The Villainess Takes the Cockpit

The vigilante corps' training facility had never held an atmosphere quite like this one.

Around the rows of modern simulator units, more than a dozen members—some of them off duty—had gathered in silence, eyes fixed on the central monitor.

"Nooo—I lost again—!!"

The hatch burst open and Stesia Rinin tumbled out, hands pressed to her head.

An instant later, the ceiling display lit up:

[WINNER: LETARIA ADENIAM / TIME: 16.74s]

Sixteen seconds.

Stesia—no pushover even within the corps—had been defeated without landing a single hit. A ripple of murmuring moved through the room.

"It's too fast! I thought she'd entered my detection range and fired, and then her fist was already in my face! No one can dodge that—des-wa!"

"That's 'des-wa,' not just 'desu-wa.' And your speech patterns are catching."

The next figure to emerge was Letaria Adeniam—dark purple hair falling loose, a faint sheen at her brow. The fitted pilot suit Milea had issued her. She'd been so embarrassed by it at first. Once inside a machine, however, her focus was something else entirely.

"Ohoho, it will take another hundred years before any of you can hope to match me! The enhanced Arden responds precisely to my senses."

She stood with a proud chest. The modifications Milea had made were allowing Arden to translate the "best course of action" that Letaria's intuition identified into mechanical movement with almost no delay at all.

"Don't embarrass us, Stesia. You're a member of this corps."

A dry voice came from the crowd. A woman stepped forward.

Medium-length red hair. Slightly downcast eyes, but with a sharp intelligence behind them.

"But Merry-senpai, her movement is genuinely wrong somehow—"

"…Letaria-san. Would you be willing to face me next?"

The woman called Merry stepped forward and laid down a quiet challenge. She was the corps' most accomplished sniper: Merry Farna.

Letaria met her gaze with a cool smile and swept her dark fringe aside.

"By all means! I am in excellent form today. Whoever steps forward will meet the same end—I'll send them all home defeated!"

Both returned to their units. The room lights dimmed. A virtual battlefield took shape.

Terrain: a debris field. The shattered remnants of enormous asteroids drifted all around. Heavy in obstacles—a fight decided by fractions of a second's visibility.

"I haven't seen you fight with my own eyes. So you'll forgive me if I don't simply take it on faith."

Merry's voice over the comms was completely cold.

Her machine—Breakline—was a Lude rebuilt to the limits of long-range firepower and heavy armor.

"Now. Show me if that 'luck' of yours is real."

The large-caliber cannon mounted on Breakline's right shoulder fired.

A high-output optical round sliced through vacuum, straight at Letaria.

"A cannon?! …Well. I'm not afraid!"

The shape of the next few seconds unfolded in Letaria's mind as instinct.

She threw Arden's thrusters full and slid sideways. The beam passed through the space she had occupied and obliterated a chunk of debris behind her.

"She dodged it—?! Then this—!"

Merry had already anticipated the evasion and moved.

From Breakline's shoulders and leg containers, a multi-lock missile salvo launched simultaneously.

Designed for multiple targets. Every last one now locked onto Letaria alone.

"How persistent—that's quite enough!!"

Homing rounds from every angle. Standard doctrine called for going defensive and minimizing damage.

Standard doctrine had no hold on Letaria.

"Right—above—lower left—there!"

She could see it. The only safe gap in the missile grid.

Arden moved like something possessed. Sudden acceleration. Hard stop. Hairpin turns that defied physics.

The simulator dampened direct G-forces on the pilot, but the members watching from outside were going slightly green just from the footage.

"That's impossible—she turned at a right angle—?!"

Merry was speechless. Her supposedly inescapable full-surround barrage—Letaria had threaded it on a chaotic, impossible trajectory.

"Gotcha—!"

Arden burst through the smoke and plunged into Breakline's guard.

At Letaria's will, the machine's leg swept up—fluid and strong.

"—I won't let you—!"

Merry moved to deploy a defensive arm—but Letaria was faster.

Arden's heavy kick struck Breakline's sensor cluster precisely, and shattered it.

[LOST CRITICAL UNIT: SYSTEM DOWN]

Red warnings ran across the monitor. Battle over.

"Are you serious…Merry too, just like that."

"She punched through that barrage without a scratch. That's not human…"

A wave of noise moved through the room.

Merry emerged from her unit and stood still for a moment, staring at her own hands. Then she walked directly toward Letaria.

Letaria braced. Have I upset her—?

"…I doubted you. I apologize. You're the real thing, Letaria-san."

Merry bowed her head—deeply, cleanly, without hesitation.

The simplicity of it knocked the wind from Letaria's prepared indignation.

"W-well. Yes. If you've understood the measure of my ability, then that will do."

Cheeks faintly warm, Letaria displayed what she hoped was noble magnanimity.

The room shifted entirely. "My turn—!" "I'd like a match, please—!" The more confident corps members began stepping forward, one by one.

What followed was Letaria's stage.

The corps' machines were built on Syn-Fibra's current model, the Lude—exceptional in output and versatility, each customized to its pilot's style.

In raw specs, there was no comparison between a Lude and the Crafid that Arden was built on.

High-mobility close combat types. Heavily armored defense types. Electronic warfare specialists.

Every variety challenged her.

Letaria defeated them all—head-on, or by finding the angle they hadn't covered.

"How does she read the attacks at that timing?"

"Can Trace Mode really be controlled that precisely?"

"…So the battle footage wasn't fabricated after all."

No one was looking at her as a girl in a peculiar costume anymore.

"I give up. You're something. The Runaway Lady isn't just a nickname."

Retta Barl—who had exchanged a hard-fought round with Letaria minutes before—walked over with a clear, open expression. He had blocked her strikes twice with his shield. But the moment he'd tried to counter, Letaria had vanished from his field of view. Arden had come from behind, locked the machine in a hold, and destroyed an arm.

"I, um—your shield work was also quite admirable…"

Letaria answered between gasps. Nearly ten consecutive matches. The toll on her concentration was real. The inside of her suit was damp.

"…At this point, there's really only the sergeant."

Someone said it quietly.

All eyes turned toward a man who had been watching from the wall in silence.

Mid-thirties. Older than Captain Grain. The build and manner of someone who had seen genuine combat—a weight to him that went beyond physical presence.

"If anyone's going to give the Captain a run for his record, it's the sergeant."

At the chorus of expectation, the man scratched his head with a somewhat resigned look, and walked toward the simulator.

"Ha…ha…ha… And you are…the Sergeant? I look forward to this."

Letaria regulated her breathing and looked up at him.

"Ethan Brow. They've just always called me 'sergeant.' Old rank—nothing more."

The vigilante corps had no formal ranks. But out of respect for his background and skill, they called him that.

"Is that so. Then, Ethan-sama—I look forward to it!"

Their battle began.

Ethan's machine—Ribast—looked unremarkable at a glance. But the joint reinforcements and thruster placement had been worked out with extraordinary precision.

(I've had the chance to observe her patterns.)

Ethan was calm.

Fast. Reads ahead. Pushes into close range.

Those three things made up every one of Letaria's winning sequences. So—dismantle the premise.

The moment the battle started, Ethan fired his photon rifle on high output.

A feint. But from Letaria's angle, it came as a blind-side shot.

Of course she felt it coming and evaded by a razor margin.

(Expected. But now—your escape route is fixed.)

Ethan continued firing. Each shot nudged Letaria's evasion in a specific direction—herding her.

Letaria's Arden was genuinely fast. But her reliance on pure instinct—always selecting the most direct path to victory—made her trajectory legible to a veteran.

"There you are—!"

Arden lunged in hard.

A heavy crack of metal. Arden's fist drove into Ribast's left arm.

But Ribast absorbed it completely—redirecting the force into minimal damage.

"You blocked it—?!"

Letaria tried to disengage and reset the distance. Ethan didn't let her.

The Ribast's compact internal blade swung out. Letaria barely twisted clear, but the pressure was unlike anything she had faced today.

Ethan had left a deliberate opening. A gap that looked perfectly safe—the exact kind that Letaria's instinct would tell her to exploit.

"Here I come—!!"

And her instinct answered. Arden pulled back for a straight punch and committed.

In that instant—Ribast's manipulator was already there, exactly where Arden's fist would arrive. It caught the blow and held.

"It's grabbing me—?!"

Letaria's field of view lurched.

The loss of freedom. The premonition of what came next.

"Fine—then—!"

She was a moment from panic when she made the call. The free arm snapped out.

A blade of light blazed from the open palm.

"'fo-ton-sei-ba'—!!"

A close-range energy weapon. Milea had been telling her to use it since the beginning. Instinct, not calculation. But the blade was aimed straight for Ribast's head.

Light erupted.

A shockwave tore through the virtual space. Both machines were hurled apart.

Ethan had deployed his own photon saber in the same instant, catching Letaria's strike. The clashing energies repelled each other, and the distance between the machines opened.

"A fresh start, then—!"

Letaria's hands were shaking on the controls. She pushed forward anyway.

And then—

A buzzer. The simulator forced an end.

"What? What is happening?! We aren't finished—!!"

She emerged from the unit still protesting. Ethan climbed out on the other side, quiet.

"Let's call it here, Letaria-san. You're breathing hard. Another round now would just wear down your focus. You need to rest."

Only then did Letaria realize how badly her lungs were working. Sweat on her face. Heart hammering.

"We'll settle this another day. You gave me a real fight."

A faint smile from Ethan. Around them, the corps members broke into genuine, warm applause.

"That was a match!" "You actually went that far against the sergeant—!"

Letaria looked at Ethan with a face that was half frustration, half something considerably brighter.

"Hmph! Just you wait until next time! Next time—I will absolutely make you eat those words!"

She planted a hand on her hip and struck the arrogant-noblewoman pose.

But what lay beneath it—the joy of having found someone who could genuinely push her; someone she could call a rival—that wasn't hidden at all.