ther Hunters just like this.
I wonder if there are other Hunters in his situation as well? I guess that’s the case for that Zalmo too, huh? Or maybe they are actually friends? Can’t tell… I have no idea at all…]

 

Akira continued driving through the wasteland while wondering about the answer to those questions.
That was when a destroyed powered suit blocked his way forward.
The destroyed powered suit had its lower half completely decimated and its body was severely damaged at different spots.

 

Akira stopped his APC.
He thought that if he used the full power of his augmented suit, he might be able to move that powered suit aside, so he then walked toward the destroyed powered suit.
That was when suddenly a short-range connection call reached his information terminal.

 

“Long time no see.
To think that we meet in this place, it must be some kind of fate.
Anyway, you came at the right time, can you help me for a bit?”

 

“Who’s this?”

 

“It’s me, Nelia.”

 

Akira immediately looked around.

 

“Where are you calling me from?”

 

“You see a destroyed powered suit nearby, right? I’m inside it.
But I can’t get out by myself, so like, can you help me?”

 

Akira hesitated for a bit, but then he carefully approached the blast door and grabbed the bent handle.
He swiftly opened the door and switched to his rifle as he aimed inside.

 

Right there, Nelia was smiling amusedly at the surprised Akira.
Similar to the powered suit, Nelia only had the upper half of her body.
One of her arms was crushed within the bent powered suit.

 

“That was a rather cold reaction from you considering that we don’t get that many opportunities to see each other.”

 

“Well, considering the situation and the other party, I had to do at least this much.”

 

“Is that so? Well, it doesn’t really matter.
Can you take me back to the temporary base for now?”

 

Akira gazed silently at Nelia with a serious face, his rifle was still poised at her.
So Nelia raised her eyebrows and asked.

 

“Oh my, do you have some kind of interest in girls that are paralyzed?”

 

Akira sighed exasperatedly and lowered his rifle.
It was not because he was sure that Nelia would not shoot at him in this situation.
He understood that very well.
Nelia was an insane Hunter, there was no doubt about it, but her madness was the thing that guaranteed her as non-hostile at this moment.
This strange feeling reminded him that there were many things out there that he did not know about in this world.

 

“Let me at least confirm this first.
You’re not hostile at the moment, right?”

 

“Sure, if you think so.”

 

“Alright, do tell me beforehand if you’re going to attack me, okay?”

 

“Of course, I’ll be sure to tell you beforehand.”

 

Akira grabbed Nelia’s remaining hand and pulled her out, but the cable connected to her crushed arm prevented him from doing so.
Thus, Akira put in more power and tore that cable forcefully before carrying Nelia out.

 

Akira was carrying Nelia by grabbing her remaining arm and letting her body hang down.
That Nelia smiled teasingly at Akira and poked fun at him.

 

“That was not gentle.
Are you not familiar with how to treat a girl’s body? I know that some girls like it hard though, do you perhaps have a preference for them?”

 

“The heck are you even talking about?”

 

Akira only said so and carried Nelia back to his vehicle.
After putting Nelia on the driver assistant’s seat, as if to vent his anger, he turned the vehicle violently and rammed it to the blocking powered suit to push it aside.

 

“You’re bad at driving, do you want me to drive instead?”

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“How are you going to drive with your body like that?”

 

“The control device in this vehicle is connected to one of the terminals, right? You just need me to connect to that terminal.
Although I can’t fight with this body, I feel bad leaving everything to you without helping at all.”

 

Akira hesitated, but he then pulled out a terminal from the APC, he then connected the terminal to a jack on Nelia’s neck as she had instructed.
Not too long after that, the APC suddenly started moving with her control.
With this, Akira could just focus on fighting and let Nelia handle the driving.

 

After that, Akira and Nelia exchanged information to understand the situation.
Hearing what had happened to Nelia’s powered suit, Akira frowned and asked.

 

“Wait a sec, are you being serious? The powered suit squad got beaten? Isn’t the whole squad using the same powerful powered suit that you were using before? And you still got beaten?”

 

The rider of the powered suit that Tsubaki cut in half was Nelia.
She was lent that powered suit in order to advertise it.

 

“If the commander was not that stupid, we would have retreated instead.
I tried to use a melee weapon since none of our ranged attacks worked, but then this happened.
So yes, close-range, long-range, nothing worked.
I don’t think they have anything to turn the tide at this point.
If they had any trump card, they would have already used it at this point.”

 

“Which means, those invisible monsters right now are…”

 

“Now that the powered suit squad is gone, there is no one to stop them.
I think they’re roaming around the area right now.
In the first place, thanks to that old-world automaton, the squad was not able to stop any monsters at all.”

 

With that, Akira’s hope that the situation would fix itself with time was completely dashed.
If more and more mechanical monsters did not stop pouring out from the other side, the situation would only get worse with time.

 

Because of this, Akira no longer hesitated, just waiting until the situation got better was out of the question now.
He heaved out a huge sigh and made a grim face.

 

“Alright then, Let’s force our way back to the temporary base.
Although judging  by the signal, there’s a huge battle near the supply line, but that’s still better than just staying here.”

 

“We’re already heading there.”

 

“…I see.”

 

Akira was surprised that Nelia just decided where the APC was heading without consulting with him first.
But since it was a good thing that they were already heading toward the temporary base, Akira decided not to say anything about it.

 

“But still, after hearing your story, this means that our chain of command has been destroyed.
And then, for some reason, we’re now caught in a situation where the Hunters don’t trust others that they do not know.
This is quite an issue.
But to think that we would meet each other in this situation like this, I wonder if we’re connected by fate or something.”

 

“Well, judging that I’m here in right now, it is safe to say that my luck sucks.”

 

“That’s pretty harsh.”

 

The APC’s radar picked up some new signals.
Akira noticed that and went to open the back door of the APC to clear his line of fire, in case those signals were enemies.
He more or less had a grasp on how many enemies there were thanks to those signals detected.
As he aimed his rifle, he suddenly spotted a powered suit flying from behind a building, still far away from him.

 

“Nelia, are those powered suits here to pick you up?”

 

“They are enemies! Shoot them down!”

 

Right at the instance Nelia said that, the powered suit aimed its rifle at Akira’s APC.

 

“Hold on if you don’t want to be thrown out of the APC!!”

 

Nelia made the APC do sharp turns in order to evade the incoming bullets.
But even so, some of them still hit the APC’s sidewall and rooftop.
Each shot was huge, fired from an equally large rifle equipped on the enemy’s powered suit.

 

The expensive armour plating protected the APC from those shots, but eventually, some plates had their durability worn out and fell to the ground.
But even so, the barrage did not stop at all.
The force from the bullets pushed the APC to the point that it almost rolled over, but Nelia was able to skillfully control the APC, preventing it from rolling over.

 

Akira quickly grabbed the APC by reflex in order to maintain his balance while his other hand pulled the trigger of his SSB rifle.
Due to Nelia’s rough driving, his aim was far from accurate.
But the homing armour-piercing frag grenades were still able to find their way toward the enemy’s powered suit.
Enveloping it in a sea of flame

 

Now that the APC was out of the hostile powered suit’s line of sight, Akira went to his terminal to check for its signal.
The signal was still moving, indicating that their enemy was still alive.

 

“Nelia, just a question, have you fought against that powered suit before?”

 

“Nope, how about you?”

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“Me neither… So how were you able to immediately tell that it was hostile?”

 

“What are you talking about? Just look at how it moved from the signal.
It’s obvious that it did not come in peace, no?”

 

Akira could not tell.
But he thought that it was unwise to say that he did not know, so he decided to just shut up.
Nelia found that silence suspicious as she then continued.

 

“Well, it’s true that it might just have been careful of us, moreover, it’s dangerous to try and come this close.
Close enough till it can send its identification code.
Even if that powered suit held no hostility, it should be aware that we might be hostile against it.
Although my judgement is basically based on the end result, I don’t deny that I was not being that careful when deciding if it was hostile or not.
But do you think we should let it close considering that it might suddenly spring an ambush and get us killed?”

 

“No, that’s fine.
It’s true that it is hostile too after all.”

 

“Right?”

 

Akira just tried to end the subject as he agreed with Nelia, thus she returned back to her usual mood.

 

“But still, since both of us don’t remember fighting it at all, then why is it attacking us? Did the user go on a rampage after losing the rest of his team?”

 

“From what I see, it seemed to be obviously aiming for us though?”

 

Right after Nelia said that, someone suddenly connected to the vehicle’s short-range communication feature.
It was because the user of that powered suit had dialled his device communication output to maximum, allowing him to only send his voice to Akira.

 

“Akira!! I’m not going to let you run away!! You’re going to die here! That I can guarantee!!”

 

Akira’s face twitched as he scowled.
In contrast to that, Nelia smiled amusedly and said.

 

“It seems that it is chasing after you.
Are you sure you don’t remember that guy?”

 

“…This voice, it’s Zalmo.”

 

“I see, so, what is your connection with that guy? It seems that guy really hates you, did you cuckold him or something?”

 

When Nelia jokingly said so, Akira climbed up the top of the APC through the open back door and turned on his communication device.

 

“He once attacked a shop owned by someone I know.
I’m pretty sure I killed that guy then and there.
I did blow his head off back then and there was no mistaking it, his brain was scattered all over the place after that.
But, for some reason, he is still alive.
Maybe it’s someone else posing as that guy.”

 

Nelia listened with full interest.

 

“That’s a pretty interesting story.
If you were not lying, then either he got resurrected or he’s a ghost.
There’s a story about the beguiling ghost around this area, after all.
I guess it’s not that weird to find a deadman roaming around this place.”

 

“That story about the beguiling ghost, wasn’t it supposed to be the old-world area managers? You know, those AI managing the old-world buildings? I saw one back in Mihazono ruin when I went to Seranthal building”

 

“There are many different theories about that beguiling ghost.
Well, putting that aside, it might be possible to resurrect someone with a destroyed brain with old-world technology.

 

“…No no no, that’s just simply impossible no matter how you look at it, right?”

 

“And old-world technology is such a thing that turned such absurdities into reality, right? You are a Hunter yourself.
So it’s better to keep in mind that nothing is impossible for the old-world technology”

 

Akira indeed had gone through a lot of things that were out of the ordinary, so he found it interesting that he still had some common sense left inside him as he smiled wryly.
Even after using an augmented suit that boosted his physical strength outside the realm of common sense, the SSB rifle that could spit out an impossible amount of bullets; and had spent days living together with something as absurd as Alpha, Akira found it interesting how resilient this so-called common sense could be.

 

“He’s coming from above!!”

 

Akira aimed his SSB rifle up and pulled the trigger.
One of his SSB rifles was spewing out homing armour-piercing frag grenades while the other one was spewing out anti forcefield rounds.
Akira shot that barrage with such intensity, that he emptied his magazines in a blink of an eye.

 

Way above Akira, the hostile powered suit was flying so high that he was barely able to spot it.
That powered suit aimed its guns at Akira and, just like what he had done just now, it also emptied its magazines, releasing a storm of bullets in Akira’s direction.

 

The bullets and explosives both rushed up and down past each other.
Some of them collided and exploded in mid-air.
The bullets that came from above landed and created large sinkholes in the ground.
Some of them managed to hit Akira’s APC, shaking it violently, causing some of the armour tiles to fall.
While the frag grenades flying upwards hit the side of nearby buildings and exploded.
The shrapnel collided with the powered suit, resulting in flashes of light on the forcefield armour.

 

During that exchange between the two opponents with an overwhelming difference in size, both parties exchanged an uncountable number of bullets, heavily damaging the area.

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