The beach was roughly separated into two halves. One was shaken by the nearby battle and chose to return to the city. The other still pointed at the giant ice pillar and took pictures of the dual smoke trail.

After returning to their cafe, Tsune saw that it was still almost full. Mostly because a lot of the visitors were either pilots, or their fans, and both parties now had a juicy new attraction.

One of the central TV stations sent out an automatic phone message about a newly published video of the Zodiac's recent mission. And it even included the view from inside of the cockpit as a bonus feature.

Having clicked the link as soon as she read the message, Tsune saw a rare sight on her screen. A 3d model of the planetary ring, *Tek Terra* that served as the main directory for all of the orbital services.

The ring's image was cut into fine slices by information icons that lead to different utility or production sections.

Feeling lost in this forest of messages, Tsune spent almost a minute with filtering options before she saw the Zodiac's sign. And only then she got to the desired video link.

-Do you want to download the mission footage?-

-You chose Yes-

When the download started and she saw the countdown, Tsune put the phone down in annoyance. It was close to an hour.

-

Around twenty minutes later, the blonde grew bored of looking at the sea. And trying to analyze the fight from her own experience was an exercise in futility because of how little she knew about the robot.

Looking at other team members, Den was busy with Aery whispering into his ear, and Hem's attention was taken by his phone. She couldn't see it from her position, but judging by the voices he was in the live chat for people stranded in the download queue.

That left only Eider, who used the commotion to appropriate everyone's drinks. And immediately finished them off, with the most recent victim being her juice glass.

'Hey, do you know anything about Zodiac?'

Eider ignored her question, but at the same time his neighbour, Hem, winced as if he was struck below the table.

'Well, whatever, I'll look it up by myself.'

'I know a fair share about orbitals.'

Failing to get his partner to shift his attention to Tsune and speak to her first, Eider tried to salvage the situation.

'And this guy can add a lot as well. Isn't that right?'

The boy in question only shrugged, his hands flying over his tablet as he took part in a heated discussion with other people.

'I can do that, but don't you think its better to use this chance to make connections?'

'You read my mind! That's exactly what I'm suggesting.'

Eider took the electronic menu from the center of the table to order more desserts and a juice assortment. He paused to steal a quick glance at Tsune and ordered a pie slice and a fruit salad as well.

'Okay, so what do you want to know? Anything specific, like that pilot's connection to a certain old that man Hem told me about, or just general stuff?'

The blonde looked at her phone's screen, that constantly increased the video's download timer, and sighed. At this rate, lowering its priority to an archive download was a better idea.

'Give me both.'

'I'll need my phone for visual aid.'

Eider stood up and put his hand on Hem's shoulder. It was an unassuming gesture, but it was enough to make the hazel haired boy stand up and move his chair closer to the girl. Then, with his phone between the three of them, Eider clicked a star sign on top of the orbital ring map. And the simple image changed to a detailed model that no student should have had.

The new map seamlessly merged the computer graphics, used for uninhabited structural sections, and real but rarely updated video loops for crewed parts.

Unlike her own phone, the Zodiac site showed an entire directory instead of a single video. It also had animated intros for the team itself and for all of their pilots and mechanics. What's more, every mission was available for streaming instead of a download.

It looked like a business site used by potential employers.

'But how do you have all of this?'

Answering her question with only a smug grin, the boy clicked the latest video from the Air Zodiac section.

-

-Recording started-

-Warning, mechamonster emergence detected.-

The siren blared across the Zodiac hangar halls and the lighting switched to red.

Seconds later, four people hurriedly put on helmets as they ran from their rooms to the command center .

There, on the main screen, their assistant devices displayed the available data as soon as it was processed.

-Locating the emergence point-

-Orbital location failed, switching to ground sensors-

-Seismic and tidal detection successful-

-Calculating the interception point-

When the point was drawn from deep sea to the shore near Crystal Resort, one of the taller Zodiac members turned to others. He had signs of Libra, Aquarius and Gemini on his chest and arms.

'Hah, told you. He might be intolerable, but my old man can still think straight. Also, I propose I should go. Even if I can't destroy it, I'll freeze it to buy time for evacuation.'

'Wouldn't it better for me to snipe it through water? I don't even need to descend if I use Sagittarius.'

The Water Zodiac pilot, a tall but thin woman, interrupted her Fire colleague.

'No, he's right. Fire is too destructive and you have nothing to stop the wave from flooding the beach.'

-

The view changed and the command room was replaced with the chest cockpit of Air Zodiac mech. It was a round room with flat ceiling, transparent walls and, unlike the mechs Tsune was used to, had no visible controls installed.

But that changed when the pilot jumped in from the ceiling hatch. Two wide circles, one drawn on the floor and the other on the ceiling, flared to life. Multiple green lasers locked onto the pilot and their thin beams tracked the position of his limbs and fingers.

'Launch.'

The wall before the mech opened, and with a light tug from hangar's tractor beams, it fell out of the hangar. After rotating in the open space to align itself with the orbital ring, it started to accelerate.

It flew alongside the ring on a preplanned route that maximized speed for as long as it was possible.

It shot past the ship production docks, with clouds of construction robots around airspace battleships, whose shapes loosely followed their ancient navy counterparts. Avoided the protruding research wings with rows upon rows of small glowing windows. And took a shallow detour around spaceports with their endless streams of passenger ships.

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But even that was almost too slow to intercept the enemy before it broke the underwater wall. Therefore, instead of a slower descent, the pilot chose to do a sharp turn and dive into the atmosphere at full speed, betting on the engines to slow the fall.

'Magic Mode.'

The circles above and below the pilot flared once more and a holographic cube appeared in front of the pilot. It looked like somebody cut out a piece of the near shore sea below him, from surface to the bottom, and put it into an invisible fishtank.

Reaching inside of the hologram, the pilot clenched his fist around red sphere that represented the current position of his enemy. With the weapon now locked onto the target, his other hand circled around the fist to trap the mechamonster inside of a wind wall.

'Libra.'

A glowing horizontal line connected the pilot's hands and he moved his fist up. By imbalancing the scales around his target, he increased the wind's power with every passing second. Until it was enough for a killing blow.

'Libra release.'

When the enourmous pillar of water was about to turn into a tidal wave, the pilot quickly slashed it from top to bottom with his finger and called out another attack.

'Aquarius.'

-Recording ended-

-

"Magic mode? Was that ever in the game? Was that in any of the games?"

"Wait, how would my Gunner even fight against that? Isn't this unfair?"

Eider's grin only grew when Tsune looked away from his phone, now with even more questions. But before she could ask even a single one, he stood up.

'I'll go ask the waitress about our order. Its way too late.'

The girl understood where he was going with this, but it was already too late. With curiousity in overdrive, the blonde's attention turned to the only source of immediate satisfaction, the boy still near her.

'Hey, what does it mean by magic?'

'Come on, answer me.'

Hem tried to ignore her as he kept tapping away at buttons, but eventually relented. And for the first time since their trip, the two of them properly talked to each other.

'Okay, but you really should not be missing a chance for an early career.'

'I'll do that later, but first tell me. What was that?'

'It was a remote manipulation part. Custom made to fit his team's theme.'

'But those weren't in our shop and I saw everything there.'

'Because parts that require maintenance are rarely sold to students. Imagine if you broke your assistant device during senior student practice, would our Academy agree to fix it?'

Hem took Eider's phone to demonstrate. And after a quick spin of the orbital ring map, the girl could look through the advanced parts market.

To her relief, she found out that while most of the weapons and devices certainly had more than enough features to justify all of the zeroes in their price tags, they also had a fair share of drawbacks. They were limited by ammo, charge level, timed activations, or were simply hard to use or maintain.

"Oh, I remember that part! So, random buffs were chosen by the pilot? Those decisions were really bad sometimes."

She found one of the parts, that she often used in the previous games, *E-Field projector*, and paused to read its description.

In the game it gave powerful buffs, but they were chosen randomly. So depending on your luck, its defense mode could cut into your damage combos, or its offense mode would leave you open to the enemy's special attacks.

Its real version created a force field surface around the robot that the pilot could shape as he wanted. As long as it was made of flat polygonal faces, straight edges and sharp corners. And according to the instructions, he would have to change them in real time, shifting the shield into spikes to meet the attacks and flat surfaces for return fire.

"Ah, Remote Manipulation, finally."

When her search yielded the first result for Libra, the blonde went to read through everything on its store page. But she quickly regretted that decision as the amount of strictly technical information was overwhelming.

Even the community section was headed by menacing warnings like *Exercise caution while using* and *Always have a mechanic on stand by.* And the content itself was almost evenly split into graphs, math and horror tales that were born from stories about the part's misuse.

While Tsune read about a pilot who managed to choke himself by draining the cockpit's air away, Eider has returned. The food he brought ended the weird date scheme and both boys returned to their seats.

-

The rest of their vacation went by smoothly, except for Aery's attitude towards her that grew progressively distant.

Whether it was because Den still tried to make the team members interact more, or because there was something between them, the blonde could only guess. But the stressed out brunette chose her as the target for venting negative emotions.

When they left the hotel to board the train and Aery gave her a piercing stare just for looking in their direction, Tsune's patience ran thin as well. She went to Eider, who agreed to carry her bags while she took more photos.

'Hey, what's up with her? She was much friendler several days ago.'

The boy shrugged before switching hands, that held the baggage, to walk closer to her.

'I don't know what she thinks you did, so lets hope the summer break fixes it.'

Reducing his voice to nearly a whisper, he continued.

'But I wanted to ask you. Was I too pushy about bringing you and Hem together? Did I cause a scene? The guy seems even more of a recluse than usual.'

Tsune smiled and returned the shrug.

'No, its probably because he noticed that I'm not really interested in a relationship.'

-

Finally home, when late evening was about to change into night, the blonde surrendered her phone to mother and immediately went to bed.

Her sleep was interrupted by light from the window. It reflected off the wardrobe before the bed to brighten her entire corner. Initially she thought that it was from a passing car, but it kept on going even after a minute. Begrudgingly, Tsune removed the cover to look outside.

Her father walked out of the house, to a car marked *Red Labs*, while holding a familiar assistant device. Glancing back, the blonde confirmed that her cabinet was empty.

Her confusion didn't last long. Her life was threatened at the resort and there was no need to guess what her father's motives would be.

'He better not be preparing another surprise.'