with living without. Even aside from how uncomfortable wearing armor felt, sometimes it was so much more convenient not to receive a message.) Tsukasa drifted around behind Sanae, looking over the girl’s shoulder to see for herself.

She could see why the shrine maiden had gone quiet. The number of dots on-screen was not encouraging. “Tell me that’s one of your quaint music games, not the radar.”

“It’s the radar.” Sanae confirmed, frowning. “That’s too many mechs to just be a patrol. How’d they know we were here?”

“The cave-in must have given us away”, Tsukasa regretfully let go of the chance to assign blame as she grabbed for her own communicator. Which showed… wait, where was it? Ah, she’d set it on the table in the diagnostics lab, hadn’t she? Irritating. The fox leaned over Sanae’s shoulder, taking over hers instead. “Let’s see… Two dozen inchlings, two of their lieutenants… and they’re coming from all sides. Oh dear.”

The shrine maiden was right. That was too many mechs for a simple patrol, or even being caught between two of them; it was bordering on half their forces. Combined with the angles on the surround? This wasn’t completely Sanae’s fault after all; the inchlings had known they were here before the fireworks started. And that? That was interesting.

Tsukasa tapped through the details on the larger mechs, finding exactly what she suspected. “Looks like it’s Noble Wolf and Dullahan.” Also known as the two members of the inchling side best suited to a dedicated search. “I bet they didn’t know we were here specifically, only that something was happening in the area.”

Sanae pulled her arm away, shooting her a look. “Does that matter right now?” The shrine maiden sighed. “Still, if Shinmy herself isn’t here, we could blast our way through.”

Tsukasa flicked her ear, drawing an annoyed look from the girl. “Not without backup, we can’t,” she said chidingly. “And Suwako’s near, but not that near.”

It was one of the biggest differences between mech battles and danmaku fights - someone on Sanae’s level could fight an essentially infinite number of tengu grunts, but giant mechs simply couldn’t graze their way through spellcards in the same way. The higher quality mechs could absorb a lot of damage, but throw enough firepower their way, and anyone would fall.

“Sure, we can’t fight all of them at once, but if we rush for our mechs right now, we can punch through here,” Sanae pointed at the ring’s weak point, which just so happened to be the opposite direction from Suwako. “Just half a dozen inchlings? You take two, I’ll deal with the other four, and we can clear out before the others reinforce.”

“The Noble Wolf specializes in pursuit,” Tsukasa reminded her.

“So? If she wants to chase us by herself, let her.” Sanae grinned. “I’d be happy to give her a proper duel. Now grab Wriggle and come on!”

Hm. It wasn’t the worst plan in the world, but something about it set Tsukasa ill at ease. Still, Sanae was right about one thing - whatever they were going to do, they needed to do quickly.

[-] Let Sanae have her way, try to blast through.
[-] See if they can get the facility’s defenses online. Forget about inchling territory, the earth itself was Suwako’s territory. They just had to hold out until she could get here.
[-] Takane’s facility did have a back exit into Chimata’s domain. They’d be forfeiting their mechs, but it would completely dodge the inchlings’ trap.

So, Atsunima was kind enough to make a cover image for the story. The full thing is animated, but the file size for that is too large to upload here. You can see the gif version at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1we8Z-1YsfcvQLix23pIbTypb6s2iCUVv/view?usp=sharing or the original mp4 on his twitter, https://x.com/asutnima

Honestly, I'm really happy with how the whole thing turned out.

Anyway, I know it's only just getting started, but this story is now shifting over to the backburner. It's still ultimately a secondary project to USiL, and with my hiatus on that story now finishing, I need to get back to updating that. I'll try to throw in updates here when I have time, but I don't want to promise too much - USiL does come first, and I'm only going to be writing Wriggle's tale if I'm making enough progress (or taking a break from) that end of things.