16 Shooting Down a Star 5
'Indeed, you're formidable. Jin Higashi.'
After several exchanges, Harold murmurs, licking his dry lips.
He has watched the recorded footage countless times.
Each repetition overwrites the previous one, as they stand opposed once more.
Truly. It's hard to believe this is the same human being.
'Tch... The machine performance差距 is too great!'
Jin has assessed his opponent's skill.
He is certainly strong.
By age, Harold should be older than Jin, already past his physical peak.
Yet, he moves with such precision—likely due to his own cybernetic augmentation.
That enhancement does more than boost physical capability.
It also stabilizes the body in a fixed state.
Even accounting for that, Jin's skill remains superior.
The gap in machine performance is so vast it more than compensates for any difference in pilot ability.
'Calming down.'
Jin’s frustration at being unable to advance the battle as he wishes is lightly addressed by Edelweiss.
She offers something resembling advice.
‘Perhaps you should proceed as you did when fighting me?’
Jin nods.
‘I don’t want to say it, but you’re ten times stronger.’
‘Indeed. Twenty times stronger than Jin.’
Neither can gauge how serious the other truly is, but one thing is certain: they are undeniably the greatest enemy either has faced in the past.
‘Chattering is a sign of confidence!’
Having sensed the increase in communications activity,
Harold attacks Jin’s griffin.
Etherdagger. A weapon capable of finishing any opponent if its output reaches two thousand lammy.
No defense exists beyond evasion.
Dodging the slash that gradually melts through armor, Jin asks.
‘…Can you break through his ether coating at full strength?’
The flash that erased the battleship’s armor moments ago.
The question: could that strike breach even Antares Prime—the entity boasting a defense surpassing the Queen?
Edelweiss nodded briefly.
‘If it’s in its current state.’
Breakthrough is possible.
But as expected, the opponent is moving.
‘Yet if it converges like you, it’ll overwhelm even me.’
A defense already far harder than usual, consciously reinforced.
Even Edelweiss’s full power would struggle to penetrate, she admitted, a hint of frustration in her voice.
But for Jin, that answer was already a perfect hundred.
‘I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.’
He’d redirect her focus toward him.
Any hint of danger recognized—then that would be Edelweiss’s opening.
The issue remains their lack of coordination.
‘Can you sync with me?’
Slightly provocative.
Edelweiss nodded firmly in confirmation.
'Of course.'
To fail now, after such preparation, would be unthinkable.
'Has the strategy meeting ended?'
In an instant, acceleration resumed, closing the distance once more.
Edelweiss intercepted Etherdagger’s slash with her own Long Sword.
The convergence technique of Ether.
She had observed Jin perform it countless times—now it was her own.
The blade barely held against the blade of light.
At the point of clash, Jin fired toward both combatants.
The target, naturally, was Harold’s Antares.
Yet the green机体 pivoted off Edelweiss’s frame and evaded the shot.
Worse—without pause, it rotated 180 degrees and turned directly toward Jin.
The acceleration should have overwhelmed both机体 and pilot. Yet no effect is visible.
"What kind of G-tolerance are you operating at!?"
The ether coating is undoubtedly more than just armor.
The机体 frame itself is reinforced with ether.
Or perhaps—could the pilot be reinforced as well? A suspicion arises.
Deceleration from top speed in an instant.
Antares, matching relative velocity, assaults the Griffin.
Another slash.
The pilot knows evasion is possible through gunfire.
No matter how advanced the机体, the trigger is pulled by a human.
Jin’s skill makes avoiding a shot before it's fired effortless.
Thus, close combat.
Fists clash at a distance too fast to react, even with foresight.
‘To treat me like this…!’
Jin’s shoulder, struck by humiliation, is pressed against Edelweiss’s glare as she raises her kick.
She wants to cover him, but that option does not exist for her.
Good or bad, she was a fighter too.
Jin attempts to disengage, but Harold does not allow it.
Closing the distance triggers an immediate advance.
They press against each other as if connected by thread.
At that range, evading every slash becomes difficult.
So he does not evade.
He extends his palm.
He shifts the vector of the opponent’s ether dagger strike, aligning with the arm’s motion.
Not evasion—redirecting the attack itself.
Easy to say, impossible to achieve.
Antares’s output surpasses the Griffon’s simple actuator output.
Only perfect foresight of movement flow could accomplish this.
'You really are an infuriating man!'
The technique was something that even Harold, as an enemy, could only marvel at.
'You're riding a griffon with your bare body—how dare you challenge Antares itself!'
Jin responded with a look of contempt, as if about to spit, despite the praise transmitted directly.
'Shut up.'
Just hours ago, there had been no personal grudge.
He was angry about bringing Mio to this place—but that was her choice.
Now it was different.
'What if you accidentally shoot me down?'
She chose it herself.
He would choose Mio over orders.
No regrets in that choice.
But... but... but...
He would never forgive this man who forced such a choice upon him.
'Go ahead and try!'
'I don't need to be told!'
Jin answered Harold's taunt with action.
A barrage of standard ether rifles.
Harold did not dodge. There was no need to.
Jin responded to the lapse with a single shot—ether compressed to the limit of the rifle’s capacity, focused to an extreme degree.
‘Oh.’
But it was dodged, as if anticipated.
Indeed, one might predict the flow of ether.
Yet the reaction was swift.
‘Power differential attack… but I’ve already seen that once.’
Chi had used the same tactic once before.
Harold remembered it clearly.
‘Damn it, if you’re going to show it, finish him already, you clumsy fool.’
Jin, unaware his义妹 had thought the same, cursed the foolhardy remark.
‘Still got something left, I assume?’
‘That was my most confident strategy.’
He considered his next move, though options were few.
Something arrived from behind, resolving his dilemma.
‘Supply container…?’
The question of why such a thing was here now resolved itself instantly.
"So. It's you."
"Ah, still someone held on the other side...?"
Harold muttered, immediately recognizing the sender.
"No. It is her."
Sharon Byron.
The same name surfaced in both their minds.
"Of course. You wouldn't wish for a future where you parted from Shōgō Jin without resolution."
That world had been, in a sense, Jin's ideal.
But—Sharon's perspective was different.
Perhaps, in some ways, more painful than death.
Remote-deployed the supply container, scattering its armaments across the field.
From within, she seized several Ether Daggers and turned them toward Jin.
A slash synchronized with the oscillator—beyond design limits.
It was an attack too reckless for Harold to receive lightly.
She intercepted it with an Ether Dagger, converging Ether in the same manner.
Ether skewed.
The flow concentrated in the attack could not be easily replaced.
Now, the opponent could not shift to defense.
"Receive this! The strike that destroyed our ancestors!"
A finishing blow.
Harold responded—
"Ah. I know that attack—"
with a smile.
Lances launched from platforms embedded across Antares Prime.
They collided head-on with Edelweiss’s Long Sword.
"…Impossible."
"That’s exactly it. Harmonic Razer. I’m surprised the name matches too…"
Each lance vibrated at high frequency.
Even as they self-destructed through their own vibration, they neutralized the oscillation of Edelweiss’s Long Sword.
"An armament that existed in the past database."
The Long Sword of Edelweiss was forcefully pushed back by the vibrational wave at the moment of its complete self-destruction, as if bidding a final farewell.
She watched it, disbelief etched in her expression.
‘As long as you’re carrying that, I’ll make preparations.’