Chapter 04 — What Do You Mean, Cosplay—?!
"In the end... I put off deciding..."
An empty metal corridor. Letaria sat in a built-in chair and murmured to herself.
The conversation with Milea was still turning over in her head.
"I'd like you to help with data collection. I want to learn more about you."
It wasn't a bad offer, on its face. But something about that woman's manner — calm and unreadable — kept snagging on something.
(...I can't quite tell what she's thinking.)
Food, shelter, a roof over her head — offered in exchange for cooperation. And yet easy acceptance felt wrong.
(...She also took my dress.)
She looked down at herself.
The elaborate gown from her old world — stripped off for the examination — Milea had swept it away without asking.
"It'll be covered in sweat and other things. I'll clean it."
That was all she'd said, taking it as she left. Under her breath, Letaria thought she'd caught the word fascinating.
In its place: clothes common in this world. A light top. A practical skirt. The texture was nothing like silk or linen — something she'd never felt.
Strange. But not unpleasant.
(...Not bad, I suppose.)
Just as she'd accepted the strange food, she was beginning — without quite noticing — to accept everything else.
She looked up. On the wall across from her, a large hologram filled the entire surface with moving images.
No magic in her old world produced anything like this.
She watched without understanding. The image showed a layered place she'd never seen — metal structure and green woven together, light tracing paths between them, people moving everywhere in every kind of dress.
(...Is this Seldia? Is this what the city looks like...?)
Nothing like the stone streets and grand capital she'd known.
Cold at a glance. But alive.
As she looked, something small and unexpected came to life in her chest.
"...It does look interesting."
The words came out before she meant to say them.
The tightness she'd carried since the exile — since long before the exile — loosened, just for a moment.
But the stillness didn't last.
* * *
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
"—?!"
An alarm tore through the station, sudden and deafening.
Red light pulsed through the corridor. A cold mechanical voice followed.
[Emergency alert: armed forces approaching from outside. All personnel proceed to designated shelter areas.]
Letaria was on her feet before she'd decided to move.
(What is happening?!)
What she didn't know: the remnants of the pirate gang Blang, assumed destroyed, had scraped together a collection of mercenaries and launched a second assault on Seldia — this time relying on sheer numbers. Grain had already launched and was fighting to hold the line.
None of this had reached her.
(Shelter area — where?!)
The alarm chased her. She ran.
Right. Unfamiliar metal walls.
Left. More unfamiliar metal walls.
(I don't know this place at all—!)
She was completely lost.
Panting, she rounded a corner, and the corridor opened into something wider —
* * *
(...Oh.)
She recognized this.
A vast docking bay.
And there, held in maintenance hangers, stood the Makinas in silence.
She had stumbled here by accident. But she knew that machine.
The first battle surfaced in her memory. The faces of the men who had used her as a decoy.
"...The same sort as last time."
She didn't have the full picture. But she felt it.
The ones attacking now were those same graceless people.
"Disturbing my peace — that is an offense deserving of the harshest punishment."
Not duty. Not heroism.
Pure, uncomplicated anger that her rest had been interrupted again.
She looked at the machine and felt something she couldn't explain.
(...Arden wants to send them flying too!)
That was entirely her own invention. But if she believed it, it was true.
She moved toward the machine without hesitating.
Then the docking bay's speakers crackled with a sharp voice.
"Letaria. Don't. Get back."
Milea. She must have been watching through the surveillance system.
"Leave it to the Corps. You don't need to go out there."
The usual easy confidence was gone. A genuine order.
"That machine — the old Makina, Arden — it's especially dangerous."
The way it moved, with no consideration for its pilot — Milea knew better than anyone what it could do.
But Letaria's hand was already on the hatch.
"...Arden?"
She looked at the machine again.
"That's her name."
The warning had not registered. She had heard only the name.
"...I like it."
She slipped inside. The hatch sealed behind her.
"...Was she listening to any of that?"
In the control room, watching the monitors, Milea pressed one hand to her forehead.
"...She's something else."
A small smile found its way onto her face somewhere under the exasperation. She picked up her comm.
"I need to let the Corps know..."
* * *
The catapult launched her with brutal force.
G-forces that would have taken consciousness from any normal person — Letaria bore them, jaw set, and burst into the open sea of stars.
The moment Arden cleared the bay, a familiar battered hull appeared directly ahead.
Static burst across her comms. MTI activated, translating the enemy channel in real time.
"—It's that cosplay girl! She's back!"
A Blang remnant's voice, caught between panic and fury.
The moment she heard it —
Something near Letaria's eye twitched.
Anger rose like a tide.
"What do you mean, cosplay—?!"
She drove the controls forward with everything she had.
"Stop using words I don't know—!"
Arden's rear thrusters erupted.
She still hadn't worked out the ranged weapons.
So her approach was simple. Committed. Direct: a full-speed charge, and a flying kick with the machine's full mass behind it.
CRASH—!
Metal shrieked through simulated vacuum.
The remnant's Makina tumbled away in a long helpless arc, became a small bloom of light, and was gone.
Letaria sniffed. Then turned her eyes to the rest of the battlefield.
No fear. No confusion. Only the anger of someone whose rest had been interrupted, and something that felt — unexpectedly — like joy.
"Who's next?!"