"Catch me if you can, you stinking mutt!"
Facing the canine-featured calamity beast, Geno taunted it without restraint, not that he had any idea whether it understood him. Either way, it gave up chasing the tunneling machine and turned to charge straight at him.
"~Bite me, you idiot! Come on, bite me! Ow!!"
Geno had completely let loose, provoking the calamity beast with everything he had, wiggling his hips and striking poses in an attempt to make it snap.
As it turned out, the beast did take the bait — but instead of biting, it spat a pale blue frost-flame straight at him.
"Hell! Where's your honor, throwing ranged attacks like that!"
Geno patted his own backside, instinctively glancing back over his shoulder.
Thankfully he hadn't been charred, just singed a little.
That did nothing to ease his mind, though — if anything, the beast's display only made the situation feel more dangerous by the second.
This thing can't be beaten in melee, and I can't outlast it at range. So what am I supposed to do?
There was no way around it — the frost-flame shielding the calamity beast's body was simply too overpowered, both fire and ice at once, burning to the bone and freezing straight through the flesh. From just that one hit, Geno already understood how brutal that power really was.
But he couldn't keep running like this forever either. He only had two legs, after all, and there was no outrunning something with four — sooner or later, it would catch him.
Meanwhile, with Geno drawing the calamity beast away, the tunneling machine had managed to drag the grabber and the pile driver back to safety. Unfortunately, all three machines had already been rendered combat-incapable.
"Geroy, what do we do now? We've got nothing left to fight with."
The tunneling machine watched dejectedly as Geno was chased all over the ice by the calamity beast in the distance, utterly at a loss, turning to its big brother Geroy for guidance.
"Even so, this one shall never allow Master Geno to face such a monstrous beast alone!"
"That's right! Even if we get torn down to our last bolt, there's no way we're just standing here watching!"
Hans, the grabber, was practically shaking with righteous fury, and immediately moved to charge out and pull Geno from the fire — only to stumble and collapse onto the ice after barely two steps.
"Ow~"
"You've already lost both your feet. Quit trying to be a hero."
The tunneling machine looked at Hans with open concern. Back when they'd first charged the calamity beast, both Hans and Friday had already been battered to pieces.
Hans, with both feet snapped clean off; Friday, scorched and slammed into a pillar; and the tunneling machine Greta, stripped of its demolition saw — between the three of them, they couldn't scrape together one functioning unit.
And yet the prototype machine Geroy still hadn't said a word.
"Geroy?"
The three machines gathered around it. Noticeably larger than the rest of them, Geroy looked, in that moment, like a silent giant, quietly watching over everything unfolding before it.
"I'll go help. The three of you find Koleda."
With that, Geroy turned its treads and rolled off toward Geno in the distance, leaving the other three staring blankly at one another, not knowing what to do.
"Is it really okay for him to go alone?"
Hans's voice was heavy with dejection; he clearly blamed himself for being unable to help.
"There's nothing else for it. If we went up there now, we'd just be dead weight."
Compared to Hans, Greta was a good deal more level-headed. It didn't sit well with him either, but that was simply the reality, and there was nothing to do but accept it.
"I have an idea."
Right then, the old chuunibyou Friday suddenly came up with something, instantly pulling the other two machines' attention his way.
"Really? Tell us, tell us — what's the plan?!"
Greta and Hans stared at Friday with faces full of anticipation, and Friday, looking terribly mysterious about the whole thing, began laying out the plan to them...
Meanwhile, Geroy, already in motion, kept barreling toward Geno's position, treads spinning full tilt, kicking up sheets of white mist off the ice, charging at the calamity beast with a fierce, fearless momentum.
Right after, Geroy's frame started creaking and groaning, the armor plating across its whole body shaking without pause.
Every weapon system mounted on its body unloaded at the target without holding back, trying to draw the calamity beast's attention and take some of the pressure off Geno.
But before that barrage of firepower could even reach the beast's body, the rising frost-flame froze it solid, then shattered it into fine powder.
Even so, Geroy didn't let up for a moment, hammering the enemy without pause.
The commotion was loud enough that even Koleda and the others, some distance away, noticed.
"Nice work, Geroy! That's it — hit it hard!"
"I still don't like all that gear they bolted onto Geroy's frame, but at least it's actually doing something now."
Being too far away to make out what was really happening to the calamity beast, they only saw plumes of smoke rising and assumed the hits were landing.
But to Yanagi Tsukishiro and Asaba Harumasa — two Executives who'd both served in the military in their younger years — the truth was plain to see.
"No. It's worse than it looks. An attack at that level isn't affecting the enemy's movement at all."
Yanagi Tsukishiro's brow furrowed. Judging by the weapon systems mounted on this machine from Belobog Heavy Industries —
to their eyes, it barely qualified as 'civilian-grade' gear, and given how things stood, even professional military-grade equipment probably wouldn't do much better.
"Looks like even if the Defense Force showed up, there wouldn't be much they could do."
Yanagi Tsukishiro's mood in that moment was heavy with worry, especially with Hoshimi Miyabi — the backbone of Anti-Air Section Six — now in trouble.
No one could have imagined that Hoshimi Miyabi would ever be ambushed, let alone have a weapon stolen right off her.
The last time anything like that had happened was when Nicole tricked her out of the Hoshimi family's heirloom blade.
"I hope Mr. Asaba has some good news on his end."
She'd already sent Asaba Harumasa to check on Hoshimi Miyabi, hoping to get some information about Tailless out of her.
Right then, Yanagi Tsukishiro's communicator suddenly rang. Without thinking, she answered — only to freeze for a moment at the voice on the other end.
"This is Deputy Section Chief Yanagi Tsukishiro of Anti-Air Section Six. May I ask who's calling?"
"Miss Yanagi, this is Hoshimi Souichirou."
"The head of the Hoshimi family?"
It was no wonder Yanagi Tsukishiro was startled — the caller was none other than Hoshimi Miyabi's father, Hoshimi Souichirou, the current head of the Hoshimi family.
"I've already heard what happened to my daughter. I have some information about that monster that I need to share with you."
Hearing that Hoshimi Souichirou had information about the very beast standing before them, Yanagi Tsukishiro's eyes lit up at once — finally, something that actually counted as good news.
But just as she was about to give him her full attention, the group from Belobog Heavy Industries beside her suddenly burst into an uproar.
____
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