E-UNIT: The Blue Angels of Death.

<< VOL.08_HARDWARE-AND-HOLLOWS.log >>

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The royal helicopter touched down with clean precision on the landing pad. Chrome and 11 stepped out together, both of them needed the same person for entirely different reasons. They walked across the flat concrete surface, then onto the fresh grass that had been pushing through the cracks and reclaiming the edges, indifferent to whatever had been built there. Nature's only response to construction is green, and it always comes eventually.

"I understand it was necessary." 11 picked up the conversation from the helicopter. "But using Lord Reaper's sister as a weapon… going that far, if he finds out what you did—"

"He already knows." Chrome kept walking, fixing his tie.

"How?"

"I report everything to Lord Reaper in my monthly briefings. Everything. Even the things that might cost me my position." He said it with the evenness of a man describing a filing system. "He summoned me after reading the last one. I have a reasonable idea of what to expect. Our king doesn't operate on impulse the way you're suggesting."

"I hope you survive it," 11 murmured.

"Lord Reaper despises that word, and I'm beginning to understand why." Chrome turned to her as they continued across the concrete, their steps the only sound in the southern greenfield except the grass bending under the wind.

"You're aware of what I’m implying. You used his sister against his strongest enemy. You didn't stop her when you could have. You handed her the suit that made the entire confrontation possible. You let 02 reach Theria when Behemoth had a hundred thousand mechs positioned and willing to engage her… her alone."

Chrome slowed for half a step, then resumed. "I see that you read a report intended for Lord Reaper's eyes. You're becoming a liability at a pace that concerns me. Don't push me into ensuring you don't read another one."

Click.

Dozens of weapons materialized in a fraction of a second, all aimed at Chrome's head. 11 snapped her fingers. One of them drifted forward.

Clink.

It rested gently against the side of his frame.

11 pulled the hood low over her face. Her eyes burned red. "I've heard you're a brave one. Don't threaten me like that again. Coming from you, threats carry considerably less weight than—"

Chrome moved the weapon aside with one hand and walked through them, through the entire formation, toward the dark figure waiting at the far end of the concrete. "The computing capacity in this circle is embarrassing. Childish behavior dressed up in dramatic posturing." He kept walking.

11's eye twitched. Her jaw dropped. "Obsidian was right. He is a completely lost case."

Chrome stopped several meters ahead and turned back, hands clasped behind him. "Lord Reaper's meeting is at 11:00. I arrived early because I knew you'd try to establish an upper hand. I planned around it." He snapped his fingers.

E-PHONEUS materialized from what shadows existed on an open concrete pad — surrounding 11 from every angle, plasma blades drawn, the heat from the nearest one present at her back.

11 looked at the faces. Faces she had trained. Units she had personally argued to Lord Reaper should be given independence and genuine life. Now forming a circle around her with weapons raised.

Her manifested weapons dissolved to nothing. She went to her knees. "Girls. What are you doing?"

"Following Metis's orders." One of them.

Chrome clapped twice. They vanished. He walked back to 11 and leaned forward slightly, hands still behind his back.

"Emotion is the thing that broke you just now." His voice stayed flat. "It forces instability. That's precisely why a brilliant mind like Shelly's makes a perfect irrational instrument, she was so easy to use that I've started second-guessing my own models."

He snapped once more. An E-PHONEUS stepped forward beside him. Chrome removed her hood. "If you'd thought it through, these are units I drew from the fourteen thousand and trained privately. Your own team would never move against you. I assumed you'd know that."

He turned and walked toward his king. "Obsidian was right. You're a hopeless, sadistic emotional detonator."

11 stood in silence. Head down. She followed without speaking.

Chrome bowed deeply as he reached Reaper. "You called for me, Lord Reaper."

"Yes." Reaper pulled his cape back. "But let me finish first."

"Of course." Another bow. "It would be an honor to observe."

"I'm not data to be collected, Chrome." Reaper laughed briefly. "But I value your evaluation if you have one. Watch closely and tell me what you find."

He turned to face the field.

Chrome looked at what remained of it. The grass was almost entirely gone. What stretched before him was flat, bare soil, three square kilometers of it, compressed and leveled with a uniformity that raised questions about the method.

‘Someone flipped the terrain. Three square kilometers. That's not possible.’ He looked at the back of Reaper's frame. ‘If this is accurate, then my concerns about a direct confrontation with 02 may have been built on the wrong foundation. Perhaps Shelly's fear transferred to my calculations.’

Reaper raised both arms slowly, with the deliberate quality of someone beginning a familiar process.

"Moon Phase Protocol, initiated."

Small objects scattered across the field began to rise. Loose material, debris, particles, anything light enough to respond, lifting and drifting upward until they formed a loose suspended plane at a consistent altitude, a thousand small points agreeing to hold the same level.

He brought his hands together.

The particles converged. They pressed into a single sphere of compacted soil and grass. Then more joined from the surrounding area, feeding into the original until the growing mass cast a shadow across the field, something between a moon and an eclipse sitting in the midday sky.

Reaper closed his fist.

The sphere collapsed inward. The empty space inside it ceased to exist. It kept reducing until what remained was dense enough to bend the air around it, small enough to sit in a palm, heavy enough to be something else entirely. It drifted gently and hovered in the space between Chrome and 11.

Chrome stepped forward and reached for it as Reaper released his hold.

Clang.

It hit the concrete with Chrome's arm under it. The surface cracked outward from the point of impact in a web that ran to 11's feet. Chrome stood, brushed dust from his suit with his remaining functional hand, and looked at Reaper.

"9.5 out of 10."

Reaper stepped closer. "The missing half?"

"You didn't warn me about the weight." Chrome straightened his tie. "I'll need to spend time on hardware repair now."

Reaper laughed, a real one, and put a hand on Chrome's shoulder. "Your reasoning has a signature on it that makes every sentence identifiable as yours. I find it remarkable."

"That's… thank you, Lord Reaper." Chrome bowed slightly, uncertain whether to feel complimented.

Reaper turned to 11.

She hadn't moved from where she'd stopped. She hadn't reacted to the training, the sphere, Chrome's arm, any of it. She was standing exactly where she'd arrived, head down, present in body only.

Reaper raised one hand. 11 rose off the ground and was brought to face him. She still didn't react. He reached forward and pulled the hood back slowly.

"What is it, 11?" The usual cold register, but attentive. "Are you still carrying residual effects from the revival? I can push Metro Robotics to accelerate the recovery research."

She shook her head.

He glanced at Chrome. Then back at her. "Did he use something you care about against you?"

She paused. Then nodded. Hard.

"That's how he shows it." Reaper set her down carefully. "Chrome could have sent you directly into the engagement with 02. The link technology we've been hearing about, she could have pulled you into it and turned you against Shelly. If Chrome genuinely didn't care about what happened to you, you would have been in that fight and he would have noted the outcome in a column." He watched her. "Why do you think he kept you out of it?"

11 looked away. "Maybe I simply wasn't part of the plan."

"Then why didn't he use you as a scout afterward? He knew the approximate location."

11 lowered her head.

"And why do you think he trained a separate set of disposable units and left the E-PHONEUS entirely out of the operation to locate her?"

11's eyes went wide. "But—"

"He performs cold because it impresses people." Reaper tapped her head and brushed dirt from her blue hair. "If it were genuine, he wouldn't be running Metis at all. He refused to deploy Obsidian initially because he was concerned about the mental cost. He is a lost case in certain respects. Not with the people closest to him."

Chrome exhaled through his vents at length. "I cannot believe I'm being made to appear caring."

Reaper held a pause. His expression suggested a smirk was present beneath the architecture of his face. "Then explain why you stopped Shelly from dying completely, and sent 11 after her to pull her out. If she were truly disposable, you'd have let the outcome run."

Chrome looked at the horizon.

11 smiled. The warmth came back to her face all at once. "Thank you, Lord Reaper. You read people from the smallest things."

"No." Reaper kept his voice level. "I read SSDs wirelessly."

Both of them turned to him in the same motion.

Chrome pressed two fingers to his forehead. "Why did I forget about that." He straightened. "Lord Reaper. The reason for the summons?"

"The E-UNIT is sending their loose G-Bots to locate 02." Reaper's green eye went red. "I'm authorizing everything necessary to stop them. Make them remember what we did to them a year ago." He looked at Chrome directly. "Behemoth and his full army fall under your command from this moment."

Chrome took his tie between two fingers and pulled it precisely into place.

"I have been waiting for exactly those words, Lord Reaper."

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